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Oct. 13, 2020 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:06:51

YOUR PAST IS NOT YOU!!!

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	all right just uh just before we start
	i just i don't often vent about petty things but i'm just gonna say microsoft how about you fix your fucking software at some point This, patches?
	I mean, my god, I've got more patches than Mickey Rock trying to quit smoking.
	This is bloody ridiculous.
	Every single time I turn to my computer, it's like 19 gigs of patches.
	And of course, I'm in the alternative media, so I have to go and check whether everyone else is getting patches or some special NSA delivery just for me.
	Stop patching everything!
	It's fine! Because for me, of course, I started on, I think my first version of...
	Well, my very first operating system was the Atari 800.
	No, the PET, the PET 2K. And, you know, you shipped it and that was it.
	There was no patching. There was no upgrades, no firmware, no hardware updates or anything like that.
	It was just that was the computer.
	Now I get things have changed and there's advantages and this and that.
	But dear lord above, Atari 520ST never even went online.
	Never went online once with that thing.
	The very, very first computer I ever had that went online.
	I paid $1,300 for a monochrome 386SX with one meg.
	That's right. One meg of RAM from Mighty Max.
	And yeah, it had a 24 board, 2400 board modem.
	And I spent a little bit of time online.
	Still no patches. It was running Windows 3.1, which was like the first multitasking one, where everyone played around with, ooh, if I click on 32-bit disk access, will it be faster?
	No, not really. I don't think that thing actually did anything.
	It's just a little checkbox to make you feel better.
	And no patches! No patches to the operating systems in any way, shape, or form, even though you could go online, you could download stuff and all of that.
	Once, I wrote an entire essay on...
	Star Trek and its collectivization mandates in it and posted it to an online forum.
	The online forum went down.
	I plaintively emailed the BBS owner, hey, could I ever get that back?
	You're still out there somewhere.
	It's sort of like many, many years ago, long before I was doing this kind of stuff, I was probably in my 20s, a friend of mine was doing public access television, which was, do you feel like your audience is too large?
	Do you feel like you're just not appealing to the insomniac still awake at 2 o'clock in the morning who are just watching because they've got nothing better to do?
	And almost anything to do would be better.
	So a friend of mine was doing public access television and he roped me in To have a debate with Trekkers, right?
	With Star Trek people, Trekkies or whatever, Trekkers I think they're called.
	And I worked on all these arguments, and my very first argument was going to be, because they were pro-Star Trek, and I was like, no, Star Trek is evil.
	And my very first argument was going to be sitting down with them and say, listen, if you guys are so pro-Star Trek, how come you're not here in uniforms?
	It taught me a lot about debating to realize when I walked into the room, hey, guess what?
	They're all in uniforms. Rip!
	Off it goes. It's done.
	It's gone. It's bye-bye.
	So somewhere out there, I don't know, probably it's still somewhere on someone's VCR, rotting away in an attic, is me in my very first television appearance.
	Oh no, I was also an extra in Citizen Kane.
	I actually had a full face and I was also an extra in a movie about Tecumseh.
	But yeah, somewhere out there, these things lag.
	My essay on Star Trek on a BBS from 30 years ago and a couple of TV appearances and one debate.
	And I remember my friend, I was having a pretty civilized debate and my friend was like, make it more exciting, make it more exciting and be more aggressive.
	Good thing I never took that to heart, isn't it?
	Because that would have been just strange.
	So foreign. To my nature.
	But yeah, Microsoft, basic point.
	Fix your damn software, man.
	Stop updating everything all the time.
	Or at least don't do updates when I'm doing something important with my bandwidth.
	Don't look like... Just a little thing, man.
	Little thing. Little thing.
	Like, you know there's like a basic bandwidth issue that everybody learns about when they're little, right?
	Basic bandwidth issue goes something like this.
	If someone's in the fucking shower, don't flush the toilet!
	Why? Because you flush the toilet, you take away all the cold water, and people basically get...
	Spears of lava burns to the face, chest, and whatever else they happen to be washing.
	Heaven forbid if it's something low down, otherwise you've got javelin speared by laser time.
	And so, yeah, basic bandwidth issue.
	Everybody learns this kind of thing.
	Somebody's in the shower, don't flush the toilet, unless they had lots of loud sex and kept you up all night.
	Oh my god, have you ever had this in a roommate?
	I'm sorry, I'm all over the place here, but I'll say it.
	Ever had this in a roommate? I had a roommate.
	No, actually it wasn't mine.
	It was a friend of mine who had a roommate. Who had the opera sex lady, which is like, you can't just have good sex.
	You can't just like, whatever, right?
	It's got to be like, literally like birds are like, what the hell is that?
	Our deity has arrived!
	Something which causes windows to slowly bulge.
	And, you know, if you're blowing soap bubbles and she's having an orgasm, it kind of ripples them, you know, like some sort of slow-mo sound system.
	And, yeah, somewhere between a dental drill and a cat being fed ass-wit backwards through a blender slowly, that is the loud kind of people.
	So if your roommate has had someone over who has sex, something like they've answered a very untoward ad in some German fetish site, then it's perfectly admissible.
	It's absolutely fine to do that.
	Just give them the scalding thing, because maybe you'll damage your genitals to the point where you'll have a night off from Miss Wind-Up Air Siren Orgasm Queen.
	So, yeah, just fix your stuff.
	And if you're not going to fix your stuff, maybe, maybe, maybe, just maybe, maybe, a little bit.
	Have a look at the bandwidth consumption that's going on In the computer.
	So, for instance, let's say, just for argument's sake, let's say someone is live streaming.
	You know, in other words, the bandwidth is just kind of holding on.
	The data is going through the pipe like a Zeppelin through a condom, right?
	Maybe just check it out.
	If there's only, say, 3K availability, maybe don't seize all of that and then 500 times that in order to perform some update because your crappy coders couldn't get it right in the first place.
	Just a thought! Just a teeny, teeny, tiny thought.
	Fix it, right? Because you know what happens.
	All of these endless patches means you don't have to get it right ahead of time.
	Because, I mean, I was a computer programmer before you could put out endless patches.
	You actually had to mail out a disk, and then you had to step incompetent people through the absolute hell of IT existence, which is saying to someone on the phone, yeah, this is really important that you get this right.
	What do you see on your screen right now?
	I see some pictures.
	There's a piece of text, but I can't find the any key.
	It's like, what are you talking about, the any key?
	Oh, well, it says press any key to continue, and I can't find the any key.
	There's like letters. I got numbers.
	I got some F, something that was really kind of the root keys, F4, FU. I can't find the any key.
	There will never be a life long enough to not go insane with that kind of situation.
	So I was a guy, you had to basically, it was faster.
	Like you had a customer who had software that you needed to patch for whatever reason, you had to create the install disks.
	You had to put them In a folder, like an actual physical folder.
	Then you had to put them in your briefcase.
	Then you had to go out of the office, you had to go down to your car, and you had to drive over to the person's place.
	See, that to me would be okay.
	If, like, Bill Gates comes to deliver his update, I don't mind if they're in floppies, as long as he's not going to RFID me and give me some anal suppository vaccine from hell, just come on over, Bill.
	You know, we'll chat, we'll ask why you went from...
	I'm a software nerd to Bondvillain when it came to COVID. Just come on over.
	We'll chat. And then you can deliver me this patch.
	You can do this update. I can give you a Melvin, a wedgie, and send you on your way on your, I don't know, what would he drive?
	A Chevy Nova?
	Something like that, right?
	That's how I used to have to patch things.
	I would often literally just drive over because it would be easier than mailing someone a disk and then having them say, wait, which side is up?
	Oh, no. I'll just come over.
	I'll just come over. But now they could just keep firing all of this screw-up stuff fixing down the pipe.
	And because they can patch it so relatively easily and they can sort of suck up your bandwidth, suck up your CPU, suck up your processing.
	Oh, and then, by the way, They'll say, you know, it's really, really important to reboot now.
	You know, man, it's just, I promise it won't come in your mouth, and I promise this will be a very, very quick update, man.
	Quick update. And I've had this happen a couple of times in this show.
	You know, I've got 10 minutes.
	I might as well do this update.
	I'm going to forget about it afterwards, right?
	And then it's like, oh, you thought this was going to be relatively quick?
	Well, you would be absolutely incorrect.
	I'm absolutely going to have to reboot 15 or 16 times.
	At one point, you're going to see an iOS update.
	And then there's going to be a little bit of Linux, and then you're going to see a TRS-80 or a Sinclair ZX-80 screen, and then eventually it's going to mutate into something vaguely familiar, and then it's going to say 100% complete, and then it's just going to reboot again and start again and be like, mmm, you've got all the time in the world, please take your time!
	And basically it would just be faster for them to give you.
	I'll tell you something funny. Way back in the day, when I had an Atari 800, We used to draw straws about who would have to do one of the most horrifying things known to mankind when you have a computer.
	So one of the most horrifying things to do back in the day was you would have to...
	So assembler language is really, really short and cryptic and you need like 10 statements just to like add a number together.
	But it was blindingly fast.
	Like, now you can write something in Visual Basic, it compiles to native.
	But back in the day, if you wrote something in Basic, it was an interpreted language, which meant it would run 10 to 15 times slower than machine language or machine code.
	Now, machines, of course, right down goes to machine.
	It's all ones and zeros, right?
	I went a little bit out of my way to get some hardware from a store.
	I would completely recommend it's in Guelph.
	G-U-E-L-P-H. Again, it's a bit of a drive.
	I will say, though, it was recommended by a friend of mine.
	Fantastic, fantastic guys.
	Great store. It's called Extreme PC. I'm not getting a commission and nothing like that.
	Just want to give prompts to where prompts is due.
	And I knew that this was the guy for me to deal with a hardware issue.
	I knew that this was the guy with me because he sent me an email.
	And at the bottom it said, there are ten types of people in the world.
	Those who understand binary and those who don't.
	I'm like, dude! You are the guy for me.
	And they're fantastic.
	So I just wanted to recommend that.
	Again, no skin in the game, no commissions, nothing like that.
	But I just wanted to...
	To recommend them. They're very, very good.
	A very, very good company. So, anyway, yeah, just patch your stuff.
	Just patch your stuff for the love of all that's holy.
	And stop having your quality be so crap that you just constantly need to push out new fixes.
	Now, again, I understand. I'm not an idiot when it comes to this kind of stuff.
	I absolutely understand that there's new malware, there's new things, and new blah, blah, blah.
	But that's what Windows Defender and all of these other things are supposed to be.
	Oh, yeah. The short straws with the old computers was every now and then you'd get a great game But you'd have to type in The binary code.
	Like you'd literally have to type in page after page after page of binary code in order to get this code work.
	You get one thing wrong.
	It doesn't tell you. There's no compiling or anything like that.
	You get one thing wrong and it just doesn't work.
	And I remember drawing the short straw a couple of times from that D&D group.
	And then the worst thing is you spend half the weekend blindingly typing all of these ones and zeros and other sort of things in.
	And And then the game sucks.
	Like, oh my, because you can't really tell.
	There's a couple of photos. Ah!
	Because back in the day, it would be like, the photo was the game.
	Nope! The photo is a loading screen.
	The game has nothing to do with that, and it sucks.
	So anyway, just wanted to mention, please stop pushing out crappy things.
	Now, occasionally I will make a mistake, and I, you know, I'll put something out.
	Every now and then I'll put something out with, like, it's...
	Still in stereo, which is how I process it.
	But come on. I mean, 5,000 shows.
	That's happened maybe five or six times.
	So it's a 0.1%.
	I'm well within the Six Sigma quality standard.
	So anyway, I just wanted to... Get that off my chest.
	Just wanted to get that off my chest because I do have a couple of little bugaboos.
	I've got one right now. I'm telling you, I've got one right now.
	Look down at this computer. Look down at this computer.
