How do you convince someone a job is not just about the money, even though you understand it’s important. Let’s say you are offered a job at a company that pays 6 figures but they have DEI hiring practices or if they are union but you personally don’t agree with unions, in spite of all the “benefits”. How do you stand on principals in the face of an increasingly hostile job market?
My first son won the genetic lottery when it comes to looks, now my wife is pregnant with our second one, and, it pains me to admit this as the father, based on the ultrasounds it looks like he was not so lucky. Without going into detail, there is a big chance he will be bullied/rejected his entire life because of his looks, and I presume it will also cause a lot of envy with his older brother.
Do you have any advice for me as father, and for my future son to navigate the possible bullying/rejection and keep his self-esteem up, especially at an early age, when I know other kids will be cruel to him?
Can severe migraines be caused by an abusive or traumatic childhood? I have a coworker that gets debilitating headaches with 10/10 severity (e.g., crying in agony) semi-regularly, yet imaging and MRIs reveal no physical abnormalities. I haven't been able to delve too much into his childhood, but know his parents divorced, and he's a bit unstable overall. He added these migraines started up again recently after he and his siblings began planning their mother's 60th birthday.
I already recommended therapy since I think that's a good idea in general for any one. Just curious if you had heard anything about childhood trauma lying dormant for decades only to manifest in this way years or even decades later.
Transcript: https://freedomain.com/never-give-up-locals-questions-answered-transcript/
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My first son won the genetic lottery when it comes to looks, now my wife is pregnant with our second one, and, it pains me to admit this as the father, based on the ultrasounds it looks like he was not so lucky. Without going into detail, there is a big chance he will be bullied/rejected his entire life because of his looks, and I presume it will also cause a lot of envy with his older brother.
Do you have any advice for me as father, and for my future son to navigate the possible bullying/rejection and keep his self-esteem up, especially at an early age, when I know other kids will be cruel to him?
Can severe migraines be caused by an abusive or traumatic childhood? I have a coworker that gets debilitating headaches with 10/10 severity (e.g., crying in agony) semi-regularly, yet imaging and MRIs reveal no physical abnormalities. I haven't been able to delve too much into his childhood, but know his parents divorced, and he's a bit unstable overall. He added these migraines started up again recently after he and his siblings began planning their mother's 60th birthday.
I already recommended therapy since I think that's a good idea in general for any one. Just curious if you had heard anything about childhood trauma lying dormant for decades only to manifest in this way years or even decades later.
Transcript: https://freedomain.com/never-give-up-locals-questions-answered-transcript/
Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!
Get my new series on the Truth About the French Revolution, access to the audiobook for my new book 'Peaceful Parenting,' StefBOT-AI, private livestreams, premium call in shows, the 22 Part History of Philosophers series and more!
See you soon!
https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/UPB2022
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LearningTranscript
00:00 Good morning everybody, hope you're doing well.
00:02 Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain
00:04 and you can get
00:06 a great community, this is where these questions come
00:08 from freedomain.locals.com
00:10 So how do you convince
00:12 someone a job is not just about the money, even though
00:14 you understand it's important?
00:16 Let's say you're offered a job at a company that pays
00:18 six figures, but they have, you know, really
00:20 crazy hiring practices
00:22 or if they are unionized
00:24 but you don't agree with unions
00:26 in spite of all the quote benefits, how do you stand
00:28 principle in the face of an increasingly hostile job market?
00:30 This is tough, man.
00:32 This is really, really tough.
00:34 And I can't
00:36 speak to what it's like.
00:38 I have seen a lot of prejudice
00:40 against
00:42 pro-individualistic,
00:44 pro-free market, pro-reason,
00:46 pro-objectivity people
00:48 in a wide variety of careers.
00:50 So it was heavily, heavily
00:52 left wing, of course, in the Canadian
00:54 theatre world and that was one of
00:56 the problems that I had.
00:58 They loved me in theatre school until they
01:00 found out about my politics and then they hated
01:02 me and so that was
01:04 tough.
01:06 It was tough
01:08 in the academic world to be
01:10 anti-communist, to be
01:12 pro-free market and so on.
01:14 That was very, very hard. There was a lot
01:16 of, you know, I feel like a salmon
01:18 going up the Niagara
01:20 Falls. So that was very tough.
01:22 In the business world, I faced significant
01:24 integrity issues, which is one of the things
01:26 that helped me to get into the podcasting world.
01:28 In the world of publishing,
01:32 getting novels and short stories
01:34 published, even though the novels
01:36 are very good and very popular with people
01:38 and have been, I mean, one of my novels,
01:40 The God of Atheists, was by a professional reviewer
01:42 called The Great Canadian Novel.
