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Jan. 16, 2021 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:12:22

MAXIMUM POSSIBLE FREEDOM! Freedomain Call In

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	Good evening, everybody.
	Hope you're doing well. It is the 15th of January, 2021.
	And I just wanted to start with a thought or two I had.
	This censorship stuff that's going on, Parler getting booted off, people getting deplatformed left, right, and center.
	There's a lot that's wrong with it and a lot that everyone has mentioned.
	One thing I haven't Really thought mentioned or heard mentioned, which I wanted to mention here just before we jump in.
	One of the great tragedies of this kind of de-platforming and silencing of people is, A, it confirms people's worst fears because they say, oh my gosh, if we have ideas or arguments that are unacceptable to, say, the left or the powers that be, They're just going to suppress us and censor us and there's tyranny coming and so on.
	So it does kind of confirm people's worst fears and of course what it will do is it will foster the creation of alternative, probably secretive means of communication wherein ideas, some of which have merit and some of which of course are heinous, will flourish outside The reactions and feedback of mainstream society.
	And so you're confirming people's worst fears and then you're forcing them to create alternative means of communication far outside the norm wherein ideas will flourish in an underground format.
	Now people have talked about the underground format and so on and ideas not getting the pushback from mainstream society.
	But by confirming people's most legitimate, I'm sorry, by legitimizing people's greatest fears, You are really putting fuel to a very divisive movement, and it's such an obvious point that it seems hard to imagine that that's not kind of the purpose of things, but it is pretty bad.
	I certainly am seeing lots of communications from people who are deeply, deeply concerned about the state of free speech.
	In society, when you have people like Michelle Obama praising, deplatforming, and People like AOC saying that, you know, we've got to crack down on misinformation.
	Even counter-narratives, there's a conservative politician here in Ontario who was pointing out the downsides of the lockdowns.
	You know, that 10% of people in Ontario have had suicidal thoughts.
	I don't know what it's up from, but I've got to imagine that's up from the baseline, which has got to be a whole lot lower.
	He was saying that children are growing up in a state of anxiety and fear, that we're creating anxiety-ridden children who fear the world, the people in it.
	That's pretty bad. We've got doctors in Ontario talking about their expectation of a tsunami of cancer that's going to occur because screenings are not being performed.
	And Those are preventive screenings, and I also assume screenings for people who've had cancer.
	I'm outside that window.
	That's a long time ago now, and I've screened five years afterwards.
	But, man, it's pretty rough.
	He's pointing out, let's say there's this terrible shortage of intensive care unit beds in Ontario hospitals, but he's pointing out that the spare ICU beds is actually higher at this time This year than it was at this time last year or the year before.
	And I think there's fewer than one COVID patient per hospital on average.
	Now, of course, I know that they're not spread out across the province evenly, but there's less than one COVID patient per hospital in Ontario.
	He's pointing out, of course, that the vast majority of people who have died from COVID are extremely elderly.
	No children have died.
	And the numbers of people who've died below the age of 60 are very small.
	So he's saying, look, lockdown's not working.
	You can see this, of course, pivot.
	This is a very predictable pivot that was going to occur in the mainstream media that the moment that Biden, well, as Biden, what are we, one week away from inauguration?
	So as Biden mounts the steps towards the presidency, lo and behold, Lo and behold, it turns out, you see, that lockdowns are just not that good an idea.
	Got Lori Lightfoot of Chicago saying, we've got to open things up.
	New York City, we've got to open things up.
	People are now publishing all of the research that was suppressed before, pointing out that lockdowns don't really work relative to other, more voluntary measures.
	And this, sadly, was the price of having Trump in office.
	The price of having Trump in office was that the pandemic was going to be used as a political weapon.
	I mean, it's tragic.
	It's monstrous. But you can see this now.
	You can trace these new articles coming out where now that the Democrat is coming in, it turns out you see lockdown is just really a bad idea.
	We've got to open things back up.
	And that way, of course, people look back and say, well, my gosh, when we...
	Under Trump, these lockdowns were terrible.
	When Biden came along, the lockdowns were opened up.
	We got to have a society again.
	That's how things go.
	And, I mean, all of this really comes down to one thing and one thing only.
	And it's something that I have to grapple with, you have to grapple with, we as a society or as societies as a whole have to grapple with, which is we now have a couple of generations who've grown up We have virtually no exposure to critical thinking.
	Virtually no exposure to the Socratic method.
	Virtually no exposure on how to work with data.
	Virtually no exposure on the seen versus the unseen.
	Civilization is in the unseen.
	The seen is, well, slaves pick the food, pick the cotton.
	And so without the slaves, no cotton or food will be picked.
	That's the scene. The unseen is what potential do we have to advance as a society if we get rid of the moral evils of slavery?
	And the answer was pretty much infinity growth, infinity moral and economic growth.
	The seen versus the unseen.
	So-and-so died of COVID. That's the scene.
	But 10 so-and-sos died because they couldn't get their screenings.
	For cancer or heart disease or other things.
	We here in Canada as a whole in Ontario, it's pretty hard to argue that we have a functioning healthcare system.
	Healthcare has been taken away from most people in most circumstances.
	And with an aging population, It's pretty bad.
	The government's in control of healthcare.
	And because people don't know how to think critically, they don't know how to compare visible benefits with hidden costs or hidden benefits and visible costs.
	And so they're easily led into hysteria by the media.
	And you can see this language all over the place all the time.
	When the media wants a particular rule to be enforced, They say the government is going to crack down.
	For some reason that appears to be a positive to many people.
	I'm not exactly sure why. The government is going to crack down.
	And the other word that you'll see all the time is flouted, which means insouciantly, perhaps even belligerently, ignoring necessary rules for the protection of others.
	The government is going to crack down on businesses that are flouting these rules.
	Tells you, I guess, how everyone's been parented.
	And unfortunately, because we've had a couple of generations of people with no exposure to critical thinking, reason, evidence, Socratic method, seen versus the unseen, you just have this big boiling mass of easily programmed idiocy that can surge back and forth against the landscape, washing away any saplings of thought that happen to grow in the stony soil of modern culture.
	And that's what we all have to live with.
	This conservative politician who wrote a letter citing data and evidence put forward by government institutions.
	Well, he's been kicked out of the caucus.
	I don't believe he's got the power to run again as a conservative, which effectively ends his political career.
	And you've got the premier.
	Stomping around saying, I don't care what he says.
	We're not going to risk even one life.
	We're not going to risk even one life.
	Now, that's really fascinating, of course, and somebody who would be raised with even a smidgen of critical thinking would sit there and say, well, wait.
	Are you saying that taking away functioning healthcare for 10 million, 15 million Canadians in Ontario, right?
	15 million Ontarians, that taking away a functioning healthcare system from 15 million Ontarians doesn't threaten any lives whatsoever.
	Then what the hell is the point of the healthcare system at all?
	Why are we paying taxes to support it?
	Because apparently you can flip a big giant switch to turn off the healthcare system in many ways and it doesn't harm anyone.
	What are you talking about?
	Lockdowns don't harm anyone.
	Why did we ever have an economy to begin with if nobody gets harmed by lockdowns?
	Why do we have a healthcare system?
	Why did we have an economy at all?
	Why did people get up and go to work?
	There's no harm. Placing 15 million people in house arrest?
	And as soon as somebody says, not one life will be harmed, I mean, you just know that straight up sophistry, right?
	I mean, there aren't any magical solutions wherein nobody gets harmed.
	If there was a magical solution wherein nobody gets harmed, well, that should have been done a long time ago.
	Now they're putting COVID test requirements for entry into Canada.
	Why not in the past?
	Why just now? The last thing I wanted to mention as well is that you're hearing a lot of this stuff from politicians these days.
	Stuff like, well, the darkest days lie ahead of us.
	It's going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
	Be prepared for brutal times ahead.
	Now, that kind of language is only possible in a group that has a monopoly, a legal monopoly, a coercive monopoly.
	I mean, can you imagine?
	Let me take a silly example, right?
	Just to sort of highlight why this language exists.
	Can you imagine...
	A restaurant that serves bad meals, makes people sick.
	There's rats in the kitchen.
	Now that UB40 song is in my head.
	But it's a terribly run restaurant.
	People don't want to eat there.
	And there's this big advertisement that they take, ads that they take out online on TV. Bob's Restaurant.
	Yes. The food is terrible.
	Yes! It is, in fact, meals that nobody wants to eat.
	Yes! It is overpriced and the waiters are surly.
	The plates are unclean and the water tastes like batteries.
	But let me tell you, things are going to get a whole lot worse before they get better.
	We can have actual rats at the soup before we finally turn the corner a year or two from now.
	Things are just going to get so much worse before they get better.
	I mean, can you imagine such a thing?
	It would make no sense at all.
	But that's because they don't have a monopoly.
	You can just go to some other restaurant.
	Or you can cook at home.
	You can order out. Things are going to get a whole lot worse.
	Like, they can say that to you because they have so much power over you.
	They can make all this grim-sounding absolutes.
	There will be no return to normalcy for years.
	I mean, if there was some insurance company was found not to be paying out legitimate just claims, somebody died, life insurance, somebody's house burnt down, fire insurance, someone's car was stolen, property insurance, And they just weren't paying out and they were on the take.
	Money went missing.
	Stock price was plunging.
	Can you imagine? Them convening all of their shareholders together and saying, well, it's going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better.
	We're going to take more.
	There's going to be more corruption.
	We're going to pay out fewer claims and there will never be a return to normal profitability.
	I'm sorry. I mean, I just thought how absurd that would be.
	Because what would people do?
	They'd just say, well, I guess thank you for your frankness.
	I will be selling my shares and you will go out of business.
	But because there's a monopoly, they can give you all of these dark tidings.
	And it's almost like there's almost like a sadistic pleasure, it seems like, in it.
	You can't go anywhere. Things are going to get a whole lot worse.
	We've got you by the balls.
	We're going to squeeze and twist and not in the way you like.
	Because I'm always comparing what I see to a free society.
	Like if you're an abolitionist and you want to end slavery, you look at whipped and beaten slaves or slaves that have had their hamstrings or their Achilles tendons cut.
	So that they can't run away.
	People ripped from their families.
	You look at that and you compare this to a world wherein someone complains bitterly because they're being slightly underpaid or their pension benefits aren't quite high enough.
	You're comparing the beatings, the mutilations, the tortures, the rapes of slaves.
	If you're an abolitionist, you're looking at that and you're comparing that to a world wherein people nag Because the boss expects them to come back from their 15-minute break on time.
	That would be great to have that world compared to what is, right?
	So when I look at the news, the media, I mean, why are people so angry in America?