	And I don't even manage a lot.
	I've got a couple of computers at home, right?
	But what have we got here?
	Cumulative update preview for.NET Framework 3.5 and 4.8.
	Sure. Cumulative update preview.
	What does that mean? What is an update preview?
	Is it an update or is it a preview?
	I mean, that's really, really bizarre.
	Here's a trailer for a movie that came out four years ago.
	You can get it soon. It's like a preview is something coming soon.
	An update is something that's patching something that exists.
	What is an update preview?
	I do not know. I will never know.
	I will never know. All right.
	Okay. Enough of that. Thank you.
	I appreciate that. It's good to puffer fish deflate the various frustrations that I have in life.
	Still, nothing quite beats the fact that hand air dryers almost never work.
	All right. I'm sure everyone came here to listen to that.
	Let's get on with the callers.
	And I'm all ears.
	I'm just going to do a quick reboot to install these packs.
	No, I'm just not going to do that because I'll be here until Tuesday.
	James, who do we have up?
	All right. Excuse me.
	So tonight we have a caller who actually wants to read his own email.
	So I'm going to turn it over to him and we'll take it away.
	Okay. My question is, hello, Stefan.
	I'm a 30-year-old man with a long history of major depression and isolation that stems from my childhood experiences and growing up with neglectful and verbally abusive parents.
	My parents got divorced when I was one year old, and my mother had custody of us mainly while my father would take us out over the weekends.
	My mother remarried later to my stepfather and ended that marriage very similarly.
	My father would usually take us over his sister's house and would just drop us off and watch sports on television with my uncle and never spent actual time with us.
	I had a lot of problems in school and was put on SSRIs at the age of 13 and was diagnosed with major depression and bipolar, which later I found out that bipolar was an inaccurate diagnosis.
	I've been hospitalized on several occasions due to suicidal thoughts and self-destructive behavior, and looking back on it now, the only reason I behaved that way, I feel, was because it was the only way to get my mother's attention when I felt that negative, as she also would ignore us most of the time and watch television.
	They both had the double standard of putting me down for playing video games too much while essentially doing the same thing that they were doing.
	I went through a heavy video gaming addiction up until my mid-20s and then developed a heavy addiction to marijuana.
	I went through many counselors and psychiatrists adjusting changing medications until I found out the truth about these medications with the help of your show.
	I now firmly believe that my issues lie within post-traumatic stress and have been off both the meds and marijuana for some time now.
	I moved out in my own apartment over two years ago now and have not seen or talked with my parents since then.
	I had a long talk with both of my parents before moving and tried explaining the way I felt and shed some truth to them, but they basically gave me more bullshit and I couldn't have any sort of meaningful connection.
	In present day, I have terrible flashbacks and dreams about my experiences and have lost a few jobs trying to cope with it all and am afraid of losing my livelihood and my life along with it.
	How do I move past this and start to define my own identity and make my own path towards happiness and not let this dark side of me run my life like it has for so many years?
	I have so much difficulty making connections and friends due to trust issues and the fear of being abandoned once again.
	I often ask myself, how can I love someone else when I can't even take the time to love myself?
	It has already taken its toll on me to where I feel bitter and resentful and I struggle with feelings of little to no positives.
	I have been going to therapy for a couple years now.
	What else can I do to help myself?
	I appreciate that.
	I appreciate that.
	And how long have you been listening to the show?
	Honestly, it's been off and on, but I would say it's been about two to three years now.
	And do you listen to cool new shows much?
	Welcome back.
	You literally won't fucking believe it.
	Really? Is it the updates?
	Oh, I don't know if they've got a direct pipeline into my OS or something like that, but apparently me talking about quality issues at Microsoft.
	So, and we'll get to the caller in a sec, but I hear this, right?
	And then, you know, it looks like not a lot is happening on my computer screen, right?
	So then, you know, when you are concerned about your computer, what do you do?
	You try to move the mouse.
	Now, if the mouse moves, It's 50-50.
	Like the mouse pointer moves, you've got 50-50 of coming back from the dead.
	But if that mouse ain't moving, 99% of the time, you're just playing fracked, right?
	So I'm sitting there, no message, no error message.
	No, oh, something didn't work.
	And listen, by the by, I don't have any weird non-standard hardware.
	I'm not like something Buddhist Tibetan monk modem put together with four hamsters and duct tape.
	I mean, it's all standard hardware.
	And, you know, something just completely fracks up, right?
	Now, you should catch these errors.
	Again, I know this is a program, right?
	On error, go to, provide a message, give something helpful, exit gracefully, whatever, right?
	But the whole thing just kind of completely locks up.
	And then you can't get it back.
	So then what you do is you just do that hard reset, right?
	You just hold down the power button until it goes down, right?
	So then I start it up again.
	And it says...
	It says restarting.
	And it's like, no, no, no, you're not restarting.
	You're starting. Restarting would be indicated that something shut down gracefully.
	Now, I didn't say, I don't know if you ever see this in Windows, right?
	You got this start menu, right?
	And the start menu, you know, you can shut down, you can update and restart, or you can update and shut down or whatever, right?
	Now, if the...
	Program called Windows completely F's up and locks up completely, and I have to do a hard restart.
	I didn't ask for the update, right?
	But nonetheless, too bad.
	You get the update anyway. Sometimes, you know how you get some rough loving in prison?
	You know, it's really not your choice.
	So it starts to do its update literally probably five minutes after I talked about it, locking up and rebooting endlessly.
	So then it just...
	Kept saying, restarting.
	And there was a little swirly, but nothing was happening.
	Like, it just says, restarting.
	The swirly was moving. Nothing happens.
	I don't know what the hell's going on.
	I don't know if it's stuck in an endless loop.
	I have no idea what's going on.
	Because the programmers are like, he'll just figure it out.
	It's like this R&D program I had once.
	And I asked him to create a wizard.
	Like, you know, when you install the program, you've got this forward and back and forward and back, right?
	So he had to step through there, right?
	And at one point, I was testing out his little wizard.
	And, um... I went back, and it didn't carry over a variable or something like that, right?
	It didn't keep the last choice.
	And I said, well, look, it doesn't...
	Like, I hit the back button, and it doesn't work, right?
	And he said, well, why would you want to go back?
	You've already been there. You know, keep moving forward.
	It's like, okay, I get that.
	But people do go back.
	They go, oh, I forgot something, right?
	But it doesn't tell. It doesn't tell you, right?
	Just reboots endlessly, reboots endlessly, and...
	I'm finally back.
	This is the funny thing, right?
	So, this is your operating system.
	If there's one thing the operating system has to do more than any other thing and more than any other fucking program in the environment, handle an error gracefully.
	You know, ping the hardware.
	If there's a problem with the hardware, switch to your backup hardware.
	If there's a problem with the graphics card, go to the onboard graphics card.
	If there's a problem with the sound card, go to the onboard sound or disable the sound.
	Don't fucking freeze up!
	Like some nerd in a bowling competition.
	Like this is ridiculous. One thing that you have to do is not lock up the entire operating system.
	And again, standard programs, standard hardware.
	This is nothing funky.
	I'm not installing things that I got from shifty-eyed Chinese guy in the middle of Chinatown at 3 o'clock in the morning.
	It's all standard stuff.
	One thing you have to do.
	One thing. It's like you've got a car, and the car says, hey, I'm going to come with all of these warnings.
	Your door is ajar.
	No, it's not. It's a door. The jar's in the kitchen.
	Your door is ajar.
	You're running low on gas.
	Your oil is running low.
	But none of that happens.
	See, if the car that you bought has a problem, it just fucking explodes.
	You're going down the highway.
	Oh, I think the oil's a little low.
	You know, that's great.
	That's exactly right.
	Except this stuff can be even more important than a car.
	The number of things I've lost, and I do backups and all of that, and it hasn't been for a while, but the number of things I've lost just because the operating system has a complete mental fry, epileptic spaz out for reasons that it doesn't say.
	Have you ever had this blue screen of death?
	Blue screen of death? I saw Bill Gates live get a blue screen of death in a demonstration once, right?
	Blue screen of death. And it says, oh, you know, here's a little QR code.
	And the QR code says basically, you're fucked.
	It's nothing. It's a system PIP exception driver alert.
	Yeah, that's fucking great.
	Just tell me which toads to kill, which witches to invocate, and which horrible voodoo rituals I need to perform with a penknife on a goat in order to get my stuff back.
	And it's just unbelievably ridiculous.
	So yeah, the operating system, for God's sake, just keep one job.
	One job! One job!
	Don't lock up! Don't lock up!
	One job! Can you imagine?
	You've got a bike? No, you've got a motorbike, and it's a smart motorbike.
	And the motorbike says, you know, I think there may be a problem with the automatic braking system, so I'm just going to lock up the fucking front wheel, and I'm going to send you 400 miles over the handlebars, and good luck.
	Stick the landing, man. Stick the landing.
	You'll be fine. I know.
	And of course, every time you have to rant about these kinds of things, people are like, hey, you just need to install Ubuntu.
	Ubuntu, and you'll be fine.
	Or switch to Mac.
	Or it's like, yeah, I get that. But, you know, it's not even...
	I mean, first of all, I have thousands of dollars of...
	Software and hardware that is invested in this environment and my learning curve and this and that.
	You know, they've got you by the short and curlies, right?
	They absolutely have you by the short and curlies.
	And it's kind of like, so when I was visiting Africa many years ago, there's a bush there and it's called, wait a moment, It's some local word for that, right?
	And the reason is that you can walk into the bush pretty easily because all the thorns point one way.
	You can walk into the bush fairly easily, but God help you if you try and get out.
	Well, that's kind of like the Windows operating environment to some degree.
	It's like, yeah, yeah, come on in, man.
	It's cheap. Lots of software and all of that kind of stuff.
	And then you're in, right?
	And you're in. And just when you try to get out, they pull you in deeper.
	And, yeah, it's pretty rough.
	And, you know, maybe it is an abusive relationship and we'll get to that with the caller, but...
	On the plus side, I think I've done all my updates for today.
	And it's so random, right?
	I did a whole show.
	I did a call-in show with...
	It was a fatherhood roundtable with like 40 guys yesterday.
	Everything hunky-dory and smooth, no problem.
	I did a call-in show...
	An interview show with Dr.
	Duke Pesta. And it was fantastic.
	And... Yeah, I don't know.
	I like Linux. I do.
	I like Linux, but I also like software, so it's a challenge, right?
	On one computer, I completely disabled my updates, and it was bliss.
	Yeah, no, it is. It is, until some hacker is like, oh, you know, we've just sashayed over here from Hillary Clinton's server, which also wasn't patched with updates, and look at that!
	A big, wide, gaping hole like Mae West's legs where I could just sail in and ransomware the shit out of your Bitcoin.
	So, yeah, it's a challenge, right?
	Okay. I did not...
	40 minutes of the call-in taken by Microsoft.
	And, yes, I did read the TPS report, just in case anyone's...
	Anyone is watching.
	So I'm so sorry about that. Our good friend, The Caller, we're back.
	And I was just asking you about...
	You've listened to the show for a couple of years, and I was going to ask you, just before I got by Microsoft, I was going to ask you...
	Oh, one other thing, too.
	Microsoft... Has gone down in quality, in my humble opinion, since Bill Gates left.
	Bill Gates was a famous perfectionist with this gun, and you just need this kind of anal perfectionist kind of stuff.
	This like toilet trained at gunpoint kind of stuff.
	I remember a story about some guy who wrote a better filled program for...
	Filled program.
	Again, we're back to the prison metaphors.
	No, it's a filled program. Like you draw a circle and you click in and it fills...
	And he felt that he'd written a better fill algorithm than Bill Gates for an early version of Paint on Microsoft.
	And Bill Gates was like, can it be mathematically proven to work every single time?
	Well, that's not actually that bad an answer.
