5190 So DID I Ever Hit Someone? Freedomain Livestream
Livestream 4 Jun 2023My father kept in close contact with his verbally abusive mother until the end of her life. I could see this slowly wear him down over the yearsCatcher in the Rye, JD SalingerOK, but what if your secret is that you have been with a dozen prostitutes? I am still puzzling over that one. What's the golden ratio in honesty?The devil says sin is no big deal before you do it and then afterward he says it completely defines youStef, What would be an example of someone who hides their past in order to get a relationship, in this context.Your shows are really helping me turn my life around, I am starting to make so many good decisions and not engage in any destructive behaviour and I have just started dating a real quality women. Thank youHere, is a harder question. for the example of body count, is it possible for this kind of reform, and growth possible.Stef I’m sorry, but you mentioned you hit your mother when you were a young teen. I understand this was in self defense but I believe this is a contradiction of hitting someoneNo you said you had not hit someone. You added fist fight after. I just thought it was curious.I stated I was sorry I understood where you were coming from and it was in self defense, I know why you did it and I had opportunities when I was younger too. But did not.You had not gone into detail about the hitting in your previous stream. The word just caught my attention as you mentioned you had never hit someone. So I think it’s a choice of words.My dearest apologies that my messages are coming across as uncompassionate, I do not know how to communicate it over text.But I started with I’m sorry and you took it the wrong way.Thank you Stefan, you know how valuable this show is. I'm only just beginning to see how truly valuable it is, especially since I started working out regularly, going to therapy and journaling.This stream has been great Stef, Thank You. I wish to be more like you, I may start going to therapy twice a week despite how pricy that can be it helps a lot. Once a week doesn't seem like it's enough, like exercising only once a week.It's interesting how UPB is sort of automatic for kids. As soon as you do something for one the others say, "What about me?"What do I do about Father’s Day after basically not speaking to him because he is the epitome of a narcissist?Do you think it’s harder to peacefully parent, multiple children, interactions-Sibling fighting? I know you did very very well with a single child.I am going to a speed dating event tonight (one of the many things I am currently trying). Any suggestions about topics of conversation? I got a few in mind, but I am really open to suggestions.
I'm trying to figure out eight, eight, eight years.
I don't think so.
Eight years to second decade of life.
All right.
So I'm trying to figure out how to calibrate the song quiz for you.
Because it's not an obscure song, but it's not a song that's really lasted, which means that you kind of had to be around.
Oh, somebody said, oops, five.
OK, that makes a bit more sense.
In your 40s?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm in my sixth decade.
In a couple of months, I'll be 57 years old.
57 years old.
It's kind of funny.
So when I was a kid, when I was a kid, there were all of these commercials about Freedom 55.
Like, if you invest with us and you work, you'll be free from having to work at the age of 55.
Freedom 55.
It was just all over the place when I was a kid.
I don't know that those...
I don't know if those ads are still around anymore, but 55 is when I got deplatformed.
Freedom 55.
They weren't kidding.
I get why people think of the
Hypothesis of the simulation, because, I mean, there are just these very, very bizarre coincidences in life.
Don't you find?
You find these very, just very bizarre.
Sometimes I go through them in my mind.
I think, oh boy, this was really strange.
This was really strange.
A girl I was interested in romantically, but it wouldn't have worked out in hindsight, right?
But I was interested in her romantically.
And
We finally were, it doesn't matter, but we were in a hot tub and in a public place and we were sort of sitting there, you know, making eyes at each other.
And it would have been a bad, bad idea.
It wouldn't have been the right thing to do at all.
But, you know.
What does that matter when you're young?
Unfortunately, I try to remind people, but I'm not just wiser, I'm just older.
So I should try and transfer some of that wisdom.
We were sort of making our lives each other in a hot tub and then a whole gaggle of like tattooed, bloated, loud guys just came in and
Sat in the hot tub.
Hey, what you guys doing?
It's just like boom the moment was just and and those people were you know If I were religious those people would be sent from God to prevent me from making too bad Too bad a mistake It's kind of funny that way so many coincidences in life and Some things that you know, I get this sort of collective unconscious stuff.
You know, there are some things that I
I remembered for reasons that didn't make any sense.
I'd watch some show, and I would end up remembering a line from that show for years, off and on, and then it would turn out that that line would have amazing explanatory power in my life.
You know, I mentioned this many years ago, but I used to watch the show MASH, Mobile Army Surgical Hospital with Alan Alda,
And in it they're talking about, they end up pouring a load of concrete into a big field gun, like an artillery gun, and they make all these jokes, and one of them says, ah, it's humour of the highest calibre, you know, because calibre is like the measure of the gun.
I remember that and then of course it wasn't for a long time.
I just remember that as a kid and it wasn't for a long time that I finally realized that my friends who were around me who were the most funny were also the most angry and that there's a kind of bitterness to humor.
I remember that.
There was a very forgettable Tom Hanks movie about comedians where he says, I'm a comedian because I think nothing is funny.
And there's this railing against the world that takes place in comedy.
When you are a comedian, you're also full of despair, because you see how absurd the world is, but because you've had a bad childhood, which is why you're a comedian,
You, as a comedian in general, you grow up with a parent who's hanging by a thread.
And this is the truth about Robin Williams, that he grew up with a mother who was perpetually and terminally depressed.
So you become a sort of performing monkey guy in order to rescue your mother from her depression, to keep her alive so that you stay alive.
In the same way that you'd want to... Somebody says, oh crap, my colleagues think I am funny too, and I am goddamn angry.
Yeah.
No, not, it's not all.
It doesn't, there's not some, you know, you can always find some sort of exception, but I remember that.
Humor of the highest caliber.
So you grow up to be a performer.
You know, people, when they sort of burst into the public scene with some talent or ability, they don't just learn that on the fly.
When you look at somebody who's got a significant talent,
It's because it was inflicted on them as a kid.
Talent is the scar tissue of early knife wounds as a whole.
Somebody who's very funny has been a sort of manic humor monkey for a mostly depressed parent, trying to keep that parent laughing, right?
And trying to keep that parent alive.
There's a real desperation to it.
So when a comedian just bursts on the scene with these incredible skills, it's because they've been forced to build those skills from the age they could talk.
Hit me with a why if you've ever been around a really depressed parent.
Have you ever been around a really depressed parent?
Have we got a why?
Why?
Yeah.
It's pretty chilling, right?
It's almost like you can see them.
They're like a sand sculpture in a slow rain, just wearing away, falling apart, almost dissolving right before your eyes.
And you know, if you've to take the analogy sort of one step further, if you have a parent, who's like a sand sculpture,
In a persistent rain on a beach.
And you're stuck on the beach, you've got nowhere to go.
And if I were a dream, what I would do is I would have you watch a sand sculpture get dissolved away.
Helpless to fix it, helpless to solve it.
And then finally, the sand sculpture would be worn away and inside the sand sculpture would be a tombstone.
And then finally you'd be released from your paralysis.
You'd run forward to the tombstone, which would have a hole in front of it.
And you'd get close, running, panicked.
Is there a way to bring my mother back?
And you'd see that your own name was on the tombstone.
You'd trip and fall into the hole.
Somebody says mom used to burn herself with an iron on purpose.
I'm really sorry.
It is terrifying because our parents are us when we're little.
You know, I wrote in a poem many years ago, I fell out of the hole of my mother and fell into the hole of my mother.
Our parents are us.
We don't differentiate between the two.
And when our parents disintegrate, we feel deep down, and maybe on the surface too, when our parents disintegrate, we feel that we are also disintegrating, that we are tied and bound to them, which is entirely true, evolutionarily speaking.
I did a call-in yesterday with a fellow who got turned on when his girlfriend would hit him.
And, you know, I sort of, I wanted to explain to him that a lot of what we think of as, you know, it's kinky, it's weird, it's disturbed, it's dysfunctional.
Okay, well, I can understand that perspective, but, I mean, it's a sentence that I read many, I read this when I was a teenager.
Nothing human is alien to me.
You say, okay, well, why?
It's very easy to judge ourselves.
It's very hard to be curious about ourselves.
And the Y, like his mother, was very violent towards him.
And so when you grow up in a tribe, you're scanning to see how to reproduce.
How do you reproduce?
Rituals, what habits, what morals, what culture do you have to manifest in order to reproduce?
And of course the person who's reproduced in your environment is your father, and the person he reproduced with is your mother.
It's not Freudian, it's just you say, okay, well that's a template for reproduction.
And so if you grew up in a tribe where women are violent, then if you're repulsed by violence, you won't reproduce.
If you evolve in a tribe or you're born into a tribe where the women are violent, then if you are anti-violence, if you will not marry or reproduce with a woman who's violent, then you simply won't reproduce.
That's just the way it is.
And women, I mean, even in the modern world, women are violent.
Women are twice as violent towards their children on average than men are.
Like mothers are twice as violent towards their children as fathers.
And when it comes to child murder, women murder their children at twice the rate that men do.
And this is normalizing for sort of time with the children.
So it wasn't that he's got just some sort of weird masochistic kink.
It's like, well, okay, your genes don't care about anything other than making more genes.
They're just blind photocopiers, right?
So if it's like, okay, well, if we have to find violent women sexually exciting, then we'll find violent women sexually exciting.
That's how it's always worked.
And it wasn't like there was a big excess of peaceful parenting throughout our evolution.
You adapt to your environment.
I mean, of course you do.
That's the only way you can... It's the only way we got here, right?
The only way we made it through to where we are.
But we have a choice about it.
Good morning, Joe.
What's that passive-aggressive thing that I... So, so... Oh, so nice of you to join us.
So... So nice of you to join us.
I hope you brought enough gum for everybody.
Somebody says, my father kept in close contact with this verbally abusive mother until the end of her life.
I could see this slowly wear him down over the years.