01:44 But because they're
01:46 pro-individualistic and they're
01:48 pro-market and pro-self-knowledge
01:50 and pro-virtue and pro-objectivity,
01:52 that goes against the
01:54 agenda, right? Nothing in art
01:56 these days, and less and less
01:58 in business these days, is
02:00 ever, like art should be about going
02:02 deep into the human condition and
02:04 unraveling the tangled spaghetti
02:06 nest of our motivations to
02:08 get some clear understanding of
02:10 how to be good, right?
02:12 That's not about that, and hasn't been
02:14 about that for probably
02:16 60 or more years.
02:18 It's about advancing the cause,
02:20 advancing the revolution, and so on.
02:22 Provoking conflict, and so on.
02:24 And going against people's empirical evidence.
02:26 So,
02:28 I have
02:30 found
02:32 the forward momentum of what
02:34 I wanted to do in life
02:36 considerably
02:38 blocked
02:40 by
02:42 let's say negative
02:44 forces, certainly forces that we would not
02:46 be pals, right?
02:48 And
02:50 in the business world, people can go
02:52 kind of crazy greedy and can lose their
02:54 souls, and in the
02:56 academic world, as the old saying
02:58 goes, "The stakes are so low,
03:00 therefore the fights are so petty."
03:02 And so
03:04 vicious. And control over
03:06 young minds is the
03:08 ultimate crack for power
03:10 addicts, so there's a lot of that going on in academia.
03:12 So there was all of this stuff
03:14 that I wanted to do
03:16 that I couldn't
03:18 you know, it's funny because
03:20 when I was, I mean
03:22 I think I write great novels, and
03:24 yet I couldn't get published.
03:26 And not only could I not get published,
03:28 the amount of rage and hostility
03:30 that I got in response to what I was doing
03:32 was kind of incomprehensible to me at the time
03:34 because I didn't really understand
03:36 that much about how the world works back
03:38 in the day. This is pre-internet, so you couldn't puzzle
03:40 all the stuff out on your own.
03:42 And
03:44 I didn't
03:46 get what the purpose of all of these
03:48 structures was,
03:50 which was to advance a collectivist agenda
03:52 rather than
03:54 gloriously and happily explore the human condition
03:56 and so on. And so
03:58 for me, I had
04:00 to keep shifting gears, and I had to keep shifting
04:02 approaches until I found something that
04:04 really worked for me and for the world.
04:06 Now, I mean, to take a sort of
04:08 religious analogy,
04:10 the devils were rejecting me
04:12 so the angels opened up a
04:14 path that was
04:16 the best thing that could have happened.
04:18 I know that's
04:20 kind of an
04:22 abstract analogy for people who are
04:24 struggling with this stuff, but I was constantly
04:26 facing these soft,
04:28 foggy, hostile barriers
04:30 to basic things that I wanted to do.
04:32 And I couldn't argue with the quality
04:34 of what I was doing. I mean, I got
04:36 into theater school, which they take like
04:38 1% of applicants.
04:40 They loved what I was doing. They loved, said,
04:42 "You should drop playwriting. You should just be
04:44 an actor," and all of that. And, you know, you listen
04:46 to my audio books. Not too
04:48 bad at that kind of stuff.
04:50 And so,
04:52 I kept facing these
04:54 odd oppositions, and
04:56 I didn't quite
04:58 understand it, because I thought
05:00 that there was a publishing world with
05:02 ideologues in it.
05:04 I didn't realize that ideologues basically run
05:06 the whole thing.
05:08 And, of course, in Canada, where most
05:10 of the money in the arts comes from the government, then
05:12 being pro-individualistic is obviously
05:14 threatening people's bread and butter and livelihood
05:16 and vanity and status
05:18 and all of that. So, I kind of got
05:20 all this in hindsight. So, what I'm saying
05:22 is that
05:24 if you're
05:26 blocked in what you want to
05:28 do, and
05:30 you keep casting about for other
05:32 things to do. Now, I get that I have
05:34 the good fortune to be skilled
05:36 in a bunch of different areas.
05:38 So, I have options. And
05:40 that's not particularly common, but I would
05:42 certainly suggest learning a multiplicity
05:44 of skill sets for sure.
05:46 So, if you can't, or
05:48 if it's hard on your integrity,
05:50 and, I mean, I was
05:52 offered, gosh, back in the day, I was offered
05:54 a
05:56 crazy amount of money to
05:58 work just three days a week.
06:00 We'll come work three days a week. It's a crazy amount
06:02 of money. And stocks. Can't just come
06:04 work three days a week.
06:06 But,
06:08 it wasn't the right thing
06:10 for my
06:12 conscience.
06:14 So, I didn't.
06:16 And,
06:18 at the time, these all seemed very hard. Looking
06:20 back, you can see, and
06:22 you know, I don't want to be the guy who won the lottery
06:24 who said, "Oh, you don't need to save money, just play."
