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Jan. 31, 2018 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

03:38:11

3982 The World Changing Innovation You Don’t Know About - Call In Show - January 24th, 2018

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	Hey everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain.
	Hope you're doing very, very well.
	Please don't forget to help out the show, this glorious year 2018, at freedomainradio.com slash donate.
	Three callers tonight.
	Oh, that means we're digging deep, baby.
	We're going for the gold and diamonds.
	The first caller wanted to know about universal basic income, the idea that the government just gives you a bunch of money to start and you get to keep whatever afterwards.
	And we did talk about that, but for reasons that I'm pretty sure make sense in the conversation, in hindsight, we start talking about IQ 200 babies currently being germinated in...
	China and the implications of that kind of genetic engineering.
	You can listen to my interview with Dr.
	Stephen Su, HSU, for more on that.
	Now, the second caller wanted to know about, you know, the sort of personal development gurus, the Anthony Robbins and so on, why they studiously avoid politics.
	And man, we ended up with a very, very deep exploration of his life.
	And I think the life of many of us who grew up in the West over the past couple of decades.
	And the third caller is an artist.
	He wants to make a comic.
	He's wanted to make a comic since he was five years old.
	And he's stuck and he's stalled.
	And I think we've all been there, us creative types.
	And if you have a dream, if you have a creative impulse, and you've ever had trouble with it, that is the call for you.
	So please don't forget to follow me on Twitter at Stefan Molyneux.
	Use the affiliate link at fdurl.com forward slash Amazon.
	Thanks everyone so much.
	Alright, well up for us today we have Brandon.
	Brandon wrote in and said, I've watched some of your videos on automation and universal basic income.
	You did not mention the critical component that robots can think and learn.
	Unlike the shifts in the job market from the past, they were based on physical skill, i.e.
	systematic routines done by humans.
	Robots will eventually be able to take jobs that require human-level thought.
	Despite my libertarian ideology, it concerns me that in the future there may come a time where the majority of jobs, including ones that require thought, will no longer require humans.
	What happens when robots have higher IQs than human beings?
	Will humans be obsolete, much like how the horse became obsolete with an increase in transportation technology?
	What is your take on the thinking aspect of automation?
	What could be a solution in a free society?
	That's from Brandon. Hey Brandon, how are you doing tonight?
	I must know. Got on mute, Brandon.
	I must know! Brandon!
	Brandon! Oh, there we go, finally.
	I'm doing great to answer your question.
	Sorry about that. I'm afraid we're going to have to upgrade you with an automated Brandon.
	Please step back from the microphone.
	All right. All right.
	So how are you doing tonight? Doing awesome.
	Why do you think the robots can think?
	Well, I did see your video on this where you basically said they don't think they data process, which I definitely agree with.
	So I would change that phrase a little bit.
	But I'm not sure if you heard about how IBM Watson can generate recipes using knowledge of human taste buds and how food cooks.
	Sorry to interrupt.
	I just need to be precise.
	And of course, I have been for many decades a computer programmer off and on, so I know something about this.
	It does not generate recipes.
	It compares data. So the computer is in no way generating a recipe.
	That's what it looks like to a human being.
	It's sort of like saying, if you're playing Doom, there's a demon in the computer.
	It's like, nope, the computer is just manipulating pixels and following instructions.
	Now, those pixels have been programmed to simulate a reality of demon ripping for a human being, but the computer in no way experiences it along those lines, and the computer is not generating a recipe.
	The computer is simply comparing data.
	And the computer is not doing anything.
	The computer is only doing what the human being tells it to do, right?
	Now, you can say, well, given this array of taste buds and given these flavors, but all of that data has to be input.
	But the computer is just grinding through data and producing an output.
	We can call it a recipe, but it's important to understand that that's a human construct that the computer has no idea about.
	Yes, that makes sense.
	I guess then what I would say is, even if it does just do what we tell it to, What if it gets so good at making things that look like recipes that we no longer need chefs or we no longer need engineers?
	What if it comes up with better ways to make other computers?
	I'm not sure what the problem with that is.
	What's wrong with that? Just the implications of unemployment.
	Why would those people be unemployed?
	Well, you mentioned that it would kind of create a seesaw-like pattern where it would take up jobs in some areas but create new market value in other areas.
	Is that correct? Well, do you think it would be preferable for 90% of the American workforce to be involved in farming, as was the case 100 years ago?
	Now it's down to 2% to 3%.
	Are you saying that 80% of people or 90% of people are now completely unemployed because they used to be farmers?
	No, I'm not saying that.
	I'm just wondering... I do think low-skilled jobs...
	I think it's good to have a nice ladder of job opportunity.
	And I think that higher and higher levels of automation might take away some of the rungs from the bottom part of the ladder.
	So why are we using Skype then?
	Why don't you walk over to my house?
	Or why don't we use carrier pigeons?
	No, why don't we do this through mail?
	I mean, because you understand that by having this conversation, we're throwing a lot of carrier pigeons and horse groomers out of work, right?
	Absolutely. A lot of people who process the mail.
	So it's kind of funny how everyone's like, well, I'm concerned about automation.
	And they use massive amounts of automation to make that.
	You know, it's like, you have no problem with automation.
	I have no problem with automation.
	I'm still trying to understand what the problem is.
	With automation, do you know that the average home has like 80 or 90 people's worth of work in it, right?
	In other words, the average home in terms of like you just flick a button and you get heat.
	That used to be guys who have to go out into the forest, chop down the wood, come and burn it and clean out the fire.
	I mean, you just go watch them downtown Abbey.
	There's this sitting on this, it's like a few people at the top and this massive pyramid of people running the house.
	How about, you know, warm water?
	I mean, I've worked in the boonies, and warm water is tough.
	I remember bathing in minus – I had to bathe outside.
	It's like minus 35. I just had to bathe.
	I couldn't take it anymore. And I had to, first of all, boil the snow or get the snow warm on a propane tank.
	And then I had to wash, and it was freezing on me.
	As I was washing, like I was washing, I'd start by washing and I'd end up just scraping ice off my body.
	Actually, it was pretty refreshing in hindsight.
	But we all, you know, now you just turn a tap, you get hot water.
	I mean, I'm just trying to, it's this weird thing, you know, and it's not your fault, but I just kind of find it odd that there have been the successive waves of automation throughout human history that we're incredibly happy about.
	You know, there used to be a guy who'd have to go and rub sticks together to start a fire.
	Now you have matches or a lighter or a propane thing.
	You just push a button and you get it.
	And it used to be when I was a kid, some people didn't have fridges.
	So you would get your milk bottles every morning by your door, the milkman.
	And I guess that's gone by the wayside now because people go and I'm glad we don't have to do that stuff by hand anymore.
	You know, man, I'm glad that I have a lawnmower that is gas powered or electricity powered and I don't have to do a push mower.
	Man, you know, I'm really glad I have a snowblower or I'm really glad that I have a car and don't have to walk.
	We look back through time.
	And we say, I'm so glad that I don't have to do this menial stuff.
	But then there's this weird flip.
	And we look forward and we say, but the next one, man, that's going to be a disaster.
	Right? And I'm trying to sort of understand that.
	Like, you don't look through history and you say it was a real disaster that we have cars instead of horses.
	You don't look back and say it's a real disaster.
	Right? That we have combine harvesters and don't have to thresh the wheat with a scythe by hand.
	You're really happy that we have antibiotics rather than, say, death.
	So, looking back through time, everyone's completely thrilled at all of the automation that's happened and would consider it god-awful to lose it.
	And yet, we sort of look forward and say, well, it's totally different.
	The future is going to be totally different from the past.
	All the past automation was fantastic, but the future automation is going to be a disaster.
	That makes sense. One other question.
	The car basically made the horse completely obsolete, right?
	It didn't generate different jobs for the horse.
	It kind of just made the horse completely obsolete.
	Do you think that there will ever be a time where robots make humans obsolete?
	Because, I mean, I'm less concerned with small jobs, but I'm more concerned with what if humans aren't even needed in society, which I hope I don't sound like a broken record.
	But do you think there will be a time when the human becomes the horse and robots become the car?
	Well, I mean, horses are not obsolete.
	It used to be that poor people had horses, and now rich people have horses.
	I mean, horses are still needed and still wanted for recreation, right?
	Yeah, they're wanted for recreation, but they can't really serve an economic purpose in society other than, I guess you could say, entertainment.
	Or getting the Amish around, or being slaughtered in Game of Thrones.
	But what does it mean when you say human beings becoming obsolete?
	I'm not sure what that means.
	Because robots will do what human beings tell them to.
	I mean, there's all this science fiction, right?
	And I've talked about this way back in Stadium is Dead Part 3.
	But we have this weird...
	You have to understand what is real and what is sublimated in the world.
	And that sounds kind of confusing, but let me sort of explain.
	This idea that...
	We have something that is supposed to serve us that ends up ruling us.
	That's the government, you understand.
	That's the state. We all have this anxiety that, remember, the government was supposed to be a very small thing that was supposed to just resolve intractable disputes, give us some police, some national defense, and that's it.
	And it was like 2%, maybe 3%.
	Of the national GDP. So your taxes would be a couple of percent and you'd get all of this wonderful stuff that would just make your life better.
	And it was supposed to be something which served us.
	And now it's grown to the point where it owns us.
	We're less free now.
	Slaves used to keep 70-80% of their income.
	In other words, the wealth that they generated, 70-80% of it went on their housing, their medicine, their food, and their spending money and so on.
	So it used to be that slaves got taxed 20-30%.
	Now, most of us are getting taxed 30-50%.
	And we're less free than slaves were in terms of how much wealth we get to keep.
	And that doesn't even count. I mean, you couldn't go into a national debt based upon your slaves in the past, but now we're all in debt virtually to infinity.
	National debt, unfunded liability.
	So this idea that we're going to create this servant that is going to take on a life of its own and then enslave us, that's the state.
	In reality, in fact, that is the state.
	And we know that this is because this is such a recurrent theme in movies, right?
	Skynet, right?
	The Matrix. We created these machines to make our lives easier and to be efficient and to be our slaves.
	And they grew a life and a mind of their own and they took us over, right?
	That's the state. That is the government.
	No question. And the reason why we keep returning to this in science fiction is because we can't talk about it in real life.
	It's like how the slaves, Lord, I'm bearing heavy burdens trying to get home.
	The slaves used to sing about Moses and wanting to be free.
	Why? Because they couldn't sing about being slaves and wanting to be free.
	So they had to sing about these Old Testament freedoms, right?
	Yes. And so we are always talking about the state in science fiction, almost always.
	But we can't talk about the state.
	Because the state can fuck you up if you're an artist.
	Right? I mean, they can punish you.
	So you can't talk about the state any more than you can talk about immigration or any more than you can talk about female evil, other than outlandish Charlize Theron style.
	But we're talking about the state.
	And that is the thing that empirically...
	It's designed to serve us and ends up ruling us.
	That we see.
	We see it every day. We see expanding every day.
	I'm not worried.
	I'm not worried about my iPad or your iPhone or his Android device or the 72nd person's Windows Phone device.
	I'm not worried about these things.
	They're not a danger to me.
	But when you look at tax rates and regulations, well, there's your danger.
	So when you see all of this terrible stuff in the future, in science fiction, Nobody's talking about robots.
	Nobody's talking because there's no empirical evidence that any of that is happening in any way, shape, or form.
	What does happen is the state that is supposed to serve us ends up ruling us and destroying us.
	And unfortunately, people find it safer and easier to sublimate their fears into imaginary robot terminators rather than the very real destroyers of civilizations, which are the states.
	I actually have a really funny example of that.
	I'm taking an economics class in college right now.
	And my professor says that she's not teaching us supply-side economics because apparently hardly anybody believes in it.
	So we only learn demand-side economics.
	Demand side economics. It's just interesting how the state has affected universities so much.
	It's also interesting how she says nobody really believes it.
	Like, that has anything to do with science.
	It's weird how we get this consensus science.
	97% of people believe this.
	It's like, what the hell does science have to do with consensus?
	Every possible advantage in this world comes from an extraordinary lack of consensus, an extraordinary opposition to the new paradigm.
	So this popularity contest is just, well, you wouldn't want to disagree with 97% of people, would you?
	It's like, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, what if they're in the wrong?
	Absolutely. I guess to clarify a little bit more, I'm not really worried about robots having any sort of malicious impact on us.
	You were just talking about human beings being replaced by robots and us turning into the horse.
	I'm more concerned that they are so advanced that there's not a single job in the market that could not be done by a robot.
	And then my question is, how do you decide who gets what and how people get their money?
	Because it seems like there's no upward bound to how smart robots could get.
	So maybe 100 years from now, they could do any job that any human could possibly do.
	Is this really a big issue for you, what robots and money are going to look like in 100 years?
	I wouldn't say it's a big issue, but philosophically, it's interesting to think about.
	Okay. Well, if we say...
	That robots can do everything a human being can do, then they become identical to human beings, which means they have rights, which means that they have preferences, which means that they have morality, and they have free will, and they just become extra humans.
	So they would need to be negotiated with, but the difference, of course, that they can be turned off.
	I guess human beings can be too, but it's a little bit more spattery.
	See, here's the big problem.
	Here's the big problem with automation.
	And I think people are right to be concerned about automation, but not in the way that they think.
	So, as jobs become automated, the easiest jobs get automated first, which means that the lowest IQ jobs get automated first.
	And what should that mean? That should mean that lower IQ people have a tough time competing.
	Now, they either can up their skills or they can't because they're very low IQ, right?
	Now, if lower IQ people can't make much money, then they won't have many children.
	And we know that because as taxes go up in the middle class, they have fewer children.
	And also, as women become more free, in general, they have fewer children.
	And so, if less intelligent people are being replaced by robots or by automation, then less intelligent people should have fewer children.
	And more intelligent people, who then are more in demand, because the easiest stuff has been automated, which means there's more wealth in general, which means that smarter people have better exercise for their intelligence.
	The more wealth there is in society, the more smart people can increase society's wealth.
	I mean, if there's no savings, there's no investment, there's no entrepreneurship.
	If there's lots of savings, lots of excess wealth, then there's more investment, more entrepreneurship, and more We're good to go.
	However, because we live in a democracy, which is one vote, one person, regardless of IQ, what happens is we have a welfare state.
	So as jobs get automated, we say, well, we don't want the poor people having fewer resources, so we're going to take money from the rich people and we're going to give it to the poor people.
	Now, rich higher IQ, poor lower IQ, it's a generalization that's not invalid.
	It's not true, of course, for everyone.
	I have to say that for the idiots out there who've never cracked a stats book, but...
	And it's not that they've never cracked a stats book, it's that they think they understand these things when they don't.
	That's what makes them idiots. So, in the free market, Increased automation shifts the birth rate to more intelligent people.
	In the welfare state, you have automation combined with the shifting of resources and therefore of childbirth from more intelligent people to less intelligent people.
	And then you have fewer and fewer smart people having kids.
	You have more and more less intelligent people having kids.
	Well, the jobs for less intelligent people get scarcer and scarcer.
	And this is one of the fundamental problems that occurs.
	The market should be determining the allocation of resources, not the political system.
	Because the political system will simply buy votes by shifting resources from the few intelligent to the many less intelligent.
	And this is what's so ridiculous when you have these massive waves of low IQ migrants coming in from the Middle East where you've got average IQs in the 80s to 90s if you're lucky.
	You've got massive numbers of migrants coming in who are supposed to be really necessary for the economy at the same time that you have a massive automation of low IQ jobs and the outsourcing of low IQ jobs either to robots, to computers, to machines or overseas.
	I mean of course it makes no sense and this is nothing that the market would do.
	There would be no low IQ migration to a high IQ country because there'd be no jobs really available for those people.
	And so no welfare state plus a lack of demand would be the most effective shield, a far more effective shield than the current government program known as immigration.
	And one day, one day, I don't know if it's going to be this historical cycle, I kind of doubt it, but one day people will understand that the way resources should be allocated is through freedom.
	And through voluntarism and through property rights, not through giant government programs that are fundamentally evil and coercive in nature.
	So yes, people are right to be concerned about automation.
	And then you get this ridiculous idea that somehow universal basic income is going to be the way that we're going to solve this problem.
	And then what's going to happen is people on the UBI are going to have three kids and no father, women on the UBI, are going to have three kids and no father and are going to clamor for the government and everyone's going to cuck out and female gynocentrism and the white knighting of the West is going to provide more and more resources to people who are irresponsible.
	Now irresponsibility has a genetic basis.
	This is what people didn't understand at the beginning of the welfare state.
	They did not understand that when you mess with resource allocation, you mess with the genetics of your population.
	You mess with the genetics of your population.
	It's devolution. It is eugenics, but it's the opposite of what most people think of as eugenics.
	It is a race to the bottom.
	When you start taking resources from one genetic population, smart people, and you give those resources through force, you transfer them to a less intelligent population, you are fundamentally changing the genetics of your society.
	When you take fathers out of families, through the welfare state, through the demand of the welfare state that no man be living with the children, through divorce courts, through no-fault divorce, through alimony, through child support, through a woman being paid whether she shows up for the job of being a wife or not.
	You fundamentally change the epigenetics of the society.
	And boys raised in single mother households have lower testosterone than boys raised with fathers.
	Of course. Of course.
	Because a boy...
	This is nature's self-regulation.
	A boy who's raised without a father is getting the signal that there has been too much aggression and violence in human society.
	Because the father has been off to war and has died.
	So nature attempts to balance that out, I assume, by reducing the testosterone of the next generation.
	Men have been too violent, the father is gone, the father is dead.
	And father absence was a signal for our selected behavior, for having kids early and often, because you were in a dangerous, random, unpredictable environment.
	And so what's happened is, by taking fathers out of the equation through social policy, Social planners have fundamentally re-engineered the DNA of Western civilization through genetics and through epigenetics, through the way in which our genes respond to immediate environmental cues.
	Father absence means chaos, means violence, means aggression, and society tries to dial back male aggression by reducing testosterone in the next round.
	And To the great tragedy of the West, all of these social programs were embarked upon before much of any of this stuff was understood scientifically.
	And we are trying to understand this stuff scientifically, but there's massive pressure against it from the communists, from the leftists.
	And here's the tragic thing, and you can read more about this kind of stuff in Adam Perkins' book called The Welfare Trade.
	He's been on the show too. But here's the great tragedy, is none of this shit matters at all.
	Because leftists are radical environmentalists and hate anything innate to humanity.
	They believe, of course, that, well, they believe two things which make no sense.
	The first thing they believe is that human beings are fog or water or soft goo that could be poured into any fashionable container and take that shape.
	There's no fundamental truth or reality to human nature.
	And so human beings are entirely the effects of their environment.
	Now, that means that they hate any explanations that speak to genetics.
	They hate the bell curve of intelligence.
	They hate the bell curve between ethnicities.
	They hate the bell curve between the genders.
	They just hate anything that says there are aspects of human nature beyond social control.
