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Oct. 9, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

03:07:25

2817 WIN-WIN or WIN-LOSE – Wednesday Call In Show October 8th, 2014

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	Good evening, everybody.
	It's Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio.
	Do I sound tired?
	Do I sound drained?
	Well, I can tell you this.
	Never before in the history of Freedom Aid Radio have I felt more like having a cigarette after a presentation than I have after three hours of Ayn Rand!
	And, um...
	I also wanted to mention that I have, in the course of my life, heard many women complain about childbirth ladies.
	I'm afraid I have you beat.
	32 years in the making.
	It was, in fact, 32 years ago that I first started reading The Rand Bot, and I have finally managed to get The Truth About Ayn Rand out.
	And the first is out.
	The second one is going to be, I would say, produced.
	But basically, it's released into the wild, leaving a bloody trail of rational integrity in its wake.
	And so, you squatting and shitting the sideways watermelon known as The Truth About Ayn Rand has been quite exciting for me.
	It really is my white whale.
	I've really tried to do our smoky Russian vixen I'm glad that we're both atheists otherwise.
	I'm fairly sure she would come back from the dead and breathe smoke into my gaping eyeballs.
	So, please go to youtube.com slash freedomainradio to check them out.
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	60 frames a second, smooth facial.
	It's just wonderful.
	You know, the more you up resolution on YouTube...
	The older you get.
	Thought you didn't have spots?
	Try 1080p.
	You want to look like Lance Hendrickson's entire visage of human mortality?
	Oh yeah!
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	So yeah, I hope you'll check it out.
	We've got Part 3 coming out soon.
	And I'm happy with them.
	They've been really a lot of work.
	And I've tried to keep them relatively short, but it is quite a mouthful of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics, and aesthetics to chew.
	So I hope you will help them out.
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	So, that's it for the FDRURL.com slash donate request.
	Let us move on to the callers.
	Alright, up first today is Andrew.
	And Andrew wrote in and said, How do I discriminate my emotions effectively between parent alter egos and my true self when each parent represents opposite ends of the PET, parental effectiveness training, spectrum, with my father being dictatorial and my mother being permissive?
	Wow.
	I believe the answer is 42.
	Okay.
	Next!
	Next!
	I appreciate that.
	Okay, so flash this amorphous question out a little bit and see if we can swing somewhere in the right vicinity.
	Sure, sure.
	So, I just want to say up front, the complete necessary ass-kissing.
	I totally love your show.
	It's changed my life and everything, and I am donating, so just wanted to get that out there.
	I appreciate everything.
	Oh, wait, donating?
	Yes, sir.
	Oh, I'm sorry.
	Then I'm totally going to pay attention to what you're saying.
	I just want to mention that up front.
	I'm not going to bring out my PlayStation handheld and just wait until you stop breathing and have a completely unrelated rant.
	You get as much of my full attention...
	Ooh, shiny.
	Stop!
	Stop!
	Sorry!
	I'm back!
	I'm back!
	Focus!
	I'm sorry.
	So, Andrea, go ahead.
	Andrew.
	Just kidding.
	I know it's Andrew.
	Go ahead.
	So, my dad spanked me when I was a kid.
	And I don't think that much, but a good enough amount where I was pretty afraid of it.
	And he was the disciplinarian in the family.
	And my mom would basically...
	Be the one that would coddle me afterwards and give excuses for my dad like, oh, he just had a stressful day or he loves you, he just doesn't know how to show it and more bullshit like that.
	And would also use him as a threat because she was a stay-at-home mom and would threaten me and my brothers with telling my dad what was going on when he got home.
	But in my relationship right now with my girlfriend, I find that trying to figure out my true self and what I really want out of the relationship and expressing myself with my girlfriend and conversations and arguments we have, I either swing from kind of this humiliating, bully-ish version of my dad to passive, permissive, quiet about everything version of my mom.
	And a lot of my difficulties have been revolving around that.
	Can I make sense?
	Yeah, I think I completely understand.
	Do you have, like, sort of any third pole to go to?
	So you swing between the one permissive and authoritarian?
	And just for those who are not aware, and I'm sure you're aware of this, Andrew, but the authoritarian is I'm going to win and you're going to lose, right?
	Right.
	And the permissive is you're going to win and I'm going to lose, right?
	But I will get you back in passive-aggressive ways.
	Is it sort of like that?
	Yes.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	So if you are in relationships, the absolute north star to guide by is win-win interactions.
	Right.
	And I've got a whole series on how to negotiate and all that.
	But the real focus is on win-win interactions.
	But win-win negotiations require patience.
	And they require having the capacity to manage anxiety.
	And the managing of anxiety is...
	If you're used to win-lose negotiations and you try to approach them win-win, there's an anxiety which is, well, I'm now going to lose because I'm being, quote, more reasonable and the other person's going to see that as a sign of weakness and dominate me and win and all that.
	So there is, and of course, when you go for win-win negotiations, if you achieve them, there's significant heartbreak involved if you grow up like most of us did with win-lose negotiations.
	And the heartbreak is what?
	What do you think it is?
	That you assume the other person lost somehow?
	Or...
	I'm not sure.
	Well, I think that the heartbreak is about history.
	Oh, yeah, right.
	So we didn't get the significant win-win negotiation-style parenting when we were growing up, and that makes us focus on that more?
	Yeah, it's very painful.
	If you achieve win-win negotiations, it helps you to understand just how...
	Unnecessary all the win-lose stuff was when you were growing up.
	How much or how many opportunities were lost for genuine love and affection and bonding and all that kind of good stuff that can happen with win-win.
	To me, relationships are win-win.
	If it's not win-win, it's exploitation.
	And that, to me, is not a relationship.
	If If a brain parasite can do it, it's not love.
	And so the only way to get win-win, really with human beings at any conceptual level, is through negotiation and through the absolute refusal to dominate the other person.
	The absolute steadfast grit your teeth, cross your legs, stuff your balls halfway up your ass, crack and bounce up and down like a trampoline if you need to.
	The absolute refusal to dominate the other person.
	I see.
	Or, and of course because you love them, the refusal to let them dominate you as well, right?
	Right.
	Okay, so give me a conflict where this kind of comes up.
	I'd say, well, a personal conflict that's kind of been going on.
	In the past, I read, I don't know if you heard the Sex at Dawn book, but it was before I got into your show.
	And I had basically persuaded my girlfriend at the time, which is the same girlfriend I have now, to go into an open relationship.
	And a lot of distrust and self-sabotage and ruining of the relationship happened because of that.
	And Okay, okay, hang on.
	Sorry.
	I'm sorry.
	I feel we're just, you and I are walking along, and one of us fell down a manhole, and we're just continuing to chat as if we're both still walking next to each other.
	Okay.
	And, you know, inserting long tubular object-like person into hole in sidewalk is probably the most obvious metaphor for this part of the conversation.
	Okay, so you read Sex at Dawn.
	Oh, yeah.
	And then you thought, you know what I'm missing?
	Broader exposure to a wide variety of sexually transmitted diseases.
	Exactly.
	You know what really enhanced my life?
	Penicillin and crotch rot.
	Okay, so what was the...
	I've not read Sex at Dawn.
	And it's on the list.
	But what was it in the book that made you think that the open relationship would be good?
	Yes.
	Yeah, I was convinced, but at that time in my life, I was just not in a good place mentally.
	I pretty much diagnosed myself as crazy in a technical term.
	So are you telling me that you don't want to answer my question?
	I'm sorry.
	The question was, yeah, it made me want to be in an open relationship.
	Yeah, I got that.
	What was it in the book that made you think that Sex at Dawn was the – what arguments did the book give you for an open relationship?
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	That throughout human history, tribes, the best way to connect to other tribes and provide stability was to have promiscuity among the tribe members.
	That was basically the main argument.
	So you'd meet a tribe across the jungle and you would have sex with them and it would build communication and your connection with them, keeping you safe.
	So the idea being that if nobody knows which kid is part of which tribe, they're basically going to kind of get along with each other?
	Exactly, yeah.
	So all the kids are raised by all the parents, and yeah.
	Okay.
	Okay, let's just say that's true.
	Okay, let's just say that's completely true.
	Andrew, do you mind answering me a question?
	Yeah, yeah.
	I don't mind.
	Were you having any kids?
	No.
	Isn't that kind of the point?
	Yeah, you're right.
	I mean, yes, I'm sure if we could get some Middle Eastern gangbang with all the Jews and Palestinians and everyone all mixed up in one primordial baby oil bathed soup of massive rampant sex, they'd be like, I don't know whose kid is who.
	Kumbaya, my lord.
	Yeah, I don't know.
	But that's not going to happen, right?
	Because tribes are usually pretty fierce about keeping the tsunami of sperm tightly contained within the tribal structure, right?
	Right, right.
	Okay.
	So basically, you wanted sex with other people and you wanted to have a girlfriend too, right?
	Right.
	Because the whole idea of, you know, if you have kids with other tribes, that brings people together.
	Well, you weren't having kids.
	So the whole argument falls apart, right?
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Okay.
	All right.
	So why do you think you wanted sex with other people in your relationship?
	Um...
	I mean, there's obvious, you know, variety and blah-de-blah-de-blah, but what else do you think there was that impulse?
	I think I had a problem controlling my own sexual impulses and I wasn't happy in the relationship at that time.
	I don't really feel like our relationship was based on anything real.
	Like I remember hearing you say in a previous podcast a long time ago that it was kind of a fusion of clouds that happened.
	We met each other and just kind of fell in love and it was lustful.
	Sorry, not love.
	You did what now?
	Fell for lust for each other and basically fused mind, body, and soul.
	Okay, so sperm splashed egg.
	Yeah.
	And we'll call it love for want of a better word, right?
	Right, right.
	Okay, got it.
	Got it.
	The kind of love that you have to argue who sleeps in the wet spot.
	Got it.
	Okay.
	That's what I call love.
	Laundry.
	Laundry.
	Alright.
	And what about your girlfriend do you have affection for or why do you think you're in the relationship?
	She's incredibly honest now about her thoughts and feelings.
	And if I ever...
	When I talk about my own thoughts and feelings...
	She shows a genuine sympathy and empathy with me and is very supportive in what I'm doing through work and what I'm going through with my parents right now and has basically become a great ally.
	She listens to the show too now and also a donator and I don't get as great of conversations anywhere else in the world than I do with her.
	Is she there?
	Oh yeah, she's right here looking at me, taking notes.
	Hi.
	Does she want to talk?
	You want to talk?
	Okay.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Hello.
	Hi, how you doing?
	I'm sorry to drag you in, but I'm kind of curious.
	I just got really nervous.
	I have a couple of questions if you don't mind.
	All right.
	All right.
	So.
	Yes.
	Andrew says, if I understand this correctly.
	Honey, read this book.
	Yes.
	Let's sleep around.
	Yeah.
	Okay, help me, you know, help me fathom why you didn't, you know, say, punch him in the penis for that.
	I think...
	Good luck sleeping around with a corkscrew there, boyo.
	I... Remember feeling very alone at the time, and almost this attachment to him at the time, and I didn't feel like an individual.
	And along with that, I've realized comes with how my relationship was, especially with my mother.
	So...
	I felt very lost, and I felt like I would be even more lost if I didn't at least have that, when really I probably would have been free.
	But that's where I was then, I believe.
	I mean, I don't want to reduce it to something simple, because I know it's not.
	But did you just really fear being alone?
	Yes, yes.
	And I had moved out away from my family for school.
	They live in Texas still, and I moved out to California.
	So for some reason at that time I thought they were my connection, and then I was lost from them.
	It was very confusing.
	And what was your emotion?
	What did your heart say when Andrew suggested...
	Sleeping around?
	I was very angry.
	I have my journal.
	It was very intense and angry, but I reserved that from him.
	I didn't show that because I was timid.
	I felt timid.
	You felt scared?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	And how long ago was this?
	About a year ago.
	And how long did the open relationship last?
	If it's still going, obviously that would be a year, but...
	Yeah, no, it didn't really happen.
	Neither of us really...
	It didn't really expand.
	No takers?
	No takers.
	Oh, is that like, did you both go out and try?
	And people were like, not so much?
	I haven't read that book, so...
	I think he talked to a girl.
	He messaged on Facebook that he told me about eventually, but she didn't want to have anything to do with it.
	And I didn't attempt, or I attempted, but didn't really want to.
	Like, I had talked to a fellow, but nothing came of it.
	It was just texting, and I felt weird.
	Yeah.
	You felt weird, like, flirting with a guy when you're in a relationship?
	Yes, yes.
	I felt very uncomfortable with it.
	And he was a very...
	That guy in general made me feel very uncomfortable.
	Oh, the guy you were texting?
	Yeah, yeah.
	I'm curious why, but that's not particularly relevant to...
	So I think I'll eat my own curiosity.
	Now, did you feel...
	I assume you felt angry throughout the process of...
	This supposed openness?
	Yes.
	Or did it diminish?
	We eventually came back to talking about it.
	It was actually after he started listening to your show where he just kind of brought it all up to me and really was emotional about it.
	What up to you?
	Brought up the show and virtue and being honest.
	He was really...
	Upset about not being honest in the past.
	And what was he not honest about?
	About talking to these women and having these feelings for other women while we were dating at previous jobs and things like that.
	Oh, sorry.
	So before...
	He proposed the open relationship, he had had thoughts and wanted to flirt with other girls?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	Yes.
	So, and then when he found your show, he kind of expressed what he had learned from the show, and that's when it kind of diminished.
	So no physical activity actually came from it.
	From the open relationship?
	Yes.
	It's like open door, nobody walked through, right?
	Yes, yes.
	Okay.
	And when did you decide to, I assume you've closed off that option, when did you decide to do that?
	It was only a few months after, or if that, after it was decided to open doors.
	Right.
	And then when did it close again?
	When did it close?
	Yeah, like when did you decide to be...
	Only...
	So when we closed to being an open relationship, it was a few months after we had decided to do an open relationship.
	So it didn't really last.
	Okay, got it.
	Now, I'm going to assume, and obviously correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm going to assume that in your childhood, your...
	If you had an opposition to what was going on, it was not exactly welcomed in your family.
	Is that fair to say?
	Yeah.
	Yes, very much so.
	And how was that?
	What happened?
	Well, first I was very pushed as a child.
	I danced all my life and still dance.
	And I was compared to other children a lot from my mother, so I think that made me feel a little unimportant as a kid.
	You mean sort of in the dance world, like that girl's thinner, that girl has a better pirouette or that kind of stuff?
	Yeah, or that girl's more outgoing.
	It sounds like you're quite emotional at the moment.
	How are you feeling?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Really sad about that and angry almost that as a kid I had to experience that.
	The comparison with the other dancers and so on?
	Yes.
	And how would your mother talk about you in relation to other dancers?
	Well just like, oh, this girl.
	She does this many lessons and you only do this many lessons or smiles really big when she's on stage and you look at the ground and or why did you mess up on that turn and like very much like that.
	Right.
	Now, did it feel sort of like a constant stream of criticism and negativity?
	Was there positive stuff mixed in there as well?
	No, I felt pretty constant negativity.
	And when I was young, when there was some sort of positive...
	I was probably about seven and she would come and try to like hug and kiss and I was like I'd ask mom did you just read a parenting magazine like I knew no no I knew at a kid as a kid that and she's like how did you know it's just because it felt a nor it didn't feel like the normal for her to come up and do that so I knew it's important to hug your children must insert hugging module mommy coming for hug Yeah.
