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April 22, 2016 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
03:14:15
3268 My Girlfriend Is A Third World Prostitute and I Bought Her Family a Cow - Call In Show - April 20th, 2016
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Okay, okay, this was just really quite a trip of a show, and I hope that you'll listen to it all the way through.
It's well, well worth it.
The first caller, okay, gave us the strangest title for a show I think we've ever had, and may in fact ever have.
Who basically wanted to know if there was any way to get his Cambodian prostitute girlfriend to value him for something other than his money, his capacity to deliver a cow and a water buffalo.
Okay, it'll make sense when you hear it, and I thought maybe this guy was a troll, maybe he was faking it.
I don't think he was.
But if he was, I just wanted to put him on display for his artistry.
So I hope you find that interesting.
The second was a fairly irate single mom who called in and wanted to take me to task.
About my comments about single mothers that I had made over the years.
And we learned a little bit about her history, her current circumstances.
And we had a good back and forth.
I appreciated the criticisms.
And she gave a very good...
She made very good points.
And we had a good conversation back and forth.
And the third caller...
You might need a little patience.
And he's a little tough to follow at times.
He's kind of like an archetype.
Almost a stereotype.
But he wanted to know basically why I hadn't had mystical experiences using drugs and maybe he could encourage me to do so.
And it got pretty feisty towards the end.
And I hope you'll find that helpful as well.
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Alright, well up first today is Nick.
And Nick wrote in and said, If my girlfriend from the third world is a prostitute, how do I know if she really cares about me and doesn't view me as her work?
That's from Nick.
Hi Nick, how are you doing?
Very well, thank you.
Very well, okay.
I'm sure you won't mind if I just inquire a little bit into the backstory of this situation.
The back story is I live in Cambodia.
I've lived here for four years.
I've been with the same girl since moving here.
I found her at a club.
She's relatively poor.
She's uneducated.
She doesn't really want to get another job because she gets quite a large amount of money from older Western men.
And that's pretty much the crust of it.
This country is very conservative.
I can't really date a, let's say, a non-prostitute in this country.
I don't really know of anybody that's dating a woman in this country that is not one.
So that's kind of the background.
So, basically, my question is, does she have the ability to separate me from her line of work?
And, you know, that's kind of where it's at.
Right.
Sorry, Cambodia?
Which country were you in?
Yes, I'm in Cambodia.
And what are you doing in Cambodia?
I'm a project manager for a construction company.
And how much longer do you think you'll be in Cambodia?
Well, judging by the state of affairs in America, I do plan on staying here for quite some time until I see some type of improvement.
I make a very nice salary.
I'm considered upper middle class, which is very nice.
The taxes are extremely low and there's a lot of civil liberties here, which are very nice.
The people are The Khmer people are very nice and generous and they don't seem to bother me or anything like that.
So that's pretty much that.
So for the foreseeable future, right?
Correct.
Now when you met your girlfriend...
Did you meet her because you were visiting a prostitute?
Or did you meet her?
You said you met her in a club.
Was there money exchanging hands at the beginning?
Or has that not been part of the equation?
No.
She didn't ask for it.
But out of generosity, I did give her something.
She never asked for anything for about the first six to seven months.
And then, you know, there's a save face culture here where it's constantly lying.
Uh, you know, and I knew, I knew of this prior, uh, you know, getting, getting involved with her and, uh, you know, she kind of told me what it is she do.
She did.
And I, I kind of had an idea, but I kind of just looked the other way.
And, uh, that's, that's pretty much how it's, uh, been since.
So she's still working as a prostitute.
Correct.
And how do you feel about that, Nick?
I've become very un-epathetic towards it.
I try not to care.
I do a pretty good job at not caring.
As you know, women, whatever the country is, the more you care, the more you tend to push women away.
That's personally from my experience, whether it be in America or living overseas.
So I kind of just Let it be.
I let her go do what she has to do.
And then she just comes back and it's pretty much normal when she comes back.
And how many clients does she see a week?
Very few.
Maybe once every week or two weeks since she's been with me.
It's been a much bigger decline, but her clients do give her, for the few clients she does have, the money is very large.
I mean, you know, if you're getting five, six hundred dollars, you know, from an older gentleman that beats working, you know, six days a week for one hundred and fifty dollars a month, you know?
Well, I mean, okay.
I mean, You can make money as a prostitute.
I think that's not in doubt.
But the idea that the only consideration when it comes to prostitution, the only consideration is how much money you're making.
You know, I think it could be argued that there are other considerations involved in bringing a prostitute other than how much money.
Right.
Well, again, in this part, this region of the world, it's, as you put it, resources for eggs.
And that is very upfront.
In this part of the country.
I mean, in this part of the world.
It's not what you can do for me tomorrow.
It's not what you did for me yesterday.
It's what can you do for me right now at this moment.
And I kind of refuse to give her, let's say, an allowance.
I mean, I'll take her out here and there.
I bought her family a cow recently.
I do things like that.
But there's no...
I'm sorry.
You bought her family a cow?
Yeah, I bought her a cow.
I'm trying to save up for a water buffalo.
You know there's an old saying, why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?
You actually bought the cow, and now you're thinking of buying a water buffalo for the woman's family?
Yeah, I also had them just for my own amusement.
I mean, coming from New York, I'm fascinated with farm animals.
It's something that I never got to see growing up.
So if I have a cow and a couple chickens, I'm kind of amused.
And also takes care of her family because, again, it's family comes first.
If I was to marry a local in this country, I will always be treated as, like, second class.
The family will always come first, and I will get treated as, you know, as behind.
So I have to provide, if I was to marry her or marry any woman, any Cambodian woman, I would have to provide for her family, even if her parents Family are deadbeats or can't handle money.
They're not responsible when it comes to finances because they are poor and whatever money, let's just say I give her $5 and that's what she has for the day, she'll spend it all within the first 15-20 minutes.
So that is a major problem because they live day to day, they don't see tomorrow.
Yeah, I mean, and it certainly is tougher to spend a cow because, you know, they don't fit in a wallet or anything.
How much did the cow cost, just out of curiosity?
About $300, but it was an older cow, like a middle-aged cow.
If I bought a young one, it would be much more expensive.
So I bought one that was, I guess, I don't know, a 15-year-old cow.
Right, and an older model.
And how much is the water buffalo going to be?
That's more.
That's about $500 to almost $1,000, depending on how healthy it is.
And they would use the water buffalo for agriculture?
Is that right?
I mean, they don't give milk or anything, right?
Correct.
And if it does have calves, the calves are worth a great deal of money.
There seems to be a high demand for water buffaloes right now.
Sure.
Sure.
Now I get it.
But I guess you'd have to buy two water buffalo if you want to have calves, right?
Well, someone in the village would have the mate and they'd split the expenses and everything like that.
If they have a baby, they would go 50-50 or something like that.
And what was it that drew you to the woman in the first place?
Well, I came here as a tourist back in 2011 and she was a prostitute when I met her then.
And she asked for too much money and I took her friend instead and I came back about a year and a half later and I saw her and she remembered me kind of stiffing her.
She goes, yeah, you're the one that didn't want to take me because I wanted too much money.
I go, wow, you actually remember me.
Do you want to go have dinner?
Do you want to hang out or something?
She agreed and, you know, her English is really good.
She's a very caring person.
She's not nasty in any way.
She's also getting...
She's older than me.
She's two years older.
And also, you know, she wants to get married and everything like that.
But I am very apprehensive about marrying someone outside my own race and outside my own country and things like that, you know?
Or who, say, is a prostitute.
Oh, correct.
That also.
Yeah.
Okay.
I just wanted to check.
Right.
So you went with her friend the first time.
So you paid her friend for sex the first time, right?
Yes.
And how much was that?
Not a lot of money.
For Cambodia, it would be a significant amount, but for a foreigner, it's very low.
Well, what are we talking?
I don't want to say because I don't want more guys from Western countries making their way over here.
There's already too many of them driving up the prices.
What?
You know, if it's $300 for a cow, is it about a quarter of a cow?
Yeah, about that.
Okay.
So it's some subsection of a cow to go with the prostitute.
Now, is that full intercourse bareback?
Is that oral?
What are we talking here?
No, I wear protection and everything, of course.
Of course, yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
And so what do you guys chat about?
Well, we kind of know each other well.
She started listening.
She actually listens to your show.
I usually fall asleep listening to your YouTube channel or, I don't know, some conservative talk radio show.
And she over listens to it.
And, you know, she's now fascinated with radical Islam because she grew up in a village where there were a lot of Muslims.
And she shared a lot of stories about growing up with them and what they used to do.
And talking about what's going on around the city, asking about her family.
I tend to have decent conversations with her.
She's not really, you know, up my ass, so to speak, about conversations and stuff.
We'll talk for a little while, then she'll go, you know, watch a movie or something like that.
She doesn't bother me in that sense.
She doesn't really need my attention like a Western woman would need.
And her family knows what she does?
I'm going to say her mother does, but she tells me they don't know.
And, you know, I'm fairly certain the mother certainly does know.
Yeah, I mean, you don't.
You don't get cows for nothing, right?
I mean, and if there's a water buffalo waiting in the wings, that's not because she's a great conversationalist necessarily, right?
Right.
Well, the other thing is that she has eight other siblings and they're all married off already and she's the last one not to get married.
So the one that is not married has to provide for the rest of the family.
And that's kind of a rule in this country.
Right, right.
So they don't want her to get married unless she gets married to a man who can provide for the family, because that's her job, right?
To either provide for the family or to marry a man who can do that.
Right, and they know that I'm a Caucasian male, and in this country there's a lot of racism, so if you have a Western boyfriend, that automatically means I have money shooting out of my ass.
Right.
Okay.
So it's pro-white racism, is that right?
Yeah.
So if I go to the market, I would get charged double the price, but I speak the language fairly well.
And since I do speak it when I go to the market, they kind of know that I live here and they'll lower the price.
But it's a constant hassle when trying to shop and do things that, you know, whatever the price they're telling you, it's double.
It's automatically double.
Yeah, I mean, they'll charge what the market can bear, and yeah, that makes sense.
Just out of curiosity, I've never been to Cambodia, but is there any residual or leftover resentment towards Americans from the spillover from the Vietnam War?
None whatsoever.
The Khmer people absolutely, Vietmanly hate Vietnam, and as long as it's killing Vietnamese, they are quite okay with it.
Right, okay.
There's a lot of nature between the two countries to this day because of many different reasons.
Big, big cultural difference between the two.
Very, very large.
It's like comparing Canada to Somalia.
Okay, I will accept that.
Are there any Western or white women out there who you might be in contact with or be interested in dating?
There are more and more Western women coming here now.
The rapid move towards globalization...
Well, it's you people setting up the free cow economy.
It's drawing all of the Westerners in because, you know, where there are, as you know, the old saying, where there are the free cows and possibly the free water buffalo, there shall ye find the ladies.
Yeah, the Western women here, I'm going to say they're pretty much the same as like in America or in Europe.
They just appear very asexual and really don't seem to want relationships with guys, so to speak.
Or they'll just keep having sex with the same guys over and over, you know, like the bartender or the has-been rock and roll guy kind of a thing, you know.
Right, right.
Flat Earth masseuse.
So the Western women who are out there are not women that you would particularly like to date?
No.
Social justice warriors, NGO types, UN workers, the expat community here is very small.
It's a very small market in general, this country.
It's still relatively poor, so there's not a big international community here yet.
There's only a handful of Americans.
Most of the foreigners here are Australian, British, and French.
So the Western women here, you know, my neighbor, she's from Wisconsin.
She invited me to go do the play The Vagina Monologues, and I just wanted to throw up in my mouth, and I'm like, absolutely not.
I have no desire to do or watch the play Vagina Monologues.
So what you're saying is that In the Western paradigm, a woman who is a lefty or a social justice warrior or has been infected perhaps with more radical feminism has lower status, lower sexual market value for you than a prostitute.
Well, what's that?
A lot of criticism.
I'm just curious where your yardstick is.
Well, what's better?
A 20-year-old, slender woman who will take very good care of you and kind of let you be and do what you have to do to a certain degree.
You know, there's a lot of issues with gaining a Khmer woman.
But again, the Western women here are very...
Combative.
I had a date with a 38 year old woman.
I'm 28 by the way.
She's 10 years older than me.
She's trying to prove herself to me in an aggressive manner that I can do this and I can do that.
She's trying to outsmart me and try to top me in some way.
That kind of just really turned me off.
As compared with the Akamai girl, they're much more traditional.
They're very sweet.
They're very kind.
They smile.
They laugh.
One thing I really do like about the women in this country is if you're handsome, they will actually smile and joke around with you.
They like catcalling a little bit in a respectful manner.
They're pretty playful.
They're very nice people.
As compared to a Western woman, I can't really do any of that, whether it's in New York or here.
They just, again, they don't seem very interested in relationships with guys.
Okay, so the sexual dimorphism or the women being the women and the men being the men is something you find more compatible with this woman, right?
Correct.
All right.
So your question is, is there any way to know whether she's into you for something other than your money?
I know she is to a point.
Obviously she is because, again, I don't really take...
Financially, I don't really take that good care of her as compared to her friends that have Western boyfriends.
But again, these Western boyfriends are much older.
They're 50, 60, 70 years old, and I'm 28 years old, so I cannot give her $1,000 a month that these guys that are in their twilight years trying to rekindle their youth, so to speak.
Right.
Well, I mean, you know the answer, I'm sure as well as everyone who's listening to this, which is that if you want to know if she's into you without the money, you stop giving her money.
If you want to know if people like you for you or your money, you stop giving the money.
And if they still like you, then you know.
This brings up to the fact that this is something I really would like to mention and maybe you can share.
What is really the sense of marriage if all they're going to do is somewhat just bleed you dry at the end, like most Western guys that are your age that I know who warn me not to get married?
I mean, all the mentors in my life...
Well, no, no, hang on, hang on, hang on.
That's a separate issue.
Your question about whether she's into you without your money, you can solve by not giving her money and seeing if she's still into you, right?
Well, she is, but she's not...
We can get on to the other topic if you want, but that's...
That's the first one.
Right.
Well, she's still around.
I honestly don't really give her much.
It's just out of care.
It also makes me feel good to be able to provide for her in some way.
But there's no residual effect if I do something nice for her.
For example, if I was seriously contemplating buying her her own little motorcycle, But most of my Western friends here said, absolutely, absolutely not.
Do not do that because she will just sell the motorcycle and then blow the money in some other way, whether she'll wind up giving half of it to her mother, the other half to maybe going out with her friends or something like that and, you know, just being irresponsible with the money.
Right.
Right.
Now, because here's the thing, right?
I mean, you want to give resources to women.
Women are the gravity well and resources are the star matter and we're the unstable gas giants.
And basically women pull resources out of men.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
That's perfectly natural and it's perfectly valid.
It's how we've evolved.
That women are giant resource holes.
And they are that way because they have kids and they breastfeed and they need lots of resources.
So once a man gets into a family situation, he has to spend, you know, five to ten times what he would spend if he was single, with the plus coming out of it that he gets an entire giant family...
To nurture and sucker him and give him companionship into his old age.
And he continues the race and he creates life and, you know, it's a good deal all around.
So when you're around a woman, particularly if you either want to sleep with her or are sleeping with her, you will want to give her resources.
That is natural for men to feel.
It's one of the great powers that women have.
And again, it's not a bad thing.
It's just, you know, combined with the state, it's a bad thing.
Ketchup combined, but the state turns into blood, right?
So the fact that you want to give her resources is perfectly natural.
The fact that she wants to take resources and that there is a sexual element in the transaction is, again, not wildly outside of nature.
But you're in this weird situation where you have marital economic relationships with no marriage and no prospect of kids, right?
Because Now that women have access to birth control or men have access to pretty reliable birth control, a weird thing has happened.
You know, we're not supposed to buy sex for very long, right?
I mean, if you sort of think about it in the past, women did not put out before marriage.
And so you would have to marry the woman and you'd go on your honeymoon.
and for the couple of days to week or two that you'd be on your honeymoon, you'd have sex seven times a day or whatever, right?
Yes.
And then she'd be pregnant, right?
So your big financial sex, it would last like a week or two.
That's it, right?
But now, of course, you can get involved into this groundhog day of infinite resource vampirism where you're sort of giving resources in exchange for sex without the inevitable, oh, I missed my period.
Oh, I'm pregnant.
Oh, here's some babies, right?
Right.
And so we're kind of stuck in this perpetual honeymoon situation.
And by the way, the reason it's called a honeymoon is because it starts off sweet and you end up kind of sad at the end of it for reasons of hedonistic excess or whatever it is.
Anyway, so that...
Situation that you're in is sort of like the perpetual adolescence that young people in the West are now stuck in these groundhog days of perpetual schooling and living at home and being in debt and not having resources and postponing adulthood and careers and commitments and all that kind of stuff.
So you're kind of in this null zone, which is really only supposed to last a short amount of time, is only supposed to occur after graduation.
A lifelong commitment and is like eight minutes before children come squirting out of your wife's hoohoo, right?
