2837 Merchant of Injustice - Saturday Call In Show November 8th, 2014
To what extent can we hold parents morally responsible for having children in developing nations where impoverished people exploit them as labor to work the land for survival? If you accept that free will is not supported by biology or physics, and you presumably accept that it's hypothetically possible for decision-making (and any other characteristic of free will) to be an illusion, then does that not make free will an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence? Why am I so attracted to narcissistic women - is there something fundamental to which I’m currently blind? Includes: liberal shaming, class eugenics, not all poverty is tragic, hard work vs. fun in the moment, stripping moral responsibility from the poor, not smart enough to figure out that sex makes babies, economic inequality as original sin, take what you want and pay for it, compared to what, industrialization as contraception, don't have children you can't afford, peddling the injustice of the system will always find buyers, beware the peddlers of injustice, the free market is fair, emotional intelligence, coffee makers debating free will, why some people are deterministic, a lack of self-knowledge creates a lack of choice, indifference comes from hopelessness, realizing that people aren’t interested in you, the horror of the blarp, win-lose mentality, magic geography standards, the challenges of cross cultural romances, role-play with dad, painful lack of connection, overriding lust, understanding what is missing in your relationships and the last guy to buy a slave before they outlawed slavery.High Emotional Intelligence linked with more delinquency among young women (but not men)http://digest.bps.org.uk/2014/10/is-this-dark-side-of-emotional.htmlhttp://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14789949.2014.943796#.VF7ID8kfRdc
It is November three days before November the 11th, Remembrance Day, where I think humanity turns its countenance upon war and a visage of war more in sorrow than in anger, as I think seems most appropriate.
The Double-barreled suicide of Christendom, known as the First and Second World Wars, were, I think, the greatest tragedies to strike the planet since the Ice Age.
Not because only or mostly or largely Christians died, but because it snuffed out the 19th century experimentation with classical liberalism, a minimal state, and so on.
It really sets the stage for The Cold War and the War on Terror and all of the other catastrophes that have continued to pummel the twitching remains of shredded liberty that still lie straggling and struggling for breath across the world.
So I think I'm going to work on the truth about World War I. I mean, I've done the truth about World Wars video, a couple of videos I did years ago, but I think updating it is...
World War I is sort of one of these weird mysteries.
So many disagreements.
You ask 100 historians how it started, you probably get 200 answers.
How did it start?
What happened?
And how did it continue so long?
And how did it set the stage for the Second World War?
All these I find fascinating.
Fascinating questions.
And my ancestors, my Great-grandfathers, they were decimated in the First World War.
Set the stage for feminism in many ways because the decimation of the European male stock gave women some options, involuntary and perhaps even unwanted options.
But really set the stage for the spread of certain feminist ideals, some of which I think are wonderful and some of which I don't.
Not that that's worth going into right now.
But it is, I think, essential to really mull over the First World War of what a savage eruption of volcanic medievalism it was that laid waste to the youthful spirit of liberty that had so animated in many ways the 19th century. essential to really mull over the First World War of So we'll work on that.
Hopefully get it out before the 11th.
And other than that, I guess I am all ears for the listeners.
Who do we have first on with the mic and us?
Alright, up first today is John.
John wrote in and said, To what extent can we hold parents morally responsible for having children in developing nations where impoverished people exploit them as necessary farm labor to work the land for survival?
This question is prompted by Peter Joseph's use of starving Africans as a sort of shaming tool in Western economies, and also because I have been accused of class eugenics for advocating that the starving poor be responsible and not procreate.
Class eugenics, was that the phrase?
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, I had that phone at me when I suggested, well, hey, maybe people in these very difficult situations could opt not to have children.
So I turned it into a sort of personal responsibility thing.
Now, do you have a specific sort of area of the world that you're thinking of?
I guess it's sub-Saharan Africa.
It's the very difficult areas that are subject to a drought in particular.
Right.
But sporadic drought.
So, you know, you could get some good years.
You know, bearing in mind that children in these cultures...
are potentially your retirement plan and that a lot of them could die of disease so you know these people tend to have more children because they're reckoning some will be lost to disease and so forth.
Right, right.
So do people get offended when you say that there are people in the world who might make a more rational calculation about the number of children they have?
Yeah, exactly, yeah.
I mean, this particular guy, who I think is somebody who works with people in these kind of circumstances in Africa, he became quite judgmental, should I say, or critical, or attacking.
He was attacking me.
Yeah, and it's something that comes up.
I find it genuinely baffling.
For instance, I've said over the years that there is tragic poverty in the world, but not all poverty is tragic.
There are people who decide that playing video games is more important than learning how to program.
They finish level 12 million on Candy Crush.
And they don't know the difference between a go-to and a go-sub statement.
And I think Candy Crush, I suppose, is more fun in the moment than learning how to program.
And so there are people who choose – this is not obviously the case in sub-Saharan Africa, Candy Crush versus learning how to code.
But there are people who choose to not add to their human capital and to have more fun in the moment.
A liberal arts degree is more fun than a physics degree or a degree in petroleum engineering.
So the people who don't add to their human capital, who go out drinking rather than reading books, who watch sitcoms rather than writing short stories, who don't add to their human capital very much, well,
these things It's strange to me because I assume that this fellow who called you a class eugenicist would probably be kind of into universal suffrage, right?
Like one person, one vote?
I'm guessing so, yeah.
I got the flavour of socialist, leftist kind of sentiment there.
Right.
So if you were to suggest, say, property restrictions on voting, like if you were to say, well, look, I mean, if the person doesn't own property, they can't vote.
If the person doesn't have an income of at least, say, $45,000 a year, they can't vote.
The person would be appalled.
Yeah.
Like, are you kidding me?
Would you reserve participation in the political process only for the middle class and above?
Would you have different moral standards, different opportunities, different laws, different participation options for people depending on their class?
How horrifying!
Right?
Correct, yeah.
But this is exactly what they advocate.
When they strip Choice and moral responsibility from the poor.
Right?
Because, let's say, instead of voting for a political leader, you are voting whether to have a child or not.
Probably a more important vote.
Right?
I mean, voting obviously has a formal politics to it.
But voting is also just, here's my choice, I'm acting on it.
You vote to have a child by generally having unprotected sex, or I guess being the...
Roofied victim of some ancient sky ghost.
And so when you say, I would like, I think it would be great if poor people had fewer children, you're actually giving poor people moral responsibility.
And if someone is appalled at you giving equal moral responsibility to rich and poor, middle class, men, women, minorities, you name it, Somebody who's appalled at you giving moral standards to the poor that are equal to everyone else in society.
I mean, if you said, I think people in general should try to avoid having children that they can't spend time with, right?
If you were to say, I don't think rich people should have lots of kids if all they're going to do is put them in boarding schools and have nannies.
Like, people wouldn't be appalled at that.
And you're just saying, nobody's saying castrate them.
Nobody's saying inject them with birth control hormones.
You're just saying, look, I don't think it's a good idea to have kids you don't bother to see because you're off at the country club and golfing and skiing in Aspen and so on.
People would not be usually morally appalled at that because you're just stating an opinion.
But when you start talking about the poor, oh man, people just completely and totally short-circuit The moment you bring moral responsibility to the poor, people assume that you're being elitist, abusive, class eugenicist, you name it.
And it's like, I'm sorry, are you saying that the poor people in this world are not subject to any moral responsibility, any laws of cause and effect?
Is it that they're too stupid to figure out whether they can afford children?
Yeah.
Yeah, that was one of the things.
They're not well enough educated about sex to understand consequences.
Wait, is this guy saying that people in sub-Saharan Africa don't know what makes babies?
Well, that seemed to be part of his argument.
Does he think they should vote on, say, complex issues of economics and foreign policy and whether to receive aid or go more with the free market, whether to privatize or whether to socialize, what tax rates?
So someone should be able to vote on all of that who doesn't know that rubbing naughty bits together makes babies.
Yeah, I found that incredible when he started going down that way.
I just didn't believe it.
I think at this point, most of the population of the planet have worked that stuff out.
But his response to that was to say, well, you know, it's a submission to lust.
You know, the people can't control it.
Well, that doesn't help the voting argument, right?
How the hell does that...
Okay, so they just submit to base lust.
Okay, fine.
So does that mean they're then able to vote with statesman-like impartiality?
Or are they just going to be, give me that!
Give me stuff!
Get me some money!
I want my government cheese and an Obama foam!
So if they can't even resist their animal lust to the point where they can put a condom on, How on earth could they vote for any – even the least complex government plan or proposal that could be imagined?
So if you want to strip the poor of the moral responsibility or the practical responsibility, if you want to strip them of all agency in their own life, then you have – Demoted the poor to a subspecies of social pets.
And I think that is disgusting.
I think that is incredibly elitist.
Oh, these poor people, we need to rush in and help them.
We need to be the great white hunters, all saving all these people, because they don't know.
Penis plus vagina could equal babies.
And then you say, well, okay, the natural consequence of demoting them to a species of human pets would be we don't give cows the vote.
And then they're appalled because they don't give a shit about the poor.
They use the original sin of economic injustice to browbeat any independent person who calls for equality.
The use of the poor In almost all political arguments is as a stultifying, guilt-inducing club with which to beat people to their knees to open up their wallets in a tsunami of bittersweet tears.
If you care about the poor, the first thing you do is you don't just assume there's a huge group of people in this world composed of four letters and two legs.
The poor, they are different from us.
This is something that Fitzgerald and Hemingway used to debate about because Fitzgerald said, well, the rich, they're different from you and I and Hemingway said, yeah, they've got more money.
But we're still people.
One's economic income is not the definition of one's humanity.
A man who makes $10,000 a year is as fine as a man As a man who makes a million dollars a year.
And I will not strip the poor of their choice.
So there are two groups of people who combine to try and wring gold out of your twisted penis by grappling it with the gloves of guilt.
The chainmail gloves of guilt, I dare say, to truly sex up my metaphors.
The poor who...
Wake up at the age of 30 and say, well, I don't remember much of my 20s.
I remember thumping the roof of my pickup truck quite a lot of times.
I remember skinny dipping.
I remember getting lost in the woods.
I remember having a lot of meaningless sex.
And now I'm 30 and I have the economic capital of your average soda can pop.
Soda pop can?
Anyway, rearrange that as you...
As you see fit.
And they wake up and the idea that they are in any way, shape or form the authoress of their own misfortune is completely appalling to them.
They panic.
Like literally like somebody who's fallen off a boat and doesn't know how to swim.
They simply grab at whatever they can.
Yeah, I screwed around and lazed around and worked odd jobs and played at all our World of Warcraft and couch surfed and Didn't move out.
And it was great.
Yeah, I get it.
It's great.
It's great.
You know, I got my first job when I was 10.
You know, I envied the guys who laced around.
Wonderful.
Lays around.
But then, you know, like the ancient Greek proverb says, take what you want and pay for it.
Now, the poor people, the people who end up without any real economic capital, because they...
I chose to watch Netflix rather than, say, cracking a book or learning a foreign language or learning how to think or reading some meaningful material or learning how to code or learning how to be a carpenter, having some hobbies that add to your value.
I mean, if you're just going to piss away your time, I mean, fine.
But then when you're 30, what happens is you freak out.
And then if people let you, they completely damn you.
By submitting to an appeal to cunning guilt.
I was poor.
I didn't have a chance.
Nobody told me.
I didn't have any guidance.
So give me money.
Give me money.
Save me from my own choices.
And it is a very tempting thing to do that because they're very...
People who don't develop economic capital have to develop...
Socially malevolent capital, i.e.
manipulation, guilt-inducing tears, rages, feigned helplessness, all of the manipulative proboscis of vampiric self-abdication.
That's what they have to do.
I didn't learn how to read any real books, so now I'm just going to whine that I never had a chance.
And hope that someone's going to give me some money.
Now, in a free society, there would be people who would help, those who've made bad decisions.
And, you know, okay, so I got you an apprenticeship.
Like Tom Hulse in parenthood.
So I get to inherit the plumbing supply shop.
Do I? Okay, so I got you an apprenticeship.
Get up and go to work.
Oh, man, I don't want to...
Like there's an old Mad Magazine cartoon I remember from a kid with this...
Hippie dippy guy sitting on the couch and his dad comes in and says, come on, man, go get a job.
And then the guy slouches up to some counter at a store and says, hey, man, you're not like looking for anyone to work here, are you, man?
Stephan?
Yeah.
Yeah, so I'm hearing all this and that's great.
I'm just coming back to, I think, something I said or maybe slightly differently in my original question, that these children in these desperately poor conditions...
Are essentially either their cheap labour for, say, subsistence farmers, and also they're like a pension plan.
So when they don't have any welfare, their parents might be dead.
So their offspring are going to be who's going to be looking after them and feeding them when they're old.
How does that affect the sort of moral culpability of Well, I mean, I don't really know how to answer that because if people want to have kids and then they want those kids to take care of them when they get old, I mean, they can try that.
The kids may choose to want to live in the city.
The kids may choose to want to go overseas.
The kids may choose to not live on...
You know, an acre of dirt and try and farm it.
So, I mean, people can take that risk, right?
