All Episodes
Previous Next
March 29, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:06:33
1026 Anger (Listener Convo)
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Well, I appreciate the challenge of the topic that you brought up on the Freedom Main Radio board.
And I do sympathize with the problem of anger or what may be more specifically in your instance and in other people's instances called rage, which is a little bit different from anger, if that makes sense.
I believe it does. So, I do want to hear about your history, but I'd like to just spend a few minutes, if you don't mind, just going over the way that I approach the question or the problem of anger.
And I've had some problems with anger in the past, so I do understand where you're coming from, and I do sympathize, both with what you experience when you go through these feelings, and also for your sincere desire not to live like this anymore, at least to try and find a way to minimize it, if that makes sense.
Yes. So, this is my theory, and remember, I'm an amateur on the internet, so you can take this with all the caveats you want.
This is just playing around with ideas.
But this is the way that I found that I could work with anger in a way that turned it from something destructive into something enormously helpful and productive for me.
So, I always experiment on myself first, so I try not to pass along anything, any prescription I haven't taken myself.
So very briefly, the way that I approached the question of anger in myself was sort of as follows.
I view anger or rage as anger that turns rancid because it can't be acted upon.
What I mean by that is when we're kids, let's just say that we have parents who are either aggressive or passive-aggressive, who put us in impossible situations, who are frustrating, who are overbearing, who may be violent either verbally, emotionally or physically.
And what that does is when we are in a situation of danger, Like all animals, we have of course the fight or flight mechanism.
And when that fight or flight mechanism is provoked through us being put in situations of anger or fear or frustration, then normally what is supposed to happen We're supposed to leave that situation.
You put your hand on the hot stove, your finger says, ow the hell, and you take your hand away from the hot stove.
That's the point of that pain.
When you feel that something is scaring you in particular, then you're supposed to move away from that thing.
If you see a lion in the street, you will feel afraid as a child.
The purpose of that fear is to move you away from something.
Frustration also, of course, has an enormously beneficial component to it insofar as frustration is really designed to have us avoid the problem of sunk costs, right?
So if you spend half an hour trying to untangle a little piece of string, frustration is that part of you that says, let's just go buy some new string, right?
I mean, this is a waste of time and a waste of effort and so on.
And so the feelings that we have around anger and fear and frustration are all designed to propel us into action, into have us change the behavior or the situation or the environment that we're in.
Unfortunately, when we're children, we rarely have that option.
In fact, we almost never have that option with regards to our own family.
Right? So, when we think of something like physical torture, and this is a strong metaphor to use with the family, but I think it gets the point across.
Physical torture takes our body's self-protection mechanism, i.e.
the transmission of pain when injury occurs, which of course is designed to have us not do it again.
You stub your toe, it hurts like hell, and the point of that is so you don't stub your toe again and maybe lose a toenail, get an infection, and die or something.
So, a torturer It takes the body's healthy defense mechanisms and uses it to inflict pain because the purpose of torture is to inflict pain while you're helpless and paralyzed and can't leave and can't avoid the pain and so on.
In the same way, if you're in a family situation when you're a child, And your fight-or-flight response is being continually activated in one form or another, either by teasing or an angry parent or a passive-aggressive parent or a parent who keeps the bond very fragile, right? So there's lots of parents around there, around, who, you know, if you displease your mother, she will not talk to you for a week.
And so she's just showing that the bond is very fragile and that you have to please her or she will abandon you, which of course for a child is psychologically is a death sentence.
Children are abandoned. They tend not to do very well.
So when we get into situations where there is a chronic activation of the fight or flight mechanism, then what happens is...
We end up continually being in that fight or flight situation.
And anger is no longer something that is caused by something that we can then change.
Right? So, if someone who's a friend of ours, you know, comes up and, boom, pretends to punch us, then obviously that's going to startle us, right?
And we're going to avoid that friend in the future because that's a really jerky thing to do, right?
But if we can't avoid that friend in the future and they keep pretending to punch us, we end up in a state of continual arousal and not in the good kind, right?
Where the fight-off mechanism is just out of whack.
It's hypersensitive, it's continually activated, and there's not a diminishment or a cessation of that fight-or-flight mechanism, which leaves you, or leaves one, rather a hair trigger.
So that's just a real brief introduction to the way that I found working with my own anger was productive.
Can you tell me if any of that rings a bell for you?
Yes, yes it does.
Okay, well, now I'm done talking and you can tell me how that fits and anything else that you wanted to say about this.
Well, I'm kind of processing this still.
Would you like me to? I mean, I'm happy to ask questions.
I don't want to put you on the spot. I mean, not everybody likes giving big speeches like me, but so I can ask questions for...
I think I would prefer that.
I think I would work better in that, if you're willing.
Sure. I'm happy to.
I just wanted to mention, there is a little bit of a background hiss here.
I don't know if anybody else who's listening has...
Oh, that's better.
Thanks. So, can you tell me a little bit about the parenting that you experienced, the discipline that you experienced, and the general emotional experience that you had within your family with parents or siblings or anybody else who had any kind of power over you?
Well, I can sum it up pretty easily, and I've been speaking to my friends and my wife about this.
My parenting can be summed up by saying, it is not yours to question why, it is but to do or die.
And that's the parenting that you experienced when you were a child?
Yes. My father is and was a military man.
Oh god, I'm so sorry.
Oh man. Man, that's killer.
I mean, literally. I'm so sorry.
I'm so sorry. What a terrible situation.
This is the price that people pay for the military-industrial complexes, the rape of their childhoods, psychologically, and I really am.
