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Oct. 4, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:23:25

2811 Toasters Can't Fight Megatron - Wednesday Call In Show October 1st, 2014

The Real-Time Relationships approach, paralyzing certainty through theoreticals, people don’t change, what’s the evidence, people who say - man up, the inevitability of personality, people without self-knowledge are robots, requiring he permission of a women to accept reality, abusers hate the symptoms of abuse, empathy in action, overwhelmed with horror and actions over words.

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	Good morning, Vietnam!
	I hope you're doing well, Steph.
	Sorry, that's just my shout-out to the Nixon presentation.
	Thanks to Stoyan for putting it all together.
	And he's one of the few philosophically-minded researchers who's willing to cake his entire body in mud and use a Ouija board to get to the source.
	And so thank you so much, everyone.
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	So I hope you're doing well.
	Let's move on with the callers.
	Alright, up for us today is Ian.
	And Ian wrote in and said, I'm feeling reservations about using the real-time relationships approach.
	Could you walk me through the theory and do a roleplay with me so that I can be sure I'm not misunderstanding or misapplying the approach?
	Alright.
	Which roleplay do you want to do?
	Oh, hey.
	Are you good?
	Can you hear me?
	Okay, great.
	What's happening here, I wanted to do this roleplay...
	I kind of got roped into this talk.
	I did kind of let it out to my brother that I would talk to my mom in a mediated fashion.
	It was then later on that happened.
	I started thinking about using the RTR approach, but then all these emotions came up.
	A lot of it centers around this rage I have over that.
	My mom and talking with her and how I feel it probably won't get anywhere.
	I figured, since I'm kind of in this, I think the RTR approach would probably be the best thing to do.
	So I wanted to kind of role-play how it would be to talk to her in a mediated session using RTR. Now, by mediated, do you mean with a therapist?
	Yeah, it'd be a therapist there or something.
	All right.
	So for those who don't know, the general theory is...
	That if you want to be related to someone, you really have to open the often iron-bound doors of your heart.
	And if you feel something, which we generally do whenever we're talking with people, particularly when we're talking about difficult or stressful topics, if you open your heart and Tell that person what is occurring for you in the moment, emotionally.
	That is about as honest as you can be.
	Most times we try to cloak our vulnerabilities, which is our emotional openness and honesty, in judgments.
	You're making me angry, as opposed to I'm feeling angry.
	Now most times when we have emotions that are surprising to us, we don't usually know why.
	And not jumping to conclusions is really important when it comes to maintaining some kind of honest communication with someone.
	That's really important to remember.
	So that's very brief.
	The book is called Real-Time Relationships, The Logic of Love.
	It's available at freedomainradio.com slash free.
	It's $12,000.
	No, it's completely free.
	So you can read it or listen to it as you like.
	So what are the issues that you think are going to come up with your mom?
	You know what it is?
	I was watching that movie, the series of movies he made, The Bomb and the Brain.
	And specifically, I have it out for her so much for the spanking, for the yelling, divorce, everything.
	I think, uh, I passed you an ACE test, uh, prior to the, uh, prior to this call.
	Were you able to, to look into it?
	Yeah.
	And, uh, do you want me to mention what they are?
	Sure, yeah.
	Scored six out of, I think, nine or ten questions.
	Yeah, you can mention it.
	I think we're pretty much anonymous, so it shouldn't be a problem.
	Yeah, so verbal abuse and threats, physical abuse, non-spanking, no family love or support, parents divorced, lived with alcoholic or drug user, household member, depressed, mentally ill, or suicide attempt.
	I am incredibly sorry for all of that, and you have my deepest, deepest...
	Empathy and sympathy for these experiences.
	Is there anything that you want to go into any more detail about?
	Or what do you think the major issues or the major rebuttals your mom might come up with are?
	I mean like with that, that's where I believe a lot of my rage is coming from.
	It's like in the Bomb and the Brain series, a lot of that you can't really physically recover from.
	And the emotional part is it takes a lot of hard work.
	You know, you got to do your journaling and so forth.
	I'm not even sure if she'll even really listen at this point.
	She's kind of getting old and stuff, like in her 50s.
	And actually, that's what kind of gets at me with this.
	I had a big depression over this and everything.
	And I'm just kind of coming off of that.
	The specific one regarding the suicide attempt.
	She had a suicide attempt...
	Back when I was in 10th grade, so put me at 26, so it puts you in perspective when that happened.
	I remember being threatened with knives at one point, and usually she kept a stick around to beat us, although I don't think she used it as much as mostly open hand.
	I think it was more so the disciplinary actions.
	Which of course got less frequent when I got older.
	Things going further into it, I'm trying to remember what else.
	The alcoholism had to do more so with her father.
	My brother, he did an ACE test, so he doesn't have that on his because he wasn't living with us at the time.
	He wasn't born at the time that we were living with her parents when they still were alive.
	And her father was the alcoholic.
	I'm so sorry to interrupt.
	I just lost a minute or two.
	For some reason I got disconnected.
	I hate to ask you to roll back, but if you could, that would be great.
	From what part did you miss?
	When I asked you what the major issues would be, major defenses that your mom might come up with.
	Major defenses?
	I'm feeling like she might deflect.
	I know specifically when she tried to use my brother as a go-between, She came up and said she doesn't know why I'm angry at her.
	And that just kind of just threw me off.
	I'm like, we have all this shared history.
	And she's known some of the stuff.
	Specifically, I know the divorce was very hard on me.
	The suicide attempt was very hard on me.
	She knows at least those two.
	And sorry, who had the suicide attempt?
	My mother.
	How old were you at that point?
	10th grade.
	I would come back from a baseball game, and it was very tough on me to talk about.
	And she had turned on the car while it was in the garage, so when we opened it up to go in, there was all this smog from the car, and she was lying in there inhaling it.
	That's how it kind of went that way.
	Wait, so sorry, let me understand, and I'm sorry to ask you for more.
	I just want to make sure I get a clear understanding.
	Yeah.
	So you were, what, 15?
	You were coming back from a baseball game?
	Yeah, a baseball game.
	And your mother was in the garage sucking fumes?
	Yeah, she was in the driver's seat with the car turned on inside the garage, closed up.
	And this had been after, supposedly she was priming me to figure out what to do after she passed on, asking me questions like, you know, what would I do if she passed on, that kind of thing.
	So I was like, yeah, in my mid-teens at the time.
	Alright, and so she knew that you were coming home?
	Yeah, yeah, my dad, my brother, and myself, we were coming home, and that's when we discovered the car going on like that.
	So, this was not a throw-yourself-off-a-building-no-way-back kind of suicide attempt, right?
	Right, right, right.
	The more I think on it, it seemed more like an attention-grabbing device.
	This was during their divorce.
	Right.
	So she was going to find a way to dominate the situation by the extreme brinksmanship.
	Yeah, of suicide.
	Hmm.
	Well, I won't share with you my thoughts on that at the moment because I want to keep the focus on you.
	Sure.
	And she also threatened you with knives?
	Yeah, I coughed a lot.
	And...
	I was supposedly taken to the doctor.
	They said I was hypochondriac and whatever.
	Wait, the doctor said that to you?
	Yeah.
	He said that it was all in your head?
	Yeah.
	And then I think one dinner time I was coughing too much.
	She just got so annoyed.
	That's when I was threatened with a knife.
	I actually had the telephone in my hand about to call police, but everybody kind of backed down.
	So how were you threatened with a knife?
	She had it in her hand and Was about to stab me with it, or slap me with it.
	That was some more time ago before the suicide attempt, several years before that.
	And how long were your parents fighting before they divorced?
	Parents were, I want to say, five years.
	So it culminated, well not culminated, it kind of settled itself when I got into college.
	That's when papers were drawn and whatnot.
	But in high school, they separated.
	They wouldn't sleep in the same bed.
	My dad was in the bathroom, my mom in the master bedroom.
	You would sometimes hear them yelling when they closed the door and all that.
	I don't think there was any kind of physical exchange, you know, beating or anything between them.
	But there were a lot of insults coming from my mom, like she wished my father would have...
	Passed away when he tripped on the stairs or he's flying in an airplane that it crashed.
	You know, she made that known to us at some point.
	Oh, so she wished that your father had been horribly killed.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Right, right, right.
	This is what kind of makes it difficult for me to kind of go back to talking to her.
	Yeah, I get that.
	I get that.
	I mean, I do want to face her, but then all that comes up, and I'm like, ah, you know, I don't know if I should...
	I don't know if I'm ready yet, you know?
	That's kind of...
	No, I hear you.
	Okay, so what's your cultural background?
	Well, in terms of ethnicity?
	Yeah.
	Or Hispanic?
	Right.
	Okay.
	American-Tamanian?
	Right.
	And what's the story with your dad?
	Currently or back then?
	Let's start with back then.
	I did actually happen to talk to him a little bit about his past.
	His mom beat him a lot.
	From what I could tell, I'm not sure if they stayed married or not.
	I know my father divorced three relationships before reaching the current one.
	He had my mom, then they divorced, and now he's in another one.
	He's currently living in Paraguay, married to someone else.
	Wait, was your father your mom's fourth husband?
	No, my father was the one divorcing.
	I'm not sure if my mom was married previously.
	I'm not sure about that.
	My mom did not divorce constantly.
	It was more so my dad.
	My mom is, I think, his fourth or third in a series.
	Right.
	And when you said that you experienced physical abuse outside of spanking, which is tragic that that needs to be separated, but that's the way the test is, what sort of physical abuse did you experience, my friend?
	Physical abuse outside of spanking?
	No, I think just the spanking.
	I may have misunderstood that question.
	It was just the spanking.
	Sometimes my dad would hit me on the head with closed fists.
	Well, that's more than spanking, right?
	Okay.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	So would he punch you?
	I'd just kind of wrap his knuckles on my head if I did something bad.
	But he didn't beat me as much as my mom would.
	She was more disciplinarian.
	My father, and he said this, I kind of agree with him, he was kind of the more laissez-faire kind of parent.
	I really didn't have much of an influence from him as much.
	Our house was kind of bifurcated, because my brother would be the one mostly aligned with my father, and I would be the one mostly aligned with my mother.
	So that's kind of how the household was for the most part.
	Right.
	Right.
	And did your mother rain down verbal abuse on you as well, call your names?
	Names were big.
	Guilt.
	Use a lot of guilt and shame.
	That's the big one.
	But yeah, I would get called names.
	Like what?
	I know it's tough to translate.
	Yeah.
	Sorry.
	Shit.
	Sometimes after college I wouldn't have a summer job, but I would start entrepreneurial ventures or something, but I wouldn't have a summer job or I wouldn't have an internship.
	She called me lazy all the time and stuff like that.
	And did she work?
	Yeah, she worked.
	She had a career going as an IRS agent.
	Oh, really?
	Yeah.
	I must tell you, it does not add a lot of endearment medals to her chest for me.
	Yeah.
	Alright.
	So she worked for the government, but she called you lazy.
	Well, I do too, but I don't know.
	I got side stuff I do all the time.
	I've been trying to leave it.
	I'm sorry, somebody just mentioned in the chat, sorry to interrupt, the stick your mother kept around?
	Apparently I didn't hear that.
	It was a kendo stick.
	And there was some other stick too, but I was behind some sofa, but she had a kendo stick kind of readily available.
	For beatings?
	She didn't use it, but she kind of had it there just to...
	I think she made mention that she might use it to beat me one time, but...
	I don't remember it being used.
	I bet you there are a lot of people who are behind on their taxes who wish that you guys hadn't come home from that baseball game, but...
	All right, um...
	And what's your living situation now?
	Are you out of the home?
	I'm out of the home myself.
	I've been outside for about four years.
	All right.
	It's been quite healing, actually.
	Yeah, you think?
	Hey, I took my hand out of the fire.
	It's feeling a lot better now.
	Yeah, yeah.
	All right.
	Now, what would you like to get from your mother?
	A confession.
	And what would you like?
	What's the speech, if you can slip into her, well, let's call it a heart or mind for the moment, what would you like her to say?
	What would be the ideal confession for you?
	Yeah, show contrition to, you know, tell me that she's sorry.
	For what?
	For all of that, the suicide, divorce.
	I even put the circumcision on her.
	Well, I'm circumcised.
	Sorry for that, too.
	Yeah.
	Okay, so...
	You wish that she would...
	Not just...
	I mean, not just anyone can say the words, right?
	But to genuinely feel the remorse for...
	The violence, the knife threats, the suicide attempt, the gruesome divorce, the...
	You'd like her to acknowledge and feel genuine sorrow and regret for the way she parented, or for many of the ways that she parented.
	Is that right?
	Right, right, right.
	Because, I mean, especially when my brother told me, you know, why is Ian angry at me, she says.
	It's like, it just threw me off the wall.
	Yeah, so she claims to have no idea...
	Why you could have any negative feelings towards that, right?
