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Dec. 9, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:14:53
935 Sunday Call In Show 9 Dec 2007

A book review, crooked cops, a mother's depression, and the strength of the youngest siblings...

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Well, thank you everybody so much for joining us on this chilly Toronto Sunday afternoon.
Which is the 9th of December, 2007.
If you would like to get any copies of my books for people for Christmas, I'm cutting fabulous deals left, right, and center, but you'll need to get them in the next day or so if you're going to make Christmas shopping, so that's the little plug for that.
I have received a very nice review of Untruth, The Tyranny of Illusion.
It is the first review that the book has So I thought that you might indulge me as I tootle through it, just because I think that it is a good review.
So it goes a little something like this.
A review of On Truth, The Tyranny of Illusion.
This is by a writer on the internet.
This is posted on the Freedom Aid Radio boards.
So it goes a little something like this.
This was published November the 29th, 2007.
He writes, it is rare to encounter an argument without an apology.
Most people, when espousing their beliefs, especially if they are controversial, will qualify their points with a haze of, in my opinions, though you may all disagree, and this doesn't apply to everyone buts.
Any unique or useful principle that they come close to sharing is dashed on the rocks of uncertainty and self-effacement.
But when a speaker or writer ignores these frivolities, his audience is left with no way out.
No choice but to listen and reason for themselves, because for once the author has refused to nail his own coffin.
It is mainly for this reason that On Truth is both so refreshing and so difficult to read.
At the beginning of his book, Stefan Molyneux warns the reader of what awaits him, that this book will mess up your life as you know it.
And though this may first seem a dramatic or arrogant statement, he is right to warn us, and we are right to be afraid.
Focusing primarily on parents and background, Molyneux reveals the nature of the relationships we cherish the most, the relationships we have not chosen, and the unrequited duty and obedience to those relationships.
Each of these relationships, family, culture, government, and religion, are bestowed, or rather forced on us at birth, and Latch us to their respective codes of behavior.
But the foundation of those codes, the source of the morality almost all of us have grown up with and accepted, is a blackout, an empty space.
Parents have the ability to declare right and wrong for their children with no qualifying criteria other than the ability to bear children.
Culture attempts to define who you are by telling you what your ancestors were before and who your brothers are now.
The government passes laws that encroach heavily into the areas of morality with nothing but the concept of patriotism to lean on.
And religion, holding veto power over all, offers the most complete system of morality and therefore garners the most control.
Throughout his brief book, Molyneux deftly exposes these false moralities for what they are, useless, destructive, and evil.
Parents with no real concept of virtue turn to religious or cultural definitions, more often than not an entirely inconsistent hodgepodge of both, to provide a framework for ethical behavior, and in so doing, cut off their children from their ability to reason the truth behind action and consequences.
At times, particularly when he discussed religion, I felt certain that Molyneux needed to qualify his statements to assure us that not all religious figures are seeking a sense of control over their own lives by demanding the obedience of others.
But it was quickly apparent what a mistake that would be.
Such an abdication would serve as the apology his readers needed, and they would quickly throw themselves into that tiny minority of not all.
Molyneux is unyielding, as well he should be.
Because he is right. Perhaps his most startling insight is the application by the power hungry of what Ayn Rand called the sanction of the victim.
Those who wish to control do so by appealing to right and wrong, sin and virtue.
In order to be good, they say, you must do as they command.
And in doing so, Molyneux shows us that they are using goodness in the service of evil.
By appealing to the drive and those under their control to be virtuous and moral, they succeed in fulfilling their own evil ends.
By the end of the book, Molyneux leaves no question as to what isn't a reliable source of virtue and morality, as he points out.
We would not trust a doctor who does not heal, and so we should not heed the teachings of the unlearned.
I expected that the second half of the book would discuss what should be the source of virtue, and I gather from his epilogue that Molyneux expected that as well.
But the book's power lies partly in its brevity, so that answer is saved for another read, one that I hope to get to as soon as possible.
Of course, I did send him UPB, and I sort of wanted to read that.
Obviously, it's good praise for the book, and I think it's fair.
I also wanted to read it to you because I think he's a great writer.
I mean, I think he really is.
His great turn of phrase is a great flow.
The sentences have a sort of controlled passion to them that, of course, I appreciate because my passion is wildly uncontrolled.
So, you know, it's like if you're farting, you randomly, you sort of really admire a dancer.
So I just wanted to sort of mention that to you.
And then the other thing that I wanted to mention, just to kick off the show, this is a very short newspaper article from the Globe and Mail of Saturday, December the 8th, 2007, in the news section, page A19. And the headline is, Indignant police negotiators leave talks after Miller's jibe at Union.
And what this refers to, Miller is the mayor of Toronto, and of course the police are going on, are in negotiations for a new contract.
And I'll just read you a little bit of this, and we'll see if we can't find the grim hilarity in it.
Contract bargaining between the Toronto Police Services Board and the 7,700-member police union stalled yesterday when union negotiators walked out before the talks began over, quote, insulting remarks made by Mayor David Miller a day earlier.
Both sides, however, said they expect the talks, which were in their fourth day, to resume as scheduled on Friday.
This is a quote from Toronto Police Association President Dave Wilson.
Today was a protest. This is about getting a clear message to the mayor that he needs to respect our membership.
The union took particular issue with Mr.
Miller's comments at a Labor Relations Committee meeting reported in the Globe and Mail that the union, quote, has always said it wants to be the best paid of the 12 big police services in Ontario and beyond, a stand he has said has long produced, quote, a leapfrogging effect on police forces within the union.
What he means by that is they say we want to be the best paid so they get a raise but then other people say well we need a raise now too and so we also need a cost of living increase which they'll start on early next year which means they get slightly more pay and then it all starts again with this leapfrogging everybody cranking up and the amount of waste in the police force of course is absolutely staggering.
Well I won't read on maybe I'll post the article on the board but I just wanted to point out the The grim and base hilarity of this.
So the mayor intimates that they are trying to get more money in their negotiations for pay.
And the police finds this negotiating tactic highly offensive.
By God, how dare he accuse us!
Of wanting more money in a contract negotiation.
How dare he?
Because you see, the police are all about respectful negotiation.
They're all about respectful negotiation.
