Nov. 26, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
03:06:55
2849 Moving The Human Race Forward - Sunday Call In Show November 23rd, 2014
Why should somebody be moral? If there isn’t a God then is the universe simply just random happenstance with no deeper intent? Do you think that in order to start a family you need to have a high paying career and income? When I feel a desire to help people - how do I know that I’m acting out of genuine care, and not trying to fill my own emotional needs inappropriately by parenting others? Includes: welfare state of human progress, ripping science out of the womb of superstition, moving the human race forward, modern education as Chinese foot binding, the biological basis of empathy, imposing conclusions on children, commandments under the threat of death, turning off the fog machine, hunting for eggs and confessions of a social climber.
I'm sorry I was unavailable yesterday, but because we're all about the professionalism, we just shuffle it around like that deck of cards in an eight-armed octopus poker dealer.
So, I hope you're having a great evening.
Hope you're having a great week.
Mike, who do we have first?
Alright, up first today is Tim.
Tim wrote in and said, Go on.
Do you have impulses that lead you in the opposite direction a lot?
No, I don't.
I do my best to adhere to non-aggression principle and volunteerism.
And I completely acknowledge them as logical and solid, but I'm having difficulty on my own, in my own, let's say, deductive logic, crossing that gap from, okay, so that is the science of morality.
Now, what is the reason to be moral?
What is the reason to adhere to that logic?
Yeah, I mean, you may be asking the wrong guy because my emotional argument as to why be moral is sort of like someone with OCD arguing why you have to wash your hands 500 times a day.
Because it just feels really weird and bad if you don't, which is not much of an argument I accept.
But if you're having doubts about why be moral, I'm going to assume that you have counter arguments to it.
So what are the counter arguments to living virtuously?
No, I don't have an argument against it.
Let me see if I can find out.
I would submit that you have not thought about it very much if you don't have arguments against it.
How about this?
Let me give you the logic that I had before I arrived at where I am now.
And maybe, since you're smarter than I, you can point out where I've gone wrong.
Is that okay?
Well, hopefully I won't I may point out that when you say I'm smarter than you, you may be mistaken about that, but go ahead with your logic.
Let's see what we can get.
Okay, so originally when I was approaching voluntarism and anarchism, I was really arguing from consequence, which I know that that's not your preferred starting place.
And the reason why I could justify to myself adhering to voluntarism is because in my mind I would envision a better society And I could see it as being more profitable for me and the people that I love and everyone else.
And now that I've changed and that I do acknowledge that the ethic of voluntarism and non-aggression, it makes sense.
However, I can't...
I almost can't figure out, like, okay, so I get it, like, logically, but I can't figure out why to do it if I'm not doing it for profit.
I know that sounds like greedy and all that, but I consider, and I understand that you also consider profit to be virtuous as long as it is, you know, not violating non-aggression.
Yeah, I don't know that I would characterize profit as virtue.
I mean, it may be the effects of keeping your bargains, of paying your bills, of honoring your contracts and so on, which would be virtuous actions, but So, for you, you would have a higher standard of living, more money, more freedom, and spend less time filling out 1040 tax forms and so on, right?
That's sort of one of your arguments?
Yep.
Great.
What else?
Well, that's, I mean, that's how I, like, arguing from consequence, it was easier for me to understand, like, okay, so this is why this is a more beneficial mode of behavior.
Because it increases my standard of living and will increase peace, reduce poverty.
And then when I switch to thinking from ethic, I'm able to logically understand it, but I can't...
I don't understand, like, what the driver for being moral is if I'm not thinking from consequence.
Yeah, and of course, if you...
And there's a huge...
Section of humanity who've specialized in plausible Ideology religiosity and and politics and nationalism and Racialism and so on as lots of people who have developed the sophist set of genetics in other words They can convince themselves in the moment that what they're saying is true enough to sweep you along in their sociopathy so there is an entire class of human beings who have developed the capacity of To tell the
most outrageous lies with a straight face.
And those people have developed over hundreds of thousands of years or tens of thousands of years.
And they have enormous profits.
They make an enormous amount of money.
Now, of course, they're generally parasites and feed off the human condition and so on.
But if you say, well...
I'll make more money in a free society.
You just think of some crappy teacher, some inefficient DMV employee, some union boss, some politician, and so on.
Well, they've designed a system where they regularly peck at power and control and security, and they get the little dopamine hits of security and power, and they're not about to give up that kind of system, right?
So when it comes to profit or to making money or to having security and so on, yeah, it certainly is true that everyone and most people in a free market over the long run would do a lot better than people now.
But it's hard to imagine, say, George Bush, the younger or Barack Obama.
I mean, what would they be doing in a free society?
I think that they'd be selling cars of questionable value with the rust painted broadly over to people who did not speak the native language and regularly moving their businesses.
That would be my guess, as opposed to sort of having the 0000 magic code to the magic missiles of humanity ending political power.
So, I think the argument from, in fact, is very hard to make.
I can give you some other reasons to be good, if you like, but Mike, I think you wanted to mention, as you did, I think you wanted to make the case, as you did in our first job interview, for evil.
Well, in this society, evil appears to be very profitable.
For so, so many people.
I mean, you touched on the politicians.
It was profitable for Bernie Madoff until he got caught.
Oh, The Wolf of Wall Street.
There's a movie to watch about...
Sell me a pen so I can stick it up your nose and suck the remaining money residue out of your sinuses.
Well, even now, it's kind of weird.
That's a great example of the Wolf of Wall Street character.
His name escapes me.
But even now, that guy's kind of heralded as, wow, look at all that cool stuff that guy did.
Sure, he defrauded people out of an untold amount of money and ripped people out of their life savings, but he snorted coke off of a hooker's ass and Did some cool stuff in some way.
So yay!
Yay, he's a good guy.
Elliot Spitzer has a TV show.
Bill Clinton is an elder statesman.
And today, Marion Barry died at the age of 78 because apparently he'd replaced most of his bone marrow with crack cocaine during the 90s.
For those who don't know, it's the mayor.
What, Washington, D.C.? I can't remember.
Some mayor of some big American town.
And in the 90s, there was a sting operation.
And they caught him smoking...
Crack with hookers.
But of course he's on the left, right?
So the left-wing media is like, controversial politician.
Controversial Peace Corps worker Charles Manson is getting married.
He's like smoking crack, which crack for those who don't know it.
Like rolled particularly through African-American communities in the late 80s and 90s and destroyed It was like this massive tsunami of fireballs that went through and just gutted a lot of the African-American communities.
Of course, it was used in other places, too.
And that the mayor would be using this stuff with hookers, controversial.
No, a criminal, in fact.
Just criminal and hideous and horrendous.
And this guy, you know, gets a fairly nice write-up in the left-wing media.
So, yeah, very profitable.
And, I mean, people like Joseph McCarthy...
Uh, and, uh, all that get terrible write-ups despite doing some enormous good in trying to keep the world safe from the spread of communism.
So, I'm sorry, I don't mean to take over your speech, but yeah, that was a pretty good case for, to be made for, you know, if you, if you can find the right black and deca machinery to remove your conscience and, and exist as a no shame based life form, uh, you can do pretty well.
Alright, so my question, if you don't mind me jumping in, Tim, is given that in this world it can be incredibly profitable to be evil, what is the elevator pitch for being a good moral person?
What is the short elevator pitch for morality?
Well, it's love and hatred.
I mean, love and hatred.
Do you want to fall in love and do you enjoy combat?
We all strive for peace, but we all love conflict.
We are all lazy, but at the same time, we'll put huge amounts of work in to achieve laziness.
And so if you want to love, you have to be good.
And I've made that case elsewhere that love is our involuntary response to virtue if we are virtuous.
And one of the primary reasons Virtues that generates love in others is the moral virtue of courage.
And courage requires danger and opposition.
And so if you want to be loved, sadly, you cannot live a life of safety.
You cannot live a life of safety if you wish to be loved because you must be doing good in the world.
When you're doing good in the world, you are harming the interests of evil people who will then try and do you harm.
So if you want a life of security and safety and inconsequentiality, life like a high spear of javelin that disappears into the stormy seas of history, leaving barely a bubble in its wake, then you can have that life of security and there's comfort in that and I understand all of that.
Nothing wrong with it in a way.
But you'll never know love and you'll never know real happiness.
Real happiness, according to many studies, arises when you try to do something that is important and difficult and has an element of risk or danger in it.
And the more important, the more difficult, and the more danger there is in it, the happier you are.
Everybody wants to have this continuum of happiness.
Like, you just want to have an orgasm all day long.
Sting accepted.
It's a little tricky to maintain that.
So you must...
Work very hard if you wish to be loved and if you wish to love others and if you wish to have the joy of combat.
We love combat.
We love fight movies.
We love mixed martial arts.
We love war movies.
We are viscerally excited by combat.
We are a predator species, a very tricky predator species.
And why be good?
Because fuck evil, that's why.
Because fuck evil.
Why would insane idiots talk about the sun-centered model of the solar system during a time when you could literally get burned at the stake for doing that?
Because fuck superstition, that's why.
Why would people talk about evolution when it clearly states in the Bible that the world is twelve and a half minutes old?
Because fuck superstition, that's why.
Why would we want to talk about the non-aggression principle?
Because fuck sociopathic predators.
That's why.
Why would we want to talk about honest, secure, stable money?
Because fuck intergenerational debt.
Fuck the selling of fetuses off to foreign banksters for money to bribe constituents too dumb to know the consequences of their own voting.
Because fuck evil!
That's why!
Fuck them!
That's why!
And good!
Yes!
You know, if you want to go into battle against the Nazis, because fuck Nazis!
That's why you want to go into battle against communists?
Because fuck communists!
That's why.
Fuck the ever-swelling, ever-growing predation and swirly, tumbleweed-from-hell gathering ball of tsunami bullshit that passes for thought in this world.
Because fuck lazy people!
Because fuck stupid people!
Because fuck people who won't, as they say in Fight Club, I fucking hate the pandas that won't even have sex to save their own species!
Fuck them!
Because fuck evil.
Fuck the stupid teachers who do nothing but propagandize.
Yes, they should be subject to the free market so they can fall down the economic ladder to the position that they're actually qualified for, which is to ask you if you want your fucking fries with your Happy Meal.
Fuck the stupid teachers.
Fuck the bullshit unions.
Fuck the debt.
Fuck the Fed.
Fuck it all.
That's why you get out of bed in the morning to say fuck evil.
Well, I'm sold.
That was very passionate.
So, just to summarize so I understand...
Okay, you have to say it even more blandly than that.
Hang on, more monotone.
Wait, that was very passionate.
No, wait, no, flatter than that.
Hang on.
No, I can't do it.
But anyway...
No, no, no, you did get my emotions going when you were speaking.
I could do that for like two hours, but we have lots of callers, so...
Alright, so you're summarizing fuck evil and be virtuous because it'll bring love and happiness.
Is that correct?
Well, it brings love and happiness to yourself to sanely fight immorality.
And every time you fight evil, you shoot up a flare that allows other people to see evil and to see that someone's fighting it.
The true philosopher is always the first one over a trench that no one knows is part of a war.
And what happens is you start fighting something and it looks like you're just shadowboxing.
Go back to Fight Club, like you're the guy punching himself in his boss's office.
So you go out and everybody thinks that the world is at peace.
Because the guns are hidden by language and compliance, right?
So the billion-line tax code just towers over and smothers people, and they just run away from the shadow of all these falling scimitar books.
And so everyone complies, and there's this sense of peace due to compliance.
You know, because the slaves aren't actively revolting, there must be peace.
And so what happens is that the true philosopher, the truly courageous moral human being, Goes out and looks insane to the people who are watching because they think the world's at peace and you're going out fully armed and suited up with your bayonet and ready to rumble.
And as Nietzsche says, those who were dancing were thought insane by those who could not hear the music.
And those who are fighting are thought insane by those who cannot see the war.
Now through the fighting, through the conflict and through the definition of that which is Immoral and that which supports immorality, because the gun to the head is the only immorality, but most people, as I've argued many times before, are the getaway drivers for the bank robbery of statism.
They're not directly using violence, but without their compliance and support, the violence could not occur.
So, you are out there and you look like you're fighting yourself, and then if people look and listen long enough as you pant out the reality of what you're doing...
They understand that you're fighting ghosts, and then they start to see the ghosts, and then they understand that you're fighting people, and then they understand that you're fighting language, and then they understand that you're actually attempting to wrestle the gun from the hands of sweaty-tooth madmen.
Yeah, there's my hat tip to Robin Williams.
And through that...
Staying in the battle and reminding people of the battle, reminding people that the world is not safe, reminding people that history is not over, reminding people that all the goddamn benefits that they enjoy, First Amendment, Second Amendment, separation of church and state, some property rights, some contracts,
some philosophy, some human rights, all the benefits that people stick their goddamn faces in this pig trough Of the present without understanding all the blood that was spilled to secure them a few basic liberties.
They just take those and like, wow, this is great.
I love all these liberties.
And they never ever think, most people never think of how they could possibly add to the liberties people might enjoy in the future.
They just greedily suck down all of the reservoirs.
Basically that rain blood from the skies.
They drink it all deep.
A bunch of vampires.
They drink all of the accumulated wisdom and value and courage of history.
And they say, great, thanks for all those freedoms.
Now let me set fire to them.
Let me make them burn so that I don't have to lift a goddamn finger.
I don't have to drop my mouse button.
I don't have to put down my goddamn tablet and get my loathsome spotty behind off the couch to go and do anything to maintain or, God forbid, expand the freedoms that we've all inherited.
Most people are like...
Like the last generations of the Eatons brothers in Canada, they have inherited this unbelievable gift of freedom from history and they squander the living shit out of it.
And they do not think that they have any responsibility to be any kind of spoke or any kind of chain in the bicycle chain that allows us to propel humankind up the hill towards a better place.
They don't think of anything to do with that.
They just strive for comfort and distractions and staying away from the big, big boned T-Rex dinosaurs of history that are continually scouring the countryside looking for anything that moves so it can snap its goddamn head off.
They don't think of adding to the inheritance that they have received.
They just squander the living shit out of it.
Boomers.
And then they wonder why the next generation grows up kind of cynical.
So, yeah, I think that we inherit some incredibly hard won, hard fought for liberties that millions of people died for.
And they had to endure the kinds of things which it's hard to even imagine.
When I was writing a novel set in the 18th century, I did research on what happened to the scientists under the tender mercies of both the Catholic and the various Protestant...
Sects and churches tortured, eyes gouged out, tongues cut off, set fire in pyres of superstitious but very real flames.
I mean, God, even winning science.
I mean, science had to be ripped out of the ever-pregnant womb of superstition most violently, like with a raptor strike.
And the amount of blood that was spilled for every inch forward and upward of the human condition is truly staggering.
And I wonder, I wonder if the people could, who made all of the sacrifices, I wonder if they could look forward through the tunnel of time and see what the hell we're doing with all of the gifts that they so painfully and bloodily bestowed upon us.
And we are cowering with video games, pornography, video distractions, and empty sex, and drinking and drugs and all this bullshit.
That they delivered a man to the top of the hill so that he could see the view and he gouged his own eyes out out of laziness.
And this just bothers the shit out of me.
So why be virtuous?
Because you're in an elevator, for fuck's sake.
Why are you in an elevator?
Why was there no elevator in the ancient Roman empires or the ancient Greek empires or the Assyrian or Pelophenician or Phoenician empire?
Why was there no elevator there?
Because nobody had Why are you in an elevator?
Because people fucking fought and died for your freedom.
And I'm not talking about First World War or Second World War.
That's a topic for another time.
I'm talking about the thinkers.
The thinkers who moved this shit forward, a lot of them died.
A lot of them were burned, poisoned, imprisoned, stuck through with swords, beheaded.
They were guillotined.
They were starved.
They were thrown in gulags.
They were thrown in towers.
