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Dec. 15, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:04:51
940 A Single-Celled Childhood (A listener conversation)
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Time Text
Hey, how's it going? Hello?
Hi, can you hear me? Yeah, I can hear you.
Can you hear me? I sure can.
Alrighty, where do we start?
Your call, brother.
Alrighty, let's start by reading the little message I sent you.
That sounds good, doesn't it?
Yes.
All righty, just one sec.
So how are you going just in the meantime?
Oh, how am I doing? I'm doing great.
I'm just spending half the day on FDR, busy work, all the stuff that needs to be done, and then the other half of the day on the new sort of book on real-time relationships, which is quite a lot of fun, although it's a challenge to write, so I'm doing well.
I'm doing well. Sounds good.
Okay, here's the message.
Yes. And I may be taking away a spot from one of them.
I'm leaning towards it, but that may just be because I don't fully recognize what it is to go into a refuge.
And that's it.
Right, right. Okay, well, I mean, let me just tell you about stuff that I can't help you with so we get that stuff off the table.
Obviously, I don't know the quality of...
The refugees. I guess they would be called, what in North America might be called, something like a shelter.
Is that right?
That was my understanding of it.
They seem to be like, from the places I've seen, there'd be like emergency housing facilities or some sort of name like that.
Right. Okay. Okay.
And so I don't know anything about emancipation or student welfare or any of the legal aspects.
But of course, there would be...
That's not why I'm asking, is it? No, no, of course not.
Of course not. I just sort of want to make sure that, you know, we focus on the stuff that I can actually help you with, right?
So there'd be tons of resources to help you with that.
So what is the primary driver that is putting you into the situation of considering this as an action?
Well, I guess because I'm just so unmotivated to do anything now.
Go on. Well, I don't know.
It just...
Most of my...
Pretty much every day consists of going to school and then coming home and staying in, like, my room for, like, until I go to sleep.
And, I don't know.
It... Oh, just one second.
It... Just seems, well, if I was put in a situation where I actually had buyer feedback on my actions, and also Jess had mentioned that they help you develop independence.
Okay, but perhaps you can tell me a little bit more, because I don't have a view of your family situation at all.
So if you could tell me a little bit about your family situation, that would help.
Alright, where to start?
My dad used to work for the RAF, that's the Royal Australian Air Force, and now he currently works for the Shell Oil Refinery, and he's been, well, he sort of just, it appears like he just comes and goes as he pleases.
And my mum used to work for a bank, but now she just does odd accounting jobs for people.
So it's mostly just been me, my brother and my mum at home.
So pretty much, well, yeah, since I was born.
Okay, me and my mum, well, I don't know.
Can I get some prompting questions or something?
Well, sure. I mean, if you are, how old are you?
I'm 17. Okay.
So if you're 17 and you're looking in a sense for emergency housing, then I would assume, correct me if I'm wrong, but I would assume that there is some bad stuff going on in your household.
Well, it's not like I'm being beaten or anything.
No, you're 17, right?
You could probably take her, right?
Yeah, I could. Tell me a little bit about how your mom raised you, what kind of discipline she had, whether you had any intimacy, whether you were close or anything like that.
Intimacy? No, not at all.
I remember when I was...
Okay. I don't remember the exact age.
I just sort of have to infer it.
But it would have been when I was about six.
I remember my mum driving me up to a juvenile detention centre, or as she called it, the naughty boy's home, and threatened to leave me there unless I'd cleaned my room or something mundane like that.
Right. And there seems to be so many examples in my mind of times where she would just completely let loose on me and my brother about how we were misbehaving and then the phone would ring and then she'd be like, oh, hi.
And I remember thinking it was the craziest thing back then as well.
Yeah, no, and just not to interrupt your story, but, you know, my mom was the same way, right?
She was screaming like a banshee, like a banshee siren, and then the phone would ring and she'd be like, oh, I think it's my boyfriend, you know, whatever, right?
And it would be like a complete, like, out with the old and in with the new interpersonal.
Yeah, it's like, how many people are in there exactly, right?
Can we get them all together for a conference, maybe?
But, sorry, go on.
And what else?
I had another fantastic point, but now it escapes me.
Well, so there was obviously...
Oh, no, I got it. I got it.
Sorry. Go ahead. I remember these times where I would complain to my mum about something and then she would just completely bawl out.
Oh, I'm a terrible parent.
Maybe I should go to live with one of her friends or something.
Something along that. And then I would have to go, no, you're not a bad parent.
And I'd have to consult her, which is just messed up.
So she's pretty good at making it about her, right?
Well, yeah, I guess you could say that.
No matter what happens, it's about her, right?
So if you're upset, it immediately becomes about her, right?
Yeah. More recently, it's been like I do something like I wouldn't put my clothes in a washing basket or something else.
Why don't you do this? You just do this to frustrate me.
And I respond with, yeah, I've got nothing better to do than to think about these tiny little insignificant things to piss you off.
Right, right. You haven't listened to, there was a recent...
Two podcasts with an Australian fellow, and just your family sounds very similar, right, insofar as it is a crazy mom.
Was the podcast Predatory Depression?
Yes, the two. I haven't listened to them yet.
Yeah, you might want to listen to them because it sounds like you are like the twins separated at birth, and maybe you're in fact brothers.
It would be kind of ironic, right, if your brother had called in already, but I don't think so.
But have a listen because there's the crazy mom and the absent dad and two boys, right?
So it's something to have a listen to.
He wasn't the younger one, was he?
No, I don't think he was.
He's not as young as you are.
The similarities will be kind of freaky when you listen to it, because it seems like there's only one kind of family in Australia.
Anyway, that could just be my perception, having talked to a grand total of two Australians about their families in this way.
So it's safe to say, I guess, that there's no love lost between yourself and your mother.
Oh, no. If someone came up in just a car now and said, hey, you want to come and live somewhere else, then I'd be totally for it.
