3851 Help! A Turkish Wizard Cast Magic Spells On Me! - Call In Show - October 4th, 2017
Question 1: [2:10] – “I am a first-year college student attending one of the more esteemed Christian colleges in the United States. My college is in what we all usually consider the "Bible belt" of America, and generally I figured that would imply people would tend to share my perspective as a more conservative Christian (While also being a Conservative Populist politically, myself). While I have met several people that seem to share my distaste for the violence and sheer insanity of SJW culture in today's society, it almost seems like it's been embraced by quite a number of students. Sometimes I feel quite alone as a young man that holds to Christian tradition and the word of the Bible while the administration veers subtly more Left with every week I stay here. I know that God wants me here for some purpose, but how do I keep my sanity or even push back against this seeping cancer of Social Justice into my religion? How does one separate true Christianity from the influences of Social Justice, and what can I do practically as a pastor-in-training to root out those influences?”Question 2: [1:00:01] – “When I was little, I have clear memories of being very young (toddler or just after) making up stories. I went on to draw pictures and create more and more elaborate stories. Then, when I was 10, Star Wars came out and my dad had died a couple years before. My mom, feeling guilty, or just out of unconditional love, she bought me tons of the associated action figures and vehicles. At that point, I pretty much slowly moved into my imagination. I had two lives, one in my head with a cast of characters and all kinds of amazing heroic stories and situations, and the other real one that basically went through the motions with. At any point, I can just sit there and go off into my imagination. It’s easy to do and fun. However, the people I should have a better connection to are suffering. When things get stressful, I essentially leave to a place I have complete control over. I’ve gone to a therapist, and that’s helped. But I simply can’t seem to leave my imagination and be as present as I should. My wife and kids need a full-time husband and dad, and while I understand that, this habit is hard to break."Question 3: [2:09:26] – “Is spell casting ethical? How can you logically comprehend magic and rebuild your life if you have been affected?”Your support is essential to Freedomain Radio, which is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by making a one time donation or signing up for a monthly recurring donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate
Hey everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
Hope you're doing well. Please don't forget to check out theartoftheargument.com.
Pick up a copy. You can also get the book on audible.com and please leave a review with your thoughts.
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And freedomainradio.com slash donate to help out the show.
Now, we went in-depth in the callers in tonight's show.
It was lengthy calls, very detailed calls, very powerful calls.
The first caller is a man who's studying to become a pastor.
He wants to become a pastor. And he finds that social justice warrior leftism has infected the college that he is studying at.
And he tries and strives to figure out How it can be reversed.
How it can be opposed. And the sin of despair rode its dark horse right into the heart of the conversation.
How do you survive what appears to be overwhelming opposition in exactly the wrong direction?
The second caller lives in a world of his own imagination.
He doesn't write it down.
He simply goes over scenarios and stories and characters and a whole story.
Series of events in his mind.
And he has done so for many decades since he was a boy and tasted way too deep the drink of death in his family.
And how to survive the lure of fantasy versus the richness of imagination was a very, very powerful call.
The third caller, I didn't even know what to say, man...
The sentences I have to say or feel compelled to say in this conversation still surprise me, which is why it's so interesting to have these conversations.
This woman, very pretty and very young, well, relatively young, she attempted to take her health into her own hands with disastrous consequences to the point where she now feels gripped by the magic spell of a Turkish wizard.
Yes, I am not kidding.
I did my very level best.
I think I helped. I'll let you be the judge.
Alright, up first we have George.
George wrote in and said, While I have met several students that seem to share my distaste for the violence and sheer insanity of social justice warrior culture in today's society,
it seems like it's been embraced by quite a number of students.
Sometimes I feel quite alone as a young man that holds a Christian tradition and the word of the Bible, while the administration veers subtly more left with every week I stay here.
I know that God wants me here for some purpose, but how do I keep my sanity or even push back against the seeping cancer of social justice into my religion?
How does one separate true Christianity from the influences of social justice, and what can I do practically as a pastor in training to root out those influences?
That's from George.
George! How are you doing tonight?
I'm doing well, Stefan.
How are you? Good.
You are facing some challenges.
Philosophically, theologically. It seems so.
Yeah. Do you want to say a little bit about what's going on for my esteemed non-Christian listeners who haven't lifted the lid in a little while?
Well, where to begin?
So I guess I'll start with the first time I came across social justice kind of entering into Christianity with a rift in my home denomination that could be forming with the Western Coast churches starting to accept Gay clergy, which is not biblically correct.
I mean, love the person.
Hate the sin, not the sinner, right?
Right, yes. And I've also seen quite a bit of some people here talking about the growing racial prejudice in our country today.
Or racial division, I should say.
I'm sorry to interrupt, George, since I just asked you the question.
Yeah. When people say racial division, what they mean is white people are racist.
When they talk about racial conflicts, they mean white people are racist.
When they talk about racial tensions, they mean white people are racist.
In other words, they don't sit there and say, well, we have increasing racial tensions.
Hispanic racism against white is a big problem, right?
It always is just a code for white people are bad.
I agree. Wait, you agree that white people are bad?
No, I'm just kidding. Okay.
There's also a bit of cultural relativism as well.
I was reading a book, actually, signed from one of the classes.
We're supposed to give a review on it, so I'm allowed to say my opinion, but it was one of the chapters where I agree with them when they say, understanding the Old Testament, in order to understand it better, you should understand it.
Understand ancient Israeli culture.
But then they go on to say, like, well, there's this fallacy in our thinking nowadays where one culture is better than another.
And I'm like, wait a minute.
Isn't that true that there are cultures better than others?
I believe one of the comments they made was, I once believed that a democracy was morally superior to a monarchy.
So, let's just sort of unpack that a little, because that's something that's very common these days, which is this cultural relativism.
No culture is better than any other culture.
That's sort of the idea, right?
Right. Well, of course, if no culture is better than any culture, then there's no need for diversity.
Like, if no food is better than any other, what's the point of a buffet?
When they say no culture is better than any other culture, again, what they're saying is, white people, you're not allowed to have pride in your culture.
They're not saying it to Saudi Arabia, right?
Right. They're not saying it to Ghana, right?
Or Mozambique.
They're not saying it to the Maori.
They're not saying it to the Philippines.
They're saying it to white people.
They're saying it to white people and European culture.
Right. Say that Jews are superior and, you know, the rest are non-Jews or like cattle to serve, right?
They don't sit there and say to those people, well, that's wrong.
No culture is better than any other.
You better take that back, right?
It's one of these things that's considered to be universal that magically is only applicable to white people.
Yeah. Yeah. The two other things that I find probably the most...
Oh, sorry, one other thing. I'm sorry to interrupt, but just before we end that topic.
Sure. Would they say that there are certain cultures that are derived from Christian ethics?
And would they not consider if...
Christ is the way and the Lord is the true path and Christianity is the path to heaven.
Would they not say that Christian inspired or Christian derived cultures are better than non-Christian cultures?
In other words, would they say that Christianity is better than any other religion?
One would certainly hope so, wouldn't they?
Right. The other two things that I find probably the most prevalent, I would say, is the historical revision and kind of the shame of some of the areas in the Church's history, specifically the Crusades most often times.
Which is always a fun topic.
Yeah, and I'm sure they're doing a lot of lecturing on Muslims about the history of slavery and the invasion of a wide variety of countries, including India and so on.
I'm sure that they're really out there nagging cultures that may be considered a little bit more aggressive.
Are they just forever finger-wagging at Christians who have taken self-flagellation just a little too far?
Right. I remember one of my professors making comments like, have you ever found it awkward discussing with a Muslim about the Crusades?
And I was just sitting there thinking, I don't know, do they find it awkward to bring up the jizya and the taxes and the oppression that they put on Christians?
How about the Iranian genocide?
Is that awkward? I believe it was for the Armenians.
And this is the thing, too, right?
I mean, it's tragic and cowardly, right?
And in the past, I felt prey to this as well and had to look hard in the mirror at my own level of moral courage.
You know, and again, I'm not trying to put all the Muslims in one big bag, but, you know, the Muslims aren't sitting there sort of saying, well, you know, we were pretty aggressive in this area, and we did treat the slaves really badly, castrated and killed a lot of them, and, like, we've really got to reform that.
We've got to figure out what went wrong.
That's how criticism does not seem to be occurring very widely in other cultures.
You know, you don't see days of atonement for our participation in slavery in sub-Saharan African countries or even sub-Saharan African countries.
They don't sit there and say, well, white people couldn't have come in to capture the slaves because the average life expectancy of a white person in Africa was 11 months in the 16th, 17th century.
So we had to catch the slaves and sell them to the white people.
So we were kind of the fountainhead of slavery, so to speak.
And we've really got to figure out what we did wrong and what went wrong and why we participated and why we literally enslaved our brothers and sold them to the white men.
You don't see any of that stuff happening.
Where are these other self-critical cultures out there that we're supposed to be just so much in awe of?
Whose model are white people emulating here?
Who else is out there beating their own heads against a wall endlessly for things that weren't even considered wrong in the history at the time and for which other cultures have yet to apologize and yet to oppose?
Where is the successful culture that performs this level of self-flagellation, self-abuse and self-hatred?
No. White people are in an abusive relationship with the media.
That's all it is. They're in an abusive relationship with academia.
And just like a woman who's been verbally beat down and abused and stripped bare of her heritage, her history, her self-esteem and her personality and her soul, all we do is beat ourselves up in the mad hopes that somehow we can avoid aggression from other people.
It's not going to work.
I completely agree.
And one of the other examples I can think of off the top of my head, there was a chapel speaker, I remember, she was saying something I've heard a couple times among this sort of Christian ideology, questionably called Christian, that Jesus was a revolutionary.
He was, you know...
Specifically preaching to the downtrodden and to empowering widows, and specifically women through widows, and the Samaritans who are a different race.
And yeah, I don't agree with that at all.
Even Jesus said, I'm not here to judge the world, I'm here to save it.
Yeah, I mean, the idea that Jesus was preaching to the downtrodden, well, you know, I hate to say duh, and I don't know what ancient Aramaic is for duh, but le duh.
Of course he was. There's not much point offering salvation to the well-to-do political elites.
I'm sorry. In order to save people, they have to kind of be on the low end of the totem pole first in order to offer them salvation.
And of course, he appealed to slaves.
And of course, there is something in the Christian message that the first shall be last and the last shall be first and the meek shall inherit the earth and so on that gave comfort to people who did not have any particular martial capacity to improve their standing in the pecking order.
But the idea that he was a revolutionary, to me, is extraordinarily diminishing of the man's message.
Because to say that he was a revolutionary is to say that his primary purpose was the replacement of one government for another.
That the primary purpose was some sort of communist overthrow of the existing system and the imposition of a new political order.
I don't believe, you know, I'm no theologian, but I don't recall any time when Jesus gave specific instructions on how best politically to manage a disparate geographical region.
Don't recall that in the Sermon on the Mount.
Thou shalt have anarcho-singlitist communists scattered across the countryside to make sure that ratifying offers is meet once every week or two to act as a sort of informal mouthpiece for the masses and that everybody agrees.
That wasn't what he did. If there was a revolution, the revolution was the avoidance of political revolution and the incitement towards personal revolution, to personal self-criticism, to personal conscience, to a personal relationship to free will, a personal relationship to ethics, a personal relationship to God.
And that is revolutionary insofar as he was one of the first guys to come along and say, the answer does not lie.
The answer to human unhappiness does not rely in a reshaping of the political structures.
The answer to human unhappiness does not lie in the acquisition of power or sexual conquests or material goods.
The answer lies in the pursuit of virtue with an unattainable ideal as being the star that draws us ever upwards through the stony cliffs of morality.
And that revolution Gave something truly astounding to the West.
And the idea now that we're going to replace a personal relationship with responsibility and free will and virtue with the welfare state and the belief that this economic determinism that comes spewing like mucus out of the snotty nose of communism, the idea that economic determinism is what rules.
Well, these people, they're born poor.
They'll always be poor.
So we got to steal from the rich and give to the poor.
Ridiculous. The idea that Jesus said, okay, we'll give to the poor, sure.
But the poor will always be with us.
Give to the poor so that they don't die.
But don't imagine that if you give to the poor, they'll get to heaven, or you will either.
Sorry, go ahead. I was going to say that, I mean, Jesus didn't say that it's impossible for the rich to enter heaven either.
He said it's difficult, but not impossible.
Well, and of course, in Jesus' time, how did you become rich?
You became rich through invasion, through exploitation, through literal enslavement, right?
The majority of people in the ancient world were slaves, in the cities at least, and actually in the country a lot of them as well.
So wealth was, in general, an unjust accumulation of either political privilege or monopoly privilege or ancient, you know, who were the aristocracy?
They were the very best murderers that you could find.
They were the most promoted hitmen in the local state apparatus.
And who was the king? Well, he was generally the most bloody.
And that is...
That's not just Macbeth.
That's a whole lot of them.
And so, given that wealth was generally the accumulation of criminal activity, at least by modern standards, the idea that it would be rare for a rich person to enter into the kingdom of heaven.
But it's interesting because Jesus, by saying the rich can rarely get into heaven, meant that the accumulation of riches under the existing system was unjust.
Now, if Jesus had looked at The free market which his teachings helped to develop in many ways.
If Jesus had looked at the free market and looked at somebody who gained wealth by serving his fellow man, by serving their needs, by making their lives easier or better, I think he would have said, well, that rich, the richness, the wealth that comes out of that, conforms entirely with thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not bear false witness, thou shalt not murder.
It is a voluntary transaction.
The accumulation of wealth It's a sign of service and excellence.
And I can't imagine that he would have said the same thing about the rich in the free market that he would in a slave and imperialistic environment.
Yeah, I honestly think that these sorts of ideals just tend to prey on the good intentions and the good hearts of Christian people.
And they can get a little bit swept away by it, I think.
Well, Christians Need to really develop the spine of the provision of responsibility.
We all do. We all need to say to the poor.
Or to say to those in need.
Yes, perhaps you can get some help.
We can discuss that. But first, in order to be on the receiving end of our largesse, what you must do is you must start taking responsibility.
If you're having children out of wedlock, no one did that to you.
Right? The brother of the Las Vegas shooter was interviewed.
What did he say about his mother, who bore four children to a psychopathic armed bank robber and con man, who spent his entire life on the run or in prison, it seems?
He said of his mother, she had a hard life.
No, she chose to have children that With a psychopathic criminal.
And child after child after child.
And you know what? She didn't even leave him.
He left her, according to the brother.
He abandoned his family.
He left her. So she took the money, I assume, for the proceeds of the crime.
She didn't care about it. Fine with it.
Get out of here. Get me some money.
Get me some money. I don't care how.
The entire family serves the needs of women.
The shooter grows up, makes his mom rich, gives money to his girlfriends, gives money to his wives, gives money to his mother.
Responsibility is a hot potato that people want to get rid of.
It is an unpleasant, a bitter, jagged pill to swallow to say, I am responsible for my life.
There are factors outside of my control, but we still have significantly more freedoms than almost anyone throughout history and still almost anyone across the world.
Your life is your own. It is a precious gift to be unwrapped by your hand.
When people succeed, they want to say that they did it.
When people fail, they want to say, it's the system, man!
It's economic determinism while I was born poor.
Well... If we give people resources without also requiring that they accept responsibility, all we're doing is funding, subsidizing, and reinforcing their bad decisions.
Hey, you got a real good muscle there called irresponsibility.
Do you mind if I pump it full of steroids and send you to the gym?
It's tragic. Christians used to be tough this way.
Listen, I was raised as a Christian.
I was raised by Christians, and they were tough as nails.
Man, you failed.
You sucked.
You didn't study for the test.
You failed! Yeah, I thank my parents for raising me in a Christian home like that.
Consequences. Consequences.
People want to play the pity pipes in order to summon the demonic horde of free stuff.
Now, the social justice thing, people look at it as a cause.
I don't. Leftism is not a cause anymore.
Leftism is an effect.
And it's really just supply and demand.
And I'm sort of saying this to you so you can get a sense of the scope of what it is that you're dealing with and whether it can be solved through words.
Mm-hmm. Word's mostly pretty window dressing to the real meat of the matter, which is resource transfer.
How do you get to resources?
We all need resources to live.
How do you get your resources? Well, you either work for them, you steal them, or people give them to you.
You either steal from them directly or indirectly through the welfare state or other income transfer programs.
So, right now, if you can achieve the exalted status of victim...
You get free stuff. If you can claim to be a victim, you get free stuff.
It's either material stuff or emotional stuff like vengeance.
You know, like if you have sex in a college, I guess up until recently, and you woke up and really felt it was a bad idea, well, you could just claim to be a victim of sexual assault or rape, and you could get your revenge on the guy who never called you back and made you walk the walk of shame and made you feel like you used Kleenex and so on.
And So if you play the victim, you get well paid for it.
If you can claim victimhood, you are on the receiving end of trillions of dollars of resources as a collective.
So to me, You say, well, why is there such victim culture?
I mean, that's like asking, why do people buy lottery tickets?
Because they want to win.
Why do people, if you put gold bars on the front of your lawn and say, take them, I can't figure out why people are picking up these gold bars?
Right? We just have this weird system where we print money and we borrow money and we fire money at people who claim victim status, who claim to be outside...
The moral biosphere of free will cast out into the darkness.
And so, if we pay people to be victims, guess what?
You'll end up with a lot of victims.
Hey, I'm paying people in the town a million dollars to limp around.
Funny, there's a lot of people limping around.
You know, it's really not that complicated.
And trying to end...
Material acquisition with language is a magic deeper than any mortal syllables can conjure.
You can't do it. You cannot do it.
Like, try some guy, let's just say some guy, living in his car, gone through family court, and he just won $100,000 in a lottery ticket.
And you stand between him...
Let's say the lottery is run by the state.
You stand between him and the lottery office.
He's got this $100,000 winning ticket.
You stand by him and you say, no, my friend, this is not the way.
You should not take money from the state because it's only going to add to the state debt.
And then, by golly, your children's children may end up paying even more taxes or face runaway inflation.
So you should tear up this ticket that gets you $100,000.
You should set fire to it.
You should throw it away. It's bad for you.
It shall corrupt you.
It is easy money.
And it is the devil's work.
Well, what do you think? I mean, no matter how eloquent you are, what's going to happen?
The guy's going to push you aside and say, Oh, I'll take my chances.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
You cannot stop rampant resource acquisition with words.
It's like going out to a field full of rabbits and say, Hey, bunnies!
Stop fucking! Please!
You're going to run out of grass!
Too much sex! Too many baby rabbits!
Stop rutting!
You mad bags of hormones!
Stop it! What are they going to do?
Howl, howl, howl, howl!
Right? I mean, this is going to make more bunnies!
You cannot stop resource acquisition with words.
You can tell people why the resource acquisition is unjust.
That's not going to stop anyone from doing it.
But what it will do is when the resources start to run out, it will hopefully have laid the foundations for a better situation and system.
So why have people given up on the idea of free will?
And that's all social justice is, is giving up on the concept of free will.
Well, because we have paid for people.
We have paid for people.
To give up their free will.
Of course. Because if you portray yourself as a helpless victim of social or racial or gender or economic circumstances, you are just a leaf, verily tossed in the breeze, in the wind.
Well, then you're going to get paid $60,000, $70,000, $80,000 a year in terms of total benefits, the equivalent you'd have to make before taxes in the free market, or the relatively free market.
So it's like, well, I have this great gift from God, from nature, from biology.
I have this great gift of free will.
What's it worth for me on the open market?
How much can I sell my free will for?
How much if I pretend to be a victim?
And after you pretend long enough, you know what's interesting?
If you limp long enough...
In imagination, if you limp long enough pretending, you will eventually end up limping.
Why? Because you're favoring the leg.
You're not developing those muscles.
Your other leg gets stronger.