	Right, right, right.
	I mean, I didn't rage in front of his face, but I kind of, you know, I kind of had some contempt.
	I rolled my eyes kind of at that statement.
	I'm like, how could she say this?
	I even told him this.
	How could she say this?
	All the shared history we have together.
	And she acts like, oh, shit, I just didn't do I didn't do anything.
	What could it be, you know, that he's angry at me for?
	Okay, but sorry, Ian, do you think, and I don't know if this is answerable, but I'm just sort of curious.
	Do you think, Ian, that your mother remembers but doesn't admit or doesn't remember?
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	If you had to guess or put money on it.
	Does she remembers everything she did but doesn't admit?
	Is that I'm getting it?
	Yeah, so does she remember but claim not to remember?
	Or does she not remember?
	I would go with the first if she remembers but chooses not to admit.
	Right.
	Right.
	In some ways, the question is irrelevant, but it's important for me to know what you think.
	Like, if somebody refuses to admit something or genuinely doesn't remember it, like, knows but refuses to admit, functionally it makes no difference.
	Right.
	I mean, it's one of those, I feel it's one of those ego defenses.
	She's kind of denying things happen, in a sense, and kind of putting herself as the victim, I think.
	Alright, let me ask you, I'm sorry, sorry, go ahead, finish your thought.
	I think, as of, like, kind of placing herself in a place that I'm just, I'm just this bad son person.
	Hating on her for no reason.
	That's kind of what I feel is happening here.
	And this is part of her manipulations.
	I've seen her do with me also, but I've seen her do that with lots of people.
	My brother is especially vulnerable to this because he's shuttling between college and over there.
	And I know how she likes to play those games with people.
	Oh yeah, you can get people to believe a lot more of your bullshit if you're feeding them resources, right?
	Yeah, yeah, that's true.
	It's like the mama bird can get the baby bird to believe in the divine hawk if it means he gets a piece of worm, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	So let me ask you another question.
	So you've known your mom for probably like a quarter century off and on, right?
	And have you ever seen her lose?
	Like, have you ever seen her back down?
	Have you ever seen her relinquish a position?
	Have you ever seen her admit that she's wrong?
	Very rarely.
	She tends to be...
	Give me an example of when you saw that.
	From what I can tell, she tends to be kind of headstrong.
	I think she should kind of go into a situation.
	No, no, no.
	Sorry to interrupt, but give me a specific time when you have seen somebody beat her and get her to change her perspective.
	And I don't mean like in a nasty, dominating, scream at her kind of way.
	Because some people, when they experience something they don't like, they dig their heels in and they escalate.
	And that tends to be pretty much a character trait, in my experience.
	That's more so what I would normally see her do.
	Okay, but give me an example, a specific example, if you remember one.
	Of when she admitted she was wrong and changed her perspective or opinion or beliefs or statements?
	What I'm guessing is from my dad, which I've talked to him about this a lot.
	No, no, dude, dude.
	I'm sorry to keep interrupting you.
	I understand, but a lot of this...
	What do you hear me asking for?
	As for specific, that I remember...
	And do you?
	Because you've now tried to answer this five times or six times.
	I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
	And I'm not mad at you, I'm just really got to, this is an important part, right?
	I understand, I understand.
	I don't remember one specifically, but I do know a lot of discussions like that did go behind closed doors.
	Okay, no, I'm asking your direct experience.
	Because I'm an empiricist, right?
	I understand, okay, okay.
	Okay, so when I am thinking, or when I was thinking about confrontations with people...
	I would certainly think about my needs, which is why I asked you what you want from your mom, right?
	So I would certainly ask myself, what do I need and what do I want, right?
	Yes, okay.
	And then I would ask for the empirical evidence that it was possible for me to get it.
	Okay, okay, okay.
	Right, so I don't, like, if I, I don't know, let's say I wanted a Rolex.
	Right.
	Right.
	I can't imagine anything I want less, but let's pretend I want a Rolex, which costs like, what, $5,000 or $10,000 or more, right?
	Okay.
	Now, if I go to a homeless guy, I know that I want a Rolex, right?
	Yeah.
	Do I think the homeless guy is going to have a Rolex that he's going to give to me?
	But I understand your analogy, so you're trying to see if she's capable of giving me what I need if I were to go and converse with her.
	Well, yeah.
	And it's simply because having a need is like having a key.
	Somebody else being capable of meeting that need is like a keyhole.
	And I'm sorry to use such penis and vagina metaphors with you and your mom, but...
	So, because you don't want to sit there with a key trying to push it into a metal wall, right?
	Right, right, right, right, right.
	Because then you're like, goddamn keys!
	They're broken.
	It's not working, right?
	Something's wrong, right?
	So, you got a key, which is a need.
	Do you have a keyhole, which is any capacity to get that key met?
	That's the first thing.
	Like, so I say, I have a key.
	Is there a keyhole?
	Now, if there's a keyhole, that doesn't mean that I'm going to get my needs met, right?
	But it means that at least it might be worth trying the key.
	Now, if I bring out one of those, you know, big old skeleton keys from like the Addams family, and then what's there is a little mailbox box.
	Keyhole, well, it's not going to fit, right?
	I'm not going to try.
	Sometimes you get the key in, you jiggle it, and so on.
	You're waiting for that click or whatever, right?
	So, I'm looking for a keyhole here, which is you are going to want to, and I hate to put it this way, but this is going to be a win-lose interaction.
	So, if you go to get your mom to admit to the wrongs that she's done, and to show remorse, which are two Not entirely the same things.
	So, I'm saying, is there a keyhole there?
	In other words, have you ever seen anyone get a key into your mom's regret or willingness to admit that she's wrong?
	Now, if you haven't, that's important information going in.
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah, that's true.
	So, to your knowledge...
	At least to the memory that you have right now, you don't have a specific memory of your mom admitting fault and changing her mind.
	Right, at least not openly to me.
	No, no, no, no.
	See, you're saying maybe there's a key somewhere else, a keyhole somewhere else.
	I'm asking, have you ever seen a keyhole?
	Okay, I would say no.
	I would say no.
	I haven't seen a keyhole.
	It was usually her way or the highway.
	I think my father's been telling me that's been her way.
	She's been like that since they were dating.
	Okay, so, yay dad, good choice.
	I mean, I'm glad that she spawned a Freedom Aid radio listener, but nonetheless, not necessarily the greatest choice in partners.
	So, you have not seen her admit fault, ever.
	No, no.
	Your father has not seen her, at least, as he says to you, your father has not seen her admit fault ever.
	In terms of my father experience, I'm not...
	Too, too well qualified to speak on it, because we've spoken at length at some points, but not the full experience.
	He may have been able at some point to convince her.
	No, no, no.
	Don't give me Plato.
	Don't give me in some abstract possibility.
	Sure, and in some abstract possibility, she may have been replaced with an exact cyborg replica of your mother at some point over the last 90 minutes.
	Okay.
	Right?
	I don't want...
	What is within the realm of possibility physically, right?
	Right.
	Because that's not helpful.
	Right?
	I mean, it's sort of like saying, well, okay, I could drive off this cliff and a space alien might beam me out of my car before it hits the ground, right?
	Right, right, right.
	And we're going with historical training.
	Don't give me...
	It's theoretically in the realm of possibility physically.
	Right?
	She may have admitted fault at some point that I'm not aware of, right?
	Right, right.
	Okay, that will never help you in your relationships.
	Okay.
	Because to be an empiricist means beyond a reasonable doubt.
	Right, so if I'm charging, like if I'm the cops, right, I'm charging some guy with a crime, and when he was committing that crime, at the same time he was kissing his girlfriend...
	On the, I don't know what you call it, the kiss cam at a stadium, and everybody saw him and he was on TV, right?
	Yeah.
	Now, it is possible that he cloned himself, or he had a time and teleportation machine, and so on and so on and so on, right?
	But there's a reason why, when it comes to guilt or innocence, you know what the phrase is, right?
	Beyond a?
	Reasonable doubt.
	Reasonable doubt.
	Good Jay-Z record, too.
	I'm just kidding.
	Does anyone buy records and good Jay-Z? Anyway, that's perhaps another conversation for another time.
	Okay, so that's really important to understand.
	When you're looking at guilt or innocence, beyond a reasonable doubt.
	Because what you're saying is, well...
	Gosh!
	Theoretically, she might have admitted she was wrong to some waiter in some restaurant when she was 13, right?
	Oh, I see what you're saying.
	Okay, okay.
	So you're kind of covering your bases, but what you're really doing is paralyzing your certainty.
	Oh, okay, okay, okay.
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah.
	The sun...
	Is it theoretically possible that the sun was stolen and instantaneously replaced with a duplicate sun?
	Sure.
	Okay.
	I'm not, but how much money are you going to put on it?
	This is what it comes, in relationships, the question is, how much money are you going to put on that?
	Right, and that's probably a bet I shouldn't be taking.
	I wouldn't put a single thin dime on your mom admitting false.
	Now listen, I have a mother who is like, Street fighter, I mean she'll call an airstrike, she'll use a shiv, she'll release giant radioactive spiders, she's got a genuine lizard men, invisible henchmen.
	I mean there's nothing that she won't do to avoid admitting she's wrong.
	I've never seen my mom admit that she's wrong.
	I've seen her kowtow to authority when somebody has genuine power over her, then I have seen her You know, nod and curtsy and simper and all of that kind of stuff, and that's really gross.
	Some women do it, and some men do it too, I guess, too.
	But I've never seen her admit fault, admit wrongdoing, admit regret or experience regret.
	What happens is she just doubles down and escalates.
	Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
	Now, if this is what you have seen consistently, by far the best predictor of future behavior is relevant past behavior.
	That's why we have personalities.
	I married my wife, what, 11 or 12 years ago.
	I don't expect her to wake up tomorrow being unable to admit that she's wrong, because she's perfect and never wrong.
	We have Continuity in our characters.
	The personality is extremely innate, extraordinarily innate.
	I went back for a 20-year high school reunion.
	I actually wasn't planning on doing it at all.
	I was just meeting a friend in the neighborhood where my high school was because he still lives near there.
	And we were hanging out.
	I would drive her to go somewhere.
	I was like, hey, there's a reunion.
	Mm-hmm.
	And I'm like, hey, why not, right?
	Why not?
	I swear to God, man.
	And you'll get this when you get older.
	Sorry to be annoying by saying that.
	Nobody had changed.
	Everybody was saying to me, my God, you're exactly the same.
	And I was looking at him.
	Like I saw people walking down the hallway at the end of my high school who I'd not seen.
	This was maybe more than 20 years, 20, 25 years or something like that.
	And I could see Mm-hmm.
	Mm-hmm.
	Now, this doesn't mean that personality is incapable of change and, you know, I've certainly worked to become more self-expressed and more honest and more open and more courageous and all these kinds of things.
	And I think I've had some effect.
	I agree.
	It shows in your body of work.
	I've seen...
	If you look at enough, you see a change.
	There's a change.
	Yeah.
	I mean, some of my videos from way back are a little different from my videos now.
	Yeah.
	But nobody, I think, is shocked by my next video, right?
	Okay, yeah.
	Right?
	Nobody says, oh my god, I can't believe Steph said that.
	I mean, if they do, they're sort of playing some game, right?
	Right.
	Because my personality and your personality and everyone's personality, at least by the time you become an adult, your personality is just the way you are.
	Now, can it change?
	Sure it can change.
	But boy, you've got to work like a son of a bitch or a daughter of a bitch to get there, right?
	So when we accept that for the vast majority of human beings, personality is physics.
	You are released from false hope.
	Let me say that again.
	When you accept that human personalities are like physics, you are released from false hope.
	You know, there's something called magical thinking, which is, this time it'll be different!
	Yeah, okay, so she beat me up the last three times I went out with her, but the fourth time will be different, right?
	So, are you saying...
	And it might be, but only so she can get you to the fifth time and beat you up more, right?
	Right, yeah, yeah, that's a tactic they use to continue the abuse.
	So, when you were a kid...
	You learned about physics and gravity, right?
	Okay, yeah.
	And you learned there was never a time to hit yourself on the head with a rock that felt good, right?
	Fair enough, yeah, I understand.
	Right?
	There was never a time when, assuming you like chocolate, that you ate chocolate and hated it, assuming the chocolate wasn't off or whatever it was, right?
	Like, there's a predictability and commonality.
	But it's how we know we're not dreaming.
	Right.
	Right.
	Because there's, you know, you don't, have you ever woken up in a different place that you went to sleep and had no idea, like as an adult?
	Probably not, right?
	Like you go to bed and you wake up and it's the same place.
	You left something, like you don't leave your keys somewhere, be unable to find them and assume that they've been teleported away, right?
	So part of growing up as a child is recognizing the absolute nature of physics and And relinquishing the magical thinking that willpower or desire or hope can overcome physics, right?
