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July 12, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:47:59

How to Forgive Parents! Twitter/X Space

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	Hi, everybody.
	Stefan Molly from Freedom Air Radio.
	Good evening.
	Welcome to your show.
	And let's see.
	Yes.
	Is it a Twitter space?
	Yes.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	It is a Twitter space.
	Hi, everybody.
	Stefan Walnut from Free Domain.
	Hope you're doing well.
	Hope you're having a lovely day.
	Let's get straight to it.
	It's your show Sunday.
	Sunday, chatty Sunday, we're going to be doing a donor-only show at 11 a.m.
	And if you want to join into that, you can, of course, go to free domain.locals.com, free domain.locals.com, sign up for that, and we'll be doing it that way tonight.
	All right, so let's get to here and see.
	You can just ask to chat, bring yourself into the conversation.
	Thrilled to chat, of course.
	Thrilled to have that kind of conversation with you, you, and go check out Colin James, just whenever you can.
	I'm on an Alan Parsons kick at the moment and a Colin James kick.
	And that is some lovely, juicy, delightful stuff.
	So I hope you will check that out.
	Go and listen to him and the Birmingham singer, Amanda Marshall, doing Keep On Loving Me Live.
	Smoking.
	Smoking.
	So I've been talking to some drug users today.
	It's funny because I just kind of forget these big controversies because like in my life, they're just not around.
	Obviously, I don't really have any drug users in my life.
	And yeah, it's been a while.
	It's been a while since I've been around the rampant justifications of the drug adult.
	And listen, again, I talked about this today.
	I'll just keep it briefly here.
	I have great sympathy for the kind of childhood upset and trauma that has people turn to drugs, self-medicate.
	I have great sympathy for that.
	And nothing but love for the people who are struggling to overcome childhood stuff and all of that.
	Beautiful.
	You're magnificent, heroic.
	But the people who try to make it cool or like it's natural and Terence McKenna and Johns Hopkins studies and PDSD trauma fixing and so on.
	And I have a great time and it's great and it's fun and it's good.
	The people who praise it and promote it.
	That is not good.
	That is not a good situation.
	If you've got some upset, some sadness, probably from childhood, massive sympathies, but if you're making it cool and selling it to others this way of avoiding things, that's not cool.
	That's not cool at all.
	But again, if you disagree with me, I'm certainly happy to be set straight.
	And this idea that, well, Steph, you've never done drugs, so you can't comment on them.
	It's like, well, you know, I haven't beat my balls with a baseball hammer either.
	But that doesn't mean that I can't have any opinions about it or can't have any thoughts about whether it's good or bad.
	I haven't injected bleach into my veins either.
	I haven't drunk antifreeze or brain rotten moonshine.
	I haven't done any of that.
	Does that mean that I can't have any perspectives or opinions about these things?
	Well, of course I can.
	Of course I can.
	So I hope that gives you at least some answers as to where I'm coming from.
	So this idea that I can't comment on things unless I've experienced them directly, that's why it's called philosophy.
	You know, we can say things if you're a physicist, you can say things about Mars without actually having visited Mars because it's universal principles, right?
	So you can say things about things without having done them.
	I've never murdered anyone, but I have an opinion about it.
	I really do.
	So again, if you have any questions, comments, you disagree, you want to set me straight, I'm obviously thrilled to hear from you.
	You can just raise your hand and come into the conversation and set me straight.
	I'd be thrilled to have you do that.
	And if there's something I don't understand, I'm obviously happy to be schooled on it and so on.
	But, you know, and if some people benefit from some sort of drug with regards to PTSD or something like that, hey, great.
	I mean, maybe it could be used in a meditional sense, but not recreationally, right?
	You know, not right, you know, like laughing gas should be used, maybe, if you're going to get your wisdom teeth out, but not recreationally, right?
	So saying conflating when you're doing something for medical reasons as opposed to something recreationally, conflating those two things is kind of a sad cope.
	It's kind of, and, you know, I guess this is the thing too, is that the people who do drugs and the people who don't do drugs, they just seem to kind of live in really different worlds.
	And I think crossovers are good.
	I think crossovers are good.
	So for people who take drugs recreationally, which is really what I'm talking about, because people are like, oh, so you've never taken an aspirin?
	It's like, an aspirin is not an escape from self or reality.
	It doesn't alter my perceptions.
	It doesn't mess with my brain chemistry.
	It's just a minor painkiller, right?
	So I think it's good to have this kind of crossover where people who don't take drugs get to interact with people who do take drugs, and you get to have a robust back and forth, right?
	That seems to me like a good plan.
	I mean, don't we want to widen our conversations to include people we wouldn't normally talk with?
	I don't normally talk with people who do this kind of stuff.
	But on the plus side, they don't normally talk with me either.
	And it seems to be a good crossover.
	So I hope that people will listen to that.
	And here's the other thing, too.
	You know, if you're a drug user, and I don't mean that you tried pot once when you were 20, who cares?
	Like, it doesn't matter, right?
	But what I'm talking about is if you justify it as a good thing.
	And by the by, just my sort of general opinion is anything Hollywood promotes, I just dislike automatically.
	Just anything that Hollywood promotes.
	And you sort of think of the Seth Rogan Stoner comedies or the, you know, gotta, gotta, gotta get a party, gotta drink, gotta, all of this sort of stuff.
	I mean, it's all just rampant degeneracy.
	And so if you're on the side of Hollywood on anything, you're dancing with the devil and bending over to pick up soap in the demonic shower of general social corruption.
	That's just my particular approach with those kinds of things.
	It's not an absolute standard, but it's a pretty good first pass.
	So yeah, whatever that stuff is promoted.
	And the other thing too, like you might be wrong.
	You might be wrong.
	You might be wrong.
	And I would have a certain amount of respect for people who, if I'm bringing up sort of criticisms of drug use, say, you know, I thought about that.
	Maybe it isn't a good idea, but here's the thing, blah, blah, blah.
	But it's all like, no, it's absolutely great.
	It's absolutely perfect.
	There's no problem with it.
	No issues.
	You're just a close-minded, narrow-brained bigot.
	And, you know, it's like, okay.
	So you just have insults, right?
	And the insults fly pretty, pretty fast and furious.
	Now, I'm not claiming victimhood here.
	If I refer to people as druggies and say it's bad, I understand that it is not something where I can say, oh, oh, but I'm such a victim.
	I, I, delicate little flower that I am, never said anything negative wrong or bad, never had anything critical.
	They just, they just swarmed me for no reason.
	I get that.
	It's kind of provocative.
	But here's the thing, right?
	I mean, if drugs make you so mature, then you should be able to handle some criticism.
	Should be, right?
	I mean, somebody was saying, you know, Steph, you know, the drugs, they really just help me feel at one with everything.
	And they, you know, make gentleness and connection.
	But yours is really shit take.
	And it's like, yes, I feel that connection, bro.
	I really do.
	I really do.
	It's like all the people who get mad at me when I tell them that forgiveness should be earned.
	It's like, let's say I'm wrong.
	Shouldn't you just forgive me rather than get mad at me?
	I don't know.
	If you want to have credibility in this life as a whole, then it is pretty important to actually live the values that you are proposing to others, right?
	If I'm going to promote peaceful parenting, it's kind of important that I be a peaceful parent, wouldn't you say?
	If I am going to promote forgiving people who apologize and make restitution, then when somebody does me wrong, apologizes and makes restitution, then I should forgive them.
	And I've done those conversations.
	I've had conversations with people who were harsh, ugly, and vicious trolls for a long time.
	And they finally saw the light and realized that I was a good guy trying to do good things and often achieving good things.
	And I have conversations.
	They're forgiven.
	They're part of the conversation.
	So if people, and of course, I have apologized to people and made restitution.
	I criticized someone unjustly on one of the live streams a couple of months ago.
	I gave him a free two-hour call-in, which is, you know, not cheap for some people and promised to never do that again.
	So I made my apologies, made my restitution.
	So you should live by the values that you espouse.
	And if drugs make you so wise, then you should be able to handle some criticism, even if it's harsh, right?
	See, the funny thing is, you know, people come to me and they say, Steph, philosophy is useless.
	Philosophy is a useless, abstract nonsense.
	What the hell has it ever achieved?
	Discipline, right?
	Philosophy is useless.
	And they come at me quite harsh.
	I mean, well, they come at me quite strong.
	I suppose you could say it's harsh.
	They come at me strong.
	Right.
	I mean, tell me more, if it's any consolation.
	I've had exactly the same criticisms about philosophy for many years.
	The reason I got into philosophy was because nobody was doing what needed to be done.
	Nobody was doing what needed to be done.
	In particular, talking about the ethics and virtue of childhood parenting and child raising.
	So, yeah, but if people come, or if people come in me and say, well, Steph, what good has your show ever done?
	Right.
	And I say, well, according to my recent calculations, I have prevented about a billion and a half, a billion and a half violent acts against children.
	It's not that hard because children are aggressed against by parents in some studies 17 times a week.
	So you just have to convince, you know, I've had a billion views and downloads, even if I just say, okay, I've just convinced a million parents over the last 20 years.
	I've convinced a million parents scattered over that time to not hit their children.
	That's a billion and a half children not being hit.
	Now, I could count not being yelled at, verbally abused, and so on, but let's just say not being hit.
	So that's practical, measurable effects that are positive in the world.
	But if somebody says to me, show me some good your philosophy show has ever done, I'm like, yep, that's a perfectly reasonable question.
	And I should show some actual, this is one of the reasons I got out of politics is it's really tough for libertarians to show the good that they have achieved.
	Whereas with you talk about peaceful parenting, you can actually get the non-aggression principle to be enacted by people as a whole.
	All right, let's get to your questions, comments, criticisms, challenges.
	Will.
	Lordy, lordy.
	Will, you are online, on the air, scouring through my neurons like a vole.
	If you want to unmute, I'm happy to hear what is on your mind.
	Oh, what's on my mind?
	Besides the conversation earlier, I would say, should children be considered property of the parents until they move out?
	Well, they're not the same as property because you can destroy your own property, but you can't destroy your own children.
	So I would say that they are the responsibility of the parents, but they're not the property of the parents.
	Because you can't, and this is an old argument with regards to slavery, which is you can't have self-ownership and also own other human beings.
	So human beings have self-ownership, and owning ourselves means owning our own minds, our own bodies and also owning the effects of our actions.
