Sept. 15, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:32:21
2795 Cynicism as Scar Tissue - Saturday Call In Show September 13th, 2014
Overcoming feelings of loneliness, non-existence around narcissists, cynicism is the scar-tissue of cowardice, the science of happiness, the morality of murder and theft, universal ethics, moving past guilt without the possibility of restitution, escaping a decade long drug-addiction, swinging between over-confidence and under-confidence in work and relationships, male biology as a penis replication machine, avoiding estrogen based parasites and the glory of skepticism.
Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Feetomade Radio.
I hope you're doing well.
It's Saturday night, and this is how the cool kids roll.
So anyway, I'm afraid this joke of my daughter's is going to take a tiny bit of setup, but I think that's a reasonable payoff.
So we play a game called Meany in Trouble, and I am a mean person, and she tries to Recruit me into her nice gang.
And we have basically these great discussions about why be good?
But I want to join your nice gang.
I like being mean.
And so basically, it's my job description in a nutshell.
I'm trying to get people to join the nice gang.
But one of the things that's true about the mean gang is you have terrible food.
Like the food is horrible.
And we try and come up with the...
That you could imagine.
And she says she loves chickpea soup.
And of course, she says, if you join the nice gang, you'll also get chickpea soup.
And the moment she says that, I go, chicken pea?
Who would want to have chicken pea soup?
Anyway, that's quite funny.
And so in the mean gang, you get stuff like Mac and Sneeze, which is, well, I think you could probably piece that puzzle together.
And I make her something called Eggie Toast.
But this is leggy toast, which is cricket legs and toast.
Also, in the Mean Game, you get something called an ice cream sandwich, which is where people put a piece of bread on your head and then scream in your ear.
Anyway, so we were just making jokes about what's the most horrible food that you could possibly get.
Anyway, I was just heading her to sleep.
I was just heading her to bed.
We're reading Lord of the Flies at the moment, because you just can't have enough Nightmares as a child.
But anyway, obviously it's somewhat edited.
So just as we're heading to sleep, she says, Dad?
Yes, honey?
Do you know, I think in the morning, the Mean Gang is going to have a nice bowl of Eriel.
Just great.
Just great.
So anyway, I also wanted to mention to my black friends and listeners...
It's important to work on your racial insults correctly.
You know, if you really want them to land, calling me a hunky is not exactly what you're aiming for.
I just wanted to mention that.
I mean, cracker ass, I will grant you.
But hunky, I take, actually, I would say with a fair amount of pride.
You know, hey...
I'm sexy and I know it.
I work out.
I just wanted to mention that insults that are so wrong are probably not where you want to go.
If you're going to get into a duel, pick a gun that doesn't go off in your face.
Just wanted to mention that.
But I wear hunky with pride.
I actually quite appreciate that.
Mike, anything else?
FDRURL.com slash donate.
Help us.
Help me to help you.
Give up any character-driven movies and do nothing but cartoony action crap until the end of time.
Sorry, just a brief review of Tom Cruise's career.
Could be worse.
He could be Matt Damon.
Anyway.
I'm still stuck out on Hunky.
I'm sorry.
Of all the YouTube insults, I missed that one.
I thought that was just...
That was quite delightful.
So...
Yeah.
It's interesting, you know, again, for a group who's obviously rightfully sensitive to racial insults.
Holy crap.
Black people sure can fire the honky cannon pretty quick and heavily.
And, you know, it's not that I don't fit the description.
You know, I'm about as honky as a...
Gaggle of startled geese, but nonetheless, it just seems kind of ironic.
It's like, don't use the N-word, honky!
Excuse me, I may be missing some of the UPB aspects of this conversation.
Anyway, anything else we need to share?
People have been eagerly anticipating our video on Adrian Peterson, which will be coming out shortly.
And it's probably going to be more than one because there's quite a few things going on that kind of revolve around this whole situation.
So that will be out shortly.
But no, other than that, nothing to announce, really.
Now, I just would like to offer a prize to – this is a – it's called the Freedom Aid Radio Quiz.
So, Mike, you'd say I sound pretty upbeat, right?
Oh, yeah, of course.
Yeah, upbeat.
Now, for those who don't know, Either Mike or I has been working on the Adrian Peterson story all day.
I wonder if anyone can guess which one of us has been working on the Adrian Peterson story for most of the day.
Anyone?
The first caller is...
That's right.
Stay strong, Mike.
Stay strong.
Well, thanks.
And I'm sorry.
I know it's serious.
It's pretty rough stuff.
It's a horrible situation.
You have a history in sports as well.
I mean, for those who don't know, Mike was a pole dancer?
No.
Lap dancer.
Something to do with the champagne room.
I told you that in confidence stuff.
Actually, it's how we met.
You slipped me a 50 and I said, hey, can I work for you?
It's like 50 cents?
You hunky?
Anyway, but no, Mike played hockey for many years and I think that's got some degree of your – you have quite a passion for things sports-related and NFL-related in particular.
Yeah.
It's kind of fascinating.
Yeah, it is.
I want to do some stuff on the NFL concussion situation, and more information is coming out about that by the day.
And it's really scary stuff.
And it's not just obviously limited to the NFL, but all sports.
And you have all these youth sports.
I mean, I played hockey.
I was on skates since I could pretty much walk.
And in the early years, the checking or slamming into each other was not allowed.
It certainly happened.
But in later years, it's allowed.
And I got out pretty lucky.
You know, I didn't have any concussions that I'm aware of, but the concussion stuff, hey, easy.
That could be self-defining.
Anyway, go ahead.
No, I'm glad for that, obviously.
And people don't know this, of course, about me, but, you know, I played violin for 10 years.
And, like, the left side of my neck, sometimes, like after a lot—anyway, go ahead.
But no, it's really scary, and you get all these really young kids with the giant helmets and shoulder pads on.
It looks almost cartoonish, and they're full-contact football, slamming into each other.
And I'm sure it's a little more toned down than you'd see at the older ages, but the...
But they're all the more vulnerable.
Oh yeah, you know, developing brains, concussions, all that stuff.
It's really nasty stuff.
Hit us with a switch, we're probably more or less okay.
But if we're four, say...
No, and the NFL has recently in federal court papers revealed that their estimate, which I assume is on the low side, is that one out of three of their players is going to end up with some significant brain damage as a result of injury.
And that's just brain damage.
We're not even talking about other physical disabilities, you know, knees.
Oh, like the knees and cramps and all that.
Yeah.
I mean, the people who get there are just the people who've dodged all the random bullets of 250 pounds of man meat crushing into you on a regular basis.
So partly it's about skill and partly it's about, hey, I'm lucky I didn't take a sideways hit to my knee at any point in my career.
Yeah.
And hey, taxpayer, how about you pay for our new stadium so we can watch men slam into each other?
Yay!
They did, what, $9.6 or $9.7 billion last year, and apparently 46% of the fans are women, and this is, of course, not a good situation for a lot of the women, that they've got these wife-abusing, child-abusing guys rolling around the field, right?
So, yeah, they're going to have some problems.
The more problems, the better.
You know, again, sports is great.
But organized sports, to me, is like government science.
You know, if you say you're against government sports, which is basically what most of these things are, you say you're against government sports, and people suddenly think you're against sports.
You know, I don't want the government to build roads.
Oh, so you're against roads.
No.
No.
Nothing like that.
So, yeah, and I think it's just a massive problem.
Bread and circus is distraction for people, and so I hope that they, you know, I mean, if I watched them, I would boycott.
I would just boycott the whole damn thing.
But that's obviously everyone's decision to make for themselves, but I don't watch sports, so me withdrawing my support isn't going to do much.
Alright, well, I could talk about the sports stuff all day, and I think we will in coming weeks in videos that we're going to be putting out.
Want to move on to callers?
I think I'm ready to go.
Oh, yes.
Let's...
Let's chat with the people who pay the bills.
All right.
Well, up first is Tommy.
And Tommy wrote in and said, Trying to live in accordance with moral principles and applying them to others has left me very lonely, without neither friends nor partner.
This feeling is especially hard, being somewhat older.
I'd like to know how you coped with this transition, since the loneliness I suffer has made me quite sad.
Can you tell me more?
Yeah, sure.
Thanks for having me on, by the way.
Oh, you're welcome.
Okay, so, yeah, well, when I look back at the relationships that I've had, I've realized I've been the one working both sides.
Oh, yeah.
And, yeah, I've been considered, like, amongst my friends, or what I back then called friends, I've been very socially, very functional, because I've been on all the time.
I think you've used that phrase before, that you're on, you're being very, like, active.
Me plus, right?
And pedaling both sides of the tandem bike, right?
Yes, exactly, exactly.
I've had two longer relationships.
When the second one failed...
Wait, you mean romantic or friendship?
Yeah, romantic.
Friendship-wise, if that's what we want to call them.
I wouldn't call them that today, but I had a lot.
But when my second romantic relationship failed, I just took a sabbatical and I moved away for a year to another country.
And that's when I realized, and I started listening to your shows, actually.
And I started just realizing that most of these friends didn't keep in touch if I didn't keep in touch.
And when I moved back to my home country, the few that were left, they couldn't really deal with me when I started.
I wouldn't say challenging, but when I started speaking very openly to them, being very honest with how I saw our friendship and maybe I was just open how bad I felt.
About how they had treated me and such.
And they couldn't deal with it.
My little brother couldn't deal with it.
And they kind of disappeared.
And I realized that one of my most...
So, sorry.
I just wanted to make sure.
So, you moved away.
They didn't really stay much in contact.
And you come back and you said, Hey, you know, it really bothered me that you didn't really stay in contact with me while I was gone.
And I felt I had to do all the work.
And they're just like, Whoa!
Emotional reality?
Bye!
Am I paraphrasing somewhat accurately?
Yeah.
Yeah.
The few ones that stayed in touch somewhat, I challenged them as well because when I was away, I was away for a reason.
I felt pretty sad.
I just needed to get away.
And when I was open with them about it, even when I was back in another country, they said, oh, well, basically, when you feel better, get back in touch.
They just didn't want to do it.
Yeah, it was a bit unfortunate.
When you're entertaining again, maybe I could find utility for you.
Yeah, that's kind of the reality I woke up to.
I'm sorry about that.
Yeah, and I realized at this time that one of my biggest fears has always been to end up alone, just like my mother.
And I realized this is becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.
No, no, no.
No, no, no.
I'm afraid self-pity is beckoning, but I must call you back from the pit.
Right.
No, look.
You were alone, right?
Like, I mean, if you're the entertainer, if you are me plus, as I call it, like, I can't just be myself, but I have to be sexy or rich or entertaining or fun or whatever, generous, you know.
I don't mean like a virtue, like generous, like buying things for people or whatever.
If it's a me plus situation, you're already alone, right?
Yeah.
You know, I was trying to explain this to my daughter the other day.
I was trying to explain this to my daughter, and I was saying, so...
If you had a friend, and that friend said, I'm going to charge you, I will have a playdate with you, but you need to give me $10 for the playdate, what would you say?
She'd say, what?
That's terrible.
That would be like, me alone is me minus $10.
It's got to be like $10 just to make up for it.
That's no good, right?
And...
So, you're already alone if you're in a me-plus situation?
Yeah, yeah.
So, the idea of ending up alone, I think, is not accurate.
I just sort of wanted to point that out.
Yeah, no, definitely, you're right.
And that's the reality I kind of woke up to, is that I realized I probably never had any close relationships.
No, but tell me about your mom, because that's the curse you're most afraid of, right?
How she ended up.
Yeah, well, she's now ended up having...
I have three siblings, other siblings, and we've all basically broken contact with her because she was very abusive, narcissistic, and she's now sitting in her apartment all alone and having no contact with the world.
Right.
Well, I mean, I think by definition a narcissist is all alone no matter what, right?
Or not, right?
I mean, if I surround myself with stuffed toys, I can't claim to have a party.
And I think that other people's emotional reality have about as much impact on a narcissist as the personal preferences of teddy bears.
So, your mother has not, right?
Who we are later on in life is who we were earlier made real.
So if we treat people like crap and then they don't want to spend any time with us, well, we were alone, which is why we were able to use people and treat people like crap.
We were alone, and now that aloneness has manifested itself in reality.
Whereas if we're kind and generous and people want to spend time with us and all that, then we end up surrounded by people who love and care and all that kind of stuff.
But your mother hasn't ended up alone.
The selfishness and solitude of narcissism has simply become real.
And one of the things I think that is essential about a number of human endeavors is do not deny to people the effects of their choices.
Right?
I mean, just stupid stuff like Obamacare.
Well, if you don't take out health insurance and then you get sick, well, then you have a pretty rough go of it, right?
You have a lot of bills to pay.
If you don't take out fire insurance on your house and your house burns down, then you're out one house, right?
And, of course, people are desperate to avoid the results of their bad decisions.
And statism is set up primarily to have people avoid the effects of their bad decisions, right?
