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Feb. 13, 2015 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:10:42

2910 The Inertia of Human Personality - Wednesday Call In Show - February 11th, 2015

My husband and I are peaceful parents to a six year old boy, but we are at odds about how to deal with our son not taking our discussions to heart. Is an emotional reaction necessary for children to understand? What are reasonable expectations for a six year old? Previously you’ve suggested that people think of the world as a whole – and not just personal happiness - when choosing a career. How does this mesh with the objective belief that altruism is not a virtue?

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Time	Text
	Good evening everybody.
	Hope you're doing well.
	Thank you for your patience.
	Sorry for the late start.
	Inclement weather.
	Apparently I was driving at a 30 degree angle.
	Up a waterfall both ways.
	So, sorry about that.
	But we are ready for the brains of the outfit to take the helm of the starship brain planet.
	So, Mike, who do we have on first?
	All right, up first is Michelle and Justin.
	And Michelle wrote and said, My husband and I are peaceful parents to a six-year-old boy, but we are at odds with how to deal with our son not taking our discussions to heart.
	Is an emotional reaction necessary for children to understand?
	What are reasonable expectations for a six-year-old?
	Hmm.
	Very good question.
	Very good question.
	How did you come to the Peaceful Parenting Planet?
	Hi.
	Hi.
	I'm sorry, a little nervous.
	Actually, I came to Peaceful Parenting because of you.
	I wrote in a letter a couple years ago thanking you for your Bomb in the Brain series.
	I watched that, and because of that, I stopped hitting my kid.
	Oh, fantastic.
	And how old was your kid when you stopped hitting?
	Well, by then he was about three years old.
	So some of my concern about this issue is because he was already three by the time I became a peaceful parent that I'm dealing with bad seeds that I've sown.
	Right, right.
	And I'm sorry to ask this, but it's important.
	What sort of frequency was he being hit with prior to three?
	For sure, I can remember three or four times that I hit him.
	I would guess maybe a few more times beyond that.
	Okay, so not a week or a day, but over the course of his.
	Okay, okay.
	And what other things did you do when there were, I guess, what would be called disciplinary issues?
	Well, I recognize that it wasn't discipline.
	I recognize that I couldn't bend him to my will.
	I'd pick up your toys and I don't want to.
	It was me out of control, acting out of frustration, trying to get him to do what I wanted, not negotiating, not listening to him.
	I really regret a lot of that.
	I didn't listen to him a lot.
	When he was little, he had a lot of tantrums because he was frustrated.
	Right.
	Yeah, you know, it's interesting, Michelle, when you talk about the bending him to your will, because I think all parents have that urge.
	I mean, we all do.
	Like, I know what the right thing to do is, I know what's a necessary thing to do is, just do it.
	And...
	I get that frustration.
	I do.
	I really do.
	And this idea of bending to the will is very seductive, right?
	Because it feels like it's going to really work.
	I guess there is part of that.
	And in my first letter I wrote to you, there's a link to it in the emails or whatever with Michael, but...
	In the moment, I know that I was wrong when I was doing it.
	My ACE score is a 10.
	Uh, I was bent to my father's will.
	And so when, you know, I went, oh, you know, I have a kid now and now it's my turn to bend him to his will.
	Your turn, baby.
	Yeah.
	And I, that's horrible.
	And I watched your Bomb in the Brain series.
	I understand where that comes from, but that, that's the truth of it.
	I mean, it was, I have the power now.
	I'm going to make this kid do what I want.
	And it's just crazy.
	Yeah.
	And, you know, if I understand it correctly, tell me if I'm wrong, but it wasn't out of like, blah, but there was this like, well, this is kind of what has to be done.
	You take your kids to the dentist, and you get them their shots, and you bend them to your will, right?
	I would have to say like 90% yes.
	But I do think that, I do think part of it, there was a sadism in it.
	I do think that's...
	Was that conscious?
	I don't know if it was conscious in the moment, but in the aftermath.
	You know, when you have a chance to take that deep breath and you go, oh, Jesus Christ, what am I doing?
	I don't know.
	I do feel like there was a bit of sadism in it.
	Right.
	Now, just for a moment, I mean, we'll get to the practical questions.
	I'm just sort of trying to do my usual blind-as-a-bat sonar echolocation thing in the call.
	Go ahead.
	Thanks.
	Parents as a whole struggle with these issues and he's very, very brave and heroic and noble of you to talk about this stuff.
	I mean, you know, if you haven't done it, you don't know how tough it is to talk about this stuff.
	So I really appreciate it.
	But tell me about the sadism after the fact.
	What is that?
	I think that, okay, like before I had kids, you know, I was a young adult and I would go, I look at other kids and I'm like, oh, they're brats.
	It's because of their parents.
	And of course, it is because of their parents, but it's because their parents are not, you know, negotiating with them and teaching them right.
	And of course, to me at that time, it's like, they're not spanking them enough, you know?
	So it's like, before I had kids, I think, oh, well, you know, I'm going to discipline my kid and he's going to be a good kid and he's not going to have to, you know, he's not going to be a brat running in the restaurant hitting people's chairs, you know?
	And it's like, I thought, well, I got to I gotta beat that into him.
	And then, you know, they say, like, don't cry over spilled milk, right?
	So, like, pick up your toys.
	It's really not a big deal to me, honestly.
	Like, if the toys are around, like, yeah, if I'm stepping on them, it's annoying, but, like, what's the big deal about a few toys lying around?
	Like, why would I go crazy about that?
	And it's like, I think part of it was the, I told you to do this, you're not doing it, I'm gonna make you do it.
	And that's where I feel like the sadism comes in.
	Okay, okay.
	So, a lot of aggressive parenting, I mean a lot of aggressive life as a whole, right?
	It comes out of this weird kind of consequentialism, which is, do X or disaster will occur, right?
	I mean, you know, they can invade Iraq or You know, the smoking gun will come in the form of a mushroom cloud.
	Millions will die.
	There's this crazy kind of hysteria.
	And again, I don't put myself above this, but this is sort of what happens a lot with people.
	And so with your son and your thoughts about being a parent when you were even younger, what was the consequentialism that drove this behavior?
	What was the disaster scenario or the negative outcome that made it an absolute to get him to do what you needed him to do?
	I guess I would definitely say it's rooted in my childhood.
	When we were getting beat, yelled at, whatever, it's like I'm doing this so that you don't do what I did when I was a teenager and, you know, my dad, I robbed houses and I stole things and I did this and that, you know, and it's like, that's, you know, I'm beating you so you don't do these things.
	And it's like, we were nowhere near doing anything like that, you know, and it's like, so...
	It's kind of bizarre logic, though, because, you know, his childhood, he was beat constantly by his father when his father was even around.
	Uncle, his uncle.
	Or was it his uncle?
	His uncle.
	And that didn't seem to stop him from...
	Going into a life of crime.
	Right.
	And then with my kid, I think while I'm going to be disciplined with him, I thought a little more fair about it.
	But I don't want him to be the brat.
	Everybody looks at that kid and goes, Oh my God, why don't the parents have control of that kid?
	Okay, so let's say that you are in a restaurant and your kid is...
	I don't know, what is it...
	What is it?
	Running around or throwing things or screaming or having a tantrum or what?
	Well, he doesn't do that now or anything.
	He's very well behaved for the most part.
	When I wrote in, the main thing is he doesn't really respect people's personal space or their property.
	Okay, but no, let's get back to that because I hear the restaurant thing a lot.
	Okay.
	So, in the restaurant thing, your kid is acting up.
	I mean, I know it's not, like, empirical, but it's something that you mentioned.
	So your kid is acting up, and you get what?
	Like, you get these looks from the other parents?
	Oh, yeah.
	For me, yeah.
	Okay.
	Yeah, I suppose you would hear, like, looks, whispers.
	I guess I would see myself in the crowd going, why doesn't that parent have control?
	Control, yeah.
	Right.
	And would, like if you saw, I guess I say when you were younger, maybe before you became a mom, when you would see, because we've all seen that, right?
	Some kid going kind of a little haywire or whatever.
	What would it mean to you for the parent to have control?
	In other words, what would you want that parent to do to gain control of the situation?
	Yeah.
	Well, before I was a peaceful parent, it was, smack the kid.
	Take him outside and spank him.
	Take him off and yell at him somewhere.
	That would be my response before.
	Right.
	It's completely different now.
	Yeah, now I would look at that kind of behavior, and I wouldn't necessarily say, oh, what a terrible parent.
	Because I don't know.
	Maybe the dad is sick.
	Maybe the kid's got a stomachache.
	The more experience you have with something, oftentimes the less quick you are to judge.
	Sometimes it's hard to go out into the world as a whole.
	I'm sure you know this as a peaceful parent.
	It's hard to go out into the world as a whole and just see all of the terrible parenting that is all around you.
	Go ahead.
	Sorry.
	No, no, go ahead.
	Oh, I was...
	Yeah, it's very, very hard for me.
	Like, I have a really bad fight-or-flight response.
	Like, I'm shaking right now talking to you.
	And it's like, I know you're not going to reach through the microphone and hurt me or anything, but, like, it's just...
	Interactions with people make me very nervous.
	And I've worked before, you know, and then after becoming a peaceful parent, I worked in retail.
	And all day long, it's like people are hitting their kids or threatening to hit their kids or...
	You know, if I talk to peers about raising kids, it's just all this vomit of all this crap, you know, and it's so hard to find other peaceful parents that I can talk to, get advice from.
	I've only met two.
	One moved away and the other one has a child that's younger than me, so it's hard for me to go to her and be like, hey, have you experienced this with your seven-year-old yet?
	You mean younger than your child, not younger than you?
	Yeah, your child's like...
	Otherwise that parenting might be going on a little long.
	I decided to become a peaceful parent when my kid was 28.
	You may have missed the vote on that.
	Right.
	Yeah, it is sadly prevalent.
	And I mean, people just have this, I just did this video today on the singer Pink, who a couple of years ago was talking about how parents really should beat the crap out of their kids, that her father put her through a wall.
	And that's the only reason she's alive today.
	And at the same time, she strips down naked because she's so concerned about people treating animals harshly that she's willing to show off her tats.
	Oh, yeah.
	And her tits.
	To her music.
	For the sake of like, let's treat animals super kindly.
	And it's like, you know, children are animals, right?
	Yeah.
	I don't know.
	I listen to her music and a lot of it's about breaking up and getting back together with the same guy for 10 years.
	I was like, okay.
	Oh yeah, I listened to Family Portrait.
	It was about her parents split up when she was, I think, 8 or 9.
	And her dad was a vet, sorry, a veteran, not a vet.
	Her dad was a veteran, and it was pretty rough.
	She was smoking when she was 9, she was doing hard drugs when she was in her early teens.
	And the home environment must have been terrifying.
	I mean, the lyrics she wrote, you know, it's hard growing up in World War III, never knowing what love could be.
	I mean, that's just like horrifying environment.
	And then so with all that trauma, then she says, well, yes, my dad had to beat me up because I was just a bad kid.
	And she's into attachment parenting and she's keen on breastfeeding and she's into PETA, but when it comes to her own history and children as a whole, people just short-circuit like crazy.
	Oh, yeah, absolutely.
	And I gotta say, you know, again, thank you for, like, the videos you've been pointing out on peaceful parenting and, you know, women and women's issues and moral agency.
	I'm trying to grow a unicorn and fart rainbows.
	It's not happening.
	I'm crying.
	But, like, there's a few videos...
	Actually, I think it's easier to grow a rainbow and fart a unicorn.
	I think that's probably...
	Sometimes it feels like that's easier, but...
	I'll try that.
	It reminds me of childbirth.
	Oh, yeah, I can imagine.
	But yeah, I mean, like your videos where you talk, like you basically, you have a couple where you experience the rage for the person when they're talking about their shit childhood.
	And I can't tell you how much that like is sunshine on my soul.
	It is.
	Like, fuck you people that are like, oh, I deserve to be beaten.
	I deserve to be hit.
	Because, like, when you're saying, I deserve what my parents gave me, you're telling me that I deserve what I got.
	And it's like, I got hell.
	It's like, no.
	No thanks.
	No, no, that's right.
	And I try not to interact with alter egos that don't know their alter egos.
	Yeah, and I have that problem.
	My father alter ego comes up, and my husband and I watch your shows, I listen to your podcast, I need to start reading Real Time Relationships, but my alter ego of my dad pops up and my husband says, I'm not talking to your dad.
	Yeah, well, I'll talk to him as long as he knows he's a defensive alter ego and not the real guy.
	And I don't.
	Right.
	I mean, but yeah, so when people, when they're fully inhabited by the parental alters, I mean, there's no point having a conversation.
	In fact, I think it's destructive to do that because it gives those alter egos strength.
	Yeah.
	Really, my bigger problem is when she tries to put me in that role.
	Right.
	And I'm not that guy and I don't want to be addressed as such.
	Yeah.
	Oh, yeah.
	Like, yeah, don't deal with me as if I'm some historical abuser.
	Right.
	And sometimes there's an effort to put people into that role, right?
	If that's what the psychodynamics are working their way towards, then there's almost this invitation to be put into that role or maneuvering people into that role.