So that is kind of a weird situation to be in, evolutionarily speaking, if that makes sense.
Yes, that does make sense.
The other thing, though, is Like if I do give her, let's say I give her $50, her response would be, oh, just $50, that's not a lot of money.
And no matter what I would give her financially, she would always say, oh, that's not a lot of money.
So it could be $1,000, she'd say, oh, that's not a lot of money.
It could be $20, oh, that's not a lot of money.
No matter what I do or whatever I provide for her, it's never going to be enough.
I can say that about my parents' relationship, where my parents have been divorced 10 years, and my mother makes double what my father makes in salary.
My father doesn't have to give her anything, but my mother still harasses my father for financial support.
It's this constant loop of never being satisfied or never being happy with what Sure.
I mean, but women are not satisfied with the resources they receive.
Of course not.
I don't know.
Maybe Melania Trump with her gold-plated bathware or whatever.
Maybe she's satisfied.
But yeah, of course.
But so what?
I mean, men are never...
Is your computer ever fast enough?
Is your cell phone ever cool enough?
I mean, we all want more.
There's nothing particularly wrong with that.
Right.
It is a little troubling.
I mean, of all the things that are troubling about this, it's a little bit troubling, Nick, that...
That doesn't seem to be a lot of thanks.
No, there is absolutely no thanks.
And that is with the vast majority of the women in this part of the world.
There is no like the joke is or wife credit or girlfriend credit.
Like, say, you know, I took her to Thailand for, you know, for a week.
We had a great time.
As soon as we got back, I wanted to go see my friends because I haven't seen them.
And then she just started, you know, screaming and yelling that I don't care about her after I just took her on a very nice holiday.
So there's none of that residual effect showing that I care.
So it's constant.
What are you doing for me at this moment?
Not what you did for me before and not what you're going to do for me tomorrow.
Right.
Sorry, go ahead.
No, no, I'm saying does that make sense to you?
Yeah, yeah.
And do you think you would ever marry her?
Well, she's been the longest girlfriend I've had since my early 20s.
You know, she's by far, as far as intercourse goes, she's been, you know, the girl I've had sex with the most in my life.
She knows how to present herself very well.
If most people were to meet her, they would never think she was a prostitute at all.
So all those things I do like a lot about her.
She's a good woman, but again, she's financially irresponsible.
She's never really worked.
I don't want to say prostitution is not a job, But, you know, if she had the choice between working in a garment factory or, you know, going on a vacation with some old guy who's really not going to do much to her but just throw money at her, you know, you can't really blame her for doing what she does.
And Nick, what was your mother and father's relationship like when you were growing up?
Fine.
My mother was 10 years older than my father.
By the time my father turned 45, 46, he wanted to go to Manhattan, go see plays and do these other, all these, you know, trying to relive a little bit, you know, taking up different hobbies.
And my mother was 56 and she didn't really want to do any of those type of things.
She just wanted to, you know, stay home and, you know, watch foreign flicks and subtitle movies and things like that.
And why did they get divorced?
I think, again, I think my father went through a midlife crisis.
My mother wanted a change for whatever in particular reason.
And then my father met my stepmother, who is a little bit younger and attractive.
And she's financially well off, so my father saw that and he jumped the ship, so to speak.
Yeah, it's not generally a midlife crisis.
It's a no-life crisis.
Right.
I mean, you don't have a life.
You haven't achieved your goals.
You haven't fulfilled your dreams.
You've been stuck with a stay-at-home deadbeat.
It's not a midlife crisis because, you know, I went through the middle of my life, didn't have a crisis.
It's a no-life crisis where you realize you're not going to live forever and you better damn well get your living in before the Grim Reaper comes and cuts off your head.
Well, they definitely, the both of them definitely do regret getting a divorce now because they're both not as happy as they were when they were married.
I will say that.
And they still do love each other.
They talk every day.
I just got a call from my mother before taking up this phone call that my mother will put the deed to the house to my father after my father gave it to my mom.
So they're still friends and everything.
So, you know, they're fine.
I had a very, very nice upbringing.
I came from a very conservative Roman Catholic family.
I'm a second generation Italian.
So all those nice things.
I have all my cousins, all my grandparents around me all the time.
I'm just, you know, forgive me for hopefully not being too much of a Prude or a square.
But how does a nice Italian Catholic boy end up going to Cambodia and paying for sex?
Well, if you really want to know, and it's a topic for another day, I don't think you've ever mentioned it before, but I had a very nice job in New York City.
I was implementing sustainable development.
Do you know what that is?
I think I do, but I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing.
Sustainable development as far as a municipal...
Municipality planning was my job.
I had a very nice salary.
I was making good money, but I actually come to the conclusion through my job, what I was actually doing was kind of supplying the bricks to my own prison in New York, if that makes sense to you.
I think it does, but tell me what you mean.
Well, sustainable development is a comprehensive plan on Transit-oriented development where they build small cluster communities close to railways and stuff like that.
So because they know in New York the property taxes are extremely, extremely high.
They know that my generation and the younger generations will not be able to afford living on Long Island or in New York City.
So it's a plan on how to gradually I undermine property rights, so to speak.
And when I saw this, I realized, wow, you know, if this is what my future is going to be, that I won't be able to get financially ahead, and everything's just going to keep skyrocketing around me, and I'm stuck at home living with my mom in the basement.
I said, you know what?
You know, I'm young.
I want to try traveling.
I want to see the world.
I had a friend here growing up.
He was living here being a journalist.
He told me, why don't you come stay here with me?
We can find you a job.
And that's pretty much it in a nutshell.
Yeah, I appreciate that that's maybe why you left New York.
I can't understand how you end up paying for sex in Cambodia, though.
Well, I was a little bit ignorant moving here.
I thought it'd be very easy to find a local woman to be my girlfriend.
But it's a very conservative society.
It is marriage.
It's marriage to get sex.
It's either you're a prostitute or you're a virgin.
There's no in-between whatsoever in this country.
It's a very morally religious country.
Right.
And was this the first time that you paid for sex?
Yeah, yeah.
When I came here as a Taurus, yes.
And how was that for you?
To be honest, I didn't really mind it that much because the girls were very attractive.
They carry themselves...
Fairly well.
They're your friends also.
They'll keep in touch with you.
You can talk to them.
Again, because they're relatively my own age, so they're kind of comfortable with the fact that he's our age.
He's not some old creep on a holiday kind of a thing.
Yeah.
Could be thought of as a young creep, but all right.
Right.
Not a wrinkly creep, but a relatively smooth-skinned one.
So, emotionally, it was not something that you felt to be a problem or humiliating or bad or anything like that.
You just, you know, here's the money, we'll have the sex, and we'll call it friendship?
Yeah, pretty much.
I mean, I live here now, so I don't engage in it like I was on a holiday.
I mean, I work here, you know, I have neighbors, so if I bring girls home, they're going to know something's up.
And, you know, I want to keep a, you know, at least have some self-respect and, you know, some decency.
You know, you don't want, you know, they watch you.
Oh, dude, I got to tell you, you know, I want to keep my self-respect while dating a prostitute.
I'm not sure that those are wildly compatible goals.
Right.
Well, again, it's either, you know, it's either what's better?
Do I pay for sex or don't have sex at all?
If I wanted to do that, I can go back to New York and jerk off in the basement, you know?
Right.
All right.
So do you date or go to prostitutes outside of your girlfriend?
Okay.
Well, because she is a prostitute, she knows all the other prostitutes.
So as soon as I go and try to talk to one, they kind of radio central command up.
He's over here right now.
And then she calls me and says, what are you doing?
I know where you are.
So she has that type of control.
Over me that I can't really go and see other women.
Because she, again...
So you want to, but you can't get away with it?
No.
And she'll use that against me.
And then, you know, when I bring up the fact, well, you do it, she will say, that's my job.
That's different.
Right.
For you, it's more of a hobby or a calling.
But for her, it's, you know, she's punching clocks.
Well, punching cocks, so to speak.
Yeah.
Okay.
All right.
You get it now?
Yeah.
Yeah, I think I do.
Okay.
So, you're probably not going to marry the girl, right?
No.
She's been a prostitute.
Sorry, go ahead.
If you were to ex me two years ago, I'd be, yeah, she's great, she's fantastic, but I guess I'm just done with it.
I definitely don't want to...
I don't want to see prostitutes or anything, but it's a bit of a catch-22 because, again, here, because of the racism, they don't want to be seen with a foreigner because the society will automatically think the girl you're with is a prostitute.
So there's a lot of that kind of a problem here.
Right.
So, I mean, where's the relationship going to go?
Well, I want it to end, but I still enjoy having sex with her, and I haven't really found another catch, so to speak, because again, the society here kind of regulates white guy, prostitute, the better eggs are for the locals.
Right.
There you go.
All right.
Interesting.
So, I mean, you're both a utility to each other, right?
I mean, so fundamentally, if she was not able to give you sex, you wouldn't give her money, right?
Correct.
Right.
So it is, she's using you as a cash cow, almost literally, well, literally, I guess, a cash water buffalo, and you're using her for sexuality.
Correct.
Correct.
And you enjoy giving her money, and I would assume that to some degree she enjoys having sex with you, right?
Yes, she enjoys having sex with me a lot.
That's why she keeps me around.
The other thing is she doesn't want the thought of me going with another prostitute because that means I'm giving money to another girl.
I'm not giving her that money.
Sure.
Yeah, I mean, she wants the monopoly of resources and you want the monopoly of sexual access, but she's not willing to give you the monopoly of sexual access because you're not willing to pay her enough so that she won't go and see other clients, right?
Right.
So she will try to get as much as she can from me to make sure I don't go out and go find other girls.
Right.
So since you're both using each other as utilities...
I don't know why you're looking for more.
Well, I would like to get married.
You know, that is something I would like to do.
You know, my family is, my mother at least, is trying to push for it.
But I kind of broke the news to my mother that it's not going to happen anytime soon.
And the other issue is I moved here to get away from Western women, but the Because of the cultural difference and things like that, I realized I can't marry a woman here.
I would have to go back or try to find a Western girlfriend and that is another obstacle.
When I went back to New York, I went out drinking with my friends and seeing everybody, I realized real quick why I left New York in the first place was I wasn't really getting any satisfaction regardless of me having a really nice job, a car, a nice home.
The women are very immature.
I'd say most women under the age of 30 this day and age are very narcissistic between Facebook and Instagram and all these type of things.
The vanity, they're just not really on the table, especially a lot of them not on the table for marriage.
But do you have a utility for her other than sex, fundamentally?
I mean, I'm not saying you hate her or anything like that, but if she was an elderly Asian gentleman, would you be hanging out?
Yeah, she's fine.
Like I said, she speaks very good English.
She cooks, she cleans, you know, she...
No, no, no, that's more, hang on, that's more utility.
Okay.
Right, just her as a person.
Yeah, she's affectionate.
She's very affectionate.
She's lovable.
You know, we share some moments together.
But like, you know, again, you know, if I were to show her a song, for instance, I go, hey, look, this song reminds me of you.
That would she doesn't compute those type of things.
So romance, you know, sharing a moment like that is very alien to her.
Yeah, no, prostitute's not very good at romance.
I'm not good at faking it, I would imagine, but not very good at the thing itself.
I wouldn't say just prostitutes.
It's, again, living in a third world country that is Asian.
Right, okay.
She's half Chinese, so, you know, if you can, you know, understand a little bit more of that background.
She's, sorry, what?
She's half Chinese.
Right.
Okay.
Okay.
Right.
So it's, you know, it's a little bit more, I wouldn't say she's aggressive, but, you know, she has that, a little bit of that type of mentality.
No, there's like third world women have a hard edge to them because it's do or die, survivor or not.
Right.
I get that.
So, okay, hang on.
Let me, let me, let me ask you this.
Do your parents know that you're dating a prostitute?
I would say my father knows just by, he just knows what it's like over here.
You know, he goes, are you giving her money?
I go, I try telling him, no, it's not really like that.
He goes, she's a prostitute.
And I keep trying to reiterate, no, it's a little bit different here.
He keeps saying, no, she's a prostitute.
So, you know, he cracks jokes.
Well, does she have sex for money?
Yes.
Okay, then she's a prostitute.
I mean, I'm sorry, I don't mean to be totally blunt, but, you know, the beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper names, right?
But then what's the difference between a Western woman cleaning your clock when you get divorced towards the end of your, you know, when you're in your 40s or 50s?
You know, at least you're getting it up front.
At least it's pay as you go.
No, a Western woman cleaning your clock is not having sex with you for money.
There is a little bit of a difference, right?
Right, but at least it's more a pay-as-you-go, not, you know, take that out.
No, listen, listen.
I'm not—don't get me wrong.
There's no initiation of force here.
There's certainly an imbalance of economic opportunity, right?
I mean, you're educated, you're verbally acute, you're a professional, and she's like, what, a village girl with no prospects, right?
Right.
Yeah, I mean, she grew up in bomb craters from the Vietnam War.
That was her, you know, she used to collect scrap metal from the bomb craters as a kid.
Well, I guess Vietnam.
On the border.
She grew up on the border.
No, I thought, isn't she 30?
She's 30, but no, the whole countryside is still littered in debris.
Okay, but it wasn't during the actual war, right?
No, no.
She grew up, she was a farm girl, her father...
You might want to check that birth certificate, just if she's telling you, oh, Vietnam was terrible.
It's like, that was quite a lot of years ago, 40 years ago.
Well, there was a civil war afterwards.
They kind of came out of it maybe about 15, 20 years ago.
But she grew up on the border.
Her father dropped dead in the rice fields when he was 46 from just exhaustion.
After the father died, the mother squandered the land, lost everything, and now she lives in a hut in another village.
Right.
Okay.
So, I think that a relationship that's on such sort of power imbalance in that you have lots of options and she has very few options, a relationship where there is cultural incompatibilities and a difference in history.
I mean, you're educated.
She's probably not very educated.
No.
So, there's a utility aspect.
You know, she's your sex worker and you give her money.
And again, I'm not saying that there's No affection or anything like that, but that's the foundation of the relationship.
Now, if you want to turn it into something else, well, there's an old saying, you can't turn a whore into a housewife.
Right.
And this idea that you can have this sexual paid relationship, but turn her into a good wife and mom?
Right.
I think that might be a little bit optimistic.
And you might want to listen to your father about this.
So as far as that goes, I think it's harmful for you in some ways.
I mean, I don't want to tell you how to live, right?
I mean, that's not my gig.
But there are costs and benefits, right?
You're not learning how to negotiate with an equal here.
Because she's dependent upon you for money.
There is something that...
This is sort of the last thing that I'll sort of mention about this, which is...
There's a great song by Pete Townsend, the guitarist for The Who, which he did on one of his solo albums.
I'm not going to sing it for you, but I'll give you a couple of the lyrics, if that helps.
And it's called Secondhand Love.
And the lyrics are, Now you went out tonight.
Who you been hanging around this time?
I don't care if he's black or white.
I just don't like his kind.
He's been leaving his scent on you.
I can sense it from a mile.
All my money is spent on you, but you're still selling your smile.
I can guess where you've been tonight.
Yeah, you've been hanging out on the street, wearing your dress too tight, showing out to anyone you meet.
I want the first call on your kiss.
Answer me one question.
Can you promise me this?
I want my defenses laying in your hands.
I don't want to rest in the palm of another man.
I think there's a certain amount of dissociation that you have to be in this kind of relationship.
You know, you're going to smell another man on her.
You're going to know that another man has been where you are in a very...
Physically or biologically intimate way and you kind of have to separate yourself from knowing where she was last night knowing whose hands were on her last night knowing who she was going down on or who she was having sex with last night and I think that there's a basic kind of elemental male pride or Possessiveness That you don't want sloppy seconds.
You don't want the leftovers.
You don't want secondhand stuff.
And because you can't have a monogamous and exclusive relationship with this woman, I think it may be doing harm for you in the long run in terms of your capacity to commit.
You hold all the cards and you have all the options and she doesn't.
She herself, of course, is not developing the kind of life skills that would make her a good companion into the future.
She's not developing the kind of life skills that would make her a good mom into the future.
To be honest, I think it's a little gross and tawdry, but that's just my particular perspective.
I'd like to think that if you're listening to this show, you can do better than paying somebody who is vastly below you in terms of opportunities for sex but That's just one possibility.
So you're getting the sex.
But my question is always when it comes to this kind of stuff, Nick, look at what it's costing you.
Look at what you're not getting because you aren't getting this.
And there will come a time in your life when sex is gonna be less important to you and you're gonna look back and you're gonna say, all that time I spent paying this woman for sexual companionship, I don't have the sex anymore, I don't have the kids, I don't have the marriage, I don't have the love, I don't have the commitment, I don't have the family.
I just have a whole bunch of flip pages for the Spank Bank, and it kind of hollowed me out and didn't leave me with much to go forward on.
So that's kind of all that I'd caution you about as far as that goes.