I mean, that's just terrible. That's just terrible.
But tell me a little bit more about that, how that worked for you, or rather didn't work for you, or how it worked for your father, what happened, what your mom did, and so on.
Well, ever since I was a little kid, I've wanted to know why.
I think that that was the question of my life.
And growing up in a situation where you don't get to question...
My parents weren't always like, no, you don't get to know an answer, but these walls would come up whenever I would question why.
It would be like, Okay, I'll give you an answer for this.
Now here's this huge frigging wall and you better not try to cross it or, you know, here comes the discipline and it's usually fertile.
So it would sort of be...
I mean, kids have this phase, right?
They go through this phase.
Where they, there's always another why, right?
You know, why is the sky blue?
Why does blue exist? Why is there air?
Why is there a planet? You know, this kind of stuff, right?
And that's a very healthy part of, this is the genesis of philosophy, and a very healthy part of a child's developing mind, which is striving to joyfully understand the world that he lives in.
But for you, you'd get maybe like one or two whys, and then it would be like, just because, damn it.
Yes. That's exactly how it would go.
And your emotional experience of that, just because, damn it, what was that like?
When you'd hit that wall, what was the emotional experience that occurred for you as a child?
Confusion. Right.
I don't really know how else to put it.
It was just frustration, confusion.
Why don't I get to know the answer to this?
What would it hurt you to tell me?
These are things that I think now that I relate back to when I was a child, giving that child words he didn't have back then.
But I guess most of all, I just experienced frustration.
Okay, okay. That's good.
I mean, it's good that you know that you experienced frustration.
It's not, of course, good that you were raised by this lunatic.
But... So, the frustration is...
Frustration, again, often arises or usually arises from two contradictory impulses.
So if I want to get some girl to go out with me, but she doesn't want to go out with me, then I have a desire that I cannot fulfill.
If I want to unravel my Christmas tree lights, but they are just knotted up like a lower intestine, then I have a desire which I cannot fulfill or so on.
So the frustration, I'm guessing, if this theory works for you, which is the most important part of it, Then the frustration that you experienced was because you wanted to know something and you weren't permitted to know it,
right? I was going along with you in my own mind and it was that I wanted to know the answer to the question but at some point I knew that the wall would come up and at that point it was like Here comes the abuse.
Here comes spanking.
You're being defiant, which was and is my parents' default position that the only acceptable use of spanking is in cases of willful defiance.
Right. We have a chain of command in this family, son.
Right. Yeah. And if you defy that chain of command, here comes the spanking.
And apparently asking too many whys was a way to provoke You're being defiant now because you're just not accepting what I'm telling you.
Right. I'm telling you that I don't want to answer this question.
You keep answering it, so you're willfully disobeying my express orders and you must be punished, right?
Yes. Now, this is, I think, at the core of the frustration, is that was education a value for your parents?
Like, did they say education is very important?
Yes. Right.
So there we go, right?
So you have parents who say education is very important, but if you ask three whys rather than two, you're going to get beaten.
Yes. Okay, so there we have a bit of a contradictory instruction set, right?
Yes. Most definitely.
Alright, alright. Okay.
Now, I'm sorry to ask this question so directly, but the word spanking is often used to mean a wide variety of things.
People told me that spanking is everything from a light swat on a padded buttock to getting hit with a wooden spoon or a rolling pin.
So can you tell me just a little bit more about the physical assault?
And to me, there's just no excuse for hitting a child.
There's just... No excuse for hitting a child.
There is no circumstances under which hitting a child is a viable option any more than there is any circumstances under which hitting your wife is a viable option.
So, if you can just tell me a little bit more about...
Because you used the word spanking and used the word beating, and I just want to make sure physically that I understand what you're talking about.
I understand the confusion.
My parents' default position was that you did not spank with the bare hand.
So... A leather belt or a wooden spoon were the two devices usually used.
What the hell is the theory that says that spanking with a bare hand is negative but spanking with a wooden spoon or a belt is positive?
I haven't delved into it because I really haven't looked at this in a long time but if I had to venture a guess I would say You don't want the person to associate the touch of your hand with the spanking.
Goddamn. I mean, did they think you were functionally retarded and you would think that some ghostly belt was hitting you?
It's unbelievable. I mean, the lengths that people go to put insane rules around their brutal abuse.
Oh, man.
Okay, so this was not discipline, this was sadism, right?
I mean, can we at least agree on that?
I can agree to it.
I still am protecting my parents and my own life in a lot of ways, so I'm working through that.
Well, let me put it to you this way, and maybe this will, and I understand that.
Look, I mean, this scar tissue of defending the parents is very, very powerful because it's a key survival mechanism, right?
If you'd continued to be defiant, you never knew when your parents would lose control and you might get seriously injured, right?
Yes. So, I mean, I just, by the by, I was just thinking about this the other day, and I was talking about it with my wife based on Dr.
Phil show that I saw that I experienced physical abuse as a child and I just remember very clearly when my mother was beating me that she was out of control.
I remember understanding that really, really clearly and just going limp in terms of compliance because if you continue to resist when somebody who is inflicting sadistic abuse on you is...
Out of control, you don't know where it's going to end.
And it may not be that they want to really hurt you, but maybe one of my mom's rings would have caught me in the eye, or maybe she would have just gone totally blind or something, and you just don't know, right?
Yes. Right, right.
Okay, so, and let me put it in a context that hopefully will make some sense, because I know that sadism is a tough word to swallow with regards to parents, but let me give you an analogy and hopefully it will make some sense.
