June 10, 2018 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
03:54:45
4115 Doctor's Note For Being A B!tch - Call In Show - June 6th, 2018
Question 1: [1:25] – “I grew up as a loner, disliked school, likes guns and fit the typical profile of a school shooter, but obviously didn’t do any such thing. I would like to push back against your argument for holding parents accountable if their children commit crimes such as mass shootings. Instead I have a proposed solution that I would like your thoughts on.”Question 2: [16:30] – “I think I disagree with Stefan on the issue of single mothers. Since single father's sexual market value is brought down a peg, wouldn't it then be appropriate for single fathers to date single mothers? In my opinion, the up side to dating a single mother is if you eventually want children with her, you would be able to have a bird's eye view in action of how potentially your children would be treated by her.”Question 3: [1:31:40] – “I have a background in philosophy and theology. I started reading your book out of curiosity to see what you had to say 'against the gods'. I usually find your work interesting, and in depth which I appreciate. However, when it came to your discussion of theism it was painfully uninformed. So, my question for you is: Do you find theism so out of the question that you don't take the time to adequately research it, or was there another reason that you abdicated good research methods? A specific example is your discussion of omnipotence and omniscience, you seem to think you dispatched theism in a few paragraphs, but you failed to define what is meant by those terms. When you attempted to represent what a theist would say in response you gave a skewed understanding of the motive for Divine Atemporality. Theists didn't create divine timelessness to get out of an incoherence, rather it was because various philosophical considerations pushed them in that direction (divine simplicity, immutability, arguments from motion, notions of necessity etc.). I can detail other egregious errors, and a logical fallacy in the arguments against Theism in the book as well. So, why the disparity on this topic?”Question 4: [2:25:21] – “I have recently ended a number of, what had been, close friendships due to some traumatic incidents within the friendship group. After hearing my reasons for cutting off one individual many others followed suit, ending both personal friendships and working relationships. Most of those that continued to be friends with this individual eventually ended their friendships with me. Following this incident, I have found myself heavily scrutinizing the people that continue to spend time with those who I have cut off, and I have little respect for people to try to tow the middle line and not take sides. My question is, how far should people be held accountable for the actions of the people they choose to be friends with? If you are the company you keep, should those that stick by people who behave immorally be painted with the same brush and how far does that extend to their relationships?”Your support is essential to Freedomain Radio, which is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by making a one time donation or signing up for a monthly recurring donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate
Hey everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
Hope you're doing well. Great callers tonight!
I love you guys so much.
It's wonderful to have these conversations every week.
Please don't forget to help out the show at freedomainradio.com slash donate.
First caller doesn't like the idea that parents could be held responsible for children who grow up to be, or who are still, as children, school shooters, and we talked about all of that.
The second caller attempted to change my mind about my evaluation of the majority of single moms within society, and I guess I'll let you figure out for yourself how he did.
The third caller has a background in philosophy and theology, and was sure that my book, Against the Gods, was filled with egregious errors and untold countless, nay, a veritable locust swarm of logical fallacies.
So we had it out.
And the fourth caller was a young woman who was part of a friendship group and then was attacked by one of the men in that friendship group and found out chillingly what friendship means or doesn't mean to a lot of people.
A very powerful story. So thanks everyone so much.
Don't forget to pick up your copy of The Art of the Argument at theartoftheargument.com.
You can do some shopping at fdrurl.com forward slash Amazon.
And don't forget to follow me on Twitter at Stefan Mullany.
Alright, well up for us today we have Brian.
Brian wrote in and said, And all the other problems that go along with it, but I didn't do anything like this, obviously.
Given the current state of things in government, I would like to offer some basic pushback on the argument against holding parents accountable as accessories to murder in these cases as you proposed on your YouTube video the other day.
And instead, I'd like to offer a proposed solution and get your opinion on it, because I could be wrong as well, and if I am, I will accept that.
That's from Brian. Hey Brian, how you doing?
So you don't like the idea, or you argue, I shouldn't say, you have problems with the idea that we should hold parents accountable for the actions of their children?
Well, not necessarily.
I'm not an ideologue, so if I'm wrong, I guess I just want to know, I guess, where I would be wrong in my thinking.
But it's, it was, first of all, it's really nice to be on your show.
I missed that part of being able to say all that.
Thank you. Um, and I just, I guess what I wanted to, to, I guess, get a clarification, um, is like, I guess, how, how would that work?
Um, you know, uh, cause I, I kind of fit into some of the, you know, I think back to my childhood and, you know, I had every problem you could think of and like, I mean, the furthest thing from my mind would be something like that.
And, um, so I, I just kind of wonder like, well, you know, how, how would it work?
I guess, um, Logistically, I suppose.
And then, you know, and I have my own kind of my own thoughts as to like how to maybe solve it or look at look at the issue.
But but I'd like to hear kind of, I guess, more of a more expansion, you know, if you could expound a bit more.
Sure. So let's say you have a 12 year old child and your 12 year old child shoplifts.
Who should be responsible for paying back the store?
Well, okay. Yeah, I guess that's a good point.
But I guess where would it end, though?
Hang on, hang on. Hang on.
See, we're jumping. Everybody wants to jump to the end, step by step.
This is foreplay, not...
All right. And so if my child does something wrong, assuming that the child is of the age of reason or something like that, if my child does something wrong, Then I, as a parent, am liable for it.
Like, if my child keys a car, and my child is 10 years old, well, the child doesn't have the money to fix it.
So, that would accrue to the parents, right?
So, the parents are responsible for the actions of the child, until the child is an adult, right?
And a child who's 17 is not legally an adult in most places, so...
That is the basic argument for it.
So if your child commits a criminal action that has liability associated with it, Then you would be responsible for it.
If you are the parent and your child gets a hold of your guns, which you're supposed to keep locked up and away from people, particularly children, then you would be an accessory, I would assume, or logically you would be some sort of accessory because the child uses your weapons, which the child is not supposed to be able to get a hold of.
The child uses your weapons to commit a crime.
Okay. I... Well, I guess the...
So, I mean, if you permit to give a little bit of pushback on this, is that, like, I guess where my challenge is, like, it would be, like, the waking man hours that kids spend in the public school system or in the school system.
I mean, it seems like they would share some responsibility as well, not just the parents.
Again, not specifically speaking of any one particular case, but just in kind of generically, as it pertains to, like, a school shooting would be It seems like they would be kind of getting away with being able to have all of this influence, all of this huge amount of influence on kids, and making parents almost like ancillary characters in their lives.
This is particularly true in some states here in the U.S., where not only is homeschool...
You know, discouraged.
I mean, I think in California, they've all but banned it.
And so what they're saying is that we're requiring massive influence in your kids' lives, but we don't want any of the responsibility.
We want to just put it right back on you.
And I guess that's where, to me, it kind of muddies the water a little bit, where it's like, okay, well, in other words, in a vacuum, if the If our, you know, if our influence directly with our kids and stuff, and by the way, I don't have a dog in this fight.
My son's grown and gone and everything and stuff.
So, I mean, I'm just trying to figure out the mechanics of it, of the amount of influence that we have on our kids.
You know, we do the best to influence them as well as we can.
Okay, so, yeah, no, I get it.
Kids' schools have influence.
But the vast majority of personality is developed in the first couple of years of life, particularly the first four or five years of life.
Right. So the parents still have a significant amount of responsibility even before the children go to schools, right?
Yeah, yeah.
So saying it's all the school's fault, I know that's a straw man, I know you're not saying exactly that, but saying it's significantly the school's fault, well, the schools can prune but parents plant and grow, right?
And so I would say that certainly in the case of Broward County, I would assume that in a rational legal system, which would only exist if there were no government schools, but in Broward County, for instance, with Nicholas Cruz, the dozens of times that they should have intervened to deal with this issue but didn't, then that would have legal repercussions as well.
But I think that parents are responsible because you say, oh, well, in California, it's tough to homeschool.
So you leave California? I mean, you leave California.
You find a way to do it.
I mean, these are your children, for heaven's sake.
You know, saying, well, I like living in California, so I'm going to put my kids in a terrible school system.
Well, that's a decision you have to take responsibility for as a parent, right?
Yeah. I mean, I guess, I mean, those are all really good points.
It's, you know, like I said, I'm not an ideologue.
So, I mean, it's...
Those are really good points, and I don't really have a counter for it, I suppose.
I mean, I wish I had a...
In my head, I kind of played it out in my head a little, trying to think of how I wanted to explain it.
But, I mean, it's a good explanation that you give.
Like I said, I kind of look into...
I just think back to my childhood, and I'm like, you know, I mean, I was messed up and had everything going wrong for me.
But I just never did anything like this.
Or even thought of anything like this.
And... So, I guess, just on a personal side, it's like, well, I think of people like this, of young boys like this that do things like this, and I kind of wonder, like, what in the world is going through their minds to pull something like this off?
Well, I'm going to assume also that you weren't put on psychotropic drugs.
No, no, I didn't have any insurance.
I don't need insurance for that kind of stuff.
So, when I say that parents are responsible, I don't mean to imply that only parents are responsible.
Oh. But the reality is that if you are the parent, it is your job to ensure that your children grow up in the healthiest environment possible.
Yes. And that is the job.
That is the gig. That is the whole deal.
And whatever you have to do, To make sure that your children grow up in the healthiest environment possible, well, then that's just what you got to do.
And parents can say, well, it's difficult or it's tough or it's this or it's that.
It's like, that's the gig.
You know, if you don't want the gig, don't have kids.
But, you know, if you have kids, your responsibility is to put them in the healthiest environment possible.
Peers have a big influence on kids, but parents control the peer environment because parents can move without the permission needed from the children.
If you're a parent and your kid's moving with the wrong crowd, you move.
You do whatever it takes.
To make your children's environment as healthy as humanly possible.
If that means moving to a small town, if that means making a tight income, if that, like, whatever.
You just, that's what you gotta do.
And if you don't do that, and then the environmental toxins of peer pressure and bad schools and bullies and conflicts and fights and psychotropics, I mean, if they then mess up your kid, well, you're responsible for leaving your child in that environment.
Could, okay, so, I mean, I guess with that, then, I mean, what about the, if you could, can you address possibly the, I guess the demographics of it?
In other words, like the, it's, I mean, it's already, we're already seeing people not wanting to have enough, nearly enough kids.
I didn't myself. I only had the one.
I would have, I would like to have had more, but it just didn't work out that way for me.
But, you know, like if we, in other words, it's like if we're If we carry that thought through, wouldn't that put even more pressure on younger people now or potential parents to want to do all these things?
I agree with you.
You're right. It is the parent's responsibility.
If you're going to have kids, you should do everything possible to give them the best environment.
In my son's case, I don't think I've ever even raised my voice to him.
I grew up in a terrible environment like that, so I didn't want him to grow up in an environment like that.
How would we address that?
What would your thoughts be on the societal part of that?
Not necessarily the accountability, but the difficulty that people are already having No, no, but Brian, this is designed to decrease the difficulty and stress and conflict that people have raising their children.
So when I say you move your children or you get your children into an environment that is safe and positive and healthy and so on, I'm not saying take this huge sacrifice and have a miserable life so that your children do well.
I'm saying do that so you actually enjoy being a parent.
Because being a parent, when your children are in a toxic environment, being a parent is hell in that situation.
Because your kids are being pulled in bad directions, they're being bullied maybe, or they're becoming bullies, they're being taught garbage, they're being indoctrinated, they're being, oh my god, it's ridiculous.
I was talking to some young people in Canada the other day, they said that at their school, they're being told, or in a sense forced, To write songs about social justice warrior issues.
Like, that's full-on commie chanting crap.
And so you either say, well, that's a bullshit assignment, but I just decided it.
You know what I mean? Like, you can't have as much fun as a parent if your children are in a toxic environment.
You just can't. So this is to encourage.
How much fun do you think it is?
Like when young people hear parents around them talking about how difficult it is raising teenagers and how stressful it is and how they don't listen and they don't obey and they don't take your feelings into account and they're selfish and they're irresponsible.
Like when people hear that, does that make them want to have kids?
Of course not. But if people say, oh, you know, I have a great time with my kids.
You know, today we went to the Science Center, then we went for a hike and took a little app along that allowed us to identify the plants.
It's like, well, that sounds pretty game good, doesn't it?
So it's not about trying to make parenting harder for people.
It's about trying to make parenting easier for people and more fun.
No, and that part, yeah, I agree with you on that, too.
I was referring more to the, I guess, the economic and environment side of it.
Given the state of things in terms of the type...
Unfortunately, we live in a government-controlled world, it seems, and getting worse all the time.
And that's kind of where I was approaching that, was just the amount of intervening that government keeps doing into our lives that makes that job way more difficult than it really needs to be.
That's kind of what I was... The government would draft your sons into a war, which happened regularly throughout the 20th century.
You got me there. Compared to, I don't know, religious warfare, Spanish Inquisition, compared to endless wars and invasions and starvation, plague and pestilence.
And, you know, I mean, wolves, a dingo got my baby, you know, I mean, it's not too bad being a parent these days compared to a lot of times throughout history.
No, that's fair.
Nobody's opening up your child's heart to sacrifice to Moloch, at least outside of the Clinton compound.
No, fair enough.
I guess I just wanted to expound a little bit on that.
I'd heard the YouTube program on it, and And when you kind of closed with it, I was like, well, you know, what about, you know, I kind of wanted you to expand, you know, I was like hoping for more, like, is there going to be some expansion?
And that's kind of, I guess, that's where my question was coming from, was just sort of thinking like, just to get some more clarification and everything.
Again, as a parent and stuff, I'm not dad of the year or anything, but, you know, I think I'm pretty good.
And, you know, I didn't do stuff like that, nor did my son or my family, so...
And some of this could just be my projecting of, one, trying to figure out how people can think like that.
Right. Well, I'm glad that I answered your question, and I'm glad that you gave me the chance to clarify it.
But let's move on to the next caller.
Thanks, Ryan. That's from Michael.
What a topic, Michael. Thank you for bringing it up.
How are you doing tonight? Hello.
Can you hear me? Yes. The God King of Anarchy himself.
Let me just say up front, it is an honor to speak to you, Stefan.
Well, thank you very much. I appreciate that.
I appreciate that. Wow.
Are you a single father by chance?
Yeah, I am.
I want to say from the outset, the reason I'm asking is to...
Also lead into...
Well, the first reason is because I want to see if you can convince me otherwise.
But also, it leads into something that's happened to me...
Excuse me.
Something traumatic that's happened to me recently.
My view of it is that...
When you're a single father, or mainly a single father, and you're dating a single mother, you're sort of on the same level, in my view, as the single mother.
You both come with the liabilities of other people's kids and entanglements, although the single mother often comes with income as far as alimony and child support comes, but the single father comes with liability in that he may be paying for those, right?
Yeah. I never looked at it from that...
I should have known.
I started watching your show.
Hardcore recently.
But I never looked at it from the economic standpoint.
I've always...
What I'm saying is you're not wrong.
You're right, of course. You are spending a lot of syllables to say, I agree.
Please try and concentrate and focus on what it is that you want to say so that we don't end up being four hours to get three points.
Let me give you a couple of thoughts about this.
I'll hear what's going on in your life.
There is, of course, a fit in some ways between single fathers and single mothers in terms of Having kids that might blend and so on.
One of the challenges is that if children...
Aren't biologically related and don't grow up together.
When they get older, I think there can be more of a potential for boundary violations regarding physicality or sexuality.
It may not be a big chance higher, but I would assume that there's some slightly higher chance, you know, stepbrothers, stepsisters, and so on.
They don't have that same biological incest shield as being biologically related and growing up together.
That could be a potential issue to keep...
An eye on, but I guess my first question would be, you say, you can see how she's treating her children.
But my question would be more, or my observation would be more, Michael, that you actually get a bird's eye view on how she treated the father of her children.
And that's the role, in a sense, that you'd be stepping into, and that's something that I would be concerned about as well.
Yeah, you know, that's a really good point, too.
Wow. I never really thought of it like that.
So let me ask you this.
How did you become a single father?
Oh, man.
I've seen a lot of these episodes.
Well, the thing is that I had a girlfriend.
We were together for We just broke up last year.
But we got together.
And we were going to get married, actually.
She was more than my girlfriend.
And so it just sort of felt right.
But the thing is, is that I sort of...
Well, not sort of.
I did fall out of love with her about two and a half years into the relationship.
And I stuck around because...
She said she was pregnant.
And after that, I said, okay, well, I have to stick around because I feel like I have a moral obligation now.
Oh, so were you thinking of breaking up with her and then she just got pregnant?
Well, I wasn't thinking of breaking up with her.
You said you fell out of love with her, didn't you?
Yeah, I mean, in a sense, yeah, because the thing is, is that her...
Birth control just turned her into something that I didn't even recognize.
The birth control made her make my view of her decline.
Does that make sense?
She was a bitch when she was on birth control.
Is that what you mean? We can just be frank.
I mean, just be straight with me, man, because I really want to pay attention to what you're saying, but it's a little tough to do so when everything's so slow and halted.
So she became a bad person or a mean person when she was on birth control.
And so you were falling out of love with her.
So she went off birth control.
Is that right? And then she thought she was pregnant?
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
And so...
That happened. I'm sorry, Michael.
Are you like moving around or something?
Getting a little bit of background noise on your end?
Let me...
You're just touching the mic or moving around or something.
Just try and stay as still as you can or at least leave the microphone as still as you can.
Yeah, or set it down at a desk and talk at it if you can.
Is this better? We'll find out.
Yeah, that's better. Thank you.
Okay, so she got...
She thought she was pregnant.
She wasn't pregnant at the time, is that right?
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
No, she did get pregnant because her birth control, not the effects of her birth control in terms of what it was making, how it was making her be, because it was the depo shot.
which is the shot that gets injected into her body.
Yeah. So in about a few years into our relationship is when she got pregnant.
But at the beginning of our relationship is when she got the depo shot.
When she got it, I thought, okay, well, you know, she's starting to act like a bitch, but you know what?
I'll stick around because she was really good in the beginning.
And basically, it just got to a point where I was like, oh, like, I don't...
How do you know it was the birth control, though?
Yeah. Well, because she told me that she had a hormonal imbalance.
A hormonal imbalance, and she was saying that I think her doctor said that the birth control is making her the way she is.
Something like that.
I just took her word for it, and now that you're saying it, You know, maybe she just...
Wait, she had a doctor's note for being a bitch?
Really? I shouldn't laugh, but that's the story that she's got.
My doctor said I could be really, really mean to you, and it's my hormones.
You know when you say something and you're just like, wait a minute.
You are one friendly person to female manipulation.
I'll tell you that, Mike. Stefan, this is just the tip of the iceberg.
The... This woman, I mean, as far as I'm concerned...
I got a doctor's note for sleeping around, honey.
I don't want to get backed up.
It's not good for my prostate.
So I got to sleep with other women on business trips and the doctor gave me a note.
