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Nov. 7, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:45:25

1203 Sibling Relationships -- A Conference

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	Alright, so I guess we should start.
	Relatively shockingly, relatively close to one time.
	So, just remember to mute if you're not talking, and Greg, I'm probably wondering why you called us here today.
	I don't think you're wondering, but...
	No, I'm not. I'm not really.
	Right. So, right, so...
	This actually all sort of the idea for this came out of a conversation between you and I a couple of nights ago.
	Yeah. I've just been feeling a lot of and let me just say up front that I'm I'm feeling pretty anxious bringing this up again, but I was just feeling a lot of irritation and annoyance at At the Q-Tron man guy,
	and especially at the idea of Steph wanting to actually debate him, engage him in a debate, and the sort of thinking that kind of went behind that was, at least the surface thinking was, you know, he's kind of He's kind of troll-y and arrogant and aggressive.
	Why would Steph want to engage someone like this?
	Actually, why would he find that enjoyable, right?
	Because I don't really find it enjoyable because I'm annoyed by the guy.
	And the bottom line is, after some hemming and hawing of my own, I kind of...
	Well, we kind of figured out together that...
	Well, sorry, just so we know what led up to it.
	So you pinged me and you said...
	You know, what is it that you're hoping to get out of this debate and this and that and the other, right?
	Right, right. I was provoking a lot of annoyance in you.
	Yeah, like instead of saying, I'm bothered by this debate and I don't know why, you know, like maybe we could put that in a book somewhere and all agree on that as a principle.
	Greg was sort of pinging away and irritating me at the sidelines, you know, when you're trying to concentrate and someone's blow darting some spitballs into your head.
	So I was sort of expressing my annoyance, like, you know, of course I know that you disapprove of this debate, so why don't you just tell me what you're feeling rather than asking these, quote, reasonable questions and so on.
	So that's sort of where we started.
	Sorry, go ahead. Right, right, right, exactly.
	And I sort of realized what I was doing after the fact, of course.
	And so, you know...
	Trying to mask my own annoyance in reasonable questions, right?
	Or just not really mask it, but I mean, because I kind of knew that it wasn't really masked, but just sort of trying to not trusting the annoyance, right? Right.
	The idea being, you know, if I just ask Steph, you know, this question and get a clear, rational answer for it, then I can argue with the annoyance, right?
	And tell it that it's wrong, right?
	So we talked about that and I tried to blame the annoyance on all sorts of things.
	But in the process of just sort of going over the story I had in my head for Qtron Man, the various descriptors, right?
	One of the things that came up was I don't want to say out of the blue, but sort of just bubbled out of it was that he reminded me of my brothers.
	And then it just sort of hit me like a ton of bricks.
	Like, that's where the annoyance is coming from.
	I'm still annoyed at them.
	Which is to say, I'm actually annoyed at myself For various reasons.
	Relating to them. And I was sort of...
	I'm sorry, I'm not sure.
	Just help me over that last hump.
	I was with you up to that last statement.
	Well... And I don't mean I disagree with it.
	I'm just... I don't understand it.
	I mean, I was...
	Like we talked about, right?
	I was projecting the annoyance onto...
	Onto Q-Tron, right?
	Like... No, no, I understand that.
	But you said, I was annoyed at my brothers, which means that I was annoyed at myself about something to do with my brothers or something like that.
	Well, if I'm projecting annoyance, right, then that means that it's really mine, that there's something about myself that I'm annoyed about, right?
	Well, yes, but sorry, there's three, just so we start off with precision, right?
	There's three actors in this, not counting me.
	You, Cutron Man, and your brothers, right?
	So, Cutron Man was a displacement of hostility or ambivalence, let's say, that you feel about your brothers.
	But the hostility that you feel or the ambivalence you feel about your brothers is not projection, right?
	It was to project it onto Cutron Man, who you don't know and whatever, right?
	But it's not the same thing with your brothers as it is with Cutron Man.
	Like when we've had 20 or 30 or 40 years of experiencing someone, projection becomes pretty difficult, right?
	Yeah. Because we need a blank slate to project onto, right?
	So you didn't know Q-Tron Man, so you could project onto him, but it's not the same with your brothers because you have a lot of experience with them.
	I just wanted to sort of clarify that.
	No, that's exactly right.
	That's exactly right.
	But... Okay, so I guess what I meant by that was...
	I mean, it doesn't stop with the annoyance, right?
	What does it?
	The annoyance and the hostility that I feel toward my brothers, or that I've been avoiding feeling, I guess, since I've been projecting it onto Q-Tron, is...
	Well, the theory is that that's a reaction to the guilt that I'm feeling the theory is that that's a reaction to the guilt that I'm feeling about the way that I've behaved you Well, I wouldn't say that we know yet, right?
	Right. And it's definitely a lot of things, right?
	Right. Right.
	It's a pretty mixed bag in terms of my own relationship to them and the things that happened when we were kids and the things that we sort of did to each other.
	Right. And just for clarity, also siblings are tough because parents are obviously autonomous actors.
	With pretty much full moral responsibility by the time we meet them.
	But siblings aren't, right?
	Because siblings grow up with us.
	And so it's not possible or not rational to put the same judgments on siblings as it is to put on parents, right?
	Because siblings are children.
	And siblings coexist for the most part if your age is relatively close.
	But of course the problem is also that siblings contribute, at least my understanding, My brother contributed perhaps the most to the unhappiness in my childhood.
	And at the same time, he, and I say this just to start the conversation with others, while it's true that he was, of course, a child and therefore not as morally responsible as my mother or my father or other adults around, The problem remains that he knew that he was doing wrong and he hid, like he would kick me under the table, not punch me where people could see, to sort of use not even so much of a metaphor as a reality.
	And he would tease or torture me when we were alone, not when we were with others.
	So he knew enough to hide it so there was some level of moral responsibility, but then he was a child.
	So we see this whole complex web of abuse, responsibility, dysfunction, and of course we are often more prone to aggress against our siblings than we are against our parents, especially if we're older.
	So siblings are very complex, very deep, and have great seeds of happiness and destruction embedded within.
	So I think that's why it takes a while to get to trying to really absorb and examine those relationships.
	Yeah, I would definitely agree with that.
	Yeah.
	In the environment that I grew up in, the torture and the hostility was actually pretty out in the open.
	We didn't really have to hide it.
	Sorry, and when we talk about this, just make sure that You say whether it's siblings or parents or whatever, because otherwise it's going to be tough to sort out.
	Sibling to sibling is what I'm talking about.
	Yeah, so, I mean, you guys were, like, right out front, front and center with the abuse and the punching and the rage and the teasing and the whatever, right?
	Yeah. Yeah.
	Yeah, it was all out there.
	For sure. Yeah.
	But it wasn't like...
	I mean, it was the majority of our relationship, but it wasn't sort of like a total saturation, if that makes any sense.
	Although, thinking back on it now, I can't even really remember what...
	For example, I have two examples in mind that are seemingly in opposition, but I wonder now if they're not.
	There was an incident when my brother Tom and I were maybe five or six years old.
	We'd done something that my parents didn't like with the crayons.
	We had this little fishing box full of crayons and there was something that we did that they didn't like about it.
	So my dad stowed the crayons in his...
	he had a little stainless steel Like writing desks that he used for doing his bills and things like that.
	He stowed it in there and kind of grounded us from the crayons for a week and my brother Tom had taken them down noticing that where he had put them or hid them.
	He took them down and used them and you know trying to You know, sneak the crayons, right?
	And he didn't put them back in exactly the right place when he was done, so my dad noticed that they had been taken.
	So one night at dinner, he sort of confronts the both of us, and I I actually lied and said it was my fault that I had taken them and I ended up getting beat for it.
	And I used to tell myself when I got older that it was because I was defending him.
	But I don't know anymore if that's true because Like, the second example that I have is from when I'm much older.
	I'm in high school at this point, and my youngest brother, John, is maybe seven or eight years old.
	And he had sort of this kind of impulsive, natural exuberance, I would call it, where he would...
	He'd glom onto something and get really excited about it and run up to you and say, oh, look at this, right?
	And one night, and actually this was, this wasn't a single incident.
	We all sort of did this to him.
	One night he came, that I can remember in particular, he came running down the stairs with the Uno card game in his hand.
	Oh, you guys want to play Uno?
	You want to play Uno? And our habit was to take a big deep breath, put a smile on your face, like, and then go, No!
	Right? So you sort of elevate his expectations and then crush them like a paper cup.
	Yeah, which is fairly common older sibling stuff, right?