	You know, it's not quite as brilliant as, hey, I hit the back button.
	Is it okay if I go back? No, time is one way, man.
	You can't go back in time and you can't go back in my wizard.
	But yeah, I think that the quality has gone down.
	And I get, you know, there's hardware and it's complicated.
	Yeah, it's complicated. But, you know, you have $12 trillion a year in profits, I guess, $11.5 trillion of which goes to the Biden campaign.
	95% of tech donations are to the Biden campaign.
	I'm sure that has nothing to do with wanting free labor from India.
	Sorry, not free. A surf-like labor from India.
	And, yeah, quality's gone down.
	All right. So, sorry, back to the listener.
	I was going to ask you if...
	You'd listen to many call-in shows.
	Sorry about all this delay.
	No problem. Yeah, I've listened to quite a bit.
	I mean, I honestly like your call-in shows the best, if I do have to state that, because there's a lot of information.
	There's a lot that I can relate to and empathize with others.
	Okay, now, if you've listened to the call-in show...
	I'm sorry, let me ask you this.
	I always have a concern, and I'll just deal with this up front.
	I have a concern when people say that they've been suicidal, that I'm not sure whether to be over-gentle or very firm and direct.
	I certainly don't want you to...
	Like you said, you've been hospitalized with suicidal thoughts and self-destructive behavior.
	So I don't want to be...
	have anything to do with pushing you or...
	Having you spiral down into some sort of really negative self-talk.
	So I'm just going to, as you've probably heard me do before, ask for your 150% commitment that if, whether it's, you know, for whatever reason, if you have any suicidal thoughts, you will get in touch with a therapist, you will call a hotline, you will go to emergency, you will do whatever is necessary to keep you safe.
	Is that a fair thing to ask for?
	Yeah, I can do that, sure.
	Can you say you'll promise to do it?
	Because that sounded a little bit like, yeah, I'll pick up milk.
	Yes, yes.
	I promise. Okay, thank you.
	I appreciate that. Now, what kind of approach do you want me to take in this call?
	Because I'll tell you the approach I'd like to take is pretty direct, but different strokes for different folks, right?
	So I was just curious what kind of approach you would like me to take.
	A little bit more gentle, a little bit more I dare say cuddly or more direct.
	What's your pleasure? I think direct would probably be something I can reflect upon more.
	Okay, good. What's the trauma?
	Post-traumatic stress, you say.
	Okay, so post-traumatic stress. And again, I'm not saying there isn't, obviously, right?
	I'm just telling you from what I've seen from what you've read, right?
	So it's been a while since you did the intro through No Fault of Your Own, of course, right?
	So you say... Neglectful and verbally abusive parents.
	So your parents got divorced when you were a year old.
	Mother got custody. Father would take us out over the weekends.
	Mother remarried later. Stepfather entered that marriage very similarly.
	My father would usually take us over to his sister's house and would just drop us off and watch sports on television.
	With my uncle never spent actual time with us.
	You know, usually that means that your dad is depressed.
	Your dad... I mean, my father, when I went to visit him, I was like 15 or 16 and I spent a couple of months with him in Africa and...
	It was brutal, man.
	He had nothing to say.
	He had nothing to say.
	I remember he brought some other kids, other teens over, and we ended up, I ran Dungeons& Dragons for them, and we had to use, like, funky dice that come with patterns.
	I think it was from some Japanese game or whatever it was.
	And, I mean, we played some Scrabble.
	But it was nothing. He put me to work.
	His garage needed sanding, so I went up there with the radio and listened to Crimson and Clover when it came on, because I liked that song by Joan Jett, and scrubbed away.
	I was just up there. And then we went into the bush, and he would work, and I would come out sometimes, but I'd just be sitting around and just explore the jungle on my own.
	I remember going out into the jungle, There weren't really any paths, but I would get stones and I would lead arrows back the way I came because, you know, no GPS back then.
	And of course, if you got lost in the jungle, you could have a pretty bad time of it, especially if you were there overnight, right?
	Very bad time of it. And it was many years later.
	When I was on my honesty directness thing, which I guess has been lasting ever since, and I was like, and then he went out to the bush.
	He was going out to the bush for like a week, and he's like, would you like to come?
	You know, and you could tell.
	It's like, yeah, you know, I know you're here, and I've got to do something.
	And I was like, no, you know, I've got some letters to write.
	Like, I couldn't write those letters in a, because, you know, we would go out and just, we would be in a little, a tent or a little, I guess it'd be like a trailer in a trailer park or something like that, and Yeah, it was pretty brutal.
	It was pretty brutal.
	And he told me many years later, I guess probably 12 or so years later, he said to me, he said, I was so depressed.
	I was just so depressed.
	I had no resources, no capacity to deal with you, right?
	Now, I have no resources.
	It's like, you know, I was just out of gas.
	I rented a car. I was out of gas.
	It's not much choice there, right?
	Yeah. So, and actually, I found it enormously helpful that he told me that.
	It was actually a very, very helpful thing for me to say.
	I didn't realize how helpful it was until I felt teary after he told me.
	And that's just because if you have a depressed...
	I don't know about your dad. We can talk about it, right?
	But if you have a depressed parent, because you sit there and say, well, he'd rather watch sports than spend time with me.
	He'd rather watch sports than spend time with me.
	And... That probably is not, because then, you know, the inevitable result of that is, well, I guess I'm not interesting, or he's not interested in me, or he doesn't love me, or doesn't care about me, he cares about sports more and whatever.
	And it's like, no, see, like really, really depressed people are allergic to intimacy.
	In the same way that, you know, if you, I don't know, let's say you just sneezed into your hands, And then somebody said, can you hold the naked baby?
	You'd be like, no, I can't hold the naked baby because I just sneezed in my hands.
	I've got a cold or I got a flu or God knows what in these COVID days, right?
	I can't, I can't, right?
	Social distancing for fear of infection, right?
	That's what happens in COVID. And the way it works in depression is...
	People feel so filthy, so useless, so diseased, so degraded that they shield themselves from others.
	They shield themselves from children because they're terrified of infecting those children.
	And my father, when I was out visiting him in Africa in my teens, my father did the right thing.
	He did not interact with me.
	He did not interact with me.
	What an incredibly beneficial thing to have happened.
	And I remember he took me on these hikes up these mountains that just went on and on and on.
	Of course, he walked for a living.
	He was like legs of steel.
	He was like Robocop climbing upstairs.
	And I found it kind of rough going.
	I found it kind of rough going.
	And I remember him, and I was thirsty, but he didn't have much water.
	And I remember him saying to me, well, just if you suck on a rock, just suck on a stone.
	You'll be fine. Because, you see, if you suck on a stone, it produces more saliva, and apparently that quenches your thirst because you can swallow your own spit rather than, you know, having some actual water.
	Spoiler, of course, doesn't do anything for your thirst because you're producing the liquid, swallowing the liquid.
	It's like trying to get a blood transfusion from one arm into the other and saying, oh, look, I'm cured, right?
	And I remember, I guess he was not happy with the fact that I wasn't much of a hiker back then.
	And this is before I joined cross-country and, you know, all of that.
	I mean, it was partly this trip where I was like, you know, I got to be a little more fit.
	And that sort of started me on this journey, which has been going on for the last 40 years, where I'm like working out three or four times a week and trying to stay sort of fit and healthy and all that.
	And I remember him just being way ahead on the path.
	Way ahead on the path. Now, you feel that.
	Like, he's like, oh, I can't believe my son, who's like a third my age.
	He's not keeping up. It's terrible, right?
	He's tired. But, you know, I didn't complain.
	I wasn't like, eh, I wasn't complaining.
	I was just tired, right? And, of course, it's kind of tough for the dad to...
	To say, when he leaves me with the mom who doesn't care about my exercise, hey, you should have exercised.
	Well, you left mom, so you left me with mom, and mom's not that way inclined or anything like that.
	So I remember him seeing, like, way up on the path.
	Like, it had to be a good half a kilometer ahead, like a quarter or third of a mile ahead.
	And I had to then speed up, right, because I didn't want to lose him somewhere, because I'm in the middle of nowhere out here, and, you know, the sun's beginning to sink towards the horizon and all that.
	Anyway, so... I guess for a long time, 10 years or so, and I didn't really think this consciously, but I guess it was sort of in the back of my head.
	I was like, oh, you know, I guess my dad didn't really have much interest in me, which may have translated somewhere deep in my brain to, I'm not that interesting.
	What is it that my mom said?
	Don't think! And my dad said, you're not that interesting.
	So I've become a thinker who's very interesting.
	What can I tell you? It's so good to live life not just in reaction to everything, but spontaneous and ideal to yourself.
	So, sorry for that long thing, but I'm trying to sort of just figure out, when you think about your dad, if you judge yourself negatively because your parents aren't interested in you, But if your parents have real psychological disorders, and my dad did, real psychological disorders, then it's kind of like a quarantine.
	You know, if your dad had some illness that caused his immune system to collapse, like to the point where, you know, ventilators, boy at a bubble, you know, Seinfeld style, all that kind of stuff, right?
	I don't think you'd sit there and say, well, my dad didn't hug me because he was a cold guy.
	You'd sit there and say, well, my dad didn't hug me because he had no immune system and, you know, three germs and he's pushing up the daisies, right?
	He's joined the choir invisible.
	If you hadn't nailed him to the perch, he'd be, right?
	So, I'm just wondering if there's a way of reframing what happened with your dad Because, you know, your dad's just sitting there staring at sports with kids in the house.
	That just strikes me as unbelievably depressed.
	In the same way that feeling like you're drowning or like you're mentally diseased or you're infectious with your misery and self-destruction and all of that.
	For my dad, it was just like, I can get this kid on the fucking roof.
	Let me just put this kid on the roof.
	I'm up there all day and I'll just sit here wrestling with my demons and at least he's far enough away that they're not going to jump out of me and into him.
	Does that fit at all with your dad or your knowledge of your dad or is it a swing and a miss?
	Well, I honestly like the part that kind of gets to me about it is like a lot of times I would tell him I wouldn't want to go with him because you know I pretty much knew what to expect and And every time I said I didn't want to go or like,
	yeah, like basically I refused to go, he would get pissed off at me and start yelling at me and And, like, at one point, even, like, later, kind of threw it in my face, like, oh, we had so much fun.
	You didn't, like, since you didn't come along or whatever, you didn't get to experience it in so many words or whatever.
	So I just, it was like I had to go with him to appease his anger or whatever, so he didn't get angry at me.
	And at the same point, on the same point, um...
	My mother would always, like, pressure me into going and saying, like, oh, your dad loves you and blah, blah, blah.
	Like, you should go spend time with him.
	And it's like, you know, I didn't really want...
	I didn't want to get them angry at me, but at the same time, I didn't really have a say in it or whatever.
	Right, right. And that's always kind of confusing to me.
	Your dad loves you.
	You've got to go spend time with your dad.
	You have a good time with your dad.
	To which you always say to your mom, you couldn't stand him.
	Right, exactly.
	You divorced his ass. You guys couldn't stand each other.
	She always trash-talked him behind his back or whatever.
	She just couldn't stand him all the time.
	Only in that moment she was like, oh, he loves you.
	You should spend time with him.
	I thought it was so ass-backwards.
	No, it's because she wanted you out of the house, right?
	Right, right, yeah.
	Right. So you're just kind of hot potato-ing, right?
	Yeah. And your dad probably doesn't want...
	Like, he invites you over because if you don't want to go over, then his ex-wife is going to get angry at him because she doesn't get whatever time she wants to do whatever she wants to do, right?
	Yeah. Okay.
	So tell me a little bit more about your dad.
	I never looked at it that way.
	Well, he spent a lot of time...
	I don't know if... I want to say he was a workaholic, because he did spend a lot of time working, and I know at some point he used to drive a bus, so there was only maybe once or twice that I can remember where he actually took us at where he worked or whatever.