So, for instance, if there is a piece of paper written in the House of Commons which jacks up, or the House of Representatives, which jacks up our taxes, 5% or 10%, the police are only concerned with the quality and respectful negotiation that goes on.
They'd never pick up guns and take the money from you by force!
Never! Because they're all about respectful.
Negotiation. I don't even think they carry guns.
I think what they do is they dispense Oprah-ish advice and grappling body hugs to make sure that people understand how respectfully they negotiate with a mostly disarmed citizen.
These thugs are so hypersensitive to anybody maligning Any negotiation that may be occurring, even the slightest hint of a possibly disrespectful tone in somebody's voice, causes the police to storm out in a huff.
Because, like all sociopathic bullies, they are hypersensitive to any perceived slights.
But my god, they are going to look at this in the future, they're going to look at this sort of stuff.
And they are going to wonder how it is we manage to walk down the street without the clatter of small arms fire at the sound of everybody's head exploding at the insanity we are supposed to accept in the world and in the media and in news that the police are allowed to leave a negotiation because they feel offended.
But if you disobey a single law that a cop can find you an infraction of, or if he decides to manufacture something, well, they just shoot your ass.
They'll just shoot you if you resist, right?
But by God, these people who use guns to get their way are so hypersensitive to any possible lack of respect in a negotiation.
It's absolutely stone, completely beyond insane.
And they will look back down the tunnel in the past and they will say, I cannot understand how these people functioned every day with all these contradictions in their head.
I just can't understand how these people...
We look at Winston Smith in 1984, was that how he functioned?
But we are asked to swallow half as many absurdities and most people don't even question Bailey Burke.
Well of course we have to treat the unions with respect.
Of course negotiations have to be conducted with respect.
But what happens if you and I decide we don't want to pay for the police and we'd rather have our own security?
How respectful do you think the negotiation is going to be with the policemen then?
If you and I say, you know, I don't really want these fat donut coiffin pigs to be protecting my property.
I'd rather deal with my security myself, so I'm not going to pay the taxes to support the police.
What sort of response do you think that these people who are so obsessed with respectful negotiations, what response do you think would occur?
Would they say, well, of course, we understand how you feel because we get upset if somebody even suggests that we might be looking for more money in a negotiation, and we storm out of the room.
That's how sensitive we are to disrespectful negotiation, so there's no way in hell I'm going to put a gun to your face and tell you to pay me.
Oh, sweet mother above.
The things we are expected to believe, and the things that are reported with a completely straight face in the media.
The things that are reported with a completely straight face in the media.
It's almost beyond belief, but that's what happens when you take the red pill.
You see everybody moving in the matrix as if the matrix is real, and it is just a mind-boggling experience.
Well, that's my intro.
Thank you so much for your patience.
I am perfectly, perfectly happy to take all the questions on the planet from interested parties.
So if you're not talking, if you could just remember to click on the call menu on Skype and to mute your microphone, I would appreciate that.
And if you are talking, then talk away.
I'm more than happy to hear questions.
Okay, now. Well, I was waiting to hear questions on the relevant subject matter you were just talking about.
But if nobody has any questions on that...
Well, I don't know if anybody has any questions.
I do know that nobody's asking any, but whether they're rolling around in people's heads, I could not tell you.
Well, it's just that I wanted to talk about the whole...
The last three podcasts and there was one premium podcast that is relevant also.
You're getting quite a bit of background noise there, Mr.
N. I'm not sure exactly why.
Just a sort of note, if I can just put this out there for the people who call in regularly, please go down to Radio Shack and drop $30 on a decent headset.
It really won't kill you.
And given that this stuff is going to be listened to for possibly decades, if not hundreds of years, a slightly improved audio quality for the sake of a couple of bucks might be a reasonably worthwhile investment.
But sorry, please, go ahead.
Hold on, let me see if I can make it better.
Just while you're working on that, I just wanted to mention there was some questions floating around on the board about unchosen positive obligations.
And because I've had some podcasts about the responsibility of doctors, that if you study to be a doctor, there is some obligation on your part.
To put your hand up if somebody says, is there a doctor in the house because somebody's having a heart attack or something like that?
And that is something that I still stand by.
I don't believe that it is something which anyone can force you to do, right?
This is a challenge where people have obligation, right?
Obligation, you know, if I say I'm going to meet you at 7 o'clock, it's, you know, I have an obligation to be there on time, all other things being equal, like no catastrophes or catastrophes nonwithstanding.
So there was some consternation.
I did sort of point out that I've written books and articles and podcasts and so on about the question of no unchosen positive obligations.
The articles are free.
The podcasts are free. The book is between, you know, 12 bucks and I guess it's 14 bucks for UPB if you want the PDF. It's a little bit more for the audiobooks.
And I did a long podcast on it.
And this is something that, if you have questions for me, I'm going to put this out there as something that I just have to do to keep my time management under control.
So, if I do a podcast and have written books and articles and so on on a particular topic, please, you know, I'm begging you, go and read them or read someone else if you don't like my writing or podcasts or whatever, and then come in with a specific question.
Because if you come in and say, well, tell me more about unchosen positive obligations after I've written a number of books and podcasts and articles and so on, then that's kind of annoying, to be perfectly honest.
You need to give me, well, you said this here and I don't understand how it fits with what you said there, or here you seem to make a logical leap that doesn't make sense, or whatever.
You've got to come in with a specific question, right?
But otherwise, it's like, you know, if I'm a physicist and I've published all these books and papers on physics, and then someone comes in and just says, well, just tell me a little bit more about physics.
I have no idea how to respond to that, frankly.
I just don't know how to respond to that.
And what I do get out of that, rightly or wrongly, my sort of interpretation, correct me if I'm wrong, is I'm having trouble putting this together, so maybe you can connect the dots for me.
But I don't have a lot of interest in doing that, and the reason why is that if it's not worth it to you to boil down your question or objection into something that is specific and precise, which indicates some knowledge of the subject matter, Then you're kind of asking me to do your work for you.
Now that is not something that is going to be very helpful for me to do.
What I'm trying to do is spend my time on the people who are going to link up the lighthouses.
This is our goal.
I got a lighthouse going in FDR and spotlights are bursting up all over the world, all over the country.
