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July 26, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
45:31
348 Breaking With Corruption Step By Step - Part 2
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Good afternoon everybody.
Hope you're doing well. It's Steph.
It is ten past five on the 26th of July 2006.
Beautiful, beautiful summer's day up here in Canada.
I hope that you're having as glorious a set of weather and as happy a set of circumstances.
So we're going to continue this afternoon to talk about Breaking free of the foo.
Foo busting. Busting out of the foo bar.
And I would like to talk a little bit, so we mentioned sort of this morning about some of the methodology behind it, some of the reasons before it.
And I just sort of wanted to keep sort of re-emphasizing this for those who are maybe not listening to this directly in sequence, eh?
To just keep re-emphasizing that you must, you must, you must be vulnerable with your family if you do not have a solid impulse to not spend time with them.
You must be vulnerable with them.
You must give them the opportunity to show you who they are.
You must re-experience them as they are and as I bet you they were when you were knee-high to a glasshopper.
And that is a fair, a decent shake at what's going on.
And the same thing is true in most of your relationships.
I think that it's well worth giving people a decent shake, right?
So if you're unhappy at work, then you sit down and you say, I'm unhappy.
I would like X, Y, and Z. What should we do?
And if you are unhappy with a lover, then you sit down with that lover and you say, if you could just dress up as Batman and use the baby oil in a way that I've got in this little video, then I'll be perfectly happy and we won't fight anymore.
You need to sit down with the people that you have relationships with and let them have their say and get a chance to judge them objectively and clearly and directly.
And that's only fair, and not so much fair to the other people.
I mean, fairness to others is, I guess, important, but mostly what's as important is fairness to yourself and to your own history.
I'll tell you where hell really exists in human relationships.
Hell does not exist in relationships that are agonizing.
Hell does not exist in relationships that are painful.
Hell does not exist in relationships that are dysfunctional.
Hell exists in none of these places.
Because when those things are clear, you just don't spend time with these people.
So that's not hell.
Hell exists, my friends, in relationships where all those things are occurring and you tell yourself that they're not.
Hell does not exist.
Limbo exists, and limbo is hell.
So the reason that I want you to go and talk, or suggest, what you care what I want, right?
Just another voice in your head.
But only this one with a bit more of an indistinguishable accent.
You don't care about what I say, but the only reason that I'm sort of hopping on about this kind of stuff, you know, as opposed to hopping on about something else, eh?
Is that I don't want you to get stuck in the limbo Of relationships that are neither satisfying Neither good enough to be satisfying, nor directly and experientially and emotionally bad enough to leave.
I don't want you to get stuck in those relationships.
Do not get stuck in those relationships.
Those relationships are where your life bleeds away one dismal corpsicle at a time.
You end up with the death by a thousand mosquito bites, with a slow wasting anemia, with creeping unfelt But vaguely realized depression, you end up with all of these terrible, decaying, slow, decades-to-complete acts of suicide of size, as I talk about in...
I think that's Revolutions. It was a suicide of size, talking about one woman who's letting herself expire in the shadow of unsatisfying relationships.
Don't be a suicide of size.
So, when it comes to...
Dealing with your relationships, what you want to do, what you need to do, what is healthy to do, and not just because I'm telling you, good heavens, again, you care what I say, but I'm sort of appealing to your greed, right, as Dr.
Phil says, appealing to your self-interest.
You want to have relationships that are great.
You want to have relationships that are deep and satisfying and meaningful and rich and funny and all of the great things that you can get in life.
I want you to have all of that because I'm totally committed to making the world a less violent place.
And the happier and more rich your relationships are, the less tendency you're going to have towards either emotional or verbal abuse or being mean or being spiteful.
I mean, all these things arise out of dissatisfaction.
From personal relationships or within oneself.
That's what makes people lash out at others.
That's what makes people kind of mean and snarky and passive aggressive and so on.
And I want all of that stuff to go away.
I particularly want it to go away before you have children.
I particularly want it to go away if you have children.
I particularly want you to not end up experiencing all of these kinds of bad things when you have children or are raising children or, you know, in a relationship with anyone.
Basically, if you're breathing, I don't want this for you.
So that's sort of my basic approach to this kind of issue.
So, don't get stuck in this dead zone, in the null zone, of relationships that neither flourish nor end.
Don't get stuck in that.
That is the true nightmare of human existence.
That is barely alive, right?
You want your relationships to be dead or alive.
You don't want them to be lingering, breathy, stinking zombies that lurch around and You sort of feel obligated towards, but you can't really escape, right?
Those suffocating nets of vague disapproval and guilt.
I mean, you've got to fight your way free of that shit, because that is anathema to your true self.
That is anathema to happiness, and that is anathema to freedom and integrity.
You've got to get free.
You've got to get free of those relationships, because they're not relationships.