	Because then they have less to sell, right?
	They can't offer this fantasy, right?
	I mean, if somebody came along and said, well, you can be six inches taller, have a bigger dick and a full head of hair, I don't know, maybe people will be tempted by that, right?
	Well, I guess I could be taller and have more hair, but...
	So, they don't like the fact that personality traits are genetic.
	They don't like the fact that political preferences have significant genetic components.
	And so, they hate the exploration of human personality through biology.
	Now, there are other cultures out there that have no problem talking about this, particularly East Asian cultures.
	You have the Japanese and the Chinese cultures.
	Very woke. They have no problem talking about this stuff.
	No problem discussing race and IQ. I mean, this is why they have the immigration policy that they have.
	It's why they don't take migrants.
	They can talk about this stuff.
	They can discuss this stuff. And they don't have all of these ridiculous hysterical barriers against research into the human genome.
	And there is strong, significant evidence that the Chinese say are only about five years away from being able to produce IQ 200 babies.
	Now, I say this with the full understanding that this could be the Infowars equivalent of the water that is turning the frogs gay, even though there was empirical evidence for that.
	Right? So, if you have...
	The Chinese out there working on IQ 200 babies, why does it matter what our social policies are?
	I mean, we're losing the IQ race because we let the left dominate what we can study.
	And if 1% of the money that was poured into bullshit global warming studies was poured into the human genome and how to study and map intelligence, we would be...
	So far ahead. And you can check out my interview, Will Genius Be Genetically Engineered?
	Which is Stephen Su, HSU, and myself, of course, Devan Molyneux.
	So the Chinese are just going to start producing these super genius babies, according to where the research is.
	And the West won't, because we'll be too busy importing third world refugees with high testosterone, low impulse control, low conscientiousness, high aggression, and IQs in the 70s to 80s range.
	And that's going to be it.
	That's it for the West. I'm actually just kind of curious.
	What is your position on the morality of basically creating 200 IQ babies?
	Does it violate the non-aggression principle?
	Not any more than selective breeding, I don't think.
	I don't think it does violate the non-aggression principle.
	Now, you could say, well, you're messing with the baby's genetics and so on.
	Okay, but we do that all the time.
	Of course, we do that with the partner that we choose.
	We do that through the environment that we expose the baby to with epigenetics and so on.
	It's sort of one of these, if there are going to be very intelligent babies that are created through genetics, it kind of doesn't matter if you've – I mean, I hate to sort of say it, but there's a practical outcome.
	I don't want to do any of that. I consider that immoral.
	Okay, well, you'll just be taken over.
	Okay. That's true. Okay, you know, I don't want nuclear weapons.
	They're wrong. It's okay. Well, you're just going to be Syria or Iraq or Libya or other countries that gave up their WMDs or never had them.
	And if you have IQ 200 babies, you won't need a welfare state.
	There will be very little crime because you can get far more resources with IQ 200 in the free market than you can through criminal activity.
	And so the need for the state will diminish.
	And we see this already happening in Japan.
	In Japan, the police are coming up with stuff to do.
	They have nothing to do because it's a relatively peaceful society.
	And that part of that has to do with, you know, a kind of quiet malaise within Japan.
	But you won't need to spank IQ 200 babies.
	Now, of course, it's a bit of a problem in that if you have IQ 200 babies being raised by IQ 90 parents, well, there could be a challenge or two in that.
	But no, imagine this.
	Imagine if there used to be this Mozart.
	You know, have your baby listen to Mozart, and it's baby Einstein, and I think they ended up having to give a bunch of money back because it didn't turn out to pan out.
	But parents, if they heard about something that could raise the kid's IQ 5 or 10 points, they'd take it, right?
	And if there was some ailment that was causing their kids to be, you know, 10 or 20 IQ points lower, and they could take a pill for that ailment while the baby was in the womb, they would take that too, right?
	And IQ 200 babies don't need to go to college.
	So look at the cost benefits of doing that gene therapy on the infant versus paying to go to college.
	It's a free choice.
	It's a free choice. Now, if it comes with significant risks of illness and ailment and all that, then that could definitely be considered too risky and too edgy.
	Or if it came with psychosis or neurosis or schizophrenia or something like that, if you were just hitting the Gassed so hard on the brain that it started to break up on re-entry.
	Well, then that would be a violation of the non-aggression principle.
	Assuming that there can be IQ boosts, and we certainly know that they're extraordinarily smart people.
	And so it's not like you're creating some superhuman.
	You're just creating a taller human.
	You know what I mean? So it's not outside the bounds of what the human brain is capable of.
	It's just trying to figure out those configurations and see what happens.
	And, you know, regardless of what we say, the Chinese are going to go ahead with it anyway.
	And so it's kind of funny to me.
	The West has yet to have its recoil from leftism.
	It has its recoil from what's called rightism, which is sort of the Nazis and all of that.
	But the Chinese society, they've had their recoil from leftism.
	They've had their recoil from communism because it killed tens of millions of their people and starved half of them to death.
	There was a cultural revolution and the Mao's Let a thousand flowers bloom so we can figure out who the dissidents are and kill them and their families.
	And they've had their decades under communism.
	And so they know that decades after communism, human nature hasn't changed that much.
	It's been a lot of trauma.
	But it's like if you look at the flourishing of churches after the fall, Of explicitly hostile to religion, Soviet Russia.
	You see that the human spirit can be contained for that long.
	If you look at how Greek culture re-emerged after 400 years of rule by the Muslim Turks.
	You see that human nature doesn't.
	If you look at the re-emergence of religious values in Poland after occupation by the atheist Soviet Union for many decades, you can see, of course, that you can't really change human nature that much.
	And so the Chinese people have rejected the environment-only stuff because it was so hugely costly to them, as wrong explanations tend to be.
	And so they're looking, saying, okay, well, it's not the environment that benefits as much as genetics.
	And regarding IQ, that seems to be the case.
	And so, yeah, they're able to research this stuff.
	And that is really important as far as where the next power is going to be.
	The great technology is the genome.
	The great technology is the genome.
	And The West can harness it, of course, the West can use it, but we need to overcome this leftist hysteria about essential human nature.
	This is the great promise.
	You know, you see these comments occasionally, they're on the Bitcoin videos, you know, give me $2,000 for three days and I'll give you back $4,000.
	It's like, nope, bet they won't, right?
	Because if you did have that ability, if you genuinely had that ability, To double money in a couple of days, well, you'd be into Bitcoin.
	And you wouldn't ask for money over the internet.
	You'd just get the money and do it yourself.
	You get your first 100 bucks, then you got your 200 bucks, your 400 bucks, your age, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 5, 12, 10, 20.
	You understand, right? 10, 24 and all that.
	20, 48, 51, 96.
	Anyway, so it's...
	You have to be able to offer some people some release from their own nature.
	If you're unhappy with yourself, then you want someone to come along and say, oh, it's all environmental and I can turn you into a different person.
	It's like, no, you can't really be turned into a different person.
	You can't. I mean, you are who you are.
	You can be comfortable with it, you can work with it, but you can't fight it.
	But the left, of course, comes along and say, we can release you from the prison of who you are and we can pretend that you have no essential nature and you can be molded any which way you want.
	Now, why on earth would a happy person want that offer?
	You know, if someone who came to me, if someone came to me and said, Steph, I can fundamentally reshape who you are, I'd be like, no thanks.
	I'm really happy with who I am.
	I do not want to be reshaped into something else.
	But if you're unhappy and miserable, then if someone comes along and says, I can fundamentally reshape who you are, then the miserable person says, thank God, because I can't stand being who I am.
	And so... Rather than just saying, you have to accept who you are, and we have to work with human nature as it is.
	Which is after you have this mad social experimentation of human beings are infinitely malleable and this goes on decade after decade and kills tens of millions of people and makes everybody miserable and bloody and violent and destructive and destroys human capital and intellectual capital and capital capital.
	I mean, at some point you're like, okay, well, this is not working.
	Now, China is at that point.
	Japan is at that point. And the West is not at that point.
	And I hope, like, I mean, I've talked about peaceful parenting and the positive effects that breastfeeding and staying home with your kids and so on can have to your children.
	For sure, I'm not saying that the environment has no impact.
	But I hope that I have credibility for talking about the factors we can change.
	And I've always talked about those.
	Like when I talk about socialism and communism being destructive, totalitarianism being destructive, and a stateless society being the goal, that's because I accept that human nature cannot flourish under tyranny.
	Human markets cannot flourish under central planning.
	Like there's no possibility for that to happen.
	And so I have accepted essential human nature from the beginning.
	And just because you say a horse has a nature and you can't turn it into a beagle, Doesn't mean that it doesn't matter if you beat the horse.
	You know what I mean? The fact that your children have their nature doesn't mean that it doesn't matter if you hit them or not.
	Of course it does, right? I mean, we want to be free to express who we are.
	We want to be free in society because human beings have a nature means they shouldn't be subject to coercion.
	Coercion will suppress that nature and pretend that it can somehow be changed.
	So there is technology that can cause human beings to surmount themselves.
	It just tends to be genetic rather than robotic.
	Does that help us a way of looking at it?
	Yeah, that was quite interesting.
	And the hypocrisy is actually quite hilarious because, you know, the left is known for thinking you're crazy for not believing in evolution.
	But then when it comes to human beings, it somehow doesn't apply.
	You know, it's like, oh, that's a pit bull.
	It's a very aggressive dog breed.
	Oh, that's a subcategory of human beings.
	They commit more crime.
	Oh, you're a racist, you know?
	Well, of course, dogs vary in their DNA 30% and human beings vary in their races, vary in their DNA by 15%.
	Yeah, but I'm saying that, you know, when talking about animals, they have no problems saying the differences between...
	Right, right. Well, no, some people even get mad when you talk about differences in intelligence between dog breeds.
	Dog manuals have had to be reprinted because people get upset about that.
	And... So, I mean, I understand this is upsetting stuff for people.
	Absolutely. I mean, I'm probably going to get flack from all sides for talking about this stuff.
	But this is science.
	Like, there's no putting the genie back in the bottle.
	This is the science. The human genome and its effect upon intelligence is being mapped as we speak.
	It is being researched and great strides are being made in figuring out how to turn on the genes for very high intelligence.
	That's happening. We can like it.
	We can not like it. We can get mad about it.
	But that's silly. I mean, it's knowledge.
	It's a fact that we are going to be able to flip switches for human intelligence relatively soon.
	Certainly within my lifetime and probably within the next half decade or so.
	People are going to be able to You know, and this is a society, like, don't get me wrong.
	I'm not a huge fan of the Chinese society in many ways.
	This one-child policy is brutal.
	And the number of babies that have been killed, the female babies who've been killed is astonishing and horrifying.
	And I'm not saying I like it.
	I'm not saying this is exactly, you know, what happened.
	And I mean, I know it's somewhat in the rear view, but it went on for a long time.
	And that's pretty nasty stuff.
	I'm not saying it's all great.
	But it is there. And we are either going to start accepting that there are significant aspects of human nature that we cannot alter.
	We can suppress, but we cannot alter.
	And, well, we can't alter through social policy.
	We can alter through science.
	And if people are going to start cranking out super intelligent babies, well, we're either going to understand how that works or we're not.
	And if we don't, I don't see if a civilization that is significantly composed of...
	I mean, just look at the Ashkenazi Jews in the West, right?
	That's just a 15-point IQ gain.
	And look how successful they are relative to whites or relative to East Asians, for that matter.
	That's just 15 points.
	Let's say that they can only get 10 points, right?
	So, if they can only get 10 points from this engineering, then the East Asians are going to go from like 103, 104, to 113, 114, right?
	Which is very close to the Ashkenazi Jew.
	Now, if you look at the small population of Jews and their hugely high impact on finance and art and so on, and literature in particular, the arts as a whole, well, imagine a billion of them in China.
	A billion of the intellectual equivalent to Ashkenazi Jews in China, or half a billion, or a million, or 10 million, or whatever it is, right?
	I mean, it's a huge effect.
	Intelligence has a very disproportional effect on society as a whole.
	And that's a very big deal.
	It's a very big deal.
	And we're either going to start learning how this stuff works, Or we're not.
	Now, if we can figure out how this stuff works, gosh, can you imagine?
	This is very speculative, of course, and I fully understand all of that.
	But can you imagine what it would be like if we could, through one process or another, end up increasing the intelligence of the human race by 20 IQ points?
	That would be incredible.
	That would be astonishing.
	That would be revolutionary in a way that can scarcely be conceived of.
	You know, there's some significant evidence that the intelligence of the ancient Greeks was on average about 120, 125.
	Oh, wow. That's incredible.
	Well, there's evidence that in the 19th century in England, IQ was significantly higher.
	And if we have, see, higher IQ can mean things like an empire.
	It can mean, of course, you know, still had slavery in ancient Greece and so on.
	But with the knowledge of egalitarianism that we have achieved, and with peaceful parenting, plus high IQ, I'm telling you, I don't see any way to get better than that.
	Peaceful parenting cannot be achieved with low IQ in general, because low IQ is low impulse control, low conscientiousness often.
	And so, if you can have peaceful parenting and high IQs within society, what an astonishing step forward that will be as a whole.
	And certainly some groups without a lot of peaceful parenting are focusing on it, and the West either does or it doesn't.
	Again, you can ignore reality, but you can't ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.
	So I don't have any particular predictions.
	And of course, none of this is certain.
	I invite people to do the research themselves.
	But, you know, if you care about the world and everybody's place in it, this is stuff you really need to get up to speed on.
	Yeah, well, that's actually kind of funny that you brought up the IQ stuff, because if the average IQ went up, say, 20 points, then the people who want UBI would be obsolete pretty much from society.
	Yeah, and as far as impact on economy and society, this is way bigger than automation.
	Oh, yeah. Way bigger.
	All right, and I'm going to move on to the next caller, but thanks very much for your question, man.
	Appreciate it. Yeah, thank you for talking to me.
	I appreciate it. Okay, up next we have Tim.
	Tim wrote in and said, That's from Tim.
	Well, hey Tim, how you doing? Dandy, thank you very much for taking my call.
	My pleasure. Not a lot of short, bold guys in the motivational speaker business, do you think?
	I would say not.
	You, I would say, are an exception.
	I'm not short. No, I got the accent and I got the jawline and I got the cheekbones and I wouldn't put myself in the Danny DeVito category.
	But yeah, there's just not a lot.
	And they do avoid politics as a whole.
	And I think that's just basic marketing, right?
	They don't want to bring culture wars or identity politics into their movements.
	And I think that's a shame.
	Because there's no amount of personal growth or confidence and assertiveness that's going to change the demographics of the West, fundamentally.
	So I think that ignoring politics could be considered short-sighted in the long run.
	But yeah, politics and personal development go hand in hand.
	I mean, I'm not sure I'm going to oppose that strongly.
	The motto of the show from the beginning has been the logic of personal and political liberty.
	The personal has to come first.
	The personal has to come first.
	So capitalism, of course, relies upon a subjugation of the ego to the customer.
	I mean, you can't make it in a capitalist environment if you're only focused on your needs.
	At least you can't make it for very long.
	Like if you go out with nothing to sell and just say, I need stuff, you're not a capitalist, you're a beggar, right?
	And you have to provide value to people.
	You have to figure out what they want and an efficient way to provide it.
	I mean, if you just want to start up a restaurant, you invest a whole bunch of money, you don't cook good meals, but you tell people that you just need their money because you got bills to pay, you're going to go out of business, right?
	You have to subjugate your ego and your preferences.
	To what the markets and the customers want.
	So there is a kind of confidence, but that confidence is related to your willingness to subjugate your ego to customer demands.
	And everybody who's had a difficult customer in business who's had to say, I'm sorry, even if the customer has been difficult, and you have to have a balance in that, you can't just roll over.
	But, you know, if you apologize and you promise to do better and so on, then people will often give you another chance, assuming that you haven't offended the left bots.
	So, I would say that socialism, of course, is needs first.
	It feels first. And the subjugation of the ego is a little bit more of a man's thing, because men deal more with engineering, with the reality, with objective, empirical, scientific, mathematical facts, which is the surrendering of the ego to general standards.
	Whereas women are like, to some degree, and this is a generalization, it's generally true, women are, I feel something, therefore, it's a problem, right?
	I mean, you saw this with Kathy What's her name?
	Debating with Jordan Peterson. That she was saying, Kathy Newman, she was saying, I knew it was something to do with man.
	Kathy, full boy?
	I couldn't remember.
	So Kathy Newman, she was like, there's this difference.
	It's unfair. Why should women put up with it?
	Now, the funny thing was in that interview debate, Jordan Peterson, Dr.
	Jordan Peterson, he was the guy who was actually helping women get better salaries by teaching them how to be more assertive, right?
	Whereas she was just complaining about it and waiting for men generally to fix the problem.
	It's like, okay, so the man is actually doing something to help women.
	The woman is just complaining and whining and nagging so that men give her resources or men give women resources, huh?
	It's like, well, how could there possibly be a wage gap?
	She's so competent. But, so, if socialism is, I have needs, therefore...
	People should provide, and that's a kind of female perspective.
	Capitalism is, I must provide value and subjugate my ego to that, and that's more of a man thing, right?
	For men, the value has to be earned.
	For women, when they're young, the value is innate, right?
	Which is vagina, sexual access, and romantic approval, and so on.
	So women are value, men must create value, which is the difference between.
	Socialism and capitalism, right?
	And so...
	I do think that there is a relationship between the personal and the political.
	And of course, when women...
	Women come on very strong, right?
	This is the cry-bully thing, and not all women, but definitely Kathy Newman.
	Come on strong, right?
	And then when you lose, you play the victim, right?
	And that, again, is kind of socialism, right?
	Which is... You come on strong.
	You see this with feminism all the time.
	Women are strong. They should be empowered.
	They should be independent.
	They're their own people.
	And then if something fails, it's like, okay, this woman needs resources from the state because she's a victim.
	Because, you know, the man just abandoned her and she couldn't possibly tell that he was going to be a bad man or whatever, right?
	Mm-hmm. And this happens, you know, businesses as well.
	They come and they want to compete. And if they lose, oh, I need a subsidy.
	I need barriers against unfair trade practices and so on, which sometimes can be valid.
	But it's also a pride thing as well.
	I mean, a lot of men are like, I don't want a subsidy.
	I don't want welfare.
	But for women, women don't have, in many ways, the luxury of pride because they have mouths to feed.
	Right? And so a woman who's got three kids and no provider, she's like, you know, to hell with pride.
	I like, I have to have a conveyor belt of food going to my kids and I have no, can't be proud about it.
	And so I do think that there's a relationship between the personal and the political for sure.
	And it does fall along somewhat stereotypically gender-based lines.
	And see, I mean, socialism as well is an indirect path to resource acquisition.
	You can't get the resources yourself.
	So you have to yell or bully or cajole or vote in order to get the government to give resources to you.
	And that's an indirect form of resource acquisition.
