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March 11, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:06:10
1008 The Holocaust Dream (A Listener Convo)

The small horrors that bring on the great horrors...

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Time Text
Alrighty, that's better.
Okay. Alright, so we can start, if you like, by you can read the dream or you can tell me what happened the day before the dream.
Uh, shall I do both?
Yes, but not at the same time.
Not at the same time. Just kidding.
Oh, right, so I will do it at the same time.
That would be impressive. Oh my god.
Okay. No tickling yourself. That's my job.
To tickle myself. Huh? Anyway, no tickling yourself.
Right. I'll read it out.
What happened the day before?
It was Saturday. I turned up at work after waking up late.
It was stressful and I felt a lot of anxiety about being late.
I arrived at work. My manager didn't shout.
She just said she was worried about me because I was five minutes late.
She also told me that instead of having an eight hour shift, I had actually booked myself four hours holiday for that day.
So I only did a four hour shift.
While I was on the check-outs, I was very upset to see a small child, about three and a half, by my guesses, get hit by his mother because he handed some rubbish to put in the bin for him.
The mother hit him on the arm and sneered, say please.
This stood out to me emotionally that day because I wasn't in a position to help the child.
Then I went home after my four hour shift and I rang Tom to say I was out of work and wanted to see if I could come and see him.
He said yes and I went to his house.
Really enjoyed being there and we decided to go on a long walk through the countryside and I really enjoyed it.
I had to leave at around about five o'clock so he could get ready for work at his job.
I went home, didn't do anything all that exciting.
I had dinner and went on the computer, did some biology homework.
Then late that evening, I talked to someone from FDR on Skype for a long time about a family issue.
We talked late until the night until about 1 or 2 a.m.
Then I went to bed. Then the following morning, I had a dream that went like this.
What was the family issue?
And you don't have to get into any details.
I think it was about the time I was really depressed, but my mom didn't do anything to help me.
Okay, okay. And the dream went like this.
I was going on a school trip, though I didn't have to go.
I really didn't want to go, but I felt a lot of social pressure to go, seeing as my whole class was going.
It was to a Holocaust museum, and the Holocaust is a topic which has always really deeply upset me, and I was feeling really anxious about going because I didn't want to find out anything sad.
When I arrived at the museum, part of the museum was to put people through the same experiences of entering a death camp, like the process the Jews went through as they entered the death camps.
I was literally terrified.
I just wanted to close my eyes and ignore what was going on around me.
I felt very alone and very sad.
Everyone else was really enjoying the trip and was really eager to learn the history and the facts, but I couldn't wait to get out.
Tom was there too.
He was really enjoying the trip also, and I started mixing things from the films like Saw with events from the Holocaust.
It really wasn't nice. Towards the end of the trip, I got separated...
Sorry, what does it mean when you say, started mixing things?
Things like...
I don't know if you've seen the Saw films.
Oh god, no. No, they're not nice.
I haven't seen them, I've only heard stories, and then I started imagining that things from those films happened in the death camps, basically.
Yeah, no, I'm sure they did, but the film, as far as I understand it, is like you're locked in a room and you have to saw off your own leg to get out and that kind of stuff.
Oh yeah, I don't want to know anything else.
Please. Anyway, come on.
Towards the end of the trip, I got separated from my school class and I found two girls who I'd never met before.
They were very friendly to me, but there was some talk about one of the girls having a Nazi father.
In the dream it didn't bother me, but I was also surprised at how much they laughed and enjoyed the trip, almost like they thought the Holocaust was just fantastic.
I went home with them and stayed at their house.
The father of one of the girls was a Nazi.
I slept in one of the rooms.
On the wall was a picture of the father operating on a Jew.
The image made my stomach turn.
I tried to ignore it and just go to sleep.
That night I was scared the father would come and hurt me.
The room I slept in was pitch black and this terrified me as also in reality I have a phobia of the dark.
I couldn't get home to my own house and I didn't know why.
And that was basically the dream.
Right, right, right.
Okay, so I would say that the most important thing that happened the day before was you saw this child being...
And tell me a little bit, you posted that incident on the board, but just tell me a little bit more about it, if you could, and remind me what happened.
Well, I was basically on my till, and...
This woman came through and I was just serving her normally and she had a child sitting in the chair on the trolley and he basically handed me like a piece of rubbish and he wanted me to put it in the bin.
I wasn't sure what he wanted so I asked him would you like me to put this in the bin and he said yes.
He didn't say please. And so I took the rubbish off him and then his mum like hit him on the arm And said, you know, say please.
And she said it very, you know, nastily.
And then I took the rubbish off and put it in the bin.
And I think it wasn't nice to see because then I had the rest of the shopping to peer through for this woman.
And, you know.
And why didn't you say anything?
I'm not saying you should have.
I'm just curious. Yeah.
You would like to have said something, right?
Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't have known what I'd have said, but...
Yes, you did know what you would have said.
Sorry, look at that.
I'm already being annoying.
Yeah, I suppose I didn't say anything because I didn't feel like I was in any position to say anything.
What do you mean, position? I was in any position of power to be able to say anything.
I'm not sure what you mean by a position of power.
Like, I was just on the checkout, just doing her shopping, and I didn't...
I don't know.
Can you say anything in those situations, or...?
What do you mean? Like, physically, can you say something?
Well... It's possible, right?
I mean, speak with your mouth.
Yeah, I mean, so, I'm not sure what you mean when you say, can you say anything?
I'm not trying to... Like, I really don't understand what you mean.
Oh, I don't know. I don't know how to deal with those situations when I see that happening.
You do. You do.
You absolutely know how to deal with those situations.