You end up with an imbalance that goes from faked to real.
Faked to real.
And if you give up your free will, ah, I shall play the victim.
I shall play the victim for deep 30 silver pieces.
I will play the victim for deep coin.
You play the victim for long enough, guess what?
Your free will has gone.
You are now dependent on the state.
You will react ferociously to anybody who talks about shrinking the power of the state or interrupting your unjustly acquired flow of Satan boogers known as fiat currency and...
You have sold your freedom.
You have sold your free will.
You have sold your power.
You have sold your responsibility in return for shekels, in return for coins, in return for food stamps and snap benefits and nothingness.
You sell your free will.
You end up with no free will.
And it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Like in the beginning, they had to sell you on economic determinism.
Now... After several generations of the welfare state, you kind of have it in a way, and that's why turning things around is going to be so tough.
So as long as there's this massive fire hose of free money going at those willing to give up their free will, telling them they have responsibility, it's kind of futile.
I mean, it's good to lay the seeds.
Don't get me. It's good to lay the seeds.
it's just something that they hopefully will remember when the free stuff runs out.
You sound brokenhearted about your situation.
That might just be my inability to properly inflect.
I was thinking on what you were saying.
My apologies. No, no, no.
It was before, before I started my speech.
I'm not criticizing. I'm just pointing out, you know, person to person, that you seem quite heartbroken about this situation.
Well, you know...
I grew up in a home that really valued our patriotism to our country, and to see it in the state that it is now, after having grown up, you know, believing in its values, it is kind of disheartening.
Compared to what? Compared to the Cold War?
Compared to the Second World War?
Compared to the Great Depression?
Compared to the First World War?
Things are bad, but they're way better than they used to be.
I mean, I know what you mean. You look at demographic crises and massive government overspending and terrible schools.
I mean, there's bad stuff going on, don't get me wrong.
But I am the first in a long line.
We men are the first in a long line of people for quite a long time.
Oh, are we still on? Despair.
Possibly, yes. Because you feel you can't win?
I feel that there's a bit of an inevitability to it.
And why's that? It happened to Rome.
It happened to Rome.
To the improvement of a lot of people.
That is true.
The current empire falling is not bad at all.
You understand?
The current empire in the West is a corrupt, vote-grabbing, horrendously immoral, destructive, imperialistic force of bombing foreigners and ripping off the unborn and ripping the unborn out of their damn wounds.
This Sodom and Gomorrah...
What should we fight to save from it?
The internet, reason, philosophy, virtue, free will.
What could we possibly want to save from the majority of the shit stain that passes for culture in the modern world, in the West?
Now, it still has the best elements and it still has, hopefully, the best future.
But right now, look at the mainstream media.
Lie after lie after lie.
They lie you into war.
They lie you into debt.
They lie you into despair.
They lie you into futility.
So the idea that we have to save what is...
Is madness. What is, cannot, and should not be saved.
We should rejoice its fall.
You know, Syria, right?
2011. Obama said, well, we gotta go and get rid of Assad.
He's killing his own people.
And they ended up, what, shipping $2 billion through Eastern Europe, handing it out to ISIS and ISIS-related fighters, or moderates, who pretended that they weren't ISIS and then turned and gave the weapons to ISIS. Right.
And now, in Syria, looks like they're ending what's going on.
In ISIS. And, of course, Aleppo is about to be liberated, and the mainstream media is screaming and catawalling, Assad's going to kill everyone!
And what are the 600,000 Syrians are streaming back to be ruled by Assad?
He's not killing anyone.
They're a bunch of sociopathic, murderous liars.
They are the ring from Lord of the Rings.
Sophistry is the ring. Now, they can kill with language.
They can enslave with language.
They can corrupt with language.
Surely we have some white words of our own that we can wield in response.
If the world can be undone by language, surely the world can be saved through language.
But not what is. What is has to go.
I mean, tell me, tell me, what would you save from what is?
Uh, uh, well...
I guess the people, so they can see that better tomorrow.
Oh man, that is flaccid, man.
I guess the people?
Tell me why would you save the people?
What virtues have they expressed that deserve their salvation?
It's not about what they deserve.
It's not about being fair.
It's not about justice?
Wait a minute. Aren't you a Christian?
It's not about justice? Justice and fairness are two different things.
Go on. God is not necessarily fair.
A mass murderer, if he repents and accepts Jesus, could go to heaven.
Therefore, it's not so much about being fair, so much as trying to share Jesus and what he has done by his sacrifice with other people.
As Milton would put it, I am involved with mankind, and to have mankind suffer and lose to be lost would...
Well, it's a bit less of myself as well because...
Yeah, I know the Borg collectivism of him, but let me ask you this.
Okay, so you feel that repentance is the pathway to salvation, right?
Part of it, yes.
That's what you quoted, okay?
Don't go rubber bones on me, man.
Let's just have a robust conversation without caveats, all right?
All right. So a mass murderer can go to heaven if he repents, right?
Yes. Quick question.
Do you see a lot of repenting going on in the world at the moment?
Do you see a lot of leftists seeing the error of their ways and repenting?
No, obviously not.
And therefore, how have they earned their salvation, I ask you again?
They definitely haven't.
Right. So if God won't save the unrepentant sinner, If you do, aren't you saying that your judgment is somehow morally superior to God's?
No, and it's not necessarily my job to save them in that way, to be sure.
Well, you can't save them, right?
They have to save themselves.
The beautiful thing about the Internet is the Internet is a big, giant network of no more goddamn excuses.
Excuse my French, I'll stop there.
It's no more excuses.
No more excuses, because the information is literally...
You don't even have to type.
You can speak. Google, show me reason.
Whatever you can do. Show me philosophy.
Show me facts. Let me look up data.
I think there should be gun control.
Well, except for the focus on the facts.
Gun ownership has been going up.
Violent crime has been going down. Oh, look.
South Africa. Really, really strict gun control laws in South Africa.
One of the highest murder rates ever.
Facts are right there for your fingertips.
Don't even have to go to the library. So people have no excuse.
You know, there was an old debate, theological debate.
I don't know where it stands right now. Did Socrates go to heaven?
Clearly a good man, but lived hundreds of years before the time of Jesus.
Socrates did not have access to Jesus, and therefore could not go to heaven.
But he was a good man, therefore he couldn't go to hell.
And the purgatory and other theological constructs were...
Described or discussed to try and solve that problem.
Nobody now exists prior to Jesus.
Nobody now exists prior to facts.
Nobody now exists prior to reality, to data, to better arguments.
So nobody has any excuse anymore.
At all. If you have time to take pictures of your cat's dinner and post it on the internet, you have time to look up a fact or two.
So nobody is innocent now.
And, you know, again, I'm talking about people with access.
It's billions of people around the world, pretty much.
So nobody has any excuse anymore.
And Christianity was created at a time when the communications technology was what?
A guy running in a toga?
A bird flying with a note tied to its leg?
And now we have instant access to all the world's wisdom in the palm of our hand, something incomprehensible merely a few decades ago.
And nobody gets to say, I didn't know.
If you don't know something now, it's because you actively don't want to know it.
Because you're actively avoiding it.
And ignorance of the law is no excuse, they said.
Even when the law was ridiculously complicated, ignorance of facts is no excuse anymore.
The facts are all available. And you can find charismatic people to present those facts to you somewhere on the internet, somewhere, somehow.
Easily, easily, easily.
So, I ask again.
Forget the people. You can't save them because they have to save themselves and you can't offer them absolution in the absence of repentance.
And repentance must come before disaster.
Like the NFL making its players stand and put their heart on for the anthem now means nothing.
It means nothing. They're no longer standing on principle.
They're standing on a shrinking pile of money.
Mm-hmm. The people must find fault in their vices before the system begins to collapse.
It's sort of like the woman who treats a guy like crap because she's got a million dollars.
And she's like, I don't need you.
I got all this money.
She treats him like crap and he does this beta orbit thing, right?
Then her banker phones her and says, ooh, sorry.
You invested in something that went completely belly up.
Your money's all gone. And then she's like, oh, that guy I was really mean to, I'm going to be super nice to him now.
That's got nothing to do with virtue.
That's just resource acquisition.
The end of the system is close enough now that people have almost no time left.
To repent. To see the error of their ways.
Because once the cracks start forming in the system, women have very little time to start treating men well again.
Because when the welfare state starts to run out, when old age pensions start to run out, when the inflation hits, when the whatever crisis hits, it's not far away.
America is the reserve currency of the world.
That petering out is not far away.
I said 10 years ago, 5 to 15 years.
I still stick by it.
It was 5. And it may well be 15.
But when the money really starts to run out and people start to reform, like when women face the end of the welfare state and then they suddenly start being nice to men Men aren't going to buy it.
Well, some desperate, thirsty men will buy it, but men aren't going to buy it.
Be too late. So, your job is to save people now.
Because it's almost soon.
I'm telling you this.
Let me tell you something about my days.
I will tell you a reasonable portion of my day.
This is my spiritual and mental exercise.
Mm-hmm. And I will recommend it to people.
It's harsh, but it is very, very necessary.
A good portion of my day I spend hardening my heart.
I'm a ridiculously soft touch.
I'm very empathetic. I really care.
And it is a horrible, horrible liability in the years to come.
I am...
Working hard to harden my heart.
I need an exoskeleton.
I need it wrapped 12 deep in armadillo hide.
I need leather, metal buckles.
I need force fields.
I need shields. I need everything.
Because the time is going to come when people's desperation is going to flare up like a fiery geister.
And we are going to have to tiptoe our way around people's needs.
And we're going to have to be Hard in our hearts.
And people are desperately going to try and play the organs of our empathy.
They're going to try and play the musical instruments of our self-flagellating suicidal altruism.
And they're going to have need and they're going to present their need to us.
It's like when you are...
You've been in an abusive relationship.
You're a CEO wife. You've been in an abusive relationship for many, many years.
And then you decide to leave.
And a week before you decide to leave, your husband gets cancer.
Well, you know what he's going to do, right?
He's going to try and play every single note on your flute of sympathy.
And you know what you need to do?
You need to harden your heart.
You need to treat people as you've been treated.
You need to treat them with the empathy that they have treated you or the lack of empathy that they have treated you You need to wake up every morning and punch yourself right between the nipples and put a thick coating around your heart.
This raw, skinned liver, raw nerve exposed to the sky and the lightning and the rain and the hail aspect of Western civilization needs to be driven out like the demon that it is.
This soft-hearted, easy-touch, massive guilt resource coughing up, sacrifice and surrender the future of your children for the sake of avoiding the lashings of guilt in the here and now, that has to stop.
That has to stop. I view it as a deep spiritual exercise to harden my heart.
Now, when your heart is hardened, you can help people.
When your heart is hardened, you can save people.
When your heart is hardened, you might actually be able to save your civilization.
But if all you're focused on is avoiding pain, you will end up with nothing.
There is no safety in this world.
There is no security in this world.
There is only temporary liberty from pain at the expense of permanent enslavement under politics.
You must harden your heart.
Because let me tell you something else.
This is the path, I think, to free people.
This is what I've been working on, so I might as well talk about it now.
If you own other people's lives, they will treat you As both a god and a devil.
And you see this. We see this with white people.
White males in particular. They are gods because they have this magic, mysterious privilege.
And they are devils because they are evil and racist, right?
And the reason people treat you as gods is because you have a productive power that they need, and the reason they treat you as devils is they're afraid that you're gonna figure out you don't need them.
They need you, you don't need them.
They don't have anything positive to offer you, they have only the withdrawal of a negative.
We won't call you a racist if you give us a trillion dollars a year.
The only way to help people In this time of need, in this time of crisis, is to stop owning their lives, to give their lives back to them, which means to harden your heart against their supplications.
People will beg to be saved from the consequences of their own actions, and if you refuse, they get to own their lives again.
I want to empower women, but empowering women isn't hiring them because they have tits.
Empowering women Is giving them full moral responsibility.
You chose to be with a crappy man.
That's your choice. You must own it.
I will not own that choice for you.
I will not own that choice for you.
If you chose to play video games rather than learn anything productive and valuable in the marketplace, you own that choice.
I will not own that choice for you and I will not subsidize the effects of that choice because I will not rob you.
Of the autonomy, nobility, dignity, and humanity of being a person with free will.
If you took a degree in university that landed you in debt and gave you no economically valuable skills, that is your choice.
I sympathize. You must own it.
Because if you're smart enough to go to college, even though the standards are full, and if you're smart enough to go to college, you're damn well smart enough to look up whether your degree is going to be worth anything or not.
And if you avoid doing that, that's on you!
Not on me. That's on you.
You chose to take some degree in women's studies.
Well, you're either going to end up Trying to be some kind of professor or what?
You're going to end up in some low-rent retail job.
Because that degree has not only not given you economic value, it has crippled you by filling you full of resentments and hatreds and angers and depression and rage.
It has provoked neuroticism within your personality.
Maybe it's epigenetic. Maybe it's one way.
Maybe it's permanent. I don't know.
But you must harden your heart and you must give people back their lives, which means stop owning their bad decisions.
I have made bad decisions in my life.
I have never asked anyone else to own them.
I have never said, my bad decisions, they're owned by someone else.
How did I escape the rubble of a destroyed childhood?
By... Owning my future.
I could have blamed just about anything I wanted on that childhood, on how I was raised.
But I didn't. You stop owning people's bad decisions.
They will cry out piteously, like children.
And we wish to rescue them piteously, like children.
To the child who walks out of the ice cream shop with the ice cream, we've all seen this.
And they lick too hard. They lick too hard.
They say, careful, don't lick too hard.
That's wobbly. I'm fine.
They lick too hard. Plop.
Right? They'll ice cream and they plop.
They cry. And what do we want to do?
Oh, it's okay.
I'll get you another ice cream.
Now, when your kids are little, that makes sense.
When they're not little...
That is bad. Very bad.
You spilled your ice cream.
That's a shame. Now, if you want to spend your own money to buy another one, you certainly can.
But I'm not going to own your bad decision.
So you need to harden your heart against this open-mouthed baby bird supplication that keeps pouring in at us from all directions.
I need, I need, I need.
It's unfair, it's unfair, it's unfair.
You gotta give, you gotta give, you gotta give.
No. No.
I will not own people's bad decisions.
In America, this is the darker question.
People came in illegally, bought children.
Well, they have to own those bad decisions.
Asking the American public to subsidize and fund and pay for those illegal, immoral decisions is wrong.
But they need, they need, we feel, we feel, we sympathize.
No! Harden your hearts!
For God's sakes!
Harden your hearts.
Give people back their lives.
Stop owning people's decisions in this sick, interwebby, girly, feminine, claustrophobic, everybody's responsible for everyone else, I am a part of mankind.
You're not a part of mankind.
You're a striving bundle of DNA seeking to replicate.
Stop owning other people's decisions.
It's not because you're a good person.
It's because you're a scared person.
It's not because you're moral.
It's because you're bullied.
It's not because you're virtuous.
It's because you're traumatized.
We don't give things in the West because we think it's kind and good and nice.
We give things because we're afraid.
We give things because we don't want to be called racist or sexist or whatever.
Xenophobic. We give up everything out of fear.
But the devil has always walked among us, threatening to hit us with fiery verbal lashes of social disapproval if we do not conform to what he wants.
You stand...
In the face of these lashes and say, I wear these blackened stripes as a mark of pride, as a mark of virtue.
Jesus could walk up to a cross and be nailed to it and hang there for days, dying and draining in the baking sun.
And his legacy seems to be composed, present company accepted, of a lot of people Who won't put up with bad words, who fold and give the glories of her history.
To trolls. For fear of bad syllables, for fear of mean words.
I think it's important to remember the sacrifice of Jesus, what he gave up.
He gave up a family, a marriage, a life.
He gave up his freedom, the integrity of his scalp, the wholeness of his hands and his feet, for his truth.
Christians, I think, have strayed so far from that kind of sacrifice That they have become traumatized victims willing to appease anyone and everything to buy five minutes more of not being called bad names.
Christianity was founded on being called bad names.
Christianity was founded on crucifixion and death and being eaten by lions and politically persecuted and thrown into prison and thrown as slaves into the swords of others.
And Christians Did not survive and flourish.
It did not become a core component of Western civilization.
Because bad syllables folded the hearts and spines of Christians.
There was a courage.
Christians ruled from one small island, from England.
Christians ruled a third of the world.
Then after the Second World War, perhaps because so many good Christians and strong case-selected Christians had been killed, that one small island that ruled a third of the world, to the benefit of much and many of the people in that empire.
After the Second World War, the English said, they were offered this deal.
We will give you the welfare state and we will take the empire.
And this is what they have been living with ever since now.
Please understand, I'm not saying that the empire was necessarily good.
There are certainly positive aspects for some for the welfare state.
We want to find something in the middle where there's just property rights and the non-aggression principle.
But the devil, my friend, wants you to feel that things are hopeless so that you will not fight.
You understand? He wants you to feel that you are small and the wrongness of the world is immense.
So that you feel insignificant.
You feel like a mouse at the feet of a T-Rex.
All I can do is scurry and hide and hope that the meteor takes down the giants.
Well, the meteor is taking down the giants.
The meteor of economic reality, fiscal reality is taking down the giants no matter what.
But you need to be standing tall and strong in the saddle To be a beacon for people whose world is going to fail.
You can't win now.
You can't win now.
But you can be there as a prophet.
You can be there as someone who was right all the way along.
You can be there standing tall and visible And as Nietzsche said, those who were dancing were thought insane by those who could not hear the music.
Those of us who are right are thought mad and evil by those who do not understand the facts.
But we stand in the facts.
We stand resolute in the facts.
We pour our feet into the concrete of the facts and hope that society doesn't pour us with our concrete feet into the bay.
But we stand...
And we continue to speak the truth and we laugh at those who call us mad.
Because that's exactly what mad people call sane people.
The disease thinks the cure is a disease, you understand?
You stand and you speak the truth.
This is wrong. This will not work.
This is wrong. This will not work.
This is immoral. It will fail.
This is immoral. This will fail.
And here's why, and here's why, and here's why, and here's why!
I've been saying for 30 years the welfare state will fail.
Being a philosopher means always being sorry that you're right.
I've been saying forever, demographics is destiny.
I've been saying forever, feminism is toxic.
Feminism is socialism in granny panties.
Now, I was also saying, why Bitcoin?
But it was 17 cents.
So you just have to be right for long enough, and the world either puts you in the grave or kneels at your feet.
That's all. And you can avoid standing tall in the saddle and being right, though the winds try to destroy you, if you want.
And then you just join the human herd, the lemmings, the leaves on the stream, and you're taken over the waterfall, and you've given up your free will and your power and your glory and your commitment to virtue and your capacity to inspire.
But I can't believe that that's what God wants you to do.
Be quiet. Join the herd.
Don't tell the truth. Don't tell the facts.
There is more science in Christianity than there is in the left.
There is more reason in Christianity than there is in communism.
There is more philosophy in Christianity than there is in socialism.
Because Christianity defends fiercely the pups of free will like a mother bear.
The pups of personal responsibility.
And I'm not sure if you have remembered that as much as you should have.
You stand tall.
You stay right.
You stay correct. You stay honest.
You stay vocal. And you have no authority as a sane person in a mad world But when the mad world reveals itself as mad, people flock to sanity, and if you're not there, where will they go?
You will have a congregation as a pastor to be, my friend.
You must tell them the truth, though the skies fall.
You must tell them the truth, though they nail you up.
Because what is the alternative?
To let the devil rule the world?
To let lies and sophistry rule the world?
To plunge mankind into an eternal darkness?
Not an option, not a plan B, right?
You must be there for your congregation.
Because when the world falls apart, they need your credible blueprints to put it back together again.
And you cannot deny The herd, the responsibility of leadership, when they cannot think for themselves.
When people can't think for themselves, all they can be is led.