Okay. If I had a brother who was in a wheelchair...
No, forget that. If you came across me and there was a guy in a wheelchair and I was beating him with a belt, can you think of any circumstances under which that would be an appropriate rational or moral response to whatever the person in the wheelchair had done?
No. Okay.
The guy, an adult in a wheelchair, has infinitely more power with regards to me than any child does with regards to his or her parents, right?
Right. I mean, if I go up and just start beating the shit out of some guy in a wheelchair, he can call the cops, he's got his own place, right?
He can have my ass thrown in jail.
He's got lots of options, right?
He might have a cell phone.
You know what I mean? Like, he has lots of options.
Now, he can't fight back because he's in a wheelchair particularly, right?
Unless he's got a gun. But let's just say he doesn't.
He's got... This could be just one particular incident that is an ugly, ugly, unprovoked attack in his life.
He gets my ass thrown in jail and things get, for him, to some degree restored to normal and his independence is secured, right?
Right.
But children don't have that option, right?
So if I'm beating a guy in a wheelchair, we understand that the power disparity is so great between me, an able-bodied man, and a guy in a wheelchair.
We can understand the power disparity and the strength disparity and the physical ability disparity is so great that there's no circumstances under which I could claim self-defense for beating an unarmed guy in a wheelchair, right?
I could make up a story as to why it would be possible, but that would be just me making up a story.
And I think it would be really hard to make that story, fundamentally, right?
Yes. Yes.
It would be very difficult.
So, clearly, there would be no circumstances under which discipline or...
I could never say that I'm beating the guy in the wheelchair with a belt or a wooden spoon for his own benefit...
When he's cowering and whatever, right?
Begging me to stop. There's no conceivable way that I could really sell that story.
That I'm not interested in inflicting pain, that I hate doing it, but it's just what the guy in the wheelchair needs to become a better person.
Yes. There's no reason that I can see.
No reasonable excuse for it.
Right, right. Now, of course, a lot of times parents will say that the reason that you have to beat children or you have to assault children is because their minds are not capable of processing their own self-interest and therefore what we need to do is beat the children so that they get the lesson which they wouldn't rationally understand.
Does that make sense? It's almost word for word that I was taught growing up.
Right. I have no doubt that it is almost word for word.
And I actually had a conversation with a guy who was a dad who made this exact same argument.
Unfortunately, he demanded that I pull the podcast after he listened to it again because, I mean, he realized what he sounded like.
But that is the theory, right?
Which is that the children will only respond to threats of physical violence or the acts of physical violence because they don't understand their own Long-term self-interest, right?
Now, of course, there's two fundamental problems with this.
The first is that it's completely illogical, right?
I mean, it's wildly illogical.
If the child is unable to understand his own self-interest, then a beating shouldn't work because the child should never want to avoid a beating, right?
Right. So clearly, we rely on the fact that the child can act for his own self-interest if we're going to inflict a beating on him because we're going to assume that he wants to avoid the beating, right?
Yeah, exactly. Right, so clearly you can't say that I have to beat a child because he doesn't know his own long-term self-interest because beating relies on the fact that the child is interested in his own long-term self-interest, right?
Because we're asking him to three days from now or a week from now, don't do X because remember you got beaten.
So we're asking him to remember that, to process that.
So you're actually relying on that which you say is missing if you beat a child, right?
Which is the self-interest. Yes.
So that's a completely irrational justification.
The second thing is that Parents, when they get older, and I'm talking like, you know, 70s, 80s or whatever, right?
A large number of them will become forgetful, right?
Correct. I mean, that's just the nature of age and all that kind of excitement, right?
I don't think that I've ever talked to or read about or heard of a parent who says, if I become forgetful when I get older, I want you to beat the shit out of me with a belt.
Sorry. No, no, I mean, it is funny in a way, right?
Because it's so fucking hypocritical, right?
Yes. Can you imagine saying to your dad, okay, dad, I think I understand it.
So if your brain has problems processing stuff the way that my brain did when I was four, if you show any signs of becoming forgetful in your old age, then the best way to train you to remember stuff is to beat the living shit out of you with a belt, right? So you're good with that, right?
Would he say what? What would he say?
Well, no.
That's exactly the theory that he used, right?
Which is if your brain is having problems processing stuff and the forgetful mind of an elderly person is far less problematic than the developing mind of a toddler, right?
Correct. But it certainly can be a problem and it can be inconvenient, right?
So, Dad, if you forget to take your meds because, well, for whatever reason, Then I should beat the living shit out of you so that you remember to take your meds, right?
It's a theory my grandmother still acts on.
What do you mean? My grandfather has Alzheimer's and she screams at him if he forgets things or when he says something that would be considered stupid or what have you.
Right, and that I understand in a horrific kind of way, and you may want to report this bitch for abuse, but the question is, if your grandmother gets forgetful about something, do people get to shake her and scream at her?
No. So you see, it's always put forward as a rule, and it's like, hey, you know, don't blame me for gravity.
I just have to follow the rules, right?
But the rules are never designed to be applied to the person who's making them up.
Thus, we know they're not rules, right?
Right.
If a parent says, I beat you because there was no other way you could learn, then obviously that's logically inconsistent completely.
And secondly, it is a rule that the parent would never want applied to themselves when they get elderly.
Therefore, we know that it's not a rule that is objectively applied to, right?
Like I have a rule, like I treat everybody the best that I can the first time I meet them and after that I treat them as they treat me.
I'm perfectly happy to have that rule applied to me.
I think it's a good rule, right?
