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March 2, 2015 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:25:44

2922 PAINT IT BLACK - Saturday Call In Show - February 28th, 2015

Is there an objective standard for determining what is Art? The common definition is subjective, using this standard the work of a deranged person smearing feces has the same value as a masterpiece done by a methodically trained, accomplished and dedicated artist. How do I apologize to someone while at the same time conveying the responsibility of others without it coming across as a bullshit non-apology?

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	Alright, good evening everybody.
	Hope you're doing well.
	Stephen Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
	Time for your Saturday night show.
	Oh my god, it's the last day of the shortest and bitterest month.
	Not only in the world as a whole, but even more importantly in the financial ecosystem of the world's most listener-dependent philosophy show with me as the host.
	Look at that, narrowing down my categories until no one can argue with me about anything.
	So, I hope you're doing well.
	Please, please, please drop by.
	Free Domain Radio dot com slash donate.
	You know, there's a little something called Lent, which is where you're supposed to give up stuff.
	And it generally occurs sort of late in winter when you had no food anyway.
	Hey, cupboards bare, let's make a virtue out of not eating.
	Well, Mike, what are you giving up for Lent?
	Because January and February are like the donation desert.
	This has always been the case.
	I mean, we're hoping that people will break I don't know.
	It's a tough month.
	They do like to sleep in the crockpot sometimes.
	We have a crockpot, and for whatever reason, it's not on everybody before you call, like, you know, Cat Protective Services or something.
	We're only joking.
	This is what needs to be said sometimes.
	No, they actually do like to sit in the crockpot.
	If we leave the lid off, it's kind of big and it's on the counter.
	They'll come up and they'll curl up in it because it's real small and contained and they like, you know, getting into small areas.
	So I will occasionally find the cat in the crockpot.
	If you put your cat treats in with a nice bed of basmati rice, then they like to sleep in the crockpot.
	What's that smell, honey?
	Oh dear.
	Have we hit a new low in terms of like just completely horrendously offending everyone and for fine reason?
	No, and I'm sorry to hear about your cat.
	Oh, just because I'm sure I'll get emails of people asking if I don't mention it.
	But yeah, one of our cats, we found out he has some kidney problems.
	He had a blood test done after...
	He had some bad breath.
	Wanted to find out what the bottom of that was.
	It's normally a sign of health problems.
	And he has kidney problems, which are hereditary.
	And unfortunately, we have three cats, and they're all brothers.
	And hereditary health problems when you have three cats that are all brothers really sucks.
	So it's been a bit of a crappy week in that respect.
	But yeah, I don't know what I'm giving up for Lent.
	Maybe, I don't know, my Netflix subscription now that I've watched House of Cards?
	In totality?
	You have a Netflix?
	I couldn't even...
	I have one hand puppet that actually is just a sock with eyeballs drawn on.
	Is it as good an actor as Kevin Spacey?
	Because if he is, I mean, my God.
	I tell you, mostly what it does is just argue with me.
	I told you not to talk about that publicly, Steph.
	I had to tell you, too.
	I read a theory that the reason I'm anti-religious is my mother was Catholic.
	You ever heard that one?
	I haven't heard that one.
	People have thrown out the mommy issues thing before, but regarding religion because she's Catholic?
	Yeah, I'm anti-religious because my mother is Catholic.
	And that's why nobody has to evaluate my arguments.
	It's like, fill in the blank, so you don't have to evaluate my arguments.
	He has mommy issues, so I don't have to evaluate his arguments.
	Elitist, arrogant, fill in the word.
	He's born with a silver spoon in his mouth, so I don't have to evaluate his arguments.
	He's bald, he has freckles, so I don't have to evaluate his arguments.
	Yeah, I mean, it's a kind of thing.
	And I look, I really, I mean...
	It's really tempting, of course, to find some way to dismiss people.
	And there's this whole industry, not related to me, but the whole industry of just McCarthyism is bad, so I don't have to evaluate whether there were Soviet spies in the State Department dictating what happened to Poland at Yalta.
	I mean, just heaping people with negatives so that you don't have to evaluate their arguments.
	And people really do like to look for psychological causes and just anything that they can...
	And I don't think it's because people have massive problems with the arguments.
	I mean, generally they don't even know.
	But I think that, I was just reading about in Ontario, sort of where I live, there's some concern among college professors that the curriculum that was implemented In the late 90s, which they got rid of grade 13 because it was too expensive.
	It's like, hey, so the fact that it cost me a year of my life is no problem.
	Oh, is it costing you guys a little bit of money?
	Now you want to get rid of it.
	And the physics professors are saying, well, look, the scores are like way down.
	One physics professor gave a test to his incoming students that he'd been giving for a number of years.
	People have gone down significantly, 25-30% in terms of the pass rate.
	And he says that the problem is that because they've accelerated what people are supposed to know before they graduate, what's happened is they're not teaching critical thinking.
	Now, they weren't teaching a whole lot of critical thinking, to be fair, even when I was knee-high to a grasshopper in government schools, but there was some.
	And you had the occasional...
	Erratic, hyper-caffeinated teacher who would just shake your matrix a little bit, you know?
	Just for the fun of it, you know?
	Hey, I see some rotting apples of underutilized thought.
	Let's take a caber toss to the base of that apple tree and see what stands.
	I remember a teacher in...
	Well, when I first came to Canada, I was in grade eight for a couple of months.
	And then we moved cities and I was put back in grade six.
	I had a teacher in grade six who was pretty good that way.
	He was pretty good that way.
	I remember us going through H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, and he had a lot to say about the Eloi and the Morlocks and how they related.
	And a lot of it was just like, I talked about this in the last show, just sort of rambling hippie talk, but it was also kind of stimulating.
	Like, whoa.
	I'm not sure if I'm learning anything, but I'm really listening.
	I'm not sure if it's helping, but I'm alert.
	Those words are interesting.
	I will pay attention to that.
	And so what's happened is because there's so much stuff that people just need to regurgitate before they graduate, I think the last sort of shreds of critical thinking have just vanished.
	And it now is just like cram facts that people can throw up on a test and then shuffle them along to the next binge purge cycle of facts and recitation.
	And this is, of course, completely...
	The opposite of where education should be going, because the government's doing that.
	Education should be only critical thinking these days.
	Why?
	Because the internet has replaced our need for memory.
	I don't know.
	You're too young for this, I think, Mike.
	But there used to be these things...
	Have you ever heard of these things?
	Slide rules?
	I know of their existence.
	Do you know that...
	Yeah, and logarithmic rules...
	And you used to have ways of calculating square roots and all this kind of stuff.
	And then...
	I got a calculator watch.
	It's a little thermonuclear mushroom cloud where all of this stuff used to be.
	Do you need a thousand dollars worth of encyclopedias?
	No, you have Wikipedia or Google.
	Right.
	And it's, you know, on your phone.
	On your phone.
	And, you know, couldn't remember when grade 13...
	Got removed.
	Boom!
	Got it!
	2003.
	Like, you just don't need to look anything up.
	Why bother?
	Why?
	You just have to memorize all these constants and all that.
	And now, the internet has freed up the human mind to do what it's really supposed to do.
	The human brain sucks at retention.
	But it's great at critical thinking.
	And the whole point of the internet to me is to offload...
	The need for memorization and to give people the capacity to focus on what the brain does best, which is conceptualization, critical thinking, rational thought, refutation, argument, you know, all that kind of good philosophical stuff.
	But of course, naturally, government's like, let's head back to the past.
	Let's have people memorize more.
	Now that there's the internet, memorizing stuff is super important.
	Well, stuff, thankfully, net neutrality is going to fix the internet, so we won't have to worry about it.
	Yeah, no, I mean, it was really tragic just how stuff was getting from one side of the planet to the other through a system of voluntary mutual cooperation for profit.
	I mean, that was horrifying.
	I'm so glad that the government has decided to step in.
	And do you know how much the government cares about Netflix?
	It's not just a pretense to gain control by ginning up some false controversy and so on.
	They really, really care that video delivery systems gain equal bandwidth across the internet.
	I mean, it's right there in the Constitution.
	Obama loses sleep over it.
	I guarantee it.
	Every night.
	Yeah, those founding fathers.
	You know, like the 32nd Pi Amendment.
	All future video streaming services shall have equal access to bandwidth over the intranets.
	Now, they did spell it with a Z at the end, but other than that, that's some prescient stuff.
	I mean, they're still talking about militia, but they figured that stuff out.
	It's so great that the government has taken the core mandate of protecting persons and property in a free society and decided to bend the internet to its will to solve a problem that the free market solved.
	Long ago.
	I mean, it's just wonderful.
	I mean, the government that's still using whiteboards in the classroom all around the world.
	It's so great.
	Oh, did you see the article that came out this week?
	It was all over Drudge.
	Air traffic control is using technology from 50 years ago that's held together with duct tape and chewing gum, supposedly.
	Do you know that the space shuttle is still using code from the Apollo missions?
	And that's because, of course, I mean, and it's so old.
	The computers in the space shuttle, if I remember this rightly, computers, they're so old, you actually have to swap memory modules when you want to change the program.
	Oh, dear.
	Give me the backup 16K so we can get into orbit.
	That's a bit before my time.
	Was that pre-Oregon Trail or after Oregon Trail?
	I don't know.
	Something like that.
	I mean, you might as well get the fucking Pony Express with a giant catapult as far as technology goes.
	It's so, so bad.
	It's so bad.
	Okay, so if I got this right, people have given up critical thinking for Lent, and we should give up YouTube comments, and unfortunately the government has not given up overreaches of power for Lent, unfortunately.
	I think that about sums it up.
	I've decided to give up non-tangents for Lent.
	And I feel I'm doing a good job so far in this particular, I guess loosely could be called a conversation.
	Can you tell me why fish is not a meat for Lent, Steph?
	I've never talked about that.
	Why fish?
	Why fish is not a meat?
	You're allowed to eat fish.
	Oh, I'll tell you why.
	Because being a fisherman so much makes you want to shoot yourself with a fish hook.
	That if they also couldn't eat fish, they'd never come back.
	They'd be like, just keep sailing.
	I can't pull another goddamn fish out of the water.
	Like, I can't do it.
	I'm so bored.
	Oh my god.
	It's so terrible.
	Plus, they smell suspiciously like fish.
	And I have to club them.
	You know, these four little silver things flopping around.
	They just want to get back to their home.
	Bang!
	Hit them with a giant chair leg.
	I can't...
	You know, my back hurts from hauling Nemo's out of the reef with giant ropes.
	You know, like, fishing is...
	I mean, it's a sport, whatever, right?
	I mean, not the end of the world.
	I've fished in a variety of places around the world, and it's not bad.
	It's not a bad way to commune with nature and ignore the fact that you're getting hungry and there's just no way to replace the calories you're using with the calories you're getting.
	But to actually be a fisherman?
	I mean, you know, like a Jesus is like, I'm going to go recruit among the fishermen because I could be a crazy bearded cult leader, but oh my god, their alternative to following me is going back to fishing.
	Hey, look!
	I've got a big trail of fishermen following me.
	Hey, Steph, did you hear about the 280-pound catfish that was caught in Italy this week?
	This intro is just an accumulation of all the drudge articles I've read.
	Wait, 280-pound catfish that was caught in Italy?
	And do you know why it's 280 pounds?
	Why?
	It's one tiny catfish with three ISIS militiamen inside who are going to take over Rome and bring about the end times.
	Good to know.
	Yeah, it's good to know.
	That's how they're getting in.
	Enough boats from Libya.
	Let's just get inside a giant catfish and spring out.
	Look up the picture, everybody.
	It's quite the sight to see.
	1,200-pound tuna caught recently.
	A 16-year-old fisherman caught a 1,200-pound tuna.
	You know, Steph, now that you mention it, we have gotten lots of complaints that we haven't done a true news episode about the catching of this giant tuna.
	It's obviously a huge news story that needs to be covered in exquisite detail.
	Right.
	Yeah, no, it's quite impressive.
	And I obviously imagine quite a huge amount of work.
	Giant swordfish caught as well.
	That's a lot of fish delays on Fridays at McDonald's.
	I have no idea why this shows up in my feeds.
	I don't think I've ever had any particular interest.
	But it's just there.
	Hey, are you tired of reading about the economic collapse of the Western world?
