Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

June 21, 2020 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:04:12

"My Stepfather Almost Killed Me!" Freedomain Call In

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	His question is, both my wife and I are in the process of disowning our dysfunctional parents, and we are both going to therapy to help us through some childhood issues.
	We are both contemplating whether we should call and tell our parents Happy Mother's Day, or if we should just not get involved and face possible repercussions.
	Well, short and sweet, I suppose.
	I'm sorry to hear about the situation as a whole.
	It's really, really tragic.
	And knowing just how close parents And children can be, you know, because I'm a dad.
	It's even more heartbreaking when you hear about these kinds of situations.
	And as you know, I've gone through the situation myself.
	So this is one of the few times where I don't just have to say I can imagine how you feel.
	So hopefully that helps.
	But do you guys want to tell me a little bit more about the backstory of what led to this?
	Yeah, so I've been listening to your show for a few years now, and I've...
	It's caused me to completely...
	Actually, both of us, but it's caused me to completely change my whole perspective on how I see my mother, because when I was growing up, I had what you refer to as a Franken family, where my mom had six kids, and the three oldest ones have one dad, I have one dad...
	And my two younger siblings have a dad of their own.
	And, you know, she wasn't married to...
	Well, she was married to the first man.
	She's been married a couple times, but she's been in relationships with all sorts of men.
	And... Just...
	One of these men almost killed me one time.
	And... But the problem with my childhood was that I was kind of like in this caretaker role because there was no other man.
	It doesn't feel like we should just skate past that you one was being killed by some guy.
	Oh, no, yeah.
	I plan on getting into that.
	I'm just kind of like giving you the backstory of it first and then I'll definitely be willing to talk about that.
	Okay. But, yeah, so...
	I'm sorry, man. I'm a real big fan of your show, and I'm not real good with this type of stuff.
	Well, it's no problem. I can just ask you some questions.
	I guess the first question being, how did this guy almost kill you?
	Well, there was this one...
	Okay, so the story is, my brother and I were playing in a pool.
	We live in a hot part of the country, so we're always in the pool.
	And we had this game that we would play where we had this water slide in the backyard.
	And we would play this game where we would dodge each other as we were coming down the water slide.
	And this was when I was probably about six or seven years old.
	And one of these times, I accidentally landed on top of my brother, who was younger than me.
	So that's his child.
	And I've got a different father.
	And my mother was not there at the time.
	And so he was the one watching us, my stepfather, I guess you could say.
	And he was very angry because I had hurt his son.
	And so... He basically grabbed me, stripped me completely naked, sent all the other kids inside, and then he went and grabbed me by my hair and brought me out back to the pool and started drowning me underwater to teach me a lesson, I suppose. How bad was his son injured?
	Oh, he wasn't. There was nothing really wrong with him.
	I just had accidentally hurt him, and he teared up a little bit because he was probably five years old at the time.
	It was more of a frustration thing for my, quote, stepfather, I suppose.
	Yeah, so like injury scale for your stepbrother was like a 1 or 2 out of 10, right?
	Yeah, if that. I mean, there was nothing wrong with him.
	I mean, he cried a little bit and then recovered, you know, just like any normal kid might do.
	So then this psycho, son of a bitch, decides that the best way to teach you a lesson for a mild accidental injury to his son is to half drown you.
	Yes. And I just remember, yeah, after that happened, I mean, I was, you know, six years old, pretty much prepared to die in that pool when that happened.
	I didn't know what to expect because he'd been, you know, he'd done this type of stuff before.
	Not to that extreme, but...
	You mean to you as well as time.
	So I just didn't know...
	I thought I was going to die, but he pulled me out and forced me back into my bedroom while I was still wet.
	I didn't dry off or anything like that, and I was completely naked, and so I had to stay in my room after that, completely naked, cold, wet, until my mother got home hours later.
	Right. Now, I mean, from his standpoint, and I'm pleased I'm not asking you to empathize with this lunatic, But from his standpoint, the thing to understand is that he had no fear of going to prison.
	No, he did not. He had no fear that your mother was going to say to him...
	That your mother was going to come home, she was going to go and say, Hey, where's my son?
	He was going to go up to the bedroom and you were going to sit there and say, Man, this lunatic half drowned me for nothing.
	Not that there would be anything to half drown you for, but...
	And then your mother would say...
	Oh my god. And she'd go down, did you do this?
	Yeah, I was trying to teach the kid a lesson while I'm calling the cops, because you're not safe around my kids, you're not safe around your kids.
	You're a dangerous lunatic who's going to get some child killed, possibly one day, and you've got to go face the music, right?
	Yeah. Which would have been, you know, obviously it was a bad choice on her part to be with him, but...
	That's not at all what she did.
	I didn't know that's what you would think somebody would do.
	It was a bad choice.
	It was a bad choice.
	I'm not even... I know.
	I don't know, man.
	I gotta tell you, I don't think the language is quite strong enough.
	You know, it's a bad choice to not take the extended warranty if it turns out the thing breaks in 18 months, right?
	Yes, that's a bad choice.
	But what my mother did was downright evil.
	She ignored what I had to say about it and either didn't ignore it or pretended it didn't happen or took his side or whatever it was.
	But either way, it was totally inexcusable and evil.
	And that's why I want to disown my mother.
	Well, just for moral clarity's sake, you know, for the sake of moral clarity, see, there's nothing funny about this, but I'll just tell you why it's kind of ironic.
	Because I was always raised, you see, I was raised in the feminist era.
	And it actually had a pretty strong impact on me, and there's some stuff that I thought was actually pretty cool about that.
	Because, you know, back in the day, even before I was born, there was kind of this cultural idea that Women are just...
	They're kind of like children and, you know, this is the idea, the argument that you have to manage them and take care of them and protect them from the world and all of that.
	And I was always taught that this was sexist and wrong and women are powerful and women want to be empowered and, you know, they can handle responsibility just like men.
	And this did sort of sink into my soul.
	And actually, it did me some good.
	It did me some real good because...
	In the old way of looking at things, I would have looked at my own mother and I would have said, well, of course she's screaming and throwing things and having tantrums and being violent because she's just a toddler.
	Or she's just like a child who's, you know, because that would be the story about what women were to some degree, right?
	Right. And...
	Because there was this feminism around.
	Now, I mean, the dark side of feminism, of course, is that, you know, men are pigs and patriarchy and all this, you know, male chauvinism and all this sort of stuff.
	But I really did, like, that actually did kind of save me.
	Because what I could do, because, you know, you can't hate a child for having a tantrum.
	I mean, obviously you can, but it's not rational, right?
	Because child having a tantrum is usually a reflection of bad parenting, bad environment, bad circumstances.
	And also, the child is a child, right?
	It's never grown up. It's in the process of growing.
	It's like getting mad at a child for not being tall enough to get a bowl from the top shelf, right?
	It's like, It's like I'm too short, right?
	So that's why we have children in families with parents in charge and so on, because they're children, right?
	So if I had viewed my childhood like, oh, I'm trapped in this house with this dangerous, ranting, raging toddler who has total authority over me, I mean, that's a terrifying thing, right?
	That's like, I guess, being one of them.
	If you've ever seen the first Toy Story, it's like being that neighbor's kid's toy, you know, like he's kind of inert and he's going to torture you and all that kind of stuff.
	But I really did listen to and absorb.
	I actually read some books on this when I was younger, like a kid, because I used to basically live at the library.
	It's one of the things that differentiated my childhood from others.
	But I went and read about all this stuff, and I really began to absorb this.
	Women are powerful.
	Women are empowered.
	You know, there was this old... Helen Reddy's song, I am woman, hear me roar.
	I am invincible. I am powerful.
	I am this, that, and the other. It's like, okay.
	I don't like the women are children thing.
	It's sexist, right? And so I really did absorb this women are the same as men.
	So what I began to do was I began to say, okay, well, what if it was a dad who was doing this to me?
	I mean, society would go mental, right?
	Or I can't give my mom the out of being a toddler with teats, so to speak.
	And so I gave her full moral responsibility because that's what I was taught to do.
	And I agreed with it.
	There was lots of things I was taught to do that I didn't agree with, like being inconsequential.
	But I agreed.
	With that, she's a powerful woman.
	She's empowered.
	She's full responsibility, full moral responsibility, right?
	And so then, of course, what happens is you start giving full moral responsibility to And society gets really mad at you, right?
	I mean, this is why you're calling me, right?
	Yeah, definitely true.
	Yeah, you're giving full moral responsibility to your mother.
	You're not saying she's a victim.
	You're not saying she was fooled or she was dazzled by this patriarchy.
	You're not saying that she was just reacting to things.
	You're not saying, right?
	You are giving her full moral responsibility, which is, as far as I understood it as a child, Kind of the goal of feminism.
	And then you run into this, well, it's a bit of a freaking paradox now, isn't it, right?
	Which is, full moral responsibility, sure.
	Full moral responsibility, God no.
	And just understanding that is, you know, there was an old phrase, I don't know, it predates my childhood by a long time, but it's the old thing, be careful what you wish for, you just might get it, right?
	And women have wanted full responsibility, for the most part, right?
	Full moral responsibility, full equality, and all that kind of stuff.
	It's like, okay, great. Well, now I'm going to give you full moral responsibility, which means you can't be a victim.
	You can't be a victim. You can't be a victim.
	And if you can't be a victim, then you own everything you do.
	And you have to do that. I mean, the only way that I could raise my daughter to have full moral responsibility is if I accept that both men and women have full moral responsibility outside of a few exceptional circumstances of brain deterioration or whatever it is, right?
	Right. And the reason I'm sort of giving you this whole spiel is because...
	I think that, and this is like off the cuff just as we start talking, so forgive me if I'm jumping the gun here, but the way that you were describing your mother was not giving her full moral responsibility, which is probably why this remains a challenging decision for you.
	Yeah, you're probably right about that.
	What does it mean to give her mother's full moral responsibility?
	Yeah. Well, you said that she stuck it out with this guy and all of this.
	I mean, that's accurate, but that's not fundamentally true.
	She didn't come home and find that this guy had done this to you.
	She voluntarily, of her own 100% moral responsible free will, brought this guy into your life.
	She did. She didn't have a situation that she managed badly.
	She didn't make a bad choice.
	She scoured the world.
	I assume since she's been married multiple times, there's something attractive about her, right?
	Yeah, she does have physical attraction for sure.
	So she's an attractive woman.
	And so she has her pick of men, right?
	Yes. So she could have chosen out of hundreds of men, She chose this psycho who...
	I mean, you try doing that to an adult, that's attempted murder, as far as I understand it.
	I'm not a lawyer, right?
	But that would be like if you hold someone's head underwater to the point where they genuinely believe that they're going to die.
	Well, first of all, if you do that to an adult, the adult is perfectly within their rights to jam their fingers into your eye sockets and kill you.
	Yes. You know that, right?
	So this is a situation where you would be perfectly legitimate in using lethal force in self-defense because you don't know what the hell the guy is going to do.
	Yes. So you were put in a situation of legitimate killing.
	Yes, I was. And so to me, if you had killed this guy, no court would convict you.
