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June 2, 2016 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:24:52

3308 Nobody Will Hire Me - Call In Show - May 31st, 2016

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	Hi, hi, everybody.
	It's Evan Molyneux from Freedom Main Radio.
	Hope you're doing well.
	Great callers tonight, just before we get into that.
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	First caller, a fine young lady, very pregnant.
	In fact, I tried not to make any startling noises during the conversation.
	She's not hugely satisfied with her relationship with her mother and wants to make sure that she doesn't pass along those bad habits when she becomes a mother herself.
	So we had a good conversation and a role play, which she found one of the most helpful conversations she's ever had.
	So there's that.
	And then, ever heard of this thing called the social contract?
	Well, we had a dissection of it with a caller.
	Implicit contracts, social contracts, and whether they are valid, and if not, why not?
	And the third caller is smart, articulate, well-educated, and apparently unhirable.
	And...
	In talking to him, it became at least clear to me why that would be the case, why he would go on job interviews but not get job offers.
	And so I made what may be, to new listeners, a surprising offer.
	And he accepted.
	You can hear all about it.
	Alright, well up first today we have Carolyn.
	Carolyn wrote in and said, I'm a 32-year-old white married female who is a stay-at-home wife.
	My husband and I are expecting our first child and we are experiencing all of the emotions of first-time parents.
	Thanks in part to your show, we've made changes in our lives so I can be a stay-at-home mother.
	I have listened to Stefan's most recent podcast about the benefits of stay-at-home parents and parent-child bonding that is so crucial to a lifelong meaningful relationship with your children.
	My question stems from the fact that despite being raised in a two-parent home with my mother being stay-at-home, I have a very distant and non-communative relationship with my family, especially my mother.
	Because I am soon to be a mother, I fear that if I cannot get to the bottom of why my relationship with my mother is so fractured, it will carry over and negatively affect my relationship with my future children.
	How can I ensure that I will not do the same to my children in the years to come?
	That's from Carolyn, who it's quite possible she may go into labor during this call.
	She's ready to go from that standpoint.
	So welcome to the show, Carolyn.
	Hi, how are you?
	I'm well, Carolyn.
	How are you doing?
	Doing well, thank you.
	Yeah, listen, I know that late bump stage where it's less of a bump and more of a prow of a battleship.
	I was chatting with a friend of mine yesterday.
	Who's very pregnant.
	And I was just saying, okay, on the way home, no speed bumps, no startling music on the radio.
	And yeah, well, good.
	I guess, obviously, let us know if we need to call anyone, but I'm sure you'll be fine.
	Congratulations.
	Of course, it's a thrilling and wonderful, amazing thing to be a parent.
	So there's BC, before kids, and AD, after diapers, and the twain never seemed to meet at all.
	So I'm thrilled to hear about that.
	Congratulations.
	And of course, thank you so much for letting me know about the part that the show is playing and helping you make decisions like Staying home with your child.
	It shouldn't need a lot of arguments to do that.
	We've gone kind of far from our sort of instinctual simian roots as far as child protections go.
	But it's great to hear that.
	Now, let's get to the issue that is big for you, which is mom.
	Yes.
	I shouldn't make that sound so sinister.
	Mom!
	But tell me a little bit about how it goes...
	At the moment with your mom, like when you talk with her, what sort of stuff goes on?
	So when I talk to my mom on the phone, it's like a 15-minute limit, and then I can't take it anymore.
	But there's so much unpacking to do in my mind that I don't know if it's more helpful for me to dive into my mom's past and maybe why she is the way that she is.
	Or if, you know, I don't know the best way to approach it.
	I can just ask questions and then if, you know, because I know what it's like when you've thought about something your whole life and you're asked to explain it, it's like, well for me at least, jump from tangent to tangent, right?
	This is why, like I just did a video on 100,000, 100 million views on the channel and I had to, I thought, oh, I'll just wing it.
	It's like, nope, don't do that.
	Write it down.
	Congratulations on that, by the way.
	That's very exciting.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	I appreciate that.
	Well, why don't we start with what is unbearable?
	You know, if you go to the doctor, they say, where does it hurt?
	So what happens after 15 minutes for you, Carolyn?
	It's just really, I don't have patience.
	I think is the biggest thing where I just don't have...
	I'm sorry to laugh.
	So you immediately start with a self-criticism.
	Good to know.
	That means we're on fertile ground.
	Because you've already talked about, well, you lack patience.
	In other words, you're too impatient, and therefore the issue is with you.
	That's just important to note.
	It's always at the beginning of what people say that we find the truth.
	But go ahead.
	Okay.
	My mother is just a very anxious person, and I can't deal with the anxiety anymore in my life, I guess, because I was in that environment growing up.
	So my husband and I moved out of that state about eight years ago, like 400 and some odd miles away.
	Basically, in retrospect, to flee the situation.
	Right.
	So when I talk to my mom now, you know, being able to look at my family situation from the outside, like through the looking glass, so to speak, it's really hard for me to have patience with the whole situation, with my mom's anxiety and everything.
	So I think that that's where my impatience stems from, is just...
	You know, kind of having a bigger picture of what's really going on with my family and then, you know, not really being able to do anything about it.
	Well, okay, hang on.
	But if you were to have a switch in yourself, Carolyn, that...
	I'm sorry, is it Caroline or Carolyn?
	I just want to make sure.
	It's Caroline.
	Caroline, because that way I don't have to fudge the syllable at the end and pretend I'm being sensitive.
	All right.
	All right.
	So, Caroline, if you could push a switch in yourself that would give you infinite patience with your mother's anxiety, would you hit that switch?
	Absolutely.
	You would?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	I'm going to try and talk you out of that decision just so you can be forewarned.
	I want to have a relationship, you know, what I consider to be a functional relationship.
	Because it's not that...
	I mean, I talk to my mom on a regular basis.
	I talk to my family, you know, at least on a weekly basis.
	So it's not like we go months without communicating.
	It's just when we do communicate, it's nothing of substance.
	Well, no.
	If it's nothing of substance, then what you'd experience is boredom, not frustration.
	So there must be something coming across the wire from your mother around anxiety that makes it unbearable.
	True.
	Like you said, I couldn't take it.
	Now, 15 minutes of being bored, I don't know.
	You made it through public school, right?
	So you could probably handle being bored, but there must be something else that's going on with Ragusa.
	What is the kind of stuff that your mom is anxious about and how does she express it?
	She...
	How do I put it?
	She hyperfocuses on things and then elaborates to the point where detail is painful to listen to, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, what kind of stuff?
	A perfect example would be yesterday I was having a conversation with my mom And, you know, we were talking about how when they come out here, once the baby is born, that, you know, she's going to lend a helping hand, basically, with the baby because I'm going to be breastfeeding the baby.
	And she had to go into a five-minute conversation about how, because she's not able to breastfeed, You know, I'm going to have to, like, it's just the amount of detail that she went into with that explanation.
	You know, I'm not able to breastfeed, so then you're going to have to do this, and you're going to have to basically micromanaging the situation.
	Sorry, she's not going to be able to breastfeed, therefore you have to breastfeed?
	Yes.
	And I don't mean to laugh, but yes.
	Uh...
	Yeah, you know, I can see that if I was maybe walking up to a fridge and there was fresh, wholesome jar of milk and then a jar of milk from, say, a pharaoh's tomb, whose expiry date was several thousand years ago.
	Yeah, I'd pretty much go with the fresh stuff.
	So, all right.
	So, she is reminding you that she cannot breastfeed.
	Which I'm fairly sure you're aware of.
	And therefore, do you think she feels that she might be criticized for not breastfeeding?
	Possibly.
	I've never gotten that vibe from her before because I know that some women are really on the defensive about not having breastfed.
	Oh, so she didn't breastfeed you?
	No, I was not breastfed.
	Oh, right.
	And was that because she went back to work?
	No, that was just a choice at the time.
	Oh, I'm sorry, because you already said that your mom would stay at home.
	Sorry, I forgot that.
	Yeah, that's fine.
	So she went to formula because that's what the cool kids were doing at the time?
	Yeah, I mean, I have an older brother and she tried breastfeeding with my older brother and...
	You know, from what I'm going to experience very soon, it's a very challenging and patience demanding task and I think she just It can be.
	It doesn't happen.
	It's one of those things where you think it's basically going to be like peeing.
	Oh, here we go.
	But as opposed to you need the right music and the white noise and the nipple covers.
	It's like trying to land a helicopter in a windstorm sometimes.
	But it doesn't have to be that way.
	I've certainly talked to parents with whom breastfeeding was pretty easy.
	There's no way to know ahead of time, I think.
	Okay, so she tried breastfeeding your older brother, didn't work out well, she didn't try breastfeeding you, so of course you went straight on formula and stuff like that, right?
	Yes, from what I recall, my mother telling me yes, that's true.
	Okay, so do you think that she regrets that decision?
	Have you talked to her about benefits of breastfeeding and I assume your choice to breastfeed?
	No, not really.
	When I said earlier that we don't talk about anything of substance, we don't really talk about anything.
	It's just, hi, how are you?
	And then when we do get into those details, then my mom takes over with pointing out the fact that she can't breastfeed and then It's probably more frustration than impatience, as you pointed out.
	And then I shut down and I just don't even want to talk anymore.
	And when your mother brings up the Paleolithic point that her breasts are a little past their due date, I mean, certainly, look, if somebody did that to me on a call, I'd immediately stop them and say, why do you feel the need to tell me something self-evident?
	Right.
	You know, please don't wake up and tell me that the world is a sphere and that the sky is blue.
	You know, like, I'm a smart guy, and even if I wasn't, I'd know that stuff.
	Right.
	So I'd immediately, okay, well, why are you telling me this?
	It's annoying, right, and frustrating, and that's not how I want our communication to go.
	And do you have any idea what you think she might say if you said that?
	She would probably...
	Take it very personally and shut down herself.
	So she would punish you with a kind of emotional distance for upsetting her?
	Is that a quick way to put it?
	I don't mean to put words in your mouth, but...
	Yeah, absolutely.
	That's my mom in a nutshell, basically, because their first line of defense is the silent treatment.
	Right.
	Okay.
	Okay, so in a sense, it's a confirmation that you're not there in the conversation, right?
	Because clearly your mother knows that you know she can't breastfeed, right?
	Right.
	So the fact that she's telling you this as if it's a relevant and important piece of information that you need to know means that you're already not there in the conversation, right?
	Right.
	And so if you then attempt to make yourself present in the conversation, in other words, mom, why are you telling me something that's so ridiculously self-evident?
	What's going on?
	Then she gets huffy and shuts down and is offended, right?
	Yes.
	Or upset or whatever it is and then gets smaller syllabic or won't respond or something like that, right?
	Yes.
	So it's a real complicated trap, right?
	Because you either – Are not there in the conversation in that you don't speak your mind.
	Or if you do speak your mind, then you're rejected, and so there's no possible way to be there in the conversation.
	Does that make sense?
	Yes, absolutely.
	Okay.
	I know this one well.
	I will not say I'm enormously out of the orbit of this kind of parenting when I was a child.
	So I do understand it.
	So have you ever, in your memory, have you ever had that kind of connection with your mom, however fleeting that you feel breaks that pattern?
	Do you mean having like a close relationship with my mom and then having like a time where that became fractured?
	Is that what you mean?
	Even just a minute or two of genuine, relaxed, open and honest connection?
	I'm dealing with pregnancy brains to fans.
	Hold on a second. Not in recent...
	Not within the last eight years, I would say.
	And prior to that, can you...
	Like that it would happen prior to that?
	No.
	I honestly can't.
	It's all...
	My memory of my relationship with my mom is just...
	What I'm calling just very superficial.
	Like there's nothing, there's no like mother-daughter talk.
	There's no emotion to it.
	It's just very like going through the motions of, how are you doing?
	I'm doing fine.
	How was your day?
	Like very interview-like is how I recall my relationship with my mom.
	Well, actually, interviewers are supposed to get to something real.
	Whether you're interviewing for a job or, you know, Barbara Walters is making you cry.
	If there were an interview who said, how was your day?
	Okay, thanks for the interview.
	My day was fine, too.
	They wouldn't be an interviewer for long.
	That's not the right way to put it.
	Okay.
	I mean, I interview people and I'm not really trying to get to find out how their morning was and whether they stubbed their toe over the weekend.
	True.
	So?
	So it's just, it's very amotive, I guess.
	A motive?
	Yeah, like lacking emotion.
	Lacking in the depth of feeling.
	Right.
	But it's, so it's, it's lacking feeling, which is not, I mean, male, female potential differences aside, it's not the end of the world for some relationships to lack feeling.
	If it's an educational relationship, let's just say your mom was not very emotionally connected, but was very wise, whether those, you know, it could happen, but there's something about there being no emotion combined with.
	with a rigid set of boundaries about what you can talk about, those two to me are the really claustrophobic things. - Okay. - Because if, when you step outside the bounds of the prescribed interactions with your mother, if you're then when you step outside the bounds of the prescribed interactions with your mother, if you're then punished by distance, then that's not only not emotional, but also Mm-hmm.