Someone's going to lead them. They're either going to lead them down to hell or towards heaven, where they go.
It's largely up to you.
Does that help? I think that does.
Thank you. You're very welcome.
Let's move on to the next caller. Thank you.
Alright, up next we have Dan.
Dan wrote in and said, My mom, feeling guilty or just out of unconditional love, bought me tons of the associated action figures and vehicles.
At that point, I pretty much slowly moved into my imagination.
I had two lives, one in my head with a cast of characters and all kinds of amazing heroic stories and situations, and the other real one that basically I went through the motions with.
At any point, I can just sit there and go off into my imagination.
It's easy to do and fun.
However, the people I should have a better connection to are suffering.
When things get stressful, I essentially leave to a place I have complete control over.
I've gone to a therapist, and that's helped, but I simply can't seem to leave my imagination and be as present as I should.
My wife and kids need a full-time husband and dad.
And while I understand that, this habit is hard to break.
That's from Dan.
Thank you.
Hey Dan, how's it going?
Hey Steph. What are your wife and kids missing from you?
I mean, not necessarily what do they say, but what do you think they're missing?
Well, I guess I kind of feel like anything that takes my attention and time and focus away from family and work, you know, might be inherently bad.
Does that make sense? Yeah.
I mean, you've kind of described things without giving me any specifics.
Give me a concrete example, please, of how they might be missing you, what might happen.
All right. I have a little boy I should play with more, right?
And so I do not spend as much time one-on-one with him as I should.
I guess, you know, some people watch TV, I do this.
And sorry, give me more specifically what it is that you're doing that keeps him at bay.
Okay. It's kind of the way I described it.
I just kind of go, I go off into this other, into my imagination, and I just sit quietly and disappear.
You know, often I have this whole other world that I hang out in.
And there's rules to it and things, you know.
And so I spend too much time doing that is my concern.
I mean, I guess maybe it shouldn't be a concern.
Maybe everybody has a hobby, right?
Tell me a little bit about the other world.
Okay, so, you know, when I was a kid, I was very much influenced by sci-fi stuff, right, that came out when I was a kid.
And so, you know, it's kind of very similar to that sort of thing.
So imagine like a poorly written novel with predictable cliches and meandering plot because there's no editor that I work with.
And so.
That's kind of.
I've been doing it for almost 50 years and I'm a little bit close to the problem, so I I wanted to get.
Perspective on it.
So you said 50, 5-0?
Yeah, I'm 50, yeah.
Okay, so why did you not make this your job?
Well, okay. I tried to, when I was in my 20s, put things down on paper, and I tried to be an artist, I tried to be a writer, but I'm a pretty lazy and unfocused person.
And, like, I bought a computer, a Mac 128 back in 84, with the intention of You know, using it to typeset my own books or something, and I ended up being more interested in the computer, and that turned into a career rather than the stuff that was going on in my head.
Right. Okay, so you worked in IT, is that right?
Oh, you work in IT? Yeah, yes.
All the way, yeah, till today.
Right. Right.
And... Why do you think you ended up working more in IT than in the creative field?
Well, one thing...
Okay, when I was...
My early teens, I guess, or tweens, I sort of felt really ashamed about the stuff I was doing and stopped showing the pictures to my family and other people.
Oh, yeah, yeah. Sort of the, aren't you a little old for this kind of thing?
Right. Yeah, yeah.
And I was, you know, I was just, right, right.
And so then it became sort of a secret.
I wasn't sure if lots of other people did it, all right, for a long time.
I was like, maybe, maybe everybody does this and it's not just me.
And it wasn't until I was in my 20s and realized that, no, not everybody does this to this extent.
Okay, so you stopped writing.
Oh, sorry, you stopped trying to do pictures and maybe even a bit of writing when you were in your early teens because social disapproval or a feeling of embarrassment.
Is that right? Yeah, and I'm a little bit lazy, right?
Like, you know, I might start something and not really finish it.
It's a lot more efficient and clearer in my head than it is when it comes out in words.
Well, sure. I mean, that's like saying I can think of a piano tune, but I can't play it until I've practiced piano for a long time.
Yeah. The translation of thoughts to communication, whether it's direct or indirect through allegory, through story, through metaphor, it takes a lot of training.
It takes a lot of work to translate.
I get comments all the time and people say, Steph, I really envy your ability to translate my secret thoughts into public language.
Yeah. Well, it didn't come out of nowhere.
You know, it's like me looking at a classical pianist and saying, like, I really envy your ability to play that piano piece.
It's like, it didn't come out of nowhere, right?
I mean, there may be some native talent, but this is a lot of preparation.
Now, people didn't see my preparation.
I popped into the world, you know, fully formed, like something out of Zeus's forehead.
Yeah. Yeah.
Like, if you ever want to see a great concert, 1991, in excess, Wembley Stadium.
Damn, that's a great concert.
Yeah. It was a tragedy when that cat-like blues voice singer died.
But... This was a...
They played... You know, this was a bar band that had been working forever.
Yeah. It's like Huey Lewis in the news.
A 10-year overnight success.
He just came out of nowhere.
No, he didn't. They'd been working for a long, long, long time.
And it takes so the preparation that I did.
I mean, I had written before The Art of the Argument came out, which is like my first, I mean, the other stuff I sort of self-published.
And this is self-published, but through a bit more of a mainstream, you know, Amazon outlet.
Go to theartoftheargument.com.
It's a great book, I think, but...
I've got it on Kindle.
It's great so far. Oh, have you been enjoying it?
Yeah, I'm still in part one, but I am enjoying it.
Thank you. I think it's best on Kindle.
But anyway, when I had written, you know, The Art of the Argument, which is still number one, I think, political philosophy, but this is like my 10th or 11th book.
Come out of nowhere. You know, I had debates.
I wrote novel stories.
I have like this journal from when I was at college that goes on for, you know, 700 small typed pages.
I developed thoughts for a long time, my capacity to express.
I did theater.
We did improv. I mean, spontaneous speech is something that I have had many, many years of training in, and I have delved deep into philosophy, and I've read the greats.
I've read the great orators to figure out how they do what they do.
How do you connect with yourself and the world at the same time?
It's a balancing act.
So I guess my question is, did you expect that it was going to be easy to translate inner thoughts to outer stories?
No. No, I did not.
I read up on screenwriting and story structure and, as I said, I did try to do some of these things.
I just didn't stick with it.
It doesn't mean I can't try again.
Yeah, I just did not really...
I didn't stick with it.
Right, right.
Let's talk about your dad and your mom.
Mm-hmm. You say you were lazy.
You say not particularly motivated, is that right?
I mean, I guess you were somewhat motivated, but you said you were lazy.
Yeah, yeah, I was...
Very much, very much a lazy guy.
I was a kid. I was the one that always, his room was messy and would avoid, you know, avoid any kind of work.
My dad was very hardworking.
He died when I was young, but, you know, it's the thing you only hear the good things.
So I didn't really know him.
But he had built a business with his brother and was very hardworking.
And my mom was a stay-at-home mom.
She was a great mom.
You know, gave me definitely unconditional love.
When I had a lot of...
There was a lot of death in the family from various causes.
And she became a hoarder.
I think she withdrew.
My father's side of the family...
Swindled her out of the business my father had built and friends that my dad had stopped coming over over a period of time.
You know, I was little. I didn't really understand what was going on.
But she became more and more isolated as the years went on and started hoarding.
You know, just like you see on Tortors, the show, there was little pathways to walk and all that.
So, that's the way things were up until my late teens.
Okay, so let's talk a little bit about, sorry, because you've got this great mom thing going on, right?
Yeah. Now, you've listened to enough of my show to know that I don't take things at face value that people say, just as people shouldn't take things at face value that I say, right?
Yeah, I've been waiting for this.
Yes, good. Good, I'm sure this is why you called.
So, unconditional love.
Yeah. That's fine for a baby.
It's fine for a toddler. How is it good for a child?
What do you mean by unconditional love?
Well, I just feel like she, no matter how I was, I really began to get angry at her and really kind of hate her when she got sick and I couldn't have friends come over and stuff.
As a teenager, I was a real ass to her.
And no matter what I did, she would never...
She was always loving and supportive and never got pissed.
You know what I mean? I never questioned that I was loved, even when I was being a terrible kid.
Okay, but what does it mean to be loved by your mother?
I'm not really sure.
How do you know she loved you and how did that manifest?
She never got mad.
I mean, she never really got mad at me.
And whenever I asked for something, she always gave it to me if it was within her power.
So whenever you asked her for something, she always gave it to you.
You didn't have to earn it.
You didn't have to learn to deal with rejection or no.
That is correct. Yes.
Do you see any relationship between this and what you call laziness?
Okay. Okay.
Yes. A little light.
It's going off. Okay.
Go on. Tell me. No.
Well, yeah, I never had to do anything.
I promised the world to get something and then not actually go through with what I said and was never held accountable for what I had promised to do in exchange for whatever it is I wanted.
And that probably didn't really encourage a work ethic very well.
What theory of parenting do you think she was working with that says, give your children everything they want?
Well, alright.
I believe she felt guilty because there was no dad for me, and my brothers had died, and so I didn't...
Sorry, your brothers died?
Yeah, I had...
Okay, there was a mother and father, and I had four brothers, so it was five boys.
And three out of the five boys died by the time I was ten.
How? Different things.
One was a complication from an operation.
One was a birth defect.
One was a schizophrenic, very violent schizophrenic, who died at a mental institution.
So on the bell curve of death, I'm on the edge, in my opinion, of someone that's not in a war-torn country.
So... It was just different things.
And so she watched her husband and three of her sons die.
Okay, so sorry. So one died from an operation and what was that?
What was the operation?
He got an infection from, it wasn't your appendix, it's another commonly removed organ.
And he got an infection.
He got a fever. And there was some machine they had back in the 60s that they would put you in that would cool your body down.
But there was already someone in it.
And so he died of an infection.
Like overheated kind of thing?
Like gold platter? Yeah, I think that might have been it.
But I was little.
And honestly, she didn't talk about this stuff.
So I'm also ignorant just from my own background.
I've gotten bits and pieces from some cousins.
I know that sounds weird, but that's the way it is.
Right, right. And what happened with the other brother, the birth defect, you said?
Yeah, he had severe Down syndrome and didn't know the past.
One or so.
Right. He died very young.
And then my brother, my oldest brother, was in a state mental institution.
They said he fell, but my mother always suspected someone beat him to death in his room.
But he was like 20 years old.
I was, I guess, a change of life baby.
The nearest sibling was...
10 years older than me, and he was the oldest.
I think he was around 30 or something when he died.
What did your father die of?
He had a massive aneurysm and just dropped dead.
He smoked his whole life, so I figured somehow related to that.
It's one of those things I remember waking up and Seeing all the house full of people, food all over the counter, you know, people bring food.
And then looking up and everyone looking down at me with this sort of sad look on their face.
And the pastor of the church told me that he had gone to heaven.
He did a lot of work for the Catholic Church.
And how old was he? Seven.
Oh, that's rough. Yeah, I mean, you know, a lot of people never even know their dad, so I did have seven.
Oh, no, no, no. Come on, man.
Don't give me this.
They're a starving kid in India, so...
Right? I mean, that was rough.
Really rough. Yeah, my mom never took his clothes out of their drawers or anything, so as I got older, you know, there was still this...
This stuff was on his desk.
I mean, nothing had...
She was, I think, waiting for me to ask questions, which I didn't.
So, you know, a lot of things I learned just by looking at his stuff is sort of strange.
Wait, so your mother was waiting for you to ask questions?
What do you mean? That's what she told me one time.
She said, you know, I asked her why she didn't talk about him.
And she said that she thought...
Something about asking, you know, she would answer any questions I wanted to.
So she was passive?
Yes, yeah. Yeah, because you don't expect children to know the kind of questions to ask.
Right, like, you know, I'm now in the process of teaching my daughter about self-knowledge, about having some idea where your feelings come from, and it's a challenge, right?
Yeah. I mean, just saying, okay, well, why did you feel this?
And what did you think? I don't know.
Like, what's a perfectly valid perspective for a young child to have, but you do need to get into this habit.
So your mother has this fantasy world in a way where your father is still alive, right?
Like, she's not clearing stuff out.
Maybe she just ran out of grief, you know, I mean, with all of these deaths in the family.
But... She's passive, and she doesn't say no to you or give you rational restrictions or boundaries.
Is that right? Right.
Yeah. Even if I said no to like a bath, right, she wouldn't make me take a bath.
So I would go to school, you know, really gross.
Yeah. Well, she gave up.
I mean, this isn't even liberty.
This isn't even a parental philosophy.
This is just like rubber bones, right?
Sure. Yes.
Well, because also with the hoarding, right?
You give up on letting anything go.
You give up on housekeeping. You give up on basic maintenance of your environment, right?
Yes. And, you know, when my dad was around, we had a really...
I mean, we went from...
Upper middle class waterfront to, you know, it was really gross, living on government, you know, social security, survivor benefits, and then a house that just went to crap in, you know, maybe five years. No life insurance for your father?
No, he had an agreement with his brother that whichever one of them died, the other one surviving would take care of the family, of the one who passed.
And he was my godfather, too.
And he ended up just...
All he did is... This is what I've been told, right?
This is what I was told. He swindled her out of everything and just separated from...
They lived down the street. I don't quite understand.
Why not just buy some life insurance?
It's not that expensive, especially when you buy it young.
What does it mean? I'm going to rely on my brother.
Sorry, I don't mean to say that.
People say, as close as brothers.
And to my knowledge, that just...
Simply means as close as brothers pretend to be until early memories of treachery reemerge.
But I don't like, if you have kids, and you're the sole provider, you buy some goddamn life insurance.
Like, I mean, I'm sorry, that's just one of these basic rules.
You brush your teeth, you wipe your ass, and you buy some life insurance.
Yeah, I have three kids, and I have a shitload of life insurance.
I bet you do. I bet you do.
So, not a smart move on your parents.
Side to rely on this brother who turned out to not be overly helpful.
You know, I don't know what they were thinking, but he wasn't stupid.
I mean, he was an architect, and they had a successful business, and I guess anybody can trust too much.
But, you know, I'm not making excuses.
I don't know.
No, but this is the challenge that you face, Dan, is I'm trying to Reorient your continuum here.
Okay. Right? So, first of all, if he was stupid, it would be better, right?
So the fact that he wasn't stupid makes it worse, right?
But I need you to reorient your continuum.
Because you say, my mother loved me.
And it turns out that that means neglect.
And you say, you know, my father was too trusting.
Right? No, he was mistaken about a very important matter.
A, his health, and B, his brother.
Right? So that's not trusting too much.
I need to, like, you know this Aristotelian mean, like there's this kind of bell curve that happens?
Where if you have too little courage, you're a coward.
If you have too much courage, you're foolhardy.
You never know when to retreat.
You never know when to strategically move forward and backwards, right?
So I'm trying to sort of get you to reorient, right?
So saying no to everything a child does and saying yes to everything a child wants, they're not opposites.
They're both bad.
A balance, a rational balance, and the general tipping of parental authority to self-ownership is the point of parenting, right?
So I'm trying to get you to reorient.
You say these words like when you say, my father trusted too much.
No. He made a terrible decision.
Because if your father doesn't know his own brother, he didn't trust too much.
He trusted someone he had damn well no right to trust.
And he trusted the future of his family and his children on someone who was a scumbag.
That is not trusting too much.
That's being profoundly irresponsible.
Wow. I'm telling you this.
I'm sorry, but the dead need to be dug up and judged.
Because that's how the living advance.
It is profoundly irresponsible.
Even if your brother, even if his brother, sorry, had been trustworthy.
It's a bad idea.
To put the future of your family, when you're a heavy smoker and in ill health, to put the future of your family on some other family member who might decide to go pick grades in Queensland, who might lose his job, who himself might die or get sick.
No. You go to insurance company and you get your insurance so that it can be paid.
It's profoundly irresponsible to chain smoke and not have insurance.
You moved into your imagination because...
Reality was off-limits.
These kinds of judgments, I get that they're shocking to you, these kinds of evaluations, right?
It's easier to be in a fantasy world when the real world you need to judge is off-limits.
Can you imagine saying this stuff to your mom?
No. Right.
Right. Listen, I have a lot of insurance that I've had since my 20s, since long before I became a father.
Yeah. I exercise, I eat well, I'm a healthy weight.
Oops, got cancer.
Bad luck, brother.
It's like that guy, the Godfather in that war movie, or that war series.
Got throat cancer.
Did you smoke?
No, I'm just lucky, I guess.
Life can be a little random.
Thank you.
So you need your insurance.
Now, your dad was in a different category.
As you say, he smoked. He wasn't healthy.
Was he overweight? No.
No, he wasn't. I guess if he smokes enough, he's not likely to be because there's no room to eat all that smoke.
And so your mother...
I mean, that's a lot of death to chow down on.
And I'm not trying to dump on your mom because I get that that's a lot, but you have to live for the living.
I mean, it's a cliche and it's a goofy thing to say, but it's fundamentally still true nonetheless.
That your mother cannot lay down with her dead children in the grave And let her living children fuck off to wherever they want.
That is not a choice when you're a parent.
That's not a real choice.
I mean, that's a lot of grief to process.
That is a lot of death to process.
And my heart goes out to you and your sibling and your mom.
I mean, that is terrible stuff.
But nonetheless, we do not get pulled daisy chain style.
You know, like there's a tug of war between the dead and the living, right?
And it's a tug of war.
Like, you know, you see these games at county fairs where there's this mud pit in the middle of these people pulling on either side.
There is a tug of war between the living and the dead.
Now, we can't pull the dead back to life, but a lot of times they're trying to pull us into death, to pull us into despair, to pull us into futility and mortality and meaninglessness and hopelessness, because we are going to be pulled by the dead into that grave.
They are going to pull, that rope is tied to us, and they have all the strength of eternity, they have all the strength of mortality, they have all the strength of finite time to pull us down into that grave.
And their hands never tire, and the rope never breaks, and their grip only tightens, and our heels may dig in, but we are pulled inch by inch, day to day, towards that grave by the endless chain of the dead.
And to be surrounded by the dead when young is a real challenge, but it doesn't mean that you follow the dead into their grave.
What it means, I think, is you say, to hell with you dead people.
I'm sorry you're dead.
I'm still alive.
Fuck off. Wow.
And you say to the dead...
I can only honor you by tasting deep of the fruits of life because you can no longer take breath.
Therefore, every breath that I take must smell the sweetest.
Every meal I ate must taste the best because you are ashes and earth and worms.
But there is a part of us that wants to follow the dead into the grave and lie with them and avoid life for fear of...
What? Offending them?
Upsetting them? They're dead.
This isn't a Japanese village where the dead come to life.
This isn't a Ghibli cartoon of horrifying, nasty hellishness and insanity, by the way.
God, those are creepy. Right?
And so there was the dead.
And there was the dead in the history of my family.
There was the First World War. There was the Second World War.
There were all of these stories.
There were the dead. And there were those claimed by madness.
We are a high-octane brain family.
And sometimes that means speed, and sometimes that means burning out.
I recognize that.
It's a tight, tight thread between brilliance and supernova.
It is a very, very tight line.
And all high-octane families have their craters around them of the people We did not exactly achieve a three-point landing when coming down from the stars and Your mother, in retreating into unreality, into lassitude, into absence, dissociation, alienation, and depression, if those are accurate words, she got dragged into the grave by the dead.
And you can't do that.
It's one thing to do that if you're single, if you're—and I know this.
I mean, a friend of mine whose mother died, she fucking dragged him down into that grave with her, and he never survived.
Now, he had slippery shoes and a slippery slope, which had occurred for many years before, but he still poured in, like water out of a jug into a hole.
He poured into her grave, and she swallowed him alive, and the dead consumed the living, Japanese style.