06:26 So, I want to be sort of aware of that. But, I will
06:28 certainly say that in hindsight, for me,
06:30 being blocked in particular areas,
06:32 was a way of guiding me towards
06:38 what was the right thing
06:40 for me in the world. What was the best thing for me
06:42 for the world, which was this
06:44 kind of conversation. So,
06:46 the way I sort of think about it is that
06:48 there's a
06:50 mountain, a very jagged
06:52 mountain, and on the top of the jagged mountain
06:54 is this snow cap.
06:56 And, in the spring,
06:58 you are,
07:00 you're ice
07:02 in the snow cap, and you desperately
07:04 want to join the beautiful lake down at the bottom.
07:06 And, when you melt,
07:08 you go crashing down,
07:10 you bounce here and there, your path is
07:12 blocked, you sit in a pool for a bit, but
07:14 all of that
07:16 helps you to get the
07:18 right path down to the lake, to
07:20 join your destiny, to join
07:22 what is best for you.
07:24 So, the important thing is when you
07:26 reach these kinds of blocks, keep moving.
07:28 Keep creating alternatives.
07:30 Have friends. You know, make sure you have a
07:32 network. This is something I was
07:34 not particularly great at when I was younger, but
07:36 yeah, try to have a network so that people are
07:38 available for opportunities. If
07:40 every job offering to
07:42 you is something that would seriously
07:44 compromise your integrity, well, first of all, you have to
07:46 live. So, if you have to join
07:48 an organization that doesn't align
07:50 with your values, I certainly did,
07:52 and, um,
07:54 that, but that was
07:56 a time when ideology was not
07:58 central to the marketplace. Greed was central
08:00 to the marketplace. I think that's always been the case.
08:02 But ideology was not central to the marketplace.
08:04 Now, it is.
08:06 The
08:08 businesses, a lot of businesses these
08:10 days, don't exist to serve customers. They don't exist
08:12 to serve shareholders. They don't exist to make
08:14 money. They don't exist to produce products. They
08:16 exist to transmit ideology.
08:18 In other words, they've been hijacked
08:20 in many ways. So,
08:22 if that's not the case,
08:24 then you need to keep looking.
08:26 You need to keep moving. You need to,
08:28 perhaps, you know, one of the things that can
08:30 happen is that
08:32 you can
08:34 start to think in entrepreneurial
08:36 terms, right? So, you can start to read books
08:38 by entrepreneurs. You can start to read business books.
08:40 You can start to try and figure out
08:42 if there's something that you want to do from an entrepreneurial
08:44 standpoint. So,
08:46 I, for a lot,
08:48 for many years, of course, I worked for,
08:50 most of my career, I worked for other people when I was
08:52 young, and then I
08:54 was chief technical
08:56 officer, then I was director of
08:58 technology at another company, then I was
09:00 director of marketing, and so on.
09:02 And,
09:04 I felt, over time, I had
09:06 to make the kind of compromises that I didn't want to make.
09:08 And then what happened was
09:10 I ended up working
09:14 for you, right? I mean, working
09:16 for you, the listeners, and
09:18 that gives me a kind of
09:20 integrity that is
09:22 incredibly precious for me.
09:24 So, if you find
09:26 that bad stuff is coming out of the HR department,
09:28 then start a company without an HR department
09:30 and maybe you can keep it small so you don't ever need
09:32 one. That's certainly
09:34 a possibility. So,
09:36 you can look at these barriers in life
09:38 and I, look, I completely
09:40 sympathize with this, and again, I don't want to be
09:42 the guy who lucked out and
09:44 says you don't need to, you don't need anything
09:46 but luck. But I will say that
09:48 all of the barriers
09:50 that came up in my
09:52 life, which have been, it felt
09:54 like endless and huge,
09:56 all of the barriers
09:58 that came up have gotten me to a
10:00 better place, but you just can't stop.
10:02 You gotta be like a shark,
10:04 you know, just constantly swimming, we have no
10:06 bladder. So, you have to
10:08 just keep moving and keep trying.
10:10 You can't let anything stop
10:12 you. I mean, if you join
10:14 one of these organizations, you end up self-policing
10:16 your speech and therefore
10:18 your thoughts and all of this kind of stuff.
10:20 And of course, the purpose of getting you to
10:22 self-police is so that you're easier to rule
10:24 externally. If people can get you to
10:26 self-police, then you can be
10:28 "policed" by others much more easily.
10:30 But you just have to keep trying
10:32 and keep moving and let absolutely nothing
10:34 stop you.
10:36 You have to let absolutely, you have to be
10:38 like migration, you know,
10:40 like the, this, it takes
10:42 like three generations for the butterflies to get
10:44 from North America to Mexico or
10:46 you just have to be
10:48 like the geese flying south
10:50 for the winter, like no matter what storms, no matter
10:52 how you get blown off course,
10:54 you have to get to your destination.
