1:27 - Introduction
3:12 - Technical Difficulties
4:51 - Reconnecting with Audience
12:21 - Handling Call-Ins
18:30 - Financial Security and Resistance
25:39 - Vetting Process for Izzy’s Husband
27:16 - Rachel and Oliver’s Relationship
35:15 - Authenticity in Love
36:39 - Rachel’s Transformation Journey
39:03 - Technical Difficulties and Headsets
43:20 - Corporate HR and Wasteful Spending
48:36 - Women in the Workforce and Fascism
53:24 - Just Poor: Fatherlessness and Revenge
59:29 - Mary’s Revenge on Lady Barbara
1:03:23 - Handling Background Noise in Calls
1:04:34 - Reflecting on Past Shows
1:05:44 - Show Reflection and Audio Quality
1:06:40 - Parenting and Family Dynamics
1:13:45 - Support and Community Involvement
1:27:10 - Monetizing Advice and Self-Improvement
In this episode, I dive into various intriguing topics with my audience. We kick things off by exploring the impact of toxic individuals, particularly narcissists, on our lives. I am open to engaging with questions and comments, sparking conversations about consumer boycotts, tipping, and the potential power of collective action in influencing change. Throughout the episode, I welcome callers, discussing financial security, consumer strikes’ political influence, and more, sharing my insights and actively participating in the discussions.
As the conversation unfolds, we delve into the parallels between personal growth and career choices, highlighting the challenges individuals face in balancing reputational concerns, financial stability, and authenticity in today’s society. We also analyze character arcs, emphasizing the significance of transformation and genuine connections in personal development and societal dynamics, offering thought-provoking insights into human behavior and aspirations.
We then shift to discussing an intriguing character storyline involving struggles with vanity, feminism’s societal impacts on business, and the importance of coachability in employees. We touch on power dynamics within families and communities, reflecting on societal norms’ productivity influence. The conversation extends to a book I authored, exploring themes of fatherlessness, wealth pursuit’s impact on happiness, and the intertwining of economic concepts within the narrative.
Passionately discussing a scene where Lady Barbara faces consequences for her cold-hearted actions, leading to eviction and a plot twist where Mary gains ownership, we admire the storyline’s parallelism. Emphasizing the importance of helping new parents and rational conflict resolution, I share heartwarming listener updates and engage with comments on self-improvement, narcissism, and societal attitudes. The dialogue transitions seamlessly into financial matters like Bitcoin, enriching the conversation further.
Wrapping up, we ponder the notions of ‘best’ versus ‘good,’ particularly in how women often use ‘best’ in a showy, vanity-driven manner compared to the selflessness of ‘good.’ We delve into advice on overcoming paralysis and inertness, addressing fight-flight-freeze responses in dangerous situations, and the challenges of monetizing advice-giving. Finally, we reflect on managing symptoms versus root causes, the complexities of money relationships influenced by family, navigating conflicts, balancing life aspects, and making technical audio adjustments. Join us for future conversations and remember to visit freedomain.com/donate or freedomain.locals.com to engage further. Cheers and have a great day!
Wrapping up, we ponder the notions of ‘best’ versus ‘good,’ particularly in how women often use ‘best’ in a showy, vanity-driven manner compared to the selflessness of ‘good.’ We delve into advice on overcoming paralysis and inertness, addressing fight-flight-freeze responses in dangerous situations, and the challenges of monetizing advice-giving. Finally, we reflect on managing symptoms versus root causes, the complexities of money relationships influenced by family, navigating conflicts, balancing life aspects, and making technical audio adjustments. Join us for future conversations and remember to visit freedomain.com/donate or freedomain.locals.com to engage further. Cheers and have a great day!
[1:27]
Introduction
[1:28]All right, what do we got here? Yes, greetings, hello. All right, let me know if you can hear me. Yeah, I went here.
[1:50]Yeah, how's that? Looks like we're good. Looks like we're good. Just hit me with a, if you could hear me, and we will try this way of getting things done, mon. Hello, hello, hello, Calver. Welcome. We're going to give this a little old here and just remind people that we're live. And if you have a question or issue or comment, boy, it's been a little while since I've used this interface, and I think it's changed. But I think you can request to talk or something like that if you have a question or comment. And we can go with that. All right. So let me just see here. So we'll thrash around a little bit of course but it will all sort out just beautifully, alright, let's give it a try I think this is it, join for a voice.
[3:12]
Technical Difficulties
[3:13]And let's see here. Hello, hello, hello. I'm not sure. It's been a couple of years since I have used this, so I'm not sure how you request to talk. But if you could do that, I would appreciate it. Oh, I said if you want to, if you feel like it. All right. One last thing here. Audio effects. I don't think we want that. Wait.
[3:50]Music.
[3:57]We can also, okay, let's turn that off. I think we can, oh, no, let's stop that. Let's just do a drum roll there. Good, okay, well, that stops. And we can add music, too, Kevin's Apple style. All right, so... I'm just posting this around, just to see if there's somebody around.
[4:51]
Reconnecting with Audience
[4:51]All right. Well, while we doth await, people, in case you have any, I don't know, like if people prefer voice or not, but I thought I'd give it a try. I remembered about this thing just the other day. And hello, hello, and welcome to the show. Now, I had some questions here that people had asked for. So just while everybody's thinking about whether or not they want to talk oh you know what I should probably do I should probably do a recording yeah let's do that, alright so yeah we're giving it a try it's the 17th of August 2023 just after 8pm Eastern Standard Time I'll be dropping in here and we will see, who's got what to chat about. And I did put something, which is...
[6:08]Yeah, actually, so somebody posted... He posted... Let's see here. I can't quite remember how to get people to request talk. It's been a long time. Yeah, no kidding. No kidding. So I've allowed for call-ins, and I don't know. I don't know how we find out who can call in. Let's see here.
[6:36]I'm sure we'll we'll figure it out but yeah so there's a video uh done by a professional i think a professional psychologist also it's a professor he's a professor and you know 15 years ago i said, you don't have to be in relationships with toxic people and it doesn't matter if you have a friend's family in fact family can be the most toxic of all so of course you know i got raked over the coals and accused of all kinds of nefarious and terrible things this is what he wrote he said i'm shocked and amazed how steph says something 15 years ago get away from toxic people which is not quite what i said but you know what the heck he gets there branded as a cult leader and now actual psychiatrists and psychologists phds professors literally say the same thing and And we're all shocked.
[7:29]The no contact and gray rocker official techniques of effectively dealing with cluster B people, narcissists, psychopaths, sociopaths, borderline paranoid, et cetera, that have been taught to victims of those human predators. This video, he says this video is about what to do if you spot a narcissist in your life. Spoilers. Run. He said run. Do not even pack your things. He says, it doesn't matter if the person is your parent or sibling or lover or spouse. You must cut all contact. If you need to have any communication, it needs to be through intermediaries such as lawyers, etc. No matter if you do have a successful business, you leave the business, leave the money behind and run. Money and possessions are not worth your sanity and a life.
[8:20]So he says, a narcissist will dismantle your identity and your sanity. Their one goal is your mental destruction, so it validates their own grandiosity. A narcissist believes himself or herself to be a god, and anything or anyone that threatens that delusion must be dismantled and destroyed in order to maintain the fantasy.
[8:41]The narcissist has no actual self or identity, there's nobody home. They only have the delusion of being a god. Any threats to that delusion, as in being exposed, is perceived as an existential threat, thus they react as if you're actually trying to kill them by pointing out they're not the greatest thing that's ever existed. If you even as much as threaten to, quote, expose the narcissist, you will be treated as if you've cornered them and are trying to physically kill them. So they start gaslighting and manipulating you in order to dismantle you and turn you into an empty shell. They turn you into a narcissist like them, just like a vampire that drinks your blood and turns you into a vampire, an empty shell without reflection, no self, that needs to parasitize on other human beings for sustenance.
[9:25]According to the professor in the video, victims of narcissistic abuse are indistinguishable from people with borderline personality disorder, as well as complex PTSD. Their identity and mind are shattered. Belonged exposure to narcissistic abuse strips the victim of the ability to trust to other people, as well as strips them of the ability to empathize. And that is really something. Hello, hello, people. Hello, hello, hello. We're just talking about this. And, you know, it's something I mentioned a little while ago, that people will, if you're first, you get hacked. And then other people will say stuff. You've kind of been the tip of the spear. You've broken the armor that other people can say stuff. And they won't ever reference you because you have a bad reputation.
[10:26]And they will move on as if you never existed. And it's not super fun being first. I think it's fairly safe to say it's not super fun being first a lot of the times, but I guess the honor accrues to history more than to the time. All right. So I'm happy to take questions. We can actually speak, spreken vi, with each other. We can talk with each other if you want. and we'll just make sure, yes, yes, that's all set. So, yeah, if you have questions or comments, we can talk. I can answer questions. You can sit back, take it easy, and we can see if we like this interface at all. By the way, I have no idea how to call, like how do you call. I do not have any particular clue at all, but we will get there, I'm sure. Let's see here.
