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March 8, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:01:36
1004 From Jail to Jail - A Listener Conversation with an Activist

A fiery Libertarian activist reveals the history that shaped her future...

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So it's nice to finally chat with you.
Yes, I'm pretty excited about it myself.
Cool, cool. Now, you had to propose a topic on the board which had more to do, if I remember rightly, and I apologize if my mind has drifted, but I am getting old, that you had talked about wanting to talk a little bit more about your own sort of personal history and the effects that it might have had on your political activism.
Is that right, or was it another topic?
Sure, I've been open to that topic for a while.
Okay, okay. Do you want to tell me a little bit about your history, upbringing, family, all that kind of stuff?
Let's see. Well, brought up by parents that I figured were a little overprotective, didn't let me outside without permission, didn't let me go to the movies without having, you know, someone older than me go with me, and couldn't travel around, couldn't take a walk. Until I was a lot older, I guess.
And older being what?
Like a teenager or so.
Wow, so that Britney Spears song must be really emotional for you, the overprotected one?
I don't think I've heard it.
Just kidding. Anyway, go on.
So you became a teenager before you were allowed to take a walk in the neighborhood, is that right?
Well, not entirely.
I did go out from time to time with my friends and parents and things, but not as much as I wanted to.
Right, right. Okay. And was that the most important thing or the central theme that you remember from your childhood, or were there other ones that were more important or about the same?
Just wanting to escape, wanting to go other places.
I think that's the central thing.
Right, okay. And your parents were together, and tell me a little bit about them.
Yeah, two parents, both Catholic.
I was adopted, and so one of the promises they had to make was to raise me as a Catholic, and I didn't like that too much.
No, I can imagine.
Both parents stayed together, never been through a divorce or anything.
And what is their level of religiosity?
Not that much.
Actually, they left it to the church and the catechism teachers to teach me about that.
I don't think they ever brought it up with me directly.
And did they themselves go to church?
Occasionally, yes. Occasionally?
Okay, so like Easter, Christmas, that sort of stuff?
Yeah, big events. Okay, and so is it fair to say that their religion was more social or cultural than it was fervent?
Yes, because I never had any religious, theocratic sort of discussions at home.
Okay, and did they say your prayers, or was that pretty much on your own recognizance?
I don't think they even asked me to say prayers at any time.
Did they say grace at the table?
No, it never said grace at the table.
Really? Okay. Okay, that's interesting.
Read the Bible or anything like that?
No, I don't think they read anything, actually.
So pretty much the Catholic Church was a good place to get a baby, as far as the price you pay is baptism and some childhood instruction, right?
That seems to be the case.
And has that changed overall since you were a kid?
You mean, have I ever been more religious?
No, sorry. I'm just trying to figure out where your parents are coming from.
So, has your parents' lack of religiosity changed as they've gotten older?
No. They died when they were, what, 60 or so.
That was 20, 30 years ago.
So, they were the same religiosity all the time I knew them.
Right, right. Okay.
Okay, and when it came to ethical discipline, which is really the core, I mean in my view anyway, it's sort of the core of parenting, when you did something that your parents disagreed with or when you did something that they thought you shouldn't have done or whatever, what was their general approach to attempting to modify your behavior?
Mostly just authority, do it because I say so, or sometimes they would bring in the, you've hurt me by making a mistake or whatever, and I don't want you to hurt me anymore.
Okay, now these polls, not to be overly sexist, but these polls tend to fall along the gender lines, right?
So the fathers tend to be more authoritarian and the mothers tend to be a little bit more of the tearful victim side.
Was that the case in your family or was it different?
Actually, it was the opposite.
My mom was pretty much in charge and more authoritarian than my dad and my dad was kind of pleaded with me at times to stop hurting him, you know, stop asking him to stay up late and Because I wanted to do things with him, and he had a night graveyard shift job, and he wanted to go to bed.
Oh, so he was more like, it hurts me when you do this, so you shouldn't do it because it hurts me?
That's right. And your mother was more like, I'm your mother, I know better, this is why you do it.
Yeah, and you'll do it because I say so.
Right, right. Okay, okay.
And what was...
I'm trying to sort of get a sense of...
I appreciate this is good, candid stuff.
I'm trying to get a sense of where the fear of the world seems to have come from, right?
Because it seems to me that...
There was a sense, I get a sense of threat that your parents perceived from the outside world.
And I'm just sort of trying to get a sense of where that might have come from or what it is.
It wasn't the devil because they weren't religious.
And so I'm just sort of trying to get a sense of where that threat might have come from that had them keep you so close to home.
I don't know. I don't.
I hadn't thought along those lines.
Maybe because I was so small, I don't know, that it would be easy to hurt me or for me to get lost or something.
I haven't thought about that.
But, I mean, it's, sorry to be annoying, but it would be a kind of important question, right?
Because if, I mean, just in terms of the, there's a theory which I think is not proven, but I think a good starting place.
Which says something like that the unexpressed emotions within the family have the greatest effect on us in terms of our development and in terms of our own unconscious.
So I'm just trying to sort of figure out because it's unusual to me for there to be this very much keeping you close to their chest, right?
Right. And so I'm just trying to get a sense of like when the world was spoken of, What was it spoken of as?
And I'll sort of give you an example. Like when I was a kid, I had this babysitter who, not that I noticed or cared at the time when I was like six years old, but she was very physically attractive.