	And that, of course, is the relationship that wives and mothers have to husbands and fathers.
	You can't go out and get the resources yourself, but you can encourage your husband to go and do it.
	You can support him, or you can nag him and tear him down and then complain that he's not competing in the marketplace.
	And so this being comfortable with an indirect acquisition of resources.
	And also there's an amorality among the female acquisition of resources as well.
	Because, I mean, this is a ridiculous example, but in The Sopranos, right, the Edie Falco character, she doesn't care where the money comes from, she just wants the money.
	And this is not a negative thing, it's why we are around as a species, is that the woman doesn't care where the resources come from, she just needs to feed her children.
	She doesn't have the luxury of, well, you know, these goods may be tainted as like, well, then they'll still feed my children, right?
	If it fell off the back of a truck or was stolen, you know, my children need to eat and I don't have any.
	I can't delay. I have to give them food now.
	So there's an immediacy and amorality, which is one of the reasons why, of course, Women just vote for free stuff on average.
	They're more keen to vote for free stuff.
	They don't really care what it comes from. And you talk to women about the status and agency of coercion, you have this glassy stare.
	Well, that's all well and good, but my kids are hungry and I've got to feed them, so I really don't care where this food comes from.
	I have to have it and my kids have to eat it.
	And this is nothing negative towards women.
	I'm glad that the women like that because otherwise children would starve to death, but there is a certain amount of Not strict morality when it comes to that kind of stuff.
	Whereas, of course, if a man achieves resources directly, not indirectly, right?
	The man plants, and then the woman gets the food, and the children get the food.
	The man gets the resources directly, and the woman gets the resources indirectly.
	And if you are dealing with reality, you can't manipulate it.
	You can't nag your ground into giving you food.
	So you can't nag.
	You can't bully. And if you're dealing in business...
	If you are amoral, you will quickly run out of people to do business with.
	And that is a significant problem, which is one of the reasons why sort of honor and integrity and so on have, I think, somewhat been developed more along masculine lines than feminine lines.
	So those are, I think, certain aspects of the market and gender's relationship to it that I think are worth thinking about for people.
	That's a mouthful, if you will.
	Wonderful insight, by the way.
	I'm going to probably give you, just throw you a package.
	I want to see what your thoughts on it are.
	Throw me a package. I got your package right here.
	That just reminds me of the other night.
	I got a little tap payment, right?
	I go up to a coffee.
	Shop. It's a drive-thru and there's a woman there handing me a coffee and I say, oh, I can tap that.
	Double meanings. Double meanings abound.
	Anyway. Joke.
	No, it was just something I said it and I was like, oh, probably should rephrase that next time.
	I can tap that. All right.
	Hit it. All right. So, next.
	Um... Yeah, okay.
	I wrote it down. I just wanted to make certain that it was.
	The statement is, personal development is the truth in life.
	And the reason that I said that, for a single mother who has three children, and like my mother, I'm not saying this is a personal example.
	I'd love for you to dissect it.
	It's... But my mother had three kids, two jobs, and was single.
	But she did the best that she possibly could.
	She was not making the most amount of money.
	She was a public school teacher and all that.
	Supermama would probably put her.
	But she decided that she doesn't want to go on the welfare system.
	She worked hard.
	She brought us to baseball games, soccer games, peewee football.
	It was a long time ago. But she decided that she was going to grit it out.
	She was going to do the work.
	And she provided that.
	She could have went the route of socialized handout.
	But she decided to go in towards the capitalistic area and started to do private tutors just to get a few hundred bucks for food.
	And I believe that not just that politics and personal development go hand in hand.
	But that personal development, personal growth is the truth in life that regardless of what's handed to you, it's how you handle it and where you're going with that.
	And I want to know your thoughts. What happened to your father?
	Oh, father, he's a mess.
	He's always been bipolar, manic, depressed.
	So even before your mother settled down with him?
	Yes. My mother needed the stability and security.
	Wait, what?
	Your mother needed the stability and security of a manic depressive man?
	This is going to sound weird.
	It already does, man.
	I'm not disagreeing.
	I'm just trying to follow because, you know, follow the bouncing logic has got me lost in the hills.
	Right. She's loyal to a fault.
	And it's not that he was the stable one.
	she sticks her mind to something, she will fight till the death.
	So she's not wrong.
	And it, it worked because she had a bad childhood when, uh, her, uh, my mother's mother told her that she was born just, uh, 10 years apart from all the other, like four other siblings, because she was a play thing for her older brother.
	And that's the type of, I guess, childhood that she had.
	Very neglected. No, no, no father, no connection to the mother, if you will.
	But it's, she's, I guess, always needed that connection.
	And then when somebody comes along, boom, hey, you want to get married?
	Fantastic. And then I guess she just stuck right into it.
	To get back to the father.
	Okay, go ahead. You have a question?
	Virtually none of what you're saying is even remotely true.
	Fantastic. I just wanted to let you know.
	I mean, I'm sorry from the outside.
	This is this rampant justification and white knighting.
	And I mean, my God.
	I just wanted to point that out before you go on.
	Okay. I would love for you to correct me.
	Well, yeah. I mean, just from the outside.
	It doesn't, right? Okay. Okay.
	And my father, manic-depressed, he did, I guess, He, what is the word?
	Infidelity, if you will. I thought that's the correct word.
	I think he slept around with a few women.
	Mother, I think, stayed more importantly because she wanted to get the children together, but that doesn't sound good.
	And my father had to leave when I was like five years old, so I didn't really get to live with him.
	He was a weakened person.
	Why did he have to leave?
	Divorce, I'm sorry. Oh, did he divorce your mother?
	No, no. My mother divorced my father.
	Wait, I thought she was loyal to her fault and wanted to keep the marriage for the kids.
	Apparently, she's not.
	But you see what I mean when I say that none of what you say is true.
	I mean, you feel like it's true, and this is probably something that you have told yourself or been told, and it's become...
	And I know, see, when I listen, I listen so carefully, like I get half a migraine.
	Like, I listen so carefully, and I know when I'm being spun a tail, because you have no emotion in your voice.
	No. Right, you're talking about your mentally ill father who cheats on your mother, the divorce, your mother struggles with three children, you talk about your mother working full-time and then taking on tutoring, like that doesn't interfere with her capacity to take care of you, and it's like you're rattling off a fucking laundry list.
	There's no emotion. And that's how I know I'm in propaganda land.
	This is why I came on the show.
	I know you would tell the truth.
	I know, I know. I know.
	Okay. Sometimes it takes a while for people to get to what they want to talk about, and that's totally fine.
	I'm going to live forever. No.
	Totally fine. It's totally fine.
	You will be immortalized. This is why none of this is true, right?
	Right. Okay, so why did your mother marry your father?
	And don't give me this, she wanted stability, or she was told that she was a plaything for her brother, which sounds creepy, but I know you didn't mean it that way.
	Right. I don't know why they got together.
	Was he not very good looking?
	No, I would say.
	You know what strikes me as weird that these players tend not to be very good looking?
	Did he come from a family of means?
	Did he have money? Did his family have money?
	I don't know. He was that dork or nerd in college and he was just an average man who...
	I have no idea how they got together.
	I've never asked them.
	It's always whittled me, but I've never cared enough to actually ask.
	That's another lie. The idea that you would not be at all interested in why your parents got together is incomprehensible to me.
	Come on. Are you saying that it doesn't matter to you?
	Here's the thing, man. If you don't know why your parents got together, how are you not going to replicate the mistake?
	That is a good question. And like what you said, you're dead on your bullseye.
	I care a lot, but it's something I don't want to delve into.
	It's painful. No, no.
	See, again, I know you're not lying to me, but you're sure not telling the truth.
	See, here's the thing.
	You want to know the truth, Tim.
	Your mother does not want you to ask the question, and you don't know the difference between the two as yet.
	See, I was hearing all your mom's propaganda.
	Oh, she's loyal to a fault.
	And then, you know, literally three minutes later, well, she kicked my dad out and divorced my mom.
	I divorced him and so on, right?
	Well, that's not being loyal to a fault.
	And so, I've yet to talk to Tim much.
	I'm hearing a lot of maternal propaganda.
	Of course, you want to know why your parents got together.
	It's the reason why you're existing.
	You would like to know why your mother chose...
	A mentally ill, sleeping around man whore, not to put too fine a point on it, you would like to know that.
	Because you don't want to make the same mistake.
	And if your mother was interested in you not making the same mistake, she would sit you down and talk to you about why she did what she did, the mistakes she made, because that would be her gift to you so that you would not repeat those mistakes.
	Now the fact that she hasn't done that with you, she hasn't sat you down and said, Tim, Here's how I screwed up.
	Here's why you grew up without a father.
	Here are the mistakes I made.
	Here's the ownership I made.
	Here's what you can avoid. Now, the fact that she hasn't done that, and I know that she hasn't, tells me that she cares more for her own immediate comfort than your future happiness.
	Because that's what we do as parents, is we sit our children down and we say, here are the mistakes I made.
	Here's why I made them.
	This is what I've learned.
	And this releases you from the curse of repeating the mistakes.
	Now, if we don't do that, but we also actively avoid having our children ask us about these issues, in other words, if we push back against our children asking about these issues, then we're very clearly signaling that we would rather have comfort in the moment than our children have happiness and peace in the future.
	That she's willing to vastly increase your risk of repeating her mistakes rather than have a difficult conversation and take self-ownership.
	Could you repeat that last part again?
	She is resistant to this conversation, which means that she would rather vastly increase your risk of repeating her mistakes than have a difficult conversation and take self-ownership for what she did in her life.
	To confirm that, my father and mother have both said to me, and I guess I didn't really click until I've heard it, but I just didn't really click it.
	That my father has always been hands-off.
	I played football with him.
	I thrown the ball around with him one day out of my entire life, if you want to put it that way.
	And he's always emotionally awkward, so I don't get that.
	Love, if you will.
	But that is incredibly correct with the mother thing.
	Well, okay. So I'm sorry about this, Tim.
	I really am. You should have...
	The fact that you can remember throwing ball with your dad is pretty heartbreaking because it tells me all the times he didn't.
	That's such a standout thing.
	So you have like hands off and awkward and stuff.
	I don't quite understand that.
	Like... No, no, no.
	Let me tell you what I don't understand.
	So what I don't understand is...
	Let's say I find it inconvenient to feed my dog, and my dog half starves to death.
	Would the dog say, well, it was inconvenient, or it was kind of awkward, or it was not an easy way.
	The store was not easy to get to.
	He'd have to drive a little bit out of his way.
	If you have a child, you don't get to be hands-off.
	That's not an option. You understand, Tim?
	That's not a choice. You don't get to be hands-off.
	Because you have a child who needs you.
	You have a son who needs you.
	You have daughters who need you.
	Hands-off is not an option.
	It's not an excuse. It's selfish.
	And he sure as fuck wasn't hands-off with the women he screwed, right?
	Was he awkward with them too?
	No, I bet you he was a little bit of a player in his corner of the world.
	So all you have are excuses.
	And the problem, the great danger of that, Tim, which is why I'm talking about this with you, is if you give your parents excuses, you will end up taking excuses for yourself.
	And that is the great danger.
	If you have the ability to magically excuse yourself, it means you can fuck up without worrying about it too much.
	If you don't excuse yourself, and this doesn't mean hate yourself or blame, just hold yourself responsible.
	If you don't, excuse yourself.
	If you create excuses for others, particularly your parents, which is what they want, you understand.
	You need them to take responsibility.
	They want excuses.
	And the fact that just handing over excuses means they're pulling the levers called Tim.
	The personality, otherwise known as Tim, is kind of being run by mom and dad in this conversation because they need the excuses.
	You need the responsibility.
	You need to give them responsibility so you can take responsibility and Because right now, you are indifferent to your parents' mistakes.
	You're not angry. You're not upset.
	You're not frustrated. You have excuses.
	Now, if you're not upset by your parents' mistakes, it means you have permission to make those mistakes yourself.
	If you get really angry at other people's fuck-ups, And know that that's part of how you're going to live.
	If you give people self-ownership, you get to magically take self-ownership.
	We can't own or have more in our own lives than we're willing to grant to our parents.
	Whatever excuses we give to our parents, it's because of their need, not ours.
	And that's how carelessness infects the next generation.
	That is how a lack of responsibility, a lack of conscientiousness, a lack of morality...
	Let's say your father was awkward.
	I don't fucking care.
	You play ball with your kid.
	Well, I feel awkward. I don't fucking care.
	You play ball with your kid.
	Well, I'm kind of a hands-off holler.
	I don't fucking care.
	You play ball with your son.
	And you deal with it.
	It's like saying, well, my baby did half starve to death because it didn't feel like getting up.
	You know, I need my sleep.
	Well, if you need to sleep that bad, give your kid to someone else.
	But that's not an excuse.
	He's your father. You sit and you play ball with your kid.
	You make sure that your child knows that you care, that you're there.
	And you don't model this ridiculous, well, I'm awkward and I'm hands-off.
	You don't model that shit.
	You fucking deal with it.
	And you're there for your children, because that's the deal of being a dad and of being a mom, is you're there for your kids.
	And the selfishness of letting personal awkwardness get in the way of being there for your children?
	Tim, don't tell me that doesn't bother you.
	I've been trying to hold back since...
	Don't hold back, Tim.
	Tim, I saw that, Tim.
	He's not that engaging.
	aging.
	Having difficulty trying to like come up with something.
	you touched on a really good trigger point there because yeah yeah
	I can say this with legitimacy yesterday Yesterday, this is relevant to what you just mentioned.
	Yesterday, I tried to do my own speech or something somewhere with a couple of people.
	And something I wrote down for that thing was that for...
	And it didn't really come up until I started thinking about it.
	For... Actually, I have in front of me, it's like two lines of information.
	Yeah, up until like the age of 21...
	I didn't really care about school activities or hang out with friends.
	I stayed in my room and done the dirty, if you will, and played video games.
	And with no exaggeration, I did that through all of middle school and high school.
	What do you mean? Going number three, if you will.
	Masturbating? I don't know what that means.
	Oh, yeah. Masturbating.
	Okay. Don't colloquially me up too much, bro.
	You masturbated and you played video games.
	Fortunately, you're the only man in the history of the West who ever did that.
	So, good thing that didn't spread.
	But my mother was always out of the house.
	My older sister, she was out of the house when she was like six or seven or eight years older than me.
	And She was out of the house when she was 15 because she was with other friends and such.
	You've got to stop thumping the mic, man.
	It's driving me kind of crazy. I'm sorry.
	And then the only person I really connected with was my brother and I didn't really have any friends until...
	Still thumping the mic, man.
	Were you tapping, you're thumping, you're moving or something?
	I'm sorry. No, no, I was tapping it.
	Okay. But the major thing is...
	Your parents are tapping the mic.
	You understand? You didn't tap until we're talking about difficult things.
	Right. So, your sister was out of the house?
	She was eight years older? Roughly, yes.
	And I didn't really get to connect with her at a younger age.
	So, she was out. And then my brother, manic-depressed, bipolar...
	He used to throw tantrums and violent tantrums that my mother would have to pin him to the ground multiple times.
	And he would have to be sent out of a house and go live with father.
	And I guess if you want to start connecting with my father, I didn't get to live with my father until I was about the age of 24.
	Because I went to the military because I was struck with cash and such.
	But... So I didn't really get that connection with my father and my brother did.
	He got to live with him through middle school and high school, but I wasn't allowed to go over there often unless my brother wasn't because of how violent he got.
	So violence leads to your father and you go into the military?
	That's a really good way of putting it.
	Was your brother less violent when he was with your father?
	Yes. So that kind of puts a bit of a lie to the whole involuntary mental illness stuff, right?
	Or at least puts a dent in the theory, right?
	Very. Why was he violent with your mother around?
	He was violent with, I think, my sister.
	Very. I remember one moment.
	Clothes were ripped off on one occasion because of how violent it got.
	And with my sister.
	And another one.
	It's just with my sister and my brother.
	Sorry, my sister and my mother.
	And... A few times with me.
	I had to scream and yell.
	I didn't know how to fight back.
	I was that young. But he would pin me to the ground or something.
	Why was he so violent?
	Manic, depressed, bipolar.
	That's the only thing that I have, I guess, justify it.
	And if you didn't have those words, which don't really explain anything.
	Right. If you didn't have those words, what would you say?
	What was he angry about?
	Daddy wasn't home.
	That's the only thing that's really coming to mind.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Let me ask you this.
	Did your mother...
	How did your mother speak about your father to you guys?
	She didn't, actually.
	Didn't speak of him at all?
	Right. Both my father and mother, when they were divorced and Up until I was out of the military at the age of 24, they didn't talk about the other either negatively or positively.
	They didn't really come into conversation unless there was an exchange for, I guess, weekend visitation rights or something.
	Why did they say they got divorced?
	Or why did your mother say she divorced your father?
	I think it was the promiscuity, I think.
	So, she did say something about your dad then, didn't he?
	I can't believe you walked right into that trap.
	Not a trap, but you know what I mean, right?
	Well, they said nothing, except the fact that he fucked around, so I had to dump him.
	Right. So, she told you about your father's affairs?
	Did I have to say? Like what you just said, more than once, apparently.
	Go on. Yeah.
	It was the passive-aggressive behavior, if you will.
	I don't really...
	Can you ask a question again?
	Okay, so let me ask you this.
	Let me ask you this. Yes.
	When it came to ascribing causality to the divorce...
	Was the only causality that your mother ascribed your father's infidelity?
	We divorced or your father isn't here because he slept around?
	That was not brought up until later.
	You said that she talked about his promiscuity.
	When was that? Probably high school, maybe.
	I didn't really care about family affairs.
	What did she say at the time, why your father, why the divorce happened?
	What did they say at the time? No.
	No what? No, she didn't.
	She didn't talk about- What did she say?
	Why did she say the divorce was happening?
	Or did she say anything? I didn't know that the...
	What I mean by I didn't know that divorce was happening.
	I was like five years old and just daddy's moving into an apartment.
	That's all I knew. But why?
	I wasn't discussed at that when it happened.
	Okay. When was it discussed?
	It was discussed later. When was it discussed?
	High school. So what, you were like 10 years later?
	Pretty much. So for 10 years, you had no idea why your father left?
	Very. And your violent brother, older or younger?
	Older, I assume. Two years older.
	Two years older. Okay, so he's seven, right?
	Why does your brother think that the marriage broke up?
	I didn't ask.
	I thought that was just the way things are now.
	So, the family can be destroyed for no reason whatsoever.
	That explains all my relationships up until now.
	It just happens.
	Like a bolt of lightning out of clear blue sky.
	No causality, no responsibility, just random shit.
	You know, sometimes people move in, sometimes they move out.
	It's like the tide. Well, no, the tide's kind of predictable and has a causality.
	But just the entire family structure gets destroyed, and now you guys have to grow up without a father in the house.
	No causality, no reason, no preventability.
	See, when there's no causality, there's no preventability.
	The price you pay for prevention is self-ownership.
