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Oct. 18, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:51:11
1486 Sunday Show October 18, 2009

Izzy updates, discipline and parenting children, and getting along with roommates.

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Well, without any further ado, thank you everybody so much for joining us a little after 4, Sunday, October the 18th, 2009!
So, I hope you had a wonderful week.
Thank you for your patience, and we are ready to roll with the Sunday show.
And I hope you had a fabulous, fabulous week.
I hope that you're enjoying all the new podcasts, and I am ready to either start on a Ramble Spittle Tangent Fest, or I am ready and willing and able to Supine, I could say, perhaps, to hear your questions, slash comments, slash rank praise, or massive criticism of either my hairdo or the smallest mustache on the planet, because I just shaved this morning.
Actually, it's more of a goatee. Full-on Captain Morgan beard.
Anyway, I am all ears.
If you have questions or comments or issues or problems, speak on, McDuff, and I will be with the listening.
Otherwise, so I'll give this a second.
Otherwise, I will go to a comment or two.
Going once. Going twice.
Well, I just want to mention one thing.
Mention away. We changed one of the behaviors of the board over the week to where you have to be registered and logged into the website before you can view anyone's profile.
Excellent. Excellent.
So, that's my mention.
I'm back out. Right. And that's because most people are posting nude profiles, and so we just wanted to keep that...
Well, okay, so it's just me.
But other people could, I guess, if they wanted to.
Thank you. A good note.
All right. Well, you leave me no choice but to bore you about my daughter.
We took her to the mall today because she has a car seat that only works until she's a year old.
And shockingly, oh my God, it's shocking.
But we actually are going to celebrate her 10-month anniversary.
Birthday, tomorrow. I guess October the 19th.
She will be out of the womb for 10 months.
And since I spent most of my time trying to get back in, it's really quite interesting to see the degree to which she doesn't do that.
But we took her to a mall today because we need to get her a new car seat.
And because the one that she has just goes up to a year and we need to get, I think, a forward-facing one or whatever.
So there was a sale on. And we went to the mall and we picked her up recently.
It's like a little truck.
And it's built so that she can stand and push herself and walk behind it, sort of like a very accelerated version of an old lady behind a stroller.
And it's got bells and whistles and singing and all that kind of stuff.
And it's really, really cool. I posted a video of it this week.
And she just blows my mind.
She's so cool. She just picked it up and started going.
Like at an adult walking clip, she just goes that fast, which is really, really wonderful.
And so we took her to the mall today because so far we've basically just been having her go inside the house, like up and down the hardwood floor of the empty living room.
And we took her to the mall and she just barreled.
She literally went the entire length of a long, long mall and halfway back again before she got a little bit tired.
And it was just fantastic.
So it was really cool to see her just go, go, go.
And of course, she's easier to put down when she's had that kind of exercise.
So that was just fantastic to see.
It's just the cutest thing. And it just amazes me.
That's the first time she's done it, and she just goes.
And the second thing she did that was pretty cool, just today, just this morning, was, you know, for those who visited for the barbecues, you know, we have a downstairs and an upstairs, and there's two flights of stairs.
I think there's like nine stairs or eight stairs on each flight.
And for the first time, she climbed up the entire set of stairs, which is cool and dangerous slash scary.
And so that I thought was pretty amazing to watch.
We got a little video of that. Maybe I can post it later if people aren't getting too bored of this kind of stuff.
But it was really, really cool.
So, you know, these kinds of things that just occur so rapidly.
I mean, babies just blow...
It just blows your mind how rapidly the human brain can learn and move ahead in advance.
It just is fantastic.
So, again, parenting is a challenge.
And occasionally it can feel somewhat akin to...
Inarticulate manual labor, you know, like literally 20, 30, 40 times a day, she'll go up and down, back and forth from room.
She goes sort of from the front of the house to the back of the house, from the living room to the kitchen, and then goes back and then goes back and then goes back and then goes back.
