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Nov. 17, 2020 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:25:18

"RAISE YOUR DAMN STANDARDS!" Freedomain Call In

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	Good morning, everybody.
	It's Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain.
	I hope you're doing well in the Bataan Desert Death March of the U.S. election.
	I hope you're staying alert and I hope you're standing up for what you believe in.
	Now, we got a couple of callers this morning and I wanted to answer a question that I got.
	And somebody wrote and said, Well, okay, so the pure experience thing is kind of important, right?
	So I had put 10,000 to 15,000.
	I've put in about 50,000 hours of philosophy, so that's just something that's going to accumulate.
	And for those people who don't sort of understand the value of experience, it's important to not just sort of wander into a field where people are very experienced, get discouraged, and say, well, I can't.
	Achieve that, right? Because that's not the way that life works.
	When you walk into areas where people are very experienced and skilled, as a result of that experience, you don't want to compare what you do with people who are more experienced.
	Where the experience doesn't count as much as the talent.
	It's really, really important. So for singers, like if you have a great singing voice, then you kind of open up your mouth.
	And if you're a talented singer, which means more than just having the voice, but having the connection, the emotional connection.
	Like if you go and listen to Celine Dion put out her first album with songs her mom wrote when she was like, I don't know, 14 or something like that.
	And you listen to...
	Celine Dion sing when she's in her early to mid-teens.
	I mean, she sounds like an angel.
	And she's got that passionate connection to the songs that kind of characterizes her singing.
	If you look at, there's a documentary on Whitney Houston, a tragic victim of childhood sexual abuse, of course, that claimed her later with drug addiction and overdoses.
	And you listen to her sing when she's very young, same kind of thing.
	You look at Katy Perry back when she was doing her Christian albums.
	She sounds wonderful even sort of back in the day.
	So if you have that kind of skill that's sort of built in, then experience certainly helps, but you're kind of starting way down the road.
	But when it comes to something like this...
	I was not known as particularly verbally fluid, coherent, engaging when I was starting out.
	In fact, I remember being at a friend of mine's place when I was probably about 14 and there being a very big debate about whether colonialism, British colonialism in particular, Was it a good or a bad thing?
	And I couldn't really contribute that much.
	I hadn't worked on the fluidity on the engagement and so on, right?
	So I will tell you a few of the things that I did very briefly, and hopefully that will be important.
	Okay. So when I was in the business world, And when I was, because I was a co-founder of a software company, for those who don't know, I was chief technical officer.
	I ran the company, had like 35 people.
	It's a fairly big and decent deal.
	And we successfully went up against IBM and Microsoft when it came to selling what are called EMIS, Environmental Management Information Systems, how companies reduce pollution and manage regulatory requirements and so on.
	Now, because I was in a position where I had a fairly substantial budget, I would get people who would call up To sell me things.
	And it was very easy to differentiate the two types of salespeople.
	Colloquially called the successful and the unsuccessful salespeople.
	Because sales has got kind of a bad reputation.
	Because sales is like...
	It's sleazy.
	It's Herb Tarlick from WKRP back in the day.
	It's, you know, suits like the cutout of a Volkswagen...
	Backseat cover from 1968.
	And it's considered to be, you know, a little slimy, a little manipulative, a little, yeah, you do it, you do it, right?
	Now, those salespeople are not good salespeople.
	And in my mind, when I was in the business world, I'd call them the quota people.
	And the quota people, so in sales, you've got to be out talking to customers.
	I mean, you've got to be out talking to customers.
	I remember talking to a guy. Who worked at a really big tech company back in the day.
	And he said, he was a salesman and he said, I'm out here because the manager, the ultimate sales manager for the country, came in and saw a bunch of salespeople at their desk.
	And do you know what he said? He said, I don't want you here.
	Get out of this building.
	I don't want you here.
	Because I know when you're here, you're not actually selling things.
	Now, maybe you're doing your expenses or you're filling out your reports or you're doing some research.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah. Get out.
	I don't care if you go do that stuff at a coffee shop.
	But when I see you here, I know you're not out there selling.
	So get out of this office and go sell something.
	And so they did.
	And you have a quota, right? And so bad salespeople, what they do is they're kind of lazy at the beginning of the month.
	And then towards the end of the month, they got a quota, right?
	So they get really insistent.
	And you know, like you can't fool anyone.
	Everything passes between two human beings.
	Now, you can either choose to accept what's passing between you and another human being.
	And of course, 90% of communication is nonverbal.
	Or you can reject it, but it's passing either way.
	The information is passing either way.
	And so the quota people would call me up, and you'd know, it would start like around the last week of the month, and they'd call me up and they'd be really insistent.
	So two things. They wouldn't listen, they wouldn't ask me my needs, and they'd be really insistent.
	I know that sounds like three things, but the first two are kind of combined, right?
	And I remember there was a guy who wanted, he was calling me up, and he wanted to sell me a multifunction printer.
	And he was just like, oh yeah, multifunction printers are great.
	And what they do is they read off the spec sheet and they're just like, here are all the great features of our printer.
	And our printer is per page per cost.
	And it's like... Why don't you shut up and ask me if I need a printer or not?
	And so it's a push sale.
	And sales don't work in the long run if it's a push sale.
	You know, it's like if you're in business and you get this call.
	I got a couple of these when I was in the business world.
	You get this call. And...
	In the call, it's some skeevy guy from some low-rent stock trading shop.
	And they're all like, this stock is going to go to the moon.
	You've got to get in now.
	You've got to get in before it's too late.
	We're talking 2x, 3x, 5x.
	You know, to which you just say, well, look, if you've got such a hot stock tip, why on earth are you trying to sell it to me?
	It's sort of like somebody who says, can you imagine somebody calls you up and says, I have a winning lottery ticket.
	Oh no, even better. They go, you're in the grocery store, you're in the convenience store, and they say, I have a winning lottery ticket.
	I just won $100,000.
	Why don't you give me half the price of the ticket and I'll give you half the price of the winnings?
	Well, that would never happen.
	Because if he's got the winning lottery ticket, he's going to cash it in for himself, not split it with other people.
	It's the same thing with stocks, of course.
	If you have some sure thing, whatever that is, right?
	If you have some sure thing, then the last thing you're going to do is go out and flog it to other people.
	You're going to buy it yourself, and why don't you get all these 2x, 5x, 10x?
	Why don't you do all of that, right?
	Could be a fine thing to do, but...
	The quota people are the people who, they need to meet their quota.
	They want to get their bonus. They want to get a raise.
	They want to keep their job, and it's all about them.
	Now, in life, we're selling.
	And the question is, what are you selling?
	Now, once you can identify what you're selling, then How you sell it will become immensely more compelling.
	How you go about selling it.
	So what are you selling?
	And this is, you know, because I was in the business world and because I've been debating since I was in my mid-teens and all of that.
	I mean, I know enough when I started the show.
	So why did the show become so successful?
	Well, because I kind of know what I'm doing.
	And a lot of that came out of the business world, right?
	Now, when I was in the business world, what were we selling?
	Right? Were we selling an environmental management information system?
	Yes, but that's not what we were selling.
	That was a means to an end because no one's going to buy that for itself, right?
	So what are we selling? We're selling a better management of the environment.
	We're selling good PR. Hey, we just bought this environmental management information system and we've reduced our emissions by X, Y, and Z percent.
	We're also providing, to some degree, protection against liability.
	Because if something goes wrong but you've been managing it well, then you can resist liability issues pretty significantly.
	We're also selling some kind of protection from negative state action because if you have a management system and you found not to be in compliance, then you have a particularly strong defense against that kind of thing.
	So... We're selling a cleaner world for your children.
	We're selling fresher air.
	We're selling cleaner groundwater and lower emissions and all this kind of stuff.
	So we were selling a better life for people.
	Less stress, cleaner air, a greater job satisfaction, a feeling of virtue for cleaning up the environment.
	So what are we selling?
	It wasn't a piece of technology.
	It was a tangible benefit to other people.
	Now benefits Are twofold.
	It's either the addition of a positive or the avoidance of a negative.
	I mean, this is all it kind of comes down to in the world, right?
	When you sell someone something, it's either the provision of a benefit or the avoidance of a negative.
	And if you can combine those two together, it's a very, very compelling situation.
	So in the environmental world, yes, we were selling a benefit, a cleaner environment, better PR, better perception of the company's commitment to environmentalism, and so on, and that's a positive.
	And we were also selling the avoidance of a negative, which was liability issues, regulatory issues, and so on.
	So it was a very compelling case to make.
	This is in your life as a whole.
	This has nothing to do with my business history or this show or even this guy's show asking this question.
	This is your life as a whole.
	What value are you bringing to people around you?
	And it's tough. For those of us who grew up with bad parents, absent parents, abusive parents, negative parents, destructive parents, addictive parents, whatever, then it's really hard to figure out this win-win benefit.
	Relationship with other human beings because, you know, we were exploited or ignored or abused or whatever, right?
	So it was all just negative.
	We were just trying to survive. And we couldn't really bring anything positive to our parents other than being a poison container for their own screwed-upness, which is really the avoidance of a negative on their part by dumping their trauma on us, right?
	Recreating it and getting it out of their system, at least temporarily, while, of course, making it worse, as all addictions tend to do.
	That's a big question in your life.
	Why does a woman buy makeup?
	What are they selling? Are they selling face paint?
	Are they selling mascara?
	Are they selling lipstick? No. I mean, those are the tangible goods, but nobody buys that stuff and throws it in a drawer.
	I now own lipstick. No.
	Why do you buy lipstick?
	You buy lipstick to put the lipstick on your lips, to unconsciously signal to men that you're sexually aroused, And therefore gain power over them.
	Sorry. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, she of the harlot lips, but that's the reality, right?
	It is a signal of sexual arousal, possibly orgasm, and that's why women do.
	Why do they contour their face?
	Why do they smooth out their foundations?
	Because smooth, even clear features are a sign of youth and fertility, and thus gives you power and control over men.
	I mean, you know, for those of you who don't know this kind of stuff, I mean, I'm sure you do, but I remember when I, it was back in the software days, a woman came in, and she was a programmer, and she was very, very attractive.
	And this, of course, is a pretty rare breed in the programming world, right?
	And the ripple that she sent through all of the, uh, like the male programmers, because they were desperate to have her come and work in the business, right?
	And, uh, It was funny because the male programmers, you know, all popped their heads in to say hi and all that.
	And all of the female programmers and female workers in the company I ran were all rolling their eyes because it was all completely obvious.
	Oh, you really want to check?
	You didn't check in on the last three obese guys, but you want to check in on this young woman who's very attractive, right?
	It's just, there's so much power in that.
	There's so much power in that.
	Most women reproduced throughout human history, but fewer than half of the men did in various places and various times.
	So it was very much a pussy beggar environment, and that gives women a lot of power.
	So what are they buying? Well, they're buying two things with makeup, right?
	They're buying a positive, which is gaining influence, power, and control over men.
	And I don't say that in a negative way.
	It's just a description of the mechanics and the interaction.
	And also, they are avoiding a negative.
	They are avoiding a negative, which is being ignored by men, or should the 10% of women who ask men out, should they go up and ask out a man, they're avoiding the pain of rejection or reducing the pain of rejection, right?
	There's a funny old Friends episode where Ross is infatuated with Rachel, as kind of comes and goes in the show, and he brings a big basket to her work and wants to set up a picnic because he hasn't seen her all week.
	And because he's so keen on spending time with his girlfriend, the other girl in the office who's kind of plain says, oh man, that's it.
	I'm going to start wearing makeup.
	Because she understands that makeup brings the boyfriend who brings the goodies and all that kind of stuff, right?
	So what are you offering to people?
	You don't have to be a salesperson in order to be a salesperson because life is selling.
	Life is interacting and selling.
	So what are you offering to people?
	Now, if you understand the benefit that you can bring to people, then You are going to be much more accessible to them because we always have antennae out there for the quota people.
	The people who want you to buy from them because they've got to meet their quota.
	They want you to date them just because they think you're pretty and you're high status or whatever it is.
	Or they want you to believe in their political ideology because they're dependent on the government and they don't want a free market.
	Or whatever. The people who have this urgency to get something from you that is for them.
	That is for them, not you.
	That's the power in life.
	If you can fully understand and get behind, and whatever you can do in life where you can fully get behind the benefit you can provide to other people, that's an amazing place to be.
	It's incredibly powerful.
	What benefit are you bringing?
	How are other people going to be better for interacting with you?
	Well, I mean, I just saw this post on Facebook that two free domain listeners got married.
	I see free domain listeners who get married, who have kids, and also there's real value in that because they know that their values are They're simpatico, they are complimentary and so on, and they have reasonable methods of resolving disputes, and they are not going to be violent towards their kids or aggressive towards their kids.
	So all of that stuff is kind of dealt with or sorted out, so to speak, right?
	So what benefit am I bringing in this conversation?
	There's the form and then there's the content.
	So the form is, I think, courage in the face of, you know, sometimes bottomless levels of sociopathic social hostility and aggression against me.
	I'm going to stand tall against that kind of stuff.
	So that hopefully, as people have inspired me to be courageous, hopefully inspires other people to be courageous, but not foolhardy, not to the point where you destroy yourself.
	Or are destroyed or trigger that destruction.
	So you want to provide a benefit, maybe inspiring people and so on.
	And the benefit, of course, is to untangle your thinking.
	To live in a manner that is consistent.
	To have, say, the non-aggression principle from the root of your personal interactions to your parenting, to your marriage, to society as a whole, to politics, to just have...
	A consistent worldview, which really uncomplicates your personal relations if you apply that consistently.
	It complicates your relationship with society, right?
	Like if you switch between, as I do sometimes, the alternative media and the mainstream media.
	The alternative media, it's like, okay, there's a lot of truth, there's a lot of honesty, there's a lot of, you know, there's some trolley stuff, and there's some real consistency there.
	And the mainstream media... I mean, it's mostly just falsehoods, right?
	And so that's the tension, right?
	If you just, all you do is go with the mainstream media, your relationship with the society as a whole is not that complicated because, you know, you're just like salmon swimming with the current.
	Everybody lines up the same way.
	But if you then go to the alternative media, your relationship to truth is often much less complicated because you're getting honest statements Or at least a variety of statements which allow you to compare and contrast rather than just this one uniform drumbeat of propaganda.
	So your relationship to the truth becomes less complicated but your relationship to society becomes more complicated and then you can make your decisions about how much you want to interact with the society that wants to ostracize you and attack you and so on, all of that.