Oh, sure. No, of course.
I mean, that makes perfect sense.
Now, clearly, you had psychological abuse.
I mean, to put cards on the table as far as your history goes, right?
I mean, threatening to drop your child off at a juvenile detention center when he's six is, no matter what you did, like you said, well, I didn't clean my room or something or make my bed.
But it doesn't matter.
I don't remember what I did, so it couldn't have been that bad.
But it doesn't matter how bad it was.
That is not good parenting.
Like, no matter what you did, I mean, if you'd set fire to the cat or whatever, right, then it's still not how you handle things with a child.
That's highly abusive, highly destructive, and it is a clear severing of the bond, right?
Because the one thing that occurs with these kinds of parents is that you don't feel any bond with them, right?
I mean, the only interaction that you have with them is to serve their needs in one way or another, but there's no actual mutual bond, right?
Yeah, totally agree.
So you had psychological abuse.
It seems clear to me that there was verbal abuse, but you can let me know whether that is the case or not.
Verbal abuse how? Well, verbal abuse would be raising her voice at you, calling you names, and so on.
Yeah, not so much names, or not that I can remember, but yeah, she raised her voice a lot.
Like to a loud sort of speaking, or to a screaming, or a shrieking, or what sort of extremity are we talking about?
Certainly felt like shrieking when I was young.
But then, of course, I remember her telling me, I'm not yelling.
Right. I bet she wasn't just telling you that, right?
She's yelling at you.
Or, you know, don't make me yell by provoking me, right?
Or whatever, right? Oh, no, no, no, no.
That would mean she was yelling.
Right, right, right.
So there's a constant denial of reality, too, right?
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, and just on the denial of reality thing, ever since I've become an atheist and tried to, like, talk to her about it, man, oh, man.
As if being so evident.
Okay, now, was there any physical abuse?
Oh, the standard hitting when you're young, but that's about it.
Can you tell me what, because this definition changes from place to place, what is standard hitting where you are?
Up until I was about, okay, say about eight.
Let's go with that. Just get a hit or just smack you around the bum when you've done something bad.
Right. Of course, when you get to the age when you can take them, they need to take a different tactic, eh?
Right, right, right, right.
Okay. And my dad, well, I don't recall him hitting me, but there have been these instances where he'd do something and it was understood that one move, you're getting hit.
How many times a week would you be in the situation where you would be fearing some sort of punishment?
When I was young?
I didn't really think in weeks back then.
It was more hour to hour.
Okay, let's go with how many times a day would you be concerned or be afraid of punishment?
Let's go with two.
Sounds about right. Okay.
Did you ever experience the punishment as something that was being applied against you because you were genuinely being bad, or was it just, these are the arbitrary rules, and if I don't obey them, I will get punished?
I'm tempted to say just that it felt like arbitrary rules, but that's not really it.
And the reason, sorry, the reason, just to analogize that, right?
So if you're playing rugby and you, I don't know, you pass the ball forward, then you get, you know, whatever, you get a ticket or whatever.
But that's not moral. Metaphors change for your convenience.
I'm sorry? Rugby metaphors for the Australians.
Yeah, yeah, there you go. See, I'm always trying to serve the audience as best I can, right?
And I was doing fine until I tried to remember what the hell the punishment was by having played rugby.
Hell, I don't know what it is.
I don't know what it is either.
But the thing is that nobody thinks that if they pass the ball forward, they've done something immoral.
It's just, I've broken these rules, and, you know, it's just the rules that you have to play by.
So when you were punished, was it because, like, if you did something wrong and you were punished, was it like, okay, well, the game is try to obey these crazy rules, and if you get caught, then you get punished, and that's just part of the game.
And I don't mean a game like it was fun.
But did you experience when your mom said, you know, you're a bad kid or something?
Did you ever feel like a bad kid or was it just, well, that's just mom talking?
There were two main reasons why I said it didn't feel like arbitrary rules.
The first one being that when I was about, say, 14, when I got depressed, it felt like there was something wrong with me.
So, and also, it seemed to be like if you do like this thing wrong, then your future will be like this.
And the analogy which I was just talking about in the chatroom was that if you keep acting like that, you'll end up like your Uncle Steve, who was just a complete failure as a human being.
Right, so there was a, that's not quite the same as moral, right?
Well, yeah. Because, I mean, your mom is religious, right?
So if she's bothered by you being an atheist, is she religious?
She's religious to the point where it frustrates me.
It's this...
Before I became an atheist, I was thinking, like, we didn't go to church, and it seemed to me, if God is real and the Bible says you have to go to church and you don't go to church, well, that seems like bad mojo.
Right. So I was like, and it just sort of just keep nagging.
It never seemed to bother mum.
I don't know. It seems weird that, like, if you're consistent enough to try and follow the Christianity, you end up falling right out of it.
Yes, that's true, but I just missed that transition point.
So your mum didn't go to church, but she was a Christian?
Well, yeah.
Okay, um... So she was like, did she read the Bible?
Did she pray every day? I mean, what was the extent of her religiosity?
I've been told she prays every day, but I haven't seen it.
She's got all these stupid little knick-knacks with Bible quotes on them.
Right. Okay.
So she's managed to make Christianity also all about her, right?
Yeah. It's quite a talent.
It's like a gravity well, right?
But then again, no Christians ever read the Bible, to be fair.
Well, but they do go to church and have bits of it read to them, right?
The bits that appeal to their vanity.
I remember I was taken to church with my grandmother, and she was more on the extreme side of it.
Well, let's call it the consistent side.
Yeah. Okay, so we have psychological abuse, some verbal abuse in terms of raised voices, but not much name-calling.
We have relatively minor and culturally acceptable physical abuse, which doesn't mean good or whatever, right?
And we also have a certain...
Feeling on your part that you have to obey the rules.
If you can get away with something, you'll do it without any particular guilt, you know, because it's just these crazy rules and you have to survive.
