2987 Passive-Aggressive Communication - Call In Show - May 30th, 2015
Question 1: How can you demonstrate the power of psychology to someone who views it as nothing more than superstition - like believing in a deity? Isn't it true that to ‘outsiders,’ therapy and learning to trust your emotions is not that different from what religious people call faith? | Question 2: During the May 16th show, Judgment as Violence, you proposed several criticisms of the late Marshall Rosenberg's guidelines for achieving what he labeled, Nonviolent Communication, that I found to be quite troubling. I believe there are several logical errors in your explanation that concern me, but ignoring them, I have two main questions. Why is it that all communication must be seen as nonviolent? How can verbal abuse be nonviolent? |Question 3: Is it moral to have children when you're either physically and/or mentally ill?
Relaxing, enjoyable, engaging, full of love and togetherness, connectedness, and the kind of productive conflict that sharpens all our mental whetstones of steel.
Mike, who do we have first?
All right.
Well, up first today is Matthew.
Matthew wrote in and said, How can you demonstrate the power of psychology to someone who views it as nothing more than superstition?
Sort of like believing in a deity.
Isn't it true that to outsiders, therapy and learning to trust your emotions is not that different from what religious people call faith?
That's from Matt.
Hello, Matt.
Who are you talking to or who are you thinking of talking to about psychology?
Yeah, this is a pretty personal question for me.
And there is a theoretical component to the question, but I think the personal is more important.
So I will jump into that as long as we can at some point remember to talk about the theoretical.
So this, it's around my brother and about...
About a year ago, I stopped talking to my parents.
Actually, it would be more accurate to say that my parents stopped talking to me.
I tried to communicate with them the problems that I saw in our relationship.
And I had a Skype call with them talking about some of the problems.
And then afterwards we were communicating through email and my mom, or my dad rather, wrote and said that, you know, your mom isn't comfortable communicating through email.
Or she's not comfortable communicating through Skype.
She wants to communicate through email and Then after that, a couple weeks went by, and then they called me out of the blue and just went on as if nothing was a problem.
And I said, wait, wait, you know, I don't just want to talk about the weather.
I don't feel like we've resolved this.
And I said, I don't know if I want you in my life.
And then my dad kind of got choked up, and then he said, okay, Matthew, and then hung up the phone.
And so that's the last time I've talked to them.
And my brother doesn't see anything the same way.
And it's been quite a struggle.
He's fighting...
Tooth and nail to not see psychology.
And we've had conversations about therapy, and he's admitted that there are some things that he notices about his own relationships.
He's married, so his relationship with his wife and also his relationship with our parents.
And whenever I talk to him about psychology, he's...
Close-minded, but I don't know if that's because he's just a rational person and very skeptical.
No, it's because he's married.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, look, let's just back up for a sec.
I'm real sorry to hear about your parents.
Mike tells me that you're in therapy, so you're getting professional help with this I'm really sorry about all of that.
I can't fathom how a parent could just say, okay, click.
More or less, right?
It's incomprehensible to me, but the world is full of people who make no sense to me.
I'm sure I make as little sense to them, and that's just part of the ecosystem of humanity that open-minded people need to accept.
So I just want to say that's a hell of a thing.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Yeah, it was difficult.
It still is.
Yeah.
And I want this great relationship with my brother.
We connect on an intellectual level.
And I've talked to my therapist about our relationship, and she talks about the eight stages of intimacy.
I'm not sure if you've heard of that, but she says we have this intellectual intimacy, and He is an anarchist, and he actually got me into libertarianism, and that's how I found this show.
But he will listen to the DRO stuff that you talk about, but when it comes to relationships and psychology...
Not so much.
And part of it, you know, I just...
You're right.
I mean, the relationship with his wife is a huge hurdle.
And maybe if I could talk to her...
It sort of reminds me of that movie, The Game, where...
They have to contrive all these elaborate scenarios just to get through to the guy.
But, yeah.
I'm not sure if that was a trailer for pause for thought.
I guess it was a pause for thought.
I know, it was a pause for thought.
No, but I guess what I'm getting at is...
I watched your series on objectivism and you said that Ayn Rand, she couldn't...
She couldn't change people's mind if they didn't want to hear what she was saying.
And that's sort of how I feel when I'm talking to my brother about psychology.
And, you know, the metaphorical crowbar, I don't know if it's there.
Because he's been adamant that what I'm saying is not working.
And he's very...
Wait, wait, what you're saying about what?
A lot of topics.
Yeah.
Well, his complaints have been that my conversation is negative.
Like, it oftentimes comes back to problems from childhood, problems, and he's not comfortable talking about that.
He doesn't like conflict.
Yeah.
He's very conflict avoidant.
And I've tried everything and we have conversations that sometimes last four up to five hours and it's just...
I feel like I'm going in a circle and beating my head against a wall.
So, I feel like if he could...
If we could get some help through therapy and so on, then that could improve our relationship.
But it's very frustrated when he listens to all my arguments, but he still says, I don't think that's for me.
It's more like this personal decision, like, well, therapy, it's good that it's working for you.
I'm joining a jazz band.
Well, that's good.
I don't really want to join a jazz band.
No, you have to join this jazz band.
Jazz is for everyone.
Jazz is the best.
It's like, whoa, I'm glad that you're enjoying your jazz life.
I don't really want to join a jazz band.
No, you must!
That kind of stuff, right?
That's how he perceives it, maybe?
It is.
Like it's a hobby of mine or something.
Stamp collecting!
It's for everyone!
Everyone, drop what you're doing!
Collect stamps!
Right, right, right.
And there is a...
I mean, I got six million thoughts, but the one I'll just sort of briefly mention is that If people say, well, I guess you need therapy, but I don't, it's sort of similar to saying, well, you know, you broke your leg, and you need rehab, like you need physical rehabilitation.
I didn't break my leg, so I don't need it.
Why are you asking me to go for physical rehabilitation when my leg is perfectly healthy, right?
Well, but in this case, it's not an accident.
I didn't break my leg.
Okay, even if somebody else broke your leg, my leg is not broken, so I don't need to go to rehab.
Right, right.
Yeah, and it's just really hard to tell somebody, no, you have these feelings that you're suppressing, and if he won't acknowledge that, you know, because we've talked about anger.
And I've told them how I feel about my childhood and all the anger.
And then I've gone into some of the somewhat similar things around bullying and stuff that happened and how our parents responded to the bullying.
Wait, bullying that happened?
Oh, oh.
Vague, vague award prize of the night so far goes to bullying that happened.
Well, I don't mean bullying that my...
Maybe my...
It was bullying in the schoolyard, so outside of the family.
So you and your brother didn't have a bullying?
There was no bullying aspect to your relationship?
So we're seven years apart, but there was teasing, there was...
You're younger, I assume?
Yes.
Yes.
So there was, absolutely, and...
We had fights.
Especially when we were younger, we had fights.
What do you mean by fights?
Well, let's see.
I'm remembering bits and pieces of it, so excuse me if I try to piece it together.
Do you mean verbal fights, physical fights?
That's all I mean.
Mostly verbal.
I remember one time I threw a baseball bat.
He slammed the door and then I threw a baseball bat at the door and put a huge dent in the door.
But most of the time it was verbal fights.
Like I said, he would tease me about pimples.
He would tease you about all your pizza face, stuff like that?
Sort of, yeah.
And he actually tried to pop my pimples.
So it was an invasion of personal space.
What, like he'd sit on you and try and pop your pimples?
There was no sitting, but...
Well, he's got to corner you in some way to invade your personal space, right?
Yes.
No, he...
He said, oh, I just have to pop that pimple, and then he would go and try to pop my pimple, and sometimes I would run away or swat him away, but other times he would...
Other times I guess I let him pop them because I wasn't sure really about proper hygiene.
I didn't have that kind of role model.
And so it was an insecurity sort of that he was exploiting you could say.
Right.
So yeah, there was teasing, there was bullying.
The one instance that we talked about where he experienced bullying on the playground.
And he came to our parents and said, you know, I'm being teased about my pants.
My corduroy brown pants.
And like...
He asked our parents to buy him new pants.
Yeah, get me some nondescript Levi's, right?
Get me something that doesn't stick out.
Oh, I had those corduroys too, man.
They're horrible.
Like, you run, it's like...
You can hear them a mile away, yeah.
Oh yeah, and you break into a sprint, you're afraid your legs are just going to catch in fire and you're going to get this polyester molten slag going down your inner thigh.
But yeah, I get some sense of those pants.
You know, when your parents, well, in my case, your mom's buying you clothing by the pound from thrift stores is not always the most ideal fashion statement to be making on the planet.
Oh, yeah.
And being the younger child, I got all kinds of hand-me-downs.
So, I can relate.
Anyway, so what happened when you wanted pants from your parents?
They said...
I don't know if suck it up is right, but they said in a nicer way, like, well, some people are just mean, and you've got to deal with it.
You have to not care as much what other people think.
Yeah, exactly.
Why are you letting it bother you?
It's not their thinking.
If the only thing they were doing was thinking, then it wouldn't be bullying by definition, right?
Yeah.
So when I asked him how he felt about that, he said, I felt a minor annoyance, but I didn't...
He didn't feel angry.
And when I said, like, when I was kind of getting into his child's, and when I was trying to empathize with his child, I was like, come on, Mom, like, what the hell?
I've got these pants, and people are making fun of me, and you won't buy me new pants.
And he took that as very hostile.
He said...
Something like he was taken aback.
He was offended by my anger towards – as if I was trying to tell him what to feel.
And I said, well, that wasn't my intention.
Well, it sounds a little bit like it.
It sounds a little bit like it, Matt.
I mean, if he says...
It's always a challenge, you know?
I mean, let me just clear something up off the bat in case people are listening to this for the first time.
You know, we're using the word psychology.
I'm not a psychologist.
I took, what, a year's college course in psychology.
I'm not a psychologist.
And so I've done therapy and all that.
But I just want to be clear for that for people.
But it is tough.
You know, I've had in this show...
I won't point any fingers.
I've had in this show countless instances where people tell me they're not bothered by something.
Right?
And I know that it's not the case.
I know it's not the case.
Yeah.
But the problem is, can't prove it.
Can't prove it.
And so you're like the cop who's like, yep, I know the guy did it.
Can't prove it.
Turn him loose.
Right?
Can't prove it.
And when people, like if you have a memory of your brother, you know, sobbing or getting angry or putting his fist through a wall, then you could remind him of that.
And he could say, oh, you know, it was just hormones or whatever.
But if he says right now, he's not bothered by it.
I mean, I've had people on this show who say, oh, you know, I have this friend.
He does this terrible thing to me and this terrible thing to me and this terrible thing to me.
But I love him.
And I'll say, really?
Because that doesn't sound to me like...
And it's like, nope, I love the guy.
I love the guy.
He's great, you know, and so on.
At which point I'm like, okay, well, you cannot...
Like either the person is lying, in which case accusing somebody who's lying when you have no evidence will always cause them to double down on the lie.
And counterattack with, oh, now you're telling me how I feel.
I don't fit your theory, and so I must be reprogrammed to fit what you think, right?
I've seen you do this.
I've seen you just accept it, and then later on you say, ah, but you said that.
Yeah, now, I mean, if there's contradictions, right, if there are contradictions, then I can point those out.
But I can't tell somebody they're wrong when they're open.
Like, maybe if it was one-on-one, or if we were in the same room, I could read body language.
But especially on Skype, you know?
I mean, if somebody tells me they love someone who is obviously abusive...
What am I going to say?
No, you don't.
But that's a form of self-erasure, right?
Then that's the trap.
Because then I would be erasing the other person.
Because either they're lying and they know it, in which case they'll just double down, or they're lying and they don't know it, in which case the abuser's alter ego is fully in control of the emotional apparatus, in my opinion, and you can't...
you can't get through.
So if your brother says, your brother says, well, I just had mild annoyance, and you don't have any evidence of the contrary...
You can say, are you sure?
You know, because it seems to me like you might be more bothered by that.
I don't want to tell you what you feel or whatever.
But if he simply says, I just felt mild annoyance at the time.
I barely even remember it.
I don't know why you're so hung up.
It's like, okay, well, what can you do?
You can't...
They win, so to speak, right?
If they're telling the truth, then it would be wrong to tell them they feel differently than what they feel.
And if they're not telling the truth and they know it, they're just going to double down.
And if they don't know it, chances of getting through or even...
Right, right.
And you know what my evidence was?
Which isn't entirely evidence, but I said, well, you know, in a kind of coy way, like, do you think it's a coincidence that you listened to lots of angry music?
And then I sent him studies that have Linked angry music to, you know, depression and suicidality.
But I know it's not a proof.
No, that's not proof, but it's evidence, right?
Yeah, yeah.
And what you're doing there, I mean, the fact that I obsessively listened to side three of Pink Floyd's The Wall for about three years might have been a clue about what was going on for me emotionally and my family, but, you know, my family's response was to hide the record.
That's gonna help.
But, so there's evidence where he says, you know, so if he listened to, I don't know, really angry music, then you say, look, there are these studies, this may be an indication.
He might say, well, that's interesting.
I guess I never really thought about that.
I guess I must have been kind of angry if this music really spoke to me.
Or he could just say, so I like music with some energy.
Now that makes me crazy?
Well, yeah.
Again, what can you do, right?
He responded with, oh, I think I would have liked angry music no matter what kind of childhood I had.
Right.
Okay, and in which case?
I say, okay!
Yeah, listen, when you push people, they just resist.
Yeah.
Right, so you can provide evidence, you can open listen, right?
I mean, but...
But you can't corner people.
I mean, you can if you have evidence, right?
You can if you have evidence.
And you can push back a little bit if you have indications, right?
Like he was really into angry music or whatever, right?
But, you know, the old saying, which is foundational to changing the world, is you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.
You cannot get that horse's head in the water and make that horse drink.
You can lose weight yourself.
You can starve other people.
If they're interested in how you lost weight, they'll say, tell me more or whatever, but you can.
And you're engaged in this dance with your brother called, I have this truth, and he's like, well, it's your truth.
It's not the truth, it's your truth.
And if you want to pursue it, great.
Don't think that it's me, right?
Yep.
And you can't win that.
You can't win that.
And all you're doing is you are hardening his defenses.
You are making his avoidance stronger.
Assuming you're right.
I'm going to just assume that you're right because you're a listener to this show.
But I'm going to just assume that you're right.
You're in therapy, so you're working on this stuff.
So if you're right, trying to corner people, all you do is make them better at getting away, right?
And through our conversation, I found more evidence.
He at one point got extremely angry and...
Blew up at me.
Well, at one point is another vague, I don't know what time period we're talking about here.
It was the last time we talked.
Oh, so not when you were 10 or whatever, but okay, got it.
Yeah, yeah.
So, we were talking, I was talking about therapy and I was making another case for therapy, which was how are your children going to I was pointing out some of the miscommunication that he had with our parents around emotions.
This was actually something his wife pointed out.
When he was talking to our father, he didn't ask him how he felt about his retirement.
And so his wife pointed that out, and he said, oh, that's true.
I didn't notice that.
And so anyway, in this conversation, I was talking about what happens when the roles are reversed.
Don't you want your child to have that kind of connection, to open up to you?
And after that, he...
Like I said, he blew up.
He got extremely angry that I was continuing to press this issue, and that's when he said, we only talk about things that are negative, and why can't we just go back to talking about the Fed or something?
And he's like, you're a terrible salesman.
He said you're a terrible salesman.
He said I'm a terrible salesman.
Are you trying to sell self-knowledge to him?
Well, that's what I asked him.
What do you think I will gain?
Because a salesman gains money and he couldn't really answer that.
He's like, I don't know what your motive is.
He doesn't know what your motive is?
Right.
Okay.
Right.
So I was trying to get him to think about this and ask the question, why did I lose my temper?
Because he blames it.
We talked through email after that point because he went to Europe on vacation.
But he blamed it on that he was tired and that he didn't...
He didn't have a lot to eat, so he was hungry.
And he said, I was being pushy, so not taking any responsibility.
But he did at least apologize for losing his temper.
But apology without self-knowledge is just a promise of repetition.
Yeah.
Part of what I'm struggling with is I don't know the degree to which what he's doing is conscious.
With my parents, I could see, well, they acted differently when they were Not in the family.
But he is like this.
Right, sorry.
I want to make sure I understand that, but with your parents, you said your parents acted differently when they're not in the family?
Not around me.
So, you know, my mother was a receptionist, so she would pick up the phone and be very pleasant to talk to.
But that wasn't the case around me.
And my dad wouldn't slam the table or anything whenever he was around other people.
Oh, but he'd slow.
Yeah, so they were nicer outside of the family than inside the family.
Yes.
Because strangers matter so much.
Right, I get it.
Yeah, but with my brother, I can't exactly pinpoint that same degree of responsibility.
Yeah.
And what you said around proving it kind of struck a chord in me because I felt growing up that my ACE score is like 2 and I just felt I couldn't...
Nobody...
He could see what was happening, and part of why I'm so, I guess, desperate to get through to him is just to have another witness, someone who was there, and could corroborate my story and that.
I think that's partly what I want, and I may never get that.
But that is a psychological thing.
That I'm aware of.
That I couldn't really prove this, and so part of my struggle is trying to prove it to him.
I feel like I've proved it to myself, but maybe that's not entirely true yet.
I don't know.
So that's about all I had to say.
All right.
All right.
So, a couple of points.
First of all, he's had seven years more exposure than you have to your parents?
Yep.
That matters, right?
It does.
It does.
Right?
It's like, I only had 10 years of radiation poisoning.
Somebody else had 17 years.
Like, it's going to have an effect.
Well, actually, yes.
And I'm sorry to...
I don't mean to characterize your parents as radiation poisoning.
I'm just using that as an analogy.
But if there's dysfunctional emotional problems that your parents have, then he had seven more years exposure and seven of those as a single child.
And, you know, parents are often more neurotic or more crazy with the first kid than they are with the second.
If they're going to be crazy, they're going to be more crazy with the first kid than with the second.
So he took a real brunt seven years more probably when it was escalated.
Because so I just want to sort of point that out.
This is something that younger siblings often forget.
He actually had 15 years more living with my parents because I left home to go to boarding school when I was 14 and he didn't leave until after college.
Oh, right.
So as far as exposure goes, if dysfunction is dose dependent, and I think it is, he got a much higher dose.
Right, yeah.
So that's important to understand.
But do you say that point to just point out that he had more dosage, or do you think that their parenting was different?
Well, I assume it's both.
Parenting changes when a second child comes along.
And so there was probably...
Some change in parenting, for better or for worse, and he had a continual exposure for 15 years that you didn't, right?
So it's going to have an effect.
I just pointed that out, right, that it's important to recognize.
Yes, and my therapist has pointed that out too.
She's told me that his experience was different than yours.
I don't want to get into what your therapist says because I don't want to compare and contrast.
That's the first point, I think, to understand, Matt.
The second is that if your brother's emotional state is not troubled by the fact that your father and your mother have stopped talking to you, I don't know what evidence you can bring to bear, verbally that's going to be stronger than that.
You said that they stopped talking to me?
Well, you said that you had stopped talking to your dad, but it was more accurate to say that your dad had stopped talking to you?
Yes, and he actually didn't know about that until we had a conversation, but it did not...
Really.
Didn't change anything.
Okay, so stop there for a sec, right?
So stop there, right?
Because we want to be empiricists, right?
Right.
