Alright, so you had some questions about family issues.
You thought that maybe I might be able to help a little one?
Well, yes. Four years ago, I have lent an uncle money, and he has, in the beginning, he has paid me a little,
but He should pay me back within three months and the situation is after four years he has not been paying back the rest of the amount.
Right, okay. And so about two months ago I gave him a letter Demanding the rest of the money and some interest.
I hadn't asked for any interest because it was only meant for three months.
And I mentioned in the letter that I wanted the payments To be done at regular times.
But he didn't react to that letter at all.
Right. And in the letter I wrote, do not wait months with reply because I will not accept that.
Right, right. So, the situation is, my mother is quite close to this brother.
My uncle. So, When I've shown the letter I wrote to my uncle, I have given copies to my brothers, and I have shown it to my mother.
They already knew I had lent this uncle money, but not the exact data.
So, the situation is, my brothers were very understanding.
Two of my brothers, I have three brothers.
And the fact is, I also wrote, gave a copy of this letter to a son of this uncle.
My cousin.
And the thing is, because he is a project developer in Costa Rica and I have some business with this cousin.
So I thought, well, his father is doing this.
I cannot have that happen and not giving him notice of this.
So I have sent him a copy of this letter and some extra information.
They were all understanding, except my mother.
That's the strange thing. She said, well, you couldn't do that and you cannot mention your brothers in that letter.
In fact, I felt attacked.
And so, obviously there's not much that I can do in terms of the financial stuff, but what I can do is...
No, no. It's not the financial stuff.
It's not too important.
Right. Right.
It's your mother's reaction that's troubling, right?
Yes, that's troubling and it can complicate things much more because she is now talking with her brother about the situation but I don't know what will come from that but The strangest thing is when you love someone,
you would not act in that way, I think.
She would rather say, well, how can we solve this?
But she really attacked me on things my brother said, and my cousin also, there is no reason for such behavior.
Right, right.
Now, One of the things that is very true about money and loans, particularly within family, is that when you lend money to someone, you put yourself in his power.
Yes, that's true.
Right, so you feel helpless and frustrated and angry, right?
Well, I was that angry, certainly, but that has turned more to my mother because of her reaction.
Well, sure, but let's go back to the source of it.
We'll deal with your mom as best we can in a few minutes, but to go back to the source of it, when, and I know because I've had financial dealings with my family as well that have turned out pretty much uniformly badly.
Yes. But when you lend money to someone, what you're doing is you're putting yourself in their power and you are becoming vulnerable.
In family, I don't mean like if you're a bank, they just throw their assets in jail if they don't pay you back.
But when you are lending money to someone, you are creating, in some ways, a parent-child relationship, if they're not a good person, insofar as when you're a kid, You are helpless and dependent and have very little control over your parents if they're not great parents.
In the same way, when you lend money to somebody, you put yourself at their mercy because if you put the whole thing together, even if the guy were to give you all the money plus the interest back tomorrow, you would still feel That it was not a good interaction or a positive experience.
No, no, that's the strange thing.
I have lent two of my brothers when they were studying and they didn't have a lot of money.
I have lent them some money and as soon as they had a job, they wanted to pay me back.
And the feelings were completely different.
They are really different.
Right, so no matter what happens now, this will be, or this has been, a scarring or unpleasant experience.
No matter what happens now, even if he shows up with double the money tomorrow, you still will feel that it was not a good experience, right?
No, it's not a good experience, no.
That's true. Right, so I think what we can say is that When other people, when you are dependent upon someone else, and you are vulnerable to them, and when you lend money to somebody, you're putting yourself in a vulnerable position, because if they decide not to pay you the money back, there's no way it can ever be a positive experience.
If you call the cops, if you get their salary gung for a year or two, no matter what happens, because it's family, And this is true even with any one you lend money to.
If they decide not to pay you back or they become difficult or they pay you back less than they should, it's automatically become a destructive and negative experience, no matter what's happening.
This is even more true with family, right?
So there's two things that I get out of somebody who doesn't pay me back.
The first thing is that they lack empathy.
Because if you're willing to put somebody through a difficult emotional and familial situation for the sake of a couple of thousand or a couple of tens of thousands of dollars, then clearly you lack empathy for the other person.
Well, that's very true, Steph.
That's very true. My sister, I also...
I'm so sorry. I just lost the recording.
Let me call you back in just a second.
A thousand apologies. Okay.
Sorry about that you were saying.