Right.
So I don't make up this rule, and then when somebody says, oh yeah, well I'm going to turn it around on you, and I go, oh shit, that's not allowed, right?
I mean, the rules that I have, I don't steal things, and I'm happy when people don't steal things from me, right?
Otherwise it's a hawker scene.
Well, otherwise it's hypocrisy, but hypocrisy coupled with beatings is sadism, right?
That the rules are made up so that the children can be beaten.
The children aren't beaten because they disobey the rules.
The rules are made up as an excuse for beating the children.
Yes. Does that make sense?
Yes, it does. I mean, that's just an important thing to remember because when we grow up with these sort of, quote, rules...
We often will internalize, and that's what the rules are designed to do, right?
We will internalize those rules, and we will say, if I fail to meet legitimate standards, I am a bad child, right?
Right. But of course, the standards aren't legitimate.
The standards are invented in order to abuse the child, and thus there's no way to win that game, right?
No. I mean, have you ever, ever in your life Met standards which let you feel, wow, I've done a great job.
I've made it. I finally met these standards.
I don't have anything negative to think about with myself anymore.
No. It's always, you've got to go further.
You've got to go higher. Right.
You've got to do better than you did before.
Right. And then these standards are designed so that you will feel small relative to them, right?
It's like defining an average height man as 500 feet tall.
That's not a standard that is designed to be accurate or objective.
It's just a standard that's designed to make everyone else feel small, right?
Yes. Right.
Now, tell me a little bit more, if you don't mind, about...
I'm sorry, is this conversation useful or working for you?
I want to make sure that I'm hitting the stuff that's helpful or relevant.
It is, I think. As I said earlier on the boards, I'm processing and trying to work through this, and I just don't know where to go, so I'm kind of grasping at straws here.
Right, right, right.
Well, okay, then let me sort of, I'm going to paint it a little bit more clearly, hopefully, sort of why it is that we're talking about this stuff.
I'm sorry, can you give me just a moment?
My son has woken up and I need to ask him what he needs because he's asking for my attention.
Do you want me to call you back? I don't want to interfere with your parenting, of course, right?
No, it's okay.
Okay, take your time. Okay, it'll take me a couple seconds, thank you.
No problem at all. I'm back, thank you.
No, no problem at all. He sounds very cute.
It's a great age. Anyway, so the reason that we're talking about this is that, to use a military metaphor, if a man has been in a war for five years where he's been in constant firefights and so on, if he's walking down the street and a car backfires, he's going to dive to the sidewalk, right? Correct.
Now, if he doesn't make the connection between his current physiological reaction and his prior experiences, then his own reactions will appear bewildering to him relative to everybody else's relative state of calm, right?
Correct. Because he'd be like, well, everyone else is standing around.
How the hell did I end up on the sidewalk sweating, right?
Yeah. Because don't you feel very, very different from everybody else in this area?
Yes, I do. Right?
I mean, don't you feel like you're living on some bitter, anger asteroid while everyone else is living on the planet, right?
Yeah. Sorry, that's a really fruity way of putting it.
I apologize for the English degree, but you know what I mean.
Yes, I do. And certainly those of us who come from war-torn childhoods, We will often feel wildly different in a shameful way from everyone else around us, right? Like, we have this feeling like everybody's living this fabulous beer commercial and, you know, we're lurking semi-naked and half-animalistic in the bushes, right?
That used to be my thought, and now I feel almost contempt because I realize they're lying.
Maybe there's 1% of 1% out there who are actually living the life of happiness, but everyone else is just fooling themselves, and that's part of the frustration.
Right, right, right.
Now, I do understand that. I will also say that in my own experience, I became very nihilistic when I was a little bit younger.
I became very nihilistic because I viewed all of society as a massive scam or sham, if that makes any sense.
Because everybody in society talks about, we care about the poor, we care about the helpless, we care about the old, we care about the sick, right?
Yes. I mean, that's the social programs, that's socialists.
I mean, everybody goes out to hear Barack Obama talk about his concern for the poor and healing the racial divide and this, that, and the other, right?
Right. But the simple reality is that I passed through society, living in three different continents, being subjected to Impossible to hide physical, verbal, and emotional abuse, and not one of the thousands of adults that I came in contact with did the goddamn thing to help me, right? No.
Sorry, there's a lot of thumping and creaking going on?
I don't know if that's...
I'm sorry, uh... It probably is.
My chair creaks and the desk creaks and the microphone sits on the desk.
Oh, okay. I hate to ask you to stay still, but if you could just minimize that a bit, it's just a little bit distracting.
I will do my best.
No problem. Hold on just a second.
Will you take this upstairs?
Can you go watch a movie, please?
Okay. Part of the thumping is my son is taking a drink out of a cup and setting the cup down on the desk.
Ah, the sticky cap.
I remember it well. Yes.
Will you take that upstairs, pretty please, for just a little bit?
Thank you so much.
All right, I'm back. Sure.
So, the moral concerns of society...
Right? Seemed to be, or at least I went through a long period of feeling that it was all complete, made-up, hypocritical nonsense.
Like, everybody cares about the poor, the old, the sick, the weak, this and that.
But nobody cared about the beatings that I was going through, right?
Or the screamings or whatever, the chaos and so on, right?
I mean, my brother and I kicked my mom out when I was like 15, right?
We worked three jobs, we took in roommates, we just made it work, right?
And I mean, I laugh about it now because it's like so long ago, but...
We lived in an environment where everybody knew what was going on.
Everybody knew that we were like the wolf children with no parents, right?
