 The idea of self-help, which is, imagine this, we didn't have self-help in all of history. It's new, I think. Is it not new? We have this idea that before I can be standing on this earth as a well-rounded, confident man, I have to resolve my childhood. Because my childhood sucked. Had all this abuse and all stuff happening to me. I've got to resolve my childhood. So I have to go to therapy. I have to medicate, which is our modern theme. But think of it this way. There has never been a happy childhood in any culture in any century. All childhoods were broken. The children were hungry. Disease, famine, migration. Mother gets, can't feed herself because she's feeding the children. Sister gets dragged away and raped. Dad gets dragged off to war. There's been no happy childhoods in all of history. We were the first generation that says, I have to resolve, I have to come to terms with it. All other children in history said, okay, that sucked. I'm out. I'm out of here, man. They go build cities. We're the only ones that naval gaze and say, no, no, no. How come? Nurture me, nurture me. We're the only generation that does that. Imagine this. You say to me, oh yeah, I went on an adventure. I traveled, I backpacked across Europe for a year. That's not an adventure. You went from ATM to ATM. You could call mom if you ran out of money. 300 years ago, those young men would go into the sea in a wooden ship. They had no medical insurance. They didn't have their savings saved up. They just went one way. They don't know where they're going. We have to have everything all plotted and planned and comforted, comfort, comfort. We have so much comfort around us and we complain the most. And we say, I'm a victim and I need counseling. And I'm not against careful counseling where it's needed, right? But I tell you, self-help, 20 years ago I said the number one genre of books in the world is romance novels. That was true back then. You know what it is now? Self-help books. Everybody's got those books on the shelf. And you can always buy another one. You don't read them. You don't need to read them because I got the answer right there. Right within, I have the, oh, this one, yeah, this one, I'll buy this one too. And we have a little affirmations and a little Facebook things, we stick on them. Right? You don't need it. You know what? I had a broken childhood. I won't even go into that. I left home when I was 13. I went into the wilderness. Further into the wilderness. We were already in the wilderness. I went further into the wilderness. No electricity, no running water. I had a knife on my side, a rifle on my back. As a kid, teenager. And I helped a trapper named John Terry run a trapline. That's what I did. I knew how to survive in the wilderness. I had to start a fire with my hands. I had to catch a fish with my hands. 200 miles away from any civilization. No, not 200, 60 miles away, sorry. But far enough away, it's a major trip to go into town and get supplies. And I helped with the trapline. My formal education ended at 13. I have not gone to school since 13 years old. I'm an uneducated bum. I was a homeless bun too for a long time as I was traveling. At 18, I looked around and realized there's no girls. I gotta get out of here. I love girls. And I came out into the world and I was completely unequipped socially. I was the most needy, petty, sticky, jealous guy. Because I didn't know how to, I didn't go to university or college to get some social understanding. I didn't know. I got my understanding from movies, which are romantic comedies, which is the guy, the nice guy who always wins at the end. And I don't think so. So I was really that guy and I, he had some embarrassing, you know, back, you know the movie Hitch? Where he's, yeah, he's looking, he flashes back to his college days and he's got braces and the girl's getting into the car with the cool guy and he's like leaning against the window crying, I'll be there for you. I saw that in the movie theater and I was like, because I did the exact same thing. I have an image of me. I'm not kidding. This is embarrassing to say, but I have exact same thing. I'm crying, probably 20 or 19 or something. She's getting on the back of a motorcycle this girl I was dating, getting on the back of a motorcycle with some cool guy. And he's like, who's this guy? Who's this loser? She goes, I don't know, let's go. And I'm crying and I'm saying, I know I'll be here for you when you come back. Yeah. I was the quintessential nice guy who's, it's embarrassing, you know? And so I'm talking to that young guy. He doesn't have to be that way. You don't have to buy into any of the modern discourse. There's a better, beautiful message. My thesis, well, I'll say it this way. Nietzsche said, God is dead. And everybody knows this quote, right? And we think, okay, well, Nietzsche was affirming my atheist beliefs. Yeah, he's an atheist too. Nietzsche was a staunch atheist, but the rest of the quote is this. He said, God is dead, God will remain dead, and we have killed him. So what he was really saying, get ready. Because when you strip God in the transcendent out of modern society, good luck. And he was an atheist, but he knew the saving grace and the salvation of community that the concept of God and the transcendent had for communities around the world. You strip it out and look what we have today. Political unrest, relationships, antagonistic, no sense of the beloved that we used to have, right? That's why we have this turmoil today and this angry discourse. My thesis is this, is what I'm trying to write about, and it's hard. The Alevastic Girl came out of my experience, 100% my experience. For 10 years, I wrote that book. And the whole time I was writing it, I never read a book. And I love books. I'd go into an airport bookstore. I love bookstores. I'd go into a bookstore and I'd be in there for like three minutes and I'm like, I felt guilty because I should be working on my book and not. And I also didn't want to influence it anyway. So I didn't read a book for 10 years, I'm no kidding. And I dumped it out of my system and it was like it was vomited out of me. And I was empty. I did public speaking for the next two years after that. I'm like, I have nothing to say, because it's all there. And I'd start to tell a little story or anecdote and the people in the audience go, yeah, yeah, as I'm saying it, because they read it in my books and I have stalled. So as you can tell, I don't talk about anything I know. I'm talking about what I'm interested in knowing, what I'm curious about right now, what I'm thinking about when I sit in my rock chair, this is what I'm thinking about. That's cool. So Nietzsche said, God is dead. And what we have the symptom of our modern times, sorry, my voice is scratching. The symptom of our modern times is that we've turned our face away. This is what I 100% believe. We've turned our face away in all things, in art, in architecture, in relationships, in politics. We've turned our face away from beauty and we celebrate ugliness.