	We used to, like, view Christmas lights or something like that, and...
	I'm trying to think what else I could describe about him.
	Sorry, my mind's kind of drawing a blank right now.
	So he drove a bus?
	I'm sorry, what did you say?
	He drove a bus? Yeah, yeah.
	Until he retired.
	He was a bus driver. Yes.
	So... Kind of dumb?
	Yeah. I mean, that's an IQ90 job, right?
	Right. And listen, not an insult.
	I mean, you know, if there are bus drivers out there, thank heavens you're out there.
	Because I didn't have a car until I was in my 30s and I really needed to take the bus.
	But if you're listening to this show and your dad was a bus driver, there's going to be a bit of a mismatch.
	Yeah. Yeah. A lot of times, he would come home really angry.
	I remember my brother, he remembers a lot of these instances, and I don't think I was too young at the time, but he remembers my dad coming home and just slamming the door.
	We had a golden retriever at that time, and the dog would just run and hide under the table.
	Basically, he He would just lash out at whoever was in his way, whether it be my mother or I guess the dog even at that point.
	And a lot of times, I think he would talk to my mother about it or at least say something and he would just be pissed off at something at work or whatever, like somebody giving him crap and then he, of course, just took it home with him.
	Right, right, right.
	Did your father ever remarry?
	He actually got engaged with another woman several years back.
	She was a single mother.
	I don't know if they're married right now, but that was the plan for them at least.
	How do you feel in this conversation at the moment?
	How do I feel? Uh...
	I don't know.
	When I talk about my parents, I usually...
	Like, I have a lot of rage when it comes to this stuff.
	Like, I know it's deep-seated in that.
	How do you feel, not in general or in the abstract or in other situations, how do you feel right now?
	Uh... I don't know, nervous or...
	Because I need your feelings to be here if we're going to have a conversation.
	Because right now, it's like you're trying to lure me into this empty world of depression and anxiety.
	You know, like my dad does this, and I don't know, like he does that, and I talk to my brother about this, and it's just kind of dead voice, right?
	And I can't work with dead voice.
	You wanted me to be frank, right?
	So here's me being frank, right?
	Yeah. Because it sounds like you're not here yet.
	And I can't fucking talk to you if you're not here.
	Hmm. It's not a criticism.
	I'm not mad, right? I'm just sort of pointing out.
	Right. So tell me what you want to get out of this call.
	Because right now, I don't know.
	What you're here for? Now, again, I know you're unhappy and all of that, but what is it that would be ideal for you to get out of this call?
	Because I really want to help as much as I can, but I need to know what that means.
	I just want to find my own happiness.
	I don't want to have these thoughts to where I think back and feel the way I do about my childhood right now.
	That's all in the past.
	I just want to be able to pretty much set it behind me or shelve it or whatever.
	What's the moment of greatest happiness that you've had in your life?
	Can this be a childhood memory with my parents?
	I'm not sure what's unclear about what I'm asking.
	What is the moment of greatest happiness you've had in your life?
	Being at my grandparents' with pretty much my cousins and the rest of my family.
	We all got to hang out there and play hide-and-go-seek and the manhunt at night it was called.
	Yeah. Oh, night games are tight.
	Night games are the greatest.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And I mean, like, we, like, at one point, we even decked ourselves out with, like, face paint and stuff.
	And it was, like, one of the coolest things because it was just a moment to be free and enjoy, you know, what we were doing or whatever.
	And I was around so many of my, so much of my family.
	And, yeah, I'd say that was great.
	Definitely one of the most happiest times I remember.
	Okay, so let's say that's a 10 on the happiness scale, right?
	And that was what, 20 years ago?
	Yeah, maybe like 15 years ago.
	Okay, so 15 years ago.
	So that's your 10.
	Where's your 9? a lot of it went back to when I went to my grandparents so I would think at that point when I used to go hiking out there yeah I just remember like hiking out in the woods there and I'm going to need you to build up your space here.
	You're trying to hypnotize me.
	I'm not saying it's conscious, but you're speaking so slowly that it's impossible to connect because it's kind of tick-tock, like it's like a pendulum.
	So you're going to just have to step it up, otherwise we're not going to be able to connect.
	Again, I'm sorry to be such an egg, but I just got to tell you what's needed.
	Mm-hmm. Okay, so your nine is hiking, and how long ago was that?
	It's about the same, maybe like 13 years ago.
	And what is the happiest you've been since?
	I honestly can't really think of anything.
	I mean...
	Okay, that's fine.
	That's fine. Okay, so here's a question that I think is kind of essential.
	Who wants you dead? Who wants you dead?
	Because when you have suicidal or self-destructive thoughts, when that shit just doesn't come out of you, nobody wakes up in the morning and says, you know, it'd be great if instead of shaving up and down, I just shaved side to side and slashed the shit out of my cheeks.
	You know, it'd be great if I take this bowl of cereal and I just pound it into my forehead until it cracks and cuts my head open, right?
	Nobody sits there like that.
	Was it Christopher Walken playing some creepy vet in some Woody Allen movie where he's like, you ever drive down and you're driving down the road and you just like, you see the traffic, you just want to turn into the oncoming?
	Nobody does that.
	No organism just wakes up.
	You know, like America didn't just wake up and say, you know what, I'm just going to start hating myself.
	I'm just going to shit all over my history.
	I'm going to just complain about everything to do with my history.
	Like, this didn't come from within America.
	It certainly didn't come from within Christianity.
	You didn't just sit there and say, yeah, we're just going to shit on ourselves.
	We're just going to try and commit cultural seppuku, right?
	So when you have thoughts of harming yourself, they don't come from you.
	Because that's not what organisms do.
	It's not what life does. I mean, a bird doesn't sit there and say, well, I know that fucking piece of glass is going to kill me, but I'm just going to fly ahead and do it anyway.
	You try and grab a squirrel, man, that thing will chew through two layers of gloves.
	A chipmunk will just gnaw through you like a buzzsaw to get free.
	Dogs have such an instinct for life.
	You see these videos of women trying to do yoga.
	And their dogs start humping their legs.
	It's like, well, I know that you're a biped, but maybe we can create a dog with three legs and very little hair?
	The life force within every organism, you, me, ferocious.
	Moms can turn cars over to get kids pinned out for a month.
	Men can do amazing things.
	Dogs can go 3,000 miles to find their way back home.
	As long as they don't need a Windows update, in which case they just get frozen in time.
	Leg falls off. So, you don't want to die.
	You want to live. You want to be happy.
	You want to conquer. You want to fight.
	You want to have joy.
	Peaceful joy, fierce joy, beautiful joy, exhaustion joy.
	You want to have all of that.
	That's your nature. It's my nature.
	But in that roaring fire, The inferno of your life force.
	Some big-ass water bomber is just dumping half of Lake Erie on it.
	You don't want to die.
	Someone wants you to die.
	Who is that?
	Well, I feel like what it could be would be like my parents stomping that out, like that sort of livelihood.
	Wouldn't it be?
	See, I can't go with your theories.
	This is why I said you got to bring your feelings.
	It's fine if you don't know, and it's fine if I'm wrong, right?
	But there's just no organism that I've ever seen that is healthy and respected and free that just sits there and says, you know what, I'm just going to take a pencil and jam it into my own eye socket.
	I mean, that's just not what happens. So, let's go back then to your childhood.
	When you would have a thought, have an impulse, have a thirst or desire to share something of yourself, which we all do as children.
	Half or three-quarters of childhood is, Dad, Dad, Dad, let me show you something.
	Mom, Mom, I want to show you something.
	I made something. I built something.
	I wrecked something. I got a high score.
	I got a low score. Share, share, share, share, share.
	It's like a photocopying cyborg clone conveyor belt of Sonny Bono's singing partner.
	Oh, that was a long-labor joke.
	But anyway, so you want to share.
	You want to share. With your parents.
	You want to share with people.
	I wrote a Zork-style text adventure game with blood priests when I was a kid and I wanted to share it with my friends.
	Here, try this game. Try this game.
	It's really cool. I wrote a paint program.
	I wrote a screensaver. I wrote lots of cool stuff.
	I want to show you. I want to show you.
	Many, many, many years ago, I Started a documentary, got about three-quarters of it done.
	It was text plus animation.
	I wanted to show it to people.
	I remember showing it to a guy I thought was a friend, and he watched like three-quarters.
	He stopped because there was something on TV he wanted to watch, and he just never went back to it.
	I'm like, dude, I just...
	Unfortunately, I couldn't finish it.
	The animator flaked out on me, and then I got cancer.
	But you want to share.
	I love philosophy. What do I do?
	I want to share it with the world!
	Share it with the world. And, you know, for 10 years, I had a pretty good run.
	So, when you would want to share what you had made, thoughts, experiences, pictures, Lego, whatever, what did you do?
	What I wanted to share?
	Yeah. Yeah, I mean, most times I would, well, I've played guitar and I've drawn a bit and I feel like with hiking especially,
	I've taken a lot of pictures and that's something I like to not just share the pictures, but like kind of where I've been and how it looked in that moment or whatever, just like I don't know, something to try and reflect on.
	I'm trying not to be too abstract here.
	You're failing, but I appreciate you noticing that.
	Yeah, I mean, I'm just trying to think what I felt so passionate about.
	I mean, a lot of it was gaming when I grew up.
	I used to talk to my friends about it a lot, and we would just talk about the same games or whatever.
	But, of course, That wasn't really challenging me creatively, I guess, so...
	Well, no, the gaming comes because you can't share anything else, right?
	So the gaming is a place where you retreat to because you can't share with your parents.
	Mm-hmm. So I'll tell you what I'm doing, because I think we need to be even more direct, right?
	So would you say that I've been fairly enthusiastic in this conversation?
	Yes. Right. I'll tell you, no, I mean, it's genuine and all of that, but I'll tell you why I've taken a very enthusiastic approach to this conversation.
	Because I want you to understand how your parents felt when you were enthusiastic.
	Because I've been quite enthusiastic.
	You had one little half laugh.
	We've been talking for like, I don't know, half an hour, whatever, right?
	And you've had no response to my enthusiasm at all.
	So in this situation, I'm you and you were your parents.
	So now, when I'm enthusiastic and you're indifferent to my enthusiasm, again, it's not a criticism, I'm not offended, it's perfectly natural given where your mind is, right?
	So I'm enthusiastic and you're indifferent to my enthusiasm, you're not attacking it, you're ignoring it really, right?
	So this is a way for you to understand what's going on with your parents.
	Because I'm enthusiastic and you're not responding to it at all, really, right?
	And again, I'm not criticizing.
	It's not anything negative.
	It's perfectly natural and it's fine.
	It's totally fine. So when I'm enthusiastic, how do you feel?
	When I'm energetic, when I'm sharing, how do you feel?
	Just answer.
	It's got to be right there.
	Because you're going through some experience.
	If you overthink it, it's going to come out false, right?
	When I'm enthusiastic or when I'm talking about my history or things that happened with my father or whatever it is, how do you feel?
	I feel happy to hear what you have to say.
	I feel like you have a lot to say about yourself and you describe it in a way that's very influential and pretty detailed.
	So there's...
	You paint a big picture, so to speak.
	None of that is a feeling. Oh my God, man.
	None of that is a feeling. I'm not asking for analysis.
	Listen, you're a smart guy.
	You're a verbally acute guy.
	You listen to this show. You can analyze things until you can push them through a soup strainer, right?
	What I wanna know is how do you feel when I'm bringing a lot of energy to the conversation? - I mean, like that I said happy, isn't that like a sort of feeling?
	It just kind of brings me an inner joy.
	Do you think you sound happy?
	Do I think? Because I'd asked you when you'd last be happy, and there was a reason I asked that.
	why did I ask you when you had last been happy because we're having Now, if you'd have said, well, I'm feeling happy in this conversation, right?