	Right, and when watching these videos, we're starting to recognize when those patterns are coming up, and I recognize I do need to see a therapist to try to retrain a lot of these thought patterns.
	I feel like I'm crazy sometimes because I'm arguing with all these different voices in my head.
	Oh yeah, no, that's sane.
	No, that's sane.
	No, listen, arguing with different voices in your head, from my, obviously, amateur perspective, that's sane and that's healthy.
	Because you then have a dominant ego that's able to mediate these disputes.
	Right.
	It's when, and I've never had this particular, I've never had a luck really getting this particular attitude, but I've, you know, when you see people switch in and switch out, like they're talking to someone who's pro-spanking and they're like, yeah, spanking!
	And then they talk to someone who's a peaceful parent and they're like, yeah, peaceful parenting!
	You know, and they don't seem to have any transition or any knowledge of these opposite perspectives.
	That, to me, Is crazy.
	Like Pink, you know, saying, I really care, I cry when I think of an animal being mistreated, but parents should beat the shit out of their children.
	And it's like, and there's no wires that cross over this great divide.
	Like, there's the alter ego, which is like, sniffle, sniffle, let's take care of the animals.
	And then there's the, yeah, my dad put me through a wall, and thank heavens he did, otherwise I'd be dead.
	I mean, that to me is crazy.
	I mean, she's a ferociously talented musician and singer and songwriter, but, you know, Matt is a $3 bill.
	I mean, that's just nutty.
	Because there's no, like...
	And the other thing, too, of course, I mean, people like that, I would assume Pink doesn't have someone in her life who's going to say, ah, Pink.
	I think you might be missing some of the empathy stuff.
	You know, this ethics that you have going on, you know, like the easy ethics of like, well, I care about the poor.
	I care about the homeless.
	Well, I care about animals.
	It's like, yeah, that's great.
	You know, there's nothing wrong with all of that stuff.
	But it's not the most controversial ethical state.
	You know, I hate war.
	I just wrote an anti-war song.
	It's like, that's great.
	You know, I think that's wonderful.
	They have been around for about 5,000 years and we still have war, but it's nice that you wrote an anti-war song and it's nice that you're posing to be nice to animals and it's great that you care about the victims of this hurricane or that tsunami and so on.
	And that's all necessary work.
	But anybody who's taking a non-controversial moral stand is not exactly advancing the course of mankind.
	I'm anti-racist.
	Okay, great.
	I think that's wonderful.
	I hate sexism.
	Like, great, you know, but who's going to, you know, if you've got moral energy, why don't you bring it to some place that's controversial?
	Like, if you want to end war, promote peaceful parenting.
	Take that on, rather than, war sucks!
	What is it good for?
	Absolutely nothing.
	Say it again!
	I mean, that's great, but, you know, funk out all you want, but you're not going to budge a single bullet out of a chamber.
	Anyway, I'm always suspicious of people like, I care about the animals.
	It's like, well, yeah, I think that's great.
	But if everyone was a peaceful parent, then the animals would be fine because there would be no cruelty to animals coming out of children who were raised peacefully.
	I agree, and I'm striving for that, and I'm trying to get friends to do it.
	I don't have any close friends that have children, and, you know, part of this topic is, you know, with my son, because it's like, I feel like, well, if I do get them, like, they ever have kids, and they say, oh, maybe I'll try the peaceful thing, or, like, maybe I'll listen to what she has to say.
	It's like, I want to be a good example, too.
	Is it because they don't have boyfriends or married, or they just don't want them, or what?
	They're mostly guy friends.
	I mostly have male friends.
	You know, guys can breed too.
	I speak from experience.
	It's a little less traumatic.
	I guess a male friend is single.
	I have a female friend who's with a long-term partner, but they're not interested in having kids.
	Yeah, I don't know.
	Not a lot of people in my life have children.
	Most of our friends are on the smart, introverted side.
	They...
	I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that just white people are like the worst breeders in the whole world.
	I mean, it's just really like, oh my god.
	I mean, white people are just the worst breeders.
	What we've gone down for, like white people have gone down from like 35% to like 15% in like 30 or 40 years of the world's population or something.
	It just...
	Just white people?
	I mean, I think...
	I don't know if we just need to start broadcasting porn on low-hanging clouds or something over WASP neighborhoods or something, but anyway.
	I mean, like a male friend we have who's single currently, you know, I mean, I'm sure he issues family or whatever, you know, things he needs to work through, but I mean, a lot of it he goes, you know, Like, she's got to be talking about MGTOW and women have men by the balls, you know, if they get married and they have kids.
	And, like, that's a big deterrent for some of them.
	Well, you know, we're working at trying to create as many quality people for everyone to breed with as possible through this show so that you can rely on them.
	Like, be anarchist, be peaceful, join us.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, anarchy has got to become the new cleavage, that's all I can tell you.
	And not like the hairy man-boob cleavage that I in my late 40s am getting, but like something slightly more appealing to people as a whole.
	Anyway, listen, Michelle, fun to chat, but let's get back to your, and sorry, that was me drifting us off, but to your son.
	So give me an example of a conflict that you have with him, if you wouldn't mind, that comes to mind.
	Well, often we'll have friends come over, you know, a few friends come over for, you know, we'll watch a movie or whatever in the evening time after work.
	And we usually try to get my son to, you know, play a PlayStation game or, you know, do something while we're watching the movie.
	And...
	You know, people get there.
	Sorry, I'm just trying to get the physics of it.
	So you watch a film with your friends and your son is like on a PS Vita or something like handheld?
	Like a PlayStation in the bedroom on TV in there.
	Oh, so he's in another room?
	Yeah, like it's right next door, but it's, yeah, another room where he can do something that's interesting to him, and we're watching, you know, it's like adult movies, not like kid movies.
	No, no, I get it, yeah.
	And I don't have people that I can be like, here, take my kid so I can, he can play with somebody.
	I don't have family, like, that's good to be around.
	I don't have children in my life.
	I don't know any other peaceful parents.
	It's very difficult, so it's like, and he does enjoy the video games, But it's kind of isolated for him, right?
	Well, we watch TV, but it's a movie.
	I think it's a reasonable amount of time.
	He's almost seven.
	So we'll watch a movie.
	Friends come over.
	They get in the door, and he's just like, hi!
	And he just wants to hug them, and he's very extroverted.
	Very, like, loving and wants to hug, wants to talk, wants to talk about his day, wants to ask them questions, you know, what's your favorite holiday color, food, whatever.
	And, you know, at first it's fine.
	And then after the fourth, fifth time of them jumping, it's like, hey, kid, you know, can you please back off?
	You know, we've explained personal spaces.
	You put your arm out.
	That's someone's personal space.
	You don't get in it.
	You know, our friends don't have kids.
	They're not used to being hugged.
	You know, we try to explain a lot to them.
	Oh, hang on, hang on.
	What do you mean?
	They're not used to being hugged?
	Well, okay.
	Well, like me personally...
	Are your friends cactuses?
	No, seriously.
	Did you pick them up from the desert roadshow?
	Anyway, go ahead.
	For me, hugging was super, super uncomfortable until I met my now husband because I only got hugged on Christmas and my birthday.
	So that was it for me.
	I was super uncomfortable getting into hugging.
	My friends that I have, the one friend in particular, the male friend that's single, I'm not really sure how close he was with his family.
	He'll probably listen to this.
	I don't want to give too much information, but he went to boarding school and I don't think there was a whole lot of connection.
	Okay.
	All right.
	I'm just going to be annoying, frankly.
	And Mike, if you can get your mic ready, I'm going to drag you in in a sec.
	But what's your husband's name again?
	Justin.
	Okay.
	Now, can you imagine having a female friend over, or a male friend, doesn't really matter, and saying, it's girl time, or I just want to chat with my friend.
	So, Justin, here's an iPad.
	I want you to go into the next room for a couple of hours.
	But we do.
	That's kind of the problem.
	You do that.
	I am that kind of person.
	I'm totally content to be off in another room doing my own thing for a couple hours.
	It doesn't bother me, but he really likes to interact with people.
	He likes attention.
	I'm sitting in a chair and read a book and I'm happy, but he wants to be talking.
	And that's okay.
	I mean, that's great.
	But when we're trying to do something or when he's getting a little bit too up in their face and he just...
	He doesn't really understand, like...
	Signals that people are ready to move on from the conversation.
	No, he doesn't understand coldness.
	Before I had a kid, I wouldn't hug other people's kids.
	I have a terrible background, I understand.
	But to me, it's not foreign to see people that this isn't my kid, I don't want to hug them.
	Haven't they known your son for seven years almost?
	No, we lived in another state and we just moved back here last year.
	Okay, so these are friends who've known your kid for a year.
	Yeah, they've known our kid for a year, but we've known them for like 15 years.
	10, 15.
	Okay, so the kid is obviously the central part of your life.
	At least has been for, I mean, it's probably easing back a little bit now, but they feel not comfortable hugging your kid?
	Well, it's less like, you know, the one hug is fine, but then he'll want to be up and sitting in their lap and talking to them when we...
	Have other things that we're trying to get going because, you know, it's late and we've got to get our movie over with so everybody can go home and go to bed and things like that.
	Anyway, what other things?
	I'm sorry.
	I'm probably just going to sound annoying here, but I don't want to quit.
	So what time does he go to bed at night?
	He usually goes to bed around the time that we do.
	He's homeschooled, and I work from home, so we kind of have a schedule all over the place.
	And what time is that?
	Generally around midnight is when we all go to bed.
	He goes to bed at midnight.
	Okay.
	So you've made the choice, of course, to put him on a schedule that works for you.
	And I'm not saying it doesn't work for him or anything, right?
	He's kind of the same way we are.
	We all just kind of have a natural preference for being up late at night and sleeping in the morning.
	He gets really upset.
	The times that I've tried to get him to be on more of a day schedule, he doesn't like it.
	I'm not really going to cope with him because he doesn't have anywhere to be in the morning.
	So your lives are such that you can't socialize really without your son, right?
	Pretty much.
	I mean, we don't have babysitters around here that we trust.
	I mean, obviously her family's nearby, but you've heard about them a little bit.
	Yeah.
	ACE of 10, I think that I'd have a bit of a fiery moat, but I guess that's a choice.
	I can answer yes to multiple parts of some of the questions, 10 to 15 maybe even.
	Right.
	Right.
	Okay.
	So, just a moment.
	Micah, are you on?
	I am on.
	And what do you think?
	Why was this around your friends not having much physical intimacy with your child?
	I was thinking of my interaction with Steph's daughter and There's a lot more than hugs.
	And it occurred long before I knew her for a year.
	You know, we have this game where I grab her as tight as I can and she has to try to escape from my arms and I wrap my legs around her.
	The mic trap.
	The mic trap is what we call it.
	And she loves it.
	I don't know how we got started doing that.
	But, you know, it's quite a workout trying to, you know, restrain someone who's trying to wiggle around and wiggle out and, you know, there's laughter and all types of enthusiasm and it's just, it's so much fun.
	It's so much fun and, you know, it's games like that that have brought us even closer.
	And the idea that being around someone who you care about and here is a hug and now that's it, that seems like a barrier to me that would be really kind of uncomfortable.
	If the kid wants a hug, don't you just give the hug until the kid's done with the hugging?
	Well, it's not that they don't, like, interact with him, don't talk to him.
	Like, you know, if we're watching a show about, you know, like, the SpaceX rocket is going off, he'll come out.
	And, like, what is that?
	What's going on?
	Where is it?
	You know, and we'll talk to him.
	We'll answer his questions.
	They do it, too.
	I don't know.
	I just, I can't understand, like, not being comfortable with other people's kids because I wasn't before I had a kid.
	Now that I've had a kid, now that I'm a peaceful parent, like, yeah, I'll play with the kids and all that.
	But, like, I can understand why they don't, especially not really being around kids, not having any Mike, how well do you think it would work if we wanted to watch an adult film to send Dizzy to another room?
	Every four and a half minutes, four minutes and 26 seconds, she'd come out.
	I mean, generally the way – I don't know if this is right or wrong.
	I'm just – right?
	Like, I'm really – like, I don't know if this is right or wrong, Michelle, but I'm just saying that with us, there's no adult socializing without including Izzy.
	Right?
	We don't have a – you know, we're setting up the over-18 force field.
	I'm just making jokes or whatever, right?
	But – And I don't know if this is right or wrong.
	I mean, I'm just telling you what my perspective is.
	That there will be very occasional times, if I need to talk about something with Mike, business-related or whatever, if we're the only ones home, then we'll say, listen, we need 10 or 15 minutes or whatever.
	But that's about the max.
	That we don't have a, this is adult time.
	Because the challenge is, you say your friends are childless, so he doesn't have other kids that he can go play with.
	Right.
	Right, and that's part of...
	And so...
	Sorry, go ahead.
	That's part of his problem, too, is when he does have other people to play with and he kind of, you know, his bucket's full, then he's much more content to do his own thing, but...
	No, no, that's not part of his problem.
	Well...
	That's your problem.
	Yeah, but what I mean is that I think the reason that he sometimes desires so much attention is because he hasn't got enough peer interaction, I guess you could say, where he's communicating with people who are new and interesting.
	Listen, if you have a six-year-old and you're able to watch a movie, I don't think he's demanding too much attention.