	When I would be desperately looking for something, my brother would say, I'll help, and then he would say, here it isn't!
	Yeah. So this is fairly common evil mental torture stuff, but go on.
	Yeah, and so...
	We would all sort of do that to each other, right?
	In different ways and at different times and for different reasons.
	So I guess I'm as...
	Pretty much as culpable as the rest of them.
	Right, and what was the thinking behind that?
	there?
	What was the pleasure in there?
	Well, just from 2020 hindsight, of course, it's pure sadism, right?
	Well, sure, but still, what's the...
	Like, if you'd have said, yes, I'd like to play Uno with you or whatever, right?
	Or that would be great. I mean, what would the result of that have been in the family?
	Or I guess among your siblings?
	Well, of course, he would be...
	He would be shocked and disappointed and...
	Sorry, if you do want to.
	If you said you did want to play with him.
	Oh, I see.
	Um...
	Well, I mean...
	It would be a subtle kind of ridicule, if that makes any sense.
	From who? From your siblings?
	Right. Like, they wouldn't openly sort of make fun of you, but it would be this sort of...
	Eyes to the sky, kind of, you know...
	Well, we're all doing adult things here now, so if you want to go play with the baby, I guess, then you can go do that, but we're all busy over here doing more important things, right? Right.
	Kind of... Kind of manipulative, sort of, in a way, I guess.
	Sometimes it would be... Right, you either mock him or you're put into his camp, right?
	Right, right, exactly.
	Right, that's exactly right.
	And and
	I guess I'm just trying to understand how all this ties together and why I've been avoiding it for so long and what the implications are, are, I guess.
	Okay, well, what about, do other people have stuff that they wanted to talk about with regards to siblings?
	You asked other people?
	Uh-huh.
	My sister sent me an email yesterday.
	I've told her on a couple of different occasions a couple of months apart that I wasn't going to speak to her while she's still at home but she still sends me emails and she's the only family member that I haven't blocked and I feel sad when she messages me but also There's also some ambivalence in that.
	I mean, I'd like to talk to her again, but on the other hand, I'm both afraid that she's just going to pass a lot of information to my parents and kind of feed them, or she'll be attacked for talking to me endlessly.
	I mean, that's why I don't talk to her, because I know they're going to put huge amounts of pressure on her, and I know they're probably doing that now, and that's probably why she emailed me Am I just talking with no real purpose?
	I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm sorry.
	I don't know what the emotional content is of what you're saying I mean if you don't have any that's fine I I'm not sure what you mean by what you're saying.
	Okay, I feel a little bit sad and a little bit terrified.
	But, I mean, I'm not, like, shaking or anything.
	It's just, like, I feel like I'm going to be terrified.
	Does that make sense at all?
	Or is that just total crazy talk?
	No, it's not crazy talk at all.
	But, again, it's not...
	Something that I know what to do within the context of this.
	I mean, we can talk about stuff that's happened with siblings, ambivalence about siblings, history with siblings, but I don't think current familial strategies with regards to siblings fits in quite as well, if that makes sense.
	Okay, sure. Hey, Steph.
	I posted a while back on the forums about this myself.
	Oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't want to interrupt.
	We can come back, JC, if you want to get your thoughts.
	I don't want to interrupt, but sorry.
	Go ahead, Rich. Oh, okay.
	Yeah, I had posted on the forums about this a month or so ago and how I was feeling a lot of regret about the way I treated my sisters growing up.
	I was the oldest in the family.
	And... You know, it was just a lot of teasing, a lot of just, you know, repetitious teasing to the point where it really, really annoyed them, really upset them.
	Sometimes kind of like physically holding them back from moving from one room to another, just completely annoying them until my parents would yell at us to stop.
	They'd say, stop harassing your sisters.
	Right. And it was usually in the presence of my parents.
	If they weren't home, I would stay to myself.
	But when my parents were around, I tended to harass my sisters more.
	Right. And to this day, I feel just horrible about it.
	Right. I'm sorry, go ahead.
	I was just going to say, I don't know how to reconcile that in my life.
	I don't know how to make up for the way I acted towards them.
	Right. No, it's very, very, very tough for sure.
	I don't want to...
	Either pursue what you're saying or ignore what you're saying.
	Do you want to see what other people have to say?
	Because I think we need to gather some more sort of thoughts or experiences before we can start to maybe come to some conclusions.
	Yeah, for sure. Yeah, go ahead.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Yeah, I mean, sorry.
	I mean, I could get into kind of what happened with my sister.
	Sure. Yeah, I mean, like, I was really, really mean to her.
	I mean, my family was a brutal system and I yelled at her pretty often and made fun of her, teased her all the time.
	And I mean, looking back at it, I mean, if I yelled at her, dad wouldn't yell at her.
	If that would make sense.
	And me yelling at her wasn't as bad.
	And then dad would yell at me for yelling at her.
	Oh, so the theory was that if you yelled at her, that your dad would not.
	Is that right? Yeah, and actually, it generally worked that way.
	Would she agree with you if we got her on the call?
	No, she would be totally...
	Well, agree with me about...
	That's you were, in a sense, intervening to prevent stuff from your dad.
	That was the defensive justification that I had.
	Well, so what I'm asking is, do you think that it's true now that this was your intent to protect her?
	No, I think that was the propaganda that I gave myself.
	I think the real thing was me managing my anxiety.
	I'm not sure what you mean, but managing my anxiety is a little abstract for me.
	Okay, I think I... Yeah, I guess...
	She didn't have to follow as many rules or do as...
	The way I saw it is that she didn't have to do as many things around the house.
	She wasn't subject to as many requirements and expectations as I was, and I resented it.
	And I thought it was unfair, and this was my way of making it fair.
	Right, so you thought that she got special treatment and that irked you to the point where you wanted to make her feel as bad as you felt, is that right?
	Yeah. Okay.
	Okay, I feel chilly in my stomach now.
	Okay, we have lots of people on the call, lots of siblings, so if we want to, if anybody else wants to talk about history with siblings or thoughts or experiences...
	Sure, this is Greg.
	I'm feeling really anxious bringing some of this up, because I know that a lot of this is under-processed, but I was quite cruel to my younger brother when I was growing up with him, and I feel really, really awful about it in hindsight.
	Like Rich was saying, it's just a tremendous amount of regret, and I do remember a vivid memory of Being yelled at by my dad and then crying and having a fit because I remember saying at the time, you never yell at Scott.
	And it was a jealousy.
	Oh, sorry?
	Did you say something? No, go ahead.
	Oh, okay. And I remember being a jealousy about But not in a positive way.
	It was a jealousy about the negative that was towards me.
	In hindsight, I know that they yelled at him just as much as they yelled at me.
	I just didn't see it.
	I remember my dad saying to me, Don't worry, he'll have his day or something like that.
	And it was just, I mean, in retrospect, it's just cruel, cruel stuff, right?
	Manipulative and...
	And it's just...
	I was like, I think, eight at the time.
	And it was just the level of back and forth was...
	I mean, I remember being...
	I mean, for the most part...
	I used a lot of my mental agility against him.
	Growing up, I used that as my tool against him, especially when he hit puberty before I did, even though he was younger. So, he would have that against me.
	And for a while, when he would, like, push me down and stuff, I would see that as aggressive.
	But in retrospect, it was, I think, his way of defending against my mental flurry, if that makes sense.
	Sure, yeah, absolutely.
	So, like, I mean, he could...
	He couldn't keep up with some of my mental things.
	I mean, the cruel sibling things that you and Greg were talking about, those were commonplace in my household.
	And so he couldn't keep up with those.
	So in retrospect, the fact that he did have sort of this...
	Like, they had him checked for pituitary gland, like an overactive pituitary gland.
	I mean, he was two years younger than me, but was in puberty, and I wasn't.
	So he had the strength, and then this was like the one time he had something on me.
	So something that I wrestle with is just, I mean, if he doesn't make it, because I'm still in contact with him, if he doesn't make it, I grapple with how much of that is my fault.
	Right. And then it's just awful.
	And that's just sort of my experience with sibling relations.
	I'm not sure if you want to hear from the other side of the spectrum, like how the siblings were always attacking myself.
	It seems like there's a...
	I would say that, I mean, that's fine with me, but it's...
	I don't want this to be...
	Sorry, I don't want this to be just in general complaints about siblings.
	but relationships to siblings, if that makes sense, like where the complexity and the ambivalence is.
	In the relationship. Like, if you just hate them and you're done with them because they were jerks, then it's not a very ambivalent relationship, if that makes sense.
