All Episodes
Previous Next
Sept. 26, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
39:41
430 Invisible Snipers And Fighting In Cars

A listener deals with relationship road rage

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Good morning, everybody. Hope you're doing well.
It's Steph. I'm trying a new thing at work today.
I'm heading to work for...
I'm trying to leave at quarter to nine and take the public highway straight across, which is the fastest route, in the hopes that it will be a little less busy.
So, we'll see how that goes.
I unfortunately lost a podcast last night.
Happens on occasion.
It was because I assumed, which as everyone who's ever been in the Marines know makes an ass out of you and me, I assumed that because the computer was plugged into the power outlet, was plugged into the cigarette lighter, and the...
The webcam was plugged into the computer, and the headset, the USB headset, was plugged into the computer, and everything was fine, but unfortunately the power cord had come loose from the back of the computer, and when that happens...
I do a tasty little podcast and then at about half an hour the computer goes into hibernation mode while recording in Windows Movie Maker and sadly then all hope is lost and all data.
In fact, it's really quite remarkable.
I don't know what Windows Media Player does With all that data.
I mean, these movies are 600 or 700 megs in size before I compress them to the YouTube standards.
And it's really amazing.
I can't keep them in memory.
It's only got a gig on the notebook.
And I really don't know what it does with all of this data because, boy, when it goes, there's no temp files you can recover them from or anything like that.
So it's obviously using Bill Gates' Magic Ether Universe to store the data, which is where a good number of my Word documents occasionally seems to go.
But we'll do a recap of the podcast.
You could, of course, as we sometimes do think with Take Two, that we might be a little bit more concise, and I think that will be the case.
But, of course, my concision, to make up a word, depends very much on the traffic flow, as you probably know.
So, we may be concise, we may not be, but it's amazing to me that I can get to work in 28 minutes.
I'll get back from work in 28 minutes when I'm not in rush hour, but we'll see what happens this morning.
If I can sort of leave at quarter to nine and get to work at 9.30, that's no problem because I usually have to stay...
I mean, I enjoy what I do, so that's not an issue, but I will often have to stay late because Christina's seeing patients in the home and they get all fussed when I come in and...
Hang around. Anyway, so what we were chatting about yesterday was I had an IM conversation with a fine young gentleman who was talking to me about his short temper.
And I thought it was a frank and universal enough discussion that it may be worthwhile to you.
And I will talk about a time, actually fairly recently, where I was a tad short with Christina.
So that we can sort of place this in context.
I have a new Zen Vision M, which is a great media player, certainly better than the iPod, according to the research and the sort of test driving that I did.
But when I got that...
I had an old Zen Vision extra 30 gig sort of monochrome LCD screen player, which I've now turned over to Christina.
And you know when you have a piece of music or something or a hobby or a habit that you just really, really love, and you want to share it with someone?
I don't know if you're like me, but I really want, like, with almost a grim desperation, I really, really want...
The person that I care about to get what I love about a certain thing.
So if I'm really into a piece of music, I'll play it to someone I care about, and I yearn for them, I burn for them to really enjoy it.
They don't have to love it to the same degree that I do.
But I would, I at least want them to understand why I love it.
And it's a strong feeling in me.
It was certainly stronger when I was younger.
But you just want someone to, if you love some obscure song, you'll play it for someone and you really want them to get it, right?
You're going to play them like, I don't know, like We Are The Champions and say, isn't that a great song?
Because they've heard it a million times already and they already have an opinion.
But you can play them something else, and that will be something that you can hope that they will really love in the way that you really love it.
That, Christina has inherited this Zen Vision M. Now, I love audiobooks, I love music, I love all things Audible.
And a great site, by the way, if you want audiobooks, audible.com.
But I have given her this, and I really want her to get into it.
I really want to, because she likes music and so on.
She hasn't listened to too many of her CDs, because we've had mostly things run from the computer.
As far as audio goes in the last couple of years.
And so we haven't really...
She hasn't really had much access to her music.
So I've put all her music on it.
I've set it up for her. I've put the volume leveling on.
We bought her an FM adapter for her car so she can play it through her stereo and all these kinds of good things.
And... So, I really want her to, and I've put, you know, Dr.
Phil audiobooks and all this kind of stuff on it for her, and I really want her to, I keep reminding her, you know, hey, you went to the mall, did you take your MP3 player?
You know, just kind of want her to get into it.