	Okay, great, right? But you said you couldn't remember the last time you'd felt happy, right?
	And now you say to me, well, no, I was feeling happy.
	Again, I'm not trying to catch you out.
	I'm not cross-examining you.
	I'm just pointing out that there is something going on here that's important to figure out, right?
	Right. I uh I guess it's like I try to find the like entertainment through other people or whatever like listening to you like I said it's um gets me to sort of reflect but I know like that's not really my own happiness or anything coming out uh Okay,
	tell me this. Give me a sentence, it doesn't matter what it is, in your most enthusiastic voice.
	Like you say, I won the lottery.
	Give me a sentence in your most enthusiastic voice.
	Dude, I just freaking won the lottery.
	Can you believe that?
	I can't really fake that, I feel like, but at the same time, I feel like that's kind of how along the lines...
	Okay, you can't fake it? Maybe you can.
	give me a sentence in your most unhappy or depressed or soul-sucking energy draining voice man i fucking hate the way i feel Thank you.
	See? You can fake it, unless that's not faking it, right?
	So you can do it one way, but not the other, right?
	Uh-huh. Right.
	So enthusiasm is very tough for you.
	Listen, I get that. I mean, this is not any kind of big insight on my part, right?
	But the question is, why is enthusiasm tough for you?
	And it comes back to your parents.
	So when you would be enthusiastic about something, how would your mom and dad react?
	Pretty much the same way I react, where it's not really given much emotion or dialogue even.
	Because I'm engaged right now in a totally grim battle with your parents in your head.
	It's an epic throwdown, let me tell you.
	I'm engaged in a very grim battle because I'm bringing enthusiasm to try and denormalize this kind of depressed emptiness, right?
	Mm-hmm. But your parents in your head are like, no, we own him!
	You cannot have him!
	He's ours! And fuck off, Baldy.
	Or something like that, right?
	They want to keep you.
	So, how is enthusiasm harmful to your parents?
	Why is it dangerous to them?
	If you came home from school, let's say you had a great day at school.
	Okay, let's alternate universe, right?
	Great day at school. You come home and said, oh, mom, dad, I just had the best day.
	Let me tell you all about it. What would they say?
	Oh, that's great.
	I'm glad. I'm happy that you had a good day in so many words.
	They would just, yeah, pretty much give me that.
	I don't think they would or very rarely would they ask what happened or get me to talk I guess so yeah.
	So the words would go kind of off a cliff right?
	Uh-huh. So what do you interpret about life because of that or through that?
	What is life about?
	What is the relationship of enthusiasm or the role of enthusiasm or, like, what does it mean when people don't respond to your enthusiasm with anything of consequence?
	Like, what does it mean about life?
	What does it mean about enthusiastic people?
	Are they just stupid? Are they blind?
	Are they selfish?
	Are they rubbing other people's faces in it?
	I mean, what does it mean?
	I think it would mean that they would outwardly express how, what they like, what they enjoy in their life, and what they're going through.
	Sorry, say that again? I said, I think it would, like for the enthusiastic people, it shows to me that they can outwardly express what they enjoy in life, like what they're actually finding interest in, and yeah, like What they like to talk about, I guess, more or less.
	No idea what that means.
	What does it mean? What is enthusiasm in life?
	Is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing?
	Is it a smart thing? Is it a dumb thing?
	What is enthusiasm in life?
	What does it mean? What does it matter? What is the value?
	It's the value to it in terms of how you experienced being enthusiastic when you were growing up.
	Um, I feel like it would be something that's part of my identity, something I can put my mind towards and think about, something I can put my mind towards and think about, uh, It's a good thing.
	Okay, let me ask you this.
	What was the happiest you ever saw your mother and your father?
	It was the time that they took me out to Pizza Hut after they brought me out of the hospital. - Yeah.
	Thank you.
	And it was the only time that I saw them, like, happy towards each other.
	They were, like, actually talking to each other and then talking with me.
	And I just remember them smiling.
	And basically, it just was one of the most bizarre things I've ever seen, really.
	But, yeah, like, it just felt like...
	The only time I could actually be myself around them or just, yeah, open up, I guess.
	So when they had some immediate relief that you hadn't killed yourself, that was the happiest you saw them?
	Yeah. Okay.
	Anything else? I can't, no, I mean, because a lot of times my parents were never really together, so... No, no, it can be separate.
	That's fine. It doesn't have to be whether they're together.
	They can be separately. Most of the time it would be going out for my birthdays.
	Like going out to a restaurant, we would...
	Sometimes go to the lake and just walk around.
	And you'd like to talk about stuff or what?
	Yeah, yeah.
	And what would you talk about?
	Most of the time...
	I guess what I could remember about it would be like talking about the area but then like there would be a candy shop or something that was around the area and my mother would say like oh I remember these candy shops and she would reflect upon like her memories of it and like what she used to buy or whatever.
	Oh so your mom was happy thinking about the happiness she had like 30 years ago?
	Right. Good God.
	That's terrible. Yeah.
	Did they ever take pleasure in you other than, hey, he didn't kill himself today?
	The only thing I can think of is, like with my mother, she would sometimes, I know this is going to sound bad even, but she would just sometimes talk to me about the video game I was playing where I would talk to her about it and she would watch me play it or whatever, but...
	but... There wasn't really...
	See, there was a lot of times where we would go out to like...
	We would go out to Six Flags or whatever, the water parks and stuff, and...
	Of course, that was us kind of going off on our own with her supervision, whatever, and just...
	Like we had to have our own fun or whatever.
	But I can't really, it's weird, I can't really think of a time or many times even that they took joy in me being there or whatever.
	Why is that weird?
	Isn't that exactly what you've been living?
	I don't enjoy.
	I don't bring joy.
	This is the great equation of childhood.
	I don't bring joy, therefore I can't have joy.
	I don't bring happiness, therefore I can't be happy.
	I'm not interesting to my parents, therefore I can't be interesting.
	I'm not loved by my parents, therefore I cannot be loved.
	But this is the inevitable equation of childhood.
	Inevitable until you figure it out and say, fuck that, right?
	Yeah. So this is really important to understand.
	The roots of your unhappiness are not complicated in my obviously humble and amateur opinion.
	The roots of your unhappiness are not complicated.
	You believe your parents. You believe your parents.
	You accept your parents' judgment of you as if it has anything to do with you.
	Like when I was in Africa and my father didn't find me interesting.
	Shit, I'm an interesting guy.
	I really am. I got hundreds of thousands of listeners.
	We got three quarters of a billion downloads.
	Pretty interesting. So if someone's not interested in me, I know it's not because I'm not interesting.
	Right. Got that double negative.
	I got it down. Right?
	So the question is, do you believe other people's perspective of you?
	Now, when we're kids, we generally do, right?
	We generally do. We kind of have to.
	We really don't have a choice because we can't displease the parental units because there were always more children than resources throughout human history.
	It's a fundamental fact of our entire existence.
	There were always, always, always, always, always more children than resources, which meant you could never, ever be the child who displeased the parent.
	Ever. Ever. Now, until you get into your teen years, then you can, you know, have all kinds of Kellyanne Conway, 15-year-old kid TikTok eruptions in the face of your mom because you can just go find some guy to take care of you and you can go and hunt for yourself.
	So basically to hell with the parental units at that point.
	But when you're a little kid, you really can't displease your parents too much.
	Really can't. So when your parents say, you know, son, you don't really cause us any pleasure.
	You're not really very interesting and don't enjoy your company and find your enthusiasm is really bad.
	Your enthusiasm really pisses me off because it reminds me.
	It reminds me how empty, soul-sucking and vacant my own experience is.
	And I like to think that it's human nature.
	See, it's just life. Life is empty and soul-sucking and depressing and nihilistic and stupid and everything's terrible and love falls to ashes and sex turns to infidelity and everything.
	Food turns to fat and exercise turns to injury and everything is just shit.
	Everything you enjoy will be used as a weapon against you by others, by time, by self-recrimination.
	Everything you like.
	We'll be turned against you and you've just got to live in constant cowering of the endless bladed boomerang backlash of everything you like and every choice you make just waiting in the bushes to hijack you and throw you into some ditch good Samaritan style, right?
	Or Samaritan victim style.
	So you just believed your parents as we all do.
	My parents don't find me interesting.
	Oh, I guess I'm not interesting. My parents don't like happiness.
	Well, I guess I'll be unhappy. My parents piss on enthusiasm.
	Well, I guess I won't be enthusiastic.
	And I'll signal it all day, every day, by talking in a low, slow, depressing way.
	Because the moment I get enthusiastic, I'm going to get attacked.
	I'm going to get injured. I'm going to get abused.
	I'm going to get Dead, right?
	Because if you displease your parents enough throughout most of human history, you just die.
	And it could be, well, you just don't get the food.
	It could be, well, some fucking bear is coming and the parents only have time to save two out of three kids.
	Too bad! Your number just came up that day, kid, because you really didn't please your parents, so they didn't bother.
	Or it could be much more explicit, like Aztec, Incan style, you know, was it one day they sacrificed like 16,000 children?
	Well, I bet you it wasn't really popular pretty children that they sacrificed, right?
	I mean, it was all the children who displeased the parents, who talked back, who thought for themselves, who were independent, who...
	We're rational a tiny, tiny little bit.
	Well, too bad. Sorry, we're going to put you on top of Chichen Itza and rip your heart out with a spoon.
	Well, sorry, we're too fucking stupid to have invented spoons.
	We'll just do it with our hands.
	So you believed your parents.
	And I don't blame you for that.
	I don't think that's bad.
	I mean, I'm glad you did because you're alive now to still have this conversation.
	But you just believed your parents.
	And because you believed your parents, they now run the show.
	Yeah, I mean...
	Sorry, go ahead. Well, it's like I have to say, like, the feeling now that I have is just, like, I feel very frustrated because there's been many a times where I've, like, I've gotten a promotion at my job.
	Like, every time I would get a promotion, it would just be, like, you'd have this, like, body high, like, oh, you know, I did well or whatever.
	And it's just, like...
	Sometimes it would last for maybe an hour or two, but then it was just like, I always feel this feeling of like, oh, I can't get too excited.
	It's hard to explain, but it just feels like...
	Oh my fucking God, man. You are pushing my buttons like crazy.
	Holy shit. Of all the people...
	Like, holy shit, man. I'm not aggressive against you or anything like that, but you are just pushing my buttons like crazy.
	I'll tell you why. You don't listen.
	You just wait on your turn to talk.
	I just gave you a mind-bending series of insights about why you're unhappy, right?
	You don't agree. You don't disagree.
	You just say, you know, I just, I don't understand.
	Like, I've just been talking to you for like 45 minutes about why you're not enthusiastic, right?
	And then what do you say to me? You say, I get so frustrated because, you know, I just, I have no idea why I'm not enthusiastic about things.
	Well, I could be wrong, but you've got to acknowledge that I said something.
	I made syllables with my mouth hole.
	Well, no, and I do see, like, that's the thing.
	I see where it comes from.
	I just, to me, I guess I want to, like I said, shelve that.
	I want to be able to, like, enjoy that moment of a promotion or whatever.
	Like, I know where it comes from, and I guess, like I said, to celebrate or to, like, have any sort of feeling afterward, it's just...
	It only lasts for an hour or two and it's just hard to like...
	Are you now mansplaining depression to me?
	Come on. How do you want to spend our time together?
	Do you really want to just sit there and say, after you sent me a long letter saying about how unhappy you are, do you really want to spend a lot of time explaining to me what unhappiness is?
	Is that how you want to spend our time together?
	Because it seems like a giant waste to me.
	I'm just not sure what to say, I guess.
	Okay, that's fine. So be honest with me and say I don't know what to say.
	But don't take me on some...
	You know what unhappiness is?
	Unhappiness is when you really can't feel very happy.