	So, once you figure out the benefit that you're providing to people, you have to be honest about the downsides, obviously, right?
	And I've always said about this in the show.
	My very first book, I've just put these out as audiobooks on Dailymotion, but my very first book, On Truth, The Tyranny of Illusion, at least my first book that was philosophically devoted to philosophy and was not fiction.
	So my very first book, On Truth, The Tyranny of Illusion, started off with, you really, really don't want to read this book.
	This book is not going to be good for you in the short run.
	It's going to make your life very difficult.
	It's going to make your life very challenging.
	It's going to provoke a lot of conflict.
	It's going to disorient you.
	I can plug in from The Matrix. It's tough.
	And that's why.
	It's On Truth. The title was very deliberately chosen.
	The book is On Truth. These are things that are true.
	The Tyranny of Illusion.
	So when you devote yourself to the truth, You bump up against the tyranny of illusion.
	The tyranny of illusion is socially enforced, is politically enforced, that illusions are tyrannical.
	Because true statements don't need violence to sustain themselves, but false statements need aggression and violence in order to sustain themselves, right?
	This is why you know if you have 100,000 people marching in Washington, as happened last night.
	For the Stop the Steal, for the MAGA stuff, nobody brought it up their windows and there was no violence.
	However, the hard leftists and Antifa were attacking men, sorry, men, well, men, obviously, women and children and restaurant goers and so on, but they waited until the crowds thinned out and then attacked the stragglers, right?
	As you would expect. So, true statements.
	And this is how you know that the people who are conservatives are closer to the truth than the people who are On the far left, right?
	Because on the far left they need violence and violence is a significant tell for falsehood.
	Lies and fists go hand in hand, right?
	I mean, so the people who focus on censorship, right?
	The people who want other people censored are confessing that their ideas are terrible and they have no idea how to defend them.
	So when you find out what value you're bringing to others, then it's not about you anymore.
	Because once you can get your ego aside, And you can introduce a benefit to people that's very compelling to them.
	Once it's not about you.
	Once it's not about, I need you to agree with me for some, I've got to meet my quota, I've got an urgency to it, I'll feel depressed if you don't agree with me, I'll get angry if you don't agree with me, I'll feel despair if you don't agree with me, you must agree with me to benefit me!
	Wow. All right, nose is crazy itchy this morning.
	If it's about you, it won't work.
	It won't work. And even if it does work in some temporary manner, you make some sales or whatever, it won't be satisfying.
	And you won't make sales to people for good reasons.
	And so I started this show, of course.
	There was no financial incentive.
	In fact, it was negative. It cost time and money to get started.
	I had to pay for bandwidth, which was crazy expensive, back in 2005.
	And it was only later that I thought, oh, well, actually people suggested and said, oh, why don't you start taking donations?
	And then that's sort of how it built.
	Because I really care, I really care about bringing philosophy to the world.
	Are there benefits to me?
	It's mixed, to be honest.
	You know, yeah, there's some benefits.
	I think the world is more rational because of what it is I've been doing, but that rationality provokes hostility from the anti-rational forces.
	So it's been a real mixed bag for me personally.
	You know, there's certainly been times where it's like, oh, I shouldn't have done this, right?
	I should have stayed anonymous and used a computer voice or something like that, right?
	Yeah. But it wouldn't have worked, obviously, that way.
	So it's been kind of mixed for me.
	I think it's been better for the world as a whole to have this conversation, this rational conversation in the world.
	And so I've done it for the sake of bringing strength, compassion, rationality, moral courage, and consistency to the world.
	And yeah, it's been pretty brutal on my life at times.
	At times it's been fantastic.
	At times it's been really brutal.
	And I think why it succeeds or at least succeeded in its heyday is because people understood that I was not doing this for some kind of ego thing.
	And you'll notice that people, if they can't rebut your arguments, they will simply malign your motives, right?
	And they'll say, oh, he's saying this because he's a racist, or he's saying this because he's a whatever, right?
	A cult leader, a white supremacist, a Nazi, whatever it is, right?
	And what they're doing is they're saying, they're trying to get away from the benefit that the listener could receive from getting this information, which is considerable when it comes to philosophy.
	It really is the only way to get happiness on any consistent basis.
	And so what they do is they try and move you from someone who is an honorable salesperson into the category of a quota person.
	You know, Steph is saying this because he hates this or loves that or only wants this or just for money.
	Like, you do this for money.
	Oh, my God. Easier ways to make a buck.
	I was in software, man. I was an entrepreneur.
	So, because the purity of motive, the purity of this is going to be a benefit to you, This is important for you to know, to learn, to understand.
	This is incredibly important for you.
	This is very helpful to you.
	This is going to make your life better.
	It's going to make it harder, for sure.
	But quitting illusions, like quitting smoking or drinking or cocaine, is pretty tough.
	It's pretty tough, but it's kind of essential.
	Because illusions will get you killed.
	Illusions will put you in the grave.
	The illusion of egalitarianism gives rise to the dictatorship of communism and fascism and that gets hundreds of millions of people killed.
	The illusion of the moral legitimacy of the state got a quarter of a billion people killed just last century outside of war.
	Illusions are The most dangerous mind virus that exists.
	I mean, this is what's so strange, right?
	The coronavirus, with its 99.9% survival rate, is far less dangerous than statism.
	Far less dangerous than statism, especially because it provokes more and more statism.
	Now in Mayor Lightfoot's Chicago.
	It's Chicago, I think. I mean, she's telling you who you can have over for dinner.
	That's one thing if you're Hannibal Lecter.
	It's quite another thing if you're just someone who loves their family.
	So, if you focus on bringing a benefit to people and you become a clear pane of glass through which people can see the benefit, then it's not about you anymore.
	If you make glass, this is the last analogy I'll use.
	If you make glass, if somebody builds a big house on a Big hill with a beautiful view of the Napa Valley or whatever it is, right?
	And they say, I want a big, big pane of glass to look out at this beautiful view I built this whole house for.
	Now, if you're the glass maker, the last thing you want is for people to notice the glass, right?
	The quality of you as a glass maker is the degree to which People don't even notice the class.
	And I've constantly said to people, forget about me, I'm not important in the equation.
	The view. I'm a glass maker.
	The view of philosophy, that's what's important.
	I am not important in the equation.
	It's not about me. Of course, people will try and make it about me.
	Focus on Steph! Focus on Steph!
	Because if they get you to look at the glass, you can't see the view.
	They ever go up to this, right? If you're looking at a beautiful view and then there's a fly walking on the glass or there's a spot on the glass and you focus on the fly or the spot, your vision changes, right?
	I mean, you focus on what's close and now you can't see the view anymore.
	The view blurs. And so small-minded people will always, always, always try to get you to focus on the motivations and the personality and the person.
	That way you're looking this fucking close to your face and you don't get the view that is inspiring.
	Be invisible in the process.
	Bring the view to people.
	Constantly try to, in a sense, distract people from you and get them to focus on the view.
	And practice, practice, practice.
	So I hope that helps.
	I know that that's fairly abstract, but excellence in the realm of philosophy is success in the implanting of rational processes in the minds of people.
	And if they're focusing on you, they're not focusing on how to think themselves.
	And constantly undermine your own authority because the last thing you want to be is an oracle to people, right?
	Because that way they'll focus on you.
	They've got the fly on the window and they're not focusing on the view.
	Get them to just relentlessly focus on the view.
	Become invisible in the process as best you can.
	And if it's all about, look at this beautiful view.
	Look what an incredible, I mean, yes, every now and then someone will come along and say, my God, that's incredible glass.
	It's like it's not even there.
	It's like the glass doesn't even exist.
	It's like I'm standing in this weirdly windless mountainside.
	Okay, every now and then people will notice that, and I think that's kind of cool.
	And Tucker Carlson talked about this when he kind of half begged, half commanded the New York Times not to dox him a second time when he said, I don't want to make the show about me.
	The show's about you. The show's about the listenership.
	And that's important.
	And that's a Christian thing too, right?
	Jesus didn't focus on what was best for him.
	He focused on what was best for the world as a whole.
	All right. So that's it for my intro.
	Sorry, it's a little longer than I thought.
	But, you know, it is important.
	And this is not about a show.
	This is not about my show or this guy's show.
	This is about life as a whole.
	You've got to figure out. If you're not bringing benefit to people, then you're exploiting them for your own personal gain.
	And that's not a productive or particularly moral way.
	To interact with the planet.
	All right. Thank you for your patience.
	Let's get the call. All right.
	So I would like to invite the listener who wrote the question, who's on the call now, to see if he has any thoughts, any responses, or if he has enough to think about.
	So if you wouldn't mind just a meeting and let us know.
	Hey, Stefan. Thanks for that.
	The main thing, I guess, is the view.
	It's like, yes, I get it, and that's what I want to share with people.
	But the question is, how to make the glass when I'm kind of shoddy at the moment?
	What steps I can do to make that glass better and more clear?
	Okay, so that's fine.
	But you're thinking about it, if you don't mind me saying so, I think you're thinking about it backwards, because you're focusing on making the glass, but you only make the glass because of the view.
	So my question is, what is the view that you want people to see?
	The way that philosophy can help your personal life, like it did for me, thanks to the way that you showed it to me.
	And I think that was the thing.
	The way that you showed it to me allowed me to see it.
	And the way it can affect the world and how it can bring more peace, essentially.
	Okay, so then you focus on the benefits.
	And see, here's the thing, too.
	Are part of the benefits, right?
	So if you say something is tough, that's part of the benefit, right?
	It's the old line from JFK about going to the moon, we do this thing not because it is easy, but because it is hard.
	I don't know, I can't really do a Boston accent or whatever the hell he had.
	But, so yeah, saying that something is difficult is perfectly fine.
	I mean, the people who want to climb a mountain often want to climb the most difficult mountain.
	They want to do the most difficult things.
	So, the view, what is the view that you want people to see?
	Forget the glass, right? I mean, because the glass is only built facing a great view.
	Nobody builds a big, beautiful pane of glass to face a brick wall, right?
	I mean, first of all, you have to have the view, then you can focus on the glass.
	So, the view. Give me your elevator pitch.
	Like, why should people listen to you?
	What is it that you want to bring to them?
	Essentially, I've discovered that philosophy, proper philosophy, proper methodology can bring you the most joy in your life, the best relationships, and The greatest sense of peace possible, even though it's quite difficult and there's consequences to get there.
	And it's essentially the foundation to solve the major problems in the world as well.
	So if we have bad philosophy, there's major problems in the world.
	There's violence, there's state problems, there's war.
	And philosophy is the solution to do it.
	If we properly follow it and properly spread it and just show the truth, Then the world can be a better place and your personal life can be a better place.
	So it's the twin realities of a good personal life and a good world.
	So yeah, personal benefit of happiness and social benefit of a reduction of violence, the violence which could get, well, has historically and still contemporaneously, gets millions and millions of people killed, right?
	Exactly, yes. Right.
	So, I mean, that's a pretty amazing view.
	I mean, that's a pretty amazing view, and that's a pretty amazing benefit to provide to people.
	Now, of course, there's the methodology of sort of how you go about it, how you implement it, and so on.
	Because it's, you know, every business plan says, we want to make more money than we spend.
	We're aiming for profit. It's like, yeah, but how you do it, right?
	You do it is the question, right?
	So if you understand the stakes, like the higher the stakes, the less the personal value.
	Investment. I mean, sorry, it's not a really, really good way to put it.
	The better the view, the clearer the glass, the higher the stakes in philosophy, the more you want people to focus on philosophy, not on you.
	Now, people are inevitably drawn to judging people rather than ideas because we're raised by women and educated mostly by women who tend to judge people rather than ideas in general.
	And so the question is, how do you ninja out of people's inevitable focus upon you?
	Because if you say something that's troubling to people, the first thing they want to do is discredit you so they can pretend that the disquietude, the troubling aspect that they're experiencing, is to do with you being a bad guy rather than them living in a world of illusion.
	So how do you get yourself out of the way?
	How do you become clear yourself to...
	Get people to focus on the view, not the glass.
	I think that's the answer that I'm searching for, which I don't know yet.
	And over time, I hope to find it.
	Well, so here's the thing, right?
	So if you don't tell anything about yourself, then you will arouse people's curiosity.
	And so, I mean, I've been pretty clear.
	Like, why does anti-rationality bother me so much?
	Well, partly it's philosophical, of course, but a lot of it has to do with the fact that I was raised by a violent, anti-rational woman.
	And I'm now old enough to have seen the arc of her life and how incredibly destructive, focusing on vanity, on domination, on bullying, on physical looks alone, how incredibly destructive that is to a human being.
	So... Yeah.
	So, I mean, I can answer that question for people, and that's like saying, okay, you have to tell people there's glass, otherwise they're going to reach past to hurt themselves, or they might walk forward and bump their nose, or they might run forward and shatter the glass.
	I mean, you've got to tell people there's glass.
	In other words, you have to sort of say a little bit about yourself, and that way it can be acknowledged, okay, there's glass here, now let's look at the view, right?
	Because people are going to be curious about you.
	So it's fine to say a little bit about yourself, to talk about your motives and so on.
	Because if you don't clearly express your motives, then people will imagine whatever they want.
	And I'm not saying that's a rational process, but, you know, you've got to deal with the world as it is, right?
	So speak a little bit about yourself, the costs, be honest about the costs, because there's nothing worse than the people who are like, oh, this is an old Bloom County.
	A cartoon from many, many years ago.
	I don't think that guy's done anything in forever, but...
	Berkeley Breathed?
	Did I get that right? It's a weird name.
	But there was this penguin who wanted to lose weight.
	And... I'm going to go on the all-asparagus, broccoli, lemon water diet, and it's going to be a completely pain-free way to lose weight.
	And somebody was saying, like, couldn't you just, like, eat less and exercise more?
	No, no, no, no!
	It's not how it's going to be.
	And so, yeah, the challenges, the difficulties, and, you know, once that's out of the way, Then, okay, the glass is there.
	Let's focus on the view.
	So saying a little bit about yourself, introducing yourself, your motives, and so on.
	Because people are going to ascribe motives to you anyway, right?
	And you can either be honest, obviously, about your motives, and that's going to help.
	Some people will still ascribe motives to you, and they'll assume you're lying about your motives or whatever.
	But people will be, okay, so these are his motives, and okay, let's look at the view together.
	The glass is there. Let's look at the view together.