And so it can feel a little bit retarded after a while, but it is very cool.
And other than that, you know, where you can feel a little bit brain dead shepherding someone back and forth and being, you know, Enormously encouraging.
I actually put on a cheerleader outfit most times that she does something new, which I'm surprised she does anything new anymore because I would think that would be pretty traumatic.
But it was pretty cool.
So feel free to pump up the questions, pump up the questions, ask, ask, ask, wait.
Oh, I also wanted to mention that I wanted to put together a second round of the...
Entrepreneurs Conference. Of course, it's tough because, you know, we have people from England who want to join.
And we are concerned about getting English entrepreneurialism up because the last time that happened, they ended up ruling roughly two thirds of the world.
So we're a little concerned about getting British ambition going.
So we're somewhat, you know, I guess we could be worse.
We could have Russians coming in.
But I think that's just something I wanted to mention.
So we'll try and get it going this week.
I'll put something up on the board and we'll try and work it out.
Because I think it was very useful and it was very helpful.
And I would certainly like to do more of it.
I keep forgetting that I'm an entrepreneur, right?
But it is important to remember that that is occurring as well.
Yeah, and of course, having Americans be entrepreneurs, well, you know, it's a little different.
It's not quite as funny. There is a new School Sucks podcast that is out there.
Do I have any open plans for American Thanksgiving?
I do not have any open plans for American Thanksgiving, other than...
I guess I'm relatively glad I didn't end up moving to the States.
What else was I going to say?
Okay.
Oh yeah, so I'm working with James Riak, who's the Executive Director of the NOS Bank The parents against corporal punishment in education and so on.
We had a fairly lengthy chat yesterday, and I'm going to work on...
I already created one audio version.
He wants to trim it a little bit, so I'll create another audio version for him, and he's going to try and get a Spanish speaker.
And if you do have a good Spanish-speaking voice and wouldn't mind reading this as an audio and have the equipment to do it, that would be very helpful.
He's keen and I think it's a good idea to get audio, CDs and stuff out to people who maybe wouldn't be that interested in reading a pamphlet.
They can just drop it in their car or put it in their boombox or whatever.
So we will be doing that and I think that will be a very useful and good thing to get done.
There is some evidence that there is greater degrees of corporal punishment among racial minority groups, Hispanic, black communities and so on.
So obviously I will be putting out a full Ebonics rap version With Kazoo and Spoons, which I believe are the musical instruments of choice for the streets of San Francisco.
Anyway, we'll be working on that.
I'm quite excited about that.
Let me know what you guys think of these interviews.
There's three formats of shows, fundamentally, if we count this one as the same.
There's monologues with airplanes and The occasional hyena sounds.
Right, there's monologues, there's conversations with listeners, there are interviews with, you know, outsiders, right?
And then there are Sunday shows, I guess, the same sort of thing.
So I'm keen to do the interviews.
I like the interviews. There are quite a bit of work sort of getting started up.
I did send a message to a doctor in Canada here who just released a book critical of the Canadian healthcare system.
I would very much like to interview him, and we'll see if he would be interested in that.
Yeah, people are saying that they do like the interviews, which are great.
And I don't really view them as interviews so much.
I mean, it's more like conversations.
But I mean, I will interview people when I have like no expertise whatsoever in the subject matter.
But for the most part, I have at least a few things to add.
So it's a bit more of a conversation.
I kind of like that format.
I don't sort of like the...
Because, you know, he might as well just do a monologue if I'm just there to prompt him for questions.
So I'm sort of keen on having it in this format.
So I will try to get...
I think that it's a big enough show with a big enough recognition that people are starting to have heard.
This Jordan Riak fellow is also a good friend of Alice Miller.
She's a bread maker, I think, based on her name.
Obviously, she would be a great get.
I'm going to ask him if he wouldn't mind dropping it past.
I'd also like to get a chance to chat with Nathaniel Brandon and see if he might be available for an interview.