	I'm not saying you are, right?
	So, I'm just looking for the complexity in the relationships.
	Well, there's lots of complexity.
	I mean, you can go into step-siblings and the complications that arise out of step-parents and your parents as well.
	The relationships that evolve.
	I mean, what my position was, was trying to take care of my brother and protect my mother against my sister.
	And those were all delusional concepts.
	They were unnecessary.
	So our parents, to me, it seems they put us in these impossible situations as their slaves.
	And They make us responsible for each other in ways that we never should be.
	We become micromanagement for these siblings and we take out our anger on them that we should be taking out on our parents.
	And then we're forced to think that we love them when they treat us horribly.
	It's very complicated.
	I think there's a lot to talk about here.
	I'll step back, though, because I have a lot of details that I'm still sorting through.
	Great. No, I think what you're saying there, I think, is bang on and has a lot of ramifications, not just within ourselves, but obviously within the larger sphere of what we're trying to do with society.
	This is mirrored. In RTR, I talk about this horizontal attack.
	Well, this, of course, we learn this in the sibling world.
	We don't learn this in the schools, but even we learn it usually in the sibling world.
	This horizontal attack that is provoked and managed by the authority figures, that, of course, is the state and the citizens.
	So this is a very, very important relationship to unravel in order to help bring the world closer to freedom, in my opinion.
	That's the theory generally.
	So I think that's why it's definitely worth talking about this stuff.
	I mean, we don't get attacked by governments, we get attacked by our fellow citizens.
	And that's a little different because a lot of times we get attacked by parents and siblings in a family, but the emotional attacks come from other citizens, not the government.
	And a lot of that is true within the family with siblings relative to parents.
	So I think it's very important, this topic.
	Did somebody else have something that they wanted to share or to bring up in terms of relations to siblings?
	Yeah, I just wanted to share my experience as the ambivalence I have towards my older sibling as a younger sibling who, you know, was like all the older siblings we're talking about here.
	And I have a lot of anger for what happened, but on the other hand, I have a lot of, like, Pity for my older brother.
	I just feel a lot of sadness and pity about what happened.
	It's really difficult to sort out because although he tormented me, I understand that he got so much worse from my parents than I did.
	I just think to myself that his life is just horrible now.
	I don't know. I have a really hard time with those conflicting emotions.
	I think I was sort of the favorited child in the family.
	And so I think that was really hard on him.
	And he also got more aggression than I got.
	Right. Right, and we do feel that with siblings, right?
	We do sympathize with what they went through as siblings in terms of the parents, but we also feel anger or sadness with regards to how they treated us too, right?
	And to me, that's more complex than it is with parents.
	Hey guys, this is Chris.
	Just so you know, this is my first time on a call, so hello everyone.
	Hello. I just wanted to give a quick rundown.
	There were actually lots of sibling relationships in my family.
	My dad already had a son, my mother already had a girl, then my dad got remarried who had three girls, so lots of siblings floating around.
	But the one I'm interested in speaking about is my younger brother.
	We were Just a year apart.
	I'm a year older than he is.
	And we shared the same room together until we were 14 years old and absolutely everything together.
	And I think it's a pretty good example of, as Steph said, the horizontal attack because my dad and my stepmom figured out really early how to divide and conquer.
	I was more on the academic side and my brother was more on the athletic and social side.
	As far back as I can remember, once we started school, it was Me being shown is better than my brother because I did my homework and stuff like this.
	So my younger brother was always criticized for not being responsible, not getting good grades.
	And then on the other end, I was often criticized by my dad for not being athletic, not being strong enough.
	I remember the term pussy being thrown around a couple of times.
	Despite my brother being more athletic, I was larger than him, so very quickly it descended into this thing where I can remember boasting about the fact that I made him cry every single day.
	At least once a day I made him cry.
	So it was this very aggressive relationship.
	Another thing I remember is once he threw a cinder block at me.
	But then what happened is that at some point my dad's first son, who is I think four or five years older than both of us, came to live with us.
	And he and my younger brother had more in common.
	And they immediately banded together against me, right?
	So then my tactics switched from being the aggressor as to being the victim, where I was like tattletaling on them and, you know, I guess trying to get brownie points.
	And so the tables were turned to where I would just be absolutely tortured by these guys.
	We all shared the same room, all three of us, and they would keep me awake until 3 o'clock in the morning because I had gotten them in trouble earlier that day.
	This is all stuff I'm still trying to think about because I hadn't really considered it until recently when I found out that my brother is about to have a second child and I was just overwhelmed and so surprised by the amount of anger I had at hearing that news.
	So yeah, that was pretty much my experience.
	Right, right. So you sort of saw it from light and dark, so to speak, or from aggressor and victim, is that right?
	Right, right. And now it's pretty much stayed that way, where my brother is extremely aggressive all the time.
	And I know that all I have to do to get him angry is to be calm.
	And that's enough. Right.
	So you have this sort of fuck you Zen thing going on, right?
	Exactly. Wait, sorry.
	Now, because this is your first call, I'll just mention this, that we won't go into it in much detail.
	But you do have a kind of jokey air about this stuff?
	I've been told that. Yeah.
	Yeah. Don't do that.
	Sorry to be annoying, but that's really disconcerting for your listeners.
	Like when you're talking about some pretty abusive stuff, like the mental torture making him cry every day, and you're talking about it like it's comedy, that's really disconcerting to people you're talking to.
	Right. So if you're going to talk about it, and I hope that you will, and I mean it's very important I think that we do talk about this stuff, you've got to try and rein in the haha stuff because it's really confusing for people.
	And I'm sure it is for you as well, right?
	Okay, no, that's absolutely understandable.
	I've been told several times that laughter is by far my biggest self-defense mechanism, and it's that for many reasons.
	But yeah, anytime I tend to talk about something that makes me nervous or anxious, I start getting laughy and cracking jokes and things.
	Right, and I mean, it's not a shockingly unusual defense.
	I've certainly had it in my life as well.
	And again, there's nothing wrong with the sense of humor, obviously, but when you're talking about this kind of traumatic stuff, it's...
	And then I punched my kid.
	I'm not putting you quite in that category, but obviously it's not funny.
	Absolutely. That's very interesting, and I certainly do appreciate you sharing, because that is a really interesting switch in perspective.
	And it hasn't ended, as you say, right?
	Right. Well, I'm not really in contact with him anymore.
	After that recent news, that's when I decided that I couldn't really talk to him anymore.
	And do you have any thoughts as to why you failed to anger at him having a second kid?
	Oh, absolutely. Because he is precisely like our father.
	He is extremely aggressive when he wants control, and when he doesn't get control through aggression, he switches immediately to guilt trips.
	Like I can remember growing up, his favorite thing to say to his girlfriends was, if you love me, you'll do it, you know, whatever it was.
	So when I realized that he was about to bring another child into the world, and I was already attached to his son, I couldn't go through that again, seeing him treated that way.
	Well, and as you say, I mean, I certainly sympathize with that and appreciate you saying that.
	But as you say, of course, you also work to provoke him, right?
	So his temper doesn't exist in isolation of your behavior sometimes?
	Oh, absolutely. Okay, I just wanted to make sure I understood that.
	No, that's very interesting.
	Okay, well, thank you. I just jotted that down, and I just want to make sure that those who have this stuff to talk about get their shots.
	So thank you. I really do appreciate you sharing this.
	I know that's some tough stuff, and that's quite the switcheroo you went through there.
	Thank you. All right.
	Do we have anybody else who wanted to mention stuff?
	Yeah, I've got the...
	I've got my one brother.
	I'm the oldest of all the siblings and step-and-a-half siblings.
	I have one brother who's two years younger.
	My father remarried right before I turned 14, so we had the two stepsisters, five and ten, and then two infants when I was in high school.
	But the most significant relationship among all those, of course, is my younger brother by two years.
	I still feel some ambivalence a bit about it.
	Sometimes I feel like I want to go see him, sometimes like I never want to see him again.
	When we were younger, I mean, we sort of switched back and forth between being...
	I know that when we were really young and I was bigger than him by two years, then I would physically aggress against him.
	And I don't remember so much whether or not it happened in the presence of our parents or not, but I do remember that as we got older, He would begin to provoke,
	and I would react, and then there would be, you know, he would, I mean, I don't want to put it like, it would always be like, he would provoke, then I would react, then he would run crying, because I don't think it always worked like that, but I think, you know, that was certainly one of the things that happened, but...
