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April 25, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:55:42

Grandparent Slaughter Destroyed My Father!?! Freedomain Call In

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Time	Text
	How's it going?
	I'm doing good.
	How are you?
	I'm well, thanks.
	I'm well, thanks.
	Yeah, I'm obviously keen to help.
	You didn't provide a lot of details, which is fine, in the call and request.
	So if you just want to tell me what's going on, I'm happy to help.
	Yeah, as I was typing the information about the call and request, I had to retype it and type it again because there's just so many...
	Too many things I wanted to ask you.
	And because I've been listening to your work from all the coin shows and all the other live scenes for so long, I just started having a modern love between me and my imaginary staff.
	And then it just went on and on, so I just decided to stop and just ask you.
	Request a call first off and then maybe you could help me unpack all the thinking and just help me laser focus on what matters and just help me cut down some of that.
	Like, in the narratives that I'm telling myself and so-and-so just like to not be as confused.
	Yeah, that's kind of how I roll, so tell me a little bit about your life at the moment.
	I have, you mean just general details?
	Well, I mean, we can't do specific details without the general details first, so yeah, I mean, you said you're 30 and you're not.
	Particularly excited about where your life is.
	So tell me a little bit.
	I mean, the general, the two things that philosophy can help the most with are work and love, right?
	The romantic love and productive work.
	So how are those two areas of your life?
	Oh, yeah.
	The work is actually going quite good.
	It's going quite good as in like I'm not making a lot of money, but the general direction is pretty set.
	And I have started.
	I've started a business already and I've been started for five years and just starting to get a hang of it.
	And then as well as found my direction, got my market and started to know what I'm doing and what is it that I'm offering that's unique to the market and so forth.
	So your business has been running for five years?
	Yeah, I started for more than five years, a little over five years, yes.
	So, I mean, you don't have to give me any, obviously, details, but...
	Oh, no, don't worry.
	It can be as open as possible.
	Okay, so roughly, just in general, you said you're not making much money.
	I'll be talking, if we can talk US dollars, like, I don't know, 25, 50, 100 thou a year.
	Like, when you say you're not making much money after more than five years in business, what do you mean?
	I mean, alright, so let me pull out a calculator and work some works.
	Thank you.
	I'm probably better at math than I am.
	I'm just going to go with the cliche of the accent.
	Get the currencies.
	Hold on.
	Let me see.
	I mean, I was trying to follow the currencies in Squid Game and my head exploded.
	It's just like, looks like a lot of money.
	My bad.
	No, that's fine.
	I'm the one who's asking you questions to translate numbers, so take your time.
	Okay, so after expenses, I take home about 40k a year.
	Okay, and that's after more than five years?
	Yes.
	Your business blows, man!
	Oh, man, hearing you say that.
	Why so little?
	And I wouldn't say that to everyone, but just because you're a listener to this show, so I'm going to put you in the top 1% of intelligence.
	You've heard me talk about it.
	Is it the wrong field?
	Are you not working hard?
	Is there too much competition?
	Is there no market demand?
	Is everything you do...
	Like, why, after five years plus in business, you're making $40k a year, which is $20 an hour.
	What's not working for you or for the business?
	It makes some horrendously bad calls.
	Well, sure.
	Listen, everybody in business does.
	I mean, I could certainly look at my own business call podcasting and say some slightly questionable calls in terms of success.
	I assume that in five-plus years, which is a long time, obviously, more than half a decade, so in five-plus years, I assume that you found ways to make better decisions.
	Only just.
	Only just.
	Sorry, only just?
	What does that mean?
	Only just recently?
	Yeah, only just recently I found ways of making better decisions.
	So why do you think it took you almost half a decade to learn to make better decisions?
	Again, knowing that you're a very smart fellow, I assume that it's a lack of mentoring, isolation, or emotional issues, or something like that, which I say...
	Yeah, a combination of all three.
	I pretty much started from zero.
	My life has gotten to a point where I...
	I have nothing, and then I used all I had to go to the business registration department, the government department, and just get the license and then pay that month's rent, and that's it.
	So I built from there.
	Right.
	That doesn't answer...
	I mean, the fact that you started with nothing, well, okay, that's a lot of entrepreneurs.
	That certainly was my case when I first started business in my 20s.
	So, I understand that.
	So, you are a one-person business?
	Because you said after expenses.
	I don't know if that's labor.
	Yeah, labor included.
	Okay, so how many people work or are paid by your business, including you?
	Including me?
	We have about four to five part-times and one that is like work from home.
	A half-time kind of deal.
	Okay, so you have a half a dozen part-timers and then yourself who's full-time, right?
	Yes, yes, yes.
	And how many hours a week do you work on your business?
	Let's see.
	you.
	times 5.8.
	Actually, about 40 hours a week.
	Okay.
	And so, the 40 grand that you have at the end of the year, is that your pay?
	I mean, not at the end of the year, but is that your income?
	Including my income, yes.
	Okay, got it.
	All right.
	So, have you ever had any mentors or...
	People interested in your business who've given you advice, or have you ever paid for consultants with experience to evaluate your business and so on?
	No.
	No.
	And why do you think that's the case?
	Thank you.
	Because I can't trust the business consultants.
	not?
	I'm just going to be straight.
	I'm just going to be straight.
	Because I'm in a tutoring kind of business.
	And the market here, the market in the place that I am, it's messed up.
	The way they teach kids is messed up.
	And I want to do things differently.
	I want to teach them, because I listen to you, so I use...
	Like, a lot of non-aggression principle stuff, and I, like, try to talk to the parents.
	Like, I do a lot of things that, to them, without talking to them, I already know that to them, oh, these are just, like, not a good idea, or these are, like, money-wasting, or it's not the way to make money, etc., etc., etc.
	And I already know, like, yeah.
	So I just couldn't really listen to them.
	Okay.
	I mean, there would be people who would...
	Evaluate your business independent of the moral content of what you're doing, which would be, you know, your marketing, your sales pipeline, and all of that kind of stuff, right?
	Yeah, well, in those cases, I'm also a little bit scared of, like, I don't know, like, scared, but wanting people to tell me actually how to improve, but...
	I didn't have the connection, so I just didn't reach out for advice.
	Okay.
	Can you tell me a little...
	You're not an only child, are you?
	No, I do have a brother.
	Okay.
	So tell me a little bit about your childhood.
	Oh, uh...
	Crap suit.
	Sorry for that.
	Does that count as swear words?
	I'm not sure.
	I'm the last person to complain about salty language, so...
	Don't worry about that.
	Where do you want to begin?
	It's your childhood, bro.
	I'm not supposed to know.
	I just said I listened to all the calls.
	I'm never going to go rubber bones.
	I'm never going to laugh about something that's really awful.
	I'm never going to gaslight.
	I'm never going to fog.
	Look, it looks easy until you're doing it, right?
	And I get that.
	So don't worry about that.
	But yeah, just tell me about your childhood.
	Right.
	Basically, it was hell.
	It was hell.
	Because I grew up in Southeast Asia.
	And ever since early childhood, ever since when I was early, I didn't know how to properly fit it.
	And then starting from fourth grade, an issue starts to show up and my parents did not know what to do.
	They say there weren't any gifted programs or they have no idea what to do back then.
	And then I started to encounter problems.
	Sorry, were you testing?
	Sorry, were you in the gifted category and there were just no programs for it?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Not exactly.
	Because my mom took me to Tet and came out with an IQ of 128 overall.
	But she never got the report.
	And so there's no...
	I guess the report's supposed to tell you different areas, right?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Verbal and, yeah, yeah.
	Yeah, never really got that.
	I just got, like, an overall, like, an overall.
	But, like, now that I've grown, like, you know, I spent 30 years with me, so I know, like, probably some areas I'm way above 120 and some areas I'm just, like, I'm just, like, a retard, basically.
	No.
	No, no, no.
	That's not, no, that's not the case.
	That's not how IQ works.
	So, with regards to IQ, again, this is just the general theory.
	Who knows what it is in every specific case?
	But with IQ, there are areas where you are very good, right?
	Could be spatial reasoning, could be language, could be math or something like that.
	And there are areas where you have really great abilities.
	And then there are other areas where you feel dumb, but you're probably still above the average.
	So I'm obviously very good with reasoning and analogies and language, and then I feel less smart when it comes to math.
	And I certainly am, but I'm still above the average when it comes to math.
	So it's kind of like if you're a baseball player, you're really good at baseball.
	And then you start to do some other sport and you feel really bad at it, but you're still probably above the average because you're just athletic and have that.
	So when I experience how easy it is for me with language, and then I struggle sometimes a bit with math, I feel, compared to my language, it feels stupid, but it's not.
	It's just compared to the facility I have with language, I'm still above average when it comes.
	To math.
	And I do actually, you know, I help my daughter with her homework and I do some math stuff for business and so on.
	So I'm still above average, but just compare.
	And of course, I had a friend, a couple of friends who were just fantastic at math when I was growing up.
	And they just found it super easy in the same way that I find language and analogies.
	They just pop into my head.
	And, you know, I had one of my best friends when I was growing up got more than 100% in math.
	Yeah, there'd be a couple of bonus questions, and so he had more than 100% in math.
	And so I would look at his math skills and say, oh, that's brilliant.
	But, you know, then he would look at my language skills and say, that's pretty good, right?
	Like, I ran a dungeon in Dungeons& Dragons that was, you know, extremely popular, went on for a long time, and he ran a dungeon that was mostly empty of things and people.
	It was this big, giant void.
	And so, yeah, don't think of yourself.
	As dumb in the areas where you don't have the peaks.
	They're not valleys, they're just not peaks as high.
	And so they look lower, but they're not probably below the average.
	So I just wanted to sort of mention that as a whole.
	But sorry, go ahead.
	So I'm basically, like, apparently, like, from what I remember back in school, they had a program for, like, kids that are, like, gene journal over 130.
	But because I'm, like, shy two points.
	I didn't qualify for it for whatever reason.
	That's just a general memory I had of the situation.
	Well, sorry to interrupt again.
	That's not the issue.
	Again, I don't know how strict these rules are, but if your parents...
	I don't know if this makes the same thing in your culture, but in the West we call it going to bat.
	Go to bat for someone, right?
	So if your parents went to bat for you and said, come on, he's two points shy.
	Let's test him again.
	Let's get him into this program.
	What do we need to do?
	Like, they'd find some way to get you into the program.
	Yeah, they didn't.
	Right, so I think it's not so much not getting into the program, it's not having parents who say, look, I mean, he's two points shy.
	Do you think he's going to be fine with the average kids, right?
	So, of course, in Southeast Asia, the average IQ is like 105.
	Right?
	So you are, you know, 20, what, 23 points.
	So you're almost two standard deviations above the average, which means that you're really not going to have much in common.
	And it's going to be like trying to have conversations.
	Not quite with houseplants, but not quite the opposite of that either.
	So your parents would say, come on, let's get this guy into the right intellectual arena because he's going to be horribly bored.
	And they would want to get you.
	Into the gifted program, because otherwise your social life is going to suffer enormously, because you're going to feel way out of place.
	One of the vivid memories of me listening to your show is when you said your tribe is smart people.
	This is years ago, and I just remember standing in front of the street, just bawling.
	I'm sorry about that.
	And I'll tell you this, like, I mean, I obviously have very smart people in my life, and that's really just out of kindness and preference, right?
	But, of course, every now and then, God help me, I have to call tech support, or I have to deal with somebody, I have to return something, and I have to genuinely experience that thousand-yard stare of watching the average person try to puzzle through something where they don't have a script.
	Right?
	And it's not their fault.
	I'm not even frustrated, but I do have sort of mild, like, oh, God, yeah, I remember what this was like when I was trapped in a whole room for these people for more than a decade, right?
	I mean, because I was generally carved off from the...
	There was no official gifted programs as a whole, but I was always put in my own room with one or two other kids, and I was just told, you know, like, just read books and, you know, do what you want because, you know, there's really nothing that we can...
	We can teach you, right?
	I mean, I was reading Crime and Punishment pretty young, and they were like, well, as we work through the Bob books, really.
	So it was kind of recognized that I was different and unique.
	Now, my mother didn't have anything to do with that.
	But then, of course, when I came to Canada, I was put back to grades, not due to any particular issue that I had, but just because they were really focused on keeping people in the same age cohort, which, you know, I don't know, so long ago, maybe it was a good or bad thing.
	But my mother did not go to bat for me and say, look, come on, I mean, he's been in gifted programs.
	Even if they've had to invent them for him, he's been in gifted programs pretty much his whole life.
	Please don't put him in.
	And I just remember going to grade six.
	I was in grade eight for a while.
	When we first moved to Canada, we were in a different city.
	And then when we came to Toronto, I was put back in grade six.
	And I remember, you know, the first recess, all of the boys were chasing the girls around and punching them in the groin.
	And I was like, what kind of Lord of the Flies scenario have I washed up on?
	So, yeah, it's rough and it's not people's fault any more than it's their fault if they're short or anything like that.
	But just because it's not somebody's fault that they're short doesn't mean that you want them on your basketball team, right?
	So, yeah, it doesn't sound like how involved were your parents in your...
	You said you didn't fit in, but it's part of your parents' job to, A, put you in a situation where you can fit in, and B, you know, model and teach you some social skills, because it doesn't come in any way to us.
	We have to be taught those things.
	Non-existence.
	Oh, were they very isolated themselves, or did they not have a social group themselves?
	My dad worked two jobs.
	And my mom was just outdoing her thing.
	What does outdoing her thing mean?
	I'm not sure what that means.
	She had her own, at various points, she had her own business and she was out socializing or doing whatever.
	One of the very whole points of my childhood is being locked in the house because we're not allowed to go anywhere.
	And calling, I could never reach my mother through phone.
	It would always just go to voicemail.
	And then calling my dad, just doesn't matter what I was asking him to do, the answer is always no.
	And it was just there, trapped in, in the box of the apartment.
	I mean, I'm not going to try and paint with too broad a brush here, but as far as I understand it, like, violent crime rates in Southeast Asia are not through the roof.
	So why were you stuck at home?
	Why weren't you allowed to go out and roam the neighborhood and find friends and play and negotiate and all of that kind of stuff?
	I do not know.
	Well, your father must have said something about, don't go out, did he say, because?
	Me, I tried finding spare keys around the house.
	Maybe we can go outside and stuff like that.
	But no, just the answer was no.
	You couldn't go out.
	You couldn't go down.
	Just no.
	Was that common?
	I mean, were there other kids out?
	Or was it just generally, culturally, kids just get locked up like prisoners?