They're a dismal holding pattern.
And holding patterns are fine if you've got an infinity to work with.
But my friends, like a calendar, our days are numbered.
We do not have an infinity of time with which to enjoy ourselves and develop great relationships in this world.
We are, I mean, what have I got left?
I got another 40 years left.
I'm done almost 40.
I got another 40 or 50 years left.
Or not, right?
I might die on this drive home, right?
Certainly if I have a long rant and it doesn't seem to end, then what's going to happen is I'm going to run out of oxygen.
So I could die on this way home.
And that's something that became very forceful to me.
And I'm sort of trying to, especially for the younger people, I know you feel like you've got forever.
You really don't. You really don't.
Life is not an eternity.
Life is short. Life is short.
Life is long enough that you want to do the right thing to build for your future happiness, right?
Life is long enough that you want to save some money for your retirement.
But life is not so long That you can waste time in relationships that are go nowhere, not satisfying, not productive, not healthy, not invigorating, not refreshing, not encouraging, not joyful.
So, you don't have...
An eternity to spend in your life.
You have a finite number of days and nights.
Finite number of hours.
And they're probably shorter than you think.
Especially when you're young. I can promise you that when you're young, they're definitely shorter than you think.
Because when you're young, you think it's like millions and millions.
It's not the case at all. If you don't mind taking advice from a hoary old bald bastard, just recognize that every hour that you spend in unsatisfying, dismal, depressing, defensive, don't be yourself, don't be honest, don't be vulnerable, don't be passionate, don't be enthusiastic.
Every hour that you spend in those kinds of relationships is an hour that is net and totally subtracted from your life.
You don't get those hours back at the end as a do-over.
Every hour that you spend in your life, whatever it is that you're doing, is an hour you are never ever going to get back in any way, shape or form.
So they're finite.
What you've got is finite.
The only question is, how are you going to spend your days and hours?
What are you going to do with your days and hours?
So, the false self is in this conformity and eternity.
Conformity, universality.
The conformity is absolutely required that corruption is universal and life is eternal.
That's why you end up in these kinds of dead relationships or non-relationships.
I'm using the words relationships very loosely here.
But... You absolutely have to get out of those foggy cages, right?
I call them foggy because if they were actual bars of iron, you would feel more motive.
But there's this vague, foggy, kinda, kinda nothing, kinda real, kinda dissatisfying, but guilt-ridden, but obligated, but dutiful, but hated, but feared, but...
I mean, there's this whole quagmire, this primordial soup Of guilt and fear and self-hatred and hatred of others and frustration and desperation and heavy obligation and the occasional funsy time, all that kind of stuff.
You've got to break out of that because every moment that you're spending in those relationships, not only do you not get it back, but you are harming yourself for other relationships as well.
right?
Every moment that you spend in relationships out of guilt and obligation, you are making yourself so much more susceptible and so much more drawn towards passive-aggressive guilt and manipulation in other relationships in the future.
And I hope I made this a little bit clear when I was talking about the journey from mother to girlfriend a couple of podcasts ago.
But just in case it wasn't, I'll reiterate it again.
And I'm not saying this over and over because I think anybody out there is dumb.
I think you're all absolutely brilliant.
I think I'm fairly smart too, and it took me two years of therapy.
So please, I apologize for any repetition that you might be experiencing in this.
But I'm only saying it because I have to throw a whole lot of mud against the false self to get a spatter through to the true self.
So I do apologize if you feel that you've heard this before, but you don't need to listen to it if you've already broken with your family.
But if you're listening to this, I bet you haven't.
And so you haven't got it yet.
You haven't got it yet, and that's okay.
That's perfectly acceptable.
That's perfectly fine.
It took me forever, and I'm not working with two and a half brain cells here.
I think it's close to three now.
I think I just felt one of them pop.
So I apologize for repetition.
It is so important to understand all of this stuff, and so important to accept that it takes a number of times.
It takes a number of runs at these foggy bars before we get out, because they're kind of claustrophobic, and they're hard to see, and they're...
You know, you push against them, they don't push back, but slowly and so on.
So like gradually increasing gravity, you don't feel fat until your legs break, right?
So, you know, I do apologize for that, but there's good reason for this repetition.
And not only do you not get these hours and days and dismal weeks returned to your life at the end of it, not only does it make you much more susceptible.
Every moment, every decision that you make on the premise of appeasement and guilt and obligation weakens your capacity to decide against it in the future.
Every cigarette you smoke makes it harder to quit.
Every drinking binge you go on makes it harder to be sober.
And every time you cave to guilt and obligation, and I know this because I caved for so many years, it's ridiculous, you make it that much harder to quit.
So that's why I say be vulnerable and be open with your family because that will make it easier to understand and to feel.