And so she was in the car the other day, we were driving somewhere, and I was trying to get her to, you know, do things, right, with the player, right, you know, search by artist, search by this, right, because I wanted to, you know, I said, ooh, let's listen to this song, you know, just so she's on a whim, she thinks like, feels like listening to a song, there are thousands of songs on there, she can listen to them and enjoy them.
And she was having trouble with the controls.
It's a click wheel and a menu system and so on.
It's not bad, but not great.
And I was like, click on the now playing.
Click on the now playing!
And I got kind of short with her.
And of course, I apologized profusely.
I think it was later that same day or early the next day when I sort of thought back at it.
And I thought, gee, that was... That was a little counterproductive, wasn't it?
I mean, I really want Christina to enjoy this.
And the reason that I got short with her was because I so much wanted her to enjoy this mp3 player that whenever she found something confusing or frustrating, I got upset because I thought that it might interfere With her enjoying the use of this MP3 player.
I mean, talk about deranged, right?
I mean, this is how irrational defenses work in life.
In fact, I so desperately want Christina to enjoy her MP3 player that I'm going to be snappy with her when she has...
Like, I'm going to raise her stress level when she's trying to figure something out.
And that's going to really help her enjoy this MP3 player.
I mean, it's madness.
It's complete madness. And so, that's sort of an example that I'll give about, that I was short with Christina, and I'll give you sort of an example that I sort of meant to mention yesterday, but I think it's worth giving an example.
That we went to...
Christina took me to a hotel downtown for my birthday.
And we had massages and facials.
We were supposed to have massages and facials on Sunday.
They got postponed because the masseuse was sick.
But when we were in the hotel room...
Christina, a wonderful woman that she is, she packed everything, she got everything ready for us, and she took the whole responsibility for that stuff because, of course, I pack like I'm doing laundry and often will take things that should be in the laundry on vacation in a burlap sack tied up with some food and crackers thrown in for good measure.
Whereas Christina, you know, as a glorious example of femininity, will pack everything nicely and folded and neat and you sort of say...
Like somebody says to me, where's X? When I've packed it, I'm like, I don't know, let's just dump the whole damn thing on the floor and stuff it back in when we're done.
But of course, with Christina, it's like...
It's like the Terminator.
It zeroes in on exactly where it is.
You know, vector 223 by 422 in the large bag.
Heh. You'll need to go down three layers.
She's really just quite amazing that way.
So she packed everything, and we were in the hotel room.
And she says, oh, I forgot to pack your razor.
But you don't need to shave.
It's the weekend. And I said, well, but I'm getting a facial.
Right? And then she said, oh, I assume that they're going to shave you anyway.
I assume that they're going to shave you.
And I just knew that wasn't true.
And it's because Christina, like most of us, was heavily criticized for being, quote, sort of unprepared, which we'll get into in the conversation this morning, when she was a child.
What happened was, in her own mind, she felt, or she thought, that if she didn't pack the razor, which I really, really need...
Because I'm getting a facial and they can't give me a facial if I've got stubble, then she's going to be open to being criticized.
Right? So I'm going to say, oh, so you packed me?
I'm not going to. I mean, I never do this.
The worst I ever do is snap at her when I'm trying to get her to enjoy something and then apologize profusely for it afterwards.
But, you know, in her mind's eye, she hears like, well, that was rather careless, wasn't it?
Well, how am I supposed to get a facial if I don't have my razor and I can't shave?
Right? All of these kinds of unanswerable, rhetorical, jerky kind of questions.
So... So what happened was, she simply, and this is an automatic response that comes from childhood, and she's working on it and she's very good at doing this kind of work, so these are pretty minimal and rare.
But when she has made a mistake, like she didn't pack my razor, and it's supposed to be my birthday weekend, and I'm getting a facial, and she forgot about it too, right?
Because we were actually walking out and about and passed by a store where I could have bought a razor on Saturday.
This was on Sunday. So if she'd said, oh, by the way, didn't pack your razor, let's go get you a razor, it's like, great, thank you.
But she'd forgotten about it and so on.
So not only had she forgotten to pack the razor, not only had she not made the connection about me not having the razor and me getting a facial.
But, see, when you talk about mastery, as I did in the last podcast, it's very important to talk about manly facials.
Don't worry, it was called the executive CEO facial, right?
So it's very different. I think it's, you know, it's with hot rocks.
So it's very different.