	And that level of control is probably something that arouses a kind of rebelliousness or frustration in you.
	And this is probably why the hourglass of 15 minutes kind of runs out.
	Because you're like, okay, well, I can't speak my mind.
	I'm really bored with what we're talking about.
	And so I am basically...
	Let me put it in another way.
	I like my own company.
	And, you know, when I'm home alone, I can exercise and think about things.
	I can do a show.
	I can read.
	I mean, lots of great things.
	I've never felt, to my memory, I've never really felt lonely when I'm on my own.
	Because I have, you know, free range within my own brain, which is kind of a fun Fourth of July place to be.
	The only time, and I don't feel frustrated, I don't feel alienated, I don't feel any existential angst when I'm on my own.
	However, when I'm with someone where I cannot be myself, and I can't be myself by being alone, and I can't be myself by being with someone else, that is when I, I guess, tap into a deep well of resentment and frustration.
	And, of course, my show where I'm attempting to connect with the world and refusing to self-censor about what is going on in the world is obviously to some degree a reaction to that childhood where I felt lonely only in the presence of other people.
	I felt lonely only in the presence of other people because when I was in the presence of other people, I could neither be myself nor connect with them.
	And that was the great isolation for me growing up.
	It wasn't with everyone.
	I did have a few friends that I really could connect with, but certainly with regards to my family of origin, it was virtually impossible to be who I was because who I was just felt wrong to the people in my family.
	Like whenever I would sort of Occasionally, honestly say something that'd be this like, I don't know, did I just set fire to the house?
	Why can I not just say what's on my mind?
	And so for me, a lot of childhood was avoidance.
	It was avoiding people with whom I could not be myself.
	You know, if me plus you equals only you, then that is not an equation that I wish to pursue.
	And I'm just telling you sort of my Experience about all of this that there's, for me, non-existence.
	It's like those divers who go down and they hunt for oysters or other kinds of shells.
	And they sort of grip a little knife.
	I remember seeing this when I was a kid, grip a little knife between their teeth.
	They dive, they can dive down ridiculously deep.
	I guess they've got really good inner ears or something like that as far as equalization goes.
	So they can go down and they can, you know, grab three shells and they can come back up.
	So they're very good at it, but they still can't live there.
	They can't have no gills.
	They can't do what dolphins and whales do and stay down for Lord knows how long.
	And so for me, like I can dive into non-existence, but I'm buoyed up.
	I have like a...
	An oyster diver struggling to get back to the surface with his last breath, I have to flee people with whom I cannot exist because I can only stand a certain amount of non-existence.
	And that's because I know the difference between existence and non-existence.
	I know the difference between being present with myself and connected with myself and being in the presence of someone else where I am erased.
	And I'm going to assume, based upon your 15-minute time frame, that you have connected relationships with yourself, you have connected relationships with other people in your life, with your husband and so on.
	And so, because you can breathe air, you can't stay underwater in non-existence and you have to fight your way back to the surface to be again.
	Does that ring at all true with anything you've experienced or is that just my talk?
	No, that's the most eloquent way I've ever heard my situation being put.
	Yes, that's exactly what it sounds like it is for me.
	Woohoo!
	Bullseye!
	Excellent.
	Sometimes I just feel like I shoot an arrow over a house hoping to hit a target.
	You hit the nail right on the head with that one.
	Right.
	So that non-existence is a...
	A great challenge.
	And that's why I was asking if you'd ever had that connection with your mother.
	I mean, I was reflecting a little bit while you were using that analogy.
	And I would say that up until when basically puberty, until I started to come into my own person...
	I would say that there was never that feeling of non-existence, but when I started to, you know, show my own interests and show, you know, really taking interest in hanging out with other, you know, making friends and hanging out outside the house and, you know, doing things that were for me, that's when, you know, that non-existence started, I guess.
	Yeah, so you were gaining a kind of identity in your relationships outside the family, and therefore you had something to compare it with.
	Right.
	Okay, got it.
	Yeah, because otherwise, I mean, until you get connection, you're like a colorblind person trying to choose between green and blue.
	Right?
	It's like, well, they're pretty much, I don't know, flip a coin.
	I mean, you don't know.
	But once you get your sight, then you can see the difference between green and blue.
	And this is one of the reasons why people who are disconnected in your life try strenuously to avoid you becoming connected with other people, because then you can see the difference between existence and non-existence, between connection and disconnection between green and blue.
	So you were out there, I assume, having conversations with people outside your relationship with your mother.
	We haven't talked about your dad yet, but outside your relationship with your mother.
	And then once you get that connection, then you notice the lack of it in your own home.
	I mean, this is why I was talking recently about a friend of mine who died.
	And these are people that I actually had conversations with who found what I had to say valuable.
	And in my family, it was all about Making sure I didn't say anything that was potentially embarrassing or potentially upsetting or might offend hyper-British hysteria kind of stuff.
	And it didn't work.
	Sorry.
	It didn't quite work.
	But when I actually got a connection with people who enjoyed what I had to say and found what I had to say very valuable and I had a real connection with them, then...
	You know, you don't know till your first meal how hungry you've been your whole life, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, that's how it was with my husband's family when I first really started, you know, spending a lot of time with them.
	It was almost like a holy shit moment.
	Like, this is how a family is supposed to function and communicate.
	You know, it's like, wow.
	And then I would go back to my house and I'd get silent treatments and guilt trips because I was spending time over there and not with my family and...
	Yeah, that was fun.
	That was not a fun show.
	Right, and that's fascinating, right?
	That's fascinating.
	Very predictable, I would assume, or I would think, but it's very fascinating that rather than attempt to up their game and say, well, you know, Carolyn is getting something from this other family that she's not getting from us.
	Let's figure out what it is and attempt to provide it.
	They just attempt to build a wall of resentment, their resentment, between you and this other family.
	Mm-hmm.
	That's still happening, even to this day.
	Probably a lot of it's because I've yet to communicate my feelings to my family about it, for the reasons that we've somewhat discussed so far.
	You know, it's frustrating when my mother's already saying, well, your kids are going to prefer them over us because they're going to spend more, you know, like that.
	It's the constant pitting grandparent against grandparent, you know, that I am already emotionally exhausted over.
	Well, hang on, hang on.
	Oh my God.
	Oh my God.
	Sorry, I saw Angry Birds.
	I'm sorry, this is not funny.
	But the reason that I'm smiling is that it is so remarkable what insights disconnected people have.
	My mother said that she resented Ayn Rand because she felt that Ayn Rand had become my mother.
	Just something in passing.
	Burped up, moved past, can't be circled back, can't ever be exhibited.
	Truth.
	Let's move.
	Keep moving.
	Nothing to see here, right?
	And that your mom would say, okay, well, your kid is going to prefer the other grandparents to us.
	So that is, I would imagine, a truthful statement.
	And what was her justification for it?
	Did she say why?
	Just because my husband's parents are just much more outgoing.
	They have a much more Not aggressive in a bad way, but they're much more go-getters than my parents are.
	They're assertive and boisterous and chatty.
	Both of my parents are definitely betas.
	My mom is a beta trying to be an alpha, but is definitely a beta.
	Both of his parents are alphas.
	The way that my mom puts it is they always bulldoze the situation.
	Oh, boy.
	Unlike her controlling withdrawal if you say something wrong.
	Oh, that's not controlling.
	That's not aggressive at all.
	They're just bulldozing.
	I'm just a victim.
	Plowed under like a stone in a farmer's field.
	Just plowed under.
	Helplessness.
	It's like, oh, well, I disagree.
	It's like, wait a minute, weren't you just a victim?
	Yep.
	And with my mother, it's always somebody else.
	Like, she can't do this because of somebody else, or she can't say that because of somebody else, or she can't be happy because of this situation or that situation.
	It's very much the victim card when it comes to my mom.
	Yes, but people.
	You could try this.
	Yeah, but...
	There's this, this, and this.
	Well, how about this solution?
	Yeah, but...
	Right?
	And it's just like, it's like block, block, block, block, right?
	They're all shield, no sword.
	Right.
	We just had a conversation the other day because my father-in-law is very much interested...
	You know, in the progression of the pregnancy and is always asking a lot of questions, you know, to the point where it's almost overbearing and annoying, but that's okay because I'd rather have them involved and not involved in care than not care.
	But my mother has not asked hardly any questions the entire pregnancy.
	And it finally came to a head in conversation with her and she's like, well, You know, your father-in-law asked so many questions that I can't ask any questions.
	And I'm like, so because he's asking questions, you can't.
	Like, what part of that makes sense?
	The penis is asking questions about the vagina.
	So how could the vagina possibly ask questions about the vagina?
	Because the penis has already asked them.
	Right.
	There is a plumbing compatibility with those questions that I assume would be somewhat helpful.
	Right.
	Wow.
	Right.
	So it's his fault.
	Right.
	It's his fault that she has not been as actively involved in experiencing, expecting their first grandchild.
	It's their fault.
	She's a no-agency person.
	Yes.
	Right.
	I will do what I want, and anytime I'm criticized, I will blame someone else.
	Yes.
	How did you get your way through to an alpha family, Carolyn?
	That's an incredible feat.
	You're like the legless guy who's climbed Mount Everest with his teeth.
	I mean, it's incredible.
	How did you get from this kind of origin?
	How did you get through to an alpha family?
	How pretty are you?
	No, I'm just kidding.
	I'm just kidding.
	Go on.
	No, but for real, I definitely, I look at my husband and I look at the life that we've built and I'm just like, how the hell did I get here?
	Because, you know, I was first generation college student, so I was the first one to go to college.
	Didn't get any support from my family in terms of encouragement because they didn't even You know, help me get through that.
	It was just a stroke of luck with the guidance counselor that got me on my cascade, you know, and now I'm, you know, two masters into my education and I'm just like, how did I get there?
	Two masters?
	You mean one degree and your husband?
	No, I'm just kidding.
	Good for you.
	No, that's very impressive.
	And listen, you could just be an IQ fluke.
	That the combination of two people who may not have been intellectually scintillating produces this giant disco ball of intelligence called you, which you then, of course, will end up passing along through genes and through stimulation and breastfeeding and non-spanking and negotiation to your child.
	That is the hope.
	You're like two short parents looking up the nose of some giant...
	What the hell happened, right?
	Yeah.
	Right.
	And that is a really challenging situation.
	If I'm right, and I'm going to just assume that I am until you give me information to the contrary, because it fits and I have to have some basis for moving forward.
	But if you're a very smart person who come from a not smart family...
	See, wisdom has a lot to do with the deferral of gratification, right?
	So for your mother, you know, if she's asking fewer questions about your pregnancy, I think you said no questions about your pregnancy, and your father-in-law, who's not blood-related, is asking lots, then if that comes up, it's very uncomfortable for her to figure out why that is the case.
	Why is that the case?
	But instead, she can use this magic wand of, well, he...
	He stood in the way of all my questions, so I couldn't ask any questions.
	He asked so many questions, like, there were none left for me.
	You know, like, there's some finite, you know, you burn these.
	You've got ten pieces of wood.
	He burnt them all, so there's no wood.
	I can't burn ash.
	It's like, no questions, or you can just ask them.
	They're not limited.
	And so, less intelligent people will immediately try to wave away their anxiety or any possible criticism.
	Because for less intelligent people, criticism is like annihilation panic.
	Let me go out on a limb here and ask you the number of times where your mother has volunteered that she's wrong and apologized to you.
	I'm going to hold up a number here on the camera and I'm just going to ask you how many times your mother has voluntarily come to you and said, I was wrong about this, I'm sorry, here's how it's not going to happen again.
	Pretty damn close to zero.
	One, maybe two times in my life.
	Good.
	All right.
	So I had a goose egg up, but it's in the realm of goose eggs.
	It's in the realm of fagal.
	Okay.
	All right.
	And of course, you know, apologizing is what you do.
	You take the discomfort of apologizing in the moment because you wish your relationship to be better in the future.
	Okay.
	And...
	That's why you do uncomfortable things in the moment in a relationship, because you wish your relationship to be better in the future.
	Now, for me, if I am in a relationship and there is that kind of disconnect, it's very uncomfortable for me.
	I notice it.
	It bothers me.
	I've also noticed that it doesn't seem to bother other people.
	And that always puts you at a disadvantage in those relationships.
	If a lack of connection bothers you but not the other person, in fact, if a lack of connection benefits the other person because they can withhold connection and withhold approval or withhold interactions and then get you to dance their tune, you're always going to be at a disadvantage if you feel the disconnection or the frustration more or much more than the other person.
	Yes.
	My husband...
	Because you have nothing to negotiate with, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, my husband and I always kind of joke, but it's not funny.
	But when we go home to visit, it's like a two-day limit that within that two days, I'm either in tears or screaming at my husband just venting.
	Because...
	Screaming at your husband?
	What?
	Not doing it out on him, but like venting to him.
