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April 13, 2023 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:28:25
SCREW YOUR DETERMINISM!
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And you might even be able to get it in the first syllable, as far as medium difficulty song quizzes go.
I'm not going to try the singers.
It's a good singer. All right, let me make sure I get the lyrics here.
Well, you wake up in the morning You hear the work bell ring And they march you to the table You see the same old thing.
Ain't no food up on the table.
Ain't no pork up in the pain.
But you better not complain, boy.
You'll get in trouble with the man.
Anyway, it's a good song.
It's a good song.
I can't do that Raspi thing.
I don't know how he does it.
I don't know how he does it. Certain mystery for me.
It's a mystery for me.
You might be too young for these quizzes.
Come on, that's some southern blues gospel.
Anybody? Oh, come on.
Well, maybe you know the song, but my rendition doesn't quite match.
Could be any number of things.
Yes. Yes, it is CCR. Midnight special.
All right. How are you guys doing?
How are you guys doing? Let me tell you.
Pretty even-tempered guy.
I'm a pretty even-tempered guy overall.
I have my, you know, I go between 7 and 9 in terms of the happiness-o-meter.
But let me tell you. A couple of days ago, it's an amazing thing about the mind.
A couple of days ago, I just felt...
Kind of almost out of nowhere.
I just kind of felt like sour and negative.
It's like a lemon tree hanging from the strings of my soul.
Just kind of pulling me down.
Just kind of bleh. I'm sure you have this from time to time.
It's not common for me.
And I don't mean to be like, oh, I'm so happy all the time.
I don't mean that. I just mean like if I have sort of a negative mood, I tend to get a little bit more grumpy than I do just feeling kind of sour and negative.
And... As we increase in wisdom, so do we also increase in death grumpiness.
And so I'm like, I couldn't figure it out.
I was talking about it with people and couldn't figure it out.
And then, and then.
See, because I work just about every day.
And... I don't really travel anymore.
I mean, I used to have these bookmarks, right?
I used to have the weekends. I work weekends, and I won't say I'm in a groundhog day, because each new day is a glorious exploration of wisdom, knowledge, and truth.
But in terms of the actualities of my days, yeah, a little bit the same.
So, I generally know what month it is.
It's not that bad. Anyway, so I saw yesterday was April the 12th.
And I looked at that, and I haven't thought about this in years, I think.
But then I'm like, oh, my mother's birthday is April the 11th.
Which I guess shows that your brain knows what time it is, or what date it is, even if you don't know what the date is.
So, yes, I kind of noticed that.
Now, my mother is 86.
Not the healthiest person on the planet.
It means for me, all things lucky, I got another 30 years.
Assuming minimal gulag dice rolls.
So, but there's, I won't get into sort of details, but there's been a death of a parent recently in my circle, and it's, you know, it's tough.
The people my age, my friends my age, I mean, I have friends sort of all over the spectrum, but the friends who are my age, you know, this is in your 50s, right?
You deal with the death of your parents.
And that's if your parents have been good little girls and boys and Santa brought them the modern version of near immortality.
So another friend of mine literally spent the last year of his life in and out of hospitals because both his parents got sick at the same time.
It's just something that, you know, when you're younger, just be aware.
In your 40s, if you don't take care of your teeth, you get dental problems.
And in your 50s, your parents drop like flies.
And it's tough.
It's tough. So I guess with the death of a parent of somebody I know, fairly close to, thinking about my own mother and...
You know, she probably, I mean, if she has another birthday, I'll be surprised.
She might. I mean, she could just be one of these weird George Burns undead characters that live off smoke and snorting Nescafe grinds.
But, you know, odds are not long for this world.
And, of course, you know, I mean...
She'll always be my mother and I'll always be her son.
And it's just a pretty wild thing to go through.
You know, you think less about death when there's a parent between you and the Grim Reaper, right?
It's like a buffer. It's like a buffer zone.
And that buffer zone crumbles and it's just you staring that black door in the face with no...
Human being in the way.
It just sort of speeds it up a little, gives you a flurry forward in time, in years and decades a little bit.
It's just sort of feeling like...
Look, I have no urge to contact her, and I certainly don't imagine that she would contact me, but...
It's different with my father. I didn't grow up with my father.
Of course, I did grow up with my mother until I was 15 or so.
And it's just a different kind of situation.
There's a lot bound up in all of that.
And it's true for everyone. No matter who your parent is, good, bad, or indifferent, which is to say bad, you just have this thing.
This depth and the complexity that goes along with...
Mothers. And I saw this meme and it was like girls with daddy issues, you know, tattoos and funny hair and all of that kind of stuff, but, you know, not totally insane.
It was like girls with mommy issues and it was straight up demonic and eyes dripping with blood and...
I don't know about that, but...
Are you guys' parents?
Hit me with a why if you've gone through a parental demise.
Hit me with a why if you've gone through a parental demise.
Not yet? You've gone through one?
Yeah. Yeah, it's tough.
A friend of mine, when I was in, shortly after high school, I got in touch with a friend of mine from high school, this woman, and her father had just died, and I wrote a poem for her to be read at the funeral called Farewell Father that I actually read on this show.
You can do a search for it at fdrpodcasts.com.
Oh, you have the grandparents.
Your grandparents? Yeah, see, I didn't really know any grandparents.
My... Mother's stepmother visited us once when we were...
In England, when I was a kid, maybe eight or nine years old, she did.
And I actually noticed how she was terrified of my mother too.
It was kind of interesting. As a stepmother, she was terrified of my mother as well.
And I remember I was painting a 1 24th scale model of a Spitfire, MK1 I think it was, and I spilled a little paint on the carpet, on a shag carpet.
And my step-grandmother was so scared of my mom, my mom was out.
This is the kind of stuff where my mom would literally go ballistic and you could be at risk of serious bodily or brain injury.
And my grandmother helped me to cut a little piece of the carpet out from under a...
And then cut the piece out that had been stained with the silver paint.
And we switched them, right?
And she... I mean, honestly, she could have saved my life, this step-grandmother.
So... And I... A lot of my grandparents, of course, died in the Second World War, particularly on my mother's side.
They all sort of took refuge in Dresden.
And they...
Died in the thousand-plate raid in 1944 in Dresden.
Somebody says, I was just discussing with DH, dear hubby, that I only experienced funerals growing up, no births.
There was a lot of dying and no babies in my family.
Oh, that's sad. Yeah, that's quite sad.
You know, I said this in a show yesterday.
I haven't published it yet today.
And do me a favor if you can.
Hit me with a Y if you think I publish too much content and hit me with an N if you think I publish too little content.
Hit me with a Y. If you think I publish too much content, hit me with an N. And there's probably one or the other, right?
I doubt this. This is the tiny bowl of just right.
Just right? Oh, just right!
Michelle, I'm going to come there and I'm going to give you a big hug for being a listener.
Just right? Yeah, it's funny because I do...
I mean, here's what happens, right?
So I do this logjam of shows, right?
Like yesterday, I did a big call-in show.
It was a really good one. But then I'm like, well, I just released two chapters of my novel and I'm doing a live stream so I can't release this.
And then basically I just end up forgetting about them.
and they just sort of recede back into the general flotsam and jetsam of
of uh of the show's history and Because they don't really take time off like a lot of
people will take time off and publish shows while They're off, but they don't really take time off. Why would
I want to be away from you lovely creatures?
So I like to surprise call-ins and these surprise live streams
Well, this comes with a bit of an apology.
So I was supposed to do a live stream last night.
In fact, I even talked about it in my live stream on Monday.
I was supposed to do a live stream last night. What happened?
Completely gapped out. I absolutely, I think this is the first time in the history, 17-year history of the show, the first time, I was like 11.30, I'm starting to get ready for bed, I turn to my wife and go, hey, I was supposed to do a live stream tonight, come to think of it.
I'm so sorry. I completely gapped out.
I know that I did the audiobook reading and you've really got to throw yourself into these audiobooks.
You don't hold anything back and you just really throw yourself into the audiobooks.