[11:33]I'm just wondering. Okay, that's inviting co-hosts. I don't think we absolutely, totally need that. Anyway, if either James or Jared could figure that one out, it may be in the up menu here. So, what does a vetting process look like for the potential Izzy's husband? I think you mean Izzy is not a potential, but an actuality. But what does the vetting process look like for Izzy's husband? Aha. Wants to invite someone as a speaker. Let's just see. Oh, here we go. John, are you with us? John, are you with us? Sorry, John can't join now, but may call me later.
[12:21]
Handling Call-Ins
[12:22]Is that right? Because it kind of looks like we are.
[12:30]All right no worries so yeah vetting process i won't talk about it in particular with izzy because izzy has some fantastic instincts in and of her own mind right so izzy has some fantastic instincts in and of her own mind and she's actually in some ways better at me than me at identifying troublemakers to put it to put it mildly she's got a really really great instinct For people, she's like my early warning radar or something like that. So I don't have any particular concerns about that. So it's not so much that you would be concerned about childhood. You need to know about childhood. What is the person's childhood like? and you need to remember that you are going to be having a person in your life for the next, you know, 50 plus years. All right, so what is it saying here? Sorry, there's two people in the call-in. We've got Quantum Mechanic and John F. And I don't know if they're saying anything or not because I cannot hear. Oh, Pocket John, you're doing laundry. Quantum Mechanic, can you hear? at all. Just say one, two, three. If you can hear, you don't actually have to talk. I'm just kind of curious.
[13:54]If we can hear you at all. No, there's nothing here. Oh, they left. They left the cornered area. All right. Good to know. Good to know where we're sitting at the moment. All right. You go. You are alive. No. Gone. Gone. Is my voice? Did I win? Did I win? You're in. You're first on the new platform, brother. What's on your mind? Fantastic. Oh, not too much. It's just a meal after working out. But yeah, I just wanted to be first. I don't really have any other ambition. So, no. No particular questions at the moment? I'm afraid no. This is more of a, I listen to you, I get wisdom, and I eat my food, and I get my protein. I'm afraid. Well, no. Hey, no problem. At least we know that it works. So that's good. Appreciate that. Welcome. Welcome to Firstness. Trevor, are you cooking? Trevor, are you on with us? Hello, Trevor.
[15:05]Somebody says, is it wrong if employers don't pay servers a living salary? Instead, they expect the employees to earn the rest on tips. This leads to tipping being mandatory instead of optional and outsources the responsibility of paying salary from the employer to the employee. Well, that's a fine question, and I would answer it this way.
[15:34]The people who tip, it's actually very similar to this sort of business or this sort of industry, sort of the tipping philosophy, I guess, that I do. So if you run a restaurant and the meals cost 20 bucks, then you can lower the price to $17 because people will tip, right? So if there's no tip, the price of the meal is just higher. So if you don't tip, you're a free rider on other people who do tip. You get a subsidized meal because other people are tipping. Now, this is just the way that it's involved. As you know, it was originally an acronym to ensure prompt service. But that, I know it should be ensure, E-N, not I-N, insure. To ensure prompt service.
[16:20]So it was originally something you gave to the maitre d' or to the waiter ahead of time, making sure he'd take good care of you. At some point, it shifted to after the meal as a way of saying thanks. Banks, but it's a pretty wild thing. It's a pretty wild thing when you think about it, this whole tipping. Because if you didn't have tipping and you were cynical, people are, if you didn't have tipping and you said, well, we're going to give cheaper meals to the customers and we're just going to hope that they give money to our workers, that's going to be our thought or idea. We're just going to give money to our workers. They're just going to voluntarily going to give money to the workers. Because, of course, everybody and their dog would say, oh, come on, that's a ridiculous business model. That's like underpaying lawyers and then hoping that the customers are just going to give them some money for free, for no reason, for no benefit. And then they'd say, well, it's a town. Everybody knows each other. All the people who are passing through, all the people who are passing through, they'd never do this. They're never going to see these people again. It's never going to work. All right. So somebody's joined. I think that's you, Jarrod, and I'm getting a lot of background noise. If you could mute. The shop. You can hear me, Steph. Yes. Jared, is that you?
[17:46]Well, somebody's here. Trevor. Trevor. Ah, okay. What's on your mind? Can you hear me? I had a question bouncing around my head from the tractor the other day. Um i remember a comment you made long ago and then made more recently about uh and then i heard somewhere else about somebody else uh always uh the kind of lamenting about how take up and and resist well enough and i'm wondering if it's because people aren't financially secure as they'd like to be or as they need to be to be able to um like you know,
[18:30]
Financial Security and Resistance
[18:27]tell the government to take their mandates and shove them type thing. We don't care about the consequences because we know we can go get another job or take care of ourselves for a few months or something like that.
[18:43]Well, I think that there's a lot. I mean, if you look at sort of the Bud Light thing and what happened with Target and what happened with Disney, is that people can boycott, right? They can boycott companies that they don't want to do business with. And that's perfectly legal. Nobody's forcing you to buy stuff in the free market. So I think that people should use the power of boycotting. I mean, gosh, it was like 30, 45 years ago with a bunch of people, I floated the idea that if the consumers just went on a strike, like if you want the government to do something, I'm sorry, could you do me a favor? If you're going to call into a show, could you not have a huge amount of background noise? Would you mind terribly? I'm just standing in my shop. I don't know what's causing any noise. Oh, my apologies, Dan. Sorry, I thought it was you.
[19:31]So, if you decide that you are mad at the government, want the government to do something, then consumers go on a general strike, which means that you don't buy anything. See, people target specific companies, and I guess that's fine, but if you were to be really upset about something to do with the government, you just go on a general consumer strike. And in the general consumer strike, you just don't buy anything other than what you absolutely need to survive. Yeah, you don't go to restaurants, you don't go to movies, you don't go on vacation, you just don't buy stuff that you don't absolutely have to buy. No birthday presents, no Christmas presents, no frou-frou, no knick-knacks, no electronics, no computers, like just bare minimum. Until the government changes its policies to do what you want.
[20:15]And I don't know why the sort of general strike, they used to have them for labor, like for workers and so on. But I don't know why they don't do that now. I mean, that's a perfect, people kind of force you to buy stuff, right? Right. I mean, outside of Obamacare and all of that.
[20:29]But you just did the sort of bare minimum. Everyone's on strike. Now, of course, people would say, oh, yes, but then everyone would get thrown out of their job and all of that sort of stuff. But I think governments would act before all of that happened. In my opinion, I think governments would act to change because they don't. I mean, if people get thrown out of the job, then the governments have to pay unemployment insurance or severance, not severance exactly, but unemployment insurance and more welfare and so on. So i think that would be a way to i mean i've again floated this idea talked about it some years ago in the show as a whole like it's just a general consumer strike if you're not the government's not doing what you want have a general consumer strike and the government and the corporations will then have to figure out some way for you to start shopping again because the whole thing is a going to be kind of tough to sustain without that so yeah and the other thing too, of course, is that now that you have the internet, it facilitates communication. And communication is like one-tenth of a millisecond ahead of lies and slander on the internet, right? So that's sort of the problem. We have a bunch of people who can't tell truth from falsehood in positions of petty power who listen to lies about others, right? So you tell the truth, and that which facilitates the truth also facilitates the lie. Thank you.
[21:50]It's sort of like sex is great, the STD not so much, right? But the same mechanism can facilitate both. So we have a situation where there's this amazing communications method that we have, but unfortunately, liars and midwits are using it to slander. And once that stuff is out there and it sticks to you, it's pretty tough to get it away with that. And then, you know, they try to lure you into, I don't know, suing or defamation or whatever it is. And, you know, we can see sort of where the judicial system is in many places at the moment. And, you know, it's a questionable value to put it as mildly as I can. So I think that's really what's paralyzing people to some degree as well. And if they have some independence, if they have some savings, but you have to have a lot of savings if you're willing to burn up your career for the sake of putting yourself out there for something that an individual has no hope of changing. So I hope that makes some sense. Tell me what you think. Yeah yeah that makes quite a bit of sense i i was i guess the other thing is how many people feel that they're not super re-employable like i guess i come from it where i know i could i'll never be without a job because i'm high highly skilled and i can go just about anywhere but it you know the couple months without one while you're looking for one maybe is a little harder but yeah it's just it's just i kind of i kind of was if uh like people.
[23:20]Whenever the r rsp 401k system came around and now everybody's money is in jail until they're 60 60 years old you don't have that you can't give and take from yourself to get through to make it to the next job and all that stuff like people don't save money with the way they used to back And I guess it would be my grandfather's day and to a limited amount, my dad's day where you kind of banked on yourself and had whole life insurance. And you can always borrow from the cash value if you needed money to get by or had a business opportunity come around. And then stay in age, you can always borrow a little bit from your future self to buy some Bitcoin, right? Yeah.