	I don't think he's demanding enough.
	I don't think we have a problem with the demanding of attention.
	Like, I don't mind.
	We spend time together.
	We do stuff together.
	It's not the demanding of attention to me.
	It's the...
	I've told him, you know, like, we have this conversation a million times, it seems like, you know, this is personal space, not everybody's being comfortable with this, respecting people's property.
	Like, if he goes and you just, like, oh, your cell phone's there and it's got something interesting on it, he might ask to grab it, you know, sometimes he doesn't remember, but sometimes he'll just grab it.
	And it's like, and then...
	The main conflict that happens with my friends is if they snap at him, and it's not that they yell at him, they don't call him names, nothing like that, but if they say, hey, what the heck, I just said X, Y, Z, that really bothers me.
	I'm like, why are you talking to my kid like that?
	I don't want his feelings hurt.
	If his feelings get hurt and he cries, it kills my heart.
	It's like, how can I avoid it coming to that point?
	Well, so, right, is this fair to say that it's easier to try and change your son than your friends?
	That's part of it, but I think it's important for him to respect people's personal space and property, and that's something that he needs to learn to do.
	Like, if an adult just came up out of the blue and just snatched something of yours and started messing with it without permission, I mean, he'd be upset, right?
	I mean, that's not...
	Well, okay, now you're really framing this.
	You're really framing this.
	Because, first of all, he's not an adult.
	He's six.
	Well, of course.
	No, hang on.
	Number one is, like, snatched it from you and started messing with it.
	Like, you're using this very loaded language to make it sound as negative as humanly possible.
	You know, it's sort of like, well, if the devil himself came up and set fire to you, you'd be bothered, right?
	It's like, well, yeah.
	Okay.
	So you're really front-loading the language of the thing?
	I think that, I guess, what I'm trying to communicate is that how it feels to them and...
	That's how they react toward it, because...
	No, but is it accurate?
	If you put something shiny in front of a six-year-old, aren't they going to want to have a look?
	I think that's okay for them to want to, but I think it's also important for him to ask first, and if somebody says no, then he has to respect that.
	What do you mean, has to?
	Has to in the sense that that's, you know...
	It's okay to be upset, but it's not okay to throw a fit about it if somebody says no.
	Like, you can be like, oh, I'm disappointed.
	I really want to see that.
	But okay, it's yours.
	That's a good reaction.
	But going, you didn't give me that.
	Now I'm going to throw a fit and I hate the world and, you know, hyperbolic is...
	To do it anyway is also...
	Okay, so what you're trying to do is producing, like, the approach that you've taken so far is producing tantrums, right?
	Not very often.
	It was more so before the Bomb and the Brain series, before I watched that, before I learned to really start listening to him, he did have tantrums.
	Not so much anymore.
	Well, okay, but it's not working.
	Let's put it that way then, right?
	Yeah, like, I guess you could say, like, what we're doing is not working.
	Okay.
	So, look, if what you're doing is not working, then obviously you need to do something different, right?
	And that's why I'm going.
	I know, and I appreciate that, but you guys are spending a lot of time defending what you're doing.
	Okay.
	Okay?
	Like saying, well, you know, he's got to respect his personal space and he's messing with people's stuff, right?
	Okay.
	I don't know that he does.
	Because, look, there are times...
	Every parent gets stuck into this, right?
	I'm brushing my daughter's teeth.
	And she will start talking.
	Why will she start talking?
	Because she never stops talking.
	And every single day I have to say, Izzy, there's two times a day for two minutes where you really can't talk.
	Because it drools on your pajamas.
	It's not easy.
	And I've been having this conversation with her for about 18 months.
	And it's every day.
	Most days.
	Most days.
	And it's not...
	I mean, I keep having the same conversation with her, but, you know, the important thing is for me, I mean, I do try different things, and it's sort of getting better, you know, sort of remind her ahead of time or whatever, or talk about a story that she's interested in, but of course, if she's interested in, she wants to chime in and so on, right?
	But just sort of reminding her, and also saying, you know, I get frustrated or whatever, but if he's six, the concept of Personal space and other people's property and ask for permission and this, that, and the other.
	It may be a tad ahead of the curve.
	And it also may be that there's something else that's going on that's not just about personal space and so on.
	I don't mean that.
	Something else.
	It's not sinister.
	It doesn't mean anything sinister or negative.
	Possession!
	Yeah, the strike at the root.
	Part of my first three years raising him, did I do something to cause this?
	Because I didn't listen to him when he was younger, he's not listening to me now.
	Hitting is an intense invasion of personal space, right?
	I'm sorry, I can't really hear you with some interference.
	Oh, no problem.
	Hitting is an intense invasion of personal space, right?
	Yes.
	And so, you know, you only hit him a couple of times and so on, but I assume that there was other intrusive stuff going on.
	Maybe you picked him up or there's naughty corners or yelling or whatever.
	That's all very intrusive of personal space and that would be the first three years, right?
	And so recognizing that for you guys now to have, you know, when you basically intruded, not constantly, right, but you intruded on his personal space for the first three years, then expecting him to have An accelerated development of personal space would be optimistic, to say the least, right?
	It's unreasonable for him to expect him to pick that up quickly.
	But on the property thing, I think that he really does get that concept because he'll get upset if somebody messes with his things.
	And he has his things and they're his.
	I mean, that's the way we've always been with him because that's been something I met a lot of little brothers, so...
	A lot of my childhood was spent being frustrated because my things were being played with and broken.
	Anyway, that's something that we've always...
	Oh, so that's why you had the energy of other people.
	That's why you used that language, right?
	Of messing with stuff and snatching.
	That's your childhood, right?
	Right.
	Okay, so don't bring that into what we're talking about here.
	I mean, I sympathize with all of that, but it's not going to help with your son, right?
	I think that...
	He understands the concept of this belongs to me and people should have to ask me before they go and use it without my permission.
	He gets that, but he doesn't...
	No, he gets that for him.
	Right.
	But if he got that for everyone else, you'd be able to let him go work at a bank.
	Well, maybe not a bank, because banks get bailouts.
	But the point is that, of course, he gets that with regards to himself.
	Right?
	I mean, babies get that.
	You try, you know, it's the easiest taking candy from a baby.
	The only statement ever made by somebody who never tried to take candy from a baby, right?
	But, of course, he's got impulse control problems.
	And they're not problems relative to being six.
	They're just, there's a reason why you've still got, you know, six, 12 years of parenting to go, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	Or more.
	So, he has problems universalizing.
	He has problems with reciprocal empathy.
	He has problems with impulse control.
	He has problems with the effects of his actions.
	And he has problems with people's personal...
	They're not problems for a six-year-old, right?
	It's like calling a baby drunk because they walk badly, right?
	It's just that this is where you have 12 more years of parenting to go.
	Yeah, that's why I ask, like, what is reasonable to expect from him?
	Like, because I'll say, well, he's just a kid, you know, how much is this he didn't get?
	And then I get the, well, he should know by now.
	He needs to learn this stuff.
	When he's older, this is going to be, you know, the reaction he's going to get.
	But have you looked it up?
	No.
	Why not?
	I mean, if you're claiming significant knowledge that's causing a lot of conflict with your son...
	Why don't you look it up?
	Or why don't you phone, you know, developmental experts and say, listen, for five minutes, whatever, right?
	Or just look it up and, I mean, we sort of do this every couple of months, say, well, what's appropriate for this age based upon developmental standards and so on, right?
	Okay.
	Are you saying that the average six-year-old group of kids never gets into conflicts around property because they're all pretty good at asking each other permission?
	I'm not saying that I don't.
	It's just like I have memories, you know, of course, not typical from my childhood.
	I remember, like, being, Hit and not understanding why.
	I didn't understand whatever they were hitting me for.
	I just don't want to repeat that.
	I'm afraid that if I get upset because he does whatever I'm just repeating that.
	Like, I'm punishing you and you don't know why.
	Or I'm yelling at you.
	Yeah.
	I don't think it's appropriate to ask him to have a perfectly developed sense of property rights or even a reasonably developed sense of property rights at the age of six that's reciprocal and universal and so on, right?
	I think that's unrealistic.
	I mean, talk to your average voter.
	I mean, they're 46.
	They have no freaking conception of property rights at all.
	Yeah.
	Government has money, gives me stuff.
	I am happy.
	I put an X in the box and free food pellets come down from the snap machine.
	Right?
	So, I mean, even adults don't seem to have any sense of property rights.
	I mean, just try talking to people about taxation is theft.
	So, asking it for a six-year-old, what most 46-year-olds seem to have no grasp of fundamentally understanding, I think may be premature.
	Let me tell you a sort of brief story, right?
	Oh, yeah, people always get comfortable when I say a brief story.
	So, my brother had a sweater that, I mean, he was, I guess, a bit of a dandy, and he liked his clothes.
	And he had a sweater that he liked and I wanted to wear it.
	And he begrudged and begrudged.
	Finally, he did.
	He let me wear it.
	And I'm walking around downtown.
	A beautiful sunny afternoon.
	There's just this freak rainstorm.
	And, God help me, the sweater gets a little wet.
	You know, like I moved towards the mall, but the rain kept going.
	Rain kept going.
	I had to run across the street to get to the subway.
	The sweater got a little wet.
	And I guess I was maybe 14 or 15 or 16.
	I can't remember exactly, but something like that.
	And I get home and my brother is like, that sweater got wet, didn't it?
	And I'm like, well, yeah.
	I mean, I'm not going to borrow a sweater and put a jacket on because then people can't see the sweater, which looks really cool.
	And he pulled it off me.
	He was really angry because, apparently, if some sweaters get wet, they get misshapen, which I don't understand.
	I mean, fundamentally, I don't get that.
	I mean, what on earth is the point of having something that you can wear that can't get wet?
	I mean, it rains.
	I mean, we're not talking Morocco.
	This is Canada, right?
	I mean, it rains.
	And I remember my brother spreading the sweater out on the bed and, don't touch it!
	You know, I thought he was going to bring out a defibrillator and try and give it CPR or something.
	Don't touch it!
	Because it might dry back to its original shape.
	And this was like a big, a big deal.
	I mean, I heard about this for like months.
	Can I borrow?
	No!
	Remember the sweater?
	Right?
	I mean, it just, it was like, oh my God.
	You know we shared the same womb, right?
	You know that we're flesh and blood.
	It's, it's, it's sheep hair, for God's sakes, man.
	Right?
	It doesn't matter.
	But no, the sweater.
	The sweater of doom.
	The sweater of the great divide.
	The sweater of my brother, Steph.
	We'll never be responsible for anything ever again because it rained.
	And he got the sweater a little wet.
	Now, that's like a kind of ownership or property or use dispute that my brother and I could not negotiate in our teens.
	Mostly because he considered it really important and I didn't.
	And I'm never good at faking When I find stuff, eye-rollingly unimportant, our team won!
	Okay.
	I don't care, right?
	Stand where the flag is being, I don't care, right?
	I mean, I couldn't tell the difference with the sweater the next day or not.
	I wasn't like, oh yeah, I see what you mean, right?
	The lines are all of this drooping and it's like, no, it looks the same to me.
	And so this is my brother and I in our mid-teens, which is like 10 years after what you're talking about here.
	We're still fighting about property.
	You know, there are people, you know, in Canada, there are these cottages, right?
	And the cottages, God forbid, you know, when the parents die, who gets to use the cottage?
	Right?
	Of the siblings?
	I mean, it's like the Hatfields and the McCoys.
	I mean, people set fire to each other.
	They go through 10 years of legal battles.
	Like, it's insane.
	I mean, look at divorces.
	You know?
	You get the salt shaker.
	I get the pepper shaker.
	You know, people just go completely mental.
	So, property is something that just drives people mad, and there's a lot of, you know, fog and nonsense about it all.
	But I think that to say, like, if you guys had frustrations with regards to property and personal space and so on as kids, then it's not fair or rational or healthy to put that on your kid.
	Because if you have a question about child development, you sure as shit Don't consult your own history if you've had a bad childhood, right?
	Yeah, absolutely.
	So there's a reason why you guys haven't looked this up.
	When do kids get a strong sense of property?
	When do kids get a strong sense of personal space?
	When is that appropriate, right?
	You don't have to reinvent the wheel here.
	This stuff has been studied for approximately 12 billion years, right?
	So there's a reason why you haven't looked it up and why do you think that is?
	Part of my reason is that Honestly, I don't trust the sources because a lot of child psychology, particularly in the United States and in English-thinking countries, is all about justifying violence against children and discipline and control and all of that.
	I don't even know where to begin looking for somebody who actually approaches it from our point of view.
	No, no, but nobody's talking about punishment, right?
	Developmental stages, right?
	Why haven't we Googled?
	I think that's kind of tied into it, though, because all of these expectations that are based on these studies of children, you know, often in the United States, where they're dealing with violent parenting and public school and things like that, how much does the psychology of the society that a child grows up in influence how quickly or slowly they develop in one category or other?
	So where do you go to find a neutral point that's like, in A reasonable situation, which most children don't have, this is what you can expect out of a reasonable child.
	We try to be reasonable in this little bubble in a very unreasonable world, so when you're looking at child development, what are realistic expectations inside of that bubble as opposed to the rest of the world that doesn't really live in there yet?