How long was it between your father stopping, like hanging up on you and you telling your brother about it?
It would have been at least eight months.
What?!
What?
Eight months?
You could have made a baby at that time.
It had come out slightly preemie.
Are you kidding me?
Eight months?
Eight months.
Your brother did not know that your parents had stopped talking to you.
Well, I didn't tell him.
No, no, no, no!
I get that you didn't tell him.
I just asked you that question.
Here's where you need to give me...
I've given you lots of room to talk.
You need to give me short answers at this point, just because I've got to get this sorted out of my head, all right?
Go for it.
So your brother was still in contact with your parents during this eight-month period?
Yes.
So your brother and your parents are talking for eight fucking months.
Nobody says anything about you being cut out of the family.
No, he knew that I wasn't talking to them, but he had a different story.
In other words, he thought I just left on my own.
So he knew that you weren't in contact with your parents?
Yes.
But he didn't ask you about it?
Because you told him.
You had to tell him what was going on, right?
For you.
Yes.
Yes.
Dude.
Actually, it's actually after this happened, a couple months after, he got married, right?
And I was supposed to be in his wedding, and I said I wasn't...
No, no, no, no, no, don't drag me off.
Oh, you're right.
I stopped talking.
No, you're trying to drag me away from the scene of the crime.
Look, there's a disco opening right around the corner.
Don't chalk the body.
Okay, let's go back.
We'll get to the wedding.
Let's go back.
Your father hangs up on you.
You don't talk to your father for eight months.
You don't talk to your mother.
Your brother's in contact with them.
He knows that there's been this massive family altercation, right?
Family separation is foundational.
It's fundamental.
It's biblical.
It's huge, right?
And it is a hell of a lot less accepted than divorce, right?
But certainly for adult children to not see their parents is the equivalent of a multi-decade marriage breaking up, I don't know, in Amish country?
I mean, I don't know, right?
Because it's...
So, there's this huge thing that happened in your family.
Monstrous, huge.
The biggest thing since the birth of the kids that happened in the family.
Your brother is in contact with your parents.
He knows about this for eight months and he never brings it up with you.
Never asks you what happened.
Never asks you your side of things.
You have to bring it up with him.
Yeah.
No, no, no, no.
You're not getting it.
Because you're like, yeah, and.
No.
If you get it, if you get it, there's like, you know, give me a full-on Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.
Whoa.
Right?
Do you get just how crazy that is?
I'm sitting down now.
Hang on.
I mean, you've got to just physically relax, because you're going to want to rush off to some other narrative, right?
Yeah.
But this is key to understanding things.
There are two brothers in the family, right?
No other siblings?
Yep, just us.
Two brothers and two parents.
One quarter of the family just fractured.
And he doesn't mention it to you at all?
No.
Doesn't ask you about it at all?
Doesn't offer to act as a mediator at all?
Doesn't say, holy crap, dad says he's not talking to you?
Look, what's going on?
How can I help?
What message can I carry?
How can we get a sit-down?
Can we get into family therapy?
What do I need to do to help you, to help this family, to figure this shit out?
I mean, you were in conversation with your brother during those eight months, I assume?
Part of it, yeah.
Okay, part of it.
You all chat about the Fed, you all chat about the weather, you all chat about, like...
He doesn't bring it up.
He may never have brought it up if you didn't bring it up, right?
We don't know.
But the longer these schisms...
Occur, sorry, the longer they last, the worse they are.
Right?
If there's a fracture in your relationship, you have like 24 hours before the scar starts to really harden.
In my opinion, I don't have any science behind this, it's just been my experience.
If you have a fundamental crack in your relationship, there is nothing more important than the next 24 hours.
Because what happens is, if people are like, I don't want to see you, I hate you, whatever, I don't know what happened with your dad.
I know that's not what happened with your dad, but I don't want to, like, what happens is, you have 24 hours before everybody's self-justification mechanism starts to kick in, and they start to look back through time, and they start to gather evidence for the case.
And they're no longer interested in solving the problem.
They're interested in justifying their innocence in the problem.
And they start to tell the story.
And they put the story out about what happened where they're good and the other person is bad.
And they start gathering information and they start gathering evidence and they start putting out a whole narrative.
And then how the hell are you going to recover from all of that?
Right, so I don't know what your parents did.
I'm just theorizing here.
But if a man and a woman, oh, I hate you, I want a divorce, slam the door and off they run, right?
The next 24 hours is the whole thing.
It's the whole thing.
Because if she goes around and says, oh, he's such a bastard, he yells at me, he spends his pees in the sink, he spends all the money, he, you know, just has his man cave in the basement, he's just spending time with the kids, I can't stand him, I haven't found him attractive for years.
She goes out and starts to build the case about husband bad, wife good.
Husband's probably out doing the same damn thing, right?
And the friends might be like, oh, yeah, I never liked that guy.
Oh, yeah, I never liked that woman.
I never thought she was right because, you know, they're...
Everybody thinks that support means agreement and support Usually means the exact opposite.
But anyway, so people put this out and then they start thinking about, oh yeah, he has been selfish.
I remember this time.
I remember that time he didn't even buy me a birthday present.
I remember that time he forgot our anniversary.
I remember that time.
And they suddenly, they're realigning reality.
They're going back like 1984 style, rewriting history and they're bringing in allies and they're creating the narrative and they're self-justifying.
So there's an acceleration apart from each other.
That happens when there's this fundamental split in a relationship.
And man, I mean, I don't know why people don't just freak out and try and fix it right away.
You hang up the phone, you're like, oh my god, that's so terrible.
What the hell just happened?
I've got to call back.
Or if I don't call back, I've got to call my brother.
I've got to call my friends.
Here's this thing that happened.
I could have said, oh, my parents said, I don't even know if I want you in my life.
They're like, fine, click.
Right?
It's a multi-decade relationship.
What are we going to do?
But instead, people just let this acceleration apart.
Narrative.
Selective history.
Self-reinforcement.
Justification.
You know, they've done studies where people...
Say that they agree with a particular moral statement, they say, oh, I just want to check something, and they hand them back a different piece of paper with the exact opposite moral statement put on it, and people just immediately start justifying that.
This is how insane our world is as far as any kind of reality and integrity go.
So, eight months is a huge amount of time for this kind of schism to occur.
Because every single minute of every single day that nobody's contacting each other to fix it.
Now I believe in this case it's the parents obligation and responsibility because they're the parents and they define the relationship and they set up the habits and all that kind of stuff.
But the fact that your brother saw this fundamental schism In the relationship.
That was going to lead to unbelievably complicated, as I'm sure we'll get to when we talk about your brother's marriage, unbelievably complicated future relationships, right?
If you're not talking to your parents, you're still talking to your brother, Z-O-M-G, right?
I mean, it's going to be a mess, right?
Now, if I was his bride-to-be, And he told me, oh yeah, Matt's not talking to our parents or our parents aren't talking to Matt or whatever, right?
I mean, I'd be like, why are you telling me this?
Go talk to Matt.
Go sort this out.
Go fix this.
I don't want to marry into this kind of complicated mess.
I would not put up with...
Somebody just leaving that lie fallow.
How the hell is this going to work at the marriage?
Are they just going to pretend that each other aren't there?
How the hell is this going to work, say, for the next 50 fucking years?
We're going to have to invite everyone over separately?
Are there going to be separate Christmases?
Are there going to be separate Thanksgivings?
I don't know.
Fix this damn thing.
For me.
For my sanity.
For me.
Right.
Because I don't want to marry into a family that just lost a quarter of its members and no one's doing a goddamn thing about it.
Now, the fact that the woman, your sister-in-law, didn't say or do any of that, at least to my knowledge, and we know, we're pretty sure if she did, because your brother would be calling up and saying, hey, ma'am, my fiancé says we really got to talk to you.
Right?
Right.
It tells me everything I need to know about her.
And therefore, she chose to voluntarily marry into a family less than a year before they got married.
There's a huge schism and nobody's doing anything about it.
And she's like, yeah, let's keep going.
Nothing wrong with this.
What could go wrong?
This is fine.
I'm fine with this.
Ah!
Ah!
I wouldn't go within a thousand leagues of these kinds of problems if I was going to...
I'd be like, oh, I don't care how big a dick you got.
It's not coming anywhere near this.
you - I'm not marrying into this dysfunctional mess where there's this giant schism in the family and nobody talks about it, nobody solves it, even though there's a marriage coming up, even though there's other people coming into the family.
What did you think?
Oh, well, Matt's out.
I'll just step in as the sister-in-law.
Look, we're back to four again.
God.
So if your sister-in-law is that kind of person, and your brother is that kind of person, and your parents are those kinds of people, which is avoidance, avoidance, avoidance, avoidance, avoidance, avoidance, avoidance, right?
As your parents call back in, after you brought up issues with them, your parents call back in like nothing happened, right?
Right.
Right.
Avoidance reinforces avoidance.
There are six billion studies out there Which say that avoiding your fears makes your fears worse.
Avoiding your fears makes your fears worse.
Amygdala and overstimulation, where your amygdala sends up all this fight or flight stuff, you gotta face down that storm.
You gotta face down that electrical storm that rises up with fear and anxiety when we're challenged in one form.
This used to be common knowledge.
Gotta fear?
Face the fear!
Scared of something?
Face your fear.
PTSD has been well shown to respond very positively to progressive exposure.
Afraid of spiders?
Look at a picture of a spider.
And then look at a real-life spider behind glass.
And then touch the spider.
And then let a tiny spider on your hand.
I don't know why I'm not an expert, but this is as far as I understand.
And that's how you deal with your shit.
You face it down.
You face that shit down.
But if your family is like, oh, our son has a problem with us, click!
Right?
We avoid, we avoid, we avoid.
Well, then your parents, who are probably in their 50s or older, have 50 years of avoidance, which means that their capacity to handle negative emotional stimuli is paper thin, right?
Yeah.
You know, if I don't go to the gym for 30 years...
I'm not picking up a Buick.
And if your brother, who's, I don't know, 30 or so, whatever, 25, 28, doesn't matter, 30, he's got a couple of decades of avoiding negative stimuli, which means his physical capacity to handle emotional stressors is paper thin.
And so you're basically holding up A hissing, two, in fact, hooded hissing cobra snakes to somebody who's deadly afraid of snakes.
Saying, the snakes are friends!
Here, catch a snake!
Snakes are great!
Wrap it around your neck!
Deep kiss the snake!
It's wonderful!
What are they going to do?
And I felt that fear, too, when I first brought it up with my parents.
It is a fear that is a death fear.
You may as well be a lion in an enclosed area, turning on the overhead human sprinklers of ultimate marinade.
Right?
You are, by pushing self-knowledge on them, you're saying, got a tiger!
God is really hungry.
And little tiny tiger elves have been sharpening its teeth and implanting diamonds just to make it extra special sharp.
Really hungry.
Here we go!
To people who are terrified of tigers, right?
It's overwhelming.
I hate to sort of put determinism into this, but if you relentlessly avoid self-knowledge for long enough, you basically just become a machine.
Self-knowledge is supposed to give you free will by giving you choice.
I didn't used to like spiders.
It used to freak me out.
I remember being...
I was taking a picture once at a cliff edge and there was a spider crawling on my hand.
Pretty big one, actually.
And I like...
I threw everything away and I'm like, wait!
Camera!
Cliff!
Not a good combo.
They're close in the alphabet but far apart in terms of mutual functionality when meeting at high speed.
So I caught the camera strap and after that I was like, I better deal with this spider shit because it's really not very healthy, right?
Now I'm pretty comfortable with spiders and so on.
I don't want to get into all the details but I didn't have, like I had a spinal reaction and it was not under my control because I wouldn't have thrown a camera off a cliff to get rid of a tiny pretty harmless spider, right?
So, if you avoid self-knowledge for long enough, you become a machine.
Because all you are is avoiding discomfort.
Avoid discomfort.
Pursue pleasure.
Avoid discomfort.
Pursue pleasure.
Avoid discomfort.
That's not freedom.
That's barely even having an identity.
It's the same machinery that drives a fucking trilobite or any kind of bacteria.
Pursue pleasure.
Avoid discomfort.
Pursue pleasure.
Avoid discomfort.
The whole point of self-knowledge and willpower and therapy is to say, okay, I've got these fears.
I don't want to spend my whole goddamn life running from ghosts and running from fantasies and running from illusions and running from discomfort.
I don't want to.
I'm going to turn around, face that shit.
There's six million movies about this and about 12 million books and all of the fables on the known planet are around face your fears.
Face your fears.
And if you don't face your fears, then you're just this pinball, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, running around from fear to fear, to fear to fear to fear.
Yeah.
It feels really good, too.
Yeah, so if this is where, I'm sorry, I'll shut up in a sec, but if this is where your family is, and you understand, I'm just theorizing here, I don't know because of your family, but the science is pretty clear.
Political correctness is supposed to be avoiding discomfort for people.
Your data makes me uncomfortable, right?
And it's gotten so ridiculous.
Because when you avoid your fears, your fears grow.
It's a fear subsidy to run away from your fears.
When you avoid your fears, your fears grow.
And...
Now, political correctness and the sensitivity, you know, they've got these feminist gatherings where women are like, it kind of freaks me out.
It makes me very anxious when people clap.
So, I want everyone just to do jazz hands.
Right?
Look, dancing phalanges.
Right?
I mean, and so people can seriously look out at a sea of people doing jazz hands rather than clapping and saying, yeah, we're not crazy.
Right?
This seems perfectly fine.
Some woman came to talk about rape statistics.
And they had to set up this safe room.
This safe room in case women got triggered.
Safe room!
You could run to this room and they had cookies.
And they had teddy bears.
And they had big giant embracing bean bags.
And they even had videos of frolicking puppies.
Just in case some of the math made you upset.
And...
Oh, God.
The guy, I think he was head of Harvard, who, you know, he was off the record just shooting the shit, and people said, well, why do you think there's so few women in the STEM field?
All right, science, technology...
Engineering and math.
And he said, I don't know.
It could be any number of things.
It's possible that there could be some biological reason, like maybe male and female brains are different, but nobody really knows for sure.
And a couple of the women enacting the perfect stereotypical Rudyard Kipling cardboard cutout Victorian hysterics said, I had to run from the room.
I thought I was either going to faint or throw up because he said something that I disagreed with or that was upsetting to me.
I had to run from the room.
This is somebody who's getting a storm of anxiety erupting from the amygdala.
And they've never faced down their fears in any way, shape, or form.
So they can't say, oh, I'm scared.
That's good information to have.
I'm not going to have it make me turn into some fainting, bring me the smelling salts, blanche du bois cliché.
I'm going to deal with my feelings like a mature, responsible adult and not let them run me like some giant, ridiculous, hysterical marionette.
And it's not going to change.
It's just going to keep getting worse and worse and worse.
Fear avoidance breeds fear avoidance breeds fear avoidance breeds fear avoidance.
You know, there are some people, particularly women, who say we should not teach rape law.
We should not teach the law around rape in law schools because it's upsetting to women.
Alan Dershowitz Was sued for sexual harassment for teaching rape law.
Because a woman said she felt assaulted by the data.
And he now videotapes everything.
Professors live in terror of this kind of hysterical overreaction.
Like one guy was saying, you never know if you're just going to say something, not intentionally, you don't even think it's wrong, someone takes it the wrong way, next thing you know you've got women with mattresses following you all over campus.
I mean, we've just become very fragile.
Because fragility is power in a statist environment, because fragility breeds white knighting in politicians and resources.
And so we're basically funding and feeding all of this hysteria, and so we're getting more and more of it.
But it's never going to stop.
I mean, you have to at some point turn around and say, sticks and stones, right?
I have my bones.
So...
So I just...
I'm sorry, I said I'd shut up in a sec.
I will shut up now.
But...
You are, I would assume, your willingness to pursue self-knowledge, your willingness to explore your emotions, is for your family a death threat.
And the very brief reason is because conformity was survival throughout almost all of our upbringing.
Conformity was survival.
The capacity to be non-conformist is so ridiculously new that I don't think there's been any possibility that For any fundamental human apparatus to adapt to this insane reality that we can be non-conformist.
If you were non-conformist in a tribe of 50 people or 100 people, they just killed you.
Or they killed your genes by not giving you eggs, not letting you breed, right?
So then...
Conformity is essential.
And what you're asking people to do is do the opposite of that which enables them to survive in your family, right?
Because you needed the support and approval of your tribe in order to survive.
They had to guide you while you sleep.
They had to...
Help you fend off predators.
They had to go and get food when you were unwell or when you had broken your leg.
They had to bring you food.
You needed other people and you needed their approval, their enthusiastic approval, in order to survive.
And people who said, screw you to the tribe, the tribe said, screw you to their genetics.
And those people dropped right out of the gene pool.
This is why ostracism It's as powerful a motivator for humanity as torture.
I'm not saying it's the same as torture, but biologically it activates the same parts of the brain as physical torture.
Because we are a social species.
We survive collectively, not individually.
So if your family is the tribe of emotion avoidance, and you're like, let's go for the emotions, right?
Right?
It is a death threat at the deep biological level.
Everything which is the opposite of conformity is perceived as a death threat, either individually or to the genes as a whole.
And the genes don't care either way, right?
So that, I think, is why you're hitting such resistance.
And this is why mere evidence won't be enough.
And now your brother has brought someone else into the clan who is, let me guess, emotion avoidant.
Oh yeah.
Yeah, of course.
Like begets like.
Like attracts like.
And so now he's like, well shit brother, maybe before I got married, but now if I follow you down this merry primrose path of emotional self-expression, you get to the laughing paradise of the gods, I go to family court.
Yeah.
Well, if he has children, then it just becomes even harder to get out.
Oh, yeah.
No, I mean...
No, absolutely.
I mean, it's a complete disaster.
Beyond a disaster.
I mean, that's...
Divorce in the modern West is about the worst thing that a man can experience.
Should I tell you about the wedding?
Yeah, I'd like to hear about the wedding.
But first, is this helpful?
Is this...
Yeah, I mean, I don't know if this is good or bad, but I can kind of empathize with my brother a little more now.
In terms of his physiological reaction to...
It's physiological right down to the base of the brain.
And without philosophy, without principles, everything is just a cost-benefit calculation.
Everything is just a cost-benefit calculation.
And that's why I say that you're a machine.
You're a machine of cost-benefits without philosophy.
And this is why people resist the spread of philosophy so much, because philosophy causes people to face their fears.
It causes them to have something other than mere biological, emotional-driven cost-benefit analyses that And to look at a larger perspective and a longer-term view.
People like me, and like you perhaps as well, we look insane to people.
Like, why the hell would anyone take on this kind of task?
Where's the cost-benefit?
I don't get it.
Because they don't understand that philosophy creates a vastly different series and perspective and longevity of cost-benefit.
And so...
If they're just running on cost-benefit, you have nothing to offer them a cost, and conformity has nothing to offer them a benefit.
So it's pretty clear why they do that.
Okay, but let's hear about the wedding.
Right, so a couple...
A month or two after my parents cut me off, my brother got married.
And...
I was supposed to be in the wedding as one of two best men.
And I called him up and I said, you know, I know I said that I would be in the wedding, but I just really, I can't do it.
I'm not in a position to be around our parents.
And he said, yeah, I kind of thought that that might be an issue for you.
But again, he didn't bring it up.
Right.
It was me that had to bring it up.
And so I did not go to the wedding.
I have gotten to interact with his wife some.