I guarantee you that you know exactly what it is that you want to say.
And this, I think, has something to do with the dream, but that's why we'll spend just a minute or two here.
Yeah. But yes, you know what to say, right?
I mean, you've read RTR, right?
Yes. Yeah, so you know what to say, right?
Hopefully. Well, what's the basic premise of RTR? To be curious.
And to be honest about your experiences of the other person, right?
Yeah. So what would be a way of doing that?
What you just did to your child really shocked me.
Yeah. Would be one way of saying it.
Right. And can you understand the basic contradiction in this woman's behaviour towards her child?
I mean, I know you can, but I mean, can you articulate it?
What was wrong with what you did, fundamentally?
Well, it was an evil thing to do.
Well, I agree with that, but calling it that doesn't make it that, right?
Oh, okay. What's the fundamental violation of UPB that this woman was engaged in?
Hitting a small child?
Well, for sure, but I would say that she wanted the child to treat you with respect, right?
To say please. Yeah.
Do you see the contradiction?
Well, she didn't treat the child with respect.
Exactly. Exactly.
Yeah. So, that would be, I mean, I would be, I would certainly say that this is upsetting to see.
It's upsetting for me to see you treat your child this way.
And I would say something like I don't want to interfere because I'm not the mother, but just from a concerned outsider, I would say that if you want the child to treat other people with respect, then it's never going to work because children learn from what you do rather than what you say.
And if you hit your child or aggress against your child because that child is not treating others with respect, then clearly the kid's not going to I would appeal to the woman's self-interest, right?
If you want to treat people with respect, then you should treat your child with respect, which I know is not always easy and you've had a stressful day, but I'm just saying from the outside...
I don't know, it's just a four-hour shift and it wasn't hard, I could put it that way.
No, I meant the mom has had a long day.
Maybe the mom's had a long day and this and that and the other, right?
So with some sympathy, because the important thing is the kid, right?
Yeah, obviously. So, I think you certainly would have some idea of what to say, right?
Yeah. In other words, if I took off, or if somehow magically could be taken off, any repercussions from saying what you wanted to say, you'd know exactly what to say, right?
If you knew that the woman was going to thank you for whatever it is you said, you would know exactly what to say, right?
Yeah. I mean, if, heaven forbid, you saw your boyfriend doing this, you wouldn't stand there and have no idea what to say, right?
No. What would you say?
I'd say what you just did was really shocking and...
Yeah, don't do that. Right?
So, and the only reason that I'm saying that is we want to correctly identify what the block is, right?
Yeah. Because if you don't identify the correct thing, you can't solve the problem, right?
I mean, if you don't get the right diagnosis, whatever you prescribe isn't going to cure the real problem, right?
Yeah. So the problem is not that you didn't know what to say, but what would be the more accurate way to characterize the problem?
That I didn't say what I wanted to say.
Well, that was the action, but what was the reason?
Why didn't you say what you wanted to say?
I can't locate in my head why I didn't.
Well, what was the feeling that you felt when you saw this?
What was your first instinctual feeling?
What was your feeling?
Well, I suppose the first thing I felt was shock.
But I didn't feel like I could do anything.
Well, but that's not a feeling, right?
Didn't feel like I could do anything as an interpretation, right?
So with After the Shock came obviously an impulse to say something, right?
Yeah, it did.
What feeling did that impulse bring up in you?
Well, the event made me feel angry.
be.
Well, sure, but anger would have given you the incentive or the motive to speak, right?
So what was preventing you from speaking?
Feeling powerless?
Powerlessness is not really a feeling.
That's another interpretation. Sorry to be, again, annoying, but...
Well, if you put yourself back in that moment, right, just close your eyes, put yourself back in that moment, that the woman is standing there, she's just lashed out at her child, and so on.
If you actually opened your mouth and said what you just did is shocking, what is the feeling that occurs just before you opened your mouth to say that?
Fear?
Yes, of course.
Fear?
And fear of what?
What is the worst case scenario that occurs from you opening your mouth to speak out against this kind of brutality?
Oh, I suppose because I was at work, I think there was a variety of things.
Go on. I think primarily fear of being attacked.
By? By the woman.
Now, do you mean physically attacked or verbally attacked?
Verbally. Alright.
And what would have resulted from that?
Like, let's play that out, right?
So you say to the woman, I think what you do is shocking, I also think it's unproductive, and so on.
And she's like, well, you're just some know-it-all bitch, get out of my face, or whatever she would say.
Yeah, you've never had a kid, etc., etc.
Right, right. Who are you to tell me what to do?
You know, you have two kids for six years, and you can be lord over me, right?
Or whatever, right? Yeah, well I think the most you probably would have done is gone to my manager and complained.
Right, right. And...
Said I'd been rude or something like that.
Sorry, if she had started verbally attacking you, then, I mean, of course, you could have said, look, first of all, verbally attacking me is not going to solve the problem, right?
And secondly, if you do verbally attack me, if you say anything else that's unpleasant towards me, then I will call the manager over and we will talk about this in more depth.
But verbal abuse towards employees is not tolerated in this company.
Yeah. Right, you could get banned from the store forever, right?
Yeah. But you would have, I think that you were in a place, and I totally understand this fear is not irrational, right?
I'm not saying that you were a coward or, like, there was nothing wrong with what you did, because it's a really terrifying thing to do.
It really is. So, you know, I hope that we'd all do sympathy, right?
Yeah. But you felt that if she'd gone over to the manager, what would have happened?
That I would have gotten in trouble with the manager.
Which means what? Well, getting in trouble with the manager can mean something like a bad reference or not such a good view of you or, you know...