It's a bad decision to go to war in Iraq.
and now George Bush is off doing his paintings and showing everyone his paintings on his iPad and all this kind of crap, right?
And it used to be a very bad decision to have a child out of wedlock.
And you can see this in Downton Abbey.
Downton Abbey, I just did a review of it.
I mean, it's the most popular British show in a decade or two, 12 million viewers and all that.
And partly, I think, why people are drawn to it is because this is a situation where social rules were actually enforced and people paid for the consequences of their bad decisions.
And I feel that if an insurance company can...
You don't get to apply for fire insurance after your house burns down.
And I remember when I was a kid, I used to sometimes listen to the radio late at night when I couldn't sleep.
I had a little tiny, tinny...
Beach radio.
And there was some comedy.
I don't remember really anything about the comedy.
I think I was like five or six at the time.
But the comedy was, somebody's boat sank.
I mean, this isn't obviously the whole comedy.
But somebody's boat sank, and that person was upset.
But they said, but at least we have insurance.
And someone said, ooh...
I was actually just on my way to mail it.
And then, of course, this was a huge catastrophe because you obviously can't.
And I just remember that really clearly as a sort of little kid listening to that show and saying, Ooh, that's bad, right?
I mean, I was just on my way to mail the insurance for the boat, but unfortunately the boat sank first.
Well, you're shit out of luck, right?
And I remember that really clearly.
And I remember as a kid, you didn't study for the test.
You got an F, right?
I mean, you...
I just sort of wanted to point out that justice means not withholding from people the consequences of their decisions.
For better or for worse, as I've said before, I pay the bills of virtue and of vice.
People who are used to manipulating the political process are shocked when they experience a negative moral judgment.
So, you know, I mean, single moms are a big enough voting block now that everyone is, ooh, you're a single mom, you're so heroic, this, that, and the other, right?
The bad man just knocked you up and vanished and, you know, like some Old Testament deity.
I mean, it's...
But then you come across like, well, that was pretty selfish and irresponsible of you now, wasn't it?
And people are like, shocked!
Shocked!
When there's a negative moral judgment.
In other words, when you pay people the bills for their choices.
And...
So, with regards to your mom, and I'm sorry to go off on such a rant, so to speak, but with regards to your mom, she was always alone, but the aloneness has manifested itself, if that makes sense.
Yeah, definitely.
And I do hold responsible, and the point is I'm like the opposite to a narcissistic.
I suppose I became more codependent when I look back at the relationships I've had, so...
Right.
Yes.
Because you cater to other people's needs.
I mean, that's all you can do with a narcissist.
You either appease them or you get attacked, right?
Yes.
It's like, okay, well, now I'm big, I don't have to appease you, and I don't really like getting attacked, so I guess we don't have anything to talk about, do we?
Yeah, exactly.
All right.
All right.
Now, peeling back from codependence.
But tell me, tell me how, because I mean, obviously we just sling these words around as rank amateurs, at least for me, but tell me what you mean by codependence.
What are the characteristics of that?
It's taking responsibility for the relationship, like 80-90% of it.
And also I realized one common trait is that I've cared more about them than they've cared about me.
Does that make any sense?
I also...
Codependent, I felt that I wanted to live my life or give purpose to my life through others.
So having these relationships, I felt like taking care of them or helping them out was more important than helping myself.
I'm going to therapy now, so I've come to the insight that I'm actually helping them instead of helping myself.
Right.
So then the moment you express needs, because, I mean, the codependent attracts the narcissist and vice versa, right?
You know, it's one of these horrible key-in-the-hole situations.
Click, go the tumblers, and down goes the life, right?
Yes.
So then, of course, when you start to express needs to somebody who's selfish, well, who wants to bother with you anymore, right?
I mean, you don't buy a car to ask the car where it wants to go, right?
The whole point of using things is they're not supposed to have needs.
They're just supposed to do what you want, right?
Yeah.
And so, yeah, the moment you start expressing needs, you become inconvenient and you get dumped and then they go in search of someone else who's been smashed up by a prior selfish person so that they can continue to exploit the rich mine of not-mine-ness that is at the heart of these things, right?
Yeah.
Right.
So, this is a great fear, right?
Because...
You have grown up to service the needs of others and to actively suppress your own needs and preferences.
Is that fair to say?
Yes, definitely.
I mean, that is changing now, but looking back, that's been a common thread.
So, you know, I would argue, argue probably sounds like the wrong way to put it, I would say that The solitariness that you have to process is not to come, but in the past.
You cannot help but feel worse than lonely around selfish people.
Because if you're alone, well, you can do your own thing, right?
And when you're alone, You are not self-evacuated, if that makes any sense.
So if you're alone, you can scratch whatever itches, you can eat whatever you feel like, you can run your own schedule.
But if you have selfish and domineering people in your life, you neither get the benefits of solitude, nor do you get the benefits of connection, right?
So you really are in a desperate state of non-existence.
And I would probably argue that for you, it is the prior state of non-existence.
And it's really even worse than non-existence, because non-existence is kind of like death or coma or a dreamless sleep, which is not a painful state, but anti-existence.
To focus on other people's needs and to actively suppress your own, It's to experience the opposite of existence.
It is, for me, at least based on my experiences of it, it is actually hell itself.
I remember one summer, my mother was supposed to go, it doesn't sort of matter the details of it, she was supposed to go away for a couple of days, and I was living at her place, and I remember looking forward to those A couple of days with like delectable, delicious, deep dish ice cream, deep fried Snickers delight.
And she ended up being gone for months, ended up living in a homeless shelter, all kinds of crazy stuff.
But anyway, having her not there was fantastic.
Like if you're living with a kind of predator, you can't relax, you can't be yourself, you can't Really even experience your own needs, let alone act on them, because all you're doing is focusing on how the other person may or may not act, or may or may not need.
And of course, the goddamn selfishness of allowing yourself to attack others is one of the most reprehensible behaviors.
And when you're around people like that, the people who fight dirty, people who will just say and do anything to get their way, It is exhausting and it's the very opposite of existence, of life.
And I think it's probably that in your past, that non-existence, the anti-existence, I should say, that would be the thing to most process rather than I might be alone in the future.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
It's just that back in...
In those relationships, that's definitely not what I felt.
It's more now I'm waking up to that fact.
And it's not only the romantic part, it's also from the friendship side.
I think you mentioned it before, like you're dancing with ghosts.
You go to parties, and even when I try to get back into the social circuits that I was once part of, it's just different when you have another approach to it.
Do you know what I mean?
Oh, no, I know.
I know, because...
Very few human relationships are constituted on a basis of equality.
Mostly it's one form of exploitation, and people are striving to have value and status so that they can exploit others.
It's a pecking order, which is what happens in a society that's not philosophical.
You end up with a pecking order because resources have to be allocated and conflicts have to be resolved, and if you don't have reason and evidence, you have to end up with dominance and submission.
It's how Dogs don't reason with each other.
They just growl and get a pecking order.
Chickens, the same thing, right?
Just get a pecking order.
That's how we resolve disputes, and that's how society doesn't work or functions in its barest state at the moment, is we don't have reason and evidence to resolve our disputes.
So it's all show and power and intimidation and so on, right?
Yeah.
Like, I mean, if you look at, just very briefly, so look at how do women have a pecking order?
Well, women in general...
Of course, there are exceptions, and this is different for various subgroups, but women in general have a pecking order, which is, has my vagina bought me enough money that I can appear high status?
In other words, why are there high heels?
Well, obviously, to accentuate a woman's butt, but also because high heels Are impractical for manual labor.
So when you're wearing high heels, you're signaling that you don't do any manual labor, right?
That's status.
Now, sometimes, of course, women have earned it, but the way these things developed was a man would generally buy them, this stuff.
And why are there long fingernails?
Well, because there are long fingernails, because long fingernails means you don't have to do any manual labor, and you don't type.
So you're very high status.
Why do women wear white?
Because white means you're not doing any manual labor.
So why do you wear expensive clothes, expensive fabric, even tight-fitting clothes?
Other than the sexual appeal, tight-fitting clothes are an indication that you don't have to do any manual labor.
Also makeup.
Makeup means that you don't have a job wherein you have to sweat, like a farmer's wife or something, right?
So, a lot of what is developing, partly to do with sexual attractiveness towards men, but a lot of female, like how do women get their pecking order sorted out?
Well, it's just about status.
It's not about philosophy.
And the same is true for men, right?
Just sort of mentioning women, the same is true for men in a variety of ways as well.
And so, when you're in society and you're not interested in a pecking order, like you just don't care, it's like you don't fit in anywhere, right?
Yeah.
But what was it like with your mom?
Tell me a little bit about that, if you can.
It was quite hellish.
She was very verbally abusive, physically abusive.
She took our siblings, she turned us against each other, built packs, she turned us all against Everyone against our fathers, or my father, I would say.
Me and my brother have the same father.
So we never connected with anyone.
So when I've spoken to my siblings about this, I realize that we all lack this, I don't know if it's the knowledge or the competence, but for true connection.
Right.
Kind of descriptive, not connected, if that makes sense.
Yeah.
It was...
You see, I was...
I just realized that from...
When I was very...
When I was a...
I think as long as I can remember, I've always heard that I've...
I just...
I'm not good enough.
I suck at everything.
She yelled.
She...
As soon as I did something...
That she didn't like, she would hit me.
I, in turn, took that out on my little brother, which I have extremely bad conscience for today.
It was just a very hellish upbringing.
It's hard to put words on it.
And have you talked about this with friends?
Or I guess...
Proximity people?
Yeah, I tried, but it didn't connect.
What would they do when you would talk about this stuff?
They'd usually start talking about themselves and their issues.
Oh, yeah.
But enough about me.
Tell me what you think about me.
Yeah, a little bit like that.
Right.
Oh, yeah, I remember right now.
Well.
I can give you a bit of advice.
I think all I can offer at this time, I can give you a bit of advice and see if this helps.
Is there anything else you'd like other than that?
No, that would be good because I know that you probably went through, maybe not the same childhood, but you went through the same transition, right?
Oh yeah, of course.
So the first thing that I would say is...
It's that old line, I think it's Oscar Wilde, be yourself because everyone else is taken.
I think really the point of self-knowledge is to learn that you can be yourself or you can be nothing.
There's no other choice.
Now, whenever you are yourself, it provokes people.
Whenever you are yourself, you appear to other people who've lost.
No, it's even worse than that.
When you are yourself, in other words, you honestly self-express and are relentlessly yourself.
You are unapologetically yourself.
Then, the way that people experience you, it's not just and it's not fair, but it is the way that people experience you, Is they tore up a winning lottery ticket and you won the lottery.
And they feel like you're coming over and showing off all the stuff you won with the lottery ticket.
And they won't even tell you that they tore up a winning lottery ticket and threw it out.
There's a resentment.
I mean, if you go and peruse, you know, I wouldn't suggest you do this, but if you want to.
So, go and peruse the YouTube comments.
I mean, what do people say?
Oh, Steph, you're so arrogant.
You're unfeeling.
You're just full of yourself.
You love yourself too much.
This, that, and the other.
Why would that bother?
I mean, these are just words that people say out of envy, right?
I mean, I think that it's fair to say that I have a life that is somewhat enviable.
I mean, I get to talk about The most amazing and deep and important things in the world get to do a lot of good.
And I have justly earned my share of hatred from evil people, which is all a mark of honor to a good man.
And people resent authenticity.
People also resent enthusiasm.
Like, enthusiasm is considered nerdy, naive, geeky, whatever, right?
Because...
The lazy, squalid self-shitting of cynicism.
It just seems like maturity.
But all it is is the scar tissue of cowardice.
And like most cowards, most people will spend their lives enhancing cowardice and calling courage arrogance.
And luring other people into the same sticky, syrupy trap of cowardice and Self-abdication.
I don't know if people think like there's some prize that is out there.
Like if you deny yourself and you conform, that you get some prize.
Well, I don't think there is a prize for that stuff.
And if there is a prize, it's my job and the job of other good people in the world to make sure that that prize is withdrawn from the world.
So, to be relentlessly who you are, to be unapologetically who you are, is essential.
It's an old and true statement that most people are not afraid of death.
They're afraid of life, of actually living, of having responsibility, of self-ownership, of life.
The acceptance of the consequences of their own decisions.
It's not life after death that we need to concern ourselves with.
It's the question of can we have life before death?
That is actually what we need to concern ourselves with.
Forget heaven.
Can you come to life while you still have a heartbeat?
I think for most people that answer is no.
Express enthusiasm for anything and people will generally take the French waiter approach as if they're peeing on you from a great height.
Express passion about anything and you provoke the scar tissue of those who have carved their own hearts out and fed it to their destroyers.
Finishing off with their own hand The verbal battle of their historical abusers.
But let not the deadness of the world strip you of the blood in your veins.
The zombie horde wants you to eat your own brains, right?
