2974 How to ‘Find Yourself’ - Call In Show - May 13th, 2015
Question 1: My band is working with others musicians and interacting with a manager and label. What level of intimacy and connection should I have as a standard in order to achieve success? What is your experience of working with others in business? What made your business relationships successful? Do you have any advice and tips on working with others in business? | Question 2: What does it mean to "find yourself" and why is it so often associated with being attainable through travel and ‘getting lost?’ | Question 3: I’m a single father of a young daughter and am interested in dating again. While I know how to date I have no idea how to appropriately filter my daughter’s insight into my dating life - do you have any suggestions? I’m also concerned about the type of woman that would be interested in dating a single father. Does a single father have any chance of finding a ‘good woman’ when the single mothers in my extended social web seem to only find jerks?
Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
I come to you in a subdued state, having just tackled almost three hours of George Washington material without a break.
I actually did it without any significant flubs except Potomac.
Potomac!
Anyway, but for the most part it was great.
So I hope you'll check out The Truth About George Washington, which I guess will probably be up before this video is up.
So look a video or two back, The Truth About George Washington.
If there's one Presentation you're gonna watch.
Other than this one, of course.
I would suggest that one.
It's really good.
Mostly because of the research.
All right.
Oh, freedomainradio.com slash donate.
Please help us out.
I know, I know the economy grinds on in its ungodly manner.
But, you know, $10, $20 a month or a one-time donation, we really need your help.
And we can't survive without you.
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All right.
Let's move on.
Alright.
First caller today is George Washington.
Wait, no, no.
First caller today is Matt.
I think that's what's called a get.
Colloquially.
That would be a get.
It does under 10,000 YouTube views because George Washington is so many centuries ago.
But, if you put tits on him...
Can George Washington wear a low-cut top for the thumbnail?
That's the question.
That's right.
And for those of you into bad dentistry fetishes, do we have the powdered head for you?
Okay.
I had a guy I knew when I was younger saw a woman.
I can't remember if it was a woman, a man with really wide-spaced teeth.
And he's like, man, that woman could eat a ham sandwich sideways through Venetian blinds.
Shall we do a show just full of bad dentistry jokes at this point?
I feel it's an avenue we should explore.
You could tie this into my work on the truth about David Letterman.
Yeah, he's got a pretty good smile, right?
They actually wanted him to fix his teeth before he had his big first television break, and he said no.
That's what Freddie Mercury said.
He's like, because he had these, like, seriously Stonehenge upper chompers, and he's like, hey, they're healthy teeth, and what if it changes my singing voice to have my teeth fixed?
Well, that was the thing with Letterman.
He tried, like, these inserts, and he was just, like, slurring his words, and yeah, so he said, yeah, that's not going to work.
No, the inserts that made Letterman slur his words were copious amounts of alcohol, but I'm sure this will be cleared up in the presentation.
Yeah.
Another thing for folks to look forward to, the truth about David Letterman coming up very, very shortly.
All right.
All right.
Up first today is Matthew.
He wrote in and said, I'm a writer slash producer slash performer in a band my friend and I founded.
We are working with other musicians and interacting with a manager and label.
They are competent musically and the manager is highly successful.
But what level for intimacy and connection should I set as my standard in order to achieve success?
What is your experience of working with others in business?
What made your business relationship successful?
Do you have any advice and tips on working with others in business?
Well, they're always successful.
Until they're not.
Well, Mike, I guess this is something that you and I could chat about.
I mean, we're friends.
We work together.
We have what could somewhat be called a business, I guess, depending on how you classify it.
What are your thoughts?
Is your manager bald, Matthew?
I think that's very important.
Shaved head?
No, he's not.
That's a no-go.
Sorry, just by the by, I was out for dinner with some friends this last weekend, and they're kids, and apparently there's a cure for baldness that's been discovered.
And it's not a time machine.
Neither is it copious amounts of female hormones that give you a nice head of hair, but unfortunately, a voice like John Anderson of yes.
I have hair, but I'm growing breasts.
Oh, boy.
That's right.
And the consensus around the table, since I sort of asked everyone, is that the guy who I'm friends with, who's not as balding as I am, but that he should...
Take the Hair Regrow Tonic.
But I should not.
And nobody could come up with any particularly great reasons.
It would be weird, though, because my wife has never known me with hair, so she definitely don't.
But, yeah, I just thought that was kind of interesting.
Okay, just for shifts and giggles, I want to see you with a wig now, Steph.
We need to get you a rug.
FDRdonate.com.
Do you think?
Go to the wig fund.
Or you could get that weird undead, weird bit of like tumbleweed that's on top of David Letterman's forehead.
You know, it's like it's been hanging on there for like 40 years or something.
All right.
Sorry, man.
Sorry, let's get back.
Working with others.
Well, this commonality of goal is pretty important.
You're always going to have disagreements with people you work with, right?
That's always going to happen.
And the way that we try...
You know, and if Stoy wants to get in on this too, he's certainly welcome to, but the way that we try to align our disagreements here at Free Domain Radio is to try and figure out what is our goal.
And the goal is not obviously spread philosophy, this and that and the other, but what's the metric of that goal?
And sometimes it's like donations, and sometimes it's views, and other times it's new listeners, and other times it's, you know, a variety of things.
What are we particularly passionate about or enthusiastic about at a given time as well?
Because that often comes across in the works.
So that's important to keep in mind as a consideration.
And apparently, according to some portions of the listenership, what are we passionate about that involves defending policemen?
That seems to be a pretty key part of...
Just because they're facts doesn't mean I love the state.
Anyway, so, and there are times where it's like, oh man, you know, we really need some donations, so we try and figure out what's most important that, and it's like, oh, okay, donations aren't too bad, so let's really focus on what can help get new listeners in and all that.
So, it's sort of a shifting matrix.
So, I guess the question is, what is the band for?
Right.
I guess the goal is to spread good art using mass media.
It's like how I've reduced it down to that.
Too generic.
Okay.
Everybody wants to spread good art and everybody wants to use mass media.
I hate to be annoying, but it's got to be a little bit more lasery and a little bit less like Moonlight.
Oh, yeah, I know.
That's my most reduced kind of form of it.
But yeah, so the goal is to really communicate kind of ideas of freedom and kind of be a model for living a good life, living with kind of volition and free will and Kind of be a model for people to, you know, show them the truth.
That's the power of art, I think, to me, is the ability that you can show truth at the perceptive level, you know?
So people can kind of look and feel empowered.
You know, I don't like that goal of hiding the brushstrokes, You know, I want to empower people to be like, you can come and do this too.
And the goal of it is to kind of really passionately communicate the truth.
Yeah.
All right.
So that's great.
Still a bit generic if you want my feedback.
Yeah, that's great.
Because the question is, how are you going to measure that, right?
Yeah.
We've empowered 12 people.
So that which you cannot measure, you cannot manage.
And that which you cannot manage is very difficult to negotiate, right?
Right.
Can you explain that a bit more?
Well, so Mike, how often in a month do I say, let's focus on views, not donations, and then complain about low donations?
It seems it switches every other day.
Every other day, right.
It's...
Now, what Mike doesn't realize is it actually switches much more often than that.
He just dips in every other day.
Right.
So it has to be...
So do you want...
How are you going to judge the success?
So obviously you're going to put your content in and the philosophy, I assume, it's going to come out of two places.
One is the lyrics, of course, and the other is the sense of life of music, right?
So there is that sort of...
A peppy, enthusiastic, technically excellent sound of people like Rush.
And then there is the, you know, dragging your soulless hide through a dungeon of semi-Nazism known as Pink Floyd.
And there is just like a wide variety of different ways that the sense of life can come out through the music.
And I actually prefer Pink Floyd too.
Because I can only sound a certain amount of a hobbit screaming in sounds higher than Wattleman should produce.
Who's going to be the lyricist in the band?
Bryn, my friend, he is the principal writer at the moment.
I do some writing, but he's principally the lyricist and the front man.
Alright, and so is your goal to, because there's a tension, right?
If you are, you know, an explicitly anarchist atheist band, that is going to limit your consumability by the general media.
Trust me, I can tell you for sure it is going to limit your capacity to get out into the mass media.
Although there are bands like Rage Against the Machine and things like that that are explicitly, you know, do that kind of thing, right?
But, yeah.
That's true.
That's true.
I'm not sure how philosophical they are.
The phrase rage, they have something to do with the clue around that.
Of course, when they were younger, it was just irritation at the Tonka toy.
Now, it is, like, it's really gone full florid.
But so there's a balance there, right?
So the degree to which you wish to have integrity to follow the ideas and the reason and the evidence wherever it leads is the degree to which you're going to annoy people.
Now, some people are mature enough to be annoyed and, you know, accept that and say, well, just because I'm annoyed doesn't mean that whatever.
And they come back and listen some more.
And other people are like, throw it down, you know.
And off they go leaving this Wile E. Coyote shape in the exit of your art.
So there's those compromises.
If you want more views or more downloads or more purchases, then there may be some dilution of the message that's necessary.
Yeah.
And so these are decisions that you have to make.
Is it a mission, like you want to make the world a better place and you'll take whatever hits are necessary to do that?
That's sort of our business plan.
Or do you want to reach more people with a less concentrated message?
Which again, it's not a good or bad thing.
It's just, you know, every person's decision to make for themselves.
And those I think are the kind, so once you have these kinds of discussions and then figure out how you measure it, like if you want views, and I'm sorry, I'm thinking YouTube, right?
So I don't know, what do you call them?
It used to be album sales, right?
But what do you call it now for what you measure the success of music by?
I guess you could just call it the size of your audience or your audience.
But there's a way of counting that, right?
I mean downloads on iTunes or whatever.
Downloads, you could probably measure it in downloads or ticket sales, things like that.
Right.
Okay.
So then if you're going to say our primary goal, and these will change throughout your career as a band, our primary goal, you could say, is to produce, you know, the catchiest stuff.
We're going to put some philosophical content in there, but we're not going to alienate audiences with a philosophical message that may be more than they can handle.
In a four-minute song or a three-minute song.
Because it's really, really compressed in a way that, you know, my windbaggery on the web is, it gives me room to really build an argument sort of slowly and carefully.
But you guys have really, really concentrated messages.
So you could say, look, our goal over the first year is what?
What would you say?
Like 100,000 downloads?
Again, I don't know what your goal would be.
You all have to agree on that stuff.
Yeah, definitely.
I think, really, we always think of the goal of being the biggest band in the world.
Absolutely, but step at a time, right?
I mean, so what's your goal for the first year?
And that will condition what kind of songs you're going to write, I would assume, right?
Or at least record them, please.
Yeah, definitely.
The manager and label we talk to, which is a pretty major thing that...
They managed a number one selling band.
And it's kind of...
Their idea that they pitched to us, which I think we like and is a really nice way, is they kind of pitch it like coming in from the left field.
You want to get a kind of more less poppy sound, more, they call it darker or whatever, kind of sound, and then give them pop.
the pop music at the end and they kind of think that you get the best of both worlds where there's these people who don't really like pop music and they really kind of push it away and then there's people who just you know generally love pop music and accept it and so the goal would really be to build an audience through Through making,
not giving them the full-on pop, full force of the band straight away.
But I haven't really thought about the numbers thing.
I always kind of figured that labels would think about that kind of thing, but I guess I'm wrong on that.
Well, no, it sounds like you guys are doing really great stuff already, and if you want to send us a sample of music, we'll drop it in.
I'll send you a link.
I don't know if you can play it now.
You kind of get a sense of, like, the music, because I know what you're talking about when it comes to giving them, like, Too much of, I don't know, the truth, you know, of singing in the government and the state and, like, child abuse and things like that, right?
Yeah.
See, if I can start off podcast one as, like, the stateless society, an examination of alternatives, I'm not building the case up slowly.
And so, but you guys obviously have a different choice.
So, yeah, we'll drop the music in.
We'll get a link.
We'll drop the music in in post-production just so people can hear.
And what's the website?
You can go to lifepark.com, but it's spelled L-Y-F-E-P-A-R-C dot com.
You know, just by the by, I have in my novel The God of Atheists, there's a boy band called Boy Band.
And the boy band called Boy Band has an edge.
And do you know what their edge is?
No, I can't remember.
It's an umlaut over the O, like the two little German dots.
So it's boy band with an umlaut, right?
And their manager thinks that's really cool until he realizes no one can find them on the internet because nobody knows how to enter into that.
I know, I know.
Yeah, it's a working title for sure, but yeah.
But okay, so that's great.
So we'll put the music in.
And so if you guys have, like, if you agree on what the goal is, then don't make the goals too abstract.