And they fought and they starved and they gnawed the bellies of rats that they could catch because people had forgotten to feed them for a week.
So that you could actually have an elevator.
And what are you doing?
What are you doing with all that?
What are you doing with this incredible gift, this throne that has been built on blood and bone?
What are you doing on it?
Well, you're taking a shit on it and wandering off.
And so why be good?
Because we have inherited gifts, and anybody who doesn't even think about paying forward is the worst kind of parasite on the best kind of people.
Would you argue that morality is really the pursuit of happiness?
I don't know that I would characterize that that way.
I think it adds to happiness, but it sure as hell doesn't add...
Biologically, it makes no sense to be virtuous.
Almost no sense.
And this is why a number of philosophers kind of migtail, right?
Men going their own way.
A number of philosophers...
Either gay or just stayed away from women.
Because if you are aiming to improve the human condition, you are generally going to do that despite or in the face of endless rejection from women.
Right?
Because women need a lot of resources.
this is very sort of very brief um biological evolution women need a lot of resources to raise their kids which means that they can't offend too many people which means that they have to please a whole lot of people which is one of the reasons why they don't tend to be with exceptions of course and and some great exceptions which i've mentioned on the show before they tend not to be a very innovative or confrontational when it comes to ideas right generally you know the women the men start arguing politics and the women all start tidying up
and oh let's leave the men and let's go off somewhere else and talk about shoes and shit and it's not bad it's just the way that biology works Women need massive amounts of resources for decades to help raise their kids so they can't piss off too many people because otherwise they don't get those resources.
And they can't marry a man who annoys a lot of people because then those people won't give them resources.
So biologically, if you want to succeed in terms of mating and all of that, then you have to kneel the fuck down in the face of the infinite bullshit prejudices of the tribe because women generally are the enforcers of culture and religion.
As the Germans used to say, church, children, kitchen.
That was what...
Women historically were forced to be focused on and not just by society but by biology.
And so there's not any rational reason for philosophy to exist biologically.
Philosophy is to the social body as mutant genes are to evolution.
Most of them are disastrous.
A few of them are great.
Anything which doesn't evolve tends to die off, but anything which evolves too quickly tends to self-destruct.
And so, like 95% of all species that have existed have died off, and we're not doing that as yet, partly because we're so incredibly adaptable.
And so, philosophy, or let's just say counter-cultural thought, which isn't always thought, But anybody who spits in the wind of the current culture, yes, it's just a random mutation.
And if there's no random mutations, there's no evolution.
And if there's an excess of random mutations, the biology tends to get kind of destabilized and doesn't work.
From an individual standpoint, most philosophers sacrifice their reproductive capacities in order to help move society forward.
And those societies which have no philosophers tend to really stagnate.
Think of sort of the aboriginal Bushmen of the outback in Australia.
I mean, just same damn thing for thousands and thousands and thousands of years.
And those societies which tend to really get stuck in a rut, like the Chinese culture didn't change for like 5,000 years in any particular way, heavily conformist society and so on.
And they get their asses kicked basically by the Europeans.
The Europeans are constantly boiling over with new ideas, new thoughts, and this is how the society moves forward.
So from an individual standpoint, like no mutant gene generally does very well.
Mutant genes generally don't do very well, sorry to put it more clearly.
And most People who challenge the existing social conventions don't do very well biologically, but any society which eternally destroys and represses individual or countercultural thinkers tends to stagnate and gets taken over by some other society that at least tolerates that stuff.
And so every evolution is a threat to the existing DNA. Every random mutation that succeeds is a threat to the existing DNA. DNA. And every thinker who challenges existing social convention and who does it successfully is a massive, massive challenge to existing biological structures.
Sociopathy, exploitation, abusers, and so on, right?
But if you're into the non-aggression principle, the military-industrial complex, the prison-industrial complex, the educational-industrial complex, the Fed, the various superstitions, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, blah, blah, blah.
It is a real challenge.
And the only alternative is stagnation.
So from an individual standpoint, I don't know that philosophy can guarantee you any kind of happiness.
But I do know that if you have the capacity to think clearly for yourself and to challenge social convention, yeah, you don't have to do it.
I don't know you're going to be that happy not doing it.
But recognize that you are part of a larger story in the progress of philosophy.
I mean, honestly, it's how I view myself.
I'm a larger story.
My individual happiness on a day-to-day basis is not particularly important.
I am part of a larger story in challenging the way that people think in kicking people off their couches of complacency and getting them to think differently, getting them to think better, getting them to not assume that which seems like gravity or physics, but getting them to question everything that's around them.
Does that mean that I'm always going to be happy?
Well, I think it's my satisfying way to live.
It doesn't mean I'm always happy.
Sometimes it can be a challenge.
Sometimes there's a lot of eye rolling and sometimes there's some despair in that.
And I wouldn't want to sell philosophy as necessarily the road to happiness.
I think that It certainly worked for me that this life makes me happier than any other life I could conceive of.
And if you are a clear thinker and if you are a challenging thinker and if you help wake people up, particularly if what you do is measurable, not just, well, people seem a bit wiser, but if you get people, as I sort of focus on a lot, to stop hitting their kids, to stop using violence, to stop supporting violence, well, then you have some measurable progress.
And that, I think, is incredibly satisfying in the long run.
I guess it's sort of like if you're going for a gold medal or something.
A lot of times you don't want to get up early in the morning.
You don't want to drag those logs around if you're practicing for whatever you drag logs around for.
But it is a satisfying thing when all is said and done, if that makes any sense.
It does.
Thank you very much.
You're welcome, Mike.
Did you want to add anything?
It's actually interesting.
Well, you were talking about regarding females being more agreeable and not wanting to rock the boat from an ideological perspective and men being more forceful in, you know, possibly overturning the apple cart of society.
In the book, The Science of Evil, which we've talked about on the show quite a bit, he goes into the biological reasons for this that involve some differences within the brain.
And we're actually going to be doing a presentation on that in the near future.
I'm not going to go through it now, but look for that in the very near future, an actual breakdown of what goes on in the brain as it relates to empathy and, in this case, the willingness or unwillingness to disagree with those around you.
So some pretty interesting stuff I was going over last night.
Well, and he who controls the eggs controls the gonads, and he who controls the gonads controls the thinking, for the most part.
I mean, this is why women are so heavily pressured into conformities within particular, say, religion, right?
You know, you go to church to meet a nice girl.
And there's a lot of pressure on the women because, of course, the women are raising the kids when they're young, which is when they need to be propagandized in the superstition and so on and in the statism.
And generally, there's more focus on controlling where the eggs go.
Because if you control what women will say yes to, then you basically control what men will do.
And so, yeah, it's a very strong focus, which is another reason why I talk about female ethics and female responsibility.
I don't like the idea, which seems entirely not true, the idea that somehow women are like the tail of a kite, that men make all these decisions and dominate anything, and women just sort of flutter along afterwards.
I think quite the obverse is true.
I think that women have massive amounts of control and authority in the world.
And, you know, men propose and women dispose.
I mean, men say, can I? And women say, yes or no.
And if we can sort of understand that, then I think we can come up with a very productive way to change things and to invite women into the arena of ideas more openly and more powerfully than I think they've had before.
Anyway, shall we?
Anything else, Tim, or...?
One other thing I'll say just as I go, thank you very much for your time, Stefan.
I appreciate it.
In one of your previous call-in shows, probably the most powerful thing you said that actually really deeply depressed me was when you said that there are people who probably cannot change in that, and I don't mean to paraphrase, you can correct me, but in that they're so deep in their own psychopathy That their brain has actually, like, changed.
And they probably can't undo that.
And that actually really scared me.
Why?
It just saddened me that there are actually people who are just gone.
No, you're repeating it.
Why did it scare you?
I'm not saying it shouldn't.
I just want to know why.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's a good question.
Because I guess I realized...
That people are just killed morally in childhood.
I don't know.
It just hurts to see people be treated like shit.
Is it a concern for yourself or someone around you?
Yeah, maybe, I guess maybe, now that you probe a little, perhaps I'm a little worried myself if I have a little brain damage that I haven't worked out.
Although, to my knowledge, I was never abused as a child or anything.
I was, I was, because I went through a doctor nation.
Okay, go ahead.
Did you go to public school, brother?
What's that?
Did you go to government schools?
Yeah.
Yeah, were you punished?
Did you have stupid rules?
Were you bored?
Were you given inconsequential tasks?
Were you given stupid-ass busywork?
Were you aggressed against even verbally for thinking for yourself or questioning the purpose of being there?
Or, you know, but weren't you kind of incarcerated in a boredom camp of dusty sardineness for 12 years plus?
I was, yes.
Look, I'm not saying that all child abuse is equal.
But what I'm saying is that people say, I was never abused as a child.
I'm not sure that that's possible in the current world.
Right, right.
Because there's simply so many lies, so much propaganda, whether it's religion or statism or the cult of the family or whatever it is, right?
Which is not to say all families are cult.
But it's hard to imagine...
What a...
I mean, in the future, I completely understand how it's all going to work and so on.
But when people say, basically, I was never abused as a child, abuse doesn't mean, you know, guys sticking bamboo shoots up your fingernails for fun and profit.
And it doesn't, you know, and this wouldn't be on the parents, right?
I mean, it wouldn't be like, well, my parents sent me to public school, therefore they're child abusers.
I don't mean that at all.
But in the future...
When people look back at how government schools ran, and you can watch a documentary called The War on Kids or Waiting for Superman or whatever, how these, quote, educational facilities run at the moment, absolutely horrifying compared to what children are capable of doing and capable of learning.
It's horrendous.
I mean, the time that I spent in government schools was...
Basically like trying to climb a ladder like one of those guys who has bricks.
I don't know what that thing is called.
It's like a half a box on a 45-degree angle.
You pile all these bricks in it.
It's like climbing a wobbly, shitty ladder with spiders down my neck.
But people kept adding more and more bricks to this stuff.
And you get to the top and it's just the bottom of another ladder.
It just felt like this endless baton death march of hyper-stimulated boredom, which is the worst kind of, you know...
The worst kind of, I think, psychological state to be in.
And, I mean, I went to boarding school where there was caning and all of that.
I went to government schools.
I went to, I think, three or four or five different schools of my childhood.
And they were all absolutely terrible.
Absolutely terrible.
I mean, you never learned a goddamn principle.
Remember, there's a pal in principle.
Yes, but there's no P.L.E., Anywhere to be seen.
And it was all about just conformity, and it was all, you know, there's this old saying about French waiters, that they deal with you as if they're peeing on you from a great height.
The amount of smug, sociopathic, self-satisfied contempt that the adults had for children as a whole, and this is 40, 35 years ago or whatever, so, you know, maybe it's changed somewhat since, but The amount of contempt that adults had for children in all of the schools that I went to was absolutely bottomless.
They really were just, almost without exception, unbelievably ghastly human beings who basically just opened up, like ripped open the mouths of children and vomited contempt and bile and disregard and A lack of curiosity into the child's very bone marrow.
And maybe your experience was different than mine, but I think that government schools as a whole are just terrible.
I mean, there's a little thing online.
John Stossel.
There's some black kid who's just, you know, reading way below his grade.
And there's all these meetings that the parents have with the teachers and the principals.
And you can just all see them twirling their pens, staring off into space.
Nobody gives a shit.
And, you know, they get this poor young kid enrolled in some tutoring program and within like two months he's reading at grade level.
I mean, that is abuse.
That is abuse.
That occurs in the stripping of potential among the young.
Who could we have been if we had been taught passionately by the best?
by people who really cared about us, by people who monitored and developed our individual strengths and challenged us on our weakness.
And we knew why we were going there to be educated.
We were passionate about it.
We cared about it.
We were enthusiastic about it.
It wasn't homework.
It was home play because it was so enjoyable.
Learning is the greatest and deepest game the universe has ever seen and will ever see.
I love, literally love the capacity that I have in this conversation to research new and surprising things for me to follow the rabbit hole wherever it goes.
It is an incredibly engaging and deeply erotic mind journey in many ways.
Just deeply satisfying.
And I think of how much I love to learn, which I really only discovered when I was doing my master's degree when I didn't have to take that many courses.
I had my own little office.
Well, not really an office, more of a cubicle.
And it really was only when, I think I was 27 or 28 when I was doing my master's, it was only then that I realized just how much I love to learn.
And that was, I guess, 25 or 24 years after, almost a quarter century after I started government schools, when I mostly had the library to myself and no one to answer to save a thesis advisor for my master's.
It was only then, almost a quarter century after the government first got its Dusty brain eviscerating meat hooks into my frontal lobes.
It was only then that I really understood just how much I love to learn and how passionate I was about learning.
Imagine if that was the way it was from the beginning.
I don't have to imagine it.
I mean, I'm parenting a child who's like that.
My daughter is Writing her own stories now.
She folds up these little books.
She's five.
She folds up these little books.
She creates these stories.
She illustrates them.
And she just loves to do it.
And it's, you know, it's just so delightful.
Just hearing her...
As she's figuring out the words.
She loves to do this stuff.
She's always asking me, Dad, tell me about a show.
Dad, tell me about this.
Tell me about that.
I mean, just wants to know.
Everything that's going on is so enthusiastic.
And imagine if you'd had that...
Joy.
Our brains, my friend, are like the feet of Chinese women 150 years ago, where the women, because it was considered to be exciting and erotic and sexy for women to have small feet, the girls' feet were crushed in vices and squished down so that their toes curled into their heels and they became these little hobbling balls that could never get anywhere.
This is what governments do to our brains.
And then you see all these Poor Chinese women.
And this ended like that.
Like over the course of like half a generation, it ended sort of the turn of the last century.
You see all these women hobbling around and you say, well, my God, we can't have a running team because this is the way that women are.
They can't run.
They can barely climb stairs.
They're in pain all day.
And this is when we talk about a free society and people are like, well, you can't have a free society because...
Well, that's like saying we can't have people who run because...
The Chinese women's feet are tortured and crushed.
And yeah, we can't have a free society right now because what the medieval implements of torture did to the Chinese women's feet, government schools and religions are doing to children's minds.
And I don't know how to solve that other than to encourage peaceful parenting as much as possible.
So yeah, when you sort of blithely say to me, well, I was never abused.
I assume that you mean like people didn't sort of wake up with a glib desire to torture you.
I certainly accept that.
But to say that you do not live in a society that harms children significantly, that's where I'd sort of part ways.
I agree.
I agree.
I definitely did when I think in that bigger context that you just provided.
Yeah.
And I don't look, I mean, again, just to remind everyone, I don't fault parents for putting kids in public school.
I mean, that's not even on the top 100 list of things with my parents.
That's just what people do.
But that doesn't matter.
I mean, before people understood that you need citrus and vitamin C to combat scurvy, kids died of scurvy.
And that's not because the parents were bad.
But that doesn't mean the kids were healthy either, so I just wanted to mention that.
Do you know if, according to any of the scientific research you've seen, if a person can actually undo that brain damage?
Or are we all just stuck at, not stuck, but are we all kind of just fated to deal with our, I guess, damaged brains?
I don't know what else to say.
So you're asking me if I'm a con artist?
I don't know, am I? I don't mean to be if I am.
No, because I'm out back saying, you know, this is Dr.
Steph's house of rattlesnake bite cures.
And you say, man, I just got bitten by a rattlesnake.
Do you think it's possible to cure it at all?
It's like, well, if I say no, then I'm a con man.
I'm selling rattlesnake cure- Potions!
So don't ask me!
If I'm a con man, I'm going to lie and say, sure, this sugar water will total.
I've got to go now, but let me sell it to you for five bucks and run over the hill.
No, but I mean, aren't some people too damaged?
Like deep psychopaths?
Aren't they too gone?
Oh, yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, no, I mean, to my knowledge, and I've talked about this recently, so I won't touch on it any more than briefly here.
To my knowledge, there's no cure.
For a lack of empathy.