	In clothes, child, in flesh, tentacles.
	Yeah, okay.
	Exactly.
	Yes.
	And I'm the oldest out of five children as well, so there's pressure to take care of brothers and sisters or be a good role model for brothers and sisters or your sister gets better grades than you and she's younger and things like that in the family as well.
	Did your mother achieve her own life's ambitions or goals?
	No.
	That's always something that troubles me about people who are heavily critical.
	I'm not trying to give you sympathy for your mom because I can hear the pain even more so in the little laughs you have at the end of the sentence than the sentence itself.
	I can feel the pain that you had at this wearing down.
	It's like a sand rain of negativity that just kind of scrubs you And wears you down.
	So I'm not trying to give you sympathy for your mother, but I'll tell you this.
	When I hear somebody who's very critical of other people, I see somebody who is a failure in their own goals.
	Yes.
	And this is the worst thing.
	You don't want to take feedback from people who...
	Are not achieving what they say they want for you, right?
	Yes, or happiness whatsoever.
	No happiness.
	Right, right, right.
	You know, I'm not much of a critic.
	I mean, I certainly will.
	If I read something that I think is just good and instructive for helping other people think or whatever, then I will write about that.
	And I definitely do criticize.
	But what I mean is that my major goal is to create.
	Mm-hmm.
	Not to critique.
	And to me, criticizing other people, particularly nagging them, is so disastrous.
	It's so destructive.
	You know, the people who are successful in life and the people you actually want instruction from are the people you go to voluntarily and say, hey, how did you do that?
	Can I do that too?
	Not the people who just like...
	Hang off your neck and whine and complain and sink their stinging negative fangs into your jugular and drain your lifeblood of the will to live, right?
	Yes, exactly.
	And make you self-conscious and make you worried and make you hyper-competitive and insecure and all that stuff.
	Yes, all that stuff.
	Because it's exhausting.
	Being around people who are very critical is intensely exhausting.
	Yes.
	Because you have to regularly fight the urge to strangle them.
	And all you can do is go limp so that you don't end up having to strangle them.
	I'm laughing because I know that it's really tough.
	And from what I've experienced in the creative realm, there's nothing that drives success more than enthusiasm.
	And there's no know-it-all like somebody who's failed to achieve.
	Nobody knows more that every step you need to take to be successful than someone who has never succeeded at anything fundamental.
	It's called the Donnie Kruger effect.
	Donnie Kruger, I think it is.
	And it's based upon research that has shown that the more dumb people are, the easier they think everything is.
	Yeah, yes.
	And the less experience they have in something, the easier they think it is to do.
	It's going to be, yeah.
	Yeah.
	And nobody lectures you more than somebody who doesn't have a clue what they're doing or what you need to do.
	Yeah.
	Very much like a lecture most of childhood.
	And not a motivating lecture, right?
	No, no, not at all.
	Better kind of drag yourself around the stage and try and do something right rather than enjoy yourself and have fun, right?
	Yes, and kind of drove one of my siblings to, she had an eating disorder as well.
	And I believe a lot of that negativity or all of it had to do with that.
	Was she also in a Heavy body image field.
	No, she wasn't.
	She was actually the one who she did really well in school.
	She's very intelligent.
	You know, she was the one that my mom would be like, look, you know, Amy gets these grades, Sarah.
	You don't get these grades.
	You know, Amy does this really well.
	Amy doesn't fight.
	Amy, you know, works with the brothers really well because I have two younger brothers.
	And so that was...
	Sorry, I lost track.
	Well, of course, you know, when parents compare one sibling to another, they're blaming the children.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	So, if your mother says, well, your sister does all this good stuff and you don't, what she's saying is, hey, look, I created another kid who does all this wonderful stuff.
	How come you don't, right?
	As if there's no difference in how you may have been treated.
	As if there's no difference in being further up or further down in the birth order.
	Yeah.
	And it is so incredibly destructive to say to a sibling, well, why don't you do it like this other sibling does it?
	Because I'm not that other sibling.
	Yes, and I think, and I can't speak for 100%, but I think that was destructive for her as well because she had this idea that she had to be perfect all the time.
	She felt like she couldn't make mistakes.
	She had to be the statue of perfection through which your mother could compare all the other siblings to and found wanting.
	So she's got to be the statue of angelic perfection so that your sister can use her to club.
	Sorry, your mother can use her to club the other kids, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	Yes.
	Right.
	I'm sorry.
	I feel bad.
	I'm very sorry.
	I feel like I'm...
	No, no, no.
	You're not taking it out because the question is, right?
	I mean, the reason I asked you...
	Well, you know why I asked you why it's tough for you to say no, right?
	Because you didn't want an open relationship, right?
	No.
	And why not?
	Um...
	I have a hard time explaining the exact reasons, but it didn't feel right.
	This feels weird.
	But at the same time, I was like, well, I don't really know how relationships are supposed to work.
	So maybe...
	I was very confused.
	I felt like I... Yeah.
	Great.
	Do you mind if I give you a few ideas as to why you had the feelings you had?
	Of course, I would love that.
	Okay.
	It's humiliating.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	It's humiliating.
	It's humiliating because no matter what anthropological bullshit gets piled on top of it, your boyfriend is saying, you are not sexually or romantic enough for me.
	I need other people.
	Right?
	Yes.
	Which is humiliating.
	Yeah.
	You know, if you and I are talking at a party and I say to you, you're boring.
	I'm going to go talk to someone else.
	Yeah.
	You wouldn't experience that as a big compliment from me, right?
	No.
	Because I'm saying, look, your conversation is just not satisfying to me.
	Now, I get that the Polyamorous people or the open relationship people say, well, yeah, but you don't go to a party and just talk to one person the whole night, right?
	Yes.
	But sex is not that.
	No.
	Human beings, at least in the modern world, and not just in the modern world, are pair-bonded.
	And the reason we're pair-bonded is our children require such a ridiculous and outlandish amount of resources to get to adulthood and Like, it's completely insane.
	There's no other species, to my knowledge, that has this delay to ratio.
	Maybe elephants, but you need, like, staggering amounts of resources to raise even one child, let alone two or three, right?
	And so it doesn't work when you mingle.
	When people kind of rotate in and rotate out, like, it just doesn't work.
	That makes sense.
	Kids thrive with constant relationships.
	Kids thrive with pair-bonded parents.
	Kids thrive with predictability and trust in relationships, not with people cycling in and out.
	That they keep having to adjust to new people and figure out how they need that predictability and that trust, right?
	Yes.
	And so, from a sexual standpoint, there are two things that That work really well when it comes to sex and babies and pair bonding.
	Number one, female chastity works really well.
	And number two, male loyalty works really well.
	And so the whole purpose historically of civilization has been To get women and men to not have children they can't afford and not to have children until they're in a socially reinforced pair bonding situation.
	Boy, there's a hallmark card for you.
	Congratulations on your socially reinforced pair bonding situation.
	And this is what allows children to thrive.
	This is what allows parents to invest the most into their children.
	And so when women sleep around...
	Men don't commit.
	When men don't commit, women sleep around.
	When women sleep around and men don't commit, you get an explosion not only of single motherhood, but you get an explosion of infidelity in marriage, right?
	Yes.
	That makes sense.
	And so when someone comes up to you, because look, you know, you know you've got eggs, right?
	Yes.
	And those eggs would love to turn themselves into babies.
	And sex, enormously fun, that it is, is pretty much about the babies, right?
	Yes.
	It's not just like a toy that we can do whatever we want with without consequences.
	And your eggs don't know anything about birth control.
	And your eggs don't know anything about a book called Sex at Dawn.
	Your eggs are like, well, we'd really like to become babies and...
	We'd like some tits.
	In fact, we'd like huge amounts of tits with massive amounts of milk night after night, day after day.
	Every two hours is, you know...
	It sounds like me on my honeymoon.
	Anyway, but we want all of that.
	We want milk.
	We want cuddles.
	We want security.
	No tigers is a definite plus.
	Warmth, shelter, all that's what your eggs want, right?
	We want a man who's going to bring us resources...
	So that we can feed the eggs, the babies, right?
	Right?
	Man, bring meat.
	Meat, fill woman.
	Woman, make milk.
	Milk, feed baby.
	Baby poop on man's leg.
	And that's, I mean, that's what sexuality is all about, right?
	Now, look, I'm not a Catholic.
	I mean, recreational sex is absolutely fantastic and no problem with that whatsoever, right?
	But...
	This open relationship stuff is treating sex as pure recreation, right?
	For everyone.
	It's sort of like treating food like just junk food.
	Now, junk food is fine.
	Junk food is fine.
	Everything in moderation, but you can't live on junk food.
	And recreational sex is great, fantastic, right?
	But fundamentally, It is about, we're designed emotionally and physically for sex to be about babies because we evolved with no birth control, right?
	And so things have got kind of lunatic in the sexual realm.
	And when you say to your man, you can go ahead and sleep around, there's only two possibilities.
	I'm speaking as your eggs, right?
	Yes.
	There are only two possibilities.
	Number one, the relationship he has with some other woman is worse than the relationship he has with you.
	The sex he has with the other woman is worse than the sex he has with you.
	In which case, why would he be doing it?
	Yeah.
	As Paul Newman said about his wife, he said he was considered one of the best-looking guys in the world, and kind of was.
	And they said, like, you never have affairs.
	He's like, well, why would you go out for a hamburger when you've got steak at home?
	Oh, I like that.
	I like that, too.
	Joanne Woodward.
	She could get her funk on, I imagine.
	She could get her groove going.
	So either he's going out and having bad sex with nasty women.
	Mm-hmm.
	In which case, like, dude, what are you doing?
	You know?
	I've got a lovely frittata at home.
	Why are you peeling up roadkill from the side of the road, holding your lighter under it, and eating the leg?
	Like, why would you do that?
	That's gross, right?
	Uh-huh.
	So either he's going to have bad sex with another woman, or just not as good as you, in which case, what's the point?
	Or he's going to go out and find that he's having better sex and having a better relationship with some woman, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	Then how does that feel?
	That was what I think worried me.
	One of the things that I thought about the most within that.
	Yeah, what if he does better, right?
	Yeah.
	What if he finds out, I'm warming up roadkill with a lighter, and out there are New York sirloins, right?
	Yeah.
	Right.
	In which case, why would he come back?
	Why would he come back?
	Yeah, so if he goes out and has great sex with some woman who's way better than you, whatever that means, right?
	I'm just talking about the thoughts, right?
	Then why would he come back?
	To have mediocre sex with you when he could have great sex with someone else.
	Yeah, I'm not really sure.
	Because then sex with you is going to be something he just kind of puts up with, right?
	Yes.
	So, you can't have exactly the equal sex and interactions with two different people.
	So, it's either worse, in which case, why bother, or it's better, in which case, why come back?
	Does that make sense?
	Yes, it makes sense.
	Now, if he's going out and having bad sex with someone else, that's humiliating.
	Because it's like, well, why are you going out and having bad sex with someone when you can have good sex with me?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	But if he goes out and has great sex with someone and comes back and stays with you, that's also humiliating.
	Because it's like, well, why are you coming back?
	Exactly.
	And why, like, if the sex can be improved, and by sex I don't just mean, like, physical sex, but romance or what, like, the whole romantic thing.
	If it can be improved, then he should be improving it with you, right?
	Which is, I feel, where we have taken it now.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, good.
	I mean, you can work on, you know, technique and whatever it is.
	Like, that stuff can all be enhanced in a relationship.
	You can make that commitment to, you know, this relationship is so great, I'm not putting up with merely okay sex or even good sex.
	It's got to be great sex, right?
	Right.
	Okay.
	Well, I'm going to assume that Andrew knows that you have had a history in your childhood of not being able to say no.
	I think so.
	Does he know that or not?
	Do you know I have a history of not being able to say no?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	Does he know that you were negatively compared to other women or other girls when you were growing up?
	Yes, he knows that.
	Okay.
	Does he know That asking for an open relationship is bringing back all this comparing to other girls when you were a child, which is why I was talking about better and worse.
	You're basically being compared to others in an open relationship, right?
	Yes.
	He knows that?
	You can put him back on if you want.
	Okay.
	Hold on.
	Hello?
	Yo.
	Sorry about that detour.
	I just wanted to sort of get the view from that side.
	No problem.
	Okay, so you know that your girlfriend has a history of not being able to say no and of being compared to other people, right?
	Right.
	And so when you went into an open relationship where you suggested that, deep down I'm sure that she was going to feel compared to other women, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	It sounds like you've gone limp conversationally and you're still there.
	Yeah, I'm still here.
	What are you thinking?
	I feel really shitty.
	Go on.
	It was...
	Just this feeling of using her in the relationship.
	Using her to both have a girlfriend and have sex with random people and totally annihilating her wants and needs in the relationship.
	And you knew to some degree about her childhood before that, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I did.
	Yeah, I knew a lot about her childhood.
	All of our first conversations were about growing up.
	Right.
	So, you know, when you listen to someone about their childhood, about her childhood, that's very privileged information, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	And...
	When you know something, this is why I say to people, talk to each other about your childhood, so why I suggest, I mean, like I can tell anyone to do anything, but it's because when you know something about someone else's childhood, it gives you the responsibility of that knowledge, right?
	Right, yeah.
	Right, so if you're suggesting something that might be negative for her and you know that she had no real capacity or ability to say no as a child, you have to be incredibly gentle and Tender in how you bring things up that she might want to say no to, right?
	Right.
	And of course, you know, we were talking about win-win relationships.
	This was win-lose, right?
	You got what you wanted, which was the opportunity for sex with other people, and she did not get.
	You were pursuing a positive, she was avoiding a negative, which is win-lose, right?
	Yes.
	Yeah, I understand that now.
	Okay, so how...
	How do you think you could have re-approached this if you had a time machine so that it could be win-win?
	I could have told her how I was feeling, I guess, disconnected and not happy.
	And tried to figure out what was wrong with her by talking to her, letting her know how I felt before, trying to come up with a solution myself.
	Was there something missing in the sexual relationship that you thought you could replace with something else, someone else?
	No.
	No.
	I just...
	I think it was a...
	I don't know.
	I don't think there was anything missing sexually.
	I mean, we had...
	Yeah.
	Well, if you wanted sex with other people, there must have been something missing sexually, right?
	Right.
	Yeah.
	If I want to eat Indian and I don't have Indian at home, then I go out for Indian, right?
	What's missing?
	Indian I'm not saying was there anything wrong with her or was there anything wrong with you but oftentimes we will look for variety in partners because we don't feel self-expressed about our sexual desires and wants in a relationship Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Like, I can get my freak on with someone new who won't be freaked out, but this person who I'm in love with, I can't talk about that.
	Whatever, right?
	Right.
	Yeah, I think...
	I think that will...
	I mean, fuck.
	I, uh...
	I guess she was more on the conservative side, and I was, like you said, looking to get my freak on.
	And it was a very confusing experience for me, I think.
	Right.
	You gotta share your freak with the people you love, right?
	Yeah.
	Alright, that's it.
	I'm getting you a song.
	Don't worry, I won't sing it to you, but I will get you a song by Macy Gray.
	Okay.
	You know who Macy Gray is?
	You're pretty young, right?