You can't say anything now, can you?
I can explain my browser history with a doctor's note.
Gotta keep the pipes clean.
Wow, I like the doctors know.
I'd like to meet these doctors.
That'd be fantastic.
The number of times I've heard women say, well, my doctor said it this way.
And it's like, what are you supposed to say, right?
I'd really like to go talk to this doctor together because I got to live with your bitch eruption.
So I'd really like to know what the cause is.
And the other thing to do is to say, well, I've got a hormonal imbalance that's made worse by this birth control pill.
Well, then my suggestion would be stop taking that birth control pill or injection or whatever it's going to be, right?
So stop taking that.
Because if you're a bitch, we ain't having sex anyway, so birth control doesn't really mean anything.
The depo shot, apparently it lasts anywhere from two years to five years.
It just depends on the person, I guess.
What? Yeah, yeah, just one shot.
What? No, I call bullshit.
Not on you. I mean, this is just what I've been told.
Well, see, it's your sperm and her eggs, so I think you might want to be a little bit less, it's what I was told, right?
Here we go. Deproprovera is a contraceptive method for women.
It's a shot that a doctor gives you in the arm or buttocks.
Each shot works for up to 12 to 14 weeks, but you must get the injection once every 12 weeks to get its full protection.
Now, I agree with you with one thing.
The bitchiness might have lasted years, but it wasn't the depot shot.
Yeah, you know what?
You're so right. And I should have seen the warning signs with her mom.
She wasn't as bad.
She's not as bad as her mom, thankfully.
But I mean, you know...
Wait, so her mom was a bitch too?
Yeah. Yeah, but don't worry.
It's the birth control's fault.
Yeah, totally. Oh dear.
You know, Stefan, the thing is, is that she is like a, just in the chapter of my life, she's just the mother of my child.
I mean, we're much better off the way things are now.
Well, that's because you haven't questioned anything about her now, is it?
Right? Because you're still going with this whole, yeah, I'm a bitch for five years because I got an injection.
Yeah. I mean, you know, we haven't been together for a year, but things are...
And why did you break up with her?
Because you said you felt honor-bound to stay with her because she was pregnant, so why did you break up with her?
Yeah. And, oh, that's true.
I haven't got to that. I'm sorry.
The reason is because she just kept wanting to break up with With me.
And I said, we got a kid together.
We got to stick it out for him.
And she just kept...
Long story short, she kept pestering me to the point where it was just mutual.
Like it was just... No, if she's pestering you, it ain't mutual.
So she got pregnant.
Hang on, hang on. So she got pregnant.
And then she wanted you to leave her after she had the baby, right?
Um, she wanted to leave after, like she, she wanted, she, she kept trying to break up with me for like a year after the relationship, um, like on, on and off.
Wait, I don't know what this means.
Wait, hang on, hang on. Michael, I gotta, I gotta figure out what you're talking about here.
Did she try to break out with you before she got pregnant?
Yeah. She did.
Okay. But you didn't listen.
No, no. Well, it, no, I didn't.
And, um, At the beginning of the stage, it was because I still felt something for her.
I still felt love.
And then it just dissolved into, no, just stay with me.
And now I'm realizing that I was saying stay with me because I was just afraid of being alone, to be honest.
It was just we had so much invested and stuff.
And I was just...
I just didn't want to be, you know, I just didn't want her to leave because I thought, oh, you know, we had so much invested and hopefully, you know, if we stay together, like, we'll have...
I delved into self-manipulation like you can't even believe and I got out of that cloud.
Yeah, let me just give a tip out there for you, Michael, which I'm sure you're aware of now, but for the audience as a whole.
The moment that somebody says, I want to break up with you, don't disagree with them.
The moment someone says, it's over!
It's over! You can circle back, you can hang around, you can do dead man walking, you can have sex, you can visit each other's in-laws.
The moment someone breaks that bond, that bond is precious, that bond is holy.
The moment somebody takes a samurai sword to that ribbon that holds you together, Not all the king's horses and all the king's men can put the relationship back together again.
When someone says it's over, believe them.
And if they say later, they've changed the mind, say, no, I actually believed you the first time.
The moment that someone tells you they're over, they're done, it's over, it's broken, you're finished, it's done.
And you can go back and you can shock the monkey and try to get the paddles to bring that damn thing back to life, but no.
Just wanted to tell people that.
Because either they're serious, in which case they don't love you anymore, in which case forget about trying to keep things going, or they're not serious, they still care about you, but they're using it as a weapon in your relationship, in which case, run!
Yep. Yep.
You're absolutely right.
You paying child support there?
Yeah, not through the state though, just directly.
Why are you paying child support?
Does she not work? She does.
I do it because I make more money than she does.
Sorry to interrupt you, Michael.
It didn't happen that you got a raise, then she got pregnant, is it?
Or you got a better job and then she got pregnant?
No, I've always had really good ambition.
For someone who didn't go to college, I have a lot of knowledge.
Oh, trust me. These days, if you went to college, you have negative knowledge.
And so if you say, well, I didn't go to college, I'm like, okay, so you're smart.
Yeah, exactly.
And the thing is, is...
I've always had good ambition.
All right. Sorry to interrupt.
So you're making good money.
And how old is your child now?
Your son, I think you said. Yeah, he's one and a half now.
He's going to be two in September.
I don't know if you can see the profile picture I have.
that that's him.
And what was it that caused your breakup with the mother of your son?
Well, I wasn't, I just stopped investing emotionally.
Finally.
And I'm just coming to terms with why we broke up.
I started coming to terms with why we broke up probably six months ago or so.
I just wasn't investing in the relationship.
I was... Not paying attention to her.
No, I understand all of that, but why were you not paying attention to her?
Because she kept yelling all the time, all the time.
It was just a verbally abusive relationship.
Since the baby, that was new since the baby or that happened before?
Before as well.
And it was just really dumb for me to stick around, Stefan.
And how long after you first started dating her did she yell at you?
Probably like a year to a year and a half.
Wait, she hit the bitchiness for a year to a year and a half?
Yeah, and I would be a dick a lot of times, too.
And then, whenever she would yell, I would always yell back, but then for the last two and a half years or so of our relationship, I'd say, I would just let her yell at me, and I would just...
Michael, why are you having a baby with a verbally abusive woman?
Did nobody in your life say to you, Michael, you deserve better than this.
She's not good enough for you.
This is not what you should be doing with your life.
I mean, triple bag it and put a body hazmat suit anytime you get near an egg.
I mean, what?
Oh my gosh. Stefan, I did.
Oh, so people were telling you to get out?
And I wouldn't listen.
So you can get out, but your son can't, right?
That's the problem. That's the problem.
You can leave, but your son can't, right?
You're so right. I know.
It's god-awful.
He's got 17 years to go.
But you know what? I'm taking the steps necessary by...
Starting to listen to your show more and call.
But the main reason I called today was I made another...
I also made another mistake.
Well, I don't know about a mistake.
I wanted to see if this was a mistake.
I sent originally some pictures of myself and pictures of a girl that I felt deeply...
Deeply in love with, recently, Stefan.
I mean, she is the most beautiful girl in the world to me.
She is...
She's gone now, though.
And with her, I felt like...
I had a family.
She peacefully parents her children.
She doesn't even listen to your show, Stefan, but here's the thing.
From her life experiences that she's had, it's like she learned what you say from your show on her own.
And she's dating you, is that right?
No, not any...
Not anymore. I lost the girl of my dreams.
Well, let's deal with your terminal case of one-itis in a moment, but why did she stop dating you?
Well, we weren't officially boyfriend and girlfriend.
But we would do everything a boyfriend and girlfriend would do.
What do you mean? Like you had sex?
Oh, sex.
She would take me shopping.
I would take her shopping.
So what does that mean? Wait, you were in a monogamous sexual relationship, but you weren't boyfriend and girlfriend?
No, because the thing is that she lived with...
She lived with her son's grandfather at the time.
She lived with her son's grandfather, and therefore she couldn't have a boyfriend?
She wanted to try to build a foundation with me at first, and that sounds very counterintuitive now that I'm thinking about it because we did everything a boyfriend and girlfriend would do, but without the Um, label of boyfriend and girlfriend.
Wait, wait, sorry, Michael, how long after you left your, the mother, you weren't married, right?
So how long after you left or broke up with the mother of your son, did you end up dating this new woman?
Uh, I would say nine months.
Nine months. Yeah, I would say around there.
I didn't get to answer your question.
You asked why she left me.
Well, I mean, she just wanted to be friends after because she started to realize, well, in her opinion, that what was going on wasn't healthy.
You mean what was going on with you?
No, what was going on between her and I, like having sex and doing, like rushing and stuff like that and all that.
Okay, so how long after you met did you end up sleeping together?
I'm sorry? How long after you met did you end up sleeping together?
How long did it take? Well, we known each other from the...
From last year, but then after knowing each other for about a good four months, and then meeting was the first time we had sex.
But it's not like, you know, oh...
Wait, wait, wait. Sorry. You knew each other, but you hadn't met.
Hang on. You knew each other, but you hadn't met.
And then the first time you met, you had sex with each other?
Yeah. Did you meet online?
Yeah. Well, yes, but here's the thing, Stefan.
We run in the same circles.
No, no, I'm fine.
But you hadn't met, but then the first time you met each other physically, you had sex together.
Yeah, yeah.
And I was the first person that she was kind of like, you know, oh, dang, like, I shouldn't have...
Well, hang on.
How long had she been out of a relationship with the father of her children?
Here's the thing about the father of her children, Stefan.
Her husband, so she has...
You're going to have a brain aneurysm.
I'm sorry. No, no.
The point is for you to have the brain aneurysm, but go on.
I know, I know, I know.
Just hear me out, okay?
She is a hybrid of a single mother and a widow.
Oh, so one husband died and one marriage broke up?
One boyfriend broke up, yeah.
Her husband, as of it was last May of May 2017 was the day that she was just in the middle of trying to get back and to work things out with her husband, her legally married husband.
She was in the middle of trying to work things back out and to get her life back on track and she started going to therapy.
Okay, what happened to her first husband, Michael?
Right, her His husband got killed on the job.
He apparently was just standing there on lunch break while his friend was going to get a sandwich from down the street.
And he came back with a tree on top of him and he was cut in half.
That's rough. I know.
It's unbelievable. I mean, and he was...
Sorry, how long ago was that?
This was a year ago.
In May. Okay.
So he died in May.
And then she had another relationship in between that and you that produced another child?
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
While she was married, but in the middle of trying to get a divorce, she had a relationship with someone that...
But, I mean, they were married...
Her and her husband were married for a long time and were like separating.
Oh, so she had an affair while she was separated from her husband, but then she tried to get back together with him, but he was killed by a tree.
Exactly, yeah. And the affair that she had when she was separated from her husband, she got pregnant from that?
Yeah, it was her boyfriend that she would, you know...
Well, I don't know. If you're still married, it's an affair.
It's technically, yeah.
I mean, I'm not saying you're wrong.
I mean, technically, it's an affair.
So she has two children by two different men, is that right?
Her first child...
I want to tell you up front first, though.
This is very important.
She has an ACE score of 11 out of 10.
I'll tell you why it's 11 out of 10.
Because all of those questions for the ACE score, she scored a yes and also the trauma that she's had from foster homes and having to keep moving and stuff.
She literally has the most saddest story I've ever heard, but she's the most strongest, and the crap she had to deal with in her childhood, she's just inspiring.
I mean, the stuff that she went through, Stefan, I would have already gone mad years ago, decades ago.
My goodness. So what happens if she broke up with you?
You said she thought it was unhealthy.
What was unhealthy for her? Well, she just saw it as unhealthy for the relationship that we had in general, that we had sex on the first time that we met, and that she never told me this, but I could tell that she Knew that like, you know, I was clingy and she knew that I was in love with her and she wasn't in love with me.
She was in the process of falling in love.
Michael, you're not in love with her.
Come on. Come on.
You can't use that word.
Can I describe to you why I think I am and then you can...
No, I mean, I've heard this kind of stuff so many times that, I mean, you could, but I mean, you've heard the calls as often as I have.
So, she had an affair and then she decided to get back with her husband.
She met you online and then had sex with you the first time she met you.
She refused to call you a boyfriend, although she was having sex with you and doing everything that a girlfriend would do.
And then she broke up with you because she thought it was unhealthy.
This is one random woman, man.
Come on. And I sympathize with her history.
I sympathize with her childhood.
But this is not healthy.
This is not a healthy person. It also had to do with the fact that she had a medication change as well.
Wait, another doctor's note?
You're not going to try and sell me another doctor's note here, are you?
Oh, I'm a walking doctor's note.
No, you're a sucker for this bullshit, right?
The man's made me do it.
She, she had, she's had, um, uh, I know that you've, you've talked about, uh, how mental illnesses isn't a real thing.
And I'm, I'm in the transition of, of, um, listening to those, to those arguments that you have actually on, on your.
I have them saved on a playlist, and I'm considering them.
I appreciate that.
Let's stay with this story, right?
So she said she was on a medication change, and that's why she changed her mind?
Yeah, what I was going to say was actually tying into what I was going to say is that she actually has physical damage to her brain.
She said that her doctor kept changing her meds.
Meds for what?
Let's see. She has PTSD. She has ADHD, OCD. But here's the one that's, oh, depression as well, but here's the one that's the worst.
It's, she has, and I think this is the kicker as to why I got dipped.
She has dissociative disorder.
Dude, I mean, I'm trying to stay with you on this story.
But you're saying that you're a perfect woman, like, you're basically fucking a brain damaged woman, who's on wild personality alterating medications, and you say she's the love of your life and the most perfect woman ever.
I mean, are you just kind of trolling me at this point?
No, dude, you can't be that desperate.
Like, what the fuck is wrong with you?
You can't be that.
Do you have, like, three knees?
Do you have, like, a second head growing out of your ass?
Like, what the hell is the matter with you?
Like, why would your standards be this low?
This is the best you can do?
And she dumped you?
I started to realize afterwards, I mean, I sent you some, I sent Michael some pictures, by the way.
How pretty is she, man? Like, you want to see, go look at the pictures that I sent to Michael.
Okay, so she's hot and crazy.
She's black and beautiful, and in terms of personality, and in terms of Physical beauty, everything I've ever wanted.
No, come on, man. Oh, come on!
Do you listen to yourself, Michael?
You're saying that she was promiscuous with you, had sex with you the first time you met.
Which means stop following your cock and be a father.
Oh, she's hot.
Oh, we had sex.
Dude, you're not 15 anymore.
You're a father.
Stop with this bullshit and either be alone or find a normal, healthy woman.
But you cannot be bringing this big bag of messed up trauma around your son.
Or you can't end up having to manage this woman's craziness and thus be emotionally unavailable to your son.
You already have your son with one crazy bitch.
Do you really think that bringing somebody this damaged into your son's life is a good idea?
Is a responsible idea?
Stop thinking about your balls.
And stop thinking about your son.
You know, Stefan, you're absolutely right.
That's actually...
It's funny that you said...
Well, not funny. Nothing's funny about this.
Sorry. It's what you said about being emotionally unavailable to my son.
You get involved with this woman, she's going to just wrap your brain up like a pretzel.
I mean, she may have no ill intention, but this is a huge amount of damage to take on.
And you can't afford it because you've got to be there for your son and you've already got his mom to deal with, right?
Who got a doctor's up to be bitchy.
That's the other reason she...
She wanted out because she saw that she was doing damage to me and stuff.
Wait, the black woman you were just dating or whatever the hell you were doing, she wanted out because she was doing damage to you?
She saw that she was about to do some...
Well, she saw that she was doing some damage to me because of how I felt about her.
Well, because you fused with her, right?
You uncritically attached to her because you can't stand to be alone.
And maybe you're right.
Maybe that's just what my problem is, Stefan.
I can't stand to be alone.
If I didn't love this woman, Stefan...
You don't love her?
I never fell in love before.
You've attached to her.
I mean, I'm sure you're under the sway of massive floods of happy hormones for bonding.
I mean, you have attached to her.
But you can't love her.
She's too damaged at the moment.
And she, just last year, her husband, the father of her children, was crushed by a tree.
You don't think that takes a little while to get over?
It's been a year. And she had another relationship in between that produced a child.
And then that relationship broke up, right?
You're right. She's random.
She's not safe to be around.
Come on. I mean, there's red flags and then there's this.
I mean, it's red flags.
A red flag at least has a stick attached to it.
This is all red flags.
Can I tell you what attached me, though?
I'm going to go with what I think it is, but you can tell me if you want.
Every red flag needs a pool.
The way that she parents is exactly the way that I would want the mother of my future parents.
Children to be parented.
Okay. So, but Michael, why is she not with the man who fathered her latest child?
She actually is now.
I'm sorry? She actually...
Oh, she got back together with him?
She did, but then he left her because of the dysfunction of his family and stuff.
And... So why did she have a child when she was having an affair?
How is that fair to the child?
Because you're going to tell me. You can try and sell me on this crap about what a great mom she is, right?
Why did she have a child when she was having an affair?
Did she get a doctor's note to make that okay, too?
Well, because the thing is...
Well, I mean, there's no excuse for what she did, and even she was like, you know, I really messed up, but I wanted to try to make things right, and then...
Wait, what does that mean? Why did she have a child with a man she was cheating on her husband with?
Especially when she wanted to get back together with her husband, and then she wanted to get back together with the father of her latest child, but then he left her, right?
So how is this good motherhood?
How is it kind to fuck the brains out of a guy when you meet him for the first time and then dump him after he gets attached to you and thinks you're the one and he loves you forever?
She may not have the capacity to bond because of her childhood, but you bonded with her because you had meat-bang sex, right?
You met, bang, boom!
And so you are all dopamined up and you're bonded.
And she's like, no, I don't think so.
This is not healthy. Boom, off she goes.
It's way more than just the sex.
We were having...
Yes, we were having sex, but then she...
What she said, actually, and then I later on heard it on your show a week after she said it, and it blew my mind.
She said, oh, well, we should have less sex so that we can have more sex in the end and stuff.
And I said, okay. And then I heard you actually say that same line.
I'm like... What the heck?
Is she secretly watching the show?
No, but she...
So she's slept with four guys.
No, three guys, but one of them twice in one year.
So she had sex, we assume, before...
Her husband died a little over a year, right?
So she had sex with her husband.
She had sex with the boyfriend.
She had sex with you. Then she went back, had sex with the boyfriend who was the father of her son, and then he broke up with her.
So that's, you know, I guess what?
Three and a half sexual relationships in the span of 12 months when she's got children.
Dude, come on.
You've got to wake up from this.
This is not a dream.
This is a nightmare. In terms of that, you're absolutely right.
I think I was just drowned in all the similarities that I saw in her To me, she brought out all of me, in my opinion.
But good and bad.
That means nothing. You're trying to talk yourself into some hallmark affair, some Kodak moment that didn't happen.
You were lonely.
You had a lot of sex.