	Here's a big fish.
	You might need to live on this.
	Learn how to fish.
	Okay, let's move on to the callers.
	Are any callers still on the line?
	Yeah, we can probably do this for about the next four days.
	So let's...
	All right.
	Well, Upwards today is Clark.
	Clark wrote in and said, is there an objective standard for determining what is art?
	The common definition is subjective.
	Using this standard, the work of a deranged person smearing feces has the same value as a masterpiece done by a methodically trained, accomplished, and dedicated artist.
	So, what is art?
	All right.
	Hello.
	Hi, Clark.
	First of all, Welcome to the show.
	Nice to chat with you.
	They always launch into the questions, and people usually have something to say before we do, so thanks for calling in.
	Thanks for a great question.
	We can go right to the question.
	Well, so I've done a podcast of this, so I'm going to keep it relatively brief, and for more, you can go into the podcast details.
	I just did it sort of, because we didn't get to this a couple of weeks ago, so I wasn't sure if you were coming back, so it's a great question.
	So, briefly...
	This is the definition of art that I think is valid.
	Which is that art is an argument.
	Art is an argument to remind you of a perspective that is easy to overlook.
	So the traditional examples is if I paint a picture of something beautiful.
	Venus to Milo or David or whatever, Sistine Chapel.
	If I paint something beautiful, I'm making an argument that, yeah, there's ugliness in the world.
	There's ugliness, there's viciousness, cruelty, degradation, horror, irrationalism, mysticism.
	There's ugly stuff in the world, and it's easy to forget the beauty of the world.
	And so I want to bring your attention to beauty to refresh and remind you of the value of beauty in the world.
	And that is...
	An argument for a perspective that's easy to overlook.
	On the other hand, if I paint a picture of something ugly, then I'm saying, well, yeah, there's beauty in the world, but remember, there's ugly things in the world and so on.
	So if you think of the sort of traditional photograph that you see that's supposed to make you feel guilty for, I don't know, having a roof over your head or something is the giant skyscraper and maybe a helicopter passing by.
	And then at the base of the giant vertical ice cube tray skyscraper, there is a homeless man sitting in a box looking mournful.
	And this is an argument which says, yes, we have all this wealth in society.
	Let us not forget.
	Let us remind ourselves.
	Let us remember the people who are hard done by, the people who are down on their luck, the people who need their help, and so on.
	So it's an argument for a perspective that is often a plea for sympathy.
	And this is particularly true In the 20th and 21st century, the Frankfurt School, cultural Marxism and so on, it's a plea for sympathy, for the downtrodden, the proletariat, the working class, and so on, noble and heroic and so on.
	You can look at movies like The Bicycle Thief and all that for more on this kind of stuff.
	And so that's an argument for a perspective which...
	It's easy to overlook.
	I think that's where art is best and most clearly defined.
	And so something which is random in the world is not art.
	Because it is not a consciously directed and controlled argument for a perspective that is easy to overlook but important.
	And, you know, there was an old...
	There was an old, probably decades old now, but there was an experiment where they took buckets of paint and threw them into the jet stream of an idling jet engine and had a splatter against a canvas.
	Now that is, I guess you could say, an argument for a perspective that's often overlooked called modern art is a kind of elaborate scam, but that would not be art.
	And, you know, paintings by monkeys and Elephants and so on.
	Sort of anti-art and so on.
	So you can tell a huge amount about someone by the art, by the music, by the aesthetics that the person is bringing to the world.
	And so what about, say, like scenery?
	Like a kind of something that seemingly has no meaning or just aesthetic value.
	I mean, that's...
	But no, scenery is too generic a term.
	Because scenery could be, like, if it's a vista of a garbage dump, you know, with, like, I don't know, dead animals and rats and, you know, garbage and so on, then the artist is, because the artist can choose anything.
	The artist can choose anything.
	I remember having a ferocious argument years ago with a friend of mine after we went to go and see the Ayn Rand play the night of January the 16th because one of the bad guys is in a wheelchair and And he was like, well, it doesn't have any meaning.
	You know, he's just an equal opportunity.
	I said, no, it does have a meaning.
	Because you don't have to have a character in a play that you're making up.
	You can choose whether the character is crippled or not, is in a wheelchair or not.
	And the fact that you portray the character in a wheelchair says something about that character.
	And that is...
	Everything in art is a choice.
	So you can paint anything you want.
	If you choose to paint something disgusting or gross or hideous or repulsive, I mean, I remember this is back in the days where there used to be like record stores and CD stores.
	I remember many, many, many years ago flipping through an alternative record store and there was a, I think it was a I don't know the name of the album because it just shocked and I recall from it.
	Flipping through the albums in the racks and one of them had a severed penis on the cover.
	That's repulsive.
	To me it's like an electric shock to the nads I guess.
	And of course they could put anything they want on that cover.
	But the reality is they choose to show something that is shocking and appalling and visceral and repulsive and And so on.
	And these are all choices.
	So if there's a scenery, the question is, well, what is being shown?
	If it's a beautiful fall visage, then the person is saying, well, here's something to rest your eyes on.
	Here's something to nourish your soul.
	Here's something to replenish your perhaps scarce consumption of natural beauty, especially if you live in the sort of urban center and so on.
	Then that is your...
	That's your little oasis, right?
	If they paint something lovely, if they paint something ugly, then they're making an argument that ugliness is the essence of life, everything else is an illusion, and this is what you need to focus on, you bourgeois pig, not you.
	So the intention of the artist, say they're obviously most likely not philosophically oriented or virtuous, they could be a talented artist and create You know something horrific and have one intention and then somebody else could look at that and get a whole other kind of inspiration from it rather than like what you said before like the gloomy picture
	of basically people in poverty and whatever and you're supposed to feel bad someone else could look at that and say well that's obviously not true and you get some You're not inspired in the way you're supposed to be, but you're still inspired by it in a sense.
	I don't know if that makes any sense.
	It certainly has its power to alter your mind and your mood.
	That sort of makes sense.
	Mike, could you do me a favor?
	There's a movie I never watched much of because I just found it too horrendous.
	Mm-hmm.
	But it's Viggo Mortensen, otherwise known as Aragorn.
	And he was in a movie.
	It was sort of some post-apocalyptic movie wherein he played a guy with his son who was...
	Clark, if you know this, let me know.
	And they were wandering around and there was cannibalism and just all kinds of horrendous stuff.
	The Road?
	Is it called The Road?
	Yes, The Road.
	That's right.
	The Road.
	Oh, got lots of nominations.
	I thought it was about how people get around in a free society, but no.
	Absolutely not.
	Or why we can't have a free society.
	The Road.
	Yeah.
	Did you see it?
	No, it's on my Netflix queue, though, actually.
	Oh, man.
	Do not have any flesh-colored popcorn while you're watching that movie.
	I couldn't.
	I mean, I don't mind a good horror film.
	I mean, there's one with Nicole Kidman called The Others.
	Great, great film.
	I don't mind.
	A good horror film can be really lots of fun.
	The Ring was great and so on.
	Really good stuff.
	But this was just, oh my God, horrendous.
	And I couldn't get too far into it.
	And of course they could have made any kind of movie they want.
	Viggo Mortensen also played A Dangerous Method.
	He played Sigmund Freud.
	Not massively well or anything, but I just watched that actually last night.
	And the filmmakers could have poured everything that they have into creating something inspiring and beautiful and noble and heroic.
	And instead, they just put people in an endless series of unbelievably horrifying situations.
	And that is for no reason.
	Like Sophie's Choice, which, spoiler, there's some Holocaust stuff in it, is...
	But at least that's a sort of real historical reenactment or event or series of events that they're trying to portray just how brutal all of those situations were in Europe, particularly, of course, for the Jews and the war.
	So there is some justification, like the Schindler's List thing, there is some justification to say, well, look, we're going back and showing something that happened that's important to remember.
	But in this one, of course, since it's science fiction, it's all made up.
	And it sort of reminded me, as I mentioned before on the show, when I was six or seven, We used to watch these movies in boarding school.
	They gave us like The Incredible Journey and other movies that were all sweet and syrup and so on.
	And then they sprung Charlton Heston in Omega Man, which is a post-apocalyptic zombie chase, blow-up people.
	I think they just must have ordered the wrong movie.
	I mean, it was like basically violence porn for your lizard brain.
	And, you know, the entire dormitory that night was just like, I can't sleep.
	Too terrified even to talk.
	And so, yeah, I mean, the scenery can be anything that you want.
	And what you choose reveals both who you are and what you want to convey.
	Art is a way of conveying, I believe, unconscious emotional experiences to other people.
	It's a way of making people like you.
	Making people like yourself.
	For better or for worse.
	And in that movie, there's such a horror of existence in that movie that the person is basically saying, here, have a tasty slice of my childhood, which I have not processed and therefore needs to be reenacted and extrapolated into the most gruesome kind of art imaginable.
	I'm sorry, Clark, go ahead.
	I was agreeing and kind of go back to a side question I kind of had of Lowbrow art or lowbrow movies and things like that, such as things that are filled with propaganda, I typically avoid stuff like that.
	But to a degree, you know, it says a lot and I've learned a lot from it, from consuming it.
	It gives you kind of a pulse almost of what people are thinking and what people demand, I guess, what people's...
	Yeah, if you know what art is doing, If you're a really well-trained and competent therapist, then crazy people won't make you crazy.
	Because you know what they're doing.
	You understand their maneuvers.
	You understand their manipulations.
	You understand transference and counter-transference and all this kind of stuff that goes on in therapy.
	And so you can spend your day with crazy people and not go crazy.
	At least a lot of them can.
	But that's because they know what crazy is and they work at Extracting its meaning and helping to make it saner and fixing the bad thoughts that lead to irrational emotions and so on.
	And so you can consume art as an artistically aware person.
	That doesn't mean you have to be an artist.
	It just means be aware of what art is and what art does.
	You can consume it with great instruction and it will not make you crazy.
	I mean, almost every single time I go to a movie, there is something unbelievably offensive to reason, truth, and virtue in it, if not most of it.
	But I know what it's trying to do.
	I know what it's trying to do.
	For me, I'm usually, at that point, I would really like to get away from it.
	Even though I know, I think to a degree it can be empowering and maybe constructive for you to learn from it.
	But what is it that would make...
	I mean, I guess it's a normal, overwhelming reaction to be kind of repulsed from it.
	Right.
	Yeah, no, and it is, of course, right?
	I mean, you have the emotional reaction, but you know what the person is trying to do, and you know the source of it.
	A lot of it is, I have too much repetitive compulsion in my own life, so I need to spread it to other people through art.
	That tends to be, I think, the way that these kinds of things work.
	There's an author, William Styron, who's a beautiful and terrifying writer.
	He actually wrote the original Sophie's Choice and a bunch of other books.
	He wrote a book, I think it's called Darkness Visible, which was the memoir of his depression.
	His depression was...
	Catastrophic, debilitating.
	I mean, he was in Paris, I think, receiving a literary award.
	Couldn't even make it up the podium.
	I mean, he was just crippled with it.
	And like a lot of writers who pour themselves into taking inner experiences and translating them to inflict and infect others with that which they have not processed, which is usually the literary and particularly the cinematic art, what they do is they...
	So reproduce for others their own experience that they don't have to process it, although they do gain some respite from their own burdens by inflicting it on other people.
	You know, misery loves company, and that's a lot of what modern novels are, is I'm so fucking miserable that I'm going to pour it into artistically organized phrases designed to evoke the same horror in you so that we're all isolated from happiness and virtue.
	And that is, to me, Anne-Marie MacDonald as well.
	Staggeringly gifted writer.
	When you go through something like fall on your knees, I mean it is just a medieval horror show of human dysfunction and violence and predation and horror and I mean it's just, it's endless.
	And William Styron, it's been many years since I've read Darkness Visible, but if memory serves me right, he has no knowledge.
	That he has any dysfunction.
	It takes someone else to point out that in the majority of his novels, at least one character commits suicide.
	He's like, wow, I'd never noticed that.
	And I'm like, what?
	You know, it's like, it's literally like the guy in my left foot at the end of the movie saying, someone says, hey man, you're in a wheelchair.
	And the guy's like, oh my god, I never noticed that.
	And it's like, how is that possible?
	And he's healed...
