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Nov. 15, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:09:34

2841 Life: Experience Required - Wednesday Call In Show November 12th, 2014

Is inaction by its nature morally neutral? How does one become motivated? I cheated on my wife for 8 years - is it possible to salvage our relationship given our long history of dysfunction? I'm striving for a virtuous relationship but I'm having trouble insofar as I tend to choose people who seem honest, but still give me some red flags. How much should I invest in these people?

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	Hello, everybody.
	It is time for the November 12th, Wednesday night, Philosophy Call-In Show.
	Just got a couple things I want to make note of before we get running with the show.
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	All right.
	Mikey Nuckness, who do we have?
	Bernard wrote in and said, according to what you said in UPB, inaction can either be moral or immoral.
	Clearly, this is what Steph wrote in the book, clearly if I proclaim X is the good, then the opposite of X is evil.
	He says, then you define nonaction as the opposite of a positive action, saying, clearly if not raping is good, then raping must be evil.
	Conversely, if raping is good, then not raping must be evil.
	However, why can inaction have moral content?
	Isn't inaction by its nature morally neutral?
	Could you say that not doing evil is necessary but not sufficient to be virtuous?
	Yeah, I mean we've had this conversation in the show once before and I think it's a good distinction.
	I want people to not take my stuff and not hit me and not kill me.
	And so on.
	So for me, all that I really require to live in peace with other people is for them to not initiate the use of force against me.
	Now, not initiating the use of force against other people can be quite challenging for some people at times.
	Impulse-driven people, the criminality that is often associated, though not exclusively, with lower IQs, people who have significantly limited intellectual capacities and so on.
	So, I do think that to refrain from initiating the use of force is really all that's needed for people to live in peace.
	However, I would not say that's sort of necessary but not sufficient for positive virtue.
	Because, of course, as you probably know, libertarianism as a whole is very interested in the non-aggression principle.
	And, of course, that respect for persons and their property.
	And Out of the non-aggression principle comes all of the other negotiation and trade and love and all that kind of stuff that comes out of that.
	Those, I don't think, would be...
	Like, a man who makes his way through life without initiating force against others I think has lived a good life.
	But I would not say that that is the very highest mark of virtue because there are other virtues that are more positive but not required.
	So, somebody who rushes to somebody else's defense, you know, some old lady is being set upon by a thug or two and this guy runs in.
	Moral courage to make arguments that go against the collective sentiments of the masses and so on.
	Those, I think, are good things.
	I don't think that they're virtues that relate to the non-aggression principle.
	But they're nice to have, but not have to have.
	But I do think that if we could, and of course we're a long way away from that, but if we could have a society where, just look at parents and children, to look at parents and children, if we could have a society or a world where parents did not initiate force or fraud against their children, I mean, Lord heaven above, great Zeus's ankle, we would have an absolutely astounding world.
	We could get a world where parents did not initiate force or fraud against their children.
	No hitting, no yelling, no verbal abuse, no punishments, no, you know, anything that required force or power or size or strength.
	And not initiating fraud would be not telling children things that you can't prove are true, which would be the superstitions of statism and religiosity.
	I mean, imagine if children were raised peacefully and not lied to.
	I think that would be pretty much sufficient for eradicating the need for virtue because there would be nobody initiating force.
	Now, you may have, I guess, some temptations.
	If you're involved in some business contract, you might want to shave some corners or cut some costs or maybe cheat people and so on.
	But I think those would be very low-incidence situations.
	So the opposite of evil is I think is good and given the prevalence of aggression and lying to children aggression to and lying to children around the world I think that we're a long way from even achieving the basic virtues of don't aggress against or lie to your children.
	Does that make any sense?
	Yeah, I think that mostly I went to regions I didn't intend to go to with the question but We covered most of it.
	One reason I asked the question was that under German law it is illegal to, or you get punished for not helping a person that you could have helped if they are in a life-threatening situation, I guess.
	So if somebody's drowning and you know how to save them and if they can prove it to you, then you can go, I don't know if you can go to jail for it, but at least you can get punished for that.
	If you don't help him.
	And the idea here is, then, basically, since they're not initiating aggression, it's not immoral.
	Of course, I mean, you've talked about this before as the...
	Well, you're a douche principle, sort of.
	Dad.
	Yeah.
	But...
	I think that just going by UPB and the non-aggression principle, it's not immoral in a way to not save a person if you can.
	Yeah, no, absolutely.
	It's not immoral.
	And, I mean, the German government in this is entirely hypocritical.
	Because let's say that you saw someone...
	Let's say that you saw an old lady being...
	Having her purse stolen from her by a 10-year-old boy and you were like a strapping 225-pound, 6'2 guy.
	I would assume that given that the boy was unarmed and so on and you could, you know, take him or at least get the woman's purse back, that under this law you would probably be not, like you would probably be guilty of not helping this woman, right?
	Because you could do so with virtually no threat to yourself.
	So in other words, if you have the power to stop a theft and you don't do it, Then you are bad.
	You're breaking the law, according to this, if I understand it correctly.
	Well...
	Of course, the reality is that there's still a national debt in Germany, which the politicians can change and reverse, which they don't do.
	So they're basically stealing from the unborn when they have the power to stop it.
	But of course, the important thing is whether you go save a drowning kid or something, right?
	Well, in this case, it's not an old lady getting her purse stolen.
	I don't think you get punished for that.
	But maybe if you're a doctor and somebody at the table next to you and you, I don't know, chokes on something and you're like, meh, just let him die.
	And continue eating, basically.
	And they know you're a doctor.
	They know you could have helped him.
	And, you know, he basically killed that person in the eyes of the law because he didn't.
	Well, I don't know if it's that harsh, but And I think you might get second or third degree for that.
	Well, I mean, I think that these situations are so incredibly rare that having legislation about it is kind of pointless.
	I don't know what it is in Germany, but certainly in America, the police have no duty to protect you at all.
	The police cannot be faulted, cannot be sued, cannot any of these things for failing to protect you.
	So for me, if the police, whose job it is to protect you, don't have any legal requirement or duty to protect you when they've pushed out every other or most other competition and take your money by force, if the police in America, and I don't know what it is around the world elsewhere, but if the police have no duty to protect you, I don't see how you can push that same duty on a private citizen.
	But these things would be so rare.
	I mean, what doctor would sit there and say, well, I'm right in the middle of a great conversation?
	Of course the doctor would get up.
	And help.
	And these things could be dealt with by the governing body, but there may be some licensing body in a free society, and the licensing body would have the Hippocratic Oath, right?
	Do no harm and, you know, help people where you can.
	And he may have his license revoked or withdrawn from that governing body if he doesn't, you know, help someone when it's so easy.
	There's so many different ways to deal with this rather than having the law step in that I don't think it's at all necessary.
	Well, but if you say governing body, isn't that kind of like a government or a state then?
	If you have a No.
	I don't know.
	If you have like an agency or something like that, that's in a given geographical area, which would be your problem.
	No, no, no.
	No, no.
	Hang on, hang on.
	No, it's just, it would be optional, right?
	So if you want to be a doctor, then obviously people would like to know that you know what you're doing, that you're educated and that you meet your professional standards and that you keep up on your education and all that kind of stuff.
	And rather than research it themselves, which they probably wouldn't want to do, there would be a third-party body that would certify you as having maintained or fulfilled certain professional requirements, which would be the same thing as a seal of approval from some consumer safety board that is voluntary but gives people peace of mind.
	So, no, it's not a governing.
	Governing body doesn't mean a government.
	It just means somebody of people who've figured out Ways to certify that people have taken particular approaches or education or maintained standards that are productive for their patients.
	Seal of approval.
	You can get like good housekeeping seal of approval and so on.
	You can get CIA certified or automobile association certified garages or carriages, as they'd say in England.
	So you can just get people who say, listen, these guys have done what we think is the right stuff.
	And, and then you don't have to go to these people, you can, or you can go to people, like you can go to a psychologist or a psychiatrist, or you can go to a life coach, which as far as I understand it is unregulated.
	But this doesn't have to be government at all.
	This just has to be some group of people who have come up with some consumer optimum way of certifying people's knowledge and skill.
	Well, That wasn't actually the direction I tried to go.
	The thought that originally came to mind, although I kind of figured that by now, is that if you, for instance, have, I don't know, you call them DROs, I think.
	If you have like a police, whatever that is that you privately pay, then you would grant them the The thought was you would grant them a monopoly of violence on your property, which would then make them kind of like a state.
	But then I figured that, well, they don't have a monopoly on violence, since you yourself can still use it on your property.
	Well, no, I imagine, I have no idea how all this would work.
	So I understand this is all purely theoretical and I'm not exactly well versed in these areas.
	But just off the top of my head, what I would like to see, so if there's some DRO, then I would certainly like them to have access to my home under certain conditions.
	So if I call them and say, you know, I just heard the window break in the basement, then I want them to come over and come into my house.
	Right?
	So if I request that they come, they can come into my house.
	There may be other situations where You know, if they have good reason to believe I've done some egregious harm to someone and, you know, hid the body under my couch or something, there may be circumstances under which I would sign ahead of time the conditions under which they would have access to my house.
	And of course, this would be as restricted as minimal as humanly possible because very few people would want to say, you know, hey, if you're just down the street, you need to pee, come use my bathroom.
	I would have to be very...
	Restricted so this would all sort of be worked out to be as minimally invasive as possible while still giving Investigators the capacity to go in and examine places where they suspect something nefarious may have occurred Okay Well one thing I Want to ask because I mean the the question was asked that's quite a while actually till you get on this show is There were some other parts on UPB I wanted to ask,
	but I listened to it again, so those kind of figured themselves just by listening again.
	And basically the next is a bit of practicality.
	There's a lot of ideas that I think are good, and I thought of some ways, basically, that you might be able to do a DRO or similar organization in the world today as a valid business model.
	But I just can't seem to get moving.
	So what I mean by that is on the Joe Rogan podcast, you guys talked about basically how great it feels to be rolling in the sense that you're working and you're active and you're just working a lot.
	It's that old saying that if you want something done, give the work to a busy man.
	I don't know if I quote you there, but the problem is I feel very stale at the moment, so I can't seem to get moving.
	So I have an idea how to basically start something like that, but how do I motivate myself to get there?
	I don't know.
	That motivation is not something that you squeeze out of yourself like the last piece of toothpaste.
	Motivation is something you try to ride like you're strapped to the back of a horse.
	I mean, I don't know if this makes any sense, so I'll keep this brief.
	When I realized I had the opportunity to talk about philosophy to the world, unedited, uncensored, With the topics that I care about the most, to talk to experts in the field, to talk to listeners like you.
	It wasn't like I thought, well, how do I motivate myself to do this?
	My question was, how soon can I do this?
	So it's not like, I don't know if there's something that you love to do, something that you're just passionate about doing.
	But, you know, even if it's something like going on vacation, some boring job, you say, well, how do I motivate myself to go on vacation?
	Or how do I motivate myself to play a video game?
	You want to play a video game, you want to go on vacation.
	And when it comes to motivation, I think that you have a drive, you have a passion to do something.
	I wrote 30 plays, hundreds of poems, six or seven novels...
	And barely cut paid a thin dime for any of them.
	I just loved to write.
	And it helped me to organize my thoughts.
