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March 1, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:30:33
How to Protect Those You Love!
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Time Text
Good evening, everybody.
Welcome to your...
Oh, my gosh.
It's the last show.
Last show of the...
No, we got Friday night, too.
So, second to last show, February 2025. Welcome, welcome, welcome.
Happy to take your questions, comments, issues, challenges, problems.
You know the drill.
You know the drills.
But if you don't have stuff, if you're feeling shy, shy, but...
Philosophy curious.
Philosophy adjacent.
Philosophy curious.
I am curious, but yellow.
So, yeah, we're going to try taking some calls tonight, just in case people are around.
I know a lot of you are saying you can go to fdrurl.com slash live call, and a lot of you are saying you're at work and stuff like that, different time zones.
No problem.
We're just, I thought we'd give it a shot.
Give it a shot.
So, interesting.
Jeff Bezos.
Rhymes with Tezos, but it's worth slightly more.
Jeff Bezos wrote, I think it was today.
Today?
Yeah, today.
We got 16.3 million views on X. Really interesting.
Not unpredictable, but really, really interesting.
Thoughts on the Trump gold card?
Yes, so Trump is saying it's $5 million, and you can get a card to green card or whatever it is to come and live in the States.
I think he can do it because it's not citizenship.
But yeah, for $5 million, he's hoping to sell a bunch of these to retire the national debt.
It's funny, you know, like the country is the government to sell access to is not the most end cap position in the known universe.
But if anyone can sell it, it would be him.
Of more interest is Apple dropping, what, 500 million or 500 billion or some massive amount into developing jobs in America?
That's something.
That's something.
So I don't, I mean, it doesn't affect me.
I don't have any real...
I don't have any skin in the game.
It's just that the idea that there's a geographical landmass and you bribe the people in charge to be able to work there is pretty wild.
All right.
No, let's do...
I've got your questions in, so I'll get to it, but let's do this.
So Jeff Bezos, right?
So what's happened lately with Jeff Bezos?
Well, he started working out.
He has been called out, not in name, but by implication, by...
Elon Musk saying, look, wealthy people should care more about the success and future of America because if America falls, there's really no place, no place to go.
So Jeff Bezos has started working out.
He's either getting more testosterone because he's working out or maybe he's on testosterone supplements or DHEA or I don't know what, what do I know, right?
But he seems to be bulking on a fair amount of muscle.
He shaved his head and he's gone from that dweeby accountant who'd get pushed around with the tip of a pencil.
To, you know, not exactly Jason Statham, but Swole-ish, in the vicinity of Swole guy.
And I say this as a guy who's vaguely in the vicinity of Swole myself.
So, he also, I think he was dying to make a Lord of the Rings show, and through Prime, he gave the Lord of the Rings show to Prime, who put on a bunch of purple-haired wokesters who just absolutely Roman Polanski'd the entire...
And I don't mean that in the art side.
I mean in the accused of rape or charged with rape of a 13-year-old.
So, yeah, they just completely messed it up.
So, he said, of course, he owns the Washington Post.
Jeff Bezos wrote, I shared this note with the Washington Post team this morning.
I'm waiting to let you know about a change coming to our opinion pages.
We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars.
Personal liberties and free markets.
We'll cover other topics too, of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.
There are times, there was a time in a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader's doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views.
Today, the internet does that job.
I am of America and for America and proud to be so.
Our country did not get here by being typical, and a big part of America's success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else.
Freedom is ethical.
It minimizes coercion.
Oh yeah, baby!
And practical.
It drives creativity, invention, and prosperity.
I offered David Shipley, who might greatly admire the opportunity to lead this new chapter.
I suggested to him that if the answer wasn't hell yes, then it had to be no.
After careful consideration, David decided to step away.
Traitor!
Sorry, that was me editorializing.
This is a significant shift.
It won't be easy and it will require 100% commitment.
I respect his decision.
We will be searching for a new opinion editor to own this new direction.
I would like to respectfully not submit my resume for that position.
I'm confident that free markets and personal liberties are right for America.
I also believe these viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion.
I'm excited for us together to fill that void.
To which Cernovich replied, why did Amazon ban, hoaxed?
The movie.
That's the movie that I was in, actually.
So, very interesting.
Very interesting.
So, seeing a bit of counter to the Soros phenomenon, seeing a bit of a counter to the money pits of the left, often taken from the state, from the taxpayers, and seeing him move in that direction, thank you, Dorbens, is really, really quite fascinating.
And it's encouraging.
I'll be straight up.
It is encouraging.
What's going to happen to the Washington Post if they have to hold their nose against their stinking pile of dinosaur cack ideology and actually talk about personal liberties and free markets?
Ooh.
Ooh.
Humanity's 50-50, right?
It's 50-50.
The people who produce and the people who fucking pillage.
The sailors, the fishermen, and the pirates.
About 50-50.
And I don't know if it's always going to be that way, but it sure as hell is now.
All right.
So let's get to your comments, issues, questions, and problems.
What have we got?
Boom, boom, boom.
Boom, boom, boom.
Let's see here.
What are some things to say to a girl you like, but still has feelings for a dude who has jerked her around?
Well, there's sort of a weather vane.
There's a weather vane about where society is going.
And when society gets heavily into debt, When society, when the instinct for women, and I write about this in my novel, The Present, which you should definitely check out at freedomain.com slash books, but women's instincts in particular, when you are in an unsustainable social course, women turn to very aggressive men.
When you are in a sustainable and sort of free market-based course, then women tend to We move emotionally and sexually towards, you know, stable, nice guys who do well in the free market.
But, of course, you know, there's lots of push for ethnic and gender conflict.
The ethnic conflict is the one the women are more worried about, I suppose.
Or the haves and the have-nots, the takers and the taken from.
There's a lot of conflict going on, and women are drawn to the bad boys.
It's not female nature.
Just think of Smith and Jones.
We'll talk about Smith and Jones.
So Smith and Jones are neighbors.
Smith, unfortunately, pulled a bit of a grasshopper, not ant, and did not put aside enough food for the long, hard, cold winter.
And his wife understands deep down that they're not going to make it through spring.
It's just not enough food.
It's not enough hunting.
They're not going to make it through spring.
Now, next door is a guy who's doing pretty well because he's a very aggressive guy who goes farm to farm and takes stuff.
you know, is willing to dangle children off ledges, is willing to set fire to barns, is willing to just do anything to get resources.
Right, so that's Jones.
So Smith is not got enough food for the winter.
Jones does.
Who's she going to go with if she wants to survive?
Who is she going to go with if she wants to survive?
Now, of course, if she has kids, that's a big problem because Jones probably doesn't want the kids around.
But if she wants to survive and she's still fertile, and we just have to look at sort of raw, brutal, evolutionary pressures, right?
If she's, let's say she's 30, she's got two kids.
So if she goes with Jones and abandons Smith and even abandons her children, then she has a chance for her genes to be passed on if she gets impregnated by Jones and makes a bunch of babies with him.
If she stays with Smith, most likely Jones is going to come and tear them apart, or even if he doesn't, they don't have enough food to get through the winter.
So she's going to lose her kids and her husband and herself anyway, so she might as well throw her lot in with the brute Jones.
