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Jan. 24, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:36:57

HELP ME STOP PAYING ESCORTS! Freedomain Call In

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	Thanks for taking the call and thanks for everything you're doing.
	I'm listening constantly at the moment.
	It's very, very useful to me on a daily basis.
	Oh, good.
	I'm glad.
	I'm glad.
	How can I help you best specifically?
	I mean, I've read your email and there's not a lot of detail.
	We talked before, right?
	Yeah, we talked before.
	That was about three years ago.
	And that was exploring my childhood and my past.
	I'm in my late 20s now.
	I would like you to, I'm glad you've accepted taking the time to look in more to my past and to see what might be holding me back and what is influencing my decisions in the last five years or so.
	Because I think that the quality of my choices in the last five years have been bad.
	Some of them have been quite bad.
	And you said, did I have this right, that you held on to the thousands that I sent?
	Yes, that's correct.
	I have most of the thousand.
	Yeah, that's correct.
	So why do you still have the money?
	Because I sent it for therapy.
	I mean, it's your money when you get it, but I thought I had sent it for therapy and maybe you used some other source to pay for therapy, but did you go?
	Yeah, I have been going to therapy intermittently and that is what I intend to spend the money on.
	Though I've also been spending money on vices in the last three years.
	That's something that I would like to change and have been changing and would like to discuss on the show.
	Okay, so you say you have been spending money on vices?
	Just remind me what they are.
	Originally, I think the biggest vice is I was spending money on an escort.
	The last money on escorts.
	Sorry, I can't talk.
	Your audio keeps coming, cutting in and out, so we can't do the show at the moment.
	Is it more consistent if I'm like this?
	Well, I don't know.
	You'll have to just keep talking and we'll have to cross our fingers.
	Okay, yeah, please let me know.
	Sorry about that.
	Okay, so I've been spending money on escorts for the duration of my adulthood on and off.
	I've had somewhat of a dependency or an addictive relationship to it in the last 12 years or so.
	And what's the frequency over the last couple of years?
	Over the last couple of years, it's about half a dozen times over the last couple of years.
	Okay.
	So, I mean, not rampant, not great, but certainly not rampant, right?
	Okay.
	Yeah, not particularly rampant, but still not great.
	Okay.
	And so, in the last couple of years since we talked, how have things been going?
	There was some positives when I moved out.
	I moved out straight after around our call.
	I was living at home and I would say I had a good quality of life.
	I was traveling and looking for places to move to simultaneously.
	I was working remotely and my life...
	For intents and purposes, I was quite happy with my life and I was in minimal contact with my family.
	I moved back briefly about two years ago to collect my stuff and to organise moving my house, moving to the house that I wanted to move to.
	And it basically fell through and I ended up entangled in quite a lot of domestic kind of arguments with my family of origin.
	And it all just blew up very dramatically and the police were called.
	And yeah, that was about two years ago, so it was about a year of hell.
	And...
	Sorry, from one visit to pick up your things?
	Can you help me understand that a bit better?
	It was about a month.
	So I'm responsible for being kind of present.
	It wasn't a visit.
	It was more like a planned month's stay where I would kind of go between jobs and move my things periodically from one location to another in the UK. So it wasn't a visit.
	I'm sure I understand this.
	Your family's a mess.
	You didn't talk to them or you said minimal contact for a while.
	And what was it?
	Sorry, help me understand if the family's such a mess.
	Why move in for a month?
	I'm sure there's some practical reason that I'm missing.
	The practical reason was that I was in between jobs, so it was my responsibility.
	I didn't secure a second job after the first job that I was in.
	So how much would it have cost you to be somebody's roommate for a month or stay at a friend's place and chip in for groceries?
	I'm not sure.
	How much money were you trying to save here to move in?
	With your messed up family again?
	Yeah, I think I was very naive.
	I was just very naive, I suppose.
	I didn't intend, I didn't expect for some reason.
	Now, in hindsight, I can see that it was very, very naive.
	But at the time, I thought that...
	I thought that it was...
	I didn't expect any problems, basically, because I was expecting...
	Okay, so let's...
	Okay, brother, brother.
	Okay, so you've got to start telling me the truth, because you weren't naive.
	We talked before about how messed up your family was.
	Yeah.
	And you had been minimal contact for some time because of how messed up your family was.
	So this magic word, naive, doesn't change...
	It's an insult to both of us.
	What are you doing?
	Yeah, that's fair.
	I appreciate it.
	No, your voice is cut out again.
	Hang on, your audio is cut out again.
	Sorry, can you hear me now?
	No, I can't hear you.
	Hello?
	Can you hear me?
	You've got to figure out this audio thing because it's just going to be really annoying.
	Is there a loose connection?
	What do you think might be happening?
	I think it could be hardware related.
	I'm using headphones and the headphones maybe move about, but I can hold it in place.
	If you could do your best to just not move around too much, it's just that if we're trying to deal with content and also dealing with technical issues, it gets really tough.
	Okay, so you were minimal contact.
	Just give me the brief overview of the issues that were going on with your family in the past, in your childhood.
	My parents had heroin addiction when I was in childhood.
	They both were heroin addicts for different durations of time.
	There was a lot of shouting and neglect.
	The money was quite tight at various points.
	We were in not poverty, but we were quite low on money at various points.
	I think there was also some...
	To describe it bluntly, the kind of sexual abuse that was involved in different periods of time, but that's probably a good overview of everything.
	And for that, of course, you have my eternal sympathy, and that's absolutely appalling.
	Were you sexually abused, just remind me, sorry, by either one of your parents, or was it someone else?
	No, it was someone else, and it was sort of a murky scenario where...
	I think my parents are culpable, basically, without going into detail.
	Yeah, my parents are culpable.
	That's all I'll say.
	Okay, so we talked about all of this a couple of years ago.
	You went minimal contact, and then you're saying this word, naive.
	And so tell me what you mean by...
	Naive is like, I'm young, I'm innocent, I don't have any idea, I didn't know that there were dysfunction, I didn't know that there were problems, but you knew all of that, so help me understand what you mean by naive.
	By naive, I suppose I mean I'd had a year of therapy, I'd spent money on therapy that year.
	I'd been living, it sounds...
	I was living in hostels, but I was doing that because I was looking for accommodation, so it wasn't very...
	It was more sort of...
	There's a good experience, is what I'm trying to say.
	And the good experiences I'd had living in hostels and getting therapy and travelling, they sort of...
	For some reason, the sudden improvement in life and quality of life, It convinced me that it was going to be a breeze, moving home for only a month, and I would get work again, and I would be able to organize moving.
	Sorry, because you got better, you thought that things would be better with your parents.
	I thought that a month I could stand.
	But if you already knew how to live in hostels, and hostels can be quite cheap, why wouldn't you just move back in a hostel?
	I mean, a couple of hundred quid, maybe 500 quid for the month?
	I was out of work, and I'd spent most of my money on therapy and living expenses at that point.
	Okay, but you still had the money that I'd sent you, right?
	Well, I'd spent it on therapy, but I can explain kind of what I mean by...
	So I spent it all on therapy, most of it.
	I had about £200 left.
	Oh, okay.
	So you didn't have enough for a month somewhere else?
	No, I didn't have enough.
	And why?
	So because you'd spent your money on therapy?
	Now, you don't have to tell anything to me about your private therapy sessions, but if you don't mind, just in general, when you said to your therapist, I'm going to move back in with my parents, what was the feedback?
	The feedback was, if I remember rightly, I probably would have only mentioned it once on the last session I'd had.
	And the feedback would have been very moot, no discouragement and no encouragement is how I describe it.
	And so you would just mention, I'm moving back in with my parents, you mentioned that at the end of the last therapy session?
	Yes, I would have mentioned it at the end of the last therapy session.
	And why do you think you would wait that long?
	I suppose, at the time, I didn't see it as...
	I don't know why, but I didn't see it as significant.
	I really don't know why, in hindsight, I didn't see it as significant of a factor as I did previously, but I didn't see it as a significant factor, basically.
	Yeah, I don't know what, because it was two years ago, I don't know exactly what was going through my thought process.
	Well, the word exactly is a red herring.
	Nobody knows exactly what was going on in their thought processes at any time, because it's all very complex.
	Okay, so you move back in with your parents, and what happens?
	So I move in, and...
	We get into domestic, we get into arguments.
	I use the word domestic disturbances because the police was called and the police were called on my mum's behalf.
	And I sort of suspected this would happen within a few weeks of being there because the arguments were being escalated by her and she was basically shouting and kind of gestating.
	I can't remember raising my voice once, maybe once or twice.
	And the police were called, basically, and I was taken to a jail cell night after night for breach of the peace.
	So breach of the peace is just, what, being loud and difficult?
	I mean, it wasn't anything like assault or anything, right?
	No, it wasn't assault.
	No, no, it wasn't assault.
	It was breach of the peace.
	So breach of the peace is being loud and difficult, essentially, yeah.
	Okay, so you were taken to jail.