	Yeah, culturally.
	Because I remember watching the TV.
	And then, like, in the advertisement, there's, like, the government telling people, like, just keep their kids home or something like that.
	I think it has to do with the culture.
	And was it out of a fear of, like, I don't know, kidnapping or crime?
	Or, like, why keep kids home?
	I mean, there's a whole big, beautiful world out there.
	Yeah, yeah, it could be something like that.
	There were other running around, too.
	Other kids were allowed to roam the neighborhood.
	Because in Southeast Asia, we have these estates.
	So it's basically a couple of...
	Let me see.
	Five or six skyscrapers.
	I grew up in something similar, but it was not.
	It was five stories, not...
	You know, 50 stories.
	But yeah, I know it's a bunch of apartment buildings.
	There's some greenery around and it usually doesn't have a road going through it.
	So it should be a good environment for kids to go play, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	But we're never allowed out.
	We're never allowed out.
	That's interesting.
	I mean, I understand how it serves the powers that be that kids aren't allowed to go out and play because then they learn how to negotiate.
	They don't need the government as much and they learn.
	But the funny thing, too, is that, of course, you know, certainly with your age.
	People think that the dangers are out there in the world.
	It's like, nope, the dangers are on the internet, which is home, right?
	So that's the problem.
	I mean, it's a funny thing that people say, well, kids roaming around, they might meet creeps.
	It's like, right, because there's no creeps on the internet.
	That's just a completely creep-free zone.
	So I just find it odd, and it's sort of very old-fashioned thinking.
	You know, the number of, of course, people that I've talked to over the course of this show who, you know...
	Became, you know, pornography addicts and all kinds of crazy stuff because they were home or, you know, got into really, you know, weird and creepy ideologies because they were home and alone.
	So it's this funny thing which is like, out there is danger.
	It's like, I think the danger is coming from inside the house, for the most part.
	Yeah.
	And, well, actually, in my case, when I was, you know, during the primary school age, That thing didn't exist because my dad would unplug all the TVs and just take the computer with him to work.
	Sorry, he would unplug the what?
	He would unplug the TV and take the cables with him to work.
	And then he would also take the whole desktop.
	Oh, so you had no computer, no TV?
	Yep.
	So what were you supposed to do?
	I mean, I'm not saying that there's nothing to do with that.
	I was trying to explain to my daughter.
	Occasionally, I've tried to explain to my daughter what it was like growing up without TV, internet, or anything like that.
	But, you know, we would be bored at home, so we would go out, right?
	And so the punishment when I was a kid was being grounded, like you have to stay home.
	That was a punishment.
	Whereas now, the punishment is like you're grounded outside.
	You've got to go outside, away from the screens.
	Were you supposed to just study and read, or what were you supposed to do, you and your brother?
	No, we weren't supposed to do anything.
	Nobody cared what we did.
	And what age were you that you remember you and your brother being home alone?
	That would be, let me see, I would be about 8 to 10, so 6 to 10. And is your brother older or younger?
	Younger.
	So are you saying at the age of six, you were left home alone?
	Yeah, that would be the memory, yes.
	If we're not in school and on other activities, that's where we will be.
	Okay, are you near a computer at the moment?
	No, but I have my phone with me.
	You have your phone, okay.
	Could you do me a favor?
	Could you just look up, and you don't have to tell me your country.
	But can you look up what age children are allowed to be home alone in your country, like legally?
	Oh, in that case, there will be a detail because I had a grandpa that lived like a door down, like two doors down.
	So it's not technically alone.
	No, no, that's, you know, I'm just curious what the law is.
	All right, all right, all right.
	So, give me a second here.
	Because if you're six, how much younger is your brother?
	Two years younger.
	Okay, so if you're six and he's four and something happens, you know, to you, will the four-year-old know to which door to go, to knock, to get your grandpa?
	Like, even if he's two doors down, he's still four.
	Yeah, so I was basically in charge of taking care of him.
	Well, no, but if something happened to you, then he would be alone at the age of four.
	Okay. Thank you.
	Oh, it's 16 or under.
	Okay, so your parents are criminals.
	It's criminal neglect, criminal negligence.
	They would get their asses thrown in jail, or some significant repercussion.
	Let's say you're supposed to, quote, take care of your brother, whatever the hell that means when you're six.
	Let me ask you this.
	What's the legal age in your country to be a babysitter?
	Let me see.
	Now, usually, I mean, there's some informal stuff within the family, but usually...
	There is an age at which you are legally allowed to be a babysitter, to take care of strangers' children, and so on.
	Yeah, I'm not getting...
	It's not really a thing here, so I'm not really getting it.
	Got it.
	Okay.
	I think in some places it's 12 or whatever it is.
	Like, you can't be a babysitter at the age of six.
	Right?
	So, okay.
	So, your parents were criminally negligent in leaving children alone, right?
	So, you're supposed to take care of your four-year-old brother when you're six.
	Well, let's say you fall down, or you trip, and you bang your head against the kitchen counter, and you're unconscious, and you're bleeding, right?
	What is a four-year-old supposed to do about that?
	Nothing.
	Well, I mean, maybe he might remember to go to your...
	Grandpas, but who knows?
	He might just be shocked and appalled.
	He might think you're just taking a nap.
	He might wander off and go and play with his toys, and then you just bleed out and die.
	And again, I know that that's an extreme situation, but let's say that there's a gas stove.
	Maybe there's a gas leak, or maybe somebody turned on the gas without lighting it, and then there's a funny smell.
	But what is a four-year-old or a six-year-old supposed to do with a funny smell?
	What if somebody knocks on the door?
	I guess you were told, like, never answer the door.
	Is that right?
	Yeah.
	Right.
	So this is appalling.
	It's criminal.
	And I say criminal, even in a free society, that would be criminal.
	Like in a truly free, like, ANCAP society, you can't leave a six-year-old and a four-year-old.
	You said your father worked two jobs.
	Your mother had a business, so she was gone a lot.
	How much time would you spend alone?
	I know it's hard to remember sometimes at the age of six.
	How much time would you spend alone with your brother?
	If we're not in school, two to three, like, during the school days, it would be two to three hours.
	But, like, on the weekends and on the summer holidays, it's just days after days.
	My God, now...
	Your grandfather, was he on your mother's side or your father's side?
	It's my father's.
	Okay, so what the ever-living hell was your grandfather doing not knocking his kids' heads together or his son and daughter-in-law and saying, you can't leave children unattended when they're four and six?
	Like, what was he doing?
	I mean, he knew, right?
	He knew about all of this.
	Yeah, he knew.
	So, I mean...
	Why wasn't he...
	I mean, it's an elder respect culture.
	So why wouldn't he say, you can't possibly do this?
	I actually don't know why he didn't say it.
	Actually, I don't think he'd find it because he would come over to check on us from time to time, so I think.
	But I don't know why.
	I don't know why, Steph.
	I really don't.
	I mean, that's very strange to me.
	It's very strange.
	Just to add on to, as you were talking about how we had to stay at home for a long time, and I always had to be extra careful just to avoid anything that you mentioned,
	because I know I would be alone, and I had to take care of my brother.
	Oh, like to avoid doing anything dangerous?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Avoid doing anything dangerous.
	It's just from a very young, I know to not take those risks because I cannot afford to.
	Well, and that probably has had an effect on your business.
	Okay.
	All right.
	So when you did something your parents didn't like, were you disciplined or how did that go?
	Yeah, disciplined.
	And how?
	How? How?
	Um. Uh.
	Thank you.
	We have these sticks that are kind of flexible, but they were used to hit us.
	I would get hit and then my dad would go completely cold and start asking rhetorical questions.
	And that was just like, I don't know, like, it's mentally devastating because it would go cold and then go, I don't care, and then just, and then start asking us, like, rhetorical questions, but with this completely just ice,
	like, cold-blooded face.
	Well, and with violence at the end of it.
	Yeah, but it's only reserved for, like, Very serious stuff, like lying and others.
	Lying?
	Yeah, you know, when kids would lie.
	No, no, I know that kids lie.
	But your parents were criminally negligent, but they were really upset when you lied.
	That's crazy.
	Yeah, they were really upset.
	I mean, they're putting their children in constant danger, but heaven forbid those children lie.
	I mean, you guys were unparented.
	I mean, you were punished, but you were unparented in that your parents didn't give you advice or values or morals or they didn't give you examples of how to interact with people.
	I mean, did your parents say anything to you when you were a kid that was good advice that you still find helpful and useful to this day?
	Morals were drilled into us.
	Ah, okay.
	So what did they say?
	Thank you.
	We had to be responsible.
	I'm sorry.
	The parents who abandoned their children at the age of four and six, pretty much, left them alone sometimes for hours or, well, I mean, I know they'd be back at night, but, you know, during the day, days in summer vacations and so on.
	So the parents who abandoned their children to their fate and refused to raise them or protect them in any meaningful way, We're very keen on responsibility.
	Yes.
	Okay, so what we're supposed to be...
	Oh, you have to be responsible for your brother?
	Yep, and we have to be responsible for...
	Well, I personally...
	I have to be responsible for pretty much everything that goes on.
	What do you mean?
	Because if my brother messed up, if my brother...
	Did something wrong or if he, like, I would be the one that had to answer for it.
	And if, for example, if we were out with a group of friends or if something, like, some things that happened, like, something bad that happened to me or just, or we were, like, not quite,
	I wouldn't quite say bullied at that time, but...
	When there are, like, arguments and when things happen, it will always be my fault.
	Yeah, it will always be my fault.
	It will always be, well, you must have done something to cause it.
	You must have done something.
	What did you do?
	Okay, so the older people are responsible for the younger people.
	You're responsible for your brother.
	And if something goes wrong with your brother, it's your fault.
	But if something goes wrong with you, it's apparently not your parents' fault at all.
	No.
	So the older people have to take care of the younger people, except the adults don't have to take care of the children.
	And the older people are responsible for negative outcomes for the younger people, except your parents, whereas if there's a negative outcome for you, that's 100% your fault and they have no responsibility.
	Yeah, pretty much it.
	Okay, so that's morally corrupt, deranged, and insane.
	I'll just be straight up frank with that.
	To say that the six-year-old has total moral responsibility for the four-year-old, but the people in their 30s or 40s have zero moral responsibility for their children is fucking corrupt beyond words.
	It's psycho, in my view.
	The worst part of it is because my brother used to get pretty violent.
	Because he's always been, like, a physical kid, you know?
	Yeah, he's a boy.
	Yeah, I got it.
	And so he would use his hands a lot.
	And I couldn't fight back.
	Oh, you mean like he would...
	Yeah, you can't fight back because you're older, right?
	And you're also going to get in trouble if your brother gets injured.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	And...
	And I always knew that I'm bigger, and I always knew that I'm stronger, so if I...
	So it was never an option to fight back.
	It has to be some other way.
	Well, sorry, let's say that you had hit him back, right?
	And would he have gone crying to your parents, and you would have been punished with the sticks?
	Not sticks, but they would give me a hell of a guilt trip.
	I'm sorry, I thought you said that there was a switch, or the switch was the word in my mind, that there was something physical that you were hit with.
	I'm sorry if I misunderstood.
	Yeah, no, it was sticks.
	You can think of it as a type of bamboo stick, but not like the hard kind.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	The soft kind is like for whipping, right?
	Like it whips.
	Yeah, it whips, yes.
	Those are generally reserved for when I lie.
	Right.
	So, your brother, I'm just sort of trying to puzzle this out, because I think it's quite a common thing these days, that one of the reasons there's so much trolling and dysfunction on the internet is so many kids have grown up without consequences.
	And that's because they lack father figures.
	So, for mothers, Their instinct is to not have children learn from consequences, which is entirely appropriate when we're talking about babies and toddlers, right?
	You don't let a toddler who's learning how to walk figure out how dangerous the stairs are on his own because, right, that's too dangerous.
	But when you get older, you have to learn negative consequences and that's how you learn some sort of, you know, self-restraint and decorum.
	And when I was a kid and as a teenager, You didn't run your mouth because you'd get beaten up.
	And, you know, nothing really would happen to the people who beat you up.
	And so you learn to moderate your language because there are negative consequences.
	And so if your brother grew up without negative consequences, and, you know, if this is not the case, of course, set me straight.
	If your brother grew up with no negative consequences, then he's going to be wild.
	Because it's sort of like, there's this guy, I can't remember his name, he's like some YouTuber, Jack, some Irish name or something like that.
	And I saw a video of him the other day where he was squirting people with a water gun, young men with a water gun, and they were getting annoyed.
	But then he's got this big security that holds people back.
	Or I remember seeing a video of the same guy throwing his shoulders into people as he's walking down the street, and the people get mad, but then he hides behind his security.
	And so people get really trollish when they don't suffer any negative consequences for bad behavior.
	And, of course, I'm not necessarily talking about punishment.
	I'm just talking about consequences.
	Which is, when I was a teenager, or I guess even a kid, you didn't just randomly run your mouth and insult people and so on, because you could get pushed, you could get hit, you could get...
	And that's just sort of a consequence thing that happens, and one of the reasons I think that women are so sort of wild these days is because they live these fairly consequence-free lives.
	If they get knocked up out of wedlock, they get welfare.
	Don't like their husband, they get half his stuff.
	If they make false accusations, they're very rarely punished.
	So we have this sort of consequence-free life, which makes people vaguely aristocratic, like they're the king's kid or Huda and Hussein for sons of Saddam Hussein and so on.
	So if your brother grew up without negative consequences, he can just do and say whatever he wants.
	And he will be shielded from the consequences because it's always your fault.
	That's very, very disturbing on the personality as a whole, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, but it will only happen when I'm the responsible.
	Because when the time that, for example, dad is here or when he was in school, he wouldn't act this way.
	Sure.
	Yeah, yeah, no, I get that, because then there might be more consequences, but he's still got an entire environment where he can do whatever he wants, and you're going to get blamed for everything, right?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	And that's a typical parental strategy to turn the brothers against each other.
	I mean, there's a couple of different ways to turn siblings against each other.
	Obviously, have an obvious favorite, and then that breeds resentment from the least favorite towards the more favorite.
	Another one, of course, is to say, usually to the oldest kid, For your younger brother, and if anything bad happens, I'm going to blame you, because that turns you from potential allies into, you know, you're like, you resent him because he's limiting your freedom and you're going to be blamed for things that he does.
	It also gives the younger brother too much power, and that causes problems in terms of the hierarchy.
	So there's lots of different ways that parents can turn siblings against each other, but it sounds like you're...
	Your parents used most of them.