I did the audiobook reading last night of a really, really tough scene for me between a son and a very, very manipulative mother and him just like...
Standing firm in the hurricanes of female discontent and provocation and holding firm.
The chapter just took it all out of me.
Afterwards, I listened back to it and I was like, oh my God.
I just did something brainless.
I apologize for that if you were waiting, but I just...
I just completely gapped out and that was, I think, a combination of my mother's, probably my mother's last birthday, one of her last few birthdays, plus doing this brutal scene between a son and a manipulative, highly motivated mother who attempts to turn him against himself for the sake of pathological altruism and so on.
And I just...
My philosophical soul left my body.
I was a shell of my former self.
So I hope that you'll...
It's chapter 22 in the novel, just in case.
Somebody says, I live in Israel.
My sister's husband is religious.
They're currently trying for a baby.
Circumcision is mainstream here, even among atheists, and religious people consider it a must.
I want to convince them not to go through with it in the case they have a boy.
Do you have any tips on how to approach them about it?
Yeah, so, I mean, again, fdrpodcast.com, you can go to...
That website, fdrpodcast.com.
Do a search for circumcision. Get the facts.
There's absolutely no reason that if the child wants to get circumcised as an adult, leave it to be their choice.
Leave it to be his choice.
Leave it to be his choice. It's brutal on the children.
The first thing is the slicing off of a third of the most sensitive organ that a man possesses.
Hacking it off. Oh, we put some topical anesthetic off.
Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah, just try putting a little topical anesthetic on your tongue and biting hard and chomping off a bit of it, right?
It's going to hurt like hell. Six months after circumcision, the infant's cortisol level is still elevated.
So the first thing that the baby boy has is he's born...
And so he's going from a womb to, you know, a harsh, colder environment, and then he gets a third of his penis hacked off without anesthetic.
I mean, Jesus, oh Lord above, I can't imagine how this became a thing.
I mean, okay, you can get way back in the day, maybe it had a slight evolutionary advantage because it can be a little tougher to clean, but now that we have this lovely little four-letter word called SOAP, It seems a little odd for people to continue this truly, truly barbaric practice.
So, alright.
Tips are always welcome.
If you're enjoying the shows, if you're enjoying the feedback, if you're enjoying the musical stylings of the big chatty forehead, I would appreciate that.
And let me get to the questions here about what people had as far as questions went.
Because I did ask for questions from people.
And by God, when I asked for things...
I expect them. Now, quick question.
Let me know. Hit me with a why.
It's basically what philosophy is doing, pounding on my mental doors these many years.
Hit me with a why if you would like me to give you the latest data on the origins of narcissism.
Hit me with a why if you would like me to explain the latest data on the origins of narcissism.
Sorry, I just need to check my hair before I do that.
A little on the nose hair.
Let me just brush my ear hairs.
Sorry, I'm just getting lost in my own visage before I talk about narcissism.
Is it boomer related?
You'll miss the boomers when they take their competence and turn it over to less competent people and everything falls apart.
We'll miss the boomers then, right?
So, okay, so there's two theories in general about the origins of narcissism.
Now, narcissism is, you know, excessive self-regard.
It comes from Narcissus, who was a Greek mythological creature who was so beautiful, so gorgeous, that he fell in love with his own reflection in a pool of water, stayed there, starved to death, and died.
And it's generally very high self-regard without any particular empirical evidence.
Right? So, I mean, you used to see these kinds of people on Kevin, the late great Kevin Samuels show all the time.
Like some woman who had inherited 50 grand was like, you know, we're going to build a media empire together.
It's like, no, you're not.
No, no, you're not. And, you know, all this girl boss, yes, slay queen, go girl kind of massive hysterical girl boosting stuff.
It's just a way for people to feel special without actually having to be special.
So there's two sort of theories about how this comes about.
One is it comes about from excessive parental praise.
And the other is that it comes about because of parental coldness and distance.
And the general research trend seems to be, or is indicating that, it comes from excessive praise.
It's sort of both are true, right?
Excessive praise plus parental coldness and detachment tend to be the most fertile ground for narcissism.
And narcissism is, you know, on the rise.
It's on the up and up. It's on the growth these days.
So, for instance, a key part of narcissism is I'm right Because I'm right.
The sort of circular thing. I'm right and anyone who disagrees with me is a bad person.
I'm right and anyone who opposes me is a bad person who can be attacked, who can be deplatformed, who can be abused, who can be assaulted even.
So I'm right. Any evidence of the contrary is indication of evil.
That's narcissism in a nutshell and of course this is very common in sort of modern debates.
So... Yeah, if you overpraise your children and you say, not you're special to me, which of course they are, but if you don't say, if you say you're just special, you're wonderful, you're the best, then they grow up with this inflated sense of self and you're giving them the effect without the cause.
You're giving them the effect without the cause.
Absolutely, we should work hard to be wonderful to ourselves, to be good to the world, to be moral lights in a darkening universe, all that kind of good stuff.
We should do all of that, but we should earn it.
We should learn it. If everyone thinks you're super muscular and you've never gone to the gym, would you bother going to the gym?
No, because going to the gym is hard work.
It's unpleasant. Often.
I'm just moving metal around in a dark corner.
So, if everyone thinks that your teeth are just wonderful and perfect, do you really go and get them straightened?
Of course not. So, if you give people a very high sense of self-worth without them having to earn it, then anybody who asks them to earn it becomes an enemy because they're exposing the...
The bubble, you know, the hyperinflated bubble of self-regard.
I mean, there's bubbles in the economy, but the even more fundamental bubble is the bubble in self-regard that comes from excessive praise.
And you get a lot of this stuff where, you know, your kid shows you a picture.
Oh, that's so wonderful, blah, blah, blah.
And listen, when your kid's a little, sure, yeah, you know, this is like a male-female thing.
Women are mindless boosters for infants and toddlers, and that's wonderful because, you know, yay, you learned how to walk.
That is a good thing, and yay, positive.
But men generally, in general, men are...
We're the reality checks, right?
And as men have been excluded from the families and so on, you get fewer and fewer reality checks in the world.
I thought reality was in Czechoslovakia when I was younger.
No, I didn't, but that's just what popped into my head.
Reality check! Okay, well, you have to go and get your passport stamped with the check to get reality.
So, yeah, babies, yeah, mindless, yay!
You know, you turned over, yay! You know, you figured out this word, positive, right?
Enthusiastic. And then...
Men are supposed to come along and tell kids what they suck at, what they're not good at, what they need to improve.
And if all you've had is this mindless boosterism, then when anyone comes along and says, you know, you actually do have to earn stuff.
Like, you're not just special for breathing.
Nobody's special for breathing. You have a pulse.
Congratulations. You're a hero.
You know, like I enjoyed the Dungeons and Dragons movie.
What I did not enjoy was this super lame-o that even the actors, I think, hated.
You're a hero for coming to the theater.
It's like, no. I went to a theater and, you know, when you've got those seats that lean half-back and you end up with a belly full of popcorn, it's like, burp, I couldn't be more heroic if I tried.
It was my dip. So, you know, you're a hero for coming to watch our movie.
It's like in the movie they go through all of these dangerous death-defying stunts and, you know, all of that.
But you're a hero for sitting and accumulating Dorito dust in your nose hairs.
It's like, nope! So, yeah, you have to...
That there's a, you know, this general idea that women are like, someone posts a picture of their overweight and the women are all like, you look fantastic, so beautiful, slay, queen, blah, blah.
And that's how women talk to each other.
But if you've ever had, you know, I'm sure you have like a close circle of honest male friends and you say, hey, I think I've gained some weight.
And your friends will be like, dude, I know five fat guys.
You're four of them. So you'll get that kind of blunt response.
And this is what boys grew up with.
At least they used to. I don't know if they still do anymore.
But this is what boys grew up with.
If you're not good at soccer and the teams are being picked for soccer, you're going to get picked last.
Nobody cares about your feelings.
They care about whether you're good at playing soccer.
And that's your cue. That's your cue.
You get kicked down.