That's exactly why you need to not see corrupt people.
And maybe they'll surprise you, and maybe they'll be a reversal and have a great relationship, and that's fantastic.
I'm not telling you to break with your family.
I'm telling you to find out the truth about your family, and whether you break with them or not will be completely clear to you after that.
But the first thing you've got to do is figure out exactly, and you know exactly how to do it, right?
What you do is you go to your family.
We'll talk about... I'll come back to that in just a sec.
Sorry. Now the third thing that's going to occur if you continue to see bad people is that you are not spending that time, you are not spending that time meeting better people, right?
So for instance, one of the things that's generally accepted within a relationship Within breakups and so on and starting relationships again is that every day or let's just say every month that you spend in a relationship is two weeks that you have to spend recovering from it when you break it up.
So you go out with a girl for a month and you break it off and then you've got two weeks of reorienting yourself and then you can start dating again.
These are just general guidelines but I think that they're fairly accurate.
But If you're in a marriage for two years, then you've got to break up, you've got to get a divorce, and it's going to be a year before you're any good to anyone.
And five years, two and a half years, ten years, five years, you get the whole idea, right?
So not only is the time that you're spending in claustrophobic, negative, unproductive, depressing, guilt-ridden, obligated relationships...
Not time you get back, time that you're harming yourself and making yourself more susceptible to corruption in the future, but also you're going in the wrong direction, my friend.
You've got to double back and it's going to take longer.
You know, you get that uneasy feeling when you're driving somewhere.
I mean, I get this in business meetings sometimes when I'm in the States or whatever.
I get this uneasy feeling like I'm driving somewhere.
I'm supposed to be somewhere. And I'm driving somewhere, and I get this weird feeling like, am I going east when I should be going west?
And I had this once in a meeting where a salesperson picked me up and was supposed to drive me to a meeting.
It was supposed to be 10 minutes from the hotel.
Right? So... So he dives into the car and we go to drive and we've left ourselves 20 minutes so we can park and get up and get set up and all that kind of stuff, right?
So we go down the road, we go down the road and where we're going is flying.
We're just cruising along, having a great chat and this and that.
But we notice that on the other side it's a total traffic jam, it's a total log jam, right?
Obviously this is where everybody gets in, comes into the city and we're heading out of the city at like quarter to nine in the morning.
So we're flying and what we get very nervous about, of course, is that If we're wrong, we're really, really, really, really screwed.
Right? Because, I mean, we're wrong even if we were going real slow and it was going fast the other way, we're still heading in the wrong direction.
But this is much worse.
Because now what's happening is we're going in the wrong direction for sure, so we're going to have to double back anyway, but there's a traffic jam coming the other way that's going like.2 miles an hour.
And we're flying along at 70.
So the unease that we feel about going in the wrong direction is pretty significant.
And that's what I want you to understand every time you're driving out to see your family or you're involved in any kind of relationship with anyone, which is based on guilt and obligation.
Not only are you going in the wrong direction, but it's going to be a heck of a lot slower coming back, right?
So every kilometer or mile that you put...
In this direction, in going for guilt and obligation and all these relationships that go nowhere and not pleasant, not happy, not rich, not inviting, all that kind of stuff, then you've got to turn around.
There's a traffic jam coming the other way because you've got a lot of unlearning to do, a lot of unprogramming, a lot of deprogramming to do.
So every time you give in to your false self, it's an enemy.
It's not your friend. It's not your friend.
Maybe it was trying to help you when you were eight.
It's not trying to help you now. And every time that you give in to your false self, and you cave, and you go over, and you spend time with these jerks, every time you do that, you're making it that much harder.
You're feeding the beast.
You're feeding the false self.
With the blood of your own life, with your own soul, with the white glory that is your own soul, you are throwing it down the red moor of the false self, of the devil.
So, that's very important to understand.
The stakes are pretty high.
This is not a moment-by-moment decision.
It's not like, oh, okay, well, I'll just go over one Sunday.
Right? This is toxic.
This is radioactive. This is a very difficult-to-navigate-back-one-way street.
Right? So, you bike, even if you take another metaphor, you're flying down the highway at 110 or 70 kilometers or 70 miles an hour.
Everybody's happy and hunky-dory.
You're cruising along. It's good stuff, right?
Right? But to come back, you've got a bicycle.
Down this way, the same way.
So you've got to fight traffic, it's going to be windy, there'll be trucks, right?
So every kilometer that you go in that direction, you've got to fight wind and traffic and trucks, biking back against traffic.
So it's not insignificant, these decisions that you're making, to go and see these people that you don't love.
Right? So, I'm not saying don't do it.
Do whatever the heck you want, right?
I mean, this is about freedom.
This is Free Domain Radio. We're about freedom here.
But just know what you're doing.
That's all I'm saying. Just understand the consequences of what you're doing.
