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Sept. 25, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:53:44

2802 Who Profits From Your Insignificance? - Wednesday Call In Show September 24th, 2014

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Time	Text
	Well, good evening, everybody.
	How are you doing?
	I hope you're doing well.
	Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio.
	This, on the very eve of my 48th birthday, 24th of September, 2014.
	Yo, these many moons ago, pushing a half century.
	It's important when you get older not to think of yourself as turning 48, but being in your 49th year.
	I find that pretty much makes you feel like some goddamn elf stole 365 days from you.
	And I hope you're doing great.
	I had an interesting birthday.
	My daughter came toddling into the room at 12.15.
	Happy birthday, Dad!
	Actually, Daddy was hoping to be hearing that from his dream lover, his right hand.
	But yeah, so she came in and she actually didn't get back to sleep until about 2.15.
	So we bundled up and went outside, looked at the stars, and I explained why the stars flicker.
	It's because of the state and child abuse.
	And, um, so, because remember, everything in this show is the state and or child abuse.
	If you're playing the FDR drinking game, take a drink.
	Actually, I just can get these people stone drunk in the intro, but, um, uh, so yeah, we, and then she finally got back to sleep around sort of 2.15 in the morning and then, uh, I had to get up at, uh, about 7.40 to, anyway.
	So, um, it was a bit of a A bit of a slow brain day, but I'm juiced up with coffee and ready to roll this evening.
	So I hope you're having a wonderfully great day.
	I certainly am.
	And people say, how does it feel to be getting older?
	Well, for those of you who don't know, and there may be a few out there, last year I was diagnosed with cancer, specifically lymphoma, which is a rather dangerous and somewhat tricky blood-borne cancer.
	And the guy from Dexter...
	The actor from Dexter actually had the same thing.
	And also one of the musicians from Metallica.
	And causal risk factors are basically an excess of logical sexiness.
	It seems to be the biggest single risk factor.
	As you can imagine, I would be patient zero pretty much for the planet on that.
	So the reality is that if you face something like that down, There's no bad birthday after that.
	I think that's sort of what I'm trying to get across here.
	People say, how do you feel about getting older?
	Great!
	Because the alternative was not something that would be particularly great.
	So that experience last year of cancer and chemo, radiation therapy and so on, Plus, you know, massive amounts of coffee enemas, artichoke hearts, leprechaun brains, and all of the other helpful medical advice that came pouring into my inbox really sort of helped me never ever complain about aging.
	And I think that's an important thing.
	I will never ever complain about aging in the future because when you stare down into the giant Whitewater shock rapids of the alternative, well, the creaks and groans that happen when you start getting around the half-century mark are absolutely fine.
	Anyway, I'm looking forward to chatting with everyone this evening if you would like to help out the show.
	As per normal, oh yeah, just in case you had any question, I am going to milk my mother's vaginal agony for money.
	So because it's my birthday, I hope that you will send in some cash, some bitcoins.
	We're also taking wren's beaks, otters' noses, because apparently bushmeat is very popular.
	In certain sections of the United States, we're starting a thriving import-export business.
	And so if you can go to FDRURL.com slash donate, FDRURL.com slash donate to help out, do not make my mother's agony have been in vain.
	So please come and help me out on my birthday.
	I would really, really appreciate it.
	All right.
	I believe I have raised the caliber of the show yet again.
	So let's move on with the callers.
	Alright, up for today is Mike.
	And Mike wrote in and said, I'm trying to get my business off the ground, but I'm having a hard time getting myself moving.
	My girlfriend just moved in and is financially supporting me while things are getting started.
	It's been a source of stress in our relationship, and I don't want to put undue stress on her and further contribute to the already tumultuous start to our relationship.
	Do you have any advice?
	Why is the relationship tumultuous to begin with?
	Oh, right off bat, eh?
	Getting right into it.
	Well, we had been together for about four months, and she was working at a ski hill, and some extra relationship at a ski hill.
	A ski hill, okay.
	I thought you said a steel.
	She was working at a steel.
	Okay, she's a bank robber.
	That might be tumultuous.
	Okay, working at a ski hill.
	Got it.
	Yep.
	And there were some extra relationship activities that went on up there.
	Okay, look man, I'm too old for euphemisms.
	I don't know what extra relationship activities.
	Did you mean you had like group sex with yaks in a hot tub?
	I don't know what the hell that means.
	No, she slept with someone else up there.
	Okay, hang on.
	Okay, oh lord.
	So, you meet the girl, she works on a ski hill, and You're dating her, your boyfriend, girlfriend, you're dating, and she sleeps around with someone else.
	She's unfaithful to you.
	Do I have it right so far?
	Yeah.
	Do you want me to tell you the actual story, like the actual details of what happened?
	Nope.
	Nope.
	Okay.
	And so how far into your relationship did this happen?
	It was about four months.
	So she had just finished another job and she was applying for a job.
	She's a chef.
	And she was applying for a job at Ski Hill.
	And it was a little bit too soon in the relationship for me.
	I didn't feel like I should be voicing my apprehensions about her working up there.
	And I kind of kept it to myself.
	And then as the relationship went on, she apparently got blackout drunk one night and slept with someone else.
	Is she there?
	No, she's actually supposed to be home from work fairly soon here, so she wanted to listen to the show.
	Got it.
	So she slept with another man?
	Yep.
	And she claims that she was blackout drunk?
	Yep.
	Which we've also heard before, right?
	I mean, on this show, which neither here nor there.
	Now, how did she know, if she was so blackout drunk, how does she know she actually slept with someone?
	Woke up with him the next morning.
	Ah, okay, okay.
	And did she use protection?
	Did he?
	No.
	And did she get screened for sexually transmitted diseases?
	Yeah, the screening wasn't really necessary.
	And why is that?
	She brought something home.
	Oh, so she came back with an STD that she got from this guy who had sex with her while she was blackout drunk?
	Yeah.
	And what did she come home with?
	One of the, I think it was chlamydia.
	Right.
	So something treatable, right?
	Yeah, treatable, yeah.
	Okay, and how did she know that she had chlamydia?
	Because I knew.
	She gave it to me, and I had the venerable singing pee problem going on.
	Pissing fishhooks.
	Good time to go to the doctor.
	Yep.
	And did it clear up the medication?
	Yeah.
	Okay, so four months into the relationship, She's slept with someone else and given you an STD? Yeah.
	And then she moves in?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	So, do you really think that your major issue is your entrepreneurial things?
	Well...
	She didn't move in immediately afterwards.
	Oh my god!
	Oh my god!
	You didn't just tell me that.
	Oh my god!
	You didn't just tell me that, right?
	Yeah.
	I'm not really sure what you're...
	Does it really matter how long it was that she moved in?
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	This is kind of where I'm confused, you know?
	We hadn't been together...
	For too long once this happened.
	And at the beginning of a relationship, I mean, you don't immediately get into a relationship with someone and it's exclusive right off the bat.
	And I wasn't really sure how to handle it.
	Hang on, hang on.
	Were you having sex with her?
	Yes.
	Did you know she was having sex with other people?
	No.
	Well, it wasn't really...
	It was one person as far as I know.
	But see, her intentions...
	I mean, was she supposed to be exclusive with you?
	Because is that why she's saying, well, I was blackout drunk and that's why I had sex with the other guy?
	I don't know.
	Like, we had never really had any sort of an exclusivity talk at that point.
	Like, we were still...
	At that point, obviously, we weren't living together and we were kind of seeing each other.
	But there was no, like, full-on exclusivity talk.
	So, like, we weren't, you know, calling each other boyfriend and girlfriend or any of that stuff.
	And she presented it as though it were, you know, a slip-up, which I believe it was.
	I mean, I don't know how much stock you can put in that, but I kind of took her to word there.
	So slip-up meaning, like, it wasn't my fault because I was drinking?
	Yeah, pretty much.
	Yeah.
	So I guess I can use that defense.
	So like if I get blind drunk, get into a car, and kill someone, I can say, well, hey man, I was drunk.
	So it's not a problem, right?
	Yeah.
	No, I know.
	And I've struggled with this too.
	I know exactly what you're saying.
	There obviously has to be some liability there.
	But...
	The scenario that I was presented with is that she wasn't drinking with any close friends.
	She didn't really have anyone there watching her.
	She didn't have anyone watching her?
	What are you saying?
	When she walks down the street, is she holding a rope with a lot of other children?
	Is she saying that unless she's closely monitored, she might get drunk and fall on a penis?
	No.
	No, I don't think so.
	Unless she has bodyguards ringing her to keep the STD-ridden penis poles at bay, they're just going to get through her perimeter of drunkenness?
	Yeah.
	How hot is this woman?
	You've got to explain this to me.
	I don't understand this at all.
	Yeah.
	You know what?
	I don't know.
	I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt.
	You're not answering my question.
	Okay, one to ten, right?
	Because I need to know.
	Okay, one to ten, what do we got?
	Oh, jeez.
	Seven and a half.
	And where would you put yourself on the scale?
	I don't know.
	Probably maybe around a five.
	I'm a little overweight right now, so...
	Okay, so you're jumping two and a half points up, right?
	On the scale.
	So you're looking to go a whole quarter up, right?
	Yeah, I guess so.
	I mean, it's a pretty arbitrary scale, I think, but...
	It's not that arbitrary, actually.
	People usually are pretty clear about this stuff.
	And I'm not...
	The reason that...
	And people get upset when I ask these questions, but there's important reasons to ask the question, which is if you feel attractive wise insecure relative to your partner, then you will give her more resources in order to make up for that. then you will give her more resources in order to You'll have a desire to do that unless you know that about yourself.
	Or if she's way up there in the attractiveness scale, then she with, say, chlamydia gets knocked down to your level and you feel more egalitarian, right?
	Yeah, no, I see what you're getting at.
	I know what you mean.
	I mean, there's nothing wrong with different scales, like with a five going for a seven and a half or whatever.
	But you have to be really clear that your penis wants to climb up that ladder, right?
	Your penis wants to go from five to seven and a half.
	Why?
	Because physical attractiveness is a sign of genetic fitness, even features and so on.
	It's a sign of particularly women who have alpha male features, which is high cheekbones and stuff, square jaws.
	They...
	come from alpha male stock and so they genetic fitness and so on so our penis constantly wants to go jet packing up the scale of attractiveness right and uh everybody's aware of this is and it's not again it's not the only factor uh in life but it's something we need to be really aware of so that we don't get exploited right yeah no and i understand that and And I mean, I'm not, I wasn't trying to say I'm an ugly guy.
	Like, I'm just, I'm a little bit overweight right now.
	But I've got a good build and good features.
	And I do bring other things to the party.
	So, you know, I think that we're a good match.
	But this is, I mean, like I said, this is definitely one of the things that I've struggled with in our relationship.
	And trying to rebuild some trust.
	And I knew that you were going to have a...
	A bit of a meltdown when I told you about that.
	So I was kind of expecting...
	And do you know why I'm having a meltdown?
	Because basically I committed after having a massive breach of trust.
	No, I'm having a meltdown because you're not.
	And because this is not the topic of the conversation.
	This was sort of thrown into one side, right?
	Oh, yeah.
	And you don't seem to be particularly bothered by it.
	Believe you me, I've worked through a hell of a lot of grief.
	Where is she sleeping?
	In bed next to me.
	Right.
	So you're not that bothered by it, because after four months, she betrays you, she sleeps with another guy, infects you with a contagious disease, and moves in.
	yeah if you heard the story from someone else Mike what would you say Yeah, it's kind of fucked up.
	Look, are you going to emotionally engage in this conversation at all?
	Because it just sounds like you're describing the menu from a restaurant that closed 12 years ago.
	No, I'm emotionally engaged.
	I'm not going to break down in tears or anything, but Oh, I'm not asking you to break down it.
	I'd be happy if you got angry.
	Yeah.
	Like, okay, what the fuck is missing in your heart, Mike, that a woman who fucks another guy and gives you a disease, you're like, let's make a go of it.
	Like, what happened to you, and I mean this with sympathy, what happened to you, Mike, that this is even within the realm of possibility that Yeah, I don't know.
	Yes, you do.
	Yes, you do.
	Let's talk about your mom.
	So, tell me a little bit about your first experience of the feminine, let's say.
	First experience with which, sorry?
	Tell me about what was your relationship with your mother like?
	What was your mother's relationship with your father like?
	Well, my dad was certainly...
	My dad was a big alcoholic, so I guess my early memories of my mom were, I guess, friction with him.
	So you get that the woman...
	Hang on a second.
	I'm sorry to interrupt you just right after you asked, but I don't want to forget...
	So you understand that your father was an alcoholic and your girlfriend claims...
	I hate to say girlfriend.
	Your father was an alcoholic and the girl you're with now uses alcohol as an excuse for bad behavior.
	Yeah.
	Well, she did in that one instance.
	Do you think that it's a good idea if you were raised by an alcoholic to be with someone Who drinks to blackout, has sex, and infects you with a disease that can actually kill your fertility.
	Yeah, it certainly might not be the best life choice, that's for sure.
	All right.
	So, are your parents still married?
	No, my dad died when I was 16.
	So, he's been gone.
	And your mom's...
	Now, how bad an alcoholic was he?
	I don't know.
	That's a good question.
	I mean, at 16, I wasn't really in a position to judge having no experience with alcohol myself at that age.
	But according to my mom, he was a fairly big alcoholic.
	Like, I remember him coming home from work, and he'd have a number of beers after work.
	How many exactly, I can't say.
	But I remember as I got older, I certainly remember a few experiences of him being, you know, fully intoxicated.
	Then how often would that happen?
	Well, I lived with him from when I was, I think, 14 until I was 16.
	And over those two years, the point of full-on intoxication, I would say maybe once or twice.
	But there would be weekends where we'd go away where I'm sure he would smash through a 2-4.
	Over the course of a weekend or over the course of a day, maybe 18 beers for a day.
	I'm drinking pretty much all day long.
	Wait, wait.
	Are you saying 18 beers in a day?
	Yeah.
	I mean, assuming you're not drinking 24 hours, how do you even survive that?
	Yeah.
	You're drunk by the end of the day.
	That's for sure.
	I think with 18 beers, you're drunk a little bit before the end of the day.