	Yeah, so that was the relatively happy or relatively happy part of it.
	Happy part of the childhood.
	Oh, okay.
	I'm bracing myself for what comes next.
	If isolation and imprisonment and occasional beatings, if that's the good part, You'll have to tell me what comes next.
	Oh, that's the good part.
	That's the good part, Steph.
	Because there was still...
	Well, anyways.
	And then as I grew, I get to be more difficult.
	I wasn't learning in school.
	I couldn't understand what the teachers were telling me.
	Sorry, why couldn't you understand?
	Because the way that they pass through the knowledge doesn't make sense.
	It makes sense in a very rudimentary level.
	And to me, I just look at it and go, but what if...
	Because when I learn, I'm the kind of person that I have to argue with the thing.
	I have to argue with the knowledge.
	I have to absorb it.
	I have to come up with other examples.
	What about this?
	Sorry to interrupt.
	Yeah, like all intelligent people, when you hear a general rule, you want to figure out the exceptions.
	That's Socratic reasoning, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	So I would start to argue with it, and they couldn't answer me.
	They couldn't make it make sense.
	Okay.
	And so I just stopped paying attention.
	I just stopped because it just...
	It just sounds like, I don't know, in my young mind, it's probably just so boring and just so dry, and I just lost interest.
	Well, you recognize that it's not the truth, like instinctively.
	I mean, most intelligent kids go through this where they say, the parents say, it's really important to tell the truth, right?
	Got to tell the truth, got to be honest, right?
	And then you say, you know, some auntie's over who's really fat, and then you say, Why is auntie so fat?
	And it's an honest question, and you're telling the truth.
	Auntie is fat, and what happens?
	Well, you get, it's horrifying.
	It's appalling.
	It's terrible.
	How dare you, right?
	And then it's like, okay, so I'm supposed to tell the truth, but I'm not supposed to tell the truth.
	Or if your father had too much to drink one night, and you are talking to the family the next day, and you say, Dad was really drunk last night, which is a true statement.
	Well, suddenly it's bad, it's wrong, it's no good, you're disrespectful, and it's like, okay, so I'm supposed to tell the truth, but I'm not supposed to tell the truth.
	And so the truth is not an absolute value, there's something else.
	Because the truth can be attacked, and so on, right?
	Or if you're in school and you're bored and you raise your hand to the teacher and you say, I'm bored.
	This is really boring.
	Well, you're telling the truth, you're being honest, right?
	And then you get punished.
	Right?
	So, none of this, right?
	None of this really makes any sense.
	Or, you know, if you're a kid and, you know, you've studied some libertarianism or whatever, and the teacher says, well, you shouldn't use violence to get your way, and then you say, well, hang on, but your entire paycheck is founded on coercive redistribution of wealth.
	Right, then suddenly it would be really bad, even though you're trying to point out an inconsistency and you're being honest about your thoughts.
	Yeah, those are no goals.
	Well, you know, it's like in America, it's like, we need to have an honest conversation about race.
	Well, I gave that a try.
	Right?
	Or, you know, the typical woman says, well, tell me what you're feeling, right?
	Or tell me what you're thinking.
	And you say, you know, I think you've gained some weight.
	Oh, no!
	So, you know, do people want the truth or not?
	That's sort of a foundational question in society.
	Do people want the truth, right?
	And then, so, yeah, but anyway, your work is awesome, Steph.
	I know you took a beating in the de-platforming and stuff, but honestly, you earned my respect, and the whole reason I wanted to call you and listen to all your shows is just partly because...
	Like, I started to listen to you because of those things.
	It's like, oh, these people are saying that this is such a bad guy, so let me listen to what you have to say.
	No, and I appreciate what you're saying, and I absolutely appreciate your sympathy and your thoughts.
	I honestly view it as a liberation.
	It's like getting fired from a really bad job.
	You know, you're like, oh my god, this is shocking.
	And then, like, you're like, wait a minute, I'm a lot happier now.
	So, yeah, I much prefer doing this to that.
	And there's lots of people who can do the politics stuff.
	But I think that this kind of stuff, this sort of self-knowledge stuff and the parenting stuff and all of that, I think that's something that's not as common.
	And I don't know anyone else who can do these kinds of call-in shows.
	Like, it's not even close.
	So, I think you kind of...
	It was a reminder, in a sense, from the world and the universe to do that which is more unique to my skills.
	Yeah, thank God for that.
	So after I started to hit primary five, and then I started to kick into my rebellious face, and I started to not listen to the teachers at all.
	Because at that time, I'm already going home from school by myself already.
	So I'm talking about like 11, 10 and 11, I'm already going home by myself.
	Sometimes I have to take care of my little brother with me.
	But not only school, I would start rebelling against the teachers.
	I would not pay attention in class.
	I would just go to the library, start to borrow novels, and I would just read under.
	I would just read novels while they're having class or whatever.
	I would just sit at the back of the class and I would just pull up books after books and just start reading.
	And then the rebellious phase kicks up at home too.
	I started to time my dad, like time his shift timing so that when I get home, I wouldn't have to see him.
	So I would stay out.
	I would hang out in shopping malls.
	I'm sorry, what were you most trying to avoid with your father?
	Just a cold-blooded rhetorical question, to be honest.
	Right, okay.
	And I assume, like most power plays, it was great for him to ask you questions, but you sure as hell were never allowed to ask him any difficult questions.
	Yeah, well, asking questions to my dad was not a good idea.
	Actually, I wouldn't even think about it.
	It wouldn't even occur to me back then to ask him questions.
	Yeah, I mean, it's a foundational question in all relationships.
	What happens if I disagree?
	What happens if I disagree?
	Am I allowed to disagree?
	Are you curious about my disagreements?
	Am I allowed to have a different opinion?
	Can we talk about it?
	Am I allowed to disagree?
	And if you're not allowed to disagree, then you'll be the narcissist.
	Yeah.
	And then, so I would start to time that, and I would become increasingly difficult for my mother.
	I would ask her tons of questions, and she did not like those.
	What sort of questions?
	I would...
	I would ask her...
	I would ask her...
	I would question...
	How could I say it?
	She would make a decision and I would ask why.
	I would say, I disagree.
	And then...
	So basically, like in Asia, this red pocket thing is kind of a thing for Chinese New Year, right?
	And so she would...
	It's customary for the kids to give it all to their parents, and then the parents kind of save it up for them, etc., etc., right?
	I'm sorry, a red pocket?
	Red rocket?
	I didn't quite get into that.
	Yeah, a red pocket.
	It's like money.
	It's like when you are...
	It's like, you know, birthday, your grandma had you 20 bucks.
	Okay, got it.
	But in the cultural context, it's like that.
	But it's like for every Chinese New Year, it's customary for the elders to give the younger generation as a form of a blessing, or as a form of a blessing, etc.
	Got it.
	So the opposite of boomers.
	Yeah, okay.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	And so we would go around all these other relatives' houses, and then we'd get the red pockets.
	And then we'll give it to her, and she would save them and keep them.
	And once I would ask her, I would say, "But these are for us.
	Why can't we use it?
	Or why can't we use it to buy the things that we wanted?"
	And she would just say, "Oh, you have to save her."
	But save her for what?
	She wouldn't tell me.
	She wouldn't answer the question directly.
	What are you supposed to save if all the money you get goes to your grandmother?
	Yeah, it goes to my mother.
	Your mother, sorry.
	Your mother, yeah.
	Yeah, but I think it's just a customary of the whole culture thing.
	Asians would just save.
	I mean, they just save.
	Even for nothing, they save.
	They would invent ways of saving.
	I had this friend who would...
	Who would have all the saving plans, and then after he had fulfilled the saving plans, he would come up with a new saving plan just to have a saving plan.
	Right.
	Continue saving.
	Right.
	I mean, it's easy to be an entrepreneur where you are, but it's also tough if everybody's saving and nobody's spending.
	It's kind of tough to be an entrepreneur.
	Yeah.
	You know, you've got to weasel the money out of people's pockets.
	Oh, yeah, yeah.
	And so I would ask, I would disagree, and then...
	After I get no answers or just nobody explained why, then I would start to take it.
	I would start to just take the money.
	And then she would be...
	At the end of the day, just this hella guilt trip.
	Sorry, when you say take the money, you mean you would be given money by relatives, but you would keep some portion of it for yourself?
	No, no.
	I would give it like...
	I'll give it to mom, and then mom would keep it somewhere in the house, and I would find out, because I had all this time in the house, right?
	So I would find out where the money was given, Kevin, and I would just take it.
	Sure.
	I'll just take it, and I'll just take it.
	Well, you could argue you're just taking it back, because the money was given to you, and then your mother took it, so you're liberating it.
	You're taking it back.
	Yeah, yeah.
	But then she would be...
	She'd be very stressed.
	Like, yeah, she just doesn't know what to do with me.
	Right.
	Well, I mean, how is she going to say, don't take what I took from you?
	Yeah, yeah.
	And so just other things pile on.
	So like the school would give her tons of complaints and then other people would like, Other things would start happening.
	I would start to rebel.
	I would start to do other things.
	So hang on, sorry.
	Last I heard you were just like bored and not paying attention and so on.
	And what was the rebellious stuff?
	Oh, I would bring BB guns to class.
	Oh.
	And why would you do that?
	I was just trying to show off.
	But what were you trying to show off regarding?
	Like, did you have a BB gun?
	Yeah, it was just I had this cool gun and, you know, just like show it to the classmates and maybe make some friends that way, I thought.
	Okay.
	And was that considered bad?
	Oh, yeah.
	I mean, I get in the States, that would get you tackled at the entranceway, but...
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	And, but I...
	Essentially, I kind of weaseled my way.
	I didn't get caught.
	I didn't get caught per se.
	But I would, because I knew somebody had told on me, and so I kind of hid it someplace before the checkup occurs.
	And I would kind of humiliate the teacher by not getting caught.
	But everybody knew I had it.
	I was showing it off to people.
	And then the teacher would say, "Okay, so if you confess now, then you wouldn't be punished."
	And I was having this...
	I was like, "Okay, then I'll tell you yes," etc., etc.
	And I'd tell her what I did with it, etc.
	And then she would have this large write-up into one of my...
	It's like one of the homework diaries that you take home and show your parents.
	So, yeah, my homework diary is always filled with wet markings of just stuff that I did.
	Yeah, I mean, the show-offy stuff is usually because you can't relate to the other kids, so you just need to have some way of interacting with them, and here's a cool BB gun.
	Yeah, I get all of that.
	I understand that.
	Because, yeah, you just don't have anything in particular in common because you're in a two-standard deviation IQ miscategorization.
	I tried to play computer games with them, but my mother would say no, and just, yeah, I couldn't.
	Socializing was so difficult.
	Right, right.
	Yeah, and then, but anyways, it boils down to a point where my mother just couldn't take it anymore, and then she would kick us out of the house.
	Sorry, your mother couldn't take what anymore?
	Couldn't take me anymore.
	But you doing what?
	The actual mentioned things I just mentioned.
	Okay.
	So then she...
	It's really important to stay home unless your mother's bothered and then it's absolutely essential that you leave the house.
	Yeah, you can say that.
	Well, I'm not trying to say it.
	I mean, I think that's what you were telling me.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Well, I...
	Yes, yes.
	I'm trying to argue, but...
	I'm just going to...
	Yeah, that's what happens.
	Okay.
	So, when it was convenient for your mother, for you and your brother to stay home, and now I can understand why...
	I can understand why they wanted you to stay home.
	They wanted you to stay home so they would not get caught for child neglect.
	Because if you were out there roaming around as a six-year-old and a four-year-old, they could get arrested.
	Yeah, people could be asking questions, yes.
	Yeah, they could be.
	So, yeah, you had to stay home because your parents wanted to go and work or do whatever, right?
	So then you had to stay home.
	Now, when you're bothering your mother, now you have to go out.
	So both situations have the thing in common, which is what is most convenient for your parents, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, yeah, that is so true.
	And it got to a point where I was kicked out, like literally kicked out, and I had to go live with my grandma, which is like...
	Wait, kicked out, you don't just mean for the moment?
	You mean kicked out like you can't come home?
	Yeah, well, yeah, that got kicked out.
	It happened twice, and those were daily banishment.
	And then it got to a point where I just got into second jury school and I was like kicked all the way to my grandmother's place.
	I'm sorry, how old were you?
	13. So you were 13 and your parents said you have to go live with your grandmother.
	Wow.
	And do you remember what sort of behavior was going on that they were responding to?
	I don't remember clearly, but I just had this...
	I was just not listening.
	I was just not listening.
	I was just not listening to any authority figures at all at that point.
	was just...
	Thank you.
	At that point in my life, I wasn't listening to any 40 figures and I was just...
	The word that came to mind was I was being a shitty kid.
	But that's probably not fair to me.
	Yeah, I mean, that would have been your parents.
	And just by the by, of course, I mean, it just always amazes me how parents can blame their children.
	Yeah, so I was kicked over there.
	And your brother stayed, right?
	Yeah, my brother stayed.
	And how was your brother doing at this point in his life?
	Oh, better.
	He was doing better.
	Okay, and so how long did you live with your grandmother for?
	Oh, I don't remember.
	I think it was months.
	It must be more than a few months because I remember the commute would take...
	The commute to school at that point would take two hours.
	One trip.
	Man, you must have been exhausted.
	Yeah, I had to get up at the crack of dawn just to catch...
	Yeah, just to get over there.
	Yeah, a lot of people don't understand that smart people often don't sleep very well or deeply because our brains don't really turn off.
	And so anything that, like this, right?
	I'm actually pretty good with sleep, but a lot of people are not who are high IQ.
	And so they don't realize that, you know, particularly high school, you've got to get up early, you're just losing sleep, and you're exhausted.
	Yeah.
	And so...
	Yeah, I get to school and the teachers, given their credit, they would try.
	They really would.
	But I wouldn't listen.
	I just wouldn't.
	And I was just unruly.
	Well, do you know why you weren't listening?
	It's just so much anger.
	So much rejection.
	Well, that's not necessarily causal.
	I mean, I agree with you that there was anger, but I don't think that's why you specifically weren't listening.
	I don't know.
	Like, thinking back for me, it was just...
	I'm just...
	I didn't want to listen to them because my mother would just be one lie after another and my dad would just be...
	All of these moral rules, just all of these reasonings, and I could recite them backwards to him.
	And he would just keep repeating the same thing.
	What were some of the things that he would say?
	What were some of the things that he would say?
	I couldn't remember now.
	I couldn't remember now, but back then it was just...
	It was the same thing over and over again.