	When I was in university, when I took my course on Aristotle, we were going through the metaphysics, and I paraphrased the argument and wrote voluntary essays and sat down with the philosophy professor, who was a very smart woman.
	And we went over the arguments and all that.
	I just loved it.
	When I got into computers, I programmed for years before I got one thin dime for coding.
	And I love to sing, I love music, and I do all of these things because they are enjoyable to me.
	Now, if you don't have something that's so enjoyable to you that you have to find a way to do it, I think then you just have an idea of something that you want rather than something you actually want.
	Does that make any sense?
	Well, yes, but I think there is a slight difference between you and me in this case because I think you said before on the show that you started working when you were 10 or 11 or 12, somewhere around that age.
	And working, as far as I heard, is sort of a habit.
	If you are used to working, then it's easy for you to work.
	Yeah, if that makes any sense.
	And if you're not used to doing much or anything, because after I was done with school, before I started university, I had like a year in between where I didn't do anything.
	I really wasted a complete year.
	And now when I try to start working again, it just doesn't work.
	I start something, I get frustrated, and I give up.
	Even though I want to do it, I'm slowly forcing myself to Do more of it to basically get a habit of working on the things I don't like also It's just I can't even motivate Myself to do the things I love to do two years ago like there were things I know No, no, no.
	Come on.
	No, come on You don't have to be motivated to do the things you love to do Right everything that you love to do has a lot of stuff in it that you don't like to do right and I mean, that's natural to everything.
	Everything that you love to do has a lot of stuff in it that you don't love to do.
	I mean, if you're a singer in a band, you probably love getting in front of the audience and singing.
	You know, do you love doing sound checks?
	Probably not.
	Do you love, I think, is it Gord Downey, the singer for Tragically Hip, wrote a poem about life on the road, Beer and Gum.
	In other words, that's their...
	Meal is sitting in a bus, you know, for months driving from place to place.
	And so, you know, 90% of a musician's life is tuning, sound checks and traveling and not being at one with the audience.
	So just about everything that you do is kind of slow and kind of painful.
	You know, I mean, to get into, I don't know what the Iron Man suit, Robert Downey Jr.
	had to spend like four hours in makeup and then he gets to act for maybe three minutes.
	So most of what people want to do is just full of so much stuff that they don't want to do.
	Marlon Brando would go in.
	The reason he stopped making movies was, of course, they didn't have widescreen for his ass, but also because it was just so boring.
	He would sit there.
	You just sit there on set.
	And you've got to stay in character.
	And you've got to be ready to go.
	But there's a lighting problem.
	There's a sound problem.
	The weather is not right.
	Whatever.
	Or he'd give the speech of his life.
	And then they'd say, oh, can you do that again with the chin up a little bit?
	We didn't quite get the eyes.
	It's really boring.
	It's really dull.
	When I was an actor, I just dreamt about this last night.
	That I went back in time.
	And I saw myself playing Macbeth almost 30 years ago.
	I played Macbeth when I was 22, I think.
	So, 26 years ago.
	I went back and I thought, hey, it was pretty good.
	And I was thinner.
	But we did that, and I worked with an Iranian director.
	And we did the play, I think, in March, and I started doing rehearsals with him in November.
	And we worked that play six ways from Sunday, and then we ran for two weeks.
	And a massive amount of that was, you know, walk to this spot, turn, and then the technique of the sword fight at the end and all these various things that went on.
	And the actual sort of great fun stuff with the audience or great powerful connection with the audience, which didn't always happen every night, was a very minor part.
	Of what was going on.
	So, yeah, I mean, a lot of, you know, if you're a musician or a songwriter, a lot of the songs that you come up with just don't pan out.
	They just don't work out.
	You can't, I mean, Leonard Cohen, the guy who wrote Hallelujah, it took him months and months to finish that song.
	He was going up and down, I think, in Montreal at a hotel, tearing his hair out, saying, I can't finish this fucking song.
	It just, it was driving him insane.
	Phil Collins at Live Aid screwed up the intro to his song.
	How can you just let me walk away when all I can do is watch you go?
	And it's against all odds.
	And it's just what happens.
	A lot of stuff is crap.
	And if you really care about it, then you accept that and you just push through it.
	You know, I mean, the athlete spends like 10 or 20 times more practicing than playing.
	It's just the way it works.
	Tiger Woods was on the Johnny Carson show when he was two years old playing golf because his dad wanted him to play golf.
	Andre Agassi, the player, the tennis player, tennis pro, had his father strapped ping pong paddles to his hands when he was like a year or two old and started teaching him tennis from there.
	And it took him still like 10 or 12 years before he began sort of really doing stuff in tennis.
	So you may have this...
	You look at the top of the mountain...
	And you say, like you have a camera that looks at the top 50 feet of the mountain, and you say, well, it's just 50 feet up the mountain, right?
	That's what you see.
	I'd love to get to the top of the mountain from K2. What an amazing view.
	The shadows of K2 stretching out to China.
	The Himalayas or the mountaintops all around you, stepping over the bodies of the 11 people who died in 08 or whatever.
	And you have this camera that goes the 50 foot up to the top of the mountain.
	But when you pan that camera back...
	That mountain is 8,000 feet high.
	And some climbers who went to go and climb K2, they went there.
	This husband and wife team wanted to go climb it, very experienced climbers.
	They went to that mountain for 93 days.
	And they tried this route and they tried that route, but the weather was bad.
	And then there was a snowfall and then there was an avalanche.
	And they were there for 93 days.
	They never got to the top.
	And they came back later and then the husband tragically died.
	During an ice fall, but you've got to pull that camera back.
	You know, if you're just focusing on the top 50 feet, 100 feet, saying, oh, you know, climb up to the top, there's a massive amount of preparation.
	And you either do the preparation or you don't.
	And if you don't do the preparation, then your ambitions will die on the mountain.
	If you're willing to do the preparation, even if you don't know what it's for, like when I look back at everything that led up to this show...
	For me doing this show.
	And I'm not trying to say, yay me.
	I mean, a lot of it was accidental.
	But, you know, the vocal training, the theater training, the body training, the reading, the writing, the speeches.
	I mean, I used to give lots of speeches in the business world, lots of training in the business world, got comfortable talking to people, the creativity, the rigid discipline of programming, the logic, I mean, my education, so much stuff, sort of, even my technical capacities to do You know, podcast XMLs and, you know, way back in the day when it was hard to do that stuff.
	All of that stuff kind of came together.
	And this is why I encourage people to compete.
	I'm quite comfortable with that.
	I think that would be just fine.
	So if you have this belief that, because when we see other people achieve, we see the end of an 8,000, we see the last 50 or 100 feet of an 8,000 foot climb.
	And I think in our mind's eye, we know that we don't even start at the bottom of the mountain when it comes to climbing something like K2 or Everest.
	We don't even start at the bottom of the mountain.
	We start without the ability to climb 20 flights of stairs, probably.
	So even to get to the bottom of K2 or Everest, there's four base camps going up K2, even to get to the bottom of that It takes years.
	And then getting up it may take two or three trips in months and months of time.
	And for every four climbers that go up, one of them dies.
	So it also takes a kind of suicidality, in my opinion.
	But if you care enough about what you're doing, and I do believe, I do believe that when it comes right down to it, it is, our fundamental motivation is the gifts that we can give to the world.
	I am not in this show I don't want people to think anything about me.
	I don't want them to care anything about me.
	You know, people say, oh, you did the truth about this.
	What's the truth about Stefan Molyneux?
	Can I tell you?
	It's exquisitely boring.
	It really is.
	Today, I woke up and I had some breakfast.
	And I worked on, we have an 82-slide presentation on Germany's economic decline.
	So I did research.
	I went through that presentation and rearranged it a bit, cleaned it up, and got rid of some stuff, and then did some research about Germany's finance minister after the Second World War, who ended all the damage of the Nazis.
	And that was my day.
	My daughter came home.
	We had my wife, my daughter came home, we had dinner, I gave her a bath, and I came down to do this show.
	It's really boring.
	I love it, but it's really boring.
	Actually, that's kind of the video I've been waiting for, though, because before I did the question I did then, I wanted to ask about where can I find data on Germany's economic decline, because I know all the way the US is going to hell, but I don't know about Germany.
	Sorry to interrupt.
	Let me just finish my point, then I'll be quiet.
	I want this to be a one-way conversation, not between you and I, but this show going out to the world.
	I'm happy to answer questions if people want to ask.
	It's not about me.
	I think it's about philosophy to the world.
	Alexander Salk, the guy who came up with the polio vaccine, His major concern was to get the polio vaccine into the veins of the people.
	You know, if people said thanks, yeah, that's nice.
	And we get thanks and that's wonderful and we get updates on how people are doing and we hear all this wonderful stuff about peaceful parenting from people and people getting out of bad relationships that can't be recovered from and can't be rescued.
	And it's all great, but my goal is to get philosophy, the methodology, not any of my conclusions, to get the methodology of thinking into the brains of the people.
	And that is the gift that I want to give to the world.
	That's what I want to provide to the world.
	That's what motivates me.
	You know, I like it when people donate because that's a signal of how well I'm connecting with and helping people through this conversation.
	So I like when people donate.
	That's important.
	I got to eat and pay the bills and all that kind of stuff.
	But my fundamental concern is I want people to listen to philosophy.
	I want people to get interested in philosophy.
	I am not a singer.
	I am a singing teacher.
	And a singing teacher, it's fine if they can do some scales and so on, but I am not someone I want them to come and watch me give a singing concert and go, wow, that guy's a great singer.
	I want people to say, holy shit, I can sing, baby.
	And that's now if you have a gift that you want to give to the world, that gift can be music.
	It can be a great business environment.
	It can be if you have the idea for a dispute resolution organization or some sort of mediation organization, then you're going to bring peace and security and negotiation and an avoidance of the god awful court systems and so on.
	You're going to bring a gift to the world.
	Now, if you can think in terms of bringing a gift to the world, then your focus is on how you can benefit the world.
	And that doesn't mean at your own expense.
	I'm happier doing what I'm doing now than being in the business world or being in the art world or being in the theater world or being in the writing world or being in the whatever, right?
	And it's not a self-sacrifice position, but I think if you can get to a place...
	Where you can bring a gift, and the gift can be, you know, like Joe Rogan.
	He likes to make people laugh.
	He's very good at it.
	He brings a lot of happiness to people, gets well paid for it, and I think that's great.
	But if you have a gift to bring to the world, then I think that is a motivation.
	But if it's about you, I don't think it's sustainable.
	Anyway, that's it for my speech, but go ahead.
	Yeah, what I want to say, I think you...
	Struck gold or oil or whatever is more valuable now.
	And at the beginning of that, where you said that everything you love has 90% maybe of stuff you don't like.
	And actually, I wouldn't look at it as a mountain.
	I would more looking at it as digging for something valuable.
	So on the surface, it looks very nice if you have a topic you like on the surface, very shallow interest basically.
	And then it's a lot of fun that way.
	Maybe you watch a documentary about it.
	Then you start digging into it.
	You start working on it.
	And then until you become, you know, not even an expert, but very knowledgeable about the subject, which obviously takes a long time, it's not that much fun.
	But as soon as you reach the stage where you have the knowledge, it's a lot of fun.
	Again, I know this from only one subject so far, which is history and politics, which I worked into A lot when I was younger, and I kind of stopped doing that.
	I wanted to go back to something like that.