You get ignored. You get ostracized.
You are only valued for the objective contributions that you provide.
You don't have the magical pavement creation vagina that allows you to stroll across a canyon on the hot updraft breath of sweaty manslave because you just have value magically.
Narcissism is going up because men are losing their authority, power, feedback in the family, in society, everywhere.
Everywhere. And also, I think, I think in general, that all of this girl power boosterism...
I mean, I remember being at a county fair many years ago when my daughter was quite little.
And we actually, we bought a woolen ball that we played with for years.
It was called the fuzzy ball.
We played with that ball because you could throw it inside the house.
So in Canada, of course, cold in the winter, it can't go out as much.
We played with that thing for years.
And I remember when we were at this county fair...
My daughter was maybe six or so.
And this guy...
You know when people just advance too quickly?
I'm not a paranoid guy.
Mob? Squirrel? I'm not a paranoid guy, but I'm situationally aware, situationally alert.
I mean, when you're a controversial public figure, you know, whenever you're out, you generally have to be a little bit of your head on a swivel, right?
Not as bad as I literally thought I was going to get stabbed.
I was chased in Australia, literally chased through the streets by a bunch of leftists.
Like, it was quite exciting.
But I'm sort of situationally aware.
I'm not jumpy or anything like that, but, you know, just keep my head on a little bit of a swivel when I'm out and about.
Anyway, this guy just, you know, comes like some caterpillar on cocaine.
Just comes up way too fast.
And he starts, you know, putting a wristband on my daughter.
And he was like, a girl power and girls can do anything.
And I'm like, whoa, back off, brother.
Back off. He's like, yeah, but you got a girl.
You know, she can do it.
And I was like, dude, chill.
Take a step back, please.
I'd appreciate that. Just give my family a little space here, all right?
And he was like, here's stickers and workbooks and your kid can do anything.
And I'm like... I didn't want to get into it with him, because it's like, no, my daughter can't do anything.
She can't do anything she sets her minds to.
I can't. No one can.
I've set my mind to defying gravity, but girl power allows me to do that.
It's like, no, no, you can't.
You know, if you have Michelle Rodriguez's arms, and the fact that she can do those fight scenes in her 40s is pretty wild to me, but who knows what she's on, right?
But, no, you can't do anything, and...
When your kids, you love them for who they are, but you tell them and you remind them and you reveal, you lift back the curtain of adulthood that we all have to kind of navigate through and live in, and you say, other people won't care about you in the way that I do.
I love you because you're my daughter.
I love you because you're my son.
And as you get older, I love you because you have flourished into a virtuous, kind, good and strong person.
And I admire that and I respect that.
But everything you get from daddy, you get for free.
Everything not daddy and not mommy, you're going to have to earn it.
That's just kind parenting.
That's just realistic, kind parenting.
We go to the mall and you want to buy something.
I will buy it for you.
When you become an adult, no one is going to buy things for you.
I mean, maybe you get married or whatever, right?
But you get married because you have provided value.
You provide value. You've got to provide value.
So I don't...
You've got to provide value.
I guess this is men's perspective.
You know, we don't get the excuse called intention, but I meant to.
I never meant to hurt you.
I meant to get that done.
It's like, nobody cares if you're a man.
Did you get it done or not? If you got an easy goal and you screw it up, you're going to get relentlessly mocked.
You choked, right?
You get relentlessly mocked because you can't afford it.
Men can't afford it. Can't afford to screw up.
You throw the spear at the deer and you miss.
Everybody goes hungry. Well, I meant to hit the deer.
I can't eat your mint.
You can't eat your mint if you don't have your pudding.
I can't eat your intentions.
I meant to put that shelter up before the storm came.
I can't take shelter in your intentions.
Women get intentions.
Men don't. Women loved a little more for who they are.
Men loved a little more for what they provide.
And we have a society now that just expects everyone to defer to them, and that can't happen.
It can't happen. Everyone can't defer to each other, so you need a mediation called reason.
All right. Let's get back to your questions.
How can we, as parents, balance unconditional love with installing the values of earning competence?
When you are...
This is my opinion, right? I don't have any scientific proof.
This is not my opinion. When you are a new parent and your kid's very young, you're there to simulate the womb.
When your kids grow older, you're there to simulate society.
When your children are learning how to carry things, they will drop them.
And they want to carry their glasses and they'll drop their glasses and you give them the plastic glasses or whatever.
Sometimes they won't. So they'll carry and they'll drop and you don't get mad at them because they're just learning.
But if your kids are still dropping things into their double digits, then it's like, okay, what's the problem here?
Like, why do you keep dropping things?
Because it's expensive and, you know, we've got to clean it up and you might get glass dust in your feet and, like, it's ridiculous that you're still dropping things, assuming no medical issues, right?
It's like, you've got to be more careful.
When my daughter was very little, I did not expect her to tidy up after herself.
Right now, I guess like most teenagers, you can sometimes see a little bit of a trail around what she's done, right?
And I will, you know, hey, come over here, this, this, this, this.
You know, when you were little, like you want to be, you want to get a job, you want to be an adult, you want to, right?
Great, you know, but... You're not a kid anymore.
Who's going to pick this up?
Mom and I don't have better things to do.
Pick this up, right? It's pretty simple.
When you leave someplace, look behind and see if there's anything you can tidy up that you've used.
It's not complicated, right? So you have to start...
You start off by replicating the womb and you end up by replicating a boss or a teacher or something like that, right?
All right. And you praise the effort, not necessarily the results.
So when my daughter does a good picture, she's doing a lot of pictures.
When my daughter does a good picture, I'm like, wow, you've really nailed the lighting here.
And this shadow, the shading is really good.
And even when I zoom in, there's great detail.
That's a great job. As opposed to, well, that's a great picture.
It's a wonderful picture. So you praise the steps.
You praise the progress. You praise the effort.
Somebody say it.
Somebody stop me.
Many bad parents do not have unconditional love.
Their love is conditional only when their parents provide love that they, the kids, haven't received from their parents.
Because the parents themselves haven't received it from their parents.
Oh God. Not one of these.
Really? Oh.
Love you guys. Love you.
There is an occasional treacly wave of syrupy weirdness that passes over my soul, burying it in the amber waves of, do we really have to do this again?
Do we? Okay, so first of all, to go back to the narcissistic parents, parents praise their children because it's a form of self-praise.
Oh, my kid is so wonderful, and my kid does this, and my kid does that.
And it's a form of self-praise.
The child is a performing monkey for the vanity of the parent, and kids understand that.
They understand that they are only of value when they please someone.
And pleasing people and serving other people's egos means that they grow up expecting other people to serve their egos or they serve other people's egos and so on.
So you say, many bad parents do not have unconditional love.
Well, first of all, you shouldn't have unconditional love throughout your kids' entire childhood.
Because if your kid is doing something mean, if your kid is doing something hateful, if your kid is being lazy, if your kid is being selfish, if your kid is whatever, right?
Then you need to give that feedback.
Now, you can say, well, that's still a loving thing.
Well, of course it's a loving thing, but unconditional love means I love you no matter what.
But you're preparing your children for adulthood, and in adulthood, they're going to be surrounded by people who aren't their parents, right?
I mean, I'm sure I don't need to say this.
It's pretty obvious, right? What are you training your children to do?
To succeed in adulthood.
In adulthood, will they get their primary resources and feedback from their parents until the day they die?
Nope. No.
They're going to go and they'll have boyfriends and girlfriends and bosses and teachers and friends and you know, who knows, right?
All these people out there who are going to have no relationship to them beforehand, who are not going to love them for who they are, who didn't watch them evolve and grow and...
So, the goal is to prepare your children for adulthood, which means you have to prepare them for the feedback they're going to get from strangers.
You can love your kid if your kid is overweight, like severely overweight, right?
Okay. You can love your kid.
I mean, I don't think it's a very good reflection on your parental standards if your kid has become morbidly obese.
But the idea that that kid's going to then go out into the world, let's say it's a young woman or a young man, is going to go out into the world morbidly obese and people are just going to love that person like mom and dad did.
