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Feb. 28, 2021 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:18:29

"HELP I WAS RAISED BY A VIOLENT SINGLE BLACK MOM!" Freedomain Call In

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	Well, well, well, well, well, good evening, my friends.
	How are you doing? I'm from...
	Oh!
	Do you really need to know?
	Do you need to know? You don't need to know.
	You don't need to know.
	You don't care where I'm from.
	You only care where I'm going to, into that place called wisdom, knowledge, virtue.
	And with any luck, well, happiness as a whole.
	So, we are here.
	For our Friday night call-in show, Jamal Green said, We didn't flip Georgia Blue for Biden to airstrike Syria.
	We flipped Georgia Blue for our $2,000 stimulus checks.
	That's a refreshing amount of honesty, wouldn't you say?
	That is very refreshing honesty.
	He flipped Georgia Blue to get his $2,000 stimulus checks.
	That's very honest, very direct.
	Give me my free stuff and I'll vote for you.
	Because you see, bribing a politician is absolutely immoral.
	But a politician bribing you is pretty much the foundation of modern democracy.
	Somebody else said, damn, Biden sent bombs to Syria before he sent the 2K stimmy?
	And the stock market is shit?
	Well, at least Orange Man gone, right?
	Just crazy. Cenk Uygur of the Young Turks wrote, U.S. military admitting they're basically ending F-35, it's a war plane, after wasting one trillion dollars of our money.
	Then corporate Republicans and Democrats say there isn't enough money left for COVID relief, minimum wage hike, etc.
	because of deficits. Always have enough when it comes to your donors.
	It's funny, right?
	It's a funny, funny thing.
	Which is... People are constantly complaining about the politicians not doing what they want, but they still won't be open to a state.
	The society, like, they just, it's just, it's incredible, like, how deep this propaganda goes.
	They just, you know, if I were to be, if I were to ever talk to Cenk Uygur, if I were ever on a show and it's a state, the society, you've got to be insane!
	And it's like, yeah, they just...
	The end of the F-35 plane, it's not going to replace the current plane.
	They wasted a trillion dollars of our money.
	Yeah. And yet, even with that, he'd be like, yes, but the next politician's going to be oh so much better.
	He's going to be just right.
	And, you know, this is...
	You know what this is?
	It's an abusive relationship.
	That's all it is.
	Just an abusive relationship.
	You ever have... Okay, guys here will kind of know what I'm talking about here, right?
	So, you ever have this girl, you kind of float around her because you want her to be your girlfriend?
	You think, usually because she's pretty, right?
	And she may have charisma, charm, or other things going for her, but usually it's because she's pretty, at least when you're young, right?
	And it's nothing wrong with pretty.
	Nothing wrong with pretty. But she has a boyfriend, right?
	She has a boyfriend, and he's a jerk.
	And she constantly complains about him.
	Oh, he didn't do this. He doesn't care about this.
	He's messy. He doesn't, you know, he doesn't have a job.
	He sponges off me, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
	And all she does is complain about him.
	And then, like a sane Machiavellian male, you say, maybe he's not the guy for you.
	Of course you've been in this situation, right?
	Of course you've been in this situation.
	Every red-blooded male has, right?
	Some girl, some woman complaining, complaining, complaining about her boyfriend.
	And listen, you can tell.
	You can tell he's a jerk.
	You can tell he doesn't have a future.
	You can tell he's a loser. He might be a pretty loser who does a lot of sit-ups, but loser nonetheless.
	And then you say, you know, all you do is complain about this guy.
	Maybe he's not the guy for you.
	But I love him.
	You see, that's an abusive relationship.
	And it can be even not that just he's a loser, but he actually is abusive.
	He might be dragging him into a quasi-criminal world of drugs.
	He might be saying mean things to her.
	He might be, you know, this is a way that you get sabotaged in relationships.
	You'll notice this.
	It took me a little while to see this, but you'll see this sometimes in relationships, and if you're in one, God, don't stay.
	And what happens is, you're on some path to success, and you have a very important day the next day, right?
	You have a very big meeting, you've got a big job interview, you've got something.
	And I'll speak from the male-female perspective, because that was what I experienced, but You've got some really important day.
	You really need to be alert and well-rested and ready to roll.
	And that time, the night before, is the night before when all the shit comes out in your relationship, right?
	All the problems come out in your relationship.
	All the complaints and another thing.
	And you end up fighting all night.
	You barely get any sleep.
	And you've really got to struggle through the big important meeting you've got going on the next day, right?
	Well, what's really going on? Well, I can tell you.
	I can tell you. What's really going on is your girlfriend is afraid that you're going to become so successful that she won't be able to keep you.
	You understand, right? Your girlfriend's going to complain.
	She's concerned. She's worried.
	She's scared that what's going to happen is that you're going to become so successful that you're going to dump her.
	She's not attractive enough.
	She's not positive enough.
	She's not smart enough.
	She's not ambitious enough.
	She's not successful enough. She's not educated.
	Something's going to happen. You're going to outgrow her.
	Have you guys ever been in one of these relationships where you just can't get ahead because the moment you start getting some kind of success, you get sabotaged?
	Problems start. Anxiety start.
	Or it could be if your girlfriend is really passive-aggressive, it could be even that she doesn't start bitching at you about some things.
	She just starts to have some sort of internal collapse herself and needs you to prop her up.
	And just keep her going.
	Just nervous. Just scared of everything.
	She's having a really tough time.
	It's a really tough time. I need you to be here for me.
	I need you. My God.
	I've got to tell you, and maybe this is just my bad luck in my youthful dating life, but men alive, there are so many women out there who just basically can't handle reality.
	They're scared to make a phone call.
	They're scared to go and ask for what they want.
	They're scared of job interviews.
	I remember dating a girl in my early 20s, late teens, early 20s, something like that.
	Anyway, sorry, it's a bit of a blur now.
	And she was taking engineering and she had crippling exam anxiety.
	And, you know, it didn't really, I mean, you couldn't help her with it.
	It didn't, like, it went really deep.
	It was her body saying, you'd be better off having kids.
	But, man, the number of incompetent women out there.
	And, I don't know, it's hard to say.
	I have a male sort of standard incompetence or incompetence.
	It's like all the people who, oh, we've got cheap labor coming in from Mexico.
	You know, just go talk to some of your American friends, if you have American friends.
	Especially if they're fairly well off, right?
	And they've bought decent houses and, you know, built by this very cheap labor, very cheap labor, and just ask them how that's been going, right?
	How's that been going? And I can tell you, I can tell you.
	It's going terribly.
	Half their houses are falling apart.
	There are problems with the foundations.
	There are problems with the waterproofing on the balcony.
	Just all kinds of problems.
	How's that cheap labor working out?
	Turns out nothing's more expensive than cheap labor.
	It's another thing, too.
	Like, as you know, a lot of the H-1B visa program, it drives workers from India to come into big American tech companies Where they kind of burrow themselves in.
	And it's pretty well known in the industry that if you get Indians, they will only ever hire other Indians.
	And, you know, the fact that free speech has kind of collapsed in the tech giants at the same time as you have a lot of foreign labor.
	Cheap labor coming in, right?
	Well... When I was back on Twitter, I would have debates, arguments sometimes, with the vast group of Indians who believe that the only reason that England had an industrial revolution was it stole trillions and trillions of dollars of massive wealth and technology from India.
	Spoiler! We didn't.
	We didn't. Yeah.
	That caste system, the burning of the brides, the endless child abuse in India, it turns out that's not a great foundation to build a modern free economy on.
	But nonetheless, you have people who, you know, wealth exploded in the West because of freedom, economic freedom in particular.
	Other cultures and governments don't want to try and reproduce that because they enjoy pillaging.
	I mean, bribery in India is like the second largest sector of the economy after, I don't know, bride-selling or something like that, right?
	But they don't want to give the kind of freedoms that produce the economic growth in the West.
	So what they have to do is they say, aha!
	You know, it's the old, it's the leftist bullshit, right?
	Someone's doing better than me.
	Therefore, they stole from me.
	I mean, it's really sad, right?
	It's really sad. It's really, it's a pathetic, pitiful, self-hating, useless, loser-ville thinking.
	Someone's doing better than me.
	They stole from me.
	They cheated me.
	It should have been mine.
	And so you, you know, get a bunch of Indians who come in and they believe that the West stole All their wealth, and that's where the Industrial Revolution comes from.
	Turns out, not very pro-free speech for white males.
	Isn't that a strange thing?
	Isn't that a strange thing?
	Oh, well. These things are all...
	Oh, it's all so tiresome.
	All right. Are we ready with the listener?
	Are we ready with the caller?
	I am. Just tap on the call and show it.
	All right, all right, all right.
	All right. All right.
	Good evening, everybody. How are you doing?
	James, James! Are you ready?
	I am ready, and we're going to get our caller queued up.
	If you are ready, please to let me know.
	Oh, dear. Can you hear me?
	Yes, go ahead. Oh, sorry.
	All right. So, caller, when you're ready, go ahead and tap on the call-in thing, and I'm going to read off your email.
	All right. So, caller writes, Hi, Stefan.
	My name is Daniel. I am 28.
	In two short years, I will be 30.
	I haven't done much with my life.
	I have crippling anxiety and depression, which makes it close to impossible to achieve any of my goals.
	I have no sense of self-worth.
	I am currently on Zoloft and an anti-anxiety med to help me survive the day.
	Before the meds, I was having constant, unending panic attacks.
	My anxiety was at about a 10, and I couldn't function.
	All I wanted was for the pain to end, which I could only think was death.
	Since I was a kid, I would either be overrun by anxiety or depression to a lesser degree than now.
	Over the years, it got worse and worse, and I feared one day that I would end up like this.
	I've gone to therapy for many years, since I was 8 to 24, before...
	Forced by the school, and later in hopes of me getting better before it was too late.
	By each therapist I felt betrayed, they would ask me to forgive my mom and say that she wasn't that bad.
	I felt like they took to the struggling black single mom is strong narrative that she spins.
	My sessions usually end up with me arguing and explaining all the reasons she is bad and hurt me, like hitting me, screaming at me, gaslighting.
	Getting my uncle to beat me.
	Using my cousin as a weapon to hurt me when she was upset.
	Blamed me for ruining her life.
	Didn't take care of me to the point where I got diabetes and went blind for a year.
	Constantly made weird sexual remarks to me and grabbed my butt a lot and so on and so on.
	I try to study things but I just end up avoiding it or having panic attacks while trying to study.
	I failed out of college twice when trying to write my final papers, but I couldn't.
	I call it the wall when this happens, and I'm trying to do an activity, but I just can't do it.
	Like, there was a wall stopping me.
	My days are mostly spent watching YouTube and porn.
	Well, mine is the porn since starting the medication.
	I don't really feel sexual pleasure, maybe like on a scale of 1 to 3 sometimes, but most of the time I don't feel anything.
	I still feel the urge, but no payoff, which leaves me feeling depressed and empty inside.
	I do have friends, but I end up ruining most of my friendships through how depressed I get and my lack of trust.
	I would go on and on, telling them how they don't love me or care about me and how I'm a worthless human, just bashing myself non-stop until there was no one there to listen.
	I do know these things are irrational, like me having value and people caring about me, But in the moment, it seems all too real.
	I know I've brought value to others by saving a person's life, talking people off of killing themselves, providing emotional support, defending kids growing up from bullies.
	I volunteered for many years at a soup kitchen, but inside, I feel like I have no value.
	How do I stop being a worthless person so I can move on with my life and not be a waste of space when I'm 30?
	Hey, Daniel. Are you with us, brother?
	Yes, I'm here. All right.
	Well, listen, thanks for the call, man.
	I really appreciate you calling in.
	Oh, man! There's so much to talk about.
	I mean, that's a hell of a letter to hear, and I'm proud that you have selected this as a place where you can vent and hopefully get some comfort.
	I mean, I'm sure there's more that you want to add to what you wrote.
	Is there anything that you wanted to talk about now before we start diving in?
	Yeah, I guess I just have a very internalized self-hatred and I just spread it to several people, myself, and I just can't really do much.
	Right, Snow, I understand.
	I understand. So, do you have a place you want to start?
	Do you want to let me get rolling with the stuff that's on my mind?
	Or how would you best like to approach this?
	I'll let you get rolling.
	Okay, so...
	Can we talk a little bit first about the diabetes?
	What was the story?
	I was always, like, overweight as a kid.
	My mom would just, like, force me to eat, like, really crappy food.
	And, like, run...
	12 or so, I, um, yeah, I became blind one day.
	I woke up blind.
	It was quite terrifying.
	I was screaming, um, because I didn't know what was happening.
	I just couldn't see. And they found out that I had, like, cataracts, and I had cataracts because, like, I had untreated diabetes.
	Um, my blood sugar was extremely high, like, probably near comicus levels.
	Um, yeah, so I had to get, like, surgery, um, But I took a whole year to get the surgery and for the recovery and stuff, and I was out of school.
	I had to have home tutoring sessions.
	I had to stay in the hospital for almost a few months.
	It was pretty terrifying.
	Oh, man. I mean, that's about as terrifying a thing as I can imagine.
	I quite like sight. You know, it's one of my favorite senses.
	And so, I mean, you were very much overweight.
	I mean, what was your diet like?
	Like, what was going on? It was pretty much McDonald's and, like, upper fast food all the time.
	I'm still overweight now.
	I still continue eating horribly.
	I was just like binging all the time.
	It was like my emotional release.
	My mom just kept giving me food like I guess in exchange for like hurting me.
	She used to like buy me a bunch of things like gifts and other things I guess in exchange for her treating me horribly in a way.
	It was kind of like buying me off.
	Right. I mean when you have I mean to me when I see overeating what I see is somebody who is experiencing very little pleasure in their life.
	And if you're not experiencing – like we all want to feel pleasure and we all want to feel happiness.
	But if you're feeling very little pleasure in your life, one of the things that you can do is you can just eat stuff you like and feel better that way, right?
	So it's a form of self-medication for misery.
	At least that's the way that I see it.