[24:07]Yeah, and I think as well, so, I mean, the white-collar and blue-collar jobs, right? So, I mean, it sounds like you're a blue-collar guy, which I respect and appreciate, and thank you all for keeping the lights on. So the blue-collar stuff, they don't particularly care about reputation, right? Right. They don't they don't I mean, if you're a welder, you don't like, oh, oh, no, someone says something bad about you online. It's like, I don't know, can you weld well? Well, if you weld well, I don't really care. So there are all these jobs that have practical considerations. And there are then all of these other sort of frou-frou HR nonsense jobs in offices and so on. And there they can indulge in reputational evaluation. valuation. And so like, you know, the cowboy doesn't care if you were accused of shoplifting, six months ago, he just wants to know if you can rope the cattle and bring them in. And so you have sort of these practical jobs. And as the practical jobs have sort of disappeared, and the frou-frou white collar jobs have expanded, then we have a whole economy that is reputational sensitive, reputation sensitive, and all of that. So, yeah, it's a real challenge. When people work more with their hands, they didn't care about reputational nonsense, but now there's a lot of language-based stuff and all of that, so it's kind of different.
[25:35]All right, thanks, man. Appreciate it. Stay healthy, stay strong.
[25:39]
Vetting Process for Izzy's Husband
[25:40]And Victory Jen, you have joined us. If you would like to join in, I'm happy to hear what you have to say, what you have to ask. Your comments are here and welcome. Now how do i mute someone there we go yes it was trevor who was making all that background noise uh victory gin there i don't know if i need to invite you now they've they've gone all right so let's get to vetting i mean hello hey it's me it's vince uh victory gin um i just i just got that little uh notice that said join after i hit the call it took a few seconds of delay, Anyway Are you in a freaking laundromat Or are you actually in the laundry at the moment Oh I'm sorry I have a Bluetooth headphones on And I'm walking along the Mova No you You're not using Hang on.
[26:44]Stop touching the mic Stop touching the mic All right, so you're not using Bluetooth at the moment. It sounds like you're on speakerphone. No, no, well, my Bluetooth headphones. Actually, let me turn those off. Hold on. No, that sounds better. Oh, is it? Okay. All right. Do Rachel and Oliver get together? And you don't have to go into it, or not, like, you know, extensively. But do they? Well, Tim, what do you think?
[27:16]
Rachel and Oliver's Relationship
[27:12]Oh, well, I kind of want to believe. But, you know, it's okay if they don't. I'm just wondering because you got to end a story at some point but that's the quick question because i know i wouldn't if i wrote the book i wouldn't want to go into that either but anyways uh the last caller was talking about uh hr type stuff and you were talking about frou-frou economy, and i work wait wait we're doing the right are we doing the rational oliver thing or are we doing the economy thing oh i'm sorry i i i thought you i thought we just got that one aside that's okay oh no i'll do that one after we're going to do the economy thing i just wasn't sure if you wanted that one first okay go ahead all right so um.
[27:56]Well, the way, the way that it was written, it feels to me like they would have gotten together by a fantastic story. I've, I listened to the present, the future, and, um, just finished just poor today. All in the last two weeks. It was fantastic.
[28:15]Wow. You've got some, you've got some time to listen. Well, I appreciate that. Well, let me ask you this. So just before we get into the economy thing. So with regards to, uh, sorry, I don't know if there'll be many spoilers or whatever. So if you haven't, you can skip over this part or not. So with regards to Rachel, I think as a writer, the character has earned something if the character has done everything in his or her power to achieve it. So if you want a guy to succeed in business, does he do everything in his power to achieve it? Now, if he does everything in his power to achieve it, but then you don't give it to him as the writer. Like if he bends every muscle to achieve it, and you don't give that to him as a writer, then you're cursing the reader because you're disconnecting reward from effort.
[29:06]And so you want to encourage people to do the right thing, to be ethical, to be moral, and all that kind of stuff as a writer. So if someone, they confront themselves, they go to therapy, they give up their delusions, and then they still don't get the girl or they don't win at life or something like that, then you're saying to people, there's no point doing any of these things because you're just going to lose no matter what. And so I honestly can't think of anything that Rachel could have done more of to become a real person, right? So at the very beginning of the book, she's fake, she's false, she's vain, she's not productive in society. She's kind of a parasite. She's arrogant. She's empty. She's all of that.
[29:57]And then sort of a one-two punch hits her. And the one punch is the aunt, right? Aunt Crystal, which is her future if she doesn't change, right? And even if Rachel got everything that she wanted and she doesn't have Aunt Crystal's sort of charisma or talent, but even if Rachel got everything she wanted, then Aunt Crystal would be the end destination because Aunt Crystal was a very successful reporter and Rachel is not. And so Rachel wants all the success and then she thinks, ah, the success. Now, one of the reasons why Rachel is not so ambitious, I mean, it's partly vanity.
[30:35]But it's also partly because she's seen the journey that Aunt Crystal has gone on. So Aunt Crystal is a reporter. She ran awards. She went all over the world. She covered wars. She did all this amazing stuff. And then she ends up miserable and alone, right? Because she poured everything into her career and it hollowed her out as a human being. So one of the reasons why Rachel doesn't throw herself into her career, and it's an unconscious thing, is because she knows that it's not going to make her happy. So rachel uh in interacting with crystal and when crystal really begins to draw rachel into her life with the whole uh biography or an autobiography thing then there's a horror the visceral horror at her future and and so that's the that's the stick that's driving her away from vanity and delusion which is she sees in our crystal the end result of vanity and delusion now that's the stick Now, the carrot, of course, is Oliver.
[31:36]And Oliver is looking for an authentic woman. Now, Oliver is frightened of manipulation. He's genuinely authentic indeed. Now, Oliver's frightened of manipulation. For a lot of the book, we don't know why. Why is Oliver so frightened of women? Why won't he sit down? And he's got the excuse, and it's a good excuse, that societal collapse is coming and why would we start and all this kind of stuff. But then later on with his mother, when his mother just sticks that feminine fork of manipulation into his mad, so to speak, we can see where some of his concern is coming from, his fear of inauthenticity, his fear of the feminine and of manipulation.
[32:21]So, what happens is Rachel has to go through being broken down as a character, as a person. She has to be broken down to scrub the false self. And so, the deplatforming that happens and then staying with people who won't make decisions, her parents who are just sliding into the abyss, she panics and flees for life. And then she's out of fuel, the false self is out of fuel, which is why what happens at a gas station where she's attacked by the dogs. And what does Rachel do? She climbs up, she elevates herself into the sky, into the ceiling. And she's actually, she's in a crucifix position. She's spread eagles across the beams.
[33:10]And so she is fleeing the merely physical, the mere, the ego, right? The vanity and so on. She's trying to get there. And then, of course, the man sacrifices himself, which would be a bit of a Jesus thing, so that she can escape. And she goes from vain and shallow and manipulative and empty. And she's a performer, right? She's a performer. warmer. And she ends up struggling through the wilderness to get to Oliver. And when she arrives, she doesn't say, well, I need to fix myself up, right? And she just wants to be taken straight to Oliver. She looks like hell, right? But she doesn't sit there and say, well, I need to work of my appearance or fix something up about my appearance.
[34:04]And so she has done, I think, everything that she can to earn authentic love. I couldn't think of anything else that I could throw at her that she could survive that would strip her of her vanity and her emptiness and her manipulative side. And so she doesn't say, I want to see my sister. She doesn't say, I need to top up. She's just like, take me to Oliver. And so she's going to arrive in Oliver with no adornment, no hair, no makeup, no nice clothing. It's just going to be her. And that to me is enough to earn his love. The fact that she would show up with no adornment, no makeup, no nice clothes, having not brushed her teeth probably in a week or whatever, The fact that she would show up and want to see him without manipulation would be, I think, enough to win his love. In my view, they do get together because I can't throw that much adversity at her and not have her achieve her prize. Otherwise, it would be a very nihilistic book. But here's the thing, too, is that.
[35:15]
Authenticity in Love
[35:16]We get love when we're not trying to change people, when we're not manipulating them. When we are authentically who we are, we get love. So if you try to get love from someone, right, this is why the book ends when it does. So if you try to get love from someone, you're just manipulating them. You'll say what they want to hear, and you will put on makeup, or you'll flash money, or whatever it is. You'll do all of that and then you can't get love because you're trying to get love you can't get love if you're trying to get love you can only manipulate and so i don't want like the reason i didn't write a scene with them getting together was i don't want people to say, she got love therefore was worth it.
[36:08]She got love there she was because she even if she doesn't get love even if all of her was dead if from a circumstance it's still worth becoming yourself even if it doesn't get you love so whether she gets all of it or not if if the whole purpose of all of this is for her to get all of her it's still a kind of manipulation and so i didn't want to show the scene of them getting together because the purpose is for Rachel to shed her false self, to become authentic,
[36:39]
Rachel's Transformation Journey
[36:36]to become real, to become deep, to be one with nature. In the beginning of the book, she's in high heels and a tight dress, lots of makeup and hairspray. She's in a city looking snappy and jazzy and feeling everybody watching her and enjoying all of that, all of that young, vainglorious sexual display nonsense. At the end of the book, she's...