	I mean, let's say you were an adult.
	And let's say it was on tape or there were witnesses or whatever.
	No court would convict you.
	And, of course, the guy...
	Or let's say that you simply, I don't know, blinded him, right?
	He just jammed your fingers up his eye sockets and blinded him.
	And then in the courts, right, or whatever, or the police came to take his statement, which was probably something like, out of my eyes or something like that.
	But his statement would be something like, well, I was just trying to teach him a lesson.
	I wasn't actually going to kill him.
	At which point the legal system would say, that doesn't matter at all.
	Yeah, that's true.
	Because you, the victim, Thank you.
	Would have every reason to believe that you were about to die.
	I was going to stop is not a valid defense.
	Because everyone would say that.
	Oh, I was only kidding, man. I was going to stop.
	Right? Yeah, that's true.
	And here's the thing, too.
	If you had had the ability...
	To cause the end of the life of the man you genuinely and legitimately and factually believed was going to kill you.
	If you had had the chance to cause his death in that moment, I have very little doubt that you would have done it.
	I would have definitely done it.
	Right. Right.
	And you would have been perfectly within your rights to do so.
	And I dare say the world would have been a slightly better place if you had.
	Yeah. I've thought about that as well, and I completely agree.
	And he's only there because of your mother.
	He's only in your life.
	He's only holding your head underwater because of your mother.
	I say, ah, well, where's his moral agency?
	No, I get all of that. Of course he has moral agency.
	But he's only there because of your mother.
	Yes.
	And of all the men, she, with her physical attractiveness, I dare say her personality is not the smoothest and nicest, but at least she could have worked on it and could have attracted a better man.
	Right.
	Yeah, she could have. So, the abuse happens because of you.
	Sorry, my apologies.
	The abuse happens because of her.
	The abuse happens because of her.
	Yes, I... Yes, that's 100% completely accurate.
	Because what we do in the first stage...
	Well, the first stage is generally, you know, poor mom was a victim.
	There was this abusive guy.
	She managed it the best she could. And the second stage is she managed this abusive guy badly and she should have done better.
	And the third is she created this abusive guy's relationship to me and brought him into my house.
	Yeah. And I think you're in stage two.
	And I'm just making a case for stage three, which I think is the most accurate.
	I think so as well.
	And I think the large part of my problem is not that I can't accept your arguments because I've applied a lot of them and it's greatly improved my life.
	But I've been hardwired through this caretaker.
	Basically, I was the child responsible for my mother's Emotions, essentially.
	I became like a slave to her will.
	And that was hardwired into my brain for years.
	And it's extremely difficult to force myself through to...
	Even though it's completely illogical, it's like a deeply rooted emotional thing.
	And I know that I need to be...
	I need to be in that stage three.
	And I'm trying to get there.
	So that's part of why I called.
	Because, you know, it's like I need...
	I almost need Stefan Molyneux to tell me that I need to go to stage three and not accept any of the BS of the feminist narrative and courageous single mom and whatnot.
	Well, no, but see, this is where I think feminism, despite itself, has real value.
	And the real value is 100% moral agency.
	100% moral agency.
	See you.
	Thank you.
	She used her looks to draw a potential child murderer into her children's lives.
	She did. Because if you say, well, she's not really that responsible or she was just managing a situation that somehow occurred or erupted in her life and so on, Then, like, we can only have a relationship with people to whom we ascribe 100% moral agency.
	Because if we say, well, they are kind of like idiot children in adult bodies and so on, okay, well, I guess that makes...
	But then there's no relationship. There's no relationship.
	Like, to give a sort of silly example, I could not have...
	A meaningful relationship with a fairly severely mentally handicapped person.
	Doesn't mean I couldn't care for them, doesn't mean I couldn't take care of them, but I could not have a relationship.
	Right. Because they'd be operating at IQ 40 and...
	I'm operating at IQ whatever, and it's, you know, again, could take care of them, could care for them, but couldn't have a relationship.
	Yeah, you couldn't do that.
	So if you take 100% moral responsibility, which is kind of what I encourage, and if you say, well, my mother has very little moral agency or very little moral responsibility, then it doesn't solve the problem of whether you should have a relationship with her.
	Because the more you dial down her moral responsibility, the more you dial down your capacity to have a relationship with her, because then you, as a son, are trying to have an adult-child relationship with your mother who was the adult when you were a child.
	Because you're saying, hey man, I'm an adult.
	I'm a full adult. My mom, who's like, I don't know, whatever, 30 years older than me, is like a child.
	And we give moral responsibility to children too, right?
	We should. I mean, not 100%, because they're still learning, but we give moral responsibility to children.
	So it's almost like she would be an infant.
	Like, there's no moral responsibility for infants, right?
	No, there's not. I mean, to take a silly example, right?
	If you have a...
	A six-year-old boy who, you know, unzips his fly and pees into his sister's cornflakes.
	I mean, that's a mark of a very, very seriously disturbed child, right?
	And that would be cause for a great concern and professional intervention or maybe whatever, right?
	But if a baby pees in your eye, you know, it's like that old movie, I think it's City of God with Patrick Swayze, the Weirdly buff chain smoker who died, unfortunately, in his 50s, but there was an improvised scene in that where a baby, a little boy, pees in his eye, and Patrick Swayze laughs and says, hey, he's going to be a fireman.
	Well, it's funny, right?
	Yeah. And so the baby has no moral responsibility.
	Yeah. And so if we strip almost all moral responsibility from our parents, we're sending them back through time and back through human development into infancy.
	Yeah. And you can't have a relationship with an infant who is your mother.
	Because it's weird.
	I'm sorry, that's not much of an argument.
	You know what I mean, right? No, I know exactly what you mean.
	It's weird. It's weird.
	Yeah, it is. I mean, you can't imagine dressing up your mother in, like, big adult diapers and cuddling her.
	You know what I mean? Like, it would just be weird.
	I mean, that's Freudian, like, make Freud's head explode, right?
	Even more than the endless cigars did, right?
	Yeah. So, if you dial down the moral responsibility, you gain some ease in terms of, oh, well, you know, I can just treat her as an infant and all of that.
	But then you kind of have a relationship with her.
	But if you dial up the moral responsibility...
	Then she is 100% responsible for bringing extraordinary dangers and horrors and near death into your life, in which case you can't have a relationship.
	Yeah. Unless on the outside chance, you know, she accepts, she acknowledges, she apologizes, she goes to therapy, she whatever, right?
	Makes extraordinary amends.
	All of the fantasy stuff that we always imagined is going to happen and never does.
	Right, right. And I do apologize for doing so much talking and so little listening, but I really wanted to be clear on that part.
	No, I appreciate it.
	Yeah, yeah. Well, and that's the thing, too, is my mom, you know, because she had programmed me to be the one to take care of her, you know, it's even gotten to the point where she expects me to He'll take me in when I need to retire because I didn't save into a 401k or anything like that.
	I'm just like, no, there's no way that's happening.
	I've got my own family I'm going to go raise and I'm not going to be one of those that just serves.
	No, and of course, right?
	And the beautiful thing, in a way, about having your own family, the decision is out of your hands.
	Right? The decision is out of your hands.
	It's sort of like, you know, if you're a single guy living alone, and you decide to, you know, pound back a Dozen beers in a night, I think it's a stupid thing to do, and I think it's a wasteful thing to do, and I think it's a destructive thing to do, but hey, you know, you're not violating the non-aggression principle, right? Right.
	However, if you have, if you're a guy and you're home with your children, you don't have the choice to pound back a dozen beers over the course of an evening, right?
	Right. Right.
	I mean, you can do it, but then you're just like a criminally delinquent parent.
	Right. Because you can't parent if there's an emergency, if there's a whatever, you can't do it.
	And it's traumatic for your kids, watching daddy sway and totter and fall over and stuff.
	So a lot of your choices get removed when you have children.
	And the idea of bringing this monstrous human being into the house with your children, my gosh, you'd be better off with a rabid dog.
	I agree. So it's almost like, you know, you may even want to, based on history and momentum, you may even want to, right?
	But, you know, like, I'm sorry, but I have kids.
	Like, if your mom was like a chain smoker, and she wanted to come and live with you, and she refused to quit smoking, and she'd smoke in the house all the time, you'd be like, yeah, I'm sorry, I've got kids.
	Like, you could make the choice as an adult to inhale all that secondhand smoke, but you can't make that decision on behalf of your children, right?
	Yeah. There's another interesting story about that one, too.
	She actually is a smoker.
	I guess not a chain smoker, but she smoked throughout all the six kids that she had.
	It was a couple years ago, after all the kids are out of the house, she tells me that she's on the nicotine pouch now and that she's going to quit smoking.
	Well, she's done that before, but I was just like, this is just unbelievable that you would have six kids, and then as soon as they're all out of the house, that's when you decide that you're going to quit smoking.
	Is it really unbelievable, though?
	No, it's not. No, because she doesn't have anybody's needs in her mind, but her own.
	Yeah, I've come to that realization.
	I mean, it's a very primitive form of brutality.
	Wherein somebody doesn't have an observing ego and they're simply following slavishly their own particular lusts, right?
	Pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain.
	That's sadly what most people are programmed with and it's not a very elevated human state of mind at all.
	They're just kind of machines, right?
	I mean, there is a kind of determinism for people who don't Want to, or maybe even have the capacity to observe their own behavior and compare it to ideals and try and improve and have a conscience and mirror neurons and empathy and guilt and shame and love and, you know, all of that stuff. I mean, a lot of humanity are just largely bald apes with advanced language skills, which they use to manipulate rather than illuminate.
	That is true, for sure.
	I've had to disown my own best friend and several people because of that.
	Right. Yeah, and then once you have standards, they recognize standards as the enemy, right?
	Right. Absolutely.
	If you're raising a chimpanzee and you have higher standards than the chimpanzee, the chimpanzee doesn't get mad, right?
	I mean, of course you have higher standards.
	I hope you have higher standards than the chimpanzee, right?
	But when you start to elevate your own standards into your life, People get really mad, right?
	Because you're opening up a pathway of choice for them that they steadfastly wish to refuse exists.
	Yeah. So, yeah, there's no enemy like the man who wants to improve for a lot of people, right?
	Yeah. And they'll sabotage, right?
	Yep. They absolutely will do that.
	Yeah. You become an aggressor in their eyes once you decide to set your own boundaries.
	And they don't see it as you're setting your own boundaries.
	It's, you know, you're, oh, look at the pain you're inflicting on me, you know?
	Right. Yeah, you see, because the infliction of pain is really bad.
	That's why I brought a potential child murderer into your environment, because, you know, the infliction of pain.
	And it's, you know, and the sad thing is, right, this is what's really sad about all of this, is that Why do people like your mom manipulate it this way?
	Because it works. And some people will learn because they see a higher standard, they're inspired, they're elevated, they work hard, and so on, like you, me, and other people.
	And other people will basically...
	Like, we're like lock picks.
	Like, we learn how the lock works.
	We get the coat hanger or the wire or hairpin or whatever it is, and we get in there.
	Like, I remember as a kid, I wanted to go and see the movie Rocky and getting locked out.
