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May 20, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:08:43
1359 Ambivalence and Siblings

Brothers, society and the case against philosophy.

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So, what's up?
What are you saying that there's something about your brother?
Yeah, well, I mean, it's nothing really, like, in particular in terms of, like, triggers or anything.
So, yeah, it's not a particular incident that really, like, has been triggering me or anything, but I've been starting to, I guess, I don't know if it's exactly this.
Last night, I just kept, like, rolling in bed thinking about it.
Right. Yeah. My relationship with my brother is easily the most complex relationship I've got at the moment.
And it's... I mean, to be honest, it kind of fucks me up thinking about it sometimes.
Sure. Hey, I wrote a whole book about mine, so I can understand it.
Sure, sure. Well, I mean, when I go...
I mean, okay, I don't know if you're exactly aware of this incident, but in June, shortly after I defood last year...
My brother heard my parents talking about me in a disparaging way and went downstairs and he said, I don't think it's fair of you to talk about Greg that way.
And stood up for me in a very, I think, courageous way.
Yeah, I think I was aware of that, but go on.
Yeah, I think I did tell you at the time.
So there's that incident and then there were several other incidents that I can remember.
Similar incidents where he would leave the room if they start talking about me in a disparaging way or just things like that that felt pretty good.
But then also there have been incidents where we've been talking and he's defended them to me, right?
So, like, it'll be like, there are these two poles that's really hard for me to square.
And, like, I've actually gone a month in December where I just, like, didn't initiate calls with him.
And he didn't call me, so it was very much like an unspoken break, but then I did initiate contact with him in January, and we've been talking since, but it's just, I mean, I'll go from seeing this potential in him,
like I did in June, and then I'll just be reminded of incidents where he's defended them, and I just don't know.
It's something that I'm just at a standstill with.
I was wondering if you had any kind of clarity.
Yeah, I mean, I think I can help.
I mean, brother to brother is one of the most complicated relationships around.
I mean, maybe sister to sister is too.
Actually, I should say that there is that aspect.
Sibling is more complex than parents in many ways, because there's not quite the same power disparity, unless there's a great age difference.
So, I totally understand the challenges that you're facing.
Of course, Greg, Mark, too, went through some of the similar issues with his brother where there seemed to be some commonality of values and then not.
And it's a big sort of frustrating and enticing tease, if I can put it that way, if I understand it rightly.
Oh, yeah. Oh, absolutely.
And then, of course, there's the added aspect that he's 18, so he's living at home still.
Sure, sure. So it's like every time I start to blame him for standing up to them, there's then the voice that jumps in and says, oh, but he's, uh, I mean, he's still at high school, right?
Right. Now, if I understand it correctly, it's not, you don't expect him, if I, I mean, sorry, let me, you don't expect him to stand up against your parents for you in any consistent way while he's living at home.
Is that fair? Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, because I mean, that would be kind of an unfair expectation, right?
For him to go down in flames for a fight that you fled, right?
Right, right, right.
And that's why I was actually so surprised when he did at all, right?
Right after the deep two. I was like, oh my God, that's almost merging on suicidal.
Right, right. So it's not that he doesn't support you in front of your parents.
It's that you feel, if I understand it rightly, that his support of you...
Or of not so much of you as a person, but of the right thing to do, that his support of you comes and goes in an inconsistent way, in a way that the pattern is hard to detect.
Is that right? Yeah, and it's sort of like...
I almost get the sense in our conversation that it's like, well, that's okay.
That's an okay choice that you made for you, right?
Right. Nothing in terms of like, that was a good thing to do on principle, but...
Yeah, like music and psychology are fine for you, but it would be kind of narcissistic for you to expect me to choose your career.
Like it's a career choice or a band you like or something like that, right?
Exactly, exactly. And I get the sense that it's sort of...
And it also makes me feel uneasy about talking about psychology and philosophy with him because then it makes me feel sort of like I'm just...
Pushing my preferences onto him.
Right, right, right.
And that is a very, very difficult thing to break through, right?
Because, of course, one of the fundamental issues that you had with your parents was them pushing their belief systems or preferences or mindset upon you without sympathy to how you thought and felt differently.
So that's the last place you'd want to go with regards to your brother, right?
Right, right. And especially in sort of a dangerous way because, I mean, I've Sorry, and especially a danger to him, right?
And I was just going to say, as it's probably no surprise to you, your voice has been banned in the household, right?
Oh, right, so I can't play my podcast out loud or whatever, right?
Right, of course. Oh, sure, sure, absolutely, because my voice is the problem, right?
Exactly, exactly. The fact that I have a show is the only problem that your entire family history has ever faced in a multi-generational standpoint is It's one podcast on the internet.
It's the entirety of the problem.
I know.
It's a sad but predictable response in certain families.
Exactly. I almost feel like he's talking to me about an issue and I just know there's a great podcast that would help him out with it, but I'm just like, Man, if I send him this podcast, it's like, well, what if they look through his email, which is not exactly an uncommon thing.
It really feels like we're almost slipping messages under the fence sometimes.
Sure, sure, I understand.
Oh man, it just, as I said at the beginning of the call, it just really fucks me up.
Oh, completely. Look, I mean, it makes complete sense that it messes with your head.
So, I hope it doesn't feel, I mean, I know it's frustrating, but I hope it doesn't feel weird.
There's not a single person in your position, myself included, for what it's worth, that has ever had an easy time of this kind of problem.
So you are in good company.
And just sort of by the by, one last bit of ambivalence.
One last? No, it can't only be one more.
I won't have it. Sorry, go on.
I'm the older brother, right?
Yes, yes, of course. That added...
Guilt and level of responsibility that if he becomes cold or if he is resistant to this stuff, there's a voice in me that's like, well, how much of this, Greg, is your fault, right?
Sorry, you mean his hostility towards philosophy or if it ends up being that way?
Yes, yes. So, like, how much of it is my doing from the past, right?
Oh, I see, I see.
Okay, yeah. And that, of course, is another cross...
That older brothers carry, right?
And it is to your entire credit that you are conscious and sensitive to that, because there are certainly those who aren't, right?
So that's good.
But as far as I understand it, you have not acted to make him hostile to philosophy or self-knowledge.
You didn't do that once you began to grasp the principles.
It was beforehand, right?
I'm sorry, can you repeat that last time?
Yeah, I mean, you didn't know and then act badly.
You only acted badly, so to speak, when you didn't know, right?
Like, you didn't hold these principles and then work to turn him against these principles.
You may have done things which would have turned him against these principles prior to knowing these principles, right?
Sorry about that. Oh, no problem at all.