10:56 And, when
10:58 you're young,
11:00 it's an annoying thing
11:02 to hear from a bald guy, I totally get that,
11:04 but I'll say it anyway. So, when you're young,
11:06 you have
11:08 a vision
11:10 of your life that accords to
11:12 what you want. And, yeah, when I
11:14 was younger, I wanted to be
11:16 an actor, a playwright, a director, and I did
11:18 all of those things. I wrote a play, I produced
11:20 a play, I directed a play,
11:22 and I won. And this was
11:24 something that I enjoyed. I enjoyed being
11:26 on stage, I enjoyed acting, I enjoyed
11:28 performing, and so I wanted to be
11:30 that. And
11:34 then there were a bunch of things that I wanted to be
11:36 that were around my preferences,
11:38 to some degree my vanity, not that there's
11:40 something totally wrong with that, and my
11:42 ego and my preferences.
11:44 And that, I completely understand.
11:46 I'm not even saying there's anything particularly
11:48 wrong with it, but basically
11:50 I got beaten up by
11:52 society until
11:54 I hit
11:56 the mother load of
11:58 what it is that I should be doing and how I
12:00 can best benefit the world.
12:02 Of course, when you're young, it's about
12:04 benefiting yourself. And, you know,
12:06 particularly if you come like me from a hardscrabble
12:08 background where nobody thought about what
12:10 benefited you. So
12:12 when you're young, it's about, "Okay, how can
12:14 my life benefit just me?"
12:16 When you get older, I think
12:18 as you get wiser, again,
12:20 annoying, I appreciate that, so
12:22 forgive me, but
12:24 I now think
12:26 in terms of what's best for the world.
12:28 How can I use my talents
12:30 in a way that's best
12:32 for the world? I view myself as being
12:34 in possession of a particular
12:36 skill set that I'm kind of lucky to have.
12:38 And because I didn't
12:40 earn it, there's a certain
12:42 pay it back to the universe aspect of it.
12:44 Or you could say, in other words,
12:46 the world as a whole collectively sacrificed
12:48 itself for countless
12:50 generations to give you and me life and
12:52 our particular skill sets and so on, so they're not
12:54 just our own. Like, we happen to inherit,
12:56 quote, "inherit" a large amount of money, we can't
12:58 just spend it on our own pleasures. We have to find some
13:00 way to multiply it within the world.
13:02 And so I want to find a way to multiply
13:04 the skills that I have in the world as a whole
13:06 and teaching people how to think, how to reason, how to
13:08 question, all of these kinds of good things
13:10 and hopefully how to love and
13:12 be loved is the greatest treasure that there is.
13:14 So you can look
13:16 at these things and say, "My will has
13:18 been thwarted." And it has
13:20 been, I'm sure it has been, and it is
13:22 in countless ways over the course of
13:24 your life. Your will, what you want to do, what
13:26 you prefer. And again,
13:28 it's not a bad thing to want and prefer things,
13:30 but if you say,
13:32 "Maybe, just maybe,
13:34 I'm in a dance with the world to move me
13:36 into an optimum place,
13:38 but I just have to keep trying, I just
13:40 have to never stop, I just have to
13:42 find a way." I mean, like water,
13:44 you know, the Bruce Lee, "Be like water, my friend." It's a little
13:46 annoying, but water will always find a way.
13:48 Right? Water gets blocked, it just spreads around.
13:50 As you throw a big rock at a pool, the water just
13:52 spreads around. Right? You throw a
13:54 big tree branch, a big
13:56 tree limb at the top of a small waterfall, the water
13:58 just finds a way around. You
14:00 just have to
14:02 take the hardness
14:04 out of your personality and the hard
14:06 preferences out of your personality,
14:08 and be in a dance with the world to try and find a
14:10 way to maximize
14:12 your
14:14 virtues and your skills. You have to
14:16 be in a dance with the world to try and find a way to
14:18 maximize your virtue and your skills. You just
14:20 can't stop. The moment you stop
14:22 is the moment
14:24 you start to die. The moment you stop is the
14:26 moment you lose
14:28 the treasures of your skills and abilities.
14:30 You have to spend
14:32 this money in order to have it materialize
14:34 in your heart, and the moment you
14:36 start hoarding it is the moment it turns to
14:38 ash and dust and
14:40 vapor in your hand.
14:42 I'm sorry for that poetic analogy, but
14:44 if you don't like this company, apply for another company.
14:48 If you
14:50 don't like any of the
14:52 companies around, find someone online
14:54 that you really respect
14:56 or admire, and then
14:58 try and find a way to get to work
15:00 for that person. If you can't
15:02 find anything like that, try and
15:04 increase your skills. You could take a lower
15:06 rent job and then just work
15:08 nights and weekends to increase your skills.
15:10 You can
15:12 try and start your
15:14 own entrepreneurial company
15:16 and then you are largely in charge of the values,
15:18 at least when it's small, before the regulators
15:20 come in. That would be my suggestion,
15:22 but the absolutely essential thing in
15:24 life is you just can't stop.
15:26 You just can't stop.