	Thanks, man. It's really great for you to bring that up.
	Oh, blinding! I'm illuminated, right?
	And again, I'm not upset.
	I'm just pointing it out, right?
	Okay, so what's your theory as to why you're unhappy?
	If it's not what I'm saying, right?
	What's your theory? Well, it's very much the memories I have of my parents, like having that stomped out of me where if I did have something good happen to me, a good event, I was not really able to express myself to my parents.
	And then I, of course, Held that within me and that always comes up.
	Those traumas or whatever, they come up and...
	Okay, sorry to interrupt. So your theory is that because of what happened to you as a child, the memories fall down on you like a whole series of dominoes and you can't be happy now, right?
	Yes. Why is that true?
	So that's your theory, right?
	That the past and the upset and unhappiness which you had in the past, which I fully accept and I'm not trying against any of that.
	So your theory is that because you were unhappy in the past, you can't be happy in the present.
	Yeah, I'd say that's pretty accurate.
	Why is that true though? Why is that a true...
	I mean, that's your theory, right?
	Why is that true? How do you know that's true?
	I mean, would you say that I had a tough childhood?
	Yeah. Would you say that I'm a pretty happy person?
	Yeah. And you've been listening to me for a couple of years, right?
	Right. You've been listening to me for a couple of years.
	Someone who is not just the last fucking domino to fall down from an unhappy history.
	Oh, and then they just keep falling down and then one of them becomes...
	The cover of your coffin and you go into the ground, right?
	So you've been listening to someone whose life experience goes directly against your hypothesis, right?
	So you're coming to me saying, well, I'm unhappy because of the past.
	But you're happy independent of your past.
	So what's the difference?
	Why do I not drag myself through life feeling unhappy because of my history?
	Because we both have bad histories, right?
	Right. So what's the difference?
	Why is it determinism for you and a choice for me? - That's honestly what I wanna find out.
	I'm not really sure how to answer that.
	Good. Okay, good.
	Because if you have doubt, you have possibility, right?
	No, you do. Yes. Right?
	Because there's this thing, and it's kind of all over the place, right?
	And there's this thing which says, well, if you want to know what your future is like, just look at your history.
	Or, well, you've been so smashed up by...
	Bad people that you can't ever put yourself back together again.
	It's like this Humpty Dumpty thing, right?
	Or your identity is somehow entirely run by things that don't even exist.
	Yeah. Your childhood is gone.
	You are not a child.
	Sorry, I know. I said, hey, don't tell me obvious things.
	But this is not, you know that, right?
	You know that, right? Right, I know.
	Right? Yeah. All of this shit that went down Lack of enthusiasm, divorce, verbal abuse, neglect, being...
	Like all of that, right? None of that exists anymore.
	You're not a child.
	They're not even really parents anymore.
	They were. Now they're just grandparents in waiting.
	God help you, right? None of that stuff exists.
	The... Tin roof that I spent a couple of days up there in the African sun scrubbing away when I was supposed to be spending time with my dad, that tin roof doesn't exist anymore.
	My father is dead.
	My mother is close, I'm sure.
	The Africa that I visited no longer exists.
	Politically, economically, socially, racially, it does not exist.
	I was enthusiastic When I was a kid about Pink Floyd's The Wall, which was introduced to me by a cousin in Africa who was actually a very nice guy.
	He was older than me. He knew that I loved Dungeons and Dragons.
	We took three buses for an hour and a half so he could take me to a store to show me swords that I couldn't afford.
	They were cool. Unfortunately, he died not too long afterwards.
	Anyway, so we were in a car.
	He drove. No. We were in his dad's car going somewhere.
	Sorry, he didn't have a car. We were in his dad's car and he puts on a tape.
	Back in the days of cassette tapes, right?
	He puts on the tape. I've never heard this before.
	I'd heard that, you know, we don't need no education.
	I'd heard that song. Uh-huh.
	But I hear he puts this...
	I said, I remember this. I was sitting in the back seat, you know?
	The back seat sucks in a car, right?
	Because you can't actually have any fun.
	You can just see, this is an old comedian.
	You can just see profiles of people having fun in the front.
	You lean forward the whole time like you're doing some endless sit-up because they're all talking up there and the music's on.
	You can't hear anything. Anyway, so he puts his tape in and he hears the sound of this helicopter.
	And I'm like, what? What is this?
	And I was just coming out of...
	I had a really terrible music phase.
	Like, my mom was into all of this.
	Like, a lot of crazy, really aggressive people she was into really, really...
	Narcoleptic music, like the breathy-voiced Ray Conniff singers and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
	And I remember we used to have that Elvis Christmas album, Mama Love the Roses.
	And it was just playing all the time.
	And she just had a terrible taste of music.
	And then I ended up staying with a friend of mine's grandparents one summer.
	I didn't even know them.
	I spent, like, months with these people while the woman was dying in some condo.
	And... We would occasionally go up to their cottage where, again, they'd put me to work, and they'd listen to Engelbert Humperdinck.
	There's a place in the sun.
	And it's just like, I kind of got into that music.
	I had no music sense that was at all age-appropriate.
	I was like Mel Torme in the body of Zac Efron or something, right?
	The Velvet Fog does high school musical.
	And so this guy puts in this tape in Africa.
	And I hear this helicopter.
	What the hell is this?
	And then down to down to down to down to down to down to down to down to down to down.
	When we grew up and went to school there were certain people who would hurt the children teachers who would hurt the children anyway they could.
	And I'm like, whoa.
	Who's snarling? That's not Engelbert.
	That's not the Raycon of Singas.
	In fact, that sounds like someone who would spearfish the Raycon of Singas when they went swimming and then eat them half one end to the other end to the shark.
	You! Yes, you!
	Stand still, Eddie!
	And I was like, what the fuck is this?
	And I loved it.
	I fucking loved that.
	Daddy's flown across the ocean, leaving just a memory.
	Fucking great album. Terrifyingly good album.
	I got a little black book with my poems in.
	And I used to sing the whole thing, like sort of start to end.
	I fucking loved that album. Anyway, Side 3, I used to listen to that every night before I went to bed.
	And family member just stole the album.
	Stole the album and hit it.
	I didn't know. I just couldn't find the album.
	Have you seen the album? No. Because they got sick of me playing it.
	Now, why was I playing it? A lot of times I wear headphones, sometimes not.
	I played it because it was important.
	It was about my life, right? There was a lot about that album that was about my life.
	About the temptation to just hollow yourself out and shred your insides because you're surrounded by vampires.
	You know this stupid show with the zombies?
	It was a whole series.
	Somebody will put it to me in the chat.
	The zombies, they called them nerds or...
	The Walking Dead. Thank you.
	Walking Dead. Look!
	My collective memory has rushed in to save me.
	So The Walking Dead. I watched the first couple of episodes, right?
	Because I like to keep up on pop culture and I thought it was interesting.
	And so they have this...
	Oh, you just rub yourself in the zombie...
	Blood. You rub yourself in a zombie and they can't smell you.
	You just walk out past them. It's like, oh, well, they must be using this all the time then to wage their war.
	No! We will never use this again in the entire history of the show.
	What? You have the superpower to be invisible to zombies and you're never going to use it again?
	We've got to go and get some supplies every single episode.
	Well, I guess we just got to rub ourselves in zombie juice and we're good to go.
	We could just walk down and barely an inconvenience.
	Oh, really? That's the kind of stuff.
	I couldn't stand watching that show any further because it was the same stuff even.
	Like, I don't know.
	Especially with stuff like that, you see that.
	To me, it's like, how can the world be overrun by that kind of stupidity, more or less?
	No, no, but that's an analogy for people dependent on the government, right?
	They've got to eat brains to stay alive, right?
	So... So you rub yourself in zombie juice and you're fine, right?
	But this is life, right?
	If you've got zombies for parents, what do you have to do?
	You have to rub yourself in zombie juice so they don't smell your life and eat you.
	You had to rub yourself in depression.
	You had to rub yourself in that chunks of zombie so that they wouldn't smell you and eat you.
	Right? Right.
	But the zombies are gone, man.
	Hose yourself the fuck off.
	Go scrub that shit off.
	Now it's just recreational zombie armor.
	Boy, we got a title for the show, right?
	Recreational zombie armor.
	Now, from Free Domain. No, but they're gone.
	They're gone. You've got this belief that your past has determined who you are.
	No. No. Who you are is determined by what you choose!
	And you did not choose your past.
	And you did not choose your parents.
	You did not choose your circumstances.
	That was just some shit that was done to you that you had to get through.
	You know what I mean? Yeah.
	You didn't choose that. It has nothing to do with you.
	Now, it has an effect on you for sure.
	But if some asshole Merry Christmas, Mr.
	Lawrence style. Ties you out in the sun and you get a sunburn.
	You don't sit there for the rest of your life and say, man, I was so stupid to not put sunscreen on that day.
	Right? Why not?
	That would be like a way of preparing for the next time.
	Like, oh, well... I have this memory of getting massively sunburned, so next time I'll be sure not to do that.
	That is not the answer.
	But I can see why you would say that.
	Because you're taking some self-ownership.
	No, if some asshole ties you out in the sun, he caused the sunburn.
	The sunburn has nothing to do with you because it's nothing to do with your choices now.
	Did it affect you? Yeah, it affected you.
	But it doesn't stick to you.
	It's not part of your personality.
	It's just something that was done to you.
	You know, like, if you decide to go and get skull and crossbones or Nazi swastikas or hammer and sickle shit tattooed on your forehead, well, that's a really stupid thing to do now, isn't it?
	But if somebody roofies you and does it to you, that's not a reflection of your philosophy.
	It's just a problem you've got to fix.
	Okay, I've got to get this taken off, right?
	No, you're not with me yet.
	You're not with me yet. You're fighting me.
	That's alright. Your parents are fighting me, right?
	So your past has nothing to do with who you are.
	Because it was not chosen.
	Nothing that happens before you become an adult means much at all in terms of who you are.
	It's just some accidental shit.
	It's just luck of the draw.
	It's random. Some people get really good parents.
	Some people get really bad parents.
	Some people get raped. Some people get praised.
	Some people get money. Some people get nothing.
	It's just hurly-burly random shit.
	And it means nothing about who you are.
	Nothing. But you're putting it all on you like this is who you are.
	It's just terrible stuff that happened to you, that was done to you, that you had no choice about whatsoever.
	As you said, you didn't want to go.
	You told me this already. You said, I didn't want to go with my dad.
	Why did you go with your dad? Because he'd get really pissed off and make your life hell, right?
	Yeah. So you understand, you were just surviving.
	Just surviving. Nothing to do with who you are.
	You didn't choose it.
	it you just had to survive it poor Dan Bongino Dan Bongino runs, I think, one of the top-rated conservative podcasts in America.
	And he's invested in Rumble.
	You can find me on rumble.com, by the way.
	He's invested in Parler, which people should follow me as well.
	On there, and other people, of course, as well.
	Poor guy. Poor guy.
	He thought he had a lipoma because he's got these fatty deposits that grow.
	It's just part of the joy of middle age.
	You get these little fatty deposits, right?
	And they don't grow on your penis where they can do some good.
	But he thought he had a lipoma and he didn't do anything about it.
	And then they ended up, he had to go in after listeners said, dude, right?
	Stop being a macho weightlifter and go to a doctor, right?
	So he went in and they found a 7cm...
	That's as big, right? 7cm tumor.
	And they yanked it out.
	And I think it was just Wednesday that he announced that it looks like it's lymphoma, right?
	Kind of familiar, right? Now, he's been a healthy guy.
	Like, he's not like Eddie Van Halen, like...
	Just died of, he fought like tongue and throat cancer for like a decade.
	Eddie Van Halen, the guitarist, he just died.
	A guy was like a heavy smoker for many, many, many years.
	Now, he doesn't think it was a smoking that had anything to do with it.