	She's kind of old school now, I guess, right?
	Sure.
	The name sounds familiar.
	I don't know any of her songs.
	Hang on a sec.
	Let me see if I can get this.
	So the song is Sexual Revolution...
	For some reason, my keyboard is giving me every...
	Oh, there we go.
	Okay.
	Yeah, she's this kind of foggy-voiced singer from about 10 or 20 years ago.
	Okay.
	And let me just see if I can get these lyrics up here.
	Okay.
	Here we go.
	Are you ready?
	Yeah.
	Hit me.
	Everybody, shake it.
	Time to be free amongst yourselves.
	Your mama told you to be discreet and keep your freak to yourself.
	But your mama lied to you all this time.
	She knows as well as you and I. You've got to express what is taboo in you and share your freak with the rest of us.
	Because it's a beautiful thing.
	And I think that's pretty important.
	Yeah, I agree.
	Everybody break it.
	Every rule, every constriction.
	My papa told me to be home by now, but my party has just begun.
	Maybe he'll understand that I've got to be the freak that God made me.
	So many things I want to try.
	Got to do them before I die.
	I'm so funkin' beautiful!
	Especially when I take my clothes off.
	So, yes, I think that sharing your freak with the...
	It's Presley.
	Get Presley!
	But no, the video's not great, but definitely the music, I think, is great.
	And, you know, human sexuality is a multifaceted diamond of heaven and hell.
	And sharing what is sexually exciting, you know, can be a challenge.
	But there's...
	It's really, really important.
	You know, there's no variety like sexual honesty.
	That gets you the variety that you're looking for.
	Plus it gets the intimacy, plus it gets the trust.
	And don't prejudge other people's freak reaction.
	You know, if you're with a woman you love, a woman you care about, a man you care about, talk to them and say...
	I've always been curious about this.
	I always wanted to try this.
	This is really cool.
	And, you know, this is a little alarming.
	It can be anything.
	You don't have to do anything, but talk about it.
	And I think that is the best way to...
	I mean, when I was a kid, I've said this before on the show, but when I was a kid, there was a couple who lived upstairs.
	And they were a French couple who were...
	I don't know, I was a kid, so they seemed approximately 9,800 years old.
	Like something out of the Old Testament.
	And I can't remember under what circumstances the man told me this, but the man was telling me, he said, look, if you don't get married, son, if you don't get married, you might date 10 or 20 people your whole life.
	But if you do get married, you'll date thousands because your partner and you will always be changing and always be growing.
	And that really stuck with me.
	If you commit to honesty, you will have far more variety in a monogamous relationship than anything you can ever get from serial monogamy or polygamy or anything like that.
	Simply the stand, the courage to stand with someone in the same room and unpack your mind and unpack your heart will provoke and produce so much variety that it's impossible to tire Of a single person with honesty.
	Whereas if you date other people, you will get superficial variety, but a monotonous sameness.
	If that helps.
	That totally helps.
	That's incredible.
	And so your parents, you know, people who are defensive and people who are empty and so on, the parents in your head that we started talking about?
	Sure.
	There is a grim predictability to those kinds of interactions.
	Don't you kind of feel like you're a train on a train track?
	You can't jump the tracks.
	You just know the next thing that's going to be said and the next next thing that's going to come back and the next thing that's going to be said after that, you feel like you're in some insanely hell penned play that you can't rip the script out of your throat, right?
	Right.
	Yeah.
	I feel like there's strings attached.
	Right.
	Everything I'm saying.
	Well, that is when you're maneuvering for win-lose, right?
	Right.
	And when you are in that mode, you have to start looking for win-lose and say, you know what, I'm panicking and panicking means I want to dominate or submit.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	Right, right.
	And if you are feeling anxiety, win-win is curiosity.
	Win-lose is anxiety.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	And so, when you feel the anxiety, you try to manage it through dominance or submission.
	Right.
	So more curiosity.
	Yes.
	When you feel the anxiety, say, stop, stop, stop, stop.
	I am...
	We're sliding into win-lose.
	Okay.
	Yeah, that helps a lot.
	Last song.
	Another one?
	Woo-hoo!
	Brian Adams.
	I don't think it's his song, but he does a live MTV version of this that's really bluesy and very good.
	Okay, cool.
	So this is a, he's, it's called If You Want to Be Bad, You Gotta Be Good.
	He says, she got a nasty reputation and a talent for sin.
	She's the kind of trouble I'd like to be in.
	I want to be her lover.
	I want to be her slave.
	But she's the kind of woman who makes me want to misbehave.
	So give it what you want, boy.
	Let's make it understood that if you want to be bad, you've got to be good.
	Now, the part I like in particular, she says, there'll be no lying, no fooling around, no seven-day weekends, no nights on the town.
	That's the way I want it.
	That's the way it's got to be.
	If you're looking for trouble, better get it from me.
	So get on your knees, boy, and do what you should.
	If you want to be bad, you better be good.
	I like this, if you're looking for trouble, better get it from me.
	I like that.
	A woman who would say that to a man, or a man who would say that for a woman.
	If you want variety, you better get it from me.
	If you want to reveal your freak, get it from me.
	There's a robustness in that receptivity to other people's preferences without being compliant, without Fifty Shades of Grey and Crab like that.
	But go get trouble from your girlfriend.
	Don't get it from other places.
	Okay.
	All right?
	Sounds great.
	Yeah.
	All right.
	Thanks, man.
	Appreciate it.
	Thank you.
	Let's move on to the next caller.
	Up next is Valeroux, and Valeroux wrote in and said, Are men responsible for feminism?
	He would like to have a discussion on what happened in the past century and at the end of the 19th century that led to the situation as it stands today.
	I hope one man is responsible for feminism, so I can go and have some words with him.
	What do you think?
	What's your perspective on that?
	Well, as a background, I studied a few years ago...
	The British history in my school, and we particularly focused on the 19th century society in England and Scotland.
	So I reached a conclusion, because obviously we also study about the suffragette movement, and I thought maybe feminism now happened because there were A set of people, especially men, because men used to rule at that time into the politics scene.
	Those were the ones that concessioned the rights, especially to vote, and I'm pretty sure that happened all in the West.
	Not just in Britain, also in the US and Canada.
	So pretty much we've been, all the men have been sold out by a small group, which have given them rights.
	I'm not arguing that that wasn't good, but as you've seen in everything that happens now, everything has degenerated since then.
	Right.
	Thank you.
	So you're saying that a small group of men gave women a whole bunch of rights and privileges and Therefore, it was those men who caused feminism?
	Well, pretty much.
	They caused it because they first gave their voting rights.
	And you feel that voting rights generated feminism?
	Well, not exactly, but they pretty much set the tune for what was going to happen after that.
	Um, okay.
	Well, what is it that you would call feminism?
	Because that's obviously a challenging definition.
	Well, obviously, I'm not going to use the definition of feminism, because in reality, the definition does not apply.
	It is not about equality, as people say, and I've seen it plenty of times, it's about more and more female privileges hidden under the name of equality.
	Right, so female privilege Is your issue.
	But female privilege, the argument of many people goes, and you can check out Girl Rights What or Karen Strawn for more on this, but the argument from a lot of people is that female privilege is not a new thing at all.
	That female privilege has been the rule of human interaction throughout history.
	That on the Titanic...
	There are, you know, those life posts for women and children first.
	Women, you know, go save the eggs.
	Eggs are less plentiful than sperm, so save the eggs.
	And women didn't have to go to war.
	And when you'd go conquer another tribe, you'd kill the men, but you would kidnap the women and keep them alive.
	And so the argument, I think, is not that female privilege is some new thing, but because of the biological imbalance that simply to have new people, you need, like, one guy...
	And you can have like 20 or 30 women.
	And so men are more disposable.
	But if you get rid of too many women or too many women die in the tribe or get kidnapped, the tribe can't replicate.
	But a whole bunch of men can be disposed of or sent out to fight wild boars or sent out to chuck spears through other guys' heads.
	And as long as you've got a guy still around, then you can repopulate the tribe.
	And so there is this imbalance in the scarcity of eggs and the prevalence of sperm and the fact that the woman is disabled for arguably 18 to 24 months when she has a baby, whereas a man is disabled for, if memory serves me as a teenager, approximately two and a half minutes after orgasm, that women are in a privileged position in terms of sexual or reproductive value.
	And men are pretty much infinitely disposable.
	So the argument seems to be, and I think it's a reasonable argument, that women have always occupied a privileged position vis-a-vis men in society.
	Well, I agree that they did occupy a privileged position, but I believe that after they were given their voting right, that those privileges started being more and more prevalent in society.
	But fundamentally, that wasn't feminism.
	That was Marxism.
	So Marxism wants to screw up capitalism, but capitalism doesn't screw up itself.
	So if somebody's a faster bicyclist than you, they're going to win the race unless you take a giant stick and put it in their whizzing spokes, in which case they'll crash.
	So the Marxists...
	The goal of the Marxists originally from the 19th century was, well, you know, we got to go through feudalism to capitalism, then we get socialism.
	Because capitalism will turn out to be so bad, and the workers will end up so poor, and the division of wealth will be so huge that there'll be a revolution, right?
	That was the theory behind scientific Marxism, which turned out to be completely and totally false.
	Completely and totally false.
	The workers under capitalism started doing better and better.
	Back in the early days of the free market, not now.
	Back in the early free market, well, what happened?
	The wealth narrowed.
	The wealth gaps narrowed.
	I mean, the wealth gap between the aristocrat and the serf was pretty big relative to later on.
	And so capitalism wasn't working.
	And also, the whole idea behind the Marxists was Well, the workers, which is so insulting, by the way.
	I hate it.
	You got the capitalists and the workers.
	Oh, yeah.
	Because people who start businesses, they don't lift a fucking finger, do they?
	They don't do a goddamn thing.
	They just sit around because it's so easy.
	I don't know why all the workers don't become capitalists.
	It's so easy.
	You just sit around and workers come and dump money on your lap and then you go and have sex with airline stewardesses in Fiji.
	It's a great gig as a guy who started a business, and I guess this is just Freedom Aid Radio.
	It's just one of the new ones.
	It's a huge amount of work.
	I could have done that a lot longer, but out of deference to the sanity of the listeners.
	So the Marxists were hoping that the workers were going to get so pissed off that they were going to be part of a revolution.
	And then the Marxists would start sniffing around the workers saying, you're being exploited, man.
	You know, the capitalist is getting rich of your labor, man.
	And they're like, fuck off.
	You know, try going down to some construction site and converting those hard hats to communists.
	You're likely to get richly deserved beatings from their hammer-like fists.
	And so, capitalism was not destroying itself.
	And so, what the hell were the Marxists supposed to do?
	Well, they worked on getting control of the money supply.
	As Lenin is attributed, I don't know if it's been proven, but Lenin is supposed to have said, just screw up the money and you'll screw up capitalism.
	So they got central banking, they got all that, right?
	A lot of it came out of the progressive movement, the socialist movement, in the turn of the last century.
	So they got control of the money supply, and then they wanted to use blacks in America in particular to destabilize capitalism, and then they wanted to use women.
	To destabilize capitalism.
	In other words, they weren't willing to say, we'll just let capitalism fail on its own because capitalism was succeeding wildly.
	So they had to fuck with the machine and then say, whoops, it broke.
	We'll fix it with communism.
	And so I've talked about this in the immigration presentation.
	So in the early 1920s, the Communist Party basically said, you know, we're going to screw up capitalism through the blacks in America.
	We're going to go in there and we're going to tell them that they're put down because of the market system, that slavery had something to do with capitalism, that the white man is always going to put them down, that they're never going to be equal.
	But under communism, they'll be equal, right?
	The truth is that looking now, I believe that they succeeded because...
	Oh, it's perfectly succeeded.
	Sorry to interrupt, but it has perfectly succeeded, and now you have hundreds of affirmative action programs, and all of the problems in the black community are laid at the feet of the white community, and the original black leaders, like Marcus Garvey, sorry, like...
	Shoot, what was his name?
	W.E.B. Dubois.
	Those people who said, I don't want to take anything from the white man.
	Forget taking stuff from the white man.
	No charity from the white man.
	It is through our own bootstraps that we will raise our communities.
	That is almost completely gone.
	And of course Martin Luther King's dream of a world wherein his children are judged not by the color of their skin but the contents of their character.
	It's almost completely gone.
	Now everything is just race politics and victimization and freedom is unjust!
	That's what you always hear.
	Freedom, the free market capitalism will fuck you every time.
	And they say that to minorities and they say that to women primarily.
	And this has come completely...
	I mean, feminism itself came almost exclusively out of Marxism.
	Gloria Steinem was an out-and-out Marxist.
	And she's like, yeah, you know, feminism is a great way to get Marxism implemented.
	That's what we want to do.
	Now, if you go to people in a state of freedom who are doing less well than those around them, and you say to them...
	You're doing less well because of the current system, because it's unjust, because it's unfair, because you're discriminated against, because there's racism, because there's sexism, because there's evil on the part of those white male bastards.
	Well, you provoke resentment against the existing system and people start clamoring for change.
	And then people say to the government, help save me from these nasty people who are keeping me down!
	And...
	If you can convince enough people that freedom will victimize them, then they will cry out for the government to come in and save them from freedom.
	And governments, as you may have noticed throughout history, seem to be pretty much more than happy to save people from the injustice called freedom.
	Of course, there was horrible injustice against minorities, Chinese and Irish and what were called the home children in Canada and the people in indentured servitude in America.
	I mean, Japanese were interned in concentration camps in the Second World War, for God's sakes.
	But the Japanese and a lot of the Asiatic people Racists and cultures have a pretty good habit of saying, well, you know, the government threw us in concentration camps.
	I don't think we really want to go to the government for help.
	The mafia shot my brother.
	I'm going to go borrow money from the mafia.
	It's just not a smart way to go about doing things.
	The Irish were completely retarded when it came to moving themselves ahead.
	We're going to go into politics and become cops and priests and politicians.
	Huh.
	We don't seem to be doing very well.
	We're kind of stuck in the middle of a mess.
	So those cultures which reject government help and rely on community and rely on hard work and rely on effective and productive education and all of that, those cultures do really well.
	The cultures that say, fuck it, we're screwed.
	We can't beat the system.
	Let's run to the government.
	Well, they do really badly.
	And this is one reason why women are so incredibly unhappy these days.
	This is one of the reasons why the black community seems to be getting worse and worse in many ways.
	And this is one reason why the communities that have avoided getting the help of the government seem to be doing very well, like the Japanese communities.
	The blacks from West Africa, who are physically indistinguishable from American blacks, have a higher per capita income than whites.
	Asians have a higher per capita income than whites.
	Our Chinese overlords are going to rule our kidneys.
	So if you can convince people that they're being victimized, they will run to the government, and the government can then enact socialist programs to redress the injustice of the free market.
	And then what happens is the government power grows, the free market gets even more screwed up, and then people become suspicious, right?
	So I've talked about this before, but blacks who go through affirmative action programs, you know, where their scores get lowered...
	Or lower scores will get them into schools and then they get pushed along beyond their ability, not the ability of blacks as a whole, but those particular blacks, if you let people in who don't do as well as the whites or the Asians or whoever, then they graduate and then they go out into the workforce holding these degrees and the employers hire them and then the employers say, well, you're not actually very good, right?
	That's terrible.