[37:00]In the woods and and she has struggled through nature she's far from man she's far from protection, and she's i i it's one of the furthest arcs i think a character has ever gone through, in anything i've ever written uh the sort of the start of the end journey and to me that's that's, that's the more exciting thing to write about is is how much how much can the character change from the beginning to the end of the book and i think this is just about how so big as possible and the The other thing, too, at the beginning, Rachel wants to, and I say this very clearly at the beginning of the book, she wants other people to desire her. So it's all about provoking desire and envy in others, and that's why she chooses Arlo, who is like a Faberge egg. He's a beautiful, physically beautiful guy, got some charisma, got some language skills. He's fairly smart, but he has no inner resources.
[37:54]So she can survive the deplatforming. He can't, even though she's the one being talked about. He has sort of this panic attack, and he's hollow. He's hollowed out inside. So at the very beginning, all she does is she tries to get other people to desire her. And she won't say directly to Oliver when she meets him, I find you attractive, or, you know, let's whatever. She lies to him. She lies to him repeatedly and constantly. She's constantly lying to him and trying to manipulate him. and he finds her attractive and interesting, but that repels her because it's too much like his own mother. So throughout almost the whole book, Cho is trying to get other people to desire her or defer to her without ever being direct with anyone. And then at the end of the book, what does she say? She says, take me to Oliver. She's actually finally expressing a desire that's straight, clean, direct, and is not manipulative in any way. So I think that's enough to earn to own him. So that's my particular thought about that, but I'm certainly happy to hear what you think.
[39:03]
Technical Difficulties and Headsets
[39:04]I'm sorry, your audio's going bad again. Oh, no. Can you hear me at all? Yeah, I don't know what it is with people. I mean, it's not your fault or anything like that. It's just I don't understand how difficult it is to have a headset. I've discussed it with the call-in shows. Like, you wouldn't believe the number of call-in shows we cut off the first five minutes because people are like, I don't know how this headset is. Like, they just plug them in and that works. I don't know why we keep covering the code. Anyway, go on. Is that better? Yeah, go on. Now we're at the end.
[39:39]So you're on speakerphone, right? So I'm looping back with myself. You know, I'm going to just say to people at the poll, like if we're going to do this thing, just get a headset. Seriously, they're like 20 bucks. Just get a headset. You plug it in. That's all you need to do. I don't need Bluetooth. I don't need speakerphone. Anything funky like that. Just get a headset and call in so that i don't lose my fucking mind when i'm trying to do this stuff in post-production so um anyway yeah about that okay um the what you mentioned about that story with the symbolism there's a lot of little things in there that i did not catch like the uh part with her in the store with the dogs up in the rafters um great symbolism but yes the story arc is uh is so dramatic that's i guess why that popped into my mind honestly uh it is very dramatic it's one of the most dramatic story arcs i've ever read and well and sorry to interrupt but if you compare this to new estate in in the future again sorry for the spoilers people but i mean he doesn't make that change right that's why he wanders off into the night and dies or the whatever yeah yeah Yeah, he dies. Yeah. He died.
[40:53]See, he lived after his son, and then he ended up dying. So, yes. So, yeah, he cannot confront his own vanity. He cannot confront. And he has that moment, of course. There's a series of moments when he's confronted by his son, who's now older than he is due to the magic of cryogenics. And he will not drop his vanity. He will not surrender to any external standard. He retains his own will. He is his own will and his own will is all that is good. And so he, yeah, he doesn't make any changes. He doesn't submit himself to anything. And so he doesn't make it.
[41:32]Brilliant. I just loved it all. It was fantastic. And I'm really sorry about the audio issues. I just, I frantically sort of downloaded the Podbean app while taking a walk with my Bluetooth headphones on. I'll get better headphones. I appreciate that. Thank you. no problem at all uh so the uh i guess the question i was going towards after that was, um the previous caller was mentioning well the conversation had to do with how hr sort of gloms on to these corporations and sucks out the uh resources really that should be putting being put towards the growth of the uh company i work for a company that's similar to that and i noticed this there's so many like there must be so much money going into this like uh creating all of these apps for people to sort of uh within within like the work intranet sort of thing there's so much going into complete crap that has to do with people's sexual preferences supporting political causes and racial issues that really i'm not going to say anything about the company that i work for but it has nothing to do with the service that we provide. And it's a tough economic environment these days. We're struggling.
[42:55]In my particular area, the area that actually makes money, we're actually doing well and hitting targets. But I just look up above me, so to speak, in the corporation, and I imagine how many millions of emails and phone calls and dollars and people, just a giant waste of time and money.
[43:20]
Corporate HR and Wasteful Spending
[43:18]That's all I have to say about that. And what do you think about it? Well, I mean, it's worse than really a waste. Yeah, it's worse than a waste because it's actually interfering with the business.
[43:28]Like there's this meme on the internet, which is like, your face when you told a joke is so funny that HR also wants to hear it. Right so we like you never get to graduate from that school mom finger wagging kindergarten stuff, yeah so you end up with this sort of female weird emotional bullying dominant stuff like for the rest you never get to be a man right you never get to be a man you never get to just make jokes don't be funny or say things and and so on because it's almost like when you sit down with hr right, and all of that yeah i mean that's this i was reading this text about a guy who works in an office he works out and all of the chubby pudgy pear-shaped people always with him they, call him protein shake you know hey protein shake's gonna be uh gonna be at the meeting right so they just refer to him that way and at one point he you know gets gets annoyed uh and a woman he's five minutes late to a meeting and the woman says oh you're late protein shake and he says well Well, I had a long way to come, McFlurry.
[44:33]Oh, how did that go? Well, he ended up having to take a couple of weeks of diversity sensitivity training and just finger wagging nonsense, right? So, because none of this stuff is applied universally, right? Of course, of course not, right? Exactly. So, it was like you can make fun of the male. Yeah, you can make fun of the male who works out, but you can't make fun of the female who's overweight, right? You can, you know, so it's fair. fair it's urgent and it's all like so you can insult this guy like on and on and nobody cares but the moment he punches back at all uh then then it's just it's literally the end of the world as as far as people can think it or see it or whatever like it's just yeah it's it's just completely manipulative and nonsense but you see you you can't um i don't know how to put this as as good you you can't lure people you can't lure women into the workforce without subsidizing them enormously. It's just not going to work, right? So, I mean, a young woman, certainly in the past, right? You know how this goes, right? If you're a young woman and you want a job, then the first thing, assuming that you lived in a genuinely free market, the first thing that the potential employer would say is, oh, but you're going to get married, right? So if you're going to get married and you're going to have kids, then why would I hire you? I'm going to train you. And also, you won't be able to work as hard as a man. You won't be as ambitious as a man.
[46:01]And you'll be more sensitive, right? Because when you are a manager, I mean, you know what it's like. I mean, if you're a manager, what do you desperately most need of your employees? You need them to be coachable. Yes, yes, that too. Right? You need them to be the number one thing you look for in an employee. And, you know, I've interviewed a thousand people. I've hired over 100 people over the course of my career, managed like up to 30 people or so at a time. And what you need is you need to be coachable. Now, of course, what's happened with women as a whole, and I don't fault women for this. It's just part of the culture that we're in, is that women are just told from the very beginning, from the girls onwards, that they're perfect and empowered and wonderful and everything you do is amazing and excellent and lovely and gracious and good. And what that means is they're not coachable. Because they don't men, how do we end up being coachable? Because our vanity is constantly smashed and broken because everyone tell us, we suck you suck, sorry, I'm getting a lot of background noise from you I know there's a helicopter flying over the trail that I'm walking on alright, good to know so, women, hang on, women come into the workforce and they are to a large degree, uncoachable And because they're uncoachable, they can't be productive.
[47:30]And so as a whole, in a genuine free market, you either have... Women in the workforce, sorry, if you have women in the workforce, your civilization will not sustain itself because you're taking women's most fertile, youthful, and productive years, like demographically productive years, and you're just flushing them into the sewage of fluorescent lighting and cubicles and nonsense and garbage, right? Right. So the moment that you want women in the workforce, you have to pass all these laws that subsidize, take money away from men and give it to women. And you have to say to employers, you can't discriminate on the grounds of youth or fertility or marriage or babies or anything like that. And if the women have babies, you have to keep the job open for a year. And so just in case they want to come back and I don't know, maybe it's 50-50 whether they come back or whatever. And so you just, you can't have a free market and a bunch of young women in the workforce at the same time. You just can't have it.
[48:36]
Women in the Workforce and Fascism
[48:37]So women in the workforce leads to fascism. Women in the workforce leads to fascism because fascism is the merger of corporate and state power.
[48:46]And so the feminists have to demand that the state, And this was all back in the 60s, right? You've got to have equal pay for work of equal value, which is hilarious to me. I mean, first of all, nobody knows what any of that means. It's like in the best interest of the child. Nobody knows what that means. What's hilarious about that phrase is that what it is saying is that women should be paid the same as men, even though women can't negotiate as well as men, right? I mean, it's really funny. It's funny, it's such a disempowering, insulting to women thing, because if women are producing equal value, then women should negotiate for equal wages. Men have to fight for their wages. It's not like everyone steps up and gives us a million dollars an hour the moment we wander into the workforce. So men, we have to negotiate for everything.