You know, like, I don't think, Mike, have we ever said, like, our goal is to enlighten the planet in incremental shades of lightning rationality?
You know, because it's like, did we meet that or not?
Yes, no, maybe.
Unicorn, fishnet.
Definitely.
The more specific you can get, the better.
Definitely.
The more specific.
So, I mean, Mike, correct me if I'm wrong, but we basically bounce back and forth.
Basically, it's like that old 70s Pong game on your TV. We bounce back and forth between views, downloads, and donations, right?
Well, and there's a...
It kind of fits into donations, but there's a lot of shows we do that we know aren't going to do well.
A lot of the parenting-related shows don't tend to be huge download hits or huge video views on YouTube, but it's such important stuff and it's such core stuff.
There's certainly people that donate for that kind of material that we put out, but at the same time, we're putting it out there because we know it's important stuff that needs to be done.
You know, on the other side of that coin, we'll do, hey, Jennifer Lawrence's nude photos got hacked.
Let's talk about that, to hopefully direct some people towards that parenting material.
Well, weirdly enough, we decided to do that show, and we found out that the research had already been done.
So that kind of efficiency is...
Interesting.
Yeah, I think to have quantifiable information, you know.
Yeah, quantifiable.
What are we aiming for?
Because if you don't have an objective metric of a destination, you don't know if you've arrived or not or what to change course.
So if you say we want 100,000 downloads in our first year...
Then that's going to condition you from the very beginning.
What kind of songs are we going to put out?
What kind of lyrics are we going to use?
And then you can figure out whether you're meeting or not that goal.
And everyone kind of has to get on board with that at the beginning.
You've got to hack out all of the what are we about?
What are we about, right?
And figure out what your objective metrics are going to be.
And then...
Which is, I guess, different for you than for us, is that you have to figure out what is the relationship between outside advice and the band.
Because there'll be conflicts within the band and there'll also be conflicts between the band and the managers, right?
And the people who say, listen, kids, we know what we're doing.
You know, follow us and, you know, record this song in Spanish and you'll be able to retire next year.
And...
And then there'll be times where the people in the bands, half the people in the ground agree with that and half the people don't and all that, right?
So those kinds of challenges are really important.
So there has to be, you know, what is our objective metric?
How are we going to decide internally how to resolve conflicts?
And what is our relationship as a band?
What's our veto power between us as a band and the outside influencers who are going to want to tell us what to do?
Right.
Yeah.
Talking about the band, I wanted to also say and mention is the crucial point is that we've gone through like five members.
It's been a quite growing learning process that we've been going through and we've gone through quite several members and we're trying to really understand our standard and Establish how to really build a band.
We don't actually have any current members except for me and Brynn at the moment.
As a byproduct it would be so good and I want to put it out there to the audience that would be listening to this if there's any musicians out there that want to be involved in our band.
Feelings, nothing more than...
that choice.
What have you done, Matt?
Karaoke stuff.
Sorry, musicians.
Sorry.
Like music, music does not like me back.
Sorry, I'm back.
And a really important question for us is how did you...
For you, the standards that you...
When meeting a new person and evaluating a new person, what kind of markers and what characteristics, kind of intangibles and things like that, did you...
Do you observe?
Did you find that are crucial?
And just that kind of question, if you understand what I mean.
Like how to evaluate people who would be good at joining your band?
Yeah, definitely.
First, you have to understand that A significant portion of musicians are interstellar douchebags.
I don't mean to diss the whole profession.
That's very true.
Especially those drummers!
Always slapping their knees under the table.
No, I mean, so...
Personal experience with your business.
Obviously, there's a thing where I know how to evaluate if someone's good at music.
But for you, the characteristics you found in your business, What characteristics do you find were really kind of essential for you to function with them?
Mind if I jump in, Steph?
Yeah, and they'd be so good as well.
You know, you said with asking Mike and Stoyan and stuff like that.
I mean, we can find out the answer right now.
Well, I think, I mean, bare bones, I think we all agree sharing similar values is really important.
If you value honesty and the people in your band don't, that's going to be a problem.
But once you get past the basic values, one of the biggest things I would say is someone who's a motivated self-starter who's willing to work hard.
I mean, the amount of people that fit that category is incredibly small.
And you're no doubt going to face adversity or challenges over the course of your musical careers.
And having people that can, you know, not so much dust yourselves up and keep moving forward.
There's nothing worse than someone that's a motivation sink.
Or a motivation black hole.
Where it's just like, I've spent time around you and now I've lost my will to live!
But you want someone around you that you actually enjoy talking to that is a creative problem solver who you're going to have engaged, fascinating conversations with about not only what you want to do, like the big goal dream projects with the band, but any day-to-day problems that come up that you need to deal with.
You want it to be as enjoyable of an experience and finding someone who has that motivational pep to them and is willing to work really hard.
I mean, those are some of the qualities that I think are essential for any type of project which is going to succeed long term.
I would also add to this that if you are really, really great at what you do, you gain a lot of negotiation strength.
I mean, so I'm sort of thinking like, okay...
A queen, the band Queen, right?
I mean, were they really going to say, you know, I'd really like to upgrade this lead singer because, you know, teeth are kind of funny looking and he's getting a bald spot.
I mean, he was widely considered like the best front man in showbiz, so...
That's who you need.
And a fantastic singer, obviously.
Bastard.
Smoked and never took a singing lesson.
So, you know, well, Brian May.
Okay, all right.
You know, we could get somebody who can, you know, pull the cat guts a little bit faster.
And they, of course, all the members of Queen wrote top, like, number one songs.
They all wrote number one songs.
So great songwriters, great musicians, and so on.
And so there really was no upgrading.
Right.
Of those guys.
And that gives them an elite bond, if that makes sense.
Like, they're not going to say, U2's not going to say to Bono, oh man, you fell off a bike and you can't play guitar?
That's it!
You're out of here, man.
We're going to start auditioning other people.
Plus, your voice is getting a little old and you are sounding like a creaky weasel these days.
So you're out of here, man.
You're not going to do a whole lot better than Heaven Bono as a frontman.
So I think just that dedication to excellence is going to give people, like once they feel like they're part of something that can really go the distance, that's really special, that's really powerful, that's going to bring a lot of, like a strong current puts all the fish pointing the same way, if that makes any sense.
Yeah, I definitely agree.
It's kind of looking for people that I just get to the point where I'm like, I can't replace you.
You know, you're the man for the job.
You're the woman for the job.
You know, you're the person that, like, I can't find anyone else that does the thing that you do is the thing.
Yeah, like Coldplay, I'm going to say to Chris Martin, I don't know.
Yeah.
I don't know.
Yeah, you're good looking.
Yeah, you're married to Gwyneth Paltrow for a while, but really, and you write most of the songs, but really, we've decided to upgrade.
It's like, I don't think that.
Like, what's the best?
And XS tried that, right?
They got this whole show, which was like a big audition show, to replace Michael Hutchins, who auto-asphyxiated himself to death, and having seen his girlfriend, I can...
Knowing what she's like.
See why?
And they got this guy.
Can't remember his name.
But they got this guy one and they went on tour.
And I guess he did okay.
And now he's back living in his trailer.
And the whole thing is just right.
So Christopher Hitchens was just this guy.
Sorry, Christopher Hitchens.
Michael Hutchins.
Although Christopher Hitchens, I would have paid damn good money to watch him do New Sensation.
In between drags of his cigarette.
Ah, New Sensation!
So, Michael Hutchins, that sinuous, bluesy, rough voice was gorgeous.
He had fantastic stage presence and he was very sexy and all that.
They basically auditioned the entire planet to find a new Michael Hutchins and couldn't.
And it's like the doors, right?
I mean, like Jim Morrison was this, at least when he was young, was this, you know, shanky-haired, slinky, bluesy god of leather-tight, panted sexiness.
And then, you know, he dies doing drugs in Paris at the age of 27 because he wants to be a poet because he listened to his Yoko Ono.
But anyway, and what do they do?
They didn't say, ah, job opening!
Right?
Let's go get someone like Jim Morrison.
It's like, you can't really do that very easily.
Those people are incredibly rare.
You might as well just try and play the lottery.
Although more people win the lottery than become rock stars.
So I would say just devote yourself to your craft.
And I think in particular, given how live performance is even more important for bands now than it used to be because of musical piracy and so on, Really dedicate yourself.
I've never understood.
Never understood for the life of me.
You say this to your front man.
Why there are bands like Men at Work or The Men at Work or The Cars.
The bands that just sit there.
Thank you very much.
They stand there like mannequins with a moving wrist to play their instrument.
I mean, why the hell aren't you jumping all over the stage?
Why the hell aren't you doing the Mick Jagger strut or the Freddie Mercury call and answer or the Sting...
You know, bouncy, jumpy castle thing or whatever.
Like, why the hell aren't you doing these things?
I mean, these people have paid ridiculous amounts of money to come and see you.
So don't give them, you know, this mannequin with moving lip stuff.
Like, get out there and really engage and push those boundaries and risk being rejected and risk it not working.
But go out there, grab the audience by the balls and hold them high kind of thing.
And, you know, that to me, I've never really understood why...
Why people don't do that?
There's a guy in Phil Collins' band who looks like this incredibly bearded garden gnome.
Unless you really watch his hands, it's like, is he a statue?
Is he actually moving or not?
I can't tell.
Phil Collins does a great job as a front man, but why wouldn't you get into the crowd's face and really get them going?
Because there's got to be a reason to go live.
I've just heard complaints from a lot of bands.
People who go to see bands That they just, the band does not really engage the audience.
It's like this giant wall.
I went to see, I saw Yes a couple of times, and they were not really very engaging with the audience at all.
And, but, you know, I saw Depeche Mode way back when, gosh, like, I don't know, more than...
30 years ago now, not very engaging with the audience.
So UB40, they were pretty engaging with the audience.
But the front men who can just grab the audience, really connect with the audience, have the vulnerability to go out there and put your all out to try and connect.
You know, when I speak, I try to get that little bit going as far as I can with the audience to be a little unpredictable, to be A little vulnerable to be passionate and so on.
And that's just my particular perspective or opinion.
But man, you know, you've only got one life to live.
And the audience is there dying for you to grab them.
I mean, they already, you know they love you because they're there.
So go and get them and take them on a journey called enthusiasm.
And I've just, to me, it's like...
Go to see guys who are just like, what are you doing?
I could prop up the album cover and listen to the CD and it's the same thing.
Yeah, it's like the audience showed up but the band didn't.
Right, right, right.
Or yeah, so anyway, I think if you get the front man who's willing to really engage and get involved with the audience, you're not just playing to a black set, like a set of lights and the tops of people's heads, right?
But there are human beings out there you could really connect with.
And I think that is really, really engaging.
You know, use it for good, not like Hitler for evil, but, you know, I think you could do some really great stuff that way, and that would be my suggestion as well, that everyone in the band should get into that kind of stuff.
Yeah, and we really do have that, and we really...
Me and Bryn are really good at doing music.
It's not a play, it's a show!
But that's the thing that we struggled with with the other members is that we're really passionate and enthusiastic and it kind of freaked them out and it's like that doesn't work.
Oh, if you're not aiming for the top, I just don't even know why show up.
Yeah, exactly.
If you're not aiming to just be the very best, that's just much more fun.
And not aiming to be the very best, and not even by historical standards, but by future standards.
Wild stallions!
But not aiming to be the very best.
I mean, what's the point?
Because if you don't do that, you're saying that you have some correct preconception of your capacities.
And I can tell you, man, I mean...
Knowing what you can do ahead of time is a fool's quest of self-limitation.
You don't know.
You just keep pushing and keep pushing and get better and get better.
You don't know where you're going to end up.
And I really dislike the self-limiting stuff.
It seems to me very stingy.
Very stingy.
So, yeah, if you guys have broken through that barrier, fantastic.
Yeah, and I wanted to talk about how, did you find, when we found, we put these emails out to lots of different managers, right?
And we got one back, which was kind of our ideal manager, that we thought was going to be our ideal manager anyway.
And the interaction with him and meeting up with him, that was a very, A very big growing process that was very scary for me.
I felt quite a lot of fear from going from where I am to going into private clubs with people with big bank balances and crystal cut glass and all that kind of thing, right?
And that was a big learning experience for me.
Hang on.
This doesn't sound like the edgiest band in the known universe.
Ah, we only play places with the finest...
No, it's just...
Was that a paper cup I saw?
Bang!
I'm off the stage!
Call my agent, I'll be in my trailer.
And his treatment of us has been a bit...
I don't know what his world is like.