	The price you pay for not repeating mistakes is owning the mistakes that were made.
	Because if shit just happens to you, you can't prevent it.
	But if you have some causality, the pain is responsibility.
	The pleasure is preventability.
	Right? Right.
	If your father dies from smoking, you cannot smoke.
	If bad stuff happens for no reason whatsoever, you end up jumpy.
	You end up jittery. Because you don't know what caused it.
	What caused this disaster?
	Don't know. How does that make you trust anyone or anything?
	Your parents made a vow to love, to honor, to obey, to be with each other in sickness and in health for better or for worse until death do they part.
	That was the promise.
	That was the vow. And they made it with 100% commitment.
	And then, sometime later, he just moved out.
	No reason. No cause.
	Just happened. And that can be inflicted upon the children.
	You growing up without a father in the house, that can be inflicted on the children.
	He can just move out for no reason.
	Did he not love you enough?
	This is what you ask yourself as a kid.
	Was I not fun to be around?
	Why would he move out?
	Why would he move out?
	It's fundamentally incomprehensible.
	Does he not love my mother?
	Does she not love him? Do they not love me?
	Was I not a good kid? Was I not a fun kid?
	Was I not attractive or enjoyable enough to be around?
	Can I add a piece to that?
	Yeah. What's your life?
	Please, add all you want. Yeah.
	One question I did ask myself a lot was, why does my brother get to be with father?
	He's a scarce resource.
	Why wasn't I... Why can't I have some of that?
	That's one thing that really was imprinted, I guess.
	There was something about your mother, it sounds like to me, there was something about your mother that made him violent.
	And something about your father that calmed him down, right?
	Yes. So that's back to my question.
	Why was he violent with your mother around?
	I... I...
	That...
	It just comes down to...
	I can correct me if I'm wrong, or if you see something.
	But he was...
	She probably kicked him out of the house.
	The quote-unquote excuse is that he has manic bipolar depression, but again, I don't...
	I don't think that's a valid excuse enough.
	When did he get violent, Tim?
	I don't remember the moments before it.
	No, but what age do you first remember him getting violent?
	Oh. Actually, the first one came up for like three years old.
	Wait, you were three? I came to the forefront like this image.
	Yeah. So this is before your father left?
	Yes. Right.
	More importantly, he wasn't attacking my mother.
	He was, I guess, roughhousing with me, and it just got too aggressive.
	And that's when he was five and you were three.
	Right. And did you guys, I'm guessing no, but did you roughhouse with your father?
	Do you remember doing that at all? Physical contact with my father was a no-go.
	A no-go? Like you couldn't touch it?
	Hugs were allowed, but if I tried, there's nothing pushed back.
	I never really got that.
	He never reached out and touched.
	He never came to hug me or something.
	And why do you think that was?
	That's just how I...
	That's not a good excuse.
	I really just... That's all I know of him to be.
	I've never seen him as somebody who's...
	Do you think...
	Sorry to interrupt. Do you think that he did not know that children need affection?
	I... I do not believe so.
	If you were to ask him, do you think that children need affection?
	What would he say? He would know it, but he just doesn't apply it.
	So he knows that you need affection.
	He's just choosing not to give it to you.
	Yes, he did choose not to give me that affection needed.
	Which is a very aggressive action.
	Very. Actually, to add on to that, one of the greatest fears I've ever had that transcended death or public speaking being number one, number two, I'm tearing up right now.
	I remember this very vividly.
	One of the greatest fears I've ever had was pushing.
	I wouldn't feel pushed back.
	Let me see if I can say that again.
	I would try to push.
	But I wouldn't feel that pushback.
	Like I would push on a wall, but there's no pushback from the wall.
	Like your hands kind of go through?
	No, not...
	Like there's no resistance.
	I don't feel connection. I don't feel that touching or the...
	I don't know.
	Like you've become a ghost?
	That's actually a very good analogy.
	It's like... I like being a ghost.
	Yeah, it's... I want to be in a social environment.
	This happened many times through my life is that I would want to act, but my body just said, no, don't do it.
	Like what? Don't act.
	Don't. No. Don't do it.
	I wanted to be part of the group and it said, don't do it.
	Don't do it. And I kept like a deer frozen in headlights.
	I just couldn't act.
	I couldn't.
	I think one of the reasons I love to hear your insight on that one is.
	Anytime that anytime that I really remember my family having a social occasion was.
	Everybody either yelling or fighting or screaming or yelling.
	It's not to say that we haven't had good occasions, but it's just out.
	I really, the first thing I remember is screaming, yelling family.
	It's we're always segmented.
	There's always parts of the family, but never the whole family at once.
	So family gatherings, the family screaming and yelling.
	Say that last sentence again.
	I apologize. You were saying, no, no, it's fine.
	You say the family gatherings, your family would be screaming and yelling, and those are some of your first memories?
	I do not remember good memories.
	No, no, no, no. I just want to make sure I understand this one correctly.
	So your early memories are your family screaming and yelling at each other.
	I'm not trying to catch you.
	I just want to make sure I understand what you're saying.
	To be more clear, I just don't remember good...
	No, no, no.
	Dude, I just want confirmation of what you said.
	That's all I'm asking for. I don't want other explanations.
	Your family screamed and yelled at each other.
	Is that right? I think the first memory...
	Okay, but I assume that that happened, right?
	And it was not... Wildly rare, right?
	You said, was it pretty much every time the extended family got together or often or what?
	Nuclear family. Boy, there's a double meaning, eh?
	Right. But the extended family I never really had a connection with.
	Wait, so your immediate family would get together and who's that?
	Like your mom and dad? Mom, dad, sister, brother.
	And they would all be screaming and yelling?
	Yes.
	And how often did that happen?
	Again, up until like the age of, again, up until the age of five, every time.
	And after that, they were never together in the same room, but always put up a front because of the children.
	What do you mean they put up a front because of the children?
	Why didn't they put up a front because of the children when you guys were younger?
	That whenever, again, like before, exchanging children for weekend parental rights or visitation rights.
	No, but sorry, what I mean is so they could not yell at each other.
	They just didn't bother before, right?
	That's correct. So they have the capacity...
	They have the capacity to not yell at each other.
	Right? Right.
	They just didn't really bother until after the divorce, right?
	They chose not to, yes.
	Right. Now, I just want to put a pause on this.
	We'll get back to it, but I just want to give you the perspective.
	And the perspective, Tim, is this.
	I need you when we've done this conversation, and we're not close to it, but when we've done this conversation, go back and listen to how you described your mom when we were first talking.
	Mm-hmm. As heroic, as brave, as, you know, she didn't go on welfare, she worked really hard, she, you know, she was part of the capitalist environment and so on.
	And now, of course, she's screaming at your dad continually when you're little, right?
	Mm-hmm. That's a journey, right?
	Yes. It's a long way from where we started.
	And I accuse you of nothing.
	I mean, you genuinely sounded like a very honest regurgitator of quasi-Soviet propaganda at the beginning, but it's a long way.
	It's a long way from where we started, right?
	And that's good. Yes. That's good, because where we started was bullshit.
	I mean, no disrespect, but objectively that's the case, right?
	So, screaming at each other is very aggressive, right?
	Yes. And you say, and your brother was exposed to it for two years longer than you were, right?
	Yes. And you say that you have no understanding of where your brother's aggression could possibly come from.
	Well, there's a strong indicator right there.
	Screaming is incredibly intense.
	Like, when you're a family, you are, like, up in each other's grills like you wouldn't believe, right?
	You're so close to each other.
	You live together. You sleep in the same roof.
	You eat together. You're all using the same crappers.
	You know, like, everybody's really...
	Face to face. Like, you've got your mouth glued to each other's ears, so to speak.
	And so, it's tough enough when strangers scream at you, but when family screams at you, it's like times 10,000.
	Yes. Right? This is what's so weird about, like, you need a very light touch with family.
	Very light touch with family.
	But everybody's, like, got these airstrikes of, like, massive verbal abuse and scream fests, and it's like, don't you understand?
	You need... Very little.
	A light touch.
	But your parents, their rage, spilled over to the point where they destroyed the family, right?
	Yes. Right.
	And then, and then they were able to contain their anger.
	Right? Right.
	So the question is why?
	If they're able to contain their anger, why on earth did they not do it?
	Before the marriage was destroyed?
	I have no idea.
	I guess right now.
	Sure you do.
	I want you to catch me on my BS.
	Because excuses come up.
	No, no, tell me the excuses.
	That's fine. That's what comes up, right?
	Okay. Maybe they're good ones.
	One had expectations for how he was going to live, and one had expectations on how she was going to live, and how the relationship was going to be.
	And they...
	They didn't click.
	Like a jigsaw puzzle with different ends and different pieces, they just didn't click.
	And that frustration of trying to make it work and it's, oh, I'm going to do this, and no, you're going to do this, and no, I'm going to do this, and you're going to do that.
	Does that make sense?
	I might be... Playing softball here, that answer.
	Well, it's a fancy way of saying they disagreed, which we know that they did because they yelled at each other, right?
	Yeah. So, yes, I will absolutely accept that they disagreed.
	Okay. Right?
	Yeah. I disagreed with you earlier, right?
	We didn't end up screaming at each other, right?
	And I thank you for that.
	I appreciate your honesty and respect what you're doing in the conversation.
	So disagreement doesn't mean screaming, doesn't mean divorce, doesn't mean any of that stuff.
	Disagreement is continual.
	Disagreement is continual in life.
	I mean, good Lord, I disagree with myself from six months ago sometimes.
	You didn't yell at yourself, did you?
	I really didn't. Oh, fantastic.
	Right. So the fact that they disagreed in no way conditions how they deal with it.
	It is inevitable that they will disagree.
	I mean, it's actually kind of rare when you think about it.
	Right? It's kind of rare when everyone's on the same page, right?
	I mean, you ever have it where it's like you've got five friends, you're out for the night, and some guy says, I want to go to sushi.
	And every single person is like, yes, that's exactly right.
	I want to go to sushi. And everyone's like, yes, that's exactly the restaurant.
	Never happens, right? Right.
	Everyone's like, I want to go clubbing.
	Oh, I want to do this. I want to do that.
	It's like... Disagreement is the natural state of things.
	That's why we need to negotiate.
	That's why we need philosophy, right?
	I mean, we need nutrition because her health disagrees with her tongue, right?
	Right. So, no, they disagreed, sure, they disagreed.
	But that tells you nothing about how they deal with those disagreements, because disagreements are continual in human relations, in human life.
	So, the question is, why were they screaming?
	We know they had the option to not scream because they ended up not screaming later, right?
	There is something that does come up, is that the initiator, I would say, would be my father.
	I don't think my mother has ever raised her voice first.
	But my father has had some tempers in the past.
	And he went from zero to 60 in one second lap.
	And he would...
	To get my brain jogging, can you ask a question or something?
	Because I'm at a standstill.
	Sure. Okay.
	So your father was a bully? Verbal, yes.
	He would use his words like a scorpion.
	The most effective ones that I've ever remembered are those where his intent, whether he wanted it to or not, he just really jabbed it in.
	A verbal sadist. Verbal sadist, yes.
	A verbal sadist with very good aim, right?
	Right. And that's the other big problem.
	That's the other big problem. With family, as with friends, you're always showing your soft underbelly, right?
	Right. Your family, they can be your greatest allies or your greatest enemies.
	And I'm not kidding about those two extremes.
	If your family supports you, then they know where your weak spots are.
	They know how to reinforce your armor.
	They know how to strengthen you.
	They know how to torque you up.
	But if they want to tear you down, like family and friends and people who know you really well, they know exactly where your weak spots are.
	They know exactly where to hit to take you down.
	They're like the, you know, there are engineers who specialize in demolition.
	And they know exactly where to place the minimum amount of explosives to bring the whole building down.
	Well, that's your family. They are experts in demolition because knowing somebody's strengths is knowing also their weaknesses.
	And this is why, like, if you want to do great things in the world or just above average things or you want to surmount your history, if you have people in your family and your close friends, if they're not behind you on that, you will fail.
	Success is a group activity.
	I don't do this alone. Success is a group activity.
	And if your family is not committed to your success, and if your friends are not committed to your success, you cannot succeed.
	You cannot succeed.
	And this is why if people want to succeed and they want to do great things and extraordinary things with their life, they have to evaluate their personal relationships.
	We can't be bigger than the person around us who thinks we're the smallest.
	I wanted to do great and powerful things with my life, and I am doing great and powerful things with my life.
	You should check out my speeches from New York last week.
	It's great stuff. I've checked some of them out, yeah.
	And I can't do it without people around me who believe in me.
	I can't do it without the audience's enthusiasm.
	I can't do it. I do not have a single-minded willpower of success.
	You can't do it. People have to really want you to succeed to the point where they'll really help you.
	And that doesn't mean just bolstering you up.
	It can mean pointing out your weaknesses and your flaws as well.
	So, your father, a verbal sadist who slapped around on your mom.
	So why did your mother marry a verbal sadist?
	And why did she have three children with a verbal sadist?
	And why did she hand an angry brother to a verbal sadist?
	One word is needy.
	That's the word that's coming up.
	All right.
	And what's that mean?
	Maybe, correct me if I'm wrong, You're really good at that, so I thank you for that.
	She was like a four-point grade average in college.
	That's where she met my father.
	And I'm assuming that he was the bad boy, but he didn't really quote-unquote look the part.
	He just acted the part.
	He didn't have the leather jacket and swag or such.
	But he gave her that emotional sway from a very diligent studying lifestyle.
	And it's like, oh, you emotionally move me.
	Well, I'm going to continue in it because of the type of lifestyle up until that point was rather to the book.
	One, two, three, sequential, but then here comes this man who changes all of it up and it's, oh, he makes me feel more alive.
	That's my thoughts on it.
	No, it's simpler than that, man, because she was a masochist.
	Glad you put it that way.
	I mean, if he's a sadist and she marries him...
	She wants to be around the sadism.
	Now, who wants to be around a sadist?
	A masochist.
	I believe that's how the jigsaw puzzle works.
	I'm no expert, but I think that's how it works.
	Ta-da! That's a really good way of...
	No, that explains a lot.
	Why? Or how?
	She can take verbal abuse.
	She's very...
	I'm not a potato.
	I'm using the wrong analogy.
	A sponge. Thank you. She's a sturdy sponge and can just take abuse all day.
	And there's not much direct...
	No, I will not tolerate this anymore.
	Well, the masochist doesn't just take abuse.
	a massacre seeks abuse out.
	Right?
	If you can just take abuse, that means that something random happens, like you're on the subway and someone just starts yelling at you, right?
	But if you pursue and put out for and date and get engaged and marry and provide children to a verbal sadist, that's just not randomly taking abuse like it happens to you.
	That's you pursuing and bringing abuse into your life, right?
	Yes. Yes, it is.
	This is the Fifty Shades of Grey shit, right?
	Very. And to confirm this, is that she very much, again, like that sponge you were talking about, is she'll take abuse from her daily life, but then she'll go into politics.
	That's her, like, one Area of quote-unquote escape, but then she seeks out things that are just pisses her off and Things that gets her upset and such So if your mother needs abuse in her life then when the father goes the brother is going to escalate to serve that need,
	right? Yes We always serve the parents.
	Whether they like it or not, consciously.
	Right. My mind's at a blink right now.
	Well, so one possibility is that your brother is abusive because that's your mother's need.
	But then when he gets sent to your father, he's less violent or less abusive because your father is a sadist and not a masochist.
	So it doesn't work on your father.
	your father doesn't have the need to be abused because he prefers to abuse.
	I can see that.
	And you understand that the sadism is also related to not touching your children.
	Thank you.
	Right? To withhold from children what they desperately need is sadistic.
	Like, you know, as a hungry child, I'm dangling their favorite food just out of their reach and then pulling it away whenever, like, you understand that would be sadistic, right?
	It's incredibly sadistic.
	And to not touch your children, to not cuddle with your children, to not hug your children is sadistic because you know the studies as well as I do that a monkey that is raised with a simulated mom will choose the affection of that simulated mom even over food.
	Children need that desperately.
	Hungry children choose cuddles over food.
	Starving children will choose cuddles over food.
	So when I talk about dangling, like your father's right there, but he won't hug you and he won't touch you.
	It won't give you an affection, won't kiss your head, won't stroke your hair.
	None of that. That is dangling a desperately needed food right in front of a child and pulling it away.
	That's cruel. That's sadistic.
	Because you have kids, where are they going to go?
	Can't go somewhere else. Can't run up and down the streets asking for random affection.
	Not that that's wise. Well, for the right price.
	So, this is all part of the same stuff.
	And part of the sadism as well, or part of the cruelty, is to not be honest with your children about your mistakes.
	Because that sets them up for failure.
	You know, if your children do better than you do, This is part of the sacrifice stuff of parenting, right?
	You sacrifice time, and it's not really a sacrifice.
	You understand all of that. But to not tell your children why you made the mistakes that you made and how they can avoid them.
	Like for women, for moms to not say to their sons the dangerous natures of some women.
	And for fathers to not talk about the dangerous natures of some men, and to not talk about how disasters happened.
	Why the hell were they screaming at each other?
	Why the hell did your father sleep around?
	Why did they get divorced?
	I'm not saying when they're children, but that's the tough problem.
	When adult, when a very adult issues destroy a marriage, When adult choices, that sounds very passive, when adults make destructive decisions to destroy a marriage, to destroy the security and sanctity of the family home, well, the question is, what do they say?
	If they don't give any explanation to the kids, then everything looks random, and that's really terrifying.
	And if they give an explanation, then this is one of the reasons why divorce produces so much lying and avoidance and dissociation.
	Two parents get divorced.
	Bob and Sally. Now, let's say that in your case, it's because Bob's verbally abusive and sleeps around.
	Well, what do you say?
	How do you say that to children?
	How does the mom explain that to the children?
	Does she say, as she often does, not in your case, I guess, in your case, nothing was said, which I don't know, that seems terrible, but does Sally say, well...
	I chose a man who was really terrible.
	He's a terrible husband and a terrible father.
	And I chose him, and I chose to have children with him.
	And now I'm choosing to kick him out.
	Well, the question is, why didn't you kick him out before you had children with him, so that you could have children with someone who'd stick around?
	Why did you just suddenly wake up to the fact that he's a bad guy?
	Why didn't you know that he was a bad guy for the 10 years you were dating and having lots of kids with him?
	Right? So it's terrifying for children that their mother might be completely retarded when it comes to basic self-protection and protection for children.
	That's really terrifying for a child.
	So you either say nothing, in which case the family was destroyed for no causality, or you tell something of the truth.
	But if you're telling the whole truth, you would say, Mommy has some serious mental health issues.
	Mommy did not bother or take the time to process childhood issues and deal with the facts of her upbringing.
	And so she ended up pursuing and choosing A verbally sadistic bully who tortures his children with verbal abuse and a lack of affection.
	And I was fine with that.
	I loved that. I married that.