[49:43]And so women want to be in the workforce, want to be equal to men. It's like, now you have to negotiate. No, we can't. We have to run to the government. Well, of course they have to run to the government, because if you have a young man and a young woman, you know for sure that when the young man gets married, his productivity is going to go up. And when he becomes a father, he's going to work even harder. Whereas if the woman, when she gets married and decides to have kids, her productivity is going to largely vanish.
[50:11]Right? back. And I know this, I've had female employees who have kids and all of that, and five o'clock man or 4.58, whatever, 4.56, they're gone. They got to go get their kids from daycare and whereas the guys can work late. And I mean, everybody knows how all of this works. So yeah, feminism leads to that because feminism says women go into the workforce, but women wouldn't get paid nearly as much as all of this government intervention. And so to lure women into the workforce, you have to have all of this government intervention, and then you have to create all these massive HR departments, and they're like, questions about activity and so on. I mean, this is one of the reasons why I waited to backdate it since women entered the workforce, is you just have all of this nonsense, busy work that you have to create in all these worlds. And the other thing, too, is that if you have two engineers, one male, one female, and the engineer is producing more, but the female engineer is getting paid the same, then who's going to produce less?
[51:14]Nobody likes to work harder for the same pay. So if the man is producing 20% more than the woman, but the woman who the power of the government is getting paid the same, the man would just produce 20% less. I mean, everything falls to the lowest common denominator in productivity areas. So yeah, it's all really, really quite tragic. And to go back to the novel, to the present, right? Rachel, far happier.
[51:43]Getting married and having kids than mucking about with this pretend career of her. And this is not just my opinion. This is a fact. So in the 1970s, when the wage gap was at its height, women were much happier. There was no maternity leave. Yeah, there was no maternity leave. There was no maternity leave, and the wage gap was the highest I think it ever was. And women were significantly happier than men, significantly happier than men in the 1970s. Now, ever since then, men's happiness has gone up, and women's happiness has gone down.
[52:31]And of course it has, of course it has, of course it has, because it would be like if If you said to all the men, you have to stay home and raise kids, a lot of the men would not do a very good job at that, because that's not really how we've evolved. Women are generally better at raising particularly young kids, and men are generally better at working out of the home. And we just now men stay home because they don't have jobs and women go to work and are miserable. So, yeah, it's really it's really sad. But it's all just part of the depopulation agenda. Right. They just they want fewer people around. And a great way to get fewer people around is to subsidize women in the workforce so that they prefer that to having kids. You're basically just bribing women with men's money to not have kids. Right. That's the modern economy in a nutshell. You're bribing women with men's money to not have children. But sorry, I talked a lot. Go ahead.
[53:24]
Just Poor: Fatherlessness and Revenge
[53:25]No no that's fine that's fine um so yes uh well as to working backwards from some of the comments that i can remember there uh the uh i hope that this backfires i kind of feel like it will i mean on the whole agenda kind of thing but uh i have a feeling it's just workable it's going to cause a lot of suffering and misery but i don't think it's going to give whoever it's not going to give people what they want that's for sure um you know another interesting thing since we're talking about female stuff uh i just finished the uh just poor and i thought that that was very fascinating you had a lot of deep deep things to say about male and female nature but this was before women were in the workforce but you really got to see it some aspects of female general psychology i'm not saying i don't like women i love women i'm married and my wife is fantastic but that period that you put that story in um was you got to see how women exercise their power without like within the family unit and within the community without having work in hr and all that involved and that was fantastic you i mean these stories you write are very good i like them a lot, Well, thanks. I appreciate that. Just poor, of course, is one of the central themes is fatherlessness, right? Yeah.
[54:54]Mary, of course, doesn't have a father. Lawrence and Kay don't have a father. Jonathan, his father is virtually non-existent, almost entirely absent. And so one of the things that I wanted to point out was that the problem is not the patriarchy, right? And this, the problem is the matriarchy.
[55:22]And of course, Lydia has a father, but no mother, which is why she can't settle down and get married because she's been motored to offer trophy wife to her. Another helicopter. I'm sorry. If you want to mute me, there's a helicopter. Yeah. You're on quite the flight path, I would say. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I really want, but it's the outrage of the brutalized child. I was doing a lot of therapy at the time, and I was really, really working on how angry I was at society for not dealing with my child abuse.
[56:01]And Lawrence, of course, is witness to child abuse. He sees Farmer Jigger abusing Mary and does nothing. Now, why does he do nothing? Because he's witnessed his mother, Lady Barbara, abusing Kay and has done nothing. So he's conditioned for that. And, of course, because he's grown up without a father, the mother's become both parents, which generally means becoming a tyrant, particularly for women. And so, yeah, I mean, that's one of my favorite books, just in terms of the depth of the issues that are being dealt with in what seems like half an adventure story of revenge and drama and so on. Oh, yeah. And the way that you work in all of the, I remember listening to you back in like 2010, 2011, talking about more things focused on the economic front. And I like how you worked all that into there too. Too, how just slowly over hundreds and hundreds of years, we somehow developed the ability for the average person to become economically viable on their own.
[57:11]And you see a lot of that in that story as well with the new technology of the looms and you have a lot of talk about the different agricultural methods that were coming around at the time. And it's just great. You hit all the notes. You do a good job. Well, thanks. I think that there's a scene which I guess is somewhat unremarked upon, which is Mary, of course, is incredibly frustrated because she's poor. She has this audience and she's poor. And, of course, I was a pretty smart kid and poor. And so this was also me working out the problem of money, right? Because Mary, through a variety of mechanisms, ends up extraordinarily rich. She goes to the dress store and so on, and she can't stand it. So she gets what she wants. She now has enough money. She's still a young woman. She has enough money. She could do anything.
[58:12]And unfortunately, though, she's been so consumed by bitterness and rage that the money doesn't make her happy. And at that point, I think, in the dress store where she recoils from having the dresses fitted for her and just hate the entire thing and has no use for the money. After she's sought all of this money and all of this authority, she's sought it, she's worked hard for years in the wilderness to plot and plan and get her revenge, and she finally gets all this money.
[58:45]She's achieved her goal, and it makes her feel worse. And I think that's when she basically decides to destroy herself. Like, you got everything you wanted, and you're miserable. So what are you going to do? I mean, what are you going to do? It was like a self-immolation, the way that she chose to end it in the whole last part of the story there. You know, well, you know what I mean. I'm not going to try to be poetic. Well, and she takes the primary revenge. Interesting. I think this is part of Mary's intelligence is that her primary revenge is not upon Larry. It's not on Lawrence. Her primary revenge is on Lady Barbara.
[59:29]
Mary's Revenge on Lady Barbara
[59:29]That's the house she takes to destroy us. I love the argument that she has with Lady Barbara in the last quarter of the book or so, where everybody's super uncomfortable, because it honestly reminds me of a lot of experiences I've had within my own family of these blindingly obvious truths that nobody ever wants to talk about. And as soon as somebody brings it up, it's like everybody's nerves all of a sudden perk right up and everybody's, you know, a big ball of nervousness because nobody wants to talk about things that are completely obvious. Well, then Mary claims to be a victim, but she manipulates Kay. And it's Lydia who's well-raised, who actually is the one who finally stands up to Lady Barbara. So there's a lot of… Oh, Lydia. Yes, I'm sorry. Yeah, it's Lydia. Now, I'm sorry. I was thinking towards the end when Lady Barbara is ordering.
[1:00:22]I love the scene. Lady Barbara is ordering Mary on property and demanding that she be thrown in jail for trespassing. And she says, let me just stay for a little bit. Let me just stay for a little bit. And Lady Barbara is like cold eyed and no, you know, get to the bailiff Andrews, like a retro thrower in jail. She's trespassing. And then, of course, it turns out because of her legal wranglings and becoming mayor. where it is Mary who owns the property.
[1:00:51]And so she takes Lady Barbara's own hatred and uses it against her, right? Like if trespassers should be cast out of the home immediately, even when they beg for mercy, right? Even when they beg for mercy. So then she turns out Lady Barbara from her home in the way that she was turned out from her own home, Mary's, when she was a child, by Farmer Jigger. And she, I think, has identified the source of Larry's coldness, Lawrence's coldness at the beginning of the book towards her plight. And so she evicts. And she was evicted by, for example, he was young at that point, right? He was in his early 20s, so he was still a young man. And I think that Mary figured out that it was Lady Barbara who was the real master. And so just as Lady Barbara's coldness led to Mary being evicted, Lady Barbara's coldness also leads to Lady Barbara being evicted. From her home. So it's a nice parallel there. Oh, certainly. Yeah. And Lady Barbara was a great illustration also of how people who are.
[1:01:56]People who think the way that Lady Barbara does, if they have even a little bit of leverage, they have no mercy just using it. And it's almost like a big bluff because she wanted everybody to think that they all needed her, but she knew that they didn't in a way. Do you know what I mean? Yep. Yep. I guess.