	Oh, screaming about your family with your husband.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Okay, screaming near your husband.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Otherwise, we were going to take a little pit stop there for you, but we'll keep moving there.
	All right.
	Yeah, and also, it must be frustrating for your husband because if you are not present around your family of origin, because, you know, your real family is in the future.
	That's just the reality of it, right?
	I mean, the family you choose is in the future.
	The family you were born into by accident, that's in the past.
	So this is why I say family of origin, not your family.
	And I actually learned this from a woman many, many years ago.
	No, it wasn't a woman.
	It was a guy.
	His wife kept saying, I'm going home for the weekend when she would go to visit her parents.
	And he kept saying to her, but this is your home.
	I'm going to go visit my family.
	He's like, well, we're family.
	Right?
	So she always said that was where her loyalties were.
	And lo and behold, I ended up divorced.
	But anyway.
	Because when your husband is with you and your family, he must miss you like crazy because it's hard for you to be there, right?
	Yes.
	I mean, luckily, because we grew up in the same hometown, so when we go home, it's always, you know, who are we supposed to spend time with because my mom's going to get angry at some point because we're not spending enough time over there.
	You know, it's such bullshit, Stefan, I swear.
	No, and I get it.
	Like most less intelligent or certainly less wise people, Carolyn, she wants the effects without the earning.
	She wants you to spend time with her as if you really liked it without actually having you really like it.
	It's like a union.
	The union says, well, we want to get paid $25 an hour.
	Okay, maybe you wanna get paid 50, why not 500, right?
	Rather than saying, how can I produce so much value that my wage is gonna go up, they say, we want the effects of having been more productive without the actual cause of being more productive, right?
	We want the effect of high pay without the productivity that determines it.
	And so the people who want the effects without the cause are very exhausting to be around.
	Because the cause should be coming from your desire To spend time with them.
	So if your mom says, well, you've got to spend time with here, you've got to spend time with us like you wanted to, that's all automatically erasing you because she's saying, well, your preferences don't matter.
	I just want the appearance of it.
	Yeah.
	So then you drag yourself over there, already seething, I assume, already resentful.
	And, you know, your husband in tow, bewildered and, right, fine.
	And...
	It's not probably particularly enjoyable because you can't deal with the elephant in the room, which is, well, why don't I want to be here?
	Yes.
	I feel bad for my husband a lot.
	He deals with a lot with my family.
	Right.
	So, you said, I have a very distant non-communicative relationship with my family, specifically my mother.
	That is false.
	Your mother defines your relationship with her.
	Okay.
	Instead of saying, I have a very distant, you know, I have a mole.
	It's just something that, right?
	You don't have a very distant and non-communicated relationship with your mother, in my opinion.
	I'll tell you sort of the reasons why and tell me if it makes any sense.
	Your mother does not allow you to get close.
	Your mother actively resists and rejects any honesty on your part, any dissatisfaction, any frustration, any desire to improve a pretty empty relationship.
	Your mother will not allow you to get any closer.
	Your mother will fight ferociously to keep you from being in the relationship.
	Does that make sense?
	Yes.
	To take an extreme example, If you are imprisoned in a totalitarian regime and you say, well, I just have a jail cell.
	No, it is the specific actions of those in power that are keeping you confined in a particular area.
	Your mother...
	And you'll see this very, very clearly as a parent, and I'm sorry to say, well, after a parent, you'll agree with this.
	At least it's more imminent now than for most, maybe by tomorrow, who knows, right?
	But you define the relationship.
	Children are so exquisitely sensitive to what their parents want, for obvious evolutionary reasons, that children who significantly displeased their parents at a time when there were lots of children and not a lot of food would not survive.
	So children are extraordinarily sensitive Focused on pleasing their parents.
	The idea that my daughter is in charge of our relationship is a fantasy.
	Now, I obviously give her as much latitude as possible and as much feedback as welcome feedback and, you know, ask her every day what I could have done better and all that.
	But the reality is that I still define all of that.
	And she is incredibly sensitive to disapproval.
	I don't know.
	Maybe it's a wasp.
	I don't know.
	But she is incredibly sensitive to disapproval, which is why I don't use it.
	Or, you know, if it happens, it happens, right?
	But it's very, very rare.
	And once you're in charge to that degree, once you have that degree of authority and power over another human being, she's not here by choice.
	She didn't choose me.
	She can't un-choose me.
	She can't choose to live somewhere else.
	She can't choose that I have a different occupation.
	She can't choose...
	Anything.
	As far as the structure that she's in.
	She didn't choose her mom, didn't choose me.
	She didn't choose friends, didn't choose extended family, didn't choose any of that.
	She's trapped.
	And I'm concerned that, you know, that there's two areas in which we generally fail.
	Number one, which is where your mother is, That you assume you have far less agency than you actually do.
	You have to externalize and blame other people.
	It wasn't my fault and other people did stuff and therefore, right?
	That, I would say, may be your mother's challenge.
	But your challenge, if I were to try and sum it up, is the opposite.
	It's still kind of the same.
	Your mother thinks she has far too little agency and you think you have far too much.
	Okay.
	Because you said, I get frustrated.
	I have this relationship.
	No.
	Your mother defines your relationship.
	And you cannot will things with your mother that she will not allow.
	You can't make it happen.
	You can't make that connection.
	You can't build that bridge.
	You know, if I'm trying to build a bridge over a river and the other person has the capacity to call in infinite airstrikes, guess what?
	That bridge ain't getting built.
	You cannot change something with someone who will not admit there's even a problem.
	Now your mother admits there's a problem, it's just everyone else's fault, right?
	Yeah.
	It's your fault that you want to spend more time with your in-laws.
	It's your father-in-law's fault that she can't ask questions about your pregnancy.
	And I'm sure she's going to say it was society's fault that she didn't breastfeed should she ever come across that information.
	So you can't change things with other people.
	This is one of these fundamental things about life that we kind of all know.
	We kind of all know.
	I mean, you know this because you don't try.
	Right?
	You don't sit down with your mom and say, Mom...
	We've got to fix things.
	You know, you've got a grandkid coming.
	I need to be present for my grandchild.
	I'm going to get to all of that in a sec.
	But, you know, we need to change things.
	We've got to mix it up a little.
	This is not satisfying for me.
	You know, the reality is I don't really enjoy the conversations very much we have on the phone.
	I don't really like coming over.
	And I want to like coming over.
	And I want to look forward to you calling.
	But things have to change.
	I can't change them.
	But we need to change something in our relationship.
	And what would happen if you tried to have that conversation?
	The way that I perceive it would be that it would...
	I think that she would, on the surface, be accepting of it, but I don't see much changing.
	You want to do a roleplay?
	Sure.
	All right.
	I'm Carolyn.
	Okay.
	Hang on.
	I just need to stuff four watermelons under my shirt here.
	Two for the baby and two for the feeders.
	Alright.
	So, you be your mom.
	And I sit down with you and say, Mom, maybe it's because I'm just about to have a baby or whatever, but I really want our relationship to get better.
	You know, I don't really look forward to you calling.
	I kind of look forward to getting off the phone when you call.
	When we come back to town, I want to visit my in-laws more.
	I don't like that.
	I mean, I want to, really want to spend time with you, but it always feels like...
	There's not a connection.
	There's something that's missing from me.
	Maybe it's been missing, I don't know, my whole life with you.
	I don't know.
	But I really, really feel frustrated.
	And distance, not really a feeling, but I just, I really, really want something to change in our relationship.
	So I look forward to our time together more.
	Well, you know it's not easy that you moved a thousand miles away.
	Well, that's an interesting question, right?
	Because maybe, just maybe, one of the reasons I moved a thousand miles away is because I was frustrated with our relationship and the lack of connection.
	So that may be more of an effect than a cause.
	That may be, but how are we supposed to mend things when you're so far away and you don't like talking to me on the phone and you don't have patience with me on the phone?
	Good.
	Okay, no, listen, this is great.
	And I'm sorry to interrupt, Mom, but this is great.
	So you get that there's something that needs to be mended, right?
	So let's not talk about the times when we're not communicating because we're trying to communicate right now.
	So what is it for you that needs to be mended or could be improved in our relationship?
	That's not just a criticism of me, but, you know, maybe some things that could change on your side.
	Well, I mean, I can't...
	Call you all the time.
	Because, you know, you don't always answer your phone.
	You don't always answer my text messages.
	No, no, no.
	See, Mom, I'd like it if it wasn't just blaming me or things that I am doing wrong.
	Because you're the mom, I'm the child.
	It can't all be my fault.
	That's totally the tail wagging the dog, right?
	You defined the relationship.
	You gave birth to me.
	You've been in charge of our relationship.
	Certainly for the first 15 years of our life, you were the one defining everything.
	So the problems in our relationship can't be 25 or 30 years down the road, after I was born and after you were in charge of our relationship, it can't be that I don't answer my texts and that's the only problem we have.
	Come on.
	I mean, I don't want this to be a dump on Carolyn's session.
	Well, I guess, I mean, I could take more initiative in calling you to check in on you to see how you're doing, to take interest in what you're doing.
	Okay, so you could take more interest in what I'm doing.
	Yeah.
	Do you know why you don't take interest in what I'm doing?
	I don't want you to fake it.
	If you genuinely had interest, then you'd be asking, right?
	So there's some reason why you don't.
	Do you know why that might be?
	Well, you know that I'm not really happy with my job, and I'm pretty exhausted at the end of the day, and the last thing I feel like doing is having a conversation on the phone.
	So, you know, I don't really have, you know, in the time difference between, you know, the time zone difference, it's a little difficult.
	So, I'm just, I'm tired at the end of the day, and you know that, I've told you that.
	Okay, so you're tired at the end of the day, and you view a conversation with me as not re-energizing, or not something that is going to make you feel less tired or happier, but something that would further drain you from an already depleted state?
	I'm not criticizing, I'm just trying to sort of understand.
	Like, if you're tired, you know, if I'm tired, I want to go sit on the couch, right?
	But if calling me is not sitting on the couch, but going on the treadmill when you're already tired, that's important to know, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	So the problems that we have now, we could say are distance or technology or your job or whatever happens.
	But in my experience, our relationship was defined when we were living together as mother and daughter, right?
	So, before I moved away, before I got married, before I was pregnant, before there was a time zone difference, do you think that our relationship was good when I was a child?
	I thought so.
	Do you think that there's anything that could have been improved in hindsight about our relationship when I was a child?
	Improvement on my part or improvement on your part?
	No, your part.
	I don't know what else I possibly could have done.
	I mean, I was stay at home.
	You know, we put you guys in private school for a while.
	I was there every day.
	Your father worked hard for you guys.
	I thought that your life was pretty good.
	I didn't think that there was anything that was lacking.
	I guess I never thought about it.
	You never thought if you could have done a better job as a mom?
	Oh, I probably...
	I know I thought it a lot, but I never communicated that to anybody.
	You know, it's just...
	Oh, good.
	Well, I'm just curious what you thought you could have done better.
	I mean, if you've thought about it a lot, I mean, that would be something interesting for me to know.
	I don't know.
	No, you just said you thought about it a lot.
	Yes.
	You thought about things you could have done better a lot, and I'm just curious what they were.
	Well, I can't remember.
	It was a really long time ago.
	Wait, you've thought about this a lot, but you have no idea what you thought.
	No, I really can't.
	Think of what I was thinking 30 years ago.
	So you've thought about it a lot, but not over the last 30 years?
	Well, I mean, I've thought about it more recently since you...
	Oh, good.
	Okay, so let's forget about the 30 years ago, right?
	What have you thought more recently about things that you would do differently?
	I don't know if I know what I needed to do differently, but I've always struggled with why you moved away.
	No, no.
	See, we're talking about my childhood, not why we moved away.
	And I'll just ask one more time, because at least I'm aware that you're refusing to answer the question, but I'd like you to do that honestly.
	Like, if you just say, well, I'm not going to answer the question, or I think I was a perfect mother or whatever, then just say that honestly.
	But this avoidance is one of the reasons why it's frustrating, and I feel distant from you, Mom.
	Right?
	Because I've asked you now four or five times, and you've said that you've thought about things you could have done better as a mother.
	I've asked you four or five times what they are, and you won't tell me.
	So what you need to do is, we just need this kind of honesty and directness.
	Say, well, either no, I thought me as a mom, I'm perfect, or I know there's things I could have done better, but I'm not going to tell you.
	Well, I mean, of course there are things that I could have done better, but I'd I can't answer it.
	I guess I'm refusing to answer simply because I can't remember what those things were.
	Okay, so you can't remember.
	You're sure you could have done things better as a mother, but you can't possibly remember what they could have been?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	And let me ask you this.
	So I'm going to give birth to a child.
	Do you think that You will hit that child with a wooden spoon once or twice a week if you're, I don't want to say babysitting because grandmothers are more than babysitting, but do you think that if the child disobeys you, let's say I have a little girl, if the little girl disobeys you or does something that you don't like, will you take a wooden spoon out and whack the child with that once or twice a week?
