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May 26, 2022 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:36:33

The Latest Shooting - Wednesday Night Live 25 May 2022

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	Well, good evening, good evening, good evening.
	It's Steph. It is the 25th of the 5th, 2022.
	Actually, that's 5, 6, and 7.
	See, the 5th month.
	6 is 2 plus 0 plus 2 plus 2.
	That's 6. 2 plus 5 is 7.
	Yes, we have a 5, 6, 7, which averages out to 6, 6, 6.
	Oh, my God. The Beast is in the house.
	Good evening, good evening.
	How are you doing? What's new?
	Have you checked out my new book?
	You know, it's a blazing white pill.
	Like, you know how over Tatooine there are these two suns?
	Well, there are two suns in the sunset.
	Well, that's actually not the greatest Pink Floyd analogy around, but it's something that's going to give you hope.
	It gives you a world to aim for.
	A... Purpose.
	A purpose to the challenges that we all face.
	I wanted to create the perfect world, but not a utopia.
	A utopia, almost by definition, is impossible, heaven on earth, but a perfect world, and how we get there.
	So I have created this perfect world in my first work of science fiction in over 40 years.
	And the novel is called The Future, and you can get it at freedomain.locals.com.
	You can subscribe and A couple of bucks a month.
	And I think it's 12 months for the first 10 at the moment.
	And you can enjoy.
	It's being read. So that is going to be very good.
	And I think you'll really enjoy it.
	It's my first novel in forever.
	And my first science fiction since the very first book I wrote when I was about 12.
	Called By the Light of an Alien Sun.
	And I'm really, really pleased with it.
	And I think you will be as well.
	I hope you will be. Certainly the feedback so far has been very good.
	So this is a conversation time.
	It's chatty chat time.
	And if you want to have questions or comments, I certainly have topics, but I'm happy to hear.
	Person whose name is Dot, I've turned on your capacity to speak.
	If you want to unmute, feel free to ask away.
	Hey Stefan, thank you so much for your work.
	You're really changing my life to the better.
	I met you a few years ago. I started therapy and I wanted to know how is the best way that I could contain the best and I'm going to change my life to the better.
	Sorry, how is the best way for you to do what?
	To go inside therapy to see what questions asked, what to talk about, what not to talk about, what to look for and see what to change in therapy.
	Well, I mean, as far as what not to talk about, don't talk about any crimes you're thinking of committing, because I think a therapist usually has to report on that.
	Just kidding. I know you don't have any crimes you're thinking of committing.
	But I don't know, because, I mean, every therapist is different, blah, blah, blah.
	I'll tell you sort of my experience with therapy, though.
	What really helped me with therapy was the work that I did outside of therapy.
	To me, going to therapy is like going to see a nutritionist or a personal trainer.
	You go see a nutritionist and they design a diet plan for you and then it doesn't do you any good if you don't follow that diet plan outside of the nutritionist's office.
	If you only eat the right snacks when you're seeing your nutritionist, it's not going to do you much good.
	In the same way, if you go and visit a personal trainer, They teach you how to exercise in an effective manner, but then you have to exercise outside of just seeing your personal trainer in order for that to work.
	Certainly that's the case for your life as a whole.
	So with therapy, I did like three hours a week for two years or so.
	And I also journaled.
	I kept a dream journal.
	I had violent arguments with myself about just about every aspect of my life.
	And it turned out that the work that I did outside of therapy, based upon the principles I was learning within therapy, was actually the most important.
	Because, of course, that's something you can keep going for the rest of your life.
	So I would say look at the therapist's office as a way that you learn tools of self-knowledge, tools of self-insight.
	But the major work occurs outside of therapy.
	And a lot of times therapy gets a bad name because people don't want to do that work outside of therapy.
	They just say, well, they're basically, I'm not saying this would be you, but a lot of people just sit down in the therapist's office and say, ah, well now you can fix me and now I'm going to have these insights and now I'm going to burst into tears and now I'm going to get angry.
	And then they leave and they kind of forget about therapy until the next week or the next two weeks or however often you're going.
	In my experience, I can't give any advice about therapy, but I can just tell you my experience.
	In my experience, putting the onus on the therapist to solve your problems is like expecting the dietician or the nutritionist to eat well for you.
	They're going to give you some tools, and I think it's really incumbent upon you to bring those tools into your life as a whole to make sure that you're doing it in the real world.
	Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, so I understand that.
	It makes sense. So what should I focus on?
	Should I try to focus again on a good relationship with my parents or with my siblings or thinking?
	Okay, I get to.
	I have to do it in between. I have to journal.
	I have to think. I have to speak with friends.
	But specifically, what's my goals?
	I'm even outside.
	Like in training, so you can see someone's working out.
	I'm going to get the abs.
	I'm going to get the... Run the push-ups.
	But over here, I need a goal.
	Could you give me a goal that I want to get better?
	And I just need something set so I could train on.
	Okay. I mean, I can't hand you life goals.
	Obviously, that's something for yourself.
	But I think, I mean, my first impression is that if you think you can make a good relationship with people in your life, that may be Thinking you have more power in the relationship than you do.
	And what I mean by that is, I can't make a good relationship with people in my life.
	I mean, there's things that I can do to make it worse, obviously, but I don't have the power to make relationships in my life good.
	Because I can't do two sides of the relationship.
	It's like saying, can you have a really good tennis game?
	Well, it depends on your partner.
	If you're good at tennis and your opponent is good at tennis, maybe you can have a good game.
	If they're way better than you, you can't have a good game if they play their all.
	If you're way better than them, same thing, right?
	So you can't have a good relationship with someone.
	You can be honest.
	You can be open.
	You can be non-defensive.
	You can not attack them.
	You can talk about your feelings rather than jumping to conclusions.
	But you can't guarantee that you have a good relationship with other people because the whole point of a relationship, it's only half you, right?
	I also feel like how I act to people.
	So that's the exact way they're going to act back if I'm going to be happy.
	They're going to be happy to me if I act frustrated or unhappy.
	And that's how I feel in life.
	It's just like a mirror and mirroring my actions.
	Oh God, I hope not.
	I hope that's not the case with your relationships because that means the people are just empty and they just do what you do.
	Just follow you around like a duckling or something, right?
	I mean, you don't want people...
	It certainly is true that if you come in yelling at people, it's more likely to make them tense, angry, upset, or whatever.
	But I'm sure it's not the case, at least I hope it's not the case, that you have people in your life, all they do is follow your moods.
	Hey, he's happy. I'll be happy.
	Hey, he's sad. I'll be sad.
	He's angry. I'm angry too.
	He's frustrated. I'm frustrated.
	Because then it'd be kind of tough to have a relationship, right?
	Because as you say, you kind of have a relationship with a mirror.
	So what should I look in friends when I want to meet people or I want to go forward?
	What achievements or goals or activities do you think are positive that I should connect to?
	I think you're asking what are the virtues you should look for in a friend, is that right?
	Yeah, I mean the morality of friendship is very interesting, sort of the question of what is friendship.
	The first and most important friend that you should have is your wife, the mother of your children, your partner in monogamy, your spouse.
	That's the friend that you should have.
	As you go forward, like when you're young, your friends are very important, right?
	And there's nothing wrong with that.
	That's perfectly natural, perfectly fine.
	Mine were too. As you get older, your spouse and your children become Super important.
	And friendships, while still a part of your life, become less important than they used to be.
	And this is what you would expect.
	So we bond with friends as a way of meeting our life partner, of meeting our spouse.
	That's why we bond with our friends.
	And then, after we've met that life partner, then we embark on marriage, we build our careers, and we have our kids.
	And, you know, to be frank and to be honest, you don't have a lot of time left for friendship.
	It just isn't that much time now.
	I still have friends and so on, but I spend much less time with my friends than I used to when I was in my sort of early to mid-twenties.
	So friends who want the best for you, friends who are honest with you, who give you direct feedback, friends who have a blind loyalty to you that you've earned.
	I know that sounds a bit odd, but I've sort of said this to my daughter.
	I've said... In any conflict between you and someone else, like if I just come across you having a conflict with someone, I will 150% side with you.
	I will side with you completely.
	Now, it may be that later I find out you weren't totally in the right or you did something or whatever, and that's fine, but I'm going to immediately cover that.
	You. I'm going to be on your side.
	150%, right? It's kind of like if you walk down the street and you see a friend of yours and he's in a fight against three guys, you're going to hopefully jump in to the fight on the side of your friend, right?
	And you're not going to sit there and say, well, maybe I'll find out later who started.
	No, you jump in on the side of your friend.
	And if you find out later your friend started it, then he probably wasn't that good a friend if he's out there starting fights or whatever, right?
	So you definitely want that loyalty to you.
	It's just an automatic loyalty to you.
	Now, again, it doesn't mean that they don't have questions or comments or criticisms or anything like that.
	But, you know, when you're in trouble, they side with you.
	And when they're in trouble, you side with them.
	And you can ask questions later after the smoke is cleared, but just be on people's side.
	Know that you have their back, they have your back, and you have that intense loyalty.
	Of course, you want friends... I think the truest mark of friendship is when your friend has a great success and you feel very happy for him.
	A lot of times there's some undercurrents of resentment or negativity or old frustrations or whatever and you're not so happy when your friend does well.
	Or as, what was it, Gore Vidal said, it is not enough that I succeed.
	My friends must also fail.
	That was his kind of catty approach to things.
	So, yeah, I think honor, integrity, virtue, loyalty is very, very important.
	And a support of your life and your goals.
	Like if you're in a marriage and your marriage is going, is having problems, then your friend should come over and sit down for all weekend if need be to help you sort it out.
	Sorry, go ahead. Yeah.
	Also, I'm 21.
	I'm planning to get married this year in a few months.
	Oh, congratulations. So, it's...
	Yeah, because I'm Jewish, so it's going to be...
	It's like a range, then dating, then finding out.
	So, could you tell me a goal that...
	For long-term to look for in a spouse.
	Like, what am I searching? And I won't get, like, 20 years down the road.
	I won't be like, ugh, I missed out.
	Hang on. You get married in a couple of months?
	No. Like, that's my...
	Like, I put this plan a few years ago.
	I wanted to be in a yeshiva, in a studying program.
	Then I wanted to do outreach for a year.
	And then I'm planning, like, this year to get married.
	Yeah. It's okay to plan your life, right?
	That's what I did. Yeah, don't let life just happen to you.
	Now, with regards to the Judaism, is it specifically religious?
	Is it cultural?
	Is it social? What is your approach to your Judaism?
	So, my approach, it's not like only getting one thing and this.
	Like, even if the Judaism wouldn't be like, one day I'd wake up and I wouldn't believe in a god.
	So I'd have like your aspect of like, oh, it's social.
	It's everyone gets a job.
	It's funner. You have the same clothes.
	It's funner. But also with that, I believe the guy in the sky completely.
	And it's such a special connection with it that it fulfills me spiritually and stuff to do.
	And it's fun for me.
	So both aspects to the fullest.
	Okay, got it, got it. So, you want a nice Jewish girl.
	Gee, it's not a question I thought I'd be answering.
	Now, of course, she's got to have the same values as you.
	Now, the same values doesn't mean that the content of what you believe is the same.
	It's not what we have, how we got there.
	I'm sorry? It's not what we have currently, but it's how we got there.
	Yeah, yeah, exactly. So if you meet a woman and maybe she's an atheist or maybe she's an agnostic and you happen to be a theist, right?
	You believe in the religious aspect of things.
	If you have reasoned your way into your faith and she has reasoned her way into agnosticism, there's a lot of compatibility there in my view because it means that you both use reason as your way of resolving thoughts within your minds.
	And that way you'll be able to use reason to resolve issues in your relationship.
	Because a lot of people, they say, oh, well, there's a deviation of belief, therefore that's a problem.
	I don't think that's true.
	We can't want to be with someone who's just like us because that's like we're perfect and everyone who's just like us is perfect and any deviation is bad or wrong.
	So if the woman is an active thinker, if the woman enjoys seeking out and processing new information, new arguments, then I think you're in for a pretty great life of debate and conversation and so on.
	So if you look for just a commitment to reason and something which is going to subsume the ego, right?
	This is really important in marriage that you have to find something that is going to bury or be a counterweight to your ego.
	Because the ego is often based on the belief that who I am is right and what I think is right and other people have to conform.
	But marriage, you have to put aside individuality for the sake of the teamwork, the teamwork of building a household, of raising children, of transferring values and so on.
	And so there has to be some way that your ego can be brought to heel, can be domesticated, can be made part of a team.
	So for me, what keeps my ego in check is philosophy, reason, evidence, new information.
	And whatever I believe, if the evidence and the reason goes the opposite way, I have to drop what I believe.
	And I have something that...
	That brings the ego to heal, that tames the ego.
	Now, if you're religious, of course, then God's commandments, the Torah, and so on, these are going to be what limit your ego and have you Bring your ego into line with a larger or more powerful belief system than just your ego.
	Because if you just follow the ego, then you end up kind of domineering or bullying or vain or narcissistic or something like that.
	So you have to have, and your wife, your wife-to-be, I would assume, has to have something that subsumes the ego.
	So for my wife, she studied a lot of sciences, the scientific method and so on.
	For me, it's reason and evidence.
	There has to be something that you can both agree on That is a way of taming the ego.
	In the relationships I've seen where that doesn't happen, where that doesn't exist, where people don't have philosophy, they don't have religion, usually it's one of those two things, then they end up in a lot of conflicts they can't resolve.
	Because it's two people saying, I'm right, without any objective judge to help them decide, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, that makes perfect sense.
	I really wanted to say thank you.
	So how much you influenced my life, you just don't know.
	I heard your podcast four years ago, and just the thoughts, the thoughts don't leave the head once they're inside, the good thoughts.
	And my actions changed dramatically, being happy in my life, being healthier, making friends, getting more social, seeing also goals in my life.
	Yes, I really want to say thank you so much and whatever you're doing, you're doing the best.
	Just continue with all of your strength.
	Well, thank you very much.
	I really, really appreciate that and congratulations on your beliefs, congratulations on the plan for your life and therapy I think is a great idea and I wish you the very best.
	Please stay in touch and I wish you the very best in your search for a partner and thank you so much for your very kind words tonight.
	That really means a lot to me.
	All right, somebody, let's see here, who else wanted to join?
	And wished to, yes, Mr.
	Bobby, if you want to unmute. All right, Bob, let's see.
	If you wanted to unmute, I don't think any particular setting changed on my side, so let's just see.