That's a complete fantasy and an incredibly destructive fantasy.
Spoiler, the majority of the people on the planet significantly not your parents.
So, if my daughter does a bad job on something then I will tell her, you did a really bad job on this.
Why? Because she's going to be out there in the world, and if I just say everything she does is great, then how on earth is she supposed to know the difference between a good and a bad job, which means how is she supposed to keep a job, or a paycheck, or a boyfriend?
So... I mean, it's almost like the hyper-mothering prepares people for, like, infinite toddlerhood.
And, of course, you know, you don't want to take these sort of strict objective standards and put them on kids too early or you'll kill their motivation.
But, yeah, it's just a, you know, it's like walking up a seesaw.
You walk up and then it tips down to the other side.
Do you have advice for someone who conflates aggression and assertiveness?
Right. So...
Think of it in terms of judo and gunplay.
Yes, do judo and gunplay.
So, assertiveness is when you don't want your own interests to be harmed.
Aggression is when you want to harm the other person.
So, assertiveness is...
No, I'm not going to give you this.
No, I'm not going to do you this favor.
No, you haven't earned this for me.
No, I don't feel like doing it.
No, I don't want to. No, I don't.
Right? Whatever, right? And that's assertive.
Right? So, you know, when I was doing sort of interviews and so on and people would say something false about me, I would say, well, that's false.
That's not true. That's assertive.
I don't want people to harm my interests with falsehoods, right?
Right? Now, aggression, though, is when you want to hurt the other person.
Now, one of these may sound better than the other, but both have their place.
So, in a fight, if you can de-escalate, like if somebody's trash-talking you in a bar, right?
If you can de-escalate, if you can get out of the situation, if you can avoid, if you can do something...
Or the guy swings at you, you dodge, he hits his hand on the bar and he hurts his hand.
If you can not hurt the person back, that is by far the best solution.
If you can avoid the situation.
Don't go to bars where there are bar fights.
Don't be around people who are drunk.
Don't make eye contact with people who are unstable.
Like, there's tons of things you can do to not get in fights.
I mean, I grew up in a fairly violent environment.
Never been in a fistfight my whole life.
Very proud of that. Very proud of that.
So... Assertiveness is not getting hurt.
Aggression is hurting someone else.
Now, again...
If somebody's starting to push you physically and you're cornered and you can't get away and you can't get your friends to intimidate the guy back and the police aren't there, the bouncer is not there, and the guy's about to clock you, then you have...
I'm no lawyer. This is my understanding.
Don't take any advice from me on what to do in any of these situations.
This is just a pure theoretical.
Can you use physical force to defend yourself in that situation?
Well, that goes from assertiveness to aggression.
And I think in some situations that might be exactly justified.
It might be morally okay.
It might be good. Right?
Again, avoidance, de-escalation, blah, blah, blah, infinitely better.
That's assertiveness. But when you have the desire, so if somebody's about to really harm you, you're in danger of grievous bodily harm, and then you punch someone, then you are being aggressive.
You are not anymore trying to protect your own interests, you're trying to hurt someone else.
You say, ah yes, but it is to protect your own interests, yes.
But the difference being that you've now tipped onto, you're not defending yourself, you're attacking the other person.
So, The reason I'm saying all of this is that aggression is kind of an extremity that usually results from a lack of assertiveness.
If you don't want to get into a bar fight, again, I've lived in various places.
I've lived in many cities.
I went to many schools.
I came from a pretty rough, tumble, poor background and neighborhood, and I have managed to avoid all of these things, which is good.
Avoidance is, you know, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
When I was a kid and growing up, and of course, yeah, of course, right?
Don't smoke, don't get a lung removed and cure, whatever, right?
So, if you are in a situation of aggression, first of all, recognize, in my view, that this means you want to hurt the other person.
Okay, well, why do you want to hurt the other person?
Why do you have someone in your environment that you have to escalate to aggression in order to survive the encounter?
See, philosophy can't tell you much about aggression.
Because philosophy is not martial arts.
Philosophy is not learning fight club routines.
So philosophy can't tell you much about aggression.
It may morally justify it in an extremity of self-defense or whatever, but again, no legal advice, no advice on how to do anything.
These are all just pure theoreticals and sort of philosophy of law stuff.
Check with your local jurisdiction, right?
But philosophy can't tell you much about aggression.
But philosophy can say to you that if you are in a situation where aggression is repeatedly required, then you are not being assertive enough.
So if somebody says to you, let's go to this crazy bar.
There are bar fights every night.
People break bottles over each other's head.
Blues Brothers use whips.
Now, it would be assertive to say, no, no, I'm not going to a place where there's fists flying.
What are you, crazy? This isn't some western, some underwater fight scene, underwater fight scene.
So, that assertiveness is saying, no, I'm not going to get into these situations where I have to be aggressive, or the chance of aggression, or actually wanting to hurt someone, or needing to hurt someone in order to survive.
No. So, Why are you aggressive a lot?
Well, because you're not being assertive enough to avoid the situations where aggression ends up being something that happens, right?
I mean, this can happen verbally too, right?
To wanting to hurt someone. If you get into fights with a girlfriend, where, I mean, I have this unbelievably brutal fight that goes on in my novel...
The present, which you can get at freedomain.locals.com, of course.
Unbelievable fight. Now, if you're in a relationship with someone and you just want to say stuff that's going to hurt them, right?
You just want to say stuff that's, like, objectively, you've got a girlfriend and you call her a B or you call her a W or you call her a whatever, right?
You want to hurt her or why do you want to hurt her?
Because you're in a situation where you feel a desperate hostility and you feel that she's hurting you.
I'm just punching back verbally, so to speak, right?
Well, why are you in that situation?
Because of a lack of assertiveness.
The assertiveness being I don't get into relationships with people who are verbally abusive.
I don't stay in relationships with people who are verbally abusive.
And so you get out before that escalation occurs.
You don't start or you get out.
Or if the woman hits that standard where she really wants to be with you and you say, no, no, no, like the first time she raises a voice or yells at you or calls your name, you're like, nope, peace out.
No, I don't do that. Like maybe, just maybe, she'll reform, she'll take anger management.
It could be some big change that's going on and, you know, good for her, good for you, I suppose.
But no, you just...
Why are you in a situation where you're launching into verbal attacks on each other?
Because... Because...
You haven't been assertive enough and you've let things slide to that degree, so...
Assertiveness is prevention.
Aggression is cure.
And philosophy can't help you.
Because assertiveness, yes, philosophy can help you a lot with assertiveness.
Honesty, directness, all the real-time relationship stuff, which you can find at freedomainplaylists.com, freedomainplaylists.com.
So... If you're assertive, you don't need to be aggressive, because you just don't end up in those situations, or at least it would be very rare.
All right. Let me see here.
Somebody says, I homeschool my older one, and my sons are 17 and 14.
They have autism, so they are still watching Thomas the Tank Engine, but filled with testosterone.
Anyway, they're going through that parents a stupid stage now that they are teens.
I just wonder if you are feeling the same with your daughter at the same age.
I'm so sad that they're finding me annoying as opposed to adoring our time together.
I'm sorry about that.
No. I mean, I've talked about this with my daughter.
And I've talked about the reason why, you know, usually from the ages of mid-teens to early 20s,
there's this quote, parents are dumb stage.
Well, that's so that they move away from their parents in order to reproduce with people
who aren't genetically close, right?
And get to a more distant genetic situation so that you don't end up with inbreeding issues.
So there's a real evolutionary purpose behind all of that.
So I don't know because I don't...
I've never raised, obviously, somebody with autism and don't know much about the condition or the situation, but...
No, my daughter is not going through...
I mean, look, I have my peccadillos and so on that...
We kind of make fun.
One of the funny things when she was younger was I would move silently but not move silently.
And so, no, no, I'm a ghost.
You can't hear me. I just couldn't help it, right?
Because when you're 190 plus pounds, it's just the way things go, right?
So, no, I don't think she's going through.