Now, you can get mad at that if you want.
I mean, I'm really not sure what the point is.
We did not have a highly ethical matrix of development we had, like all other animals, brute survival.
And, of course, we know female lions will allow the new male, should her male die, she will allow the new male to kill her cubs.
Because that's how she survives.
Yeah, I think it is.
This is why a lot of women are like keen on Luigi Mangione.
Right.
As opposed to, I like the CEO, but the CEO can't protect himself.
And I don't know, Luigi Mangione is accused.
I don't know if he did it or not, if he's accused.
But if he did do it, then he would have won.
In that, and he would be in the position to provide resources.
So, that's just a brute reality of evolution and a female nature.
Women will be happy to be with you if you can provide.
If it looks like your provision is coming to an end and a time of nature red in tooth and claw, the Hobbesian situation is coming along, then She's got to go with the brute.
She has to go with the brute.
So, yeah, half a trill in the States coming from Apple.
Yeah, it's pretty wild, right?
So, some things to say to a girl you like but still has feelings for a dude who has jerked her around.
Well, you've got to figure out why she was drawn to a guy who was a brutal, nasty, untrustworthy, vicious, whatever, right?
You've got to get to the cause of that.
So, just be curious.
Now, if you're a good guy, and you like a girl who likes bad boys, then you are probably falling prey to the sin of lust, right?
Because if she genuinely likes bad guys, and you like her, well, you don't like her for her morals, unless those morals are kept snug in a wonderbra.
You like her because she's hot, because she's pretty, because she's sexy.
Right?
So you share that in common that you both like highly compromised people.
She likes the bad boys.
You like the bad girl who likes the bad boys.
So you are now a bad boy.
So own it.
Just say, well, I don't like your particularity, but man, you're hot.
So let's go with that.
But, you know, you probably don't want to do that because that's lying.
So.
If she likes the bad boys, you don't like her for her virtues.
You dislike her for her DNA. And that's not the foundation of a quality relationship.
That's the foundation for getting your rocks off and getting a restraining order.
All right.
Boom, boom.
All right.
Good evening, Steph.
Good evening, Eric.
By the way, by the by, freedomain.com slash donate.
I did a long live stream this afternoon.
Just mentioned this there, mentioned this here.
It's a short month, so just to keep my spirits up, if you could help me out at freedomain.com slash donate, or you can tip right here on the apps on Rumble and Locals.
I really would appreciate that.
And I know that I earn it.
All right.
Good evening, Steph.
I have a question.
My parents, it's funny, that's the Spanish ring, right?
Spanish puts the question mark upside down at the beginning, so you know it's a question.
My parents separated when I was 14. Recently, I spoke with each of them separately about my childhood, and they both told me different versions of why they broke up.
They also asked me to keep these conversations secret from everyone, including my sister.
Is it morally justifiable to keep such secrets?
And if two conflicting stories of the breakup exist, how can I determine what is true?
You will never, ever, ever get the truth from divorced people.
You will never get the truth from divorced people.
Thank you, Israel.
You will never get to just accept that.
You're not going to get the Epstein list.
You're not going to get the unredacted JFK files because nobody wants to expose where, in particular, those two breadcrumbs leave.
You're not going to get...
These things.
People may be fired in the government.
They won't be arrested.
So, yeah, you're not going to get the Epstein list unredacted.
And you're certainly not going to get the videos.
You're not going to get unredacted JFK stuff.
And you're not going to get the truth from people who got divorced.
Because if they had the honor and integrity to tell the truth, they wouldn't have got divorced.
Divorce is a function of everybody's Pinocchio lying ass noses going from here to the moon and back.
Divorce is a function of falsehood.
Divorce is a function of lying.
So, it's like asking a con man to tell you the truth when he's still prosecutable.
It's never going to happen.
You're never going to get the truth from a con man.
You're never going to get the truth from people who are Who went through a divorce?
All right.
So, as far as to keep such secrets, why do you care about why your parents got divorced?
Why do you care?
I mean, you're 34 years old, for God's sakes.
You're kind of entering middle age.
And you care about what happened 20 years past with people who are not going to tell you the truth and who are still demanding that you keep secrets, right?
So, here's the thing.
Responsible, like, let's create a fantasy scenario.
Let's create beings as believable as n-dimensional spider-verse orcs, right?
Let's create a true fantasy of people.
And the true fantasy of people is responsible divorcees Who really, really, really want to make sure their children don't repeat their mistakes.
But let's just create that as a completely outlandish fantasy scenario.
These are two people, Bob and Alice.
Bob and Alice got divorced 20 years ago or 10 years ago or whatever.
And they are super keen and responsible and moral and virtuous.
And they just want to make sure that whatever happens, man, whatever happens.
Whatever happens, their kids cannot repeat their same mistakes.
So, what do Bob and Alice do to do that, right?
What do they do?
Well, we know, right?
What they do, of course, is they sit down with their children and they say, all right, kids, we messed it up.
You were young.
We got divorced.
There was years of conflict and fighting beforehand.
And we really, really messed up, man.
We did terrible stuff.
And you're paying the price even more than we do.
We were selfish.
We were petty.
We were whatever.
Now we've done anger management.
We've gone to therapy.
And we're going to sit you down.
Not when you ask them.
Not when you ask them.
When you're young.
We're going to sit you down.
And we're going to go through.
We've got a list here.
We've gone over this together.
We agree with it.
We've gone.
We go over a list.
Here's the mistakes we made in choosing each other.
Here's the mistakes we made in being together.
Here's the things we didn't resolve.
Here's the pettiness we let accumulate.
Here's the resentment.
Here's the lies we told to ourselves.
Here's the lies we told to you.
And they would just, like, unpack an alien out of John Hurt's chest, just dump the whole thing, you know, with sensitivity and all of that.
but they would dump that on their kids so that their kids would be illuminated and wouldn't make the same mistakes.
So, okay, let me ask you this.
If your parents got divorced, I'm going to put an N in on this one.
If your parents got divorced, did they sit you down when you were young, hopefully in your middle-aged teens, assuming they got divorced before, in this case it would have.
So did they sit you down in your middle-aged teens and say, Here's how not to reproduce all of the mistakes we made.
Here's how you do it.
Here's what we messed up.
Here are the problems that we made.
You know, like if your father opened a restaurant and it completely went tits up, like it flamed out, right?
It orgered in.
And then you were opening a restaurant, wouldn't your father sit you down and say, okay, like, here's the things I messed up.
Here are the mistakes I made.
You know, the menu was too expensive.
I didn't do enough marketing.
I didn't do enough advertising.
I didn't pay the right people.
I cheaped out on the chef and whatever, right?
I mean, I mean, if your father ran a restaurant into the ground and it cost him everything, and you're opening a restaurant, and even when you talk about opening a restaurant, your father would sit down and say, hey man, I've been and even when you talk about opening a restaurant, your father
So here's how you can avoid, at least as best as I can tell you, here's how you can avoid losing your life savings in a restaurant like I did.
Here's what you need to do.
Right?
Makes sense.
Makes sense.
Right?