	Bob, can you speak?
	Yes, I can. Can you hear me?
	Yes, I can. What's on your mind?
	Awesome. First of all, I just wanted to thank you for everything you do.
	I've been a longtime donator.
	I started listening to you right out of high school.
	You literally saved my life.
	Then I saved my life. Like, dude, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
	I'll make my question quick. So me and my wife, we want to have kids within a year.
	And we're having trouble finding a support group, if that makes sense.
	Like, you know, obviously I don't need an army of friends, but someone to talk to that isn't just my wife, if that makes sense.
	It does make sense.
	Yes. By the way, sorry, I think it just got cut off earlier.
	Thank you. I mean, your kind words and the fact that philosophy has helped you so much meets the world to me.
	And thank you so much. And of course, thank you for supporting the show.
	I really, really appreciate that.
	So do you mean sort of like in real life, people who can think and reason and like philosophy and so on?
	Yeah. So, for example, when I think of having kids, I think of, okay, well, what if every two months or so I want to go on a date night with my wife?
	Well, who watches my kids?
	And it's not any of our family.
	Our families are effing crazy, if you catch my drift.
	Yes, I believe I have been in that neighborhood.
	I believe I have been in that neighborhood.
	So... Can you tell me what you've done?
	I know this always sounds like accusity, like what have you done?
	But what have you done to try and find or create some sort of community of philosophically minded people?
	Great question. So I've tried to do like in-person meetups on like meetup.com, done Craigslist.
	When we first moved to our area, we got a job at like a supermarket, kind of trying to make some friends off there.
	And every time we've made a friend, Eventually, it kind of becomes apparent that they're not the best friend or the good person to really have around for our lives or our children when we have them.
	I would rather you didn't give any identifying details, but can you give me the story arc of one or two of these relationships?
	Sure. We bought a house up here, and we had one of our friends from work move in with us.
	And, you know, he's nice, he's helpful, but he doesn't want to work on himself whatsoever.
	I even offered to pay for some free therapy for him because it was very clear to me, and I even got him to admit his parents aren't the best parents, they're really good parents, and he still refused the therapy.
	Like, I offered him free therapy trying to get him to help himself, help his depression, help work himself out of it, and he just didn't want to.
	He just wanted to play video games instead.
	And there's no amount of convincing I could do to convince him to work on himself.
	It's really sad. I hope that makes sense.
	And what were the indications you had beforehand?
	What were the indications you had that you would consider him a candidate of or for philosophy?
	He's always willing to talk about stuff.
	He seemed more on the freedom spectrum.
	He wasn't about abolishing rights and stuff, but I don't know if that helps.
	He seemed logical.
	He was helpful in a lot of ways when we wanted to talk about personal stuff.
	But when it came to his life, he just didn't really want to work on it.
	Okay, so if you look back at the beginning of the relationship, what were the signs that you could look for or might have seen or might have ignored that told you how things might have gone or were likely to go?
	Probably that he defended his parents more than he should have, if that makes sense.
	Can you give a little bit, flesh that out a bit?
	Yes. So, for example, he built this cool welding device out of a microwave, and he's over 18, and his dad, who he still lived with at the time, just straight up destroyed his creation.
	No consent, no permission, just straight up destroyed it.
	And he still thinks it's cool to hang out with people like that, and he still likes the guy, I guess.
	To me, that was like a clear, oh, wow, yeah, that should have been an indication.
	And how long into your friendship with this person did that occur with his dad?
	I think that probably happened six months to a year after knowing him.
	Okay, so let's go back a little further because my belief, and I don't want to jam your experience into my beliefs, right?
	So I'm just saying my belief, and I've talked to a lot of people about these things.
	Let's go back to when you first met him.
	Were there any indications that there would be these kinds of problems down the road?
	I'm sure there was, and I wasn't wise enough to see them.
	Can you think of any of those when you look back?
	I'm trying really hard.
	That was probably three years ago, but I should still be able to come up with some.
	Okay, so let me ask you this.
	We'll just call this guy Bob, right?
	So what was Bob doing in his life when you met him three years ago?
	Trying to start his life at the same place we worked at.
	He wanted a full-time job.
	He wanted to make some money and get his life going.
	He seemed like a go-getter. He was fixing his stuff all the time.
	He did welding on the side.
	He made his own knives.
	He did a lot of really cool stuff, in my opinion, that made me think that he was a go-getter.
	I hope that answers your question.
	Sure, sure. Okay. And did he say that he wanted to do something That's a good question.
	No, he did not. That's a really good question.
	Okay, so listen, that's important.
	So people who don't have ambitions don't grow because they've got nothing to grow to.
	I mean, it's like a sun.
	It's like a plant with no sunlight.
	The plant grows in general.
	I'm no botanist. The plant grows towards the sunlight.
	So why would someone challenge themselves if they have...
	Nothing to grow to. Nothing to grow towards.
	No ambitions to achieve.
	I mean, to me, ambitions are kind of like the...
	That's the point of life.
	I mean, if you don't have a goal, why wouldn't you just sit around and, I don't know, whack off and play video games all day?
	You know, like what? I mean, then you're just a bunch of nerve endings clawing out for stimulation.
	Why wouldn't you have...
	A goal, right? So, you know, my goal was to grow the show, spread philosophy.
	You know, ran into a couple of speed bumps along the way, had to change my goals.
	My goal is now, you know, write the best book that I can possibly write to inspire people about what the future could look like.
	And, you know, I'm frankly on the home stretch of being a parent.
	My daughter's going to be like 14 this year, so it's just another couple of years.
	And my parenting, at least the sort of formal part of it, is done, right?
	So my goal is to really enjoy...
	The last couple of years of parenting and so on.
	This is a general thing for everyone out there.
	If you meet someone and they don't have any goals, then of course they're going to sit there like a lump on a log.
	They're inert. It's like a brick, right?
	You move a brick and it moves.
	You stop moving the brick, it stops moving because it has no motive power of its own.
	So if this guy didn't have any ambitions, didn't have any goals, and again, I don't want to reiterate, I happen to have had incredibly massive ambitions and so on.
	But it doesn't have to be that.
	It could be, I don't know, I want to win a karaoke contest.
	It could be, I want to build my own house.
	It could be whatever it's going to be.
	But people do have to have some kind of goals.
	Otherwise, they're basically just working and eating and crapping and sleeping and whatever, right?
	So that would be sort of one indication, right?
	Yeah, that's a really good point.
	I appreciate that. Sure, sure.
	Let's do two, just to be on the safe side, because one is just an example, not a pattern.
	Can you think of another friend and how the story arc went with another friend who burned out?
	It was a married couple.
	I liked them at the start because they were very clearly pro-life.
	They thought killing unborn humans was pretty awful, and I thought that was pretty sweet.
	They had goals to have a kid and have a house, and it seemed pretty cool at the start, but near the end when I broke it up with them, The wife was pregnant, so they're going to have a kid.
	They're still living in an apartment, and they're having trouble figuring out how to clean out their kitty's litter boxes.
	And they're going to have a kid.
	Wait, what? First of all, the mom should not be around kitty litter boxes if she's pregnant, right?
	Isn't that toxoplasmosis or something like that?
	You shouldn't be around kitty litter and cat feces.
	She said, you're going to have your kid essentially breathe that in?
	Come on, guys. That was shortly after we stopped hanging out with them.
	That was a huge, oh boy, that's an issue.
	If you can't clean your litter box, I don't know how you're going to have a kid.
	Right. Okay.
	Okay. So was this – so they had ambitions, but they didn't pursue them?
	I'm not sure. They seemed like they had ambitions, but they didn't really try.
	One would just – he would try to become a streamer while also working at the grocery store he worked at, and he thought that he was going to get big doing that, and that was kind of a – If people have ambitions,
	then if they are not moving towards them, they're what's known as a con artist.
	Right? Because they get some prestige from having these ambitions, right?
	But if they're not moving towards these ambitions, then they're getting all the prestige and, wow, you want to be a streamer.
	I mean, I guess everybody probably wants to give it a try.
	It's a pretty tough field to, you know, low barrier to entry, lots of competition and so on, right?
	Right? It's like, you know, these OnlyFans girls who, you know, 1% of them make 99% of the money for, I guess, the X factor or the triple X factor or whatever, right?
	So when people say, I have a goal, then they are responsible for working towards that goal.
	Otherwise, oh, that's a bad sign, man.
	That's a really bad sign because it means that they just brag.
	I'll give you an example from my life.
	A woman I dated, she wanted to become an actress.
	Now, she wasn't the youngest specimen on the block, but to me, if you want to become an actress...
	Then you should take acting classes.
	You should read plays.
	You should memorize monologues.
	You should perform these monologues for friends and family to get their feedback.
	You should go on auditions.
	Yeah, all these things. All these things that you should be doing if you want to be an actress.
	Now, this woman, she met...
	I'll keep everything as vague as possible.
	She met a man who was a casting agent, right?
	And the man looked at her and said, well, you know, Phil, you're a very attractive woman, but you need to get your teeth straightened if you're going to work in film.
	Because, you know, the one thing you notice outside of, I don't know, Ron Perlman, Hugh Laurie or whatever, is that if you want to work in film, you've got to have these giant chicory white tombstone teeth, right?
	Straight up like rust glowing from friends' teeth.
	And they've got to be perfect, right?
	So this woman said, okay, I will go and get my teeth fixed.
	So, she went and she spent a year on braces and got her teeth straightened and so on, right?
	And then she went back to this guy and she said, basically, I'm paraphrasing, but she said, I'm ready to be an actress.
	I got my teeth straightened.
	And he said, well, I mean, it's good that you got your teeth straightened, I guess, but have you done any regional theater?
	Do you have any reviews?
	And she's like, well, no, but I got my teeth straightened.
	So she's not making any measurable goal.
	I wanted to be an actor, so I read tons of plays.
	I learned a whole bunch of audition pieces.
	I auditioned for the National Theatre School.
	I went to the National Theatre School, which only 1% of people who audition get to go.
	Then I wanted to be a playwright, so I wrote 30 plays.
	I produced a play or two of mine.
	Then I wanted to be a novelist, so I wrote novels.
	You've got to just do stuff.
	The number of people out there, oh my god.
	I think global warming is mostly caused by people bragging about accomplishments they will never approach.
	To me, when someone says, I want to do X, I knew a woman, she wanted to be a filmmaker.
	Okay, that's tough.
	This is back in the day when you actually had to shoot on film.
	You couldn't just bring out a little You can make a feature film on a phone these days, right?
	So she wanted to be a filmmaker.
	It's like, okay, so you should be writing scripts all the time until you find some script that you really love or some story or some idea that you really love.
	And then you've got to take a screenwriting course.
	You've got to get an agent.
	You've got to, well, whatever.
	You've got to go find some way to raise money.
	Like, okay, so if you wanted to do these things, then...
	If I don't see measurable progress in someone towards the goal that they claim, then the goal is a con.
	It's a way of them saying, well, I want to be a filmmaker.
	I want to be an actress.
	I want to be a whatever.
	And it's like, well, what have you done?
	I genuinely don't understand people who have a goal and don't take any steps towards it.
	It's a completely foreign mindset to me.
	What, do you think you're going to live forever?
	I knew this guy played in a band for years.
	What did they do? They did covers.
	What a complete waste of time.
	Oh, you're a bar band that does cover songs?
	Oh, yeah, let's hear House of the Rising Sun for the eight millionth time, right?
	And I said to him, I said, look, if you want to be in the music...
	I'm no expert in the music business, but I do know this.
	If you want to be in the music business, you have to write.
	You have to write songs.
	There's no other way to succeed.
	I mean, unless you want to be some session musician, whatever, making...
	If you want to be a band, you have to write songs.
	This is what Freddie Mercury said when he first started touring.
	He was like a roadie for Queen and then he became their singer or whatever.
	He's like, well, this is great, but we have to write.
	We have to write. You can't succeed if you don't write.
	The money is not in the playing, the money is in the song.
	The money is in the songs. To me, if somebody says, I want to be a musician, then when I call them and say, hey, let's go away for the weekend to a beach, they say, oh, I can't.
	I've got to practice, right? I've got to practice.
	It's probably an apocryphal story, but Eric Clapton, after hearing...
	Oh, all along, though, Jimi Hendrix.
	After hearing Jimi Hendrix, you know, the story is he locked himself in a room for a year to practice because he's like, wow, I'm way behind, right?
	But that's what you've got to do.
	Like that song, you know, I got my first real six-string at the five and dime.
	I played it till my fingers bled, you know, or Geddy Lee.
	You know, when he's 12, he gets a guitar, he learns Pretty Woman, and he's like, that's it for me, man.
	That's all I did was just practice, practice.
	That's all I wanted to do, and then that's it.
	So if you have people floating around, I want to do this and I want to do that and so on, it's like, it's a con.
	It doesn't mean that they'll get there.
	It doesn't mean that they'll, you know, it might take them five years, it might take them ten years, but if they're not doing it, if they're not doing something at least every week to get their distance, to get some way towards that goal, Then it's bullshit.
	And it's really dangerous bullshit because it sounds like they're in motion, but all they're doing is just empty bragging.
	You've got to watch out for people like that.
	Because people who get by on empty bragging, they will kill your goals.
	They will destroy your capacity to reach your goals.
	Because if you actually start making tangible progress towards achieving your goals, they know deep down that they're going to be revealed as the frauds that they are, so they'll sabotage the living hell out of you.
	If you are doing what they say that they're doing and you're actually doing it, not necessarily in the field, but you're achieving something towards your goal, I mean, they'll mess you up, man.
	They'll put you down.
	They'll try and get you into drinking more.
	They'll offer you pot.
	They'll interrupt your practice or your rehearsal or whatever it is that you're going to do.
	They'll put you down. They'll say, oh, I'll do it later.
	They'll sabotage the hell out of your goals if they're not actually doing Trying to achieve their own, if that makes sense.
	That was so wise. Yeah, that makes so much sense.
	I wrote all that down. I hope it didn't bother you.
	No, that's fine. That's fine. So, yeah, watch this.
	Let me ask you this, though.
	Let me ask you this. Look at this, me starting 12 sentences and trying to finish one.
	All right. So, here's the question, right?
	It's a general principle.
	If something in your life keeps happening, it's because you're programmed that way.
	If something in your life keeps happening, it's because you're programmed that way.
	Until you see that programming, it's going to keep happening.
	When I was younger, I would find people who claimed they had some real talents and then I would pour heart and soul into trying to help them achieve their goals.