	There's a number of subjects where I like the subject and I want to work into it, but I can't get myself to do the sound checks, basically.
	So look, maybe you're the kind of person or you choose to have a kind of life where you should be the cog in someone else's machine.
	Maybe you should just find someone whose cause you believe in and go and offer them your services.
	Not everyone has to be the chief.
	Yeah, I don't know.
	This is more on the basis of I want to do something.
	I know I need this, you know, the sound checking to do it, but I don't like the sound checking part, which is, you know, it's a different subject, but it is required to understand fully the subject I'm into.
	Okay, but you're not listening to what I'm saying.
	Of course you don't like the sound check part.
	We already established that.
	I mean, I told you, of course, 90% of what you do that you love is boring, is dull, is, you know, bleh, right?
	I get that.
	And now you're saying, well, I don't like that boring stuff.
	It's like, yes, I know.
	I know.
	You're not telling me anything new.
	Yes.
	No, the thing is...
	When you were on the Joe Rogan show, you talked about the difference between busy people and people that do nothing.
	Where Joe said, I think, that before he started comedy and before he started getting busy, he was very slow.
	And then when he started getting busy and working more, Then the working became easier with time.
	I think it was basically and he started having fun with it.
	It's like if you want to start exercising, then at the beginning it's bad, right?
	It's uncomfortable.
	It's painful.
	It's, you know, you don't want to do it because you're changing your habits.
	So I don't know what to tell you other than you're either going to do it or you're not.
	I mean, are you trying to say, well, I haven't exercised in 20 years and I want it to be easier to start.
	I don't like exercising.
	Well, of course you don't like exercising because you haven't done it for 20 years.
	Is it going to be easy to start?
	Of course it's not.
	But what are your alternatives?
	What are your alternatives?
	Are you going to go work retail or be a waiter or whatever?
	Those things are fine too.
	How are you living?
	The thing is that I heard the last time that I think it takes like 40 or 50 days till things become a habit.
	So if you repeat something for that X amount of time, it becomes a habit and you just do it automatically, apparently.
	And I know that from training that after, you know, starting to train and going on for a couple of weeks, it was like, okay, now I want to go train.
	The question is, how do I get through that in-between phase between, you know, the start and Oh my God.
	Look, you're asking me questions.
	I'm sorry to sound annoyed, but I am annoyed.
	That doesn't mean I'm right.
	You're asking me questions that you already know the answer to.
	You just goddamn well commit.
	You just commit.
	There's this woman who just wrote a book that she was an athlete when she was in her teens and her early 20s, and then she basically smoked and sat on the couch for 25 years.
	And then she basically was horrified at having turned into a middle-aged muffin.
	And she's like, you know what?
	I'm going to try and get into the best shape of my life.
	And she went to her doctor and she said, isn't it insane that I'm thinking of overweight and I'm 50 that I'm going to get in the best shape of my life?
	And the doctor said, no, it's not insane at all.
	In fact, 70% of the effects of aging can be eliminated, not just reduced, eliminated by diet and exercise.
	And...
	So she did it.
	And she wrote a book about it.
	And she now is running marathons.
	And she's in the best shape of life.
	And it was horrible.
	Getting her body moving again.
	And she's like, yeah.
	I used to think, oh, well, I can't run.
	It's bad for the knees.
	It's like, you know what's bad for the knees?
	Being overweight.
	And so you're saying, well, how do I make myself do something that I don't want to do?
	Well, you can't change that you don't want to do it.
	So you just make yourself do it.
	I mean, I don't understand what...
	You just do it.
	I mean that Nike thing is kind of true.
	I mean you do it or you don't.
	But you're asking me to substitute some advice for your willpower.
	But if you don't know why you should be doing something there's no point me telling you.
	And if you do know why you should be doing something then you're either going to do it or you're not.
	But that's your sovereign choice.
	That's your sovereign choice.
	You're either going to do it Or you're not.
	And there's no one outside of yourself who can generate in you the focus and commitment to make something happen.
	There is nobody who can do that for you.
	I mean, I can say, well, you know, you'll be happier.
	That doesn't matter because then I'm bribing you.
	I can't guarantee you'll be happier.
	You might, you know, I had a guy I worked with We worked together for, gosh, about six months.
	We worked prospecting together.
	And a pretty nice guy.
	And then he was continuing to work up there.
	I went back to university.
	And he was working up there.
	He was going to get married in two months.
	He was working up there and he wanted to get in good shape.
	To look good in his wedding pictures.
	And he jogged.
	He was jogging.
	And a truck came whistling around the bend.
	And hit him.
	And he died.
	Immediately.
	Now was that exercise good for him?
	Hell no.
	He would have been better off sitting on the couch for 10 years.
	Because you can undo some of that damage.
	But you can't undo the damage of getting wedged in between the grill of a speeding pickup truck.
	So I can't guarantee you...
	At all, I can't bribe you with anything of any certainty.
	I don't know how this show is going to play out, for better or ill.
	I can't guarantee you with any certainty that you are A, going to get what you want, and B, that what you want is good for you, and C, that you'll actually like what you want, even if it's good for you.
	Michael Hutchins, great singer, great front man for the band NXS, had a wretched love life.
	And then apparently killed himself.
	Auto-asphyxiation.
	And was on antidepressants, as far as I understand.
	All kinds of mess.
	The singer for Blind Melon was a football guy and an athlete guy.
	Ended up, I think, being a drug addict and died.
	I mean, so even the people who get what they want, even the people who achieve everything they would possibly set out to achieve, playing stadiums and having number one hits all over the place and so on, don't seem to have An excess of happiness at times.
	So, you know, even if you get everything that you want, that doesn't mean that you'll like what you get.
	Doesn't mean that it's good for you.
	I watched something on Netflix that I highly recommend called 20 Feet from Stardom about backup singers.
	And one of the singers was saying, you just got to listen to this woman singing the, you know, the passionate cat in a blender screeches of...
	Gimme Shelter.
	He's an amazing, amazing vocalist.
	And one of the singers was saying, yeah, you know, I wanted a solo album, this, that, and the other, but I ended up not doing it, which is probably just as well, because if I'd been a superstar, I'd probably have OD'd by now, right?
	I don't know if that's sour grapes or whatever, but who knows?
	Not everyone who's successful is happy, and not everyone who's unsuccessful is unhappy.
	So I can't bribe you with anything that is going to say, do it and you'll be happy.
	And If I say do it because you'll be happy, then when you're not happy, you won't want to do it.
	So that doesn't help.
	You just, I mean, again, my only thing is, if you think that you can make the world a better place by bringing some talent to bear or a happier place, if you can make people laugh, if you can make them tap their toes, if you can put a joyful noise into their heart with your fingers or your mouth, then do it.
	And...
	If you can do sit-ups and be some woman's arm candy to make her feel better at a lonely company dinner, do that too.
	I don't care.
	If all you want to do is go and sing at karaoke and make a fool of yourself and make people laugh, go do that too.
	If you want to be working for a company that makes customer experiences better, if you want to start a company and make people's work environment better, if you want to make a lot of money and you want to give to charity, do it or don't do it.
	If you want to stay home and play video games, whatever.
	But I would say that, for me, the greatest satisfaction.
	Satisfaction is different from happiness.
	Happiness is fleeting.
	Satisfaction accumulates.
	Happiness is like a lightning strike.
	Satisfaction is like snow that piles up.
	It just accumulates.
	The satisfaction is knowing that you're making the world a better place.
	For whoever you can come in contact with.
	And certainly doing a DRO would be very helpful with that.
	And if you're committed to making the world a better place, then you do it and it doesn't.
	The discomfort is sort of immaterial.
	And if you can imagine, like, we talked earlier about someone drowning in a lake.
	Well, let's say the lake is really cold.
	And you dive into the lake.
	Well, it's really cold.
	And you've got to swim like 100 yards to go and get this person, this kid who's drowning in the lake.
	Well, most of your time in the lake is very unpleasant, but you feel very good at having saved the kid.
	So you wouldn't, I mean, most people wouldn't sit there and say, ooh, that's kind of chilly, you know?
	That's uncomfortable.
	But most of your time in saving that person is going to be very uncomfortable.
	And yet you focus on saving and helping that person.
	So if you've got something of benefit to offer the world...
	Then be driven by what the world needs, not by your comfort in the moment.
	You know, the world needs people to help the world.
	I mean, I think about this a lot.
	Not what do I want to do?
	What does the world need?
	What does the world want me to do?
	What does the unborn want me to do?
	Well, what they want me to do, the unborn want me to teach parents about peaceful parenting.
	Because that's what I would have most wanted.
	My parents.
	To know.
	And that's what's been most valuable for me as a parent.
	So I want to bring a peaceful parent in the world.
	What does the longer-distance future want me to do?
	To talk about a stateless society so that we can have an end to intergenerational theft and predation and ridiculous jails and incarcerations and wars and inflations.
	So we can finally end all of this stuff.
	That's what the more distant future wants me to do.
	And that's what animates me.
	In the same way that I'm glad...
	That people made very uncomfortable decisions around the separation of church and state, and freedom of speech, freedom of association, and all of those things which people fought for in the past.
	For science against superstition, for medicine against quackery.
	All of the things that were done in the past that gave me a better world.
	That's what I'm glad.
	If I could send a message back in time, I'd say, I'm really glad you did that.
	Thank you so much.
	I'm sorry it was uncomfortable.
	Thank you so much for doing that.
	And I view these messages in bottles coming back to me from the future.
	Saying, thank you for what you're doing.
	I know it was hard.
	I know it was tough sometimes.
	But thank you so much for what you did.
	And the tens or hundreds of thousands of kids who are not being hit or yelled at as a result of this show.
	Well, some of them are too young to say thanks.
	Some of them may not figure it out until they get older.
	But they're thanking me too.
	And the millions of kids that I hope to end up not getting hit or yelled at by the time I'm dead and gone, they will thank me too.
	That's what, this is what they want me to do.
	This is what they need me to do.
	This is the most important thing I can do for them.
	Is that uncomfortable for me at times?
	Yeah, it's uncomfortable for me at times.
	So what?
	That's what they want.
	And I think that's a reasonable thing to want.
	And because I can empathize with them and I wish someone had done that, For my parents, if someone had taken a stand on peaceful parenting in the voluntary family 50 years ago or 100 years ago, well, I would have had a very different childhood.
	So that's what you need to focus on if you want to find a way of wading through the bullshit to get the snowdrift of satisfaction to keep your house up.
	And if you can't find something that the world is yearning for you to do, that you wish had been done for you, then I think you're just going to be distracted by the inconsequential detritus and flotsam and jetsam of who cares, right?
	I mean, all of the junky crap that you have, your taxes and your paperwork and receipts and You've got to go to the dentist.
	We've got to do these shows where sometimes there's edits.
	But what matters is the message that goes out to people that makes this goddamn world a better place.
	And making the world a better place is nothing but willpower.
	It's nothing but willpower.
	That's all it is.
	Making the decision, learning what's right, sticking to it, communicating to it, and refusing to back the fuck down.
	That's all it comes down to.
	Everything that is virtuous, everything that is good, everything that is glowing, everything that is improved, everything that makes this world a bearable place, is the result of someone learning, communicating, willing, and not backing down.
	That's all it comes down to.
	If you can find something that makes you passionate in that way, do it.
	Pursue it.
	Make it happen.
