0:01

Yes, yes, good evening everybody. Welcome to Wednesday

0:03

Night Live. Oh gosh, what is

0:05

it? 24th. So, I think

0:07

all philosophers have their trials. Some

0:10

get burned at the stake. Some

0:12

have to drink hemlock. Some even get

0:15

nailed to a cross. Some get

0:17

sold into slavery. And

0:19

then, really at the pinnacle of human

0:21

suffering, there's me, who decides

0:24

for reasons that pass human

0:26

understanding, to pour an

0:28

entire day into reading an audiobook with a

0:30

voice half destroyed by a cold. Welcome

0:33

to peaceful parenting. I am

0:36

your Slavic demon, Svolithic,

0:39

and we will take you into the dark part

0:41

of the data regarding children and their childhoods.

0:44

So, it's going to be pretty much out

0:47

of Ace

0:49

Ventura. Ventura! Yes, Satan? Oh,

0:53

I'm sorry I mistook you for somebody else.

0:57

Who, Plato, was sold into slavery. All

1:02

right, he says. Yeah,

1:05

this is what happens when philosophers go into

1:07

politics. He tried to go into politics, Plato,

1:09

and he was sold in

1:11

Syracuse into slavery, and he

1:14

just happened to be bought back for

1:16

about 400 bucks, I think, by

1:18

one of his former pupils

1:21

and was freed. Philosophers

1:23

in politics, not

1:26

necessarily the most magical of mixes,

1:29

because philosophers want to tell the truth,

1:32

and politics is

1:35

lying. It's kind of the opposite job

1:37

description. Somebody

1:41

says, I wrote a novel last year, I don't know if

1:43

it's morally good or bad. I do know that I believe

1:45

in it, so I guess I'm asking if that part, am

1:47

I good or bad? Well,

1:51

writing the novel is just the first

1:53

in a thousand steps of getting your

1:55

ideas out into the world. Now,

1:58

you have to get behind your novel

2:00

and get it out into the world. And that's

2:03

the big challenge. But thank you for the tip. I appreciate that and I

2:05

wish you the very best of luck with

2:08

your novel. Bit of motivation

2:10

for you Steph. Thank you Evan. Philosopher

2:13

at the discount just $400. Yeah.

2:16

Yeah. Yeah,

2:19

I mean, so you can be deplatformed by

2:22

being kicked off the major platforms or, or,

2:25

you can be deplatformed by

2:27

being sold as human chattel

2:29

into slavery, which was what

2:31

happened to Plato post politics.

2:33

So there is, you know, what's it, Plato

2:35

had this idea that the price of not being

2:37

involved in politics is being ruled

2:40

by your inferiors. So he

2:42

was all kinds of, Hey, I'll

2:44

just be a philosopher and I'll go into

2:46

politics. Absolutely.

2:49

Fine idea. A fine idea.

2:53

Oh, well, maybe, maybe people had

2:55

read the Republic and knew that

2:57

Plato was a psychotic tyrant

3:01

who wanted to completely dissolve the family and

3:03

have brothers and sisters having sex with each

3:05

other because nobody knew who their parents were.

3:07

Ah, what a fetid leftist monster

3:10

he was. The

3:12

original totalitarian. Just

3:18

a reminder too, we had

3:20

a call last night just for donors. There

3:23

is a debate

3:27

going on where everybody misses the point.

3:31

So we'd have to donate $400 as deaf as

3:33

ever sold in slavery. I'd

3:36

hope I'd go for more than that, but I

3:39

also might be a bit nervous to be bought by somebody who'd pay more

3:41

than that. So yeah,

3:43

we had a chat last night. There's a big

3:46

debate going on, I guess, in conservative circles after

3:48

Tucker Carlson went on

3:50

Joseph Rogan. Joseph Rogan.

3:54

Toe thumb, Joe thumb. Toe

3:57

Rogan, toe Rogan. There you go. talking

4:00

about the bombings of

4:02

Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

4:07

We had a great chat last night for donors. There's

4:10

a link

4:12

here. You can listen to it later,

4:14

freedomain.locals.com, slash, support, slash, promo, slash, all

4:17

caps, UBB 2022. And

4:21

you can join this donor

4:24

community here on Locals. You

4:26

can also, of course, join

4:28

on subscribestar.com, slash, freedomain.

4:31

And we have these, we have a couple of times

4:34

a week, we'll just, I'll just fire up the Skype

4:36

room and we'll do voice chats. And you've got questions,

4:38

comments, issues. We had a great discussion about,

4:42

what does it mean when you

4:44

have like, I don't

4:46

know if you've seen that meme, which

4:49

is, you know, the history, brief history of Japan.

4:51

And it's like crazy Shogun

4:53

Warrior, Mushroom Cloud, insane

4:57

orgasm face anime girl.

5:00

And that's like the whole history of Japan. And

5:02

Japan now, you know, pretty nice, pretty

5:04

civilized in a lot of ways, very civilized. And

5:09

quite functional, you know, if you don't look at the debt

5:11

sheet, right? And

5:16

yet in the 1940s, the

5:19

Japanese military, the Japanese culture was

5:23

approximately as evil as anything can

5:26

get in this life. Like

5:29

rampant rape as a weapon of

5:31

war, beheadings, the torturing and slaughter

5:34

and vivisection of prisoners of war,

5:38

cannibalism and just,

5:41

I mean, and the experimentation, particularly

5:44

on Australian POWs of massive amounts

5:46

of biological weapons. They

5:49

would tie the prisoners of

5:51

war in concentric circles and release the

5:53

weapons to see what would happen.

5:57

They raped women and gave them venereal

5:59

diseases to see. how the children would be

6:01

affected by the presence or absence of inirial diseases.

6:04

Just really about as evil as you

6:06

could get. Now I know that there's a lot

6:08

of war propaganda but some of this stuff seems to

6:11

be fairly independently verified so just about as evil as you

6:13

can get. And

6:16

it's all like, well but you see in

6:19

Hiroshima and Nagasaki there were all

6:21

of the innocent, innocent

6:24

women and children. A

6:27

gentleman, children, sure. Yeah, I get it. But

6:29

the women? I don't

6:32

know man. Somebody

6:34

raised these psychos who

6:37

were willing to go out and do all these terrible things. Someone

6:41

did. If

6:44

you raise a child

6:48

who grows into a man capable

6:50

of such absolutely primitive,

6:53

mindless savagery, the Japanese

6:55

are one of the highest IQ populations in the

6:57

world so... Somebody

7:00

says the Japanese were worse in World War II than the

7:02

Nazis in my opinion. Well,

7:05

it's hard to know who you'd want to be captured by. The

7:08

Nazis were a profoundly anti-intellectual movement

7:10

as were the communists in many

7:13

ways. As I said in my

7:15

documentary on Poland, they just

7:17

came in and shot everyone in glasses right now,

7:19

all the lawyers and the doctors

7:22

and novelists and intellectuals. So the same

7:24

thing happened with my family was hunted

7:26

by the Nazis in Germany

7:29

like my grandmother was hunted by the

7:31

Nazis in Germany as was

7:33

my mother. And then I assumed that she was

7:35

assaulted by all of the invading Russians

7:38

at the end of the war where the

7:40

Russians raped every woman

7:42

from 8 to 80, every girl from 8

7:44

to 80 and sometimes repeatedly in the day.

7:46

Yeah, the non-king, rape of non-king, absolutely just

7:49

monstrous. Now,

7:54

the Japanese women were heavily

7:56

involved, much, much more so of course than the

7:58

men in the racing. of

8:00

the children. So if you

8:02

raise boys

8:08

who do that, are

8:12

you really innocent? Completely and totally

8:14

just absolutely innocent. There's no, you

8:16

have no causality in anything that

8:19

ever happened. Merry

8:24

Christmas, Mr. Lawrence. So yeah,

8:28

we had a long discussion about this and I

8:30

sort of put forward this whole idea or argument

8:32

regarding how people mess around

8:34

with the concepts of philosophy and

8:36

morality, comparing

8:38

how you deal with allies versus how

8:41

you deal with enemies. It's a

8:43

really great conversation. It's up there on

8:46

the donor site at freedomain.locals.com. I

8:51

don't think the Russians minded getting captured by the Nazis. At

8:53

least they would get a hot meal for once. What's

8:57

your ethnic background, Steph? I'm half

8:59

Irish and half German. Yeah,

9:04

I mean, when

9:07

you have a brutal, violent,

9:11

psychotic and evil regime,

9:16

the women to some degree are conveyor belts from

9:18

hell. So,

9:26

well, the Russians, of course, I mean, it was just brutal. They always

9:29

have this scorched earth policy.

9:31

They just withdraw. They poison the wealth, they kill all

9:33

the livestock, and they wait for winter to do its

9:35

work. And

9:37

I think Hitler was invading Russia in order

9:39

to try and free it from the communists.

9:41

Wasn't that his idea? So,

9:48

yeah, innocence and guilt is really

9:50

tough. It's

9:54

really tough. But

9:57

they're just innocent civilians. I

10:01

don't know. I don't know. Similar

10:07

ideas to what you brought up in your series, The

10:09

Truth About The French Revolution. Yeah, that's also for donors.

10:11

Who raises men and women? Who can commit such

10:13

evil acts? And

10:17

some of them, of course, were... Not.

10:21

As guilty,

10:24

right? They were conscripted. They didn't want to do any of these

10:26

things. They would be shot if they didn't. And I have great

10:28

sympathy for that, but it

10:31

was pretty crazy stuff, man. There

10:35

is this horrible story.

10:40

I guess since we're starting with horrible stories, there was

10:42

this horrible story about the

10:45

Russians who attempted to stay

10:47

in the West after

10:50

the end of the Second World War. They were captured or

10:52

they were sent back to Russia and

10:55

untold numbers of them would break

10:57

the windows on the trains and

11:00

try and slash their wrists or cut their own

11:02

necks rather than be sent back to communism. They

11:07

were trying to kill themselves.

11:15

Yeah, it's just awful. The

11:18

death rate for POWs in

11:21

the West was like 2%, but the

11:23

death rate for POWs held

11:25

by the Japanese army, the Imperial army, was like over

11:28

30%. They were just

11:30

doing the Bataan death march and all of that. It was

11:32

like a hundred-plus mile march through the jungle. And if you

11:35

stepped out of line or fell out of line,

11:37

they just shot you. There's

11:42

something that was so foundationally arrogant.

11:48

I went looking for the French Revolution in your premium section

11:50

and couldn't find the series on the

11:52

private link. Can you

11:54

have Jared or James show me how to find it, please? Yeah,

11:58

I mean it should be in the... long

12:00

document with all of the bonuses. Have

12:08

a look. There's a big document with all the

12:10

bonus materials you get, the 22-part

12:12

History of Philosophers series, the Truth About

12:14

Sadism, the Truth About the French Revolution,

12:16

just a 130 premium podcasts and

12:18

all of that. But

12:25

of course, Japan had to be

12:27

rehabilitated after the Second World War. Does anyone know

12:29

why? Who wasn't in on the convo last night?

12:31

You know why? Japan had to

12:33

be rehabilitated and they couldn't focus on the

12:37

war crimes of the Japanese? The

12:43

bombings didn't come out of nowhere. I'll just tell you

12:45

that, right? So the bombings, I don't

12:47

believe that the bombings were necessary. In

12:49

fact, there's very strong arguments as to why they

12:51

weren't necessary. Japan had already

12:53

been negotiating a surrender. Unconditional.

12:56

Well, first of all, they say, well, 100,000 American lives

12:58

would have been lost invading Japan, but you wouldn't have

13:00

invaded Japan. Right?

13:03

You would have just blockaded it and kept farming it until they

13:05

surrendered. You wouldn't have had to invade Japan. So

13:08

number one. Number two, the Japanese government was already

13:10

willing to surrender. They said, we just want to

13:12

keep the emperor. And the

13:14

Americans said, no, you can't keep the emperor. And while

13:17

those negotiations were going on, the two bombs were dropped

13:19

within a couple of days of each other. And

13:21

then when Japan surrendered, they got to keep

13:23

the emperor anyway. So the conditions for Japan's

13:25

unconditional surrender minus keeping the emperor were already

13:27

in place. So

13:30

the bombs did not achieve anything new. I

13:32

mean, you could say it demonstrated to the Russians, maybe kept

13:35

them a little bit further out of Eastern

13:39

Europe, but the State

13:41

Department was so infested with communists that it didn't

13:43

seem like the Russians weren't getting absolutely everything they

13:45

wanted. The

13:47

whole war was started to defend Poland, which was then

13:50

handed over to the psychotic communists.