	I had children with that. I wanted to reproduce with that.
	And that's terrible.
	I did a terrible thing.
	And then you'd have a conversation with your father and he would say, I enjoy causing pain because it gives me a sense of power.
	And I did not deal with my childhood issues.
	And I pursued a woman and I dated a woman and I married a woman and I had children with a woman and then withheld affection from everyone and screamed at everyone.
	I'd cut them to the quick, cut them to the core with my verbal sadism and acuity.
	And that's why we're not together.
	Well, for a child to look at his two parents and realize that they're kind of monstrous in human skin, it's not good.
	It's not a good situation.
	And this is just the reality that is not talked about with regards to divorce.
	What the hell do you tell your children?
	That you were an idiot who chose the wrong partner?
	Well, how is that going to make them feel secure?
	Do you tell them that I'm perfectly innocent, but your father is a monster and I have nothing to do with it?
	Well, I guess that gives some short-term security on the part of the children towards the mother.
	And they say, well, mom is perfectly innocent and dad was just mysteriously turned into a monster or was a monster.
	Mom is perfectly innocent.
	And perfectly innocent people have no capacity to detect immorality or cruelty or sadism or downright evil in their midst.
	They have no capacity. See, then you get innocence, but you also get to be unbelievably stupid.
	While she is innocent, and the marriage kind of happened to her, and good people, innocent people have no capacity to detect evil in any way, shape, or form whatsoever.
	And this is why you get this good people are stupid thing.
	Because playing the victim, playing dumb for women, well, tragically kind of works.
	And this is why when you say, I didn't really care to know why my parents got divorced, this is why I said nonsense.
	It's essential that you know why your parents got divorced.
	What did you mean when you said earlier, Tim, that this explains your relationships?
	Teasing.
	That's the one word that comes to mind.
	It's that I would go with the flow.
	It would be fun for the first few days.
	And then just something comes up.
	There's something wrong with this.
	It's not right.
	For the actual definition, it's queer.
	It's weird. It's rough around the edges.
	I just missed that.
	What is rough around the edges? Oh, I'm sorry.
	That was my fault. Me being here with you, if I was with that special someone, it's not supposed to be this way.
	That would be in the back of my mind.
	When you say it's nice, you mean it's not supposed to be nice or easy?
	I'm not supposed to be with someone.
	Whether it would be good or bad, it's me being with you doesn't make sense to me.
	Why am I with you? And then I immediately try to find an escape hatch or a lever to get myself out of that.
	Anything meaningful. Right.
	Now, do you mean good, meaningful?
	Or was there some reason, like, she's like, here's my tattoo of Satan, or something like that?
	Let's just say I've had a few experiences like that.
	Anything that developed in a relationship beyond a few weeks would be insanity for me.
	What do you mean insanity?
	Insanity, yeah. I think it was more out of habit, correct me if I'm wrong, or whatever you pick up on, is I would go through the motions, I would say the right things, I would entice them greatly, but after, let's just say a few weeks, I would shun them, I would ignore them, I would get rid of them.
	Oh, you'd be cruel!
	You'd lead them on like you were a great guy, and then you'd pull back, right?
	Like your father having children and not giving them affection.
	Very. Very much so.
	Right. A little bit of sadism there, right?
	A lot of sadism.
	A lot? Well, that may be overstating the case.
	I mean, a lot of sadism to me is like, I don't know, putting staples through people's balls when they're tied to a wooden chair, so I don't know about a lot there.
	But the sadism did get picked up by my father.
	The sadism did get picked up by your father?
	What do you mean? I'm sorry, the same behavior.
	Oh, the same behavior. Yeah, so you were in the position of being needed, and because you're needed and you're refusing to provide, you have power.
	Like your father, you need his affection.
	He refuses to provide, so he gains satisfaction out of the power.
	Right. Like if I suddenly hung up on you for no reason, if I was a different kind of personality structure, I'd be like, oh, I got that guy to open up and shafted him, right?
	Right. Right.
	And what happens then with these women?
	They would crave my attention, but I always found excuses as to why it shouldn't work.
	It's not you, it's me.
	It's not me, it's you.
	So you'd give them non-answers?
	I'd give them incredible non-answers.
	Like your parents did with their divorce, right?
	Right. And that's the cruelty, right?
	Because if you were to say, well, and I'm not, listen, I'm not saying that you would know this, right?
	So I'm just, but if you were to say, well, here's the problem.
	I'm really fucked up because the moment that someone wants me, I want to hurt them.
	The moment that somebody has a desire for me, I want to hurt them.
	And the way that I hurt them is I'm unavailable.
	Like you get close to me and I will just mess you up because that gives me power because that's what I learned from my father.
	He's a verbal sadist, and he would be not providing desperate need, and so I provoke need in someone, like by being a great guy, and then I pull what they want away from them, because that's what I was taught, and I have now grown it.
	Okay, so that would be some kind of answer, and that would help those women who were...
	Listen, the women are probably not innocent either.
	The women probably knew all of this about you and chose you for that very reason, in the same way that your mother chose your father because of possible masochism, right?
	So they're choosing you to be rejected.
	I mean, that's the way things work.
	To give you some more insight of not just them, but on myself, is that there were some really sweet women that I... Intentionally try to take advantage of.
	I was wrong in a lot.
	Not all of them.
	No, no. Okay.
	I'm sorry. I got to interrupt you here.
	So you're giving innocent mom and bad you, right?
	Innocent women and bad you.
	All right. And let me tell you, because I don't want women to get out of this, like, they're listening to this conversation, right?
	Millions of women will listen to this conversation over time.
	And I don't want them to get the impression that they can play the victim card, because everybody gets agency in philosophy, right?
	Mm-hmm. Any woman who lets herself get close to you, my friend, without finding out a fuckton about your history, is not innocent.
	They may be ignorant, but they're also responsible for being ignorant.
	So if they find out about your family and your family history, which they damn well should do before they start getting involved with you, right?
	First fucking date, people.
	I'm not kidding. First date is not a time for chit-chat.
	You are a commando and you are going in and you are finding out stuff about whether you're going to be safe giving your heart, balls, and vagina to the person across the table.
	Are you going to be safe?
	Now, if there's a way to do this before the first date, so much the better.
	On the phone, on Skype, find out if you're safe.
	Ask someone about his history.
	Ask people about their history, for God's sakes.
	99.9% of life is saying, thanks, but no thanks.
	I appreciate it.
	Not going to do it. Thank you, but no.
	You go to the mall.
	You don't buy anything.
	You don't buy things from every store.
	Well, if you're a man, you're a laser.
	You go and bungee out.
	You want to say, so any woman who gets involved with you without finding out about your history, without finding out about your family and your childhood and your life...
	Oh, parents got divorced when you were five.
	Oh, very violent brother.
	Don't know why parents got divorced.
	Don't know why brother is crazy.
	Find out father is verbally abusive.
	Find out father did not provide affection.
	child protects and defends and justifies said actions.
	It's not that hard.
	If you're dating drunk, you're responsible.
	It's like driving drunk, right? If you're dating drunk, which means you're just looking for endorphins and sexual gratification and hormones and attention, and ooh, he noticed me, ooh, he's handsome.
	Then you're dating drunk.
	And you get into a car crash, please don't say that these women are entirely innocent if they don't ask these basic questions.
	And listen, we used to have these kinds of filters.
	Well, we didn't used to need these filters quite so much because we all kind of grew up in the same neighborhood, the same town.
	Everybody went to the same church, was usually of the same religion.
	So everybody knew everyone.
	It wasn't that complicated.
	But now we're meeting each other all over the place.
	You better start asking some damn questions.
	You know, if you want to hire your brother...
	You know the strengths and weaknesses.
	You're hiring some stranger, you better damn well find out.
	And if you're hiring some stranger to come to your bed and tickle your balls, you better find out how venomous those nails might be.
	And that means asking about the history.
	You know, I went on a date with a woman once.
	A remarkably tall woman.
	But very funny. I went on a date with her.
	And... We're at the coffee shop.
	And she tells me about her last relationship.
	And she says, Yeah, I was with this guy.
	He was very, very cool.
	Very hip. And we got along really well together.
	We dated for a while. He moved in.
	And we lived together for 18 months.
	And the weirdest thing happened.
	I'm at work. I come home.
	All his stuff is gone.
	It's all, he's all gone.
	Even his toothpaste, everything, his toothbrush, everything's gone.
	He just packed up and moved out.
	And to this day, I have no idea why.
	Thank you. I'm out of here.
	Thank you. It's been wonderful.
	I'll be not here for the rest of your life.
	She had no idea.
	No idea. Why?
	This guy she'd been living with for 18 months just moved out in the middle of the night or the middle of the day when she wasn't home.
	What was he running from?
	I don't know. I don't really care.
	You know, you see you're in the African jungle or something and you see, you know, 16 locals all running screaming.
	You're going to run and scream. I don't care.
	I don't want to see what's coming. I just know everyone else doesn't want to see what's coming either.
	That's enough for me. Because you've not managed a long-term relationship, right?
	Right. I'm really glad that you brought that up the way that you did.
	Everybody gets agency, man.
	And we all have this tendency to say either I'm the good guy and I'm innocent or they're the good guy and they're innocent and no.
	Because you don't want to start verbally abusing yourself.
	And you were getting there, man, because I cock-blocked your verbal abuse towards your dates and you started doing it towards yourself.
	Well, there are some innocent sweet girls that I just ravaged like a beast.
	You know, they've shredded their heart like a Beelzebub on a coke binge, right?
	And it's like, no, no, no, you don't get to go and do that.
	that.
	Everybody gets agency.
	Yeah, I'm sure you were an asshole.
	And they were stepping right into it for their own history and reasons, right?
	Right.
	Not, there doesn't always have to be somebody who has to pay and somebody who's innocent, We can all be guilty. We can all be responsible.
	Very true. Because if you're just the bad guy and they're innocent, you're not going to try and filter them either, right?
	You're just going to try and control your own behavior and you won't be focusing on whether they're safe for you to give your heart to.
	Right. Try and find out what drew your parents together and try and get them to admit if they made a mistake.
	That's important. They made mistakes.
	I'm a parent. I'm a good parent.
	I've made mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes.
	And the people who can't admit mistakes are very dangerous.
	Because then you have to handle and you have to hold all of their mistakes.
	And your parents made some pretty big mistakes.
	They made mistakes in who they married.
	They made terrible mistakes in their marriage.
	If your father slept around, say, why?
	Why would you do that? You've got little kids at home.
	Why would you do that?
	And you need to know that because you're his son, man.
	You need to know what temptations your father failed.
	You need to know what sins overtook and swamped your father and destroyed his family.
	You need to know that like you need to know what the males in your family die from.
	That's when I got sick.
	People said, first question I got asked by all the specialists, any family history?
	Nope. Any family history?
	Any family history? We say this for diabetes, cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, you name it.
	Any family history? Cruelty, sadism, screaming, violence, abuse, masochism, any family history?
	Why, yes. You need to find out.
	What the hell happened to your family of origin?
	My God. And here's why.
	I mean, not only do you need to know it, Tim, for like your own sanity and your own release...
	But you need to find it out for one simple, simple reason that everybody forgets.
	You need to find out what happened to your family for this simple reason, Tim.
	Because you need to have something comprehensible and honest to tell to the woman you're going to marry.
	I mean, if I'd met my wife-to-be, she's not dumb.
	She scored crazy high on IQ. She's not dumb.
	And she asked me about my family, right?
	First date. Now, if I'd have said, Mom, crazy, violent, but I love her.
	Right? I mean, good lord!
	Right? Now, I have a story to tell about my family of origin, and I'm not going to tell it now.
	I've told it a million times on the show.
	I have a story that is not fiction, that is not fantasy, it's documentary.
	These are the facts, and this is the truth.
	And these are the moral implications of my family of origin.
	If you know what happened to your family, and listen, you'll know even if they don't tell you the truth, and most likely they won't.
	Because, you know, you're going, if your father's still a sadist, right?
	So you're going to your father with a big need.
	Dad, I need to know what happened.
	Now, if he's a sadist, what's his first impulse going to be?
	Verbal, either, well, deflection.
	That would probably be my assumption.
	Oh, you want something? Yeah, sucker, can't have it.
	Oh, I love that feeling.
	Oh, the power. Yeah, yeah.
	Great, great job withholding things from your kids.
	Ooh, very strong, very powerful.
	So, but if with the consciousness of the possibility of your father's sadism, you ask him for something you desperately need, and you get to genuinely emotionally experience whether he's going to provide it to you, be naked in your need with people.
	My God, there's nothing more powerful and liberating than naked need.
	I need something. I'm desperate for something.
	I need something. Because what you're doing is you're giving power to people around you.
	You're giving power. Like, I'll tell you something stupid.
	So, the other day, a friend of my daughter's was showing me her programming, her computer programming.
	And she couldn't figure out how to do something.
	And my daughter's like, oh, my dad knows this stuff cold, right?
	And I sat down, and it was Java.
	Now, I've worked with Java like once or twice, and I'm like...
	You know, give me, you know, I know 17 different computer languages, but Java's just not one that I'm particularly good at.
	And I couldn't get it running.
	And I said to my daughter, I said later, I said, you know how you're always like, Dad, look at this, right?
	Like, we went skating the other day, and she was like, wanted to skate on one leg, right?
	And she's like, count, right?
	So I'm counting, you know, she does like 12, 13 seconds on...
	Until she approaches my record, then I push her over.
	No, I'm kidding. But like, she wants to show off for me, right?
	And I said, here's something that's interesting.
	She said, I said, listen, you said my dad can figure out how to do this, right?
	And I said, do you know how desperate I was to do it?
	To just sit down and go, boom, and you know, this thing works.
	I said, you know how you want to show off for me?
	I said, you know that I also want to show off for you.
	And that was nice for her.
	Because, you know, as kids, we're always like, showing off.
	If our parents are interested, we want to show them what we can do.
	And show your need.
	Show your need. You know, when I do the big ask for donations, the itchy underpants of the big ask, as I called about it recently.
	You know, when I ask people for donations, it's vulnerable.
	And you can see, this is not a donation pitch, although freedomainradio.com slash donate is not the worst website on the internet.
	But if, when I ask people for something, when I say I need your support, I need your help to do the show, to run the show, to grow the show, you know, to grow the show, you know, I don't, I didn't get paid for speeches.
	I'm down, I'm flying, I'm booking hotels in Manhattan.
	I mean, I'm just not free.
	And when I ask for people to give me something, when I ask for things from people, when I show my naked need, I need things from people.
	I need the support for the show.
	It's very instructive.
	Tim, you should do this, right?
	I think we did a donation pitch, a request last month.
	You can go and you look and look down.
	And some people are very nice.
	Some people are like, I'd like to help out.
	Some people are like, I don't have any money, but I'm sharing, which is great.
	I've got no problem with that. Some people are like, well, I've just started listening and so on.
	But then there are some people who are like, this is the most pathetic e-begging I've ever seen in my life.
	You scurvy used car snake oil, I'll never pay you a penny as I'm going to continue to consume your material and give you nothing and there's nothing you can do about it!
	How do people handle when you need something?
	When you want something from them, and you can't enforce it, right?
	It's not like we've got a contract, right?
	How do people handle it?
	Now, if you go to your family, you go to your mom, you go to your dad, and you need something, and you really do.
	You need this. Either they're going to give you some facts and some useful information, which is great, or they're not, which is going to be, in a way, even more helpful.
	Because then you get to experience them not helping you when you desperately need it, But consciously, to know what's going on.
	It's like that poem, there shall be no end to our wandering, and the purpose of all our wandering shall be returned to the place that we started but know it for the first time.
	You have need. Sorry for those watching the video.
	My lips are very dry. For those of you who have, like, if you have need and you go to people and you have need and you have need and you want something, there's nothing wrong with having need.
	We all have needs. We all have needs.
	People, I have needs with people.
	People have needs for me. You know, I need donations.
	People need me to do shows.
	They need me to give good speeches.
	They need me to do a good job with what I'm doing.
	And that's perfectly fair. But we hide our need from people around us.
	And that's terrible. Always be needy.
	You say be needy, right? With your mom.
	I don't mean codependent.
	I don't mean like have no ego.
	I don't mean like live or die in the approval or rejection of others, but we all have needs.
	We all have needs.
	And to This is why people get so addicted to nothingness and small talk and bullshit and sports.
	If you don't admit what you need from someone else, and they don't admit it to you, you dissolve into atomic triviality.
	You can't talk about anything important.
	You can't talk about what you need and why.
	And if we hide our needs from people around us, we end up with inconsequential lives.
	The people in my life know how much I need them.
	I know how much they need me.
	My listenership, I'm very clear how much I need you guys.
	Not just support, but listening and sharing and enthusiasm and rising above the petty bullshit that's written about me to the facts, to what matters.
	So if you go, you'll find out whether you can have needs around your family.
	And then you're going to meet a woman that you do want to stick around with, who's going to ask you the intelligent questions, maybe a woman who listens to this very show.
	And she's going to say, tell me about your family, tell me about your history.
	And you, for the first time in your life, will be able to tell her the truth.
	You don't think I wanted my daughter to see me in New York with people lining up for three hours to shake my hand?
	But she couldn't be there because noisy disco plus Antifa.
	There is something I would like to add among your amazing speech, if you will, is I'm really glad and happy if I'm not proud, is I'm really glad and happy if I'm not proud, you know, the male ego, if
	if you will. I'm proud and thankful that you even mentioned when you meet that woman, or when you decide to have that wonderful relationship with a respectable woman.
	And it's something that I've been taking into consideration.
	It's like, I want to go in that direction.
	I don't like in the direction that I have been going.
	And It's...
	Not to really tie it, but from...
	When I was in the military, that was the first time that really came to my mind.
	It was like, well, why did I even join?
	What's the purpose of life and everything?
	And I really stuck with...
	Personal growth, like what you mentioned, it's to be more responsible, to change my courses of thoughts and what I'm taking into consideration, finding the truth.
	And to me, a greater truth would be to have a functional relationship, functional wife, not just to have a wife, but maybe the functional husband that she would deserve for my children.
	And... I'm really thankful that you brought that up.
	Well, that's what you asked for, right?
	If you go back to the very beginning of the call, you said that self-knowledge or personal growth is the truth.
	And boy, you nailed it.
	Yeah, well, I mean, you expressed a need, consciously or not.
	And so you said, Steph, I want the truth.
	And then you started telling me a whole bunch of propagandized crap that came from your family.
	And I'm like, okay, well, I'm just listening to what he asked, right?
	And I'm going to give him what he asked, because he was pretty open with his need, not to himself, but to me.
	So I'll give him what he asked for, which is I'm going to tell him when he's not telling the truth, and we're going to get to the truth.
	Wow. You asked.
	It was funny because, you know, occasionally people get mad at me.
	It's like, well, if you listen back, I'm just doing what people ask me to.
	Paint the wall this color.
	Here's the paint can. Oh, my God, I can't believe you painted the wall this color.