	Were you charged?
	Did you have to go to trial, or what happened?
	No, I wasn't charged with anything, but this was a regular occurrence where I would say to the police that my mother was going to be calling them erroneously to waste their time.
	And they didn't do anything about it.
	They would just come, they would arrest me, and then they would bring me home the next day.
	And it actually escalated to the point that I was taken to a...
	What's it called?
	To a mental asylum where I had to get lawyers to take me out.
	I was in an asylum for about three days, four days maybe, maybe five, and I had to get lawyers to prove that this was erroneous, and yeah, they took me out.
	Wow, sorry to hear about that.
	Yeah, it was awful.
	Did it cross your mind to maybe give me a shout?
	It didn't, but I was really disorientated by the whole process and the whole experience.
	And I found it very...
	All I can say, the short answer is it didn't occur to me for some reason, but in hindsight, it would have been a good idea.
	And how long after you moved back in with your parents did these fights escalate and cops were called and so on?
	Just under a year, maybe six months, something like this.
	Wait, sorry, what?
	I thought you were there for a month.
	This went on for...
	I was planning on being there for a month, but the process was so chaotic that I didn't...
	I've worked for most of my adult life, but I didn't feel like I could work at the time in a way that was kind of stable.
	I didn't feel like I could have a stable kind of lifestyle or any stability.
	So at least I don't know if it's an excuse that you would accept, but I found the whole process to be very destabilizing, if that makes sense.
	No, no, I understand that.
	And I sympathize with that enormously, but that's not quite what I asked.
	What I wanted to know was, after you moved back in home...
	With this belief that you could just be there for a month while you switch jobs, how long into that month did problems start manifesting?
	Oh, very quickly.
	Very quickly.
	Less than a month.
	They manifested approximately a week, I would say.
	Right.
	And I guess you didn't have anyone you could stay with or any place you could go.
	Is that right?
	I felt as if there weren't other places that I could go to at the time.
	Sorry, I didn't ask what you felt.
	At the time, I felt like.
	No, in hindsight, there were.
	If you could go back in time to you move back in with your parents and the troubles and the police and the jail all starts in about a week, if you could go back in time and give yourself advice, what would you say?
	My advice would be...
	To go stay somewhere else, to contact other family, that would be my advice.
	Or maybe associates, friends, people I'd known.
	That would be my advice, definitely.
	Okay, so tell me a little bit about the 6-12 months?
	6-12 months involved regular calls to the police and regular...
	One night incarceration.
	I would say regular.
	It happened about half a dozen times, maybe a dozen times, but it had a significant effect on me.
	It was only a night each time, but it was sparked by fairly random arguments.
	That went on for about 6 to 12 months until I used lawyers to get myself out of the hospital.
	And then after then, my mother said that the condition for me to stay in the home was to take antidepressants or antipsychotic drugs that they prescribed.
	And for the last...
	Well, yeah, for the last while, since the first 6 to 12 months, for the last, I don't know, a couple of years, I've been living at home and taking antidepressants or antipsychotic drugs, just kind of a similar drug, under her behest as a condition of staying at home.
	So, yeah, the first 6 to 12 months were the...
	Was the time period where the police were called and then after that the police haven't been called so it was something that stopped two years ago for some reason and I presume it's because I'm taking the drugs that she wants me to be taking and that's we haven't had any arguments.
	I've been fairly walking on eggshells to try and avoid that so yeah I mean I can go on with describing what the state of my life is currently, but that's a description of the past three years I could give.
	Okay, so you went back home for a month within a week, massive problem started, and you've been there for a couple of years?
	Yes, that is the accurate statement.
	I'm very sorry.
	My big, big hug, brother.
	Big, big heart going out to you.
	I'm really sorry.
	Now, what would your mother say to the police when she called them?
	How did she describe your behavior?
	She would describe my behavior as very loud and threatening.
	Now, does threatening mean she felt threatened, or would she say, he said X, Y, and Z, and that was threatening?
	I think she would say both, I think.
	No, she would say the behavior was threatening, I would say.
	It was more the gist of it, was that my behavior was threatening.
	I think that was more it.
	And what behaviour would she cite as evidence for how you were threatening?
	Saying that I was raising my voice.
	That's basically it.
	Raising my voice was the primary behaviour.
	So really, I'm not an expert, of course, in UK law, though it seems to be going a little haywire these days, but you get thrown in jail overnight because you raise your voice.
	I didn't even raise my voice either.
	It was just her word against mine, often.
	It was often her word against mine, so that was the crux of it.
	She would call the police, she would make allegations, and it would be her word against mine, because she called first, the police said, and it was her house.
	It would be a breach of the peace, and I would be taken away, basically.
	Okay, alright.
	To me, that's kind of wild, but I... It is wild.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Okay.
	All right.
	So how do things stand?
	And you didn't mention your dad much in any of this?
	My father lives, they separated when I was very young.
	And he lives in another city with his family, with his mother.
	He lives with his mother.
	For some reason, it didn't occur to me at various points to go stay with him.
	He actually, no, sorry, I forgot.
	He actually, at the same time, he was taken to an asylum legitimately for a period of two years in the last two to three years.
	So he happened to be away while all this was going on, which seemed pretty, to be honest with you, it seemed pretty...
	It may be inconspicuous is the right word, or it seemed unbelievable to me because it was such a coincidence that I was being arrested and all this stuff was going on.
	I don't really trust either of them, I suppose, more so after this process.
	So I don't know why he was in hospital, but he was in hospital for the last two years.
	Right.
	Okay.
	We don't have to get into details about him.
	Okay, and so you last worked a couple of years ago, is that right?
	That's correct, yeah.
	Okay, and how can I best help you now?
	I would love to discuss some of the reasons why I think I've been...
	I'm sorry, your audio is cutting out again?
	Can you repeat that?
	Sorry.
	Yeah, I would like to discuss some of the things that I think are holding me back and the reasons why I'm not moving as quickly as I could be in terms of moving house and being productive and cutting out vices and whatnot.
	Okay, go for it.
	Yeah, so after therapy, I've had some more therapy in the last year or so.
	I believe that...
	One of the reasons why I've stayed for so long into my adulthood in the family home intermittently at times is because I think I want to try to, in some capacity, be supportive to my sister.
	So that's kind of what I concluded after therapy.
	And I don't think my overall conclusion is I don't think I do a good...
	I don't think I'm particularly supportive, but I would like to be.
	And I think that that potentially is a subconscious motivation for not moving out, even though it doesn't really make sense.
	Sorry, but maybe I'm missing something, but you don't have any money to move out, do you?
	I have some money and I have some money because a condition of living here that my mother, this was the cause of the original arguments two years ago is when I moved in.
	My mother insisted that I get on benefits and I said that I don't want to do that because I want to get a job and there was no need to be on benefits and she insisted that I did that and that was the first instance for the call.
	So for the last year, it's approximately one year, I've been on a type of benefit that provides me with a kind of sustenance amount of money.
	So I have a small amount of money that I've got from benefits but not much savings.
	Okay, and do you know why your mother wanted you?
	Did she just want money coming into the household?
	I think she wanted money coming into the household.
	I was quite annoyed at the suggestion, but I think she wanted money coming into the household, yeah.
	Okay, got it, got it.
	All right, so you've got some money enough to move out and get a job, is that right?
	Yeah, approximately, yes, I do, yeah.
	Okay, and?
	When did you first have the money that you felt you needed to move out?
	I first had the money that I felt I needed.
	I would say today and in the last couple of days I've reached a point where I'm not far off that goal.
	But in the past I would say I've had the opportunity to Probably save more.
	And if I had done, then I would have been in a position to move out maybe a year ago or half a year ago.
	Half a year ago, I think is fair.
	And I know you mentioned the escorts.
	Is there anything else that you've spent money on that has depleted your savings?
	Food, fast food.
	I've always been in good shape, different kinds of good shape.
	For most of my life.
	But in the last two to three years, I've found with the whole instance, the experiences with the police and different things going on, I ended up eating basically a lot and exercising minimally.
	And I've put on quite a lot of weight.
	So I spent just money on takeaways and stupid stuff, basically nothing that was no drugs, no other vices other than that.
	How much weight have you gained?
	I've gained a lot of weight.
	I usually am around probably 90 or 80 kg, between 80 and 90 kg, and now I'm 125 kg.
	So I've gained a lot of weight in a short amount of time, in about a year or two years.
	About 50 or 60 pounds?
	Is that right?
	Yeah, something like that.
	It's about double the kg, so it's about 80 pounds, I think.
	Oh, you've gained about 80 pounds.
	Yeah.
	Okay, got it.
	And was that a sort of slow creeping process or how did that sort of happen overall?
	Yeah, it was a slow creeping process.
	I was stressed and I would stress eat and I would say to myself that I would burn it off with exercise and lo and behold, I never did.
	I never exercised enough.
	Continue to kind of, I've broken out of it recently in the last two months.
