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July 26, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
32:42
347 Breaking With Corruption Step By Step - Part 1

So, you're finally on the move..! A roadmap to freedom.

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Good morning, everybody.
Hope you're doing well. It's Steph.
It's the 26th of July, 2006.
I hope you're doing most beautifully.
And it's 8.40 in the morning.
You might have to go to work a little bit at Mach 12.
So, hope you're having a great time.
I hope that you're enjoying your summer.
I did finally get my article on Murdering the Group and Saving Individuals, published on striketheroot.com, which is a...
I've got to tell you, there's a man who takes the name of his website very seriously.
I think this is a quote from Ben Franklin, someone who says, There are a thousand people trimming the leaves of evil for every one person hacking at the root, or striking at the root.
So, of course, he's around striketheroot.com.
He loved the article. He said it was a must-read, and he paid me $30.
That's the first time I've been paid for a libertarian article.
Shocking. See, now I'm really in the money.
That's what 20 years of thinking gets you.
That and a happy life, right?
I'll take a happy life and 30 bucks any day of the week.
So I know that I had promised to read the rebuttals to the free will arguments, the 13 arguments for free will that I put forward.
And I will, and I'm really sorry to interrupt it.
The problem is I keep running late and I'll sort of get into why in a little while.
But I don't want to read these while I'm driving, obviously.
I don't mind reading a scrap while I, you know, how you look at a map sometimes when you're on a highway that's pretty empty.
I don't mind that, but I don't want to read and read the responses, but they are available.
On the board, just look for determinism number 9.
That's the hash symbol number.
And they're all there for you.
And if I do get a chance to read them out, I will.
So, go have a look at them on the board, if you don't mind.
And I'm sorry for changing my mind about it.
But what I wanted to talk this morning about was I got a post from a first-time poster yesterday.
And, well, not just me.
I guess other people got the post, too.
I wanted to talk about this issue.
This is quite a stretch from free will, but it's still free will versus determinism, still based for me on the principle of free will and making the case for people for freedom.
But this is going on for a number of people who've emailed or posted in the last week or two.
And to some degree, it's right on schedule.
I mean, people who have gone into, you know, when you read someone or you listen to someone who has something of value for you to say, I don't know about you, I take that person's, you know, to use a Silence of the Lambs metaphor, I take that person's skin and wear it as my own.
And when I really get into something, I get totally into it.
And then, after I sort of inhabit the other person's skin, then I find out the differences between that person and reality, and I kind of make it my own.
So, like, I went heavily into objectivism, which is a very easy thing to do, because it's very rational in very many ways, and it's very well-argued, and, of course, there's an aesthetic Appeal to it, especially for men, around that sort of strong, independent soul and so on.
And so when I do get into that kind of stuff, I go all the way into it.
I take probably a little bit too much on faith to begin with, but that's fine, because the end result is that you end up being able to think for yourself, right?
So you I mean, Ayn Rand taught me how to think, and Aristotle taught me how to think, and so I followed them.
I figured, okay, well, if they know how to think and I don't, let's see what they think, right?
I mean, that sort of made sense to me.
I wasn't going to be taught how to think and then immediately just go start thinking on my own because...
We have emotional inertia, we have historical illusion, we have the pressure of other people.
You don't, you know, Mike Tyson can teach you how to fight, but it might take you more than 20 minutes to step in the ring with somebody else.
There's a lot of training, there's a lot of learning how to jab, how to move like a butterfly, sting like a bee, float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.
That's from an old song about Muhammad Ali, formerly known as Cassius Clay, Now known as a doddering old shaky head from the 70s.
I remember that from when I was a little, little kid.
So, I mean, what's happening, I think, is that these podcasts have been running for about six or seven months now.
And they're pretty intense in a lot of ways.
You may not recognize that right up front when you start listening to them.
Like, it might be like, oh, those are interesting ideas.
Oh, that guy's, you know, funny at times and obviously fairly bright and Has a good time doing the podcast and so on, but you don't get the way in which I'm talking to your true self, right?
And I don't want to talk to your true self in such a way that I set off your false self alarms, right?