And we were walking down the street one day and these guys drove by in a car hooting and honking and whistling and thumping the roof of the car because...
Apparently that's the best they could come up with in terms of making themselves attractive.
And I remember my babysitter, whose name was Yvonne, said, oh, it's a wicked, wicked world.
But I could tell that she was pleased at the attention at the same time she was frowning on it and so on.
And so people who are older give us a sense of what the world is or what it's like or what people are like beyond the sort of charmed circle of the family.
And I'm just trying to get a sense of...
What your parents might have said about the world to themselves or to you, or maybe it was never expressed.
Maybe it came out in oblique ways that gave a sense of what they thought the world was like or what the people in it were like.
Wow, I can't recall hardly anything.
Actually, most of my experience was that my mom liked to go out and visit people and would take me with her and didn't seem afraid of the world.
Okay, so when you wanted to go out, and you would say to your...
Was it your mom, mostly, who didn't want you to go out alone?
Yeah, mostly. Okay.
So when you would go to your mom and say, Mom, I want to go out, what would her emotional reaction be?
Yeah, I think it would be, like, fearful.
Like, oh, you don't want to do that.
You know, sort of...
Bad things can happen.
I don't want you to... To get involved in bad things.
Right, okay. And what that gives me a sense of, and again, this is like total remote nonsense, so, you know, take it or leave it for what it's worth.
What I get a sense of there is that, I mean, did she think that you were a good kid or a bad kid?
Uh... I don't know.
Maybe a little of both.
I'm sure she thought I was good sometimes and thought I was bad at others, but...
I don't know if there's a verdict on which one she thought I was.
Alright, and the reason that I ask that is I get a sense that if I have a kid and I say, don't go out into the world, because did she think that you would do bad things or that bad things would be done unto you?
I think she imagined bad things would happen to me.
Right, okay. So, if she thought you were a bad kid, then she would basically want to keep you home to protect you from spreading your evil to other children.
I mean, so to speak, kind of foolishly, right?
Right. But if she thought that you were a good kid, then what I get a sense of from that is that...
Good people, and by the time you're in your teens, you're 90% a person, right?
I mean, in terms of being an adult and so on.
So what I get a sense of is that this idea that good people go out there kind of like Pinocchio, you know, just wanders out and then a whole series of bad things happen to them or could, right?
That good people are kind of helpless in the face of the nastiness or the potential nastiness of the world.
That sounds about like what my mom, not related to me, but what she seemed like what would happen to me if I went outside alone.
Right. So, like, there are predators on the corner, and it's not that you would be a bad kid and would say, you know, strangers have the best candy or whatever, but the fact is that you would...
Was it that you would be naive, that you would be easily fooled or tricked by these bad people, or was she more afraid?
I know this is not anything she probably expressed to you, but in your gut or in your experience.
Do you think that she was afraid that you would be physically overpowered or...
Tricked or fooled by bad people.
Gee, I think she did sort of relay that I would be physically overpowered.
I never got the inkling that she thought I would be tricked into doing things.
Right, like she didn't say, I know that you really want to join the Crips, but for someone of your size, it may not be the best thing.
So she felt that there was the potential of a physical attack that was out there in the world.
That's what it seems to be, yeah.
Okay. Now, do you have any siblings?
Yeah, two brothers younger than me.
And what was your mom's relationship in terms of the danger of the world between yourself and your brothers?
As in...
Well, were they allowed to go out there?
Not until I was a teenager or so.
She let my youngest brother go out a little more, but she treated us pretty much the same.
So it was not a gender thing in terms of the omnipresent threat of physical attack.
It wasn't like that the attack was going to be sexual or quasi-sexual in nature based on the fact that you were a woman.
It was just that anybody who was small could be physically overpowered by the bad people in the world?
That's more what I get the impression of, yeah.
Okay, okay, good. And what was your father's relationship to your mother's fear of the world?
Hmm. Sounds like he was afraid of her, but I don't want to put words in your mouth or anything.
That's true. In terms of general, the world itself, I don't know, but I know that he was...
He would defer to her whenever she asked him to do something, or she would berate him in front of other people.
Oh, okay. So she was quite verbally aggressive.
Yes. And did this occur to you as well, or was it mostly to your father?
I don't think it happened to me very often, but I do feel sorry for my dad, because it happened to him pretty often.
And when you got, this also occurred when you became a teenager, this verbal berating of your dad?
Yeah. And how did that make you feel when you would be in the presence of that?
It made me feel sorry for my dad.
And why did you ever talk to your mother about this?
No, I never did. And why do you think that is?
I just figured that was the way it should be, I'm not sure.
Well, but that's not how you felt it should be, right?
Because you felt bad. I did feel bad, yeah.
And did it ever cross your mind to talk about this with your mother?
Or was it something that just never occurred to you?
In fact, it may never have occurred to you until this very moment.
Talking with my mother was not something I liked to do.
I avoided it pretty much all the time.
And why was that? Well, whenever I asked her something I was interested in, she would always answer, I don't know, or...
I'm not sure, but I never got any good answers from her, I don't think.
And so you would go to her and say, I'm really interested in X, Y, and Z, and what would she say?
She'd go, oh, you don't want to think about that, or philosophy things that I was interested in when I was a teenager.
That doesn't have any bearing on, you know, the real world.
It's not practical!
Right. Learn to sew.
Right, right. And was there anything that you were interested in that your mother took an interest in?