	I've, maybe three months, I've been listening to podcasts regularly and I've been on a diet and started doing other things towards moving out and work, which is great.
	But it was a gradual process, I would say, over two years.
	Right, okay.
	I mean, but you had to buy whole new clothes and all, right?
	Sort of.
	Yeah, I mean, not really.
	I mean, I've got the same clothes, but they're just quite tight now.
	They used to be baggy.
	I bet.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	All right.
	Okay, so I appreciate that update.
	And I don't know, I've read, though I'm certainly no expert on this, this is no kind of medical advice, but I've read that sometimes the psych meds can have a side effect of weight gain.
	Yeah, I've read that and I've discussed that with doctors there, but they said that that shouldn't be a side effect.
	Okay, got it.
	All right, so let's get to what you think is blocking your motivation.
	I think that one block of motivation has been at times feeling like I'm leaving my sister behind.
	In some capacity.
	Yeah, go on.
	So she's a couple years younger than me, and she still lives at home, and I think that when I look at my...
	When I think about important things in my life, like I want my own family and the big life goals, it occurs to me, it becomes very apparent to me, a kind of sadness that I feel over the prospect of not being able to support my sister, not having a kind of relationship where I can...
	Well, affect, have a good effect in any kind of way.
	Or, you know, so that's kind of where it is.
	That's what I feel.
	And your sister's an adult, is that right?
	That's correct, yeah.
	Okay.
	And she's in her early-mid-twenties?
	You don't have to give me her exact age, but...
	Yeah, that's correct, yeah.
	Okay.
	And where does she stand with regards to how your mother is treating you?
	I think fairly trivializes it.
	I think she trivializes it quite a bit.
	So she sides with your mother to some degree?
	To some degree, she must do, to some degree, yeah.
	Well, no, I mean, I don't want to theorize.
	I mean, you're in the same house for a couple of years.
	She must have had some opinions about what's been happening to you.
	I think the impression that I have is that she's indifferent, relatively indifferent.
	Okay, so you want to save someone who's indifferent to your suffering.
	Yes.
	Can you step me through that reasoning?
	I think that when I look back into my...
	We've already discussed this three years ago, but...
	No, no, no, but I'm talking about your current reasoning, because she's an adult now, right?
	And so she's got choices and responsibilities and free will.
	Yeah, you're right.
	It's something that I suspected was subconscious, but maybe my subconscious isn't doing that.
	It wasn't something that I rationally...
	It was something that I assumed that my subconscious was feeling, and I assumed that that was one reason why I was sabotaging myself from moving up.
	I don't know how to reason or rationalize it.
	That doesn't explain anything to me.
	I assumed it was something my subconscious was feeling.
	It doesn't explain much to me, if anything.
	In fact, I think I'm more confused now than when I asked the question.
	So that's why I said step me through your reasoning.
	Okay.
	After having therapy, I concluded that I had self-destructive habits that were stopping me from moving out.
	And I came to the conclusion that maybe my subconscious was sabotaging me because it wanted me to be some sort of positive influence and support network for my sibling.
	So your subconscious was sabotaging you because it wanted to be a support system?
	Somehow, yeah.
	Be close, be physically in the same premises.
	Oh, sorry, I understand.
	So your subconscious was sabotaging you so that you wouldn't get free and leave your sister behind, so you stay.
	Yes.
	In the environment with your sister?
	Yes, that's correct, yeah.
	And do you feel that, or I suppose over the last couple of years, what have you done to help and enlighten your sister?
	I think it's irrational, because I don't think that, empirically speaking, I have been particularly...
	I've been supportive in the last two years.
	I don't think that I've already had my own issues.
	I don't think that I've been particularly supportive.
	Okay, so if you haven't been, I don't know what particularly supportive.
	There are all of these hedge words that I don't know really what that means.
	So what does it mean?
	You've been somewhat supportive, but not particularly?
	I don't know what that translates to into actual things.
	Yeah, I would say somewhat supportive.
	But not particularly available.
	Available is one way or one thing that I've been successfully done is I've been available.
	But other than being available, I haven't really done anything.
	Passive, right?
	Yes, it is passive.
	Okay, so what have you done over the past couple of years to help your sister reach some sort of enlightenment or epiphany?
	Nothing.
	Okay, so then how do you sustain the fantasy that you're there to help your sister if you're not actually helping your sister?
	I have recently debunked that fantasy for myself.
	Oh, okay.
	Got it.
	But it kept you going for a couple of years?
	Yes, I think that it did.
	Yeah, I believe so.
	Okay, so what you're bringing up that you want to stay to help your sister is something that you've already dealt with that is not particularly relevant to the conversation.
	Do I have that right?
	Because you debunked it some time ago?
	I think, I suppose, you know, I suppose you're right that I've debunked...
	No, no, no.
	It's not that I'm right.
	Hang on.
	I said, why do you think you're staying?
	You said to help my sister.
	And I said, how are you helping your sister?
	You said, well, I'm not.
	But I've debunked that.
	I've known that for months, so I know that that's not the main...
	I'm not saying all the feelings immediately go away, but as far as philosophy goes, if you've already debunked something, then there's not much more that philosophy can do.
	You're right.
	Yeah, you're right.
	It's something...
	I'm sorry for bringing that up.
	No, listen, you have nothing to apologize to me for.
	I have huge sympathy for your situation, so I'm just trying to make sure that we focus on the most relevant and important things.
	So if it's not staying to help your sister, which you've debunked some time ago, what else do you think it might be?
	Okay.
	I think it might be...
	I think that I suppose I don't know why I have...
	I understand ACE scores, and I understand the influence of things like this, but I don't know why I haven't saved more, and I don't know why I haven't worked for full periods of time.
	I've got my career going in the industry that I want to be going in.
	I don't know why that hasn't happened.
	I don't know why I'm in my late 20s and that I'm in the situation that I'm in.
	I regularly am confused as to why I've made the choices that I've made and have the vices that I've had.
	Even though some things are on a positive upswing in the last few months, I still...
	Kind of, I find I'm exasperated with my choices.
	Okay, so let's list the choices.
	Is it like moving back in, staying home, not looking for alternative lodging, not saving money, eating too much, gaining weight, not exercising?
	You mean that kind of stuff?
	That kind of stuff, yeah.
	Not working in industries that would be more profitable, not saving, yeah.
	That kind of stuff, yeah.
	I mean...
	I don't mean to say this is obvious, but maybe from the outside it's more obvious.
	But you recreated the conditions of your horrible childhood, and then you're confused why you're not acting like an independent, strong adult.
	Why did I recreate the conditions?
	No, no, no.
	I didn't say why.
	I just said that that's the causality.
	When you were a kid, you were under the control of your mother, who's not super functional, to put it mildly.
	Sorry, there's a lot of background noise here.
	I don't know what's going on.
	Like thumps and clicks and bumps and burps.
	Like, please, just let me concentrate.
	I'm really trying to help you here.
	Sorry about that.
	I'll sit still.
	All right.
	Thank you.
	I mean, you can breathe.
	I mean, just not moving and fidgeting and thumping and it's kind of distracting when I'm trying to really focus on how to best help you.
	Okay.
	So, yeah, so you recreated situations wherein you experienced the maximum trauma of your life.
	I mean, I'm not saying you just snapped your fingers and recreated it for no reason, but you put yourself back under the control of your mother.
	And so, when you recreate the situations of a traumatized childhood, it's pretty hard to act as an independent adult, right?
	Yes.
	Yeah, I have a lot of anxiety about...
	I think, one, sorry to...
	This is still on the same subject, but I... Just remember that I think one general demotivator is I have a lot of regular kind of anxiety about simple things at the moment like working and exercise and being able to kind of live a functional life.
	Well, yeah, I get that.
	And the question is why, right?
	Okay, would you describe...
	Sorry, there's more background noise and thumping.
	Did you just move something else?
	Please, I'm begging you.
	Sorry.
	Sorry, sorry.
	Do you need to write it down to just not fidget?
	No, sorry.
	I have a tendency to fidget, but I'll try and stay still.
	I will stay still.
	Thank you.
	Sorry, I'm not sure if I can...
	That was just a big roar and thump in my ear.
	Is it silent now?
	Okay, thank you.
	So, would you say that your mother is anxious?
	Probably.
	Yeah, probably.
	Well, I can't really go with probably because, I mean, you've known her for almost three decades, right?
	So if she doesn't have any particular tendency towards anxiety or not more than normal, you know, I guess we all have some anxiety to some degree.
	So if it's not outside of the normal distribution or, you know, not something that you've noticed, I don't want to go with probably.
	I want to sort of try and be precise.
	If I was going to be precise, I would say she has an unnervingly...
	Calm attitude to certain things, but she clearly must have anxiety that motivates her disorganization and other areas of her life.
	Well, not all disorganization is motivated by anxiety.
	Some of it can just be laziness and procrastination, right?
	That's true.
	So I would go with she isn't an anxious person then.
	Okay, good.
	I appreciate that.
	Okay, and so...