Now, if they didn't have kids and were to invest in machinery or modernization or sort of pool their capital or resources or get microloans and so on, right, then they could – most likely they could make enough money to save for their own old age, right?
So, I mean, it's just an option.
You can grow people or you can grow your savings.
And if you grow people, well, those people might not want to take care of you when you get old.
They might.
And they might be very happy to do so.
They might not.
So, I mean, if people want to do that, I think that's fine.
Obviously, there's no requirement for people to take care of older people if they don't.
I mean, very, very, very few people would ever like the idea of their parents starving in their old age.
Okay, well, there's another thing that comes up around this, and it's that if child labour is used in the West, you know, left people, socialists go ape, basically, about that.
But when it's in these very poor African countries, Well, you know, I'd accept the argument maybe it is necessary to exploit children to maintain the productivity of these subsistence farms or whatever.
Then they kind of have a – it seems like they have a different rule in that situation.
Yeah, I mean the problem with child labor is – it's the old thing in philosophy.
Compared to what?
People say, oh, well, you know, the 19th century, children had to go up chimneys and work in mines and so on.
It's like, yeah, and that was terrible.
That was terrible.
But the alternative was them dying, right?
And the reason that they had to do that was because there had been so many kings and governments and exploiters and priests and controls and all that that the free market hadn't had a chance to generate the kind of wealth.
Parents don't want their children to go work in mines.
They don't want their children to go work up chimneys.
But the question is, if you just say, well, we're not going to let them do that, that's – I mean, what are they going to do then?
Are they going to starve to death?
Are they going to become prostitutes?
I mean, what happens then?
So – There is a process, as you know, to the accumulation of wealth in society and the first is that you have to have sufficient food for there to be an industrial class.
An industrial class is not growing their own food.
So you have to have agricultural improvements in order to even have any kind of industrialization.
You have to have more than subsistence farming in order for there to be excess crops to be sent to the city so the people there can eat and live.
And When you have excess crops, then in combination with enclosure movements and other things, we don't have to get into much detail about this, but you have an outpouring of people from rural communities into the cities because there's actually enough food getting into the cities for people to be able to buy and live.
And then you get a labor class that is available and relatively cheap and concentrated in an urban environment that you can start to build factories and all that kind of stuff.
The child labor that you see in the Dickensian model, Oliver Twist-style model, that is the result of prior child labor, which is the farms.
Everyone who has a family business, they all start pitching in when they're 10 or 12 years old, no matter what kind of business it is, usually.
It's the rural child labor exploitation that produces the possibility of chimney sweeps and so on.
As a whole, you simply have to look at the population growth.
Is the population growing?
If the population is growing, then everything is kind of necessary.
If the population is shrinking, then you have a huge problem.
But if the population is growing, then the labor is what's feeding that, right?
Because once the capital has accumulated to the point where people don't have to sort of – they have enough money to pay for their kids to go to school rather than up chimneys, that's what they do.
And then when the capital has grown and the medicine and the science has grown to the point where kids can stay alive and so on, the best contraception is industrialization.
What's happening in Africa, as I mentioned in a recent Ebola presentation, It's a lot to do with foreign aid.
Foreign aid keeps pouring money and resources and food and all of that into these countries, which then creates an access which supports more and more and more children.
So, again, I try not to...
I mean, the people in Africa are making their decisions in an environment of, to a large degree, massive amounts of Western aid that is now, I mean, is such an untenable position morally, given how many disasters it has produced in Africa.
But, of course, to cut it back would be incredibly destructive to significant amounts of people.
So it really is sort of having a tiger by the ears.
You can't really let go of the tiger, but you can't do much else other than hold on to it.
So I think one of the basic realities of human survival is don't have children you can't afford.
Don't have children you can't afford.
But unfortunately, people who are less intelligent generally don't make that calculation, especially if they can't afford them through guilting other people into pretending that they, the parents, are somehow helpless and victims and so on.
I guess my basic point is, do people have moral responsibility?
Can they make choices?
And there are some people who can't.
There are some people who are mentally handicapped or who have other cognitive deficiencies and cannot make productive and intelligent decisions and need to be, say, put in group homes or cared for in the home and do not have adult independent rights. put in group homes or cared for in the home They can't maybe sign contracts and so on.
And they can't vote.
So those people who have cognitive deficiencies, we remove from their moral responsibility, but we also significantly limit their freedom.
And I just don't like the poor being put into the category of the mentally handicapped.
I think that's terrible.
And if people want to do that, they're doing it just in isolation in economics without any other dichotomies in politics, I think is hugely problematic.
So the number of people who actually care about the poor, I actually think of very few.
Very few who actually care about the poor.
People who've messed up their lives desperately want someone to come along and tell them, it's not your fault.
It's not your fault.
It's the system, man.
You didn't have a chance.
That guy, he was born into his money.
He That guy just happened to be born really good looking and that guy over there is born with some weird anal nerdy work ethic.
It's not your fault, man.
It's not your fault.
It's a system.
It's a system.
And this idea, this addiction to injustice that so drives people who've made bad decisions because if your life is messed up, either you've made bad decisions or had bad luck.
Or there's something fundamentally unjust about the system.
The system is unjust.
The system doesn't pay women enough.
There aren't enough black programmers at Google and Yahoo and all these other places.
It's unjust.
There's all of these black programmers graduating with straight A's in computer science.
They're desperately begging for work and they're incredibly competent, but just nobody's hiring them because...
Because injustice!
Because injustice!
It can't be racism, of course, because, I mean, Chinese engineers vastly outnumber, or significantly, proportionately outnumber white engineers, some companies, some IT companies, by 10 to 1.
10 to 1.
So it's not racism.
So it can't be, well, I don't know, maybe blacks that aren't just in computers.
Maybe they've got this sort of culture of don't get educated and don't act white and don't be an Oreo and be cool and, you know, be all that, right?
I mean, I don't know.
What the hell do I know?
But people have to say it's not the result of anyone's choices.
It's not the result of anything innate.
It's just injustice.
See, women, they just don't get paid as much as men even though, you know, They're completely competent and equal to men and economically as productive as men throughout their – because they can magically slip out.
Some men slip out for a smoke and some women slip out and raise a kid to the age of 18 and come back in in the same timeframe.
And people have to just – Push forward this injustice.
And injustice is this giant narcotic that is grabbed by people whose lives aren't going well and they just, oh, it takes off their own responsibility.
They can blame it on a system.
They can blame it on injustice.
Inequality.
And so those who are peddling the injustice of the system will always find buyers, but they really hate the poor.
Anybody who forgives a competent human being Anybody who excuses a competent human being from the choices that he or she has made really hates that person.
There is no deeper hatred that one human being can have to another human being than to absolve that other human being of his or her legitimate moral agency, legitimate choice and consequences.
And it becomes their dealers, the dealers in injustice.
They give you injustice.
The whole problem is injustice.
The whole problem is the bigotry of others, the sexism of others, the racism of others, the inequality of the system, the corporations, the Koch brothers.
It's all stacked against you.
You've got no chance to get ahead.
Well, talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Oh, well, can't win, don't try.
Hey, look, injustice is real.
So, to constantly poke and prod people and say, you can make different choices.
It's not a mystery.
It's not a mystery.
I mean, anyone who's got a documentary that needs narration who then says, well, Morgan Freeman, but he's black and kind of spotty, so no!
No.
I mean, that would just be ridiculous.
I mean, he's a fantastic actor and incredible.
March of the Penguins, I mean, it's a stupid film with the most amazing narration that you could imagine.
And...
So beware the peddlers of injustice.
They are drug dealers, and I find it just horrendous how much they exploit people.
Yeah.
Thank you for that, Stefan.
Yeah, I've heard some of these arguments of yours before, and I think they're very strong, and I think they'll help me next time I come across this, which I heard not too soon.
Sorry to interrupt, but so Saturdays.
When I was a kid.
Saturdays, I used to go into the computer lab for like eight hours straight.
And this is back when you had a PET 2K computer, like a 2K of memory.
Atari 400.
ZX81. ZX81, the Sinclair, right?
And there was a Teledon, a little terminal, which was like pre-internet and so on.
And I would...
I would try and create missile command through ASCII characters, and I would create Zork adventure games, and I would create spaceship fighting games, and I was in doing that, and I loved it.
I loved it.
And I remember one time, the teacher couldn't show up, you just needed another adult there, begged my mom to come.
Oh mom, please, please, please, right?
And that's what I did for years.
Learned how to code.
Learned how these machines worked.
So then, years later, I could sit down in front of a computer and code.
And code, and code, and code.
And build some great code.
Build some great, great stuff.
Really innovative stuff.
I built a Windows Web system.
Like something that did thin client and thick client, like a Windows Desktop Plus.
And it was amazing.
So you change something in the Windows system, it would automatically be updated on the Web system.
You add a drop-down to the Windows system, automatically get exactly the same drop-down.
On the web system, rearrange stuff, change names, add forms.
The moment you add a form to the web system with a button, you get a hyperlink on the...
On the Windows system with a button, you get a hyperlink on the web system.
You know, it could produce reports, create charts, you could design your own reports.
I mean, you could just do...
I did some great stuff.
Great stuff.
Back in the day, I think this was Access 2, Microsoft didn't allow you to bundle Wizards with your runtime.
So I just built my own Wizards.
I mean, to create queries, to output to Excel and words.
I mean, just some great coding.
And that all came out of years spent doing computer labs, signing out computers, taking them home.
You know, I got an inheritance from my grandmother for $1,000 when I was about 15, I think.
The first thing I did, went out and bought a computer, learned how to program.
Then I had a...
Then I didn't have to go to the lab.
I didn't have to wait for once a week.
I could do it.
And I mean, I loved it.
I thought it was great.
And it was great training for logic and all that kind of stuff.
And it was a great education in how computers works.
Plus, you know, you all share knowledge and there are other people there who love computers too.
And they could help me learn stuff and I could help them occasionally learn things too.
And as a result, I had a lot of intellectual capital and When I went into the business world, I knew how computers worked, knew how coding worked, knew how to design and build.
Some pretty great and pretty maintainable stuff.
Some of my code base is still being used.
And that's a choice.
And other people went to the mall.
Now, I didn't have any money, right?
So I couldn't really go to the mall, right?
What's that old Kevin Smith line?
They're not there to work.
They're Not there to shop, but just there.
And so the people who went to the mall, you know, they got to eat their greasy pizza and they got to roam around and browse through the record store and they got to hang out and, you know, it was fun, I guess.
Wouldn't be for me, but it was fun for them.
And I went and learned how to code.
And what comes out of that when you're in your 20s?
Well...
I got a career.
And other people, I guess, they're still at the mall.
And these are just choices.
I don't resent their fun.
I don't know why they would resent my career.
But that generally seems to be that, oh, shit, moment.
Oh, shit.
I have no economic value.
Something's wrong with the system and this is true not just – and the last thing I'll say because I know I'm rambling but this is true not just of people who don't have economic value.
It's people who have not developed the most important human capital of all which has nothing to do with economics and everything to do with emotional maturity, with the ability to – Motivate people, with the ability to enroll people in something important, with the ability to get things done and foster loyalty and to negotiate and empathize but without being weak.
You know, this is the great plague of the Europeans.
The great blessing and plague of the sort of European ice people is this goddamn empathy which is fantastic in many ways but makes us incredibly susceptible to guilt and manipulation.
It breeds...
The empathy that breeds the egalitarianism of the free market also breeds the susceptibility to guilt that brings socialism to us.
Anyway, it's a topic for another time.
But the sort of fundamental reality is – and this is the great injustice of what happens in the world – is that all the people who had fun while I was working had their fun.
Let's say we all get to be 30 – By the time I was 30, I was making some fairly good coin in the business world.
I was an entrepreneur and all that.
And they could then go to the government and say, give me his money.
The system's unfair.
The system is unfair.
I don't think the system...
The free market is not unfair.
You know, getting cancer when you don't smoke and exercise and eat well, well, that's a little unfair.
But that's just genetics, I assume.
But...
The free market is pretty fair.
You know, and so people who have fun rather than build worth, and that means self-knowledge.
That means, as I was talking about sort of your emotional skills.
EQ is in many ways a solid or even more solid a predictor of success than IQ. The building your emotional skills.
When...
When I was in theater school, I played a Balinese fisherman and I was supposed to offer a woman a fish.
And my then-girlfriend and I stayed up all night making this fish out of cloth and stuff.
It was pretty cool.
And I went in and the director just didn't like it.
He said, just go buy a fish from the fish market.
Give me this cloth thing.
Give me a real fish.
I was wounded.
I mean, not the most mature, 19 or 20-year-old at the time.
It took a while.
This happened in the business world.
I occasionally would bump up or say something wrong in a meeting.
I was invited to a meeting once by a group selling something.
I inadvertently mentioned that their competitors gave a significant discount for people who used our software.
The guy got upset with me.
And he was absolutely right.
He was absolutely right to be upset with me that I had blurted and I had not thought and, you know, I had apologized and, you know, but it's hard.
It's hard to learn these things.
It's hard to, you know, I remember the first time I gave a presentation to a bank.
I didn't honestly know.