If you are an athlete and you are going into long-distance running, And your father, for 10 or 15 years, was a professional long-distance runner.
Wouldn't he sit you down and say, you know, here's the stuff I did right, here's the stuff I did wrong, blah, blah.
tell you all about it, right?
Right?
I certainly have talked to my daughter about...
The mistakes that I made in my life and how best to avoid them.
Because you want to teach your kids your hard-earned, hard-won, hard-inflicted lessons, right?
Now, a quick question.
Let's just guess this one in general.
You had an absolutely catastrophic marriage.
Did either of my parents ever sit me down and give me any guidance on how to avoid their mistakes?
Just out of curiosity, do you think, hit me with a Y or an N, do you think that either of my parents ever sat me down or emailed me or called me up to say, here's the mistakes, I mean, particularly my father.
Here's the mistakes that I made, and here's what you need to look out for.
Improve, right?
What do you think?
Thank you.
No, no, no, no, no.
Right.
In fact, when I was going to marry the wrong woman, my mother seemed relatively okay with it.
that she had a little bit of hesitation, but she never said anything, right?
So, just so you know, when, and maybe there's exceptions, I'm tired of these caveats shit, right?
So, you can just take this as 100%, although I get that there are exceptions.
Once people get divorced, they can never tell the truth about that for the rest of their lives.
Ever.
Ever.
It's too painful.
Because they've just fucked up so badly.
Particularly when there are children involved.
The curse of divorce.
Is lying your ass off for the rest of your life.
About your marriage, about divorce, about relationships.
Because if you were capable of taking responsibility and working with someone with real empathy, you wouldn't get divorced.
Marriage is not hard.
Relationships are not hard.
At all.
My wife and I have one or two pretty minor conflicts a year.
Usually resolved in an hour or less.
And they're fine.
They're not big problems.
And we've never called each other names.
We've never raised voices at each other, right?
Just, you know, disagreements that are strenuous, right?
But it's not hard.
It's not hard.
You got to work at your relationships.
Like, no, no, I have a job.
I already have a job.
I don't need a part-time job called a relationship.
A relationship is supposed to help me in my life.
It is not supposed to be an energy.
Drain as a whole.
So, yeah, nobody had a parent who ever sat them down and said, here's what I got wrong.
Here's what you need to learn, right?
No.
A divorce is so foundationally scarring, it's like It slashes people's bowels and they shit their soul and integrity out forevermore.
And they're just walking around hollowed-out shells of who they used to be.
Lies, manipulation, guilt, shame, blame.
Oh, the big one is blame, right?
And just lying.
Somebody says, hey, from Rumble, my parents gave me the stock standard, it's not your fault, when they got divorced.
And I remember thinking, Why the fuck would I think it was my fault?
Right.
Right.
Yeah, I mean, my parents, because I was a baby when my parents divorced, so.
Why would you even listen anyway?
Wouldn't it be almost worse if they did?
God, no!
Val, are you crazy?
No!
I wanted, I needed, I needed my parents to tell me what they got wrong in relationships.
But they cannot be honest.
They can't be honest, because if they had the capability of being honest, they wouldn't have got divorced.
Happy birthday, noun!
you Person, place, or thing, and birthday.
Today is my birthday.
Very grateful for all you do and glad to be here.
Well, I'm glad you're here, too.
Happy birthday to you.
Then he says, no, actually, my dad left us kids in a car overnight, many times, in casino parking lots.
And that was the linchpin to why he lost custody of us.
After the custody battle, when I was eight, he trapped me in a room and wouldn't let me leave for hours, guilting me about how horrible I made his life by him losing custody.
Hours wouldn't let me out or even go to sleep until he was done guilting for the night.
Well, I'm sorry to hear that, but that's a strange kind of kindness because then you no longer have to have ambivalence.
About who your father is and what he's like.
What if one party earnestly tried to save the marriage?
What if one party earnestly tried to save the marriage?
Well, then the one party who earned, let's say that this is the case, right?
It's almost never the case.
But let's say it is the case.
One party, let's say it's the husband, really, really tried to save the marriage.
Okay.
So then, then what he needs to do is your father needs to say to you, well, I really did try and save the marriage.
Unfortunately, I was so retarded, I chose a woman who wouldn't listen.
I chose a selfish woman.
I chose a narcissistic woman.
And here's why.
I did this, this, this, and this.
DNA, DNA. Cute face, cute shape, whatever, right?
I got dicknapped.
She love-bombed me.
She sex-bombed me.
Whatever!
I earnestly tried to save the marriage.
The marriage couldn't be saved because I chose wrong at the beginning.
And here's how to avoid that.
Does that make sense?
Thank you again.
I struggle to see, says someone, why that's at odds with what I said.
I suppose you mean that they told you why they got divorced and they were telling the truth.
I don't know.
Sorry.
Please, if you're going to reference something before, give me a sense of what the hell you're talking about.
I don't know who that...
if you're the same person who asked the original question.
Yeah, all right.
Let me, I'm sorry, let me just get, somebody had a question about Stephen King.
Fair.
Let me just get a copy of that.
Yes, so it's not the same person.
It's not the same person.
Yeah, you just, just don't, don't, don't try and get the truth out of divorced people about what happened.
You'll never get it.
You'll never get it.
It's a hole with no bottom.
It's a quest where you'll get drunk.
You'll get roofied and stuffed in a trunk.
You're never going to get it.
You're never going to get it.
Somebody says, everyone keeps saying, why are you hanging on to your parents' divorce from 1974?
They can't get back together now.
I'm like, I'm not hanging on, but my mother needs to come back to that point and begin again.
All her decisions since then have been dictated from that point.
And merely a continuation of that mindset.
41 years ago?
You think your mother's going to rewind?
41 years?
Wait, 51?
Yeah, 51. Sorry, 51. Math brain, right?
So, are you saying that your mom is going to somehow go back more than half a century?
and have a mulligan and a do-over?
She's not going to have a do-over.
She's not going to have a do-over.
And your mother's made her choices.
Anything that interferes with your future is expendable.
I'm telling you that.
Because your future is just ticking along.
Clock's ticking, time's moving forward.
We're all on this conveyor belt from here to death.
There's no turning it back.
There's no hitting a pause.
We're just all on this conveyor belt leading straight to death itself.
Why are you trying to get your mother to rewind half a century plus?
Thank you.
I don't know.
It's kind of incomprehensible to me.
My mother needs to come back to that point and begin again.
All her decisions have been dictated from that point.
Continuation of that mindset.
Okay, people don't rewind.
Okay, we have a limited rewind.
Like, you know, you have those video cards that will save the last 60 seconds of your gameplay so that you can keep it in case you do something really cool.
People have a very limited capacity to rewind.
It's like apologizing.
I've said this a million times.
If somebody doesn't apologize within 24 hours, it's never going to happen.
It's like calling a place you apply to work at two years later and saying, well, wait, did I get the job?
Most people don't rewind.
And they can't rewind because it's too painful.
Because if you've wasted, let's say, You've wasted six months.
It's really hard to rewind because six months is a significant portion of your life, right?
And people, there's no way someone's going to rewind and say, oh, Mulligan, man, those 51 years, I completely faffed them up, but I'm just going to go back because there's no going back to 1974. There's no going back to 1974. She can't rewind.