	That's the worst thing. I'm a mere humble servant of your preferences.
	That whole adage of ask and you shall receive sort of applies here.
	Yeah, yeah, seriously.
	I mean, people, they tell me everything they want.
	Tell me everything they want. You listen back to these shows.
	Everybody tells me everything they want at the very beginning.
	At the very beginning, they tell me what they want.
	And you're saying that the self-help movement is not getting you to the truth.
	Right? Right.
	Right. Right. Not doing.
	The self-help movement ain't getting me to the truth.
	And politics ain't getting me to the truth.
	And people call into the show, and they introduce me to their false self, which is the defenses of the parents, usually.
	It's so many other people. People call into the show, and they introduce me to their false self.
	I mean, I've been doing this for a long time now.
	I've had thousands of these calls, and I've been doing this for 10 years.
	Like, I don't mind lifting the lid.
	People can see the process.
	So people call in, and sometimes their questions are what their question's about, and sometimes they're not.
	And people call in and they tell me what they want in the first few seconds.
	And they usually will call in with some abstract problem that's not that important.
	And then they will...
	I'll ask them a question or two about the family because something will come up or I just want to.
	And then I'll get the...
	North Korean propaganda channel of enthusiasm, right?
	And I'll be like, nope, that's not true.
	Now, that's not true. And this doesn't make sense.
	And this contradicts with that. And then part of them, like the deep down part of them, that's like, holy shit, are we getting a crack in the ceiling here?
	Is there, is there, is somebody taking the lid off the well?
	Holy fuck, is that air coming in?
	Ah, excitement, thrill, breaking out to freedom, to truth, to clear air, to skies, to sunlight!
	And then... The parental alter egos are like, shut up down there!
	You're going to give it all away!
	Shut up! But they can't say shut up because they know that I don't accept that kind of stuff and it's too obvious.
	So what they do is they redouble the propaganda.
	And there's more enthusiasm.
	And then there's this pretend agreement.
	Kokesh style. There's this pretend agreement.
	Yeah, everything you're saying is really true.
	But let's get back to my original question.
	Oh, it's a really great insight, but they're trying to throw me off the trail, right?
	Hey, man, I heard some weird thumpings inside the house.
	Is that... No, no.
	Right? No, nothing.
	Here's some quiche. I'm going to throw it over there, right?
	No, it's just the TV. Hey, it's really insightful.
	You've got really good hearing, though. It's went to...
	Right? And I'm like, no, no, I'm pretty sure I heard some thumping down there, so let's go.
	And we're like, holy shit.
	Somebody's not just passing by.
	Somebody's not just... It's not just a drive-by.
	This isn't just pretend interest.
	Somebody's actually really interested in facts and the truth here.
	Oh my god, quarter century, we've been alive.
	Half century, we've been alive.
	Three quarters of a century, we've been alive.
	And people haven't been interested in the truth, but I'm finally getting somebody who's interested in the truth and who's not accepting the bullshit ghosts who pretend to rule this house, but actually is interested in the thumps in the cellar, the people trapped down there, the ecosystem of personality and honesty and lived experience trapped down there.
	And I don't provoke the defenses.
	Like when I said to you that it was not true, I wasn't angry, I wasn't insulting, I'm like genuine, like you believe that it's true, but this is just the script.
	This is the script that the parental alter egos run when any question of history comes up.
	And when you listen back to that script and you listen to its relationship to what actually happened, you'll realize there's no truth in it whatsoever.
	In fact, it's kind of the opposite of the truth.
	My mother's a hero. She's very strong.
	No, she's just a masochist, at least as far as this stuff goes.
	And because I'm not aggressive, because I'm not abusive, but I'm just persistent, I just want the truth, that's all.
	And the truth, I don't know exactly what the truth is, but I sure as hell know it's not something that contradicts itself every third of a second, right?
	It's not something where the statement of claims doesn't match the description of the events even closely, like even a little bit.
	I mean, I know you were talking about tutoring, but the fact that you talked to me about the heroic schoolteacher Who's anywhere close to the free market?
	It's like, dude. I mean, it's a red flag in front of a bull, you know?
	Right? So what happens is even the people under the stairs, even the people in the basement, even the people locked down there, they're whispering to the alter egos, yeah, run that script.
	Run that script. It's totally going to work.
	And the alter egos, apparently, they run that script.
	And the reason that the people underneath are saying, yeah, yeah, run that script, is they know I'm going to hear the bullshit.
	I'm going to call them on it, and not in an aggressive way where they get to slam the door and kick me out of the house, right?
	Got to be patient, got to be calm, got to be reasonable.
	And then I just keep going, well, this doesn't match with that, and this doesn't match with that.
	But because I'm not angry, but merely curious, Socratic reasoning and all that, the alter egos have no excuse to kick me out.
	They can't, because as soon as they become abusive, I'll see that too!
	And to be fair, the alter egos of the parents also want to be free.
	They don't want to run the script.
	They don't want to be on guard.
	They don't want to be forever standing on the trap door that leads to the basement where the facts are, where the lived experience is.
	They don't want that. They want to be free too.
	The guards want to be free.
	The guards are stuck in the prison just like the prisoners.
	Everybody wants to be free and I just have to find a way to get everyone to work together.
	And that means being firm and friendly and coming from a place of love and compassion.
	We've all lied to ourselves.
	We all have these challenges.
	This is nothing bad for you, Tim.
	This is nothing particular to you.
	It doesn't mean that it's not unique to your experience, but we all have these habits.
	We've all been lied to continually throughout most of our lives.
	So when you call me up and you say, Self-help is truth.
	It's such an undefined statement.
	I can't remember exactly how you phrased it, but when you listened back earlier, I remember I was thinking to myself at the time.
	It's such an undefined statement.
	Philosophically, you know, self-knowledge is truth.
	It doesn't really mean it. It's like a haiku.
	It's like a fortune cookie.
	It doesn't mean anything. And that means it's propaganda, because it's not reasoned.
	It's not detailed. It's not, right?
	And then what happens is, Personal development is the truth.
	Yeah, personal development is the truth.
	I don't even know what that means. Personal development requires the truth.
	It's synonymous with the truth.
	What does personal development mean in terms of self?
	Like you understand, personal development is the truth.
	That's the phrase. And that's such a hazy phrase that I know that's a propaganda flag that's been shot up.
	And again, the people under the stairs, the people in the basement are saying, oh yeah, tell the guy who's a really rigorous philosopher that personal development is the truth.
	He'll love that shit. Like, okay, I'm getting generic, feel-good, fortune cookie propaganda.
	So let's find out.
	Let's dig in, right? And so everyone, in a sense, is conspiring to be free, some more consciously than others.
	And because I care, and because I'm not being paid by you directly, or certainly not being paid by your parents, right?
	Because I care, because I won't escalate, because I'm just relentlessly curious, and because I'm frank without being abusive, it's irresistible.
	And the house falls, the house of cards falls, And the dungeon, the basement, rises to become the ground floor level.
	And now, something real can be built.
	Does that make any sense? Very.
	All right. Well, keep us posted about how it goes, and I really, really appreciate your call.
	I hope that it was helpful to you, and great work, in my opinion.
	Thank you very much, Stefan, for having me on and calling me on my BS that I was spouting.
	That was helpful.
	You're welcome. It's just an inheritance.
	It's not your earned thing.
	All right, let's move on to the next caller, but thanks again.
	Alright, up next we have Jacob.
	Jacob wrote in and said, In contrast,
	the art world is unstable, which gets me worried that I will fail miserably and not get to accomplish my dream in life.
	Most of my worries have come from this fear exactly, the fear that I will die without accomplishing my dream.
	I start thinking about how hard it will be to get back there and try to get some steps in order so I know what to do, but then the fear of failure at each step becomes an ominous cloud in my mind from which I run away, back to the comfort of stability.
	That's from Jacob. Well, hey, Jacob.
	How you doing? I'm doing all right.
	A little nervous, but, you know, I'm ready for this because I do need to be called on some stuff that might not be, I don't know, correct?
	Accurate? Yeah, yeah.
	I mean, something's in the way of your ambition.
	Yes. For sure.
	Right. One thing that I wanted to...
	I'll just say though, recently I took the Understand Myself test from Jordan Peterson.
	Yeah. And the thing that's really important that I wanted to say from this is the score that I got for neuroticism, which for people that don't know is the primary dimension of negative emotion for the big five personality trait model, which is what this test is using.
	If I were in a room of 100 people, I would be higher in neuroticism than 82 of them and lower than neuroticism in 17.
	So I'm in the 82nd percentile of neuroticism.
	Okay. And it's also, I thought of this last night, it's almost as if I'm out of fight, flight, or freeze.
	I'm stuck on freeze.
	Right. Right.
	Right. Well, do you want to do childhood?
	Do you want to do ambition first?
	What's your preference on how to approach this?
	I mean, I certainly have my own thoughts, but I'm happy to work with what works for you.
	Just any questions is fine.
	Actually, let's go with childhood first, because I'm trying to think of where I want to go, and that would probably be helpful.
	Right. Okay, so we'll start with childhood.
	Yeah, that's fine. Okay, so you've got an adverse childhood experience score, an ACE score of 5.
	So you've got no family, love or support, parents divorced, lived with alcoholic or drug user, household member depressed, mentally ill or suicide attempt, and household member in prison.
	If you could let me know a little bit about that.
	The first one that probably needs to be cleared up a little is the losing a father through divorce.
	I didn't actually lose my father through divorce.
	My parents are still technically married, but I lost the father role figure around ninth grade now.
	Yeah, it was ninth grade going into it.
	So beginning of high school, he had a stroke and he basically moved in the hierarchy of the house.
	He moved straight to the bottom.
	And, like, has had no real say in anything since.
	And partly it's because the doctors, like, they weren't expecting him to live for...
	They didn't think he'd leave the hospital.
	Right. And did it affect his cognitive ability significantly?
	Very. He has to have, like...
	Currently, I'm on a schedule for school of every other day.
	And one of the main reasons behind that was we set it up to where I'm home some days and my mom's home some days so that somebody can take care of him because we can't leave him alone.
	We also can't afford a sitter.
	Wow. That's rough.
	And how old were you when that happened?
	14. Wow.
	That's rough. And do you know why the stroke occurred?
	I can take a guess, considering the fact that he used to smoke about a pack a day and he'd come home from work and he'd eat like a Scooby-Doo sized bologna sandwich.
	Well, a stack of bologna sandwiches, but those plus the cigarettes probably didn't do him too good.
	Right, right. And I'm guessing that was not a whole mess of exercise going on either.
	Oh, not at all.
	He... His work was, he was a forklift driver at a, like, shipping, or it was some kind of, like, car company.
	Like, they dealt with the manufacturing of parts.
	And he drove forklifts around all day.
	Oh, right. So, a lot of sitting.
	Did, uh, no disability insurance, is that right?
	Uh, no, I think we have, uh, I don't know, actually.
	I'm not sure what the situation with that is.
	I think we get a little bit of money for the fact that he's now disabled, but I'm not sure.
	Right. Okay.
	All right. All right.
	Because the disability often will give you a pile of money, and I guess that didn't materialize.
	I don't know if you're getting money from the government or from a union?
	I think we got a little bit of money through the government from just the fact that he can't work at all now.
	He keeps wanting to, like, one of the things he always wanted to do was go back to work, and it's like, dude, you're blind in your right eye.
	That doesn't mean you can't work.
	Or no, it's his left eye. No, he wants to drive a forklift, and I'm like, your depth perception's off.
	You could do something smaller, but don't get behind the wheel of a forklift, man.
	People have knocked...
	He was working one day, and another guy knocked over...
	Like, multiple stacks.
	You know, if you go into like a Lowe's or a Home Depot or something, how everything's like stacked way up to the ceiling?
	The guy knocked over multiple stacks of those on accident.
	So, that would not be a good situation for him to be in.
	Right. And does he have the cognitive ability to do something else from home?
	Not entirely. He still calls Dr.
	Pepper's Pepsi. The right side of his body, he can't use it for real.
	He can kinda walk with a walker.
	And his right arm, just no.
	He said he was exercising it recently and it's the way that he was exercising it, which I mean this is something considering he couldn't do anything.
	He's taking a little three pound weight and like just trying to even grip it.
	Which, you know, again, it's not a lot, but incremental progress.
	I'm happy he's at least doing something because God knows he's had a few years to do something and he hasn't.
	I don't know. I'm just going to share with you the thought.
	Was it better he left or not?
	In some ways.
	It's impossible to answer, of course, right?
	But I want to get that thought out of my head so that we can move on.
	In some ways, it's almost as if he did die.
	Well, no, because if he was dead, you wouldn't need to be home all the time.
	You wouldn't have all this expense.
	You wouldn't have this burden. Yeah.
	Yeah, I kind of lean more towards it might have been better if he did.
	It's a tough call. I mean, obviously, nobody likes to have these kinds of thoughts, but I think everybody does.
	At one time or another, everybody has that thought crossed their mind, and I don't know.
	And it's easy for me to say, but...
	Yeah, obviously since you're removed from the situation.
	Yeah, but I mean, if I... I don't know.
	No, I understand what you're saying.
	I would just hate to be, you know, my daughter's life is stuck and she's, you know, can't do much and she's always got this burden.
	And I don't know.
	It's hard to say. It's hard to say.
	I just wanted to point that out.
	It's a difficult situation, of course.
	Right. But I mean, I haven't even thought about it from the perspective of what if I left my kids like that?
	Because, you know, I'm 20.
	I haven't even kids aren't on my radar yet.
	Right. So, God, just to even think about it from that perspective.
	Yeah. I mean, we all say this kind of stuff, right?
	Like, I mean, we think about it, you know, if I'm going to be brain dead, you know, just pull the plug.
	I don't want to destroy my family financially.
	I know my grandmother had, she was a do not resuscitate.
	She was like, well, if I go, I go.
	I don't want to be put on some, like, ventilation machine.
	Yeah. Yeah.
	I understand that. Is that really living?
	I will, you know, this is not any kind of legal document.
	I'm just telling you, like, my sort of thoughts are, if my mind is working, I mean, I'm good.
	But if my mind is gone, I don't know.
	I mean, that's me. I don't have any other ghost in it.
	No, I feel very similar to that.
	It's like, if up in my brain is still functioning, Yeah, I'm still here, but my brain's not – you're keeping a shell alive.
	I don't know. Just a very expensive bag of meat, right?
	Yeah. All right.
	So, yeah, I just wanted to get those thoughts.
	I mean, people think about this stuff and, you know, the guy could be alive for another 30 years, right?
	Yeah, which that means we'd have to take care of him for that long.
	Yeah. Yeah.
	And so I really sympathize.
	I really sympathize.
	And it's very difficult on everyone.
	Mm-hmm. Okay.
	And prison?
	That would have been my sister and my brother-in-law.
	Oh, like the Bonnie and Clyde of the family?
	In some ways. My sister was...
	She's also...
	Her and my stepbrother also fall under the drug category.
	Oh, they're drug addicts?
	They were both heavily addicted to heroin.
	Right. They had gone over state lines and brought a lot with them so that they could...
	Like, they were so addicted that they had to have as much as they had on them to, uh...
	Oh, but were they hit for dealing?
	They were. Yeah, yeah.
	Yeah. But they had to have as much as they had on them so that they wouldn't be sick for the next three days.
	So, prison is probably better than dead, right?
	Well, they're both dead.
	Oh, they're dead? What happened?
	Yes. Uh, they went to, uh...
	They both went to the jail for a while.
	And we ended up not being able to do anything to get him out.
	Yeah, no names, please.
	But go ahead. Yeah, I'm sorry.
	That's fine. Totally. Yeah.
	My brother-in-law, we couldn't get him out.
	We couldn't do anything for him.
	But he made sure that we got my sister.
	We spent pretty much all of our family's savings to get her out.
	And then she got on to...
	She went to the methadone programs to where you go to a methadone clinic every morning, basically a legal dope house.
	Methadone is the transition stuff, right?
	That's the placebo, so to speak.
	Yeah, but if they actually transition you, if you actually start moving down on your doses, but it didn't seem like they were working on that at all.
	Yeah, so... My brother-in-law, he stayed in the jail for a while, and he ended up going to a halfway house.
	Through the halfway house, after he served his little bit of time that he had to do in there, he was able to finally come back and be at the house with us again.
	Him and my sister, they were doing better.
	They had both been off it for...
	Quite some time. And then...
	Sorry.
	My brother-in-law.
	He... One day he...
	It was too much and he used again.
	And what he used happened to be laced with fentanyl.
	And as soon as the fentanyl hit his heart, he was gone.
	And my sister...
	A few months, like...
	It was actually the next month.
	My sister, she was pregnant with his child.
	And she was really distressed from him being gone.
	And she started hanging out with these couple people that it was just bad news for her.
	And we kept trying to tell her, don't be around these people.
	Don't go with them.
	She went and spent the night with them one night, and she wasn't home the next morning because we had something we had to go do, like take family pictures or something.
	We were wondering why she wasn't home, and my mom ended up calling her phone and finally got an answer.
	She was hanging out with this guy and this girl.
	The girl she was hanging out with answered the phone and said, your daughter's dead, and then hung up the phone.
	Come on. Yeah, and that morning I was woken up to my mother screaming, which I was also woken up like that the month before that with my brother-in-law.
	And just for the icing on the cake, the month before that, my grandmother passed.
	And all three of them were, like, living with us at the time.
	The only one who didn't die in the house was my sister.
	What happened to her? While she was out on the road that night, she was walking with them and a car hit her.
	And the car hitting her, that's what took her out.
	And was she walking on the road?
	I have no idea.
	We can't barely get any details out of the people that were with her.
	Because, like, according to the guy that hit her, he stopped and, like, called the cops and everything.
	They were there for maybe, like, five, ten minutes, and they walked off.
	They walked off.
	But the cops would know where she was killed or where she died, right?
	Mm-hmm. And did they tell you?
	All I know is that she got hit.
	She had to have been somewhat in the road to have gotten hit, but I don't know.
	And according to the autopsy, she did have drugs in her system.
	She did have drugs.
	But did the cops...
	I mean, they have to write reports and stuff.
	Did you not get any of the reports about what happened?
	I'd have to try and talk with my mom about that if she knows, but that's...
	God, whenever that happened, she was a wreck.
	Of course. Like, no, she, uh...
	God, she was...
	She couldn't barely handle the funeral or anything, so...
	Right. It's not really a subject I like to bring up that much.
	Well, maybe you can talk to the cops and ask if there's a report on your sister's death and...
	Yeah, that's fair.
	Yeah. God, I'm so sorry.
	Jacob, what an unbelievable, horrifying mess.
	I'm so sorry about all of this.
	Well, it's the shit storm that has culminated in my life so far, and I'm trying to make sense of it.
	That's why I'm here.
	So, right.
	And around the age of five, what was going on in your life?
	As far as I knew, the family was fine.
	It was me and my twin brother.