13:53

So I don't believe the argument that, well, it would have had to

13:55

have been an invasion. No, of course not. It's a blockade,

13:58

it means blockade and bomb it. There's

14:00

no need for an invasion. There

14:04

were more deaths in one night in the Tokyo fire bombings than

14:06

there were in either of the 100,000, I

14:09

think 60,000 for the other ones. The

14:15

Japanese army had been so

14:18

relentlessly evil that

14:21

there was the hammer of

14:23

the gods. There is a theory. It's

14:27

a dicey theory. I'm not

14:29

behind it

14:31

100%, but it's interesting. I

14:35

put it, it's my theory by the way, but

14:37

I put this forward very tentatively. That

14:41

war doesn't end, war

14:45

doesn't end until

14:48

the women truly suffer. War

14:53

doesn't really end. I'll give you a couple of examples. If

14:59

you look at Japan,

15:02

bombed of course, the women

15:04

hugely suffered. And

15:06

Japan has been relatively peaceful

15:08

since. If you look at Germany, bombed end

15:11

to end of course, the women hugely suffered,

15:13

my mother included, and my grandmother was killed

15:15

in Germany, in

15:17

Dresden. And Germany has

15:20

been relatively peaceful ever since. If

15:28

you look at France, which was the site

15:30

of course of the First

15:32

World War, the First World War was trench

15:34

warfare for the most part. Cities weren't bombed

15:36

really in any consequential way, but there

15:38

was a pretty significant amount of suffering in

15:40

France. And then France did not fight particularly

15:42

hard. In the Second World

15:44

War, it was conquered by the Blitzkrieg in a matter of

15:46

weeks in the summer of 1940. The

15:56

nukes were dropped. It was the location

15:58

of the small Christian population. Japan. So

16:02

when the women get

16:07

the blowback from

16:10

the war, the

16:13

women stop raising

16:15

the psychos. That seems to be

16:17

a pattern. Again, I'm not behind it

16:19

100%. I've put this forward very tentatively

16:21

as a possible hypothesis. And

16:23

the analogy that I would give is

16:26

if you have some crazy woman who

16:29

just enjoys stirring up fights among men. You know,

16:31

this guy grabbed me. He said this trash talk

16:33

about you. You know, he tried to kiss me

16:35

or whatever it is. And

16:38

so she's just out there and she

16:41

gets this sort of sadistic pleasure out

16:43

of causing fights among

16:47

men. She

16:50

probably enjoys that pastime until

16:58

she gets the living crap beaten out of her

17:00

for some reason. Like

17:02

when it blows back on her, when it's not

17:04

just picking fights and getting other people or getting

17:06

other people to fight and all of that, which

17:08

a lot of women find, like crazy women will

17:10

find sexually exciting. And

17:17

so the woman who's crazy and abusive

17:19

in this way, she's

17:22

going to enjoy getting men

17:24

to fight each other until that time when

17:26

she gets the living crap beaten out of

17:28

her and then she suddenly doesn't want to

17:30

play anymore. Somebody

17:35

says there's a lot of historical accounts of the

17:37

Japanese citizens knowing about atrocities in China and still

17:40

supporting the acts committed there in China. So

17:46

America also needed Japan to block communist

17:48

expansion post-World War Two. Yeah, to some

17:50

degree, but I think what

17:52

America most needed was a market for its products

17:55

and also the Japanese government after some

17:57

time is a huge holder of

17:59

US-bound. so they needed the Japanese government to

18:01

buy a lot of bonds. I'm

18:04

not sure of the time frame, but I know that happened later.

18:07

I assume that that's one of the reasons why you didn't hear

18:09

a lot about the Japanese war crimes. So,

18:13

yeah, it's really sad. And

18:17

the countries that are still quite

18:21

pro-war are the countries

18:24

that haven't had the

18:26

kind of

18:29

blowback on especially the women that other countries

18:31

have had. I

18:38

mean, England was very

18:40

aggressive until England got

18:42

bombed. England

18:45

had a whole white sun never sets. It owned a third of

18:47

the planet, England. But

18:51

then after the blitz and after the bombings in

18:54

the various British

18:56

cities, which of course blew up a lot of

18:58

women, suddenly women became

19:00

a lot more peaceful in

19:02

their upbringing of children. So,

19:05

anyway, it's just a very tentative

19:07

possible theory. I don't have

19:10

an obviously research degree exhaustively, but it's something

19:12

that I've kind of noticed because you see

19:14

these countries that go from kind of

19:16

psychotic evil to kind of

19:19

tremulous peacenicks in like that, right?

19:22

Japan, post-war, Germany, post-war,

19:25

France to some degree, post-war, just really

19:28

peaceful. And

19:30

what's the difference? Well, civilian bombing. Yeah, let's you

19:33

and him fight. Yeah, for sure. That happens for

19:35

sure. Ever read Thomas Hardy's poems on war? Now, I read a lot of

19:37

World War I poems. See,

19:43

Crete, and the I

19:49

wrote a novel set in World War I called The Jealous

20:00

War and

20:02

I read a lot of poetry

20:05

and all

20:08

of that about World War I. It was

20:10

very powerful. All

20:17

right, so I'm happy to take your questions,

20:19

comments, tips, help. I won't be

20:21

doing a superlong show because I have been

20:23

working my voice like a

20:25

Turk and I will

20:27

not push its generosity too much. But

20:30

if you've got questions, comments, issues,

20:32

challenges, disagreements, and

20:34

of course the tips are super welcome. You can tip

20:36

on the app. You can tip at freedomain.com slash

20:40

donate as well, as well, as well.

20:42

And I'm very happy. I did two

20:44

and a quarter hours of

20:46

the Peaceful Parenting book. I

20:48

am, gosh, where am I now? Let me just see where

20:50

I am. I think I'm

20:53

three quarters through. I

20:55

think another two days, two eight

20:57

hour days and I should be able to be finished

21:00

the audiobook. Let's see, where am I? I am. Yes,

21:03

I am. 339 477.

21:24

And yeah, bilateral

21:28

parahippocampal gyrus. Mmm,

21:32

tasty. Tasty,

21:35

tasty data. I feel like I'm auditioning for

21:37

a reboot of Bones with

21:40

all of these

21:43

crazy numbers. Implications

21:47

to biomarker research. Yeah,

21:52

it's pretty wild. All the data that we

21:54

put together about adverse

21:59

childhood experience. cancers and cancers, heart disease,

22:05

stomach heart disease, stroke, obesity, promiscuity, drug abuse, and

22:07

all of that. It's really, really something.

22:09

Antisocial behavior like we've got study after study

22:11

after study because this is all

22:14

the data. All

22:17

the data. All the data. And really, really did

22:19

kind of need it. How spanking predicts dating

22:23

violence. Like if you're spanking too much, you're more

22:25

likely to use violence

22:27

during a date, in

22:30

dating. And promiscuity, of

22:32

course, as we mentioned, drug

22:34

abuse, alcoholism, smoking, all of the

22:36

stuff, all the data. All

22:39

the data. Oh,

22:43

and divorce. Yeah, the effects of

22:45

divorce on children, marijuana.

22:49

And next we go heart disease and cancer in

22:51

more detail. So

22:54

363 at 477. Let

22:59

me just make a note here. Start

23:01

here. So, yeah, it's

23:03

locked but it's just important to be able

23:06

to get all this data in. Because

23:09

one thing to have the theory, it's great to have the theory, but...

23:13

Yeah, if you want to give the name of your novel, that's fine with me. But

23:18

what about your arguments for and

23:20

against self-isolation, living alone in a cabin in

23:22

the woods? Will

23:25

you be feeding the P.P. book into the StepBot

23:27

AI? Yeah, I think so. The

23:31

P.P. book. I

23:36

mean, I don't think that you want to live

23:38

alone. We are

23:40

incomplete social organisms. We are incomplete

23:42

biological organisms without our... Right,

23:45

right. I

23:48

did feed blog posts into that, yeah. The

23:51

story is The Mayor of Christ Mountain. I'm publishing

23:53

it serially online. Good for you. The

23:55

Mayor of Christ Mountain. I

24:03

mean, there is a masculine urge to

24:07

live in the woods Walden

24:09

style, right? To hunt and to fish and

24:12

to trap and

24:15

to build fires and to

24:17

improve your environment and build

24:20

paths and so

24:22

on. There is a masculine urge, second only

24:24

to the masculine urge to liberate a woman

24:26

from her crappy, no

24:29

open windows for fluorescent light jobs and take

24:31

her to the Azures and

24:33

have her become a bronze domestic goddess. But

24:37

yeah, there is the male urge to just

24:39

escape responsibilities and live with

24:41

the meaty muscle of your hands, wrestling

24:45

sustenance from nature. Absolutely, yeah, for

24:48

sure. I like

24:52

staying and talking. I read

24:58

a book many years ago about a guy who

25:00

literally did that. He decided to go and live

25:02

in Alaska in the wilderness and

25:04

he brought his son with him and it was a

25:06

pretty wild story. The

25:12

guy from Into the Wild? Well,

25:14

that guy just wanted to die. Yeah, the

25:16

guy from Into the Wild, in my view, I

25:19

did a movie review on this many years ago, and yeah, he

25:21

just seemed to kind of want to die. All

25:27

right, let me just get to a

25:30

couple of topics as I await your

25:33

questions. Where

25:43

did I put my list of topics? I

25:46

feel it's close. It

25:49

should be close. It must be. You

25:53

know, I hate it when this happens. You

25:55

have this happen where

25:57

you're like, there's got to be something

25:59

wrong. something that does

26:02

this, whatever it is, whatever this

26:04

is, gotta be something that does this. And

26:08

like I was looking for, the problem with the AI

26:10

voices, I wanted to clone my own voice and

26:13

I wanted to feed text

26:16

into it so that the text could be

26:18

read in a simulacrum of

26:21

my voice. We'll just see

26:23

how that was. So

26:26

I looked into it and

26:29

the problem was I couldn't find anything that took more

26:31

than 5,000 characters at a time and

26:33

then it takes like five

26:35

minutes to generate the text. So

26:39

then I'd have to copy and paste like

26:41

I don't know, 80 times to finish

26:43

the book and I'd have to nurse it. I might as well

26:45

just read the damn thing because then at

26:47

least I proofread it one final time and all of that.

26:50

So just trying to find something where it's like okay,

26:53

I've got perfect recordings of my voice, I could just

26:55

feed it a bunch of chapters up, the peaceful parenting

26:57

book, clone my

26:59

voice and give

27:02

me a decent amount of copy paste so

27:04

that I can have

27:08

it done. Could I find such a thing? I

27:11

could not. I just couldn't.

27:14

And here's the thing too. So you spend a certain amount of

27:16

time looking for things and you know it's got to be there.

27:18

It's got to be something technology is all there. I mean, I

27:21

don't mind paying for it. I mean, people got to live, I

27:23

understand that. But

27:26

it's like you

27:30

just got to give up after a while, don't

27:32

you? You just got to give up.