15:28 There's an old
15:30 cartoon that I read when
15:32 I was in my early 20s.
15:34 I think it was in Harvard Business Review,
15:36 and it was one
15:38 executive, the lines were all going
15:40 down in the company, it was one executive turned to the
15:42 other and turned to all the other executives around
15:44 the table and said,
15:46 "Hannibal got elephants over the
15:48 Alps with that in mind. Somebody, think
15:50 of something." And it's like, "Yes, if you
15:52 can get elephants over the Alps, what
15:54 one man can do, another man can do."
15:56 People have overcome unbelievable obstacles
15:58 to be able to achieve things
16:00 in life. You just have to try and be one of
16:02 those people. The race
16:04 is to those who
16:06 never stop running. The race is to those.
16:08 The victory is to those who just
16:10 don't stop running. Those who give up, those who fade
16:12 out, those who wallow in self
16:14 pity, and again, there's times when that'll happen,
16:16 and I'm not objecting to that, I know I have.
16:18 But if you just
16:20 keep moving, if you just keep running,
16:22 if you just keep trying to find
16:24 a way, you will beat
16:26 99.9% of the people out
16:28 there because the great seduction
16:30 is to give up. Isn't it?
16:32 Isn't that the great seduction? Is to
16:34 give up. And, you know, once
16:36 the devil can convince you to give up,
16:38 he doesn't matter. He doesn't care what
16:40 you do after that. So, that would be my suggestion.
16:42 [silence]
16:44 Uh, hey Steph,
16:46 my first son won the genetic
16:48 lottery when it comes to looks. Now, my wife is
16:50 pregnant with her second son, and it pains
16:52 me to admit that as a father,
16:54 this as a father, based on the ultrasounds,
16:56 it looks like he was not so lucky.
16:58 Without going into detail, there is a big
17:00 chance that he will be bullied/rejected
17:02 his entire life because of his looks.
17:04 And I presume it will also cause a lot of
17:06 envy with his older brother. Do you have
17:08 any advice for me as a
17:10 father, and for my future son,
17:12 to navigate the possible bullying/
17:14 rejection, and keep his self esteem
17:16 up, especially at an early age
17:18 when I know other kids will be
17:20 cruel to him?
17:22 [silence]
17:24 Uh, why, why do you know
17:26 that other kids will be, will be cruel
17:28 to him?
17:30 Uh, so I'm going to assume
17:32 that this is not something like a hair lip, or
17:34 something that can be
17:36 affixed, uh, surgically, right?
17:38 Uh, even if he had some crazy outsized nose,
17:40 you could do things about that, right?
17:42 Uh, so of course I don't,
17:44 I don't know what it is, but
17:46 let's just say he's just not going to be born
17:48 handsome, he's just not going to be good looking
17:50 over the course of his life.
17:52 [silence]
17:54 [silence]
17:56 [silence]
17:58 The emphasis, I think,
18:00 that you have put on looks
18:02 is what's most
18:04 telling here. I'll just be perfectly frank with you
18:06 obviously, as I always try to be, but there's
18:08 levels of diplomacy, but I won't attempt to
18:10 scale them here. Right, so
18:12 you say
18:14 he won the
18:16 genetic lottery when it comes to looks.
18:18 He's really, really, really good looking.
18:20 Alright?
18:22 So what you're saying
18:24 is that looks are
18:26 super important. Right, so what if
18:28 your second son is, uh, not
18:30 handsome, but he is instead
18:32 incredibly smart, or wise, or he has
18:34 massive amounts of compassion, or
18:36 uh, the strength of character,
18:38 which may, of course, be related.
18:40 So,
18:42 what the fact of the matter is
18:44 that you, yourself, as a parent,
18:46 are worshipping at the altar of
18:48 looks. And so you say, "Oh, my
18:50 first son, who's so good looking,
18:52 has it so easy, and my second son
18:54 who's not good looking is just going to have it
18:56 so hard."
18:58 Well,
19:00 you are
19:02 already
19:04 judging your
19:06 second son negatively by something
19:08 completely outside of his control.
19:10 And you say, "Well, no, but that's just the world as a
19:12 whole." It's like, "No, it's not the world as a whole.
19:14 It's not the world as a whole."
19:16 I mean,
19:20 my daughter and her friends don't
19:22 mock the people who are
19:24 inadvertently unattractive.
19:26 Don't make fun of those people. I mean,
19:28 it's not their fault. It's just
19:30 how you're born, right?
19:32 So, it's your
19:34 attitude that needs to be
19:36 challenged here. It's your
19:38 attitude that needs to be challenged here. Now, of
19:40 course, if your second son is
19:42 homely, if you put
19:44 him in a situation where he is bullied and
19:46 mocked for his lack of attractiveness,
19:48 then you need to not
19:50 have him in that situation. I mean, am I wrong?