	Have you ever been really thirsty sitting on the couch and really wished for a glass of water to float over to you?
	No, no, no.
	You go get one.
	You go get one!
	Because you know that your desire, your wish, your hope, your need, your thirst Is not going to shift one atom of water or glass, right?
	Right.
	Okay.
	That is the first wave of maturity.
	The first wave of maturity is understanding the inevitability of physics.
	Now, the second wave of maturity is understanding the inevitability of personality.
	The second wave of maturity is accepting the inevitability of personality.
	Thank you.
	Now, that doesn't mean, again, I'm not trying to say that nobody changes, but if somebody changes, they will bring that to you.
	You don't have to go there and cross your fingers, right?
	Because they'll say, you know what, Ian, geez, I woke up...
	I mean, this is what your mom could say, right?
	Right.
	You could get a phone call, right?
	She could say, Ian...
	My heart is full of woe and horror and sympathy.
	I woke up this morning, and I don't know how it hit me or where it hit me from.
	I don't know.
	Maybe I got a brain tumor or something.
	I woke up this morning.
	Maybe it was the way the light was shining on my eyelashes.
	I woke up this morning, and it was like the bed opened up like a trap door, and I fell to the end of my life, and I saw, you know how they say, your whole life rolls out ahead of you, rolls out behind you, rolls out before you.
	I saw my whole life as a mother like I was floating above myself and I I floated above myself in this vision I had on waking and I saw this crazy bitch I saw this angry striking screaming threatening manipulating destructive robot And
	the only way that I could stand to see myself doing all the terrible things that I did over the course of being a mother to you and your brothers is because I wasn't in my head.
	It was like I was watching a horror movie where I had been possessed but who I was possessed by was actually me.
	And I saw your face and I saw your eyes and I saw your fear and I saw your hatred and I saw your hostility and I saw your terror and I saw your anger and it all It just clicked to me because then I saw not just from sort of behind my own black hair and black heart, I sort of vaulted over and I saw it from you.
	I saw it from you.
	I saw it from you as a baby with this big, giant, sweaty, yelling, terrifying, screaming, I saw you as a toddler and me pulling your arm and yanking and pushing and not having any time for you and not giving you eye contact and not asking you questions and not listening to your heart.
	And then I saw it when you were four or five years old, frightened of me, frightened of being hit, frightened of being yelled at, frightened of being called horrible names, frightened of my coldness, frightened of my teeth.
	And then I saw it as you kept growing and kept growing.
	And I saw this insane woman With a toy sword that she threatened you with, with hitting you.
	I saw myself so insane that I'm locking myself in a car!
	Knowing you'll come home because that's how insane I was to win.
	To win, to defeat, to dominate, to destroy.
	Right, right, and putting all this damn death imagery in my head too.
	I would wake up in the morning and she'd talk about what would happen if she passed away in mess.
	Oh, that's what she'd do in real life?
	Yeah, that's what she did.
	Like, before the attempt happened, I'm sorry if I wasn't clear with this.
	Yeah, before the attempt happened, she put all this kind of death imagery in my mind about, like, what to do if she passes and, you know, kind of making a seat.
	Well, that's a way, yeah, that's a way for you not to have your own experience but to focus on her, right?
	Right.
	Right, so that's a way for you not to have your own experience.
	And I've seen moms who do that kind of stuff.
	It was actually...
	I dated a girl and she'd go over and she'd say, because she didn't know what the hell to say to her mom, and she'd say, oh, I like this toaster.
	And she's like, well, you know, be yours soon enough when I'm dead.
	Oh, gosh.
	Yeah.
	Guess you get to dominate the conversation again.
	Right, exactly.
	I mean, I'm telling you...
	Okay, so hang on.
	So what did you...
	Because you were kind of...
	I noticed when I was sort of giving my little speech of...
	I didn't get to the end, right?
	What was your experience while I was giving a little speech about your mom waking up?
	It kind of hit me some additional stuff.
	Was it not too long ago?
	It was something recent.
	I thought she was a borderline after I started learning about that kind of stuff.
	Dude, what did I ask you?
	What was my experience during the talk?
	Yeah, not with your theoretical diagnosis of her personality disorder, which is not really your experience, right?
	What was your experience, your emotions when I was giving the speech about what your mom was seeing when she woke up?
	Oh, that actually kind of hit me very powerfully.
	Okay, so why are you giving me all this other crap?
	Oh, sorry.
	Give me how it hits you powerfully.
	I didn't think you meant that one.
	Okay.
	What happened here is, just thinking about it, if she had that self-effacing kind of capacity to herself, that would have totally been freeing for me, in a sense.
	Yeah, because I didn't get to the part where I would apologize as your mom and all that and ask you for your experience and thoughts and so on, right?
	Right.
	I got some anger that she went the opposite way, going that, oh, why is he angry at me?
	As opposed to something more along those lines, where she's self-effacing, she shows contrition, she's able to understand, or at least seek understanding of my experience of it all, and potentially then create the bridge to closure.
	Right, okay, okay, okay.
	Alright, so you're having a tough time connecting with this stuff emotionally, right?
	Yeah, I guess so.
	Because you're very much talking like top of your head, right?
	There's no diaphragm, no connection.
	Okay, and that's fine.
	I'm not criticizing in a million years.
	I'm really not criticizing.
	I'm just telling you I'm noticing that.
	No, I understand.
	I figured you'd notice it.
	All right.
	Something that Alice Miller has talked about is the enlightened witness, somebody who's willing to look at what you experienced and name it for what it is.
	Yes, yes.
	And so much of society is around denying the experience of victims, particularly male victims, particularly male victims of women.
	This is why I do it, right?
	Right, right.
	I guess the enlightened witness to those who are wronged.
	Yeah, because I, you know, people can hate me all they want, but they can't deny that I'm pretty fucking tough.
	And part of that toughness is not bullshit man up stuff.
	Man up stuff is surrender to female needs, right?
	Whenever anybody says man up, all they're doing is saying surrender to female needs.
	That is the direct translation.
	Man up is dick down.
	Exactly.
	Man up is kneel in front of the giant vagina of unholy need.
	Right?
	So when people say to you, if you say, well, I'm really mad at my mom, and they say, well, get over it.
	Man up!
	They do tell me that, actually.
	Of course they do.
	Because what they're saying is, don't have needs that discomfort your mother.
	Yes.
	Yes.
	That's all they're saying.
	Don't have needs that discomfort women.
	Man up!
	Right.
	Right.
	It means don't inconvenience the holders of the eggs.
	That's all that people ever mean by man up.
	Right, right, right, right, right.
	So that is really fundamental to understand.
	For you to have needs inconvenient to women is absolutely heretical.
	To the egg cult nature of society.
	And this is so fundamental to understand that the emotional needs of men run counter to the narcissistic needs of crazy women.
	And for the victim to have a voice is essential to the healing of abuse.
	If you have a voice or I have a voice, it doesn't mean we weren't abused.
	But if we have a voice and we're listened to and people say, oh shit man, that really was abuse.
	That really was horrible.
	That really was destructive.
	You were a complete and total victim.
	What that does is it relieves us of expending resources to maintain a constantly Denied reality.
	And isn't that what you're hoping to escape?
	Doesn't it cost you a lot to maintain the reality of your history in the face of constant denial from everyone around you?
	It does.
	It does.
	It feels like a prison.
	And it's exhausting.
	It is, yeah.
	It does suck out a lot of energy.
	Right.
	Because you basically, you have a reality...
	And that reality includes bees that constantly fly around your head.
	And the bees are other people's irrational needs.
	And to have a man's needs in defiance of the two groups that prey upon men, not to pick exclusively on women, but the two groups that prey on men are more powerful men And women.
	Right?
	So, what does man up mean?
	Man up means put on a uniform and get shot for no fucking reason.
	That's what man up means.
	Man up means don't have needs, don't have vulnerabilities, don't have preferences that conflict with women or men in power.
	And the way that men's needs are continually undermined and destroyed is through the betrayal of any potential enlightened witness.
	Yeah, that's true.
	Which means that anytime you express pain, anytime you express being victimized, every time you express sorrow, every time you express anger, particularly if that anger is directed towards mothers, women, Or fathers, men in power, what do people say?
	Yeah, they tell me I should forgive.
	In fact, actually, no one's ever made mention of getting back together with my father, really.
	Everyone's always saying to get back together with my mom.
	So I know you're right.
	Yeah, they must have missed the patriarchy memo.
	I wish that we'd circulate that a little bit more.
	Yeah.
	But this is foundational.
	Your lived emotional experience...
	Your lived emotional sorrow, your lived emotional anger, your lived emotional pain is savagely incompatible with existing power structures, both female and male authority.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	You know, men don't like the welfare state as a whole.
	Because it emasculates men.
	Because it means that women aren't dependent on men for helping raise children.
	And it's not because we love women to be dependent on us.
	It's just that's kind of a biological reality.
	Now, if women don't have to be dependent on men, it means they don't have to choose reliable men to have children with.
	Right, right.
	Which means assholes win, pretty boys win, jocks win, and good, decent, stable providers who otherwise would win, who women were supposed to grit their teeth, cross their legs, and walk away from in some weird tentacled snail fashion.
	The stable, steady men lose.
	I can't become Brad Pitt!
	I'm bald!
	I haven't seen an ab since I was 17!
	And on the swim team.
	I don't have that acting talent.
	I don't have that ability.
	I can't become Brad Pitt.
	But I can get a job and be a nice guy.
	All men can get jobs and be nice guys.
	Right?
	Right.
	So what women don't understand about the welfare state is that men bring resources and that's our value.
	And that's biological value.
	That's just the way it is, right?
	Right.
	And women bring fertility and excellent childcare and breastfeeding, and that's their value from a biological standpoint.
	What women don't understand about men's hostility to the welfare state is that taking resources from a man is like taking vaginas from a woman.
	Right, right.
	It robs us of the time and effort we spent to get that money.
	It robs us of our sexual value.
	The redistribution of male dollars is exactly the same as the redistribution of female blowjobs and fertility and eggs and breastfeeding.
	So if we said to women, well, I'm sorry, we've got to socialize your vaginas and you've got to go have sex with all of these gross men, they'd be appalled!
	It's a violation!
	Well, when the government takes money from men who are working and gives it to women who are having sex with men who aren't working, it's exactly the same thing biologically.
	Exactly the same thing biologically.
	You are taking...
	It's like, how would women feel if lazy, overweight women could have the fat sucked out of their asses and injected into women who did aerobics?
	Yeah, they would benefit from that.
	Well, the fat women would be thinner, and the thinner women would be fatter.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And the lazy women would get the benefits of exercise, and the hardworking women who exercised would get the fat of the lazy women without the benefit of being lazy.
	Right, right, right.
	And they'd be appalled!
	Or what if women with great hair had to have it shaven off and donated to wigs with women with ugly hair?
	Right.
	Or what if women with big boobs had to have them hoovered down and stuck into the boobs of women with small boobs?
	I get you.
	Or whatever.
	Whatever transferred sexual appeal from more attractive women to less attractive women would be appalling for women.
	That's exactly the same as the redistribution of income from men To women or from hardworking men to lazy men.
	Because when our money is taken away, the foundational value of our sexual appeal is taken away.
	Socializing men's money is exactly the same as socializing women's sex appeal.
	It's easier to tax money than sex appeal.
	So I guess that's why they went that way.
	Well no, you can pass laws that say attractive women have to have sex with ugly men.
	You could pass a law for that.
	You could.
	Then you have the whole subjectivity of what is ugly, what is beautiful, defining all that.
	Oh no, we could work that out.
	No, that's easy peasy.
	That's like saying, well, how much money is stolen?
	Once you get the principle down, everything else gets worked out.
	People know the difference between pretty and ugly.
	There's no one who accidentally made it onto the cover of Vogue, right?
	Lena Dunham perhaps accepted or whatever, right?
	But there's no models are accidentally, oh my god, she's, you know, you never see a runway model doing bikinis or swimsuits who's like 300 pounds with hair growing out of her ears, right?
	Right, exactly, exactly.
	Okay, I see what you mean.
	I see what you mean.
	So, I really want to point, I'm sorry for that slight divergence, Ian, but I really sort of want to fundamentally point out that for you to have an emotional experience that is inconvenient to women is catastrophic to our entire society.
	As it stands right now or as it totters and fucking falls right now.
	Yeah, yeah.
	So what you have is a personal tragedy combined with a socioeconomic absolute that men are absorbed by women's needs.
	Okay.
	And if you have a need that is inconvenient to women, well, that's like saying to your drill sergeant, I'm kind of hot.
	I'd like an ice cream.
	What's he gonna say?
	Get down and do 20 more.
	I don't know.
	Yeah, what is your major malfunction, son?
	I'm gonna rip off your head and piss down your fucking neck.
	Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Like Arlie Erme did in that movie.