	He thinks it's because he held a metal pick in his teeth years ago.
	I'm not a doctor, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say it probably had a little bit more to do with the incessant smoking than it had to do with holding a metal pick in your mouth.
	So, Eddie Van Halen enjoyed the cigarettes and got cancer.
	Exactly the way you'd expect him to get cancer.
	Now, I'm pretty sure Dan Bongino doesn't smoke and doesn't have any bad health habits that way.
	He just got what I got.
	Well, I don't think it's been finally confirmed, but he says it looks like lymphoma.
	He just got what I got.
	Just bad luck, man.
	It's just bad luck. So, I'm not going to define myself by having had cancer.
	I'm not going to define myself by having had a bad childhood because I didn't have shit to do with that.
	I'd rather define myself by the choices that I make when I can actually make some fucking choices.
	Yeah. You know, the little fish that yeeted its way out of the primordial ocean soup shit, right?
	And starts waddling around and tries to figure out how, like, they evolve into the lungfish, into whatever, I don't know what the hell this happens, the amphibian stuff, right?
	So that fish, cool, dude, you took a risk, man.
	You're like, hey, I'm going to get away from this tuna that's biting my ass.
	I'm going to try and flop up on the shore.
	And, you know, you figure out some way to get out of the ocean, right?
	Cool for you, man. Good for you.
	That's a choice. Now, the fish, though, that ends up on land because he got caught in a giant-ass tuna net, that's not really the same thing.
	That's just something that happened to him, right?
	Right. Your history is not who you are when you were a child.
	It's all you survive.
	It's what you survive. Now, for better or for ill?
	Listen, let me ask you this.
	You ever seen these rich...
	Jerkazoids who, like, these rich kids who, like, they'll take their selfies and they'll post them to Instagram and they're standing on a jet.
	The steps of a jet are on a yacht, right?
	And they're standing on the ski slopes out in Austria or something cool in the north of Italy where apparently COVID spread like wildfire, right?
	And these douchebag little kids, teenagers or whatever, they're like, I'm so wealthy, right?
	Yeah. You didn't fucking earn that!
	You don't have a paper route that stretches halfway around the world.
	You're not the greatest waiter in known history.
	Great! You've got workaholic parents who are shoving cash at you because they've got no hearts.
	Good job! Good job being materialistic assholes.
	And again, I have some sympathy. They're teens and they're unloved and all of that, right?
	Right. But they didn't earn that!
	I'm struggling to survive a truly hellscape of a childhood.
	I had a friend.
	He didn't have to get a job in the summer.
	His parents had a pool.
	He could tootle down to the library just down the street.
	He could pick up stacks of von Mises and Rothbard and Hayek and he could come back.
	He had a basement with a cold from Fucking floor-to-ceiling Diet Coke.
	That was like liquid gold when I was a kid.
	I could almost never afford pop, and if it was, it was like that greasy, fingered, half-burpy, digestion-killing RC Cola or whatever, right?
	So he could just, he could tootle down to the library, could pick up his books, and he could tootle back.
	He could, his mom would be sitting there with a nice sandwich and a little grape cluster beside him, and he could go down and get himself a Diet Coke.
	And he could sit there with sunglasses and his hat on, and he could dangle his feet in the pool, and he could spend all day reading economics, philosophy.
	Oh, man. It's pretty sweet.
	I had three jobs at that time.
	I didn't have a lot of time or resources or anything to do that, right?
	Yeah. I'm listening to Abbey Road cleaning my fifth office of the night, right?
	11 o'clock at night. I had a job in the mall.
	I was cleaning, like, doctor's offices.
	I cleaned the travel agents.
	Back when they had travel agents, I cleaned offices.
	Yeah, it was rough, man. It was rough.
	Now, he didn't earn feet in the pool, Diet Coke, Von Mises happy sunshine time, right?
	He didn't earn that. He just got lucky.
	And it's not even lucky, because it's not like there's an alternative.
	Like, you roll the dice, you get two sixes.
	Ooh, you know. Listen, you could have got it too, right?
	But he couldn't have been born anywhere else, right?
	Couldn't have been born anywhere else.
	I wasn't even unlucky because there wasn't an alternative.
	It wasn't like I could have been born to different parents because if I'd been born to different parents, guess what?
	I'm not me, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Same thing with you. You weren't unlucky.
	And it wasn't bad like you had a choice.
	You know, like, you ever had this?
	I'm sure you've had it, right? Everyone's had this, right?
	You reach for something... On the stove, you think it's cold, it's hot.
	And your hand jerks back before you even feel the heat, right?
	Because your body works so efficiently that way, because it's got to get your hand away from the heat like that, right?
	So you touch the thing, the signals go up your arm to your whatever.
	I'm such a doctor.
	I'm not. Right? So they go up your arm, they go back, and before the pain signals even get to your head, your hand is jerked away, right?
	Yeah. That's what we do, right? Now, there you have a choice.
	But what if some crazy lunatic is grabbing your hand and putting it in a fire and you can't get it out, right?
	Well, that's not a choice.
	At least you have a choice to take your hand away.
	You've got an option. Yeah.
	You have no choice as a child.
	And when you don't have a choice, nothing sticks to you.
	And the law fully understands this.
	If you grab someone...
	Stick a gun in the ribs and say, come rob a bank with me or I'll blow your guts out.
	What do the court say?
	That you're held responsible for forcing that person to do your own will.
	Right. And what do they say about the person who was forced?
	Are they a criminal?
	No. No. It doesn't stick to them at all.
	It only accrues to the guy with the gun.
	The victim doesn't stick to it all.
	See, you're saying, I'm a criminal because I was forced.
	That makes no sense.
	Emotionally, I get why you do it.
	I understand that. If you're born into the crime gang, you've got to pretend you love crime.
	Otherwise, they'll shoot you or something, right?
	Yeah. But you're sitting there saying, well, I'm defined by this, which I never chose and which was forced upon me.
	Which is like someone saying, oh, a guy forced me to rob a bank, so I'm a bank robber.
	What would you say to that person?
	What was it again that you said?
	What was it again that you said?
	If someone forces you to rob a bank, No, let's say you meet someone and they say, oh, someone forced me to rob a bank, therefore I'm a bank robber.
	What would you say? That's ridiculous.
	That's crazy. The past you didn't choose doesn't define who you are.
	So why are you letting the assholes who happen to make you define who you are?
	Why would you let them continue?
	The verbal abuse, the domination, the evisceration of your enthusiasm, why would you let them continue to do that as if it had anything to do with you at all?
	Why was I on the roof of that garage in Africa?
	Was it because I was boring?
	No. Was it because I was a great worker?
	No. I was on that roof.
	Because my father couldn't admit fault.
	My father could not admit fault.
	That's on him. It's not on me.
	Because I was just a kid.
	My father could not admit fault.
	And when you can't admit fault, which, by the way, you're not admitting fault in this conversation.
	It's fine. We'll get to it in a sec, right?
	But when you can't admit fault, you can't change course.
	And when you can't change course, you get exhausted.
	My father had no resources because he was in denial of moral culpability for leaving his children with a violent, deadly abuser.
	Yeah. So I'm present.
	He can't really be around me because I'm a reminder of a terrible thing he did in his life.
	So I gotta go on the roof.
	Sorry. Sorry, kid.
	You provoked my guilt. Off you go.
	It's nothing to do with me. I'll go on the roof.
	I'll go on the roof.
	I'll go clean. I'll scrape the sand.
	I'll scrape the rust off the tin roof.
	Sure. What am I going to do?
	No! It's not going to work, right?
	Because if you say no, when you're provoking someone's guilt, they will fuck you up if you self-materialize.
	See, if you want to use someone You can't empathize with someone and use someone at the same time, right?
	Like why are so many women so easily manipulated?
	Because they manipulate. So it's their Achilles heel, right?
	It's their kryptonite. So when somebody wants to use you, they can't empathize with you.
	Now, if you try to make yourself real to them, if you try to show what you care about, what you're enthusiastic about, what you like, what you don't like, who you are as a human being, that fucks up Their plans to use you because now they're empathizing with you and then they can't use you.
	And that makes them very angry. So the first thing they have to do is they have to rip out and destroy your identity.
	Rip out and destroy your identity.
	I mean, you want to eat an avocado, what's the first thing you do?
	You rip out the seed. Rip out the seed.
	Can't eat the seed. Seed will kill you.
	You want to use the avocado, you've got to rip out the center.
	You want to use human beings, you have to rip out their center.
	We're not responsible for that.
	It's just the way of the fucked up world.
	For my family to use me, they had to try and rip out my center.
	It's like, okay, yeah, you can rip out my center.
	It's fine. Go ahead. Here it is.
	I'll suppress it. I will shut the fuck up.
	I will listen to my Pink Floyd.
	Whatever, right? And you just lay low until you can get out.
	And then you walk away And yeah, it has an effect on you.
	You can't be like it didn't happen, right?
	But the reason it sticks to you is you think that somehow you are defined by what you never chose.
	You think you're a bank robber because you were forced to rob a bank.
	You think that what evil people said to you has something to do with who you are.
	My parents would say to me, you're not interesting.
	But that's because if I'm interesting to them, they can't use me.
	My father wanted me to come because that was the right thing to do, but he didn't want to get to know me because that would provoke pain within him.
	I got to be there.
	Like the same thing with your dad.
	He wants you over because that's the right thing to do, and if you don't want to come over, that's an indication of something bad.
	Right? But he doesn't want to get to know you because that causes him great pain.
	So you've just got to be there, not there.
	And we all become experts at one foot in the grave, one foot on the carousel, right?
	We're there, not there. I'm present, but I'm not activated.
	I'm kind of like inert.
	I'm like a phone with the airplane mode on.
	I'm running, but it's not particularly helpful.
	Yeah. But what does this have to do with you in any way, shape or form now?
	The shit that happened in the past.
	How does it define you in any existential way?
	And again, I'm not saying it doesn't have any effect, but how does it define you?
	You chose none of it.
	it, none of it.
	Yeah.
	It's just hard to wrap my brain around everything like with applying these I understand what you're saying, especially with how I had no choice in that.
	It's like...
	I just don't know...
	To me, it's like I don't know what the next step of finding happiness is.
	Oh my god, man. You've listened to the show for a while.
	You know this. You know the shit that everyone pulls, right?
	I can't believe you're doing it. Oh, I guess I can, right?
	You know, whenever you get an insight, you've heard this a million times on this show, and I'm sorry, it's not you.
	It's just I've been doing this for 15 years, and it's always the same goddamn script.
	And the same goddamn script is, here's why you have a problem.
	Oh yeah, but what do I do about it?
	How do I fix it? How do I make it go away?
	Right? You've heard this a million times, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	And it's so predictable. Everybody wants to jump over the insights into, okay, well what do I do?
	Everyone wants to jump over the knowledge to the action.
	Because you don't want to feel what it's like to have loyalty to yourself rather than your abusers.
	To have distance, to have scope, to have independence.
	Because you're, I would imagine, a tiny bit addicted to finding yourself that way.
	I assume you're still in your family orbit, right?
	You mean, I live on my own, but I... You talk with your hang, you spend time with your parents, right?
	No, no, I don't.
	Oh, I'm sorry, you've cut them off?
	Yes. My apologies, okay.
	And when did that happen? It was pretty much after I moved out of my father's place.
	Wait, what do you mean pretty much?
	Well, they tried talking to me and then I had a conversation with both of them, pretty much telling them the way I felt in my childhood and whatnot.
	When I wrote in the question, that was the bullshit I was talking about.
	They just shrugged it off.
	Sorry, when was that? This was the question I wrote in.
	When was this whole conversation you had?
	I'm sorry, I want to look it up on the question right now.
	Two years ago. Yeah, yeah.
	I moved out and then it was pretty much...
	Oh, so you were living with your parents until you were 28?