I finished the presentation.
I'm just standing up there by the screen where we've got this super-duper VGA projector that sounds like a Pratt& Whitney engine droning over a First World War battlefield and I didn't know whether to keep standing or to sit down, like no clue, until finally someone in the business meeting just very subtly gestured for me to sit down.
I didn't know.
Do I stand?
Do I sit?
I don't know.
I could just pick my nose and do a jig for all I know.
And so just being willing to submit yourself, being willing to be mentored, being willing to learn, being willing to grow, I mean, these are hard things.
And nobody has to do them.
So all the work that I did – and look, I mean, please, I've said this a million times before.
I am no business genius.
I am no – I mean, you don't see me living in a seascape of infinite riches.
But I was willing to do some work and did fairly well.
And being willing to do that stuff, it's fair.
It's fair.
Life is pretty fair.
I make as much money doing this as is fair.
And people who add more value to their projects make a lot more money than I do.
And that's perfectly fair.
It's perfectly fair.
And I invite everyone to review the very chilling possibility that life is a lot more fair than you think it is.
And I'm not talking about getting government contracts and glad-handing.
I just mean in terms of your life and your success.
It's not the sole definer.
There is good and bad luck and so on.
But there is a lot more fairness, I think.
And the selling of the unfairness of the system is a pathogen in society.
It's a pathogen in society.
When you normalize in society, when you normalize by things that people are afraid to normalize by, by like IQ and stuff, things even out pretty well.
There's a lot more fairness in the world than people think, especially in the countries that are still vaguely free.
So the last thing I'd say, so the people who had fun rather than going to the computer lab and coding until their eyes watered, well...
Later on, they can take my money, but I can't go back and take their fun.
That's the fundamental reason why estate can't work, because estate will always become redistributionist.
It's absolutely inevitable.
There's no other possibility in any way, shape, or form, because there will always be people who choose the easy route.
There will always be people who choose fun over work.
And those people will always want to have the benefits of work later after they've had the fun.
Of course they will.
I mean, who wouldn't?
Have your cake and eat it too.
Absolutely, yeah.
And they have a much greater incentive to work the political system to get their subsidies than the people who've made it have to get in their way.
I mean, this is fundamental imbalance, right?
I mean, somebody who can go from $5,000 a year to $15,000 a year by voting for something is a lot more motivated because it's like a tripling of their income.
It's a lot more motivated to pursue that course than somebody who's making $100,000 a year has to not get taxed down to $90,000.
It's just a fundamental imbalance.
And...
You can redistribute the money, the results from hard work.
You cannot redistribute the fun, the results from the avoidance of hard work, and that is the great tragedy.
And this is why the state simply can't work, especially when you have universal suffrage.
It can't work anyway.
It can't work when you have universal suffrage.
There will be women who sleep with the wrong guy, who try to catch a guy with a kid, Guy runs off.
Well, the way we used to do that in society was we would handle that through charity and ostracism.
But now, We handle it with praise and government subsidies.
And charity used to keep those people alive, but their lives would be uncomfortable enough that there would still be a huge dissuasion.
None of that stuff works when you have a state.
The state will simply pander to the most needy people, and the most needy people will corrupt the whole society by completely upending the cause and effect of economics and social approval.
So anyway, sorry that was a long rant, but these are things I've sort of been mulling over.
Yeah, thanks.
It'll make sense.
All right.
Thank you very much for your questions.
I appreciate them very much.
And who do we have on with the next?
Well, actually, Steph, since you mentioned emotional intelligence in this call, it brought to mind something I read earlier today, which I thought was fascinating.
And I'd actually like to share it with everyone.
It's a new study that came out about emotional intelligence.
If as research suggests, the psychological trait of sensation-seeking is the catalyst for youthful delinquency, might high emotional intelligence, EI, having empathy for other people's emotions and good control over one's own, act as a calming restraint?
The surprising and unprecedented discovery was that for women, not only did high emotional intelligence not moderate the link between sensation-seeking and delinquency, in fact, high emotional intelligence went hand in hand with higher rates of self-reported delinquency, including skipping school, taking drugs, and violence.
Why should this be?
Wait, what?
What?
Okay, so for women, women with high emotional intelligence use it for evil?
Is that sort of what you're saying?
They all turn into Darth Vader in a push-up bra?
This is what the study is suggesting.
Okay.
This isn't a study that you did, like, at home, right?
With pets and kids in a bag.
Okay, okay.
I will link it in the notes for people to investigate themselves.
I just thought this was fascinating.
Okay, but go on, because I don't think you've done it.
Okay.
Why should this be?
The researchers are left speculating.
They think high emotional intelligence might fuel acts of indirect aggression like psychological bullying, deliberate social exclusion, or malicious gossip that tend to be performed more by young females than males.
Unfortunately, the researchers' measure of delinquent behavior didn't include these kind of behaviors, but they reasoned perhaps the same young women who performed these less visible acts were also more likely to commit the forms of delinquency that were on the scale, such as rowdy behavior and smoking cannabis.
If so, this would help explain the high emotional intelligence slash delinquency link in women.
The high level of trait emotional intelligence may facilitate an enhanced ability to present Machiavellian behavior in a positive light, understand victims' emotions, and predict likely responses in order that social manipulations are successful, the research team said.
What about the male students?
Hang on, hang on, hang on.
So, given that we might need the occasional listener to breed, I think, I think...
I think our approach here is something like this.
If she doesn't have empathy, run!
If she does have empathy, run!
Is that where we're really going?
I want the listenership to be informed of the latest psychological studies that I am coming across.
Alright.
Now on to the male students.
What about the male students?
Their answers were more in line with the researchers' predictions.
For men, higher emotional intelligence acted as a moderator, weakening the link between sensation-seeking traits and delinquency.
High emotional intelligence also had its own direct inverse relationship with delinquency.
That is, men with higher emotional intelligence tended to be less rebellious.
Trait emotional intelligence is known to predict a wide array of positive, practical, and health-related life outcomes, the researchers concluded.
Understanding how the perpetration of negative behaviors is linked to emotional intelligence may be an important step towards promoting well-being.
I'll put the links to this in the show notes and everything, but I read that today and I was kind of floored, so I just wanted to share that.
Well, good to know.
Alright, now that I've scared everybody, the next caller is Joseph.
He wrote in and said, If you accept that free will is not supported by biology or physics, and you presumably accept that it is hypothetically possible for decision-making and any other characteristic of free will to be an illusion, then does that not make free will an extraordinary claim, requiring extraordinary evidence?
Nope.
No, we just did this call.
It's a complete déjà vu.
We just did this call.
Did you listen to the last show?
Hi.
I did.
I listened one week ago.
I think you had a call discussing Freewheel, which is what prompted me actually to call in.
And then Michael kindly sent me another link this afternoon to a more recent conversation that you had.
I guess I agreed with the callers and disagreed with yourself.
I wanted to discuss it further with you.
So I heard in the last call that you mentioned you accept that there's no kind of biological evidence of free will when he tried to refer to the neurology involved.
Biological proof.
As far as I understand it, there is some potential evidence, but there's no biological proof.
Yeah.
So basically, I wanted to have a conversation around the fact that your arguments against free will tend to come from a logical point of view.
So a lot of it was to do with self-defeating statements in terms of, you know, if I'm here today saying to you that we live in a deterministic world, Then what am I doing on the call?
What am I trying to achieve?
And by trying to persuade you that my view on this is correct, I'm actually expressing free will.
Is that a correct understanding of your opinion?
I mean, it's close-ish.
I mean, basically, you will only ever debate with a human consciousness.
You will never debate with a chair or a balloon or the weather or a computer or anything like that.
And so you can't logically say that human consciousness is fundamentally the same as everything else in the universe if it would be completely insane to debate with anything other than human consciousness.
And the only sane thing to do is to debate with human consciousness.
Therefore, you're saying that human consciousness is specific and unique and And has characteristics that no other cluster of matter and energy in the universe that we know of possesses.
And so you can't say...
Human consciousness is subject to all the same deterministic laws as everything else in the universe and then treat it as a rare, incredible, special case when it comes to debating.
Those two are not logically compatible.
They're opposites, in fact.
I agree.
It's a second one which I wouldn't actually claim myself.
The idea of consciousness being unique, or at least to the best of our knowledge, I think to the best of our human knowledge, it is unique, human consciousness.
But at the same time, we're unable to measure it Immediately against animal consciousness.
So I don't think that it's a separate...
But you've never debated free will with an animal.
That's correct, but there's many things that I've never done to a human that I would do to an animal, so I've never petted a human in the way that I would pet a dog.
And I think it's sort of attributing this special characteristic to consciousness as opposed to...
No, but hang on.
But you could pet a human the way that you pet a dog, right?
You can't debate free will with a dog the way you can with a human.
So you're kind of dodging here, right?
Change the petting.
Let's say, for example, when I press the button on my coffee machine, it starts to pour a coffee.
Now I can't press a button on a human to get it to pour a coffee.
So I'm interacting with it in a different way.
And I agree that I wouldn't debate with the coffee machine, but nor would I press a button on the human and I'm not accepting That consciousness and debate has anything that pressing the button on the coffee machine doesn't have that stops it from being open to argument.
I'm not sure I follow this one.
I think it's a good argument, but I'm just not sure I quite follow it.
So, I'll kind of state it again.
So, basically, on the last call that I listened to, the half-an-hour clip, you talked about the chair and the person, and you said that you wouldn't debate with the person, and the caller actually accepted that consciousness is unique.
Oh, sorry.
I think I understand then.
So, you're saying, well, you push...
So, you treat a coffee machine as unique in that you push a button to get coffee.
Mm-hmm.
out, which you would never do with a human being, right?
Except that I think that, again, that's kind of sophisticated because there's lots of things that you push buttons to get stuff, right?
You push buttons to start your microwave.
You push buttons to get water or ice out of your fridge.
You push buttons to get a pop out of a pop machine.
You push buttons to start a car these days, right?
So lots of things you push buttons to get what you want.
Coffee is not really the key because it's not like you'll debate classical music with a coffee machine but not You will only ever debate with a human being and there's no other piece of matter in the universe that you would consider it even remotely sane to debate with.
So pushing a button and getting machines to do stuff, particularly since those things are the result of human consciousness anyway and can't be really used to deny the uniqueness of human consciousness.
But there's lots of things that you push buttons to get, but you still will only and forever ever have a conversation, a rational conversation with a human being.
So again, I think the duplication of buttons does not match the uniqueness of human consciousness.
Yeah, okay.
There are certainly many machines that you can push a button to get a different response, but I mean, it's not beyond the realm of imagination that if I sat down here for an hour, I'd be able to think of something else that was unique, that I would interact with in a unique way, in the same way that debating with a conscious being is unique.
It won't be the only unique thing that I do to another object.
Well, no, but it's not just unique.
Because it's sane versus insane.
So a man who debates free will with another man is sane.
A man who debates free will with a coffee maker is insane.
So it's not a matter of degree.
It's not like, well, the coffee maker guy is 80% sane, but the guy talking to another person is 100% sane, or even 20% sane.
Like the person who's debating free will with a coffee maker is completely mental.
The opposite of what would be sane.
And so it's not just a difference of degree.
You can say, oh, well, I'll find this degree or that degree.
You treat human consciousness as absolutely unique and completely different with absolutely opposite properties than everything else in the universe.
Simply by talking to me rather than a coffee maker, you've accepted that.
Yeah, but this doesn't reflect on truth because if I interact with consciousness in a unique way, then this is my human-centric way of approaching consciousness.
I'm sorry, this is your what?
Your human what?
Human-centric.
Oh, so you think like if you were a coffee maker you could debate free will with another coffee maker because you'd be coffee maker centric?
No, no.
So if I was another being, for example, a dog, I wouldn't ascribe anything special to human consciousness.
I wouldn't even recognize it.
In the same way that there would be many things that we could interact with in a unique way that we wouldn't recognize.
Yes, but you're forwarding my argument here.
Of course you wouldn't describe anything particularly unique to human consciousness because you'd be a dog and therefore you would have an exceedingly low level of intelligence relative to a human being.
So again, we're back to the uniqueness of human consciousness, right?
Okay, so I'll move on from that because it's not the crux of my argument.
In terms of that was kind of your argument against the previous caller, what I kind of wanted to say around it and what I wanted to pose to you was the fact that When you talk about free will and you refer to another one, just another quick one that you mentioned was the idea of a preferential state.
You can't have a preferential state of determinism.
I think that the way that you speak about determinism is ignoring a particular fact which is that As a being now, if I feel the need to persuade you and I go ahead in trying to persuade you that you don't have free will and that it is an illusion, then this doesn't in any way mean that I am not acting deterministically.
I can be driven to do these things and driven to have this conversation and driven to persuade you regardless of whether or not I have I have free will.
Of course, to me, it feels like I'm a...
Yeah, okay.
You can say that.
Yeah, you can say that if you want.
But that simply makes free will a meaningless concept that changes nothing.
So if you come up to me at the airport, let's say I'm behind a booth in an airport, and I say, where in the world do you want to go?
We can only fly you to Timbuktu.
What would that mean?