Okay, that's so true Steph, because my sister, I have one sister, she is the youngest, and of the family, and when she was studying, my brothers and I had the job, so she had a hard time, so we thought we lent her some money.
But the thing is, she didn't pay it back, she never mentioned it.
When I asked for it, She never had money, but she had money to go on vacation or buy a dog, for instance.
So, that is a lack of empathy.
And that was your sister?
That was my sister.
And the thing is, we defute from her.
So, she hardly...
My mother sees her sometimes, but the rest of the family has enough of that, so I hardly see her.
Sorry, the first thing that I would say is that it's indicative of somebody who lacks empathy.
Yes, of course. Sorry, go ahead.
My other brothers, I would never do such a thing.
If I would borrow money from one of those two brothers I feel loved from, I would never do that to them.
And if I wasn't capable of paying them back because of disastrous circumstances, I would do everything to explain that to them so they would not feel hurt.
And you would offer them some additional money because of the inconvenience?
Yes. I would do anything to prevent that from happening.
And I know they would do the same thing.
Right. That's entirely right because you would be very aware of the negative consequences to somebody else If you didn't pay them back.
And there are times when that could happen.
Yes, I know. Of course, that can happen.
But then you explain why it can't be paid back and you do everything.
But not this way.
My sister act and this uncle act is totally different.
It's indeed... I agree, yeah.
It is very different. And let me tell you one other thing that is different in terms of lending money, particularly to family.
It is not only that your uncle lacks empathy, but also that he possesses a form or a streak of sadism.
I think he does. I think he does.
Because it's cruel and tortuous.
It's torturing you.
And not just because of the money, but because of the Emotional upset and anxiety and frustration and confusion and what do I do and how do I handle it and who do I talk to and now the family's mad at me.
The amount of negative experiences he's inflicting on you and other people in the family is evidence of a kind, not just of narcissism or not just of a lack of empathy, but the presence of a kind of cruelty.
Let me just finish and then I'll let you go.
I don't have empathy for some guy I've never met, right?
Because I don't know him. I have empathy for him as a human being or whatever, right?
But I don't have real empathy for him.
And if your uncle was only non-empathetic, then what would happen is he would be absent from your life emotionally.
Like, he'd forget your birthdays.
He just wouldn't show up at Christmas.
He'd be too busy. He just wouldn't care about you, and that might be painful.
But he wouldn't be reeling you in to a world of frustration.
He just wouldn't show up in your life because he would lack empathy for your feelings.
However, when somebody borrows money from you, they are actively creating a situation that is very different from just not having empathy, if that makes sense.
Like if I don't want to go out with a girl, I just tell her, I don't want to go out with you, right?
But that's very different from saying, Meet me at this street corner downtown and then not showing up.
That's the difference between not caring about someone and then actively being cruel towards them.
Does that make sense? Well, I thought about that because in the letter to my two brothers and to my cousin, I told him that my opinion is that he is a destructive narcissist because he has had a lot of women And his children, that's a real mess also.
Because one of the messes moved from the Netherlands to Israel.
Another one works in restaurants and cafes and I know he has drinking problems.
Another one I spoke last week Friday and he was in therapy and he really hated his father and he wants to be through him and he told me.
And the cousin I am doing business with in Costa Rica, he knows about his father, but I don't think he really wants to be fool, but he is in Costa Rica, which is a long trip from the Netherlands.
I've noticed he is often very nervous, smoking a lot.
So, it's not really a good situation.
I think it's a good chap.
I think he is. Now, let me ask you though, I mean obviously you've known him for, when did you lend him the money?
About four years ago.
Wow, okay. And obviously you were younger then and didn't have necessarily the No, I had indications because all the time I also told my mother, this uncle is different.
There is something strange about him.
I thought even evil, but I didn't know for sure.
And he asked me for the money because his car was broke.
It was beyond repair.
And he said he needed a car.
He's an architect. For his work.
So I thought, well, I had relatively a lot of money.
So I thought, well, it was 3,500 euros.
So I lent him that.
But afterwards, he came with stories continuously.
He couldn't pay because of this, because of that.
And you realize, though, that the pleasure that he gets is not out of having the money, but out of hurting you.
Well, I've noticed something strange because my cousin I'm doing business with, his son from Costa Rica and his wife, they were here.
And we were at my mother's house, which is a big house with a large garden.
And they were on vacation.
My parents were on vacation.