So, as far as I understand it, you never did things which you would consider to be harmful to your brother Once you had a knowledge that they were harmful, right?
So you didn't turn him against philosophy once you understood or began to understood philosophy and self-knowledge.
So you only did, quote, wrong when you didn't have the knowledge to act in a better way.
Is that right? I mean, is that fair to say?
Or do you have a nasty streak that turned him against philosophy even when you grasped the value of it?
No, I think that's accurate.
Right. So there is a kind of prehistory for which there is no guilt, in my opinion, right?
And I think a really strong case can be made for that.
You know, like the doctor's not a bad doctor if he doesn't prescribe antibiotics in the 10th century.
Right, right. Like he just doesn't know, right?
And you don't know what you don't know.
And, you know, I'm a pretty smart guy who's dedicated his whole life to philosophy, and it took me a quarter century of intensive study to come up with some of this stuff.
So I think to say that before you'd even really been exposed to psychology and philosophy in any meaningful way, that you should be responsible, or you are responsible, for what took me A quarter century of dedicated study to come up with, I think would be holding the bar just a little too high in terms of personal responsibility and empiricism.
That's fair, I think.
And that actually definitely changes my...
I mean, there's still, of course, and I think this is just something that No syllogism in the world could really...
This is something that we need to explore more in therapy, but definitely that does help with some of the feelings of guilt, for sure.
Yeah, I mean, it's really, really important to recognize that a lack of...
I mean, there's a whole bunch of kinds of lack of knowledge, right?
There's people who just don't know, right?
I mean, we would not expect some goat herder in the outback of Afghanistan who's not even been taught how to read To be morally responsible in the abstract UPB philosophical sense.
Like it would just be crazy, right?
Right. Now, because, and he never had a chance to be exposed to the knowledge.
There's people who've been exposed to a lot of knowledge but just haven't been exposed to a philosophical way of thinking.
Or if they have, it's been a bad philosophical, like a post-modernist, post-grad kind of way of thinking or not thinking as the case may be, right?
Right. But then there are people who've been exposed to it, have seen the value, and then have run away from it and have attacked it.
And those people, of course, are morally culpable.
But you were in a state of pre-knowledge for which there is no right or wrong.
You couldn't be said to have been acting well.
You couldn't have been said to be acting badly.
You're in a state of pre-history, so to speak.
Right, right. And, I mean, given our parents, it was a bit of a war zone, right?
Yeah. I mean, if I... If I spit up in my living room and don't clean it up, that could be considered rather rude and not very couth.
But if Isabella does it, she's not acting badly, she's not acting well, she's just doing what she's doing because she's in a state of prehistory.
That was the nicest metaphor I could come up with.
And there's plenty more where that came from that would be less pleasant.
No, I just wanted to point that out because we want to differentiate the stuff that has validity with your relationship to your brother To the stuff which has no logical validity, but which you say, and rightly so, has an emotional validity or an emotional resonance that you need to work on through therapy and that kind of stuff.
But, I mean, the intellectual clarity doesn't solve the emotional problems, but at least what it does is it puts them in the dysfunction pile.
Right. It puts them in the set-it-aside and not as relevant to this conversation at the moment.
Well, it is. It is relevant insofar as we can carve off that guilt and say...
That is an error, which is perfectly understandable, but it's not something that we need to work on as something which is valid, right?
So if you're angry at a guy who punches you, that's a valid and emotional response, right?
But if you feel guilty for not knowing something that you were incapable of knowing at the time, that is a feeling that needs to be processed as an error rather than as a fact or as a valid and A truly empirical emotion, if that makes sense. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Thanks. Okay. So, the way that I... Where I think you're going nuts is you're kind of looking...
Okay, have you ever done this? You look at a kaleidoscope or you look at static, and if you look at it long enough or a screensaver that's really vivid or something...
I used to do this a long time ago.
I'd look at static. On a TV set, and sometimes you could almost see something rotating.
I would see sort of a space station rotating in the static.
Your mind would be attempting to form, or my mind would be attempting to form patterns out of randomness.
And then I would see some sort of pattern, and then it would go away.
Or you're sort of lying on your back on a summer's day.
You're looking up at the sky. You see clouds, and you see a cloud that looks like a horse's head or a spear chucker or something like that.
And then as you look, it begins to dissolve and change into nothing or something else or whatever, right?
It's a slow-moving kaleidoscope of essentially randomness, which we then try to put a pattern on, right?
Right, right. And then your mind keeps trying to say, well, where did the horse's head go?
Where did it go, right? Right.
And at what point was it no longer a horse's head and something else?
Like, I used to do that, too, lying on my back, look up at clouds, and I'd see a horse's head or whatever, right?
And then I'd look around at something else, and I'd look back and I'd say...
Yes, I can still see the horse's head, right?
I'd look away and I'd come back and I'd say, you know, I can still see the horse's head now, but I bet you if I looked at this with fresh eyes, I wouldn't see the horse's head at all.
I can only see it because I used to see it.
Right, right. Right, so this is, and I think it's a useful mental exercise.
It's more of an idle thing, but it is a useful mental exercise.
And the reason that I'm bringing it up is that I think what's driving you crazy is you're trying to find a pattern, but you can't find a pattern.
Does he support me?
Does he support my parents?
Is it personal or is it principled?
Is it philosophical or is he a peacemaker?
Why would he support them and then support me?
Why would he oppose them and then oppose me?
And why can I not bring it up with him and what did I do?
Like, there is things which do not follow a pattern, but you're trying to find the pattern.
That is what is tortuous for you.
And that is my theory, which could be complete nonsense, of course, right?
But I think that is what is the most tragic and absorbing for us, is when we try to find a pattern in people's behavior where we simply cannot find the pattern of behavior that makes sense, because the behavior remains unpredictable, chaotic. But not uniformly unpleasant, because sometimes it is pleasant, and sometimes it is supportive, and sometimes it is great.
But it's never consistent, and it's those relationships that really turn us into a pretzel.
Because the relationships that are just uniformly bad, you know, we can ditch them, and if we have a lot of history, it takes a while to process, but there's not a lot of ambivalence about that decision.
But the relationships that are, you know, kind of good, kind of not good...
You know, if you try to turn on a computer and everything is dark and nothing happens, you check the power, like nothing goes on, right?
Well, that kind of computer, you can take it to the shop or you can throw it out, but it doesn't consume a huge amount of your time.
You know, it's the computers that kind of work that drive you completely nuts.
If the car simply doesn't start, you just stop, right?
But if the car starts, goes for a bit, stalls a little, then you're tinkering, you're fidgeting, you're fussing with it the whole time.
It's those ones that can be the real time sync, if this makes any sense.