Empathy is a 12 to 13 part complex system of interaction and interrelation that goes on in the brain that all needs to develop in sequence and requires the presence of mirror neurons and requires mirroring and all this complex stuff.
We're going to do a presentation about it just so people understand how complex it is to develop empathy.
Empathy is a form of telepathy because there's lots of people out in the world who have no fucking clue what other people are feeling.
No clue.
You show them a picture of somebody who looks really angry and they're like, constipated?
They just have no...
For a lot of people trying to decipher human emotion is like you and I trying to decipher Japanese as spoken by Microsoft Sam.
We can't do it.
It doesn't make any sense to us.
And then for people who have empathy, it is an involuntary process that sometimes you would like to not have.
It'd be nice to switch it off sometimes.
And when you think of...
Like I was thinking the other day about...
I think his name was Naifong.
He was a prosecutor who went after the Duke Lacrosse team.
I think it was four members of the Duke Lacrosse team who were accused by a black stripper of raping.
Crystal Magnum or something was her name.
I think he's now in jail for some horrible crime murderer.
I don't know.
Anyway.
And...
He was, like, totally gung-ho.
And, of course, everyone believed because of this, you know, bullshit black-white narrative that, you know, whites are the aggressors and blacks are the victims and so on, which is completely counter to statistics on crime.
It's a complete opposite and therefore can only be believed by people who've never had any exposure to facts.
And he was sort of in pursuit of these guys and, you know, he knew that these guys were scared, you know, going to jail for 10 or 20 years and he didn't empathize.
I mean, one of them, at least for sure, had an alibi.
He was, I think, at an ATM when the rape was supposed to be occurring, the time codes, and just getting money out of it.
And I think he was censored for it.
This is all off the top of my head, so don't take all of this with any reality.
You can look it up yourself.
But if you have empathy, you can't hound people like that.
Like, you can't, because you'd be like, wow, you know, it's not really a strong case, and these people, these guys are really scared, and what a terrifying situation for Young men to be in and and the moment you get counter evidence, you'd be like, whoa, okay, whatever, right?
Like you If the power rests upon the opposite of empathy, like if we have empathy for each other Then hierarchy becomes impossible Because empathy is upb I would not like to be hounded unjustly in a legal context, therefore I don't want to hound up other people unjustly in a legal context, or anyway, for that matter, right?
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, it's kind of like UPB for, like ABCs of UPB, introduction to UPB. And so, this, I mean, could you be a prison guard?
In, I mean, not a prison where, like, rapists and murderers and pedophiles and, yeah, okay, good.
But, could you be a prison guard for people who were caught with joints or people who made mistakes on their tax?
You know, like tax forms.
I mean, that's some tough stuff, right?
If you have empathy, society runs itself.
You don't need a state.
Because people care about each other.
That doesn't mean that they can, you know, nice to the nice, mean to the mean.
Right?
But if you have empathy, you can't really harm other people.
You can't steal from them.
You can't rape them.
You can't kill them.
You can't assault them.
You can't because you hit the person.
You feel it in your own teeth, right?
I mean, I've never hit anyone my whole life.
Never will.
Go to my grave with Liddy White typist hands, right?
Because I can't imagine.
Like, hitting someone would feel like punching myself, right?
And so there is no known cure.
And again, I'm just some amateur idiot on the internet.
So again, this is just stuff I've read.
Maybe there's been breakthroughs since I last read it.
But they've tried so many different things to cure a lack of empathy, to cure sociopathy, to cure even grandiosity, narcissism, or whatever.
And I don't know that anyone knows how to cure it.
I've never heard of anyone who knows how to cure it.
Talking cures don't help.
They've tried putting people in ice water with aversive therapy.
They've tried pumping them full of psychotropics.
They've tried pumping them full of LSD. They've tried encounter, hug therapy, scream therapy, putting people in rubber rooms.
They've tried art therapy.
I mean, they've tried so many different ways to get people to not...
Be cold-hearted bastards who only view other people as utilities to be exploited.
And I don't think it's possible.
I don't think it's possible.
I think that it's like if you don't get enough nutrition when you're growing up and you grow up to be four inches shorter, well, that's just the way you are, man.
I'm sorry.
But feeding you 4,000 calories a day when you're 25 isn't going to make you taller.
It's just going to make you fatter.
If you missed out on developmental windows that are essential and nobody knows how to replicate later in life, I'm sorry.
I think it's terrible.
I think it's tragic.
I think there are some people who can definitely work to heal themselves.
And I hesitate to say never because people can make astonishingly amazing choices.
But nobody from the outside knows how to make it happen.
Nobody knows from the outside how to go back in time and have 12 or 13 complex interactive brain development centers all work together in tandem during a particular developmental window.
Nobody knows how to go back and recreate that.
And nobody knows how to create that complex system in adults.
So it would have to be some...
Since you can't do it from outside, right?
I mean...
If someone's unconscious, you can give them a tracheotomy.
If they're choking on something, it's the only thing you can do.
But you can't give someone a soul from the outside.
You can't give someone a conscience.
You can't give them empathy from the outside.
You can work to develop that from the inside if you recognize the deficiency and are willing to work through the process.
I'm a big fan, of course, of talk therapy for various reasons, both personal and scientific.
But of course, as many people have pointed out, the part of you that would notice the empathy was not there and would really want to get it back is the first pass that gets broken.
And I think that the chance of regrowing empathy in adults or growing empathy in adults is basically about the same as regrowing an arm that's missing.
I don't think it can be done.
And again, this is just my opinion.
There's some scientific backing for what I'm saying.
But I think that if you are concerned about a lack of empathy and are willing to work on expanding your capacity for empathy, good for you.
I think that means that you are saveable, right?
Because you're not like, well, if I could only learn how to fake empathy better, I could really exploit more people, right?
Then empathy would be a great tool to have in the cold-hearted toolbox.
So I think if you're – it's the old thing.
I don't know if that's an iron rule, but it's something I remember reading about.
I think if you're concerned about a lack of empathy, if you feel a fear about your lack of connectedness with people and want to really work to connect with people, I think that you have a good shot.
Because most people, I mean, most people who are without empathy are pretty happy and self-satisfied with what they've got.
And we attribute the lack of empathy to child abuse?
Well, that's my first, if not only, port of call.
Is it possible that there are people who are born with no physical capacity for empathy, no matter how nicely you treat them?
I mean, I guess anything's possible.
I guess you could have a kid born with bat wings or something like that.
You call that autism.
I'm sorry?
We call that autism and Asperger's syndrome.
Which I don't think people really know much about either.
We'll go into it in the presentation.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, so it certainly is, but those are not sociopaths, right?
I mean, those are people who, they don't camouflage in society that well, if that makes sense.
Right, yeah, I get you.
So, I mean, we're doing some work on Bill Cosby, and I don't want to get into sort of what we're working on.
You've probably heard these allegations of serial predatory roofie rape.
I think 16 women have now come forward, and I mean, that guy, if it's true, we'll probably never know for sure, but if it's true, then that is a man who camouflaged really well, right?
Yeah.
So, as far, and people who have autism or Asperger's, they don't have, there's no moral dimension to what it is that, who it is that they are, as far as I understand.
Again, I'm no expert on any of these states of mind, but for the people who have sadism and sociopathy and so on, my understanding is that that's Fairly well explained by extreme child abuse.
As I talked about with Mike Cross years ago, to me saying, well, someone's a sociopath and they never experienced anything negative as a child, it's sort of like me going to the doctor and saying, well, my arm is broken and nothing broke it.
It doesn't make any sense.
Again, I could be wrong, but that's where my understanding is at the moment.
Mike, I mean, you're plowing through How close am I, what I'm saying to what I remember reading a couple of years ago?
Because this is all very complicated stuff, and I just went through it last night, so some of it is fresh and some of it is not.
But my understanding is based on what I read yesterday, and I have yet to go through and vet this.
But in the Science of Evil book, they talk about how people with high-level autism and Asperger's don't have the brain development.
The brain systems, the 10 to 12 brain systems that develop and form together to create empathy, they don't develop that way.
So therefore, they're physically incapable of experiencing empathy.
It doesn't mean that they're evil.
It doesn't mean that they're bad.
But it's a different way of thinking.
It's very systematic.
They look for rules and patterns.
And things like human interactions and how they work, they can't be immediately predicted.
Their brains are not set up in a way to where they understand that.
Whereas, sorry, but sociopaths or sadists and so on can often be very good at mimicking empathy.
Mm-hmm.
They understand its power.
They understand people's susceptibility to it.
You know, like if someone comes up to me, if I speak Japanese, and they start speaking to me in Japanese, I'll reply to them in Japanese.
Whereas I think people with Asperger's don't speak Japanese.
They just can't, right?
And so there is a difference to me between understanding what empathy is and knowing its power for people.
You know, like the Bill Clinton's I feel your pain stuff, where he knows the power.
I think what Dennis Miller called the Dewey-eyed bubba magic.
Those kinds of people really do understand what empathy is and how susceptible people are to it, and they use it, which I think is very different from what you're talking about.
Oh, absolutely.
And there's sociopaths as well that are not evil themselves.
You may have a sociopath that's a surgeon who uses his sociopathy in a way that's actually extremely productive and beneficial to society.
When he cuts you, he does not flinch.
Yeah, somebody who's disposing of a bomb or something is like, yeah, a little less empathy is probably good.
But I'm looking forward to presenting this information in presentation format because it's fascinating stuff and really goes down deep into empathy, if it's possible, for all people to feel it and the biological basis behind that and whatnot.
So look for that in the near future.
Alright, so sorry, we do have to move on to the next caller, but thank you so much for your comments and questions.
Alright, thank you, Tim.
Up next is James.
James wrote in and said, Before I listened to Against the Gods, I held the ignorant notion that all atheists must be communists, and therefore stayed away from them.
However, I do struggle with accepting God's existence, and because of your arguments, I'm having a closer look at atheism and trying to understand the satisfaction of their position.
If God, the cosmic and spiritual father that created the universe, breathed life into mankind, does not exist, then does this mean that the universe and all within it is simply a random happenstance, which has no deeper intent?
Am I an agnostic hipster for trying to locate such intent?
I don't know.
You're wearing lobster pants and horn-rimmed glasses?
You say you're struggling with the existence of...
I can't remember.
Mike, could you just read that part?
You said it's struggling with...
It struck me.
I can't remember what it was now.
The existence of God or the non-existence?
You're struggling with the non-existence of God.
Well, it's the same thing.
It's struggling with whether it exists or not.
And I suppose...
No, no, no, no.
Hang on.
Hang on.
Sorry to interrupt.
But it's important to be precise about this.
Okay.
Because...
Because when it comes to the existence of a deity, there's two reasons generally why people reject the atheist arguments.
Number one is that they have some problem with the logic of the atheist position, right?
And that's obviously right.
That can happen.
But the second, which I think is far more important and far less discussed, which I think you're touching on, and again, correct me if I'm wrong, But it seems to me that you're saying the consequences of the non-existence of God are so negative that it's hard to contemplate the dominoes that's not going down if I accept there's no deity.
In the sense of emotion, it's hard to explain this.
I don't disagree with the logic of the atheist position.
It's really the, I guess, the precision of the words being used.
And when you talk about the consequences of not believing, for me personally, my consequences are not, they're only emotional discomfort because of my upbringing and because of just the general confusion that it presents.
Wait, wait.
All random nothingness, right?
I mean, that sounds pretty more than emotional discomfort, doesn't it?
Well, I'm trying to understand what random...
It's like, wait a minute.
Are you saying my wife is a robot?
Well, there's just a bit of emotional discomfort about that.
It's like, oh, that's actually more than emotional discomfort, right?
Well, okay.
I guess maybe I'm not fully accepting what my argument is or isn't.
It's just that from my perspective, I'm like...
Earlier in life, I would have been more devastated by the loss of thinking of God, but what's taking its place is more of a, you could say, a scientific understanding, but it was also partly spiritual, and now I'm going to into more of a scientific acceptance of things.
And what's confusing is that what the science is saying, there's also a case for That there is a euphemistic way of understanding God, and it's just more points to the point of view.
So I don't know whether your wife is a robot or not.
It's just that there's a plausibleness that's there, and I'm kind of in a limbo of an acceptance.
Once I fully accept something, then maybe those ramifications, the consequences will be felt.
Okay, but let's go more into specific, because you're Your issue is, if it doesn't exist, what does this mean to the universe?
Does this mean that the universe and all within it is simply a random happenstance?
Yeah.
The latest thing I was reading about was Dr.
Lawrence Cross.
He's a physicist.
He basically talks about how the universe came from nothing and that nothing is actually something because of the energy that they calculated.
They looked at the universe.
And all the stuff that we're made of that came from stars and galaxies, all that, the carbon and all those things that were generated from that, that's us.
But the dark matter, basically, they did a calculation of the dark matter that's there.
And they've measured that basically the universe was created by nothing.
No, no, no.
I'm sorry to interrupt you.
We just did the confusing jaunt through cutting-edge physics a couple of weeks ago.
Okay.
And I guarantee you that that is not the issue that you have with the existence of a deity.
So let me tell you something.
Would you be making this case to argue for the existence of Odin, one of the ancient Norse gods?
No.
No?
Okay.
What about some Sarastrian deity or what about some Hindu god?
No, no.
Okay.
So you're talking about your god, the god you were raised with, the god you were told was real and By people you trusted in positions of authority over you, right?
Yes, but that idea has shifted, has morphed into something else, but hasn't lost all of its value.
Okay, no, no.
Okay, so when we talk about the existence of a deity, the fundamental question is, were you lied to as a child?
Like, forget all this dark matter and this physicist.
It comes down to something much more personal.
Okay.
Right, so you were told by, I'm going to assume your parents, you were told, God is real, Christ died for your sins...
Go to heaven.
Don't go to hell.
Here's how you do it.
These are the Ten Commandments.
These are the Bible stories.
This is Noah.
This is Jacob.
This is Abraham.
This is Isaac.
This is Moses.
This is whatever, right?
So you were told all of this stuff as truth, right?
Yes.
Okay.
Now, hang on, hang on.
I'm sorry to interrupt.
I won't dominate this conversation, I promise you.
But...
Were you ever told the arguments against?
Not until later in life.
And I had my own doubts.
Well, I suppose I understood vaguely what atheism meant in my teenage years.
But I began to doubt, probably around 10 or 11 years old, that what they were telling me wasn't entirely true.
Except the aspects of God, I kind of cling to.
So if I present an argument for which there are very strong counter-arguments, without providing those counter-arguments, is that honest of me?
Without providing the counter-arguments?
No.
In other words, would you accept a legal system where there was only prosecution and no defense, or only defense and no prosecution, no cross-examining of the witness, no physical evidence, would you accept a legal dictatorship of imposed opinions with no counterarguments to whatever claims were being put forward?
Well, no, certainly not.
Okay, so it would be immoral to have a legal system with no defense.
It would be Soviet.
It would be totalitarian.
Right?
Right.
Now, is it fair to a child to have only the defense of there's a deity and no opposition?
Is it fair to present arguments as true that are, to say the least, highly controversial?
And they're highly controversial even in religious communities because 9,999 gods nobody believes in and then one god, right?
So everyone's an atheist with regards to the other people's religious deities.
So atheism is the foundation particularly of monotheism, but all religions are fundamentally atheist in that they reject the existence of virtually all the gods mankind has ever dreamed or talked about.
So atheism is very well known to all religious communities.
It is, you know, atheism far outshadows belief in all religious communities.
And so to present to a helpless independent child the case for God as if, not even without a defense, as if there's no possibility of an opposing argument or idea.
Is that honest?
No, it's not honest.
It's not fair.
I mean, can I not?
Like, if I say to my daughter, well, there's just no God.
And boy, you know, that's it.
You know, anybody who believes it is ridiculous and foolish and so on, I say, well, no, I need to make the case.
I need to give her the arguments.
Right?
Right.
So this is what I mean when I say it's very emotional because the question fundamentally comes down to Did your parents care about you or were they vehicles for the transmission of superstition as fact?