	Does that make sense?
	Right.
	So what you're saying is you can't get any answers.
	That you can trust anywhere?
	I don't know that I can't, but I don't know, I guess...
	But you haven't tried.
	You've prejudged that you can't get answers, right?
	I wouldn't say that I haven't tried, but I haven't tried very hard, I'll give you that.
	Wait, are you saying that you've looked up some stuff, but not much?
	Yeah, I mean, I'm kind of a compulsive reader.
	Sometimes I go down rabbit trails, and I have read about child development, but...
	Again, you know, the sources that they're coming from are often suspects, often government, or people who are, you know, in one breath saying, do this, and the other breath saying, you know, spank your child if he does that.
	And I really don't...
	No, but I'm not talking about, like, when is a child supposed to be able to read?
	When is a child supposed to be able to tie their shoes?
	When is a child supposed to...
	I mean, this is not...
	And hit them, right?
	Yeah.
	When it comes to, like, education, that's something that I read into a lot.
	I mean, we're homeschooling for a reason, because I don't believe in the public school system or the general approach, but when it comes to, like, emotional development and interpersonal development, I don't know...
	I don't even know where to start there, I guess, because I don't...
	I don't want to race in with the...
	Stop with the facts!
	Stop with the facts as they stand.
	That doesn't mean you have to accept the facts as they stand.
	So let me ask you, this is a pop quiz about property and kids.
	What percentage of all the people caught shoplifting do you think are between the ages of 13 and 17?
	Probably in the 60s or 70s, but that's a guess.
	I don't know.
	It said 25% of people caught shoplifting are between the ages of 13 and 17.
	Yeah.
	Children under the age of 5?
	Generally, are not sufficiently able to understand the concept of property, realize that they're stealing.
	Now, that's a year or two back from your kid, right?
	Right.
	And, you know, in elementary school, generally they know stealing is wrong.
	They probably even know why it's wrong.
	They don't have it universalized because whatever, right?
	Because the society is messed up.
	Right, I mean, when we were in school, things were wrong.
	But yeah, a lot of kids are still shoplifting into their teens.
	And, like, I'm not saying that's the standard for your kid.
	But what I'm saying is that you get information about the general population as a whole.
	And that gives you some information about the appropriateness of things like property and asking and respect and this, that, and the other.
	So...
	Five, yeah.
	I start working on property and so on, but that's a big one, right?
	It takes a long time.
	And your kid is still 20 years from brain maturity.
	And so the idea of impulse control and this and that and the other, it's hard.
	It's complicated.
	As far as personal space goes, it seems to me like you guys are uncomfortable with what's going on between your friends and your son.
	I am.
	And a lot of people, when they're around kids, they have this fuse.
	I don't mean a fuse like they're going to blow, but it's sort of like, okay, kid, you've got 11 minutes.
	And you can see this countdown happening.
	You know, it's like this Bond movie, you know.
	Ah, Mr.
	Bond.
	No, I get it.
	I felt that way.
	At 11 and a half minutes, the laser sharks of childhood will be at an end.
	And so you've got this, you know, your friends come over and your kid is excited to see them and wants to hug them and ask them questions and this and that and the other.
	And it's like, all right, kid, 12 minutes, go.
	Right?
	But that's not how kids work.
	They don't have a countdown.
	Mm-hmm.
	They don't have a wind down.
	They don't have a countdown.
	They just do what they do.
	And I think that you guys are looking to adjust your child to manage your own anxiety with regards to your friends.
	Like, I don't have friends who have a countdown with my daughter.
	I met a guy I did business with years and years ago.
	I met him for dinner.
	And Izzy was with me.
	And she was trying to show him something and he was like, yeah, yeah.
	And I'm like, dude, that's rude.
	She's part of our social group.
	He was showing me pictures of a house he was redoing.
	And I was like, I didn't say yeah, yeah, right?
	Like, show her.
	I mean, what are you doing?
	Show her the attention.
	She wants to show you something.
	And when is it done?
	It's done when it's done.
	There's not this countdown, right?
	And it's important for your friends to know that your son is not just a part of your life.
	I mean, he is your life.
	And I wouldn't want someone coming over who were like, okay, I'll talk to your wife for 12 minutes, but then she better go into another room.
	And I'm not saying your friends are saying that, but that wouldn't work for me.
	It's like, no, no, no.
	You want to be friends with me?
	My wife is part of my life.
	She is my life.
	Yeah, and part of how I feel.
	So I'll shut up in a second, then I'll let you give all, right?
	But it seems to me that...
	may have the perspective of like well we're here to see you but we'll put up with the kid for a bit you know we're here to watch a movie but we'll put up with the kid for a bit and to me that's not realistic and i don't think that's fair for for anyone involved and uh i think it's it's cheating your friends i think out of the kind of warmth and fun that they could have you know i mean if he's if he's almost seven everyone can sit down and play cards for an hour Kids love cards.
	I know I did.
	My daughter is just mad for them.
	And you can do that, and then you can have a drawing contest, and then you can have a dancing contest, and then you can whatever, right?
	I mean, or not contest, whatever.
	It's going to be fun.
	But I think your friends need to understand that if your kid is going to bed at midnight, he's part of the evening, and we have to find ways that we can all have fun with that.
	But we can't have the fuse where, okay, I'm going to come spend time, okay, a kid's here, okay, well, you know, chat a little bit with your kid, maybe play a little bit with your kid, but now it's adult time.
	It's like, well, no, if the kid's up, and particularly if there's no other kids to play with, he's got to be included.
	So you think it's just more like adjusting plans so that he's more included in them?
	I guess the thing that I butt up against there is Part of our social dynamic is, you know, we're all big nerds.
	When we sit down and watch a movie, we watch the movie seriously.
	We're quiet, and we watch the movie through, and if we're going to discuss something about it, we pause.
	But you can't do that with a six-year-old.
	Right.
	Yeah, like, if it's just us and him...
	You've got to just say goodbye to that.
	I mean, if you're going to keep your six-year-old up till midnight, you can't be watching a movie and have him go to the next room.
	Like, I'm just telling you what I think.
	I mean, I don't give you any orders, right?
	Like, we are night owls.
	I'm pretty sure he's a night owl.
	Not that we keep him up, just because it's, like, convenient for us, but...
	Okay.
	I'm not saying put him to bed early.
	I'm just saying that you're not going to get the sole adult time when your kid is up.
	Okay.
	Yeah, I kind of feel like it's a worse violation for him to be forced to go to bed early so that we can have time, you know, quiet time.
	Now see, again, you're using this term like forced, right?
	You try to win the arguments just by giving the language, right?
	By loading the language.
	No, it's not fair.
	Come on.
	I mean, the debate about when a kid goes to bed, if you bring force into it, the debate's over, right?
	Yes, force your child.
	Strap him to the bed.
	I mean, come on.
	I mean, the debate about when a kid should go to bed, do you guys want adult time?
	It's reasonable to put a kid to bed before the adults go to bed.
	I mean, they need more sleep than adults do, and adults need adult time.
	But the moment you start, you force him to.
	I mean, come on, that's not really a very fair way to...
	I like when I said, well, what about the research?
	It's like, well, yes, but those kids are all traumatized and there's no truth.
	And like, okay, you know, it's like you're kind of resistant to feedback and you kind of use this language that's really stacking the deck.
	I guess I put it that way because I don't see like, he doesn't, I can't just take him into the room and be like, okay, Sterling, it's bedtime.
	Lay down and go to sleep now.
	Well, I don't want to.
	I want to stay up and, you know, play games or watch a movie.
	Well, that's all fine with me.
	But if the alternative was between, like, either put him to bed and watch a movie or don't watch the movie, then what it comes out to is if he doesn't want to go to bed, I don't want to be like, well, you're going to go to bed whether you like it or not.
	I mean, obviously, to me, that seems wrong.
	Well, yeah, it is wrong, but why are these the only two options?
	Maybe they're not, but I don't know what the third route would be.
	Okay, is he getting enough sleep?
	Yeah, he gets enough sleep.
	How much sleep is he getting?
	He sleeps a good 10-11 hours a night.
	Oh, so you get your mornings together, right?
	Yeah.
	Assuming you guys aren't sleeping 10 or 11 hours, right?
	No.
	Okay, so your adult time is in the morning, right?
	I'm sorry, what?
	Your adult time is in the morning, is that right?
	No, she sleeps later than I do.
	My morning is getting up and getting coffee and getting my work done before everybody else wakes up, generally.
	Well, Michelle, when do you go to bed, Michael?
	Uh...
	Oh, boy, you don't want to say this, do you?
	That was a very, very deep...
	I'm trying to get on that.
	Well, like, kind of in background here, like...
	My husband and I were currently separated, living in separate households.
	We're trying to work it out.
	What?
	The guy we're just talking to?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I mean...
	Well, we're trying to work it out.
	Like, we both...
	I'm glad we got that.
	I'm glad we got that mentioned, because...
	All right.
	Yeah, well, I mean, I don't know.
	Like, I guess you don't read the correspondence with Michael or anything, but, like, I mean, talk to him a lot about this.
	I'm sorry.
	I thought you knew about the background info she gave in her letters.
	So, yeah...
	No, we live in the same apartment complex, and, you know, we go back and forth, but, yeah, we live in separate places.
	Yeah, so it's like, I like to be up till 6 a.m.
	and sleep till 2 p.m.
	I'm trying to get on a day schedule so I can get employment, have more time with the kid during the day, have more time with my husband, and repairing this relationship.
	Okay, so you go to bed at 6 in the morning, you sleep till 2?
	No, well, like, today I got up at, like, 9 a.m., so, like, I'm trying to get on a day schedule for the rest of the world.
	Yeah, that's...
	Part of, you know, it's one of the issues that we had that caused us to separate in the first place is that she was on a completely opposite schedule from me and didn't really seem to care about whether that, you know, negatively impacted our relationship, so.
	People with traumatic histories end up with crazy sleep schedules, in my opinion, or in my experience.
	You think it's trauma, though?
	Because, you know, again, I've I've read a lot about that because that's another thing that I'm interested in.
	I know that there's genetic disorders that cause it, and there's other diet and health-related things that cause people to generally tend toward being awake at night and sleeping late in the morning.
	So I don't know that that's necessarily related to trauma.
	I mean, maybe in Michelle's case, but I don't know.
	I guess that's kind of a sidetrack.
	No, it's just, I mean, all forms of predictable regulation don't happen in chaotic households.
	Yeah, but I sleep pretty predictably.
	I just tend to prefer to be up late at night like she does, and that's part of, like, why I never really wanted to push her to be on a day schedule, because if it were up to me, I would, you know, work for somebody in Australia and stay up all night, too, but that's just not the way it is right now, so...
	Right.
	Right.
	Yeah, and I think that a lot of times people have a tougher time going to bed if their day hasn't been enriching and satisfying.
	Sure.
	Right?
	It's like, soon the day will get better, maybe at 3am, maybe at 4am, or whatnot, that is terrible.
	But I think when you've had a sort of rich and satisfying day, then you generally hit, you know, you go to bed and your head hits the pillow.
	I think that there is a...
	A kind of ennui or dissatisfaction.
	And it's usually mild.
	It's not, to me, anything like depression or anything.
	It's just kind of...
	Nothing really to get up for that's exciting.
	Staying up late doesn't feel like...
	Get up at 6 o'clock in the morning, you've got a long day.
	You stay up at night, it's like in slices.
	Do you know what I mean?
	When life doesn't have much shape, when there's not a particular direction, when there's some dissatisfaction, I think that that generally tends to have people stay up.
	Yeah, I definitely say I'm sure I do have problems.
	I need to see a therapist.
	I know that.
	I have this ace of 10, these issues.
	I have reoccurring problems.
	I know that.
	I need to retrain Thoughts in my mind.
	And then like, yeah, for my days, like, yeah, right now I'm looking for employment.
	And of course, the employment I'm going to find is not going to be satisfying because I'm unskilled.
	I understand that.
	And I think that's definitely some of my problem is like, I don't really feel like I have a reason to get up except for like, well, if the kid's up, I need to go see him, you know, beyond like something for me.
	Right.
	Something more interesting to do in the morning, you'd be more motivated to get up.
	Yeah, like, maybe, like, I like to write, and I've been trying to exercise that.
	I have a horrible, like, no discipline.
	And that's, like, a huge problem in my life, and it pervades everything, not having the discipline.
	Like, you know, these issues we're talking about with, like, my sleep schedule and causing part of the rift between me and my husband, we talked about it several times while we were together, and I just...
	I'll get it and I don't take it to heart or I don't care in the moment or whatever happens.
	I make excuses for myself a lot and it's just like, yeah, here I am.
	You mentioned writing.
	Let's say you got to write more.
	What would that do for you?
	Well, I know that when I was like working on it and like I go currently because I'm not disciplined I know you if you want to be a writer you got to treat it like a job you get your ass up at 8 in the morning and you write and you treat it like a job and currently I treat it like a hobby and but when I I go through moment like I go through times of inspiration and then times of like I don't want to do anything anywhere.
	But sorry, do you get paid for writing?
	No, I just do it as a hobby.