And what I'm trying to do is to find the brightest spotlights to link with and to energize so that we can continue to pass out these sunbeams, right?
It's the illumination of thought, of enlightenment.
And I'm not going to spend a lot of time with people who aren't really driven in the conversation.
In other words, people who are just like, well, you know, tell me a little bit more about this.
I don't quite understand it, right?
Because don't ask other people to do your thinking for you.
If you've worked hard to understand something and you can't figure it out, then by all means, right?
But then ask people.
You don't necessarily have to post to me.
Lots of other people in this conversation too, right?
And I was letting that thing trundle along and it seemed fine and so on.
But people seemed to get annoyed that I wasn't coming in and giving more of some kind of distillation of the concept of no unchosen positive obligations.
Which is entirely explained within the UPB book and is entirely explained within a bunch of free articles and podcasts.
There's a navigation system that I wrote to navigate through the podcast.
You can ask people on the board to point you to the relevant material.
You don't need to come to me, and certainly I'm not going to have much luck if you come to me and you say, Steph, can you just explain this idea, which you've now spent dozens of hours and got hundreds of pages explaining.
If you can just explain this idea a little bit more, There's nothing for me to respond to.
Now the conversation is maturing to the point where, and this I would put out to all of the people who are into this philosophy conversation, or any philosophical conversation, that you need to focus your time and energies on people who are already in movement, already enthusiastic, already excited, already pumped, already in motion.
But we can't get behind and push people who are just expressing mild curiosity and asking other people to do their thinking for them.
Again, this may be fair. This may be not fair.
It may not be specifically relevant to this.
It's just something that I've noticed as a whole.
And thank you. Just by the by, just before we go back to Nate, thank you so much to those who have.
I bought t-shirts.
I massively appreciate it.
And now that you have bought t-shirts, I'm going to put out one more little nag, just because apparently I'm addicted to it.
But the little nag is just to remember that buying a t-shirt is not...
Making a donation. And I had the same conversation about the books, which is that people would say, okay, you know, I bought UPB, so I'm supporting the conversation.
No, you're buying a book, right?
And that's great, and the t-shirts are definitely supporting the conversation insofar as advertising and so on.
But just remember, we only make a buck from the t-shirts.
And with an employee on board, the costs of FDR have gone up.
Quite a bit, so if you can ratchet your way free, I know December's a tough month, but I would really appreciate it.
I just wanted to remind you that buying a t-shirt is just an economic transaction, which is great, and I appreciate it, but it's not the same as donating.
So that's my final nag of the show, I promise, not to take up any more time with annoying you that way.
So please, sorry, Ned, go ahead.
Was this any better? Eh, it's fine.
Go ahead. Hmm.
Is it just like a static?
It's just a whine. It's just a hum.
Don't worry about it. Okay.
Maybe that's my computer in the background.
It's kind of loud. Fan.
Well, if that's okay, then...
I wrote down some notes from the last three podcasts, the premium one, and...
As you know, I defoad not too long after podcast 183.
Matthew, I think you were on about 212 by then.
I don't remember exactly what number you were on, but 183 was the deciding factor, and I didn't really go into the Any kind of attempt at a real-time confrontation with them.
that was before that time so um and I knew what would happen if I if I did confront them on anything and um I'd With my parents, it's very different.
My mother, as I was growing up, my mother was very She was the one I went to talk to most of the time.
Or she's the one I found easier to talk to than my dad.
I really always got this creepy story.
This call is being recorded. Go.
Sorry. I got this really kind of...
I was always creeped out by him for some strange reasons.
I never really quite put a finger on it, although I suspect Certain things.
But I was always also afraid of his volatile temper.
So I would go to my mother and talk to her instead.
While manipulative, she was a little more calm most of the time.
But she's not exactly the one that got away.
After a while, I just realized I couldn't talk to either one of them.
So 183 just kind of pushed it over the edge for me.
That was it.
The only excuse I needed was in 183.
So I think I'm kind of reading my notes here.
I think the question I had Was more on the subject of...
Um, you know what?
I'm sorry.
This is not easy here.
I think I had trouble with the fact that it seems like the mythology is a lot easier to pick apart with the people whose parents are separated than the people whose...
or at least my story about the fact that they're still together today and they were both just diabolically cruel together at the same time.
I'm trying to figure out where all this fits in with my emotions now because you were talking to one person about the fact that they also feel alone and they feel abandoned and lonesome and they feel that sense of emptiness and I guess abandonment and And I was talking to Barbara Rogers, who's a friend of Alex Miller's.
I'm sorry to interrupt you for just a sec.
Peter, can you mute your mic?
We're just getting some... or just not breathe into it.
Somebody's breathing into the mic.
If you could turn off your mic or just not breathe into it, that'd be great.
Thanks. Sorry, please go ahead, Nick. She suggested that the circumstances around my birth were a possible key to all of this because when I was born I had an enormous goiter around my neck some kind of hormone problem that my mother was going through and they had to operate immediately and back then they would take the children away from the parents and put them in a nursery and on top of this I was also circumcised there was these three events in which The operations on babies in 1974,
they didn't use anesthetic.
So on top of that, there's this enormously painful operation.
There's this separation where they put you in a nursery.
And I'm wondering if, in your opinion, if that's very much connected with the lifelong sense of emptiness, I feel.
I don't, actually.
And this is obviously me out on a limb which I would hesitate to say is firmly, is firm, right?
But I don't believe that things which happen to us a day or two or a week or two after our birth have a permanent effect on our personality.
I just, I don't. I mean, obviously we don't want to inflict pain on children.
But the brain at that point is very unformed.
It's very plastic. It's very primitive, right?
I mean, the amount of intelligence that we achieve through the splitting of the neurons, the splitting of the brain cells after birth is considerable.
So, I mean, you're not exactly a tadpole, but you certainly aren't a physicist when you come out of the womb.
So, I don't think that that is the case.
Obviously, it doesn't help. And there are some people I know who seem to have a certain kind of coldness when they...
And they have been separated for various reasons.
They were premature and so on.
And they didn't know nearly as much about that kind of stuff in the 70s, of course, in the 60s when some of my friends were born.
So they just stick you in a fluorescent room in a box, basically.
And you would not get any kind of caressing or touching and so on.