Now, I've got to move on to the next caller, but I do find it fascinating when I get the jaw-dropping calls, and maybe you've been out there so long that it doesn't feel jaw-dropping to you, but I certainly appreciate the call-in.
All right.
Well, thank you.
Keep up the great work.
Thanks very much.
Have a good one.
And who is up with the nextness?
Alright, up next is Jennifer.
She wrote in and said, I've watched on a lot of your videos on various topics, agreeing and enjoying your views on many things.
Except, of course, your stand on single mothers.
While the stereotype is there for a reason, there are many millions of exceptions.
With almost 10 million single moms in America, half of us are not in poverty and getting a welfare check each month.
While pinpointing the bad decisions can be fun, how one thing leads to another, what I really wonder is what is left?
What is left for the rest of the single moms, the millions of exceptions that would make good girlfriends and wives?
How can we be condemned for a decision five, ten years in the past?
Is there really no redemption for a single mother, ever?
That's from Jennifer.
Well, hey Jennifer, how you doing?
Thanks for calling in.
Can you hear me okay?
I can hear you fine.
Is there anything you wanted to add to your question or comment?
Well, I ended up watching and listening to all of your videos that I could find on single mothers and I think it really, it comes out of emotion.
The question came out of emotion because In America, or me personally, we know how people think of us.
And it's years and years later, you know, you're doing the best you can to make the right decisions, or you make the right decisions, and I just wonder, is it ever going to be enough?
Or is it just like the Scarlet Letter, end of discussion kind of situation?
Yeah, and I appreciate your question.
I'm not sure what you mean by enough.
You've been hurt by a single mother.
So to you, is there ever any redemption for them?
Ever.
Do you mean for my mother?
Because you started off talking about my mom.
For single mothers in general.
Because it is general knowledge that we're supposed to be on welfare and you know the stats, okay?
But at some point, do we ever get away from that bad decision or is this just who we are?
But again, I'm not sure what you mean by, and I'm not trying to be dense.
I usually don't have to because it comes naturally, but what do you mean by redemption?
I'm not sure what that means.
To you, is there ever redemption for a single mother?
No, no, I understand you can keep saying the word again, but I don't know what you mean by redemption.
And I'm sorry to be dense, but I'm not sure what that means.
What would it mean to you?
What would redemption look like?
Just not the common hatred.
You know, in your eyes, can a single mother actually do anything to change the bad decision, basically?
Or is it just that?
Well, no, you can't change the bad decision because it's in the past.
I mean, by definition, right?
Right.
So you can't change the bad decision for sure, right?
Yes, sir.
And that doesn't mean there's no redemption, but if redemption requires a time machine and some sort of retroactive diversion from the bad decision, that's not possible, right?
Right.
The point is, we can't go back.
Right.
Okay, so, you know, what's next?
What's left?
Because you have millions and millions of single mothers now, and apparently we're going to have more.
So are we all...
Well, the number keeps increasing, right?
Right.
So are we all just condemned?
I mean, are we browbeating...
Because we know we made mistakes.
We get it.
We know every day.
So is the browbeating so it doesn't happen in the future, or does it ever end?
Well, okay, but what would it mean for a single mom?
To make restitution.
Because normally, you know, if you do something wrong, then you make restitution, right?
Like, I mean, if I ding your car, I obviously have to make your car whole and maybe even pay a bit of time for, you know, your inconvenience or something like that, right?
Right.
So what would it mean to society for single mothers to undo the damage that they've done?
And how can single mothers make restitution to society for, you know, taking resources away from more responsible people?
Because, you know, the woman who doesn't get pregnant from an unstable or unreliable guy.
And I'm not talking about widows here.
That's a whole different story.
The children of widows turn out fine.
We're talking about women who have slept with the wrong guy.
Driven away a good guy or failed to keep a bad guy around.
So it's not just the getting pregnant, right?
I mean, because if a woman gets pregnant, Then she can marry the guy.
That's the shotgun.
What used to happen, right?
If you get the girl pregnant, okay, you got to marry her.
And so it is not just one bad decision, right?
I mean, it's dating the bad guy.
It is having sex with the bad guy.
It's having unprotected sex with the bad guy.
It is carrying the pregnancy to term.
It is not giving the kid Up for adoption.
It is not arranging one's life so that you can stay home with the kid even without a dad around.
Like, it's a whole series of things that happen.
It's not just a bad decision, if that makes sense.
Well, yes, sir, but I'm talking about people that, you know, my son is seven, so my series of bad decisions was seven, eight years ago.
I do stay home full-time.
I work from home so I can homeschool.
You know, there's a lot of Steps that I've taken to make sure that he isn't one of the statistics, you know, because in the end, the statistics are what keep me up at night.
Okay, so these are statistics around greater likelihood of criminality for kids who grew up without a dad, greater substance abuse, promiscuity, bullying, or whatever it is, all the sort of mess that can occur, right?
Right.
Right.
And what, how did you end up in this situation?
What was it that led you to becoming a single mom?
I was married, I got divorced, and very quickly got pregnant by another person.
Oh, okay.
So, sorry, that's, I mean, I appreciate you giving me the abridged version, but we might want to tease that out a little bit if that's all right.
So how long were you married for, Jennifer?
I was married for six years.
Got married when I was 18.
Right.
And why did you get divorced?
Who initiated the divorce?
He did, actually.
And why?
We grew apart.
I got married when I was 18.
We were many years in difference in age, and I grew out of them.
I kind of became more dominant personality.
How much older was he?
18 years.
He was 18 years older than you?
Yes, sir.
I was going to say, because if there was an age difference and you were 18, I'm going to hope it's on the upside and not the downside.
Holy.
How did you end up marrying a guy who's 36?
I found out I couldn't...
Well, I was told I couldn't have children when I was 16.
And I didn't want to date people my age because...
I'm sorry, why did you think you have endometriosis or something?
Why did you think you couldn't have kids?
I don't have a lot of eggs.
Maybe one or two a year.
How did you know that when you were 16?
Because I already had a child at 15.
Okay.
Do you think you might be leaving a few things out?
Well, it's like...
Yes, sir.
You don't have to call me sir.
It's just a habit.
I lived in the South.
If it makes you feel comfortable, it's fine with me.
I'm sorry.
I don't mean to laugh.
If I hadn't asked three questions, we might not have found that out.
You had a child at 15, and how did that come about?
There's the scripts that you talk about, your templates.
I think you talked about it in the last show with the lady.
So I gave my child up for adoption.
I mean, if you want to get into the how, you know, obviously I was promiscuous, runaway, etc., etc.
You know, all the bad things that can happen, you know.
Oh, and Jennifer, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I have to assume that all of this happened because you had a pretty terrible childhood.
What was going on in your childhood?
All the statistics that come with it, and a lot of them are true.
So what was going on in your childhood?
Well, I came from a two-parent, you know, biological.
And my father went to prison when I was eight for abuse.
What kind of abuse?
Just physical and other.
So beating you and your siblings?
Correct.
Or his wife?
Correct.
Just all of the above.
Anything within striking distance, right?
Pretty much.
Chairs, the wall.
Okay, got it.
And I mean, given that the South, you know, corporal punishment is not exactly unknown in the South, but for him to end up in prison, it must have been particularly brutal.
Correct.
So what kind of physical abuse was going on?
Oh, I mean, you know, just...
All of the above.
I can't, you know.
Like beating with implements and belts and like all that kind of stuff.
You know, obviously, yeah, you know, marks and, you know, like sexual and just anything bad.
Yeah.
Wait, so sexual abuse as well?
Correct.
And I'm sorry to pry and you don't have to answer anything you don't want to, but was that towards you as well?
Correct.
Right.
So I was in jail when I was seven.
You know, I called the cops and had them sent away basically.
Right.
Okay.
And what happened then after you were seven or eight?
We have to go into mandatory therapy for many years.
And then I basically just ran away when I was 11 and I was gone for several years.
You ran away?
But what did you run away from?
Your dad was in jail, I assume, right?
Well, you know, and then mom checked out.
I mean, that's kind of like a typical situation.
What do you mean mom checked out?
I don't know what that means.
Okay, you know, they can't deal with it.
It's too much for them to deal with.
So they check out.
Deal with what?
To deal with her husband going to prison for, you know, molestating and raping your daughter.
I mean, that's a lot for anybody to deal with.
So, a lot of people check out, and she was one of them.
Well, it's a lot for children to deal with.
Correct.
She chose the damn guy.
Correct.
You know, that's...
You can be mad for years over that, but you kind of have to see it for what it is.
It was a weak situation.
She's kind of a weak woman.
That's...
Okay, so your mom...
I don't think we're going too far out on a limb here, Jennifer, if we say your mom chose...
Just about the worst father for her children that could be conceived of, you know, outside of Caligula, right?
Yeah, hands down.
All right.
All right.
And then after the dad goes to jail for physical and sexual abuse, she can't handle it, but somehow you're supposed to.
Correct.
And then, you know, you move in a guy.
I mean, so like I'm saying, it's the template.
It's...
It's the script, you know?
Did the therapy help at all?
Honestly, I kind of felt like it was like forced, almost like forced PTSD. You have to go over it over and over and over.
And it really isn't quite very helpful.
Right.
Well, I'm sorry about that.
I'm sorry about all of it.
It's no pity kind of situation.
No, no, no, no.
I'm going to give you sympathy.
You can shrug it off if you want, but I just want to be able to express that is a terrible place to start.
I mean, a god-awful, satanic, horrible, horrifying, lower depths of hell place to start.
And I have nothing but sympathy for all of that.
So what happened when your mom...
What, did you just wake up she was gone?
Or, like, when she said she checked out, what happened?
She's physically there.
She worked one to two jobs.
She just checks out emotionally.
You know, you come home and you go to bed.
I was to the point where I didn't listen to anybody, you know, because I can't listen to you because, obviously, you're ridiculous.
So, you just kind of...
I just did my own thing.
And then she brings...
So, your mom had no authority because she chose this monster to be your dad, right?
So, what are you going to listen to her about how to live, right?
So...
You blame them in a way because, yeah, they pick them.
And then, yeah, you know, I told her and she didn't call the cops and I didn't, you know.
Oh, you told her about the sexual and physical abuse.
And how did your dad end up getting scooped up into this system?
Because I just kept telling people until somebody called the cops.
Okay.
Right.
So then 11, it wasn't that your mother was abusive, but she had no respect for her and she was not present or available.
So then what?
At 11, you hit the road?
Yeah, basically.
Well, she had a boyfriend and just another bad guy, honestly.
Did you feel in danger from the guy?
Huh?
Did you feel in danger from the guy?
At that point, I didn't feel endangered by anybody because I just wasn't going to let it happen, and I just left.
Was there concern about the new boyfriend that was one of the reasons why you took your chances on the open road?
Well, he was just drunk and just rude and abusive, basically.
This is not exactly a tour of anti-stereotypes from the South.
You know what I mean?
I feel like I'm in some sort of Tennessee Williams cliche.
God help me.
God help you.
Okay, so you hit the road at 11.
What happened?
Where did you go?
Well, anyways.
You don't have to give me actual geography.
Did you go to a city?
I just moved to a city that I had relatives, got a job.
At 11?
Yeah.
Dare I ask what it was?
I'm sorry?
Dare I ask what it was?
Oh, I worked at a coffee shop.
Oh, okay.
Okay, good.
So you moved to Cambodia and met the last caller.
Okay.
All right.
All right.
So you got a job at a coffee shop, and were you going to school at all?
No.
I only went to about two weeks of eighth grade until I went back and got my GED and bachelor's.
Okay, so with this template, you're staying with relatives at the age of 11, and you're working at a coffee shop, you're not really going to school, and then you meet the man of your dreams?
I didn't get pregnant until I was 15, so for a long time there wasn't any of that.
Obviously not the man of my dreams at 15.
No, not the man of my dreams.
We were still together when I did the adoption.
But I knew there was no way.
And I thought they'd have a better life with a married couple.
Well, I think statistically, that's a very noble and selfless decision.
Because statistically, I think you're absolutely right.
So then you didn't stay with the father of your first child, right?
No.
No, a couple years later, we broke up.
And how long between that guy and the 36-year-old?
Well, you know, then I got married at 18, and then that was...
I know, but how long between, I'm trying to figure out the pattern here of time between dates.
It was quite some time.
Okay, all right.
So then you meet the 36 year old, how long did you date before you got married?
I would say probably three to four months.
Right.
And did you think it was going to be a good marriage?
It was what I was looking for.
I wanted a family, couldn't have any more kids, was what I was told by two doctors.
So, you know, yeah, I wanted a family and I knew that he wouldn't later want kids.
So, yeah, we had two stepdaughters.
Oh, so sorry, he had a previous marriage too and he had two kids?
He had two previous marriages.
I was a third wife and he had two kids.
You were his third wife at 36.
Yes, sir.
But, of course, you don't have anyone around you, Jennifer, is it fair to say?
You don't have anyone around you who's telling you about red flags and problems that can be avoided.
You know, obviously not really.
I thought I was doing a better job of picking, but yeah.
And he was a good man in a lot of ways.
But, you know, when you get older, you start to see things kind of what they are.
I don't know what that means, really.
Well, you know, I mean, I kind of feel like I was, you know, he married me because I was younger.
You know, I was more timid back then, and I kind of just kind of went with the flow.
You know, you get older, you kind of find your voice, or I found my voice.
I don't know if that's a good or bad thing, but it ended the marriage.
So when you started sort of speaking up or speaking your mind or not going with the flow...
Correct.
I mean, did it escalate to like verbal battles or was that you said you sort of drifted apart?
What happened?
It was just constant fighting.
It was the same argument, you know, over and over again.
And I didn't like who I was.
He didn't like who he was.
You know, I don't know how else to describe it.
And so, did he initiate the divorce?
Yes.
He got married very quickly afterwards, so he wanted to tidy it up.
Yeah, no, as they say, you know, fourth time lucky with marriage.
They don't say that.
And I assume that one didn't work out.
But anyway, it doesn't really matter.
So, and you said you then quickly got pregnant with another guy?
Yes.
Okay, so how did that come about?
It was a guy I worked with.
It was kind of...
I mean, I hate to say rebound guy, you know, but...
Yeah, um...
Hadn't been single in a long time, and I just started dating a guy.
He was a guy I worked with.
And how long after you moved out from your husband's place, or he moved out from yours, how long was it until you were dating this guy?
I'd say about two to three months.
I actually moved across the country, but it doesn't really matter.
Right.
Obviously too soon, right?
Right.
Obviously.
Right.
And was there anyone around you saying, this is too soon, you need to mourn your marriage, you need to...
No, I mean, you know, not really.
Did you ever think that it might be too soon?
Well, I didn't really, I didn't think about it.
I mean, it was kind of like, you want to feel something.
I don't, you know, I hate to say the same cliches, you know, you want to feel something, it's, you know, he had kind of moved on, and he was getting married.
So I was, you know, yeah, I guess, I don't know, you know, just...
Well, he was getting married within a couple of months of separating from you?
Yeah, he got married four days after we got divorced, finally, like the finalized, so...
Did he have someone on the side while you were married and was continuing that, or...?
Yeah, I would imagine.
Okay, okay, all right.
So it may not have been exactly that you found your voice, but that he was unfaithful, potentially.
Yeah, I mean, you know, yeah, it's never one thing, you know, it's always...
And were you unfaithful at all during the marriage?
I was, no.
I was in love, you know, for a very long time.
Oh, with their husband?
Yes.
Okay.
And so you didn't have kids with your husband because he didn't want kids.
He already had two of his own.
Is that right?
Correct.
But I never used birth control because I had always been told I couldn't have children.
So it was, it wasn't really thought of.
No, if you have one or two eggs a year, you can still have kids, right?
I'm sorry?
If you have one or two eggs a year, you can still have kids, right?
You have a child so young, it affects your uterus.
But they wouldn't have said you couldn't have children, period.
No, they give you the percentage, but it's so low.
They give you the.00 And it goes on.
So I, you know, my mindset was, I can't have kids.
Yeah, although nobody, like, I mean, if you get your uterus scooped out, you can't have kids.
But, you know, you had a lower chance of having children.
Well, I mean, yeah, correct.
I mean, I have a child now, so.
All right.
So then you start sleeping with the new guy a couple of months after you separate from your husband.
And how long did it take for you to get pregnant?
Very quickly.
Month or two.
I mean, it was really quick, very quickly.
I was still married when I got pregnant.
Oh, so you weren't, the divorce was not finalized, right?
I wasn't finalized yet.
So it was very quickly.
And this is, of course, this is the guy who's like, yeah, you're right in the middle of a divorce.
Let's get together.
Right.
So his judgment is not great either, right?
Correct.
Okay.
All right.
So you get pregnant, which is obviously a shock, right?
Yeah.
And then what?
And then what happens?
Oh, I'm sorry.
You know, tell a new boyfriend and he has multiple kids already and had a woman already pregnant.
So it was very...
Wait, wait, wait, hang on.
Sorry.
You go past these things like, this is just, well, common knowledge.
Of course he had another woman pregnant.
Of course there were other children.