Sorry, go ahead. Just on that note, I remember when I was 15, hearing about Machiavelli's The Prince, and because I was lazy, I just looked it up on Wikipedia, and it just seemed to make sense.
Like, do what you can, take no prisoners.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, this is what happens when you are in a state of nature and you are being raised by people who, I don't know if you've read or listened to or got a hold of a copy of Untruth, this little book that I wrote.
Well, it might be worth it if you come in to a couple of bucks or if you can't afford it, just send me a note and I'll send you a copy and you can just pay me if you like it.
But it very much is about this idea that parents only use morality as a concept to dominate and bully their children, right?
So they say, well, you're a bad kid.
If you don't do this, you should obey me.
And they say it's good and bad, but they don't do that because they have any understanding of morality.
They just do that because it works, and they use morality.
So what happens is we look at morality as a system of dominance, right, in this sort of Nietzschean model.
Yeah, I've sort of picked that up from the podcast I've heard.
Okay, good. So, you know all this stuff, right?
So, yeah, so you're in a state of nature, right?
So, it's like, well, whatever I can get away with, right?
Then I'll get away with, right?
I mean, if the cops are corrupt, then people just obey the laws because they'll get punished if they don't, right?
Not because they think they're a shining reflection of anything particularly ethical.
So, what happened when you were 14 and your depression hit?
Oh, it's sort of been like, I don't know, I remember at 14, I remember being able to call it depression, or maybe it was 15.
It's all sort of a blur at this point.
Sorry, it's like two or three years ago, right?
Oh, yeah. So, how is it exactly a blur?
I'm sorry, like, I mean, it's not like we're reaching back 80 years into your past or something here, right?
I mean, have you done a lot of drugs in the interim?
I mean, how does this end up being a blur?
I don't know, when, like, my home life's been basically go to school, come home, and, you know, enough days of that strung together with not much else going on sort of seems to blend together.
So, this has been going on since you were like 13 or 14, go to school, come home, and stay in your room.
Well, before that, pretty much, it's basically been base operating procedure since I was born.
So you go to school, you come home and you stay in your room.
Yeah. Sorry, the alternative to staying in your room is what?
Like what happens if you emerge?
It's just something I've been sort of piecing together with some talks with people and just I'm thinking about it.
Whenever I have a preference or anything, there's one thing my parents found to...
Get out of giving me pocket money.
I was just saying, oh, whenever you want something, just come and ask us and we'll give it to you.
This would have been when I was about five.
And I'd say, oh, mom and dad, I'd like this toy.
And then they'd try and convince me that I don't want it or that the desire was stupid.
Wow. And it's like, oh, I want to go and...
I want to go outside and do something.
Or where do you want to go? Like, what do you want to do?
With whom? For how long?
Until... Or just, who cares?
It's too much work, right?
Yeah. Yeah, so I just gave up.
So it's a very soft and gentle prison, right?
Yeah. It's not bars.
It's just an accumulation of ash until you just can't keep walking, right?
Yeah. It's more a prison than you know.
I come home and I just hop in the computer and my mom would just sort of waddle into the room, slam my dinner on the table and walk out and it's just this prison guard metaphor gets all the stronger.
Oh, okay. Okay, so you can go for quite some time without any kind of interaction with your mom and as you say, your dad is mostly coming and going when he pleases, right?
Oh, yeah. Alright.
So, when you were about 14, and I won't go into the theories if you're familiar with the podcast that I talk about, one of the things that happens when we get into puberty, right, if we've got bad parents, is that we are unprepared for adulthood.
We don't have the equipment to make.
We never develop those muscles to make choices and so on.
So the depression kind of makes some sense, but what was the reaction in your family to the depression?
So like there was this, you mentioned earlier there was this belief that it was your fault in some way, right?
The belief that it was my fault, where did that come from just again, sorry?
Oh, you had said that you felt that there was something wrong with you when you became depressed.
Oh yeah, I remember just reminiscing on it a couple of days ago.
I remember when I'd get a bad report, and I'd look over and think, oh, I'm dumb, and I'm lazy, and I got a bad mark, but I just got my report back a couple of weeks ago, and I'd just look through it and go, well, of course I'm going to get a bad mark.
Look at the subjects I'm doing.
Legal studies? Come on.
Yeah, look, I mean, I don't know much about you, but I can certainly tell you that if you're chewing your way through my podcast, you're not dumb, right?
I mean, it's not like they're the ultimate test of intelligence.
Maybe they are, I don't know.
But they're not easy for people who aren't very smart, right?
So I think that you can work with the default position that you're brilliant, right?
And people who are very smart don't do very well in state gulag schools, particularly with indifferent and anti-intellectual parents, right?
Hang on, just a relevant tangent.
My Year's Advisor asked me to come and see him about it, and after about, I don't know, nine reschedulings, he asked me to do this learning styles test, which really pissed me off, like, oh, you're failing at school.
It couldn't be because anything's going wrong at home.
Right. It also couldn't be because the school is not stimulating you.
And then we went through the results and apparently I'm an analytical, theoretical learner and all the subjects I was doing were just completely off.
I was doing legal studies, I've dropped that now.
I'm doing Italian studies of religion and software.
The Italian stuff I was good at first because I had to figure out how the grammar fit together.
I was just like a big puzzle and I was loving it.
And then as soon as I had to write long answer responses, I just completely tanked.
Well, because what's the point, right?
Yeah. It's not like you're writing poems to a beautiful woman that you want to date in Italian, right?
Then you'd be motivated, right?
I guess so.
They're actually asking you to copy a menu in Chinese.
Sorry, go ahead. I remember thinking that, well, yeah, it makes sense.
I like to make analytical models of stuff.
But then again, I can't even imagine anyone who could enjoy this stuff.
Right, right, right.
But then again, there's all these like arty, hippie, Englishy sort of people who can write stories and that, so I don't know.