Because then, and it's happened at times, and I'm not perfect at it, but my whole, not my whole, but a central purpose of all of this is to try and talk to your false self with enough levity to turn off your Sorry, to talk to your true self with enough levity to turn off your false self-defences.
So, people who are listening to this, you know, there's interesting ideas.
I don't agree with them. I agree with some of them, but not others, which is what people say when they want to say that they're being independent.
They won't ever tell you.
I mean, and this is not a slag of the listeners, because I've done the same thing myself when I was younger, but when people say to you, well, I agree with some of your ideas, but not others, it's...
It's kind of incumbent upon them to tell you what's not right.
I mean, if I put forward an argued proposition, you don't have the option to say, I don't disagree, I don't agree with it.
That's it. It didn't strike me as blue or cloudy enough.
If you'd spoken it in a slightly different accent, then it would have been true for me.
If I hadn't had those burritos this morning, man, it would be true for me.
But, so people will say, and this is a way to pretend to themselves, this is a false self way of saying, Steph, I am not your slave, right?
And people have made some jokes about this, especially, I'm enormously, enormously excited, and proud to a tiny, tiny degree, and I don't mean that to be denigratory at all, but proud of the people that some listeners have now gotten published on LewRockwell.com, and I hope that there's more of that.
Certainly, About every fifth post I read could be turned into an excellent article.
And the writing quality on the board is really great.
It's really, really great.
I mean, even the snarky stuff is well written.
I mean, actually, the snarky stuff is usually very well written, because these are people who've got some skill in this kind of aggression.
But I'm very, very excited about that.
I think that's fantastic. But so people, you know, it's like, I don't want to say like, I want to sound like I'm parroting everything you say, which to me is...
I mean, I understand it that people say, well, they don't want to get overwhelmed by these, by, you know, Steph's brain or something like that, and then say, well, you know, I disagree with some of what he says just because I want to look kind of like independent, right?
And I can understand that too.
Hey, Love Queen, not such a fan as some of the songs, and I could make quite a list of them.
But Queen are singing songs.
They're not arguing philosophy.
And certainly those who do write to me and say that they disagree with some of the things that I say, I know that they're not really being honest because they're not telling me and helping me out of error, right?
So they obviously say, first of all, they say, Thanks for putting out these podcasts.
You know, it's helped me clarify some of my thinking in some areas.
Well, that's great. So they're thanking me.
Maybe they're donating a couple of bucks.
They appreciate it. They think it's great.
Now, if they're not donating, or even if they are donating, it's not that much usually, then they say, but I disagree with you on some issues.
And then they never tell me what those are.
In other words, Steph, I really appreciate that you've put out some podcasts helping me clarify my thinking.
But you're absolutely incorrect on some areas, but I'm not going to tell you.
I mean, that's exactly how I perceive it.
Thanks so much for bringing me this cake.
You look pretty starving yourself, but I'm going to eat this cake in front of you and not offer you any back.
Is that kind? Is that compassionate?
Is that helpful? Is that nice?
I mean, and it's a little hypocritical in a way because they're kind of saying, well, I appreciate the cake.
I like the cake. Cake is good.
And you look kind of starving at times, but I'm not going to give you any cake, even though you brought me the cake out of the kindness of your heart or whatever you want to put it.
So, you know, that's just something that happens.
I actually have much more respect to people who do what I do.
I know that sounds kind of funny, but bear with me for just a second.
When they come across somebody who's got something good to say, you know, just go the whole hog.
Go the whole route. And wear it like a second skin and see.
You know, you're independent. A podcast is not going to eliminate your soul.
I am not going to overrun your personality.
Especially because the only personality aspect of you that I'm trying to overrun is the false self, which is why I use funny voices and make jokes about stuff that is deadly serious, and laugh about stuff that is deadly serious, so that I can get through to your true self.
I'm sneaking past.
I'm an Arabian thief.
I'm the prince of thieves in Baghdad.
Scheherazade time. So I'm trying to slither past all of the guards that you have up, and the best way to do that is to be entertaining at the same time as smuggling the truth into the prisoner who actually rules the palace.
Great song by Sting, by the way.