	Because then the employers look at all blacks who graduate from these schools and don't know who the hell is there because of affirmative action and who the hell is there because they're just really smart, good people at doing what they do.
	And so they're, oh, I don't know, I can't tell.
	And if I hire someone, it can be a huge mess, right?
	Especially if I fire them and they cry racism or whatever.
	So then people, and I don't, I'm just saying, I'm guessing, people avoid...
	And the blacks who've got these degrees, and then the value of getting an education goes down for all blacks, because nobody can tell who's there from affirmative action and who's there out of the merits of their own brains and skill.
	And so then the way out of poverty gets partly closed off to blacks and other minorities.
	And so for women, the free market is portrayed as wildly, horrendously, brutally unfair.
	Why?
	Well, it seems to have great difficulty paying women to breastfeed.
	That's not an economic value.
	Having babies and breastfeeding and being a parent consumes resources.
	Now it produces people who themselves produce resources, so it's important in the larger picture of bloody blind to generational, right?
	But when my wife and I decided to have a baby, we weren't like, yay, score!
	We're going to be rich!
	Right?
	I mean, it was nonsense.
	And so women seem to be, and not all, but a lot of women seem to be deeply shocked that they make less money than men because they get pregnant, have babies, and breastfeed, which takes them out of the workforce for, if you're a decent mother, 24 months?
	You know, two years, you're out of the workforce, or a year and a half at least, you have the baby and you've got to breastfeed.
	Then you're probably going to want another baby.
	There's another two years.
	Maybe you have three babies.
	There's six years.
	And then after that, guess what?
	You have a responsibility to your children.
	You know, when I worked as a manager, the women who had kids, 458, 459, and they're gone.
	Gone, baby, gone.
	And great, I'm good.
	Go take care of your children.
	The young single men and women Would stay late if they had to.
	We'd go out for drinks.
	We would get together on weekends sometimes.
	And if we needed to go on business travel, I could just, hey, you know, let's go to California.
	We've got to do a conference.
	You know, for the women with kids, it was like, oh, well, I don't know if I can get, especially if they didn't have husbands, right?
	Oh, you've got to get sitters.
	Young guys or young women, like, yeah, let's go.
	I'm in.
	That sounds fantastic.
	No problems, right?
	And so, the women seem to be, I don't know, like, They seem to believe somehow that having children, being pregnant, having children, breastfeeding and needing to take care of your children and thus being less available for overtime at work should have zero negative impact on their wages.
	Which is completely mental.
	Go to a woman and say, well, I'd really love to marry you, but I'm only going to be able to spend about half the time with you that any other husband would.
	You know, every second week I'm just going to go travel the world.
	And she'd be like, well, you know, if we're going to be apart half the time, I think I'll wait for someone I get right over, right?
	But if you can convince women that it's not because they want to have kids, it's not because they should breastfeed, it's not because...
	To invest in a worker and then have that worker go off and have kids and maybe never return?
	40% of the women who get MBAs are having children.
	What a huge goddamn waste that was!
	Let's take all this MBA education and set fire to it because no one's going to use it.
	Or they're going to try and go back to work after 10 or 15 years.
	Of course you aren't going to do as well economically.
	There's nothing wrong with that.
	It's perfectly fine.
	It's perfectly natural.
	It's perfectly healthy.
	It's perfectly right.
	But what happens is...
	If you can get enough people to convince women that it's just unfair, you only get paid 70% of what a man makes, well then they're like, whoa, freedom is totally unjust.
	Freedom is horrible.
	Freedom is totally unjust.
	Save me from freedom, Mr.
	Government!
	Well, then you get all of this crap coming in.
	All of these quotas, all of this affirmative action, all of this, if you want to do business with the federal government, you have to use a female-headed supplier, a minority supplier, all this kind of crap.
	It's estimated that one out of ten white males has been subject to discrimination as the result of affirmative action.
	That's higher than the proportion of blacks who experience possible racism at the hands of things like real estate agents or whatever, right?
	So like in real estate transactions, like you sort of take a bunch, you take a black family around or you take a black couple around, you take a white couple around, you know, 5, 6, 7, 8% of the time, the real estate agent will say, oh, this has been rented when it hasn't or whatever it is, right?
	Now, is that racism?
	I don't know.
	It could be.
	I don't know.
	There's a lot of variables.
	But it's fairly well established that 10% of white males have not received a job, not received an education, not received something, not received a promotion because of affirmative action.
	Well, you see, here's the discrepancy that right now I think we can agree that according to this year's statistics, the majority of the electorate in the US is made up by women.
	And based on the studies done as to how many people voted Democrat or Republican in the previous elections, the vast majority of women voted Democrat, they are able to vote There are financial privileges via the government, there are job privileges, and be sure that there will be no stopping in this.
	Oh, no, it's gonna stop.
	I mean, it's gonna...
	math, right?
	Well, yeah, but consider the fact that the USA is a country that prints money.
	Yeah, but...
	It might be able to stop itself, but it will still run itself into the deficit.
	No, look, I mean, it's going to stop.
	Of course, we're just in this phase, there's these death throes of this monster state.
	It's going to stop.
	I mean, that which mathematically cannot continue will not continue.
	I'm not saying I don't know when, because I don't have privy to the inside information.
	But it's going to stop.
	Now, of course, the Marxists wanted to stop and have us replaced with communism or massive socialism or whatever it is, right?
	And the people who are free marketers want it to stop and be replaced with the free market.
	But until we sort of understand that...
	You know, one of the guys I had on the show, John Allison, I think his name is head of bank, he said, look, the crash happened because...
	What?
	Head of...
	No, no, it wasn't Head of Cato.
	So some bank.
	He said, look, the crash happened because we thought that We thought that assets which lose value gain value, right?
	So houses, you build them and, you know, they get old, they need repairs, and it's like a car.
	But because we have so much money and so much crap, so many regulations, partly of which is to do is to try and get home ownership increased in minorities' neighborhoods.
	Treating that which costs money as if it makes money is fundamentally weird.
	And unfortunately, we have a system set up where people can make money from having children.
	Women can make money from having children.
	It's the welfare state and Various subsidies and programs and public schools and subsidized housing and all this kind of junk, right?
	And I've heard women openly discussing this.
	You know, well, if I have another kid, I get this benefit, I get this benefit, I can get into a two-bedroom apartment, right?
	So we've got this weird system where having children makes people money.
	And it's completely bizarre.
	I mean, what a completely Bas Hackwood's way of looking at the reality, which is that children are a fantastic investment in the future but cost a lot of time, energy, and resources in the present.
	I haven't written a book really in the last five years.
	I used to write like two books a year because it takes time to have kids.
	So as far as, you know, have men done this?
	No, I think that Marxists and socialists and left-wingers have done this.
	They've They're like parasites that live in victimization.
	The victimization is like the squalid little swamp that they breed in.
	And what they do is they make people afraid that freedom is injustice.
	And they then end up needing and perpetuating and creating.
	The very victimization that they need to feed on the body politic.
	I mean, you say to women, and it's been said, like, Thomas Sowell has this from, like, the 1970s, judging by the haircuts and his fairly stupendous fro.
	He's talking about, you know, this 70 cents on the dollar crap.
	It's ridiculous.
	Yeah, it's a lie.
	Yeah, it's a complete lie.
	Women who've not...
	Women without kids who've been in the same workforce for the same amount of time with the same education as men actually earn slightly more.
	I mean, it's complete bullshit.
	You want to have kids?
	It's going to cost you some money.
	Anyway, so I don't think it's specific to a particular ideology that was not content to have Even race with the free market and therefore had to whisper like Iago into Othello's ear all the evils that freedom was producing to two particular groups and and how they they get screwed by the free market and and they face such overwhelming oppression and and Discrimination and bloody bloody blah right and
	my god if you can convince people that freedom is injustice and They will then believe that slavery is freedom.
	They will clamor for the state to enslave them and make them free.
	They will clamor for guns to force everyone to make everyone else free.
	And once you can convince people that liberty is exploitation they will surrender economic liberty in particular which people don't view as a moral good or as a moral right Right, so, I'm going to expand on that very briefly.
	Like, if you said to people, there are some people without kidneys, most of us have two, so the government needs to redistribute kidneys, they would freak out.
	If you said, well, you know, vaginas are unevenly distributed among the male population, so the government needs to assign sex partners to under-sexed men or men who don't have enough access to sex, we would all freak out, right?
	Right.
	Some people need eyeballs.
	We all have two.
	Come on, man.
	Give them up an eyeball.
	Government's going to take it out with a rusty spoon.
	Sheriff of Nottingham style.
	Well, this reminds me of a quote by Confucius.
	In a country well-governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of.
	In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.
	Right.
	So if we start talking about redistributing body parts, you know, vaginas, kidneys, eyeballs, whatever, people completely freak out.
	But when we start talking about redistributing money, income, wealth, people don't freak out.
	They just don't get that it's really two sides of the same coin.
	I work to grow and feed my eyeballs and my penis and my kidney, both of them, in fact, right?
	And I also work to create wealth, value, money, and so on, right?
	There's no fundamental difference between my money and my kidney.
	Both things that I have earned and...
	But we have this weird dichotomy where property...
	And of course the reason is that if somebody comes to take my kidney, there's blood.
	Somebody comes and takes my money, there's not.
	Especially if it's deducted at source and all that.
	So the absence of blood for a lot of people is the absence of violence.
	The absence of a gun to a head is the absence of violence.
	And taxation of money rather than taxation of body parts, redistribution of wealth rather than redistribution of organs is something that can be achieved without a shark being fired.
	And therefore, people either aren't smart enough or are too corrupted by greed enough to recognize that the same violence is fundamentally occurring.
	So, no, I don't think it's I don't think it's men.
	I think it's a specific group of ideologues, Marxists and leftists who themselves have descended from the ancient parasitical priestly classes who use guilt and victimization and moral intimidation and all the rules for radicals, ad hominems, attacks, calling people's names.
	You're a liar.
	You're a cheat.
	You hate the poor.
	You're uncaring.
	Whatever.
	Just throw enough shit at people until other people shy away from whatever it is that they're saying.
	So, no, I would not generalize it to men.
	I would not generalize it to any particular class.
	It is just a very particular group of ideologues who seek to plant Well, I agree with that, but it's the thing that because of this, those people managed to seep in the politics so that they could get access to control the laws, to control the regulation, and slowly, slowly pretty much eroding the system by adding the so-called privileges.
	I'm not saying welfare is a bad privilege.
	There are some people that need it, there are some people that abuse it.
	But it's been more and more and it's been gender biased.
	Yeah, I think that I'm not sure I want you on the trench with that kind of approach.
	Let me tell you what I think the approach is that is needed.
	There are those of us who deeply, viscerally, intellectually, emotionally, soulfully understand the true value of human freedom.
	the true necessity of human freedom.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	And until we stop lecturing and start haranguing, we are not going to win.
	How have the bad guys won?
	The bad guys won through emotional aggression, through abuse.
	And I believe that if you keep getting beaten by the same goddamn weapon, pick it up!
	You know, if you're an Indian, Native American, and you keep getting shot, bows don't work, guess what?
	Get a gun!
	Well, yeah, I think this is the problem with the men's rights movement.
	No offense to them, but it seems that after so long, their logic approach Does it no longer function when they have to go emotional about it?
	Yes.
	No, because we've sort of been trained that the only anger that is just is the anger of the unjust.
	That's what we've been trained.
	When people of justice and virtue and knowledge and wisdom, when they, when we get angry...
	Oh my God!
	He's yelling!
	But when idiots with no knowledge and no history and no virtue, manipulative asswipes, when they get angry, everyone is like, testify!
	You tell them!
	But when people have actual knowledge and refinement and distinction, when we get angry, we get angry.
	Well, it's just the worst thing in the whole world.
	How abusive could that person be?
	You know, there's this old thing that feminists say.
	And I think there's some truth in it.
	It's a good point that they make.
	So when a man thumps the table, he's being assertive.
	When a woman thumps the table, she's being a bitch.
	Well, I think that more has to do with the fact that women thumping anything remind men of the mothers thumping them as children.
	So I think it's more to do with that.
	But my God, another goddamn blog post isn't going to do it, people.
	It's not going to do it.
	It's not going to do it.
	Attack!
	Attack!
	Now, finding enemies worthy of attack is not the easiest thing in the world, but you've just got to let it rip.
	Most people have no idea what the truth is, but they sure as hell can measure passion with their heart's barometer.
	And they associate passion with truth.
	Right?
	If some people are yelling, yell back!
	If some people are being douchebags, say you're being a douchebag.
	I mean, the fire is coming anyway.
	Might as well walk towards it.
	And so, it's not because they're remotely right.
	It's not because they are better.
	It's not because people are dumber.
	It's because The bad guys are more committed than we are.
	Commitment, you know what commitment is?
	Commitment is one simple thing.
	Do it until it works.
	And change it until it works.
	Right?
	If your dog is in a room and you smell smoke and you have, you know, one of those big-ass Superintendent rings of keys.
	And you can't kick the door in.
	You need the key.
	What does commitment to your dog mean?
	It means you keep trying the keys until you get one that works.
	You don't just keep trying the same key over and over and over again while your doggy howls himself into hairy ash on the other side of the door.
	That key didn't work.
	Fuck, that key didn't work.
	Oh, that key didn't work.
	That key didn't work.
	That key didn't work.
	You keep trying and changing shit until it works.
	I don't know exactly what that looks like.
	That's for every individual to pursue.
	But being sensitive to what works and what doesn't is really important.
	Why do people listen to this show?
	Partly for entertainment and so on, but I think people get that I really care about freedom.
	And I We'll do whatever it takes to communicate the necessary ideas of freedom.
	Doesn't mean we're gonna win.
	But it does mean that if we lose, it shouldn't be because we kept anything in reserve.
	Fire all your balls.
	Fire all your passions.
	Unleash all the capacities of your eloquence in the service of virtue.
	And truth and freedom and the future and peace.
	Peace on earth, which is what we're aiming for.
	So I've mutated myself six million different ways from Sunday since I first started getting involved in philosophy at 15 or 16 years old.
	And I have constantly sought to reinvent and to learn from the latest and greatest available evidence, facts, scientific theories, proven hypotheses.
	I started by writing a Novels.
	I started by writing, wrote a manifesto I've still got somewhere around.
	The Rationalist Manifesto.
	I was going to write books about the welfare state and submitted query letters to publishers on that.
	I was going to go into politics.
	I was going to make my speeches.
	I will do one of those.
	I had the whole thing sorted out about the national debt.
	Stop blaming the government, you greedy, greedy bastards!
	It's you who won something for nothing that is the cause of the national debt.
	You and you alone.
	I don't think I necessarily would have gotten very far.
	But boy, I would like to have given that speech once.
	And I tried to learn from the mistakes of the past.
	I tried to learn from the classical liberals.
	I tried to learn from the libertarians.
	I tried to learn from the objective.
	It's what works and what doesn't.
	Keep trying new keys.
	And then I found...
	What is the greatest truth that I've found so far?
	Which is the state is in effect of the family.
	And the tyranny of an adulthood is in effect of the tyranny of childhood.
	That an adult speaks English because they learned it as a child.
	And an adult speaks subjugation because he learned it as a child.
	And so...
	I really don't fundamentally care where people's passion for victimization came from.