We were like the lost boys, right?
Everybody knew. And nobody did anything.
So some of the hostility and skepticism that you have towards society is because everybody talks about being good.
But nobody's interested in actually protecting the people.
Like, everybody talks about the poor.
Nobody goes to a soup kitchen, right?
Or very few people do, right?
Right. Everybody talks about protecting the innocent, the helpless.
Oh, we care about the environment and the third world and global warming and shit like that, right?
But there are children being tortured and abused in our very environment that nobody does anything about, right?
And I'm not saying I'm out there breaking down doors because I don't hear anything.
And when I do, if I do see a parent mistreating a child in public, I will talk to that parent, right, in a way that I hope is positive and helpful.
But I didn't even get that, right?
Everybody just shies away from this great evil at the core of society and then talks about how we're interested in a compassionate and moral society, right?
Solving the problems of Iraq.
Yeah, right. And of course the problems of Iraq come from the problems that exist in places like your family and my family, right?
Correct. I mean, I bet you your dad didn't grow up in a happy, loving, and wonderful environment, and so he probably grew up really angry and murderous, and so guess what?
Look at that. We have a soldier, right?
Yeah. War comes from the family, not from the state.
The state just cashes in on it, right?
I think that's where the anger that I'm feeling now is coming from, in seeing these things that I haven't seen.
I don't know if it was willful ignorance on my part or just a lack of thought, just a pure lack of thought.
No, it's emotional defense, right?
You are neither ignorant nor stupid, right?
It's just that it's very costly to examine these things.
I mean, there's nothing wrong with ignoring or repressing these things.
That is a natural reaction, right?
Yes. But I think, and I want to talk about the act of anger in your life right now, but I think the danger may be that as you dip into the realm of philosophy, the danger may be that you then say, I am now really angry at the hypocrisy of the world, right?
That's not going to exactly turn you from a force of anger to a force of positive change, right?
Right. So that's the danger, right?
Would you say, okay, I get that I'm angry about my history, I get that I was brutalized and abused as a child, so now I'm going to get really angry at society.
I don't think that's really escaping history, if that makes sense.
Yes, it does. And that's actually the point I had come to this morning and through the course of last night.
Is that I need to find a way to make this productive and not just lash, not just beat people with this club.
Right, right. Now, I'm more than happy to talk about what happened last night, although it may be too raw for you and I want to be sensitive to that, but if you'd like to talk about how your anger manifests itself, and if you don't want to talk about it, we don't have to, right?
It's up to you.
Um... I'm trying to come up with a way to condense this into something meaningful.
My parents took on the task of caring for my mother's parents.
Okay.
My grandmother, my mother's mother, is evil beyond words.
Your wife's mother?
My mother's mother.
Your mother's mother? My mother.
I'm so sorry. Okay, I get it.
This is the one who yells at her Alzheimer's husband, right?
Yes. Okay.
And she will, if he says anything, like, if he forgets who he is or who she is or anything, she will scream at the top of her lungs, why are you doing this to me?
Like, it's all about her.
I can understand why he might want to voluntarily choose Alzheimer's myself, but anyway, go on.
I mentioned that to my wife this morning, that it might have been a defense for him.
Well, I mean, I think that there's real biological components for what I know, but I can certainly understand that there's a kindness in this, right?
Well, this isn't pure Alzheimer's.
This was a mental breakdown, and as a result, he is essentially an Alzheimer's person now.
I don't know how to properly represent it.
It was a momentary break which has left him in a sort of post-Nietzsche state where he's just kind of broken?
Yes. Okay, I understand.
He pretty much just snapped and he's never recovered from it.
And he's becoming progressively worse.
Right, right. Well, I mean, and of course, I mean, his adrenals are burned out.
He's lived fight or flight for 60, 70 years, right?
So he's just burned out.
I mean, this can happen. He just turned 80.
Yeah, okay. So, I mean, he's lived a full lifetime where he's gone through, you know, every conceivable amount of stressor, particularly with this evil wife.
Yeah, absolutely, this happens, and it's amazing that he made it that long, for sure.
I mean, Jung talks about certain patients where it's like, well, the best we can do is try and make them as comfortable as possible, even though there's no physiological basis for their illness, simply because...
And I don't know if the case... I don't know, obviously, what's going on with this guy, but it certainly can happen where the amount of avoidance and corruption is so great that, in a sense, metaphorically, the soul just dies, right?
Yes. Last night I went over to my parents' house to borrow a vehicle from them.
And I ended up seeing a couple things that I hadn't seen, plus applying some of the things I've been learning, both from you and from my own research and everything.
And I couldn't hold it in anymore.
I just want to make sure I understand what you saw.
I saw the true nature of what my grandmother was doing.
That she was, for all intents and purposes, just destroying everyone around her for the most inane of reasons that I can barely comprehend it.
Right. Because she's...
I don't know. There are no reasons.
I'm going to keep pounding on you, and I do apologize for that.
There are no reasons.
Anything that is invented as a quote reason is simply because she wants to destroy people.
The purpose is destruction.
The quote reasons are just an excuse.
Just an excuse. Yes.
I'm sorry, can you just a moment?
My son is calling for me again.
Absolutely.
Yes?
I have a free book on Truth, the Journey of Illusion, available at my website.
Just a little commercial while we're taking a break here.
And you can get the PDF for free.
All of my books are available for free if you want.
Just come to freedomaderadio.com, send me an email if you can't afford them or if you're skeptical.
And you can get them for free.
And I wanted to mention too...
It's 350,000 media views last night.