	Sometimes at the expense of my own goals, which was kind of unwise.
	But anyway, nobody starts off wise, or at least not these days.
	So, I had to sort of figure out, you know, I had a very high ambitious mother who was very underperforming.
	So, propping her up and moving her along and trying to keep her momentum going was a survival mechanism for me when I was younger.
	Because when my mom would get inert, it would be pretty dangerous for me, right?
	She would get out of bed and we'd get eviction notices and it would all be pretty tough, right?
	I had been programmed in particular to support female ambition in the absence of any evidence that it could be achieved.
	Let me say that again, just so it's clear.
	I had been programmed to support female ambition in the complete absence of any evidence that could be achieved.
	My mother always wanted to write books.
	Oh, look, I'm writing books.
	She wanted to write a book called One Woman's Century.
	This is her life. I wish she had.
	It would have been fascinating to read.
	She never did. So, my question for you is, do you have, or when you were growing up in your life, did you have people who talked big but didn't achieve, who had big dreams but never achieved?
	Are you programmed to overlook red flags in people?
	I think partially.
	I'm working my way out of it, but I definitely see what you're saying.
	There probably is some of that still there from my crappy parents.
	Hello! Right.
	Because if people, when you were growing up, if people, usually it's your family, right?
	So if your family was full of people with red flags, then they would train you to overlook those red flags.
	And then if you've confronted your family or you've identified the red flags in your family, that's kind of only half the thing, right?
	Because the other half of the thing is, you know, those habits will then just get pushed out into the world.
	As a whole, to other people, or to put it another way, other people will see your susceptibility to overlooking red flags and say, aha!
	I can get this guy.
	I can get resources out of this guy.
	I can get attention and friendship and money and a place to stay and support and enthusiasm and feedback.
	I can get all of this stuff from this guy because he's programmed.
	Like a lot of what people call social interaction is predators sniffing for vulnerabilities.
	And so if you have a bunch of people in your life where you invest a lot into the friendship but nothing comes back, nothing pans out and it's a one-way street, that's because people can sniff what your parents programmed into you and are perfectly happy to – I mean sadly, perfectly happy to exploit it.
	So when you have these kinds of patterns, people sniff that like – It's like blood in the water for sharks, and they will exploit it.
	And I think that's part of your concern.
	It's like, how come this keeps happening?
	Well, if you've got blood in the water and you're splashing around like a wounded fish, of course the sharks are going to come, right?
	So I would say try and look for areas in your life where red flags were obvious, but you got punished for noticing them.
	And maybe you've dealt with that with your family, but if you still have those habits and they're not clearly identified, Then I think you are vulnerable to that kind of exploitation.
	Because if you're pouring all this energy into friendships and it's not coming back, that's because the friends are, or the quote friends, are seeing a vulnerability in you.
	And they are, well, I'm exploiting it, sadly.
	That's so wise. I totally see that now.
	Yeah, like, you know, I was told growing up, you know, be honest, be honest.
	And then when I would say like, hey, mom, I don't want to hang out with your friends.
	Oh, suddenly I'm being ripped.
	Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, tell me the truth.
	It's like, well, I don't want to kiss grandmother.
	She smells of camphor oil and she has warts on her chin.
	It's like, no, no, no, I don't want that truth.
	Tell me the truth. When you have information that I want from you, truth is a virtue.
	When you have information I don't want from you, well, then you've got to be polite.
	You've got to think of other people's feelings.
	You don't want to upset people.
	It's like, oh, yeah, yeah, stupid maze that we all have to run through.
	Oh, yeah. That drove me crazy.
	Well, that's the end of my question. I'd love to hand it back to you.
	Thank you so much for your time.
	Oh, you are absolutely welcome.
	Thank you for your support.
	And it was a really, really great chat.
	All right. So let me just scroll through here.
	Does this app easily show me who wants to talk?
	No. But Tom!
	Tommy boy, the lights, the lights are calling.
	Tom, you will have to unmute and then you can speak.
	My theory is that people ask to speak and then get super drunk.
	That's my theory. I do not know.
	I do not know.
	All right. Let's see who else is around.
	Roos. Roos sounds like...
	Roosh.
	You are on the line.
	We've got like, I don't know, like five or six people who wanted to talk and all you have to do is talk.
	And yet... I'll just pause for a sec.
	We got Bob, Bobby, Nick, Micah, Justin, you are a 1-3, Drew P. You are all available.
	Yes, I heard a voice. I did.
	All right. So, Steph, I come to you with an ethical conundrum right now.
	Oh, I like those. Go.
	Yes. And it entails my mother.
	She, like yours...
	Wasn't exactly the best mother as I was growing up.
	And at the moment, I am forced by remorse and guilt, almost, I don't know what it is, to financially support her.
	And it's weighing down on me.
	I'm quite young. It's quite a weight.
	And I really don't know how to deal with it because I don't really think she has...
	The mental capacity, in my opinion, to take responsibility for what she did to me as a child and what went on.
	So I'm forced right now to continue to financially support her.
	I've been postponing plans of getting a family, of having children, or just the future in general.
	I would like to know how you would deal with a situation like this, this split in conscience that I'm going through.
	Right, right. Can you tell me a little more about your mother, your father, what happened?
	Well, the history...
	Me and my mother, we immigrated to the United States.
	Sorry, I hate to interrupt.
	I'm just going to say from where because sometimes there's a cultural element that needs to be taken into account.
	We immigrated from the Dominican Republic.
	Right, right. Okay, okay. I mean, so that's a very family-centric culture, right?
	I mean, you have to take care of the family.
	It is to an extent, but the way they raise children is barbarous.
	Well, of course it is, because if you have guaranteed care from your children, you don't have to treat them well.
	Do you get treated well at the DMV or government schools where they have a monopoly?
	No, I mean, if your kids have to take care of you no matter what, then you can treat them like crap, because it's not a free market, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, yeah. So now that she...
	Well, the story goes that when I was a boy, I was like, At the age of four or five, my mother divorced from my father, who is a great man.
	He wasn't able to immigrate with us because he's not married to her, but he is a great man.
	And she's a Pentecostal Christian, and she used to evangelize in prisons.
	And at a prison, she picked up this convict, a straight-up convict at a prison, and Brought him to the home and turned out, quite predictably, the guy was an absolute savage.
	What was he convicted for?
	It's so muddy.
	It was some sort of accidental death.
	He says it was an accidental death, but he was cleaning some sort of weapon or rifle next to a river and he killed someone.
	In fact, I do remember him visiting his home with us.
	God, in another timeline, she dated Alec Baldwin.
	But anyway, sorry, go on. Yeah, yeah.
	I remember once we visited his home and we had to leave with urgency.
	And we were going 100 miles an hour through curbs because there was some sort of blood feud that was going on.
	The family of the person he killed wanted to get back at him.
	So we had to leave. Was this, sorry, was this in the Dominican or in the States?
	Yes, it was. It was in the Dominican.
	Okay, got it. Yeah, the man was, he wasn't, he was just a terrible human being.
	He would do the most, like, if I would wake him up from his sleep, he would, I remember him, I remember these images vaguely because I don't know, I think the problem was suppressed or what, but he would beat the crap out of me and With a belt or with his hands.
	Oh, my God. I'm so sorry, man.
	I'm so sorry. Did your mom know about this?
	Yes, she knew. And that's the thing.
	She would let it happen. And this is where it turns around to...
	Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.
	Sorry, sorry. Wait, wait, wait, wait.
	A little circle back, if you don't mind.
	Where was your dad in all of this?
	Oh, yes. My dad...
	You see, this is another thing where I'm having a split in ethics or more like admiration or disdain towards him because he kind of knew.
	But the law is so...
	There is no rule of law there.
	It would have to be an act of courage for him to get me out of there because the guy, he would threaten that if he tried to get me, He would beat the crap out of him or kill him or something.
	You understand what I'm saying?
	Yeah, yeah. No, I get it. So, yeah, it's real Wild West stuff.
	Okay. Yeah.
	Tell me why you refer to your father...
	I'm not disagreeing. I just want to make sure I understand the reasoning.
	You say he's a great man. He's a great man.
	What's that? Well, I did get to spend time with him.
	And he's a Mormon.
	He's also religious. And he is staunchly against...
	Beating kids or hitting me in any way, even if the culture is pervasive with that stuff.
	So it's surprising to me.
	And he stands out as almost like a savior, even though there was a lapse of courage in that.
	Well, but he married a woman who's okay with childbeating, right?
	Yes, and that was...
	So a little bit of a value fail there, right?
	Yeah, yeah, that is true.
	My reason didn't see that.
	No, I mean, I don't know how long you've been listening to the show, but it's kind of a theme that there's in a lot of people's minds, a lot of children's minds, adult children there.
	Well, my mother was this, but my father was great.
	Or my father was terrible, but my mother was a saint.
	And it's like, but they're a system, man.
	It's like two sides of the same coin.
	I mean, your dad had a chance to vet your mom, right?
	I mean, if he's a great guy, he had his choice of women, right?
	He could get any woman pretty much he wanted, I assume, right?
	Nice, clean-cut, smart Mormon guy, right?
	But he chose your mom.
	And not only did he choose her to date, He chose her to get engaged to.
	Not only did he choose her to get engaged to, he chose her to get married to.
	Not only did he choose her to get married to, he chose her to give children to.
	Yes, yes. So he can't, like, the splash, this huge splash damage in choices we make.
	I mean, I'm glad you're here, glad we're having this conversation, but you exist out of the conscious evaluation of your mother by your father.
	To the point where he's going to give her the greatest gift a human being can give another, which is a child or children.
	So I'm not sure how he escapes the splash damage of your mother's personality.
	I'm happy to be corrected or illuminated, but I'm having trouble seeing it.
	Yes, I think you are correct in your judgment there.
	If I were to judge him harshly like that, yes, I think...
	Well, hang on. You slipped a little word in there that was a little insulting.
	That's not the end of the world, but, you know, judge him harshly?
	I'm trying to judge fairly.
	I'm not trying to be harsh.
	But he did choose her, right?
	And he gave children to a woman who grabbed a violent criminal out of the jail and put that violent criminal in destructive charge of his son.
	Yes, yes. He chose her voluntarily.
	Nobody forced him. Unless he's some one-legged guy with two heads or something, he's got his choice of women.
	And he chose her.
	So why did he choose your mom?
	That's my question. It can't have been because of the quality of her personality, right?
	Unless she was a great person, got a head injury or something.
	It couldn't have been. It must have been pure lust.
	It was probably lust. So that probably...
	Now, sorry, I don't mean to laugh.
	Has he been a Mormon his whole life?
	Was he not religious? No, no, no.
	He wasn't a Mormon his whole life.
	At that point in his time, he wasn't a Mormon.
	Was he religious at all?
	I don't think so. Oh, so he went from being not religious to becoming a Mormon, is that right?
	Yes, and he has lived an absolutely clean life.
	Wait, wait, wait. So how old were you?
	Or were you around when this transition occurred?
	I don't even have memory of the event of their divorce.
	Hang on. Did he become a Mormon before you were born?
	I think it was after.
	After he moved away with his other family.
	The change happened.
	And has your father apologized to you For what his choices did to you when you were a child?
	I have not brought the ethical concern with him.
	It's not your job to, my friend.
	I'm a father. Is it my daughter's job?
	If I do something morally wrong, is it my daughter's job to bring it to my attention?
	Probably not. Well, no, because he's a Mormon, right?
	Now, I know Mormon is like Christianity adjacent.
	There's some questions about whatever, right?
	But within Mormonism, I'm going to assume is if you are born again, right?
	If you become a Mormon, then I assume that you become a Mormon because you've sinned, right?
	Or because sin is overwhelming you.
	It's out of your control. So when you are born again, one of the things I believe that you have to do is recognize that you've hurt people through your sinful ways and I mean, even alcoholics have to do that through AA, right?
	Apologize and make restitution and acknowledge the harm that they've done.
	And again, I'm certainly no expert on Mormonism, but I assume that, especially if you're born again, it's a recognition that your life's out of control, you've hurt people and so on.
	And I assume that there's some process of saying, you know, whoops, I mean, your father knew that you were being beaten and Because of the man, the woman he chose, chose to bring into your life.
	Now, I'm not saying he beat you like your dad beat you, but he's not outside the equation because he chose your mom.
	Yes, that's true.
	I do not deny that.
	So he knows that you were beaten.
	He knows that he didn't protect you.
	Now, I mean, you're saying it's the laws and this and that.
	Okay, but still, he didn't protect you, right?
	He didn't, no. Oh yeah, it was constant.
	Yeah, I mean, you're getting chased around the countryside 100 miles an hour because of blood feuds.
	This guy's been in prison for killing someone.
	It's accidental, he says, right?
	And here's the thing, you know, for those of you who've never been beaten as a child, A, I'm super happy for you.
	It's a great thing. But if you're listening to this, you've never been beaten as a child, here's what you need to know.
	Every beating carries within it the possibility of fucking dying.
	Every single beating carries within it the possibility of dying.
	Because you might run away.
	You might trip. You might hit your head on the edge of a table.
	You might fall down some stairs.
	You might turn and, you know, the belt buckle goes straight into your eye.
	And the other thing, you don't know, if someone's crazy enough to literally beat a child, are they going to know when to stop?
	What if they just get some completely psycho blind rage?
	It's not like this doesn't happen in life, right?
	Now, listen, I don't want to speak for you, brother.
	I really don't. But I mean, from my experience of being beaten, it's like a potential death sentence every time.
	It's Russian roulette. Really bad shit.
	And in particular with you, I mean, with my mom, okay, she was like a skinny German woman.
	So it was, I mean, when I got older, when I was very young, yes, I was afraid of dying without a doubt.
	But for you, you've got some, I assume, fairly, but certainly big to you relative to a child, like way bigger than you, this guy who's already killed someone, who's beating you up, and does he know when to stop?
	Does he know when the danger zone approaches?
	So, again, I don't want to speak for you, but I would imagine, if I put myself in your shoes, that you feared for your life.
	Yeah, he was giant. He was a bodybuilder.
	He was a bodybuilder?
	Yeah, he was giant.
	Jesus. Yeah.
	Wow. He had these bouts of rage, even with animals.
	A cat once shat on the floor, and he grabbed that kitten and smashed it against the wall.
	I thought the cat was dead.
	I don't know if it survived. I finally understood the meaning of the cats having nine lives, because I couldn't believe the cats.
	Right. Yeah, that's what she exposed me to.