And shit them out and join them.
And that is a shameful thing to do.
It's a tempting thing to do, I understand it.
We are social animals.
And the reorientation of the social mechanisms is the fundamental purpose of this show.
People say, why should anyone be good?
Well, we should be good because the more of us who are good, the more obvious evildoers will become.
Right now, being an evildoer is very profitable.
But in the future, being an evildoer will be very unprofitable.
And raising the cost of evil, given that I understand economics, people respond to incentives, raising the cost of evil is one of the primary functions of this show.
Beat your kids?
Hey, they don't have to see you when they grow up.
You support the war?
Fuck you, that has consequences in your life.
Support the state?
Support the war on drugs?
Support the incarceration of peaceful people self-medicating from bad childhoods?
Fuck you, that has consequences.
People can spout off all kinds of allegiance to unholy bullshit these days.
What negative consequences do they face?
They only face negative consequences if they're moral.
Well, yeah, okay, so the first people who act with integrity, well, they eat quite a number of shit sandwiches, or at least they have quite a number of them thrown at them, but as you move forward, the resolution changes the gravity of the social order.
It changes the order.
Up becomes down, black becomes white, and we've seen this before with slavery and other moral revolutions in the world.
The first people who were against slavery were a shit-on.
And now, if you're for slavery, you're a shit-on, right?
And so, to recognize that you are part of a larger story in the world, and to cast aside your merely personal concerns is one of the most essential recipes for happiness that has ever been discovered.
And I don't say devised.
I say discovered.
This is Fairly well understood.
In fact, I would say very well understood in the science of happiness.
In the future, in the long run, your life is about adding to the glowing stars of the constellations of human virtue.
To act as an example for others, to act as an example for the young, to act as an example for those who come after you, to help stoke the courage of the uncertain.
By displaying the courage of certainty.
That is your purpose.
It's not to get along with empty people.
And it's not to stuff your heart with hedonistic pleasures.
Bad people will always try and tempt you with hedonism.
Because if you pursue hedonism, you will not fight bad people.
Because fighting bad people can sometimes be unpleasant.
And so they will say, have a fun life.
Enjoy yourself.
And then, bad people also, and I'm not putting you in this category, of course, bad people will also resolutely oppose you elevating any principle above your own personal pleasures.
There would be no Christianity if hedonism had ruled the day.
Because those people, the early Christians, well, they were scorned.
I mean, they were Jewish kids who followed a new Messiah.
They were Disowned from their families.
They were thrown into prison.
They were eaten by lions.
they had a principle higher than themselves, which they were willing to sacrifice for.
And this pisses off a lot of objectivists and a lot of libertarians, is the virtue of selfishness and my own pleasure and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But that's kind of hypocritical because most of the glories of our culture have aggregated because people were willing to undergo incredible discomforts in order to secure the freedoms that we now enjoy.
Bye.
And it's funny how, I mean, Ayn Rand praised America madly.
America was founded on a revolution which was decidedly uncomfortable, and in fact, death for many of its participants.
They had a principle that was higher than themselves.
Mormons go and teach in the third world as missionaries.
And some of them do it, of course, for social ostracism and pressure and all.
I get that.
But for a lot of them, it is a higher calling.
Muslims blow themselves up.
Other terrorists blow themselves up.
Higher calling.
And if you can hook yourself into a higher calling, your happiness will almost certainly be secured if you hold firm and hold fast to To the infinite strength, the deep and abiding gravity and rootedness of a higher purpose.
I have found mine, my higher purpose is the non-aggression principle.
In personable and actionable ways, it is the reward of virtue and the punishment of evil through the encouragement of living by the non-aggression principle.
That is my higher calling and it has been mine More or less, since about the age of 16, I will be 48 years old in this blessed month of who knew whether it would come or not.
So I have been 32 years on the non-aggression principle and have achieved great good.
Just met a family today.
Came up to me.
I recognize that voice.
They have a nine-month-old daughter.
Never yelled at her.
Never hit her.
And never will.
They both came from challenging backgrounds and it was beautiful.
And my happiness and my contentment and my pride and my security, because if you hook yourself into a higher purpose and you act with courage and resolution in the pursuit of that higher purpose, you will never doubt the love of those around you.
Because love is our involuntary response to virtue if we're virtuous.
If you hold fast to the highest and most virtuous principles you can find and act as an agent of virtue in this world, you will never doubt your value in this world.
You will never doubt the love of good people, and you will happily earn the hatred of evildoers.
So if you can find that purpose, and the more rare It is for people to genuinely pursue and spread virtue, the more loudly they need to do it, right?
Because otherwise, people can't find you, right?
Don't be quietly virtuous in your own mind.
That does not help the world very much, and it certainly doesn't help people to find you.
So be vociferous.
Be unbearable to bad people.
Be annoying to To cowards, be encouraging to those choosing strength over conformity.
And you will have moments of fear, and you will have moments of insecurity in terms of what the future holds and all that, but you will never have moments of self-doubt.
Once you have understood the reasoning, once you have accepted the principles...
And the necessity of those principles, then pursuing and spreading virtue is the greatest possible goal in life, in existence, in the universe as far as we know it.
Aim to be the best person around you and good people will find you.
And they will never leave you.
And you will never leave them.
The good people will hold fast to you with hoops of steel because you are a diamond in a sea of glass.
Irreplaceable.
And people say, I'm lonely.
That just means your virtue isn't loud enough yet for the good people to find you, for you to find the good people.
The friends...
And the wife that I have are going to be with me until one of us is dead.
Because I'm not going to find a better wife.
I'm not going to find better friends.
My wife's not going to find a better husband.
My friends aren't going to find better friends.
It doesn't mean they can't have friends as good or anything like that.
But that's where certainty and connection and security come from.
Aim at virtue and everything else will fall into your place.
Just don't do it quietly.
Does that help at all?
Yeah.
Yeah, definitely.
All right.
Well, thank you very much for your question.
I certainly wish you the best.
And, of course, I'm incredibly sorry about your history.
That is heartbreaking stuff.
But there's always a way forward.
And, you know, thankfully with the Internet, you can be loud and virtue and visible very easily.
Yeah.
Thanks, Jeff.
You're very welcome.
Thank you.
Alright, up is Jason.
And Jason wrote in and said, I recently read your book, Universally Preferable Behavior, and I have a question that I would like for you to clear up.
If murder is immoral, then non-murder is a moral good.
However, how can non-murder always be a moral good when things like, for example, running for a bus are morally neutral and not murder?
Thank you for the opportunity and for all the time you spent educating and helping people.
Well, thanks.
I think I understand the question, but I'm not entirely positive.
So, refraining from doing evil is a virtue, right?
Because if everybody refrained from doing evil, in other words, if nobody initiated the use of force or fraud against anyone else, there would be no child abuse, No spousal abuse, no wars, no taxation, no governments, no religion, because that's a form of aggressive fraud against children.
So if everybody refrained from doing evil, then we would scarcely need the positive virtues like courage and integrity in the face of disaster and so on.
I mean, you might need some for sort of physical illnesses or ailments or whatever, but, you know, major setbacks.
But so, hang on, just a second, let me finish my thought.
So if everybody avoided doing evil, the world would be kind of a paradise.
Sorry, go ahead.
The question is, what is evil?
Correct?
That's what UPV is talking about.
We're asking, okay, what exactly is evil?
And you're jumping to the non-aggression principle, and we can talk about that.
No, no, I'm not.
No, hang on.
No, no, you need to be fair.
You need to be fair.
I'm not jumping to it.
That's kind of a disrespectful way of putting it, because I take great pains in many pages to define virtue and its opposites.
So I don't jump to it.
If you've read the book, I'm just assuming you've read it and either understand and agree with Or don't agree with or don't understand the arguments, but don't tell me that I've jumped to it when I've got a 300-page book defining each of my terms.
Okay.
So, is your question, what is evil?
Yes.
How do we define what is truly evil and what is truly good?
And that's what UPV is about.
And it comes to the conclusion.
Okay, but hang on.
What did you get from the book, as far as that goes?
I mean, I can't just recite the whole book here, right?
I'll give you my impression of the book.
So I read the book, and my impression was that it was a consequentialist dialogue.
And I know that you've talked about how you think consequentialism isn't the keystone of what morality should be.
It's intentionalism.
You know, the word intent only appears three times and doesn't appear in a context.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure what you mean when you say, sorry to interrupt, I'm not sure what you mean when you say intentionalism.
Okay, like, you know, one's moral intent is what determines one's morality, not the consequence of one's actions.
Wow, I don't know what book you've read, but that's nothing I've argued for.
Okay, so do you think that the consequences of one's actions determine one's morality?
No.
Neither does one's intent.
Okay, so what...
Okay, I'm a bit confused.
One's intent is one...
Well, no, no, hang on, hang on.
So, let's say that you're judging whether somebody is a scientist or not, right?
Mm-hmm.
How do you judge whether somebody is a scientist or not?
Well, I assume that it would be...
One who does science.
Well, that's not logical, right?
But what is science?
How do you know if someone is doing science?
One who brings reason and observation to a point to discover things about reality.
Right.
So you know somebody's a scientist if they are pursuing rigorously the scientific method, right?
If they're using the scientific method to determine truth and falsehood or validity or invalidity of a hypothesis, then they're a scientist, right?
Yes.
Okay.
Now, does the consequences of their scientific pursuits determine whether they're a scientist or not?
I would say yes, because if one uses an observation, right?
No, no, no.
Let's say that they are doing the scientific method.
Okay.
Okay.
Does the consequences of their pursuit of the scientific method determine whether they are a scientist or not?
The consequences...
Right, so let's say that they produce something that is a terrible weapon.
Well, they're still a scientist, right?
You may say, well, I wish they hadn't produced that terrible weapon or whatever, but that has no bearing on whether they're a scientist or not.
That's true.
If they have achieved the production of that terrible weapon using the scientific method, then they are a scientist.
I mean, you can say an evil scientist, but they're still a scientist, right?
Uh-huh.
Does that make sense?
Because they're utilizing the scientific method.
Utilizing the scientific method, right?
Indeed.
So the consequences don't matter as to whether or not they're a scientist, right?
Sure, yeah.
I agree with that.
Wait.
So you agree?
Okay.
Now, what about their intention?
If I say, well, I really wanted to use the scientific method, but I ended up reading chicken entrails, does that mean I'm a scientist or not?
So if my intention is to use the scientific method, but I end up not using the scientific method, then I'm not a scientist in that regard.
Wait, wait, wait.
What do you mean in that regard?
That sounds like weasel words to me that you can back out of later.
In what regard would I be a scientist if I said I wanted to pursue the scientific method and then I did the opposite of what the scientific method is?
Well, if your intention was to use the scientific method and then you use the scientific method, then you would be a scientist.
No, no.
Don't use the scientific method.
If you don't, then you're not.
Okay.
So my intention doesn't matter.
Yes, in regards to, one, being a scientist or not.
Yeah, and of course, intention is self-reported, right?
It is.
Right, so like this guy who just beat up his, this guy, this football player, Patterson, I think, who just beat up his kid, he said it was not my intention to harm the child, right?
I don't know that.
You don't know that.
The child doesn't know that.
That's completely subjective.
That's like me saying yesterday, I thought of the color mauve nine times.
Can you prove that?
No, of course you can't, right?
So, because it's a purely subjective state, intention has no validity in philosophy.
Sorry, go ahead.
We can use science to discover whether one's, you know, truly had the intention.
So, like, you know, DNA evidence or, you know, that's what the cold justice system is about, you know, discovering what one's intention is.
Wait, wait, sorry.
Are you saying that you can use DNA to discover people's intentions?
Not, not absolutely.
Not absolutely, but yes, we can.
So, okay, let's say that Okay, I haven't come up with an idea like a case scenario where DNA is used, but let's use this scenario so I can show you that intentions do critically matter in morality.
So let's say someone pushes me into somebody else and that person falls off a building and dies or something, something horrible, right?
My intention was not to have that person fall off the building and die.
But I was, you know, part of that reaction that caused that thing to happen.
No, you're still going to get charged with murder.
You know that, right?
Me?
No, I mean, sorry, whoever pushes.
Like, if you push someone and then someone staggers and then somebody else falls off a building, you still get charged with murder, right?
Indeed, the person who pushed, but not the person who's in that reaction.
Not the in-betweener, no, I understand that.
I understand that.
So even though the intention is accidental, if I punch you in the face and you die...
There's no intention.
If it's accidental, there's no intention.
Right.
I understand that.
So the person who begins the pushing is the person who gets charged with murder, right?
Yes.
Because that person's intention was to do the thing, to murder.
No, I thought that it was an accident.
Well, me getting in the way was an accident.
Sorry, I don't know what we're talking about here.
So wait, I push you, you grab someone else and they fall off a building?
No, you push me, I bump into somebody else unintentionally, and then they fall off the building.