Yeah, and of course, when you're a kid, you know, I remember saying this, you know, I remember saying this to my daughter when she was little, you know, I said, look, it's a little unfair, some of our negotiations, because when you want something, sorry about this little dot here, I think I slept on my headphones or something, but
When you are little, you just focus on one thing.
Getting what you want from your parents.
You're like a scud, like a SAM, like a laser missile.
Just focus on one thing.
And your parents, of course, are focused on a thousand things.
You know, taxes are due, and you got a bill to pay, and you've got trouble with your neighbor, maybe.
Whatever's going on, right?
Money worries.
And so it's, you know, fragmented.
Fragmented concentration versus laser-like concentration, it's kind of like an unfair thing.
So what happens, of course, with your kids, when you're a kid, everything's about you.
You see your parent with you, and you see you with your parent, and you see you with your environment, but you don't see your parent with his or her environment.
I mean, my mother, as I sort of mentioned, my brother was sent to go and live in England.
My mother went to Germany, and I stayed with people I didn't even know.
A friend of mine's grandparents, and the grandmother was actually quite ill.
It was a very surreal summer and early fall.
And then when we came back, my brother just didn't return.
He was staying with a pretty good family, actually, for a couple of years.
I sort of mentioned that.
And during this time my mother just completely fell apart mentally like I remember I needed to get a hold of her for an emergency and I had a piece of paper which went on for like it was two sides of the paper it was all the phone numbers of places where she was working and I kept phoning them and because I needed to get in touch with her I kept phoning them and they were all like oh no she hasn't worked here for a while and I just going through the list and of course she kept getting fired because she'd have these breakdowns at work and then eventually she just stopped working she's been on disability for whatever for
Gosh, I can't even think.
45 years?
Something like that.
And she just wouldn't get out of bed.
My mother's very thin, too, so it's like there's nothing in the bed, like a ghost bed.
You can't tell if my mother's in the bed until you get close, right?
She's that thin.
And, of course, at the time, I didn't know what was going on.
Now, of course, or many years later, looking back, it was like, okay, well, she...
She turned 40 that year.
She turned 40.
And, uh, I, I don't see that of course.
Right.
I remember I'd make her a tea in the morning.
I'd go to, I'd make her a tea or toast in the morning.
I'd set it by her bed.
She wouldn't talk.
And then I would come home at lunch and the tea and toast would be untouched.
So I'd throw out the toast.
I'd make another piece, make another tea, put it by her bed.
Try and talk to her for a bit.
And, you know, that's fairly alarming, as you can imagine, because I was, what, 11 or maybe 12 at the time.
And eventually she sort of got out of bed, but I can't remember, honestly, at this point, whether she worked more again.
But I do remember having to turn my paycheck over pretty regularly from the age of 10 onwards.
There was this giant family Pac-Man that ate up all my earnings.
So there's another reason why I ended up going to work up north was to send money to my mother and to save some money for university and all.
So, you know, like I sort of burst on the scene with some pretty well-developed reasoning skills.
And one of the reasons I had those well-developed reasoning skills was it was a survival mechanism.
I was cornered into reason.
I was forced into reason.
You know, for a lot of comedians, it's make people laugh or die.
Talent is what survives a death sentence.
Talent is what staves off the capital crime of parental collapse.
So yeah, it was reason or die.
Or worse than death, which is go mad.
Hit me with a why if you've ever been around someone who's gone mad.
Have you ever seen that process?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, so we know, right?
We've, we've got the subsonic harmonic communication here.
Why are you so good at debating Steph?
Because if I wasn't, I would have faced a fate worse than death, which is to go mad.
Yeah.
It's like the woman who told the 50 Arabian night stories to stay alive.
She has arrived, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
If it's make the king laugh or be decapitated, you can probably come up with a joke or two, right?
And that's just why there's that manic energy behind this stuff.
It's why Ethan Hawke, when filming Dead Poets Society, couldn't stand Robin Williams, I think, because he's just constantly manic.
This is the mania behind him.
I remember Joe Rogan was really... At the time I thought, oh, it's strangely odd that Joe Rogan would be so angry about my truth about Robin Williams' show.
The Me Plus.
What is it that you need to have value?
Not to the world.
Of course, in the world you have to have value by working and all of that.
In your personal relationships, can you just be yourself and be loved?
Can you just be yourself?
Or do you have to put on a show?
Do you have to have... Do you have to be witty?
Do you have to be a great conversationalist?
Can you just be yourself?
Can you just be yourself?
But yeah, watching someone go mad... Madness is... I mean, in many ways, to me, from what I've seen, it's really a fate worse than death.
It's like that Mr. Antolini in Catcher in the Rye.
As I said before, the story Catcher in the Rye is simply a description of the post-traumatic stress disorder that results from childhood sexual abuse.
And it's not even, you understand, it's not even a theory.
It's not a theory.
I mean, it's right there in the text.
When Mr. Antolini makes a fairly gay pass at the young Holden Caulfield when he's asleep on the older teacher's couch,
He says, uh, everywhere I go I'm surrounded by perverts.
This kind of stuff has happened about a million times since I was a kid.
And this is why whenever he gets close to any kind of romance, he attacks the woman, right?
The woman he goes skating with.
He gets close to some kind of romantic feeling towards her and he just tells her she's a pain in the butt kind of stuff.
He just has to push people away.
And this is why he has murderous impulses towards men.
You know, like he, there's a guy brushing his teeth, a statilator, brushing his teeth, right?
There's a guy brushing his teeth and Holden Caulfield wants to punch him and drive the toothbrush through his neck, right?
Kill him.
Got the hunting cap, right?
Constant PTSD from
Childhood rape, and the writer J.D.
Salinger went, of course, to all of these boarding schools.
I'm sorry, not boarding schools, to all these public schools.
I think some of them, yeah, boarding schools.
And later on, one of his wives was on the verge of killing their child and herself, and just managed to stave that off in the nick of time.
It was really monstrous.
Situation in that, of course, the author J.D.
Salinger ended up going in pursuit of... he was a Buddhist, he messed around with Dianetics, he... I think that's the only book he ever wrote.
Well, yeah, he... so he... it's funny, you know, I'm not much of a rewriter, and that may be, of course, to my detriment, but he worked very hard with the New Yorker for his first short story.
He was actually friends with... J.D.
Salinger was friends with
Ernest Hemingway, I know Ernest Hemingway said, what a talent that kid has, right?
And J.D.
Salinger worked with the New Yorker, which is really the only place he published, because they had a contract with him that said we get first right of refusal on any of your fiction.
And he worked with them for a year on a short story back and forth.
A perfect day for banana fish.
It was originally called banana fish.
And I think that's the only novel he ever wrote.
Wrote a bunch of short stories.
Although there are claims that in, I think he last published something in the 60s.
He lived until 2010.
He lived to be 91.
He was a vegetarian.
Part of the reason that he was a vegetarian is his father wanted to get him into the meat business, and so sent him to Austria, which he returned right before the Angelus.
But his father sent him to Austria to learn the meat business, and he said he was so disgusted by what he saw in the meat business that he became a lifelong vegetarian.
Maybe that helped him live longer, I don't know.
But yeah, he lived for a long time, a long miserable time, in my opinion.
I mean, really isolated.
And he would never allow, Holden Caulfield's like, he would never allow the book to be made into a movie.
And according to some reports, there are, you know, they said, I mean, he worked every morning.
He worked every morning for a couple hours writing, for like year and year and year, right?
30 years, 40 years.
And they said there's like 12 completed novels.
But he said he loves the act of writing.
He says the act of publishing is just this interruption.
It's this unpleasant deviance from the acts of writing.
And of course, Catcher in the Rye, he says, what does he want to be?
Well, he says there's all these kids playing in a cornfield and they don't know that there's a cliff edge right at the edge of the cornfield.
And he just wants to be the guy at the end when the kids come stumbling towards the edge.
He wants to be the guy who catches them and sends them back.
He wants to be the catcher in the rye.
It's from a poem.
Of course, as I'm sure you are aware, a number of serial killers have been obsessed with this book because Holden Caulfield wears this hunting cap and is constantly talking about how phony people are, how terrible society is.
And he also has this odd moment where he's with his little sister and he, one of the first things he does is pinch her in the butt while she's in bed.
They're alone in the middle of the night.
He just shows up at his parents' place.
The Catcher in the Rye.
The book is a call out to people who've been sexually abused or suffered severe childhood trauma.
There was a long time when I would have said that was my favorite book.
I find it's like swallowing a puffer fish that blows up and spikes up in your chest.
It is so uneasy.
It is such an uneasy book.
I mean, the guy never sleeps.
Unless he's drugged at Mr. Antonini's, I don't know.
But it is a gruesome book.
And he couldn't really talk about this stuff.
Marilyn Monroe was actually one of the first celebrities to ever talk about being sexually abused.
I mean, her childhood was so awful.
She bonded with a dog that was noisy and one of her neighbors sawed the dog in half.
Just like sawed the dog in half and left the two halves on her front lawn.
I mean, this is the environment that she was in growing up.
It was just monstrous.
I mean, this is the problem, you know, if you're attracted to a very pretty girl, let's say you're attracted to a very pretty woman, right?
As an adult.
But the problem is that a lot of really creepy people have been attracted to her before.
And she, you know, this is why you say the hot crazy matrix for the hot crazy matrix has something to do as well as that.
If you're very attractive as a young woman, you were also very attractive as a child to creeps.
And you couldn't, the book was published in the 1950s, early 1950s, I think, Catcher in the Rye.
You simply couldn't talk about childhood sexual abuse back then.
I mean, Freddie Mercury was sent from Zanzibar to India to a boarding school, and he said, the only thing he ever said about it is like, yeah, there were some headmasters who chased the boys around the table, but that's all I'm going to say about that.
It's the great unspoken.
It's the great unspoken.
And of course, J.D.