	This is way off my memory.
	He's watching some show and there are geese flying.
	He's like, oh, I feel better.
	It's like that Tony Soprano lack of self-knowledge at the beginning of The Sopranos and the geese fly away and he has a panic attack and all that.
	It's that lack of...
	At least he goes into therapy.
	But it's that staggering lack of self-knowledge.
	And the same thing happens in Girl Interrupted, which is an interesting movie.
	In it, the lead heroine is in an asylum, and normally the way things work in these kinds of movies is she has some terrible secret, and she reveals the secret, she comes in contact with the secret, she understands the secret, and she loosens the secret, and then she is healed.
	Now, in that movie, there's no secret.
	There's no reason for her to be messed up.
	There's no causality.
	My bone is broken.
	Nothing hit it, right?
	It just snapped on its own.
	At least that's the way I see it.
	I think there's always a cause to these kinds of things, but what do I know?
	I'm just an amateur on the internet.
	But there is an argument that the artist is putting forward, and the more unprocessed The emotional raw material, the more vividly it is captured and portrayed in the minds and hearts of others.
	And this is why artists who pursue self-knowledge tend to diminish their creative output.
	I mean, before John Cleese went into therapy, he was hysterical.
	And then he did years of therapy and got divorced endlessly and now has to go on the...
	Alimony Chains tour of paying off lawyers and stuff, but the pursuit of self-knowledge is not fantastic for the production of art, again, in my opinion.
	And also, you know, wouldn't it kind of seem like, I know at least maybe in my experience, when you kind of become aware of what you're doing, you are doing disturbing sort of art and And it is part of your own process subconscious.
	When you do kind of realize that you do, at least in my opinion or my experience, you kind of feel almost guilty or like you don't want to reproduce that anymore.
	And then you have to get to the point where you really want to create something meaningful to you rather than just unprocessed garbage that is disturbing.
	Yeah.
	No, there is less...
	You know, people act out what they can't express.
	That's sort of where I think acting out comes from.
	I don't have the words to say how angry and hurt I am, so I'm going to go get into fistfights and so on, right?
	And my art in particular has always been about the pursuit of self-knowledge, even all the way from what I wrote in my 20s, Revolutions, which was about the man who decided to pursue a family rather than a revolution.
	Hey...
	I wonder if that has any resonance in my life.
	Because I knew how gifted I was in language and thinking and so on.
	I mean, I worked hard for it and all, but how skilled I was even at that point.
	And I really wanted to make that case.
	Use your powers for the improvement of your personal life and the personal lives of people around you.
	Don't use it for the attempted reorganization of a social structure which will only coalesce back to people's dysfunction as it always does.
	Or worse.
	And the God of Atheists is really around the pursuit of self-knowledge and the pursuit of connection and the slow exploration and the moral mapping of your social environment.
	The moral mapping of your social environment which is really at the core Of the God of Atheists.
	You can get these at freedomainradio.com slash books.
	I think that's the right.
	And the moral mapping of those around you is really essential.
	Nature places you almost by accident, obviously in your country, in your family, to some degree in your social circle if they come through the school that the government just happened to prop up near your house or your apartment.
	But at some point, to achieve wisdom, to achieve authenticity, to achieve independence, we must map the morals of those around us.
	What is their relationship to truth, to virtue, to care, to concern, to support, to integrity?
	And that, of course, is the story of the god of atheists, is the children decide to morally map their social environment.
	And that, to me, was exactly the process I was going through.
	When I was working on the novel, I was morally mapping my environment, those around me, those who fate, accident, circumstances had placed in my life.
	I began to look at them through the lens of voluntarism.
	And that was the story of my life during that time.
	And so there are, I think, some times in which the pursuit of self-knowledge, if your goal in the novel or in the movie is to To promote the pursuit of self-knowledge, then it can work, but I think that's why those novels remain quite unusual.
	So, I guess you could bring me to my next question or sub-question, which is kind of more, you know, there's art where the meaning or the philosophy of it is more innuendo or subtle, and that It's lost on most people,
	but obviously you get a lot more publicity or fame and just circulation if you've watered down your message, basically.
	Oh, yeah.
	And if you have provided the allegory of freedom through violence, then you have done wonderfully.
	Yeah.
	For the powers that be.
	I mean, this is my problem with The Matrix, right?
	The Matrix movies are...
	Do you know how you become free?
	You download Kung Fu moves.
	You know, that's...
	You go bullet time, which is quite different from hammer time, which is walking with baggy pants towards the creditors.
	But the idea that you can liberate...
	The human freedom results from violence, right?
	This is the...
	So all war movies pretty much.
	It's like every movie that's out today basically.
	Yeah, freedom is violence.
	Freedom is violence.
	You're just minding your own business, something happens, you go and kill people.
	And everything's better.
	It's just like fade, and then the Iraqis lived happily ever after.
	And then the Libyans lived happily ever after.
	And then the Afghanis lived happily ever after.
	And just fade out.
	And so on.
	I mean, it's all madness and nonsense.
	But that's as far as a lot of people can go.
	Because most people...
	We'll never use violence except in the service of the state.
	Most people are not going to go and kill people unless they're drafted.
	Most people are not going to go and kidnap people unless the laws tell them to and they happen to be one of the enforcers.
	If you can get people to constantly associate liberty with violence Freedom with violence.
	Well, then you have simply...
	The only freedom that violence serves is the freedom of the rulers to do whatever the hell they want.
	But true freedom, as I've argued many times in the show, the only real freedom, the only true freedom, the only lasting freedom, is freedom from illusion.
	But that doesn't work well with a Glock.
	It doesn't really work that well at all.
	I think there was a movie my therapist recommended that I watched called The Singing Detective.
	There was an original British one.
	I think there was a remake with Mel Gibson.
	I don't want to sort of get into all of it, but it's a very sort of psychological film.
	But the end of it is violence.
	The freedom is violence.
	And that is so tempting.
	The idea that violence will set us free is so tempting.
	But the idea that we should be free from...
	Sorry, this is why people get so upset when I talk about the against me argument and so on.
	My argument is that it is not violence that will set us free.
	The only freedom we can get is distance from those who support violence.
	It's the ostracism of the violent addicts, of the addicts to violence, that is the root of human freedom in the future.
	I was cutting in there.
	I just had to spit it out.
	It's definitely...
	I see it in people's eyes.
	It's this sense of false empowerment.
	They're living through these heroes, and they kind of have this...
	Imagine in their head they're kind of seeing themselves as this all-powerful guy who can just all of a sudden do whatever they want but then when the movie's over it's just back to being a slave and then you got to watch another movie to kind of get that feeling back again and it's like an addiction and like a religion.
	Yeah, and in particular, their recruitment for the necessary soldiers for the continuance of political power.
	Just all of these movies are priming you that when the word freedom is used, that you can use violence properly.
	To serve the cause of freedom.
	Because everybody says that the wars they wage are for freedom and to end war and to secure Lebensraum, living space or, you know, whatever, fulfill the manifest destiny of whatever particular religious warlord is in the books close by.
	And this is all priming you up and that's all art that serves the masters.
	You know, and this is why you always see the king is dead, long live the king, right?
	This is why in Macbeth, the man...
	Macbeth can go and slaughter, you know, 500 peasants and nobody bats an eye.
	In fact, he's cheered and is given praise by the king, but he goes and kills one king and suddenly the entirety of nature is thrown out of balance and he can't sleep.
	And the only solution, of course, is not to say, well, perhaps we should stop having kings then.
	No, you see, the solution is for a new king to come and kill Macbeth and that violence secures freedom, you see.
	It just, you know, you kill someone and the world is free.
	And all of this programming is why people still genuinely believe that if they go and kill Saddam Hussein, That Iraq will be free.
	Because you see, the solution to a lack of freedom is a bullet.
	And that is why, you know, I think of these pictures you saw shortly after the invasion.
	And destruction of everything to do with Iraq, political structure and their genetics, particularly in Fallujah, these depleted uranium shells and their infrastructure and their educated class and so on.
	But they had pictures of these Iraqis with their fingers dark with paint because they would go and vote, you see.
	And then they would get their fingers marked with paint, so they didn't vote twice.
	And everybody was like, oh look, you see?
	We killed the guy, and now everyone's voting, and they're free!
	And what's happened since?
	Well, ISIS has now captured a territory larger than England.
	And there's no freedom.
	He just killed one guy.
	There's a reason why you had to have a tyrant in the neighborhood.
	It's because you've got these irrational tribes with these religious absolutes.
	That's why you needed a secular tyrant.
	It was murderous.
	He was a horrifying man, of course, right?
	But what's happened since?
	It's like what they did with the Shah of Iran in 1979.
	Let's get rid of the Shah, you see.
	And because Americans don't know anything about their history, it's all hidden from them.
	Well, not that hidden, actually.
	The internet would make it hard to find.
	They'd just rather not look.
	They'd rather have more important movies to watch.
	Right.
	But they got rid of the Shah, and then who took his place was the Ayatollah Khomeini.
	Who now, the Shah at least had some secular rational aspects to him, was willing to work with the West, and obviously a monster like all these guys.
	But was he better or worse than the Ayatollah Khomeini?
	Well, I think a lot of Iranians would say he was far worse.
	And if you look at the pictures of Iran in the 1970s versus the 1980s, it's like it's tumbled back 500 years in history.
	So, so much of art and action movies and Marvel comics and, you know, there's a bad guy here.
	And the solution is never decentralization.
	The solution is never peace.
	The solution is never self-knowledge.
	It's always, if we pick up a bigger gun, we can bomb the shit out of our way to freedom.
	And the casualties are unimportant.
	And there's never any blowback.
	Yes.
	Never any blowback.
	So you can go kill half a million Iraqis.
	It's never any blowback.
	You can go and destroy their genetic integrity of an entire population through DNA-destroying weaponry, and you're never going to end up with a hyper-violent generation coming up, both who have experienced this hellish warfare from Christians.
	See, they don't see...
	It's a religious conflict for a lot of people in the middle.
	They don't see Americans as much as they do Christians.
	In the same way that America, when most of the hijackers on 9-11 were from Saudi Arabia, did anyone say, damn those Saudi Arabians?
	No, they said, those Muslims!
	Well, it's not that different for the Muslims.
	They look and they see all these bombs and they're saying, these bombs have Jesus on them.
	The airplanes are powered by angel wings from the Christian heaven and the bombs Are not so much, turn the other cheek, missiles from Christianity.
	And people wonder why they grab and kill these Christians.
	It's not complicated.
	It's only complicated if you have no idea what's going on.
	And then what happens when you genetically compromise an entire population?
	Well, they have kids, and those kids grow up genetically compromised, which means less impulse control, higher levels of aggression, lower levels of intelligence, and then we wonder why there are all of these people who suddenly seem very keen to be joining in these crazy religious extremist groups.
	Well, you bomb people enough, you screw up there.
	And of course, this was happening in the Gulf War as well.
	First Gulf War in the 90s, right?
	I mean, there were lots of Gulf War syndrome.
	Like 300,000 or more American troops came back with unspecified medical issues from these crazy weapons.
	Well, this is what you're doing to the population.
	I mean, a lot of the Islamic...
	It's fine to marry your cousin stuff doesn't exactly help with the genetic integrity of the region either, but neither do the massive gene-destroying weapons deployed by the West.
	So, anyway.
	Listen, I'm sorry we moved off topic.
	I've got to get to the next caller because we've got a big show for tonight, but Clark, a great set of questions.
	I hope we did some use.
	Mike, do we have a name?
	I know I shipped that podcast, but I can't remember.
	Yeah, actually, I'll put it out this week.
	I haven't got a chance to go through and edit it yet, but we'll put it out this week and probably be the philosophy of art or what is art, something of that nature.
	But yeah, look for that in the podcast feed this coming week.
	Yeah, and people can have a lot of fun just wondering how my opinion has changed in 10 days.
	It's not even close!
	Basically, like somebody whose determination is...
	To spread virtue or epitomize virtue.
	If I'm completely honest with my art, it's very repelling to most people.
	This is more or less just your opinion, but you think it's more effective to do the subtle innuendo where you're kind of sneaking it in there where most people won't notice it, but certain people, because I know, in my experience, being a movie watcher and stuff like that, certain things would make me think.
	So, I see a lot of use in that.