Or like a microphone that kind of works like this, right?
Well, this one actually works pretty well, right?
It's the one that has beautiful sound, but every three days gives you a mild electrical shock, right?
You're like, well, I don't want to give up the great sound, but I'd really like to not get shocked, right?
So these are the ones that you tinker with.
And It really comes down to trying to find a pattern where no pattern is discernible, right?
So if every Thursday your car doesn't start, well, on Thursday you take the bus, right?
Right, okay. Right, so if there's a pattern, right, then you can figure it out, right?
And of course, this is what software guys do all the time, right?
You call them up with a bug, they say, well, can you reproduce it?
And if you say, no, I can't reproduce it, then they say, well, we can't help you really because we can't just sit here for two days waiting for something to lock up, right?
Right, right. Whereas, you know, I click this, I do this, I do this, I do this, bammo, here's the error message.
Well, then they can step through and figure out what happened.
And so all of these metaphors, probably too many, but all of these metaphors are really designed to help you to see that what drives you nuts is the desire for pattern recognition without the ability to find a pattern.
Right, right. I mean, certainly the frustration is still there because I still kind of want a pattern, right?
But at least the frustration about there being no pattern is...
Wow, this is getting very meta.
Well, sorry. I didn't say that there was no pattern.
I just said that you so far have been unable to find one.
Oh. There's never no pattern, right?
The only thing that's got no pattern is like Brownian motion, right?
Even schizophrenics have a pattern.
Right, okay. There is a pattern, you just haven't seen it yet.
I'm not saying I know what it is, but there is a pattern, but there's something blocking you from seeing it.
Right, right. Okay.
Now, one of the great, and sorry, tell me, I know I'm doing a lot of talking here and I don't want to If you have stuff to say, please by all means say it.
I think I understand the issue, but also it could be because I've lived it and therefore I'm projecting.
So just let me know if you want to talk.
I'm just going to ramble a bit and you can just, of course, interrupt me and tell me that I'm not being helpful or we can talk about something else.
No, I mean, right now I'm experiencing that it's very helpful.
So if you can just tell me more, that would be absolutely helpful.
Right, okay. So, the pattern is there, but the greatest mistake that I've made, and I've made this mistake so many times, and I'm sure I'm going to make it so many more times, it's ridiculous.
The greatest mistake that I make in my life is mistaking the world for myself, mistaking people for me.
So I am a principle-based life form.
And that doesn't mean that I always achieve my principles, but it means that I'm principle-driven, right?
I will always strive to.
I will always strive to work out more clear and consistent principles.
And once I get a principle, it's impossible for me to consciously act in opposition to it.
Without a great deal of anxiety and unease.
That is overwhelming and requires immediate attention.
And that's just who I am.
Now, for me, I thought, okay, well, that's me.
I'm a human being. Therefore, this property must be somewhat common to human beings, right?
Everybody likes chocolate, right?
I mean, just about, right? It's a pretty basic rule.
Everybody likes chocolate. There are a few people who are, I don't know, allergic to it or who, you know, whatever reason don't like it.
But everybody likes chocolate is a fairly safe statement.
And so for me, I'm like, well, I like chocolate.
There's lots of chocolate around.
Everybody advertises chocolate.
And you don't add anything to chocolate to make it taste good, right?
You've got to put junk on salad to make it taste like something other than a vegetable patch.
But you don't put lettuce on chocolate to make it better, right?
So that was sort of the way that I thought of it.
I like chocolate. There's lots of chocolate advertising.
Chocolate is sold everywhere.
It's given for all the special products.
Gifts, occasions like Mother's Day or Valentine's Day or Christmas.
And so everybody likes chocolate.
That's a rule that you can kind of live with.
And so in the same way, I was like, well, I really like principles and philosophy.
And everybody always talks about principles and philosophy.
Like you hear nothing but that in political debates and other kinds of debates and in families.
Everything is an appeal to principles.
And so I sort of thought that principles were like chocolate.
You know, I like them. Other people like them.
Everybody talks about liking them.
They're always used to justify whatever the hell anybody does, and therefore everybody is a principle-based life form.
That was my fundamental mistake that I made, if that makes any sense.
Right, right. When, of course, sorry, the reality is that people like using principles.
They don't like obeying principles.
They like using principles to justify whatever the hell they want to do.
I'm not talking about your brother, right?
I'm just talking about myself for a sec.
And so, because people like using principles to justify what they do, they like principles.
They just don't like actually obeying principles in a consistent way, if that makes any sense.
Yeah, and I've heard you talk about sort of the mistaking the world for yourself before, but I haven't really experienced in that light before, so that's Right, so when you are exposed to principles, I always make them sound like someone in a kimono in a dark alley, you know? When principles expose themselves to you in the chilly dawn air, when you're exposed to principles, they kind of glom onto you, right?
Or you glom onto them, and they hit you in a very solid and deep way, and you respect the principles, and you try to work with them, and you try to improve them, right?
So principles kind of stick and adhere to you.
In a way that is somewhat involuntary, if I understand you correctly, in this way.
That was certainly my experience about two years ago, yeah.
Three, maybe. Right, right.
So, and this is something which, you know, like, first time I read Atlas Shrugged, first time I read Aristotle, I'm like, yep, I'm down with this.
I got no beef, right?
Now, it took me a while to find a beef, but up front, I had no beef with the methodology.
Same thing with science. When I first learned about science, I dropped religion and...
It became a science-based life form because it made sense.
But, of course, people can go through their whole lives rejecting science and being creationist underheads, right?
So exposure to principles has rebooted and rewritten very core aspects of your personality.
And it was not something that you had to fight to want.
You wanted it.
You had to fight, like we all do, to achieve it.
But you didn't have to fight to want it.
Once you saw it, you wanted it innately and involuntarily to some degree, right?
Right, right. I'm sorry?
Yeah, and in fact would work through vast amounts of pain, as you're well aware, to stay on to these principles, right?
Oh, absolutely, yeah.
Absolutely. Principles can be like those guys who own the bar and fight club beating up Brad Pitt.
You know, like, come on, give me another one.
Is that all you got? Right?
I mean, it is not pretty and you lose teeth, right?
And it can be sort of like, well, why are we doing this again?
Right. Raoul, absolutely.
Dear God in heaven, no question.
It's a crazy, nutty, non-wise thing to do, except that it works beautifully and you end up wonderfully happy.
But there's many times where that sun seems way beyond the dark side of the moon to be visible, so...
So that's you and your response and reaction to principles, right?
But that is not people like chocolate.
That is not innate to the human condition.
That is not innate to people's personality.
And because we are...
I mean, what are principles other than pattern recognition, right?
