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July 13, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:46:22

Fight, Flight or Freeze!?!

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	Good evening everybody.
	Hope you're doing well.
	Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio.
	Supplementary show.
	27th.
	Sorry to the people we didn't get to last night.
	Had a few technical problems.
	Had to upgrade Mike.
	Found out that he was picked up by a virus scanner as a status slash zeitgeist report.
	So clearly he had to reformat him and then he lost all of his memory, which has actually proved to be a significant upgrade due to all of the past instances of sexual harassment he's been subjected to.
	Mike, is there anything you'd like to add to my little assessment of yesterday?
	Is that a fair enough assessment?
	No, I was referencing sexual asthma, not directly.
	Anyway, suppression.
	It's like it matters at this point.
	I have photos.
	What difference could it possibly make now?
	All right, so who do we have up first?
	All right, up first is James.
	His question is, my wife's parents have grown to dislike me, yet she remains very loyal to them and it's driving a wedge in our relationship.
	I tried to talk to her about it, but she is very resistant to the subject.
	What can I do?
	All right, from the law of morality to in-law, we are keeping the theme going.
	James, what have you done to annoy these fine, nice, lovely people?
	What?
	What have you done?
	Well, the first instance of annoyance would be, I had met them several times previous, and they're English, by the way, so they're very proper.
	and very formal so I kind of matched with them and was polite and the whole thing and then we had our wedding at our house here and their entire family came and we ran out of room to put everyone so I was cleaning out the sunroom to put a bed in there and there's boxes and boxes of books and I opened one and they were full of like coloring books and pamphlets from
	Auctions in 1972 in Belgium and stuff like that and I casually said have you looked in these boxes of books?
	I'm not sure that they're all worth keeping because they you know, there's like 25 boxes of books and that was apparently a very horrible thing to insult her books and I guess the pressure of the wedding and a house full of nieces and nephews and and
	They're a fairly hysterical family, lots of loudness and telling each other to shut up and stuff like that, whereas my family's always been very calm and quiet.
	You know, like my family, you walk in the door and you wouldn't know anyone was home half the time, which is not necessarily a good thing either.
	But anyhow, that insulting her books turned out to be a major faux pas and I proceeded to stick my foot in my mouth.
	repeatedly for the rest of the week.
	And we went on our honeymoon, and she's been very cold and distant to me ever since.
	Wait, she being the mom?
	Yeah.
	No, not my wife.
	No.
	Oh, yeah.
	Just important, right?
	Anyhow, she is very guarded woman.
	I've I've been working on figuring out myself for a long time and started trying to figure out her.
	She was an orphan in the war and no parents and shuffled around from Switzerland to Belgium to England to escape the war.
	I have tried to direct my emotions more towards pity for her as opposed to anger because She's infuriating sometimes.
	They live in the Cayman Islands and we live in Ottawa so when she comes to visit she comes for three weeks and won't even talk to me.
	So there's definitely an icy kind of... What?
	You mean won't?
	What do you mean she won't even talk to you?
	If my wife is out of the house and I come into the kitchen and say, would you like a cup of tea?
	She'll just like, hmm, and won't say anything.
	So she's completely disengaged from me.
	I mean, does she stick her hands in her ears and go, oh, la, la, la.
	I mean, what does that mean to me?
	If my wife is out of the house and I come into the kitchen and say, would you like a cup of tea?
	She'll just like, hmm, and won't say anything.
	So she's completely disengaged from me.
	She used to call here all the time, but she won't call anymore in case I answer the phone.
	Really?
	Seriously, do you think this came because you said that she might not want to hang on to all these books?
	There's two instances that are always raised when we talk about this issue.
	That was one of them.
	My wife's two sisters had asked me to make sure that mom didn't want to have a fairy tale wedding, you know, and because we've got tons of gardens that are a chore to stay on top of at the best of times, so they didn't want her out there pulling dandelions and trying to make it a princess.
	Wait, you and your wife have?
	Sorry, I lost track of who has the gardens.
	We have, yeah, we live in Ottawa.
	on a farm so we had the wedding here as opposed to going to Cayman or going to England where the rest of the family is or whatever.
	So the two sisters and my wife said try to make sure mom doesn't do too much because she'll kill herself trying to make it perfect you know and I of course came up with yes perfection is the enemy of the good aphorism.
	So I think the other instance was the day before the wedding.
	I said, no, no, no, I'm in charge of the gardens for the wedding.
	You don't worry about it.
	And that apparently was an insult to her that she's not a good gardener or that I was pissing on the gardens to claim territory or something.
	I don't really give a damn about the gardens.
	I just let them grow with weeds and mow them down, you know, like the ones that I can see.
	I take care of, but we've got gardens down, you know, there's a gazebo, you know.
	All right.
	I think I don't want to get overly lost in details.
	I think I get the picture.
	All right.
	So what's your question?
	Well, I didn't do my investigation very carefully when I got involved in this family.
	And I now find out that Her father holds the title to the farm.
	Whose father?
	Your wife's father?
	My wife's father.
	And are they not together with the mom?
	They are.
	They live in the Cayman Islands and they've given everything that she's got.
	But they've never given it to her.
	Oh, so they're retaining ownership over it?
	Yeah.
	So I'm viewed as an interloper.
	A colonist?
	Yeah, in their Canadian farm.
	So I've since found out that they're both paranoid, like he hired a private investigator to follow her last boyfriend around.
	Right.
	To find out... Are they very wealthy?
	I've never asked, but they're... Cayman Islands, farming, hardware, whatever, right?
	Yeah.
	How many times did you meet them before you got married?
	Probably six or seven in the recent terms.
	Sorry, and what is your wife's perspective on all of this?
	She has a major blind spot with regards to her family, so we used to talk about it and then at one point I said, well, your
	You know he threatens to sell the farm and leave her with nothing if she displeases him and he'll come and visit and on day two they'll have a fight and he'll demand that I drive him to the airport because he's gonna stay in a hotel for the rest of his visit until his flight home you know so he's very manipulative and
	Still does all the books for the farm and, you know, everything has to be approved through the captain, as it were.
	Very loving in every aspect of her life, except when it comes to her parents.
	So she's schizophrenic, is what you're saying?
	It's starting to appear that way, yeah.
	So she has a wonderful capacity for love, affection and openness, but with regards to her parents, she doesn't?
	Or she has a blind spot to it or what?
	Well, she is the duckling that's bonded to them, I think.
	So criticism of them is not received well.
	So we went about six, seven months where her family was just off topic.
	And finally I said, well, we can't have a relationship and have a topic that is not allowed to be discussed.
	So we have to talk about this.
	And she went to the Cayman Islands in December to talk to them about why they disliked me so much.
	And her mother's response, which was similar to the first caller last night, was that she didn't want to talk about it.
	Yeah.
	So the mother obviously doesn't care for, in my opinion, for the way she feels or her relationship with her husband.
	They just seem intent on controlling their children.
	Right.
	Right.
	And what's your question?
	Well, the general consensus is that I should grovel and try and make amends to all of the horrible things that I've done.
	But I'm not sure how writing a letter saying, I'm sorry I insulted your boxes of coloring books and pamphlets.
	Or, I don't know, if my question is how to get my wife to recognize this blind spot and And, like, defooing is not an option for her.
	So I'm just feeling stuck.
	Right.
	Well, you are stuck, right?
	I mean, more than a feeling, like the song says, right?
	Sounds like you're pretty stuck, right?
	I mean, you're already married, right?
	So... And how long have you been married for?
	Three years.
	Yeah.
	And do you have kids?
	No.
	Right.
	Right.
	Are they old?
	They are.
	Yeah.
	He's 88 and she's 80.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	So it may not be an eternal sentence, right?
	No.
	Well, that was my strategy at first was to wait it out.
	Startle them?
	No.
	Send one of those cans full of tube of snakes.
	Yeah.
	Something like that.
	Yeah.
	I don't know.
	Well, it's getting worse is the problem.
	He sent our prenuptial agreement to another lawyer and made us redo our marriage contract.
	And that was supposed to remove the lien from the property.
	And then he changed his mind afterwards and started talking about passing the lien to his wife.
	Who, for all I know, could marry the Jamaican gardener and pass the lean to him.
	I have no idea how.
	What levels though?
	Now, again, you seem to be trying to get me to understand that this is a problematic family.
	I fully accept that, right?
	Okay.
	I mean, I don't want to waste both of our time reestablishing that again and again.
	All right.
	All right.
	So, let's start talking about solutions.
	So you know that there's no, I mean, there's only two possibilities, right?
	It seems that way.
	Okay.
	And what are they?
	Uh, well, I've, I have three possibilities.
	Leave my wife, um, wait it out or get her into therapy of some sort.
	to recognize that she has to acknowledge the way her parents are.
	Right.
	And what do you think it – what does it cost her to not acknowledge that?
	What happens if she just says, yeah, they're difficult? - Well, Well, that's the thing is that she knows they're difficult.
	But having them always whispering in her ear how I am not to be trusted and I'm, you know, a dangerous individual or something seems to be affecting her more and more. - Yeah.
	Right.
	So they're driving a wedge between you guys, as you said at the beginning, right?
	Yeah.
	Right.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	So I mean, in general, in conflict, there's I mean, where negotiation is impossible, and I don't know whether negotiation is possible or not.