	Yeah, right now it's a hobby I want to make it a career one day like I want to I want to kick ass.
	I want to do fiction.
	I want to talk about children, peaceful parenting.
	Those are the kind of stories I want to write.
	A lot of the...
	Sorry to be flattered here, but you're a bit of a muse in a way because I listen to a lot of your podcasts and you'll have these beautiful sentences.
	And it's like, oh my god, that one sentence, I see a whole story behind it and I want to go write it.
	Right.
	But what about taking writing courses?
	Right now, looking for employment, and a therapist would probably be number one priority for the expense beyond kids and household, but I have an online community that I practice, but it's blind leading the blind.
	Some people have their master degrees in English and so on and so forth, but it's more of a community, not lessons.
	Right, right, okay.
	So...
	What precipitated the separation?
	I would say a lot of it is my fault.
	Of course, I can't say 100%.
	No, I didn't ask whose fault it was.
	I just asked what.
	I have a very hard time taking responsibility for myself, admitting my faults, and doing something about it.
	You sound like you're reading off something that the chairman of the Communist Party gave to you for re-education.
	Oh, you're so terrible.
	I'm a selfish bourgeois pig who does not understand the working class traumas and...
	I am trying to be honest, not trying to manipulate you into being like, oh, poor her.
	No.
	Seriously, repeating history, don't want to take responsibility for myself.
	I feel like a lot of the relationship between my husband and I, I forced him to be my father.
	I didn't want to go get a job.
	I didn't want to do the dishes.
	You came home from a 15-hour day once and your girlfriend was like, hey, honey, I left the dishes for you.
	And you're like, gee, thanks, bitch.
	And I never said to my husband, oh, hey, I left you the dishes.
	But I essentially did.
	I didn't do the dishes.
	I didn't clean.
	He'd come home from a 12-hour day of work and he'd have to clean dishes and make himself food.
	I wasn't holding up my end of the bargain or the contract in this marriage.
	And what were you doing instead?
	I was being selfish.
	I did what I wanted because it felt good because I wanted to do what I wanted.
	Like what?
	I wanted to stay up all night.
	I smoke a lot of pot.
	I smoke a lot of pot and that costs money.
	That's time I'm not spending with him where I'm being intelligent and fully in my brain.
	I wanted to just sit around and zone out, watch TV, watch movies, do anything to avoid reality really.
	These are things that I saw and pointed out to her, but she'd get real defensive.
	I guess eventually it came to the point where I kind of felt like I had a roommate that wasn't paying rent, but also wasn't really contributing in the other way.
	I never wanted her to stay home and be a stay-at-home mom, necessarily.
	I said, you know, if you want to have a career...
	When we first started dating, she wanted to be a nurse or a veterinarian, so...
	I've always been really supportive of her going out and getting a job and getting a career and doing something that feels good to her and is interesting and intellectually engaging, but she has a real problem following through.
	So she said, you know, I want to stay at home and take care of the house.
	And I said, well, if that's really what you want to do, that's fine, but I need you to actually do it.
	And it was...
	Just, you know, years and years, especially once we had a kid, it became more of an issue because she was supposed to be the mom and she was supposed to be taking care of him when I was working and taking care of the house so that we would all get fed and have a clean space and things like that.
	She'd say, yeah, I'm going to do this.
	Yeah, I'll get it done.
	And then I get home and like, oh, I didn't get around to it.
	So I'd be like, well, you know, If you don't want to be here at home doing this stuff because it's boring and you don't feel like doing it, then I need you to go out and do something else and we'll split the chores.
	That's fine with me, but it just evolved into more and more arguments because she started putting me in the role of her father, using her basically as a house slave, which is not at all what I wanted or not at all how I thought of it.
	Sorry, how long have you guys, were you together?
	We've been together for like 15 years.
	Since we were...
	16, 17, yeah.
	Ah, okay.
	And when did you first find out about Michelle's history?
	I knew the basics of it before we started dating.
	I didn't know a lot of the extent of what she'd been through until we were together probably for a year or so.
	I'd say I disclosed a lot within the first year.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	Right.
	And the, I guess what you'd call it, aimlessness or avoidance of life or living in the moment or whatever you'd want to call it.
	When was that evident to you?
	That was always kind of a part of her, but I guess I also saw the other part of her that was driven and intelligent and motivated and that was, I kind of wanted to, and I guess I kind of did over the course of time, but I want her to heal the trauma and be that person that she could be.
	Wait, so are you saying that when she was younger, she was more driven and energetic?
	She was for a time, I guess, or maybe it was a phase.
	I mean, you know, I'd only met her.
	What does that mean, a time?
	Ten minutes?
	Ten years?
	What does that mean?
	During the time that she was in school, she seemed to have more focus and more motivation, but after she was at high school...
	She just kind of fell into doing whatever she wanted to do, which generally...
	So 11 years, so 12 years, right?
	11 or 12 years, what?
	I'm sorry.
	I think I lost you.
	So 12 years that she's had this inertia, is that right?
	Sorry, Michelle, to talk about you like you're not here.
	No, go.
	So you get that you're part of that inertia, right?
	I do...
	Because you're kind of giving me this story like, well, I've been really supportive.
	You're giving yourself the white knightie.
	I've been really supportive.
	I give her these reasonable choices, but I get frustrated because she doesn't follow through.
	But for 12 years, you've been part of this woman's life.
	She's gotten to 30, and the issues have not been addressed, which means you're part of them.
	Because you're kind of doing the step back thing where you're saying, well, she's got these issues and I've done everything right, but it just hasn't worked out, which is kind of throwing her under the bus and removing yourself as an influence in the relationship.
	I didn't mean to put it that way.
	No, I don't think that way at all.
	I just, I guess I tried, but I didn't do it right.
	And that was a lot of the fault that I admitted in this relationship is like, well, whatever I was doing, obviously it wasn't working.
	I wasn't supporting you right.
	I wasn't helping you in the right way to move in that direction.
	That's what I wanted and what I thought I was doing, but obviously, you know, 12 years ago.
	Okay, but I'm sorry, again, you're kind of fogging me now here, right?
	Because we're trying to get to some harsh clarity here, right?
	In particular because of your son and because of your relationship.
	I mean, if you guys could be together, that would be so much better for your son, right?
	Definitely.
	We both agree on that one.
	Okay, so you knew about the trauma and you've had 12 years of inertia, right?
	Now, in the same way, like you, and look, we're all in the same boat, so I hope I'm not trying to finger wag from on high, guys, I'm really not, but we're all in the same boat, which is empiricism, right?
	Empiricism is the great challenge.
	Let me tell you something.
	I dropped a tablet the other day, and I've dropped it before, and I had to get the screen fixed.
	And when I got the screen fixed, I was like, oh man, the case is terrible.
	I need to get a better case.
	Did I get a better case?
	No.
	What I did was I dropped it again.
	Right?
	So obviously I need to get a better case, right?
	I think you guys have problems.
	Right?
	No, but this is just being proactive, right?
	It's just knowing things.
	Like, these days, if I know I need to go somewhere and in the car, like, I need to have stuff, like, I literally will do it the night before.
	And it's annoying, right?
	Because, you know, you've always said, I'm late and I can't find my wallet and I've got to drive somewhere, right?
	Right?
	Right?
	Right, and so I'm, like now, like before, I'd be like, oh, you know, I gotta do this thing.
	I'll remember.
	Right?
	And, you know, I guess most times I would, but sometimes I wouldn't.
	Now I'm like, well, I gotta do this thing, so I gotta go do it now.
	Get it done.
	Get it done.
	Right?
	So because you have this like vaguely – and this is – when you listen to this conversation again, you'll see how this runs through the whole conversation, which is we have a fixed way of solving a problem which goes on and on and on and on and on and on.
	And the problem doesn't get fixed and we don't change our behavior.
	And we all have this.
	We all have this.
	We all have this.
	But you cannot possibly say, well, you know, 12 years into it I realized she had inertia.
	Right?
	Or I kept trying these things.
	I thought I was trying the right thing, but I wasn't trying the right thing.
	And it's the same thing with, well, you know, we feel that our son should be respectful of property even though we as kids had all these property issues and even though our friends seem to have this countdown of lack of interest in our kid and even though our kid stays up to midnight and, right, he should, well, did you look it up?
	Well, no, because other people's kids are screwed up, you know, like, there's just this way of doing things that is non-empirical, right?
	So, like, if I'm trying to Turn a screw, and I'm screwing the wrong way for 12 years.
	I mean, can I really say, well, you know, I really thought I was doing the right thing for 12.
	Like, you know what I mean?
	And this is a simplistic way of, and I'm not trying to be provocative, but, you know, whatever we keep doing is working for us.
	I think that, you know, part of it is that I turned the screw a lot of different ways over those 12 years.
	I tried a lot of things.
	No, you didn't.
	No, no, listen.
	Okay, did you go to therapy and try and figure out why you were with a woman who had inertia?
	Because you chose her.
	Did I personally?
	Yeah, did you?
	Well, no.
	Your hand clapping.
	Yes, you personally.
	What, do you think I'm going to send your genius to therapy?
	Did I go to therapy or did we go to therapy?
	No.
	No, you.
	Did you?
	Because did you go to therapy and say, why am I drawn to a woman who has this level of trauma and inertia?
	And please, I'm not trying to say you're damaged goods or anything, but this is going on for 12 years at least, right?
	This inertia.
	So, when you say, well, you tried a lot of different things, were they really that different?
	Did you look up and say, I have a partner who has inertia, I need to look up codependency, I need to look up enabling, I need to figure out where in my history, I'm comfortable with this, I need to see, I mean, listen, was there anyone, I'm going to guess a mom, but was there anyone in your life who had inertia when you were growing up?
	Not like Michelle, actually.
	I think that we both tried to date people who were unlike our parents because of our own experiences.
	But, you know, I guess when we were younger, my attitude was just enable and hope that she grows out of it.
	And obviously...
	Hang on.
	Because inertia is a big problem.
	Right, Michelle?
	I mean, I'm not farting up the wrong tree here, right?
	Inertia is a big problem.
	Because day to day, it's fine.
	I was...
	I was...
	I go over sometimes song lyrics with my daughter, and I'm sorry to interrupt, but let me just...
	It's a very short song lyric, I'm sure.
	Hey, man, if you smoke joints, you will know this song lyric.
	But this, to me, is one of the best lyrics about inertia.
	And it goes like this.
	Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day.
	You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.
	Kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown.
	Waiting for someone or something to show you the way.
	Tired of lying in the sunshine, staying home to watch the rain.
	You are young and life is long.
	There is time to kill today.
	And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.
	No one told you when to run.
	You missed the starting gun.
	So you run and you run to catch up with the sun.
	But it's sinking.
	Racing around to come up behind you again.
	Thank you.
	The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older, shorter of breath, and one day closer to death.
	Every year is getting shorter.
	Never seem to find the time.
	Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines.
	Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.
	The time is gone.
	The song is over.
	Thought I had something more to say.
	It's a big problem, inertia, right?
	Because day to day, the days just pop like little bubbles, but then there's this terror at the root of it, which is this larger perspective of time sticking away.
	Life is...
	I'm dribbling away, and I'm not getting where I need to get to, and my life has no shape, and it becomes more and more claustrophobic, because as you avoid life, you have to avoid the consequences of avoiding life.
	And I say this with all sympathy for both of your histories, but this is not a, this is something, this is why I say to people, go to therapy, because these are big, deep-seated issues, and the longer they last, the harder they are to dislodge, and you can't fix it.
	Right?
	I don't seem to be able to know.
	If your wife says, wow, my appendix is hurting, you're like, I'm getting a spoon.
	Because you don't know how to fix, you can't fix appendicitis, right?
	You assume you're not a doctor, or if you are, don't use a spoon, right?
	So you can't fix it.
	Right, and I guess what I did was try to get her to do what I did to get out of that rut, because, you know, I guess it was 10 years ago now, really, but I was in kind of that place and I was saying it's kind of funny that you brought up those lyrics because those played a lot in my mind when I was younger and I kind of felt like I was going nowhere and I guess eventually I just sort of found the motivation in myself and for a long time I expected her to do the same thing and she didn't and you know I
	became frustrated with her over that and that was a lot of my end of the problems was not Figuring out what exactly it was that she needed instead of trying to get her to do for me.
	You still don't get it, man.
	I'm so sorry to interrupt you.
	And I mean this with all affection.
	I really do.
	You had a child with Michelle six years into her well-known inertia.
	Right?
	I'm not saying you shouldn't have had a kid.
	I mean, you have a kid, right?
	But this idea that you were doing your best or trying to help...
	You'd been together eight years or so, or nine years, and at least six years of well-known inertia.
	Six years!
	I mean, you can run over someone with a car and get out of jail in less time than that.
	Six years of inertia.
	And you have a kid.
	So the idea that you were doing what you can...
	Like, if somebody has inertia...
	I mean, tell me this, Michelle.
	If you have inertia, does a kid help a lot?
	Hey, you still there?
	Yeah.
	Hey, sorry about...
	We lost connection over here.
	I was just asking Michelle.
	Michelle, if you have inertia...
	Yeah.
	Does a kid help?
	Does a kid get your life organized?
	Does a kid get your ambitions clarified?