	So I would say a little bit about yourself, what's motivating you, and why you are taking on the very powerful and very dangerous anti-rational forces in the world.
	And now that's changed a lot since when I began, right?
	When I began, the anti-rational forces weren't nearly as strong, but it's kind of funny to think, right, that the people who were 20 now were five when I started.
	The people who are 25 were 10 when I started.
	So the people in charge, a lot of social media censors, they were prepubescent when I started.
	So I don't know if I would start again now.
	I don't know. You are, and good for you, right?
	I think it's fantastic. But I'm also a little older, and the sales do droop a little bit as time goes on.
	I would say acknowledge a little bit about yourself and your motives and so on and the difficulties that you've experienced.
	And then I would say once you've talked about your motives, I think my third show was like my history and my personal life and all that kind of stuff.
	So get that out of the way so that people can focus on the view again.
	And as far as things on the fly, that's a lot of self-trust.
	I mean, there's a very deep and powerful set of wisdoms within us that are way below our conscious mind.
	You know, there's the gut, which is our second brain.
	You know, a gut instinct, my gut tells me this, and it's a very, very important part of things.
	The dance that we're in with the unconscious, you know, I'm rereading this novel that I wrote like 20 years ago, almost.
	And I had a vision for the novel, That, of course, was a lot closer back in the day to something like objectivism or maybe Dostoevsky and so on.
	But the novel kind of unfolded and you're in this dance, right?
	Because you want to ride the horse, but the horse has its own ideas and it's kind of a collaboration or a partnership.
	If the horse is just a dead slave, it won't move.
	It's got to have some motivation to move.
	And if the horse is in control, then you're not going to be able to get anywhere you want to go, right?
	So it's a real dance. And being in that dance with the horsepower of the unconscious and the gut is really important.
	So there's stuff that's going to erupt from you.
	That you're going to have to just trust.
	Now, when stuff erupts from you, you're going to want to control it.
	And focus it and shape it.
	Now, there's something to do with that.
	I think that's valuable, but you also are going to have to trust that you are a hell of a lot of layers.
	And so the conscious mind and the conscious part, your gut is not going to tell you how to format an XML file as I kind of had to do back in the day at the beginning.
	Now there's all these automated tools, but back then I had to just edit it in Notepad, in this text file.
	Now, your gut is not going to tell you how to do that, but as far as Truth and instinct and what topics to choose.
	You're in a dance with your deeper self.
	Because it's going to push up stuff that's going to be surprising or shocking or alarming to you.
	And that doesn't mean you've got to blurp everything out live, you know.
	But give yourself the freedom to just follow your passions and speak what you most care about.
	And when you kind of unite with that passionate core of yourself and the deeper part of yourself...
	Because philosophy is timeless.
	So it's not about your individual mortal life, your ego, your preferences.
	It's about something much deeper.
	Because the deeper you connect to yourself, the more you can connect to other people.
	I sort of think... It's kind of a silly way of putting it, right?
	But I sort of think of...
	If you take a bunch of popsicle sticks and you put them in ice cubes and let's say that they all melt together at the bottom for some reason or all joined together.
	So individuals, we all kind of look like these popsicle sticks sticking up from this ice cube tray where the ice cubes are all joined together underneath.
	And that's what it is. So individually, we're all kind of different and I have a different name and a different experience and a different height and different weight and we're all different, different, different.
	But then down deep we blend.
	Down deep, we blend.
	And the deeper you can get, the more you can connect to other people.
	But that dance of depth is really, really challenging.
	Because you don't just want to let the unconscious take you over like a possession.
	But at the same time, if you order it too much, it'll go silent or work against you in some ways by putting you in dangerous situations and so on.
	So I think really, really working on...
	Trusting your depth. Trust your depth.
	Now, of course, you could rehearse it, and you can...
	I did shows before I even had a microphone.
	Like, I would just be in the car and talking about stuff.
	So, you know, it's a lot of preparation.
	It's like, you know, Huey Lewis, right?
	I'm unfortunately half deaf now, but, you know, Huey Lewis just, oh, he's an overnight success.
	It's like, no, he was doing music for like 10 years first, and boom, he wasn't even the lead singer and all of that.
	And, yeah, he just...
	Kind of got out of it that way.
	The guy was in Marrakesh playing on a street corner for money with the harmonica.
	He wasn't even singing back in the day, right?
	And so, yeah, just keep practicing.
	You know, you're walking around the house.
	Just do a show. Don't have to have a microphone.
	Just do a show. Just walk it around the house.
	You're going for a walk. Just talk.
	And get used to that deep, deeper part of yourself getting a channel up.
	Because the deeper you can get into yourself, the more and more viscerally you can connect with other people.
	Because that kind of deep connected passion is almost unanswerable.
	And that doesn't mean it's always right or it's often right.
	It doesn't mean it's always right. But it's kind of unanswerable in that it's going to have an impact on people.
	It's going to have an impact on people, whether they like it or not, because it's just very deep.
	I mean, I remember there's a movie.
	Oh, gosh, what was it called? With Marlon Brando.
	It was a pretty gross movie called The Last Tango in Paris.
	And he's got a scene where he's by his mother's deathbed.
	And Leonard Malkin?
	Who is a film reviewer and never an emotional guy that I saw, was playing the scene.
	I'm sure you can find it. Just look for Last Tango in Paris, Deathbed, whatever it is.
	And Marlon Brando was actually thinking about his own mother because of the method actor and all that.
	And he had a very complicated relationship with his own mother, as you can imagine, from a tortured actor.
	And Leonard Moulton...
	Not Michelle Malkin's husband, Leonard Moulton.
	Leonard Moulton, after he played that scene in some TV show, was like in tears himself.
	You know, Viva Brando, he was just, he was weeping himself.
	Because Marlon Brando went really deep and connected with the pain he had about his own mother, did the scene, and that connected to other people.
	And I'm sort of trying to work that kind of stuff.
	I'm no Marlon Brando, of course.
	I'm trying to work that kind of stuff.
	In my audiobook reading of a novel which has some very, very, very, very deep emotions in almost.
	And the more I can connect with those emotions, young boy struggling with the depression of his mother, it's not a stretch, right?
	And yeah, the more you can connect with yourself deep down, the more you will connect with other people for better and for worse.
	So yeah, just practice.
	Just practice verbalizing The deepest parts of yourself.
	Be willing and eager to be surprised by what you say.
	I know it sounds a little crazy like possession, but it's got to be something.
	I don't know how people just kind of say the same stuff over and over again.
	I just don't know. I mean, I'm restless.
	I always want to work on new topics or approach new things from a different way.
	And be willing to be surprised by yourself.
	Engagement is when it's not over-rehearsed.
	When I was in theatre school, there was an old comedian, Jackie Gleason.
	And in theatre school, one thing we worked on quite a lot was what was called anticipation.
	So anticipation is, let's say you're in a scene and someone's going to hit you by surprise.
	Obviously, not really hit you, but what you do is you hold your hand up and pretend to block it, and then they hit your hand, but it sounds like you're hitting your face, and it's all in the reaction.
	And he was in a show, I think in the 50s, called The Honeymooners.
	I never really watched it, but Jackie Gleason was opening, I think it was a bottle of pop or something, and then it just spritzed all over him.
	And I remember my acting teacher saying, that's incredible.
	He has no... Anticipation, right?
	Because normally if you're about to open something and you think it's going to spritz on you, you're like, ah!
	You get it, right? Or you point it away or whatever.
	But he was totally calm, totally relaxed, opened it, and then it spritzed him in the face and he was like shocked.
	He said there's no anticipation in that guy.
	And that's pretty cool.
	So what actors do is they strive for that depth of connection.
	It's fake, but you know, whatever, right?
	They strive for that depth of connection so that they can connect with you as the audience, right?
	And striving for that depth of connection.
	And of course, actors want to speak, even though they probably rehearsed their lines, you know, a hundred times, right?
	They want to speak as if it's spontaneous in the moment, right?
	That's good acting is when it sounds ad-libbed.
	And Marlon Brando used to do this to try and keep them fresh.
	He would have his lines held up by a stage hand, or I guess a film crew hand, And the lines would pop up and he would just glance at them because he didn't want to over-rehearse them because then it would sound rehearsed and it would sound lifeless.
	And being willing to be surprised by what comes up, by how it goes.
	You know, like this conversation, I had a couple of notes, but that's maybe 20% of what I've said.
	You've got to be in that dance with the depth.
	I know that's completely, in a weird way, abstract use of the dance with the depth.
	There you go. Now you can have a philosophy show.
	But don't over-control what it is that you do.
	If you over-control what it is that you do...
	It's like that old David Spade comment where he was talking about some band, Radiohead or something, and he's like, yeah, I went to the concert.
	And I'm like, okay, Radiohead, play Radio Free Europe.
	And play it like it's on the album.
	Don't fuck it up, right?
	Because if the band goes too far off what's on the album, then it's kind of annoying.
	David Bowie used to do that, where he would just remix his songs live.
	I saw him live once, and it's just like, dude, this doesn't sound like anything to do with the album.
	It's fine that you're having a jam session, but it's kind of a little bit far off.
	The only reason people are here is because of what's on the album.
	But on the other hand, if it plays it exactly like the album, then it's not really that much fun, because you might as well just have the recording up there, right?
	So it's got to be spontaneous, not too far off from the original, but also not a carbon copy.
	So they've got to have some spontaneity.
	Like one of the things I love with Queen was, you know, one of my favorite songs, Somebody to Love.
	When they would do that song live, Freddie Mercury would ad lib the beginning, like the first minute of the song.
	And just amazing stuff.
	He would just ad-lib it.
	And he would also ad-lib that falsetto and then that scale down after the chanter, find me somebody to love.
	And that spontaneity was kind of why people went.
	He would play around a little bit with the notes and so on, but the songs were still recognizable.
	So you want to have a pattern that's consistent enough that it's not random.
	But also play, you know, play while you're going and trust that the depths of your instincts are in many ways the best ways to connect with others.
	So anyway, I hope that helps. I know we've got a couple of other callers, but keep me posted about how it goes, all right?
	Absolutely. Thanks a lot. Thanks, man.
	I'm all with the ears. Alright, so next up today, we have a caller who writes, Hello again, Steph.
	I watched your interview with Jesse Lee Peterson about forgiveness recently, and it got me thinking about some things.
	I was raised with the Christian message of forgiveness that, by not forgiving and holding on to resentment, it's like you were drinking a poison in the hopes of killing someone else.
	I would love to know your thoughts on this.
	I also have three specific things related to forgiveness in my journey to a more integrated self.
	1. What are your thoughts on letting go of resentment towards a past that likely won't change or for those who won't truly repent?
	How about self-repentance and forgiveness of yourself?
	Did I have agency at some point as an adult for enabling my mother and or ex-wives?
	Is ignorance an excuse?
	And was I truly ignorant?
	And there's two more points. Two, what is the difference between using your past as a tool for sympathy or an excuse to not change and learning growing from your past?
	How do I know when I'm discussing my past with others that I'm not trying to play the victim, like my mother?
	How will I know when it's time to put the past in the past?
	And then the last one, what are some ways to stay grounded in the present instead of dwelling in the past or worrying about the future?
	How long and what phases did you go through in therapy?
	How did you know you were progressing?
	And did you ever feel like you weren't ready to commit to anything?
	If so, what changed?
	Well, I mean, that's a lot, obviously, and I don't mind you jamming as much as humanly possible into the question.
	So I will sort of tell you where I am at.
	And of course, Jesse Lee Peterson has some very powerful things to say about forgiveness.
	So I'll tell you sort of where I'm at.
	Um... So, there are people who do you wrong, just as you will do wrong to people, and they will acknowledge that wrong, and they will, I mean, either explicitly or implicitly, ask for forgiveness, right?
	And that's a fine human process to go through, and nothing wrong with that, and it's natural.
	The chafing of wrongdoing is inevitable in life.
	Life. Life is a continual series of balance and mistakes, right?
	I mean, we all know exactly how we should eat and how much we should exercise in order to maintain optimal health and We don't do it.
	Right. Why don't we do it?
	It's not a wrong thing to not do because if you eat perfectly and exercise just right, then you're not happy because you're eating stuff that probably isn't that tasty and you're exercising too much and not enjoying...
	Other things you could be doing while you're not exercising, like making love or chatting with people or whatever it is, right?
	So there's always going to be a mistake, and this is life as a whole, right?
	I'm doing this show. I'm not exercising, right?
	I'm exercising my brain, but I'm not exercising.
	Now, would it be better for my health if I did an exercise routine right now rather than doing this show?
	Yeah. But maybe I can do the exercise routine later this day or whatever it is, right?
	So, everything that you do, this is why, you know, there's this old saying, like, there are no solutions.
	There's only trade-offs. This is an economics thing.
	No solutions. You know, like, I was reading this article title in the Canadian media the other day, where they said, are businesses worth more than human life?
	In Doug Ford's Ontario, the answer is yes.
	Businesses worth more than human life!
	Like, that's... I mean, that's just such a dumb headline.
	I mean, I get it gets people to click, and it gets them to feel petty outrage, which people get addicted to, as I talked about in Friday's livestream.
	But it's dumb and ignorant beyond words.
	Because if there aren't any businesses, everyone's going to die.
	Because food isn't going to get delivered, and heating isn't going to get delivered, and electricity isn't going to get delivered.
	So if there's no businesses, everybody's fucking dead.
	So this idea that, well, you know, we can just choose human life over businesses, and that's a 100% easy, positive, beneficial choice.
	And the only reason that people would choose businesses over life is because they're greedy, exploitive capitalists.
	They're like... It's just stupid.
	It's an invitation to a bichromatic sociopathic universe of totally easy choices.
	And anybody who offers you an easy choice, well, they're distracting you with that easy choice, while one hand is either deep in your pockets or high up your ass.
	So, it's just stupid stuff, right?
	So we are going to shave each other and that's fine, right?
	You're going to have different opinions.
	You're going to express yourself inarticulately.
	You're going to say something that's harsh.
	And what's the option? The option of doing that is to continually censor yourself and thus be emotionally unavailable to people.
	There's no solution. That's perfect, right?
	I'm going to be honest. Like it's the old joke that people say about their wife or they say, when your wife says, does this dress make me look fat?
	What's the right answer? Well, if you lie and say it doesn't make you look fat, then your wife is going to get mad at you and you're going to have a difficult evening or a difficult weekend or she's not going to have sex with you.
	Whatever. I mean, I don't know, right?