	It doesn't sound like it, but I'll leave that to your discretion.
	But if negotiation was possible, you wouldn't be calling, right?
	Well, I don't know, even if I do follow the recommended course of action and write a flowery apologetic letter and beg her mother to come and visit and take control of the gardens because I need help and grovel.
	whether that's going to actually achieve anything because... Oh, it'll achieve something, all right.
	You'll hate yourself.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	Oh, yeah.
	And you'll resent your wife and I mean, oh God, no.
	I mean, you know, I'm not a big fan of that.
	No, well, I've been fairly... I mean, you know, there's that crazy little thing called pride, right?
	I mean, and reasonable pride and all that, right?
	I mean, what's your wife going to think of you if you grovel before these people?
	What are you going to think of you?
	Yeah, well that's why I haven't done it.
	Yeah, of course, of course.
	And I mean, of course it won't, right?
	Appeasement doesn't work, right?
	No.
	Otherwise there wouldn't have been two Germanys for so long, right?
	So, appeasement doesn't work and all that will happen is the demands will escalate and everybody will lose respect for you, right?
	Including you.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, so I wouldn't make this.
	So, when negotiation is impossible, there are three choices, right?
	And they basically go back to the saber-toothed tiger, right?
	And the three choices are fight, flight, or freeze.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	That's what you do, a predator, you see there's a giant bear in the woods, you can run away, you can fight it, or you can stand still and hope it doesn't see you, right?
	Yes, I'm frozen.
	Now, this is all supposed to be pretty quick, right?
	I mean, you either get away or you get eaten.
	We're not kind of designed for the stress to go on year after year after year, right?
	Right.
	So the question then becomes, once the freezing becomes unbearable, and in this situation, because they are going at your wife and you, right?
	Then this is really a decaying position, right?
	Yes.
	You know, like if there was some giant inheritance and they were just annoying, but you know, whatever, I don't know, I'm just making something up.
	I wouldn't even do it for the inheritance, but you know, I can understand that, right?
	Well, I don't want the inheritance.
	I would rather have my wife than the money.
	No, no, I understand that, but I mean saying if there was, if it was like, if they were just kivetchy and difficult and annoying and whatever, right?
	But you know, you could, they're old, obviously they're not about to change.
	They had difficult histories.
	It's not like they are causing your wife to have nervous breakdowns or you know, whatever, right?
	So if there was not them driving the wedge between you and your wife, then you could probably freeze for a while and hope that time of the Grim Reaper would solve your problem, you know, over time.
	Not wishing their death, but recognizing that they're not like 50 and in great health, right?
	Right.
	So that would be one, but that's not a, you know, I don't think that's a viable option in my opinion, right?
	It's all just off the cuff.
	I mean, it's the first time we're talking, but if they're working to undermine your wife's relationship with you, Then, you know, they're fucking with your home.
	Yeah.
	So, yeah, it's time to sling up the nutsack and do something, in my opinion.
	And this is the part where you tell me what to do. - Yeah.
	No, I mean, honestly, I mean, I'm I'm really not good at telling people what to do.
	I know.
	I'm an empiricist and I know that it's not going to work, right?
	The important thing is that you need to figure out what to do.
	But doing nothing is probably going to harm your marriage significantly, right?
	Yes.
	So, given that, then action is necessary.
	Now, there are two groups that you need to deal with.
	systems.
	One is your wife and the other is her parents, right?
	Yes.
	Now you can basically fly out to the parents and you can say, um, no.
	No, no, no, no, no.
	I married your daughter.
	You came to the wedding.
	You ate my food.
	You drank my wine.
	I am now married to your daughter.
	If you had a big problem with that, you had lots of time to talk about it.
	But she has made her choice and you need to start respecting her choice, which means respecting me.
	You don't have to like me.
	You don't have to agree with me, but it is disrespectful for your daughter to disrespect her choice for a husband.
	And I don't, I don't stand for people who disrespect my wife, right?
	If you make it about you, you're doomed, right?
	But if you have someone to stand up for, then you get a, second spine, a reinforced spine.
	They're disrespecting their daughter.
	It doesn't have anything to do with you, right?
	I mean, it's all history, bullshit, whatever, right?
	Yeah.
	But they are disrespecting your wife.
	I tell you this, I do not have people in my life who disrespect my wife.
	No, well, I would make short work of just about anybody else.
	Yeah, no, no, I understand that.
	So you can talk to them and you can say, this is unacceptable.
	And if they're bullies, then they may back down, right?
	Or they will escalate.
	But either way, right, things will be out in the open.
	Yeah.
	So that's one possibility.
	I know it's alarming and all that, but I mean, that's just one possibility.
	And you can tell your wife, listen, I'm going to go and talk to your parents because I do not like the way they disrespect you.
	I love you.
	Which means that I can't sit idly by while people put you down.
	If you're not able to protect and defend yourself because they're your parents and so on, then I will have to step in because I just can't.
	In the same way that I would hope you would step in if I was letting people push me around, right?
	We need each other for support.
	We need each other for strength.
	I'm not putting up with it, right?
	Yeah.
	Sorry.
	And so I'm going to go talk to them about it, right?
	And then I would say, I would say to my wife, I would say, and listen, you have to protect this marriage.
	If this marriage is going to work, this marriage is about the future.
	Your parents are about the past, right?
	Your parents have had their life.
	They've had their marriage.
	They've had their careers.
	They've had their children.
	They've made their choices, right?
	This is a very fundamental thing for you to understand.
	And hopefully once you get it, and then maybe you do, right?
	To be able to communicate this to your wife, right?
	And say, look, they've made all their choices.
	They've had their lives.
	They're now in the waning, undead sunset era of life, right?
	Which, you know, I hope to get to and we all do, right?
	No disrespect to them.
	But, you know, he's not going to go out and start to become a tap aficionado, right?
	I mean, his choices are pretty limited and he's had his life, he's had his choices.
	We are still at the beginning of our lives.
	I mean, I don't know, she's probably not that young if they're in their late 80s, but you know, our lives are still underway.
	And to have allegiance to the past at the expense of the future is mad, right?
	Yes.
	In other words, to want to please your parents who represent the past and harm the present and the future for the sake of the past.
	It's really mad, right?
	And so you can say, look, they're disrespecting me, then they're disrespecting you.
	This doesn't mean that they're evil people.
	It doesn't mean that we can never see them again or never talk to them again.
	But we have to have the commitment to each other.
	And you can say, I would say, do you remember the vows?
	The vows are super, super serious in marriage.
	You know, people mouth them and they say them, but I tell you, my wife and I, They're printed out.
	They're hung on the wall.
	And, you know, you get lost, you look at a map.
	When you're under pressure, when you're losing your way, you look at your vows.
	What did we promise each other?
	Right?
	To love, to honor, to respect.
	Who?
	Your parents?
	No.
	Me.
	Right?
	Me.
	That is the marriage.
	The vows are the marriage.
	Nothing more, nothing less.
	The vows are the marriage.
	You made your vows to me, honey, not to your parents.
	Now, if you're going to disown those vows, then our marriage is taking a serious, serious blow.
	Because this isn't shit that you get to change later.
	Like, there's nobody who says in their vows, you know, love, honor, respect, whatever it's going to be.
	Well, but you know, subject to revision.
	Yeah, you know, well, unless I get some pressure from, you know, my heritage of a mother or something like that, or unless there's something really good on TV, or unless I spy some young hottie on a business trip, or, you know, there's no stars, there's no asterisks in these vows, right?
	That's what we promised.
	This was not a show.
	We were not Echoing empty words of habit and tradition, we made these vows.
	The vows are the marriage.
	And you need to read the vows, and you need to reconnect with the vows, and you need to remind each other of the vows.
	The vows is the integrity, and marriage is nothing more or nothing less than integrity.
	Keeping your word, keeping your promise, keeping the deal, right?
	Yeah.
	That's all that marriage is.
	It's integrity to the vows.
	And you can just say to her, look, the vows are serious.
	There's a reason we say them in front of everyone and we make them eternal.
	And there's a reason that a man and a wife, or a man and a man, or a woman and a woman, or whoever, there's a reason why you make those vows to each other and not to the community.
	To each other and not to the parents.
	To the future and not to the past.
	Right?
	And anyone who seeks to come between you and your vows is attempting to undo your integrity, your virtue, and therefore your marriage.
	Yeah.
	Well, I give my wife credit for flying down there for a week and spending time trying to tell them that.
	Well, see, no, no, I'm glad she did that, obviously that's a good step.
	But you don't try to tell someone something, right?
	We used to do this thing in theatre school, right?
	We were all, so insultingly described, young, white and bougie, which means bourgeoisie.
	You know, the holy grail was the big cry.
	You know, like if you're in acting school and you have a sad scene and you get the big cry, then that's great acting, right?
	And there was a guy who was trying to cry in some scene and the acting teacher said, hey, what are you doing?
	He's like, well, I'm trying to cry, right?
	Because, you know, because I'm acting.
	And she said, what?
	No, no, no, no, no.
	And she said, stand up.
	And he stood up.
	And she said, try to sit in that chair.
	He said, what?
	She said, try to sit in that chair.
	And I don't know, he pretended he had cramps or whatever it was.