	So, usually, children don't listen, are bored, distract, and dissociate it when they encounter the growing, almost inevitable belief that none of it is for them.
	Because what does society say?
	Oh, children of the future, we care so much about the children.
	The children have to be educated and...
	And we have to, you know, anytime you suggest anything that even might remotely be negative for children, society loses its shit.
	And it's like, oh, no, children, you know, we've got to have government education for the children, right?
	And at some point, you're like, wait a minute, none of this shit is for me.
	And most kids go through this at one time, whether consciously or unconsciously.
	They say, well, hang on.
	If society says children are really important, Why doesn't society ever ask me what I want or prefer?
	If society says, well, we have to have the government educate the children because we really want the children to be educated, then why is the education so mindless, retarded, and boring?
	And not just to me, but just about every other kid.
	So, there are all these structures in society that are supposed to be devoted to the well-being of children, but not...
	One son of a bitch asks the children what works best for them, or what they like, or what they prefer.
	So at some point as a kid, you're like, you know, none of this is for me.
	They keep telling me it's for me, but it's not for me.
	It's sort of like if you could imagine a psychiatric hospital where the doctors or the psychiatrists are paid.
	Per patient, right?
	So then their incentive is to get as many patients in as possible and to keep them there for as long as possible.
	And so, but they won't say that.
	They won't say to the patient, well, you're basically captives for income.
	You know, we're basically half kidnapping you to keep you here so we get paid.
	What they'll say is they'll say, we want nothing but the best for you.
	We want you to get better.
	We're all here for you.
	Mental health is the key.
	You know, we really want you to improve.
	And at some point, like this is the sort of one flew over the cuckoo's nest thing, right?
	So at some point, you're like, well, wait a minute.
	Is this actually for me?
	Like, is all of the bullshit that people are saying about how much they want me to get, is this actually for me?
	Or am I kind of a hostage for money?
	And kids go through the same thing.
	Is any of this educational system for me?
	Or am I just here so the teacher can get paid and I can get...
	Bored and indoctrinated.
	Is this for me at all?
	You know, and people have this in relationships.
	Oh, I do everything for you, right?
	The parents say this.
	I sacrificed for you.
	I did everything.
	It's like, well, why didn't you ever ask me what I wanted?
	Why didn't you even notice that I was miserable and depressed and angry?
	Like, if you say you do everything for me, why didn't you ever ask me what I wanted?
	So, I would imagine that not listening To those in authority, it's because you kind of probably got at a fundamental level that the people in authority are just pathological liars.
	They just say, oh, no, this is for your own benefit.
	This is what's good for you.
	This is important.
	And it's like, no, it's not.
	I knew I was never going to do French, speak French, and I knew I was never going to be a mathematician or a physicist.
	I knew that.
	I knew that from very early on.
	And so, but I still had to take this shit year after year after year.
	And I didn't want to.
	And so, is this for me?
	It's not for me.
	It's for those in power.
	The children are kept in school so the school can get paid, and the teacher can get paid, and the children are kept there so that they can be controlled and indoctrinated and not bother their parents.
	It's got nothing to do.
	With what is best for the kids.
	Because, of course, if it was about what was best for the kids, all the educators would be running all the studies known to man about how best to educate children, what's most interesting, what's most exciting.
	Like, the last thing that little boys want to do is sit like a bunch of retarded zombies in rows of desks while some woman scratches away on a whiteboard or a blackboard.
	Like, that is the last thing.
	Can you imagine?
	Do you ever get together with your friends when you're a little boy and say, you know what?
	Let's sit together in rows and have someone teach us geometry.
	It's inconceivable.
	It's absolutely, yet kids love to learn.
	They want to learn.
	They're hungry to learn.
	And so you can't believe that any of this is for you because school is a, you know, maybe not so much where you are, but in most places in the West, a school is a semi-violent prison.
	Well, you're kept there in order to be bored.
	It's a humiliation ritual to be bored, subjugated, and propagandized for the profit of those in charge.
	It's got nothing to do with what the kids want.
	I mean, if you're releasing a kid's movie, you'll have a whole bunch of, like, you'll tell the story to kids and see if they like it.
	Like, I remember the guy who wrote, or who was telling the story of Finding Nemo, telling the story to a bunch of people, seeing if they liked the story, if they found it funny and interesting.
	And then you'll do a bunch of mock-ups, you'll get a bunch of actors.
	And you'll have the actors read the lines, and then you'll test it with kids to see if they like it, and then you put the movie together, and, you know, they'll sometimes reshoot or change the entire ending of a movie if people don't like it.
	Like, they really care about whether people like the movie, because the movie is for the people.
	It's for the money, right?
	But nobody sits there and says, okay, let's figure out what's the best way for children to learn, what's most interesting to them, what's most exciting to them.
	What's going to keep their attention the most?
	Nobody cares about that.
	They just order the kids to sit like zombies in these stupid rows and then maybe you get to run around for 20 minutes a day.
	And it's all absolutely terrible.
	It has nothing to do with what's best for the kids because the kids would be studied and asked and there would be all these different experiments about...
	What's the best way to get kids to learn?
	And what's the most exciting ways for them to figure things out?
	And things would be more hands-on and physical, at least for the boys.
	Nobody cares.
	Nobody cares.
	So sorry for the long speech, but the reason that you didn't listen to your teachers or anyone in authority is because they're all just pathological liars who are just trying to get you to believe that anything is for you when it's all for them.
	Yeah, you're hitting it right on the head.
	You're hitting it right on the head.
	Yeah, they were just pathological liars.
	What kid looks at a classroom and says, this is how I want to learn?
	Oh my god.
	And it's so anti-human because it's not how human beings evolved or learned.
	We evolved and learned by going with our parents to learn how to plant the rice or hunt.
	We learned by doing, we learned by activities, we learned by...
	Experimentation.
	We didn't learn by just watching some neurotic single woman with too many cats scratch away on a blackboard about things we don't care about and will never use.
	I mean, it's anti-human.
	It's anti-evolution.
	And it is just a giant hostage-based control, humiliation ritual of propaganda and power.
	It's all just so unbelievably terrible.
	So, yeah, of course, I mean, you were bored and you didn't respect your teachers.
	And so on.
	If you want children to listen to you, they have to believe that it's for their benefit.
	Like everyone.
	Why would you listen to someone who's just droning on and on about their own thing, not to your benefit at all?
	I mean, I know I'm droning on and on, but hopefully it's to your benefit so you understand that as a kid, you accurately understood how boring, terrible, and maniacally controlling all of this is.
	And you didn't listen because those in authority?
	Certainly those in any kind of state-based structure, coercive monopoly authority, all just pathological liars.
	There's not a single truth teller among them because the moment you start telling the truth, you'd leave.
	Listening to you talk about the situation in this way actually gave me more...
	Give me time and I'm just reflecting on what I am doing now.
	That can be better.
	Well, so the reason I'm talking about the school stuff is to focus on the business stuff.
	And we haven't talked about the romance stuff, which I'm sure we'll get to, but it is all just about you probably just kind of plodding along doing stuff, but without really trying to figure out what your audience wants the most.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	You're hitting that way on the head too.
	Sorry, I projected there that you don't have an audience, you have customers.
	I have an audience, you have customers.
	But yeah, so I do call in shows in part because I think they're valuable and enjoyable, but it's what people want the most and they're pretty clear about that.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	It's by far.
	I'm sorry to be straight, but it's just so interesting.
	Right.
	And the way you just cut through all the...
	Or the BS and just go straight to the point.
	It's just, it's a wonder to, like, hear.
	Well, this is, to me, the call-in show collection is like a Google Maps of the human soul that's never been achieved, collected, and disseminated before.
	That this is people's deep morals and histories and traumas.
	This is a map of the human soul with thousands of participants that's never before been achieved in human history.
	And that, to me, is like, okay, but I could do another.
	I could do another podcast on politics, you know?
	So this is the thing.
	This is what will last the test of time.
	And once people really start studying these things, they will understand more about human nature than, I think, most things that have been achieved in human history.
	Okay.
	So you were with your grandmother for a while in secondary school, and you came back, and then how were your teenage years?
	Oh, I didn't quite came back because, like, shortly after that, shortly after that, I was, like, We will shift off to the UK.
	To stay with other relatives?
	No, to study.
	What age?
	14. Okay, but who did you live with?
	Oh, at the beginning, my mother kind of went with us.
	Oh, you and your brother went?
	You were 14, he was 12?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	And my mother kind of went with us.
	Okay.
	And why did you go to the UK to study?
	Because...
	Well...
	I guess.
	I guess because the Hong Kong system was not working out for me.
	Okay.
	And so they thought...
	Sorry.
	I went through the names.
	Oh, honestly, I don't particularly care about countries as a whole.
	That's fine.
	Okay, well, because the local system wasn't working out.
	At least that's what I thought.
	So your mother went with you.
	How long did she stay in the UK?
	She stayed for a couple of years, but...
	Sorry, my bad.
	And I'm just going out because there's somebody in the house.
	Please give me a second.
	Sure, no problem.
	Are you here?
	Yes, go ahead.
	So you said your mother stayed for a couple of years?
	Yeah, my father stayed for a couple of years.
	And, well, in the first year.
	I'm sorry, you're cutting out a bit.
	But then I...
	Okay, is it better now?
	It seems to be.
	Go ahead.
	Hello?
	Yes, go ahead.
	Okay.
	All right, so I was with them for the first year, but then after a year, I was off on my own.
	So them is your mother and your brother?
	Yeah, my brother and my mother, my brother and my aunt.
	Oh, yeah.
	Okay.
	And then at the age of 15, you went on your own?
	Yeah.
	Hey, twinsies.
	All right.
	So what did that look like?
	You had your own room or your own place or what did that mean?
	Oh, I got a roommate.
	It was a roommate, yeah.
	Okay.
	And your parents paid your rent and educational and living expenses.
	Is that right?
	Yes, but not quite.
	Yeah, because my...
	This is kind of a bombshell, so here it comes.
	I wasn't supposed to be studying.
	All right, how should I say this?
	Sorry, let me start this again.
	My mother didn't have to pay.
	Because I was studying in a governmental school in the UK.
	Okay, so you just basically went to a regular old government school in the UK?
	Yep.
	And she paid rent, but the living expenses was...
	Periods of time in which there would be no money for food.
	Let me put it this way.
	Oh, wow.
	Okay.
	Yeah, along, like, heating was not.
	It's like in the UK, those heating, you have to put, like, it's really expensive because they have one of those meters where you have to pay for electricity.
	Oh, yeah.
	No, I remember.
	Yeah.
	Oh yeah, and that's truly cold winters right there.
	Yeah, I remember spending a winter in Montreal and freezing my ass off, and then it turned out that the bill was based upon the average of the previous year, so all I did was have somebody have it cheap next year.
	I didn't save a penny.
	Anyway, go on.
	Yeah, we have the meter, so we had to put in money just to turn.
	But yeah, sometimes there was no money.
	Now, of course, I assume that you would talk to your mother and you'd say, I'm cold and hungry.
	And what would she say?
	Eat your roommate?
	Like, what was the plan?
	I wouldn't tell her.
	Oh, you didn't tell her.
	But did she call and ask you how you were doing?
	She would know.
	She knows.
	And sometimes I would...
	She would tell me when the upcoming living expenses are going to be paid.
	And I would go to the bank and there would be nothing there.
	And then I just kept my mouth shut.
	But why and why did you not live with your mother and your aunt and your brother?
	Why did you end up on your own over the roommate?
	Because I had to go to this government school.
	Oh, it was further away.
	Yep.
	And also because my mother had a business that she had to fly to all kinds of exhibition about.
	It is at this time that my brother was also...
	Sorry, sorry.
	Hang on, hang on.
	So your mother had a business that she had to fly to do what?
	Exhibitions.
	Oh, yeah.
	Conferences or...
	Okay, got it.
	Yeah.
	Okay, so your mother could afford lots of international airfare, but not bread for her son.
	No, apparently not.
	And was your brother, was he going to a private school or another government school?
	No, he was going to a private boarding school.
	Okay, so he went to a private boarding school, which I know are very expensive in the UK.
	You went to a government school, so your brother got food because he was on the boarding school planned meal plan, but you went hungry because your mother needed money for her international business travel.
	Yes.
	What's your relationship like with
	parents now?
	Respectful, like, respectful acquaintances sometimes.
	Okay, and how often do you talk to them and see them?
	I talk to my dad.
	My relationship with my father is better, but I talk to him once every other day.
	I don't go and talk to my mother.
	I don't voluntarily go talk to my mother.
	Sorry, you're just getting a bit muffled here.
	I'm not sure if you're...
	Yeah, because I'm keeping...
	I don't voluntarily talk to my mother.
	Okay, but you have a relationship with your parents?
	Yes.
	Okay, and that's fine.
	I'll just bookmark that.
	I just wanted to know.
	Okay, so you were hungry and cold throughout your teenage years.
	How long did you stay in England for?
	I stayed there for three years.
	Okay, and then did you go to university, or what happened after that?
	And then I went to college in the United States.
	Ah, okay.
	And did you have enough money for that, or was that also living pretty lean?
	Oh, that was living pretty lean.
	And I started working at the table to pay my rent and get something for money.
	Okay, so you weren't getting money from your parents, or at least not enough, is that right?
	Yeah, not enough.
	They would pay for tuition, and they would pay for the rent somewhere, but nothing else.
	Okay, so now we're in your late teens and early 20s, I do have to ask, what about girls?
	Oh, you're non-existent.
	No, I see them around.
	In fact, sometimes in my very house, I see indications.
	As in...
	Well, were there girls that you liked?
	Were you at a co-educational school?
	Did you ever talk to girls or ask girls out or any, you know, that teenage stuff?
	I did.
	I was shot down, but I didn't.
	I have no social skills.
	I don't think I have a lot now.
	No, you're doing fine.
	You're doing fine.
	So how many girls did you ask out as a teenager?
	One.
	One.
	One?
	One.
	Okay, so what happened?
	I didn't quite talk to her beforehand, but I've always liked her.
	And one day I just muster up the courage and then just got to ask her out for a movie after I've saved up for two movie tickets.
	And then I was kind of shot down.
	Well, what did she say?
	She appreciated it, but she'd already seen the movie.
	So she was polite about it?
	Yes, yes, yes.
	They were all polite.
	All of my rejections, they were all polite.
	Okay, so you're not shot down.
	Shot down is when, you know, the girl laughs at you and mocks you in front of her friends and the rumor goes around.
	Can you believe, you know, like that's shot down, isn't it?