Maybe they get a kick out of it.
Yeah, I mean, we don't have to have the same interests as everybody else, but we certainly...
But of course, you've not really had any encouragement.
In fact, you've had a lot of discouragement in having preferences, right?
Well, yeah. I mean, this is the old thing.
You're not given money and you get to make choices based on your preferences.
It's like you apply for a toy and it goes through so much paperwork that you give up, right?
Yeah. Okay, so let me sort of give you a metaphor that is spanking new and see if it...
A metaphor from FDR? Get out.
Shockingly, and then we'll go unattended, and then I'll forget who you are.
But anyway...
Sounds good.
Yes, sounds like the live is pretty much the same as the recorded.
It's the same damn thing.
But, see... Parents are like doctors, right?
Another doctor metaphor?
Come on. This is a new doctor metaphor, though.
So parents are like doctors, and what they're supposed to do...
This time the doctors are evil?
What they're supposed to do is they're supposed to cure the children.
Is that your cell phone, or is that mine?
Nothing's going on over here.
But my mommy's walking up and down the house.
No, no problem. So, yeah, doctors, parents are like doctors, and they're supposed to cure you of an illness called childhood, right?
Yeah, that's all right and fair.
Keep going. Right, and your doctors were not curing you, right?
Because they weren't giving you the steps, right?
You could say that, you know, like a physiotherapist, if you're stuck in a wheelchair for a year and then you've got to get up and walk, a physiotherapist has to help you do it, right?
Whereas, of course, your parents were like piling bricks into the wheelchair, right?
And so one of the challenges is that you haven't been given the steps necessary to be able to flex the muscles of selfhood, if that makes sense, to flex the muscles of your identity.
So that you can sort of step forward into the world, right?
And that's a real challenge.
There is a part of that that totally sucks, and there is a part of that that is totally great.
And you're probably mostly aware of the stuff that sucks, and you may not be as aware of the stuff that is totally great.
I know the stuff that's great.
All your decisions are made for you.
No, no, I don't mean that.
What I mean is the fact that you're like a wolf child, right?
Like you're raised by dingoes or something, right?
Metaphors change for your convenience.
It's no kidding, right? Insert local animal here.
But the reason that you're able to process philosophy...
It's because you have been under-trained, which means that you can also be original.
Huh? I don't get it.
Well, the reason that working from first principles is important for you...
It's because you have been untrained, right, in many ways as a human being.
And that means that you don't have a working template or a workable template with which to process and understand the world.
And that's good because most people are trained into thinking that they have a template when they don't, right?
The one thing that's generally true about the people who get into philosophy and are very successful in the pursuit of wisdom It's that they are under-trained by their parents in cultural stereotypes or, you know, whatever the template is for people to work with in your society, in your culture, right, in Australia.
So, you're very interested in working from first principles because you kind of have to learn how to walk, right?
And because you kind of have to learn how to walk...
You have to learn a lot about muscles and tendons and weight, and you really become an expert, right?
And so, because you have no particular template to work from that's going to be helpful for you, because you're going to live a life that's different from your parents, right?
So, we hope, right?
Yeah, so the stuff that sucks is that it's like I don't know exactly how to make choices and I'm not real comfortable with my own preferences and I don't feel a lot of self-generated stimuli about where it is I want to go in life and all of those things which are a real struggle.
They're kind of in your face, but I promise you that the lack of templating, the lack of habits that you've been trained in also gives you the chance to be very original.
Huh. Yeah, that makes sense.
And that's going to be something that's important to look at because there's a kind of restlessness and a curiosity that comes out of all of us who were raised by ourselves, right?
Or who were raised in opposition.
We tried to raise ourselves in opposition to all the bad advice and indifference we were given, right?
And your childhood sounds particularly solitary.
Just an aside here, the model that my user advisor was talking about was there was analytical people and the creative sort of people.
Are you saying it was just like the insane people and the people who haven't had insanity inflicted on them?
The people who, sorry, haven't had insanity?
Well, yeah, like, trained in the cultural norms, and then, I don't know.
Most of the people who, like, seem to be able, well, in my school anyway, who seem to be able to, like, do creative subjects like art and English, yeah, they're not the people I want to talk to.
Well, sure, because what they have is they have a kind of creativity without rationality, right?
Yeah. Yeah. Right?
Whereas there are other kinds of people who have the rationality without the creativity, right?
Like the engineers, the typical Spocks, and so on, right?
Sorry, that's your dad's metaphor.
Hang on, what? Well, Spock from Star Trek, but that's probably before your time, right?
Yeah, it is. Yeah, sorry.
I'm just having an age flash here, so I'm back.
But philosophy, the beautiful thing about philosophy is that it is creativity in rationality, right?
It's like the most creative of the sciences in many ways, but it's very disciplined, right?
Oh, yeah, makes sense. Well, I don't think I'm uncreative.
No, I'm saying that I think you have the capacity for great creativity if you're...
Interested in working from first principles, which you would be because of a lack of a cultural template.
So the issue in terms of getting out of your house is that just because you've got this little cell called the bedroom that you come home from, and there is obviously, if you say your mom's waddling in and slamming down your food like a prison guard, that there's a certain kind of unpleasantness in the environment.
Yeah, let's use the word unpleasantness for lack of a better term.
Well, what's a better term?
I don't know, just this complete soul-sucking horror.
I think that's probably a better way of putting it.
I think that's a better way of putting it.
Right, so the air is poisoned almost, right?
Yeah. And your mom's mood is what, in general?
Sometimes she just goes from this complete just optimistic mushiness.
Like sentiment? Yeah, and she'll just sort of go, Hi, how are you going?
And then just be like this sort of grunting, everything's against me, sort of mood.
Right, right. Now, tell me, just before we move on, just tell me, you'd said earlier that you are...
Talking with your mom about atheism.
Yeah, well, I was.
Until... Until I really started getting into the podcast.