Because we have great pattern recognition, object constancy, abstract logic, those reasoning, functioning, ego-driven centers of the brain are working magnificently for us, innately, intuitively, automatically, and with a great deal of uncorked Viking-esque passion behind it.
We then think, well, all I got to do is show the beauty of philosophy to other people, and they will respond as I responded, right?
Right, right. And just a clarification.
Now, the more I sort of keep, I mean, only friends in my life are philosophically minded people, right?
So I guess the more I see that and see in my life that everyone in my life that I talk to as a friend does take principles seriously, does that maybe reinforce that everyone likes chocolate for me?
Well, it certainly means that, you know, to me, a friendship is very much involved in, you know, because we can only meet in reality, and reality is nothing more or less than a series of principles.
And so, since we can only meet each other in reality, and reality is principle-driven, intimacy is only possible through consistent adherence to principles.
In the same way that if I tell you to meet me in New York, and you think that New York is Bangkok, we're never going to meet, right?
Right. Because we both have to have the same empirical references to reality in order to meet in any way, right?
Which is why there's such a degree of loneliness in subjectivity, right?
Right, right. Okay.
So, yeah, I think your point does reinforce it.
And that you would be drawn to people who respect principles is because there's no other way to interact with people, right?
I mean, at the very basic level, we need to have the same principles of grammar, syntax, and language in order to have a conversation, right?
Sure, right. And we see this all the time on the board where people will come and use a word and, you know, they're just using it in their own way and nobody gets anywhere.
You can't even deal with each other.
You can't interact with anyone unless you have consistent principles.
Or more annoyingly, the bait-and-switch where they'll use a word and then change the meaning of it in the debate.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
For sure. For sure. And that's just a shame-based way of not connecting with people and frustrating them because you're so frustrated you can't connect with anyone, right?
So, anyway, we can get into that perhaps another time.
So in thinking about that, I think it's fairly safe to say, and this is just what I've heard, so tell me if I'm wrong, that your brother has not had that same overwhelming response, overwhelming and largely involuntary response to principles, philosophy, psychology, and self-knowledge that you have had, right?
I think that's absolutely accurate.
I mean, he's heard some podcasts, he's seen a few videos, and after all of them, like, yeah, that was kind of cool, right?
And then, I'm going to go play some video games, or, you know, there's stuff like that, right?
And then nothing like, oh my god, that was totally mind-blowing, right?
Right, or that illuminates a huge dark cathedral of my soul that I did not know I had, and whatever, right?
Right, nothing like sort of, I mean, looking back on my own experience, either reading Ayn Rand or listening to your podcast a couple of years ago for the first time, it was like, oh my god, I've got to download like 10 a day and just listen to them, right?
And just nothing could pry me away from them, right?
Right, right. So, the challenge is, I believe, and it's a big honking challenge, but you can do it for sure, but The challenge is to understand what your brother's experience of philosophy is.
Not me or FDR or even you or your experience of philosophy.
But to try and get inside his head in a conceptual or imaginative or empathetic way.
To try to understand what his response to philosophy is.
Because if you can't get there, then you will not be able...
To uncover the pattern of his behavior.
Because you will be mistaking him for you.
Right? And so you'll be trying to put a pattern, which is your pattern, on someone whose pattern is quite the opposite.
And that's why the ambivalence is.
Because you just can't connect.
But you also can't disconnect.
Because you've got a shared history and he's good sometimes and you obviously care about him in many ways.
Right? So you have to take down the mirror Right?
You know that thing where you're looking through a window where it's dark inside, and you see mostly your own reflection, right?
You have to cup your hands to look inside, right?
Well, what I need you to do, or what you should do in my opinion, is to cup your hands and try and look inside your brother's heart, mind, and soul to figure out what his response to philosophy is.
And that way you'll be able to look at him as him, rather than, if he were me, he should be doing X, but he's not.
And I keep short-circuiting on those crossed wires.
Wow. I mean, as you said, this is going to be hard, but I'll definitely...
I mean...
It's only hard emotionally.
It's actually quite easy to do, but it's only hard emotionally because usually the things that are hard emotionally are things that we don't want the answer to.
Right? So it's not...
You know the answer. This is not like, hey, all I need you to do is learn Mandarin and we're good to go.
Because you already know this answer.
And so it's not hard to do except emotionally, which is not to say that it's easy to do, but I just want to differentiate those two things.
Now, this is maybe putting the cart before the horse, but I guess I'll ask it anyway.
How will I know if it's the right answer?
Sorry, say it again? I mean, what's sort of the null hypothesis?
How will I know if it's the right answer?
I don't know if that's a...
Oh, yeah, you'll know it's the right answer because you will know the pattern.
Oh, okay. Can you go on?
Well, you'll know the pattern because right now you're tortured because you don't know the pattern because he's reacting in such a very different, if not opposite way than you are and you're still looking through the prism of your own personality, which we all do all the time, which is why we need philosophy.
But right now you're tortured because you cannot find a pattern.
You will know that you have the answer when everything clicks into place and you see the pattern.
Oh, okay. So it'll be sort of like that last bit on the combination and then all the doors will sort of open.
Totally, yeah. Because then you'll know...
What is driving him? And this doesn't...
It may mean the end of your relationship, but it may not.
It may mean that you recognize him for who he is, can value the things that he brings to the table, and won't continue to mess up the relationship by projecting yourself onto him, if that makes any sense.
Right. I really...
I mean...
I mean, I know...
Certainly there was a ton of projection from my parents onto us, so the last thing I want to do is do that, reinflict that onto my brother.
Absolutely, and again, I hope you won't kick yourself for it, because until you get the clarity, you're not responsible for the lack of knowledge, right?
Right, right. Okay.
Yeah, I don't know what's going to come out of it, but for sure, I'll keep journaling.
I can ask you a couple of questions that are sort of the things that I went through in my own process of looking at relationships, and maybe they'll help.
If you want to do it yourself, I'm totally, obviously, completely fine with that.
But if I could ask a couple of questions and you could find them helpful, I'd certainly be happy to do that.
Oh, sure. I mean, if you have some questions that helped you, I think that would be absolutely fantastic.
Right, okay, okay.
Well, I think we can generally say that people act in consistency with their perceived self-interest in the moment.
I mean, that's not that radical a statement.
People act in accordance with their perceived self-interest in the moment.
Now, in the moment doesn't mean that we only think about the moment, right?
If I have to drive a car, I might put down my drink in the moment because I perceive it's in my interest to be sober while I'm driving, right?
In the long run. Right, right.
But my interest in the moment is to put down my drink so that in the long run I can drive sober, right?
