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May 10, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
32:08
753 Two Listener Questions on Family
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Alright everybody, hope you're doing well.
It's Steph. And you thought I might be podcasting less.
Actually, I did too. But I have a lot of errands to run today.
And the board members have posted some exquisitely excellent questions.
As they are most want to do.
And I don't really get to talk to anyone during the day anymore, so it's you and me, baby.
So, the first question that a new listener, I'm sorry, not a new listener, a new poster, has...
And listen, just before I start that, can I just tell you how amazing it is to me that people can absorb six podcasts a day or seven podcasts a day?
I just think that is so absolutely excellent that, I mean, I'm proud of everybody.
I'm proud of the human race for having this thirst for knowledge and truth and all of this kind of stuff.
And I think it sort of validates what it is that we're doing here.
And I hugely appreciate the kind words that people have to say about the podcasts.
And thank you so much for listening.
This is turning me grudgingly into an optimist.
And I can't tell you how much that hurts.
It would hurt me even to begin.
So let's talk about a question that this new poster, a long-time listener, has had.
And his question, which I think is entirely brilliant, is around, like I say, you are responsible for your own actions.
You, you, you, you sir, right there.
You are responsible for your own actions.
And he says that, well, sure, maybe I guess at some level, but...
And I'm paraphrasing, I'm sorry, I couldn't find the poster printed, but I think I remember it well.
He says, yes, but...
If you make love with someone, then they are directly creating stimuli within your body.
And if someone yells at you, then they're going to make you feel X, Y, and Z, and so on.
So when we say that we are totally responsible for our own actions, how does this...
How does this mesh with the fact that we are sensual creatures who respond to stimuli from the external world and so on and so on and so on?
And that is a perfectly and excellently and brilliantly valid criticism or question and it is causing me to attempt to change my story without you noticing it.
No, it's not that bad. I was hoping to get away with it but I don't think I will.
So let me sort of refine what I'm saying by this.
And I think it does tie two streams of the thought that we've had in this show together in an eerily prescient kind of way.
So I've always said that we are helpless before our parents, that we simply cannot undo 20 years of first impressions of being dominated.
And so we can't...
We're always going to be helpless. I'm never going to be indifferent to the opinion of my mother.
I'm never going to be indifferent to the opinion of my brother or to the opinion of my father.
And it's because of that that we need to be very careful about who we let into our life, right?
So... Given that we can't control our vulnerability, our susceptibility to our parents, we simply can't control that.
It's hardwired.
I mean, when I even hear somebody shriek, even if sometimes it's in laughter, if it's like within...
Half a pitch and 12 decibels of my mother's shriek.
My hands get sweaty.
I mean, I don't think that I'm totally hysterical.
I'm partly hysterical, but not totally hysterical.
And I don't think that it's a terribly wild thing that occurs for me as opposed to occurring for everybody else.
And I think that I've done a lot to deal with the past and live a new life that's relatively fresh from the past.
And it's been, gosh, it's coming on for ten years since I've had anything to do with my mom.
I'm about ten, seven or eight, seven or eight.
But I am still hardwired, and will take this with me to the grave, but I'm still hardwired to respond to my mother's tone.
Something in...
I mean, it's as silly as...
There's a door song...
The Soft Parade, I think it is.
And Jim Morrison starts out with something like, When I was a young man in seminary school, somebody put forward the proposition that you can petition the Lord with prayer.
Petition the Lord with prayer.
Petition the Lord with prayer.
You cannot petition the Lord with prayer!
And he goes into this shriek, and I can't reproduce it, and it scares me.
It's scary, because I know that shriek very well, right?
This is the shriek of domination, hysteria, bullying, and so on.
If you get a chance to listen to it, listen to it, and you'll sort of get a sense I can't do it justice.
But I'm still susceptible to this kind of stuff.
Any Jessica Lange character in a movie can make me wet myself.
And not in, you know, the fun Golden Channel kind of way.
So... I am still completely...
I meet someone who's like my brother.
Oh, it's madness.
Like, I mean, I saw a guy on a subway...
Gosh, years ago.
And... Boy, this is, like, going to be totally ineffective in terms of talking about it.
But... I saw a guy on a subway...
Who pursed his lips in a disapproving manner.
He pursed his lips in a disapproving manner.
You cannot purse your lips.
And it really bothered me.
Like, it really made me annoyed.