	Does a kid get you moving?
	No.
	No!
	No sorry, Bobby!
	Right?
	No.
	I mean, you can fritter time with a kid like nobody's business, right?
	Yeah.
	Seriously, I mean, a kid is like this acid that dissolves time pieces, you know?
	Like, God, it's 2019!
	What the hell happened?
	Right?
	So having a kid...
	With somebody who has inertia, it's not exactly strapping a jetpack to their moribund ambitions, right?
	Right.
	Well, we didn't set out to have a kid, so...
	Oh, please.
	Please don't.
	Oh, my goodness.
	Oops.
	Come on.
	Don't say that.
	Don't.
	No.
	Come on.
	Come on.
	There's a story there, but it's kind of a long one if you're...
	I'm interested we can go into it.
	But I knew, and she knew too, I mean, we both knew that we had significant problems in our background that would probably lead to us being bad parents, and so...
	I don't need to hear the story.
	Well, what happened was Michelle was having some medical issues, and we went to see a doctor, and unfortunately at the time we didn't realize that this guy wasn't very good, but he told us that she had ovarian cancer or else ovarian cysts so she had to get off her birth control and my understanding which was wrong apparently was that pregnancy was the last of our problems so we weren't using any protection.
	What do you mean pregnancy was she couldn't get pregnant?
	That's what I thought I was wrong.
	What do you mean that's what?
	I don't understand.
	This is so foggy.
	What do you mean that's what you thought?
	Maybe I can explain a little bit better.
	It's come to you in a dream?
	Yeah.
	When this was happening, I stopped having a period.
	I just didn't have it for months and months and months.
	I kept taking pregnancy tests, kept getting negative.
	I went and saw my doctor.
	Wait, wait, wait.
	Sorry.
	You went off the pill, right?
	No, I quit having a period.
	She went off the pill on the doctor's recommendation because he said that she had serious coronal problems and it was probably ovarian cancer.
	So she was off the pill and we were using protection at the time she got pregnant because the doctor was wrong.
	I was wrong about that.
	No, no, the doctor said go off the pill.
	Did he ever say it's impossible for you to get pregnant?
	No.
	And if it had been ovarian cancer, you sure as hell don't want to have cancer and a pregnancy at the same time, right?
	Yeah.
	Because I think that limits your treatment options to the point where you just die, right?
	Right.
	Okay.
	It turned out to be hormonal.
	Oh my god, wait, wait.
	Okay, first of all, I assume it was just cysts, right?
	No, it ended up being like an imbalance in the hormones.
	It wasn't even cysts.
	It was just like...
	It was nothing.
	Yeah, my hormones were out of whack.
	My testosterone was way up.
	Just, yeah.
	It ended up being all right.
	We've dealt with it and everything.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	So, you were never told that you couldn't get pregnant.
	You were told that there might be a risk of cancer or cysts.
	Yeah.
	You went off birth control and you didn't use condoms.
	Well, and to be fair with this, I was like, no, I don't think we should do this.
	And, you know, well, two takes two to tango.
	So, we were both wrong, yes.
	I don't think we should do this.
	I would do it all.
	What are you, clutching your pearls and fainting?
	Well, you just go ahead, Mr.
	Pirate.
	You do what you need to do.
	I'll just be lying here reading.
	It was wrong.
	We should have taken better precautions.
	We should have used triple backup, whatever.
	Wait, wait.
	What backup did you use?
	No, we should have, I said.
	Oh, any backup.
	Yeah, anything.
	Triple things.
	Lots of stuff.
	Okay.
	Should have.
	It was a mistake.
	It's one that I regret in some ways, but not in others.
	I mean, I love my son, and I'm really happy to have him in our life, but I also recognize that it wasn't the right thing for us at the time, really, even right now.
	So we're just trying to...
	Plus, I mean, your balls are whispering, eggs.
	Eggs.
	Eggs, eggs, eggs, eggs.
	No, this is...
	Look, seriously, this is what our junk is doing.
	This is what...
	It's like...
	Yeah, okay, fine.
	She's not going to get pregnant.
	Come on, man.
	Put him in there.
	Turkey based up that yin-yang baby.
	Come on, she's going to be fine.
	Because, you know, life finds a way, right?
	It's like Jurassic Park.
	They're all females.
	They'll reproduce like frogs.
	You know, I mean, life finds a way.
	And, you know, the consummation devoutly to be wished is, you know, one sperm and that giant Death Star egg that makes life worthwhile.
	So...
	So there is inertia, obviously, but you guys are not seeing as much, because you're in it, right?
	You don't see as much.
	Mike, did you have something you wanted to add?
	There's a lot of responsibility avoidance throughout this entire conversation.
	Oh, no.
	Right.
	And I say this with sympathy, and it makes sense, because what was responsibility when you were kids was punishment, right?
	Yes.
	Responsibility equals punishment.
	Rules equals punishment.
	Structure equals punishment.
	Authority equals punishment.
	If I was raised by Hitler, I'd be like, ambition sucks.
	Ambition makes you invade the world.
	The stuff that you were avoiding as kids Or the stuff that was used to punish you as kids seems to be kind of like what you're avoiding now.
	And when you have abusive parents, there is this constant demand for self-erasure.
	I just did this interview with this woman who did a study on Fifty Shades of Grey.
	And college students.
	You can watch the interview and so on.
	But one thing she pointed out was that this is erasure of people.
	This is sort of before we did the actual interview.
	That when you're in an abusive relationship, you really can't exist.
	Because you can't be abused by someone who has empathy.
	And to be abused as a kid...
	To me, at least, by definition, means that you're around someone who didn't have empathy.
	Now, if you're around someone who doesn't have empathy, you don't exist for that person.
	You can't exist for that person, because if you do, they can't abuse you, right?
	And so there is a self-erasure that occurs when you grow up in an abusive household.
	Now, the challenge when you become an adult...
	How do you un-ghost?
	How do you become real?
	How do you become alive to your own life?
	How do you become corporeal?
	How do you summon yourself from the dispossessed, floating ash snowflakes of history and put yourself back as a real-life person?
	Because to be a real-life person as a child, when you have abusive parents or abusive caregivers, is to provoke attack.
	Existence is attack.
	Identity is attack.
	Responsibility is attack.
	Planning is to be attacked.
	And planning always brings disappointment because you plan for something and then chaos happens.
	Your plans dissolve and therefore planning is self-punishment.
	Planning is like masochistic.
	Yeah, I mean, this call was feeling masochistic to me, and I knew, like, nothing bad was...
	Sorry, what was?
	Planning this call was masochistic to me.
	Like, the whole time, I was like, oh my god, what am I doing?
	What am I getting myself into?
	Okay, I'm planning this now, I'm planning this now, oh god, what's gonna go wrong?
	Am I gonna be met with disapproval?
	You know, just...
	And then I was late!
	Right, right.
	Well, I'm glad you were okay, you know.
	No, listen, so planning, thinking that you have traction in the world.
	You know, when I was younger, I used to have these dreams that, you know, that giant steps, ah, what you take walking on the moon, that I was trying to flee or get somewhere, trying to flee from something or get somewhere, but every time I would touch the ground, I would float up, and then I would be Powerless, because I would be floating.
	You know, I could thrash my arms, but I couldn't get anywhere until I bounced back down.
	And then I'd try and jump somewhere, but it was hard, because the angle and all that.
	I have these dreams.
	And I sort of finally got what it was about, which was that I couldn't plan and execute and achieve when I was a kid, because everything was just mad and chaotic and I hear you.
	And all that.
	And whenever you had a plan, if you'd say, I really want to do X, well, if you've got mean parents, what do they do?
	They say, ah, great.
	That gives us some leverage.
	Now we know what to take away, right?
	Yes.
	That's exactly what they would do.
	Now they've got something to take away from you.
	Right.
	Right.
	And this is how horrifying things are in terms of our lost human potential when we become adults.
	Like I was reading the other day about Star Trek.
	Season 3.
	Apparently, I've not watched all the Star Trek originals.
	I've watched some of the original, a little bit of the laters and none of the furthers.
	But apparently season 3, I think it was only three seasons, apparently season 3 went off the rails, went bad or whatever, right?
	And I was reading about how Leonard Nimoy and Captain Kirk, God, what was his name?
	William Shanner.
	So Bill Shanner and Leonard Nimoy and James Doohan and a couple, he said they were all in there yelling and thumping the tables and fighting for their characters.
	Fighting to make sure that their characters got the best stories, the best, you know, and they fought for the quality of the show and this and that and the other, right?
	I remember reading that thinking like, holy crap.
	There are people who do that.
	You know who...
	I mean, I think if I got a job as an actor on a TV show, I'd be like, okay, great.
	That's wonderful.
	I think that's great.
	Give me the script.
	I'll do my very best.
	You know, I wouldn't have been...
	Certainly when I was younger, now I think I'd fight more, but I wouldn't have been like, I'm fighting for the quality of this show.
	I'm calling people up at 2 o'clock in the morning and I'm throwing scripts out the window and he's got to rewrite and, you know, because, oh, that's prima donna-ish or whatever.
	I mean, whatever, right?
	But...
	And those people fought and were willing to have those...
	Like, I just...
	When I was younger, I didn't really have much fight in me.
	I mean, I sort of...
	I had this sort of dogged slogging.
	I'm going to get through working up north.
	I'm going to get through undergraduate.
	I'm going to get through graduate school and so on.
	I had this plotting even when I was an entrepreneur.
	I'm going to get this code out.
	But the idea that I would sort of thump tables and make things happen and so on, right?
	Like, there's a story of...
	Steve Jobs that I mentioned on the show before where some guy he wanted to work on.
	he was working on the Apple II and he wanted him to work on the Mac.
	He goes over to the guy's office and says, listen, man, I really need you to come work on the Mac.
	And he's like, oh, yeah, okay.
	I can be over.
	I've got to finish this project.
	It's going to be like a week or whatever.
	So I'll come on by.
	I'd love to see what you guys are doing.
	Steve Jobs is like, no, man, I really need you to come work on the Mac now.
	The guy's like, well, now?
	I guess I can talk to my project manager.
	I can maybe pass this code off to someone else.
	Tomorrow?
	The guy's like, no, you don't understand.
	Steve Jobs says, I need you to come and work on the Mac now.
	And he reaches over to the guy's computer and he unplugs it.
	He picks up the computer and he walks out of the office.
	And the guy, what's he going to do?
	He's just staring at a screen.
	So he picks up his screen and his keyboard and his mouse and walks off with Steve Jobs to go and work on the Mac, right?
	And that is, I mean, it's amazing to me.
	And of course, one of the great things about Steve Jobs is that he wasn't spanked.
	I'm not saying he was the most healthy of guys and his relationship with his daughter and bloody blah.
	But anyway, It's one thing to name a computer after you release a daughter, but it's another thing to actually be...
	Anyway.
	But the reality is that that kind of will to just get things done, to make things happen, was for a lot of my life very foreign to me.
	Because you really...
	I mean, school doesn't teach it, and church doesn't teach it, and if you've got a chaotic family life, it doesn't teach it either.
	So, you guys are still hiding out from the abusers.
	Literally, almost.
	Right now, because we moved back to this state, it sounds really stupid saying this, but to help my family.
	And I wish I had watched some of the other podcasts you put out before making that decision.
	It was a disaster.
	To help them with health issues?
	Yeah, like my father.
	You don't have to get into details.
	He's having health issues and this and that.
	He wanted to get some affairs in order and is like, man, I could really use your help.
	And it's like, well, I want to go back to the West Coast anyway because I'm sick of the East Side.
	Here's a good opportunity.
	I can help my dad.
	Maybe we can get along now because I'm an adult.
	Maybe I can help him get his affairs and I can get my affairs in order and, you know, go our separate ways.
	And it's like, no, it was right back to being in my childhood, which was nuts.
	Oh yeah, the fact that you've grown up doesn't matter because the question is, has he changed?
	Yeah, no.
	He represented himself as having changed.
	Yes, he lied.
	He told me, because I have a little brother that lives with him, he told me, because I would have conversations, we call once a month or a couple weeks or whatever, and I'm against spanking dad and this and that, I don't use corporal punishment with my kid, and he'd be like, oh yeah, I quit spanking too, and I quit doing this, and I yell at him once in a while, but I tell him I'm sorry, and it's just like, how retarded I feel.
	Yeah, no, I mean, the physics of intransigent personalities doesn't change with age.
	Like, it's not like, well, I couldn't walk through walls when I was five, but now that I'm 30...
	I'm pretty sure if I take a good run at those walls, I'm sailing through.
	It's like, nope, physics doesn't change, right?
	Right, and I was thinking, well, he and I weren't very...
	I left home in my teenage years and didn't talk to him for a long time, and then moved to another state, and I figured, well, maybe he sees that we don't have such a great relationship.
	Maybe he's trying to do better with this one, and no.
	No, but you see, this is what I keep pounding on you guys about, which is the empiricism.
	Get the facts.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	What is the empiricism?
	Like, this may be stuff, and cross your fingers, and all that, right?
	No.
	This philosophy shows, you know, is really centered around empiricism.
	Right.
	Which is, well, what, you know, forget the maybe, or now that I'm an adult, and maybe things have changed, you say, well, what is the evidence?