	Well, that's how I parented you, but you've already communicated to me that you and your husband are not going to be Um, spanking.
	So I would try to respect that.
	You try to?
	So you might accidentally slip and hit my child with a wooden spoon?
	Possibly.
	Right.
	And would you hit the child with the bare hand as well?
	No, I would probably use the spoon.
	You would use the spoon?
	Yeah.
	So you feel that or you believe that hitting me 50 to 100 times a year 500 to 1000 times over the course of my childhood with your bare hand and a wooden spoon was not a problem.
	It was good parenting.
	Why do you have to put it like that?
	It wasn't that bad.
	You turned out okay.
	The whole point is that we're trying to have a conversation about our relationship.
	The fact that I'm not currently jumping off a bridge doesn't mean you did everything right.
	The question is, hitting me 50 to 100 times a year, bare hand wooden spoon, do you stand by that now as a good parenting choice?
	Yes.
	I think children need severe redirection sometimes when they're not listening.
	Right.
	Okay, so they need severe redirection where they need to be hit with a wooden spoon when they're not listening, right?
	Yes.
	Do you think that everyone who doesn't listen should get hit with a wooden spoon?
	Probably would do the world a lot of good.
	Do you think that if you, when you get old, when you have senior moments or when you get very old and you don't listen or you don't remember, do you think that I should hit you with a wooden spoon to help you remember?
	No, I'm an adult.
	Well, no, but I mean, children are limited in their cognitive abilities just as you will be as you age.
	So you want to beat me when I'm elderly?
	Oh, now it's beating.
	So if I do to you when you're old what you did to me as a child, that's called beating.
	So you admit to beating me as a child?
	If that's what you want to call it, yes.
	You called it that, mom, not me.
	Do you think that my husband and I's decision to not beat our child, do you think that's bad parenting?
	I really just do not understand where this conversation is going, Caroline.
	I don't understand what you're getting at.
	I don't need you to understand.
	I need you to answer the question.
	Don't make me take out the wooden spoon, Mom, for you not listening.
	Do you think that my husband and I's desire to not beat our children with a wooden spoon is that?
	Because when you beat me with a wooden spoon, that was good parenting.
	Is what my husband and I, what we're now doing, is that bad parenting for you?
	They can't both be good parenting, right?
	I guess.
	No, they can't both be good parenting, right?
	Because if it was good parenting to not hit me with a wooden spoon, then it can't also be good parenting to hit me with a wooden spoon.
	So if your parenting was good, then my parenting is bad, and I'm going to be a bad parent by not hitting my daughter with a wooden spoon.
	I just think you're going to end up raising someone that doesn't know their limits, that doesn't understand the difference between right and wrong, when to stop doing something when asked.
	So then you will, in order to raise my child right, if you have the chance, you will hit them.
	Bare hand or wooden spoon.
	Well, I would try not to because that's what you and your husband are, you know, that's the parenting choice that you're making, but I guess I just don't know how else to handle the situation if the child's not listening to me.
	Okay, but your inability to know how to handle the situation doesn't mean that the way you handle the situation is right.
	Okay.
	Right, so if I don't know how to do something and do something randomly, that doesn't mean that it's right.
	What if I were to give you facts and studies that show that hitting children is bad for them?
	Okay.
	Okay.
	Would you accept that information, those studies that have gone on for 30 years and involved hundreds of thousands of children, that spanking and particularly beatings with implements are very bad for children?
	I would read them for you, but there's probably just as many studies that say that spanking is good.
	No, there aren't.
	Well, I would read them for you.
	And if it turned out that you were wrong, To spank me that it was harmful and violent.
	What then?
	I mean, Caroline, if you don't want me to spank your kids, I'm not going to spank your kids.
	Or you just said that you were going to try not to spank my kids.
	Because that's kind of risky, right?
	If I think, I mean, if I know that spanking, particularly with implements, is harmful, destructive, dangerous, bad.
	And I don't have the option to expose my child to someone who might hit them with a wooden spoon.
	You understand?
	I don't have that right.
	I don't have the right to expose my child to someone who is going to get violent.
	Or might.
	Well, I always knew that you didn't want your kids around us anyway, Caroline.
	So I guess that's what you're really getting at then.
	Is that you don't want us around your kids.
	But...
	Are you saying that if you're around my child, you might beat him?
	No, what I'm saying is that you've never been happy with the way that you were raised, and now you're going to take it out on us by not letting us be around our grandchildren.
	But you said that you might hit him.
	Or her.
	Do you think I'd let a babysitter?
	Do you think I'd let a stranger beat my daughter with a wooden spoon?
	No.
	Of course not.
	It's not a question of you being around my son or daughter or not.
	I simply don't have the right as a parent Whose major goal is to protect my child.
	I don't have the right to let someone around who might hit her with a wooden spoon.
	Okay, then I won't hit her.
	Okay, that is good.
	That is a good thing to hear and I appreciate You saying that, this is very important to me.
	Have you felt at all when, so you didn't feel as a child that we, that there was anything particularly wrong with our relationship?
	No, I didn't.
	When I was a child, I don't recall, mom, that you ever asked me if I was happy with the relationship.
	Well, you never complained about it.
	So I figured if you weren't complaining about it, then there was nothing wrong.
	Right.
	Do you think that I might have been scared that if I complained about the relationship, I might get hit with a wooden spoon?
	Well, I only hit you when you were out of line.
	Do you think that complaining about the relationship might have led to a relationship?
	To a conversation wherein you might think I was out of line?
	Possibly.
	Do you think that if you're beating someone 50 to 100 times a year, that it might not be the most inviting space to talk about improving the relationship?
	Possibly.
	Do you think it might have been worthwhile to ask at some point in the past if I was enjoying the relationship or finding it a great place to be?
	Yeah, I could have asked you.
	But again, I think that's it.
	Yeah, go ahead.
	But again, I didn't see any indication that there was anything wrong.
	So, you know, for you to...
	Now blame me for not asking you how you felt about our family situation is a little unfair because, you know, there was no indication in my mind that anything was wrong.
	You beat me with a wooden spoon 50 to 100 times a year.
	Never asked me whether I was happy with the relationship or anything that I might prefer to be different.
	And now You're complaining about me being unjust?
	Are you kidding me?
	I did the best that I could, Caroline.
	I don't know what else to say to you.
	Yes, I used a wooden spoon.
	No, I will not use a wooden spoon on your child.
	You know, I don't know what else you want me to say.
	Does it bother you that this is very painful to me?
	Well, it's painful for me to hear this too.
	But you did it.
	I didn't.
	You beat me, I didn't beat you.
	So shouldn't we be focusing on my pain?
	I guess I didn't know that it affected you that much.
	Like I said...
	You didn't know that hitting me with a wooden spoon...
	You just said severe correction.
	Severe course correction, you said.
	The whole point of hitting me with a wooden spoon was to affect me enormously.
	Don't tell me you didn't know it affected me.
	The whole point was to affect me.
	So then you tell me what I should have done.
	You're now still avoiding the fact that I'm hurt and angry about this.
	Then I'm sorry.
	Bye.
	Thank you.
	What do you mean?
	I'm sorry that my choice in parenting affected you so negatively.
	You think it was a mistake?
	If you are this hurt over it, I guess it must have been.
	Well, no, the point was to hurt me.
	That's what the wooden spoon was for.
	Right?
	So the fact that you seem surprised that you hurt me when the whole point was to hurt me.
	I mean, I don't understand.
	It's like punching someone in the face and then being surprised that they're hurt in the face.
	Yes.
	Hurt physically, but not emotionally.
	What do you mean, not emotionally?
	Is pain not an emotion?
	Not a sensation?
	You beat me with a wooden spoon to physically hurt me.
	You beat me with a bare hand to physically hurt me, to cause me pain and terror, to force me into compliance through violence.
	And you think that has no effect on emotions?
	I don't understand.
	I guess I didn't understand that.
	Didn't understand what?
	That it would have that kind of an impact on you.
	I was just doing what my parents did.
	Well, I guess it's up to me to break that cycle then.
	Thank you.
	You didn't want to.
	But I do.
	And that creates a distance between us, mom, that we're going to have to find some way To bridge the fact that I view what you did as very wrong.
	Wrong enough that I need to reverse it completely.
	The fact that you think it was perfectly right is a gulf.
	I don't know how we're going to solve it, but it is a gulf, and it's one of them.
	Now, Carolyn, at this point, I would try and wind the conversation down.
	Okay.
	Because I think that's as far as she could possibly go in one conversation without there being some titanic hyperreaction.
	And the titanic hyperreaction might actually occur 20 minutes after you hang up the phone.
	I don't know, right?
	But that's really close to blowback, in my opinion.
	And this role-playing is giving my mom a lot of credit because I'm sitting here thinking there ain't no way she's going to be in this conversation for this long.
	Zen mom of the gods!
	She would have sat down a long time ago.
	Right.
	Probably crying and hanging up the phone on me.
	Well, I'd do that.
	I wouldn't do this over the phone.
	Well, yeah, sure.
	But you know what I mean.
	How did it feel doing the roleplay?
	Sorry, what?
	It's amazing.
	You've got to listen back to this, man.
	When you slip into your mom, it's like, hey, where did Caroline go?
	She's gone, baby gone.
	It was enlightening seeing it from my mother's perspective.
	Yeah.
	You know, it's also interesting seeing how the lack of responsibility for things is so freaking apparent.
	It is all manipulation.
	Yeah.
	You understand?
	Like, you got that inhabiting her, right?
	Yeah.
	Right.
	Right.
	It is all control, management, and manipulation.
	And she always, like a lot of people, she wants to jump out of the conversation and frame it in some bigger way.
	Mm-hmm.
	Oh, all this is about, or all you want, or now I can't see my grandkids.
	It's all about jumping out.
	And I tell you, what I experienced as you, Carolyn, was this unbelievable lack of empathy.
	Towards my mother?
	No, from your mother.
	Oh.
	You know, when cornered, she will grudgingly admit that Beating you with a wooden spoon might have been upsetting for you.
	I mean, God.
	And it was fascinating the degree to which she flipped when you talked about the wooden spoon.
	Suddenly it wasn't course correction for the sake of benefiting someone, but it was beating when she was on the receiving end, right?
	Yep.
	Very enlightening.
	Okay.
	Shaking it up.
	How was I as you?
	I mean, I know that what you would say, I don't know.
	These are just things that would pop into my mind.
	Right.
	You're much more quick at the tongue than I am, which I think is part of the problem.
	I always think of...
	No, no.
	Sorry.
	That's just because she's not actually my mom.
	If it was my mom, just stand there and pee myself, just for funsies.
	Yeah.
	So, no, it's not.
	I wouldn't be that ninja with my parents.
	That's one of the helpful things about having someone else do it.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	Because she was trying to construct all these dead ends, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	But there's no going forward, right?
	Yeah.
	And that's, you know, every time I try to open up, that's pretty much how the conversation ends.
	You know, it's let's just suddenly change the subject, go off on a tangent, or just say, well, I don't know what else, you know, throw up your hands and drop the mic and that's it.
	Oh yeah, the feigned helplessness.
	What do you want me to say?
	And that's being a cry bully, right?
	That's being a victim.
	Well, I'm cornered.
	I don't know what you want from me.
	And so I'll just say whatever you want because you're just obsessed about something and I'm just watering your container, right?
	Yeah.
	Probably didn't notice a lot of that when she wanted to correct you as a child.
	Not a lot of that helplessness when she had power, right?
	A lot of spoon.
	Not a lot of helplessness.
	So the fundamental question that I have, and I'm glad to hear that you're in therapy, but the fundamental question that I have is, is there a way for you to still be present with your child when your mother is around?
	Because that's the big question.
	You can trundle along, in my experience, I shouldn't say you, I say I could trundle along with the stuff until kids came into the equation.
	Like, I can subject myself to people who dissociate me if I'm alone, because the choice affects me.
	Now, once I'm in a love relationship, then it affects my partner, and once I'm a father, it affects my child.
	So the flexibility we have to engage in or supposedly, like you can see, indulge in dysfunctional relationships Our capacity or our right to do that diminishes the more interconnected we become with other people.
	Because it's a ripple effect, right?
	It doesn't just affect you, it affects your husband, it's going to affect your kid.
	So, and you don't have to answer this, obviously.
	It's a big complex question.
	You should talk about it with your therapist and your husband, of course.
	But that's the big question is, can you be connected with your child when your mother is around?
	And if the answer to that is yes, then I think that the answer to that is probably going to be less so, like you'll be less connected with your kid when your mother is around.
	And so that's something you need to work on with your therapist, with your mom or whatever, so that you can find a way to stay present with your child when your mother is around.
	But if you're frustrated and annoyed and exasperated and eye rolling and tense, then you're going to be less available to your child.
	And I didn't feel like I had the right to do that.
	Yeah, which is why I wrote into the show, because I'm concerned about it.
	Right, right.
	And that's why, you know, I always suggest you've got problems with people, sit down and talk about it with them.