His contact with us is months of silence and then you're ringing us.
It's been quite frustrating and I'm to the point where I just want to contact lots of other managers now.
I wouldn't suggest that.
Do you know the best way to get people's attention in business?
What is it?
Well, the best way to get people's – and I'm going to be somewhat technical here.
I forgot this from an article in the Harvard Business Review many years ago.
But the best way to get people's attention in business is to make them a fuckton of money.
Yeah.
Yeah, I agree.
So the reason that you're not getting a lot of love and attention from the manager is that the manager has got bills to pay and he's quite keen, I would assume, On dealing with people who are going to make him the proverbial FT of money, right?
Yeah.
And so, the best way is just keep making great music.
Yeah, I agree.
I really got in this mindset of this kind of unhealthy thing, you know, obviously from my trauma and stuff like that, the...
I was like, oh, this person is just going to magically give me things now.
My life is solved.
I am his infant and he is my parent and I will get everything I didn't get as an infant from this person.
No pressure now.
Yeah, that's not going to work, right?
I see that it's really that you just have to double down on yourself all the time.
And you just build an industry around you rather than you go to this guy and now you're part of this thing.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, and you have to accept that the time of childhood is gone.
Yeah.
It's done.
And you, so much of success in adult life is to do with Closing off the grieving of unmet childhood needs.
And I'm really, really seeing that, definitely.
And I'm really growing a lot.
And really, that's happening for me.
But yeah, I'm seeing, you know, I've struggled and stuff like that.
Yeah, no, it's hard to give up, you know, when you didn't get what you needed as a child.
It's very hard to give up those needs.
There's a line from Annie Lennox, give up your needs, your poison seeds.
And it is really, really tough to give up those needs because they're just needs that you had when you were a baby and a toddler and a kid.
And recognizing that they're just not going to get met and never will be met.
And if someone is going to offer to meet your unmet childhood needs as an adult...
Well, they're just going to exploit you.
Exactly.
Because they're holding out from you.
It's like those fish deep down in the ocean that have those...
They're called anglerfish, I think.
And they have those little...
things that attract smaller fish, like, "Oh, the pretty light!
Ah, the giant teeth!" And people dangled in front of you, you know, "Hey, I'll be the motive force and propulsion behind your life," and then you get passive and resentful and so on.
And anybody who's going to tell you that things are going to be okay and someone else is going to take care of it...
Is somebody who's trying to hypnotize you into falling into your unmet needs so that they can pick your pocket dry, which generally tends to be a repetition of the abuse that occurred earlier.
And it really stagnates you because you really give up your will, you know.
You give up your ability to make action.
And yeah, so yeah.
Okay, that's good advice.
That's great.
Just by the by, like when I was young and Innocent.
Actually, I'm a lot more innocent now.
When I was younger, I went on a date with a nurse.
And she did not show up in the outfit I'd come to expect from dates with nurses in certain shorter videos that I'd have borne witness to.
But she worked in a mental health field.
And she said that people come in and...
You know, they're overwhelmed and they're exhausted and they, you know, and all they want to do is crawl into bed and curl up.
And part of it was like, oh, the poor dears, you know, you should let them curl up and let them rest and let them recuperate.
And she's like, no, you can't let them do that.
Yeah.
You have to, like, prod them out of bed and get them moving.
Because if they go into that state, they don't come back sometimes, or at least it's very hard.
Yeah, you've got to be stoic, you know?
Yeah, but you can't let them regress or they'll pop out of existence, right?
And we, you know, you have to, you know, as they say, mental dysfunction is almost always the result of the avoidance of legitimate suffering.
And when you didn't get what you want as a kid, you need to mourn that and then you won't be exploitable by people who are going to offer you a new childhood because they can't.
It's all gone.
I've always felt this kind of interesting nostalgia about days gone by.
I think a lot of people do.
There were times long ago where things were different or things were better or...
The future was limitless.
And of course, you're young, right?
So to you, the future is limitless, and it should be.
And that's how you should approach things.
You know, when you get older, as the old Steve Martin things go, which I said before, a series of closing doors.
When you're young, all these corridors and doors, and it's like, let's go camping.
No, sorry, we're closed.
We don't do that anymore.
And so I think that people prey upon this nostalgia.
It is really a dangerous game.
The past is dead and gone and we can return to mine it for treasure, but we can't live there.
There's an old saying, I can't remember who came up with it, the past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.
And that has to do with the transmutation of memory.
That I can't go back to my past.
I can't go back and fix anything because I don't even know where it is.
I don't even know what's real or not.
I mean, you know, some things I know are real, vignettes and so on.
Like, I remember sitting right before we came to Canada in 1977, sitting in the empty place we grew up in, and I was staring out the window, and I was thinking, shouldn't I feel more about leaving this country where I grew up and going someplace new where I don't know anyone?
I felt nothing good or bad about it.
So I believe that happened.
I'm certain that happened.
But I don't know what happened an hour before or an hour after that.
The problem with memory is, at least for me, it's all snapshots.
There's no continual movie.
And you can't go back because there is no real place called the past.
There's what you selectively remember.
And there's usually good reasons for what you remember and what you don't.
Which I sometimes, when I have idle moments, I pick up a memory and say, I wonder why I remember this and not the hour before or after.
And there's usually a good reason for it that has to do with self-knowledge.
But you can't go back to the past because when you were in the past, everything was fluid and moving forward.
Like a year from now, I'll remember this conversation, but I won't remember the whole conversation.
And I won't remember everything that I'm looking at.
I won't remember which shoes I'm wearing.
Like, I will have tiny little snapshots that But the past is a photo album, not even a movie.
And the photos are full of things that may or may not be true.
And even a movie is not you actually living the life.
And so there is no healing the past because the past has no existence at all.
The past is only...
It's like...
The past is like the bottom of a shallow lake...
When it's frozen and half-dusted with ice, you might be able to see a little bit, you can polish a tiny little bit, but the ice blows, things move, ice thickens, and it just all fades from view.
You can't go back and fix anything because there is no there to go back to.
And people have a tough time with that.
Tough time with that.
Yeah, yeah.
I don't think I have, I'm trying to think, do I have any more questions for you?
Do you have any more advice at all?
Anything off the top of your head that you have?
No, I would say this though, that maybe have the guys listen to this or your partner in music listen to this and if you guys want to call in and sort of work through this in more real time, I certainly would be happy You know, you can say, oh, you know, this guy's now got, what, 25 years entrepreneurial experience.
He's been successful in a variety of fields.
And I certainly would be happy to sort of hammer out some goals and metrics with you guys if, you know, it certainly would be helpful for other people and maybe be helpful for you guys too.
So that's one other possibility.
Right.
And I just wanted to say, I just wanted to put it out there to the audience that would be listening to this or are listening to this.
The...
Yeah, I am looking for band members.
Should I give my email address out on here?
I'm fine with doing that.
You can send emails to Mike and we can forward them if we need to or whatever.
We'll figure something out.
Email me.
I'll forward everything to Matt.
Okay, cool.
I also want to put it out there because I am looking to date women.
So if there's any women out there that are listening to this and are interested in me, then...
Women don't like musicians, man.
I don't know.
Listen, man.
Forensic accounting.
I'm telling you.
Looking for white cock fraud is like catnip for these chicks.
Like you say, forensic accounting, and their clothes evaporate in a puff of hormones.
Incredible.
I'm trying to get a good sense of...
Because I know that maths is a really good thing.
If you look at people who are successful financially independent, and you're talking about quantizing, you know, and...
You know, stuff like that.
Your stuff, you really have to have solid data.
But the extent I got into counting was just Googling it.
And I was like, I started to read the Wikipedia page and I was just like, oh, this is so boring.
You know what?
In the history of mankind, nobody has ever gotten to the bottom of the Wikipedia page On accounting.
It's just one of these weird little quirks.
Like, down at the bottom, it's like, last updated, there's just an infinity symbol because nobody can get through.
All right.
Okay, well, thanks.
Thanks for the call.
Best of luck with your career.
And, yeah, if you want to join his band or be a groupie, I believe, then just hook you up.
One quick thing before we go, Matt.
I just want one other tip or something to be aware of.
And I point this out because I think it's one of the most important things in not just business relationships, but any relationships.
And it gets overlooked on a regular basis.
So...
balance of contributions we talked about like the front man before and if the front man is out there and he's the draw and he's popular and he's contributing a significant amount to the band's capacity to fill a venue because of his charisma and let's say the other people in the band they don't have that charisma but they're just good solid musicians They work really hard.
Maybe they're more on the songwriting side of things.
It's important to have an accurate appraisal of what everyone is bringing to the table.
And if someone is bringing a lot more to the table overall, and this can mean multiple different areas, just overall, if there's vast disparities, that's not going to be sustainable long term.
Yeah, I've really observed that.
Yeah, definitely.
And be assholes to each other in the creative process.
Definitely.
100%.
Don't you ever get there, where a band puts out a song and you're like, did anyone outside the band listen to this song?
Yeah.
Did anyone Google how to sing?
Like, anything?
Like, there was a band...
Oh, God, Mike, I'm sorry, I don't have a keyboard now.
But there was a band...
They put out an album called A Pocket Full of Kryptonite, and they had a really great song called Two Princes.
You know, one, two, princes stand before you, kneel before you, that's what I said now.
And it was like, that's a great song.
And then they put out a song called What Time Is It?
That basically sounded like them walking into their equipment in the studio and crying out in pain.
And it's like, synchronicity is a great album, and then there's this song by Andy Summers called Mother, which again is like, I scolded myself and walked into an instrument.
And it's like, doesn't anybody listen to this?
And it's the same thing, again, to sort of return back to Queen, they all did solo albums.
Yeah.
Their solo albums were not good.
I think that's really, right?
So Freddie Mercury did a solo album.
There's a picture of his face on the front.
There's a picture of his face on the back.
There's a picture of his face on both sides of the album sleeve.
And I'm pretty sure he was able to inscribe a picture of himself on the needle of the record player.
And the guy who signed the contract for that album said later, like, that was the very worst deal he had ever made in the music industry in his life because that album cost a phenomenal amount of money.
And, you know, tanked like the Lusitania.
It was just horrendous.
And it was not a good album.
Not a good album.
And again, it's just like they didn't have each other saying, no, dude, come on.
That sucks.
Right.
I did have one last question, actually, of Contracts.
I didn't really...
The importance of reading contracts and...
What's your experience?
I don't know if you've signed contracts and things like that before, but if you had any advice on...
What I will say is that I don't think I've ever read a single musical autobiography where they said, you know, we just pay too much attention to the contracts.
We...
We really should have just indulged our love of contracts and thought less about the music.
There is every single musician that I've ever read about who said...
Well, first of all, we couldn't believe we were getting paid to do what we love.
And secondly, we stopped getting paid, right?
I mean, there's a song called Death on Two Legs by Queen, which is a really ferocious song about one of their early managers who ripped them off.
Billy Joel got regularly ripped off for like 20 million bucks or something like that.
Prince got the word slave put on his forehead.
George Michael stopped recording for Sony because they wouldn't let him out of the contract.
And...
It's brutal what happens to musicians with contracts.
A queen just took it all over themselves.
They're all like, Dude, we're smart.
We got PhDs.
I think we can figure this out.
And they did.
Definitely.
There's this musician called Deadmau5.
He's like a DJ, house producer.
And he is this real guy who just is really self-employed and just employs, just really treats it like he employs his manager, employs it.
He just really manages it all himself.
And I find that as a really good model for quality control and self-ownership of your music and things like that.
Yeah, it's important to make sure that you don't neglect areas that are not nearly as much fun, but are equally important.
You know, like the most successful band on the planet, someone has to do their taxes.
Yeah, exactly.
It's going to be fun, but if they don't do it, they ain't going to be playing Wembley.
It's not going to happen.
No, it is really, really important to focus on the business side.
And people go kind of crazy.
If I remember rightly, Sting's accountant stole a bunch of money from him and he had to take the guy to court and all that.
I mean, it's like, you gotta keep track of the Benjamins, baby.
That's as much art as anything else.
I agree, yeah, definitely.
Okay, we're going to move on to the next caller, if that's alright, but thanks.
Thanks, bud.
Best of luck.
Thank you.
Bye.
Alright, what we'll do is put a song from Matt's band at the end of the show, a full song, for those who want to check it out.
And up next is Dan.
Dan wrote in and said, what does it mean to find yourself?
And why is it so often associated with being attainable through travel and quote-unquote getting lost?
Specifically, advice for those going through strenuous times in their life.
Yeah.