	And I'll tell you this, once you are convinced you are a victim, it is almost impossible to give that fantasy up.
	It is almost impossible to give up the fantasy of victimhood once it has taken root.
	Do you know why that is?
	The reason that is...
	It's because once you believe you are a victim, you stop trying.
	And then, if it turns out you were mistaken about being a victim, that you could have achieved what you wanted, what you dreamt of all along, if you later turn out to be mistaken, then you have worse than wasted your life.
	The one opportunity.
	YOLO, baby!
	The one chance you have to live.
	You pissed away in an orgy of self-pity and injected victimhood from your future enslavers.
	And you end up justifying your own failures by a continual reinforcement of the false victimization that was fed to you so that you could be fed to the state.
	And victimhood is such a quicksand, is such a sticky trap that all who use it are genuine parasites on the vulnerability of people in need.
	Everybody who is a coward wishes to believe in their victimization.
	Everybody who is a failure wishes to believe in their victimization.
	Everybody who is an abuser Is an abuser because they've believed in their victimization.
	Abuse is simply the flip side of imaginary victimization.
	You kids never listen to me.
	Bam!
	I'm a victim of my kids not listening to me.
	Bam!
	Well, I want to take 10 years off from the workforce, but I don't want to lose any money.
	I'm a victim.
	Bam!
	We as a black community, we want to stay religious.
	We want to keep hitting our children.
	We want to attack, as happens in certain sections of the black community, we want to attack anyone who speaks correctly and educates themselves as acting white.
	Where's your solidarity with the losers?
	Everybody who fucks up wants to pretend it's not their fault.
	It's the system.
	What chance do I have?
	The system is so oppressive.
	Won't let me get ahead.
	And the more they fail, and the more failures like that you breed in any community, I don't care where it is, what gender it is, what race it is, what culture it is, the more failures you breed because you have infested them at the brain maggots of victimization, the more losers and failures you breed, the more those losers and failures are going to turn around to all the kids and say, you can't get ahead.
	I tried.
	You can't get ahead.
	System, the man, the whites, the patriarchy, they're going to get you down.
	Grind you down.
	You've got a chance.
	Kids are like, oh, man.
	Well, that sucks.
	Man, I can't get ahead.
	There's apparently a man.
	And a system.
	And a patriarchy.
	And white people.
	We can't get ahead.
	Oh, God.
	Well, if we can't get ahead, what the hell is the point of even trying?
	Why bother?
	I smoke some drugs, play some video games, mix up a little rap.
	Why?
	Right?
	The ladder only starts 40 feet up.
	No rungs down here.
	Why would I learn how to climb?
	Can't win.
	Can't get ahead.
	No point trying.
	Oh, don't you just hate those self-fulfilling prophecies?
	If you can convince people that they're victims and freedom is their enemy, then they lose all of the habits and dedication and integrity and hardworking capacities that actually would have changed their lives.
	The only system is the state and all of its nefarious effects.
	And when people believe that there's a system called freedom that oppresses them, you know what happens?
	Oh, it's so brutal.
	What happens?
	When people believe that there is a system called freedom that oppresses them, They have a metaphysical worldview called injustice.
	In liberty there is injustice.
	And then whoever makes it over that, whoever cracks and penetrates that vision, that fantasy of victimization becomes an apostate, becomes a heretic to the fantasy of victimization.
	And you have the great challenge of explaining to yourself and to others why, if there's this terrible system that keeps you all down, how that person and that person and that person and that person and that person and that person how that person and that person and that person and that person and They become your enemy.
	you.
	You must tear them down.
	Now the victimization is not top-down, but bottom-up.
	Bottom-up.
	Instead of the fantasy that there's a group pushing another person down, The reality is if people believe that fantasy, oh, there is oppression, but it's bottom up.
	It's bottom up.
	It's if you make it out, you are shattering the myth of victimization, so I better pull you back down.
	I better pull you back down.
	Now you have real oppression.
	A guy recently, a black guy, wrote a book about basically, stop helping us, liberals.
	Stop helping us.
	Stop helping us.
	Stop helping the black community.
	And his seven-year-old niece, I think his name's Jason, I can't remember, but his seven-year-old niece came up to him and said, okay, he was talking to some other adult and said, why is Uncle Jason talking so smart and pretending to be so much better than us?
	Ooh.
	That's not good.
	Why is Uncle Jason speaking well and learning things?
	Why is he being uppity?
	Which is a terrible thing to hear from a white person to a black person, but from a 70-year-old black girl, oh my god!
	Are you kidding me?!
	Is this how you're going to break oppression?
	By pulling down whoever is trying to get out to maintain your own fantasy of impossibility.
	Do you know where I should be statistically?
	Beaten up child of a single mother.
	you Raised in a welfare ghetto?
	Where should I be statistically?
	Dead or in jail.
	And I know some people who are from that neck of the woods from when I was a child.
	Thank you.
	But, but, but.
	Do not let the failure of others be the noose around your future.
	Fuck statistics.
	Fuck the trends.
	Will your life.
	Inevitability is for raindrops.
	Human beings have will and choice.
	And the capacity to project yourself beyond the circumstances of the moment.
	And shoot your hopes like a grappling hook to a higher plane and pull yourself up muscle by muscle.
	Other people will try to sell you on the inevitability of failure and the universality of injustice and the prevalence of the grinding down gears of the privileged and the powerful.
	Well, Do not listen to them for a moment.
	They are viruses of failure.
	They are viruses attempting to justify their own pathetic non-entity non-existences by having you not succeed.
	They are vampires.
	They have no reflection.
	They live in the dark and they live in a coffin.
	Now all the people who said to me, You can't.
	It's ridiculous.
	Not gonna happen.
	I didn't listen to them.
	I have the life that I have, which I love.
	They have the life they have, which they hate.
	And there are crossroads in life, and they are diminishing crossroads.
	They do not last forever.
	I'm telling you, my friends, the crossroads in life do not last forever.
	They diminish.
	And eventually, there will be no more.
	There will be no more.
	I remember reading an article many years ago about a guy who was a smoker.
	He was in his 50s.
	And he said, I'm going to quit smoking.
	I was talking about it with my doctor.
	I'm going to quit smoking.
	Now, my doctor says it's not going to do a huge amount for my health.
	But I've just decided to quit anyway.
	One cigarette too many, you're getting lung cancer.
	It doesn't matter if you quit.
	That fork of the road is no longer there.
	One too many nacho chips on the couch evenings, you're going to have a heart attack.
	It doesn't matter if you get up and exercise.
	In fact, if you get up and exercise, you might make it come even faster.
	There are forks in the road and they're everywhere when you're young.
	When you're born, It is choice, choice, choice, choice, choice.
	It's everywhere.
	And you look around and you say, man, tons of choices.
	I can do anything.
	And as you step forward and you step forward, the choices, they begin to diminish.
	There's nothing wrong with that.
	I don't have the choice to be a ballet dancer anymore.
	I'm okay with that.
	Keep walking forward and keep walking forward.
	And the choices diminish and the choices diminish and the choices diminish.
	So what you choose on early is the choices you have later or not.
	I can choose to go rock climbing.
	I can choose to go running.
	I can choose to go and play squash.
	I can choose to go and swim a mile if I want because I'm not 300 pounds because of other choices I made in the past.
	Hell, there's things I can do now because I dropped 25 pounds five years ago.
	Kept it off.
	One or two percent of people do that.
	That's just your choice, willpower.
	Don't like to exercise?
	Never did.
	Keep doing it.
	Gives you choices.
	And there are all the people in the world who will say to you, you don't have a choice.
	Born Christian, die Christian.
	Born Muslim, die Muslim.
	Born Jewish, die Jewish.
	No choice where you were born.
	The way it is.
	Can't change it.
	Tradition.
	And then there are people who, in many ways, lay down their comfort and peace of mind to shoot up the flares from their very hearts.
	In that good old Katy Perry style way.
	They shoot up the flares from their very heart to light up for you the existence of choice in a world that so often seeks to shroud every choice, every fork in the road in darkness.
	And to pretend that you are not a being of a self-made soul and a self-made future and a self-made world and a self-made love and a self-made life, self-made career.
	They want to tell you Oh, you're just a train track.
	You're just a train on a train track.
	You're just water bouncing down a cliff.
	We don't know where you're going to land, but we know it ain't your choice.
	No choice.
	Nihilism, determinism, victimization.
	All the inevitabilities of hiding from you the reality of choice in your life.
	Well, if you think you're on a train track, you are.
	If you think you're not on a train track, you're not.
	And who you let whisper into your ears about the prevalence and possibility of choice in your life is how your future is going to be.
	We become the words we listen to.
	We become the language that inhabits us.
	We become the conversations we allow ourselves to have.
	And we never become the conversations we deny ourselves from having.
	Victimization remains a choice.
	It will not remain a choice forever.
	And the more people who believe they're victims, the more they will make victims of us all.
	True victims of us all.
	Totalitarian victims of us all.
	But there is still choice.
	And if you choose a better life than those who came before you, you will see the reality of human evil.
	Many times.
	Not always.
	Many times.
	Choose a better life and see who loves you for it.
	Choose to overcome statistics and see who loves you for it.
	Choose to get the life of your dreams and see who loves you for it.
	And see who hates you for it.
	Because if you can achieve the escape from the imaginary victim prison, if it turns out there's no prison, no walls, it's all just a holograph of Susceptibility to propaganda.
	If you can walk out of that prison, hey, no lock on the door!
	You know you could have left at any time?
	Say that to a guy who's been in there for 40 years.
	What's he gonna say?
	Thanks!
	No.
	No, he's not likely to say that.
	And there's nothing wrong with failure, don't get me wrong.
	Failure is essential.
	You can have a whole lifetime of failure and you can be incredibly valuable to society by telling people how and why you failed and how and why you could have done it better.
	Great!
	It's not that failure is a problem.
	It's the people who externalize failure into a system.
	The system got me!
	The man!
	Whitey!
	Men!
	Come on.
	Forget all of that.
	Forget all of the illusionary limits on who it is you can become.
	Forget all of the stories that people tell you about what you can and can't do.
	Heroism, magnificence, courage, virtue, striding the world stage like a colossus.
	These are choices.
	My choice to make this speech, to have the capacity to give this speech, comes...
	From my choice at 6 to start writing stories, comes at my choice at 11 to start writing my first novel, By the Light of an Alien Sun, and have it read to my class by my English teacher, and see how much my words could affect others.
	It comes from being in plays.
	It comes from going to theatre school.
	It comes from doing improv.
	It comes from getting up to stand and try and do comedy.
	It comes It comes from reading.
	It comes from writing.
	It comes from studying.
	It comes from practicing speaking at every opportunity.
	I'm not what the British say, you touch the stone of eloquence and magically it comes.
	There's no stone of great pianic, being a great pianist.
	You just keep practicing.
	And you keep practicing because you simply refuse to bow to statistics.
	You refuse to bow to the inevitability of failure that is constantly whispered into your ear by the Iagos of failure who would love nothing more than to reinforce their delusions of an obstructing system by having you bump up against their imaginations and fall flat on your ass.
	So, the Marxists, the Socialists, And the Christians who say that you are a victim of the capitalists, of the patriarchy, of the whitey, of the devil.
	Fuck victimhood.
	Fuck it out of your life.
	Dismiss it.
	Push it aside.
	If there is genuine victimhood in this world, you'll run into it sooner or later.
	I mean, there's one called getting old and dying.
	I accept that.
	But march as if there are no limits.
	Move forward into your future, into the life you want, as if there are no limits.
	Because if you don't believe in them, that is an automatic repellent To the vampires who would whisper the limits are everywhere and omnipresent and that limits and victimization are the physics of our social universe.
	If you act as if there are no limits, people with limits will flee your very existence because it challenges and denies the limits they have put on themselves so they avoid the necessity of courage and growth and virtue in this world.
	Get to your goddamn future, people!
	There's nothing in your way.
	There's nothing in your way except the holograms of other people's failures.
	Man, look real.
	It's rendered quite well.
	There's endless amounts of art and theology and theories and class systems and all the races.
	All of this stuff is put there.
	And it feels like you're running full tilt boogie into a thick forest But there's nothing there.
	I'm telling you, there's nothing there.
	That forest is a phantasm.
	That wall is an illusion.
	And you will yourself to run through it.
	And there's nothing on the other side except everything you want.
	I think it's time to move on to the next caller.
	Up next is Andrea.
	Andrea wrote in and said, Why do awkward silences in conversation trigger a fight-or-flight response from within?
	I've realized awkward silence is uncomfortable for many people, but I think my reactions can be somewhat extreme.
	Hello.
	Hello.
	Go on.
	I'm an Andrea, just in case.
	Oh, good.
	It's Andrea.
	Gotcha.
	It's a silent, oh.
	Yeah.
	And if I may, Stefan and Michael, you are awesome, amazing.
	The show has been so transformative for me, and I am a happy donor, so put down that PS2, Stefan.
	I'm sorry, what?
	So I think everything that you said in the last call...
	Really pertains to my question.
	I've had a while to think about it.
	And I think I was kind of pussyfooting around my real question, which is...
	Oh, thank you, Andrea.
	Thank you so much for saying that up front.
	No, because you'll see...
	I'm sorry to interrupt, but you see that in these calls, people say, I want to talk about X. I'm slowly going to push that to Y. I'm not going to tell you exactly.
	We're just going to try and drift over this way.
	Right?
	Because, yeah, we do get a lot of...
	It's not bait and switch.
	It's just people change their minds over the course or find something else, maybe even in the same show.
	So I'm glad, you know, whatever you want to talk about is fine with me.
	I just...
	I'm really glad you admitted it.
	So thank you.
	All right.
	Thank you.
	So, yeah, I have this sort of glitch in my operating system that tells me that I'm a piece of shit and I'm hateable and that I don't deserve my life.
	And I know that's not true, but...
	Just call that a glitch?
	Yeah.
	Isn't that a blue screen of death followed by an airstrike and a meteor and a hurricane?
	I mean, that's more than a glitch, wouldn't you say?
	Yeah.
	Well, it doesn't feel like it's really a part of me.
	I don't know if I'm saying that right.
	It's like this mechanism in my head.
	And at this point, I'm in a lot of therapy and I've been doing a lot of work.
	I can see now that it feels like a foreign sort of maybe machine in my head because I know that I'm not really that bad.
	Oh dear.
	Oh dear.
	Is this really bad?
	I thought it would be an interesting question.
	I'm not really a total piece of shit.
	No, I mean, I'm...
	I mean, obviously there's shit elements.
	Maybe even a shit majority.
	I'm not perfect.
	But I'm not all shit.
	I'm sold!
	I just smell like shit sometimes.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Oh, anyway, I had Indian tonight.
	Let's talk about that another time.
	So, yeah, I don't feel like...
	No, no, stop, stop, stop.
	Because, okay, so...
	Because you're not talking to me yet, right?
	No, I guess I'm just trying to explain, I guess.
	So, no, you're plotting, you're maneuvering.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	You're hedging.
	You're not talking to me yet.
	Okay.
	And that's fine.
	Like, I get this is a new, hopefully this is a new conversation.
	We try to have new conversations here, otherwise it's like, how's the weather, blah, blah, blah, right?
	But you're not talking to me as yet, because if you were, you would have noticed what you were saying, right?
	Without needing me to tell you.