	Did that fit your circumstances at all?
	Oh yeah, completely. It was completely self-medication.
	I would just eat whatever to try and feel better because I was bullied a lot and I got into a lot of fights and stuff because of my weight and I felt kind of alone, isolated, especially growing up.
	I had no friends and my only outlet was my mom and my family who were pretty abusive and crazy.
	Alright, so let's shift to your mom.
	Now, the one thing I can guarantee you is I don't care if your mom is black, white, polka dot, green.
	I don't care if she's semi-translucent.
	I don't care if she's from another dimension.
	If she's a bad parent, I'll be pretty frank about that.
	I guess you're saying some of the therapists are like, but she's a strong black single mother, blah, blah, like that cliche.
	And so maybe they didn't want to say anything negative about that.
	I guarantee you I'll be fair with regards to that, at least as I see it.
	Whether I'm objectively fair is another matter, but I'm not afraid of puncturing the cliche, so to speak.
	Okay. Thank you for that.
	Yeah. Thank you. So what did she do, man?
	What was the help?
	Um, yeah, she was just verbally abusive, screaming at me a lot.
	She would tell me that she would replace me or, like, get rid of me.
	She, uh, I don't know, would tell me that I was the reason she didn't do anything with her life, um, and that it kind of ruined her life.
	She would just hit me a lot, scream at me, call me smart mouth.
	She would beat me a lot like whenever she like kind of got upset or especially if like I got into a fight at school where people were picking on me for being fat she would like get upset with me and beat me if the teacher was called or she would call my uncle to beat me too um and yeah it was just she was just like gaslighting and constantly saying that When I talk to her now, she will say, like, oh, none of that happened, or she doesn't remember any bad things happening.
	And it's just kind of hard to, like...
	I didn't really, really understand reality for a long time, because I just tried to, like...
	I tried to understand her point of view, which was nothing happened.
	Bad idea.
	I mean, I understand why we want to empathize with the abuser because we think or somehow imagine that's going to keep us safe, but it's like buying temporary peace at the expense of severe psychological harm, right?
	Yeah, it was completely bullshit.
	I was just fighting myself trying to remember things and conjure reality.
	Not conjure, but like Remember reality.
	Well, and I assume that this was a demand that your mother had, which was if you only understood me or empathized with me, we'd get along a lot better, right?
	Yeah. She would cry a lot, a lot, whenever she would get her way and manipulate me and talk about killing herself.
	I forgot to say that, too. Oh, man.
	I'm trying to think of, like, every evil medal that a mom could get that she didn't get.
	You're the reason I'm a failure.
	I'm going to kill myself.
	I'm going to abandon you.
	I'm going to get rid of you.
	These are all about as horrendous a set of statements that any mother could ever make to her child.
	I'm so sorry, man.
	What a horrible shit show to have to struggle through.
	I also forgot. She knew she was horrible because she told me that she would Because, like, the ACS was involved, of course, because of the school and the fights and everything else, and she told me if I say anything, I will, like, be taken away from her and I'll be raped, pretty much, and I'll have to eat the white stuff in the walls and whatnot.
	I was, like, maybe, like, four or five, six or so, around that age.
	Wait, so she said that if you complained about her as a mother, the state would take you away and you'd get raped?
	Yeah, I would get raped, drugged, and I'll have to eat white stuff in the walls or whatnot, because I would be starved enough.
	So... I don't get the white stuff.
	I mean, just help me with the white stuff on the walls thing.
	It was like this famous story about these kids who were orphaned who were eating white stuff on the walls and she was using that to terrorize me.
	It was like this famous story from many years ago about these, like, yeah.
	Like they had to eat the plaster on the walls or something?
	Yeah, the plaster on the walls, yeah.
	Holy shit. So she's like, well, I am a shitty parent, but I'm a step up from a rapist in starvation.
	This is her big competition, right?
	Yeah, pretty much.
	So at the age of four, she's talking to you about rape?
	I mean, how would you even know what that was?
	I... I'm not doubting you.
	I'm just trying to understand the context.
	People touching me about my permission and stuff like that.
	She was always talking about that.
	Yeah. Now, do you have any siblings?
	No. Well, I have a half-blood brother.
	Wait, that was a long pause.
	What do you mean? It's kind of a long pause.
	Well, let me just run through.
	They're half-blood, but I did grow up with a cousin who's kind of like a sibling.
	My half-blood brother and sister didn't live with me.
	They lived with their mom and my dad.
	My mom and dad aren't together.
	They were never together. My mom was the other woman, I believe, but I'm not for sure because she never really would tell me.
	So your dad had a marriage and she was the mistress or something?
	I don't think he was even married.
	He was just with some woman and he was cheating on her with my mom.
	Dude, you are not helping me break cliches about the black community here, so I'm afraid we're going to just have to start again and you're going to have to...
	No, I'm just kidding. I'm kidding.
	Oh, man. Man, that's rough.
	That's rough. Now, what was the story between your dad and your mom?
	I mean, did they ever try to make a go of it, or what happened with his original...
	I have no clue.
	Like, she never would really tell me, but he would come over, and I know they would have sex, but I'm pretty sure he was still with other women, but that happened for a long time.
	Hey, man, those STDs aren't going to spread themselves.
	You've got to get behind them, give them a little help.
	Yeah. Completely.
	I remember one time they were like naked in bed and I came in.
	Like that was me when I was like seven because I had like a nightmare.
	So like they were at least sleeping together until I was like seven years old.
	But he like later remarried and stuff, Sarah.
	Did he ever throw his ring into the...
	Did he ever throw his hat into the parenting ring at all?
	Did he like ever... Mostly just cursing at me, telling me I'm like something's wrong with my head.
	Uh, the one time, the last time I really talked to him was, like, when I was, like, just about, I think after I, after I was done being blind, I mean, not done being blind, but, like, when I, after I had the surgery and stuff, like, I was doing homework late at night, and he came over really drunk.
	He drank a lot, and, uh, he was saying he's the authority, he's the police, and he, like, hit me, uh, because I wasn't respecting him or something, because I was trying to do my homework.
	It was, like, 12 a.m., I was trying to do it at the last minute.
	He's like 6'1", not 6'1", he's like maybe 6'2", or something.
	I was just really tiny.
	He hit me so hard, I flew across the room and I broke one of my favorite games.
	Like the disc cracked and stuff.
	Oh, like the CD or DVD games?
	Yeah, the CD. It was like Moth Tycoon.
	Oh man. That was the last time I really talked to him, because there was a whole thing of me running to the kitchen and grabbing a knife, and I was just in the corner.
	That's something I used to do a lot, just grab a knife and go in the corner to tell everybody to get away from me.
	Well, I mean, at this point, if you hit a child, That hard.
	I mean, you can just kill them outright.
	So this is primal self-defense that you've got going on here, right?
	With the knife in the corner and make sure no one can get out from behind you and have something stabby so that you might have a decent chance at surviving.
	I mean, is that a wrong way to characterize it or is that what you were going through?
	That's what I was going through.
	I was just in the corner pretty much.
	Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
	No, no, go ahead. Go ahead. I'm all ears.
	Keep going. Sorry. I did the same thing with my cousin, mostly.
	Like, just, like, in the corner.
	He's, like, bigger than me. And he was, like, five years older.
	He used to beat me up a lot or scream at me or harass me.
	Pretty much torture me, honestly.
	Yeah, it was just, like, when the fights broke out, I would just run away and get a knife and go into the corner, pretty much, and just try to...
	Hang on. Hang on, man.
	Are you smiling at the moment?
	Because I'm kind of getting a smiley vibe from your voice.
	Because you're not trying to invite me into this was kind of cute and funny stuff, right?
	Because, you know, I've nagged a whole bunch of listeners on this show over the years about, like, I don't go to giggle stuff with child abuse.
	I don't go to smiley stuff.
	I just want to double check with you on that because I know that that's the way that people present it because it's like, oh, it was so crazy that blah, blah, blah, right?
	And it's almost like a half joke, but, I mean, this is about as bad as I've ever heard.
	Yeah. I'm sorry.
	Yes, I was. Yeah, I need you to slow down.
	Let's stay with the feelings here, man, because if you try and skate past this stuff, we're going to end up with a very frustrating, non-progressive conversation, so to speak.
	So I sympathize.
	I'm not blaming you at all.
	I totally sympathize with where you're coming from.
	But this is about as funny as a heart attack, right?
	Yeah, like my whole thing is the cute and funny thing.
	Yeah, it was so crazy in my house, like some Chris Rock shit, right?
	I mean, it was so crazy. But no, this is like, this is a fucking war zone for a child, right?
	And that's an insult to a war zone, because at least with a war zone, you've got people on your side, you're armed, you're an adult.
	I don't know what this is, but it's kind of hell itself, right?
	Yeah. So, sorry, go ahead.
	Sometimes I, like, mentally try to, like, downplay my own childhood, saying it wasn't that bad in my head.
	Because, like, there are people who have worse childhoods, you know, tell myself, and yeah, I should be doing better in life.
	Well, but that's like when you wake up blind saying, hey, at least I'm not deaf, dumb, and blind.
	It's like, no, no, that's not how life works, right?
	And, of course, when you're a kid, you can only compare your experience to yourself or to some ideal that you might have in your head, but you, you know...
	You can't compare it to other kids you don't know anything about, right?
	I had pretty horrible childhoods too, like in my neighborhood, kind of in my school.
	I had pretty horrible childhoods too.
	I feel like my childhood is kind of like normal for a black family.
	Well, I would say normal for a black family.
	And please don't let me tell you anything about black families.
	But I would say my sort of first thought is...
	Normal for a black family in a particular kind of environment, in a particular kind of neighborhood, in a particular kind of class.
	You know, it's not, you know, it's not Thomas Sowell's family, right?
	Yeah. I'm, like, my mom was making over 100k, so, uh, like, I'm not, like, poor, poor, um, but, like, yeah, we lived in, like, a house and stuff, uh, Okay, so help me understand because I was going to ask about the income thing,
	right? And normally people who are that emotionally chaotic and abusive, you know, I mean, I guess some of them can do well, but it's not the most common thing.
	So, I mean, what did she do?
	Did she make so much money? I don't want to, like, she works for, like, a specific company.
	I don't know if I should, like, say the company.
	Probably not, right? No, no, don't say the company.
	I'm just curious, like, what field is she in?
	She does billing for a specific company.
	She's the head of billing. There are people, she acts really nice and whatnot, and she will change character.
	She acts super nice and pleasant and whatnot.
	And to me, she wouldn't, or sometimes she would be nice and then psychotic.
	So she's the kind of person who, like, she susses out the environment, right?
	And if someone could have power over her, then she's very reasonable.
	But when she has total power over someone else, she turns into, like, psycho witch, right?
	Yes. Okay, okay, okay.
	Did she, I mean, did she date?
	I guess you said that she was having sex with your biological dad.
	I hate to say father, but, sorry, go ahead.
	She's really fat.
	No, she did not eat.
	Oh, so she's...
	Okay, so this is like the stereotype, and it's not particularly black, of course, but the stereotype is obese mother fattens up the son to destroy his sexual market value when he hits his teenage years because she was unsuccessful sexually, and so it had something...
	So she was joining you on this, like, march to an early grave, so to speak, with this obesity stuff, right?
	Yeah. Yeah, she's morbidly obese.
	She's going to dialysis.
	She didn't take care of herself.
	She's going blind. Her mom died from diabetes, pretty much.
	She lost her toes. She couldn't walk.
	She also went blind.
	And she died of a stroke or something, but that was probably because of all the stuff she was doing to her body and she never took care of herself.
	Her mom died alone with no friends, pretty pathetically.
	Wow. That's a horrible thing, but pretty pathetic.
	A fact is a fact, man.
	And look, the fact that this happened in your family is, I assume, one of the things that's kind of scary delivering shit out of you, right?
	Yeah. Which is that, let's not do that, right?
	I'm going towards that way, I feel like, and I don't want to.
	I don't want to do it. I don't want to.
	I don't want to. No, I... I get that.
	No, listen, I totally get that.
	And, you know, good for you, man.
	It's great stuff to call and ask for help.
	You know, man to man, it's not always the easiest thing for us as men to say, I need help, right?
	But, you know, it's good for you, man.
	This is very brave and the right thing to do, I think.
	And I'm sure we can get you some useful stuff out of this.
	But, yeah, just, I mean, for what it's worth, take my admiration for Thank you.
	I've taken the step to ask for help because it's not easy and it's a lot easier to just drip by every day and just trundle along without that big picture.
	Was there something that happened that gave you, you know, like for me, when I got cancer, like, oh, I got the Zoom out, like this is my life as a whole rather than, it's easy to get Kind of consumed up by the everyday.
	Like the time is just like the Pac-Man character, just chewing up your days and they just kind of blow by.
	Was there something that gave you that kind of zoom out where you're like, holy shit, big shape of life, bad, bad, bad.
	I mean, was there something that made you panic?
	Not nothing in particular.
	I always, like, kind of thought about that.
	Like, because I was, like, suicidal since I was eight years old or whatnot, and I just didn't want to have my life to be complete shit.
	I felt like if I buy my time, if I keep waiting, if I be patient, that things will eventually turn out better.
	And when I got older, I, like...
	I saw where I was going.
	I saw how I was acting.
	I didn't want my life to be like my mom.
	That's why I went to therapy. I thought that would help me.
	I kept doing things that I thought were the right thing to do to make myself better, but I never got better.
	I got kind of worse. Are you saying it sort of got worse?
	In what time, you said eight, when you started going to therapy?
	It's like, what, 26 years ago or whatever, right?
	When would you say that you started to really notice things getting worse?
	Uh, things have been worse.
	Like, probably...
	Things have always been really bad.
	I'm trying to think of a specific time things got worse, worse.
	I guess, like, now, recently, things have got completely worse.
	Like, having the pan attacks all the time and having to be on medication in order not to have constant pan attacks.
	Um, my... My body was on all the time.
	I couldn't calm down. I couldn't really sleep.