And there's a lot of similarities between my mom and her.
And she will shut down the conversation when he tries...
For instance, he's tried to talk to her about politics.
And from what I understand, when she gets uncomfortable, she just shuts down and goes into another room, which is very similar to my mom.
And...
So, yeah, it's not too surprising that they ended up getting married.
There wasn't much more to the story, sorry.
Okay.
But you missed your brother's wedding.
That's sad.
It is.
Yeah.
I would have liked to have been there, but I don't know.
If I was the older brother, I feel like I would have tried to talk more sense into him.
And I guess there's still a certain amount of guilt that I feel about...
I mean, granted, I didn't have the kind of self-knowledge I have now back then, but I feel a little guilty for not...
Not trying to warn him about what he was walking into.
Oh, you mean with his wife?
Yeah.
I basically...
I don't know what I would have said either, because...
When somebody asked me what I thought about her, I would have been like, she's nice.
I don't think I was able to be that honest back then.
Are the odds of him listening to you?
Slim to none, in my opinion.
Well, that's certainly what the evidence is.
And you only get to pull those dice once, right?
Yeah.
You're marrying the wrong woman!
Oh, you don't believe me?
Oh, fuck.
But the thing is, now it's even harder because...
Well, that's what I mean.
He's wrapped around her finger and...
I assume that the men in your family, yourself perhaps excluded, are not blessed with an overabundance of spine, right?
No, that is certainly true.
Yeah, they're all white knighting, and the women get upset, and then the men rush to...
White knights, they rush in to save the damsels in distress, thus making the women who have no power supposedly have all the power.
Yeah.
Well, there was an episode where my mom wasn't happy that the family wasn't talking, and so she hid the internet box...
Sorry, who was this?
My mom.
She hit the internet box.
Yes, because we were on our laptops.
This was over a winter break, and we weren't talking, and she wasn't happy with it, so she hit it.
I asked my dad what happened, and he said, your mother is upset that we aren't talking.
I always dislike it when people...
This is just my particular thing, Matt, but I always dislike it when dads refer...
Your mother...
It's like, how about your wife, man?
Yeah.
Because that's just such a plea to authority.
It's just such a plea to, well, it's your mother.
So I'm going to hook into the word mother and get your compliance because of that.
And of course, if I refer to her as my wife, then I might actually have to do something about it.
Yeah.
Maybe in a subtle way, it's because he views her as his mother.
Yeah.
Alright, so the last thing I want to say is, in my opinion, in my opinion, it is not going to work with your brother in the way that you're trying to make it work.
Right?
But how long have you been trying this for?
Since last...
Uh...
December?
Yeah.
Oh, so like five months or so?
Yeah, there was definitely a period where we weren't talking at all, and then I got back in touch with him, partly because I wanted to get...
Well, this is what I told myself, is that I wanted to get...
Information from him.
I wanted to see if there were any memories that he could help me with.
But when I asked him about his memories, everything was foggy and he didn't remember anything before age six.
But as I started talking to him, I guess another desire came out to really...
To see if I can make it work.
Part of this might also be that if I can't make things work with my brother, I sure as hell know I couldn't have made them work with my parents.
You can't make it work with anybody.
You can't make it work.
With anybody, you're like some communist czar looking at the economy and saying, I can make it work for everybody.
You're talking about central planning in human relationships, that you've got to make it work.
You can't make it work for anybody.
It has to be mutual.
Trade, whether in values, in love, in long-term body fluids, in the economy, it has to be mutual.
You can't make it work for anybody because that dehumanizes the other person and makes them a puppet in what is supposed to be a relationship.
No, no, that's right.
And that's why I definitely didn't, the last thing I wanted to do was to just gloss over this and ignore it.
So I was adamant about that.
No, but this drive you have, in my opinion, is so early.
And it comes from a desire to connect with your mother, which is, of course, the basic drive of all ridiculously inconvenient babies, as we all are.
We need to connect with our mother, and we need to connect in an emotional way to our mother, and to know how important we are, to know how bonded she is, We need, like, oxytocin dripping out of her eyeballs in tears of joy on contact with us.
That is what gives babies security.
And you had, as all babies have, a yearning for an emotional, deep, meaningful, oceanic connection with your mother.
And I doubt very strongly that that happened.
So you have a habit of reaching for family members, of trying to connect with family members.
And this probably goes back as early as your earliest memories.
And when we reach for something and we don't get it but we still need it, we keep trying.
We keep trying.
We don't give up.
We keep trying.
Now, we may know deep down that we're never going to get it, but it is the trying that keeps us going.
So we have to lie to ourselves, oh, I can get it, I can get it, I can just try this, I can just try that, right?
Like in Lord of the Rings, they're all sitting there at the bottom of it, trying to get into the mines of Moria, and there's this Door that they can get into.
And they're trying all these spells and hacking at it with hammers and stuff.
And, you know, then Gandalf comes open, friend.
Boom!
You know, off!
Yeah, they're in there.
Just, oh, I gotta just get that phrase.
I gotta just get that last tumbler into place.
I know I've been working at these locks for a quarter century, but just one more, right?
One more try.
And when people have nothing to offer you...
They love to provoke in you the desire to get something from them.
Because now they have something to offer you, which is the fantasy they have something to offer you.
They don't actually have to have something to offer you.
So my concern is that you may be, it's all just an idea.
No truth in this, just ideas.
It may be, Matt, that you are Simon the Boxer, like in my free book, Real-Time Relationships.
You can get it at freedomandradio.com slash free for those who haven't.
Got this analogy of Simon the Box.
It's a repetition compulsion.
You may be locked into confirming that you're not going to get anything every single moment of every single day.
Because managing not getting anything while striving to get something is the only control and connection that you had as a kid.
My concern is that you're driven unconsciously to attempt to connect to something that isn't there because that's what you used to survive as a kid.
And I think that you're avoiding that grieving by pretending that you can get it.
Whether you can get it or not from your family, I don't know.
But as sure as Sunrise know, you're not going to get it this way.
If this is true, and let's say I can't get it, is therapy the fix for that?
I mean, I think I've heard you say you kind of established that unmet need with your therapist.
I'm not sure what your question is.
Because you said, well, I'm reaching out to get these unmet needs.
But to a certain extent, you know, the therapist is this authority figure similar to When you were a child.
And so that can reprogram in a way your...
This Simon the Boxer thing.
I guess what...
No, to me it's...
What's the solution?
Once you have cheesecake, you can't eat sand anymore.
Again, I don't know why therapy works.
I don't know anybody who does.
But it does work really well.
It does work really well.
And...
For me, my relationship with my therapist was somebody really cared about me, really cared about what I thought, really cared about what I felt, really cared about what I dreamt about, was really focused and found me interesting.
I was paying her.
I get all of that.
I get all of that.
But we had a very deep and fascinating relationship and Once somebody had really taken an interest in me, really for the first time, or you could say, oh, well, people had used me before as utilities, like as a utility, as a status symbol, as for business value, for whatever, artistic value.
Okay, she was using me as a utility to get money.
I get that, and I fully, fully understand that.
But nonetheless, she was really interested in me.
And She would think about me between sessions, which, you know, I would do work between sessions.
I guess it would happen for her too.
And she'd say, oh, I was thinking about this thing you said three weeks ago and blah, blah, blah.
That's interest.
And once somebody has really been interested in what you think and feel, which is such a radical experience, you can't go back and To the herd of just self-absorbed non-people.
And that to me was just having an actual...
I cared what she thought, she cared what I thought.
We explored some very powerful and very deep and very meaningful issues together.
And when you have that and you're like, oh, this is what food is supposed to taste like.
This is what it means to actually talk and listen to someone.
This is what it means to be cared about.
And there are times when her care for me expressed itself in very sharp disagreement and pushback.
And once you have somebody who is genuinely devoted to your improvement, to your self-knowledge, to your depth, To your identity.
To your growth.
Once you've experienced that...
I mean, I spend a lot of time trying to bring water down the hill.
It's just a hole in the bucket is too big and the hill is too high.
I couldn't do it.
Maybe some people can.
I couldn't.
But I just found when I would go back to other relationships, I would just be like...
Bored.
Just bored.
It's so boring.
So dull.
I don't care that much about the sports team.
I don't care that much about the flag.
I don't care that much about the weather.
I don't care that much about this political thing or that political thing.
I care if there's principles we can explore, fantastic.
It doesn't have to be 24-7, but this relentless drip of nothing trivia and unimportance and avoidance, it's just...
I didn't know how bored I was until I wasn't bored for three hours a week.
And I just couldn't go back to that.
I couldn't.
I tried to bring deeper conversations, and to a small degree, and in certain areas it would work, and then there'd be this backlash and people, right?
They'd hit on something that was difficult, and because they're pain-avoidant, pleasure-pursuing machines...
They enjoyed it as long as it was not challenging, and then when it became challenging, ah!
Boing!
Off they go, right?
And it was disappointing.
So, I don't know why therapy works.
I mean, there's the enlightened witness theory, there's the coaching hypothesis, there's, I mean, stuff I've talked about in shows before, but I think it's just, it's not boring.
And once you've not been bored in a meaningful relationship, once you've been really engaged and you've really recognized the degree to which human connection is possible, well, it just raises your standards, or lets you have standards other than accidental biology.
And when you have those standards, which are involuntary, involuntary, I don't know...
You can't sustain yourself on air once you know what real food is like.
And also with connection, and I think this is why a lot of people avoid connection.
With connection, the reason that connection is so important is connection is so deeply associated with mortality.
People have this weird belief.
I don't know where it comes from.
This weird belief, Matt, that...
If I turn myself into a ghost, I won't die.
Deep connection has something to do, and I don't know exactly how it does, but deep connection has something to do with mortality.
And the reason I think it's to do with that is that people who are avoiding stuff and avoiding stuff and just being these pain avoidance machines, discomfort avoiding machines, anxiety avoidance machines, they know deep down that They have to fix things.
Your parents know deep down.
This is not how a family should be operating.
This is not how things should be.
They know that.
But there's a weird kind of immortality that people have, a weird kind of no-timedness, an outside-the-bounds And rules and demands of time.
Motality has its demands, which is fix shit now because you could be dead tomorrow.
And you sure as hell pile enough tomorrows and you will be dead.
So fix stuff now.
Connect now.
People who don't connect, who let their mistakes accumulate, who let their avoidance accumulate, who let their relationships...
Decay and fall apart.
There's this weird kind of immortality to it.
Oh, you know, I can have as many relationships as I want.
Oh, I've got an infinity of tomorrows to solve my problems or to fix things.
Oh, maybe I'll circle back in a year or two and see how things are.
Fuck!
Fuck!
No!
We do not have forever to connect.
We do not have forever to reverse these disasters.
We do not have forever to really get to know the people who are around us.
And we do not have an infinity of tomorrows to undo all the mistakes of yesterday.
Time marches on.
Shorter of breath, one day closer to death, every single step down the road.
The coffin comes.
The coffin opens.
The coffin yawns.
The coffin is hungry.
And the coffin eats you whether you are alive or have been dead your whole life.
Whether you turn into a ghost or have been a ghost.
And the panic of mortality is what this kind of dissociation, this kind of avoidance is designed to distract you from.
Mortality brings with it a desperate and incredibly healthy kind of panic.
An incredibly healthy kind of panic.
To connect, to learn, to...
to eat deep the flesh of life.
To drink deep the wine of life.
To experience.
To nuzzle this great beast of existence.
And to retire from the sport of life spent...
Bruised, bloody, glowing with exercise and satisfied with how you spend your strength.
To be a predator rather than an endlessly fleeing prey is the essence of life.
By predator, I don't mean attacking people.
I just mean seizing and chasing, achieving, winning.
Helping the planet, though the planet desperately does not want to be helped in the moment.
And I never really thought that much about death until I was in therapy and I realized every day that I spend Being empty.
Every day I spend being bored.
Every day I spend making jokes with people rather than connecting with who they really are and letting them connect with who I really am.
Well, that's just taken off the pile.
That day's just taken off the pile.
I got a fixed number of days.
That's just taken off the pile.
Thrown away.
Set fire to burn.
Vanishes.
Never to return.
And when you really do get a sense that time runs out, it gives you this great deal of panic, this great deal of invigorating terror that we all so desperately need.
This invigorating terror which says, fuck, I'm gonna die?
Is this how I want to be spending my short life?
I am going to die.
Is this how I want to be spending my tiny slice of existence in between the vast chasms of nothingness that I came from and that I'm going to in this incredible laser-pointed, sunlit, disco ball sliver of life that the universe has miraculously bestowed upon this tiny aggregation of starshit?
In this glorious capacity and receptacle of life and not just life like a bacteria in the armpit of a whale, but life as a human being with reason, with depth, with dreams, with thought, with creativity, with all the star-shining matter.
That we can bring to bear on the inert things of this world.
A human being is a great way of turning an ear of corn into a poem.
I have been granted this unbelievable opportunity.
Do I want to spend my life, my brief flash of near infinite possibility, do I want to spend my life Arguing about some political idea.
Do I want to spend my life watching A merely okay, dumbed down for the masses kind of movie?
Do I want to spend my life sitting and staring at people I don't have anything in common with, I don't have any connection with, who are not going to join me in some great march of virtue and terror and possibility and achievement and disaster?
Do I want to spend my life...
Too bored to get up and go to bed, watching late-night infomercials, slowly inhaling the floating orange dust of Cheetos up my nose.
And we all have moments like that.
Lord knows I've argued some political ideas, and they've been fine.
I don't, like, it's not like it all, I don't wake up, ah, let me seize the day, you know.
Sometimes you've just got to take a dump.
Well, that's fine.
But take a deep dump.
But connection...
We drive for connection because we fear death.
And when people skate through life merely avoiding discomfort, it's because really they must think they're going to live forever.
Or that their choices don't matter, their connections don't matter, their closeness doesn't matter.
Your dad, and it breaks my heart to even think this, Matt, but your dad clicked down on the phone because fundamentally he didn't think he was worth being missed.
He didn't think that he provided enough to you that you would even miss him.
And what a terrifying thought that is, that somebody can live for 50 years on a planet, give birth to two children, be married to a woman, and not feel that they could be missed.
So, I think that the intimacy Generated by any close, deep, meaningful, repetitive conversations, whether therapy or somewhere else, the deep conversations generated by therapy remind us that we're going to die and it matters how we live.
It doesn't matter how we live because there's some judgment in the afterlife.
It matters how we live because we're going to die.
And deep conversations remind us Of the proximity of death.
Death is always proximate.
It's like a crow on your shoulder.
You just don't know when it's going to peck.
Could happen to me before the end of this show.
Might have an aneurysm.
Don't know.
Giant meteor could strike the house.
Great conversations remind us of mortality, and mortality reminds us of the need for great conversations.
I think that's why it works.
Thank you.
I don't know what to say.
Do you want to just mull it over for a bit?
Well, I know.
I know.
I think this helps.
I think this helps.
You can't spend your life chasing after people who hang up on you if you have a problem with them.
I don't think.
I mean, I think what an incredible waste of life that would be.
You're like somebody desperately swimming after a ghost ship in an ocean that never ends.
Yeah, I want to make the most of...
And I think it's true.
It's not only theists who feel that they're going to live forever.
Well, but theists at least will talk about things of depth that import.
They'll talk about virtue.
They'll talk about integrity.
They'll talk about commitment.
They'll talk about courage, moral courage.
And that is...
In these semi-secular relativistic haze that we currently have lost our entire essence of humanity in.
I mean, we don't even believe in good and evil anymore.
The hell happened to us as a species?
It's like a lion not believing in gazelle or hunger.
Right.
Anyway.
I've got to move on to the next call, man.
But I appreciate it.
Do let us know how it goes.
And as always, my advice is stick close to your therapist and listen to what she says.
Great, great.
And do you mind if I give a plug for the book that I'm writing?
Well, I'm actually going to be speaking at Porkfest, so people can come and check me out there.
Please do.
The book is on how design thinking can help bring down the state of Excellent.
All right.
Do say hi to them at Porkfest for me and have a great time when you give your speech there.
I will.
Thanks so much.
All right.
Take care.
Thank you, Matt.
All right.
Well, up next is Brian.
Brian wrote in and said, during the May 16th call-in show titled Judgment as Violence, you proposed several criticisms of the late Marshall Rosenberg's guidelines for achieving what he labeled nonviolent communication.
I found these to be quite troubling.
I believe that there are several logical errors in your explanation that concern me, but ignoring them, I have two main questions.
Why is it that all communication must be seen as nonviolent?
How can verbal abuse be nonviolent?
That's from Brian.
Hello, Brian.
Hi.
How's it going?
Well, how are you doing?
I'm good, thanks.
Thanks for having me on.
I appreciate it, and I appreciate it.
You're very welcome.
Thanks for calling in.
Yeah, thanks to Michael as well for, you know, giving me the opportunity.
You're very welcome.
But yeah, the question, just, you know, talking about nonviolent communication, which I know you love talking about nonviolent communication, right?
Can't wait to talk about that.
Yeah, so, anyway.
Like the question asked, because I remember from the show before he said, what I'm asking is why is it that all communication must be seen as non-violent?
I didn't really understand that when you said that.
I have no idea what quote you're referring to.
I don't have a...
Before we get there.
Sure.
I'm sorry, I can't seem to find a mic if you could just post that.
Oh no, I have it actually down here.
Oh yeah, okay, okay, okay.
Yeah, yeah, this annoyed me.
It doesn't mean you're annoying, I'm just saying I was annoyed by even the question.
And I'll tell you what my thoughts are and tell me how it strikes you.
Okay.
So you found my criticisms to be troubling.
Yeah.
I mean, this is a philosophy show, right?
Don't worry about that.
No, no.
This is what you wrote, right?
Well, I mean, I did, but it's not like a criticism.
It's not like, oh, because it's troubling to me, therefore you're wrong, or something like that.
Okay.
So let's let that one go, if you don't want to talk about it.
And then you say, I believe there are several logical errors in your explanation that concern me.
And then you said, but ignoring them, I have two main questions.
Right, because the structure of how I was asked to...
I think Mike said that...
Michael, sorry, said that I had to use two sentences or less.
Try and break it down to a couple sentences.
Right, so I kind of wanted to not just throw out all my criticisms in this giant expose.
You know what I mean?
Well, do you want to talk about The logical errors.
Because as a philosopher, I don't want to be making those logical errors.
And so if you have logical errors that I have made, I don't want to ignore them, if that makes sense.
Right, right.
So you said that...
Do you remember the actual show, though?
I just want to make sure you're familiar with it.
I remember the call, yeah.
I don't obviously remember every argument I made a couple of weeks ago or months ago or whatever, but I remember the call very well.
But you said like, I think most of your critique of nonviolent communication kind of revolved around its title, nonviolent communication.
And you're like, I believe you said something to the effect of like, if it's nonviolent communication, that means all other forms of communication are violent or something like that.
Do you remember?
Well, I think it's not the most helpful to say my form of communication is nonviolent communication because there's this implicit thing which says, okay, well, if you're not following my form, it must be violent communication.
And I think that's not great.
But that wasn't my fundamental issue.
My fundamental issue revolved around the question of judgment in that Rosenberg, from what I've heard, says that judgment is violence.
Uh, that's not exactly what I would say, what he's trying to say, but, um, going back to that, like, what you just said, the implication there, it's, I would call that, uh, the logical fallacy of denying the antecedent.