But, so she did all that, and then she forgot to tell me, and then when I sort of said, but I'm getting a facial, and I made that connection for her, she then zipped, you know, and this happens automatically, right?
Until you continue to work on this stuff.
She zipped all the way back to her own history, to her own past.
And in that process, She then felt, oh my god, I am now seven years old and I've forgotten something that I'm supposed to bring that my mother reminded me to three times and what's going to happen to me now?
Well, of course, in her family what would happen is she'd be very heavily criticized and probably humiliated at the same time for good measure.
So... So that's how Christina's history worked.
And so then when she was in the hotel room and I said, well, I need this.
I'm going to get a facial. She said, oh, I assumed, right?
So she had a defense, right?
So if they say, well, why didn't you bring it?
It's like, oh, well, I forgot to pack it, but then I thought about it, but then I thought, oh, you're going to get a shave, so it doesn't matter.
So she had a defensive position, so she couldn't be criticized.
And this sort of automatic move to manufacture a defensive position is very common when you've gone through heavily critiqued childhoods, right?
This is an important thing to understand.
When you're in these kinds of situations where you've had a heavily critiqued childhood, You are in this mode where you'll just sort of...
And I've done it myself countless times.
A story will come to you that can't really be penetrated, right?
That you can be attacked for it, but it's like someone's going to get mad at you.
Like, where the hell's my razor?
And you'll be like, but I thought you were going to get shaved.
Why are you getting so upset?
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So, in these kinds of situations or circumstances...
You could end up with a big conflict, right?
But of course, I was just like, okay, well, when we're out, we'll get a razor.
And then later I said, you know, this bit, this moment felt kind of like not right for me.
Like it felt kind of false.
And I think what was going on was, you know, how did you feel when I made the connection between you not having the razor and me getting the facial?
And she's like, you know, I suddenly felt guilty and then I felt like a little nervous and so on.
And not because I attack or anything, but...
Because of her history and so on, right?
So the conversation that I was having with this gentleman yesterday on the instant messaging was he was talking about his own shortness of temper with, believe it or not, he actually, he and his girlfriend have fights in the car.
I know, I had to sort of write it down because I've never heard of couples having a fight in a car because Of course, a car is not a metaphor for control or direction or teamwork or anything like that, so couples never feel tense about cars or sex or money or anything like that.
Boy, next thing you know, somebody's going to be telling me that they're having conflicts with their wife or husband about housework and child raising.
You never know. You just never know where these things might occur.
Unpredictable, but yet strangely massively predictable.
So... This was the typical sort of situation that you see between couples in a car.
The man is driving, and the woman is giving directions, and the man is coming up.
They're coming up to a turn-off, and they're lost, and they're late, and there's lots of stress and tension, and, you know, it really is like a...
He's like a surgeon holding a heart in his hands, waiting for the next heart, right?
Which is supposedly coming, but somebody stopped off for a smoke, and it's like life and death to that degree, right?
That's what it feels like.
And many women don't actually understand this, but men...
Because we have peculiar powers, like women have women's intuition, which is wonderful and great, which is why you never lie to a woman, because you'll never make it.
But men, we have a kind of sensory perception that women don't have, and we realize that the world, especially the highway, is heavily populated with invisible snipers.
And these invisible snipers take a bead on any couple that does a turnaround in a foreign city, like in a city you're not familiar with.
So if you miss your turnoff, what they do is they use their walkie-talkies, they radio head to the next guy, who will then, sadly, shoot everyone in the car.
So when we're asking for the turnoff and you don't know where it is, the reason that we're so tense about it is it literally is a life-or-death situation, and not many women understand this.
We can only be thankful that the men can, in a subtle and nearly invisible manner, dodge the invisible bullets as they pass by on the next turnoff.
So that's why we're so tense, just so you understand it is life or death, and it's not at all An immature overreaction, really.
But this typical situation is very common, and what happens is this gentleman is, what he's got is he's got a moral absolute, right?
And we'll get into sort of why he has this, but he has a moral absolute.
You know, I have made a personal commitment to be there by eight.
It is now quarter to eight.
We're still pretty far away, and we're lost.
So, he's got an absolute, I have a personal moral commitment to be there by 8 o'clock.
And he has a variable which he cannot control called, I don't know how to get there.
So, these two things, the unstoppable force meeting the immovable object.
So, you've hung your entire moral character on getting somewhere by 8 o'clock, but you're lost.