Salinger had to put into The Catcher in the Rye, sorry, I know if you haven't read the book, I'll stop in a sec, but he had to put another trauma in to cover up the real trauma.
The real trauma is the sexual abuse, which is not alluded to, it's directly stated.
Directly stated repeatedly in the book.
It's not alluded to.
So Holden Caulfield has a younger brother named Ali who got sick and died of leukemia.
And that is supposed to be the trauma.
That's put in as a red herring so that people have an explanation other than the real one.
And it's a test of empathy.
Lots of people go through great tragedy and sadness in the world.
without becoming isolated and murderous and semi-suicidal.
You know, he's got lots of money.
Holden Caulfield is another reason why the book was controversial.
He's in a hotel and
The elevator boy, or the elevator man, the person who runs the elevator, they were also kind of like half security guards, basically says, do you want a prostitute?
It's going to be five bucks.
Prostitute comes.
He doesn't have sex with her because he's sexually incontinent because of the childhood abuse.
And then the guy comes back with the prostitute and the prostitute says, it's 10 bucks.
And he says, no, it's five bucks.
Right.
And then the prostitute and
The elevator operator, the pimp, come back and demand the extra $5.
Now, he wastes $5 on a stupid record, which he then breaks.
Like, he buys a little record for his sister, which he breaks.
And he just wastes money.
He says, I'm at a total spendthrift, right?
So he's in this situation where, in a sense, sexual violence is going to occur.
Because he hired a prostitute.
She wanted more money.
And then he gets all kinds of like, well, no, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna give you the extra five bucks.
He spends money on useless stuff, blows money, loses money all over the place, but he just takes a stand here because that's the reproduction of trauma.
That's the Simon the Boxer stuff, right?
So he ends up being beaten up by the pimp for taking a stand on something that is completely unnecessary.
Somebody says, I really identify with the loneliness or inability to connect, where you have all these conversations where you feel like the other person isn't really aware of you.
Right.
And of course that happens.
But the reason why you have conversations where you feel like the other person isn't really aware of you is because you are ferociously guarding a bottomless secret.
If you are ferociously guarding a bottomless secret, you can't connect with people.
Right?
Imagine if you were dating a police officer and you knew that you spoke of your crimes in your sleep.
Would you stay over?
Imagine you're dating a police officer.
You've committed a terrible crime and you know that you speak of your crimes in your sleep.
How relaxed would you be?
What if you had a kind of Tourette's where you confessed?
Hopefully the cop fully loves you.
No.
You can't fully love people keeping secrets.
That's one of the purposes of secrets.
One of the purposes of child abuse is to have you contain a secret that makes you incommunicado, that isolates you in the crowd.
I said the loneliness of crowds, right?
So you do two things.
Number one, you traumatize children.
Number two, you make people extremely opposed to children talking about their trauma when they grow up.
So the cop can't fully love you if you've committed a terrible crime, and you're keeping it secret, and you haven't resolved it, and your unconscious screams it out in your sleep.
You might even get antsy if you feel a yawn coming on.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
The cop is like, hey man, you really just, you know, stretch out on the couch, take a nap.
You're that tired.
There's a lot of people holding on to a lot of crimes in this world.
I mean, we're talking about the victims, but of course there are a lot of people who are perpetrators, a lot of people holding on to a lot of crimes in this world.
Crimes against their children, crimes against their family, crimes against their fellow citizens, crimes against nature, crimes against morality, crimes against the conscience.
You see an uneasy person nine times out of 10, it's a conscience violation.
A conscience violation could be being on the receipt of these things.
And Mr. Antolini says to him, and I remember reading this as a, in my early teens, I remember reading this bit where Mr. Antolini says, you're like a guy who's falling, who doesn't even know that he's falling.
And Mr. Antolini gives him this windy nonsense about, well, you have to get educated to find out the shape and scope and size of your mind and what it can contain and what pursues you, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
Somebody says, I identify with what you're saying.
An ex-girlfriend of mine used to say, I swore in my sleep.
I believe it was a deep anger about my parents, poison container kind of stuff.
Tim says, I like the verse where it says, Jesus knows what was in people.
Yes.
Since for many people, the fall of Christianity, there's no one to unburden to.
I mean, you can pay for a therapist.
But people are nervous about therapists, they're nervous about judgment, they're nervous about reporting requirements.
The priest and the confessional was a place to shake off the shells of secrets.
To shake off the shell of secrets, to fill in the moat of isolation that comes from keeping secrets.
I mean, this is Crime and Punishment 101, right?
Raskolnikov has a secret in that he murdered the porn broker Annalisa Vita.
After he confesses his secret, he can actually fall in love.
Many people in this world are lock boxes of isolation that stagger from birth to death with no connection at all.
They have been sinned against, and when you are sinned against, you discover the vast cover-ups of crimes against children that are the foundation of the world.
Or they are sinners themselves, with no one to grant them absolution.
There's no point to confession except vulnerability and danger.
You know, when you go to the priest, you confess your sins, you get absolution, you get a path to redemption.
In the absence of that, you hold on to your secrets, which puts you at an interstellar distance from the souls of those around you.
When you see someone who's really distant, unconnected, won't respond, everything goes through a filter, everything goes through an analysis.
They can't spontaneously interact.
It always has to go through a filter and a management system.
And it's like it has to go through HR or a PR department in order to get a response.
They can't just talk back and forth.
Keeping a secret.
Keeping a secret.
Keeping a secret is keeping your distance.
Somebody says, okay, but what if your secret is that you've been with a dozen prostitutes?
I'm still puzzling over that one.
What's the golden ratio in honesty?
You don't have to tell your secrets based upon a commandment from morality.
That's my only point in that.
He can tell the person.
I wouldn't tell it too early.
If you had a secret like that, I wouldn't tell it too early because you will be judged by that.
And if you've dealt with it and put it in the past and it's not an issue for you anymore, you wouldn't want it.
Like when you have something that you've done, that's not great at all, and then
You've dealt with it, then you've processed it, you've worked through it, and it's in the past.
But if you tell it to someone new, it's in the vivid present for them.
I mean, it's something you've, this guy had to deal with this for over a decade and all of that and, but when it's new, then people will often define you by that sort of one thing.
And
It's the question of redemption or forgiveness.
And I said this way back in the days of Trump, right?
Trump and the Billy Bush tape.
Where people on the left were like, well, this is it for him, man.
This is it.
He talked about grabbing pussies and stuff.
And I said, but it's only it.
That's only it.
Quote it.
If you're on the left is the left has no path to redemption, which is why the left polarizes and things get more and more extreme.
And it leads often to, to real conflict, real war.
But I said in the Christian community, Trump accepting the responsibility for his wrongdoing saying he hates who he was.
Praying for forgiveness.
There's a path to redemption.
So do you have the chance for the path to redemption?
Do you start your first date telling your date all of the very worst things that you've ever done?
I don't think so.
Yeah, the devil says sin is no big deal before you do it and then afterwards he says it completely defines you.
Yeah.
Well.
Song quiz.
I'm confused.
Keep your secrets or confess them too soon and be shunned.
You see, you're looking for a rule that you can follow.
That's not philosophy, man.
I'm not here to give you commandments.
That's been done.
That's in the rear view.
I'm not here to give you... I'm not here to program you like a computer is programmed or a robot is programmed by a programmer.
I'm not here to give you rules.
I'm not here to give you absolutes.
I'm here to give you thou shalt nots.
Like, yeah, no rape, no theft, no assault, no murder.
I get all of that.
But this is not a... I'm not talking to Tony Soprano here.
This is not something that we need to do.
So you're looking... You say, I'm confused.
Keep your secrets or confess them too soon and be shunned.
So what you're doing is you're looking to be ordered around.
You're looking for me to say, you absolutely keep your secrets.
You never confess them.
Or you're looking for me to say, you must tell the truth about every relevant piece of information, blah, blah, blah.
You're looking for me to give you a rule.
I won't, won't, won't do it.
I'm not here to tell you what to do.
I'm here to tell you how to think.
I'm not here to tell you what to do.
I'm not here to substitute my eloquence for your conscience.
I'm not here to substitute your wisdom with my orders.
That's why I will never tell people what to do on this show.
Look, if
It's not in the past for you.
If you've done something bad and the woman accepts you and she loves you, then you can say, yes, you know, I did this thing that was bad in the past.
She's got the context.
She's got where you are now.
She's had the empirical evidence of where you are now, what you did 10 years ago or five years ago.
I can't tell you if you should tell the truth about your worst decisions to your partner.
I can't tell you the truth about that.
Because a thou shalt can't be ordered.
Thou shalt not?
Absolutely, that can be ordered.
That's UPB.
But you're talking about aesthetically preferable behavior.
So, if it doesn't bother you, you've worked through it, it's in the past, it doesn't affect your current relationship, why bring it up?
Why bring it up?
If, on the other hand, it's torturing you and you can't shake it and then the other person has the right to know.
I mean, in a marriage, as a friend of mine used to say, I'm married, I'm not blind.
So, you know, I've been married for over 20 years.
Now, do I notice when other women are sexually attractive?
I do.
I do, of course I do.
I'm married, I'm not blind, right?
Do I notice when other women are sexually attractive?
Yes, I do.
Do I sit there and turn to my wife, she's hot!
No.
Of course not.
Of course not.
Now, it won't ever happen, but should it happen that I become sexually obsessed with someone, I mean, that's not going to happen, but if it did and it was really interfering with the relationship and so on, then I would need to talk about it.
I mean,
What does total honesty mean?
You, you, you want to find something to follow.
You want to, and listen, I don't, I'm not saying this in any critical or negative way.
Trust me.
I followed objectivism for a long time.
So I truly understand that you just want an answer for what to do.
How to live.
What am I going to do?
How am I going to live?
Give me the answer.
Give me the rules.
Give me the train tracks that I can follow to be a good person.
I want to get to this place called happiness.