Um, that's the title, and I don't expect you to know exactly what that means, because, yeah, I wouldn't either.
Um, I had to look it up.
But anyway, so it's, It's like if I said, the analogy I'll give is like, if I said this mouse that I'm holding, this computer mouse, is non-cake, for example.
I'm sorry, sorry, say that again.
Like a computer mouse, just an object, you know.
This is non-cake, right?
That doesn't mean, you know, this keyboard is cake, because it's not a mouse.
So, right?
The structure is, you know, if P, then Q, not...
No, no, no, no, but the cake is a specific thing.
Violence is a general category, right?
Okay.
That's fine.
No, that matters, though, because a piece of cake is something very specific, whereas violence is not a physical object, but a definition.
So saying that if you're going to compare...
I'm sorry, you go ahead if you don't want me to finish my thought.
Go ahead.
No, because computer mouse is a definition.
A what?
Computer mouse has a definition.
That's like a word.
Yes, but it's a concrete thing.
It's not an abstract definition.
Okay, I don't know what...
Go ahead, I'm sorry.
Well, if I create a definition called violence, and then I create something which is non-violence, then I've got a general definition and I've got a specific exception, right?
Sorry, can you say that one more time?
I just want to make sure I'm understanding.
Okay, so if I create a definition of something and say, this is violence...
It's not a physical object I'm referring to.
It is a definition, like a concept.
It's a concept, right?
Right.
But it's a concept that does not refer to a physical thing.
Like a computer mouse is a physical thing.
Right.
So a physical thing is violence, though.
Yeah.
So it's a category, like you were saying.
Yeah.
Okay.
It's a category, right?
So if I say there is this thing called violence...
And then, there is something which is non-violence.
Right?
Then clearly, everything which does not conform to non-violence is violence, by definition, right?
Uh, correct.
Okay.
So, that's my point.
And that's not a logical error.
It is, um, I don't think...
No, you just agreed with me.
Now, we can go back if you want, but you just agreed with me.
I agreed with what you just said.
Okay.
Okay.
However, I don't think Marshall Rosenberg ever said that anything that's not adhering to his strict guidelines of what's called nonviolent communication is violent.
It doesn't matter to me what he said.
It doesn't matter to me what he said, because I don't refer to the person's words, I refer to the principles.
To take an extreme example, if Hitler said once, I'm all for peace, what the hell would that matter, right?
But the point is that if you define violent communication as the norm, And then you say, well, mine is non-violent communication.
Then clearly everything which doesn't follow your principles must be part of violent communication.
Yeah, see, I don't think he did say that.
I don't think he defined, like, the norm as being violent.
I don't know what...
No, which would have been...
It would have been great if he did, but he's not a philosopher.
But he called his non-violent parenting...
Sorry, non-violent communication.
And the reason that...
Sorry, the parenting thing just popped into my head because I've been called...
Like, I call mine approach peaceful parenting or philosophical parenting.
But I think I can, because it is parenting which embraces the non-aggression principle.
And every form of parenting which rejects the non-aggression principle must found itself upon the initiation or involve the initiation of force, therefore cannot be peaceful.
So I'm perfectly happy if people say, well, yeah, Steph, but what about peaceful parenting?
You say peaceful parent, does that mean all other forms of parenting are non-peaceful?
It's like, well, yeah.
Okay, you don't have to say yes.
That's where I'm getting at.
I'm sorry?
You don't have to say yes to that.
The question you sent, if I say that my way of parenting is peaceful parenting, does that mean all other forms of parenting are non-peaceful?
I mean, technically...
I do say that because I'm a philosopher and I care about definitions.
If I'm going to call my parenting peaceful parenting, then of course everything which doesn't follow that is not peaceful parenting.
Okay, so if I talk to you like I am right now, this is non-violent communication, right?
The way I'm talking to you right now.
I'm not sure what you mean by...
I don't have to characterize it in any way at all.
Has the conversation been violent or non-violent, or neither?
It depends.
Do you count passive aggression as violence?
I don't know.
I'm asking you.
No, that's what I'm asking you.
In non-violent communication, is passive aggression considered to be a violent?
You think I'm being passive aggressive?
I do.
I'm not saying you are, I'm just saying I think you are.
I'm just trying to show, this is what I'm trying to show you.
Let me just be really blunt about it.
Nonviolent, saying some form of communication.
Nonviolent communication is a set of principles of how you communicate.
Of how he would suggest for you to communicate.
That's not to say that if you don't adhere to his exact principles perfectly, then obviously you're being violent.
No, because there's all kinds of communication that are nonviolent.
He just called these specific ways of doing it as a way to ensure that you're being nonviolent.
So he's saying that there's lots of communication that's nonviolent that has nothing to do with nonviolent communication.
Correct.
So non-violent communication merely means a small subset of non-violent communication.
It's not very clear.
He is clear in his book.
He wrote exactly what violent communication is.
So he breaks it down, but he says there are three components of violent communication.
Okay, go ahead.
Which are moral judgments.
And it's not the judgment that's violent.
It's the communication of the judgment that's violent.
Because it triggers defense mechanisms in the person that you're talking to, where they're concerned with defending their image of themselves.
When you morally judge them, they're concerned with trying to say, well, I'm not bad.
I'm not immoral.
You know what I'm saying?
So he's saying that you can have moral judgments, you just shouldn't communicate them in a way that's upsetting to immoral people?
You shouldn't communicate...
You shouldn't communicate them to people when you're trying to ascertain needs, when you're trying to resolve conflict.
No, but no, no, no, sorry.
Again, I've not read the man's books, but moral judgment is not around the ascertaining of needs.
Immoral judgment is...
Saying that somebody's behavior is acting in opposition to an ethical standard.
I'm not sure how that is ascertaining.
Like if I say this rapist is a bad guy, I'm not sure how I'm trying to ascertain needs.
Or if I say rape is immoral or this rapist is immoral, would that not be in conformity with nonviolent communication?
It's not a way in which you're going to resolve the conflict between you and the rapist.
I'm not sure why I would want to resolve a conflict between myself and a...
Okay, then you have no use for nonviolent communication.
Nonviolent communication is a strategy for resolving conflicts and meeting needs of both parties within that interaction.
That's the point of it.
So then it's not moral judgment that's the problem.
Because moral judgment is fine if you don't wish to negotiate.
Moral judgment is always fine.
It's communicating those moral judgments to other people.
What's the point of having a...
That's like a First Amendment thing, right?
It's a freedom of speech.
What's the point of having a moral judgment if you just keep it to yourself?
That doesn't really make much sense.
It's like you have the right to write music.
You have the right to think up music, but you can't have it write down or sing it.
It's like, well, then I don't really have the right...
So if I put out a moral judgment, and so I say, the initiation of force is immoral.
That's sort of a moral judgment.
Right.
That's in accordance with nonviolent communication because I'm not trying to negotiate with a specific individual and get both of her needs met.
It's more of like a normative judgment.
I would say it's a little bit different because I would say, well, you're wrong because you're not adhering to this principle.
That's not in accordance with nonviolent communication.
Wait, so if I say you're wrong because you're illogical, or you're incorrect because you're illogical, that is not, or your argument is illogical, not you.
But so if you put forward a proposition that says two and two make five, and I say that's incorrect because two and two make four, is that in accordance with nonviolent communication?
Yeah, I would say that, I would say that, I don't know.
It's hard to tell because there's not really context to it, but it's not really working towards resolving conflict, I would say.
It's not because in resolving conflict, you're more trying to focus on the needs of people based on the feelings that they're sharing with you.
Yeah, so I think I understand insofar as if I say to you, You're making me angry because you're being a jerk or something, right?
I mean, I'm not saying that.
But if I were saying something like that, that would be a form of aggression and it would be a fundamentally false statement.
And that would not be conducive to us looking out our disagreements.
I could be a jerk, right?
And you could be angry because of it.
So then what would I say in the NVC world if that was occurring?
It kind of depends on the context, again.
Like, why was I being a jerk?
It's more like, what am I needing?
It really depends on the context.
Okay, so I don't know.
So basically, I don't know any principles that could be extracted here, and so I'm not really sure what place this would have in a philosophy show, because we're all about sort of principles.
Well, the principle is, again, you know, don't communicate moral judgments.
That's the principle within...
No, no, we just went through this whole principle and it turned out that it's fine to communicate moral judgments.
I'm sorry, we just went through this conversation where I said, oh, okay, so if I say a rapist is immoral, is that bad?
And you're like, well, not if you want to negotiate the resolution of conflict with the rapist.
No, it is bad if you're trying to negotiate.
Right, so it's not moral judgment and communicating moral judgment that's a problem, right?
Yeah, we just said yes.
If you're trying to negotiate with a rapist, then communicating the moral judgment is bad, yes.
The answer is yes.
Okay, are you allowed to think the moral judgment?
Of course.
Okay, so you can think the moral judgment, you just can't be honest about it.
I didn't realize not communicating was being dishonest.
Well, if I'm standing in front of a rapist and I think he's a scumbag, or I think he's evil...
But I'm not supposed to say what I'm actually thinking.
That's a form of self-censorship.
And I don't know how falsifying my thoughts and experiences with somebody else can ever help get to a productive resolution.
You don't know how self-censorship can ever get to a productive resolution?
No, I don't see how withholding what is primary in my thoughts and feelings can do anything other than falsify my experience to the other person.
I guess...
I don't really know what to say to that, to be honest with you.
Because, you know, if I feel like, right now, like, you're a scumbag, Stefan, I don't think that we're ever going to come to a mutual agreement on anything if I approach you in those terms, right?
Like, you're definitely not...
You're probably going to end the call immediately.
It'd be like, okay, well, we don't have time to talk to you now because you're calling me a scumbag and you're being disrespectful.
And so then this conversation ends.
No, I mean, if you came up to me and you said, you know, Steph, you're a scumbag, I would ask you for some philosophical content if you wanted to continue the conversation, right?
Because scumbag has no philosophical content, right?
You might as well call me a slarter bartfast or something like that.
I mean, there's no philosophical content, which is what I'm sort of trying to understand.
Like, why we're having the call is I'm trying to extract some philosophical content.
I'm open to that there is some.
I'm trying to extract some principled content.
So if somebody says, oh, Steph, you're a scumbag, I'd say, well, okay, so on what grounds would you make this accusation?
But if they just, well, you know, you're a bad guy, you're a scumbag, you're a meanie pop, and your nose smells like elderberries, I'd be like, okay, well, you're just making sounds.
There's not actually anything real in what you're saying, so I don't really know, you know.
You're obviously upset about something, and if you want to talk about your thoughts and feelings, I think that's fine.
But if you want to hide your thoughts and feelings behind jumping to conclusions...
Then there's not a conversation to be had, because I'm not actually part of the conversation.
I'm just what Lloyd DeMoss would call a poison container, and you're just venting against my image because you're avoiding some negative emotion within yourself.
And that's why Marshall Rosenberg wanted you to avoid those kind of moral judgments and adhere more to the feelings and needs parts.
Like, he didn't watch...
No, no, no.
Sorry to interrupt.
Scumbag is not a moral judgment, because there's no ethical principle involved.
It's just a term of verbal abuse, right?
I mean, it's a judgment and it could have moral grounds.
But yeah, I guess it could not.
Saying it's a judgment is like saying that a monkey flinging poo is a modern artist, right?
I mean, it's just a reflex.
I mean, it's not a judgment like somebody's evaluating something and really judging something.
They're just blarping.
They're just emotionally dumping, right?
It's no judgment involved.
I would call it a normative judgment.
Or a normative statement, at least.
We can drop that and just call them normative statements.
It's a value judgment.
You're devaluing the person because they're a scumbag.
If I say someone's an asshole, there's no moral content to that.
Because I could say that cop is an asshole for interrupting my theft.
In which case, he's a good guy, right?
Or I could say that that guy is an asshole for stealing from my store, in which case he's a bad guy.
So the term asshole or scumbag can be used for good people and bad people, right?
Which is why they're not philosophical terms.
All it means is that person is...
I'm angry at that person.
But there's no moral content in anger.
Somebody who's caught...
Stealing from a bank is really angry at whoever caught them.
It's no moral content.
They're stealing from a bank.
The whole point of a bank is designed to steal from the people.
Sorry?
They made a moral judgment, but that moral judgment was wrong.
You can have wrong moral judgments, like incorrect ones, right?
Well, not according to my philosophy or the approach that I take to philosophy.
That's like saying you can have...
I'm sorry, go ahead.
There are only correct moral judgments?
Is that what you mean?
No, it's just that if it's wrong, since morality is universally preferable behavior, you can't have an incorrect moral judgment.
Any more than you can have an incorrect scientific theory.
I mean, if the theory is scientifically validated, in other words, if it's passed into the annals of science, it can't be incorrect.
You can have an incorrect hypothesis, or a hypothesis that is later proven to be incorrect.
But if you have a judgment that is in the realm of morality, it means it conforms to the standards of moral judgments.
Scumbag and asshole do not fall into those categories.
They're just terms of abuse that people hurl at others, hoping to cow them into submission or browbeat or bully them into conformity.
So, like, the definition of moral in itself implies, you know, that it's correct.
So, like, you could have an immoral judgment, right?
So, what I was calling an incorrect moral judgment could also just be called an immoral judgment, right?
Is that correct?
Well, but, again, scumbag and...
Like, if...
No, this is useful.
It's very helpful stuff, I think.
If a guy is interrupted in his theft...
And he says, oh, that cop's a real asshole, right?
Right.
That's not immoral.
He wouldn't say, and the cop is immoral.
He'd just say, basically, asshole means he interfered with my self-interest in the theft.
I wanted to steal some stuff, and he stopped me, and he's an asshole, because I wanted to steal some stuff.
He wouldn't say that that's a moral term.
Right.
Well, yeah.
You wouldn't say that He was like, I'm morally correct.
I don't know.
I just don't use terms exactly the same way you do, and maybe I just don't understand the terms.
Well, moral judgment usually is something to do with good and evil, right?
I don't think that the theft would say, that cop was evil for interrupting my theft.
That's not what the thief would say, right?
Um, I'm not sure what the...
I'm really not sure.
He'd say, I hate that cop.
That cop's a complete asshole.
I almost got away.
Total jerk.
Scumbag.
Whatever.
I hate that guy.
Right?
It's not a moral judgment.
It's just, he interfered with my self-interest.
Well, if you hate a murderer, is that moral?
Or is that...
Like, I don't really know if we're really drawing a distinction.
No, but hate is not a moral judgment.
What kind of a judgment would you say?
Just a normative statement, I guess.
Or...
Well, I don't know.
But I mean, monkeys hate things.
They don't have a lot of moral judgments.
Right.
Okay.
Right?
I mean, it's not a moral...
It's just a hatred is a feeling that is engendered usually by this person is acting, significantly acting against my self-interest.
So the cop who interferes with the guy who wants to steal is significantly impacting...
Your self-interest, right?
People who say to someone, hey, you might be in an abusive relationship, you should get some therapy, and remember, you don't have to stay in abusive relationships, are strongly interfering with the interests of the abusive person who wants to continue to exploit his or her victim.
And so people who support victims of abusive relationships and maybe give them the mental jarring to start thinking more clearly and maybe with them ending up leaving the relationship, well, they're hated by...
The people who are the abusers.
But that's just because the person who's supporting the abuse victim is interfering with the self-interest of the abuser, so they get hated for it.
It's nothing to do with a moral judgment.
They may frame it as a moral judgment.
They may say, you know, like Erin Pizzi on this show was talking about when she opened the first women's shelter, she'd taken all these women who'd be beaten black and blue by their husbands.
And the husbands would come and demand that they get the women back and the priests and the rabbis and all would come over and say, it's in the light of God, you're betraying your vow to God.
And so they may try and frame it.
As a moral argument.
That's what I think Marshall Rosenberg was against, is people trying to frame these kind of really trigger-happy judgments that people have as like, well, it's a moral judgment, and I'm right for feeling this way, and whatever.
And instead, he wanted people to look at the other person using more observational language, rather than these normative kind of claims, or these subjective perspective kind of...
Do you understand the difference?
At least the difference that I'm trying to draw in maybe the terms.
Maybe we're going to get hung up on saying morality or saying...
Immoral judgments or correct moral judgments versus incorrect immoral judgments.
The point is that you're supposed to use observational language.
It's not that the cop is bad and I hate him.
I was trying to steal the cop.
What he did was he put handcuffs on my arms.
These are observations of reality, things that happened.
And this is what Marshall Rosenberg tried to get people to I'm including that in this category of things that shouldn't be communicated or shouldn't be if you're going to adhere to the strategy that he's providing.
Yeah, and I think that we're probably in Somewhat of agreement, which is that I just want people to tell the truth.
Just tell the truth.
And don't jump to conclusions, and don't inject highly volatile statements into things that are not present, right?
So if he says, look, just empirically describe what happened, just the facts, like the Joe Friday, just the facts, ma'am.
Right?
Don't give me your interpretation.
Don't give me a story.
Don't give me your whatever.
But just tell me what actually physically happened.
And so on.
And people, of course, they do love to pump themselves up with all of this moral language or self-justifying language or whatever.
Right?
I mean, and we all have that habit.
I'm going to say, like, exclude myself from the mass of human beings.
I fundamentally think we develop language in order to be better liars.
And only accidentally later did philosophers try and use it to get people to tell the truth.
But, yeah, I think that's all valid.
Yeah, the guy in a blue costume stopped me, pulled out a gun and said, drop what you've got, and I dropped all the silverware, and you put me in a car.
Yeah, those are all statements of fact, and you're not lying about those things.
And if you say, you know, he's an asshole, he's this and that, and the other's like, well, that's not...
He has an asshole, he's not an asshole, right?
I mean, so I think just telling the truth seems to me better that way.
But even correct judgment, so yes, that's all exactly...
So you are in agreement with me and Rosenberg and whatever on that stuff.
But I think maybe one distinction that you don't agree with, and I would like to hear why and kind of talk about it a little bit, if that's okay, is...
Even elements of judgments that are correct or are moral.
So, you know, a guy robs me, for instance, and I would say he's an asshole.
He came into my house, busted down the door.
Those are observations.
Which is fine.
Well, no, the asshole was not.
He busted on the door is what I was referring to.
Sorry.
But he busted on the door.
He said all kinds of hurtful, mean things to me.
And then he threatened to shoot my wife.
And I hate him, whatever.
Okay, so there was like one thing in there that was an actual observation, which was he busted down the door and maybe like pointed guns.
I don't remember exactly.
No, threatened to shoot my wife is probably factual.
I don't think...
Threatened to say hurtful and mean things to me, somewhat subjective, although there are things that can be hurtful and mean fairly objectively.
And so I think there was quite a lot of facts in there.
Yeah, so...
When I said threatened to shoot my wife, if he says, I'm going to shoot your wife, that's the observation.
But threatened to, I mean, that could have just been pointing on it.
Like, he doesn't want to say...
Wait, hang on, hang on a sec here.
Are you saying that if someone says, I'm going to shoot your wife, characterizing that as a threat is not an accurate statement?
No, it is.
It is, okay.
I'm pointing out that it is accurate, but it's not an observation.
Saying that he threatened to shoot my wife isn't an observation.
The observation would be, he said, I'm going to shoot your wife.
The quote.
Judges want you to do this, too, in a court of law.
They don't want to hear a lot of the judgment.
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah, they want the quote.
So I think there is a principle behind some of this stuff.