So if you had said to the manager, look, she hit her child, I had to say something.
I mean, that's just a basic human decency thing, right?
You can give me a bad reference or whatever, but I'm not going to sit there and look at a child getting struck and not say something.
Yeah. It would take a pretty tough and hard-hearted fellow to discipline you for that, right?
Yeah. Yeah. And of course, if that had occurred, right, if you had been fired on the spot for saying to a mother you should not hit your child, right, then that would have been difficult and unpleasant.
But, of course, if you seriously thought or felt that that was a possibility, then you shouldn't be working there to begin with.
I mean, I hate to say it, right, but then it's a pretty corrupt organization, right?
Yeah. I mean, because the reason it's called courage is because it's scary, right?
Yeah, that's true.
Right? And it is horrible, and I guarantee you that there's no time in life where you will have nothing to lose by standing up to these sorts of people, right?
Mm. Right?
You say, well, you know, I need this job, but there's always something like that.
Always, right? Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, you'll be in the old age home and you say, well, I want seconds of tapioca pudding.
Like, there'll always be something, some reason to not stand up to people, right?
Yeah. And again, I'm not saying that you should have, right?
I mean, maybe this woman was a complete lunatic and would have physically attacked you with a knife.
I don't know, right?
I'm not saying that you're instantly...
Well, I delved it over the tail.
And if she did, I'm pretty sure the security guard would come and, you know, take her away pretty fast.
And then if she did make an attack like that anyway, I'm pretty sure, you know, the kid would probably get taken away from her, so...
Right. I mean, we do at least live in a society that does allow us to – where there is some recourse for this kind of abuse, right?
And if it means that child services goes to visit her, she gets some parenting classes and all that, that to me seems pretty good, right?
Right. We had a connection drop here, which we pick up in just a moment.
Yeah, so there's nothing wrong with what you did, right?
I don't want to start from the standpoint that you must always confront everyone you see doing anything that's conceivably wrong.
But clearly, I think your dream is telling you that you weren't fully conscious of the decision-making process that you went through.
Sorry, did you say I was or I wasn't?
Was not fully conscious of that.
Oh, right. Okay, yeah. And the reason that I would say that is that paralysis is not a decision, right?
Yeah. Right, so I'm all about, like, there are no rules here, right, which says you must or you must not confront somebody who's hitting a child, right, or yelling at a child or whatever, right?
Yeah. But it is wise to be conscious of Of the decisions and not just be mute and paralyzed, right?
Yeah. And tell me about the pluses that would have occurred for you if you had overcome your fear of retribution from this woman or from your manager or some negative things that may have accrued to you in terms of a performance review or whatever.
Yeah. So we understand the negatives, right?
But tell me about if you had said something, no matter how it would have gone, because how it goes is not up to you, right?
I mean, you can be reasonable. Yeah, that's true.
It's out of your control.
You can influence it, but the other person has their choice.
But tell me about the positives that would have accrued to you if you had said something.
Well, if she'd have gone to my manager and complained, I'd have known that it's not the company for me that I want to be working in.
I think that's a negative, right?
I mean, that's also a negative.
Yeah. Well, let me, because I know this is a tough area for you to think in, right?
Let me prompt you a little if you don't mind, right?
Just so you don't...
Would you have been proud of saying something?
Yeah, I think I would have.
You would have felt good about it, right?
Yes. And why would you have felt good about it?
Because it would have been the right thing to do.
And, right, and obviously it would have been negative for you because you were scared and you'd have to overcome that.
It would obviously be negative for the mother because if you weren't, I mean, if you weren't saying to the mother what a pretty earring you have on or whatever, right?
Yeah. It would have been negative to the mother.
It may have been negative to the manager who would have been put in a difficult situation of having to basically call a customer abusive, right?
Yes. So, how on earth could it have been positive for anyone, and who would it have been positive for?
The child? Yes.
See? You're a smart, very smart woman.
And tell me about that.
Well, I suppose it could have meant the mother rethought her actions and reconsidered the way she was punishing her child.
Sorry, I just got really confused there.
I asked, and maybe we just misunderstood each other.
What did you ask?
How would it have been beneficial for the child?
I'm not sure that the child would have thought, oh look, mother's re-evaluating her disciplinary methods.
That's not how children think.
How would it have been beneficial for the child?
I agree with you that it would have been, but in how?
This is what I mean by being conscious of the decisions that we're making.
Okay. Well, if it's not that the child would get better treatment, then I don't know what it would be.
Well, there's no guarantee that the child would receive better treatment at all, right?
No, there's not. In fact, the mother could drag the child out into the parking lot and box its ears because she felt humiliated, right?
Yeah. You might be provoking, in the immediate run, short-term negative behavior towards the child.
Would it have been the interaction that the child saw between me and the mother?
I believe that that would have been beneficial for the child, but it's worth exploring, because you were very clear that it would have been beneficial to the child, right?
You know all of this stuff, right?
I'm just being the annoying picking guy.
No, that's fine. So you know exactly how it would have been beneficial for the child, but it's hard to make that conscious, right?
Yeah. So if...
Somebody, let's say that you're walking down a dark alley, right?
And somebody jumps out and, you know, slaps you across the face.
Some guy. Some big guy, right?
What, a huge guy?
Let's just say a medium-sized guy, right?
Okay, yeah. Right?
And there's this big guy standing a few feet away, right?
Yeah. And he does nothing and says nothing.
How do you feel? Doesn't lift a finger to help.
Doesn't indicate that he thinks there's anything wrong with what's occurring.
Well, I'd be really annoyed.
Why? Well, because he could have stopped it or said something.
He could have done something, right? Could have done something, right?
