Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

Feb. 20, 2021 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:05:11

SELF-DEFENSE 101! How to Stay Safe in Your Life

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Good evening. I hope you're doing well.
	Stefan Molyneux. We're going to go a little bit different here.
	We're going to do, I guess, more of a roundtable, but an informal philosophical one.
	So, hi, everybody.
	Hope you're doing well.
	And I hope that you are having a great evening.
	And there's a lot to talk about tonight.
	Oh, man.
	Is there a lot to talk about tonight.
	But I also want to listen, of course, as well.
	So let me know if you want to chat.
	As well. I'd be happy to hear that.
	And... Wow.
	It feels like...
	It's funny, you know, Scott Adams, who I think is probably a bit more media savvy than I am.
	He's been in the game a lot longer.
	But Scott Adams says that he keeps saying, I feel this or I feel that.
	Like, I feel that this should be a bigger issue or I feel that that should be a bigger issue.
	And I almost sort of wonder if it's because someone said to him, well, if you say you feel something, then it's an opinion and you can't be harassed or, you know, because you can be harassed for it, but you can't get induced to legal trouble for it and all of that.
	And I wonder if that's the case.
	So, whereas, of course, when I talk about feelings, I talk about stuff that's a little bit more visceral, mad, sad, bad, glad, that kind of stuff.
	But I feel that the forces of good and evil, of damnation and salvation, have almost never been...
	As concentrated and opposed in society, in the world, at the moment, as they are at the moment.
	It feels just old school, Old Testament, biblical, you name it.
	It's incredible what is going on at the moment.
	And I sort of go into a little bit of that, and then I want to get your sort of thoughts on the whole issue, and let me know.
	What is going on about that?
	Let me see. There's a way to share this as well.
	Let's see. Copy.
	I'm just going to throw it in a couple of different places here as well.
	And see how that goes.
	Paste that away.
	And maybe one other place, one or two other places, and then we will get deep, deep into the conversation as a whole.
	Alright. So, for those of you who don't know, a rather amazing thing happened today.
	And the amazing thing that happened today is kind of something like this.
	Bitcoin... Let's see here.
	Bitcoin has passed the Japanese yen and has now become the world's fourth largest currency.
	Let's just take a moment for that, shall we?
	I'll say it again.
	It's pretty important, I think, to kind of understand, right?
	So, the Japanese yen has been eclipsed by Bitcoin, so that Bitcoin has become the world's fourth largest currency.
	Now, if that doesn't get your jimmies twisting, then I don't really know what will or what would or what could.
	And, I mean, I knew it was growing.
	Obviously, I mean, you can see the price, the level of mainstream interest.
	You can see lots of what's going on.
	But it really is quite amazing how it has just gone through the roof.
	So, I guess I want to know what your thoughts are about this.
	It's not just to talk about with regards to this, but I wanted to get your thoughts and ideas and arguments and perspectives and views on this.
	And if there are callers, of course, who want to join in, just let me know.
	And I'm very happy to get you in, to get you talking, to get you chatting.
	But that is...
	A pretty wild thing that has occurred.
	I mean, I wouldn't have expected to go this far this quickly, this wildly, this powerfully this quickly.
	Now, the other thing, I posted this today, the Fed's balance sheet, total asset, billions of dollars.
	The prior high to where it is now in billions of dollars was about 4.5%.
	Well, 4,516 billion.
	And it dipped down to August of 2019 to 3760.
	And then it went skyrocketing up to 7169.
	Dipped a little bit down.
	In the summer, last summer, to 69.21 and is now 7.557.
	Up from its previous high of 45.16 is now 7.557.
	And that is a truly staggering situation.
	A truly staggering situation.
	And just let me know if you guys can chat.
	Let me know what you can hear, when you can hear it, once this is a bit of a new thing.
	Hey Josh, how you doing? Nice to meet you.
	Good evening. Hope you're doing well.
	Hope you're doing well. Hello.
	I'm not even going to try and pronounce that username, but nice to see you this evening.
	Nice to chat with you. And I'm still wrangling with the interface here, so if you want to...
	Raise your hand or I guess join in the conversation.
	I'm happy to chit-chat with anyone.
	What's on your mind tonight? I mean, I get a lot of monologues.
	Let's be frank about how all of this goes.
	I get a lot of monologues and I'm very happy to hear from you guys as well.
	For those of you who are just joining, I was pointing out that Bitcoin has eclipsed the Japanese yen to become the world's fourth largest currency.
	The world's fourth largest currency.
	And it's funny because I went back just out of curiosity.
	I went back to FDRpodcast.com.
	Like if you're having trouble finding shows, go to FDRpodcast.com.
	And then what you can do is just do a search.
	It's a pretty good search. And you can find the podcast and usually there's a video accompaniment from Library or BitChute or something like that.
	And I went back to look for Bitcoin.
	When did I first start talking about Bitcoin?
	Well, I'm not sure exactly because it's kind of buried in earlier shows, but it was June of 2011 where I did my first show entitled Bitcoin, wherein I was talking about how...
	Yeah, it was at least 2011, right?
	So I was talking about Bitcoin and how you can't compare it to gold because it has its own special properties and values and you shouldn't worry about the electricity consumption because, you know, a variety of other things.
	And yeah, 10 years, man.
	And back then, Bitcoin was cooking at $3, $5, $16, went back down again.
	It's pretty wild.
	It's been a long time coming, brothers and sisters, but a change is going to come.
	A change is going to come.
	Somebody has asked, this is a completely random question, but what are your thoughts on adopting children?
	Do you think it is a viable alternative to having children of your own?
	Now, I've talked about this before, and given that I've completely given up on trying to please anyone, it's one of the liberties of being deplatformed.
	I will tell you my thoughts about adoption.
	So, adoption, and this of course, as you know, is nothing that applies to everyone.
	These are just the general trends.
	And this is what I would think about for me in terms of adoption if I was sort of faced with that choice.
	And what I would say is this.
	So what kind of kids get put up for adoption?
	Well, often the kids who get put up for adoption are kids from very chaotic and disorganized mothers.
	And I would sort of look in the mirror for myself and I would say to myself, okay, I know that IQ is significantly genetic.
	Now, wisdom is more important than intelligence in many ways, and wisdom is not something that's genetic.
	Wisdom is what philosophy is for.
	But I would look and I would say, would I be a good parent to a child who wasn't that smart?
	Now, maybe you would be, if you're really smart, maybe you would be a great parent to a kid who's not as smart.
	More power to you.
	I admire that. I think it's wonderful.
	But if I'm really, as I try to be sort of really direct and honest with myself, what I do is I say to myself, would I be a good parent to a child who's not very smart?
	And Not through any fault of the child.
	It's just the way that the ball rolls.
	You know, maybe I can move 10% of that or maybe I can move 15% of that.
	I mean, I think there's some things that obviously are free will based and so on.
	But, you know, if you've got a kid who's got an IQ of 90 and you can move 10% through environment, you've got a 99 IQ, which is a big difference and it's important.
	That's to the average of the Caucasian population.
	But, and I've said, you guys don't see this too much.
	Maybe you see it in debates.
	But I am, I am not the most, I'm trying to think of phrasing this in a way that doesn't make my child burst out in laughter should she ever hear this as an adult.
	I'm not the world's most patient person.
	I think to put it mildly is probably the best way of explaining that.
	I'm not the world's most patient person at all.
	My wife is very smart and very wise.
	When we're reading together, I'll flip down the page if we're reading some website together or whatever.
	I will... Flip down through the page and she'd be like, I'm not ready.
	I'm not set.
	And I'm like, oh, fine, I'll wait, right?
	And I am...
	And it's not a virtue.
	It's not a vice. I don't view these things that way anymore because I'm in my mid-50s now.
	Who gives a shit? But I'm not the world's most patient person at all, at all.
	Now, you don't see it too much with me.
	On these shows. Because these shows are going at my pace.
	I'm not waiting. I'm not tapping my toes.
	I'm not flicking my fingers.
	These shows go at my pace.
	And I think that's a good pace.
	I think it's a fair pace.
	And so I'm fine with it.
	But I'll tell you.
	If I had a child...
	Who was not very smart.
	I don't think, and this is, again, you could view this completely as a confession of a weakness or a failing or whatever it is on my part.
	I'm perfectly happy to accept it as that.
	But if I had a kid who wasn't that smart, I don't think I'd be as good a parent.
	In fact, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be as good a parent.
	I think I would get impatient.
	I think I would get annoyed. And I think that I would grip my teeth and push it down and try and deal with it.
	But, you know, kids read everything and know everything.
	And I think it would be kind of harsh on the kid.
	And again, it's unfair.
	It's through no fault of your own.
	It's just a mismatch.
	It's just a mismatch of abilities.
	So another way of looking at it is if you are very athletic...
	And this is kind of a cliche in a lot of American dramas of the past.
	Maybe not so much now.
	And the cliche is that the dad is super athletic.
	All the sports and all of that.
	And his son is not athletic.
	And has other skills or abilities.
	But the son is not athletic. The dad is super athletic.
	And the dad gets really, really frustrated with the son.
	Now, it's not the son's fault.
	That he's not athletic. The hand-eye coordination, the fast-firing muscles.
	I mean, again, a lot of that stuff is genetic.
	So if the kit and also the vision has a lot to do with it.
	I remember dating some many, many years ago now.
	I remember dating a woman who didn't seem to have a huge connection with the outside world.
	She was very interested in her own thoughts and her own feelings.
	She was a little bit on the spiritual side, although that wasn't too bad.
	But she just had an inward-looking gaze.
	And one of the things I found out about her was up until the age of four or five, she was basically blind as a bat.
	She needed very thick glasses.
	And she had the most wonderful hair you can imagine.
	So basically, for her first couple of years, the world didn't hold her attention that much.
	And it really was to the fault of her parents that they didn't figure this out.
	But the world was just this big watercolor blur to her.
	And so she developed.
	And this had a big impact. You know, the first four or five years are formative in your personality.
	And she ended up...
	Having this inner, artistic, creative, cynical view, she ended up medium prominent in the theater world.
	But there was always, it was always like, if you've ever, I remember this when I was a kid, I used to get into these trains to go to boarding school, Mallory Towers style.
	I would get on a train to go to boarding school.
	And every now and then, There'd be a tap on the window.
	I'd look up, and my mom had wanted to say something or had forgotten something or whatever.
	And she's saying something, but you can't really hear it.
	There's the train noise, the chuff-chuff.
	There's the vibration, and there's the whistle, the train whistle.
	And, you know, so my mom said, yeah.
	But it's kind of through a glass, and you can't really hear it very well.
	And that's kind of how I felt with this woman.
	She would notice me. We'd have interactions.
	But there always seemed to be something between us.