Yeah, so I am then charged with murder.
Yes, because your intention was to murder, not because...
Because your intention was to kill.
Well, my intention was to push you.
My intention was to push you.
Yes.
And so there's a difference between...
So you're talking the difference between manslaughter and first degree, or second degree murder, right?
Right, right, exactly.
Yes.
Okay, but we're not talking about...
No, no, hang on, hang on.
Hang on.
So it's not essential to morality.
Oh, sorry.
For some reason, you keep talking, but I'm talking.
So why don't you finish your thought, and then I'll go ahead.
Okay.
Okay.
Murder is the intention to kill, and that is way worse than accidentally, you know, happening to kill somebody.
You can accidentally kill somebody and not go to prison and not have to pay anything because it's an accidental killing.
So, like, if I, you know, parked my car, On a hill, and it snows, and there's ice everywhere, and then, you know, something happens, and the car slides down the hill.
Like, a tree hits the car, a car slides down the hill, kills somebody.
That's not...
Because I put the car in park on the street, I'm still not liable to...
Yeah, I get it.
I get it.
People accidentally die, and that's not motor.
So, a person's intention is clearly a key factor to morality.
Well, accidents, by definition, are not moral events, right?
Because they're accidents.
Right?
So, obviously, for somebody to do something immoral requires that they will it, right?
I have a argument.
One's integrity remains intact if the action that happened was unintentional.
It still has a bearing on your morality, right?
It still has a bearing because it was unintentional.
That has a bearing on your integrity.
Okay, but we're in agreement here, right?
Which is that things which are accidental are not immoral.
Like, if I suddenly have an epileptic attack and hit you by accident, that's not assault, right?
Okay, you said things which happen by accident are not immoral.
Yeah, there's no moral category called oops, right?
Wouldn't you say it's a neutral?
That would be a moral neutral.
So it's a moral category.
It's not moral.
It's not a moral category.
It's neither good nor evil.
It's morally neutral.
Accidents are morally neutral, right?
Neutral is not a moral category.
Neutral is not a moral category.
That's right.
And accidents would fall into a neutral moral category, right?
Now, there could be negligence, there could be whatever, right?
Like, you might be culpable.
Wait, you just said accidents fall into a neutral moral category.
No, no.
Sorry, accidents fall into a non-moral category.
Sorry, the category is neutral, which means that there's no moral content.
Okay, no moral content.
Right.
I'm just trying to, like, you know, get my head around...
I'm still open to this idea, honestly.
I'm just having trouble getting my head around.
I'll elaborate.
So, if murder is a moral good, you're saying that it's immoral to not murder.
If we have two people in a room and, you know, Murder, and in this scenario, murder is immoral good.
Sorry, to be technical, the test is murder is universally preferable behavior.
Okay, so in order to test out if murder is of...
Okay, I'm not sure how to explain this.
Let me explain it since I wrote the book.
Let's just go with stealing because it's a slightly easier category to work with.
So if you give me something, I cannot simultaneously steal it from you.
Is that fair?
Right.
If my intention is to allow you to have the item, then obviously you can take it and it's not stealing at all.
But if my intention is don't take this...
Yeah, you got it.
So I can't give $10 to a homeless guy and then complain to the cop that he stole it from me, right?
Indeed.
Indeed.
Okay.
I mean, I can, right?
Yeah, but it just wouldn't make sense, right?
So stealing cannot be universally preferable behavior.
Because if it's universally preferable, then everyone must want to both be stolen from and to steal, right?
But you're implying that not stealing is a moral good.
Wait, wait, wait.
I'm right in the middle of an argument here.
What are you doing?
Where are you jumping now?
Sorry, okay.
Say that again.
Just be patient.
I've literally been going to try and prove ethics to you at this point for about 35 seconds, so give me another 20 goddamn seconds and then you can go on a tangent, alright?
My apologies.
So, if stealing is universally preferable behavior, then everyone in the theory must both want to steal and to be stolen from.
Now, if I want to be stolen from...
If I want you to take something I have, then you cannot steal from me because I want you to take it.
Okay.
So stealing cannot be universally preferable behavior.
It cannot be achieved by two guys in the same room because they're like, let's say I have an iPod and you have an iPad.
If stealing is universally preferable behavior, then I want you to steal my iPad and you want me to steal your iPod and vice versa.
It can't be achieved because it's only stealing if the other person does not want the property to be transferred, right?
So stealing, and the same is true for assault and murder and rape and theft, right?
They simply cannot be universally preferable behaviors.
Sorry, go ahead.
So you're saying everyone should want other people to steal?
No, that's not what I said.
If stealing is universally preferable behavior, then the logic does not hold.
Because you end up with contradictions, which is that you want someone to take your property, because stealing is universally preferable behavior.
But if everybody wants everyone else to take their property, it's not stealing.
It's the zeitgeist city, or something, right?
Something else.
So you're saying that, like, in this scenario, I should want other people to steal?
And that's why it's...
If you want someone to take your property, it's not stealing, right?
Right.
Let's put it this way.
If I put an old washing machine out on my front lawn and say, take me, do I want someone to take my property?
Right.
I understand it.
In that situation, do I want someone to take my property?
Right.
Okay, say it again.
If I put my washing machine on the...
If I put an old washing machine on my front lawn with a sign that says, take me, please, do I want someone to take my property?
Yes.
Right.
If someone takes my property, are they stealing?
No.
Right.
So this is why stealing cannot be Universally preferable behavior because everybody must both want and not want at the same time their property to be taken.
They have to want their property to be taken because the transfer of property is universally preferable, but they have to not want it to be taken because if they do want it to be taken, it's not stealing.
So they have to both want their property to be taken and not want their property to be taken at exactly the same time And under exactly the same circumstances, which is literally like saying gravity both attracts and repels in exactly the same circumstances in science.
And that's not valid, right?
I see the logic.
Now, here's an argument.
So, let's say it's universally preferable for each and every individual to want to steal.
So, each and every individual personally wants to steal.
Can that be universally preferable?
For each and every individual to want to steal themselves and not make moral judgments about others.
No, no, because it's universally.
If it's a universal value, then it must be universal.
It can't just be one way.
Each and every person wants to steal.
Each and every person has a desire to steal.
But if each and every person wants to steal, then each and every person must then want to steal and be stolen from.
No, not necessarily.
Go ahead.
I mean, I don't see why people have to want to be stolen from.
If a person considers that, hey, it's universally preferable, it's universally fine, it's universally desirable to steal, then I'm just going to steal.
Right, but universally means and be stolen from.
Because every stealing is both stealing and a stealing from, right?
So if it's universal, then it must be preferable to both steal and be stolen from.
Because there's no stealing without a stolen from, right?
Right.
But I don't see how one needs to necessarily think that...
One needs to be stolen from in order to be moral in that scenario.
No, no, because you're thinking about the individual perspective, but we're talking about universalizations, right?
Right.
I mean, it's like saying, does each rock want to fall down?
Well, no.
If we're talking about gravity, we're talking about a universal, right?
We don't worry about each rock.
We're talking about universals.
A philosophy, right?
So, in this scenario, one imagines that, you know, It's okay if you want to steal from me, but I'm going to protect my stuff anyway.
The moment you take steps to protect yourself, then you're saying that stealing is not universally preferable because you're denying other people the capacity to steal from people.
What you'd be doing is you'd be saying, okay, I'm going to protect my stuff so that they can try to steal it, so that their intention will be moral.
So you want them to not steal and to steal at the same time?
No, no, no.
You want them to steal, but you're protecting it because you want them to be moral.
Right.
So you want them to not steal, which is why you're protecting it, or you want them to not take it, which is why you're protecting it.
Hang on, let me finish.
Because if you didn't want to take it, it wouldn't be stealing, right?
No, my intention is I want them to steal.
Okay?
That's automatically...
No, if you want them to steal, it's not stealing.
We just went over this with the washing machine.
No, I want...
Okay, okay.
I think I see what you mean.
You can't want them to steal.
The whole point of stealing is it's against your will and desire.
Otherwise, it's...
You know, hey, I left a pie on the front lawn, come kids and eat it, right?
That's not stealing, right?
Take my washing machine, please, right?
You have to not want them to take it in order for it to be theft.
And this is why theft, rape, murder, and assault all fail the test of universally preferable behavior, whereas the maintenance of of a respect for persons and property completely passes the test of universally preferable behavior.
And isn't it nice when you have an ethical system that logically establishes the validity of the great four moral bans in most human systems, excluding the state, and excluding religion, and excluding God, but you know what I mean, right?
What is generally passed off as ethics for the peasants?
So, stealing is...
A moral good in this scenario.
Not stealing...
If you can stay with universally preferable behavior, the moment you start putting moral good in, it starts to short-circuit everyone's brain.
Okay.
So stealing is universally preferable behavior.
Not stealing is not universally preferable.
No, no, no.
Not stealing is universally preferable behavior.
Or at least...
Sorry...
A theory which says a respect for property rights is universally preferable behavior, well, that can be achieved.
Two people in a room cannot steal from each other.
There's no innate contradiction, no self-detonating situation is set up when you say respect for property is universally preferable.
You don't end up in the same impossible tangle when you say Violations of property rights or stealing is universally preferable behavior.
The moment it's universally preferable, it can't be achieved.
Because you have to have people both want and not want people to take their property.
That's impossible.
That just can't work, right?
Well, this is definitely giving me some food for thought.
Just think of it in terms of, again, just sort of basic physics is a useful thing.
These are great questions.
I really appreciate them.
But think of it like this.
So, let's, I don't know, have you ever played tennis or squash?
I've never played tennis.
Table tennis.
Okay, table tennis.
Alright.
So, if you were to say, let's say you were studying table tennis and you wanted to be really good at it, and you hired a coach, right?
Right.
And then you said to your coach, listen, first thing I want to learn is, what do I do when the ball comes towards me and goes away from me at the same time?
What would he say?
Well, this is, you know, a bad coach.
I don't have a bad question.
What would he say?
He'd say, well, that's not possible.
The ball cannot be coming towards you and going away from you at the same time, right?
Right.
I mean, it can be sunny and raining at the same time, but it cannot, right?
So that would be dismissed out of hand.
And when it comes to theft...
You cannot both want someone to take your property and not want them to take your property at the same time, right?
Right.
So it can't be universalized.
Okay.
I'm in the midst of being persuaded.
No, no.
Hey, take your time.
Don't take forever, but definitely take your time.
It's a very big and important set of questions, so...
I hope that helps.
Do you mind if we move on to the next caller?
Because we try and get through four God helpers tonight.
But great, great questions.
Seriously, that was some good stuff.
You've got a great brain for this stuff.
I have a critique of the non-aggression principle I'd like to bring up, if that's okay.
No, I'm sorry.
We're going to have to move on to the next one.
We're trying to sort of do a one topic per caller.
But definitely do call back in with that critique.
I'd certainly like to hear it.
Mike, if we could move on to the next caller.
Goodbye.
Thank you.
Alright, thanks Jason.
Up next is Travis.
Travis wrote in and said, I feel guilt for a lot of things I've done in the past.
How can I get past the guilt if there isn't a specific person to apologize and make reparations to?
Well, I think you serve as a warning to other people to not do those things.
Anyway, so what is it that you're upset about that you've done?
First, I just wanted to say I have a lot of social anxiety and I'm Pretty nervous about this call.
Oh, no sweat.
I appreciate you telling me that.
Thanks so much.
I've done a lot of...
I've been a drug addict and done a lot of things to go along with that.
Well, what are those things?
You mean lying, cheating, stealing, that kind of stuff?
Yeah, all that.
Yeah, I'm sorry about that.
Do you want me to ask questions?
Do you want to keep going?
Again, I sort of want to respect your anxiety, and if there's anything I can do to help out, I'm happy to try.
Yeah, I would prefer if you asked questions and took it wherever you were.
Okay.
Why do you think you became a drug addict?
After listening to your show, I would assume it has something to do with my childhood.
Wait, is this the first time you're thinking about it?
No, I've thought about it.
Okay, so don't try and pin it on me then.
Well, after your show, I guess you'd say it's something to do with...
Right, so what do you think occurred in your childhood, if you think it may have contributed, that did contribute?
My father was abusive and...
I think he's a bit sociopathic.
Usually it's not a bit sociopathic, so you've got to stop hedging and just give me the straight goods, right?
Yeah, I definitely believe he's a sociopath.
And I was spanked and all that.
Well, it was more than spanked, right?
Yeah, he was an alcoholic too.
So what you wrote to me, or to us, was implements were used, sometimes ranging from switches...
Which is, I guess, small branches of trees.
Yeah, that's correct.
Belts, hot wheels, racetrack sections, flyswatter, etc.
My father bragged to friends that you could train anything with a flyswatter.
And by that, he, I assume, meant you as well, right?
That's correct.
And you also, because you have an adverse childhood experience score of five, neglect, how did that show up?