27:35

It's a hole with no bottom. So

27:42

when you go down that rabbit hole, you know it

27:44

could be done and then all of these

27:46

oh, sign up for this. Oh, it's this price. Oh, but we're

27:48

not going to tell you how many characters you get and I

27:50

don't want to pay if it's not going to be what I

27:52

want. Then this place is like, well,

27:55

okay, but you're going to do a

27:57

third of a page at a time and it's going to

27:59

take forever to generate. In which case, like if I just

28:01

got to sit there nursing something, I might as well just

28:04

read the book. So I

28:06

think that's where, you know, it'd be nice if there was

28:09

an AI system where you could say, maybe there is. Here's

28:11

what I need to do. Here's what I need to get

28:13

done. Here's what I

28:15

need to get done. And

28:19

please do it. Just, you know, find some

28:21

way to have it be done. But

28:24

no, this thing is

28:26

not a thing. It can't be done. All

28:32

right. Let's see here. Someone

28:40

in the community introduced me to Daniel Mackler on

28:42

childhood trauma. Have you ever watched any of his

28:44

videos? Yeah, I've interviewed the

28:46

guy. He actually hosted a call-in

28:49

show, a dial-in show, like a general

28:51

show a couple of times when I couldn't do

28:53

it. How

28:56

is Daniel Mackler doing these days? I

28:59

actually met him many years ago as well. What

29:02

is Daniel Mackler doing these days? Is

29:11

he married? Does he have kids? What's his story? Let's

29:17

see here. I

29:29

ended my private practice in March 2010 for a

29:31

variety of reasons. New horizons, new challenges, traveling,

29:33

couch surfing, hitchhiking, made three new films,

29:35

been learning new languages, studying myself, and

29:38

continuing to heal from my history of

29:40

childhood trauma. I

29:42

no longer have a calling to be a paid therapist. In

29:45

fact, many days I'm not even sure if I

29:47

believe in this thing called psychotherapy anymore. I'm much more

29:49

a proponent of cell therapy. Born

29:55

in 1972? Oh

29:57

yeah, he broke away from his own family of

29:59

origin. What's

30:03

he doing? I've

30:05

broken out of their orbit, very grateful as a

30:07

result. Now

30:11

I am. Oh, I thought he was going to say, now

30:13

I am a parent. It says, now I am my own parent. So

30:16

I don't

30:19

know. Let's

30:23

see here. I've

30:27

never worked professionally in biology. That's

30:29

for his education. After college I waited tables, I

30:31

tossed pizzas, I hitchhiked around the world. I

30:33

was lost and depressed a fair amount. I

30:37

did temp work in New York City. I worked as

30:39

a kid's folk musician and storyteller, played to sound guitar.

30:42

I found my way into the mental health field as a

30:44

professional. Yeah,

30:50

I don't know. I'm not that he has to

30:52

talk about his personal life but I'm just

30:54

curious. All

30:59

right. Yeah, I

31:08

mean the single without kids and hitchhiking and traveling a lot.

31:11

Um, yeah, nice.

31:14

But he's getting up there now, isn't he? He's in his

31:16

40s or over, right? Good

31:22

voice acting is rarer than most people think. I'm not

31:24

sure what that's sort of related to. So

31:26

is he, is he, it seems

31:30

a bit like an eternal adolescence thing.

31:34

He was born in, oh

31:36

my gosh, he was born in 1972. So

31:39

he's in his 50s, right? If

31:42

he's 53. Yeah.

31:47

Wait, as born, he's 60, sorry, 51. 72,

31:54

I'm 66, he's 72, so he's six years younger than me. I'm 57,

31:56

so he's 51. And

32:00

no marriage, no kids. Well,

32:03

that's probably not going to happen, right? That's a shit

32:05

to shame. That's a no shame.

32:09

Revoice acting, you talking about getting the book

32:11

recorded. Yeah, it's, I mean,

32:13

I think I need to do it, but I just

32:16

wanted to get it done. Because, you know, I

32:18

have this bee in my bonnet, like, I just

32:20

have a, it's like a mosquito constantly circling me

32:22

when I have a project unfinished. And

32:25

the book's been finished in terms of this writing, but

32:27

it needed denarration. No,

32:33

he's, I think he said that

32:35

he was born in 72, so he's 51. If

32:39

I had that right. I

32:42

hate to be retarded. 52,

32:44

yeah, it's 52. 51

32:50

or 52. Yeah,

33:02

it's, it's just, it's

33:05

just fine. It's tough to find the sweet spot with

33:07

the AI reading. And I thought the AI voice was

33:09

fine. It's certainly better if I do it. Think

33:12

you'd do another interview with Fox Day sometime?

33:16

You know, I don't

33:18

have any, I mean, I like him. I don't have

33:20

any, but I mean, what would we talk about? I'm

33:22

not really following politics. I'm, you know,

33:24

probably just not interested in the same things anymore. Daniel

33:29

Mackler had a video saying he would never be

33:31

healed enough to have

33:33

children. Well,

33:36

I'm sorry about that. I wonder

33:39

why he wouldn't call me and say, well, you had

33:41

a tough childhood. You love being a parent. You

33:43

have a 21 year marriage. Why

33:45

don't you give me some advice? You know,

33:47

it's kind of funny. I

33:51

don't know. I don't know. Boy,

33:54

it's funny watching the dissident write to without

33:56

their resident philosopher. You

33:58

know, I don't think this is true. I don't

34:00

think this is true, but I have this sometimes this...

34:04

Oh, I don't know. We probably shouldn't

34:06

get Gossipy, should we? I

34:09

mean, that would just be... petty

34:11

and... wrong and... filthy

34:15

and muddy and sensual, oily...

34:19

caked on, fun to peel off... with

34:23

a spatula and... jello... You

34:30

love gossip? Well, that's just a sin.

34:33

I myself float above it in my

34:36

gossamer wings of idealistic platonic perfection. Never

34:39

would indulge in such a thing. Gossipy?

34:43

Gossipy? It's a gossip. I don't even know how to pronounce it. I'm

34:46

just so magically above and beyond it. Actually,

34:50

gossip... Gossip is

34:52

only slightly below philosophy in my

34:54

level of interest. Because it's

34:57

wisdom, really. It's applied wisdom

34:59

from practical examples. But

35:04

I think, you know, I was thinking about this today. I

35:07

was taking a break from the endless

35:09

Making My Eyes Square audiobook reading.

35:14

And I was just taking a short walk. And

35:19

I was thinking about all the

35:21

people... who

35:26

knew me well and, you know,

35:28

we were acquaintances or, you know, we'd done shows

35:30

together or whatever. Who just completely vanished. And I

35:32

think part of it was... I think part of

35:34

it probably was or had something to do with...

35:38

Well, you know, if Steph's not around, there's a whole

35:40

lot more views to go around for the rest of us.

35:42

Because Steph was taking most of the views. You

35:45

know, there was an article published some time

35:47

ago on misinformation and, like... They

35:50

had lines between all the influences. And I was like

35:52

right in the center and right the biggest, right? Excellent.

35:55

Here comes that whistling sound. And

35:58

I was thinking about the people who... were like, you

36:00

know, maybe part of it deep down was something to do

36:02

with, you know, I'm sorry

36:06

he got deplatformed, but you

36:10

know, there's

36:13

a whole lot more views to go around. But it

36:15

seems to me that the dissident right is kind of

36:17

fragmenting because there aren't unifying principles anymore.

36:21

And I think that's part of the price of not

36:23

having the philosopher around. So, yeah,

36:25

because people are going through all these paroxysms of conflict

36:27

and disagreement and aggression and name-calling

36:30

and so on. It's like, yeah, well,

36:32

it's, you know, life for that philosophy

36:34

is tough, man. Pretty

36:36

chaotic. I wouldn't want it, but, you know, I

36:39

guess other people are fine with it. And

36:42

you can't argue with them substantially, right? All

36:50

right. So let me get to your

36:53

comments in case I missed any just here and there.

37:00

It's a long life without kids from 40 to

37:02

85. It's

37:05

a long life, man. It's a long

37:07

life. The

37:11

people, you know, my

37:13

experience has been in seeing this. So if

37:16

you hold onto your lifelong friends, maybe you've got

37:18

a shot. But the problem is if you hold

37:20

onto your lifelong friends, most likely they're

37:22

going to get married. And then when you

37:24

get married and have kids, like I'm sorry, you

37:26

just run out of things to talk about with the people who

37:28

don't get married and don't have kids. It's a sad thing. I

37:32

don't know any way around it. But

37:34

when you get married and you have kids and

37:37

you're literally responsible for the survival

37:39

and flourishing of a

37:41

genuine human being who's

37:43

completely dependent upon you,

37:45

other stuff just becomes like,

37:48

eh, eh,

37:50

you know? And people were like,

37:53

yeah, you know, I'm trying to get this girl to

37:55

go out with me. It's like, yeah, that's nice. I'm

37:57

keeping a human being alive who's completely dependent upon me.

38:00

to shape them into an independent human being

38:02

in a crazy, chaotic world. So,

38:10

my friends who didn't get married

38:12

and have kids just

38:15

stayed as adolescents. I don't

38:17

know the cause and effect. I don't know, obviously, whether

38:21

because they stayed as adolescents they never got married and

38:23

had kids, or because they never got married and had

38:25

kids, they just never fundamentally had to grow up. I

38:29

don't know, but you just have less and less in common as

38:33

you move forward. So the people you have things

38:35

in common with are other parents. Most

38:38

of my friends, not all, but most of my friends are other

38:41

parents. It's

38:49

a long life from

38:51

40 or 45 to 85

38:55

without ... If

38:58

you're a good parent, you have baked in companionship through all

39:00

age. And

39:08

that's nothing to be sneezed at. When

39:11

you're young and pretty and full of energy and

39:13

all of that, you have lots of people floating

39:15

around. You go to parties and you meet people

39:17

and you travel and you meet people and all

39:19

of that. You have that energy

39:22

and surfing, effervescence of youth and all of that. You

39:24

get into your 50s, you get into

39:26

your 60s, I mean, you slow down

39:29

and you just become a little bit less appealing because

39:32

the young people don't want to have much to

39:34

do with you because you're old. Of

39:37

course, how much did you want to hang out with guys

39:40

who were 60 when you were 22? Well,

39:42

you didn't, right? I mean, outside of family. And

39:52

other people your age,

39:55

if they're single, okay, maybe you

39:57

can hang out. There's

40:00

a certain oddness that tends to accumulate

40:02

around people who stay single into their

40:04

60s. They

40:07

just don't. You have a very different experience when

40:09

you... You know this if you're married, right?

40:13

If you're married, you have someone in your life 24-7 giving

40:15

you feedback. Yes,

40:17

Stephen Mulley, you now, Stephen Mulley, you're all down getting

40:20

there. Thank God for that. Post

40:23

cancer, every day's a blessing. So

40:26

yeah, you have this constant feedback

40:28

and it changes who you are. It fundamentally changes

40:30

who you are to have constant

40:33

feedback from a

40:37

loved partner 24-7, like

40:40

22 years now, 21 years. I'm

40:43

just not the same. I'm not even close to the same

40:46

person I would have been if I hadn't been married. And

40:49

so the person that you are

40:51

when you're married and get that kind of feedback

40:53

is very different from the person that you were

40:55

friends with with your friends when you were all

40:57

single. Yeah, you learn

40:59

to reshape your life to accommodate someone else. You...

41:09

You wake up in the morning and your first

41:12

thought is, do I need to pee? And the

41:14

second thought is, and how's my family doing? Not

41:17

even, sometimes it's reversed, right? But you wake up and

41:19

you think of your family. You think of

41:22

how you can make your family stay better and you

41:24

go down, you look forward to seeing your family. I'm

41:26

happy to see you and all of that. He

41:30

says, my brother is unmarried at 50 and he's hard

41:32

to work with sometimes. Yeah,

41:34

it's, you know, I have some sensitivity

41:37

to it because of course some of

41:39

my best friends are bachelors but they're looking

41:41

to get married and I'm sure that they will. But...

41:44

Yeah, it's a different life, man. And

41:47

particularly, I'm thinking sort of mid to late 50s,

41:49

mid to late 50s, the people I have

41:53

known in their mid to late

41:55

50s who are still single, just

41:57

oddballs. It's

42:00

just such a different life. By

42:04

the time I get to 60, I'll be married

42:07

over a quarter of a century. Over

42:10

a quarter of a century. Be

42:14

what, 26 years, 27 years? And

42:17

I was known my wife for close to three decades. And

42:21

we hung out every day within the first couple

42:23

of days of dating and got married very quickly.