	She said, this is ludicrous, right?
	What I'm asking you to do doesn't make any sense.
	And she said, so sit in the chair.
	And he just sat in the chair, right?
	And she said, do you understand?
	And we kind of all got it, right?
	You don't try to cry.
	You don't try to be virtuous.
	You don't try to be good.
	You don't try to have people listen to you.
	You don't try to get people to understand you.
	You don't try to be liked.
	You live virtuously.
	You don't try to tell people something.
	You tell people something.
	Right?
	I mean, it's Yoda, right?
	Yeah.
	Do or do not.
	There is no try.
	So she went to tell them something, right?
	And she doesn't have to never talk to them, but if they stop putting you down, she has to say, I'm not listening to this.
	If you're going to talk about this, I'm not having a conversation with you right now.
	Right?
	Because they are asking her to break her vows.
	They are asking her To switch her loyalties, they're asking her to reject the one person she promised to love forever, right?
	Yeah.
	No, no, no, do not counsel me to evil.
	I mean, people around me, they don't always have to encourage me to virtue, but they sure as shit should not be counseling me to evil.
	And promising someone to love, to honor, to respect, to whatever, I don't know what your vows were, it doesn't usually matter, but I'm sure they weren't Small.
	To counsel someone to break the law of love is like telling someone suicidal to take this gun.
	Or like telling a child who's going to jump from too high a spot, they'll be fine.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	No, no, no.
	Now, this is hers, right?
	Do the vows mean anything?
	Of course they mean something.
	That's your map.
	And you go to the vows when you lose your way, as I said, right?
	Yeah.
	No, this is a good strategy for coaching her through it.
	Well, look, she's not going to say, I didn't really mean the vows, right?
	No, definitely not.
	I mean, she certainly doesn't sound like that kind of person, right?
	Okay, so then debate is over, right?
	That the whole point of the vows in marriage is to end debate.
	Right?
	Where does your loyalty lie?
	With your spouse.
	That's it.
	Anyone who then interferes with the loyalty of the spouse is an enemy.
	And that doesn't mean never cross my doorstep, but it's like, oh, I'm sorry, you bringing this up?
	I'm going to hang up if you keep talking about this.
	You just, I mean, sorry.
	You were counseling me to evil.
	You were counseling me to break my virtue and to break my promise, to break my vow.
	Right?
	And I won't, I mean, I won't have that.
	I just, it's not, it's not an option.
	There's no, I promise to love, honor and respect you forever unless some conniving bastard talks me out of it.
	Yeah.
	Her older sister married someone they didn't like and they didn't speak with her for six years.
	Well, lucky her.
	Well, unfortunately for her, now they have a great relationship because they paid the consequences.
	Who paid the consequences?
	The parents.
	The parents suffered the consequences of not having their oldest daughter in their lives for six years.
	Right.
	And that, I think, is the template that my wife is working on.
	Yeah, you know, you've got a lot of propaganda, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, so now they have a great relationship.
	Come on.
	Well, a bearable, a bearable relationship, I guess.
	Yeah.
	But I mean, seriously, you've got to be precise with this kind of stuff.
	Make things up, you know.
	Well, it's great.
	Tancrous and vicious and nasty and underhanded and conniving.
	But they have a great relationship.
	I mean, right?
	Yeah.
	But no, it's I mean, Promises are power, right?
	You know the old saying, give me a lever big enough I can move the world?
	Vows and promises and commitments are power.
	I mean you have the power over your wife to say, stand by your vows.
	Take seriously that which is the foundation of our marriage and why we call it a marriage rather than hanging out, right?
	Right.
	Rather than a highly extended booty call, right?
	Yeah.
	So, I mean, it's just power, right?
	When I make a promise to my daughter, she has power over me, right?
	Yeah.
	It promises a surrender of power to the other person and a desperate plea, a desperate plea for them to remind you what your commitments are, right?
	So you shouldn't have to do much.
	It's just a reminder.
	She promised you.
	Remind her of the promise.
	She'll take it from there.
	Don't sweat it.
	Don't, like, try to... Hey, these were the vows we made.
	Now, if you want to revisit these vows, then we're revisiting the marriage.
	But you don't get to make the vows and then wriggle out of them in some way later, right?
	I mean, that's fraud.
	I'm not saying your wife is doing that in any conscious way, but it's fraudulent, right?
	Yeah.
	No.
	Well, in her case, she's terrified of her parents and is under the illusion that she loves them.
	Yeah.
	No, I get all of that.
	I really do.
	And I mean with great sympathy, with great sympathy towards your wife.
	But the vows are the vows, right?
	I don't get to take a car loan out and sign on a dotted line for four years and then say six months later, I don't really like the car that much.
	I think I'm going to stop paying.
	They have power over me because I signed on the dotted line.
	Nobody made me to.
	Nobody forced me to.
	They have power.
	They can put me in jail.
	Because I signed on the dotted line that gives people power over me.
	And in return, I got a car, which I didn't have the money for, didn't want to pay the money for at the time.
	So it's not like they're dominating me.
	I mean, it's an exchange of value.
	She got your commitment, she got your monogamy, she got your shared finances.
	Does she work as well?
	Yes, she works very hard.
	Okay, good.
	So you're both getting each other's shared finances.
	And all of that kind of good stuff and your companionship and all that.
	She got a sexual partner and she got all and she got security, right?
	Because I assume you aren't some globe-trotting set of swingers, right?
	So she got security, monogamy, stability, commitment.
	She got all those goodies, right?
	Yeah.
	And the price for those goodies is live by the fucking vows, right?
	That's what you pay for the goodies, is the vows.
	Everybody wants the goodies, nobody wants to pay the vows.
	I mean, of course, of course, we all want something for nothing.
	That's how society advances in the free market and how it decays in a state of society, right?
	But I would just, you know, hey, get the vows.
	I'm sure you remember them.
	Write them out.
	No, they're upstairs in the closet.
	I'll hang them on the wall.
	After our conversation, I'll hang them on the wall.
	People sometimes say to me, it's time to come out of the closet, right?
	No, just sit down and say, okay, I know that the American government doesn't follow the Constitution, but we have a Constitution which we should respect, which is here, right?
	Tell me in this where your allegiance is supposed to be greater for your parents.
	Tell me in this where you're supposed to put up with people chiseling away at the foundation of our marriage.
	Because this is what I signed on for, and this is what you signed on for, and this is non-revocable.
	I mean, you can choose to leave a marriage, right?
	Of course, right.
	But it is not revocable to change and say, well, yes, but if my parents are really putting pressure on me, then I'll stop working against my... I mean, it's not revocable, because it wasn't revocable in the initial contract.
	I'd be divorced from my wife and I. Not that it's ever been a topic, not that it's ever been on the table, not that it's ever been discussed.
	It's simply not an option.
	It's never going to happen.
	One of us is coming out of here dead, hopefully later rather than sooner.
	But it's not an option because that's not what we promised and we thought very seriously about it and we discussed everything beforehand.
	And we knew when we crossed over that threshold, we knew when we made those vows, that's it.
	If people started fucking with our marriage, hey, we go back to the vows.
	Not an option.
	I mean it is that level of seriousness that is the foundation of stability in what I consider the greatest institution in the world.
	So hopefully it's just a reminder, right?
	Yeah.
	No, I love the vows and I love the marriage.
	And your wife does too, I'm sure.
	She does.
	She's just lost her way and she's submitting to pressure rather than keeping her integrity, which happens to all of us, right?
	So I'm not trying to be a bad wife or anything like that.
	And it will happen to you at some point in the marriage, right?
	You'll be tempted, you'll be whatever, right?
	It will happen to you, and then your wife got to say, hey, hey, Buster.
	Remember how you talked to me about all these values?
	Well, this is it, right?
	Yes.
	Well, I've not thought of it exactly that way.
	I've thought of it more along the lines of if a grizzly came charging out of the woods, I would wrestle it for her.
	But if we saw a grizzly a kilometer away and she said, I want you to go wrestle that grizzly for me.
	I would probably try and convince her not to do it.
	Right.
	Or not to make me do it.
	Now, she can say, listen, I don't want to disrespect the marriage, but I can't stand up to my parents.
	That's fine.
	Then you stand up for her parents for her.
	I mean, that's, you know, whatever, right?
	Division of labor.
	I mean, that's all fine.
	Yeah.
	She just has to recognize that how it gets implemented doesn't matter fundamentally, right?
	But the direction of her loyalty.
	is crucial, right?
	Yes.
	I've thought of paying a surprise visit to the Cayman Islands and the effects it would have.
	It's one of my private fantasies that I indulge in.
	No, and I get it.
	I mean, yeah, you may always stand tall and be the hero and so on, and I'm not saying don't do that.
	I'm just saying that it has to be in the context of your wife and your wife's support.
	It's her relationship with her parents fundamentally.
	You meet these people at a party and you're like, hey, let's hang out for the next 30 years.
	They're only there because they're her parents.
	It's got to be a united front.
	Because look, we all imagine, we all fantasize that there's some way to just go down and make the big speech and then people will lay part ways, you know, like the Red Sea before Moses and all that, right?
	But that's all nonsense.
	I mean, even if you startle them into giving way in the moment, I mean, what's going to happen in a week or two?