And there's a certain sub-optimal thing that occurs there.
But let me tell you why I don't believe that.
And you can tell me whether or not it makes sense to you and Anyone else who may have similar theories or opposing theories, feel free to chime in.
But the reason that I don't believe that is that if it were true, I'll just talk about a friend of mine.
We'll call him Bob. Bob was born prematurely and he was put off in a fluorescent little box basically for about a week after he was born.
And he has trouble connecting two people and he has trouble with openness and intimacy and so on.
And The reason that I don't believe that it has had a permanent effect on his personality is that there should not be any latent tension about this if the personality were permanently altered.
There should not be any latent tension in this.
If you're raised by wolves in the woods and you don't go through the language phase of your early development from 18 months to 3 years or a year to 3 years or whatever, Then you simply lack the capacity to learn language in a fluid way later on in life.
Now you don't have any latent tension around that.
You just don't have the ability to do it, right?
So I don't have any knowledge of Mandarin other than a few words I picked up in China.
I don't have any knowledge of Mandarin, but I don't have any latent energy or tension emotionally around Mandarin.
It's not like if I'm hypnotized or if I go through therapy, I suddenly learn Mandarin.
And there's no amount of therapy or hypnosis or drugs that are going to restore to somebody their capacity to fluidly work with language if they miss the language window at that point in their development.
In the same way that if you don't get enough protein, you're going to be stunted in your growth.
And there's no amount of additional protein later on That can change that.
So the reason that I sort of pointed this out is with my friend Bob, there's a huge amount of tension.
It gets quite tense when we talk about this kind of stuff, right?
And so there must be a yearning burning, right?
All tension comes from desire combating with inhibition, right?
So So he would not have any latent tension around this, and he would have a genuine incapacity for it.
But if he had a genuine incapacity for it, there wouldn't be any latent tension.
So things which can be solved retroactively later on in life cannot be considered permanent parts of the personality.
They just can't be. They just can't be, right?
If you were born with Down syndrome, there's no amount of therapy that's going to turn you into a normal kid, right?
So, if it were fixed brain problems, then therapy would be impossible, personal growth and change would be impossible, and so on.
And we all know that's not the case, right?
I mean, you're a very different person than you were two years ago, as are most people in this conversation.
So, I mean, myself included.
So if things can be fixed retroactively, then they simply cannot be fundamentally organic in nature.
So that's why I would say that that is not a productive thing that occurred.
It's not what happens to you as a kid that matters.
It's how people deal with what happens to you as a kid which matters.
There are kids in wheelchairs who are incredibly loved.
And there are perfectly healthy children that are despised and reviled.
It's not that you had a goiter and it's not that things were, you know, you were circumcised and so on.
It's the fact that your parents were your parents.
That was the fundamental building block.
And the miracle, of course, is that we can change these things later on in life.
So I can certainly understand that it might give you some ease or comfort to imagine that there's a certain biological fixedness to personality.
And, I mean, to some degree there is, but...
There's so much that we can alter with enough motivation, willpower, and expertise that I hesitate very strongly to put things at a biochemical basis or a physiological basis.
Well, I'm not sure if I was implying that it was something permanent or unchangeable.
I was just wondering if that's a source of the problem that I need to work through or something.
But if you don't think that's Of course, being who they are and who my parents were, I'm sure that has far more to do with the overall issue with that because this started in puberty and it just seems to time perfectly with exactly what you're saying and I don't know where I'm still trying to figure out where it's all coming from.
I'm trying to get to the bottom of this.
I sit there and just stop what I'm doing and try and feel this feeling.
And I don't feel like I'm getting anywhere with it.
And I try and write about it, but then I just start intellectualizing and trying to come up with theories.
So, it's...
I guess it's...
It's definitely not as easy as I thought, but I'm not sure if I'm even making any progress at all.
Oh, sorry, which feeling are you talking about?
That empty, sort of abandoned, rejected feeling.
Sort of the, I'm going to be alone for the rest of my life feeling.
I think one person described it pretty accurately on one of the premium podcasts.
Well, I mean, the one thing I would suggest is that when we make predictions about the future, which we can have no knowledge of, right?
Like I can make a prediction called, I'm going to die, and I have knowledge of that unless I pull a Walt Disney Frisical.
But when we make predictions about the future, we're not talking about the future because obviously we have no direct knowledge of the future.
What we are talking about is the past.
So I can absolutely guarantee you that at some point in your life, Nate, you felt an isolation, and probably for quite a long time, that was so fundamental, so, as we've talked about before, interstellar.
There was an isolation in your life that was so profound and so fundamental That you could not imagine it ending.
And so it is that part of your history that is informing your view of the future.
And it is a fear of a repetition of that that I would suggest is conditioning some of your beliefs about the future.
These kinds of core beliefs, they're not empirical.
We can't be empirical about the future because it hasn't arrived yet.
The only place we can be empirical is the past.
The present is a now, now, now thing that's very hard to be empirical about because it's like trying to freeze water in your mind, right?
Like while it's coming down a waterfall.
But the extreme feeling of solitariness and the belief that you will be alone for the rest of your life has partly to do with your own history as a child.
But let me ask you this.
Does your mother feel intimate and close to people?
No, not on any of this And how old is your mother?
59. And do you believe in any rational context that she will achieve any kind of depth, peace or intimacy in her life?
No. Right, so you need to be clear about what is your feelings and what is the feelings that have been inflicted upon you by others.
Because if you look in your family, there is, and we can talk about your dad perhaps, but we can certainly focus on your mom for now, there is someone who has lived the life that you fear, right?
Right. So her feeling of abysmal and terrifying solitude is something that she has lived.
You never feel as alone as you are in a crowd that you're not close to.
You never feel as alone as when you are surrounded by others that you are not close to or who inhibit honest self-expression.
So, it also is quite possible that the fear that you have, or the feeling of emptiness, is not even primarily yours.
I'm confused.
Sorry, you have an example of someone in your life who has lived the very life that you fear the most, perpetual solitude, right?
Do you think that's them?
Well, empirically, we know for sure that if you are evil, you cannot be close to anyone.
And sorry, when I say that, I mean that I'm working on this part of the UPB book, sorry, in the Real-Time Relationship book, so there's a little taste, right?