	We were just...
	It just reminds me of a typical five-year-old.
	I mean, like... Me and him would roughhouse and things like that, but I can't remember anything terrible.
	Oh, no.
	I can, actually.
	Whenever I was around five, I would see my...
	and have seen multiple times.
	My dad would get insanely mad.
	He ruled the house through fear.
	And... He's gotten mad enough to where he's, like, thrown my sister around and, uh, there was one time he grabbed my brother by the, uh, back of his shirt and pulled him away.
	And while he's pulling him away, he was choking him.
	But other than the, uh, terrible things like that from my father, uh, And having to deal with some of the stuff with my sister with...
	She got on to drugs and everything around like...
	Probably around when I was five, so...
	That statement earlier that it was a normal kind of thing is wrong.
	It's completely wrong.
	And how much older was your sister?
	She was about ten years.
	Oh, gosh. Well, one of the contributing factors into...
	Her even getting into drugs in the first place was actually my father.
	Go on. Her and my father aren't actually related.
	She was my half-sister.
	He had this fucking weird-ass thing.
	Jesus Christ, why?
	It's like he wanted to have sex with her.
	And, like, just...
	Oh, God.
	I know he ended up doing cocaine with her.
	And I had no idea that any of this was happening, but I was probably five or six at the time.
	Right. That's another thing that scares me about this whole thing is the fact that I'm a lot like my father, and I don't want to...
	Obviously, the sins of the father aren't cast onto the son, but I don't want to recreate any of his mistakes.
	Well, that's why we...
	That's why we talk about these things, right?
	That's why I'm here. That's why we go, and very rapid, like, good for you, man, but this is why we go from things were great when I was five.
	Well, my father did have this satanic rage.
	He threw my sister around, choked my brother.
	My father seemed to want to have sex with his stepdaughter.
	Did I get that right? Stepdaughter?
	Yes. And he also did cocaine with her?
	Yes. I must say that my sympathy for your father might have just taken a little fucking dip.
	Oh, it definitely should have.
	Why? Why? Okay, we'll get to that.
	We'll get to that. Let's go with five and then we'll come back, Jacob, to this.
	Okay. Why do you think your father wanted to have sex with his stepdaughter?
	What were your thoughts about that or what was your experience with that?
	Oh, my God. I've thought about this for years now and I'm like, How do you...
	I'm sorry, you have or haven't thought about this for years?
	I have. You've thought about this for years, okay.
	I'm like, how do you do that?
	How do you look over this child that you're supposed to be protecting and that you had two other children with the mother of this child?
	How can you do something like that?
	Wait, wait, wait. Do or want?
	No, want.
	Do is more for like the...
	Like the doing the coke.
	Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay. But do you think he ever did molester?
	No. Why do you think that?
	Because I haven't heard anything of that sort.
	The worst that I've heard is that one night, I think he was masturbating in a room while she was asleep.
	Yeah, it's disgusting.
	And where did you hear that from?
	Probably my mother.
	What do you mean, probably your mother?
	I'm pretty sure if I heard a story like that, I'd remember who the hell told me.
	These stories have been going around in my family for a while, so...
	I'm sure I've talked with my mom and my brother.
	I don't know if I ever talked to my sister about that, though.
	You know, I gotta tell you, man, I can't prove anything and neither can you, but it doesn't seem likely that he didn't do anything.
	I mean, if he does cocaine with her, it's not like he's really interested in her well-being, right?
	That's true. That's why a lot of my sympathy for him is just out the window completely.
	Why is he out the damn window?
	Anyway, that's it. I know.
	I'm sitting here and I'm like, I used to kind of feel bad for him, but now I'm like, no, bitch, you're serving out your sentence.
	Well, except you're taking care of him.
	Yeah, and I know. Why is the family, like, I don't know.
	I mean, I hate to say this because, you know, I'm just telling you what I'm thinking.
	Why is it to stump him in a home or something?
	Like, this is a guy who did cocaine with his stepdaughter, masturbated in a room with her asleep, threw her around, choked your brother.
	Like, what the fuck are you all investing?
	You know what I mean? Yeah.
	What do you do? Yeah, I do know.
	I'm pretty sure that we, like, looked at putting him into a home.
	But it would end up being more expensive for us.
	So, according to that, we're stuck with him, but that's not that strong for me.
	That's just the reason that my mother's given.
	Which I don't see why.
	They haven't had a loving relationship with each other since probably me and my brother were two.
	But doesn't the government, like if you can't take care of someone for whatever reason, doesn't the government, I mean, people pay a lot of taxes.
	I mean, doesn't the government take care of people if the family can't take care of them anymore?
	You know what? I don't know.
	And I just, I'm just saying, look into it.
	Don't accept that this is just a fact that you have to keep him around, right?
	I mean, good God.
	Yeah. I'll keep that in mind, for sure.
	I obviously can't give you any advice about that.
	I'm just sharing my thoughts.
	The guy who helps coke up his daughter, I don't know, I'd feel a little tough finding the motivation to wipe the drool off his chin.
	Yeah. I do a lot.
	You didn't mention the massive rage and the cocaine abuse when you were talking about why he might have had a stroke.
	No, I didn't, actually.
	And I get it.
	I mean, we had to go back to five, right?
	Mm-hmm. Good lord.
	So he's a pretty evil guy.
	And that's what I don't want to recreate in me because I understand that I have that capacity for evil and I don't want to be like, you know, it's kind of like the incorporation of the shadow that Peterson always talks about.
	The Jungian thing, yeah, that we have to all recognize our own capacity for evil.
	Why are you still home if this is the environment?
	Is it just money? Is it mostly money?
	Yes. It's helping me out while I'm in college to where I'm not having to pay for a place to stay and things like that.
	But you're paying, Jacob.
	Just paying in a different way, right?
	There's a bunch of different forms of currency, isn't there?
	There's a bunch of different forms of currency.
	Just be aware that nothing is free.
	You can get a pretty cheap place.
	I've been telling you this because I know I did this throughout college.
	I lived in the same room with a guy for a year.
	We didn't even have our own rooms.
	One room, two guys.
	You can live pretty cheap out of the home.
	Yeah, it's just a matter of lowering my expenses.
	Well, it's a matter of shifting your expenses.
	Because, right, you'll have more time to study if you're not taking care of your dad, right?
	Yeah. You know, your mom chose to marry the guy.
	She chose to have children with him.
	She chose to stay with him.
	Oh, my God. Right? I mean, if she divorced this guy when he was choking her children...
	Then she wouldn't be taking care of him now.
	Yeah, I know. Because she would have been divorced from him when he had his aneurysm.
	Or his stroke. Sorry, his stroke.
	Yeah. So, I guess...
	So, she chose this particular burden by not taking care of her children.
	Yes. You didn't choose it.
	You didn't marry the guy.
	You didn't have any choice about him being in your life.
	Your mom did. She failed to protect you and...
	This is what she's stuck with.
	Yeah, and I feel like I've been rocking the boat a lot around here because of just even trying to, I guess, hold them responsible for their decisions.
	Oh, yeah. Well, good luck with that.
	Yeah. You know, that may be a bridge too far for man or immortal being to cross.
	I'm kind of learning that as I go.
	Getting people who've made really terrible decisions to own those decisions is very hard when restitution is possible.
	I'll tell you, this is my own experience, Jacob.
	I'm not saying this is an ironclad rule.
	I'm just telling you this is 100% of my experience, which is not inconsiderable, but is not certain proof.
	And I say this to the world as a whole.
	I have never seen Ever.
	The acceptance of responsibility when restitution is impossible.
	And in your family, Jacob, with your mother and your father, restitution is not possible because nothing is going to bring your dead sister back to life.
	And nothing is going to make your brother not have been choked when he was young.
	When he was five or so.
	Yeah, that's one of the walls that I've run into, especially with my mother.
	You know, one day we were getting into it, and she was like, well, what do you want?
	What you want is impossible.
	Exactly.
	Right.
	What you want is impossible and that's where art comes from.
	I've never even thought of it like that.
	I just know whenever I was little, I always, you know, a lot of kids pick up drawing, but not a lot of kids stick with it.
	Yeah. You know, I was one of the ones that stuck with it.
	And maybe that's part of it.
	There was something I was going to say about the childhood, and I'm just trying to remember what it was.
	I might have to wait for it to boomerang.
	Yeah, it happens like that.
	Yeah, it does, right? It does. Okay, I'm sure it'll come back.
	So, you have been drawing, you've been doing this stuff since you were five, right?
	Mm-hmm. And tell me your habits in terms of artistic creation.
	What do you do? If you're talking currently, I haven't been for the most part over these past couple years, actually.
	I've just been in this rut of...
	I used to really just enjoy sitting down and just creating something and making it come to life on the page, but now I got into this point where I felt like I had to make money at it, and if I wasn't good enough to make money at it, then just screw it.
	But... I'd sit down and I've got a digital tablet for my computer and Photoshop and all that jazz and I'll just sit and work on pictures and everything.
	A lot of the time I would work for like 30 minutes or so, rest for 30, because I had heard about a like 20-30 or 20-40, something like that kind of rule.
	And I changed it a little bit because it's like, I don't want to only do 20, then rest 40.
	And according to the study, which I don't know the study, I was just told about it, they took a bunch of physical like workers breaking rocks, like prisoners breaking rocks, and they had them one group break them straight all day and the other group break them 20 minutes, rest for 40. and they had them one group break them straight all 20 minutes, rest for 40.
	And the group that got the rests actually were more productive over the whole day.
	So I was trying that out.
	And it was actually helping me for the most part.
	So when you draw, I got really bogged down by this.
	So when you draw, you haven't been doing much for the last couple of years, right?
	Not really. I've just been kind of, I guess, even scared of it.
	Right.
	So when you did draw in the past, did you work fairly often from five to, I guess, 17 or 18?
	Probably, yeah.
	Right. About 17 or 18 is where around it's slowed down.
	Did you draw pictures or did you create the panels, the drawing, the dialogue, the bubble text?
	Like, did you create comics like stories or did you mostly work on pictures?
	I mostly worked on pictures because whenever I first started, I couldn't draw at all.
	I had my grandmother told me one time, you know, you have a natural talent with art.
	And I looked at her and I was like, bull, I've been working at this for years.
	This isn't natural talent.
	It's earned. Right.
	Now people say to me, like, how do you just do this?
	It's like, I don't just do this.
	Just do it.
	Right. Right.
	Okay. So when you say you want to get a comic published, tell me what that means.
	Because comics can be like, you know, Scott Adams would be the first to admit he's not the greatest artist in the world, but he does a very successful comic Dilbert.
	Then, of course, there are more sophisticated comics like the Stan Lee stuff and all of that.
	That have more artistic merit to them and more skill and great stories and so on.
	So, when you say you want to have a comic published one day, what do you mean?
	What kind of comic? More of like a graphic novel.
	More of something that can stand alone.
	Right. Now, would you write it as well or would you work with a writer?
	I'd be fine with doing either.
	I'd probably lean a bit more towards having a writer, though.
	Until this past semester or so in college, I haven't had a lot of confidence in my writing.
	One of my professors really helped me out with that.
	I feel like I could do the writing, but I'd be fine with either or.
	Just to have...
	I obviously would like to have some say in the story, like creative process between both the people, but just to have that comic that's physical and it's illustrated by it and it's got my name there, that would be grand.
	Right. Okay, so then my question, my first question is, what would that do for you?
	And I understand that it will do good things, but I need to know from you, Jacob, what those good things are.
	So what would that mean to you?
	And what would you expect?
	how would your life improve if you were to get what you want?
	The main thing is I would be able to fulfill this desire that I've had in me since I was little.
	Yeah.
	No, no. Sorry to interrupt that.
	Okay, that's fair. I understand that.
	So you've had this desire, but the desire is for what?
	Like, say, we'll have a comic published.
	Okay, but what does that mean for you?
	What does that mean? I guess it kind of, like, validates that I am, like, worth something with art.
	Sorry, so you don't know?
	I don't know. I think that kind of, like, that it validates that I am, like, actually have value with my art.
	Yeah, okay, but...
	Yeah. That's sort of circular, you know, like, what does it get for you independent of confirmation?
	Because if you have this desire and then you say, well, it confirms that my desire is valid, we still don't know why you have the desire, right?
	Mm hmm.
	So what does it mean for you to have the comic published?
	I honestly don't know. - Wow.
	That may have something to do with it.
	So I'll give you a little bit of a backstory.
	I've been thinking about that. Yeah, I'll give you a little bit of a backstory about myself, and I won't get into this for too much detail, but I first started writing these short stories when I was about six years old.
	I started writing my first novel when I was 11.
	I didn't finish it.
	And I actually remember. I remember the English teacher reading it out to class one day.
	It was pretty funny. The love interest was not a mystery in the class.
	But anyway, I still remember her name.
	But then I did continue to work, write plays and stuff like that.
	I finally did get a novel.
	Written when I was in my early 20s, I think 23 or 24.
	And that's available, actually. You can get that at freedomainradio.com forward slash free.
	It's around, I think.
	And it's called Revolutions.
	Very good, I think. And then I just kept writing.
	And I did eventually, I took a very, I guess, fairly prestigious Canadian writing course.
	And I wrote my novel, The God of Atheists.
	And that was fantastic.
	It's a great book. It's a great book.
	Her regret rolled like a skinned seal pup in a low tide.
	Oh, it's just some great analogies, metaphors, philosophy, the whole deal.
	And funny. And that, I handed it to an agent who I got through the course.
	And she handed it out to a PhD literature professor.
	T.A., who, and I got the, I remember getting the, she faxed it to me, the review, and it was incredible.
	It was like the greatest review I've ever seen for a literary work.
	It was like, somebody has finally written the great Canadian novel, and this is going to put Canada on the literary map, and this is like the greatest thing I've ever read in modern literature.
	Like, it was an incredible, incredible review.
	And I remember like every time the phone rang, I'm like, here we go, you know, this is it.
	And Nothing.
	Just nothing. And I wrote another book.
	You know, just...
	It was tough.
	Now, I mean, so why did I want it?
	Well, I was good at it, and I enjoyed it.
	I got a special delicious...
	Pleasure out of creating all of these analogies and these characters, and they really came very vividly to life for me.
	Like, I remember with Revolutions, I did this exercise.
	No, no! It was for a play called Seduction, which I actually ended up putting on in Toronto, ran for a while.
	It was an adaptation of Turgenev's novels, Fathers and Sons.
	And I remember I drew pictures just as the characters themselves would draw them.
	And it's a great way of sort of getting, you have to do something that the characters are going to do in order to try and get more into their mind.
	And it's kind of a cliche, but the characters surprised me.
	They were engaging. They were enlightening.
	They were enjoyable. But I couldn't get any traction.
	I couldn't get any traction in the industry.
	Now, why did I? So I enjoyed the writing.
	I enjoyed the process. It felt very alive to me.
	And I wanted to share that liveliness.
	And I'll tell you, I mean, so there's some higher motivations as well, but there were other motivations as well.
	I mean, all who create, in a sense, want to show off.
	And there's nothing wrong with showing off.
	That's perfectly fine.
	But also, in my childhood, nobody listened to me, really.
	I had to do a lot of listening to other people, particularly my mom, who had loguria and basically would trap me in my room to tell me all these odd, creepy things about her dating life hour, hour after hour after hour, and I couldn't I couldn't pay attention because it was like horrible and I couldn't not pay attention because she'd snap at me if I wasn't listening.
	So I had to do a whole lot of listening and I guess...
	I had a whole lot of backed up talking that I wanted to do.
	So when you've had to listen a lot, or you've had to absorb a lot, you want to put out a lot so you can gain a sense of reality in the world, right?
	You can gain a sense of existence in the world.
	If you are constantly in a state of listening when you don't want to listen, and you're constantly in a state of having horrible words poured into you, they erase you.
	They wash you away like a sandblasting paint.
	They wash you away.
	They dilute you. You become simply a matter of avoiding the falling rain of bitter, confusing, horrible, creepy language.
	And you get washed away.
	You are a snow statue under a warm waterfall.
	So I felt that in not just listening, but in speaking, that I would gain some sense of reality in the world.
	And I didn't want to Corner people and blather onto them, right?
	I mean, this is why what I do is voluntary and people will pretend sometimes that it's not, you know, but writing books and doing shows and so on is not forcing my language on others.
	That's sort of a choice that people make.
	But I knew that I had absorbed a lot of bad words and I kind of wanted to turn them into gold and exude a lot of good words.
	It's the lead to gold alchemy that language can sometimes achieve.
	And I also found and find my mind an incredibly fascinating place to be.
	It is like what a Disney world of creativity and fertility I live in.
	Like living in this skull, living in this brain is...
	A wild and exciting place to be.
	And I surprise myself and the eruption of creativity is something that I don't will but rather manage.
	And inspiration is powerful, and I'm more used to it now, but certainly back in the beginning of this show, like I would, especially with the call-ins, I'd be like, I'd ask a bunch of questions, and it wouldn't be like until an hour, I'd even know why I asked those questions, and then it would all come together.
	And this does some time, I'm better at explaining my process now, but in the beginning, it was a lot of instinct and all that.
	So, it's an amazing place to be, mostly good, occasionally a little high-strung, but that's alright too.
	And I think I wanted to share that, and I guess I thought it was more common than it was.
	And also, when I look at sort of my happiness and fertility and creativity, and I compare that to this Artistic, cadaver-painting deadness of modern literature, where, yeah, every corpse is dressed up to be beautiful, but reading it still feels like fucking the dead.
	It is a very different level of energy.
	It's a very opposite level of fertility and happiness and creativity that I bring to my work that does not fit into.
	Like, what was the last really happy and joyful and exciting and exuberant modern novel that you read?
	Artistic, literary modern novel.
	They don't exist. They don't exist.
	And so, for me, recognizing that there was no place for my artistic brilliance to land, and that's a weird thing, you understand.
	I was just thinking about this the other day.
	You know, my mother denied reality, and I was concerned about that.
	I was like, well, I think I'm a really good writer.
	I think I'm a really good communicator.
	I think I have really interesting things to say.
	But the world isn't agreeing, right?
	And so when you grow up with someone who denies reality and it's disastrous, and the world doesn't agree with your own self-assessment, at least significantly, part of me is like, okay, well, am I crazy for believing in myself?
	Because my mom certainly believed things that were crazy, and am I crazy to believe in myself?
	It's really tough. It's a really, really tough situation.
	And this is another reason my philosophy was so important for me is that I really wanted to believe in myself and I really believed that I had something of great value to offer the world.
	But the world didn't particularly agree.
	Sometimes I'd get these little flashes, like that review or, you know, the first article I... No, the first essay that I wrote in my history degree was read out to a class of 300 people as being, like, the perfect essay and the best essay in the class and all that.
	So occasionally you get these flashes of, like, oh, good, okay, so this professor really likes my essay, so I'm sure he'll be really happy to end up being my advisor for my thesis.