Not a principle.
It's something that a lot of people agree on.
I don't know if that helps anything.
That's more what he's trying to get at in this.
So he said, if you're not using observational language, the language of observation, and if you are using more of these language of judgments or...
More vague, not...
You understand the distinction.
I know you do.
But then that's what he called violent communication.
So he made a very clear distinction on what is violent.
And he, although he did claim his guidelines as being nonviolent, that's not to say that all communication that isn't strictly adhering to his guidelines must therefore be violent.
That's not, it's just not the case.
And going back all the way to the beginning of the conversation, to say it is, is what's called denying the antecedent.
That is exactly what it is.
Oh, wait, wait.
Do we have to have this conversation again?
I thought we established this.
Do we want to go back to the mouse and the principal thing?
I'm not going to pretend we didn't have that conversation because that would be dishonest to me.
No, I think that when you drew this distinction between violence as a concept and a mouse isn't a concept, I wanted to hear you out and try to understand exactly where you're coming from.
But I still think that...
If you actually let me get through the analogy of the mouse thing, because a mouse is also a concept.
I mean, there are explicit types of mouse.
This is a Logitech, MX, Pro, whatever, you know what I'm saying?
But it's under the broad sweeping concept of computer mouse.
I don't know if you can really...
I don't know if that distinction that you tried to draw is really useful for anything.
But saying it's not really useful is not a rebuttal of my argument.
I don't understand the...
The rebuttal of the argument is that there was no distinction.
You tried to draw a distinction, but the distinction doesn't exist.
Saying you tried to do something, but the distinction doesn't exist is also not a counter-argument.
You're just telling me that I'm wrong without actually showing me that I'm wrong.
Okay.
And you've repeated the word mouse a bunch of times, but you're still not formulating an argument.
Okay.
Okay.
How do you counter an argument?
I don't feel like you made a...
It was like a non-secure.
Your feelings are also not an argument.
Saying I don't feel like you made an argument is not an argument.
I don't think you made an argument.
Saying you don't think I made an argument is also not an argument.
What's an argument, Stefan?
Well, you have to process what I said, understand the logic, and find the logical fallacy within.
The logical fallacy within...
It's a non-sequitur.
Saying it's a non-sequitur is also not an argument.
Yes, it is.
The conclusion does not follow from the premises.
Saying the conclusion doesn't follow from the premises is also not an argument.
You're just quoting logical fallacies without actually applying them to my argument.
Okay, you didn't even hear my argument, first of all, so I don't know how you want me to Is the problem really that I haven't heard your argument?
Well, you didn't because I never even said it.
The words didn't come out of my mouth because you stopped me the second I started.
Well, I can frame your argument, and I didn't stop you as soon as you started.
That's a bit of a violation, I think, of your principles, because it's kind of a goading thing to say.
Your argument was, if this is a computer mouse, and I say this is a computer mouse, and next to it there is a keyboard, if I say this is a computer mouse, everything that is not a computer mouse is not a keyboard.
It could be a whole bunch of other things.
Well, that's not what I said.
I said this computer mouse is non-cake, is what I said.
Okay, so you say that the computer mouse is non-cake, and therefore everything that is not a computer mouse is not cake.
No, everything that is not a computer mouse must therefore be cake.
That would be a fallacy, right?
That's a fallacy, exactly.
Right.
So, okay.
So that is called denying the antecedent.
If P, then Q. Not P, therefore not Q. So if you apply this to nonviolent communication, so if you adhere to the guidelines of nonviolent communication, then you're nonviolent.
But if you're not adhering to those guidelines, therefore you must be violent.
That's clearly denying the antecedent.
That doesn't follow.
And do you remember my response to that?
You said something regarding that violence is a concept and somehow it doesn't apply.
I still don't understand it.
But my friend, if you don't understand my argument, why do you tell me that I'm wrong?
Because it doesn't make sense?
No, no.
If you don't understand my argument, why would you tell me that I'm wrong?
Because it doesn't...
I mean, isn't nonviolent communication supposed to be about getting into the other person's shoes and negotiating, right?
So if you don't understand my argument, telling me that I'm wrong in a wide variety of ways...
Is not...
By telling you that you're valid.
It's not valid.
Could you explain it then?
I clearly don't understand it and I don't think I'm stupid.
Explaining what?
Your argument then, if I'm not understanding it.
No, you said you don't understand it.
Right.
If I'm not understanding it, can you explain it again?
See, now that to me would be a beneficial way to approach the conversation, which is, Steph, I don't follow the argument.
I don't want to say that it's wrong until I really understand it.
Wouldn't that be something that would be a better form of communication?
Sure.
I mean, yes.
I was kind of like...
Okay.
Yeah, I didn't mean to like...
Sure.
Do you owe me an apology or anything?
I mean, what are the consequences of not...
Well, do you want me to suffer?
You're telling me I'm wrong without understanding my argument.
It's kind of rude, isn't it?
Well, it's more like, so if somebody were to give you an argument and you didn't understand it, well, not just that you didn't understand it, it didn't make any sense to you.
It was like, this makes no sense.
Would you just be like, well, I'm not going to say that you're wrong, just because it makes no sense to me.
But, you know what I mean?
I tell you this, if I were talking to somebody who was an expert in a field that I was not an expert in...
I have a degree in philosophy from the University of Michigan.
Okay.
If I was talking to somebody who was good at something that I was also good at...
Then I would give them the benefit of the doubt to make sure I really understood their argument rather than just telling them that they're wrong and then saying that I didn't understand their argument.
Okay.
Do you understand my argument?
You do.
Of course you do.
You said that you do, and you get my argument.
So could you show me where, because I presented the argument, and then you tried to refute it, and you started by saying, yeah.
So if I say that a vacuum is non-matter, then everything that is not a vacuum must be matter.
Are you trying to say, like, is that true or not?
No, I mean, would you agree with that?
My first instinct is, like, can I think of anything that's...
Yeah, no, take your time.
I don't want to rush you.
It's a big, big question.
Don't let me rush you.
I don't actually know.
I'm not, like, a specialist in...
No, that's logic.
It's not physics, right?
Okay.
Is there anything that's...
I mean, like, there's antimatter, which is non-matter.
Is that a vacuum, or isn't it?
Right?
Let's just go with the sense data.
No, quantum physics and all that aside, and you're right.
You're right to bring that up.
It's perfectly valid and right and smart to bring that up.
So let's just go with sort of sense data, right?
And let's just go with the whatever, the sort of standard Newtonian conception of matter.
And I'm not trying to trick you.
Ah, there's antimatter, right?
But if I say a vacuum is non-matter, then anything that is not a vacuum must be matter, right?
Or, to put it another way, if I say darkness is non-light, then anything that is light can't be darkness.
They're mutually exclusive.
If I say that life is non-death, then anything that is alive can't be dead.
And again, I'm not trying to trick you or anything, and maybe I'm missing something obvious, but that's as far as I would sort of stop the idea.
If life is non-death, then anything that is life cannot be dead.
Right.
That's not...
That's not an apples to apples comparison.
So, the way that I said it, that's not what I was saying.
You would have to say, if life is non-death, then not life is death.
That would be an apples to apples comparison.
Like, you changed it.
Okay.
Let's talk about just, because I get that that doesn't make sense, right?
Because there are things that are non-life that aren't dead, right?
A rock was never alive and therefore you couldn't really classify it as death.
But if we're talking about life, right?
If we're talking about biological life, if we restrict it, and the reason why I think it's fair to restrict it to biological life is because we're talking about communication.
It's not everything, right?
Non-violent communication has the word communication in it.
And so we're not talking about everything conceivable in the universe.
We're talking about communication, right?
And so when we're talking life and death, of course, inanimate objects and so on don't count.
So if we restrict our examination to life and death, to biological organisms, then we can say That everything that is biological, that has the capacity for life or death, everything that is non-death must be alive.
And everything that is alive and everything that is dead must be non-life, non-living.
I feel like we're getting bogged.
I feel like.
No, no, no.
We're just taking this step by step.
I mean, can we get this far?
Because if we can't, then I'm not sure that our philosophy training...
Because now we're hearing two people who've got some training in philosophy try and talk about something, and if we get confused with life and death, I don't know how the hell the rest of the planet is supposed to tie their shoelaces, right?
All right.
Because there's little subtleties that I'm...
Like before, what I just brought up, like I'm trying to make sure that I'm staying accurate.
Can you just say it one more time?
And I just want to make sure that this is not...
Sure.
In the realm of living organisms and biological matter, things that were alive or dead, right?
Right.
We're restricting ourselves to just...
Just to that, right?
In the same way that nonviolent communication and my response to it restricts itself to communication, right?
Mm-hmm.
So, in the realm of life and death...
Well, it actually doesn't, technically.
See, that's why I kind of got lost, is that it actually doesn't at all.
What doesn't?
Sorry, what doesn't?
Nonviolent communication doesn't restrict itself solely to communication, necessarily.
No, but I wasn't talking about the entire body of work.
I was talking about three words, nonviolent communication.
So, we're still talking about, like, is this a good title for...
Like, fundamentally, at some level, this is not really important as well.
It's, like, not...
You can't say, I don't like the title of non-competitive.
Wait, wait, wait.
So hang on, hang on.
I just distracted the conversation.
Come on, come on, come on.
We'll go back.
Come on.
You don't get this bullshit in Socratic dialogues where people start talking about this, right?
We're just trying to work through a logical problem here.
You've got training, I've got some training.
We're just working through a logical problem, that's all.
Fine, okay.
Okay.
Let's just go light and dark, because it's even easier, right?
Okay.
Okay, so if I say that darkness is non-light, right?
Darkness is non-light, then wherever there is darkness, sorry, wherever there is darkness, there can't be light, and wherever there is light, there's not pure darkness.
So if you want to use light and dark, you'd say...
I just want to make sure that I'm trying to put it...
Take your time.
Absolutely.
So if darkness is non-light, then you'd say...
There is light.
Darkness is non-light.
There isn't darkness, therefore, there is light.
Yeah.
Right.
I think that actually...
That works, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
That's what non means, right?
It's the absence of.
Right?
Non is the absence.
Not the anti, but non, right?
Because there's no such thing as anti-light.
If we get back to antimatter, our heads will explode into quarks or something like that, right?
Right.
And so when we say that where there is Non-light, there must be darkness.
And where there is light, there cannot be darkness, right?
Right.
So this is an example where...
So hang on, hang on.
I'm almost done.
Almost done.
Wait, wait, wait a sec.
So when we say here is an area of non-light, right?
This is non-light.
As a concept.
I don't mean, sorry, an area conceptually.
I don't mean like a spot, because then it could be all over the place, right?
Like, there are spots on my forehead where there's less light because of freckles, right?
But so, just conceptually, where we say non-light, we are simultaneously defining everything else as light.
Um...
Sure.
Okay.
That's fine.
I'm not...
That's fine.
Yes.
Okay.
But I'm not sure if that's true of saying, like, well, this is an area of nonviolence and for all other areas must be violent.
I don't think that...
Like, why?
Why would that be the case?
Well, we just did this with light.
Right.
Is there some magic...
Is there something magic else with the word violence where the logic doesn't apply?
Well, yeah, I mean, I don't know why you would just presume that because nonviolent communication is nonviolent, that means anything that isn't adhering to those guidelines must be violent.
We just did this argument.
Like, what are you doing?
Don't discredit philosophy.
You can't just make shit up because it's uncomfortable, right?
We just did this argument with regards to light.
Right, but it doesn't work with regards to light.
The same pattern applies to this.
But it doesn't work because we just went over that it doesn't work with life and death.
So I think violence is more of a life...
Violence versus nonviolence is more of a life and death thing versus...
Now, the life and death thing is complicated because, of course, you can be in the process of dying.
It's just because it's a biological continuum, right?
Because rocks.
Yeah, because rocks.
So what we did was we could...
Because we're talking about...
Like, if I said, you said there's non-violent communication, and then I said, well, everything that is not communication must therefore be violent.
A rock must be violent, right?
A map must be violent.
Sunlight must be violent.
Well, it is.
I'm Irish.
Like, if I made that, that would be an invalid claim.
And I think that's closer to what you were talking about at the beginning.
But I was in my original call with the caller a couple of weeks ago.
I was saying, in the realm of communication, limited to communication, right?
If you define X as nonviolent communication...
Then everything which is communication but not acts must be violent communication.
In the same way that if you say, this is non-darkness, everything that is not there must be light.
Otherwise, there'd be no capacity to distinguish or differentiate between the two states.
So in the realm, if you say, like if I say, well, nonviolent communication, that means anything that is not in the realm of communication must be violent, that would be invalid.
But in the realm of human communication, if you say...
This 10% is non-violent communication, then by definition, you must be defining the remaining 90% as violent, because we're only talking about human communication here.
I wasn't talking about maps or rocks or concepts.
That's not what I was trying to...
I wasn't trying to claim...
Like, I understand...
So if I say this...
Let's go back to the 10% and 90% thing, because that actually works for me.
Like, it's very easy for me to understand that.
Um...
So let's say 20% of all communication is non-violent and 80% of all communication is violent, let's just say.
And then I take 10% of that 20% and say, this 10% is non-violent.
That doesn't necessarily hold that the rest 90, no, because there's another 10% of non-violent communication that I'm not talking about right now.
Sure.
That's what I was trying to say.
But that's what I was talking about.
There's a definition.
Right?
Because we're talking about the concepts, right?
Right?
It's a definition.
You can't slice up a definition.
It doesn't make any sense.
It's like saying one mile towards north is north, but two miles towards north is something else.
No, it's north.
You can't slice it up, right?
Right, but, so, all I'm getting at, and I think it's simple, and I don't understand the comparison with the North thing, actually, like, how that applies, to be honest.
I don't understand how it applies.
Sorry.
But, I think nonviolent communication, as Marshall Rosenberg defined it, is...
Like, a 10% thing, where there is 20%, like, let's say, of all communication, 20% is non-violent.
What he's calling non-violent communication is 10% of it.
Of all communication.
So there is another 10% that lives out there that he's not talking about.
Wait, there's another 10% of...
Non-violent, what he would say, that anyone would say is non-violent.
But no, he must be talking about it, because if he's not talking about it, he doesn't know if there's another 10%, or he doesn't know about it, right?
Anyway, so again, as I said in the last call, as I say in this call, and I think we can move on from here because I've certainly made all the points I want to make.
I'm not talking about the entire body of thought.
I'm talking about the two or three, whether you count the hyphen non-violent communication and the implication with that that other forms of communication must be violent.
I think I've made a good case for that with a variety of analogies.
If you want to say, well, in the entire complexity of the multi-volume works of Marshall Rosenberg, it's more complicated than that.
I would say I absolutely agree with you because there's nobody who says, I have a book called Nonviolent Communication and inside is just blank paper because the entire philosophy is contained in two or three words.
Of course not.
I absolutely agree with that and I'm sure it's far more complex in the work as a whole.
It was just an issue I had with the description of it as nonviolent communication.
So I'm fully in agreement with you that I'm sure there's far more complexity and definitions in the work itself.
I think that, you know, it was fun to go through at least that one criticism that I had with what you were saying.
But again, and I don't want to keep dragging this on because, man, there's another color.
But very quickly, I don't think finding fault in the title.
And I'd like to read a quote to you.
It's very quick from Rosenberg talking about the title, Nonviolent Communication, how he doesn't like it either.
He's just like you in that he doesn't like it.
He said, I don't like that title, nonviolent communication.
I use it because over the years it connects me with the people around the world that find our training very valuable in their lives and in their political activities.
I've used it because it connects me with those people.
Why I don't like the title, nonviolent communication, is because it says what something isn't.
And nonviolent communication is all focused on what we do want, not just what we don't want.
Also, communication is only a small part of what I'll be sharing with you.
Nonviolent communication consists of a value system that we're trying to live by, And then it outlines a language thinking communication skills and means of influence that supports that way of living.
Okay, go back to where he says what it isn't, please.
Oh, what nonviolent communication isn't?
He said it describes what it isn't?
Oh, no, he says, um, he says, uh, why I don't like the title, Nonviolent Application, is because it says what something isn't.
Uh, non-violent, non-violent.
He doesn't like the word non-violent, because it's...
No, I get it.
So he says what something isn't, so he says that he's...
Sorry, that's not what he was saying.
Um, the term non-violence...
Says what something isn't.
It says that something isn't violent.
Okay?
So he doesn't like that it says what something isn't because nonviolent communication...
That's my whole point!
Yes!
You just gave me the whole...
Like, if you'd read this at the beginning, we could have saved 45 minutes.
That's my entire point.
I wanted to, but you said, no, we want to talk about this.
It's a good experience.
It's a good thought experiment.
I want to stick with...
No, but it shows my point that you've been arguing with me.
Oh, my God.
This is not, this is not, he's not representative of everybody who comes out of a philosophy degree, at least.
Wow.
Thank you.
No, seriously, because he said, right here, he said, it defines what isn't.
The word violence does.
Which means the nonviolent communication, the term, defines that which is not violent.
Correct.
Which by definition means everything else is violent, which was the whole point from the very beginning.
His theory.
No, you don't.
You're too emotionally invested.
This is too emotionally invested.
I get when I can't win an argument with you.
I'm only doing this because of the audience, right?
I mean, maybe you're thinking about it, whatever, later.
Okay, I've got to move on to the next caller.
But listen, man, I really do appreciate you calling in.
I really had a great time.
It's a good workout.
It sounded sarcastic.
No, no, I'm not.
I'm genuinely, genuinely appreciative.
I mean, I love fucking logical arguments.
Are you kidding me?
That's my thing.
Doesn't mean I'm great at it.
It just means that's my thing.
So I really had a great time in the call.
And I appreciate, I also appreciate the further elucidation of the complexities of Rosenberg's thoughts and approaches and so on.
I think that's always fantastic to hear.
And, you know, man, you're welcome back anytime.
Thanks.
That's really kind of you to say, so I appreciate it.
Thanks, man.
Take care.
Yeah, me too.
Yeah, thanks, Brian.
I enjoyed this conversation immensely as well.
I love the nonviolent communication calls for whatever reason.
I always find them very interesting.
Mike, is there anything else you'd like to talk about with that?
We have another caller on the line.
Oh, come on!
Two minutes.
Two minutes.
What, it's all about the listeners?
We can't have any adult time?
Oh, that was a mean thing to say.
I'm just kidding.
We've talked about it before in other shows.
I know, but just say, why do you find them?
Why are you like, NVC, come to us.
It always tends to wind up being very passive-aggressive with nonviolent communication calls.
Do you mean me?
Because I think I'm openly aggressive.
I know who's passive-aggressive.
Oh, you mean that call?
Brian, feel free to jump on, Brian, if you want to talk about this as well.
Can I run through a couple of things?
Because I was taking notes during the call just for my own...
Yeah, if I was passive-aggressive, that was not my intent at all.
I don't...
No.
For any of us, go ahead.
Let's actually talk about this, because this is why I'm interested in the nonviolent communication calls.
Because my first question is, why are you interested in nonviolent communication?
I think it helps people.
And I understand that Stefan says, like, oh, well, I wasn't very enlightened by listening to it, which makes sense to me.
It's like, if, hey, don't, you know, say, well, I guess I can't say, oh, don't make judgments because Stefan doesn't agree.
But, like, making demands instead of requests is another form of violent communication.
And if I went through the list, we stopped at the first one, but there are actually three.