Okay, so that's not...
Because you know that that would not be something that I would consider to be a particularly great idea, but, I mean, if you've already dealt with it, we don't need to, right?
Yeah, or I guess sometimes it sort of laps into it, like I just wander into the lounge room and my mum would be watching this, like, the haunting show.
You know those documentaries when they try and spy out ghosts?
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
I tried to respond to it.
Oh, it's so tempting, isn't it?
Yeah, now...
It sounds like you hate her, right?
Yeah. I mean, I don't want to put words in your mouth, right?
I don't want to put words in your mouth, but this is sort of the feeling that I'm getting, and you can tell me if I'm wrong.
Well, yeah, hatred, but I don't know.
Do you sort of have to recognize someone as a person before you hate them?
She just sort of seems to be this amalgamation of cultural influences.
Yeah, well... Amalgamation of cultural influences or no, she was the waddling horror who raised you, right?
And that's not pretty, right?
Yep. Or who didn't raise you, who used you, who exploited you.
Oh, yeah. Right.
Okay. So, you want to get her, in a way, right?
Like, you want her to suffer.
Yeah. Yeah. You want to take away religion, you want to take away sentimentality because you want her to suffer, right?
Yeah, and this is something I sort of touched on with Ash a couple of days ago.
We were talking about, well, I was talking with, oh, I think it was Ricky, and he said, oh, just get out of the house and go and do something.
And so I did. I put some stuff in a bag and I put a note on my desk that said, oh, I've gone out from Dave.
And then I got back and was like, why the bloody hell did you go out?
And saying, I don't know, just cause.
And I was just being despondent.
And Ash and I sort of came to the conclusion that I took a call that would result in conflict because I wanted them to be hurt.
Well, so sorry, I just want to make sure I understand this.
So you're 17 years old and you were criticized for leaving the house?
Criticized for not telling them, is the story.
Oh, so if they, but if you told them, then they would have, where are you going and who are you doing?
Yeah. Then you would have run into the bureaucracy, right?
The state is a product of the family more so than you can imagine.
No kidding. But I mean, that's the impossible situation, right?
So if you go out and you bypass the bureaucracy, then you're criticized.
But if you agree to not bypass the bureaucracy, then by the time you leave the house, your soul is dying, right?
Man, I need a nap.
After the bureaucracy, you just want to go have a nap.
Right, right, right.
So that's the impossible situation that they put you in.
And the reason that I wanted to mention this, right, is that you've got a lot to be angry about, right?
Just man to man, right?
You have a lot to be angry about.
And you have to...
And you should be angry, right?
You should be angry.
But... You should not turn that anger into a desire to hurt your parents.
Yeah, you should use anger to fix your situations, like you said.
Yeah, and the reason that I wanted to pause, just when you say you want to talk to your mom about atheism and so on, which is a nice way of saying that I want to take away my mom's drug of religion so that she sees herself for the horror that she is and that there's a desire to punish.
And that desire to punish, I totally understand it.
I totally understand it.
I'm not quite sure that the take away the drug and see her as the monster she is metaphor doesn't really connect with me because I was really into Christianity before I became an atheist.
Well, sure, but that's not the differentiator that I'm talking about.
What I'm talking about is that you had not hurt children, right?
I did sort of have a...
Yeah, this is going to amount to nothing, but I did sort of have a bit of a harsh discussion with my girlfriend about when she decided to become a Wiccan.
Okay, we'll keep that ball in the air and we'll come back to that in a stunning feat of juggling, but because you're going to, and we can mention Ash, because Ash has a desire to engage with crazy people, right? And this happens.
Can we get this from after he's engaged with me, or...?
No, no, what I mean is that, and I've talked with him about this, right, but we had a Buddhist come in a couple of days ago.
Ah, yeah. Fun times.
Right, and he wants to dig in, right?
He wants to get them, right?
So he wants to corner them, right?
He wants to corner them and get them to just damn well admit that their beliefs are stupid, right?
But that never happens, does it?
Well, it doesn't happen, that's right, and it's just something to watch in yourself, because we're talking about your future here.
I mean, your past is what it is, right?
But in your future, you're going to meet lots of people like your mom.
They're all over the place.
The world is not full of them, but the world is not just your mom, right?
And you're going to have a desire to get them, right?
Yeah, I noticed that when I tried to bring up the anarchy stuff with the political forum at school.
Oh, man. Right, and you've got to be careful that you don't recreate.
The real challenge, right, is to recreate as little of her childhood as humanly possible, and the stuff that we do recreate is only the good stuff, right?
And you are going to have a desire to want to get crazy people into your life.
Oh, yeah. Well, don't.
I think I've worked, like, a bit through it.
I think I've made incredible progress, if I maybe throw away humility for a moment.
Sure, and these are just pointers, right?
I mean, I'm not saying that you're a guy with a scimitar going into the church or anything, but I'm just saying that.
Not yet, anyway. So, what happened with your girlfriend and the Wiccan thing?
Oh, this was a while.
Well, seeing as I couldn't really leave the house because I had to go through bureaucracy, I just sort of talked on MSN, and she said, oh, I'm really into this Wiccan stuff.
And, well, me being the typical cut-out Christian, I brought the, well, you know you're going to hell, don't you?
And how old were you when this, sorry to interrupt, how old were you when this happened?
Okay, this would have been...
Okay, it would have been before that trip.
I would have been late 14, 15 about that.
Right, okay. And this is still your girlfriend or not so much?
No. Okay, good.
Just checking. Never want to dive in where there's sensitivity and so on.
Okay, so if you can't get into a refuge, a shelter, I can't remember the word that you used.
Whatever. Yeah, so if you can't get into one of these places, how long until you can move out?
Well, I haven't had a paid job yet.
Well, because if I want to get a paid job, that's like mountains of bureaucracy.
But I've been doing what I can.
I've been getting resumes out there.