I'm going to need a GPS.
I'm going to need a map.
I'm going to need someone telling me what to do to get to this place called happiness.
But the moment you do what you're told, you move to the opposite place.
The moment you do what you're told, the moment you take orders, you can't be happy because you cease to exist.
You're just a machine following orders.
Right.
Let's say I gave you orders.
You took orders.
I'm not saying that you would, but just theoretically.
Let's say I gave you orders and you took orders.
And I said, you know, here's, here's what you do.
Here's what you do.
Here's exactly what you do to become happy.
Here's exactly what you do to become loved.
And you follow those orders.
So?
If I whisper the answer to you in an exam, have you learned anything?
Are you showing knowledge?
No, you're just showing that you can repeat things you've been told.
Virtue is not taking orders.
Virtue is the opposite of taking orders.
And we just spent the last couple of years with governments telling people who to hate, who to punish, who to attack, who to ostracize.
And everyone's like, oh, okay, that's good.
This is a good thing.
I want to help people that save lives and do the right thing and punish people subject to misinformation.
Did we not just go through all of this?
We all just lived through all of this shit?
Did they achieve virtue by doing what they're told?
No.
Virtue is something you choose based on principles.
Based on, not programmed by.
How much truth should you tell in this world?
I can't tell you that.
That's a matter of judgment.
That's a matter of intimacy.
And that's a matter of relevance and context.
I can't tell you.
What would be an example of someone who hides their past in order to get into a relationship in this context?
Well, uh, when I was younger, I had a fairly Irish slash German temper.
I've never hit anybody, but yeah, I've never called anyone names, but I've raised my voice and I got, I got angry.
Also, when I was in my mid teens, I was half dating a girl.
I kissed another girl, you know, pretty loosey goosey R selected behavior, right?
No, I mean, I've done years of self-knowledge or decades of self-knowledge.
I did years of therapy.
I don't think you notice any particular rage.
And I've never, of course, done anything close to cheating on my wife.
It's never even crossed my mind.
So on the first date with a woman, do I say, yeah, no, I'm a cheater and a screamer or I'm a cheater and a yeller or whatever, right?
Or I was a cheater and a yeller.
Okay, that's true, but is it relevant if I've dealt with it?
Or does it color me in a way that is unfair to the progress I've made?
If I go on a first date and I say, yeah, I used to shit my pants.
Okay.
Yes, when I was a baby, I crapped my diaper.
Like we all did, right?
I pretty much work through that at the moment.
I don't have a hole in the chair I'm sitting in.
Is it relevant?
Have I worked through it?
Is it in the past?
Yeah, you never know.
I believe that there's this cycle of crapping your pants.
It's like there's a bell curve in the middle where you don't and the beginning at the end.
I think you do, right?
As if the prior mistakes are the only important thing in your world.
People don't know you.
They only know how you act and what you say.
And my concern would be if somebody unloads the most negative things about themselves on a first date or in the first week or in the first month.
That they are being programmed by abusive people to drive people away.
Can I get clarification that you said you have never hit anyone?
Yeah, I've never punched anyone.
I've never hit anyone.
I've never been in a fist fight.
Edward says, your shows are really helping me turn my life around.
I'm starting to make so many good decisions and not engage in any destructive behavior and I've just started dating a real quality woman.
Thank you.
Thank you, Ed.
That is, sorry, I feel with a tip we're on a first syllable basis.
You can call me sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
A tip, we have just had to up our budget on artificial intelligence.
Yeah, programmed by abusive people to drive people away.
Yeah, absolutely.
Oh yeah, like if you're just out there saying, oh yeah, here's all the terrible things that I've done over the course of my life.
Yeah, it's just, abusers want you isolated, they don't want you to be loved.
They don't want you to be loved, because once you experience love, you don't go back to abuse.
You understand?
Once you experience being loved, you can't go back to being abused.
And you don't want to have anything to do with people who abuse you once you've been loved.
So the abusers who want to control you and gain access to your resources for the rest of their lives, they don't want to improve their behavior.
So all they want to do is program you to drive good people away by showing the worst aspects of yourself up front.
Run away!
So you're not serving the truth, you're serving exploitation.
You're serving self-destruction.
You're serving the abusers.
Here's a harder question for the example of body count.
Is it possible for this kind of reform and growth?
Is it possible to reform body count?
Yeah.
Steph, I'm sorry, but you mentioned you hit your mother when you were a young teen.
I understand this was in self-defense, but I believe this is a contradiction of hitting someone.
Oh, that's interesting, right?
That's interesting.
So I say I've never hit anyone.
And by hit, I mean initiate the use of force.
It's like saying, well, I've never walked up and pushed someone, but when someone was running at me, I pushed them to one side.
That's interesting.
You hit your mother when you were a young teen.
So, that's an interesting question.
So, if you say that you protected yourself
It's interesting, right?
So if you're a surgeon, you say, well, no, I've never, I've never just stabbed and mutilated someone.
You say, oh no, but you're a surgeon.
It's like, you understand that's a different situation.
So I said, I've never been in a fist fight.
Yes, I did hit my mother when I was a young teen.
But what's interesting about that is I didn't actually hit her with my fist.
I swung a door towards her and it hit her in the hand.
So technically I didn't hit her, I just swung the door.
So I mean, I swung the door and it hit her in her hand or her wrist because she was like, right, trying to hit me.
So I swung the door and it hit her in her hand.
So technically I did not hit my mother.
I know I talked about it that way before, but I did not personally hit her.
I swung a door.
And again, I understand that that's the distinction without much of a difference, but that's interesting.
That's interesting.
So Evan, let me tell you how I experience your question.
You are concerned with bad behavior or inconsistent behavior or a falsehood, right?
You mentioned you hit your mother, but you said you've never been in a fistfight.
You never hit people.
So yes, when I was a little kid, I had to defend myself against, like my mother was incredibly violent and like I was in grave danger of like literal brain damage, right?
She would bang my head against metal doors and things like that, right?
So what's interesting is that in the ghastly suffering of my childhood,
You express no sympathy.
You're just like, well, you said this in the past, but now you say this in the present.
That's a contradiction.
Is that the action of a compassionate person?
When I was fighting for my life?
But you're contradicting yourself.
Where's, I mean, listen, it's fine to criticize, but I would really say that you should probably start with some compassion.
I'm thinking.
Like before you criticize people who as a child were fighting for their life.
Maybe start with a little bit of compassion.
And the person says, I started with, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry but, I'm sorry but, right?
And I'm sorry in text doesn't mean compassion, right?
Hey, I'm sorry, but right.
I'm sorry.
Might be like, I'm sorry that you made a mistake.
I'm sorry that you've contradicted yourself, Steph.
Right.
And, uh, let's do a quick, let's do a quick count here.
Right.
I want you to be listened to, right?
So we got 33 words and two of those 33 words are, I'm sorry.
And it's an interesting question that you bring up.
It really is an interesting question that you bring up.
But two of your 33 words were, I'm sorry, which, and of course, you know, when people say blah, blah, blah, but, like, I didn't mean to hit you, but, you just, everybody knows, like, you just throw away everything before the but, right?
Somebody says, when you had your head banged against the door, did the teachers ask why you were bruised?
How on earth am I supposed to remember what happened when I was four?
Our teacher in elementary school, aged six to ten, that would bash her head against the blackboard when we didn't know the lesson.
I'm so sorry.
Eastern Europe.
Yeah.
It's a harsh, it's a harsh world for kids.
Somebody said, oh the guy says, I stated I was sorry I understood where you were coming from and it was in self-defense.
I know why you did it and I had opportunities when I was younger too, but did not.
Well, but the only criticism that you're applying to the entire situation is not that I was in a desperate situation of self-defense.
And it's that the only criticism you are bringing to the situation is a possible contradiction about me hitting someone.
That's the only real criticism you're bringing to the situation.
And let's say that I had contradicted myself and that I don't, you know, but so let's say that I had, right?
That I had said I didn't, I've never hit anyone, but when I was in my early teens, I hit my mother because she was endangering my survival, right?
And then if you come in with your judgment and you say,
Steph, the real issue here is that you seem to have contradicted yourself.
I'm sorry, but you just completely contradicted yourself.
It looks like you contradicted yourself.
Yeah, I get it was self-defense and all that, but isn't that a real contradiction?
Do you understand?
That the only criticism you're bringing to this entire situation is not potentially fatal levels of child abuse, but my possible contradiction.
Who were you siding with there?
It's a sorting issue, says Tim.
The way we sort shows what's important to us.
Now, I fully understand that this is not about me.
I fully understand this.
Look, of course, like, if you are, you know, let's say, let's say that some woman had been, I don't know, gang raped and she had to shove guys away in order to survive, right?
And then she says, like, I'm not a violent person.
I don't, I don't push people.
And you said, ah, ah, but when you were as a teen, in your early teens, you've been gang raped and you pushed, like, you understand where does this go, right?
Who are you siding with?
By skating over the fact that I was in a desperate fight for survival and the only person you can criticize is me.
Right?
That you don't show compassion and the only person you're criticizing when a child is fighting for his life is the child or me as the adult with a potential contradiction.
Now, again, I have nothing wrong with the contradiction.
You can point out the contradiction.
And I do find it's very interesting.
And I hope that I've clarified it, right?
So I didn't actually hit her directly, right?
I swung a door and the door hit her in the hand or the wrist.
Now, what's interesting as well is you became defensive and tried to justify by saying, oh no, no, I gave you sympathy because I said, I'm sorry, but you did say this, right?
And rather than say, you know, I can really understand how that would scorch a little, right?
I can really understand how that could scorch a little.
And look, again, I'm not saying this like you're not some terrible person.
I'm not like, I'm not trying to say anything like that.
What I'm saying is that,
If you want people to really listen to you, then when they're talking about fighting for their lives as children, maybe don't nitpick at possible contradictions.