Like, nobody's going to quit smoking if they don't know that it kills you.
Or can't. So, all I'm saying is that, yeah, smoke away.
But just know. Just know what you're doing.
That's all I'm really trying to get at here.
Just know what you're doing. Smoke away.
Know what you're doing. That you are enormously harming yourself.
By succumbing to this.
And the reason that I'm pointing that out is not because you're stupid.
Not because you don't know that you're seriously harming yourself.
That's not my contention.
It's just that in the absence of really understanding the negative consequences of what you're doing, you're going to forever be led to continue to do the same thing.
You have to hurt enough in order to change your behavior.
You have to recognize the consequences in order to change your behavior.
So, I'm just telling you of the consequences.
That's my major objective here.
I just tell you of the consequences.
This is what you're going to face.
This is what you're going to face.
And this is the harm that you're doing to yourself.
And I don't want you to experience that harm.
Because I care about you.
Sure, I care about you. But I care about the world.
And I want there to be a stateless society.
And I want the children to be raised well.
And I want there to be peace and harmony.
And I want a reduction of violence.
And... The best way to do that is to get you out of corrupt relationships.
It's the source of all violence, lack of integrity.
Or you could say, another way of putting it, the source of all violence is the I have to combined with the I can't.
The tension between when the unstoppable force hits the immovable object, that's the tension that usually is the cause of violence, right?
I must go to see my mother's.
I don't want to go and see my mother, right?
This is where people get testy and irritable and can get abusive.
So... I hope that that is a compelling enough reason for you to recognize what you're doing and recognize that life is short.
And you don't want to be heading in the wrong direction and have to turn back and fight traffic and fight the wind of the trucks and get blown over and smushed, perhaps.
So don't go down this road every time you take a step down there.
It's a slippery slope down and it's one hell of a clamp-on-based climb back up.
So don't go down.
Just don't go down. So...
The other thing that I would like to talk about then is let's just say that I've convinced you.
I've pulled the magic free will switch and you have been illuminated and now you're interested in pursuing this.
Well, what do you have to do?
Well, the first thing that I mentioned before, I'm going to talk to your family.
Be vulnerable, be open, and say, you know, I feel hurt when this happens.
Like, I've sort of given you the speech that I gave with my mom.
I'll just briefly go over it again.
Sort of something like, you know, things were pretty violent when I was growing up.
I was very scared a lot of the time, and I had to sort of pretend that I wasn't, and you were kind of beating on me, and my brother was kind of beating on me, and I just had this wretched, wretched time of it, and I don't think I was a bad kid at all, right?
I didn't... I didn't do anything really bad, but I got kind of pounded nonetheless.
And that was very hard for me and very painful.
And it's never really been addressed, right?
Everyone's just kind of moved on like it didn't happen.
And it did happen.
And I'm at a stage now in my life where I've got to kind of not pretend that the past isn't the past.
When I do that, I get all spacey and weird.
I have no rootedness.
I just feel like there's only dandelion seeds in the wind.
I got nothing, right? If you're dealing with brothers, you may not want to use the dandelion seeds metaphor because, you know, it could be helpful, right?
If they laugh and scorn at you for that, then that's a pretty strong indication of where they are as far as that goes.
So, yeah, you know, it's just something you might not want to do, but maybe it's a worthwhile thing to do anyway.
So you have that, and of course my mother was, wow, I don't remember that at all.
If you say it happened, I guess it did, but I don't remember it at all.
And if there's anything that I can do to make it easier, sure, I'd be happy to, right?
So, I mean, yes, Steph, you're insane, but I'm here to help.
It was not exactly the kind of validation and reality checking that I was really into.
So I didn't have any luck with that.
And I had the same conversation with my brother where I sort of said, you know, he's like, why don't you see mom?
You've got to go see mom. You're a bad son.
Good sons go see their mothers.
She loves you.
You're all she's got. She did so much for us.
All that sort of broken record bullshit that you get from people trying to justify their own addiction to corruption.
And I said, well, you know, my whole life this family's been telling me what to think and what to do, and every time I've tried to have an independent thought, or been interested in something that the family doesn't approve of, all that happens is that people think that I'm an idiot, right?
Like your opinion about myself with Ayn Rand, or philosophy as a whole, and my love of particular musical acts, and so on.
It was just like, it was embarrassing.
I was cringeworthy, right?
According to my brother's phrase, everything I did was cringeworthy and embarrassing, right?
So I said, you know, if you were in my position, would you feel that there was a real great value that this family was bringing to the table for me?
I understand that the family wants me to spend time with them.
It's sort of odd for me because nobody respects anything that I think or say.
But I understand that the family wants to.
And the reason that I think the family wants to spend time with me is to pretend that nothing bad happened.