But did nothing. Right?
Yeah. And I'm sure you're aware of who you are in that metaphor, right?
Yes, I am now.
Because when the child is being humiliated by his mother, and other adults do nothing, what does the child interpret?
That he's the one doing something bad?
Yeah, there's nothing wrong with what mom's doing.
There's everything wrong with what I'm doing.
I must be a bad kid.
Yeah. My mother must be a just human being who is attacking me because I am such a bad kid, right?
Yeah. But I'll go even one layer deeper because that's not what the child really believes.
The child knows perfectly well that the mother is being abusive and the child knows perfectly well that the mother is an immature bully, right?
Yeah. Now he looks up At you, who is an adult, who is not subject to his mother's power relative to how much he is in any way at all, right?
Yeah. And he sees you terrified of his mother, right?
Yeah. So what conclusions does he draw from that?
Sorry, you've got to move the mic while you're breathing directly on it.
It's rumbling. Sorry.
No, no problem. Are you there?
Yeah, I am just thinking.
I suppose he'd interpret it as that he was in the wrong and that he deserved what happened to him.
Well, I agree with you that he would believe that at a surface level, but that would be a defense against the more basic knowledge.
And the more basic knowledge would be something, I would guess, and it's something like this, and just tell me if it makes any sense, right?
Yeah, go ahead. Whenever I was a kid, and I saw people frightened of my mom, good people, Frightened of my mom and not doing or saying anything, the message that I got was that it doesn't matter how big and strong you get, good people will always lose.
Bullies run the world and good people always fold.
There's no point trying to become good or trying to become strong Because good people always lose.
They're always bullied.
Bullies run the world. Right.
Now, of course, this is not what you created in this kid and all this and that, right?
And the reason that I'm saying all of this, I'm certainly not trying to provoke any guilt or anything in you.
It's just that when you're faced with a huge amount of fear...
If we understand the cost-benefits, then it helps us overcome our fear, right?
Yeah, definitely. Right, I mean, I don't want to swim across shark-infested waters for $5, right?
Right? But, you know, if, I don't know, whatever, if there's some god-awful thing that's going to happen to me if I stay, right?
If my island is about to be hit by a bomb and there's some other island I can swim to across shark-infested waters, then I'll swim, but I just need to know what the benefits are, right?
Yeah. Now, the benefits that accrue to the kid when he sees a good person standing up to his mom and saying, what you're doing is not acceptable, right?
Yeah. It doesn't matter if your voice is trembling, and it doesn't matter if you're scared.
In fact, that's even more admirable for the kid, because he sees that a good person can stand up to a bad person and do something courageous, right?
Yeah. And kids can survive on very little, in terms of a positive impression.
If you had done that, or when you face this again, and you will in the future.
Yeah, I mean, I'll probably face it a lot on the tills and things like that, so...
The kid will never forget that moment until the day he dies.
Guaranteed. If you ever want to, you know, stick out in people's minds and be a virus that people will never ever forget, that's what you want to do.
The kid will never ever forget that moment when some stranger screwed her courage to the sticking point and stood up to his mom.
And whether she succeeded or failed or whether, right, doesn't matter.
Yeah. But someone saw it and someone did it.
And if my mom bullies her, right?
See, this is the interesting thing. The kid gets bullied all the time and his mom says, I bully you because you're bad, right?
If he sees his mom bullying a stranger who's trying to do the right thing, his mom is revealed ass.
Oh, well, a bad person.
Yeah, a bully, right?
Yeah. It takes the weight of guilt off his shoulders, right?
Yeah. And she will never be able to convincingly tell him again, I bully you because you're bad, because he saw her bully you, even though you were trying to do the right thing, right?
Yeah. Yeah. And being that kind of intervening person in a child's framework of the world is a pretty powerful thing, right?
Yeah, definitely.
That would be amazing.
It might give you enough motive to overcome the fear, right?
Yeah.
Because there is something amazing on the other side, right?
Yeah.
Now, I think that you know all of this intuitively, and that's the root of the obsession with the Holocaust.
Yeah. Go on.
Well, in this dream or...?
In general. In general.
In general. But tell me a little bit more about the genesis of this Holocaust thing with you.
Would it be unfair to characterize it as an obsession, or how would you characterize it?
An obsession might be one way of putting it, actually.
Well, I don't want to be inaccurate, you know, if there's a better way, you know, I just don't want to use a word that's unfair, but I also don't want to use one that's too tame.
Well, I mean, really, it started about two or three years ago when I was about 14, and I just read a really horrible newspaper article about the Holocaust, and it's stuck with me ever since, really. I just...
I can't believe how horrible this world can be.
I mean, how six million people can be taken to death camps and killed in these horrendous ways.
I don't know. I can't get over that.
It's just shocking. But you can understand it a little bit, right?
Based on what happened with you at the checkout counter.
Yeah.
Go on.
So you mean I can understand why these things happen?
Well, what I mean is that there are lots of horribly complex things that resulted in the evils of Nazism and the Holocaust.
But if you substitute mother for German and child for Jew, right...
Then it's easier, I think, to understand how these things can come about, right?
Because when a country ends up in this mental murderous mayhem of genocide, it's the result of, you know, countless tiny steps beforehand, right?
Yeah. You know, it's like there's a certain number of cigarettes you smoke and then you just die of lung cancer sometimes, right?
Yeah. So a cigarette is that little step towards that fate, right?
Yeah. And so we can assume that when the average good German saw another German yelling at a Jew or putting a Jew down or something like that, that they didn't say anything, right?
Yeah. Which emboldens people to go further and go further, and next thing you know, it snowballed and you can't stop it, right?