	So if Bob goes and punches someone, he owns that wound.
	He has created that wound.
	He is responsible for that wound, that black eye, or whatever it is.
	So we own ourselves and we own the effects of our actions.
	However, you can't both own yourself and also own another human being.
	But children, of course, are not independent of their parents because they need their parents' resources in order to survive.
	So they are not property, but they are the responsibility of parents, if that makes sense.
	Because property also can't become unproperty.
	Whereas, of course, the whole point of parenting is your children grow up and they become independent of needing you.
	They become self-sufficient.
	And that's not the case with property that is like my pair of glasses is never going to become independent of me and go and look and see and lust and enjoy sunsets on their own.
	So that static property is just a thing, whereas children grow into self-ownership.
	So they can't be considered the property of their parents, if that makes sense.
	Yes.
	Also, I kind of just wanted to give you a little bit of pushback on some of the drug usage type stuff, like from some of the conversations earlier.
	Like, let's suppose there's plenty of different types of drugs out there.
	Some of them you could, in theory, use to like treat a whole host of different conditions, whether that be tremors, whether that be fatigue, to focus as a nootropic.
	Like, I'm not saying like there's any.
	Sorry, hang on, hang on.
	You conflated a couple of things there, which I think are important to break out.
	So let's say there's a drug that treats tremors.
	Is that right?
	Yeah, like there's people that use like, I think like amphetamines.
	Like if you use like micro doses of them, it can actually upregulate dopamine receptor density.
	Sorry, is that related?
	I'm not a doctor.
	Is that related to tremors?
	Yes, like tremors and things of that nature.
	It's actually caused by losing too many dopamine receptors from what I heard.
	I mean, are you sure of that?
	Because I don't want to put out misinformation.
	I can't vet this in real time.
	Like, let's suppose like if someone loses 70% of their dopamine receptors, they start to develop Parkinson's.
	Okay.
	So then there's a drug that could treat the Parkinson's by doing something with the dopamine receptors.
	Is that right?
	Well, if you use like micro doses of amphetamines, you can upregulate the dopamine receptor density a little bit.
	Now, like, sure, I'm not going to say like that's the only thing like you should do, but I'm not going to tell people that they shouldn't like try to experiment with like different like rec drugs or whatnot.
	Sorry, hang on, hang on, hang on.
	So we're going from it's a known medical treatment to just what, guinea pig yourself by cramming drugs into your system?
	Yeah, so there's plenty of people who do that for themselves.
	It's like they don't trust doctors or you have like bodybuilders who'll use like anabolic steroids.
	They'll have like their own stacks.
	Sorry, they'll have their own what?
	Steroid cycles and stacks.
	Okay, stacks.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	So it's like, yes, you do have like just random meatheads who like read forums about, all right, what effect does this drug have?
	And they don't necessarily have like a PhD in some place like, let's say, Johns Hopkins or any place like that.
	They just get it from like, I guess like bro science forums, like they might read certain papers and stuff.
	So they're experimenting on themselves.
	Yeah, they'll like say, all right, yeah, I'll use like two grams of test.
	200 milligrams of Trenbolone, maybe some T3, maybe...
	What else do you like to me?
	For the sake of building...
	You mean for the sake of treating any medical condition?
	That's because they want bigger muscles.
	Well, yeah, they want bigger muscles.
	They want certain effects.
	Yeah.
	Well, I mean, it's like you could use that same logic for treating.
	No, no, hang on, Dick.
	Bro, bro, you got to stop charging all over the place.
	Let me deal with a topic that you bring up.
	Because you've conflated a whole bunch of things.
	One is legitimate treatments for medical issues.
	The other is wanting to feel good.
	The other is people mixing steroids and other stuff, not to treat any medical issues, but because they want bigger muscles.
	These things are all, they're not all the same.
	You understand that, right?
	Even if it's not the same, there's still plenty of overlap.
	Like you can still use that same mindset for treating muscle.
	I don't know what that means.
	I have no idea what that means.
	I mean, you could, just as like a meathead chemist, they might have a certain cycle for bulking or a juicer might have a different cycle for cutting.
	They might have a different cycle for treating injuries as well.
	And so, and considering that, they could also try to like use other rec drugs for other conditions.
	Like, like that is, bro, it's not a condition to have normal human muscles.
	That's not a health issue.
	That's not a problem.
	Yeah, yeah, but like, still, it's like people have a certain goal.
	Like, let's suppose you wanted to be 300 pounds.
	Maybe not you yourself, but someone else wanted to be 300 pounds stage weight.
	Sure, like, obviously that's going to be like a different goal from, do I want to recover from this injury?
	That might be different from, do I want to treat this other thing in my life?
	It's like they can have the same mindset, but just as like a bodybuilder might have like a different cycle for, let's say, like a nootropic cycle might use more smart drugs.
	It might use more rec drugs.
	Okay, this all just, hang on, you're just going off on stuff that doesn't mean much to anyone outside of that community.
	So let me ask you this.
	Are bodybuilders allowed to use steroids in competitions?
	Depends.
	And the competition, IFBB, NPC, yes.
	I don't do steroids, never been on any artificial Anabolics.
	All right.
	I've signed up for PNBA, INBA.
	No, not PNBA, but INBA.
	Competition.
	Do you think that anyone knows what you're talking about?
	I'm just curious.
	You're talking to a general audience.
	Do you have empathy for the general audience that if you just put out a bunch of acronyms, anybody has a clue what you're talking about?
	For NPC or IFBB, International Federation of Bodybuilding, that's not drug tested.
	People use steroids there all the time.
	Okay.
	Those are like the two biggest competitions.
	So NPC, IFBB, whereas you do have some bodybuilding competitions that are drug tested, but they're generally much smaller.
	They don't get as many views.
	And is the purpose of these competitions to win prizes and make money?
	Is that right?
	Partially, yes.
	And what percentage of bodybuilders do you think are making good money on these bodybuilding circuits?
	So are we talking about professional bodybuilding?
	Okay.
	What percentage of people who take steroids are doing it to win $100,000 in some bodybuilding competition or 10,000, whatever it's going to be, 50,000, whatever it's going to be, right?
	What percentage of the people who take steroids are doing it for that purpose?
	1% or less.
	Okay.
	So most people are taking steroids to get big muscles for no particular purpose other than maybe vanity or measuring their muscles or whatever, right?
	Looking good.
	Libido as well, functioning like that, depression.
	It helps with plenty of different things.
	Well, no, but we're talking about body.
	It's 12% of the body.
	Okay, you've got to focus, man.
	You're not selling these drugs very well because you're not focusing.
	I'm not talking about people who might take some sort of steroid for some other reason, right?
	So what I'm talking about is you talked about weightlifters.
	So the vast majority, the overwhelming majority of weightlifters are taking steroids, endangering their physical and mental health for nothing.
	Like in terms of no income, no career, no money.
	I mean, some of them might compete, but I wouldn't say bro.
	I mean, you just said less than 1%.
	You just, hang on.
	I just, you gotta, I mean, I don't know what the hell's going on with your brain, man.
	You just told me it's less than 1%.
	All right.
	Let's say, does steroids versus competes, like has signed up for a show versus is a professional bodybuilder?
	Like those are three different categories I say that we could have.
	I'm just going off what you tell me, bro.
	I don't know all these categories.
	I'm not into that world.
	I'm simply going by what you tell me.
	All right.
	So the vast majority of people who are taking these, I mean, steroids have dangers, right?
	There's roid rage.
	There can be heart issues.
	There are dangers to steroids, right?
	It's safe to say, yeah, there's liver toxicity, stuff like that, cancer growth.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	So there's a lot of people.
	And what they do is they take these dangerous substances or substances which can be dangerous for reasons of vanity or appearance, not for some sort of, I mean, not that the money making makes it perfect or great, but they take these drugs for reasons of vanity and appearance, and they endanger their health potentially for no good reason.
	I'd honestly argue that your average juicer is still going to be healthier than your average Joe.
	But that's a false diet.
	If it's probably not ideal for health, they're still probably healthier than most people who don't even exercise or lift.
	Yeah, but that's not what you would compare it to.
	You would compare it to people who lift without steroids.
	Because it's a false dichotomy.
	Where does your profession lead you to?
	It's a false dichotomy to say your choice is to not exercise at all.
	And I'm only going to compare people who don't exercise at all to people who exercise using dangerous drugs.
	Obviously, there are more categories, yeah.
	Yeah, there's the category of people who exercise without using dangerous drugs, right?
	And then there's people who use other drugs like rec drugs that you've criticized earlier who aren't complete junkies.
	Depending on how much usage counts as a junkie.
	So I would say who has a problem.
	I mean, I didn't use the word junkie.
	All right.
	But this is also my point as well.
	Sorry, what is oh, that there's people who, let's say, that do use rec drugs who, let's say, I wouldn't necessarily say that they fall into that category as well.
	Sorry, what category?
	Of like the random drug user who insults people.
	Okay, and I mean, that's kind of my own point.
	That there's like far more arguments for drug usage, such as like as a nootropic stack.
	People use that as an argument.
	I don't know what nootropic stack means.
	A nootropic means like a smart drug.
	So caffeine might count as a smart drug, but some people don't count it as that.
	I'd say a better example of a smart drug would be dihexa.
	So dihexa, it's an experimental brain-growing peptide.
	I've tried it.
	And I'm surprised it's not banned by wada because I'm like, this thing should be, because it significantly increases my reaction time.
	And I'll find myself answering questions before I even ask them to myself.
	And my working memory goes through the roof.
	And it's literally increases my own IQ score.
	So it's used to treat, let's say, spinal damage in mice, Alzheimer's, etc.
	You mean Alzheimer's in people, not in mice, right?
	Yeah, but it has in like lab studies.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	So, like, you've heard of nootropic supplements, have you?
	Like, I mean, I've heard of nootropics.
	So, what you're saying is they are beneficial drugs, benevolent drugs, drugs with only all drugs have negative and positive outcomes.
	Well, most of them are just supplements.
	So, a lot of them, they might at best, they're going to improve your focus.
	I'd say vast majority of them.
	So why would you need drugs to improve your focus?
	Why do you use caffeine?
	That helps improve your focus.
	It helps you feel more energized.
	People do you feel that caffeine is a powerful drug?
	Yes, it is.
	It's much more powerful than most vitamin shop over-the-counter nootropics as well.