There was no verbal or physical abuse that was going on.
So they just want to pretend that nothing happened because they don't want to deal with their guilt.
But I'm not here to manage other people's guilt.
If they do bad things, it's up to them to deal with their own goddamn guilt.
It's not my job to manage other people's emotions any more than it is my job to digest other people's food.
So, I said, how do you think this family shows up for me in terms of value?
You know, just out of curiosity, right?
How do you think I feel about how great this family has been to me?
It's an important question, I think.
Do you think this family brings me a great deal of joy and happiness and value?
And has historically, and so on.
And if they say, oh yeah, this family brings you enormous value, and they say, well, okay, what was it?
Well, we love you. It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, anyone can say that. I'm talking about practical things, like real things.
I want to bring up my ideas, what happens?
Everybody just kind of scorns them and mocks me.
Well, your ideas are kind of crazy.
It's like, I understand that you think that, but this is an example of how this family is not really bringing much value to me, because I really treasure and value these ideas which everyone thinks are stupid.
Sort of one example. And you don't approve of my lifestyle.
You think I should be living in some manner differently.
Well, the way you live is bad.
I understand that you feel that way.
Here's another example of how this family is not bringing a whole lot of value to the table for me because you're all just disapproving of me, right?
And they say, well, but you should change your behavior and be more like your brother, right?
It's like, I understand that you feel that way, but I do have a nature, right?
I am drawn to, say, these particular kinds of ideas, and I love to discuss them and think about them.
I can't pretend that that's not the case.
Like, do you want me to not be myself around you?
Do you want me to sort of pretend to be somebody else?
Would that make the relationship rich and invigorating and wonderful for you?
Well, no, we want you to be who you are, just different, right?
You get into this kind of nonsense.
And people say, well, you should be fundamentally different from who you are, and then I'm going to love and approve of you.
Well, if that's the case, you can also, I mean, logically, if the principle exists that if you just, say, weren't interested in philosophy, and then your family would love you, Then you're saying, okay, well, then if there's a disagreement about value, one person has to change in order to conform with the other person's preferences.
So I have to give up philosophy so that I can get along better with my family.
Yes, you should give up all this silliness.
Well, I understand that.
Now, let me understand why it's one way.
Can't we flip a coin, right, and then one day I give up philosophy, and then one day you give up your objection to my philosophy?
Because if it's a fundamental change that is perfectly admissible to demand within a relationship to make it more convenient for the other person, well, it would be a hell of a lot more convenient for me if you people appreciated and got into my love of philosophy.
So why is it the only I that have to change in order to conform to you?
Are you saying that I'm wrong or bad for being interested in philosophy and I should stop doing it because it's immoral?
No, it's just weird or weird or whatever.
But I think that your lack of interest in philosophy is kind of weird.
So you can just use the word weird to apply to any behavior that you would want different or want to be changed.
So I don't really go with that, as far as that goes.
That doesn't make any sense.
So there's no reason whatsoever why I should be the one who has to conform to everybody else, right?
If we allow that you should try and change your basic nature, conform to other people's expectations, then all you people have to do is to get into philosophy.
Well, maybe we'll try, maybe we'll try.
I say, well, no, I think I'll go a little further, right?
Because I'm 30 years old, let's say.
I'm 30 years old. So for 30 years, or let's just say 10 years, right?
Let's just say I came into it when I was 20.
So for the last 10 years, everybody's been mocking me about philosophy and not wanting to talk about philosophy and putting me down or ridiculing me or making fun of me or being indifferent to me whenever I bring up philosophy.
Strong disapproval in the air, let's just say.
So, let's see...
You guys would then owe me 10 years of being into philosophy, right?
Because if you now admit that it wasn't fair for just one person to change in the interaction, it wasn't fair for me to change because there's no one-way street here, right?
Otherwise, it's just blind conformity to other people.
It's not that I'm bad.
In which case, you owe me a huge apology for telling me that I'm bad for being interested in philosophy or there's something negative about being interested in philosophy or I'm weird or stupid or crazy or a troublemaker or something like that, right?
If you now admit that that's not the case...
That you were just asking for conformity, then you owe me a massive apology for calling me all these things when it was just a case that it made you uncomfortable.
And they say, okay, well, we apologize.
Let's just take every possibility.
Oh, we apologize, you're right.
It's like, great. Now, the way that that apology comes real to me is you guys are going to spend the next ten years talking about philosophy.
Because if you kind of made fun of me and told me I was wrong for being interested in philosophy, and now you're saying that that was completely unjust and wrong, then I appreciate that, and what I'm going to do is I'm going to say, great, now we can spend the next ten years talking about philosophy, and that's the way that you make it up for me.
Well, we don't want to do that, blah, blah, blah.
It's like, okay, so basically you guys are saying...