	And I think it had a lot to do with the first couple of years of her life that the world didn't interest her that much.
	And so naturally, she had to go internal to get her stimulation.
	And then her internal world, I think, turned out to be a whole lot more vivid to her than any external world.
	And that gave her great creativity and imagination, but it didn't make her the easiest person to connect with.
	And again, that's through no fault of her own or anything like that.
	So... Yeah, not going to be very patient for fools after surviving cancer.
	Yeah, there is.
	There is a little bit of that.
	I'll get to that in a second.
	And listen, I've got a whole row here of people who can...
	Who can call, but I think you have to request a call or request to call or request to talk, and then we can go to it from there.
	So listen, I mean, look, again, I feel, I mean, I am sensitive to this.
	You know, there may be people who've been adopted, and you may be perfectly brilliant, and I applaud you for that.
	I think that's wonderful. But if you had to do a blind guess, right?
	If you had to do a blind guess and you had to say...
	The kids who are put up for adoption generally come from disorganized, chaotic families or disorganized, chaotic women.
	And, you know, who got pregnant out of wedlock, who got pregnant, maybe they were on drugs and all that.
	And so the odds are, and it may only be 51-49, obviously I can't calculate this stuff on the fly, but the odds are that If you're smart enough to really mull over and go through the paperwork and all of that, that you may be mismatched in terms of intellectual compatibility.
	And I'm pretty athletic.
	I'm not super athletic, but I'm pretty athletic.
	I mean, gosh, I was on the water polo team.
	I was on the swim team. I was on the cross-country team.
	I did amateur soccer.
	I was on a tennis team.
	I did a lot of sports, played a lot of squash and all that.
	So I'm pretty sporty.
	And I remember, oh yeah, I used to play baseball a lot too.
	So friends of mine and I used to play just total pickup baseball, like two o'clock on a Sunday afternoon, just get out of the house and go do something.
	And there was a guy whose name was Brian and he would play with us.
	Now, Brian was a nice enough guy, but my God, was he physically uncoordinated.
	It was like watching a giant flesh puppet getting hit by lightning.
	I mean, he would run and he would trip.
	He would try and grab the ball and he would grab himself.
	One time he tried to grab a ball or catch a ball, a fly ball, and it went through his glove and hit him on the head, you know, that little...
	Metal stud that's at the top of a baseball cap, and it kind of drove it half into his skull.
	It was pretty nasty, and it was a total silly amateur game, so it didn't make a huge bit of difference.
	We weren't exactly playing for trophies or money or chicks or anything, but it was seeing the way that his hand-eye coordination worked and his complete lack of...
	It was almost like an athletic ability so bad that bees would fall down around him, you know, like Trees would grow the wrong way.
	Now, he was a smart guy, ended up doing quite well professionally, but just the hand-eye coordination.
	And for me, where it came pretty easily, you know, I've always been able to crack a baseball very well.
	I'm a lefty and all that.
	I've been pretty good at catching, throwing, and all of that.
	And I tell you one thing, I was a hell of a fast runner, too.
	I was a hell of a fast runner when I was younger.
	I was literally a cartoon runner.
	Like, it felt like my feet weren't even hitting the ground.
	I was that fast. And so, for me, when I was playing baseball and I would see somebody who was just so physically uncoordinated, it would be kind of frustrating.
	Like, you ever been around someone, you get it very easily, and the other person just doesn't get it?
	Like, you've ever tried to teach someone over 70, you know, how to...
	Do something with technology, particularly prior to touchscreens and so on.
	Oh man, it's brutal.
	It's brutal. And they get frustrated and you get frustrated and there's no reason.
	They may be perfectly smart and you may be perfectly smart, but they don't get it and it's frustrating for you and all of that.
	And this can also happen if you're a husband teaching your wife something technical in the same way that it can happen when your wife is teaching you something about laundry.
	It just goes in one ear and out the other and it just doesn't work out that well.
	So my concern, and again, the people who adopt, I think it's wonderful and I'm sure you're giving kids good homes.
	And this probably doesn't match a whole lot of kids, but again, my particular concern would be that I would be a smart person and the odds are slightly higher that I would end up with a less intelligent kid through adoption.
	And I think it would be rough on the kid, it would be rough on me, and I don't think it would be a good match.
	I think if you're closer to the center of the bell curve with regards to intelligence, it probably doesn't matter quite as much.
	But from where I am, the sheer brilliance of my daughter's brain is so deeply pleasurable for me.
	Like, I just enjoy discussing ideas and concepts with her.
	And it's such a core part of what we do together that I just can't see being as good a dad.
	So... Somebody said, thank you, Steph.
	My mother was indeed a drug-addicted, alcoholic-ridden individual who abused my siblings and myself.
	I was a lucky one to get adopted, but although it was certainly way better than the hell I was living before, it was not a walk in the park.
	It could be down to not having the parental bonding.
	Somebody says one of my first girlfriends was adopted and had fetal alcohol syndrome despite that.
	She had 130 plus IQ, still had an incredibly rough childhood, but she was a tough cookie for sure.
	Well, I think high IQ does help you get over a bad childhood as a whole.
	So, yeah.
	Somebody says, I'm doing great.
	I enjoyed our talk a few days ago.
	Oh, this is a guy I chatted with on this before, right?
	Okay, yeah. Wonderful talking with you.
	You are a wise, intelligent person and your work is true.
	Thank you. Thank you very much.
	Thank you very much. So, again, if you want to, I'm not sure exactly how this works.
	I'm kind of new to this thing.
	It doesn't exactly have much of a test drive.
	But if you do, You have a mic.
	It doesn't matter if it's not a great mic or anything like that.
	But if you do want to drop by and you want to raise your hand, I'm happy to add you to the voice part of the conversation and we can take it from there.
	I'm very happy to chat about that.
	I have other things to talk about, in particular to do with COVID, which I haven't really talked about that much for a while.
	But I would like to talk about it because some very interesting These facts seem to have come about, and I would like to know what you guys think of these facts.
	So let me just grab that and get the info out there, and then you can tell me what you think of this.
	Okay, so this is from the Wall Street Journal.
	Frankly, I'm not much of a fan as a whole, but I will...
	Oh my. It's demanding some kind of login.
	All right. Hang tight. Hang tight.
	Here we go. Yeah.
	Got it. All right. So, again, Wall Street Journal, after they went after PewDiePie and began the whole deplatforming thing, I'm not a big fan.
	But nonetheless, I did see this article and I wanted to share it with you guys and let me know what you...
	You can let me know what you think. All right.
	So, the article is through a pretty...
	Good specialist. It came out yesterday.
	And the article says we'll have herd immunity by April.
	April of this year. He says we'll have herd immunity.
	Have you heard of any of this? Have you heard of herd immunity?
	We'll have herd immunity by April.
	So he says COVID cases have dropped 77% in six weeks.
	Experts should level with the public about the good news.
	So he says, amid the dire COVID warnings, one crucial fact has been largely ignored.
	Cases are down 77% over the past six weeks.
	I assume this is America.
	If a medication slashed cases by 77%, we'd call it a miracle pill.
	Why is the number of cases plummeting much faster than experts predicted?
	And this, of course, has been asked by a whole bunch of people, and I've sort of been following it, and when I found this, I thought it was worth sharing.
	In large part, he says, because natural immunity from prior infection is far more common than can be measured by testing.
	Testing has been capturing only from 10 to 25% of infections, depending on when, during the pandemic, someone got the virus.
	Applying a time-weighted case capture average of 1 in 6.5 to the cumulative 28 million confirmed cases would mean about 55% of Americans have natural immunity.
	About 55% of Americans have natural immunity.
	It goes on to say now, add people getting vaccinated.
	As of this week, 15% of Americans have received the vaccine and the figure is rising fast.
	Former Food and Drug Commissioner Scott Gottlieb estimates 250 million doses will have been delivered to some 150 million people by the end of March.
	There is reason to think that the country is racing toward an extremely low level of infection.
	As more people have been infected most of whom have mild or no symptoms there are few Americans left to be infected.
	At the current trajectory I expect COVID will be mostly gone by April allowing Americans to resume normal life.
	So that's a pretty wild thing to To mull over.
	And let's go a little further here.
	Antibody studies almost certainly underestimate natural immunity.
	Antibody testing doesn't capture antigen-specific T cells, which develop memory once they are activated by the virus.
	Survivors of the 1918 Spanish flu were found in 2008, 90 years later, to have memory cells still able to produce neutralizing antibodies.
	So if you're looking for the presence of explicit antibodies, it doesn't capture these antigen-specific T-cells, which have this memory, right?
	Researchers at Sweden's Karolinska Institute found that the percentage of people mounting a T-cell response after mild or asymptomatic COVID-19 infection consistently exceeded the percentage with detectable antibodies.
	T-cell immunity was even present in people who were exposed to infected family members but never developed symptoms.
	A group of UK scientists in September pointed out that the medical community may be underappreciating the prevalence of immunity from activated T-cells.
	COVID-19 deaths in the US would also suggest much broader immunity than recognized.
	About 1 in 600 Americans has died of COVID-19, which translates to a population fatality rate of about 0.15%.
	The COVID-19 infection fatality rate is about 0.23%.
	These numbers indicate that roughly two-thirds of the U.S. population has had the infection.
	In my own conversations with medical experts, I have noticed that they too often dismiss natural immunity, arguing that we don't have data.
	The data certainly doesn't fit the classic randomized controlled trial model of the old guard medical establishment.
	There's no control group.
	But the observational data is compelling.
	I've argued for months, he says, that we could save more American lives if those with prior COVID-19 infection forego vaccines until all vulnerable seniors get their first dose.
	Several studies demonstrate that natural immunity should protect those who had COVID-19 until more vaccines are available.
	Half my friends in the medical community told me, good idea!
	The other half said there isn't enough data on natural immunity, despite the fact that reinfections have occurred in less than 1% of people, and when they do occur, the cases are mild.
	But the consistent and rapid decline in daily cases since January 8th can be explained only by natural immunity.
	Behavior doesn't suddenly improve over the holidays.
	Americans traveled much more over Christmas than they had since March.
	Vaccines also don't explain the steep decline in January.
	Vaccination rates were low, and they take weeks to kick in.
	It's really, really wild.
	And I'll just mention one other thing.
	This guy, he's a professor, Dr.
	Macari, is a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Bloomberg School of Public Health, chief medical advisor to Sesame Care and author of The Price We Pay.
	He says, herd immunity has been well documented in the Brazilian city of Manaus, where researchers in The Lancet reported the prevalence of prior COVID-19 infection to be 76%, resulting in a significant slowing of the infection.
	Doctors are watching a new strain that threatens to evade prior immunity, but countries where new variants have emerged, such as the UK, South Africa and Brazil, are also seeing significant declines in daily new cases.