	Whatever happens in some low-rent marriages.
	Or do you lie and say, no, no, no, it doesn't make you look fat, in which case you're not helping her health if she has gained weight because she needs to lose it or not gain any more at least.
	And it's humiliating because you're only lying because you're afraid of her.
	And to not tell the truth out of fear is a little bit humiliating, right?
	So what's the answer to that?
	Well, the answer to that is choose a woman you can tell the truth to before you get married.
	But if you're in that situation, there's no easy answer, right?
	So you can censor everything you say and never offend anyone, and then you're just not present in any of your relationships.
	You're not there, you're not honest, and you're not authentic.
	So you're going to hurt people around you, they're going to hurt you.
	But if you have to see, the important thing is not to have the values that say, let's never hurt each other.
	The important thing is to have the values that say, when we each get hurt, let's have a reasonable and rational approach to resolving this problem, this conflict.
	Right? So if the husband and the wife, like I have this deal with my wife, if I gain weight, let me know.
	Because, you know, sometimes you don't notice, you're busy, you're whatever, you drift a little.
	And we have to, so, you know, if my wife says, you know, I think you've gained a little weight, I'm not going to sit there and say, oh, that's so offensive, right?
	Because I've asked her to do that.
	I've asked her to do that.
	So... Have a reasonable methodology for dealing with the inevitable chafing that's going to arise from honesty.
	You commit to honesty, you're going to upset people.
	That's sort of my business plan, right?
	Commit to honesty, you're going to upset people.
	And the purpose of a positive relationship is to have a rational and peaceful methodology for resolving the disputes that inevitably begin to arise when people are honest.
	And that's why my second book was Real-Time Relationships, The Logic of Love.
	Again, available for free at freedomain.com forward slash books.
	So, upsetting people and apologizing and fixing things is part of a relationship.
	And there's no way to eliminate that except by eliminating yourself.
	Either explicitly by leaving the relationship or implicitly by being there, but self-censoring to the point where you just don't exist.
	You've got to be emotionally present to other people, and that means that you're going to upset them from time to time.
	They're going to upset you from time to time.
	So that's really, really important to understand.
	The goal is not an offense-free relationship, because the only way to have that is to be dead, gone, or so silenced that you're like a ghost that nobody knows is there.
	So the question is, With regards to forgiveness and resentment.
	So what is the purpose of anger?
	I've done shows on this before.
	The joy of anger is one. So I'll be really, really brief about this.
	I promise you that. So the purpose of anger is to protect you.
	It's called fight or flight.
	Anger and fear are two emotions that are there to protect you.
	And if somebody harms you and doesn't Apologize.
	And doubles down and justifies themselves.
	What are they doing? They're promising to harm you again.
	And they're also promising or acting out that there's no way to keep yourself safe in that environment.
	Like I had a friend some years ago.
	Gosh, more than 20 years ago.
	I was a guy I worked with, and we went on skiing vacations together to Quebec, and he was a really good skier.
	Good guy, right? Liked him a lot.
	But he kind of developed this habit that every time we were in social situations, he would tell stories about something foolish that I had done.
	And, I mean, I've got a good sense of humor about myself.
	You've got to have that mean, right?
	You don't want to be too serious about yourself, but you also don't want to be relentlessly flippant with yourself because...
	You don't want to be too serious with yourself because then you're all root and no tree.
	And you don't want to be too flippant with yourself because then you're all tree with no roots and just blow away.
	You don't want people to be alarmed by your seriousness, but you also don't want them to dismiss you for inconsequentiality, right?
	So it's a balance, right? So I have no problem with people telling stories about I've been foolish and all that.
	But it became kind of insistent.
	It became kind of continuous, right?
	And so, of course, I asked him, like, what's up with that?
	He's like, oh, come on.
	Have a sense of humor about yourself.
	It's just funny. And I'm like, yeah, but it's a little...
	It's the only thing you talk about sometimes.
	We don't do that in private.
	It's like, well, you already know these things.
	It's not funny if it's just you. So it was just...
	There was an instant answer for everything and all of my concerns.
	And, you know, I just drifted away from that relationship after a while because, like, I don't want to be in a situation where I'm constantly being ridiculed and where the person then further ridicules me for bringing up the issue of being ridiculed, right?
	It's like that really, really annoying thing that happens with people where they will...
	They insult you in some subtle or not so subtle manner.
	And then when you get upset, they will claim that you being upset is proof that they were right.
	So they'll say something about it and you'll say, hey, that's kind of a jerky thing to say.
	Oh, where the hell does that come from? Oh, aren't we getting mighty defensive?
	So they will sting you under the water and then they will claim that your desire to get out of the water is proof of whatever they said, right?
	I mean, it's really a stupid, retarded trap that's unfortunately quite effective.
	So the purpose of fear and anger is to keep you safe.
	And that's why if someone wrongs you and then says, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry, I'm really sorry, that's not good.
	And they try and figure out why and what happened and all of that.
	Okay, then you don't resent them because you're safe.
	Because they, oh my gosh, I did something that harmed you.
	I'm so sorry. Here's why I think I did it.
	Let's talk about it. And you actually end up closer, more secure, and safer with that person.
	So then you don't hold on to the resentment.
	You don't hold on to the anger.
	And even if you try to, it won't happen.
	Even if you try to, it won't happen, right?
	I mean, if you cut yourself, assuming you're not a hemophiliac, right?
	If you cut yourself, then your skin is going to knit together, and you're going to get a scab, and then the scab is going to go away, and you're going to end up with whole skin again, right?
	I've got this scar on my thumb here from when I was a kid cutting an orange, and I just sliced living crap out of my thumb.
	That was like, I don't know, I was like 11 or something like that when that happened.
	So, yeah, that took a little while to heal, and now I can't move my thumb quite as much.
	It doesn't really matter, right? But it's just a little scar there, right?
	And it sealed, and it got crusted, and all that kind of stuff, right?
	I have the mark of my two front teeth is on my left knee.
	From when I was a kid and a friend of mine was encouraging me to jump down from a garage roof when I was in England because I'd gone up there to get a tennis ball we were playing with and I was like, oh man, it's too high, it's too high, I'm going to drain.
	He's like, no, come on, you can do it, you can do it.
	You got this, right? And so I jumped and my knee buckled and I drove my two front left teeth into my knee and you can still see the imprint of my slight overbite when I was a kid on my left knee.
	And so your skin heals, it seals together, it crusts over and then the crust goes away.
	You may end up with a scar, you may not.
	But if you look at your skin where you had an old scar, and I say, okay, crust over again.
	Even if I will it, it's not going to happen because the skin's healed.
	It's not going to crust over again.
	It's not going to give me a scab.
	It's done. And it's the same thing.
	If someone does you wrong and then sits down or if you bring it up and they say, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry and let me figure out why it happened and you figure things out and they commit to do better, you're actually closer and better than you were before.
	So you won't have that resentment or that anger.
	Because what happens is people who wrong you, who want to keep wronging you, will tell you That you being upset at them wronging you is petty.
	And you're just holding on to it.
	And you can't let it go.
	And you're just a vengeful spirit.
	In other words, they hurt you.
	They won't take responsibility.
	They won't apologize. They won't figure out root causes.
	They won't commit to better action.
	So they hurt you. And then they hurt you again by saying that your legitimate anger at them for failing to take responsibility for hurting you is proof that you're an immature, petty person.
	They add insult to injury very literally.
	So this whole thing of resenting other people is like drinking poison, thinking it'll hurt them and so on.
	So what is the resentment?
	The resentment is you're in danger.
	You're still in danger.
	Because when people act in a way that makes you safe, you won't feel that resentment anymore.
	So why do people hold on to resentment?
	Because they're still in danger.
	Resentment is the fight, to some degree, but the other option, of course, is flight.
	That's what people don't want to talk about.
	So, if someone is in my life, I remember many years ago, my daughter was playing with a girl, and my daughter was chasing her, and she ran into a room, and she turned and she closed the door super hard, and it hit my daughter in the nose, right?
	Okay, these accidents can happen.
	Again, roughhousing is one of these things in life where every now and then you're going to get injured.
	But what's the option? You don't run around, you don't roughhouse.
	Okay, well then you lose muscle mass and you're unhealthy.
	You know, there's no solution, right?
	So the fact that the door slamming happened was unfortunate, but not the end of the world.
	But what happened was the girl came out And she didn't say, oh, are you okay?
	I'm so sorry, right? And it's not like, I'm so sorry I did something mean to hurt you.
	I'm so sorry that you got hurt, right?
	Which is an indication that the girl didn't mean to do it, right?
	Anyway, the girl opened the door.
	I kind of looked out darkly, waited like 20 seconds, and then turned to me and said, is she feeling better yet?
	Can she come play again? Well, that's not good.
	Because that means that the girl's not taking any responsibility for anything she might have done.
	That might have ended up with someone else being hurt.
	Again, it's not like she was totally causally responsible.
	She didn't slam the door in my daughter's face.
	She just slammed the door. But she was acting in a way that was careless a little bit.
	And she got someone hurt. Again, it's not the end of the world.
	But it should be like, okay, you've got to adjust your behavior.
	But when she didn't take any responsibility and simply demanded that my daughter feel better and play with her again, she was only serving her own needs.
	I want to play. So I'll wait until this...
	Fragile human stops leaking eye juice and then they can resume the play matrix.
	So it wasn't safe.
	So resentment is when you're in a situation with people who are going to continue to hurt you.
	That's not good.
	You know, if you are in the woods and it's late, it's getting dark, and you hear the cracking or crunching sounds, maybe it's fall and there are leaves, and you hear the crunching sounds of someone creeping or something creeping along behind you, like you're in the woods, you're going to feel pretty nervous, right?
	And let's say you start moving a little faster and then it seems like the footsteps behind you are...
	I mean, your heart's going to pound because you're in a genuine state of danger.
	Because if you're in the woods, you know, pro tip, like if you're in the woods and you come across someone, you say, Hi!
	I'm not a bear. I'm not a psycho killer.
	I'm just out here. How you doing?
	They can introduce you. You don't creep up on people, right, in the woods, right?
	It's just a good way to get...
	They have a bad day, right?
	And let's say the woods are a long way away from where you live and you get back to your car and you drive home.
	Like when you think back on it, you'll feel a little nervous, but you're not going to sit there and like after you drive home, you're not going to sit there and check your house for whoever or whatever was following you in the woods because you're safe now.
	You're out of the woods. You drove in.
	You drove your hour home. You're home.
	You're locked. You're safe. Your alarm's on.
	So you're not going to sit there and say, someone in the house who was in the woods with me.
	No, they're not there, right? So you're in a safe position, so you're going to feel maybe a little anxiety when you think back on the memory, but you're not going to feel anxiety that it's still happening in your house because you've left the situation of danger and now you're in a safe place, your house.
	And then you won't feel that, your heart won't pound, right?
	So... When you're in a safe situation, your resentment and your fear and your anxiety and your hostility, they're going to diminish.
	Obviously. Because our fight-or-flight mechanism is not just doing things for the hell of it.
	That's not just doing things for the hell of it, right?
	I mean, it's there to try and help us.
	Yes, it can get a little odd.
	It can get a little overextended or a lot overextended, the post-traumatic stress disorder and so on, where you've been in a situation of such chronic fear and stress, like in combat for years or months, that you can't cool down because fight or flight is supposed to be 10 minutes at a time.
	It's not supposed to go on like shell shock in World War I, right?
	This is when brave soldiers would simply have mental breakdowns, couldn't be recovered.
	It's what made people interested in people like Nietzsche and Freud, because they said, oh, well, we can't figure out what happened to these brave soldiers who have medals and simply can't function.
	Well, maybe the shells that exploded have damaged their brain.
	They thought it was shell shock, but shell shock, now we know, it's an overextension of the fight-or-flight mechanism to the point where The person can't cool down from the fight or flight, right?
	It's a big problem with child abuse as well.
	It's one of the reasons why significant child abuse, if you don't deal with it, can take like 20 years off your lifespan because your system is always revving and can't relax and it wears you out, right?
	It's like constantly trying to drive on the highway in first gear, right?
	So to withhold forgiveness from people who have Expressed contrition and figured things out and made a commitment to better behavior.
	Okay, then that means that there's other people in your life that are still triggering that fight-or-flight response.
	So if you're still angry, if you're still resentful, then you're still in a situation of danger.
	So if you have an abusive mother, let's say she was physically and verbally abusive when you were a kid and she was bigger now as an adult, she's verbally abusive, she puts you down, she...
	She dismisses your concerns, she's defensive, she undermines you, she insults your values, like all this kind of stuff.
	Look, you're still in a situation of danger.
	And it's significant danger and it's genetic danger, you understand?
	It's not just made up.
	You don't just have these things in your head that float around for no reason.
	The reason why you have anxiety, hostility and fear with regards to having an abusive mother in your adult life is very, very simple.
	Can she beat you up as an adult?
	No, because you can go to the cops.
	Can she put you down? Well, sure.
	But what's the effect of that?
	Well, the effect of that is you feel low, you feel bad or whatever.
	But let's talk about the genetic effect of it.
	The genetic effect of it is somebody of high quality and virtue and independence and integrity and the capacity for great love and devotion and courage, they are not going to marry you.
	You get it? Your mother's continual verbal abuse of you as an adult Is whatever genetics are associated with continual verbal abuse, it's them making sure that they get to continue because only somebody who's equally susceptible to verbal abuse and subjugation will marry you.
	And your mother then gets to contain the genetic drift.
	She gets to contain the genetic drift of these kinds of horrible genes.
	And even if it's got nothing to do with genetics, let's say you say there's nothing to do with genetics, okay, well, what happens is she gets to retain influence and pass the mind memes, in a sense, to the grandchildren by continuing to verbally abuse the mother and maybe verbally abuse the grandchildren, and that way it continues.
	So if you have a verbally abusive mother in your life, it's going to determine who will and will not marry you.
	And that's going to determine the psychological and or genetic makeup of your children.
	And you've heard me say this a million times to callers.
	You know, oh, what's the harm?
	I don't see it. Okay, but if you're still in contact with a relentlessly abusive person, a good man, a good woman will not marry you.
	Will not. And I made this mistake when I was younger.
	I had a girlfriend studying to be an engineer.
	She'd come to visit me and we'd go for brunch with my mom.
	I can't believe that didn't work out.
	I'm sorry, it's not funny, but of course it didn't work out.