	And she herself sometimes partook in the meetings because I misbehaved or something.
	And this all comes from her taking literally the Pentecost, because she was a Pentecostal Christian, and those people are a little nutty.
	And they believe that in the phrase, spare the rod, spoil the child, and they take it literally.
	Right. So she would just sometimes partake, sometimes do nothing.
	And she raised me.
	And when we came over here, she raised me pretty badly.
	I was completely neglected.
	She was a civil mother.
	She barely knew the language.
	And she had to work all the time.
	At least one positive aspect of her religion is that she wasn't an addict of any sort.
	And did she drop the guy?
	Did the guy not follow you from Dominican?
	Oh, well, the guy cheated on her multiple times.
	In the house, she left behind, and it got to her.
	Right. Yeah, he might have been on steroids, too, right?
	To affect his temper. I don't know.
	I've always... I suppose, yeah.
	I don't know, to be honest.
	That's not a plea for sympathy, because he's responsible for that, too, right?
	So this is not like, oh, he was out of control.
	No, no, he was still responsible for that.
	Okay, so to bring it up to the present right now, you're supporting your mom, is that right?
	Yeah, because I don't know what it is.
	I'm bound by a sense of duty.
	I couldn't bear she were somehow to be homeless because she couldn't take care of herself.
	I couldn't bear that. Why would she be homeless, though?
	Does she have a job?
	Yes, she works, but Isn't that the whole point of working?
	I mean, I didn't have a job I enjoyed until I was 28, but isn't the whole point of working is that you're not homeless?
	Yeah. No, no.
	If I'm missing something, please fill me in, honestly.
	Is she making three bucks an hour?
	She's on the older side.
	She's about 50, 52, 53.
	I've never felt younger.
	I'm just kidding. Just kidding.
	My apologies. No, no, no.
	Don't apologize. I get that.
	I get that the audience could be a little younger than me.
	That's fine. Okay, so she's in her 50s.
	Yeah, and she doesn't take care of herself well either.
	Like I said, she barely knows the language.
	My sisters, I have sisters as well from another...
	I have sisters, half-sisters from another father.
	And... Not the weightlifter, though?
	No, not from the weightlifter.
	So this is a guy other than the weightlifter and other than your dad, right?
	Yes. Those sisters, they once saw one of his episodes of Rage, and they just left their dad's house.
	They never came back.
	Oh, wow. So they could get away.
	So hang on.
	Well, how could your sisters get away, but you couldn't?
	Well, I forgot one detail that I remember.
	It's coming back to me now.
	I think I was being questioned once in regards to custody.
	And my mother was discussing something with this guy.
	And the dude, he made me, the official, he made me draw a picture of a family on the page.
	And I think my mother, my memory is very vague, I'm sorry.
	I think she said something to incriminate my father as if he was abusing me in order to take custody of me completely, 100%, and to push him away because I think my dad was fighting for custody through the law.
	But like I said, it's not a very reliable system.
	Do you know why she wanted 100% custody?
	I don't know.
	Maybe it's just motherly instinct.
	No, pretty sure the motherly instinct is not exactly enhanced by having a bodybuilder beat up on your little boy.
	I think we could rule out pretty empirically the mother instinct here.
	You don't invite violent criminals into the house with your children and have them beat up your children if you've got a strong motherly instinct.
	Yeah, well, she had a strong religious inclination as well, which I guess made her justify it.
	But I don't know exactly why she wanted 100% custody of me.
	Okay. But did your father...
	Sorry, when you were in the situation, did your father visit?
	Did you spend any time with him?
	Oh, yes. Yes. The few memories I have with him that he was allowed to see me, they're great.
	Him teaching me how to play baseball or something, taking me around town, speaking to me.
	One time I got to stay with him in the city where he's from with my other family.
	And he was...
	The contrast was incredible.
	I mean, I couldn't...
	I couldn't believe how different it was.
	And I was so constantly used to getting beat for little things that if I did something bad, I would be terrified or...
	I don't know if you understand my meaning, what I'm saying, what I'm getting at.
	Oh, no, I do. There were always two or three things I could be gotten for as a kid.
	Always. You know, like I was the last one to have used the flashlight, right?
	And I can't find the flashlight.
	So God help me if we need the flashlight, if we have a power outage or something.
	Yeah, yeah. Right?
	Because then it's going to be like, hey, Steph, you are the one who last had the flashlight.
	Where is it? Right? Yes.
	Right? Yeah.
	It's always something. Yeah, like you've eaten a few too many candies and you put the wrappers back in, but someone's going to find them.
	Who ate all the candies?
	It's going to be something. There's always something that's kind of floating around, hanging around that you could be gotten for.
	Yes, yes. Yes, that's exactly it.
	Little landmines all over the place.
	Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed.
	So, yeah. So, no, listen, I think you and me down there at the trenches, I think we could swap war stories all night, but I think we understand that we're veterans, right?
	Yeah. Okay.
	So, sorry, you wanted to say something else.
	Go ahead. Oh, well, I actually...
	I'll let you carry on the conversation if you have any more inquiries.
	Oh, no, no. I mean, I think I get a fairly clear picture.
	Now, listen, I know that there's lots of details and I know there's lots of nuance, so I don't want to say, hey, 15 minutes, I've completely understood your life.
	But, you know, in sort of the interest of time, I'm going to hit the gas here for just a sec and get you to see it from a different way, right?
	All right. So you think that this decision is about you and your mom, right?
	Do I financially support my mother?
	I assume she didn't save money, right?
	She doesn't have savings. She didn't learn the language.
	She didn't up her skills. Is she not smart?
	And I say that with sympathy.
	Some people just aren't. I'll be honest with you.
	She's not. She's not smart, right?
	I think that the only thing that saved me intellectually was my dad's side.
	Right. Yeah.
	Right. And even if we could question her IQ or whatever, but we know for sure she's no wisdom, right?
	I mean, it's a wisdom of three in Dungeons& Dragons world because it's hard to think of it being lower, right?
	Yes, that's another issue in my mind because...
	How much personal responsibility can I ascribe to her if she's just not capable of reasoning on the level?
	Well, no, no. I mean, so the question there is, okay, did she hide it?
	Did she hide the abuse? Did she ever abuse you in public or with a teacher around or in front of a policeman or anything like that?
	She would do it in public because it's so pervasive there, like I said before.
	Would she have done it, say, at a customs entrance?
	No, not at all. Would she have done it where she could have faced some negative effects from doing it?
	No. So she could control it.
	So wherever she could get away with it, she would do it.
	But when she couldn't get away with it, or there was a chance she couldn't, then she wouldn't do it, right?
	So that's just logically now we know that she was perfectly capable of not abusing you, right?
	Correct. Okay, so she's responsible.
	Now, if somebody has epilepsy, they're just going to have an epileptic attack.
	It's not their fault, right?
	It could be on a plane, it could be on a bus, it could be while swimming, right?
	And we don't blame them because they really have no choice.
	But if your mother could at any time stop abusing you, Because maybe then she'd get in trouble.
	Okay, well, then we know she was responsible.
	That's just, I mean, that's just one of these ones that's hard to see, but once you get it, it's like, oh yeah, yeah, 100%.
	Yeah, my mother, I mean, my mother almost never came to parent-teacher conferences, but whenever she did, she was super sweet.
	Yeah. Very enthusiastic about me, and he's so creative, and he's so smart, and blah, blah, blah, you know.
	And she never, like, yelled at me or screamed at me or dragged me across the room or, you know, beat my head against the wall or anything in front of the teacher.
	My God. Because, you know, that would be bad for her.
	So she obviously is not going to do that.
	That's no good. Of course.
	So yeah, she's 100% responsible.
	Okay. So you think that it's to do with you and your mom and it's just the two of you in a way, right?
	That this is the decision about you and your mom.
	I'm going to... Make a suggestion.
	It's just a suggestion.
	I don't know what you should do, right?
	It's just a way of looking at it, though, right?
	Okay, so I'm going to assume because you're a listener to this show, you're a super good-looking guy.
	I mean, that's just the way it is. It's just a fact that philosophy only attracts the chatty of chattinesses, right?
	Yeah. You're the guy who makes that wedge-shaped Eastern European guy with the giant jaw.
	You make him look like me, right?
	So I get it, right?
	Okay, so you're a good-looking guy, and I want you to picture...
	Okay, tell me, what's your ideal...
	And forget about personality, so let's just be total dudes here for a second.
	Okay, what's your ideal female?
	Like, who do you want?
	What's her name? What does she look like?
	She is fair, voluptuous, fairly sized breasts.
	I already said voluptuous, so I can't say anything.
	I think you did. So I think we've got that marked twice.
	Super voluptuous. You've got upper chunk.
	Okay. Yeah.
	Fit and constantly upkeeping her appearance.
	Right. Yeah, that's it.
	That pretty much encapsulates my...
	Totally fair list. Okay. So what name should we give her?
	Wow. Okay. You can go island if you want.
	You can go mainland if you want.
	I don't care. What's the name you're going to give her?
	Consuela? Or is that too cliche?
	Consuela. Consuela.
	Oh, I know.
	Okay, we'll just put the Consuela name on her, and I'm sure I'm pronouncing it about as British as you can get.
	All right. So, Consuela, her eyes meet yours across a restaurant.
	She sits up a little straighter.
	Her boobs are weighing down the tablecloth.
	She's looking across at you and she's thinking, what a hunkasaurus.
	Oh, yes. Mama likes.
	Right? And then, you know, you screw up your courage.
	You go over and chat with her. She's funny.
	She's smart. And...
	You date.
	You're getting along. She's not having sex with you because she's got some pride.
	But, you know, she's a good kisser.
	And then she says...
	I would like to meet your mother.
	Wait, wait, wait! We're not done yet!
	It's like the worst penthouse story ever, right?
	You're too young for that reference.
	Consuela comes slinking and sashaying over to your mom's place and she meets your mom.
	Now, Consuela is smart and she's really, really good at reading people.
	People can't fool her for a second, right?
	So Consuela looks at your mom, spends the afternoon with your mom, watches you with your mom, and then Consuela thinks, ah, I could get probably another 30 to 40 years with this as my mother-in-law.
	Yeah, that's...
	Now, I don't care how good-looking you are, and I'm rating you an 11 out of 10 here, my friend.
	I don't care how good-looking you are.
	I don't care what kind of meaty man-trouser snake you've got going on.
	A woman looks at your mom and thinks of 30 to 40 years with her as the mother-in-law and the grandmother to her children, and what does she think?
	Well, she...
	Well, first of all, I don't think...
	I don't think they need to add eye to eye on anything.
	Right. If she's decently smart, she probably wouldn't be able to scratch the surface beyond niceties.
	Oh, and then your mother says, oh, I'm a big fan of child beating.
	Yeah, that too.
	Now, Consuela, because she's smart and wise, doesn't want her children beaten.
	Right. Hell no.
	And she looks at you and she's like, wait, this woman beat you?
	Or she allowed you to be beaten?
	Or she set up the situation where you got beaten?
	And you're coming over here kissing the ring?
	What the hell? Why is this child abusing, criminal dating, bodybuilder beating on her kids so she rewards him with sex?
	What the hell is this person doing here?
	You want me to step into this?
	You want me to bond to this?
	I'm not just marrying you, I'm marrying this woman too.
	What is Consuela going to do?
	Thank you.
	Well, she's going to beat it.
	She is going to beat it, yeah.
	And not in the fun way we might have talked about in some other universe, right?
	But yeah, she's going to beat it like Michael Jackson, right?
	Yeah. So now, your mom, you think it's about the money.
	It's not about the money. I'm not saying the money's unimportant.
	It's not about the money. Who is your loyalty to?
	Your mother or Consuela?
	Man. I mean...
	Because your mother's going to cast you Consuela, guaranteed.
	Yeah, yeah. Because I've said this before, right?
	Men look at a woman and all we do is just think of her in isolation, right?
	Like just her. Yeah, I'll put up with the family, but it's all about her.
	Women look at you like you're the tip of the iceberg and the iceberg is your family.
	Yeah. And she's going to sit there and say, oh, this is going to be my mother-in-law, who, by the way, seems to have her hooks firmly, deeply into my husband or my husband-to-be.
	Yeah. So my mother-in-law jumps.
	My husband's going to say, oh, bye.
	Got to go deal with mother-in-law. How high, mommy?
	She's going to, this mother-in-law is going to be running my family.
	She's going to be in charge.
	And she's going to get older and sicker and needier and crazier and more aggressive because she's going to lose all of her romantic power, right?
	More naggy, more needy.
	I'm going to have to share my husband with this son of a witch, right?
	Yes. Yeah, that's the ethical.
	Because if you think it's about the money, okay, well, you can give us the money.
	I'm not saying you're made of money or anything, but what you have to recognize, I think, or what I would suggest, is that it's not about you and your mom, because that's all the past.
	See, that's past stuff.
	Your mom had her life.
	She made her decisions, right?
	She obviously was super turned on by this bodybuilder guy.
	And so because she was turned on by him, I hate to talk about this with your mom, but, you know, she's a woman, right?
	She has, I guess, a fetish or a kink or whatever, right?
	So she likes the big muscles.
	Of course. So she's like, okay, because you're hot, okay, you can beat up my son.
	Yeah, yeah. And your dad kind of did the same thing.
	Because I guess when your mom was younger, she was hot too.
	And he's like, okay, well, even though you're a pretty terrible human being, I'll give you kids because you're hot.
	And that's what Christianity is supposed to fight.
	It's supposed to say, no, no, no, lust is a sin.
	And why is lust a sin?
	Lust is a sin...
	Because it creates broken and damaged people.
	Because you end up giving children to violent, broken, deranged people.
	So lust is a sin because it breaks people.
	That doesn't mean you can't be fixed.
	It doesn't mean you can't be whole.
	I was broken in two as a child.
	You can fix it and even be stronger, but it's a pretty sucky process, right?
	It is. It has been.
	Very sucky process.
	Sucky process. And, you know, hey, yes, when it's all said and done, you're a superhero, but man, who wants to fall into the vat of acid for five years to fix yourself, right?
	Yeah, I had to do that through much trial and error.
	Yeah, so Consuela is your future.
	Your mom is your past.
	Now, Consuela is your chosen future.
	Your mom is your unchosen past.
	You never chose to have her as a mother.
	You never chose to have your father as a father.
	You never chose to have this bodybuilder beat you up.
	That was your mom's choice, right?
	Not yours. So all the stuff that's in the past, you never chose.
	And what we choose can't scar us much.