	Okay.
	All right.
	It's more powerful than like Ginkgo Biloba.
	It's more powerful than I'd say alpha GPC.
	Okay, so you would put a cup or two of coffee a day.
	That would be a drug addict.
	If you have to, then you're an addict.
	Whereas this is my thing when it comes to being an addict, you're not.
	Do you function without it or do you not?
	Like, do you use this thing as a crutch?
	If it's not a crutch, then you're not an addict.
	If it is a crutch, then you are.
	Okay, so then the people who are doing the steroids are addicts.
	A lot of them, but...
	They can't lift their weights without it.
	What are you talking about?
	What do you mean, a lot of them?
	You're not wrong.
	Like, this is like...
	I'm going with your definition.
	I mean, you're not wrong, I would say.
	This is why I don't do gear.
	Well, also because everybody who needs the drug to function is an addict, right?
	Yes, I do agree with you here.
	Okay, so the people who take these performance-enhancing drugs for weightlifting are addicts.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	And the people who take drugs because they want to focus and they really can't focus as well without those drugs are addicts.
	It depends on how poor their performance is.
	Can they focus at all without it?
	Yeah.
	That's my point when it comes down to that.
	Yeah, I mean, I mean, I just find it completely ridiculous that you would put a cup or two of coffee in the realm of a powerful drug that people are addicted to.
	I'm not comparing that to amphetamines.
	Okay, so let's just drop it.
	Like, experimentally, like, I'm not going to tell people not to do that.
	Sorry, not to do what?
	Like, if someone were to decide to use roughly like a few milligrams of amphetamines as like an experimental thing to help focus, that's probably not going to cause them to be an addict.
	And they'd still be able to function even when they crash off of it a little bit.
	Okay.
	Whereas if I can't judge these things, so sorry, is there any other philosophical questions that you have?
	Oh, yes, yes.
	I'd just say that a lot of these cultural issues that you kind of find yourself arguing with lately.
	Sorry, what do you mean by cultural issues?
	Like drug usage, things of that nature, natalism.
	A lot of that stuff's just opinion.
	And like, I'll notice this like a lot with the, I'd say with libertarians, like generally, it's like the more right you go, the more disagreement there is.
	I think there are people.
	Okay, I don't, I don't, you know, this is a philosophy show.
	So just saying shit doesn't mean anything.
	Well, they're all just opinions.
	You know, you kind of have to make a case for that.
	I mean, all of the drugs that you've taken to improve your concentration and your focus and hasn't helped you reason at all.
	I mean, art of the, hang on, hang on, hang on.
	Art of the, hang on, hang on, hang on.
	ArtoftheArgument.com, you should get that book.
	It will teach you how to reason.
	Because just saying stuff is really boring.
	Because it doesn't produce anything other than, I like ice cream.
	I think you're wrong.
	These are all just opinions.
	Like, it doesn't actually have any intellectual content.
	You're just making bleating sounds with your mouth hole.
	And I would actually like to get into a debate with sort of facts, reason, and evidence.
	And we've had a little bit of that.
	But you just say stuff and then you bring up libertarianism.
	And it's like, I have put forward the argument about, let's say, having children.
	I've put forward a whole series of arguments that need to be addressed and dismissed if you want to participate in a rational conversation.
	You can't just say, well, it's all just opinion.
	I mean, you can say it, but then you've just ejected yourself from the realm of competent discourse among adults, right?
	So I'm going to move on to the next caller, but artoftheargument.com.
	I would really, really recommend.
	It probably is going to do you a whole lot better in your life than whatever micro-dosing is going on, because I'm telling you, man, that ain't working.
	All right.
	Thanks, man.
	I appreciate it.
	Nico.
	Nico, Nico, Nico.
	You are on the air.
	How goes it, Stephan?
	Thanks for having me.
	My pleasure.
	What's up with you?
	Oh, not much.
	I'm kind of trying to figure out what exactly the conversation around drugs and your philosophy is on it.
	I saw a couple of your tweets earlier today.
	I haven't really nailed down exactly what your point is.
	Could you spell it out for me?
	What do you mean, my point regarding what?
	Drug usage.
	What kind of drugs are we talking about?
	Marijuana.
	We'll go with that, for example.
	Okay.
	So marijuana.
	Look, I understand that for some people, especially if you're going through chemotherapy, marijuana can help with nausea and things like that.
	So clearly, I'm not talking about direct medicinal uses of the drug.
	Can we sort of agree on that?
	Oh, absolutely.
	I was more interested on the actual like addictive behavior side of things.
	So drugs offer a shortcut that is non-communicable and non-reproducible, and therefore kind of false.
	So if you have, let's say, a problem with anxiety and marijuana calms your anxiety, you don't know why.
	All you've done is suppressed the symptoms.
	You haven't dealt with the root causes of the anxiety.
	I mean, for instance, you might be in danger.
	You might have people around you who are plotting your downfall or who are going to sabotage your life or who are negative towards whatever it is that you're doing, in which case the anxiety is best dealt with by, of course, finding a way to reform those people or not having them in your life.
	You know, if you're, I said this in the show today, if you're being chased by a bear through the woods, that's not the time to say, hey, man, I really need to calm my anxiety by smoking a bowl or something like that, right?
	I mean, you need to deal with the bear.
	So as far as drugs go, they cover up symptoms and you don't get to root causes.
	They give you a feeling of knowledge, wisdom, and insight that isn't real.
	And again, I've said this in my first tweet.
	I've spent 40 years asking people, and I've asked hundreds of people now, and many of them on this very show, when people call in and say, well, I've had these drugs, I take these drugs, I get all these insights.
	And I say, well, tell me an insight.
	And they never come up with anything.
	So it gives you the illusion of insight, the illusion of wisdom, and it gives you the illusion of a kind of peace of mind and security that you haven't earned through the judicious application of virtue and integrity, moral courage and so on to confront the bad people around you and all of that.
	And so it covers up the symptoms usually of child abuse, and it doesn't have people deal with their issues in a consistent moral manner.
	It gives people the feeling of wisdom and knowledge and insight, which isn't real.
	And of course, once you have that feeling, you tend not to look as much, right?
	Like if you're driving home, when you get home, you stop driving, right?
	So if you have this insight, oh man, I get this connection, I get this, I get that, then you kind of stop looking because you think you've already achieved it, but it's an illusion.
	It's an illusion.
	It's sort of like if you could, if you still have a bear chasing you, but you can will yourself not to see it or hear it or smell it, you're in really big danger because you can't even see the bear anymore.
	And so that is sort of some of my major concerns, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, I definitely agree with all you, with all of that.
	My line of questioning is a little more on, because I use personally, I would call myself an addict.
	I'm sorry, I want an addict.
	Okay.
	Like I struggle to find major detrimental effects.
	I don't really use it to run away from anything.
	I more just use it lightly, but consistently for a mild euphoria.
	Like I'm not trying to not feel bad, if that makes sense.
	Okay, and what was your childhood like?
	Oh, terrible.
	I've dealt with that to the point where it's really in the hands of other people to take some sort of step.
	Like I've done everything I could on my side, like offered to go to therapy, offered to pay for therapy, laid out my problems just logically exactly what I was angry about my childhood.
	Like I've dealt with that to the point that I can personally.
	And it's not something that I feel emotionally affects me that much.
	It does from time to time, birthdays and holidays.
	I might get a little melancholic.
	And sorry, you don't have to give me your exact age, but what decade are you in?
	Oh, I give you my age.
	I don't mind.
	I'm 37.
	Okay.
	And what were the issues?
	I'm very sorry to hear about your childhood, my friend, but what were the issues in your childhood?
	Abuse and neglect.
	I'm sorry about that.
	What kind of abuse?
	Primarily physical.
	My mom just, she didn't really care.
	Like, she was not malicious, but she was neglectful.
	And she didn't have a problem with physical punishment.
	And how bad did that get?
	Oh, it got pretty bad quite a bit.
	I think my most prominent memory of it was she used to have this gaudy belt with this large lion belt buckle.
	And it actually had sharp teeth on it, and it would leave little fang marks in my ass.
	Was it bearskin?
	No, it was usually through underwear.
	I usually didn't get my underwear pulled down, but I'd get my pants pulled down by my mom.
	Like my father would spank me too, but that didn't really affect me because he, like, when I look back on it after having a lot of realizations, like my dad was a deadbeat loser, pot dealer.
	Like, he still lives with his father.
	And yeah, he's never amounted to anything.
	He's a piece of work, but I've also dealt with that to the point where I can, where he's just pretty much cut off, but the door is open if he wants to change.
	My mother's just completely cut off.
	But the rest of that memory with the belt is I remember crawling under a water bed frame, you know, with the ones that have like the dressers on the sides, but they're all down the middle.
	And I was trying to escape through the middle of it to just basically get away.
	And I remember just being dragged out of that and belted quite a bit.
	And that was all just because I took 50 cents out of my mother's purse to buy a little frozen pop ice in elementary school.
	Right.
	Just horrible.
	Just horrible.
	And you got, in combination with the spankings and the beatings, you had neglect.
	Is that right?
	Yeah.
	Like she didn't.
	I was a latchkey kid pretty early on, like probably around 14.
	It was my older brother's job to take care of me and my younger brother.
	He didn't, so I took it upon myself and did best I could.
	I made a lot of hamburger helpers for dinners.
	And how was it in your teenage years?
	That's when I really started using to escape without knowing it.
	Like once I was in about sophomore year, I discovered marijuana and it was pretty much just the rest of high school.
	It didn't really affect my academic performance.
	I'm a hyper-intelligent person.
	I've got a really high IQ.
	I've also got Asperger's syndrome, though.
	So that's a little bit correlated.
	It's taken me a long time to learn how to speak to people and read social cues and so on and so forth.
	But yeah, I just, I have an interesting relationship with marijuana now.
	Like I think about it critically and not so much philosophically, and I taper off of it from time to time.
	It's not something that like financially impacts me too much.
	I spend maybe $100 a month on it.
	And what about your dating life?
	Oh, it's non-existent at this point because I'm trying to just build myself up.
	Well, I mean, bro, you're 37, right?
	It's not like you've got a long runway.
	Oh, yeah, I know.
	Like, I'm very aware of that.
	I'm working very fast to build myself up.
	What has your dating history been?
	Unwitting serial monogamy.