We can't rewind.
We've gone too far.
She can't go back because I don't know how old she was in 1974. Right?
I don't know how, but let's say she was 20, and now she's 71 or whatever, right?
So she can't go back because she's not going to be 20 again.
1974 is when she had a future ahead of her.
Now she can't go back.
There's no going back.
You're going to plow on.
You're going to plow on.
Nothing else.
Your parents who got divorced, or even if they had significant issues in their marriage, were supposed to sit you down.
and tell you what they got wrong, how they screwed up, what mistakes they made, so that you can avoid those mistakes.
They don't, though, which shows bottomless selfishness.
Well, I screwed things up for decades.
But I'm not going to tell you kids how to avoid those mistakes.
It's sabotage, right?
It's just sabotage.
It's like the boomer saying, well, I don't care what happens as long as my housing price keeps going up.
I don't care if you kids can't have kids.
I don't care if it's endless immigration.
Whatever, whatever keeps my house...
I will do.
That's the devil they sold their soul to, right?
You'll never get the truth.
Don't bother.
Don't try.
Don't bother.
Not going to happen.
All right.
I know of a guy who got divorced, and they had multiple children.
He seemed like a decent Christian guy before.
Now, he's full of tattoos, drinks a lot, has a long beard, and rides a motorcycle.
He did a 180 after the divorce.
Right.
So, hit me with a Y. I'll start this one off, and it's a Y for me.
Hit me with a why.
Oh, no.
There we go.
Alright, so hit me with a why.
If you've ever been in a relationship with someone who wants you to be fundamentally different from who you are.
You ever been in that relationship?
You know that somebody wants you to be fundamentally different from who you are.
I love you.
You're perfect.
Now change.
You gotta make more money.
You gotta have different friends.
You gotta cut your hair.
You gotta work out.
You gotta blah blah.
You gotta change this.
this, you got to change that.
Oh, it's sad.
It's really, really sad.
My God, I mean, I'll be perfectly frank.
The years, years, years I spent chasing after the approval.
Maybe you're just like my mother.
She's never satisfied.
Why don't we scream at it?
So, yeah, I mean, you've got to be different.
Just the fundamental disapproval, right?
It's like that cliche of nothing raises a woman's blood pressure more than the sight of her husband relaxing on a couch.
My wife is constantly telling me, relax, relax, relax.
Put your feet up.
You work hard.
I do.
So my guess is the guy with the motorcycle and so on, his wife said, well, you've got to be this way and you've got to be that way.
Thank you.
And I don't like this, and you've got to drop those friends, and you better not, you've got to get rid of your motorcycle, and you've got to cut your beard, and you've got to...
Bah!
And I've got to tell you, man, the people changes.
The fucking soul wreckers.
You gotta be different.
You gotta change.
And you can't do this.
And you can't do that.
And I don't approve of this.
And I don't approve of that.
They're the biggest fucking losers on the planet.
They're the people who achieve the absolute least.
These little fucking micromanagers of every surrounding soul atom.
It's gotta be stacked and just right.
And you gotta do this.
Oh my god.
Oh my god.
They're the biggest fucking do-nothing, waste of skin, waste of life, never achieve anything losers on the planet.
The micromanaging fuss-budget drone strikes to any individuality, those people achieve nothing in their life.
So, what I did finally was I said to the woman who was nagging at me to change, be like, okay, I'll change, but you have to stop nagging, because you are having a tough time not nagging.
And you're telling me I need to change for the better.
Nagging is not productive.
Well, I'll stop nagging when you change.
No, no.
That's like me saying I'll change when you stop nagging.
So if you show me how to change by controlling your nagging, then I'll listen to you more.
She was unable to control her nagging, so I just broke up.
Because it's like, if you're not able to control your nagging, don't tell me what I need to do in my life because you can't even control your nagging.
Right?
All right.
Thank you for the tip again.
Noun says, I have a co-worker.
Who was regularly threatening me?
After the last one, I really wanted an apology, but he acted like it never happened.
I brought it up to HR as I was explaining all the context, and all of a sudden, I felt sane and validated.
Don't let people walk on you.
Yeah, and again, if it's legal, nothing wrong with recording things, right?
I think you're right.
Right, I remember him mentioning his wife's nagging and complaining increase prior to their divorce.
Right.
Right.
My boss and I are Christians.
this.
Thank you.
We will hire anyone who can do the job, but being a Christian is a bonus.
But our last two secretaries were, quote, Christian, but their work started to suffer when they betrayed their principles.
And last Saturday, the second one swallowed a...
Whoa!
Swallowed a 38 special.
You mean she killed herself?
Okay, you gotta warn me about this shit that's coming up, right?
The second one swallowed a.38 special.
My boss and his wife are in distress.
And the more info that comes out, the more horrible the story is.
It was all over a guy, and a five-minute conversation with any of us could have stopped or curtailed the worst parts.
Why are you telling us this?
Just out of curiosity.
What's the moral of the story here?
It's not anything I can particularly comment on.
I'm not complaining that you're saying it, but I don't follow what the purpose of the story is.
All right.
Thanks.
Thank you.
If you can tell me, I would appreciate that.
Any other last questions or any other questions, comments, issues, challenges, problems?
Go on once, go on twice.
Go on once.
Uh, hello, outlet.
I'm upset the people who said they were Christians betrayed their principles in the worst ways.
And what?
I mean, yes, people betrayed their principles.
I mean, that's baked into Christianity, right?
The high road, the hard road, the narrow road, the road of thorns, right?
People betray their principles, right?
A lot of people wear the skin suit of morality in order to gain access to people's resources.
So, you're upset that people betrayed their principles.
But why would you be upset?
Thank you, Simph.
But why would you be upset that people were betraying their principles?
I mean, I get that as a whole, but...
I guess what I'm missing, let me just go back here, right?
So my boss and I are Christians.
We will hire anyone who could do the job of being a Christian is a bonus.
Our last two secretaries were Christian, but their work started to suffer when they betrayed their principles.
Okay?
So I assume you're older, because you're, right?
You're older, my boss and I are Christians.
We will hire, so I assume you're a boss, right?
So, why?
What are you not getting that you hire people who are that messed up?
Right?
Be as wise as serpents, be as cunning as serpents, says Jesus, right?
So, if you're a Christian, you should be able to identify hypocrites.
You should pray for guidance.
You should look for actions.
You should look for mismatches between words and deeds.
Right?
So what are you missing?
what did you not get or not understand?
Why did you hire people who were suicidal and corrupt people?
Well, at least one of them, suicidal and corrupt hypocrites.
What are you not getting?
Chris says, I'm really enjoying and getting a lot of value from your Bible verses talks.
Thanks again for those.
I think they're fantastic.
Honestly, I literally get goosebumps and I feel like I'm in touch with the core of the universe when I'm doing those.
It's as powerful stuff as I've ever done.
So I appreciate that.
Thank you.
So tell me, you should be upset that you hired corrupt people.
So give me the answer to that.
Betrayed their principles, you hired and paid corrupt people.
Who betrayed their principles, why did you do that?