But my uncle wanted to sleep there because he would bring them to Skip Hall, to the airport, to fly to Costa Rica.
And it was nice weather, so we arranged a barbecue and we had a lot of fun.
But my uncle, he seemed to dislike us having a good time.
I noticed that.
Sure. I noticed that.
And even my cousin and his wife noticed that.
There was something strange going on.
Sure. Well, it's not strange if you understand, and I'm diagnosing, obviously, at an amateur level and at a distance, so you can take this with as much skepticism as you like.
But if he is sadistic, then he is going to take pleasure from pain, and he is going to take pain He's going to be irritated by people who are happy, and he's going to enjoy and feel good about people who are anxious or frustrated or unhappy or angry or whatever, right? And that's why he borrows the money in order not to spend the money.
That's just a secondary gain or icing on the cake.
But he borrows the money so that he can create problems by not paying it back.
Yes, I think it could be that way.
And he has done that for a very long time, I think.
Yeah, I have no idea. This is a, sometimes it's called character logic, or character logic.
It's a fundamental character problem, and so it is going to go through every area of his life.
So tell me, why did you, like, you knew this about him, and I'm just...
Just curious, right? We have to look at our own blind spots.
If you knew this about him four years ago, why did you lend him money?
I knew...
This last thing, I only recently noticed that.
So you didn't know or noticed that he was...
I noticed he had strange behavior.
That I noticed, but what I know now, I didn't know then.
Well, you did, but you just didn't know it consciously.
Yes, I think so.
This guy's been around for years, and so you must have known everything about him, but it just didn't come to your conscious mind.
I think so.
And what that means is that your uncle's bad behavior Is something that you're not allowed to talk about in your family to your mother?
Well, that was the thing.
Because my uncle said he was afraid I would tell other family members.
But as soon as I lent him the money, I let my other brothers and my mother know I did that.
Because I thought maybe he will do that.
He will lend everywhere.
So to prevent that from happening, When someone wants money from you, that seems a good thing to do for me, so they already knew.
But now, a few months ago, he said, well, maybe the whole family will know, and he was anxious about that.
Well, but what I don't understand, and if I can just jump into your head for a moment, what I'm guessing is that the reason that you Gave this guy the money, is so that you could learn something that you needed to know about your family.
I think so. I didn't know Free Domain at that time, because it's four years ago, but somehow, yes, it would make things very clear.
There are no grey areas in this.
No, and I'll give you a parallel example, just a brief story from my own life, that When my business was doing very well, my brother and I had a business and he sold all of his stock.
We had stock in escrow so we could get it every year.
He sold all of his stock and then the price went up a huge amount and I hadn't sold that much of my stock.
And so what I did was I gave him $20,000 worth of stock.
And then a year later, when the stock price had gone down and was almost worthless, And he gave me the equivalent number of stocks back knowing that it was all completely worthless.
And I felt very upset with him about this because he came to me and I was generous to him.
And then he fulfilled the letter of the law by giving me the equivalent number of stocks back what they were worth, 5% what they were worth.
So he wanted me to be generous, but then when it came to him, he only fulfilled the letter of the law.
And if I had taken that principle, I never would have given him the stocks.
Now, that lesson, though, was very cheap.
Overall. So I spent $20,000 to find out that my brother did not have empathy and was also kind of cruel.
To find it out consciously.
I always knew it. But to find it out and really know it and see it.
And in the same way, I was in a long relationship with a woman in my 20s and I ended up giving her a lot of money to make a movie.
And then I found out after that, when I asked her to read one of my novels and edit it, she wouldn't do it.
And so what I found was that she did not have reciprocity.
And I talked about this in some podcasts, but you actually are much more efficient than I was because you've spent a lot less money to learn as important a set of lessons.
You've spent, you know, 5% what I spent in order to find out the truth about those around me.
And so by lending this 3,500 euros to this fellow, You have invested in a kind of knowledge that is really, really important, which is, what the hell is wrong with your family that this behavior is not dealt with?
I agree. So what is the deal with your family?
Why is nobody sitting down with this guy and saying, you don't borrow from your nephews and not pay it back?
You don't do this. If you want to be part of this family, you have to at least have the bare standards of honesty and decency.
You don't have to be a saint, you don't have to levitate, but you do have to have the basic standards of honesty and decency.
And why is your family not doing that?
Well, that's a long story, so I hope you have some time.
Well, I'm looking more for the principles rather than the sequence of behavior.
What principle does your family have?