	The risk of new variants mutating around the prior vaccinated or natural immunity should be a reminder that COVID-19 will persist for decades after the pandemic is over.
	It should also instill a sense of urgency to develop, authorize and administer a vaccine targeted to new variants.
	So some medical experts, he says, privately agreed with my prediction that there may be very little COVID-19 by April, but suggested that I not talk publicly about herd immunity because people might become complacent and fail to take precautions or might decline the vaccine.
	But scientists shouldn't try to manipulate the public by hiding the truth.
	As we encourage everyone to get a vaccine, we also need to reopen schools and society to limit the damage of closures and prolonged isolation.
	Contingency planning for an open economy by April can deliver hope to those in despair and those who have made large personal sacrifices.
	So that is pretty wild, don't you think?
	I mean, I have been following the issue or the question of what on earth has been happening to make These cases go down so enormously.
	What on earth has been going on? These cases have been dropping against expectations, against predictions.
	And it is pretty wild when you realize that America, in particular, or other places, it could be the case that herd immunity is there or close to there.
	If more than half the population had been exposed to this thing or had this thing, Then that would explain why there are a lot of significant declines in caseloads.
	And, of course, it's occurring all around the world.
	So some people say, ah, well, you know, but the flu, you see, coronaviruses are seasonal.
	It's like, well, yes, yes, they're seasonal, but the world over has more than one season, right?
	If it's summer in Australia, it's winter on the planet elsewhere, right?
	So that can't be the case.
	And some people say, ah, well, yes, but you see, coronaviruses, they are encased in fat.
	And if you ever want to know how heat affects fat, you can try this experiment if you want.
	It's kind of interesting. You get cold butter and Put it on your hands, right?
	Or warm water could be for that matter, right?
	And then what you do is you wash your hands with cold water.
	And you know, of course, if you've ever tried this kind of thing, if you wash your hands with cold water and you've got fat on your hands, it's really hard to get the fat off.
	But if you then wash your hands in very warm water, the fat comes off very easily, right?
	So heat tends to dissolve the fat or lipids or something like that that encase the coronavirus and make it more vulnerable to...
	To outside elements, to falling apart, and to basically not being nearly as dangerous.
	Which is pretty wild.
	Which is why coronavirus is one of the reasons why coronaviruses tend to diminish in the summer, or at least in warm temperatures.
	But the declines are happening in warm temperatures and cold temperatures.
	It's warm in Tahiti, it's cold in Norway, and the declines are happening there as well.
	So it's not just the seasons, it's not just temperatures.
	Have people... And it's an interesting question, right?
	And you guys can let me know what you think.
	You can tell me in the chat or wherever you like.
	I guess not wherever you like.
	In the chat. Have you...
	How are your COVID habits?
	How are your COVID habits relative to...
	I guess it's not quite a year ago since the hammer first came down, but it's not too far off.
	You know, 11 months ago, 11 and a half, 10 months ago.
	Since you first really began to do the COVID stuff, How have your habits been?
	I'm curious. I can tell you mine, not quite as good.
	Not quite as good.
	When I first got it, sorry, when I first heard about COVID, and, you know, this is partly me and this is partly my wife, probably a little bit more my wife.
	If we went to the grocery store, we would put on plastic gloves.
	And, I mean, I think if you still go to some places, like if you're handling, I don't know, like, yogurt, fro-yo places or something like that, they still want you to play their plastic gloves.
	I don't do that anymore. I don't do that anymore.
	I won't say that I allow that my hand's crazy.
	I mean, things are crazy locked down here as well, as a whole, right?
	So there's not much to do. But in terms of, you know, people get fatigue with this kind of stuff.
	You know, you can white-knuckle for a certain amount of time and then you just kind of run out of steam or you run out of energy, right?
	It's sort of like everybody at the gym after the New Year's resolutions.
	When I used to go to a gym, I mean, I disliked January and February because you'd have all these people who, they got gym memberships or they made, my New Year's resolution is just not working out and they'd last, you know, a couple of weeks, maybe a month or two, and then you'd be back to the lonely solitude of the truly committed.
	And I think there is a certain amount of fatigue and a certain amount of, and also, you know, the thing is too, when As the time passes along with regards to COVID, what happens is you now probably know a whole bunch of people who've had it,
	you know, and, you know, maybe people in your age group and people in your family, extended family, but you probably know by now a whole bunch of people who've had it.
	So it's been demystified and you probably, you know, some people had it bad, some people had it medium, some people had it fine, some people didn't even know they had it.
	And so you've got data.
	So what are you guys saying here?
	I have gone back to my regular hand-washing habits, which was after the toilet, before cooking, etc.
	Somebody else says, I did masks, but I don't anymore.
	I don't eat out much, though.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I think that's...
	I did end up eating in a restaurant.
	The first time in some...
	This was a while ago, but yeah, I ended up eating inside a restaurant because it's winter, and that's pretty bad.
	Somebody says, I have less stress, no commute.
	Yeah, isn't that nice, eh? Isn't that nice?
	The no commute situation is pretty sweet.
	And yeah, so people are eating out as usual, but you could really make the case, and it's probably a pretty good case to make, That people are less careful now than they used to be, in which case COVID should be spreading, not shrinking, right?
	Somebody writes, I'm a type 1 diabetic, so technically I am at risk.
	I generally wear a mask when around large amounts of people and regularly use hand sanitizer.
	I have never stopped being social.
	I've constantly seen friends since last March.
	My boyfriend tested positive after a long car ride with me, but I'm still the image of perfect health.
	I do not want to know what you were up to with that car ride.
	Or do I? I don't know.
	Okay. What is the psychology behind people who blindly follow government orders?
	Well, so, you know, there's two kinds of people in this world.
	There are the people who think that the government is there to help them and protect them, and then there are the people who think.
	So for most people...
	It's just a cost-benefit analysis, right?
	Most people have no moral center.
	Most people have no capacity or desire for moral sacrifice.
	Most people aren't going to take a stand on anything.
	And this is sort of well-known by the left, right?
	So what the left does is they simply apply pressure.
	And they make it easier for you to wear a mask.
	They make it easier for you.
	So... They will shame people.
	You get Karen's and so on.
	So people, like you can go, I mean, most places, you can go into a store.
	You're supposed to be able to go into a store.
	If you have some medical reason why you can't wear a mask, then you're supposed to be able to go into a store or anywhere for that matter, and you're supposed to say, I have a medical exemption from wearing the mask.
	And they're not, in most places, they're not legally allowed to ask you Either A, what that medical exemption is, or B, for any kind of proof.
	So you should not need to wear a mask, because there will be medical exemptions, and no one can ask you.
	Now, for a lot of people, though, it's like, oh, you know, I'm going in, I'll just wear the mask.
	Now, why do they do that?
	Well, for the same reason that people do just about anything.
	Why do people pay taxes?
	Because if you don't pay taxes...
	You go to jail, right? So they don't want to go to jail, so they'll just pay taxes.
	And then they'll tell themselves, well, taxes are the price that we pay to live in a civilized society and that kind of stuff.
	But basically, people pay taxes because they don't want to go to jail.
	And so for the most part, people aren't just blindly obeying government orders.
	What they're doing is they're saying, what's my cost-benefit situation, right?
	And of course, when it was first proposed that we clamp down on society for two weeks to flatten the curve, turns out it's all about squishing our freedoms, but when it was flattened the curve, Back in March.
	And, you know, personally, I thought that was, until we knew what the hell this thing was, I thought that was a reasonable thing to do.
	I didn't want it to be enforced by the government, but I thought it was a reasonable thing to do.
	And it was end of March, early April, I think, of last year, where I was like, no, no, no, we got to open up because the costs of the shutdown are going to vastly exceed the benefits.
	And just one example, which nobody's really talking about, except me, I guess, It's this, that far more babies are not being born than people are dying.
	Right? So more babies are not being born than people are dying.
	So if you look at the net number of life years lost, and you count the babies who aren't being born, you know, in Canada, the average death rate of coronavirus is The average year or at the average age of people who die from coronavirus is actually higher than the average life expectancy of Canada as a whole, right? So I don't know what it is.
	The average life expectancy of Canada is like 84 and people who are dying are 87, right?
	So they don't have long to go, frankly.
	Whereas people who aren't being born, your mind is 84 years, right?
	So if somebody dies of COVID, On average, they may be down a couple of years.
	You're short a year or two or whatever it is, especially if they're in their mid to late 80s and they've got three comorbidities.
	Frankly, they're not long for this world on average.
	So you may lose six months.
	You may lose a year. For somebody who gets COVID and dies from that or dies with it.
	But if somebody's not born...
	Then you have, at least on average here in Canada, like 84 years that's minus to the planet, right?
	So we're talking six months, eight months, a year versus minus 84 years.
	And the birth rates are down so enormously that the real victims of COVID are the missing babies, the missing people, the missing children, either being aborted or People are postponing families or people aren't dating.
	And so birth rates are down so enormously.
	That's the real casualty. The real casualty of COVID is not the full funeral homes, but the empty maternity wards.
	It's truly, it's catastrophic and it's going to be a huge, huge issue down the road, right?
	Because it's going to be used as a justification for more mass migration, as you can well imagine, right?
	So, let's see here.
	Yeah, my grandparents have been locked at home for months.
	Their depression is really starting to show.
	It's sad to see. Well, here's the thing, right?
	This is the thing about this as well, is that it's one thing for like a 7-year-old or a 16-year-old to, quote, lose a year, right?
	I mean, they're still chatting, they're doing video games, they're online and all that.
	But if you're 10 or 15 or 20 even, and you, quote, lose a year, I mean, that's really bad.
	I have a huge amount of sympathy.
	But you've got a lot of years to go.
	You've got a lot of years to go.
	If you're 80 and you lose a year, that's pretty significant.
	That may be a quarter of the time you have left.
	Maybe a quarter of the time you have left.
	I was reading this about Bruce Springsteen, who's absolutely reprehensible as a human being, but that's neither here nor there at the moment.
	But he was saying, he's in his early 70s now, and he's like, well, yeah, we don't get to tour right now, and I don't have a lot of touring years left, right?
	And so it matters.
	So for older people, like for younger people, It's hard for you to understand.
	You lose a year.
	Sympathy. Terrible. But it's different, man.
	It's different from losing a year when you're 82.
	Especially if you're older, too.
	This is another thing that we're going to see a whole lot of.
	Older people... So, here's a tiny example, right?
	So, a couple of years ago, when I was giving a speech in St.
	Louis, I was chasing my daughter down the hallway of a hotel, and you know when you have new sneakers, they're kind of like octopus suction pads on the bottom when you hit tiles.