	I'm not sure I understand because I think I know what I was saying.
	But did you know what my response?
	Did you think that I would stop you when you said it's a glitch that I tell myself I'm a piece of shit?
	Well, I've heard you mention that before in the show.
	I thought it would be just sort of something that you've sort of touched on before.
	I'm not the only one that feels this way, so I thought it wouldn't be so unfamiliar.
	I feel a little embarrassed right now that it was probably too heavy.
	What are you talking about, young lady?
	I feel like I've just grabbed a squid.
	It's like, blurp!
	Where's all this ink come from?
	Don't font your skunk juice on me, young lady.
	Sorry.
	Okay, no problem.
	No problem.
	Did you think that I would think it was a glitch when you said you're a piece of shit?
	You're part of you that says that.
	Yeah, because I don't feel like it's really how I feel about myself.
	It's just sort of there.
	So your solution is splitting, dissociation, like creating a separate ego, like a colostomy bag?
	And having to sort of follow you around, that's where the shit collects, but it's not really you?
	Yeah, it's just like this sort of tape that runs, you know, on its own.
	And it especially, it does seem like the bedrock of my thoughts a lot of times.
	Okay, so let's not pretend it's something else if it's the bedrock.
	And I appreciate the shit that it is, because I wouldn't want to talk about something that wasn't important, right?
	Okay.
	Okay, so...
	To, you know, you've been through therapy, so I can hit the gas on this one.
	Please.
	Yeah.
	So, Andrea, who in your life, when you were a child, benefited from you thinking that you were a piece of shit?
	Oh, I mean, both of my parents, for sure.
	How?
	Well...
	I mean, you got an ACE score of 5, which is not good.
	Yeah, I mean...
	My father called us leeches all the time.
	I could do his voice and do that whole thing.
	No, tell me.
	Give me the Andre experience of your dad when you were kids.
	He would call us leeches.
	He would say, you think your shit don't stink?
	You think the world owes you something?
	There was a lot of...
	Explicit, like you can't trust your friends and that your family is the only people that you could trust.
	My parents...
	Wait.
	Yeah.
	You're a piece of shit.
	Your family is the only person you can trust.
	He never said explicitly that I'm a piece of shit.
	I don't remember him ever saying that explicitly to me.
	Oh, so I have all these negative things to say about you.
	You think your shit don't sting.
	You want something for nothing.
	Yeah.
	But your family's the only person you can trust.
	Yeah.
	I know.
	It's so ass-backwards.
	I mean, we were total house slaves.
	Wait, what does that mean?
	We were just expected to do chores all the time.
	And, you know, at the expense of, like, being kids and, you know...
	Having our own lives and having fun.
	We were isolated a lot.
	We were in the house, my younger brothers and I, alone, probably younger than we should have been, like latchkey kids, but we had to keep the shades drawn and pretend like nobody was home.
	I think because people were trying to sue my parents.
	When I think about it now, it really felt like a prison.
	I don't mean to laugh, I'm sorry.
	There are just things like my father watching us clean the floors and he would hide a sticker to see if the sticker was still there, then we did a crappy job.
	Offer to pay me to clean his car, and then I would do it, and then he would say I missed something, and so he just would stiff me.
	Stuff like that.
	Right now, the laughter stuff?
	I'm sorry.
	I know.
	I'm just nervous.
	You probably heard me talk about this with a few other people in this show, right?
	A lot of other people, yeah.
	And did you think about that before you started the chatting?
	I really did.
	I didn't think I was going to laugh.
	I don't think it's funny.
	It's just awkward saying that.
	Okay, but what's the laughter for then, right?
	I guess shame.
	No.
	Tears are for shame.
	Anger is for shame.
	Laughter is for something else, right?
	Because I want to cry?
	Well, you're inviting me Into this like it's a comedy.
	Right?
	So, Andrea, you're trying to have a conversation with me like, isn't this kind of kooky and crazy what my dad did, right?
	Yeah.
	So you want me to come in as if it's not serious, as if it's not important, as if it's not tragic, but it's kind of kooky and crazy and funny.
	Yeah, I guess I kind of...
	So I need to talk to you, not your goddamn parents.
	Right.
	Right?
	Because what you experienced was pretty tragic.
	Very tragic.
	Now, your parents may, you know, funny stuff happened.
	Can you believe it?
	You know, it's kind of kooky in hindsight.
	Right?
	Right.
	So, that's what I mean when I say you and I not quite having a conversation yet.
	Right?
	Okay.
	Because you're not telling me the facts and letting me have my emotions, but through the laughter and through the peppy...
	Presentation, you are trying to condition my emotional response.
	And I'm not blaming you for it, and I'm not in any way saying it's a negative.
	I'm just telling you what I think is happening.
	Okay.
	Because it's probably kind of unbearable for you to have a direct emotional experience of this that is shared by another person.
	Yeah.
	Because you said you wanted to cry, right?
	Yep.
	Right.
	I mean, it's something to cry about, isn't it?
	Yeah, it's sad.
	Hey?
	Yeah, it's sad.
	I didn't realize I sound like that.
	I'm sorry.
	It's so sad, I'm gonna burst into song!
	I'm sorry.
	I didn't realize I did.
	I know.
	Listen, I'm not criticizing.
	I mean, I'm not.
	And I mean this with...
	Sorrow and with respect and with tenderness that this is hard for you to connect with, right?
	I didn't think that it was.
	I mean...
	It's something that, you know, I constantly am trying to work through.
	What if you are sad?
	And I'm not...
	You don't have to cry or anything like that.
	Just be who you are.
	But...
	If you are sad when talking to me, what's the cost?
	Being vulnerable?
	Vulnerable is not a cost.
	Oh.
	Vulnerable is an experience.
	The cost is something that you have to pay for in some manner.
	It produces some negative experience.
	Vulnerability is not that, right?
	Oh, how about that?
	I mean, I cry on this show like it seems like every other week and I don't consider that.
	A loss or a danger or a negative?
	Maybe that I have to own it.
	No.
	No, that sounds like it's coming out of a textbook, you know?
	What is...
	If you talk about these childhood experiences to me with the seriousness and sorrow that they deserve, what is the cost?
	I think I need help.
	Thank you.
	Okay, no, I'm happy to help.
	So, the cost for your, let's say, and I hate this cliche, but it's appropriate sometimes, right?
	The cost for your inner child is non-existent, right?
	It's a benefit for your inner child, right?
	So, your genuine sort of lived childhood experience, if you talk to me about it with the seriousness that it deserves, you know I'm not going to turn and betray you, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	You know, I'm going to listen and take it seriously, and I'm not going to mock you, and I'm not going to minimize it, and I'm not going to say, oh, well, you know, that's all in the past, buck it up, you know, move on.
	You've got a bright future ahead of you, blah, blah, blah, right?
	Yeah.
	I'm going to listen and care.
	So, your genuine lived experience is not going to experience a negative in talking to me, right?
	Okay.
	So...
	Who will, in your ecosystem, in your internal array of characters, who will suffer a negative if your childhood experience receives appropriate sympathy?
	Well, my parents.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	So, you want to talk to me about something.
	Your inner parents, I would imagine, are arising and saying, well, you can talk about it, but...
	We need to throw some giggles in.
	We need to throw some sing-song happy voices.
	We need to try and condition this person to not respond with the appropriate level of sympathy for what you suck.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah.
	It's weird how that happens because I've heard this same situation so many times on your show.
	And, you know, I almost feel like it got, it kind of snuck up on me.
	It's weird how we're all human, huh?
	Yes.
	Alright, and what are you thinking and feeling now?
	I guess I'm thinking, I'm feeling that I'm not as far along my path as I thought I was.
	I don't have a relationship with my parents and I'm I'm very okay with that.
	You mean an external relationship?
	Exactly.
	I didn't realize that they were alive and strong in my head.
	Well, who else do you think is calling you negative things?
	Yeah, you're right.
	And in fact, when I asked you what you felt, you gave me a negative judgment.
	You did not give me a feeling.
	Do you remember what it was?
	That...
	I criticized myself for not being as far along as I thought I was.
	Yeah.
	You gave yourself a criticism rather than telling me how you felt.
	You busted me.
	No, listen.
	The parents are strong in this one, Luke.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	So what were you feeling rather than giving yourself a negative judgment on the journey, the path, the whatever?
	Angry.
	I feel angry.
	Okay.
	Go on.
	If these thoughts are from my inner parents, and, you know, I've been doing the work, like, trying to get through this, and, you know,
	for the most part, right now, I have a great life, and I really, I want to own it and I want to be more present in it and I want to be big and these thoughts are, they're paralyzing me.
	Which thoughts?
	The thoughts that I'm a piece of shit and I don't deserve my life and that I'm hateable.
	Right.
	It makes me so angry.
	I'm so done with this.
	You know, I have a few really great friends that are supportive.
	I have an amazing husband.
	I have close relationships with my brothers.
	I have every avenue, all kinds of access available to take my work out in a big way.
	I have skills and I'm just stuck living small.
	And I just feel like I keep hitting a brick wall.
	In the speech that you gave in the last call about the crossroads and about the prison, those just really resonated with me because I really feel like I'm at a crossroads.
	It's time for me to launch.
	There's no one...
	In my way, there's nothing in my way but me.
	No, no, no, no.
	Oh, God.
	You have criticized again.
	Doing so well!
	Nothing in your way but you?
	Well, I guess I don't have any...
	A-C-E of five?
	You were molested as a child, right?
	I mean, there was one time that I remember.
	Yeah, but you were.
	And...
	You were a house slave.
	You had to live like a mushroom with the shades drawn and not answer the door and not answer the phone and not make too much noise in case people came by.
	You were tricked into cleaning your dad's car and then he found it dissatisfying and didn't pay you and stickers on the ground.
	If you didn't clean correctly, you went to work all the time.
	You suffered verbal abuse, right?
	You suffered neglect.
	You had a household member depressed, mentally ill, who had a suicide attempt?
	No family love or support?
	You cannot tell me that somehow you, with this experience, are in your own way.
	It's like me saying, well, I never learned Japanese growing up, and now I don't speak Japanese because I'm just in my own way.
	Yeah.
	You were not just in your own way.
	You were traumatized.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	You were harmed.
	Yeah.
	And so I can't accept it if you say, That you are in your own way.
	I just can't blame anything else externally.
	Why?
	Because I have no external reason not to...
	I have...
	I have my skills, I think, are great and they're ready.
	I've got...
	Oh, wait.
	So you feel, sorry to interrupt, but you feel that the external stimuli is gone?
	I feel like in terms of taking my work out into the world, I'm at that crossroads where I could really do it and there's nothing externally stopping me.
	Right.
	So the moment a man comes home from war, he is at peace because he's no longer at war, right?
	Yeah.
	There's no after effects, there's no lingering, there's no stuff, right?
	Yeah, I know.
	He's hot.
	No shells, no bullets.
	You should be fine, right?
	No.
	Let's go see Saving Private Ryan and then drop a bunch of pot pans in the kitchen.
	The war comes home, right?
	Childhood reaches its tendrils and tentacles into adulthood.
	You know the old poem, The Child...
	is the mother of the woman.
	Childhood does not end.
	Thank you.
	You're a native English speaker because you were a child.
	What language do you speak?
	English.
	Can you ever be spoken to in English and not understand it?
	it no and so it is another form to me of calling yourself a piece of shit to say that you should be over your traumas Thank you.
	Or your traumas should not affect you anymore.
	In other words, what you're saying is you should be someone who was not traumatized.
	But you were traumatized for many years, right?
	That cannot be that you weren't traumatized.
	Now, this doesn't mean that trauma now defines you and you can never change.
	That's the other extreme, right?
	Right.
	Just because I didn't grow up learning Japanese doesn't mean I can't speak Japanese.
	It's just harder, right?
	Right.
	But I first have to accept that it's not my fault I didn't...
	It's not my fault I didn't grow up with Japanese parents, right?
	We're probably overusing the Japanese thing.
	It's very appropriate.
	You had bad fortune with your parents, right?
	Yes.
	Very bad fortune with your parents.
	It has lingering effects that require the opposite of what was inflicted, right?
	Healing requires the opposite of what was inflicted, right?
	If you had a loud noise in your ear, you need quiet, right?
	Yes.
	If you were at war, you need peace.
	Yeah.
	And if you were insulted, Andrea, what do you need?
	Acceptance and love.
	Gentleness, acceptance, and love, and sympathy.
	Yeah.
	Do you do that with yourself?
	I don't know how.
	I was just having this conversation about self-compassion and self-love.
	And even the phrase self-love, I get a reaction to it.
	I mean, I can think of how I would treat my niece and how, if I thought of myself as my niece, how I would want her to be treated.
	And then it makes a little bit more sense to me.
	What is your emotional reaction to the phrase self-love?
	Like...
	Again, it's just old stuff, but like being stuck up or selfish.
	Oh, like vanity.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	That was another real derogatory term that was used in my upbringing was like, oh, you're just selfish, but it was totally just a You know, being selfish is really just not going against, you know, what their needs were.
	Yeah.
	In other words, you're interfering with my selfishness.
	I'm going to call you selfish.
	Exactly.
	Yeah.
	And the other thing, too, is that the word selfish doesn't work on selfish people.
	Huh.
	Right.
	The word selfish only works on people who have compassion.
	Hmm.
	No, seriously.
	Does the word racist work against a Klan member?
	No.
	No.
	He's like, yeah!
	I'm racist!
	The pointy hat might have been a clue!
	Proud of it!
	Right?
	Right.
	And so, the word racist only works on people who view racism negatively.
	Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
	And so the word selfish only works if you care about other people's feelings.
	And when I say only selfish people use the word selfish, it's particularly on children.
	Selfish is a hurtful word to use on someone.
	So when you call a child selfish, you're saying, I am now going to hurt you, and I think it's a good thing to hurt you.
	Which is clearly not having any compassion or empathy.
	And it only works on kids who have compassion and empathy.
	Otherwise, you're basically calling Hitler anti-Semitic.
	He's like, yeah!
	You probably read my book!
	Right?
	Right.
	Anti-Semitic only works on people who view it as a negative.
	Exactly.
	Racist only works on people who view it as a negative.
	Selfish only works on people who view it as a negative and it's almost always used by people who are being selfish against people who are not being selfish.
	Like racist is almost always used, in my opinion and experience, it's almost always used against people who view racism negatively and are probably not being racist and it's almost always used by people who are racist.
	Vote for Obama or you're a racist.
	What?
	So I should make my decisions based upon his race and his race alone, but not be racist.
	What?
	Only judge him by his race, but don't be racist.
	What?
	Go to the NAACP and say, you know, you guys are really there promoting just the interests of black people.
	That seems kind of racist.
	They're like, yep!
	You may have noticed the letters.
	It's not Chinese people.
	Right?
	So, and the reason I want to get...
	It's, you know, projection, right?
	Your parents say selfish to you, did it hurt?
	Yeah.
	It was just the way they said it to you.
	Did you want to be selfish?
	What?
	Did you want to be selfish?
	No, no.
	Right.
	Right.
	If you had said to your parents, I don't understand, Mom and Dad, what's your definition of selfishness?
	What would they say?
	I think they would say, if they were being honest, that you're just doing what you want and not what I want.
	Okay, so then one of us has to be selfish, right?
	You just don't like that it's me at this point, right?
	Yeah, I think that's how they would view it.