And she dumped you.
And she's a very damaged woman, from your description.
She's on wild personality altering medications, as you say.
This is crazy, man.
You've got to wake up from this.
So then my question to you is, she told me that I should stay single for, she told me that I have to learn to be alone for a long time.
The woman who banged three guys in the space of 12 months, two of whom she produced children with, she's telling you you've got...
Oh no, she's not.
She didn't say. She didn't actually say to you that you have to learn how to be alone.
Yeah. She can't even get off the carousel with a crane.
And she's telling you, man, you've just...
Michael, you've just got to learn how to be alone.
Oh, yeah.
She did actually say that to me.
So she is one hell of a manipulator, right?
I got very emotionally manipulated.
Well, and you're trying to sell the goods to me too, right?
Well... She's perfect.
She's wonderful. I love her so much.
I'm so afraid.
My worst fear of this folk all is like coming true.
I'm like... Are you kidding me?
You got dumped and you want to continue to worship this woman?
What are you, some kind of masochist?
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Uh, what I meant was in terms of, uh, you calling me ML, On my horse, Pucky, which you did.
I didn't mean to be...
No, listen.
I do it out of love. You know that, right?
I mean, I want you to have a happy life.
I want your son to have as good a father as possible.
But this ain't the way.
I'll tell you that. So my question to you, moving forward, because she said that I have to be alone for a long time, because I think what it is is that she has...
Detachment disorders.
I have like attachment disorders, I guess.
You mean like codependency stuff?
You can't be alone and you have to bond with people to avoid your own self?
Yeah, I just, I felt, yeah, and especially with her because I really felt like special.
You know what I mean? She was telling me that I was the Only she was feeling the same way that she was feeling when she first met her husband.
Oh, she left-bombed you and sex-bombed you like a professional Celt, right?
I've never felt these feelings for...
And, you know, you're right.
If I didn't love her, so be it.
But I never felt these types of things.
No, no. She worked as hard as possible to get you to attach to her, and then she dumped you.
Yeah. Which she's probably very good at doing.
Which is kind of sadistic, I think.
You're sober.
I'm not trying to laugh out of...
Because it's just not funny.
I just love laughing out of sheer...
Epiphany. So my question to you, Stefan, is how do I move forward?
If you could have a replica of yourself, you know, Stefan still raising your daughter at home with your wife, but just like another Stefan and just Teleported into me.
Like, what would you do?
Well, yeah, I mean, that's a great question.
And I would go to therapy, and I would keep a journal, and I would try and figure out what went wrong, particularly with my Infancy and early childhood.
These bonding issues, in my obviously amateur opinion, Michael, these bonding issues occur because you did not have a bond, a solid bond with your mom or primary caregiver or whatever.
Maybe you were put in daycare early.
Maybe your mom was depressed. Postpartum depression, maybe she was distracted.
Maybe she was avoidant. Maybe she didn't enjoy being a mom for whatever reason.
Or maybe she just didn't bond.
And so what happens is when you don't have that early bond, you have this big giant gaping wound.
And people can come along and just exploit you.
Because you're desperate to get that bond because you feel like when you are an infant, the solid bond that you get with your mom gives you security for the rest of your life.
You will never, ever go through life thinking that you're not loved if you have that early bond.
It gives you standards. It gives you discrimination.
It gives you safety because you're not needy.
But if you don't get that bond, then what happens is as an adult, unconsciously you are yearning to fuse with someone, to uncritically blend into someone in the same way that you would ideally uncritically blend with your mom when you're an infant.
And so we run through life if we have those issues.
If we don't have that bond, we run through life with this big giant wound just grabbing people and stuffing them into our wound thinking it's going to make us whole.
To avoid the suffering of not having had the bond and dealing with that issue.
We go around imagining we can fix it as adults.
That we can just become uncritically worshipful of someone in the same way we're supposed to be uncritically worshipful, supposed to be in a healthy way, uncritically worshipful of our mother and she's supposed to be uncritically worshipful of us when we are infants.
We then run around as adults trying to get people to be the big giant boobs that were indifferent to us when we were young and that connection when you're an infant gives you security but the lack of that connection when you try to repair it by using other people as an adult it does the opposite of keeping you safe puts you in danger when you were a baby Michael People were supposed to care about you no matter what.
You didn't have to earn it.
You didn't have to do anything.
They were just supposed to love you for breathing and gurgling and cooing and laughing and learning to roll over and all that stuff.
That's what was supposed to happen when you were a baby.
Hang on, let me finish. I'm sorry.
I'm sorry. Now, now that you're an adult, Michael, no one is supposed to care about your ass at all.
I'm telling you straight up, you know this deep down.
You're supposed to get all of that as a baby, and that's the foundation for your strength and independence as an adult.
If you don't get that as a baby, then what happens is you grow up very susceptible to being love-bombed by others.
Because you have that yearning for that uncritical acceptance and devotion.
And you offer it to people, and you want it from people.
Now, a baby doesn't have to earn love, shouldn't have to earn love and devotion.
As an adult, we always must.
And so you bond.
You are needy.
You are uncritical.
Right? Which is when a woman comes in and says, I've got a doctor's note.
He says I can be a bitch because hormones.
You're like, okay. Yep.
Right? And then this woman comes along and says, well, my doctor's adjusted my medication, so I don't love you anymore.
Okay. Because you get that bond when you're young, and then you can grow up and be critical within that bond.
Because you know the bond is secure.
I know this from my daughter. Her bond is very secure, so she can be very critical.
And she can argue back, and she can try and get her way.
She can negotiate hard.
She knows nothing's going to break that bond.
Right? And so...
Because she knows nothing's going to break that bond, she can serve her own needs, her own interests, she can negotiate for herself, and that's what I want for her.
But if you have an unstable or non-existent bond with your mother, then you can't really negotiate with it because you feel the last threads might crack or break.
So you don't grow up to be critical, you don't grow up to assert yourself, you don't grow up to negotiate for yourself, you grow up Wanting, needing that mutual devotion that is uncritical, which makes you secure as a baby and puts you in hellish danger as an adult.
Sorry, go ahead. I was going to say, you know, everything you just said, I've actually thought about in terms of looking at the way I'm like codependent from the abstract I think, okay, well, clearly that sounds like someone who had a childhood like what you just described.
But the thing is, Stefan, is that my parents did literally everything that two parents and a child were supposed to do.
They weren't perfect. Of course not.
I did get a lot of attention when I was an infant.
When I was a child...
Okay, Michael, I have to stop you.
I have to stop you because you have filled out your Adverse Childhood Experience score.
Now, the audience to this show doesn't have access to that, but I do.
And I know that there's one that you checked off that you do not want publicly disclosed, so I won't publicly disclose it.
The ones that you have checked...
As yes, are verbal abuse threats, lived with alcoholic or drug user, household member depressed, mentally ill, or suicide attempt?
And then there's one more you don't want disclosed, which is fine.
So help me square this circle of your parents did everything right with your Adverse Childhood Experience score.
I can totally square that right now.
Please. The verbal abuse, in my opinion...
It was my mom toward my father and I. It could have been a whole lot worse.
It was just a lot of yelling.
It was really just a lot of yelling.
And you think this had nothing to do with you putting up with the mother of your son yelling at you for years?
I know, yeah. And I was just about to say that...
What's your mom going to say?
You can't possibly be with a woman who yells!
I know, I know, and I've been a little afraid to say it.
Alright, so there's that, alcoholic or drug user. What's the story with that?
Alright, so, well, my dad was an alcoholic.
I didn't even know it until I turned 13.
He quit drinking when I was around six.
I didn't even know. I mean, I would see beer in the fridge once in a while when I was real little.
And then one day he sat me down and was like, you know, hey, listen, we were watching Cops.
No, I'm sorry. We were watching The Simpsons.
And it showed, you know, Homer like all drunk all the time and stuff.
And we were laughing. Oh, it's one where he ends up going with his bicycling with his wife, right?
Yeah. He showed off the TV and he's like, you know, Michael, I got to tell you about something.
I was an alcoholic that I know that they try to say that They try to portray the alcohol as something funny.
It's not funny. He basically gave me the whole rundown of everything early on.
In my teenage years though, I went into a lot of bad things.
So you didn't know that your father was an alcoholic for the first six years of your life?
I didn't know for the first six years of my life because the thing is that I would be put to bed and I've never seen anything crazy like, you know, beer cans all around him and he's like dysfunctional and stuff.
I guess you could...
No, what it means is that you didn't know because you didn't have anything to compare it with, in a sense.
Yeah. I think that would make sense.
So was he an alcoholic before you were born?
Yeah.
So your mother thought it would be a great idea to have a child with an alcoholic.
Wow.
She didn't say...
If you want to have children, you clearly have to stop drinking.
I clearly need to have my parents listen to this podcast.
I just need you to listen. Let's not bring that.
I just need you to listen to this right now.
Yeah, yeah. No, no.
And I'm listening. I just thought I was...
Well, you want me to do the job, which you have to do, which is to talk to your parents about their lives.
So what happened, Michael, in your teens?
What did you get into? Oh, drugs, alcohol, running around the streets, getting arrested.
Actually, I wanted to tell you about why I'm still going to take your advice on therapy, but It's why I've put it off for so long.
It's because I was going to therapy throughout my teenage years because I was really a troubled child throughout my teenage years.
When I was 18, I had sex with an underage girl.
When I say an underage girl, I don't mean like Someone who looks like a 12-year-old girl.
Like, when I was 18, like, I had sex with...
It wasn't like that.
She was 15, and I was 18.
And I told my therapist about it, and she ended up telling her superior, and they told the police, and I got arrested for it and stuff.
And it really made me think, like, wow, can I really, like, trust...
I'm a therapist with, I don't know, the things that I do and stuff.
Well, I mean, I don't know how it works in every jurisdiction, but in general, if you are talking about illegal actions, then there is a duty to disclose for, I think, a lot of therapists.
Yeah, and the other rebuttal to my little argument is don't do anything illegal, right?
Yeah, go fake it.
What's the story with the household member who was depressed, mentally ill, or a suicide attempt?
Well, my dad has depression, but everybody views him...
The consensus of what their take on my dad is, oh, he's so easygoing, which he actually really is.
He is easygoing.
I just say, you know, hey dad, see you later.
Like, oh, where are you going?
Like, oh, I'm going to blah, blah, blah.
Oh, okay, see ya. And then, but my mom, I say, you know, oh, I'm leaving.
See ya. Like, oh, where?
Then it turns into a million questions all the time.
Like, you know, but anyway, so, I'm sorry, I'm getting on a tangent.
So, he has depression.
No suicide attempts.
Yeah. No suicide attempts by my mom.
No suicide attempts by my dad.
I've attempted suicide, though.
When was that? I was 15.
I'm never doing it again.
I have...
Well, obviously, because now I have a responsibility for my son.
But even taking my son out of the picture...
I mean, I hear this tripe from...
Not a tripe, but it's sort of a saying...
Hang on, we just lost your mic.
Can you get closer again? Can you hear me?
Yeah, better. Go ahead. Alright, so I hear a lot of this new saying from people in my generation that like, you know, oh, my child is the reason I'm alive right now or else, you know, basic meaning.
Basically, if it weren't for my child, I would want to be dead.
You know, stuff like that.
So you must blame yourself a lot if you think that you were well-parented, but you went off the rails.
You were arrested for statutory rape, if I understand it correctly.
You did drugs and alcohol and tried to kill yourself.
So if you were very well-parented, then it must just be that you're a bad seed in that formulation.
Is that right? That's what I... That's what I think.
It's not true. No, it's not true.
It's not true. It's not true.
The only way to avoid the repetition of dysfunction is to criticize your parents.
Justly, fairly, they were the adults, you were the child.
They had the choices, you didn't.
They were in charge, and you were not.
You know, if somebody gets into a car crash with a woman who's bound and tied and stuffed in the trunk, we don't blame the woman, right?
Because she's not driving. She's not in control.
The parents, your parents, my parents, everyone's parents, they're in control.
They choose to get married.
They choose to have children.
We don't choose them as parents.
They choose each other, the husband and the wife, the mother and the father.
They choose when to have children or whether to keep the children either pre or post birth.
They choose how to raise the children.
They choose where you live. They choose where you go to school.
In a way, they choose your friends with an accumulated bunch of things.
And so the idea that you were well-raised, but just ended up suicidal, semi-criminal, performing illegal actions.
I assume the drugs were legal and you were drinking underage, maybe driving underage as well.
The idea that you just kind of went off the rails for no reason.
And of course, it is your parents' job to keep you safe.
And the adverse childhood experience, which we're not talking about, I think it's fair to say, They didn't even come close to doing their job with that.
And the other thing, too, there was another question on the ACE score with regards to being hit.
I've only been spanked probably about five times, and I've I've only been slapped across the face by my mom maybe three times.
I'm not justifying.
There's no number that justifies that action, I understand.
And now I definitely see.
It's because of...
It's mainly due to you.
And I also just recently seen it...
Seen that negotiation and parenting...
I've seen it happen in action with the girl that love-bombed me.
I actually saw that it works.
I'm like, wow, it really does work.
But anyway... Dude, let me ask you this.
Let me ask you this. How do you know that's how she parents when no one's around?
I mean, your father was able to hide alcoholism from you.
You don't think she may be able to hide dysfunctional parenting from others?
My mom, sweet as sugar out in public, a wonderful mom.
So much fun, so liberal, so respectful to her children.
Melted butter clogging her words every time she spoke.
But behind closed doors, It's kind of another matter.
Just because you see something, just because you see a parent behaving a certain way in public or with people around, in no way, shape, or form means that that's what's actually occurring behind closed doors when they're alone.
I'm not saying for sure, but given her ACE, given her dysfunction, given her instability, given her cruelty to you, yeah, I'd be pretty surprised if that peaceful parenting went from here to Timbuktu and back every day.
Yeah. There's an important thing I left out of my childhood.
I'm sorry, this is really important.
I have a little brother, a younger brother, two years younger than me.
The thing is, is that I grew up as feeling like the only child.
Feeling like the only child, though, because of the fact that my younger brother, he is autistic, nonverbal, autistic.
He can't communicate.
He has to be taken to the bathroom and stuff.
He has to be fed. He can't take care of himself.
I mean, Stefan, if we were to live in a cruel society where my brother were to just be left to the whims of himself, he would actually starve to death.
And what's the age difference?
I'm sorry.
What's the age difference?
He's two years younger than me.
Two years younger than me.
He's the best swimmer I've ever seen, actually.
I'm thinking about it.
I've seen him the other day.
Anyways, so he is two years younger than me.
He can't talk.
It's It's basically like a...
I don't mean this in a cruel way.
It's like a baby or a toddler in a full-grown man's body.
So, not a lot of resources for you when you're a child, right?
That's what I mean.
And I confronted...
Well, not confronted. I wanted to talk to my parents about That and stuff one day.
But my mom was saying that, you know, well, we still spend time with you and stuff.
And to be honest with you, I mean, I also would be the one to be like, you know, my dad would always be like, hey, what are you doing?
And I'd be like, no, go away.
Like all the time and stuff.
I'd always try to isolate myself when I was a child.
I don't know why.
That's something about me that I'm trying to figure out.
I don't know why I kept trying to isolate myself from, well, particularly my parents and family members.
For some reason, I, and teachers, I just wanted to Block myself from him and just go into my own little world in the backyard.
Did you have to take care of your brother much?
No, I never had to do anything.
Did your parents have a community that helped with him?
The state would send people to help take care of him.
But that wasn't until I was about, like, 12, give or take.
Did your parents hide from the world to deal with this issue with your brother?
Can you repeat that? Did your parents, when you were younger, I know you said when you were 12, but did your parents, in a sense, hide from the world to deal with your brother when he was younger?
Hmm. That's a good...
I can answer this question.
When you say hide from the world, do you mean like not do things socially and stuff like that?
Well, the whole deal, right? Not lean on a community, not do things socially.
Not like ashamed, but almost like that.
We would still do things socially.
We would go to church.
I didn't like it until I later became a Christian.
Not a very good Christian, as you could see, Stephon.
But they would take me to church.
They wouldn't take my brother though, of course, because it's too much.
So your mother was dealing with an autistic son who was non-verbal and an alcoholic husband.
Yeah, but my dad stopped drinking when my brother was four.
Remember, I was six, he was four.
I mean, I'm just talking, it's still a couple of years, right?
Yeah, right.
And I think I had this codependency on not just women, but also other male friends too.
Because I just, I so desperately wanted a brother.
Like, gosh, I don't know.
I mean, this is obviously like it's nobody's fault.
And it's incredibly harmful to a lot of things that otherwise would happen in the family.
And this is not your parents' fault, obviously, but it is a great tragedy for everyone involved for something like this to land...
In a family structure.
And my sympathies, of course, go out to everyone.
This is not an easy situation to navigate at all.
It's not. And it's never-ending.
It's never-ending.
My goodness, I felt like I just got smacked in the face when you just said it's never ending.
Oh, yeah. No, it never ends.
It never ends. Now, I'm going to assume that your mom didn't drink or smoke or take any drugs while pregnant or anything like that, right?
No, no. She's lived a clean life all her life.
I have seen her with a glass of wine once in my life, and it was at a wedding.
You know what I mean? Right, right.
What's weird, Stefan, about my parents, can I tell you what's really weird?
My mom is the most extroverted person you could meet.
And my dad is right at the edge of...
Well, not antisocial, but he's just so introverted.
It's right up to that line.
You know what I mean? Right.
It's weird.
And how...
Two people like that could come together.
And I think that's...
It sort of made...
Well, it made me introverted and extroverted because I am extroverted, but inside I just want to be like, no, don't go out and talk to people.
It's dangerous. It's scary.
Like, it's really...
It's weird.
I... I can't...
I have really been trying to figure out the pieces of all these puzzles of my childhood as of recently because of you, solely because of you.
I just don't quite know how to go about it.
I need to read your book again on real-time relationships.
I think it would be...
Yes. Because I think when you read a book and then you read it again, you pick up things that you didn't pick up before.
You know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, as far as why you want to hide away from people, I think a therapist would be good.
And as long as you're not having sex with any more 15 year olds, you should be in a clear regarding all of that.
Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
That was, it was 18.
No, I know. I'm just kidding.
But listen...
I hope it's been helpful. I'm going to move on to the next caller, but I really do appreciate your openness and honesty in this call.
And I hope that, you know, what I talked about, your terminal one-itis, you know, this idea that this is the woman who's going to make me happy.
This is the love of my life.
I mean, you can really talk yourself onto a cliff edge with that kind of stuff.
And I really don't want you to do that.
You have love in your future.
If you have self-knowledge in your immediate future, you have love in your midterm future, in your medium future.
But with the self-knowledge, you can find the woman of your dreams and it won't turn into a nightmare.
And you will be the man of her dreams.
And that, of course, is the purpose of this kind of self-knowledge.