	Like for like, I've only had about seven long-term relationships.
	The longest one was four and a half years.
	That one was probably, that one was my first real long-term relationship that really crushed me afterwards because I was stepdad in the situation.
	So are you, but what?
	A stepdad.
	A stepdad.
	Oh, my gosh.
	So you had a four and a half year.
	How old are you?
	At that point, I believe I was 21, 22.
	So you're 21 or 22, and you had a four and a half year relationship with a single mom?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, not the best decision in retrospect.
	How old was she?
	She was my age.
	And how many, did she just have one kid or more?
	No, she had two kids.
	Two kids from the same dad?
	Yeah.
	Okay, and where was he?
	He was in another state, in another city about like 90 miles away with another girl that he had knocked up.
	And he had a pill-popping addiction.
	And that went into a whole debacle that just created so much chaos in my life because her ex, basically I really bonded with these kids.
	They started calling me dad.
	They started calling their father by his first name.
	That really pissed him off.
	We were also having issues with their grandmother beating them whenever they would go over to their fathers.
	Like they would come back with bruises and grip marks and like I know like looking back, I should have done something so far as getting the authorities involved, but their mother basically just wanted to keep everything within like without the authorities.
	Why does she have children with such a guy?
	I never really got into it.
	And what was your attraction to her?
	I was young, stupid, and horny.
	So she was just relatively attractive and sexually available?
	Yeah, I mean, she spent time with me.
	Like, we shared a lot of the same hobbies.
	Like, I wasn't old enough to think that you need to be ideologically matched with your mate and stuff.
	Like, I was a couple years out of high school and discovering the world and learning how to be and failing miserably at it.
	And how did that relationship end?
	Oh, so eventually, when the kids started calling me dad and their dad by their first name, his immediate reaction was to use the physical evidence of the beatings from their grandmother to try and accuse me of both physically and sexually abusing both of the children.
	Oh.
	Oh, my God.
	How appalling.
	Yeah.
	Long story short, like that basically immediately got the authorities involved.
	I was removed from the house.
	I was homeless for probably about six months.
	The court case went on for like 14 months until the kids' father's current wife found out he was cheating on her and also that he had made this entire thing up because he told her when he was really high and they were fighting.
	So she showed up at the next court thing, spilled everything to the judge, got child protective services involved.
	They lost the kids.
	Thank God.
	Cause I did my best to Prepare and properly discipline those kids.
	Because, like, even back then, I was listening to you.
	You were my introduction.
	Well, not that much.
	Well, like, even back then, I was listening to you enough to like I had bought peaceful parenting back then.
	Well, no, no.
	The peaceful parenting, that's not true.
	That just came out recently.
	When like 15 years ago, I mean, I was talking about it, but I wasn't, I hadn't written the book.
	I really talked about it a lot, though.
	Was it just on your YouTube then?
	It was on YouTube.
	It was in my podcasts.
	Yeah, I talked about it a lot, but the book wasn't out.
	But it's neither here nor there.
	So you were.
	But you didn't listen to the dangers of dating a single mom show.
	Okay.
	I probably just didn't adhere to them.
	Okay.
	No, that's fine.
	Some people can read the diet book without changing their diet.
	That happens.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	So that was, I mean, my God, what did you do when you were homeless?
	I mean, that's terrifying.
	Like, I kept working.
	I lived in my car.
	I had my cat with me because, like, she wouldn't keep my cat and I didn't want my cat to go.
	So I basically created a partition between the front seat and the back seat and bought a couple like window air conditioners so you could put in there and like all kinds of it was a horrible situation for like six months, but like I never lost my job throughout the process.
	I got back on my feet.
	I got an apartment.
	The court case ended.
	And then I fell into another stupid relationship.
	Should I ask or is that too terrifying a story?
	No, the explanation I gave you there was really the worst.
	After that, it was just like I picked bad women because I didn't know what to look for.
	Like nobody ever.
	No, no, no, no.
	Come on.
	Come on.
	You'd already been listening.
	Hang on.
	Hang on.
	Don't play victim with me, bro.
	You had access to at least what I do and I'm a student and other people do.
	So we were saying, you know, choose for virtue, right?
	Love is our involuntary response to virtue if we're virtuous.
	So you can't go rubber bones if you have access to better information.
	That doesn't mean you follow it.
	Lord knows I've had access to better information and not followed it, but I wouldn't claim that I was ignorant.
	Right.
	That's fair.
	Like, that's not an accurate representation on my part.
	And thanks for correcting me.
	No, that's fine.
	So what was the problem with the next relationship?
	Like, if I had to put the problem on like the next four relationships, it's really I didn't want to be alone more than anything.
	So like.
	No, but that's a problem within you, but what was the problem?
	I mean, just you can give me a brief synopsis of the next couple of relationships, what the major issues were, because obviously they didn't last, right?
	Oh, no, I've always had long-term relationships in between like one and three years.
	I've had I haven't even thought of them for a while.
	I used to know these statistics, but it's something I generally don't worry about anymore.
	Well, are you in a relationship now?
	No, like I said, I've been I haven't been focused on it.
	I haven't been prioritizing it.
	Okay, when was the last relationship that you were in?
	And appreciate this information.
	Thank you for sharing.
	When was the last relationship that you were in and happened?
	It was about, it ended two years ago.
	It lasted for about a year and a half.
	Okay.
	Girl I met online.
	And this is after 15 years of philosophy, right?
	Yeah.
	So this should have been much better.
	It was a lot more tumultuous, but I was more focused on making it better.
	What was tumultuous about it?
	Like I tried to engage with her logically and philosophically.
	What was tumultuous about it?
	We had some major disagreements on abortion.
	Okay.
	So you have intellectual disagreements, moral disagreements.
	Was that the tumultuous thing that you're talking about?
	Or was this something else?
	No, it's just like we would fight over stupid little things.
	Well, no, no.
	Abortion is not a stupid little thing, so I'm not sure I follow that.
	Well, like, yeah, I was getting into it.
	Like, we would fight about like stupid little things and like how you have like your little tiffs in relationships.
	But they never really came to a resolution on her side for some reason.
	Like she always felt like, I don't know, she wasn't winning.
	And like a lot of it was good, but like one day like she just up and left and all my shit was on my doorstep.
	Oh, and there wasn't any big conflict beforehand.
	She just didn't want it?
	There were minor conflicts beforehand.
	No, that's why I said, was there a big conflict?
	I get the minor conflict, but there are a big conflict.
	I don't know.
	Like, I think one of the biggest things was like, I tried to, like, it really upset her how much I talked about, like, the political world and where it was at the time being.
	And I don't know, like, I was just, I tried to have logical conversations with her on the things that we disagreed on, mostly from the point of, like, this is like why you're wrong within a logical structure.
	But she just get angrier and angrier.
	And yeah, it was just, I don't know if I was trying too hard to convince her and mold her into something she wasn't.
	Well, and were you doing drugs over the course of this relationship?
	No, no, I was doing, I've been off for quite a while before that.
	I picked it up a little bit again after that and kind of been going with it, but not a whole lot.
	So if you've dealt, and I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm just trying to understand that one of the ways in which you know that you've truly dealt with childhood issues is you can sustain a healthy relationship.
	So if you tell me, well, and that's why I asked you about relationships, it's not a total rule, it's just my particular opinion, but it's, you know, the two big things, right?
	Work and love, particularly for men, work and love.
	You have a career, it sounds like you kept your job even while homeless, so obviously very good at what you do.
	But if you're not, if you hang on, but if you're not, I'm sorry, go ahead.
	I said, I also own my own business as well.
	Oh, congratulations.
	That's exactly.
	It was in a car accident about a year and a half ago that I'm, that's what I'm rebuilding towards financially right now.
	Oh, you were in a car accident?
	Yeah, someone had hit me.
	I'm a house painter and I was in my work van.
	I still have my personal vehicle, but I don't have anything to move equipment to, so I can't take jobs.
	But I also still have a full-time job where I'm working like 12 hours a day trying to work towards that.
	Sorry, if you're a house painter and somebody invites you into a dusty ESCU novel, don't go.
	Okay, so you've work hard, but you're not able to sustain a healthy relationship, right?
	So far.
	Yeah, so far.
	I think I'm able to now.
	I'm just, I think I could tell you, like, they're like, I'm looking, I'm actively trying, but it's really hard to find a woman who's even ideologically aligned with me enough to approach.
	Well, let's look at you from the standpoint of a wise woman, right?
	So a wise woman, I assume she's in her 30s or whatever.
	So when a wise woman looks at you and your dating history, what does she see?
	Seven, she sees a serial monogamous, which is not a good thing.
	Right.
	She sees that you have made unwise choices in who you date, right?
	So if you say to her, I fully dealt with my childhood, but the evidence is that at least up until two years ago, you were still making very unwise choices about who you date, she won't believe you.
	She won't believe that you've dealt with your childhood if in your mid-30s, you're still making terrible choices about who to date.
	Yeah.
	So don't say that.
	Don't say what?
	Don't say that you fully dealt with all your childhood issues if in your mid-30s you were still making bad decisions about relationships, really bad decisions, and you didn't even end the relationship.
	You got dumped hard, right?
	She just tossed your stuff out on the sidewalk.
	And so it wasn't even like you came to some realization two years ago that you had some epiphany about how badly you were choosing women in relationships.
	She kicked you out.
	So you didn't even wake up to that aspect of things, right?
	Well, I mean, like I said, it was tumultuous beforehand.
	Like I just, I didn't see it coming, like though it was off.
	I understand that.
	I understand that.
	So let me give you an analogy since you're into the business world, right?
	So if someone comes to you and they have started seven businesses that have all failed some catastrophically, right?
	Some where they get sued or end up in court, right?
	And they come to you and they say, I want you to invest $5 million in my next business.
	What is the investor going to say?
	Probably some expletives.
	Yeah, he's going to say, hell no, right?
	Now, how do you get, because of course, you're asking a woman to tie her life together with yours.
	So how do you get an investor to invest in your business after seven pretty catastrophic failures?
	Well, you'd have to somehow like rebuild your credit and your merit.
	No, I get all of that, but how?
	I mean, that's like saying, how do you make money in business?
	Well, the important thing is to have your costs be lower than your income.
	Okay, but so how do you re how do you have, hang on, how do you have credibility with a quality woman if she looks at a string of, and the fact that you had seven relationships is not the end of the world, but they were pretty bad, right?