	If you have a therapist to back you up and your husband sounds very aware, as far as I can tell.
	So, but that is, you know, when you have a child, as you know, your responsibility, primary responsibility is to that child.
	And I don't think that you can knowingly put yourself in situations which make you less available to your child.
	And so if you can find a way to stay connected with your child, with yourself, fundamentally, with yourself, while your mother is around, that's great.
	But I think that's going to take some work on the relationship with your mom.
	And only some of that work do you have any...
	Well, fundamentally, you have no control over the outcome, right?
	You only have control over what you say and what you decide to bring up.
	Your mother is going to make her own choices if they...
	Are indeed choices this late in the game.
	But your mother's going to make her own choices which you can't control.
	And it also needs to be an ongoing conversation.
	So the reason that I would stop the conversation if I was having that at the time that I did, Caroline, is because what I would want to know is what happens tomorrow.
	Ah, you know, when you're sitting across the table from each other, that's one thing.
	The question is, what happens tomorrow?
	And for the most part, in my experience, what happens is you might get some minor breakthroughs But usually it's because they're just bowing to power in the moment.
	You get some minor breakthroughs in the moment.
	But what happens is those openings quickly seal up again.
	And then what happens is there's this kind of dare.
	The person will then call you in a day or two or maybe a week and talk as if nothing happened.
	And it's kind of like a dare.
	They're inviting you back into the unreality.
	And if you then say, well, what about this thing we talked?
	Oh, we already talked about that.
	We don't need to bring it up again.
	I understand.
	I already told you, but whatever, right?
	If it's not an ongoing conversation, there's a challenge.
	And that's why, you know, if I have those conversations, people like to see what they're going to do down the road.
	You know, they're going to come back and say, Yeah, I've really, really thought about what we talked about.
	I made a list.
	I wrote it down.
	I checked it twice, found out who's naughty and nice.
	Like, are they going to come back?
	Is it like a spear into the ocean or is it a boomerang that comes back?
	And you can't control that either.
	That's the choice of the other person.
	Yeah.
	Anything else I can help you with?
	I guess it's just how do I... Yes, I need to talk to my mother, but how do I deal with that relationship moving forward, I guess?
	Because the thing that concerns me With my relationship with my mother is that there's almost this feeling of I'm just not willing to give a shit anymore.
	What?
	You are?
	Not willing to give a shit anymore?
	Yeah.
	Right.
	I almost feel like this feeling of helplessness where it's not even worth having that conversation with.
	With my mother at this point, for the sake of my child.
	But if it's just for my relationship with my mother, it's almost not worth it.
	I would only have it in the context of, you know, my child.
	Oh, so if you weren't having a child, it wouldn't be as much of an issue.
	Not that it wouldn't be as much of an issue.
	It would just be, you know, I would not waste my time with it because it is what it is and my mother is who she is.
	Right, right.
	And I'm exhausted by it.
	Right, right.
	Now, I don't know, obviously, what the outcome is going to be because that would be determinism, right?
	Right.
	But what I do like about...
	What I do like in relationships is certainty.
	You know, they, they say closure, you know, like closure to me is just, I know the facts and I don't have any illusions about things being different.
	Now that doesn't mean a bad thing necessarily.
	I don't wake every, I don't wake up every morning and look at my wife and say, boy, I wonder if I want to stay married to her, right?
	Doesn't happen.
	Doesn't happen.
	I don't spend time with my daughter and say, well, you know, I'm not sure if I really want to be a father.
	I have closure.
	I have certainty about my relationships.
	And...
	When it comes to your mother or other people in your life, the important thing is to get through to some kind of certainty.
	Because right now, it's a bit roundy-roundy, right?
	And of course, your mother's going to probably want to spend a lot more time now that there's a grandkid and all that.
	So there is that.
	So as far as where it goes, well, you know, roleplay with your...
	I don't know if your therapist does roleplays.
	I'm not a therapist.
	It's just I think that they can be helpful.
	But talk about it with your therapist.
	Talk about it with your...
	My husband, Nathaniel Brandon, and other people have good workbooks for writing down things to help out with a variety of approaches to understanding your past.
	I mean, it's a little late in the game because you're, you know, one more trampoline jump and you're popping.
	But, you know, you've got some leisure time because, you know, you'll probably be cutting back in your volleyball a little bit.
	But I would aim for working towards some sort of more certainty with regards to what's going to happen with your mom.
	Obviously, the ideal is she responds in a mature fashion.
	She figures things out.
	Maybe she goes to therapy and your relationship can improve and all of that.
	So that's great.
	That, of course, is not fundamentally up to your control at all.
	But as far as what happens with your relationship with your mother...
	That I don't know.
	Like, I'm just giving you some particular perspectives.
	And if she's going to be around, I generally try not to self-erase to have people around.
	And if people won't let me be who I am, then we're just going to butt heads until something gets sorted out.
	Either I'm allowed to be myself or something else happens, right?
	But that is, you know, my approach is just keep thinking about it, keep talking about it, and work it up with your therapist.
	And, um, Have a conversation if you feel ready and, you know, take your therapist's advice about this, right?
	Much more of an expert than I am.
	So don't jump into what's going to happen eventually.
	It's a step-by-step thing.
	Okay.
	All right?
	The only other question that I have is, and, you know, you have a magic wand.
	I'm being facetious.
	But I'm worried about having...
	Characteristics of being disconnected and not being aware of them simply because, you know, I've never been a parent before.
	So I'm just worried about are there any signs that I should be aware of or that my husband should be aware of that if they become apparent in my behavior or my lack of engagement or whatever.
	That, you know, I can know that it's like, oh shit, I'm being like my mom.
	Time to reflect on that, check in with my kids and, you know, move forward, change behavior somehow.
	Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't worry too much about that.
	Okay.
	For a number of reasons.
	Number one, you're not your mom.
	I mean, I know people like this and you're not.
	It doesn't mean you don't have faults or flaws, we all do, but I wouldn't worry about it.
	Listen, I had a couple of the same concerns, but I have never even remotely had an impulse to do what my mom did as a parent.
	I'm not like fighting that back every day.
	I really want to scream and throw it like it doesn't doesn't work that way.
	If you've done the work, if you've got and if you just have the smarts.
	So I wouldn't feel like...
	It's sort of like, what about demonic possession?
	Well, the brain doesn't really work.
	I don't think the brain really works that way.
	Particularly if you've been in therapy and you've got a great marriage.
	I wouldn't worry that much.
	That doesn't mean that there aren't things to look out for, but I wouldn't have that possession thing where your hair suddenly gets white and your head spins around or something like that.
	Now, that having been said...
	You can't know what is unconscious that's occurring in your mind very easily, but that's why you have people around you who love you, right?
	I mean, you've got a husband who's going to notice any differences and all of that.
	And you will notice, I mean, you'll notice some kind of difference if you're thinking about things while staring at your kid or something not connected or whatever.
	So I wouldn't worry about the possession thing.
	You have to rely and trust on the people around you to give you feedback when you're going astray.
	And I think you can trust the people around you and trust in your own intelligence and trust in the work that you've done with your therapist.
	And I assume we're going to continue to do with your therapist.
	And again, it's something to keep an eye on, but fundamentally it's going to be the job of people around you.
	But if you keep doing the work, I don't have any impulses that way, and I was not raised in an ideal fashion.
	So hopefully that will help.
	All right, I got to move on to the next caller, otherwise we're going to be here till sundown.
	But let me do what your mom didn't and check in with you and ask how the conversation was for you and if there's anything that I could have done better or different in terms of being useful.
	No, I think this has been the most enlightening conversation about my mother that I've had.
	Sorry, therapist, but I think...
	I think you've been incredibly helpful and I thank you for giving me the opportunity to do the role playing because I think that was probably one of the most helpful aspects.
	But thumbs up to you.
	And in general, my husband has been saying in my ear for the past hour, make sure you thank him.
	So my husband and I want to thank you so much because we have the utmost respect for what you do.
	And we've been fans for a long time.
	And we really, really appreciate all the work, all the hard work that you and the FDR team has done for us and for everyone.
	Can I talk to him for a second?
	Sure.
	Let me call him for a second.
	I don't know if he's going to yodel.
	Okay, he's here.
	Hi, how you doing?
	You don't have to give me your name or anything, I just wanted to say hi.
	Thanks a lot for the call.
	I mean, people thank me, but I mean, I thank you guys for this honesty and this openness to have these kinds of conversations.
	They're incredibly helpful to literally millions of people, so thank you.
	No pressure.
	But...
	Yeah, just keep an eye on her.
	She sounds like a great woman.
	And I'm very excited for you guys becoming parents.
	I've often thought how many lives would be saved on this planet if everyone drove like they were driving home from the hospital for the first time with their baby.
	Gentle turns, lots of signal, come to a full stop at the stop sign and all that.
	So I just wanted to say hi to the dad-to-be and thank him for the utility of his wife for the last hour and a half and wish you guys the very best for a fantastic life to come with your children.
	Thank you.
	Thank you very much, Stefan.
	You're welcome.
	Take care, guys.
	Bye.
	Alright, up next is Bryson.
	Bryson wrote in and said, My question is regarding consenting contracts, specifically in regards to implicit contracts.
	The social contract is an example of a supposed implicit contract that all governments claim to be the source of their legitimacy.
	What makes the social contract an invalid implied contract?
	What methodology can we use, if any, to determine what constitutes a valid implicit contract versus an invalid implicit contract?
	That's from Bryson.
	Alright, so you'll just have to roleplay the social contract and I'll roleplay John Locke.
	No, I'm just kidding.
	How you doing, Bryson?
	I'm doing good.
	How you doing?
	I am switching my gears.
	Beep, beep, beep.
	Backing up.
	Backing up.
	So, um...
	So, for those who don't know, um...
	Wow, the social contract.
	How would you describe it?
	I mean, you've brought up the question.
	It's sort of like a claim that you voluntarily agree to pay laws and duties in a country.
	There's the Lockean approach that I've been hearing.
	A lot of people saying that just by accepting property, you agree to pay taxes on it or reaping the benefits of the state using roads, public bathrooms.
	Then you've implicitly consented to be governed.
	That's what I've been hearing.
	That's how I'd explain it.
	Okay, I'll just, you know, for the definition part, that's important.
	In moral and political philosophy, the social contract or political contract is a theory or model originating during the Age of Enlightenment that typically addresses the questions of the origin of society and the legitimacy of the authority of the state specifically.
	Over the individual.
	Now the question is, of course, why did this arise during the Age of Enlightenment?
	Well, it arose during the Age of Enlightenment because prior to that, the general theory was God gave you a king and you obey the king just as you obey God.
	So this idea that there could be some mutually beneficial contract is...
	Arose when the divine right of kings began to decay as the reason for the justification for obeying.
	Social contract arguments typically posit that individuals have consented either explicitly or tacitly to surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority of the ruler or magistrate or to the decision of a majority in exchange for protection of their remaining rights.
	And, you know, the contract was around in Roman law, Greek Stoic philosophy, and so on, but mid-17th to early 19th century, it really emerged as the basis for political legitimacy, and this is what you generally hear.
	I just had a contract with a...
	A man who perhaps had been indecently exposed to time about the social contract recently.
	And the general argument that comes out of Hobbes, right?
	And Hobbes had this basis to say, nature is red in tooth and claw, and in a state of nature, it's a war of all against all, and everyone's grabbing, and everyone's, you know, no one can build anything, because no one can plant anything, people can come along and steal it, and beat you up, and all that kind of stuff.
	And that's not what we want, right?
	That's not what we want in society.
	So, what we do is we say, okay, we're all going to obey this group.
	We're going to obey these laws.
	So I'm going to surrender my rights to run around and pillage and rape and steal and set fire to whoever I don't like.
	I'm going to surrender all of those rights in return for protection of property and enforcement of contract and to have a negotiating body that is going to resolve disputes.
	And I'm going to cede the power of monopoly force to that agency.
	And I thereby gain enormous liberties rather than losing.
	Yes, I lose the liberty to go around like Genghis Khan, but I gain the liberty to have my property protected, to have contract, to have civilization, to have all of the great things that come out of that.
	And that is basically...
	The argument.
	And it's sort of an appeal to selfishness.
	And it is an appeal to consequences.
	You know, without the central authority, it's a war of all against all.
	And you can, of course, hear this.
	Well, in the absence of the state, we're going to have all these terrible things happen and all of that.
	And so that's a very brief argument for it.
	And those who say, well, I don't believe we should have a state and so on, they are perceived to be people who do not understand the value of the state and the degree to which this fantasy that if without a state we're all going to be free, without a state it's going to be a war of all against all.
	And you will then beg and pray for the state to resurrect itself and save you from the consequences of your own anarchic foolishness.
	Thomas Hobbes, one of his famous statements was that without a state or in a state of nature, he said human life would be, quote, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
	And that's the scare thing.
	You know, without God, you go to hell.
	And without the state, everybody eats each other's offspring.
	And...
	So that's, yeah.