You want a great workout song?
It's, um, the palace gods on our sleep end.
There's a letter of rain on the high Sahara.
I'll be gone before the morning light.
After the rain has fallen.
Ah, there we go. Just running it through my head.
I don't attempt to try and sing sting-sings, sing sting-songs out loud and up front and in the right key because, uh, I have lots of glass around me in this car, which I would like not to be showering itself over me.
And then, boy, can you imagine the wind tear that would come on a microphone at 120 kilometers an hour on a highway.
For those of you listening in on the police scanner, that's 99.9 kilometers per hour.
So, anyway, I wanted to talk about something that's been going on on the boards and in my emails for the last week or two.
Which is people who are getting close to the cliff edge of breaking with corrupt families.
Amen. Power to you, brothers.
Hallelujah. God be praised.
It is a fantastic thing to be doing.
And there's a lot of fear.
There's a lot of fear. First of all, congratulations and most honor from on high to you.
For having the courage to talk openly about your fear.
That is what is known as helping to isolate the false self.
The false self is based on two things, terror and bragging.
That's the false self, terror, bragging, And out of the bragging comes aggression when it's threatened.
So when you start to feel genuine fear around the idea of breaking with your family, then that is when you're starting to isolate the fear of the false self and begin to feel the desires of the true self, right?
You only feel fear when you have a desire which you are contemplating.
Which are afraid of the consequences.
I don't feel fear reading about a roller coaster unless I'm thinking.
I feel fear when I'm about to get on the roller coaster and the choice comes down to that get on or don't get on kind of thing.
But I don't feel any fear when I'm just contemplating.
I've been parachuting, but if I'd never been parachuting and I was just thinking about it, I would only feel fear if I thought I was going to do it.
I mean, I might feel some purely imaginary fear if I just contemplated it.
But the fear grows proportional to the imminence of the event.
So the reason that I congratulate you on feeling fear is that the desire of your true self is to leave a corrupt situation.
Because your true self is killed every day that you're in that corrupt situation.
It is murdered. It is buried.
It is raised. It is murdered.
It is buried. It is the phoenix of your true nature and of reality.
So when you start to feel the fear, it's because you're getting close to the cliff edge.
And that means that you're beginning to differentiate within your own psychology between your true self and your false self.
Your true self wants desperately to break free, and your false self is desperately afraid of it.
Your true self feels no fear about breaking free.
Let me just clarify that for you.
Your true self feels about as much fear of breaking free of a corrupt family as you would breaking free of a clam, one of those big giant clams that's got your finned foot in its mouth or in its jaws when you're trying to get back to the surface because you've run out of air.
I mean, you hack your way free.
The key thing is to cut the muscle at the root.
That's what I've heard. When you're trapped underwater and your whole body is crying out for the oxygen that's 15 feet away and you just have to get yourself free, you feel fear, but it's not fear of getting out.
It's fear of dying.
That's what you feel.
You don't feel like, well, yes, but once I get to the surface, what then?
You're like, God, no, just get me to the surface and all will be well.
And I'll never worry about a damn thing again in my life.
That's how much fear you feel relative to...
Getting away from your family in your true self.
Your true self has no use for a corrupt family.
You know, I'm not going to keep saying corrupt family.
Just assume that's what I mean. And then you can get mad at me and say I'm against all families at the end.
But your true self has absolutely no problem getting away from your family.
Your true self is desperately trying to get away from your family because your true self is being murdered by your family every time that you're in contact with them and every time you think about them and every time you see them and every time they call.
It's just another stab in the heart of your true self and your morality and your integrity and your virtue and your capacity to reason and your Avoidance of hypocrisy and all these kinds of things.
So the fear is not coming from your true self.
Your true self is like, Dude, I'm out of here.
Like, what the hell took us so long?
The door's been ajar for ten years and we've just been eyeing it.
Come on, let's go!
Let's go! What's on the other side?
Trust me, I'll let us know, and I'll keep us oriented for what's on the other side.
But it really doesn't matter.
You know, when you're in a burning prison cell, do you wonder what the weather is like as you try and claw your way out through the window?