	They're just going to slither around, find some other way with renewed venom and, you know, as long as they're in your life, you can't fundamentally fight them.
	Your wife can set limits and you can support her on that.
	But there's no great speech that, you know, keeps good, that establishes boundaries and keeps them there.
	I mean, the moment you said, I mean, think of the Constitution was this giant great speech against government, set up these boundaries and what happened?
	People began weaseling out of them before the ink was dry.
	Never works.
	Well, thank you for reminding me of that.
	You're welcome.
	I'm glad.
	It sounds like it was helpful and you'll get a chance to let us know how it goes.
	No, you cut it to the bare bones for me.
	So you've given me a solid leg to stand on again.
	And I look forward to having a longer conversation with her about this.
	Good.
	Good.
	All right.
	Well, glad to have been of help.
	All right, Mr. Mike.
	Thank you, Stefan.
	Yes.
	Take care.
	Thank you very much.
	All right, Ray is up next.
	He wrote in and said, I've isolated myself throughout my life.
	Last summer, I quit my full time job to pursue a career in music and became even more isolated while I focused on the project.
	Do you have any suggestions about how to emerge from isolation?
	Where are all the good people hiding?
	Oh, brother.
	Brother Ray, are you on?
	Yeah, I'm here.
	Okay.
	Hey, do you remember the third word?
	Do you remember the third word of what you wrote in with?
	What was it?
	I've isolated.
	What was the third word?
	Myself.
	No, no, no.
	No, no, no.
	You mean from the womb?
	You mean from the crib?
	From infancy?
	When people came to lovingly change your diaper, did you actually attempt to take your John Thomas, aim it right, and pee in their eyeball?
	No.
	No.
	Isolated yourself?
	What does that mean?
	How is it 100% your fault?
	Yeah, it's not my fault, but that's how I look at it.
	That's what you're going with?
	That's how I look at it?
	Of course that's how you look at it.
	I get that.
	That's what you said.
	Yeah.
	I mean, I know it's not the right way to look at it, but that's the way that I feel as far as like, I've been isolated.
	Okay.
	Well, good.
	Okay.
	So that's closer to the truth.
	So how were you isolated as a child?
	Well, in general, like, I couldn't relate to a lot of the people in my family.
	Like, I'm the youngest of four.
	And my oldest, the closest sibling to me, my brother is three years older than me.
	And I used to get bullied by him a lot.
	And I also worshiped him too, which was weird.
	But I was really, at some point in time, I realized it was better for me to stay to myself, within the family anyway, than it was for me to within the family anyway, than it was for me to actually try to be around.
	And I just went with that.
	And I kept that going for a long time.
	And it's not that I didn't have people around me as far as friends, proximity-wise.
	But I didn't and I don't really now have anyone like I could really have like a deep conversation with or just express, you know, what I'm expressing to you right now.
	Like I don't have too many people in my life where I could just say like, hey, I'm feeling, you know, isolated right now.
	You know, how can you help me to get over that?
	Right.
	So now we get to the third phase, right?
	So the first phase is you saying, I isolated myself.
	The second phase is you saying, people in my family, I couldn't relate to people in my family.
	And the third phase, which is what you've described, is that you were driven into isolation through abuse.
	Yeah.
	I understand.
	Do you?
	Yeah, I do.
	That was a mighty quick, a very big rewriting of the narrative, right?
	Yeah, I get what you're saying.
	I've been thinking about this for a long time too, and I realize that I've been abused.
	And it was... It's hard for me to admit that, or even to talk about it.
	No, no.
	Sorry, sorry.
	It's not hard for you to admit that, and it's not hard for you to talk about it.
	It's hard for other people in your family when you do that, but it's not hard for you, right?
	Oh yeah.
	What's the negative for you, right?
	It's just a fact.
	You're right.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	So no, it's not hard for you.
	It's inconvenient for others, right?
	Yeah.
	You know, like the bank worker who's got the bank thief, the bank robber's got a gun to his head.
	And he says, well, you know, it's inconvenient for me to push the alarm button, right?
	What's he really saying?
	It's inconvenient for the bank robber for me to push the alarm button, right?
	Which is why he's got his gun in my head.
	Right.
	So that's what I'm trying to point out, right?
	Yeah.
	So when I said it's inconvenient, are you saying that it's more of me being afraid?
	Oh, I'm doing it again, huh?
	I'm trying to understand, right?
	So it's me being afraid.
	of the consequences of me talking about being abused as a child.
	Right.
	Okay.
	How convenient it is for people, how convenient is it, sorry, for people who... Not at all.
	Sorry, how inconvenient, how convenient is it, yeah, if you bring up abuse within your family, if you bring up mistreatment, if you bring up harmful things that happened to you as a child, how convenient it is, is it for your abusers?
	Yeah, it's not convenient for them at all.
	No, of course not.
	And so then you have to keep a secret, right?
	Yeah.
	You have to keep a secret called, bad stuff happened to my family.
	Right?
	And we often will displace this to siblings, right?
	And it's not like siblings are completely blameless, particularly the older kids.
	But come on, I mean, it's the parents who are responsible for setting the tone in the family, and it's the parents who are damn well responsible with making sure that the younger siblings are treated well.
	With greater compassion and sympathy because of their youth, right?
	Right.
	So, you know, if you stop bringing up some of this stuff, how convenient is it for everyone around you?
	Well, it's pretty fucking inconvenient, right?
	Right.
	But the bank robbers don't want security cameras installed in the bank, right?
	It's kind of inconvenient for them, right?
	Yeah.
	A lot of shoplifters don't like those anti-theft devices.
	Very inconvenient for them, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	Politicians don't like the Constitution.
	Well, you get the picture.
	I don't need to completely belabor the obvious, right?
	Right.
	Right.
	So you were driven into isolation, which is absolute agony for children.
	It's absolute agony for children.
	We're social beings, and we have a thirst for adult interaction.
	I mean, I'll tell you this.
	There are not a lot of dads around during the day.
	And those who are, along with the moms, are kind of glued to their cell phones.
	Well, the kids.
	So I'm in there in the play centers and all that, setting up games and playing stuff.
	And I get swarmed by kids who are It kind of bugs Isabella, right?
	If she wants time just with me.
	I get swarmed by kids who just need some structure, some adult interaction, some sense of care or concern or connection or contact or something like that.
	Swarmed.
	Kids are dying for this stuff.
	Right?
	And And so were you.
	And so was I. So you were driven into isolation because human contact was painful.
	Right?
	You only retreat to a cell when the whole world is on fire, right?
	Yeah.
	You say, well, I'm choosing the cell.
	Well, I put myself in prison.
	No, the world was on fire and you retreated to a cell, right?
	And you will stay in that cell until you accept the truth of why you were there, right?
	Right.
	I mean, if we think the sentence is self-imposed or we think that the sentence is just, we can't fight it.
	I was spanked because I was a bad kid.
	I watched the movie Frozen.
	The guy says, uh, spoiler alert.
	Who cares?
	It's a kid's film, right?
	Prince Hans, I think his name is, he says, I'm the youngest of twelve brothers and a couple of my older brothers pretended I was invisible for two years.
	And the woman says, that's awful!
	And he says, nah, it's just what brothers do.
	And then he turns out to be totally evil.
	Well, that's because he's rejecting his torment.
	He's sealed himself off from The hurt of people pretending that you're invisible for two years, which for a child is an eternity, literally an eternity, right?
	And so you can't get out of that prison if you think that you've been sentenced justly, or you think that you have sentenced yourself for your wrongdoing.
	Then there's no there's no way to escape it because the sentence is just, and thus the most moral people With the worst principles are the greatest self-attackers.
	Because we want to be good and we want to be honest and we want to be just and we want to be fair, right?
	And so these are the people who, if they've done something wrong, will surrender themselves to the police and manfully accept their punishment and blah, blah, blah.
	Right?
	Right.
	So how do I do that?
	How do I get myself out of the cell?
	Out of what?
	Out of the cell?
	Yeah.
	Well, recognizing that you didn't put yourself in there.
	You were justly imprisoned.
	And that there's no jailer, right?
	If you think you're justly imprisoned or you deserve it, you're your own jailer and you can't escape, right?
	Welcome to wherever you are.
	Wherever you are, there's a prison.
	Right?
	You were unjustly imprisoned and the jailers are long gone.
	This is adulthood, right?
	17.999 to 18 years.
	Bing!
	Jailers are gone, baby.
	You're an adult.
	For some of us around me, so that happened younger, around 15 or so.
	For some people that happens older.
	But it doesn't matter.
	If you think you're in prison Which is what you started the conversation off with, right?
	Which is why you said, I isolate myself.
	Right?
	So you're judge jury and executioner and there's no way out of the prison.
	And you say, well, I just didn't get along with, I couldn't connect with the people in my family.
	Well, it's still your fault.
	You're still putting, I couldn't do X, right?
	You don't hear a lot of people in there.
	Memoirs of concentration camps say, you know, as a Jew, I just, I couldn't quite connect with the Nazi guards.
	It's an extreme example, right?
	Yeah.
	But I hope you get the principle, right?
	Yeah, I do.
	So you were unjustly imprisoned.
	You were driven into prison because the world was on fire and the prison was the only place that wasn't burning, right?