To care about a child means not imposing conclusions on a child, not giving them the answer.
We all know a teacher is terrible if they simply tell you to memorize the answers to things.
You need to teach the child how to do algebra Rather than have them memorize all of these patterns, which computers can do far better and which teaches the child nothing.
So teaching a child how to think rather than what to think is the basic separation between a propagandist and an educator.
So when you look at your childhood, is it unreasonable, and I'm happy to hear the case, of course, is it unreasonable to say that although your parents may have been very nice people in very many ways, in this area, they were not honest with you.
I agree with what you're saying.
It wasn't exactly my parents who presented that case.
It was my grandparents.
It was just the church itself, the catechism school I went to.
All these influences were there.
All chosen by your parents.
Your parents are the gatekeepers of contact with the children.
Yes.
But it...
They weren't that religious.
And so my grandmother had instilled in me...
Wait, wait.
I'm sorry.
When you say they weren't that religious, I never know what that means.
Did they believe in like a third of a god?
Did they believe in God's arm?
I mean, what does that mean?
I guess that's kind of what it is.
It's not as being strict and following the dogma of religion.
It's instilling doubt within what the religion says.
And it's only believing in certain things that...
It makes sense to you.
Like my grandmother would say, don't believe everything in the Bible because it's, you know, it's full of shit.
But she went to church and she went to get money for the church and helped support the church.
She was someone who took solace in that religion, but wasn't very religious in the sense that she was out there drilling things into my head that here, this is what you should be thinking.
Well, hang on a sec.
So, She said, don't believe everything in the Bible.
Right.
And how did she help you know what was in the Bible was true and what was not true?
Well, yeah, all right.
She didn't, she must have assumed, I read me in conversation, I was bringing certain things up, but I don't fully remember the specifics.
I just remember her.
Oh, so hang on a sec.
So you came up with problems in the Bible, and then she told you don't believe everything in the Bible.
Right, correct.
So she fogged you.
She presented to you things that were true, and then when you found ways in which they weren't true, she said, well, some of it's a lie, but I'm not going to tell you which parts, and I'm not going to tell you how to separate the truth from falsehood.
I'm just going to fog you because you've outsmarted me on a few bits of dogma.
I don't believe that was her intent.
I think that it was just simply that she didn't know how to articulate it.
She wasn't going to go into the details.
She was just saying, I was bringing up a point, and she's saying, don't believe that.
And that was her point.
Hang on, hang on.
Okay, I don't know what intent means in these situations.
I mean, if you've got psychic abilities, please let me know.
In fact, just tell me in my brain, right?
But saying you've got to believe this stuff to get into heaven, right?
And then, well, some of it's a lie, but I'm not going to tell you which parts are lies, and I'm not going to tell you how to separate the lies from the truth.
Doesn't that just make you paranoid?
Well, I can see it could, just at that particular moment, I don't remember being paranoid.
I remember having doubt of the dogma of the religion that I grew up with, that I was supposed to grow up with.
No, no, but your grandma...
I'm just going with the example your grandmother gave.
Your grandmother did not say it's dogma.
She said some of it is divinely inspired and some of it is lies.
Okay.
But which is which and how do you tell?
Well, yeah, I don't...
She didn't specify that, but she just gave me enough doubt.
But dude, oh my god, oh my god, I'm sorry, I've got to keep interrupting you.
You're not getting how important this is.
Okay.
Look, if I sit you in front of a plane...
That is flying at 30,000 feet with 100 passengers in it.
And I say to you, some of these controls are reversed.
You've got to land this plane, man.
Some of these controls are reversed.
And some of them are not.
And 100 people's lives depend on you.
And your life depends upon you landing this airplane safely.
Some of these controls are reversed.
And some of them are not.
And I'm not going to tell you which.
Now go land this plane.
I can agree with what you're saying.
It's just I don't...
I... She didn't specify...
Well, all right.
I don't think I've articulated what she said properly.
No, you have.
No, I'm not going to hear this again.
She told you some parts of the Bible are true and some parts are lies, and she didn't tell you how to separate them.
And, of course, she can't tell you how to separate them, because there's no rational way to separate truth from fiction in the Bible.
Okay.
Right?
I mean, there's no rational way to do it, because there's no God.
Right?
And so there's no divine inspiration.
There's no bits in red which are dictated by God and bits in yellow which are dictated by man and bits in purple which are dictated by the needs of priests and bits of stuff that comes later.
There's no way to rationally distinguish between divine truth and falsehood in the Bible.
It's either divinely true or it's not.
But you can't cherry pick.
There's not a buffet because the whole thing is supposed to be this is what God dictated for mankind to get into heaven, right?
Okay.
So, I'm obviously raising an impossible standard to say, well, how would she tell you which parts of the Bible are true and which parts of the Bible are false?
And how would she know?
She couldn't possibly know that.
No, I guess...
Okay.
She couldn't know that.
I guess in terms of when you say cherry-picking, if we were to say that Jesus creating, you know, water from wine...
I can look at that...
Sorry, he creates wine from water, just to be precise.
The other one is more like just drinking wine and peeing, but okay, go ahead.
The thing is that you're looking at a change of state from something.
When you look at that instance, you say, well, that can't be true.
You would have doubt just in that instance of thinking of that.
And therefore, I can...
I can take the Bible as, or the religion, as a euphemism for something else.
I can ignore the things that I don't think are, that make sense, and just look at that, well, okay, it means something else then.
It means something that, and that's why I can't really listen to that.
But I can take with it the intent of them writing it in terms of the Christian values that they talk about, just the Ten Commandments.
Those things are values that I look at and say, okay, well, that makes sense to me.
And I believe that's...
No, they're not.
No.
So the commandments are not values.
And they're not philosophical.
The clue is in the word.
Commandment.
Okay.
Right?
A commandment is not an invitation to thought.
Especially when you've got the infinite fiery gun of hell pointed at the temple of the soul.
It is a commandment.
I mean, I wrote a whole book on ethics, and the book was not, thou shalt not initiate the use of force, or I'm going to set fire to you.
That would have been a shorter book to write, considerably easier on the trees, a little bit easier to digest for people, and the exact opposite of philosophy.
They're not values, they are commandments, The Ten Commandments are death threats.
They have nothing to do with philosophy.
They're the exact opposite of philosophy.
Do it or I'll burn you forever is not philosophy.
It's not even blackmail.
It's infinite death threat.
I will torture you forever if you don't do exactly what I say.
Even though I won't actually define very much about what I say.
But we would never accept that as being part of any rational system of instruction.
Do what I say or I will torture you forever is the exact opposite of philosophy.
And if a human being were to put that forward, he would go to jail.
And rightly so.
So the Ten Commandments don't talk to me about values.
Or allegories or ethics.
These are infinitely combustible eternal death threats for failure to comply with arbitrary authority.
It is totalitarian in a way that human totalitarians couldn't possibly imagine achieving.
Okay.
I suppose I've been ignorant of the history of the But in terms of the expression of commandments, I can ignore that expression and still look at the meaning as a value because it's saying the same thing as a philosophy of saying, don't kill.
If you say, don't kill people, and you say, I command you not to kill people, you're still saying, don't kill people.
And that's what I'm hearing.
Right.
Don't kill people is not philosophy.
Okay.
That's like saying, I've got a cookbook called Make Meals.
Okay.
I don't tell anyone about anything.
Okay.
And really, come on, you know enough about the Bible to know that if you have the Old Testament deity having the unbelievable gall with a giant white-whiskered straight face saying murder is evil, are you kidding me?
Okay.
Are you kidding me?
I mean, God smites down pretty much the entire planet, except for Noah, his wife, and some hard-to-identify opposite bald testicle mosquitoes, right?
I mean, he kills kids still in the womb.
He kills newborns.
He kills people before the age of reason.
He kills old people who are just on their way to the priest to confess for their sins and gain absolution.
He kills the entire planet because he's angry.
And then he has the nerve to say to human beings, murder is evil.
That is about as insane a situation as anyone can imagine.
If I were to substitute, when I asked the question, if I were to substitute the word creator, substitute the word God for creator, would you have the same, would we be having the same discussion?
Well, no, because...
You're talking about the Ten Commandments, which is Judeo-Christian.
Okay.
And therefore, we talk about the Old Testament, right?
Okay.
If you're going to say, I'm going to make a more abstract concept, well, then we go into the problems of agnosticism.
Are you talking about consciousness without matter?
I suppose that...
I mean, it would have to be, right?
If it's consciousness with matter, then it's alive.
It's...
The word consciousness, that's what I mean, it's not, and applying it to the physics that I'm talking about, it's not exactly appropriate.
It's not, there's not a precise...
Okay, so it's not consciousness then?
It's not, but it could...
Could there be something...
Dude, you know you're doing exactly what your grandmother did.
You know that, right?
I'm just confusing myself and everything.
No, no.
You're fogging me.
I'm fogging me.
Because I'm pointing out rank contradictions.
And I'm not doing this because I want to pick apart your religious beliefs, but because I want to get you back to your relationships, which is the real source of the problem.
I'm pointing out logical beliefs and you're simply stripping away definitions.
Right?
Like you said to your grandmother, this stuff doesn't make sense.
She says, well, you know...
Some stuff is not true.
And now I'm saying, well, this stuff doesn't make sense.
And then you're abstracting out of the Judeo-Christian.
And then I say, well, is it consciousness without matter?
And you say, well, not exactly consciousness, but it could be something.
You're simply removing definitions.
Whenever contradictions are exposed, you are removing the definitions that are causing the contradictions, right?
Right?
So first you say, well, there are these values, these commandments.
And I say, well, that's not values, they're not philosophy.
It's like, okay, well, but there could be value in them.
It's like, no, because they're death threats.
No, okay.
Okay, well, thou shalt not murder.
Well, that's not philosophy, plus God murders all the time.
So you keep backing away from your positions by removing anything solid in what you're talking about.
And this is the agnostic position.
That's because the word that I used was obviously inappropriate.
God is as opposed to creator.
Okay, but to create requires some level of consciousness, right?
What's the question is that with the physics, we're talking about how here's a physicist who's saying that something came from nothing.
And that because of the they've calculated of with the missing energy that's there, they've calculated this makes sense that nothing is actually something.
And that there is no need for a God or a creator for this universe to happen.
And that there is actually possibly multiple universes.
So it's just...
I start out with God because that's how I... You know, when you say we're against the gods, it's...
I guess to me, God means many different things.
And there's a creator, so it's like, okay, consciousness...
I'm reducing it, but that's a part of what I think physics does.
Do you know anything that creates anything that does not have some form of consciousness?
I don't know.
What do you mean?
Can you give me an example?
I'm not talking about single cell reproduction or mitosis or meiosis or anything like that.
I'm talking about something which is brought into being.
That was not there before, and it could be a monkey stacking things to get bananas or whatever.
Can you think of anything that is caused to be created where there's no consciousness involved?
Well, particles.
And what they're talking about is, in a proton, the picture is that the empty space that's in the proton is this bubbling cauldron of particles that come in and out of existence.
And they're saying there's no need for a god for this to occur, no need for consciousness for this to occur.
And I'm trying to make sense...
I mean, I don't know enough about the physics of what you're talking about.
Are you saying that something is created through intent, but there's no consciousness behind it?
Well, the intent comes from...
I guess I'm trying to look at the...
compare the human experience, where the problem of consciousness is that we have these experience of visual sensations...
um the quality of things and the mental images that pop in your head um and trying to make sense of that compared to like here's as a as a human being how could we exist when there's there's something there's no intent there and it just pops out of nothing that the juxtaposition of the two just seems It's just very perplexing, and that's really what, I guess...
I'm sorry, I'm not sure what you're saying.
Are you saying, how did human beings come to be?
Well, that's...
I mean, that's pretty much known, right?
No, well, that's pretty...
Well, it's on a much more scale of knowing, because we're made of particles, we are protons, and I'm not...
I'm sorry, I'm not...
No, listen, you're changing topics.
You're refusing to answer specific questions.
You're fogging like crazy.
I'm not...
You are.
Look, you are.
You'll listen back to this and you'll hear me asking very specific questions and you'll hear you going off on these foggy tangents that can't be followed by any human being with the capacity to listen.
I don't...
And I'm not being critical.
I'm not trying to be mean.
I'm just telling you...
Sorry, go ahead.
I understand that.
I just said I appreciate your show.
I really...
You validate a lot of things in other topics.
The reason I called was because I enjoy listening and talking.
I really enjoy you.
I don't intend to fog the argument.
Maybe there's just too much going on in my head to be able to precisely verbalize what I'm talking about.
I apologize for that.
Maybe I should just leave it at that and say, you know, I appreciate the show and that's it.
Because there's...
I'm probably going to continue to fog this because there's a lot here and I'm just...
No, look, there's nothing in what you're saying that has much intellectual content.
You've got some confused ideas about physics.
And I'm not saying this because I'm some expert in physics.
But...
I'll just end with a little monologue because I get that our communication is not flowing too smoothly.
And, you know, the idea that there's just too much going on, I mean, it's sort of like gymnastics versus epilepsy.
I guess with epilepsy there's lots of stuff going on, but it's not particularly graceful.
But what I would say is that your relationship to the universe is not any kind of primary concern to you.
Your relationship to the people who raised you is your primary concern.
We are tribal, social, attachment based organisms.
We are tribal social attachment-based organisms.
We don't have a fucking relationship to protons.
We don't have a relationship to the big bang, the dawn of time, or the farthest reaches of the universe.
We don't have relationships to alternate universes or dark matter or any of that sort of stuff.
We have relationships to people.
We are social animals.
As Aristotle said, a man who can live alone must be either a beast or a god.
We are social animals.
It is that very susceptibility to socialization, which is the primary vehicle by which irrationality is transmitted.
We are developmentally programmed to obey those who have authority over us and to believe what they say.
That's just how human beings work.
And the reason why I wanted to talk about your grandmother and was trying to sort of point out the logical inconsistencies is not because I want you to jump into dark matter and protons and photons and all this kind of stuff, but because it's not the universe that becomes meaningless when we accept that we've been propagandized.
It is meaning that is stripped out of our relationships, our primary relationships, particularly when we We're children.
We wish to substitute randomness for God.
Because that allows us to pretend that the absence of God means that we have a changed relationship to photons and dark matter and big bangs and crap like that, none of which is fundamentally true.
When we accept that there is no deity, when we accept that religion is rankly self-contradictory superstition, It changes our relationship with our primary caregivers.
That is a primary survival relationship for us as human beings.
And it is that very susceptibility and dependence that we have the fourth trimester of our first couple of years that is really used by people to transmit these irrationalities.
We do not have the capacity to say no as children.
We do not have the capacity to independently think against irrationalities of those in authority when we are children.
We are dependent.
We must accept.
We must absorb.
It's not an accident that culture, religiosity, nationalism, and racism photocopy themselves generation to generation.
Because children do not have the capacity to say no, which is why fogging works with children, which is why you're trying to do it with me unconsciously, because that's what worked with you.
It's not going to work with me.
I'm not dependent upon you.
I can speak, no, this is not true.
No, I could do all the things that you couldn't do with your grandmother and couldn't do with your parents and couldn't do with your extended family and couldn't do with your priests and couldn't do with your teachers.
Because I'm independent.
I'm not your child.
You're not my child.
We can be honest with each other, but you're replicating this childhood mechanisms of fogging for things that you would never accept from someone else.
I mean, if you ask me what's two and two make four, and I say, well, four is just a concept, but let me tell you about this imaginary kite I once flew on Betelgeuse, you'd be like, what the...
You wouldn't accept that if you ask someone, how much does this car cost?
And they say, well, numbers are very interesting.
Did you know that there are prime numbers?
And did you know that there are these negative numbers and these Fibonacci sequences and blah, blah, blah?
You'd be like, what the hell are you doing?
Just give me the goddamn answer to the question I'm asking, if you don't mind me saying.