He's basically a sperm B52. He's just going over the villages, dropping them.
So wait, he already had multiple kids with, is this with multiple other women?
Correct.
And he had another woman pregnant at the same time as he had you pregnant.
Well, it's a really great thing that all the smart people in the world are worried about overpopulation and aren't having children.
Good job, smart genes!
That's not your fault.
That's just my general rant.
No, I've heard all of them, so yeah.
Did you know that he was sleeping with another woman while you were sleeping with him right after you got divorced from your husband?
No, sir.
You did?
No, I did not know.
Oh, you did not.
Okay.
So, did you think you were exclusive with the guy?
Yes.
I mean, you know, that's how relationships are, I was under the impression.
But not for him?
No.
And I figured...
Was he very cute, at least?
I'm sorry?
Was he very cute, at least?
Not near worth it.
I'm sorry, I didn't quite hear that?
No.
I mean, not...
No, he wasn't.
...the drama for...
That's, you know, eight years.
All right.
Like, you don't have a picture of the guy with his shirt off where you can look at it later and sigh and say, well, I sure wish he'd been a nicer person because look at those abs.
Nothing like that, right?
Oh, hello?
She can't just leave me high and dry.
I am so sorry.
Oh, she's back.
I'm sorry.
I pushed the little mute.
I apologize.
Okay.
You weren't trying to mute me, were you?
No, sir.
Because, you know, if that's happening, we should probably talk about that.
Would that work?
No, Mike, that would not work.
Thank you very much.
All right.
So, I'm almost afraid to ask you, Jennifer, but what happened when you told Joe sperms a lot that you were pregnant?
Well, I found out about the other girls and the other kids.
Oh, because he said, hey, funny story.
Here's an odd coincidence.
So is my other girlfriend.
Well, I mean, yeah, it kind of came, no, it's more like, well, I, you know, I can't deal with this because I have, you know, another girl pregnant.
And, you know, then I hear, you know, about, I guess I found the truth very quickly.
And then I didn't hear from him for seven months.
And I called him when I had my son.
He came down to the hospital.
And it was kind of on and off for a couple of years after that.
What do you mean?
Like you'd make up and break up kind of thing?
Oh, no.
No, I never dated him again.
He would come see his son, you know, once a week for, you know, a year, but it would never be...
I'm sorry, it would never be what?
He was never there once a week.
Because I always said, you know, pick a day and actually come, you know, because they wait, and he just wouldn't do it.
And then eventually he just kind of I haven't heard from him in, you know, three, four years.
Oh, no.
Listen, man.
Unreliable people are like the greatest satanic punishment in the world.
Say yes or say no, but don't say yes and then don't do it.
I mean, do it or say you won't.
That's sort of my basic thing with people.
And unreliable people are like the curse of Satan on the face of the planet.
But I won't do that rant right now because we're...
We're focused on you.
Okay, so when it came to having your son, you said son, right?
Yes.
Okay, so when it came to having your son, did you think about giving him up for adoption?
I'm not saying you should have.
I'm just curious.
There's no way I could have the second time.
Why?
I barely got...
It's a hard decision to make.
Oh no, I get that it's, I mean, please, I mean, I completely understand, and I can't even fathom how difficult a decision that is.
I mean, the idea of giving up a baby, which I didn't grow in my belly, is agonizing enough, and the idea of giving up a baby that I did is beyond my capacity to comprehend how difficult a decision that must be.
But you did it, had done it once before, and is that one of the reasons why?
Yeah, I felt like this was my only chance, you know, because when it happened, I thought, I was 15, so I'm like, well, I'll get married and have a kid one day and do it the right way.
So when I found out I was pregnant, yeah, there was no way I could give up for adoption.
Well, yeah, and I mean, not to put too fine a point on it, Jennifer, but given your track record of picking men, the next guy you slept with could have turned out to be like a killer robot from the future that would have eaten your feet off, right?
Yeah.
So you weren't going to be like, oh, I'm sure the next one's going to be Prince Charming, right?
No, you know, you get to this point where you just don't even date anymore because obviously you can't trust your own decisions as far as...
My vagina is trying to kill me!
Help me!
Help me!
Right, okay.
So, the guy was pretty unreliable.
You decided to keep your son.
And what happened with your life then?
I mean, what did you live on?
Well, I started doing side jobs.
I always wanted to be a stay-at-home mother.
So I started doing side jobs, like cleaning houses and anything really I could for the first couple of years.
And then I got into writing.
And living off of royalties and doing like freelancing.
Oh, freelance writing?
Correct.
Oh, good for you.
Good for you.
So now...
So now who would take care of your son while you were cleaning the houses or working?
I was funny about people watching my kids.
So it was just usually my mother.
She actually was one of my only babysitters.
Right.
Yeah.
Right.
The mother from earlier in the story, who I will not say I am the biggest fan of in the world, was the person to watch your son.
You know, I didn't talk to her for 10 years.
Did she get better?
She's grown a lot, yes.
Or I wasn't leaving my son with her, honestly.
So, you know, there's no crazy boyfriends.
She's kind of standing on her own...
There's second chances.
We have a good friend relationship now.
She really helped me out when I had my son.
How did she grow?
What did she do to become a better person?
Did she find Jesus?
Did she go to therapy?
Did she have a brain transplant with the Princess of Monaco?
What happened?
She did a lot of therapy.
She just stopped dating, honestly.
Because it was just one after another of just horribleness.
And, um...
I don't know.
She's changed.
It was a lot of therapy, but I don't really think it was that.
I think it was more she kind of started accepting what had happened and what could have been different and how much better it could have been if she would have made different choices.
Because I'm big on choices.
I really am.
So...
And would you say that you've forgiven your mother?
It's hard to say, you know, in most ways, yes, but I think her reaction was just horrible.
What do you mean her reaction?
Huh?
I'm sorry?
Sorry, you said her reaction was horrible, but what do you mean?
You know, because I told my mother on my seventh birthday.
About the sexual abuse?
Correct.
And while he was gone.
And then she kind of forced me to say it in front of him.
And that was like the worst thing she could have done.
She should have called cops.
You know, instantly that's, you know, and as a parent, you're like, what are you doing?
She played this for like insane drama?
Huh?
She sort of played this sexual abuse problem for like crazy drama between you and your dad?
Yeah.
Pretty much.
And, you know, then I'm told if, you know, you got to tell the truth or, you know, you're gonna get beat or whatever.
I mean, it's, it was to like instantly make me have to say it in front of him.
It was, yeah, I can't forgive that part.
I understand it a little bit better now, but, you know, some of those things you just...
And what do you, what do you understand about it, Jennifer?
She's a very weak person.
Oh no, that's a positive action.
Weakness would be inaction.
Making you confront your father, forcing you to confront your father about sexual abuse.
You're telling your mother, I assume, in confidence.
And if you'd known ahead of time that she was going to make you confront your father, you probably wouldn't have said a damn thing.
That is not the actions of a weak woman because that is a positive and directed action.
That's not any way the wind blows.
That's making a specific choice and inflicting it on you.
Or you could see it as she couldn't face him, you know.
She didn't have to face him.
Call the cops.
The cops will face him.
The reaction I can't get over.
To this day, I don't get it.
I've just decided, you know, I only have one mom.
She is a weak person.
She lets men run over her.
And she has her own script.
So I kind of feel bad for her.
So you've given her the out of helplessness.
Right, so she was just weak, and it was all your dad, and she was just helpless, and she didn't do anything in particular.
The dad was just there and ran all over it, and she didn't choose this guy, she didn't choose to have children, didn't choose to not protect them, didn't choose to not check out when the husband went to prison.
She's just a leaf in the wind.
Like, she failed on so many levels, you know, over and over and over again.
No, no, no, it's more than failure!
She created an environment where a child got molested!
Yeah, I mean...
That's not weakness.
You know, it's different.
Like, if I say, I can't lift this tree, okay, then I have an incapacity.
Right?
If I say, I'm going to beat you with this tree, that's not weakness.
Everyone has a different fight-or-flight scenario.
You know, she's a freezer.
I'm not...
Like, there's no saying anything beyond...
She, she's just, she failed and, or however you want to, I mean, on all levels, you know, but I'm an adult now.
So you have to decide, do I just never want her in my life again?
You know, so I made the decision that she can't control my life anymore.
And her, her mistakes and decisions can't really affect mine as much.
So, you know, they can affect your son, which affects you, I hope.
Yes, sir.
She watches my son an hour a week so I can go shopping.
I don't...
Well, no, because earlier you were talking about her watching your son when you were cleaning houses and when you were learning your craft as a freelance writer and so on.
Correct.
The first two years, yes, when I was trying to figure out how to make money at home.
Yeah.
Because I still had to go out and clean houses and stuff.
But now it's full-time home, so there is none of that.
I trust that she would never let anything happen to my son.
Just because she knows what I would do, I guess I would say.
I don't know how that sounds, but I've always felt safe with her having my son.
Because there's no other people.
Has she acknowledged and apologized for...
Her role in making your childhood kind of a living hell?
Oh, yeah.
We had that discussion, you know, 10 years later.
And who initiated that discussion?
I did.
I'm very confrontational.
Well, you're calling in and calling me out, so I can probably believe that.
No, no, I'm just kidding.
I'm just kidding.
I'm glad that you did.
I'm really, really glad that you did.
Alright, so, you know, this is the reason that I'm sort of bugging you about your mom, Jennifer, is that the values that you hold are going to transfer to your son.
And your son isn't going to listen to anything that you say, any more than you listened to what your mother said, any more than my daughter's going to listen to what I say.
Kids are all about the empiricism.
They don't judge...
Words, they only judge actions and deeds.
And so, if you're going to have a script which is, my mother was a helpless victim, and we should have sympathy for her, and we should love her, you are programming him for the kind of woman he's going to end up with.
You're programming him about what...
Female nature is.
What female nature is.
Were you violated by your father after you told your mother?
No.
I wouldn't let it happen.
I mean, no.
It just wasn't happening.
Were you beaten by your father after you told your mother?
No.
All right.
So, in the values that you hold with regards to your mother, you will be teaching your son all about what it is to be female, what it is to be a woman, right?
I was really hoping it was more of a forgiveness.
Obviously, he wouldn't know.
He knows that me and his grandmother, that she wasn't a very good mom when I was younger.
But at some point, right, he's probably going to find out the truth, right?
Correct, yeah.
All right.
And I'm telling you that, from my perspective, and you understand, I'm not reality.
I'm not facts, right?
I mean, I'm trying to sort of be honest about the way that I view things.
But if you're going to say to your son that your mother was a victim, and your mother was helpless, and your mother was a weak person, That she doesn't have moral responsibility.
He's going to grow up looking at women as non-moral agents, as fundamentally able to claim weakness and irresponsibility as their excuse for truly heinous behavior.
There's this old line that says, a man's weakness is his illusion of strength, and a woman's strength is her illusion of weakness.
I just don't understand, I guess, how...
Me forgiving my mother, you know, because it's had...
No, no!
You're not listening!
It's not the forgiveness part.
It's the fact that you're claiming that she's weak and helpless.
No, I mean, this is for me to you.
You know, she's a weak person.
I don't know how to describe a weak person.
They just don't have any fortitude.
They, you know, how do you let that happen?
I mean, how do you explain it to, like...
You know, it's a weakness that's beyond, you know, physical.
It's just a mental, she's just a weak, beat-down person, you know?
This is just how I see it.
No, I get that, and I fully, but what you're saying is that what you're going to communicate to your son is that women can participate and do heinous things, and then can claim to be weak afterwards, and that's okay.
You can forgive them.
Well, you should forgive them.
Men go to prison, women get forgiveness.
I forgave him, too.
I mean, at some point, you have to let go of the anger and the hate, you know?
He's not a person I see, obviously, ever.
But at some point, you know, it was 20 years ago.
Wait, wait, hang on.
And look, don't get me wrong.
Obviously, your father was a monster at everything that you described.
Because you say, well, what am I supposed to do?
Just cut her out of my life?
I'm not saying you should, obviously, but you did with your dad, right?
Oh, yeah.
And your mother, who created the situation, had children with a child molester, didn't notice any signs, and then when you told her you were being molested, she forced you to confront your father directly.
You don't get a choice of your family.
That's who I got.
No, you have chosen to not have a relationship with your family, with your father, sorry.
So clearly you have a choice with him.
And again, I'm not telling you anything to do with anything.
I'm just telling you that from your son's standpoint, it's going to be, well, men are judged negatively, they go to prison, and you cut them out of your life.
But women, well, they're weak and they're helpless and you forgive them and you have them around and you love them.
What do you think that's going to do with regards to his view of himself as a man and his view of femininity as a whole?
To have such different standards for both parents.
Sorry, go ahead.
I keep interrupting you.
My apologies.
He knows I didn't talk to her for 10 years.
You know, forgiveness was not like, oh, okay, it's all good.
It wasn't like that at all.
But he's seven, you know?
These are conversations to have when he's quite a bit older.
He doesn't even know what any of this, you know, is at this point, obviously.
So I just don't...
I get that, you know, I don't know.
I only have one mom.
I guess the dad situation was a little different.
I don't I guess his was unforgivable.
And hers, most of it was unforgivable, but...
I don't know.
She didn't actually do it.
She just failed.
You know, it's just like the witness that fails to say anything or fails to do anything.
Are they just...
Oh, no, no.
Come on.
Come on.
Jennifer, she was more than a witness.
She chose to have children with this guy.
And when she was told, she forced you to confront him.
And then she checked out so that you had to run away from home at the age of 11.
Right?
This is not just like a witness who fails to testify.
She was intimately involved in creating this entire situation and failing you tragically at almost every conceivable level in terms of protection, in terms of support after she knew what had happened to you.
And so here's the thing, right?
I just want you to be aware of how it might look to your son, which is that you forgive women, you ostracize men.
You have different standards.
I'm sorry?
You have different standards.
I would not want him to think that, you know, women just get off scot-free.
I'm really into choices for, you know, everything.
But I think at some point, you know, I can forgive her.
Okay, well, I know when I'm beating my head against the wall, so we'll move on here.
Maybe you can listen to this again.
It'd be easier to get what I'm trying to get across.
Because, you know, both of our focus is on your son here, right?
I mean, that's who we're really...
She is one of his big family members.
She's a big part of his life.
And I don't have very much family.
And I want him to have people in his life, you know, obviously.
Yeah, that's true.
You don't have a lot of people around you who either sexually molested you, beat you, or failed to protect you and then abandoned you afterwards.
So yeah, I mean, I get that.
And that may not be the end of the world.
And of course, the other thing too is that if you hold your mother 100% responsible, you're creating a template of holding women responsible.
Maybe you're concerned that your son is then going to hold you responsible for having...
Because at some point your son is going to be aware, and maybe he is now, but he's going to be really aware that he has no father.
And the reason he has no father is because you chose to get pregnant with the wrong guy or to take actions which had some possibility of you getting pregnant, right?
So he's going to get that you made the decisions that resulted in him not having a father.
I picked a horrible father and I'm Yeah.
He's well aware.
Your son is well aware.
Well aware.
And no grandfather.
I'm sorry?
And look, I'm not complaining about that, you understand?
I'm not saying, for God's sakes, I would not leave that man within 10 miles, that boy within 10 miles of your father, but no grandfather.
Correct.
What about your siblings?
Does he have any uncles?
Male?
Yeah, he has my brother.
And then there's...
A few, like, cousins kind of situation.
Is your brother around to mentor him in the ways of manhood, all the secret handshakes and cartwheels and all that stuff?
Yes.
And I'm very thankful for that.
Because there's some things that he, you know, I just, I can't do.
No, you can't teach him how to be a man.
I mean, obviously, right?
Right.
And what are you going to say when He gets older and he says to you, as you said to your mom, well, given the decisions you've made, why the hell should I listen to you?
We all make decisions and we have to deal with the consequences.
And I made a very bad decision and it's sad that he has to deal with my consequences.
So at this point, you know, comes.
I think he really already knows that it's my decision, you know, that made it this way.
Because I've told him, I'm sorry.
I mean, I picked the father I did.
You know, I wish, more than anything, I could change it.
And I can't.
So at some point, it's just like, so now what?
you know so you're not on government programs right No, not at all.
Okay.
And he has some male influences in his life that are fairly constant.
Is your brother sort of around?
Yeah.
We live fairly close.
He sees him weekly.
And is your brother a good role model for your son?
He is.
Was your brother not assaulted or molested by your father?
No.
Really?
Really.
I'm so sorry about that, too.
I'm not sorry that he wasn't, but that it was just you.
And sadly, though, he had his own guilt for all that, because he didn't stop it or whatever.
So, I mean, he had his own issues with that.
Right.
And you're able to stay home, and you say that you're homeschooling him?
Correct.
So as far as I can tell, Jennifer, in terms of making the best of a bad situation, you're doing fairly well, would you say?
I would say.
I would hope, yeah.
Is there anything that you think sort of wildest dreams that you could improve that you're not doing?
You know, this kind of comes down to you just wish there was more time, even though I say home.