Right. So, I don't know.
School ends like in a year.
Yeah, that's a hell of a long time to wait, isn't it?
Yeah, it's 365 days.
And counting, right?
Right. Well, have you looked at all into the practical aspects of getting into one of these sorts of housing projects?
No, not really. It sort of just came up yesterday when I was talking about it in the chat room.
Right, right. Well, I mean, any place where you don't have your parents around is probably better, right?
Yeah. Yeah. That's a given.
Yeah, you know, my particular perception, I don't know if somebody said, well, but there are people who need to spot even more and so on.
It's like, but that's stupid, right?
I mean, that's like, I can't eat a big snack because there are starving people in India.
Like, forget that. I mean, this is your life.
Yeah, I got really angry when Ricky made that argument.
Yeah, yeah, no, you don't want to be listening to that stuff, right?
Because then it's like, well, I can't wear a shirt because there's a guy who doesn't have a shirt in Sri Lanka or whatever, right?
So, you know, as far as your life goes, it seems to me that if you can pull it off, that would be a pretty good thing.
Yeah. Because, I mean, you can't, I mean, you're a young man, you should be out having fun, right?
Hell, I think I'm entitled.
I think you're damn well entitled.
You're damn well entitled.
Not stupid fun, not getting drunk, not doing drugs, not sleeping around, not stupid fun, but fun, right?
Actual fun. Actual fun, right?
Not like a hedonistic idiot fun, but actual fun, right?
You should be doing that. And, you know, this year is a year you're never going to get back, right?
Yeah. You stay at home.
It doesn't get tacked onto your life when you're 90.
And even if it does, who wants a year when you're 90 when you can have a year when you're 17?
Yeah, bring it on.
Damn right. Damn right.
I mean, you should be out there, right?
And find yourself some non-Wiccan princess.
But I mean, I think that it would be a very, very good idea to get out, right?
I mean, again, I don't want to be anything that's a downer, but you've got to watch when you get out, right?
The relaxation of your solitude and you don't sort of overcompensate and go nuts.
But I'm sure you're smart enough to figure that part out.
But yeah, I would say if you can get to some place where you have some real independence, I mean, damn right, yeah, go for it.
Alright, so I've got confirmation that the Canadian cult leader wants me to move out?
That's right. I'm sorry that the big FDR commune in the woods north of Toronto is still under construction.
Otherwise, of course, we'd send all of the black helicopters to pick you up.
Ah, well, it's only a matter of time.
That's a matter of time. Now, is there anything else that you wanted to talk about?
I know that you're at home.
Mother is slithering and lurking around and so on.
Was there anything else that you had questions about?
Was this a useful chat that we had?
Sort of useful, I guess.
It's good to just clear the air about sort of what I want to do in terms of, like, leaving home.
Yeah. I could have sworn there were some other things I wanted to bring up.
In the meantime, an esoteric question.
Sure. You've mentioned on the podcast about how men and women fit together, apart from the biologue.
The naughty bit. Yeah, apart from the naughty bits.
Yeah, well, could you go into that in more detail?
Because, yeah, I'm not really buying it.
You mean you think that men and women are not compatible, sort of in general, psychologically?
Sure, they're compatible, but as compatible as two men are or two women are.
Oh, no. From my experience, that's not the case.
That's not the case. I'll give you a simple example.
You're not married, obviously, so you don't know about these strange places, but there are stores that I never even knew there was a...
Store brand like that, like HomeSense and Bed Bath and Beyond and so on, right, where you can get towels that bend.
You get towels of different colors and little seashell soaps wrapped in plastic that you're not supposed to...
They're just towels. Get over it.
I see, but this is the thing, right?
This is the thing. This is the difference, that women are unbelievable nesters, right?
I mean, if you go into...
I mean, 95% of the economy is women nesting, and the other 5% is men buying electronics, but we can get into that another time.
But if you go into a computer store, it's all guys.
And if you go into one of these...
And that one wicked princess...
Yeah, and if you look at men's magazines, right, it's all, you know, stereos and guys with washboard abs and so on.
And then that's like a tiny little corner of the magazine rack.
And then if you look at the women's magazines, it's...
It's a different planet.
I mean, same planet, different worlds, right?
And there are very large differences.
There are lots of similarities and so on, but there are very large differences between men and women that are complementary if both people enjoy their gender and so on.
Before I got married, I was living...
In a one-bedroom apartment, and I had an old futon, and I had, you know, the biggest television set that the apartment building could reasonably sustain with its engineering, and 19 computers, and so on, and it was great, right?
And now that I'm married, I live in a house, and it's beautifully painted, and it's beautifully decorated, and right, and I think it's wonderful, right?
I think it's absolutely great.
I feel like I'm living in a showroom And it's beautiful.
And there's just no conceivable way that I would ever have done that myself.
Like, I never would have dreamed of it.
Even if I'd wanted to, I wouldn't have even known where to begin.
But my wife is, like, pre-programmed with all this knowledge.
She knows what we need to buy, where we need to go, and all this kind of stuff.
And the house runs beautifully, and the food flows in, and it's cooked.
You know, it gives me the chance to focus on the intellectual pursuits and so on, which, of course, my wife has as part of her job.
But So she just outstrips you in every area?
Oh no, I'm much better.
She runs the finances, she runs the household, but what I do is I run the emotional integrity within the relationship.
I was just kidding before.
Oh, okay. But in terms of complementary, we're, you know, and I don't think that we're alone in this, right?
I mean, but she's good at some very traditionally female things.
I'm good at some very traditionally male things.
And it actually works out really, really well.
So it certainly is possible.
And all the bachelors that I know, all the guys who live without women, they have a particular kind of Look and feel to the place, which is, I don't want to sit down.
But the men who live with women, it's just women bring this wonderful, nesting, amazing, beautiful thing to your life.
Remind them to shower.
