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Dec. 29, 2020 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:11:42

STOP TRYING TO FIGURE PEOPLE OUT! Freedomain Call In

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	Well, good evening everybody.
	Ben Molyneux from Free Domain.
	So we're here for a round two with a fine listener and I wonder if you could do me a favor and just before we get into the new stuff, if you can just remind people of the conversation we had before.
	Absolutely. So back in March, I had to call off my wedding with my Technically legally married wife, but we hadn't had a ceremony because of the COVID. And I called you, and I was talking about how her mother-in-law, my mother-in-law, her mother, was verbally abusing her.
	And we talked a little bit about my family history, a little bit, we touched on it.
	But I wasn't, I didn't have all the puzzle pieces together like I think I do now.
	So I did want to update, this is part of the reason I called, is I did want to update you on kind of what I've come to the horrible realization of with my family.
	But I also wanted to update you and let you know that when I pushed on the house of cards like you told me to, it fell over.
	She sided with her parents against me, became very unempathetic.
	And then it's a little sad because I gave her like three months to try to empathize, or like two months, right?
	May 16th is when I walked out on her.
	I got to the point where I was worried I was going to hit her, so I had to leave because I didn't think I could control myself anymore.
	And the divorce was finalized in September.
	But it was sad because I had someone on this very Discord server tell me that they thought it was almost certain that she would never change now.
	And he thought that was really sad.
	And I kind of agree with him on that.
	Well, you agree. I mean, obviously you agree that it was sad, but you agree with him now that he won't change in your opinion?
	I don't think it's possible.
	Hold on, I turned you up just a little bit.
	Right. No, we separated and divorced, and I don't think she couldn't imagine raising children without grandparents, and that's what would have happened.
	So, and from what I understand, she has a boyfriend now, but I don't bother stalking or following any of that.
	Someone told me that. Wow.
	That didn't take long. No.
	No, she was big on throwing the V-bomb at you early.
	She was...
	had a really bad sexual time.
	Like, she was pretty ruined.
	So... So, I'm sorry to hear about this.
	And I just wanted to correct you.
	I didn't tell you to do something.
	I just made a suggestion.
	And I think honesty is really, I mean, it's such a cliche to say, well, honesty is really important in relationships.
	But it really is quite shocking how little honesty we are so often allowed in our relationship.
	How much dancing we have to do, how much self-censorship we have to do.
	And I'm not just talking about the online stuff, of course, that's kind of a taken-for-granted thing, but, you know, in our personal relationship, just how little truth we're allowed, how little we're allowed to express ourselves, express our preferences.
	You know, if we're surrounded by selfish people, then they will view your preferences, if it doesn't coincide with their preferences, they will view your preferences as an act of aggression.
	They almost have to defend themselves against Or often do.
	So, you've got to be honest.
	You know, whether you lie or whether you tell the truth, you're going to die one day anyway.
	And I do sort of believe that every little lie, every little self-abandonment, every little self-contradiction, self-erasure that we do, it kind of follows us.
	Like, you know, we're tying something behind us, a bowling ball or something, and just keep adding to those And I think eventually we just kind of run out of steam.
	We run out of self.
	And then whether we are alive or dead, we're just not really there.
	And it's something a friend of mine said when he was a teenager.
	He said, I can't believe how little wisdom my grandmother has to offer.
	I always thought that was a really...
	It was just a statement he kind of made in passing, but it almost stuck with me.
	Or that old statement about King Lear, thou shouldst not have been old before thou were wise.
	That it's so easy to get old and still be an idiot.
	You know, it's so easy to get old and have accumulated no wisdom, no truth, no value, no depth, no meaning.
	No understanding of virtue.
	And it is so easy to slip into a life of self-erasure, convenience to others, never making much of a fuss, never causing much problem, at least for bad people.
	And if you're not willing to cause problems for bad people, you end up being a problem to good people or for good people.
	So, I mean, I'm very glad that you decided to speak honestly.
	Do you want to drop any more details about what happened and how that went?
	Yes, actually. What I meant by she wouldn't empathize with me is there were two things that really finally put the nail in the coffin.
	And one was much more significant than the other, but they were both significant.
	Her past history was she had a boyfriend who was physically abusive.
	I almost became that.
	And I'll tell you kind of what happened there.
	I was very resentful because I was, you know, at first I was hiding myself from her and self-erasing and I started to tell her my preferences and I started to say certain things and I started to wake up to my abuse.
	You know, part of it was listening to you saying I don't have to be okay with my abusers.
	I'd never heard that before.
	It's never that surprising why some people don't like me, because I'm kind of interfering with their ability to exploit others.
	But anyway, sorry, go ahead. Yeah, so one of the reasons I had to leave was because I was losing my temper and I couldn't control it any longer.
	And there were these two Scottish Terriers that I was not comfortable with in my house.
	And I went out walking with her and the two dogs one day, one night.
	And we were around in the street corner and I told her, I said, I'm really worried about, I feel like I'm really going to hurt one of these dogs.
	I said, I've got a past history where I tortured animals when I was really young.
	And I don't feel like I can control my anger right now.
	And I feel like one of these dogs is really going to get hurt.
	And her response to that was, well, you're just going to have to deal with it.
	The same way that she dealt with all her problems, to shrug and move on.
	Yeah, and that was one of the first things that I saw that was like...
	And I even pushed back and said, you know, I'm really reaching out for help here.
	And this is not constructive, and your answer is not going to help us solve the problem.
	Right? And so, you know, and then the worst one, in my opinion.
	So, Steph, you and I have talked in the past on August 16th about sexual abuse, and I underwent sexual abuse by a neighborhood bully who was 13 years older than I was.
	Or, well, no, he wasn't 13.
	He was 13 and I was 8.
	That's what it was. Sorry.
	He was 5 years older.
	And I didn't realize that I had this very uncomfortable relationship with my sexuality.
	And I've kind of figured out why I've had that.
	And part of it is the abuse, but there's more to the story.
	But what happened is when I got into the relationship with her, initially I said I didn't want sex.
	And she pushed and pushed and pushed.
	And it was someone on the server that told me, well, she pushed you into it.
	She basically raped you, is what this other woman on the server told me.
	But when you say pushed, what do you mean?
	She said, just let it happen.
	She started flaying our clothes off and just said, just let it happen.
	Just let it happen. And this was after I'd said, I don't want any sex early in the relationship at all.
	That was kind of an abusive thing to say.
	Yeah. So... It's certainly not saying no means no, right?
	Right. Well, and I made a mistake there because she called me after that and was crying and she played this victim card and I totally caved into it at the time.
	What do you mean? She called and said, I'm sorry, I think I've ruined our relationship and all this stuff.
	And I kind of sympathized and said, no, it's my fault.
	I'm the one that caved on the urge and I wouldn't have done it had I not wanted it.
	And I just self-erased again.
	And you know why she was pushing for sex?
	She had no personality.
	She had nothing else to offer. She needed you to bond with something.
	She needed you to bond with a positive experience that she could only provide physically.
	So let me tell you what happened then.
	Because this is important.
	When I stopped talking to my mother in about early May, right?
	This had been about three months.
	In about early May, and I'd pushed back on the in-laws at this point.
	Early May...
	She had been pushing me for having children for so long.
	I need to have kids. I need to have kids.
	I'm 33. I'm 34.
	I need to have kids. You mean this is your mom, right?
	No, this was my...
	Your fiancé.
	Okay. Yeah. Your girlfriend.
	Okay. Right. And she had been bothering me about this for the longest time.
	And I finally told her, look, I can't be a father right now.
	And I said, I know this sounds so weird because I entered the relationship and I said I wanted children.
	And all of a sudden, I'm waking up to all this abuse around me, and I'm trying to put together my family history, and I'm trying to get my head back on my feet, just trying to get myself together.
	I said, I don't even know who I am.
	I said, I can't possibly be a father anymore, so stop pushing me, please.
	Well, you didn't mean anymore, if I understand this.
	You just meant, like, I've only now just become myself.
	How can I just become someone else, right?
	Right, I need time, right?
	I just, please, please give me some space and time and empathize with me that I'm trying to figure this out, right?
	Well, a couple days later, and this was, like I said, I walked out May 16th, so I think this was May 13th or 14th.
	We had sex, and she tried to push the sperm I had pulled out into her.
	So you used the withdrawal method like you ejaculated outside of her vagina and then you tried to do a scoop and dump or sperm jack and get the sperm in there?
	Yes. And I was just horrified.
	I was horrified. Yeah, and I got extremely angry and I told her, if you want to nuke the only thing that you had of any value to me, you just did.
	And that's one of the reasons I had to leave the house because I could no longer control my temper.
	I was worried I was going to hit the dogs.
	I was worried I was going to hit her.
	So I had to leave. I was completely out of control.
	Well, it wasn't the dogs who were sperm jacking you.
	That's true. They just were the target, the weaker target, right?
	So I would have been bullying at that point.
	And I couldn't live with myself if I did that.
	So that's how that...
	I guess fortunately she did not become pregnant.
	Yes, and that is how the relationship ended.
	And I want to point that out because I literally dodged a bullet there.
	It grazed me.
	Oh no, it's worse than a bullet. A bullet comes and goes in an instant.
	This 20 years of baby jail that just goes on and on.
	Yes, it was frightening.
	And of course, if women, if feminists were really, really interested in My body, my choice, you know, they would be railing against women who did this kind of stuff, because it is basically enslaving a man against his will, through the power of the state, for 20 years.
	I mean, a woman doesn't even want to be enslaved for nine months to have a baby.
	It's horrible, but it doesn't really cost her that much, and it's only nine months, but there doesn't seem to be much problem at all with Making men pay for 20 years that they do not want at all.
	In fact, not only do they not want the child, they don't want to have anything to do with the woman in question.
	It's absolutely horrendous.
	It is a brutal violation of autonomy, choice, free will and so on.
	But given that that's the reality of the situation, I'm sure glad it didn't land too hard on you.
	Yeah, and even just talking about it, I could feel my heart rate clicking.
	Like I was still in danger almost while it was happening.
	I just wanted to describe that for the listeners.
	I just think of how lucky or how close that was.
	I just... Goodness.
	Yeah, it is no good being a vagina surfer for a couple of decades.
	Right. Anyway, so sorry.
	So you broke up after this incident of the attempted sperm jacking?
	Well, successful sperm jacking, but attempted pregnancy against you?
	Yes. We filed for divorce at that point.
	I initiated.
	The paperwork is finalized in September.
	And that's basically it.
	She's tried to reach back out to me still, even now.
	Even though she has another boyfriend to kind of just jab at me, I guess.
	And I've put her in the spam folder.
	I've blocked her on every other thing that I can think of.
	And I guess it's been long enough that she can't try and pass some other kid off as yours now.
	Yeah, I don't think she could do that.
	Wow, okay. Well, again, I'm sorry to hear that that's how it played out, but it's hard to think that that's not a narrow escape from a bottomless fall.
	Right. That's how I feel about it, too.
	All right. So how can I help you most in this?
	So there's one thing I wanted to bring up beforehand that I have a little bit of a concern about.
	My coworker kind of talked with me about this a little bit.
	He said, well, how are you not paying Steph to feel good about yourself?
	Like, how are you not paying him to tell you what you want to hear?
	I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.
	I don't mean to laugh. It's a serious thing if I understand it, but I'm trying to understand the context.
	Does he know you're not paying me?
	Well, he knows I'm donating.
	He knows I'm donating, but...
	Well, no. Donating is not the same as paying someone.
	Right. You know, if I donate to a charity, not that I'm an official charity or anything, but if I donate to a charity, I'm not paying someone.
	Paying someone is for a specific service, right?