Now, people have a different set of time frames for how they deal with things in terms of self-interest, right?
So, you know, think of the sexual addict, right?
So the sexual addict...
Will go out and have sex because he's satisfying his desires in the moment without the thought of the long-term consequences to his mental and emotional health, right?
Or if he does have a thought to them, it's because he wants them to be worse, right?
Like somebody who keeps smoking is, you know, satisfying their pleasure in the moment at the expense of their happiness in the long run, right?
Sure, for sure. The people who are the hardest to figure out are the people who have the shortest time preference for gratification satisfaction.
Boy, that's a technically annoying way of putting it, right?
I think I get what you're saying, right?
Right, so people who, like, will just, and psychologically they're known as people with poor impulse control, right?
And so people with poor impulse control, they get angry, they'll start a fight.
They find someone attractive, they'll move in.
These people are very hard to figure out because there is only the impulse of the moment and therefore the pattern is really, really hard to figure out.
So static is random turning off and on of pixels on a TV or LCD, right?
And so because it's a very short time frame, Of these things going off and on and it's random, you can't find a pattern except, you know, vaguely and occasionally and coincidentally.
Whereas a test tube, sorry, a test pattern has consistency, right?
The time frame of things turning off and on and having colors or whatever is longer and so we can see the pattern of the colors, right?
So where people have a very short time preference or they demand instant gratification in the moment with scarcely a thought to the long-term consequences, those people are very hard to figure out.
Now, this doesn't mean that they can't be lawyers and doctors and people who have – I'm not just talking about people who get into bar fights, drive drunk and do heroin, right?
I'm not just talking about those kinds of people.
You can still have long-term plans and so on, but it still is – when it comes down to a crisis point, it is the tyranny of anxiety control or desire satisfaction in the moment that dominates the, quote, decision-making.
Yeah, yeah.
So, when you think about your brother, and of course philosophy is pretty much the longest deferral of gratification that exists in the world other than Christianity, right?
- I think you've described it accurately.
It's a shit sandwich and throw away all your relationships that maybe you'll be happy in the future, right? - Yeah, you gotta go through a lot of crap, like therapy, like, you know, you gotta go through a lot of crap in order to get to the promised land, right?
And even then you slip back, right?
So people who are principled have, you know, we really look at the long range and we really have A long-range time preference, and that's why we're willing to deal with the short-term, and sometimes not so short-term, discomforts and fears and anxieties.
Right, right. So, with that having been said, if you're having trouble, I mean, if you're on the very long-range philosophical principles approach to life, you're going to have the most trouble understanding people, not the people who are total range at the moment, Generally, assholes, right?
Because that's not your brother, right?
But people who are kind of in the middle.
They have a little bit of pattern.
They can defer some gratification, but it's inconsistent, right?
Because the people who are the opposite, we can usually figure out pretty quickly because they're just so distinct, right?
Right. They're just, I get angry, I yell at you, right?
Right, right. And so the people who would be the opposite from you would be more along the lines of your parents or, you know, the FDR trolls you've seen.
I mean, they're pretty easy to figure out, right?
Right, right. But it's the people who are in the null zone, right?
The half and half folks.
They're the ones who can drive us a little batty.
Because they seem to have some deferral of gratification.
They seem to have some principled approach to things.
But then they will act in an impulsive way and so on.
Right. And I can just...
I can see where you're going with that.
I can definitely see that my brother fits more into the half and half.
Right. So... So there is a pattern, for sure, and there is some recognition of the payoff of deferral of gratification, like he might go to college or he'll do whatever, right?
Defer gratification, unless he just wants to go to college, which is fine too, right?
There will be some aspects of it, but it's not predictable, it's not consistent, because it's not principled.
Right, and that's definitely, I mean, I think...
I mean...
Last I talked about it with him, he does want to go to college.
In fact, he wants to do sort of a six-year, seven-year college program, and he's always been deferred gratification when it means, I guess, material comfort in the future.
Yeah, because that's not a principal.
That's because he wants the fruits of the college degree.
That's his personal preference.
But it's not a principled thing, right?
No, it's not. It is.
And he wants to be a doctor, right?
Right. And he may well be a fine doctor, right?
Because those aren't philosophical things, right?
Whether you are a doctor or you sharpen knives on a street corner is not fundamentally a philosophical question, right?
So he'll defer gratification, but not based on a philosophical principle.
Sorry, could you just...
Which is kind of the middle where he has the ability to defer gratification, but he's choosing not to as far as philosophy goes.
As far as what? Philosophy goes.
Well, is he choosing not to?
Again, I'm not sure.
There I go. Is it a clear choice for him?
Right. Okay. I don't know.
Well, maybe what you can do to try and get into his head, and I know you can do this, because we all do this, right?
Your brother has a case against philosophy.
I can guarantee you.
He's looked at it, and whether it's conscious or not, He has a case against philosophy.
And we all know there is a damn good case to be made against philosophy, right?
Yeah, yeah, I'm sure you can.
So, you know, huddle close to your mic and let me have it.
It would go along the lines of, well, I'm about to graduate.
He actually graduates this Sunday.
I'm about to graduate high school.
Why can't you just leave me alone with philosophy and let me do this college stuff, get a degree, and then you can bother me with philosophy?
Oh, no, no, no. That's not the case against philosophy.
Uh-oh. No, no.
You skim in 1% of the surface there.
I mean, I agree with you. That's probably probably what he's thinking, but I can guarantee you when he's done college, he's not going to want to talk about philosophy in the same way that you were interested in it.
So give me the case.
What's it going to cost him? To explore and examine principles, right?
Because remember, we're principle-based life forms, right?
So if he examines and accepts a principle, it's going to end up changing him.
So why is he not examining and accepting principles?
What is it going to cost him socially, romantically, professionally, etc.?
Oh, right.
Well, frankly, what he's...
I think he sees the...
Oh, hold on.
Well, for sure, it's a more difficult road socially when you choose philosophy than it is when you just kind of go about being a friendly enough guy and getting your doctorate and things like that, right?
Yeah, I can see why you're having some trouble getting into his head.
Okay. Right, because there's no passion in your denunciation, right?
So make the case. What's it going to cost him?
What's it going to be like to go to school?
And also, since he knows that FDR talks about child protection, what's his life going to be like as a doctor when he sees patients who, without a doubt, are emotionally or physically mistreating their children?
What's going to happen to his life as a doctor?
Alright, well, just kind of make the case as his point of view.
Please do, yeah. He's going to lose most of his friends, if not all of them.
You can use the, sorry, just try the I. Sometimes that can help.
Okay, I'm going to lose all, most if not all of my friends.