	I was always locked out as a kid.
	I mean, I was always locked out as a kid because I would lose my keys or misplace my keys.
	And even though my keys had no identifying marks on them, like, I didn't have a name saying, hey, this is my key, and here's my apartment building number.
	I would just lose my keys, and it would be like two bucks to go get new keys, because I knew that when I worked in a hardware store for a couple of years as a teenager.
	I would cut keys and mix paint and cut glass and all of that.
	And I would spend entire evenings ripping up boxes in the basement to take them out to the garbage.
	So it was like, you know, a buck fifty, two bucks for a set of keys.
	But I could never go to my mom and say, I don't have a key.
	Because she would get completely paranoid that...
	People would find the key, somehow magically figure out, I don't know, DNA evidence, fingerprints, I don't know.
	They'd somehow figure out which apartment the key belonged to, and then they would come and use that key and break into our house and kill us in, or break into our apartment and kill us in our sleep, or something like that.
	Which is irrational, because it's like nobody knows what the key goes to.
	No, it's just a key. Yeah, it's just a key.
	And so, you know, I would leave, like I'd leave every morning in the morning, and I would I'd leave the door unlocked, and then my mom would leave after me, and then she would lock the door, and I wouldn't be able to have any lunch, and I'd get tired in the afternoon because I had no food.
	And then in the evening, I would sort of wander around.
	I'd try to go over to friends' places and get some snacks, or there was a place in the woods where there was a stream that bubbled up, and I would be able to go and get a drink from there.
	But it was pretty bad.
	It was pretty bad. And this is when I was young and didn't have any money, right?
	Now, when I got older... And got my first job and all of that, I would be able to take my mom's key and sneak over to the mall and get a copy made.
	And I would get a couple of copies made and all of that.
	So that's just a little snippet of childhood.
	And it's ridiculous, right? I mean, it's completely ridiculous that a child has no access.
	To his own home from like 8.30 in the morning until 6.30 at night.
	And then not only that, you have to be in fear of actually doing anything about your situation because of the repercussions of that.
	Oh yeah. And I would be afraid to leave the house because every time I would leave the house, my mom might go somewhere.
	She might go and pick up some cigarettes or she might just go somewhere.
	And then I'd come home and I wouldn't be able to get in and I'd have no idea.
	I used to go to the library, take some books out, and I'd come and sit.
	There were some couches in the very entranceway of the apartment building.
	I'd just sort of sit there and read and wait for my mom to get back in or whatever.
	I remember the superintendent would sometimes say, hey, what are you doing down here?
	I was like, oh, just change the scenery, blah, blah, blah.
	I mean, all of this crap that you have to do when you live in these kinds of weird, dangerous households.
	It never makes any sense at all.
	Yeah. So, but I just, I remember trying to get into, I had some money, I was with a friend of mine, the guy who later died in a motorcycle accident, and we were going to go and see the movie Rocky, and we were sitting there trying to get the door open with, like, a card.
	It wasn't a credit card, maybe it was my library card, I can't remember exactly, but, you know, you can push the card in and try and get the ball to go back and all of that.
	So, like, that's lockpicking.
	And that's sort of a skilled thing to do, and I think that's what we're engaged in in these kinds of conversations, is picking the locks of history and getting free.
	But other people, all they do is they've got a bunch of keys, and they just keep trying keys until they find one that works, and they just keep trying that.
	They just keep doing that, right? And unfortunately, this kind of manipulation, like, why does your mom do what she does?
	Sadly, because it works.
	And society has trained her, in a way, to...
	Act badly. I mean, it would be like children, like as a math test, right?
	You punish the children for doing well on the math test, and you give them candy and toys if they fail, right?
	I mean, if we did that, we would not expect a whole lot of math prodigies to be coming out of our schools, right?
	Right. Probably don't expect that anyway, but that's...
	Right, so this is...
	Your mom is also trapped in a system where...
	If society had not given her what she wants, she would have experienced a discomfort, but she also would have changed her behavior.
	If that makes sense. That makes sense.
	And the reason I'm saying all of this is that I know that there's a part of you that cares about your mother and would like her to be happier and would like her to be better.
	There's a part of me that cares about my mother and would like her to be happier and would like her to be better.
	And the only way that I can do that is to stop being The lock where the key of manipulation works, turns, clicks, and opens, and gains access to treasure.
	I cannot reward her for destructive behavior.
	And that's not an act of hostility.
	That is an act of care.
	I see what you're saying.
	Right, so I'm sort of, I mean, I know that's a lot of complicated emotions with regards to you and your mother, and I'm not trying to smooth them out and saying, well, just take those all, sweep them out, and replace them with care.
	I can't say love, because love is for virtue, right?
	But you do care about your mother.
	You know, I care, well, cared, I guess, past tense about my father.
	I care about my mother. And that's why I'm not participating in fueling destructive and manipulative behavior.
	they have.
	It's not a big chance, you understand, but it's their only chance.
	Because if I provide resources based upon threats, bullying, playing the victim, manipulation, whatever, right?
	Then I am simply, you know, like if you've got a father who's an alcoholic, you can't be buying him drinks and bringing them over and drinking with him and pretending everything's great.
	If you care about him, right?
	All you're doing is fueling his worst behavior.
	Thank you.
	That is true. It is a caring thing to do to not enable destructive behavior.
	If you know that you're doing the right thing, it becomes a whole lot easier to do.
	Because I sit there and say, oh yeah, I guess, how old is my mom?
	How's my mom doing at the age of coronavirus?
	And it's like, man, you know.
	It would be great to have a relationship where I could go over and care and provide resources and all of that, right?
	Right. But you can't do that because of choices that were not your responsibility.
	Yeah, I can't enable that, right?
	I mean, I used to give her lots of money, but she used it for incredibly destructive purposes against innocent people.
	And it's like, sorry, I can't.
	Can't do it. You know, like if you give money to a drug addict and the drug addict uses it to go and buy drugs, he'd be like, sorry, I can't give you money.
	Yeah. That's not going to guarantee...
	Like, I can't guarantee you're not going to be a drug addict, but I can at least...
	I have control over whether I give you money to buy drugs.
	That is true. Yeah, you don't have to enable that kind of behavior.
	Right. And so, if you understand...
	Or at least the case that I'm making, if you understand.
	Sorry, that's kind of a rude thing to say.
	Like, if you follow me, you'll understand.
	But what I mean to say is, like, the case that I'm making is that if you kind of look at it as you won't reward your mother for bad behavior with attention.
	If she comes to you with positive behavior, I'm sure you'd be open to that.
	Yeah, I would be. It doesn't mean you'd be best buds, but at least you'd be open to having a conversation.
	But if she's like...
	Because what you said was, if I don't call her for Mother's Day, if I don't participate in Mother's Day, I'll have to take the negative consequences or something like that, right?
	Yeah. Well, that's why you can't.
	Because if it's like, well, I'm being bullied into this, then you're simply rewarding the bullies.
	And if you reward the bullies, you're just ensuring that the bullies will stick around and escalate with you, right?
	And you're just part of the system that rewards bullies and punishes good people.
	And, you know, then we're like, man, I can't believe the world doesn't get better.
	Well, yeah, okay.
	It's like mainstream media.
	Mainstream media is just toxic trash, right?
	And, you know, so...
	But, and now I, you know, I do go and read the mainstream media largely to tell people how, what kind of toxic trash it is.
	But, you know, for most people it's like, well, why would you?
	You know, like if I, if I had a friend and I went over and that friend was watching CNN all day or whatever, I'd be like, dude, what are you doing?
	Like you, you're giving money and time and attention and resources.
	Oh, it's just on in the background.
	Oh, I don't really watch it. It's like, they don't know that.
	They know that you're watching, and that allows them to charge more for ad revenue, which allows them to pay for the transmission of these lies.
	I would not be friends with someone who gave money to terrible people.
	It's funding a kind of intellectual terrorism that scares people, that alarms people.
	The same way that if a friend of mine Was, you know, endlessly telling his child about global warming and 12 years to live, I'd be like, dude, no, no, no, no.
	Don't be doing that.
	Like, no. You're harming your child.
	Yeah, you wouldn't be harming your child, for sure.
	I mean, you're creating a nihilist.
	You're creating someone who's, to go back a ways in the show, who's our selected, right?
	Who's... No higher purpose, just pleasure and pain.
	Because when you tell people they only have...
	When you tell a child they have 12 years to live, you're not creating...
	Case selection is long-term, right?
	Global warming is how our selection replicates.
	One of the ways, right? Yeah, that's true.
	So you can't submit to bullying.
	I mean, you can. I hate to say, oh, you can.
	You know what I mean, right? Like, you can't honorably submit to bullying.
	And also, then the temptation comes that you want to explain to the bullies, well, I'm not participating in this because it's bullying and I don't want it in my life and it's making the world a worse place and I have my own future children to protect and I don't want to waste brain cycles on this garbage.
	And you want to sort of grab them by the ears almost and explain to them so that they understand why it is that you're doing what you're doing.
	So that they don't badmouth you, and then that's in your head, right?
	Right. Which actually, that kind of brings me to another point of partially why I wrote the question, and that is because I know that I can't verbally confront my mom You know, without there being some sort of problem with that, even though I know that if I did do that and there was a problem, then that's all I would need to know.
	But I, you know, between working with a therapist, we decided to write a strongly worded letter telling my mom, you know, look, you need to either seek therapy or, you know, you've got to figure out a way to change the cycle or I can't have a relationship with you.
	And that's kind of where I'm at.
	Part of what I wanted to ask you, too, is exactly, you know, I know everybody confronts their problems differently.
	And I just felt like the letter would be the best way to do it.
	I'm still working on that because it's pretty much a book at this point.
	Oh, yeah. No, I get that.
	But this comes back to the smoking issue.
	Because the moment you start providing ultimatums, you're kind of being a bully, right?
	Yeah, I suppose. Yeah, I'm right about that.
	If you provide an ultimatum, you're saying, I can't convince you of the virtue of what I want, but I'm going to threaten you with non-participation unless you conform to what it is that I want.
	In other words, you're plugging into the pleasure-pain matrix of the primitive personality.
	And you're saying, I will inflict negative stimuli on you until you do what I want.
	I understand. I'm not saying don't write the letter, right?
	No, I know. Listen to your therapist in this.
	I'm just giving you another perspective, right?
	Your therapist is the expert. I'm just sort of giving you another perspective.
	But let's say, this goes back to your smoking thing, right?
	Let's say that your mother got the letter, listened to the letter, and said, oh, wow.
	Gosh, I didn't realize that what I had done had upset you so much.
	I will absolutely go to therapy.
	I will be a better person.
	I will get the toxic people out of my life.
	I will quit smoking. I will exercise.
	I will no longer expect things from you.
	I will, I will, I will, I will, I will, right?
	Right. And let's say that miracle of miracles, she was able to start achieving all of that.
	How would you feel? I would feel better, but at the same time, it's like I have to question whether or not she's doing all that for her own emotional sake?
	No, no, let's say it's real. No, we'll go total fantasy land, right?