And I'll sort of put this out there as a pretty important principle to work by in life.
Don't hang your entire moral character on things that are outside of your control.
Don't do that.
That is going to really put a lot of wear and tear on your system.
You're going to be in this constant fight or flight.
You're going to overreact. Your entire moral character depends on things like standing up for what you believe in.
It depends on things like not killing people, not stealing, not raping, not living by your word and all this kind of stuff.
For things that are within your control.
And of course, which we'll talk about a little bit more, your entire moral character is a lot more to be judged by how you treat those you claim to love than any other single damn thing in the universe.
Right? This is a very, very important thing to understand.
Your moral character is much more to be judged than any other single thing by how you treat those you claim to love.
So, that you have some control over.
You don't have any control over whether you get lost.
Nobody aims for it, it just happens.
You don't have any control over the quality of the road signs, the readability of the map, or whether your girlfriend who's running the map happens to glance at the correct intersection and everything gets illuminated for her.
You have no control over that.
But I can certainly guarantee you that getting upset with your girlfriend in these situations is never going to get you there on time.
And of course, you're going to get there eventually stressed and upset and incapable of having a positive social experience.
somebody's inviting you over for dinner, if you've just spent the last hour driving around and yelling at your girlfriend, I'm not saying he did, but if you did, then you're not going to be fit company at all, right?
Because you're going to be all wound up and tense and stressed and detached and your girlfriend and you are not going to be close.
And, you know, one of the things that you give up in a relationship is an independent emotional existence.
And you can't be good company when you've just spent the last hour fighting with your girlfriend and then you get to fight all the way home.
And the whole thing is a complete sham, right?
Your commitment to a social engagement is to show up ready to be social and engaged and happy and contented, right?
And To be there on time is completely inconsequential.
I mean, let me tell you something about being on time.
It is one of these asshole standards that's out there in the world.
It's not force.
It's not fraud. It's not violence.
It's not betrayal.
As far as a moral thing goes, it's almost inconsequential.
I would put it much more in the realm of aesthetics.
To me, somebody who's late a lot is morally akin to somebody who...
Maybe who turns the bass up too loud in his car as he's driving past.
Or one of those jerky Harley guys who takes the muffler off.
And maybe somebody who decorates his apartment really badly.
Or dresses inappropriately.
It's around that level of standard and deviation from it.
Because what harm does it do to me if somebody's late?
I mean, if I'm waiting on a rainy street corner and it's cold and they're supposed to be there and they're late, sure, I'm going to get mad.
And if they keep doing it, I'm going to stop meeting them.
But what the hell harm does it really do me?
They're not taking anything from me other than a little bit of time and a couple of degrees of body temperature.
But late is just one of these things that asshole parents will continually get angry about with their children, which is why you end up with these kinds of situations.
Because, you know, if you're supposed to be someplace by eight, and it's a fair ways away, and you leave yourself some good time, then what happens is...
You aim to be there by 8 and you leave some decent time.
Of course, if you leave 3 hours beforehand, I guarantee you you're going to get there.
But I also guarantee you're going to get there probably an hour to an hour and a half early.
At the best, right?
You may be 2 hours early.
And if you've ever been running a dinner party and had someone show up 2 hours early, you'll know that you'd rather them show up half an hour late than 2 hours early.
You've got to entertain them, find something for them to do, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
So, being late is just one of these balance games in life.
Being early, being late. Being early is rude.
Being late is rude. I mean, even if you're going to call it rude.
But it's just one of these things you leave a reasonable amount of time and you sort of let fate take you where it takes you.
The time that you leave is under your control, but what happens after that, traffic or weather or...
Construction or accidents or, you know, you get lost or you realize you've forgotten something.
All of that stuff's outside of your control and to hang your moral character on it is really deranged and way too stressful.
And this is not to say that I'm not susceptible.
This is just the kind of stuff that's important to remember when you're in those kinds of situations.
So, the interesting thing about, of course, so I asked this guy who gets very tense when he believes that he's going to be late.
I asked this guy and I said, well, it seems to me then it must be the case that you were heavily criticized as a child and probably in just this area.
And after a bit of back and forth, he did say, well, yeah, my dad was highly, highly anal, I think, to the point of obsessive compulsive disorder about this issue of being late.
And so, of course, his dad, when this guy is a kid, and kids, you know, kids like a schedule, kids are really bad at being on time.
I mean, everybody who has kids knows it's like herding cats or pushing string.