	You know, I mean, donation almost by its definition is an act of kindness, not in particular for goods received.
	So his argument would be that I'm telling you what you want to hear because you're a donor.
	Is that right? Well, there's that, but he also argued that when I was a part of the Methodist Church, I used to donate there, too, and that was to gain access to the community.
	And he said, are you paying for an echo chamber?
	That's the other thing he was asking.
	Right. Okay.
	I have some particular thoughts about that objection, which is obviously important, but not as important as your thoughts about it.
	So let's start with your thoughts about that.
	What's your friend? I mean, I feel like he has my best interest in heart, but I feel like he's a Christian himself.
	And so he did say something about, well, I think God could give you better answers than even he can.
	And I said, well, I've read UPB and I've read RTR and it's really hard for me to go back now.
	I'm perfectly willing to concede to him without any hesitation whatsoever.
	Then an all-powerful, omniscient being would give infinitely better advice than I do.
	I'm absolutely 100,000 percent, I'm infinity percent behind his statement that as a mere mortal with limited cognition, I would give infinitely worse advice than an omniscient being who is all-powerful.
	The problem being, of course, that an omniscient being wouldn't He'd be able to give advice because he would know ahead of time whether you'd take it or not and what you would be doing in the future.
	So I think I'd give just about the best advice around in the limitations of human consciousness.
	But yes, if God is real, there's an eternal, omniscient, all-powerful entity out there.
	I completely agree with your friend that would give infinitely better advice.
	Right, and I thought the donation too, because one of the reasons that I am donating what I'm donating is because the marriage actually ended and I dodged the waterfall.
	And you got what?
	And I managed to get out of that situation.
	Because I'd actually argued with my previous wife about donating to you.
	And I wanted to donate a lot more, but It wasn't until I was able to get out of that baby trap that I had the resources and availability to do it.
	I mean, look, every human being responds to incentives, so I'm not going to say that it's completely irrelevant whether people donate or not.
	It's not. But there's no one, at least, I don't even know your level of donation.
	Maybe I could sort of look it up or whatever, but there's no one that I know of Who, you know, would call up...
	I don't go and look up people's...
	Like, if somebody wants a call from me, I don't even go and look up whether they donate or not.
	And I don't sit there and say, oh, ha, you're a donor, so you move to the front of the queue.
	I get the requests, and just depending on the schedule and where we are in the general cycle of the show and how your particular issue deals with other things that I'm dealing with, either with other listeners or just in sort of solo shows, it's kind of how we make the decision.
	But, you know, I can guarantee everyone out there that I'm not someone who's just like, oh, well, this person's a big donor, so I'm going to tell them what they want to hear, so they keep donating.
	That's just not how it works.
	Now, again, I'm not going to say it's completely irrelevant to me, because that would be to be insane, you know?
	But I don't remember whether people donate.
	I couldn't honestly, don't tell me, but I couldn't honestly tell you what your level of donation is.
	It could be three bucks a month, in which case, boy, that's a...
	It's a pretty cheap echo chamber for a couple of hours of my time.
	But, yeah, that's not...
	And I can't remember a time where I've said, oh, well, this person's a donor, so I'm going to deal with them in some fundamentally different way than I would from anyone or everyone else that I've talked to in these kinds of conversations.
	I can't honestly remember a time where I've said, well, normally I would tell people...
	To tell the truth, but because it's a donor, I'm going to tell them to lie.
	You know, it just wouldn't make any sense, right?
	Or, I don't know, normally I tell people to be assertive, but because this person's a donor, I'm going to tell them to be submissive.
	Or, you know, normally I tell people not to put up with abuse, but because it's a donor, I'm going to change my message and tell them to put up with abuse.
	Right, this just wouldn't make any particular sense.
	So, whether your friend is right or wrong...
	We'll get into that in a second, but I'll just tell you from my perspective, I don't tailor these conversations.
	I mean, I don't remember, I don't know, I don't look up, it doesn't matter, it could be virtually nothing, it could be a lot, but it's not part of my consideration.
	And I don't think people could say, in the few times where someone has self-identified as a donor, I don't think people would say, oh my gosh, the advice he gives these people is totally different.
	Right, the only other concern I have, and this is something I thought about before he even brought this concern to me, and it's probably a non-concern because I don't see what goes on behind the scenes. and it's probably a non-concern because I don't see what No, no, bring it up. No, listen. Don't prejudge it.
	If you have a concern, bring it up.
	Absolutely. Don't prejudge it.
	Well, it's just, ever since the Discord server started, are we primarily choosing the people of the Discord server to have us calling?
	And, I mean, there's probably reasons for...
	I don't know.
	Just worry about that.
	And I don't know if it matters. I don't think it matters.
	I mean, I still do calls outside the server.
	It's just a very good thing to have the conversation.
	And I still do have calls.
	I'll set up calls with people outside.
	That's a big deal.
	But let's get back to your friend.
	Let's get back to your friend. He bothers me.
	And, you know, the cynical among the listeners say, well, that's what he bothers.
	I'm picking up the donor thing.
	But I'll tell you why it bothers me.
	So, the FUD people.
	Fear, uncertainty, and doubt.
	Right? The FUD people.
	And the FUD people are like...
	And one of the warning signs of the FUD people, the people who are just sowing fear, uncertainty, and doubt, is...
	It's two things.
	Number one, it's a lack of specificity in the caution And one of the ways you can tell that lack of specificity is the phrase echo chamber.
	Well, I don't know if he said that.
	That may be me embellishing a little bit.
	Okay, but telling you what you want to hear.
	Yeah, okay. That's true.
	Is it possible that because you're a donor, I'm telling you what you want to hear?
	Well, is it possible that...
	Steph is also a reptilian overlord with a human skin shell, you know, who's traveled back through time to kill a robot who's trying to kill you, right?
	I mean, oh, yeah, it's possible, right?
	I guess, right?
	But what...
	And so if somebody says, is it possible that...
	Is it possible that, Steph, you're tailoring your message as to whether someone's a donor?
	Is it possible? It's like...
	I don't mean to say this to you, but basically screw up.
	If you have a specific criticism, please voice it.
	But the fear, uncertainty, and doubt stuff is really toxic.
	You know, so if somebody says, hey, Steph, here's what I've noticed.
	And listen, I've seen these criticisms.
	People say to me, Steph, you get a guy on, and you're really, really blunt and honest.
	You tell the truth. You're direct.
	You're forceful. But you get a woman on, and suddenly you're all kinds of delicate.
	You know, you're very, very, you cuck, you're a mangina, you're not as direct, blah, blah, blah, right?
	Okay, well, that's an interesting criticism, and I've certainly thought about that quite a bit.
	And I won't sort of get into my responses to it, because I'll try to stay focused.
	But that's a slightly more specific criticism, right?
	Well, that's interesting. Now, an even better criticism would be somebody to say, okay, Here's two situations, Steph, not more than six months apart.
	The guy said this, and you responded, boom, boom, boom.
	Now, in almost the same situation, the woman said this, and you responded, boom, boom, boom.
	And the two responses were very different.
	Is it possible that...
	Or here's my evidence, not is it possible, but here's my evidence.
	Now, the is-it-possible people, in my experience, have almost always been...
	Sowing fear, uncertainty, and doubt.
	Because if you're concerned that someone is acting in a way that is not ideal, and I appreciate that concern.
	I'm happy that people bring it up.
	I'm happy that they talk about it.
	But if you're concerned that me or someone in your life is not acting the way you think they should, they're acting badly in some way or inconsistently, hypocritically, then it bothers you.
	Now, if it bothers you that someone is acting badly, then you owe it to that person.
	If you care about that person, you owe it to that person to find a specific action to criticize.
	It's really, really important.
	It's not just you and me or this other guy who was saying, oh, you were a Methodist, you donated that.
	It's really important.
	If you think someone is acting badly, don't just go up to them and say, well, isn't it possible that you're just acting badly?
	Yeah, it's possible.
	But what the hell are you talking about?
	What specific thing? I see.
	What specific thing?
	Let's say he listened to the call.
	Let's say he listened to the call, right?
	And he said, hmm, I think I detected three instances where staff Said something that I'm pretty sure you just wanted to hear rather than something that was philosophically good.
	He tailored his advice or his feedback or what he was saying.
	He tailored it to you against the philosophical principles that he himself, Steph, advocates, right?
	Okay, that would...
	I'd be fascinated to hear that.
	I would really appreciate someone.
	Who pointed that out to me?
	Because I'm not aware of it.
	But I can't see myself.
	Sorry, go ahead. His criticism is a little more broad from the first call-in show.
	When we were talking about my brother, which is kind of what I wanted to focus on this call once we get over this little bit.
	But from the first call-in show, you said it's probably too late.
	And note, you said probably.
	I even pointed that out to him.
	But he said, as a Christian, I just can't believe that it's too late for anybody.
	And that's a little too generic.
	What now? Generic, right?
	Hey, man. A little too generalized.
	I mean, has he never heard of a mortal sin?
	Sorry, you cut out.
	Say that again. Has he never heard of a mortal sin?
	I'll have to ask.
	Has he never heard of unrepentant sinners?
	Has he never heard the basic axiom that the best predictor of future behavior is relevant to past behavior?
	And the longer the relevant past behavior has stretched, the more predictive of the future is.
	If somebody wants to know whether I'm going to work out this week, if the only time in my life I worked out was last week, they can't tell too much about it, right?
	It could be a one-time thing.
	I hurt myself if I don't work out anymore.
	But if, as is the case, I've been working out Since my mid-teens, so 40 years, with almost no breaks, I have been working for 40 years.
	So if somebody says, what are the odds that Steph's going to work out next week?
	Well, the odds are extraordinarily high, because the best predictor of future behavior is relevant past behavior.
	That's sort of an iron law of life psychology.
	It's possible I might not work out next week.
	I could get injured. I could be in a coma.
	I could just, for whatever reason, say, oh, that's it.
	40 years is good enough. I'm going to coast from here on.
	And even though working out is more important in your 50s than it is in your 20s.
	In your 20s, you just work out to look good.
	In your 50s, you work out so you can keep walking comfortably at your old age, right?
	So that idea that it might be too late for someone?
	Hmm. Well...
	There's more to it. That's a Christian thing.
	I'm sorry, that's a Christian thing. Sorry, go ahead.
	There's more to it than that, right?
	Like, he sees my brother as someone who has never given the chance, whereas you're saying he has some agency, and I can really see both sides of that argument.
	And, sorry, if you could just remind me a little bit about what we were talking about with your brother.
	So my brother is disabled and you asked me, can he work?
	And my family's message, which I shared with you initially, was, no, I don't think so.
	And then you started to push back.
	So he's legally blind, so he can't drive.
	He's got one leg with a foot that's eight and a half and another that's an 11.
	So he's got one leg that's crippled.
	And then he had seizures.
	And this is the story about the doctors pulled him out with forceps and gave him brain hemorrhages.
	And I told you that they broke his leg on the way out.
	Right. Well, I found out that wasn't true.
	And I remember you messaging me about that.
	And I definitely want to get into that.
	But let's not spread ourselves too thin here.
	Let's just finish this part. Okay.
	I'm sorry. I'm kind of debating with your friend through you.
	If he wants to call in.
	And set me straight, I would be overjoyed to hear from him.
	Because if somebody... I always feel it's really mean for people to say to me, Steph, you're wrong, and then not really give me good arguments.
	That's really mean. Because if you have good arguments, please help rescue me from error.
	You know, like if you and I are driving somewhere, and you know I'm driving in the exact opposite direction, but you just kind of say, I don't know, I think we...
	Or if you don't say anything, I view that as kind of mean.