	So, and, and into your mid-30s.
	So how do you have credibility with a quality woman?
	Suppose that's the question I'm seeking the answer to.
	So I can tell you, I can tell you one thing you don't do is you say I've fully dealt with my childhood issues.
	Fair.
	I won't do that anymore then.
	Well, and it can't be true.
	First of all, it's impossible to fully deal.
	I don't even know what that would mean because to fully deal with your childhood issues would be almost like to be who you were as if they hadn't happened, which is impossible.
	Right?
	They'll always have an effect.
	They'll always have a shadow.
	My childhood still casts a shadow on my life from time to time.
	I think I've tried to judo it into, you know, having suffered a lot of evil as a child.
	I have tried to judo that into spreading as much good and virtue as possible.
	And having experienced a lot of violence, I've tried to judo that into counseling parents to not use violence against their children.
	So I think I've done as much good as I can with the evils that I suffered, but I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing if I'd had a happy childhood.
	So even I wouldn't even be having this conversation with you in this studio if I'd had a happy childhood.
	So saying I've fully dealt with my childhood is not going to be believed by a wise woman because it's kind of not possible, if that makes sense.
	Right.
	I guess I should clarify like what I mean because I was trying to specify that I've I've dealt with it insofar as I can where without other people being involved.
	Like if my mother offered to reconcile, it'd be very hard for me, but I would work towards it.
	I don't think my father would.
	Like my father thinks I'm a Russian spy.
	And I don't know why.
	he went off the deep well.
	I assume that if you're somewhat conservative, then you're aligned with Trump and Trump is a Russian asset, therefore you're a Russian spy.
	I assume it's something like that.
	Yeah, something like that, but like, I wouldn't call myself a Trump supporter.
	Like, I would call myself a conservative.
	No, I said aligned with.
	I didn't say a supporter.
	Okay.
	All right.
	So I would say keep plugging away and don't do drugs.
	Because a quality woman, does she want a guy who smokes weed a lot?
	Probably not.
	Well, no, of course not.
	Of course not, because I don't know.
	Does it have effects on your sperm?
	It's not going to have an effect on your parenting.
	It's going to have an, like, she won't know if you're, she won't know who you are if you're on drugs a lot.
	So she'll just like.
	So if you say, well, I've dealt with my childhood.
	I want a quality relationship.
	I'm working towards it.
	And I'm doing a lot of marijuana.
	No, it's not going to work, right?
	So you'd recommend just cutting her out completely.
	Well, I, you know, I mean, obviously talk to your doctor.
	I don't know what the withdrawal stuff would be like.
	I'm just saying that if you want a quality woman, a quality woman does not want a drug addict.
	I'll just tell you that straight up.
	Especially a guy in his late 30s.
	Like, you know, you're not far off from pushing 40, right?
	And so if you're still using weed and you've had a whole string of bad relationships and you're claiming that you've dealt with your childhood completely and you're still using weed, you are not going to come across as credible to a quality woman.
	So I don't think it's worth it to keep doing the weed if you want to get married and have kids or have a quality relationship.
	For sure.
	Sounds like you're trying to transition over.
	I just have one more quick question.
	It's a little tangential.
	What's your opinion on nicotine?
	I think it is actually one of the things you could put in the category of it's an addictive substance, but it can be beneficial because it's neuroprotective.
	Yeah, I mean, nicotine has some significant benefits with regards to concentration and focus and all of that sort of stuff.
	Do I particularly, I mean, obviously smoking is bad.
	I have no idea what the health effects are of nicotine gum or anything like that, but I would not put that in, you know, the category of, you know, really bad.
	I mean, again, I don't really know, but, you know, there's mind altering and there's not mind altering.
	And there's like mind altering in a foundational way.
	I mean, you can say, you know, sugar is mind altering.
	Oxygen is mind altering.
	If you have too much of it, you get dizzy, right?
	So, but in terms of like one of the things for me is, can you drive?
	Right.
	So you can drive and smoke, right?
	You can drive and have a cup of coffee and you're fine.
	Not weed, not alcohol, not hard drugs, obviously, not mushrooms, right?
	So that's sort of the big difference for me.
	And it's just a, it's not 100%, but it's kind of like a rule of thumb that if you can drive safely, it's not that big a deal.
	And if you can't drive safely, then clearly it's a bigger, much bigger deal.
	So that would be my thought.
	All right.
	I appreciate you coming by, and I wish you the very best going forward.
	Mrs., oh, sorry, Ms., Mrs. Mrs. Calloway.
	What is on your mind, my friend?
	Fill my neurons with your velvet tones.
	Going once.
	You need to unmute.
	Hi, how you doing?
	I'm well, thanks.
	You never need to apologize for the delightful sounds of children.
	Oh, I think that's lovely.
	I remember when my daughter first figured out that she could sing well, and she still does.
	Like, there's just a she makes a joyful noise up by the rafters on a daily basis, and it's a beautiful thing.
	So, sorry, go ahead.
	Well, hello.
	Thanks for letting me come up.
	I was moved a lot by that person's perspective.
	So he could do a lot of introspective-ness.
	We are children at heart, but that means we are little beeps.
	Everything seems to be.
	Hang on, hang on, hang on.
	Let's start off nice.
	Are you calling children little beeps?
	No, I'm saying that we take things very personally, all of us.
	And sometimes it's not that personal.
	So if we like step outside of our minds, we're more able to move past the things that do hurt us.
	That we think that the whole world's against us when someone calls us certain names instead of thinking of that person only as a bully.
	That makes sense.
	Right.
	Okay.
	I'm with you.
	We should certainly try and rise above it.
	And recognize that when people are insulting you, it almost never has anything to do with you.
	Exactly.
	I mean, so people get mad at me on Twitter all the time, and I'm just perfectly aware that it's got nothing to do with me.
	So people who do a lot of drugs, they're not happy about it.
	They're not content with it.
	They really don't think it's that good a thing.
	And so when I come along and say drugs are bad, they get mad and it is their addiction.
	Really, I would assume it's not even anything to do with me foundationally.
	So it doesn't water off a duck's back.
	But so sorry, go ahead.
	My position on drugs is going to be that they're bad.
	Okay.
	But as an adult, it's everything in moderation and I don't need any overlord.
	Like, please watch yourself.
	So.
	So what do you mean by everything in moderation?
	You don't mean like beating people up or assaulting children in moderation, right?
	There's some stuff which is.
	But hey, if you have aggressors in your population, I would probably send them to the military and across the sea rather than unleash them into your place or, you know, the jails would be a good place here and don't need an outlet is asinine and arrogant.
	I'm sorry, you cut out for a second there.
	I lost you after sending aggressive people into the military.
	I wasn't sending.
	It's a volunteer by, you know, I would also encourage people who have a trillion dollars to donate some of their money to things that are beyond their means, but I would never ask the government to task people to make sure that that happens.
	Good, good.
	I mean, I would have some reservations about taking violent criminals and training them how to use weaponry better and how to use squad formations and hand signals that make them look like a basic.
	Sorry, I just got a phone call.
	What did you say?
	You don't want to train violent people to use weapons.
	I would have some reservations about that, right?
	I mean, I know that there is criminal gangs who join the military or the police force in order to get, quote, free or paid weapons training and then cycle back out into the criminal element, having learned all of these cool tricks and strategies and so on for how to be more effectively violent.
	But anyway, is there anything else that you wanted to mention about drugs?
	Sorry, I lost you.
	Lost 30 seconds.
	Okay, I think we're going to have to drop you.
	No offense.
	I appreciate that, but I think that your connection is not good enough.
	Roger.
	Roger.
	If you want to unmute and tell me what's on your mind.
	Thank you.
	Hello, hello.
	Going once, going twice.
	I think he just muted himself.
	So the mystery.
	Yes, sir.
	Go ahead.
	Okay, so since you mentioned resolving childhood issues a bit earlier, do these in general involve kind of forgiving our parents if we perceive that they did something wrong and move on with our lives?
	Is that the general gist of it?
	Or is there some details that can vary from family to family in your understanding?
	Well, I wouldn't say that we should hold people at fault if we simply perceive that they've done something wrong.
	The question is, did they objectively do something wrong, often even by their own standards?
	So I wouldn't say it's the perception.
	So can you give me an example of a wrong that a parent would do to a child that would require forgiveness?
	That's not just a child's perception, but something that would be more objectively wrong.
	Oh, okay.
	So it could be, for instance, negligence.
	The parents maybe, for example, do drugs and they don't care about their children.
	So their children grow without so much care as they could if the parents were sober all the time, for instance.
	Okay, so the parents chose to do drugs.
	They didn't go for treatment.
	They didn't get help.
	They didn't do therapy.
	And they didn't give up the children, which you can do.
	Like, I don't know if everybody knows this, but certainly in some places in the world, you can drop your kids off at a police station or a fire station or hospital and your kids will be tried, they'll try to provide decent homes for your kids and so on.
	So they kept the kids around.
	They did drugs.
	They didn't get treatment.
	And the children end up neglected in pretty significant ways.
	Is that the scenario?
	Yeah, that's the scenario.
	Okay.
	So the question of forgiveness is, has the person earned it?
	Has the person earned forgiveness?
	Now, earning forgiveness is a three-part process.
	The first thing, of course, is you need the apology.
	The second thing you need is some kind of restitution.
	And the third thing you need is a reasonable assurance that steps are being taken so that it's not going to happen again.
	I would say you need awareness, too, that it happened.
	Well, I think that's kind of a given, right?
	So I asked about, you know, what would be a wrong, that it's not just a child's perception, but an objective fact.
	So just stay with me.
	It is already accepted that this has gone wrong.
	So the analogy would be if I borrow your car and I put a big dent in the door, right?
	So if I just say, hey, sorry, man, and I drop the car back and walk off, well, I haven't fixed the car, right?
	I haven't made the restitution.
	And if it turned out that I dinged your car because I drove drunk, even if I said sorry and I paid for the car to get fixed, maybe a couple of extra bucks for your trouble, and then I kept drinking, you wouldn't lend me your car again.
	So the question is, are we back to a state where the person has been made whole, they're not happy that it happened, but they're not unhappy that it happened.
	So let's say I ding your car.
	It's, you know, 200 bucks to fix, and I give you, I take you out for lunch as well for your inconvenience.