Well, those two statements would kind of be at odds with each other, right?
Because, I mean, why would I ask you where would you want to go if I'm only going to one place?
And so if you say, well, I can have preferred states and be a determinist.
I can try and change other people's minds and still be a determinist.
Then what you're saying is, I can act as if free will were true and still be a determinist.
It's like, okay, well then I guess I'm a determinist too.
Everybody's a determinist who believes in free will because all you're doing is redefining determinism to include every attribute of free will.
Well, maybe I'm destined to believe in preferred states and maybe that's how I'm acting because I'm subject.
Okay, well then there's no difference between – and this has been my argument for many years.
It's like when I say to people you can't have preferred states and be a determinist – You can't view human consciousness as unique and be a determinist.
You can't have ethics.
You can't have virtue.
You can't have love.
You can't have good and evil.
You can't have any of these things.
Nobody accepts that.
They always say, well, but maybe I'm just deterministically going to believe in those things.
It's like, okay, well then why are we talking?
Because if you can just say, well, determinism allows me to have all the benefits of the free will position And yet, I don't have to create this magic elf called free will.
Then it's like, okay, then you're acting as if you accept and believe in free will, and your actions are completely identical to someone who accepts free will.
You just say it's called determinism, in which case, what the hell is the point of the conversation?
Well, I differ from that you just mentioned that you've not spoken to anybody who accepts that none of those things are possible if there is no free will.
I actually do agree with you that morals and all these things do become irrelevant because if what will be will be, then there is no what ought to be.
So I actually agree with you.
Okay, so then you don't have any preferred states?
Because morals is just one set of preferred state.
I don't have...
So you don't believe in truth?
I don't believe in any preferred states that are universal, so I can still experience that...
But wait, are you telling me that free will is an illusion?
Yes.
But you don't believe in any preferred states that are universal?
I mean, do you listen to what you're saying?
Yes.
Because you know that those are completely opposite positions.
I disagree.
See, even when you say, I disagree, that is a completely opposite position to there's no such thing as truth.
Well, no, because it's subjective.
What is subjective?
My disagreement is subjective.
Oh, well, then we're basically just discussing our taste in food or music.
But this is a philosophy show, which is not the same as saying, well, you know, I like girls with moles on their noses.
No, so I accept that there are universal truths.
Wait, wait, sorry, didn't you just say that you rejected that there were universal truths?
No, I accept that there are universal truths, and I don't believe that free will is one of them.
So you accept that there are universal truths, and the truth is a preferred position to falsehood.
Let me just run that from here.
The truth is a preferred position to falsehood.
Well, no, it depends on the agent.
So at the end of the day, there is no reason for me to care about the truth.
If I say, as you just mentioned about opinions, I could easily say now that I have no interest in what's true or not.
So no, I wouldn't say that the truth is a preferred decision to falsehood.
The truth is the truth.
It's in accordance with reality.
I don't think that I'm in a position to say that it's universally preferable.
I would say that I personally do like to understand the truth, but I don't think it's universally preferable.
No, it's just my experience of what I prefer.
So if someone decides to drive on the wrong side of the road, because for them the truth is that they want to drive on the wrong side of the road, then you have no preference about that.
Well, I'm sure I would have emotional reactions.
That doesn't necessarily mean that.
What do you believe that implies?
Well, I mean, if somebody says that they have a subjective desire for your kidney and want to cut it out of you, I'm just curious at what level does this...
The belief system that you have operate.
So there's no end.
So I see the world as, you know, huge billions of individuals with their own desires, their own ideas of what's true and their own preferences.
No, no, you said the truth was universal?
Yeah.
So it can't be subjective and universal at the same time.
Truth, of course, is universal.
It's intrinsic to the word, but people have their own ideas of truth.
No, you can't take a universal word and then apply it to a subjective perception.
Within the sentence you can't.
No, you can't.
That is sleazy.
No, because you're talking about truth and then you're talking about opinion.
Or perspective or belief or ideology or something.
But you can't use the same word for two things.
You can't use the same word for something which is objectively true and people's subjective preferences.
Now, some people's preferences are for the truth and they align themselves according to the truth and they strive to achieve the truth and so on because they hold that the truth is a value and that achieving the truth, gaining the truth, maintaining the truth, expanding one's understanding of and acceptance of the truth is important Preferable to continuing to enmesh oneself in error and obfuscation and confusion and so on, right?
So there are some people who are committed to the truth.
And, you know, these truth seekers measure the validity of their perspectives according to that perspective's relationship to what is true.
These would be scientists, engineers, mathematicians, physicists, and so on, biologists, who are looking for the truth, right?
So the general laws of the scientific method, reproducibility, and I mean, these – empiricism over theory as an absolute – all the basic things to do with science.
Those people are in hot pursuit of truth.
People who are ideological or superstitious or religious and so on, they will distort reality to fit – or attempt to distort reality to fit their own subjective preferences, and they are – In general, hot-footing it away from the truth as fast as humanly possible, usually for economically or materially nefarious reasons.
So if you are going to mix in someone who is a scientist or someone who is a philosopher with someone who believes in voodoo and astrology, then you have just twisted language beyond the breaking point.
There is a difference between those who will subject their opinions to the measure of objective truth Empirical evidence and rationality, and people who resolutely avoid subjecting their perspectives to those standards.
Yeah, I categorically did not do that, though.
I completely agree with everything that you just said.
And what I'd said before was that people have different perceptions of truth.
I didn't say that there are different truths.
I said they have different perceptions of truth.
So within the categories that you just described, Okay, so if I say, hang on, if I say that two and two make four, what is a different perception of truth to that?
Well, that's a very simple argument.
I agree.
It would be very difficult for somebody, I've never witnessed anybody try to argue that that is not the case, but there are certainly many things that we could discuss where there are scientists in the category that you just described who are in hot pursuit of the truth and disagree completely.
Oh, yeah, no doubt about that.
But I don't think that scientists would disagree with things like, you know, gases expand when heated or matter.
Gravity is a property of matter.
Yeah, so of course there are things that are accepted as facts because they've crossed that threshold of empirical evidence that nobody can test them.
I agree.
Right, so the fact that there's uncertainty at the bleeding edge of truth is not a repudiation of the standards of truth, but rather an acceptance and admission of those things that are currently in the process of becoming true.
I mean, nobody goes with the Ptolemaic system of astronomy anymore.
I mean, it's studied for historically interesting purposes, but it's pretty much heliocentric from here to eternity, right?
And so there are these things that are accepted.
Human beings are mammals and reptiles are not and all that kind of stuff.
And the amount of scientifically accepted truth is very large.
Blood circulates around the body, which is only 220 years old as a discovery, if I remember rightly.
Those things that are generally accepted.
There is some leading edge stuff, of course.
Absolutely.
But that's like saying because there are people writing songs, there are no songs.
I mean, okay, there are new songs being created, but that doesn't mean that there are no songs that exist.
So if there's universal truth, then there are people who don't prefer to conform their perspectives to truth, and those people are in error.
They are in error in the content of their mind, and they are in error in the methodology of The acquisition of what would loosely be called knowledge in their craniums.
They are wrong.
They are in error.
And that doesn't mean that they're, you know, throw them off a cliff.
It's a simple statement of fact that if you will not subject your perspectives to reason and evidence, then you are wrong.
And even if you're right, you're still wrong because you're just accidentally right, which is I agree with everything you just said.
Fantastic.
We've strayed quite a long way from the initial conversation.
No, no, I don't think we have.
Because if you accept that there's a universal truth and the truth is preferable to error, then we are calling the same thing by different names.
Yeah, so I definitely accept that there is universal truth.
I'll ask you a question.
Do you believe that it's possible for, hypothetically, of course, I'm not talking about the existence of supernatural God, but do you believe it's hypothetically possible that there may be a being or an entity of omniscience?
Do you think it's hypothetically possible?
I mean, until time is broken, I can't imagine what omniscience would mean, because omniscience would mean knowing everything that happens in the future.
Well, to be aware of all universal truths.
Right, so until someone can show time travel.
Let me just clarify my question.
I'm not asking if you think this will happen.
I'm just if it's hypothetically possible.
Well, I don't believe that it's hypothetically possible.
And even if it were hypothetically possible, I don't know how you would ever establish it.
Because omniscience would require that the person know what is going to happen in the future.
Now, if some entity could perfectly describe everything that was going to happen in the future down to the last atomic motion in the universe, well, this, of course, would be proof of determinism, right?
And a complete repudiation of free will.
But I don't believe...
That it is possible to know without any doubt whatsoever what is going to happen in the future.
So, you know, it seems like inconceivable to me that such a thing would ever come to pass.
I also don't know, given that the speed of light is unbreakable as far as I understand it.
You know, Tachyans remain largely theoretical as far as I understand it.
It seems to be impossible to know everything that is occurring in the universe because the universe is billions of light years across and so it's not possible to know what is happening at one end of the universe and the other because any information that you would need to verify or to know anything would have to travel billions of light years over, of course, billions of years.
And therefore, it would be impossible to know everything in the whole universe at the same time because of the constraint of information transfer that is limited by the speed of light.
I'll ask you a follow-up question.
In terms of universal truths that do exist at an atomic level, as you mentioned, do you believe that there are universal truths governing absolutely all behaviours that could one day be understood by physics and biology?
You mean, in other words, are the operations of consciousness Subject to the same material forces as inanimate objects.
That is eventually where I'll go.
The reason why I ask it in this order is because, as I'm sure you can predict, if you were to agree that...
The universal truth extends to that degree, and it's possible for physicists to one day, or biologists to one day, map and understand exactly, down to the last sort of electrical impulse in the brain, exactly what is happening.
Then surely they would be able to calculate what reaction will come from a stimulus, which, if that's true, of course...
Yeah, no, and I think that will be true for some people.
I think that some people are, in effect, deterministic.
And I would imagine that you are probably one of those people.
And so let me ask you a couple of questions about that.
Have you ever...
Engaged in personal therapy, psychological counselling therapy of any kind?
Not by choice.
I'm sorry, I'm getting some kind of thumping here.
Are you moving around a lot?
I did move the laptop, I apologise.
Yeah, so not by choice.
I have gone through a small amount in school as a result of behavioural issues 10 years ago now.
Okay, but it's not something that you really wanted to do and it's not something that you Have pursued outside of that compulsory situation.
That's if you were to limit to sort of professional situations.
However, I would qualify that by saying that, obviously, as you know, from the fact I'm bringing you today, I do enjoy good conversation.
I do enjoy hearing other people's views and challenge my own.
If you think that what we're doing here has anything to do with therapy, then I would suggest that therapy may not be your greatest area of knowledge.
Okay.
So, in my experience, and I think with some fairly decent backing up from neurological science, the impulses that animate a lot of people arise from deep within the brain, and if not intercepted by the neofrontal cortex, by the sort of seat of reasoning in the top front part of the brain, Tend to act out in ways that I think could be reasonably characterized as pretty deterministic.
So, for instance, people who have hot tempers.
You know, somebody looks at them funny and they basically find out that they've hit someone.
You know, and there's no particular way for them to stop that process.
However, if they go to anger management, and they learn about their own histories and they learn about their family histories and their personal histories and they learn about the thoughts that precede the impulse and they learn about how to change their thoughts in order to slowly begin to affect their impulses and they learn most importantly to intercept their impulses and you only have about a quarter of a second to do that to intercept their impulses then they gain a choice through
the rigorous pursuit of self-knowledge That formerly, they did not really in any practical sense have.
Before, you know, like when the doctor taps your knee to check your reflexes and your knee goes up, well, that's just a reflex.
And before, their actions were a reflex based upon a resolute lack of self-knowledge and a lack of knowledge of where their thoughts and emotions come from and how they influence each other and so on.
And so if I am on a sailing ship and I have no idea how to sail a ship, Then I don't have any choices on that ship.
I don't know how to tack.
I don't know how to jib or jibe because I don't really know how to sail.
So I don't know how to do any of that stuff.
So I actually don't have any choices on where the ship goes.
I can thrash around a little bit, but I can't choose where the ship goes because I don't know how to sail the ship.
On the other hand, if I'm on a skiff or a sailing boat that's small enough for one person to manage and I know exactly what I'm doing, It doesn't mean everything's going to go perfectly, but I actually have a choice.
If I want to go north or south or east or west, I can, for the most part, achieve that because I have a knowledge about how sailing works, how wind works, how the sails operate, and so on.
And so a lack of knowledge is a lack of choice.
Agreed.
I don't have the choice to go and become a ballerina because I don't have skill or ability in being a ballerina.
And so when you develop knowledge...
and if you don't have self-knowledge then it's a whole lot easier to believe in determinism because that's kind of how you work in the same way if you don't know how to sail a ship it's easy to believe that you just go wherever the wind blows you because you don't have the knowledge on how to steer your ship okay i i agree um Basically, what you described is emotional intelligence, like was being discussed before the call.
Yeah, self-knowledge.
I always sort of refer to it as self-knowledge.
But, yeah, knowing how your mind works, and it gives you choices that – like anxiety management.
So people have phobias who don't ever deal with those phobias.
