Jan. 15, 2015 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
03:55:49
2886 Man Boobs Smothered In Nutella - Wednesday Call In Show - January 14th, 2015
I’m a brand new father. My wife and I are planning a big move next fall, and I'm planning on leaving the corporate life to start my own business. I'm having some anxiety about whether I will have the drive and motivation to make my business successful. Can you help me figure out where this anxiety stems from and how to push through it? | My Jewish girlfriend wants to circumcise our hypothetical future child. How can I convince her that it’s not acceptable? | I have often found it difficult to confront people with their irrational behavior and often – simply don't. How can I be assertive without being aggressive? | Is empathy a selfless act? If not, can there ever exist a self-serving component within empathy, where you aim to manipulate the emotional states of other people? | Includes: the importance of breastfeeding, embracing failure, fear as rocket fuel, the dangers of circumcision, benefits of Jewish traditions, a deficiency of sanity vs. a deficiency of knowledge and manipulation as a result of self- attack.
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Okay, this is going way, way back in time.
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My daughter asked me how things in the body work.
Magic.
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Okay.
Fine, fine, fine.
Well, up for us today is Asher, and he is the gentleman that we congratulated on the birth of his first daughter a couple weeks ago.
So congratulations again, Asher.
He wrote in and said, My wife and I are planning a big move next fall, and I'm planning on leaving the corporate life to start my own business.
I'm having some anxiety about whether I will have the drive and motivation to make my business successful.
Can you help me figure out where this anxiety stems from and how to push through it?
Wait, are you saying that drive and anxiety are two different things?
Because I'm not sure that I'll be able to make that case very well.
But yeah, congratulations, Asher.
Of course, thanks so much for calling in.
Can you give me a bit of an idea?
Let me try that again, but with actual language.
Let me just get a bit more background.
You don't have to get into any details, of course, but just sort of roughly, I mean, do you have any entrepreneurial experience before?
Do you have any people around you who are that way inclined or have any kind of experience that way?
Do you have a support system or anything like that?
Well, first of all, I wanted to thank you for having me on the show and for the shout-out that you gave me a couple weeks ago.
Oh, my pleasure.
Really appreciated that.
As far as my entrepreneurial experience, not a whole lot.
I helped run a startup restaurant and cafe in college.
It was part of an entrepreneurship program that my school was offering.
I had an idea for a healthy fast food restaurant.
They had an idea for a hookah lounge, and so we sort of combined our ideas.
They did most of the legwork in terms of getting permits and all that stuff.
Right, yeah, okay.
The dragola stuff of the entrepreneurial life, right?
Right, exactly.
Right, okay.
But yeah, I think giving some background in terms of just the logistics of what's happening in my life might be helpful now also.
Well, since I don't know what they are, I will leave that to your discretion.
Right.
So, my wife and I obviously just had a baby, and right now we're living in the Northeast, and we're planning on moving down south.
I assume this is America?
Yes.
So, yeah.
So, I had the idea a few months ago.
I wanted to move away from corporate life and haven't really had a whole lot of time to work on the idea just because life happens.
My wife got pregnant, which is a great thing.
But she had to go on bed rest.
As long as you're involved, yeah.
I completely agree.
She had to go on bed rest in July and that put a lot more...
Oh, really?
I mean, I've heard about that, that there's certain risk factors in pregnancy that require...
I tried pulling that stuff off, but my wife really wouldn't go for it and I couldn't get any medical support because all these people apparently like having their licenses.
Don't tell me anything that you shouldn't, but I mean, was she fine?
I guess everything, your daughter's born and all that, so it all worked out.
Yeah, daughter was healthy.
We just had to keep her in there.
Right.
It sounds like if your wife stood up, she'd fall out.
Use your grappling hook, honey!
That was kind of what we were thinking, along the lines of what we were told.
She went off work in July, put more of the financial burden on me, which, you know, fine.
I had a second job that I did more of to make more money, which was great, you know.
Financially, I had a great year.
I also wanted to have a cushion for when we moved down there, starting the business, anticipating not going to make a lot of money up front.
I wanted to have a cushion for that as well.
Is your wife staying at home?
Is she going to work?
In the near future?
Yeah, so right now she's at home.
She's going to go back to work in March, at which point I will be quitting my corporate job and doing my part-time job, which is very flexible in terms of the hours that I'm able to work and also pays pretty well.
And why is she going back to work in March?
Yeah.
Because she wants to.
At that point, we'll be able to have at least one or both of us at home at all times.
Well, no, but she's got the breast milk, right?
Well, yeah, she's going to pump.
Okay.
Does that just seem a little bit weird?
No.
I mean, not to me.
I mean, at that point, we're going to introduce...
We'll have already introduced the bottle and...
You know, she's a nurse, so she works three days a week.
So, you know, it's only going to be...
But long shifts, right?
Yeah, long shifts, 12-hour shifts.
But, you know, I'll be home with her during those times.
So no daycare, nothing like that.
And she wants to go back to work, is that right?
She'd rather be at work with the sick people than home with her daughter?
Not really.
So why didn't you tell me she wanted to go back to work?
Well, she thought she wanted to because she misses it.
She's been off of work since July.
So it's hard to...
She's having, I guess, not necessarily second thoughts, but...
Sorry, I don't know what that means.
Second thoughts about what?
Well, not necessarily second thoughts.
It's just that the plan had always been for her to go back in March.
And we hadn't really revisited that.
It's just that I don't know what her exact feelings are in terms of whether or not she'll be ready at that time.
I don't think she knows also either.
But But yeah, the plan just was for her to go back in March.
Right, right.
Well, I mean, it's great that one of you is able to stay home.
But when she goes back to work, didn't you say you were going to be working part-time?
Is that right?
Yeah, well, so my job is so incredibly flexible that I can work at home whenever I want.
Literally whenever I want.
And I can stop working whenever I want.
Right.
So whenever she's gone, I can be home.
When she's home, I can either be home also or be working from home or be out working.
So it's really an incredibly flexible job I have.
And what was your wife's early life like?
What was her infancy like?
She was born and she got...
She was sent to the U.S. Well, her parents moved to the U.S. and she was back being raised by her great aunt, I think.
And then they sort of sent for their children one at a time as they could.
And how old was she when she was reunited with her parents, roughly?
She came to the U.S. at five years old.
Right.
And did she know that her great aunt was not her mother?
Yeah.
Right.
And do you know why I'm asking this?
I think so.
And why do you think I'm asking this?
Because this sort of separation of mother and child, going back to work.
Yeah, I mean, just from assuming that the money can be dealt with, it does not seem particularly rational to me to say, well, I'd rather go and take care of sick people in a hospital than take care of my own Well, she's...
I'm going to be taking care of her when...
No, I get that.
I get that.
But if she wants to go back, like either she has to go back to work or she wants to.
And as far as I understand it, she doesn't have to, at least not for a while, which must mean that she wants to.
And again, I'm just saying, if someone gave me the choice to say, well, you can go work in a hospital or you can spend time with your daughter, it would be, well, time with my daughter, right?
I mean, that would be what I want to do.
So then my question would be, Why would that be something that would appeal to her going back to work?
Let me just finish my thought and then I'll be quiet.
So it could be – just a thought, right?
No proof or anything.
But it could be that if she had challenges in her own infancy, then she may find it painful to be around her daughter, your daughter, both of your daughter, right?
Right.
Because it may awaken very deep feelings of upset within her.
If she herself had a very difficult early childhood or even a medium difficult early childhood, then it just may be difficult for her.
And of course, Haiti is a challenging country to say the least.
And if her parents were gone and she was raised by someone else and then she was reunited and so on, that's quite a bit of chaos in the early childhood.
It's possible.
I don't know.
What do I know, right?
But I'm just saying it's possible to me that it might be worth talking with your wife about how well equipped she feels to take care of a baby because it may be avoidant a little bit or possibly wanting to go back to work.
It's just a thought, but tell me what you think.
I'm going to say that my wife has been an incredible mother.
I don't think it's anywhere close to accurate to say that she's, if anything, it's painful to leave her daughter.
Why is she doing it?
Then why is she doing it?
Well, I mean, the real reason is basically so I can quit my job and be a stay-at-home dad and have a lot more time to work on the business.
Because we need one person that has the benefits, health insurance, that kind of stuff.
So it's either me or me.
Okay, so it's not because she really wants to go back to work, but it's so that you can work more on your business?
Yeah, I think it would be inaccurate to say that she wants to go back to work and not spend time with her daughter.
I think she would far rather spend time with her daughter.
Right.
So if you were, I mean, the recommended breastfeeding, and breastfeeding is more than just getting the boob milk into the kid with the pumping and all that.
Breastfeeding is a whole ritual.
Right.
Of eye contact and cuddling and skin contact and all that kind of stuff.
So just to be aware, as far as I understand it, breastfeeding is more than just get the boob milk into the kid and a bottle is the same as a breast.
As far as I understand it, there's more to it than that, which is something to mull over.
And it's recommended.
I think 18 months is the recommended time to get ideal for breastfeeding.
And it's not just about the antibodies and immune stuff and all the healthy stuff that comes from the breast milk.
It's a lot of eye contact and skin contact, which you could do to some degree, but probably not quite the same.
Now, if you are going to be – if she's going to work so you can spend more time on your business, I assume then you're going to be working more than part-time if you're trying to start a business.
Yeah, I mean, but part-time is mostly at home.
Well, yeah, but if you're working, you're not parenting, right?
Right.
So your wife will be at work and you'll be working, so who's going to be taking care of the baby?
Well, I'll be taking care of her when she's awake.
Right.
Yeah, I mean, it depends on the baby you have.
Some babies that I know quite well didn't sleep much, and that will...
Yeah, so you'll get a couple of hours during the day probably where you'll be able to work in your business, but...
What's her sleep time during the day like at the moment?
How many hours during the day?
She has two naps, I assume, still, right?
Oh, at the moment, she sleeps a lot during the day and not quite as well at night.
Like, she has trouble when she's put down.
So we, you know, we're either usually holding her or, you know, yeah, mainly just holding her at night or...
We try to put her in a little rocker that we have and then sleep right next to her.
She wakes up pretty easily in that.
But during the day, she sleeps great.
Probably more than we'd like.
We're trying to switch it around a little bit so she sleeps more at night than during the day.
Right, of course.
It's pretty exhausting after a while with that.
Okay, well, it sounds like you're set as far as your decisions for childcare goes, so I won't sort of keep chipping away at that.
So you had questions about, I mean, you can check out The Truth About Breastfeeding, if you like, which is a free domain radio show, and we also did a show on The Mommy Wars, which I think was just last week, so you might want to check that one out too.
So your question is sort of around anxiety, right?
With regards to starting a business?
Yeah.
Right now, I have a corporate job, but not thrilled about it, don't want to do it anymore, want to be my own boss, want to work outside.
But what if this fails?
And then I lose a couple years of work experience and have to, you know, setbacks in my career.
So all of that stuff is sort of rattling around my head.
Okay, I mean, I can deal with the failure thing.
At least give you perspective on the failure thing.
There's nobody that I can imagine, Asher, who would be worth working for, who would view an entrepreneurial failure as some sort of black mark against you.
Because, I mean, I've been a hiring manager.
I've hired many, many people, interviewed hundreds of people.
And if someone said, well, I started my own business and they were frank and honest about what happened and what went wrong and they learned their lessons, that person to me was valuable.
Very valuable because it meant that they could think outside the context of their immediate responsibilities to the financial health of the organization as a whole.
Because they would understand things like cash flow, profit loss, customer satisfaction and how – there's a Dilbert that came out years ago where Dilbert is sitting in the hallway flicking his fingers and he's salaried and everyone's like, hey man, you're getting paid for flicking your fingers.
It's kind of true.
Yeah, I just remember when I was first on salary, it was just kind of strange.
It's like, okay, I'm getting paid for going to the washroom.
I'm getting paid for getting my coffee.
It's strange.
And people who've been entrepreneurs who have tried to start something really get cash flow is king and you make money or your life becomes a challenge.
And they also don't subscribe to silly things like the customer is always right.
That's something that, I don't know, is fine in fast food maybe, but in any sort of decently professional environment.
Customers are wrong.
And knowing when to fire customers is a very important thing.
And so someone who's been an entrepreneur, I can't imagine any interesting, competent hiring manager saying, ooh, he went out and risked something.
He went out and learned how business really works, and he failed.
To me, that was like, okay, well, tell me more.
That's interesting.
Yeah, that makes sense.
So I wouldn't – the only job that's going to – the only managers who are going to reject you on that are managers you don't want to work for because they are life crushers.
They are, oh, look, a glimmer of light and they take a giant cosmic dump – Down on that glimmer of light.
Oh, somebody took a risk.
I don't want them working here.
Oh, somebody really understands business.
Somebody was a self-starter.
Somebody trusted themselves to be their own boss.
Somebody went out and did every aspect of the business and, oh, I don't want them here.
It's like, okay, well, I guess I don't want to be here either.
So that would be my bit of comfort for that.
I think that's fairly defensible, but don't worry about that.
Now, as far as failure goes, you know...
I mean, learning how to love failure is pretty much the essence to happiness.
Because if you're scared of failure, you're scared of life.
So, think of some guy who was going out to hunt, you know, 50,000 years, going out hunting deer 50,000 years ago.
I mean, of those hours or days that he spent tracking and hunting deer, you know, how many minutes were actually spent killing a deer?
Like one out of 10,000 or something like that.
It's crazy just how much stuff doesn't work in this life.
Things working is kind of new.
You turn on your TV and it works.
You turn on the lights, they work.
Your cell phone boots up or whatever.
Things working in any kind of consistent way, it's kind of new.
Harvest sure as hell didn't work for a good portion of human history, which is why they were...
Eating baby rats come March, right?
And health sure as hell didn't work.
I mean, you get killed by tooth decay in your 20s, and that was one of the better ways to go in history.
So things actually kind of working, it's pretty new in the world.
And we've kind of got, I think because things work so well in the modern world because of the free market and all, we've kind of got used to this idea, well, things should work.
Things should work, and if they don't work, that's a problem.
But throughout most of history, people will be like, oh, yeah.
I mean, things don't work.
I mean, aren't there religions?
Was it Jehovah's Witnesses?
144,000 people are going to heaven, and that's it?
Yeah.
The vast majority of people are sinners, and so most of what you do doesn't work.
You know, the story of You're Enslaved in a video I did about four years ago is passing, I think it's just about to pass three million views.
And it's the only one Of my videos that's close to that.
I think the next one is the Trayvon Martin over a million and so on, right?
Now, of course, if I could put out a video that did three million views every time I put a video out, I'd probably do that, right?
But, you know, I'm not quite a one-hit wonder.
I have enough for one decent album after seven years of videos.
And I have to mix it up because some of the videos I have to do for myself, some of it I do to do more good.
You know, it's not like that.
Sorry if you're an enslavement video is convincing everyone to be peaceful parents.
I mean, there's other stuff that I have to do that's more important and practical and tangible and so on.
We weren't expecting the truth about breastfeeding to hit a million views on YouTube, but nonetheless, it remains important.
Despite the fact that Mike would not use the avatar that I supplied for my own body.
Which was man boobs with Nutella.
That was breastfeeding.
I've never quite seen a YouTube video get negative news before.
What happened to you?
Man boobs with Nutella.
I believe we have the name of the show.
And the icon!
So things won't work.
And if you're a salesperson, it's a numbers game.
Especially if you're selling something big and complicated.
It's just a numbers game.
You know, you call a thousand people, you get ten meetings, you get three RFPs, you get one sale.
That's just the way it works, especially cold calling and stuff, right?
I mean, so most things don't work.
And that's true of businesses as a whole.
I think the majority of businesses do fail within the first couple of years, which is not comforting but also is comforting because it's not purely accidental for a lot of those businesses that they fail.
People lose heart, they get scared, they become avoidant and so on.
So, if you just get used to, things in life don't work.
You know, for every person who donates to this show, there are hundreds of people who don't, even though they're listening to a lot of the shows.
They just don't.
And so, that's just the way things work.
I dated a lot of women before I found the woman I wanted to spend my life with.
A lot of people came and went working here before we found a team that really gels and works together.
Just a lot of things don't work.
And even the things that you love amazingly and think are the best don't work.
And, you know, every songwriter wants to write Stairway to Heaven, Bohemian Rhapsody, Blank Space, you know, whatever it is.
They want to write those songs.
But the number of people who can actually do it are tiny.
And even the people who can't do it can rarely do it consistently.
So, I think just saying, if you say to yourself, failure is going to be an intrinsic part of what I do, and if I'm unhappy about failure, I'm unhappy about life.
I mean, life is failure.
We reach, what, our peak in our teens, and after that, it's all downhill from there, right?
Oh, my gums are receding.
Oh, my hairline is receding.
Why did I pull my ankle running up the stairs?
Why did I pull my calf muscle running up the stairs?
Just because...
And then eventually it all fails and we take a big dirt nap for eternity face down with the worms.
I mean, so just embrace the fail.
Love the fail.
Because if you hate the fail, you're just going to hate most of life, which is fail.
And fail doesn't mean that you don't enjoy it.
I'm proud.
I can't think of a single show that I'm not happy and proud of.
And when I do occasionally listen back to older shows, I'm like, Well, I wish I was still this good.
I just wish, like, I wish I was, like, wow, that's great.
You know, it's always surprisingly good for me when I sort of listen to old shows and stuff.
And, you know, we all sound fine singing in the shower, and then just if you ever, for shits and giggles, record yourself and play it back, you're like, oh, right.
That's why those people who can sing get paid really well and stuff.
So I think if you sort of look at the fail, As life.
And the success is great, you know, and don't get me wrong.
It's nice and, you know, enjoy it.
But, I don't know.
For me, saying I'll be happy when I'm successful is like saying I'll be happy every 30 clips.
It's sort of outside of your control in a way.
And it comes and it goes.
And it doesn't add up to a lot of...
You don't want your happiness to be like.
There are these great shots in the Andes or in the Himalayas.
Himalayas!
Himalayas!
Or whatever they call them.
I don't know how you pronounce it.
But of these mountain peaks poking up through the clouds, I don't know if you've ever seen them.
They're like these giant mountain rock shark fins swimming through a cloudy sea.
It's beautiful stuff.
And you don't want your happiness to be like the peaks of those mountaintops poking up through the soft clouds.
You want it to be the whole earth, which is everything from the six-mile deep Mariana Trench to the five-mile high Mount Everest.
Just be the whole ecosystem, not just the moment that you bring the deer down with your bare hands and feast for two days.
So I think anxiety is the fear of negative consequences.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
That's perfectly natural.
And to want to get rid of anxiety is to want to get rid of life.
And to want to get rid of anxiety, I mean, I don't mean like panic attacks every time your feet hit the floor in the morning.
But that sort of mild unease that comes from trying something new and doing something that you've not done before, trying something that's risky, I think is partly exciting.
And I think sort of stress and anxiety tends to work out well when it's not overwhelming but not absent.
Because what happens then when it's absent is you get bored and frustrated and feel your life is slipping away at a groundhog day, stuck in a revolving door of the same day over and over again.
So embrace, you know, change.
And recognize that it's going to give you some anxiety and excitement and thrills and learn to recognize that if you pin your hopes for happiness on the success of everything you're doing, you are doomed to a life of frustration.
And Mike, you wanted to add some things too in this, if I remember rightly.
Yeah, I completely agree with everything you're saying, stuff about embracing the failure, because Lord knows failure happens every single day with every single thing.
Yeah.
That I do.
There's some way that it could be better or something that could be improved upon.
And that's a way our whole life, you know, the first step a child takes probably isn't going to go so well, but they keep trying at it and trying at it and trying at it before they're walking across a room and then sprinting years later.
So embrace the failure.
That's important.
But I think it's...