Like, it's always like, well, these other people are so, they're lacking principles, and what about you?
Where are your principles?
Why didn't you see this?
I assume there's Christians who prayed to God for guidance.
Did God tell you and you didn't listen?
Did you not ask God what's happening?
All right.
Steph, thank you for the tip.
Steph, my parents never advised me on relationships.
What should I be looking for in a woman?
How to speak to them and how to determine who they really are, were.
Okay, sorry, this is like past tense, present tense.
Let me try this again.
Steph, my parents never advised me on relationships.
What should I be looking for in a woman?
How to speak to them and how to determine who they really were.
They never, I think the they is not the women but the parents, they never try to evaluate the women I brought home either.
In my long-term relationships ended long ago, the same applies with her parents.
No life advice on how I might be successful, even with me being with their own daughter.
This is a re-occurring theme with your callers and myself.
Why so common?
Well, my friend, you're going to have to boil that shit down a little bit, to be honest with you.
Why don't parents take more care of their children?
What should I be looking for in a woman?
How do I speak to women?
How do I figure out who women really are?
Come on, man.
Give me a break.
Those are absolutely giant, giant questions.
And you're just like, You're just piling it on, right?
More, more, more!
My parents didn't give me any advice.
What should I be looking for a woman?
How do I speak to women?
How do I determine who women really are?
Why don't parents get invested in the success of their children's romantic relationships?
Steph, why, why, why?
So my suggestion would be, and I appreciate the questions, but my God, man, give me a break, right?
Read my book, Real-Time Relationships, and if you have more questions about parenting, read Peaceful Parenting.
PeacefulParenting.com.
Real-Time Relationships is available at Freedomain.com slash books.
So, yeah.
But I can't answer these questions in a live stream, you understand, right?
Steph, explain to me the meaning of life, the nature of the universe, and the furnace of ethics.
How Steve Guttenberg ended up as a movie star.
If you could just throw that in, I'd appreciate that.
All right.
My boss feels responsible, but he did nothing wrong.
I'm a bystander to a car wreck.
Oh, this is your boss who's corrupt.
One of his corrupt employees, well, they're both corrupt, according to you, and one of his corrupt employees shot herself.
He did nothing wrong?
How do you know?
Who says that?
I did nothing wrong.
How do you know?
How do you know he didn't do anything wrong?
He hired and paid people who were that corrupt.
All right.
Steph, what's the answer to everything?
Yeah.
How do I talk to women?
How do I pick a good woman?
How do I figure out if women are faking it?
All right.
Thank you, Danisa.
My brother married a crazy lady who got a bit more mellow over time, like cut herself during a trial breakup with my brother at 16. But they've been together since middle school and have five kids.
The younger kid is now dating a girl who was exactly like his mom was when younger, and he's asking me for dating advice and help.
I really want to provide honest and helpful feedback to him about this toxic girl and to help him understand his parents' problems, but I'm not quite sure where to start.
Well, hit me with a 1 to 10 on the ferocity of the rant you want here.
Hit me 1 to 10 on the ferocity of the rant that you want here.
Because I got it, baby.
you Oh, I got it.
I got it bubbling and burning within me.
I just started rereading your book on truth, The Tyranny of Illusion.
What a condensed and powerful book.
Thank you.
That was my first.
Crank it.
All right.
If a relationship you have is burnt down by the truth, just light the fucking match.
you Thank you.
Ooh, I want to tell...
I want to tell my...
My brother's kid about dating, but oh man, if I go too far and maybe I implicate his mother and they have problems.
No!
No, no, no, no, no.
A thousand times no.
Don't do it.
Don't do it.
If you have, if you're in a relationship but you can't tell the truth, you're not in a relationship.
You're a fucking slave.
Tell the truth and shave the devil.
Shave the devil.
And that too.
Tell the truth and shame the devil.
Tell the truth though the sky is full.
I tell the truth in my relationships and have for decades, and if those relationships can't survive the truth, too bad.
I'm married to the truth.
Relationships are my side chicks.
They're disposable.
Ooh, but how do I walk?
And I get this.
I think you're a female, so I get this.
You know, you want to balance things and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Nope.
Nope.
I would say, listen, I mean, you're drawn to this kind of woman because your mom was this kind of woman.
Your dad was drawn to her.
That's your template.
But she's got some dysfunctions, right?
And your mother, you don't have to get into details, but your mother at that age had some dysfunctions, right?
So you've got to be careful.
Oh, you're saying my parents have a bad marriage, and then next time he has conflicts with parents, well, you know what auntie so-and-so said?
Blah, blah, blah, right?
And then they come at you, oh, what did you say?
Blah, blah, blah.
You want me to lie to your kids?
You want me to lie to your kids?
Not gonna do it.
Not gonna do it.
There is no force above that will compel me to lie.
Sorry.
If you're upset by the truth, the door is right there.
Let the door hit you where the good Lord split you.
Everybody lies.
In general.
In the world.
Everybody lies, in general, in the world.
Just be one of those few stars in the night sky who tells the truth.
Just do it.
Oh, but people might get mad at me, okay?
So, do you want to be a slave and disabuse yourself of reality, truth, virtue, and integrity for the sake of approval of people who are offended by fact?
God, no!
No, no, no, no, no.
Hey, man, I told my family the truth.
They didn't like it.
Okay.
Painful, I get that.
I'm not saying, oh, shrug, I get it.
It's painful.
It's upsetting.
I get that.
But holy shit, man, I can't tell you, I can't tell you how absolutely, brutally miserable I would be if I had cucked brutally miserable I would be if I had cucked and failed the necessary human moral mission of the truth for the sake of gaining approval from volatile, selfish fools.
To kneel before coked-up chipmunks as if they are the gods of the universe.
To shred and betray the integrity of my yearning nature for the sake of approval from people who don't care about me.
Because if people hate the truth that you say, they hate you.
Well, they hate the truth, but since you personify it, they'll settle for you.
I will not B. Bullet.
I won't do it.
I won't do it.
I had to do it when I was a kid.
Yeah, I get it.
Mom beat me up.
I got caned in boarding school.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I had to be young.
They could hold me back a year in school, so I had to comply, comply, comply, bow, scrape, beg, appease.
I did my little resistances like most of us do, but yeah, I had to do that as a kid.
Well, guess what?
I've been a grown-ass adult now for 40 years.
And 20 years ago, I'd been a grown-ass adult.
I was paying my own bills at 15. Been a grown-ass adult for 20 years.
And you kind of want a signal to your system.
You kind of want a signal to your spine and your gut.
You kind of want a signal to your soul.
That you are no longer subject to the slavery of childhood and the subjugation of what is laughably called education.
We've grown up.
What does growing up mean?
What does independence mean?
It means you can tell the truth!
If you can't tell the truth, you never leave the subjugation of childhood.
You never get to grow, and you remain a frightened toddler for the rest of your life.
I understand the draw.
I understand the impulse.
I did it myself for too long, so I say this with all humility.
I really do.
I'm not blaming.
I'm not shaming.
I'm just saying.
I'm just speaking facts.
Do not shred your integrity on the altar of approvals by assholes.
You tell the truth.