Like, I'm not a big fan of spiders myself, and I think that comes from being in Africa when I was six and having spiders basically as big as small dogs around.
I'm just not a big fan of spiders.
And yet, I have sort of been able to slowly overcome that and I can now let a spider, because my daughter's of course keen on bugs, let a spider walk on me and I don't freak out.
But it grits your teeth and progressive exposure and all that kind of stuff.
And now I have a choice to have a spider on me in a kind of a way I just didn't have before.
So is it not quite for you to believe that Emotional is something that can be gained through therapy.
I mean, you just gave an example yourself, an advancement in emotional intelligence that you've gained in a non-therapy situation.
You mean just in terms of overcoming a phobia?
Yeah, so overcoming a phobia is definitely developing self-awareness and emotional intelligence.
Yeah, I mean, yes.
I mean, it's not – I mean, and certainly therapists do that, that work with people.
They've been in a car accident or whatever.
They'll help you sort of get back on the horsepower, so to speak.
And that's helpful.
But to me, the further you pursue self-knowledge, the better off you're going to be, right?
So the further you gain knowledge about yourself and the source of your thoughts and feelings, I mean, people who – I mean, People – and I envy people, of course, who are further down the road of self-knowledge than I am.
I mean, they're like superheroes.
I mean, they're just like – people can just – like, just amazing.
The equanimity, the peace of mind, the resolution, the – you know, it's amazing.
And so I – you know, I've not met somebody – now, this again, this is not a proof, right?
Because it doesn't mean that it's a proof.
But I've made the argument again for years that if you – Pursue self-knowledge, then I think a whole wealth of choice opens up for you that you don't have if you don't have self-knowledge, which is why therapy tends to be, in terms of bang for the buck, the greatest forward movement and movement towards happiness and success that people can have in their lives.
I mean, therapy got me out of sort of an endless cavalcade of crappy relationships into the marriage that I... And it's given me the resolution to pursue what it is that I'm doing with calm and resolution and all that.
And if you don't have that kind of self-knowledge or you don't have that commitment to self-knowledge, then you have a kind of automatic reaction.
You basically, without self-knowledge, you are pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain.
And that's, I would say, not...
The most advanced use of your cranial capacity.
Well, I agree.
I mean, I'll come back to what I said.
I think that it is quite assumptuous to believe that therapy is the only or even the primary place that you can gain self-knowledge.
I mean, if you were to have asked me first, do I believe I'm self-aware and have self-knowledge, I would have said absolutely.
And I'm kind of prepared to defend that position.
So I think in terms of my views about determinism, I don't think that that's relevant.
Well, except that you mistook our conversation for something to do with therapy or self-knowledge, which it's not.
You know, I mean, again, I'm no expert.
I mean, I have done years of therapy, like three hours a week, and I've done like 10 hours a week of journaling, and I've read so much psychology, it's ridiculous.
I'm not a psychologist that I, you know, but I have some reasonable amount of experience.
I've also, you know, as an actor, tried to get into the consciousness of other Characters other than myself, of course, and as a writer of novels and plays, written like five or six novels and 30 or so plays, I have tried to work hard to get into the sort of mindset of consciousness of others, of age and culture and gender and so on.
It doesn't mean that I'm any kind of know-it-all expert, but I have some reasonable amount of experience and all that.
And...
So, I mean, if you would like to call in another time to talk more about self-knowledge and your pursuit of it, I think that would be very interesting.
I think now we've got to move on to another caller because I don't want to move it from determinism to an examination of your understanding of self-knowledge because I think that would be a long topic.
I think it would be a worthwhile topic to do and hopefully you will think about calling in with that topic.
But I think we've exhausted the determinism stuff for now.
Okay, so I mean, I didn't want to discuss self-knowledge.
I think we did stray away from the determinism and didn't kind of cause a conversation.
But I mean, if you have to move on, then that's fine.
I do.
Thank you very much for calling in.
I appreciate that.
No problem.
Bye.
All right.
Adam is up next.
Adam wrote in and said, Why am I attracted to narcissistic women?
Can you help me find out if there is something really fundamental that I am blind to?
Ooh, self-knowledge question, right after the determinism.
Ooh.
Yeah, hi, Steph.
The synchronicity of it all is giving me goose-chill feather brains.
Yeah, I was listening to your last call, and I was like, wow, this is great, great.
Lead into my question.
I don't care if you're the same guy calling back and pretending to be something else.
That's great.
I'll tell you about my most recent situation.
I'm teaching English in an Asian country and I got involved with, I'm teaching in a university and I got involved with a student of mine.
So that was a really dangerous decision because there's a potential that I could lose my job if it became known.
I'm sorry, I've lost my train of thought a little bit.
What are you picturing that is distracting you so much at the moment?
Would you like to share it with me using an Etch-a-Sketch?
Wait, unless you have two mouths, is there someone else in the room there with you?
I'm sorry, yeah.
My friend is in the room.
He's a big fan of yours, and he introduced me to your show, and he wanted to be here to be kind of an emotional support.
Oh, good.
Okay, well, hello, two-mouthed listener heads.
Okay, good to meet you.
Yeah, and we were together for...
For a few months and we broke up over kind of the issue of where the relationship was going and We didn't have any contact for a couple of months,
but recently she's been contacting me again saying let's go and see a movie or let's go and have dinner or something and And there was a really strong desire for me to re-engage with her.
Now, hang on a sec.
When you say, for me to re-engage with her, is there any specific part of your anatomy that you're referring to?
Yes.
Yes, there is.
Yeah, she's very attractive.
She's a nine in my book.
Egg!
It was definitely like that.
Your belief is that you're attracted to narcissistic women, not that pretty women can sometimes be narcissistic.
I guess mainly it's I'm attracted to attractive women.
Okay, and they may have some narcissistic qualities.
Yeah, yeah.
And...
So I read Real Time Relationships and I really wanted to try and bring this into my relationships with people.
And so I said to her, okay, I want to meet and talk about what's going on between us and find out what's going on before we do anything else.
And Suddenly she became very reluctant to meet me.
After trying to talk to her about this, trying to find out what she was thinking, I realized that really she didn't have any interest in what I was thinking or feeling.
It's become apparent through my discussion with her, or trying to attempt to have a discussion with her.
And so I want to try and develop a bit more self-knowledge about how I can avoid this situation in the future because this has been a pattern a few times in my past.
And I don't want to get into this situation again in the future where I'm endangering myself and making stupid decisions.
Right.
No, I think you're right.
I mean, you are in a dangerous situation, of course, as a teacher, right?
I mean, that's...
That's not good.
Yeah.
My friend, really, before I got involved with her, he really tried to talk to me and say, you know, this is not a good idea.
You're dick-blinded and a lot of things, and I didn't listen to him.
Yeah, it is very tough to yell at a resolute penis.
It only tends to encourage them.
That way, danger lies!
Arr!
Full speed ahead!
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I know there must be something in my childhood that's causing me to be really drawn to these kind of situations where the girl is aloof and quite emotionally volatile and I try and figure them out.
There must be a reason why I'm drawn to this kind of girl.
What do you think that reason is?
Can I give you a hint?
I'm sorry, I couldn't hear that.
Can I give you a hint?
Yes, please.
It involves an egg, but not the one in the future.
Right.
Can you explain that a little bit, please?
It's the one in the past.
Roughly your age.
I'm sorry?
Roughly your age.
I still don't understand.
Your mother?
My mom?
My mom, right.
It's the first place to look.
I mean, it's not the only place to look, but it's the first place to look, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Well, I don't have a close relationship with my mom.
Oh no, we need to start much more shallow, if you don't mind.
Okay, yes, of course, please help me out.
Have you seen pictures of your mother when she was younger?
Yes.
And would you characterize her as physically attractive?
Yes, she was physically attractive, but I wouldn't say she was very attractive.
Okay, 1 to 10?
I guess a 7.5, an 8.
Oh, okay.
I guess you're from LA then.
All right.
That's not bad, right?
I mean, you know, are you a good student?
Well, I only got 80%.
Well, I wouldn't characterize myself as a good student.
Okay, okay.
I think that's an A, right?
A seven.
Oh, are we down to seven?
Oh, sorry, seven, seven and a half.
So 70, 75%.
Yeah, okay.
That's sort of middle of the pack.
It's a B, right?
Okay.
Yeah.
And now, is this before you were born that you saw these pictures?
Like when she was in her early 20s?
I don't think I've seen pictures in her early 20s.
I've seen pictures when she was late 20s.
Before she had kids, right?
No.
How old was she?
I think she was late 20s when she had me and my brother.
Yeah, because babies do to a woman's body what fingernails do to wrapping on a gift.
It makes the gift look pretty, but once you've got the gift open, the wrapping is pretty much on the floor, right?
Right, right.
And it's like, wow, this woman's really hot.
I will make babies.
The babies will cool her down.
Right, yeah.
Breasts.
Breasts.
Elevator down!
Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding!
Would you like some extra dimples of the ass?
I believe that would be great.
Would you like for some nice stretch marks on the belly and for the pooch never to go quite back to the flatness of your early 20s?
Done!
Yeah.
Alright.
But they get a glow.
They get a lovely glow.
Yeah.
Okay, so was your mother inaccessible Hard to read and emotionally volatile.
I don't remember her being very emotionally volatile, but yes, she was hard to read emotionally and hard to reach.
There isn't a lot of connection between us, and there never has been, really.
And do you know why most people are hard to read?
No.
Because they don't want to expose themselves?
I don't believe that's true.
I mean, it could be true.
And you understand.
I'm just telling you what I think.
I don't think I can prove it.
I think most people who are hard to read are hard to read because they're busy reading you or someone else.
Right?
It's hard to see behind a searchlight because the entirety of the searchlight's beams are going outwards, right?
Right, yeah.
It's easy to see inside...
A house with the lights on, right?
It's hard to see inside a house with searchlights coming out of each window, right?
Yeah.
And so when people, if someone is manipulative, in other words, if they're constantly focusing on how to indirectly get what they want from other people through manipulation, then they're very hard to read because they don't have a lot of genuine emotions, if any, really.
Does this make any sense?
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
Yeah.
I have a more difficult time ascribing that to my mom than I do to my most recent girlfriend.
I say why without skepticism, with genuine curiosity.
I find it hard to accept that my mom doesn't have real emotions or doesn't have real emotions.
Or it's being very manipulative.
I have trouble accepting that.
Okay, so when you were growing up and your mother wanted something from you, what would she say?
She wanted something from your dad or she wanted something, how would she get it?
I think she would close down emotionally.
I'm really having trouble remembering I have trouble remembering interactions with her when I was young.
So, this is a bit jaw-dropping, right, from the outside?
Yeah, yeah.
Because, I mean, you spent years and years and years around your mom.
Every human being has a thousand things a day that they want, right?
And...
If you spend decades around someone who has thousands of desires a day and you don't know how that person gets what she wants, that's a very important thing to know that you don't know, right?
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, recently I've been trying to look at this and I've I just don't have many memories of interacting with my parents at all.
Like, I was trying to find, like, some happy, intimate memories with them, and they just don't seem to be there.
Well, no, it doesn't.
And I'm incredibly sorry to hear that.
I mean, I really am, and I don't want to brush past that.
I won't.
But it doesn't have to be sort of happy memories.
It doesn't have to mean people...
You know, I mean, I won't bore you with it now, but I could sort of spend an hour telling you all the different ways my mom would try to get what she wants.
And other people I know in life, how do they get what they want?
Yeah.
I'm really trying to bring something up for you.
The strongest example that comes to mind is when I was about, I think, 10 or 11, me and my Me and my brother and my mom were having Sunday dinner and she gave us cauliflower cheese and me and my brother hated it.
We absolutely hated it and we didn't want to eat it and it kind of devolved into the showdown where she had to make us eat it and we were there for two or three hours just refusing to eat it but then forcing down a little bit and a little bit and it was She was very angry and stubborn.
So she bullies to get what she wants?
Yeah.
Right?
I mean, that's very primitive.
Yeah.
I mean, that's not negotiating.
That's not being flexible.
That's not asking you what you want ahead of time.
That's not avoiding the problem.
That's basically just brute forcing your will on someone, right?
Yeah.
I think it's significant that my dad wasn't there because I think maybe she would defer to my dad to be the one who would enforce things and if he wasn't there then she had to use her own bullying tactics and anger.
I don't remember a lot of anger from her but I do remember that strongly.
Yeah, I imagine you would.
And So she would expect you to defer to her in the same way that she would defer to your dad?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
Right.
And I'm really...
I'm sorry, I'm really trying to think of more.
Well, okay, so...
If she wanted you to clean your room or if she wanted you to do chores or whatever, right?
I mean, how would that go?
We weren't asked to do chores.
We weren't really asked to clean our rooms either.
I don't remember her really asking me to do anything.
Huh.
Other than the...
Cauliflower cheese.
Yeah, that's true.
But I wasn't pressured to work harder or to do my homework and things.
I just did those things.
But I didn't do chores and she never asked for those.
I think maybe she didn't ask for fear of being disobeyed, maybe.
Fear of not being able to handle being disobeyed.
There was a lot of avoidance of uncomfortable things in my family.
Yeah, I get that from the accent.