42:31

That amount of shaping by another

42:33

person, the amount of wisdom that she

42:35

brings, the good humor, the positivity, the support,

42:38

it's just wonderful. By

42:42

the time you hit 60, if you

42:44

haven't had that kind of constant feedback from people,

42:48

it gets pretty hard to accommodate people later on in

42:50

life. You know, you get kind of set in your

42:52

ways, right? You

42:55

get kind of set in your ways. And

43:02

it's important, what the defender of mine was saying,

43:04

oh, getting a little too comfortable staying

43:06

at home all day. Alright,

43:11

great question. Not a fun question, but a great question.

43:13

Where do you think modern post-Christian

43:16

morality has gone worst wrong? Modern

43:20

post-Christian morality has gone worst

43:22

wrong. So,

43:34

when you get rid of

43:38

the orts, all you get are

43:40

the months. So

43:44

Christianity has the orts, right? You ought to do this

43:46

to get to heaven. You got to 10 commandments. You

43:48

got your sermon on the Mount. You got to do

43:50

unto others. Golden rule. Love thy neighbor.

43:53

You got the Good Samaritan parable of the Good

43:55

Samaritan, so on. You got these shoulds.

43:58

You should do this, right? This is your moral. Now,

44:01

atheism came along and scrubbed morality from the universe.

44:03

You can't get an ought from an ears all

44:05

the way back to Hume. So

44:08

it came along and it said, you can't get an ought from an

44:10

ears. There's no such thing as should

44:13

in the universe. Okay.

44:17

Now, the end

44:21

result of that has not

44:23

been the elimination of morality, but

44:27

the replacement of morality with

44:30

easily programmed hysteria. See,

44:34

the Christians have two great sources

44:37

of morality. I mean, one is the more formal one,

44:39

which is the Bible and

44:41

the commandments. And the

44:43

second is communion with God. Because

44:54

that limited the amount of

44:56

external hysteria that

44:58

could be imposed. But

45:02

now, in the absence of

45:08

any central organizing principle of morality,

45:11

any objective or universal.

45:13

Now, we can say, of

45:15

course, that the Bible is not a philosophical

45:18

document, but it is objective insofar as everyone

45:20

who believes in the Bible has access to

45:22

the same moral commandments. There's no Christian who

45:25

says, thou shalt steal is a commandment. They

45:27

all say, thou shalt not steal is a

45:29

commandment. So there's reference to, you

45:31

love your enemies and there's disagreements about that

45:33

and questions of self-defense and just war theory.

45:36

I get all of that. But

45:38

there still is objective morality

45:41

that you commune with based on the book, based

45:44

on maybe a great priest

45:46

or a great conversation or theology

45:48

and based on prayer, you pray, you

45:51

pray and you get the answers.

45:56

You pray and you get the answers. Now,

45:58

that's gone. So there's no other way of saying that. objective

46:00

arbiter of morality. Now

46:04

when you don't have an objective arbiter,

46:06

which means a philosophical way to determine

46:08

morality, and theological is just

46:11

philosophy with different first premises. So

46:19

it's philosophy one step removed. So

46:29

now, by

46:32

getting rid of the shoulds, now

46:35

all we have is the musts. You must

46:37

do this, you must do that, you must

46:39

do the other. Or you'll get cancelled, you'll

46:41

get fired, we'll attack you, we'll shut you

46:43

down, you know, we'll weaponize

46:46

various things against you and

46:48

you'll test. The

46:52

conscience has been removed from the individual

46:56

and has been thrown

46:58

to the

47:00

beast called the mob. Christianity

47:12

believes morality is based on something real and

47:14

external to ourselves. Absolutely, yes. And

47:16

it's not subjective, you don't just get to make up your

47:18

own moral rules because they're written down. And

47:26

this is a distinction in the theory

47:28

of law called as natural versus

47:30

positive law. So natural law says that

47:32

there's God-given rights and the law

47:34

must reflect them. And if the law opposes

47:36

God-given rights, then

47:39

the law is invalid, the law is unjust. There's

47:41

a standard you judge the law, the human law

47:43

outside of the human law. That's

47:50

natural law. Now positive law says

47:53

whatever the law says, that's what's legal and

47:55

there's no other standard to compare it

47:57

to. Now of course natural law took

47:59

a fairly significant time. significant advantage

48:01

point when basically

48:04

the Nazis made legal all of the horrors they

48:06

were doing. Or

48:10

as has been pointed out multiple

48:12

times, the Bill

48:14

of Rights and the Constitution of

48:16

the Soviet Union under communism was

48:19

fantastic but didn't mean anything because

48:21

nobody enforced it or

48:23

they enforced the opposite really. So

48:32

still things need to get done. Still

48:36

things need to get done. So

48:44

now it's

48:46

the chaos of the mob

48:49

and its programmed targets. That

48:52

is the must. Positive

48:59

law of the average American committing three felonies a day.

49:01

Yeah, that's right. That's right. Then

49:03

the law becomes these wonderful

49:06

magical fish nets, the netting that

49:09

lets all the big fish

49:11

go while capturing all the tiny fish. That's kind of

49:13

the way it works. And

49:21

people end up evaluating

49:29

propositions not based upon any

49:32

reference to abstract principles or universal

49:34

laws but immediate

49:38

positive or negative consequences. That's

49:41

all. Right? That's all. So

49:46

for me, I was raised to

49:48

tell the truth. I

49:58

was raised to tell the truth. the skies

50:00

fall, you tell the truth. I

50:02

was raised in a Christian sense

50:04

with that and I was also raised with the

50:07

philosophical dedication to that or raised myself that way

50:10

and also just lying is humiliating.

50:14

Lying is an act of foundational fear

50:17

of another and it's humiliating to

50:19

lie. To lie is

50:21

just humiliating. I mean, you're scared.

50:23

It means you're a prey species. It means you're broken.

50:30

So the purpose

50:32

of modern quote morality is

50:35

to get you to fear

50:38

the consequences of your actions, not

50:42

to judge them morally. So

50:46

if you talk about this, disaster

50:48

will follow. And

50:53

so don't talk about it. Then it's just a matter of will

50:56

I get positive or negative things out

50:58

of talking about topic X. Rather

51:01

than, well, we just got to tell the truth. So

51:10

when you don't have access to principles,

51:13

it's very easy to program you by

51:15

consequences. Jesus,

51:19

of course, is an example as there are other thinkers

51:22

throughout history. But Jesus is an example of saying,

51:25

well, what matters is what Jesus would call

51:28

the truth rather than the consequences, which were

51:30

immensely negative, of course, for him. Although

51:35

Christianity did end slavery, which is

51:37

probably one of the reasons why it's so hated

51:39

by the modern slave owners. So

51:46

people who are willing to act

51:48

on principle are

51:50

less troubled by consequences. But

51:53

people who lose principles are then

51:55

just programmed by consequences. Oh,

51:59

we're going to call you. this word, we're going to call you that word,

52:01

we're going to deplatform you, we're going to attack you, we're going to

52:03

humiliate you, we're going to write hit pieces on you. Oh no, that's

52:05

bad, that's scary. Forget it. There's

52:09

no principles, there's only consequences. I

52:16

mean, whatever community I was part of,

52:19

I guess close to half a decade

52:21

ago, it was very closely observed that

52:24

they utterly abandoned their core moral philosopher.

52:28

They utterly abandoned, in a sense

52:31

betrayed, their own core

52:33

moral philosopher. And

52:36

you just can't do that without consequences.

52:39

And that makes sense, right? You can't do that

52:41

without losing credibility either with others or with yourself

52:43

or both, right? Daniel

52:51

Maclaur is an anti-Natalist. Yes, I think that's

52:53

right. I think I remember that. He

52:56

believes it's impossible to have children

52:58

without transferring your trauma to them.

53:00

Very sad. So he would call me an abuser then

53:02

I guess by having a chance. I

53:06

have a friend who is 65 and unmarried and

53:08

hangs around 20 to 22 year old girls. He

53:11

moneywhips them. Oh, he's like a sugar daddy?

53:15

Well, that's very sad. That's very sad and

53:17

kind of gross. And

53:37

so now we decide things

53:39

based upon bullying and

53:42

bribery, not based on principles

53:45

for the most part. And

53:53

that's tough. That's

53:56

tough. Now we're just, we're prey

53:58

species, we're just barbing and weaving and ducking

54:00

based upon these sort of sky

54:02

howitzes of negative blowback.

54:09

I heard someone say that only high testosterone men

54:11

habitually asked, is it true? Others ask, will I

54:13

get in trouble for believing it? Well,

54:15

even high T is one way of putting it, but it's

54:18

not like, I mean, it's not

54:20

like, I mean, high T, men, they're

54:23

not all free thinkers, right?

54:26

I mean, isn't Dwayne Johnson's a

54:28

high T man, not a free thinker? Ah,

54:31

Schwarzenegger, screw your freedoms, right? He

54:33

was like, he's the high T guy and I

54:36

mean, he's, I mean, it was kind of pathetic, right?

54:39

Really pathetic. So, no,

54:41

I get what you're saying, it's not a high, it's

54:43

just, you know, people with integrity and also excluding women

54:45

from that is not fair, certainly

54:47

not fair in my experience. That's

55:00

a recent study that came out that said women

55:02

who have more sex have better developed brains. So

55:05

that's your new pickup line. You

55:09

raise my Johnson, I'll raise your IQ. Now,

55:12

of course, it could be that women who have

55:14

better developed brains end up having more sex because

55:16

they can maintain healthy and positive relationships. Could

55:19

be any number of reasons about that but, yeah, that was

55:21

something that I was, I thought was quite funny.

55:25

There's your pickup line friends, if you're still

55:27

out there in the singles world. All right, let's see here. Let

55:34

me, I can't

55:45

even ask you this. This is a

55:48

semi-manly question but I think it'd

55:50

be interesting for the ladies as well. And

55:52

if you have any last tips, I'd appreciate that.

55:54

Free to man.com/donate if you'd like to help

55:56

the show out there. And

55:58

I'm sorry that my energy is not mad. massively peaking

56:00

but this cold has knocked me down pretty hard. I

56:03

think I'm getting back up now. So

56:05

this is What

56:09

a Young Man Should Know. From

56:13

1933, A Checklist to Becoming a Proper Man. This

56:18

was published in the March 1933 issue of

56:20

Harper's Magazine. So

56:23

here's the short list. He

56:25

should know how to swim a mile at least, dive

56:27

credibly, and not feel panicky underwater.

56:32

He should also be able to revive those less skillful

56:34

than himself by rolling them onto a barrel and pumping

56:36

their helpless arms. I could do that. He

56:39

should be able to drive an automobile

56:41

well. He should not be altogether helpless when a

56:44

car breaks down. He must know how to change

56:46

a tire and offer some diagnosis when his engine

56:48

sputters and dies. Well, you could do that back

56:50

in the day when you had three pistons in

56:52

the 1933 engine. I

56:54

can't, have you changed the tire? I've changed

56:57

the tire. Have you

56:59

changed the tire? Tell me. Tell

57:01

me. I

57:07

used to have tipped you $5 the other day, but you were busy

57:09

in the middle of a speech and may not have noticed it. Do

57:11

you have time to answer a quick question? Yeah.

57:17

So, I have changed

57:19

the tire, but

57:22

I don't know how to fix a car. He

57:27

ought to know how to clean, load, and shoot

57:29

a revolver or rifle. I don't. As

57:33

for self-defense, a man should certainly be able to take

57:35

care of himself in a scrap. He need not know

57:37

that jujitsu, old-fashioned boxing will be enough. Not

57:41

the specialty of mine. He ought to

57:43

know the rudiments of camping. How to build a fire, how to

57:45

chop wood, how to take a cinder out of his eye, how

57:47

to deal with a severed artery, how to doctor himself for ordinary

57:49

ailments. That's camping?