	Let's say that your letter achieves the best conceivable possible outcome, which is it's genuine.
	Okay. She throws herself into self-improvement.
	She gets toxic people out of her life.
	She apologizes.
	She makes restitution. She, she, she, whatever, whatever.
	She, she bullies people or encourages people or motivates people who harmed you in the past to come and apologize to you.
	And you get every conceivable thing that you would want to get out of this letter.
	How would you feel? It's a big question.
	I would feel very happy about that.
	It wouldn't be restitution completely for somebody almost killing me.
	And that's just probably an anger that I'm going to have to live with, that that happened.
	And to be able to forgive somebody for that, assuming that she did everything that she could to possibly do that, I would be very happy if she did that.
	And I get that, and I'm not going to disagree with you, but I'll say that there's another aspect to it as well.
	Okay.
	Which is, if she could basically snap her fingers and become a wonderful person, why didn't she do it all those years?
	Like you said this about this, why I said it's a smoking principle, right?
	Yeah. If she is able to quit smoking, then the question would be, well, why didn't she quit smoking in the past?
	And if she was able to become a wonderful person, why didn't she ever do it in the past when it would have actually been helpful in a very fundamental way?
	Yeah, I haven't looked at it that way before.
	You know, like if you and I Are wandering through the desert and you're half dead of thirst.
	Sorry, this is a terrible analogy given the story you told me earlier, but I'll just have to go with it.
	And let's say it turns out that after two days you're almost dead of thirst.
	And, you know, I reach into my cargo short pockets and produce four bottles of water.
	You would have two feelings.
	One would be at immediate relief, because I can give you water, and the other would be like, why the hell did you not give me water over the last two days?
	You had water the whole time.
	Did you like watching me suffer?
	What on earth would prompt you to wait until I was almost dead to give me water when you had water the whole time?
	Yeah. There's actually a scene from a movie that depicts just that.
	It's a good, the bad, and the ugly.
	I don't know if you've seen that or not, but it's a Clint Eastwood movie.
	And that exact scene happens.
	Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. So that's somebody with a difficult mom, I guess.
	So here's the thing, right?
	So you have to look at the best-case scenario.
	And if the best-case scenario has within it its own problems, it's important to know that ahead of time.
	That if your mom could snap her fingers and just turn 180 and become a great person, then why didn't she do it when you were being half drowned as a kid?
	She could have done it any time.
	Any time. If she changes, she could have changed any time.
	And now, you see, she's only changing because you're making it an ultimatum.
	I see. In other words, you, suffering enormously as a child, was in no way, shape, or form any motivation for her to change.
	But her potential suffering as an adult...
	Oh, look at that! She's changing.
	Yeah. Even if you get exactly what you want.
	I don't know, man. I simply tell you for my...
	I went through this exercise.
	I was thinking about my mom. Okay, so let's say I'm able to get exactly what I want.
	Am I going to trust it? Is it going to be real?
	And even if I get everything that I want, I say to my mom, change or I'm out of here.
	And then she does some big magical turnaround.
	Like, hmm, so this wouldn't have happened if I hadn't bullied you and the suffering I went through.
	For the 15 years you were my direct mother didn't motivate you.
	The suffering that you put me through afterwards when I was an adult didn't motivate you to change.
	But the moment your interests are threatened, suddenly you change.
	In other words, nothing's changed.
	Yeah. Kind of hard to buy that.
	Well, and it's, you know, it's not going to happen anyway.
	It's hard for people like us to understand what it's like to have a truly rancid conscience.
	It really is really, really hard, but it's really essential.
	I assume you've not done anything significantly wrong in your life.
	I've not done anything significantly wrong in my life.
	People can come to me with...
	Moral questions and moral issues and I can work on a theory of ethics because it doesn't trigger my conscience.
	My conscience is, you know, I'm certainly not a perfect human being, but my conscience is, you know, pretty, pretty clear.
	I'm very happy and satisfied with the Moral stands I've taken in the world, but the appropriate levels of courage that I've shown and so on.
	And I think I've navigated things pretty sensibly and pretty honorably.
	And where I have done wrongs, I will...
	I mean, jeez, I've probably apologized to you two or three times over the course of this conversation, you know, where I've talked too much.
	So, you know, I'm not perfect, but I will obviously apologize and make amends if necessary and...
	Keep a conversation open if I've done something wrong to the point where the other person is satisfied and I work to make him.
	So my conscience is pretty clear.
	It's pretty good. It's pretty good.
	And I assume that you're in a similar situation.
	Yeah, similar. So we don't have anything to fear from higher standards.
	Right? Right.
	Because we've never done anything...
	For which there is no restitution that is possible.
	I agree with that.
	So you have to get yourself into the mindset, if you want to understand your mom, get yourself in the mindset that honesty will erase her, will destroy her.
	The light being turned on will destroy her.
	Moral integrity will destroy her.
	Moral absolutes will destroy her.
	Why do people get so mad at universally preferable behavior?
	You know, this guy, Rationality Rules, he's made another snarky little snippy video about me.
	I haven't watched it. I don't know.
	Steph's Conti in Suicide!
	Oh no, Humean Suicide or whatever, right?
	And I'm like, I just posted on Twitter.
	I tagged him and said, dude, let's just have a debate.
	Let's just have a man-to-man debate.
	Let's live stream it. Why do people get so mad at UPB? Because UPB It encircles a bad conscience and turns the goddamn lights on.
	Yeah. It holds people accountable, whereas, you know, and of course, they're going to do whatever they can to vehemently oppose that.
	If you do bad things, right?
	Here's why UPB is so volatile for people.
	Why they get so mad at it.
	See, if you do bad things, really bad things, you can...
	Run away from God.
	But you can't run away from UPB. Because if you say, hey man, I just don't believe in God anymore.
	Then you get some immediate relief from Christian ethics.
	Or ex-religion ethics.
	But UPB is like, it chases you down.
	UPB is like, hey, I buried God so I can walk away.
	From a bad conscience.
	And UPB, you know, Frankensteins those ethics and brings them back to life.
	And then it's like a zombie movie for these people.
	So if you can put yourself in the mindset of someone who's tortured children, of somebody who's brutalized children, of somebody who's almost murdered children, of somebody who brought someone into their child's life who almost murdered them.
	And listen, the guy may have really wanted to kill you.
	And he may have just at the last minute, the pain principle of, I don't want to go to jail.
	Or maybe somebody saw him.
	Or maybe he thought somebody saw him.
	Because, hey, man, if he holds you underwater and you drown, he could just say, hey, man, I just went in.
	I just went in to get a cup of water and, oh, it's such a tragedy, that kid drowned.
	Yep. He probably would have gotten away with that too.
	Yeah, if he's like, you know what?
	My son is here, and I know he's young.
	He's only five, but, you know, he could talk, right?
	There was that case in Florida where I think it was a three-year-old when a daughter drowned.
	The three-year-old said, no, mommy was holding her underwater.
	So, I mean, he may have had every absolute intention to kill you and blame it on accidental drowning, but he saw someone saw him, or he thought someone saw him, or he realized someone saw him.
	He's like, okay, got to stop. I was just trying to teach you a lesson, right?
	Right. That, to me, is entirely plausible.
	Yeah. Yeah.
	And he knew, and I hate to be as coarse as this, but it's a basic fact, he knew that your mom would choose his balls and wallet over your life and your happiness and your security.
	Right. He was perfectly knowledgeable about that.
	I mean, the guy's acting like a lion, right?
	The male lion gets to a new family.
	All he does is, first thing he does is kill off the kids who aren't his, right?
	Right. Yep.
	So you've never held a child's head underwater and wished that child to be dead and then almost killed the child and then manipulated and laughed it off and blamed the child, right?
	You've never done anything truly sick and evil like that.
	So you don't have the bomb in the brain of a bad conscience.
	So you're like, hey, let's just sit down and talk about ethics and virtue and consistency and integrity.
	Like it ain't no thing, right?
	Right. It doesn't come out as much of a cost to me.
	Well, here's what it is, man.
	You're like Superman sitting down with a bunch of normal human beings saying, hey, let's play Russian roulette.
	Right. Because the bullet's just going to bounce off your kryptonite hardened ass, right?
	But it's going to blow their heads off.
	And you're like, I don't understand why these people don't want to play.
	You represent an existential threat.
	And it's an overused phrase.
	Existential threat means...
	Identity cannot survive exposure.
	The only way that your mom stays alive is by desperately avoiding how much you suffered.
	Yeah.
	Sorry, I was writing that down real quick.
	Thank you.
	That's an important thing to understand.
	That you represent A bomb to her.
	But it's complicated because she can't just, like a bomb, you just throw it away, right?
	Throw it into the lake or something.
	Let it go off, right? Right.
	But she can't acknowledge your pain to the point where she's going to throw you away.
	She's got to keep you close like nothing happened because if she says, I don't want to see you because I cause so much suffering to you that it makes me feel so bad that I have to avoid you, she can't say that.
	Because that's to acknowledge the suffering that she caused.
	Which provokes the conscience.
	Yep. So the only way that you can be in proximity with your mother is if you erase the pain she caused you and pretend like nothing happened, which is the constant feature of these kinds of relationships.
	I understand. It's not you rejecting your mother, it's your mother rejecting the truth.
	Which at this point in her life, she kind of has to.
	I mean, what's she going to do?
	She can't fix it.
	She can't make restitution.
	You've just got to soldier on.
	You've just got to keep doggedly doing what you do until the grave blessedly swallows you up.
	That's why you don't do these kinds of wrongs.
	That's why there's a difference between mortal and venal sins.
	That's why you don't do these kinds of wrongs, because they lock you in that cage forever.
	And there's no turning back and there's no humanity and there's no soul and there's no free will and there's no conscience that you can access.
	There's no integrity you can manifest.
	All you do is manage the devils you gave birth to in your brain until the day you die.
	Yeah. And you can't fix that.
	You can't. I mean, you can go and pretend that Nothing bad happened, and she'd be eternally grateful for that, but that just means it's two deaths for the price of one.
	Yep. Yep.
	That makes sense. There's a phrase...
	Horatio asked Hamlet about Hamlet's father...
	And Hamlet says of his father's countenance, it was more of sorrow than of anger.
	I mean, it's long ago now, right?
	I mean, it's, Lord, 35 years since my mother had Dominion over me.
	And it's a sad life.
	You know, it's a sad, terrible life that she made for herself.
	It's really, it's heartbreaking.
	And I can't do anything about it.
	I can't do anything about it.
	I mean, it's like somebody that you still have residual care for is dying of a highly infectious disease.
	And even if you want to go in and give them a hug, you can't.
	There's no two deaths for the price of one, right?
	So you can sit at the glass and you can look through the porthole and you can watch them choke out or bleed out.
	This takes years.
	Or you can say, man, that's terrible.
	And I'm going to celebrate.
	The only way that I can honor their death is to go and live my life.
	Me sitting here looking through this porthole at an expiring soul for 20 years just means both of us expire.
	I get no life and it doesn't resurrect her.
	At all. And I can't go into the room because then I die with her.
	I've got to go live my life.
	I'm sorry. This is a self-inflicted disease, too.