I mean, I know the scene, man.
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, I say!
That feels mildly uncomfortable!
We must squash it with an empire!
Right, I got it.
Right, yeah.
When I was 13, my mom and dad separated, and I remember the conversation was just, my mom sat down with us, not my dad, my dad wasn't in the house, she just sat down with us and said, your dad's moving out, like, tomorrow.
And the conversation lasted maybe five minutes.
My brother, who's older than me, three years older than me, he cried.
And I remember feeling nothing.
I was watching the TV, and I just went back to watching the TV. And I remember thinking, hmm, it's weird that I don't feel anything, or I should feel something right now, but I don't.
I had the same, because my parents divorced before that, I remember the same very, very clear memory of when we left England in late October 1977.
I remember sitting in the apartment that I'd spent most of my childhood in and everything was in boxes and everything that we were bringing was going to get shipped over.
And I was just sitting on the carpet And looking out over the view, I knew we were leaving.
I knew I'd never be back.
I knew I'd spent my first 10 or 11 years there.
Completely indifferent as to staying and going.
And that is quite tragic.
Yeah.
And indifference, I think, comes from hopelessness, that feeling anything will make a difference.
Yeah.
What if I was crying?
What would that change?
Did you have any idea that your parents were heading to divorce?
No, I don't think so.
Because my mom had said to me subsequently that she should have left my dad 10 years earlier.
So basically my entire childhood was in an unhappy house.
So it wasn't...
Did she ever ask you how you felt about...
No.
No, she's never asked me about that.
Does she ask you how you feel about other things?
No.
No, she doesn't.
Do you think that she has a curiosity about your thoughts and feelings that she's suppressing?
Or would it be kind of inconceivable for her to ask?
I... Does she have a curiosity that she's suppressing?
Does she really want to know what you think and feel that bites her tongue out of shyness or awkwardness?
Or do you just think it's like, well, I don't really ask my plants how they feel?
I don't know.
I think it's avoidance of uncomfortable, of painful things.
But that doesn't really answer your question.
Well, no, no, no.
Hang on, hang on.
Hang on.
Don't give me the one great British whitewash for everything, right?
I mean, or the Asian whitewash for everything, for that matter, or Japanese, as we had to call the last show.
Because that's to say that asking someone how he feels must automatically be uncomfortable.
Yeah, that's true.
You're right.
We're trying to do Mona Lisa.
You can't bring a paint roller, right?
Yeah.
I mean, you can, it just won't be a very nuanced painting, right?
Blurp!
Right.
Spill paint, call it art.
Okay, so I think it was inconceivable to her to do that because she's had a lot more opportunities to do that and she hasn't done that.
That's not even the most painful thing that she hasn't talked to me about or asked me about at all.
When I was 17, I tried to kill myself.
My family have never asked me about it or why I did it.
There was just a conversation afterwards.
I remember my dad saying to me, you know, I just want to check you're okay.
And he still sometimes says that at the end of conversations.
Well, as long as you're alright.
And it's kind of like this really dainty, like...
Touching base, like, this is me caring for you.
I'm interested in your well-being, but there was no detailed questioning about why did this happen or what's the problem here or anything, and there has been.
Why did you do it?
I always had this script that I told people about this and I've recently been really tearing up that script and trying to really get to the bottom of this.
I think I was lonely.
Lonely for...
No.
No, that's not enough because it's only if you feel that loneliness will be eternal.
Right.
Right?
I mean, if you're...
I don't know, stationed on some desert island for a month, you'll be lonely, but you're like, okay, but at the end of the month, right, I'll be back with my friends, right?
So you grit your teeth and you get through it, right?
Yeah.
So it's not, loneliness is not, again, I completely apologize for telling you anything about your state of mind.
I'm just telling you what I think.
I'm not trying to give you any kind of absolute answers, but loneliness is not enough.
Everybody goes through periods of loneliness, but I think it's the feeling of a loneliness that can never be broken.
In other words, like entombed in impenetrable ice forever.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think...
Sorry, do you think it was loneliness for others or loneliness for yourself or both or neither?
Yeah.
I don't think it was loneliness for myself because I actually enjoy my own company.
I spent a lot of time alone when I was younger and I still do now and I enjoy it.
I think it was loneliness.
it was known as a connection to my family.
And anger, I would imagine.
Yeah.
Yeah, there's a lot of anger, but I think...
I want to say powerlessness, but I don't know how that connects to where this came to me.
Yeah, I mean, anger is supposed to be motivating.
And if you're angry at other people's indifference to you, Then you are hopeless and helpless because anger is not going to make people interested in you.
It's going to make people frightened of you or have to manage you or annoyed at you.
You want to be seen as an individual.
You want to be seen as, pardon my flight of fancy, but you want to be seen as the candle that you are.
You want to be seen.
I always have this Emotional visibility to other people is a very delicate thing.
It's like one of those spiderweb pictures you see at dawn with the dew hanging off.
It's delicate.
You touch it, it breaks.
As Amanda Wingfield says, no.
Amanda's the mother in Glass Menagerie.
Laura.
Laura Wingfield says, careful that glass.
You touch it, it breaks.
There is such a delicate sensitivity to emotionally seeing someone else.
That when we get incredibly frustrated with other people who don't either have the eyes or the willingness to open them or the capacity to see who we are, by the time we get angry at our invisibility, we're already more ghost than man.
Because anger is giving up.
Visibility.
Because you will never be visible only through your anger.
Unless somebody is genuinely curious about your anger and is willing to accept all of the frustrations that have mounted up over the years, 17 years I guess by that point.
But you cannot yell someone into intimacy and you cannot fundamentally make other people interested in who you are.
And I think that's the real frustration.
I am interesting.
I am worth getting to know.
And the indifference of other people Cannot be altered by any force known to man that I'm aware of.
Right.
Yeah, and I think one of the most painful parts of it is that the indifference just continued straight after.
And it's continued to this day.
Right.
Into the current ex-girlfriend, right?
Right, yeah.
Yeah, and it's only recently that since I've been listening to your show and I read real-time relationships that I've started to realize how people are not interested in me or haven't been interested in me.
I've normalized it so much.
And I overcompensated by being very interested in them and trying to figure them out.
And they were never really interested in me.
Which is kind of exhausting, right?
It's like you're trying to play seesaw on both sides, just running back and forth, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And it's humiliating.
It is the mark of a slave to constantly feign interest in other people's indifference.
That is what a slave does.
You know, like, down to Dabby!
Mr.
Carson.
You know, they just sit there at the back, blank-faced, while everyone's having their animated, all the lords and ladies are having their animated chats.
And he's got to sit there, passive, and if he has asked his opinion, then he may provide a sentence, or half a sentence.
But he stands there impassively, waiting for commandments.
Only focused on the other, and nobody inquires about him.
This is the mark of a servant.
This is I was at dinner the other night, and the waitress was pretty stony-faced.
And most waitresses and waiters are pretty chipper, right?
And I asked her, I said, are you okay?
You seem very sad.
Because I don't want her to be a food-bringing Roomba, you know?
She's a person.
What did she say to that?
She was very startled.
She drew back and she said, oh, no, that's just my face.
Yeah, it's a sad reaction.
I mean, I could have been wrong, but I don't want to pretend I'm not seeing something that I am.
It doesn't mean I'm right.
Yeah, right.
Sure.
Yeah, and I really felt, you said about playing the seesaw from both sides, I really felt that when I was trying to have a real conversation with my ex-girlfriend, I was exhausted because I was doing all the work.
I was really having to drag things out of her.
And it's like, you're not participating in this at all.
You're acquiescing, really.
Or you're submitting yourself to She wasn't making any effort on her end.
I realized how empty that is and how exhausting it is for me.
Good.
Feel that.
Be aware of that.
That's one of your great strengths and one of your greatest defenses.
Know when you're bored out of your gourd.
Know when you're tired of running things through both sides.
Know when it's exhausting to put on Hamlet when you have to play all the parts.
And be the audience to boot, right?
That's some exhausting shit, right?
Yeah, and she also recently did the emotional dumping.
You had a video recently about emotional dumping.
Oh, the blurb!
Yeah, she's been doing that recently.
And then suddenly when I ask her a little bit more about it or try to get a few inconsistencies about it, then she doesn't want to discuss it.
Oh, it's not that important.
Yeah.
Oh, so when she's not in control of the conversation, when she might have to be vulnerable because you're asking questions, then she's not interested.
Exactly, yeah.
And it was startling to me, the sudden sea change in the conversation once she was no longer the person in control of it.
How is she at admitting if she's wrong?
Um...
I don't know if she's ever admitted that she's wrong.
She's terrible at it.
Well, that's, again, I'm no expert, but that's sort of been my experience with people who are narcissistic or selfish.
I mean, they don't have, they don't have, their ego is positional.
In other words, it's always relative to something else.
I mean, my ego, for want of a better word, I try to keep it focused on being relative to the truth, you know what I mean?
Telling the truth.
Am I doing the right thing?
You know, that kind of stuff, right?
And people who are fundamentally insecure, which I think narcissists kind of are, then their ego is positional.
In other words, they're either winning or losing.
They're either dominating or being dominated, and they can't stand to be dominated.
And so there's no value for them in admitting that they're wrong.
All that does is put them in a humiliating position and it gains them nothing because they're not Committed to the truth, but merely to victory.
Yeah, yeah.
Right?
Whereas for me, I was like, oh, you know what?
That was wrong.
I was wrong about that.
Thank you for the correction, right?
That serves my ego.
It doesn't harm me because I'm not into winning or losing, right?
Yeah.
And so when somebody is, what Ayn Rand would call a social metaphysician, when somebody's identity is based upon their hierarchical position to others, it's always going to be win-lose.
You know, the blarping is they win, you lose.
And then when you try to ask questions, now you win, they lose, and they're not interested.
And you can't ever just meet as two human beings.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Dumped on me emotionally.
She said a lot of things about she feels like she wants to kill herself and many things like that.
But then suddenly, when I asked her about it a few days later, she said, no, it's nothing.
I was just tired.
I was just tired.
Yeah, I was just tired.
And I was like, that's obviously not true, but now you're withholding, whereas before you were splurging on me.
um That is, I mean, you know this, right?
That is incredibly dysfunctional.
Yeah.
I mean, that's crazy.
Yeah.
In my opinion.
That's like dangerously crazy.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, that's like Bunny Boiling, Glenn Close, uh, Crawling up your pant leg with a side order of Gone Girl, right?
I mean, that's pretty much a click on the boot and a mine in the air, right?
Yeah.
I mean, wow.
I thought having you say that really has brought it home to me.
I normalised it.
I brushed over it.
I thought, okay, obviously that's not healthy and not good communication, but I didn't think how truly dysfunctional it really was.
She threatens...
She talks about suicide, and a few days later she says it's not important.
It's not, right?
It means that she doesn't...
I mean, when you said, I tried to kill myself when I was 17, I'm like, well, that's some very serious stuff, right?
Yeah.
And...
That is incredibly dissociated and dysfunctional.
And I don't even know how many adjectives to heap on it, but that is a seriously crazy egg case you got there.
Right, yeah.
The egg case be a head case.
No, it's...
Man, man alive.
I mean, this is like an egg you've got to reach through like a fire chicken to get it, you know?
It's like, my arm is burning!
Right?
Right.
And I really don't, like I said, I really don't want to repeat that.
I don't want to get involved or to get involved with someone like this again.
Right.
What was the first sign?
What was the first sign that she was...
Batching.
Batching.
No, and look, if she was calling, I wouldn't be saying any of this, right?
I need to put some cold water on your gonads.
Yes, yeah, you do.
What was the first sign that she was batching?
Oh, okay.
When I first met her...
We were down by the river in the city that we live in.
And I said, oh, my ex-girlfriend before this, she used to run down along the river.
She really liked that.
Because we were talking about exercising and health and stuff like that.
And she got angry that I'd brought it up, that I'd brought up my ex-girlfriend.
She got angry that I talked about my past and I was confused by this because I was like, well, this is my life.
This is what's happened to me.
I'm not going to...
Is that unusual to talk about your life?
I was very confused at that point.
No, you weren't.
What's confusing about that?
That's true.
I wasn't confused.
No, I mean, seriously.
I mean, let's just take an amateur self-knowledge spin through that Minefield, right?
You mentioned an ex-girlfriend and she gets angry.
How hot is this woman?
Is her picture on one of these lure Western guys into like Venus flytraps of the East pictures that you see sometimes on websites.
Find your Asian honey!
Is she like dewy-eyed sail-a-moon?
No eyes, perfect hair, pointy chin, milk-white skin.
I mean, how hot is she?
She has a lot of those things.
A lot of those things?
Alright.
She could do that.
Even in the way that she acted and everything was incredibly attractive to me.
Incredibly attractive.
Right.
Yeah.
Right.
So, I mean, you mentioned an ex-girlfriend and she gets upset.
Yeah.
And that is to erase your life for the sake of her immediate emotional comfort.
That's incredibly narcissistic, wouldn't you say?
Yes.
Yeah, it is.