But your mother, wasn't she pulled into those graves by the dead?
Yeah. Are you talking about guilt?
No. No.
No, I'm talking about meaninglessness.
Oh, okay. Okay.
Did your mother have anything to be guilty about with regards to these deaths?
No, no. No, I don't think so.
No, I mean, I feel guilt because I didn't, you know, take care of her better and that kind of stuff.
But I don't think...
No. Wait, you feel guilt because you didn't take care of her better?
What do you mean? Well, I mean, when she...
I should have been... I mean, obviously what you're saying changes my perspective, but for many years I've, you know, I've felt guilty that I didn't, you know, stop what she was doing, take better care of her, show her more love, so maybe she wouldn't, you know.
Anyway, a wide variety of things that I blamed myself for, that I had previously blamed, you know.
No, but Dan, you're the child.
Yeah. As a child, you can't own what your parents do.
Yeah, and you're absolutely right.
So, why does your mother know this about you?
Everybody's dead, actually. I'm the only survivor of the family.
So, she died when I was 17.
Your mother died when you were 17?
Yeah. Jesus, man.
What did she die of? She got cancer.
And died of cancer and my brother died about four years ago.
So he lasted the longest of anybody but me.
And what did your brother die of?
He had a lot of health problems.
He abused food, right?
Like he was like at one point over 500 pounds and you know that obviously takes a toll.
So he had a wide variety of health problems.
We had been estranged, and I'd been sending him letters and pictures of his nieces and nephews.
He'd never met any of them, or his nephew and two nieces.
And I found out, though, that he had been getting the letters, and he had planned on contacting me.
So I felt kind of good about that.
Wait, so he didn't phone you?
He didn't talk to his nieces or nephews?
No. I moved away.
I couldn't find his number.
So I just started sending him postcards and letters and stuff every Christmas.
I went online to one of these postcard places where you can just take pictures off your phone and turn them into these really cool postcards and wrote them letters.
And I just kept sending him, hoping that he would communicate with me.
His roommate, when he died, his roommate told me that he planned to...
He planned to be in contact with you?
Yeah, yeah. He just didn't want...
He didn't want to write down for some reason.
Of course, he thought he had time.
I mean, everybody thinks they have time.
And did he have, like, a heart attack or...?
Yeah, he was in one of those hover-around things, and he couldn't drive.
He had to take a cab to work.
And he was in real bad health, and he just had a massive heart attack in a cab trying to get to work.
Why do you think he ended up with these food issues, Dan?
You know... I don't know.
They were always there.
I remember being about five years old and my dad looking at me in the car saying, don't get fat like your brother.
It's one of my few memories of him I still have.
So he was like that.
Wait a minute here.
I'm sorry to interrupt you.
So your brother was fat when you were seven?
Oh, yeah. And he was younger or older?
I'm the youngest by 10 years.
So he was 10 years old.
He would be 60 now.
So wait a minute. Your mother was not saying no to your brother regarding food and not saying get to it regarding exercise before your father died.
Yeah, that is...
So this issue of no boundaries...
This issue of no rules, no consequences, no authority, was not the result of your father dying.
I had not thought of that.
Am I wrong? No, no.
It has to be.
I mean, there could be some glandular part of it, but no.
No, no, no. Glandular?
Come on. I mean, okay, maybe there's one.
It's calories in, calories out.
Yeah, absolutely. Oh, absolutely.
So your father was a cigarette addict, your brother was a food addict, you got a schizophrenic, and you got someone who died in an infection as a result of probably a gallbladder operation, and you've got a kid with a birth defect.
Yes. Was your mom on antidepressants?
Do you know? No, no.
My schizophrenic brother, you know, he was, when he was, back when he was diagnosed and stuff, you know, they would give people heavy, heavy drugs.
I remember seeing these cases of these pills coming in the house.
And so I think that the pills caused a lot of damage beyond that.
I mean, he couldn't write his name, right, properly.
Yeah, that's like crazy, like half-horse tranquilizer stuff that they give, right?
Because of management issues, right?
Yeah, and anyway.
Do you think he was killed?
I was not supposed to go to that place.
No miners were allowed to go to that institution.
It was a big one, you know, with gates and everything.
But as a kid, my mom didn't have anybody to watch me, so I would just...
I would lay down in the back of the car and go, and then I would sit in the car while she would visit him, and I'd see these people walking around, and they were freaking scary.
They were scary, scary people.
And they would always steal the stuff.
So, you know, I believe it's at least as likely as somebody murdered him as he is, he would somehow, in a bedroom, Hit your head on the side of a table so hard that you died.
I think that's fairly unlikely.
I mean, it happens, okay, but it seems to me it's at least as likely that someone got into his room.
Right. Because that's where they've sent the violent, you know, he was violent, and so he got sent where the violent ones go.
Right. Right.
All right. And of course, your brother could have got better care if your father had had life insurance.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, see, I don't know the story, but he would be at home, and then he would do something, and then he would go there.
And then he would come home, and then he would do something and be put back there.
Yeah, no, a little bit.
I remember going to visit my mother when she was institutionalized, and it was...
An alarming place.
And I remember playing, I ended up playing table tennis with this woman who, when she lost, like screamed and went into a ball.
Wow. Don't lose.
Yeah. So.
That's scary. How old are your kids?
19, 13, and 7.
Right. And the 70-year-old's a boy.
And I see a lot.
He's very similar to me.
Very. Well, of course, you're the same-sex parent.
A big influence, right?
So I will tell you, Dan, what I think.
And I appreciate all this sharing.
Hopefully what I will say will help.
You know how I was talking about the dead pulling you into the grave?
This is your cast of characters.
They are the dead.
They are zombies.
They're not alive.
They're not coming to life in art.
They are corpses pulling you.
Into a kind of living death.
Into a place of fantasy and distance and dissociation.
And empty imaginations.
Imagination. The wonderful faculty.
It allows us to see what is not and to create what could be.
And to communicate essential truths.
But that's not your imagination.
Your imagination... It's a thick, viscous, gelatinous cube wall between you and the people in your life.
It is a temptation to join the halls of the dead rather than the sunlit plains of the living.
These people are not alive.
They don't come to life. They don't communicate to others.
They don't use you as a methodology for communicating to the world.
They're inner alter egos that snare you Into a crypt, rather than you bringing them to life to shower wisdom on the world.
Because imagination that brings principles and personalities to life is wonderfully instructive to the world.
There's a very strong and proven relationship between the consumption of literary fiction and the development of empathy.
So when you write fiction...
The right kind of fiction, and you bring it to the world, you are growing the great and deep flowers of empathy in the hearts and minds of humanity.
But this is not your fantasy world.
Your fantasy world is not something that brings your empathy for your characters to life in the world so people can have empathy for each other.
Your fantasy world is drawing you into a tomb where nothing gets out, not even you.
It is joining Valhalla without even the energizing story of Valhalla.
It is the Hobbit as a state of mind rather than a joyful story that delights the world.
There's a difference between imagination and fantasy.
Imagination creates.
Fantasy destroys.
Imagination is life.
Fantasy is a living death.
Fantasy is when your imagination turns, like it metastasizes, it turns cancerous.
And rather than connecting you with characters and with the world and with a publisher and...
With a director or a producer or whatever it is that you're creating, it isolates you.
It is a cold prison of no effect.
Because what is the effect?
They're luring you, you understand.
You have to look at these as devils, as demons that dissociate you and lure you into the living death of fantasy without effect, without creation.
Have you ever read or heard of the novel, sorry, The Play, by Edward Albee?
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? I saw the movie.
Okay. Spoilers!
Horrifying play. Well, just about everything that man did was horrifying, but anyway.
George and Martha, the new Washingtons, George and Martha keep talking about their child, but they have no child.
This is a gay man's view of marriage, of course, or this gay man, that gay man's view of marriage.
They have no child. They talk about the child, but they have no child.
So this is a fantasy substitute for life.
They have not created life, they've only created a fantasy, which has no life.
You think of the women, the stereotype of the women, they don't have kids, they have cats.
That's not a child. That is a pathetic substitute that I would rip from the hands of these spinsters if I could.
No, you face the pain of barrenness.
You face the pain of sterility so that the next generation can learn from that pain and avoid it.
You manifest.
You embody the emptiness and hollowness and selfishness of childlessness.
So that the next generation can say there, but for the grace of God and fertility go I, and I will not go there.
I don't want that comfort.
And I know some people are infertile, blah-de-blah-de-blah.
I don't care. I'm not talking about that.
This is a living death that separates you and your vitality from those around you.
Do you understand how your mother kept people at bay?
Your mother kept people at bay through hoarding.
People couldn't even find where she was in the house, right?
Yeah. People did not want to come into the house.
Some people keep each other at bay or keep other people at bay through bad hygiene.
You were kept at bay because your mother didn't make you bathe.
Yeah. That's right.
Bad teeth, bad hair, bad smell, bad clothing, weird habits, facial tics, dressing up as a goth carrying around a little coffin purse, tattoos all over the...
This is how people keep each other at bay.
Stand back! Stay away!
Danger! I have been dragged into the pit of the dead, and I wish to have a tea party with dead mummies for the rest of my life.
And they're luring you into non-existence.
They are between you and life.
They are between you and connection.
They are between you and the world.
This is an isolation.
This is a moat to an airless empty house.
This is a wall that blots out the trees and the clouds.
And finally, brick by brick, the very sky itself.
You can't let go of the dead.
Thank you.
The dead have you in the whole.
And you can't let go of this cast of characters.
But these cast of characters are the dead in the past.
Join us.
Your life is a rebuke to our dustiness.
Your animation is a rebuke to our stillness.
Your breathing is a rebuke to our archaeology.
Let the dead bury the dead, the living have their business.
Thank you.
I know a lot of people who embody this living death.
Who are gone before their time, before they need to.
Haven't you seen enough death, Dan, that there should be nothing that stands between you and a vital existence?
What if instead of you joining the dead in the grave, the dead joined you?
In vitality and you absorbed their energies and their essence and you dragged them in a sense out of the grave and took their lifelessness and took their energy and took everything that they did not get to experience and every breath they did not get to take.
You take it! And breathe deep, joyful breaths of the evergreen fertility of this waking life.
What if instead of joining this cast of zombies in your head...
You took the actual dead's energy and used it to live for them a greater and deeper and more meaningful existence instead.
Isn't that what they would want?
If they could speak to you, would they not say, You have the great gift that we did not get.
You have the life that we lost or gave away or had taken from us.
By murder, perhaps. You have this great gift, which we do not have.
Use it. Connect with those around you.
We can connect with nothing, except the White Earth.
You can connect with real people.
Why are you being smothered by ghosts?
It's hard to leave.
you Thank you.
It's hard to leave the places we started.
Don't you think? Oh yeah.
There is a place lost in time where I am stuck in a dismal flat in London.
The other day, I was back in the neighborhood I grew up in, in Toronto.
And I took my daughter to the location of the mall that I had jobs in that I hung out in.
And it was gone. Gone.
Some open-air thing now.
And I was looking online, just out of curiosity, about, you know, what had happened to it and so on.
And I saw pictures.
And there was a store called Music World in that mall.
You're old enough to remember, right?
I had records, CDs. Well, I had records back in the day.
Tape cassettes. Eight tracks.
I remember eight tracks, for God's sakes.
Click, start again. Click, start again.
An ELO one. That was great.
Now, that... The store, I used to apply to work there all the time.
I mean, I had a bunch of jobs in them all, but I loved music.
And I remember I bought my first, there was a rock opera creation called The War of the Worlds.
It was off H.G. Wells. The chances of anything coming from Mars.
And... It was, these are tiny details, I'm going to mention them anyway, because it does have a point.
It was Richard Burton.
No one would have believed that in the last years of the 19th century, he had this wonderful voice.
But I had a scratch on it, so it sounded like, no one would have believed that in the last, it sounded like he was farting in the studio.
And in that music world, I applied for work all the time.
And I never got a job there, I think because I wrote down ridiculously, honestly, have you ever had any criminal offenses?
Well, you know, I stole the candy bar once.
And in that music world, there was a girl I liked from school when I was in junior high, and I went up and was chatting with her.
And my helpful brother, ah, brother's so helpful.
My helpful brother came up and drew his finger across my lower lip and said, hey, Steph, wipe off the drool.
I know she's pretty. Oh, so helpful.
It's a real shame when your dating game goes down in friendly fire.
You can expect unfriendly fire, but the friendly fire is not very helpful.
And I bought The War of the Worlds.
I bought that. I had saved up like crazy.
It was $11.88.
Oh, look, I said $11.88.
It was $11.88.
And I saved up like crazy for my three jobs at the time.
I cleaned offices. I worked in a hardware store and I had a paper route.
They overlapped for a while. Anyway, and I was so excited to have bought this album and I went up and I paid and I had the tax and I just had like three pennies left over.
And I remember being so excited thinking it was going to be a big deal.
For me to buy this album. And the woman was just...
Yeah, she was chewing gum. Here's your album.
She didn't care, right? I just remember thinking, what a different world it is.
Like, I'm so excited. This is a big, cherished moment for me.
I've got this album. I'm going to play it to death.
And I did. And she didn't care.
She didn't care. Just some kid there buying an album.
What does she care, right? Now...
That store is long gone.
I'm... You know, they're all...
H&M is all closing down, right?
And I saw...
Online a picture...
Of that store in that mall.
God, it's weird.
Dan, right? Because it's gone.
There's a picture of it. There's someone working in that old blurry picture.
I don't know where that person is, what their name was, how long they worked there, what time of day.
Well, I don't know. But I saw a picture of that Music World store and it's long gone.
I'm sure the corporation is gone.
The bricks are gone. The records are gone.
The store is gone. The person has grown.
It's gone. But it's right there in this picture, like I could step through that portal of time and walk in there and go back and rescue what?
Get what? Back.
All the trail, I feel like I walk through life and I get shorter and shorter because I'm leaving this trail of cells and atoms and history behind me.
Like I'm diminishing over time, like a Like a boulder bouncing down the side of a mountain, getting chipped off and leaving bits of itself and ending from a tall boulder to a tiny pebble at the bottom.
I'm being chipped away by time.
I'm being diminished by time.
I know I'm not. I know I'm growing in wisdom and strength and power and eloquence, but it feels that way.
That I can't get out of the past.
I can't escape where I came from.
That I can pull it, you know, like I have a elastic tethering me to this ever ice of my history.
I thought, okay, well, it's an iceberg, but it'll melt over time.
No, it seems the ice goes stronger.
I'm writing this all down, by the way.
I'm writing an autobiography because I have to.
I have to purchase this stuff.
But it's hard, wouldn't you say, Dan?
Do you feel like... I don't know.
I don't want to put words in your mouth.
It's just my experience. But I think it's a pretty common one.
That I feel... Part of me is forever in that store with my brother saying, wipe the drool off.
And part of me forever is listening to The Beatles or The Police live albums while I'm cleaning some doctor's offices and dodging all the work I was supposed to do because it's too damn boring.
Or a friend of mine and I had this job where this woman had three dogs and we would go over to her house with little bits of cloth and we'd wet it and we'd scrape up all of the fur, the hair, the dog hair from...
Her carpets and part of me is always going to be, and I went back to this just the other day, a little path back from the school running track, a little path back there where the van used to drop off the newspapers that I would put together and deliver around these streets.
And I remember there was always one house in the middle of a cul-de-sac forever away.
I had to go to that one damn house.
And I remember that I had to deposit the money from the paper route after I collected it the following Thursday.
Had to be in before the Thursday. That's when the cash to check.
I remember waiting there sometimes, waiting for the Papers to be dropped off, and I got paid a penny a day on Wednesdays to put the ads in.
I feel like I got stuck even there.
What did I leave there? A fingernail, a hand, an E? I don't know.
I feel like everywhere I am, everywhere I've been, I'm stuck there, and I've managed to pull myself forward, but I have to leave part of me behind.
Like that guy falling down the cliff with a saw his arm off just to get out.
I feel like I've got to leave part of me behind just to move on.
What the hell is left after so much time?
Do you ever feel, Dan, like you're Stuck in the hoarding prison of your mom those years ago that...
Do you ever get out?
I don't know. Yeah, I think I understand.
I actually have a...
I hoard, but it's digitally.
I have like 1,500 pictures of toys that I had as a kid.
So, and I look at them, and it brings up such emotion.
And, you know, sometimes I just wish I could go back there.
And then, like you said, for what?
What would be? But I look at those things, and I try to remember, and try to remember as clear as possible what it was, you know, the good things, the toys I played with as a kid.
And now I have missed pictures.
A lot of them. And you touch the toys and it's like part of you is stuck there, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
You're a different person now.
My mom is old.
Probably doesn't have much time left.
And even when she's physically dead, part of me will never leave her side.
I feel like You know, in this tug of war between the living and the dead, I always sort of felt like I was going to pull hard until the very end and then just give out.
Because I thought I was made of solid stuff, but it feels sometimes, Dan, like I'm made of kind of sand and they're just pulling me in grain by grain.
That when you die, it's when the last fleck of sand goes in.
It's not like you just pile in all at once.
And I don't mind being stuck.
It always sounds terrible, like you're stuck in certain places.
I mean, that's my history. Those are things that formed me.
I am my genes and my experience and my choices.
I know that. And I... Maybe it's a half-century thing, but I feel a little bit like...
I saw a video years ago of a guy who was trying to figure he was going to walk to the South Pole or some stupid stuff like that.
Because, yeah, that's an important thing to do at the moment.
And what he did was he was practicing by pulling tires across a field.
He was tying all these tires to pulling tires across a field.
And I sort of feel like maybe it's a half-century thing or maybe it's just A phase, but I sort of feel like the past is piling.
More and more tires.
Every year is a tire. I thought it would be a jetpack.
It's a tire right now. Sometimes it's felt like a jetpack.
Right now it's a tire. And maybe that's part of the...
And that's why I'm writing it all down.
This is why it's sort of on my mind.
I just started today. 5,000 words.
But... My feeling is, and it's not an argument, Dan.
I understand that.
But your imagination, which probably saved you at the time, is not saving you now.
Right? Right.
And I think that you are trying to keep the dead alive in your mind to avoid grieving.
Aren't you supposed to process memories, right?
And then they're not so terrible anymore, right?
Isn't that part how it's supposed to work?
You're supposed to judge memories, I think.
Oh. I think that memories...
There are things that I know I have judged incorrectly in my past.
Hell, I'm sure there are things I've judged incorrectly in my present.
I think that your imagination...
Was good. But your father was absent.
Your mother was absent.
Emotionally neglectful, I think.
But based on what you've told me.
And it's like the story I read when I was a kid.
We had this giant...
Like it was down in the garbage of the apartment building.
There were all these Reader's Digests.
And Reader's Digest condensed to books, which I plowed through as a kid.
And there was one about a poor family.
The kid was hungry.
I just poked myself in the eye. The kid was hungry.
And he said, I'm hungry, I'm hungry and hungry.
And the mom said, so just eat a congry.
Which is a nonsense word.
They didn't have a congry.
And when you're hungry, when you don't have connection, you invent connection, right?
When you don't have meaning...
You invent quests.
When you don't have truth, you pursue fiction.
When you don't have a mentor, you fall in love with Obi-Wan Kenobi.
When you don't have a father, right?
No, I'm serious. Yeah, I hear you.
I hear you.
We invent what we don't have to maintain our capacity for reality when we have to subsist on fantasy.
I was profoundly powerless in my early to mid-teenage years, and those were the years of my Dungeons& Dragons, where I had Argoth.
Well, I had a bunch of different characters.
The one that lasted and grew was Argoth the Paladin, lawful good, who did such deeds that he ended up becoming a demigod after playing him for years.
Now that was fantasy, and that was a recoil from powerlessness into a place where I had power and capacity and effect and nobility and quest.