	Okay, so a pretty significant alcoholic, right?
	Yeah.
	And what do you think of your mother's decision to stay with him?
	Again, that's a difficult question, right?
	Because, you know, they were married young.
	And my mom had my brother and I when she was fairly young.
	And she also had a very poor support system from her parents.
	And I would imagine, I mean, I've never been in this situation personally, but I imagine if you've got two young kids and a partner too isn't necessarily the best partner, you may feel like you're thinking into a corner and you don't have too many options.
	No, lots of women get divorced.
	Lots of women get divorced.
	And look, I'm not saying she should or shouldn't have, I don't know.
	But the idea that she didn't have a choice is not valid.
	50% of marriages end in divorce, and they're not all to alcoholics, right?
	So your mother certainly had choices, right?
	Right.
	And that's why I said maybe she felt as though she didn't have a choice.
	Oh, okay.
	Well, I guess we can all say that, right?
	I felt like I didn't have a choice, and therefore, right?
	You can almost say that if you want, right?
	But the reality is she had a choice, right?
	So she chose to let an alcoholic raise her children, co-raise her children.
	Yeah.
	Now...
	Did your mother have any substance abuse problems or any other issues?
	No.
	She's always...
	I mean, she's 52 or 53 now, and she's just getting to the point now where she drinks more wine than she did.
	It's kind of loosening up a bit, which is good.
	But back in those days, she rarely, if ever, drank anything.
	Right.
	And so the other thing that we have in common is you're not giving a lot of moral agency to the women around, right?
	Right.
	Your girlfriend was blackout drunk.
	Your mother maybe felt like she didn't have any choices.
	She married young.
	She didn't have a support system from her parents.
	She had kids young, right?
	So it's all happening to them, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Okay.
	I would respectfully invite you, given that my daughter is going to inhabit the same planet that you do, I would really invite you to start giving some goddamn moral agency to the women around.
	They're not children.
	They're not infants.
	They're not pets.
	They're not Robots.
	They are adults with full, complete, and total moral agency and responsibility.
	This babying of women, this weird thing where it's like, well, they're helpless, you know?
	I mean, they were young!
	She was drunk!
	I mean, no, they are moral agents!
	Didn't they want equality?
	Here it comes, ladies!
	Here's your equality!
	No excuses!
	Right?
	Right?
	No, that's very true, but in fairness, I mean, you're also asking me to comment on their personal experiences, what they've been feeling or thinking.
	And you are commenting on them!
	You are commenting on them!
	And your comments are an excuse from moral agency, a release from adult responsibility.
	Okay.
	All you're making is excuses.
	Well, I'm not intending to do that.
	I'm not intending to make excuses for them.
	Look, if you're going to be defensive, I'll just move on to the next caller, right?
	I don't care what you intend to do.
	I'm telling you what you're doing.
	You can either accept what I'm saying or not, but don't tell me your intentions.
	I'm telling you what you're doing.
	You're making excuses for the women in your life, which is condescending and sexist.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	How did you find out that your girlfriend cheated on you?
	Because I asked her after I realized that I had a health issue.
	I asked her.
	So she didn't even confess until you got crotch rot?
	Yeah.
	Oh my god.
	So how long was it between when she slept with the guy and when you realized you had chlamydia?
	It was about a month, I think.
	So she slept with a guy, gave you an STD, and didn't tell you, thus allowing the disease to work its way into your body, possibly sterilizing you.
	She kept it secret for a month, thus denying you the right to get tested and get medication, possibly threatening your health in a permanent way.
	Yeah.
	Are you fucking kidding me?
	That is evil.
	That is exactly the same as poisoning you.
	That is an assault upon your physical health and integrity.
	This is immoral, evil, manipulative, destructive, base, vile and hateful.
	Are you kidding me?
	How could you not imagine that you can do better than this kind of abominable human being?
	Seriously, Mike, is this the best you can do?
	No, I wasn't really looking at it that way.
	I'm telling you, this is how it is.
	Can you not do better than a woman who infects you with disease and hides it from you until the disease manifests itself?
	Yeah.
	Can you not?
	Because now you know, right?
	Can you not?
	Is this the best you can do?
	Can you not get a better woman than a woman who Who fucks another guy, gives you crotch rot, and doesn't even tell you she fucked another guy?
	Yeah.
	Is this the top of your capacity to attract a good woman?
	No, I don't think so.
	So why are you in this relationship?
	What does she have to do for you to say, that's really not very good.
	I don't think I want to...
	Be with you.
	You know, we talked about it a lot.
	And...
	I felt as though she made a mistake.
	No, no, no, no, no!
	Stop it!
	Stop making goddamn excuses!
	It's not a mistake!
	It's not a mistake!
	She fucked the guy and didn't tell you.
	That is not a mistake!
	That is very conscious behavior.
	Yeah.
	No.
	Stop white knighting.
	Stop writing off and excusing women from moral responsibility.
	That's bullshit, and it opens you to this kind of manipulation, which could have stolen all of your children out of your bloodline.
	Four billion years, nature has worked its way up to you, and it could have ended right with you, because this little number, fuck the guy I didn't tell you.
	And gave you a disease.
	So don't give me this bullshit.
	She fucked a guy and she lied to you about it and threatened your health.
	Yeah.
	That's not a mistake.
	Look, I'm just telling you the way it is.
	I'm not sure who the hell is in your life that is sugar-cocating all this bullshit.
	Does your mom know about this?
	Yeah.
	And what does your mom say?
	She was happy that we decided to make a go of it.
	So your mom knew that this woman gave you a disease that could have made you sterile, that could have harmed your body permanently, by fucking another guy and hiding it from you.
	And your mom's like, great!
	Keep going.
	Yeah, if you wanted to distill it down to that, No, no, don't put this on me.
	Don't put this on me.
	Tell me where I'm not correct.
	I'm not distilling or I'm repeating back to you what you have said to me.
	Yeah.
	Well, it wasn't as simple as that.
	Like, obviously, there was a lot of talk that went on, and...
	I don't know, I wrestled with it too.
	I was ready to throw in the towel.
	I was ready to completely end it.
	Ready to throw in the towel?
	How about bring her up on fucking charges?
	It's illegal to poison people and not tell them.
	Throw in the towel.
	I'm not saying you've got to call the cops.
	I'm trying to give you a sense of what's going on.
	Yeah.
	If you knowingly put someone at risk for an STD, that's assault!
	Yeah.
	Your mom thinks this is okay?
	You know, a guy gives my daughter an STD when she's an adult, he's staring up his own ass in a fucking blender!
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I think he better get on a fucking space shuttle to Mars because I'll find him.
	Yeah, honey, date him.
	He seems great.
	He fucked a woman, gave you an STD. I think it's wonderful.
	Why don't you have him move in?
	Are you fucking kidding me?
	My God.
	What about your dad?
	What does he say?
	Oh, sorry, your father died.
	What about your brother?
	Yeah.
	My brother didn't want me to, he told me to get out of there.
	And what was his argument?
	I don't necessarily recall the conversation being overly long, but I remember the gist of it was that he thought I should get out of the relationship.
	So it wasn't overly long.
	Was he very busy?
	No, just quite off from My brother and I, we have quick chats and we get...
	I don't know.
	It just wasn't a long conversation.
	Sometimes we have our long...
	I mean, you know, you contracted an illness and you're thinking about, oh, you were given an illness, you were infected with an illness...
	And you're thinking of moving in with the woman who assaulted you by infecting you with an illness, and your brother's like, well, you know, some reruns of Lost are starting soon, so I'm kind of busy.
	I mean, would he not want to step in and give you some sort of punch in the dick to keep you from going back to the primordial soup of your girlfriend's vagina?
	Well, there was definitely no punch in the dick, but he made it pretty clear that he was not happy about me going back with her.
	Okay, so he just said, I'm not happy.
	And that's it.
	You know what?
	Like I said, I honestly can't remember exactly.
	I can't remember the conversation word for word.
	Okay, so I think I'm pretty clear you're not going to leave this relationship, right?
	Well, I don't know.
	This is okay by you.
	This is what you want.
	This is the woman for you.
	You've worked through it.
	You've talked about it.
	And this is...
	You're fine being in a relationship where your health is physically abused.
	Well, no, I'm not.
	I'm not okay with that.
	You are, because she's there!
	I'm an empiricist.
	I don't care what your intentions are.
	I don't care what your hidden thoughts are.
	I care what you do.
	And what you're doing is living with the woman.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Is it because she's supporting you?
	No, it's not because...
	No, it's not because of that.
	I know why it is.
	I do...
	You know what?
	I do love her but no no no no no no no no no no fuck that I'm sorry, man.
	Fuck that.
	You don't get to use that word.
	Yeah.
	I said this to a woman last week or a week or two ago.
	You don't get to use the word love for a woman who fucks another guy, infects you with an illness and hides it from you.
	No, no, no, no, no.
	You don't get to use that word.
	Because there's nothing in love about this.
	Right?
	Love and abuse are antonyms.
	You may be codependent on her.
	You may be addicted to her.
	You may be terrified of being alone.
	You may be sexually infatuated with her.
	You may be getting the worst fucking advice from those around you that could possibly be imagined.
	All of that may be true, but don't tell me this has anything to do with love.
	And I actually do know why you're with her.
	Okay.
	You are with her because if you stand up for anything decent in this relationship, what's going to happen to all your other relationships?
	I'm thinking you're saying that they're going to corrode.
	If you don't put up with abuse...
	What you're in now, this four-month biohazard suit you're currently entombed in, this is a symptom.
	This is not a cause.
	With great sympathy, Mike, you have been raised to serve women.
	You have been raised to excuse women.
	You have been raised to save women.
	You've been raised so that you can't cause women discomfort.
	You can't assert your own needs in the face of what women, and maybe men too, but we're just talking about women at the moment.
	You have been raised to be a comfortable set of ball-less water juice that gets poured into whatever women's needs are around and fills it up perfectly.
	You are not allowed to have your own needs.
	You're not allowed to oppose the will of women.
	You're not allowed to make them uncomfortable.
	You're not allowed to make them unhappy.
	You're not allowed to make them angry.
	And so when you're viciously betrayed by a woman, you have to get all kinds of sweet and reasonable.
	You can't say, which I would say, fucking drunken whore hit me with pretty fucking virulent bacteria and hid it from me.
	Or you can't say, which you could also say, I regretfully inform you that Your services as a vaginal transmission of death-dealing bacteria are no longer needed or wanted.
	You can't say no to women.
	And so you end up with the lowest common denominator of womanhood, the lowest possible specimen of womanhood because you can't say no.
	And you were trained not to say no to women and not to cause women discomfort by your mother and Who's willing to shove you back into a medieval bacteria pit of patient zero horniness because you're not allowed to have needs.
	Now, if you have needs with this woman and if you say, oh my God, like no way.
	I can't even conceive.
	You're lucky I don't have your ass thrown in jail for infecting me with a disease and not telling me about the risk.
	And of course, I view blackout drunk as bullshit.
	I'm just telling you that.
	I don't have any proof.
	The beautiful thing about blackout drunk is who can tell, right?
	Anybody can claim blackout drunk.
	And I think it's always bullshit.
	I think it's just stuff that people say, particularly women, particularly after affairs.
	Men do it too, I'm sure.
	I think it's bullshit that women say so that they create this fog of Non-responsibility around themselves.
	Well, I was drunk.
	Hey, man.
	Hey, lady.
	If you were blackout drunk, that guy raped you.
	So let's go down to the cops.
	Let's press charges.
	Oh, I don't want to do that.
	Why not?
	If he rapes women who are drunk, he's going to go do it again.
	Maybe he roofied you.
	Maybe he's, let's go get a talk screen.
	Let's go figure all this shit out, right?
	Let's go charge the guy because he raped you while you were drunk.
	That's terrible.
	Go save the sisterhood.
	Put this guy behind bars.
	Well, I don't want to do that.
	No, no, no.
	It's bullshit.
	It's bullshit.
	Everybody is 100% responsible for what he or she does while he or she is drunk.
	Everybody.
	100% responsible.
	In fact, if you drink and fuck, it's worse than not drinking and fucking.
	Right?
	It's like if you drink and drive and you get into an accident, it's a lot worse than if you just get into an accident while you're sober, right?
	So people say, oh, well, I was drunk.
	I was blackout drunk.
	Or this woman said it a little while back on the show, too.
	Like, that somehow excuses it.
	Now it makes it worse.
	Yeah.
	It makes it much worse.
	Because if you've had any experience with alcohol before, you know how to not get blackout drunk.
	I have never in my life been blackout drunk.
	I've been drunk once or twice, never been blackout drunk.
	So it's adding insult to injury for a woman to say, well, I just got blackout drunk.
	Well, did you keep drinking?
	Well, that was stupid, wasn't it?
	Was there at some point that you knew you were getting tipsy?
	Of course there was.
	Did you keep drinking?
	Hey, guess what?
	100% responsibility.
	And then people who have sex while they're drunk...
	are like people who drive drunk.
	You make bad decisions when you're drunk.
	That's one of the reasons you don't make decisions while you're drunk.
	Some of those decisions involve STDs.
	Some of those decisions involve going home with the wrong guy or the wrong woman.
	Some of those decisions involve getting pregnant.
	That's why you don't drink and fuck.
	Everybody knows this.
	This is absolutely, completely and totally common knowledge.
	And so she came to you and said, well, I was blackout drunk.
	And you're like, well, I guess that makes it less bad, right?
	I guess that makes it complicated.
	No, it doesn't.
	No, it doesn't.
	It means that she fucked another guy and she's not even giving you the honesty to let you get pissed off.
	Because if she was truly blackout drunk, oh, I guess she woke up the next morning with the guy, right?
	Yeah.
	In which case, she should have jumped up, picked up her cell phone, and dialed 911.
	I don't know what happened last night, but somebody appears to have had sex with me while I was unconscious.
	Right?
	That's right.
	Yeah.
	And then you go get STD tested.
	You also go get a tox screen to find out if he roofied her or she goes and does that.
	But what happens is that if you stand up for this, then it's going to be pretty complicated with your mom, right?
	Because if you say, holy shit, this is like the worst fucking relationship on the planet.
