Oct. 23, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
08:43
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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| Good evening, everybody. | |
| Hope you're doing well. It's F. It is 7.47pm, October the 23rd, 2008, and I thought I'd rumble through, or rustle through, slither through, a little idea that has been floating around since Nathan posted something on the board, which I thought I'd mention. You can tell me if it makes any sense. | |
| For those of us who had bad parents, one of the things that we felt, I think it's fair to say, which we felt strongly as children, was the sadness or the pain or the frustration that our parents did not overcome their own histories and love us for who we were, for our potential, for our possibility, for our true selves. | |
| And we also certainly felt that there were times when our parents did have affection towards us when we were pleasing, when we were positive to their egos or their vanities or whatever. | |
| And it sort of struck me because there's been a movement afoot to help publicize the philosophy conversation at Free Domain Radio. | |
| And it's tough for people, right? | |
| Because, I mean, I know this, because I don't like asking for donations any more than people like gathering or sending emails. | |
| And so we get this... | |
| Am I being too pushy? | |
| Am I being offensive? | |
| Am I interrupting? Am I intruding? | |
| And all this kind of stuff. And, of course, we don't want to do that. | |
| Send an email and see if people are interested or not. | |
| We don't have to pester them when we never will. | |
| But I thought I just sort of mentioned something that I think is interesting. | |
| Why I think this is important is that it's a good drive-run for something that's much more important than promoting philosophy or whatever it is, if it's your business or whatever it is that you're promoting. | |
| And that is we feel sad and hurt that our parents did not overcome their own histories and act out of love towards us. | |
| And I don't think it's a stretch. | |
| Tell me what you think. I think that it's important for us to recognize that's something that we could stand doing with the world as well. | |
| Because we wanted for our parents to overcome their own histories, their own traumas, their own childhoods, their own abuses, their own scars, to surmount their own scars, to scale them like you would break out of a prison and to reach out in love towards us as children. | |
| And the fact that they so often did not do that, but withheld or withdrew or stayed within this fortress of scar tissue that is The encapsulation of the present in history, the trapping of the true self like a fly in amber. | |
| That that's what they did. | |
| That they chose their own fears over their love for us. | |
| That they chose their own avoidance, their own defenses over their love for us. | |
| And I'd sort of like to say that... | |
| I think it could be a reasonable thing to say that... | |
| The world is like a child. | |
| It doesn't know the beauty, truth, and power of philosophy. | |
| In fact, it's been taught to fear and hate. | |
| Voluntarism as chaos, as anarchy. | |
| Pacifism as cowardice and destruction. | |
| Wisdom as manipulation and exploitation. | |
| So it's kind of like we have inherited, or we have had... | |
| Yeah, it's like we have inherited an abused child. | |
| In a very real way, if we find it too great a task to overcome our own histories, our own scar tissues, and to reach out with love to this world that we live in, it becomes that much harder for us logically, consistently, to... | |
| Blame our parents. | |
| Our parents did not reach out to us over their own fears and abuses and histories and so on and we condemn them for that and I think that's fair. | |
| But it becomes much, much harder to sustain if we fall prey to the very same reticence and avoidance and cowardice and fear and failure when it comes to reaching out to the world out of love. | |
| Out of excitement of the possibility. | |
| If you were to be a parent who was assigned or inherited an abused child, it would be very tough. | |
| You'd have to keep reaching out to that abused child. | |
| You'd have to keep trying to be positive. | |
| And for me, at least, that's the relationship I have with the world. | |
| That the world is a frightened and angry and needy child. | |
| The human race, the human species is that. | |
| And there is a patience and a persistence and a winning of trust and a reaching out in love to try and win over that frightened and hostile and angry child. | |
| And I think if you look at it in this way that, and it doesn't have anything to do with FDR, as none of this stuff does, whatever it is that you choose is the greatest value that you want to reach out and help the world with, whether it's your business, whether it's someone else's books, whether it's, it doesn't matter, right? | |
| But let's say it's FDR. I think it is the best resource, but that's just me, right? | |
| When you reach out and contact people and it really changes them and they change their lives and their family's lives and their future children's lives or their current children's lives, when you take somebody in a new direction based on exposing them to some wonderful truths and emotional truths and relational truths and so on, when you change someone's life like that, What you're really doing is overcoming your own history and reaching out to the world with love. | |
| And yes, I know there's a lot of rejection, there's a lot of scorn, there's a lot of cynicism, there's a lot of snarkiness, there's hostility. | |
| I understand all of that. | |
| But we nonetheless wanted our parents to reach out for us even when we were being difficult or even when we were being unhappy or even when we were being frustrated or even when we were being hostile that we wanted that security and when you overcome work to overcome that hesitancy to bring beauty to the face of a scornful and skeptical world when you climb over when you vault over the seashell scar tissues of your own history, | |
| and march out to the world with the light in your hand. | |
| What you're doing, I would say, very fundamentally, is you are overcoming the legacy that you were giving, that you are making a different choice. | |
| Then the choice you experienced is so negative from your parents or from other people in your upbringing, priests and teachers and so on. | |
| And that's why I think it's important. | |
| That's why I think it's a great preparation. | |
| You know, steadfastly holding up your light despite being buffeted by winds and hail and rain and dead frogs, things like that. | |
| Steadfastly holding up your light despite the scorn and the opposition and the hostility of the world. | |
| is what changes the world and it is really what we wanted our parents to do and so often they didn't do that and I think that we really need to make that different choice so that we can create a beauty around within and among us and spread it in the world and in so doing really do the opposite of that which hurt us so much so when you face that fear when you face that reticence when you fear that rejection when you fear that scorn That's what your parents felt. | |
| That's what your parents felt. | |
| Overcoming it is an act of self-mastery and love of the world that is really surmounting history and really doing that which your parents could not do. | |
| And you know how much it hurt that they did not do it. | |
| So do something different. | |
| I hope that this helps and makes sense of what it is that I'm trying to talk about here. | |
| I hope it does. I'll keep it short. | |
| Thank you so much for listening. |
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