I don't think so. I don't care if it's hailing frogs.
I'm out of here! So, that's just a helpful thing to help you sort of understand the fear is just the fear of the false self.
The fear of the false self.
And the fear of the false self is that its defenses are no longer Needed.
The fear of the false self is the defenses are no longer needed and went on far too long and the false self is around forgiving and smothering and covering up and complying with the brutality of evil because the false self arises from the belief that it's not evil.
It just is. It is all humanity.
There is no alternative and also the false self is around compliance with evil because If you don't comply with evil when you're a kid, there's a good chance that you're going to get hurt or killed, or starved, or beaten, or humiliated to the point where you don't want to live anymore.
Just understand this.
This is a significant gulag.
The childhood with a corrupt family is a significant gulag.
And there were suicides in gulags from people who had five-year sentences who were adults raised in freedom.
Right? A five-year sentence for an adult raised in freedom is far less onerous than a 20-year sentence where you're raised in the gulag and you have to pretend to love it.
At least in the gulag, they don't ask you to love the gulag.
But in your family, you're brutalized and then...
They demand that you love them and respect them.
So the false self arises to cover all of that stuff up so at least you can get through the situation.
When there's an incredibly bright light and you're trying to get somewhere, you squint, you shield your eyes, you diminish your own vision so that you don't go blind.
And that's exactly what the false self does.
It diminishes and shields you from the evil.
It's sort of a black light.
Sans the Elvis posters, of course.
But your false self shields you from the reality of the evil so that you can get out.
And then if you don't get out at the right time, your false self can get a little bit too strong.
Your false self will do fine if it's just your family that's evil or corrupt.
And then there's other people outside it saying, yeah, that's pretty much corruption and you should get out.
That's why I'm getting through to your true self, those of you who are having the courage to come to this leap.
That's why I'm able to talk to your true self.
That's because I want less violence in the world.
Like, I'm no kidding.
I'm really, really, really committed to reducing the amount of violence in the world.
And so the stuff that I was talking about on Sunday about the Columbine kids, and the stuff that I'm talking about with Stalin and Hitler and Mao, This is a no-kidding situation for me.
I am absolutely and totally committed to reducing the amount of violence in this world.
And the way to reduce violence is to have sympathy for its victims.
And to be completely clear that they were victims of a great evil, and the greatest evil in the world, is parenting.
Because it is out of bad, corrupt, dishonest, vicious, brutal, skeptical, sarcastic, destructive parenting that all other human evils arise.
There's an old Seinfeld joke about targeting smokers.
And he says, well, you know, the...
The tobacco companies say, well, we're not targeting teenagers, we're targeting other people.
Like some 50-year-old guy is going to wake up one morning and say, you know, I think I'm going to become a smoker.
Everybody knows it's the teens who get into smoking.
So it's specious, right?
It's just a funny lie. Well, exactly the same thing is true.
If you're raised well...
Or you fight your way free of a corrupt situation.
You don't wake up one morning and say, you know, I'm just going to start screaming at my children.
You know, I'm just going to punch my kid if he disobeys me.
You know, if my wife talks back to me, I'm going to backhand her across the face.
You know, I'm going to be really sarcastic and denigratory towards my employees at work.
You know, you don't just wake up one day and do that.
Any more than, except in really bizarre situations where there's some genetic disorder, if you stay healthy and at a correct weight and you exercise, your body doesn't just wake up one day and say, hey, you know what, we're going to be diabetic.
Right? It doesn't happen that way.
And so I'm absolutely no kidding committed to reducing the amount of violence in the world, and the best way to do that is to have sympathy for those who experience violence, i.e.
most people in the modern world who have had parents who weren't born of a test tube and raised by space aliens.
The best way to reduce violence in the world is to get people out of corrupt situations.
Because staying in corrupt situations corrodes your capacity to be mentally and morally healthy.
It's a sick addiction that needs to be broken.
And you don't break an addiction to a corrupt family by saying, yeah, they're good, you should forgive them.
Yeah, they weren't the best, but they did the best they could.
That's like hanging out with an alcoholic and saying, yeah, well, drinking, sure, you get a hangover, but man, don't you ever have a great time at times as well?