	Then you've got to go sit down with your mom at some point and say, mom...
	With all due respect, what the fuck?
	Why on earth would you tell me to stay with a woman who infected me with a dangerous illness and didn't even tell me she fucked another guy until my penis was pissing red?
	Yeah.
	And if you were to have that conversation with your mom, how do you think it would go? - Yeah, I honestly don't know what she would say.
	I didn't ask her.
	And you didn't even think of asking her, right?
	I mean, she was married to and had children with a drunk.
	Right, so she was married to and had children with a drunk.
	So what's she going to say about a drunk?
	Yeah.
	I imagine she would make excuses.
	Of course.
	Just like you do for women.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Has your girlfriend entered a...
	I know the answer to this, but I'm just asking for the sake of it.
	Has your girlfriend entered any kind of AA or rehab program for an alcohol problem?
	No.
	Of course not.
	How did I know that?
	Why should she?
	Well, of course she should because she got blackout drunk and infected her boyfriend with an STD. Which means that she makes incredibly bad decisions about alcohol, so she better go to a treatment program, right?
	So she doesn't make horribly bad decisions about alcohol.
	But she hasn't done that, right?
	Yeah.
	Well, and in fairness, I drink as well.
	You know, I drink about as much as she does, so...
	Do you ever get blackout fucked?
	No.
	Well...
	No, I don't think so.
	Have you ever given her an STD? No.
	Lied her about infidelity?
	Yeah, did you ever lie to her about infidelity?
	No.
	Do you think you should drink less?
	Do I think that I should drink less?
	Yes.
	Yes.
	Yeah, and I've cut back fairly significantly recently.
	And has she cut back?
	I think she has cut back because I'm not drinking with her, so I have noticed that she is drinking less.
	And how are you feeling at the moment?
	Shook up.
	I don't know.
	It's definitely bringing back all the stuff that I kind of thought that I had sorted out, but at the same time, there's still things that were bugging me about the whole thing.
	I don't know.
	I just kind of hope that I have this wonderful notion in my mind of kind of walking down the path of forgiveness and all that stuff and moving on and people make mistakes and all that sort of stuff.
	It's definitely making me question my result, that's for sure.
	What restitution has she made?
	That's a good question.
	Forgiveness is not yours to will, it's other people's to earn, right?
	Be completely passive in your forgiveness.
	Wait and see what other people elicit.
	Yeah, well, we've been together for about 11 months now.
	Sorry, 13 months.
	It's been quite some time since this has happened.
	And we certainly had a lot of talks about it.
	And immediately after it happened, I made sure that she...
	Knew absolutely that if I even, for a second, felt as though she was lying to me about something, that it would be over.
	And she's apologized profusely.
	And she's been working, you know, she's been working, from what I've seen, it seems as though she's been working quite a bit.
	Like, I like to consider myself a fairly open person.
	Like, when I have problems, I like to talk about it.
	And talking about stuff It helps me work through issues that I'm having, and she is not really like that at all.
	But since this has happened, I think that she's committed to the relationship, if that makes any sense.
	So she's been working a lot harder talking to me about stuff and just trying to keep the passive communication open.
	We spend a lot of time together, so she doesn't like to go out and party by herself.
	I don't know.
	Does that make any sense, or is that a most high-quality question?
	Well, I'm not sure if it makes sense, but what are the virtues or positive characteristics that this woman has that make her so desirable that you would be willing to continue after such a vicious and dangerous betrayal?
	We just get along really well.
	We seem really compatible.
	No, her virtues.
	Look, the fact that you're forgiving her, which I consider highly dysfunctional, so you getting along with her could be because you're a pushover and she's a narcissist.
	I don't know.
	So the fact that you get along, despite the fact that you're not willing to assert the basic needs you need to have a fucking force field around your balls so the bacteria don't come in and kill them, The fact that you're compliant, the fact that you are willing to put up with this shit could be why you're getting along.
	So you getting along with her is not a virtue.
	I'm asking about what virtues she brought to the table.
	What are the great things about her independent of you getting along with her?
	She's very hardworking.
	She, uh...
	She's very funny.
	And, uh...
	I want to say we have similar interests.
	I don't know if that's along the same lines of us getting along, but we both like all the same stuff.
	We both like fishing and hunting and camping and four-by-four-ing and all that sort of stuff.
	So...
	We...
	Um...
	Yeah, I don't really know what else to say.
	I'm kind of lost.
	Well, you know that none of those are virtues, right?
	I mean, being hardworking is not a virtue.
	I mean, Hitler worked 18 hours a day, right?
	I'm not comparing you to Hitler, because Hitler never gave you an STD, but being hardworking is not a virtue.
	Being funny is not a virtue.
	Lots of incredibly dysfunctional and destructive people were very funny.
	You know, Joan Rivers...
	His husband killed himself.
	Her husband killed himself the next night she was out for dinner and she looked at the menu and she said, oh my god, looking at these prices, if my husband saw this, he'd kill himself again.
	So, hardworking and funny, these are not virtues.
	The fact that she likes 4x4ing, not a virtue.
	The fact she likes camping, not a virtue.
	I'm asking about her virtues.
	I mean, you know, this is a philosophy show, right?
	And you know that my definition is love is our involuntary response to virtue if we're virtuous.
	True.
	So what are her virtues?
	Yeah, and I honestly don't know.
	Usually when I meet people, I don't take stock of their virtues, and I guess perhaps I should put a little bit more thought into that as I'm Picking the people I spend my time with, I guess.
	But, you know, she's humble and diligent.
	Great.
	Okay, well, I mean, I think we sort of reached the end of this part of the conversation.
	I would certainly...
	I'll just give you my thoughts so you certainly can have the last word.
	Yeah.
	Mike, my prediction is that this relationship is going to get worse and worse over time.
	And she may very well, if she's not gone into therapy or not gone into any kind of substance addiction program or not, you know, dove straight into hot pursuit of self-knowledge after making such a catastrophic and destructive mistake.
	Sorry.
	After making such catastrophic and destructive decisions.
	Sorry.
	Female disempowerment can be contagious.
	Yeah.
	But I think that you are scared to assert values.
	I think that's going to threaten all of your relationships.
	I don't think that your family should stand idly by while you're betrayed and infected by the destructive choices a woman is making.
	And I think that you're not surrounded by people who are looking out for your best interests.
	I almost don't need to ask the virtues of your mother because I think I can pretty much work it out from here.
	I also think, in my humble opinion, that you're not quite ready to see the big picture of what love is, of what security is, of what virtue is.
	And I think that if you're not going to listen to my reasoning or my exhortations, then you're going to have to listen to experience.
	And I think that...
	The experience is going to get progressively more bitter until you realize that the costs of not having and enforcing values on those around you will be extraordinarily high.
	This is the kind of woman, in my opinion, who can just decide, oops, I'm pregnant.
	And then, welcome to 20 years of half your income out the window.
	Where people have irresponsibility in matters of sexuality and honesty and openness, you are messing with extremely dangerous stuff.
	I would double beg condom use until you resolve this relationship, or better yet, don't have sex at all, because I think that you are in very dangerous waters.
	Mike, I think that you don't have people around you who are giving you decent advice.
	But I think that the idea that you would stand up for real virtues and values in your relationships is something that you don't even know how missing it is in your personal equations.
	And that's a lot of journey to go in sort of one phone call.
	But I think that you're in very dangerous waters and I think that you are in a relationship that is going to turn out to be destructive.
	I'm not a crystal baller, but those are my thoughts.
	I'm certainly willing and happy to give you the last word, though.
	Yeah, no, I'm certainly not going to refute anything you said, but I guess it's just kind of left me with more questions and answers in terms of how I enforce those virtues, I guess, within my relationships.
	Yeah.
	No, no, sorry.
	And I don't mean to be confusing about that.
	Yeah.
	If a restaurant serves you a shit sandwich, how do you enforce your preferences?
	By pushing it away.
	Yeah, you just walk out.
	Yeah.
	But you don't enforce your preferences like you are now going to make this restaurant serve better food.
	I mean, who's got time for that?
	Lots of bad restaurants in the world, I'm sure.
	Yeah.
	No, that makes sense.
	And I mean, in this situation, I guess it's...
	I guess you can say it's a lot more cut and dry, but with interpersonal relationships with other people, there's kind of a gray area, is there not?
	Do you try to find people who are the epitome of virtue?
	No, no, no.
	Dude, dude.
	First of all, you have no emotional connection with any of this at all, which is why you're in such danger.
	You've expressed zero anger at having been infected with an STD, a dangerous STD, and having it untreated because your girlfriend hid her infidelity from you.
	You have expressed zero anger at that.
	And so because you don't have any emotional connection to what's going on to you, you jump straight into abstractions.
	And then in abstractions, you confuse yourself.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	So then you say, oh, does somebody have to be perfectly virtuous?
	Like, that's just you fucking yourself up.
	That's just you confusing yourself and spinning yourself around until you don't know which way is up and saying, well, I guess these questions are very confusing now, aren't they?
	They're really not.
	They're really not.
	Let me ask you something.
	Imagine you have a daughter.
	Yeah.
	The daughter is dating a guy.
	The guy fucks another woman, has sex with your daughter, and makes her sterile.
	How would you feel about that?
	Yeah, I'd be in her age.
	I'd be absolutely livid.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	You don't sound it, but I believe you know the words.
	All right?
	So how is it any different for you?
	Well, if you think that I'm not angry, I mean, you're mistaken.
	Like, I'm not going to...
	No, because all you've done is make excuses and minimize.
	So yes, empirically, you're really not as angry as you should be, or you probably are deep down.
	It just means that your anger threatens female interests.
	A man's anger that threatens female interests is like the Satan of the modern world.
	For men to have needs that are inconvenient to women, Holy crap.
	You know, I mean, I went to a conference in Detroit.
	Speak about some men's issues.
	Conference had to be moved.
	Women were sending in bomb threats.
	Death threats.
	Was my wife happy about me going?
	Not hugely.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	Emma Watson just did a speech at the UN where she says...
	You know, for some mysterious reason, men don't feel comfortable expressing themselves.
	Well, how about feminists stop sending bomb threats to men getting together to express themselves?
	That might help.
	Or maybe, you know, maybe a bunch of feminists could say that that's really bad and could organize a campaign to really remind men that these are crazy, evil women, nothing to do with feminism, instead of everyone pretending like nothing happened.
	Why aren't you men more comfortable expressing your feelings?
	Hey, express your feelings!
	I'll cut you!
	Okay.
	MGTOW for the win!
	But you have feelings that are inconvenient to women, and so you feel very scared to express them, I would imagine.
	And there's a reason why I made it your daughter who got infected and sterile.
	Yeah.
	Not your son, right?
	Yeah.
	Because you then, in thinking of your daughter getting sexually infected and sterilized against her will without her knowledge, that would rouse your protective instincts towards women, right?
	Right.
	So why not you?
	Why are your balls any less valuable than her ovaries?
	They're not.
	My balls are incredibly important to me.
	It's just that I've experienced the anger.
	When it happened, I was extremely angry.
	And I don't know if maybe just the anger has faded or whether, you know, talking about it made me feel better.
	Like, I'm not sure if I should still be feeling angry about this or if, I mean, so like, obviously you seem like you obviously think there's no way to move forward with this.
	I think you've made that pretty clear, I guess.
	If you were angry, I wouldn't be.
	Yeah.
	Right, so I know the lack of anger that you have is...
	It shows up in how you brought up the entire topic.
	Yeah.
	Like, well, you know, this happened.
	You know, it's fine.
	Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	But this isn't my issue, right?
	I want to talk about entrepreneurship.
	Well, I knew that it was going to go in this direction, and I figured the way it was going to go was talking about My experiences as a kid with my parents and how that's affected me in terms of procrastinating with work and things of that nature.
	I didn't think that we would necessarily spend this much time on this topic, but it makes sense that we have.
	Okay.
	Well, I guess I've given you my thoughts.
	My particular opinion is that this is going to get a lot worse before...
	You wake up to what's around you, and I'm sorry for that.
	You certainly have been very helpful, I think, in serving as a warning to others.
	And I certainly wish you the best.
	When the scales do fall from your eyes, please feel free to give us a call.
	I will certainly be happy to help you at that point.
	But I think that the white horse is a long drop for a lot of men.
	Don't want to get off that saddle.
	And tough to put down that lance and tough to stop riding off.
	To save women from the consequences of their own choices.
	So when that does, if and when that does happen for you, we'll certainly be here for you.
	But I certainly wish you the best moving forward.
	Alright, well thanks for your time.
	Alright.
	Alright, up next is Max.
	What, nothing you want to add to that there, Mike?
	After I see you doing pirouettes of outrage.
	I will just say that if someone I cared about was in that situation, you'd have to pry me off their pant leg with a crowbar to prevent them from going back into it and just continuing as if nothing had happened.
	I think we'd be rolling up with a windowless van and a bag full of chloroform, wouldn't we?
	Yeah, we'd find something with a big enough trunk.
	In Trainspotting, the drug addict's parents chained him to a bed until he gets over his addiction.
	So this would be basically, not to a bed, because that would probably bring back memories, but get him out of the proximity of the battle-scarred pussy channel until he sees reason, and then maybe let him go.
	But anyway, all right.
	All right, up next is Max, and Max wrote in and said, What is the point of making the world a better place if you're going to die anyway?
	Hi, can you guys hear me?
	Yeah, I mean, if you die anyway, why do you even care about the question?
	Yeah, that's an interesting way to look at it.
	Yeah, I suppose.
	Yeah, now listen, I ask the question because I often feel like actually improving the world.
	I thought a lot about what the problem is and what the solution might be and I realized that your FDR movement is pretty much the best thing we have out there.
	You know, I want to give credit where credit is due.
	You are The single greatest force of good right now in the world.
	You know, we had Bob Marley and then you came along.
	And then finally, a guy with some rhythm.
	Yeah.
	Well, that's very kind.
	I mean, that's very high praise.
	I certainly hope that we're doing a lot of good.
	It's not really a movement, just a show or a conversation.
	So you're tempted to go out and do good in the world and then what?
	Yeah, and then these days come along where you're just like, fuck them, you know?