	Eh... So there'd be all this enthusiasm followed by this backlash, which, again, I understand it more in hindsight now at the time.
	It's just really bewildering.
	It's like, I thought I was going to leave this crazy world of my childhood and go to a saner world, but it just seems to be more sophisticated but still kind of crazy.
	And so recognizing that for various philosophical reasons, mostly to do with self-knowledge and happiness, And also, the artistic world is well bent on destroying Western civilization, which I loved and wished to preserve and expand.
	There was a big, bitter conflict.
	I don't want to do the whole passage.
	I think people kind of know it as a whole, but I did recognize that Culture is downstream from philosophy.
	You know, everyone says philosophy is – sorry, culture is downstream.
	Politics is downstream from culture.
	But culture is downstream from philosophy.
	And because I had grown up on objectivism and Aristotelianism and empiricism and the British rationalist school as a whole, I had an exuberance and joy and happiness, which I still have, that comes out of that.
	I was not a particularly happy child, but I certainly, through philosophy, became a scathingly happy adult.
	And because the culture is downstream from philosophy, I had a different philosophy from most people in the culture.
	There was no place for the art, which came out of my philosophy, to land in the existing culture.
	It was opposed. Because my philosophy was opposed to the existing culture.
	The art which came out of my philosophy was opposed to the existing culture.
	And I would have faded into obscurity, of course, had there not been the internet, had there not been the capacity to bypass the gatekeepers and speak directly to the other happiness and positivity-based life forms that are around who can receive a message of grim hope.
	That's what philosophy is. It's grim hope.
	So I was able finally to find something which was the most productive thing for me to do after decades of long and painful, sometimes painful confusion and struggle and hope and then one step forward, two steps back kind of thing.
	The do-si-do of maybe.
	I was able to combine art and philosophy in what I do.
	The mere philosophy would be fairly boring syllogisms and dry language, but the passion and the analogies, the metaphors, the creativity with which I'm able to infuse philosophy gives it a kind of freakish life and light that is visible from a great emotional distance and a great cultural distance and great philosophical distance.
	It is a flare that goes up the artistic combination.
	Of robust philosophy.
	I work the syllogisms.
	That partly comes out of a pretty logical nature.
	It also partly comes out of many decades of computer programming, which teaches you very rigorous logic.
	In fact, your paycheck and your success, particularly as an entrepreneur, depends upon it.
	You can't fake whether the logic works, whether the system works or not.
	And it's a very rational process.
	There was training in that. And so I did find that robust syllogisms infused with creative and artistic sensibilities was a very potent combination for the world, and it's why this show has done well north of half a billion downloads and views now, and why I'm headlining at these events in New York, and there'll be more to come.
	So the purpose is, like, I know why, and I felt I had a great deal to offer that was rejected and overshadowed.
	By being in a state of constant anxious listening as a child, being forced to listen to things I didn't want to listen to.
	Having been so silenced as a child and so poured into, I wanted to assert myself by pouring out.
	And I wanted to show off my intellectual and verbal abilities, which are considerable, and I wanted to do a whole bunch of things.
	And I also wanted to be of service to the world and felt that I could because I do believe, because I accept the bell curve and a lot of my gifts are genetic, I'm lucky.
	And because I'm lucky, there's a noblesse oblige, I think.
	If you are lucky in your capacities, then you do have not a moral obligation, but you do have somewhat of an aesthetic obligation to share your good fortune.
	You know, like if you inherit a whole bunch of money...
	Do something with it that's of good to the world.
	Don't just sort of squander it on personal hedonism, but, you know, go start a business or help a charity or whatever it is, right?
	Do something with – because you didn't earn it.
	It doesn't mean you shouldn't have it because the property rights of your parents are important.
	Who they want to give the money to is fine, but do something.
	You know, you happen to inherit a fortune.
	If you happen to inherit a lot of money, you didn't earn it.
	Nothing wrong with it, but – Do something with it that's, you know, if you make it yourself, you can use it for hedonism, but if you inherit it, I'd say do something that makes the world a better place.
	That's the case I would like.
	It's basically you got real lucky with your good, so spread the joy a little.
	Yeah, absolutely. So, I'm not sort of trying to say this is anything similar to where you are or what you want to do, but if I were to sort of say, okay, well, what's the motivation?
	What's going on with me?
	If you know it, then you can pursue it, I think, more energetically if you know why you're doing.
	But if you – because some people have dreams in order to self-reject.
	Some people have dreams in order to make themselves anxious.
	Some people have dreams in order to – Lacerate themselves or lash at themselves for failing to achieve them.
	Dreams can be motivations, they can be idealizations, they can be fantasies, or they can be nightmares.
	And I don't know where your dream fits into your happiness.
	Yeah, and I'm not really sure about it either.
	I've thought for this whole time that this is what I've always wanted, but there's always been a part of me that's thought, well, why?
	And then, you know, I can't answer why.
	And it's like, well, if you can't answer why, Do you really want this that bad?
	Well, do you want to make people happy with the power and beauty of your drawings?
	And by happy, it can be a tragedy.
	It can be Hamlet or whatever.
	It can be a nightmare scenario.
	But you want to bring people some sort of vivid experience through your art.
	You just reminded me of the thing that I wish I hadn't forgotten.
	One of my reasons for making a comic book was that if I could just give two people the escape that comics and things like that gave me and help them out, that would be great.
	But you haven't escaped, Jacob.
	That's the problem. That's true.
	Right? That's the problem. That's the problem.
	You're still in the house with the masturbating, get my kid addicted to drugs guy.
	Mm-hmm. I am.
	Now, if you were to escape, then you could show others maybe how to escape.
	Mm-hmm. Then you'd have a story to tell that wouldn't be false.
	That's true. I've been thinking about that as well.
	There's some stories that I've had ideas for, but I wouldn't be able to write them because I wouldn't know how they finished because I've never experienced it.
	Like how you're saying, I wouldn't be able to tell people how to escape when I haven't escaped myself.
	Yeah, I think the most powerful stories are the lessons that we ourselves need to learn, or have learned, or wish to share.
	Like my first novel was about a guy who was very politically active and very much wanted to change the world directly through politics.
	And the tension was, okay, does he do that?
	Or does he become a father and a husband and make the world a better place by four or five new people?
	And that was a big question for me at the time.
	And I worked through that question through that novel.
	And then there was my next novel, Just Poor, was about a woman who was afraid that she was going to take her brilliance and vanish into obscurity because nobody could see how smart she was.
	That was also a concern of mine at the time.
	Yeah. And so, you could, of course, you don't have to escape in order to write a story or a comic about escaping, but you need to explore your desire to escape through the story and come to some kind of conclusion that changes or motivates your life, if that makes sense. Yeah, it really does.
	I can use the The fictional landscape of the story to learn and figure it out.
	Yeah, what's keeping you there versus what would it mean to escape?
	Yes. Right?
	Those are fascinating questions.
	How much do you want to get out?
	Is it worth getting out? Is it good?
	What's keeping you there? Is it worried for your mom?
	What does it mean for you to have your own life?
	What does it mean for you to be potentially enslaved by the bad decisions of others who came before you?
	What does it mean? To be a hero.
	Is being a hero taking care of your father and your mother?
	Is being a hero escaping to a life of independence and power and freedom?
	I don't know. For your circumstance, these are all very important questions which people wrestle with all the time.
	All the time. I'm very glad you're bringing him up because I know whenever I listen back to this, things like that that I'm going to be...
	Really picking up on, for sure.
	Is it, I mean, just take a silly example, is it more important for me to spend a day with my daughter or give a speech?
	I don't know. I've been thinking about it for the last three or four days.
	Actually, even before then, when I was planning on it, because I haven't been out giving speeches in years.
	I give a good speech.
	And is it important?
	In other words, if I can do something to help the world, is that an important part of parenting as well?
	These are big and important questions which we all wrestle with.
	You know, I wouldn't want to be on the road permanently giving speeches and never be home.
	I would not. But also, at the same time, if I'm only home and don't play the part that I can play in making the world better for my daughter to grow up in, maybe that's not good parenting either.
	It's challenging, and there's no easy answers.
	It's a lot of balancing acts.
	Well, and there's no balance.
	It's balancing, but you never appear.
	There's no balance. You think that you can walk the tightrope, but...
	Well, yeah, because what is the perfect balance?
	There's no, I mean, there isn't any such thing.
	That would be very much dependent on the person.
	Well, and the situations change, right?
	Exactly. Because it's not like, okay, so it was a very important event to go to this last weekend.
	Maybe I get an invitation to something that isn't quite as important.
	Maybe it's further away.
	I don't know. You know, this is a very tough question.
	There's no... Just do this.
	It's like the Aristotelian mean, right?
	Yes, be involved in the world to make the world a better place for your children, but not to the point where you abandon your children, right?
	But don't sit around with your children all the time and not make the world a better place because it won't be better.
	It'll be worse if you don't do anything, right?
	And it's a very complicated and challenging question, and this question of how much you do in the world versus how much you do in the home Is a big problem.
	We all know people with either extremes.
	Actually, we mostly know the people who do too much in the world because the other people we don't see as much, right?
	Yeah. Go on YouTube and you can find a lot of the people who are doing too much.
	Yeah. Or, you know, so let's say I say, okay, well, I'm just going to spend time with my family and then the world goes to hell in a handbasket.
	Am I going to sit there and say, well, that was kind of stupid.
	That was a bad decision. Because if you think about it, part of it is your fault because what did you do?
	Exactly. Exactly.
	If you have the power to do it and you don't do it, you're responsible.
	And I know which way the world is heading and stuff needs to be fixed.
	And it's pretty important.
	And... My daughter at 20 might look back and say, well, it's great that you spent a lot of time going to play centers with me, but the world is kind of crappy right now and you could have done something about that and I would have given up some play center time for that.
	It's a very important question and I don't know.
	I don't know. Yeah. I don't know.
	I have strong motivations to both.
	Understandably. Very valid reasons for both.
	Yeah. And the not being there, my daughter may value later, but she won't value now.
	And I've got a wife.
	Anyway, so it's complicated.
	It's a very complicated equation.
	But you have the same thing, right?
	Yes. What is your responsibility to your mother and your father?
	This is a very complicated question.
	Because not only is there no objectively easy answer, but you have to have an answer that you can live with not just in the now, but in the future.
	Maybe for the rest of your life.
	You'll have to have some kind of answer.
	If you say, well, I'm going to stick around and help my mom with my dad, and your life never gets going, you're going to hate yourself for it, right?
	If you go...
	And have your life outside of the home and then some guilt kicks in or someone finds a button and I don't know.
	I mean, I know which one I lean towards.
	I think it's pretty obvious, but I don't have to live with the decision you do, right?
	And so it's easy for me from the outside.
	It's always difficult when you're inside talking to people directly with your history and all that.
	But if you have...
	If you're wrestling with that kind of stuff and you can do it in a way that can be interesting to other people, then that's, right?
	That could be something that I could do.
	And you have someone who is both a villain and a victim.
	You have someone who is both a villain and a victim and that's complicated.
	You know, if your father was, you know, strong and healthy and still kicking everyone's ass and screaming at people and doing cocaine, it would be like...
	Oh, if he was still like that, like, me and him and my brother would have gotten, we would have gotten physical with him at this point.
	Well, or you might just go.
	Yeah, exactly. But now that he's...
	I'm just saying, because I know by this point, if through high school, we probably would have gotten into it.
	Yeah, yeah. Yeah, maybe the stroke saved a life.
	Who knows, right? Well, I mean, keep in mind, we're all around six feet.
	Yeah. We're all big guys.
	Yeah. We can't just throw each other around.
	Like, the damage happens to us, to the house, to anything.
	Like, damage will occur.
	It's like a weird short circuit to save the family, your father's stroke, right?
	In a way. So...
	It's...
	Yeah, somebody who's both a...
	A villain and a victim.
	It's a complicated situation.
	And even his victimhood is questionable if his own rage and inability or unwillingness to control it and his drug abuse and all of this, if that had something to do with...
	and his laziness and his smoking and all this kind of crap, right?
	He's not even that simple a victim, right?
	The villainy left...
	Sorry, the villainy to some degree led to the, quote, victimhood.
	And so this is all very complicated.
	What is your relationship to somebody?
	Who's been abusive, who's been horrible, who's contributed to the addiction of your sister who died from it.
	And you're, I mean, that's, I hate to say material, like a lot of material, like that just sounds so cold.
	But there's a lot of complexity in the stuff that you have to deal with.
	And the complexity, it's funny, I'll tell you something, I'll tell you something interesting.
	The complexity that I had regarding my childhood turned out to not be very complex at all, but it took quite a long time to get there.
	And the reason for that was that my mother wanted me to stick around.
	And I'll just talk about her as more people involved, but I'll just talk about her.
	So my mother wanted me to stick around.
	But I didn't. I didn't.
	There was no pleasure in me, in contact with my mother and I had not been for years.
	It was very unpleasant and very much a repetition of this being cornered and the logorrhea and the verbal diarrhea and just, ugh, that was just exhausting and No, I feel you completely.
	I've had to deal with some of that myself and it just gets so frustrating when you just want an answer.
	I just like, you know, get the giant maternal plunger and like, just shut up.
	Just keep your words inside.
	Use your inside voice. In fact, never again use your outside voice.
	And so when it came to figure out what I wanted to do, It became very simple once I realized what I wanted to do, not what other people around me wanted me to do, but just, okay, what do I want to do?
	Like, just me. What do I do?
	And to some degree, because I have done or been forced to do so many things for so many other people, what have I earned the right to do?
	What do I deserve to do after all of this subjugation, after all of this control, after all of this abuse?
	What do I deserve? What have I earned in a sense?
	Not like you have to go through it to earn it, but I damn well earned it by going through it.
	And for me, once...
	I no longer was trying to please everybody, but just figuring out what I wanted, things became quite simple.
	Obviously, your mother wants you to stick around because you're a great help.
	Obviously, your father wants you to stick around.
	We haven't talked much about your brother, but there's people who want you to stick around.
	It's the only complexity unraveling what you want versus what other people want.
	Because people who want something from you very rarely have the honesty and the vulnerability to say to you, Jacob, man, I need you to stick around.
	What they will do is they'll say, it's the right thing to do to stick around.
	He's your father.
	It's the right thing to do.
	Nobody would abandon the father who's unwell.
	Like, they will attempt to cudgel you or club you with some sort of abstract moral standard, which just happens to coincide with exactly what they want, that they don't really have the right to ask you.
	Can your mother genuinely say to you, Jacob, you are responsible for your father?
	It's like, nope, I didn't marry him.
	You chose him, I didn't.
	Uh-uh. Exactly.
	She chose him. I didn't.
	So then she's going to probably say something like, well, either she's going to play victim or she's going to play bully.
	And the bully is, it's the right thing to do, and the victim is, I can't do it alone.
	Yeah. But then what she's saying is, well, you see, you, at the age of five, were able to handle watching your father do cocaine with your sister and drag your Twin brother around by the neck and choke him.
	You can handle all of that, but I can't handle this.
	I'm sorry? I was just trying to say I didn't know about the cocaine until I was probably about 16 or so.
	But the other stuff, right?
	Yes. The other stuff, I'm not trying to play that down.
	No, no. I appreciate the facts.
	No, don't let me get away with assumptions that are incorrect.
	That's perfectly valid, and I appreciate you correcting me on that.
	But, yeah, she's going to say that you at the age of five could handle all of that rage and seeing that abuse and maybe experiencing it yourself.
	But now she, at the age of, I don't know, 40 or 50 or 55 or whatever, she can't handle it.
	Well, no. It's the old thing, you know.
	Take what you want and then pay for it.
	Make your bed and then lie in it.
	But working that out, you know, having multiple characters that you're arguing with is...
	Because that's what good art is.
	This is a big argument between perspectives, right?
	And having vivid characters on the page that you're arguing with is a great way of working out what's yours and what's the infection of others' preferences in your mind.
	It's a very important process to go through and it does go through in art quite a bit.
	The good art goes through that process quite well, I think.
	Well, that really helps me out because it kind of gives me a direction to amen.
	Because the idea of using this as a way to figure this out, I hadn't even thought of that.
	Right what you know.
	And not only could that help me, that could also end up helping others.
	Right.
	So it could be a massive positive to humanity in multiple ways.
	Right.
	Right. You are not alone in these challenges.
	I'm sure I'm not.
	Just one of the few who's voicing it, I guess.
	Right. Well, I would say try and work through it this way.
	And this is just one possible suggestion, Jacob, of a topic that you could have.
	But there's a reason you're going to be I suggest this to people as a whole.
	Just keep a journal and write your thoughts down.
	Have arguments with yourself.
	Writing stuff down is a very, very powerful thing to do.
	I mean, I do it just about every day in terms of like I'll write something or at least verbally talk about something because I've kind of got it down to an art of exposition.
	But yes, to stay on track.
	It's easy to be taken over by the preferences of others unless you articulate and verbalize what's going on in your mind.
	There's constant pushback against manipulation in the world that is.
	And art can be fantastic for helping you with that, even if the art is only your own personal journal, so to speak.
	It's funny, it just reminds me...
	It has nothing to do with anything, but it just popped into my mind.
	It does every now and then.
	I had a friend years ago who got married.
	It's not a good marriage, I don't think.
	And I was over at their house once, and she had these books, these like little red-bound notebooks, and there was like a whole shelf of them, like probably 30 or 40 of them, right?
	And I said, oh, what are those?
	And she said, those are my journals.
	I've been keeping them since I was eight years old.
	Those are my journals. I've kept them, you know, through school, through university, through travel, through career, and so on, right?
	And I said, wow, that's a lot.
	I mean, what does your husband think?
	She said, you know why I married him?
	Because he was the only guy who never asked to look inside.
	Hmm. And I went, well, that's kind of messed.
	It's kind of messed up. Why is he not?
	I don't know. You're asking me to explain crazy people.
	I can't possibly explain it.
	It could have been something she just said.
	I don't want to know about your past. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Well, I guess it's an alpha thing.
	I don't care about you. Maybe she thought that would mean it was – well, she was disappointed that he didn't end up more successful from his early promise.
	I don't have time to look at your journals.
	I'm out conquering the world.
	Or it could be that he just doesn't really care about you that much.
	Anyway. Well, keep us posted about how it goes.
	And if you do get anything cranked out, be sure to send it over.
	I'd like to have a look. And I do want to thank you and the callers and the supporters.
	Of the show, freedomainradio.com slash donate to help the show out if you want to follow me on Twitter.
	Good stuff coming out of there as well.
	It's twitter.com forward at Stefan Molyneux and fdrurl.com slash Amazon if you've got some shopping to do and by the by the art of the argument.
	is, of course, available, and you can check it out at theartoftheargument.com, a book I'm very happy with.
	And you can sign up for a newsletter at freedomainradio.com because, hey, you just never know what's going to happen, except you do know what's going to happen, which is going to have another great show very, very soon.
	Thanks, everyone, so much.
	Have a great, great night.

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