[1:02:20]All right. Well, I appreciate that. And I'm sorry for those of you who haven't read or heard. I hope this is enough of a teaser that these books are – They want to read it again, so it ought to make them want to read it. Yeah, I mean, they're very deep, and I put years of work into them. And if you haven't tried Almost, that's one of my favorites, is Almost, almostnovel.com, and you should check that one out. Yeah, yeah, I hope you'll check that one out. And, yeah, thanks for the call. Thanks for the call. I really appreciate it. Have a good one. Bye-bye. Take care. All right, quantum mechanic. Are you with us? Are you live? Are you here? So I'm going to have to mute somebody here. Because I've got those. There we go. Muted. All right.
[1:03:16]And you can say this in the chat window as well. What do you think of this interface?
[1:03:23]
Handling Background Noise in Calls
[1:03:21]I think we've had some bad luck with background noise. Noise uh it's not too bad i've got a stereo recording here so i can sort of fix that up but uh we've had some bad luck and i'd forgotten about that because it's been a while since i've done call-ins i've forgotten that people just call in with the most ridiculous background noise, and it honestly to me to me i'm not trying to dish or diss on the people who called in i'm glad they called in but it is kind of rude right because it shifts a lot of burden to me to have I have to sort of spend time, effort, and energy cleaning up the audio afterwards. So I'm just going to ask, you know, if you don't have to have, you know, Freddie Mercury's microphone from the Rocket Rio concert, but if you could just not say be...
[1:04:06]Under a low flying airplane or helicopter, that would be, that would be excellent. So again, I'm not trying to be super witchy or anything like that. But it just is a little bit of consideration, I guess, for my sort of time and concentration as well. Like when I'm trying to do a speech, and there's like rumbling and yodeling and gurgling in my ear, it's a little tough to concentrate.
[1:04:34]
Reflecting on Past Shows
[1:04:30]So I just wanted to sort of mention that if people could do that in the future. Uh like the so let's see what do people say here um yeah you can download the former shows yeah you know i've got a whole bunch of shows here that i did i think in 2020 2021 i don't think they've ever made it to the i don't think they've ever made it to the main feed and there's some really great shows uh in in here so it's one of the things i've got on my infinite list of things to do is to go back to this place and listen to the older shows. God knows when I'm going to have the time. Actually, it's kind of funny because today I'll never really listen back to my old shows other than to check this, that a couple of phases here and there. But I listened to the first hour and a quarter of the show I did last night. I'm like, damn, it's really good. It's really good stuff. Oh my gosh.
[1:05:24]Like, you know, when you, you know, you hear yourself back, sometimes you hear yourself back when you're talking like, oh, it sounds a bit hard. Or if you hear yourself singing, it's like, oh, I'm better in the shower in my own ear. But this was, I mean, I remember the show from last night being good, but man, this one was, it's just fantastic. And of course the audio quality is really great too.
[1:05:44]
Show Reflection and Audio Quality
[1:05:44]Really great UI. So for those of you who've just joined, we're just basically doing a test run on this interface. And if you would like to chat, did we figure out how that, and you can do this as an app here too for all of this as well too, right? So if you would like to chat, you do something. What do you click on me? Let's see here. You do something. Maybe if people can mention it in the chat, then i can read it out to people as a whole but yeah so with regards to vetting yeah vetting is not vetting for izzy in particular she's gonna sell her people fine she's gonna vet her people just fine but uh if i see anything that is awry right so you know when izzy dates she's gonna, get infatuated which is a beautiful time and a wonderful time in a relationship.
[1:06:40]
Parenting and Family Dynamics
[1:06:40]But it's not a time of great abstract and moral consideration. And that's kind of what you need. You need credibility as a parent to be able to have your child listen to you when she becomes a human, to listen when she's in throes of infatuation and say, you know, here's some concerns, here's some warning signs. And just, you know, talk to the young man directly. And I'm sure his parents will have questions for me because it is the merger of two families, right? It's a merger of two families. And if you just can't find a way to get along, it's going to be pretty tough. Tough because i'll tell you this man i was reading the other day uh it was pretty pretty tragic somebody was saying that you know with new when you become a parent that grandparents are pretty useless and they're talking about sort of boomer grandparents are pretty useless so and i just put this out there like if you're out there and and somebody in your family or your friends or whatever they've had a baby like for heaven's sakes i mean go over and roll up your sleeves and give them some darn help.
[1:07:47]And I'm not just talking like, hey, I'll pick up a pizza. Do the dishes, do the laundry, clean things up a little, go over and help. I know this is kind of incomprehensible to people, right? It's kind of incomprehensible to people because our social relationships are about fun and travel and going to the bar and the movies and playing pool and it's fun, right? It's like, no, no, no. I mean, that's food for your nonsense, sense right that's like the icing on your dessert tray or your dessert cake so if if someone you know has um had a baby they're going to be very tired they're going to be a little anxious or a lot anxious they're going to be bewildered and they're going to be overwhelmed a lot a lot of times right and And.
[1:08:36]Please go and help them, right? Please, like, I mean, seriously go and help them, make it all about them. And, you know, I remember when I had family members who had a baby, I would take the baby out for like half a day while they, I'd get up, take the baby out, and I would go for breakfast with the baby, and of course, I remember, you know, the baby, of course, grabbing all of the little sugar packets and all of that, and we would shake out the sugar packets on the table and make little pictures with the white and the brown. And it was great fun. And I'd be out for hours. And we'd go to the park. And the parents get to sleep in. They get to get up. They get to have a coffee and do some housework and so on. And just really, please, please, I'm begging you, go and help people. So this person was saying that the boomer parents are largely useless. They come over for an hour or two, but they're all about themselves and their travel and their this and their that. And and so on and i mean i'm going to be you know i hope that as he has kids relatively young.
[1:09:43]And i'm going to be like ridiculously involved granddad you know i think it's going to be a fantastic phase of life and uh i i you know i hope she wants more than one kid i'm sure she will because we we had as many as many kids as nature and god allowed and i think just being in a, a house I love being in houses full of kids like I I grew up sort of tail end of the baby boom so there were just kids everywhere you know one of my best friends as a teenager had two brothers and it was just just a gaggle of kids the mess of kids.
[1:10:18]It's a blast. A group of kids has a wild energy that is just really, really exciting and cool. And so, yeah, I hope it's going to be a whack load of kids. And yeah, when Izzy has her friends over and we sort of play cards or something like that, I mean, you literally can laugh till the milk comes out of your nose. Like, it is so much fun. and the kids in particular have this wild, optimistic, wide-eyed, no taboos kind of energy that is really, really great. And it's great for, you know, older people like me as well, too. It's replenishing, I think. So, yeah, they were just saying that their grandparents are largely useless and you're going to have to try and get it from some sort of local community thing. And, yeah, it's really, really quite sad and quite tragic. So, yeah, she'll sort that out. But it's going to be just a lot of shared values. And basically, all it comes down to is one thing and one thing only, which is how are we going to resolve our conflicts, right? How are we going to resolve conflicts, right? So that's really all it comes down to in life. How are you going to resolve conflicts? And if there is a rational methodology, which is really the only methodology there should be, there's a rational methodology for resolving conflicts, then you're fine. Then you don't have to fear anything.
[1:11:44]You don't have to fear anything in your relationship if you have a rational, objective way of resolving conflicts, which is, you know, we don't call each other names. We talk about I feel rather than you are, and you don't put in absolutes, you always, you never, and you just, you know, you just, and you always be willing to, you know, it's an incredible thing in, and you've heard me say this a million times in the calling shows, It's an amazing thing when, You simply say, you know, I totally could be wrong, but here's what I think. I mean, talk about a wonderful de-escalation, right? What about a wonderful de-escalation? And you hear me say this in calling shows all the time, like maybe I misunderstood, extended to me like I'm five years old, I could be wrong, and so on, right?
[1:12:40]Somebody has asked, where is the show with the mother whose son told her to call Steph? It's the show not out yet. It is not out yet. It is not out yet. But I'm sure it will be soon. It's all ready to go. So it's all just about ready to go. But it's not out. All right. Let me just see here. I'm just trying to grab those questions that I was looking for. Oh, gosh. I could have sworn. I could have sworn it was someplace. And again, if you want to chat, you want to question, comments, issues, maybe everybody is currently in a highly noisy environment. So maybe that's why we have some shy callers tonight. All right. Let's do here. Yeah, you also got to check out the Stop Making Excuses show. It's just great. It was just great.
[1:13:45]
Support and Community Involvement
[1:13:46]Oh, yes, here we go. Post questions. All right, so let me just get these. And I will keep my eyes on. Sorry, I'm not sure quantum mechanic, are you back for another question or comment? I saw your update. Is it here? Did you put your update here? Oh uh somebody says we spoke about five years ago about my daughter possibly being born with down syndrome and this is a tough situation my wife and i were facing this was especially bad because our first daughter died in childbirth i just wanted to update you that she was born perfectly healthy and is four and a half years old now we also have a two-year-old daughter another on the way oh how lovely how lovely congratulations i just signed up for a year and locals that have been listening to you for a long time. I can't wait for the new book. Thanks for all you do. Well, that is thrilling and wonderful. And I'm obviously so glad and happy that you kept the baby and obviously I'm thrilled at the healthy life and good stuff that's happening. That is just wonderful and massive, massive. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you for the update. All right.