I mean, obviously she knows you would have ex-girlfriends and she would rely on the fact that you'd had ex-girlfriends, otherwise you'd be a lot more shy and awkward.
So part of your status as a human male comes from the fact that you've had ex-girlfriends and know how to talk to women and know how to ask a woman out and know how to date a woman and I guess know how to make love to a woman and all that, right?
Yeah.
So you're not trying to remember some banana and a condom film that you saw in grade 8 while trying to bring a woman to Victorian ecstasy.
I mean, so the fact that, you know, no porn, no ex-girlfriends, no reading smut, now really be good in bed.
What?
Pick one!
You can't have them all.
So the fact that you had an ex-girlfriend is natural, and of course you knew she had ex-boyfriends, I would assume.
And lotus flower not keeping herself pure for you.
So the fact that she would get angry, that she would be offended, and that she would express her anger to you What did she say when you mentioned an ex-girlfriend?
What were her words?
She said something like, in this country we don't do that.
We don't ever mention past relationships if you're dating someone else.
You don't mention them at all.
Actually, she said to mention them means that you still want to get back together with them.
That's what she said.
Wow.
Not a lot of curiosity there, right?
No.
And honestly, saying that to you is like me going to an Indian restaurant in Canada and saying, this isn't India.
Right.
It's like, well...
It is a little bit here, right?
Because they're Indian people who are running a restaurant.
Yeah, yeah.
And so this is you bringing the West.
I mean, how the hell does she get to invoke magic geography standards to you?
Yeah.
I mean, is everything where she is perfect and everything where you're from bad?
No.
I mean, how about being curious about what you think?
Right.
You know, I mean, if she'd ever mentioned ex-boyfriends, I guess at some point you'd say...
Curious, you never talk about your ex-boyfriends.
Why is that?
Oh, well, you know, here we kind of have a tradition where you don't.
It's just a local thing or whatever, but, you know, I know you come from a different place, so tell me more about blah, blah, blah, right?
Yeah, no, it was only an hour later or so that I asked her about her ex-boyfriends and she told me, you know, no problem.
Definitely anxiety management.
Right.
Okay, so basically the first time you were there, You got that, right?
The first time you were hanging out?
Yeah, there was red flags straight away.
Yeah, so set fire to them and put them down your pants.
Yeah.
Right?
Right, yeah.
And the other thing too, I mean, if you ever want to basically stun gun the sexual desire out of your one-eyed trouser snake, then What you do is you imagine, you know, the baby is just thrown up the third time in the middle of the night.
Yeah.
Yeah.
How's she going to be?
Yeah, she wouldn't be good with that.
That would not be a very positive situation, right?
Absolutely not.
And yet, see, but this is what the penis is for.
It's for the baby who's thrown up the third time that night.
Mm-hmm.
That's what it's about.
My daughter, the other night, woke up at like 4 o'clock in the morning.
I couldn't get her back to bed.
Oh, man.
I'm like, I need my sleep.
I'm not someone who can just glide by.
Maybe when I was a little bit younger, but I've always sort of needed my sleep.
She's up like an hour and a half, and I'm like, oh, my God.
Because then it's like, oh, my God, what's the point?
It's 5.30 in the morning.
Right.
So, but, you know, I mean, I hate to say, now that I'm a dad, you know, now that I'm a dad, but that's, you know, all that lust that I coasted on throughout my life.
I mean, that's, it's for the kids, right?
I mean, it's why we're here.
It's why we have babies and all that sort of stuff.
Yeah.
So, I mean, yeah, you want genetics, which is, I guess, what the physical attractiveness does, right?
I mean, it's even skin.
Sorry, even skin.
It even features its clear skin, its bright eyes, its lustrous hair, its height or whatever, slenderness indicating self-control, whatever it is that is indicative of genetic fitness.
And genetic fitness is great.
It's an important component.
But genetic fitness won't do you a goddamn bit of good when the baby has thrown up for the third time in the middle of the night.
Right.
Yeah.
Right.
You need good hips, and more importantly, you need a big heart.
Because, you know, the sex is 10 minutes, but the baby is 18 years.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know from your own parents, right?
If you don't get the right co-parents, your life gets pretty complicated pretty quickly, right?
Yes, yeah.
It's a big mess.
Yeah, I mean, I wanted to say a little bit that I've been really, really trying to examine my relationship with my parents, and I feel like it's coming closer.
The time's coming closer where I really need to We need to talk to them about these things, bring these things up and I'm afraid to.
I'm especially afraid to with my dad because I'm afraid that he'll get angry and I'm afraid of the anger.
When I was younger, he hit me a few times and And even now, his reaction to an uncomfortable situation or a frustrating situation is to get angry.
And I'm afraid to bring that up with him because of that.
But I know that I need to get over that fear.
I've heard you say it before that Like, vulnerability is the way that you say to your inner child, like, the past is over.
You're not a child anymore.
You can handle your parents' anger now, right?
You can handle it as an independent adult.
You're not subject to their whims and mercies, right?
No, that's true.
Yeah.
Would you engage in therapy before working through any of these conversations?
Would I be willing to, you mean?
Would that be something you could do?
Honestly, I would be willing to, but honestly, I'm a little skeptical of the quality of therapists in this country.
But then, that seems like avoidance because I have no real experience.
It's just all my preconceptions.
Wait, which country are you talking about?
I'm in South Korea.
Oh, right!
Okay.
I hear North Korea, you know, yes.
South Korea, not so much.
Right.
Okay.
You might be able to get somebody who can go, like, I don't know, Skype or someone who may be able to work with you remotely, which probably would be...
Yeah, I don't think that, you know, I'm no expert on South Korea, but I can't imagine when it comes to confronting parental power that they've got a whole lot of experience and wisdom to add to the mix.
Exactly.
So, yeah, I mean, I should look into that, and I think it would be very helpful for me.
Right.
Yeah.
Cross-cultural romances, you know, that's quite a...
It's quite a mouthful to chew off, you know?
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, because you didn't even see...
White functionality in your family, right?
I don't even see people of the same race and culture get along, so I'll do a completely different race and culture.
That seems like diving into vector calculus before arithmetic.
I'm not saying they can't work, but I think there are significant additional challenges to those relationships.
Yeah, and like that...
The culture here is so hard on kids.
Really, really, really hard.
And it's pretty heartbreaking.
And there's not many that don't experience it.
Or not many people that I've met who haven't experienced a pretty traumatic childhood.
In the education system and in the parental system.
You get that slightly higher Asian IQ. But that comes at the price of a significant conformity.
You probably know the general theory about the split-off that happened tens of thousands of years ago where some people went one direction, some people went another.
And those who end up in harsher climates have had some drivers towards better IQs.
But they've had real drawbacks as well.
And I think that the harshness with which the Asians developed, the climate and the rice, I mean, it's just – but there's this huge amount of conformity.
And with the conformity comes a crippling amount of – not a crippling amount, a significant amount of control and abuse.
And that's – so your cross-cultural plus significantly different childhood environments and so on, that is a big hurdle to cross.
It may not be the best way for you to work on getting close to someone.
Thanks a lot for talking to me, Steph.
I really value what you do and what you bring to the world.
I appreciate that.
Would a role play with your dad help?
You don't have to.
I mean, it's a complete invitation, like whatever you think might be.
I don't have a lot of experience with it.
I'd be...
I mean, I really want to use this opportunity speaking with you, so yeah, let's go for it.
Okay, so you be your dad?
Okay.
Okay.
Dad...
Difficult conversation.
I hope you'll be patient with me.
I'm floundering.
I don't know half of what it is that I'm going to say.
But I do feel that I'd like to be closer in the future than we have been in the past.
What do you think of that?
Do you think that there's a possibility that there's some greater closeness that we might be able to achieve?
I'm not saying it's terrible or bad, what we have, but Do you think that there's some greater closeness we might be able to achieve with each other?
Well, I don't know.
I think we're pretty close now, aren't we?
We talk about a lot of stuff.
Well, okay, let's say we are pretty close.
Do you think we could be closer?
Yeah, I think we could be closer.
And how do you think we could be closer?
I don't want to sort of put you on the spot.
I've had a chance to think about this before the conversation, so maybe I can...
I've never heard him say that talking about emotions more is good or anything.
I really don't know why.
I think he would probably, he wouldn't know or he wouldn't have an answer.
No, but at least we've got a concession from him that something could be closer.
And that's always going to be the case.
Anyone who says we have achieved maximum intimacy is not hopping up and down on the truth mushroom very high, right?
So if he's willing to say, yeah, we could be a little closer, then he wouldn't know exactly how because that's...
Then the question is, well, how long have you known this way that we could be closer and why haven't you ever brought it up?
He could be concerned about something like that.
So you could say something like...
When I was thinking about our closeness, and it's weird, Dad, because this came up not because of anything between you and I, but because of some pretty disastrous relationships I got into in South Korea.
I mean, I'm not the first guy to chase a pretty girl off a cliff, and I probably won't be the last, but I'm concerned about my judgment when it comes to dating.
And so in thinking about that, I was thinking about you and mom and, you know, when I was 13 and you guys split up, you weren't there to tell me and, you know, it was like a five-minute conversation.
I remember my brother crying.
And my mom said, it was either then or, I don't know, shortly thereafter, my mom said that she wished she had, she wished you guys had separated 10 years before.
So I'm thinking about Growing up in a household or in a family in an environment where, I don't know if you did, but certainly mom seemed to have at least one heel out the door for 10 years before I guess you guys finally pulled the trigger.
I think that that's, I mean, obviously it was tough for you, but I think in terms of like me as a kid seeing, I think I've got an idea that that's what a marriage is, but that's a marriage that didn't work out.
And I think that that might have something to do with some of my difficulties in finding a suitable girlfriend.
I don't know if this makes any sense, but that's sort of one of the things.
Does that ring any bells with you?
Yeah, yeah, that's great.
I think that's when he would become extremely uncomfortable because I don't know if he's ever had any conversation like that before.
And I thought I'd start with that one rather than the I tried to kill myself when I was 17 and you basically just check my pulse once in a while and reassure yourself that everything's fine.
Like, I wanted to start with that one and that is about as gentle an approach as I, because, you know, you said your dad's kind of skittish, right?
Or British.
Skittish?
British?
Same thing.
So I try to approach it as delicately and as gently and as non-confrontationally as possible, if that makes any sense.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That makes a lot of sense.
So that's one way in which you could sort of bring it up.
I don't know what goes from there, and I think you didn't either.
There may be uncomfortable pauses and so on, and it's okay to let those pauses be there.
And if he's trying to find new words for unspoken things, then it may take a little while.
Yeah.
Asking him about, you know, asking your parents about their marriage, I think, is...
One of these fundamental pieces of archaeology that protects you from danger that, I mean, if possible, just about everyone should go through.
Yeah, I really agree with you there.
I can really see how, because I feel like I know nothing about their marriage.
I know almost nothing about their relationship at all.
I know that they met in school, and that's about all that I know.
So I think I'd really benefit from learning more about that.
Right.
Because if you don't have love, then you only have the incredibly dangerous incendiary firework in your pants backup mechanism of lust to guide you.
Which means that you're susceptible to manipulation, to presentation, to the tit polishing of the insecure.
And that is a very bad mechanism to guide yourself by.
Because it's so fundamentally...
Lust is so fundamentally subjected to manipulation.
Susceptible.
Sorry, that's a better word.
Lust is so fundamentally susceptible to manipulation because lust is the assigning of value to vagina, not to person.
You know, I mean, basically, lust is...
Throwing yourself out of a plane and hoping you'll hit a haystack.
Yes.
It's an incredibly dangerous way to guide yourself.
People say don't drive when you're angry, which is actually very good advice.
But don't screw when you're guided by lust is important, if not more so.
And when you don't have...
Emotional or I guess I could say spiritual values to guide you in finding a good person if you just don't have those.
And if you grew up in a cold or distant family like this, a family where you were not visible and you weren't even perceived as invisible, that is not going to give you a sense of connection with others or connection with yourself, that is not going to give you a sense of connection with others or connection Yeah.
And so then because you don't know what that's like and you have a desire to connect, then you are going to – like we talked about these R&K mating strategies.
Emotional connection is the long-term investment because you need the pair bonding.
You need the love.
You need the mutual investment in the children.
But lust is what arises out of a disconnected childhood because a disconnected childhood where you don't see the pair bonding between your parents or experience the pair bonding between your parents and yourself, that is going to give you a very short-term lust-based reproductive strategy, also known as dick in a blender.
Yeah, I totally agree with you.
So if you can connect with your parents, or at least if you can recognize that you can't connect with your parents in any particularly reasonable time frame, which doesn't mean anything other than that's just information you need to have.
You can see them or don't see them.
But if you really get that it's painful to not connect with someone, then that pain of not connecting with someone will be a break on your lust.
Yeah, yeah.
Right?
Because your lust will say, connect with her vagina, and your heart will say, there's no connection with the person, but you need to know what not being connected feels like.
And when you're not connected with someone, it's hard to know what not being connected feels like.
Any more than it's easy to constantly be aware of gravity and breathing and your heartbeat.
It's just how you live, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, and I feel like I've been experiencing the beginnings of that by trying to implement RTR. By experiencing, yeah, she's attractive, but there's no connection here.