	Your mother had choices. She may not have choices now, but that's because she chose earlier, right?
	I mean, if you choose to eat so much that you get 300 pounds, you can't have the choice to go run a marathon, but that's because you made earlier choices, right?
	Right. Yeah.
	And you can't, yeah, you can't fix it.
	You can't, especially you can't force somebody else to fix it.
	You can't parent your parent.
	You can't do it. You can't do it.
	It's like asking the child to birth the grandfather.
	It's distorted and impossible.
	You cannot parent your parent.
	You can parent your children.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	You can't parent your parent.
	You can't do it. No, you can't.
	And once you recognize something is impossible, then it becomes a whole lot easier to deal with.
	I wish I could ease my mother's unhappiness.
	I really could. But I tried everything and I can't.
	I can't do it. Because I can't go back and undo what she did.
	And neither can she. And she can't acknowledge it.
	She won't acknowledge it.
	And I understand why she can't and won't acknowledge it.
	I completely understand why.
	Because she'd throw herself off the balcony.
	And she wants to live, like all of us, right?
	Right. And I would not see as the thing, too.
	There's a kindness in this as well.
	Because if I were able to get her to understand what she did, and then she jumped up and threw herself off the balcony, how would that make me feel?
	Like, there's actually a kindness in this distance as well, right?
	Right. Let's say you did confront your mom, and then she jumped in the car, drove into oncoming traffic, right?
	You'd be like, well, shit, that wasn't a good idea.
	That is true. Yeah, I have...
	Worried about that a little bit.
	Well, I would worry about it more than a little bit, right?
	So this is probably the kindest thing that you can do, is to build your distance, right?
	You're right. There's also a part of her, which is the buried conscience part deep down, I believe, there's a part of her that wants you to do better, that wants you to, you know, like if you were sick, And your kids, if you were sick and highly contagious and infectious and your kids wanted to come in and give you a hug, would you want them to come in?
	Of course not. Well, you would and you wouldn't, right?
	But you'd much rather they didn't.
	Right. So there's a deep part of your mother, and this to me is like, if people make a relationship impossible with you, there's a deeper part of them that wants you to escape.
	Like, okay, well, the only way that you could be around me is if you lie and falsify your entire history and pretend that I'm someone who I'm not.
	That's not having a relationship.
	So if they make the relationship impossible, you understand there's a part of your mother that's driving you away from her so that you don't get infected.
	Yeah. And of course, that's subconscious.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I believe it's a very real thing.
	I think you're right about that.
	My mother acted in such a manner that she knew I couldn't possibly continue the relationship.
	Yeah. And she makes no effort to contact me.
	Because she has saved me the only way she knows how.
	She has contributed massively to the quality of my parenting, my friend.
	My mother has worked her last moral muscle to save me from herself.
	And I honor that in a kind of way.
	And it sounds kind of contradictory, but I do honor that in a kind of way.
	She drove me away so that I could do what she couldn't do or wouldn't do.
	She made it impossible for me to be around her so that my child could jump into my arms every day and we could have a great relationship.
	Thank you.
	Which we couldn't have if I was still enmeshed in this toxic and dangerous personality structure.
	That is true. She jumped on the grenade of history so I could get out of the tent.
	Yeah. So I would say listen to your mother.
	If that makes any sense.
	Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, I was going to say, if it wasn't for that situation that I was put in, Through no fault of my own, I wouldn't have accepted your advice so much.
	In our house, we don't yell, hit, anything like that, that we were programmed to do.
	Right. So your mother, like my mother, has contributed to improving the parenting in hundreds of thousands of families around the world.
	Yeah, which is pretty impressive, quite frankly.
	My mother's beatings have resulted in hundreds of thousands of children not being hit.
	My mother has very oddly helped the world enormously.
	Even a bad conscience is part of the improvement of the species.
	Thank you.
	In the same way that physical pain is an improvement in clumsiness.
	Yeah. Well, yeah.
	Yep. And my mother will never hear this, of course, but I do thank her for such a vivid lesson that The crater that hit me blew gold across the world.
	Including to you, I think.
	Yeah, definitely.
	Me and my wife.
	And your kids-to-be and their kids and all of that good stuff, right?
	Yes. Which, yeah, we are very grateful for all that as well.
	Well, I am very grateful for all of that, too, and I appreciate the call.
	Is there anything else that you wanted to mention?
	And I'm sorry we didn't get more into the details of you or your wife's history, but I think the principles are useful enough that way.
	No, that's all right.
	I had another question that I asked James, but I understand that time is limited on that, so I don't want to impose...
	Yeah, I think we've got another guy who's a kid.
	Yeah, definitely.
	Okay, thanks, man. Listen, feel free to call back in.
	I appreciate, you know, hearing it from Stefan, who I've been listening to for four years religiously.
	And, you know, it's like getting to actually hear the advice is...
	I very much appreciate it.
	Well, I appreciate your call.
	And, yeah, keep me posted about how it's going if you can.
	Okay, will do. Thanks, man.
	Thanks, Steph. James, we're back.
	Steph, unfortunately, our other caller...
	Oh, he just had success in getting his daughter to sleep, and he should be on just a few minutes from now.
	Hopefully not too long. Yeah, no problem.
	When he gets on, I will read the question.
	For those who are Minecrafters, we're going to try, I think, at 2pm.
	It's about an hour and 40 minutes from now.
	We're going to try something called The Wither.
	I don't know what that means.
	But we're going to try something called The Wither.
	So you can jump into the Subscribestar Discord server and check that out.
	I think we've got room for quite a few people in the Minecraft server.
	So you can check that out if you wanted to.
	And also thanks to everyone who had...
	Drop pass. We did, last couple of nights, we did free domain trivia games, which is not trivia about free domain, but, you know, we did that, and that was actually a huge amount of fun, an unusually or unexpected amount of fun.
	And my daughter is actually working on new trivia questions, which we'll try and get some time this week.
	I won a few of those rounds.
	It was fun. Yeah, I mean, James's knowledge of manga and anime is second to none.
	Absolutely. That's exactly where I went.
	And Australian slang. The Australian was saying, come on, guys!
	And it's like, dude, really?
	Well, Australia is the center of the universe, and we're all just sad to be away from it.
	Of course, of course. I just wanted to say, while we're waiting for the other caller, I really appreciate your perspective on your own parents because it gets me thinking about mine as well.
	But I also really appreciate that because it sort of helps push back against that bitterness that you can sometimes watch out for.
	Oh no, that's a very, very important thing.
	And it is, you know, it's really strange and complicated how much suffering can produce virtue.
	I mean, that's, it's funny, I've come like full circle back to my Christian roots, so to speak.
	But, you know, it's this sort of fundamental question.
	Was it worth going through my childhood in order to have the adult life that I have?
	In other words, would I, how much of a worse parent would I accept being in order to have had a better childhood myself?
	These are all tough questions, but they're very real, right?
	Right.
	And because, you know, all of the sweet stuff is now and all the bitter stuff was in the past.
	And given that all the bitter stuff is in the rear view.
	It seems like a pretty good deal at the moment, though, again, I wouldn't I wouldn't recommend it as a way to produce good people is to abuse your kids.
	But you can get that out of it.
	All right.
	Welcome another way.
	My daughter has a great childhood because I had a terrible childhood.
	And that's to some degree causal.
	I mean, I wouldn't have.
	You don't question stuff that doesn't really work.
	Like the guy whose car doesn't work learns a lot more about cars than the guy whose car does work.
	And that's, I think, where engineers as a whole come from and people who fix stuff and make stuff better and all that kind of stuff.
	All right. Well, thank you again very much for that.
	And we have our caller on.
	Um, he is a father and he has a newborn and a 14th month old.
	The 14th month old is getting old enough to interact with, but isn't talking.
	So obviously I can't reason with her.
	I would like to get some practical ideas for things like not having her get into certain areas or not being so upset when I change her diaper.
	Right. So good, uh, good set of questions.
	Um, and, um, welcome.
	Nice, nice to chat with you.
	Hi, Steph. So can you tell me a little bit about the 14-month-old?
	Yes, she is highly energetic and very squirmy and generally happy, but she definitely needs a lot of attention.
	Okay, so what my daughter is like, she's very energetic and Very happy most of the time and very squirmy.
	It's very difficult to keep her in one place for very long.
	And I don't know if she needs more attention than normal from most babies, but it's definitely a...
	I keep on her all the time.
	And... Sometimes we get in a situation where she wants to do something.
	I mean, this might be going to a certain area of the house, or this might be like, hey, I want to eat this thing that we don't necessarily want her to eat.
	And she's recently...
	And this happened after I wrote the initial question to you.
	She's recently discovered screaming, which is fun.
	And... Both my wife and I have been trying to figure out, okay, what do we do if she wants her way and she starts screaming?
	How do we cool this down and not get in a situation where it's just us, you know, dominating our will on top of hers?
	Right.
	And where you said her language is not cooking too far along at the moment.
	I can guess her age and all that.
	But what can she communicate? We've taught her a little bit of sign language.
	So she can point and she can say, like, hey, I want food.
	Or we've been trying to teach her to tell us when she needs to use the bathroom.
	Not successful so far on that.
	But that's about it.
	She can say, like, dad, mom.
	Right.
	And that's one of the big challenges, of course, is that for babies, right, their desires and their internal clarity is ahead, or toddlers, is far ahead of their language capacities, right?
	So that's, you know, like if you really had to go to the bathroom in a foreign country and you couldn't help anyone, like you couldn't make anyone understand what it is that you wanted, that would be pretty rough, right?
	Right. Right.
	What is she eating that you don't want her to eat?
	Oh, and this is usually fruit and puffs, you know, little cereal snacks.
	And it's not so much that we don't want her to eat fruit, it's more like you've already had three oranges, daughter.
	I don't think another orange is a good idea right now.
	And normally...
	Sorry, just so I understand, why is the fourth orange not a good idea?
	Because fruit is loaded with sugar, and we're trying to Maintain a...
	Avoiding as much sugar as possible.
	Right, okay. Now, if...
	So the fruit is visible to her, she knows where it is and she goes to get it?
	She points at it. It's out of her reach.
	Right. So what if...
	If you only wanted to have one orange, say, during the day, just put out.
	So there's only one orange, right?
	And if she wants more, say no more.
	Yeah, oh, and I mean, that's the question.
	So if she wants more, and I mean, yeah, obviously we can hide them, and that's a great idea.
	If she wants more, typically, at this point at least, we say, hey, no more, and she's usually okay with it, but occasionally she'll be pretty obstinate, and she may scream for it.
	And so the...
	What me and my wife have been trying to work out is when a situation gets to this screaming thing, how do we dial back the emotion without just being like, no, you can't have it.
	No, you can't have it. No, no, no, no.
	I've been having a lot of success with distraction.
	So for example, we've got chickens outside.
	I'll be like, hey, do you want to see the chickens?
	And sometimes that's enough for her to forget whatever she was asking for.
	But sometimes it isn't.
	Well, it's also rejecting her feelings, right?
	Because distraction is a way of saying, I can't handle your feelings, which transmits to her that she can't handle her feelings.