Now, with her friends, she will absolutely reject my thoughts on friendship stuff.
And of course, I defer to her on that, right?
I'm not a female, and so it's a whole different situation.
And of course, it's a different world from when I was a kid.
So I will give her some thoughts about things, but she is the final arbiter.
And because I'm not saying you have to do it this way, but rather, here are my thoughts.
And sometimes she'll say, yes, that's a good idea.
And sometimes she'll say, I would never do that in a million years.
She's that, right?
Particularly with female, the female stuff.
That's not my area of expertise.
If you've established wisdom and knowledge ahead of time, that doesn't just vanish, but you have to be much more tentative and you have to defer to your children's expertise.
And your children, you know, it's one of the biggest changes that has ever occurred in human history is between my generation and my daughter's generation.
And because I was later dad, it's my daughter's generation plus like 10 or 15 years maybe.
So it's a huge, huge change.
And, you know, I just want to sort of point out with all humility the people who say to me, your dating advice, boomer head, it's like useless because things have all changed.
I mean, you all have a point.
You all have a point. You know, like, in the dating market, on apps, dating apps, women get productive matches 50% of the time.
Men get productive matches 2% of the time.
Literally, for a man, unless you're some uber giga-chat, for a man, being on a dating site is just a masochism.
It's just a massive exercise in self-humiliation.
It just... Statistically, you might as well grope around blindfolded in an empty park, right?
I mean, you're just not going to get it.
Find other ways, right?
All right. Somebody says, I don't think unconditional love exists.
Oh, no, sorry, I wanted to get back to this earlier thing because I didn't finish my bone weariness complaint.
Ah, get ready for my bone weariness complaint.
Say, you said many parents do not have unconditional love.
Their love is conditional only when their kids provide love that they, the kids, haven't received from their parents because of the parents themselves haven't received it from their parents.
Right. Screw your dominoes.
Seriously. Screw your dominoes with a mile-wide bore drill.
Get your dominoes, put them in a big bag, get Elon Musk's Boring Company to drill a glory hole right through their innards.
Make them a new rectum, scatter them to the four winds.
Screw your dominoes.
There are no dominoes.
It's the whole point of free will.
It's the whole point of philosophy. Well, my parents didn't get what they wanted from their parents.
Therefore, they could not provide for me what I... No!
God above a thousand times no.
Screw your dominoes!
Dominoes are not human beings.
Dominoes are bullshit.
Bullshit. Look at my child.
I know what I'm talking about.
I know what I'm talking about here.
No caveats. I know of what I speak.
Look at my childhood.
Two parents. Violent, insane, institutionalized.
Do I end up being the father I am?
Do I end up being the husband I am?
Do I end up being the person that I am?
You tell me how I'm a product of any dominoes that conform to your theories.
Tell me. I'd love to hear.
I'd love to hear you looking at my childhood.
And I have not said one-tenth of what happened in my childhood.
I want you to look at my childhood and then predict that I turn out this way.
Anybody? Bueller?
Anybody? Want to do it?
Of course you can't. You're completely incapable of predicting where I am based upon where I started.
There are no dominoes.
I know your parents want you to think there are dominoes so that they won't be held responsible for their screw-ups.
I get that. I understand that.
Doesn't mean you have to comply.
My parents couldn't give me what I wanted because they didn't get what they wanted.
Okay, great. You just gave yourself a massive excuse for the future.
You're trapped. You're doomed.
You've just strapped yourself to some train tracks with no off-ramp.
No switches. You to the end.
No interruptions. You can't even change speeds, really.
Maybe a little. Well, my parents were dominoes, and their parents were dominoes.
What does that make you, huh?
What does that make you, deep down, a domino?
You excuse your parents?
You think it hurts your parents?
I mean, I guess a little, but they've already had their life, they've had their kids.
You excuse your parents?
Well, they didn't get what they needed, so how could they possibly provide me what I needed?
It's like... My parents didn't inherit a million dollars, so how on earth could I possibly inherit a million dollars?
They could make some money.
Huh? See, you're excusing your parents in their 50s, probably, while you're in your 20s.
Who does that harm more?
Who does that harm the most?
Thinking, well, who you are is just dominoes based upon the past.
It's just what happened before.
That just... We are a product of all of the prior forces of physics that happened in the past, back 4 billion years of life and 12, 13 billion years of the universe's existence.
Dominoes, I'm physics, it's just, I'm inert.
I'm atoms. Acted on before.
You walk a canyon and you see a rock at the bottom of the canyon.
How did the rock get there?
Well, just A bird dropped it and the bird was acting on instinct.
A rock shattered that was down here.
Something fell because lightning struck something further up.
The rock is there because of prior physical forces that have no free will.
So you're turning yourself into a rock in order to save your parents, in order that you don't have to criticize your parents for their absolute deficiencies.
Well, my parents didn't have any free will.
No, they were just products of their past, man.
Just dominoes. Down they go.
No choice. No options.
Nothing. Great.
Welcome to the train tracks called Your Life.
If they're dominoes and everyone's dominoes back to the beginning of time, they're dominoes, you're a domino.
And if you're a domino you can't be loved.
You can't. Because if you're just a product of your past particularly if a past was difficult what moral courage could you possibly manifest?
But if you can manifest moral courage which is the only thing that can really be loved about you as an adult if you can manifest moral courage Why couldn't your parents manifest moral courage?
Oh, no, no, magical difference, Mobius strip, permeations and no hydroclaims in the water, different layers, stratosphere, geological sedimentary layers, difference, magic difference, me, parents, different, opposite.
Good Lord, how much contortion can you stand in your mental life?
You can change and grow and learn and do better.
Guess what? Your parents could have learned and changed and done better.
And their parents could have grown and changed and done better.
God! Everyone!
Everyone has a choice.
Everyone has a choice.
Unless somebody is standing there with a literal railroad spike coming out of their forehead, they have a choice.
Maybe also if they're dying of brain cancer.
Everyone you meet, with exceptions so immaterial, that telling you to watch out for those people would be like trying to sell you getting struck by a media insurance.
Everyone has choice.
Everyone can grow.
Everyone can do better.
And those who fail to do so, fail to do so absolutely by choice.
Thank God for modern technology to reveal this to everyone.
Thank God for modern technology to reveal this to everyone.
I remember this from a call-in show many years ago.
I was talking to some woman. She's like, well, my mother, she couldn't change.
I mean, she couldn't. This is how she was parented.
I'm like, oh, okay. So your mother must still be using a rotary phone.
Oh, no, she's got a new iPhone.
Wait, what?
Well, it's a shame that you can't contact her through email because when she was a kid, when you were a kid, there was only physical mail.
There was no email. Oh, no, no, she's got email.
She's got Snapchat. She's got that, right?
No, I don't understand.
You said your mother couldn't do anything different than what was occurring when she was a kid.
When she was a kid, there was none of this new technology, so she's managed to adapt and learn and understand and comprehend and use all of this new technology.
She's grown. Look at that.
She's found something better and she's achieved it.
Oh, good for her. That's great.
So much better than using the Pony Express.
See, nobody gets to bullshit you this way.
Nobody. A friend of mine, years ago, literally said, well, my parents parented me because of the way they were parented.
They can't really change.
Literally, a sentence or two later, he's like, oh, I'm heading to the future shop to get my parents a webcam.
Do you want to come? Didn't notice a thing.
Didn't notice a thing. I said, wait, they can upgrade their communications, but they can't upgrade their parenting?
He's like, well, that's different. No, it's not.
It's not different at all.
In fact, it's far more important.
Oh, yeah, it is different. It's far more important to upgrade your parenting than to upgrade your webcam or get a webcam.
This is back in the days of 240p, early 90s, massive pixel Molyneux.
This is the weariness of people.
Oh, you can try and sell me.
Look, I'm not saying it's conscious, but you still try and sell me this sad, pitiful story of parents, well, you know, they had bad childhoods themselves, and so how could they...
I mean, you're damning the world.
You're damning people. And you're just creating tragic, stupid, pathetic excuses for yourself.