Technically, like the category is like not enough food, dirty clothes, no protection or medical treatment.
Those are just examples.
Some or others or all may have been true for you.
How did the neglect show up, Travis?
Pretty much just nobody around.
If I needed something, there was nobody there often.
And from what age was there nobody there?
Ten or so.
Right.
And so you'd be left alone for kind of extended periods of time?
Yeah.
After I got home from school, it was just me and my brother.
You and your brother.
And is your brother older or younger?
He's younger.
Four years.
All right.
So basically you became sort of a parent when you were ten and your brother was six, right?
Somewhat, yes.
And did you have enough food, health care, dental care?
Yeah, that was...
We always had food in the house and so on.
Okay.
And you said your father was an alcoholic?
I mean, that's a term that ranges of a pretty wide description of behavior, so...
I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that he was a pretty hardcore alcoholic.
He would drink probably a half case of a beer a night.
Jesus.
Right.
And what was he like when he was drunk?
It was very erratic.
Some days he would be just, you know, leave me alone, basically.
And other days he would be a A raging asshole.
Right.
And that's when, I guess, sometimes there'd be this violence, right?
That was somewhat unpredictable, I would assume, right?
Yeah, very unpredictable.
Yeah, one day he doesn't give a shit about something you've done, next day you're getting beat up for it, right?
That's correct.
Right.
Right.
And your mother?
I can't think of a whole lot that she did that was directly...
You know, she didn't ever beat me or anything.
She married my dad, obviously, and made those decisions, but I can't think of anything directly that she's, you know...
Oh, so she didn't hit or verbally abuse her?
No, she didn't know that.
Oh, interesting.
Did she ever provoke your dad into...
Like, you wait until your dad gets home, or can you believe what these kids did?
Yeah, that did happen occasionally.
So she would use his fists as a proxy, right?
She'd be like the puppet mistress of the hell dad, right?
Yeah, that's correct.
Until he took it too far, I guess, in her eyes, and then she would stop it, basically.
And what does taking it too far look like to...
Your mother?
Basically when it went past spanking and went to, you know, punches, kicks, so on.
Right.
Was your father an alcoholic when your mother was dating him, do you know?
I don't believe so.
They got married very early.
All right.
And did your mother stay married to him?
Is she still married to him?
No, she got a divorce.
Oh, she got a divorce.
So she found him pretty unbearable.
And when did that happen?
When I was about...
14.
Right.
Right.
And around 14, am I right in guessing that you began to fight back a bit?
Yes, I did.
Yeah.
So suddenly...
You're big enough that you can't be just physically dominated by your father, and your mother finds it unpleasant and leaves, right?
I think that was part of it, yeah.
Well, what were the other parts of it?
I believe she started having an affair.
Yeah, well, six of one, half a dozen of the other, right?
I mean, if you're going to leave, you might as well have an affair, right?
That's correct, yeah.
And how's your brother doing?
Not terrible.
I think he's not a good parent.
Is he hitting?
Yes.
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit.
Alright.
Do you have any influence over him?
Not much.
I guess it got eroded a bit during the drug addiction, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm sorry about that.
So, when you say that you have no one...
Oh, well, first of all, I'm incredibly sorry.
That is an absolutely shitty way to start life.
You know, I personally think that your drug addiction probably has something to do with the fact that you don't give your mother much responsibility, credit, or blame.
But that's perhaps a topic for another time.
Who is it that you feel you have harmed significantly through your drug addiction?
Other than yourself, of course.
At the time, everyone around me.
And when did it start?
When I was about 16, maybe.
Right.
And what was going on in your life when it started?
I mean, I assume you were fighting with your dad quite a bit.
Yes, I was.
I quit school and started hanging out with You know, other addicts.
Hang on, that's after, right?
So what was going on before you quit school?
My grandmother about that time.
So your grandmother what?
My grandmother died and that hit me pretty hard.
Yeah, and of course you don't really have much capacity to handle grief because You've got a lot of contempt and rage and sorrow and all.
You don't really have a way to legitimately process grief, right?
Yeah.
That was also the first time I got arrested.
A week after that, maybe.
A week after your grandmother died, you got arrested?
And what did you get arrested for?
Vandalism, death.
Right.
So, I mean, the rage, the sorrow, right?
That...
You have no social bond, right?
You have no bond with society at that point, right?
That's very true.
Yeah, it's like, the fucking world left me to a shit childhood, didn't do anything, so why the hell should I respect anything society has or does, or is, right?
Exactly.
No, I get that.
People steal because they've been stolen from, and people vandalize because Their childhoods have been spray-painted with the feces of evil.
and a society that does nothing to step in and help children, well, you plant a demon seed, you raise a flower, a pretty dark fire, right?
Right.
And how did your dad react to all of this?
Can I go out on another limb and assume that he just doubled down?
Not quite.
He kind of just separated and just stopped doing anything.
Stopped trying to discipline me or anything like that.
Except for the occasions where he had a raging fit when he was in drag.
I'm sorry, can you just repeat that last bit again?
Except for the times when he would But rage when he was drunk.
Right.
Right.
And I'm going to assume that he did not accept any responsibility for how you turned out as a child.
No, he's...
Sorry, as an adult.
As a young adult, right?
Yeah, he hasn't accepted any responsibility for that.
Right.
Right.
And how did your mother react to all of this?
Did you have any kind of contact with her?
Um, yes.
Yes, she, uh...
She didn't...
I can't remember anything changing, really.
She didn't act like it was a huge deal, kind of.
Right.
And did she ever apologize for...
Her role in the abuse that you suffered and choosing your dad and sometimes encouraging your dad to abuse?
No.
Shit.
I'm very sorry about that, man.
I really am.
That's wretched, wretched stuff.
Thank you.
You know, it sounds to me, I mean, unless you've got a pile of hobos buried in your basement, it sounds to me like you're a man more sinned against than sinning.
I think you're owed a lot more apologies than you owe.
And I doubt you'll get them.
Yeah, I don't expect them anytime soon.
So, do you want to talk more about your childhood?
Do you want to talk about the things that you regret?
What would be best for you?
Um...
Wherever you think would be the best place to go, I would...
You're the expert.
Yeah.
I'm not sure I'd characterize myself that way, but...
Well, there's one of two choices, right?
So my concern is that if we talk about the stuff you regret, that you might end up self-attacking.
Okay.
Whereas if we talk about the wrongs that were done to you, then the things that you did will probably be more in perspective because it's kind of a paradox.
It's hard to apologize for things we have not forgiven ourselves for.
And forgiving oneself means understanding the root causes of the dysfunctional behavior.
I mean, losing your mom, then losing your grandmom in two years, that stripped, I would assume, the majority of female influences out of your life, for better and for worse.
During a time of sexual awakening and testosterone and all that kind of stuff that goes on in childhood, teenage years, right?
I mean, I don't have to tell you this, right?
It's a pretty crazy fucking time, right?
Yeah, I became sexually active at a young age, too.
Right, right.
Yeah, I mean, I went from being a pretty quiet and shy kid to, like, screaming at my mom to, like, I mean, geez, it felt like I was just being possessed by my balls.
It was a crazy time.
And I didn't, you know, suddenly I just had all of this wild passion.
And not just sexual, but...
For independence, for freedom, for autonomy, for adulthood.
I mean, it all erupted in me like pouring lava on ice.
I just turned into this discontented steam god.
It was a crazy time.
And, I mean, it's a tough enough time as a whole.
But you throw a crazy and violent and substance-abusing family into the mix.
I mean...
It's some pretty crazy shit to go through, right?
And it goes on for years.
Yeah.
So, I'm incredibly sorry for everything that happened.
What was the drug that you got into when you were 16?
Opiates, pain pills.
Right, right.
And what was your experience and what was your feeling when you first started taking them?
What occurred for you physically and emotionally and mentally?
Euphoria.
It was just...
The best feeling...
Ever.
I don't...
I can't...
Just a numb...
Like my brain could stop for a little bit and I could...
Just let go...
Of what do you mean?
Let go of what?
Just...
Worries and...
Stress.
Stress, yes, exactly.
Yeah, the constant helicopter blade that's always close to your jugular of rotating concerns and fears and anxieties and angers, it just wipes that away, doesn't it?
Sort of blasts them away in a beam of light, right?
Exactly.
And there's contentment, right?
There is, I don't know, would you say peace of mind?
Is that the right way to put it?
That's very well put.
So there is, um, like a, like a sense of comfort in your own skin that, that you don't feel before, right?
Yes, that is, that's the best I've ever heard to describe.
Yeah, like you, you can settle into yourself like a, like a hippo into a warm mud bath, you know?
There's, I feel like, I mean, I felt as a teenager, like as just dancing on coals the whole time, and this is, um, It's a great relaxation.
And it is, I think, what most people who are raised in a non-shitty environment would call relaxing.
But when you're raised in a shitty environment, that relaxing thing is not only hard to come by, isn't it fair to say it's just utterly unknown?
Yes.
Yes, it was.
I mean, you travel from a shitty home to usually shitty schools, to shitty churches, to shitty relatives, to malls where you're...
Chased off and no place to relax.
My friends and I used to just go to the woods.
We'd pool together our money.
We'd get 30 cents.
We'd get a can of beans.
And we'd go to the woods.
We'd build a little fire.
We'd open the beans with a rock.
And we'd just cook the beans and eat the beans and listen to the sounds of nature.
Sometimes we'd go half an hour without saying a word.
And you have to go far away from people to get peace in this world sometimes, right?
Yeah.
Plus, when did your social anxiety hit?
Has it been sort of as long as you can remember, or did it arise more recently?
Oh, I guess more in your teen years.
Yeah.
Towards the end of elementary school, so fourth grade maybe, third, fourth grade, we moved during that time and I remember not being able to talk to the people I didn't already know, the new people in that school.
Right, right.
I mean, when your kids are going into a new social environment, parents need to work extra hard to try and help them make connections, right?
A lot of times it's just you get thrown into school and it's like, good luck!
Or not even good luck, it's not even mentioned.
As a challenge.
But when your kids are in a new environment, I mean, as a parent, you really need to.
You've got to have the play dates.
You've got to work to know the other parents.
You've got to try and wedge your way into an existing social structure, right?
I mean, it's not easy at all for kids, and parents can do a lot.
But I don't imagine that was exactly job one on your parents' to-do list, right?
No, it wasn't.
Did your mom work as well?
She stayed home until I was about five, I believe.
Right.
So did you stay with the opiates?
Did you move on to other stuff, or was it mostly opiates?
It was pretty much just opiates.
I had smoked marijuana and stuff like that, but nothing else ever just got up for me.
Nothing else was the same.
Right.
And how long were you on the substances?
Ten years.
Ten years.
Right.
How do you feel when you say that?
It was a waste of ten years.
Life was a disaster.
No, not a description, Travis.
How do you feel when you say that?
That was the first time I really caught a sense of emotion in your voice when you said 10 years.
Shame.
Go on.
More guilt.
and what else I don't know I don't know how to describe my feelings without going into more description.
Let's try this.
Let's try this.
So pretend that I'm you at the age of 16.
The day before the night, I take my first opiate pill, the pain pills.
So let's pretend I'm young, Travis.
Right before, right before.
An hour before I take my first pill.
What would you say to me?
Say, please don't do this.
Please, please, please don't do this.
It's going to destroy your life.
And what else?
Thank you.
It's going to hurt everyone around you.
It's going to Put you in a pit.
you're never going to be able to climb out of it.
I think I would say to young Travis that I would say, Travis, the pill that you might the pill that you might take tonight is going to be your first indication of how much in pain you really are.
Thank you.
How hurt, how angry, how enraged, how shattered you are.
And you won't know how hurt you are until you spend an hour or two not feeling that pain.
And then when the opiates wear off, That pain will return, but you will really know it for the very first time, and the depths of your own pain will be shocking, appalling, and horrifying to you, and you will not know how to handle that pain and that anger except by diving back into nuking it with opiates.
The pain can be handled, the pain can be dealt with, But if you suddenly switch it off and then it comes back ferociously, it will seem utterly unmanageable to you without the drugs.
I mean, if you have a log that's trapped on your leg, you kind of need to lift it up slowly, right?
You rip it off and your leg's going to just be unbearable.
And the problem with the opiates is that they're going to take that pain away from And you'll be shocked at what it feels like to be kind of normal.
And then when your old self comes back, it's going to come back like a hammer to both eyeballs.
And you're going to go crawling back and screaming back and running back.
And you'd bite the road to drag yourself forward to get back to those opiates because the unbearableness of yourself to yourself has been revealed by its brief absence.
You don't even know how much you're crying until the bright light is turned off for a moment, right?
You don't even know how much in agony you are until the pain vanishes for a short while.
You think it's just life.
Turns out it's not.
Turns out it's agony.
But it was so constant, you didn't know it.