We'll see if any of these things are possible.
I very much enjoy these conversations and I think that I'm getting positive feedback from people who like them as well.
That's what we will be doing.
I just want to put in my vote for the interviews.
I think that it's really cool to get an idea of the people who are If not doing the philosophy, because I don't think anyone else is doing the philosophy, but doing the real traction on the ground, hard, messy work of the no-spank.net and the psycho-history, I think that's really cool.
That's really awesome. If you find more of those and do more of those, I'm down with that.
Well, I appreciate that, and I think that...
Yeah, somebody has mentioned that the Journal of Psychohistory is a good read.
Again, it's a challenging read as a lot of the psychohistorical stuff is.
But you can email DeMaus with your name and address at psychast at tiac.net.
That's P-S-Y-C-H-A-S-T-H-S-T. Sorry, let me start that again.
P-S-Y-C-H-H-S-T at tiac.net and email your name and address.
And you will get the Journal of Psychohistory.
I think it's a really good read.
I think it's a really good read. I mean, they're not obviously voluntarists in the way that we would think of it, but so what, right?
I mean, we're not perfect.
They're not perfect. And I think it's very, very interesting.
The take that they have on history and economics and so on, there's a very interesting set of articles about the psychodynamics of the recent crash and boom.
And I think that it's well worth it.
Somebody has said in my review, yeah, I did a review of Capitalism, A Love Story.
It's interesting because I've been trying to go for weeks, right?
But it's tough. Not tough because it's hard to do.
It's just if Isabella goes to sleep, I have a bunch of FDR work to do.
And then when she's back up, I want to spend time with her, not going to see a movie.
And anyway, so I did get a chance to go and see it.
And I did a review, which I hope that you will enjoy.
And in that, it's actually the first time That I've been in a movie theater entirely on my own.
There was no one else in the movie theater at all, because I guess it was a matinee on a weekday, and it was fairly sunny out, and of course everybody's out there drinking at the sunshine like a half-dead daisy up here in Canada trying to store up the vitamin D for the winter.
But it was quite interesting to see a film entirely on my own.
But in that, I said that I don't support timeouts for children.
So he says, I'm wondering how you would deal with a child who is behaving poorly or endangering themselves in ignorance.
Well, I don't know.
I really don't know.
My daughter is 10 months old, and so far, discipline has not been required at all.
And by discipline, I don't mean that we don't set limits.
Of course, we do set limits. As I mentioned, there's a tone of voice.
Isabella, no, which we can use.
It's different. You know, she bit me this morning on my chest.
She left a red well.
She's going through a biting phase, which is natural.
But, you know, when she comes in for a kiss, I'm like, Oh God, please leave me with a nipple.
So I say ow, and she actually gets quite upset when she hurts us because she doesn't really quite understand the correlation yet.
So I have no idea really how discipline is going to work in this household as we move forward.
I think that, and I'm doing a lot of reading, I've been reading three or four books on infant psychological development.
And it really is quite fascinating.
You know, infants, Alison Gopnik has got a good book on this.
She mentions that infants as young as 14 months, 13, 14 months old, understand certain kinds of empathy.
So if the researcher who's sort of testing the child or trying to get the response to the child, the researcher drops a pencil, then the child will pick the pencil up.
A child who's a little over a year old, the baby really, will pick the pencil up and hand it back To the researcher.
But if the researcher pretends to throw the pencil away in anger, the child will not return it.
So the child understands the emotional difference between these two states.
The one is an accident and the person wants the pencil to be returned, and the other one is exasperation or frustration and the person does not want the pencil to be returned.
So based on this kind of research that I'm doing, And I may put this all together in some...
But, you know, I think people should just go and read the books.
I'll post the links on the board.
I don't certainly want to pretend that I have any capacity to synthesize all of this stuff.
Just sort of report on it. So I don't think that you can treat a child as too advanced.
And so I think that's important.