	After a certain point in time, I don't remember exactly when this was, but we used to spend a lot of time together, and then we hit a certain age, and we didn't spend much time together at all.
	Or it seems like that, anyway.
	Does that make any sense?
	As we... Entered the teenage years, and my father got remarried, and I just sort of went into this shell of, like, within the family, like, not wanting to interact with anybody, you know.
	But, you know, my stepsisters were intrusive, and the babies were babies, you know.
	They're going to be babies. They're going to, you know, they're going to do what they do, right?
	But, of course, my father, you know, Having the children.
	Even as adults, my brother was definitely the one to provoke, you know, in the presence, at least in the presence of my father.
	When we were alone, I can only remember this as adults, he would complain about something, but when I tried to apologize for it, he would, he's like, oh no, no, it never happened, you know, sort of.
	And so now I don't... I sort of defude him at the same time I defude my parents, but I still feel this...
	How do you say?
	This occasional desire to see him.
	I guess that's it.
	Right, right. Okay.
	Thank you. He's only like 20 minutes north of me, too, where I am.
	And did he try to contact you after the defu?
	Well, my defu was sort of like I stopped returning all...
	I decided I wasn't going to return any more phone calls and emails.
	And... Actually, my brother was the only person that I had any contact with at all in that whole process because I sent him a CD containing his website and a note saying that I wasn't going to host his email anymore.
	Right. And the only other note I got from him that I'm aware of, like I don't know if he's tried to send any other emails, but he sent me an email back when my mother's boyfriend died back in February this year.
	Right. But other than that, the only other thing I've seen from my brother is he has a post on Limey.
	He's like one from a while back?
	One from April this year.
	Ah, right, okay. Yeah, something like the whole thing.
	Well, I lost my brother, which is like, you know, one of those, like, well...
	Well, we never really had each other, you know, at least certainly not as adults, right?
	Right, right. Yeah, that was...
	And that was like a total accident that I saw that.
	I saw it like four months after he posted it.
	Right. He's got the whole story of James blames his parents for everything wrong that happens in life.
	It doesn't take any responsibility. You know that whole line.
	Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.
	So even with that sort of big enchilada hanging out there, I still struggle with wanting to I guess it's sort of a feeling of guilt, because I know I mistreated him for many years.
	Sorry, sort of a feeling of guilt?
	No, I do...
	I do feel guilty about that, you know.
	Okay, yeah, no, I mean, I didn't want to lead you to feeling guilty, I'm just...
	Sort of a feeling of guilt sounds like a hedge.
	Well... I don't know, I guess in some ways it...
	Like, if I just say that I feel guilty unequivocally, it's like, well, all these other things...
	Going into it, you know?
	You mean the way that he may have mistreated you and that kind of stuff?
	Yeah, the way he mistreated me, the fact that we were in a really shitty situation, you know, with the one that our parents created.
	But even so, I still... That's the challenge, right?
	That's the challenge. Sorry not to use that, but that is the challenge, right?
	It's hard enough with parents, but even more so with siblings, the anger slash Guilt slash sympathy.
	I mean, it's really quite an intense cauldron, right?
	Yeah, so I guess to be most accurate, it's I feel guilty and I feel angry and I feel sad.
	Right, right. And not too long ago, I just had a flash like, what if my brother and his wife were having the first kid?
	And I just felt so incredibly sad.
	Oh, sure, sure.
	Because, I mean, it's been over a year since I've spoken to him.
	Yeah, it could be happening, right?
	You know, they could already have a child, and I wouldn't know about it.
	Right, right.
	And do you find that whenever you go, I don't want to lead again, tell me if I'm wrong, but it's tough to talk about because when you think about it, Do you find that you go round and round?
	Do you find that you don't go very deep?
	Do you find that you go deep and get lost?
	I mean, what is it when you think about it?
	Do you sort of step from anger to sympathy, to guilt, to anger to rage, to guilt, to sympathy, to curiosity?
	Does it bounce around or do you actually get into the feelings themselves?
	I think I sort of glance off the surface.
	I don't think I go into the feelings all that often.
	And why do you think that is?
	is.
	Which is another way of saying, what does it cost you to go into those feelings?
	Well, I have to
	I suppose I have to face some of the pretty dark aspects of my history.
	I don't know if that's it or not.
	Well, but you've done that and you've gotten the value from that, right?
	I mean, with other areas of your history.
	Right, yeah.
	So maybe that's not it.
	I'm not really positive.
	Like... Like if I got...
	If I got some sort of certainty about my brother...
	But...
	I don't know if that's it, but...
	The thought was, if I got some sort of certainty about my brother, then that's...
	I don't know if that's it.
	I'm sorry.
	That's okay.
	I mean, I don't want to corner you.
	I was just wondering if you had a theory, right?
	No, I don't have much of a theory.
	I just never really thought about it that deeply before.
	Well, sorry, just to be clear, you absolutely have thought about it very deeply because you know what to avoid, right?
	No, okay, right.
	I mean, if you're like, well, I don't go there.
	I know that it's really important to examine your history and have self-knowledge and examine my relationships, but I don't go there with my sibling.
	That means that you already are processing it at a very deep level, right?
	No, you're right. Because otherwise you'd wander in and be surprised by the depth and complexity, right?
	Right. But that isn't what happens.
	You avoid that depth and complexity.
	So you already know it's there.
	You're already processing it, right? No, I think you're right.
	I think, I don't know if this makes any sense, but just like how much he resembles my father.
	Thank you.
	Do you mean physically or emotionally or both?
	Emotionally. Right.
	Just... But that's a challenge, right?
	Sorry, that's a challenge. And one of the complexities of that is that you helped make him who he is, right?
	No, that's right.
	And again, with all the due sympathy, this is why it's so complex.
	Because you say, oh my god, I made him who he is, I'm responsible, but you were a kid, right?
	Yeah, yeah. So that's why it's so convoluted, right?
	Yeah, I think what happens is, like, I get into the cycle, I go around maybe once, and then I stop.
	And that's, like, you know, it's not like I don't get into it, but...
	I stop before I get the guilt again.
	Right, so it's like, oh man, I feel so bad about the way I treated my brother.
	Oh, but he did this, that, and the other.
	So I have the right to be mad at him.
	It's like, well, yes, but we were both victims and we were trying to do the best we could and we were kids and then there's my parents.
	And it just goes round and round, right?
	Yes. And it doesn't seem like there's a way to come to a resolution, right?
	Yeah, there's no stop off the merry-go-round.
	Right. So you say, okay, well, do I want to shuffle around in a small circle all day, or do I want to get something done, right?
	Sure. Right, right. Right.
	Okay. All right. So I just want to continue to ask if there was anybody else, and thanks.
	I appreciate that.
	If there was anyone else who wanted...
	Obviously, we're not going to be able to solve the problems tonight, but I just wanted to get a sense of whether there were other people who wanted to talk about sibling stuff.
	Well, I met my brother again for the first time since April.
	Did anybody hear that?
	I did. Go ahead. Okay.
	And in the course of a two-hour conversation, I ended up screaming at him and crying, actually.
	At one point...
	And that was after he made the heinous statement that my oldest half-brother, who is a child molester and murderer, was a good person.
	And I couldn't take that.
	I snapped. I screamed at him.
	I asked him, how can you say something like that?
	How can you say somebody's a good person when they've done the things he's done, for as long as he's done none?
	And then I took it and related it to my dad, and I said, how can you say somebody's a good person?
	And then you're referring to my dad when you choke somebody and hold them down on a bed and beat them and everything.
	I just broke down and I couldn't continue anymore.
	After the whole thing was over, I just ended up feeling very drained and exhausted.
	You know, just like I didn't want to deal with anything anymore after that for a long time.
	For hours.
	And I just...
	It was like that took all of my mental energy for the day and my good mood and everything and flushed it down the drain.
	So... And I'm still trying to figure out whether it was even worth its even talking to him.
	So... Yeah.
	So, you don't have as much ambivalence, though, it sounds like, because, as you say, this fellow seems to have the moral judgment of a, I don't know, evil turnip or something, right?
	Because, as you say, your half-brother, who seems to have some pretty nasty tendencies, this person says he's a good person, so there's all that.
	So there seems to be less ambivalence with regards to this person with you.
	Is that right? I have to apologize.
	I feel like the village idiot now.
	I don't know the meaning of ambivalence.
	Oh, sorry. It just means that you feel like if you've harmed your younger brother or younger sister, then you feel guilt about that.
	But at the same time, they may have been passive-aggressive, or they may have provoked, or they may have told tales on you, and so you feel anger towards them.