I'm thinking, but I'm not recalling anything, no.
Take your time. We're in no rush.
This is my job, so, you know, I'm working here.
Okay, so in a sense, if I understand it rightly, it was more like, or it may have felt more like, not that your mother rejected certain interests of yours, but rather that she rejected you, right? Because if you reject all of somebody's interests, then there's nothing left that you're accepting, right?
That's true. Oh, there was one exciting thing that we did together.
My brothers and I and my mom went to Disneyland one year when I was about, oh, I don't know, 11 or so, and we didn't bring our dad, but we talked beforehand about how fun it would be, and we looked at all the coupons and the maps and things and planned out what we would do and things.
That was pretty cool. Right, right.
Now, do you know why you ended up being adopted?
Was it that your mother couldn't have kids, or what was the story?
Yeah, my mom had diabetes.
She weighed about 300 pounds, I guess, when I was little, and couldn't have kids, or so they told her, although she did have kids later on.
Oh, yeah, so your brothers were biological, and it was you who was adopted, right?
Two adopted, one biological.
Okay, okay. My youngest brother.
I'm sorry, go ahead. My youngest brother was biological.
Right, right. Well, of course, that makes you sound like you're robotic.
He was biological, but I made it in Silicon.
Okay, so I'm just trying to sort of understand something here, which to me cuts kind of to the core of the family structure that I'm trying to get a sense of.
And this is going to be an odd question.
It's something that we generally don't ask ourselves for pretty important reasons.
But I found it to be quite a fruitful question when I pondered it myself.
So take your time. Or you can let me know if it's not a useful question.
It doesn't sound to me that your mother took pleasure in you being around.
I mean, if she rejects everything that you...
If she rejects you, then it doesn't seem to me...
That she took a lot of pleasure in having you around.
And I'm not saying there weren't times when you guys had fun or whatever, but overall.
Yeah, pretty much I thought I was like an annoyance that made noise when she was trying to do other things.
Right, so you felt like an inflicted burden, so to speak.
That could be true, yes.
Well, I don't see, and I'm sorry to be, I don't want to go any further building a bridge if it's not attached to the side of the canyon, so I don't want, just to be annoyingly precise, if it's not true, that's no problem, then I just need to sort of work with that fact.
But just based on the fact that you said, well, you know, you were sort of an interruption and she didn't take pleasure in your thoughts and she rejected your interests and so on, that doesn't sound like love, right?
I mean, that doesn't sound like somebody who takes a positive pleasure in somebody else being around.
That's true. Because I had a different reaction from my grandma who actually, you know, was glad to see me when I visited and stuff.
And you really feel that difference as a kid, right?
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's like, I know, like, when I was a kid, when I'd be around the few people who seemed to enjoy my company, I would feel like my chest would open up.
I'd feel like, I don't know, this is sort of a stupid metaphor, but there was an advertisement on the TV, I don't know, years ago.
And it was one of these, you know, these Cadbury cream eggs they have out at...
At Easter, those chocolate ones.
And they have those sort of white and yellow, weirdly synthetic but very tasty kind of insides.
I would feel literally like when I would be around people who would enjoy my company, I'd really feel like I was one of those eggs opening.
Not breaking, but opening and sharing.
And then when I would be around people who didn't, I'd feel like, because I had a box of those when I was a kid and I put them in the freezer so they'd last, I'd feel like one of those frozen eggs rather than just that.
Ring any sort of bells, and it's not the same metaphor that you would have, but there's a real emotional difference when you're around people who are enjoying your company, right?
Well, it's not as profound as what you describe.
My profound chocolate, right?
Yeah. But I did come to like my grandma better than my mom.
Well, can you tell me what it is that you liked about your mother?
Because if you say that you liked your grandmother better than your mom, it indicates that you liked your mom to some degree.
I'm not saying you didn't. I'm just trying to understand what you did like about her.
I don't know. She would bring things for me once in a while from work.
Some things for me to play with.
Pencils and felt pens and things.
If I wanted to ever do anything, she was the one I would have to contact.
I was seeking her out all the time.
Well, but that was because of a fear of punishment, right?
I don't know. I really feared being punished, because I did, you know, sneak away a few times and didn't get punished, and so I figured, oh, I guess I could do that more often.
Huh. That's interesting.
Okay. I mean, you realize this is totally heartbreaking to hear, right?
That's terrible. Like when I say, what, you like your mom, and it's like she brought me felt pens.
Yeah. Yeah. You realize that there's no hallmark moment that says, thanks for the crappy pen from work.
I don't think that you feel very sad about it, but I can tell you that I do.
Yep, that would not be the ideal family.
So the question that I want to ask you, if you don't mind, and again, this is all totally up to you, but the question I want to ask you, which seems, it's hard for me to figure out.
This is like a round peg into a square hole, to use an oddly appropriate metaphor, which was, if your mother did not, and did she enjoy the company of your brothers more than you or less than you, or about the same?
I don't recall her having any preference, so I would say about the same.
Okay, okay. See, this is very strange, right?
So here we have a woman who gets married and who we can assume, since she had three kids, tried for quite some time to get pregnant before being told that this was not an option.
And then went through what is obviously an arduous and difficult course of adopting a baby, right?
Like I have... I had a boss who adopted two kids, and it takes like one to two years.
It takes a lot of money.
There's a lot of stress and expense involved, right?
Yeah, lawyers, paperwork, all that stuff.