Well, let me tell you this.
My father has no high IQ and he had abusive behavior towards the children when we were young.
That was verbally and sometimes even physically.
So, and later on He was a painter.
Oh, enough said, yeah, yeah.
An artist, oh god.
No, no, not an artist, not an artist.
Oh, like a house painter?
Yes, house painter and also cars, spraying cars.
Yes, go ahead. Okay, he was...
And because of the solvents that was in the, I think, between 70s and 80s, he became ill.
Right. And that aggravated the situation because his mental capabilities diminished.
So it became even worse.
The strange thing is, after a while, he became more gentle.
And...
So that has a lot changed since then.
But my mother...
I think it's like an ostrich.
She doesn't want to see.
When you talk about it, she denies.
She says, I didn't know this.
Those kinds of things.
So that's a problem.
What happened later is...
This behavior from my father and I think the denial of it from my mother produced problems within the children.
So, for instance, I've had two years ago, I ended up in a severe depression.
One of my brothers is in the military.
He's been to Srebrenica in the war and He drinks a lot and has a lot of problems, self-destructive behavior.
He was out of the army and I told him, everybody told him you should go to a psychiatrist, you have severe problems, PTSD or something like that.
But he doesn't want to do that and the strangest thing is, he joins the army again as a volunteer.
And he did some exercises and what happened?
He damaged one of his legs, the muscles of one of his legs.
And to all of my other brothers, it's obviously a self-destructive behavior he has.
Yeah, I just posted something on the board about homelessness and veterans, which you might want to have a look at.
Well, it's very extreme with my brother.
Sometimes he drives drunk and I told him, well, you can't do that because you could kill someone when you have that much of alcohol in your blood.
But he didn't care.
So, but help me understand, what is the principle, what does your mother say to herself or to you Well, the strangest thing is he's abusing her as well,
I think. Because they had a trip to Germany and my mother had bought some cases of wine and my uncle drank it and never gave it to my mother.
She asked for it several times.
So, it's very strange.
Well, I'm going to just interrupt you for a second because I don't know if it's a language thing or whatever, but you keep saying that these things are strange, and what I don't understand is why you think that they're strange.
For instance, if I'm in a big room and I turn all the lights off, it's like me saying, well, it's really weird because it's dark over here in this corner, And then when I go over to this corner, it's really strange because it's dark here too.
And over here it's also dark and under here it's also dark.
It's all very strange. But it's not.
Right? If your uncle is a sadist, then it is not strange.
None of his behavior is strange if we understand that central premise.
Do you know what I mean? Like you're looking at each of the individual manifestations of a general pattern and saying, this is strange and that is strange.
But it's not at all strange when you look at the personality and the premises that are behind it.
Yes, but my mother...
You know, I react on that.
I don't feel well, but she accepts it.
Well, but that's not strange if she's a masochist.
And I'm just making up things.
I don't have any answers, obviously.
That's your job. But if she's a masochist, Or if she has a premise which says, when bad things happen, you must cover it up.
You must convince the good people that bad things didn't happen.
Or you must convince the good people to rise above the bad things and continue to love the bad person and so on.
If she's a masochist, or if she is also sadistic in her own way, then it all makes sense, right?
I'm not saying it's pleasant.
No, it's not pleasant at all.
So, tell me a little bit about how it is that you grew up to be somebody who could not recognize a dangerous person, right?
So, when you were young, when you were a kid, there were good people around you and there were bad people around you.
And what did your mother say about the bad people, the bad kids?
Like, what did your mother say about these things?
Well, she does still say that you should forgive them.
She said it of this uncle recently.
Right, so that's the premise.
Is she religious by any chance?
Not heavily religious, but she is mythological.
She believes in spirits and that there is something after life.
So she's even more confused than a religious person?
Possibly. Well, a religious person has some structure and some responsibilities.
Like a Catholic is insane, But at least he has to go and confess.
He has structure.
He has to go to Mass. He has responsibilities that accrue to him as a result of being a Catholic.
But somebody who's just mystical, they get all of those weird benefits of religion or mysticism or spiritualism, but they don't actually even have any responsibilities that accrue to them because of that theory.
And so what is her justification?
Why does she say that forgiveness is good?
Why does she say forgiveness is good?
What's her reasoning?
You obviously know the book on truth quite well.
So what is her reasoning behind the moral imperative of forgive?
And what she means by forgive is love, right?
She doesn't mean like you can forgive someone Who's really mad.