	Does she, I think she is of the general opinion, and I don't want to put words in her mouth, so correct me if I've gone astray, but I think she's of the general opinion that you're dangerous and flawed, right?
	This was her general opinion, yes, and I believe it still is, yeah.
	Okay.
	And if she were to describe, and I'm sorry to do this, but I just sort of understand what your inner mother is saying.
	If she were to describe you and your flaws to someone, what would she say?
	I don't know what she...
	I think she's very manipulative, and I believe that she says things that she doesn't even believe are true.
	You're not answering the question.
	I'm not saying things that are true.
	I'm saying what she would say, not things that are true.
	What would she say?
	How would she describe you?
	If someone were to say, why is your son who's pushing 30 still living at home, what would she say?
	What would she say are the issues that you have, or the flaws or problems that you have?
	Not whether true, but what she would say.
	You know, I honestly feel as if I have no idea.
	I think I have no idea.
	That's my honest response.
	Okay, well, one of the clues is what she says to the police.
	And I'm sure you were there for some of that, so...
	What kind of things did she say to the police?
	He's what?
	Aggressive.
	Aggressive would be one word.
	Okay, what are some others?
	destructive and selfish.
	All right, keep going.
	Thank you.
	Maybe a bunny, maybe.
	That would be a phrase, maybe.
	Abusive, maybe, would be a word that she would have used.
	And I wouldn't describe myself like this, but this would probably be what...
	This would be what she said.
	This would be what she said.
	Yeah, I mean, family attitudes sink deep into us.
	They have to, right?
	Because we have to survive.
	We have to survive our family's definitions of us as a whole.
	So, yeah, family definitions, and particularly mother-to-son definitions, go deep into our psyche.
	So I want to know what's in there that your mother has said.
	Now, if someone were to say, your mother describes all these flaws, you know, selfish, bullying, aggressive, and stuff like that.
	And if someone were to say, why is your son like this?
	What do you think your mother might say?
	My guess would be she would blame my father more than...
	Give me the speech that she would say.
	Something like, well, his father is quite loud and in this way, he does this and this and this.
	And he's probably learned to behave like this from his father.
	Okay, got it, got it.
	So, she would say that you learned it from your father, his father learned it from his father, and there's really no one to blame, is that right?
	Probably, yeah.
	She would probably describe it as, I guess that it would be, he learned it from his father.
	That's what she would say about me, yes.
	Okay, and then if someone were to say to her, but you chose his father, so by choosing his father, you also chose the nature of your son.
	What would she say?
	I think she'd be shocked.
	I think if someone said that, I think that level of accountability, I don't think she comes into contact with much.
	So I think she would be quite shocked.
	And she would say she didn't know that he was like this initially.
	Well, no, but let's do the role play, right?
	So if you can be your mom.
	So you didn't know like this was initially.
	Well, I mean, I don't know what that means, but you chose to have kids with him, right?
	So you must have had some idea of the nature of the man.
	When you chose to have kids with him?
	I fell pregnant very quickly with him and it was unplanned.
	Well, then you chose to have unprotected sex with a man you didn't really know.
	So you're still choosing it, right?
	She would probably make the discussion political at that point.
	She would say something like, you sound like, you know, I don't know.
	Some old-fashioned conservative person.
	Some Tory, right.
	Tory, exactly, a Tory.
	Right, and then I would say, was it a Tory who forced you to have unprotected sex?
	And she would make it political.
	She's quite intelligent, so she would make it a political...
	Okay, so what would she say?
	She would say something like, I don't think that the motivations or the behaviors of people can be explained by...
	Explained by individual choices and socio-economic things have an effect.
	So you're saying that it's really hard to pinpoint the motivations of people?
	Um, hard to pinpoint.
	Yes, that's what she would say.
	Okay, so then I'm a little confused, mother.
	I'm a little confused because...
	You just talked about your son as selfish and irresponsible and aggressive and so on, which is definitely making judgments about his motivations.
	And then when asked why he was this way, you said he learned it from his father, which is also making a judgment about motivation.
	So I'm a little confused as to why you get to make all of these judgments about motivations, but no one can judge you for any of your motivations.
	If you could help me understand, that's a little confusing.
	Like, you can judge everyone's motivations, but the moment your motivations are brought into focus, It's wrong to judge anyone's motivations.
	Can you help me understand that?
	Feminism.
	Something about feminism would be brought up.
	Maybe something along the lines of a man has to control his temper more.
	A man has to be more responsible.
	Something like that.
	Oh, so I'm sorry.
	So are you saying that the sex that you had with the dad was not consensual, like you were forced?
	No, no, not that.
	Okay, so hang on.
	So then male aggression doesn't really matter.
	And I also thought that feminism was about female equality.
	And all you've done is hold men responsible, but you refuse to hold yourself responsible.
	I mean, isn't part of feminism saying that women are...
	Moral agents who are responsible for their choices?
	I mean, it doesn't seem very feminist to say that all men get are responsibilities and all women get are excuses because that would be to diminish female agency and choice, right?
	So that doesn't seem very feminist to me to say that men are entirely responsible for everything that women do.
	Yeah, she would say something like...
	She'd probably just insult you and just say something like, you sound like a Tory, you sound like someone who's a sexist.
	Well, but that's...
	So, one of the clichés is that women have a tough time...
	I don't believe in this cliché, but it is kind of a cliché.
	That if a woman is proven wrong, she won't admit false, she'll just resort to verbal attacks.
	And look, I mean, you don't want to be that cliché.
	I mean, real misogynists would say that.
	that.
	Women can't reason.
	They just get mad and attack you personally and all of that, right?
	And so if you could continue to the debate, that would be to, you know, I want to respect you as a thinker and as a woman.
	And so just resorting to personal attacks is like a real cliche that misogynists have, and we don't want to do that, right?
	Yeah, you're right.
	I think that...
	Hang on, hang on.
	So are you saying that you were wrong to call me a sexist and all of that?
	No.
	Sorry, you weren't wrong to call me that?
	No, she would double down.
	Okay, so let's go.
	So you still believe that when I've made an argument against you, that that means I'm sexist.
	Is that right?
	So when I'm treating you respectfully as someone who can think and reason...
	And make arguments.
	When I do that, I hate women.
	Yes.
	Something like that.
	Okay, so how is it when I'm debating with you and treating you as a rational, competent adult that this is somehow hatred of women?
	Can you explain that to me?
	Because you mansplain, because you have a tendency to...
	No, hang on, hang on.
	Let's be fair, though.
	I just asked questions.
	How is it that you get to judge everyone else's motivations?
	But no one gets to judge your motivations.
	That's really asking a question.
	I'm not explaining anything.
	I'm asking questions.
	So, let's try that again.
	again i'm happy to hear a rebuttal but it should be to something i said um you know i don't know what she would say at this point um I don't know.
	Well, she would probably try to exit the car.
	I have no interest in talking about this.
	You're rude.
	Like she would just find a way to storm out, right?
	One way or another.
	Yeah, I would think so.
	Yeah, I think she would just either that or she would talk about a philosophy on life and say something like people make choices that are, you know, the best they can do and some sort of philosophical trope.
	Okay, so she would say everyone does the best they can with the circumstances that they have, right?
	Something like that, yes.
	Okay, so then I would say, well, then why would you call your son selfish and aggressive and a bully?
	Because those are moral judgments.
	Surely your son is also doing the best he can with the knowledge he has.
	So why is it that you get to judge other people negatively, but whenever you're judged, you say, well, everyone does the best they could, but the knowledge they have.
	So where's this sympathy for your son?
	You didn't say, well, my son, yeah, he makes some decisions that aren't great, but he's absolutely doing the best he can.
	With the knowledge he has, but instead you say he's a bully and aggressive and selfish and these are all pretty harsh moral judgments, so that's why I'm a little confused.
	Because it's my house, she would say, because it's my home.
	I'm sorry, that's not...
	How does our geographical location change the properties of reason and logic?
	In my home, I can say, do what I want.
	Sorry, in your home you can say and do what you want.
	Correct.
	But we're making a rational argument.
	We're having a debate, right?
	About, you know, important stuff, right?
	Responsibilities and morals and self-ownership and so on.
	So, are you saying that you don't have to be at all rational?
	You can just state whatever you want.
	So, if you were in my house and I said something that you found offensive or wrong, Then you would not have an issue because it was just my house, right?
	Yes.
	Yeah, I obviously don't believe that for a second.
	I don't believe that for a second.
	Okay, so what you're saying is that you think your son is a bully, but you can just do whatever you want, and nobody can criticize you for it.
	You can be nasty, call your son names, and so on, because it's your house, and in your house, you can do...
	Whatever you want, say, whatever mean things you want, because you're standing on your property.
	Is that right?
	That's correct.
	Okay.
	So then, let's not pretend that your son is the bully.
	So now we know where your son got his bullying from, if your son is a bully, and you know now where your son is not his father, it's you.