	Isolation was the only place you weren't abused, right?
	Right.
	The world's on fire.
	I'm going into my prison.
	But the world cooled long ago and there are no guards and there's no lock on the door.
	And you can walk out any time, any time you decide to lift the verdict and change the ethics.
	You can walk out any time.
	You know, good people who were harmed as children who were self-attacking, which is, I think, what you were doing at the beginning.
	Probably what you've been doing for a long time.
	Do you know what they look like to me?
	They look like people in gulags, or people in concentration camps.
	I mean, just take an extreme example, right?
	Some Jew in a concentration camp, right?
	And they say, you're sentenced to this concentration camp for ten years.
	And two years after they sentence him to the concentration camp for ten years, the liberators come and the Nazi regime is overthrown.
	And they open the doors and they say, you can all come out now.
	And he says, sorry, man, I got eight years to go.
	And they say, well, you know, you, you, you, you crazy.
	You can leave.
	Well, I was tried in a German court.
	I was convicted.
	I was found to be Jewish.
	I am, in fact, Jewish.
	Those were the laws.
	Sorry.
	I got to keep myself on 1,000 or 500 calories a day.
	And I've got to stay right here until my eight years are up.
	Holy crap.
	I mean, do you realize how deranged a perspective that is?
	I mean, we'd have sympathy for somebody that shattered, but we would want to sit down with that person and say, the Nazis were unjust.
	The sentence is unjust.
	You were a victim.
	Get out.
	Out of the prison.
	But first of all you have to recognize that the sentence was unjust and imposed upon you unjustly, immorally.
	And that the Jew who stays eight extra years in the concentration camp with no guards and no locks eating berries and still working away Blowing ash in a defunct forge?
	All he's doing is delighting the Nazis.
	All he's doing is delighting the sadists.
	All he's doing is delighting the unjust.
	The vampiric bone marrow eaters of humanity who take great joy in smashing and detonating the human spirit.
	They have broken him so thoroughly that if they could install a webcam and watch him shuffling around eating his twigs and berries and pretending to work Yeah.
	At a Forge Long Dead, they would wake up and they would giggle at their pancakes and they say, we really got that one, didn't we?
	I mean, he could walk out and he's still serving us.
	We're not even there and he's still serving us.
	There's no power compelling him to stay, yet still he stays.
	Oh, we got him good.
	He now loves Big Brother, right?
	Yeah.
	So I tried to realize that as far as like, I understand what you're saying.
	And, and I, and I really like, uh, I've tried to speak with my parents and my brothers and my sisters, just tell them about like my experience.
	And it only like frustrates me more.
	And, and like recently I just like separated myself from them completely.
	Or, not really completely.
	My parents are dead, but my brother, he calls me from time to time.
	And it's just... Like, even... I also moved away, so I moved away, like, six months ago, or seven months ago.
	And I haven't been back to my parents' house, or even, like, around the area for a while.
	Sorry to interrupt you, but the analogy of the story that I told you about the Jew at the concentration camp, what is particularly heartbreaking is that the Nazis are gone.
	So yeah, you may have broken, you may have separated, and so on.
	But the Nazis are gone in this story.
	What's not gone is his self-attack, is his ownership of the evil That was done to him as if it was self-generated, right?
	Separating from your family does you no good at all in my opinion.
	If you were abused by your family, raging and railing against the immorality and injustice of the abuse, that's the key, right?
	The Jew steps out of the concentration camp because he knows the concentration camp is a great evil and an unjust evil.
	Right?
	And you started off this conversation by saying, I isolated myself.
	I challenged you on that.
	You took up a secondary defensive position.
	I wasn't able to connect with my family.
	Right?
	Do you see what I mean?
	Literally it's like saying, the Nazis are gone, do you get out of the concentration camp?
	And he says, I put myself here, I have to stay.
	It's like, no, you were marched at gunpoint by the Nazis, right?
	Yeah.
	You weren't here by choice.
	So how could you have done this?
	I mean, empirically, how could he possibly have done it to himself?
	And he was frog-marched there at gunpoint, right?
	Right.
	You were born into the family, how could you possibly have done it to yourself?
	Evil bitch sociopath nature put you there by fucking accident, right?
	Yeah.
	You didn't choose a goddamn thing in it.
	How can it be that you have any responsibility for what your family did to you as a baby, as a toddler, as a child?
	I don't have any responsibility.
	Right.
	Do you understand that the nationalism of the family is the foundation for almost all the world's evils?
	You know when I talk about sports and I say cheering a group that is just geographically proximate to you, when I talk about countries cheering An accidental group that is geographically proximate to you.
	And people say, yeah!
	That's crazy!
	And I start talking about a family, and people are like, whoa, whoa, whoa, hey, hey, hey, hey!
	Now that's different, right?
	No, it's not.
	In fact, the family predates all of the other ones.
	You would have no respect for me if I said, I'm great because I'm Irish.
	I'm great because I'm white.
	I'm great because I'm tall.
	I'm great because I have an accent.
	I didn't earn any of these things.
	I happen to be born in Ireland.
	I happen to be tall.
	I was born white and I have an accent.
	I didn't earn them.
	I didn't study them.
	They just happened to me.
	But do you understand that the flip side of taking pride in accident and geography and proximity, what's more insane than taking pride in it is taking shame in it.
	Right?
	You got that, right?
	You happened to be born in a family.
	If they raised you well, and they were good parents, and they loved you, and they did their best, and their best was good, fantastic!
	You are lucky.
	If you inherit a lot of money, that does not make you a good businessman.
	If you inherit very little money, it doesn't make you a bad businessman.
	One person is lucky, one person is unlucky.
	For the man to take pride in luck is as insane, in fact, as less insane than for the man to self-attack on bad luck.
	Right?
	I feel like I could understand what you're saying.
	Like, I get it, and I... And I could, like, I guess I could talk through it too, but...
	I would still, when describing my situation, I would still say, like, I feel alone or I'm isolated.
	No, no, but that's not how you started the conversation.
	Now what you're saying is, yes, I feel alone and I am isolated.
	For sure.
	But that's not how you started the conversation and that's what I wanted to point out.
	Okay.
	You're right.
	I didn't start the conversation like that.
	There is no shame whatsoever in where you were born.
	What's your ethnicity?
	I'm black.
	My parents are from Haiti.
	Right.
	Is there any shame in being black?
	No.
	Fuck no.
	Of course not.
	Of course not, right?
	I mean, Jesus Christ, right?
	I mean, it's nonsense.
	Is there any virtue in being born into a Christian family and being Christian?
	Hell no.
	Is there any virtue in being an atheist because you came from an atheist family?
	Hell no!
	No moral debt or reward accumulates until you're an adult.
	Everything that happens before that is a completely infinite get out of guilt, get out of pride free card.
	Would I be doing this podcasting if I had been born to a dirt farmer in Kenya?
	Highly unlikely, right?
	I mean, I'm lucky that I even speak English.
	Happens to be a pretty common language.
	I spoke Urdu, be a little trickier, right?
	To have the kind of worldwide impact that the show has, right?
	So black, white, male, female, it's just accident.
	And accident doesn't mean bad, just whatever.
	And the family that you're born into holds no power to morally reward or damn you in any way shape or form any more than the country that you're born into can make you a better or worse person for which you can take pride or damn yourself.
	If you were mistreated by your family There is no shame in that, at all.
	There's no guilt in that.
	There's no self-attack that can rationally come out of that situation.
	There's sorrow and there's sympathy if you are mistreated.
	But the idea, rationally, I'm not talking emotionally, rationally, the idea that you would self-attack for where you happened to be born, in other words, that you would blame yourself for the negative effects of your accidental circumstances, makes no sense, right?
	How do you talk about it without, like what, like to say that I was bullied When I was a kid, or I was spanked as a child, I would just say it like that, like I was just spanked, or... Well, I mean, evil was done unto me as a child.
	I was surrounded by evildoers.
	And those evildoers were supported by inert fucking cowards who wouldn't even pick up the phone when they heard a child being beaten, right?
	Wouldn't even call the cops, wouldn't even call CPS, any of that stuff, right?
	Maybe they liked it, I don't know.
	But I was born into an evil clan.
	Sorry, I was born into the mafia.
	That doesn't make me a hitman.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	I was born to criminals.
	I survived being raised by criminals.
	I take pride in that.
	But the idea that I would then be ashamed?
	I could imagine myself saying those words to people that I know.
	They'll look at me like I'm overreacting or I'm blowing it out of proportion.
	But that has nothing to do with you, right?
	I mean, this doesn't have anything to do with you.
	I mean, Nazis claim the Holocaust never happened, right?
	It's got nothing to do with, right?
	The historical fact is just to do with emotional defenses, right?
	I mean, when people, like when I say, yeah, I was abused as a child, people get uncomfortable.
	Do you know why they get uncomfortable?
	Because they goddamn well know some child who's at high risk.
	And they've done nothing.
	And they're terrified of that child coming forward and saying, you know what?
	I was abused.
	And you know what?
	All these people around me, yourself included, my good sir or madam, did fuck all about it.
	You piece of shit.
	It's got nothing to do with me.
	They're just afraid that people are actually talking about abuse as children.
	Because everybody knows somebody.
	Come on.
	One out of five boys sexually abused?