	Yeah, so you don't have needs in a hierarchy and men's needs that are inconvenient to women must be crushed.
	And the fact that men cannot acknowledge their needs is really our major subjugation.
	And I sympathize, I sympathize, I sympathize.
	But the reason, do you know why I'm telling you all this, Ian?
	I'm taking a guess that you're telling me this because...
	To essentially come to the understanding that my needs as a man are not really going to be taken seriously because that's the social milieu that we're living in?
	Right.
	Okay.
	And to avoid you...
	The magical thing...
	Here we go.
	No, to help you re-evaluate your desire.
	If you cannot socially, religiously, politically, if you cannot have needs inconvenient to crazy women, how's that conversation with your mom really going to go?
	Quite badly.
	And I think my subconscious figured it out way before I consciously got it too.
	But I did kind of keep denying it.
	But yeah, you're right.
	It's not going to go so well.
	Right.
	Now, this is why I say if you have doubt, then talk to, if you're in physical safety, then talk to your abuser.
	Yeah, physical safety.
	Right?
	Because, you know, that conversation can never go badly.
	Because no matter what happens, if you're honest and you're open and you're clear and you're vulnerable, you get...
	Nothing but information, fundamentally, right?
	You just get information, empiricism, fact, reaction, reality, right?
	Right, but hold on.
	Who did you say I should talk to again, if I'm in safety?
	If you go talk to your mom, it can't go badly.
	It can't?
	No!
	Because all you'll be getting are the facts.
	And if you're honest and relentlessly open and she attacks and evades and projects and manipulates and throws herself on the couch and pretends to be having a heart attack and pulls all that sandfoot and sun crap, well, I guess you've got some facts, right?
	Okay, I see what you mean.
	Even an adverse reaction is still a positive for me in that it's giving me information about...
	Yes, because it gives you the final equation of adulthood, which is that people without self-knowledge are as predictable as physics.
	People without self-knowledge are robots.
	People without self-knowledge are fundamentally inanimate objects.
	And we do not expect inanimate objects to self-change their own properties, right?
	Right.
	You don't say, hey kids, let's go play baseball.
	Now, I only have this vase, but we're going to will it to change into having the properties of baseball, right?
	You say, it's a vase.
	It's not going to work as a baseball, right?
	And anyone who said, well, it's a vase, but let's pretend it's a baseball, let's use it as baseball, you'd say, sorry, that's not kind of the way reality works, right?
	And people who are not in pursuit of self-knowledge are utterly, utterly predictable.
	And accepting the physics of willed self-ignorance is the final barrier to maturity.
	I say final at the age of 48.
	I'm sure there's more, but this is all I've got so far.
	Now, if you can change...
	Then you have the challenge of recognizing how different you are.
	Mistaking your capacity for change with other people's incapacity to change is really, really important.
	It's sort of like this.
	Have you ever seen the movie Transformers?
	Stefan, one moment.
	I lost you for a moment after you were talking about the vase and the baseball game.
	Pick it up in the playback.
	Fair enough.
	So, have you seen the movie Transformers?
	The first one, yes.
	I only remember explosions.
	Explosions and Megan Fox.
	Megan Fox, yes.
	Okay, put Megan Fox there.
	Just going to take a moment.
	Wait, one more.
	Okay, all right, so the Transformers can transform, right?
	They can, yeah.
	Okay.
	So basically, imagine the Transformer coming up to a toaster and saying, Help me in this battle!
	Transform, toaster!
	I need you!
	What would the toaster do?
	It would just stay as a toaster.
	Toaster!
	Transform into fighter jet!
	I need you to fight Megalothotron!
	Right?
	Yeah.
	Toaster just sits there.
	Right, right, right, right.
	If you really want to startle the audience...
	Have some toast pop.
	Right.
	You have transformed into edible dough.
	Good!
	Right?
	I don't know, maybe he gets some small burns on his fingers or something.
	That's right.
	Now you are hot!
	I will launch you as Torpedo!
	At Gothic Trolleton!
	Right?
	Yeah, exactly.
	Toaster, roll out!
	Right.
	Come, vacuum cleaner!
	Suck! Car!
	Transform into car slightly older than when I started this sentence!
	Good job!
	Computer!
	Lose value from a capital investment standpoint!
	Well done!
	You can gain value on your taxes, though.
	Mel!
	Megan Fox!
	Well, you can just keep being Megan Fox.
	That's no problem.
	Transform into Megan Fox in a thunderstorm!
	That's a good image.
	Megan Fox, be slow motion!
	I hold on to that one too.
	Yeah, yeah.
	So...
	So, the Transformer can transform, but the toaster can't, right?
	Yeah, I understand, yeah.
	So...
	You wouldn't want the Transformer trying to get an army of toasters and vacuum cleaners and junky cars to come and fight him against Cosmobatogatron, right?
	Right, exactly.
	Because he'd be like, I don't think you understand that they don't transform, right?
	So they really can't help you very much, right?
	It's like, but I am made of metal.
	And I transform, and they are made of metal, and I saw toast.
	It's like, no, no, that's a mechanical thing.
	That is not the same as the capacity to transform.
	Right.
	And then, of course, Oh, Shia LaBeouf runs through saying, No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
	Like about 7 million times.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Anyway.
	So you would have to explain to the transformer that appliances don't transform, right?
	Right, right, exactly.
	And that would kind of be the first thing that the Transformer would need to know, is the difference between stuff to warm up your bread, and by that I do mean, of course, Megan Fox's butt crack, but stuff that's just supposed to do your, let's say, chores, and stuff that can transform into giant alien mech warriors, right?
	Right, exactly.
	So, if you, I assume, listening to this show and all that, so you are in hot pursuit of self-knowledge, and you want...
	To be a better person and you're willing to examine your past and you're willing to pursue truth and honesty and integrity in what you do, right?
	Yay!
	You're a transformer!
	Good job!
	We're going to have an action line in the future of FDR listeners, right?
	And you are a self-knowledge bot, right?
	Gotcha, gotcha.
	But don't mistake appliances for transformers.
	Yeah.
	They can't change.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, that's true.
	That's true.
	Now, if you think they can change, great.
	And go and sit and have a conversation with your mom and talk about this and understand and be open and be honest, be vulnerable and so on.
	But my guess, right, there are these things called defenses, right?
	Defenses are designed to internalize abuse and shield you from pain.
	Defenses are designed to internalize abuse and shield you from pain.
	Because to think of defenses like you put your hand in a fire, it really hurts, so you have an aversion to putting your hand in the fire, right?
	So it's a defense for your hand, right?
	Keep it out of the fire, right?
	And to keep your personality away from the destructive fists and words and neglect of abusers, you internalize the abuse and And that way, you yell at yourself before your dad does.
	And that way, you stop doing whatever you're doing and don't trigger your dad yelling at you and hitting at you, which is physically dangerous, right?
	Right, right, right.
	I think that's where you talk with the internal family systems and the inner parents and so forth.
	Yes.
	Have it discipline you rather than your actual parent discipline you.
	So imagine if you had a defense against fire, which was an asbestos glove that ate your hand.
	An asbestos glove that ate my hand.
	Right.
	So what happens is you put on this asbestos glove because there's fire everywhere.
	You can't get away from it.
	And it's agony.
	So you put this asbestos glove on because there's fire everywhere.
	You say, okay, well, I'm just going to put this asbestos glove on until I get out of this fire, right?
	Yes.
	And then what happens is after 15 or 20 years...
	Your hand is gone.
	...of living in a burning house...
	You get out.
	I got out at the age of 15.
	Richard Nixon's dad got out of his abusive household when he was 14.
	Danica Patrick left home when she was 16, I think.
	So you get out at some point, right?
	Yeah.
	And you're like, damn, my hands have not seen the light of day or felt the breath of wind for 15 or 20 years.
	Right.
	I'm taking these gloves off.
	Oh, shit.
	They are now your hands.
	You don't have any hands left.
	The defenses designed to protect your hands have eaten your hands.
	The defenses designed to protect the personality have destroyed the personality and all that's left is a shell.
	You know that old, it's a pretty common myth, the suit of armor that fights, right?
	Yeah.
	And there's nobody inside.
	It's an animated suit of armor, right?
	Okay.
	Okay.
	So you get into this armor and then you rot inside this armor because the armor is only supposed to be very temporary.
	You rot inside this armor, you die inside this armor, but the armor keeps defending, right?
	Yeah, okay.
	So people who've not got self-knowledge and particularly people who've done evil and particularly people who've done repeated evil to children...
	Do not, in my experience and opinion, do not have an original personality left that the defenses are still guarding.
	I talked about hysterical matrons in my novel The God of Atheists.
	The intense guarding of food long rotted with regards to their fertility.
	The intense guarding of food long rotted.
	But that's what defenses are.
	If they are not dismantled through self-knowledge.
	So with regards to your mother, and again, don't take anything I'm saying as any kind of absolute.
	These are just my thoughts.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	But with regards to your mother, defenses cannot admit fault.
	Defenses to admit fault for empty people It's exactly like some guy with eyes of flame and a skeletal hand beating at your front door saying, let me in!
	Let me in!
	Right, right, right.
	You'd be like, hey, come on in.
	Let's have a beer.
	Show me that cool flame trick again.
	On my eyeball, if you could.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	Enough!
	Right, so...
	The reason why people can't admit fault if they're incredibly and heavily and emptily defended is that to admit fault is to have a personality, to have something that's empirical, to have something that's connected with reality because we all make mistakes and we all have to admit fault from time to time, right?
	And so if somebody admits fault who's been that defensive and that abusive for so long, what they're basically doing is It's instead of looking outside the armor, they're looking inside the armor, and they have to realize that they're dead and gone.
	Oh, okay.
	If I were to conjecture that, is that why my mom reacted in such a way when she asked, why am I mad at her?
	Yeah, because then she's completely innocent and bewildered.
	There's almost no defense better for women than being bewildered.
	Right, right, right, right.
	Like, you come up with something, you say something that you're angry about with a woman, she's like, okay.
	Alright, I don't know what the issue is, but if there's something you need to talk about that'll make you feel better, I guess I can listen if I need to.
	I don't know what the issue is, but yeah, I guess go for it, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, yeah.
	That is the bewilderment, the Uh, okay.
	Sure, tell me what you need to tell me, right?
	I'm so confused.
	I don't understand what the problem can be.
	I didn't do anything.
	I mean, right?
	Right, exactly.
	And that's because to admit that she did something wrong would be to discover that she was not in reality, not spontaneous, nothing alive past the armor, inside the armor.
	Mm-hmm.
	Right, right, right.
	And actually, even when I first started my self-knowledge path, that was very hard for me to do, kind of go back into the past and look into myself like that.
	And I can only imagine, she hasn't even probably gone that far.
	And I'll be pretty much asking her to really speed that process up.
	Right.
	Yeah, look, I mean, I was so naive and wrong when I first started this podcast about the politics of female power and male disposability and all this kind of stuff, right?
	Yeah.
	And I've learned a lot since then and made massive mistakes of optimism.
	And because I see a principle, I'm like, oh shit, that's a principle.
	I can't argue against it, so I have to adhere to it.
	And I keep thinking other people have that same sort of physics in their personality.
	And of course they don't, right?
	Right, right, right, right, right.
	Yeah.
	So listen, I know we didn't get to the roleplay, but I'm happy to do it.
	We've got to move on to the next caller.
	I'm sorry that we didn't, but I really want to impress upon you that for you to have your identity, particularly your identity as a man, particularly your identity as a man who's been abused by a woman, And a man, of course, but we'll just talk about the woman for now.
	For you to say, my reality requires the permission of a woman, misses the whole point.
	Right.
	And will never work.
	Men cannot say, My emotional reality requires the agreement of a woman or a man or a government or a god or a priest or a teacher or you name it.
	Your emotional reality does require an enlightened witness.
	I'm not a man up, do it all by yourself.
	We are social animals.
	I learned about physics from watching other people and other kids make mistakes as well.
	But if you say...
	My salvation will come from my mother admitting her fault.
	You are throwing yourself back into your childhood where you are dependent upon the non-existent integrity of your mother.
	Ah, yeah, that's true, that's true, that's true.
	If mom does the right thing, I'll be safe.
	Wasn't that your childhood?
	Begging and hoping for a flicker of virtue and conscience in your mother so that she'd wake up, stop herself short, question herself, doubt herself, learn other things and start doing the right thing.
	I think that this is what your mother wants.
	It's for you to need her validation of your history.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Thanks for catching that.
	Even without the roleplay, though, this is still a very incredibly valuable talk.
	Now, thank you for pointing that to me.
	I didn't think about that, that this is potentially one of the ways she kind of keeps me tied down, is that I'm searching for her permission to emote and feel my own inner life, my own inner experience.
	You know what happened to you.
	I know what happened to you.
	I doubt none of it.
	Right.
	That is a reality...
	But in most times in human history, the price of tribal allegiance was self-slaughter.