Yeah, it's like, I don't know what it is now, $10,000, $20,000, and it's like it's a big, big deal.
And it's risky, right?
Because maybe it works out, maybe it doesn't.
Maybe you keep the baby.
There's a take-back period and all this kind of stuff.
So it's a big, big, big deal.
Yes. To go adopting a kid, right?
And two, right? Yeah, two.
I even remember when we adopted my older brother, or my brother, and it was a big deal.
We had to get dressed up to go visit the lawyers many times.
Right, right. And so it's really strange.
I mean, it's almost as much work to become a doctor and almost as much expense to become a doctor as it is to adopt kids, right?
Wow. Years and tens and tens of thousands of dollars and so on, right?
That's right. So it seems to me rather odd to analogize it, and this is part of the...
I'm sorry to be a roundabout rambling guy, but that can't be a surprise to you.
But if I say, gee, you know, I really, really want to be a doctor.
That's all I want to do is be a doctor, and I spend years and years becoming a doctor.
I spend tens of thousands of dollars...
And as it turns out, I don't even end up getting paid.
I want to be a volunteer doctor in the third world or whatever.
And then I spend the next 20 years being perpetually annoyed by being a doctor.
That would be weird. It would be weird, right?
Like you'd think, well, what was the point of all of that?
Nobody made you become a doctor.
Nobody forced you to go through this long and arduous process and now all you do is complain that your patients are really annoying and that you don't like medicine, right?
Right. I mean, do you see the fundamental question?
Why did your mom have kids?
Or get kids? Yep, why?
Social, normally in those days women got married and had kids and that was just the thing to do.
But that's quite a lot to take on for the sake of some social approval, right?
Could be, yeah. I mean, because not only is it very expensive and time-consuming and stressful to get the kids, but then you spend 20 years not enjoying their company and finding them annoying, right?
Wow. Yeah, why would they do that?
Yeah, so why? And the reason that I asked about the religiosity earlier was because clearly they didn't care Enough about other people's opinions to show up at church, right?
Right. So we know that they're not totally susceptible to peer pressure, right?
They don't run their lives according to peer pressure, right?
That's true. Because they get a kid that they promised to put in the Catholic cult so they didn't even show up to church.
Right? So they're not run by social conformity and the expectations of others, right?
Not entirely, yep. Well, not much, really.
Not entirely it would be like, well, they skipped church a couple of times a year, but they only went to church a couple of times a year, and they never believed, they never read the Bible, they never prayed.
So we know for sure, even after making a commitment to have you raised as a Catholic, we know for sure that they're not very motivated by social pressure.
That's true. Good point.
I have like a retroactive respect for them right now.
Well, I'm not going to help you with that, unfortunately.
And not because I love the idea of parenting.
I love the idea of family.
I think family is the most beautiful institution, potentially, in the world.
But that gives you maybe some respect for their independence vis-a-vis religion.
But it raises a much higher barrier to the answering of the question, why did your mom have children?
Because if you say, well, it was just expected, it was social conformity, that answer doesn't work, right?
Because we know that that wasn't their primary motivation.
Yeah, that seems to be true.
And the annoying thing that I'm going to say is that you know exactly why your mom had kids.
Wow, I wonder what it is. I go with this, we know everything kind of theory, and it seems to work, right?
Maybe it will, maybe it won't, but you know exactly, because you can't spend 20 years or 30 years around someone and not know everything there is to know about them, particularly when you grow up around them, because kids study their parents, right?
They're like Dan Foskey on The Last Ape, you know, or Gorilla, I guess, right?
They study their parents intently.
Because that's our environment when we're growing up.
We have to know our parents' thoughts, motivations, feelings, desires, impulses, personalities.
We have to know all of that stuff.
It's not possible to be a kid around a parent and not study that parent intensely.
So I can virtually guarantee you that you know, but I can also guarantee you that it's going to be very hard to get to that knowledge.
Wow. Well, I'm willing to give it a try, I suppose.
And the reason why, see, the reason why I think all of this would be very useful to you, I mean, it's not because, you know, it's so much fun to skip down memory lane and find all the landmines, but you have, shall we say, a complex relationship with authority as an adult, right?
It's unusual, I'd say.
It is unusual. I will certainly say that.
And I don't mean that it's bad or negative or dysfunctional.
It could be by far the greatest and most powerful thing on the planet and so on, right?
And most positive and beneficial thing on the planet.
But I think that it's hard to have a clear relationship with authority as an adult...
If we have a murky or unconscious or unclear relationship with our initial impressions of authority when we were children, right?
Because that's how we first know and understand authority is through our parents, through our teachers and so on.
Yeah, I see. And all that means is that if you want to take on political or secular authority as an adult, which could be the best thing in the world to do, you just want to make sure that you're not being driven by anything from the past, right?
Right. So I think, in particular, that's why I'm focusing in on these areas, if that makes sense.
Yeah, it could be helpful to me, I believe.
Right, right. I mean...
Okay, so the question is, why did your mom have...
Why did she work so hard and spend so much money and time and effort and energy and stress and worry to get a hold of kids that she didn't seem to want around?
I don't know. It's...
Looking at all the efforts that she made to raise me and my brothers, I really couldn't understand why she would want kids.
Yeah, it's a real mystery. I mean, it is a genuine mystery, right?
And it's a really, really important one, I think, right?
Yep, and I don't think my dad had much to do with it, because...
Well, except for the last one, right?
