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Feb. 21, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
26:23
990 Child Left Behind (A Listener Convo)

DeFOO hostage.

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Yeah, hello. My name is...
I'm from Germany.
And I hope you got my email.
I don't know if you got...
You probably get a lot of emails.
I am a little bit behind, but can you just remind me of the content of it?
Yeah, okay.
So I listened to some of your videos and podcasts.
Forgive my plain English, I'm from Germany.
No problem. And I got some questions and there are some things I wanted to do.
In order to become like free or something, or however you call it, defooing, I guess.
Yes. And it's this, allow me to explain it, it takes a minute, I guess.
Sure. When I was 12 or something, I started to figure out that my parents aren't exactly the moral standard in my life or something like that.
My mother is German, so I think I may have some idea where you're coming from.
No, no. My parents aren't originally German.
I was born in Germany.
My parents fled from Iran, even a level higher in the non-freedom world.
They fled because of the Islamist regime and they are not religious or something like that.
A few years ago, I left my parents.
With my father, I don't have even contact now.
I feel much better with it.
With my mother, I didn't have contact for a long time.
I felt like it was something like a war between us.
Like a conflict.
A permanent conflict.
Then one day she got pregnant again, not by my father, by another man whom she married a long time ago, so I know him.
Pretty well. And yeah, now I got a little brother since two years and I started to go there again because I felt I needed to end the conflict.
I think it was because I thought Yeah, she's pregnant and she doesn't deserve distress or something like that.
And now I'm very close to my little brother and he is more than a brother to me.
I think I am...
Play a major role in his life.
And he likes me pretty well as well.
And now my problem is...
Since I watched your videos and listened to some podcasts, I saw that many things were right and the process I went, I started to move in, was the right thing to do.
Defoeing, whatever the name is.
Now I have a conflict, some conflict.
On one hand, I want to proceed and go on and leave all that waste behind.
And on the other hand, I feel like I need to stay with my brother because he is two years old.
He can learn a lot from me.
Yeah, we are close together to each other.
And this is my conflict.
On one hand...
My brother, I chose to be with him, but his whole environment, like my mother, that's what I don't like, what I don't need, what pushes me back.
I don't know if you If you can imagine this sort of conflict.
I don't know if you've got children or something.
I have two nieces that I'm very close to.
I faced exactly this situation, though.
A niece is not a brother.
It's a very difficult situation.
There's no... Obviously, there's no easy answers.
You're a smart fellow, and if there were, you would have figured them out, but it is a very painful and very difficult situation.
Yeah. But what is it that you object to, in particular, about the way that your brother is being raised?
Is he being raised in religion?
Um... Sort of.
It's not religion like...
Not fundamentalism, right?
No, no, no, absolutely not like that.
Right, okay. It's something like, but it's close.
It still is bad for him.
It's a bad environment because nobody says to him, if you don't do this and do that, you will be a sinner, you will get to hell and God created the earth or something.
Nobody says something like that, but...
The thing is, people tell him, not people, my mother is like that.
On Christmas she goes to church because the parents of her husband are Catholic.
For her, she feels like it would be an obligation to her.
Because of a tradition, not because of the religion itself, but because of the tradition.
Her argument is that my brother shouldn't be an outsider of anything, which I think is...
Totally bullshit.
It doesn't matter if stupid lunatics declare him an outsider, for me, at least.
Is he experiencing or is he being disciplined with any kind of violence or verbal abuse?
Um, no.
No, not exactly.
Not exactly. No.
No. Okay, and so...
But the thing is, he does not get beaten.
Nobody... This is not a problem.
The problem is... The problem is my little brother is a very smart guy.
I don't say that because he's my brother.
It's because he started very early to talk and he is now two years old but you can talk to him.
You can really discuss with him some things.
He's very smart and intelligent.
My thing is I want to leave Germany.
Now I'm studying and I'm working in a publishing company and as soon as I finish my studies I want to leave.
I don't want to stay here.
I don't know if you've ever been to Germany.
It's very, very, very social democrat, socialistic Yeah, whatever.
Sorry, I don't mean to cut you off, but I just kind of want to get to the core of the decision, at least as I would see it, and then you can see if that's of any use.
I was willing, myself, I was willing to have a relationship with my nieces, And still have my brother in my life.
I was willing to do that if I could have a real relationship with my nieces If I could have an honest and authentic and open relationship with my nieces, that was my criteria.
Because what I didn't want was to fake a relationship with my brother and fake a relationship with my nieces.
Then there's no winning there, right?
So what I did, and this may be a little early for you to tell, but...
What I did was I committed myself to being honest with my nieces.
And so if they said, what was your mom like?
I would be honest with them.
And if they said, what happened between you and our dad?
I would be honest.
And... Unfortunately, my brother then kind of moved to end the relationship.