	And that may solve things in the short run, but it's probably going to start a repetition.
	Okay, so you don't think distraction is a very good technique for something like this?
	Well, once she has escalated to screaming, you need to deal with the screaming.
	And distraction, I don't think distraction is too bad early on, but once she has escalated to that point, distraction is clearly manipulation, right?
	And so you're teaching her that manipulation is a great way to get what you want.
	Yeah, that's bad. And in a sense, you're not being honest with your daughter because, I mean, what do you feel when she's screaming?
	What are you feeling?
	That we're in a fight.
	That we're in a fight.
	A contest of wills.
	That's not a feeling. That's an analysis, but that's not a feeling.
	Okay. Frustration.
	Oh, fear too, right?
	Yeah. No, it's fear because you don't want this to be the next 10 years of your life as some kid screaming at you, right?
	Right. So fear, probably some anger, some shock.
	Yes. And so these are really, really important.
	So are you distracting your daughter in order to change her behavior or in order to manage your own feelings of fear or anxiety or frustration or anger?
	Sounds like the latter. Right.
	Right. Right. So, if you're trying to manage her behavior to control your own feelings, that behavior is probably not going to resolve.
	Did you have a screamer in your house when you were growing up?
	My mom. Aha!
	No, that's nothing yet.
	That's got nothing to do with it.
	Let's keep looking elsewhere.
	No, no, can't be it.
	Can't be it. Did you have a dog that howled unusually?
	Oh, yeah. My mom had the dog that howled unusually, and I think she did it in order to remind me that I was slower on the totem pole than the dogs.
	Oh, right. Okay, so you had a screamer when you were growing up, right?
	Mm-hmm. And so are you getting triggered by your daughter?
	Oh, yeah. Okay.
	I understand that.
	Yeah. Go ahead.
	I just wanted to add, so when she first, it's calmed down a little bit, because the first week that she started it, she was doing like this full-on, 100% energy, banshee show.
	And I was like, oh my god, I don't know if I can survive this.
	And she's called it down a little bit to more like 60% where it's not like drilling the nerve in my brain like it was at the beginning.
	But I mean, it's still, you know, all the list of emotions that you just described.
	Oh no, it's like an air raid siren in the brain.
	Like it's really terrifying.
	And so, okay, so has she been around anybody who has, I mean, she's been around for grandma.
	Has she been around anyone who is a yeller?
	No. She is, my grandmother is, or her grandmother, my mother is expressly forbidden from getting within a very large radius within her.
	All right. Good. Patrolling the perimeter like a good daddy lion.
	Yeah, it's...
	All right. And has she been in daycare or anything like that?
	Nope. Mom stays at home.
	And at what age, you said it started the full scream?
	At what age did that start? I mean, all babies screaming, but it became more sort of like...
	It was like a week and a half, two weeks ago.
	Did anything in particular or unusual happen in that timeframe?
	You mean leading up to it?
	Well, yeah, or simultaneous to it.
	Not that I can think of.
	I mean, my wife and I have argued a little bit, but we try to make sure that she's in bed before that occurs.
	So I don't recall that we've ever argued in front of her.
	Listen, it's not the end of the world to argue in front of kids.
	You don't want to be yelling at each other or calling names or anything, but it's fine for kids to see that you can have disagreements and still love each other.
	Mm-hmm. I just wanted to, like, it doesn't have to be, because then kids, they get a sense that something's amiss, but they never see it getting resolved.
	Sure, that makes sense.
	So, it's not, you know, it's not like you've got to hide it, like some horrible guilty secret or something like that.
	You can have disagreements about your kids, and then they can see it getting resolved, and you still love each other, and It's just part of relationships, and I think that's...
	I think, personally, I think that's fine, myself.
	I don't think there's any, like, particular harm.
	Again, as long as you're not yelling or whatever it is, right?
	Okay. Right. But let me...
	Yeah, go ahead. Let me say this.
	So, leading up to it, I'm not sure, but I need to confess that we were driving one day when it was...
	Soon after the screaming started and she was going off like this random siren in the backseat and I couldn't take it.
	I mean, I lost it and I shouted at her.
	Alright. Okay, that's fine.
	It's not going to scar her permanently to be yelled at once in her life, right?
	And what happened?
	I mean, I guess you didn't say words that she could particularly understand.
	I just said her name Very angrily.
	That was all. And why is that a bad thing?
	Because it was probably terrifying.
	I mean, my wife was terrified sitting next to me.
	Uh-huh. All right.
	So let's bring your wife into the equation here.
	Why is your wife terrified if you say your daughter's name in an angry fashion?
	Because usually by the time the amount of prodding it takes me to get Shouty.
	By the time I actually get shouty, I'm a full-on volcano.
	And did she grow up with a screamer?
	I'm thinking.
	So she's from Japan.
	Or an ill-tempered person?
	Yes, ill-tempered. Thank you.
	I don't know if they were screaming in Japan, but ill-tempered, yes.
	Right, okay. Oh, so she's Japanese?
	Yes. Yeah, see, look at me, pretty much Sherlock Holmes here.
	She's from Japan, but we're not quite sure.
	I'll be writing that up in the next Agatha Christie novel.
	From Japan. Is she Japanese?
	Yes, she is. How did he know?
	It's magic. Okay, so...
	As far as I understand it, the Japanese culture, there is sort of a cold burn rage in some of the patriarchs.
	I think it's a cold-burden rage throughout the whole culture.
	The more I interact with it, I gotta be honest.
	Right, right, okay. The women are just better at hiding it, I guess.
	Right, right, right.
	So, alright, so...
	When your daughter starts screaming, when she was in the car, do you know what she was screaming about?
	No. I mean, that was the thing that...
	Because when she looks upset, and I mean, this is part of the communication thing, and me and my wife wondering if we're even, you know, attempting to communicate with her on any sort of cognitive level that she can get.
	But we're always saying, hey, you know, daughter, what do you want?
	Can you tell us what you want? Can you show us what you want?
	You know, if you sign language things and...
	And in that instance in the car, the response was just more screaming.
	Right. Yeah, that was what really started putting the drill in my brain where it's like there's no button to hit here that doesn't produce more screaming that we can find.
	Right. So button being the manipulative phrase, right?
	Yeah. I mean, at that point, I was ready to hit whatever manipulative button I could.
	Right. Right. Right.
	Except the one called honesty.
	Okay. See, there's nothing wrong with being angry at your children.
	Now, I guess she's 14 months old, so she's just experimenting, right?
	She's in an amoral phase of childhood, right?
	Like an infant, right?
	Right. And so she is, you know, like to reference my early analogy, she's just trying keys in the lock to see what works, right?
	Right. So now she's found something that gets your attention and gets your focus, right?
	She has an impact on the world around her by screaming.
	And I think that's not her fault that you had a screamer for a mother, and I'm really sorry about that.
	Thank you. It's like the soft parade door song.
	You cannot petition the Lord with prayer.
	And, obviously, it's not your daughter's fault that you had a screamer for a mother, and I'm really sorry that you did, because it does give you these kinds of things, right?
	So, there's nothing wrong with getting angry at your kids.
	I mean, the important thing with your kids, be honest with them, right?
	So, there's nothing wrong with turning around and saying, no!
	No! No, no, no.
	No screaming. We did do a lot of no screaming.
	And? At the time, very ineffective.
	Okay, so that's interesting.
	Now, tell me about whether or not your daughter may feel that...
	Because if she's relying on screaming to get your attention, my concern is that she's not able to get...
	Her attention using softer dial tones, so to speak.
	And I really want to emphasize that this...
	Like I said, the 100% full-on Banshee level stuff lasted about a week.
	No, no, no. I said you got it down to 60% and all that, right?
	Yeah. And then she's...
	She's using it more, like you said, to get my attention.
	Once... Or my wife's attention.
	Once she gets our attention...
	She's calming down better.
	And we're staying out of this feedback loop of, you know, any way that we try to interact with her just produces more screaming.
	However, there are some cases where...
	Let's see if I can think of an example.
	I don't know, let's just take the orange thing, for example.
	It's clear if I want to talk to her, and if she's being obstinate about the thing that she wants, she'll try to very visibly ignore me.
	Wait, hang on, you said obstinate?
	What did I say? You understand, that's a moral judgment you've got right there.
	Okay. Obstinate is a negative.
	It's a pejorative, right? Now, you could reframe that in your mind and say she's really committed for what she wants.
	She's really committed to what she wants.
	So listen, if you're raising a baby peacefully, you're raising a child peacefully, then that child is going to need a lot of strength in this world because she's going to be surrounded by a lot of screwed up, beaten up people, right?
	Right. So...
	My daughter is very strong-willed and I respect that.
	She's going to need that. So obstinate is automatically putting her in the wrong as opposed to you could say she's strong-willed and you can admire her really committing to going for what she wants.
	Because, you know, we kind of admire that in adults, right?
	If somebody wants to build a business and they don't listen to everyone who says it's impossible and They find some way to do it.
	I mean, we call that person lots of positive phrases, right?
	Sure. And then, real quick, just so I can throw this in here, I actually did...
	Maybe I don't fully...
	Maybe I'm not fully aware of the actual definition of obstinate.
	I actually had a more neutral understanding of the word, not a negative one.
	Well, I think it's...
	I mean, I don't know the etymology, but it sort of reminds me of the word obstacle.
	I just want to get some things in the way.
	I want to get where I'm going. She's obstinate.
	She's just pushing back. And it's like, no, she is working hard to get what she wants.
	Sure. I didn't mean it in a negative way.
	My understanding is I don't think anybody uses that in a particularly positive way, and I just wanted to make sure of that.
	So you do want to protect your child's Commitment to getting what she wants, because she's going to need that in life, right?
	I mean, you can't raise a child rationally and then, I'm not saying that you would, but then break her will to stand up for herself, because then she's just going to get chewed up by life, right?
	Right. So, you want to maintain her commitment to getting what she wants.
	It just can't manifest itself as screaming, right?
	And again, I know it's cooling down and all of that, but...
	Do you have any idea where she may have seen this behavior from?
	Or any other outside place or within the family or TV or movies or anything where she might have seen this from?
	It's fine if she doesn't. I mean, just curious.
	Um... Maybe a movie?
	We don't watch movies with her.
	Um... I mean, like I said...
	Friends or relatives or anything.
	Again, it doesn't have to be that she gets it from outside.
	I'm just curious. Yeah, and I'm just thinking, I mean, now, when we're seeing this as an example, is talking loud falling into the category, or are we specifically referring to screaming?
	Well, I mean, if there's no screaming, I'm happy to hear about the talking loud stuff.
	Okay, because, I mean, for example, me and my cousin...
	We're pretty loud when we talk to each other.
	And he's related on my mom's side.
	It must be a family thing where we're...
	Genetic thing where we all have very loud talking habits.
	But you get me and my cousin in the room and we're just like...
	Very loud.
	And she's definitely heard.
	Ah, okay. So daddy yells.
	Okay. Okay. I mean, isn't that how she would perceive it?
	Mm-hmm. Wait, you sound like you're not agreeing with me while saying mm-hmm, which is fine.