	I would have constant nightmares every night.
	I dreamed of dying and stuff.
	It was pretty horrible.
	I guess now is a really bad time.
	Do you think it's coming up to 30 as well?
	It's a pretty big milestone, right?
	Yeah. I wanted to become a psychologist Yeah, I was a psychologist at first.
	When I first went to school and I wasn't able to even complete my first year.
	And I tried again and I wasn't able to do it.
	So I kind of feel like a failure, not in regard.
	Because I always thought, once I get away from my house and my mom and stuff, I will just be okay and become a neurologist or a psychologist.
	What I wanted to do and I just couldn't.
	It's a funny thing. I'll just tell you, like, the thought that struck me here was, like, you want to become a psychologist, but having psychologists kind of failed you?
	Yeah. Completely.
	Right. Right.
	Now, dating history?
	Oh, dating history?
	Fuck. I'm not, like, an incel, but I still like an incel.
	Like, emotionally, like...
	The whole, like, no woman will ever want me kind of thing, but, like, I've been with about, like, seven women, or so?
	Dating-wise, like, through dating, I was with a girl for, like, about a year and a half.
	Like, that was my last relationship.
	Well, shit, that's like a real relationship, right?
	Uh, yeah. It's not like a one-night stand or like a fly-by-night thing or like, that's the real thing, right?
	Oh, no. I was always paranoid with STDs.
	So I just stayed away from like having sex with a random woman.
	I was always weird with sex anyway.
	I was paranoid when I was pregnant and STDs.
	I always made sure to have a condom.
	Right, right. Yeah, I mean, listen, I mean, I don't know what race you're dating and it doesn't really matter, but I certainly know that statistics for black women and STDs is pretty grim, right?
	I think it's like half of them have herpes and stuff like that.
	Like, it's pretty rough.
	Yes, completely. I dated Black from...
	I dated, like, all races, pretty much.
	Right. Right. Okay.
	So, what was the arc, if you could tell me a little bit about...
	A year and a half was the longest one, right?
	Yes. Yeah, okay.
	So, if you could tell me a little bit about the sort of arc of that relationship, that'd be helpful.
	The arc of that relationship?
	That was fucking terrible.
	Okay, so the arc of your relationship, it started...
	She was a friend of another friend.
	And, like, he dated her, like, a while ago, and they broke up, and I don't know, I just contacted her out of nowhere, out of the blue, because I just wanted to, like...
	I contacted her...
	God, this sounds so weird.
	I don't, like, really like women sometimes, but, like, I feel like, oh, I'm just gonna date this girl, and I kind of do that.
	And I was like, oh, I'm gonna date her.
	And so I just started talking to her.
	And, yeah, then we started dating her a bit.
	And, um... Yeah, then she stopped talking to me for a while.
	It was kind of random.
	It was, like, 4th of July. We had this whole thing planned, and I was going to bring her out and have a, like, cute, I never, like, I don't know, date or whatever.
	But, I don't know, she stopped talking to me.
	And then maybe a few months passed by, like, because I went to college and I came back.
	And we talked again.
	And, yeah, we, I know, met up and made out and I started dating.
	Should I keep going? Or, yeah, I should keep going probably.
	Well, the arc of the relationship can't end with you started dating, so give me the full story.
	Yeah, and, um, yeah, so we started dating and it was pretty cool, I guess.
	I don't know. Yeah, we just hung out a lot and went out a lot.
	And I kind of, like, after maybe a few months we moved in together because of Like, I wanted to get away from my mom, pretty much, for the most part.
	So, um... Yeah, we moved in together.
	We lived together for about, like, a year, almost.
	And then after I moved out, we kind of, like...
	No, no, no, hang on! It's like you're skipping over the real...
	Here's two pieces of bread, and I'll call it a sandwich.
	It's like, okay, so... When you started living together, I mean, how did that play out?
	Oh, it was, like, a lot of sex.
	Um... We were having a lot of sex before, but she was kind of like my first time, honestly.
	So that was interesting.
	I had my first time around 20 or so.
	Yeah, so we went out.
	It was kind of boring and painful, because she was really depressed, and she was really quiet.
	We would watch anime, play video games together, and have sex, pretty much our whole relationship.
	I did make rules To not, like, you know, like, call each other names or whatnot.
	And if we did, we will have to, like, immediately say sorry and talk about it and stuff.
	So, yeah, I was, like, doing that.
	But, like, it was very painful and boring.
	And she had, like, horrible anxiety, too.
	And I tried to help her get a job.
	And she kind of freaked out before going into the job interview and didn't, you know, go in and do anything.
	And I kind of felt angry and frustrated after that.
	I didn't, like, take it out onto her.
	Oh, so you were trying to coach her to get a job, but she had a panic attack or something before the job interview and just didn't make it?
	Yes. So, sorry, go ahead.
	Oh, no, go ahead, sorry.
	Well, I'm always fascinated by finances.
	I mean, I really am, and I don't mean to sound all kinds of like, I don't know, middle class, bourgeois, whatever, but I'm fascinated by finances because...
	They just played such an important part of my childhood because, you know, we were always broke and facing eviction and I had to get a job when I was 10.
	Like, it was really...
	And so, to me, one of the things that kind of helped me was like, well, shit, I don't want to end up on the streets.
	I mean, I can't get evicted.
	I got no place to go.
	I might be able to crash with a friend's parents for a couple of nights.
	So, finances to me...
	I mean, I kind of cursed that stuff at the time, but looking back on it, it kind of gave me a strong sense of economics.
	It gave me a strong sense of a work ethic.
	There's kind of desperation to it, but nonetheless, it did teach me a lot about reality.
	And so if she can't get a job, for me, when I was a kid, like if you didn't have an income, I didn't really think about the welfare state or anything.
	I obviously wasn't some...
	You know, hot woman who could have some guy pay for all my bills.
	I couldn't get some sugar daddy or whatever, right?
	So for me, it's like, okay, so this woman can't get a job.
	She's got terrible anxiety. She's got depression.
	I always have this basic question.
	I was going to ask this about your mom until you told me what she did, right?
	Okay, what do people live on?
	It's always a fascinating question to me.
	So was she, yeah, how is she surviving if she didn't have a job?
	She lived with her mom. We lived in with her mom.
	Her mom was also a single mom.
	Her mom was, like, living off her welfare.
	Her mom was very poor. She was black.
	She was living off her welfare.
	She had, like, three kids by three different dudes.
	It was, like, a pretty shit situation.
	Oh, so this woman had some significant confidence issues.
	She had anxiety and...
	Panic attacks, and you're like...
	And she's depressed, and you're like, oh, but if we live with your mom, it'll be great.
	Like, I mean, come on. That's not a good plan, right?
	Yeah. I kind of just lived with her out of, like, desperation in a way.
	Kind of, yeah. Because I wanted to get away from my own mom.
	And that would be awesome. Right, right.
	I did have a job, by the way.
	Yeah, so this was your long...
	We'll get to the... I mean, I'm fascinated with the work stuff, too.
	But with regards to...
	The girlfriend situation, this was your longest.
	And how did it, I guess, did it peter out?
	Was there a big explosion? I mean, how did this thing end?
	It petered out. I kind of like knew, like, I don't know.
	I told her I loved her and she kind of freaked out.
	Like, I don't know how to describe her freak out.
	It was just like, I don't want to hear it kind of thing.
	Like, no. It was like she freaked out.
	That's a... Oh, Daniel, that's kind of rough, man.
	That's pretty rough. I love you.
	I don't want to hear that. She didn't say I don't want to hear that, but she covered her ear and then freaked out, and I was like, fuck my life.
	Oh, my God. Now, hang on.
	So the I love you, I mean, if she was kind of depressed and you didn't have many conversations and you just had, well, anime, sex, video games, which, you know, I know for a lot of guys it would be like, paradise!
	But, you know, it gets old pretty quickly, right?
	She was super hot, too. Like, she was really attractive.
	Right. Right. So you're like living the dream, except, you know, God forbid we get what we ask for or we get what we think we want, right?
	That's usually not a good situation as a whole.
	So where did the – so how long in the relationship did you say – did you tell that you left her?
	It was about a year and a half.
	It was like we broke up that day pretty much.
	Oh, help me out, brother.
	You're with this girl for a year and a half.
	You never told her you loved her? What?
	Oh, God. I'm not criticizing.
	Listen, I know that sounds like, oh, my God, that's terrible.
	I'm just like, I'm a little jaw dropped, right?
	Maybe I was a little bit too soon with the I love you stuff.
	So you're with this girl for a year and a half.
	You don't tell her you love her.
	And then the day you tell her you love her, she breaks up with you or you break up.
	Yeah, after she wanted to break up, and she was like, yeah, sure.
	So give me that convo a little.
	I know, I'm sorry, I don't mean to be poking around in the deep testicular scar tissue here or anything, but give me that convo.
	Like, what happened to you?
	Like, did you genuinely feel like you left her?
	Was this like a desperation move?
	Was this a, I gotta put this relationship to the test?
	Or what was, like, if it had been a year and a half, what happened?
	I wanted to test it, yeah.
	I wanted to see if she loved me.
	I kind of did love her, but, like, I wanted to see if she, like, actually loved me and if things would continue.
	Pretty much. So you thought you'd lie to her about loving her and see how it went?
	That sounds fucking horrible, yeah.
	No, no, listen. This sounds harsh.
	Listen, we all have our strategies and you come from a hell of a background, Daniel.
	So I'm not... It sounds...
	And I always have to say this because, you know, it sounds like, oh, I big judge you guys.
	Listen... We're guys.
	We've all done things with women that we're not particularly proud of.
	And I'm just trying to boil it down to the essentials, right?
	Because it sounds to me like you wanted to break up with her, but the best way to do it was to put the relationship to the test by telling her you loved her and basically not, you know, she would know whether you're telling the truth or not, right?
	Maybe. I don't know.
	No, you know what it's like?
	So you ever have friends or people you know, they bullshit?
	Like, they just, oh, I was in the special air service, and, you know, I've been in Morocco, and, like, they just kind of, and you know, like, guy to guy, you just know when a guy's bullshitting, particularly if he's talking to a woman, right?
	So women are like that when it comes to love.
	They'll know deep down to the core of their very being, they'll know down in their spinal juice, if you say you love her, right, she'll know whether you're telling the truth or not, because that's kind of the currency they work with, right?
	Yeah, I guess so. But it's another part of the story.
	I did want to kind of break up with her because I was like this other woman.
	Yeah. Oh, man.
	So you lied to the woman telling her...
	You lied to your girlfriend telling her that you loved her because you actually were attracted to another woman.
	Yeah, like I was like forcibly stopping myself from sleeping with her because she was a really hot...
	Wait, because you already had the hot girlfriend, but the other girl was hot too?
	Yeah, it's kind of weird.
	I think it was very attractive to women when I'm fat.
	I create this personality.
	No, but the thing is, you're very smart, right?
	Yeah. I say this to everyone, right?
	You listen to my show, you're in the top 1%.
	Easy. Yeah, I always pass things pretty easily.
	So I get with school, you've got the anxiety and stuff like that, but I can tell.
	I mean, the speed at which you're processing what I'm saying, like, oh, that has negative implications.
	Oh, that sounds bad.
	Like, you've got a lot of horsepower and you're a smart guy.
	So, you're going to be attractive to a lot.
	Plus, you know, you've had a job successful to some degree, right?
	So, to me, the overweight stuff, it wasn't like, to take a silly example, it wasn't like Biggie Smalls didn't have groupies, right?
	So, I get all of that.
	I get that you'd be very attractive because, you know, a lot of women really like the brains, right?
	And you've got the brains.
	Yeah, yeah. You're a funny guy and you've got a lot of charisma.
	I know you're depressed and all of that, which you say, but depressed people, like even a tired guy can win sprints from time to time, right?
	So depressed people can crank up the charisma sometimes and you've got a lot of charisma too.
	So I'm down with that.
	I've got no problem with you telling me about that kind of stuff.
	Yeah. So you were with Hot Girl A, who's the girlfriend, but her life wasn't going anywhere, right?
	I mean, what did she do with her time?
	Okay, what did she do with her time?
	She read books. She read a lot, and she was studying Japanese.
	That's something that was really cool about her.
	She, uh... We read a lot.
	But that's a big anime fan.
	I love anime so much, I'm going to learn Japanese, man.
	That's being a committed fan.
	That really is. Yeah, I have a friend who moved to Japan here.
	Yeah, no, it's like a guy with great hair listens to me and shaves his head.
	You know, out of solidarity, brother.
	Like, I appreciate it. No, that's some dedication.
	Okay, so she read, she studied Japanese, but there was no particular future there, right?
	Yeah, she also talked about not wanting to have kids too, so that was a big thing with me.
	Oh, so she has no career, she has no particular job opportunities because she gets these anxiety attacks with job interviews, and she doesn't want kids, so then it's like, okay, what are we going to do?
	What are you going to do for the next 60 years, honey?
	I don't know. Right, okay.
	And what were your impressions of her mom?
	Crazy. Drug addict.
	She actually died of an overdose.
	Oh, you're killing me.
	Oh my god.
	Okay, you now need to tell me about all the rainbows and pretty horses with lovely wings that you got to ride because this is just a grim march of disaster to disaster, right?
	Her mom was a drug addict who died of an overdose?
	Yeah. Yeah. I later heard she died overdose, yeah.
	Oh, so this is after you guys were together, right?
	Yeah, thank God. That sounds so horrifying to say thank God.
	No, no, I get that. You don't need more trauma.
	Listen, you don't need more trauma, right?
	So you had your fill, right?
	Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if trauma were McDonald's, you'd own the company, right?
	Well, like, there was other trauma that happened right after I moved out.
	Okay, but hang on. So the mom was a drug addict while you were there?
	Yeah, she would want me to give her money and stuff, and I guess that was for drugs.
	I thought she was just drinking alcohol, but I didn't know she was actually taking drugs.
	What was she taking?
	I guess I don't know what drugs she was taking, but there were drugs, apparently, and she overdosed.