That you're just going to reject everything that I'm going to say and not provide me any kind of justice here.
You've defined me as weird or bad, or ungrateful, or a bad son, or a bad brother, or whatever.
You've just defined me as weird or bad.
And no matter what reasoning I bring to bear on the problem, you're just going to change it to redefine me as weird or bad.
And you then may apologize if I prove to you that that was unjust, but it doesn't really matter, because after you apologize, you simply go back to the way things were, calling me weird and bad, right?
So it's like punching someone in the face, and them saying, well, this is wrong, and you saying, sorry, and then going back to punching them in the face.
Well, it may be sort of thought by the person who's receiving the punching that...
The story might not have been as heartfelt or as honest and legitimately intended as it could have been.
Why? Because she's still punching.
So, I'm not saying that you're going to do it this calmly, but you need to be this persistent.
You need to be this persistent.
Any rule that they provide to you, right, using the argument for morality, any rule that they provide for you is something that should be reversible upon them, right?
If they're going to say that you should follow it because it's moral, then it has to be reversible, right?
Obviously, that is the case.
If it's not reversible, then you have kind of a significant problem.
Because then it's not an argument for morality, it's just conform to me because that's what I want.
But if conformity is an expectation in relationships, then that principle of conformity is also reversible.
So you just need to go and dig in and find out what the hell is going on with your relationship, with your family.
You really, really do need to figure this out.
This is absolutely essential.
To find out if you have any scope, if you have any weight in this relationship at all, absolutely crucial to figure this out.
Do you have any scope or weight in this relationship in any way, shape, or form?
Or is it simply the case that you are there for other people's convenience and basically as a big manhole cover to cover up the fires of hell called the past, right?
Which nobody wants to touch because you're hot, baby!
You're hot! And I would suspect the latter, but you can talk to your family and find out the former.
Now, what happens after this particular process, and you know, practice, practice, practice.
Really, really important.
Practice on the boards. You know, I'd be happy to run through it on a call-in show with you.
And if you want to call me, Skype me privately, we can do that too.
I would ask that I be allowed to record it for other people's benefit.
You can tell me that up front, and I may not do it if I can't record it, because I'm not trying to be anyone's therapist.
But if I can record it, the sort of role-playing, I'd be more than helpful.
Or maybe Christina and I could role-play it for you, just so You really need to practice this kind of stuff because you're going to be in an emotionally volatile situation and you're going to have a great difficulty holding on to your reason because as you start to get passionate you're going to start to get more angry and as you start to get more angry your family is going to start to close up and mock you and withdraw from you and call you crazy and then you're not going to get anywhere and then you're going to walk out feeling like you just got angry and they were reasonable so you must have the problem like all these defense mechanisms are going to occur for sure And,
you know, don't end up in that kind of situation, if you don't mind, right?
I mean, just don't do it.
So it's just, it would be bad for you.
So practice, practice, practice is the key in this kind of situation, right?
You're certainly probably not unaware of all the kind of defenses that go on in your family, so this is not going to be a completely unknown situation for you.
So let's just say you've gone through that process, and it's gone pretty much as I would expect, and as you probably anticipate, which is why you're afraid of doing it, and you've kind of got that your family doesn't give a rat's ass about you.
Your family could fundamentally give two shits about you and your perspective.
That you're simply there as a solve to their conscience.
You're simply there as a way for them to say, hey, I must have been a good parent.
Look, he keeps coming over for dinner.
Right?
You're just there as one of these little hand puppets that the narcissist loves to pretend that they are themselves.
It's a purely voluntary and beautiful relationship.
And that there's this hand puppet that they call their child who is there for their convenience to keep that myth alive.
Right?
So you figured that out.
Right?
Good for you.
I, you know, I'd give you a big hug if I could, but I'm kind of sweaty.
But, you know, big hug, all the love in the world raining down on you from the skies because it's an absolutely miserable and for a short time debilitating place to be.
But you will survive it.
You will survive this revelation.
Because really, you know, frankly, it's not a revelation.
You knew this all along.
This is not something that is a shock.
It may be a shock to your false self because it's designed to hide this kind of stuff from you.
But your true self is like, yeah, duh.
What the hell do you think I've been doing all this time trying to get this across to you, right?
So it's painful, but when you really look at it deep down, it's not really a shock.
It's not a shock at all. It's perfectly inevitable.
That this is how this is going to play out.
Your fear is your certainty.
You look back at your fear beforehand, and I think you can clearly and plainly see that this is, of course, inevitable, and you were frightened because you knew it was going to happen this way.
You weren't frightened of discovering something.
You were frightened of unearthing something that you already knew was buried.
You just kind of forgot. The treasure from hell, we call it.
So, let's just say you're back and write it out in your journal.
Talk about it on the board.
You know, talk about it with...