Just maybe.
Just maybe.
Maybe show them some, you know, fairly elemental or elementary human compassion for this.
situation for this fight for survival.
Maybe that's a little bit more important than nitpicking potentially contradictory statements.
Just maybe.
Maybe, I don't know, half-killing a child is slightly more important in the moral categories than a potential contradiction in two statements.
In terms of where you apply your moral criticisms or your consistency criticisms.
And again, it's an interesting question.
I'm certainly glad to have had the chance to clarify.
But I think, and it's like, here's the thing, right?
If this is how you interact with people as a whole, and people are, you know, sort of opening their deepest wounds, and you say, ah, but I think I found a contradiction.
People might not experience much compassion from you.
And again, I know this isn't about me.
I know that's not about me.
Because you already said this.
You said that you had the opportunity to fight back and you didn't.
And I have great sympathy for that as well.
And your decision to not fight back might have been entirely the right and productive and moral decision to make.
So Evan, he says, this is the guy who's sorry, but he said, you had not gone into detail about hitting, about the hitting in your previous stream.
The word just caught my attention.
As you mentioned, you had never hit someone.
So I think it's a choice of words.
Okay, I'll have to abandon this because I'm trying to sort of tell you how people would probably experience your lack of compassion.
And you're very abstract and, you know, it's a choice of words.
Okay, I will have to abandon the pursuit of heart to heart compassionate understanding with you.
Because you're throwing the bricks higher, you're throwing the wall higher, right?
And it's really unpleasant to be on this side of it, just just so you know.
Well, you didn't go into detail, so it's your choice of words.
Okay.
I'm telling you what it's like to be on the receiving end of this nitpicking when you're talking about, you know, a pretty horrifying and abusive situation in your life.
And I will have to abandon this because it's really, really unpleasant.
And it's a shame too, right?
Because this is the opportunity for learning in these kinds of situations.
You know, I sort of tell people, and you've heard me say this in the call-in shows, right?
There are these moments in life where you really have, like, free choice just rears up.
Because I guarantee you, you will not have this conversation again in your life, where somebody's being really vulnerable, and you're kind of cold and judgy, and, well, there's this contradiction, and it's your choice of words, and like, and this moment, like, in people's lives, they come and they go.
And this is part, it's one of the main reasons why I do the show, and in particular the call-in shows, but these are very important moments as well, right?
So, I don't know, do people just drift along in life thinking, well, I'll just do it better next time, or I'll be more compassionate next time, or I'll listen better next time, or something like that, right?
And people, I don't know, it's strange to me, like people are lost in a desert, and they see the plume of a car in the distance, and they're like, oh, it's kind of hot,
You know, it seems like a long way and I've been walking a lot.
My legs are kind of tired.
I'll just, you know, I'll just wait for the next one.
I'm sorry, I don't mean to laugh.
I'll just wait for the next deep and meaningful conversation where I'm being kind of cold and harsh with someone and that person is going to respond with compassion and explanation and try and help connect that empathy, right?
I'll just wait for the next time.
I'll just wait for the next time that happens in my life, right?
Alright, thank you for the tips.
These last couple of shows addressing moral obligations and the distinctions of moral obligations have been fire.
My dearest apologies that my messages are coming across as uncompassionate.
I do not know how to communicate it over text.
No, yes you do.
I'm sorry, like now, I mean, you're lying.
And I understand.
I'm not saying that you're being some terrible liar or anything like that.
But you're... No, you are.
You are.
Like, I'm sorry, you are.
Because it's not hard to say, I'm so sorry you were in that situation.
I'm so sorry that happened to you.
I'm so sorry you had to fight for survival in your early teens.
You can type that.
The idea that you couldn't type that?
No, I get you.
We're in the same situation.
And the lack of compassion you have is not towards me.
The lack of compassion you have is towards yourself.
Right?
So your English is fine.
It's very good.
Right?
So the idea that you don't know how to say, I'm so sorry you're in that situation.
Right?
I mean, you're very intelligent, right?
Very intelligent.
And very, a very good communicator because you're able to communicate these nuances.
So the idea that you are unable to type, I'm so sorry you're in that situation.
You know how to type that.
So you know how to type compassion, right?
And your lack of compassion is not towards me.
Your lack of compassion is towards yourself.
Because if you were compassionate towards yourself, then the last thing on your mind would be that there was a possible contradiction between a desperate fight for survival in my early teens and hitting people in fistfights as an adult.
Right?
You wouldn't sit there and say, well, this guy was fighting for his life in his early teens in a way, but the important thing is a possible nitpicky contradiction between blah blah.
Like you wouldn't, that just wouldn't, it wouldn't even cross your mind to be like, oh man, I'm so sorry you were in that situation.
That's just a, that's a terrible and appalling situation.
I'm so sorry you were in that situation.
But the idea that you, with your eloquence and your intelligence, the idea that you wouldn't know how to type, I'm so sorry, you suffered through that.
I'm so sorry that was the situation.
I'm so sorry you went through that.
Of course you know how to type that.
That's why I say, I'm not saying you're like lying, like evil, you know, mustache guy with a bald cat on his chest.
I'm just saying that when you tell me, when you retreat to, I'm completely incompetent in communications, and I have no way how to say, I have no way to understand how,
And especially if you went through the same thing.
Of course you would have empathy for me, right?
If you went through the same thing, for which I have, like, I'm really sorry that you went through what I went through.
Like, I really, really, that's just a terrible situation.
It's a horrible place to be.
This kind of, you know, desperate situation.
I am so sorry that you went through all of that.
Which is why I'm not calling you a bad person.
I'm just saying that it's unpleasant to be on the receiving end of that coldness.
Right.
It's like this, this, this frozen eyed Sauron gaze from the sky.
Right.
But you're contradicting yourself.
Right.
So I'm really, really sorry that you went through that.
That's just an awful, awful thing to go through.
And if you want to do a call, then like, I'm happy to do a call and we can talk about it, you know, as, as people who care about each other, right.
As, as fellow victims, right.
As, as fellow victims of this kind of awful abuse.
I'm really, really sorry.
Somebody says, I'd like to know how to warm up what I said, but I think you answered it.
Well, but if somebody were to say to you, how do you communicate that you're sorry that something happened to someone?
You'd say, I'm sorry that happened to you.
Right?
Again, your intelligence is very high.
Your language skills are very high.
Your eloquence is very high.
And you're a fast typist for what it's worth.
And you're an accurate typist.
So I'd like to know how to warm up what I said.
You do know how to warm up.
It just hasn't crossed your mind because of your lack of empathy towards yourself as a child, I would assume.
Oh dear.
Oh, we were making such progress.
And then so we were just, oh, that's too bad.
That's too bad.
Well, you know, I can't control people, right?
So he said, but I started with I'm sorry, and you took it the wrong way.
Okay, so, all right.
It's my fault.
It's my sensitivity about my desperate fight for survival as a child.
It's just, I'm oversensitive.
Okay, alright, so you win.
Yep, you absolutely win.
And I will not continue that.
Alright, do we have other... I've got a bunch of questions.
On, uh, I asked for a bunch of questions and just while I'm waiting for questions to come up from here, I, oh, I also posted, um, a show from 2016.
My girlfriend is a third world prostitute and I bought her family a cow.
How did that work?
Um, I also trained an AI on my fiction and freedom.locals.com.
You can do a search for that.
Uh, oh yes.
So questions, questions from the glorious listeners.
Oh, sorry, those are the questions for the AI.
Whoops!
And there are some really great questions from the AI.
It was really interesting to put those in.
Yes, sorry it has been a while.
Happy to take your questions.
As always, thank you for your interest in philosophy.
What have we got here?
What's the most significant undertaking you've ever failed at?
What's the most significant undertaking you've ever failed at?
You know, I don't mean to be Mr. Language Manipulation Guy, I really don't, but I don't... Like, to me, honestly, everything that got me to my wife, my daughter, and to today, to this conversation, everything which got me here, all of the multifarious, nefarious lines and whirlpools and mobius strips and spirograph
lower intestine convolutions that got me to this, I can't look at it as a failure.
Like I was thinking the other day about my time in theatre school.
And in my time in theatre school, when I first arrived with the class, the guy who was in charge of the theatre school says, oh, you're all very young, white, and bourgie, which I assume means that he was socialist or communist.
And they thought I was the greatest thing since sliced bread and tried to really convince me to drop the playwriting and go just straight into acting because I was such a good actor until they found out about my...
Morals and politics and my anti-communism, and then they just half-shuffled me out of the whole place, right?
Now, was that a failure?
Okay, let's say that I had succeeded as an actor, like Jamie Foxx, right?
But let's say I had succeeded as an actor.
Okay, what's the price of being an actor?
The price of being an actor is being an activist.
The price of being an actor, if you're famous and successful, is to do what you're told and repeat what you're ordered to.
Or you just don't have a career, right?
I mean, it's half Harvey Weinstein, half whatever, right?
So, if I had gotten what I wanted at the time, which was to become a famous actor, I wouldn't be doing this.
I mean, for me, what's more important than this?
Nothing.
What's the most significant undertaking you've ever failed at?
Everything that got me to where I am is part of the success of what I'm doing.
And there's nothing better or different or more, you know, there's an old joke about like, you know, well, I'm working as an actor, but I'm really hoping to break into waitering.
Right?
Everybody knows waitering is like usually a stepping stone to, you know, I'm a waiter so that I have flexible hours.
I can go to auditions or whatever.
Right?
Split shift.
And so I don't do this in order to get somewhere else.
Right?
I don't, I don't do this because I really want to be a mime.
You know, this is just funding my mime addiction or whatever.
Right?
So.
You know, I had a relationship, a lengthy relationship in my 20s that was heading towards marriage.
Was that a failure to end that relationship?
No.
Was it a failure to be in the relationship?
You know, I can't know before I know.
I can't know before I know.