It's really important to prepare yourself for success, which reads like something you'd pull off a flyer at some motivational speaking class, but let me explain to you what I mean by that.
I had a friend who, had a friend, have a friend, who, mid-30s, told me that his first priority in life at this point is to have a family.
First priority, with a bullet, number one.
And then a little while along, a little ways after that, I heard him say something similar to what you're talking about, about becoming an entrepreneur.
And I talked to him and I'm like, so did you...
Did something change here?
Because it seemed to me, priority number one, have a family.
And now, wanting to be an entrepreneur, I'm aware that's a massive time commitment.
Such a huge time commitment that it's going to make it hard for, if your priority is to have a family, it's going to be hard to keep that at number one without burning yourself into the ground or You know, failing at both.
And it was a change that he wasn't aware of, and I was glad that I brought it to his attention.
And it's one of those things, like, I think it's really, really, really important to be 100% conscious of what your immediate and long-term priorities are.
Now, they can change, don't get me wrong, but I say this especially since you're a brand new father.
And parenting, that is going to be a big priority in your life.
And the amount of time that is going to have to be required to have a successful business, in many cases, is huge.
And I don't know the exact field that you're in, maybe not as huge, but this is something for you to mull over, but what are your priorities?
And are you going to have enough time and attention to dedicate to those priorities to set yourself up for success?
And if you try and have too many priorities at the same time, and as someone who has done that, and said, I'm going to try and do 40 things at once, and then I've accomplished absolutely none of them, or I've done them all, but done them all poorly, I think it's really important to be aware of what priority number one with a bullet is, and do everything in your power to throw as much time and resources towards that to make a success as is absolutely feasible.
Yeah, because my priority is my daughter and my wife right now, and I am having...
I am having trouble finding time to really do anything along the lines of starting this business.
And I'm really trying to turn a hobby into a business, a hobby of mine into a business.
So yeah, it really has been tough to juggle my day job, my part-time job, and being a father and husband Along with starting this business, and I, you know, starting the business, you know, I haven't had time to really put anything into it.
Right.
And you talk about motivation, being concerned about having the drive of motivation.
I found that to be something that's incredibly hard to just muster.
You know, if it's not there, if there's not a fire started that you can maybe add some kindling to, getting that going can be a big challenge.
Yeah, because I'm holding my daughter in my arms and I'm thinking, well, do I want to do some research or do I want to hold her?
Well, I want to hold her.
I think that's in line with what my priorities are.
This too, Asher.
What's that?
This too, not to cut you off, but if you picture success in your entrepreneurial venture, starting your business, I got to think that that is likely going to lead to more time away from your daughter, at least in the short term.
Yeah.
If things start going really well and you have more demand for either your product or services, it's going to be more time that you're going to have to put towards either developing that infrastructure or fulfilling what's needed.
And that's going to be more time away from your wife and daughter at crucial years where it's hard to even think about putting her down now like you talk about.
Right.
Is there any way you could structure it so that if your wife is going to go back to work, That you could stay home and maybe for the next year or two, not start a business.
Because, I mean, entrepreneurial space is very challenging.
And in America right now, for the first time, I think in the last year or two, more businesses are being destroyed than created.
It's really, really quite tragic.
And you're going to be facing a lot of competition in the entrepreneurial sphere, particularly when there's a time of high unemployment.
It doesn't mean that people aren't working.
It means often that they're looking for alternatives to the jobs they can't get a hold of, which means some entrepreneurial stuff.
And there's an old study, I think it comes out of Malcolm Gladwell or other people, around the Entrepreneurs who founded Silicon Valley were all born within a few months of each other because there's a particular window when you're young and unencumbered, so to speak, and with little overhead, low overhead.
That you could just work, like, insanely.
And I remember this when I was a boss, you know, like the young single guys.
It's like, yeah, we'll stay and play two hours of competitive Quake or Unreal Tournament at nighttime, and then we'll, you know, go out and talk coding until the wee hour.
And I could do that.
I was single and all that.
But, you know, I mean, the married people were like people with kids.
I'm like, oh, you know, 4.59.
I've got to go out.
I've got to go and get my kid.
And they just didn't have that flexibility.
I'm not sure that it may not be the best time to commit to fatherhood and entrepreneurial life at the same time.
Well, let me give you a high-level view of what I'm looking to start.
To answer your question, I think there probably is a way to start this at least gradually.
To where, you know, I'm doing it part-time and, you know, maybe I'm out when my wife can be home taking care of my daughter.
So the idea basically is to build, you know, edible landscaping.
So basically building people vegetable gardens.
I'm a gardener, love to do it, want to turn that into a business.
Yeah.
And, you know, so I, you know, there probably is a way to do it sort of part-time as we, you know, as my daughter grows up a little bit.
All right.
So you want to, it's landscaping with vegetables so that people can have something attractive that they can eat, right?
Yeah.
Right.
And for a lot of different reasons.
One being, I see what's coming down the pipeline in terms of the economy and food pricing and dollar devaluation and all that stuff.
But also, I want to capitalize on the local food movement and people are becoming more and more food and health conscious.
Right.
Yeah.
And so I guess the challenge would be – so if you came to me, if I were an investor and you came to me with this idea, the first question that would pop into my mind is, okay, well, how are you going to get your customers?
How are you going to get your first customers?
I'm going to do some – Basically, you know, sort of cold calling.
So going around to people who have, you know, look like they have landscaped yards or maybe the landscaping in their yard is a little unkempt and approach them and say, hey, here's what I can do for you.
So you would sort of walk around the neighborhood and try and find people who would want your services?
Yeah.
I mean, that's...
And do you know the competitors in the space?
In other words, have you looked up and seen if there's anyone else?
Because you certainly don't want to be walking behind the guy who's trying to get your business.
Right.
And so do you know any other people who are operating in your neck of the woods with similar ideas?
No.
And part of the reason for that is I'm planning on starting this in a whole different part of the country.
Well, yeah, but you can still research and see if there's anyone who offers the services in that part of the country, right?
Right.
And I have, to a certain extent, there are some, you know, there's a lot of landscaping companies out there, but none that I've seen that have specifically specialized in what I'm doing.
Now that, so the next question from an investor standpoint, for me, would be, and I say this because these are just questions you need to ask, right?
But...
Now, if there are tons of landscaping companies but none of them offer what you're offering, that may be because you're brilliant or there may be some other reason.
Right.
And that – assuming that it's because you're a genius who's thought of something that nobody else has thought of.
No, look, it could be true.
It could be true, but when I was giving investor pitches...
When I was pitching to investors a business, which I've done on more than one occasion, they basically would say, okay, well, what's the barrier to entry?
Not that I was ever pitching this, but if I was pitching web design, people would say, okay, well, what's the barrier to entrance for getting into your field?
And people would say, nothing, basically.
You need a computer, a phone, and an internet connection.
And so, because if you've had this great idea, like landscaping should include edible landscaping, well, that's an idea.
I don't think you can protect it.
And so, if there is this great idea that's relatively easy for you to get into, it's going to be much more easy for the existing landscape companies to add that to what they're doing.
Right, and I think even some of them have it as part as, you know, hey, we can do this also, but Not as a specialty.
Not as what?
Not as a specialty.
Right.
And so what that means is that there's not enough of a business for them to specialize in, if that makes sense.
Yeah.
So they need to offer a full-service landscaping thing, and they'll do that too.
But if you can't find a dedicated company for doing that, that's a challenge.
It doesn't mean you can't make it work, but it means that other people who are much more experienced in this field than you are have looked over that and decided not to do it.
And you need to know why.
And there's so much that you can do ahead of time to find out what is in the market space, what is in the marketplace.
And if there's lots of people in the marketplace...
That's both good and bad, right?
If there's few people in the marketplace, that's both good and bad.
If there's no people in the marketplace...
Like, I don't know, a personal action philosophy show, let's say.
Let's say that's both good and bad, right?
So, you know, whereas if, I don't know, if I was saying I want to create a chip fabrication plant, what's the barrier to entry?
Oh, I don't know, $5 billion, right?
It's like, okay, well, we know that people out of their basement aren't going to be fabricating chips for computers or something, right?
So, So, you know, these are the questions that – and I should – I don't know.
What do you think, Mike?
Should I just do a whole series on things to ask yourself if you're going to be an entrepreneur?
Sounds like a good serious idea to me.
Yeah.
I mean, because these are – the market research is the key.
Is the key.
And you can, you know, phone companies up and say, do you offer this service, right?
And pretend to be a customer, right?
Do you offer this service?
Well, we used to, but we found that there was no demand.
Or we used to, but we found that we couldn't offer it.
There was demand, but we couldn't offer it at a price point that people wanted.
Or we're planning on it because there's a huge upsurge in demand.
Whatever, I don't know.
Whatever they're going to say.
But you can...
And also you can find people who are retired.
So you can do a search on the web for companies that Aren't around anymore, but were around recently.
And you could then find a way to contact the person if that person had a name, like on, you know, the Wayback Machine where you can look at old websites.
You know, see if you can track the person down and say, listen, you know, I understand you've retired, your business is closed down, you've sold your business.
Man, I'd die for 10 minutes of your time.
And, you know, I mean, I don't think...
I mean, most people like to share their wisdom.
You know, the role of...
Guru or mentor is something that's sadly undervalued.
People retire.
It's going to vanish from society.
And some people do try to pass along wisdom and so on, but there's a lot of, well, I'm off to Boca Raton and that kind of stuff.
I'm going to have to bake myself like a lobster by a pool in Florida.
Actually, I don't think anybody does that anymore.
But a lot of people, like, you know, happy to help.
You know, like, I mean, if, I don't know, if somebody called me and said, you know, what's your experience in a software company?
I'd give them 10 or 15 minutes.
You know, if it saves them massive problems, I mean, why not?
It's, you know, cheap for me.
It makes the economy a slightly better place for the world as a whole and good for that.
So there's lots of things that you can do to really try and establish whether there's a market, whether there's a potential market, and what challenges other people have faced and how you're going to solve.
Those challenges, if that makes sense.
Yeah, that's really helpful.
Because you don't want to just sort of say, well, I'm going to go and do it.
And we're going to go there.
I'm going to start knocking on doors.
I mean, that's a really Bias Ackwood's way to get a business going.
And I think that's going to – that's just putting in brute muscle where a moment's thought goes.
It's like trying to lift a car up by your hand when you're sitting next to a jack.
It's like, well, you might be able to do it, but man, you're going to hurt yourself in the process.
And the forethought of the planning, I've said this before on the show, there was an old entrepreneurial joke.
It's a little bit crude, but there was an old entrepreneurial joke where, which is basically there's a A herd of female cows.
I didn't come up with the joke, and it was an older guy who told me, so I apologize for the crudeness.
But there's a whole bunch of female cows, because they're all female if they're cows, right?
A bunch of female cows at the bottom of a hill, two bulls up at the top of the hill.
And there's a young bull and an old bull.
And the young bull says, let's run down the hill as fast as we can and have sex with the first cow, right?
Right?
And the older bull says, oh man, that's not how you do it.
You walk slowly down the hill and have sex with all of them.
You're not tired.
You're not out of breath.
And so with the entrepreneurial stuff, it's really around the forethought and around the planning.
I mean assuming that you're going into a market that's already defined.
I mean mine started out as a hobby too.
I ended up with a business that came out of it.
But I've always specifically looked for things that I can do, and we have these conversations internally all the time.
Should we do this story?
Can we do something that only we can do?
Can we take an approach to it that really only we can take?
And if not, we tend to throw it on the maybe pile, which then decomposes into the not-in-a-million-years pile.
And so I knew for myself...
There were lots of libertarian outlets.
There were lots of, you know, fed bad outlets and so on and lots of free market outlets and all that.
And I could have added my voice into all of that and so on.
But what I saw pretty clearly was that bringing libertarian or philosophical values to bear in your own life in actionable ways, taking the principles, rip them out of the goddamn clouds and stick them up your spine.
I bet you nobody thought I was going to say the word spine there.
Sometimes it feels like the other words you were thinking of, but you want to rip the principles out of the books and put them in your hands, put them in your muscles.
And that's what I – the very first slogan way back in I think 06 or 07 was the philosophy of personal and political liberty, the personal coming first, personal freedom from the initiation of force or aggression or whatever it is in your own life.
And I didn't see anyone else who was doing that.
You know, there were philosophy shows who was like, let's talk about Cartesian metaphysics.
It's like, yeah, I could do that too, but so what?
You know, what I wanted to do was give people values that they could act on.
And I did that largely because I'd had these values and not acted on them and saw how disastrous that turns out.
So even within the sphere of the history of this show, I was always looking for a differentiator.
And Philosophy is not a conversation any more than dieting is a book with pictures.
I mean, it's necessary to have the conversation, but it's not sufficient to be philosophical to merely talk about it.
You don't look at a gym membership and bulk up, right?
I mean, you don't look at your weights and get ripped.
You have to actually lift and move them.
It's all about moving metal in dark places.
And so I really wanted to translate philosophy into action and I didn't see anywhere else that that was really happening and I still don't really.
I mean because a lot of the libertarian stuff is vote for this person, do this rally, sign this petition, try and get this law changed.
And all of that, you know, I mean I obviously have my issues with that.
I don't see how that adds to liberty and values in your own life.
So, if there is a market that's out there, then that means that people are willing to buy the product, and that's great.
And that means that some of the people who buy that product could buy from you.
But I think it's wise in general to assume that any relatively mature market And I'm going to put landscaping in that because they were the hanging gods of Babylon.
So any market that's more than a few thousand years old, I'm going to assume is a relatively mature market.
And given that the barrier to entry for landscaping is quite low, and I would assume that every market you're going to enter that's relatively mature, particularly with the barriers to entry are low, that...
There are as many businesses in the market space as the market can support.
This is just – again, unless there's – you've got to have 19 licenses.
There are some crazy states where to be an interior designer, you've got to go to school for years and – I mean just because this throw pillow looks nice.
Oh, I think I just broke the license.
Anyway, I'm obviously – Being so facetious, I get that interior design.
Like all things I don't do well and can't understand, I assume it's very simple.
I think the state that I am moving to does require heavy licensing, and for that reason, given that I don't have experience, haven't gone to school for this, I might have to...
Landscaping requires licensing where you're going?
Yeah, big time.
How are you going to overcome that?
Well...
Yeah.
Wait a minute.
What are you talking about?
Well, it's...
Are you not legally allowed to do...
I'm sorry to mean to laugh, but isn't that sort of an important thing?
So what it is, it's...
Landscaping is just how I sort of describe it, but it's basically like raised bed gardens.
So I'm going to get around it by, you know, not calling it landscaping and not like doing official landscaping, but like raised bed vegetable gardens.
Well, I'll tell you this.
You better find out than talk to a lawyer for heaven's sakes, right?
Yeah.
Because I guarantee you if other people – this is the way in which the police state spreads because if other landscapers have put their time and money and energy into getting licensed and they see you waltzing in and doing stuff that they'll call landscaping without a license, I mean, you don't need the cops to catch you.
They'll turn you in.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, yeah, you better be pretty sure about that because definitely if there's licensing requirements, I mean, then all those who are licensed will be policing interlopers.
So just be very aware of that and, you know, don't do anything, obviously, that's going to get you on the wrong side of this sort of stuff.
Right.
And also, I mean, if there is some loophole in the licensing, I can virtually guarantee you that if you achieve any kind of success, they will try to close that loophole.
Like, your competitors will try and close that loophole.
I mean, you just see how...
Oh, what is that?
Mike, you might know the name of this.
What's that service that you can get sort of pseudo-cabs with on your iPhone?
Uber, I believe you're referring to.
Uber.
Uber, okay.
And I mean, the taxicab companies are just trying to get that closed down all the time, right?
Because they went through, they bought a $100,000 license and now guys are coming in with a smartphone and doing the same thing.
So listen, I mean, that would be my suggestion about ways to approach it.
But I think you've got some not too tough work to do, but it might be difficult work emotionally for you to do.
Because if you do find out that you can't offer this without a license, or if you do find out that, you know, there's 20 guys already offering it, and they're all going out of business left, right, and center, you know, you can track bankruptcies in this field in the location that you're going to, and if they're on the up, it means that the market is shedding providers rather than acquiring them, which, again, doesn't mean that it's impossible, but it's just really good to know all of that stuff.
Yeah.
When it comes to entrepreneurship, because you are putting significant amounts of time and resources and you're foregoing a lot of income and you may get into debt, you really do have to know what the market is and what the opportunities are, what the possibilities are.
And so on.
And don't start getting into this and then find out, you know, like you can also see what's coming down the pipeline from a regulatory standpoint because, I mean, particularly under Obama, hundreds of thousands of regulations have been added to just about every conceivable aspect of business.
And it's, you know, it's like watching a blue whale be drained to death by a billion mosquitoes.
And so, you know, just I would do this kind of research and just pretend you're doing it for someone else or, you know, whatever it is, but don't walk in I'm blindfolded thinking that a good idea and a willingness to work hard is going to do it because if it's a good idea, at least have the humility to know that you're not the only person, and neither am I, who have good ideas.
And there's lots of people out there who've worked hard and lots of people out there who have even more of a motive to work than you do because you've got a young daughter on your hands and they may be single, young, or they may be...
Their kids have grown, and they're looking at growing the business in order to sell it at a peak, or whatever it is, so they can retire.
Those would be my suggestions about ways to approach this, and that's just sort of off the top of my head with not having much understanding of how these kind of businesses work.
All right, so we're going to move on to the next caller, if that's all right, but congratulations, and do give your daughter a big, wet, squishy, bearded kiss for me, if you don't mind.
Thanks.
Will do, Seth.
All right.
Thanks, Asher.
Thanks.
Alright, up next is Rob.
Rob wrote in and said, My girlfriend is Jewish, and although she doesn't come from an overtly religious family, she would want to circumcise her potential future son and feels pressure from her family to do so.
How can I convince her that it's not a good idea and also help her overcome the pressure to do it from her family and culture?
Hmm.
It should be.
Yeah, that's a challenge.
That's a challenge.
Are you guys married yet?
No.
Can you hear me okay?
Yes, you can.
Great.
Cool.
Just checking.
No, no.
We've been together for about a year.
And I feel like it's a bit of a pickle because I listen to your show.
And once again, thank you so much for everything you do.
It really helped me a lot.
And I feel like I'm with her for a lot of really great reasons.
But obviously, this is...
This one thing.
It's not the only thing, but it's the major thing.
It's like we have this great relationship.
You're sort of living with this ghost of Jewish Edward Scissorhands creeping over our shoulders sometimes.
Right.
Now, absent her family, I assume by that it's parents, right?
Or at least elders.
Absent her family, what are her thoughts about circumcision?
Um, it's, there's a lot of things where I can get very straight answers, but this is one of those sort of blue screen shutdown.
Now, that's it.
You know, like, it's really hard to get straight answers and the conversations just go, go around in circles, unfortunately.
She is aware that there are uncircumcised Jews, right?
I told her that.
I said, did you know that 5% of the Jewish males in Israel are not circumcised?
And there are whole movements of fully religious Jews saying, we maintain our religion and every aspect of it, but we should stop circumcising.
And she said, well, maybe if I'd grown up with that, maybe.
But I didn't.
Wait.
Does she have a cell phone?
A cell phone?
Yeah, of course.
Yeah, of course.
Did she grow up with a cell phone?
I know.
I know.
It's ridiculous.
This is the thing.
This is sort of where I'm at with it is that I find her lack of curiosity.
If it was just about the actual issue, you could go, okay, cool.
She's like, I respect you and we're going to talk about it and get really curious and find out.
That would be great.
But because there is such a lack of curiosity and like you said, that's It's just such a ridiculous thing to even say, well, if I grew up with an uncircumcised religious family, then maybe I wouldn't do that, but I didn't.