	And then, you know, if there was a movie that was, or art, or writing, or something that was straightforward, I would probably not even want to approach it.
	I don't get the question, if you could boil it down.
	Which strategy, I guess, would be more effective to do really bold, like, in your face, just 100% focused on Maybe say if it was writing, like writing about the situation that's going on right now with society being controlled basically and where we're heading in the future or maybe do something more entertaining where you're sneaking it
	in.
	Oh, I would say, you know, you can't really command your artistic centers that much.
	I mean, if you could command your artistic centers, then Paul McCartney wouldn't have gone like 30 years without a hit.
	And Pink Floyd's last song would not have been like, oh, wow, you guys are basically just retreading the 70s, but without any innovation.
	So you've got to follow your muse, right?
	The creation is a dance between conscious purpose and unconscious inspiration.
	In my experience, you have to dance with it.
	You've got to get the juice of the unconscious inspiration, but you also don't want to blarp stuff on the page because you don't know where it's going to take people.
	And I think as an artist, you have a particular responsibility to try and make the world a better place.
	Somebody who's a nutritionist also knows what will do you harm and their job is to try and do you good and not say an old diet snorting MSG and cocaine is the way to go so that you're hyper and fat at the same time.
	And artists, you've got a conscious control.
	It's like riding a wild horse.
	You've got to know what the hell you're doing.
	Sometimes the horse is going to take you where the horse wants to go, but you've got to try and give the horse some direction at the same time.
	So the idea that you can sort of pick and choose from a buffet and say, well, I want to do this kind of art or I want to do that kind of art.
	It's like, I don't know, where does a horse want to go?
	And just try not to get your head taken off by a low-hanging tree branch.
	And I think you have done a good job.
	I mean, there's times I wrote this giant novel Which I really am going to get out in a more digestible format.
	A giant novel.
	like 380,000 words about a German family and a British family from World War I to World War II.
	And in the process of writing that book, I found out what the book was about, you know, partly through doing it.
	And there were times when insights came to me about the book and the characters through the speeches of the characters.
	Literally gave me goosebumps.
	I remember I used to sit in Starbucks and write with headphones on and all that.
	And that dance is really important.
	In order for it to be alive, you can't command it.
	And I think that's sort of my issue to some degree with Ayn Rand's writing, is that it is so consciously controlled.
	It is so dictated to.
	There's an old line from a Talking Heads song, you know, everybody get in line!
	And I thought that was sort of how Ayn Rand...
	Like, lined up her words like Roman soldiers.
	You know, the phalanx, you know, hey, you, get back in line!
	And she had such a rigid control over her writing that it was more geometrical than wondrous.
	And again, a wonderful writer and a very powerful theoretician and a great plot.
	That was my particular weakness of many as an artist, but But I couldn't pursue that level of control over my art.
	Now, that may be entirely wrong.
	I mean, she's an infinitely more successful novelist than I am.
	But that was not what I wanted to do.
	I wanted there to be a dance.
	I didn't want to...
	She tamed the horse to the point where it was half horse, half glue.
	I just wanted to ride the horse more.
	And...
	Have it be a two-way street.
	And I think that's where, for me, the greatest creativity comes from.
	But of course the reality is, you know, I've sold, I've had more podcasts downloaded than she's sold novels, which doesn't mean anything, but she's sold infinitely more novels than I have.
	So, you know, she could be entirely right, but I'm just telling you sort of my perspective.
	All right, man.
	Thanks, Doc.
	I really appreciate the call, but let's move on.
	Very helpful and inspiring as always.
	Thank you.
	Alright, thanks, Clark.
	Up next is William.
	William wrote in and said, how do I apologize to someone while at the same time conveying the responsibility of others without it coming across as a bullshit non-apology or BNAP, baby!
	BNAP, baby.
	Right, right.
	Do you have a particular example that may not be wildly theoretical that you'd want to...
	Yes, of course I do.
	First of all, I'd just like to say...
	I'm really nervous right now, but I think I'll make through it.
	Oh, thank you.
	I appreciate that.
	The question refers to my family, my siblings actually.
	I'm the oldest of five siblings.
	And as we were growing up, I was an abusive older brother.
	And especially coming into my late teenage years, I was really violent and had lots of rage problems, with my father especially.
	And I believe I've traumatized them.
	Traumatized who?
	Especially my younger brothers.
	I've really hurt.
	I don't know.
	I have tried to apologize, but I don't think I've done enough.
	Hang on.
	You don't have to get into details if you're not comfortable, but what would they complain about if They were on this show about what you did.
	What would they say you did that was tough?
	Well, they would say that as we were growing up, especially referring to the incident with me and my father, one of my brothers, he said that his whole life was turned upside down during this time.
	And what was the incident with your father?
	Well, we were fighting for two years' time in the household.
	The police came to us like four times.
	Oh, like physical fighting as well, right?
	Yeah, yeah, physical fighting.
	And he tried to get in between us several times, but I wouldn't listen.
	I just pushed him aside and continued to Provocate and be angry.
	And what were you fighting with your father about?
	Well, as I've come to realize later what the reason was, I think that my mother, who is behind this to some degree, she would always criticize my father and always Nag on how horrible he is,
	how unloving he is, how, you know, it's like she never had an end to say about the horrible things about my father.
	Have you ever seen, I'm sorry to interrupt, William, have you ever seen the movie Do the Right Thing?
	It's a Spike Lee movie?
	No, I haven't.
	If you ever do see it, Rosie Perez plays like this shrill, critical, horrendous, it's like, I could date you or I could go be a fisherman.
	I'll go be a fisherman.
	So that kind of shrill female nagging can definitely be nails on a chalkboard, right?
	Yeah, and it's never-ending.
	It would start from the time she came home from work and by the time we were going to bed.
	It's very tragic, actually.
	But the thing he would say, my brother, he would say that he...
	He had no time to do his homework because his whole existence was in a fight-or-flight state.
	Anytime there could be a fight with his brother and his father, anytime there could be something thrown against the wall, there was this war-like atmosphere in the house.
	It's something I really...
	Regret right now, but I do know that...
	I'm still very murky on what you and your father were fighting about.
	You mentioned that your mom was a nag to your father, I assume, or also to you?
	Well, of course, yeah.
	She would nag almost all the male members of the household.
	She would be quite against.
	And so, yes.
	But...
	I think that when I got angry at my father, I got some respect from my mother, like I was on her side.
	I got her empathy, or I don't know what word I would use.
	No, no, no.
	Don't give me empathy with a chronic nag.
	No, no, sorry.
	It could be that you were acting out your mother's rage against your father, right?
	There's an old cliche which goes way back in time, which is that men seek to gain dominion over the world and women seek to gain dominion over people, in particular over men.
	And there's obvious reasons for that.
	I mean, traditionally throughout the evolution of the species, men were the source of resources for women.
	We always try to gain control over our resource source, which is why we plant fruit trees and we have cows and we don't just wait for them to wander in and give us some milk.
	We try to gain control over the source of our survival.
	This is why we build igloos and have heaters in our houses.
	We try to gain control over that which we need to survive, the source of our resources.
	Traditionally throughout history.
	For men, that's been trying to gain control over the material world, which gives you science, technology, the free market, tablets, all that kind of cool stuff.
	Whereas for women, it's been trying to gain control over men as the source of their resource.
	That is...
	You sound like you come from a kind of traditional household, if you don't mind me saying so.
	And correct me if I'm wrong, but that can occur.
	Now, this doesn't mean that that means that all women are nags.
	Because there's ways to gain control over a resource that can be very positive.
	You know, my wife tells me to do something, and I'm like, yeah.
	For the most part, right?
	I mean, I love and respect and worship her so much that, you know, we have this joke, like, well, I can't remember the last time you were wrong, so I'm going to take your thoughts on this as gospel.
	And so, I have some sway over people.
	You know, they listen to my arguments, and, you know, after a certain amount of time, if I've been relatively rational for a relative amount of time, then people will start to take...
	Some of my arguments at face value.
	And I don't know whether it's a good or a bad thing.
	It's an inevitable and natural thing.
	It's an inevitable and natural thing that the more you grow to trust people, the less you have to double-check and verify everything that they're saying and doing.
	So you can gain, quote, control over someone through extremely positive and virtuous behavior.
	Or you can just browbeat them until it's easier for them to do what you want than submit to more browbeating.
	If that makes sense?
	I mean, you're calling in for some thoughts from me.
	I assume it's because you've listened to these shows before.
	You found my thoughts or feedback to be of some value.
	So I at least have, quote, controlled you to the point where this is what you're doing with your time at the moment, right?
	Yeah, right.
	You're not nagging me into this.
	I'm not.
	Like, man, you've got to call into philosophy.
	Philosophy will help you.
	Come on, man.
	Just call in.
	Oh, man.
	Where's that fishing rod?
	Right?
	So that's sort of what I want to say.
	So when I say that men want to gain control over their environment, you can do that by going and And killing other men and taking their stuff.
	Or you can do that by trading on the free market and gaining some control over your environment by providing.
	Like what I was saying in a recent sort of job interview thing is like job security means you're producing more than you're consuming, significantly more than you're consuming.
	So then you have control over your job.
	Now that doesn't mean that the economy might shift or managers might invest in tulip mania in the Netherlands or something.
	So things might still go to the shitter, but you're exercising positive control over your own employment if you just make sure that you're providing a lot more value than you're consuming.
	In your job.
	Now, that's one way you can gain control over your environment.
	The other is that, you know, you can seduce your boss and then threaten her with a sexual harassment suit unless she gives you a raise, right?
	I mean, these are both ways of, quote, exercising control.
	But one is good and one is not, right?
	So...
	Yeah.
	So is it carrot and stick or...
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I mean, this is good versus evil, right?
	I mean, you can get a candy bar by trading or by stealing, right?
	And you can...
	You know, Allah John Fowles, the collector, you can get a woman to spend time with you by chloroforming her and locking her up in a windowless van, or you can be appealing enough that she voluntarily wants to spend time with you.
	And so the fact that women want to control the resources that men provide and control the men doesn't have anything to...
	It's not a negative judgment, right?
	So the fact that your mom has this impulse doesn't...
	Doesn't mean that she was going to end up nagging.
	I'm just saying that there's a driver now.
	She obviously took the Darth Vader path to familial control or to resource control as opposed to a nicer way of doing it.
	In our household, or as it relates to my father, the one who hits the table the loudest gets the say, or the one who...
	The one who screams the most or the one of our siblings who makes the most fuss about something gets her will through.
	He would just cave through and even though he'd promise something to one child, if another child would scream louder, he would change it.
	So the one who screamed the most was the one who got the way, which wasn't productive for our childhood, I think.
	Well, it is productive for the person who is the most comfortable with thumping and screaming, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, if you have pride, self-respect, and so on, then thumping and screaming is not exactly the way that you want to get yourself.
	What you want in your personal relationships, right?
	It's fine to yell at evil or whatever, right?
	But you don't sort of scream at people, right?
	But if you don't have any good skills or you're not that smart or you can't make your case or whatever, then yeah, you're going to want the thumping and screaming to carry the day, right?
	Yeah, and usually, actually, it came into my advantage because I was the oldest and strongest and tallest.
	But right now, I I don't envy older.
	What was an advantage to my childhood I think is a disadvantage now because I really regret being the oldest because of my abusive past.
	Were you abusive towards your brothers directly or mostly just indirectly?
	Well, I was directly as well.
	Mostly it was verbal abuse and some physical, mostly verbal things and teasing and mocking.
	And why would you do that, do you think?
	What was the goal?
	What was the driver behind that?
	I don't know.
	You know my history.
	I'm sorry, just to be clear.
	I sort of always had this idea that children who are suffering under abusive parents should be like Samwise and Frodo.
	Just cling together and get through Mordor together, not turn on each other.
	And it's like, I'll be Sauron and you'll be the Shire.
	And that's just my particular thought about it.
	And so if you could help me to understand this, it'd be great.
	I've never quite got why the elder siblings in a traumatic...
	A household turned on the younger siblings.
	I mean, shouldn't you all just cling together?
	Yeah, I know.
	Actually, I'm crying right now.
	No, and I appreciate that sensitivity.
	I really do.
	I mean, that's very noble and brave of you.
	So, what was the driver, do you think?