I wish I didn't have to work as much, so I'm kind of pushing more for royalties so I don't have to work as much.
I pretty much have everything we need as far as that situation goes.
How many hours a day do you work?
I usually work really just five to six, seven days a week because I have to homeschool, so I work at night.
I started at 6 and I still feel like I should be there until he goes to bed.
That doesn't always happen.
You get when you wake up until 6pm, right?
I'm sorry?
Right, yeah.
I have all day.
It really just comes down to the single mother, you're just not enough.
I'm not a guy.
There's just so many things I'm not capable of doing.
Oh, and just wait a couple of years.
It'll get even more challenging when he hits puberty, right?
Yes.
Are you planning on dating?
I'm sorry?
Are you planning on dating?
No.
Well, you know, no, because the common knowledge is that, you know, we're crap, we're parasites, and, you know, so you're not going to get a good quality of man.
And then you go, you add that 20 times, you know, percentage, or 20 times higher rate of abuse, and yeah, you don't even want to go there, honestly.
And I don't have, you know, you don't have time.
So, no, that's not even, you know, because...
I had, you know, my mom was the, run the men through, so, you know, obviously you want to do the complete opposite of, you know, things that were so horrible in your childhood.
Well, the complete opposite would be to show your son a functional adult relationship with you and a man, right?
Correct.
Because, you know, this is the challenge, right, in which you're aware of, and I'm just pointing it out for those not in this situation who haven't sort of really thought about it much.
But, I mean, the challenge is that he's not seeing you interact with an equal.
Correct.
Right?
So, he's not learning all of the negotiation tips and tricks and so on.
You know, my daughter is watching my wife and I negotiate all the time.
Not that we negotiate all the time, but, you know, where it comes up and so on.
And she's, you know, absorbing it all and figuring out.
And she reproduces the ways in which we negotiate without us even teaching.
Like, she just, you know, in the same way that I don't remember teaching all these words, but...
But she knows them.
So your son is going to grow up without that template of, you know, like 18 years of watching two adults who love each other negotiating and enjoying their time together.
And I don't know how that can be solved.
Because that's just not, it's not there, right?
He's not going to learn Japanese if he's never exposed to Japanese.
And he's not going to learn all of the skills that it would be great for him to learn if you're not dating.
And if you are dating, unless you can get a really high quality guy, he's going to get negative lessons.
So it's either no lessons or negative lessons.
And that is a big challenge for him going forward, right?
The only hope is that he gets to see my brother and his wife in a very, you know, functional way.
But yeah, as far as me, he's never met any boyfriends or anything like that, so he doesn't have anything to go off of as far as me.
He sees it with my brother and his wife, but that would be...
And is that tough as far as loneliness goes?
Not really.
I stay busy, so...
Yeah, I've been married, and I guess you just get to this point where you have to focus on other things, and I'm pretty full, you know, full life.
Okay, so then the last thing that I ask is, and I mentioned this to the last single mom who called in, and again, I appreciate the call, but...
When he gets older, and this, you know, probably not starting for him quite yet because he's being homeschooled, but he's going to start becoming more, much more peer-oriented.
You know, the world revolves around you, and then it doesn't.
And it's, boom, you know, like, boom!
I'm all about the peers, about the peers.
And that transition is tough.
I think particularly for single parents, single moms or single dads, I don't think it really matters.
There's a tough transition because you've been his world, and then you realize that you're not his world, you're his launching pad, and he's going somewhere else over time.
And that's where I think the sort of, wait, let me put these maternal tentacles around you and keep you close.
I think that's where the temptation is that I've seen a lot of single moms fall prey to.
What, does that not let go?
Or...
Yeah, just, you know, when he's gone.
And they go before 18.
Yeah.
I mean, because they want to go and, you know, the purpose of nature is not for kids to stare at their parents till they're dead, right?
The purpose of nature is for kids to engage with their peers and eventually get married and have kids of their own.
Right.
And so very soon...
If not already, he's going to get more interested in relationships with friends than relationship with you, to some degree.
Right.
I mean, they already have friends.
You know, you have, like, homeschool meetings.
No, no, I get that.
Yeah.
But he's going to be like, you know, it's funny because there's that old thing where, you know, I can't wait to go to the mall with my mom.
And then, like, next week it's like, I'm so embarrassed to be going to the mall with my mom.
You know, it's something that happens.
And that is, to me, the...
The bridge too far for a lot of single moms, which is that they just kind of want to keep their kids close, because when the kid goes into peer relationships, the mom is really left on her own.
I've already went through this with my stepdaughter, and I was really close to her.
And about 12, you just aren't cool anymore at some point.
Well, I will be, because I'm going to be, Jennifer, the one parent Who's going to remain cool no matter what?
Actually, no.
My daughter's already embarrassed from time to time.
I can't wait.
Not that I can't wait for him to leave, but no.
That's the whole point.
It's for them to be ready for the world.
So, yeah.
I mean, that's a good thing.
I have my own things going on, so I don't think it'll be...
I don't know.
I don't think it'll be that...
Because it's like a slow transition.
When they become teenagers, they're kind of out more.
And then, yeah, they just, you know, hopefully go to college and live their life because that's what we're here to do, you know.
How smart was the father?
Very low IQ, I found out later.
What are we talking here?
Like 80.
I was...
But my son's kind of like in the gifted, so...
As far as sciences.
So he...
It didn't...
It could have been higher, apparently.
But, yeah, he got knocked on the DNA. Right.
And hopefully, this all continues.
But if there's a divergence in the sort of early to mid-teens, that's just something to be aware of.
Maybe get some extra help for him or whatever it is, right?
Yeah.
I mean, you're doing a lot to break the cycle.
And that, I want to give you full, massive, total, on-my-knees-worshipping-you credit for.
Because your son...
Is having, I would argue, an infinitely better childhood than you had.
Yeah.
I mean, I don't obviously want to nag you about peaceful parenting if you're already on board with that, but I'm going to assume that you are.
Yes.
Okay, so you're not yelling, you're not hitting, you're not punishing, you're negotiating, you're keeping him out of toxic public school environments, he doesn't have abusive people in his life, he's not being exploited, he's not being hurt, he's not frightened, he's not about to run away in four years.
So he is having a vastly improved childhood, if not infinitely improved childhood, than you had.
And for that, I think the entire planet can be enormously grateful.
And in that, I believe he's having a better childhood than a significant number of kids who have two parents.
Because it's not like all those families are super functional too, right?
Right.
So, as far as single moms in general, you're kind of an outlier.
But I feel like I'm not though.
I feel like there's a lot of A lot of women that isn't.
I don't feel like I'm really the exception.
I mean, yeah, the one or two percent at home school and the differences like that, but there's a lot of single mothers that are trying to make the best of the situation they put themselves in and the situation they put their children in.
But how do you know that?
And I'm not saying you're wrong.
I mean, you probably know more single moms than I actually know.
I knew a lot of single moms growing up because we were all in the matriarchal manners.
So how do you know?
Well, the statistic is, what was it, half, like 48% are on welfare.
I mean, that's 52% that aren't.
That's 5 million people.
I do some blogging and, you know, I've met a lot of single mothers that are doing...
I hate to say the best they can because they're doing a good job.
They're really owning it.
I own it.
I made a horrible decision.
I made a series of horrible decisions.
I'm trying to own it the best I can.
I feel like there's a lot of women out there that are doing this.
It's a shame.
We know.
We're shamed.
We know.
Wait, who shames you?
I mean, I'm critical of it, right?
Obviously, for statistical reasons.
But as far as I see, I mean, all I ever read about is how brave and noble and heroic single moms are.
I mean, it's not like you've got to wear the scarlet letter and go down into the fires of perdition or anything.
I mean, the general media seems to celebrate single moms quite a bit.
Well, see, I really like a lot of the conservative talk.
So, you know, they're not a big fan of single mothers.
When you're looking for a house or you're calling and they find out you're a single mother, you do get reactions.
You do get, you know, we don't take welfare or the HUD. I think it's like the 80% non-verbal communication that we're looked down upon.
I mean, it's just simply...
And maybe we should be.
I should be, but at some point I feel like How many years later, and then as far as from your background and you coming from a single mother, was there anything I could even say that...
I don't know if I even want redemption or whatever.
It was an emotional question.
It really was.
And I actually tried to back out of this because...
Well, but what did I just say in terms of praise?
I'm sorry?
What did I say a few minutes ago in terms of praise?
Right, but if you watch that, you know, I listened to six hours of, you talk about single mothers, and there's a lot of anger there.
I mean, it's not just, and it's rightfully so.
So I felt like...
Well, look, I'm sorry, but everyone says, every single mom is going to say, you know, I did the best I could, and so on.
But the reality is, That single motherhood exploded after the welfare state came in.
Right.
In the past, before the welfare state, like 6% of white kids grew up in single mom households.
And for black kids, it was like 20% unmarried, right?
Right, yeah.
You know all this, you blog.
So this tiny, tiny percentage, right?
And then what happened was...
The welfare state came in, and it was like the single mom conveyor belt.
So I can't, and look, I hugely and sympathetically empathize with your childhood, and I'm not putting you in this category as a whole.
But at some point, women made better decisions.
Yeah.
And then they didn't, because government money.
And so the single moms who wouldn't have been single moms, except for the fact that there's government money, which has turned children from a liability into a source of income, that's a problem.
Now, you're not on welfare.
You didn't sit there and say, woohoo, I can have me three kids and I don't have to work again, right?
Or, I'm going to get pregnant from this guy, I'm going to divorce him, and I'm going to take him for half his stuff and all of his house.
This was not your, but there are a lot of women who were doing that.
And we know this statistically.
Because when the welfare state came in, Single motherhood went through the roof, which meant women were making decisions to have children without fathers because of government giving the money.
In other words, they were being paid to be single moms.
That is bad.
Do you think there's that many women that do that?
Sorry?
I mean, do you really think that there's that many women that do that?
Well, it went from 6% to, what is that, I don't know, an hour for white 35%.
With blacks, it went from 20% to 73%.
Because the money came rolling in.
So, you know, as far as, I don't know exactly how many, but it ain't three.
It ain't all, but it ain't three.
Yeah.
It ain't you, you know, which is good.
Because I don't want to pay for your child.
I don't.
I don't want to get up in the morning and have to work four hours to pay for your kid and then work four hours to pay for my kid.
Right, I totally understand that.
Right, and you don't want to get up in the morning and have to write four articles for my kid.
You pay for your kid, I'll pay for my kid.
Hey, I'm all about the charity.
You know, if you run on hard times, your kid gets ill, I'm there with a checkbook.
I'm happy to help.
And I don't want to pay for other people's children.
Because that's fewer resources I have for my child.
And, you know, call me somebody who believes in evolution.
I want resources for my family.
I'm happy to help, but I don't want to be forced to pay for other people's bad decisions.
I don't want other people to be forced to pay for my bad decisions.
I want us to be free of that coercive entanglement of cross-responsibility because it doesn't work.
And so, women respond to incentives.
And when women get paid to have kids without a father, a lot of women are making that choice.
Because there's more birth control now than there was in the 1950s.
Easier to get.
Less intrusive.
You can get stuff put under your arm that prevents you from having babies for I don't know how long.
We don't even have to remember to take a pill.
There's so many more options for birth control now.
And people are wealthier now than they were in the 1950s.
Maybe not after tax or whatever, but...
So the idea that it's just happening to a lot of women is statistically, it can't be true.
Right.
Because when the welfare state comes in, women start having a lot more single kids.
So this is, for some women...
A calculated choice.
Or, to put it another way, they'd be making different choices if they didn't have the backup gravy train of Big Daddy Alpha State to come in and pay for the mistakes with my money.
And it's not getting better.
- Right. - It's getting worse. - But with half of 10 million that aren't on those kind of stuff, Okay, I'm sorry.
Let's...
No, no.
Sorry.
Let me be clear.
The fact that they're not on welfare does not mean that they're paying their way.
Well, that is true.
Yeah.
Right?
Because the whole point of the system, and you know I don't agree with the system, but the way the system is, let's say that you're making minimum wage as a single mom, and you got people around you who are Taking care of your kid and, you know, you're struggling and you're doing fine.
Okay, well, are you paying enough taxes to cover public school?
Are you paying enough taxes to cover healthcare?
Are you paying enough taxes to cover roads?
Are you paying enough taxes for your share of the national debt?
Are you paying enough taxes for national defense?
Of course not.
So you can be working and not taking one thin dime directly of government money.
But you're still a massive net drain on the system as a whole.
The national debt, the welfare state as a whole, is the single mom state.
That is the welfare state.
And so even if the woman is not, or the man, is not taking welfare directly, they're still consuming far more resources than they're contributing in taxes.
And thus everyone else has to be dragged in to pay for all of that.
Now, you're not even putting your kid in government school, right?
So, I mean, maybe you're not paying the plumbing that brings water.
I don't know.
Maybe you're not paying to have the bridges repaired on highways you're not even using because you're working from home.
This is what I mean when I say, Jennifer, you're like an outlier.
Way, way out there.
Um...
Which is good.
You don't want to be the average in this, right?
Okay, but can I, I guess just ask another question, I suppose.
Sure.
So, I never came to you as a single mom.
I watched your stuff, you know, a couple years ago on education and discipline and stuff like that.
And then I think it was the truth of poverty.
In the first couple of minutes, you talk about, you know, How you came from poverty.
And it was, I think it was about two minutes, and you're like, if they would have given me the statistics and told me I'd be nothing, then I would have told them they're crazy, you know, and been offended.
And then you kind of went on to talk about, you know, if we tell people that this is what it is, you know, you're never gonna get out of it.
I feel like kind of in a way, is that what we're doing to single moms?
What do you mean?
Never get out of it?
What do you mean?
Like, are we just kind of browbeating and browbeating them and telling them, you know, you're always going to live on welfare?
It's like the same rhetoric, you know?
Oh, come on, come on.
Don't straw mammy, sister.
When have I ever said to single moms, you're always going to be on welfare?
That's nothing that has ever crossed my list.
It's a perfect parallel between the kind of the poverty thing, which is, it's not a perfect parallel.
I'm just saying, if we are telling, you know, yet 10 million, it's like there's millions, like some of the stats were crazy.
Um, So you have a lot of single moms.
But I feel like if we just keep telling them that, you know, you're pretty much nothing, you're like a, like, blech.
I think you used blech a couple of times.
Does that in a way, like, is it just like discouraging?
I mean, and maybe it's not your job to encourage or, you know, whatever.
But, oh my God.
I'm sorry.
You're such a woman.
No, listen.
It's lovely.
Don't get me wrong.
I love women.
But you're such a woman because you're talking about the feels.
Won't single moms feel bad if we criticize single moms?
Won't single moms feel discouraged?
It's like, get out of my wallet!
Get out of my wallet.
Stop taking resources from my children.
I'm concerned about living in a country where there's like 60% taxes, and a lot of that has to do with single moms.
So I don't want to be a slave to women's bad decisions.
And you're talking about, well, aren't they going to feel discouraged and so on?
Well, how about somebody care about my money?
I'm not worried about their feelings.
I'm worried about what is that going to lead as far as, because you were talking about in poverty, it basically just gives them a script like, oh, well, there's nothing I can do.
I'm not really worried about how they feel about it.
I'm worried about what is this going to mean in the future, because you're going to have more of them.
So if it becomes column of knowledge that you just get on benefits or welfare or whatever, I don't know.
Like I said, I told the guy, I was like, my question was like an emotional response.
I know, that's why I said you're such a woman, because you got this emotional response, which you're concerned about the feelings of women, and I'm concerned about the resources of men.
No, like in the poverty thing, it had nothing to do with their feelings.
It has to do with, they just don't even try.
Okay, let me ask you this, because we're back now for sympathy to women, right?
So, do you pay in taxes as much as you consume from society, in benefits from the government?
And I'm not talking welfare, just whatever, right?
Hands down, I would say.
Wait, you work from home, I don't imagine you earn a huge amount, so you've got a huge amount of deductions, and you work from home, you're self-employed, you've got a huge amount of deductions, and you're saying you pay a lot in taxes?
I pay 15% and then, so I don't get...
15%?
Yeah, it's a self-employment tax.
Okay, so you pay 15% in taxes.
Right.
Right.
I'm not obviously going to ask you...
I mean, dollar amount, I don't...
I'm not going to ask you what that costs, but, you know, with a son, and with you, you have healthcare costs, right?
You've got dentistry costs, healthcare costs, and so on, right?
Right.
And you're not paying all of that out of pocket, are you?
I'm sorry?
You're not paying all of that out of pocket, are you?
Well, I do because I don't work for a company that subsidizes, so I pay a very large amount for healthcare.
Oh, so you're not doing the Obamacare subsidies or anything?
Well, no.
I don't think you really can after a certain dollar amount.
Right.
Right.
And then I'm a freelancer, so obviously I have to find my own insurance.
You know, there's no company to...
Because companies subsidize almost half of the cost, usually.
Right.
So, no, I pay full healthcare and find it quite a lot.