And so Stefan's obviously like, yeah, don't make demands of people.
Like, what the heck?
Sorry to cut you off, Brian, but I know we're shorter on time with Greg waiting in the wings here for a call, but I think we can simplify it even more and just say you want to be a better communicator.
You're interested in nonviolent communication.
You want to be a better communicator with people.
You don't want to resolve conflicts.
Provoke defenses and stuff.
Yeah, you need to be able to resolve conflicts with people and, you know, sort out problems without things getting into a big mess emotionally for people and defenses coming up.
You don't want to provoke additional defenses when that can be avoided in any way, shape, or form.
I mean, that's why I assume you're interested in nonviolent communication.
Would you agree?
Resolving conflicts is the goal of it, yeah.
Right.
Well, I was taking notes from the beginning of the conversation, and Steph mentioned that your initial question, the way it was written, was kind of insulting.
He felt somewhat insulted by the question, and I can see that, and we kind of brushed past that right away.
And you actually said, well, that's because Mike said it has to be one or two sentences, so I didn't want to go on there.
So then you, it's my fault for the question being the way it is.
I wouldn't say...
No, it's the structure of...
You need a couple sentences to introduce somebody, so that's what...
It's the structure's fault, Mike, not yours.
You impose the structure, so it's not your fault.
It's the structure's fault.
Gotcha.
But you see whose responsibility is missing?
My responsibility is missing.
Yeah, exactly.
Now, if I say I find that kind of an insulting question, I don't mean that...
I'm just telling you my sort of experience of it.
I'm not saying that I didn't say you insulted me or you were being a jerk or anything like that, right?
You were insulted by the question.
Yeah, but I didn't judge you for it.
I just said that was my experience, right?
Yep.
And you basically told me I was wrong and then blamed Mike for the limitations of the question.
Didn't express any curiosity about what I thought and felt.
No, you identified what you thought was insulting about it.
You said that the word's quite troubling.
I knew exactly why as soon as you brought it up.
No, I wasn't insulted by quite troubling.
See, I said it wasn't philosophical.
Oh.
Okay, yeah.
So you said it wasn't philosophical, and I was like, you're right.
Being troubled by something that you said is not an argument at all.
It is just an experience that I had.
Just like, you know, you felt insulted by it.
That's not a philosophical thing either.
Feeling insulted isn't philosophical.
Same thing.
Absolutely.
Sorry, Mike, go ahead.
Okay, so we moved past that.
You said, well, let's not talk about that or let's not worry about that when that came up.
Kind of dismissive, right?
So right at the beginning, there's already a disconnect.
And given that your interest in nonviolent communication is because you want to resolve problems, like you said, there's a problem right there at the beginning because there's a disconnect.
Conflicts.
Well, there's a conflict right there at the beginning.
And I can't imagine anywhere in Rosenberg, he says, dismiss the other person's feelings and say that it's time to move on.
What could I have done differently?
Well, you're the expert.
What would he say?
I'm not an expert in nonviolent communication.
Well, you're more of an expert than I am.
What would he say?
I definitely want to be more interested in...
Your feelings.
And actually, being insulted isn't a feeling.
Anger is a feeling, or I'm not sure what your feeling was there either.
No, I said I was annoyed.
Okay, annoyed.
That's a feeling, right?
Probably, yeah, I'd say it's a feeling.
So I expressed a feeling, and you basically said, well, let's just move on.
Okay.
And why do you think that happened, Brian?
Oh, why do you think he said, oh yeah, why did you want to move on?
Do you want?
Yeah, I'm curious.
It's going to sound like I'm trying to just remove blame from myself or something, right?
But the last call took an hour and a half and I wanted to get it done as soon as possible.
Clearly it doesn't matter because, geez.
So you had a need, like an impatient need, right?
Which you didn't communicate to me, but drove you past my need, which was, I said, I feel annoyed, and, you know, all that, right?
It was actually out of...
It wasn't just impatience.
Like, I'm...
Well, I don't care about you.
I want to get to my thing.
No, that's not what I said.
It was that I wanted to make sure that everybody was going to get heard.
There was another caller after me, and I was just trying to, you know...
So by wanting to make sure that everyone got heard, Steph ended up not getting heard at the start.
Yeah, so...
And you felt, you probably, I'm just guessing, right?
I don't know, right?
But maybe you felt kind of like a time pressure, like an anxiety, like I've got to get this call moving.
And so you had a need, which was to reduce your own anxiety about the potential length of the call.
And so you blew past what I was sort of experiencing, if that makes sense.
Yeah, that's what happened.
Okay.
I think, I mean, I think just what we discussed right there is incredibly important.
Because, I mean, Brian, if you would have said, like, you know, I expressed your need to not take up so much time because you were concerned about, you know, the other caller possibly not getting on.
I mean, I... I appreciate that.
I appreciate sensitivity towards the other callers and wanting to make sure everyone gets on to speak on a given show.
I mean, I'm in total agreement with that, and I appreciate that.
But at the same time, you've waited a while to call in as well.
I want to make sure that you get the totality of your question answered and that it's the kind of productive conversation that you want.
I assume you don't want them to be.
Sorry to interrupt, Mike.
It's also, I think, could be interpreted as somewhat disrespectful towards me.
Like, it's my show.
It's not your job to manage that, right?
Yeah, you're right.
Like, if I feel the call's going on too long, I'm perfectly free to say, sorry, call's going on too long.
And you actually did that at the first call as well.
Yeah, I did that in the first call.
And it's not your job, like working both sides of the relationship almost always causes problems.
It's what I was saying to the first caller when I said, you can't make it work for both of you.
You can't be yourself and the other person's needs at the same time.
It's my job to worry about the length of the show or the accessibility of the callers to time with me or with Mike or whatever.
That's my job.
It's not your job.
Yeah, so...
And you're basically saying, Steph, I don't think you can manage this, so I'm going to have to manage it for you.
You've already been doing this show for eight years, Steph, but, you know, it's my first time here.
I've really got to help you along with this.
Well, I've seen in the past where some callers had to not get on because they ran out of time, but I think that was back when you had, like, a live show rather than just...
No, no, it still happens.
It still happens.
Most weeks.
Yeah, I don't...
I wouldn't know.
Most weeks.
Again, not a live show, but, yeah, so I've seen it.
So I just wanted to, you know, I was...
I was worried, and whether that's justified or not, whether that's my place to be worried about it or not, I mean, it's a worry that I had.
Anyway, do you mind telling me what you felt insulted?
Because when you said that you felt insulted, and then you went on to say that, you know, or not insulted, annoyed, I'm sorry, annoyed, that you, quite troubling, is what you, I thought you were targeting for that annoyance, and so then I wanted to go, you're absolutely right, that's not philosophical.
Sorry, Brian, the reason, since you asked, the reason why I felt annoyed was that You had a short amount of time to put your issues forward that you wanted to talk about, and you spent at least two-thirds of it telling me about ways that I was wrong that you didn't want to talk to me about.
Right?
And then you say, well, I didn't have enough length.
Well, if you didn't have enough length, why are you putting all these things in that I'm wrong about that you don't want to even talk about?
That's not...
That doesn't make much sense to me, other than it may be emotionally manipulated to make me feel like I'm in the wrong without actually telling me how or why.
I'm not trying to emotionally manipulate you.
I don't even think I'd be capable of emotionally manipulating you, to be honest with you.
That's a pretty...
Pretty big statement.
I think every human being is capable of emotional manipulation.
I think saying that I'm incapable or I don't think I'm capable of any form of emotional manipulation is kind of manipulative.
No, I could try to.
I just don't think I'd succeed.
Whatever.
It doesn't matter.
So you're saying that when I bring this up, you are perfectly 100% sure that you were not trying to be manipulative in any way, shape, or form.
No doubt about it.
I wasn't trying to...
I mean, if trying to make my call shorter is manipulation, then I guess...
No, no, no, no.
I'm talking about when you tell me that I'm wrong, and then don't tell me why I'm wrong, and then say you also don't want to talk to me about how I'm wrong.
What are you referring to right now?
Mike, you've got the text, right?
Yeah, I'll just read the question again real quick.
You wrote, During May 16th's call, in show title, Judgment is Violence, you proposed several criticisms of the late Marshall Rosenberg's guidelines for achieving what he labeled nonviolent communication that I found to be quite troubling.
So, in the...
No, hang on.
It's a sentence after that.
I believe there are several logical errors in your explanation that concern me, but ignoring them, I have two main questions.
Right.
So, Steph...
You're wrong.
I'm troubled.
You've made logical errors, but we're not going to talk about them.
Here's my other questions.
Here's my real question.
Yeah, it was because I was told like two to three sentences and I had already accepted that.
No, no, you're not understanding.
You're not understanding.
Or maybe you are.
No, I'm not.
But you can't get it.
If you're short on time, why bring things up that you're not even going to discuss?
Like, if you're short on space, if it's a couple of sentences, why spend two of those sentences telling me I'm wrong, but you're not going to discuss it with me?
So I should have omitted all of the parts where I said that I was troubled, and I should have omitted...
Well, if you're saying, moving on, here are my real questions.
Omit them.
Sorry, go ahead, Mike.
If you're concerned about space, it would make logical sense to omit anything that wasn't your actual question.
Right.
So, oh, I'm concerned about space.
Like, I was thinking, you said I didn't, you said, no, listen, Brian, Brian, Brian, you said, I said, why would you tell me I'm wrong without telling me how I'm wrong?
And you said, I didn't have space.
But if you're concerned about space, then telling me I'm wrong without telling me why I'm wrong and that you don't even want to discuss it is a waste of that space.
I do want to discuss it.
We did discuss it.
We discussed one thing.
What did he say?
He said, moving on, my real question is.
Or moving past that, my real question is.
Yeah, you said ignoring them, the reasons that I'm wrong, ignoring them, here are my main questions.
So you basically said, I want to ignore them.
Ignoring them, here's what I really want to talk about.
So, Steph, you're wrong.
I'm not going to tell you about how you're wrong or why you're wrong.
I don't think that's what I meant by ignoring them.
That's not clear.
Sorry.
That wasn't clear.
Yeah, that's what it was.
What does ignoring them mean?
Well, what I meant by it, and it's not clear, I'm agreeing with you, it's not clear, is that, you know, Taking them out.
I wrote a huge list, and then I had to delete it when I looked at it and said, like, I've written this.
That's what happened, is I wrote a big thing, like long paragraphs, and I have it in a Word document right now.
I could send it to you.
I'm sure the original email was much longer.
And then I was like, oh crap.
When I went and looked and he said, in just two or three sentences, and I was like, oh crap.
So I just went over, deleted a whole bunch of craps, just said ignoring it, and then put at the end what my questions were.
So that wasn't clear.
You're right, that wasn't clear.
And I should have taken a little bit more time to make sure I was being clear.
Yeah.
Well, and the funny thing is, and this is what's interesting, is that if we had talked about that at the beginning rather than you saying, let's just move on, we would have cleared that up, right?
Cleared on.
And what effect that would have had on the remainder of the conversation, I don't know.
But it's not particularly pleasant when I say, well, I found this kind of annoying, because I don't know what the heck's gone on before, like, neither does Mike.
And if I said, I found this kind of annoying, if you said, oh, you know, we went this, we took all this stuff out, and so on, right?
And this is, I guess, NVC for you and for me, I guess, too, which is, I could have said, when you said, let's move on, I could have said, well, no, wait, we just blew past my annoyance thing, right?
Right.
And then if we'd stopped at that, we could have talked about the letter that you'd written, which contained your view of my errors.
And this is instructive for the audience.
I think it's fantastic, right?
I mean, this is how conflicts can be avoided and haste makes waste kind of thing, right?
Yeah, because when you said that you were annoyed, I thought it was literally just, when I was quite troubling, you're like, well, that's not annoying.
I could see why that was annoying, and I just jumped to it.
Yeah, I was kind of zooming.
My brain was zooming, and I thought, okay, I agree that that would annoy me, too, if I were you.
I get that, because that's not an argument.
So I was like, okay, you're right, that's not an argument, let's get to the arguments.
And so then I just jumped right in, you know what I mean?
So that's where my mind was at, and I definitely missed more.
Had I taken more time to really hear you out, I wouldn't have missed the further annoyances within the ignoring them part.
You were also annoyed by ignoring them.
But we just skipped right past it.
Yeah, I never—and this is—I don't know if you do any public philosophical work, but, you know, boy, if I had a dime for every time someone told me I was wrong without telling me why, you know, I— Well, I'd have a lot of dying.
Every YouTube comment ever.
You're just wrong.
You don't know what you're talking about.
Bye!
I'm not putting you in that category.
I mean, you're obviously much smarter and certainly better trained in thinking and so on.
But, yeah, it's just, you know, and it's not like I read those every day and it's like, oh my god, I can't believe it's just, you know, after eight years of people saying, you're wrong, bye!
You're wrong, I'm gone!
It reads as, what you said is troubling to me.
You made logical errors.
I'm going to ignore them.
Here's some questions.
Yeah, come on.
That's funny.
It's like a silly...
It's a much better educated form of soft trollery, but it just strikes me.
And I'm not saying it was, because now I know you wrote out this whole thing beforehand, right?
Yeah.
But I didn't certainly know that at the time.
But sorry, Mike, you had other things?
Other notes?
Okay, so we got started off on that foot.
And then...
You mentioned a fallacy, a specific fallacy, the name of which I don't remember off the top of my head right now.
But then you admitted that Steph probably wouldn't know what it was.
And if Steph doesn't know what it is, I assume the vast majority of the listenership doesn't know what it means.
And we actually just talked in the previous show about not using, was it Socrates didn't use epistemology because he was speaking to the average person and he wanted to keep the language kind of at that level so it didn't go over their heads.
So I just, and then you admitted that people wouldn't know what it means, so I was just like, But then didn't stop to define it, right?
Oh, no, I did.
I said if P, then Q, not P, therefore not Q. That's the definition of the logical fallacy.
Do you think that the average person is going to follow that in rapid speech?
Well, then I wanted to...
Well, yeah.
I was going to break it down.
So title of logical fallacy, definition, and now I'm going to explain it.
And I was going to use the mouse, not cake thing, but you didn't like really quickly.
You were just like, okay, that's no, we're not going to go there.
And I was like, okay, let's, you know, work it out your way.
Because I'm sure your ways.
I didn't like.
I didn't like.
What does that mean, I didn't like it?
You mean I thought it was the wrong color or it smelled offensive to me?
No, I disagreed.
I said that was a particular instance and we're talking about a category or a concept.
It wasn't like I just didn't like it.
I'm not sure what that would even mean.
You know, if I say my teacher didn't like my answer, I mean, not that I'm your teacher or anything, but it would just, again, the way you phrase stuff, I mean, you're assuming an emotional state of mind that is very anti-philosophical.
I just didn't like it.
You're right.
It's easily inferred from that language.
I'm not trying to say you had a preference against it, so we're going to try something else.
No, you said I tried to do an analogy.
Going back to the main point, I defined a logical fallacy.
I gave the title, gave the definition, and then was going to try to explain the definition.
And I don't understand.
Is that okay?
Or do you want me to still talk about how I shouldn't say that you didn't like it?
By that, clearly...
No, let's move on to the next point.
Alright, the next thing on my list was, you said, let's not get hung up on terms when we're trying to establish definitions.
Hung up is one of those phrases that, you know, I think for people who are talking philosophy, terms are pretty important, you know?
It's like if...
If biologists are having a discussion about whether something is a reptile or a mammal and they say, well, let's not get hung up on definitions, it's like, they're really actually pretty important, right?
A lot of times.
But a lot of times it's not.
Like, sometimes when you're talking about definitions, it's not really...
Like, I think what...
The context of when I said that was when we were talking about moral judgments versus...
The distinction I'm trying to make when I say moral judgments was distinction between those things and observations.
Once I explained it that way, I think it made it more clear.
Well, then what we could say is our terms need further clarification.
But let's not get hung up means let's not have some irrational attachment to clarity.
I mean, the whole point of philosophy is irrational attachment to clarity.
So you can say, well, I think our terms need better definition or so on.
But just generally, when people say, let's not get hung up, what they mean is you're getting irrationally fixated on something that's unimportant.
Let's not get hung up, alright?
Let's just keep moving and, you know, your concerns don't matter, your confusion doesn't matter, your need for clarity doesn't matter, let's just keep moving, right?
And also, Brian, you know, going to the NVC stuff, if Steph has a need to understand what you're saying and make sure that we have clear terms and definitions at the start to continue the conversation, you blow past that, you're ignoring his need.
I don't think...
Okay, so he had a need for clarity, and I was blowing past that need.
I didn't think that it was...
The distinctions that we were making were useful to the actual topic.
But it's a conversation, which means my needs...
Like, your perception of what's important isn't the only relevant factor, right?
Mm-hmm.
What I'm saying, though, is that I don't, objectively, I don't think the distinctions that we were making were useful to the topic.
Like, it's not like, you know...
But do you get to decide that for me?
That's what I don't understand about NVC. Like, if I have a need, do you get to decide unilaterally that my need is not relevant or important and we should just ignore it or move past it?
Well, that's not, yeah, that's not what MVC would say.
And I think that's all we're trying to point.
I think that's what we're trying to point at.
Right, so I wasn't practicing nonviolent communication very effectively when I tried to blow past your need for clarity when I believed that it wasn't important to the topic or something like that.
Yeah.
Right.
Especially with a really complex topic like what is a moral judgment?
I mean, entire volumes of philosophy shelves have been taken up by that.
It's really not something that's a simple thing, right?
Two and two makes four.
Yeah, okay, we can dispose of that pretty easily.
But what is a moral judgment?
Can they be true or false?
And I mean, that's a big, big topic.
I don't know that we can just keep moving.
Simple, right?
Alright, the next one on my list was, you said something to the effect of, you used the word actually, if you actually let me get through, if you actually let me, there was something containing if you actually let me, in a statement, which, again, Steph, can you elaborate on why that's a little grating?
Not, because I don't know the context in which it came in, so if you remember that at all, Mike...
It was like, if you actually let me speak my argument, kind of thing.
I think it was in context to when I was still trying to go to the mouse thing, or, I don't know.
It had to do with the mouse thing, yeah, but it's, if you actually let me, like, you're not giving me the opportunity to speak, whereas you both had, you know, gone back and forth and had plenty of opportunities and time to make various points.
It's like, you're not letting me get my point across.
Oh, yeah.
There were times where you interrupted me and I sort of said, okay, go ahead or whatever.
I mean, sometimes that happens, right?
I mean, people get excited and you think you can solve it and you want to jump in.
And that happens, I think, on both sides of the conversation.
Now, Steph, if you'd actually let me get my point across and not have interrupted me there.
It's a little bit condescending.
A little bit inflammatory and a little bit like playing the victim.
Like, oh, if you just let me blah, blah, blah, right?
It's like, hmm.
Yeah, I can see.
It's just a conversation.
Yeah, see that as being like condescending or like, It's your fault that you don't understand, really.
It's not my fault for not explaining it well.
It's your fault because you're not letting me.
And the last one I had on my list was, you said, in the middle of going through some pretty complex stuff, you said, I think it's simple, or it's simple.
No, that happened a couple of times.
Yeah, and it's like...
I don't even remember that.
You'll hear back.
We'll splice it in.
I remember all these other things that I just don't even remember.
See, that's the point, Brian, because I don't think you're doing this stuff consciously.
But it's happening.