	Why do the vast majority of people not think that the election was particularly or outstandingly stable or fair?
	Why are they so maddened?
	Well, because if there was some lottery where people just didn't believe that the winners were chosen randomly, oh, look, the CEO of the lottery, his brother just won the lottery for the third time.
	Well, they wouldn't riot, they wouldn't protest, they wouldn't go mad.
	They'd simply say, hmm, I don't really want to play that lottery, thank you very much.
	And it's that voluntary aspect of human interaction that's the only thing that can combat increases in corruption.
	Corruption will always increase because we have in-group preferences, biological proximity preferences, and we always want something for nothing.
	Wanting something for nothing in the free market is a wonderful thing.
	Wanting something for nothing in the political sphere is the degradation of civil society.
	So corruption will always increase.
	The CEO will always want to give the winning to his brother.
	There will always be kickbacks and paybacks.
	There will always be a tendency for people to want to wet his beak, as they say, in any particular transaction.
	Corruption is endemic.
	And this comes from I used to dislike this idea enormously of original sin, the fundamental corruption of human nature, the fall from grace from Adam and Eve, from eating the apple of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
	I used to hate that idea because I thought it was negative towards the self-esteem of humanity.
	Now, there is that aspect to it as well.
	But one of the things that's wonderful about it is that if you understand that human beings are almost infinitely corruptible, Then you recognize that a free and voluntary society is the only thing that can combat that.
	I'm aware of my own capacity for corruptibility, which is why I didn't take ads, which is why I don't tell people what to do, which is I steadfastly remind people that I'm not speaking or preaching from any high mountain of perfection, that I make mistakes.
	You've heard me say this a billion times to people who call in who are younger than me that, hey, you're making better decisions than I ever did at your age.
	Good for you. Well done.
	You're doing better than I did.
	Because the last thing I ever want to become is an authority.
	I think my arguments should have weight, people should listen to the arguments, but I don't want to have authority at a personal level in any way, shape or form, because that's not sustainable after I'm dead.
	Philosophy is something that should be internalized and pursued by people as a whole, not identified with any particular individual.
	So there will always be corruption.
	That's the inevitable state of power, of coercion.
	And the only way we can get rid of bad ideas is with free speech, and the only way we can get rid of corruption is through voluntarism.
	It doesn't mean that there won't ever be corruption.
	It just means that you're not forced to subsidize it, and therefore it's going to be nipped in the bud pretty early.
	Pretty early. All right.
	I just wanted to mention those couple of thoughts that I had before they...
	Out of my brain, thank you for your patience.
	I now turn the show over to the brilliant listenership, led by James.
	All right, so the first call that we have tonight writes in, I had a conversation with Stefan back in May, surviving the scripts of history, and he asked me to let him how things go with my dad.
	Now it's November, a little bit later now, and I finally have a significant update to give, and, well, it's nothing good, I'm afraid.
	I'll probably have to expand on this later, because my head is spinning right now, but tonight I had a conversation with my parents where it was very clearly demonstrated to me that I cannot speak honestly with them about things that are truly important to me.
	My dad and I got into an argument the other day over something pretty minor, which expanded into a huge blow-up about taking responsibility, me needing to grow up, and how I'm ungrateful and he doesn't have to explain shit to me.
	Those were his exact words.
	He then gave me a BNAP, that's a bullshit non-apology, and now I'm the bad guy for not accepting it.
	My mom got involved tonight and was 100% on his side.
	Sorry, 100%? I heard 1%.
	My mistake.
	My mom got involved tonight and it was 100% on his side.
	There we go. Changes the channel of the story a smidge.
	Just a touch. I am, quote, only hurting myself by withholding forgiveness according to both of them.
	Any attempt I made at explaining my point of view or being honest about what I was thinking and feeling was met by my dad even getting more angry.
	And eventually he basically threatened to nuke the relationship if I couldn't accept the BNAP and moved on.
	I finally said the words, quote, I forgive you, which I admit was a lie and I hate that I said it, and he questioned my sincerity.
	The irony of this, given his completely insincere apology, was totally lost on him.
	I feel completely lost right now and I don't know where else to turn.
	I've been in therapy for a couple of months now, and I'll bring this up with my therapist at our next session in a few days.
	But I thought I would put it out here as well.
	I won't say I would love to have a follow-up conversation about this with Stefan, because I really hate everything about this whole scenario, but I'm sure a follow-up is what is needed.
	Thanks again, Stefan, for everything you're doing.
	Wow, well, it's great to chat with you again.
	I mean, obviously, I wish the circumstances were more positive.
	In your perception, I will make a case that they're positive either way, but welcome back.
	Thank you for taking my call again.
	I appreciate it, and I also wish this were under different circumstances, but this is where we're at.
	You wrote this late last year.
	What's changed since?
	Not a lot. This is something that's become more clear to me.
	Ever since this happened is that what's happened with this situation is what my family has always done, which is once someone says the right words, it's possible to just ignore whatever the issue is.
	So because my dad said the words, I'm sorry, and I said the words, I forgive you, now we're just done with it, and it's over, and we don't talk about it anymore.
	And then, of course, if you bring it up again...
	You get the one-two punch of, hey, we already dealt with this and, you know, clearly you can't let things go and clearly you lied about forgiving me and blah, blah, blah, right?
	So now you're at fault. Yes, exactly.
	Right, right.
	And how do things stand at the moment?
	The same. I mean, I know now the piece of information that I'm kind of working with is that I can't Bring up anything important to my parents that they are going to have any disagreement with.
	So basically the way things are in my head is that, broadly speaking, there's two acceptable areas of conversation with my parents, which are, number one, things that aren't that important, and number two, things that they agree with.
	Right. So if it's something that they disagree with that is important, it's off-limits.
	Right. Because the disagreement is reframed, I assume, as a moral problem on your part.
	Yes. Either a moral problem on my part or the way that my dad shuts down any argument I try to make is he will say something along the lines of, you know, you're ten times smarter than I'll ever be, and et cetera, et cetera, something along the lines of, I have all this life experience and you should shut up and listen to me anyway.
	those aren't his exact words but that is the message that I'm receiving so it's not complimentary basically It's not complimentary, basically, for him to say that I'm smarter than him because it comes along with a but, which is, but you need to listen to me anyway.
	Because he has this magic world called experience that means he doesn't have to provide you reason and evidence, right?
	Right. Experience is the magic pixie dusk I sprinkle on my opinions to make them wise and true.
	Right. Right.
	In the same way that a guy like a dad who believes in the flat earth will say, hey, I've been around a lot longer than you, kid.
	So in my experience, my experience tells me that the earth is flat.
	Do you have any science facts?
	No! Experience!
	Magic word! Yeah, so to put another...
	The final kind of layer of icing on the irony cake was...
	So during this conversation, during the first conversation, he had made a comment that I was upset about, and I brought it up to him at the second conversation where my mom was involved.
	And he said, the first thing out of his mouth when I brought it up was, oh, I never said that.
	I wouldn't have said that.
	And so I said, well, what?
	So am I just making that up?
	Like, am I remembering something that didn't happen?
	And he said, yeah, you're misremembering it.
	And that was the point where I was like, oh my God, I can't pursue this any further.
	And look, it doesn't mean that you are right, but in general, my approach to this kind of stuff is when stuff is really shocking or upsetting or unsettling, it does kind of burn itself into our brain.
	I mean, I remember things that people said to me like 30 years ago, if it was particularly negative or shocking, just because that stuff does kind of burn itself into your brain.
	Again, it doesn't mean your memory is infallible, but it usually is.
	If one person is saying something In the heat of the moment, and it's stuff they've said before, you know, it kind of comes and goes in the tide for them, but if, I mean, I said this before, I remember being, I don't know, maybe it was either six years old or maybe eight years old, I don't know exactly, but I remember my mom in the middle of the night screaming, I effing hate these kids in the apartment, right?
	Now, I remember that like it was yesterday, because that was a shocking and I guess not entirely surprising statement given her attitude, but I remember that very clearly.
	Now, of course, if I said that, my mom would say, well, you must have dreamt it.
	Okay, but then why would I dream it?
	But no, I remember that because I remember being awake.
	And I also remember making a bit of a surprised, shocked face to myself, even though I wasn't particularly surprised deep down.
	But you remember these things.
	You remember these things.
	I remember someone in my teenage years, oh, you're just...
	Philosophy is just walling you off.
	You're just drifting away from everyone you know and care about.
	You're going to be lost in space and your own ideas.
	I remember this whole rant that someone gave to me trying to shield me from philosophy.
	I remember someone when I was younger who was going to get married to the woman I love and he said, well, I mean, I'm not really going to make much of an effort to get to know her because you're just going to get divorced anyway.
	You know, so when these things come, they land.
	And they land pretty hard.
	It's like trying to think they didn't happen.
	is like trying to go to that Arizona meteor crater and pretend you're on a flat playing field.
	So I'm with you, I guess.
	Yeah. Well, to finish what I was saying about the irony.
	So my dad did that.
	He said that. And my mom was there.
	We can talk about her role in this in a minute.
	But a few days after this was Thanksgiving.
	And we had a little family get-together.
	And at the Thanksgiving gathering, I overheard my dad talking to his brothers in a little group.
	My family's all big-time Trump supporters and whatnot, and I overheard my dad talking to my brothers and explaining to them that, you see, the liberal media is gaslighting the American public.
	And he was explaining to them the concept of gaslighting.
	Like, pretty accurately, too.
	Like, the movie that it comes from and everything.
	And I remember overhearing this and I'm like, oh my God, are you kidding me?
	So that's the final irony icing.
	Thank you.
	Right. Yeah, I mean, I think it's important to listen to...
	I mean, sorry, this sounds an annoyingly obvious thing to say, but I do think it's really important to listen to people.
	And again, recognize that's a really grating thing to say.
	So I'll explain what I mean, and hopefully it will be less annoying the way I understand that it's annoying now.
	And again, I'm not trying to talk about myself.
	I'm just saying, here's where I... Have some background for what it is that I'm saying.
	So my mom said two things to me when I was younger.
	Number one, she said that she was jealous of and hated Ayn Rand because she felt that Ayn Rand took over parenting from her, right?
	Number one. And number two, she said, you raised yourself.
	You did it all yourself. Well, she also said, don't think, but, you know, that's...
	Neither particularly here nor there.
	And so those two things, that she didn't like Ayn Rand because she felt that Ayn Rand took over the parenting job, her parenting job, and also that I raised myself.
	And she said the first thing about Ayn Rand, I think only once or twice, but with regards to me raising myself, and she would say, you did it all yourself.
	You raised yourself. You did it all by yourself.
	And the reason I'm saying that is not to get you to think about my mom, but to think about what your dad's saying and just assume it's true.