	Right, so would they say that it's the parents' job to do what the kids do more, or want to do more, or would they say that it's the children's job to do what the parents want?
	Oh, yeah, the latter is what they would say.
	I mean, we were just extra limbs to them, you know.
	Right.
	Right.
	Free labor.
	Free legger?
	Sorry, free labor.
	Free labor, right.
	Yeah.
	Or cheap labor.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	So they wouldn't have any objective definition of selfishness other than it's a word when I want to win and I want you to lose.
	When I want to dominate you and have you obey me, I will say a hurtful word that is actually describing my actions and the opposite of your actions and use it to hurt you so that you will conform rather than face more pain of being called selfish.
	Yep.
	Right.
	Which is being hurt for your virtues by people who don't possess the Very much so.
	We were, you know, expected to be completely virtuous, to have really strong integrity, but they would get away with everything that they could.
	It was a very strange situation.
	I mean, all of their stories were about how they ripped someone off or how Wait, what do you mean?
	What do you mean they've ripped someone off?
	I'm not disagreeing with you.
	I'm not opposing you.
	I'm just curious what you mean by that.
	My father used to have some businesses back before I was born.
	It was a gas station and people would come to get their oil changed and all he would do was wash the car.
	And people would come back and say how much better their car rode because of the car, I mean, because of the oil change.
	And, you know, they would laugh about it or, I mean, they would have stories about, you know, just how they busted my older brother.
	You know, he was at seven years old, left at home, supposed to be doing all the dishes and the dishes started disappearing and they found them underneath the house.
	And they were, like, laughing about it, like they busted him.
	But, you know, nobody ever thought, like, what is a seven-year-old doing at home?
	I mean...
	Hey, hey, hey.
	What are you doing?
	What are you doing?
	I laughed again.
	I'm sorry.
	You started getting this, like, happy lilt in your voice.
	Like, this was, like...
	I'm tired of talking to your parents, Andrea.
	I'm sorry.
	I'm kind of a...
	I'm not trying to be mean.
	I just, I want to be sharp because I don't want to talk to you.
	You're being fair.
	I have this, we call it the, it's gross, but my alter ego, a cheerleading clown, and it comes out in conversation sometimes.
	It's awful.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, so your parents, your dad would make jokes about ripping, stealing from people.
	And putting them in danger, too, right?
	That their car might seize up, damage their whole motor, they could get stranded somewhere, right?
	All of his stories had that same theme.
	Terrible.
	But would he characterize that as selfish in his part, or just, you know, funny?
	It's funny.
	Funny old story.
	Yeah, and probably lies.
	You think?
	I mean, not lies that he didn't change people's oil, but lies that the people came back and said, how great the car was running, right?
	Maybe so.
	I mean, I've had my oil changed many times in my car.
	I have never gone back and said, how great my car is!
	Yeah, it won't make your car drive better.
	But I'll tell you, I always have to watch when I get my oil changed now.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	And I mean, a seven-year-old boy who's hiding dishes when he's left home alone to clean them, that's not a good story.
	No, what was he doing home alone?
	Because that's fear.
	They probably never even showed him how to do the dishes.
	Well, even if they did or didn't, that's fear.
	Yeah.
	He's hiding things because he's afraid of the consequences.
	I see that.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, there were a few stories along that same theme when he was that age.
	You know, all about him getting caught doing things while he was home alone at seven years old.
	Right.
	Which is kind of illegal.
	Yeah.
	I mean, it probably was the same feeling that my younger brothers and I had being alone and having to pretend like nobody's there because we probably shouldn't have been home alone to begin with.
	Okay, so Andrea, you said you have close relationships with your brother.
	Yes, our three brothers.
	Do they bring you up short when you start giggling about these disasters?
	What do you mean?
	Do they do what I'm doing when you start laughing about this?
	One of them does.
	But not enough to have broken the habit as yet, right?
	No, he's the one that got left behind.
	It's very painful.
	What do you mean?
	He's still bankrolled by my parents.
	He has a couple of serious illnesses, and so it's more of a challenge for him to go out on his own.
	But I think that, you know, the cards are stacked against him.
	And all of my other brothers and I have tried to rescue him at some point.
	But your other brothers don't?
	Stop the...
	What did you call it?
	Rabbit cheerleader?
	Oh, it's the cheerleading clown.
	No, they don't laugh about it.
	They don't laugh about it.
	And, you know, we're all in different stages of non-relationship with my parents.
	Of course, I'm the one that doesn't talk to them at all.
	I live in a different city, thankfully, and I'm just not interested.
	Yeah.
	And they all struggle with it on some level.
	My oldest brother is adopted, and so his issue is...
	It's different for him.
	Okay.
	Do you want me to keep asking questions?
	What do you think would be most helpful?
	Um...
	Well, I'm really excited about this call to get a new perspective and we're definitely, it's already happening.
	I don't know if I've accurately maybe explained what I wanted to get out of the call or do you feel like that's clear to you?
	It's not clear.
	I certainly would be happy to hear.
	Yeah, the stuff that I described to you, it was awful.
	And I agree that it was traumatic.
	And there was a time where it felt like my parents were living right next door to me.
	And it was awful.
	I don't necessarily feel that way right now.
	And to be honest, I really...
	I love my life right now.
	I really do.
	No.
	No.
	Why not?
	No, no.
	Look, I'm not saying you don't.
	I'm not saying you don't, but I'm saying there's a contradiction.
	Do you know what the contradiction is when you say that you love your life?
	The only one that I can see is that, well, I mean, can I love my life and still have the mechanism that says I'm a piece of shit?
	What do you think?
	But that's not the contradiction I'm thinking of, but that's a very good one.
	Well, I just, I guess, because I don't really believe it, maybe that you're saying that the trauma is still with me, and so I can't fully...
	No, no, no.
	You're not answering the question.
	Do you think that it's possible to love your life and still have, as you said, at the bottom of your beliefs that you're a piece of shit?
	I guess I love my outer world.
	Thank you.
	All right.
	The other thing that you said to me earlier, Andrea, is you said that my speech about the prison...
	Yes.
	And the choices was resonating with you because you feel in a box.
	You feel restricted.
	You feel small.
	I feel small.
	Which is not a criticism.
	I'm just saying that if you say, deep down I think I'm a piece of shit, I feel I'm in a prison, I feel my life is small, I feel trapped, and I love my life, I'm confused.
	Yeah, it's confusion.
	I feel confused.
	The prison feeling...
	Well, look.
	Which one is the truth?
	They can't both be true.
	I think that you say that you love your life kind of like a pamphlet or a commercial, right?
	Okay.
	Right?
	Like, if you say you love your life, then, you know, that presents a certain image of you that...
	Is a benefit to you in some manner, right?
	Now, I'm not saying you hate your life.
	I'm not saying that at all.
	I'm not saying you have a terrible life.
	You might have a great life.
	But what I'm saying is that you don't notice the contradiction, which means that you're still not quite connecting with me yet, right?
	When you connect with someone, you notice when you have contradictions.
	If you're shifting in and out of manipulation, and by manipulation, I'm not accusing you of anything negative or nasty or anything like that.
	But what I mean is that you are still trying to manage my responses by giving me statements which contradict each other as if they don't.
	And the only way that that would work on me is if I were dissociated as well.
	If I were only listening to the moment and not to your conversation as a whole.
	In other words, if I was waiting to manipulate you, I'd let you get away with manipulating me, but I'm not.
	So I'm not fully present in the conversation?
	No.
	You can't be, because you don't even notice that you've been telling me opposite things.
	Which means you're trying to do something in the moment that is disconnected from what you did before.
	Do you know what I'm disconnecting from?
	Well, obviously my upbringing.
	Did you have to put on a happy front when out with your parents?
	When with family, with your parents?
	When with others, with your parents?
	I think I had to manage a lot of crappy situations that I had no control over.
	You called yourself a clown cheerleader.
	Did you have to put on a positive spin about your family or about your life when you were a child?
	Yeah, I guess to the outer world I did.
	There was a time that I thought...
	The whole point is to the outer world.
	I said when you were out.
	I'm sorry.
	I get it.
	I just...
	Let's be more efficient than this, right?
	You had to put on a happy face outside of the family trauma, right?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	So that's why you're telling me you love your life.
	I want to.
	Because that's the commandment.
	When you're out there, you better be fucking happy, Andrea.
	You better not tell any people about the trauma that's going on.
	You better not let them know by word or fucking deed or pause or emphasis or raised voice or lowered voice or any goddamn way.
	You better not tell people what's going on in this household.
	They better not know.
	So here are your fucking pom-poms.
	moms, go cheer for the family.
	I have a way of being overly enthusiastic.
	And there was a time where I thought that my family was me.
	I, you know, my identity was...
	Okay, you don't, oh my god, you don't have a habit of being overly enthusiastic.
	Overly enthusiastic was a survival mechanism necessary for the family structure, right?
	I think being small was the habit that was necessary and just to kind of stay out of the way.
	And cheerleading.
	Yeah, I guess when I was asked to maybe like to be to mediate in my parents problems.
	It's more about, I guess, being a pleaser and anticipating people's wants, I guess.
	Yes.
	Did you ever hang out at your dad's garage?
	I hung out at work with him.
	He's a salesman.
	What do you mean by he's a salesman?
	Well, he was a sales rep for a while, and he used to take us sometimes on, you know, when he'd go visit his customers.
	And then now he has some warehouses.
	I used to work for him a while back.
	No, but you told me he was a cheat, right?
	He was a what?
	A cheat.
	Yeah, he's a cheat.
	Yeah.
	Okay, so let's call things by their proper names, right?
	Don't be a salesman for your dad by calling him a salesman.
	He was a cheat.
	Yeah, he is a cheat.
	Okay, he was a cheat, he is a cheat, right?
	Yeah.
	So could you be honest with your dad's clients about your dad?
	No.
	Right.
	Could you be honest with your friends about your dad?
	No, not when I was in the shits.
	Not when I was in there.
	No.
	Now I can.
	No, not as a kid.
	No.
	Could you be honest with your dad about your dad?
	No.
	Why are you laughing?
	Just because the idea of it is so absurd that I would put him in.
	No, no, Andrea.
	The idea of it is not absurd.
	It is traumatic.
	You could not be honest to your father about your father.
	And I bet you dollars to donuts that you had to think he was a good guy.
	Yeah, because he was terrifying.
	smart guy, a cunning guy, a guy who got ahead, a guy who won, a guy who beat others, a guy who made money off fools, right?
	You couldn't say that.
	Too much.
	You're stealing from people.
	Dad, you're putting people in danger.
	Dad, you're lying to people.
	Dad, the food that you put in my mouth comes from theft.
	Right?
	I could never say that.
	Why?
	What would happen if you did?
	He would fly off the handle.
	He's emotionally volatile.
	It's scary.
	What would happen?
	What would he do?
	At least scream, call us names, or ignore us.
	A lot of times after flying off the handle and who knows what, I remember him ignoring me once for like three months in the same house.
	And do you remember what you did to deserve such abuse?
	No, I have no idea.
	I mean, I probably disagreed with him.
	And he ignored you.
	Does that mean like he wouldn't talk to you for three months in the same house?
	Yeah, we were in the same house.
	And I remember there was some holiday or something.
	He's Israeli.
	We went to, it was some kind of holiday about forgiveness and everybody is hugging and shaking hands at the end of it.
	And he wouldn't even look at me.
	Wow.
	I mean, that's his major tactic is ignoring that.
	And, you know, he's done that recently to one of my brothers.
	And, you know, I think he's kind of a piece of shit.
	Well, I'm sure he only stole from the goyim, so I think that's OK.
	You get how astoundingly vicious that is.
	And Fucking cowardly.
	To ignore your child, to ostracize your child in the same house is so absolutely vicious because the child needs the parent.
	The threats of non-engagement, the threats of abandonment, the threats of ostracism is a death threat to the child.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, my mom did it too.
	I mean, that was like...
	Okay, you're drifting off into fucking cheerleader land.
	Yeah, my mom did.
	No, no, no.
	And you couldn't even appeal to your mom and say, Mom, what the fuck is wrong with Dad?
	No, because then she would start venting about her problems with him.
	Oh, you think you as the child have problems who was not here by choice.
	Look at me who chose him, blah, blah, blah, right?
	Yeah, exactly.
	Did your mom work?
	Yes.
	Did she also have the same lack of ethics that your father had?
	I don't think so.
	I know she was kind of known as a whistleblower in her job.
	Did she know about your dad's cheating and lying?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I mean, she had obviously no particular problems with it, right?
	No, I'm trying to think.
	Could have whistleblowed on your dad.
	Yeah, I mean, she stood to benefit from that stuff.
	In their early days, it was the two of them doing that stuff.
	It wasn't just him.
	Oh, so your mom was, in the early days, your mom was also cheating.
	Yeah, she was there.
	They were, you know, working together, trying to make ends meet or whatever.
	My mom, though, she's a liar.
	She's not an honest person.
	Okay, so you've just basically done 360.
	Right.
	I was just trying to think of examples.
	Do you know that you do these 360s, Andrea?
	I never realized it before.
	I always thought I was pretty...
	Straight.
	Yeah, because you start giving me the party line, right?
	You start giving me the propaganda.
	No, she wasn't dishonest.
	She was a whistleblower, you know, blah, blah, blah.
	And then you end up, yeah, she was dishonest.
	She partnered with my dad.
	Stefan, I don't want to defend my parents.
	I don't...
	I don't...
	I'm not saying you do.
	Did I impute any motives to what you're doing?
	I'm just surprised that it's coming off like I am, because...
	No, it's not coming off like you are.
	You are.
	And to your credit, you are shifting from their perspective to your perspective, to your huge credit, right?
	That sounds crazy.
	But I don't know the degree to which you're aware of that.
	No, I'm not aware of it.
	Right.
	I mean, when you listen back to this, and I certainly hope that you do.
	I will.
	You will be shocked.
	And not bad.
	Nothing you're doing is bad or wrong, and I hope I'm not coming across as critical at all.
	But I need to say what is happening.
	My parents are not trustworthy people.
	I don't trust them.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	This is fantastic.
	That's what's called a breakthrough.
	Do you know why?
	Who told you?
	Uh-huh.
	Negative things about yourself.
	My father, specifically.
	And your mother.
	Yeah, and my mother.
	Okay.
	They are untrustworthy people, they are liars, and they are cheats.
	What does that mean about what they told you about yourself?
	That they're lying and they're cheating me.
	Yep.
	And if you confront it at that level, at that fundamental level, A liar told me I was a bad person.
	A cheat told me I was doing something wrong.
	Then you can challenge the language because the language comes from the Lord of lies.
	The judgment comes from an untrustworthy person.
	I'm a counterfeiter, Andrea.
	Would you like my money?
	No.
	No!
	Your money is shit.
	Because you just told me you're a counterfeiter.
	I cheat people, Andrea.
	You're selfish.
	Well, you're a cheat.
	Exactly!
	Why would I listen to the judgment of me from a liar and a cheat?
	I mean, I wouldn't consciously.
	I guess it's just I'm believing judgments from people I don't even want in my life.
	Right.
	And that is the connection that is missing.
	You think it's you telling you this stuff.
	It's not.
	It's your parents telling you this stuff.
	You don't want your parents in your life because they're abusive and liars and cheats and this and that and the other.