	Because this woman was saying, oh, this is granny to my kids, to our kids.
	This is who's going to be in my life.
	This is who is going to be influencing my kids.
	This is who my parents are going to have to get along with.
	I don't think so.
	I mean, you're a nice guy.
	You're a sexy guy, but sorry, this is just a flyby.
	We ain't landing. In hindsight, of course, it makes perfect sense.
	It makes perfect sense. So you're still in danger.
	Now, how do you... If you have a predator in your house, you're going to feel fear and anxiety.
	Of course. Imagine you've got a tiger roaming around your house or your apartment.
	Are you going to be able to relax?
	No. Tiger's getting hungry. It's going to maul the shit out of you.
	You can't relax. So what do you do?
	You either get the tiger out or you move.
	You can't relax any other way.
	Then you're asking for your fight-or-flight mechanism, which far predates you, far predates mammals, far predates human beings, starts with the early reptile single-celled, whatever the hell goes on.
	You're asking for this massive, ancient, multi-billion-year developed mechanism to just shut up and go away because you want something convenient immediately in your life.
	Well, it's not going to do that. It's not going to do that any more than you can just command your skin to not heal, or you can command yourself not to feel any pain if you hold your hand in a fucking fire.
	The pain mechanisms, the healing mechanisms, all of this vastly predate you, they vastly predate me, and they're not subject to our conscious will.
	And that's, you want to have self-control, absolutely.
	But you don't want to have self-control to the point where you say, well, I'm going to will myself to be taller, because that's not up to you.
	I mean, as an adult, for sure, right?
	I'm gonna will myself to have more hair.
	I guess I could go get hair transplants, but no thanks.
	That's just a sign of vanity humiliation.
	So, you're still in danger.
	You're still in danger. And the danger is not in your past.
	The danger is in your future. You've got an abusive mom.
	It's going to beat down your personality.
	It's going to change who you are as an adult even.
	And that's going to change who you can marry.
	So the danger is in the future.
	The danger is not in the past. Because the danger is you marry some other desperately crushed down human being with abusive parents.
	You now have maybe an abusive mom and dad.
	But now you have abusive mom and dad-in-law too!
	Yay, they've doubled.
	Right?
	And then you may want to raise your kids in a different manner, but if your parents see you raising your kids in a different manner, they will attack you.
	They will undermine you.
	They will try and get their hands on the kids.
	They will try and reproduce because that's just what happens.
	Everybody reproduces themselves.
	Everybody spreads.
	Everybody's a cancer, so to speak, right?
	Or flora or fauna or whatever you want to say.
	Everyone is a spore. Everybody tries to reproduce and recreate.
	I'm a rational guy, so I'm trying to recreate that.
	There are anti-rational, violent people who are trying to recreate that.
	Muslims and Christians are all trying to recreate.
	Everybody's trying to recreate. It's a war.
	It's a battle. I don't think it would be really that much in a free society, but it sure is now, right?
	So are you still in danger?
	Now, if you're still in danger, then saying you shouldn't feel any fear or resentment or anger is another form of abuse, because it's saying you should control something that's beyond your control.
	You should...
	Gosh, there's an old, old movie called Avalon.
	It's a very good movie, actually.
	It's an old movie called Avalon.
	Where a woman is on a streetcar that crashes, and the mother blames the woman for the streetcar crashing.
	She's just a passenger. Now, that's funny, stagecoach, that's funny because, obviously, the passenger did not cause the streetcar to crash.
	It's saying to someone, you're responsible for something that you're not responsible for.
	I mean, that's mean, right? It was Laurence Olivier's wife.
	Joanne Plowright, I think, played the Polish mom or Eastern European mom.
	Anyway, it was very good. It's a very young...
	Aidan Quinn. Very young Aidan Quinn.
	It's a good movie. I'd recommend it.
	Anyway, so when you give people responsibilities that they can't control, that's a form of abuse.
	So if there's an entire network and system out there of people saying, well, you should be in danger, but you shouldn't feel like you're in danger, which is a mindfuck, you understand?
	It's a completely contradictory statement.
	You should be dangled over a cliff by a potentially hostile person, but you shouldn't have your heart rate elevate or your cortisol elevate in any way, shape, or form.
	I mean, it's asking the impossible.
	You should be in a situation of danger, but you should neither fear or be angry.
	It's ridiculous. That's just another form of abuse.
	And so, for me, I don't hold resentment.
	I don't hold resentment against my father. I don't hold resentment against my mother.
	I talk about my mother.
	Occasionally I'll be passionate about it.
	But I think everyone out there can understand that I can talk about these things.
	They don't dominate my life.
	They don't dictate my life.
	I sometimes go for a week without thinking about her.
	She's still alive, to my knowledge.
	I don't get an email, maybe.
	But I'm not sort of wrapped up.
	And of course, I have a close to 20-year marriage with a wonderful woman that I absolutely, completely and totally adore.
	I have a great relationship with her.
	I have a great relationship. She's completely opposite of my mother, which is a good thing.
	That's what happens when you We're raised by nasty people.
	You end up either being with nasty people or with being great people.
	There's nothing in the middle. Like, I'm sorry.
	It's just the way that it is.
	You either deal with it and then you go to the opposite area, which is what you want to do, or you don't deal with it and then it just replicates and photocopies your history forevermore.
	So I think that the empirical evidence is that I've dealt with it.
	Now, how did I deal with it?
	Well, as I've talked about in before, I dealt with it by saying the truth.
	That I was unhappy about the way that I was treated in the past and that I'm unhappy about the way I'm treated in the present.
	That's the truth. To be honest, maybe she hadn't noticed, right?
	And so I sat down, I think it was three times, pretty lengthy conversations, where I sat down and said, okay, maybe you don't know that I'm upset, but I need to see what's in your eyes when I tell you that I'm upset.
	I need to see what's in your eyes when I tell you that I'm upset.
	Because if it's like, whoa, you're upset.
	Oh my gosh, I didn't know.
	Okay, then for whatever reason, it's hard to imagine, right?
	But, you know, give people the benefit of the doubt and tell them the truth, right?
	Like, same thing with the against me argument that I talked about on Friday that I did a speech more than 10 years ago about.
	When you tell people taxation is theft, taxation is violence, and when they want you taxed, they're Advocating for the use of violence against you.
	You want to see what's in their eyes when they make that connection, right?
	When they wake up to that. If they're like, oh my god, I never thought of that.
	Oh my god, I don't want to...
	I love you.
	I care for you. I don't want to advocate the use of violence against you.
	I never thought of it. It never made an...
	Right?
	50s guy in glasses meme explosion head.
	Scanners, maybe. I don't know.
	So, you want to see what's in people's eyes when you tell them the truth.
	And what was in my mother's eyes was cunning.
	Ooh, shit, he caught me.
	Ooh, okay. I have to show some concern, but I can't show too much concern.
	I have to show some surprise, but I can't claim to be totally shocked.
	Like, it was all just cunning in calculation.
	How am I going to navigate this rickety bridge?
	So it was about how could she get the most out of this situation to her benefit?
	It was all calculation.
	There was no empathy. Of course there was no empathy, because you can't beat people up for ten years and then have empathy towards them.
	I mean, that would cause you to throw yourself off a cliff.
	So I attempted to gain some sense of safety by sitting down and talking with her, and I did the same thing with my father, though I had to do that remotely, or chose to do it remotely.
	I could have chosen to do it differently, but I didn't want to fly all the way over.
	And as it turned out, there was no safety with either of these people.
	There was, you know, the usual garbage of like, well, I'm sorry that you're upset.
	Not, I'm sorry for what I did.
	I'm sorry for causing you upset.
	I'm sorry that you're upset.
	It's just weasily garbage.
	There's no safety in that.
	Right? There's no safety in that.
	And it's kind of an insult. Because they're saying that if they've harmed you and you're upset, that you being upset has nothing to do with them.
	It's just your own paranoia or upset.
	Like, I'm sorry that you're upset by something I had nothing to do with.
	I mean, that's just, again, excuses or promises of repetition.
	I've said it before, and I'll say it again, I'm sure, in the future.
	So how did I become safe?
	How did I become safe?
	Well, I talked honestly to people in my life.
	And those people I connected with are in my life.
	And I am safe.
	That doesn't mean that we never upset each other or never hurt each other.
	Every now and then, right?
	My wife and I have maybe one or two significant disagreements a year, which usually last an hour, and we end up closer as a result.
	You know, it's great. So, how do you become safe?
	Well, You either turn the tiger into a cat, you get the tiger out of your environment, or you get out of the tiger's environment.
	That's it. It's those three choices.
	You either connect with people and they reform, or you get them out of your life, or you get out of their lives.
	There's no other But to hang around people who are harming you immensely and intensely.
	Like if you have this destructive mother around, let's say you're a woman, you have this destructive mother around, which means you marry a screwed up guy who has no boundaries, is totally susceptible to abuse, then you have this tortured relationship.
	You're both ground down, you both look at each other with Anxiety, fear, contempt and humiliation because you're both just allowing each other to be pushed around and bullied.
	Your kids are growing up in that environment.
	Your life is fucking ruined in the short run.
	I mean, it's hard to say lives are ruined in the long run because reform is usually possible, but it's a ruinous choice.
	It's a ruinous choice.
	Who you marry is the most important decision you make in your life.
	Who you marry is the most important decision you make in your life.
	And if who you marry is conditioned and determined by abusive people in your life, you're screwed, man.
	I don't mean forever.
	You can fix, you can reform, but my God, that's brutal.
	Those people are going to determine the genetic and psychological makeup of your children.
	That's dangerous.
	Incredibly dangerous. It's not about the past, you understand?
	Why did I have anxiety and fear around my mother and anger around my mother?
	Because of what she did when I was 10?
	No. No.
	Because I was also beaten in boarding school.
	But I don't have fear, anxiety, and resentment against the guy who beat me in boarding school because I'm no longer in boarding school.
	He has no power over me.
	It's a different country. It's a different time.
	He's probably dead. Long dead.
	I mean, the guy was 40 when I was 10.
	No, when I was 6.
	I was 6 in boarding school. So, I don't...
	Like the other people who did me harm when I was a kid, I don't...
	I don't resent them. I'm not angry at them.
	I don't seethe. I don't hold resentment.
	Because they're gone. They're out.
	They pose no danger to me anymore.
	You understand? But my mother was determining who I was dating.
	And that danger was in the future.
	If The woman my mother didn't disapprove of, if I had married that woman, my life would have been wrecked for a long, long time.
	It was the wrong person.
	It would have been the wrong marriage.
	If we'd had kids, it would have been, well, either way, it would have been a brutal divorce.
	It would have messed up my life enormously.
	So my mother was incredibly dangerous to me.
	Because she determined, through her presence in my life, who I got to marry.
	And not just my mother.
	So if somebody holds the happiness or disaster of your adult life in their hands, and they're a cruel and vindictive and mean and abusive and negative person, Well, of course you're going to be terrified.
	I'm just sitting there saying, well, you know, my fight-or-flight mechanism that is currently alarmed because this crazy bitch is going to determine who the hell I marry and whether my life is happy or a complete disaster.
	Well, sure, they hold the happiness or disaster of my future in their hands and they're mean and vindictive, but I shouldn't feel any anxiety at all!
	That That is a narrative that only serves abusive people.
	Now, the last thing I'll say, and then I will get to you, but the last thing I'll say is, so how did I end up not feeling resentment towards my mother?
	By approving of the woman I was going to marry, she was setting me up for a disaster.
	So this manipulation and destruction of my life was even worse as an adult than it was as a child.
	Because she didn't say, oh, man, that's not the right relationship for you.
	You guys aren't getting along that well.
	I mean, there are times where you get along well, but it never kind of takes.
	And, you know, I don't think she's the right...
	She was like, yeah, you should get...
	It was actually a friend of mine's wife who said, oh, you'd think that people who were engaged would be a little happier.
	I'm like, my God, somebody finally...
	Oh, my God, somebody finally said something.
	And that was what ended up with me ending up out of that relationship.
	It was a friend of mine's girlfriend.
	Not my family. Not my close friends.
	Nothing. They were all like, yeah, off you go.
	You go marry. This is going to be a disaster, but off you go.
	Don't think they were dangerous to me?
	My God. Catastrophic.
	Catastrophically dangerous. And when a casual comment from a friend of mine's girlfriend saves my life, that my family was happy to watch me wander into this pit of doom, encouraging me, I had family members help me go and pick out the ring.
	Oh my god. Oh my god.
	Of course there's danger in that.
	So how did I end up not being resentful towards my mother?
	Well, I got her out of my life.
	It's been, oh, well over 20 years since I've had anything to do with her.
	Quarter century, probably. Anyway, so what I do, which is true, is to say, well, she has no free will.
	She has no free will. She has no free will.
	I mean, oh, the abstract, blah, blah, blah.
	No, no, she has no functional free will.
	She has no functional free will.
	Her capacity for free will is like my capacity to be a star ballerina in the Bolshoi dance company.
	It's not even theoretically possible.
	So when people act as if they have no free will, after a while you just have to believe them.
	Constantly saying they have no free will.
	They never think for themselves, they never take responsibility, they never apologize with any Authenticity.
	They never make choices that are surprising.
	Everything is predictable. Everything is boring.
	Everything is dangerous. So I no longer sit there with anger towards my mother because it's like, well, she's just a broken robot.
	You know, there's these videos on, like funny videos, and one of them is a machine that is supposed to pat a baby's back to help it burp.
	And, of course, it's not a real baby.
	It's just like a doll baby.
	And it hits the baby so hard that the baby just flies across the room or the head falls off or something.
	It's kind of funny, right? Because, I mean, it's such a badly designed machine.
	Okay, so I was hit by a machine.
	I was hit by a robot. It was like a Terminator.
	A Terminator is scary, but the Terminator doesn't have free will, right?
	It's a machine. I was raised by a child-hitting, broken robot.
	Now, at least with the robot, you can blame whoever designed the robot, but there's no designer here, right?
	I was raised by an abuse machine that had no free will.
	By a...
	Physics.
	By physics. By physics.
	You know, if your house...
	Is knocked down by somebody who hates you, that's one thing.
	If some weird sinkhole that could never be anticipated just opens up for no reason and your house collapses, well, that's a drag, but what are you going to sue the earth?
	Right? It's not the way it works.
	And so for me, it's like, okay, well, the people in my life are like my friend who was like constantly compelled to tell stories that made me look foolish, right?
	Always and forever and only those stories.