Oh, come on. You see, I moderated a little bit more and you're fine.
You're fine. Don't worry about it.
Don't be such a woman about it.
Oh, my God, don't be such a pussy.
That's not exactly how you help an alcoholic.
That's called enabling. Oh, you need me to call in sick for you, honey, because you're out drinking too much?
You bet. I'm all over it.
That's not how you help somebody if you're committed to helping people.
You don't enable it. And when I see people around their families being dismissed, being abused, being scorned, being ridiculed, being, you know, with hostility and contempt and sometimes violence, and although that violence diminishes, miraculously that violence diminishes when we get stronger than we were as children.
That's how we know that it's a moral choice, right?
Because our parents don't have to do it.
They only do it when we can't fight back, right?
So we know that it's not... It's not anything genetic.
It's a choice. They've changed because, hey, you know, you're actually big.
We're on an eye level now.
I'm miraculously unable to find the restraint to not hit you or be scornful.
Or, ooh, you're standing up for yourself.
You're talking back to me. You're asking me to show you respect.
Ooh, that changes everything.
Now my behavior's really going to change, especially if I think you might leave, from the point of view of the parent.
So, just an enormous amount of kudos and respect and honor from on high, which is not where I am, which is where the truth is, for having the courage to admit the fear, for fighting your way through the fear, and you accept the fear, right?
I mean, accept the fear. You can't fight the false self by rejecting the feelings it comes up with, because it is about rejection itself, so you'll slip into its camp again and lose your true self.
So, you accept the fear, and And you act.
You act with the fear.
You don't act despite the fear.
You don't act in defiance of the fear.
You don't act without the fear.
You act with the fear.
The fear is part of what you're doing.
You can't turn off any emotion without turning off all emotions.
It's just one big giant switch.
There's no sort of little... It's not like a little switchboard.
One of these bouffant women in the 50s saying, Oh, call from anger?
Let me put you through. Oh, call from fear?
No, I'm afraid you don't have to hold.
I mean, that's not how the emotions work.
It's a big situation, right?
You don't get to take morphine and feel a headache.
I mean, that's all it is.
So... Kudos to people, and there's some question about how to do it, and I'll talk a little bit about it this morning, a little bit more about it this afternoon.
These are just my ideas about how to do it, based on my experience and the experience of other people that I've known more directly who've done this, and there is some general patterns.
But the first thing is, we use the argument for morality around here, we don't use the argument from effect, except at occasional times, but it really comes back to the argument for morality.
And the argument for morality says that you do what you do because it's right.
You don't do the right thing because it has particular consequences that are good or bad for this or that person.
I know we have some utilitarians on the board and I'm actively engaged in a debate with them because it just seems rather silly to me.
As soon as you have a should out there, it better be universal or it's just nonsense.
It's no point telling somebody else, you should do what you please.
Not a universal. As soon as you're telling them they should do something, then you're saying that there's some universal that's between you that they should obey, or there's some universal that you've understood that they should obey.
Otherwise, it's just me walking into a subway and saying to people, stand up.
I mean, they might do it, but there's no particular reason why they would.
I wouldn't say stand up because it's moral to stand up.
I might have a gun and say stand up, but I'm going to say do it because it's moral.
So, if you believe in the argument for morality and you found it useful within your own life, then the key thing to understand, in my opinion, is that you're going to make this action because it's the right thing to do.
Because it's the wrong thing to do to hang around, support, and tacitly condone and approve of corrupt and evil people who've done you great harm.
I mean, surely, just from a sense of pride standpoint, you wouldn't want that.
Why would you want to hang around people who hurt you?
What kind of self-esteem is that going to help foster within you?
It's just going to make you wretched.
It's going to make you absolutely wretched.
And it's going to make all of your philosophizing even worse for you, right?
I mean, there's nothing worse than having a standard that says do X and then doing the exact opposite.
It's better not to even have that standard.
Then you're just in ordinary human misery, not the Dostoevskyan torture of the intellectual philosopher who won't live his values, right?
So once you've got the values, time's ticking away.