	I mean, sorry, there was what?
	I just know there were drugs involved and then she overdosed.
	I didn't know what drugs she was taking.
	She seemed like a drug addict, but I felt like maybe she's an ex-drug addict and she was just taking alcohol, drinking lots of alcohol.
	Did you end up giving her money?
	Yeah, because I gave her money for rent, pretty much.
	She was charging me just like $100 or whatever, and I was like, okay, whatever.
	Okay, so you didn't give her much money?
	No, not much money, no.
	Yeah, because my concern was if the drug addict has an attractive daughter, that she's using the attractive daughter to bring guys with money into the house so she can sponge off them.
	Like, almost like pimping out her daughter?
	No, she wasn't doing that.
	Well, she was pimping out her daughter.
	She was still getting money from her children that she lived with her.
	And welfare, right? Yeah, welfare.
	So she was kind of paying me all her children, pretty much.
	The amount of drug addiction and overdose that's laid at the foot of the welfare state can scarcely be calculated.
	I just wanted to sort of point that out.
	Because one of the things that combats addiction is you've got to get up and go to work, right?
	Because then you've got to fight the battle.
	Because if you don't get up and go to work, you don't have a roof over your head.
	But the fact that the welfare state just keeps pumping money at people drives more addiction decay and death than just about anything outside of a nuclear bomb, in my opinion.
	Total sidebar. No, even now, for myself, because I'm on unemployment right now, and I was just eating Uber Eats every day pretty much.
	Oh shit, really? Yeah.
	Because that's what unemployment is for, is to make sure you don't have to get your ass in the kitchen to make some food, right?
	Yeah, completely. Just be depressed, lay in my bed, eat some pizza, eat some Uber Eats.
	At one point I had, like, pizza boxes all around my room, but I finally, like, cleaned it out, like, when I felt okay for one day.
	And Jordan Peterson, somewhere in the universe, breathes a sigh of relief.
	You cleaned your room, right? Okay.
	Yeah, the pizza boxes, the mountain of pizza boxes.
	Wow. No, I was reading somewhere that this guy who runs like an Air Jordans and Nike shoe store is like the moment the stimmy checks come in, his business goes through the roof because everyone's like, whoa!
	Or when I was a kid, there was this...
	I live in Ontario, right?
	So there was this Ontario student OSAP, Ontario student application something or other.
	I can't remember. And basically it was for Getting money for going to school, right?
	Getting money to go to college. Ontario Student Acquisition Plan or something.
	I can't remember what it was, right? But, you know, it was always referred to as the Ontario Stereo Acquisition Plan because, you know, a lot of people would get their money.
	I didn't, but a lot of people would get their money and be like, woohoo, I can go buy a cool stereo.
	It was just one of these.
	Ontario Student... Anyway, so, yeah, that idea that people are just desperately in need and if you don't give them money, they'll be out on the street.
	It's like, well... And I've never actually ordered Uber Eats.
	It's just one of these funny things because, you know, my wife's a great cook and all that.
	It is, right? It's crazy expensive, yeah.
	Yeah, God. I had a friend of mine...
	Yes, go ahead. Yeah, I don't want to think about how much I spent.
	I have to think about it.
	I should think about it. I don't.
	How much have you spent?
	Come on. You can tell us.
	It's just you and me, the internet, man.
	It's totally private. 20 times...
	Probably maybe $600, $700 a month.
	So $600, $700 a month on Uber Eats.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Right. If you do like $20 a day times like $30, that's like $600, and probably the tip and stuff is about $700, $600.
	Right, right. Well, and do you know why the Uber Eats thing is such a big deal for you?
	I don't have to leave my house.
	I could be depressed and fit in the dark.
	Well, I mean, sure, there's that aspect to it, but I think it's deeper than that.
	Which is Uber Eats is the mom you didn't have.
	Uber Eats is kind of like my mom.
	Yeah, yeah. It's kind of like the mom you didn't have and kind of like the mom you did have because it's not like you're ordering a whole bunch of salads.
	Yeah. My mom would just give me stuff from Burger King and McDonald's and stuff every day.
	Did she ever cook? Yeah, and it was horrible.
	It tasted fucking terrible.
	Her cooking was terrible. Yeah.
	Yeah, I just tell you, listen, man, we're brothers in this, right?
	Because my mom, oh, my mom could take like a recipe for scrambled eggs and turn it into something that you wouldn't feed a dog.
	Like she just had, you know, like some people have a green thumb, everything they touch in the garden just grows.
	My mom had like a black thumb when it came to cooking.
	I mean, I remember when she was like, I'm making cookies.
	And I would sit there thinking, oh, I'm going to get some digestives, maybe a little bit of chocolate on top.
	And that was the big cookie when I was a kid.
	And She'd come out with this stuff that you could use to stone a heretic to death in the Middle East.
	It was just horrendous.
	Like, you could chew it for like a week and still not get any flavor.
	I mean, a gum that you've been chewing for half a day has more flavor, and she just...
	I mean, she was like, hey, I figured out how to make pork chops with applesauce.
	I'm like, but why? Why would you do that?
	Why would you do that?
	Don't experiment. You don't know what you're doing.
	This is like me experimenting with ballet moves.
	I'm not a ballet dancer.
	I don't experiment with...
	Oh, man. I don't know why she's like, I'm really bad at this, but I'm going to go off book and try this as well.
	Hey, it's fine to go off book.
	If you're a great jazz musician, you can go off book.
	But if you don't know your ass from a hole in the ground in the kitchen, don't go off book.
	It's just going to go badly, and it always did.
	It always did. And it was like, well, I guess I need calories, so I'll jam this down my gullet.
	And, of course, she was the kind of woman, maybe your mom was like this too, was like, hey, I just served you a fantastic shit sandwich.
	But if you show even the slightest indication that you don't like it, I will give you a world of pain.
	Pretty much. Yeah, so then you gotta take your food punishment and like it too.
	It's just, yeah, it's brutal. Get on a crappy food.
	Or starve. It was just bad, the seasoning, everything.
	She would make mac and cheese, but it would make box mac and cheese.
	She would make all things from the box.
	That's tough to mess up, but if you have the black thumb, you totally can't.
	My mom would make this. One thing, one food I've always loved, and I haven't had this for years, and I just had it with my daughter the other day.
	Rice pudding, you ever tried that?
	Oh yeah, it's great.
	Yeah, it's good, right? It's good.
	Now, and I remember actually being in boarding school and some kid was like, we got tapioca and they're like, you know, that's fish eggs, right?
	And I'm like, okay, you can have it, man, because I'm just not eating fish eggs.
	But my mother would make, she's like, I'm making rice pudding for you.
	And I'd be like, oh, great.
	You know, it's going to be like that stuff that comes out of the can, that's sweet and creamy and all that.
	And I get this like burnt black stuff with milk in it.
	I'd be like, what the hell is this?
	Like, I don't even know.
	Like, how is this?
	You've met Rice Pudding and you think this has something to do with the same planet?
	And it's like, I don't know. It's just weird.
	And then, you know, you're in this...
	Mystery Rice Pudding. I'm sorry?
	No, it's like Mystery Rice Pudding.
	It's like... Like mystery meat in school, you know?
	Oh, yeah, yeah. It's like, I know there's rice here.
	I know it's burnt. And there's some other shit here which I'm afraid to ask about.
	Probably was fish eggs, come to think of it in hindsight.
	And then you'd have to jam it down your throat and give this big shit-eating grin like, oh, this is the best.
	I can't believe that the people who make it in the tins don't use this.
	This is like eating charcoal with milk.
	It's lovely.
	Anyway, let's not go into the descending horror of having to pretend that your mom's a great cook when she's got a black thumb.
	And, you know, she and Gordon Ramsay shake hands and Gordon Ramsay's head explodes because he's just like the transfer of anti-knowledge is so extreme that it's pretty much fatal to the guy, right?
	Okay, Steve. Yeah, yeah.
	Okay, so you broke up.
	Oh, did she break up with you or just kind of flamed out when you said you loved her, the hot girl?
	I usually, like, I don't know.
	Like, I have this weird thing with women.
	Like, I want them to break up with me so I don't have to, like, take responsibility.
	So I kind of, like, pushed her to, like, break up with me by asking her if she wanted to break up, like, kind of a few times.
	Oh, yeah. You're not really happy, honey.
	Do you think we should continue?
	I mean, I'm fine if you do, but I, you know, I'm just concerned about whether you're having a good time or not, right?
	It's like, I forgot to also say, she stopped, like, really, like, having sex with me, too.
	And I was just like, oh, this is weird.
	Okay, but this is the basic equation, right?
	And I'm sure you know this by now, but for the younger men and I guess women, the more sex you have early on, it's a direct statistical algorithmic relationship.
	The more sex you have at the beginning, the less sex you have later.
	Which is why you want to date a woman who has at least a three-month rule.
	Three months, no sex. Because a woman who puts out early is doing it because she doesn't feel like she has anything to offer in the personality department, and if you stay for the sex, she'll hate you, she'll withhold sex, and you'll be trapped.
	Yeah. I mean, you think the incel thing is bad.
	Try being an incel in a relationship with a hot girl who won't have sex with you.
	I mean, that's just like, it's all buffet, but you can't get there, right?
	It's so painful. Right.
	Right. And so you're like, well, the only thing I was really here for was the sex.
	I'm not getting the sex anymore, so let me throw the I love you bomb and blow up the whole damn thing and escape before the ceiling comes down, right?
	Pretty much. And I was kind of like falling for my best friend, who was the other girl, who was like really attractive, who had a boyfriend.
	It was a shit show.
	Okay. And so you jumped from one vessel to another, so to speak, and how did that play out?
	Quite horribly. Horribly.
	Of course. We ended up, like, kind of...
	We didn't have sex.
	Like, we might have had sex.
	She was naked and stuff, and I just wouldn't...
	You might have had sex?
	What are you? Mary Magdalene's boyfriend trying to come up with a story?
	What do you mean? You might have had sex?
	No, but you might have had sex if I did anything.
	Like, I don't know. Oh, you could have had sex if you'd have made the move.
	Okay, okay, got it. Yeah, like we were making out and stuff and we went back to her place and she was like naked and stuff and I just didn't do anything.
	Well, I did eat her. Wait, can I like be explicit?
	You certainly can. Yeah, I did eat her out.
	I gave her head. But I didn't want to get undressed.
	Wait, hang on. You didn't eat her out, you gave her head?
	Wait, isn't eating her out and giving her head the same thing?
	So I was trying to say nicer?
	I know. I think eating her out is cunnilingus, right?
	That's going down on the vagina, right?
	But giving her head, I've not...
	I mean, the head thing is supposed to be the blowjob thing, right?
	I think. It's been a while since I've been single, but...
	It's a little bit universal blowjob, okay.
	Yeah. Because, you know, if you were going down on her, it might not have been a her, but I'm assuming that that part was taken care of, right?
	Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was like a vagina.
	It was not a penis problem. Okay, it's an innie, not an outie.
	All right, it's important. It's important.
	Right, right. Okay. I'm going in.
	Wait, it's coming in. Okay, so you kind of half had sex or I guess, what is it?
	Ever since Bill Clinton, oral sex doesn't count as sex or something like that.
	And then what happened?
	And then she said, like, this doesn't feel right, and I was like, oh, fuck.
	And she was asking me if I wanted to do anything else, and I was just like, uh, nope, nope.
	I was just, I felt so anxious, and, like, I just couldn't stop feeling anxious.
	I didn't even take off my clothes or do anything.
	I just felt anxious.
	So she said this didn't feel right because, like, you, had you broken up with your girlfriend at this point, like, officially?
	Yeah, I broke up with her officially.
	She was still dating some other dude, by the way.
	Wait, she had a boyfriend, but that's who you're talking about, not her boyfriend, plus some other dude.
	Yeah, she had her boyfriend, but I think she might have been sleeping over people, probably, too.
	Because I heard later on she had sex with some other guy.
	But yeah, that's all I did, pretty much.
	I just didn't want to do anything else.
	I mean, I did, but I felt anxious and I couldn't really...
	I felt that wall feeling, I guess you can call it.
	The wall feeling is universal, by the way.
	It's not just studying or working.
	I'm sorry, you just cut out there for a second.
	You just repeat that last sec. So the wall feeling is universal.
	It's not just for studying or doing anything that's hard.
	It's for playing a video game or anything else.
	It could be for anything, pretty much.
	The wall thing where you run up against something like you just can't continue emotionally, is that what you mean?
	Yeah, and that's what happened with her.
	And it happened with a few women.
	And while women throughout my life, I would just, like, climb up when they tried to have sex with me or try to kiss me and stuff.
	Women are usually really aggressive towards me sometimes.
	It's kind of weird. You mean in terms of wanting to have sex with you?
	Yeah, sexually, like, trying to touch me and stuff.
	Because usually I would climb up and not want to do anything at a certain point.
	And I would just get really weird, even if I really liked a girl.
	Now, is that a race-based thing, or does it matter, the woman's race, that aggression kind of happens?
	Okay. Now that you say that, it's mostly blacks who are, like, sexual aggressive.
	So, you know, again, I don't want to get all stereotypical, but if, you know, we're going to talk about it, I've heard that black women can be a speech more assertive in their preferences, so to speak.
	Yeah. Yeah. Okay, I just wanted to check on that, because, you know, if you're dating some K-pop star from South Korea, probably not quite the same situation, right?
	Yeah, yeah. Okay, okay.
	And I just wanted to double-check on that, because that may be relevant to sort of the conversation going forward to some degree.
	Yeah, that's a good problem. Because, I mean, if you...
	I'm sorry? Number girl was white, by the way, the one who had the boyfriend.
	Oh, the girl that you went down on that she said felt bad, right?
	Okay, got it. Now, that didn't particularly work out, right?
	No, no. We just ended up having a fight and she was avoiding me and stuff after that.
	Right, okay. Yeah, and our friendship pretty much ended.
	It was pretty horrifying. Like, horrible.
	Like, constantly trying to talk to her.