That's why we go through that kind of difficulty so that we can not just have love like it hits us like lightning, but love that we can keep like we're trialing the sun around the world.
So thank you so much for your time tonight.
And I hope you let us know how it goes.
And I look forward to hearing what happens.
Just really, really quickly, I just have to ask.
So basically, go to therapy, keep a journal, and there was one more thing that you said that I should do.
Well, I'm not sure that dating is necessarily the most ideal thing, but really just focus on what's best for your son.
If you make the decisions in your life like your son gets...
The deciding vote in what you do.
Your son doesn't want you dating this woman, right?
This black woman. Not because she's black, but just because she's had this ACE and all of this, right?
Your son doesn't want you dating this woman.
You haven't done a lot to move my needle on my thoughts regarding single mothers.
I just wanted to mention that as a whole.
Because you were like, oh, she's a single mom who's great.
And then tick, tick, tick, tick.
So I'm not sure you've served much to change what it is that I think about this situation.
And I guess I thank you for that confirmation bias too.
But thanks, man. Let us know how it goes and I'm going to move on.
Thank you, Stefan. I love you, man.
Thank you, Mike. Have a good night.
Thank you guys so much.
God bless. Thank you.
Thank you. Alright, up next we have Blake.
Blake wrote in and said, However, when it came to your discussion of theism, it was painfully uninformed.
So my question to you is, do you find theism so out of the question that you don't take time to adequately research it?
Or was there another reason you advocated your good research methods?
A specific example is your discussion of omnipotence and omniscience, which you seemed to think dispatched theism in a few paragraphs.
But you failed to define what is meant by those terms.
When you attempt to represent what a theist would say in response, you gave a skewed understanding of the motive for divine atemporality.
Theists didn't create divine timelessness to get out of an incoherence.
Rather, it was because of various philosophical considerations pushed them in that direction.
Divine simplicity, immutability, arguments for motion, notions of necessity, etc.
I can detail other egregious errors and a logical fallacy in the arguments against theism in the book as well.
So why the disparity on this topic?
That's from Blake. Hey, Blake, how you doing?
Hey, how you doing? I'm fine.
I'm just kind of curious why you'd want to start off an intellectual debate with a whole bunch of insults, but, you know, I'm happy to hear about all that.
Well, I mean, I don't think they were insults, actually.
Yeah, they were insults. Well, okay.
Well, let me... I mean, so already you're not telling me the truth.
How am I not telling you the truth?
You said that they're not insults.
Okay, okay. Well...
Painfully uninformed, abdicated good research methods, didn't define your terms, egregious errors, logical fallacies, without actually giving me any examples.
You're just painting a whole negative picture without providing me any examples.
That's kind of insulting.
And then you say, well, I don't consider them insults.
Well, are they praise?
Okay. Well, I have examples if you'd like to hear them.
No, no. Let's just talk about this beginning bit because I don't want to just skip over that.
Okay. Well, I mean, I guess I wasn't real sure whenever I messaged in.
He said to write an introduction. And to me, those were just points for discussion.
And whenever I said that things were uninformed, I do think that the criticisms weren't informed.
And I mean that...
I can tell that the arguments weren't formulated.
You haven't actually engaged any of the theists that I've read, I guess.
But this wasn't a book of engaging with theists.
Okay. Like, you can say, Steph, I wish you'd written a book rebutting these theistic arguments.
Okay. But this wasn't against theism, the title of the book.
You know, it's against the gods.
It's not against the theists.
One of the clues is kind of in the title.
Yeah, yeah. But, I mean, with that, though, I mean, for instance, whenever you're talking about putting God outside of time, for instance, like, I guess, what exactly in the book are you attacking then?
No, no, listen. If you've got criticisms and you say egregious errors and logical fallacies, then don't ask me what I'm trying to do.
Just tell me what they are.
And if you've got great arguments, fantastic.
I'll fix up the book for the next edition.
Okay, okay. So do you want me to start?
Sure. Let's pick up the most egregious error and logical fallacy.
Give me the biggest logical fallacy first.
Right. Okay. So the first argument is your argument from simplicity.
Or complexity. You essentially argue, and I'll put it into a syllogism, and you can tell me if I get it wrong, but to me, in this argument, you commit a logical fallacy called the illicit major.
And you essentially make this argument.
You say, all simple beings are eternal.
Sorry, say again?
All what? All simple beings are eternal.
All simple beings are eternal?
Yep. No God is a simple being.
Wait, all simple beings are eternal?
Yes, this is what you say in the book.
I can pull it up. Hold on one second.
Yeah, if you could, please. That's not something I remember or I don't remember the context.
No, it's okay.
It's okay. Because I don't believe any beings are eternal.
Right, right. But it's just the form of the argument that you gave.
Hold on one second.
Sorry. I wrote them out and I tried to write them out in a syllogism here and that's what I was trying to do.
No, that's fine. I may have said something like that.
I just I don't believe that...
Okay. I don't remember this argument, so...
Yeah, sorry about that.
No problem. I'm trying to get back to it.
I'm on my Kindle. Is it the argument about evolution?
Because I remember that one. Yes, yes, yes it is.
Ah, okay. So the argument is that in evolution, more complexity...
It's preceded by less complexity.
In other words, you end up with a single-celled organism before you end up with an elephant or a human being, right?
You end up with a couple of cells that can respond to light before you end up with the complexity of a human eyeball, right?
Because my producer just had a quick look.
There's no term called simple beings in the entire book.
So when you say my argument is that all simple beings are eternal, I don't know where that is.
But I do know the argument from complexity.
So the argument says that for complexity to exist in the universe that we know, in evolution that we know, more complexity must be preceded by less complexity.
Hello? Hey, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry. A call came in and I got disconnected.
Are you there? I'm sorry. All right.
So the argument is that in the universe that we know, in evolution that we know, more complexity in life in particular, more complexity must be preceded by less complexity.
And so God being the most complex being that can be imagined to say that the most complex thing can exist without anything preceding it that was less complex goes against all of the knowledge that we have about life and consciousness and evolution in the universe.
Right, yeah. And what I was going to point out, though, was that theists never say God is complex.
God is not a complex being.
I mean, you can go—I can read you a section from Anselm.
Wait, are you saying that you can get omniscience and omnipotence without any complexity?
Yes. Based on—I mean, as far as theism goes, whenever—for instance, if you read Aquinas, you know, going back to the first cause, God becomes— He cannot have any parts.
He doesn't have a body.
So to me, to say that to use evolution as an argument against God doesn't work because God is a simple being.
In the same sense that, you know, I'm a simple soul.
Okay, hang on. So let me just give you the quote from the book.
I think this is what you're referring to.
This is from page 15. Yeah, I was trying to find that.
Yeah, it's fine. So this is the quote from the book.
First of all, we know from biology that even if an eternal being could exist, it would be the simplest being conceivable.
An eternal being could never have evolved since it does not die and reproduce, and therefore biological evolution could never have layered levels of increasing complexity over its initial simplicity.
We all understand that the human eye did not pop into existence without any prior development, and the human eye is infinitely less complex than an omniscient and omnipotent god.
Since gods are portrayed as the most complex beings imaginable, they may well be many things, but eternal cannot be one of them.
Right? So, complexity arises from evolution.
Evolution arises from mortality and mutation, which a god would not be subjected to.
And therefore, complexity...
Now, this doesn't immediately disprove God, of course.
But what it does say is that based upon all...
Like, human consciousness is the most complex thing.
In the universe, kind of, that we know of, right?
I mean, it really is ridiculously complex.
Hang on, let me finish my point.
You keep talking in my ear, it's really annoying.
Let me just finish my point, and then I talk, then you talk.
That's kind of how it works, all right? Okay, got you.
The human brain is extraordinarily complex.
It is the most complex thing that we know of.
It's virtually infinitely more complex than, say, the brain of a worm or even the brain of a dog or a cat and so on, because we have the capacity to conceptualize and all of these wonderful things that we can do with our human brains.
So as brains get more complex, then they get more intelligent, right?
Larger brains, more dense white matter, more neural connections, you name it, right?
And so as intelligence increases, so does the complexity of the organ, which is the basis of intelligence, i.e.
the brain. The brain gets more complex as intelligence goes up.
So omniscience is the very highest level of intelligence that we can possibly imagine, because it knows the answer to everything.
And so to say that Complexity increases as intelligence increases.
And God is the most intelligent creature that can be imagined, but is simple, is to go the opposite direction of everything that we've observed in terms of the brain and its complexity and its relationship to intelligence.
The more intelligence, the more complexity.
Right, okay. Okay, can I... Yeah, go ahead.
I don't want to cut you off. Okay. Okay.
So, but what I'm saying is I think that we're, I think we're equivocating here on complexity, right?
So, you know, if you look at, when I mean simplicity, right, as I mean, like, I'm a unified center of consciousness, right?
So like, I can, just to give an analogy, right?
So I can go through my everyday life, you know, at every moment of time, I'm the same me as I was You know, two hours ago.
Now, different things have happened to me, but at my core, I'm the same being that I was.
So that's what I mean by God is not complex.
He doesn't have a physical substratum.
You know, God exists. There's no complex brain underneath it.
Now, he can be, he could have, you know, he possibly has metaphysical parts, but he doesn't have physical parts.
So God wouldn't be, like, complex in the sense of, like, a computer switchboard is complex.
Does that make sense?
No, not really.
And that may just be because I'm not following the argument.
So saying that you're fundamentally the same person as two hours ago, well, no.
Sometimes you're dead. Sometimes you've been in a terrible accident.
Sometimes you've won the lottery.
Sometimes you've met the love of your life.
Sometimes you've... Won an Olympic gold medal, you know, like the idea that we're just going through life without any change, I don't quite follow.
Well, no, I'm not saying we don't change.
So then you're not the same as you were two hours ago.
But I'm the same person as I was two hours ago.
Well, no, not if you've died.
Well, but as long as I'm living is what I'm saying.
Okay. But what if you have brain damage?
What if you're still alive, but some railway spike went up your nose and carved off half of your brain and turned you into John McCain?
Okay. Okay.
Then you're not the same person anymore, are you?
Okay. Yeah, maybe we've...
I've misunderstood the argument then.
Well, no, you're just not the same as you...
You're not always going to be the same as you were.
Right, right. Yeah, I'm having...
I don't know. Yeah.
No, listen, you can take another route to the argument.
I just don't think that's a very productive one.
Because if someone is the same from one two-hour slice to the next, well, a whole life is a series of two-hour slices.
And are you saying that people don't change over the course of their life?
Well, of course they do, right? They learn Japanese.
They become depressed. They have a death in the family.
They get sick.
They get better, you know?
So hang on. You're doing that thing again where I'm talking and you keep talking in my ear.
I'll give you another couple of tries, but it's really, really annoying.
So please try and withhold yourself from that.
Now, so if you say people don't change over the span of two hours, then our whole life is a slice of two hours, right?
And so if you don't change it all over the course of two hours, then you're saying that people are the same from birth to death.
And I don't think that's true.
I think people do change quite a bit.
I mean, some people, I guess, kind of plod along, but that's a bit of a choice, right?
Right. Let me try it from this angle.
There's a word that I use for myself, and it's I. What I mean by that is that I'm the same I that exists throughout my life.
There's a continuity in my existence, and we call that I. Now, I'm not saying there aren't changes, but there is a self that's me.
Unless you're a Humean, right?
And you just think that you're a bundle.
But we're not, I don't think we're bundles because then it wouldn't make any sense to say that, you know, I did whatever.
I don't know what bundles means.
Okay, so like, you know, Hume, he said that, you know, all we are is experiences.
There is no I that has these experiences.
That's just kind of something that's an illusion.
But then the question is, well, what is it that's being alluded to?
Who's getting the illusion?
So what I'm saying is that there is a center of consciousness.
There's an I. Throughout my existence.
Now, I can concede the fact that, well, of course, maybe we do have moments in which someone has brain damage or whatnot.
That would be like a cutting off of some power, or we can get into dualism later.
But in the Christian worldviews, I'm so sorry to interrupt after I told you not to interrupt, but I really want to follow this.
In the Christian worldview, isn't there a difference between...
Pre-Jesus and post-Jesus between not accepting Jesus and then being born again?
I mean, isn't there a big alteration in the trajectory of your life if you're going to head to heaven or you're going to head to hell or whatever?
Aren't there big changes even within the Christian worldview and the Christian idea of the self or the identity?
In a sense, yes, but I don't think that that under...
I still think that I am the one who...
Is the recipient of God's grace, right?
So there's still an I here.
But you still do have to choose whether or not you're going to accept God's grace, right?
Sure. And if you choose to accept God's grace, you change considerably.
Certainly the trajectory of your soul changes.
Right, but I'm still the same conscious unity that I've always been.
Yes, but you fundamentally changed by accepting God, right?
By accepting Jesus. Right.
Right, but that doesn't make me a different person completely.
I don't know what the word completely means.
Yes, it doesn't turn you into, I don't know, a Zulu, but you have changed significantly by accepting Jesus, right?
Yeah, yeah, and I can acknowledge that.
But my point is that there's still...
Because I'm still Blake, right?
I'm not like John or Bill or someone else.
There's still... A center of conscience.
There's still a self here.
Yes, but it's changed.
I didn't say it's changed into someone else, but it's changed.
You know, like if I take flour and make it into a cake or make it into bread, those are two different things.
And saying, well, you can't make it into a tree, it's like, well, yeah, but that doesn't mean I can't change it.
Yeah, I think that maybe we're talking about...
No, you said people don't change and we're debating that because that was part of your argument, right?
Well, I didn't mean that people don't change, like attributes of me don't change, right?
Like, my hair color may change, or, you know, I may have an arm locked off, or, you know, I may have children, you know, or I may not have children, then I may have children at some point.
Like, those are changes.
And I was like, extrinsic changes.
But then there's also, there's the self or the I that goes through time.
And it's me, right?
All these things happen to me.
That part of me is that simple part of me, is what I'm saying.
And what if you change from self-identifying as a man to self-identifying as a woman?
Well, I mean, I kind of go with you on this.
I don't actually think that that's...
But that would still be me doing something.
I would be having wrong thoughts or I would be going down maybe some type of, I don't want to say mental illness, but yeah.
I would be having those feelings and thoughts.
Oh, so mental illness could also be another form of change, right?
Yes, yes. But there's still a self that is experiencing those things.
Even if I start hallucinating, I'm having those experiences.
There's a me that is having those experiences.
And that's what I mean by simple.
That was what I meant by that.
Sorry, you're saying that you have an identity that maintains itself over the course of your life, even though you may change considerably your thoughts, your ideas, your philosophy.
Right. Because there has to be some core of me that is unified through those things.
Or there's not really a me.
There's not an I. There's not a Stefan.
If there's not some core of who we are, That is metaphysically simple and doesn't change, right?
Like, it's there. So it's that part of us where those external things happen to us.
Hang on, sorry to interrupt.
Do you think that identity, the I, do you think it's simple?
It seems to me that identity is very complex.
Who am I is one of these sort of fundamental questions.
What do I stand for? What are my thoughts on this?
Who am I? It seems to be a very complex question.
I'm not sure that it's simple.
Right. Well, I mean, it depends on how we're taking it.
Are we taking it in a psychological sense or a sense of metaphysics?
So the metaphysical idea, it undergirds all those questions that I would be asking.
So like, what should I do?
Or people say, who am I? Usually they're asking, what's my purpose, is what they mean by it.
What am I going to identify with?
Whether it be saving children in a third world country or being a philosopher.
Right. But there's still an I that's asking that.
No, but if the I is asking what it is, right?
So if you're a Christian and you are flirting with atheism and you say, am I a Christian or am I an atheist?
That is a complicated question.
Now, I think what you're saying is you would use the word I to describe both.
But that's not a simple thing.
Right. Well, from a psychological standpoint, I would agree that there is a complexity going on there, but there's still a core center of consciousness that I identify as myself.
And I would say, well, at one point I was a Christian, but now I'm an atheist.
So there's still that pronoun I that signifies something that exists through time.
Yes, I would certainly agree that you try not to describe yourself as a potted plant, especially around Harvey Weinstein.
You don't describe yourself as a pillar.
You don't describe yourself as a marsupial.
And so, sure. Right.
So, it's this simple idea of...
The I, or the self, is what I mean.
I think it's a label that we use regarding our own consciousness.
I don't know that it's a simple thing.
Okay. Okay.
Well, then that would just be a premise we'd have to disagree on again, or disagree with.
Because I think it's a metaphysical notion, that it's part of the way the world is, or how being is.
So I guess we would just...
We may disagree there.
And that would just be kind of a sticking point.
Because to me, that's a simple notion.
In the sense that it doesn't have parts or...
Wait, the identity doesn't have parts?
Well, again, I'm talking about one type of identity.
And I think you're talking about psychological identity.
I think you're talking about taxonomy or biology or, you know, that there's you and that there's me and that's simple.
Well, I mean, I would even say that the self transcends the biological body that we're in.
So, I mean, I'm a substance dualist in that sense.
Oh, so you would be talking about the soul?
Yes. Okay, so for you, the soul is simple.
Yes. It's a simple substance.
Well, it's not really a substance, is it?
Well, I mean, yeah. If it was a substance, it would be detectable according to matter or energy, right?
No, I mean substance in a philosophical sense.
It's just the thing that it is.
It's the thing that makes me what I am.
So in the sense that, I mean, I can, for instance, I can imagine myself without my body, right?
I mean, there's modal arguments we can get for that, where, you know, there's an immaterial part of me, and that thing is simple.
It's the thing that I am. So if I lost my arm or I lost my leg, that's my body, but I haven't lost me.
I'm still me. So that is, yes, the soul.
It's a simple thing. Oh, so like what Aristotle would call the essence.
It's the one thing, like if you change that, then you're not you anymore, right?
Yes. The last thing that you would change before you'd say, that's not who he is, right?
Right. Right. So, yeah.
Okay, so I think the difference is that we're talking about the category versus the manifestation, and maybe this is why you're using the term metaphysical.
Yes. Because we're talking about the category called identity, In the same way that the category called mammal, which is defined as, you know, in general, warm-blooded, has hair, suckles young, gives birth to live young, and so on.
That category can be defined fairly easily, but the body and brain of a mammal are very complex.
So I think what we're different is we're talking about the category versus the individual instance, right?
That the category is more simple, but the individual instance is very complex.
Well, I mean, maybe.
But even with Aristotle, in his categories, there's horses, and then there's the individual horse.
So in the same way, there's rational animal, and then there's instances of rational animals, which are human beings.
So I'm an instance of that more general category of rational animal.
Yes, but even within you, there's a category called identity.
Yes.
Yes. Yeah, I think we're close.
Right. Now, the challenge is, though, that God is not a category.
God is an instance. God is not a concept, at least for believers, right?
God is a concept for everybody who studies language and so on.
It's a concept of representing a divine being.
But God is an instance, not a category.
Yeah, well, I think, yeah.