And so it is not any kind of relationship to physics and other dimensions and Big Bangs that is causing you problems right now.
Is that if there's no God, if religion is an obvious lie, then what happened is people exploit it, not because they're malevolent, but just because that's the way that power works in human relations until people achieve some self-knowledge.
People manipulated your dependents to infect you with their own irrationalities, and then when you ask them questions, they further fogged you.
Now, you wouldn't accept that fog from an equal, but you had to accept it from those who had authority over you as a child.
So did I, so does everyone else who is under the age of 20 or whatever, right?
I get it.
It makes perfect sense.
But what you're dealing with here is not that meaning may be stripped out of the universe, but that meaning and closeness and affection and possibly even love may be challenged by you bringing rational questions to people who propagandized you.
Doesn't mean that there'll be no love, but there's a challenge in that.
And that's, I think, the level at which I would suggest you work.
Maybe you're completely right.
Maybe I'm completely wrong.
Maybe you do have this passionate emotional connection and commitment to maintaining your relationship with other dimensions and big bangs and dark matter.
I don't think that's the case.
I think it's your primary early childhood relationships that are called into significant question.
When you think for yourself and when you are critical of the people who tell you stuff that obviously makes no sense.
I mean, if you would go to your grandmother, even now, if she's alive and say, okay, you told me some of it was a lie and some of it was a truth.
How do you know?
How do you know?
Cross-examine the witness because lawyers have authority.
The courts have authority.
So they can do that.
But when we're children, we're not lawyers.
We have no authority.
We have to just go, okay, well, they're fucked, so I guess I can't really go anywhere there.
Or, well, they just told me, do as I say and not as I do.
Or they said, well, when you're in your house, you can make your own rules.
Under my house, you do what I say.
Oh, I guess they can hit me saying, don't hit, because they have power.
I guess I've got to swallow.
You won't do that as an adult.
And part of growing up, and I'm not saying you're not mature, but part of growing up is treating people as equals and not replicating early childhood relationships with other people, as I believe, as I suspect, you were trying unconsciously to do with me.
So my suggestion is talk to the people in your life who raised you in this paradigm.
Ask them the tough questions.
Figure out if you can connect to them in ways that don't involve the mutual belief in self-contradictory things or the mutual fantasy that self-contradictions and irrationalities can exist and that we can connect through fantasy.
I've always argued we cannot connect through fantasy.
We connect through reality.
We connect through truth.
Everything else is just a shell game and an illusion.
So...
Sorry for that long monologue.
I hope that helps, and if we could move on to the next caller, I would appreciate it.
Steph, thank you.
I do understand what you're saying.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
All right.
Thanks, James and Steph.
Up next is Kayla.
Kayla wrote in and said, My family insists that I get a high-paying career before I have children, but I think doing what I love is more important.
Do you think that in order to start a family, you need to have a high income?
I do.
Well, let's see.
I used to work in software and I became a podcaster shortly before my daughter was born.
So their theory is what?
You go and become like a A doctor or a partner in a law firm, and then you have kids and you've got financial security?
Yeah, well, it's my aunt and uncle.
They basically told me that they messed up growing up, so I have to go get the career, get the graduate school, get the career, marry a guy that makes a lot of money, and then I can have kids.
Well, wait a minute.
If you marry a guy who makes a lot of money, why do you need to make a lot of money?
Because I have to also be smart.
To be smart, I have to marry someone else who's smart, that makes money.
Oh, and so the way that you know that someone's smart is to make a lot of money.
Yes, that's what they say.
But I don't think so.
And how do they feel that they messed up their lives?
What would they say if you asked them or if I asked them?
I assume they're not there, right?
Yeah, no, they're not here.
Well, because they did a lot of drugs and then had a baby, got off drugs, and then...
Wait, I'm sorry, I shouldn't laugh.
They did a lot of drugs?
Yeah, um...
And so the only alternative to not doing a lot of drugs is to have some six-figure income with a giant career.
Okay.
Pendulum might be swinging a little far the other way.
And also you're taking advice from people who did a lot of drugs, which, you know, may not be there.
Yeah.
Well, I mean...
Because of my past, like with my foo or whatever, they were a little...
It was a really bad situation.
And when I ran away and got out of the house, my aunt and uncle took me in.
So I kind of feel like I owe them at least to take their advice, but it's almost like they're pushing.
No, no.
You may owe them to listen to their advice.
You don't owe anyone to take their advice.
Yeah.
Because that's surrendering your sovereign consciousness, right?
Mm-hmm.
You can't be programmed like a computer.
Listen for sure.
Nobody's obligated to take anyone's advice, right?
Yeah.
I mean, I'm not taking it like I actually am trying to do my own business and everything, but it's almost like we love you and support you, but you need to be doing better and you're not doing good enough and you should be in school still and have a backup plan and all that kind of stuff.
Alright, so I'm just going to ask a couple of early 20s, is that right?
Yeah, I'm 22.
You have that silvery voice of the early 20s that is like a lovely little dinner bell ringing in my inner ear.
No, it's true.
Sorry.
Okay, so you're 22, and how many kids do you want to have?
Two.
Two, okay.
And you know that in your late 20s, your fertility is going to start to decline.
Not catastrophically, but it gets a little harder.
Plus, your energy level is going to be lower because...
You're not younger, right?
Yeah.
I actually want to have kids in two years.
You want to have kids in two years?
Yes.
Okay.
Do you have a sperm carrier of reasonable virtue floating around?
Yes, I do.
I have a fiancé.
Oh, good.
So you have the necessary nutsack with a good heart attached.
That is, you know, important.
The internet tells me that that's how it works.
Okay.
And...
How much money do you want or what kind of lifestyle do you want for kids?
Well, me and him, we really just want to show our kids that you can do what you love and money is not really that important.
Of course, I want enough so we're not starving, which isn't that hard to do.
Right.
But I don't know.
I figured even if I did like a small part-time job to pay the bills that it wouldn't be a bad thing.
Like I don't need a set nine to five job to live happily.
How much money do you think you could save up over the next couple of years?
And you don't have to give me an exact figure.
I'm just sort of wondering.
Well, I have a wedding to pay for in June.
No, you don't.
No, you don't.
Look, I mean, you can pay for a wedding if you want, but you don't have a wedding you have to pay for.
I assume it hasn't already happened, hence the use of the word fiancé.
Yes.
Okay, so you don't have to pay for a wedding.
And I'm sure that your children would rather that you be home rather than out paying for a wedding they didn't even get to attend, right?
Yes.
Okay.
I'm hoping that in the next two years, like I'm getting on this like budgeted plan to pay off my debt and then to actually have like a stable savings account.
But I don't know.
I guess I haven't really put a full number to how much I want to save.
I don't know.
Okay, yeah.
I mean, look, there's some basic spreadsheet stuff to do, which is you don't need a lot of money when kids are little.
Yeah.
Like, you don't.
I mean, what do they want?
Boobs, belly tickles, belly farts.
I mean, they're basically your fiancé.
You'll get the hang of it.
Yeah.
It's pretty much the same thing for men throughout their lives.
But you don't need a lot of money to...
To be a mom when the babies are there.
In fact, I would choose time over money for babies.
So...
Oh, yeah.
Sorry, Mike.
Yeah.
Insurance.
Are you in the U.S.? Yes.
Okay.
Well, so...
Okay.
So if you don't have a lot of money, you get some Obamacare subsidies, assuming that the Supreme Court challenge about the state exchanges doesn't work or doesn't go through.
So you'll get...
You'll need to budget some money for doctoring, right?
Yes, yeah.
Okay, but babies don't care how many bedrooms are in the mansion, right?
Yeah.
The aforementioned boobs, belly rubs, and all that, that's what they're into, right?
So you don't need a lot of money when kids are little.
I mean, my mom raised me with very little.
We were just broke all the time.
And that wasn't really the issue.
You know, people say you need a lot of money for kids.
But man, I mean, in the 19th century, like 12 kids in a room, in a farm.
I mean, watch Old Yeller.
I mean, good Lord.
You don't need a huge amount of money to have kids when they're younger.
Now, when they get older, if you want to put them in, I don't know if you're going to homeschool or put them in private school or, I mean, obviously, I'm not a big fan of government schools, to say the least.
Me neither.
Yeah, so, but, you know, you can homeschool and that's certainly fairly efficient if, you know, you get the right resources and, you know, rather than spending, what, $1,500 or $2,000 a year, a month rather, on private schools, that's a pretty good job for you to do.
You sound like an intelligent young lady.
Yeah.
I would love to do that.
Yeah, so if you've got a guy who can go out and, you know, pull in some cheddar, then you're probably going to be okay.
You can, you know, I mean, I was, my parents had a house when I was first born, but they split up, I think, when I was like six months old.
And I lived in a little apartment.
We were in a one-bedroom apartment for a while.
I mean, you don't, you know, we never had a car the whole time growing up.
We almost never went on vacations.
Yeah.
You know, food was in short supply at times, like literally.
Yeah.
I had to eat food that was furry and not like, you know, healthy roadkill.
This was like bad fur.
Yeah, I actually had to do that too because when I grew up, I lived from house to house, car to car, church-funded housing.
So my family likes to kind of use that against me.
They're like, well, you don't want to go through what you went through when you were young.
Yeah.
No, but the problem wasn't the lack of money.
The problem was the lack of stability, right?
Yes.
The problem was the lack of love.
It was the lack of connection.
You know, it's not...
Poverty that results from chaos and abuse and a mess is not the same as poverty, so to speak, that results from a dedication to being there for your kids.
That's a very, very different situation.
Yeah.
I mean, homelessness is different from being a monk, even though the incomes are probably pretty similar.
Yeah.
Like, I've been really trying hard to, you know, be an entrepreneur.
Like, I started a little website, and I'm trying to make enough off of that, that if I needed extra income, that I could stay at home if I needed to, but not enough that it would take away time from my kids, because, you know, that's what I really wanted when I was younger, was someone there for me, but...
My family, they're like, well, your kids need to go to a good school.
They need to have a good car.
That's not true.
No, listen, listen.
I mean, I just read something from Charles Murray about this and he was referring to another woman's book that we're going to work on doing a review of because it seems that which school your kids go to have virtually no impact on how they do in life.
And there's some pretty strong arguments that even parents don't have, I mean, outside of abuse, parents don't have a huge, huge impact on the end personalities of their kids.
I mean, there's so much that's bound up in genetics, particularly in IQ, but there's so much that's bound up in genetics.
Your children, according to the research that I have yet to fully vet, so take this with a grain of salt, your kids do not need to go to a good school.
Now, that doesn't mean that it doesn't matter where they go.
But in terms of their success in life, you know, they measure kids' IQ when they're young.
And that pretty much determines how they're going to turn out.
And, you know, it's weird because, you know, I talk a lot about parental influence.
And I think it's important.
But in terms of, I think Charles Murray was saying he's had four kids with his wife, right?
And he's like, he says, you know, I like to think that my wife and I helped our kids be nicer people, but the data is the data.
And it's pretty hard to find very strong ways in which parents fundamentally alter their children's personalities.
Again, outside of abuse.
And again, just because it doesn't matter where they go to school in terms of how they do in the long run.
Mm-hmm.
That doesn't mean that it doesn't matter in terms of how they enjoy their childhood.
You know, I mean, if they go to a nice school or a homeschool by you, that's better than going to some god-awful government school.
Even though it may not have a strong effect on how they turn out in terms of their income or their professions or whatever they do, it's still nicer to go to a school that you enjoy than a school that you're terrified, right?
So it's not like it has no effect in the quality of their life in the moment, but In terms of outcome, you know, people say, well, you've got to go to a good school.
It's like, well, Bernie Madoff went to a good school.
Barack Obama went to good schools.
Lots of nasty Wall Street people went to good schools.
Lots of people high up in the military industrial complex went to really good schools.
Lots of leftist nonsense idiots went to really good schools.
I mean, some of the Marxist professors who taught me went to really good schools.
And Mark Twain didn't.
So, you know, it's kind of hard to make that case.
But okay, so my suggestion would be, like, figure out the old thing, right?
How much money do you need a month, right?
You can probably get by on two grand a month.
Yeah.
Maybe $2,500 a month.
And between the two of you, you know, that's not a lot of harvesting and hunter-gathering to be able to make that, particularly if you've got a little bit of money saved up ahead of time.
Yeah.
You know, it's hard to sort of say if I could live my life over because I didn't meet my wife until I was in my 30s.
And...
But if I could do it again, I think there's a very strong case to be made, particularly for women.
Okay, if I was doing it over again as a chick, I think there's a very strong case to be made to have kids when you're young.
Your eggs are fresher, you're healthier, you've got more energy.
And if you get your kids to, let's say you have two kids in two years, right?
So you'll be 24.
And let's say that they're a year or two apart.
So, you know, by the time you're 30 31 a Significant portion of the important stuff around child raising It's the first five years first six years of the you know that defines the whole rest of the time so by the time you're 30 You got a good chunk of it under your belt 31, maybe and let's say you're gonna work till you're 65 Well, okay, so you've got 34 years if you want to have a great career and I think that's not a bad way to do it.
I think there's a lot to be said about that.
Of course, the problem is if you go and get educated now and go and start a career, if you want to be a good mom, then I believe it's important to be home.
And so then you've got to take seven years or so out of your career time.
And depending on your career, that's If you're in software, well, you're doomed.
You might as well just scrub your brain and start again.
It's like, I know QBasic and COBOL85. Sorry, maintenance programming dungeon for you.
Or if you're in law, of course the law has changed.
If you're in medicine, the medical field has changed.
I mean, it's hell to get back into things.
Even if you're in business, a lot of the financial instruments have changed.
Funding mechanisms have changed.
Even business philosophies have changed.
So if you take a seven-year gap in the middle of an established career, let's say you go out and start a career and then you're 31 or 32, then you've got to take your break.
And then what are you going to get back into the workforce when you're 40 or 41 when you haven't really kept up with whatever's going on in your field?
Now, if you're a waiter, okay, food get to customer.
Not much has changed, right?
But, you know, if you're talking about that, then you're not giving up much to be home with your kids, right?
So if you're talking about Some medium to high-powered career.
You're taking time off.
That's going to significantly impact your marketability.
And also, I know it's not legal and so on, but there may be some people who are like, oh, she's young, she's married, maybe she's going to want to have kids.
You can't ask people, as far as I know, those questions, but it doesn't mean that you're going to automatically get the job over someone who's Kids are grown or who's a guy or whatever.
It's just the way that things work to some degree.
You know, it's hard to say, hard to prove, but it's certainly a very real possibility.
So from a money-making standpoint, I personally think it makes more sense to budget small, have kids.
I mean, you're not going out of the damn house much anyway, right?
It depends where you live in the States.
But, you know, they're babies.
They don't want to, you know, hey, nine feet of snow, want to make a tunnel?
You know, they're They're babies.
You don't want them to lick your boob and have it freeze.
That's not the way it goes.
So I think it's a good case to be made.
Have your kids young when the money doesn't matter so much, when they get a little older.
If you put them in school or you keep them home or whatever, then there's a chance to really make things go from a career standpoint.
I mean, if they want to go to college, of course, that can be pretty pricey.
But if they're homeschooled, they'll probably get good scholarships, right?
I mean, they're stuck in the brain dungeons in public school.
So I think there's a pretty good case to be made.
I have significant skepticism towards go and get educated, start a career, and then take your 30s off to have kids.
I don't know.
I mean, I think it's – and I don't want to get into any details, but it's not purely personal experience that I'm talking about here – It's a significant challenge.
And I think that careers tend to have momentum.
So if you start in your early 30s and you go for 35 years, that's momentum, right?
But if you're like, you know, start in my 20s, take off my 30s, try to get back into it in my 40s, I think that's a pretty tough role.
Yeah.
It's a pretty tough road to hoe.
So does that help at all?
Yeah, it does.