I mean, I hate to say friends because, you know, I tell you, they're probably all going to go as well, right?
And it's probably not going to work out for you that well in terms of friendship either.
But maybe you've got a new friend.
Who you can talk about with this stuff.
Keep it, Jonah. Write it down.
Read some books. Alice Miller's stuff is very good.
Some of the John Bradshaw stuff on family can be good.
I mean, just put aside the religious stuff.
But, you know, really dig into this.
It's going to be a bit of a lonely traverse, right?
So then the question is, well, what next?
Well, I'm a big fan of letters myself.
I'm a big fan of mail.
I don't like email because it's too quick for people to respond and they get all bitchy in email.
But I'm a big fan of letters for this kind of stuff.
So, what I and other people I know have done, and once you figure out that your family is not going to do anything beneficial to you or for you, they'll do a lot of stuff to you, but they won't do anything for you.
Once you figure that out, then I think it's perfectly legitimate, as I've talked about briefly before.
To send a letter and say, listen, guys, got to take a break from the family.
I got some stuff to work out at a personal level.
Family stuff I find is kind of painful.
What the indication for me was, just sort of by the by, is that when I was supposed to go and see my mom, I was simply unable to sleep.
And this was during a time of pretty significant insomnia for me.
I went on for about 18 months during this process.
It won't be that bad for you.
Won't be that bad for you. Because the ice has been broken already, right?
I was sort of plowing out there.
It felt like very much in solitude working this stuff out.
But it's not so bad if you've got people to talk to and you know you're on the right path.
I was really flailing around trying to find the softest spot of the ice.
I got myself cut up pretty bad.
But I would say that it's not going to be that bad for you.
But when I had 18 months of insomnia during this process...
Of getting rid of family and existing friends, looking for better and more honest and clear and valued relationships.
Well, I found that when I was going to see my mom, I didn't sleep at all.
So what I did was I got up and I got in the car at 6 o'clock in the morning, exhausted and depressed and scared and a wreck.
And I wrote out a note and I said, I need to take some time off from this family.
I need to not see anybody for a little while.
I got some heavy stuff to work on and family stuff's not helping.
Some of it's about family, some of it's about not, but I definitely need to take a break.
Best of luck. You know, all the best or whatever, right?
And I went out and I put it in her mailbox and I just didn't see her.
Now, my mom's not so big on checking the mail, right?
Because the insurance companies, I'm sure, in her mind put letter bombs there.
So I don't know when she read it or when she didn't read it or what happened, right?
but I just didn't hear from her.
She called once, I think, and had a very short conversation with her.
Didn't mention the letter, just kind of got it.
I said, oh, I got another call coming in, but I'll talk to you later.
Let go.
And at some point, right, I mean, she must have read it, and what are they going to say?
They're going to call you up and say, well, you should want to see your family.
It's like, well, the problem is I don't want to see my family right now.
I need to take a break.
I need you to respect.
You can start to use their language if they really push it.
I don't think they will.
Well, I've never heard of a single instance of a family pushing it when you send this kind of letter.
They don't push it because they know exactly what's going on.
And they know that if you're strong enough to do this, then you're strong enough that if they push you, then you're going to tell them exactly what's what.
And that's going to really screw them up.
So once you're brave enough and strong enough and secure enough to be able to take the step of taking a break from your family, they're not going to push you.
They're not going to push you, because you hold the ultimate weapon.
I know you feel scared. I know you feel alone.
I know you feel weak. I know you feel uncertain, but you have the ultimate weapon.
You have the truth.
And they'll do anything, anything, to avoid hearing that.
They will pretend that you never existed, rather than face the truth of their own actions in the past and in the present.
Right? So you have the ultimate power here.
See, they need you.
You don't need them.
Sorry, just possessed by Shatner for a moment there.
But it's very true. It's a fundamental fact.
There's a fundamental strength in your relationship.
And it's what gives you strength in this kind of disassociation, right?
This defooing family of origin.
You don't need them.
They do need you.
You might want to re-read out of Shrugged if you haven't read it in a while because this is just what she talks about politically applied to the family, right?
You don't need them. Once you get that you're not getting a net positive from your family, but they're getting an enormous net positive from you, I think it's fairly clear to understand that you don't really need them at all, and that they need you.
So of course they're going to be kicking and screaming, right?
Of course they don't want you to figure out that you don't need them.
Of course they're going to kick and scream. I understand all of that.
But still, that's got nothing to do with changing the basic fact of the matter, which is, you know, the aforementioned...
You don't need them, but they do need you.
And we'll sort of go one step forward in just a sec.
I just have to stop past Best Buy.
So, the last thing that's important to talk about in this, I think, just to understand the situation in real depth, is that it's not just the case that you don't need them, but they need you.
You don't want them.
Right? There's a difference between not needing something and not wanting it.