Now that was healthy because it maintained my desire for these things, but only in fantasy.
The great danger is that we then get sealed in that fantasy and we can't translate what the fantasy is supposed to keep alive for purpose in the real world.
We get locked in fantasy, right?
Right? It's like we end up thinking that being a pianist is just doing the scales.
It's not. We think that it's all practice.
No action.
It's all rehearsal. No opening night.
Now, I used Dungeons& Dragons to keep my thirst and my capacity for greatness alive in a place of unbelievable smallness and pettiness.
And then I was able to rip that fantasy seduction away and put it into practice in my life.
Through a tragic artistic non-career, through a successful entrepreneurial career, through a very successful philosophy show, I was able to peel off, right?
Because the fantasy says, oh, just come in here.
We'll keep practicing.
We'll keep you ready, right?
Porn will get you ready for real sex.
Right? Fantasy quests will get you ready for courage in the real world.
But then what happens is, it's easy to put that dried up, dry dark dress rehearsal and stay there.
And continue to practice rather than to play.
To continue to rehearse rather than to act.
Right? Yes.
And it was painful peeling off that, recognizing that is empty, that will get me nowhere.
Experience points. Aren't real things.
They are practice. And we practice when we cannot do.
And your fantasy, life, was essential.
You maintained a connection in fiction that you could not have in life.
But it became more than practice.
You got locked in the school and could not leave.
Or locked yourself, I don't know.
And of course the problem is, when you have a rich connection in a fantasy life, when you have a purpose and meaning and intimacy and power and applause, when you have that in your fantasy life, real life can become a little drab.
And then that becomes self-fulfilling because the fantasy life is so seductive.
The real life becomes paler by comparison.
And it becomes circular, of course, because the more time you spend in the fantasy relationships, the less you have available for the real relationships.
Therefore, the more unreal they become.
And what happens is you end up with the lack of connection.
See, originally the fantasy life is supposed to sustain your capacity for connection.
But then what happens is if the fantasy life grows too strong, It displaces your capacity for connection and then the fantasy characters keep real connection at bay in order to sustain their own existence.
You understand? Your fantasy characters have taken on a life of their own within your mind and they view real connection as threatening to their existence.
You have become a haunted house and your family are the willful priests.
Willful priests? Fantasy is a scar tissue.
It is a scar tissue.
It is a wound.
And if you stay there, it doesn't heal.
You understand? And what you developed as an abstraction to maintain connection now stands between you and connection.
And of course, fantasy is controllable in a way that human relations are not.
Your fantasy characters will never leave you.
They will probably never hate you, at least I hope not, right?
You are in control of your fantasy relationships in a way that you can't be in control of a real relationship.
Does that make sense? Yes.
You are not vulnerable in fantasy relationships.
That's all. I had to say about this.
Is there anything you wanted to add?
This has been really great.
And I've got some work to do.
Write it down or get it gone.
Yeah. And invite others in.
See, writing it down and sharing it is a way of inviting others in.
And then your fantasy life can be used to establish the connection that was designed to protect when it wasn't there.
So write it down, invite people in, or cast it aside and connect.
Because your fantasy characters aren't going to be there to hold your hand when you get old and you're dying.
They're not going to be there to rub your feet when they ache.
They're not going to be there to help you When the dead and the rope and the mud win.
Alright? Thank you so much for your call, Dan.
I really appreciate this. Let us know how it goes, alright?
Thank you. Thank you.
Alright, up next we have Tanya.
Tanya wrote in and said, Is spellcasting ethical?
How can you logically comprehend magic and rebuild your life if you have been affected?
That's from Tanya. Tanya, thank you so much for calling in with this electric question.
I wonder if you can tell me a little bit more.
Hello. Hello, Stefan.
Hi. Yes, so it's actually quite...
Well, I mean, you know, I've always been very rational and me and my ex-husband would have been listening to your show and, you know, we would bring that to the world, this great messaging and, you know, we were very kind of scientific and I would never think that, you know, magic or things like that would affect me and that I would start actually looking into that.
So... Yeah, I mean, you know, just to start, so I've been married, now divorced, and I met my husband when I was 18 and on holiday.
Myself, I'm Russian and he's French.
You know, I never thought that it's going to work, our relationship, because, you know, we live quite far from each other.
But he was really persistent.
And later he told me that day one he knew already that we are going to marry because he was so much into me.
He fell in love with me.
Well, wait, wait, wait.
Sorry. So you're saying first day he fell in love with you?
Yeah, he told me that the day I saw you, I fell in love with you.
I don't think that's love.
Well, yeah, okay, Stefan.
I mean, it may be pointy, but it's not exactly love, I think.
Yeah, that's what he told me. No, no, I get that.
I just, you know, I want to translate for the audience on the fly.
Sure, sure. But, you know, there was this kind of heart connection, you know, when you actually give peace of your heart to another person, and when you kind of know that that's that very person...
So that's probably the experience he had.
So anyway, he told me that's what he felt.
And sorry, Tanya, how old are you now?
Yeah, 27.
And when you were 18, and I'm sure it's the case now, but when you were 18, on a 1 to 10, what would you rate merely your physical looks?
I mean, I've always been a very good looking girl.
I never had problems with boys, really.
So give me a number, one to ten.
Well, eight. Okay.
So we can probably add one to that because people are a little modest, right?
So you're very, very pretty, right?
Yes. Okay. So...
So a man sees a very pretty Russian girl and says he falls in love with her right away.
I would assume that has something to do with your looks, which doesn't mean you're not a good person or anything, but just as far as that goes, right?
Yeah, I mean, I also spoke French, and he's French, and I also spoke very good English, and he wanted to practice it.
So I think he was kind of, and, you know, I had lots of interesting stories, so I was quite well-educated.
Please don't make me make a joke about your oral skills.
I refuse to. It's too cheap.
It's too low. Anyway, go ahead.
All right. Anyway, okay, whatever.
Lux. Let's say Lux.
But he introduced me straight away to his family.
So I didn't think that we had any kind of future.
You know, it was great being on holiday, enjoying our life, but I didn't think it had any future.
But we still kept in touch, you know, so I kept him as a friend.
So we would sometimes call each other, be on Skype, he would send me presents for like birthday and Christmas or whatever.
And did you send him presents as well?
No. No, of course not, because you're pretty.
Right, okay, got it. Yeah.
So then I started telling him, you know, I was taught philosophy at school.
So we had teachers in our public schools that taught philosophy, and she worked in the Institute of Philosophy.
So I actually think that public education in Russia is really, especially now when I can't compare to the West, is really not that bad.
Well, you have a high IQ population in Russia, not a massive amount of diversity, so you can teach at the highest, right?
Yeah. So I started telling him, For me, it's very important that the man understands philosophy and morality at 18.
And he started looking into that and he would come back to me and tell me, Tanya, I studied this and this and I researched that and that.
And that's actually back then that he found your show as well, which we then, when we became a couple, supported and we supported a couple of other projects as well.
So I would actually say that he connected us in that sense, brought us together.
So I decided to give him a chance, you know, because he was really working very hard in order to get me.
He would take me to very nice hotels around Europe.
And frankly speaking, you know, I always wanted to be, you know, more kind of open to the world and, you know, living in a better world as everybody does.
Wait, wait, sorry. You wanted...
I'm not criticizing, but you wanted to use your physical looks and your intelligence and your attractiveness and your charm in order to get a man with significant resources.
If you want a family, you're going to need that, right?
Yes. Okay. Yeah, I mean, we can be frank, right?
I mean, we've got eggs and money here, right?
I mean, this is not wildly complicated.
And it doesn't mean there's no love involved or anything like that.
It just means that, you know, if this guy was poor, he would be less appealing.
Actually, Stefan, it's also quite interesting.
He actually comes from quite a poor family, and he was on drugs for four years.
So he had quite a difficult life before.
I'm sorry, he was on? On drugs for four years.
He was on drugs? What do you mean he was on drugs?
Penicillin? Like on drugs, like taking drugs.
Like, you know, like, being in his teenage, he would take drugs and, you know, he didn't study well at school.
Like, what kind of drugs?
Like, bad drugs.
Well, let's say more than, like, mushrooms or marijuana.
Like, maybe we were talking sort of cocaine or...
Well, something a bit stronger sometimes, but not something that would significantly damage kids.
But no, bad, bad drugs.
Yes, but his whole family thought that he would be just a shame for the family.
That's why he doesn't have big attachment to his family because when he really needed it, they didn't support him, but instead they would bully him.
So he decided that he would rebuild his life and he started working in a hospital in the IT department and he found a school where he could study IT as well.
And he kind of rebuilt himself and then he decided to go to the UK to get his master degree in Oxford in networking and IT. And I mean, now he's got his own company in central London.
I mean, now we're divorced, but he's a very successful businessman now.
He built his own business.
Very, you know, Like, people now invite him to different...
Okay, no, so he's doing well.
Okay, so let's move to the magic and spells bit.
Okay, yeah. Sorry, you got married?
Is that right? We were married, yes.
We were married with him.
And, you know, I mean, our life was very meaningful in that sense.
You know, we were very kind of spiritual people.
We would exercise a lot.
We would mentally exercise our brain all the time, you know.
So what happened to the marriage?
So that's the story.
We had some sex issues in our marriage from my side.
So I was on contraceptive pills and Well, it had something to do with, like, I had some ovaries that didn't work very well, and the doctors told me to stay on pills till I decide to have a baby.
So, I took those pills, and I also, because, you know, we were very much into sports, Jeremy told me to keep a high-protein diet.
If you can just stay off the name, I just wanted to mention that, but we can just call him Bob.
Yeah, okay. Okay, go ahead.
So... Yeah, so he would keep a high-protein diet, and yeah, so my health was not perfect, really.
I mean, I stick to that diet and those pills, and I felt very kind of bad that I didn't want him sexually.
Like, I was not attracted to him, but I was not really attracted to anybody else, you know?
So, like, sorry, the libido, like the pills were affecting your libido, is that right?
Yeah, so exactly.
And I mean, of course it was concerning for me, but I didn't want to really bring that point, bring that conversation in our relationship because I felt very uncomfortable about it, right?
Because we were such a strong couple.
We were a great example, very good looking, both of us.
Good career, good like everything.
Wait, wait, hang on. So you're these soulmates, you're giving each other your heart, but you don't want to talk about your lack of sexual attraction to him?
You were a show couple, like a show horse, right?
What did you say? You said you're very good looking.
You exercise a lot.
He's got money. So you are like a show couple.
You are a couple that generates envy in other people.
But if you were a couple that had intimacy, then wouldn't you talk about these issues with him?
So, yeah.
I mean, we would kind of bring it up.
But, I mean, I believe that he was so afraid of losing me because We were a great couple apart from sexual issues.
So he thought that there's something wrong with him, so he would go and work even harder and, you know, try to be even better.
Wait, so he thought that your lack of sexual attraction had something to do with him?
Yes. And you let him think that?
I mean, it's not like...
I tried to avoid this conversation because I was really uncomfortable about it, right?
No, no, no. Hang on, hang on.
You love the man, right?
Yes, I did love him.
But if you love him, why would you let him think that he was unattractive when the issue was with you?
Like, isn't that kind of tortuous to him?
Well, exactly.
I know, but we are, you know, when we are in a couple, we are a reflection.
So basically, how we treat our partner is the reflection of how we feel about ourselves.
I don't know what that means, but I do know that you didn't love enough You didn't love him enough to give him peace of mind regarding his attractiveness.
So I would...
Okay, well...
I'm not trying to be mean to you.
I'm just trying to understand the landscape here.
I wanted him to have pleasure, right?
But I didn't want him to kind of touch me or anything, right?
Wait, wait, sorry.
Did you have low libido or did you have an aversion to him?
I had low libido and sex for me would be painful.
It was painful for me.
Quite often I got small issues like thrush and things like that that you can easily get rid of but then they come back.
So basically then I started looking into medicine because I thought, okay, there should be something.
I should overcome that issues with my ovaries that, you know, doctors told me about because I don't want to be on pills anymore.
It's because I want to be a mother one day, right?
So I started looking into how I can do it naturally.
And I'm all about like natural things, herbs and, you know, exercising and things like that.
So I started looking into that.
And I took online classes about pharmacology, about just in general how everything works in our body.
Sorry to interrupt, but I just want to make sure I understand.
So you had an ovary issue and so you had to be on birth control pills.
Yeah, because your ovaries are at rest if you take birth control pills.
Okay, so do you know, I mean, it doesn't hugely matter, but so the birth control pills that you were taking, did they suppress your libido or give you this difficulty or aversion to sexuality?
So, well, we didn't discuss it, right?
And I didn't know if it affects it or not.
I didn't know that. Doctors told me that everything is the same, that my libido is not affected and blah, blah, blah.
So I believed doctors back then because I'm not a medical professional.
So I started studying it myself.
And then I started, first of all, I started looking more into being vegan rather than high-protein diet, as my ex-husband suggested.
So looking into vegan.
And secondly, I started looking into fasting because I made a big research on how fasting helped curing lots of different foods.
Issues, especially things like cancer and so on.
So I looked into fasting, and I started doing fasting, like first one day, then three days, ten days, and I actually got so much into it.
And Jeremy also, he would tell me, oh, I want you to look like a supermodel, like 50 kilos, blah, blah, blah.
And I was like, and I also had stress at work.
Your husband wanted you to look like a supermodel.
Yeah. Because, I mean, you know, we exercised and he thought, okay, you can, you know, you can get slimmer and then like put just muscles so you don't have any fat at all.
Which, you know, I mean, I just put it all together and I said, okay, I will try fasting.
And I basically went for 17 days fasting a year ago.
17 days. And after that, all my digestive system shut down.
So I stopped fasting.
I would eat and it wouldn't digest what I eat, right?
It was really scary for me.
Was it like, I don't know much about it, but it was like the bacteria had died off for lack of food in your gut or what?
No, it's just basically your digestive system shuts down if it's not used.
Because I just drank water, so it didn't need to, all this bowel movement and things like that.
So it would just shut down after 10 days maybe.
So it's not like it's completely dead, but you need to slowly reintroduce food to it.
If you end fasting, you need to kind of start with juices and then purees, fruit and something really like sugars and something easy to digest, not fats, not meats, but something easy to digest.
And your husband knew that you were not eating for 17 days?
Yes, he knew that.
And he thought this was a decent idea?
No, he thought it was a terrible idea, but I told him, you know, I researched it enough, and I think that's the right thing to do for me.
And especially, you know, I wanted to cure that issue with ovaries that doctors diagnosed for me.
How did not eating deal with the ovaries?
Well, fasting is like cleansing your system, really.
It's like... Well, I'm like, no, no.
I mean, I know that there's some decent data, if not some good data behind the health benefits of fasting, but 17 days, right?
I mean, this is one of the problems that happens with people who really starve themselves is the body just takes energy wherever it can.
It starts breaking down muscles, right?
You can break down your heart muscles and then you can end up with future heart problems and so on, right?
Yeah. It is not something you obviously checked about with a doctor or a nutritionist ahead of time, right?
No. I hope not.
At least I hope no doctor or nutritionist said, yeah, go without food for 17 days.
That sounds like a great idea.
No, Stefan, but, you know, I started researching the topic myself and also because I took some classes online and I was very much into medicine actually back then.
I kind of, and because I also did it gradually, right, I would do one day, then three days, then seven days, then ten days, and then I would go for 17 days.
So that's why I kind of thought that my body is, you know, I would look at how my body reacts on that and, you know, I really don't, don't, um, I don't trust doctors that much because very often they...
I mean, even about this contraceptive pills and...
All right. So it was a bad idea to do that.
But what happened with the libido and what happened with...
I can't imagine self-starvation plus libido.
It goes hand in hand.
So I cancelled the contraceptive pills, right?
And I did that fasting.
And so my digestive system shut down.
So basically your body goes into really energy saving.
Like it's really just like everything that you don't need shuts down.
Like a sleeping bear in January.
Yeah. Yeah, so basically I didn't have my period.
I started losing my hair because I don't know why, but probably because there was not enough to sustain them.
Because your body is throwing everything overboard except for vital bodily functions and hair is not one of them.
Yeah, so exactly.
Imagine how bad I felt about it.
And I also started having like heart, like similar to heart attacks, like my heart rate would go up very quickly.
Yeah, because your body thinks you're dying.
Yeah, so I spent so much time in accidents and emergencies because I felt terrible.
Imagine your digestive system doesn't work.
Why would you keep going?
No, I stopped. I stopped already, but I started eating, but I didn't process my food.
I wouldn't digest it.
But didn't your research and courses teach you how to reintroduce food, or was that something that you were going to look into later?
Okay, I did, Stefan.
I did that. But because my ex-husband also insisted on higher protein in my diet, I tried to kind of make that transition much faster to high protein diet again, rather than staying on food.
Wait, it was your husband's fault that you ate protein, despite your knowledge?
Well, because there was fight in my head, right?
I didn't know what is better.
I kind of, you know, when I read about fasting, I did know that you need to reintroduce food gradually and meats and fats should be the last ones to reintroduce, right?
But I kind of I decided I can just keep it.
My body will cope with it.
And I introduced nuts and like olives, like very heavy foods, quite quickly.
Which made the process even worse because, you know, then my gallbladder...
Well, let's not go into details, but basically I went through hell.
I felt so bad.
Jeremy, he was launching his new business back then.
So, you know, coming back and your wife telling you, I'm dying, I'm dying, you know, it was not the best thing for him to hear.
So what he did is he asked me to move out.
No, he told me, just, Tanya, take...
A month of go on holiday, relax, you know, be with your parents, whatever.
I said, no, I've got lots of work.
I've got a project at work that I'm responsible for, you know, when you don't have children.
Sorry, I'm just trying to follow along here and build the necessary information I have for a response.
So you say that you're dying, you haven't eaten in forever, and then he says, get out.
No, he says go on holiday, take time off work, just take care of your health, take care of your body, whatever is better for you, go on holiday or go to your parents.
Because he didn't have time for me because he was constantly at work.
Well, weren't you a priority?
So, yeah, so exactly.
But I told him, I had those projects at work and, you know, I didn't want to spoil my career.
And also... But how could you concentrate at work if you hadn't eaten for 17 days?
I mean, isn't your body eating your brain?
It's trying to figure out which memories it can discard and eat and still leave you with an identity?
Well, I still could think, right?
And I didn't want to give up on my job because, you know, because of that.
What happened. But I mean, you know, I just saw that my body will slowly kind of start recovering with time.
And how long did you be married at this point, Tanya?
When all that happened?
It was almost four years.
Okay. And you had been fasting, you said you'd start with a day and then three days, you peaked at 17 days.
And how long had it been since you'd started the fasting stuff?
Well, I did that fasting.
It's now almost two years ago, actually.
Yeah. All right.
So, you're...
And again, trying to avoid his name, but your ex-husband, he basically said, go on holiday, go move in with your parents.
I can't deal with, like...
Skeletor in the household because I'm busy at work.
Because, you know, work, it's important.
Because I would complain.
I would go and I would be like, oh, Jeremy, I think I'm dying.
I think I'm dying. And, you know, and he, I mean, yeah, I should have been maybe a little bit more into positive thinking rather than just complaining.
Oh, I don't think positive thinking was the issue.
I don't think it was a state of mind issue.
I mean, you can't make great decisions when your body is basically eating your bone marrow to stay alive.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So it was a difficult situation, but the way Jeremy dealt with it, so he asked me to either go on holiday or go to my parents.
And then I said, no, I want to finish this project at work.
And then he told me move out because I'm tired of all this.
So I did move out.
I went to the shared house.
I was like, okay, no problem. I can move out.
And I thought it's all more like a game, you know, because I mean, I associated myself so much with this man, like the big part of my life.
So I moved out into that shared house.
Then he called me and he said, okay, come back.