Thank you for waiting.
I'm back. No problem. No problem at all.
I know it's a tough juggle.
Yes. Okay, so you saw this emotional destructiveness going on with regards to your grandmother, and you decided to speak up and to talk about what happened, right?
Not immediately. If you give me a second, I'd like to explain a little bit further, just so you understand the situation.
In addition to housing my mother's parents, my parents are also taking care of my nephew and my two nieces, my brother's children.
They have been for years because my brother's in prison.
And my parents are parenting them in the same way that they did with me, although they have significantly lightened up and changed a lot of their methods and everything, which is, I guess, one of the reasons why I still continue contact with them.
But my grandmother She's essentially made my parents and my nephew and nieces prisoners in their own home to the point where a few months back my nephew ran away.
One of my nieces is withdrawing into a computer online world just like I did back when I became depressed and the other one Is essentially turning herself into the classical ditzy blonde so that she doesn't have to deal with things.
And my mother was bringing myself and my children home to my house last night.
And I unloaded on her.
And I told her that this was her fault and that if she needed to correct this now, if she wanted any chance at happiness, and that I would be willing to help her resolve the problem, but if she's not willing to resolve the problem, then that is it between us.
And how did that go? She thanked me.
I spent a lot of time just speaking about what I had seen, what I was seeing, and why I felt she needed to do what I said she needed to do, what I was saying she needed to do.
And I don't know.
Last night I was very scared that It wasn't going to connect with anything.
I don't think I've ever been so terrified in all my life.
I think it will.
I hope it will. And I am fully prepared to make good on my threat.
So your threat is...
And it's not really a threat.
It's a statement, right?
Yes. Right?
I mean, choice and consequence, right?
Yes. I mean, if my friend punches me in the face, he's not my friend anymore.
I don't threaten him with that.
It's just a consequence of that action, right?
Right. Okay, so...
If my mother and my parents continue down this path, I cannot see them anymore.
It brings me to see my father, this completely beaten down, my mother walking around stooped when I know that they are vital, happy people.
It can be vital, happy people.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What?!
Your parents are vital, happy people?
I think so.
What are you talking about?
I mean, sorry, I just tripped over my jaw.
So, your theory, if I understand this correctly, and I don't genuinely think it's your theory, but the theory that you're proposing is that you can beat your children, be in the military, Like, be a paid killer for the state and beat your children and be vital and happy.
Let me go one step further.
You can participate in the continued abuse of children Your nieces and nephews, right?
That you can continue and put or allow, as you say, the most evil person around to torture and imprison children.
You can be a paid killer for the state, beat your own children, participate in the abuse of children, enable the abuse of children, and be vital and happy?
I mean, do you understand?
I can't quite follow that.
I understand that confusion.
I could be wrong, but...
That's not necessarily where I would go with that theory.
I mean, again, that's just my thought, right?
I understand. And I have no logical thing to say.
Well, your parents will portray themselves as vital and happy, right?
Yes. Right.
That's their advertising.
That's their story, right?
It does...
Maybe I don't, but I... I do enjoy their company now.
Now that I do have the power I have, I do enjoy their company, and maybe that's a dysfunction within me.
I don't know.
Well, we talked at the beginning about how anger that doesn't result in action turns into rage, right?
Right. And that's, again, we're just working with this as a theory, as a possibility.
I'm certainly not going to, there's no law, it's not physics, right?
But tell me what it means when you say that these people who beat you and who are participating in the abuse of, I guess these are teenagers, your nieces and nephews, is that right?
Yeah. No, my nephew is the beginning of a teenager.
My nieces are younger.
Who's the one who ran away?
Around 10 and 9. He's the teenager.
14 years old. Okay, so we have, and also your parents, obviously your brother has some ownership in the matter, but we can be pretty sure that if your brother had received better parenting, he would not have ended up in jail, right?
Right. So they beat you, they abused your brother horribly, they're participating in the abuse of entirely vulnerable children at the moment, right?
Right. Can you give me a definition of evil that would not include that?
I mean, let's just put our cards on the table, right?
This is my perspective, my opinion, right?
Because if that's not evil, then I'm not sure what would be.
It is. So, and I mean this with all sympathy, right?
All sympathy and all respect.
I'm giving you a hard time just because I'm having trouble putting it together.
This doesn't mean anything other than some internet guy's opinion, right?
So, we're just playing around here as far as the thoughts go.
But if you enjoy the company of evil people...
Oh no, let me ask another question.
When you act on your rage, do you feel vital and happy?
No. No, you feel sick at yourself, right?
Yes. You feel self-hatred, right?
You feel self-loathing.
You feel self-disgust, right?
Guilt. Guilt.
It's toxic.
It's rancid, right? Yes.
So, how is it that when you act in a way that is destructive, you feel guilt, but when these other people who have acted almost infinitely in a more destructive manner than you get to be vital and happy?
The only response, and I don't know, this doesn't hold any water at all, but it's what my brain is screaming at me, is they don't see it.
They're blind. They're like walking through a world without any ability to perceive that which is around them.
Well, but first of all, you have a lot to do with that, because you say that they're blind, but you tell me that they're vital and happy, right?
Right. I understand.
So, I mean, do you see what I mean?
Like, it's sort of like the blind man calling the blind man blind, so to speak?
Yes. I mean, I don't mean that you're blind like them, and I'm not trying to put you in the same category, but I think that their story about themselves has taken you over, which is perfectly natural, given your upbringing.
Yes. If they are, in fact, vital and happy, that means you were a bad kid, right?