If people reject you because they hate the truth, there was no relationship there to begin with.
There was only subjugation and slavery and kneeling before the petty, bloody knees of endless bullies.
You better not say this!
I'm going to walk out!
How dare you!
Fuck off!
I'll tell the truth.
Thank you.
There's no shortage of people in this world who lie their ass off for approval.
No shortage.
At all!
In this godforsaken world as it stands, there's no shortage of people who will lie, falsify, degrade, and corrupt themselves.
For the sake of approval by the inconsequential, people who don't tell the truth, people who hate the truth, people who attack the truth, are inconsequential.
Even if they have power in the moment, they're just another flash in the pan evaporating from history.
You know, like you got a hot fry pan, you put that water on, test the temperature, bubble sizzles, sound and fury signifying nothing.
So if you got something to say to this boy who's dating a potentially dangerous girl, you got something to say, say it. you got something to say, say it.
If they get mad, they get mad.
Thank you.
What's your alternative?
this.
Thank you.
I can't say anything.
I can't.
Be honest.
I can't.
Because they go too far.
They're going to get too mad.
They're going to get upset at me for telling the truth.
Good Lord.
Now, I don't know what the rest of your life is like, but if I'm around, let's say, if you're a woman, right?
If I was around a woman and she was terrified of her family and conformed to her family and said nothing to her family and never told the truth to her family, I would not date her.
No.
No, no, no.
Because I would recognize that that was...
Bullying and a kind of enslavement and she did not have a commitment to truth.
Right?
Now, if she doesn't have a commitment to truth, how can I trust her?
Doesn't have a commitment to truth, can't trust her.
You know, forget the family stuff.
You're signaling to the herd of potential mates as a whole.
Now, maybe you're married, maybe you have kids, whatever, right?
But you're signaling to the herd of potential mates as a whole.
And the more you enslave yourself for the sake of the approval or at least avoidance of conflict with the petty, Useless and inconsequential, the more you are signaling to everyone of quality to stay away from you.
I cannot be trusted.
I have no commitment to honesty.
Now, I get that I'm not saying you have no commitment to honesty, just to be clear, like you're asking the question.
I'm just being emphatic here.
Or talking in generality is not specific to you.
I have no foundational commitment to honesty.
I'll balance it.
Can I get away with it?
Will people get too upset?
Will people get too upset?
Is this what you would say?
This is the test.
Is this what you would say to your own children?
Well, you know, the kids want me to do stupid, dangerous stuff.
They want me to take pills at parties.
They want me to drink unknown liquids.
They want me to drive my bike off this wall.
They want me to shoplift.
And if I don't do it, Mom, Dad, they're going to be upset with me.
They might not like me if I don't do these bad things.
What would you say to them?
Well, it's tough to do the right thing, but you kind of got it, right?
So, model that.
Yes, it can be kind of tough to do the right thing, but you kind of got it, right?
All right.
Happy you're here in general, Steph?
I like the in general.
That's good.
You're right, red flags were ignored.
but I don't do the hiring for that position, but there were two flags I didn't like, but things seemed okay until they weren't.
Okay, you're not a very good Christian, in my humble opinion, in this specific instance.
I don't mean, of course, in general.
But...
Now you're just making excuses.
Red flags were ignored.
I don't do the hiring for that position.
Don't you...
Okay.
God Almighty!
So you care about your boss He's a friend of yours.
Let's say his name is Bob, right?
Now, you see red flags in people that Bob is thinking of hiring, or you see red flags right after they've got hired, where I assume they're in a probationary period, whatever you have.
I mean, when I was a hiring manager, I think it was like a month.
They could quit.
We could fire them in the first month with no Severance, no warning, no nothing, right?
It's a probation.
You're on probation, right?
So you care about your friend, Bob, who's the boss, and you see red flags in the women that he's hired, and then when confronted and say, well, why didn't you?
Oh, I'm not responsible for hiring them.
God, stop that!
Stop it!
Stop it!
Own everything!
Stop skidding out of responsibility.
God gave you a sovereign soul, wisdom, love, caring, integrity.
So when you see the red flags, you speak up.
You are in part involved in what happened to your boss with the employee who ate a 38 special, as you rather memorably put it.
You speak up!
Thou shalt not bear false witness.
You remember that one at all?
That seems to be a pretty core commandment.
Don't bear false witness.
If you see things that are awry, you sit down with your friend and you say, I think things are awry.
I think things are bad.
Oh, I didn't.
and I'm not responsible for hiring.
Did God put you in this world with the sublime and deep hope that you'd spend your life avoiding responsibility and making excuses?
Now, I'm no theologian, but I'm going to go out on a limb and I'm going to say, God did not put you here to avoid responsibility and make excuses.
God put you here as a moral force for good in the universe, and you are not a moral force for good in the universe to the degree that you avoid responsibility and make excuses.
Whatever good you can do in the world, you And you could have done good here.
And this is not a condemnation.
I'm just telling you, raise your standards.
Right?
This is not a condemnation.
Raise your standards.
Do you have some responsibility in the matter of these terrible employees causing trauma to you and your friend?
Yes, you do.
Because you saw, you said there were two red flags.
I don't care if they've been there for a year or two.
The red flags, you sit down with your boss.
Now, maybe your boss won't listen, but you make the case really strongly and emphatically, there's something wrong with these women.
Here's what I've noticed.
They seem to be, they have this dysfunction, they have that dysfunction, they have bad boyfriends, they, whatever, whatever.
The red flags, whatever they were.
You speak up.
You speak up.
And the reason why you don't speak up is because you have access to these pathetic excuses.
And listen, I've used pathetic excuses myself, so please understand, I'm not condemning you.
We're all in this together.
But stop at the pathetic excuses.
If you don't allow yourself excuses, you just have to do better.
But as long as you continue to allow yourself excuses, you don't have to do better.
But things seemed okay until they weren't.
So...
Thank you.
So it's impossible to know.
There's just no way.
But you also said there are red flags.
Blah, blah, blah.
All right.
Somebody says, oh, this is, I think this is the gentleman who I talked to this afternoon.
you He says, Steph, after reflecting about the earlier Telegram chat, dear Lord, Why did it refresh?
Why did it refresh?
And where did my text go?
We'll find it.
Oh, yes, here we go.
This is the guy.
Steph, after reflecting about the early Telegram chat, I realized that the meanness expectation and the expectation that I can't be mean was the culprit.
Thanks so much for your help.
You're absolutely irreplaceable in the space, as I'm sure you know.
Well, thank you.
I appreciate that.
Kairos says, thank you.
He says, I think of, on truth, the tyranny of illusion, Real-time relationships and peaceful parenting as the ultimate trilogy of books on relationships.
Well, thank you.
I appreciate that.
I think we like to refer to them as the Trinity.
All right.
Hmm.
I haven't heard a Steph rant in a while.
Well, Rantus Interrupters has now been resolved.
So the woman says, oh no, I'm not worried about upsetting him or his parents with the truth.
I just genuinely don't know where to start.
not he's 14 so i can be open about what happened oh my god that's just not true i Oh man, why is everyone just...
It's like goading.
What do you mean you're not worried about upsetting him or his parents?