	So you feel guilt and anger.
	They're two opposing, sort of quote, opposing feelings at the same time would be a sort of example.
	Or you feel sympathy, but you feel anger, which we can sometimes, like when we think of our parents hitting us, or whatever, if that happens, then we feel anger.
	But then we think of our parents as children going through the childhoods they went through.
	So it's opposing feelings that can occur at the same time.
	Yeah, I did feel...
	I felt guilt...
	Well, I didn't feel guilt.
	I felt a little bit of sympathy for him because my brother has this false sense of responsibility towards my parents.
	And he's got this feeling that the way my older brother turned out and the way my parents have turned out was not really their fault.
	I mean, and to an extent, maybe not.
	I mean, because my parents both grew up in horrifically abusive households and...
	My oldest half-brother, the one who's now in prison for life, he grew up with my parents.
	My parents from What I've heard, of course, I don't know myself.
	They didn't do too bad with him, but he got into drugs and everything and they just took it down a really dark path.
	And to make matters worse, he ended up joining the army and going to Bosnia and seeing all the mass graves and everything there.
	And my older brother claims that that was what really sent him over the edge.
	But I know that for a fact that before that he was already doing some very very nasty and evil stuff.
	So it's like I felt anger that he'd say that's you know even with the person not being necessarily totally just intrinsically evil from the get-go I just felt that it was not right for him to say that You know, no matter what other considerations there are, that these are not bad people.
	I mean, no matter what the cause is, you know, murdering and, you know, molesting your own stepdaughter and stuff is not good behavior and you're not a good person if you do that.
	You know, and if you're abusive and, you know, violence and, you know, controlling and everything, you're not a good person no matter what causes that.
	You know, it just...
	Okay, so I'm sorry. I mean, you're preaching to the choir here.
	I don't think there's anybody here who disagree with that.
	No, I'm just saying that was what I felt towards you.
	No, so sorry. So your ambivalence is that you're even in a conversation with somebody who does that, right?
	Or says that. Yeah, I mean, I just...
	I guess the whole reason why I even agreed to see him It's because I thought that maybe he had some news or something about my parents, because I knew that both my parents, their health wasn't great.
	Oh, okay. So you have ambivalence in that you wanted news about your parents.
	I wanted to see if there was something wrong, or if not, whether maybe my brother was trying to make peace and let me know, hey, I've come to an understanding about what you've gone through and stuff.
	And it turned out that, in reality, he was just there to kind of, like, De-convert me, so to speak, and try to get me back in the fold.
	Yeah, look, I mean, if somebody says, oh, I've done bad by you and I want to make it up, you will know.
	I mean, you don't go to find that out because somebody will be irresistibly trying to get you to understand that proactively, right?
	They won't hold it until you show up.
	So just sort of a note for the future that you don't...
	There's not much point going and seeing if people have turned around in terms of their Commitment to ethics, because if they have, you will absolutely know it from the get-go, long before you even think about showing up.
	Anyway, that's just something that might help keep you a little safer from this kind of stuff, right?
	Because as you say, it's pretty traumatic to be around this kind of mental illness, right?
	It is. It is.
	I mean, like I said, I was just drained.
	I don't know, Steph, if you've ever actually felt that.
	I know that you're obviously a pretty emotionally healthy person and everything.
	But just the feeling of...
	You feel like you can't handle an ounce, like even half an ounce of adversity after going through something like that.
	Oh yeah, no, it's no question.
	And that's why it's important to check with how you feel.
	So if you feel drained, exhausted, and so on, then that's a good sign that that's not good for you, right?
	Exactly. And he kept telling me, look, you've got to call mom, you've got to call dad, and blah, blah, blah.
	At the end of the conversation, I said, I'll think about it.
	That's all I could say. I had to get away from him.
	I had to get away and I literally, I even called it detoxing.
	I just sat basically on my bed for a couple of hours just like butting loose in my mind and just letting the emotional poison just drain out of me.
	Now, so, sorry, and I don't want to distract from what we're talking about as a whole, which is ambivalence in sibling relations.
	So, I mean, and I appreciate that this, I'm sorry that we can't spend more time on it, because I know that it was obviously a very difficult meeting, and, I mean, I totally sympathize.
	Because the implicit thing in that is that if your half-brother is not evil, then you are actually a bad person for being judgmental, right?
	So, in other words, you end up in a lower moral category than a murderer and pedophile, which is...
	Revolting, right? I mean, so it is an assault upon sanity and reality and ethics and virtue and happiness and any kind of self-esteem to be around people who will make those kinds of hellacious judgments.
	So I do want to sympathize with you on that for sure, but it sounds like you have a little less ambivalence about that now, which I think is very healthy.
	Yes, it is. I mean, I don't think I would agree to even seeing him less.
	I am absolutely sure.
	And when I say sure, I mean I've got assurance from him himself that he's not going to do that kind of an assault on my logic and on my senses again.
	No, you absolutely should not do that, in my opinion.
	You should absolutely recognize that this is not something that is going to turn around.
	Right. I mean, if he's come from the same genetics and everything as I am, he might have the potential to turn around himself, but again, I don't think he's going to do that on his own.
	He's too ingrained with this idea that he's got to support mom and dad and that mom and dad only try to help him.
	Well, you weren't able to change his view on virtue, right?
	No, I wasn't able to change his view on anything.
	Yeah, so, you know, virtue programs us.
	Whatever we think is the good is what we will do, and we will attack the opposite.
	That is inevitable.
	That's the power of virtue.
	It turns people into slaves of the good.
	We only hope to be slaves of the rational and healthy good, right?
	I mean, that's certainly what I try to be as philosophy's Happy bitch.
	So this is not something – if he's got the opposite ethics embedded and allegiance with a murderer and pedophile doesn't shake him, then there's no possibility in this or any other universe that he will turn around.
	No, no. That's kind of the shame of it, but again, even going down, it took a great amount of effort.
	Even going to see him, I had great trepidation doing that, just taking that one chance.
	Now that I've given him that chance, he utterly blew it.
	Yeah, yeah, I'm just saying that's a good thing.
	Okay, so I just want to make sure because I don't want to keep everyone here all night if there was anyone else.
	We'll mull this stuff over and we'll process it perhaps in the next conversation.
	But if there were other people who wanted to talk about, anyone else who wanted to mention stuff about siblings.
	And I do thank you for mentioning what you mentioned.
	I mean, that is an extreme example of a kind of familial corruption and it's good for us to keep our eye on that.
	But if there's anybody else who wanted to mention something about siblings...
	Steph, I just had a question about siblings.
	How much of our love for them is out of obligation and that kind of obligation to stand by them?
	That was just something I wanted to pose to everybody to think about, to maybe talk about in the future.
	You know the answer to that.
	You know the answer to that.
	You're saying how much love is composed of obligation is your fundamental question, right?
	Sorry? How much of love is composed of obligation, right?
	That's your question? Right, right, yeah.
	But you know the answer to that, right?
	If it's obligation, it's not love.
	Right. Well, that was easy, wasn't it?
	Thank you. Come on, somebody else love me an easy one.
	Because love, if the theory that we work with, love is involuntary response to virtue, if we ourselves are virtuous, then obligation doesn't enter into it except as a form of exploitation, right?
	If I say something like, I'm not sure I'm ambivalent about my younger brother, does that sound ambivalent?
	Yes. Because when you have closure, you have closure.
	And closure doesn't mean that you don't have opposing feelings about it, but you've broken your way out of a circle, right?
	So closure, when you don't have closure, then you go round and round, as we talked about earlier with James.
	And when you have closure, you still have those feelings and you can access the anger and the sympathy and the fear and the cruelty and all of the other feelings.
	But you can contain them.
	They don't run you around like you're being dragged around by a horse and have to kind of chew your way through the leather strap or something.
	So if you're not sure whether you're ambivalent, then you have what is technically known as double-layer cake ambivalence.
	Right. Yeah, and I'm not even sure if I would want a relationship with him.
	It's never had any kind of real intimacy or depth.
	It's always just been very small talk and...
	Well, you have a relationship, right?
	Whether we see our parents ever again or our siblings ever, we still have a relationship with them, right?
	I mean, these alter egos that occur within our mind, particularly with 20, 30, or 40 years or more of imprinting, I mean, we have a relationship.
	Now, whether we want to see them or not, but, you know, defooing does not end the problems of working out these relationships, if that makes sense.
	I see. Yeah, you're right.
	I guess that explains part of my ambivalence.