	I mean, she just like was like polite and said, no, I've...
	Oh, that happens after.
	Oh, so afterwards you were mocked and ridiculed by the women, is that right?
	They were poking around.
	They were poking around, but because at that point...
	So they were what, around?
	They were poking around, like, so they would talk behind my back, and then some girl would come up and say, like, oh, like, oh, did you, like, ask this person out?
	And then, you know, they would, like, make funny faces and stuff like that.
	Sorry, the other girls or the girl you asked out?
	Other girls.
	Okay, so your belief is that the girl you asked out would say to other girls, He asked me out, and then the other girls would roll their eyes.
	Yes.
	Or it could be that the other girls saw you talking to this girl and asked her about it, and she didn't lie.
	So she may not have volunteered the information.
	They may have just seen it happen, or someone saw it happen, and then they grilled her on it.
	Because that's kind of the way that teenage girls are, right?
	If there's any kind of interest shown, they will grill each other, right?
	To their credit, I didn't actually think that it was anything malicious.
	It was just some Facebook message that they saw or just something like that.
	And then, honestly, I didn't know what was going on.
	I had no idea what was going on socially.
	But the girls' friends were rude, right?
	Because they would roll their eyes and make faces, right?
	At that time, I perceived them to be.
	Now that I think about it, I'm not quite sure.
	Sorry, you perceived them to what?
	Roll their eyes and was rude about it.
	Well, did you see them roll their eyes?
	It feels like it.
	I'm not sure.
	No, no, that's not a feeling, right?
	Oh, then I'm going to say no.
	Okay, so you have language.
	Yeah, you have self-attacking language that you were shot down and people mocked you for it, but...
	The girl said no politely, and you can't remember if anyone actually rolled their eyes.
	Yes.
	Okay, so what you're doing is you're giving yourself excuses to not ask girls out again.
	You're escalating how bad it was.
	You're exaggerating how bad it was so that you can avoid asking girls out.
	I was shut down and people mocked me, so you give yourself an excuse to not ask girls out because it was so bad.
	Right?
	When that time that it happened.
	Does that sort of make sense?
	No.
	We sexually disagree.
	Yeah, go for it.
	I think I just didn't quite know what shutdown meant.
	Well, but it doesn't mean a good thing.
	It just means rejection.
	I don't want to say it just means rejection.
	Okay.
	But if you combine shutdown or rejection...
	With her friends mocking and rolling her eyes at you, that's pretty bad, right?
	Yeah, yeah, but again, I don't really remember the...
	I remember...
	No, but it doesn't matter whether you remember it specifically.
	Hang on.
	It doesn't matter whether you remember it specifically.
	It matters the narrative you've told yourself.
	Oh.
	Yes, and yes.
	It's the language, right?
	Yeah, because at that point, my self-esteem was so low.
	Yeah.
	Okay, so you asked a girl out, she said no, and then other girls asked you if you asked her out, but you don't remember anything specific in terms of mockery or eye-rolling.
	And so, that's the girl, the one girl you asked out in your teens?
	Or, you know, now that you're 30 and you've been an adult for a dozen years, how many girls have you asked out?
	One, two.
	One, two.
	Yeah, four.
	Four girls, okay.
	And so you're asking a girl out as an adult on average every three years?
	Yeah.
	And what has been the result of asking one girl out on average every three years?
	Thank you.
	Hands has improved.
	I'm sorry, say again?
	Chances in career.
	That's very abstract.
	I'm not sure what that means.
	Did you get any dates?
	I did.
	I did.
	The last time I did, it happened and I was asked out to during my later college years.
	and
	I was asked out too, and so it went better.
	Okay, and when you went out on dates, how did they go?
	We'll just talk, have conversation, and maybe get a meal or two, and that'll be it.
	Okay, so did you try to kiss the girl or indicate romantic?
	Interest or pursue that kind of stuff?
	Or did you just have sort of pleasant conversations and then just fade away?
	I wouldn't.
	Yes, I would.
	Thank you.
	We just have conversations.
	But did you make a move?
	I mean, a date is a pretext to make a move, right?
	No, I was never comfortable enough.
	Well, no one's ever comfortable enough.
	I mean, I don't know what that...
	I mean, because you're risking rejection, right?
	So there's no way to want someone, make a move.
	There's no way to want a girl, make a move, risk rejection, and be comfortable with it.
	Thank you.
	I think that's it.
	I don't know what to tell you.
	So, just sort of man-to-man, I mean, you've never really gone on a romantic date, right, with sort of kissing or hand-holding or anything like that.
	Is that right?
	Yep.
	And you've been sexually mature for like 15 years, so how are you meeting your sexual needs?
	Is it just like pornography and that kind of stuff?
	Yeah, before I was born.
	Okay.
	So that's the danger, right?
	As you're 30 and you've never really had a girlfriend, Then all the women you meet will assume that you're a pornography guy.
	I mean, women aren't dumb, right?
	They know that men have 17 times their testosterone, that we have high sex drives, we want to have sex.
	Sex motivates most of, you know, just about everything I look at in the world, I just see a sex drive.
	You know, like, oh, this house was built so a guy could make money so that he could...
	He could take a girl out and have sex.
	Oh, that airplane's flying in the air because some guy wanted to show off what he could build or fly so that a woman would sleep.
	I mean, just everywhere I look, I just see crystallized, usually male sex drive.
	That's just what I see.
	So if you're not part of that world, then women will say, okay, so he's never really had a girlfriend and therefore he must be getting his sexual needs met somewhere else and therefore it's going to be masturbation and pornography.
	And that's not going to be too appealing to women, right?
	Yeah.
	So you're kind of in a danger zone here in particular because that is going to be broadcast to any woman.
	Like, you want a woman smart enough that you're going to have great conversations with her, but that's also a woman smart enough to see patterns, right?
	Yeah.
	This is a soft subject for Moonstead.
	No, no, I appreciate that.
	I mean, I sympathize with that.
	But would you want to date a woman who had a male sex doll that looked like David Beckham?
	No.
	I mean, you would view that as a bit odd, right?
	She's like, I'm technically a virgin, but I have regular sex with my David Beckham sex doll.
	You'd be like, ah, that seems like a bit of a swamp.
	Yeah, that's why I quit.
	I quit all the porn.
	I quit all of it.
	Sorry to be blunt, and you don't have to answer anything you don't want to, of course, right?
	But did you quit porn and masturbation?
	Yes, everything is done.
	And when did you quit?
	I'm not doing any...
	I...
	You said...
	I'm on a streak now.
	I don't know the number, but it's been like a year or so.
	Now I don't even...
	I know from a few years ago when I started listening to you in one of the videos, you were talking about the porn and how it affects the brain.
	From there, I started trying.
	Yeah, I stopped completely.
	I don't even look at pictures.
	Okay, but you know, I'm sure you know from, like, male physiology, like, I'm certainly no doctor, but my understanding is that men need orgasms for health, like, for physical health.
	So, you know, the nofap, you know, good for you, but you need orgasms for your health and all of that.
	So, since you quit, All of this stuff.
	Have you had a greater desire to ask women out, to get a girlfriend, or something like that?
	Yes.
	Yes.
	It's been going on my mind pretty much 20 hours in a day.
	Okay, good.
	So you're back to default male programming and positions.
	Okay.
	Steph, it's so bad.
	I look out.
	I say, okay, can I go talk to her?
	It's like that bad.
	Good.
	No, that's what it should be.
	That's absolutely what it should be.
	Okay.
	That's why I'm going to the gym like three hours a day, like just getting my body in shape and just go, just talk.
	Good, yeah.
	Because everyone, like a lot of guys think they have low self-esteem and they're just sperm depleted because of fapping, right?
	So it's not low self-esteem, you know, you just, it's like, you know, right after you have great sex, men kind of want to doze and it's like, oh, I just lack motivation.
	It's like, no, I just had great sex, so I'm dozy, right?
	Yeah, so it's not, you know, low self-esteem.
	It's just low motivation because of, like, semen depletion or whatever, right?
	So, okay.
	Yeah, now motivation is high.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.
	Because, yeah, if you're having infinite orgasms, your body thinks that you're already at the top of the heap, so you don't need more testosterone, I think.
	So, okay.
	All right, so that's good.
	So, a year ago you quit, and how many women have you asked out in the last year?
	I tried two.
	Okay, and how did that go?
	One was going well, but I think I just didn't make a move and somebody just got in before me.
	Sorry, you didn't make a what?
	I took her out.
	I started, you know, we had a conversation.
	I was buying her food and I was taking my time in, you know, like not rushing things because I didn't want to seem needy, etc.
	And then...
	And then it got to a point where I go, because, I don't know, to me, all the stuff had to come after we were boyfriend and girlfriend, so I asked her, and then it turns out she's already in a relationship.
	And then it just ended.
	Sorry, I didn't quite follow that.
	You cut out a little bit.
	So you asked a girl out, you went out on a couple of dates, and then you asked her to be your girlfriend, and it turns out she was already in a relationship?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	But she didn't, at the beginning of me asking her out, she didn't have a boyfriend.
	It just...
	I think it just took too long.
	Well, maybe, but what was the time frame between you first asking her out and then her telling you she had a boyfriend?
	So, we start asking her out for a couple of dates, and then I...
	And then I kind of wanted to be her boyfriend, and then she said...
	No, I'm not giving any dates, am I?
	Sorry, my bad.
	Again.
	Okay, so I started to take her out, and then for about a month, and then he got a boyfriend, but we still went out for some dates, and then...
	Yeah, so she's a liar.
	Hang on, hang on.
	She's a skeevy liar.
	It's a foodie call.
	So she has a boyfriend, you're taking her out on dates, she gets a boyfriend, and she still lets you take her out on dates.
	Yep.
	So that's shitty.
	that's shitty.
	Isn't it?
	Yeah.
	I mean, sorry if I'm missing something, but that's terrible.
	No, it's just that she was just so well behaved on.
	Okay, I don't know what this means.
	She'd always respect you when she's lying to you.
	She's letting you take her out when she got a boyfriend.
	Now, do you think she's telling her boyfriend, oh yeah, this guy who's interested in me is taking me out for dinner tonight.
	Do you think she's saying that to her boyfriend?
	I don't think so.
	Oh, well, she's not.
	And I think she was telling, like, she told me that she was thinking, like, it was a platonic relationship, but I was trying...
	Sorry, hang on.
	Hang on.
	Which was a platonic relationship?
	Her and her boyfriend or her and you?
	Her and me.
	Okay, so did you pay for the dinners?
	Yep.
	Okay, so then it's not a platonic relationship.
	Right?
	I mean, if a woman lets you pay for going out, that's a date.
	I mean, you don't do that with male friends, do you?
	Just pay for them all the time?
	No.
	Right.
	Okay, so do you think it's true that she got a boyfriend, or do you think she just said that because she didn't want you as her boyfriend, for whatever reason?
	No, I think she did get a boyfriend.
	Okay, so if she got a boyfriend...
	Then she's a liar.
	and an exploiter.
	Thank you.
	I'm happy to hear the counter-arguments, but I can't imagine any that would hold.
	I was just beating myself up for, like, you know, not being fast enough and didn't make a fast move.
	So I got no arguments.
	Because it's been running on my mind, too.
	It's been going on in my mind, like, oh, hold on.
	You can't expect me to believe that you're naive enough to go up with me and I take you on a date and take this step.
	We were planning on going on a trip together, too.
	And at that point, I was like, okay, before we move this further, let's confirm that we're a boyfriend and girlfriend before we go there.
	You know?
	What?
	Did you kiss her?
	Did you try to kiss her?
	Okay.
	Did you hold her hand?
	Did you try to hold her hand?
	Okay.
	And listen, I'm not trying to make you feel bad.
	I'm just trying to understand the mechanics.
	It's been a long time since I was in the dating market.
	Oh, you're saying that does not make me feel any better?
	No, no.
	I don't want you to feel bad.
	I want you to get mad.
	I don't want you to feel bad.
	Oh, I missed the opportunity.
	To be the liar's boyfriend.
	Oh, no.
	How terrible.
	Oh, how sad.
	This woman who exploits me and lies to me and lies to her boyfriend.
	Oh, I could have been with her.
	Are you shitting me?
	How old was she?
	Uh, she was 18. Oh, bro.
	Why...
	Why were you going out with a woman almost half your age?
	Why were you going out with a woman?
	I'm not saying that's the worst thing in the world.
	I'm just curious.
	Because I was thinking of, like, oh, we could start young, get married, and have, you know, like, this.
	I was thinking, like, the whole idea of, like, The whole idea of her...
	I get this idea from all the videos about the whole carousel and stuff like that.
	Just like, okay, so if I could get one that's young and then marry her and stuff, then it would be better.
	Okay.
	That's fine, for what it's worth.
	But why would a young woman, a very young woman, why would she choose a 30-year-old man?
	To be fair, the other guy, the boyfriend that he told me that was, was 28. Yeah, that's not answering my question, though.
	I don't know, because I really don't know.
	Come on, you're into Manosphere stuff?
	Resources.
	Right.
	Right, so she'll say, okay, I'll put up with your wrinkly ass, but you've got to have what?
	Money.
	Do you have money?
	Ka-ching!
	I'm sorry?
	I don't.
	I don't really.
	Ka-ching, I said ka-ching.
	Yeah, so a younger woman...
	We'll go for an older man.
	Look, I'm not going to police, you know, what age you can date.
	I mean, I don't particularly care.
	But a younger woman wants a younger man.
	And she will trade in a younger man for an older man in return for resources.
	In other words, she'll bypass the whole, I got to build him up.
	I got to roll the dice.
	Maybe he'll make money.
	Maybe he won't make money.
	I don't know.
	Right?
	She's going to bypass all of that.
	And she's just going to go for a guy who's already got money, right?
	But you don't have money.
	The guy that she went with, do you know anything about him?
	He's a governmental worker.
	So he makes more money and has a more stable job.
	I'm not sure about more money, but yeah, more stable, yes.
	Most, and I say this just in general, most government workers have wages and benefits and job security significantly higher than the private sector.
	Alright, then yeah.
	Okay.
	So. So.
	So. So.
	So. Thank you.
	What?
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Wow.
	Now I'm just thinking this call is so useful just now like you putting that because it just kind of burst my delusion bubble.
	Oh, I got this business going or I got this great future going and I have money.
	Listen, I love your business.
	I don't want you to feel bad about your business.
	You just got to figure out a way for it to make some money.
	That's all.
	But this has to do with motivation as a whole.
	Because it's kind of like, if you don't have a girlfriend, why do men make money to fund families?