	Uh, 27, I believe.
	Yeah. Well, you said two years ago and you're 30, right?
	Yes. It's just hard to keep time straight on, honestly.
	Like, I'm pretty sure I was like 27, maybe I was.
	Doesn't matter, doesn't matter. 27, 28.
	That's pretty fucking old to be living with your parents, right?
	Right, right. And so when you stopped being in contact with your parents, how much did they fight to stay in contact with you?
	I mean, they definitely tried messaging me or calling me and leaving voicemails and about the only time I see them is when they text me for my birthday or something or New Year's or something.
	But you don't see them, you just see their messages, right?
	Right. Well, did they try very hard, do you think?
	I mean, it seems to me that if, you know, I don't know if my daughter ever doesn't want to talk to me, I'm like, wherever she is, I'm going there.
	We're going to sit down until we figure it out, right?
	Right. Yeah, I mean, they just wanted me to come over and pretty much, like, yeah, try to talk me into coming over and spending time with them.
	Okay, with 100 being the maximum you could try to repair a relationship, like, what percentage of that were your parents' efforts?
	The maximum being, I'll go to therapy, I'll listen to this crazy philosophy show that you like, or whatever else you want me to do, I'll read whatever book you want to like, I will do anything, whatever, right?
	Like, that's 100%.
	What percentage were they?
	They would probably be, like, 10%.
	10%, okay. So they don't care that much about you, so why on earth would you care that much about what they said and what they did in the past?
	Yeah. That's a very good point.
	My mother? You know, it's funny.
	So my mother, I mean, doesn't care that much about me.
	You know, she made a couple of phone calls.
	That's about it. A couple of phone calls.
	I think that was about it. I read my father's autobiography after he died.
	He had endless, endless pages about his professional successes and who he knew, who was wonderful to him and all the travel and blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
	I came up twice in the whole book.
	Twice, if I remember rightly.
	And nothing about it.
	There's nothing about me, nothing about my likes or preferences or anything.
	And that's it. That's how much, you know, his trip to Peru gets like five pages.
	I get two sentences.
	I mean, I shouldn't laugh, but you know, like, so why on earth would I care about his thoughts or his ideas or his preferences?
	Now, again, it's not like he had no effect on me.
	Of course he had an effect on me, mostly by his absence, but to some degree by his presence.
	My mom barely did anything to keep things going.
	Other family members barely did anything.
	I had dozens of family members, not a single point of contact.
	Nothing. My father barely contacted me.
	My mother barely contacted me.
	Nothing. Freedom, baby.
	Freedom. Why would I care more about people than they care about me?
	I didn't choose to have them in my life.
	Why? Why? Why?
	And the thing is, too, like right now, you're still pre-love.
	Now, once you're genuinely loved, like once you have a healthy, normal, great, wonderful, beautiful, amazing, happy, affectionate, hilarious, beautiful person in your life, Then, looking back at all that stuff, it's like, well, you know, you've got a fantastic chef who lives with you and will cook you anything you want.
	Would you like to go back to Shit Sandwich Cafe anytime soon?
	I'm like, hmm, I gotta tell you, it's not really tempting at all.
	Right, so you're still pre-love and it's hard to get, right?
	When you're still pre-love, right?
	And, you know, pre-self-love and all of that.
	But man, you should look back and say, I'm as tough as fucking nails.
	I got through that.
	I got through divorce.
	I got through verbal abuse.
	I got through neglect. I got through being diagnosed.
	I got through on this crap.
	I got through SSRIs.
	I got through suicidality.
	I got through commitments, being hospitalized.
	I got through all of that shit, right?
	Fuck! Great!
	Yeah. Good.
	You should be incredibly proud and honor yourself for that.
	Great. You were born into a war.
	You made it out alive. Good for you.
	That's fantastic. It doesn't define you as a soldier, because you didn't choose to be in the war.
	And there was no way out of the war.
	You made it through.
	You came out in one piece.
	Fuck. Great.
	Good for you. That's the kind of pride that my friend who's had the pool and the summer's off, he'll never know that.
	Why would you deny yourself that?
	I mean, this is great. You sit there and say, oh man, my past means that I'm broken.
	No! No!
	Your past means you're heroic.
	That's the true and valid interpretation of it.
	That's the fact. You're not broken if you walked out.
	You know, like the old thing, there's no bad landing if you can walk away from it, says the pilot, right?
	Yeah. Be proud.
	You went through hell, and you came out intact.
	And the great danger, of course, of all of this stuff is you sit there and say, well, the future is going to be just like the past.
	The future's going to be just like the past.
	I have nothing to look forward to but a continuation of what was.
	Why? You happen to be born to assholes.
	Selfish, mean, abusive, neglectful, userous, petty, your dad having temper tantrums about shit that happened on the bus, come on.
	What is he, a toddler? It's an insult to toddlers.
	So you just happen to be born to assholes.
	It's not on you. It doesn't stick to you.
	It's just something you had to survive, and I'm sorry that you did.
	I'm really sorry that you did.
	But it's so wrong to just keep doing it when you're out of it.
	Yeah. Well, that story that you wrote in Real-Time Relationships, Simon the Boxer, really left an impression because I know Just that whole stress that you get when you're out of the arena, so to speak, it's like you recreate that.
	And I realize that's what's going on with so much of my anger and just the fact that I'm out on my own and I'm still feeling that, I think a lot about that.
	About the past or about your susceptibility to it?
	I think both.
	I guess maybe the susceptibility to it.
	But why did you stay so long?
	Why did I stay with my parents so long?
	Yeah. I was just afraid.
	I was afraid to go out on my own.
	I was afraid to succeed and I didn't know what any of that meant or what that would look like even.
	Well, you self-medicated, right?
	You chose to smoke drugs, you chose to play endless video games, right?
	Right. And you were drugged, right?
	I mean, the medications, so to speak?
	Yeah. Right.
	Yeah. So then you did get out, but there was to some degree a choice to stay in, right?
	Yeah. And you can take that and say, okay, well, the more I'm susceptible to the past, the worse things are for me, so why not just go completely opposite direction and say, I'm out, I'm out, I'm out.
	Yeah. You know, it's like you break out of prison.
	You're unjustly imprisoned.
	You break out of prison, then the first thing you do is buy a house and say, shit, man, you've got to put some bars on these windows.
	I'm going to need some guards in here.
	I'm going to need some shitty food.
	I'm going to need really loud roommates.
	And I really want to be scared of the shower.
	No, you're out. You're going to reproduce the prison when you get out, right?
	Yeah. One of my biggest inspirations to do all that was my brother.
	I mean, I spent a lot of time talking with him, and I saw what he did.
	I mean, he got out of the country and has his own family now, and it's like...
	I knew that deep down I wanted that and of course that that wasn't what I was going to get in living my parents.
	So that's what pretty much pushed me to do all that.
	Right. So you have a lot to be grateful for then, having that inspiration.
	Yeah. Yeah, I do.
	Right. Well, all I can tell you, man, is that every time you allow yourself to be miserable, you're just selling the present to pay a pass that doesn't exist anymore.
	You are bringing a childhood to life that is long dead.
	I mean, you're almost longer an adult than you were a child.
	Yeah. Are you off the marijuana?
	Yeah. Okay. So now you have a choice.
	Now you have knowledge, right? So now you have a choice.
	And the choice is when the past comes up to say, yeah, it had an effect.
	I mean, you can't start, there's no mulligan for life as a whole, right?
	So it has an effect, right?
	For sure. And we got to deal with those effects and that's fine, right?
	But you can't internalize it as having anything to do with you.
	If someone, you know, geez, like I'm telling you this seriously, like when I was in Australia, And the hard left, the communists and so on were gunning for me when I was giving my speaking tour.
	Like, I would go to the washroom.
	I would be very situationally alert.
	I'd keep my head on a swivel, man.
	My sit-rep would be very, very clear.
	Like, reporting at all times what's going on around me, right?
	And I would go into a cubicle to pee rather than...
	Because I didn't want to get stabbed.
	Because there was violence around in that tour, right?
	And Deb wasn't going to get any protection from the cops, right?
	Yeah. So...
	That...
	Now, but if somebody had stabbed me, I wouldn't sit there and say, well, I'm a bad person.
	Like, oh, man, that's really tough.
	And I wouldn't sit there and say, well, I never got stabbed.
	Yeah, I got stabbed, but it's not on me.
	I'm just there to... Make a speech and answer some questions.
	I'm there to go meet some listeners and, you know, have chats and dinners and enjoy a philosophical community.
	I'm not there to hurt anyone.
	I'm not there to incite any violence.
	I never have been. I've always been quite the opposite, right?
	Because, you know, the people who incite violence, they get their way, right?
	Unfortunately, that's just the way things are.
	But if I'd have been stabbed, I wouldn't sit there and say, oh, well, I wasn't stabbed.
	Yeah, you were stabbed and you were traumatized as a child.
	Absolutely. But I wouldn't sit there and say, I stabbed myself.
	I wouldn't sit there and say, you know, and that's even different because I'd have more reason to say I'm responsible because I chose to go to Australia and go on a tour, right?
	You know, we were being hunted through the streets, literally, in Australia.
	People were hunting for us. It was wild.
	But, or like, you know, if I'd taken a, when I was in Hong Kong, right, if I'd taken a tear gas to the face or to the eye or whatever, I wouldn't sit there and say, well, I stabbed myself in the eye.
	Now, I chose to go.
	I chose to march. I chose to go to the place of conflict and violence.
	So I would have, but as a kid, you did none of those things.
	It has nothing to do with you.
	Nothing to do with you at all.
	Okay. Is there anything else that you wanted to say before we wrap things up?
	Um, no, I don't think I have anything.
	I feel like it's a big wake-up call and there's just, I feel a lot of sadness because of realizing now how much I didn't really empathize with my past self and how big that has an effect of just trying to Look beyond that and just forget about it or whatever.
	Just be enthusiastic.
	Every time you side with your parents, you re-traumatize yourself.
	Yeah. Right? So if you're enthusiastic, just be enthusiastic.
	Call someone up and say, hey, you know what?
	I feel really enthusiastic. See how they behave.
	Now, if they try and squelch your enthusiasm, because the world is full of joy killers, right?
	The world is full of, oh, there's a light out there.
	Let's smash it. Oh, there's something beautiful there.
	Let's smash it. Oh, there's something great.
	There's someone happy. Let's smash it.
	The joy killers are endemic out there, which is why we've had so many zombie movies lately, right?
	Every time, every time you side with your parents and you yell at yourself or you take ownership for what they did, every time you side with your parents, you just re-traumatize.
	It's not post-traumatic stress disorder, in my humble opinion.
	Again, I can't diagnose it.
	It's nothing to do with it. I'm just talking from the language, right?
	It's not post-traumatic because if you're still siding with your parents, if you're still blaming yourself, if you're still insulting yourself, if you're still angry with yourself, it's not post-traumatic.
	It's present-traumatic.
	You understand? Yeah.
	Like if I go to war and then I keep putting Saving Private Ryan on a loop, it's not the war that's causing me the activation of my trauma, it's what I'm doing in the present, right?
	Yeah. So just do the opposite, right?
	Be enthusiastic and just own none of it.
	And if you feel bad about the past, if you feel bad or you feel like, oh, I'm a loser, I'm this or that, if all the verbal abuse stuff comes in, just say, no, I'm empathizing with the child.
	I'm not siding with the parents.
	I'm not siding with the abusers because I am a precious human being and worthy of protection.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	All right.
	Well, listen, man, keep me posted.
	Stay strong. And again, if you are feeling at all self-destructive, I'm absolutely going to hold you to your promise.
	And I appreciate your call tonight.
	Thank you so much. And thanks everyone so much for listening.
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	I guess I'm going to try...
	and end this in some sort of graceful and positive manner before Windows is like, oh my God, it's got an update.
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