Saying that your parents got together out of massive dysfunction, And that your mother was a cutter when she was 16 and your father broke up with her and so you're drawn towards these dark nihilistic personalities because that's who your mother was?
You don't think that's going to upset him or his parents?
Oh my god.
It's like, you know I can tell the truth from falsehood, right?
If you're not worried about upsetting him or his parents with the truth, well...
Either you're lying, or you genuinely have no idea what the truth does to dysfunctional people.
Wow.
His dad, my brother, is a pastor, and he appreciates that I'm honest with him and his kids.
His mom might be mad at me, but I'm not too worried about that.
Ah, okay.
So if his father is a pastor who tells the truth, why is his son dating somebody who's a semi-nihilistic goth queen, it sounds like?
Thank you.
Oh, man.
Well, you know what?
Maybe you're right.
Maybe you're totally right.
Maybe I'm completely wrong.
So just go tell the truth, and I'm sure everything will be fine.
Oh, this is the bad secretary.
He says, basically, she met the guy.
She slept with him.
The natural thing happened.
And he told her to do this horrible thing or I'll leave you.
She did the horrible thing and then he immediately left her.
Oh, okay, I get it.
So she slept with a guy who was horrible.
She got pregnant and he said, I'm going to leave you if you don't get an abortion, which is a Hail Mary because he didn't want kids with her.
And then she did the abortion and then he left her.
I realize now I will talk to my boss.
I know what he ignored, why he ignored it.
And I make sure this doesn't happen again.
See?
Still making excuses.
I know what he ignored.
No, you ignored it.
You ignored it.
We all got to watch each other's backs.
You understand?
If you're in a relationship, you are responsible for what happens to the other person.
If you're in a relationship, you claim to care about someone, you are responsible.
Take on responsibility for what?
How did your boss end up with a suicidal employee when you saw the red flags?
Because you didn't step in and intervene.
You didn't say.
You didn't...
do what was necessary to deal with this.
When you're in a relationship, like I am responsible for what happens with my daughter, I am responsible for my wife's happiness.
Now she's responsible for mine.
I get all of that, right?
But if you unite with people in a true, deep, passionate, and powerful way, you unite with them.
You got to watch their backs.
Nobody goes into battle without someone to watch their back, right?
You got to go back to back to face your enemies because you don't have eyes in the back of your head.
So the bad things that happen to your boss are on you because you did not sit down and tell him the truth and keep him safe.
Now, he's got a blind spot.
Guess what?
I have a blind spot.
You have a blind spot.
Everybody's got a blind spot, probably more than one.
And the purpose of relationships is to cover each other's blind spots.
In a world full of evildoers and corruptors, we have to cover each other's blind spots.
Now, you've got this woman.
She's a Christian.
This secretary, right?
And she has unprotected sex with him outside of marriage.
And then she has an abortion.
Now, again, I'm no theologian.
That does not sound excessively Christian to me.
Right?
Thank you.
She's doing everything against God's will and wishes and Jesus' commandments and suggestions and exhortations.
Slept with a guy.
Unprotected sex.
He bullies her.
She has an abortion.
He leaves her.
She kills herself.
Well, an excess of sin It leads to spiritual death for sure, right?
The wages of sin or death.
I'm not talking about suicide, but...
Why did you invite this level of corruption into your life, into your boss's life?
life, why did you let it happen?
All right.
All right.
Question rephrasing.
I'm not asking about the individual whys.
Parents didn't speak about it.
I'm asking, why are all these parts happening as a whole?
I don't know what that means.
Sorry.
Denise says, thank you for the tip.
One last thing, Steph.
I had this thought the other day about you.
Sorry if that's creepy.
That's not creepy at all.
I appreciate the thought.
I really do.
Your mom always wanted to be special, like somehow royalty or that everyone was out to get her medically, etc.
The pure irony of her finally reaching a level of fame, because you got famous and her fame is that she's poorly associated with you or to you for having been an abusive and terrible mother.
Yeah, my mother was always talking about writing her autobiography called One Woman Century.
I agree.
Thank you.
But I guess...
Oh, the guy says, it's a business with like five people.
you're effing right Steph yeah it's a it's a wild thing where you say I'm responsible for what happens to the people Around us.
It's a military thing, right?
You are responsible for your squad mates.
If your squad mate gets injured or shot, you probably messed up.
Everybody's got to take responsibility for everyone else.
In a relationship, right?
right in a relationship.
The relationship stuff I had no idea about until after this all came out I knew she had a boyfriend, but didn't know anything beyond that.
Okay.
Fine.
What were the red flags?
What were the red flags?
And are you also saying that she was going through all of this kind of torment and there was absolutely no sign of it at all in the business or anything to do with that?
No sign of anything at all.
That she was going through being pregnant, tortured, tormented, threatened, bullied.
Abortion, suicidal thoughts, and there was no indication of anything wrong at all in your interactions with, association with, or conversation with her.
Well, I doubt.
I doubt.
Now, you may be Maybe.
Maybe you're avoiding any sense of responsibility, like the what if, what if.
What if I'd done something different?
Well, I don't know.
I doubt it.
I doubt it.
Because I assume that these are women, late 20s, 30s or whatever.
And if people are making those bad decisions at that age, they're likely beyond recovery.
And certainly it's not your job to fix them, right?
Not your job to fix them.
Thank you.
But it is your job to help protect your heart and the heart, the hearts of those around you.
It is your job to build fences, to watch their back, to guard their six, to watch the rear.
It is your job in relationships to see and show.
what people cannot see.
Okay, you say about this woman, the secretary, she lived with her parents, she had a drinking Her work in the last two months had suffered.
I spent five minutes talking to her a week.
I work in the field doing tree work.
You still have an answer See, these are more excuses.
Hey, man, I only talk to her five minutes a week.
I'm not talking about you talking to her, although that wouldn't hurt.
I'm talking about you talking to your boss, your friend, your friend, so you can protect him.
We all have blind spots.
We all need to watch each other's blind spots.
Right?
We're laser-focused, right?
We're a predator of species, which means eyes in the front of our head, laser-focused.
We don't see periphery very well.
We certainly don't see behind us.
We don't have those big, giant chameleon eyes that go 360. We focus.
And the only reason we can focus is other people are supposed to be watching our backs.
Why do you get to focus?
Like a male hunting party, a hunting party, right?
Why do you get to focus on creeping forward and throwing the spear?
Because somebody's watching behind you to make sure nothing's creeping up on you while you're creeping up on something.
You get to focus because other people are watching your back.
If you're in a relationship, you must watch people's back.
They must watch yours.
And if something bad happens to someone you care about, first place you've got to look is in the mirror and say, what did I do wrong?
What did I miss?
What could I have done more?
Now, could you save this woman?
Probably not.
Could you have saved your boss by suggesting he doesn't hire her?
Or he doesn't keep her around when you started to notice the red flags?
Now, you're going to tell me, I get, because, you know, I'm provoking your conscience here, but I'm going to give you 100% responsibility in these things.
What's the option?
See, the moment you give yourself less, it's 100 or 0. The moment you give yourself anything less than 100% self-ownership, you can just haggle your way down to zero.
Well, I wasn't around that much.