	But the voices that your parents have embedded within your mind are not being subjected to the same evaluation.
	The voices in our head from abusers are no more valid than the voices of abusers.
	There's no...
	I'm for universality, right?
	If a man tells me a lie yesterday, it doesn't become true today, right?
	It's still a lie.
	He still told me a lie, right?
	Yeah.
	So what your parents told you when you were a child, given the nature of their characters and the immorality of their personalities and their choices, they are self-admitted liars and cheats, and everything they said to you Is it the very best suspect and at the very worst dismissible?
	Yeah.
	Wow.
	I thought that after the last call that these things were no more than me keeping myself in a state of victimhood.
	You were in a state of victimhood, and your victimhood is to not universalize your opposition to this destructive language.
	Now, the voices in your head were there to protect you from your parents.
	You know that, right?
	So the reason that you would call yourself a piece of shit is because if you didn't call yourself a piece of shit, you might accidentally call your dad a piece of shit, and then really bad things might happen.
	Yeah.
	So the voice in your head that is insulting you is doing so because it's easier to hit yourself than have someone else hit you.
	It's safer to hit yourself than have someone else hit you, right?
	So it's not like the voices in your head are not your parents.
	They are salvation from your parents.
	Yes.
	But that doesn't mean that they shouldn't be challenged.
	You know, like if you've swum for a whole day and then you get up on shore and you're half dazed, your muscles are still going to want to keep swimming, right?
	And you say, man, relax, we're on the shore, right?
	But philosophy, particularly moral philosophy, if somebody who is a piece of shit calls you a piece of shit, That has no credence in the mind of any rational person.
	And it doesn't mean that that means it's gone.
	I'm giving you a perspective that is worth working towards over time.
	Because look, if I have negative thoughts about myself, I have two magic words.
	Two magic words to solve it.
	Would you like to know what they are?
	Yes, please.
	Okay.
	The magic words are...
	Yes.
	Are you ready?
	Prove it.
	Prove it.
	Ah, you're a piece of shit.
	Really?
	Prove it.
	Right.
	I mean, that's where I get stuck is that I don't really have any evidence that I'm a piece of shit.
	It just feels like it's an implant or something.
	Yeah, but prove it is the first part.
	The second part is another two words.
	Can't prove it?
	Fuck off.
	Talk to me another way.
	You got something to tell me?
	Talk to me another way.
	Think I'm a piece of shit?
	Prove it.
	If you can't prove it, you're being abusive?
	Fuck off.
	So you say that...
	Find another way to tell me whatever you want to tell me.
	But don't abuse me.
	And that's something that you can sort of address to the voice, to the sound.
	I mean...
	Do you want to take it for a spin?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	So you be, like, dig up the shittiest inner voice, the nastiest inner voice you got.
	I'll be you.
	Let me have it.
	Okay.
	Like...
	Give me...
	Everyone hates you.
	Your husband hates you.
	He's just trying to be nice to you.
	Your friends are...
	It's only going to be a matter of time before they catch on and see that you're a piece of shit.
	You're average at best.
	You shouldn't even bother putting your workout into the world.
	Just keep cleaning.
	Yeah, nobody wants to be around you and they're just being nice to you and they just want to use you.
	Okay, those are the pretty strong charges.
	What's your evidence?
	Right?
	And know this, if you've got no evidence, you're being an asshole.
	Like, you're the piece of shit if you can't prove that to me.
	Then everything you're calling me is actually a description of a goddamn mirror, not a window.
	So I'm happy to hear, I'm kind of pissed, because this is some pretty serious charges.
	You better give me some proof, or you have to accept that you're being a total prick.
	So what's your proof?
	I don't have any proof.
	So what the fuck are you doing?
	What are you trying to achieve here?
	What is the purpose of just coming in and taking a deep dump all over my heart?
	Like, what are you trying to do here?
	I've been getting so angry and frustrated, but I never thought to just call it out.
	I can hear...
	No, don't keep on the roleplay!
	Don't jump out!
	Trust me, they're not giving up that easy.
	One challenge does not an elimination of a negative self-image make.
	Oh, there's a bumper sticker for me.
	We got one.
	Okay, so let's go back in.
	Because look, inner voices, it's UPP. If somebody talks to you like that in your real life...
	You'd be like, whoa, that's some pretty strong charges.
	Care to give me some evidence?
	And by the way, if you can't give me evidence, you're an asshole, right?
	Okay, so let's go back to the voice.
	You say, what, like, the voice says, I've got no proof, right?
	Of course you're not a piece of shit.
	Of course your husband and friends don't hate you, and they're just putting up with you for using you, whatever, right?
	Right?
	I mean, of course, right, so let's go back to, I say to the voice...
	What are you trying to achieve with this?
	What's the point?
	Do you think I won't listen to you if you're not screaming at me?
	What's going on?
	Why would you say all these horrible things to me without any proof?
	Because I don't want other people to say them to you.
	So your idea of protecting me from verbal abuse is a massive torrent of verbal abuse.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I... Do you think that's the very best way you can help me now?
	I mean, I get in the past.
	Thank you.
	You know, in the past, you internalized my dad's voice.
	You internalized my mom's voice.
	You kept me from danger.
	So massive thanks and gratitude for your service.
	They're not around right now.
	So you've kind of become the asshole you were supposed to protect me from.
	Is that the very best way for us to do this?
	No, I can be better.
	I can tell you things.
	Well, what...
	How can I help you to communicate what you need to tell me without this, like...
	Right?
	Not calling in this airstrike of horrible language.
	I mean, I want to listen.
	But...
	What can I do to help you talk to me in a way that's not so...
	I mean, it's destructive, right?
	Yeah.
	So what do you need from me?
	What do I need from you?
	I mean, you don't like the taste of those words in your mouth deep down, right?
	This is not what you want to spend the rest of your life in my head doing, right?
	No, they're ugly and they're mean.
	I would rather tell you things that will help you and feed you and Help you be in the present moment so you can enjoy your life.
	And you don't think that what I produce is really that bad, right?
	You probably just want to save me from being upset if it gets rejected, right?
	Yeah, and I just don't want it to come out of the blue if somebody actually says that to you.
	Yeah, if somebody says, I don't like what you've created, you're kind of trying to protect me from that, right?
	But you're kind of also protecting me from success, too, right?
	Like, you're not just turning off a dimmer switch, you're just shooting out the light bulbs, right?
	Yeah, that's what I'm doing.
	And look, we can survive if somebody doesn't like what we're doing, right?
	I mean, and I'm smiling here, and I don't mean, like, I take with all seriousness, you are trying to protect me from some serious bullets of history, right?
	But people who may not like what we create...
	Are not the same as mom and dad, right?
	No, they're not.
	Right.
	They probably feel kind of similar to you, which I understand because you're like Defendobot, right?
	I mean, you are like the defense robot.
	But you get that if we can't accept any failure or any rejection whatsoever, you know, we're both kind of stifled a little, right?
	And you're stuck in this role of being, like, eternal sentry with, like, aching feet and constant finger-on-the-trigger shit, right?
	Now, I've done a lot, right, to sort of keep our environment safe and secure.
	I've done a lot.
	What more do I need to do to help you to relax some of this, right, this aggression?
	I guess.
	I need to be reminded that I'm not back in the prison anymore, that the prison door is open and I don't need to protect you from the same things as I did before.
	It's a different time.
	And is there anything that you would like to do that would be really fun for you?
	Because the opposite of defense is enjoyment, right?
	Yes.
	Right, so is there anything that you would really like to do?
	Any food, any activities, any sports?
	You want to go to a roller coaster?
	Is there anything that you would like to do that would be a nice break from this hair-trigger, tension, eternal battle, right?
	Yeah, there would be something I would like to do.
	I would like to...
	Take our work seriously and take it to the next level to remind us of where we are now and what we could be.
	Now, when you say take the work seriously, what does that mean?
	I want to make sure I really understand what you're saying.
	What would that look like?
	How do we know if we're taking the work seriously?
	It would mean outsourcing, hiring out other people to do all of the small stuff.
	So that we could focus on what we add the most value to, right?
	Yes.
	And so that we can grow and see what we can be.
	Right.
	So if we can get rid of the distractions and we can focus on what we really can create that adds the most value, that would be really exciting for you, right?
	Yes.
	Well, I need that from you.
	Look, I hate to tell you I need, I need, I need, because I know you've been doing a huge and fantastic job of protecting us for so long, which is a shitty job.
	But I need that clarity from you.
	Right?
	Because, you know, I get distracted, I get scared, partly by you, and, you know, if we're more on the same side, then we can both get more of what we want.
	Yeah, we can relax.
	But what you just said is hugely important to me, and is an incredible, immense value for me that literally could save me years of my life.
	And I, you know, if that's better than, you know, the historical scream fest that I hugely respect you for doing, and Which you, you know, saved my life for doing.
	But if we can have these kinds of conversations, I mean, that's got to be more fun for you too.
	Yeah, I don't want to be at war anymore.
	Right.
	And it sucks that you were, right?
	There's certain parts of us that get promoted to sentry duty when we're in dangerous situations and we grew up in dangerous situations.
	There are part of us that get promoted to sentry duty And my God, I'm sorry it was you.
	I mean, thank you.
	I'm incredibly sorry it was you because that's not what you wanted to be doing with your childhood.
	What did you most want to be doing with your childhood?
	I wanted to be drawing pictures and learning new things, playing sports, learning an instrument maybe, making friends.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	Maybe having the, getting outside, you know, in the home with the windows drawn and Curtains drawn.
	Yeah, that's not where I wanted to be.
	That was weird.
	Well, it was more than weird.
	It was horrible, right?
	Yeah.
	It was isolating and terrible.
	It was terrible.
	And there was no escape.
	No.
	I mean, we're out now.
	But back then, there was no escape, which means no relaxation of God, right?
	Right.
	We're out now.
	That's what it feels like, is that the prison door is open, and I can go out and get some fresh air, and it's a little scary, and it's a little nice, but then I end up going back into the cell.
	Even though I know...
	Now, how can I help with that?
	Because the cell means frustration, means aggression, and means that you still think you're protecting us from a danger that's not here anymore as much.
	And you've kind of become the danger that you wanted to protect, right?
	Which obviously is not what you want and not what you're there for and not how you want to spend the rest of your time with all of us in the head, right?
	In the heart.
	So what can I do to help you not feel like you're going back into a prison?
	How can I keep this...
	A communication channel open.
	I guess I need help.
	I'm not sure how to answer it, except I want to feel free.
	I don't know what that would take.
	Is there any danger in our life at the moment that's provoking it?
	Any change?
	Sorry, is there any danger in our life at the moment that's provoking it?
	No danger.
	No.
	If you don't get listened to, does it tend to escalate you?
	Oh, yeah.
	It triggers me big time.
	Because then you feel like I felt when Dad was ignoring us, right?
	Okay.
	So maybe instead of sort of hiding from you out of fear, I need to check in with you more regularly so that you feel heard.
	Because the way that I want to work Our head and our heart is everyone gets a seat at the table.
	Right?
	You have incredibly important things to add.
	You saved our life.
	You are a hero with a bit of a potty mouth, but you are a hero.
	And that's fantastic.
	And so, you know, every morning, maybe what we can do, you know, just for me, Andrea, the writing scripts, like pretending I'm writing a dialogue out with a character is a way that I keep in contact with inner alters.
	But maybe for a little while, to integrate and to make the alter feel listened to, you can say, you know, how's it going this morning?
	What did you think?
	How did you sleep?
	What did you dream?
	What's going on in the life that I need to know about?
	And engage in a conversation.
	Inner alter egos often get, in my opinion, they often get aggressive when they're not consulted.
	Yeah.
	And the reason we don't consult them is because they're aggressive, and then they get more aggressive because we don't consult them, and then we shy away from them even more, which makes them more aggressive, which, right, all that, right?
	That makes a lot of sense.
	But if you consult, you deflate the aggression.
	Yeah.
	And you enroll participation and a sense of value, a sense of having something to contribute, right?
	Yeah.
	I see where I've been, just fighting this inner alter ego process.
	Rather than bringing it in, I guess.
	Right.
	And it's weird because, of course, it's not what you do with outside abusers.
	You don't invite them in and have them come live with you, right?
	But inner abusers or inner abusive voices, we can't.
	They're in our head.
	The call is coming from inside the house.
	There's no door to lock.
	You can't separate from abusive voices.
	You have to find a way to listen and get them enrolled.
	And they're not abusers.
	They are The scar tissue of abusers.
	And like all scar tissue, they're there to protect and heal.
	That's wonderful.
	You know, I had thought that this is just, this voice is just something that I'm going to need to manage the rest of my life and just, you know, keep it in, you know, a little cage in my head and, you know, okay, I hear you, but I'm not going to think that way right now.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, be assertive and inviting.
	I have found that to me.
	Like, don't put up with any shit, but don't be aggressive back.
	Be assertive but inviting.
	To me, at least, the best policy.
	I'm not, you know, I don't have any proof of that.
	It's just my experience and opinion.
	But I have found, I mean, I think it worked fairly well with this voice, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I really do.
	I didn't, I just thought it was just some old shrapnel, but not an alter ego that would have something valuable to say.
	I thought what the alter ego had to say was incredible.
	Yeah.
	I mean, outsource the crap and focus on the value added?
	Damn!
	That's good, right?
	Yeah, that's really good.
	Yeah, this is very helpful.
	This is exactly what I needed.
	I just needed to have a new way of dealing with the voice.
	You try different keys, right?
	You try different keys.
	And so, you know, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is, you know, if you have time now to sit down, you can write it out, hand puppets, doesn't matter what gets the inner voice to communicate with you, but to write it out and continue to follow up and continue to ask questions and continue to ask questions.
	And you don't have to do that for the rest of your life because, you know, through that process, through that habit, it will become just a process of being alive, right?
	Meditation, mulling over things.
	You can ask yourself questions and get answers.
	It doesn't happen.
	But when something has been unlistened to for a long time, a conscious process of focusing on listening through whatever method works, I think is the best approach.
	And then it It will eventually become, or not even eventually, but relatively quickly, it will become an automatic process of self-integration.
	Does that make any sense?
	It really does.
	This is tremendously helpful, Stefan.
	Good, good.
	I'm sorry it took a while, but, you know, I mean, hey, it's not how long it takes, it's what you get.
	I'm sorry it took a while.
	No, it's no problem.
	You did a great job.
	Thank you.
	I mean, you...
	You did a great job.
	What can I say?
	It was magnificent.
	So I got some work to do now.
	Yes, I think so.
	I think so.
	All right.
	Anything else you wanted to add?
	I don't think so.
	I think you nailed it.
	Good.
	Well, keep us posted about how it goes.
	Do give my best to the alters.
	Fantastic.
	All right.
	Well, thanks, everyone, for another wonderful, wonderful meat and potatoes and vegetables and fine curdled broth of historical clarity kind of meal.
	It's always a privilege and always an honor to talk with you, the fine listeners.
	And nothing to be said other than donations again, as always, more than welcome.
	FDRURL.com slash donate to Mariariario.
	We should have Vine Rand part two up and part three is mostly done, but not yet recorded.
	So I hope we get to get to that this week.
	But thanks again to the callers.
	Thanks to Mike.
	Thanks to you, the listeners, who make it all possible.
	This is Stefan Molyneux for Free Domain Radio.

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