57:52

How to deal with a severed artery? Where the hell are you

57:54

camping? The Somme? So,

57:58

yes, I know. As

58:00

you guys know, I worked for 18 months in

58:02

the north of Canada. Well, yeah. Manitoba's

58:05

Saskatchewan, Ontario has a gold

58:07

panner and prospector, so there's not much I don't know about

58:10

camping and building a survival. He

58:13

should also be able to take care of other

58:15

people in emergencies. To apply first aid, set a

58:17

broken bone, revive a drunk, or a victim of

58:19

gas, deal with a fainting fit, administer the right

58:22

emetic or antidote for a case of poisoning. I

58:24

think I can do half of those. And

58:28

he should be able to feed himself to cook, not only

58:30

because someday he may need to, but because cooking is one

58:32

of the fine arts and a source of infinite pleasure. He

58:36

should be able to... Okay, what can

58:38

I do here? He

58:40

should be able to scramble eggs, yes, brew coffee,

58:42

yes, broiler steak, yes, dress a salad, yes, carve

58:44

a chicken, yes, and produce on occasion one first-class

58:46

dish such as onion soup. Well, I

58:48

can do a meaningless onion. The more

58:50

he can do in these days of the delicatessen store

58:52

in the kitchenette, the better. It

58:54

is not effeminate, it is not beyond him, and the best chefs

58:57

are all men. Kind of

58:59

true. He

59:01

should know how to use paint brushes, a saw,

59:03

a hammer, and other common tools. Yes,

59:05

I did spend a month or two

59:07

as a house painter one summer, and

59:10

I used to saw

59:12

quite a bit up north, a hammer, absolutely,

59:14

and other common tools, yes,

59:16

that. So yeah, just roughly tell me how

59:19

you do them with these kinds of things.

59:21

They fit with your skill set or... I

59:25

walk on my car as a hobby, definitely a skill both

59:27

genders should have. Yes, I

59:30

remember dating a woman. She was an engineer once who

59:32

bemoaned the fact that cars have gotten so complicated that

59:34

she can't fix them anymore, even though she loves pulling

59:36

things apart, since the hat's all done with computers. You

59:42

ought to know how to debug a Tesla, yes. Great

59:45

show. Thank

59:47

you, I appreciate that. Thanks, Tor. Ah,

59:50

this is silly Teddy Roosevelt stuff. What about

59:52

self-knowledge or morality? Well,

59:55

is that a skill? Those are virtues.

1:00:00

I don't... let me just check.

1:00:02

What were these talked about? What

1:00:04

were these talked about? The

1:00:09

ability, skills, accomplishments and proficiencies that every

1:00:11

man should have. Yeah,

1:00:15

this is not gracious. He

1:00:20

also should have a beautiful and distinguished handwriting, but

1:00:22

the bulk of his writing, particularly if he is

1:00:24

a professional man who has much of it to

1:00:26

do, should be done on a typewriter capable of

1:00:28

turning out 3,000 words an hour. I

1:00:31

do not have beautiful and distinguished handwriting. Man, I used to

1:00:33

have a beautiful signature back in the day, I mean many

1:00:35

years ago. When I got

1:00:37

into the business world, it seems like for

1:00:39

the first year or two of

1:00:42

my career, especially as an entrepreneur, all I did

1:00:44

was sign documents. And

1:00:47

my signature went from a beautiful

1:00:50

elegant swirl of medieval perfection, half

1:00:52

calligraphy to basically an epileptic spider

1:00:55

that looks like I have to stroke and drag

1:00:57

myself across the page. Alright,

1:01:00

he should play one outdoor game well and

1:01:03

have a workable smattering of several more. An

1:01:06

American who cannot throw and catch a ball seems pathetic and grotesque.

1:01:10

Yes, have you noticed you fail on handwriting?

1:01:13

Yeah, I don't have a great. I'm a great for fast typists, but I don't

1:01:15

have, right? I'm

1:01:18

like 95 so far, less in the medical part. Oh, good

1:01:20

for you. Above average

1:01:22

and most listed skills are not too bad, doing pretty well.

1:01:25

So somebody aside from the guns? Yeah,

1:01:28

the handwriting of course has become a little less. But you

1:01:30

know, when you'd write letters and so on, my dad wrote

1:01:33

me like a letter every week or two from my childhood.

1:01:35

I couldn't read them. I

1:01:37

couldn't read them. I mean, if I

1:01:39

sat there, I can, you know, help them at various angles

1:01:41

and so on. Ugh.

1:01:46

Alright, what else do we have here? So

1:01:50

outdoor games well, so list

1:01:53

for me the sports that

1:01:56

you're decent at. Outdoors,

1:01:58

I do a can of rugs and puffs. be soccer,

1:02:03

baseball, pickleball,

1:02:07

it's kind of a subset of tennis. I'm not

1:02:09

sure that really counts. I'm

1:02:11

not particularly good at

1:02:14

football, American football. I'm

1:02:17

so-so at lawn bowling.

1:02:19

I don't

1:02:22

think swimming really counts. Volleyball,

1:02:24

yes volleyball, pretty good at volleyball. And

1:02:27

the one thing I've noticed as well is that the young

1:02:29

men these days, because I think they spend a lot of

1:02:31

time indoors

1:02:33

and a lot of time on video games, don't

1:02:35

have the same kind of physical dexterity

1:02:37

that the kids I grew up with had, because

1:02:40

when you're just doing sports from

1:02:42

very early on, you just get a kind of

1:02:44

physical comfort dexterity. Let's

1:02:47

see here. The bicycle has gone, he

1:02:49

says, yet every young man should know how to ride

1:02:51

one. I'm sure we can do that. He

1:02:54

also should be able to skate, sail

1:02:56

a boat, and handle a canoe, possibly. I

1:03:01

can skate. I can even skate

1:03:03

backwards. I cannot sail a boat.

1:03:06

I don't, oh, I remember many, many years ago,

1:03:08

I was out in

1:03:12

Victoria, British Columbia for a friend's wedding. I was the

1:03:14

best man at his wedding, and

1:03:17

I went out for an afternoon of sail

1:03:19

boarding. God, it was annoying. It's

1:03:23

like I would pay good money to never do that again. It

1:03:26

was just like, I don't know, maybe I

1:03:28

didn't know how to, I mean, I didn't really know how

1:03:30

to do it. I figured I could figure it out, because

1:03:32

I usually do, but it was just like, hold the sail

1:03:34

up. Oh, it blew over. Hold it up. Blew it over.

1:03:37

There. Anyway. So I do not know how

1:03:39

to sail a boat. I can handle a canoe. Fishing

1:03:42

is a specialty like chess. I'm not, my

1:03:45

father used to take me fishing a lot in

1:03:47

Ireland, so I'm fairly good at fishing, not perfect.

1:03:49

Chess, I'm medium. Medium a chess. I'm

1:03:52

not spectacular. I'm not terrible, but

1:03:54

I'm medium a chess. Walking

1:03:56

is a noble but neglected sport.

1:04:00

Americans pike once in a long while but

1:04:02

seldom walk. I try. Today's been kind

1:04:04

of funny. I've done less than 3000, less than 5000

1:04:06

steps but normally I'm 10 to 15,000 steps a day

1:04:09

because I'll walk around while doing shows. I just like doing

1:04:11

that. It's good for the brain too. You can see those

1:04:13

brain scans when you're walking. It just all lights up. He

1:04:18

should know a great deal about animals and how to take

1:04:20

care of them. Ahhh. Okay.

1:04:23

What I took care of, what I took care of hamsters. I

1:04:25

had, I nursed an

1:04:29

abandoned kitten back to life and it

1:04:31

thrived. I, unfortunately, my

1:04:34

daughter and I have tried saving some wounded birds

1:04:36

that never seems to work out too well. We've raised ducks

1:04:38

of course. So I

1:04:40

guess three. But a great deal about animals

1:04:42

not really. He should know how to ride

1:04:44

a horse. I can ride a horse

1:04:47

but just not super well. He

1:04:50

should learn how to dance. Yes, I do know how to

1:04:52

dance. He should know how to play at

1:04:54

least one card game. Not

1:04:58

a real card game. I

1:05:00

mean like poker or something like that. I've

1:05:03

never, I see the problem with

1:05:05

poker for me is I look at

1:05:08

the odds and how complicated they are. I'm

1:05:10

like, well I'm never going to get that. I'm

1:05:12

never going to get that. So what

1:05:14

do you got? BMX, baseball, table tennis? Put it

1:05:16

outside. Yeah, okay. Bowling, mountain biking.

1:05:18

Yeah, good. Gymnastics was my

1:05:21

favorite. I've never done gymnastics really. Sailing

1:05:23

is fun on a two person little boat on a lake. Yeah, it

1:05:25

could be. I say sailing is noticeably

1:05:27

easier than that. Oh good. Sails

1:05:29

all my life but I cannot wind surf a sailboard. Yeah, that's what I was

1:05:32

trying to do. I can't swim a mile. Seems a lot

1:05:34

to me. Is it actually normal for people outside

1:05:36

of athletes to do that? I

1:05:38

don't know. I

1:05:40

don't know. I'm terrified of

1:05:42

horses. Oh yeah. Rock climbing.

1:05:46

I've done it. I'm fine as long as I

1:05:48

don't look down. When

1:05:50

I was in Africa, my cousin and I, he

1:05:52

later died. I don't know if it was related to

1:05:54

this or not but we went rock

1:05:57

climbing and I climbed a capital

1:05:59

hundred. meters, even with an overhang. I

1:06:04

was 16 years old and

1:06:08

we had no ropes, no

1:06:10

tether whatsoever. It was complete. Raw

1:06:14

dog climbing. It was completely retarded.

1:06:16

You never have this where you look back at the risks

1:06:18

you took in your life and it's like, how the hell

1:06:21

am I here? How is that possible? Oh

1:06:23

well, that's life without a mom or a aunt sometimes, right? What

1:06:31

else does he have? I find these interesting. He

1:06:38

must have knowledge of how to tip naturally justly

1:06:40

without fear and without reproach. Yes. I

1:06:42

think that the handshake passed along the money.

1:06:44

That's nice. On the matter of

1:06:46

alcohol, he should learn his capacity and stick

1:06:48

within its limits. He should know something about

1:06:50

the different kinds of drinks and which drinks

1:06:52

produce chaos within him when mixed. I

1:06:56

have at the most I have once or twice a month,

1:06:58

I'll have like an ultralight beer. That's about it. What's

1:07:02

this? His concern, nature

1:07:04

clearly intended us to make many mistakes in her

1:07:06

hope that some of them would be productive. You

1:07:09

should know the rudiments of gambling, but gambling might be

1:07:11

placed on the same plane as drink. The less one

1:07:13

has of it, the better. Yeah, I think that's fair.

1:07:19

Higher than almost any other accomplishment on the list

1:07:21

is knowing music. There's no reason why any young

1:07:23

man who is not absolutely tone deaf should not

1:07:25

learn how to play one musical instrument well enough

1:07:28

for it to be a self-resource and a tolerable pleasure

1:07:30

to others. I suppose I spent 10 years

1:07:32

on the violin. A

1:07:35

civilized man should know how to read. The ability

1:07:37

to read or rather the habit of reading is

1:07:39

very rare even among intelligent people and has to

1:07:41

be taught and kept up if it

1:07:44

is not to become rusty. That's true. He

1:07:46

should have knowledge of at least one foreign language, French

1:07:48

or German, preferably both. German children should

1:07:50

learn an amazingly good brand of English

1:07:53

without ever crossing their borders. Why can't we?

1:07:55

One thing we don't really want to, yet we should. An

1:07:58

American who knows only English is blind. in one eye. So

1:08:01

I used to know German when I was very little and

1:08:03

I can speak some tolerable French here and there, but he

1:08:06

should know how to travel well, efficiently, without fuss

1:08:08

or complaint. Now that's true. A

1:08:13

young man should be able to express himself clearly

1:08:16

before a crowd of strangers without shyness, muddle, or

1:08:18

a pathetic resort to, so

1:08:20

much has been said and well said, or I did not

1:08:22

expect to be called on, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The

1:08:26

American adult can get to his feet, propose

1:08:28

a toast, introduce a stranger, voice a civic

1:08:30

protest, heckle a windbag politician, and give utterance

1:08:32

to an unembarrassed thought. Amen.

1:08:35

Amen. Amen. A man should command

1:08:37

the elementary tool of written language and be able

1:08:39

to put simple things on paper and clear words.

1:08:41

Very true. He should

1:08:44

have a good workable understanding of the structure of

1:08:46

business investments and banks. Well, that I do have.