One of the things that my family was really pushing against was I started this little website where I just kind of do editing which I really enjoy and I could do it from home and I was doing it and I was making enough to just pay the bills and then Kevin made the supplement income and Then they started, they were really criticizing it for a long time, like, well, that's only temporary and you're not going to go anywhere with that.
And I'm like, well, it's a website.
Wait, what does that mean that, what, everyone's going to become William Styron?
Like, nobody's going to need editing anymore?
They're going to be like Mozart writing down the symphonies and all that?
I mean, what does that mean, it's temporary?
Do they think that, like, is English going out of style?
Do you not know Mandarin or something?
Well, they think it's because I don't have the doctorate that that's why it's only temporary.
They say people are only coming to you because they don't know any better, because you don't have the degree.
But then a month ago, I hired someone who's got a master's in creative writing, and I'm like, look, I don't need the degree because I can hire people to do that, because that's what happens when you own a business.
Good thing they're not Bill Gates' dad.
Steve Jobs' dad, you know?
Yeah.
You know you don't have a degree.
You can't run a software company.
Are you crazy?
Yeah.
Brad Pitt didn't go to RADA, Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, so obviously he can't possibly be an actor.
I mean, did Linda Evangelista go to modeling school?
I don't think so.
I mean, how many...
Shakespeare, yeah, it's true, he went to government school, but for 12 weeks a year, did he ever take...
Theater writing at the National Theater School of the 15th, 16th century?
Well, yeah.
I don't know.
I mean, the idea that you need all these credentials.
I mean, I'm happy I had a master's in this particular field.
But I also, you know, nobody should believe anything I say because I have a master's.
Unfortunately, a few people do.
So I think that if you do a good job, then The work will, you know, quality wins out.
People will find you, if you're good to work with and you do a good job, you know, we don't do any advertising for this show, really.
We keep growing.
Yeah.
Because I think there's enough quality and utility in what we talk about here that, so yeah, this idea, I mean, do they themselves have like a wall full of degrees and all that?
Family, I mean, they're not really that high up there as far as money is, but I think they live outside of their means personally, but if I ever mention that, they would get really angry.
So, there are two government workers who are telling you how to make it big.
Yes.
Do you see any particular challenge with that paradigm?
Yes.
Right.
Well, I mean, it's I understand where they're coming from, you know, because it's like, I know that they wanted more for their kids when they grew up, but I feel like...
Wanted more what?
More, I guess, resources.
Like, they had to live in their parents' basement for a while until they got on their feet, and then they had to get...
Was that a lack of education or drugs?
Probably drugs.
Yeah!
I mean...
Oh!
Don't do drugs!
Stay in school!
Gotta get my job!
I mean, God!
I mean, they may be missing a bit of the larger picture of why their lives have had some challenges.
Yeah, and I can't really point that out because if I bring it up gently, it's kind of...
They go on the defensive and feel attacked like, well, you know, at the time, best we could have done.
Hang on, hang on.
Are you trying to tell me that people who are overly critical...
Are defensive about being criticized?
First time ever.
Here's what you should do.
I got all these answers.
Wait, what about these problems in your life?
What are you talking about?
That's completely irrelevant.
I mean, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I mean, I just don't think that's a very good approach.
Yeah.
Look, I've got some answers in my life that I think are pretty useful.
I mean, you've probably listened to the show before.
I mean, I don't tell people what to do.
No.
I think there's costs and benefits to a lot of choices that we made.
I mean, okay, if you're going to go out and talk about strangling hobos, maybe we have a different conversation.
But when to have kids, I don't know that there's a right answer to that.
And I think that if you're smart and if you're willing to Learn about yourself.
If you're willing to learn about how to provide value to people, you're going to be fine in this world.
I mean, unless there's some zombie apocalypse, then I think, or, you know, scientists wearing sexist t-shirts or whatever, then you're going to be fine.
So, okay, I'll tell you a really cheesy story.
This is my rolling balls of Indiana Jones wisdom down the hill of years.
So when I was younger, I found a book...
At a friend of mine's place, and it was called A Chicken Soup for the Mother's Soul.
Oh, no.
Oh, I'm telling you.
I mean, this was like, you open it, and like, basically, tentacles of treacle strike you in the jugular.
I mean, they're just, it was like, seriously sentimental stuff.
But I have a soft spot for sentimentality.
I mean, you know, give me what used to be called long-distance commercials about grandparents reconnecting with grandkids.
I mean, it's, yeah, I mean, I can...
I can squirt a leak pretty easily when it comes to sentimental stuff.
And in it, there was a story.
And the story was a woman who had been married for like 30 or 40 years and she was doing the wedding again.
You know, because they loved each other so much.
And she said, you know, when I was a bride, I was in my 20s and I was so nervous and I was so scared.
I wish I could send a message back in a bottle and Saying, don't worry, everything's going to work out well.
And I don't know about you, when I think about the number of times that I've been anxious about negative outcomes, well, first of all, everything I've been anxious about negative outcomes virtually has never, ever had a negative outcome.
Nothing I fear happens.
The thing's That I end up actually being afraid of are the things that kind of come out of nowhere, like getting sick or whatever.
But like I was thinking the other day when I was, I don't know, 12 or something like that, I pretended to be sick and didn't go to school that day.
I can't remember why.
Probably some test that I, in family life, was too chaotic to study for or something.
And I was watching some daytime TV and Some people on some political panel or something like that.
Pretty boring stuff, but you know, this is barely post-color TV, let alone internet.
And the school called.
Now, there's no call display.
It's this rotary dial, right?
Basically, one step up from smoke rings.
Pick up the phone and the school's like, why aren't you at school?
So I used the wonderfully subjective stomachache.
You know, you can't say headache because you can take an aspirin for that, right?
You can't say anything that could be tested for, right?
Yeah.
So, so stomachache.
And then they said, does your mother know that you're at home?
And I was like, oh shit.
It can't be.
I don't think my mom, I mean, my mom didn't even know what grade I was in.
Like I bring a note home and she'd have to ask me what grade I was in.
So the idea that she'd called the school, unless there'd been some emergency, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I was like, oh my God.
I mean, my mom couldn't find a school on a map.
Could she have called the school?
Is this a trick, right?
Yeah.
And the day I was like, oh God, you know, I'm going to go into school tomorrow and they're going to call my mom.
Right?
Nothing happened.
Nothing happened.
I'm telling you, the number of, like when I did my master's, it took, because it was a pretty unusual master's, I handed it in, and it took forever.
Everyone else had already gotten their degree.
It took forever, and I was like, oh my god, did I just spend all this time and all this money trying to get this master or something?
It was fine.
I got an A. Guy called me up.
Yeah.
Hard to, you know, yeah, got an A. All these things, worried about.
Afraid of.
For what?
For what?
What did all that worry do?
Add to my life.
What did it get me?
What did it provide to me?
It's like I've walked through my whole life with my head in a bag waiting for a blow that never comes.
And all it did was subtract my enjoyment of my life for no positive end whatsoever.
Now, the world is incredibly dedicated to scaring the living shit out of you on a regular basis.
Advertisers love doing that stuff.
If your hair isn't this pretty you'll never be loved.
If you don't have this kind of body if you don't have teeth that blind the space station when you look at the sun you will never be loved.
If you don't have a good education you'll never make any money.
If you don't go to a good college you're doomed.
Everybody has this incredible incentive And it's part of the market system, but the market system is conditioned by people's lack of self-knowledge and lack of commitment to virtue and lack of understanding of what love is.
And in the absence of understanding what love is, we have to go for base biological attractiveness, right?
If you don't know what love is, you've got to do a lot of sit-ups and squirt your boobs out the top of your bra on a regular basis.
And basically you've got to titillate rather than become connected.
Mm-hmm.
And then we get paranoid, of course, because can we get the right level of attractiveness?
You know, a guy who's not so hot that he's a total player, but not such an unattractive people that people think I've settled for second or third or fifth best.
And then, of course, we doll ourselves up to make ourselves this pretty to attract people, which is basically using our biology to club them into submission.
We crank ourselves up to be this physically attractive.
And then what happens?
Well, we get pregnant, our bodies fall apart when we have babies, we get old, and then we're paranoid about all that stuff.
And we worry about money.
Do I have enough money?
I remember, oh my God, so many times, I was like, I was broke.
I'm broke, I'm broke, I'm broke.
I don't have enough money.
I can't eat.
I remember being in school, and I used to get $100 a month from the government.
This is way back in the day.
Mm-hmm.
And I remember, like, I'm hungry.
I'm hungry.
And I'm going to the bank.
I have no money in my bank account.
Like, I was shameless.
Like, I would take out $2.75 from my bank account to go and have some food.
I went to the bank.
I didn't even have that.
I took 80 cents in my bank account.
And I'm hungry.
And it's Thursday.
The bank's not open again, I think, until Monday.
I go to the bank with $94 or whatever it was.
Because my parents were broke.
And I go to the bank and I want to...
I'm not going to go have a feast.
I just want to get some money out to buy some groceries.
I'm hungry.
I go to the bank and they won't let me have the money.
They won't let me have the money because the check has to clear.
And I got into a, I was desperate.
I mean, I can't, it was going to be like three business days or something.
I wasn't getting the money to like Tuesday or Wednesday of the following week.
It's like, no, I need to eat.
Right?
I mean, right now your forearm is looking like a rotisserie chicken to me.
So give me some damn money.
I'm hungry.
And I said, what do you mean you're waiting for the check to clear?
It's the government of Canada.
Look, my name, my ID, it's not going to bounce.
It's the government of Canada.
Look at my history.
Look at my history.
I've deposited this check every month for the last nine months.
Wouldn't give me the money.
Call the supervisor.
I'm sorry.
I'm in a Newt Hanson novel.
I'm hungry.
Finally, the manager lets me have $20.
Of the $94.
And that was a beautiful thing.
It really was a beautiful, beautiful thing.
Because, like, I was like hands shaking hungry.
And that's how tight things were.
And I was anxious, scared sometimes.
I don't, like, how am I gonna...
But it all worked out.
I did not starve.
I completed my education.
I, whatever, like, I... It all worked out.
I am 48 years old.
It's all worked out.
Boy, I'd love to send that.
I'd like to send that back like 40 years.
And I'm thinking that at the age of 98, I want to send it back to 48.
It's all going to work out.
And you can live like it's not.
But then you've just got one foot in the grave.
One foot in...
The giant soul-sucking vortex of imminent disaster.
Now, I'm not saying this is your mindset, my friend.
I'm really not.
But what I am saying is worry is like singing an aria into a windstorm.
The sound gets pulled away.
You put your greatest passion into something that nobody can hear and affects nothing other than Getting you a cold face in the middle of nowhere.
So believe me when I say in so many ways your future by the age of 22 Is largely mapped out in terms of, if you're interested in this show, I'm going to put you in 125 or 130 IQ right away.
You're interested in self-knowledge.
You understand economics.
You know how to negotiate.
You have some sense of virtue.
You have some sense of what love is.
You're going to get married to a great guy, I'm sure, of that.
And so you're already ahead of...
You know, all but 5.999 billion of people on the planet.
You have access to the greatest educational machinery and technology known to mankind.
I'm not just talking about this show.
I'm talking about all of the internet.
You have the Flynn effect, which still actually seems to be on your side that you're going to be smarter than me and smarter than the people who came before you.
You have love.
You have youth.
You have health.
You may not have the best advisors in your corner, but you can listen to them and, you know, accept, you know, some of what they say might be of value.
But if people have gotten to their 40s and they're not currently living in a cardboard box down by the river on a steady guy at a government cheese, they should have learned by then or by now that worrying is completely futile.
I'm not saying don't have any concern.
I'm not saying go smoke crack.
I'm not going to do that anyway, right?
No.
But worrying.
If you found the man that you love and you want to have children and you're not going to starve, which you're not going to do.
No.
If that's what you want to do right now, yes, there will be people who will try and put in all of this fruitless concern and possibilities and what-ifs and this and that and the other.
And I tell you, as a man who has spent, I don't think I'm a huge warrior, W-O, not W-A, maybe W-A-D, but I don't think that I'm a huge warrior, but the times that I have been consumed with worry are times that we're barely living.
You know, the dread, the fear, the concern, the what-ifs, the escalations, the catastrophes, the what.
And again, it's not like this stuff consumes me.
I don't have a huge problem with it.
But when it does happen, those times are barely living.
And we got the rest of eternity to not be alive.
Let's not invite those tiny coffins of worry beads and death and ashes into Into our present.
And I'm saying this to you because you sound to me like a very together and an intelligent woman who's in a good position.
You've got skills.
You've got someone who's got a master's working for you.
That's not bad at 22 because I guarantee you they're not 22 unless some sort of super genius who went to college at 12.
So you've got a man who loves you.
And so I would say it is going to work out.
It's going to be fine.
And the only thing that's not going to be fine is worrying whether it's going to be fine.
Life is going to pitch stuff at you.
You are going to make good decisions with the information that you have.
And those decisions, because you're interested in this show, which is not just because of the show, but all of that means, those decisions are going to be better than 99% of others.
All the people on the planet.
99% of all the people of your level of intelligence in your neighborhood because you've got philosophy.
So your decisions, whatever life pitches at you, your decisions are going to be good, solid decisions and it is all going to work out.
So do what makes you happy.
Do what makes your fiancé and husband happy.
Trust that you will handle whatever life throws at you.
In a very productive and functional way.
And promise.
Promise yourself that you will worry only in hell itself.
After you're dead, you can promise your worry wart brain, if you have one, you can promise that you will worry after death.
For eternity.
If that's what the worrywart part of you wants.
But now, this time is for living.
And the tiny death of worry is something that can be a mosquito in your coffin from here to eternity.
If that's how it's going to work out.
But to hell with worry in the here and now.
It prepares you for nothing.
It contributes nothing.
It averts nothing.
It only brings disaster into the present when there's no guarantee whatsoever it's going to happen in the future.
Wow.
Thank you very much.
And...
You sound like my fiance.
Oh, good.
I assume he's in his 20s, so I hope that I've approached the maturity of someone in their 20s.
That's good.
That's good.
That's great to hear.
Actually, because of my past, I grew up with a lot of anxiety and worry, of course.
Ever since I started dating him, I really have started worrying a lot less about everything.
He's always that Like the little shoulder angel coming in to say, everything's going to work out.
It's going to be okay.
We're going to be okay.
I don't know.
It's just kind of nice hearing it from you.
Thank you.
Good.
You're very welcome.
And do keep us posted how it goes.
And again, my advice is a little less on the wedding, a little more on the kids.
If that is a choice, then that would be my suggestion.
But of course, you must...
Take your own conscience as far as that goes.
But thanks very much for calling and do drop us a line.
Let us know.
Oh, before I go, real quick.
So just to kind of stick it to my family a little bit, can I just give you my website name so that if anyone who ever needs an editor can come to me and just support my goal of not falling into a government job one day?
It's absolutely your choice.
I'm certainly happy if you want to deal with an FDR editor-listener, please go ahead.
Yes, I'd love to have more of those kind of listeners come into my site, but it's donetherightway.com and it's W-R-I-T-E. If anyone needs an editor...
It's nice to have a lady who's calling in with a website.
We can actually talk about some of the earlier ladies who had websites...
We're a little less shareable and probably fewer master's degrees.
Actually, maybe some of the fine arts master's degrees would be working there.
But anyway, yeah.
So best of luck.
I hope that you get some business out of it.
Thank you very much.
And I really appreciate you taking my call.
And I love your show.
Thank you very much.
And best of luck with your wedding and your child raising if you have any other questions.
Happy to chat.
All right.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Bye.
Thanks, Kayla.
Up next is Quentin.
Quentin wrote in and said, I have many people in my life that I will consider emotionally manipulative, destructive, and whom I don't trust, but whom I still feel connected to and crave closeness with.
Examples include my father, my mother, my ex-girlfriend, and certain close friends.