And if your goal, I mean, you're interested in nonviolent communication because you said you want to solve problems.
If in your communication, things are happening which cause further problems, And you're not aware of them.
I mean that's important.
It's really important.
That's why nonviolent communication is...
Once you learn nonviolent communication, it's not like you suddenly no longer have flaws in your communication.
All it is is an outline of how you can go back, like we're doing right now, and identify where I failed, and then disavow those failures, like I am doing right now.
That's a lot of the point of moral philosophy, too.
It's not like every time you wake up in the morning, you're going to go, what should I do now?
Brush my teeth.
Let me consult my moral theory.
Sorry to interrupt you, Matt.
I don't think right now is the time to lecture.
I've got to tell you, I'm not in a wide open space to be lectured to about this.
I will give you an apology, though, which, you know, sort of in thinking about what we were just talking about, I owe you an apology for not being honest about at the beginning when we blew past stuff, not putting the brakes on and circling back.
That was not up to my standards of real-time relationships and being honest in the moment.
And I was eager to get to the philosophical meat of the conversation, and I should not have succumbed to that greed for that particular where I have the most fun.
I should have stopped and been honest about how my irritation had escalated to a small degree at the beginning.
And I'm sorry about that.
That was certainly not up to my standards of what I want to do in conversation.
So I'm sorry about that.
And I don't know to what degree that affected the conversation, but it sure wasn't positive.
It's really kind of you to say that.
That's nice.
It makes me feel really good that you would level with me on that.
And let me know what your standards are.
I would never claim, and I'm not trying to lecture, but I would never claim to say anything negative about your character, ever.
Oh no, yours neither.
I think that you came in with honorable intentions, and I think we did a pretty good job on a highly contentious topic, so I'm satisfied with the conversation, and yeah, we can always improve, but that's, you know, when we're not, we're back into the dead category we were talking about earlier.
I also wanted to just, I've taken note of, because I've listened to you for a pretty long time, and one thing that really impressed me is in a recent call, a guy called in and talked about how he had like an ACE score of 9, and then you Gave him therapy and paid for it.
That touched me so much that I could witness you doing that for somebody.
And I think a lot of times actions speak louder than words.
And that was really impressive to me.
Thank you.
I appreciate that.
And I'm very glad.
I think he's taken us up on it.
So I'm thrilled for all of that.
Yeah, there's two people.
One of the gentlemen is in right now, and the other, last I spoke with him, he was still trying to find somebody.
And we were going back and forth.
So yeah, that's great to hear.
And before we go, Brian, I'll just say again, welcome to call back anytime.
Like Steph said, it wasn't sarcastic.
You're welcome to come back and talk about whether it's NBC or another subject anytime.
I really want to thank you two for going through all the list of grievances that you had with my approach so that I could really see where I went wrong.
Wait, do you want one more?
Yeah, no.
Yeah, yeah.
So, at one point, you did say that you didn't understand my argument after you had said a bunch of times that I was wrong?
Right, yeah.
Yeah.
And I said, where do apologies stand?
I don't know if you heard it or not.
Don't you owe me an apology?
Where do apologies stand in nonviolent communication?
And we didn't return to that at all either.
And I don't mean to grind apologies out of people or anything like that.
It's not some sort of dominance thing.
I'm going to make you grovel and apologize or anything like that.
I'm just curious.
You know, I mean, if I had told someone I was wrong, and then they'd say, well, explain to me my argument, and I said, well, actually, I don't really understand your argument, I'd have to say, you know, boy, I'm sorry, you know, I told you you were wrong, and I didn't even really understand your argument.
And, as it turns out, the argument was actually pretty good.
I mean, whether it's conclusive, I don't know, but it was not bad, right?
It wasn't like...
All men are frogs.
Frog is a Socrates.
Therefore, frogs are immortal.
I mean, it wasn't anything quite that bad.
I'm not sure.
Sorry, I'm sorry.
No, go ahead.
Oh, I was just...
I thought you were done, but I don't think I said sorry, and I don't think I've said sorry at all this entire time for anything.
But I did...
I believe I said that I was wrong to...
or it wasn't correct or up to my standards to do that, I think.
And if I didn't, I'll say it now.
Did you hear that, Mike?
I didn't...
I don't, but I could have missed it.
I honestly could have missed it.
There were some talkovers, so anyway.
I don't know.
I'll say it now.
I don't know about saying sorry.
Do I regret it?
I learned from it.
Whatever.
Sorry.
I'm sorry for doing that.
If that means the same thing, saying that was an error to do that, so...
I don't know what that was.
It was an error to dismiss your argument and say, like, just because I don't understand it means that it's clearly false or something.
Well, you know better from a philosophy degree, right?
That gives you privileges in terms of what I'll grant you in terms of intellectual respect off the bat.
But it also means that you really know that that's bad form, right?
Right.
I, um...
Like, if you were just some guy out of nowhere who'd never been in a debate before or hadn't studied logic or argumentation, then you could, you know, it would be like, oh, you know, learner's mistake, so to speak, right?
But if you got an undergraduate degree in philosophy, you know that dismissing an argument without understanding it and saying that the other person is wrong in a public forum without understanding the argument is pretty bad form, right?
Right.
It's definitely not up to standard, because I don't think other people are going to learn from it, especially.
So it's important, like you said, especially in a public forum, to make sure that people...
Yeah, I got carried away.
I knew that that was wrong.
And when it was pointed out to me, what I had did, I didn't apologize.
I think that's...
It was wrong.
And it doesn't mean bad or, you know, like you're a terrible person.
It's just, you know, in the heat of whatever, right?
We got carried away.
It certainly isn't conducive to learning or, like, arriving at truths.
So that's what's important when you're having debates or, like, even dialectics or whatever.
The whole point is to get to truth.
Yeah, it doesn't...
It sows seeds of further conflict, right?
Mm-hmm.
Because I know that you know that that's bad form, and if you don't sort of acknowledge it and apologize for it, it means that you're not someone who could admit fault, or somebody who has no standards even after being trained in those standards, which I don't believe for a moment.
And if you're someone who can't admit fault, then it means that we turn from a cooperative venture into more of an adversarial venture.
Because if you can't admit fault when you've done something wrong, then we can't be a team in the exploration or understanding of these ideas.
Exactly.
Very true.
Alright.
I'm going to have to Take a tiny break.
I do want to get to the next caller.
God knows what time it is.
But tell them I'll be there in a sec.
I got to grab a drink and I'll be back in like two minutes.
And Brian, thanks again, Emil.
Again, really appreciate the call.
The after call is probably a thanks, Mike.
That was good stuff to bring up.
I hope it was helpful for you.
Certainly helpful for me.
And I appreciate that reminder of keeping the standards high.
Yes, I definitely have learned a lot.
Thank you.
Alright, bring him on.
Bring him on, I say!
Alright, well, up next is Greg.
And Greg wrote in and said, Is it moral to have children when you're ill, either physically and or mentally?
For some background, I've been injured by antibiotics, and after seven years of dealing with this issue, I believe it may have a huge aspect among many for my impending separation slash divorce.
The question started to come up last fall between my wife and I when we were married and I expressed my feelings about having children, not wanting any, because of the symptoms I deal with on a daily basis.
That's from Greg.
Well, I'm first of all incredibly sorry to hear about all this.
I don't want to probe.
Is there anything more that you want to talk about with this stuff?
Like with the medical and all that?
Well, I can say that it's been a pretty difficult seven years because first, I guess the background of it is the first year that I was first afflicted with it was a very emotionally, physically tough time.
And when I say very tough, I mean almost losing my job, my life, my sanity.
Yeah.
And I just happened to run across a particular chiropractor who had said that, you know, I've seen a few people that have had these type of reactions.
Yours is pretty severe.
But, you know, just he's like, I've got some stuff you can try.
And that was after a year of going through some really severe symptoms.
And just so he'd seen people who'd been injured by antibiotics.
Correct.
Yeah.
Now, as treatment for it, it's basically more or less what you would think when you would go to your physician.
Like, oh, you just need to eat better and take these type of supplements to help get through that.
Whereas the 11 specialists I had seen before that were just like, well, you're insane.
You just need to go on some antidepressants and everything will be fine.
And needless to say, I said, okay, fine, since no one believes me that I'm going through this and having this extreme pain and all these other additional problems that, you know, I'll give it a try.
Obviously, it didn't do anything.
Wait, sorry, what didn't do anything?
The antidepressants.
Oh, yeah, yeah, okay.
Sorry, just to mention too, I've read a number of articles about the degree to which people just shovel antidepressants at people who have underlying medical conditions that maybe is too troublesome or challenging to identify.
So you're not alone in that.
This is one of these huge, very tragic go-to places for the medical profession.
Right, yes.
And this actually isn't the first time that I've experienced this.
When I was younger, I had some other issues health-wise where with massive and severe panic attacks and everything, they said, well, we really don't know how to treat this or deal with it, so why don't you just take these pills?
And at that point, it was Xanax.
And that was another fun time in my life.
So there is that.
May I plug a website for an organization that I'm a part of, just in case anyone listening is maybe in the same state or same position where I was in, where you couldn't find help and didn't have any outlets to go and try to find information as what to do next for yourself.
Would you have any issues?
Oh, I'd be thrilled.
If you can get help out to listeners, I'm thrilled.
Fantastic.
The website is called saferpills.org, and it's an organization that is trying to conduct studies for individuals such as myself and others out there that may be experiencing really extreme side effects from What,
you know, you, myself, and other people that are not informed that, you know, a doctor may prescribe a pill for you that you would think would be helpful, but you as a patient taking these pills may not know that there are some pretty drastic side effects that could afflict you.
And they're trying to fund some research and do studies to figure out why some people, you know, such as myself, would have such severe reactions versus others that can take these pills and have no reactions at all.
And just make, you know, awareness for medical professionals and patients that, you know, do you really need to take this medication for such a minor ailment?
Are there other alternatives that are not as extreme?
These are just the type of things that the patient-doctor relationship should have.
But I can tell you after going through what I've been through, I never take anything from a doctor just as face value anymore.
I can definitely tell you that.
Yeah, and I'm incredibly sorry.
I mean, I've never heard of...
I've heard of allergies to penicillin or antibiotics.
I think penicillin in particular, I've never heard of that kind of negative reaction from antibiotics.
So I'm incredibly sorry that the lightning of bad luck hit you square in the nuts.
That's just terrible.
I'm so sorry.
Pretty much.
And that basically preface the whole idea of me calling in and discussing this topic with you.
And if you would like to go into a little bit more of the background of how this question came to be and also how I got onto the show, if that would be helpful or if...
It's your choice.
I appreciate you staying up late.
It's your call, whatever works for you.
Sure thing.
So I guess I would like to give background to the listeners.
So I've started listening to your show late last year and...
I became very interested in the topics and issues that you had brought up, not only with the call-in shows, how I was first introduced to you, but also the information that you provide through the truth about XXX, whichever topic it would be for that particular time.
And I started donating after a couple months of, you know, Intaking all the information that you're providing and I really enjoyed and feel that if you're doing this, then I should participate by providing financial support.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Absolutely.
And I think after a couple months and after my personal situation with my impending separation, which will be, of course, ending in divorce, I am starting to realize the financial impact that that's having, which is forcing me to cut off basically anything that's not going to financially be pushed to me Getting rid of my house and all the other aspects of things that I need to do from a financial aspect to keep my health at
a certain level so that I would be able to work and do it effectively and what have you.
Yeah, you, and I can't remember from the email, it's been a little while now, but either yourself or Michael reached out and was asking why I canceled my subscription.
Hence, I responded back with...
Basically the question that I was posing plus everything that's going on personally for which I would have to kind of take stock of like, okay, what are the extraneous things that I need to cut out financially as of this moment just so I can get out of this situation as cleanly as possible?
Can I, sorry, and I like appreciate the explanation.
And listen, I mean, it's not just you.
I mean, it's a gruesome economy in the U.S. Years ago, I projected there will be no economic recovery.
And people are like, oh, yeah, my stocks are doing great.
It's like, yeah, and heroin's fine until you crash, too.
But so, yeah, I mean, even according to official government statistics, I think Obama had like the worst Q1 of any president in history.
And the U.S. economy shrank by 0.7 percent in the first quarter of this year.
And, yeah, it's hitting people hard.
You know, people overseas need to step up.
And if you haven't donated and you've got an income and you're enjoying the show, I really invite you to come to freedom.
And I think that's the only thing that you can do is to get to the end of this year.
Is it done like dinner?
Unfortunately, it appears that way.
After listening to your show and just talking with my wife about where We both are, in our feelings and emotions, an emotional standpoint within our marriage, we decided to go to couples therapy.
And through that therapy brought up a lot of history for both of us that Either both of us we had spoken about but just never delved deeply into it.
And these would just be random topics from our past.
She had a very dissimilar past from myself.
My past had a lot of unique instances in it, which I thought was pretty interesting that I couldn't reflect that in the ACE, I guess, Questionnaire that comes with the call-in show.
That's the Adverse Childhood Experiences questionnaire.
Sorry, go ahead.
Oh, yeah.
No issue.
The one thing that...
I would say that maybe, because I don't know who wrote the ACE, but I do find the questions very valid in terms of determining that score, because I've seen other people that have had scores way worse than myself.
But one of the things that I would add in addition to just parents performing some of the abuses that are mentioned are siblings as well.
If that was put in there, my score would probably be higher.
No, actually, not probably.
It would be higher.
No, and it's not how I would write it.
Not that anyone particularly cares, but it's not how I would write it.
But it is something that seems to be pretty well researched and validated.
So it doesn't deal with a lot of stuff.
I mean, there's nothing in there about public school.
But so, yeah, it's not a bad place to start.
But, yeah, sibling stuff is definitely there.
And, of course, there's no mention of female on male.
Absolutely.
And I agree, because it did make me, at least before responding back, think about, you know, what was my history?
What aspects of my past affected me negatively that may be affecting the way I think and feel about things in today's environment, and especially with my marriage in terms of my wife choice?
Which I can say now, we shouldn't have gotten married.
Just based on my personal self-knowledge, gaining of self-knowledge, my wife doing the same and both looking at each other and saying that, wow, we're in our situation.
We didn't We're in our situation now just because we did not do our due diligence before we got married to really figure out these really important positions, which we spoke about, such as having children, some financial things, but we never delved so deep into them, which you should do before you get married, that we're in a situation that we are now.
So I don't feel like I have any particular clarity on the issues in your marriage, which, again, you don't have to talk about, but that's a pretty big dance around an open grave without letting me see in.
Sure, sure.
Understood.
Well, I guess I just want to focus more, since it's pretty clear now that the marriage is going to end and we're both going our separate ways, but But, but, but, but...
Look, you know your marriage.
I don't, so...
But if both people are committed to the pursuit of self-knowledge, it seems to me that they should kind of arrive at the same place.
And if one person is committed to self-knowledge and the other person isn't, Then they're not gonna arrive at the same place.
Now, you sound like the guy who's committed to self-knowledge.
If your wife is also like, yeah, let's figure out our past, let's figure out our history, and let's figure out our lives, let's figure out our childhoods, it seems like you might not end up into similar places after a while.
Like, if you both commit to the scientific method, one of you isn't gonna end up thinking the world is banana-shaped, right?
No, that's very true.
Well, I agree with your statement.
Where the disagreement comes in is where my pursuit of self-knowledge, going back into therapy and figuring myself out, doesn't connect with my wife's pursuit of that same thing.
Meaning that she...
She has a different idea of what she wants out of life.
And because of that, and me ignoring what she wanted out of life for so many years and then realizing, oh, okay, this is my mistake for not accepting what she wanted, nor was I being upfront with what I wanted, that our marriage was built on motivations that are not long-lasting.
You mean lust?
Lust wasn't so much part of it.
I would say that we both do love each other.
For me, there was love plus the fact that I met a woman that was able to accept my...
Except the things – I guess the different symptoms and things that have happened to me, which I – when they did occur, I was in a lot of female relationships, and a lot of my friendships fell away when I first became ill.
And I went from – and when I say they went away, I mean they literally went away within a 72-hour period.
So I found out pretty quickly who were friends and who were – People that I just didn't have deep relationships with.
When I met her...
She was extremely accepting of the fact that I told her, I said, look, because of all these different symptoms and things that I have going on and what I need to do to maintain my health, I am interested in marriage, but I'm not interested in having children just for the simple fact that I just can't keep up.
I can't physically perform what I would want to be as a father.
And I basically put that out as one of the conditions to say, look, we can move forward, but if this is not something you're comfortable with, then...
You mean not having kids?
Correct.
Sorry, I just don't understand.
Are you saying that dads in wheelchairs shouldn't have kids?
Well, that's kind of what I thought of.
What degree...
Which kind of posed the question between the mental and physical, because both areas of my body have been damaged, mentally and physically.
Your brain sounds fine to me.
It sounds fine, but I've definitely declined in my mental capacities a little bit.
It's a term I've heard you use a couple times.
It's like when you try to fog.
But the way that my brain works now, it takes me very – I'm kind of stumbling a little bit now, and this is kind of one of the things.
I have a hard time finding the train of thought to keep it.
And in my job, which is very train of thought dependent, it requires me to invest a lot of energy into doing my job.
And one of the other symptoms I have is a chronic fatigue syndrome which It's worse than it sounds, actually.
I really just don't have a lot of energy.
I see people with their children and trying to raise kids.
I know myself mentally and physically, just working the job that I have and maintaining the life that I have is difficult enough.
And knowing what I grew up with, I wanted to be a better person than my father at the time and be there for my children.
And when this happened to me, that really just erased any semblance of having that at that point.
I know it's always uncertain in these areas.
What's the prognosis in the long run?
I know it's already been a long run, but going forward.
Well, according to some of the studies that are coming out, it looks like from at least my nervous system from a standpoint, it's just going to degrade slowly to the point where the chances of Myself having Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases has doubled, basically.
But again, these are all like university studies where they're trying to just gather information at this point.
But every time I see a new study coming out, I get...
I try to avoid it because none of it's ever good news.
But it just looks like...
There's not really a lot of hope at this point just because it's not something that's accepted.
And by that I mean It isn't until recently that I've actually run into medical professionals that understand or have an idea, whereas taking the pills that I took could have really bad side effects.
Whereas five years ago when I did this and was trying to find any help from any doctor...
It was just like, you know, those pills can't cause those type of reactions.
That's impossible.
But I think as more and more data is starting to show up and the FDA is starting to release more and more...
Warnings on the labels to medical professionals and more and more studies are being funded to figure out why this is happening.
I tend to see more of a change when I start to speak to medical professionals about my condition, which is good.
Right.
So your wife does want to have kids and you don't at the moment.
At first, no.
After, I would say, about a year, she started bringing the topic up.
After about a year of what?
I'm sorry, after being married, about a year.
So we married under the terms that if we did get to the point where we did want to raise children, that we could probably… Um, handle a, you know, either foster care or adopt, uh, cause I'm adopted and she was adopted.
And, you know, um, for myself, I, I feel lucky in a sense based on the, my, uh, biological parents as, as much as I know of them to be in the family that I am in.
Um, and for herself, she was lucky too, to come to this country, uh, after her parents, um, We both feel very strongly about adoption and that there are children out there that, as you've said a few times, they didn't get to choose their parents.
If their parents are of not great quality or they're just not around or they've been given up to the state, Well, if I have the opportunity to either foster or adopt, I would be interested in doing that.