	Make it real.
	If you can't find something like that, attach to someone who can and have them tell you what to do.
	That, I think, is the only way that you can accumulate the snowdrifts of satisfaction that make every day and looking out the window a Christmas postcard.
	All right.
	I think...
	Yeah, just do it.
	I think it's very catchy for that.
	Thanks.
	I think I should make room for the next caller.
	Alright, thank you.
	I hope that helped.
	I'll see if it did.
	I think it felt like it struck a chord, I guess.
	Alright.
	Alright, up next, it's Alex and Natasha.
	They wrote in and said, Alex cheated on his wife Natasha for eight years.
	They want to know, is it possible for them to change given the long history of dysfunction in their relationship?
	Wow.
	Hi, Steph.
	Hello.
	Hello, hello, hello.
	First of all, I wanted to say a huge thank you to you, your family, Mike, and everyone who makes this conversation possible.
	It has really changed our lives in a way we could not imagine.
	You're very welcome.
	Thank you.
	All right.
	So, how long have you guys been married?
	So, we've been married for eight years.
	No, no.
	We've been married for six years.
	For six years, yes.
	And we've been together for eight years.
	You've been together for eight years.
	And Alex, you were cheating for eight years?
	That is correct.
	So half of our relationship was long-distance started from the very beginning.
	And so throughout our marriage and in my prior romantic relationships, I was not faithful.
	If I had a chance to sleep around and get away with it, I would do it.
	Natasha didn't know about it.
	There were signs, but I didn't tell her until this last May.
	Right.
	Have there been any sort of practical, I mean, obviously emotional results of the infidelities?
	What about STDs or unwanted pregnancies or stalkers or bunny boilers or anything like that?
	No, not of that.
	Somehow lucky.
	Right, okay, okay.
	And how did this come out?
	So in the beginning of this year, we started living together again.
	At that point, I had listened to Freedom Man Radio for about a year, and I said to myself, enough philosophical theory, I'm going to put real-time relationship in practice.
	So I remember the first time when I wanted to tell Natasha I feel anger and frustration when we had an argument.
	I just simply couldn't say those words to her.
	I was really scared.
	So I had to push myself to do that.
	But she responded very positively and we started practicing it more and more.
	And it was just really amazing.
	We could spend a whole day cuddling and talking about emotions and childhood, philosophy, just about anything.
	And it was like a whole new world to me.
	You know one really cool thing?
	My sex drive increased, and even my erotic fantasies were about her.
	I think that's the power of RDR. Right, right.
	So, in two months, we became closer to each other than we had ever been before.
	And I appreciate that, and that's great to hear, but that, of course, would be with the somewhat significant exception Right, so I was still lying to her about having this awful secret.
	Before I couldn't even imagine telling her about my past, but something changed during those two months where I just had a slight preview of what RTR could be.
	It was like a black hole that opened up inside of me and started sucking my soul from inside.
	So I got to the point where I could not live any longer.
	With those lies, and I told Natasha that I betrayed her.
	It was a horrible experience for her, and I'm so incredibly sorry about what I did for wasting her fertility years.
	I was a cold-hearted, manipulative monster, and I decided I'm going to do everything it takes to change it.
	And Natasha, what were your thoughts about what Alex is saying?
	Oh, I was afraid I couldn't speak.
	It is...
	It is still emotional.
	Of course.
	When he told me, you know, it was like...
	It was like, you know, building is just starting falling.
	Then I just like take everything and stay with my friends and Alex actually left.
	I left our apartment in four days.
	So I just, I mean, I was, you know, emotionally roller coaster.
	I couldn't sleep for three weeks.
	I couldn't eat.
	I was crying all the time.
	So I just like was in denial.
	I couldn't believe that huh but then like right now so it happened in May when Alex told me so we was Alex went on vacation after that mm-hmm He went on vacation by himself?
	Yes.
	And I was, so Alex doesn't work, so he, it was a vacation that we planned before.
	He would go back to Russia and then I would join him for two weeks that I have as my vacation.
	So once I get back to Russia, we flew back to the US together and I was just trying, you know, my first reaction was just like, get out of my life.
	Then in a couple of days I started thinking maybe I have to give myself time and process that.
	Not doing that impulsive relationship, you know, decisions.
	Sorry, why doesn't he work?
	He is in startups.
	So he quit his corporate job last year and he's trying to focus on his couple startups.
	So it's not just that he's very pretty, right?
	No, no.
	He's actually very focused and he is working all the time and I guess I can call myself lazy compared to him.
	Oh, so he works, he just doesn't get paid as yet.
	Yeah, and I was okay with that.
	I mean, I like that drive.
	So once we get back and we started living together, I mean, we were not close anymore.
	We were like separate people in one apartment.
	I was just trying to listen to myself.
	What do I feel?
	What do I really want?
	You know, and see how he would behave.
	And what really was...
	So, and then we've been talking about that and many times he would start telling me that it was my fault as well.
	So, which was...
	Making me very upset about that.
	And I remember one time we've been driving together for the, out of the town and for two years, for two hours, we would be arguing that he was trying to prove me that it was 50% of my fault that what happened in our relationship.
	I mean, I can, I can see that.
	I can see my patterns of my parents in our relationship.
	I can see that.
	But it was just too brutal for me to listen to that.
	Too brutal for my self-esteem, which was wrecked.
	And a month ago, I think three weeks ago, I discovered his interaction with one of the girls.
	So I just told him to get away from my apartment.
	You mean one of the interactions like emails or chat logs or whatever from the past or from the present?
	He actually was interacting with them And he said that he just wants to apologize for what he did to them as well.
	But my look was that he was thinking about himself as someone who has a great experience in philosophy and psychology, who can teach other people that what they do is wrong.
	And I don't think he's in that position yet.
	I told him that many times, and I told him that I don't like that interaction.
	And what I discovered three weeks ago was something like in May he told me that once we moved back together it was so wonderful, such a great experience and he cannot imagine why we live separately and he's been telling me so many stuff differently that it never happened to us before.
	So I was very happy.
	And I just discovered that in April he traveled back to the town that he used to stay and actually he met one of that woman and the text was very sexual.
	So what he told me before that the February and March relationships impressed him so much that he couldn't go back.
	But actually in April he went back to meet that girl.
	But it was May that this all came out, is that right?
	Yeah, May 11 was the day when everything came out.
	And actually, I explicitly asked him, what was the last time you interacted with a woman for that sex interest?
	And he lied to me.
	He told me it was before he came to Cleveland.
	And I just discovered three weeks ago that he met with someone in April as well.
	Right.
	Right.
	Yeah, I mean, certainly if you're going to come clean, it's usually good to come all the way clean, right?
	Yeah, I mean, I just, it was, those several months was so hard on me.
	I consider myself being usually positive and happy.
	All my friends were very surprised to see me when I traveled back to Russia that I was so upset.
	You know, I just always positive, active, do stuff, go to sports, go out with friends, chat with friends, and I'm just totally Disaster for this half a year and awful things happened to me.
	I actually, a couple of times I thought about suicide.
	Yeah, I'm sorry to hear that.
	I'm sorry to hear that.
	I'm sorry to hear that.
	I can't do it anymore to myself.
	What was Alex's argument as to why he felt it might be your fault somewhat?
	Because I didn't put strong boundaries.
	Because when we started dating, I saw a couple of times he was flirting with women.
	I mean, I was upset at that time.
	I never hide my emotions.
	I am emotional.
	In our couple, he was not emotional.
	So my problem with him was all that years that I couldn't connect with him emotionally.
	So actually I saw him flirting several times and I was upset.
	I was making a big deal of that and he somehow just was able to make me believe that it was a mistake.
	It will never happen again.
	So maybe I should talk to Alex about this.
	Alex, what was your argument as to why It was half Natasha's fault?
	So I wouldn't say it was really half.
	Yes, I was arguing at that point, but I quickly got to realize that we can't put any really quantitative numbers to this thing.
	I was saying that I wasn't really in a position to tell her that it was her fault, but I wanted her to get some feedback out of that too, so he can grow as well.
	It was really difficult.
	I'm sorry, Natasha said that you argued that...
	Natasha said that you were told that it was somewhat her fault.
	Is she wrong in that?
	No, no, yes.
	Okay, so then you want to just stop weaseling with me and just don't give me the case, just give me the facts, right?
	What was your argument as to why it was somewhat her fault?
	I think she should have been more assertive with me.
	Whenever she saw things that hurt her, when I was flirting with girls, there was an incident in Turkey where I was really close to a girl that Sitting very, very close and looking at the picture on the camera that she gets really upset and wanted to end the relationship and she should have done it at that time.
	I'm sorry, how long was that into your relationship?
	It was...
	One year.
	One year.
	So, you felt that it was partly her fault because she knew you were flirting with other girls but she didn't break up with you?
	I'm not being facetious.
	I'm not trying to lay a trap.
	I just really want to understand what your thinking is.
	Right.
	So I think she should have been more assertive with me and that would have helped her.
	So she couldn't say to me what I should do or should not, but she could have said, I totally do not accept you flirting with other girls, making me jealous or creating the situations where I think that you may have something.
	And you hurt my feelings.
	If you continue doing that, I'm not dating you anymore.
	We're not getting married.
	That's it.
	Now, did you know that what you were doing was going to hurt her feelings?
	I mean, you hid it from her, so I assume that you knew, right?
	Right, right, yes.
	So the fact that you knew you were going to hurt her feelings wasn't enough to stop you, but if she'd said it, you felt it might have been enough.
	At that time, I obviously would not have these thoughts.
	It's from my understanding at this point what she could have done at that time.
	But I totally agree.
	I said it's hypocrisy on my side.
	I knew that I'm going to hurt a thing.
	I didn't tell her anything about it.
	I kept hiding it.
	So there's no really excuse or explanation for me.
	Yeah, I mean, certainly I wouldn't say that she's responsible for you being unfaithful and lying about it.
	No. .
	Now, you know, whether there were signs or whether there were indications or, you know, whether she should have stayed with you or not, that's, I mean, you know, you have to be responsible for what you did and she has to be responsible for what she did.
	Correct.
	And what she did didn't cause what you did and what you did didn't cause what she did directly, right?
	Because we can't reach into each other's brains and make things move, right?
	Right, right.
	Now, Alex, you know about Natasha's Adverse Childhood Experience score?
	I don't know.
	They were sent to us.
	Yes.
	So you know she had a pretty rough, right?
	Right.
	And would you expect for somebody to have...
	Natasha, I won't go into them unless it's okay with you, but you had a pretty rough.
	Would you expect somebody with that kind of history to be very assertive and confident and secure?
	Not really.
	I found out about her history, about her adverse childhood experience.
	Pretty much only within maybe last year when I got enlightened by philosophy and we talked a lot the past six months since May about our childhood and histories.
	So at the moment, no, of course, I would not.
	We try to identify the patterns in her childhood that would lead to her accepting my behavior and allowing me to do that.
	Yeah, I mean, she grew up around, let's just put it as mildly as possible, some pretty dysfunctional sexuality.
	Actually, it was not in the family.
	That was outside the family?
	I mean, that sexual abuse score that I pulled, it happens...
	I grew up in Russia, and we have that public transportation, and it happens once that somebody, like I was 11 or 10, somebody starts touching me in the public transportation.
	So that was my experience that was very unpleasant.
	Right, right.