Yeah, that kind of stuff, you know, the hygiene and all that kind of stuff, right?
And so, I mean, this is just one aspect of very many, right?
But there is an enormous amount of complementary stuff that goes on between men and women if you sort of let it happen and don't try and judge it too much.
I suppose. I remember thinking that regardless of which way this conversation goes, I'll probably still be chasing skirts.
Sure. There's nothing wrong with chasing skirts, right?
I mean, there's nothing wrong with chasing skirts, right?
The thing to make sure is, right, just don't chase them off a cliff, right?
You're like, the discussion couldn't go, hmm, Steph was wrong, and men and women aren't complimentary.
We should all become gays now.
I'm pretty sure that couldn't happen, although you are pretty persuasive, so...
Right, right. And, of course, if you want to raise children, right, then men and women bring very different styles of, you know, if you want to raise children well, right, then men and women bring very different and complementary styles of parenting to the mix, right?
And that's just, I mean, that's not even just my opinion, right?
It's just that... You know, like girls who grew up without a dad tend to have certain behavioral problems and guys that grew up without moms and have different behavioral problems and there's just no better way to raise children if you can have a happy marriage, right, than having two people, a man and a woman, I believe, right, raising the children.
I mean, that just works out psychologically and scientifically.
There's a lot of complementary stuff that goes on if you just sort of relax and enjoy it rather than to get all ideological and feminist-y and all that kind of stuff, right?
Yeah, that and you've got to actually make the kids.
Yeah, I mean, that until the chemistry sets get a little bit more advanced, that does require all the naughty bits in the world, right?
Yeah. Next off your conversation, here we go.
I've actually been bringing up some of this FDR stuff with some of my friends.
And one of them is a...
Well, it's sort of been on the relativist feminist side of it.
Any pointers? A relativist feminist?
Well, I mean, the pointers that I would give you are the pointers that I think are useful in general, right?
Which is that the first thing you need to do is to say, well, how is it that you differentiate a true statement from a false statement?
Oh, yeah. You always miss that one, right?
We always miss that one. No, no, no.
I didn't actually miss it.
Oh, what happened? Well, there's this one teacher that she really looks up to, and he is just like the complete antithesis of you.
And... She'd, like, sort of come over to me, hey, I heard him talking about this idea, and then I just, like, well, in my opinion, just completely blow it out of the water.
Right. And then she'd go back and sort of, like, say, oh, you know, David was talking about this, and then she'd come back with this more crap.
And it's sort of this yo-yoing, and I said, you know what, go and ask him what his methodology for determining truth from falsehood is.
And I'm still waiting to see how that turns out.
It should be interesting. Well, but, so you did miss it, right?
Yeah, I didn't ask her.
You're right again. Hey, it had to happen sooner or later.
But, right, and the reason that we don't want to ask that question is it's a conversation killer, right?
We love wasting time with people arguing all this abstract stuff rather than come down to, right, I don't know if you watched the video I did recently, I know the Ron Paul stuff's not too fascinating for Australians, but the one that I did about Ron Paul versus personal freedom, right, right the political action personal freedom right we don't want to put that against me thing in because it tends to be a bit of a conversation killer right that we like to dabble in uh in debates right
but you've got to go for the jugular so that you can save time and not waste your time and increase your levels of frustration and doubt uh by arguing with people who don't have that definition of what is true and what is false because it's just nonsense then right yeah but another thing that i was when i've been talking about with people on the board is that i don't want to rush them through it.
Rush them through it.
Like, I don't know, I spent six months on FGR trying to get my feet and it's like, hey guys, you should completely change your way of thinking and all your personal relationships.
Doesn't that sound fun? Well, but that's not what I'm saying, right?
What I'm saying is you should ask them if they know the difference between true and false.
I don't want to hear the answer to that, do I? I bet you don't, otherwise you would, right?
Yeah. Now, see...
There are some very smart people in the world who will say, oh my fucking God, I don't even know what is the difference between true and false, right?
And they will have the common sense, the wisdom and the humility to say, I don't know, right?
But 99.9% of the people will just go charging on, making up a whole bunch of nonsense because they don't have the identity, they don't have the ego strength to be humble, right?
Oh, yeah. To say, I don't know, right?
That's what Socrates is the old thing, right?
The oracle said to Socrates, you are the wisest man.
He said, how can I be the wisest man?
I know nothing. And then at the end of his life, he realized that he was the wisest man because he could admit that he knew nothing, right?
That makes sense. If you look at the fact that literally one-tenth of one percent of people are going to be able to recognize that they don't have the answer to what is true and what is false, and yet we all go around trumpeting off our opinions like we know what we're talking about, one person in a hundred or one person in a thousand will be able to do that.
They're not going – that kind of person is not going to approach you while you're fuming and spitting at people who don't know their ass from a hole in the ground, right?
So what I'm trying to say is if you ask people what is true and what is false up front, you can very quickly and very easily get rid of the 99 people so you can get to the one person and then you hope that that one person is really shapely and wearing a short skirt.
Yeah, I guess so. Do I know how to incent a 17-year-old or is that way off the base?
Oh, I was going to make a similar joke and then you came in.
You've got to be quick. You've got to be quick.
Just kidding. More interruptions.
Well, I don't know. I've mentioned heaps of times.
It's just a funny thing.
I've mentioned heaps of times that, you know, you've determined truth and falsehood by rationality, scientific method, what is logical.
And then I get this all sort of, oh, but isn't that restricting?
And then I've slowly had, well, sort of had to beat it out of her.
I don't know. I think she's coming around.
But that could just be me.
Well, that's up to you, right?
I mean, if you have the patience, right?
I don't know if you listened to a call-in show recently where Nate was asking about why does he want to give people the answer?
Yeah, you've got to lead them to it.
Well, it's more fun that way, right?
Because once people get that aha moment, it's really quite a thrill, right?
I mean, it's the ideal of being a teacher, right?
You get people to think, right?