	Yeah, it is true. It is true that philosophy became my mother and my father.
	There's no question. There's no question.
	And thank God it did. Well, thank Socrates, thank reason, thank me, thank whoever, right?
	But I was raised by philosophy.
	Some people are raised by wolves.
	Most people are raised by the state.
	Some people are raised by parents.
	I was raised by philosophy.
	Welped, suckled at the giant tit of reason and evidence.
	And she was right.
	And did I raise myself?
	Did Ayn Rand and other philosophers replace my mother?
	Yes, thank God.
	And did Nathaniel Brandon and other psychologists replace my father?
	Yeah. Yes.
	Did I do it by myself?
	Well, no, insofar as I was raised by philosophers who'd come before me.
	But... I did it by myself insofar as there wasn't another in-room person or sort of in-my-face person.
	It was through books.
	And Socrates was my uncle, Ayn Rand was my mother, and various psychologists in general tended to be my father.
	Whether Jung, Nathaniel Brandon, other people as well.
	Ah. I should do Robert Adler at some point.
	Anyway, so she was right.
	So when your father says, you're ten times smarter than me, I think it's important to listen.
	He could well be right.
	And if he is right, if he genuinely believes that you're not just smarter than him or twice as smart, ten times smarter than him, Then what is his emotion relative to that?
	And I'm not saying to this, you know, like in terms of like have massive sympathy, but I think it's important to understand what the experience is of a father whose son, by his own admission, is vastly outstripping him at such a young age.
	Yeah, I think he's intimidated by it.
	And I said the same thing to my therapist when we talked about this, but it's like he's suspicious of it.
	He's suspicious of me because he thinks that I'm going to find some way to twist words around and make him wrong when he's not wrong.
	Oh, that you use your superior intelligence to twist his words, to outsmart him, to fool him.
	Right. Right.
	Now, of course, my question to him would be, who did you raise that he's doing this?
	Why would a son that you have raised be using his superior intelligence to undermine you and gaslight you and attack you and whatever, right?
	Why would you have...
	Listen, there's stuff my daughter's better at than me.
	But I don't think that...
	I'm of the opinion that that makes me lesser.
	I mean, it's just different skill set, right?
	She's just really, really gifted at some things.
	I'm good at some things, and to expect them to be exactly the same things would be ridiculous, right?
	So what does it mean to him, A, that you're smarter, and B, that you would use that intelligence against him?
	Why would he think that? I would think...
	I mean, I would think it has something to do with his childhood, but I'm not certain about that.
	Well, how much of his identity is bound up on being the older, wiser daddy guy?
	I mean, he...
	There's probably a lot of his identity bound up in being an authority figure, which I guess is kind of the same thing as what you just said.
	Yeah, yeah, that's the same thing. Yeah, that's the same thing.
	So he wants to add value.
	He wants to add value to your life, right?
	You understand that? Yes.
	He really, really wants to add value to your life.
	Now, that, I think, is an honorable and decent thing.
	God forbid we're in relationships where we don't want to add value.
	It'd be the government, right? So he wants to add value to your life.
	He wants to be a provider of good things to your life.
	And the question is, as you get older, as you get access to different information, as you think for yourself more and more, the question is, how is he going to provide value to your life?
	It's a big question, right?
	It's a big question.
	How is he going to provide value to you as you get older and wiser and, as he says, you're ten times smarter than he is?
	I guess experience.
	I can tell you what the fear is if you want. - Yeah.
	I mean, the thing that comes to mind is the life experience that he keeps bringing up.
	Like, I think that's the value that he intends to provide or thinks that he's going to provide.
	Right, right.
	Now, Life experience that you can't translate into actual arguments or perspectives or facts or evidence or empiricism.
	And that's why I sort of refer to it as a magic word to sprinkle on rightness dust, right?
	Because reasons is kind of a, you know, I'm right because reasons is kind of a joke on the internet.
	I am right because experience is pretty much the same thing.
	Because if you can't translate that experience into anything practical...
	Or explainable or...
	Then he's really just saying, obey me because I'm talking.
	It's the ultimate argument from authority, right?
	Obey me because I'm older.
	So his major, probably his major concern is of being left behind.
	Of being left behind.
	My friend, when I was younger...
	Who bitterly and angrily complained and railed at me because philosophy was making me inaccessible?
	Wanted to portray me as drifting off into nothing land, right?
	Being buried in books, living in abstractions, living in the past, living in other people's thoughts.
	Like all the people who said, well, you don't think for yourself.
	You just parrot whatever philosophy book you're reading.
	Which is... It's kind of ridiculous.
	I mean, if you're an athlete and you're being trained by an elite coach who's trained many successful athletes before and people say to you, well, you're not running like yourself.
	You're just running like the coach is telling you to.
	It's like, well, yeah, of course I am, right?
	You're not eating what you want to eat.
	You're just eating what the world expert in nutrition is telling you to eat.
	It's like, well, yeah, absolutely I am because I want to be coachable.
	If you can't be coachable, you generally can't.
	Invite coaches into your life, which can save you a lot of time.
	So, of course, I was parroting the people I had read.
	Not everyone I had read.
	I read a lot outside of what I believed in.
	I was certainly thinking for myself, but people were saying, well, you don't exist.
	In a sense, you're just inhabited by books and other people, and you just run to the answer, look up and don't think for yourself, and blah, blah, blah, right?
	Even though I was writing poetry and plays and short stories and novels all throughout my teens, Which was certainly not...
	But even those, I would be influenced.
	I would read Oscar Wilde, but it would be kind of cool to write a 19th century comedy.
	You know, I read a lot of Russian literature and my first novel was set in 19th century Russia.
	Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
	Of course. It's like saying to a singer, well, you're never going to sing your own songs because...
	In the past, you sang other people's songs.
	Well, of course you sang other people's songs.
	Nobody sits there and starts singing their own songs from scratch and never ever sings anyone else's songs.
	So, he wants to add value and he can't add value by being coachable by you.
	He can't add value by pursuing what you're pursuing, thinking for yourself.
	My friend of the past was right.
	That philosophy was making me inaccessible to him.
	And in the long run, philosophy and my own independent thought overtook him, eclipsed him, and left him in the dust.
	And I won't get into any identifying details, but I happened to find him the other day.
	I know that sounds kind of silly, but I did.
	And he's still... Running his little business from a bicycle.
	Just as he was 30 years ago.
	And he was right.
	Philosophy was making me inaccessible to him.
	And so instead of saying, well, tell me the value that you find in philosophy.
	Help me to understand. Help me to learn.
	He just attempted to drive a wedge between philosophy and me so that he could Retain value without having to learn how to think.
	So, your father wants to continue to add value to you, but the withholding of a negative is not providing value.
	In other words, withholding insults or accusations or put-downs or superiority or whatever, right?
	It's not a value. I mean, it's the equivalent of somebody saying, hey, I can put a shiny new storefront on your store for a very cheap amount of money and it's going to double your business and here's the data.
	Okay, maybe you'll say yes to that.
	That's providing a positive. As opposed to the mafia coming along and saying, well, you don't want your store burned down now.
	That'll be a thousand bucks a month.
	Thank you very much. That's withholding a negative, right?
	And so the question is, to me, what positive benefits Can he bring to you?
	Where you will seek him out for a value, for something that is beneficial, positive, pleasurable, exciting to you.
	Okay. Hey, can you hear us?
	Oh, yeah. So, just very briefly recap.
	The question is, what value can your father bring to you that's a positive, that's something that gives you pleasure or joy or What positive things can he bring to you at the moment?
	What do I think he can bring to me?
	Well, you're the only one on the call, man.
	Well, I think we were talking before about what he thinks he's bringing, so I wasn't sure.
	No, no, what you – what can he bring to you that is positive?
	I'm struggling to come up with an answer, and I don't like that I'm struggling to answer that, but I kind of am.
	I don't know.
	Well, I don't want to jump into your dad's shoes here, but let's compare that to why you called me, right?
	So what positives might you expect to get out of this conversation?
	Clarity, for one thing.
	I know that you're not going to bullshit me.
	I know that you're going to say what you think is true and present arguments to support whatever you think is true.
	And I can hear those arguments and evaluate them and hopefully come to a better understanding of what is true.
	Yeah, I'm not going to tell you to believe anything that I say because I say it.
	I'm not going to argue from authority and I'm going to try and share my experience not to have you think about me but to understand the overlapping nature of our histories and so on, right?
	So that at least I know where you're coming from.
	So the analogy I was using earlier is if you have a store and someone comes and says, hey, I can really pretty up your storefront.
	It's going to be very cheap. It's going to double your business.
	Here's the data, right? And then if you believe him, He's offering you a positive as opposed to someone from the mafia who comes and says, well, we cannot burn down your store.
	It's going to cost you $1,000 a month.
	That's merely the beholding of a negative, right?
	So you got to look at all your relationships.
	This is for everyone out there, everyone out there.
	You got to look at all your relationships and say, is the value that I'm getting from this relationship the providing of a positive or the withholding of a negative?
	Or the withholding of a negative?
	In other words, let's say that I choose not to see this person or let's say I choose to limit my interactions or downgrade the time that we spend together to some lesser amount or whatever, right?
	Is it going to be a problem?
	Are there going to be negatives?
	Are they going to get mad? Are other people going to say, oh, you haven't talked to so-and-so, they're really upset, blah, blah, blah.
	Like, is it just you're just trying to appease and avoid a negative or are you pursuing a positive, right?
	So let's say That you decided to not call me tonight, right?
	Would I hassle you about it?
	No. No.
	Would I send trolls after you?
	Social media accounts where I don't even know who you are, but...
	Right? I mean, there's no negative repercussions to not talking to me, right?
	Right. So with regards to your parents, if you can't think of a positive...
	What's going on? Well, my guess is probably that it is not a positive that you are seeking to maintain, but a negative you are seeking to avoid.
	That is unsustainable.
	Because that's taxation, right?
	Taxation is, well, it's not that I really value what the government is providing, you know, I just don't want to go to jail, okay?
	It's not the provision of a positive that's going on, it's the withholding of a negative.
	Pay your taxes, we won't put you in jail, right?
	All right. Now, I mean, that's the society we live in.
	I tell people to obey the law.
	The negatives are pretty bad, right?
	So, yeah, the withholding, you understand that to me it's ironic and maybe perhaps a little predictable that libertarians have often, not saying you, but often libertarians or free thinkers, they have these pretty bad relationships that they kind of trudge through because they don't want to cause any trouble and It's not that they get a great positive out of it.
	It's just that they don't want to go through the negatives and the hassles of disentangling themselves or challenging that relationship or whatever and it's like, okay, so you're living your life not in the pursuit of a positive but in the avoidance of a negative and then you say, well, taxation is bad.