	Right, right, right.
	Was the destruction of your experience and your history and your personality.
	The great conformity of war paint and spears.
	And if we are to grow as a species, and Ian, I hugely respect what you're doing with your life.
	I mean, I can't tell you it moves me enormously and I hugely respect what you are doing with your life.
	But the key to adult freedom is need nothing from abusers because that's how they get you.
	In a voluntary environment, abusers get you by provoking need.
	I need his approval.
	I need her apology.
	I need his validation.
	I need her acknowledgement.
	I need her regret.
	I need his apology.
	I need her sorrow.
	I need, I need, I need.
	That's how they hook you back in when you don't actually have to be there.
	Right.
	That's their power, by creating a demand for that kind of permission.
	Yeah.
	As a kid, I need food.
	I need shelter, so I'm here, right?
	But as an adult, they're a little different.
	They fly fishing rather than dynamite fishing, right?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	You gotta lure them in.
	Will you let me know how it goes?
	Uh, sure.
	I mean, it seems I had to cancel the talk, uh, talk to my brother about it.
	He's the one that was, uh, kind of active to go between.
	But, uh...
	I mean, I wouldn't make...
	I would talk to a therapist if I were you.
	That's my real recommendation with anyone who's dealing with significant family issues.
	You need an enlightenment witness.
	Enlightened witness a doubt you're gonna get one from.
	Um...
	conversation, but I'm certainly not a therapist.
	Right, right.
	But if you can get into some therapy with someone who is going to just listen and accept the agony of your masculine history, I think that would be the most...
	I wouldn't make any decisions with regards to your mom as yet.
	I think get into a conversation with a therapist and I think that would be the most important thing to do at the moment.
	Okay.
	Yeah, I can do that.
	Alright.
	Well, thanks very much, man.
	I really appreciate it, Ian.
	Kudos to everything that you're doing.
	And can I also tell you, like, I mean, this is complete bullshit as a whole, but you're Hispanic, we've got some black guys calling in, you know, like, Great.
	Great.
	You know, sometimes it feels a little bit like we're just going through slice after slice of Wonder Bread.
	And so it's great to hear from more and more diverse groups.
	It's a real, real pleasure and an honor.
	And I hugely appreciate your openness in the conversation.
	All right.
	If we could move on to the next caller.
	Alright, up next is Violet.
	Violet wrote in and said, I was raised without any real love or bond or even any real examples of such.
	How am I supposed to recognize real love between myself and a partner or friends?
	Also, when the time comes, how will I know if I'm properly bonding with my children?
	Hmm.
	Interesting.
	Do you have negative examples of how you know it wasn't love?
	Oh, hi.
	Oh, I'm sorry.
	I didn't know if I should start talking.
	Also, sorry if I, like, made some noise in the back.
	I actually hit the wrong button.
	But, yeah, it's pretty obvious.
	I'm sorry to interrupt.
	You just started talking.
	I don't know.
	I find that the women who call in here have, like, voices like Angel Honey being wept into my eardrum.
	I mean, you've got a really great voice.
	I just wanted to mention that.
	But, sorry, I just wanted to mention that so I could get it off my mind.
	Okay, so negative experiences with love?
	Oh, well, my...
	Oh, jeez.
	My dad was an alcoholic and he was abused as a kid, so I doubt he even knew how to.
	And then my mom was just really distant.
	Well, I hate to say it, but bitchy.
	And, like, I don't talk to them.
	And my brothers were really abusive with me.
	And my family obviously didn't give a shit because no one did anything.
	So it's basically, like, me and my brothers were just, like, neglected and abused our whole lives.
	And then recently, you know, I've been reevaluating my life.
	And I realized that most of my relationships are just absolute just crap.
	And so I'm trying to...
	Like, start from, you know, nothing.
	I have no real examples at all.
	A lot of my family was ripped up by divorce, and the ones that didn't, they just, like, my parents, they're horrible together.
	So, that's basically, I just don't know what I'm looking for.
	I think I'm kind, like, I have my boyfriend now, he's, like, really respectful and nice and stuff, and I'm I really just think that what I'm looking for is just like niceness, basically, but I'm new to it.
	So I don't know.
	I just kind of want to get your advice on that and stuff.
	Right.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	Well, so love, of course, falls into two general categories, which is romantic love and platonic or friendship love, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	Right.
	So which one are you most interested in at the moment?
	Both, honestly.
	I don't know.
	Because I'm trying to make new friendships and also I'm just really unsure of all of it.
	I know it sounds like vague and weird.
	No, but I get it.
	So we'll examine the love with the penis and the love without so much of the penis.
	Right.
	Okay.
	Got it.
	Okay.
	Fair enough.
	Fair enough.
	So, you know, my definition, just for those who are new to the conversation, is that love is our involuntary response to virtue if we're virtuous.
	Yeah, I've heard you say that.
	Yeah, if we are not, if we're evil, then our involuntary response to virtue is hatred, a desire to destroy.
	And if we are virtuous, our involuntary response to evil is hatred and a desire to destroy.
	It's kind of parallel.
	It's like a big cat's cradle.
	It goes on here.
	And so, I mean, the first thing, in my opinion, to look for is virtue.
	Now, virtue is a big complicated phrase, which sounds like you're saying something, but when you try to unpack it, as Socrates and everybody's been saying for thousands of years, when you try to unpack the word virtue, it becomes tough.
	Well, interesting enough.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Oh, interesting enough, I'm dating an ANCAP now, so, like, I'm pretty sure that I found someone with Virtue, finally, which is, like, the biggest reason why I'm attracted to him, because, like, the best qualities of myself I see in him, you know, he's really nice and respectful, and when we, like, fight, I guess, as you could say, it's more, like, intense debating.
	We don't really actually, like, treat each other badly, so it's really nice.
	But, like...
	Okay, good.
	So I'm going to just run through a couple of things.
	You're certainly welcome to jump in with your experience with your boyfriend or his experience with you.
	But for someone to be virtuous, they first have to know that there's such a thing as virtue.
	And they also have to know there's such a thing as vice or evil.
	Now, if somebody says, well, I don't believe in evil, all they're doing is they're telling you they've never tried to be good.
	Because the moment you try to be good, you annoy evil people, right?
	And so that's how you find evil people.
	It's like in long ago days, maybe they probably still do, they used to go grouse hunting.
	And, you know, they'd release all the dogs and the grouse, the grouse's grouse, I don't know, the many grouse, would fly up and they'd shoot them and all that, right?
	I'm assuming it's a bird in one.
	Yeah, it's some kind of bird that doesn't fly too fast because, you know, it's England and not exactly great sharpshooters.
	And so the moment you are virtuous in your life, evil people are like, whoa, hey, did you hear that?
	I heard these, you know, they're little cups of water ripple, you know, like in Jurassic Park.
	Is there a good guy around here?
	Shit, light's coming on!
	Flee cockroaches attack!
	Right?
	Yeah.
	And so...
	If somebody's a relativist, what they're saying is, I can't identify evil because I've never turned the lights on.
	I've never become a light.
	I can't see.
	I am fog.
	And I'm deliberately ghosting myself so that I don't summon any exorcists.
	I am going to avert my eyes from immorality so that I don't have to do anything good, which might put me in some risk or some danger or some conflict or whatever.
	So...
	So, the first thing when trying to figure out if someone can be loved, and there is an emotional aspect, but, you know, I've read your ACE score, which we can go into if you want, but I mean, clearly, you have the kind of opposite conditioning for that.
	So, when you meet someone who's virtuous, they understand and accept that.
	The prevalence and existence of evil.
	They understand and accept the need to be good in the face of evil and to advance the human cause in the face of evil and so on.
	What that means is that if you've had as traumatic a childhood as you've had then they recognize that what was inflicted upon you as a child was irredeemably evil that you were surrounded by evildoers That you are a completely innocent victim of evildoers.
	And there is an unwavering condemnation of the abuse that you suffered.
	That's how you know that you're in the presence of somebody who understands something about good and evil.
	Oh yeah, you have no idea how many times people have told me that I'm like, you know...
	Basically exaggerating on things and that I should forgive and forget and talk to my parents and all that stuff, but, like, no way.
	Like, that's ridiculous.
	Like, and you know what's really crazy is that when other victims of child abuse tell me, oh, what I went through and that's nothing and blah blah blah, that drives me nuts.
	It's like, dude, just because your childhood was worse doesn't mean mine was good.
	But, like, that happens...
	All the time.
	It's just really annoying.
	Well, it's more than annoying, right?
	Go ahead.
	It's more than annoying, right?
	Oh, yeah.
	Annoying is somebody who parks too close to your car and you can't get out easily.
	Yeah.
	It's a betrayal of the innocent victim, you, Violet, of evildoers.
	It's a...
	Fundamentally disgusting, hideous, evil betrayal of the victim of child abuse.
	You have an ACE score of eight, young lady.
	You were birthed in a chamber of hell.
	Right?
	That was pretty terrible.
	It was about as bad can be.
	And...
	It was the worst childhood you will ever experience, and it doesn't matter what the fuck happened to anybody else on this planet because this was your childhood.
	There is not a three-year-old alive who will say they're no longer hungry if they haven't eaten in two days because there's a child in India who hasn't eaten in three days.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	And I try to explain that, but they don't want to hear it a lot of the times.
	Yeah.
	They don't.
	They don't because it requires that they see evil and it requires that they then, when you see evil, all you need to be to be a doctor of morality is see evil.
	Screwed up because they're talking about, like, their parents used to hit them with, like, Hot Wheels tracks and, like, crazy, crazy, crazy stuff, and they still talk to them, and I'm just like, how?
	Like, and then to tell me that I didn't experience real child abuse just because it wasn't to the same degree.
	It's really insulting and infuriating, not just knowing you're right, but I don't...
	Well, can you imagine a soldier who lost four limbs saying to a soldier who lost three limbs, eh, it's nothing.
	Yeah.
	I hate it.
	Like, it could be worse.
	Of course it could be worse.
	Of course.
	That doesn't make it okay.
	Like...
	And that's pretty much like so many people's attitudes, like, well, you know, this didn't happen to you, or it wasn't really your parents doing that to you, and blah, blah, blah, blah, but it is, you know?
	What do you mean that, sorry, they say it wasn't really your parents?
	What are they, they think they were possessed or something?
	I don't know what it is, is that, like, my parents, they hit me, and they screamed at me, and they treated me like shit, but, like, their real, like, sadism type of use was from my older brothers.
	And so, they didn't stop it, though.
	They were obviously the ones that were in charge of all that, and so it's okay, though, I guess, because they weren't the ones actually doing it.
	I don't know.
	No, but they modeled the behavior that your older brothers internalized, I would assume, right?
	Well, yeah, my dad used to get trashed and just beat the shit out of them and treat them like shit, so they used to do it to me.
	I mean, it doesn't take a genius to figure out how that works, you know?
	And...
	You know, of course, who else's fault would it be?
	Mine?
	I was, like, a friggin' little girl.
	I was five and six years younger than my brothers.
	It wasn't even an equal fight, you know?
	So...
	And how...
	But how the fuck would your dad say don't hit children?
	You're right, as he's hitting them, telling them not to hit them.
	Hitting children is wrong, kids!
	Yeah, that's him.
	That's him to a T. Like, you know, I've got...
	To the last caller, like, I, oh man, when I tried to talk to my parents about this stuff, it was like, well, you know, your dad this and your dad that, and then my dad would be like, I'm sick of hearing this stuff, and basically what it is is my mom apparently isn't accountable for everything because, you know, she's a woman, I guess, and that means that she's incapable of making her own decisions or something, and she's scared.
	Oh, so, hang on, hang on.
	So, Violet, If women are not responsible for their decisions, then surely little girls are not responsible for their decisions either, right?
	Cool.
	Apparently they are, Stefan.
	No, no, no.
	You've just got it wrong, Violet.
	No, I mean, that's their...
	Your mom must never have punished you or asked your dad to punish you because...
	Women are not responsible for their behaviors and therefore little girls who are women who haven't even become adults yet must be even less responsible for their behaviors and therefore if she can't be punished for what she does as an adult, the consistent application of that philosophy is that you must have never been punished at the behest or hands of your mother as a child.
	Right.
	You would think that logically, except you know how narcissistic mothers can be.
	It doesn't really matter.
	We don't really follow a lot.
	And it's also interesting to me how your dad is, what did he say, tired or annoyed at hearing about this stuff?
	Oh, yeah.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, that's really funny to me, because whenever I try to bring it up with him, he doesn't want to talk about it, and we get into fights, and he's like, I'm sick of fighting, but meanwhile, when I was a little tiny kid, I had to hear a drunken asshole scream at the top of his lungs over stupid shit, and I had to see him beat my brothers and all this stuff, but he's tired of it.
	Right.
	So you experienced the child abuse for an adverse childhood experience score of eight.