The first thing that I'm really going to do is just continually treat her as enormously advanced.
And that has been working very well so far.
I mean, she's not even 10 months...
And, you know, with support, she probably walked, you know, a quarter or half a kilometer today, which is very unusual for a child of that age.
So, yeah, so I just wanted to sort of mention that.
I think that's been very important.
I'm just going to treat her as very much advanced, as very much capable of empathy and good decision making, and just work to keep her safe in that way.
Work to keep her safe.
Work to keep the environment safe.
Clearly, Isabella cannot do anything wrong at the moment.
Isabella cannot do anything wrong.
And so there's absolutely no reason to punish her.
No reason at all.
I mean, I'm not a fan of punishment at all.
I think punishment is a very bad way.
To discipline children or to keep children safe.
Because you're not teaching them anything other than negative consequences, right?
Which means that they should be afraid of you rather than learning something about how the world works and what keeps them safe.
So, I mean, if she's endangering herself, well, what's she going to do to endanger herself?
Right? I mean, we're with her all the time.
We don't leave her unattended, obviously.
Right? And so what's she going to do to endanger herself?
That's our job to keep her safe.
Right? It's our job to keep her safe.
So I don't know what it is that she can do to endanger herself.
We don't let her go anywhere near cables.
We don't let her play with plugs.
We don't let her anywhere near the stairs.
We just don't let her do those things.
So it's my job to keep her safe.
And it's not her fault if we do something that ends up with her somehow getting in danger.
That's not her fault. That's our problem to fix, not her problem to fix through punishment.
So given that she can't do anything wrong, and given that we don't leave her in a position where she can be in a dangerous situation, I'm not sure where punishment is going to fit in.
Now, there will be a time, of course, when she starts going through the twos, at least that's the theory, that she's going to be testing limits and so on.
And we'll see. I don't know.
I mean, my general theory is that I give her as much latitude as humanly possible.
I give her as much latitude as humanly possible.
I try not to arbitrarily restrict what it is that she can do, even if it makes me a little anxious.
Today, she was crawling around the mall, and we were in a store getting her car seat, as I mentioned.
She wants to pick this up.
She wants to pick that up. We keep the hand sanitizer handy, and we let her do all of that stuff.
Now, then she did start to crawl under a set of cabinets where it was very dusty and dirty, and that was...
I just didn't think that was safer-wise, so I said, Isabella, you can't go in there.
And I slowly pulled her out, you know, slowly and gently.
And she was fine with it, you know, because we give her so much latitude, she's really not that bothered when a restriction comes down.
I think children get very bothered by restrictions and want to fight them when there are many more restrictions than permissions, right?
So she's allowed to go everywhere...
Except a few places, right?
Except a few things outside the home.
Inside the home, it's pretty much a free-for-all with one or two exceptions.
So I think what happens is she gets to go everywhere, and so when she doesn't get to go somewhere, it doesn't really bother her.
But I think if we restricted everything she did, then she would start to get very frustrated because she is really fierce in her absolute love affair with the world, right?
She has... An absolute, passionate devotion to discovering and learning about the world.
If we restricted that, it would be like trying to stand before a tsunami and stop it with your fingertip.
It just wouldn't work.
To keep her frustration level low, and to be very judicious in the restrictions that we place on her, to place as minimal restrictions on her as possible, means that when those restrictions show up, she's not particularly bothered because there's 999 other things that she can do.
So there's really no need for discipline.
It's our job to keep her safe.
And she can't do anything wrong at the moment.
And of course, when she does do things wrong, I'm not naive, and she will do things wrong, I mean, things that she knows are wrong, things that she'll lie, she will cheat, she may even try to steal.
I mean, these are going to be natural explorations of a child.
And the purpose, of course, is not to teach her punishment, because that externalizes the decision-making process.
If I punish her, It means that then she's like, okay, well, I don't want to get punished, not I want to be good.
And that's just not a good way to teach anyone anything.