	Oh, sorry for the language, by the way.
	I'm sorry.
	It's the middle of the night.
	Yeah, you're like, there's so many bad people around you.
	The world is filled with bad people.
	History is a horror show of bad people making the world terrible.
	I mean, why haven't good people stood up in the past and dealt with this for us, you know?
	It's like...
	Wait, wait, hang on.
	So are you saying to me that you wish people in the past had done a lot or done more work to make the world a better place?
	Yes, yes, yeah.
	So...
	So wouldn't you be one of the people in the past to future people that they wish had done more to rid the world of evildoers?
	Yeah, I would be.
	So, isn't that your answer?
	So, no, I don't seem to follow their stuff.
	So, basically...
	Okay, well, I'll break it down for you.
	So, in the year 1900, if more people had done work for virtue, right?
	If they had said, you know, let's not spank...
	Let's get rid of these terrible public schools that are priming people to go into the First World War.
	Let's be peaceful and reasonable with our children and set appropriate limits in negotiation and so on.
	So if people in 1900 had done a lot of good work, then the 20th century could have been entirely different, right?
	Yes.
	So now, in 2114, there'll be people looking back and they'll be saying, let's say, that, gee, I wish Max had done more good.
	In his day, so that we'd be better off.
	So you look back at the people in 1900 years ago, 1914, I guess, and you say, I wish they'd done more good, but the same thing's going to be true of people 100 years from now.
	They're going to look back and say, I wish you'd done more good, so wouldn't, right?
	Yeah, yeah, but what did they care?
	I mean, they're dead anyway.
	What did they care?
	What I wish they would have done.
	You mean the dead people?
	Yeah.
	Look, you don't have to explain to me that dead people don't have feelings, so I'm not really sure what your issue is.
	No, no, no.
	And I don't want to have a debate about this, of course, because we don't disagree here.
	No.
	What I'm saying is I have a lack of motivation in doing the right thing in the world.
	I'm far more tempted to be like everybody else and chase after, you know, your own self-interest.
	But I guess my self-interest kind of is improving the world, if you put it this way.
	Would you agree?
	Your self-interest is improving the world?
	Yeah.
	I don't know that that necessarily follows.
	Improving the world can be a nasty and ugly and difficult and dangerous business, right?
	Yes, so why do you do it?
	Because when you improve the world, you threaten the entrenched interests of evil people.
	Yeah.
	You know, whether they're abusive priests or abusive parents or governments, you and you harm the interests of entrenched evil groups.
	And that can be a difficult, dirty and dangerous business, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, it sure can be.
	I don't know.
	I don't I don't know about self-interest as far as that goes.
	I like the fight.
	I do.
	I like the fight.
	I consider it exciting.
	I consider it thrilling.
	I consider it essential.
	I consider it honorable.
	It gives me just and justified moral pride.
	It gives me a sense of rootedness and of moving through the world with purpose, with beams of light coming off my forehead like a disco ball, chasing the shadows of lies and inconsequentiality off into the far reaches of interstellar nothingness where they goddamn well belong.
	I like it, baby!
	It gets me up in the morning with a song in my heart and a spring in my step.
	It thrills my spine and swells my balls, in fact, although I need to get that looked at.
	But...
	It is an enjoyable and exciting fight for me.
	It stimulates and tests all of the strength and metal that is in my personality, which is quite considerable.
	It is the biggest and most challenging burden that the world currently faces, which is the better protection of children and the revealing of the depth and extent of evil doing in the world.
	It is a massive challenge.
	It is like Gandalf in front of the Balrog, but with not a staff, but a microphone, driving it back with the bad karaoke of wonky jokes.
	So it is something that is in my self-interest.
	I wish to be looked upon by virtuous people as heroic, and I wish to look upon myself as heroic.
	I am heroic.
	And I'm certainly not the only hero and maybe not even the most important and certainly not the best.
	But as far as my capacity, skills and talents can take me, I'm extending just about every moral muscle that I can to beat back the darkness of the world, which is, I think, essential because I have a child and because I do care about the people who come after me.
	We are part of the great chain of being.
	We do leave the world to the future and inherit it from the past.
	And that which I borrow, I do not destroy.
	That which I rent, I do not trash.
	And I am borrowing the world from the future just as I am lent to it from the past.
	There is a great chain of being, I believe, that exists whether or not we have children.
	Because you can have far more powerful and effective children...
	Than mere biological specimens.
	I mean, the children of Kant, the children of Ayn Rand, the children of Socrates, of Aristotle, of Plato, of Schopenhauer, of Nietzsche, of Hegel, you name it.
	Marx, they breed memes which change the world.
	And there is, I think, a responsibility for those with the capacity to To heal the world.
	To heal the world.
	Don't have to.
	You can play video games all day.
	You're just kind of a dick if you do.
	Right?
	If you're a doctor, people are dropping dead around you and you've got a bunch of pills that make them well.
	And you say, ah, you know, it's a good movie on.
	I think I'll go watch a movie.
	Then I'll play some video games.
	Then I'll I don't know, check in on the fappening number 67 or whatever's going on and some people are dropping dead and clawing at your windows and begging for the medicine and some hating you for the medicine.
	The undertakers hate when you give the dying people medicine.
	So you don't have to help the sick if you have a pill that cures them.
	It's kind of dickish not to.
	And if you have the capacity to make the world a better place, you don't have to.
	You're not an evil person for not doing it.
	Can't throw a doctor in jail.
	If we're not going to help the sick, but if you can, I think you kind of should.
	And if you're born with capacities, there is just a kind of responsibility in that.
	Because not everyone is born with those capacities.
	Not everyone is born with my language skills or your particular skills, whatever you bring to the table in this.
	You're just not.
	Now, if you're born with a great singing voice, you don't have to be a singer.
	Lots of singers in the world.
	But if you're born with the power, passion, commitment, and desire to create and bring to light the fire of virtue, have it reach to the sky and draw everyone around for its warmth to light their branches and take it out, I guess this ends up with the whole world in flames.
	So maybe it's not the best metaphor.
	Some people just want to watch the world burn!
	But if you can...
	Light other people's candle with your candle.
	It sure as hell doesn't diminish yours.
	The world ends up a brighter place and the shadows beyond the firelight get pushed further back.
	So if you can do it, then do it.
	Now, I mean, if it's horrible and hateful and fearful and terrifying and, you know, then don't.
	But part of being a good doctor is also to some degree having the desire to do it, right?
	You could be a great doctor but faint at the sight of blood and hate illness of any kind, right?
	In which case, well, you're not going to be a doctor, right?
	But this idea that it has something to do with, well, but then I'll be dead, right?
	I mean, the idea that life shrinks to meaningless if you take a big enough view is, to me, completely the wrong way to look at it and completely backwards.
	Look, let's say...
	I mean, I remember when I was a kid.
	I think the sun's been burning for 10 billion years.
	It's got another 10 billion to go.
	But...
	There was, as far as ethics go, nothing until a couple of thousand years ago.
	Nothing.
	There's no ethics in lower nature.
	There's no ethics.
	There's some reciprocal altruism among the apes, and there's obviously care for the young and so on, but we don't say that the species that follow the strategy of tons of eggs and no parental care are evil, but the Animals that follow the strategy of fewer children but lots of parental investment are virtuous.
	It's just two different survival strategies with a slider in between, or reproductive strategies.
	So ethics, which is meaning, which is the possibility of virtue in the universe, as far as we know, from like, what, 13 or 14 billion years ago until 2,500 years ago or so, there was nothing.
	Nothing of any particular value or virtue.
	There are no values until there are virtues, or at least money.
	And money requires some element of property rights and other kinds of virtues.
	And so, it's not like our life is meaningless because we have access to virtue.
	No!
	The universe was meaningless until there was virtue.
	And in a brief slice, a tiny, tiny little sliver of the universe's history, the universe has had a point and a purpose.
	The universe has had values and virtues and good and evil and right and wrong and all of the high drama and excitement of propelling the spread of virtue in the world.
	Before that, who gives a shit?
	It's not like the infinity of the universe makes us insignificant.
	No, no, no.
	Everything but us is insignificant.
	Because without people and without philosophy, there are no virtues and no values, and everything is meaningless.
	A frog has its babies.
	Some of those babies are eaten.
	The turtle lays its eggs.
	Some of those eggs are eaten.
	What's the meaning?
	There is no meaning to any of that.
	It's just DNA trying to photocopy itself, right?
	I mean, the shell of the tortoise egg wants to make another shell of a tortoise egg.
	So that's all it is.
	Absolutely meaningless.
	And we compare ourselves to the infinity of time and feel meaningless, but prior to consciousness, philosophy, and virtue, time didn't even exist.
	Certainly prior to consciousness, time didn't exist as a concept.
	There was fundamentally no time.
	You can't go up to a trilobite or a protozoa and say, hey, what time is it?
	They don't know.
	There's no such thing as time until human consciousness comes along.
	Of course time happened and things happened in sequence.
	There was no concept of time.
	So if you think that the fact that you're going to end makes the pursuit of virtue meaningless, it's entirely backwards.
	It's only because you're alive that the universe has any purpose and meaning whatsoever.
	And that purpose and meaning comes down to your choice about whether to join the fight to spread virtue or Let the evildoers take over and make the world a hell, not just for us, but for other species as well.
	It is only your choice that determines the value that exists within the universe and the virtues that exist within the universe.
	So we cup that flame and we blow on that flame and we feed that flame its fuel and we try to grow it.
	Everything else is meaninglessness.
	Well, Yeah, thank you for that, Steph.
	That was beautiful.
	It actually puts it into a far better perspective now.
	I never thought of it that way, actually.
	Having virtue adds value, creates the value in the universe.
	And without virtue, there is no value.
	The whole point of the universe is this little third planet from this little tiny yellow sun on this little arm of the galaxy...
	100 billion stars in the galaxy, 100 billion galaxies around.
	Let's say we're the only...
	I don't think it's true, but let's say we're the only consciousness that ever walks this universe.
	The whole point of the whole goddamn thing has been this and us.
	We are not meaningless relative to the universe.
	The universe only has meaning because we're here.
	A star burning has no moral choice, no consciousness, no right or wrong, no fight to make things better, no choice to...
	Use words instead of fists.
	No choice to stay your hand and reason.
	No choice to stand up against evil or reject evil.
	The star is a giant burning nuclear fart that comes and goes.
	It has as much consciousness as a forest fire.
	That does not shrink our meaningless into nothing.
	It means that the whole point of everything has been us.
	Not that it was planned or conscious or anything, but meaning only exists because we're here and we have this choice and we have these ethics.
	So revel in it and enjoy it.
	We don't fade into insignificance because the universe is so vast.
	We are the culmination and soul explosion of meaning in the universe.
	Everything else is meaningless, not us.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	I get it.
	Yeah, but...
	I mean, Steph, I'm sorry, but...
	I get it and I feel far more motivated now because this is the very meaning of basically...
	It could be giving meaning to my own life now.
	But...
	I've just...
	I kind of feel too insignificant for it.
	Sure.
	I mean, that's...
	Yeah, look, it's evil people who tell you that you're insignificant.
	Of course, especially if you're motivated for virtue.
	Yeah.
	I mean, if Apple...
	I mean, Steve Jobs could have convinced Bill Gates he was insignificant and worthless and useless.
	Apple would be even bigger.
	I don't know.
	I'm just...
	But of course, people who are evil want to compare you or have you compare yourself to the infinite reaches of empty darkness that so terrified Pascal in the Pensées.
	Evil people want you to feel tiny so they can rule.
	It's a lot easier to rule ants than people, right?
	So there are evil people in your vicinity and in your environment who profit from you feeling insignificant.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I kind of think that there might be actually.
	Okay.
	Who are they?
	Yeah, all my parents definitely were.
	But they definitely never give me credit for doing any of the stuff I'm doing now.
	And then my friends around me, so-called friends, don't recognize it neither.
	Matter of fact...
	So they want you...
	They want you to feel insignificant so you don't get anything done and thus make their insignificance a choice rather than an inevitability, right?
	Because to make you feel cynical towards your own virtues is the elemental task of immoral people, right?
	So, I mean, I get called naive or Optimistic, arrogant, deluded, narcissistic, psychopathic, sociable, you name it, right?
	Utopian, whatever, right?
	A dreamer, but I'm not the only one.
	And people all do that because they wish for me to observe my own virtues in a cynical manner.
	Oh, look at him striving like the fish in the bottom of a boat to get back to the ocean.
	It's so cute the way he struggles to try and make the world a better place, as if he didn't know the vastness of the interstellar spaces and the time slices of the universe that make us vanish into insignificance, as if he didn't know that human nature is evil, as if he didn't know that we'll always have a government, as if he didn't know...
	And they're trying to get me to sort of jump out of myself and look at myself as ridiculous, right?
	From the inside, I am a hero.
	From the outside, I am a clown.
	They want to jump me outside of myself and have me regard myself as foolish.
	Because what if I'm not?
	What if I'm not foolish?
	What if I'm brave?
	What if I'm not naive?
	What if I'm right?
	If I'm right...
	What are the consequences to my detractors?
	Right?
	What happens if I'm right?
	What happens if through the peaceful treatment of children and through UPB and through the non-aggression principle and through all of the commitments that people have to make the world a better place, through the embracing of the virtues and the rejection of the evildoers, what if that does make the world about as perfect as the world can be?
	Then all my detractors were just assholes in the way.
	Meletus, the guy who brought Socrates up on charges, probably thought he was pretty heroic, right?
	And now, what do people think of Meletus or Meletus?
	They think, what a fucking asshole made a great man drink poison.
	Yeah.
	Socrates won that round.
	Assholes win other rounds.
	The Jewish community, I think in the Netherlands, with Spinoza.
	Spinoza was skeptical about the existence of God.
	And he actually died because he'd inhaled so much ground glass from grinding lenses, which is a great job for a philosopher, right?
	To grind lenses so people can see more clearly.
	And the Jewish community in his vicinity commanded Everyone to ostracize him.
	Don't touch him, don't talk to him, don't do business with him, don't associate with him, don't eat with him, don't drink with him, don't invite him over, don't have...
	And now Spinoza is taught and read and absorbed in universities.
	And the Jews at the time were just assholes in the way.