	And so, is that a fair way to sort of give a very brief summary of it?
	Yeah, that is exactly what I've been hearing.
	The argument from consequences, I mean, it's just stupid.
	I'm sorry to take an entire category and say, well, without the state, there'll just be this terrible, terrible stuff.
	Maybe that was a little easier to believe in the 18th and 19th centuries when Before the separation of church and state, the state was murderous to a large degree on all non-conformist religious doctrines, right?
	I mean, and the religious wars that raged throughout Europe after the cracking of Christendom and the rise of various Protestant denominations, this was brutal.
	And the smaller governments that emerged out of the separation of church and state and out of some of the limitations on state power, particularly with the regulation of trade that came out of The Netherlands and came out of England in the 18th and 19th centuries.
	So it looked like the government was kind of heading in the right direction.
	It's like, whoa, this is a huge step forward.
	Separation of church and state, growing free market, and the state was tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny compared to what it is now.
	So what they were talking about was something that who would bother trying to fight A government that was the size of the initial founding fathers approach, right?
	All funded on tariffs.
	There's no central banking.
	It doesn't control education.
	It doesn't control higher education.
	There's no property taxes.
	It doesn't control massive sections of the entire country as is the case now with the federal government.
	So Who'd bother?
	If the government stayed that size, if the government didn't have this innate tumoresque growth from here to eternity and collapse, then it would be pretty hard.
	So, like, when I first got cancer, well, I didn't know it was cancer at the time, a little lump under my throat, right?
	Just a little sitting on my salivary gland, I think it was.
	Now, if it had been this tiny little, I don't know, what it was, like a half a pea or something like that, if it just stayed like that, well...
	Is that really a giant problem?
	Probably not.
	On the other hand, if it grows and kills me, well, that's a problem, right?
	So, nobody takes chemo and radiation for a tiny little lump that doesn't change.
	It's not threatening to you.
	It doesn't do you any harm.
	You wouldn't even notice it.
	But it grows.
	That's the problem.
	So, in the great Shrinking of state power that occurred with separation of church and state and separation to a large degree, at least relative to now of state and economics.
	Okay.
	I can understand the social contract theory having some more validity.
	Unfortunately, the social contract theory creates the foundation for the state that grows to the giant monolith that we have now, where states are genuinely threatening civilization as a whole.
	And so I just sort of wanted to give that sort of brief overview of Of why I think it was compelling at the time, but why I think it's a little less compelling now.
	That's just sort of from the argument from effect.
	Does that make any sense?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I understand that, yeah.
	So the question as to how we approach this rather than sort of historiologically or consequentially or pragmatically, how we would approach this from a philosophical standpoint would be a, it's quite simple.
	It's quite simple.
	And I've actually got a video called The Social Contract Defined and Destroyed Five minutes or less with a little countdown clock at the bottom.
	So I can keep it brief, shockingly.
	All rights are universal.
	And I know I've got problems with the words right, so just use that as a shorthand for the moment.
	But anyway, all rights are universal.
	So the question is, who has the right to create universal implicit contracts on others?
	Now, if you say, these three guys, then you have a problem philosophically as to why only these three guys.
	Which is why the argument is consequentialist.
	Well, it's better for you if they do.
	Maybe initially if there's only three guys, when there's three million guys, maybe not so beneficial anymore.
	So, they can't argue it philosophically, which is why social contract tends to be consequentialist.
	Scares you with the state of nature and rewards you with the protection of your rights.
	But the reality is, philosophically, who has the right to create implicit universal contracts?
	And the answer is either everyone or no one.
	Now if no one has the right to create social contracts, Then the social contracts are invalid.
	If everyone has the right to create social contracts, then everyone can be a government and a subject at the same time.
	I mean, this makes no sense.
	Because then there's some guys who come to me and say, well, we've created a social contract that says you owe us $1,000.
	And in return, we'll try and build some roads, right?
	Okay.
	So they have the ability to create implicit universal social contracts.
	But then so do I. So it's like, oh yeah?
	Well, I'm going to tax you $2,000.
	You tax me $1,000, I'm going to tax you $2,000.
	No, I'm going to tax you $3,000.
	It all becomes nonsense.
	If everybody has the right to create implicit contracts on everyone else, they all nullify each other.
	So there's no practical way that the social contract theory can be universalized, which is why they don't try to do it, because it's such an obviously bad argument, which is why they do this Pascal's Wager appeal to disastrous consequences.
	It's like you can't prove the existence of God, so you threaten people with hell, reward them with heaven, and you can't prove the social contract in any rational way.
	Philosophical way, moral way.
	And so you have to bribe people with stability and threaten them with chaos if they don't fulfill it.
	So that is how you push back on it.
	It's like, okay, well, who has the right to create these implicit social contracts?
	Everyone or no one?
	It can't be some people because then it's no longer ethics.
	It's just power play.
	And if it's everyone, they all cancel each other out.
	And if it's no one, then the social contract is invalid.
	So either way, you can't possibly sustain it rationally.
	Does that help?
	Yeah.
	Originally, I was debating someone about this and they sort of gave the Lockean argument that by just accepting property, you've agreed to pay taxes on it.
	And what you just said, just by trying to universalize the social contract, it sort of just falls apart.
	But it got me thinking on a more general level.
	What constitutes just any valid implicit contract?
	Actually, I posed the question to Walter Block, and he gave me the example of, you know, you go into a coffee shop, and you buy coffee, and then they charge you with like a million dollar bill that you have an implicit agreement to not pay something of unequal value or somewhat unequal value.
	So you wouldn't be obligated to pay that.
	But they put the price of the coffee right up there, and the price of things on the menu.
	I mean, I don't see how that's particularly valid.
	Yeah, well, he said even if they would have listed the price as a million dollars, you still wouldn't be obligated to pay it.
	Yeah, listen, I could, I don't know, I mean, I probably couldn't, but let's say there was some magic way to get the address of everyone who watched my show, and I sent them a bill for $10,000 for every show they'd watched.
	I said, no, no, no, it's implicit.
	Would people pay it?
	Of course not.
	No.
	Because then they'd have the right to say, well, you have now used my mailbox, so you owe me $10,000, and it all just cancels each other out, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	Okay.
	Now, you could say, of course, you know, and another example is you go into a convenience store, you don't have to sign something that says, I'm not going to steal anything.
	That's just kind of implied, right?
	Right.
	You don't have to sign a contract that says, I'm going to pay before I leave in a restaurant, right?
	I mean, those are sort of...
	But those are specific to...
	Local property.
	So they're not universal.
	I don't get to impose implicit contracts on something I do not own.
	And of course, people say, well, then the government owns everything.
	But then you get back to the problem is, okay, well, who gets to own everything?
	Everyone or no one?
	If everyone gets to own everything, then nothing can be done.
	And if no one gets to own everything, then there can't be a valid social contract.
	So in your own property, you can have contracts.
	And some of those may be sort of common sense implied.
	But you can't extend that to property you don't own.
	If I have a swimming pool, I can say, no peeing.
	If you want to have an all-peeing swimming pool, that's your choice.
	I can't impose that on you.
	You can't impose that on me.
	It's relative to our own property.
	And again, it comes back to genitals.
	I can choose the disposition of my own genitals.
	I can't choose the disposition of your genitals.
	If I'm going to jam your junk into a pencil sharpener, that's a solve.
	Yeah.
	That's one of the arguments.
	Sorry, just let me take a moment to say, worst analogy ever.
	Cross legs four times.
	Okay, go ahead.
	Yeah, that's one of the arguments I actually give was that the state doesn't actually own any property, so you can't really use that localized property argument with the state.
	It doesn't work.
	Now, the other argument that people use is...
	Well, the government paid for a whole bunch of stuff, so you owe them back.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	I mean, that is a vaguely compelling argument because it ties into people's parent model, right?
	You owe – you've got to take care of your parents when they get old because they took care of you when you were young.
	They paid whatever money it was and spent however much time it was to take care of you when you were young.
	So you owe them when they get old, right?
	It's that sort of sense of pendulum obligation that occurs.
	So when people talk about that with regards to the state, it seems compelling.
	Like the guy who called in recently, well, the government educated you and so you owe whatever, whatever, right?
	But the problem is that the government didn't pay for shit.
	Government didn't pay for anything.
	Government took money from other people to pay, right?
	Government didn't dig deep into its own pockets.
	Government doesn't have any pockets.
	The only thing it has in its pocket is a gun.
	So the fact that, you know, my mom paid for the education through taxes.
	And she didn't have a choice as far as that went, right?
	So the fact that I don't owe the government because the government forced my mom to pay for my shitty education.
	That makes no sense at all, right?
	It's like if I go and steal from someone and then buy you a car saying, well, you now owe me because I bought you a car.
	It's like, no.
	No, you've got to return the car to the money, sell the car, return the money to the original person, right?
	And also, if the provision of resources in an unchosen situation creates obligation, then someone who kidnaps you should be able to send you a bill.
	because they housed you they sheltered you they fed you they gave you water And we say, but no, it was a coercive situation.
	So don't send me a bill if you kidnap me.
	A slave is not responsible to take care of the owner because the owner happened to give food and shelter and healthcare to the slave because it was not a voluntary situation.
	There can be no obligation that comes out of an involuntary situation.
	In other words, you cannot send a bill to someone you kidnapped saying, well, you know, you did eat a lot of pasta.
	And so I got to, got to bill you for that.
	Sorry.
	It's like, it's not a chosen situation.
	And so how would you just real quick define an implicit like agreement because it's kind of a kind of a gray area explicit contracts those are easy you know signed paper verbal agreements supposed to be binding then implicit I was just trying to find like I found a couple different definitions but they all have to do it sort of you show an act of agreement and that act you know I don't find it a huge problem,
	and maybe this just comes back out of my waitering days.
	Because there are implicit contracts that are enforceable, like pay for your meal.
	If you dine and dash, they can track you down if they get your license, whatever, right?
	So there are implicit contracts that are enforceable, and there are implicit contracts that are not enforceable, like tip your waiter.
	And they work.
	You know, I was a damn fine waiter, and I almost always got a good tip.
	And so, this is an implicit contract that is not even remotely enforceable.
	People could just leave a stick of gum and walk out, and you can't do anything about it, right?
	And so, even unenforceable implicit contracts were almost perfectly adhered to, in a way that it was actually pretty fair.
	The better a mood I was, or whatever.
	Generally it was quite fair.
	And so it just works really well.
	I mean, how you would define it?
	I don't know.
	I mean, does it really matter?
	I mean, is this a big problem in society?
	I mean, the big problem in society are the immoral initiation of force.
	Aggressions masked as a social contract, which are much more important to focus on how tipping works in a free society, you know, by the time that floats to the top of our list of problems, I think the world will be a very different place and I'll be long dead.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	That clears it up too.
	I think you, I think it was, you could correct me if I'm wrong, mentioned like even just bringing a child home from the hospital, you're sort of entering a implicit contract to take care of it.
	Yeah, but that's such common sense, right?
	Right.
	I mean, a lot of it's just common sense.
	That's such common sense.
	Because you know that if you don't take care of that child, that child will die.
	Because you have removed that child from a situation where other people could take care of it.
	So you are now the only lifeline that child has to survival.
	And so that is, you know, anybody who doesn't understand that, well, I mean...
	They would not be allowed to take a child home because they would be mentally handicapped to the point where I don't even know what you'd say.
	So I mean, that does not require a high IQ. It's not complex, right?
	I mean, if I go to the dog pound And I don't go home with a dog named Rufus, then the dog pound knows that I'm not taking care of Rufus so they keep feeding him, right?
	However, if I come home with a dog named Rufus from the dog pound, they're not responsible for feeding him anymore.
	And I am now responsible for feeding.
	And there's nobody who doesn't know that, who's able to have money, right?
	Or anything like that.
	So...
	You know, how it would work in a free society, I assume that you would have some payment mechanism, whether it would be cash or Bitcoin or whatever, you have some payment mechanism that would require an IQ of 75 to manage.
	And anybody with an IQ of 75 or 80 would understand that you've got to feed a pet and a baby and all that, right?
	And so the way that you would pay would be sort of, and people who weren't able to enter into those contracts, implicit contracts, wouldn't be able to enter into the explicit contract of having a payment mechanism that would be understandable to us.
	to others.
	You try and pay with leaves, you're not gonna get very far, right?
	But, so there's ways that you would have a minimum threshold for explicit or implicit contracts, which would be, can you pay?
	Like, do you have at least enough understanding to enter into a mechanism by which you can pay for something?
	So I think all of those things would be well understood.
	And there's nobody who can say, I thought fairies were going to feed my child or my dog, right?
	I mean, you know, and if they did, and if people genuinely believed them, then it would be a tragedy because they had lost their minds, right?
	I mean, they had, I don't know, one too many hits of joy juice or something, and their minds just broke.
	So, you know, I don't find it to be a particularly thorny problem just because I try not to theorize about stuff that's working really well already.
	You know, you don't go to the doctor for the leg that isn't hurt, right?