	So, I stepped a little too soon, and my new sneaker kind of stuck suction cup style to the tile, and I went down, I crunched my knee, and it took like eight months.
	To get better and partly because I went to physio and the physiotherapists, I mean...
	Physiotherapists and Bluetooth are bullshit.
	Don't even get me started on what bullshit Bluetooth is.
	Bluetooth is an absolute piece of shit standard that has wasted just about more time than even floppy disks have in my life.
	Oh, it's connecting. Oh, it was connected, but it's not connecting again.
	Oh, it connected for calls, but not for audio.
	Oh, you know, it's like Bluetooth is just an absolute...
	What the hell were you thinking when you were coming up with this standard?
	I'm literally like, if I can attach something with a wire, I'm a happy guy.
	If I have to go through Bluetooth, you know, I want to start playing, you know, Brendan Lee Russian roulette with a blank cartridge against my belly.
	So, but...
	Uh-oh. I went off on Bluetooth.
	So, yeah. Old people. Bruce Springsteen.
	Oh! Oh, no!
	I lost my thread. You know, a couple of times a year this is going to happen.
	Oh, yeah. That's right. That's right. So, for old people up here in Canada...
	You know, they're not skiing anymore.
	They're not skating anymore.
	Because, you know, when you're old, one fall can just wreck you and put you in a wheelchair, right?
	And, you know, they're not out walking because it's slippery as hell.
	And again, one fall, one slip, and you can be toast.
	Like, you can lose a hip.
	You can have a knee replacement.
	I mean, it can be a disaster.
	You can break bones. Almost impossible to fix.
	I mean... So, when I was eight months, and I could walk.
	I had the injury when I was doing the documentary in Poland at the end of 2018.
	So, I could walk, but I couldn't run.
	And eventually, I ended up having to fix it myself, just with seriously savage massaging behind to the left of the knee.
	That apparently was what had messed it up.
	Now, it has taken me a long time to get back to running, right?
	Because you don't run for eight months and, you know, it's different when you're younger.
	Like when I was younger, I could not play tennis for a year and then I could go and play an hour and a half of tennis and I'd be fine.
	Right? It's not the case when you get older.
	When you get older, it's use it or lose it, man.
	When you get older, you've got to use it or you've got to lose it.
	So what's going to happen in Canada and other cold places is that the people who, like 70% of Canadians who would go south, they're called snowbirds, right?
	They go south to Florida or other places for Arizona for the winter.
	And one of the reasons they do that is because otherwise they're stuck at home.
	And they're not out moving.
	They're not out walking. They're not out lawn bowling.
	They're not out golfing or whatever it is that they're doing.
	Swimming. And so you're going to see a whole bunch of soft tissue injuries, a whole bunch of broken bones, a whole bunch of people who couldn't go out and exercise, couldn't go out and walk around, couldn't live an active life.
	And that's, you know, a big other mess, a big other mess, right?
	So somebody says, yeah, I can't stay, wear a mask, but I don't want to get harassed, so I stay the face shield.
	Wear the face shield? I don't know what that means.
	The horde is horrible if you don't wear a face mask.
	My depression era...
	The horde?
	The mob? I don't know.
	This is voice dictation. I think it went.
	My depression era grandfather warned me against mobs.
	When I lived in a more liberal area, I was wearing the mask, but that was to avoid dealing with Karens.
	Having moved, people are much more chill.
	Medical exemptions, somebody says, aren't a guarantee to get you inside, though.
	They have to provide reasonable accommodation, which is why Walmart will shop for you, so they don't have to let you inside without wearing a mask.
	Oh, is that right? Okay. Somebody says, I used the medical exemption at the beginning and people were extremely hostile for me challenging the narrative.
	Stay clear of those people. Somebody said, for just the last year of COVID, the numbers of cases seemed to peak around the mean of temperatures in the region dipping into summer but picking up again in the fall and spalling again during a cold spell in January and February.
	Hmm. Somebody says, my husband and I were kicked out of Walmart for not wearing a mask, even though we had a medical exemption and the woman who chased us out was closer than six feet the whole time.
	I'm sorry, I don't mean to laugh. Yeah, it does go against Walmart policy, as far as I see.
	And, you know, we've, I mean, this is an IQ issue as well.
	Like, it's really hard to understand where the world is or how the world's going.
	Particularly the West without understanding that we're just shedding IQ points.
	We're just losing IQ points over time.
	There's a wide variety of reasons for that, but yeah.
	So people who are more intelligent have a better capacity to manage their own emotions, obviously, right?
	Because you can reason yourself in and out of things and you can take a big perspective and self-management, self-control is associated with having a higher IQ. And of course, there are tons of high IQ people who completely act out and understand all the exceptions, right? But in general, that's the way it works.
	And so people are terrified.
	And in general, I think there's a level below, like it's a low IQ, you're not that scared because you don't really get it.
	You know, I don't know what, I have no idea what it would be.
	But I think around... 87 to 95, if I had to say, 87 to 97 IQ. That's where people tend to just really, they're really freaked out.
	And they're very self-important, and they believe they know everything, and they believe what all of the, quote, experts tell them.
	And yeah, they genuinely believe.
	They're superheroes saving the world by jamming face diapers on healthy people's faces.
	Somebody has said, is there any validity to emotional intelligence?
	No. No, no, there isn't.
	Emotional intelligence is like the consolation prize that you give people without a high IQ. So they feel, well, I don't have smarts, but I have street smarts.
	I'm not smart, but I'm emotionally intelligent.
	And no, I mean, there's been tons of studies done on emotional intelligence.
	It has virtually no predictive capacity.
	And, you know, IQ has immeasurable.
	I shouldn't say immeasurable.
	That sounds bad. IQ has enormous predictive capacity.
	For a complex job, raw IQ scores predict success about 80% of the time.
	There's nothing better.
	There's no test. There's no interview technique.
	There's nothing HR can vomit at you that's going to determine whether you succeed or whether you fail more than IQ as a whole.
	It's really sad that we're not allowed to use it.
	The economy could be so much better and so much more efficient if we were able to use it.
	But of course we can't.
	Oh, look at that. Bitcoin. I mean, Bitcoin's pretty wild, eh?
	This is Canadian.
	$71,167.92 right at the moment.
	It's gone up $5,600 and change in a 24-hour period.
	That is a pretty wild thing.
	It's a pretty wild thing.
	And I just wanted to mention it.
	I just wanted to mention it.
	And it's taken some getting used to.
	It's taken some getting used to.
	All right. So I'm guessing...
	Let's see here. Let's see here.
	Will there be a true separation of state and money?
	Well, yes.
	Yes. If there is to...
	If we are to survive, there has to be.
	If we are to survive, there has to be.
	Okay. Listen, I'm happy to chat.
	If there's anybody who wants to jump in, I don't think that...
	Again, I'm trying to figure out this interface.
	I've got up to seven people. We can have a round table if you like, or I've got more topics, so I can certainly do all of that.
	I can certainly do all of that, but it's really up to you.
	Now, people are gifting me stuff, which I think is very nice.
	I appreciate that. Thank you for whatever it is that's flying our way.
	All right. We have somebody who's in, and this is some sort of, it's a big new Brzezinski kind of name that's going on with your thing, but can you hear me?
	Yes, can you hear me?
	Yeah, what's up, my friend?
	Yes, I was just wondering, do you have any strategies for someone whose mind is always racing or changing all the time?
	Yeah. Can you tell me, I want to make sure I sort of know in more detail what you're talking about.
	If you can just tell me a little bit more.
	This is you, right? Or is this someone, a friend of yours has this issue?
	This is me. This is me, Stephen.
	Okay, yeah. I don't know if I'm the best guy to give advice on what to do if your mind is racing, but hopefully we can get it racing in a productive direction.
	But, yeah, tell me a little bit more about how it is for you.
	Yeah, so, like, I struggle with...
	Like, an idea seems good to me, and then, like, something else will pop up, and then, like, I don't know how to balance my daily life.
	I don't know if that makes any sense.
	It probably doesn't. No, I'm getting, I'm sort of circling it, but I need to see a bit through the fog to the runway here, so can you give me a sort of more recent concrete or specific example?
	Yes, so recently I've been hired by the federal government for a wildland firefighting job, but as an NCAP, you know, I'm opposed to government, so I'm trying to, like, shuffle my feelings towards that.
	Okay, yeah, no, I understand.
	I think, so it's firefighting, right?
	Yes, sir. Yeah, it's a wildland firefighting job.
	Right, right. First of all, I think just hearing that phrase gave me four extra chest hairs, so I thank you for that.
	I'm up to nine now, I think.
	So the way that I view these things, and listen, the way that I view it is not any kind of objective metric or anything.
	I'm just telling you the way that I look at it.
	And the way that I look at it is, would this job exist in the absence of the government?
	Yes, it would. And the answer is, of course it would, right?
	Because there's wild places that...
	Catch fire, right? So, I mean, it would be different, right?
	I mean, a lot of the California fires were based upon terrible government management practices of land and no fire breaks and not letting fires burn for way long.
	But, yeah, you'd have a job if there wasn't a government because that would be necessary.
	You know, other things like maybe being a tax collector or that job.
	I mean, they'd be bill collectors but not tax collectors.
	So, for me, if the job would exist in the free market, and also if the government has a monopoly, right?
	So, if you want to be a teacher, I guess you can go to the free market to some degree for that, but if you really want to be a firefighter, and the job would exist in the free market, and the government has a monopoly, then I wouldn't let the existing configuration of the world Take away something you love to do.
	It's sort of like, oh, if I want to be a musician or a singer or a songwriter or something like that, but I don't agree with copyright, it's like, yeah, well, that's the system.
	Go sing your heart out.
	Go make beautiful music and all of that.
	It's sort of like you and I are...
	Talking on protocols to some degree developed for a decentralized network by the Department of Defense, right?
	And some taxpayer money went into the creation of all of this.
	Now, would there be some sort of universal network, whether it was TCPIP or something else, would there be some sort of universal network?
	Well, of course there would, right? And so would I sit there and say, I desperately want to have a world, I desperately want to have a conversation about philosophy with the world, but...
	The mechanism by which the information would be transmitted was paid for by the states.
	So, nope! I'm not going to do it.
	I think that's a bad idea.
	Because it's taking something you love and having it taken away by bad people.
	And, of course, if you're good at fighting fires and you're going to save lives or save houses or save animals...
	Then the animals would certainly rather you do the job.
	You know, you're probably better than most of the people out there doing this job if you're listening to this show.
	So I would be like, embrace it.
	Honestly, I don't think I've given more than, like in 15 years, I don't think I've given more than five minutes thought to the fact that the network technology that we're broadcasting on was developed by the state to a large degree by forced taxpayer funding.
	Like, I don't care. And it's not like me, like, Because 30 years ago or 40 years ago, the government paid for something.