	I don't know what was the driver, but I've heard you speak about this thing that We should protect each other.
	I really regret it now.
	I can't put my finger on the driver.
	It was like an itch.
	You can't apologize, I would say, authentically until you know.
	If you don't know why you did it, then no one can trust you to not do it again.
	That's the protection Granted to others by your pursuit of self-knowledge.
	So if you say, well, I'm really, really sorry, part of the foundational implication of an apology is a commitment to not do it again, right?
	But if you say, well, I'm sorry that I did it, I have no idea why I did it, then you cannot extend the...
	Apologies are not about the past, they're about the future.
	Because you can't change the past.
	And the reason that we apologize...
	for the sake of the commitment to not do the harmful behavior again in the future and so that's why i think you're having trouble with the apology if you don't know what the driver was for the cruelty towards your siblings because you experience cruelty at the hands of your father you experience verbal abuse or nagging at the hands of your mother so you knew exactly how painful it was and you were actually experiencing it in the moment i'm I'm sure your parents had terrible childhoods too but this is 20 years after the fact or more, right?
	So that's my question is what was the driver of turning to harm the weakest when you as weaker than your father knew exactly what it felt like?
	I think that It was to lessen the burden off of me, like it was some curse or...
	No, that's a very hallmark response, which means, well, that sounds credible.
	But isn't it true to say, William, that your burden would have been infinitely lessened had you...
	Experienced support, kindness, gentleness, compassion.
	That would have eased your burden considerably more.
	Is that fair to say?
	It would have been 10 times better actually.
	No, that's not correct.
	It would have been infinitely better because what you did was worse.
	That's like saying exercise is 10 times better than smoking.
	Smoking is not even in the category of exercise, right?
	No.
	If you had protected your siblings, if you had turned to them and you had all supported each other in the face of the dysfunctional parenting that you were experiencing, that was a possibility, but there's a reason that...
	Did that even cross your mind at the time?
	I don't know if it crossed my mind, but I probably was nice in between being bad, you know...
	Well, but that's even worse, right?
	Because that's the lower people's defenses, right?
	Yeah, maybe it is.
	That's what the nice cop is for.
	When you switch between nasty and nice, that's to rebond, to rebuild trust so that you can break it again, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I think I fell into that, being nice and then being bad, but...
	Fell into that.
	Do you see how you got real passive with that phrase?
	Yeah, I did.
	Like the ground just opened up beneath you and you fell into that?
	Yeah.
	I don't know.
	So why?
	Why was this the approach you took?
	And please understand, I'm not trying to blame you.
	I'm not trying to make you feel bad.
	I'm not trying to judge.
	That's why I was open about my history and curiosity, right?
	Yeah, you're trying to help.
	Yeah, I mean, it's a huge question.
	I feel sort of clueless to the origins.
	I know it has to do with my upbringing and the role models I had for being a good guardian or being a good role model.
	My parents didn't help.
	They didn't show me.
	Oh, listen, to give you the facts of the matter, at least as far as I see them, if you'd had decent parents, this wouldn't have ever come up in you.
	So I'm not blaming you.
	I'm not sort of saying, well, out of nowhere, you just turned mean to your siblings, right?
	I mean, I get that your parents were the drivers behind this.
	But the question still must be answered for your future.
	For your future, you can't do anything about what happened when you were a teenager, but for your future, William, you must try and find a way to understand what the driver was, because if you don't know what the driver was for this cruelty in you, then you will never be able to trust yourself with loved ones in the future.
	Okay.
	Sounds like I'm putting some voodoo curse on you.
	Yeah, you are.
	But if you don't know why you were bad, then you won't know how to stop it.
	Like if I have some epileptic attack and crash my car and I don't know what the hell happened, what should I not do?
	Drive a car.
	But if it was like, oh, here are the specific courses and it's been remediated, then I can drive a car again.
	But if I don't know why I crashed something, like I had a relative many, many years ago who was a pilot and Fainted while coming in for a landing.
	Hundreds of people on the plane.
	Never allowed to fly again because they couldn't figure out what happened.
	Now if it's like, oh he's diabetic and if he has his insulin he won't faint then I don't know what the rules are but it would imagine that there would be some leniency there but because they never figured out medically what happened it's like, sorry man.
	So if you don't know the cause then you can't trust yourself with people's hearts in the future.
	Yeah, and I haven't been to therapy or any good therapy at least, so I don't… Oh, we'll get there.
	We'll solve it.
	No, we'll solve it, but you've got to engage, right?
	You've got to stop making excuses and avoiding.
	You've got to engage, right?
	So what happened for you… Yeah, no, don't worry.
	I'll give you some hopefully not deleting questions.
	But before you accrual to your siblings, and again, just to reiterate, I'm incredibly sorry for the relationship with your father and your mother, and I fully sympathize with all of that.
	But you know how bad that was, and I think you have some ideas as to why with them.
	But...
	Was it...
	I'm trying to sort of figure it out.
	So you're...
	You're not being cruel, and I assume you're not feeling like being cruel all day and all night, right?
	No, of course not.
	So you're not feeling like being cruel, and then something happens and you uncork this cruelty.
	This cruelty arises within you.
	Can you think of anything specific that happened or something you saw or some variable in the environment that triggered this cruelty?
	Well, it was like I can remember the time when I really, really bullied my sister at the age of when I was like 10, I think.
	And how old is she?
	And she would be 8 at the time.
	I would just get angry because she was happy.
	Like, if she was laughing or something, I would actually hit her.
	Call her ugly or something and abuse her because she was happy.
	That was the only reason.
	It's like that song, I see a red door and I want to paint it black.
	Wherever there's color, wherever there's life.
	Yeah.
	No colors anymore, I want them to turn black.
	And so where you saw joy, what did that evoke in you?
	What was the feeling there?
	What was the thought?
	Like anger or jealousy or like some visceral rage or something that I couldn't let her have, you know, because I wasn't feeling it.
	So she had to not feel it.
	No, it's not that you weren't feeling it.
	That's not strong enough.
	Because, you know, if I'm sort of feeling just, you know, mellow or whatever, and somebody's, like, overjoyed, I'm not feeling overjoyed in that moment, but I don't hate them for it, right?
	Yeah.
	But I don't know if this is the answer to the question, but I remember, like, it sounds horrible now, but I remember, like, feeling good.
	Doing it.
	Like, I remember...
	Oh, no, no, I get that, but let's get back.
	Of course, you did it for a reason.
	It made you feel better than the alternative.
	Yeah.
	But so she's happy, and this, I think it's fair to say, this visceral, bloodshot darkness arises within you, right?
	Yeah.
	And you wish to destroy her happiness.
	Yeah.
	To make her...
	Into you.
	Yeah, to make the abuse that my parents did.
	Yeah, we talked earlier about how art was the transmission of unconscious, unprocessed material.
	In this case, your art was your fist, right?
	Yeah.
	But the horrible thing is it would be like our parents abused us all, you know?
	They would get double from me and from them.
	Like, it wouldn't be fair.
	Right?
	Okay, so let's get back to...
	That's very analytical, and I want to get back to the emotion, the visceral, because the best apologies come from a place of emotional certainty.
	Sure.
	She was happy.
	Mm-hmm.
	In that moment, did you believe you would have a chance to be happy?
	Probably.
	No, that's a theoretical answer.
	You've got to get back to the state of mind at the time, right?
	So you see your sister, she's happy, she's dancing, she's proud of her picture, she's dressed up, looking like a gypsy.
	She's having a tea party with her stuffed animals, whatever she's doing, right?
	And she's happy.
	Did you believe that you could be happy like her in that moment?
	No, not unless she wasn't.
	No, listen, you can't put your happiness at destroying her happiness in the same category.
	Do you know what I mean?
	Yeah.
	Because that's not happiness.
	That's sadism, right?
	Sure.
	Well...
	Because look...
	Now I believe...
	No, no.
	Let's go back to the time.
	Go back to the time.
	I know it's hard, but this is where you need to come from if you want to have an apology that really resonates with people, in my opinion.
	Why not join her in her game and be happy with her?
	That's my question.
	Right?
	You had a belief about your capacity for happiness.
	Like, if I see a bunch of people laughing and joking, speaking Mandarin, I don't speak Mandarin, what is my chance of joining in their fun?
	Zero.
	Zero, right?
	Zero.
	Now, that's a leading question.
	But my question is, What chance did you think you had to join her in her happiness?
	Yeah, well, I thought that I couldn't, I guess.
	I couldn't join her.
	Listen, William, if you want to do this theoretical, like this is some hand puppet show on Mars, you can't do this conversation with me.
	You've got to step into your heart, right?
	Because you're giving me all of these, well, I suppose, theoretically, blah, blah, blah, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	If you want to have a conversation about this stuff, I mean, I'm really, really happy to do it.
	Not happy like yay, but it's important.
	But you've got to step up to your own conversation.
	This is your topic, right?
	You've got to open your heart to this topic.
	I know it's dark stuff.
	I know it's dark stuff.
	But if you want to trust that you won't do it again, you have to feel how painful it was to do it in the first time, which means you've got to embrace the dark.
	You've got to crawl right up the ass of the devil and take a view from his eyes.
	Your sister is happy.
	What's her name?
	We'll call her Sarah.
	Sarah is happy.
	Sarah is happy.
	She's dancing.
	She's having fun.
	She's giggling.
	Why can't you join her?
	Why can't she teach you about happiness?
	Why do you have to inflict misery on her?
	Why can't she teach you about happiness?
	What happens if you're happy at the age of 10?
	What happens if I'm happy?
	Maybe like if I'm happy then my mother will Nag on me or my father will...
	Are you connected to what you're saying or not?
	Are you giving me more theoreticals?
	I'm giving you more theoreticals.
	Okay, stop that.
	Stop that.
	Is this not one of the most central issues in your life?
	Yeah, I would say it is one of my...
	It is probably the most central issue in your life.
	Yeah.
	Because you did great harm to...
	Your siblings, and you were harmed, I'm not trying to gloss over that, but you did great harm to your siblings, who were innocent of the harm done to you.
	It was not your sister's fault that you were abused, but she suffered for it.
	And that becomes hard to hate your abusers when you've done what they've done, with the excuse of being 10 and not 40, but you know what I mean, right?
	So, what would happen if you were to say something like this to your sister when you were 10 and she was 8 and she was happy and you were in hell?
	Thank you.
	If you were to say to her, Sarah, I can't tell you what a black pool of widening darkness my heart has become on seeing your happiness.
	Do you know I genuinely believe and I'm genuinely terrified At the endless nihilism of my endless days and I don't think that I'm ever going to ever have the chance to be as carefree and happy over my next 80 years as I saw you being over the last 80 seconds.
	And seeing your carefree joy Brings me right up against my darkest impulses because I want to smash it from the world.
	I want to smash your happiness from the world as an affront to my misery.
	I don't know if it's some weird, misguided goal to protect you, to have you hide your happiness from the dark forces that have engulfed us against our will, against our choice.
	I don't know if your light makes my darkness visible to me.
	I don't know if your joy.
	And it's not my misery that I'm scared of.
	It's not my unhappiness that I'm scared of.
	It's my hatred.
	It's my desire to disassemble you.
	Like a broken robot, piece by piece.
	And to turn you into me, and to loose you then, as I will be loosed on the world, to disassemble other people, and turn them into black Lego bricks of endless dysfunction.
	I don't know what is driving me to feel this way, but I see your happiness, and I want to shred it.
	I want to tear it limb from limb.
	I want to destroy it.
	I want to destroy you.
	And I know, I know, that will only give me the tiniest and most momentary relief from the hell that is me.
	But I am so bitter and I am so broken that I will take even the slightest gap in the blackness.
	Like a man drinking from a moose track in the woods because he's so thirsty.
	I don't care how much bacteria is in there.
	If I don't drink something, I feel I'm going to die.
	And I know that harming you Breaking you.
	Wet fingering out your candle wick of joy will only give me a slight, slight relief for my own existence.
	But I will take that because I don't know if there will ever be anything else for me.
	What do you think she would say to something like that?
	I don't know what she would say.
	What would you say to someone like that if someone said something like that to you?
	I would probably...
	Sorry, I said probably again.
	I would give them a hug and say, I appreciate your honesty and your And what would you feel if someone said that to you?