And I said, you know, it's not too far from my office and I'm kind of comfortable here.
And I was a bit, you know, disappointed that he asked me to move out.
Then he calls me and he says, you know, I slept with a woman and she...
Can you please come and collect the rest of your stuff?
So hang on a sec.
So I just need to get the timeline here.
Just beforehand, so when you moved out...
How long had it been since you guys had had sex?
I mean Like Do you mean doing like it depends like I wouldn't allow him close to me, but I would make sure that I would maybe give him a blowjob, but we wouldn't have sex like sex normal.
Yeah, but how long had it been since you'd had intercourse or mutual?
Mutually pleasurable sex.
But it was not pleasurable for me.
He always knew that. Okay. How long had it been since you guys had had intercourse?
I don't know. Maybe three months, four months.
Okay. And what kind of regularity of sexual activity did you have at the time?
Oh, very bad. I say maybe every four months.
But I say it was not something...
Every four months? Yeah.
I would try to avoid.
So I would give him a blowjob instead.
But I assume more than every four months.
Is that right? What?
Blowjob? Yeah.
You said intercourse was every four months or a couple of times a year.
Yes. But blowjobs would be more common?
Yeah. Yes. Yeah.
Well, I guess your body thought, well, at least I'm getting some meat in my mouth.
Fingers crossed! Maybe we can mow down on it.
Okay. I mean, it's not a very comfortable discussion for me, but let's just move forward.
No, listen. We're human beings just dealing with earthy subjects.
Yes. So, I mean, I really tried to solve that issue.
And my first thing, the whole idea was that I wanted to get rid of those pills and I wanted to get rid of any Kind of illness in my body.
I wanted my body to just be perfect.
I was very fit. I ate very healthy.
I didn't smoke. I didn't drink.
I really just wanted to be...
I was always into knowledge.
I was a very good human being.
I just tried to be good.
I just tried to be good.
And I felt very bad that I don't give sex to my man.
I did feel bad about it.
I'm sorry to interrupt.
This is an old story about marriage.
And the old story about marriage is, you know, the couple is having sex before they get married, you know, like a day or two before they get married.
And the woman's giving this, you know, elaborate blowjob involving, you know, porcupines and boa feathers or whatever it is, right?
And the guy's leaning back thinking like, oh man, I can't wait to get married.
I mean, this is going to be my sex life for the rest of my life.
This is how it's going to be every night.
I can't wait to get married.
And the woman is sitting there thinking like, thank God we're about to get married.
This is the last time I have to do this kind of stuff.
Yeah. Well, all right.
It's not always true, but I've heard that it's true.
Yeah, so Stefan, I mean, I felt really bad about it and I really tried to solve the issue myself.
So when I moved out into that house, you know, and I thought that, you know, it's just temporary and we will be back together.
But then when he called me and he said, you know, I slept with another woman.
I'm sorry, how long had you lived in that house before he called you?
Maybe three weeks after three weeks.
Yeah. And I'm so sorry to interrupt again, Tanya, but what was the plan after you moved out?
Because like moving out is a pretty big deal when it comes to marriage, right?
I mean, that's kind of on the brink.
And what was the plan in your mind about how long you were going to be out for?
I didn't know that, but the only thing I was thinking about was my health.
I thought, okay, whatever Jeremy's doing there, the most important is my health now, because I didn't have my period, I was losing my hair.
I thought, the only thing...
It's funny, because you wanted to be more attractive by starving yourself, and you ended up being bald.
Now, don't get me wrong. In men, bald is like as sexy as you can possibly be.
But for women, it's not quite the same.
Stefan, it's not something I wanted, right?
No, it's just one of these tragic ironies that you did it for Lutz and did not have.
Yeah, yeah. So he called me and he asked me to collect the rest of my stuff.
And then...
Two weeks after, then he apologized, actually.
He called me back and he apologized.
He said, I'm very sorry, you're my wife.
And, you know, after just two dates, which was really bad.
I mean, I felt very bad about it.
But then two weeks or three weeks later, he said, okay, let's proceed with the divorce.
And I said, okay, let's proceed with the divorce.
You know, like, I tried to not...
What do you mean, like, let's proceed like it isn't no thing?
Like, what do you mean? Like you just, that's it for the marriage, just gave up?
Stefan, I mean, it was quite painful for me that he went and slept with another woman when I didn't even have my period, and he knew that it's exactly when I wanted to conceive babies, and that's exactly why I did that fasting, because I wanted to have children, right?
I wanted to have children, and I started asking him for sex just before he asked me to move out, even though it was not the most pleasurable experience.
You starved yourself to the point of having no period because you wanted to have children.
Stefan, I didn't expect that to happen.
Okay. No, no, no.
Listen, you can't say to me, Tanya, that you did all this research and you took all these courses, but you had no idea that starving your body might interfere with your period.
Come on. Either you didn't know enough when you were acting blindly, or you knew enough, in which case you can't say you didn't know it was going to affect your menstrual cycle.
Actually... Because I was on contraceptive pills most of my life, I think I started taking them at 14 or 15.
I knew that it could happen that you don't have period for a while if you've been for a long time on the contraceptive pills.
So I didn't know what caused that What caused the absence of menstruation.
And sorry, just out of curiosity, were you living in, I think you said you were living in London at this time.
Did your family know about, your family of origin, did they know about what you were doing?
Did they have any feedback on this starvation project?
No, I didn't tell them.
My parents are really uncomfortable that I'm so far away from them.
I'm the only child and I try to avoid any kind of worries because they really worry a lot.
They worry a lot about me.
Well, yeah, but aren't they going to worry a little bit more about you if you get sick or get divorced?
Yeah, so I told them all that.
Sorry, about the divorce and stuff?
About the divorce, about fasting.
I'm sorry, Tanya, I'm trying to understand.
You didn't tell your parents about starving yourself because you didn't want to worry about them, but then you told them about the divorce.
I guess they would have figured that out or found that out.
Is that the idea? No, I... Okay, after fasting, when I got all those issues, after a while I told them what happened and, you know, that I did that fasting.
And actually, they blamed my ex-husband quite a lot about that because they thought he should kind of, you know, he should have just stopped all that, you know, he should have insisted that you eat rather than just...
What do you think would have happened?
Well, he did. He suggested you have, what was it, the high protein?
Is that right? Well, yeah, he told me that's a bad idea to fast, but it's not like he would force me to eat.
Well, no, I mean, he can't force you to eat, right?
No, he can't. I mean, what would you have wanted him to do differently that would have resulted in you having something in your belly?
No, nothing, actually. I mean, not counting a baby, of course, but I mean, what would you have liked him to do that would be different?
No, no, actually nothing.
And I mean, I even felt great that I'm doing this fasting.
I felt that I'm actually very strong to go without food.
That's how I looked at it.
It was like my challenge.
Right. When I got into that.
So, well, okay, well, everything that happened after that is when he told me, okay, let's go for divorce, I just said, okay, if that's what you want, let's go for divorce.
But Bob, why didn't you fight for him?
Because he started, like, you know those papers, divorce papers, he wrote so many, like, she...
No, no, but when he first brought up divorce.
Yeah. Or when he first said, go to your parents or go on vacation, get away from me.
I mean, that's not a sign that things are going well, right?
Get me behind me, Satan is not someone about to become a Satanist, right?
Yeah, I mean, I'm just the kind of woman I just got used to, like nobody ever refused me or like people usually fight for me.
So you're entitled because you're pretty, right?
I kind of thought, and he wrote so many bad things about me.
He wrote, you know, she kept me sex-deprived, you know.
We lived like neighbors rather than a cop.
You know, he wrote so many bad things.
I'm sorry, I mean, I understand those are unpleasant things to hear, but you were living like neighbors or brother and sister, right?
Yeah. Yeah. And not like creepy, horrifying flesh and bone blood and sister, but you were...
He had no sex life, right?
No. And I'm just telling you from a man's standpoint, that is the same as infidelity.
Like the pain that you feel about him sleeping with another woman is the pain that he feels about you not sleeping with him.
That is the same as infidelity for a man.
Because that's the contract.
The contract is, I mean, he was making a lot more money than you, right?
Yes. No, actually, back then, not that much, because I built my career.
I compensated with my career.
You compensated? Oh, you mean you worked harder at your career?
Yes. So you were both paying the bills equally?
Not equally. I mean, we had a joint account.
We would never count money who kind of brings what.
I mean, he knew my salary, I knew his salary, but we wouldn't say, okay, you paid this and I paid that.
We would just have a joint account, like everything together.
Oh, so you both put your money into the joint account and just drew the money out, right?
Yeah. Okay.
But when you were going to have the kids, you were going to stay home, I assume, right?
Yeah, we did.
I mean, we followed. Okay, so he was going to pay for all of that, right?
He was going to pay for you and for the kids while you didn't make money, right?
Yes. Right. So that's the deal.
I mean, the deal is the man provides resources and the woman provides sexuality.
And look, I'm not saying that's all it is and there's love and respect and companionship and all those kinds of good things as well.
But for a woman to stop providing sexuality is the same as a man stopping providing resources.
Like, if you just said, that's it, I'm not paying for anything anymore, it's up to you to pay for everything, what would you have thought?
I'm gonna quit, I'm gonna stay home, and you pay all the bills.
Stefan, I completely agree.
But again, you know, if it's painful for me, I just can't, you know?
That's exactly why I went into all these medical classes, that I wanted to solve my problem, right?
But this is like do-it-yourself dentistry.
If you have a bad dentist, Tanya, you don't just sit there and say, well, I'm going to do it myself with a toothpick and a pair of pliers.
You go to another dentist, you get a second opinion, you figure out what's going on.
Yeah, well, yes.
How do you call it? Sexologist or whatever you call it.
I would just go to a gynecologist.
And, you know, I mean, I just felt that I'm kind of unhealthy.
That's how I felt about myself, okay?
So that's why I didn't want to go through all that because I felt like I'm unhealthy.
And for a woman to feel unhealthy is terrible, you know?
Wait, as opposed to for a man to feel unhealthy?
I'm not sure what you mean, like for a woman to feel unhealthy.
It's like somehow different than for a man to feel unhealthy?
What do you mean? Yeah, probably it's the same, but I just felt that something was wrong with me.
That's why I didn't... Well, something was wrong with you.
Yeah, well, yes.
That's more than a feeling. I mean, something was.
Sexuality was painful to you.
Intercourse was painful to you.
And you said, was it thrush you said you got infections and stuff?
Yes, yeah. And where would you get...
I don't know much about thrush.
Isn't it a throat thing? So, no, no.
It's like bacteria.
It's like a fungi. It would just make it, like, itchy and, you know, uncomfortable.
And sorry, was that, that had something to do with, you think, the birth control pill?
No, actually, what I found out then, when I switched to vegan diet, so, and when I went into medicine and I went to the Institute of Gastroenterology, they told me I'm lactose intolerant.
And actually, when I stopped anything dairy, I stopped having thrush completely.
Yeah, but I mean, nobody teaches you that, right?
You just keep eating all that crap from the market, especially they put so many hormones in it, and we just keep consuming it.
So when I switched to vegan diet, a whole plant, sorry, whole diet, A plant-based, whole food, vegan diet, right?
I was completely fine.
And you know what?
So just, I had such a strong sexual desire when my period came back.
So, sorry, hang on.
Sorry, sorry. Just a sec.
I want to make sure I'm sort of following this.
So did it turn out that the issues were not to do with the ovaries or the birth control pill, but you were lactose intolerant?
So thrush issue was lactose intolerant, but pills stopped my libido.
It did affect my libido a lot.
So when I stopped contraceptive pills and I switched to vegan diet, I don't know what exactly, because I did it all at once, right?
I didn't do first, like I stopped contraceptive pills and I switched to vegan diet together.
So I don't know what exactly.
So the veganism and the lack of dairy solved the problem.
Yes. And I started having such a strong sexual desire as if, you know, I was like sex-deprived to compensate for all those years that I didn't have it.
Right. Now, of course, and listen, I just wanted to give my particular opinion very briefly, Tanya.
I think that experimenting with diet changes is a good thing.
It's a good thing. Like I recently, actually not that recently now, probably 10 months or 11 months, I gave up almost completely on sugar.
And I think it's been good.
I mean, I'm sleeping better.
My digestion is better.
I mean, I think it's just a good, I miss it still, but, you know, it is a good thing to experiment with diet.
I'm a bit surprised the lactose intolerance thing, I mean, there's a very specific test for that, right?
I mean, you... Can get a very specific test for it, but I guess, what, did you have no dairy that you didn't notice when it happened, or what?
I mean, I would always eat dairy.
You know, in Russia, we just always eat dairy.
It's like a normal thing.
I mean, all my family ate dairy, so I wouldn't even consider taking that test.
But when I started studying medicine, I started thinking about checking it, which I did.
Right. Yeah.
Okay. And this is the British healthcare system that you were involved in, right?
Yeah, correct. Yeah, so it's terrible.
I mean, I just want people to have some sympathy for Tanya here.
It's terrible. Because it's government-run, socialized, right?
Yeah, it's the same in Russia.
They're all around wretched.
And so just in terms of you having to try and figure things out for yourself and you not getting the proper tests, you not getting the proper feedback and so on.
It's a terrible system.
I mean, you know, if you break your arm and you got to go to emergency, it's not bad if there's something very specific and clear.
But if it's like, you know, something kind of ill-defined, low libido, like nobody wants to get involved in that because they want to cycle you through.
They want to, like, the average doctor listens to your complaints for 18 seconds before interrupting and shoving pills in your direction.
So... I just wanted to point that out.
Yeah, but at the same time, Stefan, I mean, I have an advantage that I can always go back to my home country.
And in my home country, private doctors are much cheaper than in the UK. And did you go back to Russia to get information about these issues?
Exactly. I did that.
And what happened? Yes. So that's exactly where I found out everything about myself because they did the whole research on me, on the digestive system, on everything.
And that's where I got...
Hang on. So you were, what, a year or two with no sex, painful libido, recurrent vaginal fungus and so on.
And you didn't...
Did you visit back?
You must have visited back to Russia during that time, right?
Yeah, but I would just always go to gynecologist, and I wouldn't, like, they don't look at sexual life.
Oh, the gynecologist doesn't look at your sexual life?
No, not really.
Isn't that like a mechanic, not looking at your exhaust system?
But hey, what do I know? What do I know?
And so even in Russia, the gynecologists, the private ones, they didn't help?
Well, it's more complex.
I mean, I didn't really discuss that with them.
The only thing I discussed is that I constantly had that thrush and that I, you know, that I had that problem with my ovaries, but they solved it by just keeping me on pills constantly.
They told me, don't stop taking pills till you decide to conceive.
Right, right.
Okay. Okay, so you ended up agreeing to the divorce...
Now, had you fallen out of love with your husband at this point, had there been too many difficulties and too much tension and lack of sexuality and all that?
Yeah, I mean, I kind of, you know, I moved out into a shared house, and there was a guy there who was 25, and I was 26 back then, and he fell in love with me.
I'm sorry, can you just say that again, this was back home?
No, no. I mean, when I moved out from my ex-husband, I was still in the UK, right?
Because I had a job in the UK. But I moved out into a shared house.
So I didn't go for any dates.
Even though my ex-husband asked me to, because he told me, try with another man, maybe sex will be better with somebody else.
Maybe it's me that's the problem. Your husband was encouraging you to sleep with another man?
Yeah. Well, that sounds healthy.
Because he didn't know how to solve the problem.
Yeah, he didn't know how to solve the problem.
And there was that man, and he fell in love with me, but he didn't tell me that, right?
Okay, Tanya, you see this word, love.
Okay. You keep using this word love like the men are evaluating the morality and virtue and courage of your character and admiring you as a pedestal of virtue.
Right? Falling in love and falling in lust are not the same thing.
You know that, right? I know that.
You can't fall in love.
You cannot fall in love with a woman.
Whose husband is encouraging her to have sex with another man.
You can't. You can't fall in love with a woman who's in the process of being divorced.
That's not love. Because you're unhappy.
I hope you're unhappy if you're getting divorced.
If you're happy, I don't even know what to say about that, right?
And you can't be neutral about it.
So if you meet a woman, and this is just for the guys out there, right?
And for the women too, and for you.
But if you meet a woman...
And she's moved out, and her husband, she's going to get a divorce, but her husband is saying, date some guy, have sex with him, because maybe you'll like sex better with another man than with me.
She's not in a good place.
She's not in a positive place.
She's not in a secure place.
She's not in a happy place.
Is that fair to say? He didn't know all that.
He didn't know all that.
I moved into that shared house.
I didn't share all that information with people I shared the house with.
So he just knew me cooking in the kitchen.
Oh, so he had no idea what your inner emotional state was at all, but you claim he fell in love with you anyway.
Yeah, I would just...
No, he didn't. I would just...
No, no, he didn't.
Are you saying to me, Tanya, that you dated a guy while you were going through a divorce and you didn't tell him you were going through a divorce?
Stefan, Stefan, I told you I didn't date anybody.
I moved it into a shared house and anytime I would be in the kitchen cooking or just being friendly to my neighbors, to...
I was just speaking to him, just as friends, you know?
I wouldn't go into details about my life because I didn't want to date anybody.
I was in a bad place in my life.
My apologies. I'm sorry about that.
I misunderstood. No, at all. So you didn't date this guy.
And what happened next? And what happened next is, I mean, after, you know, my husband did all that, what he did, I felt so bad about it that I thought, okay, I have no period.
Sorry, you felt so bad about what?
About myself. I felt like I have no period.
I'm losing my hair.
My husband just told me he slept with another woman and he wants a divorce.
And I thought, okay, the only thing I want to be is I want to be with my family.
So I decided to go back to Russia.
And you didn't have sex with anyone or anything like that, right?
No. Okay, my apologies.
I just wanted to double check.
So you went back to Russia? Exactly.
Even though my husband asked me to try to date anybody, I didn't want to date anybody.
I was in a bad place in my life.
Okay. You know, I totally understand and sympathize.
That is a very horrible place to be.
I mean, it's especially in your 20s, but anytime, I mean, this is the death of your marriage and all that?
Yes. Yes.
And so I just, you know, I just decided, okay, I just need to go back to Russia.
And, but basically, I had two years to wait.
To get my UK passport.
So basically, I did already four years in the UK, and I just had two years to wait to get my British passport.
It's tough to get British citizenship if you don't just show up in a boat.
But anyway, go on. No, well, I researched all that.
So if I stayed two more years, I would get a British passport.
But I say I felt so bad.
The situation just, you know, I thought the only thing I want to be, I want to be with my family.
And just before I left, I... Just two days before I left, that guy told me that he loves me.
He tells me that he loves me.
Oh, the guy in the house, right?
Yes, in the house, yes.
And he also tells me there is no better and let the man be the man because I became so much like Korea.
I'm sorry, there is no what?
He told me there is no other man better out there.
Like, I'm good. Oh, I'm the best man for you, right?
Yeah, yeah.
But the only concerning thing was for him that I am divorced, of course.
Oh, you told him then that you were like in the throes of a divorce and all that?
Yeah, but as a friend, of course, I was speaking to him, like, you know, in I told him that I am going through a divorce, yes.
And at the same time, I met with Jeremy after that, and he didn't date with anybody, and he started telling me, Tanya, I have resources, your children need resources, so come back to me.
But I just told him I don't feel any love, so it was so painful for me what What he did, that I kind of put the fence, you know, I said, you know, that's kind of over.
I took a test, you know, that's, that's over.
I didn't want any more pain from that relationship.
Okay, so then because he slept with the other woman, you were done.
Okay. I mean, not just because he slept with another woman.
He asked me to collect the rest of my stuff from the house after three weeks.
He knew that I was in a bad place in my life, that I needed support.
And he asked for divorce.
You know? Like, just everything together, I just put the fence.