It's even just to know that that's the reason why is ridiculous, and it kind of undermines my respect for her, you know what I mean?
Well, sure.
Well, sure.
And when you say not particularly religious, what does that mean?
Well...
You know, I mean, because I was very, I feel like I've been very, kept my eyes open throughout the relationship.
She invited me to a Passover at her parents.
Her father comes from like an English slash Australian Jewish family.
Her father's parents are who are here.
Her father's brother married an atheist woman and is totally atheist.
Her parents are culturally Jewish.
They have a cultural Jewish identity, but they're total atheists.
So her father is searching for an identity, you know, traveled to Israel, went to a kibbutz.
I only just found out what they are.
Subsidized socialism.
I know.
For rich Western kids.
Yeah, I know.
I'm reading this Wikipedia article about, you know, Karl Marx's philosophies in kibbutz.
I'm like, oh God, give me a break.
Anyway, he found an Israeli wife.
So that's my girlfriend's mom.
She...
He's more religious and he, I think, you know, he just said, I always felt like a bit different to other people and he's latched onto the Jewish thing and he sort of says, I'm not religious.
They don't go to synagogue at all.
They're not observing.
My girlfriend eats bacon.
She doesn't like eating pork because it's gristly and fatty, fair enough, but she eats bacon.
Went to a Passover and it was kind of like, you know, read a bit of the book, have a giggle, get halfway through, the mum rolls her eyes, let's all eat.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
And she said, we do it more for mom.
She said the fasting, like I fast for mom, but if she wasn't around, I wouldn't bother.
And I was like, okay, cool.
But she says, you know, we're culturally Jewish and it's part of my identity.
I said, well, great.
Like that's never a problem for me.
Awesome.
And if we had kids, she said, you know, like I wouldn't, I said, I wouldn't, I don't want to bring kids up in an environment where they are taught something to the point where they're scared to think anything else.
And I said, and I'm atheist, and I would be telling them appropriately how I see things.
But I'd say, hey, your mom's Jewish.
That's what it is.
That's what it's all about.
If you want to go for it, go for it.
You make your own decisions.
And obviously, we grew up in Australia, and all our friends are not very religious.
Sorry, go for what?
I just want to make sure I understand.
Oh, just the Jewish thing.
Say if we had a kid, and say, okay, your mom's Jewish.
You've got...
That culture there, you know, she'd want to do some of the rituals.
Yeah, cool.
No worries.
But, you know, and she always said that for her, the rituals is about family and about being together.
And I come from a pretty crappy family that I don't speak to anymore.
So I was like, well, you know what?
Family and being together and talking and spending time and having good relationships with family is a really great thing for me.
Big thumbs up for me.
So I didn't see a huge problem with it.
And like I said, they're all like, you know, her dad's like, I don't believe the Bible's written by God.
I believe it was written by men to organize society.
I'm like, yeah, I do too.
He probably puts a positive spin on that.
I put a negative spin on it.
But they don't go to synagogue.
You know, they're really just sort of, I don't know.
I didn't find a huge religious element there.
But you get to circumcision.
I must circumcise.
And even her atheist grandmother, oh, you have to do that.
Have to.
Oh, okay.
Why?
Oh, it's healthy.
No, it's not.
Well, if it is minutely more healthy, there are other ways, better ways to tackle that.
It doesn't give you any major health benefit in and of itself at all.
Oh, you just have to.
It's our culture.
Well, that's a dumb reason to do things because everyone's got different cultures.
Oh, you just have to.
You know what I mean?
All right.
Right.
Right.
Yeah, I mean, there are a million Jews around the world who aren't circumcised.
Yeah, I know.
So then the question is, excuse me for being frank, what the fuck is it about then?
First of all, parents do not have the right to inflict religion upon children.
Because children are in a dependent and susceptible state.
And I would add to this culture, but that's such a big word that doesn't – we owe our children clear, rational thought.
They are too dependent upon us.
We have too much power over them.
They cannot be our intellectual equals.
They cannot argue with us.
They cannot – they do not have the knowledge.
We are shaping their minds through our interactions.
They don't have – Yeah.
So when somebody doesn't have the capacity to say no to us, that is when we must be at our most gentle and solicitous.
So there's no reason why your son, should he choose to get a circumcision as an adult, it's perfectly valid.
That's what I offered.
I offered this.
And I mean, this is where...
No, no, that's not yours to offer.
See, you don't own your child's penis and neither does your wife or your girlfriend.
So you can't offer that.
No, I agree.
It's not yours to give.
But you said that's a perspective, right?
He can get a circumcision if he wants it as an adult.
Exactly.
That's what I said.
I've had a very candid chat to her dad about all this.
Hey, how would this work out with the family and also my girlfriend?
And I said, look, if circumcision is that great, make the case when they're older, when he has the choice, but you're doing it on a baby.
And I mean, I didn't say this explicitly, but the only facilitating sort of element to doing it to a child is that they're too small to grab the scalpel and throw it in your eye.
That's the only thing that enables...
No, no, that's what I'm thinking.
I'm saying that to you now.
Oh, yeah, no, you do it to them because it can't be undone, and what sane adult is going to...
Yeah, that's the only facilitating circumstance, is that they're a baby.
And I said to her dad, you know, you don't...
People own their own bodies, so you have no right to take some of it without their consent.
If my son grew up and said, hey, I really like the culture.
I'm half Jewish.
Mom's Jewish.
It's all great.
Nat and Pop are awesome and I really like it.
Great.
Go get a circumcision.
It's his choice.
That's fine.
But to do it on a baby, it's irreversible.
I offered this in negotiation, but we go into crazy land because I said to her dad, well, we own our bodies.
It's no one else's to take.
And he said, well, see, that's the thing.
I don't believe we do own our bodies.
I'm just, oh, wow, okay.
I mean, I mumbled something about your argument of writing a piece of paper that says language is meaningless, you know.
But you just go off into fairyland, you know, and I get so flabbergasted by such a ridiculous thing to say that I find it hard to get my logic back on track, you know.
And what if you converted to a belief system that required female genital mutilation as opposed to male genital mutilation?
Would that be fine with her?
Would that be like, okay, we'll mutilate the girl's genitals when she's a baby or when she's young?
You know, like, I listen to your show.
I'm trying to be really rational and make great decisions.
So I brought this up with her four or five months into our relationship.
What if I wanted a certain - what if I was a Muslim?
I mean, people tell me that's not exclusive in Muslim belief.
I don't know.
But if I was from a culture that wanted to circumcise our daughter, she'd say, and I was like, we had this beautiful baby daughter.
I grabbed the knife and was like, great.
And she's like, I'd grab my baby and run.
I'm like, well, that's how I feel.
Who in this conversation has the penis?
Who the fuck is the woman making decisions about the penis?
You have one.
Exactly.
Why the hell would she have anything to say about it?
Well, because she just says, my dad and my brothers are all fine.
They're all great.
They're all happy.
My dad's had a lot of great relationships.
It's all fine.
It has to be done.
You know?
No, no.
So she would take the girl and keep her away from you if you approached the girl's genitals with a knife?
Yeah.
Well, does she not understand then how you feel?
Well, this is the thing.
I'm sure she does.
And I even said the same thing to her dad.
We had, like I said, a three-hour really in-depth chat.
And I said, what if, you know, female gentleman, what if I wanted to do that?
You know, because I was from a culture that did that.
And he's like, oh, it's different.
It's different.
It's different.
It's a different thing.
It's a different thing.
And I was like, how is it really different?
And he's like, fudged around a bit, fudged around.
And then sent me a text probably a week later, said, look, I don't think I had an adequate answer for you.
On how it really is different, but here's what I would say.
And then he said, oh, the World Health Organization lists it as female.
They've changed the name to female genital mutilation.
It used to be called female circumcision.
I know, but he went down a sophist, it's got a different name, therefore the action is different, therefore I don't have to change kind of route.
And once again, I deflate.
I just go, this is fucking ridiculous.
And then I feel like saying to him exactly how you said, look, language is the matrix we live in.
You can't get this.
A rose is a rose, that sort of thing.
But I attack it from every angle I can.
But I have to reiterate, this is a family that I see a lot of positive stuff with, a lot of great things.
I feel like I'm with my girlfriend for a lot of great reasons.
But this is just this impenetrable wall of shutdowns.
And running around in circles.
I even got to the point that my girlfriend was saying, you know, your dad believes that we don't own our bodies.
And she said, well, I agree.
And I said, but in every other circumstance, we act like people own their bodies.
I can't...
What does that mean?
Sorry.
So you can cut off a third of the skin of the baby boy's penis because you own that baby boy's body.
And so she then extrapolates that to we don't own our own bodies?
No, he… So does that mean that… Sorry, go ahead.
He just said, oh, look, you know, well, I don't believe we do own our own bodies.
It's like everything we own.
It comes and it goes.
At the end, we're all going to die, blah, blah, blah.
And I'm like, yeah, but you… What the hell does that mean?
What does it mean?
It means nothing.
When it goes, we're all going to die?
I know, I know.
And, you know, I mean, I'm the first to say, well, just because we, you know, quote-unquote, lose it to nature and it comes from nature doesn't mean that you've then proven that it's yours to take because you're not life or death, you know?
It's...
And I even said, in every other instance, we act like people do own their own bodies.
And it's like anything else.
Okay, circumcision.
Well, they don't remember it.
And I say, well, if I drugged and raped a woman and left no trace, did I do nothing wrong?
She's like, of course you did.
I'm like, well, this is the thing.
Well, what about the female genital mutilation?
She's going to take that child away from you if you get a doctor to come at that girl with a knife, and rightly so.
So is it only the male bodies that are disposable?
Is it only the male bodies that are not owned?
And also, well, her dad, in defending the difference between that and the female one, is he said, you know, female genital mutilation is designed to control their sexuality and is the oppression of women and blah, blah, blah.
I'm like, what's your point?
That's what it's for men, you know?
Look, I mean, I don't know.
What?
I mean, obviously it's a covenant with God and blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
But this is bullshit.
But for atheists to believe any of that shit is just ridiculous.
Judaism is a religion or a culture or a race or a nationality depending on which way you want to slice and dice that cake, right?
All of the above at the same time, simultaneously.
All of the above, none of the above, whatever, right?
Now, the degree to which it's a race...
They have in-group preferences for breeding with their own race.
I believe that one of the reasons why circumcision was essential was to make sure that no non-Jews pretended to be Jews to mate with Jewish women.
It's a form of branding of the male to ensure that the Jewish race or the Jewish stock is not diluted with non-Jewish DNA. Well, I mean, that makes a lot of sense.
I watched the documentary a long time ago called Who Wrote the Bible?
And he's basically talking about the Old Testament and that it was, you know, in ancient, or what is Israel now, that there's so many sort of disparate tribes or their own religions, and they unified under one king and one religion, the same as Constantine.
They just went, one religion, where are people, solidification of power, boom.
You know, so the religion, like you said, is about creating, and there's the thing with Jews, is they don't really want to convert anyone, but they want supreme Sure.
Sure.
as cattle that can be cheated and sometimes even killed with impunity.
Like there's the same in-group preferences within Judaism as there are, and extreme Judaism, this is not obviously your average Jew.
But yeah, there are, of course, within the Torah, very much commandments around, you know, that they're yours to use as you see fit, You can lie to them, you can cheat to them, you can kill them, and so on, right?
And there are crazy...
Crazy rabbis in the world who put this stuff forward and so on.
Well, I mean, I've even come up against some of that.
You know, I mean, as a side issue, like I said, her father's family who live here in Australia, they're Australian, are all very atheist.
But her mum, who's Israeli, you know, she said to her daughter, because, you know, we've started to talk about marriage and her daughter loves me to bits, I love her to bits, except for, you know, all this stuff.
And she said, well, if you married him, don't, you know, He's a great guy.
It's this weird double thing.
He's a great guy.
He's really great.
You're really happy.
I just want you to be happy.
I'd do anything for you.
I love you, but don't expect me to come to your wedding.
And my girlfriend was like, wow, that's really fucked up.
And I'm like, yeah, it's pretty screwed up.
I'm going to give you some facts here.
Circumcision often performed on infants without anesthetic or with a local anesthetic that's ineffective.
In a study from 1997, a controlled group of infants who received no anesthesia was used as a baseline to measure the effectiveness of different types of anesthesia during circumcision.
The controlled group babies were in so much pain, some began choking and one even had a seizure, they decided it was unethical to continue.
It is important to also consider the effects of post-operative pain in circumcised infants, regardless of whether anesthesia is used, which is described as severe and persistent.
There are other negative physical outcomes including possible infection and death.
Researchers demonstrated that the hormone cortisol, which is associated with stress and pain, spikes during circumcision.
Although some believe that babies won't remember the pain, we now know that the body remembers as evidenced by studies which demonstrate that circumcised infants are more sensitive to pain later in life.
Research carried out using neonatal animals as a proxy to study the effects of pain on infants.
Psychological development have found distinct behavioral patterns characterized by increased anxiety, altered pain sensitivity, hyperactivity, and attention problems.
I mean this is a ridiculous stereotype, but I remember Jon Stewart interviewing some anthropologist who was Jewish who was talking about all the places he went in the world and all the exciting – And Jon Stewart was like, don't you know that our people are, you know, we don't do that well with that kind of stuff.
We're sort of subject to nasal blockage.
And, you know, he's just talking about how.
And so this idea of the sort of the...
Anxious or neurotic Jewish male and so on.
It may have some truth and some of that truth in general might be based upon the effects of circumcision.
Studies of men who were circumcised in infancy have found that some men experience symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anger, intimacy problems.
And 5.1% of males will have significant complications from circumcision.
The rate can be as high as 55% for all complications.
Matal stenosis narrowing of the urinary opening has been found in 20% of circumcised boys.
And we've got the truth about circumcision, of course.
I'm sure you've seen it and so on.
But we'll put a link to this as an article in Psychology today.
But it is very bad.
For boys.
Of course it is.
I mean, you're stripping a child of one-third of the skin on the most sensitive organ that the body has.
I mean, there's simply no way that that could be considered anything other than highly negative.
No.
I mean, I've got a video of that on YouTube and it's like nine minutes long just from like an instructional video with sort of classical music playing in the background.
And the baby is just screaming and gagging.
I got four minutes in and just like, I can't watch it.
I can't watch it.
And to be honest, I have such an emotional, visceral reaction to any of these.
And the one that you had in your presentation as well, I look at that and I just go, you do that to my son, I'll fucking kill you.
And it makes me...
It makes me morally so disgusted by her that, for me, I just go, wow, you were just culturally indoctrinated to the point that you do that to my child.
I just feel like, no, fuck off.
No, a friend of mine had an adult circumcision.
All right.
And I won't get into any of the reasons why.
It wasn't anything religious, of course, or medical.
But, I mean, it was staggering how painful it was.
Well, I mean, but this is the thing that I could say all this to her and she doesn't argue with me when I say it's excruciating for the babies and they're too young to have proper anesthetic and she goes, look, I get that.
But she goes, there's videos of my brother getting done and they're fine.
They don't even cry afterwards.
I said, if they don't cry, it's because they go into shock.
She's like, they're all fine.
My brothers are great guys.
My dad's a great guy, hardworking, great family, you know.
Yeah, hardworking, no kidding.
Yeah.
No kidding.
Yeah, well...
You brand slaves, they tend to be pretty hardworking too.
Yeah, yeah.
But I mean, they're all, you know, lovely functional people.
No, they're not lovely functional people.
I know, but on the surface...
No, they're not lovely functional people because they're willing to slice off a third of a baby's penis skin.
I know.
If that wasn't the case, I'd say they really are.
Well, and the mom's not going to come to your wedding, right?
Well, no, I know.
And this is what scares me about my girlfriend is...
And they're not rational.
No.
About this issue, and I'm telling you, it's not only this issue.
And they're incredibly sexist.
Yep.
Anti-male.
Well, if you were to do this to a woman, I'd be horrified.
Do it to a man or do it to a boy.
They're great.
That is not isolated.
No, it's not.
It's not.
I know that.
And that's, yeah, it's a huge problem.
I'm not sure what to do.
How pretty is she?
Look, I knew that was coming.
I'm not too bad looking.
To me, she's gorgeous.
I'm in love with her.
I'd be very happy.
Give me the virtues then, if you're in love with her.
Look, I think we're both probably about, say, seven and a half.
Okay, but give me her virtues then, if you're going to say love rather than lust.
And I accept that.
I'm not trying to say you're wrong.
I just want to know what the virtues are.
I came out of a very abusive relationship before her and a real narcissist, you know, sort of prettier, very pretty, you have to pay for me, illogical.
I was very much an emotional punching bag.
It took me a year and a half to figure out, you know, listen to you, why did I normalize such a horrible, abusive, manipulative woman?
Once I dealt with that, I started looking at my mom, traced that back as far as I could go and was like, ooh, okay.
I'm going to see a therapist for the first time this afternoon to talk about that.
That hasn't been resolved.
I went to my mother with issues and she's like, get out of my house.
Okay.
I'm sorry about that, man.
I really am.
That's terrible.
Yeah.
It's really hard.
It's really hard.
I spoke to my sister.
I'm wanting some validation.
And she said, I'm just about to have a kid.
I don't disagree with anything you've said, but I need her.
And I just said, okay, you're a fucking coward then.
Don't speak to me.
Oh, she needed your mom for childcare?
Yep.
And I talked to her about everything I went through and the life that I've had.
And I'm really proud of myself to be where I am.
It's fucking hard.
I met my girlfriend and...
I'm a musician, right?
That's my profession.
She said, hey, I love music.
Let's catch some live music.
Cool.
I'm happy to pay a first date.
I said, no, no, no.
Let's just go halves.
Cool.
Very gentle.
I know what I'm saying about circumcision.
I would say she's not gentle but up to excluding this issue.
She's going to be very gentle and maybe it is the Jewish kind of slightly chauvinist culture but she likes men and sees men as positive things.
Not like in Australia.
There's so many feminist women who just hate men.
They just despise men.
They're jealous and contemptuous of you.
They want you to pay for everything then hate you for having more money than them.
You know, and they're just, oh, it's horrible.
So I meet her and it's his values of family.
Her, on her father's side, there's quite a few very famous musicians who were mentors to people that I listen to on CD and I'm You know, talking about that and they love what I do.
They really respect what I do.
They say I'm smart.
They say I'm hardworking.
You know, my girlfriend is hardworking as well.
She's not lazy.
She's very giving.
She's the sort of girl that, hey, you've given me a massage, you know, a few times, roll over, I've got to reciprocate.
And I'm like, wow, it's like you said with your wife.
Hey, I'll just go pick up your shoes.
And you get this moment.
You're like, wow, that's, thank you.
And it's surprising, you know?
Yeah, I know.
I mean, I know what you mean about some of the overly feministized women.
Oh, my clitoris might like you, but my heart and my mind despise you!
Yeah.
I want to climb on the patriarchy, screw it, and strangle it at the same time.
It's like, I really wish things were slightly less complicated.
I know.
And growing up and identifying with my mother who's through victimhood, just a perpetual victim, but also quite abusive through that.
You know, I grew up saying, yeah, feminism's great, great, great, great, but then just getting treated like shit by women and just...
Yeah, and I've looked at the...
I don't know.
I don't know what I'm trying to say, but that's really hard and...
My girlfriend is not feminist, is favorable towards men.
You know, she loves her dad and maybe it's the patriarchal rabbis or something, but they look towards men with favor.
And as a consequence, she's helpful.
She's lovely.
She, in every other way...
We can have a great discussion.
She supported me through all that stuff with my family.
I was really busy at work one time and she just stayed behind just without me asking.
She cleaned my house.
I was like, hey, that makes me feel really lazy.
Please.
She's like, I just wanted to help.
I'm like, okay.
Thank you.
Cheers.
There's a lot of great stuff.