Clearly, no more relationship with my family or extended family, except for Greg.
Clearly going to have a lot of problems with my professors, especially in some of the softer science, which I'm going to have to take a lot of those classes.
I'm really not looking forward to getting into debates about ethics and religion.
And when I'm a doctor, I'm really not going to like having to...
In fact, I don't know what I would do when I see kids with bruises on their backs or who are clearly being yelled at by their parents and just are emotionally dead.
And I know the causes of emotional deadness.
Right, and he's seen what happens...
He has seen what happened to me, right?
If he's had any exposure to the media stuff that happened last year?
I don't... Well, actually, I don't know if he had that much exposure, maybe through my parents, but I didn't really talk about the media stuff with him that much.
Yeah, I'm sure your parents have, if I've been banned, I'm sure your parents have noted it, and they probably passed it along to him.
So he's going to see, well, this is what happens when someone stands up for a kid, right?
Which is that, I mean, all that happened was I got, you know, they typed about me, which was not a huge deal, but of course he could get Right, right.
So I could even be...
They could file a malpractice suit against me, which could completely lose my entire livelihood.
And you could end up in jail, right?
I mean, it could actually go that far, right?
Right, right. And I'm going to certainly have some student debt, because, I mean, mom and dad are going to pay for my undergraduate, but I'm not entirely sure they're going to pay for my graduate degree.
So I'm going to be in some student debt, and if I... Actually, I don't know a figure.
But it's going to be a hell of a lot of money, right?
Becoming a doctor is like becoming a lawyer, right?
Yes. And a friend of Christine has graduated $90,000 in debt.
Yeah, and I don't think that would be an unlikely figure.
In fact, I would say it might be six figures after interest accrues.
Oh, absolutely. Yeah, for sure.
It's a brutal, brutal financial game.
But sorry, go on. So I'm going to be six figures in debt.
And then what? I'm going to be preaching philosophy, and I'm going to lose my entire doctorate license, and then what?
I'm out of a job with six figures in debt, and I don't have a family support system, and I have only...
And I'm 35, right?
Or 30, right? And I'm having a lot of trouble romantically, and what?
I'm also paying for therapy?
What are you trying to give me here, Greg?
Right, right. I mean, philosophy is social disease, right?
I mean, it's transmitted orally, right?
It is, you know, it's a very strong case, right?
Was that, I guess, a little better?
Yeah, no, that's better. I mean, I think you could still dig into the passion, right?
And you didn't even get into, which I'm sure is in the back of your brother's mind, deep down, right?
Which is like, oh, so you're telling me that statism is evil and I'm going to have to join a state-protected union in order to become a doctor?
Oh, right, right.
Yeah, that's right.
And that statism is evil, I'm going to have to comply with 100,000 pages of government regulations in order to even practice as a doctor?
Right. Going to a state college as well.
Going to a state college and, oh, and by the way, it also means that I have to, I'm going to have a great deal of difficulty educating my children should I even be lucky enough to find a woman who wants to have kids with a crazy philosophy guy.
Right, right. And, I mean, I'm not entirely sure.
My whole not going to college and working as a freelance writer is exactly showing him the financial benefits of all this, right?
Yeah, yeah. So I can work in a coffee shop and try to be a freelance writer.
That's going to be the great reward of what you're talking about so that I end up making less, paying more for therapy.
Donating to some bald, nutty guy from time to time.
And I live a life of discomfort facing legal threats from parents, or at least the discomfort of feeling that I really should act once I've absorbed these principles.
And I'm heavily in debt.
I'm socially isolated.
I work for an organization I've self-identified as corrupt and immoral.
Where's the great big ball of joy that's going to land in my lap that's going to make up for all of this?
Right, right. And for, I mean, I am absolutely positive that, I mean, it takes a lot for me after these two years to even kind of see that ball of joy, right?
Let alone if you're facing all that, right?
Oh, yes. No, you're quite right.
So, you know, from a cost-benefit standpoint, it's pretty tough to make the case, right?
In fact, if you look at it one way, he's actually making entirely the most logical decision he could make in the face of others.
Well, absent a deep joy in the pursuit of principles, it would be insane for him to do anything else.
Do you see what I mean?
Like, this is the case that is so tough for us to make, and this is why I don't tell people.
To just drop what they're doing and get into philosophy, because unless you take a deep joy in self-knowledge and the pursuit of principles, and we all feel that joy, even with the pain and the challenges that come with it, we still feel that joy.
If you don't feel that joy, well, it's sort of a moot point, because no one's going to pursue it anyway.
But even if you were to encourage people, I'm not sure that I would be comfortable saying to your brother, well, you don't feel that deep joy now.
But trust me, after you're $100,000 in debt and being sued for malpractice because you dared question an abusive parent and working for a corrupt status organization after having kowtowed to nasty professors for most of your college life, then you'll feel the joy.
Just trust me. Get into all this debt.
Face all of these terrible repercussions.
Have a difficult time dating with friends.
Separate if you have to from your family.
Do all of that. And then, don't worry, deep joy will settle.
I'm not confident that's the case, because I've never seen it, so I don't know, and I would be really hesitant or reticent to make that promise to anyone, because I just don't have any evidence, because anybody who doesn't take a deep joy in principles to begin with never pursues that course, the course that we're taking, so I don't have any evidence that it would even work for him.
Right, right. It would just be, in some ways, it would almost just be kind of an act of masochism, which...
Would lead to the opposite of joy, right?
Oh, yeah. No, absolutely.
If he would be acted out in that kind of self-destructive way, then it would just be, you know, like getting interested in philosophy would be like getting addicted to heroin, right?
It's just another way of self-mutilating.
Or like a more extreme version of the Ron Paul libertarians, right?
Just kind of... Jumping onto something that's not exactly socially acceptable, but in a more extreme way, in that you can kind of be socially accepted as a Ron Paul libertarian.
It's really, really hard when you take a principled approach.
Yeah, so I don't know how...
Like, if your brother were to call me, he's obviously welcome to if he ever wants to, but I wouldn't know how to make the case for him.
I certainly, I would not be confident to say to him, take all these bullets because then you'll be happy.
I can't make that guarantee.
I've got no evidence.
And I think that's why it's hard for you to see the patterns.
Thank you.
And it's still kind of hard to get inside his head, and I don't know exactly why, because normally I'm pretty agile with the role plays, but I don't know why this one is just so tough.
Well, the reason that it's tough, because what you're expressing is something that he's not experiencing consciously.
What he's experiencing consciously is...
That is interesting. It obviously, you know, Greg is really taken by it, and I think that's great.
I'm glad that he's found something that is so thrilling for him.