Yeah, except for...
Okay, so tell me about your mother's relationship with food and weight and eating and so on.
Let's see. Well, she was like very obese when I was a baby.
And like to to go out to dinner, lunch, ice cream, you know, after dinner and stuff like that.
And but later on, she she had diabetes her whole life, I guess.
And when she hit 50 or so, her health started to She didn't get bad, so she lost a lot of weight, so much that she became thin.
And very cranky, too.
Well, she sounds a little cranky.
She sounds maybe more cranky, right?
Because she was pretty cranky when you were young, right?
Well, it seems to me that she was crankier the thinner she got.
And this is another way that we know that your mother is not driven by social convention, right?
Because people who are heavily driven by social convention don't tend to gain that much weight.
Simply because, rightly or wrongly, it's not particularly approved or respected of in society, right?
That's true. And we also know...
Do you know what your father's relationship with your mother's weight was?
I can't say...
He never mentioned that he didn't like her weight or her looks or anything.
I never heard anything like that.
Or he never said that he liked her looks or anything, I don't think either.
Right. So if we were to put a preliminary map around your mom, it's that people were scared of her and people didn't even consider bringing up an honest opinion to her.
From my point of view, that's exactly right.
And I can hardly think of anyone who didn't think that way, yeah.
No, I'm sure. Look, I mean, I'm sure it had nothing to do with you as an individual, because your brothers didn't, and your dad didn't, and I'm sure that lots of people didn't.
So here we have a totalitarian family system, right?
A matriarchy. And not a good matriarchy either, right?
Well, right. So what are the consequences of speaking the truth to your mom?
If you were to say to her, Mom, I don't like this.
I don't like that.
These are my preferences. I'm not going to inflict them on you.
I'm just going to tell you what I like and what I don't like.
So see if you want to change your behavior.
And you can tell me the same thing.
But I really don't like it when you berate Dad when there are people around.
That really makes me feel uncomfortable.
And I don't think it's...
It certainly doesn't make him happy either.
And I don't think it makes you look good either.
Like, what would be the consequences of saying that to your mom?
Well, I would never have thought of that.
But she would most...
I guarantee you that you did think of it at some point.
Because children are all born with the desire to be frank with their parents, right?
Wow. That was a long time ago.
Yeah, it would have been a long time ago, for sure.
So I think her reaction would be that she would laugh at you, or try to make fun of whatever you thought was important, or whatever subject you were trying to convince her of.
Well, but I mean, I don't know if you've read or heard the book on real-time relationships, but then you could just say, well, it really makes me feel bad when you laugh at something that's important to me.
And it's like, what would happen if you just continued to be honest about your experience of your mother in the moment with her?
Well, I don't know. More laughing, I suppose.
I'm sorry? More of her making fun of you or mocking you.
Yes, but then what would happen is at some point you and I and everybody would then start to either get very angry or burst into tears or there would be some sort of emotional reaction to the continual humiliation.
And what would she do then?
Gee, I'm not sure.
I'm not sure. It must have happened to me, but I can't remember exactly how she dealt with it.
Yeah, the reason that we don't ever think of taking the first step down a particular road is because we know what the last step is.
Right. And my guess, my guess, is that there would be mocking and humiliation, and then if you burst into tears, there would be additional mocking and humiliation, and if you continued to stay honest with her, at some point you would get to the rage, right?
because this is an angry woman.
There were times I've seen her angry.
You don't bully people and reject your children unless you're angry, right?
Huh. I don't see how that follows, but...
Well, if you bully somebody...
Well, okay.
I mean, you've spent a lifetime studying philosophy and authority, right?
Why do people bully others?
I don't know. To try to make themselves feel better?
To... Well, what you say is to make their abuse as children seem normal.
Yeah, there certainly is that aspect for sure.
And there is, of course, a self-hatred, a self-diminishing, a feeling of non-existence or negative existence which drives people to want to assert power over others so that they can feel like they come to life, like a vampire preying on a victim or something like that.
Wow. And we know for sure that your mom knew who your dad was when she married him, right?
Yeah, that's pretty much true, right?
For everyone. That he'd go rollover, right?
Right. And so she chose someone to get married, not because she loved him, not because she respected him, not because she treasured him, not because he was heroic or because he was courageous or because he was whatever, whatever, right?
But she chose him because she could dominate him.
Yes. So she voluntarily entered into a relationship with a husband in order to dominate him.
Yeah, I would say that was true.
Do you notice me poking the back door lock as to why she had children?
No, I'm not following.
Okay, well, tell me again the theory.
This is just a theory, right? But tell me again the theory that we're working with as to why your dad voluntarily chose to get married to...
Sorry, why your mom voluntarily chose to get married to your dad.
So she would have someone to dominate, to bully around, to make her feel better.
And do you see how this pattern could be a reasonable explanation as to why she pursued the acquisition and the birth of children?
Aha, so to have someone smaller than her that she could have control over and dominate, yeah.
It seems kind of likely, doesn't it?
Well, this is the weirdest science on the planet, right?
Because we're just looking at patterns and trying to come up with theories.
These are not things that can be empirically tested because, of course, they're both dead and so on.
But you have the knowledge of all of this within you.
I mean, of that I'm completely certain.
Whether that's true theory or not, that's the certainty that I bring to the table.
And I would modify that a little bit because you said to control and to dominate.