Just get them out of your life.
Never have anything to do with them again.
But you can still forgive them.
So if my friend steals my car, I might choose to get rid of my friend, but never press charges.
That means, in a sense, that I forgive him for stealing my car, but I'm not going to invite him over for Sunday dinner anymore.
But what she means is to continue to love Well, that's what she means by forgiveness, right?
To continue to love bad people.
Because... Yes, that's the strange thing.
There doesn't seem to be...
Maybe when someone was raped or something like that, or murdered, maybe she would draw the line there.
But as with this thing, I told her, when you want to continue seeing this uncle, I will be out of your life.
I've told her that. And how could it be else?
Because I do not want to see this uncle who has abused me in this way.
Well, and of course, you would not want to be friendly with somebody who was friendly with someone who had abused you.
No, that's...
I don't want.
Now, what is your mother's opinion of her father, the painter?
Her father, no.
The painter, that was my father, eh?
Oh, I'm so sorry.
I'm so sorry. But what was your mother's opinion of her father?
That he was a good man.
And was he a good man?
Well, he was a Christian, but as far as I know, to us, he was always nice when we were small.
Well, it might be worth, just so you can understand the family patterns, it might be worth asking family members about your grandfather on your mother's side.
What was he like? Is he still alive?
No, he became 96.
Wow, okay. Now, we do know that he was a Christian, which means that he was corrupt in intellectual and moral matters, but we don't know how that played out as far as his effect on the family world.
We do know that his children, your mother, has masochistic and passive-aggressive, sadistic tendencies in terms of not teaching you how to protect yourself against bad people, but instead putting you into the Yes,
I've mentioned this to my mother, but she always said her parents had problems, but they were good people.
Well, of course, and now you know that you can say what is your definition of a good person.
And I guarantee you that it's going to be a person who does the best of what they can and judges not lest they be judged.
It's all one grey area.
Well, it is a grey area that is put in there, but it is always to the detriment of good people.
Yes, I see that. So it sounds a little bit like your mother has certain aspects of her character that may be similar to my brother's, which is that you love good people because they're good, and you love bad people because...
They are that way.
They can't help you. They are that way.
So you can't say no to anyone.
You have to love everyone, no matter what, right?
I agree. And so the question, to me, then becomes why Why would somebody have that perspective or opinion that you can never differentiate between good and bad people?
Well, I ask myself that.
How could that be?
Well, if you've read your Nietzsche, then he has a pretty good answer.
And his answer is this.
If you are raised as a slave, as a prisoner, as less than a pet, If your father or your mother or both raise you and attack any opinion that you have and never really negotiate with you and never really listen to you and just give you orders, whether nicely or harshly, then what happens is you are not allowed to have an opinion.
And every time you have an opinion, you are attacked for that.
And then what happens is you have A choice.
And you can go one of two directions.
You can even go the first direction, which is to say, my parents are assholes.
They are controlling.
They are claustrophobic.
They are destructive. And I hate them because they are attacking my very identity, my very soul.
Who I am is what they constantly attack.
It is a life and death struggle.
I'm going to obey because I have to.
I'm a kid. But I still hate them.
And as soon as I get old enough, I'm getting out.
Right? That's one thing that you can do.
Now, the second thing that you can do is you can say, my opinions are attacked.
Therefore, opinions are evil.
I am not allowed to judge everything, anything.
Therefore, not judging anything is a virtue.
I am forced to live in this little box, and therefore, living in this little box is a virtue, right?
You can either fight your circumstances that are cruel and degrading, or you can redefine your cruel and degrading circumstances as virtuous.
Yes, that makes sense to me, yes.
Yes, it does. And that's what I mean by mythology, that you just make up an answer, and you say, well, I feel really unhappy with the life that I have and I feel controlled and bullied and I'm not allowed to have opinions.
Therefore, this being controlled and bullied and not allowed to, that becomes a virtue.
And then the only vice, the only evil in the world is actually having a judgment, making a decision, thinking for yourself and evaluating for yourself becomes the only thing that is wrong.
And I know what happens Between you and your uncle is that your mother tries to change you, right?
I don't know. Tonight she is to a philosophy club and I probably will see her tomorrow.
Well, but in the four years or whatever that you've had these problems with your uncle, who has she counseled to change?
Has she sat down with your uncle and said, you have to pay this money back?
She said she did.
Well, okay, but were there any consequences?