	No, no, no. I'm thinking about it, yeah.
	I mean, if I'm talking loudly all the time and she just sees me talking loudly, she's like, well, that's how you do things.
	No, I totally see that.
	At her age, she doesn't have a sense of the Aristotelian mean, right?
	She's like, hey, if loud is good, loud is good, right?
	Yeah. Uh-huh. Like, kids don't sit there with their Halloween candy at the age of two and say, yes, well, I do have to worry about my gum line in 30 years or whatever, right?
	Right. Sharks on a seal, right?
	That's a really good point. I didn't think of just...
	Talking loud, even though I'm not putting any negative emotion on it.
	Or, I mean, now that I'm thinking about it, maybe me and my cousin happened to be talking about something negative.
	Like, we were being negative ourselves, but maybe we were talking about something negative, and we put negative emotion into our loud talking while she was around.
	Yeah, I guess she could have picked up something like that.
	It's a possibility. Yeah.
	It certainly is a possibility. And...
	It seems, I don't know, when you say loud talking, I mean, is he hard of hearing?
	Like, I'm not sure why this is loud talking.
	I don't know. So, to put this in a framework that you might understand it, my grandmother got married, again, because my grandfather died when I was...
	14. And at family gatherings, when we're there, he sits there and he often asks, why is everybody shouting at each other at the table?
	And we look at him and we go, who's shouting?
	It's kind of like that.
	Right. Okay.
	Okay, so it's loud sometimes.
	Yeah, it's loud sometimes.
	Okay. Okay.
	Um... That probably gets halfway there.
	I'm trying to figure out the other half, though.
	I'm not putting you in this category.
	I'm just telling you something that I've seen.
	You can tell me if it fits or not.
	There's proactive parenting and then there's reactive parenting.
	Proactive parenting is you engage with the kid at every conceivable opportunity with the understanding that it's not going to last forever.
	The first couple of years, you're just in there playing and engaging and giving them the attention because You are really the only source of stimulation in your child's life.
	You have to really understand that.
	Like, you're the drug dealer called reality.
	Because, you know, kids don't have much of an inner life.
	Toddlers, right? Don't have much of an inner life to draw upon.
	And so, if your daughter is, I don't know, I want to say a stimulus junkie, like that's a bad thing or whatever.
	But if she's restless and curious and all that, you know, as I talked about with my daughter, when she was very little, like just a couple of months old, she never sat.
	Never. Never sat.
	It was kind of exhausting, actually.
	Okay, that makes me feel a little better.
	She would fly me around the room.
	Yeah, she would fly me around the room because basically when I would sit, she'd get fussy.
	And then I would lift her up and I would show her a painting.
	I would show her a book.
	I would show her a blender.
	I would push the buttons. She would push the buttons when it was all unplugged, of course.
	And so basically I was her airplane, right?
	So she couldn't get up and walk around.
	And so she'd be like, I want to see this.
	So she'd just reach for it and fast until I got her there, right?
	And so I was her airplane, I was her legs, so to speak, because she couldn't get places, but she wanted to see stuff.
	And she never sat.
	It's kind of frustrating, because it gets tiring, you know?
	It's one thing if they're 10 or 12 or 14 pounds, but if it's all day, you know, it's a little rough on the old shoulders.
	So that's just the way it is, right?
	Now, pouring as I did, and I did have the opportunity to do this, thanks to you lovely listeners supporting what it is that I do, but I did...
	I have the ability to spend most of my day interacting with her, which was a great delight.
	Now, she's pretty independent.
	It has been for some time.
	I still enjoy spending huge amounts of time with her, but when I'm off doing stuff, she's happy for a couple of hours.
	She'd read a book, or she'd work on creating one of her animations or drawing.
	She's very... It's not like it lasts forever, but if you have that kind of kit, you've got to pour stuff in.
	That's proactive parenting. Now, the reactive parenting, and it's a blend, right?
	It's never one or the other, but the reactive parenting is, I'm going to do stuff until there's a problem, and then I'm going to try and solve it.
	Like, I'm going to do other stuff until there's a problem, and then I'm going to try and solve that problem.
	And generally, that whack-a-mole parenting doesn't fit very well with the high-stimulus requirement toddler.
	So can you give me an example of what you mean by, I'm going to do stuff until there's a problem, and then I'll solve the problem?
	Oh, sure. Yeah, so, I mean, it would be like, okay, I'm going to cook a meal, and I'm going to put the kid in a playpen until the kid gets fussy.
	Oh, yeah. We've gone through this.
	Go ahead. Yeah, so that's all.
	I mean, there's tons of other examples.
	I'm going to listen to the news on the radio in the car until my daughter gets fussy, and then I'll maybe turn it off and see what she wants or whatever.
	It's when you're doing other things, and then if your daughter expresses something negative, then you will pause what you're doing and deal with that.
	Yeah, well, I mean, like you said, it's not like we're entirely one or the other, but there's definitely elements of that.
	Yeah, of course, of course. And, I mean, for example, it's funny you brought up the I'm cooking thing, because I cook her breakfast every morning.
	And for a while there, you know, you got those walker things where they can walk around, but they can't really reach anything.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're like big lifesaver hoops around them with all this cool stuff on it, and they can wobble around.
	Yeah, exactly. So, you know, she's happy with it for five or ten minutes or whatever, and then she'd come up to me, and she obviously wants to pick up, and I'd say, you know, daughter, I'm super sorry, but I have to have two hands to cook.
	And, you know, clearly she wasn't interested in that at all.
	Okay, so you understand that means nothing to her.
	Yeah, exactly, exactly. I have to have two hands to cook.
	You might as well be speaking Icelandic or some sort of ancient Aramaic, right?
	So this is what I started doing, which is different from what my wife figured out what to do.
	So now what I do if she's awake before I start cooking, that optimally I'm awake and cooking before she's up, but it doesn't always happen.
	I put her in a high chair, and I give her some olives or blueberries or something to eat.
	No, she wants you.
	She doesn't want olives or blueberries or a walker.
	She wants you. Now, that's the challenge.
	So the challenge you have is your daughter wants you, which is a compliment, right?
	We look at this as a harassing thing, you know?
	But it's a compliment, right?
	My daughter was like my shadow, and still is sometimes, right?
	I'm in the kitchen, she's like right behind me, right?
	And it's like, occasionally it's just like, can I get a little personal space here?
	But it's a compliment, right?
	And she wants to be in your arms, she wants to see what you're doing, she loves daddy, she wants to figure out what's going on in the world, and she's curious, and she's affectionate.
	So this is your challenge.
	How can you cook with her in your arms?
	I mean, you're a smart guy.
	I bet you if someone paid you a million bucks, you could figure it out, right?
	Okay, point taken. Right?
	So you can find a way to do it.
	You can find a way.
	You have the blessing of the challenge of a high-stimulus child.
	And, I mean, it's so funny, right?
	I mean, so my daughter, I mean, getting her into a car seat was sometimes like pinning down a wrestler.
	Right, yeah.
	She didn't want it. And she always hated being confined.
	We bought her a whole, like, you know, one of those Joey marsupial pouches that you could put kids in and walk with them.
	Nope. No interest in it whatsoever.
	Didn't want to have anything to do with that.
	She didn't like being in a pram.
	She didn't like being outside for the first year of her life because I think it was too bright for her and all of that.
	Really? Huh. Mine's the opposite.
	She loves outside. Oh yeah, that's good.
	Good for you, man. That's great.
	I'm happy for you. I was quarantined by a baby long before China.
	It sounds to me like you have a high IQ guy.
	Your wife, I'm sure, is a high IQ. It's Japanese, right?
	Some of the highest IQs of the world.
	So you have a very smart toddler, right?
	And so she's going to be high stimulus.
	She's going to want to see what's going on.
	She's going to be very easily bored.
	Yes. And that can be a bit of a hassle at times when she's a toddler, but it's beautiful, man, because it means she's going to be inoculated against terrible peer pressures when she gets older.
	Right. You know, parenting is always pay me now, pay me later, right?
	And so my guess is that you're going to need to find a way to involve her in just about everything that you're doing.
	I know that's a big ask, right?
	That's a big ask. But if you look at, I've got things to do, and then I'll do my parenting, or I've got things...
	How long can I last until my daughter has a problem is not going to work.
	You have to find a way, I would suggest, to integrate her into just about everything that you're doing.
	It's a challenge. It's a challenge.
	I mean, that's good, because this is why I wanted to have the call, is, you know, I've been listening to you for a while, and I've...
	It's one thing to listen to somebody talk about something and it's another thing to do it.
	No, no, I get it. I get it.
	And I appreciate the call that way, right?
	Yeah, go ahead.
	We're in the moment.
	We're going, okay, how do we stick to the principle in this specific moment?
	And I'm glad you told me about the reaction versus the...
	Reactive versus proactive parenting, yeah.
	I mean, just the thing, like you said, with, hey, when I'm starting breakfast, I'll put you in the high chair and I'll give you something to eat so you've got something to do, where you're telling me that's just...
	Well, look at your life as a whole, right?
	I mean, I... Yeah, so if you look at your life as a whole, the most successful parts of your life...
	Are proactive rather than reactive, right?
	So I assume, or at least I hope that people who listen to this go get dental checkups before they have some horrible how-to-get-ahead-in-advertising mole poking out of their gum line, right?
	So you don't hopefully wait until you're in agonizing pain before you go see a doctor, but hopefully you'll go and get blood work done every year and kind of be proactive that way.
	And so the successful parts of our life are the parts where we are More proactive.
	And when it comes to parenting, if you are on the side of, again, sometimes we're all reactive, sometimes we're all proactive, but if it's something in your head, to say, I'm not going to wait until there's a problem with my child.
	I'm going to work to engage my child as much as possible.
	And, you know, I can virtually guarantee you, my friend, that your daughter ain't going to be screaming at you if you're cooking with her in your arm.
	And maybe you need to cook Mm-hmm.
	But you have her, and this is what I did, you know, whether it's right or wrong for you, I don't know, but I'll tell you what I did, right?
	I mean, I'd have my daughter on my hip and I'd be cooking away and I'd be saying, oh, here's the eggs and all the chickens come from eggs.
	And like, I was mostly just babbling to her, right?
	But she's being communicated with and I see, I don't know what she can understand at that point, right?
	Because I'm not her, and it's free language, so I can't say, do you understand the concept of chicken, right?
	I don't know, right? Now, I guess since you said you have chickens, that there's a lot of egg stuff going on, okay, well, maybe you can...
	Hard-boil the eggs and serve them later with a little mayo or deviled eggs or whatever it is, right?
	But if you just have her in your arms and just talk to her, like, without the baby voice too much.
	I mean, I'm not a big fan of the baby voice.
	I think that's... It's fine with their babies.
	But, you know, at her age, you just talk to her like a normal human being.
	And, you know, just explain to her what you're doing and just keep that constant stream of chatter going.
	And then she's going to feel engaged with.
	She's going to... Like, you and I... You know, when we feel bored, we have about a billion things to do, right?
	Imagine, like, basically kids are in solitary confinement, right?