	That's why we need 10 times the amount we can live on to have a wife and kids.
	Oh, yeah.
	Ain't that true?
	So if you don't even have a girlfriend, what are you working for?
	I mean, you're probably okay with your income right now, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	That was what I was saying.
	I'm comfortable.
	I lived dirt poor for years of my life.
	I'd never mind it in particular.
	I mean, there were times when it was a drag, but, you know, one of my favorite times in my life prior to sort of getting married and all of that, one of my favorite times in my life was when I was doing my master's degree and I had my own little desk in the library.
	I could take out books for as long as I wanted.
	I would go up and just read books and sit in the sunlight in these big couches and I'd go to the gym and I'd play squash with friends and, oh, it was fantastic.
	What a great time in life.
	I was broke like you wouldn't believe.
	I mean, I couldn't eat out.
	I would make these giant vats of, like, pasta and cheap metallic-tasting tomato sauce, and, you know, I was broke, but it was great.
	So I don't particularly mind being broke, because I always have the entertainment of my own brain, which is a considerable carnival.
	But, you know, you can't do that stuff.
	And have a wife and kids.
	So there's a block in terms of you moving forward in your life.
	I think I know what it is, but I'm not entirely positive, so I'll run something past you, right?
	And you can tell me what you think.
	Okay.
	That would be awesome.
	So give me a name for the 18-year-old woman.
	Girl, whatever.
	Give me a name that's not her name.
	Let's go with Grace.
	Grace.
	That's a lovely name.
	Okay.
	All right.
	So, Grace says, yeah, I'd love to be your girlfriend and your boyfriend and girlfriend and you date and you go on your trips and whatever it is, right?
	And then she says, when am I going to meet your parents?
	And your brother.
	Hmm.
	And how do you feel when she asks that?
	I would be...
	Honestly, I would say, yeah, yeah, go, come, come meet them.
	Okay, what was my question?
	When, right?
	No, no, no.
	What was my question?
	I'm trying not to be a nag, but I just want to make sure.
	You just kind of gapped out right there.
	So what was my question?
	What was the question again?
	How would you feel when she asked to meet your parents?
	I would feel good.
	Like she's serious.
	Okay, so come meet them.
	Oh, come on, man.
	Oh, no.
	I'm being 100% honest.
	I am not faulting you.
	I am not faulting you for your honesty at all.
	But this is the problem.
	I also have a reason for it, too, because I know my mom will pull out great funds, and I know my dad.
	I know they can pull out great funds, and it's going to be like, yeah.
	But then me realizing saying this, I already know, like, oh, shit, that's just a lie.
	Well, okay, so hang on, so how, with Grace, how honest will you be about your childhood, or to put it another way, let's say that Grace has already heard this conversation, and she knows that your parents neglected you,
	abandoned you, bullied you, hit you, starved you, underfunded you, you name it.
	And were criminally negligent in how they raised their children.
	And then she says, and then you say, come meet my parents.
	What's she going to think?
	What's she going to think?
	She might not like them.
	You think?
	What if Grace's parents treated her?
	The way your parents treated you as a child, where you said your childhood was, and I quote, hell!
	Would you like Grace's parents if you love Grace and they were the two people who'd done her the most harm by far in her life?
	No.
	Let's say you're walking down the street with Grace and some guy out of nowhere...
	Hits her with some bamboo sticks, right?
	Oh, we'll be fighting.
	Oh, no, no, because what if he put on a really good spread and was kind of charming?
	Wouldn't you want to be friends with the guy?
	No, no, I would hit him so far.
	Okay, so it's outrageous to hit an adult, but you chat every other day with your father who hit you as a child.
	you.
	So, Grace, I mean, you'd just beat the hell out of somebody who hit him with a bamboo stick.
	But you get along well with your dad.
	Help me understand this riddle.
	I don't follow it.
	Because his childhood was inconceivably worse than mine.
	Ah, okay, okay, good.
	Okay, so do you think that the guy who hits Grace with a bamboo, do you think he had a good childhood?
	No.
	Ah, so then you'll be friends with him because you sympathize with his bad childhood and it's fine that he hit Grace with the bamboo stick.
	you.
	Why are you beating up the guy who hits your girlfriend as an adult and best buds with the guy who hits you as a child?
	I mean, you know I'm about the rational consistency, that's why you're copped.
	And I'm happy to have it explained to me, but I don't see it.
	you.
	Let's say you and Grace get married and have kids, and you have a son, and you hire a babysitter, and it turns out when you come home that the babysitter hit your son with a bamboo stick, what would you do?
	Actually, I don't know.
	I don't know, because why would I let it get that point?
	No, no, your babysitter, he comes with good references, he seems fine, and the babysitter, let's say it's a woman, right?
	And the babysitter seems fine, and you have no reason to be alarmed and all of that.
	And then you go out for a nice dinner with Grace, you come back home, and your kid has welts, your son has welts on his back and buttocks because the babysitter whipped him with a bamboo stick.
	What would you do?
	I don't know.
	Just picturing that, make me see red, I'm not quite sure.
	You'd be angry, right?
	And you might report that person to the police, and you certainly would never hire that person again to ever take care of your children, right?
	Yep.
	Right.
	So what's the difference?
	Except this only happened once, but with your father it happened on many occasions.
	Thank you.
	I know there's no answer to this.
	All right, let me give you another one, because I need to contact your emotions here.
	Let's say that you send your 12-year-old son to a summer camp, because it's got a really good reputation, he really wants to go, his best friend is going, so you send him to a summer camp for two weeks,
	right?
	And let's say there's no cell phone reception, whatever it is, right?
	And then when you come to pick up your son, he's lost a considerable amount of weight.
	And you say, why are you so thin?
	What happened?
	You've got like circles under your eyes, your ribs are showing, you're walking shakily, like what's going on?
	And he says, they barely fed us.
	Thank you.
	What would you think?
	That's your parents, man.
	They starved you as a child.
	Starved you as a child.
	Yeah, I had an eating problem.
	I don't know how I had an eating problem.
	Would you be angry at the people running the summer camp?
	Would you ever send your son back?
	No.
	So why the fuck are you going back?
	Have you ever talked to your parents about the terrible things they did when you were a child?
	Yes.
	I listened to you, Steph.
	That's like the first thing I did.
	And then we had it out.
	I kept talking to these conversations and after years it finally started to get through.
	Okay, so you had these conversations for years, and what happened in the early part of these conversations?
	How did they respond or react?
	Anger.
	Okay, so the anger, gaslight, never happened, you were a bad kid, it was your fault, like that kind of stuff?
	Yep, and then I just kept pushing and pushing in, and we got to a point where my dad, this is why I have an okay relationship with my dad, because at one point he broke down and he said, He simply said he didn't know what to do.
	To him, his whole way of dealing with it was just keep working, keep working, keep working, and just keep working.
	Sorry, your father said he didn't know what to do?
	Yeah, he didn't know because his childhood is inconcebably worse than mine.
	Okay, and look, I obviously...
	That's tough to hear, and it's usually the case.
	Okay, so he didn't know what to do.
	So, did he tell you that his childhood was bad, and that that's why he didn't know what to do?
	No.
	This is another part where it's so hard, because he never blamed it on his childhood.
	Even if I asked him right now, if I were to wake him up and ask him.
	He would say that his childhood is fine.
	Okay, so he's in complete denial about...
	But what about his childhood was so bad that you know of?
	I mean, how do you even know it was that bad?
	I'm not disagreeing.
	I just want to know where your info comes from.
	Because it was...
	Around the social circle, everybody knew what happened with my dad.
	And what happened with your dad?
	Thank you.
	Basically, my biological grandparents, they kind of...
	Sorry, you're going to need to move a little closer to the wrapper because you're cutting out a little bit?
	Right, right.
	As I was saying, basically, my biological grandparents murdered suicide.
	So your biological grandparents who raised your father were engaged in a murder-suicide?
	Yep.
	Okay, and how old, sorry, sorry to interrupt, how old was your father when the people who raised him?
	Six.
	He was six years old, okay.
	Now, does your father acknowledge that this murder-suicide of his primary caregivers occurred?
	Yes.
	And does he think that that's a negative thing?
	He wouldn't say it.
	He wouldn't say that the murder-suicide of your primary caregivers...
	He would just say it's not a positive thing.
	Hmm.
	Would he say it's a negative thing?
	He wouldn't say it's a negative thing.
	He would only say that it's not a positive thing.
	Okay, so his argument is that having your primary caregivers, was it the father who killed...
	Sorry, was it the grandfather who killed the mother and then killed himself?
	The details were not known, but that's what everybody presumed it happened to.
	Yeah, I mean, that's the most likely scenario.
	Women who are murderous tend to poison and live off the life insurance.
	Men who are murderous, it's more after that it would go this way.
	Okay.
	All right.
	So, did he discover the bodies?
	Did he know at the time that it was a murder-suicide?
	They knew.
	My father remembers possible signs of infidelity, but when it happened, my biological grandparents took my dad into the main part of the country and just distributed my dad and his sisters or my aunts to relatives.
	So, this was the other grandparents?
	Was it not the grandparents?
	Was the murder-suicide, or was it someone else?
	No, before it happens.
	The biological grandparents took my dad and my aunt.
	Oh, so the biological grandparents who did the murder-suicide, they scattered the kids they were in charge of because, I guess, they knew bad things were coming?
	Yes.
	So, it's pretty much premeditated.
	Okay.
	So, your father did not...
	Discover the bodies, or was he told it was a murder-suicide as a kid, or did he find that out later?
	He wouldn't say, but everybody knew.
	And did your father...
	No, I get it, but, I mean, everybody knows a bunch of stuff they don't tell kids, right?
	I know about the Holodomor, that doesn't mean that I open a book and show my three-year-old pictures of Kulak starving to death in Ukraine, right?
	There's tons of stuff you keep from kids.
	Now, did he ever talk about any negative behaviors of the grandparents before he was six?
	Not quite.
	You just mentioned that they would work 24-7 because it was, you know, the...
	He was poor.
	He was in the 60s, and everybody was poor, so they had to work like crazy.
	All right, so he knows that working too much is bad, and then he worked a lot.
	Okay, or can be.
	Okay, so what about his biological parents rather than his murder-suicide grandparents?
	Oh, no, no, no.
	The biological parents is the murder-suicide.
	Oh, the biological parents is the murder-suicide.
	Sorry.
	I just wanted to double.
	That's why I was told in primary care givers.
	Sorry, I apologize for that.
	Okay.
	But then there's another relative that kind of saw the situation and just decided to take care of my father and keep the family whole.
	So I call him my grandparent.
	I call him granddad.
	Okay, so this is the one who rescues your father before the murder-suicide from his parents?
	After.
	Oh, after.
	Okay, but sorry, I thought the biological grandparents took the kids and scattered them around so they wouldn't be under the control of the parents.
	So basically, the murderer, I try to call him the murderer because that's what he did.
	He would take my dad and my aunt and scatter them.
	And then so after that happened, another distant relative, whom I call grandpa, would go and collect them and keep the family whole.
	Okay, got it.
	Now, of course, you know, massive sympathy for your father, for what happened to him as a child.
	I can't, for the life of me, imagine how this excuses what he did as a parent.
	Because that's about as dramatic and horrible and evil and horrifying a situation as can be conceived of.
	And so, your father would know that that's really bad parenting.
	He would also know that he was raised by really bad parents.
	Now, when you had a test to study for as a child, did your father care whether you studied for it or not?
	No.
	Oh, he just didn't care at all?
	Like, you could just take the test, not take the test?
	He didn't care.
	Okay.
	Yep.
	Okay.
	When your father was lacking knowledge in something in life, for his business or something like that, did he consider it important to gain that knowledge?
	Yes.
	Yeah, so for instance, you were doing badly in the schools in your country, and so your father and your mother, I assume, did the research and...
	and figured out that maybe it would be better in the United Kingdom, right?
	you.
	Honestly, I just think my mother wanted to go.
	No, no, but they still would need to do some research.
	You don't just fly to England and cross your fingers and hope that you get a score.
	Yeah, that's what they did.
	Okay.
	Did your mother, in the business that she had, and obviously you don't have to tell me what the business is.
	She learned it.
	Now, your father, in whatever he did for a living, was he raised in that business, or did he learn how to do that as an adult?
	Right. Okay, so you're...
	Your parents were perfectly capable of figuring out where they lacked knowledge and perfectly capable of pursuing and achieving that knowledge, right?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Yes.
	Now, I assume that your mother's childhood was also terrible.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	And is there any sort of highlight reel from that?
	Highlight was she also lost her dad when she was around the same age, so like six and seven.
	And then she grew up in a countryside where it's like, picture like rural China countryside.
	So basically that.
	And yeah.
	And she...
	Yeah, so that was it.
	And it's interesting to me that your parents both lost their parents, or at least the father, at the age of six, and then you were abandoned in the apartment at the age of six.
	Yeah, this is the messed up part, too.
	When I talk to them, I say, you are the one, like, okay, I don't know, but when I was talking to them, I was like, you guys didn't have parents, I do.
	Why is it that you make it so that I even now don't have parents?
	Right.
	So, the issue that I'm pointing out is when there are financial incentives involved, your parents are fully competent to recognize their knowledge deficiencies and work to learn and do better.
	Otherwise, they'd be beggars on the street, right?
	I mean, do your parents drive cars?
	No, they did.
	Oh, so they did at one point, right?
	So they recognized that they didn't know how to drive a car, and they learned how to drive a car and to obey all of the traffic laws, which can be quite complex, right?
	Yes.
	Okay, so your parents are perfectly capable of recognizing knowledge deficiencies and working to solve them by gaining knowledge, right?
	Yes.
	Now, clearly they knew, because they talk about their bad childhoods, that they were raised...
	Badly parented.
	Or at least it certainly wasn't good, right?
	They wouldn't say that.
	No, your father said it was not...
	He wouldn't say it was negative, but he wouldn't say...
	He would say it was not positive.
	To that event, yes.
	But he would say that he got the best out of the situation that he was in.
	That is what he would say.
	That's what he would say.
	Okay.
	So, would he say that...
	He learned how to be a good father from his childhood, because my understanding was that he said he didn't know what to do.
	He wouldn't say he's a good father, no.
	Okay, so he didn't know what to do.
	That's what he said, right?
	Yes, he didn't know what to do, yes.
	Okay, so he knows that he didn't know what to do, and he also knew at the time he didn't know what to do, right?
	Yes.
	So, your parents don't have a brain injury that prevents them from learning and acquiring new skills or doing, you know, what is called a gap analysis, right?