	And that's just what happened.
	And you've got to live with it and it's fine.
	But if you bring it up to your dad, then he suddenly becomes very invested in human comfort and happiness.
	And having a nice time and not being uncomfortable.
	So beating children, well, that's good parenting.
	But if those children come to you and say, I thought it was really wrong for you to beat me, now he's all interested in making sure that people are comfortable and not upset.
	Oh, yeah.
	Well, it's so predictable, but it's so vile.
	Oh, God, I know.
	I still get mad, you know.
	I haven't really talked to them much in the last couple of months, and I still just get infuriated when I talk about it.
	How could I not, though, obviously?
	And if you would like to talk about my ECE score, that's fine.
	I don't mind.
	I mean, that's why I called, so...
	Listen, Violet, it's your call.
	I mean, I don't want to lead the conversation.
	If you want to talk about the ECE stuff, I'm happy to talk more about it.
	I would like to.
	Thoughts of identifying love, but go ahead.
	I would like to talk about both if you have the time, honestly.
	Okay, what do you want to do?
	Do you want me to go through the ACE stuff?
	Yes, please.
	Okay, so ACE score of eight.
	Again, I mean, it's heartbreaking to read this stuff.
	Verbal abuse and threats.
	What was that?
	Oh, um...
	Just a lot of putting me down by literally everyone in the house.
	Because, you know, my dad would get drunk and he'd be such a terrible person.
	And then, you know, when you're, like, I kind of, like, I forgive my brothers for what they did when we were kids.
	But now, you know, they're still just kind of bad people to me.
	So I don't talk to them now either.
	But, like, kids, you know, they react to what...
	Like, how they're treated.
	So they were being put down and treated badly by my parents, and I was being treated badly by my parents, and then they would do it to me.
	Like, I got teased by them a lot.
	Like, my parents used to threaten...
	Oh, one thing that I was just thinking about, like, you know, school days, if I wasn't getting out of bed, they'd, like, threaten to pull me out by my hair and shit like that.
	And just, my dad would get drunk, and just, like, recently, like, he...
	Recently, basically, like, oh, if you weren't a girl, you know, that kind of thing.
	Just, uh, and I don't know, like, just whatever threat you can fathom, basically.
	Right.
	Like, whenever.
	And, uh, they would hit a lot, too.
	Like, my dad didn't hit me as much because, I guess, thankfully, he's sexist.
	But, um, but my mom, they'd pull her hair, well, they used to spank too, but they'd, like, pull hair and smack hands and spank and really, really unnecessarily and embarrassingly even, and, uh, um, my mom would hit me with stuff,
	but, like I said, mostly my physical abuse was from my older brothers, but, uh, I don't know, just basic threats, and a lot of the times, uh, They would act on them even, so I don't know.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	Now, the physical abuse, non-spanking, obviously you've got the threats and hair pulling and so on.
	And I got to tell you that for me, Violet, hair pulling is elementally horrifying.
	I know this is maybe just my sort of particular hang-up, but it feels so ape-like.
	Do you know there's this old, I don't know, maybe there's this old, like, You know, the caveman drags the woman into his cave by her hair.
	It's so primitive.
	It hurts, too, really bad.
	Yeah, it hurts like hell, right?
	It hurts like hell.
	You feel incredibly vulnerable and you feel desperate because if your hair gets pulled out, I mean, that's pretty obvious, right?
	Yeah.
	So hair pulling has always struck me as an incredibly destructive thing.
	And such a violation of the child's physical integrity.
	And of course spanking and beating and all, absolutely.
	But hair pulling to me just has a kind of creepy special category, if that makes any sense.
	Do you want to hear one of the specific times that I was spanked that's like the most traumatic for me?
	Because I think it's really, really quite disturbing.
	My dad used to like bare bottom spank me for some reason too.
	And one day I was up late because there was like people over and there was pizza.
	And I wasn't even in the double digits, obviously, because I was getting spanked.
	But I can't give you, probably like five or six, something like that.
	And I used to have a crush on my dad's friend, Tom.
	And he was over.
	And I just wanted to hang out and I wanted some pizza and I wasn't listening, right?
	So my dad pulls my pants and my panties down, pulls me onto his lap at the kitchen table and spanks me in front of this guy.
	It was like...
	It was really traumatic at the time.
	I mean, if I can remember it, obviously, you know, it was pretty bad at the time.
	Well, it also has a...
	Because you had a crush on his friend, it also would have a romantically humiliating aspect to it as well, right?
	Yeah, and then, you know, he just exposed me in front of him on top of it.
	Right.
	It was pretty...
	That one was pretty bad.
	But the...
	Worse shit.
	Like, they neglected my health big time, too.
	Like, I actually, when I was 18, had to get emergency surgeries to get, like, some of my intestines removed because I had stomach aches, like, my whole life dealing with, you know, that stress.
	And so they didn't really get me any treatment, and they just basically called me a liar or a hypochondriac or that I was exaggerating and stuff like that.
	But then I started passing blood in my stool when I was like 16.
	And they took me to like, after months of this, like literal months of this, they took me to like a really crappy doctor in a small town who said that he didn't know and that I'd have to get more tests done, you know, like colonoscopy.
	But they never took me to get any more treatment after that.
	And so then from that time to around 18, I was just like, Passing blood and I ended up in the ER with a heart rate of 226 beats per minute because I was infected and sick and dehydrated and all this stuff and I told them and then they tried medicine on me but my body wouldn't respond to the meds because it's been so long and they had to give me an emergency surgery and I had a temporary colostomy bag and I had to get like a whole
	surgery to fix it all after that and now I'm still I have Crohn's disease and like I'm still dealing with like I have to get like another procedure even now because of it.
	But that's not abuse.
	It is.
	It is catastrophic abuse and it could have been deadly abuse.
	Right.
	I mean assume that you had sort of perforated intestines and so on and You could have been spilling terrible stuff into your innards.
	One of the best men at my wedding has Crohn's disease.
	I know a little bit about it.
	That's murderous neglect.
	It's terribly painful.
	And when you're losing blood, of course, you're going to be all tired and anemic.
	And so I didn't want to...
	I didn't do much as a kid.
	I just slept a lot.
	And so I was told that I was lazy and that I needed to be doing things.
	And I dropped out of school even because I couldn't go.
	I just couldn't do it.
	And one day, because I don't know why, I probably felt fibromyalgia or some stupid shit...
	My hip, like, hurt so bad.
	I literally just couldn't walk.
	And I used to go to an alternative high because I missed so much school from being sick.
	And I was supposed to walk from the middle school to there.
	And I told her, I said, if you drive me to school, I will go to school, but I cannot walk.
	And she's like, I'm not driving your ass to school.
	So I dropped out.
	Like, I don't know what the hell else I was supposed to do, really.
	And so, like, it's literally...
	Crippled my life.
	I still don't have a GED because, sorry, but there's just so much more going on right now.
	I actually defood and was staying at a homeless shelter for like a month because I didn't have anywhere else to go.
	I'm staying with, like, someone that I met at a shelter now in, like, this really bad area where I'm just, like, constantly harassed by guys and just, like, treated really disrespectfully by people, like, all the time, and they don't even know because, as I see it, they don't have a right to know, you know?
	Like, and, uh, so their terrible parenting has, like, basically, like, crippled, like, I'm not saying that my life is ruined or anything.
	I know it's not, but it's really stunted it.
	And now if I try to get a job, no one wants to hire me.
	I don't have a GED or a high school diploma or literally any work experience because I couldn't.
	I couldn't work.
	I mean, I'm an artist and I make paintings and sell them, but then I work doing Random stuff like cleaning and yard work for people is a real job.
	It's really hard to get a job when no one wants to give you a chance because you have no experience and you're 22 and they just see it as laziness, you know, I think.
	Sorry to go off on a rant, but that bothers me really bad.
	But another thing, it's like people don't see it as child abuse because...
	They were other kids hurting me, my brothers, but they were a lot older than me and they were sadistic.
	Did I give you examples?
	I can't really recall.
	No, go ahead.
	Speaking of pulling hair, one time they actually put a vacuum on top of my head and it caught all my hair up.
	They still laugh about it like it's funny.
	It was incredibly painful.
	They used to watch wrestling, too.
	And so they used to do a lot of wrestling moves on me.
	It was insanely painful, because obviously it's not fake when you're reenacting it.
	I used to have a wall behind my door, and I used to go in my room and hold myself against the door to keep them out.
	I spent a lot of time hiding as a child.
	Yeah, me too.
	I used to go and there was no place to hide where I lived, but I used to go and build tree houses and climb into the trees and just stay up in the trees and read or I'd go to the library or I'd go someplace where, you know, there were people around where I could feel safe and secure and relax and sometimes even nap until people shake you awake and stuff.
	But, yeah, it's exhausting.
	Your fight-and-flight mechanism is constantly activated.
	You never know what's coming next.
	And anytime there are people in the house, it's impossible to relax.
	Yeah.
	Oh, yeah.
	And, you know, now if I talk to my parents or see my parents, like, I'm, like, immediately anxious.
	Like, it's gotten a lot better.
	Like, I talked to my dad briefly because...
	The Humira, it's this medication that I take.
	They sent something to their house and I wanted to find out what it was, so I had to call them in case it was important.
	And I was okay, actually, but I tried to even talk to him again and he's still, I don't want to hear it.
	Everyone's trying to make me out to be a bad guy and blah.
	Oh, poor you, you know.
	Yeah, no, he's obviously very, very concerned about victimhood.
	Very, very concerned about being a victim.
	As a father, when he was raising children, very, very victimized.
	How repulsive.
	Yeah, and it's really sick because he was treated badly as a kid, too.
	And so you'd think that, you know, you'd think more people would identify it and try to stop it.
	But so many people don't.
	Yeah, the people who say, well, I did bad because I was treated badly.
	I mean, I just I don't understand that.
	I mean, fundamentally, I don't.
	And I think fundamentally it has to do with a complete lack of moral clarity, defending the indefendable.
	But I don't understand it.
	It's like, well, I was in a car crash, so I can't possibly empathize with people who are in car crashes.
	And I try and create as many car crashes as possible.
	Like, who could ever take that seriously?
	If you were in a car crash, surely you can understand what it's like to be in a car crash.
	He would do these things where he'd get in a fight with his mom or his dad.
	And take it out.
	Just screaming at everyone else.
	But then he'd stop talking to them for a while.
	But then he'd start talking to them again.
	And it was always the same thing over and over again.
	And I guess I'm kind of, in a way, thankful for that.
	Because I know not to do that.
	I can see, obviously, if he doesn't understand that that's wrong.
	And he keeps talking to his parents.
	Then how is he ever going to think that there's anything wrong with how he's treating us?
	And so I'm not about to keep inviting that back into my life.
	Interestingly enough, people will still tell me this, but I'm not the only one of their kids at Defood.
	Like, my other brother, one of my brothers also did.
	And I don't talk to him, though, because he couldn't, I guess, handle talking to me when I was talking to my parents because he couldn't.
	I guess I kind of understood.
	And what he's saying, like, it's emotionally hard for him to talk to me because it makes him think about, like, what we had to deal with as kids.
	But at the same time, he was one of those assholes.
	He fucking choked me with a phone cord at one point, you know?
	Like, he's in part...
	Like, not like, not like consciously responsible for it because he was a kid, but I mean, he added a lot more shit onto me too.
	And then when he was going through the defooing process, he was talking to me about everything.
	And I was in the hospital, like getting surgeries and shit like that.
	And he was like venting to me and I was there and then I'm going through the same thing.
	He's just like, I can't do it.
	That was really hard because he got me and he actually introduced me to your show and he got me into anarcho-capitalism and everything.
	And then to do that, it was kind of like you were a horrible example of this.
	That's how I felt.
	Yeah, so he wasn't giving you any sort of sympathy or empathy while you were going through your surgery, but he was really venting about his own history.
	Did he at least acknowledge the degree to which he tortured you?
	Oh, yeah.
	Oh, yeah.
	Oh, he did?
	Yeah, he did.
	He actually, from what I could tell, felt quite bad about it.
	He was really sadistic, too.
	He choked me with a phone cord.
	Like I said, that was really hard because you're looking at someone right in their face as they do that.
	Him and my other brother, they would take turns holding me underwater and then let me up and then just hold me back under and shit.
	That was fucking terrifying.
	Like, I thought I was gonna drown, you know?
	And...
	One time, and this is really weird, one time he, like, just held and just, like, poured spices, like, all over my face and, like, in my ears, like, garlic powder and, like, all over me, just, like, really humiliating shit for no reason.
	Like...
	And that's, like, he's the hardest, like, he's, like, the hardest person to talk about because I really, like, when I was really little, like, a baby, my brothers used to love me and they used to play with me and, like, we were inseparable.
	And then I think, you know, once my dad started freaking out and hitting them, that changed.