What I will be curious about, I think, is if she lies, it'd be like, okay, well, tell me what was going on.
Tell me why you made that decision.
Tell me what you were thinking beforehand.
What were you hoping to gain? Just be curious with her so that I can understand Why she wants...
Because the important thing is that she not want to lie.
Not that I punish her for lying.
Because, again, that doesn't give her any sense of morality.
It just gives her negative consequences, which is, you know, anything that you would train a dog with, I'm not going to inflict on my child.
I'm just not going to do it.
Anything that you would use to train an animal is unworthy of...
I mean, I think it's pretty unworthy of an animal, too, but it certainly is unworthy of my daughter.
So... So that's, you know, I genuinely, I don't know.
But I think if she knows that we're passionately devoted to giving her as much fun and happiness and safety and security and love as possible, then I don't think she's going to be bothered by a few restrictions.
And she's going to, I think, innately sense that they're not arbitrary, they're not punitive, right?
Children are incredibly sensitive to the emotions of those around them.
And if we come from a right place, I just can't imagine...
That she's going to be terrifically fussed about all of this stuff.
It really, really doesn't.
If you're coming from the right place.
And of course, it used to be, right?
People used to believe that, you know, here's how you discipline your wife.
You know, here's how you discipline the women in your life and this, that and the other, right?
And, you know, that's...
You know, we don't do that anymore, right?
At least reasonable people don't do that anymore.
You don't sit there and say, well, how am I going to best discipline...
My wife, nobody would believe that stuff anymore.
So I feel it's the same way with children.
People will look back and say, I can't believe that people used to discipline their children.
In the same way that we sort of look back and we can't believe that people used to, quote, discipline children.
Their wives in this way.
So I just sort of wanted to mention that for people who were curious.
Again, I'm certainly not going to claim to be any kind of parenting expert.
But I sure as hell know what I'm not going to do.
I'm not going to treat her with any less respect than I would treat an adult.
And if I wouldn't do it to an adult, I'm not going to do it to her.
So I hope that makes some kind of sense.
And we'll find out.
Maybe I'll eat my words. I don't think so.
But we'll certainly see.
I've also found that she is very responsible in a weird kind of way, right?
She is very responsible in how she manages the risks in her life, right?
She doesn't run too fast.
She hasn't really dropped...
She hasn't fallen and hurt herself in...
Well, she's never fallen and hurt herself other than a little mark.
She's never even had a bruise, I think.
But she's... Yeah, she's very...
She's very careful, and she is very responsible, because she doesn't want to get hurt, right?
And we want her to have the ownership of that, not us, you know, because then she won't develop that sense, I think.
When did she get hair? Oh, she's getting this, so you can see.
I just put a picture in the chat window.
The hair is beautiful.
I mean, she just has this amazing hair that has got these beautiful highlights, and it really is just lovely.
Sorry, somebody had a question.
Let me just look it up here in the chat room.
Would it be possible, Steph, someone says, for you to talk a little on the topic of love as an involuntary response to virtue?
I have a problem falling for people who never feel the same for me, instead of get stuck in the friend zone.
People who seem to fall for me are not people I respect highly.
Can this be because I am not living my values?
Well, that's a...
That's a big question. And let me just...
Before I go into that, and just because I've been talking for a while, I want to make sure that, you know, others get the chance to talk.
I'll come back to that if nobody else has any other questions.
But if you...
So if anybody else has a question, we can have more of a dialogue.
That would be great. But otherwise, I will go back to that.
Going once. No, I'm happy to answer the question this way.
I just... We just wanted to know.
I just don't want to have a monologue show.
No? Okay. Well, let me tell you what I think.
These are all just my opinions, of course, but this is what I think.
I have definitely had the problem of falling for people who did not share my feelings, the mainstream media say.
Just kidding. I definitely have had the issue where people have...
I've fallen for me where those feelings have not been reciprocated to me.