[1:15:00]Somebody says, me and my wife have been discussing one of the things I heard you say recently regarding only treating people in the same way they treat you. My wife's argument is that you should be the best version of yourself and be better than the other person. I argued that this can lead to being manipulated or taken advantage of. Could you elaborate? Thank you. You should be the best version of yourself. Yeah, I agree with that. But who's to say that the best version of yourself is always treating other people magnificently well, regardless of how they treat you? So the first thing have you heard this oh it's kind of annoying it's it's kind of annoying we're busy oh i'm out here living my best life you heard that hit me with a y if you've heard that i'm living my best life and of course what's the uh what's the rebuttal come on you a smart crew, What is the rebuttal to my best life?
[1:16:04]What do you say when somebody says, yeah, I'm out here living my best life? I mean, there's so much that's wrong with that. Yeah, how do you know? Brilliant. Oh, look at the case. They're brilliant. Absolutely right. Absolutely right. How do you know? You don't know. You don't know that you're living your best life. compared to what? Also, beware of anyone who makes a claim that is first person, I mean me, I. I am living my best life. You know, my happiness comes from giving my daughter her best life, right? From making my wife happy, making her rough, making her happy, making you guys happy and bringing, that's my joy. My joy is to bring happiness and depth and wisdom to the world. So I'm living my, I, me, I, my best life. You don't know. You don't know. And of course with those, okay, well, live, laugh, love. That's all personal, right? There's no giving that. Live, laugh, love. I'm alive. I like to laugh. I like to love. I like to be loved. I, I, I, me, me, I.
[1:17:25]Thank God most people I know only say that sarcastically, LOL. Yeah, no kidding. Yeah, this is attitude robots. And it's a form of vanity, right? I'm living my best life. And so, and when somebody says, I'm living my best life, what they're saying is, my best life requires me to be absolutely, blindly freaking uncurious about the state of the world.
[1:17:56]Absolutely uncurious about the state of the world. I'm living my best life. It's like, oh, you know, there's national debt and there's war and predation and crime is increasing and so on, right? And the pandemic, well, it's increasingly looking like not the natural phenomenon it was claimed to be at the beginning. Lots of dangerous, bad, terrible things. I'm living my best life. It's like, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, to me, this is as much depth as somebody when the Titanic is at 45 degrees saying, am I getting a pimple on my nose? It's just so relentlessly shallow and selfish and narcissistic, right? I mean, would you say, hit me with a why, if you find it, you know, on occasion or on more than one occasion, a little tough to be happy in an increasingly deranged and violent world. You know, it's a little, it's just me. Maybe it's just me. I know it's not just me. Ah, somebody renamed themselves me and me. That's right, that's right. But enough about me. Why don't you tell me what you think of me? Yeah, it's tough, right? Bitcoin and this community. Boy, that took a dive today, didn't it? Oh, Bitcoin. It went down. It went down.
[1:19:22]Quite exciting. exciting quite exciting well at least it's moving at least it's moving oh lovely i'm sure it's stabilized oh maybe not well at least it's moving that's good all right so the best version of yourself so women use best instead of what right what do women use the word best instead of, What do women use the word best as a substitute for? Some men too, I'm sure, but I hear it more from women.
[1:20:00]No, unexamined, no, optimal. No, it's another four-letter word. So the women use the word best instead of the word good. Best, selfish, and good is selfless to some degree, right? Are we there? Like you understand, right? I'm living my best life. You should be your best self. So best is like show. Best in show. It's how you look. It's how you appear to yourself, to others. It's showy. It's vanity. It's glossy. And it's nonsense. Right? Women use the word best as a substitute for the word good. So that they can do what they like instead of what is needed. Yeah, it's more subjective. What does it mean?
[1:20:54]You want to call in. Yeah, let me find you there. Something flashed up here. Oh, here we go. There we go. All right. Invite is. And they came and went. Excellent. Said they wanted to talk. They came and went. Yeah. I mean, I like the chatty chat stuff, but people coming and going and misclicking and noise and background and helicopters and airplanes. Yes, sir. Go ahead. I think I'm talking. Can you hear me? Yes. oh sweet okay um i was calling in and this is my first time so i'm a bit nervous uh i was calling in in response to you saying are you feeling a little downtrodden about the state of the world uh and it seems less and less rational and i i have this uh increasing sense of paralysis and inertness. Uh, and I was wondering if you had any advice to bust me out of that. Why did you bust it out of it?
[1:22:10]Uh, well, I have, I have testimonies from people who I've given advice to, to they I've sort of reinvigorated their passion. I, I helped quite a few people defoo. I, I talked one guy out of spanking his infant son but it seems like uh i have success doing that but i'm not sure, how to make it more sustainable or monetize it uh well hang on sorry those are two separate questions so one is the state of the world and the other is can i monetize giving good advice Is that right? Oh, I see what you're saying. So let's see. Let me do the first one. I'm happy to do the second one. Let me do the first one. It's real quick. All right. So there are three responses. There are three responses to a situation of danger. Fight, flight, and freeze. Right?
[1:23:12]So for many years, many decades, I was fight. And now I'm freeze. And one day I'll probably be flight. So if you're feeling paralyzed, it's because your instincts are telling you, it's too dangerous to fight. It's too soon to flee. Just lay low. So that's what I mean when I say, how do you know that this is something to be fought and overcome?
[1:23:42]It's too late to fight. It's too dangerous to fight. It's too soon for flight. So just lay low.
[1:23:52]And freeze, like the early mammals with the feet of dinosaurs, right? You don't take on the dinosaurs, but you've got to stick around because that's where the food is and the water. So you just go, right? You just lay low. Okay, so the holding pattern is adaptive on my end, even though it provokes quite a bit of anxiety. Well, I would say, and I don't know for sure, this could be different for everyone, but the first place I would look is not to say A, my holding pattern produces a lot of anxiety, but it's my desire to do something other than holding pattern that is producing the anxiety. Or to put it another way, the need for the holding pattern is producing both the holding pattern and the anxiety. So if, look, if you think you can be in a fight that you can win, that you have a reasonable chance of winning, right? So if you think you can be in a fight that's a good fight, a moral fight, and you have a reasonable chance of winning, I think it's fairly dishonorable to not fight. Does that make sense? Do we sort of roughly agree on that? Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's where I get success with people one-on-one, but I want to kind of pump up the numbers on that because I've only... Well, hang on. No, no. See, again, you got to let me do the one topic before we do the other topic, right? Okay. Apologies. Ah, where was I now? Okay.
[1:25:18]Oh, I can't recall. So, okay, let's do the second one. So how do you monetize giving good advice? Yeah, that's, that's what I was wondering, uh, as like a part two of that. Right. So how do you monetize giving good advice? Well, you, you give it away for free and then you charge for it. Isn't that, isn't that the thing?
[1:25:45]Oh yeah that's so simple i'm already doing the free part okay that makes yeah so you're already doing the free part and and you just have to work at relentlessly providing maximum value, and word of mouth will spread and people will call you gotta set up a website so you give it away for free and then you start charging for it and and but i guess there's a stage in between right so you give it away for free don't ask for testimonials you'll probably pass that phase And then you say, listen, I'm happy to chat with you, give you some advice, but my only price is a testimonial that I can put on my website. I can put the testimonial on my website. And then you start to build from there. There's also about a bazillion smaller podcasts that are looking for guests. Tests so you can contact people in the realm of sort of i don't know life coaching or self-help or something like that and say look i've uh i've got this website uh i'd love to be on the show and and then just work on providing maximum value there and you know just keep stimulating demand until you can charge does that make sense yeah absolutely that's that's great advice thank you for your feedback and uh you you can use me because i'm not sure how to do it on my end, yeah no problem so the other thing that I would say is that.
[1:27:10]
Monetizing Advice and Self-Improvement
[1:27:10]When it comes to monetizing, another step that you could take is you can say, I'm going to record our action to someone. Nick, can I get your permission to record, right? I'm going to record our interaction. I'm going to convert it to text. I'm going to anonymize, right? I'm going to take out any identifying characteristics, and I'm going to make you anonymous. Right? So there's no places, no names. no countries or anything like that. I'm going to synthesize it down to the core and then you can publish it right on a blog or a sub stack or something like that. And then you start to show up in searches and all of that. So making things and transcribing them can be very powerful and helpful when it comes to starting to get a name for yourself as a whole. But it's just, it's a lot of hustle. It's a lot of hustle. And if you are willing to do the hustle and most people aren't, right? Like, why was my show successful for so long? Well, because I just, you know, I spent 80% of my time marketing and posting and boosting and all of that. Finding people to be on the show and finding shows that I could be on and posting on forums about my show and all of that. So it's just, yeah, it's just a lot of hustle. And everybody looks at the front, the flashy front stuff. And.