	Depending on how you count it, one out of four, one out of three girls.
	90% of children in America spanked?
	25% of those spanked with implements hard enough to leave welts and bruises?
	I mean, everybody knows somebody.
	Some kid that they're failing to protect.
	And they're all hoping that this giant conspiracy of silence is just going to continue, right?
	And they're going to get away with it, right?
	They're going to get away with it.
	They're going to get away with failing to protect the children in their lives.
	They're taking a gamble, right?
	Taking a roll of the dice, right?
	And the roll of the dice is, well, if I do nothing, Fuck.
	So what?
	People have been doing nothing pretty much for thousands of years.
	Everybody gets away with it.
	Well, sorry.
	Not no more, people.
	Right?
	Sorry, your old snake eyes this time.
	Right?
	So when I talk about it, there's this deafening thunderclap of silence, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	I mean, libertarians fight tooth and nail over stupid shit like how big should the government be.
	But I've been spending seven or eight years raising the topic of child abuse and spanking and there's this, you know, massive thunderclap of silence.
	Is that to do with me?
	Of course not.
	Is it to do with my arguments?
	Of course not.
	It's just this great fear that everyone has that the day of reckoning draweth near.
	That the conspiracy of silence is about to crack and detonate.
	And they will be named as among the wrongdoers.
	Either the child abusers or the people who knew that there were significant risk factors and did nothing.
	And did nothing.
	I don't mean going up and confronting parents individually, but just speaking out about it.
	Right.
	And accepting that it's an essential topic.
	So when you say, look I was harmed as a child and people get uncomfortable and people start talking about it and people want to change the subject and people attack you, it's got nothing to do with you.
	I mean, there's probably not one person in a thousand who can actually listen to you as an individual for your own sake, without their own bullshit cluttering up the mix.
	So it's just their own guilt and shame.
	At their own moral cowardice, that is occurring.
	It doesn't have anything to do with you in any way, shape or form.
	That's part of the narcissism of moral cowardice.
	You're always worried about being exposed.
	And so everything has to be about you.
	Ooh, is that light of truth about children getting closer or further away?
	Am I going to be exposed?
	Am I going to be known?
	Are the children I've failed?
	To help make safe, gonna grow up and point their fingers at me.
	Is there any asshole out there supporting children when they grow up doing that?
	Oh, I hate that guy.
	It doesn't have anything to do with me.
	The people who hate me for talking about child abuse are saying, hey, if you were hurt by your parents, go talk to your parents, get a therapist, work that shit out.
	And if you have unrepentant abuses in your life, well, all doors open both ways, right?
	And when people get mad, it's got nothing to do with me.
	Nothing to do with my argument.
	I'm just out there doing my thing, speaking the truth, and supporting people in the exposure of child abusers and all those who supported them, which is why most people in society fall into one of either category.
	And we're not even talking things as esoteric as, you sent me to government schools, right?
	I mean, I've never had someone say, yeah, I was sent to a government school.
	Ah!
	Child abusers!
	Right?
	I'm not even talking, I'm talking about the stuff that's fucking illegal in our current society.
	You hit a child with implements, for the most part, in most of the West, it's illegal.
	You beat a child, it's illegal.
	You fail to get a child sufficient medical attention, that's evil.
	You fail to adequately feed and clothe your child, that's evil.
	You fail, and illegal, right?
	They're all criminals, right?
	But most people in the world, at least, I say most people in the world, I think that's a fair statement.
	Most people in the world, even by the current laws, are harming children or supporting the harm of children by enabling the behavior, by So I just really, you need that perspective.
	We are surrounded by people who harm children, even by the standards of the laws around.
	And once you get into libertarianism, homeschooling, unschooling, anarchism, atheism, then the degree of harm that you see in society is such an evil, bloody supernova that it irradiates your eyeballs and shoots them Through the back of your head, in like white laser lights of horror.
	So when you're talking about your history, you are provoking the guilt of people who've harmed children.
	I mean, 50% of sibling relationships are abusive.
	You start talking about being harmed as a child.
	How many people, even if they don't have their own children, were assholes to their own siblings, or who teased or tormented The broken children in their school, or who failed to stand up to people who were doing that.
	We all feel shitty about our moral cowardice to do with the protection of children.
	And like all people who have immense guilt, we hate and fear anything which provokes that guilt.
	And we praise anything which diminishes that guilt.
	So when you start talking about the harm that you experienced, people will react negatively, and they will diminish, and they will attack, and they will oppose, and they will ignore, and they will maybe grudgingly sit through it and then never bring it up again.
	There's nothing to do with you.
	It's their own guilt.
	That's the shit sandwich you have to eat as a moral coward, and this is the manipulative and controlling person you have to become if you are a moral coward around the protection of children.
	So I hope that helps to put that in some perspective.
	Yeah, it does.
	And when I talk to people about it, like you said, they'll get quiet and try to change the subject and never bring it up again.
	end and what what happens then you know like I I don't want to like It seems to me like I can't no longer really talk to that person anymore.
	Yeah, you can ask them, you know, you seem uncomfortable or is there anything you want to share with me?
	And maybe they'll say, you know, I don't know why this is really bringing up a lot of uncomfortable stuff for me.
	I don't know.
	I mean, I remember this kid in summer camp who everybody picked on and I didn't pick on him, but I really didn't.
	I felt this urge to befriend him and I felt this urge like this kid was really upset.
	I just kind of stepped around him.
	I didn't really do anything about it.
	I've really felt bad about that and you're bringing up like the stuff that you experienced as a child makes me, you know, maybe they'll talk about something like that.
	I don't know.
	Maybe there's a possibility for a breakthrough, but most people, you know, just double down on their defenses, right?
	Because, you know, they've worked for thousands of years.
	Who's not going to expect that they're going to keep working, right?
	And it's your choice, of course.
	I just, I know I'm an empiricist.
	I mean, if somebody's not open to change, I accept that they're not open to change.
	I just had this in a call last night, right?
	If somebody says, I'm not going to change, or somebody shows no evidence of wanting to change, or even admitting there's a problem, I'm like, well, you know, thank you for the information.
	That's all people are saying to you all the time.
	They're giving you massive information about their capacity for change and curiosity and intimacy and reason and virtue and empiricism.
	And when people actively deny reality and oppose reality, whether it's your reality or empirical reality, they're just telling you, I am incapable of change and all I will do is defend my prejudices.
	Well, okay.
	You know, as a black guy, I'm sure you don't sort of sidle up to a Klan picnic and say, hey guys, you want to rethink any of this stuff at all?
	Not at all.
	No, you don't, right?
	So as that process goes on, I find myself, you know, not wanting to go back to those conversations.
	Like, I don't want to keep bringing up topics that people would be uncomfortable with.
	So I just, you know, keep myself away from them.
	And little by little... The topics or the people?
	The people.
	Right.
	And now, little by little, like, The people that I would call close are like dwindling, you know?
	Yeah, well, I mean, the reality is that you thought you had a table full of people and it turns out you've got a table full of zombies with history up their... history hand puppet hands up their ass, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, you just... you need to turn the lights on and see whose pupils dilate, right?
	Right?
	The illusion of connection Kills any capacity for real connection.
	The illusion of knowledge kills the pursuit of knowledge.
	If you think you know something and you're wrong, you stop looking for it, right?
	Yeah, and I've heard you talk about this before.
	As soon as you start really bringing philosophy into your life and really taking a good look at your relationships, you start to see that they're not as strong as you thought they were, and then you'll find Yeah, most what are called relationships are pacts of non-existence.
	We'll go cheer at the same sports team and we'll pretend that we're existing.
	We'll go salute the flag and fold it the right way and we'll pretend that we're existing.
	We'll all wear the same uniform and we'll pretend that we're existing.
	We'll all participate in the democratic process and we'll pretend that we're existing.
	We'll all talk about the weather and pretend that we're existing.
	It's a pact of existence predicated on non-existence.
	And the moment that you stop participating in this let's pretend we're alive, well, you find out.
	Yeah, that old police song, is anybody alive in here?
	Nobody but us, right?
	Who's alive?
	Who's capable of listening and thinking?
	And who's got curiosity?
	Who's willing to change perspective based on new information?
	Right?
	Who is not dead from the neck up?
	Well, you can find that out pretty easily.
	Just be yourself and see.
	Speak honestly, what's on your mind in the moment, what you think and feel.
	Find out how people respond.
	It's terrifyingly easy to do.
	Everyone is always five to ten minutes from the truth about their relationships.
	Everyone.
	And that five to ten minutes, and that's pretty generous, it probably is about 30 to 60 seconds.
	People live 80, 90, 100 years, 30 to 60 seconds away from discovering the truth about what they think of as their relationships.
	Keeping that knowledge at bay is so unbelievably strenuous and exhausting.
	Andreas Andropoulos was just on the show talking about the amount of energy it takes to prop up this fiat crap called the US dollar.
	The amount of energy that people have to expend to keep the simple truth about their unrelatedness at bay is astonishing.
	It's why economies fail.
	People just get exhausted keeping the truth at bay.
	You know like in the movie The Matrix you have like a little, oh I got deja vu, like you have to really keep your eyes peeled for it.
	It's like no, The Matrix is continually dissolving for people and they continually have to prop it up.