Like, you have to pay this money back, you don't get to exploit my precious son, because if you have hurt and stolen from my son, you will not be in my life.
That's what it means to sit down and tell someone.
They're just saying, oh, you should pay this money back, let's go for lunch.
It means nothing. To say, if you steal from my son, I mean, if somebody stole $4,000 or $5,000 from Christina, would I go for lunch with them?
I'm sure not.
Of course not! I'd press charges!
But your mother may have said something, but the question is, whose behavior does she try to change?
Does she try to say to you, Oh, you should be patient.
He's difficult. I know he's a problem.
Can you kill your uncle? She does that, yes.
Well, and that's what I mean.
So the only wrong that can occur from this situation is not your uncle stealing from you.
It's you judging that your uncle stealing from you is wrong.
That's the only thing that she thinks could come out of this situation that is bad, which is not theft or exploitation or lying But you saying, hey, this is theft and exploitation and lying.
That's the only evil, is you actually identifying corrupt behavior, not the corrupt behavior itself.
Right? It's like saying, the problem is not that I have cancer, the problem is that the doctor says I have cancer.
Yes, of course, I know that.
She tries to attack the reality which is evident now.
Sure, sure. So, in all the variables that is occurring...
The only person who must be corrected is the moral victim.
In other words, she is the agent of the attacker.
And she is aligning herself with your uncle against you.
She is aligning herself in defending a man who stole from you and lied for you for many years.
And she is attacking Yes, I feel that it is the case, yes.
And so help me understand what it is that remains uncertain for you about your mother?
Well, she has some good things too.
Because she helps some poor people with money.
And she likes animals, for instance.
I'm sorry, not to paint a silly portrait here, but to take an extreme, right?
I mean, Hitler set up the welfare state and was a vegetarian.
Yes, I know.
These things don't mean anything.
It's easy to love animals, because animals aren't moral.
And it's easy to give money to poor people Because that's not a moral and reciprocal relationship.
She doesn't have to have any moral judgments in order to love animals or give to the poor.
The question is, how does she deal with a moral situation in her life which she can actually affect or control?
That determines whether you're a good person or not.
Yes, I know, but to me it's hard because it will complicate a lot of my life.
Okay, well, let's take an inventory of that.
What is going to be so complicated?
Well, I have, as I told you, two brothers I am close to.
They are both atheists and very rational.
Well, but who's to say that they won't join you in your understanding?
Well, I don't know.
It's a big step to make.
Even for me, it's a difficult step.
Look, I'm not saying it's not difficult.
But I can't do anything about the emotional difficulty of it.
But I can try and bring some clarity to it from a philosophy standpoint.
Are you married?
No, I'm not married.
Alright, tell me what you think, tell me whether or not staying in close proximity to your mother, do you think that will have any effect on who you choose for your wife or who chooses you for her husband?
Who chooses me for her husband?
Yeah, so let's say that there's some Philosophical queen, and I'm assuming you're struck, but whatever, right?
But if there's some philosophical queen of integrity out there, and she thinks you're the hottest Dutch guy on the planet, and she goes out for dinner with you, right?
And she says, so tell me a little bit about your family.
And you say, well, my uncle steals from me, and my mother attacks me, and then defends my crazy sociopath of an uncle, and blah, blah, blah, right?
What is that woman going to say to herself about you?
Well, that's not very good.
Yeah, this guy has no integrity.
And I don't mean this is an extreme way of putting it, right?
But what it means is that he has values, and you do, and you're great as far as your values go, but he's not going to make the difficult decisions.
And he's always going to align With the bad people, if it's inconvenient for him.
And what that means is that she knows, deep down, that you will choose your mother and your uncle over her.
And if she has problems with your mother and your uncle, you are not going to confront your mother or your uncle.
You're going to attack her.
Not because you're a bad guy, but just because of the premises that you live in.
You're going to feel anxiety.
Like if you're dating someone and then she meets your mother and then she says, you know, I think your mother's really creepy.
I don't like her at all.
You're going to immediately want to say what?
Yes, I know. No, you won't.
And I tell you, you're going to say exactly what you said to me when I started pushing you towards coming to a conclusion about what you know.
And what you immediately started saying was, what?
Like when I said, what do you not know about your mother?
You said what? Well, I said, I think she has some good things.
Exactly. You began to cloud and to muddy the waters, right?
You began to throw a lot of smoke in my house.
Yes. Which is to say, because what do you know about me, you began to throw a lot of smoke in your own eyes.