	Like, trying to hang out or whatnot.
	And she was just avoiding me.
	I felt really hurt. Oh, listen, man.
	They, you know, so there's this kind of cliche, right?
	And the cliche is, you know, you're attracted to some girl and you make a move, but then she says, I don't want to ruin the friendship, right?
	Or she gives us signals.
	And it's kind of true, right?
	If you're only there, mostly...
	Sorry, go ahead. I feel like sometimes I'm like a girl.
	I don't want to ruin the friendship because she was giving me signals, so many fucking signals.
	And like, we almost kissed and almost did stuff like so many times and I just kind of kept stopping myself, you know?
	Yep. So like, yeah, I didn't want to ruin the friendship, but like I really felt like, I don't know, I really liked her so much.
	I loved her. Right.
	No, and so, yeah, so the cliche is don't want to ruin the friendship.
	But then when you make a move, you can't just go back to being friends.
	Like you just can't. It just doesn't work that way.
	It doesn't work that way. Like once you go big or you go home, right?
	I mean, in terms of like if you want to make a play to be the boyfriend, then you either achieve the boyfriend But just staying the friend.
	Once you've already indicated that you're sexually attracted, you just can't go back to friendship.
	I wanted to be her boyfriend, but I didn't want to be her boyfriend.
	Go on.
	Unravel me this, my friend.
	I didn't want to be her boyfriend, but I wanted to be her friend, but dear to you.
	You wanted to be friends with benefits.
	Yeah, but best friends with benefits.
	But not a boyfriend? Yes.
	Okay, so if she was sleeping with other men, would that have bothered you?
	No. Okay.
	Yes, but no. Okay.
	Hey man, I can hold my breath while we go through this particular underwater exhibit of contradiction.
	That's no problem. That's no problem.
	So, you wanted to have sex with her and to be her best friend, but you didn't Particularly care if she was monogamous with you?
	Yes. Kind of, yes.
	That sounds horrible to you.
	No, no, listen. No, it doesn't sound horrible.
	It sounds perfectly rational from a, I want to have sex without commitment.
	Yeah, with somebody I love.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right.
	Because I have a number of friends who wanted to have sex with me.
	She was a number of white girls.
	Both of the girls went to honor colleges, by the way.
	They were insanely smart.
	Both were, not valibatorian, flibatorian.
	But like, yeah, she wanted to have sex with me, but I didn't really want to because I felt she was kind of gross because she had sex with a bunch of people.
	But I really liked her too, and I wanted to have sex with her, but also I kind of felt like I couldn't, you know, because of the wall thing, and I felt weird.
	Right, right. Yeah.
	And listen, the thing is too, like you don't want to be in a situation as a man where you're kind of thinking maybe it's a good idea, maybe it's not a good idea, but And then you get into it hot and heavy, and, you know, either you can't get an erection, or you're feeling really depressed, or, like, then it's suddenly, like, what a shitshow.
	Like, what a disaster to be in on just about every level, right?
	A number of times.
	Well, that happened a few times, sir.
	It's fucking awkward. Well, yeah, fucking awkward, right?
	But also, it's your penis saying, danger, danger, danger, right?
	Yeah, completely. Right.
	I'm not going to rise to the occasion because this is going to lead to a bad place, right?
	Yeah. Yes, yes.
	I really like her, too.
	I have a girl. She had my prom date, and I really liked her, too.
	When I was in high school, I met her at a concert.
	Right. But do you want to be a dad?
	Do you want to be a married man?
	Do you want to be a husband and a father?
	Yeah, definitely. Yes.
	So, what are you doing in your late 20s with this You know, I want to be her boyfriend, not her boyfriend, like this kind of shit, right?
	I mean, that's not going to lead you to marriage, right?
	That was like maybe three years ago, yeah.
	Okay, got it. So now, you want to try and find a...
	A quality woman who's someone you could spend the rest of your life with.
	That's part of the plan, right?
	Yes, and I want to be a quality man and not be this messed up human being who hates himself and destroys all her friendships and relationships and stuff.
	So listen, this is our first real parting of the ways, which doesn't mean that you're wrong and I'm right.
	I'm just being straight up frank with you, right?
	You don't hate yourself.
	And if you tell yourself that, It's self-abuse.
	It's verbal self-abuse.
	Because you've mentioned this a couple of times and I've been bookmarking it in my brain so we can circle back and talk about it for real.
	Because you do not hate yourself.
	You do not hate yourself.
	I feel like I felt...
	No, it feels that way.
	Let me make the case and maybe I'm full of shit.
	But let me make the case and see if it lands in a productive way.
	So, hatred...
	Is an emotional response to evil, if we're virtuous, right?
	Now, you have never abused a child.
	You've not mentioned anything, and correct me if I'm wrong, but you've never beaten a child, right?
	As a child, you defended yourself, or you had gotten into fights, as you said earlier, when you were being bullied and that.
	But you have not abused a child, right?
	No. Okay.
	You have not verbally abused people.
	I'm sure, you know, you get in fights with girlfriends and you both say things you regret, but you're not like a concentrated, verbal abusing guy.
	Have you ever destroyed someone's health?
	Destroyed someone's health? Yeah.
	Right, so no one's ever been in your care, custody, and control, and you've just, like, this is a similar side to child abuse, right?
	So you've not physically abused a child, you've not sexually abused a child, you've not health abused a child by force-feeding McDonald's and Burger King and other kinds of rancid shit down their throat, right?
	Yeah. So, you have good cause and reason, my friend, to hate people in your life, but you are not one of them.
	But you were not one of them.
	Yeah, go ahead.
	Like when I was in middle school.
	It sounds horrible. Like, yeah, when I was in middle school, I made fun of somebody.
	These two people I made fun of because I didn't want to be made fun of anymore and targeted.
	No, listen, you were a survival...
	You were surviving as a child the most brutal abuse that can be imagined.
	I mean, you've not mentioned anything about sexual abuse, so correct me if I'm wrong, but that's at least...
	It was just, like, my mom just, like, touching me and stuff, like, my butt and saying, like, how sexy I'm going to be when I get older.
	I'm just, like, killing my butt a lot.
	Yeah, well, that's creepy as hell, and I'm sorry that you went through that as well.
	And that's kind of like a warning shot for a kid, right?
	It's a warning shot. My mom was like, naked girl.
	And did you have that too?
	Please, for God's sakes, put some clothes on.
	Put some clothes on, woman.
	It felt like it was on purpose. It was fucking disgusting.
	No, it is. And that comes out of sexual frustration.
	That comes out of a lack of boundaries.
	And it is very abusive.
	You cannot be naked in front of your children.
	You cannot be naked in front of your children.
	And especially mother to son.
	It is creepy.
	It messes with the kid's head.
	It's overwhelming. And it's vile as a whole.
	So I'm with you there.
	Like you and I had the same, you know, we're linked arm in arm staring at these maternal children.
	nakedness that we'd rather rip our own eyes out than see again.
	I don't want to remember it.
	No, no, but it's there.
	So all of this brutality and lack of boundaries and verbal abuse and sexual misconduct, I guess you'd say, is certainly inappropriate.
	And violence and the fact that she fed you so much shit that your eyes died in your fucking skull.
	Okay, like that's unbelievably evil from top to bottom all around.
	That is so evil.
	To beat a child, to verbally abuse a child, to say you're going to kill yourself in front of a child, to say if you complain about me, you're going to be taken to a place where you get raped.
	This is so staggeringly evil that you have good cause for hatred in your life.
	And hatred, I think, would be a pretty healthy emotion given how much you were violated.
	But unless you strangled five hobos that you're not telling me about, hatred should not include you because you were far more sinned against than sinning.
	You are a victim of Of almost overwhelming, almost life-destroying, certainly vision-destroying, maternal and paternal abuse.
	So, when you say to me, oh, I hate myself...
	It's not true. Because hatred is something that we reserve for our moral opposites, right?
	So if you're an evil person, you hate the good.
	And if you're a good person, you hate the evil.
	Now, you strike me as a decent guy, as a good person.
	Does it mean you're perfect? No.
	Does it mean I'm perfect? No. But we're decent people.
	And so the idea that you would, you know, this is the outside in, right?
	The outside in is what people call me for, right?
	I'm just giving you straight up landscape from the outside in, right?
	You tell me all of the unbelievable, horrible wrongs that were done to you as a child.
	Verbal abuse, physical abuse, sexual inappropriateness, violence, beatings, savage, savage environment where people tried to screw with you in every conceivable way, in every conceivable abusive way, to the point where you lost your eyes for a year, right? And you didn't know whether they were ever coming back, right?
	So when you tell me about this shitstorm of evil that you grew up in, and then you say, Steph, the person I hate out of this shitstorm of evil I was subjected to, the person I hate is me.
	I'm like, nope, that's not true.
	It's not true. You were hated for reasons that have nothing to do with you.
	It's just, you know, screwed up parent stuff, right?
	Like, my mother beat me.
	Didn't have anything to do with me.
	It wasn't some objective judgment of me.
	I was just a handy target, right?
	She had frustrations. She had immaturity.
	She had this, you know, a lot of single moms have this shit.
	Maybe it's the same as single dads too, but a lot of single moms have this fantasy.
	Without these fucking kids, I'd be Jennifer Lawrence.
	Never. Or, I don't know, whatever, you know, race-appropriate substitute, Halle Berry, or whatever, right?
	Like, without these fucking kids, I'd be on some red carpet, there'd be flashbulbs, and people would love me, and it would be great, and I'd be wealthy, and I wouldn't be fat.
	Like, they just take all of this shit that they've caused in their own life, and they dump it on their kids and say, it's your fault, kid.
	It's your fault my life didn't turn out the way I wanted it to.
	It's your fault I'm unloved.
	It's your fault I'm alone. It's your fault I'm fat.
	It's your fault! That my life is shit.
	Right? Now, no.
	Your life is shit because you're blaming a child.
	It's not like your life is shit and then you end up blaming a child.
	Your life is shit because you're the kind of person who would blame a child for your own shitty life.
	Right? Because as an adult, she has choices.
	As a child, you don't. So when you say to me, Steph, well, you know, I kind of hate myself.
	I'm like, nope, that's not true.
	Now, I think you were convinced to hate yourself So that your abusers could get away with it.
	So this brings us to the core, for me, of the matter.
	How are things going with your mom?
	I don't really talk to her.
	She calls me constantly now.
	Like, when I was, like, at home, when I wasn't doing anything in the press, she never would talk to me, but now, like, I'm away, she's, like, calling me a lot, trying to talk to me.
	She used to text me, like, every day.
	Can you still hear me?
	Yeah, she usually texts me every day, talking to me, trying to get me to talk to her back and stuff.
	But we don't really talk anymore.
	She does send me money every month, like a few hundred dollars.
	But we don't really talk that much.
	Okay, so that's the sort of physical, objective aspect of your relationship.
	But how is your heart relative to your mother?
	I hate her.
	When she texts you, when she phones you, you hate her and you want her to die.
	Okay.
	So why are you telling me all about how you hate yourself and nothing about how you hate your mom until I start digging around like Indiana Jones in the bowels of this stuff?
	Because I hate myself for not doing better.
	I hate myself for not completing college, not becoming a doctor, not doing what I wanted to fucking do.
	I hate myself for not being strong.
	I hate myself for being the worthless person I am right now.
	For being the what? The worthless person I am right now.
	Right. Yeah.
	Okay. So, let's go through some of this list, right?
	You hate yourself.
	You hate yourself for not becoming a doctor.
	Do you mean like a doctor of psychology or a medical doctor or something else?
	Or neurologist. I was trying to decide which one.
	I was like, oh, I'll just...
	I don't know. Either one would have been a great...
	I just couldn't do anything, so I'm a failure in that way.
	And was it exam anxiety?
	Was it something else? Just, like, during my, like, final, like, papers when I'm, like, first semester, like, I just couldn't complete them.
	I would sit in front of my computer for hours and try to type up my, like, final paper.
	It was, like, final paper for sociology, but I just couldn't do it.
	I just couldn't type it out.
	I even, like, literally forgot how to write an essay.
	I just mentally couldn't do it.
	Yeah. Okay, so here's the thing, right?
	Here's the thing. How do you know that being a psychologist or a neurologist is what you're supposed to be doing in this life?
	Because of my intelligence, I guess, and I just want to help people.
	Okay, but you're calling me.
	Am I a psychologist? No.
	Am I a neurologist? No.
	Do you think I'm adding some value to the world?
	Yes, completely. Okay.
	Now, do you know why I'm doing what I'm doing?
	Because my first three choices were wrong.
	My first choice was to be an actor-writer, like in the theater world.
	My second choice was to be a novelist.
	And my third choice was to be a businessman.
	I went to theater school. I wrote a bunch of novels.
	And I was in business for 15 years, right?
	I was totally wrong.
	Now, I, of course, I was like, oh man, I wanted to be an actor and it didn't work out.
	That's bad, right? But I ended up doing exactly what I should be doing.
	So how do you know for sure that being a psychologist or a neurologist It's what you're supposed to be doing.
	It's what the very best thing is for you to do in the world.
	I don't.
	Right. Yeah, I don't know.
	So, I mean, you've got to be open to the possibility that you're wrong.
	Because it's like, well, this is what I want.
	Right? I really wanted to be an actor.
	I was a pretty good actor too, right?
	I mean, I went to theater school.
	It was the top theater school in Canada.
	They'd take like 1% of the applicants and I got in and I worked hard and You know, I just, it didn't work out.
	And I'm really glad it didn't work out.
	And I wanted to be an academic as well, and I wanted to be a novelist, and I wanted to be a businessman, and I did these things and had some success, but it didn't work out the way this works out, right?
	It didn't work, because neither of those used the full scope of my abilities, right?
	So there are things that I wanted to do, And I had to ask myself the really hard question.
	I know this sounds like it's about me.
	Daniel, it's not. This is about you.
	But you've got to ask yourself the really tough...
	What if I'm wrong? What if I'm not at my best as a psychologist?
	Listen. That's what I said earlier.