That changed a little while after we married.
That caused a little bit of a rift right off the bat.
I'm sorry, Greg.
I'm just trying to figure out the rift.
I'm sorry.
So the rift was that she was mentioning that she wanted to have children of her own, and my rift with that was, well, we had a discussion about this before we married.
I'm not sure why you want to bring this up now, or if you're feeling uncomfortable about it.
Or our conversation about having children and you were just saying that to go through with the marriage or just placate the conversation.
Okay, so sorry.
So originally you were going to adopt and then she said after you were married that she wanted biological children, is that right?
Or her own children?
That's close.
We originally stated that we didn't want children at first, but we said if our minds, you know, decide to change where we get to a point where we're comfortable, because we were both, you know, with moving in together and just financially just trying to get our feet, you know, stable, you know, try to find some solid ground, like, all right, well, We're not even going to really think about children until we can do that first.
And if we do, I'm not interested in having children of my own, and neither was she, that if we did have children, we would adopt or get involved in foster care.
And then it was a year later that she decided that she wanted to have children of her own.
Which was very fleeting, which I never understood that, nor could get a clear answer about that.
Could never understand what?
Her desire to have children of her own?
Well, I understand that part of it.
The part was it would be a conversation about having children of her own, and then that conversation would just disappear.
And if I ever brought that up again, she was like, you know, I don't really understand what I was thinking, and...
It's like, I don't know why I said that.
And that always kind of stuck in the back of my mind that, well, maybe she didn't marry me for me, or maybe I was just at the right place at the right time for this marriage, and it just worked out in her benefit.
So you became suspicious of our motives to get married to you at all?
Back then, yes.
Now, not so much.
Now that we're going through our separation and divorce, now that we're talking about—now that we can have deeper conversations without the repercussions of the anger, which we used to have, which the therapy was very helpful in providing for us.
So I would say it's been a shift for both of us, whereas myself, I'm becoming more self-aware, and she herself is finding more emotional stability with herself, which she didn't really have through a lot of our marriage.
Well, as you say, her parents were basically murdered, so emotional stability would not be the natural offshoot of that, right?
Absolutely.
Oh, I agree.
But I think the way that...
It was one of these situations where she never really accepted or spoke about it, and when she did, it was very matter-of-fact.
And...
So, you know, if the topic ever came up, it was more or less, you know, this is what happened to me, let's move on.
And it was never really a discussion.
It was more of a statement.
This is what happened.
This is what happened to my parents.
This is how I came to this country.
And, you know, that's it.
That's the end of the story.
You know, it wouldn't really be a conversation.
And I think with her doing that for so many years, it just became like a note card to read if that topic ever came up, and it never was something where – She thought about it or spoke about it or actually delved into what happened and why it happened and what have you.
I think when we started going to therapy and those topics started coming up, I started to notice a change in her.
Which, of course, I was going through changes myself while we were in therapy, and then we started to realize that we haven't been happy together for a long time, and us being married is just not something we want anymore at this point.
And pretty much, we are where we are.
Right.
So there's no imminent possibility of you having to make a kid versus no kid decision if you're getting divorced, right?
Correct.
So the question came up during the time when we were speaking about it, and the funny thing—well, I can't say it's funny at all.
The same week where this question was posed on the forums, and it was recommended that, hey, this would be something that you would want to do on a call-in show, that same week is when we both had a pretty— It's a pretty intense discussion about where our marriage is going to go.
I think for the both of us, we are both just so emotionally spent.
It's at the point where there's not even enough adrenaline to be emotional about it anymore.
I think after the last few years, just saying, okay, look, now that we've pretty much spent everything we can to try to make this work, it's just not working.
And I have to say I'm very thankful that there are no children involved.
But, yeah, it's just – There's nothing easy about this, and there's nothing about this situation that I would wish on anyone.
This is just a terrible situation to be in.
But at the same time, if I have to look at the bright side, I will say that the both of us being unhappy so long and Starting to make headway to getting our lives back is at least something to look forward to.
Right.
Well, I obviously can't give you any hard and fast answers about...
As far as the morality goes of having children, it is immoral to have children that you cannot feed.
Well, I should say, it's immoral to have and keep children that you cannot feed, in the same way that it's immoral to bring a pet home from the animal shelter and starve it to death, right?
I mean, it's just wrong.
As children are confined within the environment biologically and so on, so it's wrong to have children that you can't afford.
To feed and to give some sort of reasonable level of comfort and medical attention and Clothing and you know this is wrong because it's harmful to the children to be in those situations Very many children are in those situations of course the majority of children around the world are in highly deficient Situations and they find enough joy or happiness or positivity in life to keep going so So for yourself,
it sounds like you can make a living so you could provide for your children.
Would you have a huge amount of energy for your kids?
No.
You say you've got chronic fatigue and it's enough for you to get through your day at work and so on.
So would you be able to do lots of rough and tumble play with your kids?
Probably not.
But there are people who have osteoporosis who can't do that either, and they will find other ways to bring happiness to their children.
And particularly if you have sort of friends and family around, other people can step up to take that slack.
Not being able to have as much energy as you want for kids.
Well, I mean, my energy is pretty good, but, you know, still not quite what it was when I was 20.
And that's just a reality.
That doesn't mean that I can't be a good father.
It just means that I don't have quite as much energy as I did when I was 20.
Almost three decades on, that makes sense.
You obviously have a great intelligence, an inquisitive mind, you're pursuing self-knowledge, so you're way ahead of the curve as far as a lot of parents in this world would go.
You know, would I rather have a father like you, who was deficient in energy, or a father who was not deficient in energy, but I was like a nasty mean guy.
Well, I'd choose you, right?
So that's a possibility as well.
And so I don't see, again, what do I know?
I'm no doctor, but I don't think philosophically that there's anything in your A condition that would render you somebody who just morally couldn't have children.
You know, maybe if you were stuck in an iron lung or I don't know, whatever, right?
You had to live in some sort of bubble container or something, that would be a bit more tricky.
But I don't see that there would be anything inherent in your situation.
I assume that this ailments, these ailments, and I wish there was a better, these chronic conditions, because there's no word strong enough to describe, of course, what you're going through.
But if they, you know, made you prone to explosive rages and rampant strangulations, then, you know, that would be another matter entirely.
So, yeah, you'll be tired.
And, you know, guess what?
Parents are tired a lot.
And you'll be tired more so than those parents who have full health.
But does that mean that nobody can have a kid who's over 60?
Well, people do.
And...
And again, who knows what's going to happen in the future as far as treatments go, possibilities of reversing the damage that has been caused, other ways of lifestyle changes, diet changes that might give you more energy.
You said that you'd be getting some satisfaction already.
Who knows, right?
So, you know, I mean, I've had cancer.
Does this mean I can't have other children because cancer can recur?
There are lots of people who grow up With one or even both parents missing and have great lives and make great contributions to society and so on.
So I would not think that would be something that would be banned from me or banned from you by any sort of foundational moral imperative, if that makes sense.
No, it does.
The thought about when you had cancer and brought that up As a possibility for the moral case of having or not having children is an interesting one to me just because I've seen it in my own family with relatives who've had cancer and didn't get through it.
And I think where my question is stemming from, because if you see me on the street, there's nothing about me that would indicate that there's anything wrong with me.
This has always been the toughest part about dealing with this.
You look fine and just tough it out.
I'm like, well, between the pain, the fatigue, the neuropathy, the vision problems, the list goes on.
I can't convey my day-to-day I don't know.
Basically, I have these conversations with my father because it took a couple years for him to accept that this is not a hypochondriac.
My symptoms aren't caused for being a hypochondriac.
I'm actually going through some real issues.
We just had a conversation about this recently, about my symptoms, and I've been sending him data of what the FDA is doing and all these other universities that are running studies, and he's just getting it now.
And I'm like, well, I've been dealing with this for years now, and no one believes me.
I found a few doctors that are helping.
What was the issue with it?
He's like, well, you have a history of issues that I figured that you weren't making them up, but they weren't as severe as you were saying they were.
And that was pretty tough.
Just to hear that the closest people to you just don't believe you for so long.
And I think that's basically part of why I'm asking the question because it's very – it's insidious where – If I'm having a really bad day, I literally have to call off work in the middle of work and just go find a place to sleep for one or go find somewhere to go so I can take some aspirin just to move around and calm down the pain in my joints.
Or, you know, set my alarm to eat because another symptom I have is I've lost the ability to feel hunger or fullness.
So I have to eat on a schedule just so I don't forget.
And with all these weird symptoms and not really having a lot of help in the past has led me down some dark areas of substance abuse for a little while.
I mean there's just – when you're constantly being told that you don't have a problem, it's all in your head, and you're looking at your throbbing joints and you can't move, I mean it's – after a while, you're kind of like, well, no one's going to believe me.
No one's going to accept me.
But I did meet this woman that accepts me.
I did meet, you know, a couple other people that have had not similar experiences, but other, you know, adverse reactions to either medications.
And, you know, you can kind of build a foundation on, I mean, it's not the greatest of foundations, but just a similarity of situations where you're like, oh, you went through that?
I went through that too.
It's like, and And the tough part that I find is I haven't met anyone that is in a similar situation that does have children.
So I've always been kind of curious of what kind of parent I would be with all of these adversities.
Would I be able to do a better job than my father and my mother?
You know, could I do it?
How would I find a mate and have them understand after all this is said and done that, hey, like, you know, you're getting into a bumpy car, you know, if we decide to go forward here.
I just, Greg, I have to make a request.
You keep laughing or giggling about this stuff, and I know it's painful, so I just find that kind of disconcerting if you can try and...
Tamp that back a bit.
I mean, the challenge, of course, we're going to have is that if you're deficient in energy, you'll need a wife or mother for your children who has an excess of energy.
And a woman who has an excess of energy to compensate for your deficiency of energy might not want to be with a guy who's deficient in energy, if she has an excess of energy, if that makes sense.
No, no, it makes perfect sense.
You're going to have the most in common with somebody who's also gone through a chronic ailment like this.
And continues to go through it, and therefore, if that's the person you have the most in common with, then you have two parents who have little energy, and that may not be optimum.
Again, it's not a moral issue, fundamentally, if you can take care of the kids, but you can beg off from work.
It's really tough to beg off from parenting, right?
Well, I guess that's where I'm having the issue with the morality of it.
Say, for instance, Myself and a woman that has gone through the same thing and unfortunately is stricken with the same issues that I have, I would figure that from a moral standpoint,
why would the both of us get together to bring a child into the world where not only is the child requiring all the attention that That they should deserve as a, you know, being a child being raised by two loving parents, when the parents really do have to balance, you know, their own issues on top of work and life.
But you probably couldn't do it.
I mean, it would have to be something you say you were talking about chatting with your dad.
It would have to be a situation where you'd have to lean extensively on an extended family, right?
Yeah, yeah, no, that's true.
Like maybe even have your parents live with you and or her parents live with you and provide if they can or if they're retired or they have that desire to provide the kind of support.
And, you know, I'm sure that there'd be some parents who'd be thrilled to be living grandparents and so on, right?
But to provide that kind of support would be, it seems to me, would be a good plan if you want to have kids and you're going to be Having some health issues, having people around who can really help shoulder the burden would make, I'm sure, all the difference in the world.
Yeah, that's a very good point.
So yeah, whoever you marry...
Try and make sure their parents are still alive, unlike your soon-to-be ex.
But I think that that would be part of the plan.
If you're interested in having kids and you have a deficiency of energy or some ongoing health issues, it's most likely that, you know, a woman of intense, vibrant, physical health and energy would probably have a little bit less in common with you.
It could happen.
I'm just a possibility.
True.
So if the woman does have not, if she's not, you know, 150% energy, then look for her extended family and your extended family to step in significantly to help out and, you know, may have a brother or a cousin or whatever who wants a place to live and is willing to help out with the family situation with that and can be, you know, could end up better in some ways than otherwise.
Yeah, absolutely.
I didn't even really think about it in those terms.
But then, of course, you know, with the extended family, you know, that's always a mixed bag, too, if you never meet them or they're estranged and all of a sudden they come into the family.
Like, hey, why don't you come in and move in with us because, you know, we need help.
Well, you'd lay the foundation, right?
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Interview, so to speak, and you wouldn't try and drop it on people.
But I think, you know, for you, like if I were in your shoes, I would definitely look at how to backstop.
Challenges I would have as a parent in terms of energy and mobility and so on and figure out how to design a life that I could get the most support possible and how to make sure I was providing as much value to others who were supporting me as possible, of course.
And I think that could give you the village that apparently some people think it takes to raise a child.
By village, you know, Hillary Clinton means government, but we mean it somewhat differently.
You could have the extendo-rama of the gene pool to help out, or just friends, could be any number of things.
But that, I think, would be the most useful thing.
Sure.
No, absolutely.
That's some great points there I didn't really consider.
Thank you for that.
You're very welcome.
And now that's something, of course, when you start looking, that would be, need healthy parents, need healthy in-laws, strong, vigor, full of like oxen.
And that would be something to chat about.
But, I mean, you've got a big heart and you've got a good head on your shoulders.
And, yeah, so double the risk of Alzheimer's.
I don't mean to toss that off like that's unimportant, but...
There's risks in just breathing, I mean, as far as I'm aware.
So I wouldn't let that paralyze you out of reproduction, but...
I'm a big, as I've said on the show many times, I'm a big fan of smart people breeding.
I don't want my daughter to grow up in the remnants of idiocracy.
And so I'm a big fan of smart people breeding.
And if you can find a way to get the right resources around you and your wife-to-be can figure out how to get the right resources, I don't see why you couldn't look back and say it's a blessing in disguise, as so many of life's supposed tragedies seem to be.
Yeah.
That's great.
You really put a perspective on it that I never really entertained just because of my current situation.
I think for some of the listeners, too, it's good to hear these things just because if you don't have that objective viewpoint from outside of the tunnel of whatever it is that you're going through, it's difficult to see Outside of that tunnel.
Totally.
Yeah.
But just to be clear, I wouldn't say that I have an objective viewpoint.
I just say it's a different perspective that can be helpful.
Like a sort of supplementary perspective.
If I was making some rigorous philosophical argument, I'd probably claim more objectivity.
But these are just perspectives that, you know, when you're staring at your own hand, sometimes it's tough to see the mountains in the background.
And you've got a lot on your plate.
You've got a lot of stuff to deal with.
I mean, chronic ailments and pain, and not just the physical pain, but the emotional pain of not being believed about these ailments for so many years, and not getting the support or even the sympathy from some people, and a divorce, and, ah, man, and negative prognosis coming out of research.
I mean, you've got a lot on your plate.
So the idea that you're not seeing some big-picture future stuff makes perfect sense to me.
Yeah.
But, again, thank you for clarifying that.
It's...
It's still good to hear that things, I guess, that if you haven't thought of with the blinders on as a horse down in New York or something.
But again, I appreciate the viewpoint in discussing the morality or basically what would make it More feasible, I guess, for people such as myself.
You're still in the top 1% of potential parents on the planet.
You know, you think of being this fetus hanging from these umbilical cords in this giant Rawlsian universe outside of time and space saying, okay, you can choose from these half billion parents in India or this guy in North America.
I think he's kind of tired, though, and he's got some aches and pains.
And I don't mean to diminish what you're saying, but I mean what you're experiencing.
I think pretty much the babies are like, well, that's India.
They've got lots of energy, but, you know, flies, monsoon, crazy cattle, then walking through the streets and elephants stomping on people on a regular basis.
This guy's low energy.
He's going to take some naps and he's going to have to make some pains.
But, you know, Xbox or whatever, you know, like.
Like, I mean, I still think you'd be in the top 1% of potential parents for people on the planet, so...
Interesting, yeah.
That would be my perspective.
You know, whenever you feel down about where you are at, Either look historically or look globally.
And I'm not saying it erases everything, but it can give you some of that jolt that reminds you about the good things.
And at least you didn't get struck with this, you know, in a slum in Mumbai or something like that, in which case, I don't know what even remotely would have happened to you.
Yeah.
And it's funny.
Well, it's not funny that you mention that, but it's interesting where...
A few of the people that have joined the forums are exactly from Mumbai taking this medication and some of them are having a lot of issues as well.
It's a global thing.
I just hope more studies and more research is done to help people such as myself and others that are experiencing this.
Can you mention, you said it was antibiotics, what was the What was the brand or the type of pill that set all this in motion?
Well, for myself, it was under a class called fluoroquinolone antibiotics.
The main ones that you may have heard have been Cipro, Avalox, and Levaquin.
I had taken Cipro and Avalox without any effect, but for myself personally, Without any negative effect, I assume that they killed the bacteria or whatever, right?
Correct.
And then when I was prescribed the Levaquin pills, three pills in, I was pretty much close to death in less than 48 hours.
To say the reaction was severe...
I can't think of a word to describe what happened in those 48 hours and then the six months later and then...
It sounds like one step back from spontaneous combustion.
That's like 1% less than spontaneous combustion was your body's reaction, right?
Pretty much.
It was...
I mean, I couldn't...
If someone tries to describe what they're feeling, they'll try to give you an explanation and say, well, Steph, you've had flu before, so you know what flu feels like.
So this is what I was feeling.
What I experienced with the nerve damage, the insomnia, the joint – I mean, and none of it correlates.
None of it really – so I go to one doctor – And tell them, this is what's going on.
And, you know, they'll tell me, oh, you have cancer.
No, you don't have cancer.
You have Lyme disease.
No, you don't have Lyme disease.
You have, you know, X, Y, Z. You pick some rare disease and that's what you walk away with.
And, you know, well, what do I do?
Well, we don't know.
Yeah.
And this was literally told to me the first time I went back after having this.
The first doctor I went to literally said, I don't know, go do yoga or something.
I don't mean to laugh, but I'm thinking about it now.
I just remember how hopeless.
Oh, God.
But yeah, yeah, so. - Yeah, I mean, they might as well tell you you've been possessed by the demon of aches and pains and you need to go make a pilgrimage to the Pope.
I mean, it just doesn't have any relevance to the underlying pathology as far as I understand.
Absolutely.
And if that's what they told me to do, you better believe I was going to do it.
If it's the Pope I need, it's the Pope I'll get.
Right, right.
So I've tried a lot of crazy things, and some have worked, and some were just a lot of waste of time, money, and energy, but at least I tried them.
I'm real sorry about, I mean, obviously I'm incredibly sorry about, you know, just three pills and wham, your life just takes a completely different direction for the worse.
And what was the name of the website?
Yeah, it's called saferpills.org.
Saferpills.org.
Yeah, people can check it out.
I've never visited it and I don't know what's in it, but if it's good enough for you...
I'm happy to have you talk to other people about it.
Do keep us posted about how it goes.
You know, I sure hope that there's some positive news that comes out of research and potential treatment, and I'm incredibly sorry about What happened to you?
It's horrendous.
And life isn't the same afterwards.
There are some benefits, but nobody ever wants to go through all of those challenges just to reap those tiny rewards sometimes.
So I am incredibly sorry.
I hope that you can find someone that you can have kids with if that's what you want.
And I certainly think you can do it with a clear conscience if you can get a good support system in place.
And yeah, keep us posted if you can, Drake.
And again, my deepest sympathies.
I will.
Thank you very much.
I definitely appreciate it, Stefan.
All right.
Take care, man.
All right.
Have a good one.
Thanks, everyone.
And freedomainradio.com slash donate to help out the show.