	What you need to do is say, Steph, you're absolutely driving in the wrong direction.
	Here's the map. Here's the example.
	Here's where we're going wrong. Here's where we took the wrong turn.
	And here's how we turn around and get back.
	Now, as a driver, am I going to sit there and say, you bastard.
	You son of a bitch.
	How dare you turn me around when I'm driving in the wrong direction?
	No, I would be thankful. And so the people who are like, oh, you'll be as bad or, you know, whatever, this is wrong or, you know, it's an echo chamber for donors or something like that.
	It's like, Come on.
	I mean, if I'm worth criticizing, I think I am.
	I'm sure there's lots to criticize.
	But if I'm worth criticizing, then people need to do the Christian act of kindness and give me something specific rather than the vague fear, uncertainty, and doubt crap that people generally hump into the atmosphere for reasons I think I understand or I think I know.
	But let me ask you this about your friend who was telling you the fear, uncertainty, and doubt stuff in my opinion.
	Did he... Warn you about your wife or your fiancé or when she was your girlfriend.
	Did he say, ooh, you know, she's got some really bad...
	We better really sit down and talk about this because I'm nervous about you getting mad at this woman.
	I don't know why I didn't think about that before.
	Maybe he'll remind me once he hears this.
	Maybe I forgot. I think you'd remember.
	I think you'd remember that conversation.
	I got really mad at all the people in my life then because almost no one told me anything.
	Ah, so you could get married to a truly dangerous woman.
	You could have ended up being tied to her through child support, alimony, and she could have been the kind of woman, and we all know these brutal stories, right?
	Listen to the honey badger stuff that will make your penis actually go from an outie to an innie.
	Of the kind of women who in a divorce will say, oh...
	Sorry, lost a tiny bit of audio here.
	My argument here was that this man's wife, if she had gotten pregnant, could have thrown him in baby jail through alimony child support for 20 years.
	She also, in a divorce, if she had children, could have accused him of abuse.
	He could have ended up in jail and his friend hadn't warned him about this very dangerous woman he was dating, engaged to, and married to.
	And the argument goes from there.
	To the point where he's going to warn you about me.
	I can't put you in jail.
	I can't drag you through a court system.
	I can't force you to pay me thousands of dollars a month for 20 years.
	Neither would I want any of those powers.
	So he's really concerned for you.
	So he's going to warn you about me.
	Okay, that's fine.
	But did he warn you about something pretty much infinitely more dangerous to you than a podcaster in Canada?
	The only person that I can give that credit for, well, there's two people.
	My father warned me a little bit, and my therapist warned me.
	But now he's warning you.
	Now that you've got some support on your side, now that you've got some clarity, now you've got someone in your corner, now you see he's a concern.
	Yeah, that's interesting.
	Where were you, my friend?
	When I was staring down the maw of a well-armed vagina.
	When I was tied to the train tracks of the V-bomb.
	Where were you? Now you're free of this, and that freedom threatens him, I assume, and so he's just, he's feeling anxious because you're making choices.
	He obviously knows he has to make better choices, and so he's just trying to create fear, anxiety, and doubt in you.
	So that he can excuse his own inaction with what I assume are his own crappy.
	Yeah, I think that he's got a brother that he still helps on occasion.
	And we were talking about finding closure around my own brother.
	And I think you might be right on that.
	So, again, I don't want to be sounding like the guy who's like, well, anyone who criticizes me is just But, you know, there is that biblical thing, like, do not worry so much about the moat in your brother's eye and ignore the beam in your own,
	right? And so, yeah, if he's all kinds of concerned about you but didn't warn you about your incredibly dangerous wife or fiancé or girlfriend, be like, dude, I mean, you're pulling up to the party here kind of like three days afterwards and you're showing up from champagne.
	So I don't want to be the guy who's like, well, anybody who criticizes me and has their own issues, yeah, yeah, absolutely criticize me.
	But I get annoyed fundamentally when it's this, well, you know, maybe it's just an echo chamber.
	Let's just fear uncertainty and doubt.
	Okay, define echo chamber.
	An echo chamber would be, I didn't tell you anything you didn't already know.
	Like, you get a bunch of libertarians sitting down and say, do you know that Congress...
	You know that Congress...
	Screwed the public for their own financial and political gain?
	It's like, yeah. That's what Congress does.
	That's Congress. That's what force is, right?
	That's what violence does. The state does.
	So an echo chamber would be when a bunch of people who already dislike Congress sit down and talk about how they dislike Congress.
	That's fine. It's not the end of the world.
	I mean, it's not bad.
	It's a bit of a waste with everybody...
	But an echo chamber is when you don't hear anything that you don't already know consciously.
	Now, in our conversation, if I remember it rightly, I think I do, you got some stuff you hadn't noticed or thought before.
	Like in this conversation, where I'm pointing out your friend who's like, oh, I'm concerned about you in this echo chamber.
	It's like, well, were you concerned enough to warn me about an incredibly...
	Dangerous vagina dentata that could have swallowed decades of my life in a hellish legal maze of possible prison?
	That's a new thought.
	So an echo chamber would be where everything I said you kind of already knew and already agreed with, but as far as I understand it, in our conversations, there's new stuff that comes up.
	And if there's new stuff that comes up in a conversation that you hadn't thought of before that's of value, A little surprising, maybe even shocking.
	Then that, by definition, is not an echo chamber.
	Did your friend listen to the call that we had?
	I sent it to him, yes.
	Oh, he did listen to it?
	He did listen to it, yes.
	Oh, so then he must have had something specific where he said, I think here is where the echo chamber is.
	The only argument I remember hearing him give me was he didn't think it was too late for my brother.
	But that's a... That's a difference of opinion, and I never said it was too late for your brother.
	I can't make those decisions or determinations because of that crazy little thing we call free will, right?
	Right. You said it was probably too late, and I did point out the probably in there, and he seemed to disregard that.
	So even when you agree, even when we agree, he calls me wrong.
	It seems like it.
	I think like you said, he's kind of grappling it from his own side and his own life choices, almost like a justification.
	And I'm sure he's going to listen back to this because I'm going to share it.
	Sorry. Yeah, and listen, if your friend listens to this and your friend wants to call, then I'm happy to hear.
	But I'll just tell you this, I'm not going to have a lot of patience if he calls in with, well, maybe it's an echo chamber.
	It's like, That's just annoying.
	No, I don't think he would do that.
	I think he might face his own issues.
	I don't think he's... No, that would be great.
	I would love to talk to him.
	I really would. But I would just say, you know, if you're going to listen to this, you want to call in, fantastic.
	Love to have you call in. But if you're going to criticize an interaction that was enormously helpful to your friend, you didn't criticize...
	multi-year interaction that was incredibly dangerous to your friend, you're not going to have a lot of credibility.
	You know, like if your friend is in a terrible car crash and you're driving right behind, your friend is in a terrible car crash and is thrown through the windshield, life's bleeding on the road, and you come up and you say, hey, life's bleeding on the road, and you come up and you say, hey, I think your Thank you.
	Thank you.
	You're kind of overlooking the big injury here, right?
	And this is the kind of, hey, maybe it's an echo chamber.
	It's like, dude, I just...
	The jaws of...
	The philosophical jaws of life just ripped me out of this wreckage of a marriage.
	And you didn't criticize the wreck of the marriage, and now you're criticizing somebody who helped get me out.
	Come on. Come on.
	That's not about... He's not...
	He's not being a good Christian, in my opinion, because he's not...
	He's bearing false witness. He's not being honest and saying, you know, hey man, the fact that you're getting abusive people out of your life, the fact that you're trying to come to some final decision, at least final for now decision about your family, causes me great anxiety.
	That's being honest, right?
	As opposed to, well, maybe I can undermine and destroy the value he gets out of philosophy so that I don't have to think clearly myself.
	And that's taking something that's of value to you, not me, but philosophy as a whole, and trying to harm, undermine, and possibly destroy your relationship with philosophy.
	And that's not honest.
	The fear, uncertainty, and doubt bullshit, that's just not honest.
	He's feeling anxiety, maybe about his own family, his own relationships.
	It really threatens people who aren't growing when someone grows.
	It really threatens people who are embedded in abusive relationships when someone else gets out of an abusive relationship.
	Because it's like, oh wait, there's no lock on this prison door.
	So... Yeah, his argument has been, you know, well your brother never really had a chance.
	Like, my brother had a chance.
	He was able-bodied and all these other things.
	You didn't give him that chance.
	And I was like, yes I did.
	I said I offered to stay, you know, offered him a room in my own home down here where he could start over, right?
	I offered, you know, there's services here where they could put him to work and everything.
	And then he talked about blind school.
	Well, my parents even sent him to blind school.
	Right? So, you know, school for the deaf and blind, so he could still do things.
	But, like, my mom was always sabotaging him, and he did point that out.
	And I'm not going to argue that that's not necessarily false.
	That is true. Right?
	But where is his agency?
	And I kept saying, come on, he has to have some agency in this.
	He had a choice at some point.
	And he's saying, did he really?
	I mean, or was he just trapped?
	And I guess that's...
	No, but that's the...
	Is it an echo chamber?
	So asking these rhetorical questions is just designed to sow doubt into your mind.
	And that's what it's doing, right? Yeah, it is.
	Did your brother ever really have a chance?
	It's like, I don't fucking know.
	I don't know. Because that is an unanswerable question.
	So, you know, okay...
	The question, is it an echo chamber, that's answerable, right?
	Which is, okay, it's an echo chamber if, as I said before, you're just receiving information that you already knew.
	And then we're just nodding with each other and saying, yep, yep, I agree, yep.
	And then there's an echo chamber.
	And again, it can be fine with people you agree with, so it's not a bad thing or whatever.
	But that wasn't the case in our conversation.
	And he would have known that if he'd listened to it with any attention, that you were getting new information.
	That you hadn't experienced before that really did change your life.
	That's exactly the opposite of an echo chamber, right?
	That is the precise and exact and diametrical opposite of an echo chamber.
	An echo chamber is when you get no new information and you did get massive amounts of new information in a recall.
	Now, you know, maybe your brother never had a chance, right?
	Now, how on earth is a mere mortal Supposed to possibly know the answer.
	With our limited knowledge, our limited information, and the fact that a lot of people lie about a lot of things in this life.
	So people who made bad choices and failed where they might possibly have succeeded will almost never tell you the truth about that.
	You know, I mean, I had to listen...
	Well, I was still listening to my mom for, like, 30 years.
	I had to listen to my mom bitch about my dad.
	Yes. Oh, God, yes.
	Now, could my mom...
	Oh, God. Did that marriage ever have a chance?
	I don't fucking know. And I'll never know.
	It's completely unknowable.
	Because there's no drone back there with all the footage of all the marriage and everyone's choices and empirical and object facts.
	And even if there was, I couldn't go into everyone's minds and figure out how much free will they still had left.
	Could they have made better choices? I don't know.
	You know, was my parents' marriage doomed from the start?
	I don't know. And where I don't know, guess what?
	I'm going to err on the side of free will.
	Now, if someone gets pushed off a building and they fall down and someone says, well, you know, once they were falling, there was no way for them to flap their arms and fly away.
	I'm like, yeah, I'm down with that, so to speak.
	I agree. They can't violate the laws of physics.
	So where there is no chance, like once that person was pushed off the top of the Empire State Building, they were going to die.
	It's like, yep. Yeah, they were going to fall down, they were going to splat, and they were going to die.
	So, absolutely. But...
	Marriage doomed from the start.
	Did your brother ever have a chance?
	There is no possible way to answer that because of free will.
	Does that make sense? Well, right.
	And I even argued with him, it doesn't matter anyway, because the best way I could help my brother, and this is...