Right. Because their beating of you was moral, because we generally understand that reason equals virtue equals happiness, right?
Right. So, if somebody ends up genuinely happy, then they must have done some good in their life, right?
Doesn't mean that we've been perfect or whatever, right?
But they must have done some good.
Yes.
So if your parents have ended up vital and happy, then they must have done good, therefore their beatings of you must have been good, therefore you must have been bad, right?
Yes.
Do you see how the abuse never stops?
Now... It's just subtle and verbal and psychological, right?
You're still a bad kid, right?
Because they're happy. They did the right thing.
They're content. They're happy, right?
They're vital. They're good people.
They're not happy.
They're miserable. Well, of course they're miserable.
You don't get to beat children and be a happy person.
You don't get to be a happy sadist, right?
That's just a rule. Right.
Yes. You don't get to be a fat marathon runner and you don't get to be a happy sadist.
I guess the issue that I'm having is, you know, I've totally lost the train of thought now.
It doesn't matter.
No, no, it does matter. And this is the part where everybody gets blank, right?
So I don't know if you've listened to any of the other listener conversations that I have, but there always comes a point where everybody gets completely retarded.
And it happens with me when I was in therapy too, right?
It's just when you get to the point where the real contradictions exist, we all tend to blank out, right?
Yeah, it feels like that's exactly what I just did.
I saw something, I started to verbalize it, and poof, it was gone.
Right, right. And that is a healthy defense when you're a child, and it is an unhealthy defense when you're an adult, right?
Right. Right.
Like, if you're a surgeon, it makes good sense to scrub your hands very carefully, but you don't want to be doing that 24 hours a day, right?
Then it becomes obsessive, right?
So it's a good thing to do in particular circumstances, but not as a continual habit, right?
Right. So, where were you going?
What do you think you saw when the blank out happened?
I know, that's a tough question.
But what do you think?
I have a theory, but I don't want to impose it upon you, so I just wanted to see if you can catch that again.
Would you be willing to go back over what you were saying whenever I went into the blank out?
Yeah, absolutely. You don't get to be a happy sadist.
And you said, they're miserable, right?
Right. And I said, of course they are.
I think that your parents' story about yourself and about themselves is overtaking your genuine experience, right?
So you can openly say to me, of all people, that they're happy and vital, right?
And I'm saying, no, they're miserable and evil, and you agreed with that, and then we had the blank out.
Yeah. I feel blocked at the moment.
Like, I saw something, just got a glimpse of something, and I can't get back to it.
Do you want me to tell you what it was?
I'm curious now.
What did I see? Do you want me to tell you, or do you want me to ask questions?
Ask questions, please.
Alright. If it is true, and we're just playing in a sandbox, in the most serious use of the word playing, right?
Children play very seriously for the most part.
Yes. If it is true that your parents...
I'm sorry? They play with the intent to learn.
They're trying to figure out qualities. They play very seriously, right?
If it is true that your parents are miserable and evil, if it is true, if, if, if, if, right?
right?
If it's true, then what?
Then there's no hope for them.
Thank you.
Well, sure, maybe that's true.
Then what? I don't know.
Sure you do. I have to...
You do, that's why you're avoiding the knowledge.
If your parents are miserable and evil, then what?
Then I can't associate with them.
Yeah. You have a predator in the house, right?
Right. Your children have fallen into a lion's den, right?
Right. Because it's not about their future, and it's not about your grandmother's future.
It's not even primarily about your future.
It's about your kid's future, right?
Right. Yes.
And about the kids that they have with them now.
How? Well, you don't have much control over that unless you're willing to go legal, which may be a perfectly viable option, but that's for another time, right?
Dealing with all of that is another conversation which maybe you don't need to have with me or whatever.
I figured that one out. How are you going to teach your children ethics and integrity if you introduce evil people into their life?
How are you going to have any moral authority with them?
And I don't mean authority like telling them what to do.
I just mean respect. How am I going to respect myself?
Well, that's, of course, the respect from others only comes from respect for the self originally, right?
Right. But if...
Ethical judgments, and we're not talking gray areas here, right?
In my opinion, right? We're not talking, well, you know, he was a doctor who worked for the state and maybe he was, you know, didn't do great medicine.
We're not talking about gray areas here.
We're talking about child abuse, the abuse of the elderly, the continued abuse of children, right?
This is not a gray area.
No.
So if your ethics are so dissociated from your daily life that it's like, yes, they're evil, here's my children, right?
Yes.
You can't have respect.
an inevitable consequence, you cannot have respect for yourself because you have these ethics, which would be, you obviously wouldn't go out and find an evil person and have them babysit your children, right? No.
Right?
You wouldn't say, oh, here's some guy who just got released from prison for beating his I want to give him every second weekend with my kids.
No. Not remotely.
Not remotely. But in the area of the family, and this is what I call the null zone in the book on UPB, which you might want to read, or I think on Truth would be better, and it's free now, so go to the website and get it.
You can download the PDF and read it in an hour and a half.
But that's what you're doing, right?
Yes. And this is the blank spot.
The blank spot, I'm telling you, is an eject button the size of the Arizona meteor crater.
That's the blank spot, right?
That I have to, if I want a chance of happiness, I have to banish them from my life.
Sure. I mean, I think that's, I mean, that would be my suggestion.
I personally don't believe that an ex-soldier, lifelong child abuser who's participating in the abuse of children right now, I would not let somebody like that around my kids.
I just wouldn't. I would sooner piss into their cornflakes, frankly.
So that's my perspective and opinion.