	I just didn't tell my parents, I guess, because I was embarrassed.
	Right, and generally these sons of bitches know somehow, I don't know how they know, but they usually know when kids don't have a close enough relationship with their parents to say that.
	But you also, you were with verbal abuses and threats and you live with an alcoholic or drug user?
	My dad has an alcohol problem for some time, but he stopped for some reason.
	Good.
	I guess that's one less in Russia.
	That's nice to hear.
	Yeah, he just...
	I mean, it was very common in a little town like ours, and our family was considered not to be as bad.
	He just come home drunk once a week, and my mom gets very upset and aggressive, so this is what I... What do you guys want going forward?
	I mean, do you want to stay married?
	Do you want to have kids?
	I mean, what's your, what do you want going forward, do you think?
	I do not believe we can stay married.
	I do not believe it's healthy for my self-esteem.
	I'm not sure how I'm going to tell my kids.
	Why did I stay?
	Are they both of your kids or from some other marriage?
	I do not have any kids.
	We don't have kids.
	It was a problem.
	Oh, so future kids.
	Sorry, okay.
	Yeah, future kids.
	Another thing is that I'm not sure if Alex is going to be emotionally available for kids.
	This is what I worry about.
	He's a very intellectual guy, so he told me, his argument was, Why if you were so emotional and you were trying to connect with me emotionally all those years, why you didn't explain to me that this is important in a relationship?
	I was like, how can I explain to you?
	I don't know.
	I was trying to connect and connect and connect and it didn't work.
	And he said, so if it didn't work, why did you keep connecting?
	It's just like we're on such a different emotional level and he...
	And it was like that all the times.
	So I was, I came upset and needing just hug and support.
	He will tell me, oh, what's going on?
	Just go and do this to solve this issue.
	You know, I don't want my kid to be in this situation.
	Is there a love between you still that you can feel?
	I definitely do not feel that much connection and that much...
	I mean, I can feel that from me My feelings are going down.
	How can I love someone who hurt me that much and do those things with me?
	Alex, how do you feel about the marriage?
	This time since May was really, really rough, I definitely felt in love during those two months.
	Right now it's really hard to tell.
	We had so many arguments just about everything, about our parents, about philosophy, just like any topic possible, and I can see how that was obviously affected by all the experience that it caused to Natasha.
	So I would love to fix the relationship if possible.
	I think we would probably have to work Separately with therapists, and that's what we started doing.
	Also, when I went to Russia, I spent most of the time examining my childhood with my parents, confronting them on the issues, my friends, very much everybody.
	And at the moment, you know, you think you once said that it takes 10 times positive experience to compensate for a bad experience.
	Yeah, and you guys don't have 80 years, right?
	Right, and we don't have 80 years, and I'm not sure.
	I would definitely love it, but I don't want Natasha to constantly remember this, and every time something comes up, and being constantly worried about it for how many years, I don't know, it's going to take her.
	Yeah, I mean, so, and I don't mean to pick on you, Alex, it's just that this is, you know, you've done the big talked about Stuff we can talk about.
	Do you have any ideas or thoughts as to what your thinking was with regards to these affairs?
	How did you think, or did you think, it was going to play out?
	How did you think it might play out?
	What did you think might happen?
	So, I surrounded myself throughout, say, my probable college years with friends who probably kind of Had the same attitude, that we had a feeling that you have a primary relationship that could be your marriage or just your girlfriend that you have the main relationship with.
	And then you can, you know, have other women on the side and it's like not important.
	And I think that's kind of an idea that I had and I thought...
	Sorry, sorry to interrupt.
	And is that something that came from your culture or your friends or...?
	Were your parents that way?
	Because in some cultures, like France, for instance, if you are, I don't know, wealthy and powerful, or this sometimes happens in Italy or whatever, but it's like you've got your wife for raising your kids and then you've got your mistress for whatever you want to do with balloon animals and stuff, and Was this something that is sort of in the culture in your parents' marriage or was it mostly your friends?
	I think it's both.
	So my parents divorced when I was three and I grew up with my mother.
	My father was married four times and he has three kids from different wives.
	Do you know why his marriage is broken?
	So this summer when I talked to him, his value in the relationship and in the woman is just physical attractiveness.
	He does not know how to build a deep emotional relationship that is based on moral, philosophical values.
	His argument was, well right now he's married to a woman much younger than he is, and one of the things he said, like, I look at the women of my age and I can't imagine having sex with him.
	Okay, so he basically keeps marrying younger women?
	As he was getting older, yes.
	So right now, he's in, I think, probably the last relationship.
	I don't think he's going to get married again.
	So all this together, I think, defined my reproductive strategy to be that it's praying prey.
	My mother was an artist.
	That's what I found when talking to her.
	So I didn't know how to express emotions, how to bond, how to build close relationships.
	And the biggest value that I could get from a romantic relationship was a dose of endorphins that I would get from seducing a new woman and having sex with her.
	And I think that's the drug that I kept abusing.
	Do you know if your father had affairs?
	He said a very interesting phrase.
	He said, when I was in a relationship, I did not cheat.
	But when the relationship was not so good, which I assume was kind of towards the end, towards the divorce, then I think he said he had affairs.
	Right.
	But that's what I found out this summer.
	Well, yeah, I mean, consciously.
	So, I appreciate that.
	Now, Natasha, when you look back at Alex eight years ago, were there any signs, looking back, if you try to be sort of as, turn the searchlights on as much as possible, were there any signs that this was in his character?
	I mean, as I told you, I saw him flirting a couple times with other girls, and I know that his dad is married fourth time, and so...
	It might be a good prediction, predictors.
	I think those are important, right?
	Because whether you stay together or not, it's obviously your decision.
	You don't even need to say that.
	What can be helpful, I mean, there's two things helpful about talking about this stuff.
	One is that you can sort of see what you didn't see earlier on, which helps other people who are listening to this look for those kinds of things, too.
	And if you don't end up staying together, you obviously don't want to get back into a similar situation with somebody else, which means that you need to be aware or alert to the signs.
	So a man whose parents split up when he was three and whose father went on to have multiple marriages with women...
	Who he basically married for their looks, for their sex appeal.
	Is that right, Alex?
	Correct.
	Right.
	And Alex, is your background Russian, too, or somewhere else?
	Oh, yes.
	Russian.
	Right.
	I mean, there is sort of a cliché that you have these sort of not-too-attractive Russian men who are continually bedding these very attractive Russian women.
	I don't know.
	That's a cliché you sort of see from outside.
	Is that somewhat true from the inside as well?
	Probably.
	Yeah.
	At least from my experience.
	Yeah.
	So, of course, that would be a pretty important question, right?
	So, I assume you knew before you got married that Alex's father had married four times and his mother was, I think he said, a narcissist.
	It was sort of his words or his word.
	And I don't assume that he'd gone through any therapy or had read a whole bunch of books on how to be married because he certainly didn't have that template, right?
	So when you hire someone, like I just went to a burger joint for lunch today and basically there was a sign on the door that said, Burger Flipper wanted.
	Experience required.
	I don't know, you know, it's getting dark, turn it over.
	There, I just gave you all the experience you need.
	But when it comes to this burger joint, they wanted experience in flipping burgers.
	Now, when it comes to giving someone your heart, when it comes to getting married, I think we got to have experience required, right?
	I assume you guys got married because you wanted to live together and get old together and till death do you part, right?
	No.
	Oh, no?
	Alex, can you explain why did we get married?
	So, after we started dating six months later, I went to the States to do my master's in computer science.
	And so it was the first long distance, two years.
	We saw each other twice a year.
	And at that point, after I graduated, I got a job in the States and we wanted to continue the relationship.
	But the only way for Natasha to come to the States at that point was for us to get married.
	So we got married because of that.
	So you didn't intend to stay together forever?
	I did.
	We wanted to continue.
	Natasha, you did, but Alex, you didn't?
	You just thought, you know, like your dad, this will be a do for her now kind of thing?
	No, I wanted, but if not the visa situation, then we would not get married, at least at that time.
	But you might have gotten married later, right?
	Right.
	I wanted to continue the relationship, right.
	I mean, certainly, you were committed, right, in a long-distance relationship, right?
	Right.
	So, what you do with your life and Who you do it with and who you do it to.
	Those are the two big decisions, right?
	What are you going to do for your career?
	What are you going to do to make money?
	What are you going to do to live?
	And who are you going to love?
	Those are the two big decisions.
	In many ways, the second is more important than the first.
	Because if you have a job that you love, that will not make your marriage happy.
	But if you have a happy marriage...
	It's hard not to love your life as a whole.
	You know, jobs come and go.
	Money comes and goes.
	But if you have someone in your corner that you love and who loves you completely, then everything in life is bearable, is doable, is survivable, allows you to flourish.
	What you do with your heart And who you give your heart to, I think, is more important than what you do with your head and who you give your economic relations to.
	Philosophy and virtue is the prerequisite for love, as I formulate it.
	And you certainly didn't have any particular focus on philosophy and virtue and commitments to truth and Openness and honesty and vulnerability that wasn't part of your thinking so you were kind of going and without therapy without self-knowledge You both were most likely going on the momentum of history Right and Because you were going on the momentum of history which is what most people do Which is why history repeats
	which is why culture is like a photocopy of the Middle Ages and Then you were going to end up reproducing what came before.
	Mm-hmm.
	And is it fair to say that in some ways that's what's happened?
	Yes.
	That's right.
	I mean, if your marriage fails, then, of course, Alex, this will be strike one out of which your father has had four, right?
	Correct.
	And you said earlier...
	Alex, that Natasha's childbearing years are in question?
	I think you said earlier that Natasha's childbearing years were an issue.
	In other words, I don't want to get any specifics about her age, but if you break up, given that it's been eight years, if she wants to have kids, I assume she'd need to find a husband fairly quickly.
	Oh, that's right, yeah.
	So that, of course, is a pretty brutal thing.
	And Natasha, is it that you do want children with your life?
	Yes, I do.
	I can tell how old I am.
	I'm 34 now.
	Right, so...
	Yeah, so for Natasha, yeah, 26 to 34 is, you know, pretty...
	Well, it's important for fertility, and fertility begins to decline and all that, so that's something that is...
	It's not too late, but it's not exactly early either, right?
	So, there is, of course, in economics something called the fallacy of sunk costs.
	The idea that if you've waited 10 minutes for the bus, you don't care that much about it.
	You just go walk, right?
	But if you've waited an hour for the bus, then it feels really stupid to walk because you've put so much time into waiting for the bus.
	Mm-hmm.
	Mm-hmm.
	No better investment, in my opinion, could you make right now than to get to a marriage counselor.
	Now, whether the marriage counselor is going to help you stay married or help you get more amicably separated, I don't know.
	Because that's...
	Obviously, I'm not an expert in that field.
	And that's something that is...
	You would work out with a counselor.
	But I think that's the really important thing to do right now.
	If you can find a way to save the marriage, then...
	And if you can't or won't, then I think having a therapist around who can help you more amicably separate and move on, I think would be a huge plus.
	But just for people out there who are listening to this stuff, and I hope you don't mind if I sort of use you as what they call a teachable moment, learn about your potential lovers' histories.
	Learn about what their childhoods were like.
	Learn about what their template is of romance.
	Learn about what their parents have done.
	It doesn't mean that you judge someone by what his or her mother or father have done.