And we said that the instances are more complex than the categories.
And so if you're trying to define God as a category to retain the simplicity argument, then you have a challenge because God is not a category.
That would be an atheist position that God is a conceptual category.
For the theist, God is a manifestation.
God exists.
And therefore, God is an instance, not a category, and can't then be part of the simplistic definition.
Okay. Well, I mean, see, this is where we may have to back up.
And like I said, I know you've got other callers.
So, for the theist, God doesn't have a genius, right?
I'm sorry, he doesn't have what? There's no genius for God, right?
God is a specific instance of one thing.
Yeah, it's not a category.
It's an instance. Right.
It's the horse, not the category horse.
Right, but he would also, there was only one, so he would also, he would be the instance and the general idea as well.
Well, not for a polytheist.
Well, no, but I'm not a polytheist.
No, no, I understand that, but if we're going to talk theology, we can't just limit it to monotheism, right?
Because for a polytheist, there would be a category called gods, and then there would be each individual god.
Or even for a Christian, there would be a category called immaterial consciousness, which would include God, would include Satan, would include the devils, the seraphim, the cherubim, the angels, you name it, right?
And the soul itself, which would be immaterial consciousness.
I'll concede that for now.
Well, hang on, hang on.
What do you mean you can see that?
Am I off in my theology?
Well, I mean, in a sense— I'm not saying they're all gods, but they certainly are immaterial consciousness, right?
Right. Well, I mean, what I'm trying to—I mean, this is where this gets so difficult, because, I mean, from what I've read of someone like Aquinas and people like us, is God doesn't have a genus.
There is no genus of, like, God.
God is the only instance of that thing.
So, like, God technically can't even be defined— In classical theology.
We can say things about God, but there isn't any—because of his infinity, right?
There isn't any category that we can use— For God, in that sense.
So that's where I'm having a hard time.
Okay, well, let's move to monotheism and we'll put all of that other stuff aside.
So we'll move to monotheism and we'll say that there is a category called God.
We have to have some kind of category, otherwise we have no way to differentiate God from all other forms of immaterial consciousness, such as the soul and the devil and demons and angels and so on.
And so there is a category wherein God is distinguished from other immaterial manifestations of consciousness, and God is distinguished from other supernatural beings.
And I apologize for using the word supernatural, I just don't want to keep saying immaterial consciousness over and over again.
So God is differentiated from other supernatural beings by his infinite goodness, his infinite wisdom, his all-powerfulness, his omniscience, and so on.
The infinity aspect that you have talked about, because none of the other Supernatural beings have within, they may have that capacity of being eternal, such as Satan or the angels.
They may have the capacity of great wisdom or great intelligence, such as the seraphim and the cherubim and so on.
But they would not have the capacity of infinite intelligence and infinite power and infinite wisdom and infinite virtue.
That infinity is reserved for the one instance, which is God himself, if I understand things correctly.
Yes. Yeah, we're on there.
That's good. Okay, yeah, we're good there.
I would agree. All right.
Yeah, okay. So the question then, which I talk about in the book, is the question of omniscience and omnipotence.
And it goes a little something like this, which is if God is all-powerful, then God can change or do anything that he wants.
And if God is all-knowing, then he knows everything that's going to happen in the future.
But if God knows 100% for certain, What is going to happen in the future, God cannot himself be able to change what happens in the future.
Because to change it would be to invalidate his omniscience, his all-knowingness.
And so if God can change what happens in the future, God cannot know 100% for sure what is going to happen in the future.
If God knows 100% for sure what is going to happen in the future, then God cannot change it.
So you have omniscience or omnipotence, but you can't have both.
And the solution in general is to take God outside of the realm of time and say...
That there is no such thing as past, present, and future for God, which I do consider to be a way of avoiding the logical problem by simply removing a standard.
Right. Okay.
Do you want me to just jump in?
Yeah, go ahead. Okay.
Okay. So, I could give...
There's three broad responses that I could give to it that have been developed within theology, but I'll just give mine.
I'm a Calvinist, so I think that human freedom is compatible with determinism.
But I think that God's knowledge, and I think that God is outside of time, but I can just do away with that for the sake of discussion.
But unless you want to jump to it next.
But so on the Calvinist view, God's omniscience is based on his omnipotence.
So essentially God's knowledge is based on his decree.
So if he decrees that I'll have breakfast, then I'll have breakfast in the morning and he knows it.
Now, the question could become, well, can he change it?
And the answer would be, well, no, because God's power is the thing that determines that he does what he wants to do.
So in the sense that his power comes from his essence, and he's already freely decided what will happen, the thing happens.
So the omnipotence has to be compatible with his other attributes.
And that's how I would resolve the issue there, is that if God—now, he can write himself into the history of the world.
So if—I had an example here.
Hold on, I'm sorry. Let me pull up.
So the way I put it was— God has both omniscience and omnipotence.
In fact, God's omniscience is based on His omnipotence.
God ordains the free actions, compatibilism, from eternity, and also ordains all that He will do in that history.
So just as God ordains that Moses will do X at time T, God ordains that God will meet Moses at T, so at the burning bush, right?
So He meets Moses at the burning bush, but He's ordained all that.
He has all of His interactions In that sense, God is all-powerful and he's all-knowing because he ordains all that comes to pass and he knows everything based on omnipotence.
That would be how I would resolve it.
Now, there's two others. Oh, hang on.
I don't see how that resolves anything.
Okay. So, if God knows you're going to have Cheerios for breakfast tomorrow morning, God can't change that.
Because he's decided that's what he would do.
Right. So he has decided back in the dawn of time that you're going to have Cheerios for breakfast tomorrow.
Therefore, he can't change it.
Right. Because he freely decided that.
But he can't change it.
No. Okay, so then he can't be all-powerful because he lacks the capacity to change things that are foreordained.
It's like saying that a train can go anywhere it wants.
No, a train has to follow the tracks.
You say, well, the tracks were laid out ahead of time.
So what? The train is still on the tracks.
The train can't go wherever it wants.
The train has to follow the tracks.
So we say that the train is on the tracks and the train is going to go where the tracks go for sure.
We say, well, but the tracks were laid out ahead of time by this plan and that plan.
I accept all of that.
But the train still can't change its direction once the tracks are laid and the train is in motion.
Right. I think this might be, again, where we would disagree.
In essence, I would say that, well, since God's power isn't determined by anything but himself.
And that's all that I would...
To me, that's all that's required for omnipotence.
There isn't anything external to God that causes him to do anything.
I don't know what you're talking about.
I don't know how that answers...
Whether God can change whether you have Cheerios for breakfast tomorrow or not.
Well, because he's, well, as Aristotle would say, he's fully actual.
That's not an argument. Fully actual is not an argument.
Well, I mean, let me kind of go.
No, build an argument.
Don't just give me buzzwords. Build an argument, right?
Because if you start with buzzwords, it sounds, well, I quoted Aristotle and therefore, right?
So just, I made an argument and you need to build an argument.
Just don't quote buzzwords.
It doesn't help. Right.
Okay. Well, give me one second.
I gotta think. Okay, so...
God wouldn't need...
Okay, we'll go with, like, you know, you guys said that essentially God's infinity.
So, I mean, would you agree with me that if God exists, then God would be the most perfect...
No, I don't believe that existence predicates perfection at all.
Just because something exists and is infinite doesn't mean that it's perfect.
It could be infinitely evil. Right.
Do you think that if God exists, if God existed, that he would be The best conceivable being.
I mean, on the theist view.
Well, if you define the existence of God as the best possible being, but that's a tautology, right?
So, if you're saying, if God exists and God is the most perfect being, do you agree that God is the most perfect being?
It's like, well, sure. But saying that God exists, saying that immaterial, omniscient consciousness exists, does not mean perfection, in my view.
Yeah, I'm not trying to give an ontological argument or anything like that.
I'm just trying to—looking at God—so as Christians and theists through history have understood God, that if that God exists, if he existed, then he would be the greatest conceivable being.
So he would have all-powerful, all-knowing— He wouldn't need anything, you know, that type of thing is what I'm saying.
Well, you attach a lot of positive adjectives to a concept, for sure.
I mean, this is what religious people as a whole will do, is they'll say all-knowing, all-powerful, all-wise, perfect, and, you know, all that.
But these are a bunch of positive adjectives attached to a concept.
But if I say... I believe in the existence of flubar, and flubar is all-knowing, all-wise, perfect, and rouge.
Right? I mean, I've attached a bunch of adjectives to a concept, but that does nothing to prove that the concept exists, if that makes sense.
Right, yeah, yeah. No, it does.
I was just trying to give you a reason for, given the conceptual constraints of theism, so to speak, that So, you know, if you've read—okay, so, like, Aquinas makes the following argument.
You know, he says, so, you know, everything in nature is composed of, you know, act and potency, right?
So, you know, potency, if you had a rubber ball in your hand— And it's soft and squishy.
You can melt it down.
It has the potential to be melted down.
It has the potential to be turned into a rubber toy soldier.
But it can't become a tree.
You couldn't plant it in the ground.
So it doesn't have that power.
So there's a potency that it's constrained by potency.
And then there's act.
So if it is the rubber wall, then it's actually the rubber wall.
If it is, you know, the army man than it is, you know, the rubber army man, right?
So everything in the world is made by act and potency.
And, you know, Aquinas says, well, you know, everything that exists for it to go from potency to act, it has to have something that moves it, right?
So, you know, and then you go back to chain and, you know, you can take any item in the world.
So the...
The rock, the stone, sorry, I'm not used to doing this over the phone and on the show.
So you've got the man who has the stick in his hand, and then he has the rock, and he moves the rock with his hand.
And then you follow the pattern of causes.
It can go from the rock to the stick to the hand, and then you can break it down into the neurons firing in his arm, the muscles moving, the messages from his brain going into his arm, and you go back.
Well, that's a act potency chain.
You couldn't go if you went back to eternity and there was nothing moving the whole causal apparatus, nothing would move.
And and then, you know, Aquinas, you know, he finishes and he says, you know, if whatever moves that thing, it can't be moved by another.
Yeah, the unmoved mover, right.
Right, right. But the unmoved mover would have to have certain qualities or attributes.
And one of them would be, it would be unmoved.
Because it would be fully an act.
And that's why Aquinas and Aristotle, I think, puts God outside of time.
Because if God was outside of time, there would be some addition to his being.
And the first mover couldn't have that type of change because then it would be going from potency to act.
So I would put God outside of time.
And since God would be outside of time because He is that first being, the first mover, then everything in our history, in our time, God was ordained.
And He has all power because He is purely actual.
Is that better?
Yeah, I mean, I enjoy Aquinas, but I'm not sure that I would take physics from Aquinas any more than I would take medicine from Aquinas, or biology from Aquinas.
You know, we're talking about a guy who lived in the 13th century.
Long before Darwin, long before Newton, long before Einstein, long before Planck, long before quantum physics, long before DNA. The idea that you would be able to reason yourself into physics, which is one of the great scholastic, I would say, fantasies, although was a good foundation for some of the science that grew out of Francis Bacon.
The idea that we would sit there and say, okay, well, we have physics that's doing pretty good or pretty well in terms of figuring out the nature and origins of the universe.
We have biology and evolution, which is pretty good at figuring out these kinds of things.
The idea that we would sort of skip over all of that and go back to a guy from the 13th century to get our physics and our biology and our scientific arguments.
I'm not sure that I would necessarily go in that direction.
And here's the thing. So if you're going to say that there's the unmoved mover, okay, we don't know for sure, because we don't know what's happening in the origin of the universe, and this is why people keep looking.
But the question is, if you're going to say that there's a being outside of material reality, outside of time, outside of constraints, it's infinite, all perfect, all knowing, whatever, whatever, whatever, Well, once you remove standards of cognition from an entity, what should happen is you also remove your capacity to describe it, right?
So if I say to a blind man who's never seen a cloud, describe to me a cloud, he would say, I don't know.
In general, right? I mean, or if we were to say to a deaf person, describe to me Some piece of music, then the person absent, you know, vibrations and stuff like that, the person would have a great deal of difficulty actually describing that piece of music.
Because we've taken away that capacity to process The data that would give them direct experience of what it is we were discussing.
And so if you remove an entity outside of sense data, outside of rationality, outside of time, outside of the universe, then you're creating a category called cannot be perceived, cannot be discussed, cannot be described in any way, shape, or form.
And then what happens?
You say, well, that's really good, and we're going to worship it.
And I don't really know at all how you can remove standards of cognition from a proposed conceptual entity and then say, but I'm pretty sure he handed us these 10 tablets, wants us to do this, doesn't like golden calves, and will send you to hell if you're bad.
See, if you're going to take things out of reality, if you're going to take things out of conceptual describability, then you can just put a big X there, right?
Saying, completely unknown.
So, in an effort to save God by removing God from all standards of rationality, philosophy, science, and consciousness from reality, then you can do that, I suppose.
You can save a big category called X, but then you can't describe it in any way, shape, or form.
Because you don't know what it is.
You can't reason with it.
You can't create any standard by which it can be objectively proven.
It's not subjected to science or sense evidence or...
Rationality or empiricism of any kind.
It's like, okay, so there's a great mystery outside of time and outside of the universe, then shouldn't we just not talk about it because we can't possibly use any rational standard to describe it?
Okay, can I... Yeah, yeah, go.
I don't want to over-talk you.
I actually apologize for doing that a while ago.
I'm just a little nervous. So I would...
Okay, I'm going to respond to your points.
So the first point you brought up was that Aquinas is dealing with physics.
Well, I think that he does use physical examples in his work.
Actually, I don't think that those physical examples are...
I don't think that's what he's getting at.
I think he's getting at first principles.
No, no, no. He's saying that motion in the universe must have had a course.
And that course cannot itself be subject to any prior dominoes, so to speak.
This is talking about the origins of energy and matter in the universe, which is the subject of physics.
I think that motion in him and in Aristotle is referring to just change in general.
It can be any type of change whatsoever.
It can be even change of reasoning through a syllogism.
It can be any type of movement.
Change is, I think, what he means there.
So any type of change that happens in the world requires going from potency to act.
So whenever I reason through a syllogism, I don't think that reason is material.
I don't think that laws of logic are material things somewhere floating around in outer space, right?
But I have to use my reason To walk through the steps of the syllogism.
And even that in and of itself would be a form of motion for Aristotle and Aquinas.
I'm almost certain of that.
Yes, but our capacity to perform those actions would also be something to do with the physical substrata of our brain, which would be the result of evolution, which is obviously tied to physics in some form, because everything that is material is, including life.
So he is talking about physical things in the universe, even if it's just the brain, which would have to do with biology, maybe medicine, but certainly physics.
And that's the challenge with the 13th century guy.
Well, I mean, but I think you would even drill down deeper because, I mean, I think that we would even have to say that, you know, I mean, I think there's an immaterial part of us.
We can go off to all these different rabbit holes.
No, but you would have to establish that.
And the problem is because it's immaterial, you can't.
Because the very definition of non-existence is immaterial.
If you have a doorframe rather than a door, you can walk through the doorframe because there's no door.
Whereas if the door is there and closed, you can't walk through it because there's a door.
And so if you're saying, well, there's a door in the doorframe that you can walk through, that's a contradiction.
So if you're saying something that is immaterial exists, then you're taking the definition called existence, which means detectable in some manner.
Detectable in some manner.
You know, matter, energy, or the effects thereof, something like gravity.
And so you're saying something exists that is immaterial.
But immateriality is the very definition of non-existence.
So you're saying, this is the challenge that I'm talking about in the book, you're saying non-existence exists.
Which is a contradiction.
I don't think that's what I'm saying.
For instance, the rules of the syllogism, they're not the marks on the page in biologic book.
They are immaterial meanings.
And meanings don't just reside in any individual mind.
Can you give me a material example?
Okay, so if you and I were, you know, talking about the rules of the syllogism, right, and we wrote down all seven rules that, you know, determine a valid syllogism, right, and we're sitting here reading them off, we could write that in French, we could write it in English, we could write it in Arabic, we could write it in any number of languages, right?
But the languages aren't the propositions themselves, right?
Those propositions have They have an existence besides the words on the page, because we can talk about them, we can think about them, and they all have something in common, and they all mean the same thing.
So there's the proposition, and then there's the token examples of them in each individual language.
And what I'm saying is that the logical principles themselves, they're universal things.
And to me, that's one example that I can give.
Yes, but if I were to say you should worship logic...
That wouldn't make any sense.
And so if you're going to say there's a concept called God, well, I would certainly agree with you.
But if you're then going to say that the concept has material or I guess it would be immaterial existence, which again is a contradiction in some other realm, that realm being defined as could include anything from unicorns to dragons and so on, then you have a problem.
So I certainly agree with you that concepts are valid.
Concepts don't exist in the real world, but they're not purely subjective.
At least objective concepts are not purely subjective.
But to say that concepts exist in some platonic realm or platonic form is to me not a valid argument.
Okay, can I push back a little bit here?
Because this is one of the things I do.
I enjoy your show.
I watch it a lot.
And I enjoy your use of things like contradiction and things, you know, the law of non-contradiction and, you know, that type of thing and the way you reason through things.
So you wouldn't say that logic actually exists?
Logic does not exist in the way that a tree exists.
Right, no, I would agree with you on that.
But it does have an existence.
It is, right?
Like the laws of logic, like, they have an existence.
No, they are mapped to a real existence.
In other words, if I say, this is, you know, an example, if I say there are three chairs...
Well, the three chairs have a material existence, and the conceptual designator called the number three is not subjective insofar as if there are four chairs, and I said there are three chairs, I'm objectively wrong.
But the concept number three does not exist in the way that the three chairs exist.
But it also doesn't mean that it's purely subjective because it is attempting to describe real things in reality in the same way that the laws of physics do not exist independent of matter and energy and their effects.
But the laws of physics are not subjective because the laws of physics claim To describe and predict the behavior of matter and energy in the real world, in the objective world of the senses and empiricism and validation.
So no, the laws of physics, the laws of mathematics, the laws of logic do not exist, but they're not subjective because they claim to describe and predict the behavior of things in the real world and the laws of logic derive from The laws of physics, insofar as identity, non-contradiction,
either or and so on, they all follow the behavior of material entities that we all encounter when we're very little, which is why children are so very logical, because their logic is constantly being reinforced by the sense data that they're receiving from the objective world around them.
So...
Okay.
I still...
No, listen, you have faith.
Listen, you have faith, so you don't need to prove any of this stuff.
Just so you know.
Because you have faith, and I'm entertaining this for the audience, right?
I have no thought in my mind that you're going to change what you believe about these things.
And my suggestion is, and I hate to tell a Calvinist how to be a Calvinist, but my suggestion is, it's faith.
So, because it's faith, you don't need to prove anything.
You don't need to have rational arguments for things.
You don't need to have unmoved movers.
You don't need to have ontological arguments.
You have faith. You believe because you have faith.