	Well, yeah, it is but one thing you can do something about and one thing you can't and yet the voluntary taxation of being in relationships in order to avoid a negative, that's a social tax.
	It's a social tax. And it's all over the place in society.
	It's all over the place in society.
	I read a book many, many years ago.
	I think the author was Beverly Slopen called Divorcing Your Parents.
	And literally three-quarters of the book were, yeah, I get it, but man, you're going to suffer socially for it.
	Because people are going to think you're a bad person if you don't see abusive parents.
	And everybody remembers how the media went after me for even suggesting that you didn't have to see abusive people.
	And society will punish people who don't see abusive parents to keep everyone else in line.
	Because if you start to question, like questioning taxation is easy.
	Questioning the time, money, energy, life that you invest in relationships in order to avoid a negative, challenging that is tough.
	But you've got to show people that things work before they'll even think of believing you.
	I know for sure I would not be happily married if I was still in contact with my mom.
	Guaranteed. If I've taken the woman who became my wife over to meet my mom, whoo!
	Remember, I was talking about how men think of this coming weekend, whereas women think of the next 30 years or 40 years.
	She'd have looked at that and said, hmm, nice guy, smart guy, good-looking guy, creative guy, great conversationalist, but no thanks, man.
	I'm not marrying into that.
	Can't do it. Can't do it.
	So I would have traded the close to two decades of joy I have with this wonderful woman for the sake of clinging to a woman who beat the crap out of me when I was a helpless kid.
	I mean, boy, that's a bad deal, man.
	That's a bad deal. It's a very bad deal.
	You've got to get the bad out in order to get the good in, right?
	You can't park a Lamborghini in the garage of a hoarder We've got to clear it out, right?
	So, what could your father, let's theorize here, what could your father provide to you that would be a genuine positive?
	Well, there's two things that I thought of while you were talking just now that I can see that are, well, I guess the first one would be the avoidance of all the negative social pressure, which is the avoidance of a negative and not a positive.
	The other thing, the other value is Would be the safety net that they've provided for me on occasion in the past.
	Whether it be financial help or, right now, a place to live, which I can talk more about if you want.
	But those are the two things that I thought of while you were talking.
	Well, hang on. But that's a providing of a positive only if it doesn't come with conditions.
	Right. Yes.
	Right? So, I mean, them giving you a place to live, it's great.
	It's wonderful, but if it comes with, and you have to obey me because I'm older and wiser, or you have to listen, or you can't bring this topic up, then it's a silence bribe, not a generous offer.
	Yes, and this is something that came up in the conversation with both of my parents.
	My mom, whenever they've helped me out in the past, my mom has always said, You know, there's no strings attached.
	We just want to bless you. That's the word she uses.
	We just want to bless you.
	And in the first fight I had with my dad, he was telling me I was ungrateful and I need to be more thankful for the things they've done for me.
	And so in the conversation with both of them, I brought that up and I said, you know, Mom, whenever you've provided help for me, you've always said there's no strings attached, but it kind of seems like there is a string attached, which is that you get to hold it over my head when you're mad about something.
	And so, yeah, it comes with a condition, even though she says it doesn't come with a condition.
	Right, right, right.
	And that, again, is this sort of desperate desire to provide a positive somehow, right?
	Right. Yeah, and just while you were talking, I was thinking, okay, so let's say I go to my daughter.
	You better be grateful that I didn't hit you.
	You better be grateful that I didn't yell at you.
	You better be grateful that I didn't call you names.
	You better be grateful that you had a roof over your head.
	I got to tell you, it's incomprehensible to me to say that.
	You better be grateful.
	No, I can't picture it.
	What do you think? I wouldn't think that you could picture it.
	Just from the way you talk about your relationship with your daughter, I don't...
	Okay, but I am doing these things.
	I couldn't imagine you saying that either. Yeah, okay, but I am not hitting her, not yelling at her, putting a roof over her head, making sure she gets healthcare and education and blah, blah, blah, right?
	But why would I not be able to say you better be grateful for that?
	Because that's your job as a parent to not do those things.
	Like, you chose to bring her into the world.
	So it's not...
	You don't get to hold it over her head that you're doing your job as a parent.
	I mean, yeah, to take a silly example, if I lock someone in my basement, do I expect them to be grateful that I'm giving them food?
	No. No, and she didn't ask to be here.
	She didn't ask to help me as a dad.
	So why on earth would it be like, you better be grateful?
	Yeah, that is a story.
	But I mean, it's not strange insofar as they want to provide value.
	And if they can't provide value in terms of wisdom or listening or whatever, right?
	Then they will probably aim to provide, quote, value by giving you money, right?
	Right. But it's pretty desperate.
	I mean, can you imagine taking a woman out on a date?
	You pay for dinner. And I don't know, maybe she pays for coffee or dessert or whatever it is, right?
	And then you go in for the kiss.
	She's like, hmm, that's a bit soon, right?
	And you say, hey man, you better be grateful I paid for dinner.
	You owe me because I paid for dinner.
	I mean, doesn't that just...
	Aren't you trying to turn her into a prostitute?
	Maybe a high-carb prostitute, but nonetheless, right?
	Yeah. Or if you give a present to your friend on his birthday and then the next day say, you better help me move because I gave you a present on your birthday.
	You owe me because I was nice.
	Your friend would probably just throw that present in your face, right?
	Thanks, no. You can't own me through presents?
	What, are you crazy? So let's talk about your mom.
	Okay. You just mean her role in this, in all these fights?
	Yeah. Well, when my dad said the comment about, I never said that, my mom wasn't there for the first fight.
	She was there for the second fight.
	So, I said, you know, I'm upset about this thing you said.
	I'd like an apology for that.
	My dad says, I never said that.
	As far as my mom is concerned, it's my word against his.
	She wasn't there for When he actually said this.
	And she automatically assumed he was right and I was wrong.
	Not one bit of consideration that I might have been the one who was right.
	Clearly one of us was wrong and she assumed it was me, without question.
	And joined the The track of, you need to forgive, you know, you've already gotten an apology, you need to give forgiveness, and you're only hurting yourself if you don't.
	That's where she was at.
	Huh. So that's a demand followed by the withholding of a negative in a sort of third-person way, if that makes sense.
	Because she's saying, well, you've got to give an apology, otherwise you're hurting yourself.
	Which is an attempt to inflict a negative upon you in terms of your own self-condemnation.
	And so to extract an apology from you with the threat of a negative is extortionary in a kind of way.
	Yeah. Yeah, speaking of extortion, the thing that...
	I guess maybe the thing that stands out to me the most about this whole situation is that...
	So I explained to my dad how I didn't think his apology was sincere, and the way I did it was...
	You know, I painted a scenario.
	So you remember when me and my brother were little kids, and we would be in a fight about something, and maybe I would hit him.
	And you would say, that wasn't very nice.
	You should apologize to your brother.
	And so I would be like, sorry.
	But it was obvious that I didn't really mean it and I just am saying that so we can move on and go back to whatever we were doing.
	That's an insincere apology and that's how your apology sounds to me because you don't understand like you're not you can't explain what you're apologizing for.
	You can't tell me why it was wrong to have said these things and it's just going to happen again If you don't understand why you're apologizing for it.
	And so the way my dad responded to that was that he said...
	I'm trying to remember the way he said this.
	He said, if you're willing to throw away a relationship because you can't accept an apology, I don't know what to tell you.
	Wow, that's a hell of a threat, man.
	That's a hell of a threat. And so in one breath, he threatened the relationship, accused me of threatening the relationship, and told me that threatening the relationship is bad.
	Yeah, you better accept my apology or we're done, right?
	That's what I got out of that.
	Yeah, and I had not brought up throwing away any relationship.
	He was the one who first mentioned that.
	So...
	Yeah, now, I mean, threats arise out of deep insecurity.
	Threats arise out of a historical tendency to not provide value, and therefore you threaten, right?
	I mean, why do parents threaten their children?
	Because they're not providing value to their children.
	Why did your father insist upon an apology without asking why You and your brother were fighting without trying to figure out what the root of the behavior or where the behavior was coming from.
	Well, that's the thing about it.
	Whenever something like that would happen, I remember this happening when I was a kid.
	If one of us, me and my brother, would give an apology that wasn't sincere, My parents would say, well, I don't think you really meant that.
	Like, what are you apologizing for?
	Like, tell them what you're sorry for.
	So they can spot insincere apologies.
	I know that why were you and your brother Violet I think it probably has something to do with nothing ever getting resolved like
	We were in an environment where as long as someone said the right words, then it was expected that the issue would just be over.
	Yeah, like the thing you have as kids where, you know, shake hands, right?
	What the hell does that mean? What does that mean?
	Right. Say you're sorry.
	Okay, I'm sorry.
	And now we're done. Why didn't your father want to get to the root of the violence?
	Well, I'm pretty sure it's because he wants to maintain some kind of illusion that his parents were good people.
	Because he can't condemn their violence against him.
	Right. Right.
	So violence is normalized in order to protect the aggressive.
	And therefore, the roots of the violence can't be examined.
	Because, look, if you go to a parent and you could say, well, you know, your kids are fighting all the time, so you can either try and get to the roots of the conflict and resolve it, or you can just wallpaper it over this big giant hole in the wall, wallpaper it over with apologies that are meaningless, and then just have it happen all over again, right?
	They would choose to get to the root, I'm pretty sure, right?
	Right. Right.
	So, how can I help you most?
	Which is to either confirm or deny what I think is going on here, and I think we've confirmed it.
	Um...
	So I guess the second thing I'd like to do is to try to figure out where do I go from here, and how do I deal with my situation?
	Well, let me try reframing here.
	Let me try reframing.
	How do you know it's bad, what's going on?
	Because you keep characterizing it as negative, right?
	And I just, I really want to understand.
	I mean, I get, like, most people would say it's negative, and I, you know, it's not, things aren't happening the way that you want them to happen, and I understand all of that, so I'm not saying, oh, it's crazy to call it negative.
	But why is it bad what's happening?
	Because the way that I was brought up in as far as the values that my parents preached in words was to tell the truth.
	And I'm now in a situation where I have to choose between telling the truth and appeasing my parents.
	And why is that bad?
	It's hypocritical.
	It's against the values that they say they uphold.
	Okay, so you have information that your parents reserve the right to be hypocritical themselves while demanding the truth from you.
	That's information, right?
	Yes. Those are facts.
	So why is that bad?
	I'm not saying, why is it bad what they're doing?
	I'm saying why is the situation wherein you're getting objective facts, why is that bad?
	I guess because it's kind of...
	Well, it feels bad for me.