I mean, it's almost impossible to, if you've got an agenda called get the kids out by 7.30 in the morning, you are really going to have a tough time with them.
Unless you find some way to get them engaged in the whole process of getting them out.
I mean, if you can get that done, then fantastic.
You are going to have a happy morning.
But if it's a school they don't want to go to, and they've got a computer in their room, and they're going to be late, and they're going to be whatever, and you're going to get stressed.
It's just a game that kids play when there's a lack of structure, and it's a way of them acting out their passive aggression for not being involved in family decisions, right?
Like, where do I go to school, and what am I learning, and so on.
So, the question, then, around lateness and aesthetics comes down to this, right?
I call it the asshole crowbar.
You can sort of call it whatever you want.
The asshole crowbar is an entirely false standard that is used to pry compliance, or basically pry independence and self-esteem off a child, the way that you use sort of one of those things to pry the lid off a paint, right? And it uses, as we've talked about before, a universal argument for morality that is entirely non-reciprocal.
So, I'll give you a possible short scenario about how this might work in the real world.
So, in the real world, it might work this way.
Sorry, that was kind of redundant.
And so was that, and that.
Anyway, let's stop that. So, in the real world, I am your dad, and I'm saying to you as a child, you know, Bobby, we have to go!
Get your socks together!
Get your jacket, put down the Game Boy, and let's go!
And, of course, this comes across to you like a ton of bricks, and you get scared, and you get flustered, and you get nervous.
And, I mean, assuming that I'm a dad who's not just sort of an empty threat kind of dad, in which case you're going to kind of roll your eyes.
But either way, you're not going to comply, or you're going to comply in a sort of awkward way.
But in this kind of environment, there's a lot of stress for the child, right?
Maybe the child's left things too late.
They've been distracted. Like, children have a real problem focusing, right?
It's not OCD. I think that's nonsense.
Sorry, it's not ADHD. I think that's nonsense.
But they do have a tough time.
With this whole keeping their focus and so on, right?
They'll literally will, if they're anything like me, when I was a kid, and my brother and so on, they'll forget, right?
You know, we've got to go in 10 minutes, yeah.
Off it goes into the ether world of kid forgetfulness, right?
Basically, children are like Alzheimer's patients, just, you know, hopefully they're moving in the other direction as far as cognitive capacity goes, but...
For sure, you don't want to make the mistake of thinking that kids are like adults and will remember what you say, right?
I mean, this is my repetition and all this kind of stuff is important.
So, I'm getting progressively more and more angry, right?
And then, let's just say, I finally get you into the car, you know, flustered and half-crying and upset and this and that and the other.
And then I turn to you and I give you a long lecture and I say, you know, we made a commitment as a family To be there by 8 o'clock.
I asked you at 6.30 to get ready.
I asked you again at 6.45 to get ready.
I asked you again at 7 to get ready.
And what did you do?
You played with your Game Boy.
You logged onto the computer.
You watched a little bit of television.
Now, I don't want to be the heavy dad here.
I don't want to be the guy who just yells at you, who drags you by the collar off the couch and makes you get ready.
I can't leave you at home.
Mom's not home. I can't leave you at home.
You have to come with me. I make a commitment that we're going to be there at 8 o'clock.
I give you plenty of warning.
And still you just won't do it.
And I don't know what to do. It is incredibly rude.
When people have taken the trouble of inviting us out, it is incredibly rude for us to show up late.
It is incredibly disrespectful to the people who've taken all of this effort to invite us somewhere, to make a meal for us, to want to enjoy our company.
And I don't ask you for the world, but I'm just asking you for one thing, which is to get ready at a reasonable time so that we can get ready.
Where we need to get to.
Because if you were to say to me earlier, Dad, I don't want to go, I'd say, great, let's not go.
But you said, great, let's go.
So then we go. Now we're running incredibly late.
We're going to be unbelievably late.
I'm going to have to spend the first 20 minutes apologizing.
It's incredibly disrespectful and rude for me to do this.
And I can't control you, obviously.
So this is where I am, right?
So this kind of stuff.
We've all had these kinds of lectures from people in authority.
Now, the reason that this is the asshole crowbar is quite simple.
What I'm doing is saying that the problem is that it is rude and humiliating for the other people or for the dad or whatever, that it's rude and disrespectful and disorganized and blah blah blah blah blah, dis that and the other, for us to be late When we are on our way somewhere.