	This is what I want, this is what I have, and how do I close that gap?
	So, your parents are perfectly competent to gain knowledge when they lack knowledge, and they also knew that they were raised badly.
	So, your father said, I didn't know what to do.
	Okay, so your father doesn't know what to do, which is true for all of us with a lot of things.
	I didn't know how to be a podcaster before I became a podcaster, right?
	I didn't know how to do public speaking before I became a public speaker.
	I didn't know how to whatever, whatever, right?
	I didn't know how to run a business until I ran a business, right?
	So, when your father says, I didn't know what to do, I think you consider that an excuse.
	Don't see it the same way, and I'll tell you why.
	If I don't know what to do, and it's important, I should learn.
	I should learn.
	And your father, that's why I asked about other things.
	Your father did learn how to drive, how to do his business.
	He learned how to, you know, get you to England or whatever was going on, right?
	I mean, he had to learn how to get you on a plane, right?
	So...
	Your father learned all of these things and so is perfectly capable.
	Like, he didn't sit there on a street corner saying, I have no money because I don't know how to operate in the business world or wherever he operates, right?
	Right?
	Your father is not single because he says, well, I don't know how to talk to girls, right?
	I mean, nobody knows how to talk to girls.
	When you're young, because, you know...
	You just go and do it.
	Yeah, you just got to puzzle and figure it out, right?
	So, you think that your father's saying, I didn't know what to do because I had a bad childhood.
	To me, that is not an excuse.
	That makes it even worse.
	Because your father has a clear knowledge deficiency that he's perfectly aware of, and he even knows why it happened, but he didn't do a goddamn thing to remedy it.
	To his credit, I'm not sure if this would help, but to his credit, after me just droning it in, he now knows that it was a deficiency.
	He's starting to recognize it.
	Okay.
	How long have you been working on this?
	Going on five years, Steph.
	Ever since I found you, right after having...
	Now, you do understand and appreciate that the progress...
	And the time frame of your business and your father's enlightenment is about the same.
	Which is very little progress.
	And this is not unrelated.
	It isn't, because I spent all my time in dealing with this.
	Right.
	Trying to get into...
	Now, would you feel comfortable if you get married, or when you get married and have kids, would you feel comfortable...
	Leaving your children for a weekend with your parents.
	Thank you.
	Now I would.
	Why?
	I know that they're not going to kill them.
	Well, there's lots of ways to be dysfunctional without hitting.
	Oh, yeah, but I'm pretty much sure that they're not going to be dysfunctional either.
	Oh, fantastic.
	So hang on, hang on, hang on.
	So how do they have the capacity to not be dysfunctional now if they've not studied parenting, they've not studied self-knowledge, they've not gone to therapy, and they've barely even admitted that you have any points at all?
	So how are they able to not be dysfunctional?
	Because I thought that they were dysfunctional because of their bad childhoods.
	Now, just because they're older doesn't mean...
	That they didn't have bad childhoods, plus they also have the additional guilt of having been horribly and perhaps criminally neglectful and abusive towards their children.
	So how is it that they're able to be functional, loving, and non-abusive?
	Suddenly?
	This is going to sound dumb.
	This is going to sound dumb, but I think because I did the work in trying to get them to, like, see.
	Your father has not even admitted that his parents engaging in murder-suicide was negative.
	He has not said, I didn't know what I was doing and I choose to remain ignorant.
	I chose to remain ignorant.
	Though the biggest responsibility I had was being a father and I knew I was fucking it up.
	And yet I did not go to anyone for help.
	I did not go.
	To a counselor, I did not pick up a book on parenting.
	I did not study anything to do with self-knowledge.
	And so you're saying, well, my father's incapable of improving because of his childhood and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	It's like, okay, but then how is he capable of improving now if you have kids?
	It's like, okay, but then how is he capable of improving now?
	It's like saying, well, I didn't grow up with Japanese and...
	I don't know Japanese, and I can't speak Japanese, but by this time next year, I'm going to be fluent in Japanese without studying anything.
	Right, so you say that your parents now fluently speak the language called healthy and functional, but how?
	How do they speak it?
	I'm not saying that.
	No, you are, because you're saying I'd be happy leaving my kids.
	With my parents for a weekend.
	Because they will not be dysfunctional.
	So, if your parents cannot be dysfunctional with children, why were they so dysfunctional with your...
	You and your brother.
	and your brother.
	Now, do you know why I'm asking these questions?
	That'd be what...
	She would be asking me.
	Yeah, that's what Christ is going to ask you.
	Yeah. Yeah.
	Thank you.
	I highly doubt that she's going to be as smart, but okay.
	I think you want her to be, don't you?
	And you certainly want her to vet for the protection of her children, right?
	Yes.
	Have your parents repented of their abuse and neglect?
	Yes, they have apologized to me.
	Okay, and what have they said about that?
	Because your father made an excuse, which is, I didn't know what I was doing because I was raised so badly or whatever, right?
	Or I didn't know what I was doing.
	So that's not taking ownership.
	My dad outwardly said, like, he's sorry he didn't do a good job.
	That was at the beginning of my talk, of my conversation.
	After listening to you, that's the beginning.
	And at one point, it just broke down.
	But now, after years, he accepts it.
	He's like, yeah, it was bad.
	Okay, so your father is now admitting that he did a bad job and he's sorry for it, right?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	He must have now started to read books on parenting and how to be a good father because he's sorry he wasn't a good father.
	So now he must have gone to therapy and studied books on parenting and so on because you're still adrift, right?
	Your business is not really succeeding.
	You have never had a girlfriend or even been on a romantic date and you're 30. So your father must have said, holy shit, I was a bad dad.
	So I better...
	I better fix that.
	I better go study some parenting.
	I better go dig in and figure out how my bad parenting affected my son to the point where he can't get a date.
	Okay, so has he done that?
	Has he studied better parenting?
	Has he talked to you in great depth and detail about how he and your mother's parenting deficiencies kind of crippled you as a kid and are doing something bad to you as an adult?
	Have they...
	Improved!
	Have they learned?
	Have they done anything to improve what they say is deficient?
	No.
	So that's all bullshit.
	Even if I bring it up exactly the way you phrase it?
	Even if I bring it up, they would brush it off?
	Yeah, so you just kind of cornered them into spouting off the bare minimum to keep you around.
	That's all.
	Nothing's fixed.
	Holy shit, I've wasted time.
	Well, I want you to stop.
	This is why you're calling me, because you said you feel like you're kind of treading water and wasting time, right?
	Yeah, it's always been like this.
	So, restitution, right?
	You've heard me say this a million times, right?
	So, when you wrong someone, you owe them apologies, restitution, And a methodology by which it's not going to happen again, right?
	Now, your father broke down into some self-pity, but he still doesn't seem to have a freaking clue how what he and your mother did have harmed you as a human being, and that they need to fix that.
	I mean, it's like, I take your precious car, your favorite car, your beloved car, and I total it.
	And then I burst into tears saying, well, I didn't know how to drive.
	And then what?
	Everything's supposed to be okay?
	No.
	It's just a move.
	I'm just falling apart in self-pity so that I don't have to make any actual restitution.
	It's just a move.
	It's not moral.
	It's not moral.
	And this is who you will be inviting Grace, the girlfriend, to spend the next 50 years or 40 years or 30 years of her life with.
	I mean, if you hire me to paint your fence and I do a terrible job and knock down half your fence, do I then burst into tears and say I don't know much about fences and then wander off and everything is fine?
	And you hire me to come back and do more housework, handiwork?
	No.
	I gotta fix the fence, right?
	What has your dad done to fix the fence?
	For half a decade, you've been cajoling, nagging, reminding, whatever, and he's, you know, what's he done to fix what he broke?
	Does he ask you about your life?
	Does he ask you about your business?
	Does he ask you about...
	What happened with this girlfriend?
	Does he give you any kind of parenting?
	Because you say he knows how to be functional, because he's going to be functional with your kids, right?
	He's going to be great with your kids.
	Okay, is he great with you?
	Has he said, wow, you know, I spent 30 years not inquiring really about my son, and so I've really got to inquire about my son.
	He's better now, but mostly issues.
	Me talking to him about my problems.
	To be fair, he did give me some advice.
	I wasn't a very good job in listening to them, but sometimes he would just think that I'm too negative.
	He would think that I keep talking about my problems.
	Hang on, you're just scattered all over the place, right?
	So he says you're too negative, is that right?
	Yeah, because I always go on and on about this whole...
	Like, childhood and stuff.
	Okay, so he, in fact, is blaming you for some of the problems caused by his bad parenting.
	Thank you.
	Can I say what he said to me, to you?
	Sure, of course.
	Because I'm not quite sure whether I'm being gassed or not.
	He would say something to the effect of, well, not just him, but my brother too.
	And they would say something to the effect of, oh, you just keep looking at the patch, you're not moving forward.
	And that's why you're stuck, because you're not moving forward.
	You're not coming to terms with it, you're not moving forward.
	That's the gist of what they would say.
	And they would say, like, oh, of course you're miserable.
	You keep hanging on to the miserable parts.
	Okay.
	Alright, so let's do a roleplay with your dad.
	Okay.
	So I would say, so you know how to move on from a bad past, right?
	Thank you.
	That's what he would say.
	So if you know how to move on from a bad past, then why were you such a bad father?
	I thought I was doing
	Because I thought all I would need to do is just bring home the bacon.
	Well, but you were wrong.
	Well, how so?
	I'm sorry.
	Dad, we already had this conversation.
	You already said you apologized for being a bad father, right?
	Yeah, but I was working two jobs.
	I was provided.
	Okay, so sorry.
	I guess we're back on this.
	Do you have any feelings that you were not great as a dad?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Okay, so you have apologized for not being very good as a father or being bad as a father.
	So if you're going to tell me how to move on and to be happy, you understand that you're like a fat guy telling me how to lose weight.
	I'm not going to believe you.
	Because if you know, oh, well, the way that you move forward and move on in life is you ignore the past and pretend it didn't happen, well, you were a neglectful and sometimes abusive father,
	and so when you tell me I know how to achieve happiness, mental health, stability, and wisdom, when you were a bad father in many ways to me, Do you know why I might not believe you?
	He wouldn't understand the question.
	And to be honest, I don't think I understand the question.
	Sorry, just a big character.
	So let me ask you this, Dad.
	If you were 400 pounds and you were telling me you're an expert at losing weight, would I believe you?
	No.
	Okay.
	If you were a chain smoker and you say, I'm...
	I'm an expert at quitting smoking, which is really important to do.
	Would I believe you?
	No.
	So, if you tell me that you know how to be mentally healthy and happy, while at the same time having been a bad father, to me, will I believe you?
	Oh, I see what you're getting at.
	Well, then my dad doesn't, like, I'm in character now.
	Well, I had my son and I got married and I had you okay.
	Like, I had my family.
	It worked out.
	Sorry, do you think it worked out for me?
	Thank you.
	Well, you're just holding on to the bad parts.
	Okay, so your idea is you don't think about the bad parts, but if that works, why be you a bad father?
	All right.
	All right.
	I mean, you know that's not believable to me.
	You're saying, well, I know how to move on from the past and be happy and virtuous and good and kind and sensible and mentally healthy, right?
	But you didn't do those things.
	You were cold.
	You were aggressive.
	You were violent sometimes.
	You kind of locked me up with my brother, and you left us alone at the age of six and four, which is actually illegal and makes you a criminal, by the by.
	So then would you tell me, well, no, no, no, I know how to deal with bad things, then why were you a bad dad?
	If you're just an expert on knowing how to deal with bad things, then
	can see that the people who are not going to be able to deal with bad things.
	Well, you came out okay.
	I couldn't believe I just said that.
	No, no, he might say that, right?
	Right?
	And I would say, I don't feel okay.
	I'm not okay.
	I'm not okay.
	I'm 30. Now, I know you're going to blame me and say, well, the reason that I'm not okay is because I focus on the bad things, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Well, how about I had fewer bad things to focus on?
	Let's say you're right, right?
	Let's say that the solution is to not focus on the bad things.
	Okay.
	But isn't it an even better solution to not provide the bad things?
	In other words, If someone hits you with a baseball bat and breaks your leg, and then you're in continual pain for the rest of your life, is that person going to lecture you and say, well, you've just got to not focus on the pain?
	Would that make any sense?
	At this point, he would talk about it's impossible to not have any bad things, and he would just focus on the one or two bad things anyway, so he would just go and do that.
	Okay, so my grandparents committed murder-suicide, right?
	Is that a bad thing?
	It's not positive.
	Is it a bad thing?
	I mean, there's tons of things that aren't positive.
	I mean, that's everything in the world, pretty much.
	Except a few things that benefit you in general.
	Is it a bad thing for...
	Let's just go with the murder part.
	Okay, forget the suicide.
	Is murder bad?
	Is murder bad?
	murder bad?
	Okay, Dad, are you insane?
	This should not be a tough fucking question.
	I'm literally asking you, is murder bad?
	And you're like, I don't know!
	Maybe we shouldn't have any laws at all.
	Maybe we should reward murderers with cheesecake.
	Maybe we should give them foot rubs and concubines.
	What the hell?
	You're pausing on, is murder bad?
	Jesus, Dad, you whipped the shit out of me when I told a lie as a kid.
	And now you're like, well, I don't know if murder is bad.
	Oh, but lying is worth beating children for, but you have no fucking clue whether murder is bad?
	What is your malfunction here?
	What the literal hell is wrong with you?
	You can't even say that murder is bad?
	And yet you beat a child for lying?
	Thank you.
	And then you're going to tell me how to handle bad things?
	You can't even say that murder is bad?
	You're going to tell me how to handle negative things?
	My God, this isn't...
	I'm not even within a conversation.
	I'm in an asylum.
	I'm not joking.
	Like, I'm not...
	This is what's been going on.
	Every time I bring it up, he just boils down to this, and then I would have your exact same reaction.
	I would yell at him, like, that is a bad thing, Dad.
	Okay, so why are you going back?
	And I'm happy to hear the case.
	Why are you going back?
	The guy who beat you for lying, who can't even say that murder is wrong or whatever might happen in these conversations, who's highly dysfunctional and can't even admit basic moral truths and is going to tell you how to handle negative things and is going to blame you.
	You know, like if...
	If some guy accidentally breaks your leg and puts you in constant pain for the rest of your life, I wouldn't take any fucking lectures from that guy about how to handle the pain.
	It's like, how about you didn't break my leg in the first place?
	So, this is a man who cannot admit fault.
	And it's a prestige thing, it's a status thing, it doesn't really matter, but that's a fact, right?