	I don't know.
	Yes, but why is that bad?
	Why is it bad just because it feels bad to you?
	It may be.
	Not necessarily. It may be that an illusion being punctured feels bad, but that's good, right?
	Yes, that's exactly it. It's the shattering of an illusion that I was brought up with.
	No, no, no, no. No, no, hang on, hang on.
	Oh, no, no. I'm so sorry.
	I don't mean to laugh. It's not funny.
	It's not funny. But I think you're way off base here.
	And this is why it's good that we're talking.
	It doesn't mean I'm right. Obviously, I'm just telling you what I think.
	All right? Okay.
	Do you know the illusion about yourself that's being shattered as we speak?
	Not the illusion about your parents.
	The illusion about yourself.
	I'm not sure. Well...
	This is going to sound negative.
	I don't mean it that way, but there's no better word for it.
	The illusion that is being shattered is vanity.
	Vanity. And I say this as a guy who still has...
	I still have my own illusions of vanity being shattered pretty much on a daily basis, so hopefully I'm not projecting.
	I don't think I am. But the pain that you're experiencing...
	It's the limitations of your powers.
	Because here's the thing, my friend.
	You desperately, desperately don't want this to be happening.
	You are working every possible muscle, moral, intellectual, and emotional fiber in your being to have this have a different outcome, and you can't do it.
	You cannot achieve what you want.
	That is a limitation or a puncturing, a vanity of grandiosity.
	You have reached the limits of what you can do.
	You cannot affect this change.
	That's a fact. The pain is not that you can't affect this change.
	The pain...
	So look, when we're kids, we grew up in a difficult household.
	Maybe it's abusive, maybe it's just dysfunctional, but it's a difficult household, right?
	Now, the way that we retain our sense of Free will, our sense of power, of efficacy, is we imagine that we can do things to change it.
	Oh, if I take out the garbage, my mom won't be mad.
	Oh, if I tidy up, my dad won't be mad.
	Oh, if I do this, I do that.
	Some magical pixie dance of whatever it is, then I can affect the outcome.
	I can change things, right?
	And that's a necessary delusion of childhood because we're trapped, right?
	We're trapped. And we don't want to accept that we're helpless in this situation.
	Because when you say, well, if I do things that can change a negative outcome, then what happens is you end up feeling responsible for the negative outcome.
	So if you say, well, if I take out the garbage, mom won't be mad, then if mom gets mad, it's your fault, to some degree, right?
	So we get this These delusions of grandeur that is entirely necessary to retain our sense of free will, our sense of having some kind of control over our environment.
	We develop this magical thinking that we can change people.
	We can make angry people calm.
	We can make dysfunctional people more functional.
	We can make raging people calm.
	We can part the Red Sea, make bushes burn and bring down Ten Commandments from the mountaintop.
	We develop this grandiosity, this magical thinking that we can control the people in our environment through our actions.
	Now, like all delusions of grandeur, it's fundamentally paralyzing.
	So what's happening is you're being honest and you're bumping up right against the giant rocks of other people not fucking changing.
	They're not changing. They're immovable.
	That's painful as hell.
	Because you had, as we all did, I think, as a child, the illusion that you could manage and control a dysfunctional environment.
	And of course, that's what your parents tell you.
	They don't say, I'm angry because I'm an immature man-child who is unable to assign moral responsibility to his abusive parents.
	They don't say that. They say, I'm angry because You're playing video games on a sunny day.
	I'm angry because you didn't do chores I asked you to.
	I'm angry because I've had to remind you three times to do your homework.
	I'm angry because you didn't do the dishes.
	And what they're trying to do is lure that grandiosity out of you.
	Oh my gosh! My dad's temper is based upon what I do so I can control his temper.
	My behavior moves the levers of his mind.
	And he's a puppet that I move.
	Because he's assigning causality for his emotional state of mind on me.
	I'm all-powerful.
	I am the all-mover of the emotions of the household.
	I can make the gods tremble with my actions or inactions.
	I bring about the weather.
	I make earthquakes happen.
	You understand, right? So when your parents say, well, I'm angry at you because of what you do...
	then they're inviting us into this world where we control them through our behavior.
	We control them with our behavior.
	And now you're trying to control them with your behavior based upon the grandiosity that you and I and everyone who grows up in these environments has as a child.
	The vanity. I am the one responsible for the emotions Of my parents.
	I dance on the piano keys of their happiness and unhappiness.
	I am the prime mover of my parents' passions.
	And now, you're trying to continue that process.
	And you're trying to get your parents To do what you want them to.
	Which is what your parents always told you when you were a kid.
	I'm mad because you left your bicycle out on the sidewalk again.
	Tell you a little something.
	This morning, I woke up my daughter and I said, I have a little apology to make to you.
	She said, what do you mean?
	I said, well, you know, we were playing Among Us yesterday.
	And I thought I'd put forward a good case as to why I wasn't the imposter.
	I wasn't the imposter. And people just said, oh, I'm just going to go on a hunt and vote you out anyway.
	And I got a little annoyed, right?
	Actually, more than a little. I wasn't raging or anything, obviously.
	I was just like, grumble, grumble, grumble, right?
	And I said, you know, I was a bit sucky yesterday during the game.
	And she said, I kind of made a joke about it.
	Like, it was way too subtle for you to notice because you're only a child.
	She said, Dad, I noticed, right?
	And I said, no, I've got to apologize because, you know, it's not a fun way to end the game.
	And I said, I think I know why.
	She said, well, why? And I said, because it reminds me of deplatforming.
	I make a good case.
	And please understand, I'm not comparing the people I played with to social media companies.
	I'm just saying that was my emotional association was I make a good reasonable case, but I get booted off anyway.
	Because feels. Right?
	And I said, that was, you know...
	It's not the fault of anyone who voted me off or anything like that.
	I'm just, you know, it certainly wasn't your fault and I'm sorry because that was not very mature.
	I just, I didn't really make the association until this morning, right?
	Now, if I hadn't, if I had a habit of, you know, every time I got upset, saying that she did something, well, you should have voted for me or you should have defended me, then what I'm saying is my judgment Darling daughter, you are responsible for my emotions and you need to change your behavior so I feel better.
	Which gives her the grandiosity that she moves the man mountain of the father based upon her actions.
	And I am not responsible for my behavior.
	She is. I never want her to change her behavior to appease me.
	I also want to extend the apology to the people I played with.
	I was a bit huffy on the exit and it was not right.
	It was not right because I should have recognized that association, but I didn't until later.
	So, you are trying to exercise the power that your parents gave to you as a child, which is you can control their behavior based upon what you do.
	It turns out, not so funny story, you don't have that power.
	Now, if you don't have that power now, you certainly didn't have it when you were a child.
	Now, if you didn't have the power to alter their mood as a child, what does that mean about how you were raised and what you were told?
	That's a real question, by the way, just so you know.
	I mean, I'm going to lecture forever, right?
	But what does it mean?
	If you never had the power to change their moods, really, It means that I was being raised under some kind of false pretenses, like being raised under a lie, which is you can control our behavior.
	You, as a child, were made responsible for your parents' moods.
	They assigned their emotional self-regulation to a little child.
	Boy. And they made you at fault for their moods.
	Now, if this is not an accurate description of what happened to you as a child, I would completely withdraw it.
	But that's my sense.
	I mean you were there you tell me I'm trying to think back and see if I can think of any examples Your mom's angry. Why is she angry?
	What does she say she's angry for?
	If she's angry at you for something, what does she say?
	There was a lot of the I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed line.
	Okay, so she's disappointed.
	It doesn't matter what the emotion is.
	Who was responsible for her disappointment?
	I'm really disappointed that you did this thing that I told you not to do.
	Right. So you have created your mother's disappointment, right?
	Right. Like, I'm disappointed that you did this thing and you knew better.
	Like, you knew you shouldn't have done that thing.
	Right. Okay. So she's disappointed or hurt or upset or angry.
	Whatever it is. Whatever emotion it is.
	And it's you are the cause, right?
	Yes. And what about your dad?
	When he would get angry, it's the, you know...
	The cliche, if I've told you once, I've told you, right?
	Yeah.
	My dad would bring up my mom's emotions a lot.
	Thank you.
	Like, you know she takes care of this house and she does so much work and You need to make life easier on her.
	Something along those lines. And you didn't do that because of this thing that you just did.
	Okay, so your mother's weariness is your responsibility, right?
	Right.
	Okay.
	But what about when your dad would get angry or disappointed or whatever, right?
	I'm trying to think of an example of that.
	I'm not having one come to mind off the top of my head.
	Well, we don't have to go too far back in time.
	You just gave me an example not 20 minutes ago.
	That's true. You don't give me my apology, I would cut you off.
	You are responsible for 100% of my commitment to you.
	My entire relationship with you hangs on the balance of you accepting an apology which I never would have accepted from you when you were a child.
	Sorry, brother, I hit you.
	That's not a real apology.
	Do it again, right? Yeah.
	So the entire relationship, it's not like he has a commitment that supersedes whether you do something he wants in the moment or not.
	Son, I'll always love you.
	I'm annoyed at this thing.
	Maybe you, maybe not you, I don't know, but just know you're perfectly free to disagree with me.
	I will never lose my 150% commitment to you.
	That's as foundational to your world as physics.
	You will sooner lose the grip of the earth through gravity than my commitment to you, right?
	Yeah, and that's another thing.
	He will say those words, like almost exactly what you just said.
	But he just demonstrated to me in November that those words are not true.
	Right. So his commitment is 100% dependent upon, in this case, you accepting his apology, right?
	Right. Right.
	An apology followed by a threat is usually not overly credible.
	So, your parents' moods, it's a very destructive thing that parents do.
	And teachers do it too, and other authority figures, right?
	I'm upset because of you.
	Now, I'm not trying to say that our behavior has no effect on others.
	Of course it does, right?
	But the parent-child relationship is unique because they're raising you and they're the ones supposed to be in charge.
	But if they're not in charge of their own emotions, but instead are assigning the causality for their own emotional states to a little child, that's way too much power for the little child, right?
	It's the abandonment of responsibility.
	And it's not people saying, why am I angry?
	And to externalize the source of my anger to be this little child is probably not fair.
	Yeah.
	You know, if a sculptor is making a sculpture and he gets angry at the sculpture, well, he's really angry at himself, right?
	And if a parent is getting angry at a child for failing some moral whatever, whatever, then, to some degree at least, the parent has to look in the mirror and say, what am I modeling here?
	What am I teaching? Maybe my child is learning accurately and I just don't like the reflection, right?
	Because children are a reflection of who you are, of how you parent, of how you interact with the world.
	And a lot of times what happens is children listen to what their parents are doing, right?