For the most part, they are very troubled, and I do feel powerfully compelled to help them, possibly at my own expense.
I've recently been through some confusing close relationships, and I'm very concerned that my mental health is suffering for it.
How can I genuinely care for these people while at the same time staying true to myself and my needs?
How can I know that I'm acting out of genuine care and not trying to fill my own emotional needs inappropriately by parenting others instead of allowing them to parent themselves?
Okay, so we'll get to the ex-girlfriend thing in a bit, but what about these people do you love, respect, admire?
Um...
Well, sorry to kind of waylay things.
I just wanted to say before we started that I really appreciate what you and Mike are doing with the show.
I've been listening for about a couple of weeks, I'd say, attentively.
I mean, I've known about the show for a while.
And I've just discovered all the family relationships podcasts that you've done lately.
It's been an immense help to me.
So I just wanted to say that I really appreciate everything that you two do.
Thank you.
I really, really appreciate that.
So, well, in terms of what I value about these people, I mean, my family and my...
No, no, no.
Sorry.
Maybe we drifted a bit from the question.
I didn't ask what you value about them because value is neutral.
Fair enough.
Value is morally neutral.
I asked what you respected and admired.
Oh, I see.
I see.
Well, shall I kind of break it down to my person?
Okay, let's start with the ex-girlfriend.
Okay, fair enough.
Because that's the most chosen relationship that you have at the moment, right?
Indeed, yes.
So, my ex-girlfriend is...
She's extremely kind.
She's very nurturing.
She means a lot to her friends.
She's a very decent person deep down, I think.
Wait, wait, wait.
I think we may have stepped from facts to hypothesis there without much of a beat.
A very decent person deep down, I think.
Those four words take us in a whole other place, right?
Deep down means, well, you can't really see it, but I think it's there, which could be projection or could be fantasy.
I think is one of these words where it's like, gosh, what do you mean you think?
I mean, how long have you known the woman?
I've known her for about, I suppose I've known her properly for about six months now.
What does properly mean?
Properly in terms of we've spent a lot of time together.
We've...
We've gotten to know each other properly, I suppose.
Okay, repeating the word doesn't really help me.
Did you know her beforehand, before the last six months?
I did, yes.
We were in the same circle of friends.
We saw each other socially, I suppose.
We didn't actually interact on a serious level.
Okay, so are you saying that she went from friend to girlfriend to ex-girlfriend within six months?
Um, that's correct, yes.
And how long were you boyfriend and girlfriend for?
A big pardon?
How long were you boyfriend and girlfriend for?
Two months.
Two months.
Correct.
And why was it only two months?
Um, well, um...
It's one of the things that I actually still don't know, not with certainty.
Well, let me ask you a couple other questions if it's tough.
Who broke up?
She did.
And did she express unhappiness before she broke up?
She did not, no.
So it came out of the blue for you?
Exactly.
And how were things going before you broke up, according to your experience?
It was fantastic.
I thought I'd find somebody that I really related to, who respected me, that I had a lot in common with.
I felt very, very valued.
And did she say that she loved you?
She did, yes.
She did, and how long after you started dating did she say that she loved you?
Beg your pardon?
How long after you started becoming boyfriend and girlfriend did she say that she left you?
A couple of weeks, I think.
Right.
And did you say it back?
Yes.
At the same time or at a different time?
At a different time.
Right.
And Did she say she loved you from the first couple of weeks until the end of the two-month period and then suddenly wanted to break up?
Or was there some other thing that she said in the interim that...
You said that you thought everything was great, right?
Yes.
So she's like, I love you, I love you, I love you, it's over, right?
Correct.
Right.
And why did she say that it was over?
Well...
When it happened, when the breakup happened, she gave me a whole lot of reasons which she later admitted were bullshit.
So the reasons that she gave at the time were she feels that we were quite different people.
Oh, I don't care what she lied about.
Fair enough.
So she lied to you and broke your heart?
Correct, I suppose.
So kind, nurturing, and decent.
Well, Steph, she's a very conflicted person, I think, but...
That's not known.
No, that's not what you said.
Kind, nurturing, and decent.
Yes.
I'm not trying to catch you out or anything.
Yes.
I'm just trying to...
You give me these adjectives and then...
You know, it's like saying to you, listen, man, it's a zebra.
It's got shaggy hair and...
Blonde hair and its back, giant teeth and claws, and you're like, I don't think that's a zebra, right?
I hear what you're saying.
Look, I think that the way that she handled things and her actions weren't kind in that instance, but I mean, not everybody is kind all the time, I don't think.
She said she loved you.
She indicated no problems with the relationship.
You were very happy.
You loved her.
She broke up with you without warning and lied about the reasons.
That's not like a sunspot on the sun which still gives you a tan, right?
That's not a little thing.
She broke your heart, right?
Yes.
So that's not a little thing.
That's not a people make mistakes.
And it's not funny, right?
No, it isn't.
So what were the real reason if she said that the reasons she gave you were lies?
Quinton, what was the real reason there?
I pressed her about it because I wanted her to be honest with me.
And essentially the reasons that she gave were, well, in her words, She wasn't thinking, she was looking for somebody who was emotionally available and a good companion, but she wasn't looking for a relationship.
So she wasn't looking for somebody who was emotionally available and a good companion?
She was.
She was, but she was not looking for a relationship, per se.
She said that she was rather looking for a close friend.
So she was looking for a good man, but not a romantic relationship.
Yes.
Why not?
Well, I guess that's something that's really known to her at this stage.
Yeah, I can't venture a guess.
Now, did she say to you when you...
I mean, who asked who out on the date?
Or how did it transition from friend to romance?
It was a mutual attraction that built over about two to three months.
I was the one who sort of took the initiative and expressed feelings for her.
And she reciprocated those feelings?
Correct.
So was she lying then or was she lying at the end?
I... Steph, I've got to be honest, I don't know.
I have no idea.
I'm still confused about it.
Does it matter?
It matters to me because I would rather know the truth than be left wondering, you know, what just happened in the last two months.
But she's a liar.
So how the hell are you going to get the truth?
She is a liar.
I don't think that the second bullshit is any more true than the first bullshit.
I've thought the same thing.
So you can't get the truth from a liar.
Why is that funny?
Um...
No, I'm just...
It's not...
It wasn't an amused laugh.
It was a...
No, I resonate with what you just said.
How attractive was she physically?
She was very beautiful.
Right.
One to ten.
Wow.
Um...
Well, if you would have asked me, I would say a nine or a ten.
All right.
And you?
I have no idea.
Oh, come on.
Everybody has some idea.
I've always thought of myself as averagely good looking.
I don't know.
So like five or six or seven?
Yeah, I suppose in that range.
I don't know.
Do you have a lot of money?
I probably have more than most people my age, but not specifically.
I'm not wealthy.
Right.
Did she meet another man?
There was...
I'm sorry.
It's quite a long story, so I don't know how much detail to give, but there was...
I understand that my question was more about my relationships in general than not specifically about my girlfriend, or my ex-girlfriend.
But there were a lot of other relationships in the mix.
She had just come out of a three-year relationship.
Wait, wait.
How recently after this relationship ended did you date her?
She had been separated from her boyfriend for about three to four months.
Right, okay.
Was she living before?
I beg your pardon?
Was she living?
Did she live with him?
No, she didn't.
Okay.
So, you know, three months after a three-year relationship, nobody's fit to date, right?
Yeah.
I mean, you've heard that it's about, I don't know what the facts are or whether this is even true, but it seems to be a pretty good rule of thumb that it's about half the length of the relationship to recover from it.
Yes.
To figure out what you did wrong, why it didn't work out, what you could do better, what you could do differently, how you ended up in a relationship that didn't work out.
Look, everybody wants their relationships to work out.
Everybody wants to find someone, fall in love, stay married, have all of those benefits of companionship and romance and sex and parenthood if that's what you want.
So a relationship that ends is a fuck-up.
And I'm not talking like a one-night stand or something like that, but especially when you get to I Love Yous, you wanted that to be forever at some level, right?
So if you want something to be forever and it lasts two months, that's a fuck-up, right?
And I'm not trying to say you did something wrong or bad, but that's a massive screw-up, right?
If I say, this bridge will last for 80 years and then two months later it falls down without warning, I'm not a very good engineer, right?
Wait, I'm not sure what that is, whether that's disagreement or not.
I'm agreeing with you.
Okay.
So when she was invested, how old is she roughly?
Like 20s, early 30s?
23.
Oh, she's 23.
Okay.
And how old are you?
25, getting on 26.
Okay.
So she was in a relationship from 20 to 23.
Correct.
And do you know why her relationship ended?
Um, she said that he was emotionally unavailable.
But did she not know that before, like three years?
I mean, that's like saying, well, you know, after three years, I suddenly realized, man, she only speaks Gaelic.
Wouldn't you kind of know that earlier on?
Okay, um...
Well, I mean, I don't want to speak for her, but I mean, I suppose, you know, it's different when you're new to a relationship than when you're sort of a year, two years, three years in.
Did you ever meet her?
You must have known him if you knew her socially beforehand, right?
Yes, you started meeting.
And how physically attractive was he?
He was fairly attractive.
I mean, if you want to put a number on it, I'd say six or seven, eight.
Okay.
All right.
And do you know who broke up with him?
She broke up with him.
And she said because he's emotionally unavailable, and then you're emotionally available, but that's not what she wants.
Yes.
So she doesn't know what she wants.
Correct.
Does she have any history of self-knowledge?
She's gone to therapy, read books, keep a journal.
You said you didn't talk about anything deep when you knew her before you got into a relationship.
Does she have any history of self-knowledge?
Well...
Well, let me back up a bit.
We're both from a background of basically of dysfunctional families and alcoholism.
The reason we started becoming closer friends just before we started dating was that I reached out to her and started talking to her about some problems that she was having.
And this was before we started dating.
So I suppose I should say that we did speak about serious things before we started dating.
So it wasn't like I went into the relationship without knowing who she was or how much self-knowledge she had.
Okay, good.
So now instead of giving me the background, you can give me the answer, which is, did she have any history with self-knowledge?
She is in therapy.
When I started going out with her, I thought she had a fair amount of self-knowledge.
So she's currently in therapy?
She is currently in therapy, yes.
And how long has she been in therapy that you know of?
About a year now, I think.
Wow.
A year.
Do you know if she discussed her relationship with you with her therapist?
I have no idea.
So you don't know the content of a therapy at all?
I don't.
Okay.
And do you think that if she talked about a relationship with a therapist, with you, do you think that if she said, well, I'm a couple of months out of a three-year relationship and a guy wants to date me, he comes from a dysfunctional background, I come from a dysfunctional background, do he comes from a dysfunctional background, I come from a dysfunctional background, do you think that's What do you think the therapist would say?
Probably not a good idea.
Right.
Now, if she started dating you and then said, well, a couple of weeks into it, I realized that I love him.
What would the therapist say?
I suppose that the therapist would say you should think very carefully about that because it's quite something to say after such a short period of time.
You think?
Yes.
Yes, it is.
Yes, it is.
And if she had talked to her therapist about, I broke up with the last guy because he was emotionally unavailable and I'm breaking up with this guy because he's emotionally available.
What would the therapist say to her?
You've got to decide what you want.
I think the therapist would also say, if you're going to break his heart, you need to be as honest with him as humanly possible.
Yes.
Don't lie to him.
Yes.
So either she's not talking about her relationship with her therapist, which is not doing therapy, or she has got the worst therapist in the world, in my opinion, or her therapist is giving her advice and she's not listening to her therapist, right?
Yes.
Do you know if she actually is in therapy or did she just say it?
Um...
She did just say it, but, you know...
I mean, if you love someone and you're doing great therapy, you know, it's her choice if she wants to talk about what's going on in that therapy session with you, right?
Yes.
And she never did talk about anything that's going on in their therapy sessions?
Um...
Not that I can recall, no.
Did your family and friends, what did they think of this relationship?
Um...
My family, when they had met her, they were very enthusiastic about her.
But they were having some concerns that she was not in a good space in her life.
And why were they enthusiastic about her?
Well, my mother really liked her because she She was everything.
Well, this is my mother's word.
She was everything that she wanted to be at her age.
They were both studying acting and drama.
They were both...
Yeah, I suppose it's fair to say that my mother liked her.
I don't know if that answers your question.
But your mother liked her because she reminded your mother of herself.
Of herself, correct.
And did any of them...
Have any concerns about the early I love you's, about the past relationship with a man who she reports being very different from you?
The one thing that they did say, not just my mother but others as well, was that be careful because she is fresh out of a long-term relationship and that is not necessarily good.
Right, right.
And you...
Didn't really listen, right?
I beg your pardon?
You didn't listen to that stuff too much, right?
No, I didn't.
Right.
Right.
So nobody had any insight that she was going to break your heart, right?
No.
Why do you think that was?
Um...
Well, because I suppose she didn't really say what was on her mind.
She didn't tell people what she was really feeling.
And nobody knew that about her?
No.
So they don't know when somebody's being honest or not, or when somebody's being authentic or not, right?
Yes.
And you don't either?
I thought I did.
I know, but you don't.
I'm not trying to be mean.
I'm just trying to call it like I see it, right?
No, I understand.
You're correct.
No, this stuff's not funny.
Please stop doing that.
Don't try and invite me into looking at this as amusement, because if it's amusement for you, I've got other people who want to talk about serious stuff.
Okay.
All right?
Your heart got broken.
That is not amusing.
No.
And I have to speak on behalf of your heart here, right, which got rolled over, right?
Yes.
So you have a blindness, which is you don't know when people are being authentic.
You can't see what I assume in hindsight are fairly clear warning signs.
You know the boyfriend, right?
Yes.
The ex-boyfriend?
Yes, not well.
But you could call him up and say, listen, I'm thinking of dating this woman.
What do I need to watch out for?
I suppose so.
You know, when I'm hiring people, I say, give me your last employer.
I say, well, what happened?
Why are they not working there anymore?
So you don't know how to protect your heart and other people don't know how to protect your heart, right?
At the moment?
Yes.
And that's a dangerous, right?
You got off pretty easy.
Relative to how it could have gone, where you could have got married and then she left you taking half your stuff and half your money and at least one of your gonads as a purse ornament.
She could have gotten pregnant.
Like, who knows, right?
She could have had an STD. She could have, like, six million things, right?
Yes.
And so, if you are a man who has some resources and you have a susceptibility to a pretty face, which we all do, And you don't have people around you who can watch your back and you don't know how to watch your own back, then you are in a dangerous situation.
Right?
Right.
This woman is not kind, nurturing, and decent.
Decent people don't break up with people they say they love without warning and then with a continual stream of lies about what happened and why.
I'm telling you, that's just not what the adjectives mean.
I follow.
Why is she still in your life?
Well, she's still in my life.
She broke your heart and lied to you about it.
Why is she in your life?
She's not really...
I'm not in close contact with her anymore.
We still have contact, but we don't speak.
I made the decision not to see her after the breakup.
Essentially, where I am with her is that I don't know whether I want to remain in her life as a friend to help her.
No, no, no, no, no.
Friend?
Are you kidding me?
She broke your heart.
She lied to you.
She said she loved you.
She lied to you about why she broke up with you.
Yeah.
What kind of standards do you have for friends?
Or are you just hoping for some makeup sex?
I mean, what the hell?
Listen, if I say, hey man, let's you and I go into business together.
You know, you are like the best person I can go into business.
I've got this great idea.
And you quit your job.
And you invest.
And you move out of your place.
And you sell your car to build up the capital.
We invest the money together.
And then I just, two months later, I'm like, eh, I quit.
And I run off with half your money.
Are we still friends?
No, we're not.
Of course we're not.
You were vulnerable to this woman, you opened your heart to this woman, and she fucked you bad, right?
Yes, she did.
So, what are you talking about friendship?
What virtues does she have that you could possibly pin friendship credibly on?
And I know the answer to that, and it doesn't have anything to do with her fundamentally.