	Spinoza won that round, right?
	Yeah, he did.
	And so there is a fundamental war.
	I'm telling people, I keep telling this over and over again, you are at war with your friends and you don't even know it yet.
	You are at war with the smallness of the petty who wish to hold you down so they don't even feel short, right?
	And you are at war with the people who mock you for that which is best within you.
	Who deride and insult you for your highest aspirations and most virtuous goals.
	You are at fucking war with these people.
	Whether humanity is heroic or petty.
	Whether we can reason or whether we must use force.
	Whether we can negotiate or whether we have prisons.
	Whether we hit our children or whether we reason with our children.
	This is a war.
	And it's hard to see only because we give in.
	That's what I was saying to the last guy.
	It's not a virtue to get along with someone if you have no needs.
	And just kind of conform to their expectations.
	It's not a virtue.
	You know, anyone can join the Nazi party if they say they hate Jews.
	Hey, look, I get along well with the Nazis.
	That's not good.
	And there is a war.
	And the war is not fought intellectually, fundamentally.
	This is why we talk so much about feelings in this conversation.
	The war is fought from the heart.
	It doesn't mean irrationally, because the heart is not an organ of irrationality.
	Ondaatje says the heart is an organ of fire.
	Pascal says the heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.
	Bullshit.
	The heart knows the war.
	Which is why the heart says if you unsheathe this sword you will see about a thousand swords unsheathed in front of you pointed at you.
	The heart knows of this war.
	Which is why we pretend there is no war.
	Why we pretend that we can hang with evildoers and people who put us down and people who mock and attack us for that which is best within us.
	And the endless propaganda of the media and the movies and the TV shows which tell you that courage is fighting giant robots and space aliens that drop acid when cut or shot.
	Yeah, it's always killing.
	And it's always violence against a fantasy.
	Sauron!
	Right?
	They divert your moral courage into fantastical impossibilities to make sure you never do that which is actually morally courageous, has the greatest effect, and provokes the greatest opposition.
	which is to speak truth and shatter the true tyranny of this world, which is the tyranny of silence, which is the tyranny of smallness, which is the tyranny of everybody being on their guard against which is the tyranny of everybody being on their guard against a moral agent coming along and then doing everything they can to fuck up that moral agent so they don't have to feel
	It doesn't have anything to do with the fact that you'll be dead or that people 100 years ago were dead or people 100 years from now aren't even born.
	That is all, with all due respect, Max, elegant bullshit.
	What matters is that if you act and live virtue in the real world, you will make approximately 5.999 billion enemies, right?
	Yeah.
	After 20 minutes, After 2300 years of philosophy, 3% of Southerners supported freeing the slaves in 1850, which meant you take out one sword, there are 33 swords against you after 2300 years of moral philosophy.
	How many people are anarchists?
	How many people are into peaceful parenting?
	And I don't mean unparenting.
	I don't mean unparenting, where there are no consequences for your children and everyone's buddy-buddy and you never say no and you never confront and you never have your own needs.
	That, to me, is bullshit.
	Total bullshit.
	How many people are strong atheists, anarchists, into peaceful parenting with rational consequences, into negotiation with your own needs, rather than this self-erasing unparenting stuff?
	Probably one person in a hundred thousand.
	Grow the show.
	The show grows the minds, and then the show grows.
	You don't want to take out this sword, and then you're saying, well, you know, but what's the point?
	I'll be dead one day, right?
	But it's nothing to do with that.
	It's because you're afraid of seeing how many swords come out in echo, right?
	Right?
	Yeah, and how many stores are in my direct vicinity?
	Well, how many are pointed at you and how many people are behind you saying, hey, let's take them on, man, right?
	Not many.
	Ah, I tell you, you're lucky if you get one or two.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, well, luckily FDR has brought me a few.
	Yeah, the good news is we don't actually need that many because we're right.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Yeah.
	Okay, well, thank you, Steph.
	You're very welcome.
	I appreciate that.
	Let us know how it goes.
	I will.
	I've actually got a...
	I've been asked to give an economics lecture, and I'm going to talk about how liberty improves the world.
	It's going to be my first public appearance, trying to...
	Well, we're going to talk from effect, but I'm also going to try to put in some moral stance there, so it's going to be my first battle against evil.
	Good for you, man.
	Good for you.
	Send us a link if you can.
	We'll do what we can to spread it.
	Cheers.
	All right.
	Thanks, man.
	Have a good one.
	And have a nice birthday, even though it's not your birthday here anymore because we're a few hours ahead.
	Oh, my God.
	I thought I sounded older while I was talking to you.
	Yeah, you're a day older.
	Hey, what?
	I don't have Bluetooth.
	I got a Bluetooth.
	Anyway, that can't be good.
	All right, who's up next?
	All right, thanks, Max.
	Up next is Nathan.
	And Nathan wrote in and said, if international law would honor an individual or groups' rights to live by their own rules, would it then follow by definition that international law accepts states of anarchy?
	And I also want to say, before we get to the question, congratulations to Nathan.
	Birth of a child.
	Days ago.
	Just got to say that as well.
	Well, yeah.
	Happy New Dadness.
	Nathan?
	Are you with us, Nathan?
	Can you guys hear me?
	Now I can.
	Okay, that's better.
	I guess my headphones don't work.
	There we go.
	Hello?
	Hello?
	Hello.
	Is that too loud?
	We didn't get Bob, right?
	No.
	Okay.
	Nathan.
	So, Nate, first of all, congratulations on the birth of your child.
	It's a very exciting time.
	You sound about as alert and energetic as most new fathers and mothers do.
	So, grit your teeth.
	It gets better.
	I'm not going to tell you when it gets better.
	Probably not information you want to have right now.
	So, let me sort of make sure I understand your question.
	So, international law recognizes a person's or a group's ability to live by their own rules.
	Is that right?
	And therefore, they should recognize an anarchic state?
	Or an anarchic society?
	Well, okay.
	So, I was coming from the definition of anarchy.
	And I apologize for the vagueness.
	Maybe I didn't put the question together properly.
	Well, but anarchy is no rulers, correct?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	So, there is such a thing as the right of self-determination.
	Are you familiar with that?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	And it's acknowledged and recognized internationally.
	So if that's acknowledged and recognized that a group of people can self-determine into whatever status they want, and it's just up to them to be determined enough to do that...
	Doesn't that kind of make everything non-ruler-ish?
	I mean, like, if you want to make a government and call yourself a ruler, that's fine, but there's also a million other possibilities of forming a society that doesn't involve I think in essence,
	even if we find at present today that we're in a situation where we have leaders over us or politicians over us, if we don't like the rules of that house, we can get out and make our own way or expatriate or find another better situation.
	Right.
	Yeah, I think that it would follow that from a technical standpoint.
	If groups can choose to live by their own rules, then they can have DROs or voluntary associations to resolve disputes and so on.
	So if there's a group there that doesn't have a centralized state but instead relies on voluntary market-driven organizations for the dispensation of justice and conflict resolution, I think international law would have to accept that.
	It doesn't really matter because they're just words on a page, but technically that is the recipe for summoning a state elemental.
	It doesn't mean you're actually going to get a state elemental.
	It just means that's the recipe.
	The problem that I have is I know that there's some micronations out there.
	There's lots of situations that this does seem to be Honored or acknowledged.
	Why do so many people focus on ending all governments?
	I know, and this is where it's probably going to rub you the wrong way, but make your own government.
	Why not make your own government, even down to the scale of your individual self-status, And then, you know, keep working on ways and get more people in on that through networking and everything to make that more pronounced in whatever society you find yourself in.
	Does that make sense or is that too...?
	No, no, I get it.
	Yeah, I mean, you try and influence people towards freedom horizontally rather than vertically.
	I don't think that's going to rub me the wrong way.
	Okay.
	And remember, with enough baby oil, there's just no way to rub me the wrong way.
	I just wanted to mention that as well for those who are curious about that.
	But, yeah, I think we're in agreement that you work to try and spread freedom as much as possible horizontally rather than try and control it vertically.
	When you say horizontally, you mean...
	I'm sorry, what do you mean by that?
	Oh, I just mean not trying to jump into political action and grab the Death Star and trying to turn it into a...
	Some sort of Genesis machine.
	It's only got lasers that blow things up, so you ain't going to be able to make a new Eden.
	But just work horizontally with the people in your life to try and spread as much reason, peace and evidence as you can.
	Well, I listened to...
	I can't remember which podcast it was, what number, but it was...
	I can't remember which!
	Israel and Palestine.
	God, man, that's only 3,000!
	Narrow it down a bit!
	You were talking about Israel and Palestine.
	Because I thought that that was kind of like a sore thumb as far as the right of self-determination.
	I even heard Obama talk about Palestine's right to self-determine and that should be honored and Yeah, so the best way to honor Palestine's right to self-determine is to dump billions of dollars worth of weaponry into the hands of their oppressors.
	I think that's a good one.
	Self-determination, like just in terms of politics rather than philosophy, self-determination is simply a way of claiming that people ought to obey their oppressors, right?
	Because you're self-determined if you get to vote for highly bought out, highly partisan and highly conflict of interest ridden people who rule over you for the benefit of corporations, the military industrial complex, welfare, public sector unions, old age pensions, Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, public sector unions, old age pensions, Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, you name it.
	People who are basically just using the state to steal as much as humanly possible like a coke duck Indiana Jones sprinting through an Aztec temple full of gold dust.
	I'll be snorting that shit and coughing it up later so that he can make some money.
	In that environment it's supposed to give you some sense that you're ruling yourself.
	When a bunch of power-addled money-printing sociopaths rule over you, it's called self-determination if you get to choose which money- and drug-powered sociopath gets to rule over you.
	Choose your beater is not the same as walking out of a room bruise-free, but it's called self-determination.
	Hey, ladies, you can pick from child abuser...
	Sorry, you can pick from wife abuser number one, wife abuser number two, or wife abuser number three.
	I am also a wife abuser and I like wife abusers so I'm going to help you with that choice.
	And ladies, that's called the right of choosing your marriage partner.
	It's called the right of self-determination in marriage.
	It's like, I'm sorry, do I have the choice to not get married or choose someone who's not an abuser?
	You do not!
	Because that really would be self-determination.
	We can't have any of that.
	I'm going to pretend that you choosing your abuser is self-determination so that you then feel morally responsible for the abuse you receive.
	It's fundamental to abuse that you blame yourself for the abuse that you receive.
	So self-determination is a great way of turning you into a real victim.
	The most tragic victims are those who blame themselves.
	So I'm going to put in this voting mechanism, this thing called self-determination, so that you will blame yourself for the resulting abuse of having to choose between three varieties or two varieties of sociopathic monsters.
	That way, when you blame yourself, you won't question the system, because you'll be too busy punching yourself to look up and clear your eyes of blood.
	Well, I think that those are all examples of...
	Obsolete and dead ways that are on the way out.
	I mean, because of your work and others' work with critical thinking and, you know, I listen to podcasts all day, I definitely can say that there's definitely some progress being made to where, I mean, that's almost like saying, well, that's not going to work because...
	You know, you're referencing the ways of the world that have, you know, and it's important to know your history and to base it off of that, but also, you know...
	Hey, Nate.
	What?
	Can I ask you a question?
	Yeah.
	How much sleep have you had over the last week?
	Not too much.
	I actually threw my neck out yesterday morning.
	Nate, can I make a suggestion?
	What, man?
	Can you get some sleep and call back?
	All right.
	Listen, you're welcome back.
	You sound like a perfectly nice guy, but I remember the new dad world.
	It's not like just the moment after the baby's born, you don't get much sleep, but there's a lot of preparation, and you're basically sleeping with half a beached whale with two heartbeats, so it's not the most relaxing thing.
	Get some sleep, get some rest, and call back in, all right?
	All right.
	Sorry, Stefan.
	When you listen back to this, you'll understand why.
	I'm sure.
	So, let's do one more call, because I also am a guy who only got four hours sleep last night, so...
	Just let's do one last call.
	Hopefully it's not too long.
	Otherwise, I'll just faint halfway through and pretend that it's over.
	All right.
	Up next is Scott.
	Scott wrote in and said, I'm committed to a non-manipulative, non-violent method to raising my three daughters.
	I've done a lot of work to deal with my emotional unavailability that has improved my relationship a lot with my kids.
	I do not hit my kids and generally try the preparation method of parenting.
	There are many times, however, when I raise my voice or yell at them, and the yelling slash voice raising has a kind of urgent quality to it, similar to calling after a kid going into the street.
	How do I stop this yelling or otherwise speaking harshly to my children?
	How old are they?
	How old are they?
	Oh, sorry.
	No, no problem.
	How old are they?
	I have a pair of twins who are two years old.
	And I have an 11-year-old.
	Wow.
	The other.
	I have two generations in my family, so...
	Right.
	Right.
	All right.
	I guess the causality of that decision matrix is not hugely important since they're kind of here, but...
	My wife and I just tried having kids the second time and just didn't happen for a long time, so...
	Right.
	Okay.
	And so...
	All right, so...
	Is it mostly the two-year-olds that you're yelling at or the 11-year-old?
	The 11-year-old has grown up in a different generation of my parenting.
	I never have hit my kids or anything like that, but I was not as self-aware in her life.
	So, yeah, I have yelled at her throughout her childhood, not...
	Not very often, but I would just become impatient when I asked her to do something and she didn't do it or something.
	Well, but see, impatient and yelling are not the same thing.
	Every human being gets impatient, right?
	That's kind of an involuntary.
	And some of it's justified and some of it's not, right?
	Right.
	I was in a mild rush to get somewhere today, and whenever you're in a hurry, you're in a challenging time as a parent, especially when they're young.
	Because kids, you know, trying to get kids to hurry is like trying to push a giant stinging jellyfish through Jell-O. Yeah.
	Like, it's...
	Right, so that happens pretty regularly.
	And, you know, I have one, and I can imagine three.
	It's even more exciting.
	And just one more thing.
	And then, you know, I had to ask my daughter three times to get out of the car today.
	You know, can you please just get out of the car?
	Please get out of the car.
	Yeah.
	Come on.
	Don't make me release a snake in the car.
	Oh, actually, she'd think that would be really cool.