Right? I don't need a second mp3 player, but if someone gives it to me, I'll stick it around in case this one ever busts.
Right? So, not needing something is very different.
Not wanting something is quite a different thing entirely.
Right? So, I don't need a second mp3 player, I don't need another car, I don't need another computer, but, you know, I wouldn't say no if somebody gave it to me.
But not wanting something is quite a bit different.
I don't want anthrax, right?
I don't want a llama, because that's going to be quite a bit of effort to feed and care for and do whatever you do with llamas, right?
So, not only do you not need your family, but you don't want your family.
There is a very, very wide disparity, the widest possible disparity in value propositions from either side.
They desperately need your sanction to pretend that they were good people.
Because it's a hell of a lot easier to just bully people and then trick them or guilt them or bully them again later into hanging out with you like you were some kind of great guy or great woman, great husband or great father.
That's a lot easier.
In the same way that stealing for a living is a whole lot easier than going to work.
And so they desperately need you to pretend that all of those horrible decisions that they made back in the fogs of history that can never be reclaimed or changed were fine.
So there is a huge net positive.
To your parents or your siblings or whoever's been corrupt and mean to you in your past, a huge net positive, desperate, massive, titanic, cataclysmic net positive to have you around.
It forgives the entire past.
It erases all corruption.
It makes them great people when they never had to really work to become those great people.
Quite the opposite, in fact.
They actively avoid it.
They became bad people.
So, a huge net positive for you.
For them to have you around.
A huge net negative for you to be around them.
You tell me a wider disparity in relationships and I'll be fascinated to hear about it.
But that's the situation that you're faced with.
Of course they're going to guilt you.
Of course they're going to pressure you.
It's absolutely inevitable. One could almost say determined.
But one won't. But given the disparity in needs and desires, of course, they're going to do everything in their power to make you want to see them, and to make it your fault if you don't want to see them.
How could it be their fault?
They're good people! But if you don't want to see them, and you're a good person, it's because they're bad people!
Because most of the world is bad people!
People? Right?
I mean, the world isn't where it is because it's full of lightness and goodness.
There are bombs raining down in Lebanon because the world is full of lightness and goodness.
You don't have Muslim children rocking back and forth like semi-artistic broken spirits, well, like, not like, because the world is full of good people.
You don't have constant guilt, corruption, manipulation, physical and verbal abuse within families because the world is full of sweetness and light.
No, of course not. So most people are bad people.
I hate to say it, and it's not something that I feel real good about, but it's also not up to me to define it.
It's not up to me to observe it.
It just is. The world is full of bad people and power corrupts, and we don't have a strong methodology for sorting all this stuff out.
We're working on it. Thinking that your parents are moral is kind of like thinking that somebody in the Middle Ages can be an effective scientist.
The knowledge does not exist yet.
It is not propagated. We're trying to do our best here, but the knowledge is not out there yet.
The knowledge is innate to human beings, which is why the argument for morality is always used by parents.
So your parents are still responsible.
We're hoping to make the job of parenting easier.
We're hoping to make the job of having power easier and more beneficial and more productive and more positive.
But everybody's still responsible because everybody's still using the argument for morality all the time.
Your parents may not have very effective ways of figuring out how to behave better, and maybe they never did, but they certainly knew exactly what to do to bully you, right?
And they certainly continue to make that choice now, right?
So they're actively avoiding knowledge.
Actively avoiding knowledge makes you complicit.
Actively avoiding knowledge makes you complicit in the wrongs that you're committing.
It makes you responsible. So if I'm supposed to be a doctor but I actively avoid knowledge and then end up killing a patient because I actively avoided that knowledge, then I can't say, well, I didn't know.
So, I mean, if you're a parent and you actively avoid knowledge by acting out bad things towards your children, then you can't say, I mean, you can, but who cares, right?
Oh, I didn't know. Knowledge has been out there for quite a while about how to be a decent parent.
We're certainly aiming to refine it in a little bit more reproducible fashion here, a little bit more universal fashion here.
But your parents still are completely responsible.
So, I hope that this is helpful.
Please send me a donation.
I'm running a little low, except if you've sent stuff before.
I'm kind of looking for new blood. I know we're getting a couple of hundred new listeners a month, so it's now time for you to pony up, I think, because if you've come this far, you must be getting a good deal of value, and I think what we have to offer here is quite unique.
So do the right thing and spend some money.
It will make it a lot easier for you to confront your parents if you're acting with integrity in your life in general.
So I hope that this is helpful.
I look forward to your feedback, listener feedback at freedomainradio.com.
Participation in the board is always welcome.
I did move the Free Will vs.
Determinism threads to a new forum.
It just seemed to make sense because, as I mentioned online, a beast that big needs its own cage.
Thank you so much for listening.
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