But if you are immoral, if you are corrupt, if you are cruel, particularly to children, then you are filled with such shame and self-loathing that vulnerability and intimacy become Impossible for you.
And yet you cannot be alone because when you are alone your feelings of shame and self-loathing and humiliation and rage and guilt all start to bubble up.
So what you're set into is an endless life seeking distractions, running from a beast of self-loathing that is always Panting right over your shoulder and always keeping you in motion and always having you move to the next thing and always having you join clubs and always having you praying to God and always having you voting and always having you making up mythology after fantasy to try to escape who you are,
what you have done. So the emptiness in your family must first and foremost be accruing to those who have abused children.
Because there is no worse evil, right?
Right. So...
So I'm feeling their feelings.
It's possible. This is something that you'll have to examine within yourself.
but one of the reasons you may not be making any progress in this area is because you know you're taking up jogging when you're actually feeling your father's heart attack if that makes sense.
That's a confusing metaphor.
It is, sorry. That was definitely one that was not a hole in one.
What I mean is that if your mom's shoulder hurts and you go to physiotherapy because you're so empathetic that you feel your mother's shoulder hurt, right, but your shoulder is not actually injured, Then you going to physiotherapy isn't going to make that pain go away, right?
Right, right. Right, I see what you mean.
So if she's got this emptiness and this horror of her own existence and this constant desire to surround herself with distractions to avoid the hell of the soul that she's made for herself, then if you continue to identify it as your feeling and your failure alone, then you aren't going to make any progress because it's not your feeling.
Let's see. I can try that approach to it.
It's just another...
Yeah. That may...
Well, if it's... Sorry, the reason I say that, if it's not your behavior or your thinking that brought on this feeling, then changing your behavior or thinking in the way that we're talking about here is not going to solve the problem, right?
Right. If you just say, well, that was my mother's fate.
And she did her damnedest to make it my fate, too.
But I don't have to fear my mother's fate because I'm making different decisions.
Just because my mother walked out of the airlock does not mean that I have to.
And therefore the feeling that my mother is full of, this emptiness, this fear, this rage, is not going to be my feeling because I'm making different decisions.
Yeah, I get that.
Yeah, I'm making all these different decisions.
There's these complete opposite decisions.
So, rationally, I should not be Right.
And if we have a hurt shoulder and we continue to work it and continue to fix it, if we imagine that we're in Jamaica and voodoo is real, if we can't fix it at some point we know somebody's got a pin in a doll of us, right?
Right. Right.
And just to, again, this has nothing to do with reconnecting with your parents, right?
But if you wanted to test this thesis in a way that would help you connect with this emotionally, you can just write an essay in the persona of your mother about solitude, loneliness, and emptiness.
And you can very quickly get to the core of the people we've known for a long time, even the people we've known for a short time.
We can very easily get into their heads and get into their souls.
We are empathetic, deep down, almost all of us.
What does your mother have to say, if you want to write it down, what does your mother have to say on the topic of isolation?
Wow. I'm sure with a lot of thought I could figure out how that would go.
No, don't. You wouldn't need to think about it.
I promise you. You won't need to think about it.
I mean, if we had time, we could do it now.
We can sort of step through it at some point another time if you like, but you know all of this stuff.
You know every chattering thought that rolls through your mom's head.
You know that. You studied her for 20 years and more.
Yeah, in a way, I kind of did that when I translated that card she sent.
But I think...
Yeah, I think she...
I could...
I could do that. I'm trying to think of an example of how that would go.
I was inconvenient, and I'm pretty sure, just based on the few flashes of memory that I have from the time before I was five, I can figure out just how inconvenient for her I was, my emotions, especially the strongest ones.
She would just get angry and frustrated and snap at me with a disappointed look.
I'm sorry to interrupt you, but you just switched voices there, right?
You just switched your narrative perspective.
Right.
Right.
So I'm in my I'm in my right.
From her perspective, though, she would be saying I'm afraid of what I've done.
I'm afraid that what I've done will come back on me.
Just before we go on to that, you had said, when you started talking about your mother, you said, I'm sure that I was inconvenient, right?
Right. But this is not true, right?
You were a baby. No, no, not true in the objective sense.
Just for her, my emotions were a nuisance.
I mean, she felt irritated by them.
Right. I totally understand that.
I got that.
But I think it's important to notice that it's relatively unconscious or easy or fluid for you to move from one perspective to another, right?
From your mother's perspective to yours.
Go on. Well, your mother, in her pettiness and her vanity and her narcissism, experienced a childhood illness of yours that you had no control over, wouldn't wish upon your worst enemy.
She experienced that as inconvenient, which is monstrous for a mother to do, or any parent, right?
Right, that's just...
Oh, it's unbelievable, right?
I mean, it's just staggeringly, ridiculously unbelievable, right?
And you said, I was inconvenient.
And I know that implicitly, but you didn't say that with any emotional content.
Like, can you believe she experienced my childhood ailments as inconvenient to her?
Oh, right. Right, so you switch into her emptiness.
And her, well, he was inconvenient.
Yeah, he was difficult.
He was like, oh man, he was sick.
He cried all the time.
Oh, I was up all night.
He was right. Right.
That's her story, right?
And that her story merges and completely erases your identity at times, right?
You know, like if you've ever talked to people and they say, oh yeah, my dad used to hit me and my mom was a total drunk and man, she likes to smoke weed in front of my friends and blah blah blah blah.
But hey, you know, they're living free, they're easy, they're hippies and so on.
And you're just standing there with your jaw dropping, you know?
Because they're not processing their own experience, they're processing their parents' story with no experience of their experience.
Feelings or the appalling nature of what it is that occurred, right?
So when you say, well, you know, I was an inconvenience, I was inconvenient, I was this and that, but that's all your mother's empty narcissistic experience, right?
That's exactly right.
You experienced it as a kind of unbelievable experience.
Universe-spanning agony.
That's right. I mean, it's just shocking.
It is. How we can relate these things in a way that it does not connect at all with our own emotional experiences, right?
And do you know why you can't feel this?
No, I can feel it now.
But I can tell you why you didn't feel it earlier.
Why? Because, my friend, and there's no reason you'd know this, right?