	She loves snakes.
	I don't know.
	What would she...
	I don't know.
	A too advanced Bob book would probably get her out of the car.
	I don't know.
	But, I mean, you know, like, whenever you're in any kind of hurry...
	That it's just complete doom with parenting, right?
	Yeah, and I think that one of the things that my wife and I made a mistake with her was that we were always trying to surprise her because we were trying to avoid the conflict beforehand.
	And I think that's where it always fell apart, is just always trying to throw things on her.
	Contrary to what people believe, kids do not like surprises at all.
	No, I mean, if the surprises involve, like, dessert trays and light-up balloons, then they do.
	But if these surprises are like, hey, we're visiting grandma who smells like mothballs and has whiskers thrown out of her face that poke you in the eye when she kisses your forehead.
	No, not a good surprise, right?
	So, yeah, I get that.
	So, conflict avoidance, as you know, is conflict provocation.
	Whatever conflicts you avoid, you're just feeding so that they're stronger when you finally have to meet them, right?
	Yeah, I mean, I think I've spent a lot of time talking to my daughter and asking her about how it made her feel when I yelled at her.
	Because I notice a lot more now.
	I'm really kind of awakening to what's going on inside me.
	I'm able to step outside a little bit more and look at how I'm behaving around my kids a little bit more and observe that behavior and criticize it, hopefully constructively.
	And I've asked her, you know, like how did it make her feel when I would yell at her or raise my voice at her or, you know, speak harshly in some other way.
	You know, and she told me that it made her feel terrible.
	It made her feel, you know, like she...
	I just...
	I... I really feel bad about that.
	I feel terrible that she...
	Ever felt bad about herself because of me or something that I said to her.
	Right.
	Now, do you know that you were probably yelling at yourself inside before you yelled at your daughter?
	Yeah.
	Right?
	It happens.
	Almost all emotionally eruptive states are a mere effect of the internally eruptive state, right?
	Yeah.
	The first time I really experienced that...
	Finally figuring that out.
	I mean, you can probably tell I'm an older guy now.
	In fact, you are the age of my oldest sister, so I'm almost in your same generation, you know.
	So you're an older guy, but I'm an even still older guy.
	Way older after today.
	You know, if I had any short-term memory at all, I'd be totally offended by that, whatever it was.
	Yeah.
	Bob.
	Yeah, that's right.
	Yeah, no, I'm sorry.
	What I'm saying is that I've spent a long time going through this world not knowing that that's what was happening, or at least not getting a hint about it.
	Yeah, because it happens so quickly, you genuinely think that you're angry at the other person, when usually it's Past childhood stress that is erupting in you and then you yell at others because you're being yelled at internally, right?
	I mean, the time that I wasted in politics, you know, just talking about politics, it's all just rehashing my childhood over and over and over again.
	I saw this everywhere once.
	It was the show you did in December and Where you were talking to a guy who had...
	I don't want to go too much into detail, but you were talking to a guy who had a father who used to take off his watch before he hit him.
	And you went through a role play with him.
	And I just...
	I didn't realize how much I was doing that role play along with it.
	And...
	I had this moment where I just...
	Like, the tears that came on when you said to him, do you realize that's not your dad?
	That's you.
	You know, your dad is the asshole that used to take his watch off.
	You know, he's living in California or wherever, and...
	It's the person inside.
	And then you said that that person was there to protect him.
	That sudden realization just...
	When I realized that's what my own voices were doing...
	I... The tears that came on were kind of like...
	They were almost like laughter.
	They had the same kind of sudden involuntary nature that having the giggles does.
	It's relief.
	Yeah.
	It's relief because with knowledge comes the power to change, but the knowledge has to be accurate.
	So it's relief.
	It's like when you finally find something...
	That you've been desperately looking for, you kind of giggle, right?
	Like, oh, wow!
	You know, you feel this relief.
	Because now you can stop looking and you can start doing.
	Yeah, relief is the best word for it because it's...
	I'm the middle of six kids growing up and I'm a fourth child and I was always trying to manage...
	All of the conflict.
	I was very empathetic when I was growing up.
	My mom is an absolute, complete narcissist.
	She's different than a sadist in that way.
	What she did was out of necessity to get what she needed or wanted.
	She may have enjoyed it, but it But that was immaterial.
	It was that she wanted something.
	A narcissist is just more like a lion than a torturer.
	A lion is just, well, I'm hungry, so I'm going to go eat a gazelle.
	They don't focus on the needs of the gazelle.
	They're just hungry, got to go eat a gazelle.
	But they're not sadists.
	They don't torture the gazelle, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, it doesn't matter much to the gazelle that are dead either way, but it is different usually from somebody who's sadistical who will torture when they're not hungry.
	The sadists are more dangerous, but the narcissists, they're okay if you're not conflicting with any of their needs, but the moment you conflict with any of their needs, I mean, you're fucked.
	Yeah.
	I mean, that's what it was.
	This is why I recognize such empathy in my oldest daughter.
	My youngest daughters, they're very empathetic, but they're also two years old.
	Yeah.
	And I love them for they do like to have things done their way, especially right now as they're climbing up on things and stuff.
	They really like to do things by themselves.
	Now, let me ask you something, though.
	Yeah.
	If you're sort of aware of this aspect of yelling.
	Yeah.
	I believe that most times people are yelling at children, it's in a twisted attempt to protect them from their inner parent.
	In other words, if your mother was in the room and seeing your daughter's doing something that she disapproved of or that made her angry or upset or anxious or whatever, then she might really lash out at them.
	So in a weird kind of way, when you yell at your children to not do something, it's often because your mother is metaphorically standing over your shoulder and about to rage at them if they do something wrong.
	So it's a kind of strange way to protect your children from the abusive parent.
	I think there's a lot of truth to that.
	I mean, I... I have that particular complexity that you're talking about, about constantly managing these external dangers internally.
	I'm always...
	Man, that was really unclear.
	What I'm saying is I'll be doing something where no one could possibly be present.
	Everyone's asleep in the house or whatever.
	And I'm downstairs tinkering with something.
	I'll be, like, wondering what someone would think if they were there.
	Yeah, no, and I've had this with my daughter.
	If she...
	Like, I put her to bed and I'll...
	I, you know, read with her, we chat, and I'll lie with her usually until she falls asleep.
	And I'll come downstairs...
	And I'll see that she left a mess somewhere, right?
	Crayons or something.
	And this is the kind of thing that my mother used to vent her temper with.
	I mean, she didn't care about the mess.
	She's an incredibly messy person.
	But she liked having the mess as an excuse to vent that made her not feel evil.
	So I go downstairs and I see a mess my daughter's left.
	And she's pretty good at tidying, but I see a mess my daughter's left.
	And I can feel myself tensing up a little bit.
	And I feel like saying, you can't leave that mess.
	We'll get in trouble.
	Leaving that mess is dangerous.
	I need to stop You from making that mess.
	Because we'll get in trouble.
	And this idea of harming your children to keep them safe is very common.
	Happens in the black community.
	They say, we have to hit our children because otherwise they won't have respect and fear of authority.
	They'll mouth off to a white cop and get blown away.
	It's not true.
	But it makes them feel less like they're just beating their kids, right?
	Plus, you know, it becomes white people's fault, which is not exactly unknown, white males in particular.
	Ooh, we're bad!
	But this idea of yelling at your kids to keep them safe is a very common source, I think, of parental anxiety, right?
	And the desire to control your children so they don't provoke the abusive grandparent I think is quite a strong driver for this stuff.
	I mean, that does explain why it always seems to have an urgent quality to it.
	It's not like...
	It's usually, let's say, that I'm giving the twins a bath and one of them's You know, trying to, you know, get too close to the toilet or something like that.
	You know, something that could be dangerous.
	You know, or standing on wet ground where they could slip or something.
	It's like, well, here, don't do that.
	Don't do that.
	And then, you know, it slowly escalates.
	Or maybe not so slowly, but it escalates to where I'm like, well, just don't do that.
	You know, and And it can escalate beyond that, but it always does seem to be like an emergency.
	I'm sorry to interrupt, but...
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Obviously, you care hugely about your daughters, but is some part of it, if they fall, they'll get hurt, or if they fall, I'll get in trouble?
	That's what it is.
	It's the second one.
	Because I have...
	I have to keep bad things from happening.
	It's your responsibility.
	And if anything bad happens to them, you will get in trouble.
	Yeah.
	And I don't mean that you then don't care if they fall and hurt themselves.
	But I'm not trying to say that.
	I'm trying to say that the escalation and the anxiety makes it very difficult to think clearly in that moment, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean...
	I mean, children respond when you lower your voice.
	We think that if you escalate, you get people's attention.
	But I find with my daughter, if I become quieter, because as you can imagine, I'm pretty animated in my conversations with my daughter, but if I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, hey, wait, wait, wait.
	Right?
	That really gets her attention and she listens to me much better than, I mean, not that I've ever raised my voice, but she listens to me much better when I'm quieter and speak more slowly.
	As we all do, right?
	I mean, if someone's yelling at you a lot, you tend to tune out, you tend to turn off.
	It's overwhelming, particularly if that person is like 10 times your size.
	But if that person comes down to eye level, make sure that there's eye contact and says, listen, I need to tell you something.
	It's really important.
	You know, that wet floor, not good.
	And if you prepare all that, that to me is, you know, soft words leave footprints.
	Loud words are just like wind in the desert.
	A lot of shit goes up in the air, but nothing fundamentally gets left behind.
	But soft words brand themselves into children's minds.
	Quiet words.
	But loud words tend to raise everybody's static level to the point where no communication can occur.
	It's just noise.
	And it's overwhelming noise, right?
	Yeah.
	It's like too much current.
	It blows the fuse.
	You know, I'm six foot four and 200 pounds.
	I've got to look like a giant to them.
	Yeah, I'm six foot and 200 pounds.
	So obviously I have an ab.
	Yeah.
	So obviously it's quite different.
	But yeah, so I think we know that when you lower your tone, children are more likely to listen than if you continually...
	But the reason we do it is because we're in a state of anxiety and we're in a state of somebody looking over your shoulder.
	I mean, why I couldn't have my mother around while I'm parenting is because she's around anyway and I don't need to feed that.
	Ghosts are scary enough, but you don't want them to be made flesh too, right?
	Sorry, go ahead.
	I was just going to say, maybe two days before I contacted Michael, my two daughters, they're extremely adventurous.
	They feed off of each other.
	Two kids is more than just double.
	Oh yeah, no, I've heard that.
	It's a J-curve, and one of them had figured out how to get deadbolts open.
	And so we're constantly switching the little doorknob protectors from upstairs to downstairs until we can get to the It was like a couple of days after we discovered she knew how to open these doors.
	And I went downstairs to grab something in the basement.
	And my wife went upstairs to help my daughter with a project from school.
	And I was on my way back upstairs.
	When I got upstairs, the twins were out the door.
	You mean like out the front door?
	Right.
	And not in sight anywhere.
	Terrifying.
	I've never run so hard in my life.
	I've never run so fast.
	I mean, I completely burnt my lungs up just running around.
	I mean, I must have looked like a crazy person to people, but I was in my bare feet.
	I was just running everywhere to find them.
	I had all these visions in my head, you know.
	What could have happened?
	Oh, yeah.
	You think you're going to find a skull with tire tracks in it.
	Absolutely.
	Oh, yeah.
	I get all of that.
	For those who don't know, all parenting is basically you're trying to turn yourself into a human shield against the endless javelins of disaster constantly raining down from the planet.
	Absolutely.
	They're still alive!
	Good job!
	That's what I'm going to get at.
	Dad, they're still alive!
	That should be like a t-shirt, you know, like two thumbs up, you know.
	Still breathing!
	Mostly intact.
	And so, no, I get it.
	I get it.
	As soon as I, you know, got my head together, I figured, oh, hey, I've got a bike.
	Grabbed the bike, got on the bike, much more effective.
	How far did they get?
	They got really far.
	Went to the airport, checked the checkout counter.
	Fortunately, they'd only gone to Kuala Lumpur, got the next flight.
	They knew exactly where they were going.
	They're like maybe two houses.
	Through the backyards of two houses, of two other houses, is a public, you know, like a neighborhood playground.
	And they headed right there.
	They went right for the playground.
	My 11-year-old, she said, let's go check the playground.
	So I got on my bike, and she's thinking a lot more clearly than I am.
	And I went right there, and that's what they're doing.
	They're at the playground.
	They look like they had just gotten off of one of the slides.
	And to them, it's, you know, it's, hey, we just went to the playground.
	What's the problem?
	Yeah.
	Well, but I mean, I had you talk to them about sort of the boundaries and...
	Oh, yeah.
	I mean, I have...
	We...
	Every time that I take them, like, I take them to the garage or I take them to the front door, front steps, and I have them sit there without moving.
	You know, like, hey, can you sit there right there while I'm adjusting the sprinkler head?
	And then they'll sit there and I try to get them to...
	To exercise control over wanting to just run all over once they get freedom.
	But, you know, it obviously wasn't effective that day.
	Can you fence up the yard a little bit?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, the contracts have gone out.
	Good, good.
	Yeah, I mean, I'm not saying a huge amount of electricity.
	No.
	Clearly some would be in order.
	Maybe small.
	Maybe small collars.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Okay, yeah.
	So that's pretty terrifying.
	I mean, it's horrifying.
	It was really terrifying.
	But the thing was is that when I talked to them, when I found them, there was no yelling in it.
	I was just, like, relieved to find them.
	Right.
	It was just, like, this massive relief washed over me, and I just said...
	You know, what could I possibly say to them?
	Could I possibly yell to them to get them to understand what I was going through other than to just hug them and let them know like how, you know, just tell them how worried I was and just hug them and that's all I could do.
	No, of course.
	Yeah, I mean, of course.
	And then they certainly weren't doing anything malicious.
	No, they told me.
	They said, They said, we just went on the slide.
	I mean, they just told...
	It was almost like, oh, hey, you got here.
	And they didn't cross the road.
	They certainly didn't obviously know that they were breaking any particular rules.
	No.
	And so, yeah, I think definitely prevention and preparation is there.
	Look, I'll tell you, I'm of two minds.