[1:28:35]There's a huge amount of hustle before that like everyone looks at queen playing south america it's like wow that would be great it's like i'm sure that's great but you know that was like 12 years into their career and the first like five years they did mostly their own equipment humped it all over the place and it's just like grind it's kind of boring or like i remember mc hammer the rapper back in the day hammer don't hurt i mean he he got a start by you know funding like borrowing money from family, funding his own records, and then just driving all over the place with records in the back of his car and playing them for DJs and begging them to play the song and just that kind of stuff, right? Just hustle.
[1:29:15]Everybody wants the fun stuff, which I understand, but because everyone wants the fun stuff, if you only do the fun stuff, you won't make it because you have to differentiate yourself. And the only way to differentiate yourself in a crowded marketplace is just do more of the stuff that nobody else wants to do. Like that's all there is. Do more of the stuff that nobody else wants to do, and you'll be fine. Somebody says, or become a therapist that actually helps people, and then make your own podcast or YouTube channel. Well, that could be tricky. And becoming a therapist can be a five to ten year process, and he may not particularly want to do that kind of stuff. And then you generally are helping people one-on-one, and if he wants to do it in a more sort of public arena, that could be different. so but yeah certainly certainly an option it is certainly certainly an option.
[1:30:05]Oh yes thank you uh thank you tim yes so dishonorable yeah so if if you have a fight that you could win that's important like a moral fight that you could win, then i think it's fairly honorable to give it a shot to go to go all in if you have a fight, that you can't win, then you have one of two choices, right? If you can hide, you should hide. And if you can't hide, you should run. I mean, we see this all the time with animals, right? I mean, they'll fight if they can win. And if they can't win, they'll hide. And if they can't hide, they'll run. So that's the sequence, fight. Hide run right fight freeze flight fight hide run so i mean for many years i was in the fight phase now i'm in the hide phase and at some point it'll probably be the run phase right just the way the way of these things uh this is the general tide of humanity trying to flee all this crazy stuff in the world since the beginning of time until we get to the future my novel, that is the DROs and a free society. If I were you, I don't know what you should do, but you have to know when you can't win.
[1:31:30]I mean, every single one of our ancestors knew when they couldn't win. That's why there are ancestors, not a genetic DNA. So every one of our ancestors knew when they could not win. So I was willing to do, in Hong Kong, right anti-communist protests i was willing to do a danger tear gas all that kind of stuff sure but when the tanks in a sense start rolling down the road it's like out of here right you can't right can't win that so but now it's pretty stressful if you think you can win but you don't fight then you're just thinking about it all the time right this is i guess the first question that came up so if you think that you can win but you you know sure maybe oh i don't know i could i might not then you're just really in a state of constant stress and tension right, Yeah, I think that's the anxiety I was hinting at earlier, and I think maybe part of that is my wish to pursue monetizing it because my dad was sort of money obsessed, and I hate him. So I think that I'm fighting this want to monetize things while also trying to not be like my father. Stig Brodersen Right. Yeah. So you don't want to associate your mother's or your father's money obsession with having anything negative about money, right?
[1:32:55]It's like saying, you know, my father was very vain about his house, so I have to live under the stars, right? Like, no, I don't think that's a rational response, right? And so the reason you might have trouble with monetization is because it's very easy with abusive parents or anyone really, but abusive parents, it's very easy to say that I'm going to avoid the effect rather than morally identify the cause, right? So my mother was, when she was younger, was very into grooming and appearance and so on, right? So then I could say, well, grooming, mother was vain. My mother groomed herself and presented herself well. My mother was vain. My mother groomed herself therefore grooming yourself is vanity and therefore i'm not going to groom myself well let's go into the opposite extreme right excessive grooming is a sign of dysfunction.
[1:33:51]Insufficient grooming is also a sign of dysfunction you follow right so you understand right so if you groom too much then you're kind of plastic and vainglorious and you avoid too much makeup on if you groom too little then you're slovenly and and unappealing and signaling that you don't think you're worth very much right so it's this is an aristotelian mean if you are heavily focused on money that probably has something to do with vanity and status and dominance vainglorious kind of narcissistic on the other hand if you don't care about money then you broke most of your life and your life kind of sucks so the problem is the vanity the problem is not the money the problem with my mother my mother was not the grooming the grooming was a symptom. And that's what I mean when I say it's easier to try and manage a symptom than it is to morally identify the root cause of the problem. The problem wasn't that my mother was.
[1:34:49]Really into grooming. That wasn't the problem. That was a symptom. And if you don't have.
[1:34:58]The moral rot, the symptoms become irrelevant, right? So I'm not a particularly vain person. And therefore, because I'm not a particularly vain person, I can just groom to whatever degree I feel comfortable.
[1:35:11]I don't feel, I remember working with a woman up north. We had to go into town to get some groceries. It took an hour. I said, I've got to put my face on. I'm like, we're going to the grocery store, the two-bit town in the middle of nowhere. Like, what are you talking? You're not going to meet Hugh Grant there. So that was you know a bit too much whereas i worked with another guy who was so slovenly that when he came back from the mission was uh walking his he had a pram he had a baby he's walking the pram down the street he was a middle-class guy he made some decent money and he was working his baby in a pram down the street and the police tried to pick him up because Because they thought he was a homeless guy stealing a baby. Like he was that slovenly and unkempt. So yeah, I think the happy medium. So you have anxiety about money, but money is just a symptom, right? And having a complicated relationship with money because your father used it in a negative way. It's like saying, well, I can't have a gun for self-defense because my father shot someone. And it's like, no, that's not the issue. If you're a good person, the symptoms will take care of themselves. self. And if you are failing in your moral judgment of those around you, then you start managing symptoms and life gets ridiculously complicated. I hope that makes some kind of sense.
[1:36:29]Yeah, it makes perfect sense. Thank you for your feedback there. Yeah, like my mother was demanding, right? My mother was demanding. And, you know, people then say, well, you know, I don't want to be demanding, so I'm not going to ask for what I want. Right? So my mother was demanding, and you had to do things her way. And so am I supposed to then never ask for anything that I want? That's not fair. That's not right. Why would I have to suffer? so so you know i had this early on when i was like asking for donations and you know freedom and i don't appreciate that so you guys don't have to worry about it because you're subscribers so i appreciate this is a a kindness to you hopefully you find it helpful yeah i mean like when i would say there i well i want you know i want you to do it i want you to support i i need your help i need your support and so on oh i'm demanding like mom and it's like that but that's That's not it. That's not a thing that was happening. That wasn't what was occurring. So somebody says, it still seems to me like you're fighting, but I guess that's in a different arena.
[1:37:41]Yeah, I see what you mean. I mean, there's still conflict, but there's conflict just about, I mean, life is just sort of founded and embedded on conflict. So I had to even fight with my annoyance with some listeners tonight, or rather the sort of technical background noise or interruptions or whatever, right? So yeah, I mean, there's conflict sort of embedded in life as a whole, but I'm not out there fighting in the public arena to change the world politically, right? Or try and bring enlightenment to people politically. Those days are gone, and they probably won't return in my lifetime anyway.
[1:38:17]All right. You know what? I think that's good. Tell me minus 10 to plus 10 if you could. Minus 10 to plus 10. How would you rate this option or this interface or this way of talking? I'm going to assume that we can get the audio issue sorted out on the listener side. So yeah what do you think is it is it worth as opposed to reading and doing the, microphone video camera thing is it worth doing it this way from time to time I would say more for donors or is it better to do the text and reading thing, I love when you have listeners call in even though it can be challenging, plus 10 okay audio gain seems higher on this platform versus others but otherwise good I'm not sure what you mean by gain Do you mean like the volume normalization? I don't have much control over that. Maybe, I'm trying to think if there's probably software that could do it in real time. But I can smooth it out afterwards. But I know it's a little bit dial-up, dial-down the audio. Because some people are quiet and some people are not so quiet. All right, well, I appreciate that. Thanks for dropping by. Yeah, volume seems a little blown out, I guess. Yes. Oh, is that on my side as well?
[1:39:42]It just hit me with a yes if that's on my side as well as if the listeners. Because I can certainly adjust that on my end. All right. So, yeah, it seems that there's some value here. Platform is a bit chunky. It's a bit blown out. It's distorting on our side. Is that your side or our side? Did you see the Y there? Yeah, you could have told me that. Maybe you did. Some of your best thoughts happen when doing the spontaneous call-ins, in my opinion. Oh, it's a bit distorting on my side. Oh, okay. Wish you'd told me that, because I can't... Oh, my game is at zero, actually. All right, let me just dial this down a smidge. Is that any better? Just hit me with a Y if that's better in terms of audio. You. Testing, one, two, three. Testing, testing, one, two, three. Just turn the volume down. I just need to get a sort of marker on the volume side that's better for me.
[1:40:52]The little thing here, yeah, it does seem to be getting kind of high, right? All right. Okay. Well, I'll assert on that on my own, but thanks everyone so much. Thanks, Thanks, of course, so much for all of your support. I really, really appreciate that. If you would like to join in these conversations, should this go to the mainstream, freedomain.com slash donate, or ideally freedomain.locals.com. Thanks, everyone, so much. Have a great evening. Lots of love. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.
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