19:52 You need to find some way
19:54 to have him not be in that
19:56 situation. So, if you put him in some,
19:58 I don't know, hell-sent
20:00 government school, and he's mocked
20:02 for his unattractiveness, then
20:04 you would need to not
20:06 have him in that situation.
20:08 Right? Because
20:10 he's going to look at you and say,
20:12 "You're responsible for my environment." All children do.
20:14 They look at their parents and say, "You're responsible
20:16 for the people around me." And why would they say that?
20:18 Because it's true. You, as a parent,
20:20 are completely responsible for
20:22 the people who are around your children.
20:24 So,
20:26 it's your
20:32 attitude towards beauty that needs to change.
20:34 The idea that the beautiful,
20:36 the idea that physically
20:38 beautiful people have great lives
20:40 is
20:42 satanic propaganda.
20:44 The idea that physically
20:46 beautiful people have great lives
20:48 is just, I mean, look
20:50 at Anna Nicole Smith, for heaven's sakes. Right?
20:52 She was a
20:54 beautiful woman,
20:56 very sexy in her prime, of course,
20:58 and she had a completely miserable
21:00 existence.
21:02 I mean,
21:04 some people
21:06 find Taylor Swift very attractive,
21:08 and, I mean, she's got great figure,
21:10 she's tall, she's got,
21:12 I don't know, a bit of a lemon face, but, you know,
21:14 very attractive. Is that a life
21:16 that a person would want,
21:18 who wants love? No.
21:20 She has ambition, she's been offered the world, and she's
21:22 taken the world, but I think it's come at the price of
21:24 love and
21:26 motherhood, and probably will remain that way.
21:28 So, the idea that
21:30 good-looking people just have this
21:32 great life is
21:34 one of the greatest lies
21:36 in the world. I mean, just go talk
21:38 to the average beautiful woman and
21:40 just see how happy she is. She's often
21:42 quite neurotic about her looks, she's often
21:44 terrified of it fading, she often has a
21:46 great deal of difficulty settling down.
21:48 It's like saying all, you know,
21:50 "Oh, gosh, if I just inherited
21:52 $20 million, you know, like,
21:54 if I just inherited that as a kid,
21:56 my life would be perfect." And I understand that.
21:58 Like, I do understand all of this, you know, when I
22:00 was a teenager, there were a couple
22:02 of wealthy kids, super wealthy
22:04 kids, they got, like, Corvettes for their 16th
22:06 birthday and so on, and drove around, and they looked super
22:08 cool, and they were, um...
22:10 There was a lot to envy
22:12 about that, especially for the poor kids and so
22:14 on. I get
22:16 that. The idea that you can
22:18 be happy with the unearned
22:20 is
22:22 really, really, really seductive.
22:24 That if you just happen to be born
22:26 good-looking, that
22:28 you will be happy. And, of course, I wrote
22:30 about this in my novel
22:32 The Present, so...
22:34 Excuse me, still recovering from the cold.
22:38 So, I wrote about this, my novel, The Present,
22:40 with the character Arlo, and you should really
22:42 check that out. That the fragility
22:44 that underlies beauty, because
22:46 if your value comes from
22:48 your looks,
22:50 then you will
22:52 never feel
22:54 that you have earned your value.
22:56 So,
22:58 what you want to do is remind your good-looking
23:00 kid that, you know, he happens to be lucky
23:02 and he happens to have good looks, and that
23:04 there's nothing wrong with that, but it's
23:06 not the source of his value, and it's gonna fade.
23:08 And it's, uh, it's
23:10 gonna fade. So...
23:12 And to your,
23:14 to your, quote, "ugly" or
23:16 "not good-looking" child, your homely child,
23:18 I mean, strength of character,
23:20 strength of virtue, you know, you'd be
23:22 really surprised, actually, there are a lot
23:24 of women, a lot of
23:26 girls, who aren't that into
23:28 looks, and do care
23:30 a lot more about quality of character.
23:32 And so, and if you can't
23:34 find any of them, then just go to church.
23:36 So, I hope that makes some
23:38 kind of sense, but your idea,
23:40 "Oh my gosh, my kid's so good-looking, that's gonna
23:42 be such a great life." And it's like,
23:44 you know,
23:46 that's a fantasy
23:48 that you have, right? So,
23:50 if you yourself are very good-looking,
23:52 and you think that just made your life wonderful,
23:54 then you are saying
23:56 that the positive stuff in your
23:58 life is entirely accidental, you didn't earn any of it,
24:00 and that's a pretty terrible
24:02 place to be, mentally,
24:04 because you haven't earned it.