	So you're not happy that I dinged your car.
	You're not unhappy.
	It's okay.
	That's a neutral.
	You don't want someone to be overjoyed because then you're overcompensating.
	Like, oh, I dinged your car.
	Here's half a million dollars.
	They'll be like, here, here's more cars you can ding.
	That's too much.
	So you have to have the apology.
	You have to have the restitution.
	And then you have to have some reasonable assurance that it's not going to happen again.
	So if I'm dating some girl and I yell at her and I take a glass and I throw it against the wall, you know, acting out some crazy rage, I obviously need to apologize.
	I need to make restitution, right?
	So I need to fix whatever I broke.
	And I also need to enroll in therapy or anger management classes or something like that.
	So she has some reasonable assurance that it's not going to happen again.
	Does that make sense so far?
	Yeah, it does.
	And if I may, can I go back to the scenario of the parents actually to compare with this analogy that you made?
	Sure.
	Okay, so suppose that the child has grown and is an adult and is fully aware that the parents did wrong in regards to their child-rearing life.
	And now there's two possibilities.
	Or the parents are still alive or they are dead.
	And so the parents being dead pretty much guarantees that no further problems will happen.
	So I think that that would solve the forgiveness parts in the world.
	No, no, no, no, no, no, no, not even a bit.
	Okay.
	Because the parents never apologized and they never made restitution.
	Yeah, so but if they are still alive, we would need to confront them explicitly saying, okay, this happened.
	Do you acknowledge it?
	Do you acknowledge it to the point that you ask for forgiveness and stop doing wrong to me even as an adult?
	Hang on, hang on.
	You skipped over one step, which is actually quite telling.
	Restitution.
	So if you grew up in filth and squalor because your parents were drug addicts and refused to get help and refused to give you up to people who could take care of you better if they kept you trapped at home like prisoners, like animals, then what would restitution look like?
	What could be restitution for that?
	What would make that okay?
	That's a good question.
	I don't think anything.
	Like, this is why you shouldn't let things fester.
	You shouldn't let things get bad.
	Right?
	So if you do wrong, which we all do, we all stumble and sort of make errors and sometimes we can be pompous or whatever it is, right?
	Well, we all make mistakes.
	So you don't want to let these things fester.
	You want to, as quickly as possible, make restitution and make it right.
	Because if children grew up with like 20 years of being neglected and didn't have enough food and no health care and so on, there's nothing that can be done to make that okay.
	There's nothing.
	Nothing that can be done to make that okay.
	And you can replace the example, which is one among many forms of mistreatment of children by their parents with child abuse, physical aggression, yelling, educating poorly, indoctrinating in a way that their minds become closed.
	So many things that people that are raised in such abusive manners, and probably there are an abundance in the population of people that unfortunately did not have an optimal childhood, there's a lot of restitution that is impossible, according to what you said.
	Right.
	And this is why the parents, did the parents ever have, and this is why I said it's really by the parents' own standard.
	So did the parent ever say to the child, you pushed your brother off the desk, and so you need to say you're sorry.
	You need to apologize, right?
	You stole your sister's candy and ate it in the cupboard under the stairs.
	You need to go and apologize to her, right?
	So did the parents have, as a moral standard they imposed upon the children, the need to apologize on wrongdoing?
	Now, if the parents had that standard, and most parents do, if the parents had the standard that if you do wrong, you need to apologize when you're four or five or three or eight or 10 or whatever it is, then the parents in their 30s and 40s should apologize as well.
	But if they didn't, this is the big challenge.
	This is why I'm constantly telling parents, if you do wrong, if you've done wrong, apologize to your children before it's too late.
	Because there absolutely is a too late.
	And the too late is when restitution becomes impossible.
	Now, let's say that you're 25 and your parents are 55.
	And you've been an adult for seven years.
	You go and talk to your parents about if you were this kid who was neglected as a result of drug use and so on.
	You go and talk to your parents, but they can't parent you anymore because you're an adult.
	So you'd go and talk to your parents.
	Maybe you'd get an apology.
	Maybe you'd get some restitution.
	It wouldn't be enough, obviously.
	Maybe you get some commitment about how it wasn't going to happen again.
	But they still can't parent you because by going to your parents with this knowledge, you're showing that you're much more mature than they are.
	You're much more responsible.
	You're much more moral.
	You're much wiser.
	You're much more honest than they are.
	So you're 25 and you're wiser, smarter, more honorable, more honest, have greater integrity, better communicator.
	Your parents are 55 and still complete idiots and corrupt this way.
	Are you going to spend the rest of your life trying to parent your parents?
	That's not going to work.
	So what is the relationship?
	And I don't have a good answer for this, just so you know.
	But what is the relationship that you could have with, I mean, I confronted my mother late 20s, late 20s, maybe into my early 30s.
	I had a whole series of conversations.
	And I didn't get apologies.
	I got, well, she blamed the doctors who poisoned her or whatever it was.
	It doesn't really matter.
	So I didn't get even apologies.
	But what restitution?
	What restitution would make my childhood okay?
	Well, there is no restitution that would make my childhood okay.
	I mean, I've tried to get the best out of it, as I mentioned earlier, that I can, but there's no restitution that would make my childhood okay.
	So without restitution, what happens?
	Well, you, you know, that could be a farewell conversation.
	Like, I just need you to know these things, but I can't raise you.
	You're my parents.
	I can't teach you.
	I can't instruct you on basic honesty, basic human decency or anything like that.
	I can't train you or teach you because then what happens is you suffer as a result of your parents being immature, corrupt, or downright evil when you're a child.
	And then you also suffer by trying to parent them and fix them now that they're adults.
	And all of that, right, what happened to you, which was harmful as a child, is bad for your adult romantic relationships and work relationships.
	And how much energy are you going to have to fall in love with a good quality woman who comes from a good quality family?
	Or even if she doesn't, she's a good quality woman.
	And you say, well, my major project for the next 30 years is to fix my parents, to bring my Parents who were cruel to me as children to reason, love, and virtue, which is probably impossible anyway.
	So you end up then having your childhood half destroyed by your parents, and then your romantic life as an adult half destroyed by your parents, or rather, your mission to try and fix them or change them or make them better.
	And then you go through the whole, well, they're manipulating, they pretend, and then they back down or they back off.
	And right?
	So it really does not seem to me a very productive line to go down.
	Again, this is assuming that the abuse was pretty egregious and your parents didn't try and fix anything until fairly significantly into your adulthood.
	I don't really see what the plus is.
	I think it's then time to perhaps, you know, with withdraw your losses or cut your losses and try and focus on having a quality relationship and making a better family out of the wreckage of your unchosen family.
	Because the family you have is the family you choose, the family you make.
	The family you're born into is not the family you choose.
	And if you can't fix what you didn't choose, you can try and make things better in where you can choose, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, in regards to this, a technique from Stoicism came to mind, which is fatalism.
	But not fatalism broadly regarding time, just regarding the past and the present.
	So the past has already happened.
	We cannot change it absolutely.
	The present in which we are located is pretty much also locked in place.
	But we can change our vector towards the future in meaningful ways, especially if we focus on stuff that we actually have some power on.
	And if we find ourselves having been raised, born and raised or misraised in a family that is egregious, term you use, and we have had no say in that, we had no control because we were children, minors, and we survived that.
	We gained some wisdom somehow through life or our peers or teachers.
	There are other role models, fortunately, beyond parents, that might actually inject some wisdom in young people.
	And so probably some people will realize that the best thing to do is actually to stop their relationship with really bad parents and move on with their lives.
	Yeah, I mean, the concept of no-fault divorce has been accepted by society.
	And these are relationships that you choose.
	These are relationships that involve helpless children, which adult children with their parents doesn't involve helpless children.
	So we have this whole thing about how you should just be able to leave your marriage.
	If you're just dissatisfied, that's no problem.
	It's self-actualization.
	But it's funny because when it comes to parents, which people didn't choose, everybody kind of loses their minds about this kind of stuff.
	And it's, of course, it's just power and parents can be scary.
	All right.
	Do you want to shoot more?
	Barcode.
	Thank you for the questions.
	Great, great questions.
	Barcode.
	I'm not going to make any scanning jokes, but maybe your QR jokes.
	Quality relationships, QR.
	That's what we need.
	If you want to unmute, I'm happy to hear your thoughts.
	Hello, can you hear me?
	Yes, go ahead.
	So in regards to all this drug stuff, I hope I don't qualify as a druggie for one use of psilocybin, you know, over a decade ago.
	Other people should try it.
	As opposed to, you know, like if I have surgery and they use local anesthetic, I don't say, man, you should really try local anesthetic.
	It's the greatest thing ever.
	I'm just like, well, I needed that for, you know, the surgery or whatever.
	So the druggies, it's not really the number of times you do it.
	It's whether you promote it.
	That to me is the key.
	But go ahead.
	All right.
	So I think we're aligned in that.
	I wouldn't promote any sort of drug use as like beneficial, broad scale.
	But anecdotally, I was in a pretty rotten place with anxiety and depression for a little bit there.
	And I tried, you know, talk therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, things like that.
	And I don't know, be it arrogance and younger age or whatever, it really didn't have an effect on me.
	It wasn't really helping.
	I could sort of negative logic my way around whatever the therapist was trying to say.
	Okay, but hang on.
	So did you, what were your relationships like at this?
	How old were you when you were going through this anxiety and depression?
	Maybe 22, 23.
	And what were your relationships like with your family, with siblings, with friends, with girlfriends?
	I mean, I had good relationships with my friends who had chosen.
	Most of them had gone off to like Ivy League schools, and I didn't quite make it.
	So that was part of the depression and the anxiety.
	Sorry, what do you mean you didn't quite make it?
	You wanted to go, but you didn't go?
	I didn't even apply.
	My SAT score was, you know, a little bit higher than Mindami's.
	So not quite in the territory of making it to an Ivy League.
	But yeah, so that was all surrounding it.
	I'm sorry, but why were your SATs so low?
	You know, just didn't study as much as I should have, you know.
	Okay, why didn't you study as much?
	We can keep doing that.
	We can go into the details of all this.
	It's really not about my past.
	I just wasn't as successful as my more intelligent friends.
	Let's leave it at that.
	So it was a factor of intelligence because you said you didn't study as much.
	I mean, this and that.
	I couldn't really tell you.
	I had near-perfect writing SAT score, high math SAT score.