	Right.
	Right, and I took him for his word instead of, like, what I should have done is said, put my little brother on the phone, let me ask him what's going on, and I didn't do that.
	No, no, no!
	You don't need that!
	Okay.
	Because you could coach him to lie too.
	Uh-huh.
	Human personality is incredibly inert.
	It only shifts under the greatest of pressures and the greatest of willpower.
	So if your father, who started out as an abuser, had become non-abusive...
	Hmm.
	The amount of prodigious energy, concentration, and resources that would have consumed would have mean even if he did it on the West Coast, you would have seen the light from the East Coast.
	Okay.
	Right?
	Like he would have...
	His personality would have been destabilized.
	The rest of the family would have revolted against him.
	He would have gone into therapy for years.
	He would have...
	Like all of these things would have happened.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	And he would have invited you to come to therapy with him once he had prepared a certain amount so that he could attempt the process of trying to heal.
	He doesn't just casually say, oh yeah, I've given up.
	Spanking.
	Well, to be fair, he didn't go to anger management and a lot of this was forced by the court system.
	Forced by the court system!
	Forced by the court system!
	You know you're talking to an anarchist, right?
	Right.
	And then along that line, when that happened was around the time he quit beating me and my brother, but it's because we were too old is what happened.
	We just happened to be too big for him to beat on anymore.
	And that's happened to be around the same time when he got arrested and was forced into anger management and stuff.
	So it's like, yeah, it's all...
	It's all BS. And you're right.
	I would have known from that side of the world because when I finally got it and quit, you know, quit and was, you know, I'm dedicated to being a peaceful parent, doing the best that I can.
	I preach it constantly.
	I talk about it constantly.
	I don't care if my family hates that.
	I don't like it.
	I say it's wrong.
	So it's like, you're right.
	I would have heard those conversations from him if there would have actually been a change.
	Oh, I mean, if he realized that he had done significant evil in his life, the repercussions of that across the entire gene pool would have been astonishing and so visible.
	Yeah, I got the bullshit non-apology before.
	You know, I told him, you know, my childhood has left me in shambles as a person.
	And I didn't recognize what a bullshit non-apology was yet.
	I hadn't seen your BNAP. I don't even know if you're online yet.
	And I got the, I'm so sorry I did that to you.
	I regret it.
	And then I got the, but I had it worse.
	You didn't go through what I went through.
	You know, you didn't have a broken bone, you know, whatever crap.
	And it's like, I got the bullshit non-apology.
	And at the time I thought it was an apology and now I know it's not.
	And even that conversation, that conversation about my childhood was destroyed by you.
	That conversation goes on at least for many months.
	Right.
	At least.
	But most people want to like, they're like pearl divers.
	One time, go in, grab the pearl, get out, never go back to the ocean, right?
	Right.
	And then if you bring it up again, it's like, hey, we already talked about this.
	What are you, like, weirdly obsessed with this now?
	It's like, well, it was only the first 18 years of my life.
	I don't think it's an obsession to want to talk about it for more than 10 minutes.
	Right.
	And, yeah, like, I don't feel like I've been heard.
	I don't feel like he really...
	You know, all the things that go along with that is just...
	You can't grow empathy later in life.
	That's my understanding of the science.
	Maybe it's changed.
	Maybe it's different.
	Part of it, I guess, in a way, it's not fair, but I quit hitting.
	I watched the bomb in the brain.
	It clicked.
	I went, this is wrong, and I stopped.
	I feel like Like, if I give up on trying to get him...
	You can't make anybody do anything.
	Michael gave me some great perspective about, like, you know, put your kid first in these thoughts.
	But it's like, I feel like I'm giving up on myself if I give up on my dad.
	Because it's like, well, I changed.
	Why can't he?
	I know that's not necessarily fair.
	Well, but remember, you changed at year three.
	Much earlier, yeah.
	Yeah, and you also were nowhere near as harsh as your dad.
	No.
	And you had a supportive spouse.
	Yes.
	Yeah, I think the big step with her was to get her to see that what she was doing was the same thing as what he did.
	It was a matter of degree, not of mind.
	Right.
	I was going, oh, it's not as bad as what I got.
	So you did a little wrong for a little time.
	Not a lot of wrong for a lot of years.
	Right.
	So basically you're like, well, I smoked 12 cigarettes and I quit.
	So my dad, who's been a chain smoker for 40 years, should find it as easy.
	And even if he did quit, that doesn't mean that he's not going to die of lung cancer if that, you know, was his, if that analogy were valid.
	Yeah, I'm sorry.
	It cut out a little bit, Arne, and it's a little flaky, but I'll listen to this again.
	All right.
	Well, listen, I'm sorry, and I mean, it's been a long, long chat, but I know we've gone over a wide range of topics.
	We have.
	And before you cut me off, just a follow-up with the friend of the child.
	Okay, so I am willing to be a wall to my kid.
	Like, I will let them crash their ways upon my wall, you know, like I will protect him.
	What do I need to do with this situation with my friends?
	Do I need to say, sorry, friends, my child is not the problem.
	He's a child.
	Adjust your attitude or just don't come over so often.
	I would not be as confrontational as that.
	Okay.
	Because we all know where that's going to go, right?
	So what I would suggest is to try and steer the ship instead of trying to command the ship.
	Okay.
	So confrontation is the command of the ship, and it usually doesn't work.
	But if you steer the ship, then you've got a much better chance of getting someplace newer or better.
	So figure out what you and your friends and your son can do that's going to be enjoyable.
	And look, stuff can be a huge amount of fun.
	I mean, things like charades, even hangman can be quite a lot of fun.
	Maybe they can show your friends some video games and have them join it.
	Cards, of course, is great fun.
	I'm a big fan of Scrabble.
	Jenga.
	Jenga blocks can be a lot of fun.
	And so find some way to get stuff going.
	And look, you'll have a better time.
	There's nothing wrong with marching movies with friends.
	But I mean, I'm not saying that's all you do or anything.
	But it's not quite the same as interacting.
	I mean, you have stuff to talk about afterwards.
	But there's still like two hours that you haven't.
	Had much conversation, as you say.
	You can't even blink when you watch movies with your friends or something like that.
	So, I would say, and it doesn't have to be, you know, for four hours straight.
	But if they only give him like 10 or 15 minutes attention, maybe you can stretch that to 30 or 40 minutes with some games that are going to be fun for everyone.
	Okay.
	Yeah, and we all love games of all kinds.
	Yeah, Pictionary, it can be a lot of fun and pretty hysterical.
	And it'll be something new and fun that you can do with your friends.
	It's something that your son can really get into.
	I mean, kids, what do they want?
	They want to feel like they're part of the adult world.
	I mean, that's what they're aiming at.
	That's what they want.
	And...
	If there's ways that you can get your friends and your son to do fun stuff together, and then just keep stretching that out as much as you can.
	I've generally found that that's, to me, steering the ship rather than yelling at the ship saying, you've got to change, right?
	Just go steer it.
	It's usually just better, right?
	And certainly will get you more of what you want, I think.
	So, in this, am I also trying to, like, attempt them to build a rapport together?
	Because, like, I mean, to me, it does kind of feel like a rejection of me if they reject my son.
	Not that they, like, go away, kid.
	But it does feel like...
	No, it is a rejection of you.
	It is a rejection of you because your son is your life.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	So, I'm okay feeling that way.
	No, no.
	It's not like, oh, my son and I are one person.
	It's like, your son is your life.
	Mm-hmm.
	No one can dislike my daughter and be my friend.
	I'm sorry.
	And I'm not saying they dislike him or anything.
	But no, you're right to take it personally.
	Because they don't have kids, maybe they just don't understand it.
	And they probably don't.
	It's one of these annoying things that's hard to get until you become a parent.
	No, you're right to take it personally.
	You don't want to have to choose, and so find a way to get win-win, right?
	Because win-lose is going to happen.
	Either your friends lose and your son gets everything he wants, or your friends get what they want and your son loses.
	But if you can negotiate a win-win where you can find stuff that's really fun for everyone, then so much the better.
	At some point, you want your friends to drop by and pick up your son and take him out for the day.
	Because they enjoy his company so much, right?
	That would be awesome.
	It would be awesome.
	But you want them to get to know each other.
	Because for a lot of people, kids are, you know, socially, oh, there are kids here.
	Okay, well, you know, I'll check out your Wanda Loom for 10 minutes, but then I've got to go and do something adult, right?
	And it's like, no, no, no, that's not how we do it.
	I mean, the kids are...
	They're part of the family.
	They're part of the social circle.
	And the challenge is to find stuff that everyone enjoys and that everyone gets to know each other more.
	And that, of course, that's what you want.
	Yes.
	And that way, you'll help white people breed.
	Do you find that with your daughter, does she...
	I mean, kids usually have kind of a short attention span.
	Does she tend to get bored quickly when you're playing games?
	And what do you do when that comes up?
	You mean games like Scrabble and stuff?
	Board games, video games, whatever you guys like doing together.
	Does she tend to tune out after a little while and want to do something else?
	Or is she more focused?
	Not if we're engaged.
	In other words, if all we're doing is staring at our cards and not chatting.
	But there's so much you can do to make the game engaging and fun for kids.
	So, and I'm sorry, I know you do a lot of this stuff already, but I'll just sort of mention it.
	So, you know, I was playing Go Fish with my daughter.
	Yesterday?
	I think it was yesterday.
	I was playing Go Fish with her, and she said, Daddy, do you have any aces?
	And I just threw them over my shoulder and said, Good heavens, no.
	And then I said, but I think I see some over here.
	And I went to dive to get them.
	And of course she comes screaming around the table and tries to scrabble to get the cards and stuff.
	So that caught her attention for a little while.
	The other is you just subtly try and hide them in your sleeve and say, good heavens.
	So there's ways that you can make it fun.
	You can play for quarters.
	That's a good point, too, because we played tabletop role-playing games along with board games and video games, and one of the things you learn when you're running those kinds of games is you've got to figure out what the other players want that engages them in the game, I guess.
	Oh, yeah, I mean, just get emotionally invested.
	Like, I mean, just, you know, she asks me for it.
	I know if I've got three threes and she asks me for a three, it's like I just burst into tears.
	You know, just...
	They're gone.
	And, you know, whatever, right?
	So, I mean, just make it so that the stakes are higher.
	Because kids are always interested in something where the stakes are higher.
	But if it's just like, oh yeah, good call, here's your threes, right?
	They're going to lose interest.
	Or, you know, best two out of three gets to choose what we do for the next hour.
	Just put some stakes in it, and they'll stay interested in that.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I mean, that's all great advice.
	It's interaction that we didn't have, so it's like, you know...
	Yeah, of course, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	No, I have some pretty good memories of playing cards with my family growing up and all that, and the games, obviously they're useful in terms of memory and probability and so on, and learning how to win and lose gracefully, but...
	It's enjoyable for kids when the stakes are high.
	But if there's some card game where they're playing for the life of a, you know, some sweaty million dollar stake or whatever, then we're interested, right?
	And nobody watches backyard football, but the Super Bowl is a different matter because the stakes are higher.
	And so whatever you can do to raise the stakes, you know, not to make everything hysterical, but whatever you can do to make this, you know, to make it important to want to win.
	Like when I win, I do a victory dance, which if God is kind, you will never see in your entire life.
	It can be fairly lengthy and requires a certain amount of warm-up.
	But my daughter knows that the victory dance is something that means she's lost.
	And so she doesn't want to see the victory dance.
	And that raises the stakes as well.
	So these are just sort of thoughts and ideas to keep kids engaged with that stuff.
	Sure.
	Yeah, that makes sense.
	And one more thing.
	Got a direction to point us about where to find information for developmental milestones and stuff.
	I don't because I just do a general Google and see.
	I don't have any sort of, ah, I trust these people like I haven't vetted anyone.
	But just go to a bunch of different sites and figure out where kids are.
	And bulletin boards can be helpful in terms of what people are complaining about or challenging or whatever.
	But in general, guys, I would just say trust your son.
	Okay.
	Just trust your son.
	Okay.
	He's developing fine.
	And if there is a place where he's stalled, that's fine too.
	It may not be stalled.
	As you pointed out, I think with my going, kids are different and apples to oranges sometimes and so on.
	But if he's not getting something, then trust that that's perfectly fine.
	That he's going to get it.
	We do that with teaching, I guess, at It always felt like the, you know, the social interaction stuff was, the stakes are higher because you don't, obviously you don't want to have a bad social environment at home, but that doesn't make sense.
	He's ahead in some things and learning and behind and other things and I don't really worry about it, but then it comes to the, you know, social interaction and suddenly it's like, you got to learn this right now.
	But no, I mean, I guess that's wrong.
	It is wrong, I think.
	And I don't mean wrong like evil or anything, but it's...
	It's the wrong way of thinking.
	You water the flower, you don't pull at it, right?
	Right, right.
	Grow, damn you!
	Hey, look, roots!
	Uh-oh.
	Right?
	I mean, that's not what you want.
	That's what happened to my hair.
	No, I'm just kidding.
	But, yeah, so I would say just trust that the best thing that you can do, and we all know this, and it's just, I have to remind myself of this every day, but the best thing you can do is provide a good-natured, positive, and consistent set of examples.