Right.
Well, and you could be, right, one of the rare single moms who's paying more than she's consuming.
I think that's great.
Right.
I mean, as far as, again, making the outlier who's making the best of a bad situation, and I can certainly understand why you'd call me up, Jennifer, and say, well, wait a minute, you're not talking about me, and it's like, yeah, I'm not talking about you, right?
I mean, but, you know, if you're the seven-foot-tall Chinese guy, there's no point getting offended when I say Chinese guys are short because I'm not talking about you, right?
Right.
I mean, you're the guy dunking the basketball without even going up on his tippy toes, right?
I'm talking about the degree to which men, and to some degree women, but men pay a lot more in taxes than women do, but men are having their resources pilfered by single mom's irresponsibility.
I'm not trying to speak on behalf of all men, but there's a legitimate complaint, which is stop taking our money because you couldn't keep a quarter between your knees.
And I completely get it.
And you're going back to saying, but what about women's feelings?
What about men's money?
It was nothing about their feelings.
It was...
The parallel I was trying to make is you were talking about poverty just keeps going because they're told.
It's basically, I think, how the 1% keeps down the poor.
So how would you do it?
You kind of browbeat and browbeat.
I'm telling them it's never going to get any better.
I don't care about my feelings.
I want to live in a world where everybody doesn't look at my son as a rapist.
Wait, I think we may have...
Jumped a little bit in topic or two.
I also want your son to grow up in a world where people don't think he's a rapist.
It was one of your stats, like 80% of rapists are from single parents.
Oh, oh, I see.
I see what you mean.
So I read a lot of your stats, okay?
Right.
Sorry, I thought we were talking about him going to campus and feminist calling.
Sorry, my mistake.
Okay.
It has nothing to do with their feelings.
It has to do with what is going to be the end result of common knowledge that single mothers are this way, I guess.
Well, and listen, but let me ask you this.
Do you think that knowing the danger that your son is in statistically because he's being raised by a single mother, do you think that that is going to make you or give you the best chance of avoiding those problems?
Yes, it does.
Because, I mean, if you didn't know any of this information, you'd be, you know, moseying along and you wouldn't necessarily be thinking about it or how to deal with it or the importance of a male role model in your son's, whatever, right?
Right.
So putting this information out is important.
When it comes to, you know, my solution is facts, obviously.
And I put a huge amount of information out about parenting, you know, much to the fact that nobody watches those videos compared to, you know, I get like half a million with watching me debate some guy about the flat earth and we get an expert on to talk about how to be a good parent.
And we're likely to break 15,000 because planet, rage quit.
Anyway, so information about parenting and there's nothing in what I say about parenting that would exclude single moms, right?
I mean, and you've listened probably to me drone on about parenting, and I haven't said, but if you're a single mom, turn this off, because you can't, right?
I mean, you can do it as much as a single mom, maybe even more, because you don't have to negotiate with another parent who might have different perspectives, right?
You're the sole provider of parental services, so you can make a unilateral decision on how to change your parenting, which, you know, could be certainly implemented more quickly if you had an oppositional So putting out lots of information about parenting.
But what I am concerned about is guys aren't being told about the dangers of this kind of situation.
And I'm concerned that guys are just kind of wandering into this situation without thinking through all of the ramifications of what's going on.
That the woman isn't going to have as much time for you.
That she is going to be a lot of times kind of a resource person.
And that there could be some vaguely sinister or troublesome ex-husband or ex-boyfriend around.
And, you know, I just – I'm trying to get the information out for the guys so that they can date women who don't have kids.
Or at least if they're going to date a woman who does have kids, they know the stuff that's getting involved, right?
Because that's also really bad, right?
I mean, getting men who won't commit to single moms to not date single moms is the best thing for both the single moms, but most particularly for their children.
Because having a succession of guys who won't commit sort of parading through the apartment of the single mom is really bad for the kid.
I think more so than just not seeing any dating going on at all.
So if guys want to commit to single moms, at least I want them to go in eyes open.
I don't want them to sort of go in and say, oh, I'm sure it'll be fine.
and then as they step deeper and deeper into a complicated quagmire, they then yank themselves out after the kids have bonded with them and it's really painful.
Will your stats keep me up at night and I think they should – And I'm thankful for them.
Have I given anything useful to you whatsoever in our conversation?
I'm sorry?
Have I given you anything useful or valuable?
I'm not trying to get you to say yes, I'm just curious about it because I think we're kind of winding down here.
How has the conversation been for you, Jennifer?
You gave me a few things to think about and I appreciate that.
Because I don't want my son to think that, you know, just women get away with everything and that men, you know, have to get stuck to him.
I don't want that for him.
But you've always got me thinking.
So, you know, I appreciate it, I guess.
Well, that sounded like a very lukewarm and diplomatic response, and that's totally fine.
I... I appreciate you calling in, you know, and I invite single moms to call in.
You know, I think we can do some good together.
I don't hate single moms.
You know, I feel a lot of sympathy for people who've made bad decisions as the result of bad social cues and bad economic cues, right?
Because now that government pays women to have children and not work, well, guess what?
Whatever you subsidize, you're going to get more of.
And because people don't really understand The nature of the state, they think, oh, well, the government has all this money and they really care about my children so they can be like my husband, but, you know, without the skid marks and smelly feet, right?
So that aspect of things where women are getting bad social cues is a problem.
And it's not the fault of women directly that there's this public school system, there's this crazy welfare state, and there's this media which constantly praises single moms.
Right?
So, you know, years and years and years ago, even before I started this podcast, I wrote an essay, freedomain.blogspot.com.
I wrote an essay with great sympathy to people who end up as soldiers, right?
I mean, they're not told the nature of the wars and the imperialism and the taxation is theft.
Everyone praises this.
It's a noble profession.
You're from the South, right?
I mean, you probably know quite a few people like this.
So, I don't sort of hate single moms.
I do think that When I talk to men about the challenges of dating single moms, it's better for the single mom's kids, it's better for the men, and it's better for the women who aren't single moms yet, right?
Because then they see, oh, okay, so if I become a single mom, I simply won't get or have very little chance of getting a quality guy.
I mean, and this goes back to, I've mentioned this story before, but hey, it's been a while, so everything old is new again.
But when a friend of mine and his wife were going through big, big problems, and she'd just had a baby, and I was walking with her in a park, and she was saying to me, grumble, grumble, grumble, husband, grumble, grumble, grumble, maybe I'll just leave him and go marry a doctor or a lawyer or a stockbroker or something.
And I said...
No, that's not going to happen because you just had a baby.
For heaven's sakes, your nipples are like geysers.
I mean, what guy is going to want to get involved with you when you just had another man's kid?
This level is no longer available to you.
Like, I mean, stay or don't stay, but...
And stay.
Hopefully you'll work it out.
But for heaven's sakes, don't go with the delusion that, you know, Rocco, the chiseled sculptor, is going to want to scoop you and your kid up and raise them as his own in a loving environment of artistic abandon.
I mean, it's not, I mean, it helps women to not make these kinds of decisions, which is better for their future kids and future families, right?
I mean, obviously, you would rather have a loving husband with you to share in the joys of Of parenting, right?
And the challenges.
Definitely.
Right.
So, I appreciate the call.
I really, really sympathize with what happened to you as a child that is unbelievably brutal.
And I really, really admire you for the work that you're doing to improve your child's experience relative to yours.
It's like he's growing up on opposite world for your childhood, which is the right place for him to be.
All right.
Thanks so much.
I hope we can hear from you again.
Let's move on to the next caller.
Have a great day.
You too.
Up next is Jordan.
Jordan wrote in and said, I consider myself to be a logical person as well as a spiritual person.
I would like to know if you've ever had a mystical experience before in your life.
And if you have not, what is your opinion about such things?
That is from Jordan.
Oh, hey Jordan.
How are you doing tonight?
Very good.
Before you answer my question, can I say something?
I think you just did.
Yes.
You can say even more if you want.
Smart Alec.
I would like to say that I really respect you.
I look up to you a lot.
I have a philosophy podcast as well.
From watching you, it's inspired me to create this thing that I'm creating right now.
I just wanted to say that your philosophical heroes are kind of...
Your father figure a little bit in life.
And I want to say that I'm really looking forward to this.
Well, thank you.
I really appreciate that.
First, of course, we must start with our definitions, which is what do you mean by a mystical experience?
A mystical experience.
So...
What I mean by that is my spirituality is 100% based off of my experience of life.
I'm not basing my spirituality off of any books that anybody's written or anything like that.
My spirituality is based off of mostly my psychedelic experiences, which I started taking mushrooms for the first time when I was 20, 21 years old and before that I was a very rational and hard-headed and skeptical scientific person and upon taking psychedelics for the first time it made me realize that I really didn't know fuck all about reality and to say mystical for
me is Fully embracing the mystery of the universe, you know?
The only question that science can answer is why the fuck all of this is happening.
They can say the who, what, where, when, and how, but they can't say the why all of this is happening.
And I've had a lot of mystical experiences from the psychedelic drugs that I've done.
Alright, and can you share with me some philosophical insight that you have received while on drugs that you have validated with reason and evidence later?
Because, you know, scientists do this as well, right?
Scientists, I don't know if they take drugs, but they have visions, right?
Structure of the carbon atom was some guy had a dream about a snake eating its own tail, you know, inspiration.
But then they go through the process of validating it afterwards with reason and evidence.
So can you give me some knowledge that mysticism led you towards that you later validated?
Didn't just sort of have and sit with and simmer because that's not really translating it to truth value.
Well, even yesterday was September 19th, and that is the day that...
You what now?
Hang on.
Sorry, not September.
I don't know how many drugs you've done.
April 19th.
But it was not September 19th, otherwise I'm about to have a birthday.
April 19th, you mean, right?
April 19th was the day that Albert Hoffman discovered LSD. And today is International Marijuana Day, which is an important day to me because I consider myself a libertarian and a sovereign individual that is allowed to put anything that I want to in my body.
But Francis Crick discovered the Double helix.
Watson and Crick, double helix structure.
By the way, I think James, I think it was either Watson or Crick wrote a book called The Double Helix, which is a great read.
But anyway, go on.
Yeah, so if I can, one thing inside of the psychedelic world, one way that mainstream media dismisses the psychedelic experience is they call it a hallucination.
You've heard that before, I'm sure.
Yeah.
In the same way that dreams at night could be considered a hallucination, right?
So, what I've learned from my experiences is that we live in a universe of ever-expanding and complexifying chemical compositions, and I don't understand why one chemical composition has the right to call another chemical composition a hallucination.
It negates the experience that the person had.
And what we call reality and what we define as reality is really just the most common chemical composition that all of us are experiencing on a daily basis.
Would you agree with that?
Wait, okay, okay.
No.
God, no.
No?
Why don't you agree with that?
Not even close.
Speak to me why, please.
Okay, let's just start with dreams because I've never taken any mind-altering substances other than philosophy.
When you dream, the pineal gland inside of your brain is producing dimethyltryptamine.
So every dream that you have, you are taking a drug, which is a tea.
Okay, that's fine.
That's fine.
I haven't taken that drug.
It's naturally produced within me.
So a dream...
Are you saying that we have no right to call dreams at night subjective experiences?
Well, reality in and of itself is a subjective experience.
So our interpretation of reality is also subjective.
No, no, no, no.
Why?
Well, so for instance, if I dream...
That I'm flying on an elephant over the savannah of Africa.
That's a good dream.
Okay, it's a good dream.
So if I'm dreaming that, I can mount a camera to look at my bed and the whole night I'm not moving.
Or at least I'm certainly not flying on an elephant over the savannah, right?
So that I can have someone watch me.
Did I go to Africa?
Nope, still in Canada.
Okay, so let's say that you also...
That we know whether it's a subjective or objective experience.
Whereas on the other hand, if I am actually not flying on an elephant because you can't, but let's say I'm flying on an airplane, a Cessna or something, I'm flying over and I've got video and I remember it and I booked the trip and I got there and I got pictures and people were there with me who remember the experience.
Okay, well that's different than what happens.
If I dream that I'm having dinner with my wife, And I wake up in the morning and she says, I dreamed that I was with, you know, Raul the Spanish abd cleaner.
Then, you know, I wasn't with my wife because she was...
Okay, can I retaliate to that?
You believe in such a thing as forgetfulness, do you not?
Do you mean, do I think that people have the capacity to forget things?
Yes.
Sure.
Could it be possible that while you're in the dream world you set up that camera as well but going through the process of waking up that that reality became non-existent as you entered this reality and the camera footage would not be possible to show anybody else?
I don't understand that.
Can you step me through that?
Maybe I just haven't taken the right stuff, but I don't know what you're talking about.
For sure.
Honestly, I'm not trying to convince you of anything.
No, no, no.
Don't give me the commentary.
Just re-explain it.
Just give me the straight duck.
Let's say you're wearing a GoPro all day today.
Yeah.
And as soon as you go to sleep, that GoPro that you're wearing is not in the same dimension or the non-physical world as what you went to sleep in.
And you turn your GoPro...
Wait, wait, wait.
No, no, I don't understand this part.
I don't mean to interrupt people, but I don't understand this part.
So if I don't understand the beginning, there's not much point going on.
So I'm wearing a GoPro during the day.
I go to sleep.
I still have the GoPro on?
You still have the GoPro on.
And then what does it do?
Shimmers out into another dimension?
I got to give you a little side example of what I've learned from psychedelics to explain this next part if I can.
Okay, but we're now layering things, so it's going to get progressively more confusing, but go on.
It's a very complicated subject because you've never taken drugs before, and I have.
Or it's not, and it's a hallucination, but go ahead.
Or it's a hallucination, for sure.
So you and me both know that we see, smell, taste, perceive 1% of the electromagnetic spectrum of light.
Well, you can taste light, but you said...
Regardless, your interpretation of reality is completely based off of what your senses can interpret of reality.
We can't see all of reality, but that doesn't mean that what we can see is invalid, right?
So that 1% that science has based this figure off of is based off of what our machines can interpret, which they could also be seeing 1% of reality.
And what I'm saying, and this is a very large claim, and I understand if you want to agree with this, is that into the...
Infrareds and the ultraviolets is that there are parallel realities with parallel experiences, and because our senses are limited to our experience and our scale and our size, we are not interpreting those versions of reality.
Wait, wait, hang on.
Are you saying that the infrared spectrum is another reality?
Well, below the infrared is an infinite amount of colors that we have no interpretation of because our senses are not attuned to that vibe.
The same way a radio, when it's tuning into a radio station, it can pick up that radio station, but the other radio stations that exist You're not tuning into because the chemical composition of your brain and of your body is not fully attuned to these alternate realities that are playing out in every moment as we talk right now even.
Okay, you've got to find some way to answer me stuff that's actually an answer rather than an analogy that doesn't advance my knowledge at all.
Okay.
Hey, man, I want to teach you about a hubungajigga.
And you say, well, what's a hubungajigga?
I said, well, it's an alternate dimension that phases in and out of this, that, and the other, and it's like a radio, and it's like, not telling me anything, just draping a bunch of incomprehensible analogies around something I don't understand.
Let's go back to the GoPro that vanishes into another dimension when I go to sleep.
Sure.
Okay, so go ahead, because you were supposed to explain that to me, and then we went to infrared, and I don't know what the hell was going on with radios.
So explain to me the GoPro that goes into another dimension?
Well, the GoPro doesn't go into another dimension.
The GoPro exists in this dimension only, in this physical form of reality that we perceive.
Like, our body is 99.99% empty space, but...
Because of our senses, we perceive it as though there's physical matter in front of us.
There's about the same amount of space between every atom in our body as there is every star system in the universe, but because we're at the scale that we're at and because we're at the sensual perception that we're at, we perceive it as though I'm sitting on my fucking couch and you're sitting or you're in front of your wife.
Oh man, how did I know it was?
I just knew it was...
How come I knew you were on the West Coast?
So you're still not explaining anything.
Now we're talking about atoms and star systems.
I mean, you're still not explaining anything to me.
What the fuck happens with the GoPro when I go to sleep?
Just try and focus, man.
Okay, what I am explaining is that...
Our perception of reality is not the complete perception of reality.
And when you go to sleep, you're not experiencing something that's fake.
You're experiencing a different version of reality.
You're experiencing a different understanding of perception of what the human experience is.
Okay, okay.
Now, if you define reality as anything we experience, well, sure.
But that's not the definition of reality.
What is the definition of reality?
Reality is the objective medium we all share, and that is not the case with dreams.
With dreams, I dream I'm doing things, but I'm not actually moving.
I dream I'm interacting with people who aren't actually there objectively in reality.
So you can redefine reality to say, well, anything you experience objectively is reality.
But that is not the definition of what reality is, and that's the difference between a subjective experience and an objective fact.
Other than what you perceive inside of your mind, what is the difference between a dream where you think that you're talking to me on this podcast in a dream and you're thinking that you are talking to me on this podcast inside of the way...
Objective evidence!
Objective evidence!
Hang on, hang on.
Objective evidence, which means...