Yeah. Yeah. And like it or not, I mean, it's kind of like a blessing and it's also kind of like a curse, right?
And I'm going to use metaphorical language here, and I apologize for all of that to all the people who then will accuse me of being a freaky-ass mystic.
That's fine. But like it or not, you are one of the people that the world has chosen to be a good person, right?
To fight for goodness, right?
Yeah. I mean, because you're in this conversation, right?
Yeah. So, sorry.
Sucks. But, I mean, that's the way it is, right?
I mean, this is the weapon that you've been given.
This is who you are, right?
Yeah. So, most people, they wouldn't care.
They wouldn't really notice that much until it was too big to start.
But you can see these smaller...
of things, right?
Because as I've said before, like we who are philosophers, we are hypersensitive to the little decisions at the beginning of things that lead to the terrible events later on, right?
Yeah.
So if we want to make the world a better place, then we have to speak out against evil, right?
We have to speak out against that which is corrupt, that which is hypocritical, that which is false, that which is manipulative, that which is destructive, right?
That which is abusive. Yeah.
And it's not like we chose that.
It's just who we are, right?
Yeah. So...
To you has been given the responsibility, God knows how or where, we'll just use this metaphorical language, right?
But the world has put its little laser of moral growth on your forehead and pulled the trigger.
And it's like, I'm afraid that the bullet of integrity has lodged in your head and now there's nothing you can do but live with integrity or be miserable, right?
Yeah. And I do have a lot of sympathy as a fellow victim of this situation.
Right? This horrible reality that we are hypersensitive to that which most people don't even notice.
And I think that we are, you know, we're like the early defense, right?
You want your defense system to kill the cancer before it grows, right?
You don't have to go through chemotherapy or just get dead, right?
So we're like the world's early immune system that we see these things before they flower.
And we unfortunately are...
I wouldn't even say motivated because it's just an absolute, right?
We have to speak up or we're miserable, right?
Yeah. Does that ring true?
I know that's highly metaphorical, but does that make any sense?
Well, it makes sense about how I felt after I saw what happened on the checkouts.
Right. And so the Holocaust, like, I think, I think that your unconscious is trying to tell you something like, look, hate to tell you this, but there's a link between this checkout thing and the evils that the world can, or the evils that can infest the world, right?
Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's one of the reasons why you're drawn towards a knowledge of and understanding of the Holocaust.
And I have gone through the same thing.
Oh, really?
Oh, yeah, yeah. Plus, I mean, a Jewish background and German and all this.
Oh, really? Yeah, so I've delved into this fairly deeply as well.
Because it is such a stark and demonic aspect of human evil.
Oh yeah, it's a horrible, horrible topic.
It is a horrible, horrible topic, but unfortunately, you know, since we are the early warning self-defense of the planet, so to speak, we are the superheroes in a t-shirt, right?
But since we are the sort of early warning radar, we have to be hypersensitive to evil, and it's just a role that we've got, whether we like it or not.
And so we have to study the enemy, right?
And the Holocaust is one of the most well-documented and obvious examples of just a rank satanic evil in the midst of a supposedly civilized continent, right?
Yeah, it just gets me every time I think about it.
Right, right. We also know that if good people don't oppose the little evils around them, that the great evils will come, right?
Yeah. So we're hypersensitive to the little evils around us.
I always have been. I'm guessing you are.
I'm also guessing that you couldn't feel fully at peace if you felt that you weren't expending a reasonable amount of effort to prevent the accumulation or growth of evils in the world, right?
Yeah, I've actually always had something like that.
I mean... I've always found myself being drawn to, like, human rights groups and things like that.
So, yeah.
So, finding Freedom in Radio was fantastic, really.
In a way. I'm just kidding.
Yeah. I mean, there's shit I gotta do that's personal.
Oh, man. Let me go back to everything.
Yeah. It was much easier.
No, and you're right. I mean, it is much easier and rampantly and largely ineffective in the kind of stuff that we...
We're the completely unheralded heroes, right?
Because the stuff that we work to prevent will never occur, right?
So the guy who discovers a cure for cancer is the hero.
We don't even know the name of the guy who discovered that cancer is caused by smoking, lung cancer.
A lot of lung cancer is caused by smoking.
But think of all the cancers he's prevented, rather than the ones that are sort of spectacularly cured.
That's just a different...
So we're sort of unsung, but the amount of good that we do is greater in the long run.
But maybe that's debatable, but that's the way that I look at it.
Yeah. That's why I think you had this dream.
I don't want to, you know, tax your time too much, but we can certainly have a look at the dream now if we accept that as a possible context to work at it within.
Yeah, okay. All right.
So, you're going on a school trip.
You didn't have to go. You didn't want to go, but you felt a lot of social pressure to go, right?
Yes. Yes. Alright, so what is the dream telling you right up front as a warning?
That I was doing something I really didn't want to do and I shouldn't have done it?
Well, and why did you do it?
Because I felt pressure to.
Right, so what is the dream warning you about your susceptibilities?
That I shouldn't give in to them.
Well, no, that's not a warning.
That's a suggestion. It's acceptable to social pressure, right?
Oh, okay, yeah. It's okay.
We're all fairly brain-dead at these core topics around our own issues.
So, next time you can call me about a dream and I can be not happy with this stuff.
That's okay, right? If you were totally fluent with stuff, you'd be having a different dream about stuff that you weren't fluent about.
Yeah. Yeah. So the dream is saying, look, you have a false self susceptibility to social pressure, right?
Yeah. And how did your unconscious know that, based on what happened that day, or the day before?
Because something happened where I really wanted to speak out, but I didn't.
Because you were afraid of negative social repercussions, right?