He said, like, you can't tell them this stuff, right?
Even though they were teenagers, right?
So it wasn't like I was telling inappropriate things to the little kids.
So, unfortunately, what happened for me was that I could not be honest with my nieces because my brother would not let me see them.
And I wasn't willing to be dishonest with them because that wouldn't help anybody, right?
So the real question is, I mean, obviously you love your brother, and the question is, can you have, as he grows up, I mean, obviously, can you have an honest relationship with him where you tell him your thoughts and your feelings openly?
And if you can, then it probably, it may be, it's up to you, right?
Then it may be worth... Struggling through with your parents.
But if, when you were honest with your brother, your parents moved to intervene and to not allow that honesty to occur, then that wasn't sufficient to me.
That wasn't good enough for me.
Because, of course, my nieces can always get in contact with me Anytime they want, right?
If they want to go independently of the family, right?
I mean, this is a long way away for you, but they can drive.
I'm not hard to find, right?
So I think the real question is, can you have a relationship with your brother where you are honest about what you think and feel?
And if you can do that, then it may be worth putting up with your parents, if that's what you want.
But if you...
And you know this in your heart already.
If you are honest with your brother, and this causes your parents to intervene in the relationship...
Then it becomes very hard to sustain any kind of real relationship, particularly as he grows older.
Does that help at all? Yes.
Yeah, thank you.
It is a point.
But the point is, there are certain things I can do with him without...
My mother intervening.
But there are other things which she doesn't like me to tell him.
Like, if I would tell him there is no God or...
Or something like that.
She doesn't like it. There are certain things she allows that I play with him, that I teach him things, that I help him to achieve anything.
Yeah, but there are some points, yeah, she got herself some idea of the world and some of her own values and that's her border, I think.
That's the point where she would tell no.
Right. So what's going to happen is, as your brother gets older, he's going to ask you questions, even if you say, well, I'm not going to tell him.
He's going to say, do you think there's a God?
What do you think of the government?
What do you think of whatever, right?
Our culture. And either then, you're going to tell him the truth, or you're going to lie, or you're going to tell him that you can't tell the truth, right?
Right. And what impression is that going to give him about virtue and integrity?
And it's horrible, right?
Or you can avoid the topics and pretend that there's nothing deep and meaningful in life and let's play a video game and go to a football game.
Yeah. No, I wouldn't do that.
If he would ask me, if he actually would understand some of these things and would ask me by himself, I would tell him the truth, at least what I think is the truth.
Okay, and if he said to you, do you think that my mother is a good person?
No. You would tell him no?
Yeah. And what do you think would happen after that?
I would have to do it, yeah.
What would happen then?
When he went to his mom and said, you know, this guy doesn't think that you're a good person.
I don't have to listen to you because you're not a good person.
What's she going to do? Yeah, I think she would end any...
She would say, no, you can't see him anymore.
You are telling him things that makes him opposing me or something like that.
Yeah, you're making my job as a parent, given my parental approach, you're making my job as a parent impossible.
Because you can't operate without obedience from children to some degree, at least when they're very young.
You can't be a parent.
So either she would have to change her whole life and she would have to call you up and say, tell me what it is again that you feel I'm doing that is not good.
And you would have that discussion and then she would think about it and she would mull it over and so on.
All of that would occur.
Or she would simply say, you can't spend time alone with this kid.
Maybe she'd say, well, you can spend time when we're all together, but you can't have him on.
So then he would ask you when they were all together, and you'd be put into this very difficult position and so on, right?
So that's the challenge, right?
As you know. And there's no easy answers.
Other than the one that I took which was good enough for me and it depends what's good enough for you which is that I'll put up with a bad relationship or no relationship with my brother in order to have an honest and open relationship with my nieces.
But if an honest and open relationship with my nieces was impossible then I wasn't going to pretend.
Yeah, the thing is, my core problem is not the relationship to my brother.
I think there is nothing which can break it or really destroy it or something like that.
There's nobody who's able to do that.
Oh, sorry to interrupt.
There certainly is, and that's his parents.
Yes, but not in that meaning that they would alter my behavior about what I tell him.
Look, sorry to interrupt you, but they certainly would alter your behavior insofar as they would not allow you to see him.
Yes, yes.
They wouldn't alter your feelings, they would not alter your commitment, and they would not alter your love, but they certainly could.
I'm not saying they would, but they certainly could alter your behavior, right?
Yeah, right. They are already doing it because if I go there, it's some schizophrenia, something like that.
I'm splitting myself in two parts.
One part is saying, hello to them, yes, hello, how are you?
When can I see him and whatever?
I don't really want to do this anymore because I saw that it really sucks some energy out of my life.
If you're around your parents and your parents are...
I don't know and it doesn't matter, but if your parents are...
Yes.
This is unavoidable.