	That's why you see, wherever you see hysteria, you're almost always seeing people avoiding the truth of the non-existence of others.
	In war, the cheering, in the media, in the intensity.
	in war, in sports, in all of these places where there's hysteria, at dance clubs.
	It is all like rain dances or magic man weather dances to keep the reality of unreality at bay.
	And this is what I swear to God, 95% of people's brains are consumed with keeping the reality of unreality at bay.
	And then we wonder why TV is such a relief for them.
	Oh good, I don't have to keep unreality at bay.
	We wonder why video games, pornography, obsessions, OCD, phobias, paranoia, addictions, it's all about keeping the reality of unreality at bay.
	And if you see that, I mean, it's just not tempting.
	Beyonce, fine looking woman, right?
	Right?
	She is like two millimeters away from being the ugliest person around, right?
	You just take two or three millimeters of her outer skin off and suddenly she's like something you're running away from in a zombie film, right?
	Yeah.
	Are there like questions to ask?
	Because although I've stayed away from, you know, Yeah, it's called you, man!
	You're looking for some third party?
	to like some people just to like go out and get a beer with you know like is there something I could just like I guess bring up with them to kind of see whether or not it's even worth you know yeah it's called you man you're looking for some third party to well if I if I talk about Tesla will they be you know just bring yourself up just say anything that you genuinely think and feel anything Anything!
	And see how they respond.
	You're looking for a trick, right?
	What sleight of hand can I use to become real to people?
	Reality is not a sleight of hand, right?
	And I'm writing this down, too.
	I'm going to write it down, because I'm going to forget.
	Just be myself.
	Like, you're sitting across from someone.
	You don't have to do this.
	Look, I mean, go out for beers.
	I mean, what do I care in terms of, like, or what should you care what I care, or what I think about it?
	If you want to go out for a beer and shoot the shit with someone about nothing in particular, fine.
	Who cares?
	You don't have to be, like, philosophy god 100% of the time, right?
	It's fine.
	You know, there's nothing wrong with that.
	I mean, I don't care.
	It doesn't matter.
	I don't know if you're an atheist, but let's say you are.
	I don't know what your religious beliefs are, but actually I always feel kind of nervous bringing mine up, because I'm an atheist, and I always feel anxious bringing that up with people, because I never know exactly how they're going to respond, right?
	Somebody says, yeah, you know what, I'm not an atheist, but I've always wondered, what would it be like to be an atheist in this society?
	Or what would it like to be an anarchist?
	I mean, what's that like for you?
	What is it like for you to be an objectivist?
	What is it like for you to be a Rastafarian?
	What is it like for you to be into trains spotting and stamp collecting?
	What is it like for you to hurt, right?
	But that's somebody who's, you know, willing to explore the human condition, as the old saying goes.
	Nothing human is alien to me, right?
	Yeah, well that's, you know.
	Yeah, so I am an atheist and it's hard for me to talk to that.
	Bernie Frank, like a 17 term congressman or whatever, he had a gay lover who was running a gay prostitution ring out of his apartment, right?
	I think it was in the 80s or whatever this was all found out.
	And he's fine.
	He's gay and his lover is running a gay prostitution ring out of their shared apartment.
	And he goes on to a final political career, right?
	After he leaves office, he's like, oh by the way, I'm an atheist.
	Right?
	So being gay in America and having your lover run a gay prostitution ring and break the law is fine.
	But for God's sakes, don't mention anything about atheism, right?
	Yeah.
	It's hard.
	We are the most hated and feared minority.
	Certainly in America that's the case.
	It's not so much in Europe.
	Then we get to spin and say, well, I'm not an atheist, I'm an anarchist.
	Right?
	Nobody ever asked me what it was like.
	What the hell is it like to be an anarchist?
	That's crazy.
	Like, that must be so difficult.
	I mean, why on earth would you do that?
	Are you nuts?
	That's a perfectly fair question.
	I wonder that myself sometimes, right?
	So yeah, just tell someone what you think and feel and, you know, if they have some curiosity, I mean, I think that's worth That's going to be a conversation that's going to go pretty well, right?
	Yeah, that doesn't happen now.
	If I talk about being an atheist, I get either, like, no one would want to offend me, right?
	They'll say something like, oh, that's just your belief, or that's just what you think and it doesn't matter, or something like that, where it's just like brushing it off, like, oh, you're just different.
	Yeah.
	Or it's attention seeking or whatever, right?
	Yeah.
	That's pretentious.
	What does it matter?
	Why would you bother, right?
	Yeah.
	But I would, you know, again, there is no slate of hand.
	It is just be the apparition that appears for people in the form of reality.
	The reality of you, right?
	And my brother.
	from another mother.
	I must move on to the last caller because I can't have a late night tonight for a variety of reasons.
	So I really, really appreciate you bringing this stuff up, Lang.
	What an incredibly honest call.
	And I'm sorry that the world is the way that the world is.
	But, you know, man, we can take some pride in navigating it anyway, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Thank you.
	I really appreciate you taking the time out.
	And for all that you do, you've been extremely helpful for me like the past year.
	So I appreciate it a lot.
	Well, it's good.
	I like to think that I heap nine tons of difficulty on people and then take one ounce away and then they're relieved.
	Oh man, that's so much better.
	Anyway, I'm glad that it was helpful.
	And yeah, go ahead.
	Is it okay if I plug the project that I was working on over the last six months when I quit my job to pursue music as a business?
	Yeah, please do.
	All right.
	So it's called Transcender.
	And you can get it on my site, it's www.racist.com.
	It's R-E-Y-S-H-I-Z-Z.
	I got a song on it called Atheists.
	I got a song on it called We Politic Ourselves.
	So it's like, there's some anarchy in there, there's some atheism in there.
	There's a song on it called School Sucks.
	So, it's a lot of, like, what I learned just listening to you and just doing my own research and just a lot of, like, what I've been feeling.
	Like, there's a song on there called Alone, talking about me being alone.
	So, like, I really, like, put, you know, myself into it.
	So, if anyone wants it, it's free to download online.
	Just go to my site and you'll get it.
	Well, thanks.
	I look forward to eating the fat beats.
	I really appreciate that.
	Hopefully, we'll get to talk again.
	All right.
	Thank you.
	All right.
	Take care, man.
	All right.
	Bye.
	Mickey, Mikey, Mockey?
	All right, Peter is up next.
	And Peter wrote in and said, in 1822, Thomas Jefferson wrote, I looked to the diffusion of light and education as the resource to be relied upon for ameliorating the condition, promoting the virtue and happiness of men.
	Has the modern economy rendered university an institution of student debt slavery as opposed to a virtuous pursuit of knowledge?
	What do you think?
	Basically, to put all that in a nutshell, I would say that after seven years of business school, it kind of seems to me like going to college to get a job is a lot like getting married to get laid, you know?
	It doesn't really make any sense economically.
	Except that, you know, usually if you get married, you get laid, right?
	So going to college doesn't always mean you get a job, right?
	I mean, finance guys can't find jobs.
	Lawyers and engineers can't find jobs these days.
	So, yeah, it's rough.
	That's rough.
	Yeah, I mean, college is kind of a new thing, right?
	Is it?
	And yeah, I mean, as far as, you know, Ben Franklin did like what went to grade six, Shakespeare did 12 weeks of school every year and graduated as soon as like shortly, I think, before puberty and got out as quickly as he could.
	And he became a playwright by going to act in plays and going to be around the theater for like 10 years.
	And then, you know, he knows what the hell he's doing when he starts writing plays.
	So yeah, for a lot of the things that you need to learn how to do, apprenticeship and doing is a far better way to learn how to do them than going to college, right?
	Yeah, it was soon to be true.
	I mean, I agree now after seven years and more debt than I want to talk about, but I mean, holy Christ, why would you go get a master's in the first place?
	Why would you go to grad school at all?
	Yeah, I mean, as somebody who went to grad school, I'm still glad that I did.
	Look, it has become, I mean for a variety of reasons, which I've talked about before, and also I didn't go heavily into debt to do it, but I would, you know, there's two reasons people go to college, well three I guess.
	One is they don't know what they want to do and they think the college is going to help them with that, which it doesn't generally.
	The second is they want to get into some profession that the government regulations and requirements have made the demand for college education necessary, right?
	You want to be a lawyer, you got to get your, you know, degree and you want to be a doctor and you got to get your degree, right?
	So that's the way it is, right?
	They've just monopolized the market, right?
	Yeah.
	And in other words, you go to jail for being a good engineer without the particular degree.
	Okay.
	Right.
	See Netflix suits for more detail on this, right?
	Anyway, so and the third reason is that they recognize that Having a degree gives you credibility.
	In other words, if you have a degree, people say, oh, he's got a degree.
	And if you don't have a degree, people say, oh, I wonder why he doesn't have a degree.
	And the reason all that's happened is because governments have just been subsidizing higher education like crazy.
	You know, mostly to capture the intellectuals and to trap young people in debt.
	Young people are highly inconvenient to power, right?
	As they are to entrenched economic interests.
	They work for cheap.
	They are skeptical, they are caustic, they are cynical about their elders and you know they're a constant annoyance.
	So you know bury them in debt and draw them into school and make them continue to serve their masters in the pursuit of a degree.