This is a very bad thing.
But the interesting thing for me is that if it is, in fact, disrespectful, rude, and bad to be late, Sorry.
If it is disrespectful, rude, and bad...
If it is disrespectful, rude, and bad to be late...
Boy, this was something I'd edit if I was only doing audio, but hey, let's just keep plowing on.
Let me start again. Hi, everybody.
It's Stefan. It's... Anyway.
If it is bad to be late because that implies it's disrespectful and it's rude and it's all these sorts of things, then obviously, right, you use the argument for morality to understand this in a comprehensive and universal way.
So what you always do when you're given a moral argument is you extract the principle and you reverse it, right?
This is just pure Socratic reasoning over and over again.
You extract the principle and you reverse it to see if it holds, right?
This is standard scientific theory stuff.
And so, With this thing, obviously the principle is that it's really bad to be rude and disrespectful.
It's really bad to be rude and disrespectful.
Now, let's reverse that in this interaction and then you can understand why I call this the asshole crowbar.
You may not agree with me, but at least you can understand my reasoning.
If you are going to verbally humiliate a child, If you are going to be rude and disrespectful towards a child, you might not want to be pulling out the whole club of how bad it is to be rude and disrespectful.
If you say to a child, I must be rude and disrespectful to you because being rude and disrespectful is so bad, That I have to be snarky and bitchy and contemptuous and disrespectful and rude to you.
Because the worse the offense, right, and the parents who give these kinds of lectures, it's a pretty offensive speech.
Can you imagine giving that to your wife or your husband or your boss?
Can you imagine giving it to your boss if your boss shows up late and is flustered and had things to do?
Can you imagine giving your boss that kind of lecture if you're driving him to the airport or something?
Of course not! We wouldn't talk like that!
Can you imagine if the judge is late and you're in court and the judge is late, can you imagine giving the judge that kind of speech?
Of course not! Or the cop?
Some cop if you got some appointment?
Nonsense. We wouldn't do it.
So, what actually happens is that we are acting in a rude and disrespectful manner.
We're not curious. We're not sitting there talking to the kid and saying, I'm upset, don't get me wrong, I'm upset, but I want to sort of understand what happened for you.
Do you not want to go? Did you forget?
How can we work together to make this easier for us?
I don't want to get mad at you because that's not right.
I mean, I'm the parent here.
I'm supposed to be in charge. I have all the authority in the world, so getting mad is a bit of overkill.
But we kind of need to put our heads together and try and solve this problem because I don't want to get mad at you.
But at the same time, when we have a commitment, I kind of prefer being there on time.
Like you like it when your TV show starts on time rather than just, you know, whenever they feel like doing it.
So we kind of do need to get together on this in terms of being on time together.
But at the same time, I don't want to be a bully or angry or any of that sort of nonsense, right?
Because that's not how we want us to work as a sort of team, as a family.
So, we kind of need to find a way to work this out, and we will be able to find a way to work this out, but, you know, let's put our heads together and figure it out, right?
I mean, what's the way that will work for you that we get someplace on time?
And, you know, just get the kid to be part of the solution, right?
Come down like a ton of bricks and humiliate and bully and call bad and disrespectful and, oh, God, just what a load of crap that is, right?
Because the more angry you are at the child being disrespectful, the less you should be disrespectful because you're saying disrespectful is bad, right?
So anyway, I mean, I'm sure you kind of get the idea.
Because what's really going on is that the father can't handle criticism.
The father can't handle showing up late and having somebody criticize him for being late.
I mean, that's just, that's absolutely what's happening.
And this is how the cycle of abuse perpetuates itself across families, right?
So the father is heavily criticized for being late.
And then what happens is the father feels this upcoming humiliation and so on.
And then feels a panic, feels terror, and in order to manage his feelings, he gets angry because he's afraid of people being angry at him.
So in order to manage his feelings, he ends up bullying and being angry at his child, right?
So this is how he reasserts his power.
This is how he manages his own fear and his own history of being bullied and so on, right?
I mean, this is not brain surgery, right?
This is all perfectly natural stuff that goes on.
And what happens then is that the child then complies, and the reason that this gentleman still exhibits this behavior is that he's still couching it in moral terms, this guy I was chatting with on the IM. So this guy is still saying, well, the being...
Being late is morally bad.
It's wrong. It's disrespectful.
It's rude. It's inconsiderate.
It's disorganized.