	And so they didn't want anything to do with me and the only time they did is when they wanted to hurt me.
	And so...
	My parents would always say, oh, just my mom more so.
	My dad was, you know, drunk most of the time.
	My mom would be like, stay away from him, I told you, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	Like, it's my fault, you know?
	I thought that was pretty good.
	Crazy to just be so dismissive about it and act like it's my fault because I want to spend time with these guys.
	You know, my mom would always talk about how, oh, I never had to do anything with her.
	Her brothers took care of her all the time, like brag about how she, you know, didn't take care of me or whatever.
	And so then it's shocking when I want to spend time with these guys, you know, and to tell me that I shouldn't want to, you know, I just wanted them to be nice to me.
	Obviously, they weren't going to be, but I was a kid.
	And instead of staying in the house and doing her job as a mother, my mom would just be outside in the gardens and doing all this random stuff outside while I was in the house fighting.
	And then when I'd come out crying, she'd be like, what happened now?
	So like, yeah...
	Just act like it's my fault.
	Like, one time I actually stepped on a pitchfork when I was in the garage, and I went through my toe, and I, like, walked up to her crying, and she's like, what happened now?
	Like, all pissed at me because I was crying, and when she did that, it was kind of like, um, what?
	Like, I'm in pain.
	Help me.
	She didn't take me to the hospital for that either, if you're curious.
	Of course not.
	But, uh, I don't know.
	It's hard still.
	Like...
	I mean...
	I have dreams about my family randomly, you know?
	And it's just...
	I wake up completely anxious.
	You know?
	Like...
	Just bad mood all day.
	A lot of the times.
	And...
	I don't know.
	I just...
	And there's a good chance my brother could even be listening to this show, too.
	So...
	That'd be kind of interesting, I guess.
	But...
	I don't know.
	That's the thing.
	I don't know how the hell I'm supposed to identify a loved one.
	I never had it.
	You know, my family knew about it, too.
	Like, the rest of my family, they all knew about what was happening and no one did anything, Stefan.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I'd be shocked if they did.
	But I'm still full of sorrow that they didn't.
	And everyone...
	And you know what else really sucked?
	Is that everyone...
	Like, pitied my poor mother, right?
	Like, oh, your dad's so mean to your mom, and how can you be mad at your mom?
	Your dad's the one, blah, blah, blah.
	No, like, not really.
	My mom, you know, my dad was a drug addict.
	He was beaten a lot as a kid.
	I'm not making excuses for him, it just kind of makes sense.
	My mom had a pretty shitty childhood, like, really dismissive, and she was hit and stuff like that, too, but she wasn't completely unstable.
	You know what I mean?
	She was totally conscious of what she was allowing to happen.
	It's totally abuse to have let someone abuse your children.
	And she abused the hell out of me, though, too.
	She used to hit me quite a bit.
	She actually threw a coaster at me when I was really little, and it knocked half of my front tooth out.
	And then they made me lie about it, how it happened to everyone.
	Right.
	So, you know...
	They don't get that.
	They all just think it's my dad.
	He's just evil and somehow in control of everything that she does.
	Everyone's like, well, she's probably just scared.
	That's probably why she didn't leave.
	She's probably just scared.
	How the fuck do you think I felt?
	Right.
	Yeah, she was an adult.
	She had options.
	She had homeless shelters.
	She had a whole support network.
	She had child protective services.
	She had, you name it, right?
	She had police.
	Yeah, and for those who don't know, look, my mom would sometimes throw...
	When you're in an environment where parents or anyone really is throwing stuff, you are in a war zone.
	Everything can become shrapnel.
	Like my mom threw a knife.
	It gouged out a piece of our wall.
	Yeah.
	Like if that hits you, you can fucking die as a child.
	You are in a World War I trench when stuff starts flying and You can get killed.
	You can lose eyes.
	You are in a death.
	When you're getting beaten, you can curl up, you can cover your genitals, you can cover your eyes, and you might get some bruises, maybe some kidney owies or whatever.
	But when there's stuff, particularly like coasters or glasses or plates, my mom would throw plates, that stuff can fucking kill you.
	If it hits you wrong.
	She justifies it.
	No, sir.
	So I really want to point out to people who've not been through this environment, when stuff starts flying through the air, as a child, you are in a war zone full of shrapnel.
	That can kill you.
	Oh, yeah.
	And I really want to emphasize that point to people.
	You are in an environment of potential, admittedly accidental, Murder.
	Yeah.
	Like, and you know, people, they can't understand that unless they've been through it, and even some of the people that have been through it don't, you know, they don't really, I don't think, understand it if they haven't really gotten that wrong.
	They just see it as, well, stuff happens, you know?
	But, uh, I don't know.
	I don't know how people can hear this and be so dismissive about it, because they did abuse me, and...
	And they also let other people abuse me, too.
	My mom, when I was 16, I was dating a 31-year-old man.
	And my mom drove me there, like, multiple times.
	Like, she was actually trying to get me to move in with him, I think, just to get rid of me.
	And he ended up, you know...
	He's a 31-year-old man dating a 16-year-old.
	Obviously, he's not the greatest person to begin with, typically.
	Maybe she was hoping he'd...
	Pay for your medical bills.
	Right, probably.
	Personally, and I think most people would agree with this, I would never, ever, ever drive my teenage daughter to a grown man's house.
	No, I think I'd drive over there, but not with her.
	Right.
	And we'd have a little jet.
	Right.
	And she was trying to move me in with this guy.
	It was insane.
	Of course, the only reason why I was really interested in him was because no one was giving me any sort of real affection or anything, and then he just comes over manipulating me because they can sense that stuff, especially when you tell them.
	And they know how to play with teenagers.
	Emotions.
	And he just was like, oh, yeah, I care about you and blah, blah, blah.
	And then all the psychological abuse started.
	And I will admit, a lot of the times I ended up hitting him first.
	But he would literally, like, one day, he, like, backed me into a corner.
	Wait, sorry.
	I just lost track.
	I just got a message.
	Who was this?
	Was this the 31-year-old?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	He would scream at me, just going like a huge attack.
	Well, he had me cornered one day against a wall and was just screaming like an inch from my face.
	So I grabbed him by his ponytail, and I pulled him down to the ground, and then he tossed me across the room.
	And I'm not saying that that's okay that I did that, but I was 16, and I was used to being hit a lot, and he was screaming in my face.
	And so then we had a lot of physical confrontation, but...
	He actually ended up, like, raping me when I was 17.
	And...
	And so, like...
	You know...
	Fuck...
	You know, if she would have been a mom...
	She wouldn't have even...
	Like, I'm not blaming her for that completely.
	Although it's a big, big part of her...
	Sorry, but what are you not blaming her?
	Oh, I'm not...
	You're not blaming her for what completely?
	For me being in the situation.
	Even though it's mostly her fault...
	You know, I was still there.
	I don't know.
	But I just wouldn't let my daughter get herself in that situation, though, I guess is what I'm saying.
	Listen, if you keep pursuing self-knowledge and so on, your daughter won't get in that situation.
	No, my kids won't at all.
	No, no, they won't.
	I mean, people keep telling me, people keep writing to me.
	It's almost like they want this biblical curse or this Egyptian curse to strike me with my child when she gets older.
	Well, you just wait till this and you just wait till that.
	I'm not waiting till this and waiting till that.
	I'm not waiting.
	I'm fixing it all now.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Oh yeah, because she's not going to need the attention and the affection and everything that I was looking for because she would have it from you and her mother.
	Yeah, look, my daughter will not...
	I mean, women as a whole who grow up loved and respected and treated peacefully and negotiated with...
	And where people take genuine pleasure.
	They don't need to...
	I mean, they'll enjoy sexuality, of course, but they don't need to use their sexuality to try and provoke the kind of caregiving they should have gotten as infants.
	Yeah.
	I'm on the phone.
	I'm on the phone with...
	Sorry about that.
	I was actually hanging out in the bathroom because I couch surf right now and I didn't have anywhere to go.
	And so...
	The roommate was just making sure I was alright.
	Right.
	But yeah, no.
	My kids will never feel like that.
	I know that.
	I've been studying peaceful parenting for probably like six months or so now.
	I'm not pregnant even.
	I just want to make sure I'm doing the right thing when it finally comes.
	You know?
	Yeah, good.
	That's good to say.
	It might be a whole other conversation.
	And it is.
	I mean, it is very exciting to But painful, right?
	To study how you can parent in a positive and peaceful way.
	And it's so easy.
	It is so easy.
	I'm really good with kids.
	They listen to me.
	I've never felt the need to have to hit a child.
	And they listen to me because I make eye contact and I speak to them calmly.
	And when you give kids respect, they just seem to want to listen.
	And I don't understand why it was so hard for them to grasp that concept.
	Oh yeah, children are so desperate to please and they're so desperate for the good opinion of their parents.
	Yeah, you simply don't need...
	I mean, it's so counterproductive.
	Trying to parent through violence is like trying to call in an airstrike to produce crops in a field.
	I mean, it just produces the exact opposite.
	You get a crater, not corn.
	Yeah.
	And then you know what's really funny is they pretty much set me up for all this and then my family...
	It feels like I'm not doing enough, I guess.
	I don't know.
	I was literally tortured as a child, emotionally and physically.
	And then I had health problems holding me back, even still, because like I said, I have to get a procedure.
	And I'm not doing good enough, I guess.
	I don't know what the hell they expect from me, though.
	I mean, statistically, it makes sense that I'm in the situation I'm in.
	I hate that, and I'm trying to change it, but it makes sense, you know?
	Yeah, I know.
	Listen, abusers hate the symptoms of abuse.
	I mean, that's a very, very important thing to really get.
	When I was...
	So I went...
	I'm trying to think.
	So I went to Africa when I was 16, and...
	And caught Ebola.
	I'm sorry?
	And caught Ebola, but I was joking, obviously.
	And...
	There was a guy there who first introduced me to the album called The Wall by Pink Floyd, which became a very powerful album for me.
	And so from sort of 16 to 17 or 18, I'd listen to Side 3 every night before I went to sleep.
	And my family hated that album.
	It was hidden from me, too.
	Couldn't find it.
	And my family hated that album.
	And that album was incredibly important to me.
	Oh, it's something you enjoyed.
	That's probably why.
	It's about child abuse, right?
	It's about child abuse and adult dissociation.
	And it's about the political power lust that comes out of Empty Souls.
	It's about the political powerless that comes out of a feeling of powerlessness as a child.
	It's about the anger that masks the sorrow and the sorrow that masks the anger.
	Oh, shit.
	Sorry about that.
	People are just yelling around me.
	Sorry about that.
	But they hated that.
	Nobody, of course, ever asked me why the album was important to me.
	At all.
	I mean, that would be incomprehensible to ask, right?
	They hate the symptoms of child abuse, and of course they blame the child abuse victim for the symptoms that they themselves have produced.
	You know, it's like that old joke that the mafia guy, not joke, but it's like the scene where the mafia guy punches the guy in the nose, and then he gets really angry at him for bleeding on his couch, like it's rude.
	It's like, you punched me, man.
	That's why I'm bleeding.
	Another thing, it seems like if there's something that you really enjoy and you're having fun with it and you're not giving any attention to these people, they get almost jealous or something.
	I think my dad would do that a lot.
	If we were having a...
	Good time and he wasn't a part of it.
	He would just have to ruin it, you know, for everyone.
	Just come up and talking like a jerk and stuff, you know.
	Just yelling or changing what's going on to better suit his needs so that he feels like he's getting the attention or whatever.
	And that's why I said the because you'd enjoy it thing because it seems like with my experience that abusive parents don't really like it when you're getting pleasure out of something that doesn't have anything to do with them.
	You know, have you experienced that?
	I mean, torturers don't like to see happiness, right?
	Yeah.
	Then they feel like they're not doing their job.
	Like, another thing, like my dad, you know, they're all quiet about everything, too.
	He's like, you better not talk about me and stuff like that while he's just being a complete asshole.
	And I thought that was pretty interesting.
	Bad people don't want you to talk about what's actually happening because they know it's wrong, obviously, or else it wouldn't be a problem.
	But then now he still has this delusion that, oh, everyone's against him, right?
	And we shouldn't want to talk about what happened when we were kids.
	It's just stupid.
	And, you know, the one of us, there's three of us, and the only one that talks to them for some reason is living in that house with his son.
	Like, and he only stays, you know, he uses them for resources, but at the same time he's subjecting his child to the same situation as he grew up in.
	And I'm pretty sure, you know, it's only a matter of time before he starts treating his son the way that he was treated.
	It's really unsettling.
	You know, to think that my nephew's going to have to go through, he's going to possibly have to go through the same things that we went through.
	And he's, for some reason, he just, uh, he just, like, denies it.
	He's like, it wasn't that bad, or, you know, you're complaining.
	He even says that there's nothing wrong with me physically, even still.
	Like, he's, he's the one...