No. No. Parents were 100% responsible.
See, if your parents have told you they had a bad childhood, then they're responsible for fixing it.
It's the only way you know, right?
See, here's the thing.
Let's say your dad hits you, and you say to your dad, when you get to be an adult or teens or whatever, you say, Dad, I don't like the hitting.
The hitting is wrong. He's like, Hey, man.
Like, I'm sorry, but this is how I was raised.
I was hit as a kid, and, you know, my childhood was really bad.
You got it better than me, kid.
See, that's using the suffering of a child as an excuse to inflict suffering on a child, right?
That's using the suffering of your child, your father as a child, as an excuse to inflict further suffering.
You're strip mining child abuse, not to gain wisdom, knowledge, depth and virtue and improvements.
You're strip mining child abuse, why?
You're torturing your inner child into a kanji justification for you torturing another child.
You think your inner child, when he was suffering that abuse, said, you know, the best use that I can get out of this abuse is to find some way to replicate this abuse on the next generation.
No, of course your child is like, this is horrible, this hurts, this is terrifying, this is wretched.
I never want to do this to someone else.
That's what your inner child is saying.
But then you... As the adult, you're like, yeah, you know, I can use that pain to inflict pain.
I don't have to suffer that pain and grow from it.
I can just use it to... It's a justification to inflict.
It's vile beyond words.
It's like my entire hairs are coming up on the back of my hands.
It's like body revolts physically against the depth, corruption, degradation, exploitation.
Well, I had a bad childhood.
That's why you had to suffer. It's like, well, if you had a bad childhood, then you know what it is to suffer as a child, so why would you inflict that on another child?
You've just taken away all of your excuses by giving me the excuse.
Tell me a more monstrous thing and I just won't believe you.
I won't. Even a little bit.
It's hard. You know, again, I'm not saying it's easy.
I'm not saying it's easy. This 100% responsibility thing.
It's not easy. But it's the only way that you can grow is to give 100% responsibility to everyone around you.
You can't create an exemption for yourself.
That's corrupt. Well, everyone's a domino except me.
Really. Do you not understand biological classifications?
Everyone's a mammal, but I'm the opposite of a mammal.
Okay, Mr.
Biologist, I think you need to take a lie down.
It's been a big day.
You get this magic wand?
Really? You get this magic wand?
You just wave it over people and they no longer have free will.
Isn't that incredible? What a magician, what a sorcerer, what a warlock and wizard you are.
Got this incredible magic wand.
You can just excuse people for moral responsibility.
Oh, but only selectively.
Only a little bit. I get it.
Look, you don't want to confront your parents.
You don't want to give them responsibility because they'll be blowback.
I understand that. Listen, I sympathize with that.
I don't have a big problem with you for that.
That's fine. You don't want to go to your parents and say, why the hell did you yell at me?
Why the hell did you hit me? Why the hell did you put me in these terrible schools?
Why the hell did you put me in daycare?
Why the hell did you make all these bad decisions?
You don't want to do that. I understand that.
Then be honest about it.
That's all I'm asking. Do not bear false witness.
Don't create all this sentimental syrupy bullshit.
Well, they had bad childhoods.
I have sympathy. No, it's not true.
It's not true. You're frightened to confront them.
I understand that. I sympathize with that.
I'm not saying you have to confront them.
I'm just asking you not to come on my channel and lie.
And maybe you don't even know the truth.
This is the confrontation that gets you to the truth.
That's all I'm asking. Don't come here.
Use my hard-won resources.
I've burned my entire public reputation to have this conversation, okay?
Please don't lie. Don't pretend you have this big understanding and wisdom and karmic knowledge about their childhoods.
No! No! They gave you an excuse and you swallowed it so you wouldn't have to confront them.
Just be honest.
That's all I'm asking.
Actually, kind of demanding.
Sorry. This is just a place where you have to be honest.
You have to be perfectly honest, but just don't lie and mislead yourself or others to this degree.
Your parents are 100% responsible for what they did.
They could have improved. Parenting books have been around for 70 years about not hitting children.
Mainstream television. They watched sitcoms.
They watched Eight Is Enough. They watched Leave It To Be There.
They watched My Three Sons. They watched Family Ties.
They watched Full House.
They got hundreds if not thousands of hours of instruction on peaceful parenting.
It's the mainstream in the media.
That's all you see. It's all you see.
They knew exactly what to do.
They chose not to do it.
Not because of their childhood.
Because if they could be assholes because of their bad childhood and you had a bad childhood, guess what?
All you're doing is giving yourself permission to be an asshole.
I don't want you to have that permission.
I don't want you to take that permission to be an asshole.
Do you understand? Because I'm here to protect your future children.
I'm not here to protect your feelings.
I'm not here to protect your self-esteem.
I'm certainly not here to protect your parents.
What am I here for?
What do I get up in the morning to do in this show?
Protect your future children!
Sorry, I was just being hypocritical because I was talking the other day about how people clap in your face, how annoying that is.
I'm sorry. That's wrong.
I apologize. I will not do that.
It's just passion, but that's not an excuse.
So, I apologize for that.
Now, I'm here to protect you and your future children.
You had a bad childhood.
If your parents could be abusive because they had a bad childhood, you just gave yourself permission to be abusive towards your children.
I can't do anything about your parents' brutality in the past.
I can't fix it. No time machine.
I can't do it. The only place philosophy can operate is in the future.
The empiricism of the present guiding the morals of the future.
That's philosophy.
Right there. Boom. Done. So when I see you give justifications to your parents for the wrongs they did, I know you are going to justify and you are in fact justifying the wrongs you are going to do.
And the devil is whispering in your ear, Dom.
And I'm screaming, however futilely, in the middle internet distance, free will, free will, free will.
Responsibility, responsibility, responsibility.
150%. Take on what seems to you infinite responsibility, because as soon as you put your cap on your responsibility, you'll just start working down from there and give yourself permission for other things outside that purview.
You give yourself absolutely infinite responsibility.
I'm here to protect the helpless.
And the helpless are in your life now, or in your future life, the children.
And I will not give you, as far as is in my power, I will not give you permission to replicate what your parents did to you that was abusive or neglectful.
You're going to have to go elsewhere for those justifications.
You will never, ever get them here.
I'm here to draw a deep, fiery, alligator-filled moat between all justifications for childhood mistreatment.
I will never, ever let them merge with you.
I will never, ever let you have those excuses.
I will never, ever let you justify what your parents did.
Ever. Ever.
Because that's the only way to keep the children safe in this world.
You give infinite responsibility to your parents and their parents and their parents, which means you take infinite responsibility for yourself, which means you don't have the excuse of the past, because you're not giving that excuse of the past to your parents.
And if you don't have the excuse of the past, you have no choice but to improve.
Everyone who gives you excuses for bad behavior is your enemy.
And the enemy of the helpless and of virtue and of civilization, everyone who gives you justifications for immorality is satanic, is your soul's worst enemy.
And I'm not putting you in this category because you're not alert to this.
Now you are, you're responsible.
And this is why I felt that weariness.
Whatever has to be done to protect the children of the future must be done.
Must be done. And the most toxic environmental substance in the life of the mind is justification for prior mistreatment of children.
Taking away the free will and moral responsibility of parents.
Now, we go back to ancient Rome.
We go back to the 15th century.
I can give you some slack.
I can give you some slack on that.
Now, free libraries with endless books and shelves on how to parent, free seminars.
I mean, especially since the rise of the internet or even before that, you could get books on tape.
You go down the library.
You know, you can...
I asked this listener yesterday, because this is all coming out of a conversation with the listener from yesterday.
I asked this listener yesterday. I said, see, Mom, she's very pretty.
I said, how much time does she spend on her personal appearance?
Makeup, hair, nails, exercise, whatever, right?
Teeth whitening. How much did you spend?
I was like, oh, thousands of hours.
I said, you know, you can become a substantially better parent in about 16 hours.
Just go take a weekend seminar.
Just go take a weekend seminar.
16 hours. And I said, how does it feel that your mom, your mother, chose to spend...