It wasn't a terrible relationship.
It wasn't an abusive relationship.
So, you know, what's the most significant undertaking you've ever failed at?
I've always tried my best.
And if you try your best with the knowledge you have, knowing that you can't magically acquire knowledge you don't have, if you try your best with the knowledge you had, I'm not sure what the definition of failure would be.
So, I'm redefining failure as success, but I don't view things in my life that I look back and say,
Oh, I failed at that.
Because everything which got me here is part of the success of what I'm doing.
What we're doing, really.
Somebody says, Free Domain, can you define what women mean when they say they want a guy with emotional intelligence?
Is that just a way of saying they want a guy who can read their subtle non-verbal cues?
Well it can mean, I don't know, I mean it can mean any number of things, but a lot of times what they mean is that they want a guy to be their girlfriend, which is a bad idea.
It's a bad idea.
So a lot of women, a lot of women have issues with other women because of, you know, cattiness or cliquiness or gossip or, you know, betrayal or whatever it is, some woke conformity stuff or whatever, right?
And so a lot of women who want sort of deep, meaningful, emotional-based conversations find it difficult to do that with women because of aforementioned betrayals and instabilities and cattiness.
And so what they want is they want a guy, they want the stability and consistency of a guy, but they also want the sort of deep emotional exploration of a woman.
And so what they'll do is they'll try to turn their guy into a proxy girlfriend.
It's a very bad idea, it doesn't work, and it's just, you know, and that's what I said.
I said this to, of course, many years ago to a woman who was like, she wanted to talk about this, that, or the other, and I was like, oh no, that's why God gave you girlfriends.
Like, I'm busy, I'm running a business, and I don't have any particular interest in this stuff, so, you know, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta get female friends to talk about that stuff, if you want to talk about that stuff.
And I'm, you know, I'm pretty good at talking about emotions and so on, but when it seems to me just kind of empty self-justifying complaining, I have a pretty tough time getting into that kind of stuff.
So I'm like, no, no, this is not a thing for me, right?
So it could be that they want a guy that they can turn into a safer woman to chat with, or a more consistent and reliable woman to chat with.
But a subtle non-verbal cues?
There's this game that people play.
It's not just women, right?
There's this game that people play where if they're upset, it's the other person's job to fix it.
To figure out what they're upset about and to fix it.
And I don't play that.
I don't play that game.
I don't play that way.
I mean, that to me is just ridiculous.
It's just ridiculous.
You know, it'd be like me hanging outside an Apple store being discontented and saying, well, you know, one of the Apple geniuses, they're supposed to be geniuses, they're supposed to come out of the store, figure out that I'm upset and know that it's because I dropped my phone and it's got a cracked screen and I'm too poor to repair it and they should offer me a free repair just because I'm sad, right?
And then just getting increasingly enraged that the store employee is not coming out and solving my problem without me having to say anything or even show them the phone.
I mean, expecting people to read your mind and solve your problems is just an excuse to bully them.
It's not because you genuinely think that's possible.
It's not because you genuinely think that's a thing that can happen.
The reason you have the standard of, I'm upset, you better bloody well figure out what I'm upset about and solve it without me saying anything, that's just an excuse to bully someone.
So if you want to avoid being bullied, just say no, you're an adult, use your wits.
Let's see here, excuse me.
Thoughts on parents who allow their teenagers to consume alcohol as long as it's supervised.
I remember being invited to a party where the parents were upstairs and all the teenagers were downstairs.
The parents took everyone's car keys and let them drink beer as long as they were staying downstairs and everyone who drank would sleep over.
No, I don't think that.
Particularly for boys, but only slightly less importantly for girls.
No, you don't allow for alcohol consumption of kids in their teens.
Why?
Because their brains are still developing.
They can't make good decisions.
And when you take a brain that's still developing, and then you remove the higher executive function, bad decisions are going to be made.
So, no.
When asked, the argument is, I'd rather see them drink when supervised than them being out in public and secretly drinking with peers.
No, you raise your children so that they don't want to be around drunks.
Right?
You raise your children so they don't want to be around drunks.
I mean, okay, let me ask you this.
So from a one to 10 standpoint, from one to 10, how much fun was your first party where you drank?
No, it's a minus 10.
Minus 10, it was like a terrible time.
Plus 10, it was a fantastic time.
Like all the commercials came true.
Uh, so we got minus 10, you know?
Oh, that's heaven.
Yeah.
Minus 10, minus five, minus five, minus five.
Yep.
Never went, don't drink.
Good for you.
Good for you.
I'm just waiting for her.
Puking isn't fun.
Oh, yeah.
What's that old D. Martin?
You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.
Drunk and barfed on a log at 16.
Yeah, it's horrible, right?
Oh, plus six.
So you had a good time.
Okay, that can certainly happen.
That can certainly happen.
Me, not really.
No, I got drunk a couple of times in my teens and it's like, I've got the spins.
I need to pee.
I can't sleep.
And the next day it's just kind of wiped out.
Like I just voluntarily gave myself the flu.
I mean, it is inducing an illness, right?
I mean, being drunk is an illness.
Somebody says, mine is seven.
Didn't drink, but saw a friend's family smashed out of their mind.
Very unpleasant.
Oh yeah.
Why would you want to be around drunk people?
I mean, I was never able to erase my sort of judgment.
I used to have this thing when I drank, and again, I'm talking like three or four times I got drunk in my life, but you know, maybe two or three of those when I was a teenager.
And I would have this mantra, like I'd say, a galaxy is a mass of stars held together by a central gravitational force.
And if I could repeat that sentence, I wasn't drunk, and I could always repeat that
That sentence?
So I never lost that, right?
Tim says, I almost drowned the first time I smoked pot.
We were at a lake.
That's a bad idea.
I remember being swimming at night in a lake with some friends and I kicked a giant fish.
I remember feeling those scales and it just freaked me out.
Alcoholic parent turned me off.
Alcohol, yeah, I don't drink.
It's gross.
Drunk people are like aliens.
Yeah.
I mean, people mostly drink to overcome boredom and alienation.
You're erasing the fact that you're not connected, right?
First time I got drunk.
It was also the first time I listened to Stranglehold by Ted Nugent.
That song seemed to last forever.
Also did a bit of foreshadowing.
Ted Nugent is vile beyond words, right?
I mean, just go look up the lyrics for the song Jailbait.
The number of stars who've had statutory... Well, you know, right?
All right.
A lot of strategies for men to get women or women to get men are adversarial, not in their best interest.
What are some principles I could use to know when it is too far?
Oh, you mean like nagging and stuff like that?
What is it someone said on social media?
They said, you know, today, right now, today, you can go and join a beginner's dance class and you'll be the only man there and it's totally legal.
It's totally legal.
You could do it anytime you want.
I mean, I don't know that it makes any sense to start any relationship with manipulation or falsehood.
Because the only people who will respond to manipulation and falsehood in a positive way are people who are manipulative and false themselves.
So it's like starting a relationship, trying to start a relationship, being fluent in Japanese, and then complaining that your partner speaks Japanese.
You start by being yourself, being honest, being direct.
Now, I said by being honest, but again, people are saying, well, what about my very worst thing?
Well, the very worst thing I ever did.
I gotta be honest about that.
It's like... Oh, the fellow says, I did modify my previous comment above, Steph, if you would like to read it.
I was not shown much to any compassion growing up, so it is difficult for me to include it.
Sorry, let me just see what he said here.
Somebody says, even though you worked towards being a playwright and did acting and it didn't work because of your standards compared to the socialist economies in the field, wouldn't it be fair to say that it helped you in life regardless?
I would assume your novels and live streams would still be great, but your... RP?
Role-playing, imitations, character development skills were in part started during your time there.
Absolutely, yeah.
I don't regret theatre school at all.
The fact that the voice training that I took was very important, the role-playing, the...
The improvisation that we did was really fantastic.
And I also did a lot of body work.
I did the Alexander Technique for sort of posture and movement and so on.
And this is why, I think it's one of the reasons why as an adult I don't have any knee problems, I don't have any back problems, and I move fairly well and all of that.
So yes, I don't regret that at all.
Let's see here.
If you succeeded as an actor, you would be on TV all the time getting your 10th boost effects.
I could be on TV at his funeral, right?
Alright, so...
I didn't find the earlier message.
Somebody says, owning a wedding venue, I get quite agitated by drunks or people that drink too much.
Never understood why people need to knock themselves to the floor.
Because they can't stand themselves.
Drinking is a form of self erasure, right?
You're erasing yourself.
Sorry, my messages seem to have vanished and our good friend Evan did put out another message, right?
While we're waiting for that.
If you have not read or listened to my latest book, I'll put the feed in here.
You really, really should.
So somebody, Evan says, I did modify my previous comment above, Steph, if you would like to read it.
I was not shown much to any compassion growing up, so it is difficult for me to include it.
Again, I really, really hate to be naggy nitpicky guy after complaining about naggy nitpicky guy, but this is more than a nitpick.
So you're saying I wasn't shown any compassion, so it's difficult for me to include it.
So you're trying to, in a sense, blame your parents for your own lack of compassion.
But if you did not get compassion when you were growing up, then you would be more sensitive to its lack.
It's like saying, well, I wasn't fed any food when I was growing up, so I have no idea when someone's hungry.
I don't follow that.
I think I have a great deal of compassion.
I think sometimes it could be too much, but I think I have a great deal of compassion, though I was shown hostility and rage and coldness when I was growing up on a near consistent basis.
It wasn't like boarding school when I was six was some super compassionate place.
So it's like, well, I grew up really, really hungry, so I have no idea when anyone else is hungry.
That doesn't follow.
Because now you're saying, well, it's my parents' fault that I can't be compassionate.
So if you know, if you can tell me, well, I wasn't shown much to any compassion growing up.
Okay.
So you had a lack and I, I'm really sorry about that.