And I think if I understand your experience of your mother, and I'm trying not to co-mingle my experience of my mother because she was different but not that different in a way, but what happened for you around your mother...
Okay, let me not tell you, let me ask you.
In general, if you had to sort of characterize it in a sentence or two or three...
What did it feel like to be around your mother?
Like if you were in the kitchen with her or if you were in day-to-day, so around the home, like you're sitting there and she comes into the room or whatever.
What did it feel like to be around your mother?
What were the emotions that were associated with that?
Well, whatever you were doing, you would have to put it down and pay attention to her.
Or what? Or...
I don't know. I guess she would...
Be really loud and not let you continue with whatever you're doing.
And the emotion of wanting to get away would pop into your head right away.
I mean, I can totally understand that.
That seems like a perfectly sensible reaction.
And again, completely heartbreaking.
But if you couldn't get away, what was the feeling?
The feeling that I get, and I'm not trying to put anything into your mouth, right?
But the feeling that I get is sort of like...
I'm in a tiger with a cage and I don't know if he's hungry or not.
I'm in a cage with a tiger, sorry, and I don't know if he's hungry or not.
Like being afraid of getting completely mauled emotionally, I guess.
Right, and you don't know for sure if it's going to come, right?
I don't remember feeling like that, but there were times when my mom did get angry, yes.
Oh, I have no doubt. I have no doubt, and I can guarantee you that the only way that you could ensure that she did not get angry was to self-erase.
Aha. What does that mean to you?
To be quiet and not bring up anything that you care about.
Right. Right.
To be like a liquid that gets poured into the sort of twisted personality of your mom, right?
Right. The moment I have an independent opinion, bam!
She's going to attack, right?
Right. And you have to pay attention to her and what she wants to do and listen to whatever she decides to talk about.
Right. Now, do you know, and again, this is, remember, I'm just an amateur idiot on the internet, right?
So this is all nonsense, right?
It's just whatever resonates emotionally and whatever is worth exploring to you.
But in general, do you know what the technical term is for a personality type that attacks independent thought The personality type that chooses or surrounds herself with weak and dependent people, and by that I don't mean you as a personality, but simply you as a child and your brothers as children, who doesn't let them out of her sight, but doesn't let them flourish around her.
No, I've never heard a term to describe that.
The term is a narcissist.
Oh, okay. A narcissist...
And again, this is not the DSM-IV. This is not a psychiatric definition.
This is my understanding and my experience and my exploration of the term.
So again, all the caveats in the world, you can look it up and maybe I'm completely wrong.
But the way that I work with the term narcissist is something like this.
A narcissist is a personality that fundamentally does not exist.
It does not have any reason.
It's like a ghost in the body.
It's like a ghost in the flesh. And because the personality does not exist, it can only feel alive Through causing other personalities to not exist, to repress them, to control them, to subject them to bullying, to attacks, to whim-based...
And that's why when your mom comes in the room, you have to put down what you're doing and focus on her.
Because if you don't, you're going to get attacked.
Because you can't have an independent thought or life or existence when your mom is around.
But she won't let you leave.
She wouldn't let you go out.
She wouldn't let you find other people.
And the reason, of course, is that if you went out and you found stronger, more positive...
When you were a kid, you were a teenager, and you found stronger and more positive role models, then who she was would become denormalized.
It would become something odd, something strange.
Like, imagine if you... Found a friend when you were in your early teens who came from a really strong and healthy and positive and mentally alive and emotionally open family and your friend then came over and your mom was doing her bully narcissist erasure of all around her routine.
What would your friend say to you?
I don't know. I suppose I wouldn't say, uh, well, goodbye, I gotta go now.
No, I don't think that your friend would say that.
I mean, if she was a real friend, right?
if she was a really kind and caring person.
But she would mention that my mom...
I don't know.
Dominates all the conversations, or...
I don't know. Right.
And that's interesting, right? I mean, again, the reason that these conversations, to me at least, are so important is that they help us map.
This is all stuff that you do know.
I mean, I guarantee you that you do know it.
But the thing is that when you were a kid and when you were a teenager and so on, you were not allowed to know this, right?
It was not permitted for you to have.
I mean, you know all of this stuff because, as I talk about it in the RTR book, when you're Mom's key is in the lock.
How you feel is what you know.
And because you felt scared or frustrated or frightened or angry or resentful or bored or alienated or whatever, cautious, alarmed, anxious, whatever it is, they're all negative things.
So you know exactly what the story is with your mom, and you always have and you always will.
It's just whether or not we can consciously map it out or not, so that we can integrate the knowledge.
But a friend, when you were a teenager, would not have told you what your mom was like, but would have asked you how you felt around your mom.
You know, like I noticed that you don't jump up and run into your mom's arms with a big giggle when she comes in the room, because that's the relationship that I have with my mom, so it just seems odd to me, and I think I may know why or whatever, but tell me what your experience of your mom is and so on, and you'd have those long conversations, right? Mm-hmm.
Now, clearly, that would be highly beneficial for you, but highly not beneficial for who?
For my mom. Right.
Right. So the fact that you are sort of not allowed to ask these questions, these basic and important questions.
Do I like my mom? Why did she have children?
What was the nature of our relationship?
What was the motivation?
How is it that I have construed authority based on my first 20 years' direct experience of living under it and so on, right?
These are all obvious questions, particularly for a woman as intelligent and philosophically minded as yourself, right?
Yeah, must have thought of them sometime.