	Maybe I'm skipping to the end, the conclusion here, but the only way I think I can help my brother...
	Is by showing him how good life can be if you take your free will and take responsibility for it.
	And what age range is your brother in, if you can remember?
	He's going to turn 39 in March.
	Yeah, yeah. I mean, I got an email, and I think I'll do this call, and I'm going to mention that, I won't mention it in details, but I got an email from a guy who's basically like, well, I'm 40, and I've never gone on a date.
	Now, Is he going to get married and settle down?
	If you had to bet whether he's going to end up getting married and settling down, how much would you bet and what odds would you bet?
	Probably one penny and not very likely.
	You'd need some pretty good odds for that, right?
	Right.
	But I would say he has about a 10% of doing it if he works really hard at it.
	Because, and not just because he's trying to learn a skill that most people start learning in their early teens, is how to sort of date and figure out and get along with women and so on.
	He's starting, I mean, close to 30 years behind the curve.
	But he's either going to A, find a woman who's more experienced than he is, in which case she's probably going to be impatient.
	Or B, he's going to find a woman equally as inexperienced as he is, in which case they're probably going to mess it up.
	Thank you.
	So, you know, it's not impossible.
	But the odds aren't good.
	Now, your brother, if I remember rightly, has never had much...
	I'm sorry, you cut out on that last one.
	Your brother has never had much of a job, right?
	When he was 18, I believe he had something that was going for him pretty well.
	It was somewhere around there.
	It was towards the end of high school.
	But it was very short-lived, and my mother didn't support driving him.
	So he had a job.
	It withered on the vine.
	He did have a job at one point, yes.
	Uh-oh. Server switch again.
	So he can have a job.
	Because he did. Yeah, he did have a job.
	A guy in a coma can't have a job.
	Yeah, that's true. But your brother had a job.
	Case closed. As far as, was it ever too late?
	No, he had a job. Yeah, I think what he's saying is...
	Well, your mom wouldn't drive him, so he couldn't maintain the job, so he never had a chance to actually pursue that.
	Okay, but that again, that's stripping agents.
	Yeah, that's been my concern.
	Well, there's no way that he could have called the government and said, I'm desperate to have a job.
	Is there any way I can get a ride from a handicapped service?
	Or, if he's part of a church, Say, oh, I really want to have this job.
	My mom's not available to drive.
	Is there anyone who could help me out?
	Any retired person who'd be willing to, you know, maybe you could share it among five retired people so that they could just drive him to and from work or at least maybe donate so he could get an Uber or whatever it is, right?
	Something. Yeah, and I agree with you on that.
	Like, I see where he doesn't take initiative.
	Like, he lets these opportunities slip and that's his agency.
	So, you know, maybe it was never possible for your brother.
	It's like, okay, no, I mean, it was.
	Now, if you're going to say, well, it's not possible for my brother because of our mother, then you're blaming the mom.
	Okay, so it was possible, but your mother made it impossible.
	That is what he's saying, in a nutshell.
	Okay. So then the question is, if it's impossible for your brother to have acted any better or more responsibly...
	is it also impossible for your mother to have acted better or more responsible?
	Well, that depends.
	We talked about resentment, and you had told me at one point that...
	No, I mean, according to him, and I know he's not here, sorry to interrupt, but if he's going to say your brother...
	Oh, yeah, good point.
	...couldn't act better because of your mother...
	Well, could your mother not act better because of her mother?
	Does it just go turtles all the way back through time and nobody has any free will or moral response?
	Yeah, that's a good argument.
	I mean, if we all get a get-out-of-jail-free card forever, because of those who came before us, then they get it too.
	It can't just be the last generation that gets this and no previous generation.
	And then what he's doing is he's saying, okay, we're all deterministic robots created and programmed by a history we can't control, and the people who programmed us in history were themselves robots who couldn't control it.
	So we're all just a bunch of rocks bouncing down a hill.
	There's no free will. There's no choice.
	There's no better state. There's no morality.
	There's no higher purpose, no higher state.
	A little bit more of a threat to his Christianity than the possible ill-defined echo chamber is to your relationship to philosophical virtue.
	That's true. And then you could say, well, is my wife, or my ex-wife, or soon-to-be ex-wife, is she responsible for however much you want to get into whatever...
	Is she responsible for that?
	And if he says no because she had too bad a childhood, it's like, okay, well, I had a bad childhood.
	You're holding me responsible.
	You're saying, ooh, you know, you should really reevaluate your relationship.
	To philosophy or to staff and you should act better and you should evaluate whether it's an echo chamber and you should evaluate whether your donation is affecting the conversation.
	So he's saying to you, you should act better even though you had a really bad job.
	But he's saying about your mother, your brother, Well, they don't have to act any better because they had really bad childhoods.
	It's like, pick a lane, dude.
	Actually, pick a side. Pick a reality.
	Anybody who holds you responsible must hold everyone else in your life responsible.
	If he's willing to say, well, your brother never had a chance, your mother never had a chance, and your ex-wife never had a chance, but you've got to really raise your standards, dude.
	It's like... Because it's singling you out as the thoughtful, concerned, self-improving person as the only person he's going to criticize.
	Why? It's like Richard Dawkins' bullshit tweet that came out recently where he's like...
	What a flop-haired, semi-pedophile, justifying douchebag.
	Oh, look at the brave atheist...
	Calling Christians paranoid.
	Oh. So the only people that you criticize are the people whose religious commandment is to love your enemies.
	Oh, you just...
	Not criticizing the Jews, not criticizing the Muslims, not criticizing...
	Just the Christians.
	Oh. So vile.
	It's so predictable. It's so boring.
	It's so fedora-wearing, and it's so pathetic.
	I hate the people.
	I'm sorry about this.
	I'll be frank about it. I hate the people who singled out the good, thoughtful, fair-minded, working-on-self-improvement people as the only people in their life they're willing to have the moral courage to criticize.
	Everybody else gets off scar-free.
	But if you try to improve yourself, you try to talk rationally and clearly about your life, you try to up your moral standards, suddenly every asshole With a keyboard and opinion, rains down upon you and starts criticizing.
	And by doing that, you know what they're doing?
	They're saying, to everyone on the whole planet who can see that interaction, they're saying, well, the price of self-improvement is endless bullshit hypocritical criticism.
	Oh, yeah. You better not try and improve yourself, man, otherwise every asshole is going to rain down They're unwarranted, hypocritical, bullshit, cowardly opinion on how you should be doing better and they will suitiously avoid and step over everyone who's actually dangerous and difficult in this world and they'll just puff up their moral courage and they'll thump their chest and they'll call themselves very brave and concerned moral hero trolls!
	Why? Because they have the astounding moral clarity and courage to only criticize people who are already criticizing themselves and they steer clear Of everyone whose lack of self-knowledge makes them actually dangerous.
	Ooh, what a brave, brave soul.
	It's vile. It's vile.
	And again, I could be completely wrong about your friend.
	He's still welcome to call in.
	I'd love to be corrected. But the fact that he's criticizing you and not himself, not your mom, not your brother, not your ex-wife, No.
	It's like whites as a whole, right?
	Oh, the white people.
	Did you invent the modern world and end slavery?
	Oh, yeah. Well, we're just going to hate you.
	Oh, are you self-critical and that's why you improve?
	Oh, do you have free speech and that's a value?
	Oh. Sasha Baron Cohen comes up with this incredible Christian-hating movie, this Borat 2.
	Oh. It's so unbelievably, rancidly, monstrously anti-Christian.
	And then he bitches about free speech.
	He lives in a Christian country, still largely, gets to savagely attack Christians and then bitches about free speech.
	Oh! Oh!
	Can't even tell you how that...
	Hypocrisy...
	So, anyway.
	I mentioned that. End point today.
	But let's get to...
	Not the story.
	More recent. So...
	You wrote an almost about how I think it was Tom wasn't emotionally capable of handling certain information just yet.
	He wasn't able to process it.
	Do you recall that?
	It's a pretty long book. Yeah.
	Well, there's news that I just wasn't able to process because I still I was under the impression that my father was not bad right like I wouldn't necessarily say good but not as bad as my mother and and I thought that you know he really cared and wanted to build a relationship with me and um I did have a conversation with my brother,
	too. I did want to speak about that really quickly.
	You don't have to be quick, man.
	I had my speeches, so I'm all ears.
	Okay. When I called my brother after the podcast, I told him two things primarily.
	The first was that if he's unhappy with his situation, he's the only one that can change it.
	And I'm not going to throw my life away trying to help him do it.
	Anymore. And the second thing I told him is the fact that he's aligned himself with my mother limits my ability to have any kind of relationship with him.
	And he told me back, and I quote, I already know that.
	Just tell me how to kill the pain.
	My whole family thinks he's dumb.
	My mother says, well, they injured his brain.
	My aunt says the same thing.
	My dad says the same thing.
	And I think they're fucking wrong.
	If he can say that to me, Steph, then I know he knows.
	I know he's intelligent.
	He hides behind their excuses.
	On purpose. And then to say that, that he just wants to know how to kill the pain.
	It's just... It's too painful to hear that.
	It's like, why did I bother defending him?
	Why did I bother helping him?
	Because you care. You should care.
	Don't ever think it's bad to try helping if there's some indication they can learn.
	I don't think it's a bad thing to do at all.
	I don't think I can help him anymore.
	I think the only way I can help him is to show him what it looks like to not repeat history.
	And how long have you been trying to help him?
	Well, before I talked to you, I was 32 and I'd been trying to help him in any way I could for...
	Oh my gosh, I can't even tell you.
	It goes back to when I was six years old and I got kicked off the school bus.
	Because they were bullying him and calling him retarded.
	And I got in fights on the school bus.
	And I even got punished for that.
	But I got in fights because they were picking on my only brother.
	So... A decade.
	Well, it's been...
	What, 28 years?
	Something like that? So, yeah.
	A couple of decades. More than a quarter century, right?
	Yeah. And probably about a third of your entire life.
	Well, I'm quite young.
	No, given your lifespan going forward, I don't mean right now.
	Oh, yeah. Yeah, okay.
	Okay, so, I mean, that's an interesting question.
	So, to take your brother out of the equation, which is, I don't mean to sound cold or callous, but sometimes the decisions need this kind of perspective.
	So, if I had said to you, man, I've been trying.
	To be an actor for over 25 years and still haven't been cast in anything, what would you tell me to do?
	Give it up. Like, holy shit, what are you, crazy?
	25 years, you've never had any success?
	This is just self-abuse now.
	It probably has been for some time.
	I feel like that, yes.
	Yeah, okay. So, listen.
	I think it's great that you tried to help your brother.
	I really do. I think it's wonderful.
	But, if you have not succeeded at something in 28 years, what's going to happen in year 20?
	Likely nothing. Likely nothing.
	If I haven't been cast once in 28 years, what's my next year going to audition?
	It's a waste. It's not going to happen.
	You say, oh, but there's a chance that...
	No. No.
	I mean, that's like saying, well, I'm not going to save any money for my retirement because there's a chance that some Nigerian prince is going to leave me $10 million.
	You can't prove that it's impossible.
	It's like, dude.
	It's what I was talking about in Friday.
	The billion to one people.
	Nobody lives their life like that.
	Nobody lives their life like that.
	Nobody drives blindfolded and says, well, there's a chance I could get exactly where I want to go and not get into an accident.
	It's like, yeah, there is. You can't prove that I can't do that.
	It's like, nobody does that.
	I think it's really nice that you tried to help your brother, but the most fundamental question is why are you trying to help him?
	Because it's not about helping him, because that would be empirical.
	There's a pain you're avoiding by trying to help him, and what is that?
	It's not about helping him, it's about avoiding your own pain that you will experience.