Probably over the course of your childhood, tens of thousands of hours on her personal appearance, but didn't have sixteen goddamn hours to spare on becoming a better parent.
Well, it's very important that my hair is properly frosted, but my children's feelings are completely expendable.
Hello.
Bleagh! Bleagh!
Hm?
Vile. Demonic. Satanic.
Straight up. As evil as things could be.
Appearance of a virtue. The plump of your gushy lips over the support of your children's hearts, minds and souls.
You pinch your cheeks, you hit your children.
Vanity, vanity, vanity.
We all know whose favorite sin that is.
So yeah. Nope.
You try dominoes with me because I care about you.
And this is male caring maybe.
This is certainly philosophical caring.
Because I care about you and I care about your happiness which can only be achieved through virtue.
And I care about your future relationship with your children or your present relationship with your children because I care about you and I'm probably the only person who will ever have this conversation with you because I care about you.
I'm involved with all mankind because all mankind is my environment.
Because I care about you, I will tell you the truth.
You give dominoes.
You know what dominoes are?
Inflate them, turn them gray.
They're the gravestones of every day you pass from here to infinity.
Dominoes are gravestones. Boom, boom, boom.
Gravestones of choice. That was not punching.
The gravestones of opportunity.
The gravestones of possibility.
The gravestones of choice. So, this is the same person, right?
I want to give feedback, right?
I had my rant. And if this doesn't apply to you, and this is a platform for other people to hear this rant, I appreciate you giving me the platform.
And don't take it personally.
So he says, let me just get this quote, because he wants to clarify.
Perfectly fair, perfectly valid.
I should not be the only person who has a voice.
All right, let's get down here and get caught up.
I think it's the same person.
Let me just triple check.
Yes, okay.
So he says, he wants to clarify, I understand that personal responsibility still has to take
a place on my part regardless of whether parents provide my needs or not as a
child.
I've been listening to you since 2015.
I'm asking you a question to avoid making mistakes in the future.
I'm sorry, that's a bit of a word salad.
I understand that personal responsibility still has to take place on my part, regardless of whether my parents provide my needs or not as a child.
No. Live more simply.
Please, stop overcomplicating things.
Live more simply.
If you can change, your parents could change.
Simple. If your parents couldn't change, you can't change.
And you can try and carve out some exception, but you're just swimming against the current, you'll get exhausted, and you'll just replicate.
Do you know how much energy and focus and ambition and passion gets completely cratered, destroyed and evaporated?
By doublethink. By holding a position and a contrary position at the same time.
Do you know how tense and weird that's going to make you as a parent?
Do you know how much energy and effort that's going to drain out of your life as a whole?
It's brutal.
Just live more simply.
Because you're saying, well, I understand the personal responsibility still has to take place on my part.
You gave an excuse to your parents, which means you're giving an excuse to yourself.
You say, well, but I'm fundamentally different from my parents.
How? Same species.
When you become a parent, you're in the same moral category.
Are they immune from physics?
Are they immune from the laws of mathematics?
Is 2 plus 2 equal 5 or a blue unicorn in their universe?
Are you part of the same reality?
No, just simplify things.
Stop creating exceptions.
Human mammals have free will.
Human mammals are responsible for their lives.
Human mammals are informed by the past but not defined by the past.
It's just simple. E equals MC squared.
Inverse square law. Boom, boom, boom.
Gravity is constant. It's just simple.
One rule. Why would you create, oh, well, there's a rule for my parents, but they didn't have this knowledge and the internet wasn't this big.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
If your parents are on the internet, they can't blame the lack of the internet because it means they're willing to learn new things.
Parenting books, peaceful parenting books, peaceful parenting instruction on mainstream media has been solid, universal, widely available, and free for 70 years, at least.
And you can go back even further, but it's basically 70 years.
So unless you're 95, maybe you are.
No, just you're now creating this...
Complicated thing. Philosophy is pretty simple.
It's pretty simple.
Universal morals tell the truth.
Do the right thing. Or at least be honest about your refusal to do the right thing.
Look, if you don't want to confront your parents, that's fine.
Then say, look, my parents are 100% responsible, but they're too scary and too abusive and too difficult and too unpleasant and they make me feel too bad.
I don't want to confront them.
I got no problem with that.
Obviously, I have great sympathy for that.
Confronting your parents is not some foundational moral obligation like avoiding strangling homeless dogs or domesticated dogs for that matter, come to think of it.
Yeah, if you don't want to do it, don't do it.
But don't pretend that it's because of some mystical understanding about the causality of their decisions.
Says, uh, sorry, let me get to comments here.
I'm going to stop soon because I'm low on vocal flexibility because I did a difficult...
Oh, that was a little bit of a difficult guy to voice.
So... Where do my messages go?
I click on load more messages.
Do I get more messages? I do not.
Why won't bad parents learn new things?
Why won't they change? How am I making far better advances than them?
How do I continue to avoid making the same mistakes?
I've confronted them, and it was a waste, and it's very dangerous to continue.
Best to get away. Again, that to me, beautifully honest, and I salute and respect and kneel down before you.
Knee pads on both my knees for you.
Yeah, I absolutely, hugely respect and honor you for that honesty.
That is a beautiful thing to be, not even on the receiving end, just to be on the vicinity of.
Why won't bad parents learn new things?
See, you're asking for causality in the realm of free will.
Why won't bad parents learn new things?
See, if I give you an answer, we're back to dominoes.
Well, because of their childhoods and because...
No, but then you're just excusing them.
Why won't bad parents learn new things?
Because they've chosen to continue the abuse rather than do the right thing.
See, the moment you start to try and explain human nature, in any collectivist sense or even in a personal sense, the moment you try to explain human nature, you're a determinist.
We're all hanging in an infinity of choice.
All of us. Why won't bad parents learn new things?
Because they chose to hurt children rather than learn wisdom.
The only thing we can know is the empiricism of their actions.
We cannot know their secret motivations.
It's impossible. Because people will never know the truth about why people abuse children.
First of all, there is no truth.
It's just a choice. And secondly, even if there was some causality, you'll never get it from them.
Why? Because they're child abusers.
And if they're child abusers, they're going to lie.
They're not going to tell the truth.
At all. They're not going to tell the truth.
At all. It's like saying, while somebody desperately doesn't want to go to prison, why won't they confess?
They don't want to go to prison. So why won't bad parents learn new things?
Because they chose not to. It was easier and better for them, and they made that choice to keep hurting children rather than learn and do better.
Why won't they change?
See, you can't answer that.
Because they chose not to change, and they continue to choose not to change.
And maybe they're beyond choice to some degree now.
It doesn't matter. Just because somebody's beyond choice doesn't mean they didn't have choice.
Somebody jumps off a bridge, they now can't choose to fly, but they did choose to jump off the bridge, right?
See, you want an answer as to why your parents hurt you.
But an answer is what your parents want you to go chasing so that you don't hold them responsible.
Your bad parents want you to chase motivations and causality and understanding and explanations.
No. I'm sorry that they did, but they chose to hurt you.
They chose to hit you.
They chose to punch you. They chose to confine you.
They chose to scream at you.
They chose to do that. 100%.
Infinity choice. They hung, like all of us do, in a 360 sphere.
Of options and possibilities, and they chose that one.
Ah, but they did have bad childhoods, and why is it that bad childhoods are so associated with being a bad parent?
Why is it that parents who went through bad childhoods, why is it so, so, so?
I can tell you why.
It's the exact opposite of what you think.
The reason why people who go through bad childhoods Oh, you won't like this.
But that's alright. I'm not here to be liked.
I'm here to protect the helpless, right?
The reason why a bad childhood leads to bad parenting often is because the bad childhood is used as an excuse.
And if instead the bad childhood was used as There's no excuse.
The people who had bad childhoods have the least excuse to be bad parents because they know exactly what it's like to have a bad childhood.
They know exactly what it's like to have a bad childhood.
So they have the least excuse for being bad parents.