Finding yourself generally means I want to get laid and not have people know about it.
That's what...
I'm going to Europe to find myself and apparently finding myself involves copious amounts of antibiotics and lubricant.
Not necessarily in that order.
I'm going to go find myself and that's like the siren song for Euro trash guys to swarm over American girls or whatever.
I'm here in In Paris, to find myself is like, let me find you a futon so we can find you together.
Anyway, so, what do you think?
I found a disease!
Oops!
I found a lingering sense of shame that will follow me from here to eternity.
Oh, God.
Did you ask me what I think?
Yeah, it's fine.
Well, that's interesting because usually when I would – the first thing that I want to say is like some sort of – it doesn't sound right, but this sort of comfort or content with who you are, where you are, and where you're going.
But the words comfortable and content, I don't know if they necessarily play into what it means to find yourself.
I'm not really sure.
Comfort is a form of self-necrophilia that prepares you for an easy death.
The search for comfort is something we all yearn for in some ways, but I think most people with any oomph in them get pretty restless when comfort continues.
And so I think that we like comfort insofar as when you've done a hard day's manual work or you've been out doing heavy sports or something, it's really nice to rest afterwards.
And so that level of comfort we strive for, but comfort is the shadow cast by productive labors.
People want that sense of comfort to continue without recognizing that that's never going to happen without the kind of mind-bending drugs that will not have you in a very good place other than as a case study in a Gabor Maté book.
This sort of find yourself.
I think people like to expose themselves to new environments partly to distract themselves from themselves.
And I don't know.
I think that you find yourself, at least for me, I have found myself most deeply in relationships as opposed to places.
Yeah, I think there's this sense of absolutely finding yourself in relationships, but sometimes there's the ability to lose yourself in the sense that, I mean, I was, I just got out of, I guess, my first serious relationship and Wait, you just got out?
Sounds like a pretty wrecked situation.
The jaws of life came next thing you know.
My wallet was gone, but I was under a clear sky.
My prison sentence ended.
They let me out.
I chewed my way out of the trap known as...
Now, what happened?
It was a long, slow process.
In college, I had some close relationships, but it wasn't until after...
She was a friend.
A friend in the sense that there was very platonic, no real sexual tension.
And for myself, who was very unexperienced at the time, I expected with the first person that I was ever going to really invest in, I thought there was going to be some initial spark.
But no, with her and I, we were totally just friends.
And then...
Yeah, it happened very organically, I guess.
But it kind of started off on weak legs, sort of, because I was very unsure.
She had several boyfriends, and she, kind of coming into this relationship, she was like, you're who I want.
I know it.
And for me, I was like, I just had sex for the first time.
I don't know.
I mean, right away I was kind of ready to get out there.
But...
I remember sitting in her living room and she kind of gave me this ultimatum in the sense that she's like, okay, well, either we need to date or I need to stop getting this close to you because she was starting to feel things.
Good for her?
Yeah, absolutely.
I was just sitting there kind of being like, okay.
You haven't talked about anything like her personality or anything.
What was she like as a person?
You said you were friends, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, we were...
I mean, we, I guess we still are.
Um, we're good, good friends.
Um, very funny.
I don't know.
I remember...
Meeting her very early on, and we were just joking lots and texting, as I guess you do a friend.
And I remember she was getting a tattoo, and our mutual friend who kind of introduced us, she was lying on the table, and her friend was kind of rubbing her leg.
She was getting her tattoo on her back, and she kind of hinted that I should do the same or something.
It was a very weird situation, but I just...
I don't know.
It was weird.
I was...
I was uncomfortable by doing that, but I noticed I was sort of attracted to her.
I don't know.
That was kind of a pointless story.
I think it was a time where I had all these expectations on how I would meet someone.
We dated for a year and a half, which I know isn't that long.
During that time, we became very...
Yeah, I don't know.
I feel like the bond was much stronger than had I just met a girl at a bar and we had some sexual chemistry right away.
It kind of set the standard, like, you know, of course, every girl that I fall in love with, I'd love to be friends with first, which sounds obvious, but I think a lot of my friends, they don't really understand that.
I think most of my friends who are in relationships either, you know, met them online or, you know, just at a bar.
You do realize you're helping the world see that I do, in fact, get to the point somewhat quickly.
What was her childhood like?
Mine?
No, hers.
Oh, hers.
Okay, well, she has two...
Both her parents are psychotherapists.
Her father was a priest and had three kids.
The oldest was 17.
And then he was one of, from what I understand, one of the...
Four fathers of psychotherapy, at least in Toronto.
So yeah, he started going to these meetings and kind of leaving his family to explore this, which was part of the church.
And then he met this young woman.
What do you mean leaving his family?
What do you mean?
Well, he had...
Yeah, her father, he was a church in a small town, but he started exploring psychotherapy and having to leave the family to come to the city, which is where I guess the workshops were.
And then he met a young woman, much younger, and he fell in love with her.
And he ended up leaving his family for this woman, who is my ex's mother.
And they were both therapists together.
And yeah, she's just an only child.
She does stay close with her one stepsister, but some of the other siblings refuse to talk to her just based on her connection with their father.
It's not her fault, right?
No, no, I know.
I think the youngest daughter of his keeps in touch with her, but they don't really stay in touch.
As far as her mother goes, she loves her father.
I mean, she loves both of her parents, but her father in particular is really her everything.
During the time we were dating, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, which was huge.
And she doesn't have a very good relationship with her mother at all.
Her mother, I think, is a bit of an alcoholic.
It took a while for me to see that.
She would tell me about it, and her mother seemed very lovely.
But as I got to know them more, I could tell that something was off.
So, yeah.
So why was she getting a tattoo?
It was her first tattoo, and it was of a loon on her back.
Okay, dude, dude.
I didn't ask if it was her first, and I didn't ask what it was.
Oh.
Why was she getting one?
There you go.
I don't know.
It was...
The loon was a connection to a friend of hers, a long-time childhood friend.
They both got it.
It was a matching tattoo.
And I think it had something to do with her country life.
I guess I don't really know.
It's really painful, right?
Yeah.
And it's pretty permanent, right?
At least until you get older, in which case it gets all saggy and weird, right?
Yeah.
And what did her family think of her getting a tattoo?
I think they were pretty easy going about it.
Yeah, I think they liked it.
And what did you think of her getting a tattoo?
When she got it at the time, I really had no opinion.
It looked nice.
Yeah, it somehow fit her personality.
I don't know.
And would you say she had a happy childhood?
Yeah.
Yes, I think so.
She had a lot of wonderful friends that she's been able to stay in touch with her entire life, like public school friends, high school friends.
Yeah, I think she was a bit lonely, just maybe being an only child.
She definitely craved siblings.
But overall, I'd say yes.
She looks forward to going back home for the most part and seeing friends and being in her hometown.
So, the fact that she was the result of an affair, and that her half-siblings don't speak to her, and her mother was an alcoholic, you don't feel that this had any sort of negative impact in her childhood?
Yeah.
I guess...
I think...
Well, I mean, she must have had some, but it really was her father.
I mean, she really looks...
I think her father definitely...
It's hard to even imagine.
Even knowing him as little as I do, I can't even picture him doing that.
And he's such a lighthearted, very fun...
Doing what?
I think just playful with her.
I don't know.
Dude, it's really hard to follow.
You can't understand him doing what?
Oh, just leaving a wife and three kids.
Yeah, just absolutely abandoning them and having that sort of past.
Now he's not religious at all, which really was his...
Okay, so look, you've been to therapy for a number of years, right?
Yes.
Okay.
I mean, I don't know what your therapist has been doing, and I'm certainly not a therapist, but I'm going to break it down to you, at least as I see it, right?
Please.
All right.
Religion plus priest-therapist who meets woman, abandons his family, has an affair with woman, said woman is an alcoholic, right?
Yeah.
So he left his wife and children for an alcoholic, right?
Do you get that in your bones?
Yeah.
That is fucked up!
I mean, it's one thing to go through a life crisis to learn something new and to leave long-term relationships for something better.
I've done it.
I get it.
But to leave your wife and three children for an alcoholic is not progress.
Or, if it is progress, God help you.
Yeah, it's tough to...
But why don't you get this?
You've been in therapy for years.
No, no, I guess...
Are you covering up for someone?
Does someone currently have like a Nerf gun to your kidney?
I mean, what is going on?
No, no, no Nerf gun.
You're like someone who's got a PhD in physics who says stuff moves around.
Don't get how or why, but it's cool.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think maybe we were so removed from them that when I did meet the parents or I would talk to them, yeah, I guess it was hard to even take what she would say in versus what they were showing.
I mean, from what I understand...
So they put on a good show, right?
Of course, he's a priest.
Of course he puts on a good show.
Right.
The mother, in terms of her drinking, it seemed like that kind of kicked up once he was diagnosed with the Alzheimer's.
I don't really know her entire path of drinking, but based on how she recounts it, she seems like her mom's always been kind of drinking.
But I guess it does sound harsh to think about, yeah, I'm leaving this family for an alcoholic.
I don't imagine she was an alcoholic her whole life, but...
Alright.
Okay.
Is there anything else that you want to chat about?
Because I feel like we're not quite having a conversation yet.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I think for some reason it started off just on this idea of finding yourself.
I think a lot of my advice from...
Do you know why you're interested in finding yourself?
Yeah, I think it was more about what that even means.
Yeah, I could tell you what it means, dude.
At least, you know, this is my first impression, so I can't claim to know you in any great detail, but I'm pretty big on first impressions.
You kind of live in a fog world, in my opinion.
And I think that the finding yourself question is interesting because I'm always interested in why people have an opportunity to speak on this program, and you've waited a long time for that opportunity, and you could have changed your question anywhere along the way.
But this is the question that you want to ask, which tells me a lot about you, I think.
And again, this is just my opinion.
I don't have any bead or knowledge of you in any objective fashion.
But when you listen back to this, You will be really surprised at the lack of center that you display in the conversation.
And by center, I mean judgment.
You're very easygoing, would you say?
Am I? Yeah, I guess.
Oh, I guess.
Well, you just confirmed it.
I don't want to agree with you or disagree with you, Steph, so I'm going to use the magic word, I guess, which gets me out of perjury.
Right?
But very easygoing, non-confrontational, right?
Yes.
Don't like to make people upset.
Exactly, yeah.
Right?
And what do you stand for?
Yeah.
Am I off base here?
Again, I don't want to tell you about yourself.
I'm just telling you what I think.
Yeah, I think...
I think...
For some reason, I'm frozen.
I'm usually pretty good at articulating and talking about how I feel.
Oh no, you've been fantastically great at articulating.
You've been extraordinarily clear, right?
And again, I'm certainly not trying to be mean, right?
But I want people to get out of this conversation something that they want and need and haven't gotten yet.
And this would be my suggestion to you.
So, let's talk about you.
Okay.
That's alright.
Yeah, okay.
So you have an adverse childhood experience of zero, which is great.
Yeah, yeah, I was looking through that.
I was like, okay, this is good, this is good.
This is good, right?
So no verbal abuse, no hitting, no yelling, no suicidal family members, no drunks, no drugs, no neglect, no...
Okay, so this is wonderful.
It's great to hear.
Great.
Right.
Parents married?
Yes, of course, because otherwise you'd have an ACE of something other than zero, right?
Yeah, yeah, they are married.
I grew up, my mother did really all the work.
I look back on their marriage now and I remember my mother telling me a lot how She would say that sometimes she wishes that she hadn't stayed with my father for us.
Because I would often hear that if it wasn't for years...
Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.
Yeah, I know, I know.
Slow down, sweet talking listener.
So how old were you when you first knew that your mother wanted to leave or had thoughts about leaving your dad?
Very young, like five, six...
She wouldn't say it as, I want to leave your father.
She would say that if it wasn't for you guys, I wouldn't be with your father, which I realize is for some reason.
And she said this to you when you were five or six years old.
Yeah, quite young.
I have an older sister.
No, no, no, no.
Stay with me, brother.
Stay with me.
What do you think of that?
Yeah, of course.
That's fucking terrible.
And I have...
I would talk to her about it even being older.
And she'd be like, yeah, I guess that wasn't the greatest thing to say to you.
But at the time, she was doing all the work.
She would often leave.
Wait, wait.
She was doing all the work?
Hang on.
She was taking care of you guys and working full-time?
Yep.
Yep, she was.
Sorry, I didn't hear that last part.
What was your dad doing?
Um...
My dad had retired.
He used to be a real estate agent.
He was pretty good at taking care of...
What?
Wait.
You were five and your dad was retired?
He's not Billy Joel, is he?
No, no.