1:08:49

That every educated man is a necessary part of

1:08:51

his education, be thrown into the muddy stream of

1:08:53

American industry and see what it is like to

1:08:55

swim alone on daily wages. That's kind of true,

1:08:57

right? I

1:09:02

still want to two more. He

1:09:06

should, before reaching 22, have done

1:09:08

something because he wanted to, whether other

1:09:10

people wanted him to do it or not. Amen to that.

1:09:13

You've got to find a way to get

1:09:15

what you want to get done done without waiting

1:09:17

for the permission of others, or waiting

1:09:19

for the approval of others. He

1:09:26

should not acquire property unless

1:09:28

he needs it, insensitiveness to

1:09:30

his personal property, unless, of course, it

1:09:32

is extraordinarily beautiful, is a desirable skill for any

1:09:34

man to have. It must be learned and worked

1:09:36

at. Yes. You

1:09:39

have to be willing to let things go that

1:09:41

you own and be relatively indifferent

1:09:43

to wealth. Otherwise, you're going to be

1:09:45

controlled by whatever you desire.

1:09:48

Obviously, these days, that isn't just virtue will be

1:09:50

used to control you. Unusual

1:09:56

though this young man may be, he should not seem

1:09:58

so. parent's basic ambition

1:10:00

for his child, that he'd be very different

1:10:02

from other people, yet managed to seem almost

1:10:04

exactly like them. That's interesting. That's interesting. All

1:10:11

right, so those are that's from 1933. If

1:10:19

you can't tune a guitar about year, are you really a

1:10:21

musician? Somebody

1:10:23

says, I told my alcoholic mother that if she wants to

1:10:25

be in my son's life, she

1:10:27

had to show that she was seeking help. She

1:10:29

refused. I cut her off. How

1:10:31

did you recover emotionally from defuing your mom? Are

1:10:35

you cheating? I think you're cheating. I

1:10:40

think you're cheating. Yes, you are. So

1:10:42

this is the guy who said, hey Steph, I tipped you five

1:10:45

bucks the other day, but you were busy in the middle of

1:10:47

a speech. I may not have noticed it. Do

1:10:49

you have time to answer a quick question?

1:10:53

You know, quick question. What's the capital of

1:10:55

Turkey? Quick question. Oh,

1:10:58

the quick question, apparently five bucks worth,

1:11:00

is I told my alcoholic mother that

1:11:03

if she wants to be alone, if she wants to be in

1:11:05

my and my son's life, she had to show that

1:11:07

she was seeking help. She refused. I

1:11:10

cut her off. How did you recover emotionally from defuing your mom? That's

1:11:14

a little bit of a cheat. It's a little

1:11:16

bit of a cheat. I'll tell you why, because first

1:11:19

of all, tipping me five bucks doesn't get 20

1:11:21

minutes of time. Right? Because

1:11:24

that would be paying me 15 bucks

1:11:26

an hour, right? The

1:11:28

tips are for the shows, and they're not

1:11:30

to buy answers, just so you know that, right? I mean,

1:11:32

if you tip, you know, I mean, I'm happy

1:11:34

to answer, but of course the questions I answer are for

1:11:37

people who don't tip. And

1:11:41

what you have probably inherited from your mother

1:11:43

is a bit of a manipulative side. So

1:11:48

rather than tell me how important your

1:11:51

question is to you, I'm in desperate

1:11:53

need of answers for this from somebody who has

1:11:55

real experience that's hard to come by and even

1:11:57

harder to communicate, instead of saying... I'm

1:12:02

really really in need of some wisdom here

1:12:04

in something that's really heartbreaking which I really

1:12:06

sympathize with. You say, I gave

1:12:09

you five bucks, that's not even a big question. Yeah,

1:12:12

that's cheating. Sorry, man. I mean, I'll answer the question.

1:12:15

I will. I will. Oops,

1:12:17

sorry Steph, bad habit. Yeah, I mean, I'm not mad

1:12:19

or anything. I'm just pointing

1:12:21

it out. Don't do that stuff. The

1:12:25

first thing you want to do if you want to escape the

1:12:28

abusive childhood is you

1:12:30

got to be direct. And the

1:12:32

honest thing, because here's the thing, right? It's

1:12:34

really surprising to me in a way because

1:12:36

when you say, so you

1:12:39

say, I tipped you five bucks the other day. So

1:12:43

that's to create a sense of obligation that's kind of a

1:12:45

manipulation. Like, hey man, I gave you five bucks. I need

1:12:47

you to solve my central life issue. Five

1:12:49

bucks. I think your

1:12:51

central life issue, you don't have to tip me on this. I'm just

1:12:53

pointing out that I think your central life

1:12:56

issue is probably worth more than five bucks because if

1:12:58

your central life issue is worth only five bucks, then

1:13:01

it's not much, right? And

1:13:04

then your life isn't worth that much, which is kind of sad, right? Which is

1:13:06

not true. So if

1:13:09

you're like, so then you're like, oh, quick question, right?

1:13:11

I thought it was just a little thing. Did you

1:13:13

ever do a show on Topic X or whatever it

1:13:15

is, right? But no. What

1:13:18

is your quick question? What

1:13:23

is your quick question? I told my alcoholic

1:13:26

mother that if she wants to be

1:13:28

in my son's life, she had to show that she

1:13:30

was seeking help. She refused. I

1:13:32

cut her off. How did you recover emotionally from defooing your

1:13:34

mom? Okay. Just out

1:13:36

of curiosity, maybe I'm mistaken about this. Always

1:13:38

happy to be corrected. Always

1:13:42

happy to be corrected. On

1:13:47

a one to 10, how

1:13:50

big is that question? On

1:13:54

a one to 10, maybe I'm seeing it as bigger than it is.

1:14:01

But on a one to ten, how

1:14:07

big is that question? How

1:14:09

did you recover emotionally from

1:14:12

separating from an abusive parent? Ten,

1:14:17

eight point seven. Seven

1:14:22

at the lowest? What the hell's higher? Let

1:14:26

you sever from your own mother and

1:14:29

recover emotionally. You

1:14:34

don't think that's a big

1:14:37

question? Nine

1:14:39

and I took years to recover. Seven,

1:14:42

eight, ten. Probably

1:14:44

not ten, maybe not. Okay, what's ten? Tell

1:14:47

me what's ten. I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just

1:14:49

like for the people who are saying, it's

1:14:51

not ten. I'm certainly happy to hear, but what

1:14:53

is ten? A

1:14:58

man should know how to hook up stereo and computer equipment. Well,

1:15:01

I'll say yes to that. I'll

1:15:03

say yes to that. How

1:15:09

did you recover from the foundation of your emotional,

1:15:11

relational life? Well,

1:15:15

how do you draw boundaries with a

1:15:17

crazy, dysfunctional person? No, listen. I'm

1:15:20

not saying it is a ten. I'm just saying it

1:15:22

seems pretty high up to me and maybe

1:15:24

I'm missing something obvious. If everyone says, no, no, no,

1:15:26

it's a seven, then they're saying that

1:15:29

there's three higher tiers,

1:15:31

entire tiers of questions. Ten

1:15:34

would be about parenting my own children. I

1:15:37

think that would be similar in terms of height, but

1:15:40

I don't think it would be less because you

1:15:45

couldn't be a good parent to your own children if you

1:15:47

didn't get resolution with your parents. And

1:15:51

if you had a child and dealing murder, that would be ten. But

1:15:55

that wouldn't be a question for a philosopher. If

1:16:03

somebody were to say, I'm a murderer, to

1:16:05

me, I wouldn't take that call. It's

1:16:07

not a philosophical question. So

1:16:10

of the categories that I would get. So

1:16:24

it's certainly pretty high. It's

1:16:26

certainly pretty high. It's the questions that I would answer,

1:16:28

not of all the possible questions, I suppose. He

1:16:36

says, yes, I would say

1:16:38

9 or 10, honestly. Steph, you really are a

1:16:40

whiz. It took you five seconds to find out

1:16:42

my mother is manipulative and I wasn't even aware I

1:16:45

was emulating her behavior in a way. Well, that's

1:16:47

the funny thing, right? And I don't mean this

1:16:49

in any negative way. But

1:16:51

it's like, yeah, my mother's really kind

1:16:53

of manipulative. So here's five bucks.

1:16:55

It's just a little question, man, and you're just manipulating

1:16:57

me, right? And again, I sympathize

1:17:00

with that. I'm not calling

1:17:02

you any kind of bad guy. I'm just, it's

1:17:04

pretty obvious, right? All

1:17:08

right. Tim

1:17:10

would be, how do I recover from the trauma

1:17:12

to have a life as if the trauma never

1:17:14

happened? But

1:17:17

first of all, you can't have the life as if the

1:17:19

trauma never happened. But

1:17:22

this is what he's actually asking, right? This

1:17:25

guy, he's on rumble. He is actually asking.

1:17:31

He is actually asking how to recover

1:17:33

from the trauma. And it's the deepest rumor. He

1:17:36

says, if somebody else says, abusive mom's a pretty

1:17:38

core issue, I'd say at least 9, 10 would

1:17:41

be even more personal, like something to do with wife

1:17:43

and kids. Yeah,

1:17:46

but the mom is the foundation to the my wife and

1:17:48

kids, right? They're not separate. All right.

1:17:52

Hit me with a Y. If it's helpful

1:17:54

or useful for you to know how to

1:17:57

move on from

1:17:59

relentlessly. abusive relationships. How

1:18:02

do you move on? Is

1:18:13

it a value? I want to

1:18:15

know just how much effort and energy

1:18:17

to put into this one. Yeah,

1:18:21

okay. Okay.

1:18:32

Well, I will tell

1:18:34

you. I

1:18:37

will tell you. The

1:18:51

first illusion you have to dispel is that

1:18:53

you're leaving something behind. You're not leaving something

1:18:56

behind. You're leaving precisely nothing behind.

1:19:02

The price of manipulation is

1:19:05

isolation. Right?

1:19:07

This is why I'm sort of pointing this out but the

1:19:09

manipulative question here is five bucks. It's

1:19:11

just a little thing. Get my

1:19:13

foot in the door. So the price of manipulation

1:19:16

is isolation. If he'd been honest and direct with me, which

1:19:18

he I'm sure he'll be in the future, but if it's

1:19:20

honest and direct with me and says, Steph, I'm

1:19:24

half drowning under this sea

1:19:26

of corrupt alcohol-based estrogen.

1:19:29

I really need to get out from under this and

1:19:31

I left it too long because I already have a

1:19:33

kid. I'm desperate for help. Please, please, please help me.

1:19:35

You're one of a few people who can articulate these issues

1:19:38

and has actually been there. Man,

1:19:40

can you imagine? How respectful is that? How honest?

1:19:42

How admirable? How wonderful is

1:19:44

that? As supposed to? When I did give

1:19:46

you five bucks, maybe you didn't notice it. Maybe you didn't. You

1:19:48

were busy, I guess. It's just a little

1:19:50

question. That's chilling

1:19:53

shit, man. That's

1:19:55

chilling shit. So, thank

1:19:59

you for the tip. You are... not leaving

1:20:02

anything behind. Because

1:20:12

there's no person there in the way that

1:20:14

you and I would understand it. So

1:20:19

what is a manipulator?

1:20:23

A manipulator is someone who

1:20:25

doesn't exist because

1:20:28

they don't think they have any value and

1:20:32

so the only way they think they

1:20:34

can get things is

1:20:36

by pushing emotional buttons in others.

1:20:43

Right, so this guy, well, maybe you didn't notice

1:20:45

my five dollars, this is self-pity, it's a minor

1:20:47

obligation thing, it's just a little question, it's getting

1:20:49

my foot in the door and

1:20:51

they're all false statements. I mean, he did donate five bucks

1:20:53

or whatever but they're all false statements, right? A

1:21:00

manipulator is someone

1:21:03

who's stealing from you. My

1:21:06

wife asks me to do something, I'll do it.