	I think like most parents, you worry about being overprotective and underprotective.
	So on the overprotective side, I think, well, watch a nature documentary with monkeys.
	Right?
	I mean, those monkey moms, they're like swinging through the vines with babies hanging onto their back hair, picking at nits and having a meal to go, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, and the monkeys pretty much don't die, right?
	And so I think, well, so we evolved with like Living in trees with jaguars and all this crap around and lightning strikes and forest fires and swinging and hanging on to fur.
	We pretty much made it, right?
	So for the most part, kids are safer than you think.
	Now, I get we're not exactly in a hugely natural environment.
	My brother, when he was a kid, I don't know how old.
	When he was a kid, he had a friend.
	He was in the backseat of the car.
	And his friend opened the door, stepped out, killed by a car.
	Just creamed.
	Just vanished.
	And my brother also was in a car and parked on a hill and he was messing around with the parking brake.
	Pushed the button, parking brake, rolls down, full on, risky business style.
	Fortunately, he did not become a U-boat commander, as they say.
	So, there are no stairs in the jungle, right?
	So, kids, you know, and again, my daughter's never been in any particular danger, but I do sometimes, as a parent, you look around at all the adults and say, well, they're alive.
	You know, they made it.
	But it is, you know, as Dave Barry says about toddlers, they're basically just giant death magnets.
	And it is, you are in a constant state of low-grade anxiety.
	And that's, you know, not always.
	And then you're carrying ghosts around with you at the same time.
	Yeah, and so with the ghosts as well, it is alarming.
	And of course, remember, I mean, a lot of times, the one thing I will say about parents, older generation parents, is that they were often preparing their children for a lot harsher kind of world than we have.
	In many ways.
	A world with, you know, maybe more racism, a world with more homophobia, a world with stronger and stricter and more dangerous social standards.
	And there is this belief that if you hurt children, they're easier to manage socially.
	And I think that's more true for girls than it is for boys.
	And I think it's not true.
	I think, obviously, the whole purpose of the show is that we build a free society when we treat children reasonably.
	If you want a rational world, reason with your children.
	If you want a world where all the children speak English, everybody should speak English to their children.
	If you want a world which is rational, reason with your children.
	It's not something that's going to suddenly pop into their head when they're 18.
	It's a language that's got to be taught, listened to, developed, and understood.
	Throughout a child's life and then the child will speak reason and evidence like you and I are having this conversation in English without even really thinking about it.
	But I think that the ghosts often propel the harms of the living.
	It's not my mother's hand, it was her mother's hand that was hitting me.
	And she was hitting me to protect me from her mother Who hit her.
	Or for the world that was being blown up when she was a child in the war.
	Stay safe, stay safe, stay safe.
	And there's this belief that if you traumatize a child, you're keeping that child safe, right?
	Spank the child, otherwise the child will grow up with no discipline.
	Spank the child, otherwise the child will grow up with no respect for authority.
	Which came from a time where not having respect with authority.
	I mean, when I was six, I was caned in boarding school.
	And my mother could have said, well, I hit you because you only got caned once or twice, right?
	Other kids got caned a lot more, so you'd already learned it was bad and it kept you safe.
	It's kind of a tautological argument or a circular argument, right?
	Where does it stop?
	Well, we hit kids to keep them safe from kids who grew up to hit other kids to keep them safe, from kids who grew up to hit other kids to keep them safe.
	It just never stops, right?
	At some point you've got to stop.
	Yeah, I've found out a while ago that I have an ancestor named Thor in the 1400s or something.
	Oh, okay.
	I was going to say how far back it was.
	Fairly long ago, and I have no idea what Thor's life was like or anything, but...
	I had these images in my head of these swords and axes and shields being passed down from generation to generation, you know?
	Oh yeah, like Thor, like either a total Viking or an immense gay porn actor.
	I'm not sure which.
	Yeah, who knows?
	I'm just going with the helmet motif.
	Yeah.
	If I had a hammer, I'd hammer in the morning.
	Yeah.
	All over this bathhouse.
	All right.
	Yeah.
	So, yeah, and that is the purpose of self-knowledge and of confronting sort of your inner alter egos is to make sure that they're part of your conversation and not driving your freak-outs.
	And I think that really helps.
	So, as far as stuff around bath time, yeah, baths are slippery and so on.
	And I think it's just a matter, and kids, they get hysterical and they drive each other mental, you know, and that's part of the fun of childhood is, you know, Laughing till the milk runs out of your nose is pretty fundamental to childhood fun.
	But having them understand about dangers and so on.
	It's prevention and preparation.
	That's sort of the only thing.
	And you know this.
	I mean, you're more experienced father than I am by far.
	But prevention and preparation is key.
	And that will reduce risks.
	You cannot eliminate risks without eliminating childhood, right?
	That's what childhood is.
	Well, and it's what life is.
	We don't want children to grow up with no sense of risk, otherwise they can't be virtuous, because these days, virtue is risky, and we hope to create a world where vice is risky, but right now, vice is pretty strongly rewarded, so we're still working on that.
	But we don't want to raise entirely risk-inexperienced or risk-averse children, otherwise they definitely will inherit a world less moral than ours.
	Yeah.
	Steph, I just wanted to also...
	This is your birthday.
	I just wanted to say how the first show that I ever watched or listened to yours was just a what-to-watch recommendation from YouTube, you know?
	And it was the Elysium show of all shows.
	Oh, wow.
	Everyone who clicks on it is like, wow, Elysium, that's a picture of Matt Damon.
	It's an hour and 45 minutes long.
	Woo-hoo!
	Hey, what the...
	Yeah, I was trying to manage the liberals around me who loved the show.
	I've got to argue these guys out of this stupid show.
	And Elysium popped up.
	Your show on Elysium.
	And the amount of truth that I saw there, it just kept me coming back for more.
	I just really connected with that.
	Everything.
	And then when you started talking about Not spanking your children.
	I mean, I used to be like this, the kind of conservative that made everyone uncomfortable because I would have to manage them and argue them out of whatever idea I thought was crazy when I held crazy ideas.
	And When I started examining this personal stuff, all that stuff just fell off.
	Who cares about politics now?
	Someone starts talking to me about politics.
	I just leave the room.
	I don't want to talk about it.
	I want to hear about it.
	I don't even know who's running.
	It's just so pointless and silly.
	Politics for me is like, I'm so tired of veiled references to your own parents.
	Absolutely.
	That's all it is to me.
	I mean, if we're not going to talk about the real thing, let's not do the stand-ins, right?
	Yeah, and I started to realize that, that the guys that I liked were these, you know, these guys that brought out this reaction in me, you know, that I got to, you know, it's all like you say, like I'm like this tribal protector that's like trying to, you know, manage the perimeter of the tribe, you know.
	And, I mean, that's the reason why conservatism appealed to me.
	But once, I mean, that stuff just fell off once I started looking at this.
	And the thing that's amazing, and this is why I just, you know, if my daughter ever hears this, I just want, you know, everyone to know that empathy, like, she saw the changes happening in me without me saying anything.
	I wasn't, you know, this was an internal thing for me for a while.
	And she noticed...
	In days, the change is happening.
	I mean, she doesn't notice so quickly.
	I mean, it's just like the connection that she has.
	I mean, and, you know, I started doing, I've had, I started doing some trial.
	I wasn't trying to do, you know, full separations, but I started doing trial separations with People in my family who were so abusive growing up just so that I could see for myself how I changed when I was around them versus not and not feeling like I needed to be around them.
	And my sister tried to surprise me with my parents when I told everyone in my family that I would not see my parents.
	And You know, we showed up to Easter for Easter egg hunts with the kids, and there's my parents.
	And I didn't realize how I would react.
	I thought I was keeping it internal, because that's what I feel like I've got to do, you know.
	And I felt...
	Fear.
	It was like fear.
	It was the kind of fear that people talk about when they're suddenly thrown into a public speaking engagement with no speech.
	It was fear deep down inside.
	And I'd never noticed that that was fear.
	And my daughter noticed immediately.
	Everyone's chatting it up and acting like this is some great reunion and she's looking at me And she notices immediately.
	And she said, you know, Dad, are you okay?
	You know, and I just had to explain to her, like, how I felt, you know, that...
	I... When my twins were born, my...
	My mom refused to see them after she'd been talking about how excited she was that we were finally having kids.
	She was going through some kind of depression or whatever she wants to call it, whatever excuse she had for it.
	But she told my dad to tell me that she couldn't see them because she didn't want everyone to see that she couldn't experience any joy around them.
	And then about a month and a half later, she attempted suicide.
	Yeah.
	And she tried to kill herself with sleeping pills.
	And my dad found her, and, you know, she was not responsive.
	And my dad, you know, got her into an ambulance.
	The ambulance administered anti-credits.
	What do you call it?
	Whatever it is, it's something that they do when this sort of thing gets called out.
	I mean, she came to in the hospital with everyone surrounding her, and all I saw on her face was shame that everyone was seeing her like that.
	You know, like, I just saw on her the consequence of That everyone was seeing her.
	Not a recognition that all of us were afraid.
	And that all of us were desperately there hoping that she wouldn't die.
	But I don't understand why didn't she die.
	I mean, if you want to kill yourself, I don't understand how it's that complicated.
	Right?
	I mean, you just throw yourself off a cliff or put a gun to your head.
	I mean, how is it really that hard to kill yourself?
	And she was doing it because this is what she does.
	She wasn't trying to kill herself.
	I don't think that she would have died.
	She's a nurse.
	So she knows, and she knew your dad was coming home, I assume, and she knew how much to take to scare people but not to kill herself.
	Yeah, and this is...
	This woke up in me.
	When this happened, first when she refused to see the twins, and when I had to hide from my daughter that she would say something so damaging.
	Because my daughter is older.
	And so I had to make up reasons why.
	Why?
	She's not seeing the twins.
	Why grandma isn't seeing the two babies that we're all so proud of?
	And then this happened.
	And when I was about 15 or so, she recognized a long time ago that she had to treat my brother one way, my younger brother another way.
	And to me, she could say incredibly damaging emotional things, and I would react how she wanted it.
	And she would tell me when we were, you know, every week she would, it was just like what you were describing with your mom where she would, you know, use uncleanliness as an excuse.
	Yeah.
	With my mom, she would just, you know, walk around the house with a garbage sack crying that the house was not clean.
	And my mom was, it was just such a, If you weren't a child growing up in it, it was pitiful.
	Now that I'm older and I look back on it, it's ridiculous.
	But it affected me tremendously.
	And she would tell me during this time, she had been a nurse and my dad was a software engineer and one day she decided that she needed to stay home for the kids.
	And stop and quit her job and all this stuff.
	And while she's home for the kids, all she is is this monster that comes out of her room every once in a while crying and sobbing with a garbage sack in her hand.
	And she would tell me, and it was usually only when I was there, not when my brothers were there or anything, she would say, you know, if I got cancer, then you would appreciate me.
	I look back on when she would say that.
	To me it was like, you make me want to have cancer.
	You mean your mother was sort of saying to you, you children are so ungrateful, you make me want to have cancer.
	Yeah, cancer is better than this.
	That's what it sounded like to me.
	I guess it would be a big difference for her Having cancer rather than being a cancer.
	And she was a cancer.
	My brothers and sisters, they still say, well, you know, at least we know how to parent because mom and dad left all these signs about how not to do it.
	And I'm like, yeah, and you're the sign.
	And I'm the sign.
	Did your mother's, I don't know what you'd call it, depression or what, Did it have anything to do with your wife's pregnancy?
	In other words, did it sort of start and escalate over the course of the pregnancy?
	My mom, like, the behavior hasn't changed, but, I mean, she has always gone up and down and up and down and just, you can't talk, you can't say anything that would possibly cause her to explode.
	But, Right before, or probably about a year or so before, she was diagnosed with Hajimoto's disease, which is an autoimmune disorder that attacks certain parts of your body.
	I wanted to be there for her and try to do whatever I could to make that easier and all that stuff, but this just became an excuse to be a tremendous...
	Because I was still stuck in that.
	I was still being ruled by these old ghosts.
	Right.
	So, I mean, she wanted you for that, but your own feelings probably didn't matter that much, right?
	No, not at all.
	And then when I started to realize that that was what was happening, that I'm trying to manage...
	that I'm still just trying to manage...
	The fear that I feel around whatever disappointment or punishment can come from my parents or from my family, I feel like I gotta do something for mom.
	Yeah, I mean, people, amoral people, this is a big secret of life.
	I'm gonna share it with you and only you, nobody else.
	It's a big secret of life.
	Amoral people do what works.
	Amoral people will do what works.
	Now you can't appeal to amoral people or immoral people based on ethics.
	Because they don't do ethics, right?
	They're not into it.
	The only way to change amoral people is to fuck their strategies.
	The only way to affect any change in behavior in amoral or immoral people is to have whatever they're doing not work anymore.
	And that has to be relentless.
	And in that moment where you say, I am no longer going to feed your dysfunction, what they call enablement, The reason why you're...
	It's not your fault.
	But fundamentally, why does your mother do what she does?
	Because it works.
	And it worked to get your father.
	It worked to get out of going to work.
	It worked.
	It gets her what she wants.
	Now, what she wants isn't healthy.
	I get that.
	But amoral people...
	Amoral people...
	Do what works and the only way to change them.
	You don't reason with them.
	It just doesn't work.
	This no longer works.
	My mom, hey, when I was a kid, yeah, I get it.
	Yelling and screaming worked.
	Why?
	Because I was a kid.
	Hitting me worked.
	Why?
	Because I was a kid.
	It worked because I couldn't leave.
	In the same way most people use the post office.
	Because they have to.
	Most people send their kids to public school because they got taxed too high to send them to private school.
	They have to.
	Now, when I became an adult, well, suddenly we went from communism to capitalism, right?
	We went from enforced relationships to voluntary relationships.
	I had to see my mom when I was a kid.
	Didn't have to see it when I was an adult.
	Families always get privatized.
	They do.
	You've got to go home when you're a kid.
	Where the hell are you going to go?
	But you don't have to go visit your abusive parents when you're an adult.
	Everybody's family gets privatized through time.
	And I'm aware of that with my daughter.