Anthony Quinn.
I don't know who else has had...
How old was your dad when he retired?
Just over 40.
A little over 40.
He retired at 40?
Wow.
Yeah, yeah.
He made enough money to be comfortable for the rest of his life?
No, no.
He was a real estate agent in the city, and then we moved out to the country, and he basically bought the house, but he just kind of stopped.
And even for that now, it's...
What do you mean, stop?
Stopped?
He just, he kind of, he had all of his clients in the city, and then when he came to the country, he just kind of- They buy and sell things in the country, too.
I mean, you bought your house there, it had to come from someone, probably a real estate agent, right?
So, this sort of, there were contracts in the city, it's like, well, I used to buy groceries in the city, now I'm in the country, there's no choice but to starve to death, because my grocery store is in the city, right?
I mean, there's tons of stuff in the country that Mirrors what's in the city, and certainly real estate is a booming business in the country.
So that's not it, right?
So what did he do with his day?
Yeah, I've tried to have conversations with him before.
No, no, you were there!
No, no, you were there!
For years!
What did he do with his day?
We had a rather large property, so he would cut the grass.
That'd be an all-day event.
He would take me to visit with...
He had friends who owned restaurants, so we would kind of spend time there.
But most of my memories with him are really just doing that.
I mean, when I was at school, I don't...
Sorry?
Sorry, you said most of my memories are of him doing that.
I may have just missed something, but doing what?
Oh, either spending time with him at friends' restaurants or him outside doing some work.
He enjoyed hunting, so he would do hunting as well.
But yeah, it was pretty hard because my mom would leave for weeks at a time to have to work in the city and then come back until she was able to...
We should work a little more close to the house.
Well, hang on, hang on.
I'm so sorry to be annoying.
But if your mom was doing everything, how is it possible that she's doing everything and spending weeks in the city?
Because while she was spending weeks in the city, which, by the way, unless she's working seven days a week, doesn't seem like she'd have to, if she's spending weeks in the city, then your dad was taking care of the house and the children, right?
I mean, he would cook.
I assume there'd be some cleaning going on, some laundry, you know, that kind of stuff, right?
Yeah, but it would be minimal.
My mom would often come home and still have to cook and clean.
So your dad wasn't retired, right?
I mean, he was unemployed.
Right, yeah.
That's how he would label it.
So why would you say retired?
I don't quite understand that.
I mean, if he's 40 and he doesn't have enough money to live on and he stops working, then he's unemployed, isn't he?
Yeah.
I guess, yeah.
You see why there's so much fog here, right?
It's that where we've received an extraordinary amount of bullshit about our own history, it's kind of tough to have an identity, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
And things seem very foggy about this stuff, right?
Your dad stopped working, so he was unemployed, and did he ever get another job or any other source of income?
No, he didn't.
He was receiving some, I guess, government checks, I suppose.
Oh, God.
Yeah, I don't even really know.
I mean, I think, yeah, he would have some checks come in, but it would definitely be my mom bringing home the bacon, if you will.
Right.
And what was your relationship like with your dad?
Yeah.
It was good.
He's a scary guy.
He's a...
I don't know.
He's a big guy.
We would...
I don't know.
I guess, yeah, it's tough to talk about him.
Well, you just told me some very contradictory things, right?
Yeah.
It's about the most five-second contradictory conversation I've probably ever had on the show, right?
Yeah.
Which isn't funny, which is that it was good, he was scary.
Right.
Ha ha, right?
Right.
So what was scary about him?
Yeah, I would rarely get...
I think it was his...
Oh, fuck.
I'm always having a hard time communicating about it.
You're being very clear and doing a great job.
Just keep going.
Yeah, he...
He was...
Fuck, man.
Yeah, he was scary in the sense that he was...
I don't fucking know.
Just...
Well, did he yell?
Did he call you names?
Yeah, he was very...
He could get angry very quickly.
Yeah.
Usually, I'd constantly be turning to my mom for really anything, whether it was to ask to go to permission to really do anything.
Yeah, he was tough.
More so on my sister, it even felt like.
Well, no, no.
Hang on, hang on.
We've got to unravel this.
We've got to unravel this.
Again, you're really racing past the graveyard here, right?
Yeah, yeah.
So, Dan, when you say that He would yell.
Yeah.
And you would go and have to ask your mom for things.
Was that because when you asked your dad if you could do something, he would yell?
Well, one, he would usually say no.
But it's weird.
When I look back on my relationship with my dad, we didn't really communicate at all, it feels like.
I mean, even now as I'm older, we don't really communicate.
I mean, when we do, it seems very pleasant and nice.
But for the most part, I'm on the phone...
Catching up with my mom and then I hang up.
Same with my sister, again, staying back on me, but that's on both of us.
And what's hard to talk about is my entire childhood, like, yes, he would get angry very quickly.
He would, you know, sometimes, you know, hit us.
But it's weird because then other times I... I remember him as a very happy person.
I mean, even now, since I've been out of the house for many years, he's very kind and nice, and I don't see him get angry or anything like that.
And how would he hit you?
What would he do?
I think this is when I think of scary.
I would start, you know, if I did something, he would call me over very quietly and just stare at me.
And he would ask me something and then I would just get a slap across the face.
Maybe one time I remember getting threatened by a belt, but never more than one slap, I don't think.
It's illegal, right?
Just in case you were wondering, and this is because you'd mentioned Canada, but it's illegal to hit children in the face.
It's criminal behavior.
Yeah, I know he would talk about his dad, and his dad was much harder on him.
I know that doesn't give him any right to do that to us, but I think that's, from my understanding, that's kind of his background with that.
His father would be much, much harder on him and his siblings.
Do you have any idea why he stopped working?
I've tried to have conversations with him about it.
It's very uncomfortable to even try it.
You can tell me that you haven't got the information from him.
I'm just curious what your thoughts are.
You know what?
I really, really don't know.
I feel like he was very driven for his whole life, at least in the real estate game.
Even when I speak to my mom, who I can have really great conversations with, even she has a hard time.
Whether she knows it or not, she at least comes off as she has no idea.
Did he seem depressed, or was there anything like that, or was he just happy to not work?
I think he was happy to not work.
He had a farm.
I mean, a hunting camp far out of the city.
So he would often do that with friends.
He enjoyed doing that.
Or going and hunting.
Yeah, yeah.
So he had some expensive hobbies, but no job.
Yeah, he owned this...
He calls it the farm, but it was a hunting camp, basically.
And that, to this day, still costs the money.
My mom's had to put on a couple of mortgages to keep that.
She talks about, you know, we need to sell it, we need to sell it.
But, yeah, he just kind of doesn't really respond to it.
And now he's quite ill that he can't even use it.
So it's just there for his friends, I guess.
Right, right.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, so it's...
And did your father, when he would get angry, would he call you names or would it just be sort of loud?
No, no names.
Just loud.
Yeah, loud.
And was he intimidating towards your mother as well that you know of?
No, no, not really to her.
She definitely stood her ground.
I have no memories of him ever hitting her, even threatening to hit her.
Yeah.
If anything, a memory between their confrontations would be her calling him an asshole.
That would be an extreme thing.
That would hurt him a lot.
He was very intimidating to a lot of people that didn't know him, but to my mother, no.
We've got to revise your adverse childhood experience score, right?
I guess, which part?
Well, physical abuse, non-spanking, that's being hit, not in a spanking manner.
I mean, that's the ACE, right?
So it's kind of mainstream.
So you weren't spanked, but you were hit in the face from time to time.
Yeah.
And verbal abuse and threats, I don't know.
I mean, yelling, verbal intimidation, again, I'm certainly no expert on this, but it's not zero, right?
Right, yeah.
And, I mean, what's really tragic is the degree to which Your father's behavior was nothing that you could internalize with the goal of achieving success in your life, right?
Yeah.
That alone has had a huge weight.
I've achieved quite a level of success in my career and what I'm going for, especially at the age I'm at.
I do feel quite driven in that, but sometimes I'll have moments where I just...
I'm paralyzed, and I'll do nothing.
I'll just waste.
And I'm so hard on myself about it, but it really is an absolute waste sometimes, whether it be sleeping in.
But then I feel like I do make up for it in terms of actual production.
Well, and not just the work, but I consider it extremely irresponsible to get married, to have two children, and then to stop working.
Yeah.
I mean, if you want to not work, then go be a hippie somewhere in a commune, and I don't know, they probably work pretty hard, but once you have kids, you don't have to make money.
I mean, he could have been a stay-at-home house husband, and he could have run the household or whatever, right?
But you don't really have an honorable choice called, okay, now we've had the kids, I'm quitting, and I'm not going to work that much around the house.
Yeah.
That's a significant dick move, in my opinion.
And why do you think your mother stayed?
For us, I guess.
A lot of my friends at the time, being very young, even in kindergarten, a lot of my friends' parents were getting divorced.
And I think they would come over a lot.
Is this kind of 80s, 90s kind of thing?
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, the plague of divorce that ran through society at that time.
Right, right.
Yeah, early 90s.
But it was a functional divorce, right?
I mean, your parents – I'm sorry to interrupt, Dan, but it was sort of a weird kind of in-home divorce, right?
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, they weren't really a married couple.
She's gone for weeks at a time.
He's off.
She wants to not be there.
I would imagine at some point their sex life probably took, well, something of a hit.
And it was kind of like an in-home divorce in a way.
I'm just telling you what I think.
Again, you were there, so your perspective rules mine infinitely higher, but that's sort of the impression that I get.
Yeah, it's hard to think of it like that.
I mean, did they go out for dinner?
Were they affectionate with each other?
Did they enjoy each other's company at all?
Yeah, they were very pleasant with each other.
That's one way.
In terms of romanticism, I don't recall my father really taking my mother out or them really going out at all.
Yeah.
My mom would usually just be exhausted and she would spend time with us right away.
Any kind of spare time she had, she would immediately be with my sister and I. Right.
Right.
But it doesn't sound like much of a love marriage.
No.
No.
And it couldn't be if she resents him.
The resentment is like a wet finger on the...
Again, they definitely had many moments of being very lovey in the sense that they'd be, you know.
But you're right.
It feels very foggy.
Right.
So, I mean, I think that it's, you know, in terms of finding yourself...
I would certainly argue that it's a fairly important thing to do to try and figure this stuff out in terms of your history.
What's your template for a relationship?
What is your template for masculinity?
What is your template for parenthood?
Because it has a huge impact, of course, on how we view relationships.
I mean, the first relationship that we see, which we're going to emulate as adults, is our parents' relationship, right?
Yeah.
I've had a really...
I had a hard time kind of grappling with the idea of masculinity and what it means to be a man.
Even coming out of my relationship, this idea of needing to sleep with a whole bunch of women before I could ever possibly settle down and really struggling with my ex even sleeping with a larger number than I had.
Yeah, that was something that really got to me, even now that we've been broken up for a while.
Well, look, and if you don't want the relationship your parents want, I mean, look, it's sort of like if you don't want to speak the language your parents speak, you've got some work to do, right?
If you do want to speak the language your parents speak, well, you're fine, right?
I mean, I grew up speaking English, and I speak English, right?
But if I was like, I hate English or I don't want to speak English, I'm going to learn Japanese, I've got some work to do.
And through that, I'm actually going to learn a lot more about language than if I simply used my native tongue.
And so if you don't want what your parents had, then there can be nothing automatic about your relationships because the automatic thing is to speak parent, right?
And if you don't want what your parents had, you really have to unpack their marriage.
You have to unpack what went wrong and you can do that hopefully with their participation if they're willing to be open and frank, but you don't need their participation fundamentally to understand things.
But if you're going to navigate away from the home village, so to speak, in terms of the template your parents gave you, you've got to get really good with a map and a compass, right?
Yeah.
And that means, unfortunately, being judgmental.
It doesn't mean hating them and it doesn't mean, you know, whatever, right?
But it does mean that you have to judge the decisions that they made.
And when you say, well, how do you find yourself?
You find yourself, Dan, in your judgments, in your evaluations, in your view of people.
Now, we don't want our evaluations to be bigoted or prejudicial or whatever, right?
But we do want to have...
You know, there's that old thing, judge not lest ye be judged, and someone is like, yep, I will judge.
I'm prepared to be judged.
I'm fine with that, right?
And it is in our judgments that we gain our identity, which is why philosophy is so powerful in terms of identity, because philosophy gives us the objective tools to make judgments that we know are not mere what are called reaction formations or I don't know if that's
still kicked around at all.
Probably not.
Probably not.
Okay.
But it's a great word.
Like, discrimination is considered to be a bad word.