	Well, he's just a machine.
	That's what he does. He can't change it.
	He can't choose differently, even if I give him objective and useful feedback and helpful feedback and how would you feel if and blah, blah, blah.
	What about all the times I've done great and wonderful things?
	Why do you never talk about those?
	Right? It's a machine.
	So the machine, the machinery aspect of a lot of people's natures, they're just machines.
	All they do is, like an addict, it's like a machine, right?
	And so a machine of short-term satisfaction of needs to help with the long-term is machines, right?
	The addict is going to lie and cheat and steal and manipulate and it's just a machine.
	Just a machine. See, once you liberate yourself from resentment by their machine, right?
	But you also liberate yourself from a relationship.
	You can't have a relationship with a machine.
	It's like thinking you fapped the internet and you're going to get a baby.
	No, you're not. You're not.
	You're going to get AD, but you're not going to get a baby, right?
	So you reduce resentment historically Well, you reduce resentment by getting dangerous people out of your life if they can't be reformed.
	And then you let go of the past resentment by recognizing that they were just machines.
	There's no choice in the matter.
	And that liberates you from resentment and also liberates you from any illusion that you can have a relationship because you can't have a relationship with a machine.
	You know, if my wife brings me coffee in the morning as I get up, I don't ignore her or go down and thank the coffee maker.
	The coffee maker is a machine.
	My wife is making a choice.
	And when you find people who actually have free will, I mean, you hold them close to your chest that they are gold in the general detritus of mankind.
	There's people in my past who hurt me, who didn't change when I talked about it honestly with them.
	They're just machines. And nothing in the quarter century Since I went through this process, more than a quarter century in some cases, in all of that time, in all of that time, I will tell you this.
	It's a lot of information.
	I will tell you this.
	I have not seen one iota, atom or shred of evidence that these people are not machines.
	They've continued on the same dismal path.
	They have made no surprising moves.
	They've certainly never called me up and said, you know what, I really thought about this.
	I've gone to therapy and I've just, you know, I've really...
	Now, maybe it's happened.
	I'm not saying it's impossible.
	I'm not saying it's impossible.
	But that means that they've made the choice to stop being machines and stop being human beings.
	Although so many people are human machines who are human beings, I'm not sure that we are not the inhuman ones, so to speak, right?
	I'm not saying it's impossible, but I'm saying that of the dozens of people that I knew back then, not one person that I designated as a machine without free will has given me one shred of evidence that I wasn't completely and totally right.
	What a relief.
	I gotta tell you, it's a pretty big decision to say you're all robots, dangerous robots.
	Pretty big decision. You don't want to be mistaken about that one, right?
	But the people I have in my life who have choice, who have thoughtfulness, who have depth, who have will, philosophy.
	Beautiful crew. Beautiful, wonderful, amazing crew.
	Just had a lovely dinner with some friends of mine last night.
	And last night, they made their own house.
	Third kid thinking of a fourth.
	It's beautiful. It's great.
	They have choice. They have will.
	And you can let go of resentment if you recognize that people didn't make a choice to hurt you.
	But then you can't be in a relationship with them because once you take someone's free will, you can't have an interaction with them that has any meaning whatsoever, any more than you can debate a robot.
	So I hope that that helps.
	Now, when you discuss your past with others, trying to play the victim like my mother, well, stop playing the victim.
	How do you stop playing the victim?
	Take control of your life.
	How do you take control of your life?
	You, the reformed people, get out of their lives or get them out of yours.
	You either summon free will through your own honesty, or if they continue to be abusive, you don't see them.
	That's how you take control. That's how you're no longer a victim.
	I was a victim when I was a kid.
	I had no choice in the matter. People say, oh, you're an immigrant.
	It's like, no, I was brought over to Canada when I was 11.
	And nobody asked me. I had no choice.
	It was all in place when I was 10.
	I had no say in the matter.
	I remember sitting in the flat that we lived when I was a kid, 12th Priory Crescent, and staring out at this view we had of the city and thinking, oh, I'm going to Canada.
	I felt nothing about it because there was no choice in the matter.
	I was just being dragged around.
	I was a victim as a kid, but when I was an adult I had a choice.
	So if you're not a victim, when you take control and say, you know what, my future children deserve me not being continually broken by abusers and having abusers choose my co-parent, would you let your mother choose who you marry?
	Because if your mother's abusive, She is choosing who you marry, if she's in your life.
	Because a healthy person won't want to marry into that.
	Won't do it. I mean, I did date women who had really pretty destructive parents.
	Never closed the deal. I've already got one, or got two really, one and a half.
	Why on earth would I want more? No good.
	So, yeah, if you're not a victim, if you say, look, I've got some standards.
	The standards are you have to treat me with dignity and respect.
	You can't put me down, and you can't dismiss my thoughts and feelings, and you can't undermine my confidence for no reason, for your own petty amusement.
	You can't treat me badly.
	Just have that as a standard.
	Don't treat me badly. It doesn't mean you've got to be perfect, because I'm not perfect, but don't treat me badly.
	That's not a crazy standard to have, isn't it, right?
	It's not a crazy standard to have. Maybe it is these days, but you're not a victim if you just have a standard called don't treat me badly.
	And if you want to treat me badly, I'm not going to spend time with you.
	It's not a crazy standard, is it?
	I mean, we do that with a pizza place.
	You know, don't send me pizza with glass in it.
	Is that a crazy standard to have for a pizza place?
	I don't think so. Don't send me pizzas with crazy-ass hot spices embedded in the crust that cause me to be violently ill.
	And have a shit the next morning like I'm a space shuttle taking up from the ground.
	Right? Just have that, right? So, some ways to stay grounded in the present, dwelling in the past, worrying about the future.
	Just be safe. Just make yourself safe, whatever that takes.
	You got an abusive job?
	Figure out how to change or work from home or become an entrepreneur or whatever it is.
	You got abusive parents? Sit down, talk with them.
	You don't have to spend time with them if they're abusive.
	You've got an abusive spouse, that's a difficult matter, right?
	And that goes right back to your parents.
	But there's no point fixing, trying to fix your abusive spouse if the abusive parents are still in the picture.
	Because even if you somehow, you get divorced and all of that, then your abusive parents are still in the picture.
	They're just going to choose who you date next and who you get married to next.
	This is why people tend to stay in these repetitive abuses.
	Abusive relationships, right?
	So you won't play the victim if you aren't a victim.
	You stay grounded in the present when you become safe.
	And listen to your fight or flight mechanism.
	It's trying to help you. And of course, there are all of these abusers out there saying your fight and flight mechanism is petty.
	You should be in a situation of danger, i.e.
	me, and you should not feel any fight or flight.
	I should be pushing you towards a fire, call to your own future, but you should not feel any anxiety, hostility or fear or anything like that.
	You should feel perfectly neutral and happy.
	I mean, that's the whole you're at fault For being abused and being angry is another form of abuse as a whole, right?
	Alright, so, sorry, I guess I went a little over.
	But anyway, those are sort of my thoughts and experience.
	What do you have to bring to me, my friend?
	Okay, so, hear me okay?
	Yes, just fine. Alright, the thing I was tripping up on that you pointed out was...
	The free will. I've done well to remove danger from my life, but I still felt like I was in danger because I couldn't accept, I guess, who these people were.
	The fact that they, like you said, they didn't have any free will.
	That was the part I was tripping up on.
	I couldn't make that connection.
	I've got a part of me that believes that It's always people's choice.
	I know they have all this stuff in the background, but I have a hard time giving up on people.
	Do you want to know a tiny secret?
	This, I think, will give it a very vivid reality to you.
	So you know how people get really screwed up by the theory of ethics called universally preferable behavior.
	And also by my definition of free will.
	So free will is the capacity to compare proposed actions to ideal standards.
	Ideal standards are UPB. So why do people get so screwed up by that?
	Because if you are a robot, if you have the fundamental mental illness called no free will, Then my definition of free will plus UPB reveals your deficiency in a glaring way.
	So anybody like the economic determinists who are called Marxists or whatever, or the racial determinists that are called sort of woke postmodernists and so on, Everybody who sort of talks about larger social forces shaping the human personality and you're just a leaf in the wind or whatever, what they're saying is they're saying, I don't have an ego that is capable of comparing proposed actions to ideal standards.
	This is why UPB screws people up so much, is it reveals that they're robots.
	Because a robot can't compare proposed actions to an ideal standard.
	I mean, you can program it to do whatever you want, but the robot isn't making a choice as far as all of that goes, right?
	So, whenever you start to bring universal standards, universal ethics...
	Now, Christians are very comfortable with this, right?
	Because that's the whole point of Christianity is you're comparing proposed actions to an ideal standard that you can't reach, but it's still worth aiming for.
	That's fine. You can't reach the ideal standard of health, but there's still something worth aiming for.
	And so, this is why people get so creeped out and frustrated and angry.
	At UPB, right?
	Like the rationality rules and the debates I had with Vosh and all the way back to Peter Joseph.
	And when I compare proposed actions to ideal standards, it really messes people up.
	Because if you have, and this is one of the things that happens in mental illness that happens first sometimes for people, is that they lose the capacity to observe their own actions and compare them to any kind of different standard.
	You and I know that we're falling short where we're falling short and we should do this differently or that differently or whatever.
	Even now, I'm like, oh, am I talking too much?
	I get an ideal standard. I'm constantly comparing my behavior to an ideal standard.
	That's called having an observing ego and that's called having free will.
	People who don't have that.
	And this could be the result of trauma.
	It could be the result of laziness.
	It could be the result of drugs.
	The sort of psychotropics.
	It could be the result of other kinds of addiction or whatever.
	Or it could even be the choice to not Compare your actions to ideal standards, but that's really, really important.
	That's really, really important to recognize that when people have this innate hostility to ideal standards or this innate hostility to free will, it's because it exposes a deficiency that they have that is catastrophic to them and they don't want to deal with.
	Sorry, go ahead. It's interesting when you're talking about that, the first thing that comes to mind is perfectionism.
	Perfectionism is just a form of abuse, right?
	Because it's saying that you're never going to reach this ideal standard, but you should.
	And there's an old line from some, I don't know, it was one of these law and order things, right?
	Where somebody says, well, you shouldn't do this because Jesus wouldn't do it.
	And the guy said, well, Jesus is perfect.
	I'm not. Okay, so that's saying there is an ideal standard, but I'm not going to be able to reach it.
	And of course, that is, you know, Jesus was perfect and Christians can't be perfect, right?
	So it's not abusive because they know you can't reach the ideal standard and you just have to be good enough to stay in God's grace and get into heaven, right?
	But perfectionism is saying that you are responsible for achieving an unattainable standard.
	That's just a form of abuse, right?
	And perfectionism, of course, is imperfect, right?
	Because it doesn't accept the fact that you can't reach ideal standards.
	Like, what does it mean to be perfectly rational?
	Like, I don't even know what that means.
	What does that mean, to be perfectly rational?
	I don't have that as a standard.
	You shouldn't have that as a standard.
	Nobody should have that as a standard.
	Because what does that mean? Do my dreams have to be perfectly rational?
	When I play a video game, do I have to be perfectly rational?
	You know, like I'm having sex.
	Do I have to have it perfectly rationally?
	Like, it doesn't make any sense.
	And these kinds of ideal standards, and this is a little bit of the pull of objectivism, and even though Ayn Rand said that her characters are not guides to action but ideals to strive for, still a lot of people are like, well, what would Howard Rock do?
	And I did something different, and that's not right and all that.
	But no, the perfectionism is very much a way of abstracting yourself from the standard, imposing it on others, and forever being able to attack them for failing to meet something that can't be met.
	Yeah, that's interesting.
	The other thing, too, is I've realized that I'm not as aware when I'm being I don't know if you'd call it abused necessarily, but mistreated, I suppose.
	Right. As an example, just two days ago I was with a couple at their house.
	They invited me for the board games and we had dinner and it was fun, right?
	And then afterwards I started talking about, you know, we started getting into some deeper topics because I was questioning things around forgiveness, and I was retelling my experience, my childhood experience.
	And the guy that was there said something that was, I didn't know how to take it at first, but now that I look back, I feel a little bit of anger towards him.
	Because he was saying, well, you're not, it still has power over you because you're still talking about it.
	Giving it energy, you're giving it time, you're playing a victim, right?
	And yeah, I get a little upset now that I think about it because I'm like, well, wait a minute, he was treating me like a kid.
	I'm a 33-year-old grown adult.
	I'm not a kid, right?
	And I'm not being a victim because I've isolated my mother from my life.
	I don't talk to her. She has no control over me.
	But here I'm grappling with this There's this feeling of, I need to forgive myself internally for enabling her.
	And it's like, well, wait a minute.
	Is that really true? I was ignorant.
	Do I even have agency?
	At some point, I did.
	Because I woke up to it.
	I woke up to the abuse.
	Before that, I'm not sure.
	It's a difficult...
	Maybe it doesn't matter.
	No, no, it matters. It really matters what your friend said.
	It really matters what your friend said.
	Because, you know, he's your friend, right?
	So you have to, I think, you have to accept the possibility that he might be entirely right.
	And that's why I was questioning it.
	I was like, well, okay, I'm bringing these topics up.
	And he's saying you need to put the past in the past.
	You need to be comfortable enough to let it go that...
	You've dealt with it.
	And I was like, yeah, but this is a little different, right?
	Like, we're sharing experiences here right now.
	And to be honest, I was looking for people that were 20 years my senior who had been through very similar circumstances.
	I was asking them, what is their concept of forgiveness?
	What does it mean to them?
	Right? How do they deal with resentment?
	How do they deal? Like, what is going on there?
	It was interesting of you saying that I still feel like I'm in danger.
	I think that's true. And when you said it was about the future, that really put a light bulb in my head because it was like, okay, I'm at a point in my life where it's hard for me to see my achievements because I'm worried About going out there and making that crucial decision.
	Of course, it'll be the third time if I do it again.
	But the crucial decision to marry.
	Crucial decision to find...
	I mean, just expanding friendship circles and finding friends with free will and finding friends who are open and honest is scary.
	Especially considering that background.
	Yes. I mean, it is the future that you're considering.
	Like, there aren't many people in the world who wake up terrified of smallpox, right?
	Because smallpox has been dealt with.
	It's a 15-year coordinated effort, but smallpox has been eradicated.
	But if there are people who are anxious about COVID, because COVID is there, right?
	So you've got to leave the past to the past.
	It's like, no, COVID is still here. So the effects of the past are still there.