And I think that for theology to attempt to cross over into philosophy is a disaster for both disciplines.
Because you believe because you believe.
And it's sort of like saying, well, I have to rationally prove that Ingres is the best artist of the human body, or Degas is the best artist of whatever, right?
You don't have to prove these things because this is just where you are in terms of your allegiance, right?
You have faith in the existence of God.
And then the idea that people come to you and say, well, you've got to prove it or I've got to disprove and so on.
You don't need to engage at that level because you have faith.
And I think that this blurring of these two mental approaches to the world is a problem.
Atheists keep luring religious people into these discussions about the existence of God.
And religious people, maybe it's physics envy, I don't know.
But religious people are like, well, I gotta jump in and I gotta start proving stuff.
I don't know why. To me, the whole point of faith is it's beyond proof.
Or as Tertullian said, I believe because it is absurd.
He didn't say, I believe because it is rational.
I believe because I read this from Aquinas or this from Aristotle or whatever, right?
He said, I believe because it is absurd.
And I think for me to say, I'm right because I have faith that I'm right, would be an irrational statement in philosophy.
But saying, I believe in God because reasons is an irrational statement in the realm of theology.
That you should have faith and you should not try to reason it through.
I just have to disagree, but I mean, yeah, I mean, I don't know if you're wanting to close it up or...
Yeah, I'm going to move on to the next caller, but I really do appreciate the conversation and I hope that you understand that it's a pretty good book.
I'm pretty good at defending these positions and I'm not just not doing any research and not defining my terms and so on.
It's not bad.
It's not bad, but I really do appreciate the call.
And I was going to apologize the way I put that when I dashed it off in the email.
No problem. Thanks, man. Alright, up next we have Sally.
Sally wrote in and said, Following this incident,
I have found myself heavily scrutinizing the people that continue to spend time with those who I have cut off, and I have little respect for people to try and toe the middle line and not take sides.
My question is, how far should people be held accountable for the actions of those people they choose to be friends with?
If you are the company you keep, should those that stick by people who behave immorally be painted with the same brush?
And how far does that extend to their relationships?
That's from Sally. Paint everyone with the same brush, Sally.
There is only one brush.
It is the old brush. Paint everyone everything from all the time.
It must come from the clouds. It must come down in the rain.
It must be spread by lightning.
Okay, never mind. So, let me...
I could do that for a while, but I decided not to for, you know, sanity's sake.
Why did you cut off your friendship?
Well, so...
Basically, I was sexually assaulted by somebody in my friendship group.
Sweet mother of God, what?
Yeah. Did somebody not understand what the word friendship means?
Well, like, it was...
Oh, God. We were very close for, like, a year.
And then...
There were like a couple of like sort of consensual drunk after a night out like hookups and then...
Wait, hookups just means you had sex.
We didn't have sex.
Wait, isn't that what hookups mean?
It's not fishing, is it?
No, no, no, no, no. It was just sort of like, oh, I'm a virgin.
I didn't want to go.
Wait, is it snogging?
Because nobody knows what that is.
So just tell me, what does hookups mean in this situation?
So just like we went back to his, like, just a lot of like, you know, making out touching.
Like genital touching?
I'm not trying to cry.
I'm just kind of curious. Okay.
So gentle touching to orgasm?
Well, I think that was the intention.
Yeah.
So, no? No.
Okay, got it. So, genital touching with no orgasm, and is that because the orgasm would interfere with the virginity, or I'm trying to figure out, or it's wrong?
It was just sort of, it got to a point, and then I was kind of like, I'm not really ready for this, and we stopped.
It was just kind of like, I'm very, very inexperienced, and I kind of wanted to ease into the whole, like, sexuality thing.
Right. You don't want to be like a cat with a cucumber.
Right. Got it. Got it.
And this happened a couple of times.
Was the drunkenness...
I mean, how drunk were you?
I guess let me just ask that question.
Pretty drunk. Like, first time it was one of those, like, Kind of like massive huge piss-ups.
His memory was spotty like afterwards.
Second time it was we were less drunk but we still had quite a bit to drink.
Third time, which is the time that wasn't consensual, he claims to remember none of it.
I don't know if he's saying that or if that's genuine because he does lose his memory from alcohol a lot.
So He's a blackout drunk?
Yes. And you thought, you know what's great?
Heavy petting with a blackout drunk and no witnesses.
Yeah. I'm not blaming you.
Of course. But what he did was wrong.
Absolutely wrong. But I'm a little bit more into prevention than cure.
Yeah. I mean, like, it's...
In hindsight, yeah, there was a lot of...
A lot of warning. But I didn't think he was capable of that.
Even though he was extremely drunk, he'd kind of be very aware of whether or not I was comfortable with what was happening.
But before, he'd had a spotty memory, right?
Yeah. So before...
He said he didn't remember some of it, I assume, the next morning.
I mean, people generally don't say they don't remember it while it's happening, but he didn't remember it the next morning as much, right?
So you already had an indication that he had lost control while drinking, not that he went crazy, but that he didn't remember or recall what he was doing.
Yeah. Right.
Again, I'm not entirely sure how much of that he...
No, he could have been lying.
Yeah, no, he could have been lying.
Yeah. I mean, drunk people do this all the time, right?
Yeah. Which is they say, well, I don't really remember that as a way of avoiding what they did when they were drunk, right?
Mm-hmm. Right.
Did you want to be his girlfriend?
No. What?
Okay, now I'm really, really confused.
Okay. You didn't want to be his girlfriend, but you're heavy petting with him while you're both drunk.
Yeah. Why?
It was like, well, I found him very physically attractive and it was just sort of, like I literally no sexual experience before him, like not even like kissed a guy and it was just kind of driven partly by curiosity, partly by like raw physical attractiveness.
It's not Bill Cosby, right?
Just checking, just making sure.
So you found him physically attractive.
You were in the same friendship group.
You both liked to drink. So why didn't you want to be his girlfriend?
I'm not saying you should have. I'm just curious why.
Okay. I was kind of aware that he was very reliant on alcohol to sort of express his emotions like...
A lot of us in the group would use the phrase like emotionally constipated to describe him because he's just like he's got one of those faces where if you punched it your hand would break like that's the kind of impression he gives off like but when he gets drunk he kind of opens up a little bit more and I kind of was very conscious of that and he's also a couple years younger than me and it just it didn't seem like it would work out.
How much younger than you? Two years.
Right. So it was lust?
Uh, yeah. So you didn't want to be his girlfriend, but you wanted to fool around while drunk?
Yeah. What do you think of that now?
Not the wisest.
And you were absolutely shocked that a drunken teenager went too far?
Um... That kind of, that third incident where it wasn't consensual, we'd had like a bit of a, not really a fight, like he'd said something kind of mean, like it was a party at his house and it was one of those where I wasn't sure if he was joking or if he was just genuinely annoyed with me.
What did he say? Something about...
He was talking about how he didn't like it when I sort of teased him about stupid stuff that he'd say while he was drunk that he didn't remember.
Sorry, say that again? I just couldn't quite follow.
So he was getting very angry at the fact that I kind of would tease him a little bit about just stupid things that he did when he was drunk, like that he didn't remember the next day.
And he said that I was like ruining his uni life and...
Wait, were you saying this in front of other people?
No, just when we would walk back home after, like, a night out or walk back home after classes.
Did you ever tell other people about things that he'd done while he was drunk?
Um... Sometimes I'd, like, bring it up in conversation, but it would be with the group who were there and kind of already knew and we'd just kind of laugh about it.
So, yes. So...
When he said that you were ruining his university experience, was that because his reputation was suffering because you were talking about what he did while he was drunk?
I don't think so because I would never say anything to anybody who wasn't there and who didn't also remember.
He would get the most drunk out of the group.
Everybody else would remember the night afterwards.
But he thought that you had said things that were harmful to his reputation.
Is that right? Possibly.
I think he just doesn't like to be reminded about embarrassing stuff.
Well, let's not theorize.
So maybe you told somebody who told somebody and maybe he heard from somebody outside the group what he had done when drunk.
I mean, it's a possibility.
It's out there, right?
Yeah. You know, it's like topless selfies.
Once they've escaped, they're out there forever, right?
So once you tell these stories, again, not blaming you, I'm just trying to follow this, right?
But once you tell these stories, they're going to spread, right?
Especially if it's a good-looking guy.
And one of the ways in which they're going to spread is...
Men might spread them because they're in competition with this good-looking guy, so they want to downgrade his sexual market value so that they can compete, right?
Okay. So, if he got the reputation as a sloppy drunk or a dangerous drunk or a sentimental drunk or whatever, right?
Then that is not great, right?
No. No. He shouldn't be drinking that much, don't get me wrong, but...
So, he thought that you were ruining his university experience.
Mm-hmm. By talking about what he did when he was drunk, right?
Yeah. And he expressed anger about this, right?
Yeah. And what did you do?
So, I was quite upset.
I... I went over to him and I said, because he was going on a rant and I wasn't sure if he was saying it because he was trying to be funny or trying to be the center of attention or if he genuinely meant it.
So I went over and I said, like, hey, did you really mean that stuff that you said?
And he just kind of got up and moved across the room and sat somewhere else.
And then one of the girls who was at the party just goes, why don't we change the subject?
Let's go around the room and say what we like about each other.
So everybody could tell that there was a bit of awkward tension.
So this was at the meeting of the friendship group?
Yeah, it was like... Oh no, it was a party at his house, you said?
It was like a house party, but more kind of casual drinking, sitting around chatting kind of thing.
So was it just for this friendship group or was it a more general invite?
It was mostly the friendship group.
There were a couple of other people who we didn't see quite as often.
And what is a friendship group?
So, basically, we all know each other through dance.
Like, we run a dance society at the university.
I'm just overdosing on Britishness here, but all right.
All right. Darts and warm beer.
All right. Oh, Danny boy.
All right. So, then what happened?
People tried to wallpaper over this social awkwardness, and then what happened?
Yeah. So the conversation moved on.
It got late. People started to leave.
I kind of hung back because I wanted to talk to him about it a little bit more.
And at this point, I was very, very drunk.
It probably wouldn't have been safe for me to walk home by myself.
Why not? I don't know what that means.
Like... When you're kind of a level of drunk, you need somebody to make sure you don't trip over your own feet, basically.
So you were really drunk?
I was incredibly drunk, yes.
And why do you drink so much? Well, I don't anymore.
At the time, it was just...
I think it was mostly peer influence.
Everybody was getting that level of drunk.
And if you're the only sober person in the room, you're just kind of...
Bored. Yeah.
Oh yeah, drunk people are, if you're not drunk, they are the most boring people on the planet.
Yeah. All right, so you were heading home?
So I hung back at his house after everyone had left.
Oh, to talk to him while you were drunk, and he was drunk about a conflict, because that's just going to go well.
All right, go on. Yeah.
I mean, in the past, we'd had arguments, and he'd say, we're not drunk enough to have this conversation, you need to get drunker.
And, like, he really could not have an adult conversation whilst over.
So I hung back.
His housemate came in after a night out, and he was talking to her about it.
And so I was just like, I'm just going to go wait upstairs.
So I went upstairs.
A few minutes later, he came up.
I tried to talk to him about it.
He just kind of... I'm sorry. Why did you head upstairs?
Oh, he'd... Because I was like too drunk to walk home at this point.
He said that I could sleep over.
Sorry, the roommate?
Oh no, my friend.
The man himself? Yeah.
Okay, the man that you'd had the heavy petting with before.
Yeah, yeah. He said, you can sleep over.
Yeah. Right, okay.
So you went upstairs to a bedroom?
Yeah. Right, and then?
And so he came up.
I tried to open up the conversation again.
He just sort of got into bed.
Like I said, I'm too tired.
What do you mean he got into bed? I'm like sitting on the floor.
He walks past me, gets into his bed.
You're sitting on the floor.
He gets into his bed.
Yeah. All right.
And your friends just thought, we'll leave her here.
Drunk. Yeah, I mean, I'd stayed over at his before after nights out.
Yes, but you'd also had the heavy petting thing, right?
Yeah. Did your friends know about that?
They did. How did they know about that?
I told one close friend and then she told a few others and he told a group of his friends and it just kind of got around.
Why are you telling people about your sexual life?
Like, it was...
It was kind of like a just first experience, like...
You kind of want to talk it over with your girlfriends.
I kind of thought that was sort of normal.
Well, and did you ask them not to talk about it with others?
Um, I did.
And she was just like, oh, I really want to tell this guy.
I want to tell him so badly. And yeah, and I guess...
Why does she want to tell some guy about your sexual experience?
I guess everybody in the group thought it was kind of funny.
Funny? Yeah, just two people in the friendship group hooked up like they found it funny.
I'm not sure what you mean by funny.
I don't know. They just talk about the fact that it happened and laugh about it.
Okay. I don't know why it's funny that you would...
I mean, I'm not saying it's tragic or anything, but I don't know why it's funny that...
Anyway. All right.
Yeah. I'll just call myself over 50.
All right. So then you're on the floor, he goes to bed, and then what?
So I lie down to sleep on the floor, and he goes, you can get into the bed.
And I was just like, you sure? He was just like, yeah, no, it's fine.
So I kind of like got into his bed, sort of curled up at the edge.
And then he sort of started touching me.
He like pulled me around to face him and then he climbed on top of me.
And I don't want to go too much into graphics, but I was struggling.
I had tears in my eyes. It was not a good experience at all.
That's horrible.
The whole situation is horrible.
Horrible. Did he eventually take no for an answer?
Eventually. It kind of gets to a point where you just sort of, you struggle initially and then you just sort of go limp.
What do you mean you go limp?
Did you kick him in the balls or something?
I mean, I don't quite understand.
If you don't want to have sex with the guys all over you, don't you just hit him with the lamp?
I mean, I'm not sure I'd fall out.
It's because, like, if you're struggling initially and you're being overpowered...
Like, the next instinct is to just sort of relax because it's painful and...
What's... Oh, sorry. What's painful?
Like, he kind of...
I don't want to be too...
Oh, he penetrated. Just with his fingers, but it hurt.
God, Sally, that's horrifying.
Yeah. But when...
I mean, sorry, I mean, maybe I'm missing something here, but don't you fight tooth and nail?
Like, I mean, maybe you were too drunk, or, I mean...
I've talked to a few people about it, and apparently it's a common thing to just go, like, if struggling doesn't work, you just go limp.
Oh, struggling works if you keep struggling.
Struggling works if you, like, you escalate until you're free, or he's dead.
Or both. I mean, he's a lot...
Physically stronger than I am.
Well, he's got eyes, doesn't he?
You know what eyes are?
Pretty damn soft. He's got balls.
Pretty damn sensitive. He's drunk.
So, very slow reaction times.
I'm just, I don't want anyone to get, and I'm not saying you're suggesting this, I don't want anyone to get out of this conversation, just go limp.
I'm like, you've got teeth, haven't you?
I'm serious.
Go Mike Tyson on his groby ass.
Yeah, I like thinking about it like rationally now, I feel like I should have been able to defend myself a bit better.
But when you're in that situation, you don't really know what to do.
And it's sort of this is somebody who you like you trusted and they're doing this and you don't know why.
And.
Yeah, I mean, it's.
it's just weird to me that after 70 years of feminism, there's still such a go-limp instinct.
I think it's more of a, like, almost like a biological defense mechanism, like Because if you are being penetrated and you're struggling, then there's risk of internal injury.
No, I get that. But prior to that, the moment the man doesn't say no, you escalate like crazy until he gets off you.
Before he's got to open your pants, he's got to whatever, right?
Yeah. I grabbed his arms and I was trying to move his hands away from me.
But just bite his arm!
I mean, his arm wasn't anyone in my face.
Are you saying it was impossible to get your face near the body of the man who was attacking you in this way?
Come on. Yeah, I get it.
I'm just saying this for others.
You escalate until you're not being bothered that way anymore.
And the man is in a vulnerable position.
Yeah, he's bigger. Yeah, he's stronger.
But he's in a vulnerable position, right?
He's got to unbuckle his pants.
He's got to unbuckle your pants or whatever it is.
There's time. You got an elbow.
Or just throw him.
Push him. Headbutt him.
him like if you take your forehead and you bash it into his nose i got a feeling the blood is going to go away from his penis and out of his nose which is a good thing yeah i mean like the damn guy in the eye thumb his eye i guess like at the time and i think this might have something to do with the alcohol or just trying to rationalize it um
I kind of, my initial thought was that he didn't realize I didn't want this to happen.
So it was just trying to like, well, you did get into bed with him after you'd done a bunch of heavy padding in the past.
Yeah, yeah.
But, like, obviously, like, thinking back, I'm pretty confident that that isn't the case, because every other time it had been very, very different, and you'd been very careful to make sure that, you know, I was comfortable with everything that was happening, and that just didn't happen this time.
Why did you get into the bed?
Again, I'm not blaming you.
I'm just trying to figure out the domino, like, the causality here, right?
I mean, I didn't really...
Think anything of it.
Like, I know it happened in the past, but I'd also slept over at his in the past, and nothing had happened.
But the previous two times you'd slept over, the petting had occurred?
Uh, yes. So the previous two times you got into bed with him, there'd been heavy petting, but this time you got into bed with him, and was it immediately repulsive?
Or was it something that grew, or what?
Um... The moment he even started to put his hands on me, I kind of curled up into a ball and sort of went tense.
And I thought that would be enough of an indication that he'd be like, okay, she doesn't want to.
And I thought that he wouldn't do anything that I didn't want him to.
Sure. No, I mean, and he shouldn't, of course, right?
But getting into a bed, getting to bed with a man that you previously have had a sexual relationship with every time you got into his bed the last two times, it's a little bit playing with fire.
Again, not to blame you.
He's wrong for what he did.
No question. But it's better not to be in these situations to begin with, right?
Yeah. So then did he stop after a while?
Um... Eventually, yeah, he kind of...
He basically climbed on top of me and put his dick in my mouth.
And I, like, recoiled.
And I just went, just get off me.
And he was just like, okay.
And, yeah.
Well, then you're in a bit of a position of power now, aren't you?
Yeah. Okay, so you said something like...
I guess it was a lot of vowels, but you said, get off me.
Yeah. And then he did.
Yeah. And then what?
He just kind of rolled over and went to sleep.
And you? I just was just sort of lying there trying to process it.
And it was like early hours of the morning.
I got up and I just like burst into tears.
In the room with him? Yeah, still in the room.
And did he wake up?
Yeah, he asked me if I was okay.
And I didn't answer.
I just kept crying.
And then he just sort of...
He didn't say anything else.
I assumed he went back to sleep.
And did you say clearly no to him?
Or did you sort of do this curl in the ball?
I said... I don't at one point.
But once he put his fingers in me, it was very painful and it probably came out a bit like sort of speaking through my teeth kind of thing.
So he may not have heard it or it may have been like he was doing something and you said don't and he may have thought, oh, she doesn't want me to do this thing, whatever it is, right?