	Because you're aggressive and you're a bully, saying, I can be perfectly mean to other people, and then I wave this magic wand called property rights, and somehow that becomes justified.
	So, yeah, you're the bully, and that's where your son would get these aggressive tendencies from.
	Because you've modeled this behavior for him, that I'm right no matter what.
	My house, my rules.
	That's very aggressive, and it's bullying.
	And yet you pretended to have some philosophical reasons behind what you're saying, but you're just wielding a deed and being a bully.
	So, I mean, we don't have to continue the conversation, but let's not pretend we don't know where your son's supposed aggression comes from.
	You're the bully.
	She would say something like, if you believe that, if you're me in this conversation, she would say something like, well, if you think that, then, you know, leave.
	No, no, hang on, hang on, dear lady.
	It's not what I think or believe.
	It's what you literally just said, right?
	If I say my name is Bob, and then you say, hi, Bob, and I say, well, if you want to believe that my name is Bob, I suppose that's up to you.
	It's like, no, you just told me.
	I just told you my name is Bob.
	So you just said...
	That in your house, you can say and do whatever the hell you want, no matter how aggressive or mean.
	So I'm not believing something.
	I'm simply accepting the literal facts that you told me about 30 seconds ago.
	And she'd just end the conversation there and say something like, well, if that's what you're saying, then there's nothing else to add.
	Right.
	So she can't admit fault and she...
	Pretends to have rational arguments when they're disproven.
	She turns to aggression.
	When it's pointed out that this might be the source of any aggression she's complaining about in you, she ends the conversation.
	That's correct.
	Okay.
	And that's who you move back in with?
	That's correct.
	Okay.
	All right.
	So, why do you think you're having...
	Such trouble moving out.
	Your theory about the sister was, I think you said you've disproved it some time ago.
	My theory is that you put yourself back in a situation of helpless and dependent childhood with somebody who will never let you win.
	Right?
	You know, there's an old movie with Ferris, no, not Ferris Bueller, with Matthew Broderick.
	And it's war games, right?
	And it's about a computer simulation that tries to figure out how to win a nuclear war.
	And it says, funny game, the only way to win is not to play.
	Right?
	And I remember this burning itself in my brain when I watched the movie, for reasons I think that are fairly obvious given my family, and maybe somewhat obvious given your family, you can't win with your mother, right?
	She'll never concede anything.
	She'll just make up nonsense after nonsense, lie after lie, and then if she's finally cornered, she'll either explode with rage, or leave, or both, right?
	Yes, that is an accurate description.
	So you can't play chess with someone who's not playing chess.
	It's an insult to the game to pretend to play chess with someone who says, I have a wand that can turn my pawns into queens and my bishops can go straight and my rooks can go diagonal and it just makes up whatever rules.
	There's no game, right?
	You're not playing anything.
	You're just being humiliated.
	Yeah, that's correct.
	Yeah, I would agree with that.
	Okay.
	So you are back in, I assume, a kind of sick familiarity of helplessness and dependence.
	And do you or have you had sort of interactions with your mother where, I assume not if she keeps calling the cops, but maybe, have you had these sort of interactions with your mother where you're trying to reason with her or trying to fix something or trying to make the situation better?
	Yeah, in the last, since I've been taking medication, it's been steadily improved and she does this sort of, she kind of invites me out to their second property and kind of, you know, just like wants to spend time with me and it's...
	How did your mom, as a sort of ex-heroin addict, how did she acquire all these properties?
	She met a guy who earns enough money to buy these places.
	Oh, no.
	Oh, no.
	The feminist got property through the patriarchy?
	I mean, it feels almost predictable.
	When it's my property, it's like, no, it's a man who bought it for you because he had sex with him.
	I'm sorry, I don't get to laugh, but it's so blindingly predictable.
	Yes.
	I have authority because I had sex with a man who gave me property and that gives me the authority to fight the patriarchy.
	I'm sorry.
	Oh my gosh.
	I don't know how people get out of bed in the morning.
	It just amazes to me the amount of logical opposites that can be simultaneously held in people's heads.
	It's really just amazing.
	Yeah, I agree.
	Feminist sleeps with man for land.
	Claims land gives her authority to fight patriarchy.
	Oh, no.
	Oh, my gosh.
	All right.
	All right.
	Okay.
	So, things are better with your mom?
	Yeah, they're a lot better.
	There are hardly any disagreements.
	And that's one of the things that...
	I mean, with the caveat that you are drugged.
	Yes, I am drugged.
	Yeah, the caveat, I am drugged.
	Yeah.
	All right.
	And so, help me understand this.
	And this is going to sound like a troll question.
	I don't mean it that way at all.
	I'm genuinely curious.
	So, what's wrong with the life you have?
	I mean, you're pretty comfortable.
	You're taken care of.
	I'm sure you can exercise and lose weight.
	You're getting along with your mom.
	Your bills are paid.
	What's wrong with this life?
	One thing that's wrong is that I'm planning on...
	What's wrong with my life is I listen to your show regularly and I come to the conclusion that for political reasons and for personal reasons and for significant personal reasons.
	I'm going to have to cut contact at some point or at least bring up conversations that are going to be controversial or significant.
	Sorry, you're going to try and debate with your mom some more?
	Hopefully not debate, but I would say not debate.
	Have conversations where you're vulnerable, expose need and express preferences, is that right?
	Yes.
	Okay, that's fine.
	We can look at that.
	So, in your quarter century of trying to negotiate with your mother, how many times have you been successful?
	I think 100% of the time, I find the interaction, regardless of the outcome, I find the interaction to be dissatisfying in terms of Okay, so, bro, I keep asking you about facts and you keep talking to me about feelings.
	I mean, I know you grew up without a dad around too much, but this is kind of a habit.
	I ask you, how many times have you won?
	Now, winning doesn't mean she loses.
	It's just where you get what you want because you're negotiating.
	It could be win-win.
	Maybe it's something that you didn't think of or whatever, right?
	How many times in your quarter century, since about the age of four or five, in your quarter century of negotiating with your mother, how many times have you got what you wanted?
	Probably less than 25% of the time.
	Oh, okay.
	That's a little surprising to me, but I'm certainly happy to hear it.
	So can you give me an example, you know, prior to being drugged, of a significant, I mean, I'm sure you've got, I mean, parents and children negotiate thousands and thousands and thousands of times.
	So you must have a thousand examples of when you negotiated with your mother and got what you wanted.
	So can you give me some examples from, say, your teenage years?
	Where I got what I wanted.
	You're asking where I got what I wanted.
	Sorry, did you not understand the question?
	Should we go over it again?
	Yeah, sorry.
	Did you ask where I got what I wanted?
	Yeah, you negotiated with your mother and you got what you wanted.
	Or you came out with an outcome that was satisfying to you, whatever, right?
	While I was studying, I would have received some sort of aid and some sort of books or support of some kind that would have been present.
	That would have been...
	I'm sorry, I'm not sure what you're talking about.
	So I would have asked for studying materials that would have been bought for me.
	But that's not really a negotiation.
	I mean, they want you to go to school and they have to pay for your books, right?
	Okay.
	I mean, that's like saying it's a negotiation because my parents fed me when I was a kid.
	It's like, well, that's not really a negotiation.
	Something where you and your mom have significant differences of opinion, you have a negotiation and you end up satisfied and pleased with the outcome.
	Oh, yeah, less than 5% and less than 5%.
	Okay, so then you've got to have at least a couple of hundred to get to that 5%.
	So just give me an example of a negotiation.
	Say in your teenage years, or maybe, but not something too recent, where you had a significant disagreement with your mother and you went through a negotiation and you were satisfied with the process and the outcome.
	It must be less than 5% then.
	It must be...
	Just give me one!
	I can't think of one.
	I'm trying to think of one.
	Then what are you submitting out all these numbers for?
	Am I trying to have a real conversation with you just making stuff up?
	How can we have a conversation if you can just make stuff up?
	Sorry, I didn't think accurately about the meaning of the word negotiation.
	It's something that I'm unfamiliar with, I suppose.
	I'm very unfamiliar.
	Okay, so a time where you negotiate with someone.
	And so let's say an example would be your parents want you home by 10, you want to be home by midnight, you compromise on 11pm, and you're satisfied with the outcome.
	It's not like...
	You don't feel ripped off and they didn't listen to you, but you've had some negotiation.
	It's not a negotiation if you get everything you want, and it's not a negotiation if the other person gets everything that she wants.
	It's a negotiation when you find some compromise that you're both satisfied with.
	That would be an example where I would be out at a late time and be allowed to stay later in my teenage years.
	Okay, so how did that negotiation go?
	It would have been...
	It would have been over text, and it would have been something like, very brief, can I stay later?
	Maybe ask again, please.
	And she would say, yes, I can stay later.
	Okay, but you're just asking for permission, and she's making the decision.
	That's not a negotiation.
	Can I get a raise?
	No.
	That's not a negotiation.
	Yeah, it would be just asking him for permission, yeah.
	Okay, so I'm talking about a negotiation.