	But when you ask people to recount their histories, listen with every single hair.
	Listen with every single pore.
	Listen with every single fiber of your being.
	Every single...
	Eardrum hair should be attuned to listening to this person talk about their history.
	If they're glib, if they skate over it, if things have gone wrong but they don't seem to acknowledge or notice it, you are setting yourself up for disaster.
	Almost certainly, you are setting yourself up for disaster.
	You know, I mean, to take a ridiculous example, which doesn't apply to you guys, you go on a date with some And he's like, oh, yeah, my dad's a hitman.
	I thought it was it's a great job.
	Not for me.
	You know, I'm you know, I can't hold a gun steady, but I really admire his get up and go and put him in the ground attitude.
	I mean, that would obviously be like a kind of run screaming situation.
	So you never want to be judged by what your parents have done because parents are not anyone's choice.
	You guys are now in the position of being judged to some degree by the partners you chose because there was choice in the marriage where there was not choice in the parents.
	So when you, you know, nobody lives long enough to waste time falling in love with the wrong person.
	There is no, you know, even if we lived forever, that would be a bad idea and we sure as hell don't do that.
	You know, you've taken...
	You know, what could be 10% of your life, you know, 13, 14% of your adult life.
	And you may have been, you know, through understandable lack of self-knowledge and so on, may have been the wrong person.
	Nobody lives long enough to put their heart through a blender and have it recover.
	And there are ways to avoid these kinds of things.
	You ask people, don't be shy.
	Your short-term spray-and-pray reproductive strategy is not going to want to ask your partner about Her childhood or his childhood.
	Your eggs and your balls are not going to want to plumb the depths of the other person's origins because that is a long-term reproductive strategy where you're keeping yourself safe so you can fall in love with the right person rather than get lust attached to the wrong person and reproduce some of the destructions of family history.
	The long-term reproductive strategy, which I think leads to the most happiness and satisfaction, Is to inquire boldly and with open-hearted curiosity about the other person's history and then really listen to what that person is saying and accept what they say at face value.
	This is really, really important.
	Don't make up stuff.
	Oh, you know what?
	I'm sure he was just saying that to put on a brave face or I'm sure that it wasn't as bad as she's talking about.
	That's all just Egg, lust, sperm, sex, attachment, codependence, when you just make excuses.
	Really listen to what the other person is saying and take it very seriously, what they say.
	If they acknowledge any difficulties or trauma, what work they have done to deal with trauma, what their goals are, what is their definition of love.
	You wouldn't get into business with someone but having no idea what their understanding is of honesty and loyalty and integrity.
	And you should not get involved in people when you don't have any idea what love means to them.
	And if you ask someone, first date material, perfectly fine.
	How was your childhood?
	What does love mean to you?
	What does commitment mean to you?
	What is it that you're looking for in a relationship?
	And how are you going to achieve it?
	You know, if somebody says, I want to be an airline pilot, great.
	How are you going to achieve it?
	And if they say, oh, I don't know, I guess I'll Pick up a flight simulator for the Xbox and a beanie propeller hat.
	You'd be like, okay, well, I don't think you're going to be an airline pilot because, you know, the answer I'm looking for is, you know, read all the books I can and go sign up for flight school.
	That's what I'm looking for.
	And here's what I've done already so far.
	You know, if somebody's 30 and says, I want to be an airline pilot, and you say, well, what have you done?
	And they say, well, nothing yet.
	Well, that's your answer, right?
	Or somebody's 40 and says, I want to join the ballet!
	Well, that's not...
	Right, so...
	You guys are starting at the end, so to speak, because you are now really learning about each other eight years in.
	Is that fair or is that unfair to say?
	Yeah, I think it's fair.
	What we should have done the first six months, not the last six months.
	No, no!
	First date!
	Not first six months!
	First date!
	First date!
	I mean, you don't hire someone as a surgeon, have them work at your hospital for six months, and then ask to see their credentials, right?
	Right?
	I know engineers.
	They go for job interviews, and they bring their engineering paperwork with them, their registration, their certificates, their education.
	They bring it with them at the first interview.
	Because if you're, you know, we're advertising for an engineer.
	If you're not an engineer, you're wasting my time.
	You don't hire someone and then six months later say, well, you know, you've been sitting around playing Quake all day.
	I wonder if you could maybe show me some paperwork and see if you're really an engineer.
	First interview.
	First job.
	Interview.
	And don't be shy about protecting your heart.
	It is your most valuable asset.
	There are lots of smart people who are miserable, but there is no one Who's happy in their heart, who's miserable.
	Nobody who protects his heart can be broken.
	As Socrates said, no fundamental harm can come to a good person.
	And to protect your heart, you know, you see these guys in soccer games, you know, when there's a penalty kick and they're all standing, what are they doing with their hands?
	Have you ever seen that?
	Mm-hmm.
	Right?
	They're cupping their balls, right?
	Yep.
	You're going out into the soccer game of romance.
	You cup your heart.
	You protect your heart.
	You find out who is safe, who is secure.
	It doesn't mean that they're never going to upset you or you're never going to get upset with them or anything like that.
	Just as if you hire an engineer, it doesn't guarantee that that person is never going to make a mistake.
	Of course they will, right?
	But at least they're an engineer and you find that out at the beginning.
	But people put, you know, this burger joint...
	Won't take a burger flipper without experience, but we give people who have no experience taking care of someone else's heart and no model of how to do that, we give them our hearts and cross our fingers.
	Much more important than a burger flipper.
	Ask for experience.
	or if no experience, at least ask for education?
	Actually, we...
	We have another question about the communication which was the main problem.
	We've been talking about philosophy and actually talking about stuff with our friends and family about what happened.
	Let's say the example with the family.
	So family...
	parents will not accept that it's because of our childhood history.
	What happened?
	And we have different perspective with Alex.
	How would we talk to our family about that?
	Well, but hang on, hang on.
	I can't speak for your parents, obviously, but my thought is that they're not entirely wrong.
	Right?
	Because I'm sure you knew that childhood has an effect on adulthood, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	You both knew that?
	Even when you were younger?
	Right.
	So given that you both knew that childhood has an effect on adulthood, and you both knew that you had come from somewhat dysfunctional families, did you do any work to deal with any of the effects of that dysfunction before you got into romantic relationships?
	Nope.
	Right.
	And so, look, I'm incredibly sorry for the dysfunctional family stuff.
	I am.
	And, you know, I don't know enough about your family history, family situation or not to know the degree of responsibility your parents had or whatever.
	And we could talk about that perhaps another time.
	But what I'm trying to sort of jolt you into awareness of without trying to provoke any self-attack is that The fact that you grew up with dysfunctional families is not directly causal in the problems in your marriage.
	It's the dysfunction plus the avoidance of dealing with the dysfunction, right?
	So I've used this analogy before, which is if I have a family history of heart disease, and then I say, well, I have a family history of heart disease, so I'm going to just sit on the couch and eat Cheetos, and then I get heart disease, I say, well, you know, It was my family history that caused it.
	And it's like, no.
	It's the family history plus the Cheetos and the couch, right?
	Right.
	Whereas if I say, well, I got a family history of heart disease, man, I better eat as well as humanly possible.
	I better go see a heart specialist.
	I better exercise and better really take care of my heart.
	That's a different matter.
	So it's not the family history that primarily causes these things.
	It's necessary but not sufficient.
	And I don't know if you have any.
	I don't know if you have anyone around you or anyone, anything in your culture that says family history is important.
	I mean, I don't know if there's a Russian equivalent of Dr.
	Filzikoff or something like that, but it is, at least in the West, like in Western Europe and North America, it has been fairly well known for, you could argue, at least 140 years since Freud became Slightly less since Jung or go back to Wordsworth, the child is the father of the man.
	You can find in the West a long tradition of childhood has an effect on adulthood.
	You get it all through Dickens novels.
	Some novelists like Dostoevsky tend to repudiate this and they have these wonderful families that birth these monsters like Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment.
	And so there's, in Russia there seems to be, I'm thinking of Turgene's fathers and sons or fathers and children as well, there tends to be a heavy emphasis on intellectual ideas rather than personal history being the drivers for dysfunctional personalities, particularly in young men.
	So I don't know if you had any exposure to the idea that trauma should be dealt with.
	But I'm not saying your parents are not responsible.
	What I am saying is that You had exposure to this idea that You should deal with a bad childhood and Didn't then to some degree it's Cheetos and couch not heart disease.
	Although I'm still very sorry for all the dysfunction I'm sort of trying to give you some sense of empowerment now and like you're not doomed to whatever happens because of the dysfunction of your childhood because there's choice choices that you can make and I say this and I say this in all humility and Having pissed away my 20s in bad relationships, even though I damn well should have known better and was working on self-knowledge, but did not go where I needed to go.
	So I say this with all humility, having walked a very similar road in many ways.
	But that's sort of what I learned, which I sort of wanted to pass along.
	Right.
	I think people have an abstract concept that, yes, childhood affects Your adult life, but it's not an actionable item for a lot of people.
	They just go with the flow.
	I think Natasha was saying not that the parents accept responsibility for what happened to us, for our marriage, but for what they did to us as children.
	And so they think that self-knowledge and philosophy is pretty much bullshit.
	Yeah, so if they say we didn't do anything wrong, then that's a huge problem.
	And we just released a podcast on parental responsibility, which goes into this.
	So you can...
	Listen to that in more depth and detail if you want.
	But, you know, I'm incredibly sorry for all of this.
	You know, I mean, I get...
	Obviously, Natasha's pain is a little bit more on the surface, and I feel it.
	I mean, I'm incredibly sorry for this mess, this pain to the heart, this pain to the soul.
	And I remember once when I... When a woman...
	I dumped her, then I wanted to get back together, then she dumped me.
	This is my early 20s.
	And I was working in a restaurant at the time as a waiter.
	And there was this...
	A bunch of Chinese guys in the back who were very funny, would explain the Chinese newspaper to me every night after we were working.
	But there was this Mexican guy who was like a busboy.
	And...
	I was kind of broken up by this breakup.
	Or by this woman not wanting me back.
	Wise decision on her part.
	I was not ready for that.
	But anyway, he just said to me, how are you?
	You look sad.
	And I told him a little bit about what was happening.
	And he said, oh, my friend.
	And he put his hand on my shoulder and he said, how is your heart?
	And that moment where this guy...
	Just ask me that basic and essential question.
	Not intellectualizing, but how is your heart?
	Reminded me and began to give me a sense of what I needed to protect.
	What I needed to protect.
	What I needed to keep safe.
	What I needed to not throw over a wall and hope it landed someplace soft.
	How is your heart?
	Hold on to your heart.
	Keep your heart safe.
	Keep Your heart, a virgin, so to speak, so that it's not too tossed around and broken by the time the right person comes along.
	You know, whether you could make each other into the right people or whatever, again, that's, I think, something to work out with a therapist.
	But I just wanted to say, I'm amazingly and deeply sorry that this pain has come into your life.
	I can tell you that, you know, like most pain that is not fatal, you will emerge better people out of it, wiser people.
	More cautious people.
	You know, we are incredibly incautious with our hearts.
	You know, love, particularly marriage, is like a long-distance ski jump.
	And we just basically blindfold ourselves, step on some popsicle sticks, and throw ourselves down the slope.
	And it's the preparation that is necessary, particularly if we come from dysfunctional stories, history, sorry, is...