And you also have to, if you want, you can ask yourself other questions like, let's say that in a few years I marry and have children myself.
Are my parents going to be babysitting my children?
Well, I don't think so, right?
But are your children and your brother going to be close friends?
What you're doing is you're setting yourself up for another 40 years of spending time with your parents.
Yeah, that's not what I want.
Well, no. And not only your brother will be confused, because what happens is, when good people surrender their integrity to corrupt people, all that teaches children is that good people lose to bad people, which means, why bother being a good person, right? Because you just don't win, right?
So, in terms of your life, if you don't see your parents and they're corrupt, you will choose a better...
You will choose a better wife.
Your own relationship with your children will be healthier.
And we can't, I mean, agonizing though it is, we can't surrender, you know, our integrity, our future, our happiness and the security and mental health of our children for the sake of other people's kids, right?
Yeah, right.
What I've been thinking is, yeah, that I, for myself, I love my brother.
I like him really much.
Really, really, really like him.
But it's not possible that I like him.
That my love for him would be something that would make me destroy my own life.
Because still I love myself more.
You can't destroy your own life and do a good thing for your brother.
Yes, yes. It won't work, right?
Like, you can't set fire to all your money and then give money to other people, right?
Like, if you destroy your own life, all you will teach him is that virtue equals self-destruction.
So he doesn't end up with a good lesson, and you end up with negative things, right?
Yeah, but if I would leave him behind now, if I would say, okay, in order to get my own life done, I don't want to meet my parents anymore, so I would have to leave him behind.
I would have to end this relationship to him and probably not see him until he's a teenager or something like that.
Well, that's possible. The way it worked with me is that I hung in there and what happened is my nieces ended up not wanting to see me.
Because children will always choose their parents over an uncle or an aunt.
I mean, that's just biological, right?
Yeah. They have to.
That's who provides their food and shelter and who has legal custody, right?
So children will always choose their parents over everyone else.
So it may not be, and this is, again, this is all delicate stuff, and obviously you can do whatever you want, but it may not be that you end up having to leave him and blah, blah, blah.
But if you stick around and you try to be honest with him without being cold or cruel or brutal about your parents, about God, about culture, about life, about the state, whatever, then it may well be that his parents will turn him against you, right?
So that he won't want to spend time with you.
Or he may look at your life and say, well, that's a pretty lonely existence and all my friends here are saying this and that and the other.
And therefore, I'm going to...
Like, he's going to have his own decisions that he's going to make based on the pressures that he is experiencing.
So it may not be your choice, if that makes sense.
It's not my choice.
My choice is choosing between being honest to him and being honest to him means I leave my parents.
I don't see them anymore and that equals not seeing him anymore.
This is one choice and the other choice is some compromise.
And if I were you, this is what worked for me.
Everyone's different. If I were you, I would pursue the compromise until you really felt that it wasn't going to work.
Because the important thing is to not act prematurely before you have certain knowledge and then feel regret, right?
Okay, yeah. So I would pursue trying to make the compromise work, trying to navigate it.
Okay. If you're done, you're done, right?
But obviously you're torn, so it's usually not good to leave a situation when we're still torn emotionally about it, right?
Yeah. So if I were you, I would pursue this relationship and try and negotiate or navigate the middle ground with my parents.
And then C, until either it worked or it didn't work.
And then I would feel real quick.
I'd given it everything I had.
I'd given it every effort that I had.
And then if it works, fantastic.
And if it doesn't work, at least you don't feel torn or regretful.
Yeah, right. Yeah, because I would like to offer him a better education than he would get here in this place.
I already talked to my mother about it.
I told her. I gave her articles.
I told her... Because in Germany there is a monopoly about schools.
There are no private schools, at least there are not many.
They are very expensive and any school is under control of government.
I wanted to offer him a better education, a better place where he could evolve and become something he wants to be and he could be.
In Germany, certainly, you can't do that.
If I look back in my own life, I can see that.
What school taught me Crap things, yeah?
Yeah. Okay, I think I got the answer of my question.
I'm very thankful to you, and I think it helps a lot.
Sorry to interrupt. The one thing that I do, and this is up to you, is that I release these conversations as podcasts.
So, is that alright with you?
I can blank out your name, which you mentioned at the beginning, if you prefer.
That's, yeah, that would be nice.
Okay, I appreciate that.
So, I will send you a link to this.
If you can just send me another email to make sure that I have your email address, that would be great.
Alright, alright. I will do that, yeah.
Alright, and you can talk on the board with other people as well who've had these kinds of situations.
You don't have to sort of run through it all alone, which I know is even harder.
Yeah, yeah. I've got one other small question, if you don't mind.
I'm sorry, I have to go, so I can't take another question at the moment, but if you drop it in an email, I will get back to you.
Yeah, all right. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much. I hope.
Yeah, thank you.
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