	If it's, I mean, the way that you know, right, the way that you know that relationships remain problematic is sort of simple.
	Is it, do you avoid thinking about it?
	Right, so if something reminds you of, or the thoughts come up, or something like that, Do you avoid thinking about it?
	And this is not just for you, right?
	This is for everyone, right?
	Oh, and somebody said getting them out of your life is easy compared to getting them out of your head.
	Well, you can't get them out of your head, right?
	I mean, we can never exercise these ghosts.
	We can only learn to work with them and hopefully harness the positive stuff that can be there.
	But, yeah, where we avoid thinking about relationships...
	Well, that's where we need to go, right?
	I mean, it's like if you've hurt your forearm, then you need to stretch your forearm.
	It's like whatever hurts when you're in physiotherapy, it's like whatever hurts, well, that's what you need to do, right?
	So where you have relationships that obviously are significant, like siblings or parents or whatever, and you can't think about them.
	It doesn't mean with Zen peace of mind.
	I mean, that never happens, at least not that I can think of.
	But if it's something that you avoid, you distract yourself, the thoughts come up, you feel anxious, you push them away, well, then there's a lot of ambivalence there, right?
	So when I think about my family or as it comes up, In my mind, I will let the thoughts come to me.
	I will try to interact with them.
	But I try not to like, oh, that's, you know, I try not to judge the thoughts or that's bad to think about or that's good or, you know, oh, I'm coming along.
	I haven't thought about my brother in a week or something like that.
	But if I have a dream, which I will still have occasionally about my family, then I will talk about it with Christina.
	I will journal about it.
	I will podcast about it.
	So it's when the thoughts come to you that you accept them as guests in your house.
	It's not like, oh my god, vampires are out there.
	We must lock the door!
	So that's where the clues are around where the ambivalence is and where the avoidance is.
	Because really, if you've separated from family or whatever, all you're doing is avoiding yourself.
	Because it's not...
	I mean, if my brother comes to my mind, it's my brother in me.
	It's not him. He's not calling, right?
	It's my brother in me.
	And if I push that away, all I'm doing is avoiding myself, right?
	It weakens me, right?
	It weakens me. It sets me against myself.
	I'm at war with myself.
	I got to juggle myself.
	I've got to manipulate myself.
	I've got to manage myself.
	I've got to avoid the stimuli that reminds me of that.
	I mean, it's a kind of shifting prison, right?
	Right. Right.
	Yeah, the last thing...
	I'm too weak. I'm too weak to handle it.
	You know, if I feel guilt about something that I've done, it's like, hey, bring it on, you know?
	Come on, guilt, instruct me.
	Make me a better person.
	Put me through the fire, right?
	I can take it. But if it's just like, oh, gotta hide.
	Guilt's in the house. It's like a raptor.
	It's gonna just bite my head off, right?
	Then I'm making myself small, right?
	Right. And if we make ourselves small...
	We make our inner bullies more bullying, right?
	Yeah, I can't do that.
	Do what? Continue to avoid the subject of my brother.
	I almost didn't join this call because I just felt uncomfortable with it.
	Right. No, and it is, right?
	And then we end up avoiding and self-managing, and then we make the bullies bigger through fear and compliance and avoidance and so on, right?
	But it's like what we try to do with the inner critic.
	It's like, give it to me.
	Give it to me. Give me more.
	Tell me what a bad person I am.
	Tell me what terrible things I've done.
	Let me make a list, and let's work to improve, or let's work to accept, or let's work to apologize, or let's work to understand.
	But it's standing in that gale that feels like it can never be stood before and letting it strengthen you rather than push you into hiding.
	I mean, you guys have heard me do this a million times, right?
	In podcasts, if somebody has criticism, it's like, tell me more, right?
	Or, here's the logical thing that I don't understand about your criticism, but make me a better person.
	I'm happy to be instructed, right?
	Come on. And you'll find what always happens with those conversations.
	They always end up...
	It turns out that they're projecting or...
	Ah, they all back down, right?
	Right. Whereas if I was avoiding them, then they would look that much stronger, right?
	Oh, I'm not taking that guy's call, right?
	I don't want to talk to that guy.
	I don't want to talk to the guy who's criticizing UPB. Oh, God, no, right?
	I'm just going to pretend I'm not here.
	Huh. It would just make his criticisms look valid, right?
	That makes sense, but where do we get this habit of avoiding...
	Oh, never mind. I don't know why I'm asking that question.
	Because the things couldn't be avoided, right?
	Like someone yelling at you or hitting you.
	I mean, that couldn't, right? But then when it's within ourselves, we don't want to end up refooing internally, right?
	Carrying this little microcosm of the family or other destructive relationships all the way through to the end of our lives, right?
	Yeah, you're right. Yeah, the last thing...
	I talked to him a year ago, and the last thing I ever said to him...
	My grandmother was dying, and he said, you should be here because I know she would do anything for us.
	And I said, oh, really?
	What does she do for you?
	Or what did she do for you?
	And I never got an answer back.
	Well, sure you did. Yeah, exactly.
	I'm manipulating you. That's my answer, right?
	I'm trying to guilt you. That's my answer, right?
	Right. Because he knows if the only answer he can give is money, then...
	Yeah, I mean, nobody says grandma will probably bribe you well if you come to the...
	I mean, you know, that's not going to fly, right?
	Nobody would say that. But no, I mean, the only way to solve ambivalence is to give everyone a voice at the table.
	I mean, ignoring yourself just makes it worse, right?
	Avoiding yourself, because it's you.
	It's not your brother anymore.
	It's not your mom. It's not your dad.
	It's not your sister. It's you.
	Right? We are some form of mostly submerged and very hard-to-see original soul, right?
	And then we are the craters and gardens of everyone who impacts and plants us, right?
	And so if we're avoiding and we're stepping around ourselves, then We are conditional.
	I like this part of myself.
	Oh, I don't like that part of myself.
	Ooh, that part's good. Ooh, that part's bad.
	And that's the parenting and the religious instruction and the educational instruction that we suffered through so much.
	This is good. I love you.
	This is bad. I don't love you.
	I hate you. And that kind of stuff, right?
	Exactly. All right.
	Well, that... Definitely answers my question as to what I need.
	I need to explore that for a while.
	Well, let it, you know, when it comes up, right?
	And when the question comes up, it's like, tell me more.
	You know, hey, you know, I feel this stab of guilt.
	You know, it's like, well, think of it like a child is criticizing you, right?
	If a child criticizes you, you say, tell me more, right?
	You don't say...
	I gotta go! Right? Into the basement with you, right?
	Right. Sorry, go ahead.
	I was gonna say, when I ask that voice, that question, it's very sad for me, because it makes me want to really ask him, because I don't know how to answer that.
	Or at least I... I can't really come up with a developed conversation between he and I existing within me because it's like I don't really know all information that I really do want to know.
	So that's part of my ambivalence where I know that if I'm going to go look for it, I'm definitely going to get attacked anyway.
	But get attacked, right?
	So what? So get attacked.
	I mean, when you're ready, right?
	But that's the goal, right?
	If a kid is saying I hate you and kicking, right?
	Then you hold the kid and you say, tell me more, right?
	Right, but that's kind of like a conversation that I really want to have, like, in reality, not just within.
	But I know it's not going to be good for me.
	Well, sorry, you mean with a real person who you feel will attack you if you just have that conversation internally?
	Right. Well, if you're afraid of your inner representation of them, I would say that it probably means that you should be afraid of who they really are, right?
	Right. It's just these false attachments.
	It's something I need to work on in therapy, but...
	Right, and with the false attachments, So when someone says, you should call mom, then you say, tell me more.
	Make the case. I'm all ears, right?
	Like Nate with his guy who says, you've got to come to grandma's deathbed.
	It's like, you know, hey, make the case.
	I'm all ears. Like Bill Rush from last night.
	He says that atheism is wrong.
	And it's like, I'm like, hey, make the case, you know?
	I want to make sure I understand what you're saying.
	I want to make sure that you're not leaving me behind when you leap off these great pillars of intellect, right?
	Explain it to me like I'm three years old.
	It's like, I'm all ears. Make the case, right?
	But that was taking place internally, right?
	What was? Asking to make the case.
	Well, no, I'm just...
	No, this was an actual debate that I had last night with a fellow, but it doesn't matter whether it's internal or external, right?
	So... I mean, I'm constantly getting nothing but horrible things sent to me, right?
	I mean, people saying, oh, you're this, you're a bad guy, or whatever, right?