	Okay, okay, I gotta, I gotta interrupt you here, because...
	Do you, do you think that I need more information about your parents?
	Uh...
	No, probably not at this point.
	No, listen, I mean, you convicted them of murder.
	I don't need parking tickets, right?
	Yeah, sorry.
	I'm just really, you know, kind of...
	No, no, listen, it's a powerful thing to listen to sorrow and pain and anger, horror.
	It's powerful to be heard, right?
	And I'm not disagreeing with anything you're saying.
	I fully accept and mirror your horror at how you were raised.
	I'm on the phone.
	Sorry.
	I'm on the phone with Stefan Molyneux, so not really okay, but...
	Oh, man.
	People.
	Sorry about that.
	I keep getting interrupted because people...
	Not your issue.
	But I... You have to make sure that you don't get into the sort of broken record of horror spray.
	Yeah.
	Because that will be overwhelming to a lot of people, right?
	And then you will end up feeling isolated again, right?
	I guess it's just like, there's so much that happened, and you're like one of the few people that actually get it, at least...
	No, no, listen, but just for other people, most people, the most they can drink, you know those little...
	I don't know if you ever...
	You ever do this where you mistake, like you think you've got a straw, but it's one of those coffee stir sticks with those two tiny little holes?
	Oh, yeah.
	And you try to drink and it's almost impossible.
	So the horror that comes from you and the agony and the abuse that you've received is like a fire hose.
	And most people, they just have the little coffee strainers to drink from, right?
	I see that it'd probably be a little overwhelming to people, yeah.
	It's not for me.
	It's not for me.
	I get it, right?
	But I do want to make sure that you're aware that some people may need sort of measured doses, and I fully get the degree to which evil was done to you as a child.
	And the tragic thing is that it feels like, I think, and I don't want to speak for your experience, it feels like You know, you get shot, there's a hospital, right?
	Yeah.
	But it feels like when you've experienced child abuse, a lot of times it feels like you got shot, you go to a hospital, they shoot you again.
	Because the number of people who can actually hear and appreciate and sympathize and understand and act as a witness to the immoralities we have suffered as children...
	It seems they just, oh, did your parents leave a knife at you?
	Let me squirt some lemon on it and twist it a little.
	Oh, yeah.
	That happens.
	It's happened before, like, so a lot of times, you know, I like to talk about it openly, though, because so many people are so unaware of it that I'm, like, pretty open about it.
	But, like, yeah, a lot of people, they're like, what?
	That's horrible.
	I don't want to listen to that.
	Or, like, They won't believe it.
	Or they just immediately start comparing it to their childhoods.
	Like it's a contest or something, you know?
	Right.
	That I really don't get.
	Well, it's a way of taking their focus off you and getting you to focus on them, right?
	You see, if you want to know how much empathy there is in the world, express pain.
	About your childhood and you will find out how much empathy there actually is in the world.
	I'm starting to and it's pretty low.
	It's pretty low.
	It's pretty tragic.
	Peak oil.
	Peak empathy.
	We're not running out of oil, we're running out of empathy.
	And the reason why people want you to talk about their childhoods rather than yours is that people shy away from their own lack of empathy.
	People will try to seriously avoid how unempathetic they are.
	And you know, like, I would gladly listen, too.
	But it's just the way that they do it.
	They, like, completely, like, almost, like, degrade you and your experiences.
	Or you'd listen if you thought it would come back, right?
	If you thought it would come back to you.
	Like, okay, now, right?
	Now I've listened to you, so maybe I can get some listening in, right, from you.
	And you know what really makes me piss?
	When people, like, laugh about it.
	Like, oh, like, that's kind of funny.
	Like, my brothers, they still think that vacuum thing is funny.
	That was horrifically painful.
	And they still, they're like, yeah, like, even when I said that, like, he apologized and shit, he still thinks that's funny.
	So I don't really know how sorry he really is because of that.
	But I thought he was, but now I think about it, he was actually laughing about that still.
	Jokes about sadism are just the white crosses over the graves of people's hearts.
	To me, this is just a confession that, hey, sorry sister, I didn't make it.
	My body didn't even make it.
	My ghost didn't even make it.
	Because I did such harm, my laughter now is my sign to you That I'm not only dead, but murderous inside.
	You know, I don't understand why he would stop talking to me.
	I really don't.
	It hurts, like, so bad.
	And now I don't even want to talk to him because of it.
	But, like, I don't know.
	He's in part responsible for it.
	So I don't really understand why he can think, like, oh, I can't be there now because it's hard on me.
	So you go and you deal with it all completely alone, even though you were there for me.
	When you're going through a really hard time, but I can't do this now for whatever reason.
	Violet, has he done therapy?
	I think that he was for a while.
	I'm not sure if he still is, but he was, I think, for a while.
	And I haven't talked to him in a long time, so I have no idea what he's doing anymore.
	Has he been in pursuit of self-knowledge that you know of?
	Well, he says he is, because like I said, he introduced me to you, and he's always got so much to say about what I was doing and what's wrong with how I'm behaving and stuff like that.
	Wait, what's wrong with how you're behaving?
	Oh, at the time.
	You need to stop venting to me about our parents.
	He wanted me to stop talking to my parents, which I wanted to also, but unfortunately I was really dependent on them.
	I was really sick, and I still...
	Still am, but, like, I don't know.
	It's just weird.
	I don't know.
	I'm sorry, I kind of figured out where we were.
	I'm getting kind of upset again.
	Yeah, I mean, the brother is another topic.
	I mean, the most precious enlightened witnesses are those who were actually there in our childhoods.
	But they're often the ones who deny our reality the most, right?
	Yeah.
	Because, like, my one brother, he just acts like we're exaggerating.
	But he had it worse, which I think he's broken, honestly.
	I think he's incapable of change because he doesn't want to try even.
	He refuses it.
	Like, it's like, basically, I'm, you know, overly emotional and stuff like that.
	Yeah, so, of course, you are the problem.
	Well, I personally wouldn't have, I mean, that wouldn't be somebody I'd have number one on my to-dial list.
	Yeah.
	Right, I mean, it's...
	As I've talked about before, when people have done things to you, evil things to you, for which restitution is impossible, I believe where restitution is impossible, forgiveness is impossible.
	Well, I don't...
	Yeah, because there are some things that just can't be made better.
	And especially when they're just refusing to acknowledge that it was wrong to begin with, you know?
	And you can't have a restitution if they're not even capable of realizing that it was bad to begin with.
	Well, or if they...
	If they admit that it was bad to you and then they're joking about it with your brothers, right?
	Like the vacuum cleaner.
	Yeah.
	Don't you just want to...
	I'm not saying you should.
	Don't you want to just take a really strong vacuum cleaner and sneak up behind them at some social event and start sucking their hair out of their scalp and say, hey, I heard this was really funny.
	Yeah.
	Aren't you having a great fucking time?
	It's hilarious.
	Yeah.
	That still wouldn't be the equivalent because I'm a girl and I had long hair, you know, so it all got tangled up in there.
	But still.
	But still.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I get what you're saying.
	Yeah.
	No, I don't know.
	Like, I'm not really like that.
	I'm not really aggressive anymore.
	I used to be...
	No, no, no.
	Look, I'm not saying that's your weekend plan.
	I'm just saying that they, of course, would react with horror and appalling and what the hell do you think you're doing?
	It's like, hey, I'm having fun!
	Right?
	Let's all laugh!
	Oh, yeah.
	If I had treated them the way that they treated me, yeah, they wouldn't be fans of me either, I'm sure.
	Right.
	And I understand why they did it, you know, because they were kids and they were being treated like that.
	But it doesn't make it okay, and it definitely doesn't make it okay now that they're kind of like, especially my one brother, just in complete denial about it and not willing to be supportive of me getting any help or anything like that.
	So I'm pretty much done with all of my family.
	Every once in a while I talk to my mom's relatives who didn't know anything about it because my...
	Mom kind of isolated herself from her family so that she could live in a horrible hell world of abuse with my father.
	I've got to interrupt you again.
	Why are we still talking about your mother and father?
	It's like you have this gravity well of this is a topic.
	And look, I'm not saying that you've told everything that there is to ever tell about what you suffered as a child.
	But it seems like you keep moving back to discussing details of your parents.
	Oh, I really, really wasn't.
	I was just mentioning that's why they don't know about it, because they weren't involved, so I still sometimes talk to them.
	But, yeah, that's all I was saying was that.
	I wasn't going off on another tangent, don't worry.
	Oh, no, I'm not saying that you were.
	And if that wasn't, do you feel connected to me as a person at the moment?
	Oh, yeah, I'm I've listened to you for quite a while now, and I feel comfortable talking to you.
	That's probably why I'm going off so easily, honestly.
	Right, right.
	And how is your heart at the moment?
	What's that?
	What's that?
	Oh, sorry, I wasn't sure if somebody called you from the back.
	Yeah, hold on one second.
	I'm on the phone, please.
	I'm on the phone.
	I do.
	I've been waiting for this phone call for months.
	I can't.
	Why can't I be on the stairs?
	I'm not in the bathroom.
	Hello?
	I'm sorry.
	People are screaming at me, apparently.
	I asked you what's in the bathroom.
	I asked you what's in the bathroom.
	We can pick this up later.
	Hello?
	What's that?
	Sorry.
	Maybe they're done now.
	No, it's fine now.
	They're done now, I think.
	They're just drinking and screaming, so...
	I'm not in the bathroom.
	Go ahead.
	Okay.
	Anyways.
	Okay.
	We're still ready.
	Regardless.
	I've been waiting for a phone call for months.
	You need to stop.
	Seriously, you're pissing me off.
	Please stop.
	All right.
	I'm sorry about that.
	Go downstairs!
	Go downstairs!
	What?
	No, girl.
	Don't get no...
	Anyways.
	Phase what?
	Well, first of all, we can pick this up later if you want.
	And second of all, let me just ask you a practical question, right?
	I don't care.
	Go ahead.
	Is there any practical help that you need at the moment that would be important?
	Say it again, please.
	Is there any practical help that you need at the moment that would be essential for you?
	Like in terms of money or resources or anything like that, that would make a big difference?
	I don't really...
	The only thing that I'm really doing right now, like for money and resources and stuff like that, is I sell paintings.
	But I don't, like I said, I don't really talk to family.
	And it's not like...
	Most people don't have a lot of money, so they're not really willing to give it out.
	But, uh...
	Well, listen, I mean, so...
	Well, hang on.
	So...
	If we could get you into a room or a little apartment or something like that for a month, would that give you a start to get somewhere else?
	Would that allow you to get a job?
	Just from a very practical sense, is there anything we could kickstart?
	I've done this for a couple of listeners before when they're in a really tough place financially.
	I'm happy to kick in.
	I'm sure listeners would be happy to kick in some money to get you to some place which was a little bit more relaxing.
	I'm not...
	Yeah, I'm trying to actually get...
	I would like to...
	That would be awesome because I'm trying to actually get to Ohio so I can be with the one other person that feels the same way I feel about this stuff.
	Yeah, because right now I'm living in a really bad area.
	Yeah, and I didn't like that you were saying that guys are harassing you and stuff.
	So what do you need to get to Ohio?
	Well...
	I don't really know exactly.
	I really don't want to stay in any more homeless shelters, so probably just enough to stay somewhere for, like you said, a month or something, and then I could probably get there, though.
	Okay, well listen, we don't have to get into the details of this now, but send a message to Mike and figure out what you need.
	And I'll certainly kick in, I'm sure, with the community.
	If you want to donate at FDRURL.com, just mention Violet in the comments and we'll forward the money directly.
	So listen, we'll get you set up in a place where it's a little bit more relaxing, but you have a little bit more of a community.
	And I get that selling paintings is a tough way to get to Ohio.
	So just keep us informed.
	We'll get you sorted out.
	At least as far as that goes.
	And get you someplace which is a little bit more secure where you can hopefully start to build a life with some companionship.
	Wow, thank you so much.
	You're welcome.
	Thank you so much, Stefan.
	And I should probably let you go now, though, because it doesn't look like I'm going to really be capable of getting as much privacy as I would have liked.
	Okay, good.
	Well, listen, again, we'll be in touch, and we'll figure out how we can get you to some places a little more safe and secure.
	We like to put a little bit of motion behind the air of words that are constantly flowing out of the show.
	So, listen, thanks so much for the call-in.
	Massive kudos, massive sympathies, and we will do what we can to help you out, of course.
	If you want to donate, fdrurl.com slash donate, throw Violet in the name, and we'll forward it.
	Directly to her.
	And of course, we'll kick in something from up here as well.
	So, I guess that's it for tonight's show.
	I really, really do appreciate you, everybody calling in.
	I hope that you have a wonderful, wonderful week.
	And thanks to Mike, thanks to Stoyan, thanks to everyone who's donated to help make this Thank you so much, everyone.

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