	They're bored and there's nothing for them to do, especially at her age where she's intellectually restless and curious, but can't really talk and can't get a lot of things going.
	And then when she does want stimuli, a lot of times it's like, nope, that's too many oranges.
	Nope, that's too much of this. Nope, you can't go there.
	Nope, nope, nope, nope, no, right?
	And you want to say yes as much as humanly possible to your children.
	So this is why you can have all the oranges you can see.
	Put out an orange or two.
	So that you don't have to say no to oranges that she can see.
	You have to plan the environment so you say no as little as humanly possible.
	And not because old kids can't handle the no.
	I mean, that's nothing to do with that.
	It's just, why show her something that she can't have?
	I see. It's a recipe for conflict, right?
	If she's going into places that she shouldn't be going into, how can she even get there?
	Why are those places even available to her?
	And again, I don't know the layout of your place or anything like that, but if she's too close to the stairs, just put up a baby fence or whatever.
	Just find some way that you don't have to say, no, stay away from the area.
	No, don't go there. Just because the no, no, no gets really frustrating.
	Yeah, well, and then, I mean, if we could talk about no as well for a second, we've decided that we're trying to avoid having to say no whenever we can.
	And part of this, I've heard this, I don't know if you know anything about it or you agree or disagree.
	When a child is young, and let's say they're, not that I would want my daughter to stop running, but for example, let's say she's running.
	If you say, don't run, they don't hear the not- All they hear is run.
	Yeah, they hear the run. So it's actually counterintuitive, but you're kind of shooting yourself in the foot by just saying, don't do this, don't do that, don't do this, don't do that all the time.
	Yeah, they get the positive.
	Sorry, the other thing I'll mention as well...
	I learned this pretty early on.
	One time, my daughter was about to jump somewhere, and I said, be careful!
	And that caused her to stall.
	You know what I mean?
	She kind of committed to the jump.
	Be careful! And I never did that again.
	She didn't injure herself or anything, but I could see that that was a potentially risky situation to interrupt the flow, so to speak.
	Now I'm just like, yep, go for it.
	And she's good.
	She's got a good sense of risk.
	She does take some risks, but she almost never gets...
	Gets hurt and all of that. Try and avoid the no's.
	She sounds like a very attached and curious and affectionate child, which you should treasure, but trying to find ways to integrate.
	This is how we evolved, right?
	And women would go and take their toddlers into the woods.
	Oh, let's go find the berries.
	Or I guess in Japan, they'd be working the rice paddies and stuff like that.
	And they would be usually explaining or singing or chatting.
	So integrating our children into our activities.
	You know, there weren't any baby jails when we were evolving.
	There weren't any of these little walkers that you could put kids in.
	There weren't the bouncy things.
	There weren't tablets.
	Like all the things that were used to distract kids.
	No, children were integrated into our daily activities.
	As a whole.
	I mean, you can see.
	There are pictures in the past of women who were like, they're picking fruits while breastfeeding.
	No, seriously.
	I'm just imagining my wife's face when she hears it.
	No, but the whole idea that we go and have a life and then we bungee into parenting is very alien to our evolution.
	Children are designed to be integrated into what it is.
	That we're doing. That's kind of how we evolved.
	And that's how culture transmits that, how work skills transmit, and that's how the bond is maintained.
	Because you couldn't, like, think about way primitive times, you couldn't leave your baby and go and do something.
	Because there are foxes, there are wolves, there are rats, there are whatever, right?
	And so you had to bring your child with you everywhere, and everything that you did, your children were integrated with what it is that you were doing.
	And that's...
	It's the way that I try to approach it.
	It's like, hey, well, I'm doing something.
	And you can actually see there are all videos of me doing shows where I've got my baby just walking around and, hey, I'm doing a show, right?
	Yeah. And I'm glad to emphasize it.
	I mean, I've been trying to do that to an extent.
	And I guess I just didn't think about it in terms of down to the last detail.
	I mean, for example, with the cooking, I was already planning on, once she's old enough, like, how can I get her to help me with the cooking and, you know, try to turn it into a fun activity.
	And I just assumed, like, well, she's not old enough yet, so we'll worry about that later.
	No, no, no. Just do it now.
	Do it now. Yeah, do it now.
	If you have to change your cooking, just do it now.
	You know, this is the first couple of years, as you know.
	Like, I mean... The more you can integrate with her, she's not going to start screaming at you if she's interested in what you're doing and you're chatting with her.
	And it's just, you know, any snatches of song, little chit-chat.
	And that also helps her get language shapes into her ears.
	It may accelerate her language and all of that.
	I mean, I was reading to my daughter before she was born.
	I was reading to the bump in my wife's belly and all of that.
	And I was also...
	I used to, my daughter would lie on her back, her knees would sort of come up, I'd hold her feet, and then she would push.
	And then she was scooching, right?
	It's like, but on her back. So I sort of got, I would go up and down the hall with her, you know, while chatting with her.
	And that helped strengthen her leg muscles to the point I think she was walking, she was walking pretty early.
	And so, you know, there's things that you can do to sort of get this process kind of cooking along.
	But my sort of thought was, at least for the first couple of years, like, that's the job.
	If I can get some other stuff done too, fantastic.
	But that's the job, is interacting with my daughter, because A, she was high stimulus, and B, I'm the only avenue she can get to experience stimulation, right?
	She's lying in the crib staring at the ceiling.
	It's like, oh my god, right?
	I mean, how long would you do that, right?
	Just lie someplace, stare at a blank ceiling with nothing to do.
	You're not tired, right? Yeah.
	I mean, unless I'm paying for a Zen meditation retreat, not very long at all.
	Right. And you're only paying for a Zen meditation retreat because you're kind of burned out from doing stuff that's hyper-stimulating for a long time, right?
	Right. So just understand, like, you are the only avenue, like, you are reality to her.
	You are the only avenue by which she can be stimulated.
	You're like, I say, the drug dealer in a sense, in that if she doesn't get that stimulation, if she doesn't get that interaction, it's going to drive her nuts.
	Mm-hmm. In the same way that, you know, if you had to stare at a blank wall for eight hours, it would be pretty tough, right?
	Yeah, it would be horrifyingly tough.
	And you're probably, similar way, right?
	You're probably darting, I mean, you're probably checking Twitter Cernovich style while we're having a conversation.
	I don't know, it seems to happen. No, I'm actually holding my son right now.
	Oh, okay. Yeah, hi.
	My daughter woke up, so I got past the son and wife is now...
	Playing with daughter. She's turning the light switch on and off.
	No, that's fine. Listen, we can boogie.
	No, we're good as long as my son doesn't start crying.
	That's right. I don't want to hear any sounds of children while we're talking about parenting.
	That would be totally inappropriate.
	That would be, oh my god. No one would ever listen to you.
	No, but I would try that. I would just say, yeah, I would just try that and I would say...
	How much can I integrate my daughter into everything that I'm doing?
	And if you can manage that, look, I know it's a hassle.
	Don't get me wrong. I know this is a big ask.
	But the problem is that if your daughter starts to remind you of your mother, that's going to be a big, big challenge, right?
	Right. You don't want that.
	You don't want... Because that's going to be, in a sense, beyond your control.
	You're going to end up recoiling from her.
	And she's going to take that very personally, as she should, because she's a toddler, right?
	Right. Every time you're like, I have something to do, so here I'm going to distract you.
	This is why I sort of focused in on the distraction thing earlier.
	The child is going to feel a little rejected.
	No, that's a great point.
	I'm glad you brought that up, because I was obviously not coming to that conclusion myself.
	Right. I don't know if you've ever had someone try to distract you from what it is that you want.
	It's kind of annoying. I'll give you a silly example, right?
	It's a silly example just out of nowhere, right?
	So imagine that, I don't know, you want to have sex with your wife and your wife is like, oh, look, your favorite movie is on TV. You'd feel a little like, yeah, okay, I like the movie, but I guess she doesn't want to have sex, right?
	Right. And she's not even being honest about it.
	Right. And so, while I get that that's an odd analogy for the situation, it's probably the closest thing that will get that response from you, that, you know, hey, here's something shiny is so kind of obviously manipulative, and it is kind of rejecting what the child wants at the moment, and it doesn't teach the child how to deal with not getting what they want, other than, I guess, just screaming or whatever, right?
	Right. No.
	That's great. Like I said, that really helps.
	We have been trying to integrate her with a lot of the stuff that we do, but now that I'm having this conversation, I see how we can do it a lot more.
	And listen, please recognize I'm in the ridiculously privileged position of having one child.
	Oh, yeah. This is like...
	I'm aware that what I'm saying is there's a lot of eye-rolling out there when people listen to this, and don't worry, I get that.
	I can be home, I can do my show usually at a particular scheduled time, and certainly when she was younger and all of that.
	I have one child. So listen, you've got two, and there's a juggling act and all of that, but I'm just quite sure that you can do more to integrate, and I'm pretty sure that will calm down the frustration.
	Yeah, well, you're 100% right on the first one, and I assume you're 100% right on that second part.
	And listen, huge kudos and congratulations for thinking this deeply about your parenting, man.
	That's a beautiful thing. Thank you.
	It's a beautiful thing. Especially if you come from Screamer House and Yowling Dog House, and you are heroic.
	It's truly heroic. I had all the years of my childhood to think, okay, how would I do this differently?
	Hey, we just had this conversation with the last guy.
	This really really sucks.
	How do I not enforce this on others?
	It's funny how a screamer can make you quieter and an anti-rational person can make you rational.
	This is how we get gold out of the asteroid that hits our early lives.
	Will you let me know how it goes?
	Sure. We'll have a second...
	Test subject here to try it on and see how it goes with him as well.
	Oh, man. You wait till the sun hits the restless phase.
	If he hasn't already, you'll see what I mean.
	Oh, yeah. No, he's three weeks old.
	He's still the blob of baby phase.
	So, yeah. Oh, no. I get it.
	Basically, you can cut the umbilical, but it's still there.
	I get it. Yeah, right. All right.
	Well, thanks, man. I appreciate that.
	And thanks, of course, to James for setting up what is always a wonderfully delightful, deep, and meaningful conversation with the world.
	I really, really appreciate it.
	That, if you're out here listening to this on the general stream, if you could, of course, drop by Subscribestar.com and sign up for a couple of bucks a month.
	And we do have a lot of fun on the Discord server and so on.
	Don't forget to join us in a little while for our nether exploration in Minecraft.
	We will try and set up over the next couple of days another trivia night because those are actually remarkably fun.
	And lots of love from up here.
	I hope you guys are having a great, great week.
	I'll talk to you soon.
	Thanks, Steph.
	Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.
	Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.
	Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.
	Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.
	Thank you.
	Thank you so much for enjoying this latest free domain show on philosophy.
	And I'm going to be frank and ask you for your help, your support, your encouragement, and your resources.
	Please like, subscribe, and share, and all of that good stuff to get philosophy out into the world.
	And also, equally importantly, go to freedomain.com forward slash donate.
	To help out the show, to give me the resources that I need to bring more and better philosophy to an increasingly desperate world.
	So thank you so much for your support, my friends.

▲