Discriminatory, you know, or discriminating.
I'm a discriminating buyer.
That's considered to be, slightly snooty, but a positive word.
And judgmental has become this bad word.
You know, and it's sort of the emotional equivalent of saying, so-and-so is bashing someone.
You know, which is just this appeal to...
Emotion and white knighting and all that.
But judicious, I think, is a much better word than judgmental because it hasn't been polluted by leftist relativism and so on.
Judicious, I think, has to do with a fine judgment and a positive judgment and a rational judgment and self-protecting.
A judicious use of resources is like if you have seed crop that you can eat some of your grain but you've got to keep some for next spring's planting, you have a judicious use of your resources so that you don't run out.
A judicious use of your energy as a marathon runner will get you from beginning to end without fainting or anything like that.
So it's a carefully measured and reasoned marshalling and expenditure of resources and I think that We do have to judge.
And in some ways, we can, I think, judge actions rather than persons.
Although, to what degree a person exists to others independent of their actions, I think is an interesting question.
The answer is probably not much at all because we can't inhabit each other's minds.
So, I can sort of judge my mother's actions I can say, well, but am I judging my mother?
It's like, but I only know my mother through her actions.
I don't have a mind meld with her, probably for the best, but to judge your parents' actions and say positive or negative, and tragically, philosophy demands that we judge actions according to ideal standards, and that doesn't mean that anyone can ever perfectly achieve those ideal standards.
I can't, you can't, your parents couldn't, my parents, nobody can.
But that doesn't mean that we should not judge by those perfect standards.
So if you're drinking water, the water is not going to be 100% pure.
And to say, I'm not going to drink water until it's 100% pure, just means dying of thirst.
But nonetheless, there's still a difference between Evian and seawater.
Evian is not pure, but you can drink it.
Seawater, you can't.
It's too minerally, too salty.
So we judge water relative to its purity, but we don't require water to be pure in order to judge it.
And so we do have to judge our own actions and our parents and our friends and our culture, our society and so on, our relatives, relative to ideal standards.
And, yeah, nobody's perfect, but that doesn't mean there's no difference between John Galt and Charles Manson, right?
I mean, so, in the judgment, in our relationship to ideal standards, Dan, is where we find our identity.
Because ideal standards give us structure.
And a bridge doesn't have to be perfect, but it does have to stay up.
And we do want an engineer.
Who can judge accurately whether a proposed bridge will stand?
And we have a bridge in our life called the future, our future selves, the rest of our lives.
And we need the principles which an engineer would use to figure out if a bridge will stand.
We need those principles so that we can build a bridge to our future that will be where we live in the future.
That will stand.
We cannot have identity without certainty.
The degree to which we are not certain of things is the degree to which we lack shape, form, purpose, courage, identity, being, personality.
Philosophy gives us these wonderful tools by which we can become certain of things.
When you listen back to this, Dan, as I hope you will, When I talk about the fogginess, it's a lack of judgment.
And because you lack judgment, and what I mean by that, and you're successful, so I'm not trying to define you in any massive way.
I'm just talking about with regards to particular values, right?
I'm not trying to say, you lack judgment of any kind.
I'm just saying, in my opinion, relative to particular values, you...
Judgment is dangerous for you because there were things in your family that you didn't like but weren't allowed to judge negatively because your dad was scary and your mom was who she was.
And so because you are afraid of certain kinds of judgments about maybe ethics or functionality or whatever, you are probably going to end up continually drawn towards people Who also lack judgment.
Right?
So the girl that you dated had a story about her life that did not match, in my opinion, the facts of her life.
Right?
And when I heard the facts of her life, I'm like, whoa.
Yeah.
Whoa.
Right?
And so what that means is that she also lacks judgment in these particular principles.
Of functionality, perhaps, of ethics.
I mean, I think that your father's lack of functionality, given that he'd decided to become a father, was really kind of close to, if not in the realm of ethics.
It's one thing to be non-functional if it's just you, but when you have a wife and kids, it's kind of a different matter, right?
Right.
And so that's sort of my concern around sort of finding yourself.
I think that you will find yourself...
Through philosophy.
I think philosophy is the gateway through which we find ourselves because we find ourselves fundamentally through moral certainty.
Through moral certainty, we gain connection.
Because the problem, of course, with the relationships where people are foggy about their history is honesty becomes something that's not even really possible.
And not because people are trying to lie.
It's because they don't even know there is any falsehood.
So, I mean, if you were, if I were, I mean, imagine if I had met this girl and I was single and she was single and she was telling me she had a great childhood and a great life and her dad was a priest who abandoned his family to marry her mother who's kind of an alcoholic.
The first thing I'd say is, whoa, whoa, are you ever lost at sea and think you're on solid ground?
Right?
But you can't do that.
And I don't think you would even say that that was something that was missing.
Right?
Yeah.
Right?
And I think that's where the finding yourself is a challenge.
Philosophy does give us that clarity, that curiosity, and those standards.
And you also notice, like, I mean, I'm not...
I've repeatedly, as I do in these conversations, I'm really desperate to not tell you what your life is or who you are or anything like that.
I was telling you what I think and I'm continually telling you.
Your perspective trumps mine because you were there.
So I'm not bullying you or dominating you or telling you, well, damn, this is the way your life is and you don't know shit.
I'm just telling you my thoughts, right?
Yeah.
So it doesn't have to be an aggressive thing at all.
But I would say that skepticism, curiosity, and principles.
When you started talking about your girlfriend, I was like, this can't be an ACE of zero.
And I think if we were to continue, we need to, but if we were, we'd probably find out more.
But there was a significant amount of dysfunction in your household growing up.
And I don't get the sense that it's clear for you.
And therefore, you're going to be drawn to other people who also don't know about their own dysfunction, which means the dysfunction is likely going to dominate the relationship and not allow deep roots to take hold.
Yeah, especially, it definitely felt like there was an attachment between us, but attachment in the unhealthy sense as opposed to some deep, rooted connection because, yeah, maybe we did have a hard time communicating, especially about our past and our family.
It would often just get ignored or we weren't able to actually articulate it.
Right, right.
So yeah, that would be my suggestion.
You know, I've got this book, Real-Time Relationships, which you can get for free at freedomainradio.com slash free, a book on ethics called Universally Preferable Behavior, a Rational Proof of Secular Ethics.
One that you might want to start with is the first one I wrote, Untruth, the Tyranny of Illusion, which is pretty short and I think gives some good analogies and arguments for these kinds of judgments.
And I think that it is in the division between things that we have identity, right?
I mean, we know a stream is a stream and not an ocean because it's bounded by non-stream, right, on either side.
Land, we know where the shore is because it's where the land dips into the water.
And we know where a country is because of imaginary lines.
We know where I end and you begin because it's space between us.
It is in...
It's not a division that we gain any kind of identity, and it is in the judgment that we gain our identities as individuals.
So I hope that helps, and I hope that you will sort of mull this over and find some utility in it.
Yeah, I think it'll be really useful even to hear me talking about it, especially at the top of the conversation.
Yeah, I think despite me doing well in my chosen field, there's definitely this huge sense of being lost, which is why I think I even was talking about this idea of finding yourself and whatever, going on trips, which I've done, and friends giving me advice to either go on trips or to sleep with women as some sort of means to cope.
But I realize it's something much deeper rooted and really just starting from my core values I think I'm even struggling with.
Yes, and I get that.
And we don't want to invent core values any more than a scientist wants to invent physics.
You want to discover them, the objective values that you can hold.
And we did just put a video out called What is Masculinity?
Cool.
Thanks so much.
I appreciate it.
Alright, up next is John.
John wrote in and said, As a single father of a daughter, I wonder whether I should pursue looking for a serious romantic relationship.
Two doubts always creep up when I think about it.
First, while I know how to date, I have no clue how to morally filter my daughter's insight into my dating life.
Examples.
If I go on a date, should she know she's being babysat that evening for that, or just not mention the reason?
If a lady hits it off to me, when or how do I introduce them to my daughter?
Second, what type of woman?
Like being pursued by a single father.
That worries me.
In all but a few cases, in my social web, the men who pursue single mothers are immature, jerks, aggressive, possessive, drunkards, or drug addicts.
Does a single father have any chance of finding a good girl when the single mothers in my extended social web seem to only find jerks?
My daughter's mother was such a bad experience and bane all these years that I have PTSD about finding another like her.
Gosh, yeah, I can imagine.
I'm sorry, what was your name again?
John.
Nice to meet you, John.
Nice to meet you.
So...
I don't mean to reawaken your trauma, but can you give me the brief overview of what happened with your ex?
I kind of rushed into things too fast.
I was in high school and I missed all the warning signs.
When I started hanging out with her, within a few days, Five of my teachers individually brought me into their offices and were like, John, we would really recommend you stay away from that girl.
What did your parents say?
My mother did not approve at all.
She could sense something was up far before I could.
How pretty was this girl exactly?
Well-bosomed.
Oh, you got dicknapped.
Okay, got it.
Got it.
Okay.
Right, so your penis was like, eggs!
Eggs with big feet bags!
So, eggs!
And you're like, I don't think she's that nice a person.
It's like, I don't care.
She has eggs!
And good fertility signs, so...
We're going to shut down the higher frontal cortex and we're going to go full monkey brain.
Is that probably kind of what happened?
Yes.
Right.
And what were the signs that the girl was, that the other people were reading that the woman was trouble?
She was kind of the queen of gossip at the school.
Sorry, did you say queen of goths?
Gossip.
Oh, gossip.
Okay, sorry.
Got it.
I had a history of depression and things of the like.
And her, other than the gossip thing?
She had a history of depression, a history of lying a lot, wasn't that well behaved in school, didn't obey the dress policy.
Right.
And how long were you together for?
We were together for two years before we separated.
We were together for six months, then pregnancy.
How did the pregnancy come about?
I was at university.
It was my birthday.
Go on.
Do I really need to go into any more details?
Yeah, you kind of do, because it's not that hard to prevent pregnancy, right?
Oh, we did use two different types of birth control, but neither seemed to have worked.
Wait, so was it like condom plus IUD, or?
Yes, it was condom plus, what was it?
Yeah, an IUD, or whatever the acronym is.
And did the condom break, or what happened?
There was no visible issues with it from the packaging.
Now, I'm going to ask you a question that's probably crossed your mind, but I just want to satisfy my own thought processes.
I hope you won't take offense.
Do you know what that question's going to be?
Yes.
What's that?
Do I think she planned it?
Well, she can't plan for there to...
I mean, she put a hole in the condom or something like that and didn't have her IUD. And I keep thinking of IED, which is, you know, not far off in some ways.
So, okay, that's one question.
That was my second question, which we can deal with first.
Do you think that she wanted to get pregnant?
Honestly, looking back at it, her dream...
When she was a teenager was to be a parent, like the whole idyllic husband that goes to work as a good husband and father and her be the stay-at-home wife.
And that's always been my vision.
So I think maybe we weren't as careful as we should have been.
No, you were pretty careful, right?
I mean, IUD plus that's an intrauterine device.
It's like a Y-shaped thing that's supposed to, I think, what, prevent the sperm from hitting the egg or the egg from implanting or something like that.
So it sounds like you were pretty careful.
Who disposed of the condom?
I did.
Okay, so she couldn't have sperm-jacked you, right?
No.
With young individuals that are not sexually experienced, there is a high failure rate like Put on the condom slightly wrong or all that stuff.
I have read studies that show that there's a high failure rate for inexperienced users.
Inexperienced users of condoms?
Yeah.
Right.
But condom plus IUD, Mike, if you can sort of look up, that's got to be like 1 in 1,000, 1 in 10,000, I would imagine.
It seems like extraordinarily unlikely.
But anyway, okay, that's the way it went and that's what happened.
There is one other possibility, and I hesitate to mention it, but I feel I need to sort of dot my I's and cross my T's, which is that the pregnancy occurred from another man.
In other words, your birth control worked, but there's a technical possibility, which I feel obliged to mention, that the pregnancy occurred from another man.
That was a thought that worried other people, but during the period that she did get pregnant, nobody else was around her, yada yada.
Okay.
I just wanted to mention it.
Because if you've got two forms of birth control, but she gets pregnant, again, my thought is the possibility that it was somebody else's...
Somebody else is swimmers that managed to get one past the goalie.
But, of course, I bow to your judgment and experience.
It's just a thought that crossed my mind.
All right.
So, you were together six months when she got pregnant, right?
Yeah.
And did you get married?
I wanted to, but she never did.
Huh.
And what were the arrangements supposed to be?
Were you supposed to live together?
Were you going to give up college?