Mike's listening to this call.
Other people are going to listen to this call.
Hundreds of thousands or millions of people are going to listen to this call.
No pressure.
We're going to listen to this call.
It's recorded.
It's uploaded.
Other people are going to write in.
Nobody ever writes in and says, hey, Steph, you know that dream you had about flying over I don't know.
They'll never know what it was.
But you also agree that forgetfulness exists and possibly you could be forgetting that's happening in the dream world.
Forgetting what's happening in the dream world.
Well the same verification that's happening right now.
Oh, so every single dream I'm having could be existing and objectively put out there in the universe, but I'm forgetting it every single time, even though I have like five dreams a night.
Yes.
And I have had those dreams.
You know, the first dream I remember having was when I was two years old.
I want to ask you a question.
Hang on.
I've had hundreds of thousands or tens of hundreds of thousands of dreams.
And they're just as objective as this podcast, but for hundreds of thousands of times, I and everyone else has completely forgotten that they've existed in some objective form.
Yes, and vice versa.
Okay, that is not possible.
No, that's not possible.
Okay, that's fair enough.
Because there's forgetfulness, and then there's something which is no null hypothesis.
Have you ever done any drug before?
No.
Like, uh, like even like, uh, like you had surgery and, and, or like, yeah, I was knocked out for my throat surgery.
Did, uh, was it the kind of experience where, where you could feel like, uh, a different experience of reality than you were normally used to feeling?
Yeah, I passed out.
Okay, so I want to give you an example of a trip that I had on ayahuasca.
Ayahuasca is a South American tea that is based off of dimethyltryptamine.
Same endogenous chemical that your pineal gland, your third eye, excretes into your brain when you dream.
I've experienced the dream world in the waking reality, and this is why I've come to this conclusion, okay?
So I'd like to give you an example of a trip that I had.
Wait, so you're talking about stimulating the dream center or the dream chemical in your brain while you're awake?
Yeah, so you can call it the dream chemical, but every...
No, you called it the dream chemical.
You called it the chemical that is released when you're dreaming at night.
I'll call it the dream chemical, but what it really is is just a chemical.
It's just a different chemical.
But it's a chemical that reproduces what happens when you dream.
Yes, and also when you die...
So it's a dream chemical!
Let's just be frank.
I'm not trying to trick you here.
It's a chemical that's released the same as when you dream.
It's a dream chemical.
It's also a chemical that's in a plant that has been inside of a tradition in South America for probably as long as humanity has existed.
So here's an example of what...
The scientific world would call a hallucination that I have.
And a hallucination sounds like I'm watching Bart Simpson riding a fucking horse while Michelle Obama is sucking it off or something like that, you know?
Well, I can't think that anyone else would describe a hallucination in that kind of vivid detail.
You may be revealing a little bit more of yourself than you care to admit, but I really want to suck off a horse is what I'm getting at.
But I'll give you an example of a trip that I had.
Like, I went to South America and studied shamanism for a period of time.
And I came back...
I started making the medicine for myself.
I had this trip.
I want to say, first and foremost, all of this trip is inside of my mind.
It is inside of my mind.
It is completely centralized to my mind.
It is not a parallel reality outside of my mind, but my mind is fucking huge.
Here's the trip that I had.
I drank this medicine and I saw this wall of moving shapes and images that passed by my body and then all of a sudden I was inside of a laboratory where there was these praying mantis machine scientists that were wearing lab coats.
I know how ridiculous it sounds.
They were building devices and technology inside of the laboratory.
And when I showed up, they looked at me and they're like, okay, like, who's this fucking guy?
And I said, hey, what are you guys doing in this laboratory here?
And they're like, what the fuck does it look like we're doing?
We're making devices, machines for...
You know, these guys in your dreams sound a lot like you with the casual swearing.
Yes, they do.
Yes, they do.
Yeah, yeah.
They're a personification of my personality.
So I... They're like, okay, what do you want to know?
And I said to them, I would like for you to show me a free energy device or how to make a free energy device.
And they said, okay, well, we can't show you the blueprints because you won't understand it.
But what we will tell you is if you want to create free energy, you should...
create a feedback loop of light.
And if you know music at all, when you play like a reverb chamber, you make a sound and the reverb chamber will feed back into itself.
And they said to do the exact same thing with light.
And the idea that I got off of this, regardless of whether this was real or not real, I got some creative idea from this experience that said, you build a pyramid out of, let's say like, you know, like FBI glass you build a pyramid out of, let's say like, you know, like FBI glass where you can see through one way and it reflects You've seen a cop go before, I'm sure.
So they said, build a pyramid out of that type of glass so that the light will shine through and reflect inside of itself and create a feedback loop.
And that will create more energy than you will know what to do with it.
Which is coincidentally the same way that lasers work.
They take a light source and reflect the photons back and forth upon each other Until they're excited and then they shoot it out in a certain direction.
And this is something...
But to be fair, lasers don't create energy.
Well, what do you mean by that?
Of course they create energy.
They're projecting energy out into the physical...
No, no, no.
They consume energy.
Well, yeah, they consume and they project it.
They transfer energy into another form.
If you've studied physics before, you know that nothing is ever lost in the universe.
It's just transformed into another form of energy.
Right.
But what I'm saying is that if you have a laser pointer, the battery wears out.
It consumes energy.
It doesn't produce energy.
Well, you're missing the point of, like, that was a pretty cool story that I probably couldn't make up.
And I'm not a fucking physicist.
I don't know anything about free energy.
But for some reason, the hallucination that I had, it wasn't just some bullshit pattern thing on top of everything with some weird light coloring and stuff like that.
I entered into this three-dimensional world that while I was experiencing it, it felt realer than me talking to you right now.
I know what reality feels like, and I experienced this realm, and it felt more real than this experience of life.
I think that is because, and connecting the two points from what I was talking about earlier, is that the dream world is another world, and this world is another world.
And somehow, when you do psychedelics, and they have MRI scans and brain scans that show when you do them, The part of your brain that interprets the dream world and the part of your brain that interprets the real world that me and you are talking in right now, there's a gland in between those two worlds and that gland shuts off so that information can be there's a gland in between those two worlds and that gland shuts off so
And in a universe that rewards complexity and rewards connectivity, Our frontal lobe, our neocortex, is the most densely connected thing in the entire world.
And doing these psychedelics, doing magic mushrooms, doing ayahuasca, smoking DMT, causes what they call neurogenesis and a hyper...
I'm going out on a limb by making the assumptions that I make.
I understand that 114% that I'm going out on a limb, but I'm also the person inside of our culture that has done more psychedelics than anybody else, so I have more experience and more perception of what is actually going on in regards to this mystery.
So the point of that story was that you've messed with your perceptions by screwing with your brain's wiring and reproducing in a waking state that which your brain is supposed to reserve for a sleeping state and that's given you the illusion that you've had some sort of insight or some sort of view into another dimension when all that's happened is you've fried your brain a little.
Yes, yes.
Okay, let's define illusion though.
Go ahead.
No, I'm asking you to define what an illusion is.
Oh, it's a subjective experience that you believe has something to do with...
A subjective experience.
Excuse me.
Hello.
Sorry.
You just asked me a question.
Let me answer the goddamn question.
I apologize, Stefan.
Thank you.
Alright, so an illusion is something that you think is happening in the outside world, or you're coming to a conclusion about something happening in the external or objective world, which is not borne out by independent verification.
So if you're in a desert, you're looking across the sand, you think you're seeing a lake.
Well, you're just seeing reflected waves of heat and light going between differently heated layers of the atmosphere.
So what you're seeing is true, but the conclusion you come to is you say, ah, that's a lake.
But it's an illusion because you're taking your sense data and you're projecting some fact on it, which is not true.
You get to the lake and it's just sand and whatever, right?
Or, you know, you look at the old thing.
You look at a pencil in water and it looks like it's bent a little bit because the water refracts the light.
But it's not bent, right?
You can run your finger down and feel that it's not bent.
So illusions are things, they're sort of conclusions that you jump to based upon your sense data that are not borne out by independent or other sense verification.
Me and you...
We are both having our subjective experience of realities, correct?
If we can corroborate our experience with other people, then it's not subjective anymore.
If other people can corroborate our experience and be a witness to the experience that me and you are having, then it's not subjective anymore, correct?
Well, that's one way of doing it, but there are many other ways of doing it as well.
I mean, I can corroborate my own experience, as I just pointed out.
There was nobody else in the desert example or in the finger running down the pencil in water example.
I was then verifying it for myself that my subjective perceptions were not valid.
I didn't understand that.
I'm sorry.
Well, you said that other people are necessary to verify my experience.
Yes.
And that's not necessarily true.
If I film myself sleeping, I can review the footage for myself and find out if I was flying on an elephant over the African savannah.
I can also, if I think that there is, you know, in the hot days, you think that there's all these puddles of water on the road because it looks, the little mirage is going on on the road.
As I drive forward, I can see that I'm not splashing through anything and therefore it was just an illusion.
So, we don't actually need other people to verify our subjective experiences.
So, let's say that GoPro is running again.
That camera is videotaping you.
But inside of your mind, you're imagining yourself as a child, as something that happened to you as a child.
And inside of your mind, there is an experience happening.
You are reliving an experience that you had, but the GoPro isn't going to capture any of that because it's on this plane of reality.
Right?
The GoPro can't see you fishing through your memories and your ideas.
Yes, but why is me fishing through my memories and ideas not part of reality?
I'm doing it with a real brain.
Still talking, still talking.
I'm doing this with a real brain in the real world using real biochemical processes, so I don't know why we need another dimension for me to be reflecting upon my memories.
We don't need one whatsoever.
One idea that I've been meditating a lot lately is the idea of infinity.
I'm very fond of the idea of the infinite.
If you really Take that idea and swallow it and shit it out.
What it really means is that every possible reality is happening simultaneously.
Like, Plato said that time is the moving image of reality.
And the reason he said that is because Plato was fucking doing drugs.
They went to the Ulyssian mystery schools and they took Urgot and all of them were tripping balls.
That's why they had the philosophical breakthroughs that they had at that time is because they were experiencing themselves outside of the consensus reality that they have.
When he said time is the moving image of eternity, he gained that perspective.
Wait, wait, wait.
Hang on, sorry, you just changed the quote.
Time is the moving image of eternity.
Sorry, just to interrupt.
The first time you said, time is the moving image of reality.
I apologize.
Time is the moving image of eternity.
And he experienced that because he became eternity in the moment.
And all of this stuff, we can argue all of these points to the death, no matter what.
But unless you're willing to sacrifice 10 minutes of your life to smoke dimethyltryptamine and experience the alternate reality, there's not a lot of common ground for us to talk to because I think if you found the courage to look for that drug and take 10 minutes out of your day to smoke it, you would start to understand what I'm talking about.
There's nobody that's done this drug, this medicine, these medicines that have Been used by human beings since the beginning of human being-ness that would disagree with any of this stuff because it opens you up to the fact that all of this shit is a huge fucking mystery and to say that you know the truth is like sucking on a pacifier for the infantile mind.
None of us knows anything that's true whatsoever.
Wait, sorry.
None of us knows anything that's true.
Is that a true statement?
Oh, you got me there.
And also, did you just refer to me as having an infantile mind?
Is that how you get people to appreciate your thoughts?
Well, when I say infantile, I mean that you haven't experienced all of the facets of reality that exist.
And you have experienced all the facets of reality that exist?
No, I've experienced a couple more than you, though.
I would say that.
And how do you know that something which directly stimulates subjective hallucinations, which dreams are by any rational or empirical standard, how do you know that that's another reality and not just your brain doing its thing, which is to give you a subjective experience, which it does every night?
Because I've shifted my definition of reality and I... No!
No, no, no, no!
That's not how philosophy works.
You've got a philosophy show, so I'm talking guy to guy, right?
Thinker to thinker.
You can't...
Like, how do you know...
That what you subjectively experience on these drugs is some kind of alternative reality when you're taking something that directly messes with your perceptions and you know that ahead of time.
You're not going in a spaceship and going 2001 style through some sort of portal.
You're taking something which gives you a very vivid subjective experience.
How do you know that that is any kind of objective reality that you're experiencing?
It's not objective.
What's the null hypothesis?
It's not objective.
It's 100% subjective.
And from experiencing this thing, I've learned to shift a couple of my definitions of what words mean to me.
And I've shifted the word reality to mean What I am experiencing.
What I am experiencing is real to me.
Whether it's real to you or not, that doesn't matter to me.
Reality is what I perceive it to be, and reality is what you perceive it to be.
That's exactly what I said at the beginning of this conversation.
I said, if you define reality to be that which you happen to be experiencing in the moment, but that's not the definition of reality.
You can't just take these two...
Do you at least admit that there are subjective experiences in this world that have nothing to do with alternative realities?
Yes, definitely.
Okay, good.
So there are subjective experiences in this world that have nothing to do with alternative realities.
I stub my toe, I feel the pain, you don't.
That's a subjective experience.
I haven't entered into another reality called pain toe universe, right?
So there are subjective experiences that have nothing to do with reality.
Do you also admit, or at least accept, that there are at least some objective experiences that can occur, or there is some kind of objective reality that we're sharing at least to the point where we can have this conversation?
Yeah, definitely.
And that's what I call the most common chemical composition.
Because we're all experiencing the most common chemical composition, we share...
Similar definitions of reality and when you change that chemical composition and there's been lots of instances where people have taken hallucinogens together and share the alternate reality that they experience as well because they're on a similar vibrational plane of experience.
Okay.
I don't know what any of that means.
But, I mean, there are collective hallucinations to some degree, right?
There is what Jung called sort of archetypes or collective unconscious and so on.
I mean, a lot of people will dream about flying or dream of things that they're afraid of and so on.
So, listen, I mean, there's not really much that I can say because if you're going to make up your own definitions for things, then there's not a philosophical conversation.
You're just using words that philosophers have worked very hard to turn into something real and you're just making them your own subjective experiences.
You know, you can call a piece of shit a great sandwich.
It probably isn't going to taste how you digest it.
But let me just ask you this as a whole.
Well, in response to that, if you're going to call me out on that, language over time is constantly morphing and constantly changing and words are constantly getting redefined over history.
There's plenty of examples of words that mean completely different things after a certain amount of generations because people apply new definitions to them.
Can you give me an example?
Well, even in, let's say, America, once hip-hop started getting popular, when somebody said something bad, it meant it was good.
Like, oh yeah, you bad rapper, man.
Oh, that's really sick, right?
That's a clear example of a word becoming the exact opposite meaning of what it meant before inside the context of the culture that's experiencing the language itself.
Our reality models are 100% based off of the language that we use to describe them.
We interpret what's going through our senses and we try to articulate it into language.
These word models define the key essences of what our culture becomes.
With these parallel realities, these psychedelic trips, there isn't a lot of words that really people can use to describe them with.
When you take a psychedelic, it activates the language center of your brain.
There's scientific proof that says that more energy goes to the neocortex, essentially the part that makes you...
Do you know who Terence McKenna is?
No.
Well, I do know who he is, but I just want to get back.
So your goal as somebody who is interested in philosophy is to say we should stop trying to strive for objective definitions, we should stop trying to tie language as much as possible into objective experience, and we should basically redefine things however we want because nihilistic rap culture has changed the meaning of some words.
Well, that was one example that I used.
No, that's not what I'm saying at all.
That's not what I'm saying.
What I'm saying is it's not this or that.
I'm saying both of these things are happening simultaneously.
The universe in and of itself is a paradox.
There's no reason in the...
Okay, I mean, sorry, I've got to interrupt you.
You're just saying stuff now.
I've got to ask you, though.
I mean, this is a really serious, serious question, right?
It's a really serious question, Jordan.
Yeah.
Do you ever worry that the chemicals that you put into your brain that alter your perception, which we know, right?
They alter your perceptions and they do give you sort of waking dream states.
Do you ever have any doubt or any concern about the stuff that you're saying in terms of it's some alternative objective reality?
Like the mysticism that you have, are you ever concerned that you might just be Taking a hammer to a very delicate engine and then saying, well, the engine is just working differently when you break it.
I mean, do you ever have any concern that you may just, in fact, be wrecking the machinery of your mind through drug addiction and that all of the stuff that you think makes sense because you've done some harm to your brain only makes sense because you've harmed yourself?
It's a possibility.
Does it ever cross your mind?
I'll answer that with the question.
Do you have any concern by not doing that?
You're doing the same thing?
No, I don't have any concern that by not taking drugs that damage my capacity to perceive things, that I'm somehow harming myself.
So I asked you first though, so answer my question rather than with another question.
Do you ever have any doubt or any concern or any possibility of a shred that what you're saying might just be a load of garbage that's coming out of somebody who's taken a lot of drugs and harmed their capacity to actually process sensor data accurately?
To answer your question, no I don't feel that way because I used to be a very sick and a very troubled and a very sad person that had a very negative outlook on reality and by exposing myself to this stuff, I'm talking a lot about the metaphysical concepts of it and I haven't talked a lot about the healing properties of it where they've shown It heals depression.