Yeah. Or he may not have heard it if it was through your teeth or whatever it was, right?
Yeah. But I was, like, really resisting and, like, as much as I could.
Well, no, you went limp, didn't you? Oh, before you went limp.
Before I went limp, yeah. Right, right.
Wow. So then he went back to sleep after he asked you if you were okay and you were crying?
What did you say? Did you reply to him?
I didn't. Right.
And then I think I just told them I was going home and I collected my stuff and I went over to a friend's house like immediately.
Right. So then you were able to walk at that time of night, right?
Because I thought the idea was like you were too drunk to go anywhere, but then you did go somewhere, right?
So you could have before, theoretically, right?
If it was strong enough of a motivation.
I felt like I'd...
I don't know how long I was there, but I felt like I'd turned up significantly.
And I think just the intense amounts of stress and...
Oh yeah, the cortisol and...
Yeah, yeah, I get it. I get it.
Yeah. So you went to your friend's place.
Yeah. And what then?
So I showed up at her door.
I had like tears streaming down my face.
I was an absolute mess.
She invited me in. The first thing she asked me when she opened the door was, did you sleep with him?
And I just kind of went, kind of, but I didn't want to.
And then I never used the term sexual assault or rape, but I did say several times that it wasn't consensual.
I had trouble.
I had a long period of time where I felt very uncomfortable calling it by its name because I just was in denial about what had happened.
And I told her everything and she said, oh, you guys are so close, you'll be able to move past this and kind of encouraged me not to make a big thing out of it.
Why do you think she did that?
She's one of those very conflict-averse people.
I think she will just kind of go with Whatever is easiest for her.
And if I had kicked up a fuss about this, it would have caused a lot of tension within the group.
And eventually, when I did go to the police, that's kind of divided people a lot.
And people have been called into your witness statements, everybody who was at the party, and it's just been very stressful for everyone.
So I think she just sort of went for the least stress for her option.
And what was the steps that led you to go to the police?
Um, so, I saw him a couple days later, and he actually asked me why I was crying in the morning when I left his house, and I just sort of had this moment of, oh god, you really don't remember.
And I told him that what had happened, like, I didn't want it to happen, and he seemed kind of horrified, and he was like, just a bit panicked, and You know, saying, like, I wouldn't ever, you know, do anything like that on purpose and really kind of apologetic.
And I took that, but as time went on, he started being, like, mostly when he was drunk, he'd be very friendly towards me when sober most of the time.
But then when drunk, he would get very aggressive or very standoffish, and he'd...
It was just really stupid stuff.
He'd act as though I was disgusting to him.
If I accidentally brushed past him, he'd move away and be like, uh, and that kind of thing.
And then it started to really get to me more and more, and I said, we really need to sit down and talk about this properly.
I text this to him, and he texts me back saying, you consented, I did nothing wrong.
And then I sort of lost...
I kind of thought to myself, if he doesn't think what he's done is wrong, he might do it to someone else.
And I don't really want that on my conscience if I didn't do anything to try and stop that.
Well, it's on text, right?
I mean, if he admits to...
What he did in text form, you can go straight to the cops, right?
Yeah. I'm not agreeing with it, but I can understand his reticence.
I mean, I asked to meet up and speak in person.
Yeah, but you could be recording.
I suppose. The moment that he admits what he did, then it's kind of open and shut, right?
Mm-hmm. I mean, again, I'm not justifying it, but I can sort of understand his avoidance of admitting guilt, right?
Yeah. And also, when he's drunk, he kind of avoids you.
Well, I would imagine that's because the problems occurred when, or his behavior occurred when he was drunk and with you.
So when he's drunk, to avoid you may have something to do with that.
Yeah. Okay, so then what happened?
So this is all very recent.
The police report is still ongoing.
No, but when did you decide to go to the police and what happened there?
And how long was it since the incident that you went?
It was about six months after the incident that I eventually went to the police.
Six months? Wow.
Yeah. It was just kind of like eating away at me for the whole time and I was...
Trying to blame it on other things and just trying to avoid thinking about it.
But then once I sort of confronted it and went to the police about it, it was sort of a bit of a weight off my shoulders.
Right. But of course, I mean, if he had done physical damage to you with this...
Physical invasiveness, there would be no particular indication, I would assume, at that late point after the attack, right?
Yeah, they said that they wouldn't bother doing a forensic analysis or any kind of a kit because it's too long after the incident.
Right. Do you think there's anything that he could have done that would have prevented you from going to the police?
I think if he had agreed to talk to me about it and we had an honest conversation about what had happened, I might not have.
Because I didn't want to go to the police about it because I did still consider him as a friend.
I know that sounds insane.
What now? Yeah.
I mean, we had a very...
You went to the police to destroy the life of a friend?
I mean, a person you considered a friend?
Don't get me wrong, I mean, maybe it's the right thing to do, but he was in the friend category?
I mean, we'd had a very close friendship for a year before it happened, and I didn't really want to let go of that, and if I could sort of...
I guess, get closure about what had happened without having to go to the police and without having to destroy his life.
I would have preferred that, at the time at least.
But I was just too scared that he might repeat what he had done and do the same to someone else.
Sorry, I'm just trying to follow this, Ellie.
And again, I'm not blaming you, but you want to stay friends with a man that you're afraid is going to sexually assault another woman.
If, from the conversation, I left confident that he wouldn't repeat the same mistake, then I might not have gone to the police.
I don't know whether or not that would have been the right decision or not now, but at the moment I feel like I made the right decision.
And how long ago was it that you went to the police?
So it would have been...
Towards the end of March.
Right. Right.
And what's happened since?
So they've started conducting their investigation.
They're interviewing everybody who was there the night it happened, just to ask them about the general tone and vibe and speaking to my friend.
Sorry to interrupt, but nobody witnessed what happened, of course, right?
No, but just the events leading up to when people would have been there, they're being interviewed about that, and also first disclosure.
So the first person I told, they're asking her to relay exactly what I said and how much she can remember of that.
Right. Yeah, and I've been told that we weren't to be in contact.
He was given a warning to stay away from me.
And I was told not to contact him, which I haven't done.
Is he out of uni?
He's at uni still.
Oh, so he hasn't been kicked out, right?
Yeah, I've made them aware that they said since there's an ongoing police report, they can't really do anything until that's been concluded.
And what is he facing?
Do you know? What might happen to him?
Are we talking jail time? What's going to happen?
They haven't given me any indication of if the report will go any further.
They said that once they've interviewed everyone, they'll start compiling evidence and then they'll give me an idea of whether or not any charges can be made.
If it will be like a curfew or a fine or go to court and possibly consider jail time because it was so long ago and it's very much like he said, she said.
There isn't a Great likelihood that anything's going to happen.
But I'm hoping that having to go through the report will at least kind of scare him into not doing this kind of thing again, because if somebody else reports and says his name, then that's an even bigger weight.
Sorry, can you just...
I was just having a... I apologize for this, Sally.
I was just curious what the punishment might be in the UK for...
Sexual assault. And you were saying that, you know, not necessarily jail time, but if there's something negative that accrues to him socially, that that might keep him from repeating?
Is that what you meant? So I'm hoping that the fact that the report has happened would kind of, like, scare him into not repeating this, because if somebody else reports him...
Then there's a higher likelihood that something will get done.
So if he's not charged this time around, they'll keep it on record that he was accused.
And then if somebody else accuses him, they'll be all like, well, this isn't the first time your name's come up kind of thing.
Right, right.
And what's happened to the increasingly horribly named friendship group?
So I was quite, I think, understandably very traumatized by what happened.
And I was severely depressed and I was self-harming and it was just having a really awful time.
And a couple of them told me that they didn't want to spend time with me anymore because it was distracting them from their studies and that it was just too stressful for them to...
Oh, you mean the police investigation?
The police investigation.
Was distracting them from their studies, or what?
Just general being around me when I was depressed.
Right, okay. And one of the members of this dance group...
We run it together.
We're co-presidents of the society.
He was criticizing my ability to do my job because of my mental health.
He didn't know what happened, but he was like, you're not working with this guy.
And that's because you're mentally ill and you're incapable of being rational and objective and just making all these comments about my mental health.
Did he know the experience that you were talking about?
He didn't.
He didn't know why that happened.
He just didn't know why you were upset.
He didn't know why I was depressed and...
I'd had depression in the past and it had never affected my work.
I think he was just being kind of a dick.
Sorry, go ahead. He had his way that he liked to run it and I had my way which I liked to run it.
We really shouldn't have been running it as a joint thing.
We were just getting incompatible in our working styles.
So once he had something that he could jump on, like, oh, she's got a mental health issue, I can use this to say that she's incapable and try and get others to listen to her less, that kind of thing.
And you said you'd had depression in the past?
Yes. Since what age?
17. And your childhood?
Not the best relationship with my parents growing up.
My dad would hit us and my mom would threaten to leave.
My brother was diagnosed with depression when I was 17 as well.
And neglect, you mentioned on your Adverse Childhood Experience score.
Sorry? Neglect.
You were saying, neglect. Yeah, so whenever my mum would go away, like if she went away for a weekend or stayed over at her mum's for a bit and she'd leave my dad in charge, he just wouldn't prepare food for us.
And my mum would come back and we'd be like, well, we haven't eaten.
And she'd scream at my dad and say, why didn't you feed them?
And We'd ask our dad to feed us and he'd be on the computer and he'd say, I'll do it later.
And they never did. And you had a household member depressed.
Was that your brother or mentally ill or suicide attempt?
My brother was diagnosed with depression.
And how did that manifest before he was diagnosed?
He was very reclusive.
He'd just stay in his room for most of the time.
And if you tried to go in and talk to him, He'd usually just get angry and tell you to leave.
And do you know what brought that on in him?
He doesn't really like to talk about it.
Everybody would just kind of say that he was a bit of a hermit and that he was addicted to video games and just sort of brushed it off and laughed about it.
Right. Did the physical abuse more come from your father than the verbal abuse from your mom?
Yes. Tell me a little bit more about the dance group, if you don't mind.
It's a university group.
Joined a couple years ago and I ran it one year alongside another person another year by myself with not very much help and then this year with this bigger group there were six of us in the group so all kind of Like varying backgrounds,
varying age groups, mostly between like, he was the youngest, he was 19.
And the oldest was 25.
Right. And we just meet up and like train together every week and we'd set up events and run classes and workshops and that kind of thing.
It was a nice little group before this year.
Right, right. Like there was a really tight sense of community.
What type of dance was it?
Breakdance. Ah, okay, cool.
Cool. And did you guys put on shows?
This year became very show-heavy.
In the past, it would be like a couple of shows every year.
It's mostly like battles and competitions and stuff.
Right, right. Okay. And you said that you were self-harming.
Yeah. After this attack.
And had you done that before?
Yes, when I was 17 as well.
And then again, when I was 19.
And what sort of self-harm was it?
So basically, I had a friend that I met while I was in school who would cut with scissors.
And I looked up online Like methods to stop.
And it would have things like, you know, hold an ice cube in your hand until it melts and like snap rubber bands against your wrist.
And I sort of started with the least severe one and then worked my way up to cutting.
Wait, so you were trying to find a cure for a friend of yours?
Yeah. And then that was like years before I did it.
Right. But I knew of all of the methods when you felt that way to avoid it.
So I started with the least severe ones and then I worked my way up.
Did you end up, was it like thighs or?
Left forearm. Left forearm, like on the inside?
Both inside and outside, like all the way around.
And what would you cut with? So it started off with fabric scissors.
Then double-edged razors and the most recent one was a pencil sharpener.
A pencil sharpener?
Oh. Yeah, you can unscrew the blade.
Yeah, yeah. And were there any particular states of mind or incidents or occurrences that would trigger this?
Was it more in terms of time of the week or were there triggers for it?
So, a lot of it was, I'd just kind of be in my own head thinking about everything that had happened and how horrible the situation was.
And it's like, I'd cut and then I'd stop thinking about all the stuff I was thinking about and think about, okay, I'm bleeding now, I need to wash this, I need to look after this.
So it was sort of a distraction.
And what was your relationship to the I assume it hurt?
Yeah, I assume it hurt.
I mean, the adrenaline kind of cancels out a lot of the pain.
So it won't hurt initially when you do it, but then it will start to sting a few minutes later.
Right. And what would you be thinking about, I assume, your childhood?
Is that fair to say? Is that what you would be thinking about before you would cut?
It... It was more often like the immediate situation and like kind of...
Because I'd had depression on and off when I was a teenager.
There was this sort of...
And I'd gotten over it and then been depressed again.
It was sort of like this is just what life is like.
Like there's no other side.
It's just up and down and it's never going to improve significantly.
Yeah, depression feels eternal in the moment, right?
Yeah. And a lot of times it's a lot more than a moment, right?
Yeah. And how long did your depression last when you had it at 17 and 19?
I'm not too sure exactly when I was 17.
I was doing my final exams at school and I was in the mentality of once I leave home, things will get better, I'll be living on my own.
So it was all through the school year and then when it got to summer it was just kind of like a sense of relief, like I'm not going to have to live at home anymore and I started to get better.
Right. Then when I was 19, it was the better part of a year.
And I had a lot of counseling, CBT, all of that stuff to get over it.
And then I did start to feel better and then this kind of triggered it off again.
And does the dancing or other forms of exercise, does that help?
Yeah. I think that's kind of what made it hardest this time because the dancing had been a real de-stress for me.
And then that environment became very stressful because of the people that were there.
Right. Right.
And what's the status of the people you were friends with before now?
I know that you've said that there's fragmentation and where do people sit with this whole...
Well, with all of this stuff.
I think, well, most of them don't speak to me anymore.
I think a lot of them, particularly the ones, like the original six of us who are running this group, a lot of them either think I'm making it up or they don't really want to think too hard about it and they don't want to believe that he's capable of that and I'm kind of out of sight, out of mind. So they just kind of continue to be friends with him and just continue as they were.
No, it's tough. That is very tough.
I'm sorry to hear that. It's hard, you know, when you are expecting support from friends and they cross over to what you see as the dark side.
That is a hard thing, right?
Yeah. And what would you say to...
There's no way to make this a good thing.
Obviously, what happened to you was awful and terrible and wrong.
But what would you say to other women, or maybe even perhaps men, about what they could do to prevent such a thing from coming into being?
Um... She's like...
Because I know what the warning signs were in my particular situation and I ignored them.
What were they for people who may be in a similar situation?
I don't know.
That's hard. I don't know if there's any kind of blanket piece of advice that would like Help everyone.
No, but even if you can help a few people.
I guess the big one is don't ignore the red flags when you see them.
And I made a lot of allowances for this guy's behavior because of his age and the fact that he was the youngest in the group.
And it was just kind of like, oh, he's immature, he'll grow out of it.
And that's never an excuse.
But what were the red flags?
This does nothing to excuse what happened to you, just so you understand.
Yeah, yeah, of course. But what were the red flags that you see?
The fact that he was so heavily reliant on alcohol and that he would get blackout drunk and he would, on occasion, become More aggressive when he was drunk.
And he would blame a lot of his negative behavior on the fact that he was drunk and think that that was enough of an excuse.
Yeah, like earlier we were talking about the woman who had the doctor's note and how we have the alcohol note.
Yeah, yeah. He very much, he even said to me at one point when he'd said some, I don't remember what he said, but he said something that Something nasty directed at me, and then I told him about it the next day, and he said, you can't hold me accountable for the things I do when I'm drunk.
Oh, you can't hold me accountable for the things that I do when I'm drunk.
Yeah, that could be considered a red flag, right?
Yeah. People are horrifyingly honest in hindsight sometimes, right?
Yeah. See, what he means by that is I don't hold myself responsible for what I do when I'm drunk.
In other words, I have license for anything when I'm drunk.
Yeah. Was there anything else?
The alcohol reliance, the lack of emotional expressivity, as you said.
What was it? Emotionally constipated?
I think that was the phrase that you used.
The sense of anything goes when you're drunk.
And you said the aggression.
Now, the aggression was just verbal prior to this assault, right?
Yeah. Right. But was there and indicates that somebody has a problem with his temper, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
And so if somebody has a problem with his temper, has said, I give myself license to do whatever when I'm drunk, and is angry at you in that evening, invites you into his bed, again, none of this justifies anything, but there are ways in which these things can be avoided to some degree, right?
Yeah. Definitely.
And was there anything else? He was just very...
He's insecure and lacking in confidence and he'd kind of hide behind this ego.
He's an incredible dancer and he's good looking, he's got a lot of muscle and he has this persona that he fronts a lot basically.
And for those who don't know that Britishism, what do you mean he fronts a lot?
Like he has this cool exterior that doesn't match his inner self?
Yeah. It's not quite poser, but I know what you mean.
It's a false self.
Yeah. I did have the conversation about hitting your kids with him at one point as well.
And he was hit.
I knew this piece from an area of London where it's kind of the norm.
It's very, very rare to meet somebody who hasn't been hit by their parents in that area.
So I kind of knew this going in.
But he had been, and he was all like, I thank my parents for it every day.
I was like a bad kid.
I would have turned so fucked up if I hadn't been hit.
So he's justifying the violence he was subjected to as a child.
Praising it, in fact. Yeah.
So his relationship to aggression is kind of messed up, right?
Yeah. And it's something that you hear so often in the area where I grew up.
Did he have a father in the house?
Yes. Do you know what his relationship was like with his father?
I mean, he didn't say that much about it.
He... He, like, only really talks about them in terms of, like, they give me money and, like, just sort of that teenage, like, they're kind of annoying, but I love them kind of thing.
Right. Yeah.
I mean, I've certainly known some dancers who've had some tough stuff As children.
It's really common in, like, just the breakdance scene.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Very common.
Yeah, I mean, there's the hip-hop culture influence as well, which also can come from a rough place.
Yeah. And how are you enjoying university?
I mean, it's like that old joke, you know?
And I'm sorry to make it any kind of joke, but it's like this old joke.
Other than that, how did you enjoy the play, Mrs.
Lincoln, right? Because President Lincoln got shot at a play by John Wilkes Booth.
But prior to this, let's say prior to this situation, how was university for you?
Did you find it good, enjoyable, rewarding, rich?
Was it what you wanted? Yeah, I was enjoying it.
I'm sorry, you were? I was enjoying it a lot, yeah.
Right, right. And what are you taking?
Classics. English did?
No, like ancient Greek and Roman history.
Ah, okay, okay. Yeah.
And what is your hope for graduation and the future for that?
So I want to do a master's next year in business and marketing and I want to set up my own company running events.
I want to kind of start with what I know which is dance events and kind of bring These more deprived areas, set up local talent shows, that kind of thing.
I'm doing the math.
You seem to have raced through pretty quickly.
Am I right? Did you swat?
It's not related to snogging.
It's just been studying hard, but go on.
I've got a plan, a vague plan in my head.
I have a mentor who...
He's like a professional dancer and he runs events and he's helped me run successful events in the past and that's what I really love doing.