I think that's a terrible place to start.
I really, really sympathize with that.
But if you say I lacked something essential in my childhood, the moment you say that, and you know that, right?
And this is not something that you, I mean, if you listened to the show for a while, you've listened to call-in shows, you know that, right?
So if you know for a fact that you lacked something essential when you were a child, you are now 150% responsible for showing it to others.
If the moment you, the moment you identify a lack, then you are 100% responsible for fixing it.
You no longer have any excuse.
And you know, say, well, I wasn't shown much to any compassion.
Okay, so now you know there's a lack, right?
I mean, if I'm going to a fencing competition, and I'm just about to leave and I look at my
Foil, like my little sword there, and I'm like, oh, forget it, I'm just going, right?
And then they say, well, where's your foil?
So, well, I knew, I knew that my foil, I knew that I didn't have my foil with me.
It's like, well, if you knew you didn't have your foil with you, why didn't you go back and get it or arrange for something else or arrange for someone to bring it with you or just take it in the hallway or whatever?
Like the moment you identify there's a lack, you're responsible for fixing that lack, right?
You know, like if you're starting a business and you know that you need $10,000 to start the business, you know that for a fact, and then you don't make any steps to get a hold of that $10,000, and then you say, well my business failed because I didn't have $10,000.
No, your business failed because you didn't get the $10,000, which you knew you needed, right?
Can I attempt to fix it?
I'm not sure what you mean by that.
Do you mean our conversation or just a lack of compassion as a whole?
I'm sorry, you said yes.
I'm sorry.
I asked two questions, one or two.
Like this particular conversation or compassion that you lack as a whole?
Oh, this particular conversation?
I don't think so.
Because if I were to tell you what to say, then again I'm telling you what to say.
And the point is not to fix this particular conversation.
This particular conversation is a symptom.
And the symptom, I mean, I can just tell you straight up if you want.
Hit me with a why if you just want me to tell you straight up what's going on.
So that you don't blame yourself and you don't get mad at yourself and feel like you did something wrong or bad.
I don't want you to feel that.
I want you to feel like you did something wrong or bad or mean or cruel or whatever, right?
You know, me self-defending against my mom was like 45 years ago.
You know, it's coming up to a half century.
That's like, it's not a raw wound for me, right?
Uh, yeah, I'm just going to wait.
Hit me.
You don't have to, of course, but yeah, hit me with a Y if you'd like me to tell you what's going on for you.
Again, so you have understanding.
Well, no, you're not the guy, so you're not the guy.
I'm going to wait for him.
He doesn't have to, right?
Appreciate the feedback.
Okay, that's not the same as... Do you want me?
Yes, okay.
Alright, so what's happening is that your parents' coldness requires that you keep empathetic people out of your life.
Because once you have an empathetic person in your life,
And you discover the beauty and trust and love and intimacy and connection of empathy.
Once you are empathetic, once you have empathetic people in your life, then what happens to your judgment of your parents?
I can tell you exactly what happens to your judgment of your parents.
It goes very harsh, very negative, very critical.
So your parents need to keep compassionate people away from you so that you don't end up judging them as cold and cruel.
They need to normalize this kind of coldness.
And so you are not attacking me.
You're not being cold towards me.
It's nothing to do with me, as I said.
That's a bit of a distracting statement.
You say, I effing hate my parents LOL.
That's a very strange sentence to be on the receiving end.
LOL?
Are you kidding me?
Laugh out loud about hating your parents?
That's like the least funny thing that you could possibly say.
Right?
And it's very confusing, right?
I effing hate my parents lol.
So again, that's a coping strategy.
I mean, I don't know that doesn't really lead to much, right?
That statement, a coping strategy doesn't really lead to much.
It's like saying defensive.
It's okay, but defending what, right?
Well, I do.
I love people who treat you awfully.
Well, my issue isn't to say that you should love people who treat you awfully.
My issue is that when you say something, and I'm trying to give you this sort of feedback to help you, right?
That when you say, I effing hate my parents, LOL.
That's a very strange and odd, you know, that's a very strange and odd sentence to be on the receiving end of.
Uh, let's see here.
Could you do a rough timeline of how you got to where you are now in life?
What were some of your biggest life-changing moments or lessons?
Over the years, you've shared a lot of life lessons and experiences from working in a hardware shop, fixing screen doors while not knowing how to, from Times, gold panning, theater school, business experience, and almost marriage, books you've read over the years, starting a podcast.
Cause why not?
I've got a long commute, maybe people would like it.
It'd be very cool to see it all in one rough timeline.
So basically you're talking about an autobiography, right?
I actually started one.
I started an autobiography some years ago.
But the problem is that there are people in my life, it's not their fault in a sense that I'm sort of famous or notorious or whatever.
Controversial.
So it's tough because it would be pulling people into the public sphere who didn't ask to be there.
So it's a challenge.
All right.
Let me get back to my other questions.
Where did the other questions go?
Oh, there we go.
All right.
Should AI StaffBot pass the family Turing test?
That is, should the AI StaffBot model be something your family should interact with and judge whether or not to authenticate?
I don't think so.
I don't think so.
The reason being that I don't think the AI StaffBot could possibly pass the Turing test.
So, it's funny because NPCs can pass the Turing test, because they're just programmed like a computer, but people who genuinely think for themselves, I mean, can you imagine an AI doing a call-in show?
Steph, do you have advice on how to learn to control emotions and not overreact?
Yes, I do, and recognizing that most people are not talking about you.
I mean, this guy, Evan, who was in the call, who was sort of nitpicking at what I said about hitting people,
I know that it's not about me.
It's not about me.
And he's, you know, very much confirmed that.
He grew up with sort of coldness and criticism, I assume, and he's just recreating his parents' behavior in order to not be around people who have compassion, because that would be dangerous to his inner parents or whatever it is.
Right now, he said he hates his parents and all of that, so I don't know what to believe at this point.
Especially when somebody says, I hate my parents, lol.
That's such a bizarre thing to hear, you know?
Yeah, no, I just I just put down my beloved dog lol.
It's like what?
It's just I don't know which way is up or down, right?
So not overreact.
You can't directly control emotions, they just happen, right?
But you can control your thoughts, which give rise to the emotions.
So if somebody's being mean to you, you know, like, so everybody has this, right?
You're driving along and someone's just driving kind of crazy, right?
And you have a perspective on that.
And my perspective is, I choose to think that there's some emergency, their wife is giving birth in the back, somebody has just home invaded them and they just got the message, or they're super late for a job interview that they're desperate for, as opposed to they're just an idiot to drive badly.
There's nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so is a line from Hamlet.
I don't go that far.
But you have a choice about how to interpret things.
So everybody knows when you're driving, some people text, and please don't, right?
But some people text and stare at their phone and all of that while they're driving.
So that's just a fact of life.
And I just, I drive like everybody's drunk and retarded.
Like everybody's on their phone and, and has just taken a hit of Hiawaska or something like that.
Right, that's just, I just, now I say, well, am I mad at that?
It's like, well, that's just a fact of life.
I can get mad about it every time I get in the car.
I can just say, well, that's just a fact of life, so.
Um...
Let's see here.
What led to the decision of the title universally preferable behavior?
The title implies the rest.
Universal applying to all things, preferable a comparison or conditional operator of behavior and observable act as opposed to thoughts or sentiments.
Yeah, I mean morality has to be empirical in order to be judged because there's no such thing as thought crime.
Preferable, yes, something which you could choose.
Preferred is the past tense, preferable is the future tense and I've always said that morality exists in the future.
All right.
Hey, Steph, a woman called in discussing her child and their inability to leave the park when she said they needed to go.
I believe she ended up picking up her kid and leaving, a situation you mentioned you would have handled differently, without using force and having a conversation with them after the park, how their actions affected your feelings.
How do you implement similar methods of peaceful parenting when children are younger, between, say, the ages of 1.5 to 4, before they're more capable of applying lessons you teach them?
Thanks so much for your wisdom.
So disapproval is not violence, right?
And so if I made a deal with, if I make a deal with a kid, and the kid is young, and the kid does not respect the deal, even if they're like, say, two or whatever, right?
They can understand deals a little bit, right?
And if they're pre-understanding deals, then you just don't, like, you don't take a two-year-old to a play center when you have to be at the dentist in an hour.
Right?
So you take kids to play centers when you have a ragged end to your time commitment.
You can stay, you can go, right?
You understand?
You don't take a kid to a play center when you have to go and catch a plane, right?
Because then you have a hard end.
So it's around preventing.
So you have to be in a situation knowing that you've got a two-year-old who's not going to want to leave the play center.
And that's a compliment to you, right?
The fact that kids want to stay playing with you is a compliment, right?
If a woman wants to stay on a date longer, that's a compliment.
So you just simply, I wouldn't put myself in a situation where I take my kid, who's very young, to a play center when we have a time that we absolutely have to leave by.
Like that's just setting yourself up for a mess, for disaster, right?
So I wouldn't put that in.
You know, by the time they're four, you know, you can say, and you just remind them, you know, we've got an hour and, you know, we got half an hour, we got 15 minutes, we got 10 minutes.
And then if they don't come, then you stay.
You don't pick them up and leave them, right?
Because that's just force, right?
So you stay.
You stay, and you don't play with them, right?
Because you're upset.
You don't withhold the emotional reality of your experience from your kids, right?
And so, you know, we made a deal, you're breaking the deal, I'm not going to play with you.
And then on the way home, you're not happy and chatty and, right?
You're just, you know, we made a deal, you didn't keep the deal, put me in a difficult and awkward situation, I didn't like it.
And then you're just honest.
And then if they want to go back to the Playcenter the next day, you say, I don't want to go to the Playcenter.
Well, why not?
Because we had a deal and you didn't keep it, right?
I mean, all of that is, that's how life works, right?
You're trying to teach them how life works.
You know, if they displease a date, the date won't want to go on a date with them again, right?