	Maybe someone can.
	Maybe someone out there can, but it ain't me.
	What is the pain that comes into your heart?
	If you look at the empirical evidence, see it here, say, it's beyond me.
	What is the pain that comes into your heart? If you look at the empirical evidence, see it here, say, it's beyond me.
	What is the pain that comes into your heart?
	But that's...
	Sigh.
	I don't...
	I don't know.
	Sure you do.
	Sure you do. I mean...
	Part of me thinks that...
	I don't know.
	It's just like... Well, I just recently put together the pieces of what actually happened to him and how horrible my parents are.
	And I guess it softened my heart for him a little bit.
	But I don't think that's answering your question at all.
	Maybe it's... No, no, I think, I mean, it simply puts the question back to right before you got this information.
	But let's, since this is part of the conversation that we're having now, I know, but with everyone, what's the information that you got that softened your heart?
	So I wasn't ready for it.
	I got it in June, and it didn't hit me until December.
	I know that sounds weird. Well, that's why you were talking about my character in my novel almost not being ready to process information, even though we already have.
	Yes. Yes, it hadn't quite hit me.
	But in June, my father called me.
	And like I said, I thought my father was a good person.
	And I wanted him desperately to be a good person because it was the only person left in my family.
	And I never thought I had a relationship with him because, well, I only saw him twice a year.
	I really didn't know him.
	I didn't realize it was his choice until I started talking to him.
	And then later I remembered what he told me, because he did tell me some useful information about my history, and I will be forever grateful to him for that at least.
	But that doesn't change the fact of who he is.
	And what he told me, he called me after he listened to the call-in show.
	And he said to me, I want to set the record straight.
	He said, the doctors never broke your brother's leg.
	He didn't tell me what happened, but he did say this.
	He said, well, your mother was responsible for doing exercises with my brother when he was an infant.
	And he said, she didn't do those exercises, and that crippled him.
	And I couldn't...
	Sorry, you've cut out if you're still talking.
	Oh, can you hear me? Start again.
	So your mother was responsible for doing exercises with your brother when he was in...
	And she didn't do it.
	It's like she willfully didn't do the exercises.
	Have you asked? Have I asked who?
	Your mother. I refuse to talk to my mother, and she's the one that lied to me about the doctors telling me that they broke his foot and it was in a cast and all this nonsense.
	She lied to me about so many things.
	Yeah, but do you think that your dad's telling the truth?
	No, I don't think either of them are telling the truth necessarily, but I do believe my father because I feel it in my heart that my mother did do this to him.
	I'm 100% sure.
	I don't know how, I don't have facts, I'm sorry stuff, but I know it's true.
	No, that's fine. Don't apologize to me for the lies that were told to you by your parents.
	You have nothing to apologize for at all.
	I hugely admire nothing to me for at all.
	Or to your kind. So...
	Oh, I don't know.
	It's up to you. How dark do we go here?
	I can tell you the evidence I have for my mother, if you'd like.
	I can support the argument that she crippled him.
	Huh? Yeah, go ahead.
	So, the first thing is, when she got the lawsuit settled for $300,000 for what the doctors did do to him, she put her name as primary on the trust without my father.
	So that's one thing. The other thing is she told me that she didn't want a second child, which was me.
	So that tells me that her needs were being met from the dependency of the first child.
	She never wanted me.
	Those are two pieces of supporting evidence.
	She also complains constantly about my brother. - Sure.
	And so does my father.
	They both complain about him constantly, and it's the same complaints.
	And that to me says they've created their own monster, and now they're not happy with it.
	So there's a lot of evidence, I think.
	And I just feel it's right.
	I know my mom's past.
	I know she was the lowest in her family.
	She was raped by her brother.
	She was abandoned at the age of 10 and forced to live with strangers.
	And just knowing that background, I could see her doing this.
	Well, with all too sympathy to your mother, of course.
	If you cripple someone, you'll never be...
	I'm sorry, you cut out.
	If you cripple someone, you'll never be alone.
	Yes. You'll always be needed.
	You'll never... Your children will never outgrow you, one of them.
	You probably know this, but there are so, so, so many people in the world who can't stand their own company, who can't stand their own thoughts, and who are desperate for distraction.
	Desperate to never be alone.
	I was watching this show, Kaylee Cuoco, something about a flight attendant, and it's not a spoiler, she's a raging alcoholic, and she's in a hotel room, And she says, oh, I need ice for my drinks.
	And then she says, wow, come on, be honest with yourself.
	You don't need ice. You just don't want to be alone.
	She's so desperate to avoid her own thoughts and her own history, her own self, that she'll just wander in search of ice, hoping to bump into someone and hoping to be distracted from herself in a hotel.
	Like, that's how pathetic it is.
	And I mean, just for sympathy.
	She had a rough past and all that in the show.
	But there's so many people out there who just can't stand themselves.
	And they can't stand...
	I remember a friend of my mom's once one night was a drunk.
	She was over and she just wouldn't go to bed.
	She just obviously she did not want to go to bed.
	She did not want to put her head on the pillow.
	She was unbelievably hostile and hateful to her own thoughts or they were hateful to her.
	And so much of life In the world, it's driven by people who just can't stand being alone.
	And one thing that is tragically true is that if you cripple someone, you'll never be alone.
	And so the big secret of this show, it's not a huge secret, I talked about it years ago in passing, but the big secret of this show is I know from a moral, philosophical, economic, political, you name it, standpoint, that voluntarism is better than coercion.
	That that which is chosen is better than that which is automatic or unchosen.
	A free will choice, you know, if you get to choose your boss, that's better than being a slave, morally, economically, philosophically.
	If you get to choose your spouse, that's better than having your spouse assigned to you.
	If you get to choose your job, it's better than the government assigning your job to you.
	It's better. Infinitely better.
	It's moral. It's productive.
	And... One of the central purposes of this entire show for 15 years plus has been to bring voluntarism back into personal relationships.
	You've probably heard me say this a bunch of times.
	If this person was not your, insert relative here, if this person was not your mother and you met her at a dinner party, would you want to stay in touch with her?
	If this person was not your brother and you just met him in passing, would you want to stay in touch with this person?
	Now that is bringing voluntarism Into the relationship and bringing the morality of the relationship into the present, which is kind of how slavery ended, it's how the free market grew and developed, which is, okay, if this person wasn't your boss, would you want them as a boss?
	If this person wasn't your employee or wasn't your worker, would you want them as a worker?
	That's challenging or questioning enslavement, slavery.
	If this person wasn't your mother, but you just met this person socially, would you want to continue to have a relationship with them?
	If this person wasn't your brother or sister or aunt or uncle or grandmother, if you just met this person, would you want to have a relationship with them?
	That's bringing choice and voluntarism into relationships, which are just kind of inherited in the same way that slavery was inherited.
	Now, I'm obviously not saying that all family relations are based on slavery.
	I'm simply using slavery as an unchosen analogy.
	And an inherited analogy.
	Everybody inherited slavery from the times that came before.
	And trying to bring the free market or free market principles into personal relationships is how we achieve freedom.
	It's the only way we can possibly achieve freedom in the future is to bring the principles that we think work in society as a whole into our own personal relationships.
	It's the only way we're going to gain certainty about them.
	How am I so certain that voluntarism works?
	Because I used it Well, it's a Christian thing, right?
	Well, you have to apply your virtues to your own life, to the lives of people around you, and forget about the big abstractions, at least for now.
	To have credibility, right?
	The people who are anti-state say, well, you know, just because we inherited the state doesn't make it a moral relationship and we should have a voluntary relationship.
	It's like, okay, just because you inherited your parents doesn't mean the relationship has value and is moral.
	You've got to evaluate it morally.
	Now, they love railing about the Fed and the state and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	Okay, yeah, it's fine. I agree with a lot of those arguments.
	But if the last place you'd ever want to apply your abstract arguments is to your own personal life, I don't buy your abstract arguments for a second.
	It's just a bunch of pompous fedora-wearing bullshit.
	If you believe in voluntarism, bring the principle of voluntarism to your own personal relationships.
	Because what people say is they say, well, you can't have quality without choice.
	You know, when the government has control over you, it doesn't have to provide quality.
	The schools don't have to be good.
	The Department of Motor Vehicles doesn't have to be good.
	Congress's bills don't have to be good.
	Taxation doesn't have to be efficient.
	Spending doesn't have to be productive.
	Because wherever you don't have choice, wherever you don't have voluntarism, where you have central planning and coercion and control and slavery and serfdom, it's all bad and terrible and wrong.
	So voluntarism is quality.
	And you say, well, you should evaluate your personal relationships from the standpoint of voluntarism.
	Ooh, you're a bad cult leader.
	I hate you. It's like, well, then shut up about the state.
	And shut up about everything you're talking about.
	That's real-time relationships.
	Yeah, you're discrediting all of your ideas by refusing to apply them in the areas you can control and only advocating them in the areas you have no control over.
	It's like, you know, people will say, and rightly so, they say, well, Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln, only freed the slaves in areas he didn't control.
	He never freed the slaves in areas he did control.
	It's like, okay, that's a really, really good point.
	It's a very important point about his moral commitment, blah, blah, blah, right?
	And it's like, but if you only want to apply the principles of voluntarism to a Jetsons future imaginary society that exists 200 years from now, but you would never imagine bringing the principles of voluntarism and choice to your own personal relationships, then you don't believe in any of it.
	It's a posture. It's a Nonsense.
	It's discrediting. It's noise.
	Because if you want to change the world, you have to be really fucking certain, man.
	You have to be really, really...
	And there's no way to gain certainty outside of application.
	There's no way to gain certainty outside of empiricism.
	Like I say, I'm an empiricist, right?
	So an empiricist says, voluntarism is preferable.
	Choice is preferable. That's what an empiricist would...
	A moral person would say.
	Non-aggression principle... And breaking from history and re-evaluating all of our relationships and saying, well, the government is an abusive relationship.
	It doesn't matter how long we inherited it.
	It doesn't matter how many governments there have been in the past.
	The government is an abusive relationship and should be morally re-evaluated and we should switch to voluntarism.
	It's like, okay, I get it.
	If your parents were abusive, then that's an abusive relationship you inherited just like the state, which needs to be morally evaluated and shifted towards voluntarism.
	Now, I understand.
	The definition of the state is immoral.
	The definition of parenting is not immoral.
	In fact, the definition of parenting can be just about the most moral thing in existence, which is what I'm trying to manifest in my parenting, what other people in the show and in this conversation are manifesting in their parenting as well.
	And the reason I'm saying all this abstract stuff is to give you the Indiana Jones whiplash, right?
	Which is, okay, you got a brother.
	You didn't choose to have that brother in your life.
	You inherited that relationship from your parents' choices.
	Are you willing to subject that relationship to the principles of volunteerism and choice and free will that you respect in a political and economic and social sense?
	Are you willing to take those same principles and forget about applying them to a society 200 years in the future and apply them to your relationships right now?
	Do you believe?
	Because Christianity was founded by people who believed in the divinity of Christ so much that they were willing to have their heads torn off by lions.
	They were willing to go to the wall.
	They were willing to go to the Colosseum.
	They were willing to get nailed to crosses because of their belief.
	Now, nobody's asking you to nail yourself to a cross or to get your head ripped off by a lion.
	But the principles that you believe, are you willing to manifest them in your actual life?
	Voluntarism. Choice, a refusal to accept the obligations that are unchosen, that come out of history, to morally re-evaluate every relationship in your life, not according to some ideal perfect society 200 years from now, but your principles as they stand.
	Do you believe?
	If you're a Christian, you are only a Christian because other people took their values And believe them to the point where they suffered great harm, torture, and even death.