You began to confuse yourself because you don't like where that leads, right?
That's so true. Right, so, and look, this is with all sympathy.
I mean, I have massive sympathy for this because this is just what we're taught to do as children.
The moment that we start having an immediate judgment about someone, What we do is we just confuse ourselves because we don't like where it leads.
So all the sympathy in the world, I totally understand, it's not a criticism, it's just an observation.
But when your fiancé or your girlfriend says, you know, I find your mom really manipulative and kind of creepy, you're immediately going to say, yes, she does have certain aspects of that, but she's a really good person in some ways in this and that and the other way.
In other words, you're going to reproduce For your fiancé and possibly for your wife and, well, certainly for your wife and probably for your children, that same kind of thing where someone says, this doesn't feel right to me.
There's something creepy about this person.
And you're going to say, well, yes, but blah, blah, blah, blah.
And then that person is not going to be able to protect themselves from bad people because they're going to say, well, this person makes me feel pretty bad and creepy, but blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
So I'm going to ignore my instincts and end up lending thousands of dollars to a sociopath.
Yes, that's so true.
So I'm trying to look out for your future, your long-term future.
And that's why we all know that confronting these things with inner family is completely horrible.
Nobody likes it. It's horrible.
And so the question is, why?
Why would we bother? Why would we do it?
And the answer has to be because we want a different future than we had as children.
We want a different future. We want our future to be very different from the past.
The only thing that can change our future is values and our adherence to them.
Sorry, go ahead. When I talked about this with one of those brothers I am close to, and...
I talked about my sister.
She is obviously sociopathic.
Everybody knows that.
But he said, I have some problems.
And he is married, too.
And he was afraid of getting children.
So I said, well, you're not the same as your sister.
Well, but there are some similarities, right?
Which is that you guys have a lot of bad people in your family.
And then you have a lot of people who make excuses for those bad people and try and cloud everybody's vision, right?
You guys have a family full of brutalizers and appeasers.
Yes, that's true. Right, so you have to choose if you want.
And now you have to because you're in this conversation.
Sorry, Ian. Not because it's just going to happen, right?
But if you're going to have a different family for yourself, a different family life, and incidentally help save the world, then you have to have a family or a set of values wherein the choice is not to either be a sociopath or a masochist, not to be cruel or to be an appeaser.
And in order to do that, you have to say...
Well, there are bad people, and then there are the, quote, good people who enable them.
I don't know which is worse, because the cause and effect is very complicated.
But they are a system.
You can't have a sadist without a masochist.
Right? It's a system.
The two people are like the two ends of a barbell.
And so you have to say, I reject this system of either being a bad person or Screwing everybody up in their perception of bad people.
I'm not going to be cruel and I'm not going to sit around for the rest of my damn life making up all the excuses in the world for why people are cruel and telling all the good people around me to love the bad people.
I understand.
And that's how you can carve a different future.
Yeah, it's inconvenient for sure.
It is. But if you look at the alternative The alternative is to recreate what was so hateful to you.
And that is inconvenient to infinity.
Because that will make you depressed and miserable and self-hating, and especially if you do it to children, your soul will be lost.
As people look at the immediate difficulties of confronting family members on this, as if there's some alternative where they can be happy without doing this.
Mm-hmm. But you can't be.
You can't be happy without living your values.
And those values, of course, have to be logical.
But there's no alternative which says, well, if I don't deal with this, I can just kind of scrape by and be happy anyway.
It's not like, well, I have happiness of ten in my life, but if I confront this, my happiness is going to go down to five.
It's like, no. You're heading for a zero.
Right? You're at six or seven or eight, but you're going down.
Yes, I see that.
I see that because it will get worse within this family.
There will show up things that it will get worse.
Well, what's going to happen when your uncle meets your kids or your mom?
Yes, or the other kids.
You're going to have to do damage control the whole time.
Yes, or the brother which I told you of.
He was afraid to take children and he will have children and then this uncle will show up.
And what are you going to do when your children look at you and say to you, why are these people in our life?
Why did you expose me to these people that you say are so dangerous?
And why are you telling me about virtue, Dad, when you chose comfort over virtue?
And when you sacrificed our futures For the sake of your own unwillingness to be honest with the people around you.
And your children may never say that in so many words, but starting from about the age of two onwards, they will know that and it will be in their eyes.
I think that's true.