And if they displease you, when you take them to a Playcenter, you may not want to go back to a Playcenter for a while, right?
So yeah, put yourself in a situation where you know the kid's gonna want to keep playing.
There's also things you can do if you're done with the play center or whatever and you want to go.
You can say, uh, let's go get an ice cream or like you can do something to sort of bring them out, right?
But there's no point in their life where someone's displeased with them and they just pick them up and bodily haul them somewhere, right?
I mean, no reasonable situation, right?
So what are you doing?
You're not teaching them anything about how life works or adulting works or anything like that.
You're just showing that you're bigger and stronger.
All right.
Somebody says, I'm a subscriber and I left two questions and a tip on your May 16th locals question.
Okay.
I don't think they were answered yet.
Should I repost them?
Were they too long?
Repost for the guy so he doesn't have to search for it.
I also left a question on the May 16th post, Steph.
Did you forget these questions or were they not up to your philosophical standards?
Here's the link for all of our convenience.
Wait, you want me to go and search through pages and pages of text for your... questions?
No, just repost them.
I just repost them.
This is weird to me.
Uh, repost.
Post.
Please.
Like, you know I'm not... I appreciate the tips, but you don't pay me to answer your questions.
I don't, like, I don't charge for answering questions.
I don't charge for call-in shows.
I don't charge for books, for the most part.
I don't charge for, like, it's an honor system, right?
So you're not paying me to answer your questions.
Like, you don't get to say to me, well, Steph, you just didn't answer my questions and you're deficient in some manner.
It's a tip, right?
All right.
So, and again, I really appreciate the tips and thank you so much.
We can go for another few minutes here.
All right.
So I got through those questions.
All right.
Let's take another couple of cues here and then we shall close things up.
All right.
Let's see here.
Sorry I interrupted, and I am very impulsive, hence the regular $100 donations.
I do love what you do, Steph.
Well, thank you very much.
I appreciate that.
One last thing, if I may, I'm going to speed dating event tonight.
One of the many things I'm currently trying.
Any suggestions about topics of conversation?
I've got a few in mind, but I'm really open to suggestions.
What I would do is I wouldn't just do NPC talking points.
I would take a roll, go, go, you know, 1% to edge, 1% to something just honest and genuine and see how the person reacts.
I guess a person would say, how do you feel about your parents, Steph, in this moment?
Oh, this is Evan.
I'm 100% sure you've answered this before, but in the context of this conversation, me saying I hate my parents, they were terrible people, it doesn't seem like that irrational of a comment to me.
Oh boy, I mean, I don't know what to say, man.
It's not that you say you hate your parents.
I don't find that to be an irrational comment.
If they were terrible to you, I'm really sorry that that happened to you.
But it's not that you said that they were terrible people.
You said, I effing hate my parents, laugh out loud.
It's the juxtaposition of those two things that's just emotionally baffling.
You're talking about the most terrible thing that ever happened in your life.
But just your relationship with your parents, you're talking about something that harmed you enormously, that scraped you of compassion, and then you're saying you're inviting me to laugh out loud like it's a joke, like it's a comedy thing?
That's weird to me.
And I'm not saying you're weird, I'm just saying that the experience is like, it's very confusing to people, and it's kind of alienating.
Because you're inviting people to laugh about child abuse and neglect.
And it's not funny.
So I don't know how to make it clearer than that.
Can a two-year-old handle that kind of dealmaking?
I can't answer that.
My daughter got ethics at 18 months.
So can a two-year-old handle that kind of dealmaking?
Sure.
Two-year-olds are constantly negotiating.
Somebody says, does she have or want children?
What does she think about coerced vaccinations?
Maybe that one is too contentious for speed dating.
I don't know.
Yeah, I mean, I think to be honest, like let's say that you're at a speed dating event because you want to find a wife and be a dad.
It's like, yeah, I'm here because I want to find a wife and be a dad.
What are you here for, right?
Somebody says, do you think it's harder to peacefully parent multiple children through interaction, sibling fighting?
I know you did very well with a single child.
So, multiple children.
Of course, I know people who have multiple children.
A lot of my friends have multiple children, and we've talked quite a bit about this.
Multiple children can be more challenging from a time standpoint when you're younger, but it gets easier when it's older, because my daughter, when she wanted to play, it's my wife and I. Like, that's it, right?
So it's harder at the beginning and it's easier later on because the children can play with each other.
Now it's a little different.
My daughter has friends she plays with and there's a great, great community of people that she hangs with.
All right.
Let me see here.
What do I do about Father's Day after basically not speaking to him because he is the epitome of a narcissist.
I'm not sure what you mean by what do I do about Father's Day.
Thank you for the tip.
If anybody else wants to throw a tip in.
It's interesting how UPB is sort of automatic for kids.
As soon as you do something for one, the others say, well, what about me?
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah.
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah.
UPB is, UPB has to be like seriously traumatized out of children's minds because what are we?
We're universal making machines.
We are conceptual universal machines.
Yes.
As soon as you have a rule, your children will try to manipulate it for their benefit.
Yeah.
And so it says, do I acknowledge it?
Like text or send a card?
Well, I guess you weren't here earlier when I said, I don't tell people what to do.
Here's another tip.
To ensure prompt service.
Thank you.
So like, do you want me to tell you whether you should text or send a card?
I can't tell you whether to do that or not.
Yeah, I can't tell you whether you should text your father or not.
That's not a philosophical question.
I can tell you that it's probably unwise to do it out of a sense of empty obligation or conformity.
You know, while you're supposed to, or because people will say, well, did you text your father on Father's Day?
And you're like, yeah.
So you're just saying it out of fear of negative judgment or criticism or something.
That's probably not the best reason in the world to do something.
On the other hand, if he's about to die, you're in his will and you're going to get a billion dollars.
I don't know.
I can see why a text might be worth a billion dollars.
You could then apply it to spreading peaceful parenting.
And you know, I can't answer you that question.
I can't answer you that question.
And here's the thing, even if you do it because you're afraid of negative judgment and criticisms and so on, do it by all means, right?
Again, I'm not here to give you orders.
Philosophy is not here to order you around or program you or become the new physics you have to obey no matter what.
Do what you want, but just be honest about it.
Like if you say to yourself, well, I stand to inherit a billion dollars, he's just dying, so I'm gonna say happy Father's Day.
Okay?
You're being honest about it, right?
You're being honest about it.
And if you say, well, I'm going to do it because my aunt who hates me is going to demand to know whether I did it.
And it's just easier for me.
Okay.
Then just do that.
And then just be honest, right?
Just be honest about it.
I'm doing it because I feel this heavy sense of obligation.
Like just, just be honest about your motives.
That's all right.
Uh, so.
Somebody says, Evan says, because I was asking Steph a serious question and Steph says I'm protecting my inner parents is hilarious to me because I'm not.
Yeah, it's not hilarious, dude.
It's not hilarious.
I don't want to be at his level and cold, but it feels insincere.
Somebody else says, yeah, it's not, it's not hilarious.
It's not, it's not hilarious.
The worst tragedy that ever befell you in your life.
Is not hilarious.
So this again, this is, you're inviting people to view child abuse as funny, as like laugh out loud hilarious.
And nobody who's got genuine compassion will go there with you because it's not compassionate.
It's not compassionate to join in at laughing at someone's childhood suffering.
You know, if I said, well, I had to swing a door at my mother's hand because she could have beaten me and half killed me or given me brain damage, LOL.
You understand that this would not be LOL.
Is tipping smaller amounts on locals better because the tips are in coins instead of dollars?
Yeah, I think so.
I think so.
So I appreciate that.
And the people who are tipping me coins on locals really, really appreciate that.
All right.
Good show.
Good show.
Worth a tip or two.
If you're listening to this later, freedomain.com slash donate.
I would really, really appreciate that.
Don't forget to check out the book.
I posted the link.
And to the person who wants me to answer your questions, do me a solid.
Don't make me spend 10 minutes trying to scroll through and try and find questions that could be scattered on, you know, 500 messages.
Just repost them and I'd be happy to
Answer them.
Also check out, I have the freedomain.locals.com.
I posted some questions that I had asked Steph Bott, the fiction writer.
I fed a whole bunch of my novels into an AI.
Steph, would you be interested in a call-in with me about this topic?
I would be, yes, absolutely, Evan.
I'm thrilled to have a call-in.
Just email me, callin.freedomain.com.
Yeah, thanks, James.
callin.freedomain.com.
We'll absolutely talk about this, and I would be really, really fascinated to have a talk with you about this and figure out if I got things wrong or where I may have gotten things right.
I would be overjoyed to do that, so just...
Shoot me an email.
When you include, just email me at callinfreedomain.com.
Include your Skype ID and your time zone and when you're available, just so we don't thrash around too much setting it up.
Thank you for your wonderful insights.
Thank you.
I appreciate that.
Thank you, Tim.
I appreciate that.
I hope you guys have a wonderful, wonderful rest of the weekend.
I love you guys for coming by, and I really, really do appreciate your support.
Again, we've got a bit of a fiscal hole with the AI obsession, but it's really, really working out.
It's really, really working out, and you will be really surprised at how great it is when you get a chance to use it.
It's, you know, work, time, effort, and money.
But it's well worth it, so if you'd like to... Again, I'm sort of asking you to support... Trust me, it's going to be fabulous, right?
I'm asking you to support me and the AI initiative, but I do think it's going to be great.
Wouldn't it be nice to just be able to ask a question and get, you know, we hope, right?
We can't ever guarantee an accurate answer, but they're pretty good for the most part.
All right.
Great show.
Thank you.
Thanks, Steph.
Great chat.
Thank you so much.
Love you, Steph.
Thank you so much, Nina.
I love you back.
Thank you for your support and your kindness.
Have yourselves a wonderful, wonderful afternoon, and I will talk to you soon.