I mean, it's not because she's just gorgeous.
I mean, after my last one, she was good looking, but I got to the point of just going, it's not worth it.
I hate you.
It's not worth it.
And I've learned that lesson the hard way.
So I chose her on values and virtues and just a good cross-section of everything you want in a partner.
But this one issue just cuts right to the heart of it because, no, it's not rational and it's not kind and it's not gentle.
You know what I mean?
Well, and the mom would reject the marriage, right?
I know.
And this is the funny thing about my girlfriend.
I get the propaganda spiel.
My mom loves me.
She would do anything for me.
Whatever she does for me, I know it's because she loves me so much that she does it out of love.
She would do anything for me.
And I say, except come to her wedding.
You know, and then it's like fumbles.
That would be one of the things that would kind of be helpful.
Like, nobody's saying pick up your dry cleaning once, you know, next February.
That's like come to the wedding.
I know.
Right?
That's a pretty big thing.
Look, I don't, you know, when it comes to the Jewish experience, I mean, there's Judaism in my family background on the German side.
But I have not been subjected to this fairly intense pressure that comes out of Certain aspects of Judaism.
Like, if you don't marry a Jewish guy, like to a Jewish girl, if you don't marry a Jewish guy, you're continuing the work of Hitler kind of thing.
And that's, you know, some hyperbole or whatever, but there is a lot of pressure.
You know, it's 5,000 years, it didn't...
The tribe did not stay together by accident.
It stayed together and retained an identity after...
Persecution and being expelled from over 100 countries.
But there's a lot of well-versed, well-practiced pressure to maintain these rituals.
And some of it has to do with closing your hearts against suffering.
And circumcision is one of those things.
And I don't know the degree to which it shows up.
I mean, I've had my eyes open, you know?
Yeah, well, I mean, it's certainly showing up in the mom rejecting the whole marriage.
Yeah, but at the same time, my girlfriend identified that as ridiculous.
Her father said to me, I chose a Jewish woman.
I would say from experience it's better that she married Jewish, but at the end of the day, you're a great guy and to be with a bad guy who's Jewish, I don't want that.
The only must-have I want is that my daughter's happy, you have my blessing kind of thing.
Her grandmother is like, oh, Rob's amazing.
Yeah, he's just great.
Yeah, go for it.
They love me to bits.
They all think I'm great and We're great.
Are they going to want you to raise your children in—because Jewish, of course, is matrilineal, right?
So Judaism is matrilineal, so your kids will be, according to Judaism, Jewish, right?
Yeah.
So would they want you to—because you've got to like, well, there are these rituals and all that's great and so on, right?
You know, I don't know.
I mean, it really depends upon your commitment to philosophy, right?
I'm not trying to corner you or shame you or anything like that because we all have to make our decisions.
There's no one who can have a hundred percent commitment to philosophy in the modern world.
You simply can't do it because the world is kind of nutty and aggressive and all that kind of stuff.
I'm not trying to say, well, you should have a hundred percent commitment.
It comes down to your level of commitment.
And so if people have rituals, okay, they have rituals.
And I'm sure that's fine and survivable.
And, you know, that can be comfort and rituals.
And I kind of get what your girlfriend is saying about it gets the family together.
Like saying, let's get together because it's Sunday is one thing, right?
But saying, let's get together for Hanukkah or to sit Shabbat or whatever, that's different, right?
That's more like people got to come.
Yeah, yeah.
And I... I get that.
I mean, it would be nice if people would come without that, but it does make it more likely that people will come.
So some of it, yeah, okay, you sit and, you know, I certainly love the Jewish.
As I've said before, so much that I love about Judaism and the Jewish traditions, not least of which is that, you know, they raise the bar in terms of commitment, intelligence, excellence, I mean, all that kind of stuff.
I've said that on this show before.
Yeah.
And Jewish conversations are often fantastic and, of course, incredibly funny.
Yeah.
I saw a friend's play some while back and some of his Jewish friends were over and one of them had been given a book called The Big Jewish Book of Why, which is, you know, an explanation for all the Jewish rituals and histories and so on.
And his friend who's Jewish said, "No, no, no.
It should be the big Jewish book of Why Me?" I thought that was just brilliant.
Just brilliant.
And so I can see a lot of those rituals having some, you know, let's sit and talk about big Let's sit and talk about virtue.
Yeah, and the idea of the mensch, you know, like the good man, the good, solid, upstanding, reliable, devoted man of integrity.
I mean, that is...
Good stuff.
I mean, obviously, I wish it were more of a philosophy and a little bit less of a tribe.
You can't listen to free domain radio.
You weren't born from someone who listened to free domain.
I wish it was more philosophical and less tribal.
But given that I make probably substantially less money than most rabbis, I can understand why from a sort of base material standpoint.
It is...
That way inclined.
So for some of the stuff, yeah, I mean, from my perspective, and you know, there's no final answers about this kind of stuff.
It's where you're comfortable.
So from my perspective, I can see that some of the gathering rituals, some of the let's talk about deep stuff, let's think about the important stuff in life, let's think about ideas and virtue and all that, and let's talk about these things.
And having rituals associated with that I think could be helpful.
And so I, you know, from my standpoint, that kind of stuff would not be a deal breaker.
Child mutilation?
Sorry.
Like, I can't.
I can't cross that bridge.
Well, that's where I'm at.
I can't, because that's the initiation of direct violence against the helpless, the direct force against the helpless being.
And it's not required.
You know, like, I gotta pay taxes or I go to jail.
But it is absolutely not legally required in any way, shape, or form To mutilate a boy's penis.
And so from my standpoint, I could not cross that line.
I can't get involved in situations where there's an initiation of force.
That is not required.
I mean, the other thing about you saying that Jews coming from the mother too, I mean, just to say, I agree, that's kind of where I'm at.
You know, they say, oh, you know, you also, I was talking to her uncle, you know, Jewish lineage comes from the mother.
And I said to him, you know, I get that and there might be a few surprises there waiting for me, but at the end of the day, I see it as a bit of a word game that means nothing.
At the end of the day, thanks to you, I'm committed to being the greatest dad that I can.
And I'm pretty sure my kids are going to really love me.
And you could tell them they are what they are until you're blue in the face.
But at the end of the day, they'll be my kids as well as hers.
And I think that would be the primary influence on them.
So I'm not worried.
It's a bit one of those like, you know, yes means yes and no means yes kind of things.
You know, it's like a wordplay, but it has no meaning to me.
Well, you know, but that having been said, you know, a caution that I would put forward is that Judaism is much older than Free Domain Radio, right?
Sure.
And they've had quite a bit more time to polish their in-group skills.
Yeah, I can see that.
I was reading a thing about Jewish mothers that they say that the role of the strong Jewish mother is to forgive, something along the lines of to forgive with one hand but punish with the other.
And I see that with her mom even, you know, I love you, I love you, I'd do anything for you, I would kill myself if anything happened to you with one hand, I won't come to your wedding on the other.
And it is this sort of one-two punch of...
It's all carrot and stick, right?
I mean, it's very well developed.
And you know, it's funny because, I mean, I've been criticized at times for saying to people that you might not want to hang with those who directly oppose your most cherished moral beliefs and want you put in prison for exercising your conscience, right?
Yeah.
And people are like, oh my god, that's ostracism.
That's cult-like.
That's all terrible things.
And it's like – Have you noticed every other group in the known universe that has any passionate commitment to its ethics?
I mean, good God!
I mean, Islamic groups and Judaic groups and particular groups within Christianity, fundamentalist groups, they all the same damn way.
And, you know, at least I've got some arguments.
Yeah.
Some reasons, yeah.
But so, yeah, when philosophy tries 1% of what religion tries, it's like philosophy, oh, that's evil!
Yeah.
It's like, okay, well, I think you might be just missing the bigger picture here.
How dare you try and impose a smidgen of the kind of standards that...
That go on.
And I mean, my God, I mean, what was it?
In the last presidential election, 93% of reporters reported that they voted Democrat.
And in a group of, I think, 400 social psychologists, two or three were conservatives.
I mean, these guys won't hire with, won't hang with, won't socialize with people who have differing opinions politically.
Yeah.
So this idea that philosophers should have an in-group preference for people who are into philosophy is like, oh my god, that's shocking!
That's appalling!
It's like, I think you're going to find a lot more shocking and appalling in the world than… Maybe you should question the value of people who want you thrown in jail for following your conscience, because that's a lot worse than most religions will.
It's such a ridiculous double standard.
It's like criticizing the defu idea, you know.
Oh, how dare you not speak to your parents?
It's like, well, you listen to what...
It happened to some of the people who actually make that decision.
It's like, why having so much compassion for parents and none for the actual people who have been abused so horribly?
It's ridiculous.
Because honor thy mother and thy father is the last commandment for secularists to question, right?
And it's very hardwired into our systems.
And of course, remember, you see, women who choose to break up families in terms of getting rid of their husbands, that's empowerment.
And even if the husbands aren't abusive, even if they're just the women, the number one cause for divorce that is given by women is discontented, unsatisfied.
And more than 50, I think it's 50 or slightly more than 50% of people five years after they got divorced really wish they hadn't.
And so, yeah, women who leave husbands they're bored with are empowered, you-go-girl feminists, but adults, particularly adult males, who leave mothers who were outright abusive...
During their formative years for decades, well, that's just terrible.
I mean, so, yeah, but bringing rational consistency to people's prejudices is just a game of whack-a-ball with the crit-keeper trying to bite your eyeballs.
Which is where I'm at with this.
It's really hard.
It is.
Now, listen, I'm going to give you – you're a young man, right?
Thirty.
Yeah, okay.
So, this is your first non-abusive relationship?
And I'm not trying to say the only thing it is is non-abusive.
I get and accept all of the positive qualities that you've ascribed to your girlfriend.
But this is your first, like, she's functional and she's decent and she's not abusive, right?
I've had four.
The first one was a bit of a bully.
The second one was the opposite way, almost like a child.
There's a bit of circumstantial stuff with that.
She had to come over from overseas, but I mean, I made a few bad decisions probably, but I was exhausted because I felt like I was looking after a child and she just grew more and more dependent on me and that was a big turn off.
The third one, horribly abusive, the worst.
And now this one, you know, with my girlfriend, she's...
Yeah, it's really functional.
She's helpful.
She's loving, communicative.
She supports my dreams.
No, no, I get that.
I'm not trying to cut you off from listing her virtues, but I fully accept them.
Yeah, great.
So there is relief that you found a functional woman.
Yeah.
Right?
And I'm not trying to say that...
But she's not the only functional woman in the world.
Especially if you just come right out of a really...
I dated for about a year afterwards.
Yeah, yeah.
No, I get that.
So you sort of came out of something traumatized and so she's all the better because of that experience.
She looks all the better because of that experience.
That's something just to sort of recognize that...
There is that sort of any port in a storm or the barrel after the shipwreck is your favorite barrel of all time, so to speak.
And again, I'm not trying to diminish your affection for her, but there is that aspect.
Here's my biggest question for you, though.
And this, I think, will be the most revealing question for me, at least.
Maybe for you as well.
What does her family think of your family?
They haven't met them.
Right.
Why?
Well, because I don't speak to my family, and so as I started to introduce her...
Well, you speak to your sister?
No, I don't.
Oh, did you start speaking to your sister as well?
Yeah, I... Okay, okay.
When she said that she would not acknowledge any of it and would not take a stand and was just really being sort of two-faced, like speaking to me about really horrible things with a little tin of voice and overly happy.
And I just went, you're just avoiding the whole thing and it's not good enough for me.
I called her a coward and said, don't speak to me again.
And you've gone through therapy with this process like you said you were in?
Um...
No, I'm going to my first therapist this afternoon.
I have been to therapists before about different things like my dad died when I was 17 and he was the one who was overtly abusive throughout my childhood and I found them to be less probably, I don't know, less intelligent than me in a way and kind of not helpful in the slightest but I've decided to give it another shot especially from your recommendation.
Oh good.
So I'm just going to try a few.
Does her family know that you don't have any contact with your family of origin?
They do, yeah.
Okay, and what have they said about that?
They haven't asked me too many questions.
Her uncle, who is a musician, and I had a pretty candid chat with him the other day, and he said, what do you think about the family?
And I said, okay, I'll explain some of my background.
And he said, that's really horrible.
And he said, it sounds like you don't need that background.
You know, he basically said, you should propose to her with conditions.
You know, we don't have overly religious children.
We don't circumcise.
I'm prepared to give you this, but these are my conditions.
I'm not ready to do that.
I think he was just, you know, put it all on the table, draw it all out.
He said, you know, just get it right up front.
And at that point, if she can't promise you that, then, you know, do you really need it that much sort of thing?
And I was like, okay.
Because he just said, it's really horrible what you went through and it sounds like you don't need this sort of stuff.
I was like, okay.
Yeah.
Well, look, if the relationship could be worked out, I mean, great.
If the relationship can't be worked out, you have a great gift that she's provided to you, which is you now have experience of a functional relationship.
Yeah, that's true.
So your standards are going to be forever raised.
And you simply, you'll be amazed once you've been with a functional person how quickly...
The cross-eyed sheep bats of willful dysfunction will be visible to you, like from orbit.
Whereas you thought it was just pleasant sunshine before, you'll now recognize that you're standing under an Atlas rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.
Except that that's a quick death, whereas dysfunction is a slow and painful death.
So...
I'll tell you, as you know, I don't give advice.
I can tell you what my standards would be, and I'm not going to try and tell you that these are the right or objective standards.
Sure.
You know, as well as I do, that it is immoral and deeply wrong to initiate the violence of circumcision against a baby boy.
I mean, I don't need to tell you any.
That's why we're having this conversation.
We're not going to tell you that that's...
Even if you didn't say it, my guts twist when I watch it.
Yeah, you get that.
And that speaks very well to your character.
It really does, because it means that you've retained an intense capacity for empathy despite the difficulties of your childhood.
And I hugely, hugely respect you for that.
Thank you.
I mean, that is carrying a candle through a hurricane and emerging with it bigger.
I mean, that's amazing.
That's just good for you.
Well, I have to thank you.
I mean, you've helped me get in touch with that and really see it as important as it is.
Good.
Well, I really appreciate that.
And thank you very much for those kind words.
So, this is the speech that I would give to your girlfriend.
And if it's a value to you, great.
If it's not, obviously just toss it aside and so on.
But I would say this.
I would say, look, I... Absolutely love you.
There is so much about you that is fantastic, that is untouched by the nastiest elements of corrupt modernity.
The fact that you're anciently rooted in a tradition, I think, has given you a lot of strength to withstand a lot of the crap that's thrown, particularly at women, in modern society.
So I don't want to give you the impression that That in questioning one or two traditions that I want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, you are deeply rooted in this tradition, and you are like the great oak with the deep roots that withstands the storm that I've seen has taken off and thrown into the clouds of nonsense so many women around.
So when I have reservations about certain traditions, I want to put that in the context of having an incredibly deep respect and finding enormous value in The traditions that you were raised with.
So I just want to put that in context.
I am interested in a life with you.
Not a life like let's move in together like a lifetime, like let's commit till death to us part, better or worse, sickness and health, with baby spit up in our hair, the whole deal.
All the mess and beauty and glory of domestic life.
I'm seriously thinking about this.
And that's being pulled out of me by how wonderful you are.
I mean, I obviously find you physically beautiful, but your spirit, your soul, your heart and mind is glorious to me in ways that I don't even have great words for because it's so new to me.
It's like a baby or a toddler seeing their first sunset.
And you say, what do you think?
They don't know because it's such a new beauty that the words haven't formed yet.
So...
The beauty and glory, not just of you, but of, I mean, your dad is wonderful, as you say.
Your mom has some great aspects to her personality.
You guys certainly have and had and have a far better family life than I have.
And I'm drawn to that.
And I'm aware that I'm drawn to that and that I may be painting a rosy picture, but it still is great and wonderful stuff.
I hugely appreciate the degree to which your family talks about things that are important.
It's willing to discuss stuff and that your dad follows up with me when we talk about particular traditions.
Your dad follows up with me like a week or two later with an argument.
Whether I agree with it or not is in a way to me less important than that he actually followed up and it didn't just vanish into the void like so many things did and do.
In my family.
So, look, I'm currently marching through life without a family of origin, and there's so much that I really like about your family of origin.
So, there are very few things that I consider negative, and as I said, there's a lot of things that I consider positive about your cultural traditions, your Tribal traditions, because it's not particularly religious, your cultural traditions, there's a lot that I consider hugely positive and would welcome into any family that we might have together.
However, and this is to me the big stickler, and one in which I cannot give my assent because the assent is not mine to give.
And that is, as you know, as we talked about before, this issue of circumcision.
Now, there are, of course, compromises that are necessary in a relationship.
I hope to win over your mom.
I hope that she will come to our wedding.
And I'm certainly willing, you know, there are certain aspects of your traditions that are not particularly philosophical but have great value and I'm willing to explore those and find the value in those.
But there are certain compromises that I can make and there are certain compromises that I can't make.
And even if I wanted to, even if I thought that they would be great compromises to make, I'm simply unable to make them because I cannot acquiesce to that which would harm another.
Any more than I could, you know, to take a ridiculous example, any more than I could sign a contract for someone else to buy a car and then drive home with the car.
I mean, it's not possible.
So the compromise that I would like to propose is that...
There are, as you know, over a million Jews around the world who are not circumcised and they choose, many of them, to go through adult circumcision to retain that characteristic.
But I do not and cannot acquiesce to the cutting off of the third of my son's penis for the sake of a non-medically necessary and non-enforced ritual.
I can't do it.
And I can't do it just because, like, oh, I wish I could, or, you know, give me a good argument.
I can't do it because it's not my choice to make.
I can't acquiesce to that.
And, you know, the degree to which you can understand this, and I get that this is a big challenge culturally and a big challenge tribally, but it's exactly the same as you feel about your daughter and female genital mutilation.
It's exactly the same.
And I'm afraid that in this particular circumstance, it's not tradition that wins.
It's person with penis wins.
And person with medical knowledge about the incredibly harmful effects.
And I'm not saying that the males in your family who had this done to them are horribly damaged or whatever it is.
But nonetheless, I have to go with...
I'm telling you, this is the horrible paradox, my dear, that we're stuck in.
In that, I assume that one of the things that you love me for is my integrity and my commitment to the non-aggression principle and to virtue.
Yeah, I get that, right?
So, here's the horrible thing, and this is where this blade cutting off the foreskin is such a horrible thing for both of us.
Because if I were to acquiesce Which I can't do, but let's say that I did.
Just say, okay, my son can be circumcised.
You would recognize that I'm willing to abandon and betray the very core values that you love me for in the first place.
You see, this is a no-win situation.
And this is, of course, in philosophy, there's really no such thing as a no-win situation.
Like in science, there's no such thing as a no-win situation because if I put forward a proposal or a hypothesis and your hypothesis is different and yours is correct and mine is incorrect, I've learned something, which is that yours is correct.
I've gained knowledge and I've also gained the knowledge that mine is incorrect.
So that's still win-win.
Now in these situations though, which is where you can identify that something really wrong is occurring, it's win-lose.
And the win-lose is I acquiesce to you, which really undermines your love for me.
So I say, okay, let's get married and we can male genital mutilate my son.
Well, you're going to lose love for me in that process.
Or we say, it can never happen, which I can't make that choice because my child is going to grow up and then have his own moral agency and responsibility.
So I can't say that either.
We can say – so I think that the compromise, of course, which I think we understand is rational.
I get the emotionally it's very difficult, but the compromise – Is that we do not inflict this upon a child who has no choice.
We do teach him the important family rituals that come from your tradition that keep us together and keep us talking about important things.
Because the purpose of Judaism must be virtue.
It must be virtue.