You're trained not to see it. If your mother dislikes anything that is inconvenient about you, because she's whatever, narcissistic or whatever, right?
If we accept that your mother dislikes anything that is inconvenient about you, if you experience horror at how she treated you, is that convenient or inconvenient?
That's inconvenient. Wow.
Wow. Yeah, this is something that's going to take yet another week of focus.
Right, so... And I don't think it's...
Go ahead. Like, yeah, I just...
Wow.
This is intense, and I don't know why I'm holding back on this, just kind of...
I'm holding way back on the, I guess it's because it's the Colin show, and I feel like I'm having to talk or say something without, you know, dead air time.
Sorry, I'm just, I'm hearing a little bit of background noises.
It sounds like an enormous number of chickens clucking.
Can you hear that at all? I'm just kidding.
Chicken clucking? I'm just kidding. Oh!
Oh! Just kidding.
Just kidding. You can deal with it in your own time and at your own pace.
But when you listen to this, play, like, seriously, play this like ten times.
You talking about How you were an inconvenience with no emotion.
And that is the whole story in so many words, right?
Which is that not only were you an inconvenience because you were sick, but if you ever process how ghastly it is to be an inconvenience to your mother, then that is also inconvenient for your mother and that's not allowed either.
You are in the way.
And then she tells you that she loves you, right?
Oh, wow. And yeah, that's the baffling part, the whole...
what I repeated in my relationship.
Just the baffling confusion there.
And I got a glimpse of this yesterday when I was watching The Golden Compass, because, I mean, this is like the only part of the movie that was really well portrayed.
The mother...
Pretty much, like, in this world, she hurts her child, and then after hurting her, she says, I love you, give me a kiss.
Well, sure, but that's also, that's continuing the abuse, right?
Right. And it's just, that's kind of what exactly what I got.
That's the kind of sick, twisted crap that I got.
Just this Horrible shit.
Yeah, endless.
Endless. And not only is pain inflicted upon you, but then any expression of discomfort invites further attack, right?
Right. There's a book, I think it's Lawrence Kasdan, it's called Soul Murder and it's an overdramatic title and I would not apply that to you but it's very good just about how parents set up these impossible situations over and over and over and over and over and over again that all parents are doing when they're in particular modes of abuse is setting up impossible situations for their children.
Right? So they'll yell at them and then say, give me a hug.
And then if the child hesitates in giving a hug, they get attacked.
Right? Fuck you, you're not giving me a hug, you little bastard.
Right? So what are you going to do?
You've got to plaster a big empty five watt smile on your face and go and give the bitch a hug.
Why? Because that's part of the abuse.
That's the Stockholm Syndrome.
You will love me for hurting you.
That creates the impossibility.
That creates the detonation of consciousness that is perpetual.
In my family, there was millions of them, of course, but one of them was, you know, you don't seem to be enthusiastic about doing your chores, and that's selfish.
But I don't like you people at all.
Why would I want to please you?
Why would I want to help you?
Nobody's helping me. Nobody's treating me with any respect.
But I've got to damn well, you know, be enthusiastic and do a good job.
But it's ridiculous because nobody was being enthusiastic about me or doing a good job of raising or dealing with me.
So you just get all these impossible situations.
I'm going to treat you like shit and you better love it!
And I'm going to get sentimental and I'm going to drench you In self-satisfied, self-righteous tears because I'm playing a part for myself called being a good mom.
And if you express the slightest hesitation or doubt in the face of this, quote, love bomb, I'm going to fuck you up because you're a little love robot.
And then if I'm mad, you're a little abuse robot.
And you just do what I say when I want it.
in the right way and that way is going to change but the punishment never will.
The argument from the apocalypse that somebody boasted today.
Well that's right.
And then here's the thing too, right?
The last thing is, the last thing after all of this mental torture and this impossibilities and this incredible maze that we have to get our way through, that no science or rationality could navigate for us as instincts and virtue, survival, drive.
When we get through all of this, our parents say, after torturing helpless children for decades, They say, I'm not happy.
I'm lonely.
I need you. It just boggles the mind.
And when I needed them, they weren't there.
Yeah, I mean, if I rape a woman for decades, am I allowed to call her up and say, I feel lonely because women don't want to go out with me?
You've got to come over for dinner.
Seriously, this is what we're asked to believe.
Holy crap. This is what we're asked to swallow.
It's amazing that I swallowed it.
It's staggering. Sorry, go on. Well, it's just amazing that I was able to swallow this for so long.
And now that I see it from this angle, it's just horrifying.
I'm going to punch children.
I'm going to scream at children.
I'm going to terrify, brutalize, and control children and use them for my own narcissistic ends.
And then when I get old, I'm going to complain that somehow my evil did not bring me joy.
And now it's those children's job to make me happy.
This is satanic.
Right. Or godlike if you want to.
Yeah, same coin.
Yeah, it's the same, like you were saying about mysticism, and I think it was 931, how it's just got this aggression behind how it's just got this aggression behind it, where they want you to accept this, and if you don't accept it, they get aggressive.
And it's the same line of thought all the way through their entire interaction with anyone, with you as a child, that it's not just about mysticism, it carries over Their entire personality.
Yeah, it's the whole thing and it's all the way through the state and through the church as well.
And I don't want to cloud other people's experience with my interpretation, but there's lots of talk and you see this all over the place about forgiveness and reconciliation and peace and so on.
I live an incredibly happy life and I have a wonderful marriage and there's not any sort of self-praise or anything.
I just want to point out what's on the other side of working through all this stuff.
And I do not hate My mother with every fiber of my being and wake up with my teeth clenched and this and that and the other.
But, you know, when I sit and think about it, like when I sort of sink back into history and remember all those things lost to history those many years ago.
And I look forward to her death, which will probably not be more than a couple of years from now, to be perfectly honest.
I experience this as thinking about her deathbed and so on and it's like rot in your bed.
That's my feeling, you know.
Rot in your bed, you satanic bitch.
This is not a feeling that motivates me, that animates me, but I'm telling you, like seven years after having not seen her, when I sink back into history and remember and feel, viscerally feel the evils that were done unto me, an innocent and very good child, It's like, yeah, rot in your filth.