	Pursuing a degree has nothing to do with learning how to think and everything to do with pleasing your professors.
	That's true.
	I mean, when I was trying to get my master's going, I had a great thesis and I'm still very happy with it.
	And I mean, it took me forever to find a thesis advisor.
	And I graduated way long after everyone else got their degree, because nobody could figure out whether I should or shouldn't graduate.
	And I ended up getting an A and all that.
	But man, it was a battle and a half.
	I mean, it was much harder to get the degree and to find the advisor than it was to research and write like a hundred page thesis on the history of philosophy because everybody, you know, just over specializes.
	And that way nobody can ever tell them that they're wrong because nobody cares anything about what they're doing.
	Right?
	Right.
	I'm studying sheep patterns in 17th century Southern France.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	Fine.
	I'm, you know, I have a life.
	So yeah, it doesn't have any, so it's just a way of making sure that young people continue to bow to the masters.
	The masters have to be professors and the professors like all people with power become petty and vindictive and ridiculous and embarrassing and you know to anyone with any free market experience in the intellectual pursuits as I have.
	It's just it's ridiculous and nonsensical and so on.
	And so, I mean, yeah, you bury them in debt and they can't question the system and you train the smartest ones to continue to take orders into their late 20s and then they can't change the system and you give them the fallacy of sunk costs to the point where walking away from an academic career after you've buried yourself in masters and PhD land becomes a non-option.
	And then, of course, in the PhD land, because there's tenure, tenure doesn't mean that I'm popular.
	professors never get fired it means that unpopular professors never get hired because you know you can't ever get rid of them right and so and also of course universities have pointed towards governments rather than students because governments now provide a huge amount of their income in I think in Canada it's like less than 10% of the price of the education is paid for by the student which means the students don't really matter right I mean what really matters is the government and pleasing the government and all that kind of stuff so yeah I think that there's not a lot of value
	I've certainly learned a lot more through Free Domain Radio than I ever did through college and all of the value that I brought to college was the value that I brought to college through philosophy, through objectivism and things like that.
	Nobody in college taught me how to think.
	I never had a required course in logic or sophistry or any of those things and so yeah, I think it's a pretty empty and vapid institution and if you can get things done Then go do them.
	It's fine.
	If you've got the money and you want to hang out and meet some fun people and go to some not too many classes and write some papers and all that, it's fine.
	Worse ways to spend your time.
	But it's, I think, not at all, even remotely, a necessary or fundamentally valuable institution at all.
	That's not been the case forever.
	Yeah, I mean, I certainly agree, but it's just, you know, finding out – finding this out now, you know, I pretty much come to the realization that in order to – I'm really only in grad school now, honestly, to defer the loans that I've already taken out because I can't pay them off because I have no experience and I am only in school.
	Yeah, and you can't even, I mean bankruptcy doesn't affect student loans.
	Right, so I'm pretty, I'm pretty screwed.
	So I guess, you know, I don't know, part of me just wants to like say screw all this, drop out of grad school and just like, I don't know, ignore my loans, just run away from basically, but I know I can't do that.
	So, I don't know, man.
	Yeah, I mean, you know, my suggestion would be, I mean, if you want to finish a degree, finish degree, but if you don't, you know, find some cool people and start something entrepreneurial.
	I mean, that'll teach you a lot more.
	Yeah.
	Then school will probably in terms of what, you know, pleasing customers and sales and marketing and raising capital and, I mean, obviously a smart guy, right?
	So go out and get things done.
	You know, I mean, it's funny because I, you know, I went to school all the way to graduate school and then just started a software company, you know, with no training in software or business at all.
	You just learn as you go.
	Business knowledge was the foundation for the success of this show and all that kind of stuff.
	And nobody ever said to me, what, are you kidding?
	You don't have a degree in computer science?
	Well, shit.
	I mean, nobody asked.
	You don't have a degree in business?
	You've never taken any management training courses and you want to run this whole department?
	You want to run the whole technical department of a big software?
	No, right?
	I mean, when I started going into sales and marketing, nobody said, well, you haven't taken a sales course.
	You haven't taken a marketing course.
	Nobody cared.
	Didn't matter.
	Could I get stuff done?
	I mean, it wasn't like they gave me giant accounts, right?
	It wasn't like they gave me massive, like, yeah, I wrote a bunch of software and it works.
	That, but that was all the resume I needed.
	Oh, cool.
	You know, when there are people who say, wait a minute, wait a second.
	Steph doesn't have a PhD in philosophy.
	It's like, yeah, yeah.
	That's why you should be listening to me because I'm doing this and I don't have a PhD in philosophy, so I better be even better.
	Anyway.
	Yeah, so you would suggest that it's not a good idea to stay on my current course.
	I should just change it and do something that actually adds wealth instead of accrues debt.
	Well, look, I don't know.
	I mean, if you're six months from finishing your PhD, I'd say, you know, probably worth finishing it, right?
	I'm like a year and a half away from my MBA.
	And how long is this?
	You're six months into the program.
	Is it a two-year program?
	Yeah.
	Well, I don't know, I mean, you're obviously continuing to, it's going to cost you how much, right?
	$100,000 to finish?
	Yep.
	And does that include your opportunity costs?
	Well, I don't know.
	I mean, your Harvard Business Review, you can just read for free, right?
	Go to the library, right?
	I mean, I don't know.
	I don't know.
	Yeah, exactly.
	I mean, I've worked with a couple of people who have MBAs.
	And I found them, like, universally annoying.
	Right.
	And that doesn't mean you, right?
	I mean, obviously, right?
	I just, you know, like, it's all theory and it's not practice, right?
	That's true.
	It's like people who learn how to sew without needle and thread.
	It's like, well, I'd really like it if you put the needle on the thread, right?
	So I don't know.
	I mean, I have no idea whether, I mean, you'd need to look at the industry, you'd need to look at the standards and so on.
	And you don't have to make the decision one way or the other directly, but I wouldn't seal yourself up in academia to the point where you're not exploring potential opportunities to not be in academia, right?
	Absolutely.
	Right?
	So, you know, get on the internet.
	I'm looking for, you know, people who are looking for startups or people who want to get startups going or if you have an idea for one, just start casting it about.
	You know, you can get your micro funding and all that kind of crap.
	I mean, it's a hell of a lot easier to get businesses started now.
	Than it was when I started.
	Oh my God, don't I sound like an old fart?
	Oh, I am.
	But yeah, I mean, it just gets get things going.
	I mean, I think just talk to Jeff Tucker.
	I mean, he's starting Liberty.me.
	I mean, if you've got great skills and enthusiasm and you understand the philosophy, just send resumes to him or give him a call and maybe he knows someone.
	Just stop putting all the feelers out.
	Just get used to getting on the phone and asking people for stuff.
	That's really the first foundation of success is just get on the phone and start asking people for stuff and keep asking until somebody gives you some stuff.
	Or offers you some help.
	And lots of people do, right?
	Particularly people who've achieved some success.
	They really want to help out others because everybody remembers how hard it was.
	So that would be my – just go to your course or whatever, fine.
	But if you get some opportunity that you can generate, then that's something you can choose then.
	But if you're not even pursuing that kind of stuff, then you're just kind of orbiting this thing as a way of hiding out.
	And I don't think that's a great idea.
	Yeah, that's true.
	Well, um… And if anybody's listening to this, is there a way they can contact you?
	Yeah, of course.
	You don't have to give a last name or anything, but if there's just some way to contact you, that would be great, or we can insert it into the links if you don't have anything handy.
	Yeah, can I give them my email?
	Please do.
	Yeah, my email is pbagon at su.edu.
	It's P-B-A-G-G-A-N, right?
	Exactly.
	Okay, P. Baggin, relative of Bilbo, and yeah, smart guy, understands libertarianism, economics, and obviously has the intellectual horsepower to get into an MBA program, which means that he's too smart probably to finish it.
	So yeah, give him a shout if you'd like to talk to him.
	I'm sure he'll work for – well, He'll work for enough to pay off his student loans to begin with.
	I'm sure that will help.
	I also actually am on a founding team of a small startup I'd like to plug as well.
	We're Creative Chemistry.
	We're doing a secret show this summer.
	Go to liveatthegorill.com.
	That's liveatthegorill.com to subscribe to our newsletter.
	And we've done artists like Camp Lowe, Kane if you've heard of him.
	We're in Northern Virginia, D.C.
	area.
	Check us out if you get the chance.
	It'd be really great if you would support us.
	All right.
	Fantastic.
	Well, I hope that that works out.
	And yeah, I mean, always have your foot in more than, always have your pokers in more than one fire, I guess you could say, because you never know where the next geyser of flame is going to light up.
	So, you know, I'm a big one for spread your risks out, spread your rewards out.
	So just don't hide out there in academia.
	Just keep plugging and keep driving at something and something will connect that may lift you out.
	And if it doesn't, at least, you know, you've made some contacts when you graduate.
	Yeah, man.
	I appreciate the time.
	Thank you.
	You're very welcome, and thank you everyone for calling in.
	Sorry again that we had some technical issues last night, but I guess we are back on the sunny side of the Skype Street.
	So remember, no shows Sunday and Wednesday, and thanks again to Mike for setting this up last minute, and we will talk to you soon.
	Take care.

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