	I would feel sad for them.
	Or...
	What else?
	Not angry or anything, but sad.
	I was...
	It's the feeling I would get.
	And I'm not going to disagree with any of that, but I think that there's an element that is there but I think that there's an element that is there that you're not aware of.
	I'm just saying I think, I don't know.
	If somebody who lived in your house and would live in your house for the next 10 years-- I got disconnected.
	Allegorically?
	I got disconnected literally.
	I'm just saying, I think, I don't know, but I think that there is an element that you're not connecting to.
	And I could be wrong, so don't let me make you feel that there's something missing if there's nothing missing.
	But I'll tell you, my feeling, William, would be if somebody was in my house Who wanted to destroy my happiness and was going to be living in my house for the next 10 years, do you know what I would also feel?
	Fear.
	Yeah.
	Because you gave very sentimentalized and abstract, like, oh, feel sad or sympathy or give that person a hug and so on.
	It's like, man, William, I move into your house.
	I say, I really, really want to hurt you.
	I really, really want to destroy any chance of happiness that you might have.
	And I'm going to be here for the next 10 years.
	When you come home from work, when you wake up on the weekends, when you go to bed at night, when you're sleeping, I'm going to be here and I want to destroy you.
	Yeah.
	Now, if you can empathize with other people's fear of you, then, then you can make an apology mean something.
	Yeah.
	Does that make sense?
	It does make sense, yeah.
	And I've, well, this one sister, Sarah, I have apologized about this.
	No, no, no, come back, come back.
	No, no, no, you're going into abstract self-justification land.
	Uh-huh.
	Right?
	What I said was, if you can connect with how much you frightened them, your apology will mean something, and now you're telling me that you already have apologized, though you haven't connected with how much you scared them.
	Yeah, that's what's missing, I think.
	So don't start justifying things.
	And what's your relationship to joy at the moment?
	Let me ask you this.
	I mean, I do some joyful casts, right?
	I have fun with what I'm doing.
	I'm passionately committed, or should be committed to what I'm doing.
	When you hear me enjoying myself in a podcast, what's your emotional experience with that?
	It's fun.
	I like to listen to your jokes.
	Some jokes, not all.
	I agree with that.
	I'm very much, you know, I'm not...
	I'm not a sniper.
	I'm basically like, if I shoot enough times, I'm going to hit something.
	That's my judgment.
	So when I'm happy, this doesn't offend your sensibilities as much, right?
	Of course not.
	Why?
	You say, of course not, like, well, I hated the happiness of my siblings.
	Your happiness is great.
	What's the difference?
	The difference is my age or my growth.
	I think I've changed from despising happiness to enjoying it.
	I don't feel jealous or anger when I see people having a good time.
	I don't have that...
	No.
	Now you give...
	Look, we all feel that sometimes.
	Yeah.
	I mean, everybody feels that.
	Like, if you just...
	I don't know.
	It can be as simple as you have a headache.
	Uh-huh.
	Right?
	And people are, like, roller skating with music in their ears.
	I mean, I think we all feel that.
	It's not a constant thing, but I think there's always a resentment that happens from time to time when...
	Other people are doing well and we're not in that space for whatever reason, right?
	So this is what I mean.
	You're giving me these abstractions.
	You're painting with this wide brush and I'm asking for detail.
	I just, I don't feel that.
	Like, I just, you know what I mean?
	I think that's a human being alive who doesn't...
	What is it?
	Gore Vidal said, it is not enough that we succeed.
	Our friends must also fail.
	Now, that's obviously pretty petty, and I don't agree with that.
	But we do all have some of that in us, right?
	Yeah, yeah, of course.
	But you're just giving me this, no, no, no, I'm loving...
	Happiness is great.
	I love happiness.
	It's just I can't remember the last time it happened.
	Maybe it's happened...
	And I don't remember it, but...
	Alright, let's go back to 10, because I don't want to get these commercials, right?
	This is like Super Bowl break time, right?
	So, William, let's go back to when you were 10.
	I know.
	I got it.
	Finally, the plug goes in the socket.
	Okay.
	Wait, like literally something?
	When you are 10 and your sister, Sarah, is happy...
	You are not happy, right?
	Correct, yes.
	If she were very kind, let's just go on a tour of Crazy Town, which is not irrational.
	Let's just go with the premise.
	So you're miserable and she's happy.
	If she cared about you, what would she do?
	Invite me to play with her or be with her and do something or...
	No.
	So if I'm...
	Let me give you an example, right?
	So when I was...
	I don't know.
	It's so fucking long ago.
	Who knows what the...
	I think I was seven or eight years old.
	And I lived in the kind of environment which is incomprehensible to young people these days, for the most part, unless you live out in the country.
	Which basically is...
	Go out with no money, find kids to play with, and come back at like 7 o'clock.
	It'd be like 4 o'clock.
	Just go out at the age of 7.
	Just go out into the neighborhood.
	Do whatever.
	Just don't be home.
	And these days, I mean, it's like this weird gulag apicalago childhood where...
	People have...
	You've got to be modest.
	Even though it's way safer for kids now than it was when I was a kid.
	It was basically just...
	You have no money.
	Just go out and find someone to do...
	And we would go into the woods and we'd play war or we'd build forts or we'd do treasure hunts or hide and go seek or whatever.
	Nobody had any money.
	You didn't go to movies.
	We used to go Saturday mornings for 10 pennies.
	You'd be able to watch a bunch of shorts and cartoons and stuff.
	But anyway, so you'd go out...
	At the age of seven, you'd be out for hours and hours.
	This would be like all Saturday.
	Just get on the bus, go somewhere if you had a couple of pennies or whatever.
	Go swimming if you had like, I think it was five pennies to go swimming.
	Anyway.
	Now I remember one time I don't know what the hell my mom used to wash stuff in, but I think it was a combination of soap and acid, because my clothes were just like sandpaper, washboard, shark skin, god-awful, scrape-your-skin stuff sometimes.
	And I would remember being out in the summer, and I was running around, running around, and I got this sensitivity chemical rash on my inside thighs, And I was walking back home and I was like half crying because I had to walk like John Wayne after a stint in prison because I had to keep my thighs apart because they were so sensitive.
	I had to keep the thighs not just apart from each other but away from this godforsaken skin crawling Satan fabric.
	And a friend of mine ran up with a football, a soccer ball, and was like, hey Steph, come play!
	We're having a soccer game!
	I got mad at him!
	And do you know why?
	Because the soccer game would provoke the fabric irritation?
	No.
	Well, he didn't know that this was happening, so...
	Six words.
	What?
	I'll give you the first five, you give me the last one.
	Okay, let's go.
	Can't you see I'm in?
	Pain?
	Yeah.
	Huh, yeah.
	I'm walking along, I'm half crying, I'm walking funny, and he's like, hey, come play soccer!
	Yeah, his happiness was unempathetic to your pain.
	Referring to my sister, you mean that her happiness was unempathetic to my unhappiness.
	She saw me being sad or not happy or neutral and she was dancing and prancing.
	Let me tell you, if you can't see my pain, I will fucking make you see my pain.
	Yeah, of course.
	Now we're somewhere, right?
	Yeah.
	Okay, so tell me what that meant to you.
	Yeah, I understand.
	No, don't understand.
	Tell me what that meant for you.
	Oh, you're so abstract, man.
	Yeah, I know.
	Okay, so let's get back.
	When I said...
	If you won't see my pain, I will fucking make you see my pain.
	And you went, yeah.
	There was something from your lizard brain, not from your elf brain, right?
	So, what was that when I said that?
	The...
	The feeling that, like...
	I inflicted it on my sister to...
	Like...
	Like make her see how I was feeling or make her see the pain or the suffering.
	Right.
	So you probably experienced her happiness as an insult to you, as an affront to you.
	Yeah, but of course she couldn't help it.
	No, no, no, forget that.
	Stay with your ten-year-old.
	Don't give me this, oh, I'm empathetic, if I were John Bradshaw at the age of ten with a good child.
	No, give me your, stay with the ten-year-olds, right?
	Because this is what you're apologizing for.
	Don't give me this abstract crap, right?
	So, she comes in and she's happy and you're miserable.
	What do you most want her to do?
	Stop being happy.
	I want her to see that I'm not happy and maybe ask why.
	It's like the family's driving away and they don't even notice that you're not in the car.
	A terrible memory from my childhood was before I went to boarding school, my brother was there for a year ahead of me.
	And my mother and I went to go and visit him for a day.
	I remember this story, actually.
	Yeah.
	But not everyone's heard every podcast.
	Of course.
	My mother, I don't know if she got it wrong or got the day wrong or whatever, but we had a train to catch and she dropped my brother off and the boarding school was locked.
	There was nobody there.
	She just dropped him off at the age of seven.
	He was just bawling.
	How terrifying.
	Yeah, just dropping you off at the empty house, empty school.
	It was a giant school.
	Just dropping you off.
	It's locked.
	Nobody there.
	Night is falling.
	Bye-bye.
	And I watched him as we drove away in the cab.
	Yeah.
	I never knew what happened.
	And that feeling, I get what he felt was that they're abandoning me basically in this giant hellhole of a haunted complex and Well, I don't know if anyone's even here.
	Night's falling.
	What the hell am I going to do?
	We couldn't even...
	It was in the middle of nowhere.
	It wasn't even like in a town.
	He could have, like, starved, or I don't know.
	He could have...
	Yeah, exposure.
	It was cold.
	Yeah.
	Well, maybe not starved, but yeah, he could have...
	You need water.
	Yeah, he'd need water.
	Well, just, I mean, and how traumatic would it be?
	Yeah.
	All night.
	Sure.
	It's in the woods, nowhere...
	Wolves, who knows, right?
	Terrifying.
	So, we're just driving away.
	And his tears are not lasso enough to pull us back.
	Because, you know, mom had a train to catch.
	So, the idea of saying, well, we're not going to get this train, right?
	Now, I was four and a half or five, so I don't feel like, oh, I should have reasoned with my mom.
	But it was a terrible situation, and his pain was not enough to alter my mother's behavior.
	I think that changed permanently their relationship.
	I think that sense of his terror, his fear, his hatred, his panic, his Horror at the situation.
	I think that...
	I never saw that from him again, with her.
	Ever.
	I think that was the sever.
	I think that was the cut.
	Just my opinion.
	The child and parent bond?
	Yeah, I think that was it.
	Yeah, probably.
	I think that was it.
	And I think that he never went back to that vulnerability again.
	Yeah, that's the problem when you abuse or inflict pain, you can never have that...
	Well, how can you trust?
	Where's the trust?
	You're abandoning me at a big, giant, old, scary place in the woods, driving off in the dark.
	I'm seven.
	I mean, how the hell is he ever going to feel secure again?
	Huge sympathy for that.
	Terrible.
	So, my point is, if...
	And let's forget about your perspective now, right?
	Because you don't do it now.
	The perspective as the child is important.
	It's essential.
	It is.
	If she cared about you, what would she do?
	I mean, imagine if you were hosting a dinner party and friends were over, like 20 people around, and...
	You cut yourself really badly.
	Like, really badly.
	Like, blood squirting, like, stitches, hospital, thumb hanging by half a thread.
	And everyone's like, oh, William, would you pass me the potatoes?
	I say, fine wine.
	Mighty chili for this time of year.
	What, what?
	And you'd be like, the fuck?
	Yeah, everybody's blind to my pain.
	See all this blood on the ceiling?
	You know?
	Yeah.
	Like, that would be completely fucked up, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	That would be like...
	These are insane people.
	And there would be like a really...
	There'd be a fuck you element to that, right?
	We are not going to acknowledge that you're hurt.
	We're not going to acknowledge that you're upset.
	We're not going to any of that.
	Just pretend like nothing's happened.
	Like nothing's happened.
	Now, from your childhood perspective...
	The people who you really wanted to care about your unhappiness was who?
	My parents.
	Of course.
	And why do you want your parents to care about your happiness and your unhappiness?
	Because if they care about your unhappiness, if they care about your unhappiness, Then you can trust and feel more secure that they will not try to make you unhappy, right?
	Yeah.
	But if they don't care about your unhappiness, or if even worse, they enjoy or relish your unhappiness, right?
	Then there's no possibility of security.
	So you really, really, William, wanted your parents to care about your unhappiness.