	What does that mean? Leave the past in the past?
	That's a tautology that is profoundly uncurious.
	And the dismissal of the past, I guarantee you, is coming from his parents.
	And so he actually, by telling you to leave the past in the past, is letting the past completely dominate his interaction with you.
	It's completely ironic when you think about it.
	It's interesting that you say that, because he would say things like, well, I've dealt with my past, and then he wouldn't go into any details or share any insights.
	And even his own She's like the live-in girlfriend.
	They've been living together for a while, but she's how I met him in the first place.
	Even she said, yeah, right.
	She was ribbing him a little bit, like, yeah, right.
	So she doesn't think that he's dealt with his past, right?
	Well, it's interesting because they don't agree on very much, so it's amusing to watch.
	Oh, so you should leave things in your past the way he has so you can end up with a relationship that's profoundly dissatisfying like he has.
	Good plan. Yeah, I suppose that's true.
	Her perspective is a little bit different though.
	She's Russian and she's a practitioner of yoga.
	So she actually has some pretty good insights on trusting yourself and that's something that I've struggled with personally.
	And yet she's not very assertive with this guy, right?
	That is true.
	And she said she's learning to try to be.
	She's learning to try to be more of a taker.
	Because we were talking about that.
	I've read Nathaniel Brandon's book, Honoring the Self, and I actually loaned it to her.
	We were talking about the definitions of selfless and selfish and how selfish is better.
	And this guy was immediately offended by that.
	And I thought that was so interesting because he was defending a point from indoctrination.
	I saw that and I was like, there's no open-mindedness here.
	Like, I'm arguing from a point and I said, we're arguing semantics.
	We're getting bogged down in language.
	We're not even talking about anything.
	It's because you've been programmed, like the rest of society, to raise selflessness as the highest value.
	And I said, I absolutely abhor that.
	I can't stand people like that.
	I was like that for a long time and I realized my mistakes.
	And the Christianity in me was like that too because it was saying selflessness is you know the ultimate sacrifice is the highest ideal and it's like no not at all not even close the opposite i was trying to tell him about selfish love right now me not being practical Love relationship and practicing selfish love.
	I had to tell him conceptually from the book, but I was still trying to say something about, you know, he was saying, well, there's givers and takers, right?
	That's what he was saying. I was like, well, that's not helpful at all.
	Right. But it's interesting to me that I, you know, I didn't get in touch with those emotions about being demeaning a little bit.
	Until now. I mean, I'm absolutely overjoyed that I'm in touch with them now, but I was not aware of them in the moment.
	I just felt very dissatisfied from the conversation.
	That's very interesting, too, because what that means is that that's where you're, in a sense, the most in danger.
	See, we're not in danger of the predators we can see.
	I mean, we are, but not as much.
	It's the predators we can't see.
	Like, if you're in a mall and you see a tiger at the other end of the mall, you can get out.
	But if you're in, like, chest-deep grass and the tiger is sneaking up on you and you can't see it, that's where you're at the most danger.
	So that relationship...
	I mean, here, picture this, right?
	Are you dating at the moment?
	I have not yet...
	Okay, so imagine that you've got, you know, this, maybe she's an FDR listener, cream of the crop, right?
	So let's say you've got this girl, and she's coming over to your friend's place, the guy and the Russian yoga woman, and she sees your friend put you down in this superior, contemptuous way.
	What's she going to think?
	That's not proper.
	Well, and it's not some stranger.
	You say, these are my friends.
	My very good friend, right?
	These are my very good friends.
	And he's putting you down and contemptuously dismissing your exploration of forgiveness and independence and victimhood.
	These are all very deep and powerful situations.
	Sorry, go ahead. I would say that's the second time I've had any conversations or met him.
	So, her, on the other hand, I've been in her yoga class a couple times, and I've been hiking with her a couple times.
	Oh, so they're not close friends, right?
	It's just acquaintances. Well, right, right.
	I mean, they invited me to their home, and I stayed a little late, and...
	Okay, but so let's just say these are the people I hang out with.
	Let's say your girlfriend sees people treating you this way, and you're just going along with it.
	What happens to her affection for you against her will?
	Like, it's just going to happen one way or the other.
	Oh yeah, well her opinion of me is going to go down.
	Oh yeah, hugely.
	Hugely. Hugely, right?
	What would be different in that situation, I would say, that doesn't feel right to me.
	You said doesn't feel right to me.
	Sorry, can you ask the question again?
	Like, if I recognize that something's off about the conversation, For some reason, I don't pinpoint it to the fact that he's actually demeaning or diminishing my experience.
	No, but his girlfriend was coming to your aid.
	That's true. Because she snorted, right?
	Yeah, right. Yeah, right.
	She was being sarcastic, that's true.
	So, what she is saying is that she's on your side, right?
	That she doesn't believe him.
	Now, you had the choice in that moment, and it was a choice, because you heard her say it, right?
	So you have the choice in that moment to say, what do you mean?
	Do you not think he's dealt with?
	I mean, there's some parts of his past he hasn't dealt with?
	What do you mean? But you didn't.
	Now, again, you can say, I didn't do that, and there's no point attacking yourself about it.
	Just be curious with yourself, right?
	You know, attacking is for tigers with ourselves.
	We must be relentlessly curious.
	It's interesting, too, because I don't exactly agree with her perspective either.
	And it's nice. You don't know what her perspective is because you didn't ask.
	Well, there is one thing that she stated up front, and it was, like, when she...
	See, here's the thing I've disagreed with her on before.
	She has the opinion that my mother...
	And maybe this is the connection I wasn't making, and maybe you're right.
	Maybe she is right. Making that connection at...
	My mother didn't have the free will.
	And so what she would say is, I feel sorry that your mother is autonomous or just doesn't, you know, that she was just reacting to her past.
	I think you mean the opposite of autonomous, but okay.
	Oh, but yeah, exactly.
	Sorry. She was just an automatic thing.
	Automatic, yeah. Yeah, that's what I meant.
	She was just being automatic.
	I got offended at that because, you know, part of me was, and that's where I wasn't making the connection, and that's why I still was resentful towards my mother, is because I didn't think that.
	I was like, no, she was, is that really true?
	You know, I was like, I just, I have a hard time believing that.
	I have a hard time believing that she couldn't change.
	I have a hard time believing, and maybe that's not what she's saying.
	Maybe she's not saying, it's not that she couldn't change, it's that she was only reacting to her past while she was raising him.
	Well, yeah, I mean, you can imagine anything you want, but you just have to go with empirical evidence with people.
	My mother never made a choice that surprised me.
	My mother never took responsibility for her behavior.
	Now, I can say, well, the reasons for this might be this, that, or the other.
	She had a really tough time in the war, which I'm sure she did, and if I saw what happened to her in a war, I might have even sympathy as opposed to no anger, and I'm sure that would be the case.
	But... But it's not that complicated.
	Judging people isn't that complicated, particularly when you have multi-decades of information, right?
	So if your mother has not taken responsibility, has never compared her own actions to an ideal standard or listened to somebody who has a complaint or whatever, then she has no free will.
	You say, oh, but why?
	It's like, I don't care. You can't possibly know why.
	Why does somebody end up as a robot?
	Why are they an NPC of trauma infliction?
	You don't know. And you'll never know.
	Because they're an NPC, they'll never tell you the truth.
	I could go to my mom and say, okay, why are you this way?
	But for her to respond in an honest manner would be to not be a robot.
	So I'm going to a robot saying, why are you a robot, expecting the robot to give me some honest answer when honesty is impossible to a robot.
	You'll never know! So, Nathaniel Brandon wrote about this, though, and this is what always comes up when I think about this, and I'm glad we're talking about this because this is going right to the heart of the issue of what we were discussing nights ago and what I've been grappling with ever since I read it in the book, Honoring the Self. It tells a story about two brothers, and they're both seeing a therapist, and they both had the same alcoholic father, and the older brother is...
	You're an alcoholic like his father, and the other brother is a staunch non-drinker, right?
	Absolutely doesn't touch the stuff.
	The therapist asks the older brother, why are you an alcoholic?
	And he goes, well, that's easy.
	I learned to drink on my father's knee.
	You know, I saw him, and I guess you could say I learned to drink on my father's knee.
	Then he turns to the younger brother and says, well, why are you Why don't you touch alcohol at all?
	Why are you against it? He goes, that's easy.
	I saw what it did to my father, and I decided completely against it because I saw the destructive.
	So here's my problem with what you're saying, I guess, and maybe I'm not seeing things properly.
	I still believe mom had a choice.
	I had a choice.
	I could have easily been disliked the rest of my family, and I'm not.
	And so I have agency there.
	See, this is where I fall down on this.
	She doesn't have any free will.
	She did at one point.
	She might not now.
	She made that choice.
	Okay, you tell me the empirical test for figuring out whether and when your mom had free will and how she lost it.
	Because the only person you can go to for evidence for that is your mom, who's a liar.
	So you tell me how you can prove this to beyond a reasonable doubt.
	Look, I know I'm sounding facetious, but maybe there's some method I've never thought of.
	But you tell me how you can figure this out in any objective fashion.
	Okay. It's like going to a criminal and thinking you can get an objective witness to the crime by asking the criminal, did you do it?
	Now, if the criminal has reformed, then he'll take responsibility.
	He's no longer a criminal, right?
	But if the criminal denies being a criminal and you go to the criminal and say, well, when did you become a criminal?
	Or why did you become a criminal?
	They'll say, I'm not a criminal. I never did it.
	Never touched that guy. I'm framed.
	It's a setup. Cops hate me.
	You tell me...
	Because you can't haul your parents into a court of law.
	You can't subject them to discovery.
	You can't bring up eyewitnesses and you can't impose punishments.
	It's he said, she said.
	And you're dealing with corrupt and abusive known liars if you have these kinds of people in your life.
	So you're going to a liar and you're saying, I need you to tell me the truth about how you became a liar...
	Even though I know you're committed to lying to me about everything.
	You tell me how that's just not a hole with no bottom and a massive waste of your time.
	So then is that statement, like that story that Nathaniel Brandon describes in that statement about how he was using that as a way to say you are not sealed in your own fate, right?
	Like, you're not damaged goods.
	You have a choice. So he was using it as a tool to empower.
	Okay, well both of those people in therapy.
	The two I was having dinner with?
	No, sorry, the two people in the Nathaniel Brandon story.
	Weren't they both in therapy?
	Well, that's true.
	Okay, so there you already have a very, very select group of people.
	A tiny minority of the population.
	Therapy is for smart people and elite people.
	The vast majority of human beings wouldn't go there if you paid them.
	So I broaden the concepts beyond what?
	No, but you can't.
	You can't say these two people who have taken responsibility for their lives and have figured out why they are where they are and are honest in the process and are in therapy are exactly the same people as my mom who's never taken responsibility and never gone to therapy and won't admit anything.
	Two people who speak Japanese are exactly the same as my mother who's never studied Japanese as my mom.
	It's like, no, they're not. These people in the Nathaniel Brandon story are not the same as your mom to begin with.
	So you're comparing apples with oranges, or apples to the opposite of apples, really.
	And there's a part of me that has that, it's a bad, well, I wouldn't call it bad, but it's a belief that's not quite objective reality.
	It believes that everyone has a choice and that everyone has free will and everyone makes decisions.
	And I've met a lot of people that have the same belief as I do that, you know, it's just people have agency and they should have agency.
	But what you're saying is that's a small subset of the population.
	Well, what is your empirical evidence Not from a theoretical standpoint, right?
	Now, if you're a Christian, of course, the soul exists, and the soul has agency, and there's reform as possible, and, you know, I mean, that's not my belief, right?
	So... Not a theoretical, all human beings have free will, but a, I'm an empiricist first and foremost, right?
	So how many people in your life that you've known, and everyone knows hundreds or thousands of people over the course of, you know, middle age or whatever, right?
	Sometimes more. So of the people that you've known in your life, How many out of the hundreds of thousands of people that you've met and had some kind of interaction with that's not just like a waiter or something like that, right?
	It's a question for the audience.
	It's an important question, right?
	So don't, you know, we don't want to dwell in theory, right?
	We don't want to be scholastics.
	See, scholastics said that you can figure out the universe by reading the Bible and debating things.
	Whereas the scientists say, well, we need empirical, we've got to go to reality, we've got to go to empirical evidence, and we've got to build our theories of what is in the world, not what we can just imagine or picture or what we would like to have, so to speak, right?
	So, that's my question, right?
	My question is, of the hundreds or thousands of people that you've known over the course of your life, How many of them take responsibility, have substantially improved themselves, are open to being criticized, welcome feedback, and improve thereby?
	It's a big question, right?
	Because that's empiricism, not the theory.
	My therapist and I had this conversation two Fridays ago, and someone else on the server, who's also in therapy, was telling me that her therapist had that same conversation, so it sparked one between us.
	Yeah. Okay, so just stop giving me the backstory and just give me the answer, because the long show, right?
	Well, for my personal experience, it's between the two numbers that I got.
	For the person on the server...
	Wait, wait, what are the two numbers? Just give me the answer.
	How many people of the hundreds of thousands of people that you've met...
	The low was 0.1%, the high was 10%.
	I'm sorry, the low is 1%, the high is 10%?
	0.1%. The low was 0.1% and the high is 10%.
	That's way too big a break.
	That's way too big a spread. But for me, it's probably closer to 1% because that's been my personal experience.
	Okay, so... I mean, 1%, whatever it's going to be, right?
	So, 1%.
	Look, it could be 10% if you're raised in a sort of very elite self-knowledge, therapy, whatever kind of way, right?
	But those people will then tend to become robots when it comes to politics.
	They might be fine with self-knowledge and stuff, but then they become robots.
	Like, it's got to be robot-free.
	Or, you know, like my mom was a robot about everything, but I've known some people who are more interested in self-knowledge, but then you start to talk to them about Donald Trump and they just lose their minds.
	They just become robots somewhere else.
	I mean, a person with genuine free will, not a little carved out corner. - Yeah, 'cause I don't think we were talking about that necessarily.
	What my therapist was saying is, well, look at AA. About 10% stay clean.
	There's a permanent change.
	Look at... Well, no, no, no, no.
	But hang on. You know that that's...
	Come on, man. Don't fudge me. Don't fudge me this late in the game.
	You know that 10% of people in AA is not 10% of the general population.
	Come on. That's a good point.
	Come on. You know that, right?