It's not of particular interest to me, although, you know, I do find it intellectually stimulating, you know, but to me it's like a podcast on astronomy.
You know, if Greg listens to that and wants to become an astronomer and devotes his life to it, fantastic!
But I just find that I have a mild interest in astronomy, and it's an interesting and entertaining diversion for me, but it's not something that moves me in the same way that moves Greg.
Is that closer to probably, if he were cornered, what he might say?
Oh, absolutely.
In fact, he's probably said almost exactly that.
Sorry, you need to step in.
Yeah, I mean, he's almost said exactly that to me on several occasions where we talked about philosophy.
Like, oh yeah, I mean, I like those videos.
Pretty cool. Right, and that's frustrating, right?
And the reason that it's frustrating and the reason that I would make the case that there's something unconscious going on for him is, well, it's twofold.
One is that principle-based lifeforms can't escape it, but we don't have to make that case because I've already made that before.
But the second is that If Christina really gets into something, right, if someone I love really gets into something, she just loves X, whatever it is, right?
Thai fusion cooking, Indian music, whatever it is, right?
And it overturns her life and she quits, you know, like, she loves flowers, right?
So if she couldn't be a psychologist, she'd be a florist, right?
So if she just, I don't know, she watched some show on being a florist, And she just woke up and she's like, oh my god, I don't want to be a psychologist.
You know, let's sell Meadowvale.
I'm going to go and become a florist.
We're going to turn over our life or whatever, right?
To me, it would be very, very, very important.
In fact, it would be the most important thing for me to do to understand what moved her about this so much.
Right, right. So what's frustrating, if I understand it correctly, is that he's not saying, tell me more, tell me more, tell me everything that this means to you, tell me how deep it reaches within you, tell me what it was like listening to these podcasts, tell me what your experience is, tell me how your world is different now than it was two years ago, tell me...
Tell me about how you see people, how you see the society you live in.
Tell me how you see art.
Tell me how you experience movies differently.
Tell me about everything. Even if he's got little interest for himself, he should, if he was not avoiding something, he should have a deep interest in the degree to which it has moved you.
Right? Well, I'm not sure that it's not there, but it's not expressed.
We generally get frustrated with people when they withhold something from us.
So, you know, the typical example is the guy trying to please his dad, and the guy finally makes it, and his dad comes to his corner office at the top of the Sears Tower or wherever the hell people have their Trump Towers or whatever, And the guy says, that's a pretty crappy view of the parking lot, says his father, right?
Right, and that's kind of a stock scene.
Sorry, can you go a little closer?
Sorry, and that's kind of a stock scene, right?
Yeah, it's a stock scene. Yeah, I had an ex-girlfriend who is now an ex partly because when I made it as a software guy, it had a nice corner office.
She came in and said, that's a nice view of the parking lot.
And by the way, your brother's office is a little bigger.
Right, and she was working as a secretary, and it's like, yeah, well, I'm sorry that I haven't made it enough to your exacting standards, right?
But we know that that person is withholding something from us that's very important.
Like Steve Martin talks about this in his book, right, that his dad would make fun of his movies, and his dad actually tried to be an actor when he was younger and fails, right?
Right. Well, you know Buster Keaton, right?
And so when people owe us something that justice and fairness would require that they give to us, right?
Praise or whatever, right?
Or at least a recognition of success.
When they withhold that from us, we feel frustrated and irritated and distant.
Because we know that they are...
managing themselves by hurting us, right?
Right?
She, this woman had to put down my success because she felt like a failure, right? .
And I don't know what it is with your brother, right?
But he probably doesn't like...
Sorry, let me rephrase that.
And I'm totally going out on 12 limbs here, so take it for what it's worth.
But this is what my gut tells me.
Your brother does not like the degree to which he hasn't...
Sorry. Your brother does not like the degree to which he has to dislike philosophy in order to get ahead in this world.
Your brother does not like what that reveals about the world that he lives in.
That he has to reject or ignore or dismiss or minimize principles and virtue...
And consistency in order to get ahead in this world, in your family, in his romantic life, in his social life, in his chosen profession.
He does not like the degree to which he has to reject principles to get ahead in this world because he does not like two things.
A, what that says about the world he lives in, and B, what it says about him.
And even the most successful philosophically minded person he knows of, which would be you, right, gets totally blasted in the media, right?
So it's like, this is the best I could hope for, right?
Yeah, and that's all they could do, right?
Right. Because the world has progressed a little because of prior philosophers, right?
But yeah, that's, I mean, he's, I mean, half the posts on FDR are like, Philosophy is my fucking curse, right?
Right. I'm lonely.
I'm never going to meet anyone.
I have no friends. It's too hard.
I thought I was working for a sane person.
Turns out I'm working for a crazy person.
I thought this company was good. Turns out they're bad.
Right? I think you're totally right in what you said.
About what it says about him, right?
Because I don't know exactly what it says about him, but I think it would have something to do with his choice in a career path, his choice of continuing to stay in contact with our parents for the material goodies, right?
Things like that. It's not just material goodies, right?
It's not like they're just going to give him a million dollars, right?
It's not just material goodies.
I mean, he wants to be a doctor.
Right. And can he be a doctor and a philosopher?
Well, sure he can. It's just really hard, right?
Right, right. I mean, I have listeners who are doctors, and they say, shit, it's really hard.
Sure, sure. I have one guy in Australia who's a doctor who's trying to get an entrepreneurial product going that will really help people's health, and the government's just trying to shut him down.
It's really hard. Right?
It's hard to be a guy who makes money off donations when I used to get a steady paycheck.
It's hard, right? And that's okay, right?
See, it's okay to me.
I would never have any fundamental objections with your brother saying, you know, it's too hard for me.
I just, I'm not built for that kind of fight.
And that's fine. I look at people running marathons and I say, I don't want to do that, right?
Maybe I could if I trained for a year, but I don't want to do that.
Right, right. But then the frustration, I think, comes in when he does jump in the ring for a bit, right?
And then he jumps back out, right?
And that creates a staticky image like you were saying earlier, right?
And why is he doing that?
Because he has a preference for principles?
No, because he wants to play with principles.
Because that's what people do.
They use principles. They don't want to live principles, right?
They use them to feel better about themselves, right?
Right, right. So when he stands up to me now and then, right?
Or not stands up to me, stands up for me, to my parents, right?
Now and then. Then he can say, look, I see both sides.
I'm not listening to my parents' propaganda.
Greg has his own perspective.
I'm trying to see both sides.
So he's got a principle called compromise, called seeing both sides, called being the peacemaker, called being, you know, so yes, I stand up to, you know, when When my parents say something unjust about Greg, I will stand up for him.