I know that she's not more than two dozen miles from my house and she's sitting in a little apartment and she doesn't clean and she doesn't tidy and it's all completely batshit insane crazy and I'm sure she's got teeth problems.
I know she's got teeth problems, infections and all these kinds of things.
It's like, rot in your squalor.
I can't change the justice of the conscience I can't change that.
I can't change justice.
I cannot change your conscience.
I cannot make it more benevolent.
The torture that accrues to people who take out evils on children is something that is beyond our comprehension in terms of the suffering.
And I can't do a damn thing to change it.
I'm not saying I would if I could, but I can't.
She has Right, and the things they'll do to avoid that realization, the things they'll do to avoid the responsibility.
Exactly, of course, of course. It's the evasion of self-ownership that causes these crimes in the first place.
It doesn't change when they can't hurt the children anymore.
All that happened was when I grew up, when I became old enough that she could no longer abuse me, she started suing doctors.
This is just a cancer on the world.
I can't change that.
And yes, she had a terrible childhood, but I still cannot change the reality of the conscience.
The conscience is hell.
This is where the power of the idea comes from.
So just be careful in your own emotional apparatus to make sure that you're not inheriting the hell of the crimes of others.
Nate, was there anything else that you wanted to add to that or mention to that?
Or should we move on? Well, we can move on.
I think that's enough info for me to go on for a week.
But you said, I can't change the reality of the conscience, this is hell, this is, and I don't know what you were going to say.
Well, yeah, I mean, sorry, that's a good point.
That's a more general note, also for the gentleman, sorry, for the lady who joined us in the FDR chat window this afternoon, that our parents will try to have us relieve their pain, right?
Relieve the pain of having hurt us, right?
So they're constantly trying to control and manipulate us to get us to alleviate their pain, right?
As if our forgiveness can change their actions.
As if our forgiveness, as adults, can change the brutalities that they perpetrated against us when we were children.
They may as well ask us to say, if you forgive me, I can be 20 again.
Or, if you forgive me, I won't have glaucoma.
Or, if you forgive me, my cancer will go into remission.
It's that exact kind of magical thinking.
Although it's even worse than that, because a tortured conscience cannot change the past, but cancer can go into remission, as can glaucoma, I guess, with enough weed.
But they're asking the impossible, and of course that's why it never works.
People demand forgiveness because...
They hope that forgiveness will erase the past.
But the forgiveness of an adult, even if it were heartfelt, even if it were possible to forgive somebody who abused you when you were helpless, would still not be the forgiveness of the child.
The forgiveness of the child is gone because the child is gone.
The child is grown.
Forgiving parents is impossible because who they harmed no longer exists.
We are not children.
We are adults. Hell, even atomically, we retain no atoms from who we were as children.
Those bodies are gone.
That mind is gone. The human beings are like a wave, not like a rock.
So they always demand from us this impossible thing.
And to make it even more horrendous, to make it even more horrendous, it is the social fantasy That forgiveness will heal evil.
That is what is largely responsible for the infliction of evil in the first place.
If people understood that a tortured conscience cannot be healed, they would be a damn sight less likely to commit crimes.
And that's partly what I'm trying to take away from the world, is this fantasy that forgiveness can heal evil.
I mean, if there was some pill that could reverse all the damage of smoking, there'd be a hell of a lot more smokers in the world, right?
For sure. But there's this fantasy that you can do all the evil on the planet to helpless little children, and then you can just make them, ooh, look, I'll just make them forgive me when I become an adult.
I'll just make them forgive me, and everything will be better.
Which is just a continuation of the abuse, because then you place the solving of evil upon the victim of evil.
And then, when your parent demands forgiveness from you to ease their tortured conscience, And you provide it.
And they don't feel better.
Who gets blamed? Me, of course.
Look. So it's just this idea of forgiveness and save me from my guilt and save me from what I've done.
It's just a continuation of abuse.
It's just another goddamn way to shit on your children.
So with this in mind, what Rich was saying on the boards about his girlfriend saying that she doesn't want him to come over, that he doesn't know if he's done something wrong or to make her angry.
I have that same feeling and I remember feeling that way with my mother.
She would just sort of do the whole, you know, She would act as if something's, you know, wrong or I've done something wrong and I would have to have trouble reading her or trouble reading her expressions or it was just, you know, and then later she would come down on me for something.
With that in mind, how does this sort of reconcile with that?
I don't follow.
You'll have to give me some more details.
Well, he had posted that he feels as though he feels rejected when his girlfriend doesn't want to come over because she's busy getting ready for work.
But he feels like he's done something wrong or she's going to be abandoned.
He explained that his mother would Do the same sort of thing.
He would have trouble reading his mother's expression.
I had the same problem. I had trouble reading her expressions about whether...
This was when I was 5 to 12 or somewhere in there.
Maybe even later than that.
Trying to figure out if something...
I was doing something wrong or that she disapproved of or why was I feeling...
I have a feeling that what I'm trying to say is, was I even then feeling her feeling of worry and isolation?
Well, I don't know, but I will say this, that if somebody says, I'm mad at you because you're not coming over here, but instead you're getting ready for work, That's just bad, right?
I mean, mother this and facial expression that and so on, right?
I mean, other people aren't there for your beck and call, right?
I mean, if your girlfriend wants to come over, then she wants to come over.
And if she doesn't come over, if she has something better to do or she has something different to do, you have no right to demand that she come over.
I don't mean you, but anyone, right?
Right. I mean, I remember this, gosh, back to my early 20s.
I was going out with a girl.
I was putting on a play that I'd written and this girl was my A set designer.
She was very artistic and a fun person.
And this is how astoundingly not mature I was when I was much younger.
And she had a terrible problem because we had to get a forest on stage and all these trees and And all this, and we had to not scar the new wood of the theater as a big mess, right?
So she did the most amazingly complex things to make it look like there was a forest on the stage.
Lighting, and it was just great stuff.
She's very creative. But she would go out of town for the weekend because she wanted to go to her dad's farm and try and find foliage.
And she was really, you know, she became a very successful artist.
Set designers, very dedicated, and so on, right?
And this is the kind of jerk that I was, that I'd get upset with her going out of town to help my play.
And after a couple of weekends, I sort of sat down with her and I said, you know, I was thinking about this.