You know, once you understand the concept, it's kind of like that music.
Ding, ding, ding, ding.
It's kind of like that music that's on, I don't know, some damn game show.
I don't know, I never watch them. So, you sort of better get moving or get rid of the ideas, right?
So, there's a bit of a fuse here.
And this fuse is just your natural integrity and reality checking.
And, of course, once you get a principle that you believe in, the true self is all about principles, right?
So... You're going to get a lot of impetus starting to rise from you.
With me, it was insomnia, but you may have other symptoms.
Once you get a principle, then you better start acting on it, and the sooner the better.
And how you act on it, as I mentioned before, and I'll talk about it a bit more this afternoon, is don't just vanish.
If you just vanish, then you're probably going to end up going back, because you've got a significant undertow of history here around these people having control over your emotional apparatus.
And it is possible to have some low-level control over somebody else's emotional apparatus.
If you're my kid, and I bang a gong very loudly whenever you're sleeping, then whenever you hear that gong, you're going to have a Pavlovian response, right?
It's like the phantom limb argument that someone came up with for determinism, which I don't think is particularly accurate.
I said why on the board, but...
I'm going to be able to control your nervous system to some degree at any time in your life just by banging a gong, right?
I'm not going to launch another T-Rex song, but I think you know where I'm coming from.
So, your parents do have some control over your autonomous nervous system and some significant control, right?
I mean, look at how you feel when the phone rings, right?
What's the phone doing to you? Nothing.
Has it got a gun? No, but you feel angry or frightened or frustrated or wary or whatever, right?
I mean, this is feeling that your parents do have some control.
That's why you need to get away from people who have this kind of control over you because, you It's like you're a little bit of a puppet, and so was I, and so was everyone else, and there's no way to escape it.
It's programmed. Nothing you can do.
Nothing you can do. There is no amount of Zen in the world to overcome corrupt parenting and continue to be exposed to it.
I mean, it's just nonsense, right?
So, the first thing you need to do is have some, you know, if you don't just sort of wake up one morning and say, that's it, I'm out of here, which, I mean, I did to some degree, but this was after, I don't know, a year of therapy or something like that, and a hell of a lot of work on my personal Life and a hell of a lot of confrontations with my false self and so on.
So if that's not what's happening, if you're just sort of getting the idea, but you're very frightened, and I was frightened even after I got the idea, but if you're really in that situation of feeling like you're jumping off a cliff and hoping for an updraft to carry you to the castle in the sky, then what you need to do is confirm the thesis.
So if you have this belief that your parents may be corrupt, Or not kind or not loving.
You certainly need to define what loving is, of course.
You have to have some idea. And you know deep down, but it's worthwhile having some shared values and virtue and honor and courage and dignity and respect for people who've earned it.
All these things, basically bestowing upon people a just evaluation and fair response to their behaviors.
I don't care about their ideals, but their behaviors.
And so you have to have some idea what love is, and that's sort of an important thing.
We've talked about it tangentially before, but perhaps I'll move that topic up a little bit.
Because love is sort of, you really will only understand love after you get the corrupt people out of your life.
Because so far, you're turning a flamethrower to the idea of love every time you're with them, so it's shriveled to a crisp.
But once you get them out, it has this amazing, to use the phoenix once more, this amazing regenerative ability.
Which is one of the most amazing aspects of the human psyche, is its regenerative ability.
You get a burn in your arm.
It's there for life, if it's bad enough.
But you can find a way to regenerate yourself out of 20 years of bad childhood-ing, or having had a bad childhood and another 10 years of hanging out with your corrupt family.
The regenerative capacity of the human mind is really, really astounding.
So, I would say that...
You will get there.
But if you're in that situation where you're feeling a huge amount of terror, as I've mentioned before, what you do?
You go sit down and talk with your family.
And the more you feel afraid of that, if that fear is not driving you to not see them, then the more you need to do that.
And I hate to sort of say it because I don't want people to have to act on fear.
But if you're absolutely terrified of talking to your family, but you also can't get free of them, then you need to go and talk to them.
There's just no other option.
There's just no other way to do it.