Like, you ever have a really annoying sound that you get used to and then it goes away and comes back?
It's like you get annoyed all over again, right?
That's exactly how they made me feel normal.
Right.
I mean, you didn't...
You weren't at, like, happiness level 100 and you wanted to go to 200, right?
You were, like, minus 50.
You just want to get to 50 or 75, right?
Yeah, people don't take drugs to feel ecstatic in general.
I think.
I think they take drugs just to feel a little bit normal.
To feel a little bit like they didn't have the childhood that they did have, right?
Drugs fundamentally are different parents.
If you had different parents, you wouldn't need the drug because you'd feel like that most of the time anyway, right?
Drugs are cutting out your snarling parents from the family portrait and And replacing them with some version of the cleavers, right?
Oh shit.
You're probably too young to even get that reference, right?
But...
But we want...
We want drugs because we want a different childhood.
We want drugs because we don't want to carry the burning logs that our parents dumped on us.
It's...
A desire to end up in a different continent called happiness because you just weren't on the shit ship your parents were sailing.
And it's very tempting, right?
Yes, it is.
I can be as if I was never hurt.
My pain...
And my history and my victimization can all be removed with one tiny pill.
You know, I mean, one of the most famous songs from Pink Floyd is Comfortably Numb, right?
And in that song, he sings not about the achievement of happiness, right?
Comfortably numb.
Drugs is not about ecstasy.
It's about pain erasure.
And it feels like ecstasy only because the pain is so chronic and constant.
And I'm sure you understand most of what it is that I'm talking about.
But if you understand it as a form of agony management from an incredibly victimized and brutalized and repetitively assaulted childhood, how does that strike you as a perspective?
I can relate to that.
It sounds dead on to me.
And...
Are you feeling anything?
You keep sniffing and I think you're getting upset, but I think you just have a runny nose, right?
Oh yeah, I'm sorry.
Oh no, that's fine, that's fine.
But what do you think or feel about what I'm saying?
I can relate to that.
That's agony management that really struck me.
It's an excellent way to describe how I feel about it.
How did you stop?
I went to a doctor and got on some medicine that helps you step down basically.
Step down over the course of a couple years until I finally just stopped.
Were you hitting it pretty hard near the end?
Oh yeah, I overdosed a few times.
And the last time I woke up after sleeping for two days, I had these huge purple splotches all over the side of my body where I laid in the same position for so long and my heart slowed down so much that all the blood settled to that stage.
Oh shit.
Man, you're...
You're skating pretty close to the edge of the volcano there, brother.
Yeah, I really almost died that time.
My little brother slept beside the bed all night to make sure I stayed breathing.
So you still have some love in those around you, right?
Oh, yeah.
I love it.
I love my rhythm.
Well, my understanding as well, Travis, is that when you start taking drugs, your emotional development stops.
Right?
Because you don't learn coping mechanisms, you don't expand your willingness or capacity even really to reason with yourself, to talk yourself out of things that are irrational and so on, because the solution is right there in the palm of your hand, right?
Yeah.
I mean, if I had a magic pill that gave me abs, you wouldn't catch me doing a sit-up from here to eternity, right?
Yeah.
Not that sit-ups have given me abs.
I still have, I mean, an ab.
So, I mean, that's the challenge, too.
It's like, okay, so you're off the drugs, but there's some circling back and regrowing and skill development that you need to do, right?
Yes.
And do you do any therapy?
Have you done any talk therapy at all?
No.
Would you consider that?
Do you have any access to that kind of stuff?
Yes.
Recently I've been looking into it a little bit.
I think I need to get on it.
Yeah, I think so.
Because, I mean, the great temptation about ending an addiction, or I think, at least as far as I understand it, the way that the temptation works is, okay, so you're off the drugs, which means, yay, not dying.
So good.
I mean, that's good.
But the problem is that there's the baggage you had before the drug use.
And by baggage, I don't mean like stuff that you went out and chose from a store but basically was thrown down an incinerator chute onto your young mind.
There's all the baggage that you had before you started.
Then there's the additional baggage of having been an addict and all of the associated dysfunction that comes with that, right?
And yet there's also 10 years of the non-development of alternative coping skills than drug use, right?
Thank you.
And so what happens, I think, with addicts who quit, it's like, okay, well, I don't know how to move forward, and my life feels kind of stuck, and that creates more discomfort and pain, and I think that's the temptation for going back, right?
Yeah, I definitely do feel stuck.
Right.
And I think the stuckness comes from you've moved forward biologically, but emotionally, there's probably been quite a bit of stagnation.
And so I think a talk therapist can be fantastic in helping to teach you the skills that should have been taught innately to you as a child through good and kind and wise and loving and patient examples and mild corrections and suggestions and advice from parents that you loved and respected, which sounds like pretty much the polar opposite of what you've got.
And because those skills weren't innate to you and because you didn't develop them as a result of the drug use, you're kind of stuck at probably even a younger age than 16 in terms of like your emotional skills.
But the good news is that you can learn those.
I mean, I assume everyone who listens to this is smart until proven otherwise, and it's been eight years or seven years, so...
I think I'm going to still go with that.
So you're a smart guy.
And if you listen to this show, I assume you have interest and capacity for the value and pursuit of self-knowledge.
So the good news is that you can learn these skills actually quite quickly.
It's not like learning Japanese from a standing start.
And so if you do go into talk therapy, which my incredibly strong suggestion would be to call tonight, call in the morning, find someone.
Who you trust, who you feel comfortable with, and really trust your instincts on that because, you know, a therapist is an incredibly vulnerable position to be in with a therapist and, you know, don't feel like obligated to just go with someone because they're there and you've been before.
But talk to them and try and understand, do you have, you know, tell them your situation?
Do you have experience helping people with this kind of stuff?
You can develop coping skills, emotional skills, negotiation skills, both with yourself and with others pretty quickly.
With the right therapist.
And I think that would give you the opportunity to deal with your social anxiety by understanding the root cause, which is, you know, if I airdropped into a remote village in Japan and I was hit every time I got Japanese wrong, I don't speak Japanese.
I'd be pretty fucking stressed.
And so understanding that your social anxiety comes out of a brutal environment and that you can learn these skills quite quickly.
That will allow you to move on in your life and not just catch up but surpass people who haven't gone through this kind of stuff.
You know, we're not aiming to get out of the wheelchair and join the normal walking people.
We go from wheelchair to superhero.
Like, we go from hell-born to krypton-born.
That's all we get.
Those are the only two choices we have.
We're victims, right?
You're either a victim or a hero.
That's all.
You don't get to return to normal, which is, you know, I guess kind of a relief, right?
But at least it is for me.
But that would be my strong suggestion as to the best way to move forward.
I'll do that.
Yeah.
And will you drop us a line and let us know how it goes?
Yes.
Yes, I will.
Keep listening to the show.
Of course.
Don't donate anything.
Take your money.
Take your money and give it to the therapist.
Don't give it to us.
I already have.
Well, don't do any more then.
And if you need it back to pay for therapy, just let us know.
We'll send it right back.
All right?
All right.
Thank you, Stefan.
All right.
Thanks, Travis, man.
Stay strong.
Good job getting off, and you'll do great moving forward, I feel it.
All right.
Thank you very much.
You're very welcome.
Thanks, Travis.
Alright, up last today is David.
And David wrote in and said, Self-doubt.
How can I be more sure when to push through with the decision or not?
I have a problem with overconfidence and underconfidence in different situations.
I'm interested in making my confidence more consistent with regards to business and relationships.
Overconfidence.
Mike, do you...
Do you think that we've ever had a problem with overconfidence here?
I think it's more just grandiosity and megalomania.
I don't think overconfidence...
Overconfidence isn't strong enough, I'm afraid.
We're going to change the world.
We're going to heal childhoods.
We're going to end war.
We're going to end the state.
We're going to end religion.
And then we want to go to Paris.
Hi, Stefan.
Hi.
Just before we continue, I just want to bring some things to the table.
I grew up in an Asian community, so you just keep that in the back of your contacts.
And I tend to ramble a lot, so if I start rambling, you can cut me off any time.
You bet.
Okay.
So my chief problem comes with the fact that I think my certain behaviors have given me value, but These very behaviours sort of hinder me from moving forward.
One example would be through business relationships.
I have my own company back from where I came from and I have problems with lying to so-called business people because you have to put up a certain front when you go about talking to business people.
And sometimes I have a little bit of trouble trying to rationalize the lies away.
Okay, wait, wait, wait.
You just did two separate things.
The first thing you said was that you have to put up a certain front.
Yes.
And the second thing you said was lies.
Yep.
Those two things don't seem quite exactly the same thing.
How so?
Because by my definition, putting up a front will be the equivalent of lying.
Is it?
I don't think that's necessarily the same thing.
So let's say I'm having a bad day.
Let's say I'm going to the dentist.
Now, I have a really nice dentist, so the two aren't the same thing.
But my dentist or my hygienist says, how are you?
And I say, I'm fine.
I'm okay.
Because I'm not going to sit there and say, well, I stubbed my toe and then I got bitten by a fire ant and whatever, right?
Okay.
So I'm saying I'm fine, right?
Yes.
And I was sick last year, but whenever the waiter said, how are you guys doing?
I didn't say, I'm reeling from chemo, right?
Yep.
So...
You could say that's putting up a front or whatever.
I think that's just an appropriate level of sharing for the social context.
Okay, correct.
So my business partners will be telling other people, other business people, about how they have certain facts coming up or say, we're expanding or we're doing something.
We are getting a new deal soon in a couple of days or weeks or whatever.
But it's not exactly confirmed, you see.
And I don't really exactly...
Yeah, don't do that.
I mean, don't do that stuff.
I mean, I know it's tempting.
I know it's tempting.
So after this, what you need to do is you need to go to YouTube and you need to type in U2 live.
I was a sailor.
I was lost at sea.
It was under the waves before love rescued me.
When Love Comes to Town is the name of the song.
Okay.
It's live, When Love Comes to Town, and it's from Rattle and Hum.
Okay.
And it's a pretty young Bono.
It's a pretty great song, I think, too.
And Bono wrote the song for B.B. King, and B.B. King is one of the great American blues guitarists.
Okay.
And B.B. King walks on the stage, and he says, basically, listen, man, I... I don't do chords.
Other people in the band do chords.
I'm absolutely horrible at chords.
I'm horrible at chords.
He keeps repeating that, right?
And I think that's great.
And then Bono says something like, you know, it's not like there's a lot of chords in the song.
I think there's like three.
Something like that.
And so, B.B. King is basically saying, I'm terrible at stuff, right?
And...
That is a sensible thing to say.
Look, I'm always told – when I was in the business world, everyone was always telling me, oh, we're doing great, we're expanding, we're doing – I didn't care.
I didn't care.
And I assumed that they weren't telling me the truth.
Yes.
And the reason I assumed they weren't telling me the truth is that almost every business venture is really, really hard.
There's a lot of doubt.
There's a lot of uncertainty.
Yes.
There are real challenges.
There's times where you just want to throw yourself under a bus.
There's times when things fail.
And there's times of unexpected glory and success.
I mean, it's hard.
The life of an entrepreneur is very exciting.
It's very hard.
Yes.
And...
So when everyone says, oh, it's going great.
We're growing.
We're doing this.
We're doing that.
I know that even if that's true...
says, oh, we're growing, that's just fine.
Hey, man, I was in a company that grew 50% to 100% every single year.
Yes.
The company that I co-founded.
Do you know how tough that was?
No.
Because growth is really tough because growth means you've got to go and get more office You've got to hire more people.
You've got to train more people.
You've got to get different suppliers.
You've got to grow the people you already have.
Some of them will grow and some of them won't.
Some people get annoyed that the intimacy of the early company is gone.
You've got to change the whole work ethic.
You've got to put in a lot of policies and procedures.
It's really hard to grow a company.
Growth is not like, oh, everything's great, we're growing.
It's like, oh no, we're growing.
Right?
And so...
Yeah, so back to the point of you...
No, no, no, hang on.
Let me just finish my thought here.
So when people tell me everything's going great, I know, like in the business world, I know that they're basically just selling me a bill of goods, and it really...
I just would undervalue what they're saying, right?
And so, you know, when we were growing and doing well, and people say, how's the business going?
I say, well, it's growing, but man, alive, it is really complicated and challenging to grow.
We went from basically three employees to 45 employees in a couple of years, and that's a real challenge.
It's a real challenge.
When people just say everything's going great, nobody who's got any real sense is going to believe you, and it's going to undermine your credibility with people whose opinion you probably really need.
Like, people whose interest and opinions you probably really need.
Does that make any sense?
It does, it does.
You sort of answered my question in the second part of your answer, so that was good.
In the sense that you don't have to sell yourselves too hard, and all you have to do is just present them with a real case that's challenging, basically.
Yep.
It is.
Look, I mean, knowing that there aren't easy answers in life, and there aren't, I mean, you've heard me, I swear, I sound like a broken record half the time, right?