	For your son.
	And if you do that, that's his best shot at it.
	But the idea that you sort of get behind and push.
	And look, we all get frustrated.
	Of course, you know, like my daughter comes in, she drops her boots, and she goes racing off.
	And like every day it's like, hey, can you please put your boots, you know, on the rubber mat or whatever, right?
	And it's, you know, I think that's a fair thing.
	You know, she's got some chores now and all that.
	But just getting her to remember that stuff, it's going to take a while.
	And the other thing, too, is every time I can't find my wallet, I've just given her permission to forget to put her shoes away because I put my wallet in the same place every day.
	So who am I to nag and lecture at this kid who forgets things?
	I'm not too bad with my wallet, but once every two or three months, I'm like, oh, where is it?
	And so I think just...
	Keep providing those consistent examples and find creative ways to engage your friends and your son together.
	And I think that don't worry about the lessons that happen verbally because I think most of the lessons are embodied.
	It's like sexiness.
	You know, someone you don't find sexually attractive can nag you to find them sexy.
	Is it going to happen?
	No.
	No.
	Whereas if you look at someone across the room and you find them sexy, then they don't have to say anything, right?
	Because that's an embodied imprint, so to speak.
	And I think that the most important lessons are not, and I say this as a podcaster, which is annoying, but the most important lessons, which is why I'm constantly encouraging people to do stuff rather than listen.
	You know, listening to podcasts without doing stuff is like reading diet books without Changing your diet.
	You have more knowledge and less excuse.
	And so I think that the...
	Just keep working on the consistent embodiment of these things.
	Because in a weird way, you're kind of violating his space of not getting other people's space by demanding that he do it.
	And so if you pull back from that kind of stuff and just keep embodying the principles you want him to emulate, I think you'd be surprised at how quickly things can change.
	Okay.
	Alright, so that makes me feel a lot better, because it's like, I was so worried, like, oh, I screwed him up.
	My first three years, I really just messed him up.
	Look, I mean, as we, I hate to do this cliche of kids are resilient and all that kind of stuff, but...
	You know, your commitment to peaceful parenting and your commitment to not having toxic people in his life makes him, you know, in the top luckiest kids on the planet and throughout history.
	So you did what you did with the knowledge that you had.
	You learned something better.
	You're doing something better.
	And your kid is very lucky to have you.
	So don't worry about that.
	All right.
	Yeah.
	So, yeah.
	Thank you so much.
	Thank you for the talk.
	You're welcome, guys.
	Keep me posted, all right?
	Thank you.
	All right.
	Take care.
	Thanks.
	Bye.
	All right.
	Darren is up next.
	Darren wrote in and said, in one of your viewer question shows, you recommended that the writer think of the world as a whole when choosing his career, not just his own personal happiness.
	Doesn't this tangle with the objective belief that altruism is not a virtue?
	I don't think so.
	I don't think so, but I'm certainly happy to hear the case that it might.
	First of all, I wanted to say thank you for having me on.
	Thank you for your patience.
	Yeah, no problem.
	This is the equivalent of a 16-year-old girl talking to Justin Bieber.
	I'll spare you my squeal, but...
	I'm sorry, I wasn't sure who was Justin Bieber, but if that's me, fair enough.
	I guess I'll get some tats and tiny abs and throw some eggs.
	Yeah.
	So I sent this viewer question and it kind of bothered me.
	A viewer said he was interested in programming and acting and whatnot.
	And at the very end you said one of the things he should consider is what he could do that would benefit the world as a whole.
	And this kind of puzzled me because What I know about Ayn Rand.
	I was an objectivist before.
	I was an anarchist.
	And this puzzled me because they claim that altruism is not virtue.
	Sorry, you're cutting out just a little bit?
	I don't know if you said it was virtuous to think of the world when picking your career.
	Well, but don't you think that Ayn Rand wrote her novels?
	Hang on.
	Don't you think Ayn Rand wrote her novels, at least to some degree, thinking about the world as a whole?
	I think she found a personal pleasure and she found enjoyment in writing novels.
	I don't convince people of non-aggression or peaceful parenting for the reason I don't consider the world as a whole...
	As an end to that conversation, I think it really stimulates me, and to see people learn really inspires me.
	It's a nice byproduct of that conversation, that it helps the world, but that is not the primary.
	Yeah, okay, but aren't you strawmanning me a little bit?
	Because I don't think I said to the guy that this should be your primary.
	I said, but think of it as well, right?
	Right, but isn't to think of it...
	Is that a question of virtue?
	He should regard that as virtue?
	Because you called him selfish, if I remember.
	I could not find the specifics of your video.
	But you said, how do I put this, you selfish bastard, or something like that.
	And in Ayn Rand's eyes, wouldn't that be sort of a compliment?
	Help me understand.
	Okay, well let's just look at Ayn Rand herself, right?
	She struggled mightily and suffered quite a bit for her art.
	So she had a lot of unpleasant conflicts and ugly interactions with people for her art, right?
	Afterwards, she became enormously depressed after the publication of Atlas Shrugged, and there's some people who said that she remained depressed pretty much for the rest of her life.
	Right.
	You know, like, the sense of life, the joy.
	I remember when I first saw Ayn Rand being interviewed, it was really kind of a crushing disappointment.
	I mean, she looked haunted, and she looked...
	Suspicious and she looked hunched over and I did not get this joyful sense of life from her that she'd written about.
	Now, of course, she was older and so on, right?
	But nonetheless, it was not very pretty to see that.
	And it's not that I would want people to suffer and be unhappy, right?
	For the sake of taking a larger view of the world.
	It's not that at all.
	I don't remember the call.
	I certainly don't think I would seriously call someone a selfish bastard.
	That sounds like a joke.
	It sounds like something I was joking about.
	He definitely said it jokingly.
	Let me explain.
	It's a great question.
	I've had this before.
	Let me give the very quick explanation of it.
	When you're young...
	You don't think that much about the world.
	You think about your world, which is perfectly fine and perfectly appropriate.
	You know when people get older, what do they start thinking about?
	They start thinking about their legacy.
	Because when you're young, you want to carve out your place in the world, you want to achieve the things that are important to you, and you wish to find happiness, and you wish to find love, and you wish to find a career, and you wish to have some money, and all that kind of stuff.
	And that's great.
	There's perfectly nothing wrong with that.
	Perfectly appropriate for a younger person.
	When you get older, you start thinking about more than yourself.
	And this sounds like it's selfish versus not.
	It's not.
	It's just not at all.
	To me, it's like calling a baby selfish because they don't help around the house.
	It's like, no, because they're babies.
	It's appropriate to their time.
	And so, with this young man, you know, I certainly didn't say, well, the important thing is to go and become the medical director at a leper colony because it'll make the lepers happier.
	But what I did say was, if you're choosing a career, have a thought to the world as a whole.
	Not because that's hugely important or you should sacrifice the happiness of your youth for that, but when you get older, it will be more important to you How you've helped the world and less important, how you've helped yourself.
	I mean, this is why a lot of people who have money, when they get older, they quit working or they work less and they move into philanthropy and charity and all that kind of stuff.
	And it's not good or bad.
	It's just this is how life works.
	You get older and you start thinking more about it.
	Maybe it's because you have kids and you know your kids are going to grow up in the world.
	And Ayn Rand didn't have kids.
	And so, you know, the philosophy of selfishness, which again, The Virtue of Selfishness is a great book to read and so on, but you don't care as much about the world if you don't have kids, but my daughter is going to have to live in the world that I leave behind, or that I'm part of and can hopefully alter and nudge a tiny little bit to make it better.
	And so because my daughter has to grow up in a world and her kids are going to have to grow up in a world and, you know, all my listeners who, you know, are going to grow up in this world and they're going to have kids and grow up.
	So because of all of that, it becomes more than what would just make me happy today.
	It's more about what would make me happy in the long run.
	So the argument for smoking is selfishly it makes you happier to smoke every cigarette in the moment.
	But in the long run, It's not going to make you happy if you get sick.
	And even if you don't get sick, you know, you've still got smoky bacon-fraved lungs or whatever, right?
	So it's not like I'm saying do things that are altruistic that are going to make you unhappy.
	Because the definition of altruism that Ayn Rand railed against was to sacrifice a higher value for a lower or non-value.
	And that's not what I've ever counseled people to do.
	I'm just, you know, from my ripe old age of 48, I'm trying to remind people that there is a second half to life.
	So there's youth, there's middle age, and there's old age, right?
	And now I had kids kind of late, so for me it's kind of bifurcated down the middle.
	But when you do have kids, your life takes on a perspective to the point where the way the world is and the way the world is going really, really matters, right?
	You know, there's these theories that Keene said, well, in the long run, we're all dead.
	And he said that because he was gay and didn't have kids and wasn't going to have kids.
	But in the long run, we're not all dead if we have kids.
	In the long run, our bloodline, our genes...
	Pass on.
	And on and on and on.
	And so it matters where the world is going.
	And so when you're young, you want to get some money, you want to get some dates, you want to be popular.
	And there's nothing wrong with all of that.
	Again, it sounds like I'm not putting it down at all.
	But when you get older, it does matter how the world is and where the world is going.
	And what you can do to contribute to that is more important than when you're young.
	And it's not to say that they can't be young idealists.
	And of course, there are lots of aged cynics.
	It's a very broad brush that I'm painting with.
	But I'm not saying do something that makes you unhappy for the sake of the world at all.
	What I'm saying is that the world is going to become more important to you as you get older.
	And if you can recognize that potential when you're young, then some decisions you can make will allow you to better facilitate your desire to make the world a better place when you get older.
	Does that make any sense?
	That makes total sense to me.
	So you're saying...
	Not to make a decision to avoid selfishness in his career, but rather to pick something that will make him happier in the long run versus the short run.
	Something along those lines.
	There are times when my life would have been easier if I had stayed in the software world.
	And there are times when my life would have been harder if I had stayed in the software world.
	Now, I assume because you like the show, you're happy that I didn't Stay in the software world, but instead I'm doing what I'm doing now.
	Absolutely.
	And I appreciate that.
	And I would not be as happy or I would not feel as content, as satisfied if I had stayed in the software world.
	And it was a pretty clear decision for me.
	Which is, does the world need a philosopher or does the world need another software executive?
	Well, I think that the world needed a philosopher more than a software executive.
	The world needed a philosopher more than another novelist or a poet or an actor or all of the other things or academic.
	What are the things that I considered doing when I was younger?
	And that's simply a matter of scarcity.
	Right?
	I mean, competent philosophers who are able to talk to people in ways that help them change, I mean, just the previous call, competent philosophers who are able to talk to people in a way that helps motivate them to pursue virtue in practical terms and in actionable ways, we are not falling from the celestial intellectual heavens like rain upon the planet.
	The world is a desert and it rains, it seems like, once every 500 years.
	Right.
	And so, for me, it was kind of a supply and demand thing.
	Did I think, oh boy, it's always going to be great.
	I'm always going to be happier by doing this.
	Well, no, of course not, because being a philosopher can be a very difficult job at times.
	But I did want to think, what does the future want me to do?
	What does the world want me to do?
	If I lived 100 or 200 years from now, and I could come back and influence, what would I suggest?
	Now, this doesn't mean that I then, I hate doing what I'm doing, but I'm doing it for the...
	Like, that's not it.
	That's not it.
	But it does mean that the satisfaction that I want to have when I'm 60 and 70 and 80...
	Is involved in the decisions that I'm going to make now.
	Am I willing to sacrifice some current happiness for the sake of greater satisfaction down the road?
	Of course.
	We all are.
	It's why we go to the dentist.
	It's why we exercise when we don't feel like it.
	It's why we don't eat that second piece of cake.
	It's why we have kids.
	And so it's not about, well, now is crap, but 20 years from now is going to be great.
	It's not like that at all.
	But it does mean that I'm willing to make sacrifices in the here and now for the sake of a better world, for the sake of my daughter, for the sake of the listeners, for the sake of people who can change for the better through this show based on philosophy and their own integrity and compassion and commitment.
	But...
	If you recognize when you're young that your priorities are likely going to shift over time, that's important, and it's helpful in making some decisions that better prepare you for the second half of your life.
	That's really all I was trying to get at, and I really appreciate you asking the question.
	I hope the answer is at least somewhat satisfying, if not necessarily entirely conclusive, because it is an important question, and I obviously didn't have time or the inclination to go into it in that level of detail in that form.
	It was great.
	It was a question that was bugging me and that's why I chose it.
	I'll be donating very soon.
	I really appreciate that.
	Thank you so much.
	Have a good one.
	And thank you everyone who's called in.
	It's such a treat.
	It is such a treat.
	I look forward to it.
	Well, I guess twice every week it is such a treat to chat with you guys.
	And I hope you have a wonderful week.
	We will talk to you soon.
	That would be Saturday the 14th.
	Are we doing a show Valentine's Day?
	Is that right?
	I believe we are.
	All right.
	We will be doing it from our dungeon.
	From our dungeon, we will be doing a show called Fifty Shades of Gay, where I will be putting on all of my various fruity accents one after another.
	Actually, it's just me talking.
	The safe word is donate.
	Yeah, the safe word is donate.

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