1:21:09

I love helping her. Every

1:21:11

day around three o'clock I'm like, I jump up, hey, can

1:21:13

I make you a coffee because she likes her coffee mid-afternoon,

1:21:15

I'm thrilled to do it. If

1:21:19

I'm doing something and I notice that

1:21:21

the dishwasher is done, I'll empty the

1:21:23

dishwasher. I'm thrilled to do it, I'm happy to do

1:21:25

it. She works hard,

1:21:28

I like to put my two

1:21:31

bits in. She

1:21:33

doesn't have to ask, she doesn't have to bully, she doesn't have

1:21:35

to threaten, she doesn't have to manipulate, because I'm just happy to

1:21:37

do it, I want to do it. My

1:21:39

wife, I love her. My daughter

1:21:41

this morning, last night she said, let's go for brunch

1:21:43

tomorrow, I'm like, with

1:21:45

great joy. And

1:21:49

we went for a lovely brunch today and

1:21:51

chatted for like two hours, lovely. But

1:21:57

I don't need to say to her. I

1:22:00

sacrifice so much for you, you can't even go

1:22:02

for brunch with me. Like, how sad would

1:22:04

that be? Because

1:22:07

I... Why would I... Like, why would I manipulate

1:22:09

someone? I would manipulate someone.

1:22:12

Because I want something I haven't earned. And

1:22:16

do you know how you earn things

1:22:18

from good people? Is

1:22:20

you're fucking honest. You

1:22:24

get this, man. You will float up like a

1:22:26

bubble through all the layers of trash planet. To

1:22:31

the stratosphere of functionality. How

1:22:34

do you earn things from good people? You're

1:22:37

just fucking honest. Steph,

1:22:40

I'm drowning with my mom. I'm half dying

1:22:42

inside. I'm trying to draw some boundaries. She's

1:22:44

crashing right through them. Help, help, help. That's

1:22:48

how you get... Resources

1:22:50

from honest people. But

1:22:53

if you manipulate, most honest

1:22:55

people... Have

1:22:58

in part become honest because they've

1:23:00

escaped manipulators. And

1:23:03

if you manipulate honest people, they

1:23:07

will not want to help you. Thanks,

1:23:13

I really do appreciate it. He says you've taken the time with

1:23:16

this, especially since you said you were low energy tonight. But the

1:23:18

low energy might help with this. Because maybe

1:23:20

this is the kind of thing that needs to get across more

1:23:22

murmur than less... Upity

1:23:24

up. But when you are

1:23:26

raised by manipulators, honesty

1:23:31

is terrifying, isn't it? Just

1:23:34

being direct and honest, it

1:23:36

feels like you're just about to get the shit kicked out of

1:23:38

you. If you're just direct and honest with people. Do

1:23:42

you have that experience? You're raised

1:23:44

by manipulative people, bullying people, narcissistic

1:23:46

people, selfish people. People

1:23:49

with nothing to offer you other than people

1:23:52

with nothing to offer you other than punishments

1:23:55

and the art reward. It's

1:23:58

very hard to be direct. and honest with

1:24:00

people when you're raised by liars in the shadow

1:24:03

boxes of manipulation. And

1:24:10

it's funny too and I appreciate, right? Now you admit

1:24:12

that I was low energy too, right? So he also

1:24:15

asked this giant question towards the tail end of a

1:24:17

show where I said I was tired coming in. That's

1:24:19

all right. It's my job to

1:24:21

do the show. I still have a choice every time, right?

1:24:24

Thanks, Santiago. Appreciate it. Now,

1:24:33

do you know why it's

1:24:37

very hard to be honest when you're raised

1:24:39

by manipulators? Because

1:24:41

you don't want to do what they want you to do. You

1:24:46

don't want to do it. You

1:24:50

don't want to do it because they're manipulating you. So when I

1:24:52

first saw this guy's question, I'm sorry to pick on you. It's

1:24:54

just a good example and I'm not mad at you. I'm just

1:24:56

pointing it out as a good example. When

1:24:58

I first saw that this guy's giant question followed

1:25:00

by this rather weaselly manipulation of I

1:25:02

gave you five bucks, maybe you didn't notice me,

1:25:04

it's just a little question, boom, right? The

1:25:07

reason I didn't want to answer it is that that's manipulative. So

1:25:11

if you think of this guy is

1:25:15

having such a tough time drawing boundaries with his

1:25:17

mother that

1:25:20

when he asks me for help in dealing

1:25:22

with his mother, he asks me in the

1:25:24

form and style of his manipulative mother. Do

1:25:26

you see how amazing that is? This

1:25:29

is how amazing the human mind is. He

1:25:32

asks for help with his manipulative

1:25:35

mother in the style

1:25:37

of his manipulative mother because

1:25:40

99 times out of 100 that means he won't get

1:25:42

the help in

1:25:45

fighting his manipulative mother so his

1:25:47

manipulative mother will win. Does

1:25:51

this make sense? I want to make sure I'm not going too

1:25:53

fast or too slow. Does this make sense? So,

1:26:01

help me with my manipulative mother if you do

1:26:03

that in the style of the manipulative mother. Then,

1:26:07

the honest people who are really the only people who

1:26:09

can help will be the ones who

1:26:12

recoil from that asking. Because

1:26:16

if you don't even know that you're being

1:26:18

manipulative when you're asking for help with manipulation,

1:26:21

most people will recoil from that because they

1:26:23

don't have the sensitivity and skill or

1:26:26

whatever X factor it is, brilliance or

1:26:28

something to just unpack and unravel these

1:26:31

complexities. So,

1:26:33

his mother intervened in

1:26:35

his asking so

1:26:39

that I wouldn't help him with his mother. His

1:26:42

mother took control of the personality structure

1:26:45

to ask me in a way that was off-putting. You

1:26:53

know, his five bucks work

1:26:57

like crazy for me. Try

1:27:01

that in any profession. Go to a plumber and

1:27:03

say, I have a massive leak in my house

1:27:06

that's going to take you two

1:27:08

hours to fix it, if

1:27:11

five bucks. The plumber

1:27:13

would just laugh at you, honestly, wouldn't he? And again, I'm not

1:27:15

trying to insult you, I'm just sort of pointing

1:27:18

it out. He

1:27:23

says, I don't consider it picking on me, you can give me

1:27:25

10 out of 10 honesty, right? Now

1:27:30

another thing that he was doing was by becoming

1:27:33

his mother and asking me for help with his

1:27:35

mother, he was trying to get me to empathize

1:27:37

with the part of him that's trapped by his

1:27:39

mother. So

1:27:44

in asking me how to deal with a

1:27:46

manipulator but doing it in a

1:27:48

manipulative fashion, which

1:27:50

is a creation of a sense of obligation and

1:27:53

guilt and falsehood, he

1:27:58

is asking me to empathize. with

1:28:01

how he feels. Because he

1:28:03

can't communicate directly how he feels, he becomes

1:28:05

his manipulative mother which then

1:28:08

has me experience the annoyance

1:28:10

and irritation that

1:28:12

he experiences with regards to his mother because

1:28:14

he's treating me like

1:28:16

his mother treated him. Does this make sense?

1:28:19

He's actually trying to get me to

1:28:22

see what it's like to be

1:28:25

him with his mother. It's

1:28:28

really amazing how much gets communicated when

1:28:32

you pull it apart, right?

1:28:40

People who can't be honest with you don't

1:28:44

exist in a

1:28:46

psychological sense. They exist obviously physically. They have

1:28:48

minds and brains and plans and calculations and

1:28:50

I get all of that. But

1:28:53

there's nothing real about them. It's just

1:28:55

shadow boxing. That's what manipulation is.

1:28:58

Manipulation is when you want things to happen but you can't

1:29:01

be honest, you can't be direct. And

1:29:06

it can take just about any form. The

1:29:08

guy wants to date the girl but he can't be honest with

1:29:10

her. So he just hangs around and tries

1:29:12

to make her laugh and offers to help her move and all

1:29:15

of that. He's manipulating.

1:29:22

So you're not leaving anything behind. See,

1:29:25

when I stopped seeing my mother, it

1:29:32

was through the process of accepting that

1:29:34

there was no mother. There was

1:29:36

only a manipulator. And

1:29:38

there never was a mother. There

1:29:41

was only a manipulator for which I have

1:29:43

some sympathy. I mean, Lord knows she went

1:29:45

through hell, I'm sure. In the

1:29:47

Second World War and I have a lot of sympathy for that. But

1:29:54

there is no directness.

1:29:59

There's no person there. There's no relationship. You

1:30:01

can't have

1:30:05

a relationship with somebody who's indirect. Somebody

1:30:12

says, I have a hard time being not nice

1:30:15

sometimes and I hate that about myself. The

1:30:19

reason why you have a

1:30:22

tough time being not nice

1:30:25

is that you don't accept that there

1:30:27

are genuinely corrupt people in this world.

1:30:31

It means sometimes letting people take advantage of me and

1:30:33

my family. No, you're taking advantage

1:30:35

of them. You

1:30:39

think that if you're just a nice guy all the

1:30:41

time, you're a victim, you're being taken advantage of? No.

1:30:45

It's a mutual taking advantage

1:30:47

of. It's mutual. You're

1:30:52

avoiding the pain of being

1:30:56

attacked when you stood up for yourself in the past. You're

1:30:59

avoiding that pain by

1:31:02

being direct, right? Sorry, by

1:31:04

being indirect, you're avoiding the pain that being direct

1:31:06

would have caused in the past. The

1:31:08

reason you can't be

1:31:11

yourself around manipulative people, the reason why

1:31:13

manipulation spreads is when

1:31:18

I was in my mid teens

1:31:20

or whatever, my mother was part of a particular

1:31:22

social club and she really

1:31:25

was desperate for me to come to her dances

1:31:27

because she wanted to show off her young, handsome,

1:31:29

whatever son and I

1:31:31

didn't want to go to these weird

1:31:33

old people dances. I really didn't.

1:31:39

But she kept bugging

1:31:42

me about it. I've done so much for you and you

1:31:45

owe it to me and it's just

1:31:47

once and it will make me happy

1:31:49

and all that, right? It was

1:31:51

all about her, right? She

1:31:55

didn't figure out who

1:31:57

she was that I didn't want to come. and

1:32:00

how to change that because that would be the work

1:32:03

of years. And

1:32:05

she wanted something herself directly

1:32:07

without having to earn it. So she just pressured and

1:32:09

bullied and nagged until I went. And

1:32:12

it was an okay evening. It wasn't the end of the world. It was fine.

1:32:18

It's not what I wanted to do with my time. But

1:32:21

I couldn't say to her, I actually don't

1:32:23

really like you as a person because you've been pretty violent

1:32:26

and aggressive and abusive and manipulative and

1:32:28

there's no connection. That's real. Because

1:32:32

if you say to a

1:32:34

liar or a manipulator, you're a liar

1:32:36

and a manipulator, what happens? Well,

1:32:42

you split the atom, right? There's a

1:32:45

nuclear shadow on the wall where your childhood self

1:32:47

used to be. So? The

1:32:58

reason why you end up being manipulative is you

1:33:00

can't be honest to the manipulative person because

1:33:03

behind the manipulation is always the

1:33:05

rage. And

1:33:07

the rage comes from the laziness. The

1:33:15

rage comes from the laziness. And

1:33:18

the laziness is because

1:33:20

you don't want to work to

1:33:22

earn value from others. You don't want

1:33:24

to be a good person in order to... You

1:33:27

know, like why did my daughter want to have brunch with

1:33:29

me today? Because we have a great time

1:33:31

when we go out and have brunch. You

1:33:34

know, we laugh, we chat, we talk about life, we

1:33:36

talk about our friends, we talk about my

1:33:38

show, we talk about just about anything and it's a

1:33:40

lot of fun. It's

1:33:43

a great time. It's a great time. So

1:33:47

I have to make her do things. She does it

1:33:49

because she's enjoyable. And

1:33:51

for as long as she wants to keep going out

1:33:53

for brunch, which I'm sure will be, as long as we're

1:33:57

in proximity, I'll go out for brunch. I

1:34:00

enjoy doing it with her. I suggest that she'll suggest that we'll

1:34:02

do it. You

1:34:04

know, I said before, if I need to run to get

1:34:06

some groceries, she's like, oh, I'll come, right? Because

1:34:09

we have a great time out there at the grocery store making

1:34:11

fun of all the food that no sane

1:34:13

human being should ever eat. So

1:34:25

you think you're losing your mom,

1:34:27

and I'm very sorry that you have, of

1:34:30

course, an alcoholic mother, but

1:34:33

she's more honest than you are in

1:34:36

this. He

1:34:39

says, it's pretty painful. My parents were partying

1:34:41

boomers. Dad became an alcoholic and died, said

1:34:44

he didn't want to live anymore because of

1:34:46

her abuse. Mom drinks, blames me,

1:34:48

and takes no responsibility. See,

1:34:50

but your mom is more honest in this way than

1:34:52

you are because

1:34:54

your mom is saying, you

1:34:58

are not worth much to me at all because

1:35:01

you're saying, hey, man, maybe you can go and get some

1:35:03

help or, you know, quit drinking or something. She's like, nope.