	Some reason I flubbed the reading.
	But that happens.
	But you can take it a bunch of times, right?
	Yeah, again.
	But this is the issue I was having was the depression and anxiety.
	I was so stressed out with test taking at the time.
	It was like the weight, the burden of not getting, you know, a 2400 was crippling to me at the time.
	And I would rather, sorry, was that out of a parental or family expectation or something?
	Yes.
	Yes, very much so.
	My mom was, you know, A-plus student every single class.
	If you get an A, we're going to have a shouting match for hours.
	You're not Asian, are you?
	Are you Asian?
	No, no, Roman Catholic, you know.
	Well, it could be both, but all right.
	I was just curious if the tiger mom thing was kicking in.
	Okay.
	So you had a mom who was like a perfectionist when it came To studying, right?
	Was she a perfectionist when it came to parenting?
	In other words, you're supposed to get perfect SATs.
	Did she read a whole bunch of books on parenting and how to parent well?
	Because she's really into excellence.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I mean, she was like a PhD biologist.
	She was like real into like, I'm going to make these like super soldier children and they're going to go on to like.
	You're not answering my question though.
	I'm sorry.
	Do you mind repeating it?
	Well, listen, I have nothing against people who are into excellence, right?
	I have very high standards for myself.
	I try to get things right.
	I try to get the data right.
	I try to get my arguments right.
	I've worked very hard to be excellent at philosophy.
	I have no problem with excellence.
	It's great.
	Is it more important to be good at tests or good at parenting?
	Yeah, parenting, of course, right?
	So if your mother is really into excellence, great, love it.
	Did she apply the same standard of you've got to be excellent when it came to parenting, right?
	So if you're supposed to study for six months or whatever it is or a year for your SATs when she decided to get married and have children, did she also study a lot to be a parent and got really good books and training and coaching and all of that on parenting?
	I don't believe so.
	I don't think I wouldn't know, to be honest.
	Well, I think you do know.
	Sorry to be rude.
	I apologize.
	But I think you do know.
	So, for instance, do you think it's good parenting to put that much pressure on your children about tests?
	Oh, definitely not.
	No.
	Okay.
	So she didn't get any good parenting advice with regards to that.
	How did she discipline her children when they did things she didn't like?
	Screaming, yelling, you know.
	Okay.
	So do you think that there are, and I'm really sorry for that, it's horrible, particularly that sound of female screaming from moms.
	It's like, it's like nails on a chalkboard.
	It just, it scours the male soul and makes our balls go back up into our throat.
	So do you think that there are any parenting books that say if your children are doing something you don't like, the best remedy is to scream at them?
	Definitely not.
	No.
	Okay.
	So she sucked as a parent in these ways.
	Now be blunt, right?
	This is terrible parenting.
	How often did she scream at her children?
	I mean, I was pretty good, but, you know, my brothers got the worst of it because they weren't quite so good.
	So I didn't.
	No, no, no, no.
	See, this is...
	I'm 35.
	Okay, so you should know this shit better by now.
	Are you really blaming your mother's screaming on the children being, quote, bad?
	No, no, I'm not blaming it.
	You just did.
	You just did.
	You said, I was good, but my brothers weren't as good, so they got the brunt of it.
	Well, the point only is that, like, I witnessed the consequences.
	No, slow your roll.
	Slow your roll.
	Hang on.
	You're not listening.
	You're not listening.
	I'm not saying you've got to agree with me, but you can't just talk as if I didn't say something.
	You did.
	You said.
	And I'm not trying to put you down or blame you for anything like that, but it seems pretty important, right?
	Absolutely.
	Hang on.
	Did your mother scream at your brothers because they weren't good?
	Well, qualify good here.
	You use the word.
	I mean, my qualification doesn't mean anything.
	I mean, if they got a B, she would, you know, scream at them, basically.
	Okay.
	Does getting a B mean you're bad?
	You're not good?
	No, but it doesn't.
	It means you're not as good as you could be, or you're not applying yourself.
	Well, how do you know?
	I mean, not everyone can get A's.
	It's not a matter of willpower.
	Well, I mean, look at the cultures that kind of assume that their children can.
	Their children mostly get A's.
	Well, that's not true at all.
	If you're talking about, say, Asian cultures, they have self-selected for high IQ into the West.
	So that's a matter.
	And also, do they get A's in terms of creativity or A's in terms of rote memorization, which is not the same thing at all?
	I've got a whole show on tiger moms and all of that.
	So suicidality is high, mental illness is high, lack of creativity is very high in that, you know, they can play piano well, but they can't compose for shit, right?
	So no, it is not just a matter of willpower.
	I mean, if the parents are very musical, the kids are more likely to be musical, but they're not going to be as musical as the parents because of regression to the mean, right?
	So no, it's not just a matter of willpower.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	I'll have to look at that tiger mom situation, and you're definitely hitting the nail on the head.
	There were serious issues with my upbringing.
	Well, and sorry to interrupt, but if your mom is really into excellence, then she should have been an excellent parent and she should have read about how to motivate children, how to reason with children, how to deal with children, because she's obviously very intelligent.
	You say a PhD.
	She's very intelligent.
	And so why the hell would she think that you studying for some stupid ass test in grade 10 is more important than her studying how to be a not terrible mom in these areas?
	That's very fair.
	I don't think she kind of trusted psychology as a science.
	She was more of the biology and like, you know.
	It's not a matter of psychology.
	Nobody's saying that she's got to trust psychology.
	Well, psychology.
	Hang on.
	There's not one parenting expert out there on the world who says that the healthiest thing for you to do as a parent is scream until your face is red if your children get a B. That's true.
	That's just shitty parenting.
	That's out of control, shitty parenting.
	Right.
	I agree.
	Okay.
	All right.
	So all that being said, so the argument for the one-time use of psilocybin for me was after this shitty upbringing, after this intense anxiety and depression I had for not fulfilling this grand destiny that, you know, out-of-control motherhood inspired in me, I was kind of stuck.
	I was depressed, you know, not motivated, not moving, just kind of sitting around in place.
	Right.
	And I did some reading and I found that like these like depress, like diagnosed depression and anxiety disorder actually forms this myelin sheath between your processing center and your amygdala.
	So it like, it's a spontaneous fear generation that sort of paralyzes your body.
	And it's, it's this neural connection that's very rapid.
	So, it almost overrides the consciousness inside your own head to say, don't even worry about that.
	Don't think about it.
	Don't do anything.
	Just stay still.
	Right.
	And there's a couple of ways out of this.
	One of them is sort of a meta-thinking.
	And they've done some studies on this where cognitive behavioral therapy works.
	And you actually sit there and you think, does this sort of thinking lead to what I want in my future?
	And for a lot of people, that will actually delete this myelin sheath and reorganize the neurons such that you can now think in a plethora of different ways.
	Yoga is another one.
	They do something called mindfulness, where they sit there and they literally visualize these negative thoughts, put them in a bubble, and send them off into the universe.
	And that does the same thing.
	You'll see this myelin sheath break down.
	So the argument for psilocybin is that it actually has some plasticity effects with the brain, where neural connections that you don't ordinarily have are activated, right?
	So instead of going to this root cause, straight from the amygdala, down to the fear, down, sorry, straight from the processing center, down to the amygdala, now your brain is sitting there and it's thinking like weird stuff.
	It's just kind of jarring.
	For me, it was like a horrible trip.
	It was like experiencing hell.
	It was just horrible visions of like maggots coming out of my face, demonic runes, like shirts jumping, turning to murders and jumping out at me.
	You know, and it was awful.
	And it lasted for hours and hours and hours.
	And then when I finally came out of it, I was like completely drained of all of my adrenaline.
	And I just, it just kind of gave me a new perspective on life.
	Like, you know, as like booked you do, I didn't get a perfect score, but like that's compared to like the hell I was just experiencing, that's nothing.
	And from there, it's like, you know, since then, it's been a lot easier to cope with anxiety and depression and things like that because it just seems so pitiful and meaningless compared to like the suffering that you can physically experience.
	So I thought it was useful in that regard.
	I think that's very interesting, very helpful.
	Now, did you, and I have a couple of questions.
	Did your therapist talk about the verbal abuse that you suffered from your mother?
	I had a couple different ones.
	Yeah, it was broached.
	Okay.
	And was it like, that's really bad parenting and that's abusive and you should talk to her about that?
	Yeah, but it's like...
	Yes.
	Yeah, they encouraged you to like.
	Did you talk to your mother about the torrents of screaming when you were a kid?
	I'm sure we've discussed it, but it's now you'd remember.
	No, no, don't, don't, don't rubber bones me, bro.
	You'd remember.
	It's sort of not worth broaching the subject with her.
	She's not, she's set in her ways and has been probably since she was not for her.
	I mean, it's not for her.
	It's not to change her.
	It's just to be honest.
	Yeah.
	I mean, she just denies things.
	She's just like, no, that didn't.
	I didn't do that.
	Oh, so now she gaslights you.
	Or she generally doesn't remember.
	I can't know her mind.
	No, no, no, no, come on.
	I don't remember.
	It's a co.
	All right.
	Unless she's had some sort of brain injury.
	And are you married?
	No, no, I'm not.
	Right.
	Do you know why?
	We had this discussion a couple of days ago, actually.
	Okay, so what do you remember?
	Bipolar mom, bipolar girlfriend.
	Right.
	Modeling my father's dating behavior.
	Right.
	So Asana Bison, is that what it's called?
	Yeah, I'd say so.
	Okay.
	It didn't give you any moral insights.
	It did.
	It did.
	No, it didn't.
	No, it didn't.
	Because a moral insight is I've been treated in an abusive manner.
	I need to confront the abuser.
	I need to work for apologies, restitution.
	And if I can't get any of those things, I don't have to stay in an abusive relationship.
	I mean, what's your relationship like with your mom now?
	It's pretty good.
	We chat like once a week.
	It's pretty good.
	So she verbally abused you as a child, drove you through an excess of verbal abuse, you know, to some degree, I would argue, into this depression and anxiety, kind of crippled your move forward and set you up for a whole lifetime so far of pretty bad relationships.
	And she won't even admit any fault and she gaslights you, but your relationship is good.
	Are you kidding me?
	I mean, you only get one mom, right?
	It's like, I still love that.
	Don't give me a fucking fortune cookie, bro.
	Come on.