I mean, it's beautiful. So if you give her the answer, it's not going to resonate with her, right?
Oh, yeah. That makes sense.
So just keep asking questions.
Now, of course, if after two questions she's like, I'm bored, you know, or whatever, right?
Then that's your answer, right?
Which is that you're attempting to philosophize with a shapely sack of potato for brains, right?
Oh, no, she's not bored.
And she's not shapely, so I don't know.
What am I doing wasting my time?
When I say shapely, I mean the frontal lobe, you know, that B cup, like the brain cup.
But then just keep asking, but if she gets angry, like if you run into all these emotional defenses, then that's your answer, right?
Which is that she gets it, right?
Everybody gets it. That's the thing you've got to understand.
You're not teaching anyone anything they don't already know.
I don't teach anybody anything they don't already know.
That's why people get so tense about this conversation, because they totally get what it means, right?
Yeah, I remember just a couple of days ago, I was looking through some of my old emails and found one from an quote-unquote intelligent friend when I was talking about anarchy, and I just remember being thinking, how could anyone believe this stuff?
It boggles the mind.
How could anyone believe...
Oh, he was talking about anarchy.
Yeah. Oh, no, I was talking about anarchy and then it's like, oh, you see, people pay taxes is good because people think that paying $4,000 in taxes is fine, but paying $40 to charity is just too much.
Like, what? Yeah.
Yeah, people make up the most astounding nonsense.
They make up the most astounding nonsense to just keep their beliefs running, right?
I mean, Christians do this all the time, right?
The dinosaur bones are put there to test our faith.
I mean, literally people say that.
But how can you function as a human being if you, like, I mean, my God!
Well, but in many ways, I mean, by many standards, they function very well, right?
I mean, the Bush family in the United States has an enormous fortune and wields great violent power, right?
I mean, it's like the mafia guys, right?
I mean, they function quite well, right?
I mean, as far as material things go, as far as the power over others goes, I mean, they're functioning very well, right?
But they just don't function well relative to reality or truth, and that's what they know, and that's why they get so tense.
It's a good thing they don't have to live in it, hey?
Yeah, that's right.
It's enough money. Money can buy you the alternate dimension of the null zone.
Ooh, I had a question.
Alright, I'll give you one more because it's after one here, so I'm going to get to bed soon, but I'll give you one more question if it helps.
Sorry about that. Yeah, in English, we have to do a text study, and we need to pick a book to study in a certain area.
I'm just grabbing the sheet for it now.
I was just wondering if I could get a suggestion off you.
Hang on one second.
Oh.
How the individual relates to society.
Ah, okay, well, I'll send you a PDF of Untruth.
Come on, man, I need to get some marks.
No, you can trash it if you want to get the marks.
You should just read it. That's all.
I tell you what, read it and see if it fits.
It definitely fits into that category.
And hey, I may have convinced the English teacher.
Well, you have some influence about that, right?
And the way to...
I mean, this is just a...
It's like, you know, you're into Machiavelli, right?
So this is just a trick, right?
Well, he's got some useful things, right?
So, you know, another way that you can get people interested in a conversation is you can express...
Your own doubts about it, right?
So one of the ways that you can get people, like if you read on truth, right, and you say, geez, this guy's got it nailed, right?
Then the best way to get other people into that conversation is not to say, this guy is totally right, and whatever, whatever, because then their first reaction is going to be what?
He is a shining beacon of truth in more ways than one.
Right. No, they're going to say, no, he's not right.
Whatever. I've never heard of him.
But if you go and you say, you know, it's weird.
I got this book from this guy.
He's like a self-styled philosopher in Canada, if you can believe it, right?
And he's written this book about culture and parenting and children and so on.
And it's got some pretty wild ideas in it.
And I'm on the fence, right?
Like, I'm on the fence. I think they're interesting.
I think that they're stimulating.
But I don't know.
What do you think, right?
And then you mention a couple of the ideas and so on.
Then what happens is that people feel that they're invited into a space where they can contribute, where they can discuss, right?
Whereas if you come with, you know, this is the truth, the answer, and so on, then people will recoil, right?
So if you read this and you want to write a book report or whatever, you can say, well...
This is an unusual book.
I'm not behind it 100%.
And that's true. Nobody can be behind anything 100%.
I'm not even behind FDR 100%.
I'm doubting and questioning.
But you can say, but this is the stuff I liked about it.
And it's radical.
I don't exactly know how to fit it into everything else.
But there's a lot of logic and evidence here and so on.
But it's okay. Again, this is a reference you won't get.
But there used to be an old television show.
I know it.
You know it, right? He's just about to leave and he's like, you know, there's one thing that I just can't understand.
He's bumbling, he's confused and so on, right?
And that really disarms people and that can be very helpful.
So pretend like you're just toying around with the ideas when really you know the refutation to any single point they could put forward.
Sounds familiar. Well, for sure.
That's more inviting for people, for sure, because if you just go in and lecture them, then, like, I want to talk, right?
But if you just go in and lecture them, then it doesn't, it's not as inviting for them, right?
And then what happens is they get all their, you just trigger their past, right?
I mean, it's like then, oh, the last people that lectured me were my parents, and I didn't like that, and this guy's lecturing me now, too, and all this sort of stuff, right?
Oh, yeah, makes sense. Anyway, thanks.
Okay, well, I'll email you a copy, a PDF of the book, and you can have us skim through it.
It certainly will be helpful with your own family situation, your own questions about this sort of stuff.
It could be a while before I pay you what with the going into a refuge.
Oh, yeah, don't worry about it.
Don't worry about it. You know, just when you can.
And if you don't like it, then don't pay it, right?
Just delete it or whatever, right?
So just tell me what's wrong with it before you do.
That's all I ask. But no, don't worry about that.
Just enjoy it. Hey, thanks.
It's been good. All right, man.
I will talk to you soon, and keep us posted.
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