It really made me irritated. And that really is quite amazing when you think about it, that this one physical gesture of my brother's reproduced by somebody who obviously had some similar characteristics.
I don't just sort of make this up.
Years, like many, many years later, passing in the subway, and I felt irritated.
And I'm not going to imagine for like a split secundo that I can undo all of this, you know, 30 years of impressions and dominance and bullying and so on.
I'm just not going to hold that forward as a standard that I am going to be able to undo that.
That's to me like erasing your brain, like erasing your personality.
I think that is a standard or a goal that is simply not remotely achievable.
Now, lots of people believe that it is, and there's an enormous amount of money to be made from setting up impossible goals and then, you know, setting up impossible goals and then charging people to go off in hot pursuit of them.
And I don't want to get involved in that kind of stuff, right?
So there are, I don't know, tens or hundreds of millions of priests and fakers and self-help gurus out throughout the world who will say to you, yay, though you have been ensconced in a dank prison cell, lo, these 30 years, I will give you the freedom to return to that prison cell and not feel anything bad.
And I think that's mad deranged and frankly impossible.
It's not going to happen.
And so my approach is sort of different, right?
My approach is, you know, a recognition, for me at least, a recognition of what is possible and what is not.
And so for me, people say, well...
I can get it so that your parents won't bother you anymore.
It won't bother you that your parents were bad to you and you'll be with them and you won't feel upset because you will have hit the magic land of pure forgiveness, right?
So that's how the Christians do it and that's how a lot of self-help people.
Almost all the self-help people in the world do it.
And sadly, that's how a lot of therapists operate as well, right?
Forgiveness is key. So what they want to do is to say to you...
Yes, you were in a prison cell for 30 years, and the goal is to get you back in that prison cell but not feel bad.
And I don't think that's freedom at all.
A, I don't think it's possible, and B, even if it was possible, I don't see how that sets you free.
The goal is to not go back to the prison cell.
Not to go back to the prison cell and manage your feelings.
The goal of freedom is not to learn to love your prison cell, or forgive your jailer, or pretend that torture did not occur.
That's not freedom.
That's dissociation. That's like, sorry for the technical term, that's splitting off your feelings and saying that your feelings are wrong.
And this, of course, is religion, fundamentally, and of course it's family, and it's the state to some degree as well.
So we're born in prison cells, we're raised in prison cells, we're abused by jailers or ignored by jailers.
Or even if the jailers are gruff and friendly, they won't let us out of jail.
So what should we do with that?
What would be freedom, right?
What would be freedom? Well, for me, freedom is, you know, there's no lock on the door, right?
Right? You know there's no lock on the door.
That's freedom. Push the door open and walk away.
That's freedom.
To me. And that's not freedom to a lot of people.
And I think that it's terrible that they don't believe that.
I think it's just so destructive.
So... It's true that we're completely responsible for our own actions.
It's also true that other people can have a deep and negative effect on us, involuntarily.
It's true that we are completely responsible for our actions, and if we stay in the prison, we're going to feel like hell.
We're going to feel like crap.
We're going to feel like a big steaming pillar of carbon-paste doo-doo.
So, given that we are in complete control of our own actions, and given that it is impossible to be in a prison cell and to feel happy, you can only lie to yourself and pretend, what are we responsible what are we responsible to do?
Well, to leave, of course.
And I know that everyone who hasn't heard other podcasts is like, oh, he just means run away.
Oh, it's going to recreate itself in your future, blah, blah, blah.
Well, no. If you know what you're doing, and you make all the attempts in the world, right?
If you're in a prison cell and there are jailers around, you can say to them, hey, this is a prison cell.
And if they say, no, it's not.
It's not a prison cell. It's a hotel.
It's a hotel. No, look, there's no locks on the door.
It's not a prison cell. You're free to go anytime you want.
And you say, great, I'm going. No, you can't leave.
If you get into that kind of mythology, that kind of story, then speak your mind.
If you're heard, great.
See how you feel.
But you won't be.
So yes, it certainly is true that we have complete control over our own actions, and it certainly is true that other people's behavior will affect us negatively and involuntarily.
So, given that we're responsible for our own actions, the first action is to not put ourselves in the pathway of people who treat us badly.
Because you can't be treated badly and feel good.
So you're completely responsible for who you surround yourself with as an adult.