	It's the old saying, I can't hear what you're saying over what you're doing.
	Children reproduce the behaviors of their parents The parents get angry.
	Why?
	Because the children are accurately showing the weaknesses and foibles of the parents.
	And so they, in order to avoid their own hypocrisy, they attempt to control the behavior of the child.
	And the way they do it is they pretend the child is in control of them.
	I know this sounds all kind of complicated.
	I'll just run through it one more time.
	In order to avoid...
	The manifestations of their own hypocrisies, which is the child doing what they're doing rather than listening to what they're saying.
	In order to avoid the manifestations of their own hypocrisy, the parents successfully control the child's behavior by pretending that the child is in control of the parents' moods.
	I'm upset because, right?
	So, when your father is angry at you for not being considerate enough To your mother and then uses guilt trips on you, therefore not being considerate of you.
	He's modeling a complete lack of consideration while saying a lack of consideration towards your mother is bad, right?
	Right. Now, this does not motivate you to be considerate.
	Why? Because your father is saying a lack of consideration is bad towards your mother while showing a distinct lack of consideration towards you.
	In fact, your inadvertent behavior, quote, hurting your mother, is far more innocent than your father's grinding you down with guilt, which is directly harmful to you.
	So he pretends, well, you're in charge of your mother's mood, so you better change your behavior.
	But he's doing that by attempting to be in charge of your mood by inflicting guilt.
	And I think everybody who's listening to this, man, you think back on the magical thinking inflicted on you if you had these kinds of households.
	questions.
	The magical thinking inflicted upon you by your parents.
	Did your parents hold you responsible for your parents' moods?
	If they did, and it's one of the most common child control mechanisms, then you grew up with the magical ability to To control the moods of everyone around you based upon what you do.
	That gives you a sense of grandiosity.
	And then you get bewildered, frustrated, confused, upset, and angry as an adult.
	You try and change the behavior of your parents.
	Doesn't work. Wait a minute.
	My parents are immovable?
	Then why the hell was I blamed for their moods when I was a kid?
	I mean... They kept trying to get me to change my behavior when I was younger so their mood could change.
	Now I'm changing my behavior. Their mood isn't changing at all.
	Whoa. Mind blown, right?
	And that's what I mean. Vanity, I don't mean like you have a personal fault or foible called vanity.
	I mean that vanity was inflicted upon you by parents who blamed you for their own emotional states, therefore putting you in charge of the household in many ways.
	And now you're running into the limits of that vanity and you're like, holy shit, I can't change these people at all.
	They're immune to what I say and do.
	So what the hell was all this crap for 20 years about how I make them feel stuff?
	They're immovable now.
	How the hell can I push them around so much in the past, so to speak?
	Tell me if this makes any sense.
	I don't want to drift off your lived experience.
	Yeah, it does. It does make sense.
	I can't remember my dad ever being angry and taking a second to think about why he was angry.
	It's all just reaction.
	Right. And reaction is triggered, right?
	My mood is your fault.
	And so I have to give you The illusion of control so that I don't have self-ownership, self-responsibility.
	I'm going to put my emotional state in the hands of a five-year-old child and then when that child is an adult, you know what I'm going to tell him to do?
	Grow up. Grow up.
	I mean, you let a five-year-old pilot your emotional apparatus and you're telling the five...
	When you were an adult and you're telling that kid to grow up when the kid's an adult?
	Come on.
	My daughter is not responsible for what I feel.
	And vanity can be a good thing.
	Vanity is, I think I can, outside what you can already do.
	Ambition, vanity, these things are kind of co-joined.
	And I was sort of talking about myself.
	It's like, well, yeah, over the last year, year and a half, maybe two years, I've really run up against the limits of what I can do.
	Boom, boom, boom.
	I start out with these wide-open fields of free speech and discuss whatever.
	And walls come in, they close in, I end up with Luke, Leia, and Han and Chewbacca in the garbage chute of the Death Star, right?
	And the droid that lets me out is abandoning politics.
	And pretty much the case that when Viking-helmeted lunatics are carrying off Nancy Pelosi's whatever, Yeah, that's not a philosopher's place.
	That's not, you know, I'm really, I'm up against the limit or ran up against the limit of what I could do.
	So I'm aware and I'm very glad that I did all that I did.
	I have no regrets, no regrets about all of that.
	But it is really important.
	It's really important, my friends.
	I know a lot of you who are mad at me about not doing politics, but it would be delusional to continue trying to change what I cannot change.
	That would be unhealthy, right?
	That would be vainglorious, megalomaniacal, almost narcissistic on my part.
	It was fine. Hey, as long as I'm out there Having an effect, making change, but you know, you get silenced, you get shut down, defunded, deplatformed, blah, blah, blah, blah, your circle shrinks.
	And I mean, you know, you know what comes after free speech.
	I mean, I've said this for 15 years.
	What comes after free speech is violence.
	That's why those who want to provoke violence shut down free speech.
	And that's, they know, they know what they're doing.
	Maybe not consciously, but they know what they're doing.
	After Free speech comes violence.
	Now, I'm good at language.
	I'm terrible at violence.
	I don't want to do it.
	It's wrong. It's illegal.
	It's bad.
	And I suck at it.
	So when I say to you, it's important to know the limits of what you can do.
	Yeah. Yeah. It's really, really important to know the limits of what you can do.
	So with me, yeah, larger conversations about politics, yeah, I'm done.
	I've been done for a long time.
	Because I know the limits of what I can do.
	You know, when the words go away, the swords come out.
	And when the swords come out, only the foolish continue with words.
	That's why I love these conversations.
	I believe that you and I can have a productive exchange of ideas.
	I'm different because of the conversation.
	I think you're different because of the conversation.
	It's wonderful. We can do that.
	That we can do. That we can do.
	And it's a great thing to do.
	But you cannot change your parents.
	But you're so used to the idea that you're in charge of your parents' emotions that you keep trying to pick this lock as you were told.
	That you could pick this lock all throughout your childhood.
	But you can't change appearance.
	Spoiler, you never could.
	They just told you that you could.
	So they didn't have to take responsibility for what they felt.
	What do you think? Yeah, I think that sounds pretty accurate.
	Now, why is it a bad thing?
	Why is it a bad thing to have an illusion broken?
	Again, it's not fun. I understand that.
	I mean, I'm not saying enjoy the process.
	I mean, there's things to enjoy about the process, but why is it necessarily or why is it a bad thing to have an illusion shattered?
	It's not. It's just unpleasant.
	Yes, it is. But you know what's more unpleasant?
	Keeping the illusion going.
	Going through life with a giant fish hook in your cheek which can be yanked up by dysfunctional people.
	You can change me! Because you'll come across, I'll tell you, if you don't have this illusion shattered, you know what's going to happen, man?
	Some hot mess is going to come along and you're like, I can fix that.
	That's already happened. Another hot mess is going to come along and you're going to say, I can fix that one too.
	Oh yeah, the hot mess.
	Yeah, right. Yeah, these are tied in, right?
	So immunity, immunity from trying to fix dysfunctional people is the great liberation.
	Because when you Give up the illusion that you can fix people.
	You know what wonderful thing happens?
	People come into your life that you don't have to fix.
	Once you give up on the illusion that you can fix people, people come into your life that you don't have to fix.
	And then you're like, what the hell was I doing all that time before?
	So you're characterizing this as a bad thing.
	And some of it is objectively unpleasant and painful, but characterizing it as a bad thing because you're a problem solver, because your parents told you that there was a problem called their bad moods that you had to forever solve as a child.
	which was a lie. Because you're a problem solver, when you characterize something as negative, you dive in and try and fix it, right?
	Right. Do you know that there were people in the Capitol riots who were trying to stop the violence, who were trying to talk people back down, who were saying, don't break those windows, who were pulling people back?
	What's going to happen to those people, do you think?
	They get lumped in with the rioters.
	Seems likely. Seems likely.
	Hell, Trump said, go peacefully.
	Go to the Capitol. Protest peacefully.
	This thing had been planned on social media for weeks ahead of time.
	The violence started 20 minutes before the end of his speech.
	So he did not plan it.
	He did not incite it. It happened before he finished his speech and he said do it peacefully.
	And what's happening to Trump?
	Same thing that's always happened with him since he even thought about running for president.
	Right.
	So all the people who brought words to a fistfight are probably going under.
	All these people who brought reason and evidence to a riot are probably going under.
	There's no due process in the second impeachment.
	Thank you.
	I remember with Bill Clinton, I mean, I don't remember the whole details about it and all that, but I remember there were just endless hearings and depositions and evidence and blue dresses with semen on them.
	This was just like, and amazing how quickly the government can act.
	You know, Nancy Pelosi spends, what, eight months holding up stimulus checks, but she can get an impeachment done in a long weekend.
	So, is it a bad thing to realize that What you cannot achieve.
	No. Yeah.
	Is it a painful thing?
	Yeah, for sure. But it really depends on how...
	If you characterize the whole thing as painful, you won't be free of it.
	Because you're the kind of guy that's like, hey, something's painful.
	Okay, I'll go fix it, right? But if you still think you can fix it, the pain won't end.
	Take your parents as they are.
	My advice is maybe you can find valuable things in them.
	Maybe there's, you know, you can talk sports or, you know, maybe there's a little bit of politics, but take them as they are, man.
	Do not fall prey to the illusion that you can change your parents.
	I say this to everyone. I say this to everyone.
	Do not fall prey to the illusion that you can change your parents.
	Because as a child, if you grew up in a dysfunctional household, you were a victim, not a victimizer.
	And so you have a pretty good conscience.
	And so you're like, well, why can't people change?
	They should be able to change. It's like, well, yeah, you say that because you have a good conscience.
	If you have harmed children, then you have a pretty bad conscience and you're not going to change.
	And you're not going to change.
	It's really, really important to get that divide between people who've suffered and people who've caused suffering.
	People who've suffered can change.
	They can grow. They can, right?
	I mean, listen, and you don't have to be perfect.
	Obviously, I've done harm and wrong and hurt people in my life and made mistakes and been bad.
	Sure, absolutely.
	But not to children.
	And I've not violated the non-aggression principle.
	I've kept my contracts.
	I haven't stolen. Except my wife's heart.
	But I don't, I don't, it's important to understand, oh, if you can picture that if you've spent 20 years maybe bullying children or holding them responsible for your own moods or there's been violence in the household you haven't dealt with or you've been manipulative or, I mean, that's a, that's a lot of shit to have behind a damn wall that you just keep poking with your fingers saying, huh, I don't know why, just, this thing should give way and we should have a little, little surf.
	It's like, no, this thing gives way and the whole damn mountain comes down.
	But you've got to take your parents for who they are.