And so I'll just talk about my own experiences.
Maybe they'll fit with you.
Maybe they won't. It's hard to say.
But the reason, I think, that people did not fall for me, the women did not feel the same to me, was that I was not drawn to their virtue, but rather other attributes.
That perhaps we're not quite as noble or elevated.
You know, everybody has certain physical characteristics, and maybe it's more than one set of physical characteristics.
Everybody has certain characteristics that they like, right?
It could be, you know, some people like butts or boobs or hair or, you know, certain things that people like.
Long legs, they have a certain thing.
And it can be, you know, it can be a bit of a pit.
It can be tempting. And...
So, if you find yourself attracted to people because, to a woman, because I'm gonna just go with the standard, sorry if I get the gender wrong, but if you find yourself attracted to a woman, the first thing that I would say is, was it like, well, this person is hot, you know, physically attractive, she has a particular attribute that I find sexy or whatever?
That would be the first thing, right?
Did I slowly become attracted to her as I got to know her?
Or even relatively quickly, if you got to know her relatively quickly?
So that would be my first question.
Would be to say, well, why is it that I am attracted to this person?
If I'm attracted to a virtuous person and they don't like me, then I doubt that we share the same level of virtue, right?
So the first thing that I would do, and this is true for everything, is to examine, you know, your motives and so on.
So, you know, my pattern, my mother was physically very attractive.
It's not something you really notice when you're a kid, but sort of looking back at it, you can sort of see in the pictures that she was very pretty.
And, for me, the history of being emotionally rejected by an attractive woman was a bit of a pattern that was set in my childhood.
And I don't think it was the be-all and end-all, but it definitely had an influence.
In my response to women or my relationships to women, right?
I mean, the idea that our relationship with our mother has some degree and effect of our relationship with women, I think is pretty much a given.
And I'm certainly not going to say that that's not the case.
I think it is. So, I would look at your relationship again.
Start early. Look at your relationship with your mother.
Was there, like, did you get the love and affection that you needed or wanted from your mother?
And if not, why not?
And, you know, so I would sort of look at that, those kinds of patterns.
So, work for self-knowledge.
Why is it that I'm attracted to people?
And just be very honest with yourself, right?
And just be very honest with yourself.
Again, I mentioned this in a podcast, but it is something that I found kind of funny, right?
That I would be attracted to women who were very beautiful, as everyone is, I think, right?
I would be attracted and I would attempt to get them out.
And sometimes it would work, but most times it wouldn't.
And then I'd be upset and I'd say, oh, you know, I can't believe they're so shallow that they won't go out with me because I'm bald or I just make something up or whatever, right?
And of course, it was entirely hypocritical and ridiculous on my part, right?
Because it's hard for me to say to people, well, you shouldn't judge me by my looks when I'm judging them by their looks, right?
I mean... So I think it's just really important to get out of that particular pattern.
And that would be my advice to you.
So I hope that helps.
All right. We have time, yes we do, for another couple of questions.
And please, you know, you have access to this resource.
I would suggest, you know, give it a shot if you can.
Yeah, newbies, welcome. There are no dumb questions.
There are only dumb podcasts.
Oh, there's a new School Sucks podcast out there for those of you who are following that.
So, again, recommended.
We are going to try and get, and thanks to the person who suggested this, we are going to try to get a roundtable with Wes and Brett and myself to discuss a variety of issues, and I hope that that will be helpful.
That will be enjoyable for people.
I'm certainly looking forward to it.
And we will brave the harsh echolands of Uvu to try and get that working.
Oh yeah, she was so cute at the mall.
Isilbella was so cute at the mall today.
I could hear these little sonic boom pops as I think women spontaneously ovulated walking past her.
And it really is a lovely degree to which a cute baby brings out the very best in people.
It is a lovely thing to see.
Somebody said, don't say things like that.
I was drinking. You know, there's nothing better than the philosophy that comes out of your nose.