Well, yeah, but I mean, the thought is the punishment, right?
It's a thought crime. I mean, families, the thought crime, I mean, George Orwell, you read his autobiography, he's just talking about his family.
Oh, wow. But, yeah, because 1984 is a terrifying novel, not because it's an imaginary future, because it's for all too many people.
It's a very real past, right?
Wow. But, yeah.
To not ask these questions is simply the result of it being a thought crime.
But you can't go down that road because you know where that road leads.
And your mom doesn't want you to go down that road because if you go down that road, her power over you vanishes.
Right.
People only have power over us if we consider them virtuous.
Really?
Yeah, I mean, I don't mean like...
I'm not talking about Solzhenitsyn in a gulag, right?
I mean, then they have power over you because they can screw you up, right?
And they've got guns.
But in terms of personal relationships, people can only have power over us if we consider them virtuous, right?
So if somebody writes me, as I regularly get, these ghastly blistering emails about what a horrible manipulative cult leader I am and this and that and the other, right?
That only has the power to affect me if I respect the opinion of the person who's writing me, right?
That's true, yeah. If I think that they're a good and honest and virtuous person, I mean, if my wife tells me something that she would rather I be doing, I'm all ears, right?
Because she's a great woman, highly virtuous, and great integrity.
So, I mean, I'm all ears, right?
And there are lots of people in this community and in my friendships where I'm like, I am a slave to their opinions, right?
I mean, because I just think that they're wise and smart and good and so on, right?
But the people I don't consider virtuous...
I mean, it's not like it never hurts.
I mean, I'm not like a robot, but that's what I use, right?
So when somebody posts something vicious or vile or evil or nasty or whatever, or the trolls that have shown up from time to time, it's like, well, if I don't consider them virtuous people, then their authority over me vanishes, right?
Mm-hmm. Yeah, you really don't care.
I'm sorry? If there's somebody that you don't think is virtuous, you just don't care what they think, yeah.
Yeah, I mean, I will block their email or whatever if it's, you know, if it's ugly enough, because why would I want to, you know, why would I want to step in shit, right?
I mean, if I just put boots on, right?
It doesn't mean I'm going to go back and step in shit again, but I even have it in the first place, right?
So... So it's not like it has no effect on me, but fundamentally the effect is very transitory, right?
It's like, ooh, that's a nasty thing to say.
Well, this means that this person is abusive and this person doesn't think and this person is acting out some horrible post-traumatic stress disorder based on their own history.
It's got nothing to do with me.
They're showing no curiosity. They're not analyzing my thoughts intelligently.
They're not... You know, helping instruct me if I'm in error and so on.
And so clearly they're just venting their shit, right?
Clearly they're just venting their bile, right?
Right. It's got nothing to do with me, right?
Because a good and virtuous person doesn't send abusive emails, right?
Just stuff like that. So it's just a, you know, I think the technical Greek term is a dickhead or something like that, right?
So it's just nothing to do with me and it's nothing that I can respect and it's nothing that...
It just passes by.
And... If you were to get – if as a kid or as a teenager, if you were to get a view of your mother that she was a stifling – I'm not saying all of this is true, but if it was, that she was like a stifling, crushing, narcissistic life eater, so to speak, then her power over you would diminish.
She's still your mom, so you've got to do what she says, blah, blah, blah, because you don't want to fight all the time.
But you do it with the knowledge that you're only doing it because she's the mom, she has the power, and she, you know, withhold food or whatever, right?
It just becomes a compliance to power, not a respect for authority.
Right. Now, I'm sorry, I've just given you a whole lot of information.
I don't want to keep plowing on. Just let me know where you're at, what you're thinking.
So now I'm looking for the...
Apparently, I still think my mom was virtuous because I can't just not care about what she did, I guess.
No, you'll always care about what she did.
We can't ever not care about it.
Because unlike some idiot out there on the internet, our parents dominated our lives for decades, right?
Yeah. You can't... You can't be in...
I'm not saying you were, but to analogize, you can't be in a war for 15 years and then not dive to the sidewalk when a car backfires.
I mean, it's built in.
It's hardwired. It's your experience, right?
So we can't ever not... I don't think that we can ever not care, right?
But the reason that all of this, to me, is coming up is the reason that we...
For me, the reason that we go to the past is to look at the present, look at the future, right?
I'm going to put forward a completely ridiculous theory, which you can shoot down at a moment's notice, and it's, again, just musings and ramblings based on what we've said, so certainly nothing carved in stone or even written on water.
But I would say that where we lack understandings about the truths of the past, we are compelled to recreate the same situations in the present.
Until we get them right, yeah.
Yeah, until we get them right, until we get the understanding, and then we're free of them.
And again, I go into a whole chapter on this in the book, so I won't go into any of the whys here.
But let's just say for the moment that that is the case, right?
Well, you keep running into a brutal authority that dominates you, right?
I mean, through your activism, right?
Yes. And this is not to say that your activism is, you know, ooh, it's just psychologically motivated.
I don't know, because I don't know anything about that.
But what I will say is that if you are not conscious of the degree to which you were subjected to an arbitrary, brutal and destructive authority when you were a child, then you will be very tempted to continue to re-expose yourself to an arbitrary, unjust and brutal authority as an adult.
That could be happening, yeah.
And that doesn't mean that what you're doing is not good.
But you want to make sure that you're not doing it because of that reason, right?