	Where she recognizes that you have some legitimate needs, she has some legitimate needs, you know, like in a job, right?
	If you're negotiating for salary, you want to make a lot of money, they want to pay you less money, but they also know if they pay you too little money, then they're going to train you when you're going to go someplace else, or if they pay you too little money, you're going to be unmotivated and look for other work, and so on.
	And so they want to pay you enough to keep you happy, but not so much that they go bankrupt.
	And so on, right?
	So that's a negotiation where they have a legitimate need to have a business that works and makes money, and you have a legitimate need to have a reasonable salary that's competitive.
	So you just negotiate, right?
	And they probably end up paying you a little more than they want, and you end up being paid a little less than you want, but you're satisfied with the outcome.
	That description doesn't sound familiar to me.
	I can't think of one time where...
	There may have been one time, but I can't recall any time in my teenage years that that happened.
	So, negotiation is kind of like a language.
	And in my view, if people don't negotiate, they don't speak that language.
	And it doesn't sound like your mother speaks that language.
	So, if you said, 25% of the time, I speak to my mother in Japanese, Sorry, I've got some cristling and crinkling and so on going on.
	Sorry, I'm making...
	I think my mic is very sensitive, but I'll try to stay still.
	Sorry about that.
	Thank you for telling me.
	Sure.
	So, if you say, well, I speak to my mother in Japanese 25% of the time, I'd be like, okay, so tell me a conversation you had in Japanese.
	Well, maybe it was only 5% of the time.
	Right, so somebody who doesn't speak Japanese can never have a conversation in Japanese.
	Does that make sense?
	I can never have a conversation in Japanese.
	The only Japanese I learned was from the band Styx, so that's it.
	Oh no, maybe Queen's Teotoriate, right?
	So I don't speak Japanese, so I can't have a...
	So negotiation is kind of like a language.
	Now, once you learn that language, that's all you want to speak.
	Because in order for a relationship to work...
	Both parties have to be relatively satisfied with what goes on, right?
	In order for a business relationship to work, it has to be win-win.
	And the best relationships are those where both people are winning and not, obviously, at the expense of the other person.
	But that requires that you foundationally have empathy for the needs of the other person and empathy for the needs of yourself.
	So people who are ground down and bullied...
	Only have empathy for the bully's needs, they're not allowed to have empathy for themselves.
	The bully only has empathy for the bully's needs and has no empathy for other people.
	Other people are just objects to be used to satisfy the needs of the bully.
	So, in my view, there's no such thing as 25% of negotiations.
	Because once you get into negotiations and you realize how positive and wonderful and happy and great they are, you don't say, Oh, I'm going to bully 75% of the time, but I'm going to really negotiate well for 25% of the time.
	Because once you know how to negotiate, then that's what you speak.
	That's what you do.
	Because that's what makes people the happiest and makes relationships last the longest and be the best.
	Right?
	I mean, a business relationship can't sustain itself if one person continually feels ripped off.
	And even if it could somehow sustain itself from a contractual standpoint, it won't sustain itself from a productivity standpoint, because if you're resentful at being underpaid, then you won't be very productive.
	You'll just be seething, right?
	So that's why I was a little surprised when you said it's 25% of the time.
	So is it fair to say that you can't remember a time?
	Where your mother took your needs into consideration and tried to find a win-win solution for you both?
	I would say that it was less than 25% of the time, yes.
	Sorry, now I'm confused again.
	I thought you said you couldn't think of a time.
	We went down to 5% and then I thought you said, and I obviously don't want to get this wrong, but I thought you said I can't think of a time and now are we back to 25%?
	No, sorry.
	I'm saying, to track back to the original point I made, I would say that it's less than 25, it's less than 5. I can't think of one time.
	Okay, got it.
	So, zero.
	Yeah, that's what I recollect.
	If people don't speak negotiation, then it never happens.
	I don't occasionally have fluent conversations in Japanese, because I don't speak Japanese.
	Okay.
	Alright, so one of the challenges that you have is that you don't negotiate with slaves, right?
	So, if you were raised and trained to be a slave, which is to serve the narcissistic needs of others, then the problem is that you are going to try and go out into a world which is going to require negotiation, right?
	And you understand that the, I'm sure you do, the escort thing is a way of avoiding negotiation because you just pay the women, right?
	Yep.
	So because you just pay the women, you don't have to negotiate.
	You don't have to provide value other than money, which is really coming from the taxpayer and the government anyway.
	So where in your life does negotiation show up?
	It doesn't show up much at the moment.
	It doesn't show up much at the moment.
	Okay, so much is another one of these ambiguous words that I don't know what it means.
	So where does...
	You negotiating to mutual benefit show up at the moment in your life.
	It doesn't show up at the moment.
	It doesn't show up.
	Okay.
	So then, you are ill-prepared, and I say this without any negativity, and in fact with great sympathy, you are unprepared for a life of negotiation, which is an adult life.
	And I'm not saying you're not an adult, obviously, right?
	And I say this with great sympathy.
	If somebody airdropped me into a remote village in Japan where they only spoke Japanese, I would have a pretty tough time doing anything.
	I couldn't negotiate for anything.
	I couldn't really get a job.
	I couldn't buy groceries.
	I would just be unable, assuming no technology and nobody there speaks English, I would be unprepared.
	So if somebody said, well, you could leave a bad situation, let's say, and then you could go to some remote rural village in China or Japan, I say China, right?
	Where they don't speak any English, I'd be like, no, I'm going to stay here.
	This is bad, but I can survive here.
	I can't survive out there in the backwaters of China because I don't speak Mandarin.
	Right, yeah, I understand what you're saying, yeah.
	So I would say that what is probably quite important is to try and learn how to negotiate.
	Okay.
	Now, there's lots of books on this, and lots of videos.
	I actually happened to read a book.
	I think his name was Herb Cohen.
	You can negotiate anything.
	I read this when I was like 12 or whatever, and I found it very interesting.
	It's a bit amoral, to put it mildly, but it does teach you something about negotiations, about how to try and find win-win situations, right?
	So here's a completely silly example.
	My daughter is running a Dungeons& Dragons campaign.
	And in the Dungeons& Dragons campaign, we as the party were trying to get paid from a shop, and the shop said, we're not going to pay you.
	And I said, well, can you instead give us some goods at cost, like without taking your profit?
	Because we'd done them a big service, right?
	And they didn't have any particular money with which to pay us, but they had goods, right?
	So they then said, yes, we will be happy.
	Like, we wouldn't have been happy if we didn't get paid at all.
	And they wouldn't be happy if they had to give us gold.
	So we negotiated that they would give us goods at cost for a certain period of time or to a certain amount of value.
	And that was win-win, right?
	Because they didn't have the gold and we would have just taken the gold and used it to buy goods anyway.
	So getting us...
	I know this sounds like a ridiculous example, but it's just the one that sort of popped into my mind.
	And so in that situation, we ended up...
	Getting the goods, they ended up paying us for our services, and everybody walked away satisfied with the negotiation.
	Does that make sense?
	That does make sense, yeah.
	I appreciate you sharing the example.
	Yeah, so, I mean, we could have just said, you know, if you don't give us gold, we're going to torture shop because you owe us, or we're going to, you know, whatever, take you to court.
	You know, I mean, in sort of the D&D universe, you could do basically anything, but that would have been really terrible and time-consuming and expensive and kind of a waste.
	Or they could have just said, you know, we don't have any gold and too bad, come back in six months we might have some gold, which we would have been dissatisfied with because then we would have gone off into the wilderness without the supplies we needed.
	So that's sort of an example of a win-win negotiation.
	And that just takes a certain, it takes empathy, it takes testing the waters, it takes a lot of proposals and failure and so on, right?
	In the business world, you need money now, and people want to pay later.
	You have this in the business world all the time that the business wants money now, but you want to pay later.
	What they'll do is they will say, if you buy now, we'll give you a 10% discount for the next 24 hours.
	That way, they get money now, which they need for their payroll, and you get a 10% discount.
	So, you end up both.
	You're happy you get the 10% discount, and they're happy that they get the money now.
	I mean, I remember when I was an entrepreneur in the software field, we would have to meet payroll every two weeks, but sometimes businesses could take two to three months to pay.
	And this is another reason why there are these things that say, oh, if you want this laptop, four easy payments of whatever over a couple of months or...
	They might give it to you on credit or, you know, people want more expensive cars than they can afford to buy.
	So this is where leasing comes in, right?
	That you can lease the car and that way you get the super-duper car that you want and the company gets some money and then they get the car back and can sell it.
	So that's sort of a win.
	I mean, I'm sorry, we could go on about this sort of stuff all day, but you try to find some win-win thing.
	Now, in your family...
	How is "negotiation" achieved?
	I don't even know how to answer that question in this context.
	I understand.
	No, no, not in this context.
	That's why I said, quote, negotiation.
	So negotiation is when two people have a disagreement, but they both have a desire.
	If you have a disagreement, but no desire, then, you know, it doesn't matter because you don't really interact, right?