Yeah.
I mean, how many times, if you listen to this show, how many times have you heard me say, I'm just an idiot amateur on the internet, I'm just some guy on the internet, I'm not an expert, I'm like, how many times do I say that?
Many times.
Many, many, many times.
Yeah.
Many times.
Now, I know that I have, you know, verbal skills and charisma, I can think well on my feet and all that.
So if I wanted to be an expert that people defer to, I could probably pull that off with quite a lot of people, right?
Yes.
But I don't want that because the whole point is to empower other people and have them think for themselves and also model legitimate humility.
I can make some reasonable cases with a reasonable amount of knowledge but I'm always sending people off to other experts, right?
Yes.
I'm always just the last guy.
Hey, go see a therapist.
I say that all the time.
All the time.
Just about everyone who's got trouble, go see a therapist because I am not a therapist.
And people need that one-on-one stuff, right?
A philosophical conversation can't reparent people, but a skilled therapist can.
And so I think that in terms of having This sort of overconfidence versus underconfidence.
Overconfidence breeds underconfidence, and underconfidence contributes to overconfidence.
It's kind of a vicious circle, and it's a pendulum that gets wider and wider, right?
Because if you're overconfident, then you overpromise.
And when you overpromise, you end up under-delivering, which makes you feel like crap.
And then rather than face the fact that it was the consequence of your prior overconfidence, you then say, well, man...
I really screwed that one up, so I better go and get some more stuff, so I better go oversell myself again, and it's a cycle, right?
Yep.
So, I think just realistic humility just goes a hell of a long way, and most of the people who've achieved a lot, I find, tend to have pretty realistic assessments of their own capacities.
Okay.
I'm good at this.
I'm not good at that, right?
Yep.
That's very true.
Hey, Mike.
Mike?
Yes?
Mike, would you like to give people a taste of the things I'm not good at?
Remembering to write a back cover book description for the Handbook of Human Ownership?
Maybe I did write it.
Maybe I sent it by carrier pigeons.
Do you ever think of that?
18 months ago.
Yeah.
No, I mean...
Some basic organizations, remembering details, remembering schedules.
I mean, we could go on and on, right?
I mean, the challenges that I have are not inconsiderable.
I may think they'd be better if I wasn't parenting, but nonetheless, right?
Those aren't my...
To put it charitably, those aren't my strengths, right?
And everyone's got different strengths and weaknesses.
And being aware of that and knowing what it is and fitting everyone together in a way that it works the best is...
I found it to be incredibly important because I certainly have a lot of weaknesses and having everyone aware of what those are so they can pick up slack in those areas is certainly helpful.
Right.
Okay.
Right.
I'm good in a fight.
I'm not so good at avoiding fights.
Sometimes it can be quite helpful, right?
All right.
Thank you very much.
I'd like to move on to the personal relationships part if you don't mind.
Sure.
I tend...
This goes back to the overconfidence and underconfidence part because sometimes with women I'm overconfident and sometimes with women I'm underconfident.
So I attract the wrong types of people I feel.
And while I have a lot of fun, I know ultimately this is not exactly what I want to end up in the end.
So I'm having slight...
Man alive, you are an abstract son of a bitch in this time.
Yeah, no, no.
I'll give you more...
Give me some concrete issues, right?
Don't give me all these words.
I have fun, but it's not always positive fun, but sometimes it's not overly negative.
What are you talking about?
Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
Okay, you're talking about romantic relationships, right?
Okay, so what are you looking for?
What are you looking for in a romantic relationship?
Okay, I want to look for something stable, basically, but...
A nice Asian girl.
That's what your mother told me.
Pretty much.
I'm just kidding.
Sorry.
I'm not really...
A nice Asian girl who won't be nice to your children.
Yeah.
I'm actually currently residing in a European country right now, but never mind.
So, yeah.
I've listened to several of your podcasts about women in general.
And I want to know specifically how I could stop myself from going to dick mode.
Because sometimes...
Going to what?
Dick mode.
Basically, not thinking with my head.
Because when some of the women that just look fantastic, I sort of short circuit in that sense.
I want to learn how to stay...
Oh, you can't.
No, you can't.
Listen.
The reasoning center shuts down when sexual arousal, particularly in a male, flares up.
I don't believe this is quite as true for women.
I think with women, the Machiavellian brain between the boobs flares up when sexual desire occurs, but for men, the neofrontal cortex basically shuts down.
And for men, sexual desire renders us about as good at reasoning things through as drugs, alcohol, and a significant concussion.
So, you can't...
I mean...
I'm a big one for, you know, some out biology when you can, but as the old joke goes, right, when it comes to the penis and the brain, there's only enough blood for one.
And you simply, I don't think it's realistic to say, how can I not think with my penis, right?
Oh, does that mean I'm screwed?
No, no, no, no, because, like, you recognize that, right?
So you recognize and you say, ah, so this very attractive woman...
It's going to cast a spell on me and it's going to attempt to strangle me with my own penis.
Just kidding.
Because some attractive women can be incredibly lovely.
I am fortunate enough to be married to one.
But no, it's recognizing that this drug exists, right?
Have you ever been drunk?
I've actually just come back from something that might have made me quite drunk, but yes.
Okay, so do you drive a car when you're drunk?
No.
Right.
So, once you recognize that you can't safely drive a car drunk, right?
You recognize that you cannot make romantic decisions when in the throes of lust.
Yes.
So, it doesn't mean you're screwed.
It's like if I say to you, like if you say to me, how do I drive safely drunk?
And I say, you can't.
Then you say, oh, so I'm screwed to never get anywhere.
It's like, no, just take a cab.
Which I guess means masturbate like crazy.
I don't know.
But you cannot make sensible decisions when in the throes of lust.
And that doesn't mean that lust is bad and it doesn't mean that you have to avoid women or anything like that any more than cars are bad and you have to avoid being in a car when you're drunk.
Just don't be driving, right?
Okay.
So if you see a woman who turns your head every which way but loose and she's just your type physically and you...
Okay, so recognize you're now drunk.
You're now sperm drunk.
Okay.
And you cannot drive the pussy when you are drunk with the sperm, right?
Yes.
And that doesn't look...
That may be the woman you marry.
I don't know.
But it means that you say, okay, so now I know this.
I am not going to make any crazy decisions while I'm in this state.
And you can do the research and look it up, right?
What happens to the Male brain with sexual arousal.
It is literally a reason-destroying drug that attempts to downgrade our operating system to semi-simeon in order to plant the seed and let us deal with the consequences when lawyers chew our testicles off, right?
So that would be – just recognize that it is an altered state of consciousness wherein you cannot reason and therefore just don't let it take you over.
But you can't fight it.
I mean it's – You can't become a good driver when you're drunk, but you can not get into the car.
Does that make sense?
Yes.
So that means that I kind of have to consult my friends constantly when something like this happens?
Well, yeah.
And look, you can chat with the woman and, you know, whatever, right?
But you have to recognize that you can't make any substantial decisions while you're in the throes of lust.
And look, I don't know how long it lasts, but the typical romantic high lasts about six months.
In other words, nature says, let's pretend that you like each other based on hormones until the woman gets pregnant and then just deal with the fallout.
Because remember, your penis is not designed to make you happy.
It's designed to make another penis with legs attached so that it can then go and make another penis with legs attached.
And basically, they're like those Giant imperial walkers on the Hoth planet.
Instead of lasers, they're shooting sperm.
They're just machines of more penis, machines of more penis, machines of more penis, machines of more penis, right?
So it doesn't have your best interest at heart.
It doesn't have your happiness.
It has photocopy, photocopy, photocopy.
That's what it does, right?
And it will use every trick in the book, right?
I mean, geez, talk about feminine wiles.
It's penis wiles that really get us screwed up.
It's going to just try and make another person.
That's all it's trying to do.
And it really doesn't know anything about lawyers and it doesn't know anything about prenups and it doesn't know anything about family courts and it doesn't know anything about college costs or anything like that.
It's just more people, more people, more people, more people.
That's all the sperm is screaming.
And whatever they can do to get you to get those things introduced to an egg, whether formally or informally, legally in terms of being married or common law or dating or what It can be a turkey baster if she's a sperm jacker that the whole point, as you know, is just to get sperm to egg to new person.
Sperm to egg to new person.
It's not romance, right?
It's photocopying.
All you are is toner.
That's all you are.
And so it's not dewy-eyed, romantic.
It's just, you know, see an attractive woman, it's like, wow, I bet you she'd make a great new me.
Right?
And that's all that's going on.
And that doesn't mean there's no such thing as love and blah-de-blah-de-blah, right?
But we just need to understand our animal natures, our base simian natures, in order to work with them and refine them to something that's slightly more happiness sustainable, if that makes any sense.
Yes.
Yes.
So with regards to confidence, all I have to do is pretty much go about my way but have a little bit more stop gaps in between.
Sorry, could you just say that part again?
With regards to my confidence with dealing with women then, I should go about the same way as I have been.
Just I have to keep track of my own thinking and not go crazy.
In that sense, because...
I mean, yeah, I mean, it sounds a bit sort of self-managey.
If you really want to be attractive to women...
Yep.
...then you need to basically be skeptical of what they can offer you.
Okay.
That doesn't mean mean.
It doesn't mean nasty or anything like that.
But...
What do you bring into the table?
Not what do you bring into the chair, which is the pussy, but what do you bring into the table?
Again, that doesn't mean being mean or making people jump through hoops or whatever, but to be attractive to women, simply be skeptical of their value, which is a very rational thing to do because not a lot of women have value.
Just so people understand where I'm coming from, not a lot of men have value either.
Not a lot of people have value.
Why?
Because they're not philosophical, right?
Most people have about as much value to us as alchemists do to scientists.
They're just a bunch of superstitious fools, right?
And we're patient and we understand and we try and educate them and so on, right?
But to those of us who reason, to those of us who are philosophical, to those of us who understand what virtue really is, what does the average person have to offer?
That's true.
You know, maybe they can fart in your seat so it's warm when you sit, but I'm not sure about a whole lot of other stuff that they do that is of value.
So, if you are a philosopher, if you are a thinker, if you are a reasoner, and if you pursue virtue and self-knowledge and so on, recognize that tits don't match philosophy.
Yep.
So, you know, the fact that she's got a full-on airbag deployed set of baby feeders doesn't mean that she brings value to To your life from a moral sense, from a sense of virtue and all that kind of stuff.
And so, you know, a brutal woman sits across and your penis is like, okay, I don't care, we're going in.
And you're like, well, you know, just because we don't want to get you, you know, we don't want lawyers stuffing cherry bombs down our Speedos, let's figure out if this is someone who's going to make not just another me, but make us happy together, right?
Yes.
So, yeah, just say, oh, you know, be friendly and all that, but see...
See what the woman has to offer you.
I mean, from a biological standpoint, it's deeply exciting for a woman when a man is skeptical of her value.
Do you know why?
Why?
Oh, you know why.
I do know why.
But, yeah.
Actually, yeah, it does make sense.
I guess it's funny because I've listened to many of your podcasts, and the things you have told me just now were quite a rehash of things I've heard before.
But I guess it's just reassuring to hear it specifically to me, I guess.
Oh, listen.
Nobody learns piano from watching someone play piano, right?
I mean, you need to actually sort of sit down and be stepped through some stuff, right?
Yep.
For those who are asking, I'm sorry.
The reason that it's deeply exciting for a woman when you're skeptical of her value is that it indicates to her ovaries that you have a lot of resources.
Right?
Right.
The ovaries want resources and the penis wants the eggs, right?
And that's because to have a child is not enough for sexual success.
You actually need to raise the child.
And so the ovaries want resources and the sperm wants the eggs, right?
Now, if an attractive woman is talking to you and you're skeptical about her value without being hostile, which indicates resentment and pettiness and manipulation, if you're skeptical about her value, What you're saying is, I am not sure that your eggs are worth my resources.
In other words, the more attractive the woman is and the more skeptical you are of her value to you, the more you're saying that despite the fact that you're very beautiful, I am not sure you're worth my resources.
What that indicates to her ovaries is that you have a fuckton of resources, to put it technically.
Or you believe that you will at some point, right?
Yep.
And, you know, the old thing that women respond to confidence.
No.
Because if a woman sees a man who's about to jump off a bridge and he's confident he can fly, she says, well, that guy's crazy, right?
Women don't respond to confidence.
Women respond to resources.
And in the same way that men respond to fertility.
Again, this is not – it doesn't mean all women and it doesn't – but biologically, this is what the apparatus is for, right?
And so, women respond to resources.
Now, confidence is a reflection of our existing resources or our belief in the willingness to get those resources, right?
I mean, you think of this woman who was beaten up in the elevator by her NFL husband, right?
So, obviously, he's a pretty brutal guy, right?
I mean, he beats her up, and then she marries him, right?