24:06 You can't take pride in it. Therefore,
24:08 you are taking
24:10 vainglorious pride in the unearned,
24:12 right? So,
24:14 I mean, I happen to have blue eyes,
24:16 I was blonde as a young man, good-looking guy,
24:18 but I didn't earn any of
24:20 that. That just happened to be how I was born,
24:22 and then nature humbled me
24:24 in a positive way, by taking my hair,
24:26 showering, no,
24:28 everyone's gonna end up like your
24:30 only son anyway. Everybody loses
24:32 their looks, everybody ages out,
24:34 and
24:36 you're gonna have a lot of people,
24:38 like, for your good-looking kid, you gotta
24:40 warn him about the looks, right? For your good-looking
24:42 kid, you have to
24:44 remind him that there's gonna be people
24:46 interested in him, there's gonna be women interested
24:48 in him, girls interested in him, just because
24:50 he's good-looking. There are gonna be guys who
24:52 wanna be his friend, just because
24:54 he's good-looking, and they don't care about him
24:56 as a person. They care about his shell, his exterior,
24:58 and that is something
25:00 to be careful of, so
25:02 life ain't peaches and roses for all the good-looking
25:04 people, and life ain't
25:06 hell, just 'cause you happen to be born
25:08 homely.
25:10 So,
25:12 you know, the great thing is, is that if you're born homely
25:14 and people really like you,
25:16 they really like you, right?
25:18 Like, if your kids have
25:20 huge amounts
25:22 of money that they constantly have to spend, then how
25:24 many people are gonna be around them because
25:26 they take them to Disney World, or how many
25:28 people are gonna be around them because they really like them as people,
25:30 right? You won't have that insecurity
25:32 if you're not as good-looking, so.
25:34 Freedom, and can
25:36 severe migraines be caused
25:38 by an abusive or traumatic childhood?
25:40 I have a co-worker who gets
25:42 debilitating headaches with 10/10
25:44 severity, i.e. crying in agony
25:46 semi-regularly, yet imaging and MRIs
25:48 reveal no physical abnormalities.
25:50 I haven't been able to delve too much into his childhood,
25:52 but now his parents divorced
25:54 and he's a bit unstable overall.
25:56 He added these migraines
26:00 started up
26:02 again recently after he and his siblings began
26:04 planning their mother's 60th birthday.
26:06 Thought it might be the...
26:08 Okay, so let's see here.
26:10 I already
26:12 recommended therapy since I think
26:14 that's a good idea in general.
26:16 For anyone, just curious if you had heard anything
26:18 about childhood trauma lying dormant for decades
26:20 only to manifest in this way
26:22 years or even decades later.
26:24 So, obviously
26:28 I'm in no way
26:30 competent to give any medical advice or
26:32 feedback.
26:34 So, I can't talk about migraines
26:36 in particular. I can't talk about
26:38 stress and stress
26:40 responses.
26:42 So, the greatest
26:44 stress I think in
26:46 life is when
26:48 you are living
26:50 a lie and don't even know it.
26:52 Right? If you're living a lie and don't even know it. So, let's say
26:54 something bad, some series
26:56 of really bad things happened to this guy as a kid
26:58 and he's completely
27:00 covered it up mentally and
27:02 he's gone the other direction.
27:04 My family is great, my family is wonderful
27:06 because a lot of bad families
27:08 especially if they can keep up
27:10 appearances, a lot of bad families of course
27:12 will absolutely demand that
27:14 you
27:16 appraise them as great and wonderful and
27:18 virtuous.
27:20 And I mean if you've dated, I'm sure
27:22 if you've dated more than a couple of people
27:24 I'm sure that over the course of your life
27:26 you've met, say
27:28 a woman, if you're a guy, right? You've met a woman
27:30 and she's like
27:32 "Oh, my family is wonderful and I love my family"
27:34 and then you meet the family and you're like
27:36 "What?" or you hear more about the family
27:38 and you're like "Mmm, really?"
27:40 You know, "I'm so
27:42 close to my dad" and it's like
27:44 "Well, your dad divorced
27:46 your mom when you were little
27:48 you've not really had much contact with him
27:50 and you can't ever
27:52 criticize him for any of his
27:54 life choices, but you're super close, right?"
27:56 So, when people have this
27:58 sentimentality which is usually the demand
28:00 of the negative parent,
28:02 right? The negative parent demands that you praise
28:04 them and think of them as wonderful. So, if you
28:06 have this negative experience
28:08 and you can't ever talk about it,
28:10 in other words, the price of being in a pretend
28:12 relationship with a negative parent
28:14 is that you constantly praise the negative parent
28:16 and never bring anything up that's bad
28:18 then your body is stressed.