	It's not like me not doing philosophy is going to make that better or go away or anything like that.
	So honestly, it doesn't cross my mind.
	I don't care.
	It doesn't bother me. It's all like the people like, oh, you want a free society, but you use the roads.
	Yeah, okay. It's not my choice.
	It's not my choice that this is the way the society is configured.
	Exactly. But yeah, I can use the roads.
	That's exactly, I just struggle with it morally.
	It's just because you make more money working for the government as opposed as you would in the private sector.
	In the past, I've had arguments with my brother.
	He's like, oh, well, you're an anarchist and you don't think there should be government, but you work for the government.
	It's like, well, that's not really necessarily an argument because they have a monopoly on wildland firefighting.
	All the incidents that occur are primarily on government land.
	Does your brother use any Apple products?
	I think he has an Android phone.
	Okay. Well, you know, a lot of this stuff is produced through slave labor.
	Does that mean he's pro-slavery?
	That's true.
	No, this nitpicking...
	Sorry.
	No, go ahead. I used the same argument you did where I said, well, you know, I use the roads.
	So that doesn't mean I think that just because I use roads, the government is valid.
	I have to go. Yeah, so what you could say is something like this as well.
	Are you happy that slavery was ended in the United States?
	Now, unless he's some moral monster, of course, he's going to say, yes, I'm happy that slavery was ended in the United States, right?
	And say, do you know how many times people had to get up on podiums and give big speeches to convince people to end slavery in the United States?
	You say, well, I guess hundreds if not thousands of times.
	You are correct. You are correct.
	Now, the abolitionists who got up to make thunderous speeches to end slavery, were they wearing clothes?
	Well, yeah.
	They were wearing clothes. Oh my God.
	Do you know that those clothes were most often the cotton...
	The wool was all picked and they were put together and made and fashioned by slaves themselves?
	Do you think that they should have got up naked in the cold or the heat?
	It doesn't really matter. Do you think they should have tried to get up and stand on their podiums and thunder for the end of slavery while being naked?
	It's like, well, no, of course, they would have been arrested, right?
	Jim Morrison style, right? They would have been arrested.
	And then we'd still have slavery, right?
	Now, do you think it's a valid argument to say, well, these guys are total hypocrites.
	Look, they're against slavery, but they're wearing clothes, sometimes made by slaves.
	You see, that's just an excuse to do nothing.
	It's just, what he's trying to do is drag you into fighting yourself rather than liberating the world.
	If he would rather there be such moral perfection that nobody who wore slave-picked or slave-made clothing should ever have gotten up and talked against slavery, well, you understand.
	The only reason that he lives in a relatively free world is that nobody listened to him throughout human history who got anything done.
	Well, he's a nihilist.
	No, I get that, and I'm sorry about that, right?
	But you're trying to figure out a way to do something that you treasure, something that you value, something that you enjoy, something that you're good at.
	You're trying to figure that out.
	Now, rather, nihilism is cowardice, right?
	Nihilism is cowardice.
	That's all it is. Except it's a cowardice that won't even admit that it's cowardice.
	And rather than saying, I'm too chicken shit to fight for any values, it's, hey, man, there's no such thing as values, and everyone who thinks there is is a sucker.
	And everyone's a hypocrite.
	It's retarded and insulting.
	It is. I'm sorry to say this about your brother.
	Maybe he's a wonderful person in other areas.
	No, he's a bad human.
	Yeah, total cowardice, right?
	Total cowardice. Because there are two parties in your moral dilemma.
	One is you trying to find a way to navigate through the sea of blood and guns known as the modern state.
	Well, all states, really.
	Modern state less than most in many ways, right?
	So there's you, and then there's all the psychopaths who have all the guns, all the power, all the control, all the censorship, all the debt that they can inflict on others.
	And so there's you, A little lamb, as I am a little lamb, relative to the power of the state.
	And we're trying to find our way through this minefield of the state with some reasonable sense of integrity.
	And then there's people taking pot shots at us.
	There are people releasing wolves to chase us down.
	There's mines in the ground who are trying not to lose a leg.
	And as we struggle through this battlefield, being shot at, metaphorically, Who does your brother choose to criticize?
	This moral hero.
	Who does he choose to criticize?
	The huntress or the lamb?
	Hey man, you lamb!
	I mean, come on man, you're eating grass.
	You know that grass was planted by the huntress?
	You're a total hypocrite for eating that grass.
	It's like, do you have anything to say about the huntress, you unbelievable chicken shit?
	Or are you just picking on the good people because you hate yourself deep down, right?
	So, the reason your mind races...
	He picked on me because I was smaller until I got bigger than him.
	Then he stopped picking on me. No, he didn't.
	What are you talking about? He didn't stop picking on you.
	You just told me a story of how he's picking on you.
	That's a good point. I think it's a pretty certain point.
	So your mind races because you're not safe.
	A racing mind is a sign of a fight-or-flight mechanism that's in constant activation.
	So when you say that your mind is racing, what I hear is that you're in a situation where Where vague existential threats are all around you.
	Maybe they're coming from you. Maybe they're coming from Brethren or other places or whatever, right?
	But there's a certain cluster of murder hornet attacks floating around your environment that can sting you at any time.
	And your mind is racing.
	It's like those debates. We all do, right?
	You have these debates with people in your head, and then when you actually have a confrontation with them, it almost never turns out that way, right?
	But a racing mind is indicative of an unsafe environment.
	In the same way that if you think of somebody in a big room, And there are 20 doors, right?
	And they want to leave. But there's, you know, they're listening to music on their headphones and, or maybe they're having a great chat with their girlfriend and they just, they want to get up and leave, right?
	So what they do, they leisurely go from door to door.
	They try them. Ah, you know, one of these is going to be open.
	And eventually they get to the one that's open and they get out, right?
	Because they're in a leisurely relaxed place.
	Environment, right? There's no big rush.
	They're enjoying the chat. And they may be like, oh, I can't believe this one's locked again, but they're not tense about it, right?
	On the other hand, if someone is in a big room with 20 doors and the building is burning down, what's their level of urgency to find the door that opens and gets them out?
	It's pretty high. Or if they know that someone is going to burst into the room and start shooting at them, and they're in a kind of action movie, then their urgency to get out of the room, they're just like flying from door to door.
	And every door that's locked, they're like almost screaming in frustration because life and death hangs on the balance of them getting to the door that opens, right?
	Does this sort of make sense?
	So if your mind is racing, it's because you're in a situation of threat.
	Well, my therapist said that I'm always on the defensive because of my environment.
	So that's how I react to it.
	Well, that's one way of putting it.
	I would put it a different way.
	I'm not your therapist, so please listen to your therapist more than me.
	But my particular perspective would be, it's not that you're always on the defensive, it's that you're always being attacked.
	You know, you're not paranoid if people are, in fact, out to get you, right?
	That's the way I feel sometimes.
	Right. Well, you should respect those feelings.
	Your feelings are trying to help you.
	Feelings are trying to get you to a place of safety.
	And if you have a sensitive moral conscience and people are using that to kind of bully you and humiliate you and put you down, right, like your brother, then your virtues are being used to To put you down.
	Your virtues which should be there to help you, aid you, protect you, keep you safe, make you noble.
	Well, those virtues are being used to keep you small and put you down.
	And that is a situation of threat.
	And the threat is, of course, that we're immortal.
	Time passes by and we've got to get shit done.
	rather than keep circling the drain as nihilists deflate every ideal that we lay claim to.
	I just, I struggle with the fact of where I recently came to the conclusion that I have to separate myself from that environment.
	Yeah.
	And it's hard on me because I always grew up with, you know, families.
	Number one, family is the most important.
	Well, hang on.
	Is your brother living that value?
	No. No?
	Don't have higher standards than those around you.
	That's a sucker's game in the long run.
	Well, I found out how naive I was my entire life, and now I'm 32 years old, and I was like, oh, I've been naive my entire life.
	What do you mean, naive? About what?
	Naive about how they were treating me.
	Oh, your family? Yeah.
	Right. Well, don't feel bad, man.
	There's a lot of propaganda, right?
	Yeah, there's a lot of propaganda, right?
	There's a lot of propaganda.
	And... I don't mean to interrupt you because I know it's important, but I think this is really important because I don't want you to think of yourself as naive, right?
	So society is going through this massive, wrenching awakening at the moment, right?
	So I, for many years, have had massive criticisms of government teachers, right?
	And if you've ever heard these shows where I rip into government teachers, I inevitably get 10,000 emails of people saying, well, my sister is a government teacher and she loves her kids and she really cares about...
	And the idea of the noble teacher who scrimps and saves and is willing to live on virtually nothing while she takes her meager lunch money and spends it on crayons for the kids.
	This is bullshit, right?
	This is complete bullshit, right? But society is waking up from that dream at the moment.
	I don't know if you've been following any of this stuff, but it seems like...
	It seems like teachers are going to end up having to order back to work at gunpoint because they don't want to go.
	They don't want to go.
	They're coming up with every conceivable excuse to never set foot in what is to them apparently a demon-haunted classroom from here until the end of time.
	And it's hell for the kids.
	I mean, listen, government schools are prisons.
	I mean, I get all of that, but I don't know.
	About having kids curled up on a couch playing among us 12 hours a day is particularly great for them and kids' mental health is deteriorating.
	Suicidality is increasing.
	Depression and anxiety are through the roof.
	That exercise, you know, kids are laying the foundation of an entirely terrible adulthood by not having any exercise habits in their current environment.
	So Right now, people are beginning to wake up to the bottomless selfishness of the vast majority of government teachers and all of their unions.
	All of their unions.
	Because if you're a government teacher, you say, oh, I'm a good teacher.
	Yeah, well, A, you're teaching propaganda, and B, you're paying for the unions, and the unions are paying for the Democrats, who are currently opening the borders in the middle of a pandemic, which is entirely predictable.
	So I don't have any sympathy.
	So right now, there was a huge amount of propaganda and culture actually had a pretty good chapter basically listing off all of the awards that teachers hand themselves and also the vast amount of physical and sexual abuse that occurs in government schools often at the hands of teachers is staggering.
	It far exceeds by hundreds of times the Sexual exploitation of children by Catholic priests fastly exceeds it.
	Per capita, not absolute numbers, per capita.
	You're many, many dozens of times more at risk in a government school than as a Catholic altar boy.
	So society's beginning to wake up to this now.
	Because, you know, the teachers, they love to teach.
	They love their kids. They can't wait to teach.
	And now... It's like, guys, the data is in.
	School transmissions are very low.
	We're not coming back. Okay, what if we do this?
	No. What if we do this and this?
	No. What if we give you this, this, and this money?
	We got these shields. We got these blocks.