	This is really important to understand.
	Now, if we choose something really bad...
	You know, like you're in a marriage and you have an affair or something.
	You just mess up your whole marriage, right?
	Okay, that sticks to you.
	That's on you. That tattoos you, right?
	Everything we never chose washes clean away.
	It's like one of those stupid henna tattoos you get when you're on vacation.
	I last got one by coincidence in the Dominican Republic.
	And the conversation comes full circle, right?
	Yes, I was that tourist, I'm afraid.
	So, what you never chose washes clean away.
	I didn't choose my mother. I didn't choose my father.
	I didn't choose any of my family members.
	So all the shitty things they did start on me.
	I never chose it. Now, there are things as an adult that I chose.
	They're on me. Yeah, I carry those.
	They lift me up. They weigh me down.
	They are who I am. As adults, we're nothing more really than the sum of our choices.
	But as children, nothing's on us.
	We're just trying to survive, right?
	So, with regards to your mother, did the bodybuilder guy work?
	Did he make money? Did he pay bills?
	Oh, yes. Yeah.
	That's one thing he did.
	So, your mom didn't pay that much in terms of bills, did she?
	No, probably at the beginning, no.
	But when she moved over here and she started sending him remittances...
	Wait, she sent the bodybuilder boyfriend money?
	Yes, yes. And then it all crumbled for him, that psychopath.
	What? Okay, hang on.
	Much so I'd love to hear the end story of this bloated monster.
	Your mom, oh God, please tell me this is true because this makes things so much easier.
	Your mom sent money to the guy who beat you up?
	Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Oh shit, you should have told me that at the beginning.
	This could have been way faster. I mean, happy though I am to meet Consuela, and I have a very vivid picture of her.
	She's like Jessica Rabbit with a tan.
	But this makes things so much easier.
	Why the hell would you give your mom money if she gave all her money to the child abuser who beat you up?
	Yeah, that's...
	I mean, that's an easy one.
	I mean, I'm not saying it's easy emotionally.
	But morally, oh, that's dead simple.
	So the money that she could have retired on, the money that she could have invested in, the money that she could have saved, she sent to the guy who beat you all to shit, right?
	Yeah, yeah. So you would be replacing the money she sent to the guy who beat you up when you were a child and he was a fucking bodybuilder.
	You would be replacing the money your mother sent to the guy who beat you up.
	Oh, fuck no.
	Oh my god.
	She's paying and subsidizing the guy who beat you up.
	Because if she had that money, if she'd invested it, she'd saved it, whatever, right?
	Then she wouldn't need your money as much, right?
	Nope. Nope. Right.
	Right. Right.
	Like, I tried giving my mother money, but she just turned it over to a bunch of shady characters for things that I really didn't agree with.
	So I was like, nope, I'm just funding them.
	Like, in a sense, you're paying for the guy who beat you up.
	That is not morally complicated at all.
	Again, emotionally, I get it.
	It's tough. I'm not trying to diminish that.
	But morally, this is about as clear as anything gets in this life.
	She sent money to your abuser, so you've got to give her money?
	No. Tell her, hey, get it back for the abusive guy.
	Get it back for the guy who was a bodybuilder and such a tough guy, he regularly beat up little children.
	Oh, oh, and kittens, by the way, too.
	Yes. He tried to brain a kitten against a wall because the kitten did what kittens do.
	No, no, you need money?
	Just, you know, go to the International Bank of Bulkiness.
	Go get it for this guy's abs.
	Go get it for this guy's pecs.
	Because I'm keeping myself pure for Consuelo, Mom.
	And she ain't meeting you if you're sending money to the guy who abused me.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I'll have to face her with a question again.
	Well, what would you ask her?
	Well, if I can tell you an overview, I would go back to my past again and recount every single thing that happened and See if she can see how evil that was from her part to let it happen.
	Hang on, hang on, hang on.
	So what would she say?
	Well, yes, I've actually...
	Well, it was in passing.
	It wasn't. It was in a moment of rage and impulsivity.
	I brought it up. She deflected saying that I wasn't exactly the most easy child to handle or that I was in some way difficult or annoying.
	So she blanked the victim, right?
	Yeah, she somehow justified the behavior.
	So here's the thing. When you were a child and you were being abused, physically beaten up, and I'm sure it was more than just emotional abuse, verbal abuse, you name it, right?
	So when you were a child and you were being abused, did they say to you, well, I don't know, I'm just a crazy guy who likes hitting children because it makes me feel like a strong dude?
	Or did they say, oh, you've done something wrong and you must be punished?
	Yeah. Yeah, there's always a justification.
	Yeah, always a justification, right?
	So you, as a child, have to have huge negative repercussions for the supposed wrongs that you did, right?
	Mm-hmm. So how could your mother possibly argue against you withholding money?
	Because these are negative repercussions for genuine evils that she did.
	So if you're punished as a child, why is she not punishable as an adult?
	If you had to suffer negative consequences as a child for things that you did that weren't even wrong, why should she not suffer any negative consequences for what she knowingly and consciously did as an adult?
	And one thing, Steph.
	Sorry to derail the conversation.
	No, no, no. It's your conversation.
	I'm following you. Go for it.
	But ever since she's seen herself in trouble, And she's seeing that I've been coming up in life becoming more stable because I had no guidance at the beginning or nothing she could exploit.
	She's become so mild and nice.
	It's all but kisses and positivity.
	Sure, because you have something she wants now.
	And now I have something she wants and it's obvious.
	The facade is obvious.
	Well, and it also, as we said before, it means she's 100% responsible.
	Because she could have done this anytime.
	Yeah. And that's another thing that...
	I don't know if you see this as perverse, but it arouses a bit of pity in me.
	Because she is fighting for her life, basically.
	Or her financial life.
	Almost her life. What do you mean she's fighting for her life?
	I don't understand. Well, she's trying to She's trying to avoid the financial consequences of me not helping her or her having to go through the hardship that will befall her if I stop helping her.
	Sorry, again, maybe I'm missing something here, but it's a giant welfare state, right?
	Yeah, yeah. I mean, she'd get welfare, she'd get Medicare, Medicaid, or whatever the hell it is.
	There are shelters, there's SNAP, there's, you know, food stamps.
	I mean, you're a young man, but you're going to pay a lot in taxes for all this stuff, right?
	Yes. So I don't know how she gets, I mean, how does she end up homeless, right?
	Maybe I'm over-exaggerating or catastrophic.
	No, because homeless is almost exclusively mentally ill and or addicts.
	And when I say mentally ill, I mean like florid psychotics, like people who see Nazgul on Main Street or something, right?
	So I don't see...
	Oh, plus you said she was...
	Was it Pentecostal?
	Yes, she's Pentecostal Christian.
	Okay, so she's got a whole church, a whole community.
	She's got charities run by the Pentecostal, which has a huge amount of money, so...
	You know, welfare state, church, charity, and she's got a job.
	I don't get where the homeless thing fits in here.
	Yeah, yeah. I believe you're right.
	Maybe I am a little bit extreme in that.
	No, I think she's planted that in you to get money.
	Probably. Right?
	I mean, if you think of your poor, lost-souled, 50-plus mother wandering around trying to find half-eaten Big Macs in the garbage.
	Yeah, I mean, that tucks the heartstrings of any...
	To me, it's almost inconceivable.
	My honor wouldn't be able to bear it.
	Well, I mean, I get this.
	The whole Hispanic-y thingy honor stuff and all of that.
	Where was the honor? Where's the honor in beating up the kid?
	That's true. Where's the honor in bringing the violent criminal into your household because he's hot?
	And allowing him to beat up your children so you can bang him like a drum.
	Where's the honor in that?
	You shouldn't have honor independent of how people treat you.
	Honor is not like physics. Honor is a relationship.
	If people treat you honorably, treat them back honorably.
	If people treat you like garbage and you're striding in, you're a big white knight, but I must have honor.
	No, you don't. You don't have to have any honor to people who treat you like garbage, who treat you like a punching bag.
	You know, if you're running a store and someone comes in, they've been a great customer, they always pay their bills.
	Oh, come in. How nice to see you.
	How are things? And you exchange some gossip and some chit-chat because he treats you with honor.
	He pays his bills.
	He doesn't steal from you.
	So you treat him with respect because he's earned it.
	Some kid comes in who steals every single week.
	He says, oh, come in. How nice to see you.
	How wonderful. No.
	You call the cops.
	Honor is a relationship.
	It's not this fixed absolute that you just have to do it or you're dishonorable.
	That's just a bomb planted in your brain so other people can exploit you.
	I must act with honor.
	It's like, hey, anybody who asks you to act with honor, who has not acted to you with honor, they're just using that two-syllable word to exploit the hell out of you.
	It's just a pillage.
	It's like a vampire. Sometimes it's two teeth, sometimes it's two syllables.
	So this word, honor. Yeah, I definitely see that.
	If you treat the people who beat you up or facilitated that really well, how the hell do you treat people who are genuinely honorable and kind and strong and virtuous and protect children?
	You can't treat them both the same way, right?
	Of course not. Now, if your mother were to, I mean, there's things that she could do, right?
	I mean, I think, again, I'm not you.
	I'm just saying, like, in my situation, right?
	There's things my mother could do.
	I mean, she's still alive, right?
	She could call me up.
	She could say, I've been thinking about it.
	I listened to some of your shows.
	I've read some books. I've gone to therapy.
	She could get free therapy. Giant welfare state in Canada.
	She could get free therapy. She could get all this stuff, right?
	And she could call me up, and she could apologize.
	I understood.
	I'm so sorry that we haven't talked for 25 years.
	There's things she could do.
	Absolutely. I'm not a cold, hard-hearted guy.
	Absolutely. It would be lovely if she did that.
	It would be wonderful. Now, my father could have done that, too.
	He didn't. He died.
	So that ain't ever going to happen.
	And I have zero expectation that my mother will do that.
	Like zero. Absolutely like zero.
	I would bet infinity money on that's never going to happen, right?
	Yeah. But your mother is younger, obviously, than my mother, like for 30 plus years, right?
	So your mother, you know, how is she going to become a better person?
	Well, if she manipulates the shit out of you and you give her $10,000, are you helping her become a better person?
	No, I'm just incentivizing it.
	Yeah! Oh, are you manipulating me?
	Oh, let me give you a lot of money and hope you become a better person.
	No, that's called enabling, right?
	Like if your mother's a drunk and you go and buy her all the alcohol in the world and bring it home and clean up after her and call in sick for her, right?
	That's enabling. You're making people worse.
	So if people are treating you badly, if she's all sugar and spice and all things nice now because she needs something from you and she's just playing you, and then you give her stuff, you just...
	Like, you understand, that's real vengeance against your mother because you're feeding the worst elements within her.
	You're making her a worse person.
	Yeah. That's a cold-ass vengeance right there.
	If you give your mother money to be a worse person, you're paying her to degrade her soul even more, right?
	Yes. Yeah.
	You're like pimping for the worst aspects of your mom, so to speak.
	Yeah, I'm allowing her to learn.
	Yeah, like... If your mom wants to become a better person, paying her to manipulate you is not going to help that, right?
	Now, if you're like, no, no, no, listen, you become a better person?
	Like, we can actually have a real conversation about stuff?
	Sure. I'd love to help you.
	But, no, I'm not going to pay for you when you manipulate me.
	God, no. Yeah, yeah.
	I'll bring to her an ultimatum and see how she reacts to it.
	In my course of action. And last thing I want to make, does Consuela want to see you as a leader in the family?
	Of course. Right.
	Now, does Consuela view you as a leader when you're around your mom?
	Of course not. Are you in charge?
	Are you the head honcho, so to speak?
	No. No.
	I certainly wouldn't let my mother dictate anything in my family, but...
	No, absolutely you would.
	Because if your mother says, I want you to come over, and you don't want to come over, at some point you're just going to crumble and go over, right?
	If your mother says, I want to spend time with my grandchildren, are you going to never let her see her grandchildren?
	Of course she's going to end up bossing me.
	She's your mom. She's always going to be bossy.
	I mean, that's true for me. It's true for even people with good moms.
	Yeah, that's another one you're going to bring home.
	Yeah, it's just your parents always have authority over you, absolutely guaranteed, because that's how you grew up.
	Now, it can be benevolent, good authority, or it can be destructive, bad authority, but you're saying, you know, if you want to be a leader in the family and Consuela wants to see you that way, and there'll be things she's leading in.
	This isn't just patriarchy stuff, right?
	Yeah. But she wants to see you as a man, as a leader.
	So as a man, I mean, this is bro to bro here, man.
	Like, this is really serious stuff.
	As a man, you cannot put yourself in situations where your balls get cut off.
	You cannot put yourself in situations where you're being put down as a man, where you're being bossed around, particularly by a woman.
	Because your girlfriend, your fiancé, your wife is going to look at that, is going to look at you, And it's going to see your balls in your mother's purse.
	And she's going to be disgusted.
	And we can be all enlightened and say, well, she's a feminist.
	Come on, we're talking about the basic mammal stuff here, right?
	You cannot be in a situation where your balls are being bounced around like a basketball, right?
	You can't do that.
	Because you can't be, you can't take the leadership aspects of your family, if your wife is watching you be pushed around by your mom.
	It's not going to work. She's going to lose respect for you.
	Whether we like it or not, whether we're enlightened or not, this is just stuff, it's like down to the lizard brain.
	You can say all we want, it just happens anyway.
	I mean, there's a reason why I only ended up with a successful relationship when I stopped seeing my mom.
	Now, please understand, I'm not saying whether you should or shouldn't see your mom.
	I'm just saying that if your mom puts you down, if your mom bosses you around, if your mom manipulates you, if your mom wraps you around her little finger and twists you up like a knot, you can never let Consuela see that.
	Of course not. That cannot happen.
	She won't be able to trust you.
	She'll lose respect for you.
	Like, it's just not going to work.
	I don't I don't put myself in situations where I'm going to be, you know, emasculated, right?
	Like somebody's just going to try and cut your balls off, right?
	Like, just no, I'm not going to do it.
	I don't want my wife to see that.
	I don't want my daughter to see that.
	I don't want to see that. Like, I'm just not going to do it.
	So people in my life who don't give me the respect that I've earned, well, sorry, but the respect of my wife and my daughter and my friends and myself matters just a little bit more than whatever the bad people's needs are, if that makes sense.
	Of course, yeah. Yeah.
	Okay. Well, thank you for that.
	It's such a clear-cut way of putting it.