	And, you know, some guy sent me an email today saying, you know, basically, you rat bastard, you're preventing my son from voting.
	What the hell's the matter with you? Ugh, that's disgusting.
	You know, you better fix this, call me, right?
	And it's like, you know, hey...
	And I said, okay, well, make the case, right?
	I'm all ears. Tell me how I'm such a bad person.
	I'm all ears, right?
	With people who are trolls, they've got some criticisms of me.
	I call them, right?
	And it's like, you know, like this Johnny fellow or other people who got big criticisms of me.
	Make the case, right?
	If you're so wise and so knowledgeable, and this is true of internal and siblings and the internal images we have, make the case.
	I'm all ears. You know, convince me.
	And that tends to deflate criticism very quickly.
	I actually really like that idea.
	I really like that idea.
	It's a judo thing, right?
	You use the energy and momentum of your opponent to have him fall down, right?
	It's just brilliant, yeah.
	It's Socrates too, right?
	I mean, but we've refined it a little bit here, but it's like, you know, bring it on, right?
	If I'm so wrong and you're so right...
	You must have worked it out very, very clearly to make such statements that I'm a bad person or I'm wrong or I'm whatever, right?
	And you find very quickly that they don't have a case.
	What they're hoping to do is to get you to be defensive based on the argument from adjective.
	You're a bad person. Oh, shit, I feel like a bad person.
	Oh, man, I'm a bad person, right?
	As opposed to, well, that's interesting.
	That is a theory, right?
	Much like two plus two is a unicorn.
	And so make your case.
	You know, what is the definition of good and bad?
	How do I fit it? How do I fit it most of all?
	That you're willing, do you want to come and talk?
	And you find very quickly.
	And if you have trouble with this, read the Socratic dialogues.
	Because that's always, people are saying, justice is this.
	It's like, wow, you must know a lot about justice, says Socrates.
	You must have really thought this from first principles.
	Step me through your thinking.
	And you'll find very quickly that people don't have any thinking.
	They're just saying shit that they hope.
	They're just trying keys in a lock that hope that it will work.
	And it's the same thing when we think about our siblings.
	We have these dense and complex relationships with them.
	And we have conversations with them in our minds all the time.
	I have arguments with my brother to this day.
	Not so much with my mom because you can't argue with crazy.
	But with my brother, I do.
	I still have arguments. And so it's like, you know, But it's me now.
	I haven't seen the guy in years, so it's me.
	So I don't get anywhere by condemning myself.
	I just weaken myself.
	And, I mean, we don't say, bad finger.
	That finger's really good.
	That finger, forefinger, really bad.
	So it's just a matter of saying, so, you know, make the case.
	If I feel anxiety because I feel the perspective of my brothers that would trouble me, you know, oh, Steph, you're always playing the victim, right?
	It's like, oh, okay, so that thought came up.
	I'm not going to push it down like, no, I'm not, right?
	But to accept it and say, oh, okay, so part of me thinks that I might be playing the victim.
	I'm all ears, you know, that's you and I sit down and you can make the case.
	Because if I am playing the victim, I want to know.
	And if I'm not playing the victim, then you damn well better stop using that language with me.
	This is quite helpful.
	It's interesting because when this call started out, I experienced a lot of active disinterest in it.
	I even wrote a post in the middle of the call because I just kept floating off from the call and not being able to focus on it.
	I felt sort of dissociated from it.
	And do you know why you felt associated from it?
	Why? No, can I guess?
	Well, don't guess.
	Because the moon is in the seventh heaven and Jupiter aligns with Mars.
	This is the dawning of the age of...
	Sorry, go on. I almost forgot.
	Well, I think maybe that...
	Other people who were talking about their situation were possibly disconnected from what they wanted to say about it.
	Oh, yeah. I mean, this was the cryptkeeper conversation, you know?
	I mean, this is true of everyone, right?
	My brother, and there was problems, and...
	Yes, that.
	For sure. For sure.
	And that's people who...
	I mean, this is with all due respect, and this is why we're having the call, and this is with all due sympathy, but people are themselves disconnected, right?
	From the sibling relations.
	If they weren't, they wouldn't be on the call, right?
	Or they'd be another kind of human being, right?
	Because we all have that tendency.
	The more complex and difficult...
	A relationship. And the more that we have participated in harm towards a child, even if we ourselves are a child, that's really tough stuff to process, right?
	So people are droney.
	They are disconnected. They are not spontaneous.
	They're not rich. There's not emotional connections, right?
	So we dissociate. Can I bring up one of the questions that came up on the call between us the other night, Steph?
	Sure. So, one of the things that we worked through was how my annoyance towards Q-Tron man was sort of unjust because of,
	you know, just given his family history and the situation he must have been brought up in.
	There are a number of factors going into the notion that he deserved actually a certain amount of sympathy, which is something we've been talking about here tonight.
	I agree with that, but one of the questions that came up for me when we were talking about this a couple nights ago was, well, if that's true for him, then what does that say about...
	What are the implications of that on what I did to my brothers just...
	A couple years ago, even.
	Did you hide what you did?
	What do you mean? I mean, did you do it at all?
	Whatever cruelties or whatever nastiness you feel that you did, right?
	I mean, this is true as a kid, true as an adult.
	The moment you hide what you're doing, then you know that it's wrong, right?
	Right. And that's the challenge, right, that we have.
	And children have moral responsibilities, right?
	No, but what I mean is...
	Why wouldn't I have extended them the same sort of sympathy?
	Oh, well, because...
	And patience. He didn't harm me.
	He's never harmed me. He's never harmed you, right?
	I don't have a 40-year history with the guy, right?
	No, that's true. As I've always said, the victim can't heal the abuser, right?
	Right? There are people who will work with rapists who try and help them, right?
	And God help those people.
	Maybe they can do it. Maybe they can't.
	I don't know. It's good that they're trying, I guess, right?
	Right. But that's never going to be the rape victim, right?
	That would be sick, right?
	And we were sort of...
	We were all hurting each other.
	It wasn't like I was strictly a victim.
	Right. And it's not like you were strictly an abuser, right?
	Right. Well, and as the oldest brother of five, I think it would be pretty unreasonable to suggest that I was...
	More of a victim than anyone else, right?
	In fact, maybe even less so.
	We don't know the answer to that, because you're going to try and come up with logical answers to this, but ambivalence can't be solved by logic, right?
	No, that's right. There's no logical syllogism that will ever apportion 23% blame to you, 22% James to blame to brother X or brother Y. And that's not going to help either.
	I mean, that's not going to help at all anyways.
	Proportions doesn't help.
	Well, yeah, so you can't solve ambivalence with logic.
	Oh. Ambivalence isn't emotional.
	Like, you can't reason yourself into falling in love, right?
	No, that's right. And you can't...
	So ambivalence is something that we solve through curiosity, through self-empathy, RTR with ourselves and with others.
	That's how we deal with ambivalence, right?
	There's no...
	And the reason we go round and round is we're trying to use our intellect to solve an emotional problem, right?
	No, that's right. That's right.
	Which is like trying to love our way into the discovery of relativity, right?
	It doesn't work, right? Right, right.
	Well, some religious guy might think that would work.
	And he'd be wrong. But so, I mean, that's what I'm sort of trying to cajole people into, right?
	We go round and round because, yeah, there's logical arguments as to why we're victims, as to why we're victimized, as to why we should feel anger and guilt and this, that, and the other.
	All of those are logical arguments.
	And they get us precisely nowhere but round and round the mulberry bush.
	Because they're all true.
	And when everything's all true and contradictory, we're in the realm of ambivalence and emotion, right?
	And we solve that through letting everyone sit down at the table and yammer it all out.
	Like, in logic, you can't say to contradictory propositions, you're both right, can you?
	A rock falls up, a rock falls down.
	You're both right, right?
	I mean, unless you're debating with me or something, right?
	Or unless you're in spades.
	Well, there is no up and down in spades, so even both of those propositions would be false, right?
	So, in logic, you can't have opposite propositions and say, you're both right, right?
	But with ambivalence, I feel anger and I feel guilt.
	You're both right, right?
	Right. Well, I mean...
	I feel like a victim. I feel like a victimizer.
	You're both right. Well, I mean...
	It's a basic tenet, right?
	Emotions aren't...
	Wrong, per se. I mean, they just are what they are.
	What they mean could or may or may not be.
	You still have this hands-off, right?
	You still standoffish with your feelings.
	You stand before your feelings and say, well, you're not wrong, per se.
	I would say your feelings are more right than you are.
	In the realm of ambivalence, right?