And when Greg says something I disagree with, then I will stand up for them.
But I'm trying to see both sides.
I'm trying to be reasonable. He's a middle-of-the-road guy, right?
Yeah. Yeah, he's been that way for as long as I can remember, for sure.
Right, so he's got a principle called keep the peace, or he's got a principle called all extremes are bad, right?
All absolute statements are bad.
All extremes are bad. All You know, all certainty is fundamentalist.
Right, right.
Or something along those lines.
Yeah, you understand.
I'm not saying anything about your brother.
I'm just throwing out possibilities because I don't know the guy, right?
And I don't know much about him.
I'm just throwing out ways to look at it that might be helpful.
And is it just ways that you can think about it?
Right.
Well, I can tell you what this is.
One of the big things that's coming out of this conversation is that it's helping me to at least have some fuel for more...
Because I basically had come to a standstill with my MECO system in that I had run out of questions from a MECO system.
Right, right. Because, of course, our MECO system is...
This is sort of the next step for...
This is a preview, right?
Our MECO system is only the first step, right?
What I'm saying is your brother's MECO system is the next step.
It's other people's MECO system is the next step.
Wow, and that's pretty, I mean, my ecosystem is already complex enough now.
Oh, I know. I'm telling you.
I'm telling you, right? And that's why I have, I was saying, go into your brother's ecosystem, make the case for philosophy, make the case against philosophy, right?
Yeah, and I mean, I already kind of sit down with my ecosystem and make the case for something, make the case against someone, everyone sit down, call a meeting, right?
Things like that. Oh, yeah.
Okay, let's get into this ecosystem, right?
Absolutely. You know, because our mycosystem is only one aspect, because I have an inner mother.
My mother has her own mycosystem, which itself is composed of other people's mycosystems, right?
It is an infinity of kaleidoscopes that makes upper personality.
Now, it's good to know your own mycosystem, but then you keep breaking it down, right?
Like you keep cutting those oranges, right?
Those Russian dolls, right?
Yeah, absolutely. And each aspect of our Each personality aspect that we have has its own mecosystem, which itself came from other people who had their own mecosystems, which came from other mecosystems.
That's why it's so complex, right?
So you've got your mecosystem ground to a standstill because you were projecting into your brother and therefore you couldn't see his mecosystem and his ambivalence and his challenges, right?
I was seeing black and white rigid principles in an almost fine rand way where really it's more of a Absolutely.
It is an ecosystem of mycosystems.
It's mycosystem cubed.
That's all I can say.
That's why I try to get people to roleplay other people.
To get a sense of what other people's ecosystems are like, because we understand all of that, right?
We have our ecosystem, and we have an ecosystem that is mirrored from other people's as well, and that's where we get complicated, is when we only look at our own, and don't look at the ambivalences that other people have that are not particularly related to ours.
Right. Well, wow. I mean, I can tell you, Steph, this was a really...
I mean, it was a tough call, for sure, but really, especially this last bit, it's really exciting, and it's given me a lot of stuff to run with.
And those are the most deep and fine-tuned and amazingly perceptive instincts is when we can get into other people's ecosystems and shuffle around in there and understand really where they're coming from.
Because when people don't have principles, the ecosystem rules, right?
Because philosophy is designed to subjugate the ecosystem to empiricism and evidence, which is why when I talk to people's inner demons, I bring evidence and reason to bear, right?
Right, right. So we subjugate the MECO system to reason and evidence.
But when people don't have principles, then the MECO system rules.
Which means that different aspects and characteristics are stepping into the spotlight at all times with no particular principles.
These people are very hard to figure out and you can't do it by looking for principles because it's sort of designed to be the opposite of principles, which is what I want, long or short range, but with a negative regard for principles.
No regard to principles would be like he's never heard of them, but once he's heard of them, he's got a negative regard for principles, which is to minimize them as a mere aesthetic personal preference.
In other words, to take principles and to turn them into a kind of hobby, right?
So you have not just an a-principled, but an anti-principled, right?
Because the whole point of what you're doing is that it's not a hobby.
It's not a preference. It's not an I like oranges and you like ice cream.
That's the whole point of principles is the universality.
Otherwise, it's not philosophy. It's just bigotry, right?
Right, right. So he's fundamentally anti-principled.
And he's not going to do that because he's a very smart fellow.
And by this, I do not mean corrupt or nasty or evil, just to understand where he's coming from.
Because if you can't understand where he's coming from, you can't work with him.
Right? So when I talk about him being anti-principled, I hope it doesn't come across as, and he's a bad guy.
Because he's not conscious of this.
He's in a state of pre-knowledge, right?
Which is, yeah, which is a lot of the fog that I get, right?
The unconscious nature of his own.
Yes, absolutely. The reason it's hard for you to see is that he doesn't want to see, right?
So just as sort of a practical consideration, because I already do sort of the Mika system in my journal, and I do sort of this, if I can't tell which voice, I just do the dashes or whatever.
Would you recommend I actually just write Mika system or whatever?
Oh yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely. In certainly my therapy journal, it was a huge leap for me to go.
Well, first of all, the huge leap was figuring out, was having my own mecosystem and then going to other people's mecosystems and then having their mecosystems argue with my mecosystems.
It was like a town hall meeting of 12 million people, right?
But that gets to the core of the complexity and the ambiguity that we feel.
When you go through that process, some real clarity emerges.
I mean, I know it sounds like it just gets more and more complicated, but I I'm telling you that real clarity emerges through that process.
But absolutely, I would jump out of your own skin and talk about what it's like to receive your phone calls, what it's like to hear a podcast, what it's like to hear your enthusiasm about philosophy, your questions, your hesitation.
Right. I mean, I haven't, of course, done this yet.
No, why would you, right? I mean, this is hyper-advanced stuff, right?
But yeah, if you can really get into his skin...
Then, it gives you the opportunity to not project, right?
Because you don't want to get into his skin and then have the relationship like you're him, right?
But you need to get into his skin so that you can get how different his perspective is from you so that you can be more curious.
Because if you're projecting, you can't be curious because you think you know, right?
Right, right. This is going to be, I think, a great exercise in empathy.
It is. It is the essential exercise in empathy.
And it doesn't necessarily always result in sympathy.
But it definitely results in knowledge and real clarity, and it is the opposite of ambivalence in many ways.
Well, I mean, thank you so, so much for taking the time for this call.
This was really great stuff, Steph.
Oh, I'm very, very glad.
Do let me know how it goes, and I'm really glad that you brought the topic up.
I mean, we've always had great chats, and I think this was particularly stellar.
Great. Well, thanks so much, and I'll talk to you soon.
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