	Psychologists failed you, right? Yeah, I know.
	I know I have to go through a whole bunch of bullshit.
	You have to go through a whole bunch of bullshit.
	And there's a lot of politically correct stuff in there.
	And can you imagine?
	Imagine this, right?
	You're a psychologist and some young black man comes in.
	Doesn't matter if he's black, but let's hit close to home here, right?
	Some young black man comes into your office and starts complaining about his single mom, right?
	And you don't do what the psychologist did for you when you were eight years old and up, right?
	And you let him have it, right?
	But the facts, right? Yeah.
	And then he goes home. And he tells his mom what you said as a psychologist.
	What happens then? She could probably report me pretty much.
	That's right. I thought about that too.
	I'd probably just get my license pulled pretty much.
	And then you're massively in debt.
	You're professionally shamed and humiliated.
	Right? Because listen, I don't want to speak about any agencies in particular or anything like that, but we know that there's a lot of power structures in this world that move immediately to protect the abusers and further traumatize the victims, right?
	So maybe psychologists, I don't know, maybe you'd have a great board, maybe you wouldn't, but there's a risk, right?
	And neurologists, okay, yeah, I mean, you've got the brains to do it, but you have a deep introspective And self-knowledge driven mind.
	I don't think neurologist really fits that bill for you.
	You also have very powerful thoughts and insights into, I mean, a very wounded community in North America, right?
	The black community. It's a very wounded community.
	I mean, you know this a million times better than I do, but you were saying that your friends all, and I'm not saying your friends were all black, but they're all growing up in these Horrifying households, right?
	You've got three quarters of black kids growing up without fathers.
	You've got half of black girls reporting being raped by black men by the time they turn 18.
	I mean, this is a highly wounded community.
	And, listen, I'm not saying that, oh, as a black guy, you've got to be responsible for healing the black community.
	But if you wanted to, you'd be in a pretty uniquely powerful position to do it, right?
	I don't...
	Well, I used to live in...
	I don't know if I should say a location...
	No, no, don't. But just give me rough, right?
	Nothing like New York City.
	I used to live in New York City. And, uh, yeah, I'm now moved to, like, Texas pretty much.
	Yeah, there's not many black people here, to be honest.
	But I kind of ran away from that.
	But you don't have to do it knocking from tenement door to tenement door.
	You could do it with a show, a podcast, a book.
	You could do it with videos. You could do it with public speaking.
	You could do it with just record speeches.
	I'm not saying what you should do, obviously.
	I'm just saying that there's a possibility that you could take the hurt and the pain that you've experienced...
	And concentrate it and push it back and help particularly other, and not just black men, but all of the, I mean, you've heard them on my show, right?
	Young men of every race.
	Who've been brutalized by the single mother hate factory, right?
	And I say this with some sympathy to single moms as well.
	It wasn't like your mom was like, oh, wow, this life has really turned out the way I wanted.
	This is my dream come true.
	Like, she has it.
	It's terrible. It's a terrible life.
	It's a terrible life. I have less sympathy because she harmed a child.
	To me, the moment you start harming a child, I'm done with, like, I can have some empathy.
	In other words, I can understand...
	But the sympathy and empathy.
	Empathy is just kind of, okay, I can understand this is a shitty life.
	Sympathy is, and you're not responsible and you're a victim, right?
	So for you as a child, I have empathy and I have sympathy.
	It was terrible what happened to you as a child.
	Absolutely appalling. It's just about as bad as it could be what happened to you as a child.
	And maybe, and listen, I know it sounds like, oh, you've got to go heal the black community.
	Okay, that's a challenging thing to do.
	But If you say, I hate myself for failing at X, Y, or Z, this is the vanity, right?
	The vanity is, how the hell do you know that's what you're supposed to be doing?
	Maybe your brain shut down with sociology in the same way that your penis shuts down with dangerous woman.
	Maybe it's trying to protect you and guide you to something else.
	How do you know the very best thing you could be doing with your life because you had some thoughts when you were younger?
	I don't know, man. That's a lot to hang a self-hatred on.
	How do you know you failed?
	Maybe. I mean, you know what it's like with doctors.
	More than half of doctors regret ever going into the field.
	Ever. They wish they had done anything else.
	With their life. How do you know?
	You failed. How do you know?
	You don't know. And I see this as annoying older guy, right?
	Annoying older guy who wanted a bunch of stuff.
	It didn't work out. And I thank God.
	It's like, you know, somewhere in the future, somewhere in the future is going to be this woman who's going to be fantastic for you.
	And you're going to be great for her.
	It's going to be wonderful, right?
	And you're going to be like, oh, all those girlfriends who broke up with me or who I broke up with and I cried and it was terrible and it was the worst thing ever.
	Thank God! Thank God above that those relationships didn't work out so I could meet this woman.
	But at the time, you're like, oh, this is terrible.
	I really want things to work out with this girl, this woman.
	Or she broke my heart and it's bad.
	And then I tried to have sex with my friend and it's bad.
	And it's like, yes, and all of that, you think it's bad.
	And I get it's bad at the time.
	I'm not saying deny your feelings. But if you got what you wanted and those relationships had worked out, it would have prevented you from meeting the woman of your dreams.
	I mean, I think of the women I dated before I met my wife and how sad I was sometimes when it didn't work out.
	I'm like, oh my God, if only I had known what awaited me, I would be thrilled.
	I'd be like thrilled that they didn't work out.
	So that's what I'm saying.
	Like, how dare you hang a I hate you sign on yourself?
	When you've got way better people to hate in your life, your mom, your dad, your cousin, your uncle who beat you up, all of the teachers who failed to protect you, the society who failed to protect you?
	I... I have so much hatred and I... I... I guess I put the term hatred on myself because I know hatred after the world is so great.
	It's murderous.
	No, listen. I get that.
	Don't act out your aggression, obviously, but it's important to feel it.
	Of course not. You've got to feel it.
	You've got to feel it, right? I mean, I remember, gosh, let's dig up something old from my show from many years ago.
	I remember people being shocked that I would ever say I had murderous feelings towards my mom.
	And it's like, well, of course I did.
	It would be sick not to.
	Because if you're attacked physically, violently, as you and I both were for many years, how could you not have...
	And it doesn't mean I'm going to go murder my mom or anything.
	It just means I have murderous feelings.
	And I don't now. I mean, I'm going to work through it.
	I don't really think about it that much anymore.
	But certainly at your age, oh, absolutely.
	Absolutely. And...
	Of course, it would be crazy not to.
	So, I'm going to give you an invitation here, and if I could make you take it, I would, but I can't, right?
	My invitation is, like, how dare you hate yourself when you're a victim?
	That's exactly what the abusers want you to do.
	Because when you've had parents who are failures...
	And, you know, your mom's making some coin.
	I get that, 100 grand plus a year.
	That's good money. But she's not...
	I'm sorry?
	My dad's, like, even making me more money.
	Like, he's, I guess, a millionaire, I guess you could call it.
	Okay. Yeah, so they've made some money.
	And for a lot of people, that can be even worse.
	Because then their material circumstances so don't match.
	Like, they've both abused children.
	And they haven't apologized for it.
	They haven't gone to therapy as far as I know.
	They haven't reformed themselves.
	They haven't begged for your forgiveness.
	So they are unrepentant child abusers.
	You've never harmed a child.
	As an adult, for sure. I'm sure you say you made some fun of some kids, you got in some fights.
	Yeah, I apologized to them.
	Yeah, I apologized to them.
	So you've got, in your life, you have a whole series, I can think of at least half a dozen, and from what you've told me, I'm sure there's more, you have a whole series of unrepentant, brutal child abusers.
	And of all of those people, out of all of those people, Daniel, who do you choose to hate?
	Me. Come on.
	That's so unfair. That's so unjust.
	I guess I just don't...
	I have so much anger and so much hatred and so much emotion that I don't know what to do with it, really.
	Well, no. No, no.
	You do know what to do with it, it's just not working for you.
	You've chosen to make yourself the sacrificial lamb for the sins of others.
	Yes, I have. Right?
	You have said, well, they've stopped beating me up, so fuck it, I'll keep beating myself up.
	You've taken over abusing little Daniel...
	From your childhood, you've taken over their abuse of him and now you're doing it to protect them.
	And it's not working.
	I mean, I understand you would do that as a child.
	Of course we have to start self-abusing as children because it's the only way we think, and we're probably right, it's the only way we can survive.
	Because I know when I stood up to my mother, she escalated violence until I thought I was going to die.
	Yeah, my mom would call the police on me and say that I hit her or something.
	I never hit her.
	No, she could get you thrown in jail.
	She could push you down a flight of stairs.
	You could fall and crack your skull and just die on the carpet.
	Especially when you were a little kid, right?
	The amount of violence that women are capable of.
	This is why patriarchy.
	Do you ever hear that term patriarchy and not just give a bitter, blood-soaked laugh?
	Did you and I grow up with anything close to a patriarchy?
	No at all. It was taught by women, raised by women.
	Especially if you're in a broke-ass community like I was, then it's all single moms around.
	They're all in charge of everything and they're doing a shitty job for the most part.
	When you were a kid, you had to self-abuse.
	Because it was the only way to pacify your mom.
	It was the only way that you could survive that situation.
	You had to restrain yourself.
	You had to be down on yourself.
	But now, I mean, you're 28 years old.
	You're independent. You're out of the shitshow.
	And you've got to lay off this I-ate-myself shit.
	I mean, that's just...
	It's like you're still a kid and trying to survive this, you know, giant beast of a mother.
	You don't hate yourself.
	Because you've not done anything to earn that self-hatred.
	And so, it's bigoted against yourself to say that you hate yourself when you haven't done evil.
	Because hatred is our response to evil.
	No, fear. Fear when we're children, hatred when we're older.
	If you turn it against yourself, you're saying, hey, of all the people I've known in my life, I'm the most evil, so I'm going to hate myself.
	You've got to stop that, man.
	That's so unfair.
	That's so unjust. That's a sin, if ever there was one.
	You were hurt.
	You were hurt by brutal, brutal people who damn well knew better.
	And for you to say, out of all of that wreckage and that shitstorm of evil that you survived as a child, my friend, for you to say, well, I hate myself.
	No, no, no. I got a stamp between you and that.
	That is unjust.
	If I could build a big glowing wall between that judgment and yourself, I would.
	Because that's not you. That's just the shit other people told you.
	That's stuck in your head.
	Sorry, you were about to say, and I rudely interrupted.
	Go ahead. Yeah, I just don't know what to do with all the rage.
	I don't know what to do with it.
	Like, I don't know what to do with it.
	Well, right now you're putting into anxiety attacks and depression and Zoloft, right?
	Yeah. But also, like, friends, too.
	Like, if I feel betrayed by friends, I get really sad and suicidal and, like, I start seeing how worthless I am and I think I understand that you...
	Okay, but first stop betraying yourself.
	Oh, God. Stop betraying yourself, Daniel, first and foremost.
	Because saying that I hate myself when you were brutalized as a child.
	You know, if somebody had cut up my face seal style and I say I hate myself for my scars, no, I would hate whoever gave me those scars, right?
	Yeah. But I would hate myself?
	No, come on. So, if you've got standards, which it's great, you know, don't betray.
	Don't betray you. Don't have friends.
	Don't betray you. I get all of that.
	But you've got to stop betraying yourself first and foremost because you can't criticize your friends for something mild they do compared to something that you do much worse, right?
	Stop betraying yourself.
	If you knew of a child, listen to this.
	Imagine you knew of a child who was being treated as horribly as you were treated as a child.
	Would you ever consider, Daniel, sitting down with that child?
	The child is crying. They don't know where their future is.
	They feel terrible.
	They've been abused. They've been brutalized.
	They've been beaten. They've been Fed terrible food and they're losing their eyesight.
	Would you ever, ever sit down with that child and say, you know, kid, the really important thing is to hate yourself when you get older.
	That's how you deal with this shit, man.
	You hate yourself when you get older.
	That's how you get out of this.
	That's how you deal with this.
	Would you say that? No.
	I used to say save future self.
	Like in my phrase, I used to tell myself, save myself for the future.
	Then stop saying, then stop doing it to yourself.
	Because that child is you.
	And that child is within you.
	You know the old saying, the child is the father of the man.
	That child raised you.
	And got you through all that shit without dying.
	He got your eyesight back.
	He navigated this hellscape of violence and brutality and disease.
	So he was a fucking hero who got you through This unbelievable shitstorm of a childhood and delivered you to adulthood alive.
	I mean, holy shit.
	Saving Private Daniel, an all-black cast, man.
	I shit you not.
	I know. I get it. I throw a little joke in, right?
	But that kid is heroic.
	That kid got you through all of that and delivered you to adulthood.
	Functional, intelligent, intelligent.
	Relatively healthy and alive, right?
	Yeah. Now, you know what that little kid was thinking the whole time?
	I know this one for a fact, right?
	That little Daniel was saying the whole time, he was saying, oh, fuck, it's going to be great.
	Sorry, he wouldn't swear. Oh, gosh, it's going to be great when we're out, when we're free.
	Yeah. Yeah. That's the big glowing thing over the horizon that I'm dragging my ass across this desert for.
	As soon as we get out of this war, it's going to be great.
	And he then delivered you a functional brain and body as an adult.
	He got you through all of that violence and brutality and evil.
	And in return, you say, oh, I hate you.
	Not, I'm proud of you.
	Not, thank you. Not, my God, what a hero you are.
	Not, oh my gosh, let me help you and love you and protect you, little Daniel, because you got me through all of this and you did a heroic job.
	Thank you for delivering me to adulthood in one piece against all odds.
	Listen, you and I know what the odds are, man.
	How many of the people who were treated like shit when you were growing up with, how many of them have succeeded?
	None of them.
	None. None. In fact, you know, a lot of them end up in prison, a lot of them end up on drugs, a lot of them end up as addicts of various kinds, whether it's sex, gambling, crime, whatever, right?
	Drugs. Yeah, I stayed away from drugs because I knew how addicted you could be.