	I mean, and so I really want to focus our time and attention on that, which is not working spectacularly or working badly very well, however you want to put it.
	The stuff where, you know, the sort of common sense and all of that is...
	Right.
	Is...
	Oh, yeah.
	Of course, also, if somebody couldn't, like if somebody had a child, didn't understand that you need to feed that child, then they would not be able to consent to a sexual encounter, and therefore, whoever had sex with them, it would be rape, right?
	Right.
	Right.
	Yeah, it does.
	I guess I came from that approach because I was just trying to break down the social contract.
	You did it with your, you know, applying it universally.
	And how it falls apart that way works much better.
	I was just trying to figure out a way to define what a valid implicit contract would be than just sort of test to see if the social contract would pass it, which is why I was trying to figure out what was a valid implicit contract.
	Well, but there's no – like the explicit contract is you have to keep a baby.
	Mm-hmm.
	The implicit contract is your breathing and therefore obligation.
	But choosing to have sex, unprotected sex, we can assume, assuming there's no fantasy of Crohn's disease interfering with your birth control pill.
	But if you choose to have sex and you choose to get pregnant and you choose to keep the baby and you choose to not give the baby up for adoption, those are all very explicit positive actions.
	In the same way that buying a pet and bringing it home is an explicit positive action.
	And so, those are not social contracts.
	So, if you have the child, you're responsible for feeding the child.
	If you have the child, you can't send the bill to me.
	To feed your child.
	You can ask me for the money if you're broke or whatever.
	You can't send the bill to me and it'd be...
	Otherwise I'll just send you a bill back for wasting my time with this bill and it can't...
	Like, you know, if everybody has that.
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah, it does.
	Yeah.
	So these are very specific positive actions that you take that carry with them an implied contract, I guess you could say.
	But it's not even an implied contract.
	These are just basic realities.
	If you take a child home, And you don't feed the child, the child will die.
	And you are then completely and totally responsible for bringing that life into the world and taking it out.
	That's not an implicit or implied contract.
	It's a fundamental reality.
	If I kidnap someone, lock them in my basement, and starve them to death, they're dead.
	And I'm responsible for that murder.
	So this is the common sense in law.
	I don't know about implied contract seems kind of like, I don't know, why do we need to fuzz up some basic facts?
	Right.
	I was just debating people about the social contract and I was trying to figure out a way to really just figure out what a valid implicit contract was, which is why I originally had the question.
	No, all you have to do is say who gets to make implicit contracts.
	Who gets to make implicit universal contracts?
	Everyone, someone, or no one.
	If it's everyone, they all cancel each other out.
	If it's someone, explain the difference.
	And if it's no one, they're not valid anyway.
	Okay.
	Now, and then they can't explain the difference.
	And then the moment that people give you terrible consequences, they're admitting they have a bad argument.
	Argument from effect.
	Yeah, argument from effect.
	Oh, but without nature, red and tooth and claw, nasty, brutish and short, and do you want to live in the jungle and bite each other?
	Come on.
	I mean, it's okay.
	I get it.
	You don't know how to argue it.
	So you're just going to frighten me.
	Okay.
	Thank you, Mr.
	Social Contract Religious Guy.
	All right.
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah, it does.
	Thank you.
	Thanks, man.
	Great questions.
	Move on.
	Alright, up next is Fernando.
	Fernando wrote in and said, Despite having graduated at the top of my class, having run a successful business for years, having sacrificed that business opportunity to get my degree, and having worked hard and succeeded academically and practically as I have, why won't anyone hire me?
	That's from Fernando.
	Hi Fernando, how are you doing?
	I'm doing well, how are you?
	Not that much.
	You can't be doing that well with a question like that, because I get that's very frustrating.
	I suppose I'm resourceful enough to find ways to make up for my lack of employment, but yes.
	Right.
	Are you in the IT field?
	No.
	Can you tell me just a little bit about your background?
	Sure.
	So, I guess...
	Let's start with academics.
	I started in community college as a music major for one semester, and then I realized that the community college was sucking the creativity out of me, so I switched to business accounting specifically.
	Yeah, because when you first said, I got a music degree at a community college, I thought we might have been somewhere along the road of figuring out why you couldn't get hired.
	But okay, business, accounting, got it.
	No, I figured that one out myself.
	Thank you.
	Thank you for you.
	I say this is a guy with a history degree, but I'm using it!
	So anyway, go ahead.
	No, no.
	I switched to accounting.
	I did two years and ran out of money.
	I couldn't really pay for it.
	At that point, my parents were paying for it, but they're going through a divorce and our assets just got...
	Like, obliterated in that.
	But on the plus side, at least lawyers could buy another car.
	Oh, no.
	They could buy, like, an island.
	Yeah.
	If you get divorced, you get to keep 10% of your stuff each and the remaining 80% goes to lawyers.
	That's, you know...
	Yeah, that's extremely accurate.
	But, okay, let's not go on that tangent because we could be here for hours.
	Okay, so accounting major...
	So I worked a little bit as like, well, okay, I actually, my first real job that I got for myself, as opposed to, you know, someone getting me in there was at a retail job at Victoria's Secret for a couple months.
	And then, um, No, no, really?
	No, I'm serious.
	What happened was I was recently single and I lost my job on that same day.
	So I went to a mall.
	The job that I had at that point was like a student assistant position.
	My girlfriend's mother got me, but my girlfriend then slept with a co-worker.
	Whose father was somebody very important in that organization.
	Hypergamy!
	Right.
	So anyway, I went to a mall, got the job at Victoria's Secret.
	And after a few months of struggling, I was finally able to get my first position as an accounting clerk as a temp.
	And then for two years, I did the corporate temp thing, going from company to company.
	And then I started...
	Oh, wait, sorry.
	Were you on the floor in the store?
	At Victoria's Secret?
	Yeah, so I was a cashier and I was selling like the lotions and that stuff.
	I wasn't doing like bra fittings or anything like that.
	I mean, of course, you know, they have male associates and we do know the product line and all that stuff.
	And, you know, I actually did get some people, you know, putting, you know how before they exit they can ask the person at the door, if there is someone at the door to kind of say over the radio, hey, tell this person thank you.
	I got that for like bra recommendations.
	So those were some interesting flukes.
	But yeah, no.
	I think your sentiment is mutual at that point.
	I don't know how I was in there either.
	Okay.
	I didn't know.
	Interesting to know.
	Okay.
	So then you got a job bookkeeping?
	Yeah.
	I mean, accounting clerk stuff.
	Yeah.
	I guess I'm aware of the technical differences between bookkeeping and not bookkeeping.
	Not that you're not.
	I'm not trying to imply that.
	Sorry.
	But I guess after two years of that, I got fired for allegedly swearing at a copy machine.
	Allegedly what?
	Allegedly swearing at a copy machine.
	Is that a protected class of appliances?
	I don't quite...
	And you swore at a coffee machine?
	A copy machine.
	Sorry, paper copies.
	Not like drinking.
	Oh, copier.
	Okay, copy machines.
	Swore at a copy machine.
	Right.
	And then you got fired.
	And I decided that I had had enough of that crap.
	So, it's just, you know, at that point...
	The corporate world was a lot of office politics and your merits were not as important as your social standing in that circle.
	At least that was my interpretation.
	And so I decided that I wanted to determine it for myself.
	And in the process of going to community college, I decided that since I couldn't go to a real college as I perceived it, I would get, you know, licensing and vocational licensing.
	So I got my real estate license and I got like a notary license and When I got fired, I decided I'm actually going to start using these things after a couple years of holding them.
	So I put together a business just notarizing loan documents, negotiating real estate short sales, and helping tenants out in tenant-landlord disputes.
	I made enough money and had enough time to be able to pay my own way through going back to college and finishing my degree.
	The reason I made that decision is through conversations with my father and customers and clients and just people that you meet on a daily basis.
	Everyone was saying that you might be doing well, you're doing alright, you might even be thriving, but you're not really going to be anybody.
	You know, be or achieve the things you want until you get this magical piece of paper.
	They didn't call it a magical piece of paper.
	So I believed them.
	I mean, I torched everything.
	I wasn't there to satisfy my clients' demands.
	I told them ahead of time I was going to go to school, so I'd be kind of winding down the business a little bit, and I may not be available to take care of the assignments that they might send me.
	And, you know, business went, you know, after about a year of school, I stopped getting calls for clients.
	My savings was obliterated.
	I threw it all into, you know, living expenses and paying for school and all that.
	I mean, I gave up opportunities that would have made me, you know, pretty well off today if I had taken them and I knew back then that they would.
	And the whole reason for this was the expectation that, you know, I have a limitation as to what I can achieve for myself without guidance and mentoring.
	I guess I was convinced that I needed somebody in an industry, in the accounting industry, to kind of guide me to be aware of the greatness that I need to achieve in order to be able to Whatever my definition of being successful was at that point, which I'm not even aware of what my definition of success is anymore.
	I went back to school and summa cum laude, graduated.
	There were four people who got that honor out of the 940 business graduates and maybe 19 out of 4,000 that graduated.
	I assume I was at the top of my class.
	My transcript doesn't give me my rank, so I'm just assuming that.
	So, yeah.
	And then, you know, when I came out, you know, I got...
	I mean, what did these employers tell me?
	Some of them would say, you know, hiring you would be training the competition.
	Your high achievement might possibly be...
	Sorry, hiring you would be what?
	Training the competition.
	Oh, because you would leave?
	Right.
	I guess that's been the major perception amongst them is that I guess since I don't have years of solid employment under someone else's supervision, I only have it under my own supervision, I guess the perception is that I'm not really reliable because the only person who's held me accountable is myself for the majority of my career.
	Some people have said I'm getting a little old and they don't know if I'll be able to withstand being managed by someone younger than me who's already been in the industry.
	You know, some of them literally looked at my resume after seeing my, you know, I've done public speaking on behalf of organizations in the school, ran my own business, joined like an organization in school that did tax for low-income individuals.
	I joined at the bottom of my first year and by the end of that first year I was given my own unit to manage and six people I was managing.
	And this person looked at my resume and said, you know, I don't see leadership experience.
	Maybe I don't have it.
	I don't know.
	That's the point.
	I'm at a point in my life where nothing seems to make sense anymore and I have no idea how to navigate this at this point aside from going back to doing loan signings and that kind of thing that I used to do before and that's where I'm at right now.
	That's basically my situation.
	Right.
	You do laugh a lot about some pretty tragic stuff.
	Yeah.
	It's a bit disorienting.
	Sorry.
	There you go again.
	Yeah.
	So what's up with that, do you think?
	I mean, I've been through a lot, and I figure, you know, there are a couple different ways I can react to what I've been through.
	First, For example, I don't know if you know about the story of the individual in, I think it was Nebraska, I don't know what it is, but he lost his job at McDonald's and his girlfriend broke up with him that day.
	And he went to a mall as well, funnily enough, except he was armed with a, what was it, like a AK-47 or something and he shot eight people and then shot himself.
	You know, I'm not saying that I'm like that.
	Definitely not.
	Well, you're not saying you're not like that because that's the first story you brought up.
	Well, the reason I bring up that story is to show the difference of how that individual reacted and how I reacted in similar circumstances.
	So it's really to kind of establish sort of how I react to negativity as opposed to how what's potentially a reaction to negativity.
	Does that make sense?
	No.
	Okay.
	No, but who in your family was in prison when you were growing up?
	Oh, well, it wasn't like very long since, but my brother was in and out of jail for theft and stuff like that.
	I have three brothers, all of them older than me, by at least 10 years from another marriage my father had.
	And the youngest of those lived with us for quite a long time, and he was kind of in and out of prison for theft.
	Yeah.
	Jail, I guess.
	And what's your ethnic or cultural background?
	I am half Portuguese, half Armenian.
	My father's Portuguese, my mother's Armenian.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	All right.
	What age were you, Fernando, when your parents divorced?
	The official divorce, I guess I was 16.
	Okay.
	And how long had the marriage been bad before then?
	16.
	Well, 16 years, I assume.
	That's what I saw.
	Okay.
	Not funny again.
	I mean, I'd really appreciate it if you'd stop that.
	I'll try.
	I know it's a bit of a compulsion, but this is not funny stuff.
	You say you lived with an alcoholic or drug user.
	Um...
	Yeah, I mean, my brother was kind of into that kind of stuff.
	My dad says my mom would also take certain drugs, but I was too young to be able to notice or determine the signs or anything like that, so I can't really say yes or no.
	I'm taking his word for it.
	And, again, this is just from your Adverse Childhood Experience score.
	Household member depressed, mentally ill, or suicide attempt.
	Yeah, there's a bit of a history on that.
	No, no, no, no.
	Stop it.
	Okay.
	Stop the laughing.
	All right.
	This is serious stuff, right?
	And the reason I'm saying this is that if you are bringing up, I don't know, if this level of emotional disconnect is occurring in job interviews, it's not doing you any good.
	Okay.