	My daughter, hey, I'm communist dictatorship right now.
	But she is going to get progressively privatized.
	My relationship with her is going to get progressively privatized.
	And if parents understand that, if parents, and I'm not talking to you, you're a delightful guy, you get it, right?
	But if everyone in the post office knew that the post office was going to be privatized in five years, what would they do?
	They would maybe start acting a little bit more like FedEx.
	Yeah, they'd start working hard.
	They'd start providing value.
	They'd start caring about performance reviews because they'd know that their contracts were going to be torn up and everything was going to be cast to the winds and energies of the free market in only five years.
	So they would improve now because it was going to get privatized, right?
	Yeah.
	So when I talk about the voluntary family, I'm talking about That which is necessary for parents to improve now.
	If parents know, if they understand, and if the concept goes that adult relationships are voluntary, what a shock, it's all factual.
	If parents know that as parents their relationship is going to get privatized, they will improve now.
	This is the only way to fix parenting now.
	Otherwise we've got to wait for another goddamn generation.
	I don't have time to wait for another generation.
	The world doesn't have time for us to wait for another generation.
	Because evil is growing in leaps and bounds, in debts and wars and dependency.
	We don't have time to wait anymore.
	We have to snake back improvements into the parenting and the here and now.
	And that is sounding the death knell of abuse, which is privatization.
	The only cure for corruption is voluntarism.
	The only cure for corruption is voluntarism.
	Telling people the family is voluntary is telling these postal workers, you're going to get your asses privatized, babies.
	Yeah.
	That's why you have to improve.
	Now.
	You can't get into the family and fix it.
	You can't.
	You can.
	It's this, as I've talked about, it's this big giant obsidian biosphere of impenetrability.
	You cannot go walking around and fix families right now.
	All you can do is say, hey, you're going to get privatized.
	And work against the tendency of everyone to force children when they're adults to go see their parents and go do this and go do that.
	And you have to.
	She's your mother.
	She sacrificed everything.
	She's your dad.
	He's sick.
	He needs you.
	No, no, no, no, no.
	If we can get society to stop hurting the victims of abuse into contact with their abusers, that's called privatizing the family.
	And that's exactly what I learned from feminism.
	Privatize marriage.
	Women can leave.
	They don't have to stay.
	Just if they're dissatisfied, if they're unhappy, if they don't like it, if they're bored, if they fancy someone else.
	When you privatize marriage, you improve.
	Marriage.
	When you privatize the post office, you improve the post office.
	When you privatize air traffic controllers, you improve it.
	When you privatize the family, you improve the family, and you don't have to wait to try and scoop up the victims of child abuse when they're 30 and try to get them to become better parents.
	You can change it in the here and now by spreading the message of the voluntary family.
	The voluntary family!
	If you can't get fired, you just won't improve.
	Everybody knows that.
	And if parents can't get fired, why on earth would they fundamentally improve?
	Some of them will, for sure.
	Yeah, it's my decision not to see my...
	Sorry, remember when Mitt Romney said, you know, I like being able to fire people?
	Yeah.
	No, he's right!
	Yeah.
	He's right.
	It's the foundation of democracy.
	It was a terrible thing for him to say, though.
	No, no, no, of course.
	He's still Mitt Romney.
	He's still the accolade of the magic underpants, but still...
	Privatizing the family is the only way to make society as a whole voluntary.
	Yeah.
	What's so funny is that as I haven't talked to my parents and I refuse to see them and my brothers and sisters, they now understand that I'm not going to come to events with my parents there.
	I had my brother coming to me saying, you know, You know, what about forgiveness and all that stuff?
	And I'm just like, look, I realized where that was coming from for him because I've heard him say some pretty awful things to his kids.
	And he's doing that, I would argue, because he can wave around the magic flag called, you have to forgive me, even though his negative things that he said to his kids came about from him explicitly not forgiving them for whatever he was yelling about.
	That's number one.
	And number two, abusive parents rely upon this fucking phalanx of society.
	This phalanx of society traps any kid who's trying to get away as an adult from an abusive parent and herds them back in.
	They're like a bunch of slave catchers out there.
	Any slave tries to get away, they catch them and return them back to the plantation.
	And slavery ends not when the government says...
	It's now illegal.
	Slavery ends when people stop participating in catching the slaves.
	When the government stops catching the slaves, then you don't need to do anything else.
	It ends.
	And society as a whole, abusive parents, rely on society blocking anybody trying to get away from abusive parents and shaming them into going back.
	And that's what drives the abuse.
	Look, how much would you care about the quality of your restaurant food if everyone in the neighborhood was forced to eat there every night?
	Or forced to pay even if they didn't go?
	We understand that government schools are crappy because people are forced to pay for them.
	They're subsidized through force.
	Well, abusive parenting is subsidized through social pressure.
	Through What do you mean you don't see your parents?
	What do you mean you don't see your abusers?
	Well, maybe they abused you for 20 years, but you're going to go back, right, at some point?
	I mean, imagine saying that to a woman who'd been beaten up by her husband for 20 years.
	Well, what do you mean you don't see your abusive husband?
	I mean, fine, take a little break, but obviously you're going to go back and live with him, right?
	You can't just leave.
	But he abused me for 20 years.
	I'm sure he did the best he could with the knowledge he had, right?
	So the privatization of the family is foundational to the freedom of the world.
	We cannot get to a free society while the family remains fascist, communist, socialist, the state, which you cannot escape.
	And subsidizing abusive parents with allegiance is a fundamental crime against virtue because it enables child abuse.
	That's why it happens.
	Because society herds the adult victims back into the tender mercies of the abusers and deliver not just the adult victims of child abuse through social pressure back into Into the abusers' homes.
	But the abusers' grandchildren get delivered unto the abusers as well.
	And then the abusers both traumatize the grandchildren directly and, through evoking trauma in the parents, continue that trauma even when they're not around.
	Absolutely.
	It's...
	When you describe all this stuff, it's just so...
	It's so crazy the way that society they don't see these schisms and the things that they're talking about.
	And I just I will say that I talk about my daughter a lot because I love her to death.
	She came home from her friend's house a few months ago and And her friend and her were doing some creative project and her mom came down and saw them using water-soluble glue on the kitchen table and decided to take my daughter's friend in front of my daughter down to the basement
	so that only my daughter could hear and proceeded to spank her.
	For using water-soluble glue on the table.
	And my daughter came home and she was so stricken by that.
	And I told her, I said, I would burn all the furniture in the house.
	I would never touch you in a million years.
	And what What is happening to your friend is not right.
	And someday she is going to know that what her mom did to her is not right.
	Oh, if I have any say in it, she certainly will hear that.
	Absolutely.
	And I want to thank you so much for doing that.
	This conversation that you're doing has been life-changing for me.
	Like I say, it's only been since the Elysium show that I've been listening, but I can't get enough of it.
	I'm one of these guys that listen to everything Thomas Sowell put out, everything Milton Friedman put out.
	I mean, just like, you know, absorbing everything.
	I even went back to the classics and listened to Montesquieu and, you know, as much that as I could stand anyway.
	And then all of a sudden I got your show.
	I'm just like...
	I've been focusing on the wrong problems.
	Oh, and it's tempting, right?
	Yeah.
	It's very tempting.
	And it's often struck me because, I mean, the analogies are so clear, right?
	So women very easily were able to, after the sort of the pill, the 60s and so on, Women very quickly and were relatively easily able to convince society of the need to get out of abusive relationships.
	Well, my husband beat me.
	My husband's a drunk.
	My husband's a do-nothing, lay-about-nothing, whatever.
	And everyone's like, go girl power, right?
	But that's not what happens when someone like me or other people talk to adult victims of child abuse about voluntary relationships.
	I don't tell people to leave their families.
	I tell them it's possible.
	But, right?
	So, what's the difference?
	Well, this ties into why I talk about female entitlement.
	Because, you see, we naturally wish to please women.
	We naturally wish to do what women want.
	For two reasons.
	One, we're raised by women and we're used to conforming to them.
	And number two, women hold the eggs.
	And our species is such that rape is a very bad reproductive strategy as well as being evil.
	Women hold the eggs, and so we conform to women.
	Now, when women say we want something, in general, men are conditioned to try to provide them, which is, as I've said before, why men provided labor-saving devices for women before life-saving devices for men.
	In other words, we built washing machines before we put air filters in mines and factories.
	So, when women said...
	We want out of bad relationships.
	Society pretty much said, okay, women want it.
	Okay.
	Women and children first.
	White knights, whatever, and some...
	Raised by women, women got the eggs.
	Okay, go ahead.
	Right?
	Ah.
	So it was at the expense of men and to the benefit of women.
	That's how we roll as a gender.
	The concept of defooing, the concept of the voluntary family...
	That goes against the interests of women.
	Because women in general raise children.
	Mothers spend usually much more time with children than fathers do.
	So now this, you see, goes against what women want.
	Now, it's enormously hypocritical, of course, for women to say, well, we want to be able to leave abusive relationships that we chose as adults, that we could leave left at any time.
	We want that right, and we should be praised for it.
	But then, and particularly in this show where there's more men than women callers, this is something which benefits men at the expense of women.
	Horror of horrors!
	You see...
	Leaving abusive relationships, that's for women who chose to go into those abusive relationships.
	And the victims are men and the beneficiaries are women, so that's fine.
	But when men call into this show and I say, or what people hear, you don't have to see your mother.
	Well, you see, that benefits men at the expense of women.
	That goes completely against women.
	Everything that we're conditioned for.
	The white knight, feminine pleasing, give me access to the eggs and don't hit me mommy stuff that goes on in the collective brain of the species.
	You see?
	That's why it's so contentious.
	Because I am providing something, and it's not just me, of course, right?
	But I am making an argument about That disproportionately benefits men at the expense disproportionately of women.
	And that is not acceptable because apparently we're a patriarchy.
	We're just not very good at it.
	It really does seem crazy when you say that like that.
	I mean...
	The idea that I lived in a patriarchy growing up was...
	I shouldn't laugh because it's...
	Oh, yeah.
	No, it's mad.
	Yeah, no, it's laughing at the people.
	I mean, we even had a queen, for God's sake.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I know.
	It's just...
	It's crazy.
	I mean...
	You know, the queen's the one that moves around on the chessboard the best.
	Oh, yeah.
	No, the queen's got all the power.
	Yeah.
	Um...
	The idea that my dad was any kind of a king, as far as I'm concerned, my dad was gone a long time ago.
	He was just a branch of my mom.
	The idea that I lived in a patriarchy, it's lunacy.
	Yeah, I mean, what I was saying to the first caller, do something that protects yourself at the expense of a woman's preferences.
	Like, can't process, right?
	Yeah.
	Can't process.
	See, women are allowed voluntarism, but men are disposable and must serve the needs of women.
	Right?
	It's he for she, right?
	Right.
	Yeah.
	Men have to serve women and give them what they want when they stamp their feet and provide them what they need and never be inconvenient to women because women are innocent and treasures and men are disposable and utilities.
	Yeah.
	Anyway, listen, I'm so sorry to be annoying.
	It's late.
	Yes.
	I've been up for, like, way too long.
	It's our first day of your next year.
	I hugely appreciate the call, though.
	I tell you this, man, your kids...
	Are lucky buckets of protoplasm.
	They really, really are.
	I mean, I think that you are a very reflective and very sensitive.
	I could hear the emotion underlying, and I was thinking about maybe going in pursuit of it, but I don't think it's necessary.
	But very sensitive, very open-hearted person.
	Very open to change, very open to self-criticism without self-attack.
	Your kids and your wife, I hope they get how lucky they are to be in the presence of and live in the home of a man who's willing to take all this on and reform and keep them safe by defying the social convention with regards to parents, by keeping them safe in that degree.
	I'm sorry about your siblings.
	Hopefully they'll turn around.
	Look, a lot of siblings, they want to rope you back in because they don't want to deal with the parent alone, right?
	You gotta come, man!
	Don't make me go alone!
	And nobody wants to be the last one, right?
	Like that youngest daughter in the movie Chocolat who's just got to stay with her mom because she's the youngest and too bad, right?
	So a lot of it doesn't have anything to do with any ethics or anything like that.
	It just has to do with, you know, well, if you're not here, then I have to put out more resources for this crap and so on.
	It's got nothing to do with ethics.
	It's just resource management and guilting and kind of crap, right?
	Yeah.
	So, but I, you know, I really, really appreciate your calling in.
	You know, anytime you want to call in, please feel free.
	I'm incredibly sorry that the birth of your twins was clouded by what your mom did.
	That's so horrendous.
	I mean, wow, look at that.
	The narcissist brought her attention, brought the attention of everyone back to her.
	Wow!
	Who would have guessed, right?
	So, I'm really, really sorry about that.
	The consolation is that I've got these three wonderful kids and I've I mean, they're just...
	They're amazing, just watching them.
	I really thank you, Steph, for everything that you're doing.
	I can't thank you enough for every show that you've put out.
	That I've listened to has just been one show after the other.
	Just amazing.
	And I just want...
	I'd like to also say that I'm a UX designer.
	I've been working for some time in this sort of creative technical space.
	And I could not hire, if someone gave me the job description and gave me all the time in the world, I could not hire someone like Michael.
	I would not find him.
	He's mine.
	Mine, I tell you, but that's why we don't let him out anymore.
	We feel that sunlight plus exposure to alternative, less sexually harassing workplaces might give him too many options.
	No, I appreciate that.
	Thank you, Scott.
	That's incredibly kind of you.
	You're an awesome man.
	Both of you guys are just incredible and Stoyan, of course.
	Just amazing people.
	The quality of stuff that you guys put out over and over and over again is just...
	I've never seen anything like it, heard anything like it either.
	And you never will again, because this moment in history will never come this way again.
	And everything that comes after us has us, just in the same way that I had Ayn Rand and the people who came before me.
	This will never happen again.
	This is why I think it's so important.
	So, with that having been said, thanks everyone so much.
	If you want to help out with the show, FDRURL.com slash donate.
	It's just really important.
	I mentioned before, This show will go as far as you want it to.
	And so fdrurl.com slash donate to help out the show if you can.
	Really appreciate that.
	And have yourselves a wonderful, wonderful day, everyone.

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