	Right, right. And I knew, like, my situation, how I was, and I knew that I probably would be an addict if I did do drugs, so I stayed away.
	Right. So, You know the odds that were against you, right?
	Yeah. And little Daniel pulled off some serious ninja stuff there, right?
	Got you to adulthood.
	And in return, you say, well, I hate myself.
	Which is basically saying, I hate little Daniel.
	What, do you wish he had failed?
	Do you wish you had got addicted to drugs or died?
	Sometimes. Right.
	Okay. But... I hate to say just stop doing that because that's a useless thing to say.
	It's a totally useless thing to say.
	I get that. But understand that he believed in you.
	Like little Daniel believed in you to the point where he wanted to bring you to adulthood.
	If it's any consolation or if it's any use, I completely and totally believe in you as far as what you can do with this life that you have.
	But you've got to stop marching to the drum of the abusers.
	You've got to stop obeying the abusers and you've got to stop hating yourself because it's not fair.
	It's not right. I agree with you, yes.
	If someone hated you for the color of your skin, they'd just be a racist and a bigot, right?
	Yes. You can't just hate yourself for surviving.
	That's being a bigot against your younger self.
	What was the point of him? And I think this is the fundamental question.
	If you're not enjoying or finding a way to enjoy your adulthood, what the hell was the point of surviving your childhood?
	Yeah, I'm at that point right now.
	I don't really know the point.
	I had those ideas of becoming a psychologist for so long and I wasn't able to achieve that.
	It's just like, fuck, I wasted my life and I can't do anything now.
	That's all I felt or feel But I understand I shouldn't hate myself or that might not have been the right road for me to go down.
	No, no, it wasn't. It wasn't.
	Listen, have you found this conversation to be grueling and horrible and impossible to get through?
	No, not at all. Okay.
	So this is advanced stuff, right?
	I'm not giving you the 101 here because I get the sense you've listened for a while, right?
	So you are able to navigate a very challenging and complex conversation with perfect ease.
	Yes. Okay.
	How many people do you think can do that?
	Not many at all. I talk to so many people, yeah.
	Yeah, not many. Not many, right?
	I mean, I think we've cut through stuff pretty deep here in a good way.
	And I've been an hour and a half we've been chatting or whatever it is, right?
	So you are a very remarkable young man.
	And... If you had gotten your wish, I don't think the world would have gotten its wish.
	Like, it sounds kind of weird, right?
	But the world wants me to do what I'm doing.
	Because if the world didn't want me to do what I was doing, nobody would be listening, nobody would pay attention, I wouldn't get any support, you know, that kind of stuff, right?
	So the world wants me to do And you've got to be in a dance with the world, right?
	Because it can't just be about you because you know from your mom and your dad and your uncle and maybe your cousin too, you know what the world is like if you just make it all about you and what you want, right?
	You've got to be in a dance with what's good for the world too, right?
	Yes. Now, if being a psychologist had been the greatest good you could give to the world, And something that would have given you satisfaction, I don't think anything would have stopped you from achieving it.
	So, I'll tell you, again, I don't want to make it about me, but I'll sort of try and give you the analogy from my own life, right?
	I'm a very good performer.
	I'm a very good actor. And yet, most of the scripts that come out are this woke Marxist bullshit, right?
	Yes, horrible. Now, if I had taken my talents of communication, of improv, of acting, and I had set those talents in the service of evil, Marxism is an evil doctrine, right? And that's all you can do these days.
	All you can do is this woke Marxist bullshit, right?
	So if I had taken my talents and put them to the service of evil, I would not be here today.
	And I don't just mean I would not be here like I just wouldn't be having this conversation.
	I'd be having some other conversation.
	No, I wouldn't be here.
	Either emotionally or spiritually or most likely physically because I would have become so revolted at myself and not even known why I would have ended up in some self-destructive situation.
	You know, some tiger woods maybe passing out of the wheel speeding down a hill shit, right?
	So I'm like, oh, I want to be an actor.
	I want to be a movie star.
	I want to write plays.
	But I would have ended up...
	There was only two choices.
	I either fail or I serve evil.
	I either fail or I serve evil.
	That was it. There's no third choice.
	Now, I'm the kind of guy...
	A lot of people clearly can survive serving evil.
	I'm just not one of those people.
	For better and for worse, right?
	I don't mean that I'm such a great guy.
	That's just the way I'm built.
	I can't do it. One of the reasons I left the business world, which became so corrupt, and it was so greedy, so money hungry, so manipulative, particularly in stocks and share values and stuff like that, that it was just predatory and gross.
	And I bumped into the financial class, you know, like the financial class that don't produce and simply consume people like Beelzebub with a steady diet of souls.
	And so the reason I'm saying this is I wanted to be an actor.
	Now, if I was in academics, how would I be doing, right?
	I'm going to laugh because how would I be doing in academics?
	I'd be so limited.
	I'd be so attacked.
	I'd be so oppressed, right?
	Yes. It would be horrible going to work every day.
	And here I'm having a fantastic conversation with a great guy and we're doing some real work, right?
	So if I had gotten what I wanted when I was younger, I would not have survived it.
	Failure It's life.
	It's like the worst Monday morning poster ever.
	Failure is life.
	But for me, failing at what I wanted to do when I was younger is the reason that I'm alive today.
	And it's the reason I have a wife who loves me and the reason I love my wife and the reason I have a daughter who respects me and the reason I love my daughter.
	Because if I had taken my talents into serving this woke Marxist bullshit, I would have hated myself and And justly so.
	And justly so.
	Because I would have been like, oh, but there's money and there's fame and there's sex and there's prominence and praise.
	It's like, yeah, but you're promoting an ideology that has killed more than 100 million people around the world.
	So, don't hate yourself for what you perceive as a failure.
	Because success in something that is bad is worse than any failure you could imagine.
	And I don't know what would have happened to you in the realm of psychology.
	Listen, there is no field of human endeavor that is formal and accredited and licensed that is not infected by this woke fucking plague these days.
	I mean, Jesus... You can't...
	I mean, they cancelled the Muppets.
	Yeah, true. There's no Mr.
	Potato Head anymore. There's just potato because the Mr.
	is now offensive. How...
	I mean, if you're curious, obviously very intelligent and able to have this kind of conversation...
	How well are you going to do in some independent thought strangling, formal whatever?
	You know, a medical license.
	How well are you going to do?
	Not that great. A psychologist rising as one and condemning all of this...
	You know, what's this Levine person who...
	It was being questioned recently by Rand Paul, who, I don't know if you saw this, but he's like, wait, you support the genital mutilation of children because you think that they might want to be a different gender when the vast majority of them end up resolving this on their own with no intervention?
	Oh, I mean, how do you know that if you had gotten what you wanted when you were younger, it wouldn't have destroyed you?
	Thank you.
	Yeah, I don't. I'd probably be going crazy trying to talk to single moms who are going to be using their kids, saying they're okay.
	You would do...
	I would imagine this would happen, right?
	Which you mentioned before. You would end up doing...
	To the young men and women who come into your practice, if you're a psychologist, you would end up doing to them what you wish the psychologist had done for you when you were younger, which is to talk frankly about parental immorality, and then you would have found out why they didn't do it.
	Because they'll probably get their license pulled and they'll be in debt.
	Whatever. There could be any number of things that could happen, right?
	But, I mean...
	It sounds kind of odd because I know you feel kind of depressed, but there's an arrogance to being absolutely certain that this would have been the only good thing you could have done with your life and you just failed at it.
	And it's like, come on, man, that's not treating yourself with respect.
	That's not treating yourself with gentleness.
	And that's not having humility.
	And listen, I say this like I was your age and this is an annoying thing to hear.
	I was your age. I was the same way because when I was your age, I was like, this is what I'm going to be, man.
	I'm going to be a businessman. And yeah, I was in the field.
	I was pretty successful in all of that, but business is often kind of gross these days.
	I mean, probably always has been.
	Maybe it's better. Maybe it's worse.
	I don't know. I've only been a businessman sort of in the modern world, but I was like, this is going to be my thing, man.
	Okay, the acting didn't work out.
	I really didn't like academics that much, but man, business is going to be my thing.
	And I did that for a long time.
	And then... And then it happened.
	And it happened when I was much older than you.
	Aha! This is the thing.
	And this, I've been doing now for 15 years plus.
	You know, I've been kicked all over the internet from one place to another and...
	Fuck it, I'm still doing it and I still love it.
	And that's a long time to be doing something.
	And so if I had gotten what I wanted, I would have been wrong.
	And it could have been enormously self-destructive.
	So how did you know?
	You don't know. You do know that you can look at these professional organizations and you can say, okay, well, how are you guys doing in pushing back the relentless woke tide?
	And the answer is usually not very well, right?
	Yeah. Yeah. Not well at all, dude.
	The gender fluid stuff and the transgenderism, they're just like accepting it, you know, when it's just like a mental disease.
	How about, you know, like, you know, I don't know if you've heard me talk about the race and IQ stuff, right?
	This is all perfectly common knowledge in psychological circles.
	It's the world is round in psychological circles.
	And how well are they doing society having a common...
	Oh, they leave it to me. They leave it to me to take all the bullets, these cowards, right?
	Yeah. I guess those people are like turned off by it.
	They're kind of like… No, they're scared.
	Yeah. They're scared because, you know, if we can have a rational scientific conversation about ethnic and racial differences, then the Marxists can't say, well, all group difference in outcomes are because of evil whitey or whatever, right?
	We can actually have a sensible discussion rather than the superstition of radical legalitarianism that's just used to shred the society, right?
	So, all of these psychologists, they should be out there saying, yes, but, you know?
	Yes, but there are these issues.
	Yes, but there are these issues.
	Yes, but there are... Until people just get it, and we can at least include this stuff in our conversations about society as a whole, rather than, oh, well, it's just evil white people who hate, blah, blah, blah, right?
	That's the terrible answer, and it's going to lead to a very, very bad place.
	And they're not doing much about it at all.
	In fact, they even turn on their colleagues who do stuff about it.
	So I don't know that that would be necessarily the best place for your moral courage and what you can do with your life.
	And wouldn't it be a terrible shame?
	Let me give you a silly example, right?
	Wouldn't it be a terrible shame if you spent the rest of your life hating yourself for missing that wonderful maiden voyage of the Titanic?
	Oh, God. Yeah, that would be crazy.
	Right. I mean, we're in a crazy, wild, exciting, powerful new world of human communication.
	And all the stuff you're talking about is like, it's old world, old school, hierarchical, license-based, statist, you know, organizationally, you know, like, I don't know.
	I guess part of it is because I want status.
	Right, yeah.
	And I want to be, like, loved and liked.
	I don't care how you pronounce it.
	I get the word. That's fine.
	That's fine. Wait, is that how you started?
	Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead.
	I want to be, like, loved and liked, and I felt like that would be a good way to, like, do it, too.
	Like, having that status of the doctor would be a way to find love and be liked by people.
	Yeah, because, I mean, your mom had a very successful career, and clearly that got her love.
	Yeah. Well, fear...
	I mean, obviously I'm being sarcastic, right?
	Your dad is a very successful guy.
	He's a millionaire? Yeah.
	Did that get him the love that he wants?
	No. His children ran away from him, pretty much.
	My half-blood sister ran away and my half-blood brother ran away from him.
	So what you're saying is you didn't participate in the shit that destroyed your parents and you hate yourself for that.
	Uh... I guess so.
	The pursuit of status, which probably had something to do with destroying your parents, the pursuit of status, well, you just couldn't, to take an analogy, you couldn't get a boner to bang the psycho.
	Yeah, kind of, that happened a few times.
	Yeah, so maybe, no, maybe trust your inner wisdom, like you were staring down this The sociology essay that you were talking about, you were staring this shit down, and deep down you were like, no, no, no, no, this is not the path, man.
	This is dangerous. This is bad.
	All right. So I was just talking about how...
	I'm not sure where I cut off, but I might as well just give the sort of speech back in case we can't get him back.
	I might as well finish that up. So I was talking about how doing good in the world is a very complicated dance, and And what the world needs and what you need or what your vanity needs is not often the same thing.
	And where we can bring in things...
	Let's just see if we can bring Daniel back in.
	Daniel, you made it back? Yep, hang on.
	Let's try it again. Let's try it again. We can do it.
	I feel we can. I feel we can.
	Daniel, are you with me? Yeah, I'm right here.
	Okay, sorry about that. Do you remember the last thing?
	I don't want to do too much repetition if you can remember the last thing I was saying.
	You're giving a speech about not...
	Okay, you were giving a speech saying that, like, what I was saying was kind of arrogant, you know, like, thinking that, like, the best thing I could have done was become a psychologist or become a neurologist.
	Yeah, you were talking about all the negative effects that could have happened and probably would have happened.
	I wouldn't have went crazy. I think it certainly is.
	It's a reasonable hypothesis that it could have been very harmful for you.
	And also, if...
	Here's the thing, right? So if you are a successful young man, and from your picture, you look like a good-looking young man to me, so if you're a successful, attractive, wealthy young man, women will be imposing themselves upon you because they want you to...
	Be their husband or be their boyfriend or something like that.
	Now, of course, if you grow up with an abusive mother, it means that saying no to a woman is extraordinarily dangerous because she can explode and beat you perhaps within an inch of your life or maybe you'll die.
	And so it is a death threat to be assertive with women if you grow up with an abusive mother.
	Same thing with fathers for girls and all that.
	So you would have been in a situation where lots and lots of women...
	Would have wanted you and it would have produced crippling anxiety to say no to them because you would fear attack and therefore your life would have been ruined in many ways.
	Because what happens is when the higher status you become, the more some aggressive women will want you and then they may put a hole in the condom.
	They may sperm jack you. Any number of things, right?
	So it's not even for sure.
	Like if I had...
	A tough time saying no to women when I was younger because of the way that I was raised.
	So if I'd become some big successful movie star or whatever, I mean, it would have been Johnny Depp territory, Charlie Sheen territory, who knows, right?
	Getting your finger cut off.