	And he just constantly, he changes his story.
	moment by moment, to win in the moment, right?
	Thank you.
	So the reason he can't admit that murder is wrong is if he admits that murder is wrong, then he would have to say that ignoring the fact that there was a murder is mentally healthy.
	In which case, murderers should never be arrested.
	They should just be allowed to go and do whatever they want.
	It's mentally healthy to ignore the fact that there was a murder, but then it's really important to beat children for lying.
	Well, if you're just supposed to leave the past in the past and not get troubled by anything bad that happened, why the fuck were you ever punished as a child?
	Why did you have these cold-eyes, lizard, Gestapo-style cross-examinations, which sometimes would culminate in beating with bamboo sticks?
	Because you're just supposed to say, man, what have you said?
	Dad, come on, I lied.
	Who cares?
	Let it go.
	Move on.
	Bad things happen in life.
	You just got to let it go and move on.
	He wouldn't have done that, right?
	Yeah.
	And you're a little kid.
	He was an adult.
	So all these people who say, you just got to forgive and forget and move on, all they're saying is, I don't want to be held accountable for the evil things I've done.
	I get that.
	Of course.
	I mean, What criminal wants to be caught?
	Right?
	None.
	Criminals who steal don't want to be stolen from.
	I get that.
	I mean, it's just a play.
	It's just a move.
	It's just blaming you and getting you to attack yourself rather than question and examine him.
	Because if you're just supposed to move on and not be troubled by bad things that have happened, why were you ever punished as a child?
	You're supposed to move on.
	I mean, you're a kid.
	Just move on.
	Don't focus on the bad things.
	Yeah, you know, bad things happen in life.
	Yeah, kids lie in life.
	People get murdered.
	You just move on.
	But then, by that logic, you should never have been punished.
	And you'd have much less to complain about, right?
	So it's all just complete rank hypocrisy and a sort of shattered personality just trying to win in the moment.
	And why you put up with it is beyond me.
	Because you've listened to what I do for years and years and years.
	And you know the price of having corrupt abusers who don't take responsibility into your life.
	It means no good woman will come within a parsec of you.
	And not out of contempt or hatred.
	Can you repeat that last sentence again?
	Sure.
	The price of keeping unrepentant abusers in your life is good women won't date you.
	Maybe manipulative women will date you because there's the stamp of perpetual victimhood on your forehead, but a good woman will not date you.
	Because will a good woman who's got moral strength and courage and integrity, will she want to get involved in your mother and your father's life?
	you.
	Probably not.
	It's not probably.
	The more she cares about you, the more she's going to dislike the people who did the most harm to you, right?
	The more you love your girlfriend, the more you're upset when some guy hits her with a bamboo stick on the street, right?
	Yeah.
	So...
	You're asking for someone to care about you and the people who abused you.
	woman will even try.
	Bye. Thank you.
	Yeah, that's probably why, man.
	I'm sorry?
	That's probably why, because I asked...
	I'm quite talented, and I could be all...
	I mean, at some point, I would see these girls, they would look at me with sparkles in their eyes, but after I started to, you know, like, not be in work mode and be like, oh, like, they all show, so they all just vanish.
	Well, so here's the problem.
	So you are lacking effective will in your life.
	You're lacking effective will.
	To either fix your business or close it up and do something else.
	You're just treading water, right?
	You are lacking effective will when it comes to evaluating and dating women, right?
	So, this 18-year-old woman was a liar.
	Because the moment she got a boyfriend, she should have said, I'm so sorry, I know you're interested, I have a boyfriend, so I can't see you.
	But instead, she still wants to go out for dinner.
	You're planning trips.
	Now, why did you choose her?
	Now you say because she's young.
	Was she pretty?
	She's pretty.
	Okay.
	Again, I have no problem with the pretty.
	That's fine.
	But it means that you are choosing a woman not for her virtues, right?
	Now, who wants you to either be single...
	Or choose a corrupt woman.
	Who benefits from that?
	Do you?
	But if there's something in our life that continues, it has to benefit someone, right?
	So, who benefits?
	Alright.
	Whose self-interest is harmed if a strong moral woman comes into your life?
	Yes. Thank you.
	I honestly can't think of it.
	No, I'm serious.
	Smart guy.
	Smart guy.
	Okay.
	My parents, they don't really benefit from it.
	Okay.
	Not that they don't benefit.
	So, remember, I was asking these questions of your father, because that's what a strong moral woman would do, either directly or indirectly, right?
	She'd either ask you these questions to ask your father, or she'd ask these questions directly.
	Because she wants to make sure that she's marrying into a family that's going to be safe and healthy for her children, right?
	She's good, yes.
	Do your parents want to be confronted in this kind of way?
	They would not.
	They would not, right.
	So you are single because your parents would rather you be single than be with a quality woman who's going to expose them.
	I mean, look, let's...
	If, uh, I don't know, Yakuza is probably, I don't know, it's a Japanese reference.
	Okay, mafia, right?
	Let's go mafia, right?
	Okay.
	So, uh, let's say that your parents are, like, literally, legit organized crime people.
	They're like Tony Soprano, they're like the mafia, right?
	And then you say, and you don't know that they're in the mafia, right?
	You think that just, I don't know, garbage disposal or something like that, right?
	And then what happens is, you come home and you say, hey, mom, dad.
	I'm dating an FBI agent who's really focused on exposing organized crime.
	Right?
	What will your parents?
	Will they be pro or anti that relationship?
	Anti.
	Right.
	Would they rather you be single or dating an FBI agent who's an expert at uncovering organized crime and have that person come over and see how they live and all their money?
	Right?
	Very sorry, I lost the last part and you repeat that again.
	Well, do your parents want the expert on organized crime who can arrest them coming over and seeing how much money they have and how they live and all this and the other?
	No, no, they would not.
	Hell no.
	You know, if your parents are cheating on their taxes, do they want you dating an expert IRS agent?
	I don't know.
	Thank you.
	If your parents have bodies buried in the backyard, do they want you to surprise them by hiding a gardener to dig up all their flower beds?
	People who have stuff to hide never want perceptive people around.
	Immoral people do not want moral people around.
	What did your father say about the 18-year-old that you dated?
	said he...
	He said he really much had the same conclusion, like it's a manipulator, don't think about her, just move on.
	Okay, now did he say to you, hang on, did he say to you, well, let's try and figure out why you chose her so that it doesn't happen again?
	uh
	No, he didn't say that.
	Because I am...
	I am...
	I am quite old.
	Like, slim down, dress better, and just go meet more people.
	Right.
	Okay.
	Right.
	So at 30, you know, you're kind of running out of time a little bit.
	Not massively, but somewhat.
	Especially because more of the lack of experience with women, right?
	So...
	Yeah, yeah.
	This is...
	Every time this thought entered my head and I just spiral, man.
	Right.
	So your parents should be really helping you and doing whatever it takes to help you with this, not just like, oh, go date someone else, right, without circling back and saying what went wrong and helping you with it, right?
	So he's still not parenting you and he's not giving you the advice, right?
	Okay.
	So this is your choice, right?
	I mean, you're 30 years old and why I said you have an exhausted will.
	It's that you have been trying to connect with somebody who's foundationally selfish.
	You have been trying to change someone who's only capable of surrendering to pressure in the short run, not capable of any internally driven change.
	So you have exhausted your will beating your head against the brick wall of your parents for more than half a decade and no wonder your dating life and your business life is a mess.
	Hold it, Dad.
	You've got nothing left.
	You're out of energy.
	You are so hitting me on the head.
	Yeah.
	Oh, my God.
	Because it's not with parents.
	I do this with everybody.
	Right.
	I do this with, like, I made a terrible bad calling, like, character, and I try to fix them, and, like...
	It's the same thing over and over and over and over and over again.
	And this was a necessary survival strategy when you were a kid.
	You had to pretend that your parents could improve.
	Otherwise, I don't know, you'd jump off the balcony or something, right?
	So you had to have hope as a child.
	I completely understand that.
	And I'm glad you did.
	Otherwise, we probably wouldn't be talking, right?
	But no, it's not your job.
	Like, can you imagine if I was still enmeshed in like...
	Messy, complicated, difficult, gaslighting family situations, right?
	I mean, could I do this show?
	No.
	I'd have no energy.
	Because it's so exhausting.
	It is.
	It's so exhausting.
	Yeah, so your motor is out, bro.
	Like, you're burned out.
	You've got smoking wreck where your transmission should be.
	Now, it's fixable.
	It's obviously fixable.
	But you're out.
	You're out of juice.
	You're out of battery.
	You're out of energy.
	You have just spent more than half a decade, and really longer than that, but more than half a decade, trying to fix the unfixable.
	And this leaves you no energy for dating.
	It leaves you no energy for your business.
	And it's a hole with no bottom.
	And you're just digging a hole and filling it in, and digging a hole and filling it in, without even getting the sunlight and muscles that that might engender.
	All that is not serving your future is...
	Listen, this is really important.
	All that is not serving your future is expendable.
	All that is not serving your future is expendable.
	Does this relationship with your parents add to your sexual market value to a good woman?
	Does a good woman look at your family and say, fantastic.
	Because she's not choosing you.
	She's choosing your whole family.
	Right?
	Men choose women.
	Women choose families.
	So a good woman is looking at your family and saying, okay, this guy's running all over hell's half acre trying to change people who won't change, and they're just playing him.
	And he's going to have no time and energy left for me.
	He's going to have no time and energy less to go and fight in the marketplace to bring home the bacon and compete and win.
	I mean, it's like...
	Dating a drug addict, they don't have much left over for you or their own lives.
	And you're a fix-it addict.
	And listen, I understand that.
	I say this with all humility, and I was still doing it long after you were doing, like long after you're 30, I was still doing it.
	So I say this with all humility.
	I'm only lucky because I'm older.
	Right?
	So please don't think, oh, well, I figured this out when I was 12. No, I was older than you and still doing this nonsense.
	So please accept my deep humility.
	When it comes to correcting you on this, it is not out of any superiority.
	I know what it's like, man.
	You've got no energy for things.
	You just drag yourself through your life because you're trying to achieve the impossible.
	Yeah, I got no energy.
	Right, right.
	I got no energy.
	When it comes to get to work, I have all these projects.
	I have all these plans.
	And then the kids come, and then I do the same thing with their parents.
	I try to get their parents.
	I use so many ways to get the parents to...
	Oh man, the horror stories.
	One kid came in with malnutrition.
	You know that one.
	And I was looking at him hanging with malnutrition.
	I'm not talking about academics.
	That kid wasn't even playing or messing around or causing trouble.
	That's a problem.
	And I had to go and buy nutritious shoes just to eat.
	And I had to...
	Like, you know how you have kids starve to death?
	Like, starve to your point where you don't eat food?
	That was that kid.
	And I had to force it in him.
	I had to go, no, you have to eat.
	And I'm not proud of this, but it had to be done.
	I was kind of yelling at him just to get him to eat.
	No, I get that.
	I get that.
	But, I mean, is this kid still legally a child?
	Yes.
	Okay, so don't you call social services or the police or something like that?
	I mean, I don't know the laws, and don't tell me what they are, but I mean, you can't fix that.
	You could just maybe jam a bit of food down his throat, but you can't fix that.
	That's a whole systemic thing where people who are experts have to figure out why the kid is starving.
	They've got school lunches, but the school lunches are really bad.
	But he comes in like...
	Hang on, we've talked for a long time, so we've got to wrap it up soon.
	Okay.
	Did you call anyone to get an intervention on this family?
	I called the family, but I didn't call anybody.
	Okay.
	And again, I don't know whether that's a good or bad or right or wrong thing, but did you think about it?
	Did you think about, okay, this is a job for social services or the police or, like, this is not something that I, as a tutor, can fix?
	No, I just brought it up on myself.
	Okay, so that's part of the helplessness.
	You've got to turn it over to experts.
	You can't fix that.
	You can't fix that.
	And you've got to stop trying to do all of this fix-it stuff.
	Right?
	I mean, I can't fix people.
	Right?
	That's why you've heard me say it a million times.
	I can't tell you what to do.
	Right? Right?
	Right? Right?
	Thank you.
	How about you save your energies for people who aren't broken?
	Because you're like a coach, and you're saying to people you find on the street, you know, come and be an Olympic runner.
	And they're like, I don't want to be an Olympic runner.
	I'm 60 and I'm living on a park bench.
	No, you've got to become an Olympic runner and you're nagging and yelling and frustrated and you're just burning out.
	How about you're a coach and you work with the fastest runners who are already super motivated?
	In other words, why don't you work with a good woman Is already motivated to be virtuous and is already virtuous and just needs, you know, like we all do, a couple of tweaks here and there.
	And why don't you, instead of trying to fix your parents in their 60s, raise children who are healthy from scratch?
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Because when you have a woman who loves you and you are a father to your children, you have authority, you have influence, you have, quote, control, right?
	All right.
	Thank you.
	That's my question.
	I...
	You just answered the question on what I need to do with the business.
	Yeah, I know what I need to do.
	All right.
	Good. Well, okay.
	Is there anything else that you wanted to mention at the end of the convent?
	I really do appreciate your time.
	And obviously, you're a brilliant guy.
	And, you know, you're very passionate about philosophy.
	And I think that's all wonderful and beautiful and wonderful.
	I have huge, huge admiration for what you've done with your life as a whole, because you certainly, I mean, you're the grandchild of murder-suicide, and to overcome that is very tough.
	And I have, you know, massive sympathy for all of that.
	But is there anything else that you wanted to mention at the end?
	Yeah, I just want to give thanks.
	I mean, I'm just so grateful for you and for all the work that you did, especially for all the call-in shows and everything.
	I know, I know, like, I didn't, Didn't do much, or it didn't seem I'd do much, but I met people who knew me five years ago.
	They could not recognize me.
	So, and it was, like, you, like, your shows and everything you did was part of how I got, like, how I get everything started running and I get to where I am now.
	Yeah, and I appreciate that.
	Yeah, I appreciate that, and you'll just be absolutely amazed once you're no longer burning your Motor on, you know, it's like if you have a car and you're driving it into a brick wall and you just keep revving it and revving it, eventually the thing's just going to give way.
	And I think that you'd be absolutely amazed how much energy you will have when you're no longer burning your motor on people who can't change or won't change.
	Okay, so.
	All right, brother.
	Will you keep me posted about how things are going?
	Yeah, I'll send you the message.
	All right.
	I appreciate your time, man.
	Have a great, great afternoon.
	Thanks for your convo today.
	You too.
	Thank you very much.

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