Because otherwise, it's just tribal prejudice, and I love you too much and love your family traditions too much to cast them into the ash heap of tribal prejudice because there's so much about the traditions you grew up with that do promote virtue, intimacy, kindness, generosity, empathy, commitment, excellence.
So I'm not going to cast your traditions into the sulfur pit of tribal bigotry because if that was the case, I wouldn't be in love with you.
As much as I am.
So the question is, the values which promote virtue in both of us, which I'm willing to learn from and from your traditions, and I hope that you're willing to learn through from my reasoning, the values which promote virtue, we can both get behind.
And in a sense, it doesn't really matter where they come from.
If they promote virtue, that's good enough.
There is not only no way that circumcision can promote virtue— But the circumcision itself is not moral.
So we have to have a way of differentiating and finding value in traditions, certain traditions versus other traditions.
There are Jewish traditions which are no longer recognized and practiced by most people.
I mean, in the modern world, you sort of look at the Hasidic Jews and so on for some more extreme examples of what Most Jews, even though they're in conformity with certain aspects of the Torah, there are Jews who simply wouldn't go to those.
What they would call extremes.
So yes, belief systems evolve, and it is always challenging in that tipping point where belief systems evolve.
But we have to have a commitment to those belief systems which help and promote virtue.
And the reason we have to have that is A, because we want to be virtuous, and B, because we want to fiercely protect the love that we feel for each other, which is based upon our commitment to virtue.
Since circumcision does not promote virtue, and since circumcision itself is a violation of my most deeply held moral principles, I cannot, not even in good conscience, but in a very practical sense, I cannot acquiesce to that, but I certainly would do nothing to oppose our son deciding to be circumcised as an adult.
And I think that that is a reasonable compromise, and now I'd like to hear your thoughts on it.
So that's sort of what I would say in that kind of situation, if that helps at all.
It is really exactly how I feel, but I really appreciate you bringing out that the things I love about her are tied to her family and her culture as well.
That's a good highlight for me.
And it's a great thing to put to her.
I asked her, what about me was attractive to you?
And she said, you're honest.
But I think that's a bit of a subset of saying genuine.
It is true.
That is what she loves about me.
Very much.
Right.
And she would not want you to betray your values, obviously, right?
I mean, she could not want you to betray your values for the sake of something she could not prove was right or good.
No, I don't think so.
No, I don't think so.
All right, will you let us...
And, you know, to me, and again, I can't make the decision for other people, but to me, if she wished...
If the condition for me marrying her was harming a child...
And going against really the definition of virtue.
I mean, it's egregious enough to hit and hurt an adult, but a helpless child, to me that would be a deal-breaker because I would recognize that I could not love her if she wanted me to do that, and she could not love me if I agreed to.
That's true.
It is true.
Yep.
So, I hope that helps.
It really does help, really does.
Before you go, I just want to give my sincere thanks.
You in particular, when I came out of an abusive relationship, there's a lot of people to look to on the internet and talking about men's issues, but obviously the whole MGTO and things like that, there's a lot of non-answers I feel, a lot of things that are pathways are very unsatisfying, but you as someone who stands up for all the principles and the philosophy, but also putting forward the virtue of family.
You have given me something that I would want to pass on to my children, and I think you've made me want to have children and look forward to having the right family.
And I really incredibly thank you for that.
Well, I thank you for that as well.
And I genuinely, of course, accept and recognize what the MGTOW men are doing.
I'm not in the dating world as a young man these days.
I was just chatting about this with someone the other day about how, just something like, not to pick on feminism, but feminism as a sort of really invasive and pervasive ideology that dominates the social sciences and the software sciences in universities really wasn't that huge a deal when I was in college, which would be like over 20 years ago when I was in university.
It was there, and I learned about it and so on, but it was not Dominant, I think, in the way that it is now.
And so I don't know what it's like to date women in their 20s.
God help me, I hope never to find out.
But I don't know what it's like to date educated, i.e.
propagandized men and women in their 20s.
So as far as the MGTOW stuff goes, my wife's pretty old school.
know how many women there are, you say, not a huge amount around.
And so the MGTOW guys, I really get where they're coming from.
And I hesitate to put my two cents in because I'm a 48-year-old guy who's been happily married for 12 years and I'm not out in the dating scene trying to find a kind, generous, reasonable woman.
I'm hesitant to sort of say, well, from my lofty perch of long ago, I should tell you to what, right?
Sorry, you were going to say...
When I listen to them, I just hear a lot of pain.
The same thing that people say, misogyny or hatred of women.
I just said the same thing twice.
I listen to it and I hear a lot of pain from men.
Because I went through so much pain and still have a lot of pain, it was therapy for me to listen to it and to relate to it.
It's almost like just taking your shattered and broken heart and just shrinking off into a dark corner and never coming out and I just think there's a part of that that would never be satisfying and you come along and say, I'm married, I have a beautiful wife, I have a beautiful daughter, I'm happy,
I've got great people around me and I get all the philosophy and the principles and the values and the pride of being a man and the great parts of being a man in full force with you and It's so incredibly valuable.
I can't tell you how much.
I appreciate that.
And also, I mean, I've lived long enough to know that nothing lasts forever.
And male virtues are going to come back, and they're going to come back hard and deep, baby.
They're going to be balls deep in male virtues.
No, because, I mean, the current system is so ridiculously unsustainable.
It is.
That the male virtues which have been scorned and shunted aside since the welfare state really came into being.
So, I mean, from the 70s and from mid to late 70s onwards, right?
So, you know, 30, 40 years.
That stuff is...
It's all going to come back.
Like, all the male virtues which society spits upon are going to be hugely needed over the next couple of decades.
And so, I think that it may be premature to go MGTOW and bugger off because I think that...
We're going to need the strength that men bring and the stability, security, and reality checks that men bring in particular contexts.
They're going to be really necessary in the future.
But what I do get about the MGTOWs, particularly the Tom-like anti-marriage crowd, is...
I'm just looking this up now.
So, some woman who was married to an oil guy, a guy who made a lot of money from oil, she was, I think, offered a $974 million check when they got divorced, and she returned it.
Oh, yeah, Bernard Chapin did a thing about this.
Yeah.
Crazy.
And what was it?
Mel Gibson's divorce?
What did Mel Gibson's divorce cost him?
Like $900 million.
Now, I mean, so the oil guy, his wife, she was like, I think, a lawyer and she worked at the company and so on.
So she got paid and there was no prenup and all that.
But it's, I mean...
Guys look at like, okay, you've got to sign a check for $975 million to this woman and she returns it as vastly insufficient.
I think she's now cashed it, but she's going for more.
Even though I think under the law, if you cash a settlement, you can't go for more.
But nonetheless, right?
And I think guys look at that and say, what?
There's just no way.
There's no conceivable way that that could be worth it.
I mean, that's almost a billion dollars.
It's insane.
It is absolutely insane.
But I mean, even on the ground, like with all these issues coming to my focus more, I've even spoken to women and asked them about things and they just say, it's so easy for men to make money that if they don't have money, they're either stupid or lazy and you don't want to be with them anyway.
And I was just like, whoa.
Wait, they say it's so easy for men to make money.
This is what a girl said, not about me.
What, are they dating counterfeiters or people who work for the Fed?
Wait, I repeat myself.
It's so easy for men to make money that if they don't make money, they're stupid and you don't want to be with them anyway.
Or lazy.
They're either stupid or lazy and you don't want to be with them anyway.
And I felt like in the middle of where this is saying, or maybe they have values about their life and goals in their life that don't involve giving it all to you, princess.
Which is something you can thank the MGTOS for.
Hey, men's life is not just about service.
It's about, you know, they're a human being, same as everyone else, same as all the women and children, you know?
Right.
Tiger Woods, $900 million divorce settlement.
Oh, it's insane.
Yeah.
It's insane.
But it's really hard, man.
It is really hard.
And there's a lot of pain.
There's a lot of men in pain, for sure.
Oh, absolutely.
It's the same thing.
I think it was Warren Farrell who pointed out that society tends to go through revolutions when there's a lot of emotional pain coupled with significantly diminished financial opportunity.
But right now, because there are so many men willing to serve as the enforcers for the state and basically betray their gender, to put it in an overdramatic way, by going and enforcing these crazy gynocentric laws...
We have to wait for this one to play out.
And so I get the men going on strike stuff, like going galt.
Don't get married.
Focus on your own pleasure, your own happiness.
Maybe have limited romantic engagements with women depending on your MGTOW level.
I'm not sure what the hell that means, but apparently there are levels.
Like Kramer's apartment that never materialized.
Levels, baby!
So I get that, and I certainly had...
No, until I met my future wife, I had no particular interest in getting married.
And it was just like, oh God, why?
I mean, I think for those of us particularly who saw the giant, tusked, woolly mammoth of the state gore our fathers into smithereens based upon the whims of women, it was like, yeah, no, I think you can stay out of that one.
I mean, there are some people who...
They're married, but they're dating.
They just don't move in together.
They maintain their separate residences just to avoid the common law stuff where the guys do that.
So it's like – and then this is the crazy thing too.
It's like men just don't want to commit.
Yeah.
Like, you'd have to be committed to commit.
Be committable, you know?
Yeah.
I mean, here I am with my army of lawyers powering up ungreased dildos with your ass name on it.
For some reason, you don't want to come into my nest of bliss.
Yeah, it really is insane.
But you are there saying, hey, you can find a good woman and be happy and have a family and pass something on to the future world and make it better, which is the positive answer.
I really can't thank you enough for that.
I really, really appreciate that.
So thanks very much.
I think we have another caller on the line.
Sam wrote in and said, You realize that you may be asking Mike Tyson how to leave more people's ears attached to their heads.
I'm not sure that I'm always the best person to go to for non-confrontational interactions, but can you think of a particular example where things have kind of spiraled up and out?
Well, I could probably just phrase it a little bit differently with my introduction and just say that I generally just have difficulty with interpersonal relations in general and it has had an impact on my life and there's been quite a few situations that I could use as an example.
I suppose I could use a workplace example where these problems have surfaced.
I had a colleague that would approach me when working on projects with problems that she was having with a certain part of the project that I was working on and she actually seemed to me to be very confrontational and aggressive because she would actually come across to me in the office and We're
with the program on, on the, on this particular project.
And I would actually go across to her desk and try and sort it out with, with her.
And it actually ended up being, um, that she didn't understand how to, to use the program properly.
Um, and she continued to just come across to me all the time.
If ever there was a problem, um, she would just come directly to me and accuse me of doing something wrong.
And then eventually, um, after being quite, um, affable, um, I would, I went across to her and sort of let her have it.
Um, and other people overheard this in the office and actually labeled me as being confrontational when they didn't actually realize what was, um, going on in the background.
Um, So that's probably one example I could use.
Wait, so you're saying there's a woman out there who blames something other than technology or her use of it?
Well, it could happen.
Now, I think there's a good principle at play in the workplace, which is praise in public, chastise in private.
And so I think, of course, one of the things to do if you have a problem with someone is first to try and get them into a private area to talk.
And that, I mean, for obvious reasons.
But sorry, are you going to say?
No, no, no.
No, please continue.
Yeah.
You know, I've certainly had my problems with people in the workplace, as I think everyone does, particularly if you're in management.
Mm-hmm.
Because when you're in management, you get problems from above and below.
And this doesn't matter where you are if the CEO gets problems from shareholders and investors, and then you get problems from employees.
So sometimes the management feels just like a 360-degree crap fest.
No matter where you turn, there's crap flying at you.
But I think for me, at least, when I have conflicts with people, I try to figure out Whether what is causing the problem is a sort of deficiency of knowledge or a deficiency of sanity.
Because those two things, I think, are very different perspectives to work with.
So you can have conflicts, people can get frustrated and so on, and then you give them information and they're fine, right?
Yeah, yeah.
But there are people you'll have conflicts with, and the reason they're having conflicts is they're kind of nuts, right?
They have character disorders, so they are character logic disorders.
They have very distorted thinking, and you can't fix that.
You know, like years of therapy can't fix that, to my knowledge.
The best that you can hope for from those kinds of people is that over time they mellow out a little bit.
But, so I think when it comes to interpersonal conflicts, if you've got really difficult personalities around you, I think that it's really important to figure out where you can ameliorate those conflicts and where you can't.
And where you can't, you know, I think that my advice is just try and minimize conflict as a As much as possible.
And the best way to do that can be through, you know, non-responsive, dull, you know, I'm kind of busy, I can't do it right now, and so on.
Not, you know, are you always asking me these questions?
Because some people will scale up in conflicts, right?
And some people won't.
Same people generally don't, but I think people who are disturbed generally scale up from there.
Does that make any sense?
Yeah, it certainly does make sense and I have recognised that some people were sort of prone to conflict more than others for whatever reasons.
But just going back to that example that I used, I didn't blow up at the lady.
I was rather assertive and I sort of mirrored her behaviour.
Tell me what you said and how you said it.
It was quite a long time ago, actually.
It's probably not the best example I could have possibly used, but I don't know.
It was just something along the lines of you should become more knowledgeable with the program instead of always approaching me and blaming me for your problems.
And someone must have overheard it and relayed This, what I thought was a minor incident to the management, and the management actually brought it up to me and phrased it like I was the actual problem.
Well, you see, that may indicate a dysfunctional environment as a whole.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, what I would do in that situation as a manager is bring you and the woman in and say, okay, well, what happened, right?
And if you said, well, she keeps coming out, tell me that something is a problem that I'm doing when it turns out it's a problem that she's...
a deficiency of knowledge that she has and so on, I just try and sort that out.
And it usually doesn't take long to get to what's kind of actually going on in those situations.
But if you have management who...
Here's, you know, one overheard hearsay third party thing that assumes that you're the problem.
Then that is some managers.
And this is true of a lot of people as well.
And I've said this before on the show, so I keep it brief.
But there are a lot of people when conflict arises, they scan for the most reasonable person in the conflict and then screw that person.
No, I'm sorry.
Like, I mean, this has just been what I've seen and what I've observed and what I've experienced in my life.
So if this woman, let's say she's crazy, I don't know, right?
Let's say she's crazy, right?
And let's say you're not.
You listen to this show, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.
So let's say that this woman's crazy and you're not.
Then if you're the manager, a lot of people will say in life, not what's the right thing to do, but what's going to cause me the least problem.
The least problems.
Now, if you're sane, then if you're criticized, you generally won't escalate, right?
But crazy people, if they're criticized, will often escalate, right?
So if you're the manager and you say, well, this guy's having a conflict with this woman, and I know this guy's pretty reasonable, so I think I'll just try and get him to change his behavior, because if I go over to this woman and try and get her to change her behavior, well, I know she's crazy.
So it's got nothing to do with any evaluation of right and wrong.
It's just, who's going to cause me the least problems?
And in general, the saner you are, the least conflicts and problems you're going to cause other people.
And that's why being sane is so often being, quote, wrong in the eyes of other people.
This also happens in project management as well.
The person who's the most dedicated to the customer tends to get the most onerous and impossible tasks, right?
So the person who really gets how important the customer is will get the most...
So basically, your commitment to your customer gets you punished, right?
I mean, this is how a lot of workplaces, I guess you could say, work, for want of a better word.
The person with the most honesty, the person with the most integrity, the person who's the most reasonable will often get...
The short end of the stick when it comes to workplace quality.
And that usually is a good sign to become an entrepreneur.
You know, because then you'll get all the shit, but at least you'll get better paid for it, or at least your day will be more exciting.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, that's an unfortunate situation.
It shouldn't be like that.
No, but it's like...
And to take an extreme example...
Sorry to interrupt.
I have to just pause.
But to take an extreme example...
You know, in government schools, it's incredibly difficult and onerous to fire a bad teacher, right?
After they've passed tenure, which I think in a lot of schools is like two or three years.
Absolutely.
And you will have to spend so much time dealing with grievance processes and unions and complaints and filings and legal motions and all that kind of stuff, right?
And this is why so few teachers ever get fired.
I mean, everybody knows who the bad teachers are, and you can usually tell because they get transferred out.
The problem is everyone else's bad teachers get transferred in, so it doesn't really help.
Yes.
So the reality is that the worst people get the biggest passes, and what happens then is that the people who are actually dedicated to the education of the children and really care about the kids, they end up having to pick up It's
a difficult one, isn't it?
Yeah.
The number of people who are willing to endure discomfort for the sake of principle are, tragically, not that many.
I mean, they are the engine that moves the world forward, but there's just not a huge amount.
And look, I sympathize with that.
I'm not saying, oh, you know, these bad people should go run and put themselves in the facial Cuisinot brain cheese shredder of union government, union processes or whatever.
But, you know, I mean, so many governors in the U.S. know that That the finances are ridiculously unsustainable and how many of them pull a Scott Walker and get death threats sent to their home and have massive riots and face recall elections and so on.
I mean, well, not many.
You know, I say sane, but I don't know how sane it is.
You know, we're driven for comfort.
We're driven for social approval as a species.
And those who don't use that as their primary navigational method, they achieve everything and suffer enormously.
So, So I think when you're dealing with someone, you have to evaluate both horizontally and vertically.
So horizontally, if the person you're dealing with is nutty, is dysfunctional, then you're not going to usually be able to resolve that in a positive way.
If there's a lot of dysfunctional people around you, it means you have dysfunctional managers.
Absolutely.
If you have dysfunctional managers, then they're likely to side with the dysfunctional people for reasons of convenience as opposed to integrity, right?
In which case, you're going to be the one who's pedaling on the bicycle while everyone else in the tandem is, you know, smoking and napping.
And that usually is not a very positive situation to be in.
So sometimes it can be as important as sort of changing your environment as a whole rather than trying to win a conflict in particular.
Yeah, yeah.
My problem is that I've actually done that a number of times, changing the environment as a whole.
And the problem seems to follow me more than anything else.
So I actually think that maybe I'm irrational or I've actually been labelled as too sensitive.
So the problem could actually lie with myself.
That's why I thought I would try and discuss this with you and perhaps try and drill down on it a little bit because I think it could be...
My situation could be parallel with the video that you put online a few weeks ago, empathy as a weakness, predator versus prey.
And I feel that...
I am a little bit victimised in the sense that people will tune into my sensitivity over a period of time and then use that as a weapon against me.
And it sounds a little bit paranoid, but I haven't come to a conclusion that either way, whether it's myself that is perceiving things differently, Out of context or the other people that I'll have interactions with.
Yeah, but I mean obviously without an example, I couldn't even guess, right?
In the example that you gave, if the woman was constantly interrupting you and blaming you for her own mistakes, yeah, that's something that you need to tell her to stop doing.
Yeah.
And if you did it in a reasonable way and then some corporate weasel went and ratted you out to management, I mean, that's just so gross.
I mean, God...
If there's two things I could scrub from the world, it's governments and gossip.
I'm working on the G's.
I don't know about horses.
You're safe for now.
But in the example that you gave, it seems like you acted in a reasonable manner.
Generally, it's, of course, better to do this stuff out of your shot of other people.
Yes.
Well, I'll give you another example.
In that same company, I was given a leadership role which was taken off of me without any notice.
I actually had to find it out through other people.
The management didn't tell me directly and I approached one of the directors of the company who was involved in the decision and we had a little bit of discussion and it escalated and I said to the Director, which was probably very self-destructive of me, that you tend to treat your staff like crap.
And he basically was about to come up to me and assault me.
Like, he showed his fist to me and swore and abused me.
And he said that...
You don't happen to work, like, in an Italian concrete firm or anything like that, right?
I mean...
No, no.
It's actually a professional...
A professional environment.
Yeah, so it's not an Italian concreting firm.
No, no.
It's an engineering firm.
So he said, your problem is that you're just too sensitive.
And that probably came about from a few little different issues that I approached them with while I worked at that firm.
Well, then, I mean, we don't have to get into this in great detail, but I have, of course, you know, senior adverse childhood experience score, ACE test, people can Google for that.