	So, when you have a disagreement and a desire, so I don't want to buy a Lamborghini, so I don't negotiate with the Lamborghini dealership, right?
	I mean, we don't even interact, right?
	But if I do want to, if I have a desire for a Lamborghini in some, I don't know, other brain, other universe, if I have a desire for a Lamborghini, then I'm going to go to the Lamborghini dealership and we're going to try and negotiate something, right?
	Yeah.
	So, when you have a desire and a disagreement, right, I want to buy a Lamborghini, you want to sell me a Lamborghini.
	That's our desire.
	That's our agreement, so to speak.
	But the disagreement is the price.
	Right?
	And so they might say, you know, we'll knock the price off 5% and we'll extend your warranty by a year.
	Yeah.
	Because the warranty is cheaper for them, right?
	A lot of people don't even use the warranty that much.
	And, of course, it's cheaper for them because they're doing the labor, right?
	So it's sort of like getting things at cost.
	There might be a bunch of things like this, like you want to buy a house, and you can't agree on price, and they say, okay, well, we'll throw in the furniture, or something like that, right?
	You can keep all of the art, if you like it.
	So that's negotiation, because then they don't have to move it, it's cheaper and whatever, right?
	So these are just things where you have an agreement.
	That you both have a shared desire, but you have a disagreement as to the terms, and that's life.
	Life as a whole.
	That's life as a whole.
	You know, in a relationship, right, when do you go to marriage?
	Well, it very rarely happens that it occurs to both people at exactly the same time, right?
	So one person's a little further ahead, and maybe they have to convince the other person and so on, right?
	So that is, or maybe the woman's been tapping her feet for six months, I don't know, right?
	So she's been waiting.
	So, that's sort of my question.
	So, you and your family, you have disagreements, and, I mean, to not make too fine a point of it, you have these disagreements, and all that you do is bully and escalate and be aggressive and yell and call names and call the police, right?
	So, there is no negotiation.
	Yeah.
	It's sort of like the mafia saying, if you don't pay us protection money, To keep someone from burning down your store, we can pretty much guarantee your store is going to get burnt down.
	That's not a negotiation.
	So you guys have win-lose.
	And win-lose is always achieved through aggression.
	Otherwise, if I steal the car, then that's win-lose.
	So you were raised with, and it's not like they teach you any of this in school, they don't really teach you...
	In the world, we are kept as slaves because people are put in charge of us who have no capacity to negotiate and don't even really know what the concept is.
	All they have is power.
	Power is the opposite of negotiation.
	Because power is the capacity to inflict win-lose, like a guy who wants your wallet and...
	It puts a gun in your ribs.
	Well, that's win-lose.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	So teachers and daycare teachers and a lot of priests and the media, it's just win-lose.
	Like, do what we want or we'll dox you, you know, or something like that.
	I shouldn't laugh because it's very serious stuff.
	So you were raised in a slave manner, which is not to say you're a slave.
	I'm just saying that there's this mindset that I have too, by the way.
	I couldn't negotiate with my boarding school headmasters.
	I couldn't negotiate with my aunts or my father or my mother, or I couldn't negotiate with the teachers.
	I couldn't negotiate with the daycare workers.
	I couldn't negotiate.
	I started being able to negotiate a little bit with my professors, but they still had the final determination.
	True negotiation is when you don't have the final determination.
	So when you say to your mom, can I stay out later?
	She has the final choice.
	That's not a negotiation.
	If you say to your professor, can I get an extension on my essay deadline?
	And he's like, yeah, okay.
	That's not a negotiation.
	It's just begging.
	It's asking.
	And letting the other person make the decision.
	That's not a negotiation.
	Negotiation is when you have some power, some influence, right?
	If I want to buy the Lamborghini, I don't know how much they cost, but, you know, someone's going to have to sell me the Lamborghini and they want my money, so I have some authority in the interaction of the negotiation.
	And that's why competition reduces bullying, because competition means that if one person just has a monopoly, then it's not a negotiation anymore, right?
	You don't have a negotiation about paying for public schools because it's just taken out of your property taxes and so on, right?
	So I think that the challenge is that you were out there in the world negotiating, working, and so on.
	You went back home and your negotiation mind got crushed by police and incarceration, jail, right, and institutionalization and so on.
	And so your adulthood, your independence, your authority, your weight, your heft, your influence, your capacity to negotiate got crushed because your mother doesn't negotiate.
	And she only escalates some bullies or maybe that if she's scared of you, she might submit briefly, but then it just gets blowback.
	So I would say that the reason is that you were raised to be a slave.
	You were out there developing some more independence.
	You went back home.
	Slavery got reinflicted on you.
	Negotiation is not necessary because you're getting money from the government through benefits, and so how can you go back out there into the world of negotiation?
	It'd be like if I started learning Japanese, I went back home, I lost all of my knowledge of Japanese, really, and then a couple of years later somebody said, you want to go back to that remote Japanese village?
	I'd be like, No, because I don't really remember my Japanese anymore.
	Yeah, definitely.
	That's a fantastic way of putting it.
	Yeah, that really stands.
	That resonates with the experience that I think I've had in the last four years.
	It's kind of losing, feeling like I've lost something that I can't put my finger on.
	Good, good.
	I'm certainly glad to hear that.
	And so, yeah, I would suggest really read books, how to negotiate, good strategies for negotiation, all this kind of stuff.
	And if you get your negotiation muscles back up, which is, by the way, incredibly painful emotionally.
	Because you're realizing all the times you weren't negotiated with.
	So it's incredibly painful emotionally to learn negotiation skills, which is why...
	So many people kind of avoid it and just stick with the bullying paradigm, right?
	Yeah, that's great advice, yeah.
	So I would say, you know, before sort of heading back out, because you don't want to head out and then have some mess or some failure going on, so before heading out into the world, I would say really work on upping your negotiation skills.
	And through that process, then when somebody disagrees with you right now, when somebody disagrees with you, You feel a combination of fear and aggression.
	Sometimes you have a disagreement with your mother and it's like, oh God, how bad is this going to get?
	How terrible is this going to go?
	And that's because with your mother, and I assume with a lot of other people in your life, it's win-lose.
	Either you get your way at their expense and they're seething, or they get their way at your expense and you're seething.
	But there is not a win-win.
	And so, out there in the world, if your boss says, do X, Y, or Z, you're like, oh God!
	And then you're frightened, and then you're resentful, and you feel stressed and hostile because he scared you.
	But if you have some confidence in your ability to aim for these win-win situations, so your boss says, I want you to do X, right?
	And it's like, okay, listen, I'm happy to.
	I've got these five things to do.
	Which one do you want me to deprioritize?
	Because reasonable bosses, I mean, this is very common in the workplace, right?
	You've got five things to do for the rest of the week, and then your boss gives you the sixth thing to do, and people are just like, oh, God, okay, well, I can't say no, so I'll just work late.
	I'll just find some way to deprioritize something, and then nobody ends up particularly satisfied.
	I guess if you just work late, I guess your boss feels satisfied because he looks like he's a great boss.
	But then the problem is, if you can do five things a week and your boss gives you six or seven, and you do six or seven, well, guess what?
	Now you just have to do six and seven forever, and your boss looks at you like, what the hell were you doing before?
	You were only doing five things before, now you can do six or seven, so you were kind of ripping me off before.
	So your boss ends up dissatisfied, you end up dissatisfied because you're working an extra day or two a week, so to speak, and nobody's happy.
	Even the customers aren't happy in the long run.
	Because business relationships, the more complex they are, the better it is if they're sustainable.
	And so if the customer has a complicated set of things that you're providing and you get mad and quit, then they've got to find someone new and train someone new and nobody's happy, right?
	So nobody's happy in the long run if negotiation isn't achieved.
	So when your boss says, I need you to do these one or two more things this week, and you're like, hey, listen, I'm super happy to help out.
	Which one should I do next week instead?
	Well, just do them all.
	I'm like, you know, that's going to be a lot of extra work.
	I can do that, but I'm not going to do that on a super regular basis because, you know, I'm not here to just work.
	I have to have a life too.
	So, finding ways to negotiate.
	Now, and this is another thing too, it's really tough to get a good boss if you don't know how to negotiate because bosses are looking for, can my employee negotiate?
	Or is my employee just desperate and wants, like the potential employee, someone who's interviewing, are they just desperate and they just need a job and they have to have a job and they can't eat otherwise?
	And so a boss who's a good boss won't want a desperate employee who can't negotiate.
	Because negotiation is feedback from the employee and without feedback you can't produce really anything of quality.
	So a good boss is looking for someone who listens to proposals, Compares it to their own self-interest and tries to find a win-win solution.
	So if the boss says, so here's an example, right?
	So this would happen when I was negotiating.
	I remember negotiating for a job once and I think the salary was, I don't know, let's just make up a number.
	The salary was $100,000, right?
	And I said, no, I want $120,000.
	Now, I would have been satisfied with $110,000, but I didn't want $100,000.