Right. And do you want to get married, have kids, do you think?
Yeah. Right.
All right.
I mean, I have a couple of comments, but I don't want to, if there's something else you wanted to mention, I'm certainly happy to hear.
Going back to the...
I know this is a lot of backstory for your question.
I just wanted to make sure we didn't lose it in the shuffle.
It's the people who have sort of cut me off and are just continuing to spend time with him and don't seem to worry about the accusation.
Those people kind of scare me.
The people who continue to spend time with them, knowing that that's the company they keep, that also kind of scares me.
Two of the people in this group in particular, they had a conversation where they sat down.
It was two of them and pretty much the only person within the society who has cut this guy off after hearing what I had to say.
And who's kind of stuck by me.
They said that, they sat down and they said, if we, like me and severely depressed, like, you know, if we cut her off at this point, she might kill herself.
And we need to not feel guilty about that, if that happens.
And, uh... That's, uh, it's pretty cold.
Yeah, and, uh...
My friend who's the one who's still my friend, he doesn't seem to think so.
He doesn't seem to have much of a problem with that thinking.
That they shouldn't feel guilty if you kill yourself?
Yeah, like knowing that them cutting all contact would have maybe been the thing that pushed me over the edge.
And do you feel anywhere close to the edge?
I was at the time, definitely.
Which time? Around the time when they had this conversation and when they did cut me off.
And how long after the incident was that?
Sorry to refer to it as the incident.
I'm running out of descriptors, but...
It was a good few months, maybe like four months afterwards.
Was this still a time where you were trying to work on a friendship with him and...
Um, I wasn't spending as much time with him as I had in the past, but I was kind of trying to sort of be civil and get on with him.
Right. And we were both running this group and there was almost like a professional, I need to be able to work with him element to it.
Yeah, I'm sorry, that's not funny, but you know, You are getting an education.
And I'm sorry that this is the education that you're getting.
But you're getting an education on people.
Yeah. And it's not fun.
I mean, I won't go into sort of my experience with this kind of stuff because I don't want to trivialize what happened to you and nothing.
Happen to be in this kind of way.
But it is really an education when you ask people to trust you.
When you ask them to take a side against a bad guy or a bad girl.
And you realize just how insubstantial people are.
How scared or conformist or, as you said about your friend, didn't want to cause any trouble.
And how little people are guided by any form of objective integrity.
How morally flaccid, how spineless, how empty people are.
Sorry to stuttle you, but it's a very powerful thing.
And I went through my, I mean, I went through in the business world, I went through in the personal world, where it's just like, bad stuff is happening, and everyone just kind of does that Homer Simpson back into the hedge thing, you know?
I'll come out when mommy and daddy have stopped fighting, you know?
And it is really quite something.
And, you know, I mean, I've been publicly attacked many times and people, a lot of people vanish.
They ghost, baby. Call me when everything's done and the smoke is clear.
I'll be here with you after the battle to claim I helped in the victory, right?
I mean, it is appalling that people who are close to you I mean, I had cancer and a whole bunch of people, I thought they were friends.
Never called. When you have to take a stand in your life or when something's happening in your life which requires support from people, well, you find out who they are, right?
Yeah. And it's kind of chilling.
You rip the lid or the mask off the friendship group.
And it's neither friendly nor much of a group, right?
Now, I will say this.
Don't have...
Sexual relations outside of a committed relationship.
I'm just going to be really annoying and just lecture the shit out of this.
I don't need to tell you, right?
You understand now why sexual morality was kind of important before the boomers detonated it in the name of hedonism, right?
In the dark decade of the 70s that I will do an entire podcast on at some point, but...
Don't have sexual relations outside of a loving, committed relationship.
I'm not saying you've got to be a nun until you're married.
Not that I would disapprove.
But I'm just saying, don't do it.
Don't have sexual relations with somebody you don't at least really, really, really like.
Really like. Love, ideally, yes, yes, it's called make love, not make like, right?
But this guy was praising the people who abused him as a child.
He was maybe even, he's certainly a social alcoholic, right?
I mean, I assume that most times that he got together with people socially, particularly in the evening, got to have a drink, right?
Yeah, yeah. So the guy's at least a social alcoholic.
Maybe he's a full-blown alcoholic.
I don't know. Yeah, I mean, like, I know that his closest friend just sits alone in his room and gets drunk every night, like, and it's like a normal thing.
Everybody's just kind of like, he's like, oh, I'm sophisticated.
I'm a whiskey drinker, like.
Oh, yeah, because whiskey is just classy.
Yeah. I got one of the higher-end STDs, don't you know?
But... No, this, well, there's another red flag, right?
That he's best friends with a complete alcoholic, right?
Guy can't seem to function without alcohol drinks every day, probably to drunkenness, right?
So, you are a victim, without a doubt, but you made mistakes.
Yeah, of course. Right? I mean, was it lust?
This guy's just hot, even though he's clearly signaling that he's not a very good guy.
He gets drunk. He gets belligerent.
He praises his abusers.
He can't function without alcohol in social situations.
He's verbally mean towards you.
And these are all...
Prevention is the better part.
Nobody can go back and change what happened.
The whole point is to try and extract some wisdom from these things for you.
You learned the lesson in a very bitter and horrible way.
But there are other people, women in particular, who can...
Learn from this horrible situation and try and find ways to avoid this.
And again, I know I'm repeating this, but I really, really want to understand you're still a victim.
Don't get me wrong. You're completely a victim.
But this is why lust is considered a deadly sin, right?
Yeah. Well, one of the seven deadly sins.
So... I mean, like...
No, go ahead, go ahead. But before all this happened, like, again, we were extremely close, and I did very much care about him, and...
No.
No, no, no.
I'm sorry. I hate to correct the victim, but you were not close.
No, because if you think that someone you're close with can do this to you, you'll never feel close to anyone.
You weren't close to him.
He was a sloppy, emotional drunk, and that's pretend intimacy.
But you weren't close to him.
You didn't admire him.
You didn't respect him.
You didn't look up to the virtues that he manifested.
You didn't respect his friends.
You didn't respect his family.
You didn't respect the honor and integrity and goodness of his nature.
You didn't admire his moral courage.
There was a sloppy pseudo intimacy when you were both bombed.
That is not the same as being close to someone.
And I want to get this across to you, Sally, because one day you will actually be close to someone.
And I don't want you to think that if you're close to someone, they can actually do something like this to you.
Because then you'll never feel safe and secure.
You know what I mean?
Yeah. He's messed up.
He's messed up and therefore he can't be close to you.
He's got this, what did you call it, fronting?
Yeah. Yeah, he's got a big false self.
He's put himself into muscles and dance rather than virtue and self-knowledge.
He drinks too much and he assaulted you.
You were not close to him, in my humble opinion.
Because when someone is close to you, that will never, ever, ever happen.
They would rather hurt themselves than hurt you.
Thank you.
Do you know what I mean? Yeah.
You will feel safe, but I don't want you to conflate what happened to you with being close to someone.
Yeah. One of the things that kind of really bothers me about the whole, like, people continuing to spend time with him and People continuing to spend time with people who know what he did and continue to spend time with him is like...
Most of them know that it does really hurt me, the fact that they...
That this doesn't seem to bother them.
And that they're continuing to keep company with him, like, after what I told them.
And... I've been...
Accused of being a bit demanding and saying, you know, you're not allowed to dictate who we spend time with.
You bully. Yeah, it's like you can't ask us not to hang out with him and not to be friends with him.
Sure you can. You can ask anything you want.
Sally, you can ask me to play a ukulele while doing the macarena.
You can ask anything you want.
No, seriously. I mean, I don't understand.
You can't expect me.
I can. Now, just because I ask someone to do something or have an expectation doesn't mean that they have to comply.
But I sure as hell can ask anyone anything.
And they can ask me whatever they want to.
But this, oh, I gotta control you.
You can't ask me this. Like, I can and I just have.
Deal with it. Right?
But this censoring of others because you can't handle what they're asking is really pitiful.
It's pathetic. Pathetic, as the British would say, right?
Pathetic, right? But no, you can ask them.
Of course you have the right to ask them.
I would like you to not see the guy who...
I don't even want to describe it.
All right. I don't want you to see this guy, right?
I don't want you to be friends with this guy because he hurt me.
You can ask that. Of course you can.
No, you're free to ask it.
Now, they can say no, of course, but saying, you shouldn't ask me that.
You can't... You can't dictate to me.
Hey, I'm not dictating to you because I'm not Stalin.
But I sure as hell can say, a condition of being friends with me is you not also be friends with the guy who assaulted me.
I don't think that's unreasonable at all.
I think that's a very reasonable request.
I think so too.
Right. Which means that if, quote, friends aren't responding reasonably to a reasonable request, well, they're not friends.
And better you learn that now than later.
I'm a band-aid off quick kind of guy.
So you kind of want to get this lesson as soon as humanly possible, because otherwise the betrayals can escalate, right?
Yeah. Look, your friends, and again, not to blame them, but in an ideal world, Sally, in an ideal world, Your friends would say, okay, this guy's being a little bit weird.
He's kind of aggressive. And she's really drunk.
And she's probably going to sleep in his room.
Let's just take her home.
Yeah. I mean, your friends would not have...
I mean, I assume that your friends weren't all as drunk as you were, right?
Probably not. Right.
So your friends could have said, you know, they're not boyfriend-girlfriend.
She's going to end up up in the room.
He's being kind of hostile.
He's weird. He's a bit of an aggressive drunk.
99% sure nothing's going to happen that's bad.
But, you know, prevention is better than cure.
Let's just take her home, right?
Yeah. I mean, I'm going to assume that you got into this young man's bed without any sexual desire at all.
Is that right? Yeah.
Right.
Right.
A 19-year-old man is still more than half a decade away from intellectual maturity.
They're kind of... Kids with hormones.
Again, excuse is nothing.
I'm just saying that I'm not sure that women always fully understand the power and the waywardness of male sexuality.
particularly when combined with alcohol.
And the whole point of sexual morality in the past was to prevent these kinds of situations from coming into being, which again, justifies nothing that was done to you, You're still a victim. He was still absolutely wrong.
But there was a reason why there were chaperones.
There was a reason why people had to leave their doors open.
There's a reason why an attractive single young man and young woman would not be allowed to go into the same bedroom blind drunk, right?
Yeah. And it is horrible to see what happens when you ask people to take your side in a pretty clearly defined situation, right?
Because they can say, oh, she's lying or she's making it up or whatever, right?
Yeah. But then they're saying, I... Was friends with someone who lies and makes things up and destroys a man's life because he wasn't nice to her.
I'm not accusing you of that or whatever, but that's what they'd have to say in their heads, right?
And that would prompt some...
Go ahead. I almost respect the people who have outright decided that they think I'm lying and have cut me off more than the people who are trying to toe the middle line.
Well, you know, they're not as much of a concern for you anymore, right?
Because their position is clear, right?
But it's just sort of like, okay, they think that I'm lying about this.
Clearly, that makes me a horrible person in their minds.
Of course, they're not going to want to spend time with me.
Well, and he's probably been working the social network as well, right?
With his side of the story.
Of course, yeah. But the people who are trying to, like, toe the middle line and remain friends with both of us and remain neutral in the situation...
It's almost like, don't you care the sort of company that you're keeping?
Well, I think the answer to that is pretty clear.
That they don't. And they resent you, probably, for putting them in that situation where they have to choose.
Now, this is something I was talking about years and years ago in the show.
That if you have a really dysfunctional family, and one person at the Thanksgiving table starts to bring up some of the dysfunction...
Grandfather used to beat me and whatever, right?
Who does everyone get mad at?
Who hasn't been bringing it up?
Yeah. We were fine until you opened your big mouth and spoke the truth.
It is a chilling thing when you realize how few people in this world have any relationship to integrity or morality.
It's one of the reasons I work so hard to try to bring it to more and more people because I have seen into this Nietzschean post-Darwinist hellscape of the will to power where people don't have any objective standards with which to judge moral situations and make decisions accordingly.
They have no objective standards. They're just trying to get by.
They're just trying to not cause too many problems and not ruffle too many feathers and they will just conform to whoever has the most power in a particular situation which is usually the worst person.
Yeah. And that is a grab your eyelids open situation which you can't ever unsee, right?
And I hope that at least it will give you some drive to say the people with no spine can never stand with me.
And to try and find people and have relationships with people Who are honest with themselves.
Who, you know, if they were hurt by their parents, they say, I was hurt by my parents.
If they weren't, they don't, right?
People who have gone through these kinds of trials by fires and have understood the spineless, betraying nature of the social environment in which we find ourselves in the 21st century.
After a century and a half of leftism and socialism and Marxism and the welfare state and nihilism and the 70s, which I mentioned before, wasn't just bad fashion.
Polyester solve planet.
So, you can, now that you've seen these red flags, now that you have seen, you can go back and say, okay, what was the indication that these people were untrustworthy?
What was the indication that they were...
I'm going to take the easy route or betray me or whatever, and then look for those and rigorously and rigidly guide yourself to the right kinds of people by being constantly on the lookout for red flags.
Paranoia breeds protection.
It sounds kind of weird, but you know what I mean?
Caution breeds protection.
I can't even tell you how many locks people have to pick to get to my inner heart, but it's quite a few, let me tell you.
And that's necessary.
I mean, as a public figure as well, but I mean, it's just, you know, you got to be on the high shelf.
You got to be top shelf. You've got to be hard to crack.
And people got to really want it and they got to prove themselves to you.
Otherwise... It's like those trust exercises.
You've probably done them in dance and we did them in theater.
You fall backwards and people catch you and it's like, no, they just drop you and then drop a brick on you.
But now you know that you can find better people and your life can become far more secure in the long run than if this had never happened.
And I'm a big one, Sally, for trying to milk as much gold out of terrible things as humanly possible.
We can't make bad things good, but we can get as much good out of bad things as possible.
And that is the best that we can make out of evil occurrences.
And sometimes it doesn't make them worthwhile, but it makes them as valuable as humanly possible.
I have one friend and it really really scares me when he says stuff like this but the girl who told me to stay friends with this guy after it happened and her and the other person who said that they wouldn't feel guilty if them cutting me off resulted in me trying to kill myself He constantly goes on about how they're good people and how he trusts them ultimately.
People are very honest.
All we have to do, Sally, all we have to do is listen to them.
You know, people say the most astonishing things directly to our faces.
And then we like, I'm sure they're just talking or it doesn't really matter.
And, you know, let's go watch some videos or whatever.
And then when we look back, we say, man, they really were telling me the truth about themselves, weren't they?
People will tell you the most incredible things.
All you have to do is listen and assume that they're telling the truth and make your decisions accordingly.
That's how you stay safe.
People tell you everything you need to know about them, usually in the first five minutes.
Whether it's body language or statements or the topics that they choose and so on.
They tell you everything you need to know about them in the first five minutes.
And once you learn to read that and to understand that and to listen to that, Then you get security.
Then you get predictability.
Then you get quality.
But not until. So he's telling you the truth.
He thinks these people who've betrayed you are good people.
So screw him. We all want to engage.
We want to change these people's minds.
Don't you understand that they're bad?
He's already told you everything about himself.
He's not going to change.
Not going to change. Assume no one changes.
Assume no one changes and your life gets so simple.
Assume no one changes.
And everything's so much easier.
You end up with a few very high-quality relations if you assume no one changes.
Assuming that people change has you go in there and try and tinker with everyone all the time, right?
It wastes ungodly amounts of time and energy and doesn't change anyone anyway.
Just assume no one's going to change.
So much easier. Now, I know I do a show where people change and so on.
Sure, if people are in motion, if someone says, man, I'm going to go to therapy, I've got to figure this out, I had this big dream, I had this big revelation, and then they follow through and they this and they that, okay, sure.
But assume no one is going to become an Olympic athlete.
I don't meet people and say, hey, go become an Olympic athlete.
I think you should really become an Olympic athlete.
You should really change everything and become an Olympic athlete.
No one's going to become an Olympic athlete, except the guy who, since the age of five, has been training to become an Olympic athlete.
And even then, he probably won't make it.
So if somebody's already in the big process of self-knowledge and understanding, and they're moving, and they're changing, and it's good.
I'm sorry? This guy who said that he is in therapy and he's really into Jordan Peterson and he wants to listen to this show after...
No, good. So being in therapy is not enough.
Yeah. It's like saying, I'm going to become an Olympic athlete because I signed up for a personal trainer session.
That may be possibly the start.
But here's the way. You find out if somebody's really dedicated to therapy.
Here's your little trick, Sally, to save you years of your life.
It's like I've just made everybody half immortal.
Here we go. Here's my vampire bite of wisdom.
If somebody says, I'm in therapy...
Great. Then you ask them, what do you do when you're not in therapy?
What do you do about growth when you're not in therapy?
Now, for me, I was in therapy three hours a week, and I spent at least 10 to 15 hours a week journaling and dream analysis and reading and sentence completion and, you know, Nathaniel Brandon workbooks and John Gray workbooks, you name it, right?
Because the therapy was like, that was just opening a door.
I'm the one who's got to walk through.
So if the person's like, oh yeah, I go to therapy like an hour a week or whatever, and you say, well, what do you do outside of therapy?
And they're like, no, I go to therapy.
I mean, he does do all of this stuff.
Good, good. Okay, well then, fantastic.
If he's in motion, right?
Yeah. But then the question is, when somebody makes a self-contradictory statement or when somebody says something like, no, I think these are really good people, then you say, well, how do you know?
And if they're like, wait a minute, actually, I don't really know.
How do I know? Then they have the third eye.
They can observe themselves. They can improve.
But if they get defensive or they attack or they avoid, then it's just like, you're not going to therapy.
You're just looking at a diet book thinking that helps you lose weight.
Yeah, yeah, I get you.
I went to personal trainer one hour last week and one hour this week.
I'm ripped.
It's like, no, you're not.
Is that helpful?
Yeah.
Here's hope and I leave you feeling better.
Yeah, this has been very helpful.
Thank you. How do you feel?
I mean, this is an intense thing to talk about.
How are you doing? Sorry? Oh, how are you feeling?
It's an intense thing to talk about.
How are you doing? Yeah, I'm doing all right.
All right. No cutting, right?
Yeah, better than before the call.
Better than before the call. I'll take it.
All right. Well, do let me know how it goes.
And please accept my sympathies for what happened to you.
It is a terrible untutored world that we live in.
And we have to learn very hard lessons that were learned many years, many centuries sometimes before, but we have to do the great relearning.
And some people mistake that for conservatism.
As if we want to conserve much of what goes on in the world right now.
But I really do appreciate everyone's call.
I really do appreciate everyone's time, energy, attention, honesty, openness, and connection.
Only connect, as Ian Forster said.
Please don't forget to pick up your copy of The Art of the Argument at theartoftheargument.com.
You can help support the show.
Really, really appreciate your help and support of the show.
Very, very necessary. At freedomainradio.com slash donate.
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