And you've got an eight, which is, you know, heartbreaking, of course.
And so my concern would be that you may be looking to use the tools that you were tragically inflicted upon and required to develop as a child.
That you may be gravitating, even unconsciously, towards situations that reproduce the aggression of your childhood because those are the tools you developed.
You know, and of course when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail, right?
Yeah.
Do you think that there's any possibility that as you move from place to place, you are ending up saying yes to environments that have any...
any compatibility or...
I'm trying to think of the right word.
Any synchronicity with your early childhood?
I don't think I... I don't think that I consciously seek out those situations.
No.
No, I don't feel that I... Okay, well, let me ask you this then.
Sorry, because if it's unconscious, then it won't be helpful to...
But when you said to the director, you treat your employees like crap, or in general, you treat your employees like crap, What was your anticipated response from him?
I didn't really think about it.
That's part of my problem.
I think that I'm very tolerant to a point, and then when I get to that point, I just blurt things out.
And it may not be the right thing to do, and I should definitely approach it from a different direction, I think.
But...
Yeah, my reaction, my expected reaction was that, yeah.
Yeah, I mean, so, but there are in relationships things that you can say that I call them relationship ending statements or questions.
Yes.
Like if you say to your girlfriend, do you know how insane you are?
Right, that's a relationship ending question, you know?
I hate you is a relationship ending.
I don't care if you stay married for another 30 years.
That is a relationship ending question.
I can't stand you.
You make my skin crawl.
You're disgusting.
You're vile.
You're horrible.
You're abusive.
All of these things are like, that's the period at the end of the sentence called us.
Now, if you go to Was it your boss, this guy?
One of the bosses, yes.
Okay, so one of the bosses treats his employees like crap, and you go and say that, right?
Mm-hmm.
Now, either he knows, and let's say you're right, he treats people like crap.
So either he knows that he treats people like crap and has no problem with it, in which case you telling him that isn't going to change his behavior, right?
Or he doesn't think he treats his employees like crap.
Whether he does or doesn't, you know, but he doesn't think that or is shocked to hear that, in which case you come across as the aggressor.
That's called a no-win sentence, right?
Unless it's followed by, and I quit, right?
I mean, if you want to have the, I just won the lottery FU speech to, you know, take this job and shove it, I ain't working here no more, that's one thing.
It was followed, yes, I did.
I did resign.
It was followed by a I quit and it's definitely self-destructive and I think that is...
Wait, why was it self-destructive?
Because that's not the way to, in my opinion, that's not the best way to sever an employment relationship because obviously if you go, if you apply for another job somewhere,
The prospective employer may call the ex-employer and ask them how was this particular person when they worked for you and they're not going to be giving a very good response to that, I think.
Right, right.
So that's very self-destruct.
You could just say the word references and I get it.
Okay.
Yeah.
But it solved the problem.
I mean, obviously you found another job and you left that environment and so on, right?
Yes, that's right.
Yes.
So how do you know?
How do you know?
Just devil's advocate, how do you know that it was not the right thing to do?
That's right.
Yeah.
I mean, you're not living in a cardboard box under an overpass, right?
No.
No, I'm not.
No.
I think that it could have been handled a lot better than that, and it is detrimental to me in finding further employment into the future, I think.
No, but you've got a job, right?
Yes, I have at the moment, but it's taken me quite some time.
And in your current job, do you have any conflicts that you feel might escalate to an exit strategy that's precipitous?
Not at the moment, no.
Right.
Right.
Yeah, I mean, look, if you have a bad reference, I mean, I think the best thing to do is to be honest in the interview and say, oh, yeah, I mean, that place, I liked the work, I liked the customers, I liked some of my co-workers, but as I sort of got more experience, I realized that the management was, in my view, kind of dysfunctional, and here's why, and here's what I researched about your company, and here's how it's different.
So...
Yeah.
And give customers this reference rather than bosses, or give bosses a reference and say, he probably won't have much nice stuff to say about me, but here's why.
And certainly, when I had people who left previous employment, if they told me it was practice and so on, willing to hear their side of the story and so on, right?
So...
I would certainly never think it was just their fault, no matter what, right?
I view most problems between managers and employees to be management-based, because managers choose the employees, and employees usually have less choice, unless there's some booming economy, and they're Brad Pitt, right?
I mean, they usually have less choice than the managers.
So having a fractious exit, I think, is not the end of the world, and it can be fine, as long as you're sort of upfront about what happened in the next...
In the interviews going forward.
Yes, yes.
But it can be difficult to actually get to the interview stage because a lot of prospective employers will, through contacts in industry, get in contact with the previous manager and you don't actually get a say in the matter.
So you won't actually proceed any further than the application.
Well, but you've got to think about it at a deeper level than that, I would argue.
Yeah.
Which is that if hateful people say they hate you, that will make hateful people not want to hire you.
So hasn't that been really efficient?
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, like if they...
If it's a small enough industry that people know each other, and if this guy was a complete tool...
Who was your last boss, then either people know he's a tool or they don't.
You know, if they know he's a tool, then they won't take what he says seriously.
And if they don't know he's a tool and they think he's a stand-up guy, you don't want to work for them, right?
So, you know, it's weird how acting with integrity just moves the way no matter what, if that makes sense.
Yes, yes, it does.
Yeah.
Well, listen, I mean, my suggestion is always is, you know, I mean, I obviously don't know.
The degree to which you may be participating in these escalations or whatever, but, you know, given the ACE of eight, I'd strongly, strongly suggest getting in to talk to a good therapist.
I don't know if you have or not, but I think that would be really, really important.
But there's something old F. Nietzsche said, which is he says, don't leave your actions in the lurch, which I think is important.
It doesn't mean don't be self-critical and don't evaluate, but don't leave your actions in the lurch means don't assume that if you did something that later doesn't feel great that it was automatically wrong.
The reason it may not feel great is because it's growth, because you were being assertive.
I don't know, right?
I would definitely invite you to not necessarily look at, because, you know, I'm getting this kind of claustrophobic sense in this conversation that there's just no winning, right?
Like, well, you know, there are these crazy people, but you can't confront them because other people will tell you.
And then there are these other crazy people.
And if you say that they're treating people like crap, they're going to punch you.
And then if there's a bad exit, then you get this really terrible performance.
It's like, oh, my God, there's no winning here.
You know, it's almost like, yeah, breathe, no choice, concrete forming around.
Extremities can't move, right?
So you may have done the right thing.
You may have done the right thing.
Just be open to that.
That would be my suggestion.
But if it's all right with you, I'm going to move on to the next caller because we've got a bunch to get through tonight.
Thank you.
Thanks, man.
Up next is Tai Wan.
He wrote in and said, Is empathy a selfless act?
If not, can there ever exist a self-serving component in empathy, while at the same time not manipulate fundamental emotional states of others?
Hi, Tai Wan.
How are you doing?
Hi.
Before we start, I'm worried about the time restrictions on the call-in show.
It says 8 to 10, right?
8 to 10 what?
The time restrictions.
Oh, that's just a rough guideline.
We pretty much go until we can't.
Oh, yeah.
No, don't worry.
We'll take this.
It's probably the last call, but we'll certainly take time to work on it.
But I appreciate that.
Look at that, being empathetic to my needs and all.
Good for you.
Very nice.
All right.
So can you just flesh this out a little bit more?
Because I want to make sure I really understand it.
What I mean by self-serving is when I consume food, there are certain biological, physical principles that are at play that govern how the food will be catabolized and the nutrients will then...
I get absorbed through all my body.
The nutrients themselves doesn't magically get transferred to another person's body.
There are restrictions that are in place.
With regards to empathy, there is an order of operations in which these processes occur.
When I see someone, let's say I see someone Tripping and they fall down and hurt their knees.
When I receive that sensory information, it goes through a series of neurons and it gets processed in my brain.
There are these predetermined principles at play, like biological and physical principles, that prevent that sensory information To magically get processed into that other person's brain.
It gets processed in my brain and it recalls my past experiences and the emotion associated with that past experience.
So I would remember the time when I tripped and fell down and I would remember the emotion associated with that event, which would be negativity, sadness.
So when I see that person, I'm going to think that other person might I'm sorry that you fell.
I know how that feels.
That's strictly speaking from my own experience.
That's what I mean by self-serving.
My question then becomes, is that emotional manipulation?
Maybe that person doesn't know what to feel.
Maybe he's not sure what to feel.
When you're speaking from your own experience, I don't know if that would be considered manipulation of some sort.
Sorry, no.
You can't blow this conversational balloon up with the breath of 12 balloons in one balloon.
It'll just pop.
So let's take a pause and see if we can figure out some things already.
So my first question is, what do you mean by manipulation?
What's your definition of manipulation?
I'm trying to alter fundamental thoughts that they have.
Well, no, I try to do that, but I don't think I'm manipulating.
I haven't thought about the definition of manipulation too much.
Well, you see, now this is a good philosophical lesson, right?
which is that if you're going to use something particularly a word that is pejorative, and pejorative doesn't mean bad or anything, but it's just… I mean, it means bad, but I mean, it's not bad that you're using a pejorative.
But particularly when you use a word like manipulation, you've got to figure out what you're talking about first.
Because you say, well, is this manipulative, but you don't know what manipulation is?
Then you're not going to be able to answer the question.
So, I mean, I can tell you what I think manipulation is.
Manipulation to me is...
Pretending to be honest and authentic while actually attempting to get someone to act against their own self-interest.
Pretending to be honest?
Okay, okay.
Right, because in order for something to be manipulative, it has to be camouflaged, right?
Yeah, yeah.
And so, manipulation is a form of lying where you pretend honesty In order to get something from someone, while at the same time you hide that you're trying to get something from someone, which is the fundamental...
So you pretend honestly while you're being dishonest.
Okay.
Okay.
Yeah, so it would not be considered manipulation then.
Yeah, so like if I wanted to get you to come and see a movie, and you didn't want to see it, and let's say that I said, you know, well, a really good friend would sacrifice...
If I gave you some moral argument or pretended that I was being honest about my moral beliefs, when my goal was not to instruct you about ethics but simply to get you to go to the movie that I wanted you to go to, that to me would be manipulative.
Okay.
Yeah, I understand that.
Okay.
Okay.
So can we move on from that then?
Well, hang on now because I'm still not sure because we've had about ten questions so far.
So let's see, because we've used the term manipulation a bunch of times, so let's just see if we can figure out if we've answered or helped in the questions we've had so far, if our definition of manipulation has helped.
Okay.
So your question was, if I see someone stub their toe or fall down and hurt their knee...
But I think at a pure level, like if I show empathy or, you know, I bet you that hurt or something, and you're saying, well, I don't know, is it that maybe they're masochistic and they like it?
Yeah, that's possible.
Yeah.
Right.
Right.
Well, it's not, like if I say, I know that hurt you, when I don't know that, then I'm not being honest and I'm also not being empathetic.
Empathetic is not assuming that you know what other people feel.
Empathy is being open and curious about what other people feel.
Well, I think empathy is having shared emotional states, but you can't possibly know what the other person is experiencing.
No, no, no.
Empathy is not having shared emotional states.
So let me give you an example.
You and I are swimming in the ocean, and we see a shark fin.
Are we scared?
I would be scared.
Yeah, I'd be scared too.
Are we both scared?
Yes.
Right?
Are we empathizing with each other?
No.
No, so having shared emotional states is not the same as empathy.
Okay, okay.
Yeah, I've got to think about that one.
No, no, this is nothing critical.
These are the challenges of talking about this kind of stuff.
It's trying to figure out What it is that we're talking about.
And so, yeah, having these kinds of conversations is really helpful, right?
And most of what we're doing in philosophy is working on the definitions until the answer to the question is self-evident, if that makes sense.
You work on definitions until the answer is obvious, right?
Whereas a lot of people will try and answer these very difficult questions without working on the definitions.
And it ends up, as I'm sure you've experienced, as have I. Things just go round and round, right?
But once you work on the definitions, clearly enough...
The answers become pretty obvious.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So it's not shared emotional states.
So maybe we can try and figure out what empathy is if it's not shared emotional states.
And, you know, this is obviously you can be a perfectly collaborative process and so on.
But what do you think?
If it's not that, what might it be?
Um, if it's not shared emotional experience, uh, I, I kind of, well, I've been, I've been reading Atlas Shrug recently and, um, That book kind of promotes the selfishness as a virtue, right?
So I've been kind of viewing empathy as being a selfish act because going back to my previous example, you're comparing only your experience first when you're trying to express empathy for someone else.
So I think it's fundamentally a selfish act.
I think we can have empathy for people whose experiences we have not shared, right?
I mean, okay, so I watched a lot of- Sorry, just to give you an example.
I mean, I've never experienced the death of a dog, that I have never had a dog, right?
But I can certainly empathize with how sad it would be for a dog lover to have a dog die.
Okay, I think I could probably do that, not because I didn't have experience.
I have- Similar experiences, like I know what it's like to lose something.
So that kind of contributes to having empathy for losing the dog.
Various things can contribute to having empathy for someone that lost their dog.
Yeah, I mean, a good actress would have empathy for a character.
I mean, I'm sure you've cried at movies or whatever when the movie is particularly effective at portraying an emotional state.
And, you know, you watch the beginning of Saving Private Ryan and, you know, you kind of get just what an awful thing war can be.
And, you know, I've even cried in cartoons, for heaven's sakes, or computer-generated movies or whatever, just because there's not even people, right?
And, of course, when I was in the acting world, such as I was, I would, you know, play characters who would, you know, be emotional or have particular emotional experiences that I've never shared, right?
And when I played Macbeth, you know, I've never slaughtered a bunch of peasants.
I've never murdered a king.
I've never, you know, these kinds of things.
I've never been a corrupt monarch and so on, right?
But, you know, I think I did a fairly good job of experiencing those emotional states.
So I would say that we can certainly empathize without having had the same emotional experiences.
Well, that's kind of alarming to me because my worry is that, you know, is my empathy genuine or is it fake?
And, like, for example, I was watching some videos of motorcyclists crashing, like getting into accidents, and the main reason why I was doing that was I was also interested in getting a motorcycle, and I just wanted to not do what other people did to prevent me from crashing.
So when I was watching them, the main reason was for my benefit, and I didn't really feel much empathetic towards the riders because I think I can't really say that I would feel empathy for them because I haven't really gotten into a crash myself.
Yeah, but you hurt yourself, right?
That means we all have.
Yeah, I used to watch – I never sort of watched them for myself, but occasionally I would watch them with my daughter, you know, these sort of funny home videos and stuff.
And I was watching one and some guy jumped – I think I mentioned this in the show before.
Some guy jumped off a pier and the water was like way shallower than he thought.
And, like, he basically snapped his entire ankle, and he lifted up his foot.
It was a horrifying angle.
And I just, like, oh, my God, I thought I was going to throw up.
Like, I could not watch it, and I've never watched any of those things ever since, just in case something horrible like that, you know, slips into the mix.
And, you know, I've never hurt myself in that kind of way.
I've never broken a bone.
But, oh, God, I mean, it's just visceral and horrifying to see that kind of...
Because you just know that's going to be a big mess.
And the amount of pain that guy's going to be in.
Maybe not immediately because it takes a moment for that to hit.
But it's just like, oh my god.
So yeah, I can't sort of speak to the motorcycle stuff.
If you're looking at it for educational purposes and so on, maybe you could be more clinical about it.
Yeah, so that's what worries me.
Is my empathy genuine or not?
That's one of the reasons why I wanted to call in and talk to you.
But how would you know?
I mean, what's your null hypothesis?
What's your standard, right?
What's my standard?
I don't know.
I mean, for knowing.
How would you know if it was genuine or not?
How would I know if...
Well, my motivation for expressing empathy towards that person, like if it arises from my own desire, if it arises because I would benefit from that situation, then that kind of seems to me it's not very genuine.
But I wouldn't know what would be genuine empathy.
I'm trying to work that out still.
I don't know whether you benefit or not from a situation.
It would be an immediate benefit.
Sort of.
But I don't know that, I mean, whether you benefit or not from empathy, I don't think would be the test of empathy.
I mean, if you were pretending to be empathetic in order to gain some sort of benefit, clearly that would not be empathetic but manipulative.
But whether you gain or not from empathy, if your motivation is not to gain but you happen to gain afterwards, right?
Right.
Yeah, yeah.
That's a good point.
Well, okay, let me share another example that happened pretty recently.
My boss recently told me that her parents weren't doing so well, and one of them was hospitalized.
So when she was telling me this, I responded with, I'm very sorry to hear that.
And when I was re-examining what had happened...
I think my very first thought reaction to what she said was, you know, what should I say in this situation?
What is the correct thing to say here?
And, you know, I ask these questions a lot and to myself a lot.
And that was a very easy question for me to answer back at that time because I've been, you know, listening to your call-in shows and I hear you say that a lot.
And after I said that, I felt...
I felt pleased and I felt glad that I was able to say the right thing.
I was like, go me.
And that was kind of bothering me.
That's not empathetic.
Because you're thinking about yourself, right?
Yeah.
Right.
So I think, for me, because empathy is really focusing on the other person.
And if you're saying, well, gosh, I don't know what to say.
What should I say?
Oh, I know.
I'll say, I'm really sorry about that.
Oh, that seems to have worked.
Well, that's really great.
So now, right, I mean, then you're not really focusing on the other person, right?
Well, yeah, I think I was partly focusing on it, but my main motivation, my main thought was that it was focused more on me, myself.
Right.
So, I mean, maybe it's not black and white, but it's certainly not as empathetic as it could have been, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Did you know what she was feeling?
I think she was sad.
Right.
And how did you know she was sad?
That's just the intuition.
That was the feeling I got when she'd said that to me.
Well, that knowledge came after re-examining.
Well, I think I kind of knew it during the moment, too, but I can't really say with certainty.
Right.
Right.
Well, for me, I think, and this is not...
Particularly rigorous, but when I'm viewing the conversation, we always view the conversation through ourselves, right?
Because it's our own minds and our own bodies and our own ears and eyes and so on.
So the conversation is viewed through ourselves.
For me, I feel that I'm connected with the person when I'm looking at the conversation through myself, but I'm a clear pane of glass.
My...
I mean, I sort of imagine like a narcissist, because it's all about themselves, they're looking at a conversation like it's a mirror.
And what does this say about me, or how does it make me feel about me, or how does this affect me?
So they're looking at the other person like a mirror?
They're looking at the conversation with the other person like a mirror.
Oh, okay.
Like it's about them, right?
Yeah, yeah.
But for me, when I'm like, if I'm talking to you, and I'm not trying to get you to do something, right?
Like, I mean, so in the very first call tonight, um...
I had a preference that the mom stay home.
I think that was pretty clear, right?
Mom stay home and breastfeed if that was possible.
And I made the case once or twice and it wasn't happening.
And so I had to move on because I did not want to pretend like I either had to say, listen, my goal here is to get you to have your wife stay home, which is really not a very fair goal.
To have, because it's just the first time we're chatting.
There could be lots of complications and who knows, right?
And so I had to, because I was not able to look at that conversation without an agenda.
Because the moment you have an agenda, you're trying to get someone to do something or guide someone somewhere or whatever it is, right?
Yeah, yeah.
And then that interferes with my capacity to be present in the conversation in the moment.
And so...
Where that's not possible for me, I either have to end the conversation or move on, right?
And I did say, I said, well, look, I mean, you've made your decisions about this and I've made my case and so let's move on to another topic wherein I can be present without an agenda in the conversation.
And so for me, I want to have conversations with people where I'm interacting with them and I am viewing the conversation through myself like I'm Clear glass.
With no stained glass, no ripples, none of that kind of stuff.
I'm just able to look at the conversation with them clearly without trying to get them to do something or not do something.
Now, it sounds to me like other people's opinions of you have been very important in the past.