	We got this. No. You know, people are just waking up to the fact that the kids, they've always been hostages.
	And the teachers have...
	Largely been parasites. And so, people are just...
	You say, oh, society is naive.
	It's like, well, no. It's just a huge amount of propaganda.
	I wasn't saying society.
	I was saying myself. No, no.
	I know. I know. But I'm giving you an example of hundreds of millions of people around the world who were, quote, naive.
	And I'll tell you how it works with you, I think.
	I don't know. And then I'll be quiet and let you tell me what you think.
	But how it works is this.
	So there was an old deal for religion, right?
	And the deal was this.
	Religion, all the Old Testament religions, the religion would say to parents, we want you to teach these religious tenets, right?
	And the parents would say, okay, what's in it for me?
	And The religions would say, we will, like one of the things that you will teach your children is honor thy mother and thy father.
	And the parents are like, oh, wait a minute.
	So if I teach them all this stuff, one of the central moral commandments is honor thy mother and thy father.
	Which means, since it's a moral commandment, I don't actually have to earn it.
	Oh man, now you've got my attention, oh theologian, oh priest.
	Now you've got my attention.
	If the kids have to honor me as a father, as a mother, I'll teach them all this other stuff.
	But the honor me thing, that's great.
	And then if the kid ever disobeys me, he says, no, it's a commandment, you've got to honor your mother and your father.
	You've got to honor them. Now, of course...
	We should honor people who are honorable.
	That's paying a fair bill.
	That's paying a just bill.
	You order an iPad, it comes, you give someone 500 bucks.
	Someone acts in an honorable manner, you pay them honor.
	You honor them, just as they should honor you when you act in an honorable manner.
	And society has got the same deal, but it's become more secular.
	Now the deal is, society says to the parents, we want to teach you to obey society, to respect society.
	And the parents say, okay, well what's in it for me?
	And society says, we'll teach the kids that family is everything and anyone who tries to break free of an abusive parental relationship We'll be called an evil cult follower.
	So you can do whatever the hell you want to your children.
	And if they ever try to get away, as adults, when they can legally do so, if they ever try and get away, we will find whoever gave them that crazy idea and we will punish the living shit out of them by calling them a cult leader.
	And the parents will say, there's no way anyone could believe that.
	Society says, what are you talking about?
	He says, come on. Divorce rates are through the roof.
	So we constantly tell people to get out of abusive relationships.
	Abusive relationships that they voluntarily chose to enter into.
	That they got a chance to test drive for years through dating, engagement.
	So when people voluntarily enter into a marriage after years of test driving, The boyfriend, the girlfriend.
	And then we say, well, if the relationship is abusive, you've got to get out.
	It's imperative for your mental health.
	You've got to get out. So we say this to all the adults.
	In relationships that they chose, there's no way that anyone's going to believe that a relationship which was not chosen, which is the relationship of a child to a parent, child did not choose the parent, did not choose to enter into the relationship with the parent, and the child is trapped there for pretty much 18 years at a minimum.
	So there's no way, no possible way anyone's going to believe this stuff.
	That if you want to get out of an abusive relationship that you never chose to be in, that you are the victim of a cult, and anyone who says you don't have to be in abusive relationships as a cult leader, there's just no way.
	There's no way, because then every single...
	Mental health expert who says that if your relationship is abusive, you should get out.
	They would be a cult leader and you would be the victim of brainwashing if you left that abusive relationship.
	There's no way anyone is ever going to believe that.
	That chosen relationships should be left if they're abusive, but unchosen relationships should never be left.
	And then society says, well, you don't understand.
	It doesn't matter if it makes sense.
	It only matters if people have a guilty conscience, and if people have a guilty conscience, they'll do just about anything we tell them to.
	And so the deal is, you teach your children to respect society, to respect the laws, to respect the government, and in return, we will make sure that no matter how badly you treat your children, they will never ever get away.
	Because anyone who says they don't have to be in abusive relationships, we will destroy from top to toe.
	In newspaper articles, radio shows, television shows, on Wikipedia, we will destroy their reputation so that we keep this unholy bargain where you tell your kids to respect society and then you can treat them as terribly and badly and horribly as you want and we will make sure they never get away from you.
	That's the kind of unholy deal, right?
	It used to be theological.
	And now it's secular.
	It used to be, well, if you disobey, honor thy mother and thy father, you'll go to hell.
	Now it's like, well, if you try to help adult children by reminding them they don't have to be in abusive relationships with parents, well, you're a cult leader and will destroy your income, your reputation, and nobody's going to talk about it, right?
	So when you say to me...
	Well, when I was growing up, family was everything, right?
	That's propaganda. And it's the deal that society gives parents to indoctrinate their children to worship the state, basically.
	And in return, you get hit with this propaganda from all sides that family is everything.
	Because the state wishes to venerate those who tell the children to obey the state.
	So you're not naive at all.
	Never were. Because naive is a self-criticism.
	And when you're faced with a virtually universal...
	the universal physics of propaganda...
	Like, you know, in The Matrix, if you've ever seen that movie, there's a black cat that he sees twice...
	And that's the little detail, like deja vu or a little glitch.
	That's the little detail that starts to lead him out of the matrix, right?
	Or he starts to understand the nature of the matrix because of that.
	Because the matrix is seamless, right?
	The physics are perfect, the society, everything.
	The sense data, it's all perfect.
	And so, finding those little glitches in the matrix and then beginning to unravel the matrix is...
	Like, Neo was not naive, right?
	When he thought he was alive in the world, when he was a battery in a pod, he wasn't naive.
	And I just...
	I mean, I know you've had it rough.
	I don't like to hear you say to yourself something negative.
	When a child grows up in communist Russia under Stalin, like in the 1940s or 1950s, and...
	Is a committed communist and believes that Stalin was the father of the nation who protected them from the evil Germans and communism is wonderful and everyone in the West is starving and that's all the information and everything in their society tells them exactly the same thing.
	Would we ever say to that person, well, you're just naive?
	No. No.
	No. Because that would be disrespectful to the fact that we all grow up Wedded to and bonded with the lies of our society.
	And there's no escape.
	Because escape requires the absence of uniformity.
	Which, until very recently, human society did not possess at all.
	So, I'd just say be nicer to yourself.
	Be kinder to yourself.
	That you're in the process of waking up.
	I'm very abusive towards myself.
	I know, I know. That's why I'm giving you this long speech saying, be gentle with yourself, be sensitive to yourself.
	Because I was just, growing up, I was always given like, it was like a two-faced, like I was praised, but I was also criticized at the same time.
	So like I never had a sense of, you know, what is actual criticism and what is actual praise.
	Because it was all like manipulation and control?
	Yes. My mother, my mom would use emotions to make me do what she wanted to do and my dad would just operate off of, everything was off of fear.
	So, yeah, I got the belt a lot when I was a kid, so.
	Right. And if you're right, as a parent, you don't need to beat your child.
	You know, there's an old meme about statism.
	Ideas so good, they have to be enforced at gunpoint.
	You know, if parents are right, if they're correct, if they're accurate, it's true what they say, then they don't need to be abusive.
	As soon as the abuse comes out, you just know.
	I mean, it's like de-platforming, right?
	As soon as you de-platform, you're saying you don't have good answers.
	It's true, and...
	Listening to your show, it has brought a lot of perspective on issues like why I became so angry later on in my life and resentful was because of the pain and suffering I went through when I was younger.
	Not that you went through that was inflicted on you.
	And that's another harsh reality for me to face, like I didn't want to think like, I wanted to think it was my fault, like I deserved it.
	No, you didn't. No, no, no, no.
	Of course now.
	You're doing it again. I know.
	That's how I justified it at the time.
	Like, oh, I acted out, so I deserved it.
	But now I realize, like, it's not right under any circumstance.
	Well, but by calling yourself naive and by saying it's something that you just went through, you're still minimizing the evils that were done to you.
	Okay. You were a helpless child beaten by all powerful parents in a society that condoned it.
	It should never have happened.
	And if it happened, society should have intervened.
	And the fact that you're out there putting out fires rather than setting them is testament to your character.
	Sorry, go ahead. I don't know if this is kind of a fast forward, but I think a lot of where my pain comes from is like one time my dad put his hands on me and I reacted physically and put him in a chokehold and it left a mark on his neck.
	And I remember the next day, like I saw it, And I just went in my room and cried so hard.
	Why? Sorry.
	But why did you cry?
	Because I've had so much pain inflicted on me, I don't like inflicting on others.
	And...
	But I don't think that's what happened.
	Oh, I know. I defended myself.
	You prevented the pain.
	No, you were crying about something else.
	I don't know what. But if you stop someone from beating you up, you're not beating them up.
	Right? Self-defense is perfectly legitimate.
	I don't know, but...
	What I'm getting upset about then.
	No, no, no. You're getting upset and I completely understand why you're getting upset, I think.
	And I respect and, you know, thank you for opening your heart.
	It's a beautiful thing to see. It's a powerful thing to see and I respect you enormously for having that openness.
	But I want to know what happened between the time you hit your father or put him in a chokehold.
	How old were you? This was a few years ago when I was like a 25, 26.
	And he was still physically violent with you?
	Yes, because I allowed it and I'd never fought back until that point.
	Well, not because you allowed it.
	Again, it's the self-criticism, right?
	Because you never had any societal support for defending yourself.
	What had happened was, is...
	I went out with my friends and my dad and I got into a discussion.
	It got heated and he pushed me and I pushed him back and then he grabbed me and then it escalated from there.
	What happened from there?
	He put me in a chokehold and I reversed it and then I put him in chokehold.
	And then what happened? I went to my room and closed the door and got upset.
	No, no. What happened?
	You put him in a chokehold. What happened though?
	What do you mean? Give me the blow by blow, so to speak.
	So he pushed me.
	I pushed him back.
	Then he grabbed me and then tried to put me in a chokehold.
	I reversed it, put him in a chokehold.
	And then once I saw, because I wrestled earlier and I know that people go out, so I let go because I didn't want them to pass out.
	And so I just went to my room.
	No, but what did he do when you let him go?
	He didn't say nothing.
	He didn't do nothing. Did he fall down?
	We were already on the ground because I took him to the ground.
	Okay, so then you let go of the chokehold, you get up, and what does he do?
	He didn't say nothing, didn't do nothing.
	He just lay there? Yeah.
	And then the reason why I think I got so upset is the next day I saw him and I told him if he ever put his hands on me again, I'd kill him.
	Because I was sick and tired of him putting his hands on me.
	No, I get that. And then what happened when you told him that?
	He didn't even respond to me.
	Like he didn't know what to say.
	And he had a mark on his neck.
	Was it like a bruise? Yes.
	And what happened in your mind and your heart over that night?
	I felt like I wanted to die.
	I didn't like it.