	I mean, that's probably 1% of the population go to AA. So we're talking about 10% of 1%, right?
	0.1% of the population.
	Although, of course, not everyone's an alcoholic, but even if the alcoholics, right, Very few of them go to AA. Maybe...
	I think what I was trying to do there is I was afraid of that.
	There was a part of me that was afraid that it was that small of a number.
	You know, but if it is that small of a number, you damn well need to know it.
	Because then you'll stop looking all over the place and making yourself wrong because things don't work out.
	Right? Gold is rare.
	You know, when I worked for this 18 months up north, We found gold a couple of places, a couple of places, in 18 months of 12 hours a day, seven days a week, back-breaking labor with a couple of breaks in between, right?
	We found gold a couple of times.
	Never enough to make a mine.
	Gold's pretty bloody rare, right?
	Whereas if you think it's all over the place, why on earth would you fly up to the middle of nowhere and hump 80-pound peon jar drills all over God's green acre or God's snowy, bramble-covered snowshoe acre, right?
	Why would you do that? You say, oh my god, I just walked down the street and like one out of every ten rocks is going to be gold.
	Why on earth would you? Like you're never going to find any gold if you think it's everywhere.
	Because you won't look properly.
	Do you know what I mean? If gold is rare, you need to know that.
	Because if you think you can eat grass, you don't go to the grocery store.
	You just go eat grass and get sick, right?
	You can't eat grass even though it's everywhere.
	You're not a horse. You need to know how rare human beings, as we would define them with the free will and self-responsibility, you need to know how rare they are.
	Otherwise you're going to waste your life not looking properly.
	You're going to waste your life picking up rocks you think are gold and they're nothing.
	There's evidence that I've already done that.
	Yeah, well, I mean, I don't want your third or fourth marriage to go awry too, right?
	Right. There's another burden there too that we recognize that wants to lower its standards to play the hero.
	Well, and also because it's a lonely process.
	Right. It's a lonely process.
	I mean, when I was looking for gold, there weren't a lot of people around.
	It's a lonely process.
	It's a really lonely process.
	It's interesting because what my therapist said about that some time ago was that that's part of being intelligent.
	Well, yeah, there's the IQ thing as well, right?
	And so IQ, and, you know, IQ I think is related to self-knowledge, and high IQ people tend to have more emotional self-regulation and so on.
	But here's the thing, too, because you need someone who's got free will as a principle.
	You don't want to get married to someone where you can talk about personal issues and self-knowledge and they're pretty good, and then if politics comes up, they turn completely mental.
	Because then you're just kind of trapped, right?
	So you need people who have free will, not just in a certain area, but as a foundational principle.
	Yeah, they're rare.
	They're rare, but, you know, man, accept no substitute.
	I'm not kidding. Well, you've tried accepting substitutes, right?
	You tried last night?
	Very unhealthy. What's unhealthy is just not being able to tell the truth.
	I mean, you didn't enjoy what happened last night.
	And although the girlfriend was signaling for you, if you want to be a hero, you go support the girlfriend, right?
	Because he's not the right guy for the girlfriend if she's into self-knowledge, right?
	At least not in his current state, maybe down the road or maybe if he changes or whatever, right?
	But you want to go be a hero, you say to the girlfriend who snorts at her boyfriend's proclamations of self-knowledge and you say, oh, tell me more.
	What do you mean? But that's tough, right?
	Because you know. So not being able to be honest or avoiding honesty is one of the first signs of being in a state of danger.
	You see what I mean?
	Yeah, that's very interesting.
	You know, it's even more ironic that she just tried to call while I was on the show.
	Oh, she's trapped, right?
	Is he a good-looking guy?
	Is he rich?
	He makes money. He makes money.
	He makes money. Okay. So, you know, she's kind of selling out her soul and her future kids and all that kind of crap, right?
	For money, right? She's already been divorced and she's old enough now that she can't have any more kids, so...
	Oh, okay. She was married in Russia.
	I don't know too much about that.
	I know she was and she had children.
	She goes hiking with you when you're a single guy.
	If you're in a relationship, you don't go hiking with a single guy.
	We're in a group setting.
	There's 20 of us, but I don't know.
	For some reason, everybody's 40 and divorced.
	Got it. Yeah, so I think you've got to recognize that there is a huge amount of scarcity of quality people.
	And, you know, 99% of people just aren't going to cut it.
	For the listeners of this show, right?
	I mean, I guess the norms can marry the normies, right?
	But if you're into this kind of conversation, you're into this kind of show, if you're into really self-ownership, self-responsibility, maturity, free will, choice, reason, evidence, I mean, it's a needle in the haystack time, people.
	And I say that not because I want you to be lonely, but because I don't want you to be lonely.
	Because the important thing in a search for something rare is to keep moving.
	Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving.
	I covered, I don't even know how many thousands of square miles it felt like on foot for most of it when I was working up north.
	But the important thing is, oh, there's no gold here.
	We're going to keep moving, got to keep moving, got to keep moving until we find our gold.
	If you are looking for a needle in a haystack, you pick up huge stacks of hay, you shake them, you just throw them aside.
	You keep moving, keep moving.
	Whereas we just stop and say, okay, well, maybe I can turn this piece of straw into a needle.
	I was just about to say that one of the things I listened to in a meditation was...
	This is something my therapist has said before.
	You can't force things to happen.
	It's like trying to grab water.
	It doesn't work. That's what I've been doing with my past marriages and that might be what I'm doing now with this other group of people.
	Young enough for me to even have a conceivable romantic relationship with.
	I could say, well, I have a circle of friends and maybe there's quality in the friendships, but I have to vet that.
	And like you're saying, I can't be wasting time on it.
	If it's not there, then I'm just wasting my time.
	It's not advancing me forward.
	Well, and the people who want you to waste your time are the people who harmed you in the past.
	They don't want you to be happy. They don't want you to have success.
	They don't want you to have a good relationship.
	They don't want you to be better off without them.
	My God. See, they're sabotaging you in your head all the time by having you lower your standards, by infecting you with the idea of omniscience that you can somehow implant free will into another human being, which, of course, is a complete contradiction, right?
	You can't implant free will.
	It's like controlling someone to be free.
	Right? So the people in your past...
	Actively want you to, if they're abusive and negative and destructive and unreformed, right?
	They want you to fail.
	They're massively invested in your failure.
	And so they want you to grab at straws.
	They want you to lower your standards.
	They want you to fail.
	Because every day you don't find the great person is a day that they win and you lose and they're into winning.
	And I'm suggesting, you know, maybe you can fucking wing for a change.
	Which means keep your standards high.
	Keep looking. And when you find that person, you'll just know.
	So, like, let's just...
	I went hiking yesterday with a 40-year-old guy.
	And, you know, from my old me would say, well, he's not a bad guy.
	But my new, more self-aware me is, like, he's really hard on himself.
	He doesn't really love himself.
	He likes to beat himself up.
	He's a gossiper. He...
	He's not very, you know, full front with people.
	He kind of eats around the bush.
	He doesn't want to offend people.
	And to me, it's like, okay, you know, he has a hard time going with the flow.
	If he makes a mistake, he self-criticizes.
	I see all these things and I'm like, is that someone I really want to be hanging around?
	Well, I think we know the answer to that, right?
	Yeah, if I'm even questioning it, it's like, I saw that with a girl, too, at the party.
	There was a girl there that I'd never seen.
	She just moved to the area two months ago.
	She was cute. She was a lot older.
	I mean, like, 40s, so it was already like, okay, well, that doesn't really jive.
	She was self-deprecating.
	She would make comments that would demean herself, and I was like, I used to do that, right?
	And I could see that, and I'm just like, that's a very bad sign.
	No. What's wrong with her confidence in herself?
	Again, I guess what you're saying is I need to take the next step.
	And the next step is I need to realize that these people aren't advancing me forward and I need to move on.
	Yeah. Okay.
	Yeah. I mean, do you ever see the movie?
	It's an old movie now. The first half's good.
	The second half's really boring. It's called The Commitments.
	Commitments. Yeah, it's a movie about an Irish R&B band.
	Anyway, so there's a pretty funny scene, a series of scenes, and you can watch this on Rumble.
	Just search for Commitments Auditions.
	Or go to any audition.
	Watch audition shows where there's bad auditions, right?
	So if you're looking for, you know, the lead singer for your band...
	You're going to see a lot of people who are not good, right?
	You see a lot of people who aren't good?
	They either can't sing, or they can't move, or they can't hit the right notes, or they're difficult to work with, or impossible to work with, or they're weird looking, or like, there's just, you know, there's not a lot of Michael Hutchins's out there, right?
	And... You're going to say no to maybe a thousand people.
	I mean, I know when I was auditioning an actress to work on my plays and in my movie, I mean, man, it's brutal.
	I mean, the people are just terrible.
	They're just terrible. Most people are just terrible.
	And you're not doing them any favors, of course.
	But you're not giving feedback by you hanging out with people who don't make the grade.
	You're not giving them the right feedback.
	You're not being honest with them.
	Because if you're honest with them and say, you don't have to say this to them, but if you act in a manner that's like, look, I'm sorry you don't meet my standards, more power to you, have a great life, but I'm operating up here and I'm a lead singer opening at Wembley Stadium and you're like, okay, I'd karaoke. Like, you can't be in the band.
	Sorry. You know, no offense.
	I'm sure there's other stuff, but this is not it, right?
	So you're giving them honest feedback.
	But if you go and you hang out and you take the blame and you're not in a situation where you can be honest, you understand you're harming them.
	You're harming them.
	Because you're giving them dishonest feedback.
	Like some dance show where the guy came up and like dance audition show the guy was terrible but his mom's there like oh he's the best dancer in the world and it's like she's harming him by pretending that he's at a stand that he's not she's withholding honest feedback from him she's causing him to waste his life she couldn't be more destructive if she took a flamethrower to him by pretending the people are what they are not you are doing your part to destroy them I know that sounds like a strong statement,
	but it kind of is.
	Well, and then there's those people that don't listen, right?
	Like you tell them and then they just blow it off or just say, well, I've always been that way or they come up with some excuse, right?
	But you know, hang on, sorry to interrupt, but you know ahead of time whether they're going to listen or not.
	True. That's why I didn't say anything to the guy that night.
	It's because I knew that he was already feeling that superiority.
	I mean, if his own girlfriend couldn't tell him anything, who the hell is this little kid going to do, right?
	You know, it's like... He's going to treat me in the same way.
	He's already treated me in that way.
	Yeah. Yeah, so, I mean, what do you want to...
	I mean, what do you... What are you doing with these losers?
	Come on. What are you doing?
	It's so funny, because the guy yesterday...
	You know, has all those issues.
	And even he said the same thing about the group.
	About the what? About the group.
	Because that's where I met him. I met him in the group of hikers.
	And it was like, well, they're all divorced and they all complain about their past relationships.
	It's like it's a get-together, right?
	And he looked at me and he said, I'm so glad you haven't done that today.
	I get so sick of hearing about it.
	And I said, I didn't feel the need to.
	I said, when I'm around them, I feel like What am I doing?
	I'm giving that power. I'm not really just bitching like they are.
	It's really toxic, I guess, for me.
	Yeah, no, I mean, I, if you want to, I mean, you're still a relatively young man, right?
	You want to have a proper relationship, you just got to up your standards.
	Because, you know, once you've been involved, you know, you listen to these kinds of conversations, right?
	So you and I, we've had some disagreements, we've had some flybys and all of that, but we've had a respectful conversation, as I do, I had the debate with the animal rights guy.
	A couple of weeks ago, a respectful conversation.
	And, you know, I'm willing to throw down when necessary, but I much prefer kind of congenial conversations.
	So here's the thing, man.
	This is what people don't understand about this show.
	I'm sure you do, but it's the last point I want to make because I've got to go eat.
	But, like, once you've listened to this kind of conversation, I mean, you're screwed for the norms.
	Like, you now know.
	You now know that these kinds of conversations are possible.
	This is why I don't just do solo shows.
	One of the main reasons I don't just do solo shows is if I'm just doing solo shows, they're not hearing me engaged in regular conversations.
	Now, once you hear me engaged in a regular conversation with people and look at how much we've talked about, how deep we've gone, how positive it's been and great and all that, right?
	I mean, now you've got a standard and you can't undo that standard.
	You've been exposed to a higher standard of human interaction.
	And that's going to sit there in your brain.
	It's going to sit there in your brain.
	It's not just me who's capable of these conversations.
	It's you! It's you!
	You are capable of these conversations.
	And that's why that conversation two nights ago felt uncomfortable, and that's also why I noticed what was going on yesterday when I was out hiking with the guy, right?
	It's that saying, you know, the hike is nice, being out in the woods is nice, but the conversation we're having is pretty dissatisfying.
	I don't feel satiated from it.
	Like, we're out there four hours, and we really didn't talk about anything.
	Oh, yeah. No, that's not good.
	That's not good. I tried.
	I tried to bring up stuff that was meaningful, but it's just like you would glance over the topic and not have anything to say about it or change the subject or go back.
	Right. Okay, listen, man.
	It's been great.
	Two and a half hour show.
	All I had this morning was a piece of bread.
	So I got to go have my lunch and get my day on.
	I've got some almost coming out this afternoon.
	I hope you guys will check it out.
	And please let me know what you think.
	Operations at freedomain.com.
	You can get the book at freedomain.com forward slash almost.
	And I hope that you will check it out.
	It's a really, really great book.
	And I'm very pleased with the reading.
	So I hope that you will check it out.
	It explains a lot about the world as it stands.
	It's a historical novel like we just talked about history.
	But it's really about the future.
	So thanks everyone so much for dropping by today.
	A great pleasure. Freedomain.com forward slash donate.
	Freedomain.com forward slash donate.
	I really hope that you can come by and help out the show.
	It's very, very important for me and I dare say for the world as a whole.
	So Freedomain.com forward slash donate.
	Have yourself a wonderful, wonderful week.
	This Wednesday, 7 p.m.
	Eastern Standard Time, I'm going to start to do a regular live stream or at least see if I can get that into my groove.
	And I hope you'll drop by Wednesday at 7 p.m.
	Eastern Standard Time. You can go to dlive.tv forward slash fredomain.
	I streamed to a couple of other places as well.
	So lots of love from up here.
	I'll talk to you soon. Thanks so much for your time and attention today.
	Take care. Well, thank you so much for enjoying this latest Free Domain show on philosophy.
	And I'm going to be frank and ask you for your help, your support, your encouragement, and your resources.
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