1:35:07

So she's saying, you're pretty

1:35:09

worthless to me. And I'm sorry she's saying that. I mean, it's

1:35:11

a terrible thing to hear, but

1:35:13

that's what she's saying. So she's being honest.

1:35:17

She's saying this relationship is worthless to me. I'm

1:35:20

not even going to think about quitting drinking in

1:35:23

order to spend time with you and my

1:35:25

grandson. So

1:35:29

she's pretty honest. She's saying, this is worthless to me

1:35:32

or worth very little. Okay.

1:35:37

But you're like, but I'm losing so much.

1:35:39

It's like, no, she's telling you. You

1:35:43

know, like if I wanted to walk into a pawn shop, P-A-W-N,

1:35:46

I walk into a pawn shop with

1:35:49

a stamp, like an old postage

1:35:51

stamp. And I think that stamp is worth a

1:35:53

million dollars. And

1:35:57

the guy says, You

1:36:01

know, that's as common as dirt,

1:36:03

man. I wouldn't even pay your face value for that. And

1:36:06

I'm like, my God, I've lost a million

1:36:08

dollars. It's like, no you haven't. You

1:36:10

thought something was worth something. And

1:36:13

then the expert tells you, maybe

1:36:16

you get a couple experts, they'll tell you the same thing. No,

1:36:19

this is worth nothing. You might

1:36:21

as well be a scrap of paper. Are

1:36:24

you like, my God, I'm in such mourning for the

1:36:26

loss of the million dollars. It's like, well, you had

1:36:28

an illusion it was worth a million dollars. Turns out

1:36:30

it's worth nothing. It's

1:36:32

the same thing with your mother. You had an illusion

1:36:34

that you had a caring, thoughtful mother.

1:36:36

Your quote, caring, thoughtful mother is clearly saying

1:36:38

to you, clearly saying

1:36:41

to you, this relationship is worth

1:36:43

nothing to me. I'm

1:36:46

not even going to discuss getting help with my addiction.

1:36:50

You and your kid are

1:36:53

worth nothing to me. Okay.

1:36:56

Got it. So

1:36:59

isn't that honest? Isn't she being

1:37:01

honest and telling you you're

1:37:03

worth nothing to her? Really? And

1:37:07

you're like, but the loss. It's

1:37:10

not the loss of the person. It's the

1:37:12

loss of the delusion. When you take

1:37:14

the stamp in and find out that the stamp you think is

1:37:16

worth a million dollars is worthless. You don't

1:37:18

lose a million dollars. You just lose the illusion that

1:37:20

you had a million dollars or could have a million

1:37:22

dollars or that anything was worth anything like a million

1:37:24

dollars. You're

1:37:30

not losing a million dollars. You're losing the illusion

1:37:32

of the million dollars. You're not losing a relationship

1:37:34

with your mother. You're losing the illusion of

1:37:37

a relationship with your mother. Your mother doesn't

1:37:39

have relationships with people because

1:37:41

all she has is manipulations. And

1:37:45

when people manipulate you, they don't have a relationship with

1:37:47

you. The only thing they have a relationship

1:37:50

with is their own needs. And

1:37:53

whatever they've got to do or say to you to

1:37:58

get their needs met. They

1:38:01

will say. They will

1:38:03

say that. It's

1:38:07

like a magic spell, you know. Expecto

1:38:10

Patronum. Like whatever magic words you have to

1:38:12

say to get the resources like a fire

1:38:14

starter spell or an ice spell or a

1:38:17

clean water spell or like whatever magic spell,

1:38:19

you just learn the magic spell and then you say the

1:38:21

magic spell and then reality bends to your whims. Well that's

1:38:24

manipulation. You just learn the magic words. The

1:38:26

only relationship she has is with the magic words

1:38:28

that get shit from you, not with you. It

1:38:31

says, I've been there. Somebody

1:38:39

else has. My

1:38:50

mother tried to take me out somewhere for my

1:38:52

birthday even though she skipped the last 15 years

1:38:54

and it's easy to go with her then

1:38:56

knowledge dump 15 years of trauma in

1:38:59

that moment. So

1:39:01

you manipulate her. You're not telling her the truth. The

1:39:08

original guy says, she definitely

1:39:10

is telling me that. It's the

1:39:12

pain then from wishing I had

1:39:14

the real version of that illusion. Well,

1:39:18

I mean if you have a fantasy

1:39:26

that the stamp is worth a million dollars, it's genuinely painful

1:39:28

if you find out it's worthless. Do you know what I

1:39:30

mean? I get that. I get that.

1:39:35

Well, because you feel like you just

1:39:37

lost something but you

1:39:40

did only lose the illusion. The question of course

1:39:42

that you need to answer is

1:39:47

why did you think you had an illusion of a

1:39:50

relationship? Why did you think you had a relationship with

1:39:52

someone who doesn't give two shits about you?

1:39:55

Well the reason for that is that you had

1:39:57

to bond with someone as a kid and

1:39:59

so you had had to make up a fantasy mother,

1:40:01

you had

1:40:04

to make up a fantasy mother because

1:40:06

you had a bad real mother. So

1:40:09

you had to make up a category called mother that

1:40:12

you could bond with that

1:40:15

had nothing to do with the actual flesh and

1:40:17

blood birther woman you had in your life. You

1:40:19

had to make up a fantasy. Category

1:40:23

called mother that you could bond with. My mother.

1:40:28

You had to bond with something. You

1:40:31

don't bond with anything. You can't make it through childhood. So

1:40:42

you had to bond with a fantasy

1:40:44

category and then you had

1:40:46

to graft your mother into that and

1:40:48

bond with the category rather

1:40:51

than your mother. This

1:40:53

is the platonic world of forms. The forms is

1:40:55

where we take refuge and trauma from shitty people

1:40:57

around us. We create these categories called mother and

1:40:59

father and country and school and

1:41:01

whatever. We bond

1:41:04

with those fantasy images and then

1:41:06

people work the levers of those fantasy

1:41:08

images or categories to control us. They

1:41:14

don't say die because the inbred

1:41:16

weirdo on the throne wants you to go somewhere.

1:41:18

It's like fight for king and country and god

1:41:20

writes all these categories. So

1:41:24

the good news is that

1:41:27

you still have that category and you still have that

1:41:29

bond. The category of mother you will take with you

1:41:32

and hopefully you'll use it with regards to your

1:41:34

kids with the mother of

1:41:36

them. Their mother, the woman you have children

1:41:39

with. Hopefully I

1:41:41

mean you didn't mention anything about a wife but. So

1:41:46

you have that category and you keep that category with

1:41:48

you. I had

1:41:50

a fantasy of a good mother. I

1:41:53

kept that category with me. I

1:41:59

had a category. called a good

1:42:01

father which is what my mother

1:42:04

is with me everywhere. So

1:42:11

you get to keep your relationship with

1:42:13

the quote good mother in your mind, the category

1:42:15

good mother and that's

1:42:17

great because you probably want a good mother for your

1:42:20

kids. Well, you do want a good mother for your

1:42:22

kids. So you get to keep the most important aspect

1:42:24

which is the fantasy, you get to keep that the

1:42:26

category, you get to keep that anyway. That

1:42:29

can't be separate. And if you recognize that you bonded

1:42:31

with a category that will forever remain in your head

1:42:34

and that that person by getting

1:42:36

that person out of the category, you

1:42:38

stop polluting the category. You

1:42:41

stop polluting the category and then you can find a

1:42:43

great woman to be a great mother to

1:42:46

your child. All right. Let's see

1:42:48

here. I thought

1:42:53

my family he says, my

1:42:56

wife is a good mother very different from my mother. I

1:42:58

thought my family was normal when I was younger.

1:43:00

After my father died, my family told me now

1:43:03

that my father was out of the way. I

1:43:05

would be her new punching bag. Nobody warned me

1:43:07

earlier. Right. Sorry about that. So

1:43:09

your wife is a good mother. So you have a

1:43:11

category called good mother that your wife inhabits. That's beautiful.

1:43:14

So the category is what you bonded with. I don't mean treat your

1:43:16

wife like your mother or anything like that

1:43:18

but you have a category called good mother which your

1:43:20

wife inhabits. And you

1:43:23

created this fantasy called good mother, this category

1:43:25

called good mother so you could bond with

1:43:29

something and now you get your mother

1:43:31

out of the way. She's no longer standing in her

1:43:33

lepers way between you and the category or

1:43:36

ideal called good mother. Now you can have a

1:43:38

relationship with the good mother in your mind and with

1:43:40

your wife as your wife is a good mother to your son. You're

1:43:44

gaining. You're not losing. You're

1:43:46

gaining. You're gaining. You

1:43:49

know, it's like you want to make this beautiful orchestra in your

1:43:51

life called the future and

1:43:54

your mother who can't sing just screams throughout

1:43:56

every rehearsal and every concert and

1:43:59

then you tell. you know, I'd really rather you be

1:44:01

quiet or learn how to play an instrumental thing

1:44:03

properly." And she's like, I'm not going to

1:44:06

do that. Right? And then she

1:44:08

storms out and you're like, Oh, no.

1:44:11

This is terrible. My gosh, how

1:44:14

can I go on without my

1:44:16

mother screaming all over through

1:44:18

and behind my beautiful music? Well,

1:44:21

now the discordant screaming is gone and

1:44:23

the beautiful music can fill your ears. And

1:44:26

that's what your relationship should be with. Does

1:44:29

that make sense? Don't

1:44:35

let shitty people think that you've

1:44:37

lost something when

1:44:40

they stall off. I

1:44:44

think you've gained everything. I

1:44:48

gained everything after

1:44:50

separating from my abusive parents. I

1:44:55

wish I'd done it sooner. But

1:44:59

I really had to absolutely

1:45:01

invent the wheel from the ground up. There

1:45:06

was nobody talking like this. 30

1:45:08

years ago, I tell you that. I wasn't

1:45:11

even on the radar. Oh,

1:45:13

well, credit me for something, I suppose. All right. Any

1:45:17

other last tips, questions, comments? Tell me I haven't

1:45:19

been working. Tonight. I

1:45:22

mean, it did almost two hours, I guess. Any other last tips? Any

1:45:25

other last tips? You can, of course,

1:45:28

tip later if you hear this. Later,

1:45:30

freedomain.com/donate. You can

1:45:32

sign up at freedomain.locals.com.

1:45:34

Also, add subscribestar.com/freedomain. Very

1:45:37

much appreciate it. The

1:45:39

peaceful parenting book out put out two new chapters tomorrow.

1:45:42

Two and a quarter hours of very,

1:45:44

very great stuff. Good job. Thank

1:45:47

you. I appreciate that. Thank you for

1:45:50

driving by. I'm sorry

1:45:52

for not getting too operatic, but I want to save my voice

1:45:54

a little bit for tomorrow as well. Alright,

1:46:01

thank you everyone so much for your

1:46:06

time. You like the darker voice?

1:46:09

Yes, I'll try and yeah, I'm sure I'll

1:46:11

be back on track by Friday and

1:46:13

I appreciate

1:46:16

everyone coming by tonight. It's a real privilege

1:46:18

and an honor to be

1:46:20

able to have these conversations with you. Thank you, thank

1:46:22

you so much and have yourself an

1:46:24

absolutely wonderful night. I will talk to you Friday night.

1:46:27

Lots of love from up here. Take care.