Or what was going to happen?
Well, so we got pregnant in my first year.
Then we moved in together for my second year.
We broke up at the end of my second year during exams.
How old was the baby at that point?
Exams are in April.
My daughter's birthday is in July, so that's nine months old.
And what was going on that you broke up?
She kind of felt...
She wanted to be like a regular 19-year-old and go to bars, drinks, and the like.
Wait, sorry, didn't she want to be a mom and have the dad and, like, I don't get how that fits in with the bar scene.
The grass is greener on the other side.
Oh, she probably missed the male attention, right?
Yes.
Okay, so she had a kid of nine months of age, but she wanted to go out to bars and get hit on by guys.
Is that right?
Basically, yes, for all intents and purposes.
I'm so sorry.
Gosh, what a disaster.
And so you broke up then.
In your second year, you said around exam time.
And what happened after that?
So during the summer between my second and third year, We kind of had 50-50 time.
I'd have my daughter for a week.
Should have her for a few days or a bit extra.
Then around...
Sorry, was she putting this boob tent to good use?
I mean, was she breastfeeding?
How did that work?
Did she pump?
Formula.
Was she not able to breastfeed?
Yes, early on in the pregnancy, there were a few issues with that.
Not really that relevant.
Alright, so was she unable to breastfeed for medical reasons?
Yes.
Alright, okay.
Okay, so then what happened?
Starting in the fall of my third year, she had informally given me full custody, wanting to see her daughter.
She said, at most, she expected every other week on the weekends.
I did most of my fall semester and then During one weekend that she had, she refused to give her back or let me see her.
So that was a pretty bad time.
So from my winter semester of my third year to the fall of my fourth year, I only got to see my daughter about once every month or two if I was lucky.
Right.
That's terrible.
But sorry, I'm sorry, I just missed something there.
So you had informal full custody of your daughter.
I'm sorry to ask you to repeat this, but how long was that for?
This was for, say, three or four months during my fall semester.
And what was she doing?
Being unemployed, living with her mother.
But why wasn't she able to take care of her daughter?
Uh...
She didn't want to.
Okay, alright.
Is that because she wanted to, again, go out and have fun?
Yeah.
Right.
So then, in the winter of my fourth...
I'm sorry, the fall of my fourth year of university, we did go to court.
We did have a custody order set up.
Where I had...
She wanted to get more involved.
She wanted to get more involved in...
No, no.
So in the winter of my third year, she wouldn't give her back.
So I had to take her to court to get visitation rights.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, I'm sorry about that.
That's very, very hard.
So I got the visitation rights in my fall semester, you know, in my Fourth year fall semester and it was every other weekend in the alternate Monday because I wanted to be a constant in my daughter's life.
Then I graduated in the summer of 2013 and starting in late 2013 I started having Naomi say every, not every, say for a week at a time or for a week and a half at a time.
And by the spring of 2014, my daughter's mother had surrendered custody.
And I contacted a lawyer.
We got the papers all signed up.
She signed up.
And I got full custody.
Wow.
Wow.
What a rollercoaster.
Man.
Man alive.
I can get the PTSD. God.
I'm so sorry.
What a mess.
I mean, good for you, man.
Toughing it out and sticking with it.
And, you know, your daughter is very lucky, it sounds like, to have you as a father.
And hats off, medals pinned, sounds to me like a fantastic...
A job in a crazy difficult situation.
Thanks.
And so now that is the question.
Sorry, and I just wanted to sort of get that background.
So is your ex out of your life now?
I mean, I guess any time something could happen, but is she sort of out of your life for the foreseeable future?
No.
It varies a lot.
So say in the fall of last year, 2014, she moved out to, and that lasted for a month.
Then she moved back because she missed her daughter, but then went, say, three, four weeks without seeing her.
Then saw her on average of once every two weeks.
Ben said she wanted to see her at least once a week, cancelled half the visitations.
Sometimes we'll go two, three weeks without contacting her daughter.
Just last week, though, she saw her four times, so it's up and down and left and right.
Yeah, and wildly unpredictable, of course.
Yeah.
Right.
Right, okay.
And what are your feelings towards your ex at the moment?
What's the antonym of amiable?
Hostile?
Yeah.
Yes.
Not in front of my daughter, but just in everything else.
I don't get along with her well.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, I know I'm only getting one side, but nonetheless, she sounds like a pretty horrible mom, or non-mom is the case, maybe.
And not bright.
Not bright.
So, thanks for the background.
The question now is sort of around single dad dating?
Yeah, so...
I do feel, talking to myself, talking to other people, that I am ready to start dating.
But I do know for my daughter, I have a responsibility to show her how men should treat women.
So I don't want her to get a bad idea of how men should treat women with a view of how she would have of Right.
Yeah, I mean...
Yeah, sorry.
Let me hold my thoughts.
Please, go on.
I'm good.
Okay.
Well, I mean, it's interesting because, you know, I've done a bunch of stuff on single moms, and, you know, I sympathize.
You really chose the wrong...
Against significant advice, right?
Yes.
Can you help me understand why you didn't listen to the people who were trying to save you from this?
At that time, I really believed that people were innately good.
So when I heard that, The warning comments.
I thought too much about the potential positives than the negatives.
No, I don't.
I'm sorry.
I have to tell you, I got a call not quite believable on that one.
And I could be completely wrong, right?
You could be speaking God's honest truth to me and I could just be overly cynical, but I'll sort of tell you why.
Because generally, when we're young, We inherit the values of the people who raised us.
And your mother herself was saying, don't do it, right?
Yes.
So, I gotta tell you, I don't know where you'd get some innate sense of virtue if your mom believes in dysfunction and danger and is telling you don't do it.
Where on earth would you be pulling this sense of innate human virtue out of?
I just, I can't see how that, I can't square that circle.
Well, what it is is that in my life, I've had so many people in my life that were so kind to me up to that point.
Like, yes, I've met dysfunctional people.
Everybody has a bit of a dysfunction.
But up to that point, I had basically never been exposed to anybody that was Overwhelmingly dysfunctional.
So there weren't kids in school who were bullied?
Are you from the future?
That's the whole question from Seinfeld.
I mean, are you saying that no extended family members were...
No, no, hang on, hang on.
But you knew they existed, right?
I mean, I stay away from bears too.
That doesn't mean I go and give them a hug, right?
Like, I knew they existed.
It's just that, say, for the dysfunctional people in my family, my mom kept them at arm's length.
But you knew that there were dysfunctional people in your family, right?
Yeah, just never firsthand knowledge.
What, you'd never met them?
I had met them, but the second they'd started showing any loony signs or any warning signs, it was like, This is no longer coming over for dinner.
Oh, okay.
So your mom would cut off people who were dysfunctional.
Yeah.
So you had a model called, if people are dysfunctional, stay away from them.
So I don't get how you somehow transformed that into there are no bad people in the world.
I mean, your mom was regularly cutting bad people out of your life.
Uh...
And can I tell you, I'm sorry to interrupt, but I want to tell you first why I'm asking you this, because this is what an intelligent and self-aware woman is going to ask you.
And the moment she sniffs a lack of self-knowledge, she's going to hit the road.
So this is why I'm asking you these questions.
I'm pretending we're dating, or not dating, we're sort of chatting for the first time, right?
Okay.
And if you...
Right.
And an intelligent and self-aware woman is going to ask, I would imagine, similar questions to what I'm asking.
And right now, your story does not make a lot of sense, I hate to tell you, but it really doesn't.
Because your mom is like...
There are bears in the woods, son.
Here, look, there's a bear.
Now, those bears are really dangerous.
We don't go to the bears.
We keep the bears away, particularly from the children.
Those bears are really...
Here's another picture of a bear.
Now, here's a bear pelt.
Here's what bears smell like.
And here's what a bear fart smells like.
Come on, Dad, show them, right?
And you're like, bears, and then you're like, well, I just went up and hugged the bear because I didn't know bears were dangerous.
Yeah, but it's kind of that latter bit you're like, I never got the whole, this is how bears look like speech.
I just never saw bears.
No, but you saw, I get that, but you saw her, you saw your mother continually ejecting dysfunctional people from your family.
Yes.
So your model is, stay away from dysfunctional people.
Yes.
And listen, your mom is obviously pretty strict with her boundaries because there's a lot of people who say you should not keep dysfunctional family members at bay.
I believe a few of them may have commented on this show over the years about my arguments that it may be a reasonably decent thing to do to keep dysfunctional family members at a distance.
So your mom was like defooing people who were dysfunctional and then you say, well, I thought everyone was nice and I didn't know that there were dysfunctional people.
Yeah.
So this doesn't hang together, right?
And I'm not saying that you're telling me anything that is false, right?
I'm not saying that at all.
I'm just saying that, like, if I was a woman and I thought you were, like, the sexiest thing since, I don't know, deep dish bacon that does a lot of sit-ups, and...
Then I would be like, okay, what's this...
You know, this guy's obviously had a disaster or two in his history.
What has he learned?
Because if you haven't learned a huge amount about your disasters, then it's disastrous to date you.
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
And I have learned to take things slower, to listen to other people...
No, no, no.
Listen, dude, I'm telling you.
You're driving the good women away with this lack of knowledge.
And I just...
I want...
I want your balls to get a workout.
So I'm trying to help you here.
Really am.
Really am.
But if you had taken things slower with your ex, all that would happen is your daughter would be a little younger.
That's not exactly the same as avoiding, I would really like the Titanic to sink slightly slower.
It's like, no, that's not the same as avoiding the iceberg, right?
It's not taking things slower.
The question is still, why didn't you listen?
I mean, the story you've got about, you know, I just didn't know there were dysfunctional people when you're, you know, it's like your mom's continually throwing people over the side of the boat and you said, I didn't know there was such a thing as stowaways.
It's like, well, what?
Right?
So you get where I'm going with this, right?
Because a woman is going to want to know that you have a clear enough knowledge Of the mess behind you that it's never going to happen again.
And from what you're telling me, you don't have that yet.
And that's going to be a bigger impediment to you dating because you say you're kind of jumpy, right?
Which I totally get.
But the reason you remain jumpy is because you don't have, I think...
In my opinion, it's just my opinion.
It's your life, so you're the final judge, obviously.
But in my opinion, you don't have a clear view of how you ended up where you are.
And this, you know, I just believe that the whole world was sunshine, lollipops, and rainbow ponies.
Nah, that's not.
I don't think that people are going to believe that.
It's a kind of way of praising yourself.
And it's also a way of criticizing your ex, right?
Like, I was just so nice and thought everyone was so wonderful, that's what a great guy I was, and bam, she took advantage of that, and you know what I mean, right?
Yes.
Now, in my opinion, I can't prove it, it's just a thought, but in my opinion, people who don't listen to advice are angry, right?
There's an angry will, right?
Like someone, I don't know, who's got a compulsive eating disorder and someone says, You know, you really shouldn't eat that second piece of cheesecake.
What do they say?
They get angry.
Yeah.
Or if you say to someone, I think you've had enough to drink, what do they say?
I could drink twice this amount.
Yeah, you know, you try taking the drink away from their hand, right?
They're going to get angry.
Don't you limit my angry will.
Now, obviously...
Your daughter is happy, but I'm sorry, and you probably have had moments of being sorry that people didn't know the right way to talk you out of being dicknapped, right?
Which is when you get kidnapped by your penis, right?
We're going for eggs!
There's a cliff!
I don't care!
We'll jump!
We'll make it!
Wile E. Coyote time, right?
And I'm sorry that the people didn't know how to talk you out of this, right?
Because, I mean, I know you love your daughter and you're happy that she's in your life, but it would have been nicer to have all of this with a stable relationship and a woman you loved and all that, right?
Yes.
Right.
So, five teachers cared enough about you to take you into their classroom and say, Which is kind of, I don't know, unusual.
I never got dating advice from any of my teachers, so they must have really liked you or really been afraid of your ex.
Yes.
And I get, yeah, most people, when they really want something and people tell them they don't think it's a good idea, they usually push forward because they're angry.
Don't drink and drive.
I'm fine, goddammit!
Right?
Yes.
Give me my keys back!
I know what I'm doing!
There's an anger in that when you try and limit people's will, right?
Now, you were, of course, in the full flush of youthful, manly hormones, right?
Yes.
And you know the old phrase, young, dumb, and full of cum?
We've all been there, right?
All been there.
And the degree to which you're willing to overlook necessary virtues in order to pursue a sexual preference regardless of personality is scary for a woman who wants to get involved in you, right?
With you.