There's no real caring.
There's no connection.
Yeah, I mean, can I tell you a secret about this show?
Okay.
You and I are teaching people how to screw better.
Yeah.
Right?
Because I think, I mean, we're having a conversation about something real.
You know, I'm not in charge, you're not in charge.
We're just having a conversation about real things.
I think we're willing to talk about things that are difficult.
I've shared, you've shared, right?
I'm not some sort of blank therapist, stone-faced doodling guy, right?
Not a therapist, right?
This is why I'm sharing my thoughts and you're sharing your thoughts.
And then people can hear, I think, what A natural, spontaneous, open and intimate human conversation.
Sounds like...
I mean, so many people don't know what that sounds like.
Yeah, yeah.
And the fact that you're willing to have the conversation and let other people listen in on it.
I mean, you could be a woman, I could be a woman, and we could be madly in lust with each other, but we could still be having this conversation, right?
yeah yeah um and so so sorry go ahead um i was gonna say it it's it's it's astounding to me it's becoming less astounding but it's been astounding that the extent to which i didn't know how impoverished my relationships really were until i until i started to listen to you a bit more and and um and really look into this stuff and really
really experience my feelings and, wow, I didn't even know what our relationship was.
Yeah, you never know how hungry you are until you finally get a good meal, right?
Right, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, I mean, I thank you not only for, you know, sharing your thoughts and feelings with me, which I feel...
As always, incredibly honored, and thank you so much for that.
But thank you also, and this is a general comment to all the listeners who call in and who post and all that.
Thank you so much for letting other people in on our conversations.
I mean, you and I having this conversation, and just because we're talking now, I don't mean just you and I, but you and I having this conversation, I think it moves the goalposts for a whole lot of people, right?
Yeah.
Because remember, guys, we talk about your feelings in sports, but we're having, I think, a genuine human conversation and connection.
It's not stressful.
It's not strained.
We dip in and out of the role play and talk about what we think and feel.
And people don't usually have much of a model for that, right?
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I know I certainly didn't.
And the conversations that you've had with people have been so important in modeling what that's like.
And like I said before, I want to say again, thank you so much for what you do.
Oh, it's my pleasure.
I mean, but, you know, we're both moving each side of the goalpost here, like you and I, and me and the callers and Mike and Stoyan and other people who talk on this show.
For me, it's just, and this is why I still incredibly look forward to these I'm like, yay, Wednesday!
Yay, Saturday!
Because we continually get this amazing opportunity to move the goalposts, to change in people's minds, in a lot of people's minds, to change what connection and conversation means to them.
And not just in theory, but in tangible, sort of visible practice.
And that's, I mean, I think that's a wonderful gift that together, you know, we can give to the world.
And I get that for the people who, you know, like your dad or who are uncomfortable with this stuff, this conversation creates discomfort.
I get that.
And I, you know, I wish that weren't the case.
I wish it created opportunity, excitement, excitement.
But again, moving the goalposts undermines people's levels of security and comfort.
And that is a sad and tragic inevitability of...
I obviously have the goal of helping to move the species forward and upward as much as I can with the time and energy that I have available to me.
And anytime you move...
The standards, anytime you change the norm for people, it creates opportunities and simultaneously discomfort.
I think about, this is an extreme way of putting it, but I sometimes think about the last guy to buy a slave before it became illegal.
Ooh!
Bummer.
Right?
I mean, the last guy to buy a car just before they outlawed cars.
Ooh!
Because, you know, a slave costs like, this is why...
People talk about slavery and think it's some sort of widespread phenomenon.
A slave costs as much as a luxury vehicle does, like $40,000, $50,000.
It's so much a slave cost back in the day.
Not a lot of people could just go buy 10 slaves.
It was like half a million dollars.
They couldn't.
I mean, it was rare that people were being paid a pretty tiny amount.
Yeah, some guy.
He was the last guy.
Hey, I finally scrimped and saved for 20 years and now I can afford to buy a slave.
I went and borrowed a slave and on the way home, ooh, ooh, it just became illegal to have slaves.
Refund?
And so anytime there's this progress, I also think of these guys who were bad husbands in the 30s and 40s and 50s, right?
Yeah.
And, you know, in my conversations with Erin Pitsy, you know, she set up the sort of first women's shelter and tried to expand it into men's shelters and so on.
And I've said this before recently, but these women would come in, you know, just appalled and sometimes beaten black and blue or just heartbroken, heart shredded, you know, verbal abusers sometimes and all that.
And the men would come beating on the door and screaming.
It's like But this worked for so long.
I mean, how, why, you know, and then the priests would all come swarming in and try and drag the women back to their abusers, you know, what God has put together, let no man tear us under and, you know, all that.
She got her death threats and all this sort of stuff.
And man, it sucks.
I mean, God, it's terrible.
It really is a shame.
I went and looked at My daughter wanted to know what my boarding school looked like, so I looked it up.
I never have before.
There's no corporal punishment there now.
You know, when I was six, I was getting hit with a cane on the ass for climbing a fence that I wasn't supposed to.
You know, now they're all about negotiation and peace, and it's like, man...
When my wife was a kid here in Canada, kids were still getting hit on the knuckles with steel rulers.
Yeah.
That doesn't happen now.
I've seen some horrific videos recently of corporal punishment in schools in Korea.
Oh, yeah.
Watch.
It's horrifying.
Oh, it's brutal.
Yeah.
And still, I think, in 20-plus states, mostly clustered in the need to produce soldiers, southern states, there's still a corporal punishment in paddles and all this in schools.
And the progressive ethics...
He repeatedly turns saints into monsters.
And a man who simply kept a firm hand on his wife was like a respectable man.
And next thing you know, he's a wife beater.
I mean, that's a little unfair because wife beating was always illegal.
But, you know, parents who hit their kids, you know, this transition is still occurring in so many countries.
I mean, it doesn't sound like it's gotten very far in South Korea.
It's Not gotten very far in Canada.
It's gotten even less in the United States.
In England, it's God knows where.
I guess at least in boarding schools, I don't think they have corporal punishment anymore.
But we are regularly ripping off halos and installing horns.
And these halos have lasted for many generations.
In fact, probably back to the beginning of recorded history.
I mean, it wasn't like kids were being treated very benevolently by...
Parents 10,000 or 20,000 years ago was even worse.
Right.
And parents who genuinely think that they're doing the right thing, let's say.
The standards shift underneath and suddenly, you know, they thought they were on Batman's side and they realized they're like one of the Joker's henchmen or something.
And it's really, it is a difficult transition.
I don't know what the alternative is other than we don't move the standards yeah and so for your dad you know he grew up where I would imagine reticence was manly right oh don't get all stivly definitely go tell your problems to the peeing water fountain I don't want to hear them a real man right whatever it is real men
do I don't know like what the rest of us made of cabbages I don't know but I'm sorry His father and mother are definitely like that.
Right, and that's the template.
And we all love progress in technology.
We all love progress in cars.
We all love progress in heating.
You know, when I was a kid, we had to feed pennies into the meter to get a couple of gusts of heat.
And sometimes, as you know, it's pretty damn cold in England.
And now, you know, there's central heating.
I mean, I remember the first time I got a used air conditioner.
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
I got a used air conditioner, put it in the window, and I would literally, I guess I was about 16 or 17.
Because, yeah, my mom was gone by then.
So it was definitely after 15.
I'd open the door, and Toronto gets, like, wicked hot in the summer and humid.
And, you know, it's basically, like, Florida farts north.
And I remember for the first time ever, we installed it, we left it running, I went out, came back home.
They weren't even air conditioning on the buses, and I didn't have a car until I was like 32 or something like that.
So I rode the subway, no air conditioning, rode the bus, no air conditioning, come home, I'm just like, oh my god, I'm so hot.
And I just get used to being home, and I remember opening that door, and that cool, chill, Just raced across my body and it was like, oh man, stepping into an ice cream wonderland.
It was just fantastic.
And I remember reading some Henry James.
Oh, you know, I think it was a portrait of a lady or maybe one of its shorter stories where they're talking about just lying in New York in like, I don't know when it was, the 19th century.
And it's just, it's too hot to sleep like that Robbie Robertson song.
Man, it was too hot to sleep.
And now we just, ah, flip on the air conditioner, it's fine.
So there is all this progress, and most of the progress makes us happier, but the moral progress is definitely a double-edged sword.
The moral progress is like that portrayal of theater, the laughing mask and the crying mask.
Right?
So the women who can get out of the abusive relationships with their husbands are happier, and their husbands are angrier.
And I've sort of been meaning for a long time to do a show for, you know, people who are on the wrong side of moral progress.
But it is an incredible opportunity.
And there is a possibility to say to those who you may genuinely have wronged inadvertently in thinking you were doing the right thing.
And I've, you know, I've definitely had tough questions for parents around this as I have for other people around this.
But put all that aside.
For people like your dad, what an incredible opportunity it is for him to learn what it is to open his heart a little more and to gain that comfort of connection and to gain the security that comes from intimacy is the physics upon which all tall buildings need to be built.
The taller the building, the more knowledge of architecture and engineering you need.
And the longer the relationship, the more knowledge of the physics of intimacy you need.
I mean, we have these relationships now that last like three human lifetimes of the past.
Average human life expectancy of the Roman Empire was like 22 or something like that.
And now, of course, once you got to 22, you were probably okay for quite a while.
Right.
But now we live to like 80, 90 years old, and you get married when you're 20 or 30.
I mean, that's a long stretch of time you got married.
Yeah, yeah.
And so for your dad, I mean, I'm sorry that he hit you, and I'm sorry that he was not emotionally open with you or wanted to listen.
He obviously is reaching out in an awkward way when he's asking you basically, are you all right?
Are you okay?
And I don't think he's probably got the capacity at this point to move that conversation to a more open level.
But if you can work that with him, I read a story, and I'm sorry to ramble for so long, I really appreciate your indulgence on this.
I do remember reading a story many years ago about a man whose father was emotionally inexpressive, stone-faced, and so on.
And his father got sick and was on his deathbed, and For weeks, he would go back and try to hug his dad.
And then shortly before his dad died, his dad's body rigidity did actually relax, and they were able to embrace each other.
You know, like, embrace is supposed to be like waterfalls joining.
You're supposed to merge.
And he was able to do that.
I think, I mean, I'm glad that the man had that experience of a genuine hug before he died, both of them.
But...
Gosh, wouldn't it have been nice to have it earlier.
Our willingness to be led by our children is essential to the maintenance of intimacy in the family.
My daughter teaches me an enormous amount.
An enormous amount.
And I tell her that.
I said, you know, you were right about this and I learned this from you and you handled that really interestingly and let me tell you what I got from it.
Because she's growing up in a different world than I did and I can learn from her what it's like to grow up in a peaceful world.
And bring more peace to myself through that process.
And you are growing up in a world where There's far more examples of intimacy, like this conversation or the shows that you've listened to from this, like from Free Domain Radio.
You were growing up with examples of honesty and openness and intimacy that your father almost certainly had no practical access to.
And that's why I think some gentleness, you know, he's not some abusive monster, obviously, right?
But some gentleness and giving him the scope to Perhaps explore what is possible now that you can bring to the table.
That could be an amazing thing for him too.
Yeah, I want to do that.
I want to do that.
Well, I mean, sorry, I don't mean to sort of blather on, so I won't.
But just tell me what's going through your mind.
I'm feeling...
I'm feeling much more hopeful and actually excited about starting that conversation from what you've said.
I feel like I have the courage to start that conversation and if I started with gentleness, like you said, I think it could develop into something very healthy for us.
So what's going through my mind is I feel hopeful.
I feel energized.
Good.
It's hard for parents to see what they did that was deficient.
Yeah.
Particularly if it was not through ill intent.
Mm-hmm.
It's hard for parents to go to their kids and say, tell me what I could have done better.
Tell me what's missing for you.
Tell me how we can make it even better now.
And I wish, I mean, I really genuinely and totally wish the parents, more parents would do that.
And some parents are.
I get those emails and some parents are doing that, which is fantastic.
But the power Parents always have such unbelievable power over their children.
I mean, you're a grown man.
I mean, you're banging 11-point china dolls, right?
So you are a grown man, and then the idea of having an honest conversation with your father is still very scary.
Parents just have such unbelievable power over their children forever.
Never ends.
Even after they're dead.
And For parents to say to their children, how could I have done it better?
What can I do better now?
It's an incredibly powerful thing, and I wish more parents would understand just how powerful that is.
And what can be achieved through that process, through the humility of asking how one can improve.
And...
I think that you could bring a great gift to your dad, which I would be thrilled to hear about.
Great.
Thank you, Steph.
Thank you so much.
You are very welcome.
Will you, of course, give us a line and let us know?
Yes, I will.
Yeah, definitely.
Mike just noted Adrian Peterson recently got the following punishment for assaulting a defenseless child with a tree branch.
80 hours of community service, a $4,000 fine, and two years of probation.
Well, what can one say?
Well, I can certainly say thank you, everybody, for your time and attention in this conversation.
If you would like to help out the show, we grow because of you, your kindness, your generosity.
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