	And they said, we can't pay you more.
	And I said, okay, so what else can we do?
	He said, well, we don't know.
	And I said, okay, well, when I travel, can I travel not economy?
	Because I had to do a lot of traveling.
	Can I travel nicer?
	Can I stay in slightly nicer hotels?
	Those, I don't want to stay in a motel.
	I want to stay in a decent hotel so I get a good mattress and a good night's sleep.
	And that's a business write-off for them.
	That's an expense.
	So it could be cheaper from an accounting standpoint.
	And they said, okay.
	And then I said, okay, well, you want to give me two weeks vacation.
	You don't want to pay me more.
	That's fine.
	Then give me four weeks vacation.
	Because then effectively my hourly rate has increased because I'm taking two more weeks of vacation a year.
	And then we settled on three weeks and upgraded hotels and flights and so on, right?
	And, you know, I said, listen, we both want to be happy with this, right?
	I mean, you don't want me working for you if I'm not happy, and I sure don't want you paying me if you feel I'm overcharging you, right?
	So we'll find some consideration.
	You know, my workspace is quite important to me, right?
	So I said, okay, so if you don't want to, you know, we would go back, can you give me a bigger office?
	Can you give me, you know, access to half a secretary?
	Can you, whatever, right?
	Any number of things that they could do that, you know, if they're hard on the salary, we just...
	And there were reasons why.
	The reasons why you can't sometimes get more in salary is they're paying everyone else at your level the same amount.
	And it almost always gets out how much someone's getting paid.
	So if everyone they hired at your level gets paid at $100,000 and then you get $120,000, that's going to get out.
	And then they have a big problem because then everyone else gets mad.
	Well, how come he gets $120,000?
	I'm doing the same job.
	Right?
	And so, sometimes it's quite complicated for businesses in terms of pay, right?
	So, just in terms of, I'm just going to give you one example as well.
	When I worked very hard to get sort of 30 or 35 of my employees' significant raises, I had to make that case and say, look, 25% of them are actively looking for other work at the moment, and if they leave, this is how much it's going to cost us, because we've got, you know, 2 billion lines of code, which a new empire is going to have to learn how to work with, which is going to take 6 to 12 months.
	And so on.
	So I had to say, this is win-win.
	Like, you're paying more, but I'm saving you money, right?
	So instead of giving my employees a million dollars more a year, I'm saving you two million dollars over the next couple of years, per year.
	Right?
	So that's a win-win, right?
	As opposed to just pay my employees more.
	Well, that's just a net loss for people.
	And sorry, I'm sorry to give you these big abstract examples, because these happen all the time.
	You know, one of the reasons I learned all of this stuff was no particular virtue of mine.
	It just came from being broke.
	You know, it's funny because being broke is fantastic for teaching you negotiation skills because if everyone's got money, you're like, oh, we're going to go to the mall, we're going to go to the movie, we're going to go to the arcade, right?
	And everyone can pay for that so everything's structured and you don't really have to negotiate.
	But when you're broke, you've got to figure out what to do that's out of nothing and has to cost nothing.
	You know, are we going to go to the mall?
	Are we going to go to the woods?
	Are we going to go play tag?
	Are we going to do X, Y, and Z? And you've got to find something.
	And not everyone wants to do the same thing.
	But, you know, if you're with a bunch of kids and everyone's got a bunch of money, and you're like, let's go to the, I don't know, Universal Studios theme park or something, and everyone's like, yeah, that sounds great, right?
	You don't have to negotiate really much.
	So negotiation comes out of poverty, which is why there's this cycle of rich and poor quite a lot.
	The rich kids don't have to negotiate as much because everything's structured for them.
	This is another big problem, by the by, with video games, is that video games, there's really not negotiation because Negotiation for kids is, hey man, I did touch you.
	No, you just touched my shirt.
	And in war, in the war games I played as a kid, you had to figure out who was actually shot, who was actually wounded, and all of this kind of stuff.
	So there was a lot of negotiation about the rules, the structure, and the enforcement of the rules was something you had to negotiate about, right?
	You know, hey, playing soccer, hey, that touched your hand.
	No, it didn't.
	It touched my, I don't know, elbow or whatever, right?
	And so you had to sort of negotiate these kinds of things to find a way that...
	If there aren't any rules, nobody wants to play, but if the rules are used against people, like if you lose and you say you cheated, then nobody wants to play.
	So you've got to find that sweet balance so that the rules are helpful without being used as a weapon.
	So you don't have to negotiate rules in a video game, right?
	I mean, there's no, you touched my, I touched you, no, you just touched my shirt, shirts don't count, or whatever it is, right?
	There's none of that because, you know, the computers, the servers all decide who shoots who and it's all enforced and nobody has to negotiate, really.
	So, sorry for sort of a long ranty rant, but I think that once you're more comfortable with negotiation, first of all, when you get more comfortable with negotiation, you won't want to go back to bullying win-lose stuff.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	And so, you felt that you could go back into your mother's household.
	And you only looked at the material benefit.
	It's going to save me, you know, a couple hundred pounds and maybe a couple of awkward phone calls to get some other place to live.
	But you didn't look at the, this reactivates my win-lose slave mindset.
	Yeah, exactly.
	I didn't.
	And how could you?
	I mean, it's not like this is all explained to us when we're growing up.
	I mean, the people who are good at negotiating don't spend a lot of time with people who are bullies because it's no fun.
	So I think that that would explain how you ended up with some of this lost time, right?
	And because, like, so food is a constant negotiation.
	I mean, for me, anyway, I think this is the case for most people.
	But food is a constant negotiation, as is exercise, right?
	So the constant negotiation is, I mean, I would love to live on sweet danishes and cookies and banana.
	Bread and all of this.
	I'd love to live on that stuff.
	I love the taste and it makes me happy.
	But it's just not good for me, right?
	So it's a constant negotiation.
	And the reason I'm mentioning this is that you couldn't negotiate with your mother.
	You gave up on negotiating with your mother.
	And you also gave up on negotiating with food, with yourself.
	Right.
	Yes.
	Yeah, definitely.
	Yes, definitely.
	There was a clear correlation with all of it.
	And a clear correlation.
	So yeah, that would be my...
	And you'd really be surprised at how quickly you can learn negotiation.
	Yeah.
	And I think that would be the thing.
	If I were in your shoes, and again, I say this with all massive due sympathy for your childhood and most of your adulthood.
	And so I think if you really want to help your sister, which I respect and I think that's a wonderful thing, then if you learn negotiation...
	And you, you know, either implicitly or explicitly show her the benefits of negotiation, then she'll learn how to negotiate, and then she can have a healthy relationship, because a healthy relationship is founded on negotiation, because we all have disagreements and agreements, and when we learn how to serve our needs and others, so that, you know, the best negotiation is when both people are happier with the final solution than their initial.
	Suggestion.
	Right?
	So, if you learn how to do that, which, I mean, I'm not saying you don't know how to do that, but, you know, we all need those sort of refreshers and expansions of these sorts of things.
	But when you learn how to do that, and you model that in the world, you go out into the world, and you can negotiate, and there will be people.
	You go out and try and get a job, and they'll just snarl at you.
	How dare you?
	And that's good.
	I mean, it can be a little unpleasant in the moment, but it means that that is a boss who has no interest in negotiating, and you don't want to work with someone like that.
	Sure, sure.
	So it's really, really good.
	Learning how to negotiate keeps the bullies out of your life, because they don't want to be around you.
	And it can take a little longer to find a job, but man, you're going to end up with a job that's way better, and it's going to be not a recreation of sort of that, Slave mentality, top-down, power-based bullying stuff that goes on when we're growing up.
	And so, yeah, adulthood is negotiation.
	Love is negotiation.
	Business success is negotiation.
	And focusing on that will really help your sister because then with your sister, you can negotiate as well.
	And then she will learn that from you and that will make her life much better than anything else, any other single thing that I think you can do.
	Thank you very much.
	That is fantastic advice.
	Yeah, I definitely have not considered negotiation as something to emphasize in my life.
	Well, and then you can learn how to negotiate with girls or women and you won't have to pay them, right?
	So much the better.
	Yeah, I don't know.
	I don't know why.
	I mean, yeah, I mean, I think that all the vices correlate with one another.
	I have had relationships in the past.
	I think negotiation is clearly something you can always strengthen.
	Oh, very true.
	Very true.
	Yeah.
	All right, brother.
	Is that good enough for today?
	That's fantastic.
	I really, really appreciate these.
	That's good.
	One final crash of the microphone.
	And I hope you keep me posted.
	And I really do appreciate the call today.
	And, you know, massive sympathies.
	But, you know, better futures await for sure.
	Definitely, yeah.
	In the last few months, thanks to your show, I've been on an upward curve of optimism, so I really appreciate you taking the call.
	Beautiful.
	All right, man.
	Take care.
	Talk to you soon.
	Thank you.
	You too.
	Bye.
	Thanks very much.

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