And by that, I don't mean you're irrationally susceptible.
What I mean is that negative opinions about you in the past, and I would guess as a child, have been damaging to you.
You've been attacked if people have had negative opinions of you?
I don't remember, actually.
You said earlier, though, just when I started talking about this, you said yes about something?
Yes about...
I don't remember that.
Sorry.
Oh, it was like 15 seconds ago.
Oh, uh...
Other people's opinions are very important to you.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's the pattern that I'm seeing when I try to… But why?
Why are other people's opinions so important to you?
Because that wasn't the case when you were a baby.
No, it wasn't.
No.
It's got to be how I was raised as a child.
Right.
Which means that if people had negative perspectives of you… Yeah, so it could be.
I mean, the most likely explanation is that if people had negative opinions of you, then you would get punished.
Yeah, yeah.
Right?
And so you then have to focus on the other person.
In other words, manipulation arises out of a fear of punishment initially.
We're not born manipulative.
No, we're not.
And in fact, we're born the opposite of manipulative.
We're born very honest and very authentic, right?
It's that old Statement of Rousseau, man is born free yet everywhere is in chains.
And we manipulate because we are both fearful and feel relatively powerless.
Yeah, as a child I was told by my mom that I was a very quiet child.
Yeah.
And what was your punishment like or punishments if they were any like as a child?
Yeah, I would get hit with a rod, with a wooden stick.
Do you want that?
Maybe 10 to 20 times a year.
And, well, that's what I remember.
Maybe that's not the correct number, but my mom was doing that.
My dad may have done that when I was younger, but I don't remember.
Right.
And you said your dad died – no, sorry.
So your dad was not as violent when you were younger?
My dad was – I don't remember.
I don't have any memories with him, actually.
But he was actually the more irresponsible one.
In what way?
He had no job and he had drinking and smoking problems and he would come home late every day drunk.
And my mom was like the breadwinner of the house.
She worked all her life.
So your father was the identified irresponsible one, although your mother would be irresponsible for being married and having a child with that man, right?
Yeah, and I spoke to her about this, and the reason why she married him was due to family pressures.
She had a younger sister that also wanted to get married and have a child, but my grandpa kind of prevented that.
He didn't want that.
She wanted her older sibling to have a child first.
What's your cultural background?
South Korea.
I was born in South Korea.
Right.
Okay, so I was aware of that to some degree in certain South American cultures, but I wasn't sure of that.
So in South Korea, is it sort of birth order that has a significant impact?
Well, I think there's a cultural component like that, yeah.
Yeah, okay.
I don't know how prevalent that is right now.
Yeah, but back then, I guess, right?
So the eldest daughter would get married first and then the next, right?
Right.
So they only met for two months, which is absolutely ridiculous.
And they just rushed into it.
Right, right.
I'm sorry about all of that.
I mean, that's a real mess.
And of course, I'm assuming that this is not...
To put it mildly, in exactly a very divorce-friendly culture, right?
No, no, no.
They couldn't divorce.
They actually got divorced when we came to the States.
Right.
Is it just not possible, not legal, or just so socially not accepted?
It's very hard to...
The process is very difficult, I think.
Right.
I don't mind that too much, but there shouldn't be social pressure to get married if divorce is also very hard.
But anyway, that's perhaps a topic for another time.
Do you have siblings?
No, I was an only child.
Like I said, I don't have any memories of spending time with my dad, actually.
So I was largely isolated by myself growing up.
Well, because your mother was working and your father was, what, out drinking?
I don't know what he was doing.
Really?
You don't know?
I'm not trying to say that you do.
I know what other people have told me that he did.
He went to New York when I was young and I don't know what he did there.
Do you have any contact with him at the moment?
No.
No, I've cut all contact with him over the last couple months.
But I would have very one-sided conversations, phone calls with him.
He would tell me all these things about how I should live my life and all that.
And I would just say yes and yes and just hang up.
Oh, there's nothing more soul grating than life advice from highly dysfunctional people.
Yeah, yeah.
And I kind of feel...
There's still a feeling of guilt, which is absolutely insane.
But there is that feeling of guilt from cultural propaganda.
Oh, like, you know, take care of your parents kind of thing?
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, no, I get that.
I get that for sure.
Yeah, okay.
And I sympathize.
I sympathize with that.
That is a very strong commandment, of course, right?
Most of culture is excusing adults from the abuse they dished out or finding ways to keep the abuser's victims roped in, particularly children, particularly adult children.
Most of the stuff that's invented is invented to serve immorality at the expense of the virtuous.
By invented, I mean like not discovered or reasoned out or whatever, but just stuff that's invented.
And the degree to which...
There is abuse in a culture is, to me, almost directly proportional to the degree with which you're just supposed to take care of your parents no matter what.
Like, you wouldn't need that rule if parents were good and virtuous and people loved their parents.
You wouldn't need this rule, right?
I mean there's no rule for teenage boys that says you have to find your penis attractive and interesting and you have to find whatever gender you're attracted to sexy and interesting.
That just happens, right?
There's no big amount of propaganda that chocolate tastes good and so on, right?
But you need a lot of propaganda to cover up for immorality.
And guilt and manipulation is very much the vacuum that rushes in to create obligation where there is only revulsion.
And I am sorry that you've been so subjected to that.
I can imagine, at least in my understanding, which is not great, my understanding of certain types of Asian cultures, that there is a lot of physical abuse.
And of course, where there is a lot of physical abuse of children, there is this massive, massive abuse.
parents kind of thing.
Yeah, yeah.
Which, again, you wouldn't need if your parents were people that you genuinely loved and, you know, you'd never think twice about not loving and helping and supporting them in their old age.
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
So, and of course, the other thing, sorry, the other thing too is that I would never want my daughter to spend time with me out of obligation.
That's how I feel.
That's how I feel like if I had a kid.
Right, and so it's really important to, if you want, sort of this empathy thing, which, you know, I'm not saying you don't have, but it's sort of an aspect which people often miss, is I think it's really important to understand the mindset of people who put these commandments in place,
which is they're obviously completely content with And prefer, in many ways, that you spend time with them out of obligation.
Like, I would find it really gross if, you know, if I went out on a date with a woman, and she said, well, I don't find you at all attractive, but, you know, I thought maybe you were just so ugly that nobody would date you, and I took pity on you, I'd be like, oh man, you need to, like, not be on this date, like, yesterday.
It would be insulting, right?
Yeah, yeah.
But there are people who have not only no problem with that but prefer that state of things where they'll create these massive, brutal pressures for people to spend time with them.
Like adult kids is the typical example of adult kids of abusive parents.
Create these massive, brutal, emotionally destructive obligations.
have no problem with that.
That's a very different species than the one I live in, the one that I inhabit.
So I just really sort of want that – because as far as feeling the guilt and obligation and so on, I get that.
But whenever you're asked to provide a gift or whenever you're bullied into providing a value, I think it's important to ask yourself how you would react being on the receiving end of such a value.
How I would react to… If I had to bully my daughter to come over for dinner when she's 25, if I had to guilt her, if I had to manipulate her, if I had to browbeat her, if I had to threaten her with disapproval or ostracism or speaking ill of her or gossiping about her or hell or – if I basically just had to bully her to come and spend time with me.
I mean, I could never conceive of anything like that.
I mean, if I had to make up imaginary promises for people to listen to this, you'll go to heaven to listen to this show.
I feel mostly like Winston Churchill.
I have nothing to offer you but blood, tears, and sweat.
Sorrow, misery.
It is not the end.
It is not Even the beginning of the end.
It is perhaps the end of the beginning.
I mean, that's what I feel like I'm offering to people.
It's just like ghastly, horrible progress that mostly other people will benefit from.
But if you had to bully and threaten and manipulate and bribe people into wanting to spend time with you, that would be so repulsive to me as a Methodology of contact.
But, I mean, so many billions of people around the world are like, yeah, that's good.
That works.
There's nothing wrong with that.
In fact, there's something wrong with even questioning that.
Because voluntarism and the free market is for people, is about economics, right?
This is what libertarians know.
The free market is not about economics.
The free market is about relationships.
The free market is not about money changing hands.
The free market is about relationships.
And if you're not promoting free markets in relationships, you're just wasting your time and discrediting a movement.
Because economics is simply one aspect of relationships.
And almost all relationships involve economics of some kind because in almost all relationships, resources are being traded.
And this is the mistake that people make is that thinking that the free market is about goods and services and cash.
I mean, yeah, it's a tiny sliver of that.
But the free market is about relationships.
And the promotion of volunteerism in the mere economic aspect of relationships is pissing up wind as far as keeping your leg dry goes because The only thing that really matters is the promotion of the free market in relationships.
Voluntarism and the exchange of value for value in relationships.
And in economics, we understand that to ask for a value that you are not willing to trade for and provide is fraud.
It's fraud.
And so if I say, give me 500 bucks, I'll ship you an iPad...
Then I'm suggesting that we engage in a voluntary exchange which is win-win, right?
You want the iPad, I want the $500.
And if you send me the $500, I don't send you the iPad, then I have defrauded you.
And that's a tiny aspect though of what goes on in relationships as far as defrauding goes.
So, parents will hit children for cognitive deficiencies, as they say, and yet the idea that those parents would then be hit by their adult children for the cognitive declines of being old is appalling.
But that's fraud.
That's switching the deal after the deal is done.
It's trading rocks for gold because parents say, well, you know, respect and voluntarism and – sorry, not voluntarism.
Respect and negotiation is how you should deal with me as an adult.
But where was the respect and negotiation for the adults with their children?
Yeah, yeah.
So all of this stuff is really fundamental to understand.
And I know I'm speaking wider than your particular – I apologize for that.
I really do.
But I really think that it's important that people understand how essential it is for the free market to be promoted in the realm of relationships as a whole.
Economics is one aspect.
Obviously, we recognize that the free market win-win voluntary negotiations is essential in the realm of sexuality.
Right?
Because if it's non-consensual, it's rape, sexual assault.
And that's sort of my particular goal, is to widen people's perceptions of voluntarism and the free market for it to include all human relationships.
It must be win-win.
It must be a trade of value for value.
And the The dollar-based economic value aspect of them is a fairly tertiary and subsequent sliver of the totality of human relations.
My daughter has not paid me a penny for being a dad.
There's no economic aspect to her relationship to me.
My wife has not paid me a penny for being her husband.
And my wife and my daughter are the most important relationships in my life.
And there's no economic aspect to that.
I pay for my daughter and all that, but...
But the most important relationships in our life are not defined by dollars.
And yet, for some reason, it is only the dollar-based relationships that libertarians and free market economists...
Classical liberals, that's what they focus on, is the dollar.
The dollar is the least important aspect of most people's relationships.
And you were assaulted and beaten as a child, Taiwan.
That's terrible.
That's awful.
It's horrible.
And sadly, all too common in the culture you came from, as far as I understand it.
Right.
There was no dollars changing hands in those situations, in those circumstances, but it has had a huge impact on your life, right?
The abuse, the assault?
Yeah.
I can't say because I don't know what it would be like if I wasn't, if I didn't experience those.
But I would imagine it would be better.
I can tell you one thing that it probably would be like, which is that if somebody was telling you about their parents being sick You would not focus on yourself or whether you were saying the right thing?
Yeah, that's very alarming to me.
I'm not saying it's bad that you did.
I'm just saying that you would be able to focus on their experience and thoughts through the clear pain of your own experiences without distortions or a mirror.
Does that make sense, what I'm saying?
Not really, no.
Right.
You would be able to focus on that person's experience without thinking about yourself.
Yeah, and I worry very much about that.
I think the only genuine thing that I know of myself is wanting to live by principles and wanting to become more virtuous, but that's for certain I know that that is a genuine desire that I have.
But when I think about all these examples, all these things that I try to go back and reexamine, that doesn't seem to be the case.
Do you think that there was a moral aspect to this woman talking about her parents not doing well and you being concerned about whether you were asking the right question?
That's not a moral issue.
It wasn't immoral or wrong or anything like that.
It just was probably more work than you'd like it to be.
To be self-conscious is to be afraid of attack.
I believe that basically self-consciousness Is a fear of attack.
And so in situations where empathy is something that you want to pursue or want to experience, I assume that when you were growing up, empathy would have been a very dangerous state of mind to be in.
I was shown no empathy.
Sorry, go ahead.
You were shown no empathy.
And if you had shown empathy, it probably would have been even more dangerous for you because...
If your mother was cruel and brutal and certainly to hit you with a stick.
She apologized after we talked about it recently.
She apologized over and over again.
So I'm still speaking to her about this.
Oh, good.
I'm thrilled to hear about that.
That's fantastic.
The parents as a whole did this would be fantastic.
And how do you feel about that situation at the moment?
Well, like I said, she was the breadwinner of the house and she provided support for my physical well-being.
But the truth is we didn't really develop any relationship with each other.
Like in the previous call-in shows, I heard you talking about two family members just living in one house together and not developing any relationship.
And that's kind of what I think happened.
And...
So when a parent devotes their entire savings just to support their child, that counts as something, I think.
And there's a feeling of guilt that arises from that aspect alone.
Thank you.
Oh, you mean because of the financial support that you received?
Right.
But at the same time, since I don't really feel anything when I'm talking to her, Well, sometimes I would call her for my own volition and just say things that I want to tell her.
But most of the time, that would happen on rare occasion.
And I tried explaining to her that when you forced me to call you, then that's no longer voluntary and that It's a win-lose situation, and she understands that now.
I'm sorry to interrupt, Taiwan, but has she continued to ask you about your childhood and your experiences and your thoughts?
Because a lot of times it's like a one-time topic.
The abuse of years becomes like a one-time topic.
Well, if I would get into a long conversation with him, she would ask me, like, what did you think when you were this age?
What did you think?
Yeah, she would ask me.
And does she continue to do that, or has that fallen by the wayside?
Well, we had, like, three lengthy conversations, and during all three conversations, she asked me, I think.
Well, at first, you know, I was the one that was asking her, Right.
And okay, so is it still an open topic of conversation?
Well, no, that's the thing.
She's been calling me lately and I just didn't answer because I just didn't feel like talking to her.
And she understands why.
I told her why.
She asked me why don't you answer my calls and I told her the reason why because I just didn't feel like talking.
And okay, she said she understands that.
Does she?
Yeah.
Yeah, she told me that.
Yeah, she understands.
She understands that it's...
What does she understand?
That it's going to be a win-lose.
I'm not going to be enjoying the conversation if I'm being forced to take the call.
But she expressed her desires that she would want to talk to me more.
That's hot.
So that we would actually build a relationship together.
Right.
Right.
But the question I keep asking myself is, what do I get out of this arrangement?
Which arrangement?
This answering the calls more.
Like, one has to make the compromise, right?
And so whose desires override the other is sort of my question.
What would you say to your mother if she was to say to you, Taiwan, what could I do that would make you want to pick up the phone?
Who would I have to be or how would I have to be for you to want to pick up the phone?
What would you say to her?
It's a tough question and it's not easy to answer, but what would you say?
Nothing.
I mean, I don't know, to be honest.
I don't know if I want to develop a relationship with her, but I kind of feel guilted that I have to because she's been financially supportive of me and all that.
Well, look, you don't want to be a friend whore, right?
What's a friend whore?
You don't want to be paid.
A friend whore is somebody who's paid to be friendly or paid to be nice to somebody.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I don't want that.
So I don't think that's going to be like, oh, I'll talk to her because she's paying me money.
Well, no, she paid me, so that's how she was able to show her support for me in a sense.
No, she's supposed to pay for you.
I mean, that's the choice you make when you have a child.
I mean, I've never quite understood how parents paying for children creates an obligation.
I mean, the children are not part of a contract.
The children didn't sign anything, for God's sakes.
The children didn't ask to be born.
The children didn't ask to have you as their parent.
I mean, I have no idea how that creates an obligation on the part of a child that you fed your child.
I mean, I just, again, I don't I've never understood that.
I think she would agree with your sentiments.
She wouldn't feel any obligation.
She wouldn't feel that I would be obligated to answer her calls and all that.
Because she paid for your food while you were growing up.
Because that's just a way of buying people's allegiance with something that you chose to do.
That's like me saying, well, you owe me visits in my old age home because I went to go and see a movie and paid for it.
If you choose to have children, you are choosing to enter into that obligation to pay that money.
How on earth does that create an obligation on the part of your children for you pursuing what it is that you want to do, which is to have a child?
So anyway, I just think that's not – It's so irrational, it can only be believed because of trauma, if that makes any sense.
It's just such an irrational position.
Yeah, it makes sense.
So to answer your question… Stay-at-home wives would never be allowed to divorce their husbands.
Why?
Because their husbands had paid for them, you see.
They were bought and paid for.
And therefore, divorce would be inconceivable and would never be allowed.
And if the woman tried to leave, well, the police would just have to put her back in her home.
And that's a relationship the woman chose to enter into, which is not even the case with children.
And so this is one of these weird things where we have these standards for adults.
Sorry, we have these standards for children, which is, well, you know, the parents pay, therefore the children owe...
And yet, as we talked about earlier, this woman who wanted $975 million or whatever from her husband, it wasn't even enough.
Not only did she leave him, but she still owes her money.
So it's not like he paid for her and therefore she has this obligation to stay with him and take care of him until he's dead, even if she hates him because he paid for her.
Imagine trying to put that in as a law.
You'd be burned in effigy in the streets.
But somehow, in unchosen relationships, like a parent-child relationship, oh yeah, it's perfectly legitimate.
It's like, oh my god, can we just UPB these things up a wee bit?
But anyway, so, I don't know.
I mean, I've never really had to apologize to anyone to this degree whatsoever.
I mean, I certainly apologize to people in my life when I've hurt them, and it's almost by accident or whatever, but nonetheless, if I've done something that's upset someone.
And I'll tell you this, Taiwan, I apologize until the other person gets closure.
I apologize and explain and talk about and dig about and try and figure it out and try and fathom it out until the other person gets closure.
It's not up to me when my apologies are done.
Does this make sense?
Yeah, I get that, yeah.
Yeah, I understand that.
So with your mom, if she had...
Again, I can't fathom having decades of hitting a child or having 10 or 12 or 15 or however long it went on for, having that amount of time to apologize to a child for hitting that child with a stick once a month or whatever it was.
I can't imagine.
But for that situation, it would be...
At least, at least many months of this being a continual topic.
And it would not be up to me to figure out when the topic was exhausted or when you had achieved closure.
It would be up for me to continue to initiate the discussion, particularly as the person who inflicted the wrong.
The person who inflicted the wrong is the person responsible for driving the discussion to gain resolution, forgiveness, and closure.
Whoever did the wrong Pays the restitution.
Whoever did the wrong initiates and continues the discussion.
Now, if you initiated, it sounds like you did, you initiated the discussion with your mother, then she's already behind the eight ball because she did a lot of wrong and you're the one who had to bring it up.
But I would imagine that the way to have you want to take her phone calls is that she is driving the process of And doing whatever it takes.
And that would mean reading up on parenting books.
That would mean going into therapy herself.
Yeah, she's doing that.
She's doing all that.
Oh, she is?
Yeah.
Okay.
I recommended a real-time relationship book to her, and she's not very good at English, but she's listening to it all the time, trying to understand bits of it.
Good.
Okay.
So then you can tell her from me...
That my belief is, I'm not saying this is some sort of rigorous philosophical proof, but my belief is that whoever has done the wrong must drive the discussion until the victim is satisfied.
And it will be a significant amount of time that she should focus on calling you up and saying, here's what happened to me as a child.
This is not an excuse, but this is the pattern that there was.
And...
You know, here's what I felt during these times of hitting you.
And, you know, here's what I'm working on.
I'm so incredibly sorry.
I can't imagine the harm it's done to you.
I think this is the harm that being hit did to me.
Like, just continuing to drive the discussion.