And I hope that sort of clarifies the position, at least, that I have in this situation or in this standpoint.
So that's one aspect of an excellent, excellent question that a listener has put forward.
Now, the second question that the listener had, as we're going grocery shopping, people, let's do some chores together, shall we?
Bananas, oranges, Caesar salad, almonds, bread.
Because even more than the technical minutiae of my podcast, I know that you're absolutely fascinated by the technical minutiae of my diet.
Two peach.
So, the second question that a listener had was something along the lines of the following, and it's sort of related.
This is a listener that we did an Ask a Therapist response to, a very, very brave and courageous...
Oh, end gap on aisle six.
A courageous listener who has defooed from a difficult and abusive family and has been very, very brave in sharing her experiences with the defooing and so on.
So, all hail her.
And she had questions about triggers, which is sort of related to the question that we were just talking about, which I wanted to sort of mention.
These are sort of two things that work in conjunction together.
So... This woman was saying that she has defood, and again, I'm so sorry, I'm paraphrasing here, but I had to exit Christina's patient came early, so I didn't have a chance to pick up all my notes, but I think I remember this fairly well.
She's saying, you know, I have defood, I think it was last December, and my parents keep...
They send presents to my kids, which I'm sure the kids don't mind.
They're purchasable, at least I certainly was at that age.
Actually, if you look at my business model now, you people have bought me too, so I'm not going to complain about selling out.
I just hope to get a decent price.
So the kids are getting presents and she gets cards and so on, right?
So she's asked explicitly for no contact from her parents, right?
That is the deal, that is the goal, that is the purpose.
No contact from the parents.
And, of course, what are the parents doing?
Well, they are contacting her.
And she's certainly better off than some, right?
She's... She's not getting the drive-by parenting, which sometimes happens, or the phone calls or whatever.
But that will come.
Right, that will come. Just so you know, I mean, the strategies that parents will use after you defoo are complicated and nefarious.
One of the central ones, one of the central strategies that they will use is they will bide their time.
They don't give up that easily.
They will bide their time, though, and they will wait until they have leverage.
And they have leverage when one of them gets sick.
And then they will come screaming in like a ton of foo-based bricks.
And they will then use leverage.
I shouldn't laugh, because this already happened with Christina.
But they will use this kind of leverage to try and blast through your defenses.
Once they have gained strength.
They dominated you when they had strength over you, power over you.
And that power was sort of based on sentimentality, right?
Oh, they're my parents.
We all have that stuff.
And... When they lose the power of sentimentality over you, when they lose that ability to make you do what it is that they want you to do, because you've given up on the sentimentality with them, then what will happen is they will then change over and they will bide their time.
Like alligators, they will slither and sink back into the mud and they will bide their time.
Because they now don't have power over you because of your sentimentality.
So they will wait, and they will wait until, as is inevitable, their power over you will begin to increase as they get, you know, as the technical phrase goes, sick and old.
So as they get sick and old, their power over you, as they see it, will begin to increase.
And I am eagerly looking forward to the time when this begins to occur with me.
Actually, not quite so much, but it will certainly occur.
So... And they are going to continue to sort of bug you, right, with this kind of stuff, right?
Just to let you know that they're still out there, right?
The sharks will nibble as they circle, right?
Just so that you don't get too relaxed and too happy, right?
Because if you end up being happy after you stop seeing them, they will feel, well, really bad, right?
So they want to make sure that you stay unstable and unhappy, and also that you remember how much they are angry about what it is that you're doing.
So they will certainly bide their time.
And send you reminders from time to time.
Now this hasn't been the case with me, but my mom is technically deranged, right?
So it's a little bit different from what most people are going through.
Excuse me one sec, I just need to concentrate on my bread.
12 grain, 12 grain.
We're so close to the South Beach, it's terrifying.
It is actually terrifying. There we go, 12 grain.
So, I'm sorry, let me get out of your way.
Not yours. Not yours, fair listeners.
I am intrusive. So yeah, so they'll continue, and then at some point, right, and with great joy, they will come sort of screaming in, and they will blast into your life, because they have achieved power by...
One of them getting sick, or something.
Someone's going to get sick, right?
As the elderly clan of brutalizers begins to drop off into their sadly unrewarded destiny of hell, unrealized destiny of hell, they will begin to use this as leverage.
This is how they will have the power over you, right?