It heals mental disorders.
It gives people a more positive prospect on reality.
And I had a very broken mind when I started on this path and I had a lot of resentment and I had a lot of anger and self-doubt.
And it has healed me of all that stuff to where, you know, I can work a full-time job and be a happy person and have a happy relationship.
And all of those things that I couldn't do before, it's given me the gift of being able to enjoy my life in such a way that I'm not regretting the past and I'm not having anger towards people that harmed me in the past.
And I feel like I've bloomed and I've become I'm a productive member of society because I've taken these trips that I've taken.
All this other stuff on the side is what happens after you've done four or five trips, you know?
All right.
So, I mean, you understand it's a little paradoxical when you say you can't ever be certain of anything and nothing is true, but I'm absolutely certain that this has not damaged me in any way.
So I just want to point out that it's a little bit confusing.
But what I do want to know is what...
Happened to you before that you said you had a broken mind or you're angry.
So from your childhood, what was going on that you felt you needed healing from?
Well, my mom left my dad when I was two, and she continued to have a bunch of boyfriends and raise us as a single mom.
And we moved probably to 30 or 40 different cities before I was in fifth grade.
So I never really got a chance to put my roots down, and I was kind of neglected.
And sorry, how many boyfriends did she have during this period?
I have no idea.
Well, just roughly.
I don't know.
I was really young.
I don't remember.
But she was moving from city to city to city.
Was she moving for guys?
Why were you moving so much?
I think that she was running away from my father because he was an abusive dude and she wanted to make sure that He couldn't have contact with us because he had been physically and mentally abusive to her as well as us.
And it was like a protective mechanism that she was...
She was on the run.
Yeah, yeah.
She was on the run from a dangerous and violent man.
Exactly, yeah.
And did you know that at the time?
Well...
I feel like my body intrinsically knew that.
I developed a leukemia-type blood disease when I was really young, and I felt that the tumultuous experience that I was having as a young child and that my mom was having manifested in a form that made me very sick because there was really no other reason for me to catch that illness.
And I recovered.
I'm sorry, sorry.
I just want to make sure I understand.
So when you were on the rung, how old were you when you got this illness?
I was two or three years old, I think.
Why would there have to be a reason?
I mean, sometimes people just get sick, right?
No, there's always a reason.
There's always a reason?
Yes.
So nobody ever just gets sick by accident?
No.
There's always a reason?
No, there's always a reason.
Okay, so when people get Ebola, there's always a reason for it.
There's a reason why one person gets Ebola and someone else doesn't?
Somebody gave them Ebola.
Well, no, of course.
It's always a cause, but the cause is different from a reason.
Yeah, they were exposed to that illness at the time.
Have you ever been like— No, no, no, no, no.
I don't want to get into abstracts.
Let's stay with your childhood.
I was just trying to sort of understand.
So you feel that you got this—you said a leukemia-type blood illness?
I'm not sure what that means.
I think that illness can be caused by stress.
Oh, yeah, that's certainly true.
Yeah, that's—but not all illnesses are caused by stress.
Anyway, I mean, people get lung cancer without smoking and—right?
So, your mom was on the run and you got sick.
And how old were you when you got sick?
Two or three.
Two or three.
Sorry, you mentioned that.
And then what happened?
I don't know, man.
I was two or three years old.
I don't fucking remember.
No, but then what happened?
My dad gave me a blood transfusion.
It put my father's blood back inside of my body and it was over after that.
Right.
But then what happened in your life as a whole?
Well, we settled down and my mom married my stepfather and he's an incredible man.
He was a great father to me.
And I developed for the rest of my life.
I became a musician and played music for 10 years.
And in the last couple of years, I've started doing comedy and doing podcasting and giving lectures about psychedelics.
Long story short.
And you said you have a full-time job.
What's your job at the moment?
I don't have a full-time job.
I pick up work when I can do it because I have a lot of other projects that I'm working on to try and make my life gain fruition from the things that I love rather than working for somebody else.
And what happened to your musical career?
I mean, I never made any money off of it.
I still make music, but essentially, I'm 32 now, so I made a decision last year that was, okay, I need to allocate my resources into...
Oh, sorry to interrupt.
What have you lived on?
Well, I've had jobs the entire time.
I do construction...
What kind of jobs do you have?
I have a furniture company.
I build furniture for people.
I do PA work in film when I need money and so on and so forth.
Production assistant?
Yeah.
Right.
Okay, so you sort of pick up odd jobs from here and there, right?
I would like to ask you a question if I can.
Well, you can, and I'm perfectly happy to answer.
I just want to sort of get a sense of the shape of your life.
So you've picked up some odd jobs, you've done some traveling, you've obviously taken a lot of psychedelics, and the next thing you want to get into is podcasting?
Well, I have a podcast right now.
It's been running for six months and picking up a good following already.
Hopefully this gets me more from it.
I would like if that was a possibility.
And I also do stand-up comedy and play music, yeah.
But right now, what's getting you income?
The furniture thing and the production assistant and I've got a moving company that I work for when they need help and potentially I'm going to start finishing carpentry when they need help as well.
I like to have a bunch of different jobs that I'm on call for so that I have a certain amount of time to be creative in life.
Right.
And do you want to settle down, get married, have kids at all in the future?
Yeah, definitely.
Fuck yeah.
I want to have as many kids as my resources can provide for.
And how old do you want to be when you have the kids?
It doesn't matter to me.
Probably matters a little bit.
I mean, you don't want to be 90, right?
Yeah.
Like, within the next 10 to 12 years, I would like to be done making kids.
As many as I can pop out in that amount of time that my resources can allocate for.
And you mentioned a relationship.
You mean a romantic relationship?
Yeah, yeah.
I'm in one right now.
And how long has that been going on for?
It's been going on for 9, 10 months now.
And does she want kids?
Yeah.
And do you think she might be the one?
Yeah, she is the one.
And what does she think of your drug use?
She humors me.
She's from an academic background and she sees where I'm coming from and we've started to explore these psychedelic landscapes together and she's starting to understand more what I was talking about early on in our relationship.
And does she do drugs?
Yeah.
Yeah, we do drugs together all the time.
And how do you think that would affect your capacity to be a responsible parent?
Well, not at all, I would guess.
I don't know what that means.
Do you mean you think it would be fine to take a lot of drugs when you're a parent?
Yeah, I mean, as long as I got a babysitter and I didn't have to take them out of bed while I was halfway through tripping or anything like that.
I'm a responsible person, you know.
Well, I'm not sure that, I mean, if you think that it's okay to be a parent taking a lot of drugs, I would question this characterization of responsibility.
You've never taken any drugs before, so you have no idea what it's like, though.
You're operating from a completely biased viewpoint.
I don't think hallucinating and being a good parent go hand in hand.
I don't think I need to take drugs to figure that out.
I don't devil chainsaws either.
That doesn't mean I think it's a good idea.
Are you having dreams at night?
Because then you're hallucinating.
Are you not?
But when I wake up, I'm perfectly lucid and able to parent.
If my child has some problem or something that happens or they need my attention or need me to drive them somewhere, you can't be taking drugs and be a parent.
Well, not when you're on.
You don't parent them when you're on the drugs.
You allocate four hours a week to do the drugs when somebody else is taking care of them.
And there's no hangover with mushrooms.
You wake up the next day feeling fucking great.
You can drive fine.
You can take them to school and you can feed them their breakfast.
It's not like doing alcohol or cocaine where you're, like, hung over for days on end afterwards.
You wake up and you feel better than you did the day before.
Well, except...
I mean, even I don't know if that's true or not.
I take your word for it.
But accept that it does mess with your sense of reality.
And my concern is that as a parent, You want to transfer as much reality to your children as possible because that's the medium they're gonna actually have to have jobs in and save money in and buy property in or whatever it is that they want to do and drive through and so I think as a parent you want to bring as much reality to your children as possible and I think if you're continually tripping out and you are thinking you're in some alternate dimension That's going to kind of freak out your kid,
because either you're going to hide that from your kid, which is a very important part of who you are, or you're going to give them the kind of verbal torrent that you give to me, which is going to destabilize their sense of reality.
And I don't know that you have that right to do that to a child.
If the child grows up and wants to do it as an adult, obviously that's their...
It's no different than me telling them about the sex that me and my wife had last night.
It's not for them to know.
They're children, and I'm not going to...
No, no, but I'm not saying that you would have them stare at you while you take the drugs.
What I'm saying is that because taking the drugs has given you the sense that your subjective experience has some sort of otherworldly reality, that metaphysical supposition is going to transfer itself to your kids because either you're going to pretend to be Somebody who's never taken these drugs, like the way that I would parent, or the drugs that you took and would continue to take is going to have an effect on how you describe and provide reality to your child.
In other words, they're going to get the effect of your drug use without obviously them taking the drugs.
And I don't think that's a fair thing to do to kids.
I think you want to give them as much reality as humanly possible.
If they want to take drugs when they get older, that's their choice.
But I don't think you want to give them your metaphysical drug hallucinations as if there's something to do with reality.
Well, in that sense, my definition of reality is different than yours.
So I think that by instilling my kids with my understanding of reality, it's going to make them more prosperous than had I not had these experiences.
Because you're instilling your kids with what your perception of reality is, and I'm instilling my kids with what my perception of reality is.
And neither of us know if we're fucking right about it.
No, I know that I'm right.
Look, listen, I can't do this for 30 years and have worked all the way through metaphysics and epistemology and ethics and politics.
I can't have a podcast based upon rational philosophy and then say, well, but I don't know if I'm right.
I know for absolute certainty that I'm right and I know for absolute certainty that your subjective experiences are in fact subjective experiences and not anything to do with other realities or GoPros shimmering into another dimension or collective vibrations of whom and whom and who cares?
You are going through subjective experiences and you've gone through so many that they're displacing your sense of objective reality.
And I don't think it's fair to put that on kids because they're not going to be on the drugs, thank God.
And so you're going to be providing the effects of brain-damaged drug use on kids who aren't taking the drugs.
Yes, it hurts your brain to continually mess with your sense of reality.
Let me ask you this, though.
Let me ask you this.
Whether my reality is right or your reality is right, we're both fucking wrong, man.
If you think that you're right about something, you're wrong in thinking that you're right.
Dude, you just said that my perspective was bullshit.
So you just told me that I was completely wrong about something.
This is the brain damage that I'm talking about, is that you just told me I was completely wrong about something, and then you try to hand me this crap that somehow nobody can ever be completely wrong about something.
This is the kind of disordered thinking that you're experiencing.
Nobody can be completely sure about anything.
You just said what I said was bullshit.
Yeah, it is though.
That's why I said it.
Okay, so you're absolutely sure that you can't be absolutely sure about anything.
And you're absolutely sure that I'm wrong, but nobody can ever be right or wrong about anything.
This is the disordered thinking that I'm talking about.
That you and me are perceiving 1% of the electromagnetic spectrum.
So why is our 1% the reality, the real thing that's going on when we're not perceiving 99% of the rest of it?
Why is it real?
The fact that you don't know everything doesn't mean that what you know is invalid, right?
So when I was a kid, I studied my times table, right?
I went from 1 times 1 to 12 times 12 is 144.
I learned my times tables.
I don't think kids do that anymore, but that's what I learned when I was a kid.
Now, does that mean I know every possible mathematical combination?
Of course not.
I know my times table.
The fact that I don't know every possible mathematical combination does not mean that the times table is purely subjective or And it's completely wrong because I don't know all the math in the known universe.
I'll recant what I said then.
And I'll say that...
You knowing your times tables or you knowing what you know about this version of reality is true.
I think that the reason why I listen to you is because I really respect your opinion and you're well researched and you give great points on what you talk about and I think that you challenge a lot of topics that a lot of people aren't challenging and you present Information in such a way that it is irrefutable to a certain extent.
But that is only one version of reality that your perceptions are based off of.
And if you think that I'm wrong, if you think that I'm making this up, that I'm completely delusional, I would ask you, To take 10 minutes out of your life and smoke dimethyltryptamine and say that you disagree with me afterwards.
That is absolutely never, ever going to happen.
And listen, no, no, listen, you're telling me to do something that is illegal.
You're telling me to do something that is going to harm me.
You're telling me to hurt this delicate, amazing machinery of my brain so that I'll agree with you.
I don't want to damage my brain so that I'll agree with you.
That is not the point of philosophy.
It's like saying, hey, if you want to be a really great pianist, take a sledgehammer and make a fist and pound the sledgehammer into your fist until it's broken, and then you'll be a great pianist.
It's like, no, that's not how you become a great pianist.
You become a great thinker by reasoning, by subjecting yourself to the objective standards of evidence and empiricism and rationality.
You don't just harm your brain by causing waking delusions and think you're getting to the truth.
Who's your favorite philosopher?
Depends on my day.
Depends what I'm studying.
Depends the topic.
Do you like Plato?
Are you into Plato or Socrates or any of those Greek motherfuckers?
Of the Greeks, I would say Aristotle is my favorite.
Aristotle doing drugs.
Damaged his brain by doing psychedelic plants.
Damaged it.
No, he didn't.
It gave him a different view.
Wait, how do you know Aristotle did psychedelics?
Some of them went to the Eleusidian mystery schools.
It was a part of their culture that every person inside of the culture got to go to it.
And him and Socrates and fucking Plato and all those motherfuckers were taking LSD and that's how they gained...
That's where philosophy started in the white man world, essentially, was once we got back to these tribal situations.
I want to say something, though.
And listen, Ayn Rand took speed for decades.
Exactly.
And it was terrible.
It made her paranoid.
It made her vicious, highly aggressive.
And it killed her creativity.
Well, I don't want to compare speed to a natural plant, especially an endogenous hallucinogen that's being produced in your body as we speak.
Because speed is not that.
Yeah.
Okay.
And look, I mean, so I don't, I just did a whole life of Aristotle.
I didn't hear anything about him doing drugs, but let's say he did.
Okay.
Well then he took some drugs, but that didn't make him a better philosopher.
If anything, it harmed his philosophy.
Excuse me.
Still talking.
Still talking.
So it harmed his philosophy to the point where Aristotle would have made fundamental errors like defending something like slavery or religiosity and so on.
So maybe it harmed him and kept him from getting to the rational summit of excellence in philosophy.
But listen, I get when I'm not going to be able to get through to someone.
So I appreciate you letting me have this harangue together.
Sorry, go ahead.
You can have the last word.
You've gotten through to me more than you know.
You've influenced my life a lot.
And I really respect you.
Terence McKenna had this theory that as monkeys came out of the treetops and the grasslands of Africa, they started looking for a new food source.
And one of the food sources that they found was the psychedelic mushroom that grows inside of cattle dung.
It grows out of the cattle dung.
And this is why all of the early religions are based off of cow goddesses and all of that stuff.
And there's this thing in history that nobody can account for which is called the missing link.
When our brain grew in a hundred thousand years more than any other organ in any other species has grown Throughout history, and he believes, and science is starting to show this right now, that it was the psychedelic mushroom that caused the frontal lobe, essentially what makes you a good philosopher, your ability to articulate, all of that came from early humanity's use with psychedelic plants.
You can look back into history, the origins of every religion It's shamanism.
That's where it all started.
And I think there's a resurgence in our culture bringing us back to these shamanic archetypes and shamanic views of reality that's going on right now.
And you see it in the countercultures tattooing their skin and stretching out their ears and dancing in mosh pits around a symbolical fire.
All of this stuff is happening again.
And I implore you, Stefan, especially because I respect you and I think that people like you should be the ones that are doing psychedelics because it'll benefit our culture in the best way possible.
Yeah, ballet dancers don't do steroids.
At least this one doesn't.
And look, I mean, yeah, we can go back to what...
What occurred in South America thousands of years ago, yeah, they smoked a lot of tea, they failed to progress as a civilization, they were brutal towards their children, and they regularly performed ritual sacrifices where they ripped open the ribcages of their children and held their still beating hearts up for the gods to consume.
So I'm a little skeptical of the stuff that went on thousands of years ago.
And if you want to regress back to monkeys stuffing drugs up their ass, that's one thing, but I'm going to go forward...
With reason and evidence.
So thanks a lot.
I'm going to close that part of the call off.
I appreciate the call.
No, no, no.
I gave you the thing and now we're going to move on.
What?
Is it dying off?
Okay.
So I do appreciate this, but I'm going to stand firm on this particular issue.
I think that these hallucinogens are very damaging.
I think they're very dangerous.
I think they're a way of bypassing emotional pain rather than dealing with it.
it.
I think it messes with your circuitry to the point where you can believe really subjective, crazy, unsubstantiated things like GoPros vanishing into other dimensions.
I don't think that's kind of where we want to be when it comes to moving forward in human society.
And I think we could see all the disordered thinking and contradictions that were occurring.
But nonetheless, it was a very interesting conversation and I appreciate it.
I wish that there were more people in these people's lives who could push back on some of these torrents of irrationalities that come out of these addictions, but I guess I'll have to step in where I can.
Thanks everyone so, so much for listening.
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