	Accept them for who they are.
	For better or for worse, for good or for ill, whatever you do out of that.
	We talk about it with your therapist and all of that, but man, it's really important that you recognize the limits of what you can do.
	You can't change them. They told you you could for many years, but that's why you can't change them now.
	They told you that You were responsible for their moods because they didn't want to take responsibility.
	They made a child carry the burden of their own emotions because they didn't want to take responsibility.
	You think they're going to take responsibility now?
	It's not going to happen. Take them for who they are.
	That's a pretty similar place that I did get to with my therapist about this.
	It wasn't quite I think the reason I still had questions about it is because I didn't get all the reasons behind all of this, but where I got to with my therapist is that, you know, I just need to see clearly what's going on and see clearly what my parents are like and go forward based on that and not...
	I guess that I'm not going to have the depth of relationship that I would have liked with them.
	Well, and stop ordering yourself around, right?
	Stop trying to manipulate. And again, I have sympathy.
	This is how you were raised. I'm not calling you a bad guy at all.
	I mean, just from my experience, I didn't sort of make some big decision.
	Like, I'm never going to see my mother again.
	Like, just every day was like, okay, let's take away the obligation.
	Let's take away the sentimentality.
	Let's take away all the history.
	Do I want to call her?
	I'd look at the phone. I mean, post-rotary dial, pre-cell phone.
	I'd look at the phone with the 12 buttons.
	I'd look at the phone and I'd be like, ah, do I want to call her?
	Hey, hand, you want to dial?
	Nope. Okay.
	Let's check in this afternoon.
	Nope. Okay, we'll check in in the morning.
	Do I want a phone? Do I have a big desire to talk to my mother?
	Is this going to be a positive thing in my day?
	No? Okay. I'll check in with you tomorrow, right?
	And this just went on and on.
	And I was not going to order.
	I got to call my mom. It's been too long.
	A good son calls his mother.
	She's all alone. Whatever, right?
	I just, do I want to?
	Do I want to? Without sentimentality, without obligation, without bullying, do I want to?
	Not, will I feel anxious if I don't?
	Will people get mad at me if I don't?
	Will it be hard to explain if I don't?
	When people say, how's your mom?
	And I say, I don't know, I haven't talked to her in X amount of time.
	Will that be awkward? I mean, putting all of that aside, do I want to?
	Do I want to? You can't have an identity.
	You can't be a person without personal preferences.
	If you can't exercise your personal preferences and your personal relationships, you're not there anyway.
	It's not a relationship anyway.
	If you're just there out of obligation and habit and history and sentimentality and the avoidance of negatives, it's not a relationship any more than taxation is a bargain.
	So, I mean, just for everyone, do you want to?
	And you ask yourself this, right?
	Ask yourself this. Would you want to be in a relationship with someone who didn't want to be there?
	Would you want a date with a woman because she pitted you and thought you'd be pathetically lonely but didn't want to spend time with you and didn't like you?
	Would you want someone dialing you when they didn't want to?
	I wouldn't. I would consider that a terrible thing.
	I mean, my wife ever said, oh, I haven't enjoyed your company for years, but, you know, I just stayed with you and put up with you for the sake of X, Y, Z, kids, whatever, right?
	I would be appalled.
	Well, I'd notice, obviously.
	I'm almost checking in about how I'm doing.
	In my relationships with people, like I'm always checking with you.
	Does this make sense? Is it relevant?
	Does it match your experience?
	Would you want someone calling up, coming over, out of a heavy sense of dread and obligation?
	Fuck no. Hell no.
	God. You know the old phrase, don't do me any favors, man.
	If you don't want to be in my company...
	If I still want you to be in my company, then yeah.
	Absolutely. I'll try and figure something out.
	Figure out what went wrong, how I can change, how things can be better.
	But would you want someone to be in your life because guilt, obligation, fear of a negative, but they didn't really enjoy your company in a positive way?
	I mean, would you? That's a real question.
	I mean, for you in particular.
	All right. Can you hear me?
	Hello, hello. Yes.
	There you are. Wow.
	Yeah. Well, I just happened to ask a question rather than do a speech.
	It was pure coincidence. So, yeah.
	Sorry, my friend. I was just asking, would you want people to come over to your house and spend time with you out of a heavy sense of guilt and obligation?
	No, I would not want that.
	You would not, right? So that's what they call a gap analysis, right?
	What's the difference? Do your parents want you to call, or would they be satisfied to have you call out of guilt and obligation, out of avoiding a negative?
	I kind of think yes.
	Yeah, because that's what they're doing, right?
	Yeah. Yeah.
	So there's a gap analysis, which we call a gap analysis.
	This is a measure of difference, right?
	Yeah.
	I guess that's why we have this thing going on where we, as long as we just say the words that we're quote unquote supposed to say, we just ignore the issue from then on. we just ignore the issue from then on.
	Because it doesn't matter as far as they're concerned.
	It just matters that we're all acting like we're getting along.
	Right. So, yeah, there's a gap, right?
	I would not want a woman...
	To go on a pity date with me.
	I don't really like you.
	Don't find you attractive. But I feel sorry for you.
	And I think you're desperately lonely.
	But I wouldn't want that.
	I wouldn't want a woman dragging on a relationship with me because she's like, oh, my parents told me you weren't the right guy for me.
	I don't really like you.
	I don't get along with you. I don't want to be in this relationship.
	But I sure as hell don't want to prove my parents right.
	Right.
	So let's just keep struggling and going through the motions, right?
	Right.
	Yeah.
	So there's your gap analysis.
	services.
	Yeah, and I remember relationships I've had like that, too, where what's going through my head is, what do I have to say to get this person to either not break up with me or go out with me in the first place?
	I thought of that while you were shattering my vanity illusion.
	Right.
	It is infinitely easier in life to take people if they are than to burn yourself into ashes trying to change them.
	Your parents are very clearly telling you, this is what we want, we won't change.
	We won't change. And you can't do anything to make them change.
	That's the limits of your behavior.
	You are powerless here.
	Thank you.
	The spells have dried up.
	The eloquence is gone.
	The juice is absent.
	The levers are broken. You cannot change this.
	You understand, it's kind of a relief, right?
	Yes.
	James, have I ever tried to change you?
	I'm sorry.
	No, I don't think so.
	You've definitely had things that, we've had conflicts, and you've definitely said, hey, you know, I'd prefer, you know, if you would not do that or change.
	Yeah, here's some consequences that are negative for me.
	This is what I would like and all of that.
	I don't think you've ever tried to change me.
	I don't think I've never said you need to fundamentally change.
	You need to, right? No, no.
	I mean, yeah, like I said, there's the consequences to behavior, to choices that you make, but no, not like you.
	You must change or else the relationship is done.
	Here's a funny thing. It's a funny thing just for those who don't know the history of James and myself, right?
	James was playing Among Us today, and it came down to me having to choose between James and Izzy.
	Do you remember that? I do.
	And who did I choose?
	You chose Izzy. And Izzy said, what?
	Why? I don't know if you remember what I said.
	Oh, gosh.
	I know what I said, and I immediately walked back.
	I may have overlapped. I said, but I've known James longer than I've known you.
	Oh! It's true, right?
	No, it is true. It is.
	It is true. And we've known each other for, I mean, close to a decade and a half now, right?
	It's getting there. It's getting there.
	Yeah. And over that time, we've, you know, we've been close, a little more distant at times.
	We've worked together. We played together.
	We visited together. And, yeah, there have been times where we've asked each other for advice and given each other feedback, but I've never tried to change you.
	No. Because I don't do that.
	That's not how I roll. That's not how I roll.
	Now, getting used to the fact that society is my mother, yeah, that's been a little bit of a different thing because I've been spending 15 years, well, more really, close to 40 years trying to change society, and I know I've done a lot of good, but unfortunately, this is something I said at a Night for Freedom some years ago, they make crazy people faster than we can fix them.
	Yeah. The ER is overwhelmed.
	The emergency reason room is overwhelmed.
	People are lining up.
	Well, and burning it down.
	It's not the ICU beds for COVID. It's something else entirely.
	Yeah, ICU. Yes, I do.
	So, yeah, I'm sorry to yeet you in here.
	I just, I mean, this is the longest relationship that I can just sort of call on here.
	Sure, sure. And, yeah, I mean, I'll sort of give feedback.
	Now, But here's the thing, man.
	I know we're going long on this call, so I hope you'll just bear with me for sort of one more thing, right?
	Because here's the thing.
	When you stop trying to change people, they flip from one strategy to another.
	They flip from regression, too.
	Do you know what it is? From regression?
	No, aggression. Sorry.
	Right now, your dad's kind of aggressive, right?
	Sorry, I misheard you.
	No, I was probably mumbling.
	So when you stop trying to change people they will switch from aggression to self-pity.
	And they will claim to be sad and lonely.
	But then, of course, the condition of you coming back will be to not be yourself, right?
	So they're obviously not that sad and lonely that they're willing to let you be yourself, right?
	Right. And the pity thing is tough, man.
	The pity thing is tough. Especially when, I mean, you're a younger man obviously than me by far, but it's tough when your parents get older, right?
	I mean, as I said before, I mean, my mom being a hypochondriac in a time of pandemic is pretty rough for her, right?
	And a friend of mine, a relative of his died in some pretty sad circumstances.
	And the relative had been dysfunctional.
	And We were talking and I was expressing my sympathy and empathy for what he's going through.
	And he said, you know, it doesn't matter how she was, no one deserved to end up like that.
	And that's the pity thing, right?
	And deserve has nothing to do with it.
	Deserve is one of these words, do your parents deserve Your company, I'm not to serve your company.
	Is it harsh? Is it not? None of that really means anything.
	That's the weak wall of sentimentality that brings down the whole personality structure.
	Does my mother like, oh, my mother, she has a terrible life.
	She has a terrible life. No question.
	Does she deserve that terrible life?
	I don't know what to make of that.
	Because that's going to be the self-pity move probably from your parents, right?
	And people out there, you know what I'm talking about if you've gone through this, right?
	So to me, it's kind of like saying, well, if somebody smokes two packs of cigarettes a day and they get lung cancer when they're 60, say, well, nobody deserves lung cancer.
	I don't know what that means.
	If somebody decides to pack their own parachute the first time they go skydiving and they pack it wrong and they plummet to their death, or somebody decides not to wear a helmet when they're motorcycling and then they go out and get their brain shredded, nobody deserves it.
	I don't know what deserves even...
	Choices have consequences.
	You can choose to blame your child for your own emotional state.
	You can choose to bully your child.
	You can choose to not have empathy with your child.
	You can choose to threaten your child.
	Well, nobody deserves to lose their child's love, blah, blah, blah.