	Now, nobody's asking you for torture or death, but if you believe in voluntarism, if you believe in morally evaluating the most historical relationships, if you believe in not taking the momentum of history as an automatic rubber stamp of virtue in the here and now, are you willing to take the principles of the free market and voluntarism and choice and morality and apply them to your own Personal relationships in the here and now.
	Now, if you are willing to do that, you and I are brothers and sisters in arms.
	We are a noble breed.
	We are heroic. We are going to change the world.
	If you're not, please stop donating to me.
	Please stop listening to me.
	Please stop talking about me.
	Please stop advocating that people listen to me.
	Please stop recommending me.
	Don't like. Don't subscribe.
	Don't share. Because it's too late in the fucking game for words, not deeds.
	It is too late in the game for us to simply be talking about stuff we don't actually implement.
	Now, that's my argument.
	You did not choose to have your brother in your life.
	You have poured 28 years into trying to help him.
	Clearly, you're doing the opposite of helping him.
	And I would argue you trying to help him is paralyzing him.
	Because here's the thing, man.
	It's the final principle I want to get and then I'll shut up and you can talk as much as you want, my friend.
	It's the final principle you need to get.
	It is spiritually suicidal to care more about people than they care about themselves.
	That's pathological altruism.
	It is spiritually suicidal to care more about people than they care about themselves.
	And you care a lot more about your brother's life than he does.
	And because you care so much He doesn't have to care as much.
	Like if you want to start a business and each of you have to put in a thousand dollars and you say, you know what?
	I'm going to put in nineteen hundred dollars.
	What does the other guy put in? Just a hundred.
	Just a hundred. So you're stepping so far over the middle here and you're like with your brother, like I will think about, I will plan, I will talk, I will cajole, I will remind, I will remonstrate, I will encourage, I will Provide opportunities.
	I will give you podcasts.
	I'm putting in $1,999.
	And he's like, oh, great.
	I only have to put in a buck.
	You do all the work.
	Well, there's more.
	There's even more to that story.
	I feel like he stabbed me in the back several times.
	It's not just I put in all the work.
	It's the fact that I did the work, and not only has he not been grateful, but he's turned on me in several occasions.
	Of course. And do you know why he's turned on you?
	Well, I got mucked up on that.
	I thought it was because...
	Well, Mom had manipulated him to some degree, but I think that's kind of an excuse.
	No, because if you're willing...
	To do all the work for someone else.
	You're saying that they're not competent.
	That they can't do it. Yeah, so he actually hates me for that.
	Yeah, kind of. You think it's all about your mom not giving him exercises when he was a baby?
	How about you start giving him some fucking exercises now that he's pushing 40?
	You think it's about your mom?
	It's not about your mom.
	It's about you! You think it's your mom?
	Who's paralyzing him?
	You think it's your mom?
	Who's constantly saying to him, you can't cut it, you can't make it, you need everyone else, you need me, you need me to pour all this energy into you and to tell you what to do and how to live.
	You withdraw that support.
	You know, like if you're rehabbing someone, like you're a nurse and you're rehabbing someone, and you carry them around, do they ever get any stronger?
	No. If you're a trainer and you're like, hey man, I'll lift those weights for you, and that way you'll get stronger.
	Do they lift anything?
	Do they get any stronger? No.
	Physical therapy is a lot of work.
	I found that out this year.
	Right. It is.
	And your physical therapist can't do that work for you.
	Right. But you're sitting there dragging your brother to the gym, lifting his weights for him while he's propped up in a corner, doing his cardio for him while he's lying on a yoga mat.
	And you're like, man, I can't believe my brother's not getting stronger.
	Well, of course he isn't.
	You're not helping him.
	It's just about you. You think your mother is the only one babying and pampering and excusing your brother?
	No. No, my aunt, my dad.
	And? Well, me.
	Yeah, you. It was me.
	I say it was because I haven't talked to him since April when I had that final conversation.
	But he's still on your mind.
	And I appreciate that.
	I understand that.
	I really do. That's true.
	And it's perfectly understandable that you inherited this put in $1,900 on a $2,000 deal.
	But it's insulting to the other person.
	If you want to help your brother, should you ever be in touch with him again, don't let him complain and just be bored.
	Oh, can you believe what mom did?
	Yeah, I don't care. Don't give them the fuel.
	Don't give them the engagement.
	You know, whatever we feed grows.
	Whatever we starve shrinks.
	It's like muscles in our belly, right?
	If we feed our belly and starve our muscles, we get fat and soft.
	If we stop our belly and feet or muscles, well, better things can happen, at least from an aesthetic standpoint.
	So that's why he's in virtual reality.
	He lives in virtual reality because everyone doesn't bother to tell them that they don't want to hear it or they're bored.
	They just think, well, that's his whole world, so I'll just listen to him.
	Could be. It could be.
	But here's the thing. You don't know.
	And it doesn't matter. Right.
	It doesn't matter. Why people are the way they are is something we have to turn away from.
	Because in the world that we want to build, it doesn't fucking matter.
	Why is the slave owner so mean to his slaves?
	I don't care. Let's end slavery.
	That we don't have to worry about that shit.
	Do you see what I mean?
	I wonder if I... I know I have a tendency to do exactly what you're saying, which is...
	I almost call it over-sympathizing with everyone.
	You have a belief that if you can figure people out, you can be safe around them.
	That if you can figure out...
	No, I don't know if that's right.
	I could be wrong.
	So tell me how I'm wrong.
	I could totally be wrong, of course.
	So with my father, I just wanted him to take responsibility and be curious about what I went through.
	And when he wouldn't do that, and he just was a coward, he didn't even say, I won't do that.
	He'll just say, well, you are innocent in this, and that's it.
	He didn't say, I'm sorry. He didn't say, well, tell me more.
	He didn't say anything. And that's when I knew I was like, I can't have a relationship with you.
	I just can't. Why did you want him to do that?
	Why did you want him to empathize with you and apologize?
	Because I wanted a connection with him that I never had.
	I wanted a...
	Fuck, man.
	I'm so mad at him. I just wanted him to be a father.
	He was a useless waste of...
	God! It just hurts me to think about it.
	You don't sound hurt, you sound angry, which is totally fine, but...
	You're right.
	So why did you want him to acknowledge the wrong and to apologize?
	Because I couldn't be myself around him.
	Why couldn't you be yourself around him?
	Because it would make him uncomfortable.
	So I had to self-erase.
	How would he behave if he was uncomfortable?
	Well, he wasn't curious.
	He would try to shut down the conversation or change the subject or gaslight or whatever.
	He would reject you.
	Right. Yes.
	I didn't want to be rejected. Do you like being rejected by your father?
	No. Right.
	So I said, you want to figure people out or get them to change their behavior so you will feel safe.
	So you won't feel rejected or attacked or undermined or ignored or scorned or whatever, right?
	She said, I need people to change, and if I could just figure out what makes them tick, then I can get them to change so I can feel safe.
	Or get closer.
	If I knew the origin story of my brother, whether my mother broke his leg or didn't do the rehab, then I would know something that would allow me to change something with my brother, and then I would feel better.
	Thank you.
	Well, all that really taught me was that my father was a terrible person, possibly as bad as my mother, if not worse.
	Right. But let's go back to this principle, because I'm...
	No, you're right. I could be wrong.
	No, you're right. Yeah, let's go back.
	So, listen, you're not alone in this.
	I mean, my gosh. I mean, you read my novel, at least parts of it, right?
	Almost? How much time does...
	Tom spent trying to figure out Reginald.
	I'm not through the book, but I'm in book two about halfway, and I don't think he's stopped yet.
	Yeah. Or how much time does he spend trying to figure out his mom?
	He still is.
	I mean, I just got to the part with Jacqueline where they had a night together, and then how he was talking about his introduction between Catherine and his mother.
	And you're right. He's still thinking, and I've still thought about it.
	That's why I feel so much affinity with Tom in your novel, is because I feel like I'm living his life.
	I can't imagine having affinity for Tom in the novel, because he's got great hair.
	So many of us have this, and it's perfectly comprehensible.
	It's perfectly comprehensible, which is, we're trapped with people who are dangerous.
	Because if we had abusive families, we're trapped with people who are dangerous to us.
	They're violent, they're abusive, they're aggressive.
	All I have to do is figure out what makes them tick.
	Why do they do what they do?
	Now, if I figure out why they do what they do, I can adjust my behavior.
	I can give them what they want.
	I can tinker with them.
	I can change things so I can take a fucking breath once in a while and relax.
	Right?
	And this comes out of our entire species history.
	Like, holy shit, there are lions out there.
	I better build a hut.
	Oh my god, it's cold.
	I better build a fire. Oh my god, I'm hungry.
	Like, we're used to, oh, there's a threat to me.
	Cold, predators, hunger, thirst.
	There's a threat to me.
	So, my god, I better figure things out.
	So that I can change things so I can feel safe.
	Does that make sense? Oh my god, it's a long winter.
	I'd better get some food stored up for the winter so that I can relax about starving to death, right?
	There's a danger around I need to sort this shit out.
	I need to figure something out so that I can manage or eliminate that danger, right?
	But when the dangerous people and it's our families and we're stuck there because we're children What we do is we sit there, oh my god, I'm going to spin my head round and round.
	I'm going to think until my brain half melts out of my fucking ears to try and figure the shit out of these people so I can adjust something, change something, appeal to something, do something so that they stop hurting me.
	Now that's what they call necessary magical thinking.
	You can't feel safe as a child, but you can at least pretend that there's something you can figure out that's going to end up with you being safe.
	Right. That jives with this image I had recently where I felt like I couldn't put a vase together.
	It kept blowing off the pedestal and breaking every time I couldn't figure them out.
	And then as soon as I started to get in touch with my emotions for the first time in 30-some years...
	That was like the glue that put it together that it would no longer break.
	It's setting up in my mind of who these people are in my family, and I'm an adult now, and this is no longer...
	I've gotten closure.
	They're bad people. I just see it now, plain as day.
	Anyone who could do this in their own life is just terrible.
	Right. So you're trying to figure out You're trying to figure out how to stay safe around people whose motivation is to hurt you.
	Yes, that was my childhood and that still is to some degree.
	Which is the equivalent of how can I rub myself in marinade and dance around naked in front of a hungry lion and turn it into a vegetarian?
	You just get to get mauled every fucking time, right?
	Every time. You can't figure out people who want to hurt you.
	Because the moment you start to figure them out, they'll change their behavior.
	They'll gaslight, they'll affect, they'll blame you, they'll throw metaphorical sand in your eyes, they'll change the topic, they'll punish you, they'll withdraw, they'll put any kind of squid ink out of the water so you can't see who they are.
	Yeah, my dad did that to me over Christmas.
	He sent me a text that said, what did I do to deserve this?
	Right? Not even taking responsibility.
	And then he said, your mom does this.
	Yeah, and your mom does this to, your mom does this same thing, alienating family.
	Right? So like, comparing me to my own mother.
	Right. So he'll just cause pain to you until you do what he wants.
	And he said, well, I gotta figure out how to, how to, Understand him so that he won't cause pain to me.
	No, no, no. I understand. But we're talking about your brother.
	We're not talking about your dad. We're talking about your brother.
	It's true. It's your brother, right?
	It's your brother still on your mind.
	You're trying to figure out how you can change yourself or your brother or the circumstances or something so that he does something and you feel less pain.
	Because you would feel less pain if he had a life, right?
	That's true. So it's not fundamentally about him.
	It's about you managing your own unhappiness about him.
	Right. And you sit there and say, well, I'm going to find a way out of my own pain by controlling my environment.
	But that's unfair.
	And your brother knows it's not about him.