And I said, and this was weird. I sat down with her and said, I really want to apologize because I'm like pouting at you for going out of town to do the job that you were hired to do.
And I'm sorry. I said, you know, you shouldn't have to really want to do a great job and then feel that the person you're doing the great job for is resentful that you're leaving town.
I mean, but that's just something we have to, I mean, that's just something you have to will.
I mean, that's not even a choice, right?
You just have to accept if somebody doesn't want to see you, it doesn't matter whether you want to see them, it doesn't matter how needy you're feeling, you still don't have any rights to come and see you.
Right, that's... That's the rational way to look at it.
I have felt that way, and I wonder how I came off if I... Well, you came off like I came off, right?
Needy and pathetic. And resentful, and demanding, entitled, right?
But that's just something that we can't use other people to manage our own anxiety.
Yes, I wanted to spend time with her on the weekend, and I wasn't able to do that, and that was disappointing to me, but so what?
I can then say to her, gee, I'm disappointed, but I can't say to her, hey, you know, I thought we were getting together this weekend, right?
As if I'm somehow entitled to it, right?
I can be honest and say to her, you know, gee, that makes me feel kind of anxious, but probably what I'd really do is just talk it out with a friend or, you know, not go to her and say, you know, you owe me this weekend, you know, like I'm collecting rent or something, right? That's not a reasonable affair or Right, that's just cruel.
Well, it's just, you know, the only woman who'll stay with a guy like that is not a very healthy woman.
Well, that's my only, that's my last question for now, I guess.
I've got a lot to think about.
Okay, well, thanks. Good questions.
Thanks so much. All right, so if we have somebody else, it was a fairly long chat, but I think it was useful if we have somebody else.
Christina, did you have a question?
Does it ever stop itching?
No. I am sorry. I don't know why.
It's just... Next question, please.
Hello? Hello.
I got a question about...
Basically, I heard you say once that the youngest child is usually the one that...
It's the most honest about relationships or just truth and stuff.
And I don't know if you have a podcast on this already or something, but I'd like to know more about that just in general.
Are you a youngest child?
Yeah, I am actually. Are you the most honest in your family?
I guess. Well then I'll talk to you about the theory, because if you weren't and you weren't supporting the theory, I'd have to claim that I'd never said it.
But since you are fulfilling the theory, then I'm more than happy to talk about it.
I'm sorry, go ahead. Yeah, I'm the youngest child.
Because I'm the only one that's like an atheist and anarchist and so on.
The rest of my family is kind of against that.
So, yeah, it's pretty much just for me because I want to think more about myself and how great I am.
Right. Well, as one youngest son to another, I'm all over it.
Well, very briefly, there is, as you know, in abusive families, there is a shit-rolls-downhill paradigm, right?
So the dad, the typical thing, right?
The dad yells at the mom, and the mom yells at the oldest kid, and then the oldest kid yells at the, or bullies the youngest kid, and so on.
And then, basically, the youngest kid grows up at the bottom of the hill of the shit waterfall, right?
So we end up...
Now, some, sorry, some youngest kids then do go and start bullying...
Little kids in the playground or something like that, right?
So there is that possibility that it's going to go that way, but that seems quite rare, and I'm not sure exactly why, but it probably has something to do with proximity and also when you feel the abuse within the family and you don't have anyone to take it out on, for whatever reason, you don't have anyone to take it out on, you actually...
You are actually processing an honest experience because you don't have the relief of turning around and inflicting it on someone else.
So you feel the humiliation, you feel the pain, you feel the destruction within the relationships.
So the youngest child very often has an accurate processing of what is occurring with the family because they don't have this instant self-medicating drug of being cruel to somebody who's helpless.
Kick the dog or whatever, right?
But it's hard to do that and feel like you're really having any power.
So that's sort of one thing.
And the second thing, which is sort of related to that, is that because the youngest child is not part of the cycle of abuse or part of the system, so the youngest child not only does not have the relief of being able to pass along the abuse to somebody else, But also, he has less to lose from challenging the existing system, right?
So, the youngest child, because he has actually experienced the suffering that goes on within the family and hasn't had the temporary relief of abusing others, has not been enrolled into the abuse cycle.
Or into the cycle of abuse.
Because if we are tempted and take that temptation of hurting other people in order to re-establish our own feelings of power and control when we ourselves have been humiliated, then we don't have the same guilt that other people have.
And of course, the people who don't re-inflict the abuse on others spend their whole lives, or can, I know I certainly spent some Good portion of mine rolling through life fundamentally unable to understand what happens to a human soul when it becomes abusive, right?
Because if you haven't become abusive, even if you've come from an abusive family, it's very hard to understand the soul, or perhaps the soullessness would be better, of the abuser.
And so we roll around trying to connect with all of these bad people and it is our innocence and our fundamental virtue which To some degree, virtue, to some degree, it's just perhaps an accident of the birth order.
I can't put myself in the mind of an abuser very efficiently or effectively, so I don't know the degree to which it's very distant from my own sort of soul and experience, but the youngest child as a whole has much less to lose from challenging the system.
Because if somebody's been abusive and that system of abuse is challenged, then they themselves are revealed, he is revealed as an abuser, and that's It's unbelievably agonizing to anyone.
So if you have not been roped into the cycle of abuse, as most youngest children are not, you have a very strong capacity or a very strong value.
It's much more valuable for you to ask the questions about the family structures and to oppose and to question, to think for yourself.
You've less to lose and, of course, you have much more to gain because you are not going to be in the firing line if the abuse of the family is exposed.
That's sort of what I meant to mention about that.
I'm sorry that we had that drop, but I guess I can take one more question if you like, or we shall stop.
Okay, well, thanks very much.
Sorry that we have had to have a short show.
There have been some technical issues.
I'm not sure. I will give a call through to the ISP provider and find out if there's any particular reason why the Internet goeth down not during the week, but only during the Sunday shows.
Perhaps it's high-volume, both two-way traffic.
Who knows? They might have some sort of cap, but I can talk to them about that and try to figure that out.
So thank you so much, everybody, for dropping by and bearing with us through the technical challenges.
I really do appreciate it.
I hope that you all have a wonderful, wonderful Sunday evening and week, and I will talk to you all next week, and I will see you in the chat window and on the boards.
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