	I did.
	I mean, the other night we do these brain teasers in, you know, sometimes from time to time.
	And my daughter got one.
	I'll read it another time.
	It's just like, it blew my mind.
	And she got it like, bang!
	And I was so excited.
	I was literally jumping up and down.
	I was chasing her to kiss her brain.
	I think that stuff's amazing.
	And it's so cool to see happen.
	Anyway, but she didn't get the next one and she started to get upset.
	And then she didn't get the next one either.
	And then she started crying.
	And it was because she was so excited about the positive response and all that, right?
	Yeah.
	We so much care about what our parents think of us.
	And because she's so independent and so argumentative at times, which I'm not exactly going to complain about because I might have an idea where it comes from.
	But I forget, of course, sometimes.
	Not like I forget, but it's like I'm not as clear about how dependent she is and how much my opinion and perspective means to her.
	But you really...
	Wanted someone to care about your unhappiness, right?
	And when you are miserable, if you're bleeding at the dinner party and everyone's having a great time, that's kind of a fuck you, right?
	Wait, I lost you here emotionally.
	Where did you go?
	I'm here, but I understand, yeah, the pain...
	No, no, emotionally you just unplugged.
	So what happened there?
	Where did that...
	I don't know.
	Did you notice?
	How do you feel at the moment?
	Well, I feel neutral at the moment.
	Okay, so what that means is that we're not talking about something that's connecting with you?
	Which is fine, I just don't want to waste time if we're not, right?
	Okay.
	Because I think you took it as an insult that your sister...
	Didn't care that you were unhappy and was just having her merry old time, despite the fact that you were stewing in nihilistic misery.
	How dare you be happy when I'm traumatized?
	How dare you enjoy the dinner party while I'm bleeding on the ceiling?
	Of course.
	So then it becomes almost like self-defense, if that makes sense.
	If you'd like, I don't know, if you're up to it, then maybe if I can do some role play, like if I try to apologize and you're my, let's say you're my sister.
	No, no, no, no.
	Oh, God, no.
	So far from the apology.
	If you want to be the 10-year-old, or if I want to be the 10-year-old, we can do that.
	But I don't think we're at the apology place yet.
	Because you're disconnected from the motivation for the abuse.
	Mm-hmm.
	So we started exploring.
	I got one, yeah, from you.
	How dare you not notice I'm in pain.
	But after that, it's just disconnected.
	So I don't want to do an apology from a state of disconnectedness.
	You need to do an apology from a state of real emotional connectedness.
	Because otherwise they can't trust it.
	You want to do it again, right?
	That's…yeah, I think that's the key.
	I don't know if I can get to that place.
	The place is trying to get to you.
	You have to take a plane.
	The place is trying to get to you.
	Your 10-year-old suffered enormously.
	I'm getting a sense of just how much you suffered as a child.
	And it's pretty fucking black.
	And it's pretty fucking bleak.
	You suffered enormously as a child.
	Hatred of joy does not come out of the fact that you stubbed your toe or had a sunburn or didn't get as good on the test as you wanted, right?
	It comes from a very nihilistic assault upon the very foundations of your personality.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	It's that line from the Dread Pirate Roberts.
	In The Princess Bride, life is pain.
	Anyone who tells you different is trying to sell you something.
	So, no comfort, assault, attack, verbal put-downs, humiliations, and a complete lack of empathy for your suffering.
	Right?
	Now, you couldn't punish your parents Because you needed them to survive, right?
	You couldn't punish your parents' lack of connection or empathy with your suffering, right?
	- No. - But you could punish your sister for her lack of attention to your suffering, But of course your sister was modeling her lack of attention to your suffering on your parents' lack of attention to your suffering.
	And the whole goddamn lot of you kids, the five siblings, were probably quite aware that the first person to show genuine empathy would really get dumped on, right?
	From my parents?
	And from the other siblings perhaps even too, right?
	- Sure. - Well, I think this has stuffed him all over.
	I think this is stuff to maybe talk about.
	I certainly would recommend talking about this stuff with a therapist.
	But I would certainly not, in my opinion, again, I'm just some guy on the internet, but I would not put you in the category of being connected enough for a truly meaningful apology as yet.
	Okay.
	Yeah, it's good that you...
	I mean, you're not consciously fighting me like crazy, but you're fighting me like crazy, right?
	Right.
	Probably.
	Because I asked you earlier, I said, are you going to work with me or are you going to go abstract, right?
	And you're like, I'm going to work with you, man.
	I'm going to work with you.
	I really am.
	Okay, no, I'm not.
	But I'm not going to tell you I'm not going to work with you.
	I'm just going to go, uh-huh, yeah, no, uh-huh, interesting, yeah, uh-huh.
	I'm not criticizing.
	I'm not complaining.
	I'm just pointing it out that I'm noticing, right?
	Because we've got this whole scenario where no one is noticing your pain, right?
	And what's happening is you're disconnecting and you're asking me to break the cycle by noticing the pain that's making you disconnect, right?
	No, you give me that mm-hmm again, right?
	Like I'm giving you some equation.
	You want me to notice that you're disconnecting so I can tell you that I notice that you're disconnecting and that's coming from a place of suffering.
	In other words, I'm now breaking what Sarah, your sister, did at the age of eight.
	And if you can accept that someone has now noticed your suffering and is breaking the cycle by pointing it out without aggression, then you've got something valuable.
	Because you're trying to get me to disconnect by disconnecting yourself so that you can have a repeat of the same cycle of your suffering being ignored by others, right?
	Amen.
	But I get how much suffering there is In your history.
	I get how even this aggression against your sister is a cry for help, is a cry for, I have more suffering than I can bear, my friends, my siblings, my family, my world.
	I have more suffering than I can bear.
	I have no words large enough, there are no words polysyllabic or long enough to encapsulate the length and breadth of my suffering in this house with these people.
	This suffering is far larger than my heart and mind.
	I can only show you my suffering through my aggression.
	I cannot speak my suffering.
	I have no words, big or deep enough, to convey them.
	I can only reproduce my suffering through actions because I cannot encapsulate them through language.
	And I will continue to make people suffer until they notice that I am suffering.
	Thank you.
	But that can never work because the more you make people suffer, the less empathy they can have for you.
	So in this cry for visibility, for your suffering, you are driving people further and further away, as unconsciously you're trying to drive me further and further away, through your emotional disconnection, so that your suffering remains a secret.
	Your suffering remains hidden.
	It keeps you isolated.
	And it gives you the self-satisfaction of self-attack.
	But I know.
	William, I know.
	I know how much you suffered as a child.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	And I also know how much you mourn for the person that you could have been and the child that you could have been, who was, as all children are, born with a heart overflowing with love and attachment and affection and curiosity and happiness.
	And vulnerability.
	And care, concern, empathy.
	My parents, they didn't have enough love for us, or they could maybe spare a little love for one child at the time, or, you know, it was like something we had to compete with, like it was like some game or like a War amongst us.
	We had to scream to get our way and we had to use force to get love from our parents.
	They had to turn you on each other, right?
	Yeah, it was like some hunger games of the family.
	Yeah, because the abuse must be relentless and sometimes they're busy.
	So they must turn you against each other.
	Yeah, they were good at that.
	Of course, my closest sibling, she abused her sister, and she abused her younger brother, and it's like a trickle.
	Now you're back to description and anthropology.
	You're giving me a case history, not your history.
	Okay.
	Which is your present, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	It feels like my...
	I was unloved as a child.
	And No, it's worse than that.
	You're giving me all these absences.
	It's worse than that.
	A child cannot feel unloved.
	Like, the majority of the world doesn't feed me, right?
	Hell, even the majority of my listeners don't feed me.
	But the majority of the world doesn't feed me.
	I don't feel unfed by the world as a whole.
	But if some guy locks me in his basement and doesn't feed me, is he just someone else who doesn't feed me like everyone else?
	No, he's starving.
	He's starving me.
	He's starving me.
	There cannot be an un-ness with parents.
	I mean, the vast majority of the world doesn't love me.
	Or hate me or know anything about me.
	But if my daughter didn't love me, that would not be unloved in the way that everyone else unloves me or doesn't know about me, right?
	There can be no neutrality in a family.
	No, of course.
	That's either love or hate.
	So it's not unloved.
	So I need you to stop bullshitting me, man.
	I need you to stop that.
	Stop giving me all of this neutral garbage.
	Okay?
	What was your experience?
	Don't tell me this unloved stuff.
	They fucking hated me.
	Alright.
	Go on.
	Let's get some honesty out here, man.
	I mean, I know you're not lying to me, but...
	Let's get some facts.
	I mean...
	If my mother, she would criticize her, she would... she would...
	Your voice was starting to tell me the story then you cleared your throat, right?
	Because your voice broke there, right?
	You wavered, and then you cleared your throat.
	push that away, right?
	So I'm going to start again.
	You said they hated you.
	And then you started talking about your mother.
	But don't push it away.
	Just tell me.
	Tell me what it was.
	The way it was.
	All the time she would criticize the behavior of my father while he was away or while he was working or when he was home or whatever.
	But what the fuck?
	I'm I'm half my father.
	I'm half him.
	You hate half of me, at least.
	I'm half of my father, and everything that he does is imprinted upon me.
	She basically hated me.
	And it really felt bad.
	Like, really bad.
	Go on.
	Because...
	I didn't hate my father.
	I had...
	I looked up to my father and I...
	I wish I could...
	Sorry, I can't formulate any more words.
	No, I know, because you went sentimental again, right?
	You tell me that your father's violent, did fistfights and so on, and then you say, but I love my father.
	And you also went into this cliche that, you know, he's half me.
	Now I get that.
	I mean, you know, my mom used to complain about my dad all the time, too.
	I mean, I never really felt my dad's half me, but the difference was my dad wasn't around, so your dad was, and obviously there's more of an imprinting.
	But I'll just tell you, William, my experience, right?
	Because I don't want to obviously tell you your experience, but my experience, when my mom would bitch about my dad, it was really terrifying to me because she never took any ownership of Yeah, she chose him.
	She got to go out on dates and try to...
	My mother's a beautiful woman.
	She was a beautiful woman when she was younger.
	Yeah, my mother was also...
	Anyway.
	Yeah, yeah.
	So, she had her pick.
	She had her pick.
	Yeah.
	And she never said...
	I can't believe I chose a guy.
	And she certainly never ever apologized to me and said, I'm so sorry that I chose a man who didn't stick around or who I couldn't stay with to be your dad.
	I'm sorry.
	That has been harmful to you.
	Your mother, can you imagine her saying, William, I'm sorry I chose a man that you had fistfights with and you had to call the cops four times.
	She's never apologized for it and they've since divorced and So she couldn't stand him after a while, but she's never apologized for him being your dad.
	Actually, it was my dad who made the divorce proceedings.
	But she has, to this day, she has no ownership over her choosing him.
	She feels like he's...
	He's to blame, like he's changed or something.
	I don't know what her excuse is, but, you know, it's like she has no power or that she...
	Yeah, I mean, and they also play this game which was...
	No one could have seen it coming, right?
	Yeah.
	It was impossible to know ahead of time that this behavior could even be remotely a possibility.
	Married a dolphin, turned into a sea turtle.
	Strange alchemy, right?
	No history, no parallel, no precedent.
	I've told my mother this, or I've done the analogy, I think you've done it as well, with the car.
	If you wanted a Volvo, why did you buy a Volkswagen or whatever?
	I'm going to assume your dad had a lot of money, right?
	Yeah, he has a lot of money.
	Yeah, so I mean, it's just basically tits for cash.
	I hate to put it that crudely, but it's base mammalian monkey shit, right?
	Eggs for sale.
	Appetizing young eggs for sale.
	One of them will grow up and be William who calls into the show.
	Anyway.
	Yeah, so it's primitive stuff, right?
	And same thing, Mike.
	I've heard this from women.
	Oh, man.
	Look, we're not going to do the emotional thing, right?
	Because you've touched on it a bit, but it's something you need to work on with a therapist, in my humble opinion.
	And I've got to move on in a sec.
	But I will say this.
	And look, great call.
	I mean, I hugely appreciate the courage, the honesty, the trust to call in.
	But yeah, no, I've heard this from A woman from many years ago.
	She married this guy and she thought he was going to be all this and fries on the side, you know?