Because if you're willing to throw caution to the wind in pursuit of sexual gratification or at least you were when you were younger and not that much younger either, then her concern would be, well, okay, so the next big-titted vixen who comes along is going to take you away from me because – right?
So you really need to know why you didn't listen.
And, you know, just saying hormones, I mean, that may be kind of a weird answer, I guess, but the problem is you're still young.
I think this stuff fades away from men four or five days after they're dead.
And I think it's called a stiff because you still get a boner if some chafely woman walks by.
If you say, well, it was just hormones, I was young and whatever, right?
Well, then you still have all those hormones, so a woman's going to be like, okay, so this guy can get kidnapped any time, and so he's not going to be someone I want to get involved with, right?
So you really need to dig into and figure out what it was in you, and not like some flaw or some, you know, whatever, right?
But what was it in you?
Like, I mean, and just to give you an example, right?
And I've talked about this before, so I'll be really brief about it, but I was involved in a lengthy relationship.
I proposed and all of that.
Got a ring and was going to get married.
Let me tell you.
Why could I not...
I mean, it was clear.
In hindsight, it was blindingly obvious the relationship was not the right fit.
Let's put it as nicely as possible.
But why couldn't I get out of it?
Because I couldn't draw a line down that relationship without drawing a line down most of the other relationships in my life.
In other words, I couldn't say, well, I'm not being treated right in this relationship without Inevitably, through the domino effect of universal principles, realizing that I wasn't being treated well in a lot of my other relationships.
Not all of them, but a lot of the other ones.
And that was the keystone of the arch that I had to keep propped up.
Because that's what happened when I finally said, I can't do this anymore.
And I got out, a lot of my other relationships began to fall by the wayside as well.
And because I had that knowledge, I was able to explain my past.
When I met my wife, I was in my 30s, attractive, I had a couple of bucks, I'd had a pretty successful career, and I was single.
Of course, the question is, well, why, if you're such a cat?
I had to know in great detail why my previous relationships hadn't worked out.
There's little more terrifying Like if you have self-knowledge and you're interested in someone that's a little more terrifying than then saying, I have no idea why the relationship didn't work out or have No idea why I got into that relationship in the first place.
I've mentioned this before too.
I was dating a woman.
We went on a couple of dates and then she was telling me all about one of her past relationships.
I was with the guy for two years.
We lived together for six months.
Then I came home one day from work and he packed up and vanished.
I never heard from him again.
I have no idea what happened.
I was like, okay.
Bye!
You know, I hate to say it, you're a nice lady, smart and all that, but, you know, if you're with a guy for two years, you have no idea there are any problems in the relationship, and he packs up and leaves, and you still have no idea what happened, then you are not a person who's driving with their eyes open, and I don't want to be a passenger.
And I'm not putting you in that category, obviously, right?
But saying she had big tits, and this is what happened?
It's not going to be enough to make a smart woman feel safe in dating you, and that's what you want.
You want a woman who's got self-knowledge, who's not going to be doing all this ridiculous stuff about, like, I have a baby, but I want to go to the bar.
You want someone of More quality, to put it as mildly as possible, than that.
But somebody of more quality, you want higher standards, but they're going to have higher standards of you.
And someone of more quality is going to be cross-examining you like some Gestapo guy with a swinging light bulb and a truncheon.
And you better have your story straight.
And you better know how you ended up where you ended up.
Because she's going to be sniffing deep for self-knowledge.
And shallow answers, easy answers, answers that don't hang together are going to be very alarming to her.
Does this make any sense?
Yes.
All right.
So, I mean, I don't know what the answer is.
And, you know, I think it's probably a bit late in the call.
For us to sort of figure that one out now, if you can get to any therapy or whatever, I think that would be great.
I think if the woman is of high quality enough, then I think that she and you will both negotiate about the best way to introduce her to your daughter.
Of course, you don't want to introduce someone to your daughter who's not going to be around unless you just introduce her as a friend or whatever, but You don't want to – your daughter has already been traumatized enough by having a stay here, go away, come back, get lost kind of mom and some of the inconsistencies in your fathering, I guess of which most have been due to the vagaries of the mom.
But she's already had a lot of people coming and going in her life.
So you don't want any of that, of course, with a girlfriend.
So I think my suggestion would be to – If the woman's of quality enough, she will also understand this as well, and that there shouldn't be a bond with...
I mean, ideally, there shouldn't be a strong bond with the daughter until you know you're getting married to the woman, but I guess that that can be a fairly long time.
Sorry, go ahead.
Well, concerning that, I had a funny dream once.
Like, you are right.
That is what I believe, too.
There shouldn't be an introduction until one knows that it would be...
More permanent relationship.
But then you're left with the awkward moment where it's like, oh, we've really hit it off.
We've been dating for six months, seven months.
Let's get married.
And then it's like, oh, yes.
And you've never met my daughter.
No, no, I get that.
But that's something you negotiate with a woman of quality.
And you can invite her over and just say, you know, this is a friend of mine and so on and see how they get along.
And all of that.
I mean, so you don't have to sort of say, let's get married, now you can meet my daughter.
I mean, there is a blend which you can transition to.
But here's the thing.
And this I really want you to get, right?
And I'm sorry to say it in that way because it sounds like, well, the other stuff's really irrelevant, but this is the important stuff.
But this is the thing that I really want you to get behind, which is that you are really...
In a deep hole as far as sexual attractiveness goes, right?
Yes.
And that's just...
I've said this to the single moms, and I'm saying this to you, and I'm saying that not because that means, you know, you've got to settle, but it should hopefully...
Give you a sense of how to add more value, right?
I mean, you know, if you don't have experience and you want the job, you just have to work harder, right?
Right.
And since you're currently, you know, the reality is if a woman could could do really well, she could do better than you.
And I don't mean that you're not a quality person.
It's just that.
Right.
You come with baggage.
You come with a daughter that she's going to have to figure out how to get along with when she wasn't when she's not the mom.
Right.
Because, you know, your daughter, she gets older, can always say, you're not my mom, you know, that kind of stuff.
Right.
It's complicated.
And she's got, you know, you've got a crazy ex floating around.
Who could come and nuke your family structure pretty much any time that she wants.
And if she gets married to you, is she going to pay half the legal bills for this kind of stuff?
I mean, it's a mess, right?
And so, you know, you could be the hottest thing on two legs, but any woman is going to look down the corridor of time and say, okay, well, you know, he's...
He's got trauma, right?
He's traumatized by his ex.
He's got a kid that I'm going to figure out how to get along with and how to bond with and how to take care of when she's Going to have issues because she grew up with an inconstant mom and a dad who, through no fault of his own, was sometimes there and sometimes not.
And so the kid's kind of traumatized, so he's kind of traumatized.
There's an ex floating around like a viper who could strike venom into the heart of the family at any time.
And maybe she's going to grab the kid and make a run for the border, or maybe she's going to start costing us tens of thousands of dollars in legal bills, or God knows what, right?
Maybe she's going to Get married to some crazy guy and want the crazy guy coming over and being part of the daughters.
There is a huge amount of negatives through no fault of your own in the present.
There's a huge amount of negatives floating around dating you, right?
And I say that not because I want you to give up or be in despair, but there's the same advice I'd give to a single mom, which is Then you've got to totally up your game to even compete with unattached men, right?
And the upping your game means just being A really spectacularly great person.
And I'm talking to you about that because it seems to me like you can go the distance that way, right?
I mean, you really care about your daughter.
You've really stuck by her and fought hard for what's best for her in a very difficult situation.
So massive props and admiration for that.
But as far as attracting a quality woman...
You have to, you know, this is your opportunity to, you know, go fully Olympic in terms of self-knowledge and stuff, if that makes any sense.
And that's why I'm being annoyingly push-backy on your explanations as to how all this came about.
If, you know, you with minus of daughter, not that your daughter is a minus, but I just mean in terms of a new woman coming along.
You with, you know, minus point for daughter, minus point for crazy ex, minus point for trauma and so on.
Okay, so you're behind the eight ball to some degree and so you overcome that.
With massive amounts of self-knowledge and the biggest, warmest heart known to mankind and having gone to therapy and learning how to work relationships for the best and learning how to negotiate and all of the stuff that you can to overcome those negatives, then you can end up with a greater plus than you could have had even without the minuses.
Does that make any sense?
Yes, it does.
But that, I think, is the challenge, right?
I mean, and I say this, you know, I'm not trying to compare this to your situation, but, you know, we talk about some pretty alarming stuff and some crazy stuff and some challenging stuff in this show.
And so I have to figure out how to make this stuff as palatable as possible to people.
And, you know, because philosophy has led me to some...
Challenging places like strong atheism and anarchism, voluntary family and all that kind of stuff.
So then the challenge is philosophy puts me at minus 10.
Relative to people's perceptions, so how the hell do I get people to listen when we start at minus 10?
Well, I have to just compensate for the challenges of philosophy with some witch, some challenge, some metaphors, some analogies, some research, all that kind of stuff.
We have to overcome.
We have to dig our way out of a giant hole of philosophy.
And relative to people's existing belief systems, we have to make the show so engaging and so enjoyable that people are even willing to be shocked, appalled, irritated, and angered by the show and still come back.
And because the quality of what it is that we're trying to do here is directly proportional to the difficulty of the content.
And so in a way, I'm grateful for the challenges of philosophy because they have really helped spark some hopefully positive and creative ways of getting philosophy across to people.
So again, I'm not sort of saying it's directly analogous to your situation, but through being behind the eight ball, you can become really great at playing pool, if that makes sense.
And with the right woman, all the decisions about when to introduce and all that, you'll negotiate that with her and you'll know when the right time is because it will be not something that you decide individually but that you and your girlfriend or your partner will decide through negotiation and it will be the right time and it will work out well but… Again, I think that you've got to work at upping your game.
I'm not saying you don't have it now, but I think even further, you almost can't go too far in terms of upping your game in terms of what you can offer someone.
All right.
Does that make sense?
Does that sound like a potential plan?
Yes, it does.
Thank you very much.
I tend to overthink.
I'm a computer scientist, so that's kind of my job.
So the idea of just delaying concern of an issue never even crossed my mind.
Neither did the concept of, if I'm behind by five points, better make sure in the last nine holes I'm already losing two under par.
Right.
Yeah, look, if you have great self-knowledge...
And through these complications, it has caused you to not only have your daughter in your life, who I'm sure is a great plus, but it also provokes you to greater pursuit of self-knowledge and self-honesty and so on.
Then the great thing is that you will repel people like your ex and you will attract people that you want in your life.
That's just the inevitable.
If I suddenly start switching to Japanese, I'm...
I'm not going to have a lot of conversations with English speakers, but I'm going to end up chatting with Japanese speakers who are going to overhear me and so on.
So when you switch to self-knowledge, you end up not having much in common or much to say with people who don't have self-knowledge or who, like most people, are resonantly set against self-knowledge, and you end up just attracting people who speak self-knowledge.
So when you do pursue that, it will be a lot easier because it will be something like the woman of quality who cares about you, We'll also care about your daughter and we'll want to do the best by her and by you.
And so that negotiation will be something mutual between you that will work out really well for your daughter.
All right?
All right.
All right.
Keep posted if you can.
And I sort of say this to everyone who calls in.
I really do sort of care how things go in the future and down the road.
And thanks everyone so much for calling in.
You know, it is such a pleasure.
To have conversations with people about what is meaningful, what matters, and what can really make a difference in their lives.
And I hugely appreciate that opportunity.
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Have yourselves a wonderful, wonderful night.
night.
We will talk to you on the weekend.
You say you want to be good to me You say you want to be mine And you say you want to confide in me And you tell me all the time And I showed you every side of me.
And I told you all of my plans.
And you said you would be a part of me.
And we wrote it out in the sand.
Now, come up your mind.
You've given me all the bases you've learned.
And I'm trying to find Since you fell, I've decided to run.
And I thought you would be the enemy.
And you were taking all of my time.
And who thought you would be my enemy?
I should've read all the signs.
And I never thought it would come to this But here we are in the rain And I'm sorry you couldn't see the end But it might have been for the best.
Now cut out your mind.
You've given me all the places you've learned.
And I'm trying to find.
Cut out your lies.
But you've given me all the places you've learned.
So quiet beside you on me So quiet beside you on me Ooh
Ooh Ooh Ooh Ooh Ooh Ooh
Ooh Ooh Ooh Ooh Ooh Ooh Ooh Ooh Ooh Ooh Ooh Ooh Ooh Now, call up your mind You're giving me all the bases you've learned And I'm trying to find Call up your liars But you're giving me all the bases you've learned
So quiet beside you on me So why I've decided to run me?