	Well, A, you're welcome, and B, listen, man, we kind of blew past this, but I just wanted to circle back and say I'm horrified and appalled and bottomlessly, devotedly sympathetic for what happened to you as a child.
	I'm so incredibly sorry that your exposure to this level of toxic violence and stress and brutality and abandonment and neglect because we didn't really touch on the neglect that you had as a child in America.
	And I am so, so sorry – And listen, it sounds like you're doing incredible work.
	Work with what you've been given.
	Either way, you say getting your feet grounded, you're getting to be a success, and your openness to this kind of conversation speaks incredible volumes to your maturity and your virtue as an adult.
	You can't see me tipping my imaginary hat, but just massive praise, massive kudos, massive sympathy.
	You have A lot to be sorrowful about and you have a lot more to be incredibly proud of.
	And I just really wanted to make that clear as we kind of dance around some of the challenges here.
	Just really pull out my flag there and just, you know, I do Muslim call to prayer, kneel in front of you if you could see it.
	Just like massive respect to what you're doing with your life.
	It means a lot coming from you specifically because I've been listening to Thank you,
	man. Really, really appreciate it.
	All right. Alright, I think we had one or two questions in the...
	what we got here.
	No, I think those were kids in the background earlier, for those of you who had somewhat more salacious questions.
	Let's see here. Yes, somebody was asking...
	Oh yeah, the Nazis are the Nazis on the far right and socialism is on the left.
	So, Nazism is national socialism.
	Socialism generally is international socialism.
	So, Nazism is an ethnic-based socialism.
	Communism or socialism as a whole is international-based socialism.
	So, it's really... One is controlled by race and one is controlled by class, right?
	So you think Nazism generally is race or German slash white slash Christian or whatever.
	So Nazism is socialism of race and socialism or communism or international socialism is socialism on class.
	So it's supposed to be representing the proletariat.
	Workers of the world unite, right?
	The famous lines that close off the Communist Manifesto.
	Workers of the world unite.
	You have nothing to lose but your chains, which is a pretty magnificent piece of rhetoric, however much I might abhor the general philosophy.
	So if you have a culture or race or national-based socialism, then that would be in the realm of Nazism.
	If you are workers of the world, if it is the proletariat of the world as a whole, then you're on international socialism.
	So It's water whether it's a lake or it's an ocean.
	The differences are not particularly important.
	They try to oppose each other.
	International socialism is very hostile to nationalism.
	For a variety of reasons I've talked about before.
	I don't think it's particularly important.
	They're certainly not opposites at all.
	Non-initiation of force versus initiation of force.
	Those are the real opposites. Somebody asked, what is the best way to deal with burnout?
	Well, I find...
	For myself, the best way...
	I mean, I've been doing this show for like 16 years now, so how do I keep it fresh?
	Well, first of all, you wonderful, brilliant Chad and Chadess and gorgeous and fantastic and wise listeners, keep it fresh for me with the best questions and the most open conversation in this or any other multiverse.
	So thank you for that. You keep it fresh for me, and I really, really appreciate that.
	Like I'm aware of the people who do shows who either have like the same guests on over and over again, saying the same things that they always say, or they just kind of do the same thing over and over again.
	Dems are the real racists, you know, that kind of stuff, right?
	And can you believe this government agency didn't work?
	Can you believe the borders are still open?
	Can you believe that they slow walked these FOIA document requests?
	Can you like just, yeah, okay, blah, blah, blah, right?
	So the fact that we have such great conversations really keep things fresh for me.
	I got tired of politics in the past.
	It really got incredibly boring post-Trump and very predictable.
	And so I turned to reading my novels, which again, they're free.
	The two novels you should check out.
	Are free. Open source.
	You can listen to them and read them.
	You can go to almostnovel.com for my World War II novel.
	You can go to justpoornovel.com for my novel about a genius in England and how her life was just virtually destroyed in part by her society and in part because of her own self-destruction or self-destructive tendencies.
	So for me, it's variety.
	Variety is key. Now, it's not just variety of topics.
	So, for me, I didn't want to do a show in a studio.
	Why? Because I spent two hours in my studio today reading the audiobooks, why my voice is a little rough, because the voices are tough to do in the audiobook.
	And I've got a lot of training in my voice, like I did almost two years of voice training at the National Theatre School, and I took a bunch of singing lessons and so on.
	So, I'm not too bad with the voice, but it's still a little rough.
	So, I didn't want to do a show in a studio.
	The studio, because I was already in the studio for a couple of hours, and I've got to keep things fresh.
	So I tried doing it in another room.
	There was a bit of an echo. I moved to another room, and then I got to walk around a little bit.
	I lifted some weights, because I'm not doing video.
	So when I wanted to do a different audiobook, when I read Almost, I set up an amp and a really high-quality mic near a couch, because I wanted physical relaxation while I was doing the voice of Winston Churchill and the voice of von Ribbentrop and all of these other historical figures that are in my novel.
	So, burnout, you've got to change up what you're doing.
	Change your body, change your mind.
	So, I very rarely do sitting shows.
	I stand. I'm standing to do my audiobook because it's a very intellectually demanding and dynamic audiobook where sometimes you have a bunch of people all arguing with different voices.
	And in the book, you can see new paragraph, new quotes, somebody else is speaking, but in the audiobook, when you have people interrupting each other and over-talking each other with different accents, male and female, it's really technically challenging to do, and I need a full-body response to that.
	So I do standing for shows.
	I will do shows walking around.
	I have, for my call-in shows now, I have a little computer that I can strap to my waist, and I can walk around.
	And that really helps.
	Sometimes I just have to lie down.
	If I really have to listen, if there's a really complicated listener call that starts off, you know, if the person is not particularly great at communicating, I will literally lie down, close my eyes, physically relax my body so I can listen more fully.
	And again, the people, you know, they build the studios, they do the same kind of shows, it's the same kind of environment, it's the same kind of lighting, same guests, blah, blah, blah.
	Oh, Mark Levin, you're such a genius, blah, blah, blah.
	It's this Hannity thing that drove me nuts.
	So, if you are working in an office, see if you can get a standing desk.
	Whatever you're doing, try and do it in a different kind of way.
	It can be as ridiculous as sometimes when I was stuck on a programming problem, I found it helpful to change the font of my compiler so that I would see things in a different way.
	Try to change as much as possible in your environment, and that will really help with burnout.
	And so that would be my particular approach.
	So let's see here.
	I'd like to ask you about free speech and my belief that it doesn't really exist.
	Well, I wrote about that in my novel.
	I agree with you.
	Free speech does not really exist.
	You can have a right on paper that you don't have in any practical sense.
	So yes, I think that free speech is not really a thing at the moment.
	All right, let's see here.
	Yeah, Thomas Sowell does really great work on Nazism.
	So let's see here. This is from Intellectuals and Social Visions.
	This is Thomas Sowell, S-O-W-E-L-L. He wrote, in short, the notion that communists and fascists were at opposite poles ideologically was not true, even in theory, much less in practice.
	As for similarities and differences between these two totalitarian movements and liberalism on the one hand or conservatism on the other, there was far more similarity between these totalitarians' agendas and those of the left than with the agendas of most conservatives.
	For example, among the items on the agendas of the fascists in Italy and or the Nazis in Germany were one, government control of wages and hours of work.
	Two, higher taxes on the wealthy.
	Three, government set limits on profits.
	Four, government care for the elderly.
	Five, a decreased emphasis on the role of religion and the family in personal or social decisions.
	And six, government taking on the role of changing the nature of people, usually beginning in early childhood.
	This last and most audacious project has been part of the ideology of the left, both democratic and totalitarian, since at least the 18th century, when Condorcet and Gartwin advocated it, and it has been advised by innumerable intellectuals since then.
	as well as being put into practice in various countries, under names ranging from re-education to values clarification.
	So, yeah, intellectuals and social visions.
	Listen, there's almost no Thomas Sowell book you...
	Can't dip into and find something really good and useful.
	His examination of slavery is just fantastic and mind-blowing.
	Yeah, I came across an old tweet of mine.
	And it said, America had slavery for a grand total of 71 years.
	Because before independence, slavery was under the control and responsibility of the British government.
	So America had slavery for a grand total of 71 years.
	I think it was 71. It could be 78.
	And then, you know, the popular belief is that the Civil War was fought to end slavery.
	So it ended slavery, and it had slavery for the very shortest time of just about any country in history, but now it's the only country ever blamed for slavery because it's profitable.
	So, all right.
	What do you think about the ongoing Johnny Depp versus Amber Heard?
	I think it's very interesting that Look, I mean, it's been a six-week trial, what are they, eight hours a day, so I can't possibly absorb what's going on, and everything that you find about this kind of stuff is really heavily cherry-picked, so I do find it interesting.
	There's a lot in it that is just deeply philosophical.
	So, first of all, the believe-all-women stuff, I mean, I don't believe that her name is Amber Hurt.
	You know, she reminds me of that old cliche, hello, she lied, right?
	Right? That she is just a vapid, vacuous, empty-headed, pretty-faced manipulator of all that is good and righteous in the universe, in my opinion, right?
	And I've had a funny connection between Amber Heard and Elden Ring, right?
	Because Elden Ring, the video game, is gorgeous.
	It is pure art come to life.
	It's like a Renaissance painting that you could walk through.
	It's absolutely gorgeous, completely retarded, and infinitely dangerous.
	So it's really pretty.
	It draws you in with its prettiness, but then everything is violent and tries to kill you.
	So it's pretty and psycho.
	Like the entire Elden Ring world is pretty and it's completely artificial.
	Everything tries to kill you.
	Okay, well, if everything tries to kill you and there's no reason why, you've never had any hint that you are some guilty...
	If everyone tries to kill you and everything's so violent, how is there an economy where you get giant swords and helmets and well-trained horses and suits of armor that are enormous?
	How on earth could you possibly have any of these giant, complicated goods that are produced if you're living in a world of endless, eternal, psychotic violence?
	It makes absolutely no sense.
	Oh, and by the way, if everyone comes and tries to kill you, then how on earth do merchants trade Because merchants have all this cool stuff, and if everyone's just trying to kill you and you're armed, then why wouldn't they just go and kill the merchants and take their stuff?
	At least in Skyrim, you had towns with fortifications where there was some peace and some trade, which made some sense.
	You had wizard schools. You had thieves' guilds.
	You had entire towns and cities where there was peace and police.
	So you had an economy that could function.
	Somewhat primitive, but there.
	And... Fucking Elden Ring has all of the subtlety and story of Pac-Man.
	It's just, hey, it's real pretty and everything will try to kill you.
	So yeah, Elden Ring is Amber Heard, no question.
	Psycho and gorgeous!
	So, with Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, I mean, look, Johnny Depp's mother was giving him drugs when he was in his early teens.
	And... He was exploited, and he was ripped off.
	I think his accountants apparently, or allegedly, they took a whole bunch of his money, which I think he's fighting to try and get back.
	And sadly, nobody in his life was looking out for him.
	He remained, to a large degree, a child.
	I've never really ever seen Johnny Depp play an effective adult.
	Jack Sparrow was mostly a child.
	Edward Scissorhands was modeled physically on babies, according to Johnny Depp.
	So he's never really convincingly played in at all.
	He's remained in a state of arrested development.
	He's not pursued self-knowledge.
	He's pursued fame and money and success, which he's achieved more than anybody else pretty much on the planet as far as acting goes.
	The kudos and the wealth.
	What did he make? Like a billion dollars or something?
	Now, I mean, he was spending ridiculous amounts of money.
	What did he have? Somebody was telling me the other day, I don't know if it's true, he had like over 50 homes.
	I mean, yeah, okay. What Napoleon said about, you know, okay, how wealthy you are, you can still only ever eat One dinner and sleep in one bed at a time.
	So he was a gorgeous guy, phenomenally talented, staggeringly wealthy, amazingly popular, unbelievable levels of charisma, and he didn't just have talents in the movie and acting business.
	He also had talents in the musical world, right?
	But he did kind of flirt with this demonology pretty heavy.
	His Hollywood band is called Hollywood Vampires, I think is the name of his band, and He flirted with this demonic drug stuff as well, right?
	Hunter S. Thompson, an unbelievably notorious and destructive drug addict who glamorized and glorified drug addiction because he had a peculiar talent with words and therefore apparently is totally fine to be an awful human being and a rampant drug addict.
	And Johnny Depp and Hunter S. Thompson, I think, had a pretty close relationship.
	Didn't he pay to have Hunter Thompson's ashes shot into space or something?
	Yeah, that's a good use of your money there, Johnny.
	So, he was like a mutant, a mutant in terms of his physical beauty, which was considerable, a mutant in terms of his talent, which was second to none, a mutant in terms of his money-making, which was insane, and his popularity and fame and so on, right?
	So, he was kind of like a mutant, and because he was so profitable to those around him, He ended up with people around him who couldn't help him to grow up.
	He's a Peter Pan character, right?
	So he meets Amber Heard, and because Johnny Depp had a raging, destructive, violent, and beautiful mother when he was younger, when he was a boy, he ended up falling into the trap of, apparently or allegedly, a violent and certainly beautiful and attractive and talented woman in the name of Amber Heard.
	And it just shows you, man, you can have all the beauty, all the success, all the fame, all the money, all the talent in the world.
	And he did have all of these things.
	But if you don't deal with your childhood shit, it's going to destroy you.
	It is going to tear you apart.
	And the last six years of this man's life have been hell on earth.
	I mean, the alleged physical abuse.
	Losing the tip of his finger in a broken bottle, vodka-laced rampage, being accused of these crimes, having to mount a vociferous defense against these accusations, losing in England, being unhirable, but he was kicked off Fantastical Beasts or whatever the name is.
	I've never watched it or know anything about it other than it was J.K. Rowling, I think.
	He's kicked off of that. I think he owes a huge amount in taxes.
	And he can't pay his tax bill if he can't work.
	Because the tax bill is exorbitant.
	And I think he's kind of half broke.
	So, it's hell.
	It's hell. And this is because...
	Now, I don't know how...
	I don't know Johnny Depp.
	This is all just speculation from way, way outside his sphere, right?
	But somebody should have tried to help bring him up short.
	And say, the drugs, the money, the fame, the talent, the looks, the glory, is not going to save you.
	In fact, it's making things more unstable and more precarious.
	You've got to stop hanging out with people like Marilyn Manson, for God's sakes.
	A guy who half froze his alleged abuse victims in a department so cold it was called the Beat Locker.
	I mean, this is one step above it.
	It puts the lotion on its skin, in my view.