	Oh, he was doing this, he was doing that, he was going to be successful at this, that, and the other, and I thought he was just, you know, he was writing music, he was doing TV, and I thought he was going to just, you know, and now, like, look where I'm living, you know?
	It's like, oh, you wanted status, and all you got was a husband.
	All you got...
	Was the father of your children.
	And this resentment of like, I thought my eggs were worth more than this.
	Bait and switch.
	I mean, yeah, you know, I thought he was going to be higher status for me.
	And he wasn't.
	So what I'm going to do is nag the shit out of him, because I chose wrong, or I can't adjust to my choices.
	Yeah, and everybody in society just agrees with these women, or they're just like, yeah, yeah, it seems reasonable, or...
	Yeah, no, and it's funny, you know.
	I mean, let me just give you a tiny rant if you don't mind.
	But before we move to that, I mean, how was the conversation about your history for you?
	I mean, I wish I could be more there or more connected or something, but I'll give a listen back to it and see.
	Yeah, yeah, listen back to it.
	Maybe I'll hear the...
	Yeah, and call back in if you can't get anywhere.
	But is there anything you think I could have done differently or better that might have helped with that?
	Or was it as far as we could get?
	Yeah, you did a good job because every time I would abstract or give non-answers, you would tell me.
	So yeah, it was effective.
	So to say.
	Alright.
	Okay, so here's what's funny about women.
	And this is not all women.
	Usual disclaimers, but nobody listens to you.
	Anyway.
	But this is what's funny about women.
	This is literally what a lot of women, what goes on, right?
	Alright.
	I like this guy.
	You know what I'm going to do?
	I'm going to color my hair.
	I'm going to put on makeup, lipstick, blush, eyeshadow, mascara.
	I'm going to put on perfume.
	I'm going to shave my legs in anticipation of carnal cough scrubbing.
	I'm going to get a giant Meccano push-up wonder bra that basically puts my tits somewhere up around my eyebrows.
	I'm going to wear a low-cut dress.
	And I'm going to pretend to be a lot saner than I really am.
	And I'm going to get my teeth polished and I'm going to use teeth whitening and I might even get some Botox if I'm a little over the hill.
	And I'm going to not talk about any financial troubles I might be going through.
	And I'm going to pretend to be a lot more successful than I am.
	And then they, you know, date a guy and all that and After all of this Spanx-encrusted fakery, women have the nerve and the gall to say, He's not who I thought he was.
	Yeah, it's hilarious.
	Are you kidding me?
	It reminds me of the Chris Rock bit where he screams that...
	Those aren't your real tits!
	Those aren't your real tits.
	Those aren't your real height.
	You ain't that tall.
	Yeah.
	This is a woman's lie, right?
	The man's lie is, no, I was at the club with Ralph on Thursday.
	Here's a woman's lie.
	This is your baby!
	But this idea, like, flip through a woman's magazine.
	I mean, these creatures who are the top.00001% of attractive women still need makeup and airbrushing and Photoshop, and then they have the nerve to say to a man, he's not who I thought he was.
	Yeah, it's quite hilarious.
	Look at the makeup stuff that goes on YouTube or anywhere.
	Before and after makeup.
	But he's not who I thought he was.
	Look at René Zellweger's weird plastic kneecap face.
	He's not who I thought he was.
	Dear God.
	You know, like a picture emerged somehow from the fashion industrial complex of Cindy Crawford, who is, I don't know, In her 50s, I think.
	She's had a couple of kids.
	And she was at some Italian photo shoot and they managed to get a picture of her with, guess what?
	A dimpled belly from childbearing.
	Right?
	And everyone's like, wow!
	She's so brave!
	Oh yeah, that's super brave.
	You know, men, we have to go to war!
	Right?
	We get killed on the job 98% of the time.
	And for a woman, it's like, I have wrinkles from having a baby.
	I've been a supermodel.
	That's what I'm going to call courage.
	Madness.
	Absolute madness.
	I mean, seeing an un-made-up woman's face and then seeing a made-up woman's face And then women have the nerve to say, well, this isn't what I signed up for.
	He just changed.
	He changed his underwear, not his entire fucking complexion.
	I mean, the whole makeup industry is about making women appear that they're climaxing permanently.
	Oh, really?
	You know, like the red lips and the flushed face, and it's like, oh, permagasm by L'Oreal.
	That's all it is.
	It's all it is.
	Permanent, erotic coming all over the subway.
	And then after basically putting permanent climax o-faces on their skin, they say...
	Well, you know, sometimes men can sexually harass women.
	Okay, but basically you have porn face.
	That's what makeup is.
	It's porn face.
	This is how my lips would look if I was incredibly sexually aroused.
	This is how I would smell if I was about to orgasm.
	This is what my cheeks would look like if I was about to orgasm and young.
	And look, this stuff around my eyes makes my eyes look whiter, which is youth.
	And this dye around my hair makes my hair look young.
	Ah, man.
	And then women say, he's just not the man I married.
	Really?
	See.
	You and a team of 19,000 specialists make the woman I married?
	19,000 specialists have gone away.
	What's left?
	Anyway, I could do that for quite a while, but I just wanted to mention this.
	It's just kind of funny to me that so much of women's appearance is this devotional obsession to appear not who they are.
	Yeah, I mean, it feels like it's very, like, time-consuming.
	Like, they could do something else than, like, painting on their face.
	Hey, how about virtue?
	Yeah, virtue.
	A couple of sit-ups, you know?
	Yeah.
	It's all right.
	Some lunges won't kill you.
	Well, the sit-ups and stuff, that's also vanity, I guess.
	But, you know, yeah, you're right.
	No, I think having a good core, I think having a good core is important.
	You know, like, I... I took a bunch of kids cross-country skiing for two hours the other day.
	It's good to be healthy.
	It's good to have a strong core and all that.
	It's not all about six pack and all that.
	No, it's funny.
	I'm sort of having to go through this with my daughter.
	We have magazines occasionally around the house and it's like, she's not a human being.
	She's not.
	She is not a human being.
	That's not her face.
	That's not her body.
	Particularly, of course, if it's a photo, because they're all just gum beat out like crazy, right?
	And I just really wanted to point out, this is a form of sadistic art, like women's fashion and makeup and those magazines.
	It's just sadistic art.
	That's all it is.
	It's like, I'm going to make you feel like shit, and you can pay me to dig you out of that shit for a little while.
	It makes looking like a human being the equivalent of original sin in Catholicism.
	Hey, I've cursed you for just being alive.
	So pay me every week to take that curse away.
	Oh, it came back.
	Come back next week and pay me again.
	Now I'm going to curse you, says the fashion industrial complex.
	I'm going to curse you with the original sin called looking like a fucking human woman.
	And I can take away that curse for copious amounts of money.
	Copious amounts of money.
	I can take the curse away that you actually look like a bipedal human female with skin.
	Take that curse away.
	Pay up!
	And I'll take you away from the hell.
	And of course it's a race to the bottom or it's an arms race so to speak because if you're the only woman who doesn't, you're like, men are like, I don't know, I thought that's what women look like and I look at you and I'm like, whoa.
	I saw a picture on the internet the other day which was sort of like, why you should always take your date swimming on the first date?
	Because there was a picture of some woman who looked great in makeup and then they took the makeup off and it was like, whoa.
	What is that?
	And so you take your date swimming and it's like, yep.
	That's what she looks like.
	I mean, I'm the guy who stares into an ultra-high-definition camera And it's like, hey, didn't know I had freckles until high def came along, at least not that many.
	I'm like this constellation of mud splatters.
	And, you know, I'm putting makeup on.
	This is how I look, like it or not.
	This is how I look.
	And men get that luxury and women say, well, we can't.
	We can't.
	We just can't.
	We have to look this way, because otherwise...
	Oh, so men are supposed to overcome all of our gender programming and be sensitive and be non-competitive and be supportive and be sweet.
	So we have to overcome all of our programming by gender.
	But you can't.
	You can't.
	You just can't.
	Okay, so men are strong and you're weak.
	That's how you're going to approach this question of gender equality, right?
	Men can overcome their programming.
	But women, we can't.
	Can't go out without makeup.
	I mean, I remember when I was working up north.
	Oh, man.
	I think it was my second year.
	I didn't do it for, like, many years straight.
	It was my second year, and I was in a town, a little town called New Liskard.
	And I was processing a bunch of samples using some godforsaken machine.
	I can't even remember.
	I can't remember.
	Anyway.
	We were separating the gold from the silt, from the sand, from the whatever, right?
	And there was this woman who was working with me.
	And we were like, oh shit, we need a tool.
	We've got to head into town, right?
	We were in a camp.
	And she's like, great.
	I need an hour and a half.
	I'm like...
	I'm sorry, what?
	No, we have to go into town.
	We're working.
	This thing broke.
	We need to fix it.
	We need to...
	Whatever, right?
	Got to go into town.
	I said I need an hour and a half.
	I said, why?
	Are you a replicant?
	Do you need to contact the mothership?
	And she said, well, no.
	I have to put my face on.
	First of all, you have one.
	I need to attach my secondary penis to go to town.
	Like it...
	No, I can't!
	And she went into a tent with a mirror and put makeup on and did her hair, and it's like, we're going to a goddamn hardware store.
	Now that's an extreme, I hope, I think, I pray, an extreme example.
	But, yeah, so the idea that women complain that They didn't get what they signed up for with a man.
	I don't know.
	It's like Bernie Madoff claiming that somebody faked him out in some manner.
	It's like, well, you know.
	Anyway.
	So, sorry, I just wanted to mention that because this lack of responsibility stuff is kind of bad.
	It was a good rant.
	I don't know how we got there, but...
	Because you were talking about how your mom wasn't taking any responsibility and your dad just changed and no one could have seen it.
	He wasn't the man I married!
	Yeah.
	So let's say the women who spent four hours in hair and makeup before stepping down the aisle.
	Yeah.
	That doesn't change over your wedding night.
	Yeah.
	But it feels like it should be more obvious.
	Why does the pillow look like your face?
	I'm sorry?
	No, I said it was...
	It feels like it should be more obvious to people, but I guess it's not, or it's hid, or I don't know.
	It's not hidden if you go to the supermarket.
	Yeah, no, yeah.
	There's like aisles and aisles and aisles of perfume and gadgets.
	Oh God, just go to a mall.
	Go to a mall.
	There's one electronic store you can drop the husband at, and the rest of it is all like, here's shoes to make your ass up around your shoulder blades.
	Here's handbags that cost as much as a small car.
	And here's a store full of unbelievable creams that seem like a gay alchemist from the 14th century.
	Anyway, go on and on.
	But yeah, just look at malls and then tell me about the patriarchy, dammit.
	Anyway.
	Alright, listen, I think we've got time for another caller, but I hope, hope, hope you'll continue to pursue this.
	Your siblings are lucky.
	In my opinion, that you are focusing on this stuff.
	It will serve you well.
	You will connect with it.
	And just drop us an email.
	Let us know how it goes after you listen back to this, because I think that will be some useful stuff.
	Can I just say one last word or sentence?
	Yeah, I enjoyed the conversation.
	It was fun.
	And I'll listen back to it.
	And I'd just like to thank you.
	From the bottom of my heart really for what you're doing to influence the world in a peaceful way to combat child abuse and I feel tremendously hopeful of the world and because of you actually.
	It's a real joy to live life now that I've Started this journey.
	So thank you really from the bottom of my heart.
	And yeah, I hope everybody donates to you that listens or the ones that haven't yet and know that they should, they really should because it changes the way that you think and listen to the show.
	It really does.
	So thank you so much.
	Thank you, William.
	It's very, very kind.
	I really, really appreciate that.
	Thank you, everybody, as always, so, so much.
	ideas and your openness, your honesty, your vulnerability is incredibly inspiring to me and reminds me of the work that we all do and that I have to do and everyone has to do, I think, or should do to work at opening our hearts and freeing our minds and securing or should do to work at opening our hearts and freeing our So thanks everyone.
	Have yourselves a wonderful, wonderful night.
	We will talk to you on Wednesday, which I guess will be March.
	And please don't forget, freedomainradio.com slash donate.
	We need you.
	There.
	Look, there's my vulnerability.
	Please help us out.
	freedomainradio.com slash donate.
	Have a great night.

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