	It's about you managing your own pain.
	In the same way that it's possible, possible, that your mother crippled him to deal with her own pain of possible loneliness.
	So now she has someone who's going to be around forever.
	And you and I have both known mothers like this, even outside of our own families.
	The mothers who baby their adult sons.
	The mothers who is like, oh...
	Just come over. I'll cook for you.
	Oh, I'd be happy to do your laundry.
	Oh, I need to feel needed.
	Oh, yeah, no, I could be happy to come up and give you a hand cleaning.
	Or, yeah, I'm kind of bored and lonely.
	Why don't you come over? Let's play some cards.
	You know, I'm sad.
	And they just won't let the kids go.
	Because they don't want to be alone.
	They can't stand being alone.
	And what I mean by that is, They're like government workers.
	They don't want to go out into the free market.
	You know, you talk about privatizing schools and everybody.
	All the teachers freak out and all the administrators freak out because they don't want to go out into the free market.
	They get really angry. And they'll go on strike and they'll physically attack people and beat people up and scabs or strikebreakers will get assaulted.
	They'll threaten. It's real straight up terrorism.
	Which is, whatever you fucking do, do not put me in the free market.
	Do not put me in the free market.
	Now, when you bring family relationships into the free market, what do abusive people do?
	Look, there are some good teachers, even in the government system, who would be like, oh, thank God they privatized.
	I love teaching kids, but I hated the bureaucracy.
	I hated all the woke bullshit.
	I hated the mandates. I hated having a Force-feed creepy gender ideologies and global warming disaster scenarios to innocent children.
	I get to teach kids.
	It's a free market situation.
	Thank fucking God, right?
	And there will be some people like that.
	Not many, but a few.
	But most people will be like, I will blow shit up if you point me at the free market.
	Because they know, or at least they fear, whether they're right or not, it doesn't matter.
	I can't judge that because it's about future and free will.
	But the genuine terror is if you privatize the school system, people will pay me to stay away from children because I'm a dangerous, scary, nasty person.
	And the only way I get to keep my job and my summers off and my benefits and the desperate health care I desperately need because I'm overweight and pre-diabetic and shit like that, the only way I get to keep all of this free shit is because the government forces everyone to pay me.
	I inherited an unjust, exploitive relationship And if that goes away, and I have to go out into the free market of relationships, nobody's going to want my sorry spotty ass, right?
	Right. Like, if my mom didn't have a dependent brother and I was capable, then I would have done the same thing.
	What do you mean? I would have still walked away from her.
	It wouldn't have changed anything.
	Well, if your brother...
	Wakes up tomorrow and moves out.
	And maybe he's mad at your mom.
	Maybe you're mad at your mom. Maybe you guys don't talk to her for whatever period of time.
	Maybe the rest of your lives. I don't know.
	Maybe, right? Just imagine that as a potential scenario.
	I'm not going to recommend it, but maybe it's a potential scenario, right?
	And then your mom is alone.
	Now, how is she going to go about finding good friends To take her through old age when she doesn't have any historical relationships, if she's out in the free market of relationships.
	She won't. Well, she fears she won't, so she fears in the free market of relationships she's going to be abandoned, discarded, useless, negative, alone, right?
	Well, and she can't.
	She doesn't trust people.
	Well, you're with the Kant stuff, and we don't know about that because it's free will, right?
	Well, yeah, I suppose, but she's so paranoid she can't even donate to a church without giving the guy stink-beady eyes and saying something.
	I mean, it's crazy. No, no, I get that.
	I get that, but that's because she already has a relationship that she knows is never going to go away, right?
	It's enabling her, yes.
	Yeah, yeah, so she doesn't have to be nice and positive in the neighborhood because she trapped your brother like a flying amber.
	She already got. You know, it's like this old thing.
	Do you remember this old country song, Take This Job and Shove It?
	Yeah. Yeah.
	And do you know why the guy quits?
	I'm trying to remember the song now.
	Because his girlfriend left him.
	And she's the only reason he had a job.
	Oh, yeah. My girl left.
	That's the only reason I was working.
	So take this job and shove it.
	What about the people who win the lottery?
	And they hate their job and they hate their boss.
	What do they do? Same thing.
	Yeah. They couldn't be assholes to their bosses, or they couldn't be honest.
	Let's just be nice. They couldn't be honest to their bosses because they needed the paycheck.
	But if they win the lottery, which is your mother with your brother, they win the lottery, they can be assholes to everyone.
	Because they don't need to have a job.
	And so... Your mother doesn't want to go anywhere within a million miles of the free market.
	Now, your ex-wife didn't want to go near the free market to a large degree.
	She wanted the subsidy of sex.
	You understand? The government subsidy, in this case the biological hormone subsidy of male lust, she wanted the subsidy of sex.
	She didn't want to be in the free market, and that's why women who offer up sex early are so dangerous.
	They are predatory government workers who want a monopoly based upon the bonding hormone of oxytocin.
	They want to rope a man in with endorphins, sexual release attachment hormones.
	They don't want to be in the free market.
	Now, a woman who says, oh, no, no, we're not having sex for at least three months.
	I've got to get to know you.
	Well, that woman is saying, I want to be in the free market.
	I don't want to drug you. I don't want to drug you.
	I mean, it's funny because, and this is not morally the same, but I think biologically there's some vague similarities, right?
	So, I mean... There was...
	Bill Cosby used this creepy shit.
	It's called Spanish Fly, right?
	He even had jokes about it, right?
	So there was this concoction you were supposed to put in a woman's drink and then she'd get super horny, right?
	And then she'd have sex with you and you'd bond or whatever, right?
	And that was creepy, right?
	And it was nasty. And it was illegal.
	And it should be, right?
	It's like roofing, right? But for a woman to offer up sex to a man, it has not totally dissimilar Consequences in terms of the man is to some degree, you know, awash in hormones and bonds and then she gains a massive amount of control over him and all of that.
	And so a woman who wants to V-bomb you is saying, I kind of want to kidnap you through historical hormones.
	And again, I'm not saying objectively, morally, illegally or anything, but just, you know, she's saying, I don't want to be judged for who I am.
	Any more than the guy who chloroforms the girl John Fowle's collector style and throws her in the back of the van.
	He doesn't want to be judged for who he is.
	Well... Because he just wants to capture her.
	And the woman can want to capture the man, right?
	Right. And her rejecting me...
	Her rejecting me over time, I started to feel like I was nothing but a caged animal that she just opened the cage to come in and fornicate with whenever she chose.
	And the only control I had was when she was in the cage.
	That's why we had a very physical, rough sexual relationship.
	Right. It was horrible.
	Yeah, so sexuality for women, sexuality is a form of management, is a form of control for women.
	In other words, the giving or withholding of sexuality in order to control a man is a tale as old as time.
	It's a tale as old as humanity.
	It's as old as mammals.
	It's as old as life itself.
	Which is to give a man a reward called sexuality to punish a man by withholding sexuality as a fundamental form of control.
	It's a form of subsidy and taxation.
	And it's a form of monopoly abuse.
	The reason being that the man in a monogamous relationship can only have sex With his partner, with his wife.
	Now, if his wife chooses to not have sex with him, then she is punishing him by refusing him access to sex and refusing him access to anyone else who can give him sex.
	It's one thing if the restaurant closes down, just go to another restaurant.
	It's another thing if the restaurant closes you down, And then sues you for a million dollars if you go to another restaurant, which is kind of like divorce.
	So I shouldn't feel guilty about my lusts in my first marriage because I went sexless for, you know, I maybe had sex five times a year.
	And, like, I was stealing her sister's panties and things.
	And I shouldn't feel guilty about that is kind of what you're saying, right?
	Because, like, she's punishing me.
	Well, I don't know about the sister's panty stuff.
	That doesn't seem ideal. But, of course, you're a man and you're driven.
	Like, the only reason there are people is because of lust.
	Now, women have lust and men have lust.
	But a man's lust is...
	I mean, I was just thinking about this the other day.
	Like, when I was a teenager, a man's lust, particularly if you're raised, are selected, as I was and I think you were, right?
	But a man's lust is somewhat akin to insanity.
	Insanity. It is obsessive.
	It is overwhelming.
	It is what we...
	I mean, there's studies. Like, men think about sex, like, every 23 seconds or something like that.
	Like, it's... And women, not so much, right?
	And again, women have lust, and women enjoy sex, and it's all great, but it's what Socrates said about when he lost his lust.
	He said, it's like a demon has detached itself from me.
	And there is something so all-consuming about male lust that for a woman...
	To give or withhold as a form of reward and punishment is deeply disturbed and abusive.
	Now, this does not mean that the woman owes the man sex or that the woman should ever have sex with a man when she doesn't want to.
	That should never happen. So, you know, if the woman, I mean, has a bad headache, then, of course, you'd never want to have sex with a woman who doesn't want to have sex with you.
	That's nasty, right?
	It's really bad. But a woman who provides and withholds sex as a form of manipulation and control is abusive.
	Because let's say there are problems in the relationship, but you don't fix problems in the relationship by having sex.
	But a woman who won't talk about the problems, who won't give you sex, who won't figure out how you can have a better sex life, and who will punish you eternally if you have sex with someone else, It's starving you and driving you crazy, and it's really, really abusive.
	Well, and that's basically what was happening in my first marriage.
	Right. Enough to the point where, look, you're right, it's not ideal, but it's understandable, I guess.
	Right. And monogamy used to solve all of these problems.
	Not having sex before marriage used to solve a large number of these problems and so on, right?
	So, my basic point here is is stop trying to figure people out.
	Now, I know I say this in these conversations where I'm trying to figure people out.
	I get all that. But here's the thing.
	This is why these conversations can be so productive and usually are.
	And it's because of this reason.
	I'm not trying to figure you out to make me safe.
	Right? I hope you figure this out.
	I know you. I'm 99% sure that you will.
	And your life will be immeasurably improved thereby, right?
	But if you don't figure this out, my life goes on.
	I'm not doing this to manage my own anxiety or emotions or preferences or feel good.
	I'm not doing this because you represent a threat to me and I need to feel safe.
	It is really about you.
	It's not about me.
	I will talk about myself mostly to express solidarity and human-to-human understanding, right?
	I'm not doing this to manage feelings within myself.
	I'm not doing this to feel smart.
	I'm not doing this to feel better than other people.
	I'm not doing this to feel safe.
	I'm not doing this for praise.
	Lord knows I don't do this for praise.
	That would be kind of a crazy thing to do, right?
	But I'm doing this because I want the best for you.
	Now, if you choose not to Whatever, listen, or you just decide I'm wrong, and maybe I am.
	Okay, then you move on, and maybe you stop donating, and that's fine too, right?
	But because I'm not wed to the outcome, I can deeply investigate the process.
	And so I want to figure you out, and I'm telling you, stop trying to figure people out.
	Now, this doesn't mean never be curious about people in the future, but right now, you figuring people out It's PTSD, to use an amateur way of using the phrase, right?
	It's post-traumatic stress disorder.
	In other words, you had to try and figure people out when you were a kid because they were dangerous.
	You've got to study the lion when the lion's in the house, right?
	When you get older, you move out of the house.
	Leave it to the lion, right? Stop trying to figure people out.
	What makes your brother tick?
	Why is he not listening? Why doesn't he have the life?
	What happened when he was a baby?
	What's your mother's motivation?
	It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter Because you'll never know.
	Because there's no one.
	This is back to the question I had earlier.
	Was my parents' marriage doomed from the very beginning?
	I don't know. I'll never know.
	And because I'll never know, it doesn't matter.
	It doesn't matter. Knowledge, which is impossible, is irrelevant.