	Yeah, something. Yeah, I mean, so there's a guy, look at Johnny Depp, right?
	He went for a woman who was incredibly high status, right?
	This Amber Heard, I think her name is, so she's a very attractive woman, accomplished woman, and so on, right?
	And, you know, if...
	All reports are to be believed.
	I don't know for sure, but in the recordings that they made of their personal interactions, it just sounded like hell on earth.
	Like a complete nightmare.
	So that's a guy who went for status.
	Or, you know, Charlie Sheen with his...
	I've got dragon blood.
	You know, tiger blood. Sorry, tiger blood, right?
	He's got tiger blood.
	Yeah, winning, right?
	Hashtag winning. So do you know what he's doing now?
	So they're living in a trailer park and he's selling autographs for money because he blew a $125 million fortune.
	And he still owes $4 million by some reports to the government.
	Wow. And Johnny Depp is completely hosed because he now owes a massive amount of money in taxes, but he's not bankable as a movie star because, you know, I think he failed in his lawsuit to try and Sue his ex-wife for slander because she called him a wife-beater,
	right? So people don't really want to go and see a wife-beater on the screen and so now he owes a staggering amount of money and he's lost his money and he's lost his income and now he's suing his business partners and I think he's going to try the lawsuit again with Amber Heard and he's desperate.
	And what's he going to do? Is he going to get a job at McDonald's to pay off a multi-million dollar tax bill?
	I don't think so, right? So these are people who went for high status.
	And they got everything they wanted.
	These are two, you know, Charlie Sheen was like the highest paid actor.
	Was he making like $1.8 million an episode for Two and a Half Men?
	I mean, he was the highest paid actor in television history.
	A successful actor and performer as could be imagined.
	And it was a complete shit show.
	Now, look, I'm not putting you in that category, but I can certainly see how that stuff happens, right?
	Yeah, my life is kind of already a shitshow to dating-wise, so yeah, it would have been a lot worse.
	But you have avoided disaster.
	Now, you can say, oh yes, but I haven't succeeded as much as I want.
	I'm 28. Okay, I get all of that.
	And I understand that, and I understand that's frustrating.
	But if you imagine that hating yourself is going to motivate you to succeed...
	You are living in a parallel universe of which I know nothing.
	Right? Yeah. Yeah.
	Look, it sounds cheesy, but it's true.
	Love is the answer.
	No, it is.
	It is. You have absolute reason to love yourself.
	See, what you're doing is you're comparing yourself to people who had it pretty easy growing up relative to you.
	It's most of the planet, right? So you're comparing yourself and you're saying, oh my gosh, but there are other people who are more successful.
	I should be a neurologist by now and blah, blah, blah.
	It's like, dude, come on. Your mother force fed you into blindness.
	Okay? Can you have a little compassion for yourself?
	Can you have a little gentleness?
	For yourself? I mean, would you really lift some kid up or some young man off the street if you found out his mother had force-fed him into a year's worth of blindness and say, yeah, but you should be a neurologist by now, you loser!
	Come on. That's kind of psychotic.
	You wouldn't do that to anyone else and you're worth just as much as everyone else.
	You cannot ever, ever...
	This is UPB, man. You cannot...
	Ever justly be crueler to yourself than you would to a random stranger.
	Random strangers, they just come and go in your life.
	You're with you forever.
	You've got to have a universal standard.
	Imagine yourself as someone else.
	How much compassion would you have if you heard the story that I heard tonight?
	Oh, I would be really sympathetic and empathetic for the person.
	I'll just be really nice to them.
	Why are you worth less than a random stranger?
	God, because I am really hard on myself and I see so much potential in what I could do and what I should have done.
	If you see potential in yourself, then you want to love and nurture that potential and know for sure how hard you had it growing up that it's going to be a real challenge to achieve that potential.
	When you do achieve it, I think it'll be even better.
	But saying, well, I'm a hard taskmaster.
	No, you're self-abusive, man.
	Let's call it by what it is.
	You abuse yourself.
	Yes. By holding up impossible standards and assuming that you know what's best for you when you don't.
	Because if you knew what was best for you, you sure as hell wouldn't be saying, I hate myself and believing it.
	Because that's not best for you at all.
	How is that working out in getting you to a better place?
	Not at all. But you keep doing it.
	Which means it's not you.
	It's just something you were told when you were younger, that you're hateful, that everything's your fault, that, oh, you know how your mom said that the reason she wasn't successful was because of you?
	Now, what are you doing?
	You're saying, hey, man, the reason I'm not successful is because of me.
	You see, it's the same thing.
	You're just doing what your mom did.
	Yeah, my mom always told me to rise above.
	No, no, go back.
	The last thing I said did not land on you, okay?
	Your mother said, I would be a great success except for you, right?
	Yes. Now, you're saying the same thing to yourself.
	I would be a great success if it wasn't for myself.
	I hate myself. Yes.
	It's the same thing, you understand?
	That's why I say it's not you.
	This is just stuff that was told to you that you internalized, but it's not you.
	In the same way if someone stabs me and I get a scar, the scar is not me, it was something inflicted upon me.
	The scar is owned by the person who stabbed me, it's not owned by me.
	And you were brutalized as a child, and you were hated as a child, and you were told you were hateful as a child, and you internalized that in order to survive, as we all do, as you must do to survive.
	But you're holding on to this too long.
	You've got to let it go. You're not a hateful person.
	You're not a failure.
	You're not a failure.
	Because you're doing better than everyone else you grew up with, right?
	Yeah, I don't have like 10 kids or gel or addicted to drugs.
	And you haven't done anything to screw up your life.
	You say, oh yes, well I'm depressed.
	Okay, I understand all of that.
	But You say, I hate myself because I'm a failure.
	And I say, you hating yourself is the only failure.
	I agree with you.
	So, think of little Daniel and think of yourself and how much compassion you would have to someone who grew up the way you grew up.
	Can you do that?
	I don't mean necessarily right now, but can you do that conceptually?
	Yes, I can. I will.
	You are worthy of self-compassion, self-respect, and self-love.
	Now, there's some things you've got to change, right?
	So, it's cause and effect, right?
	Do you get high self-regard because you stopped doing silly things?
	Or, if you have high self-regard, do you stop doing silly things?
	Well, I don't know. The answer to that is, like, you know, if you're going forward on a rowboat, which or is doing it?
	Well, both of them, right? So, I mean, look, there are some things.
	You've got to get your life organized.
	You've got to stop living off Uber Eats.
	You've got to, like, you know, get some groceries and eat better and a bit of exercise.
	Those are things that you can do, but you do those because you...
	Have some self-regard.
	You can't say, I hate myself, and then expect you to treat yourself well.
	If we hate something, we don't treat it well, right?
	Yeah, I used to, like, work out a lot.
	I don't know, I used to wait, like, 350, or almost 350, and then I lost how much I weighed, and then I gained it back.
	Like, I work out a lot, like, until, like, my arms, like, hurt and whatnot, but...
	But that's just another form of self-punishment because you're just going from one extreme to an, oh, now my arms hurt.
	I still hate myself, right?
	I'm just saying be compassionate.
	Go get some groceries, learn how to cook, clean up your room, and stop having trashy sex with women who are weird, okay?
	That's not going to get you where you want to go, right?
	Yeah. And that's basically mirroring your dad's actions with your mother, right?
	Yeah, I thought that too.
	It didn't work for him.
	It's not going to work for you. Yeah, you're correct.
	And imagine walking into your house as a quality woman.
	Angela Bassett in her prime.
	I don't know about some quality woman, right?
	I don't know much about her, but she seems like a nice woman.
	So some quality woman walks into your place.
	Does she want to stay? Hell no.
	Right, so make it a little bit more inviting.
	I'm not saying turn it into some ultimate bachelor seduction cave or anything.
	No lava lamps, no Barry White, of course.
	That's a given, right? But there's things that you can do to start to eat more sensibly.
	You don't have to work out until your arms hurt because that's probably going to be just another way of unsustainably failing at something and hurting yourself and all that kind of stuff, right?
	But, you know, go for walks and have salads instead of fries.
	You know, just little things.
	Little things where you can start to turn things around and start to respect the deep wisdom of things you failed at.
	That sounds like a weird thing, but there is deep wisdom in failure.
	Because failure, to call something a failure, is to say you know exactly what You know exactly what's right for you and exactly what's right for the world.
	And that's a pretty tall order for a young man.
	You might have failed at something that would have destroyed you, which is a success.
	I left theater school before the end of my second year because I couldn't stand it there.
	My body was in full revolt.
	I couldn't sleep.
	I got cysts on my scalp.
	I hated it there.
	I felt disgusting there because my deep body was like, this way you will be serving evil.
	And I don't mean that theater school was evil.
	I just mean that this is the Marxist art shit that's going on, right?
	So, did I fail?
	No. I left something that was just like saying I failed because I was not initiated into this horrible street gang that kills people.
	You know what I mean? I failed, man.
	I'm going to take that failure with me to the grave.
	But it's not a failure.
	It's not a failure. The avoidance of disaster is not a failure.
	It's what's necessary for genuine success.
	You ended up moving in with a woman because she was hot, even though her mom was a drug addict and she was non-functional.
	Okay, so don't do that. I know, a little easier said than done and so on.
	Pornography may not be the very best thing for you at this point in your life.
	You know, just cut back, cut down, whatever, right?
	What is it they say about pornography?
	It's an industry that makes money hand over fist.
	Anyway, so...
	There's things that you can do, but the first, I mean, there's practical things, right?
	But here's the thing, man. Just go easy on yourself.
	Go easy on yourself.
	I'm sorry? Everybody tells me not.
	Well, no, but so start listening, okay?
	And stop letting the abusers of the past control the mindset of the present, because that's what's going on.
	You think that their hatred had anything to do with you?
	It didn't have anything to do with you.
	Because that's to say, well, some other kid, they would have been really great parents to some other kid.
	No, they would have been shitty parents to every child.
	It's not personal to you.
	So don't internalize it.
	Don't make it about you when it's not about you.
	It's about their own screwed up life.
	It's about their own screwed up values and their own sadism, their own cruelty, their own abuse, unprocessed, undealt with, unmatured from.
	It had nothing to do with you.
	You know, my mom screamed in the middle of the night, I hate these fucking kids.
	Had nothing to do with me.
	She hated herself as a parent.
	She couldn't take responsibility. She was doing everything she probably promised herself she'd never do.
	Had nothing to do with me.
	I was a great kid. Had nothing to do with me.
	And your mother's hatred and your father's indifference has nothing to do with you.
	It's not personal. It doesn't land on you.
	It's like somebody shoots an arrow over a house and hits you in the head.
	It's not personal. Oops.
	I didn't mean to, right? Accident, right?
	Don't let the accidental and the evil of others define who you are.
	You've got to let that go and start to define yourself for yourself based upon rational values and don't give any energy to To the verbal abuse of the past.
	Because that's... I mean, they win.
	You never escape.
	You never grow up. And you'll be little trap Daniel until the end of time.
	And you don't want that life.
	That's why you're feeling so down, right?
	Yeah, I don't want that life at all.
	That's why I'm thinking, oh, if I don't like it better, why live, pretty much?
	I want to get better. Right.
	So have the compassion for yourself that you would have for a stranger.
	Okay? And really think about that.
	Right? Mull it over. Write it down.
	Write the letter that you would write to a young man who was in the midst of surviving when he was a kid what you survived.
	What would you write to him? What would you say to him?
	You wouldn't say, I hate you, right?
	Yeah, no, no. Not at all.
	And I think those are practical exercises.
	And the last thing I wanted to mention, I'm going to give you the last word and all.
	If you are feeling suicidal, just please, please do me a solid and Promise you will call a hotline.
	You will call somebody who's a professional who can help you, okay?
	Yeah, I will. Will you?
	Do you need money for therapy?
	Oh, I...
	Sorry, let me just talk to you.
	I don't know if you've heard this offer before, but if you need money for therapy, I'm happy to pay.
	I'm honored to pay. If you find yourself a good therapist, I'm down for that.
	I'm happy for that. I'm sorry that you've had bad ones.
	I know there are good ones out there.
	And you don't have to answer this right now, but if you do, just let me know and we will sort it out.
	I've made this offer before. People have taken me up on it.
	I'm very happy to do it.
	All right? So Bitcoin's up.
	I'll find a way to make it happen.
	Okay? So just that's an offer.
	You don't have to tell me now.
	You can mull it over. But if you need it, it's here.
	Sure. I was talking to Noah for a while.
	If you know Noah, for real, he was a life coach.
	He was helpful.
	I was talking to him every week or so.
	Okay. So just let me know.
	If you need anything, I'm very, very happy to help.
	I would be absolutely thrilled to help.
	It would be my honor. So just let me know.
	All right? Okay.
	I will. Is there anything else that you wanted to say?
	How's the conversation been for you as a whole?
	The conversation's been really great, honestly.
	It's been something I needed for my whole life.
	Good. I haven't really gotten this from anybody else, like any therapist really I talk to.
	It's been just like a wasteland talking to them about mundane things.
	I'm sorry they're so scared of black women.
	Sorry. I'm not saying there aren't times when I can understand it a little, women as a whole, but I'm sorry about that.
	I really am, because it doesn't do you the service and the justice that you need.
	Yeah. Will you keep me posted about how things are going?
	Yeah, I will, definitely.
	I will give you an update. Alright, so I really, really, really, really, really appreciate the conversation.
	You did a fantastic job, for what that's worth.
	I have intense admiration.
	For what you have survived and how well you have survived.
	I know you probably don't feel that at the moment, but maybe you'll take an old guy's judgment on that.
	You have done incredibly well.
	You are poised for potential, and I thank you so much for your time tonight.
	Thank you. You've been amazing, Stefan.
	Thank you so much. Thank you, and thanks everyone so much for listening.
	If you want to support the show, freedomain.com slash donate.
	And have yourselves a wonderful, wonderful evening.
	I really appreciate the honor of these conversations more than I can probably ever express.
	And I can express quite a bit.
	So have a wonderful evening, everyone.

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