Gee, you had a question about roommates, right?
Yeah, I was just curious what your experience with roommates was like and if you had any specific advice.
I mean, I generally had good relationships with roommates.
I mean, I lived in a room with a guy, right?
It was... It was very...
I actually just got in touch with him recently again over...
I haven't talked to him in forever, but...
I think it's useful to keep your distance from roommates, you know, like, you know, be cordial, be friendly, and so on.
I never actually became friends with my roommates, like friends' friends, but...
Because, you know, it just...
With friends, you get to sort of go and then go home, right?
So... I sort of felt a reasonable distance was useful and good.
And I sort of felt that that was the way to do it.
So, yeah, I mean, so, you know, pass and be friendly and occasionally would sit and chat if they had people over who they were socializing with or whatever.
But I lived with a guy for two years in undergrad.
And once, you know, in one room, we sort of shared one room.
And then secondly, we had a An apartment with a one-bedroom, so we sort of switched in and out of the bedroom term over term.
But we only actually went out for dinner once in the whole time, right?
So I think it's a good thing to have cordial-friendly roommates, but I think it's important that they have a social life.
Because if they look at you as like, ah, good, now I have a roommate, now I have a social life, that can be, I think, a bit oppressive.
And so I think boundaries is the key when it comes to...
The false obligation, right?
Yeah, it's like, oh, are you going out?
Are you meeting people? You know, you sort of get that thing, right?
And I think that's a little not that great.
But, you know, I think people who are cordial and social and, you know, have good relationships, I think, could be helpful.
I think it can be a problem...
I think it can be a problem if you get the sort of third roommate, right?
So someone starts dating and then that person is around all the time.
So if they already have a relationship, I think that's a good idea.
If they get a relationship, then I think you have to sort of do that boundary thing where it's like, you know, unless you really like the girlfriend or boyfriend, I think it's generally good to sort of, you might have to have that conversation like, we didn't really sign up for three people here, right?
Right, right, right. Rent and food and all that, right?
Right. Suddenly somebody's free-riding.
Yeah, I mean, three people should pay a third rent, right?
So if you're paying half the rent and they're getting two for one, you know, but I don't think that's too common, and hopefully you can figure out whether people are going to be like that up front.
Did you go through any sort of process when you were Picking roommates or rooms, or was it all pretty much basically born of necessity and coping?
It was necessity. Yeah, it was necessity for the most part, for sure.
And so that, I didn't usually have much choice.
As a guy I ended up living in the room with, I just had to rent a room because there was nothing available, and he just happened to rent it, and we just happened to get along really well.
He's the guy who, for better or for worse, taught me all my biology.
Because he was a biology major, so it's his fault, right?
So I would say necessity is fine.
You just have to kind of trust your gut when it comes to that kind of stuff, I think.
Sure, sure. Have you ever had any bad experiences with it?
Well, yeah. I mean, there was one woman when I was living with my Very pridey roommates in graduate school.
There was one woman who moved in for a while.
She was a lesbian.
She was in an abusive relationship.
She was very depressed. She would really kind of corner you and just talk, talk, talk, talk, talk.
And so that was a problem.
And I had to sort of deal with that somewhat proactively.
But yeah, I think that was the only negative experience that I had.
How do you push back without sort of creating a whole bunch of tension in the house?
Well, there's somebody, usually when you rent, this was a house, right?
So there's somebody whose house it is, right?
I mean, they were the founder, they got the lease.
So there's somebody whose house it is, usually in those situations.
And... So I talked to the guy who I had originally talked with, right?
And said, you know, this woman is sort of negatively impacting my experience living here.
And, you know, I don't know if it's just me.
What's your experience? He was like, oh my God, she's a trial.
You know, and so it turned out that I was not the only person who had an issue because this woman was...
You know, very needy and, you know, really, really would just corner you and talk about all these terrible things until you kind of want to just slowly ease your own head off your shoulders.
So I just sat down with him and I said, you know, is this just me?