So they'll start to use this as leverage, and they'll start to increase their demands.
They can also try and do it through their children.
This has certainly been my brother's approach with me.
My nieces miss me and this and that.
But I'm not that hard to find on the internet, really, as you may know.
And I don't get...
She's had her license for a year and a half and could have driven over at any time.
So... So, yeah, I mean, that's just a bunch of sentimentality, right?
People don't like to confront how little they like family, right?
That's why they redouble their efforts and get resentful, right?
That's kind of inevitable. So, these triggers, right?
These triggers, and your parents will keep trying this combination.
Certainly Christina's parents have.
I mean, we've had your father's going into hospital.
We've had your mother's broken a bone.
We've had all of this kind of stuff, right?
And it's not easy.
Look, I mean, I'm not going to fool around with you here.
This is really, really not easy.
This is really tough stuff.
This is really tough stuff, but it's sort of hard for me, at least, to escape the basic reality of this, or the basic fact of this situation, which is that...
If somebody doesn't have value for me when they haven't got a broken leg, let's say, or, you know, if they haven't got cancer, if I don't like someone when they're healthy, how is it that they suddenly have value for me when they get sick?
You know, being sick does not change your moral nature.
You get cancer, you don't get virtue.
You get cancer, you don't get kindness.
You get cancer, you don't get integrity.
You get cancer, it does not create a new history.
Right? For you or for those you've harmed.
So it's a little hard for me to understand.
How, I mean, from a sick and sentimental standpoint, I can certainly understand why people would have that put forward, right?
Like, well, I may not have been a nice person to you, but now I'm sick.
Right? So, if you sort of look at the logic of it, it's pretty chilling, right?
It's pretty chilling, and it's obviously deranged.
And it's clearly, in this sense, as we've been talking about recently, it's a narrative, right?
It's a clear, clear, clear, clear narrative.
And, of course, what I mean by that is that when somebody says, I should have value to you now, what I'm bringing to the table is illness.
What I'm bringing to the table is that I have some sort of disease.
That's my value add.
Then that's kind of hard to figure out logically, because what they're basically saying is that now that I am helpless and dependent, you should treat me with kindness and love.
So now I throw myself upon your love for me because I am dependent and helpless.
You should love dependence and helplessness.
Or, you know, I'm frightened of my mortality and therefore you should find me more valuable as a sibling or as a parent or, you know, whatever is coming up in this realm.
And I'm sure you know where I'm going with this.
There are no secrets or surprises left in this conversation.
So, when your parents say that, I mean, this is the obvious logic in what it is that they're putting forward.
They weren't good parents to you, right?
Otherwise you wouldn't have defood.
We're not randomly mean or vicious or anything like that.
So if they were good parents to you, then you wouldn't have defood, right?
So clearly they weren't good parents to you.
And what does that mean?
It means when you, my brother and sister, were helpless and dependent upon them, They were not kind to you.
When you were a child, and your, quote, illness was called being a kid, your helplessness and dependency was called being a kid, how did your parents treat you?
Well, not with kindness, right?
Not with kindness.
And... Given that, is it terribly unjust to then say that I return like behavior to like behavior?
Actually, that's not fair, and that's insulting to the listeners.
Is it not fair to say that I abjure punishing my parents?
That I will not punish my parents in kind.
And that's the most justice, and that may not even be called justice, but that's the most benevolence that I have been able to summon from my soul.
That I shall not return punishment in kind.
Right, so I mean, if I were to return behavior for behavior, right?
If I were to do this with my mom...
Then what would I do?
Well, I would hang around until she got really sick, and then I'd beat her up.
Every day, or every other day, or every week, I'd be physically violent in that sense, right?
That would be my returning like for like.
Or maybe you would do something different, or maybe you would end up, oh, I don't know, just...
Going over and saying, oh, I'll take care of her, bringing her home from the hospital, and then not giving her enough to eat.
Or every time she did something that she disapproved of, just not talking to her for two days and not feeding her, right?
Or whatever, right? To torture in response to having been tortured would be to return like behavior for like.
And it's tough for me to...
Obviously, it's not quite as evil.
It's definitely kind of sick, right?
Because to become a sadist in response to having been abused is not exactly breaking free.
It's a cycle of violence. But I think that to not return...
The way you break the cycle of violence is not strike back.
Again, self-defense, blah, blah, blah.