It's something you already told me, was that she's like your mom, right?
Yeah.
You know that, right?
Yes, I do.
Right.
I wanted to start with the...
I have a shark that circles getting closer and closer, right?
So how is she like your mom?
What did your mom see, and what do you see about these similarities?
Well...
Well, in terms of their career paths, they're very similar.
My mother's an actress, and my ex studied drama.
They move in the same circles.
They're at different points in time, not at the same time.
That is what she saw in her.
But in terms of how similar they are, they're...
When...
They come off as very warm and very, very caring.
And, um, sorry, it's just a bit hard.
Um.
Do you want me to go over your ACE? Yes, sure.
Okay.
So for those who don't know, the ACE is the Adverse Childhood Experience Test.
It's a fairly standard set of questions.
You had an ACE score of 7 out of 10.
That's not good, right?
It's not.
I should say that I wasn't sure about one of those points, but yes, six of seven.
Verbal abuse and threats.
No family love or support.
Neglect.
Not enough food, dirty clothes, no protection or medical treatment.
Parents divorced.
Physical abuse towards female adult.
Live with an alcoholic or drug user.
household member depressed, mentally ill, or suicide attempt?
Yes, well, not all of those things happen in terms of how the test was structured, but that's fair to say.
Thank you.
Sorry, which didn't happen?
Do you want me to go through them again?
Yes, sure.
Not enough resources, dirty clothes, that kind of thing.
That was not the case.
But there was a second part of that question, which was not feeling valued or loved, which was the case.
Okay, got it.
So there's a two-part to the question that still counts, right?
Fair enough, yes.
And was it your mother who was the alcoholic, right?
Both my parents at some stage.
Both your parents were alcoholics, right?
Yes.
And when your mother was younger, was she physically attractive?
I assume if she was an actress, you know, unless she's Kathy Bates, right?
Well, actually, I find very attractive.
But was she, like...
Physically attractive in the way that your ex-girlfriend was?
Yes.
Okay.
Right.
And what has your, if any, work been towards trying to deal with this significant amount of trauma?
I've been attending support groups for the last...
Well, I don't actively go anymore, but I have been going for about three years.
I am in therapy.
I have been taking steps.
Okay, great.
Now, when you talk to your therapist about dating a woman who was 23 just out of a three-year relationship, what did your therapist say?
I didn't speak to my therapist about the relationship.
I haven't been to a therapy session for a couple of weeks, a couple of months.
Six months, right?
No, no, no.
I'd say about three or four months.
But you started dating this woman six months ago, right?
That's right.
And you went to the I Love Yous in a couple of weeks, right?
So you were in therapy, if I understand the timeline that you're giving me, you were in therapy when you started dating this woman.
I'd say I was...
I had just...
Sorry, I'm just trying to think.
I had my last session of therapy, the last one that I went to, just before we started dating.
So more than six months ago.
So you went from weeks to a couple of months to more than six months.
We started dating about four months ago.
And I met, we started becoming, let me say that we started courting about six months ago.
Let's put it that way.
Okay, so you, let's, okay, fine.
So, you were about to get into a new relationship with a woman you were very passionate about, since you both went to I Love You's in a couple of weeks, and you thought that's a good time to not be in therapy?
With an ACE of seven.
I'm being a jerk, and I apologize for that, but I just really want to get this part across.
No, I understand.
I appreciate that.
Why did you stop going to therapy?
Well, at that stage, I didn't feel that there was anything that I was really grappling with in my life.
You were just about to embark on a relationship when you have an ACE of seven with a woman who also comes from a disturbed and traumatic history.
Are you kidding?
You can't expect me to think that you're serious about that, right?
I fired my coach because I wanted to get a gold medal, right?
It makes as much sense, right?
I follow what you're saying.
Because a therapist, your therapist, would have, I think, been very helpful in helping to protect your heart.
So you've willingly cast aside your support system and someone who could protect your heart to pursue this relationship.
And I'm saying this not to make you feel bad, but to tell you, look, you don't have to do this again.
Yes.
You're not at risk if you know what you need to do to stay safe, which is, yes, if you're going to embark on a relationship with the 9 or 10 attractiveness level of a woman who's just like your mom, who came from an alcoholic family like you did.
Therapy!
Therapist!
Yeah.
Job one!
Before brushing your teeth, right?
I'm with you.
And there's a reason you stopped.
That's the part I'm concerned about.
Because I think I know what that reason is.
Okay.
And it's not because you didn't think, like, I don't know if you're lying to me or to you or just don't know, right?
Okay.
But there's a reason you stopped going to your therapist at the exact moment when your therapist was the most necessary.
Because you serve women.
You serve the needs of women.
And if you'd gone to the therapist, your therapist would have put you in conflict with the needs of women.
Or this woman, whether it's your mother or the ex-girlfriend, I don't know.
But you didn't want to have someone in your corner that would have put you in conflict with a need that you have to serve the need of women.
You were a rebound guy.
The woman's come out of a three-year relationship.
She wants to be attracted.
She wants to feel special.
She wants to be wined and dined.
She wants to be romanced.
Maybe she wants some sexual variety.
And so she wanted you to do this.
Yeah.
And if you'd been in therapy, your therapist would have said, don't do it.
Right?
Right.
Yes.
And then you would have been in the situation where a therapist would...
I'm not a therapist.
I'm just telling you what I think.
But you would then have been in a situation where you would be in conflict with a woman's needs.
Your own needs to please and serve the needs of women.
Fair enough.
Now, what does fair enough mean?
Is that true?
Is that false?
I agree with you.
I'm sorry?
I mean, I agree with you.
Right.
So the good news is you have some, hopefully, some insight into how to keep your heart safe.
Since you don't know how to see an incoming missile, and since those around you don't seem to know how to deal with an incoming missile or even identify it, And if you step away from your therapist at the very moment that you need it, then you have a solution, which is if you're going to get involved in a new relationship, find out all you can about the prior relationships, what worked, what didn't.
Find all about her childhood.
Find about, if she says, I'm going to therapy, what's it like?
What happens?
Get some facts.
Keep yourself safe.
Keep your heart protected.
There's only so many times that people can punch us in the heart before it deflates.
Like a broken balloon scattering pieces all over the living room, not to be reassembled.
And that's what I want for you is to keep your heart safe.
Therapists can really help you with that because they're not horny.
They're not screaming, eggs, eggs, eggs!
Egg, egg, egg, egg, egg, egg.
Right?
Because your balls are like these Bolo's on a shoestring that choke your heart, right?
She's hot.
She's more attractive than me.
I'm trading up.
Oh, I'm not, right?
And if you blunt your heart by this ridiculous, futile, self-absorbed...
Look, when we care about people, we tell them the truth.
That's what I sort of try and model.
I don't mean...
I have the truth.
I'm telling you the truth as I see it.
When we care about people, we tell them the truth.
Yes.
This woman lied about loving you, lied about wanting a relationship, lied about the reason she broke up, and continues to lie about the reason she broke up.
If she is young and beautiful, odds are, now well to unicorn, spotted, I get it, Odds are she's going to be exceedingly dangerous because do you know what?
I was in a store the other day and there was a makeup counter.
Do you know what it said over the makeup counter?
What did it say?
It said tools of the trade.
Tools of the trade.
You can meditate for a long weekend on that and not be done.
Tools of the trade.
A woman's attractiveness, for most women, a woman's attractiveness is something she is going to trade for resources and status.
Resources and status.
She will stay with you if she thinks...
That you are the best she can get.
And if her beauty can get her better, she will dump you and move on.
Beauty is currency.
Biological.
It's biology.
It's the same with all living organisms.
It's not the same with all women, but this is where you should start from until proven otherwise, in my opinion.
Beauty is currency.
When you have to buy a car...
Do you buy a bad car?
Do you buy something that is like seven different colors that you need a coat hanger to open the lock and which farts out more gas than a downed spitfire?
Hello?
I'm here.
I'm sorry.
Do you buy a crap car?
Something Adam Sandler is going to sing about?
Absolutely not.
Right.
You buy, I would guess, the best car that you can reasonably afford.
Right.
A young woman's beauty is her currency to get the best man she can reasonably expect to get.
And given that vanity is omnipresent, it's going to be more than she can actually get.
That's what her fantasy is.
Like, we're all ridiculous this way.
Like, I mean...
So I was...
I can't...
This is like...
The time frame gets confusing to me.
But...
I need to...
I need to look this up.
Because this is how insane...
People are.
Or at least how insane...
I was.
Um...
Who's the woman who sings that...
Song Complicated?
Good lord.
Um...
Avra Levine.
Okay, okay, good.
It comes back to me from a somewhat younger brain.
Okay, so Avra Levine.
She got married to some guy.
And I was like, aw.
Because I think she's pretty.
Good singer.
Like, the fuck am I going to meet Avra Levine?
But when she got married to some guy...
A tiny little part of me went, aww.
Like, I guess she's off my list.
Because in another universe, right?
Right.
And it's like, how insane is that?
Aw, she's married.
I guess that lowers my chances of dating Avril Lavigne.
Like, it's insane.
I've actually, I've never done it.
But I've thought, if I see a really beautiful woman in a car, I thought, you know, if we have an accident, we have to exchange numbers.
I'll get her a number.
And it's like, oh my god, stop!
Park the penis.
Engage the brain as best you can.
Now, obviously, Avril Lavigne would be lucky to get a piece of this, now that I'm happy to marry you.
But the reality is, like, you know, Fergie gets married.
And you're like, aw.
Because, you know, apparently she has some humps.
I don't know many of the details.
There's some kind of humpiness involved.
And...
We all want to...
Biologically, use our resources to get the best we can.
Now, when you have self-knowledge and you look for virtue, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
Yeah, okay, sure.
But most people, when it comes to sexuality, they're like four-year-olds with candy who know nothing about cavities or diabetes or fatness or anything like that.
It's just like, well, shit, this tastes good.
I'm eating.
Then maybe they'll get sick and they'll try and eat a little bit less.
Next time, but you sure as hell don't do a lot of favors to your body, even if you don't get sick from candy, right?
So, if you're looking at a 23-year-old 9 or 10, particularly if she's come from a traumatic household, most likely she is going to be looking for the man who has the highest status Now,
if she's biologically inclined, that means the most resources, but she's 23, so she is going to want the highest status man that she can get, and she may date you.
But if she is a penis climber, and we're all egg hunters, We got egg hunters and penis climbers.
Can I use this penis, these set of penises like a ladder to get up to the resources I feel my beauty deserves?
Again, pure biology, not all women, but it's where I start from when looking at people.
And if I was single, I sure as hell would be looking at this as a basic reality that this is where most people are.
So...
If you feel that you are the best that she can possibly do, then you will probably have her allegiance.
But that allegiance generally will be conditional upon you remaining the best that she can do.
And maybe you will.
Angelina Jolie is not trading in Brad Pitt for anyone.
Because he is like the highest status male, I think, that you can get in the world at the moment.
And so love and beauty don't mix because physical beauty in general is status-seeking penis climbing.
I don't mean climbing on penises, I just mean using them to get up, right?
And you also need to be honest about this, which is that you sure as shit were not attracted to her because of her deep virtues.
You were egg hunting and she was penis climbing.
Okay.
Do you disagree?
Because you haven't given me a whole lot of virtues to hang your heart on here.
Well, I mean, I could go on about her.
She was certainly very intelligent and she was...
We had similar values, but I mean...
No, no.
Do you have a value called honesty?
Yes.
Does she have a value called honesty?
Okay, so that's kind of an important one.
Because if you don't have the values called honesty, there's no other values you can share.
Because all the values require honesty.
Honesty is the first necessary but not sufficient requirement for all other values.
So if you don't share a value called honesty, you have nothing in common when it comes to virtue.
That's powerful.
So...
No.
You had no values in common.
Fair enough.
If she understood the value of therapy, since she apparently was in therapy, some mysterious no-speak-no-talk therapy, where you don't talk about anything you're doing in the present, if she understands the value of therapy, and she wants to date you, and you say, oh, I've just stopped going to see my therapist, let's start dating, what would she say?
No.
Is this really hard or is it just hard to say?
Yeah.
I hear what you're getting at.
She'd say, no, go to therapy.
We both come from difficult backgrounds.
We're both in Bakhiana relationship.
I'm in therapy.
You need to be in therapy too.
Yes.
Right?
I mean, you see those figure skaters where the men are like throwing women up and twirling around like a bunch of Russian sizzle logs?
Mm-hmm.
Oh, no.
It's no good if only one of them practices, right?
They both have to practice.
They both have to have coaches.
They both got to show up at the ice.
Otherwise, she's going up, he's going somewhere else for a smoke, and she's coming down headfirst on some very unforgiving ice, right?
So if you were going to get involved in a skating partnership and say, well, I'm going to practice, and the woman's like, I don't think I need to practice.
I'm good.
You'd be like, I don't think that's true.
So she's in therapy and you're like, no, I don't need it.
And she's like, oh, that sounds legit to me.
No.
You were egg hunting.
Which means that your brain was being flooded with neofrontal cortex shutting down idiot hormones.
Yes.
No, look, I mean, we've all been there.
Nothing wrong with it.
It's natural.
Men go into a kind of delirium.
And women know this.
Particularly attractive women.
They know they have the double nipple remote control male brain shutdown system.
Yeah.
Where they get to, you know, lasso your penis and drag you around and rifle through your wallet and step on your heart and their stilettos on the way out.
And women, all women know that.
I was at the mall the other day.
And there was a young couple there.
And the woman was licking an ice cream in a very suggestive way, looking at the man.
Okay.
Not the most subtle sexual display I've ever seen in my life.
But literally, I saw the man's jaw.
You can't see this if you're not watching the video.
The man's jaw was just like, holy shit.
Yeah.
Ice cream blowjob right in front of me.
Oh my god.
And you could see, like, his whole body just went limp.
Well, not all of it.
But it's like, you could see, it's like, it's like watching a, it's like watching from space a city grid shut down.
All the movies growled to a stop and the streetcars stand there still and the Lights go out in the giant buildings and the lights across the...
Right?
We're egg hunting, baby!
Shut down the higher functioning!
We're going full simian!
Don't think anything that's going to interfere with the sperm!
And being aware of that, again, fall in love with a beautiful woman.
She may be kind.
She may use her power wisely.
But not a lot of 23-year-olds are great at using power wisely.
Yeah, agreed.
How much did you spend on the relationship?
Not a lot.
Well, that's why it was two months now, wasn't it?
Anyway.
Anyway.
Egg hunting and penis climbing is incompatible with love.
Which is not to say sexual attractiveness is incompatible with love.
It's not to say any of that stuff.
But if you're surfing hormones, you are not judging virtue.
Right?
And so my suggestion would be, in particular, figure out your relationship with your mom.
Because if you ended up dating a woman that your mom thought was great, who broke the shit out of your heart, well, I would go back to the source and try and sort that stuff out.
And I think therapy, as I always say in these kinds of situations, in many situations, I think that therapy is a very good idea.
You've got an ACE of seven and you've got some resources.
You're a young man and Get right with your history.
Deal with the tragedies.
Process the grief, the anger, the loneliness, the shame.
And then you won't be a giant series of buttons for boobs to push at will.
All right?
Absolutely.
Thank you very much for your call.
Thanks to everyone who calls in.
And as always, it is my massive and deep and abiding pleasure and honor to chat with you all folks.
Remember, we're going to be a little bit early this week relative to today.
It's going to be Wednesday night for our call-in show.
And fdrurail.com slash donate.
If you would like to help out, you know, you know how many thousands and thousands of dollars we are saving people, sometimes maybe even you, for bad relationships, bad dating, bad divorces, bad marriages.
And yeah, throw a few shekels our way.
We are providing an essential service to keep the hearts of good people safe in this world.
And your donation leads to people not hitting their kids.
It leads to people not getting involved with bad people.
At least to people not having children with bad people.
And it has led so many times that I've heard of to people falling in love.