Yeah. You weren't afraid of being stabbed.
You weren't afraid of being strangled.
You weren't afraid of being shot. You were afraid of people getting upset with you, right?
Yeah. Right.
Right. So the dream is saying, because you don't even go to this horrible museum, except that you're afraid of negative social repercussions, right?
Yeah. Okay.
And also, you're scared of negative social repercussions because you're five minutes late, right?
Yeah. I mean, in the real world, right?
In the real world, yeah. Right.
So, and it didn't even turn out to be the case, right?
No. So, the dream is saying, as well, that it's imaginary, right?
Like, you say, well, I better do X, because otherwise people will get mad at me.
But even if you do X, it turns out that people don't get mad at you, right?
Yeah, actually, my manager was just worried about me.
Right, right. She was like, oh, I was really worried about you.
I had no idea where you were. Right.
I was like, oh, thanks. Right.
Okay, so as we move on into the dream, there is a simulated, right, like the process of the Jews, the entering the death camp and so on, right?
Yeah. Now, of course, I'm sure you're aware that in many of the death camps, this was entirely simulated, right?
Like they were pretending to process the Jews or the intellectuals or the homosexuals or the gypsies or the retarded or whoever they were killing that day, right?
That it was a simulated process.
And what they would do is they would pretend to process the Jews so that they could get the Jews into the ovens, right?
Right?
So they'd say, well, you know, your work will set you free.
We're going to process.
We're going to take your belongings and we're going to write down and give you a receipt and so on.
All the while knowing that the road led straight to the Zyklon B death chambers, right?
Yeah.
And so they would pretend to process the Jews even though they weren't actually doing anything of the kind.
They were just trying to keep them pacified so they could kill them, right?
Okay. I mean, have you read about that or heard about that?
No, I've been so terrified of the topic I wouldn't even ever dare pick up a book or go on an internet website.
No, I would never go near it.
It just upsets me too much.
Okay. Now...
You felt very alone, very sad, very scared, because you were taking this seriously, right?
In other words, when you were going through this process in the dream of going on the trip through the museum, you took it as seriously to a small degree as if you were there, right?
Yeah. And everyone else you say was really enjoying the trip and was very eager to learn the history and the facts, right?
Yes. So tell me what you think about that.
Well, I suppose it's the way I've often felt when I've been really upset with the Holocaust because it seems like other people around me that are kind of like okay to learn about it.
They know a lot of things about it and they accept it for what it is and things like that.
Because it's always hurt me so much, I can't I can't understand that.
Like, I don't understand how people can just be okay to learn about it and things without feeling so upset.
Like, I've always felt alone in that.
Right, right. So when you...
Because you have a strong imagination, right?
Is that fair to say? Yeah.
Right, right. Yeah, things can really play in my mind.
Right, so, I mean, have you ever seen Schindler's List or any of the movies of that sort of ilk?
No way. No way, okay, okay.
And I imagine that that's because what you imagine is vivid enough, right?
Yeah, definitely. What I see in my mind, I don't need to know anymore.
It's... Right, so the interesting thing is what I see as interesting and instructive about this area of the dream is that everybody says they want to learn the history and the facts, right?
Yeah. But they're not doing that.
You are. Hmm.
Right? Well, because to really understand the Holocaust, you have to imagine what it's like in these freezing trains, right?
And being dragged off and, you know, put into these, you know, have your gold teeth ripped out.
I mean, all the horrors that went on in this nightmare world, right?
And, you know, the same is true of, I mean, if you read, as I mentioned before, the Gulag Apicalago and the other, even the stuff, there's a book called Three Swans about the genocides that occurred in China, the famine in the 1960s or the famine in Russia in the 1930s the famine in the 1960s or the famine in Russia in the 1930s or the Khmer Rouge or the killing field, all of these sorts If you go there and you don't feel any horror, then you don't understand anything about it, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. If we experience them as, wow, this is a bumpy ride and, you know, that's interesting. I didn't know that they could kill 5,000 people in a go with this gas or whatever.
If it's just a series of facts, then you're not getting it at all, right?
Yeah. Right, so you feel like alone and left out or left behind and you feel that other people, in the dream, I'm guessing, but tell me if I'm wrong, you feel like other people are interested in learning but you feel too depressed to learn,
right? Well yeah but I mean that's how it's felt in reality as well because I mean we in English I think when I was doing my GCSEs we started doing about this poem and it was based around the Holocaust and I think I skived every single lesson whereas everyone else was like you know really enjoying this like learning about this poem and you know it was interesting to them but I just couldn't I couldn't go to the lesson I couldn't even face it.
Right, right. And the true horror of the Holocaust, I think, has more to do for you with other people's non-horror of the Holocaust.
Yeah, it has felt that way.
Right, right.
And you've probably heard me say before, but I'll mention it again here because it seems quite relevant, that if other people don't feel things, we feel them double or triple or multiple.
Oh, you're taking the words out of my mouth.
That is how I felt all along.
I felt like because no one else understands it, it's like I just, you know, I take it on myself.
It's like I just, I can't let go.
Well, sure. Well, sure.
Right. And until you get the truth about the real horror, which is not fundamentally the Holocaust, but people's indifference to the Holocaust.
Yeah. Yeah. Then you're going to keep having these dreams and you're not this obsessionist because the obsessions occur or repetitive dreams occur because we're seeing things in the wrong way.
All right. Okay. Right.
So I've mentioned about this tsunami dream that I had for year after year after year.
And once I figured it out, what it was really about, I never had the dream again.
Yeah. Yeah. Right, so you're looking at this the wrong way.
You're looking at this in the dream, you're looking at it like you're deficient, right?