Because he's got lots of resources.
What, he's a $37 million contract or something, right?
So he's got a lot of resources.
He's alpha male from a very primitive standpoint.
He's high status, right?
She gets fame.
She gets notoriety, I guess.
She gets money and so on, right?
And she likes the fact that he's big and strong and mean.
Because that's why he gets $37 million a year, because he's big and he's strong and he's mean.
And then he's big and strong and mean in an elevator.
Well, sadly, tragically, that's partly why he's getting $37 million, because he's physically responsive to threats and he's aggressive and violent.
So this level of aggression, right?
I mean, and this is something that our good friend Dr.
Warren Farrell has talked about.
That the woman wants a dominant man.
A lawyer is supposed to win.
Business people are supposed to win.
You're supposed to win the contract.
You're supposed to decimate the competition.
You're supposed to be aggressive and alpha and win, win, win.
So they're very attracted to that because that aggressiveness, that dominant status or dominance approach, what that does is it signals to the ovaries that the guy either has a lot of resources or is going to get a lot of resources.
Which is another reason why women respond to even features and tight and so on because those are signals that the person is going to make more money.
Tall people make more money.
Attractive people make more money.
And so the woman marries a man who's got the dominance characteristics to get her a lot of resources and then what does she complain about?
He's emotionally unavailable.
And it's like, well, of course he's emotionally unavailable because he's an alpha.
He's a dominant person.
He's a win-lose life form.
It's like marrying a boxer and then saying, well, he's not sensitive.
It's like, well, yeah, because if he had a lot of mirror neurons, if he was sensitive and empathetic, he wouldn't be a boxer.
So you married some heart surgeon who's a workaholic, or you married some lawyer who win-win-wins, and then you say, well, he's not emotionally available.
But yeah, that's why he has all these resources.
Because he lacks empathy.
I bought a car and he's not a boat!
Oh my goodness!
Yeah, and so women want the resources, but the resources often come with emotional characteristics that are not empathetic, are kind of cold and kind of dominance-based and win-lose and all that, and then they complain that he's not empathetic.
I just have one last comment.
How would you view these women who respond to such alpha characteristics?
I mean, on some level, I'm pretty sure all women respond to That kind of characteristics.
So is it fair to write them all?
I'm not too sure about what I'm saying here, actually.
Well, no, because look, I mean, if you can provide resources and emotional sensitivity, right?
I mean, like Brad Pitt, I mean, he's got the face of a thug and the eyes of a poet, right?
I mean, if you can provide both resources and emotional availability, that's complete catnip to women, right?
Yep.
I mean, it's like a woman bringing physical beauty without hypergamy to the situation, right?
I mean, that's the ultimate, right?
So if you can provide resources and emotional sensitivity and availability, fantastic.
Now, the problem is, of course, that a lot of the attractive women come from attractive mothers.
And the attractive mothers use that attractiveness to get a man who had a lot of resources.
So the women are primed to respond to dominant characteristics and non-emotional availability.
Yes.
Which is why attractive women often call emotionally sensitive men derogatory names, right?
Yep.
Because their mother traded in beauty for dominance characteristics in the male.
Your daddy's rich and mama's good looking, as the song says.
So then they're on the lookout for dominance characteristics in the male and the associated emotional coldness, which is very sexy.
Yes.
When the woman first meets the man and then becomes increasingly grating and horrifying as they have children and they see the man workaholic and emotionally unavailable to the kids and brutal and mean and cold and all that kind of stuff, right?
Like, I want you to leave.
Be the alpha at work and be the beta at home or whatever you want to call it.
It's all nonsense, right?
So, you know, don't have to write these women off, but, you know, don't become a cold...
Yeah.
Fish in order to attract these women because you want to find a woman who is going to value and respect who you are as a person.
Listen, biology is about who provides what, right?
Resources for eggs.
I get it.
But the reality is that if you ever want to be secure in love, you cannot be buying people off.
You cannot be buying people off with money, and you cannot be buying people off with beauty.
Because money is uncertain, and beauty fades.
But in a way, these characteristics still come into play.
You sort of need to have them in the first place.
You need to have what?
Resources of beauty in a girl, so to speak, before you can sort of be looked at as someone to be with for the rest of her life, for example.
Oh, yeah.
So this is the, we need the chemistry, and then we'll get the love, right?
Yeah, something like...
No, no.
The chemistry is just...
You know you can get high on photocopying fluids, and that's basically the story of men's sexual adventures, because all their penis is just trying to photocopy, and they're high, and they think it's...
No.
Screw chemistry.
I hate that sort of shit.
And I'm not saying that you're wrong or bad for saying it.
I'm just telling you my personal experience of it, all right?
I hate this chemistry shit.
Chemistry...
It's just people's way of saying, I don't want to outgrow my trauma.
There's just no chemistry.
According to chemistry, alcohol is a solution.
What does chemistry mean?
Are we human beings?
Can we reason?
Can we think?
Can we be virtuous?
What the hell does chemistry mean?
I didn't want to steal that car, but there was just no chemistry in not stealing the car.
What the hell does that mean?
Yep.
And chemistry is an argument for, I'm too lazy for self-knowledge, so I'm just going to let hormones and history make my decisions and then say that there's chemistry.
There's no zazz, there's no chemistry, there's no sizzle.
What the hell is chemistry and sizzle?
It's either base physical attraction, which we all know is bullshit, or it's some sort of historical clicking of interlocking traumas.
Yep.
But no, chemistry, listen, every time I pursued chemistry, I've driven straight off a cliff, and I just wish there had been a quick and fiery ending to some of that shit.
And every time I've judged and been skeptical, and I mean, that's how my wife and I, I mean, we didn't actually have chemistry when we first met, and now we can't pry each other apart.
So, anyway.
Yeah, I know what you mean, but I guess it's still really fun to have chemistry, but I guess it's not really very reliable.
Yeah, heroin is a lot of fun too, but, you know, it's not a business plan for life, right?
I guess I need to grow up in that sense.
Well, you don't have to.
It's just that it's choices and consequences, right?
There is no have to, right?
Unfortunately, I have taught my daughter the difference between wants and needs.
And now I'm constantly being corrected, right?
You know, Dad, we need air, right?
You want this.
You don't need it, right?
And she's right.
And yeah, there's wants and then there's needs.
And you don't have to, as you put it, grow up.
I mean, it's just a recognition of reality that we are built layer on layer on layer from single-celled organisms upwards, and we have all the same crap that has been layered and layered and layered through evolution on.
I mean, evolution doesn't discard a whole bunch.
Sometimes it just seems to keep accumulating and accumulating and accumulating, right?
So we've got the protozoa brain, we've got the lizard brain, we've got the Amphibian brain, we've got the monkey brain and now we've got this little bit jutting out, which I call the post-monkey beta expansion pack, which is still pretty damn buggy.
So it's just recognizing all the stuff that we sit on as a biological organism and trying to make rational decisions, right?
I mean, wouldn't we want to sit around in our underpants and eat chocolates all day?
Of course we would, right?
But that's not healthy.
I mean, it's not the right thing to do.
So, you know, we pick up some hummus and we go do some exercises.
And that's just going against the natural intention of our bodies, which is to conserve energy as much as possible and intake energy as much as possible.
And so exercising and eating well just goes against their instincts.
And this is just exercising and eating well for your penis.
That's all.
I mean, just resisting the natural impulses to eat chocolate and sit around on a couch all day and go for a walk and go work out and eat a salad.
It's not what our body says at once, but...
We know it's good for us, right?
So it's just the same kind of thing.
Like if you said, Steph, you know, it's really fun to eat chocolate all day.
And I say, well, sure it is.
I get that.
But, you know, what are the long-term consequences of that, right?
You've got no teeth and a big ass, right?
And I'm sure there's a fetish side for that too, but anyway.
But the reality is you say, well, I guess I just have to grow up.
But it's like, no, you just have to recognize choices and consequences, right?
You can go and just ride the wave of chemistry and Straight into a bunch of rotating lawyer blades if you want, but there's choices and consequences.
And I think the wiser choice is to be skeptical of the value that everyone brings into your life.
And again, that doesn't mean being mean or hostile, but it does mean being skeptical.
And people of quality will respect your skepticism, right?
I mean, everybody is skeptical as hell of this show when they first start listening to it, right?
They probably hear about it, some kind of crazy thing going on on the internet, and apparently it's a nuclear bomb for families, and he's a terrible guy.
And they start listening, and I want them to be skeptical.
And then they read UPB where I say, gee, I think I solved the problem of ethics, secular ethics with no government and no state.
And people are like, bullshit, who is this guy, right?
Some software entrepreneur?
No, right?
So, you know, be skeptical.
Absolutely.
I want everyone to be skeptical.
Because when people bring allegiance after skepticism, you can be certain of their loyalty, right?
Not loyalty to me, right?
Loyalty to philosophy, loyalty to reason and evidence and all that kind of stuff.
So I want people to be skeptical just as I am skeptical.
You know, I mean, I'm skeptical.
I do a debate with people.
I'm skeptical.
What are you trying to say?
What are you trying to tell me?
What is your argument?
What's your evidence, right?
Be skeptical.
Everyone of quality respects the skeptic.
Because it means they're keeping the junk out, right?
Yes.
I mean, when you go to a restaurant, you want them to be really skeptical of their suppliers.
Well, how do I know this is the best stuff?
Can you prove it, right?
You want them to be really discriminating, right?
And I mean, when you're going to go and see a movie… You want the director to be really skeptical of the quality of the actors, right?
Like, oh, I know a guy who lives down the street.
He'll be fine.
Let's just cast him, right?
No, no, no.
You have to go through like 19 different auditions and camera tests and audience tests, right?
Everything that is of quality arises from massive, boundless, endless skepticism.
I was skeptical of religion.
I was skeptical of Marxism.
I was skeptical of socialism, skeptical of statism, skeptical...
Right?
So all the value in this show comes out of bottomless, boundless skepticism.
All the value in science comes out of skepticism.
I don't believe the God thing anymore.
Let's find some facts and some truth.
The free market comes out of skepticism.
I don't know if this car is worth this amount of money.
I don't know.
They sell it to me.
The advertising is all around overcoming skepticism, sometimes by not entirely honorable means.
But skepticism is the great glory of mankind.
And skepticism means that...
It's the great filter that keeps junk out, right?
As I think Heinlein said, 90% of everything is crap, or sturgeon or someone.
And yes, skepticism keeps the crap out, and 90% of people are kind of junky.
And they'll never leave any mark in the world, and they're just going to basically...
The only hope they have for leaving a mark in the world is breeding someone better than themselves.
And so, just be skeptical, and your life will improve enormously thereby.
All right.
Thank you very much, Steph.
It has really helped solidify some of my thoughts because everything you have said is something I've thought of before.
I just don't exactly know how to choose which ones to adhere to.
Well, listen, I appreciate that.
I just wanted to mention, and I don't want to go into this in detail because you sent this stuff to us, but I'm incredibly sorry about your childhood.
I just really wanted to mention that.
No, that's wretched stuff.
That's not a good ACE score.
That's always the test you want to fail.
Give me a zero.
But I just really wanted to mention that anytime you want to call in and talk about that, you're certainly more than welcome.
But I just wanted to express some very deep sympathy for the stuff you came out of and also my intense admiration for where you are and where you're heading.
That's a very, very impressive and admirable statement.
Thank you.
I like to think that I'm over all my childhood stuff, although my brother is still an alcoholic.
Well, skepticism will be your friend, right?
So I hope that helps.
And thanks very much for calling in.
Do keep us posted if you can about how it goes.
Thanks, man.
I guess that's it for our show.
Look in there.
Chew through.
Only two and a half, two hours, 40 minutes.
Four callers in two hours, 40 minutes.
I'm skeptical.
And that's what happened.
And that's what we call a quickie.
Actually, basically, we basically just banged a bunch of callers in the bathroom of the bar, I think, basically.
So, yeah, go wipe yourselves off.
We're done.
So, thanks everybody so much for calling in, for continuing to, I guess, entrust your thoughts and feelings to us at Free Domain Radio.
FDRURL.com slash donate to help out the show.
Always massively and gratefully appreciated.
How are we doing this month, Mr.
Mike?
Still down from last month.
Still down from last month.
So, if you want to chip in and help offset that balance, it is much appreciated.
Yeah, we seem to have kind of hit a bit of a ceiling over the last, I guess since May, right?
Yeah.
And so we'd like to sort of break through to the next thing.
Of course, with the cuckoo depositing Stoyan in our nest, we now have another mouth to feed.
And so, I mean, not much because apparently he can live on ramen noodles in sunlight.
But if you'd like to help out to help us grow, I guess we've been growing fairly well.
But it's sort of, yeah, it lasts sort of five, six months.
It's kind of sealed off.
And I know, I know, I know that there are economic challenges.
And again, if you don't have money, just help spread the word, spread shows, post stuff.