Yes. So I will take a decision and Well, I have to say those two brothers, I have sent them the Dutch translation of On Truths, and one of them knows quite, he has seen some things from you, and he is quite rational and has problems himself, so maybe.
And you may be the guy who has to take the leadership role in this family.
You have to be the captain of the future of this family, you know.
Screw the past. Your parents have made their decisions, and their lives are done from that standpoint.
But as far as your gene pool goes, or your family goes, you might be the guy, and thank God that you will.
I mean, I hope. But you may be the guy, or you'll have to be the guy, because you're smart enough, and you're learned enough, and you're introspective enough, and so on.
And you're wise enough.
You may have to be the guy who stands up and says, this family has to change.
And if you're on board about that change, Great.
We don't let corrupt and bad people in for our lives.
We don't attack the victims who are moral for the sake of the victimizers who are immoral.
But we're going to take this family in a different direction.
And if that family ends up being me and my wife and my future kids, so be it.
But I'm taking this gene pool in a new direction.
A better direction. A more honest direction.
An honest direction at all.
And if you're on board, fantastic!
Wonderful! And if you're not on board, Good riddance.
But things have to change.
Yes, I agree.
It can't continue like this.
Well, it can, but you'll be miserable.
When I say zero, I really mean minus 100 about happiness.
You'll be depressed. Yes, I know.
I know. So...
Well, I will take the decision and then see what happens.
And remember, don't mean to lecture you too much, but remember, if you have doubts, then talk to your mom, talk to your uncle.
First of all, write off this money.
This money is never coming back.
Oh, I know. I've written that in the letter to my cousin as well as to my brothers I mentioned there.
I've written the money off, but it's not really the money for me.
What is the problem?
Right. If you have doubt, you need to talk about these things with your mom and try and really understand her philosophical approach.
Because she does have one. She's obviously an intelligent woman.
And try to understand. And you will, through that conversation, through understanding her values, you will really understand her nature and what she's all about.
And that will be a closure.
Because you want to, if you're going to leave, if no one's Yes, I know. Well, I hope my two brothers will see this too.
You have a lot of control over that, right?
I have some control.
I have.
I am not very aggressive in bringing this to them, but I hope they will draw their own conclusions, because it will be hard for them to probably.
It will be and maybe you can play them.
I've recorded this, I'll send you a link and maybe you can play them this and it might help.
I will do that.
That would be of great help.
And they can reject this or they have to accept the premises and not continue this path of psychological destruction.
Yes, for sure. I mean, we need to change.
Certainly, because my parents are already old.
My mother is 70.
My father is 65.
But there will be a lot of...
So as my sister, she wants to have a child.
That's terrible.
That's really terrible. So things will complicate and it will only get worse.
And then there is the problem, of course, they have a big house, so there is money in that.
And they could think, well, maybe I will have an inheritance, but that doesn't count, that isn't important.
And I even think there won't be much money left the way they live, so that's just bogus.
No, I agree. And if you train yourself to keep bad people out of your life, it's going to save you an enormous amount of money in the long run.
Yes. And I have something more to tell that is about a colleague of mine.
He was really narcissistic in his behavior.
But I used to talk very openly about things, even before I knew FDR. And the thing is, I was printing a part of the translation, and he read something, and he said, well, I want to read it.
And the last two years, he's changing.
He's really changing. And it's remarkable, because He has had a very bad youth.
He hasn't had parents.
And he's been in an orphanage home.
And he's been abused, obviously.
And I knew that, so...
Now you can see he still has some strange traits but I can tell him that behavior is narcissistic or you should do that a different way and when you feel anxiety you should take some time and come back on it later and he's really doing that.
No, I think it is amazing just when you get people, because we all know this stuff deep down.
I'm not telling anybody anything they don't really know.
Everything that I'm saying, you already know deep down.
It's just a matter of having the permission and the support to pull it up to the surface.
So it sounds like you're doing some just wonderful stuff and you should be happy.
If it means anything to you, you should be enormously proud, I think.
You notice the difference on the floor at my work.
It's really improving.
In that sense, you can talk more.
These problems I have now, I've talked about them.
I said I have to go to this midday and understand.
It really felt good.
We had a long discussion today also about philosophical issues.
I know he has some problems, but he is open to discussion.
I think that's wonderful.
Now, I'm sorry, I'm going to have to cut this short.
I do have another call coming up.
Which I need to prepare for.
But listen, I hope that this will be helpful for you.
I will compile it and I'll send you the link.
And of course, thank you so much for your work on Truth.