Well, I didn't know much about her.
Well, I only talked to her five minutes a week.
Oh, I'm off the hook.
Woo-hoo!
Am I my brother's keeper is a defense.
Hey, man, I can't watch him for everything he does.
I'm not responsible for the guy.
That's a murderer, right?
Where's your brother?
Hey, man, it's not my responsibility.
That's a murderer, right?
That's a bad person.
I'm not calling you a murderer, of course, but, you know, that's the mark of a bad person.
And again, we all have this challenge.
We all have that issue.
But I take very seriously, very seriously, that if I can do something good or tell someone the truth about something that helps them, I mean, I have a responsibility.
I mean, you've heard me struggle with people.
I did a call-in live stream last week, and I was fighting with a guy to try and get him to see something for like an hour, and he didn't see it, right?
But my conscience is clear.
So this is the same person who says, three weeks ago, my boss said that we may need a new secretary after she attempted to kill herself two weeks ago.
What?
She succeeded.
Oh, so she tried to kill herself two weeks ago.
She succeeded Saturday.
I know my boss is blind spot.
I have to deal with that.
Well, I would say that you are, to some degree, your boss's blind spot.
She attempted to kill herself two weeks ago.
Well, what could have happened?
I've not been in this situation as a boss, but I've been...
a boss to many, many people over the course of my career in its various forms.
So if I had an employee who had tried to commit suicide, I would sit down with that employee and I would say, I'm really sorry about the struggles you're going through.
I will give you paid time off.
You need to go and get some help.
You need to go and get some help.
And this is not optional.
I'll give you the paid time off.
But you need to go and get some help.
Like, you can't come into the office.
You need to go and get some help.
Hell, I'll even pay for the help.
But you have to go.
and you have to go and get help.
After the first attempt, she could not go back to work.
Okay?
So did she get the help?
And what would the...
Again, we can go into this.
Probably maybe this is worth a call in because we're just kind of getting drips and drabs here, right?
But I mean, that would be my approach.
You can't come to work.
You need to go and get the help that you need.
And then I would sort of see what would happen.
But it would be with the goal probably of just easing her out.
Like, for me, this is just my personal feeling, right?
This is my personal feeling.
So I am not...
Trying to suggest this as any universal standard of action or anything.
I'm just telling you about my personal feeling.
My personal feeling is that once somebody has threatened or committed suicide, I'm just looking to get them out of my life.
I can't fix that.
I'm not a mental health professional or even an amateur.
I can't fix that.
I'm just looking to ease that person out.
Now, I want to ease that person out as gently and kindly as I can, but I'm not going to have, personally, just my personal, I'm not going to have someone in my life who's threatened or attempted suicide.
I can't have that pressure.
I can't have that potential negativity.
negativity, I just can't have it around.
So, I assume that there was dysfunction in this secretary before she tried to kill herself.
you Thank you.
I don't have people who are going through mental crises in my life.
I mean, sadness, unhappiness, difficulties.
Yeah, we all have that.
I get it.
We all have that.
We all have that.
And I sympathize with that.
And, you know, that's fine.
But I just, once people go to that level of extremity and there's that level of risk and danger and so on.
You know, hey man, good luck.
But to me, that's like somebody says, oh, I have stage 4 cancer or something.
It's like, okay, well, you know, go to the doctor.
It's like, I can't fix that.
I can't.
And I won't try.
And to me, that's just...
The phrase I use in my mind is, good luck with your life elsewhere.
Somebody says, my daughter's mom did that.
Sometimes we don't get second chances to speak.
Oh, you mean she killed herself?
Your daughter's mom?
Your wife?
Your ex-wife?
Your girlfriend?
Your ex-girlfriend?
My daughter's mom did that.
Right, so when you have really destructive and chaotic people in your life, you have to look at yourself and say, who invited them in?
Who invited them in?
Who is responsible for people being in your life or in the lives of people you care about?
You care about your boss.
It's a five-person office, right?
Can you send an acapella of Bohemian Rhapsody for like five to ten seconds, please?
Well, not right now.
Tell me which part you want and maybe I'll record it some other time.
It's something one of my, a guy I did business with many years ago, it was just a statement in passing, but it kind of stuck in my brain like a burr on an elk's ass.
He said, if you let difficult people in your life, your life becomes difficult.
And it's kind of true.
Once people have escalated, once they've shown, That they can't reason with you.
Once they've shown that they have access to that kind of bullying and no particular regrets about it.
Once people have called names.
Once people have sided with an enemy.
Once people have betrayed you in public.
Good luck with your life elsewhere.
Enjoy your life elsewhere.
This person says, regarding suicide...
Nah, she hit the delete button.
She told me she was going to and I did nothing.
Nah, she hit the delete button.
There's a kind of weird callousness in this conversation about suicide.
She ate a 38. She hit the delete button.
I mean, this is a soul self-detonating in existential agony.
She hit the delete button.
That's a little cold, man.
Just my personal experience.
And any age, nah, right?
It's hard to talk about.
But you are talking about it.
And the question is, are you talking about it in a way that transfers your distress to others?
Nah, she hit the delete button.
Like, that's just transferring your distress to others, right?
Yeah, you're right, James.
There are two people doing this in the convo tonight, and I sympathize.
I really do.
I've never had a suicide in my life.
I've never had a suicide or even a suicide threat.
I wouldn't, like, in a million years have that anywhere close to me.
And you can usually see that stuff kind of.
All right.
So I'm going to have to move on from the cold metaphorical dismissal of suicide to somebody wrote, you have previously expressed a dislike of Stephen King's work.
Have you considered how the book film It is a great metaphor for childhood trauma and how adults show indifference and pretend not to acknowledge childhood suffering?
Just curious, I find the idea fascinating.
Alright, so let's go back to the beginning.
I've done a film review of It, so you can look at that.
But my understanding is that in the book, Stephen King writes about an underage child orgy, which is beyond creepy.
But let's look at the story Carrie.
So in the story Carrie, there is a mother who is a sick Christian fundamentalist religious fanatic.
So the anti-Christian forces in the world are constantly looking to promote people who mock, undermine, and oppose Christianity.
you Right.
So would he have got his start?
Would he have gotten his start?
And he's a good writer, obviously.
He's a solid writer.
But would he have gotten his start if he had not been mocking and opposing?
And undermining and attacking Christianity?
I don't think so.
And the film It, if I remember it rightly, starts out with a clown chewing a child's arm off in the rain.
That's just sick sadism, man.
That's just six-eight, isn't it?
And any culture that celebrates that or promotes that or consumes that or pays for that is a culture tottering on its last collapsing sadomasochistic legs.
Monstrous.
All right.
you Any other last questions, comments, challenges?
I think somebody's typing, so I'd like to give them the opportunity.
The opportunity.
And of course, if you would like to help out the show, freedomain.com slash donate to help out, I would very deeply and humbly and gratefully appreciate that.
All right, I think, I think we're probably done.
Yes.
All right.
Well, thanks everyone so much for a great chat this evening.
I really, really do appreciate it.
And freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show.
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I would find that very helpful and encouraging, right?
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And, oh, wait, no, and I did a call this morning, too.
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