I put the shield. I said, you know, I'm going through bad times and you are not there for me.
You are just making it even more complicated.
Because the only thing I wanted is just to fix my marriage, right?
To fix my sex problem.
So... And basically, then what happened is, I saw that guy just two days before I left.
He told me that he loved me.
And I told him, you know what, I now need to go and take care of my health because I booked a holiday where they take care of your health, like check everything, you know, and do the treatment and everything.
I said, you know what, I'm now going to...
What about certain travel? What about your job?
I asked to be relocated to Russia because they had an office in Russia as well.
Okay, got it. So I already did all that.
And I said, okay, I'm going on holiday.
Just I need to think, you know, about the whole situation.
Because, I mean, I was in a long-time relationship.
And I just, here is the guy telling me he loves me.
And I just needed to process all that.
You know, it was a bit too much for me.
So I went on holiday. Okay.
I was chatting to him on the messenger, and I received a message from him that he loves me, but he said, you know, I don't think I'm ready for the relationship.
And this is the guy from the house?
Yes. Yeah, okay. I receive a message that he's not ready for the relationship and I say, like, are you sure that's what you want because we can make it work?
And he said, yeah, I don't think I'm ready for the relationship.
What do you mean you can make it work?
I mean, didn't you just split up from your husband like weeks before?
Not weeks. It was three months already.
It was three months. Three months since you moved out, but not three months since you decided to split up.
It was two months, and weren't you there for a month before the...
The divorce?
Yeah. Before the talk of divorce came up, right?
Yes, yes. Okay, so we're talking eight weeks since you had started exploring divorce with your husband.
You're trying to have a relationship with another guy.
Yeah, yeah. What do you think of that?
I didn't try. I didn't start, but I started.
No, no, no. Don't get all passive on me.
I've let you get away with a lot of that stuff.
You were encouraging this guy to have a relationship with you.
You said, we could make it work.
That's what you just said to me, that you told this guy.
We could make it work eight weeks after you started talking about getting divorced with your husband of many years.
Yes. Okay. What do you think of that?
Eight weeks. Because... I think about that.
I mean, he was a very good guy.
And I also realized that I actually felt such a strong sexual desire for him.
A day before I left, I kept asking him for sex because I so much wanted that specific man.
I'm sorry, the day before you left, you were asking him for sex, right?
Yes. And he said no?
He, he, no he said, he said, he felt a bit, well I asked him, well he wanted it, he wanted it.
But he said, you are leaving.
And I said, yeah, it's probably not the right thing to do, right?
It's probably not the right thing to do because I'm leaving.
Or because you just started separating from your husband.
But okay, let's say it's because you're leaving.
Well, you know, if my body wanted that man, what can I do?
What do you mean, what can you do?
Listen, you were able to go without food for 17 days.
I think the phrase is, just say no.
I said no. I know.
I know. I'm just saying. I'm just saying.
I said no. I said no.
And I said, let me have some time.
I need to think. I need to go on holiday.
And I need to think about my marriage.
I need to think about you.
Everything. Right?
Right. So just taking my time.
But he messaged me that he's not ready for a relationship.
I asked him, are you sure?
He said yes. I said, okay, goodbye.
You know, goodbye. So just separated from my husband.
Then, you know, with that guy, which he just said he's not ready for a relationship.
And at the same time, I find out that there is a guy at work that is really in love with me, and he's in Turkey.
It's a Turkish guy.
Okay, I'm just going to point out that you keep saying, in love with you.
But you're not in a lovable place because you're messed up, right?
You've just come off a half-starvation diet.
Your period was shut down. Then it's starting back up.
You're changing your diet. You're getting divorced from your husband.
You're changing your countries. You're in no position to have a relationship with anyone.
Exactly. So it's not love, Tanya.
It's not love. You keep mistaking your body for your virtues.
You keep mistaking your looks for your character.
It's not love. Martin, Stefan, I... Look, I don't care that you're pretty.
I'm happily married. I don't care that you're pretty.
I'm the guy who's going to tell you something honest because I don't want to have sex with you.
It's not love.
You keep using that word.
Okay, well, anyway, this Turkish guy at work, so basically I learned from my colleagues that he told them that he's in love with me.
Okay? That's what he told them.
So he starts messaging me.
He starts messaging me.
And... Basically, I want to go back to the UK because I understand my health is better.
And the moment I think about going back to the UK, I break my leg the same day.
So instead of going to the UK, I stay at home because I can't move much.
So I stay at home and At the same time, my ex-husband is messaging me that, you know, like, come back to me, we can make it work.
But like, not come back to me, but he would be like, why did you do all that, what you did?
Why did you fast?
You know, we could, we were a great couple, we had everything.
So just like, you know, being very sad about what happened.
At the same time, You know, I was very upset about what happened.
And I also started to have feelings for that man that I met in the shared house.
Wait, after you broke your leg?
No, not after. Well, no, when I broke my leg.
Okay, let's just, I don't want to go back to the man in the shared house.
It seems like a bit of a dead end.
So where did the spells come in?
So the spells.
So I break my leg and I have to stay in Russia.
At the same time, a month later, that guy from the shared house, he writes to me that, you know, I love you and Like we can, you know, that's the most important and blah, blah, blah.
And I decided to go back to the UK because that's actually what I wanted to do anyway.
I realized that it wasn't the best. So you wanted to go back to the UK partly to be with the guy from the house?
At least to try, to give him a chance, you know.
And how long were you in Russia for?
So with a broken leg, I was a month and a half.
A month and a half that you were in Russia?
Yeah. Okay, got it.
So now we're talking 14 weeks after your husband has started talking about divorce with you.
Yes, exactly.
And so I decide to go back to the UK and I ask him, like, where are you?
Where do you live? That guy from the shared house, but he doesn't come back to me.
He doesn't answer anything.
I call him. He doesn't pick up the phone.
Well, he found someone else, right?
I don't know. I don't know.
Yeah, he found someone else. I find it very frustrating.
Or he had second thoughts.
Or he talked to someone else about the situation that he slapped some sense into him.
But anyway, go on. Yes. I feel very bad about it, and I start planning to go back to the UK myself.
So I start looking for a job to come back.
At the same time, I go through the heartbreak because he doesn't come back to me, my heart.
Wait, the heartbreak for your husband or for the guy in the house?
Oh, for the guy in the house.
Right. I go through a heartbreak, which is physical pain in your heart, actually.
The guy you never dated or slept with, right?
Yeah, exactly, exactly, yeah.
All right, so where do the spells come in?
Then, at the same time, this Turkish guy keeps messaging me.
And he tells me, I love you so much.
I'm ready to marry you.
Please come to Turkey.
We'll make it work.
He's ready to marry you?
You've never dated him, right?
Exactly. No, we just met twice at the meeting at work.
He says... Now, is he like a Western European guy living in Turkey, or is he like a born-and-bred Turkish guy?
Turkish-Turkish. Like Muslim-Turkish?
Yeah, Muslim-Turkish.
Yeah. And, I mean, I'm not religious, right?
Well, you could be.
You could be if you married a Muslim Turk.
I know, I know, I know, Stefan.
So... I go through heartbreak.
I come back to the UK. I get a job.
I send a message to that guy from the shared house.
Let's meet. He doesn't want to meet.
I'm standing in front of the door for two hours.
He doesn't open the door to me.
He's in the house. Wait, wait, wait.
You say, let's meet. He says, come to my house.
Then he doesn't open the door? No.
No, he doesn't even say, come to my house.
He just, he doesn't reply anything.
Oh, so then you go and wait outside his house for two hours?
Yes. Yeah.
I said, I need to collect my letters.
He said, I will leave them outside the door.
He didn't want to meet me.
Right. And...
So, your sexual attraction to him, given that he's insane, was not good, right?
Right. And it was not sexual.
It was heart attraction.
I went through a heartbreak.
No, no, no. You said that you really wanted to have sex with him because your libido came back and before you left to Russia.
That's what I remember, right?
Yes, yes, yes.
Okay, so then you wait outside his house.
Did he put the letters out? Yes, he did.
But then you wait outside his house for two hours.
Yes, and he saw me and he didn't open the door.
Well, sure, because if he wanted to see you, he wouldn't have said, I'll leave the stuff outside.
Don't come in. Alright, so where did the spells come in?
That's what he did. Just before leaving to Russia, I was doubting about if I should leave or if I should stay.
But there was some whispering into my ear, some weird whispers, like devil voice.
And I didn't pay attention to that, right?
I'm sorry, where were the voices coming in?
I don't know, it's just something like whispered into my ear.
No, but when did that happen?
Just before I went to Russia.
Just, you know, before I left, basically I heard some voices.
Which I didn't pay much attention to, you know, I just thought it's very weird.
Do you think it's usually important to pay attention to voices that you're hearing in your head?
I think it's important, yeah.
I think so. So I heard that, and yeah, it just, I mean, it affected me in some way.
Do you remember what the voices were saying to you?
What language were they speaking in?
Yeah, I think it was actually something like Turkish type of thing.
Yeah, it was something like I didn't understand at all.
Ah, okay. Yeah, and...
And again, then when I decided to go back to the UK, exactly that very moment, I had my leg broken, you know, without like...
How did you break your leg?
It's not really like broken, it's tendinitis issue, but I was...
You said your leg was broken, what do you mean?
Like, there was a problem in my knee.
But I had to research it, right?
I had to go to the hospital, but basically something...
Oh, I don't know that your medical research always leads you to a good place, Tanya.
So you didn't break your leg.
You had tendinitis? Tendinitis, yeah.
Sorry. Okay. So you might want to mention that as not in terms of breaking your leg, but all right.
No. So you're back two hours in front of this guy.
Did the voices come back at some point?
No, the voices didn't come back, no.
Okay, so then we need to get to the spells.
Yeah. So then this Turkish guy tells me that he's ready to marry and just, you know, come and marry.
If he's not casting spells, we need to get to the spellcasting part.
He does. Oh, he casts the spells.
Okay. Yes. Right.
Yes. And how does that come about?
So basically, I'm going through this heartbreak.
And this is the heartbreak, sorry to interrupt, this is the heartbreak not for your husband of many years but for the guy you didn't have sex with and who left you standing on the porch for two hours.
Yes, exactly. And I feel completely devastated.
And at the same time, this Turkish guy keeps sending me messages.
So I decided to go and visit him.
I booked my flight to Turkey.
I went there and I told him about like my heartbreak and what I go through and that it's quite difficult times for me and that I maybe need to stay on my own alone for a while.
He tells me that, yeah, I will wait for you, blah, blah, blah.
At the same time, he tells me that he's not really Muslim.
He doesn't believe much in it.
Well, you know that many Muslims are allowed to lie to non-Muslims, right?
It's part of the religion? And I mean, I never really wanted to marry anybody Muslim.
We wanted to raise our children without any religion and homeschooling.
And actually, in Turkey, you can't do homeschooling either.
So you have to send your kids to school.
And I just...
And so when do the spells come in?
So the spells, that's what I heard into my ear, whispering into my ear.
And then bad decisions in life.
So my heartbreak...
And, you know, that I decided to relocate to Russia instead of staying in the UK. You can imagine how you feel if you relocate back to Russia, so you kind of close part of the world for yourself.
Okay, I need to know how the Turkish man is casting a spell.
So, yeah, so basically, my life goes just so weird.
I decide to go to see astrologist, and astrologist tells me that, you know, there is something illegal about that Turkish guy.
Then I speak to that Turkish guy and I say, okay, so what is it?
And he tells me that the moment he met me, two years prior to, you know, all this conversation with him, he fell in love with me and he started and he said to his colleagues that he and Jeremy will break up and she will be my wife.
And he took it as a challenge, like if I fell in love with her, it means that I need to have her.
And he started Reading specific prayers.
Or, I don't know, he was doing something like, yeah, he told me he started reading some prayers for two years to have me in his life.
And yes, and then, you know, I just remembered all that what happened and those whispers into my ear and all those events that prevented me from going back to the UK on time.
And he basically, he put me in a situation when I was completely Vulnerable, exhausted, you know, heartbroken.
So you think that he casts spells on you to drive you away from your husband and...
Absolutely. I mean, yeah, absolutely.
But there's no such thing as magic.
There's no such thing as spells. So, Stefan, I started researching this topic and...
Basically, we are all connected to the universe, you know, about vibrations.
You probably know about vibrations, vibrational frequencies.
Yeah, I use them every time I speak.
They're in my throat. Yeah, they're not just in your throat.
It's how you're connected to the universe.
What does that mean, connected to the universe?
Like a big umbilical or what do you mean?
Like, you know, third eye opening, eight chakras.
No, I mean, I know that there are theories.
I've done some yoga, but I'm not sure what you mean in terms of all connected to the universe.
If we're connected to the universe, why are we using Skype?
Have you heard about the law of attraction?
The law of attraction?
I've heard that pretty people think that the universe is conforming to them when what really happens is men want to have sex with them.
No.
So basically, we are connected to the universe, right?
And we've agreed.
I don't know what that means.
I don't know what that means.
You say this like you know what it means.
I don't know what that means. It basically means that...
How can I explain that?
I mean, basically magic comes from the word magnetic.
So we're all like magnets, right?
Physics. We all vibrate at different frequencies.
No, no, no. You can't put magic and physics together.
Magic is a violation of the laws of physics by definition.
It's like saying thing and opposite of thing.
You can't squish together magic and physics.
You have to try some other way to explain it.
Okay. Magic comes from the word magnetic.
Magnets. Is it physics for you or not?
Is magnetics physics?
Yes. Well, sure, but etymology is not physics.
Like, where a word comes from isn't physical proof of anything.
I mean, the word elf exists, but I don't expect pointy-haired people with no beards to show up at my house.
So, by your thoughts and by your words, you can attract, you can affect A person's life.
No, no, God.
Listen, Tanya, do you not understand how this works yet?
Go to some old, ugly man and tell him that by his thoughts he can attract things in the universe.
On the other hand, go to a young, hot woman and say, by her thoughts you can attract things in the universe.
I think you're mistaking the word tits for thoughts.
You can attract things in the universe.
The universe seems to align to you because you're a young, attractive, fertile woman and men want to have sex with you.
It's not magic.
It's eggs. Okay, so you tell me that spells...
Spells are not real.
They don't exist. They don't exist.
There's no scientific evidence for magic spells.
If there was, it wouldn't be magic or spells.
They don't exist. Now, this isn't to say that words don't have big effects.
Like, if you can convince someone that they're crap, and if you can convince someone that you can save them, you can get resources.
You can convince someone that a God exists.
Maybe they'll give you money. If you can convince someone that you're right all the time, maybe they'll change your...
Their behavior. You know, like, I mean, I speak for a living.
My words turn into money.
Freedomainradio.com slash donate.
It's magic. My words turn into gold.
It's magic. But this is not spells.
This is just exchange for language, right, for value.
So no, there's no spells.
What happens is that young women in particular don't get contradicted very much because men want to have sex with them.
We don't tell you that you're wrong because it will interfere with our access to your vagina.
And so you've gone through life and you said when you were growing up as a kid, your parents didn't say no to you much, right?
Correct. Right. So your parents didn't say no to you much.
Men are tripping all over themselves because you're physically very attractive and they want to have sex with you.
You think that's love?
It's not. It's not.
That doesn't mean you can't be loved.
Right? And you have had parents who have, in many ways, it sounds like, taken away your responsibility.
Because they say, well, it's your husband's fault that you starved.
No, you made those choices.
Maybe he didn't help, but it's you.
And you are making bad decisions.
You picked the wrong guy to marry.
You picked the wrong guy to want to have sex with before you left to Russia.
You're picking some crazy Muslim who thinks he's got magic spells over you and you're messaging him.
And so you're making bad decisions, but you think this is the universe?
You think this is magic?
No! You're making bad decisions.
Now, you can make better decisions and you can be the kind of person that a rational, sane, healthy man could fall in love with, but you gotta stop all this woo-woo crap, all this mystical crap.
Because any sane man, when you start talking about vibrations and chakras and connection to the universe, any sane man is going to leave like a wily coyote-sized hole in the door getting away.
There's no magic. Stefan, what is that enlightenment for you?
What is what? What is that a person enlightened, enlightened person?
You know, enlightenment. Enlightenment, I mean, it's a period in history when the scientific method expanded, but I don't know about enlightenment.
I like the word truth. I like the word honest.
I like the word factual. I like the word empirical.
I don't know about enlightenment.
Enlightenment seems like, well, it's bullshit, but I'm going to put a different word on it.
Like, I don't care about enlightenment.
I care about something that's true.
And there's no such thing as magic.
They've tried all of these experiments.
Magic, prayer, all of these things.
No effect. No effect whatsoever.
Voodoo doesn't exist. Magic doesn't exist.
Spells don't exist. Witches don't exist.
Ghosts and goblins don't exist.
And you are surrendering your power to a fantasy, to a delusion.
And it's dangerous, Tanya.
It's dangerous.
Because if you start to believe in this stuff, really believe in it, sounds like you're kind of down that path already.
Stefan, when you hear something whispering into your ear and then some events in your life happening, that you start thinking about it, Stefan.
You're not thinking about it.
You're accepting it.
You're accepting that there's some answer called magic spells.
Yes, I experienced it myself.
What did you experience?
The sound of a voice in your ear?
Yes. I write novels!
Of course you have voices in your ear.
We have dialogue and arguments with ourselves all the time.
No, it was a different one.
It's not in your head, it's in your ear.
So you had an auditory hallucination.
People have visual hallucinations, auditory hallucinations.
It's not fantastically rare.
So you go and get yourself checked out neurologically, and if there's nothing wrong, you say, well, there was just a hiccup in my brain.
I had a kind of waking dream.
Maybe there was somebody whispering some distance away, and the way that the sound bounced around the stone square I was in, it kind of sounded like it was in my ear.
Or you just chalk it up to something happened.
Doesn't matter. My wires got crossed.
I had a kind of deja vu.
I had an auditory recall.
I had a waking dream. It's not real.
It's not like someone in Turkey is whispering in your ear, unless you're on the phone.
It's not real. And it's dangerous to think that it is, because it detaches you from simple, clear, basic, direct reality, which is where your power is.
And what it does is, by mistaking lust for love, you think that you have a virtue which you don't have.
I'm not saying you don't have virtues, but what I'm saying is that you keep saying, well...
This person fell in love with me, and this person fell in love with me, and this person fell in love with me.
But the question is, what are the qualities of the men who are falling in love with you?
If they are not high-quality men, then it's not love.
Because they do not possess virtues, and therefore they cannot recognize virtues, and therefore it cannot be love.
Love is our involuntary response to virtue if we are virtuous.
Yes, so I was virtuous, and that was my husband's voluntary response to me.
Forget virtue.
Were you sensible? Was starving yourself for 17 days sensible?
No. Was not telling your husband about your lack of sexual attraction sensible?
Because you had him think it was his fault, his issue.
Was wanting to have sex with a man eight weeks after discussing divorce with your husband sensible?
Was standing out front of a man's house for two hours waiting for him to let you in when he clearly doesn't want to, was that sensible?
Is thinking that you have voices in your ear cast by a wizard in Turkey sensible?
It's not.
Hint, it's not.
Stefan. When you go through a heartbreak, yeah?
And the only way to fix it is to be with that person.
Yes, it is sensible because it doesn't affect my heart.
Wait, what heartbreak?
The guy you didn't have sex with who didn't want to have anything to do with you?
What heartbreak? You had more heartbreak over this non-relationship from a guy who wouldn't even return your texts than from your entire marriage where you said, okay, we'll have a divorce.
It's my heart who chose him.
It's not me. It's your what?
It's my heart.
What? It's not me.
It's my heart who chose him.
It's not you? You have nothing to do with your heart?
Is it like walking around in a little walker?
Is it floating around like a red balloon held by a clown?
Your heart is what happens as a result of your thoughts.