And they're competent. Yes.
Right, that is completely the opposite of the truth.
They're deficient and you're competent.
Yeah. Does that make sense?
Now, they want you to believe that you're incompetent for feeling the horror of this Holocaust, right?
Yeah. And when you feel horrified...
About something this horrifying, right?
You're put in an impossible situation, aren't you?
Because when you feel that way, people are going to say to you, hey, what's the matter, right?
Yeah. And then what happens then?
You just can't describe what you're feeling, and you don't feel like anyone's going to understand.
You can certainly describe what you're feeling.
I guarantee you, if somebody paid you a million dollars to describe what you were feeling, you'd be totally...
Yeah, you can describe what you're feeling, but you don't feel like anyone gets you.
I don't feel like anyone understands.
And here again, I'm going to be annoying and ask you to extend your thinking in this area, to deepen it, to where I think you really get it, because the dream, I think, is pretty clear about this.
They do totally and completely get what you're feeling.
Oh. Everybody's a genius.
Remember, everybody is a philosopher.
They totally get what you're feeling.
They totally understand what you're feeling.
There's nothing that you could tell them about what you're feeling that they don't already know.
Okay. It's a possibility.
I mean, just put it on as a totally wild, ridiculous possibility, right?
Yeah. And when they ask you what you're feeling, they are asking you because they want to reject what you're feeling.
Because your depth of feeling threatens them, right?
Yeah. And the reason that your depth of feeling threatens them is that if you are right, then they are shallow, broken people wrecked by their families.
Right? And they don't want to go there, right?
No. So you have to be the Jesus of the Holocaust, so to speak, right?
You have to suffer for the collective sin.
I mean, there's a reason that myth is so powerful, right?
You have to suffer for the collective non-suffering of everybody else.
They have to pile all of this on you, right?
Yep. And then they have to say, she feels so much, it must be pathological, right?
Yep. Right, which is like everyone standing around and beating someone up and then saying, you know, he must have brittle bones because he doesn't drink his milk, right?
Yep. So that's all I'm saying is that since you are a woman of deep sensitivity, deep feeling, you feel alienated and lost because of the supposed shallow self-confidence of everyone around you.
But I would strongly urge you to look at it in quite a different light.
that they are as deep as you are, but your depth manifests where they don't want to go.
Right.
Should we keep going, or was there anything else you wanted to talk about this early part of the drink?
Actually, that's cleared a lot up for me.
Okay, we can go relatively quickly there.
I don't know that Tom is giving you this kind of feedback as yet, right?
And we don't have to get into that in any great detail, but that's just something to think about, right?
Because he is enjoying the trip, right?
Yeah. And that also means that some of your social conformity or susceptibility to social conformity may be coming from Tom.
Yeah. Right?
Yeah. Okay, so then you say, towards the end of the trip, I got separated from my school class, and I found two girls who I'd never met before.
They were very friendly to me.
In the dream, it didn't bother me, you say, right?
Yeah. And what does that tell you?
That's, you know, I'm sorry, let me just be totally annoying and jump in here because this could take forever, right?
So, it's like...
See? No, it tells me...
Let me... I'll just put out a couple of thoughts and let me know what you think.
If you put yourself down relative to other people's shallowness, in other words, if your depth and sensitivity, if the richness of your soul becomes something weird and mutated relative to the, quote, normalcy of everyone else, you end up defenseless and exploited.
Yeah.
Right?
Right.
Thank you.
Because now, whereas seeing the effects of Nazism didn't bother you beforehand...
Sorry, seeing the effects of Nazism, the Holocaust, horribly tortured you beforehand, now...
Being around a Nazi father doesn't bother you, right?
Yeah. And this is after you have felt alone and sad and lower and less than everyone else, right?
Because if you are more honest and deeper and fundamentally greater than everyone else, but you think that what is different about you makes you worse, then you are looking at it entirely the wrong way, right?
Yeah. And in fact, you're looking at it from other people's eyes.
They sense and see your depth and the power of your imagination and the richness of your soul.
And they feel, and they know that they're capable of it too, in my opinion.
Yeah. So what they want to do is they want to define themselves as normal and you as weird, right?
and they want to reject themselves by rejecting you because it has nothing to do with you, right?
It's all about their own anxiety management and their own wanting to stay small because, I mean, that's the big secret of the world, right?
That we're all incredibly huge and powerful and brilliant and we stay small for fear of offending those who stayed small before us.
It's a terrible tragedy of the planet, right?
So the reason that you're susceptible to social pressure is that you're looking at yourself through the defenses of other people, right?
Yeah. Does this make sense?
I hope I'm not going too abstract.
No, no. Yeah, it does make sense.
Okay, good, good. So, if you look at yourself through the defenses of other people, right?
Mm-hmm. Then you end up without any protections.
Because the only protection that you have in this world is depth, is self-confidence, right?
Is being sure that what you are thinking and feeling and experiencing is right.
And if other people are rejecting it, it's because they're wrong.
Right. So if you look at yourself through the lens or the distorted lens of the defenses of other people, you end up...
In this situation where going to a Nazi dad doesn't bother you, right?
Because you're dissociated from yourself, right?
Yeah. In the way that when we started talking about what happened yesterday with the kid, right, you couldn't process the simple fact that you were afraid, right?
No. Right, because you were looking at it like, well, I couldn't have said anything.
But that's the mom's perspective, right?
That's the mom's perspective.
And maybe it's your boss's perspective too, like, don't put me in that situation, right?
Yeah. So you're looking at yourself through others and saying, well, I can't, but no, they don't want you to, but that's very different from I can't, right?