And that may, I mean, I would assume that that may have enough of a value to you and give you enough of relief.
You know, when parents take responsibility for having harmed their children, the children feel relief.
Because it takes the burden off the children.
Because when the parents are hitting the children, the parents are telling the child, I'm hitting you because you're bad, right?
Yeah, yeah.
And so the children grow up saying, well, I was bad.
And that's why I was hit.
And that stays with you.
Now, once the parents say, I didn't hit you because you were bad.
I hit you because I was bad.
That takes a burden off the children.
And it puts the responsibility where it should be, where it was, in fact, which is with the parents' choices, right?
Yeah, I agree with that.
Now, if she was in pursuit of that process, then you would gain that relief of not feeling bad, and that would be of value to you to pick up the phone, right?
Well, there's also the factor of aging, right?
Maybe she's more worried, right?
Would she have behaved the same way if she were younger?
If I was presenting this situation to her, if she was younger, then would she have behaved the same way as she is now?
Well, I don't know, but that's another thing that she would have to work extra hard to overcome, right?
Because, of course, if she's doing – we talked earlier about manipulation.
And, of course, if she were to bring all these apologies and up so on because she was lonely and wanted you to come and see her or take care of her when she got older or whatever, then that would not be right.
That would be manipulative, right?
And so it would have to be – she would have to be doing this in the service of you, out of love for you, care for you, concern for you, not because she wanted you to do something.
Like if she's doing it so that you'll pick up the phone and want to talk to her, that's the wrong reason.
If she's doing it because she wanted to take care of her, if she's doing it because she's lonely – These are all not going to work.
Because what's going to happen then is then she's going to get what she wants and stop doing it.
But if she's focusing on doing it because it will be helpful and healthy for you, then she will do it until you have received the maximum relief and restitution out of it and feel whole and complete again.
Then you're in control of that.
I don't mean you're dominating or bullying her or anything, but you're in...
I also feel that, too.
When I start initiating these conversations with her, that's the kind of power that I felt that I had over her, and that kind of bothered me, too.
Right.
Again, she should be initiating these conversations.
Okay.
She did you the wrong.
She needs to initiate the conversations, right?
Yeah, I completely agree.
Also, I just thought of another example.
When I decided to call in this show, I actually prepared a little bit on what to talk about and things like that.
And that desire to do that...
Was it because I wanted to help promote reasoning, evidence-based logic, and peaceful parenting, those kind of messages?
Is that why I am doing these things, or am I really after more immediate gains from calling it the show?
Are you saying, why did you prepare, or why did you call it the show?
Yeah, why did I prepare so hard, or did I prepare extra hard?
Things like that.
Well, I mean, good heavens.
I mean, not to get overly stereotypical, but you are a guy who grew up in South Korea who's preparing for a test.
I mean, isn't there something in the Asian culture about getting things right and being prepared?
No, that's kind of not what I'm talking about.
My worry is that, am I doing this to impress Stefan?
Because I have high respect for it.
That's sort of the… Is admirable.
You don't sound to me like a very aggressive person even though you were raised in a very aggressive household, which is to your credit.
You are working on your relationship with your mother and you obviously have communicated your difficulties and history with her.
In such a way that she was able to be receptive.
I'm not saying it was all your cause.
I mean, there was virtue in her in making that choice to be receptive to what you're saying.
But you're able to find a way to work with your mother that has got her into therapy, that has got her thinking about things.
So you are an extremely impressive man to me, regardless of your preparation.
I just want to give you that frank and honest reality of my experience that you are an incredibly impressive man.
But what worries me is I have these hidden agendas that are cloaked by perhaps virtue, virtuous things.
And I don't want to be that kind of person.
No, but you need things from people because you didn't get them from your parents.
Thank you.
Right?
Yeah.
Like if I haven't eaten in two days, what am I going to be thinking about?
Food.
Yeah, yeah.
Right?
So you have, like most of us who grew up with these, if not all of us who grew up with these dysfunctional households, these dysfunctional parents, we have hunger, we have a need.
And yet we can't openly state this hunger and this need because society is so messed up.
That it views us negatively or usually will condemn or criticize us for talking about our dysfunctional histories, right?
Yeah, yeah.
So we have this need and we can't speak openly of this need because society is not healthy enough to listen to us.
Society is too guilty for all of these wrecked childhoods in its midst.
And So you do have hidden agendas in that you're hungry but you can't talk about food, right?
So an analogy is you are a heroin addict with no money and there's a heroin dealer and you need to get the heroin from that heroin dealer but you can't ask to buy any, right?
So you'll walk up and you'll pretend to be friends with the heroin dealer and you're chatting this and that and then hoping against hope that they're going to give you Some heroin for free.
And again, I'm not trying to say that you're just like a drug addict.
I'm using that as an extreme example.
And so if you have these needs that you can't openly state but feel driven to pursue around people, you will be manipulative.
And that manipulation can take many forms.
Some of that manipulation is...
I'm a great break dancer.
Isn't that impressive?
I can really play guitar.
I'm really good at chess.
It could be money.
It could be a six-pack.
It could be sexual attractiveness.
It could be your capacity to hold your liquor.
Whatever it is.
It's the me plus stuff.
Once you can speak with people and listen with people Without hunger, without a deficiency that they need to fill, then you can actually be with someone without an agenda.
And this is why, for me, you know, I think therapy and self-knowledge and all this is very important because once you've actually mourned through and gone through the tragedies, right, because I think irrational needs are fundamentally around the avoidance of suffering.
And there is a theory in certain mental health circles which says that all mental dysfunction is the avoidance of legitimate suffering.
For me, it was like, okay, I suffered a lot as a child and it's nobody's job to fix it as an adult.
I mean, it's my job.
First of all, it can't be fixed.
I mean, I can never, ever, ever have a happy childhood because I will never be a child again.
So, it can't be fixed.
So, thinking that there's some way to remediate the deficiencies and Abuses of your childhood puts us in a desperate state of hope that leads us to manipulation.
If enough people find me smart or funny or attractive or sexy or intelligent or rich or whatever, if enough people like my movies or my poems or whatever, if enough people find me of value, then I don't have to face my childhood pain.
And so we become manipulative because we're hoping against hope that we can avoid the pain of our childhood and Yeah, that's very powerful for me.
Because for me, it's like if I have enough virtue in my life, then I wouldn't have any of this problem anymore.
And in the process of trying to become more virtuous, I end up manipulating other people.
Right.
Because you're not pursuing the virtue for its own sake, but as a shield against past pain.
Now, once you've recognized that the past pain can never be avoided, it can never be fixed, I mean, if a loved one dies, you know, hopefully they'll never come back from the dead, right?
I mean, hopefully you're not part of some Stephen King novel, burying them in a pet cemetery.
But if a loved one dies, they're never coming back.
You will never have that conversation with that person again.
You will never ever get to hold that person or kiss that person or speak with that person or listen to that person.
Never ever again.
And that is a loss without end.
It doesn't mean you'll forever be miserable.
But that is a loss without end.
It cannot be solved.
It cannot be undone.
They're gone like an arm is gone.
It doesn't regrow.
And when you have...
Lost a childhood.
It will never come back.
And you will never be a person who had a happy childhood.
You will never, ever be that person.
And that's very foundational because, of course, that's a lot of how you developed.
It's a lot of how I developed.
It's a lot of the survival strategies we learned.
It's a lot of the brutalities that we endured.
And it forged our very personalities in fundamental ways.
And that can never be undone.
And that, recognizing and accepting the enormity of that loss, because that loss stretched on for years and years and years, and foundational and formational years and years and years.
And so when you accept that, you will never have a peaceful, happy, and secure childhood, and you will never be the person that you could have been if you'd had that.
That's a lot of mourning.
And that's a lot of sadness.
And tragically and heartbreakingly, that's a mourning and a sadness that society forbids us from expressing.
Ah, there's lots of kids who had it worse.
Ah, you know, your parents did the best they could with the knowledge they had at the time.
Ah, you need to learn to forgive.
Oh, you put it in the past.
Oh, move on.
Oh, grow up.
Oh, man up.
Oh, whatever, right?
People are really fucking uncomfortable with...
Victims of child abuse talking about what happened.
Now, people hold candlelight vigils for imaginary rape victims or people who seem to have made up rape stories.
But people, and particularly men, who've suffered genuine violence, and particularly men who've suffered genuine violence as children at the hands of women, at the hands of their mothers or aunts, we are not allowed to speak, right?
But I'm going to speak out anyway.
You should.
You should speak out.
You should speak out, and it will make people uncomfortable.
And, you know, it's too bad for them.
I'm sorry that honesty makes people uncomfortable, but I'm not going to lie to save the false selves of liars.
And I'm just speaking sort of man-to-man.
Mm-hmm.
This is not the only way, but I think that this is the most important.
The most important conversation that needs to happen in the world at the moment outside of peaceful parenting is men speaking of the abuse they've suffered at the hands of women.
That is the most important thing that needs to be talked about right now and for many years to come.
Men talking about the abuse they suffered at the hands of women.
Because our blindness to female evil is so staggering and so bottomless that It creates a very dark space where female evil can continue to grow and fester.
Yeah, I agree.
And it is the most crushed down conversation in the world is men speaking about violence they've received at the hands of women.
And it's not the only violence that occurs in the world.
Of course not.
I get all of that.
But it's the only fucking violence we're not allowed to talk about.
And not being able to talk about it makes men extremely susceptible to repetitions of female violence.
And not being able to talk about it is a cover and a shield for women to continue this abuse.
Let me give you an example.
I've been doing some research on why the crime rate has been falling so much.
Over the past 20 years in many, many countries, particularly Western countries, crime rates have fallen quite significantly.
Quite significantly.
And, you know, one of the theories is to say aging populations, an aging population, because you see the majority of violence occurs among young men, 18 to 25, See, that's the majority of violence in society.
And because, you see, society is aging, we just have fewer of these really violent young men.
And I'm reading this, I'm like, holy fuck!
We have so far to go, it blows my mind.
It's so much earlier than I think.
And I read, I must have read like 30 or 40...
Articles and snippets of books and so on today, just trying to dig out.
And I think I've got an answer.
I mean, subject to significantly further verification.
I think I've got an answer.
On why people are reporting that statistic?
No, no.
I've got an answer as to why violent crime is diminishing so much.
But no, I think I have...
But what is not being talked about is the degree to which moms are hitting...
They're children.
See, the real violence in society comes from young men 18 to 25 years old.
I mean, a study that I've quoted and had the psychologist on that women are hitting their babies and toddlers 936 times a year.
And some of that hitting is illegal.
It's illegal.
I mean you're not allowed to hit a child under the age of two in Canada and sure as shit in that study there were lots of kids under the age of two being hit.
That is violent crime!
936 times a year.
Moms to toddlers.
And yet the only violent crime that anyone can think of is young men between the ages of 18 to 25.
The idea that there are violent criminals called moms hitting their children, well, I don't have to tell you, right?
Certainly here in Canada, what your mom did would land her in prison.
She would be a violent criminal because you are not allowed in Canada to hit your children with implements.
You were hit with a stick, right?
Right.
So here in Canada, she would be a violent criminal.
I'm sorry?
With a stick that I made, like for fun.
Oh, yeah.
So sadism plus brutality, right?
So people, like, they're talking about violent crime in society.
And it's like, well, you see, you get older, fewer young men because they're the violent criminals.
You see?
Like, no.
I mean, I swear to God, I knew a lot of young men when I was a young man.
I even knew some who were violent.
But I never, ever knew a young man who would hit a child 936 times a goddamn year.
So the idea that...
I mean, this is how far we are.
Everyone's talking about violent criminality.
And that, you know, well, there's a few violent young men.
It's like, well, Wait a minute.
What about the moms hitting the children all the time?
And I know that dads hit the kids too.
And the reason I'm saying we need to talk about male victimization, violent victimization at the hands of women is not because I think that's the only kind of violence that occurs.
Good God, no.
I get that.
But it's the only kind of violence we don't hear about.
It's the only kind of violence we're not allowed to talk about.
So it's the most important conversation to have right now because we've heard about men's violence against women.
We've heard about whites' violence against minorities.
Don't hear much about minorities' violence against whites, but it happens.
But women's violence towards boys, well, that is the most important conversation to have because that's what can't be spoken of.
And, you know, I'm sorry, you operate Where the hurt is.
You speak where the silence is.
You yell where there is no voice.
So I just wanted to just point that out.
That the number of explanations for this falling crime rate and the number of degrees to which the violent crime is simply associated with men And there's no sense of violent criminality from women towards children, particularly boys.
Simply, absolutely, completely and totally invisible.
And it's incredibly sexist towards both men and women.
And it is the biggest challenge that we need to speak of in a society.
And...
You know, given the reaction to this show sometimes, I can certainly understand why people haven't talked about it before.
Because it's explosive.
It's volatile.
And absolutely necessary.
So, yeah, I mean, I think that if you continue to focus, you know, if your mom can continue to focus on relieving you of the burden that you were hit because you were bad, you were not hit because you were bad.
You were not hit because you were bad.
Most of the things that children get hit for Are actually virtues, but that's perhaps a topic for another time.
But I compliment you and I also compliment your mother, but she's still got a ways to go as far as understanding how much restitution and conversation she needs to have with you in order to gain your willing cooperation into a relationship with her.
But kudos to you both in many ways.
I mean, it's a lot better than what I've heard from a lot of families, so I just really wanted to pass that along.
That you've done fantastically with your life and you've done fantastically in this call.
There's still something that's bothering me when you said that I cannot have a childhood where I was not abused.
That seems kind of depressing, but I understand that.
But with regards to my My propensity to manipulate others.
I really don't want to do that.
Maybe I'm doing it out of habit.
No, come on.
Whatever you do, you want to do.
I'm not saying consciously and with every piece of intent, but whatever you do, it's like me saying, well, I just ate that piece of cheesecake, but I didn't really want to.
It's like, well, no, I did.
I may regret it, But whatever we do, we want to do.
It doesn't mean we can't change it.
If you're concerned that you're manipulating people, saying, well, I don't want to manipulate people doesn't help, right?
Because it's not being empirical.
Yeah, that's true.
There is value to you in the moment in manipulating people because it's a way of trying to avoid legitimate suffering.
As you said, when I said, you can't ever have a happy childhood, you said that's kind of depressing.
Well, it is.
But that's a legitimate grieving that occurs.
And until the world grieves that which is lost, it can't change what it is to be.
You know, I don't know if you've ever had it where you've lost, I don't know, you've lost your wallet, right?
You've lost your wallet.
And you look and you look and you look, right?
And at some point, you say, fuck, that son of a bitch is really gone, right?
It's just gone.
And what you do then, of course, is you...
You phone and you replace and you get your new cards, whatever it is, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Once you accept that it's lost, then you stop looking and you start fixing, right?
Yeah, and I want to fix that.
Because these realizations just came recently.
No, first you must accept that your childhood will never be better than it was.
It doesn't mean you're an adult.
Life can't be great in the long run, but the wallet is gone.
The childhood is gone.
And...
Looking for it, which is the manipulation of others to avoid.
Looking for it.
I mean, have you ever had this thing where you check the same place three times because you just can't quite accept that it's gone and the amount of work it's going to take when it is gone.
It's like, oh man, don't tell me it's not true.
I don't want it to be gone.
I'll check under this pillow again.
Maybe I missed it the first two times.
That's just a way of avoiding that you get to stop looking and just start fixing.
You now have to change your behavior.
to prevent the problem.
Consciously try to change it, right?
Yeah.
So, I mean, if we're constantly looking that we can find ways to not have had a bad childhood or we can find ways to wallpaper over that giant hole or we can put a band-aid on the sucking chest wound or we can make other people make us feel better, right?
That's just avoiding the reality that that childhood is gone, is done.
We're never going to be eight again.
We're never going to be 10 again.
We're never going to be two again.
All of that is gone and done and all of the effects are done.
Thank you.
It doesn't mean that we can't change.
But to change requires first acceptance and grieving.
You know, you're looking for something, you're looking for something, and finally at some point you go, it's gone.
I don't know where it's gone, it's just gone.
And then you change.
And a lot of the looking is just the avoiding that it's gone.
You know it's gone.
You keep going through the motions, right?
Check under the cash, right?
And once you accept that the childhood is gone, the childhood is done, and the effects are done, right?
Like if I've eaten really badly for five years and I gained 100 pounds and I don't exercise, then those five years are done.
My 100 pounds...
It's done.
It's an effect.
It's there.
I can't wish it away.
I can't will it away.
I can't suck my gut in or loosen my pants and hope that nothing's changed.
Now, that doesn't mean I have to stay that weight forever, but I have to first accept that my five years of bad eating and no exercise has left me 100 pounds overweight, and the effects of that will be there forever because, you know, my skin is stretched out, and if I lose weight, it's going to still hang over my Belt buckle and stuff.
So there's going to be permanent effects, but it doesn't mean I have to stay that way for the rest of my life.
But there is an acceptance of the irrevocability of the past.
You know, the mind, the fantasy part of the brain, the manipulative part of the brain.
It's like a rat on a sinking ship trying to gnaw its way through the hull.
It just tries to evade and avoid reality because reality is so painful.
And of course, as children, we did have to evade and avoid the reality that was so painful.
Of course we did.
That survival mechanism.
Rejection of the pain means you can get out of bed the next morning rather than throwing yourself off a bridge maybe.
So one thing, other people's validation was a way to relieve my own pain because I had a horrible childhood.
Is that kind of what you're saying?
Yeah.
Look, I mean, I haven't had a tooth drilled in many, many years, but if I were to have a tooth drilled, I'd want Novocaine.
I want that injection.
When I got neck surgery to remove a tumor, I wasn't like, no...
I'll grip my teeth.
Put some leather between my teeth.
I'll be fine.
I was like, no, you knock me the fuck out.
I want to wake up when I'm 60.
So naturally, when we are suffering immediate pain, we wish to have dissociation.
We wish to have avoidance.
We wish to have the fantasy that it's going to be better tomorrow.
We wish to control and manipulate the situation we can't escape.
But then when we get out of that situation and become adults, become independents, we're like, okay, well now...
Now, all of my attempts to escape failed empirically in the past.
And all of the brutality, which I no longer am forced to accept, I can now at least accept that I was forced to accept it in the past.
And this acceptance of the irrevocability of the past is a very sad thing.
It's a very heartbreaking thing.
And so much of the world's aggression is in a strenuous attempt to avoid the heartbreak of Of an irrevocably broken history.
Your history is irrevocably broken, as is mine.
Doesn't mean we must remain in the future irrevocably broken.
Yeah, yeah.
I completely understand what you're saying.
And once you accept that, and you don't expect other people to serve as distractions and band-aids to your continuing wounds, then you can be with them without needing them like heroin, and thus manipulating them.
Okay.
All right.
That opened my eyes a lot.
Thank you for that.
You are very welcome, Taiwan, and please keep us posted about how it goes.
I don't know your mom, obviously, and I'm appalled and horrified at what she did to you as a child.
She's doing some work, and I'm not going to tell you how to deal with that because I can't.
It would be ridiculous for me to try.
But she's doing a lot more and a lot better than most.
That's the only thing that I can say from my experience.
And maybe that's worth something.
But yeah, keep us posted if you can about how it's going.
And congratulations on achieving what you've achieved as an adult, even in this conversation from what I've gleaned.
It's pretty magnificent stuff, man.
Thank you.
You won't ever be like her.
And that's like an amazing and impressive way to break the cycle.
Yeah, and thank you very much for all the work.
It really influenced me in words that I can't express.
Well, I appreciate that, and thanks everyone who called in tonight.
Have yourselves a wonderful, wonderful week.
We will speak to you, of course, Saturday night, 8 p.m.
Eastern Standard Time.
And please, you know how important this conversation is to remind and nag you once more, freedomainradio.com slash donate.