Everybody knows it will kill. I'm not going to deal with that.
But clearly, if you decide not to strike back, strike out on your own, right?
You don't get free of the prison if you then throw your prison guards in jail and have to guard them.
Then you're still stuck in prison.
You've just switched places with the guards.
You're not free. You're not free.
Freedom is walking out of the prison.
Freedom is walking out of the prison.
And that's what we so desperately need to do, to break the cycle of violence, to bring down the state, to end religion, to end brutality within families, and to turn them into lawyers in the gorgeous, loyal, wonderful, warm, beautiful, educational, structural, safe, and wonderful places that I know families can be.
That I know families can be.
Because that's my family.
Now. Oh, but not then.
But now. So, when your parents then come back to you and say, you should love me because I am sick, well, it's hypocritical, right?
It's a story. Because the morals change, right?
As we were talking about in the podcast this morning.
Because the morals keep changing, you know that it's merely a story.
Because if the principle is compassion, kindness, and love towards those who are helpless and dependent is the order of the day, then clearly this is not what occurred for you when you were a child and your parents were in charge of you.
And so I would suggest that it would not be the right thing to do to then return and re-inflict that abuse on your parents.
But I do think that it's fairly safe to say that That principle cannot be appealed to from bad parents, right?
People who hurt you when you were dependent on them, who were cold or withdrawn or distant or violent or whatever, brutal.
Those people can't really very logically say that you owe them kindness because they are now dependent.
I mean, that just doesn't make any sense at all, if you sort of follow what it is that I'm saying.
So the triggers that are going to continue to occur with you and your parents after you defoo, if they don't sort of, I don't know, move to Mars or something, the triggers that are going to keep occurring are going to be triggers that occur on the basis of we can't add value by being good people.
Or let's just say that it's a strongly belief that they can't add value as if they just couldn't add value, right?
If somebody could give you a million dollars, but is so stingy that they never will, they're exactly the same as broke to you, right?
They're exactly the same as broke to you.
So your parents say, well, look, we can't add value to you by being loving, virtuous, wonderful people, right?
Because, of course, if they did, as we've talked about many times before, if they did, then they would reveal that they could have at any time.
They just decided not to with you, right?
That's not so good.
So...
If your parents say, well, we can't add value to you by being good people, good parents, nice and wonderful, or whatever, but now we have value because we are helpless and that means that you must treat us well, well, then, clearly, they are just setting up a fairy tale wherein you lose no matter what happens, right? And that's, you know, it's that great line from the movie war games we talked about before.
Funny game, the only way to win is not to play.
The only way to win is nuclear war.
And funny game, the only way to win is not to play.
And that's what I would strongly suggest.
So you just, you don't play these games.
You don't play these games wherein...
People's need for you to treat them well becomes an ironclad law like gravity.
People's need for you to treat them well because they want you to is no more a law in a sort of just and moral universe is no more a law that you must obey than the law that they had to obey.
I mean, they should have obeyed when you were a kid, but they didn't.
So, I hope that it helps with this kind of stuff, because this is quite a process.
This is quite a journey. Defoeing is not a snapshot.
It's not an email. It's a process.
And the feelings take a long time to settle down.
The moment you put down a cigarette for the last time, it's not the last time that you think of a cigarette.
The moment that you put down heroin or get out of an abusive relationship is not the last time that you ever think of or have feelings related to that sort of said abusive relationship.
And the same thing is true, of course, with defooing, which is that There is just no way that when you let go of your parents that that's the last time you have stimuli that you have situations.
And of course this is going to happen with your kids as well in some areas, right?
They had exposure to the grandparents and there's going to be some stuff that comes back from that.
So this is going to come up again from other people as well.
So, it's a process. I mean, it's not.
It's a journey, right? It's a journey.
Defoeing is not an instant. It's not a moment.
It's a process and it's a journey.
And the last thing I'd like to say to this fine, fine lady is that thank you so much for exposing your children to Freedom Aid Radio.
She has a 12-year-old daughter who's a listener.
And you might want to check out one of the later podcasts that I did more recently, 738 or something like that.
Which was around teenagers.
Are your friends really your friends?
And you might enjoy that. This is a sort of particularly difficult email that I got.
And sorry to the gentleman whose friendship I detonated with that podcast.
But I guess it's for the best.
So thank you so much for listening.
I really do appreciate it.
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