Yeah, that's true.
So these kids now think they laugh and enjoy the trip, almost like they thought the Holocaust was just fantastic, right?
And then you go home with them and stay at their house, right?
Yeah. And now you're in a really sick environment, right?
Because you say on the wall there's a picture of the dad operating on a Jew and it's a pit of black.
So what happens is, I mean, if you look at...
I mean, this is a very...
I mean, I think you're totally right to spend some time on this dream because it's a very powerful dream, right?
And it's a very instructive dream, I think.
And we had said earlier that the horrors at the end are made up of the little decisions at the beginning, right?
Yeah.
Now, the world, all of the horror that the world rejects and scorns and mocks early on, redoubles and grows and infests and becomes cancerous and comes back in a way that cannot be ignored anymore, right?
So if we look at your dream, not only is it describing the Holocaust, but it is also describing the little decisions in your life that lead to very terrible consequences, right?
And I'm not saying that these are decisions that you've made and you're living terrible consequences, but if you look at the very beginning of the dream, you go on a school trip because you don't want to go on because you're afraid of being criticized, right?
Yeah. And that whole process leads you step by step by step to being in the house of a sadistic Nazi in the pitch black with having no way to get home.
that make sense?
It's a snowball effect from the early decisions that we make around social pressure, social susceptibility, but most importantly, the respect that we have for our own depth and the power of our own personalities and our own imaginations and our own perceptions.
If we look at ourselves through the lens of other people's defenses and we end up small and fearful and feeling weird and feeling like everyone else is in some sort of beer commercial and they're all happy and stable together and we're just struck by this weird, morbid imagination and we put ourselves down and so on.
step by step by step we end up in this situation where we are in a house of horror, right?
Yeah. And we also lose our defenses.
We lose our just fear of things, and then it comes back and it's even worse, because you're nervous and scared and upset at the beginning, and then when you get a clear warning of danger, i.e.
these women say, come and stay with us, we have a Nazi dad, and you go, right?
You don't feel fear then, but then what happens is you feel real terror at the end, right?
Yeah. Yeah. And that's what happens with people.
We feel uneasy at the beginning and you can see this in relationships, you can see this all over the place, right?
We feel kind of uneasy at the beginning and then we go through a period of numbness and then there's real horror at the end.
And if we don't listen to that feeling of uneasiness at the beginning, And the way that I metaphorize this is that, you know, if you sprain your ankle a little bit, and then you pretend that it's okay, what happens is your ankle actually goes numb, right?
Yeah. I mean, this certainly has occurred to me, right?
I'm like, oh, I'll walk it off, and then I go running or whatever.
And then my ankle feels totally fine, right?
Yeah. But then what happens is...
At the end of it, my ankle is completely fucked up, right?
Because I didn't listen to the twinges, right?
I didn't listen to the twinges, and I didn't do the rest I sell with compression and elevation and make it better, right?
Yeah. And so our soul goes through the same thing.
We feel these twinges of unease at the beginning of things.
If we don't explore, understand, and decide on those things, what happens is we get numb, and then we get completely screwed up.
This has been sort of my experience and my understanding of it, and I think in the dream follows that pattern.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. So that's it for me.
Yeah, you've cleared a lot of things up for me.
And is there any part of the dream that, I mean, obviously this is a rich dream, you could spend days on it, and productively too, but is there any part of it that remains, I mean, obviously there's some stuff I think that the dream is saying that you have to talk about with Tom, that the dream is saying, whether it's rightly or not, whether he's watching your backs efficiently and respecting your depth enough to help you become more comfortable with it?
Hmm. Because he can only help keep you safe by helping you really trust and validate your instincts, your depth, your imagination.
But if he shies away from it and flees a little bit more to the social security of the common herd, then that's not going to be good for you.
He's going to need to stand by your depth and help you to really learn to use and trust this deep magic that you have within yourself.
Okay. Because he's got to be the one who says, That your depth is right, that these shallow people are acting in a defensive manner.
And I have to do this with Christina, too.
Christina's a little... I mean, I think this is a bit of a male-female divide, if we can just put it in a very sort of sketchy terms, but...
Yeah, go ahead. Well, again, I sort of have to help remind my wife of this stuff as well, because she has a susceptibility to social conformity.
This is also just, I mean, the way women are raised and so on.
I don't know whether it's in a culture, it doesn't matter.
Yeah. But he's got to fiercely guard the depth and imagination and power that you have within your personality.
Yeah. Because you find it easy to forget that.
Out of you, it is a liability, right?
Yeah. So he's got to stand for you and say, no, no, no, no.
You don't get to throw this part of you under the bus, right?
This is an essential, powerful part of you that we really need to guard and protect.
And it's been under a lot of attack, this part of you, from a lot of different people, right?
Yes. Right, so it really needs to be shielded and protected, because you can't get rid of it, and you wouldn't want to, either.
No. No, I've tried to get rid of it, and I've tried to put it away, but it just keeps coming back, so...
Oh yeah, the more you push this down, it'll just be like, hey, fuck, you can lock me in the basement, I'll just show bad movies.
Okay. Yeah.
No, it doesn't go away, that's for sure.
No. Okay, well, look, I mean, I'm getting the sense that we've talked enough about this, but is that right?
Is that a fair statement?
Yeah, that is fitting emotionally with me, so...
Okay, great.
Well, I'll do the usual.
You know the drill. I will give you a copy.
I hope that you will allow some other people to listen to it, but I will send you a copy and let me know.
No, definitely. Well, it seems to have gone fine, so you can just put it out.
Okay, well, I appreciate that.
I will send you an email with the link, though.
Okay, thanks a lot, Steph.
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