	I didn't like the situation at all.
	Would you have undone your self-defense if you could that night?
	I guess not, because it stopped after that.
	So what didn't you like?
	I didn't like hurting somebody.
	Even if it was in self-defense, it still felt bad.
	Because you felt you were being like him?
	Yeah, I guess, in a sense.
	No, no. I mean, if I'm wrong, I'm wrong.
	I'm just trying to understand why you wouldn't feel immense pride at defending yourself.
	Because I don't like hurting people.
	Well... I've been in many fights, and I don't like it.
	Well, hang on. If you don't like it, why are you in so many fights?
	Yeah. To defend friends?
	To defend family?
	Why are you in the vicinity of violent people at all?
	Because I feel like I need to protect them.
	Protect who? Protect them from themselves, I guess.
	Well... I assume that your father was more violent with you than he would be with, say, his own brother or sister or some friend or whatever, right?
	He never fought his own fights.
	He always gloated about how his brothers fought his fights for him.
	No, but yeah, so he was the most violent with you, right?
	Yeah, my two older brothers never, they didn't have it nearly as bad as I did.
	So if he's the most violent with you, do you know that the only way you can protect him from being violent?
	Well, I guess he really changed after that day.
	Like, I think it kind of put him in his place.
	I don't know how else to put it.
	I get that, and I do want to get to that, but let's get back a little earlier.
	Mm-hmm. If he is the most violent with you, the best way for you to protect him from being violent is to not be around him.
	That's a reality I've come to.
	Well, it was in the past, right?
	I mean, you said he changed after that, right?
	But if you say you want to protect...
	No, sorry, he changed his ways.
	Like, he got more emotionally and psychologically abusive after that, not physically.
	Right. So, through no fault of your own, you bring the worst out in your father, right?
	I guess so. Well, no.
	Again, if you get foggy on me, I don't know where we are in the conversation.
	If I'm wrong, that's fine.
	But you said he was the most violent towards you of all the people.
	No, it's because I was the only one that questioned authority.
	I was the only one that questioned things.
	Okay. I guess.
	So, your questioning nature is something so fundamental to you that you were willing to be beaten for it repeatedly as a child, right?
	I guess in a sadistic way, yeah.
	Sadistic? And what do you mean?
	I don't know.
	No, you mean your father or you?
	I guess both.
	Well, no. You're saying it could be masochistic on your part?
	Are you saying it could be masochistic on your part?
	No. You know that if you question your dad, he's going to whoop your ass, but you do it anyway?
	Yeah. And I guess it was just part of my...
	I loved challenging authority growing up, I guess.
	I guess you would say typical male.
	Right. And my dad, with his dad, he was...
	A depression era, World War II vet, and he was kind of secluded and away from him, and that's just how he thought parenting was.
	Because you're saying that you were around violent people to protect them from themselves, right?
	Mm-hmm. But you weren't protecting them from themselves because they directed their worst behavior at you.
	So your proximity to them Had them act out in more evil ways, right?
	I guess, in a sense, where I'd come in and clean up their mess.
	I guess. What do you mean?
	Where, like, they knew they didn't have to deal with it because somebody else would come in and deal with it.
	Well, that also promotes irresponsibility, right?
	Because you have this thing, oh, well, I was protecting people from themselves.
	It's like, I don't see any empirical evidence for that.
	In fact, I see the evidence as quite the opposite.
	Okay. No, again, tell me if I'm wrong.
	I mean, if there's something I'm missing, I'm happy to be corrected.
	Well, no, I would love outside input because I, you know, it makes a difference because obviously...
	But I think it's always 100% correct.
	Yeah, I mean, just from my own experience, I made my family worse people.
	Because as the youngest and the most vulnerable, it brought out, you know, a power.
	Power corrupts, right?
	And so...
	With my mother in particular, although to some degree my father, but my mother in particular, because I was the youngest and power corrupted her, me being around her made her a worse person.
	Now, that's not my fault. I didn't cause it.
	But it's a fact.
	So if I said, well, I spent time around my mother to protect her from herself, it'd be like, no, no, no.
	That's like me saying, well, my mother was an alcoholic.
	So I brought her alcohol to protect her from her alcoholism.
	I was a drug that corrupted her, in other words, because I was younger and vulnerable, the youngest and vulnerable.
	It corrupted her.
	So me being around my mother, without a doubt, turned her into a worse person.
	It wasn't like I made her a worse person because I was just being myself.
	But... She was worse when she was with me.
	In the same way that, like if you're an alcoholic and you want to quit being an alcoholic, you've got to not spend time around people who drink.
	You've got to not spend time around bars.
	And if you say, well, my friend decided to quit being an alcoholic, so I picked up a 2-4 and went over to help him out, make sure that he was protected from himself.
	It's like, no, that's not helping him, right?
	That's the opposite. So if your presence makes your father violent and abusive and aggressive, and again, I'm not putting that on you.
	I hope you understand that, right?
	It's just because he can't handle power, right?
	And he has the most power over you, or wants the most power over you, because of your nature, clashing with his nature and all of that.
	And that's all on him. That's all on him.
	Nothing on you. You're a kid, right?
	because here's my concern that if you say I'm here to protect violent people from themselves but you keep getting into fights it's not working if you say I'm here to make sure that people don't drink and then they keep drinking whatever you're doing is not working
	And if you keep getting into fights, then your plan to save violent people from themselves is not working.
	It's a bad plan.
	Or it's a bad execution or something, right?
	Did you see what I mean? Yeah.
	Well, there's 32 years worth of backstory.
	Well, that may be very well true, and I'm sure that there is, 32 years back story now.
	In fact, there might be 32 years and 9 months worth of backstory because you're in the womb too, right?
	But, just based on the top empirical evidence, if you think that you're around people to protect them from violence, but you keep getting into fights, and they keep being violent, You're not helping them.
	You're not saving them.
	The cover story doesn't work.
	Well, that's why I walked away from my friends because the environment wasn't healthy and they were the ones promoting the fights and the drinking and that's where I kind of split ways because they wanted me to keep going out and drinking and I just I wasn't young anymore.
	Right. Yeah, I'm 32 but my liver is 800.
	Now, okay, let me ask you this.
	Imagine that your father was out somewhere and you saw him get into a fight with someone and it wasn't that person's fault.
	And your father starts wailing on this other young man or whatever, right?
	Would you intervene to save the young man?
	Yeah, I would.
	Would you feel that by restraining your father or even putting him in a chokehold so that he understood that he had to stop, would you feel, if you were defending someone else, right, some guy in a bar, would you feel that you were being a terrible person by preventing your father from wailing on some guy in a bar?
	Not initially, but afterwards, yeah, probably.
	But why? Why?
	Why? Just because growing up, my family used to make fun of me.
	You know the movie Problem Child?
	No. There's a movie, I think it's called Problem Child, where the kid is just a big menace and creates a whole bunch of issues.
	They used to make fun of me and call me the problem child.
	Growing up, I was praised by...
	But also at the same time, I was like kicked down in the dirt.
	So like I was telling you earlier, like I had no way of rationalizing what was good and what was bad.
	So you understand that you're arguing my side of the story here?
	Yes. Oh yes, of course.
	Yeah. Okay.
	So why do you feel...
	Sorry, go ahead. There's a...
	I don't know if cognitive dissonance is the correct term.
	I don't have a good grasp.
	And that's why my mind always races.
	It's just like, I don't know what is correct or not.
	And I'm trying to help you with that.
	Yeah. Now you thinking That you are hurting your father by preventing him from choking you out?
	That is an incorrect perspective.
	That's wrong. You are saving yourself from harm.
	The idea that you're inflicting harm by protecting yourself from being choked out and possibly dying, frankly, right?
	I mean, you start to mess with people's windpipe?
	That's some serious shit, right?
	It's because he did it to me once before, and I let him do it, and I didn't fight back.
	And after that, I promised myself that if it ever happened again, I would.
	Okay, so you made yourself a promise to defend yourself.
	Now, personally, I gotta tell you, just like man-to-man, brother-to-brother, I've never had anyone choke me out.
	But I feel pretty confident in saying that if somebody does choke me out, we're fucking done.
	Like, I don't know where there is to go from there.
	But for you, it's like you go back, right?
	And whenever I confront to ask them about it, to ask for like an apology, I always get the answer, well, I've done some things.
	Right. Because you're in a situation...
	But it's so vague. No, I get it.
	Why would you say that? You have to be some of that vagueness here too, right?
	But you understand that if somebody's willing to choke out his own child, there's not a whole heap of conscience there that you're going to have to leverage, right?
	You might as well be asking him for something in Japanese.
	He doesn't speak that language.
	But you keep going back, right?
	And that's why I say I'm naive.
	No, you're not naive.
	You're propagandized.
	You know, somebody pointed it out.
	In the chat and said, family is everything and racism is evil is completely contradictory, which it is.
	Because if family is everything, it means that those who are the most closest to you genetically are the most valuable.
	But if you say that about your race, then you're a racist, right?
	Anyway, so I need to understand why.
	Okay, let's say that you saw your father beating up a child.
	Would you intervene? Of course.
	Okay. If you left a mark on your father by pulling him off and preventing him from beating up on a child, would you feel bad?
	Well, like I said earlier, probably later, but it was a good act.
	But why? I don't know. How could it be a good act and then you feel bad about it?
	I don't know. Well, yes, you do.
	I'm sorry, you don't get that in this conversation.
	Nobody ever does. I don't take it personally.
	Nobody ever gets that. You do know.
	You know exactly why. I'm not saying you know it consciously, but you know it.
	Do you feel this makes you like him?
	Oh, that's a good...
	That's spot on.
	It makes me feel like I put myself in his position, yeah.
	Right, right.
	But it's not the same.
	Because it's in defense.
	It's not out of anger or emotional response.
	It's complicated, for sure.
	Yeah.
	You had, at that time, a quarter-century experience of violence from your father, right?
	You said you were in your mid-20s, right?
	Yeah. That was in my mid-twenties, yeah.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you had a quarter century of experience of violence with your father, right?
	So being around your father means at some point, sooner or later, there's going to be violence, right?
	Correct. So it's kind of like a boxing ring.
	I mean, you get into a boxing ring and then you get hit.
	You're going to be like, I had no way of knowing.
	It's like when you came in with shorts and boxing gloves on, there was a ding-ding, and then there was a guy circling you, and yeah, you're going to get hit, or you're going to hit someone, right?
	Or both, right? That's the game.
	That's the deal. That's the whole sport, right?
	So you get in and around your dad, there's going to be violence, right?
	So one level of self-defense is I'm going to punch back, right?
	Do you know what the real level of self-defense is?
	Getting the hell away.
	Don't get in the ring. And that's what I learned.
	The hard way. Right.