	It's a challenge.
	So I'm very sorry about what has happened to both of your hearts.
	I'm sorry for the guilt, Alex, that you have and the shame that you have and the regret that you have for what you've done and for what, if it threatens your marriage in this way, which it sounds like it does, scarcely seems worth it, I'm sure, in hindsight.
	And I'm sorry, Natasha, for what this has done for your heart and, of course, your capacity to trust yourself.
	Because when you look back over eight years or, I guess, seven and a half years, you look back and you say...
	I was kind of living a lie.
	I didn't see.
	Why didn't I see?
	What was the matter with me?
	What eyeballs am I missing that I can't see the blindingly obvious in hindsight?
	That is a massive shake in self-trust, in our belief that we can see and keep safe from that which is necessary and dangerous.
	So I'm very sorry for all of this that is happening.
	There is...
	I think a principle that I live by that I'll just share with you very briefly and then I think we'll have to do another caller.
	The truth is always better.
	God, it hurts.
	God, it hurts sometimes.
	It's like unraveling the bandages of a mummy.
	You don't know if there's anything left inside.
	Maybe there's gold and jewels or maybe there's Ash and dust.
	But the truth is always better.
	And I've had times in my life where I've just, I've hated the truth.
	I have wanted anything but the truth.
	And I'm like Indiana Jones at the beginning of that film.
	Hey, look, I got an insight.
	Oh shit, there's a giant ball of truth coming my way.
	Run!
	Except I never seem to make it out of the chamber.
	I end up like a fucking seagull shit stain on the rolling ball of truth.
	That's what it feels like to me.
	The truth is a light coming down the tunnel.
	But this is the truth of your relationship.
	Infidelity, perhaps codependence, blindness, lies, manipulation, avoidance.
	It's not the only truth, but it is a core truth of what your relationship is, or to be more precise, what your lack of relationship, how your lack of relationship shows up.
	And there's that line from the Alanis Morissette song, back before she started slumming it out in weeds.
	The truth is, I think, likened to a jagged little pill.
	It's actually a jagged giant pill.
	But the truth often comes like the sergeant in Full Metal Jacket.
	I won't go into the profanity of it all.
	You can watch the clips online.
	But the truth is, once you open yourself up to it, it is relentless and it can be brutal.
	And it can be shocking and it can be appalling.
	And as you found, Natasha, you didn't sleep, I think you said, for three weeks with the truth.
	And the truth is so brutal that most people retreat into the cloudy, eye-poking gores of illusion and fantasy and avoidance and so on.
	And, of course, in this conversation, the truth is always better.
	The truth can feel like it is absolutely destroying you, but it is only destroying that which is false within you.
	And our fear, I believe, our fear is that when the truth hits us from a particular angle, that when it is done with us, there will be nothing left.
	That if I dismantle my lies, if I open up the mummy bandages, That there's nothing inside.
	That I'm just a bright animated suit of armor with no person inside.
	That the defenses that were supposed to protect me have now destroyed me.
	And when the truth comes calling, it comes calling not as someone who wants me to join a symphony, but as a relentless vampire hunter that will put a stake through my goddamn heart.
	Drag me out into the sunlight where I squirm and turn and turn to dust.
	And evaporate.
	And stream into the stratosphere.
	Like a wet fart of broken history.
	And so I have found that although the truth feels like it will unravel us, the truth only appears like an enemy to the lies we've been forced to live.
	And every time I have accepted the truth and sided with the truth, I have felt like I'm going to die sometimes.
	Because I don't know sometimes where the lies I've been forced to live end and the truth that I didn't even know begins.
	But although it is an operation without anesthetic, it is literally a life-saving procedure.
	And I would recommend to continue to pursue the truth.
	Painful, of course, and I understand that.
	Painful, though it is.
	It's not so much that the truth sets you free, but the truth frees you from ghosts, it frees you from delusions, it frees you from fantasies.
	And the truth fundamentally is the only defense that we have against the bottomless needs of the dysfunctional.
	Once we have the truth, that is our reference point, not the needs of whatever other people desperately want from us.
	And I think that's the best shield to protect your heart with.
	Does it make any sense what I'm saying, or am I...? Yes.
	Yeah, I totally agree.
	Truth is liberating, but first it hits you on the balls really, really hard.
	Yeah, more than once.
	So anyway, if you give me a chance, hopefully you guys will take some friendly advice and go and see a good marriage counselor and try and figure out what to do next.
	I would not try and chew this one alone.
	It would be like trying to do your own appendectomy or your own...
	It would be like trying to do your own dental surgery.
	I mean, I would say, hopefully you'll take some advice and drop us a line.
	You think we should go together as a couple or separately?
	I would certainly go first together and take the advice of the therapist about, I mean, I'm sure that individual counseling will help, but, you know, it's a fantastic investment.
	And no matter what happens, it will be a great investment in what's potential in the marriage.
	And if there's nothing potential in the marriage, it will be a great and cheaper way to split, and also it will do you huge amounts of good in avoiding getting into a situation like this again, should that be the case.
	But I certainly wish you the best, and I hope that you will call someone tomorrow.
	All right.
	So thank you very much for your sympathies to us.
	I really appreciate it.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Alright, up next is Matt.
	And Matt wrote in with a somewhat related question and said, I'm striving for a virtuous relationship, but I'm having trouble insofar as I tend to choose people who seem honest and who seem like they know how to think, but still give me some red flags.
	How much should I invest in these people?
	Is this question.
	Hey, Steph.
	Hello.
	How's my audio?
	Good.
	Great.
	Okay, well, I just want to say, you know, thank you very much for all the work that everybody with FDR has done to make it possible.
	Really life-changing stuff, and I'm a proud donator, so thank you.
	Well, thank you, and I hope everyone else appreciates what Matt is doing to help bring what's necessary out to the people.
	Right.
	Okay, so I'm wondering if you have any clarifying questions about my question or...
	Yeah, so, I mean, nobody's perfect, and so when are there enough red flags to flee, right?
	Yeah, kind of.
	Well, what do you want?
	What do you want out of a relationship, right?
	Right, and you know, I want the honesty, I want the virtue.
	No, no, no.
	Sorry, I mean, more practically, do you want to get married?
	Do you want to have kids?
	Do you want to stay together for a life?
	Are you looking for a fling?
	I mean, what's your goal here?
	I'm not interested in a fling.
	I'm looking for...
	I mean, ideally, a relationship, a marriage for the rest of my life.
	Okay.
	And how old are you?
	18.
	Okay, so you got a little time.
	You got a little time.
	That's good.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Well, the fewer people you date, the easier it will be to stay married.
	You think so?
	Well, I don't know the statistics for men, but certainly this is the case for women.
	That if you marry a woman who's a virgin, then your odds of the marriage lasting are over 80%.
	And then by the time the woman has had like a dozen or more partners, your odds go down to like 20% or 25%.
	It's not necessarily causal...
	But it definitely seems to be correlational.
	If you want to be a CEO, you've got to work your way up and you've got to have a whole bunch of jobs.
	To be a CEO of a big company, they'll ship you around in various departments.
	They'll ship you around to various offices around the world.
	You'll be working 80 hours a week for 20 or 30 years.
	You want to get around like a total man-whore in the business world in order to round out your experience.
	But when it comes to marriage, the less you can date...
	Okay, I hadn't considered that.
	That's an interesting idea.
	Because I've been dating around, not like promiscuously or anything, but I've been kind of doing the serial monogamer thing.
	Right.
	And, you know, that doesn't doom you.
	I mean, I dated rounds, but in general, I mean, if you want to find the love of your life, I mean, why would you want to push that off?
	Right.
	Right.
	I want to win the lottery three years from now.
	Why would I want it now?
	Right.
	It's like I might as well start working now.
	All right.
	So give me give me some give me some red flags that you've seen.
	OK, I'll give you some examples.
	So, oh, and I should I should also mention I'm gay.
	I'm not into the girls.
	All right.
	So, but anyway...
	So finding a virgin might be slightly more of a challenge.
	Is that fair to say?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Especially in college and everything like that.
	But yeah.
	So a couple things that have come up are like, oh, I find someone who is an atheist and or maybe they're skeptical of...
	The involuntary family or they're skeptical and they're very cynical of the state or so on and so forth but, oh, they have a troubled childhood or maybe they're superstitious or, you know, you can mix the variables and get all kinds of interesting combinations where they seem very interesting at first and seem promising but it's like you keep pushing and you get some more red flags and You're
	not really sure how to bring these ideas up, number one, and then number two, how much work needs to be spent with this.
	Right.
	So, just to sort of break in for a sec, if you don't mind.
	Yeah, go for it.
	So, you're looking for particular positions that someone might have that would be an indication, I assume, of a rational thinker, right?
	Okay.
	So, to clarify...
	Right.
	So, you're close, but I did email Mike about this back in the spring.
	And in a nutshell, he replied, it's not about finding somebody who has the same conclusions as you, but it's rather about finding someone who knows how to think.
	Okay, and the reason that that's important, just for those, I'm sure you get it, but for other people.
	So, let's say you find some hunkasaurus who is...
	Who's an atheist, right?
	Right.
	Right.
	And...
	This actually just happened recently, but yeah.
	Good.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	So...
	So he's, you know, as an atheist, he's a materialist, which means he can't be loved for his soul, which means he does a lot of sit-ups.
	Probably hanging upside down from some bat cave in a disco.
	So...
	So, let's say you're an atheist and he's an atheist.
	And you get together and you get married and so on.
	And ten years later, you're like, hey, we're both still atheists.
	Right?
	It's not enough.
	Right?
	It's not enough.
	It could be six million reasons why somebody is not an atheist other than they've thought things through from first principles.
	Right?
	Right?
	So...
	You could have a lot in common with someone in terms of conclusions, and that's no basis to build a relationship.
	A relationship, as you know, is a process.
	It is not a moment.
	It is not a conclusion.
	Okay.
	And so when you want to build a life with someone, they need to learn and teach.
	What's that Pet Shop Boys song?
	We shall teach and learn and learn and teach.
	Go West, I think it is, right?
	And you need to be with someone who is going to teach you new stuff, who you can teach new stuff through the whole of your life.
	And having the same conclusions as someone is not enough to teach and learn through your lives.
	Okay.
	Can I challenge you a little bit on that?
	Yeah, please.
	Yeah, okay.
	So that's interesting to me because...
	At least on ideas that are really important, like religion.
	You've talked about this on the show before, about how religion, from a moral standpoint, and the afterlife, that's very serious stuff that someone can hold as a belief.
	So, if someone was religious, like I was, like I was brought up, but they knew how to think...
	Or they learned how to think.
	It makes sense that they would convert to atheism, for example, somewhat quickly.
	Especially considering nowadays where the arguments for atheism, I think, are really well accessible.
	Does that make sense?
	Sure, sure.
	Look, I get that for sure.
	I get that for sure.
	But also, somebody may convert to atheism...
	For emotional reasons, rather than out of a dedication to reason.
	You want them to put up a good fight because it shows loyalty to their prior beliefs in the same way that you want them to have loyalty to you as a lover, right?
	As a husband.
	You want it to be like a really hard challenge for them.
	Well, yeah, I'm not saying artificially hard, but let's say that over the course of half an hour, you talk someone out of religion.
	That's not necessarily a great thing.
	Okay.
	Sure.