	And somebody should have said, look, you've got to stop taking the drugs.
	You've got to stop drinking so much.
	If this is what he did, this is, again, I don't know if it's true or not.
	This is just what I've heard. And you've got to deal with your childhood stuff, man.
	You've got to deal with your childhood stuff.
	You had it really rough as a kid, Johnny.
	You had it really rough as a kid.
	Violence, drug addiction, half-starved mother.
	It was really, really bad.
	And nothing's going to solve this, right?
	I've said this since the very beginning of the show.
	There is no external solution to the problem of insecurity.
	I'll say it again. There is no external solution to the problem of insecurity.
	Nothing you can stuff into the hole in yourself will ever fill it.
	All you're doing is making it bigger.
	You have to confront the voices in your head that need you to fail if you're ever going to have a chance at sustained and lasting success.
	Now, I'm aware I got deplatformed and blown off the social map and all of that.
	So, you know, you could say, ah, yes, Steph, but hey, I do not consider myself a failure for any of that.
	There's failures that are you and then there's failures that are the world.
	I didn't do anything wrong.
	I spoke the truth. I backed it up with scientific interviews and facts and data and charts.
	And if the world doesn't want the truth, then the world doesn't want the truth.
	To me, it would have been dishonorable to lie.
	Out of fear, rather than to be nuked on principle.
	So I get that criticism, and I've obviously leveled it against myself, but in the withering self gaze that I have done over that process, I feel happy with the honorable approach that I took.
	Because if the world can get you to lie, what's left?
	If the world can get you to just falsify, So, yeah, it is tragic.
	And hopefully, hopefully, hopefully, it's going to Wake men up to the fact that beautiful women can be extraordinarily dangerous.
	And hopefully it's going to wake women up to the fact that high-status, staggeringly wealthy and good-looking men can also be extraordinarily destructive.
	So it brings us back to philosophy.
	All right. I appreciate everyone's...
	Yes, sir. What if I ask a question?
	I'm sorry, did you say what if you asked a question?
	No, I said, do you mind if I ask a question?
	If it could be relatively short, yeah, I've been cooking for over two hours, but if you want to ask me something, sure.
	Okay, great, thank you. I've been waiting to ask one, and I just wanted to sneak one in before you left.
	I just was wondering if you could maybe talk a little bit about why incidents like The latest school shooting in Texas happened and why it only recently started happening around the last 50 years.
	I've been reading The Brothers Karamazov for the second time again.
	I haven't read it in a while. And it seems to me that this sort of question of existential meaning and the meaning of life and whether or not good and evil exists and all that, it's covered in The Brothers Karamazov to quite a great extent.
	And it seems to me that these sort of Sort of maniacal, nihilist school shooting events, these horrible, horrible events, have a lot to do with sort of a destruction of people's values.
	And I was just wondering if you could give your take on that.
	Yeah, I mean, it's a horrible incident, of course, that happened.
	And I was struck, and listen, you've probably read more about this shooting than I have, so please correct me if I go astray, but my understanding is that it was some pretty young kids that were shot.
	And so it doesn't seem like this evil young man was shooting his tormentors, because apparently he was bullied in school, he wore eyeliner, he had a lisp, and was emo or gothy or perhaps feminine in some perceived manner.
	And so I think he shot up, at least the victims that I saw, seemed to be younger kids.
	And That means that it was not an act of specific revenge against those who had tormented him.
	So, what is going on?
	Well, it's not the guns.
	I mean, as you probably know, Switzerland band-aids gun ownership, I think gun training, and They don't have these shootings, and they only really started in the 90s.
	I mean, there were school shootings before that, but it tended to be very specific, like this one kid would shoot one other kid who'd bullied him, or a teacher who'd bullied him, or it was somebody shooting a principal for having an affair with his wife or whatever.
	But these mass shootings, they really only cooked in in the 90s.
	So I think it's an overlap of factors.
	I think that I've never been a big fan of the mass industrial use of psychotropic drugs versus talk therapy.
	Never been a big fan of that.
	I think that there are times...
	This is all my opinion. I have no expertise in this area, so this is all absolute rank amateur outside opinion.
	But I think with the limited exception of antidepressants for extreme depression, I think, and the data seems to show this fairly well, that talk therapy is better than pharmaceutical intervention.
	Especially if you combine talk therapy with exercise, dietary changes, good sleep habits, and a general all-around health If you exercise, eat well, get good sleep, do talk therapy, I believe, with some data backing it up, that this produces far better outcomes.
	I think that the kids who just get stuffed with psychotropics and don't get talk therapy...
	I think this is pretty bad.
	And some of the psychotropics do have these labels that they can produce significant antisocial behavior and so on.
	So I think that's partly an issue.
	The massive rise in autism, and listen, I'm not trying to associate anything to do with autism and shooters or anything like that, but the massive rise of autism, I think...
	It was virtually unknown when I was a kid, and now was it 1 in 40 or 1 in 30, depending on which gender you're looking at.
	But it's become ridiculously, horrifyingly common relative to how it was not even 50 years ago.
	And again, not to associate anything to do with autism and mass shooting, but we are looking at something in society that is producing some neurodivergence.
	And autism is a marker of that, and whether this has anything to do with the volatility, rage, lack of empathy, and so on that is shown by these monstrous shooters.
	We have neurodivergence increasing within society, and we're not really asking, as a society, those basic questions.
	And maybe it's because the pharmaceutical interventions are so profitable, and the pharmaceutical interventions seem to drive a lot of mainstream media coverage through sponsorship and so on.
	So, the neurodivergence is increasing, and we don't really know why.
	I know that there's theories about vaccines and so on, and I don't know how well this has been proven.
	I haven't studied it, so please feel free to bombard me with facts, but I have not studied this to much degree, and simply because it requires a fair amount of medical expertise that I simply don't have.
	So, what's been happening?
	That is showing up.
	So if stuff's starting in the 90s, we need to start looking in the 70s, right?
	Because, you know, 20 years, right?
	So what happened in the 70s?
	Well, you had the breakdown of the family.
	You had unbelievable increases in divorce.
	And when you get divorce, with the rather skewed court system in America, family court system, you get father absence.
	And this horrible young man who shot up the school was living with his grandmother.
	And, you know, while we know, I mean, just about every detail, oh, he liked Call of Duty, oh, he tagged some woman with his gun collection, oh, he wore eyeliner, oh, he had a lisp, oh, he was bullied, we don't know anything about his parents.
	And if he's living with his grandmother, who he allegedly or apparently shot before he went to go and shoot up the school, okay, why is he living with his grandmother?
	Where's his mother? Where's his father?
	Was he known to mental health authorities?
	Was he known to the police?
	I think there's some indications that he was, but we probably won't find out about that in great detail for a while.
	Was he on mental health medications?
	Was he on psychotropics?
	I mean, the one thing that seems to be enormously in common with these shooters is that they do not have fathers in the home.
	Do not have fathers in the home.
	Women are wonderful, delightfully incomprehensible, and women have many great, strong, and positive qualities.
	One of those positive qualities, on average, does not tend to be significant protection of their children when they get older.
	Listen, women are wonderful at protecting children when children are babies and toddlers and young, but when kids get into mid-to-late latency periods, sort of 9, 10, 11, 12, through puberty and beyond, you need a dad.
	You need a dad because now they're facing more aggression.
	They're facing other males.
	And sadly, bullies tend to pick on children without fathers, boys without fathers, because it's an elemental thing.
	They sense the lack of protection of an elder male.
	And the children themselves feel the lack of protection of an elder male.
	And this is not just within the human realm.
	This goes through most of the great apes and other of the monkey species and so on, that the father absence does generally tend to produce bullying of the fatherless child.
	And it is just one of these tragic things that those with the least protection get picked on the most.
	So, I think that there is quite a lot going on.
	And so, just to sort of sum up very briefly, and this is far from exhaustive, these are just, you know, thoughts as you sort of say or ask off the top of my head.
	Certainly, the fall of religion has a lot to do with it.
	Because, you see, the fall of religion, the fall of Christianity has meant that boys without fathers have less access to father figures.
	Right, so boys without fathers, if they're not Christian, and I don't know what the religion was of his family or of himself, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say, you know, if he was emo, he's not religious or he's not Christian.
	So when you had boys growing up without fathers, you have huge amounts of boys growing up without fathers, like three-quarters of black boys and so on, and it's certainly creeping up pretty harsh in the white community as well and to the East Asian community, though to a smaller degree.
	Your boys growing up without fathers, where did they get their father figures from?
	Well, they used to get those father figures from the church.
	And the father figures would be two, one spiritual, one material.
	So the boys would go to church, and there would be a priest, and the priest would talk with the boys.
	The priest would talk with the children, and therefore the child would have a father figure in the form of the priest.
	And of course, being Christian, the child would have a father figure in the form of God himself.
	And so you could pray to God.
	And if you're not religious, you'd be praying to the male archetype within yourself, which is important as well.
	And so the fall of religion and the absence of fathers have produced boys who don't know how to be men.
	Again, mothers are wonderful, can teach boys many wonderful things.
	They cannot teach boys how to be men.
	I can't teach my daughter how to be a woman.
	I can't. That's her mother's job.
	So, when boys don't have a masculinity that is human to grow into, they grow into caricatures of masculinity.
	They get super buff, or they think, well, you've got to sleep with a lot of girls, or you've got to be really aggressive, or you've got to have a lot of guns, or you've got to be really great at Call of Duty, or whatever.
	I don't mean to pick on that franchise.
	It just happened to come up with this young man, and I'm not saying there's any causal relationship between Call of Duty and this shooting.
	I don't believe that there is, because there's tens of millions of Call of Duty players who don't shoot up schools, obviously, right?
	But when you don't have a living, personal example of how to be a man...
	Then you're easily programmed to the profit of culture and decadence and often degradation.
	You're programmed into what being a man is.
	And so the cultural Marxist will teach you that being a man is to be subjugated to women or to sleep around a lot or whatever it is.
	And then the alt-right will teach you that it's about working out and getting ripped and buff and cut and all this kind of stuff.
	And These are not masculinity, because nobody's teaching you to provide and protect.
	So I obviously don't know what went on with this young man, and given that he's now dead, it's going to be pretty hard to figure most of it out.
	We'll get some clues here and there, but...
	I do think that we're not examining the neurodivergence that's happening among the young, the most obvious marker of which is autism.
	Again, I really, really want to reiterate this because, to my knowledge, there's no relationship between violence and autism.
	So I don't want to say that this is any connection or relationship.
	But it is an indication that something is happening to the young that is different than what came before.
	And I do think that we need to figure this kind of stuff out.
	I do think that we should focus much more on exercise, nutrition, good sleep, and talk therapy.
	I think that that is by far the best.
	But the problem is when you allow children to talk rather than just drug them up, right?
	If you allow children to talk, they will criticize society.
	I wrote about this in my novel, The God of Atheists, which you can get at fdrurl.com slash TGOA. It's free.
	I wrote about this in my novel, The God of Atheists.
	One of the reasons we don't listen to children is children have really viable and valid criticisms of our society, which we just don't listen to.
	We can't listen to because it's very hard to change these things.
	The school that he was in, the kids are virtually all forced to be there.
	They have no say over the curriculum.
	They have no say over The sanity or malevolence of their classmates.
	They have very little control over whether they're bullied.
	They have very little recourse if they are bullied.
	I think it was Michael Malice who said that outside the home, school is pretty much the only place that people experience violence or see violence on a regular basis in their lives.
	To ban school, ban guns, I mean, well, first of all, of course, in the 90s as well was the passage of the gun-free zone legislation that ensured that schools, I think in most places in America, if not all, that schools had to be gun-free zones.
	I mean, no, I remember doing shows on, was it Adam Lanza, the Batman shooter?
	He drove past a whole bunch of theaters to get to the theater where guns were banned because he didn't want to get anyone shooting back at him.
	So, there are, I think, a lot of things going together, but we need to sit down and listen to the kids.
	We need to interview the kids and say, okay, what do you like?
	What do you not like? What works for you?
	What doesn't work for you? What's good?
	What's bad? What's positive and what's negative in your life?
	And a society that's confident, a society that is robust, should sit down, open up a dialogue with the children in that society, and listen.
	Kids are the most important treasures that we have.
	Again, I write about this in my novel, The Future.
	You can get it at freedomain.locals.com by becoming a supporter.
	What happens in a society that is focused on honoring, respecting, and listening to children?
	What happens to that society?
	What does it look like? To me, it's always been an endlessly fascinating question, and I answer it as well.
	Powerfully and deeply as I can in this book called The Future.
	So we don't listen to our children.
	They don't like school.
	They don't like the curriculum.
	They don't like the agenda.
	They don't like the ideology.
	They don't like the guilt.
	They don't like the manipulation.
	They don't like the violence. They don't like the environment as a whole.
	We're not listening to them. We're not saying, well, you're the customers and the parents, you're also the customer, you're the primary.
	The kids are the customers and the parents are the ones who pay for the service.
	But because it's not voluntary, because it's all taxation and so on, right?
	It was a meme I read a day or two ago.
	Daddy, why do I have to go to school?
	Well, because the taxes to pay for it are already taken from me and I deserve free daycare.
	But don't worry, maybe I can buy you a bulletproof backpack.
	I mean, schools have become deeply dysfunctional places.
	The sexual assaults on children by teachers and administrators and support workers is significantly higher per capita than anything that ever happened in the Catholic Church.
	Significantly higher. Schools have become vastly dysfunctional.
	I mean, in what other industry could you possibly drug your customers for failing to appreciate your product?
	I mean, if somebody didn't like a movie and wanted to walk out, you get to inject them with cocaine so they enjoy the movie and say, well, he had a great time, loved the movie.
	No. And so incrementally, bit by bit, Education has drifted so far from what it was supposed to be, which is an engaging place where children love to learn.
	And we can't sit down and listen to the kids and reform the system based upon what they want, what works for them, what they need.
	You say, ah, well, the children don't know what they need.
	It's like, of course they do.
	It doesn't mean they're always right, but you sure as hell should listen and try to accommodate where possible, where rational.
	And if kids don't like school, if kids don't want to be there, all they're learning is subjugation, compliance, and obedience, which, you know, the Prussian model of education was to produce good factory workers and slow-witted soldiers who'd be willing to walk into cannon fire.
	So these are markers of an educational system and a societal system that has gone deeply, deeply awry.
	I mean, the average age of accessing pornography for children is, what, 10 years old?
	11 years old? I listen to what Billie Eilish has to say about that.