	Don't be around violent people, man.
	Now, that's tough for you.
	Because that's Your way of relating.
	But being around this level of violence is why your mind is racing.
	Remember I said violence is when we're not safe.
	Mind racing is when we're not safe.
	That's my nature.
	I think of myself as somebody running towards the fire and not away from it.
	Well, that's why you do what you do for a living, right?
	Yeah. But the fire is not evil.
	It's just its nature.
	It's itself. Yeah, that's pure nature.
	Now, your father, though, beat up on a child, right?
	And continued to do that violence into the child's adulthood.
	And then, he was able to stop being violent towards you when you fought back, right?
	Which means, you know what that means?
	It means that for 25 years, he could have stopped anytime he wanted.
	You just didn't have the incentive.
	That's what really hurts, because I learned that from your show, from listening to other listeners, and you brought that point up, and it hit home so hard to me.
	Right. What's your current status of your relationship with your dad?
	Unfortunately, I still live with them, but I try to avoid them as much as I can.
	I don't eat dinner with them.
	I don't Hang on a sec.
	You were just telling me how much you get paid from the government.
	It's because of my dog.
	They watch my dog and my dog is literally the only thing I have.
	I love dogs too, man.
	You're going to have to step me through this one.
	You're going to have to step me through this one.
	I'm gone like six months out of the year.
	I feel like I owe them a debt.
	So I have to be around.
	How old is your dog?
	She'll be six in May.
	So what's the plan?
	You know, she could live another ten years.
	Well, thankfully I'm gone a lot throughout the year.
	Dude, dude, dude, you're killing me.
	You're killing me. I got you.
	You're killing me. What do you mean you're gone?
	Are you going to be 42 and still living at home?
	Well, what do I do?
	What do you mean, what do you do?
	You don't have to ask me that.
	What do you mean, what do you do?
	But that's what I'm saying. Do I just leave my dog behind, the only thing that I have?
	I would not leave your dog with an abusive man.
	Trust me, I have gray hairs, and so it's what gives me gray hairs.
	No, you find the dog a good home and you get a life for yourself.
	Come on. You're 32 years old.
	It's time for your life to start.
	I can't give her away.
	Why? Because she saved my life.
	Yeah, she's a dog.
	I had a shotgun pointed at my head.
	My own loaded shotgun.
	And she saved my life.
	I think that's great. I'm very glad that she's loyal.
	I'm very glad that she's a pack animal and I'm very glad she bonded with you.
	That's wonderful. She's not your wife.
	She's not your child.
	It's a dog. And if you set fire to your entire future for the sake of a dog, I'm going to have to ask you, most respectfully and with great love and affection, to reorganize your priorities.
	Do you want a wife? Do you want kids?
	Yeah. I do.
	How on earth are you going to get that, living under the roof of a man who tortured and abused you as a child?
	I can't.
	You just can't.
	Okay.
	The dog is an excuse.
	I realized that a couple months ago, once I started seeking out therapy for my depression.
	And listen, I don't want to sound down on the dog.
	I really don't. I love dogs.
	I really do. They were great pals when I was growing up.
	So I get your affection, and I'm not trying to dismiss it at all.
	And if you were 22, that'd be one thing, but you're 32 years old.
	I guess it's a crutch.
	Yeah. It keeps you tied to your parents.
	It keeps you tied to your childhood.
	It keeps you tied to a system of abuse.
	Which means you don't have to walk out, blink from the sudden sunlight, and get your own life going.
	Far away from all this shit, man.
	Somebody pointed a shotgun at you?
	No, it was my own.
	I pointed it at myself.
	I had a loaded shotgun against my forehead.
	Oh, you were going to kill yourself?
	Yeah. When was this?
	It was around the same time I was 25.
	It was like a month or so after my dad, that incident with my dad.
	Right. So your dog saved your life, but now the way you repay your dog saving your life is you kind of wreck your life by staying at home.
	I don't think that that's what the dog wanted for you, man.
	I'm pretty sure that's not what the dog wanted for you.
	Or wants for you. No.
	I guess if I could reason with her and talk with her, she'd probably tell me to get the hell away.
	She would say, you're only here for six months of the year anyway.
	And I don't want to be standing between you and your future.
	You know, maybe you have a nonviolent friend that you can leave your dog with and spend time with your dog.
	I don't have any friends since I left my other friends behind.
	Right. So you're kind of in nowhere land, right?
	Because you're not in dysfunctional, drunken party town, and you're also not in rational, sensible, mature town, right?
	You're just kind of stuck between two worlds, right?
	I'm doing what I should have been taught to do when I was growing up is figuring my shit out.
	Right. You know, when did you last date?
	Four years ago.
	Do you want to bring a date home to your dad?
	Well, my dad's charming to other people.
	Not to anybody who's got Any kind of insight.
	Your dad can fool the foolish.
	That's probably a good point.
	Now that I recognize that, I'll probably use that from now on.
	What do you mean? Every chick that I brought home thought he was charming.
	It never worked out, so I guess it says something.
	Well, except if you bring a woman home, she meets your dad, And you're still living there and she knows that he's not charming.
	She ain't coming back.
	That's the problem, right?
	So they either stay and it doesn't work out or they run like hell and it doesn't work out.
	Yeah. Tell me about your depression.
	Plus it's a self-confidence issue.
	Well, the dog is bonded and loves you, right?
	Well, I was talking about women, not the dog.
	No, no, no, but what I'm saying, I'm not saying, I'm totally confident with my dog, right?
	No, but this is one of the reasons that people are drawn to dogs in particular, right?
	Is that a dog is overjoyed to see you, a dog would bond with you, a dog is always, you know, there for you, right?
	Doesn't judge you, doesn't have any higher aspirations for your moral excellence or this bond, right?
	Yeah, she's just been a net positive.
	I run with her.
	It's just a net positive relationship.
	Yeah. Yes, it is.
	Yes, it is. But it's not a wife and kids.
	No, it's not. Much so I love dogs, it's still just a dog.
	And right now, again, I think it's an excuse.
	So what I mean is that you're confident of always having a positive reception from your dog, but trying to get a positive reception from a woman is a different matter, right?
	Yeah. I guess what happens is in the initial phase, I come off as confident and strong, but as it gets more serious, I get more clingy. And then that's when it falls apart.
	Well, any woman who's willing to come into your world ain't going to help you out of it, and you need to get out.
	And that's why I kind of struggle with myself.
	It's like, how can I have, like, I have a job that It should make me feel strong and confident, but I don't.
	Well, because you're still living under the roof of the man who tortured and abused you.
	You're still hanging around that house waiting for the apology.
	Waiting for him to get better.
	Waiting for him to fix things.
	Waiting for him to be a decent dad.
	It's never going to happen.
	It's like you're waiting in a graveyard waiting for everyone to get up and start dancing.
	It's not going to happen.
	You circling the drain waiting for an impossibility to manifest is your dad winning every day.
	He's not going to be who you want him to be.
	Thank you.
	He never will be who you need him to be.
	And the depression probably arises, in my humble opinion, from avoiding that fact.
	All significant psychological distress arises from the avoidance of legitimate suffering.
	So the saying goes, and I think it's a pretty good one.
	I think I put myself through a lot of self-inflicted suffering, too.
	Needless suffering, I guess, would be a better way to put it.
	And why do you do that?
	In a hope that things will get better, and it makes me feel insane at times.
	It makes you feel what? It makes me feel insane at times.
	But how does inflicting suffering on yourself, how can that make things get better?
	I don't mean logically. I mean logically we know it can't, but I mean in terms of your heart's reasoning.
	That's what I'm saying is like I do it because I think hopefully things will change and they never do.
	What things? I was just like hoping they would come around and apologize sincerely for what they did and you know Do you know that I have an equal chance of getting an apology from my mother and from my father?
	And my father's dead.
	Sorry about that. The app ended.
	So what I'm going to do is just do that last little speech, and you're certainly welcome to call back, my friend.
	I'm sorry that we didn't get to finish the conversation.
	So the speech was that, in my experience, and I played sort of the half-century-plus card here, and having talked with thousands of people over the course of this show, having known hundreds of people over the course of my life, and having had in-depth conversation both online and offline with many, many people about stuff, You have about maximum 48-hour window when someone does something really bad.
	They have about 48 hours on the outside because what happens is when you do something really bad, you look at yourself and you say, oh my god, I think it's just something really bad.
	And that conflicts or crashes into your sense that you're a good person, right?
	Now, a mature and wise person says, yeah, I did something bad.
	I have the capacity to do bad things.
	I'm a human being, and human beings have the capacity to do bad things, and I just did a bad thing, which means I better figure out the root cause of why I did a bad thing.
	I need to go make amends. I need to apologize.
	I need to own what I did, you know, all of the stuff that we know we need to do.
	And that happens to maybe 1% of the people 1% of the time.
	What most people do is they say, I did a bad thing, and there's this shock, this cognitive dissonance.
	They did a bad thing. It crashes into their sense of being a good person.
	And so what they do is they immediately start working on the excuses.
	They immediately start working on the blame game.
	And they say, well, that seemed to be pretty bad, but, you know, we'd been drinking and I was tired and I just lost it and it was the other person's fault.
	They started it. Maybe I didn't handle it as well as I could, but it really wasn't my fault.
	Like, you know, they just start creating this narrative, this story, this nonsense.
	That wasn't their fault.
	It wasn't that bad. And then there's no need to make restitution.
	In fact, if they end up blaming the other person, the person that they have wronged, they now expect that person who was the victim to make restitution to them, and that's it, man.
	People never come back from that.
	They go off the reservation of reality, and they go into the woods, they never come back.
	Now, normally what happens, I mean, the only thing I've really seen vividly is somebody does something wrong and they say, oh my God, I did something wrong.
	Oh, I'm so sorry. I can't believe I did this, blah, blah, blah, right?
	And then you get into that. But the longer that they're away from you and the longer it takes for them to apologize to you, the more likely it is.
	In fact, it becomes to me a virtual certainty that they've simply sealed themselves into a tomb of blaming and Self-praise.
	And they've got the dopamine rush of, oh, I guess I wasn't a bad person.
	I guess I really...
	And they just don't come back.
	So, you know, to the listener, right?
	You're waiting in a house.
	He's 32 years old.
	And your father needs you to wait in this house.
	He needs you to stick around. Because as long as you're sticking around, he wasn't that bad a dad.
	But the moment you aren't sticking around...
	Well, he has to accept that maybe he wasn't the guy he thought he was.
	And so he needs you to stick around so he doesn't face his own history and what he's done.
	And you're not doing him any favors by covering that up.
	So I hope that helps. Thanks everyone for listening, for conversing with me.
	It's a great pleasure tonight to chat with you.
	And freedomain.com forward slash donate.

▲