Right. And when I say that, which perhaps may be somewhat startling to you, what do you think or what do you feel about it?
That's what I thought when I was in jail last time, yeah.
I've had that inkling before.
That it was sort of to do with your, it may have something to do with your history, that kind of stuff?
Right. And what was your thought about the causality or the possible causality when you were in jail last time?
I was wondering, you know, this is pretty rotten here.
Who would want me to live like this?
The answer came, my mom would.
So I should have let you start, then we wouldn't have had to go through all of this.
Right. Right.
Right. Right, and of course it is a terrible, terrible thing, and this is so often the case, it's so common the case, this is culture as a whole, but it's a terrible, terrible thing how long we can spend doing our childhoods over, right?
Yep, seems like a waste of time.
Right, right. And again, if you sort of get a more solid understanding of the causality here, you may end up doing the same thing, but at least it will be something that you're conscious of.
I strongly suspect that you won't end up doing the same thing.
You go pounding your head against the wall of the state and get tossed in jail and stuff like that.
I strongly suspect that you won't.
but you will find ways of fighting for freedom, which of course is one of the aspects of you that I, for one, hugely respect, but you will find ways of fighting for freedom that are not contaminated by the unconscious dictatorships of the past.
Yep, that's what I'm afraid of.
I haven't been convinced of it yet, but I think it could be possible.
Right. Yeah, of course. I mean, there's certainly nothing I can do to convince you in an hour.
And it may be wrong, right?
Again, I always put this with infinite...
There's some stuff that I will fight to the death for, right?
There's no question. I will fight to the death for UPB, for logic, for evidence, for empiricism and scientific method and the free market.
But as far as...
Rummaging around other people's historical attics, that is a tender and delicate job, which I would never say this is what it is, right?
But this is sort of the stuff that strikes me.
Yeah, you brought up a couple of things that I hadn't thought of before.
And how was this conversation relative to your expectations?
Did we talk about the stuff that you wanted to talk about, or was there anything else that you wanted to talk about?
No, I was just...
Daring myself to actually call you, so I succeeded in that.
And was it as horrible as you had thought?
No, I knew it wouldn't be horrible, but I was just afraid to do it.
Right, right. And do you have any thoughts about sort of next steps, or if you wanted to continue to explore this kind of stuff, what you might do?
Yeah, well, I've had a couple of...
Interesting dreams when I've asked myself about things recently, so I thought I'd give that a try or just focus on whatever dreams I have.
I think that's a useful thing.
I don't know, do you read books on psychology or is that something?
Because a lot of people who are philosophically minded are like, psychology is like three steps down from voodoo.
Is that something that you read or is that something that you don't?
Before I started listening to your podcast, yes, I went with that it was complete voodoo and there's really been no, you know, any verifiable knowledge gained in psychology.
But since hearing you mention a few studies, I go, well, I guess they actually do have some some backing.
Yeah, no, it certainly can be valuable.
And in my experience, since I had never particularly done this before my 30s in any systematic or organized way, I just found that, I mean, FDR came out of rigorous and sometimes appallingly intense self-analysis, and that's where my real creativity came from afterwards.
And so it can, I think, it is a little bit like fusion in a brain or something like that.
So I certainly would strongly recommend it because, I mean, obviously your intelligence is very strong and your verbal skills are amazing and your courage and dedication is only to be envied.
And so if the same, you know, times a million flourishing occurs for you as it did for me, then, I mean, you'd be a largely unstoppable force that would be able to reverse time and travel to other dimensions, which is pretty cool.
Or something like that, yeah.
Yeah, something like that. I don't know if you've read Nathaniel Brandon's Psychology of Self-Esteem is a good book.
Alice Munro's work on childhood and its effect upon adult political motivations and so on is really, really good.
And just to have a go through those and hopefully it will help.
I mean, there's worky booky kind of stuff that you can do which sounds totally cheesy but can actually be really, really helpful.
Cognitive psychology work and so on.
For me, it was the great surprising journey of the second half of my life was joining the inner world to the outer world, and I'd spent so much time examining and exploring the outer world and left my inner world quite a lot untended that I would certainly recommend the journey, strange though it may seem to somebody who's obviously as outwardly directed as you and as I was.
But it really is an amazing journey.
Okay, I'll look into those.
Okay, and how do you feel about our conversation?
I think it would be very helpful to other people to listen, but you're welcome to have a listen to it first.
You know, you get first dibs on what happens to it.
Cool. I probably wouldn't be opposed to that.
I'd like to listen to it first.
You bet. I'll send you a link and I'll just post it after I've compiled it.
I'll do that now in the chat on Skype and then you can have a listen to it and let me know what you think.
Great. I'm very glad you called.
It was most enjoyable to chat with you and I'm glad that you found it helpful.
Oh yeah. I've got a few things to think about now.
Excellent. All right. Well, take care.
I'll talk to you soon. Bye.
Bye. Hi, it's Steph.
This is a day or two after this conversation.
And I just wanted to tack on something here at the end which is so obvious in hindsight but didn't occur to me at all during the conversation which is that this woman grew up kind of in a prison not allowed to go out and kind of kept close to the house and so on and now as an adult she remains drawn to not drawn to but accepts as an inevitable consequence of what she is doing and is relatively comfortable with The idea of going to prison,
and I think that is something that has only occurred to me afterwards, but I think it's a pretty clear parallel, so I hope that that makes some sense, and thanks as always for listening.
I look forward to your donations.
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