	So you've got a whole bunch of latchkey kids, got a whole bunch of boys with no fathers, and girls with no fathers, to the point now where we have children who are starting to menstruate at 7 or 8 or 9 years of age.
	That's how our selected system has made them.
	How do we fix the family?
	It's a complicated and challenging discussion.
	First of all, we have to accept that there's a problem, which we're not even there yet.
	All we do is praise single mothers, not say, there's a problem with the children of single mothers.
	And it's not like the single mothers are trying to do bad things.
	I mean, many of them are struggling and trying to do the best they can, and some of them do a pretty good job.
	But nonetheless, the outcomes on average for the children of single mothers are disastrous.
	And I say this with genuine and great and deep sympathy for a lot of the single mothers out there who have been lied to and who have been told that the hedonism of pleasure in the moment is all that matters and they don't know the negative effects because they've been hidden from them.
	They don't know the negative effects that fatherlessness is going to have on their kids.
	So I say this with sympathy.
	I've been harsh in the past.
	I'm trying to, you know, Speak more from a place of positivity, and I think that's warranted at the moment.
	Maybe it was before, too.
	I'll have to think about that. So, the family is wrecked.
	The culture is wrecked.
	You know, this Hispanic, I think he was a Hispanic boy, just based on the name.
	I don't know what his ethnicity was, but just based on the name.
	Was using a lot of colloquialisms that seemed to come from rap videos in his texts, right?
	So was he deeply into the rap culture, which is pretty nihilistic, right?
	I mean, it almost ate Justin Bieber alive, right?
	From apple-cheeked boy to tatted-up, junky-looking guy, right?
	So there's nihilism in that.
	There is a lack of meaning, a lack of purpose, a lack of vision, a lack of anything to subjugate yourself to.
	I was talking about this With the Jewish fellow who called in at the beginning of this about marriage.
	You've got to subjugate yourself to something or all is vanity.
	And we have dysfunctional peers on the internet raising children.
	We have father absence.
	We have emasculated fatherhood in the West.
	We have neurodivergence we have not explored.
	We've had Two years of lockdowns in many places around the world, more than two years in some places, where millennials gained an average of 34 pounds.
	Children don't go out anymore.
	They don't exercise.
	They don't spontaneously play.
	And diversity has something to do with that because it seems to cripple social trust.
	And the spontaneous play...
	Among and between children that is essential for building empathy is no longer occurring.
	Rather than going out as I did to just have spontaneous games of war or build a fort or play soccer or explore the woods or learn how to climb trees, all of this spontaneous play where we just went out and self-organized, that builds empathy.
	Because if you want the kids to do what you want them to do, you have to figure out how to convince them, how to make it appealing for them.
	You can't just order them around.
	So you have to negotiate back and forth about what to do.
	I remember sitting out back at the Don Mills Mall, back when there was a Don Mills Mall, with my friends on our 12 different colors assembled from garbage dirt bikes, because we're all poor as dirt, trying to figure out the name of her bike club.
	I honestly can't remember what we decided, but the conversation went on for well over an hour.
	We were negotiating about what we wanted our bike club to be called.
	I remember going with friends into the woods in the Don Valley.
	We'd pool our nickels and we would buy a dented can of beans.
	And then we'd go to someone's house or someone's apartment and we'd pick up a pot.
	And we'd go out and we'd build a fire and we'd bang our beans open and cook them.
	And just shoot the shit.
	Just talk. You know, being broke, having to invent your own games.
	It's pretty good. Now everything's structured.
	Now you go to Chuck E. Cheese, you get a bunch of quarters, and you play the games, and then Chuck E. Cheese comes out and dances, and then you, right?
	It's all structured. Nobody has to negotiate anything.
	You don't have to empathize with.
	You don't have to be a leader. You don't get to learn how to lead or to follow.
	Just like a train on a track.
	There's no free will. There's no spontaneity.
	So, yeah, we have a massive number of problems in our society and we can't talk about any of them.
	The incentives are all wrong.
	The power structures are all aligned against positive change.
	The media certainly is not helping.
	The advertising dollars follow this.
	So people, and of course, people seize upon these tragedies to try and limit gun ownership, which is not the issue.
	The issue is not guns. If the issue was guns, then the issue would have been bigger when more guns were available.
	I mean, you can see pictures of the 1950s of gun clubs in junior high schools and high schools in rural areas.
	In village schools, in rural schools, kids would regularly come to school with their guns with the hunting rifles to show them off and to hunt during lunch or in the recesses.
	If guns were the issue, then when stronger and more varied guns were legally allowed to be brought onto the schools by children and regularly were, then that's when the issue would be.
	This is not even this complicated logic, right?
	So, yeah, something changed in the 70s, but in the 90s, which was conditioned by the family structure change in the 70s, which was conditioned by the introduction of the pill in the welfare state in the 60s.
	And then the development of the pharmaceutical interventions, which were then inflicted on children with relatively little testing, I believe.
	I mean, they just took speed and gave it to kids and found it slowed them down.
	That's not solving the problem.
	Your movie is too fast-paced.
	I'm not enjoying it. It's giving me a headache.
	Oh, here's some Quaaludes. Now you can enjoy the movie.
	It's like, that's not how you do things.
	That's not how you do things. So yeah, you've got a bunch of kids who are forced to be there.
	You've got teachers who are forced, in a sense, to be there.
	Because if you want to be a teacher, that's pretty much where you've got to go.
	And you have boys who don't know how to be men.
	No one's there to teach them.
	You have, as you said, this is from the original Callers thing, you have the fall of religion, the fall of father figures.
	Now, who are the only father figures these kids have?
	Superheroes. Those aren't men either.
	They're wizards, supernatural beings, demons in a way.
	So, yeah, and I do think that there's a lot that's going on, and The powers that be will seize upon this to try and make the situation worse.
	I mean, there's $40 billion to send to Ukraine, but no money for armed security in schools.
	And the schools themselves are the fundamental issue.
	I mean, they're the closest thing to prison that most people will ever experience.
	And of course, there's lots of violence in prison as well.
	So anyway, I hope that helps.
	I appreciate the question.
	Sorry, my friend, you asked a question and then I talked for a while and I did want to give you the chance.
	If you wanted to add anything to what I said, I would be happy to hear that.
	If you're still with us.
	No, thank you. I really appreciated that.
	There's just so many different factors that go into it.
	I see people on Twitter, they say, oh, it's simple, it's this answer, and I just think, no.
	There's so many things that you just talked about, and then even more.
	What I was thinking about mostly when I came across this, and it kind of coincided with the book I'm reading, is that Dostoevsky's idea That he has in Crime and Punishment, too, and the Brothers Karamazov, where if there is no God, if there's no religion, if there's no idea of the eternal soul and higher power, then everything is permitted, and then you get total nihilism.
	And if you take that and combine it with somebody who is maybe depressed, they're on these drugs, they're bullied, all the things that you just mentioned, I thought maybe that is...
	This is a strong reason why someone would choose to go and not shoot up his tormentors, but to pick the most harmless and innocent and good people he can find, just to send a message of what he thinks of life itself and the more existential sense of it.
	Yeah, I certainly wouldn't get a strong sense from this young man that he felt like he had any future.
	So he failed to graduate high school, as far as I understand it.
	And he was working a dead-end job at Wendy's, where he basically just showed up and did his work very quietly and went home.
	And what was his future going to be?
	There is, of course, also, you know, there are, I don't know what his motives are.
	And again, we may never know, probably won't know, because he's dead.
	And even if he was alive, no guarantee or any belief that he would tell the truth.
	But there does seem to be, you know, when people target kids, sometimes there is a, you know, thoroughly evil justification that they put forward.
	And you can see this with mothers who murder their own children, like the really crazy evil mothers who murder their own children.
	And it goes along the lines of, you know, demons run this world, I'm not going to let you live in this suffering, I'm going to give you a peaceful, quiet, like this kind of stuff, right?
	And I've read these kinds of justifications.
	And so, you know, and nihilism, or this idea that life is suffering, life is pain, which is a, it happens to hedonists fairly quickly.
	Because, you know, the hedonic treadmill where people pursue pleasure and then they get less and less pleasure from everything they pursue.
	And they just end up dead inside.
	And I think that's where a lot of murderous impulses.
	You can very easily kill yourself with pleasure.
	You have to measure pleasure.
	Like, you can't just live on dessert.
	You have to measure your pleasures very, very carefully.
	You have to weigh them out quite a bit and make sure you don't overdose on them because it's not really what we're designed for.
	I have no idea why he would target, but was it the case?
	Was it most of the kids that he shot were pretty young, or was it some older kids, too?
	I believe most of them were, I think, kindergarten to grade four, but I'm not sure on that.
	I'm pretty sure, though. All right.
	Right. I mean, if he had some beef with parents, why would you take it out on the parents of kids who weren't obviously tormenting him because they were so much younger, right?
	I don't know. Because, you know, if you really want to make someone suffer, you attack their kids, right?
	I mean, that's a pretty well-known thing as a whole.
	So, yeah, we'll probably never know.
	But these kinds of things, they're provoking such big discussions in society.
	And unfortunately, you know, I mean, the left is a pretty hard control over the media and problems with schools are really tough for the left because the left has a lot of loyalty to government schools for both good and bad reasons.
	And the left, of course, gets a lot of funding.
	The Democrats in particular get a lot of funding from public school unions.
	And this is the case not just in America, but I think all over the Western world.
	A lot of the public school unions provide a lot of funding for leftist causes and parties and so on.
	So if the problem is with the schools, the media generally won't go too hard in pursuit of that.
	And it's just an instinct that happens.
	And so if you have a particular institution where significant violence seems to be happening on a pretty regular basis, and if you look at, you know, bullying and fights and sexual abuse and drug use, I mean, schools are off the charts relative to most other institutions outside of prisons, which is, you know, a distinction without much of a difference.
	So, we would be looking at schools, like in a sort of objective rational society, we'd be looking at the schools and saying, okay, what's wrong?
	And we'd be looking and saying, well, most of these shooters are fatherless.
	Okay, let's look at that.
	Let's really examine that, right?
	But again, single mothers are reliable voters for the left.
	So, the left is not going to, you know, don't shit where you eat, so to speak, right?
	The left is not going to Put out the facts about single motherhood.
	And again, it's often perceived as attacking single mothers.
	And look, I have my criticisms of single mothers, but they've been lied to as well, and they've had essential information withheld from them.
	So this is why the incentives are all wrong.
	Because all the things that need to be changed are things that generally support the left.
	And the left controls the media to a large degree.
	And so the media is simply not going to examine these things.
	You know, it's like the COVID-19 thing, right?
	Where, okay, so I believe that overweight people probably tend to vote for the left.
	And I know that for a variety of reasons, or at least I believe that for a variety of reasons, to do with, you know, if you work out, if you gain upper body strength and you work out, you tend to be more on the smaller government side.
	And if you're, you know, if you need state-run medicine and you can't get around and you're really overweight and you can't get married and you're worried about your pension or whatever, okay, then you're more likely to be on the left, right?
	So... In COVID, in America, like 80% of the people who had significant health issues from COVID were obese.
	80%. That's way higher than the general population of obesity.
	Not as much higher as it should be, because obesity was in the single digits, not just 30 or 40 years ago.
	So the media, does it want to say to people, look, if you want to avoid A significant amount of danger from COVID, losing weight can really help.
	If you cared about people, you cared about their lives rather than your stupid ideology.
	If you cared about people's actual lives and whether they got sick or stayed healthy or healthier, then you would say, guys, being overweight, significantly overweight is a big risk factor for negative outcomes from COVID. So, during the lockdown, here's exercises you can do in your apartment.
	Here's isometric exercises.
	You can do your bends off your chairs.
	You can do push-ups and you can do sit-ups.
	You just need a little floor space.
	You can do the planks.
	Tons of things you can do.
	You know, we're going to step you through how to make sure you don't get weight, how you might be able to lose weight because we want you to stay healthy.
	It's not bulletproof, but it sure will help statistically.
	If you cared about people rather than votes.
	But we don't have that society.
	We don't have that society where the people who claim to care about people actually do care about those people.
	Because sometimes caring about people is really being willing to piss them off.
	To hit them in their, in a sense, their most wounded and vulnerable places.
	People who are obese generally are not particularly happy at being obese and it's tough.
	It's a tough situation to be in and it's a very tough situation to get yourself out of.
	So we just have all the wrong incentives.
	And everything that, not everything, most of the things that need to change in this society tend to be inhabited by people who are pro-left and therefore the media won't Lead any charges to improve these institutions or individuals or situations.
	It's just the way that it is.
	And it's not something that we can particularly talk our way out of, at least at the moment, at least not in any way that I know.
	Maybe there's some way that I don't know, but I certainly tried a variety of things over the years and decades.
	And so while these situations keep occurring, All of the incentives to actually explore potential answers to these issues, all the avenues that might lead to someplace productive in having these discussions, tend to be blocked off for political reasons.
	I mean, if you look at the origins of monkeypox, you know, boy, CDC really doesn't like talking about the origins of monkeypox and where it came from, this latest wave, and why it spread.
	They don't want to talk about that at all.
	And I will leave it to you all to look up the source of all this, right?
	You can just go and look that up.
	No particular need to get into it here.
	You can't talk about these things.
	You and I can talk about them or whatever, but you need a larger social movement.
	Anything that could be perceived as critical of people who vote For the left, I mean, in particular, coming up to the midterms in November in America, just nobody's going to have those conversations.
	Nobody. And, I mean, nobody in a sort of general social media situation is going to have those conversations, and it's a real shame.
	It's a desperate shame, because kids are being enormously harmed by dysfunctional schools, and because the teachers vote left, we can't talk about it, so.
	Anyway, I hope that helps.
	Thank you everyone so much for a wonderful set of questions this evening.
	Just a great, great pleasure to have these conversations with you.
	I, as always, feel enormously blessed and honored that you share your lives with me, with philosophy, and with the world.
	So if you'd like to help out the show, I really, really, really, really am on my knees and would enormously appreciate if you would help out the show at freedomain.com.
	And again, the Locals community is great.
	Lots of great comments and people to meet there.
	Freedomain.locals.com Have yourself an absolutely wonderful evening.
	And remember, if you're looking for any of my old shows, you can go to fdrpodcast.com Do a search.
	Down at the bottom will be links to videos.
	And thanks to James for putting all that together.
	It's just fantastic. So, lots of love.
	I will see you Friday night.
	And have yourself a great evening.

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