	I don't know what deserves... This doesn't mean anything.
	You know, people go to tanning beds for 20 years and get skin cancer.
	It's like, nobody deserves it.
	I don't know about that. It's just dominoes.
	You make choices and there are risks.
	And deserve is a word that doesn't have any meaning.
	Because deserve is like God runs the universe and can make these choices.
	So... I'm just telling you that that's probably the next deck of the card.
	It's a self-pity card. But yeah, I would just look at your heart, look at your thoughts, look at your feelings.
	Do I want to call my parents?
	Do I want to go over to my parents? There'll be times where maybe you do.
	There'll be times where maybe you don't. But that's honesty, right?
	That's integrity.
	We always think integrity is like, well, I was bribed, but I said no.
	It's like, okay, how often is that going to happen in your life, right?
	But... The real integrity is, this is what integrity really means, is acting with authenticity to your preferences.
	So integrity is, do I want to call my mother?
	I don't want to call my mother.
	Integrity is so I don't call my mother.
	Or at least I don't bully myself into calling my mother.
	Because that breaks integrity, right?
	Because to be free is to escape self-tyrity.
	We can't escape the Federal Reserve.
	Taxation will chase us into the deep woods.
	Regulations clothe everything we do in historical armor.
	But what we can free ourselves from is self-tyranny.
	The statism of the self.
	The gimmickrats of our internal government.
	The bureaucracy of identity.
	And if we say to ourselves, I will punish myself by calling myself a bad person if I don't call my mother, guess what?
	You're not free and you don't have integrity.
	You're not free. And you don't have integrity.
	If you're managing yourself with the carrot and the stick, oh, I'll call myself a good person if I do call my mother.
	Well, I'll call myself a bad person if I don't call my mother.
	You are just a tyrant to yourself.
	And you are not free.
	And I would rather be taxed at 50% and not be my own enemy and my own bully and my own tyrant Then be taxed at 0%, live in a stateless society, and bully myself 24-7.
	Just have the simple curiosity, do I want to do this?
	Do I want to do this unchosen obligation?
	Do I want to call this person?
	Do I want to go to this event?
	Do I want to do this? Do I want to do that?
	Now, If you can be gentle and open and curious with yourself, and you don't bully yourself, you don't threaten yourself with a negative consequence if you don't do a certain behavior, or if you don't go to the gym, you're lazy. Hey, welcome to tyranny!
	Welcome to the communist called you, and the proletariat called your emotions.
	Oh, if I have the second piece of cheesecake, I'm a fat pig!
	Okay? You just abused yourself, bullied yourself.
	And I demonstrated that this summer.
	Right? Got deplatformed, slandered, got dangerous.
	And I said to myself, do I want to do politics anymore?
	Knowing what's coming next?
	Nope. Don't want to.
	I could have said, but I have a responsibility.
	I'm really good at it.
	I explain these things well.
	I have an obligation.
	I made a vow. I said I would serve the truth and philosophy.
	I could have bullied or I could have bribed myself and said, well, you know, if I don't do politics, donations will go down.
	So it's costing me money. Okay, so there's a carrot and there's a stick.
	The carrot is money, and the stick is, I'm abandoning my responsibilities at a time of crisis.
	And people tried pushing all of these buttons, all of these buttons with me.
	Not you, wonderful people, but in, you know, they tried pushing the buttons all over the place.
	Steph, you have a special obligation, a special responsibility.
	You're so good at explaining this stuff.
	We need you now more than ever. Now is not the time to abandon it, right?
	Sense of obligation can be bullying in a way, right?
	People are like, hey Ben, you're not doing politics.
	I'm not donating to you anymore.
	Okay. But I won't do it for money and I won't do it to avoid self-attack.
	I don't want to do it.
	And as it turns out, I was exactly right.
	To not do it. My instincts were bang on.
	So, there's an example, right?
	I did a video, said, been deplatformed, things are getting really dangerous, free speech is crumbling all around me, and of course I wasn't going to be the last.
	I wasn't necessarily expecting it to be six months before it happened to Trump and Parler, but I knew I wasn't going to be the last.
	In the same way you broach certain topics and you look around and see if anyone's following you.
	And if nobody's following you, you don't do it alone.
	In the same way that if you're a zebra, you don't wander far from the herd.
	If it's World War I, you're not the only one going over the trench.
	It's not a great way.
	I'm not Wonder Woman.
	So what if you have a life?
	You don't bribe yourself.
	You don't bully yourself.
	You listen to yourself. You're in conversation with yourself.
	Now, you don't just say, I don't want to, and that's the end of the story.
	story, you say, I don't want to.
	Well, why don't I want to?
	You know, I had a hesitation about going into my daughter's room, waking her up this morning and saying, I'm sorry for being a bit sucky playing among us.
	Yes.
	It wasn't your fault. Don't change your behavior.
	Here's why. I will not do it again.
	And I didn't. I mean, it may happen again, but, you know, I'll then be aware of that and alert to that and I'll know what's causing it.
	I had a hesitation going, said, well, I don't want to.
	Oh, because, you know, you think that if you admit fault to your child that somehow she's going to lose respect, where, of course, quite the opposite is true.
	Nothing's more pathetic than a parent who won't admit fault.
	Nothing is more infantile than a parent who won't admit fault.
	I'm a good parent and I made a mistake yesterday and I apologize for it today.
	Because that's integrity, right?
	So what if everyone I'm telling you don't bully yourself and then you become like the shining example of like through you people see a free society.
	If you want people to move towards a free society you be the doorway through which they can see it.
	You show them a life Free of tyranny.
	You show them a life free of self-bullying and self-bribery and self-management.
	You show them integrity and a life free of coercion.
	You know, when you self-attack, it has specific biochemical effects.
	When you bribe yourself, you're modifying your own behavior with dopamine.
	Now, how much respect would you have for a man who spiked his date's drink with cocaine to get her to have a great time?
	You would say that would be a terrible thing to do.
	What would you say to a man who threatened a woman in order to get her to go out with him?
	You would say, that's a pretty terrible guy.
	So why would you bribe yourself and bully yourself and threaten yourself to get you to do things?
	And then say, it's really important that we live outside of tyranny.
	You can't convince people to live without tyrants if you're a tyrant to yourself.
	And you, my friend, I love you.
	I'm so glad that we're talking again.
	Massive respect for everything that you're doing.
	My big invitation to you, stop making yourself do stuff.
	Stop trying to control other people.
	And stop trying to control yourself.
	It's been, for me, a quarter of a century, almost, since I talked to my mother.
	Every now and then, I will still check in with myself.
	And I will say, I could get the call any day now that she is dead.
	Hey Hand, do you want to dial her?
	And the answer still is no.
	Now, I earned my way out.
	I had the conversations I needed to.
	But it is an amazing, amazing thing when you do not bully yourself and you do not bribe yourself.
	You have that freedom.
	And you could be in a prison cell and still be more free than the richest man in the world, the most powerful man in the world, Who forces himself to do things, bribes himself to do things, bullies himself to do things.
	Integrity is acting with authenticity regarding your legitimate preferences.
	I didn't want to call my mom, so I didn't call my mom.
	That's honesty. That's integrity.
	That's something you can do every day.
	You don't have to wait for some big moral crisis to test yourself.
	You can just test yourself every day.
	Does that make sense, what I'm saying?
	Yeah, this has been, this is very clarifying.
	It makes a lot of sense, and thank you for clarifying all this.
	You are very, very welcome.
	You're very welcome. Is there anything else you wanted to mention?
	No, I think I'm good.
	I think the value in this conversation for me has been, or what was lacking in the conversations that I had with my therapist about this was all the arguments to get there, I guess rather than just the advice to you know be aware of the situation and act according to what the facts are.
	Look this is you that's been very you're in your 20s right.
	Yes, late 20s. Late 20s.
	Okay, so you've had almost 30 years of wanting your parents to be different.
	Yeah. I'm not saying that everything, I'm sure there's things they do that you like and so on, but there's probably particular areas.
	I've known my wife for 20 years.
	I've not spent one day wishing she was different.
	I've known James for 15 years.
	I've not spent one day wishing he was different.
	Now, again, we may disagree with each other's decisions.
	We'll negotiate about that, but wishing he was different?
	No. I don't wake up and say, gosh, I wish my daughter was X, Y, or Z different.
	And I don't want that for myself either.
	I don't want myself to be different.
	It doesn't mean I don't want to grow or change or learn new things.
	I don't want myself to be different.
	And you wanting yourself to be able to change your parents is wanting you to be different because you have tried for 30 years.
	Almost. Accept yourself and those around you for who they are.
	If there is to be change, it cannot come out of discontent and it cannot come out of wanting people to be different because that's just a rejection.
	Look, you don't know what it's like to sit across from you as your father and know that you want so much about him to be kind of the opposite of what it is.
	It's a massive rejection.
	I don't blame you for that at all.
	I understand where you're coming from and I probably agree with 99% of it.
	But You can't be in relationships wanting people to be different, most importantly with yourself.
	Accept the facts, accept the reality.
	People are who they are. The only change that can come is out of your example, not your nagging.
	The only growth that can come is of your growth.
	If you want your father to give up his illusions, you have to give up yours first.
	It's one of these situations, if you want other people to disarm, you have to disarm first.
	And as long as you're shaking them by the collar saying, change, damn it, they're never going to lower their defenses.
	If you want other people to be enlightened, you have to be enlightened.
	If you want other people to see, you've got to turn on your light.
	And if you want other people to act with integrity, you have to act with integrity.
	Maybe that will inspire them.
	Maybe it won't. It doesn't fundamentally matter.
	I don't want you to change.
	I want you to stop changing and to stop thinking you can change others because the empirical evidence is it doesn't work and we know why.
	I don't want you to change.
	I want you to stop trying to change yourself and accept the facts.
	All right, well, keep me posted about how it's going.
	Thank you so much. Yes, I will.
	Thank you so much for the call.
	Thank you for this conversation also.
	Dude, you are so welcome and I want to thank you for this conversation because, I mean, here's the funny thing.
	I don't come into this with a big set of answers.
	The answers come on the fly.
	So I learn as much from these conversations as you do.
	So this is not, again, this is not me handing out these big parcels of wisdom I've got stored under the throne of philosophy.
	This is a living conversation where I grow and learn too, and I feel so good through these conversations.
	And so I thank you.
	I thank you for being part of this conversation that is so enormously helpful to me as well.
	So I appreciate that.
	And thanks, James, of course, for setting it up.
	Freedomain.com forward slash donate.
	Stay safe out there, my friends.
	And thank you again so much for the honor, the deep honor, of allowing these conversations, which will echo through time in ways we can scarcely even conceive of.

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