28:20 Your body
28:22 is stressed because
28:24 you keep having to body hug
28:26 predators and if you keep having to body
28:28 hug predators
28:30 you are opening yourself up to virtually
28:32 endless predation and in particular
28:34 you're opening up the next generation to virtually endless
28:36 predation. So, if you
28:38 are, if the demand
28:40 being in a pretend relationship with
28:42 a parent, if that demand is
28:44 that you endlessly praise and
28:46 be positive and act as if
28:48 they're the greatest things in sliced bread
28:50 I think your body is pretty stressed because
28:52 you are putting yourself
28:54 in a state of constant and escalating danger
28:56 and because
28:58 criticism is not allowed
29:00 negative thoughts, negative approaches
29:02 confrontations, none of this is allowed
29:04 and that's because of course deep down
29:06 you know that if you confront the negative parent
29:08 who's very fragile and hostile
29:10 then you're dumped, right? So, you have this great
29:12 relationship as long as you don't criticize
29:14 and this is true of course of a lot of people with
29:16 friendships and so on, is that
29:18 everything's fine as long as you don't break up topic X,
29:20 Y and Z and you know you can read
29:22 this all over social media about, oh, my friend
29:24 under 20 years found out about my politics
29:26 and dumped me like, you know, 20
29:28 day old bread
29:30 so, I think people are pretty
29:32 stressed as a whole these days because
29:34 ideology
29:36 has now infected
29:38 society to the point
29:40 where multi-decade
29:42 friendships and relationships
29:44 are dumped on ideological
29:46 disagreements or and
29:48 even facts can cause that to happen, right?
29:50 Facts that people don't like or don't want to hear
29:52 [silence]
29:56 So, I think
29:58 if someone's in a relationship where criticism
30:00 is not allowed and all parents should be open to criticism
30:02 I regularly invite criticism from my
30:04 daughter, is there anything I can do better or anything that's
30:06 annoying or anything that I'm doing that's repetitive that's
30:08 getting on your nerves or, you know, because this is
30:10 the case, you know, with adult relationships
30:12 you know, the jokes I make with my wife are still the jokes
30:14 I made off and on for years
30:16 and she likes them but of course
30:18 kids, they change, right? So, kids change
30:20 and kids grow
30:22 and I mean, I remember
30:24 when my daughter
30:26 was very little, I used to pretend to call
30:28 frogs by "Here, froggy, froggy!" and
30:30 "Dad, you're scaring them!" and it was like funny, right?
30:32 And then
30:34 it really was only a couple months and
30:36 then she's like, "Dad, that's not funny
30:38 anymore." And it's like, "Oh, great!" You know,
30:40 kids love repetition in comedy, when
30:42 they get older they don't like it as much, they want new
30:44 stuff, which is great, so
30:46 you just have to be
30:48 aware of that. As your kids are sort of evolving and
30:50 adapting, they're going to change, so you always
30:52 have to be open to feedback and
30:54 criticism as a parent, it's really
30:56 super important, so
30:58 if you can't criticize your parents
31:00 then you're a slave
31:02 to their vanity, you're a slave to their ego
31:04 and you're there as a convenience, not as
31:06 a person, right? Anybody who can't criticize
31:08 you, you are exploiting.
31:10 You're exploiting.
31:12 Anybody who can't give you
31:14 feedback, who can't say, "I didn't like that" or "That
31:16 was annoying to me" or whatever,
31:18 anybody who can't say that is just there
31:20 for your narcissistic convenience
31:22 and you're completely exploiting
31:24 them, and so this is why,
31:26 in order to make sure that you have
31:28 healthy relationships, you don't just accept criticism,
31:30 you invite it. Right? I mean,
31:32 how do I start off these shows
31:34 in general, particularly the live streams?
31:36 Questions, comments, issues, problems,
31:38 anything I can do better, anything
31:40 I can change, anything you
31:42 disagree with me about, anything I've gotten wrong,
31:44 I mean, I don't just
31:46 accept criticism, I invite
31:48 criticism. I really want
31:50 to get that kind of feedback
31:52 because the last thing I want to do is
31:54 exploit people and if
31:56 I'm not inviting criticism, if
31:58 I'm not, in a sense, begging for criticism,
32:00 then I'm exploiting
32:02 people. And so, you can ask
32:04 your friend, it's like, "Oh, do you have any criticisms of
32:06 your parents?" Everybody does.
32:08 Everybody does.
32:10 Everybody has criticisms of everybody and
32:12 some of them are justified and some of them are not,
32:14 but everybody does. So if they say, "No, no, no,
32:16 they're great, they're perfect, they're for me 100%"
32:18 and, you know, say, "Come on.
32:20 Come on.
32:22 Come on." I mean,
32:24 if I look at the liberties I had as
32:26 a kid and I look at the liberties I
32:28 have now, we would have criticisms
32:30 of the elder generation just for allowing the slide
32:32 and decay of our freedoms,
32:34 even if they were great to us personally. So, there's
32:36 going to be criticisms of the elder generation
32:38 and if somebody claims to have absolutely
32:40 none, all they're saying is that
32:42 the price
32:44 of a pretend relationship is endless
32:46 praise, that my parents want to be vainglorious
32:48 gods rather than actual human beings I can
32:50 criticize. And that could be the
32:52 source of some kind of tension. All right.
32:54 Thank you everyone so much for
32:56 listening. A great pleasure to have these conversations.
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