	In the realm of rich, complicated, contradictory feelings about relationships that are themselves rich and contradictory feelings.
	Yeah, after 35 years of them, right?
	Yeah, I mean, they're not wrong per se.
	I mean, we should really have respect, right, for our feelings.
	We should not treat them like potentially charming but mostly disobedient and bad children, right?
	That's more for husbands.
	Just kidding. Yeah. I mean, our feelings have been around a hell of a lot longer than we have, right?
	Feelings are collective inheritance, right?
	Our empirical understanding, or empirical, I mean, logic, language, I mean, we have abilities for these, but the form in which we inhabit them, we have learned in this life.
	But our emotions come from lizards, right?
	I don't argue with my liver, right?
	I don't say to my lungs, well, they're mostly correct, right?
	Right? I mean, it's like, thank you for working!
	Right? I will try to take care of you.
	I just feel a lot of frustration and anxiety around this question, I guess.
	Which question? Well, uh...
	It's just a lot to wrap I guess what's frustrating me is that I don't even know what questions I'm trying to answer here.
	I just have a bunch of feelings.
	Right. And you can't answer questions about feelings.
	You can only explore them.
	You can only receive them.
	You can only say, give me more feeling.
	Give me more thought. Give me more judgment.
	Give me more. Give me more.
	Tell me more. Right?
	So you say, well, I feel guilty about this.
	Well, what if I am guilty?
	What if I am guilty and did things that were wrong, things that were bad, things that I hid?
	Which is all true.
	Both things that I did that I hid and things that I did that I didn't hide.
	In the environment that we were in, half the time you didn't have to hide it.
	Right, right. So, a witch itself comes with a feeling of shame and anger at the parents and all of that has complex stuff involved in it, right?
	Right. Right.
	Right. Like, what are the implications for, you know, virtue in the present and the future, given all this mess in the past, right?
	I mean... What you mean by that is, am I a bad person?
	Am I unredeemable, right?
	Right, right. Yes, I'm sorry.
	I don't know why I'm...
	Yes, you do.
	You don't know why you're using your intellect as a defense?
	Gosh, that's never come up before, Greg.
	Perhaps we could just check every podcast where this topic has come up.
	Sorry. That's your fear, though, right?
	Your fear is that you knowingly and willingly chose to harm people who were relatively defensive and children to you, right?
	I mean, that's some dark stuff, right?
	Very dark, yes.
	And maybe that makes you an irredeemable, I mean, to me, you know, so, oh my God, maybe that makes me an irredeemably evil or bad person and I get to punish myself for the rest of my life.
	It's like, okay, well, make the case, right?
	I'm happy to hear the case for the prosecution, right?
	I will take notes, tell me everything that makes me the worst person ever, right?
	That's all you do, is you don't fight those judgments.
	Because what we do is we jump in and we say, well, that can't be true.
	It was so long ago.
	I was just a kid. I didn't know.
	But that doesn't solve the problem, right?
	Most false arguments and statements and judgments can be defeated by a single question mark.
	But we're not looking to defeat them.
	No, I'm just saying, like, you can literally just stop any, you know, attack on your intellect or on your person just by asking how or why.
	I see what you mean, yeah.
	We certainly do want to draw out the judgment and get to the thoughts behind it, for sure, but we don't do that just by rejecting it, which you're right, you continue to ask the Socratic questions, right?
	Well, it's like somebody says, well, you know, atheists are evil.
	And you say, why?
	They say, well, they are.
	Or if they say, well, God exists.
	Okay. What proof is there?
	They say, well, look around you.
	I'm looking around me, what proof is there?
	And they say, well, what would prove God's existence to you?
	I say, well, if I happen to be sober and sane and everything, by all intents and purposes, and he pops out of the closet and says, hey, Doug, how you doing?
	And they say, well, that's ridiculous.
	Then it wouldn't be faith, then.
	It wouldn't be worth it to believe in God.
	Okay, then what logical reason is there?
	But it's not. It's faith.
	Okay, then. We have nothing to discuss.
	Right, but that's not how we can work with ourself.
	I mean, I agree with you when we're talking with somebody outside ourself who has a corrupt or erroneous belief like God or God is required for virtue or something.
	Yes, we can have a smackdown, right?
	So when I debate with people where I have hostility, to me, I'm perfectly comfortable with that when I think that people are doing bad things.
	I can't take that approach with myself.
	Because if you're debating with some crazy-ass guy who says God is virtue and atheists are evil, you can smack him down or you can leave him and he's out of your life, right?
	But we can't do that with our inner voices, right?
	True, I apologize. I misunderstood what you were talking about.
	No, no. I mean, I think what you did was hugely valuable, please.
	You know, you spoke up for a reason and I'm really glad that you did because it's an important distinction.
	Because isn't it true?
	And I'll just end on this point.
	I don't want to take up everyone's whole evening.
	But isn't this the most fucked up thing about philosophy and us as a group?
	And I think it's about us.
	You can tell me if it's true. It's certainly the case with me.
	If I could reverse this, and if I could be...
	I'm going to use colloquialisms here.
	If I could be...
	As vicious with external corruption as I am with my theoretical internal corruption.
	And if I could be as conciliatory, reasonable, and kind with myself as I am to external people, I would consider that a massive step forward.
	Because don't we find that with other people, we're pretty reasonable and we're pretty firm, but we're pretty fair and we listen, or at least this is true of me, right?
	But then sometimes when it comes to self-judgment, I'm a total asshole.
	And I'd like to have that capacity outside of myself.
	And to switch those so that I could be as strong, or let's say strong, as strong with people outside myself as I am with the people inside myself.
	And as conciliatory as I currently am with the people outside myself with the people inside myself.
	To me, that would be a huge step forward.
	Right. It wouldn't necessarily get you to the finish line, but it'd at least get the race started.
	Sorry, I'm not sure what you mean. In other words, I mean, you were talking about being vicious and aggressive and everything with I apologize if I'm totally misunderstanding what you said.
	But, you know, you can still be a, you know, consultorily, I'm not even going to try to say that word, but you can still be a reasonable and polite in everything to other people and not suffer much worse for wear of it.
	But I agree with you on being rational and reasonable and a little bit forgiving with yourself as well.
	But not necessarily a total flip.
	Taking, you know, the general attitude we have towards ourselves and flipping it on the outside and then taking our attitude towards other people and flipping it on the inside.
	I think maybe we should get rid of the whole vicious attack yourself, you know, be totally judgmental and drop that down the drain and then just be reasonable and rational and everything in all aspects of our life both in how we deal with ourselves and how we deal with other people.
	Yeah, but there are evil people who preach very destructive things.
	And I think it's okay... To be aggressive with those people.
	I really do. I think that sweet rationality and Socratic politeness has not done a huge amount in 2,500 years to do stuff which is fairly useful, like end religion, right?
	And so I think it's okay.
	And this just comes out of, because I saw the film Religious, where he's all jokey and chatty with these religious people and then says they're going to end the world as we know it, and it's just jarring and weird.
	So I think that when we're in the presence of very corrupt, irrational, destructive, and evil people, If we're debating with them in a public forum, then I think some passion and some aggression is actually very healthy and positive.
	Like when I have an infection, I want my immune system to be a total asshole.
	Take no prisoners.
	And there are infectious ideas that are very destructive.
	To humanity, and I'd like to be more of a strong kind of antibody, so to speak, towards that.
	This is not to say that you just become vicious with everyone, but the judgments that I pass upon myself that are the ugliest and most aggressive tend to be around these questions of morality, virtue, and integrity, and that's where I think that they can be productively applied outside.
	Okay, I see your point.
	I stand corrected.
	Alright. Okay, well, again, I don't want to take up everyone's whole night.
	Is there anything that anybody wanted to add?
	I know that we haven't solved the problems of siblings, but I hope that we've, at least I've invited people to take the approach of don't fight yourself, don't reject yourself, don't oppose yourself.
	But listen to the case against yourself.
	Ask questions and try and harness the moral energy and the moral condemnation to align yourself with yourself so that we can start turning on outsiders.
	I'm just kidding. But I hope that that way of exploring ambivalence in this area will be of some help.
	All right. Well, thank you everybody so much.
	It was a very, very interesting chat.
	I certainly do appreciate everyone who is sharing these very difficult things.
	And I think it is so, so important to deal with sibling stuff.
	It was much harder for me to deal with sibling stuff than it was to deal with family stuff.
	Maybe that's not the case with everyone, but I just hope that...
	That we can still continue to work on this ambivalence and work to sort it out.

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