If there's another moral rule that you can come up with that encompasses not dropping your children into a lion's den but letting them hang out with your grandparents and great-grandparents, you know, that's something to work on.
But right now you have a moral theory which says do X and you're doing the opposite of X in your life, right?
That is the discontent because we said at the very beginning, we said rage is the anger you can't act on or don't act on, right?
And you're angry at your parents for what they did to you, you're angry at what they're continuing to do, and yet you won't act on it, right?
So of course it's going to fester into rage, frustration, lack of self-respect, right?
Yes. Now, you don't benefit from seeing your parents, but they sure as hell do, right?
Yes. Because you say to them, hey, how's it going, right?
I mean, I know I'm making light of it, but you go in like you had good parents, right?
Yes. Right, so that's feeding their narcissism, that's feeding their vanity, and that also continues to feed their sadism, right?
Right. So, you say that they're blind...
But you're poking their eyes out every time you see them, so to speak, right?
You are participating in that blindness, right?
Yes. I don't know where to go with this.
Well, there's nowhere to go with it, in my opinion.
I mean, again, this is just me talking out of my ass up in Canada, right?
So, again, for what it's worth, right?
The first thing that we want to do when we get a new idea is instantly put it into action and then we get paralyzed, right?
That's pretty much where I am, yes.
Right, so you're like, oh shit, what do I do?
I gotta make a phone call. I don't know what to say.
Right? How's it gonna work?
What's gonna happen? Right? But forget all of that, honestly.
We don't force ourself into action, and if we do, it never works out the way we want it to.
The important thing, in my opinion, is to simmer with this idea, to explore this idea.
I would say that, in particular, you might want to go to some anger management classes, because those things can be very, very effective at helping to undo the short-term symptoms, right?
Right.
Because there's thoughts that you have that end up escalating into the rage that you are ashamed of, right?
Yes.
So the first thing that I would do if I were in your shoes, and I have done this, although I didn't go to anger management, I went to – I had the luxury because I wasn't a parent of going to two years of therapy for three hours a week, right?
I would say that yours is a more ER situation, right?
I could go to long-term palliative rehab, right?
But I think that you have, because you have an explosive situation, young children, you're a parent, and you have the stressors going on with what's going on with your parents.
I think, I mean, to me, this is not an opinion.
Like, you just have to go to some medical management classes.
You can do those in 12 weeks, and they will provide you some short-term relief for the problems.
And then... While you're going through that process, you don't have to do anything with your family for months, right?
This is not they're dangling your kids in a bag off the Empire State Building, right?
The important thing is not to rush into action, but to get a handle on the symptoms so that you diminish the things that you're doing that are toxic in your family.
Anger management will do that for you in a week or two.
That's very cheap. And I guarantee you that your family will be behind you on this because they don't like it, right?
I don't mean your parents, your wife and kids, right?
So I would do that. My wife will definitely appreciate it.
Right. And I know it's a tough thing to do, but that's a kind of have to.
This is like going to the dentist, right?
This is something that because you've got this toxic anger at the moment, and I think we have some understanding of the genesis of it, but when you go to the root of a problem, what happens is you don't treat the symptoms for quite some time, right?
Whereas in this situation, you need to work from both ends, right?
You need to immediately start dealing with the toxic symptoms that you have, but then you also need to start working from the bottom up.
So that you're not just controlling the symptoms, but you're also dealing with the problem, right?
Yes. That was the frustration on the boards, I think, that you saw.
Sure. Not knowing how to attack it at both ends.
Right, right, right.
And look, I mean, for what it's worth, I have goosebumps of admiration for what you're doing.
What you're doing is so unbelievably fantastic.
Now, if you don't go to anger management or deal with this kind of stuff, then we'll have a different conversation, but that doesn't matter.
I know you're going to do it, right? But what you're doing is breaking an incredible cycle of abuse that literally could have gone on for another 10 generations before somebody else stepped up and did the right thing, right?
And that is so beyond admirable that I can...
I mean, I literally have goosebumps, right, at the courage with which you are approaching this.
I just think it is absolutely magnificent.
Somebody has to. Yeah, well, a lot of people don't, right?
So, you know, the fact that you're stepping up to take care of this, and, you know, I'm unbelievably moved by the horrors that you face as a child, and the brutality, the control, the abuse, the manipulation, and also that you're still experiencing, you have unbelievably sophisticated and dangerous parents, in my opinion, and, you know, there's nothing that you could, there are symphonies of sadists, right?
There's nothing you couldn't teach them about cruelty.
But the fact that you are taking these steps to control the symptoms, to examine the moral root of the family, and so on, I just...
I know that there's a lot of shit that you have to wade through to get to the other side, but I just wanted to tell you that, from my perspective, this is how we save the world.
Yes. I know there's another side to this, and I just...
I've always been willing to...
To throw myself under the bus if that was what was necessary.
Well, I'm suggesting you throw other people under the bus, so I hope that that's not going to be quite the way it works.
You can drive the bus over other people if they're in your way, but...
Sorry.
I mean, I don't mean to sort of put you into a corner here, but do we have a deal that today you will look into some anger management classes and so on, and just...
You can listen to this recording and sort of mull over what it is that we've been talking about here.
Yes. I will...
That is fantastic. I don't want to take up your whole day.
I know that you're parenting. Is there anything else that you wanted to touch on during this conversation?
I feel I'm a little bit raw right now.
I understand. So I'd like to stop if we could.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, do keep in touch.
And again, massive kudos for what you're doing.
It's wonderful. Thank you.
▲
Export Selection