Your emotions are the shadows cast by your thoughts.
If you want to change your emotions, you have to start changing your thinking.
Stefan, that guy was in a shared house.
He was around me every day.
I couldn't do anything against it, right?
Could I? No. What do you mean?
You could slap yourself in the face and say, I make terrible decisions regarding men.
So this is another example of a terrible decision.
Let me find out about this guy.
Let me find out about his childhood.
Let me find out about his history.
Let me find out about his relationships.
Let me find out about his qualities as a human being.
Let me find out about his capacity for courage and virtue and honesty and integrity.
All right. Those 12 weeks that we lived together with him, actually the discussions we had in the kitchen were actually very philosophical.
Okay? So we were more like, I took him as a, I looked at him as a friend, but actually we had various philosophical discussions.
So I got to know him as a friend.
I didn't want any relationship. Wait, wait, wait.
Are you saying you got to know this guy, but you had no idea he wouldn't call you back or text you back and left you standing out front of his house for two hours?
That was terrible. Right, so you didn't know him.
I didn't know him.
You didn't know him. I didn't know him enough, yes.
You didn't know him. So you had no right to feel lust for him other than you're making up for some internal deficiency, it's codependency, it's an emptiness that you hope to fill up with being attracted.
You want to be attracted to, that's part of the starvation, you said to me several times.
And I'm not mad at you, by the way, I'm just passionate, right?
But you said to me several times, it made me look great.
You want to be envied, you want to be desired, you want to be wanted.
And so you're putting off all these signals, but unfortunately, the signals that you're putting off are drawing low quality men to you.
Would you call my husband low quality?
Did it work out? Did he basically kick you out and sleep with another woman?
Would you forgive him after that?
No, no. You asked me one question which I need to answer.
Asking me another question doesn't have me imagine I didn't get asked the first one.
So, did your husband basically kick you out of the house and then go sleep with another woman?
Yes. Would you call that high quality?
No. So you don't have a good track record of choosing good men because you choose men for you, not for quality.
You choose men because you want to be wanted, because you enjoy male attention, because you enjoy being desired.
At the same time, Stefan, you can understand my husband.
If your woman makes you feel not desirable and not sleeping with you, he started looking for it somewhere else.
Yeah, I'm not doing some judge, jury, executioner thing on your husband.
But if a man wants to date you or even indicates that he wants to date you when you're a couple of weeks out of a falling apart marriage, that's trashy.
That's trailer park trashy.
I gotta be honest. Yes.
Right? You don't go around picking up the spit out remnants of some other man's woman weeks after a marriage is breaking up.
That's trash. Yeah.
That's garbage. Not your garbage or their garbage, but it's garbage decisions.
It's low rent, reptile brain, lust.
Yes. It's innies and outies clashing together in a void of values.
That's exactly why I put the shield straight away, because it was just too painful.
But you're still hanging out on his porch for two hours?
No, no. That's another guy in a shared house.
It was not my husband. Oh, yeah.
No, no. I was talking about the other guy.
Yeah. I didn't go back to my husband.
Right. Yeah.
So you've got to not go down this mystical rabbit hole.
You probably will.
But I'm going to warn you anyway.
And warn everyone else out there.
I'm telling you, Tanya, I have seen where this rabbit hole leads.
It leads to a life of loneliness and despair and hysteria and self-justification and responsibility avoidance.
And fundamentally, in the end, you know what it takes from you?
The most precious thing you have.
Your free will.
Because... What happens is it all becomes, am I in tune with the universe?
What does my heart say?
You never actually end up making a damn choice.
And this is what you're trying to sell to me.
Well, the heart wants what the heart wants.
Well, we were in proximity.
We had these conversations.
What could I do? No.
No, no, no, no, no. You can't just be dragged around by your heart and your loins like some guy tied up behind a pickup truck on a dirt road.
I mean, you can be. But it's scarcely possible.
Elevated. It's scarcely enlightened, right?
Yes. And the end result of mysticism is a living death.
It is a soullessness. It is a need that will never be filled.
It is what Gabor Maté talks about in The Realm of the Hungry Ghosts.
It's the ghost that every time it eats, it gets hungrier.
It hasn't worked, right?
Trying to get male attention for you has not worked.
Yeah. And it won't.
So you believe there is no such thing as kind of fate and something guiding us through life.
Do you believe in that? Like the universe is guiding us through our journey.
How's the universe been guiding you?
What the hell did you ever do to the universe that it would guide you like this?
I mean, if I thought that, if I thought that the universe had been guiding me by having me beaten up as a child and tortured and abused, I mean, fuck the universe.
If that's the plan, fuck the plan.
No, the universe is not guiding you.
That's passive. And you can get by with passive because you're pretty.
You can get by with thinking there are vibrations and the universe and that because you've got men chasing you around like a dog after an ice cream truck.
Right?
It's not a value that you are bringing in.
Look, tell me this. This is all you need to answer to me, Tanya.
Yes.
If you were 55 years old and 200 pounds, what would these men be doing?
Don't tell me you have to pause on this one.
Don't even pretend you have to pause on this one.
Would they be messaging you and I want to marry you and I love you?
Stefan, but you know people go through...
No, no. Would they? I don't know.
Of course you know. You know.
You know. Come on. Do you have the kind of personality and personal qualities and virtues and values and wisdom and integrity and maturity that if you were 55 years old and 200 pounds, these men would be all over you?
I had it. I lost it, but I had it, yes.
You had it in the past?
I had it in the past, yes.
I blamed myself for everything that happened.
I blamed myself a lot.
Wait, so you're saying that the pinnacle of your wisdom and virtue was blaming yourself for everything?
I blamed myself for my decisions.
I blamed myself for...
Leaving the UK and going back to Russia and not being strong.
Oh, so in the past you mean like after your divorce?
Yeah. No, no, no.
After the divorce you were begging a guy to have sex with you who ended up leaving you on his porch for two hours and not returning your calls and not even wanting to face you to the point where he's leaving your letters in a bag on the porch.
Don't talk to me about your values and virtues.
Answer the question. You know the answer, Tanya, in your heart.
If you were 55 years old and 200 pounds, would you get this amount of male attention?
Probably not.
Probably? No, not.
No. Now, do you understand you will, I hope not be 200 pounds, but one day, with good luck, you will be 55 years old.
Right? How much male attention do you think you will be getting at that age?
Not much, no.
So I need to find myself a partner till it's too late.
See, no, that's not what I'm saying.
Your capacity to not listen is truly a force of nature.
You need to become More virtuous.
More sensible. You need to not go down this foggy, narcissistic rabbit hole of the universe cares about you.
The universe does not care about you, Tanya.
Penises care about you because they want to make more penises.
Or vaginas.
Which is not a bad thing, actually.
I'm sorry? I mean, so they want to have more humans.
Is that what you say? Which is not a bad thing.
You are mistaking personal value for sex appeal.
Or you are mistaking sex appeal for personal value.
Stefan, all those men wanted to be with me.
Like, marry me, you know.
Not just one night stand, you know.
My husband married me.
This Turkish guy proposed.
He, you know...
He didn't want just sex.
And do you really think...
How do you know? Well, you know your husband married you, but then he kicked you out of the house and had sex with another woman.
How do you know these guys might have had sex with you, promising to marry you and then not marry you?
This other guy wanted to have sex with you, or at least you talked about it.
And then he wouldn't even return your calls and left your letters in a bag on the porch.
Because there was miscommunication between us.
He told that I left him.
That's how he took it.
And I told that he doesn't need the relationship.
So the fact is you have people so insecure and lunatic that miscommunications cause this kind of indifference and hostility.
Guess what? There's going to be miscommunications all the time in your relationships.
Right? Right. The question is, can you survive miscommunications?
Do you have trust in each other enough that you don't freak out and panic and get hostile and freaky and weird, right?
Is it that tenuous?
One misunderstanding, one mistake, one confusion, boom, it's all over.
Yeah, so I think that, you know...
My husband should have made a different choice.
Rather than going and sleeping with another woman, he could tell me, why don't we go to a doctor together?
Why don't we call Stefan together?
Why don't we go to see a psychologist?
Now, do you think that I'm going to sit here again, Tanya, and listen to you blame your goddamn husband one more time?
No. You talk about magnetism.
Do you know what it is with you and responsibility?
Maybe it's because of your prior self-attack.
I don't know. But it's like this opposite pole magnet trying to get it together.
Stop blaming other people.
Well, it was his misunderstanding and my husband didn't do this and the doctors didn't do that.
Come on. And the Turkish man has a spell on me.
No, no, no, no, no.
You need to take a deep seat in the throne of your own being and start taking charge and responsibility.
You chose your husband.
You chose to starve yourself.
You chose to pretend that your research was somehow valid.
You chose to ignore the consequences of starving yourself.
You chose to move out from your husband rather than to fight for him.
You chose to not get back together with him.
You chose to stand there for two hours on somebody's porch.
And now you're choosing to believe that there's magic spells from a wizard in Turkey.
These are all choices. They are made.
They can be unmade.
They can be accepted and changed in the future.
Because what happens is you have had a life of privilege.
Young, hot, girl privilege.
And before that with your parents.
Single child. Attractive child.
Apple of your parents' eye.
Yeah. No...
Boundaries, no limits. You have had hot young girl privilege.
It's really the only privilege that matters.
You have hot young girl privilege.
Right? Yes.
And it's not going to last.
You know it's not going to last. You're calling in to...
People, like, guys will let you get away with this crazy mystical crap because you're pretty.
No, I mean, nobody...
I mean, that's exactly why I'm discussing it with you rather than with anybody else.
I know that's why. You're desperately trying to have me help save you from this swirling Australian toilet of mysticism.
Yes. The universe is dead.
The universe cares nothing for you.
If you think the universe cares for you, that's kind of a cock block to somebody actually caring for you in the real world.
Because if you think the universe cares for you, there's precious little room for a rational love in this world.
Because if you're married to the universe, you can't even have an affair with a rational person.
The rational person is going to look at that and they're going to say, Tanya has vanity because she thinks her high sexual market value translates into...
Personal worth in the long run.
She's mistaking horniness on the part of men for virtue and value on the part of herself.
That is a crippling lack of self-knowledge.
She either doesn't know the facts, which is that men want to have sex with her, or she does know, but she's pretending she doesn't.
Neither one of those is appealing to a rational man.
Now, please understand, I have nothing against being pretty.
I have nothing against you looking good, taking care of your appearance, being attractive.
That's all fantastic. No problem with it.
It's great. But you don't want to mistake.
Like, if I was a rich and powerful guy and everyone wanted to be my friend, is it because I'm just so wonderful?
Yeah. And you've ended up in your mid to late 20s alone.
And now the universe and mysticism and magic and spells and wizards in Turkey are beckoning.
But your life over the past half decade or decade...
Outside of your profession, it's been a kind of domino series of pretty massive mistakes, right?
Yes. So stop turning to the universe to save yourself from the bad decisions that you have been making, and which I'm sorry to say, the people in your environment, including your parents, have been enabling.
You've made mistakes.
And listen... I sympathize.
I really sympathize.
I have made my share of mistakes, sometimes maybe even more than my fair share of mistakes.
So I am not preaching from some white pony of perfection here.
But if you want to stop making bad mistakes, you need to take ownership of your life.
You need to take ownership of the reality that you have pretty girl privilege and that is a great power and a great danger.
You have like this ring. And not the threshy one, but the ring that gets you things for free, that gets you male attention.
And it is, you know, people look at pretty people and they think, oh man, that's got to be great.
I mean, how many people I wonder looked at you and your husband in your prime?
And said, damn, what a hot couple.
What an attractive couple. She's successful.
He's successful. They're laughing.
They're giggling insouciantly and holding their wine with a little finger extended.
What a cool power couple.
Well, they don't know what's going on in the home, what's not going on between the sheets, right?
So people look at pretty people and say, wow, what is it?
Socrates said, what do we want?
We want health, youth, beauty, and power or money.
And we look at pretty people.
I'm sure people look at you and say, wow, she's got it made.
What a pretty girl.
What a hot girl. What an attractive woman.
But my God, being beautiful is sometimes more of a curse than a blessing.
Especially now that we don't have pair bonding.
Like it used to be in the past, right?
Like around alpha guys. I'm just talking about alpha guys for the moment.
Maybe it's the same with the women.
But in the past, the alpha men would have been snapped up in their early 20s.
They would have been locked in in a system of monogamy and marriage.
That would have kept them off the market forever.
You get to get married in the sight of God.
Nothing tears you asunder. You are then married forever.
You're off the market. And so the men who are off the market, the women say, okay, well, that guy's off the market.
I go to the second tier and I better get him quick.
Otherwise, he's going to be off the market.
And you make your necessary compromises.
You make your necessary compromises.
Because the stock is diminishing, right?
If it's the second last loaf of bread, you may not check whether it has just the right ingredients.
You're just going to grab it and go. But now we've got this endless...
Fueled by technology and welfare and crap.
We've got this endless...
Well, it could be better. It could be better.
It could be better. It could be something else.
It could be something else. And we can spin this...
What is this? Physical attraction is supposed to be this web.
It catches the fly and then it shuts up.
Right? It gets pregnant.
It loses itself.
Not you, just attractiveness.
Let me finish, and then I'll let you tell me how I work.
Right, so physical beauty is supposed to catch the guy, and then it gets pregnant, it gets stretch marks, and it fades.
It's supposed to be like a flower.
Get, be, die in the fall.
But now it's like this sexual detraction thing, this physical attractiveness.
It's not used as the basis for a family anymore.
It's used... As a form of self-stimulation and vanity servicing.
Forever. And it really doesn't work out.
Because what happens is you're supposed to use your beauty to get a quality man.
And then your beauty is supposed to make you babies.
Have them make babies. It's not supposed to last forever.
Now, it does with some people.
And it's great and so on, right?
But... It's designed to get you pregnant, not to have you stimulate yourself with guys who keep falling in love with you over and over and over again.
That's using it like a drug rather than a food.
Stefan, and that's exactly, I mean, Ian's I never wanted to separate from my husband, right?
I wanted to stay with him all my life.
I never looked at to other guys, even though I had sexual issues, I never considered going and just breaking up with him and being with someone else.
You know, even though I'm attractive, and yes, I do like to be physically, I like to be in a good shape, and yes, I do like to have my clothes clean, I'm not into too much fashion, but yes, I do like to look clean and, you know, and so, you know, Just normal, healthy woman, you know?
Do you think that no marriage has ever flourished after an affair?
You made a choice. I don't know whether you should have forgiven your husband or not.
I don't know. And that's not really for me to say.
But I will say this.
You made a choice. As much as your husband did, and maybe even more since he wanted you to come back afterwards, you made a choice to end your marriage.
Right? You can say, well, it was my inevitable response to him having an affair, to him sleeping with another woman.
It's not an affair. He just had slept with another woman.
I'm not saying that's good, but it's not the same as some lengthy, Mitterrand-style affair.
So you can keep a woman in a downtown condo.
It's a side piece for a decade and a half or whatever, right?
So you made the choice to end the marriage.
And you were on a break, which is not great.
Again, it doesn't... And he hadn't had sex more than a couple of times a year for a while.
Not perfect, not great, not excusing his behavior, but you still made the choice to end it when he wanted you back.
Stefan, he brought me the divorce paper.
He asked to sign it.
He told me...
I had the exact amount of money when we married and when we are divorcing.
So you're passive again.
He brought me the divorce papers.
So what? But he did. So what?
He didn't fight for it.
No, no. He wanted you back at one point, you told me.
After that. Okay.
So why didn't you fight for it then?
Stefan, when the person does lots of crap to me, at some point I put the shield and say goodbye, okay?
Okay, so you made a choice, but don't tell me that the choice was inevitable based upon his behavior.
You made a choice.
That's what I'm trying to give to you.
The universe is going to take away your free will, this universe mysticism.
I'm trying to give you your free will.
Yes. You made a choice to end the marriage, just like you made a choice to starve yourself.
Which is one of the things that precipitated this.
Yes. You made a choice to not do whatever it took to get your health straight with your husband, to go back home, to get a better doctor, to go to another specialist to say, no, I'm not satisfied with this.
I can't live like this. I need something better.
I'm going to go to a better doctor. No, you made the choice to start researching yourself and starving yourself.
These were all choices. Yes.
And then you made a choice.
So you contributed to the end of your marriage, right?
I did. And then your husband wanted you back and you said, no, that's a choice.
You could have gone back to him.
You could have tried to work it out.
You could have gone to couples therapy.
You could have made this demand.
You could have made this offer. You could have done whatever it took to have your marriage continue.
But you didn't. I was already into this guy in a shared house.
Which is another choice.
Yes. Right?
But he didn't want me.
Right. Yeah.
So now you're alone.
Correct. And other than the Turkish wizard, what do you have?
Oh, the Turkish wizard is when I... I told him that...
No, I don't want to get into the details.
We had a lot of details for a while here.
So basically... No, no, I don't want to get into the details.
You're alone. I do not consider the Turkish wizard a viable option.
No, he's terrible. I can't believe the sentences I have to say on the show.
No, the Turkish delight magician, not an option.
Not an option, no. The Turkish voodoo god, not an option.
No. The Harry Potter guy in a turban, nuh-uh.
Agreed. Chunk? Yogurt?
Hogwarts? No.
Not an option. Agreed.
So you have no one and nothing as the result of your choices.
And I'm not saying this to punish you.
I'm not saying this to make you mad.
I'm not saying this to make you feel bad about yourself.
I'm saying this because it gives you power, which right now you don't have.
Because you've made a bad series of terrible decisions, and you've blamed everyone but yourself.
You've taken no responsibility for yourself, and now you're hoping the universe is going to take the burden by pretending that the universe made you do it for some obscure reason that never makes any sense.
No, I did blame myself, but I blamed myself so much about it.
You have blamed nothing about yourself in this entire conversation with me.
I can only go with what you're saying.
You've taken no responsibility.
Well, this is what my heart wanted.
Well, my husband did this, so I had to do that.
Well, this is what it said online.
The doctors told me this and I didn't have that.
What responsibility have you taken?
Sex issue. No, you said that was the result of the doctors and the medication and the this and the that.
Yes, because then I started having sexual issues, sexual desires, right?
And you then chose to solve that by going to quackmd.com and starving yourself, which in hindsight was not a rational choice.
Stefan, but it worked.
It did work for me.
So by worked you mean it destroyed your marriage?
Yeah, but now I have sexual desire.
I just need to find a man.
So you really don't have the capacity for self-evaluation in this way at all, right?
So you still think that it was a good idea to deal with these medical issues rather than getting second opinions or going to other experts and keep going until you got better answers.
You still think it was a good idea to starve yourself half to death.
I don't think it was a great idea, but it worked.
Was it a good idea? No, but it didn't help.
Was it a bad idea?
It was a bad idea, yes.
Okay, so then don't tell me it worked.
Okay. And I'm saying this to you not because I want you to self-attack or anything like that, but if you think everything you do is right, you'll end up just following your heart off a cliff and blaming the universe as you fall forever.
And that's what...
Magic is the theft of choice.
Mysticism is the thief of will.
And the supernatural is the vampire of responsibility.
Correct. Do not be drawn to mysticism.
It will, I believe, destroy you.
And it won't even destroy you like you just get hit by a truck and it's all over.
It will destroy you like the ring took out Gollum.
All right.
Work on the personal qualities that make you a great wife, mother, partner.
Demand nothing more or less than virtue from the men you want to be with.
And have a great life. All right?
Thank you so much, Stefan.
Thank you very much. I appreciate that.
Thank you, everyone. I'm sorry to those we didn't get to, but thank you, everyone, so much for a great, great call tonight.
What a journey, everybody.
It's a real privilege and pleasure to have these kind of conversations with you.
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Wait, wait, wait. Oh, I don't even know if we ever use these videos.
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