But, but... If somebody says, well, I was a bad parent because I had a bad childhood, if somebody says that and gets away with it, if they say that and get away with it, well, you're just guaranteeing repetition.
Oh, wait, I've got a good excuse?
Oh, man, that I don't have to confront my demons, I don't have to have childhood empathy for my childhood self, I don't have to confront my own parents, I don't have to condemn everyone, I can just repeat it and escape all of that?
And society will give me an excuse?
Please? You understand?
Giving people the excuse of dominoes, giving people the excuse of a bad childhood, is getting children hurt.
You're morally, philosophically, vaguely joined at the hip with the abusers.
You're holding down the kids while they get hit.
Because you're giving people an excuse.
You know, if you...
If you put your hand, you know, everybody plays with fire when they're kids, right?
You put your finger and you put it through the candle, see how close you can get, how slow you can get without being burned.
I grew up with a bit of a pyromaniac, but I wasn't.
But everyone plays with fire as a kid, right?
Now, you burn yourself, you should be very careful with your children around fire, because you know how painful it is to get burned, right?
I remember my mom dated a guy who was into gliding.
My mom dated a guy who was into gliding.
And I guess I was maybe 11 or 12.
And I went for a long weekend with them.
I think I was too young to be left alone.
Must have been 11. Although my mom didn't really seem to care about that too much.
But for some reason or another, maybe she thought this was going to be a big relationship and wanted me to come along and get to know the guy better.
But he took me up gliding, and I actually used the knowledge or memory of that scene, of that in my scene with Klaus and Tom, when Tom Furtz learns to love flying in my novel, Almost.
So I was very fortunate to have that experience.
But I remember when I was, he was in a trailer at the sort of airfield or whatever, and...
He had a propane lamp and I picked up the propane lamp from the top, burned the hell out of two fingers.
And I remember butter and flour seemed to work a little bit in terms of the pain.
But I had a blister and it hurts, right?
So if you've had that experience, and most kids have, you've burnt yourself on something and they're saying, well, I... I'm going to put my kids' hands on hot things because I burned.
I was burned as a kid. It's like, what?
No. You know how much it hurts to be burned, so you should be much more careful with making sure your kids don't get burned.
Like, the idea that that's some kind of excuse?
All right. So he says, that's great, great points.
Is it worth looking at their actions and what they did to me, hold them responsible with their crimes, and move on?
What does unconditional love mean?
Is it worth looking at their actions and what they did to me, hold them responsible with their crimes and move on?
I don't know what you mean by is it worth, because you're asking me to organize your inner preferences, which I can't do.
I can't tell you what is worthwhile to you.
I can't tell you what your emotional priorities should be.
Philosophically, morally, ethically, I can absolutely tell you that they are infinitely responsible for their crimes.
There's no excuse.
No excuses. None whatsoever.
I mean, you consider situations, you're in a gulag and your parents are forced to care, but they weren't in gulags and they weren't forced.
There's no law against peaceful parenting, right?
There's no law against peaceful parenting.
They're not compelled to hit you, hurt you, or any of that.
Thank you for the tip. I appreciate that.
Come on. Come on.
Tell me a show where you'll get more productive love.
Tell me a show where you'll get more productive love.
Where I am guarding your interests as fiercely as humanly possible, as if they are my interests because we are all united.
I don't know if it's worth this approach for you, but I know that they were infinity responsible for what they did and that there's no causality that can explain it because any causality that explains it would be an excuse for them and thus an excuse for you.
I don't know what moving on means.
We sit with the truth.
Because you're looking for a way to jump out of this particular uncomfortable temperature of water or air or
whatever, right?
Should I do this and then move on?
one.
I don't know. I think you should not make excuses for people.
I think we're safe and under the advice of a good therapist it's worthwhile or can be worthwhile having conversations with your parents.
Move on in terms of not replicating abuse.
But you and I are on the same page here.
I'm absolutely obsessed with you not replicating the abuse.
I'm obsessed with you not replicating the abuse.
That's why I'm taking away these dominoes that you keep trying to turn your parents into.
So you said, how do I continue to avoid making the same mistakes?
No excuses. No excuses.
Look, I, of just about any public figure, would have the greatest excuse to be a bad parent.
I'm not going to make a big violin pity party here, but, you know, you've heard 10% of what happened in my childhood.
I have every excuse according to this Domino's theory to be a bad parent.
But I'm a great parent. I mean, you guys have heard the shows with my daughter.
We have a great deal of fun together.
We very much love each other.
And that's her life.
How do you avoid making the same mistakes?
Infinite responsibility.
Infinity responsibility.
For your parents, for your grandparents, for everyone around you who let this abuse happen.
Your aunts, your uncles, cousins, not the other kids, but everybody who was an adult who knew about this abuse or was in a position to know or didn't ask you about it.
1000% responsible. Infinity responsible.
And that way, that way, you are infinitely responsible.
I have no excuse for treating my daughter badly.
I have no excuse. My parents got divorced when I was a baby, hated each other.
Nothing but problems and legal battles for the rest of their life.
I have no excuse to treat my wife badly.
I have no excuse. I have the least excuse of all, because I've seen how bad it is when that goes wrong.
So I have no excuse.
According to the Domino's theory, it would be completely understandable if I treated my daughter badly.
Well, look at his childhood. My God, look what he had to survive.
Of course he's, right? No, that's corrosive.
That's being my enemy. Giving me excuses as being my enemy.
It's trying to tempt me and taunt me into being a shitty parent, which you can't do.
See, whatever I have to break through, I'm like the Kool-Aid guy through that wall.
Whatever I have to break through to be a good parent, I will break through.
If it's your domino theory or society calling me a cult leader or whatever, I don't care.
I don't fundamentally care.
My relationship is with my daughter, not with society, whatever that is, right?
Whatever I have to do. And if the domino theory interferes with me being a good parent, screw the domino theory.
Like, sorry, out of the way.
Done. I won't let it stop me.
I won't let it give me excuses.
And I'm not going to let it give you excuses either.
I mean, you can do whatever you want, I'm just telling you my argument.
Just don't give yourself any excuses, and you'll do great.
.
It's like going to the gym.
Right? It's like going to the gym.
If you give yourself excuses to not go to the gym, guess what?
You won't go to the gym. If you don't give yourself any excuses to not go to the gym, you'll go to the gym.
And maybe the gym is in your house.
Maybe it's chairs and isometric.
I don't know, right? But if you give yourself an excuse to not exercise, you won't exercise.
If you give yourself no excuse...
Like, if you want to get something done, just give yourself no excuses.
That's all. I wanted to get good parenting done.
I give myself no excuses.
And I and you and we and your parents and my parents, we're all human beings.
We're all part of the same moral universe, the same physical universe.
Whatever I have to battle my way through, push my way through, claw and bite my way through to good parenting, I will do.
It wasn't even that hard.
It's actually way easier to be a nice parent than it is to be a brutal parent, which is pretty tense and stressful.
And that stress and tension follows you for the rest of your natural life because you're always afraid your children are going to wake up and learn the truth.
All right. I will stop there, although I appreciate this question.
I will copy it about libertarianism.
I will copy that. I'm going to send out probably today.
I hope you'll look for it on the various platforms.
I'm going to send out a questionnaire.
I hope that you will... We'll check it out.
If you would like to drop me any tips now just as I sign off, hugely appreciate it.
I know that I've absolutely earned it.
The question is whether you know and understand how much I have earned it and how much work and positivity and genuine, deep, practical and positive love I put into these If you're hearing this later, freedomain.com slash donate.
I really need your support.
I'll be straight up with you. I really, really do need it.
And I really, really do appreciate it.
You know this kind of stuff is what really changes lives.
You know that, right?
You know that this is what really changes families.
This is what really changes childhood.
And if there's anybody out there doing better at spreading the non-aggression principle in the realm that people can most affect it in, I would sure like to know about them because I always like to meet people's imaginary friends.
All right. If you don't get a chance to donate before the end of this show, freedomain.com slash donate, I'd appreciate that.
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Have yourself a wonderful afternoon, everyone.
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