It's, you know, I'm going to be bullied and criticized for it because that was his memory.
Now, of course, when this happens to us when we're children, we do get bullied and we do get controlled.
And we do get the argument for morality.
We get clubbed into submission with the argument for morality, as I talked about in the humiliation podcast.
And what happens then is we make it moral.
We make it a moral thing. We make it a moral argument.
And once we make it a moral argument, we're doomed to repeat it, right?
As I say, the moral argument is the most powerful thing in the world.
Our desire to be good is the most powerful thing in the world.
And it's so often cloaked in a fear of being criticized, right?
Because whatever we, you know, if somebody gets really mad at me for being half an hour late, if somebody was really rude to me about it, like if I'm going to a dinner party, I just turn around and go home.
I just say, hey, I got lost.
I'm sorry, but obviously we can't have a productive and pleasant dinner party if you're this mad at me being late.
I left a decent amount of time.
I got lost.
Sorry about that, but obviously we're not going to have a dinner party now because I'm not going to enjoy your company, and it sure doesn't sound like you're going to enjoy mine.
So, when you're in that kind of situation or circumstance, you just turn around and go home.
And then I would never actually invite a dinner party invitation from that person again.
Because I'd say if they called me up and even if they apologized, I'd say, you know, you really...
I appreciate that, but let me tell you this.
You really need to get some therapy because you're making life pretty stressful for everyone else, right?
And that's not healthy. And, you know, all sympathies for what occurred for you in the past, but this is not how you want to manage things in your life.
I can guarantee you that.
So... What happens is the child is humiliated for these stupid, inconsequential things like being late, and then...
One sec, sorry, let me just check.
How long did it take me to get to work?
36 minutes, not too bad.
And then what happens is the child ends up cleaving to this moral definition, right, in order to avoid looking at his dad as a frightened, bullying jerk, right?
Then you say, oh, well, I guess it is really bad to be late, and it is really rude to be late, and then you get this whole complicated mess of things like rudeness, sorry, like being late and so on, and rudeness and so on, and then you end up totally violating them, right?
Because if you're going to a dinner party and you're yelling at your girlfriend, you're really shitting in your own nest.
I mean, what a ridiculous thing to do.
If being polite and considerate and sensitive to others is important, surely your girlfriend counts a lot higher, given that, you know, you maybe marry her, you live your life with her, you lie down and sleep with her in a vulnerable place.
But if...
If politeness and consideration is so all-fired important, then surely it should occur a lot more for your girlfriend or wife than it should for some people you're going to go have dinner with and maybe not see again for another couple of months.
It doesn't make any sense.
You're using an argument for morality to club and humiliate other people, as you yourself were clubbed and humiliated, and the way to deal with that, because of course he asked, I have to go a little fast because I got to work sooner than I thought, He asked, how do we solve it?
How do I solve this? It's like, well, what you have to do is you have to go back in your heart and you have to unpack all the nonsense that your dad did, right?
That he was managing his own fear of criticism, his own panic, his own discomfort, his own upset, his own terror.
He was managing all of that.
By getting angry at it, humiliating you.
And you've got to peel off the argument for morality around this sort of stuff.
And you really just have to accept that your dad was kind of like a bully and kind of like a frightened jerk who was just mean to you.
And it had nothing to do with ethics whatsoever.
He just used ethics to cover up and further humiliate you, as he himself had been humiliated through ethical arguments.
But it had nothing to do with ethics.
It had nothing to do with politeness or niceness or responsibility or any of these sorts of things, because his first responsibility was to be good to you as a father, and there is nothing in the world that can violate that when you're a child.
And any time he violated that, he was violating his own standards, which further proves that to take those standards as absolutes is entirely irrational and not something that you should think about doing.
And you should make sure that if you do value something like politeness, that you make sure that you apply it first and foremost to those that you're close to in your life.
Thank you so much for listening, everybody.
It's been a donation-free couple of days, but if you're thinking about doing it, I really appreciate it.
I've tried to make it as easy as possible.
It's right there on the front page of freedomainradio.com.
You can sign up for individual donations.
I'll send you a nice, tasty audiobook.
From a book that I've written that early reviews are in, that it is considered to be a great book.
It's called The Great Canadian Novel by a reviewer.
So I think that you'll really enjoy it, even if you're not Canadian.
So send that in and send in your donations and I'll hand that stuff over to you and you'll enjoy it.
▲
Export Selection