	And the pursuit of knowledge that is impossible is self-abusive because it is giving yourself a standard of security, i.e.
	I'll figure out these crazy people.
	It's giving yourself a standard of security you will never, ever, ever meet, which condemns yourself to a life of danger.
	And if you're addicted, if you're addicted to trying to figure out dangerous people, you're addicted to dangerous people.
	Obviously, you're dealing with that addiction with some of the people in your life.
	What happened? Look, I had a friend for, oh, well over a quarter century.
	He was a bachelor. I worked with him.
	He worked for me at my software company, and I could not figure out why he just wouldn't date.
	And I'd ask him, and I'd get various stories, this, that, the other, and It wasn't due to this particular issue.
	It doesn't really matter. I haven't spoken to him for some years.
	And I do, you know, like everyone, you wonder how people are doing.
	I mean, I wonder how the girl who asked me to go steady with her when I was in grade six, and I didn't even know what the term meant.
	I said no, because I didn't know what it meant.
	I still, I mean, once every two years, I remember her name.
	I wonder how that girl's doing.
	We all do this, right?
	As we sort of journey on in life.
	And there's nothing wrong with being curious or anything like that, but it's much better to have people in your life that you don't have to figure out all the time.
	Do you know what I mean? Yeah.
	People who are reasonable, people who are safe, people who are affectionate and loving and stable and healthy and helpful, just as you will be with them.
	And then you don't have to keep trying to crack the code of crazy just so you can sit on a couch and relax.
	It doesn't matter why your brother never got his life started.
	Thank you.
	And I'm not saying it doesn't matter in some objective existential way, but in terms of what you can figure out, the honest facts that you can ascertain, you'll never get those facts.
	You'll never get the truth.
	And you can't substitute your brother's willpower.
	You can't substitute your willpower for your brother's willpower.
	You've got to go just live your life.
	It's what you were saying earlier, right?
	Which is, you go live your life.
	Maybe he'll be inspired. Maybe he will.
	Maybe he won't. But you can't live his life for him.
	You can't. I mean, you can try.
	But you're paralyzing him.
	Probably as much as your mom is at the moment.
	And that's important to see.
	I've got one other thing, quick thing, that I'd like to share.
	Sure. So, when I found this out, it was pretty recent, and you caught some of it between the messages I sent you and the stuff I've told you here.
	At the time, I was going through waves of extreme rage and sadness, right?
	The sadness would come and it'd be like, this is so terrible.
	How could anyone do this to him?
	And then how could someone just stand there and do nothing?
	And then the rage would come and just be swearing and screaming and shouting and yelling.
	But then, after a couple days, I felt joy.
	And I felt power.
	Steph, I felt power like I'd never felt before.
	Because I realize now that I didn't have to figure them out anymore.
	I've been spending my whole life trying to figure out these people and now I've come to the bottom of it and said they're not worth figuring out.
	Look at what they've done. You can't figure them out.
	It's impossible because you can't figure out manipulators.
	Because the moment you figure out some pattern, they'll change it because then it doesn't work.
	You cannot figure out manipulative people.
	Because there's no person there to figure out.
	There's no personality that's stable there to figure out.
	It's like trying to figure out the shape of rain.
	It's just constantly changing.
	The moment you figure someone out who's manipulative, they will simply change their behavior because it means that you're onto them and that manipulation won't work.
	It's not like they're not worth figuring out.
	It's impossible to figure out manipulative people.
	It's impossible to figure out narcissists.
	It's impossible to figure out sociopaths.
	Because there's no person there that's stable.
	It's like trying to...
	You can pick a lock, but you can't pick a mountain.
	You can't pick the lock of a mountain.
	You can pick a lock, you can't pick water.
	It's not possible to figure out manipulative people.
	You can't do it.
	It's a complete paradox. It's a square circle.
	Because the entire point of manipulative people is that you don't see what they're doing.
	You don't understand what they're doing.
	You don't figure them out.
	And the moment you do figure them out, they'll simply change their behavior.
	They'll change their motives. They'll change what they're doing.
	You cannot... Figure out the purpose of...
	You cannot figure out manipulative people.
	Their entire point, the entire point of manipulation is that you can't see it.
	Well, and I guess what I'm trying to share there, and I'm curious about your own experience in this, but once I figured out that they were manipulative people, like, I was always questioning that with my father until this came out, and then it was like, okay, no, beyond a shadow of a doubt.
	And with my brother, I think you helped me see that, even though I already had a feeling that There's nothing I can do.
	Why am I even worrying about it?
	I can't live his life. I already felt that way.
	But it was this power, and I just want to know, did you feel this freedom and this power that you no longer had to try to figure them out?
	Oh yeah. Oh my gosh, it's so...
	I can't even describe it.
	It's like being Thor.
	It's like going from Woody Allen to Thor.
	Yeah. It's insane.
	Yeah, or it's like if you've ever biked and the chain comes off, everybody who bikes, like the chain comes off the bike and you're just spinning.
	But it's like putting the chain back on.
	It's like, oh, now I can go somewhere.
	Now I can get somewhere. Yeah.
	It's a very powerful thing.
	And I got that the day after Christmas.
	Hey, Merry Christmas!
	Yes, right? I mean, it's horrible news to piece together, but I can trust my emotions.
	Right. I can trust myself to know.
	And I don't have to figure them out anymore.
	I'm free of it, finally.
	Right? It's like a bondage of slavery that I'm free from.
	Yeah. I mean, anger, fear, those things don't free you.
	What finally frees you is yawning.
	You know, like, I gotta tell you, I mean, this is gonna sound cold.
	I don't care. I'm just being honest with you.
	I'm RTR-ing with you. When your brother was like, I know...
	But how do I end the pain?
	Right, that message he gave you earlier?
	Mm-hmm. Oh, shut up.
	Oh, what a drama queen.
	How do I end the pain?
	It's like, come on.
	To me, it's just eye-rolling.
	You know, hey, you can have a life, you can not have a life.
	I can't have your life for you, and I'm sorry that I tried for so long.
	That was kind of rude. I was managing my own feelings, wasn't thinking about whether I was helping you, so I did it way too long.
	It was a mistake, and I'm sorry.
	But this, you know, how do I numb the pain of my own existence?
	I mean, you know, you can take that drama queen claptrap elsewhere, but it doesn't play here.
	Because if you take, oh my god, my brother wants to end the, then you just play into the drama, it feeds the paralysis, he gets attention, he feels that he's got power.
	If you want to free people from their own manipulations, you have to stop giving them power over you.
	Trying to figure out manipulative people, being in relationships with manipulative people, getting angry at them, getting afraid of them, getting confused, belligerent, you name it.
	You're just feeding their addiction.
	You have to withdraw the drug of control from the control addicts.
	Manipulative people are control freaks, right?
	The control addicts, they want to control everyone else and it's why they don't have any center and they'll just do whatever works in the moment.
	You have to withdraw the drug of being controlled.
	From them. And the only way really to do that is not the anger.
	I mean, you'll feel angry and you'll feel afraid.
	But fundamentally, it just comes down to a yawn.
	It's like, I'm sorry.
	It just doesn't land for me.
	Like, your drama, you're upset.
	This doesn't land for me.
	You know, like my mother with her, you know, the doctors made me sick and the insurance companies want me dead and blah, blah, blah.
	Eventually, I was like, I would get mad at that stuff and frustrated.
	Oh, why can't she talk about anything else?
	And eventually, it's just like, I'm so bored.
	I'm just so fundamentally bored of these people.
	It's so predictable.
	It's so repetitive.
	It's so dull.
	It's so unstimulating.
	Like a lot of the anger and fear and frustration, a lot of that's just to cover up the complete emptiness and hollowness and uselessness of the entire interaction.
	And it's really dull.
	I never get bored of these conversations.
	I never do. Like, I have to remind myself, my God, it's been two hours.
	I never get bored of these conversations because we're having lively conversations about things that matter.
	And I think we're honest with each other and open with each other, sympathetic with each other and the truth.
	But manipulation only changes when it loses its power.
	Manipulative people only have even the chance of change when they lose their power.
	And as long as you're trying to figure them out, they have power over you because guess what?
	They have something you want, which is what makes them tick.
	You want that information.
	Right? Then they're in demand.
	They provide value. You need them.
	They have power over you.
	So as long as you're trying to figure them out, as long as you're trying to figure them out, you're just feeding their manipulation.
	Right. Can I ask a question?
	Yeah, last one, but go ahead.
	So, I don't know about boredom, but if I start to realize I didn't enjoy an interaction with somebody and I choose to disengage, would that be kind of a similar thing?
	I tend to avoid rather than yawn.
	Well, if you're not enjoying your interaction with someone...
	I mean, the question is why.
	Now, if they're boring, then obviously the yawn is appropriate.
	If they're manipulative and annoying, then...
	They may trigger you in terms of your old pain and humiliation and all of that.
	Because it's kind of humiliating to be controlled, right?
	Particularly for a son to be controlled by a mother is very humiliating, which is why the dads really should pretty well step in and not have that happen.
	But it's also, you know what it is.
	It's boring because the reactivation of early trauma is a sign that it's all happening again.
	And you know how it plays and you know what it is.
	And so it's an indication that it's boring and that it's not new.
	It's not original. They're just pushing your buttons.
	Great. I'm glad because that tells me I'm on the right path.
	I'm making progress.
	I'm shortening the time window from when I get bored and when I notice manipulation.
	Excuse me. Right, right.
	Okay, good, good. But listen, I'm really glad you called back.
	Absolutely thrilled. You know, because I do get requests from like, oh, how are people doing from the past and all of that.
	I'm really, really glad that we had a chance to have this conversation.
	I wouldn't say I'm thrilled.
	I'm full of admiration for what you're doing in your life.
	This was not at all an echo chamber.
	I learned new things. You learned new things.
	This was great. And if your friend wants to call in, I'm perfectly happy to hear his criticisms.
	It's perfectly fine with me. In fact, I would encourage him to do so.
	But I mean, this is a great job, man.
	This is amazing.
	You're out of a toxic marriage.
	You're setting up boundaries with people in your life.
	You're full of a new sense of power and control in your own life, and you're out of the reach of manipulators.
	I mean, for a couple of months, dude, like this is Olympic-level stuff, and I'm filled with admiration.
	It took me a whole lot longer, so I'm filled with admiration for what you're doing.
	Oh, and I envy...
	Almost. And I plan on writing my own story in a couple of years.
	I have to finish it first, though.
	I haven't lived out the rest of my story.
	I appreciate that. Yeah, so for those who want to pick up the book, it's available for free, the audiobook, at freedomain.com forward slash almost.
	All right. Well, I will sit up and get some food because I'm starving.
	So, yeah, thanks, everyone, for listening.
	I really, really do appreciate it.
	And... Sorry for a couple of the audio glitches.
	I think we have solved the issue.
	And I really, really appreciate everyone's attention and time here tonight.
	Have yourselves a super wonderful evening.
	Lots of love from up here in Canada.
	And happy holidays.
	Merry Christmas. I guess if you're Kamala Harris, maximum Kwanzaa enjoyment.
	And yeah, Trump signed the bill.
	Trump signed the bill. It's not even worth talking about because it's kind of boring.
	He generally tends to fold.
	He talks stuff and then folds.
	But anyway. I guess that's back to politics, which is slightly less exciting.
	All right. Thanks, everyone.
	Take care.
	I will talk to you soon.
	Bye.
	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.
	Please like, subscribe, and share, and all of that good stuff to get philosophy out into the world.
	And also, equally importantly, go to freedomain.com forward slash donate.
	To help out the show, to give me the resources that I need to bring more and better philosophy to an increasingly desperate world.
	So thank you so much for your support, my friends.

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