	I'm not saying you're talking about this stuff in job interviews, but just this level of emotional disconnection from really tragic stuff where you're laughing about it, it's going to come across in one way or another during a job interview.
	Right.
	That's not helping, in my opinion.
	Yeah, I could see that, definitely.
	So you were asking about suicidal...
	Household memory, yeah.
	Depressed, mentally ill, or suicide attempt.
	Yeah.
	When I think I was maybe six or something like that, My parents, I mean it was customary for them to be screaming at each other quite often and I guess at the end of one of those situations, my mom took like a bottle of, I think they were some kind of pill, I don't know what they were exactly, and tried to like overdose on it in the shower.
	She locked herself in there and I remember like I used like a coin or a fingernail or something to unlock the door and I called my dad and He went in there, took the pills away, and I ran outside with them.
	The only thing I could figure out what to do with them at six years old was to bury them in the front yard.
	I think that was one instance.
	How old were you again?
	Six.
	You were six and you were home alone with your mother and she tried to kill herself.
	Well, I mean, it was myself, my father, and my mother.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	I'm sorry about that.
	That's terrifying.
	You know, that's a question I have.
	It feels like it should really be terrifying.
	I can't say I really feel like it is terrifying.
	Could you maybe guide me through that?
	Maybe explain that to me?
	That your mother trying to kill herself and you prying open the bathroom door with a coin?
	Well, no.
	I mean, intellectually, I understand that that is something really horrific.
	And I get it.
	But I suppose if you can understand, on a more emotional, visceral level, sort of a reactionary level, I don't really see that...
	Yeah, I guess that's it.
	I don't see how it really had an effect on me.
	Probably because I'm blind.
	I'm not saying it didn't have an effect on me, it's just I don't see the effect.
	Does that make sense?
	Well, I can understand where you're coming from.
	Okay.
	But what that means is that you were indifferent to some degree to your mother's life or death, which in a way is even worse.
	Um...
	Not at the time.
	Um...
	I mean, I was...
	No, no, no.
	Look, if you don't experience the horror, then it means that your...
	It could mean, I shouldn't say it does, it could mean that your mother's continued existence was not enough of a plus for you to be afraid of her death.
	Well, at the time, I was really scared of what was going on.
	I was really scared of the situation.
	I suppose maybe...
	I suppose maybe I'm expecting for myself sort of a different coping type of reaction than I really had, which, I mean, there wasn't really much of a reaction.
	It just kind of happened.
	And then, you know, I mean, I was six.
	I didn't know what conversation to have with my mom to kind of explain why that happened, you know?
	You mean why she would explain why that happened?
	Yeah, I suppose I didn't know how to start the conversation to make sense of why she tried to do that.
	Did anyone else in your family or around talk to you about what you had experienced with your mother?
	No, we didn't mention it outside of, you know, the three people that were there, myself and Father.
	But did you ever talk about it afterwards and try and figure out what happened?
	Did anyone explain it to you?
	Did anyone try and help you process this emotionally?
	Did anyone apologize for you being in that situation at such a young age?
	No.
	Okay, so it just vanished, right?
	Right.
	Okay, so this is, right?
	I mean, there was no support for processing this horrifying situation, so I guess the reaction is to bury it, right?
	Yeah, yeah, that explains it.
	Doesn't solve the problem, I would assume.
	Of course not, yeah.
	Right.
	Verbal abuse and threats you experienced as a child.
	I mean, I can't recall them verbatim, but yeah, there were many instances where I guess I would say something and it would be discounted as something, I guess, Irrelevant or nonsensical.
	Oftentimes when I did something that I guess my mother didn't like and my father didn't like, both of them on separate occasions would express that with, you know, raising their voice and I guess saying either some variation of stupid or, you know, just inadequate, lacking common sense, that kind of stuff.
	Yeah, clearly you didn't have the kind of common sense that your mother displayed by trying to choke down pills in a bathroom with a six-year-old around.
	That's the kind of common sense you really needed to have, I suppose, in that world view.
	Yeah, I suppose.
	Yeah, I mean...
	I guess.
	It's just, it's a little hard for me to take the moral authority of people who've...
	Inflicted that kind of trauma on a child than thinking that they have some sort of wisdom to impart to that child.
	It's horrible.
	Yeah, but I guess as the child that was in that world, that's kind of all I knew.
	That's what seemed normal to me.
	And it wasn't until, I guess, later on in life when I started reading a lot about emotional development and reading about Well, not just reading about it, but also witnessing other friends and other people, how they interacted with their families.
	The flags kind of came up.
	Something's wrong here, and I need to relearn a lot of this stuff, because it seems like my situation may not have been as normal as I thought it was.
	Yeah, so only after reading so many books did I finally get, I suppose, the prescience to look back and recognize how How sick my existence really was.
	I mean, even today, I'm kind of reticent to, I guess, you know, start a family or something like that, just because I don't want to repeat the mistakes that I witnessed my parents making.
	And I think, whatever it is, that I have the cognition to recognize that they were, in fact, mistakes.
	Mistakes.
	Mistakes.
	That's such a morally neutral term.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	What if it was abuse?
	What if?
	Well, it definitely was.
	Okay.
	Well, then, I mean, you know, the beginning of wisdom as the saying goes is to call things by their proper names.
	Yeah.
	Mistakes are, oh, I missed the exit on the highway, right?
	Right.
	Yeah.
	So, I'm very sorry, Fernando, for all of the stuff that happened to you as a child.
	It's pretty hideous, and it's pretty brutal.
	And your Adverse Childhood Experience score, and we don't have to go into it at all, but it's 6 out of 10.
	That's not good.
	And some of it is, you know, parents divorced gives you the same number, addition, plus 1.
	As struggling to break into a bathroom because your mother is trying to kill herself.
	Yeah.
	So you've got some stuff, man.
	Yeah, mostly.
	No, don't laugh.
	Don't laugh.
	You've got some stuff.
	You've got some stuff.
	You've got some trauma.
	I think that's fair to say.
	Yeah.
	You have no, I assume, existing support for that trauma to have people listen, to have people empathize, to have people denormalize it for you.
	And the feelings that it would generate in any child.
	Yeah.
	You don't have any...
	I mean, you're isolated in this having to outwardly pretend to have the opposite history that you do, which is where the laughter comes from, right?
	You can't be neutral.
	You can't just say it.
	You can't burst into tears about it because you're not there emotionally.
	You can't be neutral about it because it's there, so you've got to laugh.
	But that's very disconcerting to people.
	Yeah, I don't mean to put people off by it.
	I know, no, it's not.
	Listen, don't own it.
	Like, you're not trying to put people off.
	This is where you're at, and I completely understand, and I completely sympathize.
	This is not a criticism of you at all.
	At all.
	I don't want you to accept that at all.
	Um, this is what happens when you go through this kind of trauma and you come from an environment and maybe even from a culture where this kind of circling back and self-reflection and the pursuit of self-knowledge is not put forward as a strong value, right?
	Um, yeah, definitely not.
	Um, yeah, no.
	Okay.
	So if you've never even heard of the language Japanese, you can't be faulted for not speaking Japanese, right?
	Right.
	So, you're unemployed at the moment, right?
	No, not exactly.
	I mean, I kind of restarted the same business activities I did before, so at the moment I'm just kind of I'm not really freelancing.
	I'm kind of building my own little accounting bookkeeping firm, doing business startups and DBA declarations and stuff like that for people.
	So I do a little bit of that and going back to doing loan signings and doing those.
	I took on doing tutoring a little bit, tutoring people back in college.
	So I'm not entirely unemployed at the moment.
	How are your finances at the moment?
	I'm sorry to ask such a direct question.
	You don't have to give me any details, but how are your finances doing at the moment?
	I'm basically just about breaking even with my bills.
	I took a little loan from my dad just to have a little financial cushion, so I'm not desperate.
	Yeah, I mean, I'm making it.
	I'm definitely not as well off as I was before college.
	Right.
	You know I'm a big fan of talk therapy, because I can read, and the studies are very clear, that talk therapy, if it's done with a good practitioner and you work hard at it, provides greater happiness than even huge raises in money and so on.
	It's more sustainable.
	Yeah.
	So let me ask you this, Fernando.
	Would you take a present if it were offered?
	I mean, yes, although...
	No, that's all.
	Just, yes, it's all I need.
	Because if I offered to pay for a couple of months of therapy to get you started in dealing with this kind of stuff, because, you know...
	If you're breaking even at the moment, and therapy can be expensive, if I were to pay for that, would you accept that as something that you would pursue?
	Because I'm telling you, it's a great investment in terms of future success.
	Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't want to put that kind of burden on you.
	No, no, no, no.
	It's not a burden if I'm offering it.
	No, I get that.
	You know, if I'm asking you out on a date, you're not inflicting your presence on me, right?
	It would be good for me, and it would make me feel good and happy to make that offer.
	I appreciate it.
	Would you do it?
	Of course.
	Okay, then we have a deal.
	Look at that.
	We have negotiated something productive of both sides.
	Okay.
	So we'll talk about the mechanics of that afterwards.
	You don't need to air that for everyone.
	But you have, look, I mean, what you went through as a child.
	I don't want to, oh, it defines you and it'll forever and this and that and the other.
	But in my experience, people who've gone through a lot as children, they don't end up in the middle.
	They end up at the top or the bottom.
	They end up great or they end up scrounging away.
	Okay.
	And you are a very smart man, right?
	I mean, just based on our conversation, also based on the fact that you did this amazing thing in school near the top of the class or at the top of your class and so on.
	So there's no intellectual reason why you can't succeed as much as you want to.
	But if I had to place an amateur guest out there, it would be because there is a lot of stuff that you've gone through that...
	You've not had the resources or support to circle back and deal with.
	Right.
	And as you know, 90% of communication is nonverbal.
	Yeah, of course.
	And so if you have all of this stuff that's unprocessed, it's going to come across in one way or another, whether it's a lack of eye contact, whether it's awkward physical posture, whether it's excessive laughing, whether it's emotionally inappropriate responses to interview questions and so on.
	I don't know.
	But if I had to guess, that would be something to be addressed.
	And I don't know any way.
	Obviously, I'm a podcaster.
	I can't solve that.
	But I do know that statistically a good way to approach it is to get some really good talk therapy.
	Yeah.
	That, to me, would be a great investment because, you know, you sound like a great guy.
	You're a smart guy.
	If you had therapy and were able to resolve some of these issues, then I think you'd feel more comfortable going forward, you know, getting married or being a father.
	And, you know, Lord knows I'm happy to have more smart genes in the world going around and more people who listen to this show who become parents.
	Well, the happier and better.
	So for me, it's a very small cost to invest in a better world.
	And it's certainly something that I would be thrilled.
	To offer.
	I appreciate it.
	I mean, my concern with it is that, I mean, it's not like I haven't sought out therapy or anything like that.
	I mean, I originally wanted to major in psychology, but then I met a psychologist, and then I no longer wanted to major in it.
	Well, come on, man.
	If I had judged philosophy by the philosophy professors I had met, do you think I'd be doing a show right now?
	No, definitely not.
	Right.
	And that's part of the susceptibility that early trauma can give you, which is a rush to judgment based upon first impressions, because you had to judge things very quickly as a child, and you couldn't make any mistakes, because the situation was dangerous and unstable so often.
	So...
	And you are a conscientious person, right?
	You'll do the homework, you'll do the work that's necessary, and I think you'll find it amazing how quickly things can turn around.
	And if you have that gentle kind of wisdom and ease with yourself, you'll be very surprised at how attractive that will be to people.
	Whereas before, you had a tough time getting their attention, and before it sounded like, as you mentioned earlier, it's almost like they're making up excuses to not hire you.
	When you get that kind of ease and comfort with yourself, you will be, I think, very quickly surprised how fast I can turn around and how many options you may in fact have in terms of moving forward professionally.
	Yeah.
	I mean, of course, I would do the work.
	That's without a question.
	The question is finding the right therapist.
	Well, that I leave up to you, obviously.
	And I've got a podcast, fdrpodcast.com.
	My particular thoughts on how to find a great therapist.
	So you can listen to that if you want.
	But of course, you must judge.
	I'm going to stop selling because once you have a deal, you can stop selling.
	I really, really appreciate the call.
	I appreciate your openness to taking this path.
	And of course, it doesn't sound like I've got much to talk you into because you're a big fan of self-knowledge and all of that to begin with.
	So talk about things with Mike and we'll set it up.
	The podcast is called How to Find a Great Therapist.
	And again, it's not anything conclusive.
	It's just my thoughts.
	I had more than one therapist and finally found a great one.
	And yeah, we'll get it sorted out.
	We'll get it set up and just let us know how it goes.
	And I really look forward to, you know, maybe come back in a couple of months and talk about your experience with the process.
	Wow.
	Thank you.
	All right.
	Thanks, Fernando.
	Great call.
	Really appreciate everyone who has called in and everyone who's going to call in.
	You can follow me on Twitter at Stefan Molyneux.
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	Have yourselves a wonderful, wonderful week.

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