You can hang around in this null zone of fear and inaction, of paralysis and terror, but that's not what I want for you, and that's also not going to serve my particular goal, and I hope yours too, to reduce the amount of violence in the world.
That's not going to help.
It's not going to do it. If you're sitting around in this terror and self-humiliation of knowing you need to do something but not doing it, then your life is going to be living hell.
And your relationships are all going to be whacked, right?
Now you're in the worst place, right?
You're neither a fish in the sea nor a man in the air.
You're sort of this pathetic lungfish gasping away on the beach, unable to breathe, unable to swim.
So you kind of need to go one way or the other.
And I'll tell you, you can't go back in the water, right?
You've evolved. You can't go back in the water.
So you might as well push on.
And, you know, lean on the board.
Talk to us on the board. You know, we call in on the shows.
Let us know how it's going. I mean, we...
We're here for you, right?
I mean, you're not alone in this.
I mean, I know this isn't exactly a cozy tribe, but we are all going through or have gone through or will go through the same sort of stuff.
So, you know, stay in contact with people.
Let us know how it's going. Keep us posted, so to speak.
But go talk to your family and tell them, I feel this.
I feel that I don't get a lot of respect.
I feel that my ideas are not treasured.
I feel that I'm not loved.
I feel, you know, that there's problems that I have and problems that started with my childhood when this happened and when that happened.
Honestly, talk to people about your issues.
Talk to people about your issues.
Be honest and open with your family about what you've experienced and see how they react.
And you will know in about 30 seconds whether there's any hope for the relationship.
You'll probably know in about three seconds, right, just based on the look in their eyes.
And maybe theoretically it's possible that this is going to be a big liberating thing and everything's going to be wonderful and that's going to be great.
But I think that the law of statistics is going to hold pretty heavy here, plus the iron law of psychology that doing wrong to children truly kills a soul beyond recovery, right?
I mean, you're out there trying to resuscitate skeletons, right?
Trying to breathe life into a corrupt parenting or sibling relationship.
Unless you were sort of two siblings who were both victims and didn't victimize each other, which seems very rare as well.
But yeah, you go talk to them.
You go talk to them. You go talk to them and you be vulnerable.
You be vulnerable so that you can be attacked.
If you keep going into the lion's den, although you keep getting mauled, the first thing you need to do is to stop sedating yourself so that you can feel the pain of getting mauled so that you don't want to go into the lion's den anymore.
This is a way the false self will provoke danger against you, provoke abuse against you, and then shield you from the emotional consequences.
That's how you stay stuck in these corrupt relationships.
But you've got to let your defenses down and let yourself get mauled.
You'll take it. You'll be fine.
You're strong enough. It's a hell of a lot stronger to let yourself get mauled and then get out than to continue to pretend that you're not getting mauled when you are.
I mean, that's really, really ridiculous when you see it, right?
So you let your defenses down, and you go and you speak honestly and openly, and then you experience the fear from its proper object, which is a fear of humiliation and abuse from your family, right?
That's the real fear that you're experiencing, not fear of leaving them, but fear of talking to them.
So you get the fear into its proper context and into its proper place by going to talk Openly with your family.
And make a list of things you want to talk about.
And prepare it. And talk about it with friends if you can.
Or if you can't, practice it in the mirror 500 times or 50 times.
But be ready with what it is you're going to say.
Do not let yourself get sidetracked.
Do not let yourself get distracted.
Go and have that conversation with your family.
Be vulnerable, be open, be direct, be persistent, and you can be curious if the mood strikes you, but I wouldn't say that that's a requirement, because curiosity is really to help you explore win-win situations with loved ones, not to make you try and understand why people hurt you.
That's not what curiosity is for.
They hurt you because they're unhappy and corrupt.
I mean, there's no need for a lot of curiosity there.
But yeah, go have that conversation with your family.
That's the first step. After that, we'll talk this afternoon.
So do it today, right, so that you'll get this afternoon.
Just give them a call now, and then we'll talk this afternoon.
Thank you so much for listening. Look forward to donations.
Come by, fill out the listener survey.
And we may have a new surprise for the board members in a little while.
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