	Now, it may be.
	But I think that you want to make sure that the person is like, oh, yeah, you're right.
	I guess that doesn't make any sense.
	I'm done, right?
	That would be a bit alarming, right?
	Right.
	Because that to me would be a red flag, that the person can be talked out of a lifelong belief without putting up a fight.
	It means, have you never thought about this stuff before?
	It only takes half an hour.
	My God, you're 20 years old.
	You've been racing this in the last 15 years.
	And they're like, boom, it's gone.
	That would be kind of weird to me.
	And then if they said, wow, I guess I don't believe anymore.
	I guess we're done and I don't need to talk about this again.
	That would be a huge red flag.
	Well, of course you need to talk about it again.
	Because a growing sense of skepticism towards religion is really only the beginning of a very long journey, right?
	Okay.
	In other words, the journey then goes to, okay, well, so if this stuff doesn't make any sense and it doesn't take a long time for me to realize that it doesn't make any sense, what does that say about the people who raised me?
	What does that say about the priests?
	What does it say about my extended family?
	What does it say about the people in my Christian club or my Islamic club or whatever?
	What does it say about everyone who is around me?
	Do they know this but they're not told me?
	Have they never even been curious enough to read the other arguments?
	I mean, It is the beginning of a very challenging conversation that goes very deep.
	And so I would want someone I'm talking about with religion to give it their best shot.
	And if they folded very quickly and felt that the topic was done, I would view that as a huge red flag.
	In other words, either they just want to do it.
	They weren't really religious and they're just giving or they're placating me or, you know, they have some some hidden reason for wanting to abandon religion or they don't.
	They're not emotionally smart enough to understand that people are religious because they're raised religious.
	And if they fall away from religion, that is a huge challenge to their personal relationships.
	In other words, and they now going to be secretly gay and secretly religious, secretly atheist.
	Maybe they're openly gay and secretly atheist.
	But are they going, what effects?
	Like, so the reason I want someone to fight is in a way, if somebody's your age, if somebody's religious, and they're fighting me on religion, because I've got a whole podcast and video out there called God is really the fear of others, or God is the fear of others.
	They're fighting to retain their relationship with their family.
	That's the emotional driver.
	I don't believe too many people really care about this imaginary sky ghost.
	What they're doing is they're saying, I can't accept atheism because if I accept atheism, this causes massive problems in my personal relationships.
	Let's say you had a friend who was in the closet, right?
	I don't know, maybe you do.
	If you had a friend who was in the closet and you said, you know, man, you've got to be honest, you've got to, you know, don't hide, it's nothing to be shamed of, whatever, right?
	And the person said, you know, you're right, I'm just going to be out.
	And then they went, okay, we can chat about something else now.
	What would you think?
	Be like, wait, aren't you supposed to be, like, concerned?
	Yeah, a little quick of a turnaround there.
	You know, you spin the wheel, that doesn't mean the supertanker's turning around right about now.
	You know, especially if they're...
	I don't know, if they were from some homophobic family or some homophobic culture or something, that would be, you know, like, okay, so I'm glad that you, but, you know, let's not brush past all the next bits, which are pretty significant, right?
	And it's the same thing with statism, right?
	So if somebody is a statist, then I would assume it will be conversations that will go on for a long time.
	Okay.
	And they should bring, you know, bring their best and fight hard and This could go on, you know, I think I said, gosh, I think it was in 2010, I did a speech at Libertopia.
	And I said, my particular gauge is, I'll do months, but I won't do years.
	You'll do months, but not years.
	Okay.
	Yeah, you know, when it comes to talking to people about statism.
	Because I look, I mean, I just I don't have years, right, you know, to speak to people, because if after years, they haven't conceded anything fundamental, then They're just basically there like a person from Porlock to waste my time and prevent me from talking to people who I might actually be able to reach, right?
	So, I mean, if you had a friend who was, for some reason, had some problem with you being gay, you probably would give that friend months.
	I don't know if you'd give them a couple of years hoping that they'd turn around.
	Right, I wouldn't give them very...
	I don't know if I'd give them months even, but...
	Yeah, I mean, if for whatever reason it was a big problem in their cultural community or whatever.
	So, to me, the positions themselves are not the most, even remotely important.
	And positions can be a very big distraction.
	I have far less in common with many atheists than I do with many Christians.
	Right.
	Right.
	Because if they're atheists and determinists and communists or whatever, right?
	Right.
	Then I'm going to have more in common with a Christian who accepts free will, who understands the necessity of virtue, who believes in the strength of the family, who is skeptical of the power of the state, who believes in spontaneous social organization and all that.
	I will have much more in common with that Christian.
	Than I would with, you know, a heavy left, politically correct atheist.
	Okay.
	Makes sense.
	So it really is a process.
	A marriage or a lifelong partnership is not like a join the dots thing.
	Right.
	And so, oh, tick the checkbox or whatever.
	It is a process that goes on very deeply.
	And because there's always new things that come up in life, like if you guys end up having surrogates or adopting kids or whatever, if you get married, if, you know, then you got parenting.
	Well, so you have atheism in common.
	That doesn't mean you both have parenting philosophies in common.
	Right.
	And so on.
	So forever.
	But yeah.
	Yeah.
	And then, you know, as you get older, doubtless, what is it?
	Billy Crystal says, you know, you get into your 40s, you have an operation.
	You'll call it a procedure, but it's an operation.
	And that certainly was true of me.
	My neck scar is still visible.
	And how do you deal with illness?
	How do you deal with, you know, brushes with mortality?
	I mean, you're 18, so what the hell do you care about that stuff now?
	But it comes, you know, you'll remember this in 30 years, and hopefully I'll still be around taking calls, and you can say, hey, man, I got a weird lump in it, right?
	But...
	And then, you know, there's aging, and then there's grandkids, and then there's, you know, what do you do when you retire?
	I mean, there's lots of things that you need to have the same approaches, the same methodologies, rather than starting off with the same positions.
	Just focus on, you want to get engaged in a lifelong conversation where you're exploring new information, sharing new thoughts and ideas, going through new experiences, and being able to process them together.
	And any position that...
	What you think is a salvation is probably a restriction.
	Okay.
	I'm not sure what you mean by that.
	What I mean is, so if you say, oh, that person is an atheist.
	Great!
	You know, then what you've done is you've done a checkbox rather than explore, well, why are they an atheist?
	How did this happen?
	And so on, right?
	Somebody can be raised an atheist and be completely irrational about atheism.
	Okay.
	Right, like, so I am not a Zerastrian, even though I hear it makes you be a great singer, but I'm not a Zerastrian.
	Now, if somebody would say to me, why are you not a Zerastrian, I wouldn't have a rational answer.
	I mean, other than some general religious stuff, but nothing particular, nothing specific.
	So somebody could just be raised an atheist, or they may be an atheist because their parents are devout communists, or they may be left anarchists, or they may be, I don't know, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	If you've got a checkbox called, oh, we have an area of compatibility called atheism, then it's actually a restriction until you find out why and how they believe what they believe.
	And also, if they're an atheist and it's cost them nothing to be an atheist, you know, like if you're a Democrat and work at CNN, you're not exactly putting your career on the line.
	And so if they were sort of raised in You know, lefty circles where everybody makes fun of Christians and so on without sort of trying to understand the value of the Judeo-Christian tradition and so on.
	And then their atheism is not a mark of any particular intellectual integrity or any particular challenge.
	In other words, if they were to speak intelligently and sympathetically about Christianity, if they would then be mocked, then the fact that they're atheists doesn't, I don't think, mean much in terms of Integrity and courage and philosophy.
	It's just, well, you know, I grew up everywhere I was an atheist.
	And anybody who said anything positive about...
	Like, I remember...
	Let me just sort of give you a tiny example.
	So, I mean, I've been an atheist since I was single digits, I think.
	And I remember I worked at Pizza Hut.
	And there was a guy there who was very well versed in...
	Christian arguments.
	And he gave the argument about the improbability of the combinations necessary to produce life.
	Combinations of chemicals and electricity and energy and other things, the primordial soup argument.
	Yeah, and he had all of these arguments, and I thought they were actually very good arguments.
	And, you know, there was no internet back then and I didn't go to the library and start researching it all because we just had this conversation and he had some good arguments.
	And I thought, well, that's refreshing.
	You know, there wasn't sort of burn in hell, young Steph.
	It was like, you know, here's some...
	And I remember, you know, most of my friends were atheists and one or two weren't, but most of my friends were atheists.
	And I went to them and I said, you know, this guy gave me these really good arguments and tell me what you guys think.
	And they just went, oh, come on, that's bullshit, right?
	Right.
	And I thought, that's not good.
	Guys, come on, this is good arguments.
	That's just bullshit is not an intellectually honest position, right?
	So I did not think like, so we had atheism in common, but we didn't have thinking in common, which is why I'm not really friends with those people anymore.
	And it wasn't just that.
	It was like a bunch of things where I've always been interested in Good arguments.
	You know, if they go against my position, they go against my position.
	You know, I will read Ann Coulter's attacks on, or criticism or skepticism on evolution.
	And I will read the arguments for religion.
	And of course, I've gone through a lot of these arguments in undergraduate and graduate school.
	And I'm just...
	I'm intrigued by good arguments.
	And I am quite interested when I get stymied.
	You know, like I don't have a...
	I don't have a good...
	I don't have a good response to that.
	And that happens a lot.
	And...
	That's how I grow.
	I mean, I thought that the arguments for anarchism were completely ridiculous.
	Until I realized I didn't have a good position.
	And...
	So...
	I had more in common with the guy who was criticizing evolution than I did with my atheist friends.
	Because he was making good arguments and they weren't.
	And that's what I mean when I say, so if there's something which is a compatibility in conclusions, it probably is a restriction, i.e.
	I could not bring intelligent arguments to bear on my atheist friends.
	It was a restriction.
	It was something that was a supposed compatibility, but because it was compatibility of conclusions and not methodology, it was a restriction on the topics.
	Does that make any sense?
	Yeah, that does.
	You really have to ask people and really explore what they really think, even if they have the same conclusion as you.
	Oh, yeah.
	Absolutely.
	There's lots of people in Damascus, but they didn't all come there for the same reason, right?
	Some people, you know, are on a...
	A trip to Mecca and some people just got dumped out of the back of a van, right?
	Right.
	Okay, great.
	Well, thank you so much, Steph.
	Okay.
	Well, I appreciate that and let us know how it goes.
	Yeah, I'll definitely bring it to the table for sure.
	Keep your bowls close and you're hot even closer.
	Yeah.
	Keep it guarded, keep it protected so that it still has juice when the love of your life comes along.
	Okay.
	And thanks to Mike.
	Thanks to, of course, all the callers.
	It's nice to be back on video.
	For those who are just listening to the audio, my God, you missed some calisthenics and some incredibly unliathed gymnastics.
	Actually, you missed nothing.
	Just a talking head in a gray room.
	So have yourselves a wonderful week, everyone.
	We will talk to you Saturday night and, yeah, hopefully get the presentation for Germany recorded tomorrow.
	I have to avoid my clichés, in other words, screaming out every German-sounding name.
	And ftrurl.com slash donate to help out the show.
	We run because you help.
	And if you can help out, we are massively, massively grateful.
	And everyone who gets the show because of your support is grateful.
	This stuff changes lives.
	And thank you all so much for your support.

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