	Don't give me all of this crap.
	Come on.
	Come on.
	I mean, listen, if you have a kid, right?
	You have a kid.
	What's your favorite boy's name?
	John.
	John.
	Okay.
	It's a solid Anglo-Saxon name.
	Okay.
	So you're married.
	You got a little kid.
	John, he's like, I don't know, four years old, three years old.
	And you and your wife go out for dinner and you hire a babysitter.
	She seems nice.
	And you come back and John is shaking and trembling and he's peed himself because the babysitter has been screaming at him because he dropped a cup of milk.
	Right.
	Right.
	What do you feel?
	I would be livid.
	I'd be angry, right?
	What would you say to the babysitter?
	Oh, she'd be fired on the spot.
	Right.
	What would you say to him?
	I mean, you don't have to give me the speech, but you'd be pretty critical and like, how dare you and all of that, right?
	Right.
	Right.
	So why is John, your imaginary son, worthy of your outrageous protection, but you're not?
	Well, because I'm a man and I just, I'm dealt with everything.
	I've handled it.
	You know, a child, like, I wouldn't want someone to have to do what I've done with my own mind, but I have managed to do it.
	And it's, you know, you make the best of what you got.
	And is it worth like fighting your one and only mother when she did the best?
	Not fighting, just not lying.
	Yeah.
	Oh, you're going to give me she did the best you could with the knowledge she had.
	Okay, so if that's the standard, if that's a good standard to say, well, you did the best you could with the knowledge you had, that's a good standard, that's her standard, right?
	Then why on earth would she be yelling at you for not getting perfect on your tests?
	Hey, man, you're just you're doing the best you could with the knowledge you had at the time.
	That's very true, but I can think that I'm more emotionally evolved than my own mother.
	I am the next person.
	If you're lying to her, not if you're lying to her.
	How's that emotionally involved?
	I mean, sometimes white lies spare feelings for people that, you know, can't change it.
	It's like, you know, if you have an ugly mug, I'm not going to tell you it over and over again.
	No, you know, an ugly mug is not a fuck.
	Such a sophist.
	An ugly mug is not the same as voluntarily choosing to scream at children.
	Right.
	And I mean, she wasn't screaming at me for the SAT score.
	She thought I did quite well.
	It was just the expectation had been set for so many years.
	I'm not even talking to you, bro.
	I'm not even, you're just, all I'm doing is talking to your mom.
	This is just your mom.
	She's just in here fighting and defending and gaslighting.
	And I'm not even talking to you.
	Like, I'd like to talk to you.
	You seem like a cool guy to talk to, but I'm not even talking to you.
	These are all just excuses and justifications pouring out of your mom.
	Fair enough.
	I do get defensive over my parents.
	I do love them.
	I know they were flawed.
	Okay.
	Well, I guess you can continue to love them, but it's going to keep quality women from your life.
	All right.
	Johnny.
	Johnny.
	What's on your mind?
	Don't forget to unmute.
	Going once, going twice.
	Are we done?
	Yes, sir.
	ahead no i i uh Thank you for sharing.
	My pleasure.
	I can relate to the last guy a little bit there.
	I did confront my mother, though.
	And, you know, it was one of those things where she had a cry and said, you know, I did the best with what I had.
	And, you know, it was like a moment.
	What did she do that you didn't appreciate or didn't like?
	She was one of those, I guess you could say aggressive, emotional, very verbally more abusive, I'd say.
	And sometimes.
	And did she call you names?
	It was more like stupid, I think was the main word she liked to use.
	Don't be stupid, you know?
	It's all strange to me, of course, because she's half your genetics.
	IQ is largely genetic.
	So calling you stupid is just an insult to herself.
	It's just very strange to me.
	But anyway, go on.
	I think also, too, it's, you know, you think about the lineage of like how they were handled.
	You know, that's why I give my mother a pass almost for like, you know, nobody's perfect, right?
	We're all striving.
	But the thing is, it's like, what did I learn from her looking at my grandparents and knowing and asking those questions about that?
	When has she apologized without making excuses?
	Because it sounds like she's making excuses.
	Yeah, she'll never, that's the funny thing.
	She'll never apologize, like legit.
	Like I talked to my godmother, who's more motherly to me as far as like, you know, who I can call on the phone and who's been there for me in those tough times and whatnot.
	Like she's.
	And are you, sorry to interrupt.
	I just want to make sure I get to the core of it.
	Are you married?
	No, not.
	And how old are you?
	43.
	Have you ever been married?
	No.
	Why do you think that is?
	So you have three kids, but you've never seen that.
	With the same, yeah.
	We still share a home together.
	Oh, so you're together with the mother of your children.
	You're just not formally married.
	Yeah.
	Yep.
	Wait, there was a long pause there.
	I'm not sure what that meant.
	We came together for a family and we're honoring that together.
	That's important.
	I'd say the dynamics, we were raised a lot different.
	And that makes things difficult at times as far as standards go and how we both, you know, way we see the way things should be with kids and everything else.
	I think that's just.
	But you're striving to raise your children differently than how you were raised to some degree.
	Is that right?
	Yeah.
	My kids have gotten awards at school for being student of the, you know, great kid of the month and all that other stuff.
	Like they're good, they're great kids.
	That's fantastic.
	Well, congratulations.
	I'm obviously thrilled that you're breaking the chain here.
	So how can I help you philosophically?
	Well, I just thought it was interesting to, I just wanted to give perspective because again, I think there's a generation and what happens is I never liked a victim card, right?
	Someone has to break it.
	Like we can all say we were victims at one point in time, but what good is that to us?
	You know, like if it is it does it empower us to know that we it's not our fault?
	I think that's that's a great argument.
	I like that a lot because I have that my own problem is a self-love, I would call it, instead of, you know, but you were a victim as a child, right?
	But again, what do you say victim?
	I didn't have it nearly as bad as some.
	No, no, no.
	But you were, I didn't say, look, everyone is like, well, there's one person on the planet who had the very worst childhood known to man.
	I'm not that person.
	And it's like, so?
	You know, that's like saying, well, I'm not going to go to the doctor because there's always someone sicker than me.
	And it's like, what does that matter?
	I mean, you didn't have that comparison as a kid.
	You suffered as a kid if your mother was negative or your father was negative.
	And you suffered as a kid.
	And taking this like view from orbit, like, ah, but throughout the span of human history, it's like, but that's not how you experience things as a child.
	As a child, you did not choose the family you were born into.
	And if you were mistreated, you couldn't leave and you were a victim.
	Okay.
	I mean, if I'm wrong, maybe I've misunderstood something about sort of the nature of life.
	And I'm happy to be schooled on this, but it is certainly the case that you didn't choose.
	It certainly is the case that you can't fight back.
	And it certainly is the case you can't leave.
	Well, and I'll tell you this: same as with everyone else.
	I think all humans are imperfect.
	I don't think anyone's perfect.
	And if, you know, if we say that's not the standard.
	Come on.
	The standard is not perfection.
	That's like saying, well, one guy is dying of cancer and one guy stopped his toe.
	And you say, well, nobody's perfectly healthy.
	It's like, but you still have standards.
	You still have degrees, right?
	Correct.
	I mean, if you ding your car or you completely total it by it rolls off a cliff down into the Grand Canyon, you say, well, no car is perfectly without dings.
	It's like, yeah, well, one of them has a little thing and the other one is in a little box that's crumpled nests, right?
	So I always thought, you know, it was a good line that I appreciated.
	Your job as a parent is to not screw your kids up as much as you got, like as much as your parents screwed you up.
	That was the way that someone put it, I heard along, you know, along the way where it was like, that's, you know what?
	I kind of like that because you're not going to be perfect parent.
	Now we all have our moments or whatever, right?
	It's not mindful and knowing that like they are innocent and they need to be treated like these, you know, precious, wonderful flowers that are growing and very delicate, you know?
	But at the same time, I don't believe also we need to put these bubbles around them to make them.
	One of the things I had trouble with was, you know, the idea of the Easter bunny and, you know, because what is it doing?
	It's teaching it that it's okay to lie right to your kids' face.
	So I was like, you know what?
	When I get older, they're just going to see like, oh, it's okay to lie to your kids.
	And I'm like, that's so deceitful, right?
	So do I want them to say, oh, it's okay.
	I mean, they deceived me for years.
	Why should I like, do you understand that part?
	Where it's like, I constantly.
	I agree with that.
	Yeah, you can tell them, look, here's a great story.
	You know, I mean, I taught, do you tell your kids about Santa Claus?
	Sure, it's a great story.
	Yeah.
	It's a great story.
	And the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, they're great stories.
	Nothing wrong with great stories.
	I mean, we don't watch Ratatouille thinking that there's rats that can cook.
	Right.
	So, yeah, it's a great story.
	But yeah, you don't teach it as if it's true because it's not.
	And that's just lying to them.
	Yeah.
	See, that's the parents who go all out and make it.
	It's more for them.
	They're entertaining themselves at the expense of the child when it comes down to it.
	If you really want to go philosophy on that one, you know, it's like we got to play the role of what.
	Well, it's also a superiority thing.
	Like they kind of, they trust, look how much they trust me and I can do this and I can do that.
	It's a little bit of a power trip and all that.
	Okay.
	Well, I appreciate that.
	Is there anything else that we could chat about tonight?
	No, I really enjoy this and I'm grateful.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	I appreciate that.
	And thank you, of course, so much for what you're doing for the world.
	There's really nothing better that we can do than peaceful parenting.
	And peacefulparenting.com, the book is free.
	You've got a whole AI there that you can ask questions of multi-language.
	There's a Spanish version of peaceful parenting as well.
	I hope that you will check it out.
	There's a long version.
	There's a short version if you're in a big hurry or you haven't had enough psilobias in to get your focus up.
	So this Sunday, 11 a.m., I'm going to do a show.
	It's for donors only.
	So you can get that, of course, at freedomain.locals.com or subscribestor.com slash freedomain.
	Really appreciate that.
	And have yourself a wonderful evening.
	Thank you everyone so much for calling in tonight.
	An absolute joy and pleasure to have these conversations with you.
	Lots of love, my friends.
	Take care.
	I'm going to give it a couple of seconds to close off.
	And if I don't see you Sunday, I will probably do a spaces Monday morning and then definitely Wednesday night we'll have a live stream like this.
	And thanks again so much, everyone.
	Freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show.

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