I mean, I find this really difficult to manage.
I have to kind of make, I have to eventually just become rude because I can't spend all the time listening to about this woman's terrible life.
And he said, yes, it is a problem.
So we sat down with two of the other guys and one of them was his boyfriend and it was this other guy who was a dancer who was living there.
And, you know, we all said this is negatively impacting and so the guy whose house it was, the guy who had the lease, he's the one who had to say it's too crowded here and he eased her out, right?
Right.
So, I mean, but if everyone else is like, you know, she's great.
I love spending time with her.
Then you either have to live with it or move, but you can talk to the people who actually have the house and see if they're, you know, everybody might be experiencing it and nobody's sort of doing anything about it, which I think is important to note.
Yeah, I'm not sure exactly how it's going to work when I move, but I think actually in most cases, everyone sort of gets their own at least sublease.
if that makes any sense.
Yeah, I mean, so there is no one whose house it is, right?
Like someone owns it and they're just leasing it out to everyone?
Right, exactly. Well, I would talk to the person who is leasing it out to everyone and say, what is the process that will occur if somebody is not, right?
How is the dispute going to be resolved if things go awry?
Right. Right.
Or is it just strictly a question of, well, this place sucks, I'll break my lease and go somewhere else?
Well, I mean, I think it is a risk that everybody understands that things can go wrong in a communal living situation.
So I think it's just important to say, well, what, you know, what happens if that occurs, right?
I mean, do I just move?
I mean, do we have a, is there a way to, is there a meeting?
Is there a, you know, whatever, right?
I think that's important.
Right, right, right.
That makes sense.
I mean, and if somebody is experienced, like if a landlord is experienced, they'll know that this is an issue, right?
And if they don't, if they say, oh, I have no idea what would happen if the people who are living under the same roof ever have any conflicts, I have no idea what will happen, then I would not run from that person if there was a way to avoid it.
Oh, that's a good point.
Yeah, because then they're idiots, right?
I mean, what do you mean, right?
What do you mean there could be problems with strangers living together under the same roof?
Everybody gets along, kumbaya, smoke this, right?
So, yeah, so I think roommates can be great, right?
It can be... It's nice chitchat, it's good for expenses, and it's nice for people who like having other people around.
I'm sort of mixed. I like living alone, but I also like having people around.
But yeah, they're not your friends, they're not your confidants.
Boundaries, too much information is a very important thing to not experience, to inflict or to have inflicted upon you in a roommate situation.
You know, cordial acquaintances, I think, is the best way that I have been able to run that.
And I think that's the way to go.
I mean, the first year where I was renting a room, there was a frat, right?
So I was living in a frat house renting a room with another guy and talk about a potentially challenging living situation, right?
And I was actually asked to join the frat, but I just wasn't going to do anything like that.
That was nice of them to ask, I guess.
But, you know, I didn't really get along with the frat guys either, because, you know, I mean, it was a pretty nice frat, but it is still nonetheless a frat.
And so, yeah, but, you know, cordial and nice and pleasant and, you know, hi-bye and how's it going and stuff.
But, yeah, I never would go much better.
Basically, neighbors that share the same bathroom.
Yeah, I think so. I mean, that's the way it is with my neighbors too, right?
I mean, you know, hi-bye.
Yeah. Nice to see you.
How are your kids? What's new?
But, yeah, I don't get into any...
I got the spot! What do you think?
Get into that stuff, right?
Actually, no, I did once...
I have this guy who lives...
They have a kid who's a little older than Isabella.
And he was out mowing his lawn.
He's a really nice guy. And he will sometimes mow my side, and I'll sometimes mow his side, you know, because we sort of share a little bit on the front.
And I think the one time where I did sort of open up to him was like, dear God, I've been trying to mow this lawn for like two weeks.
And he's like, oh, I know we can't get anything done.
You know, particular phases in baby's development is just nuts because all you're doing is running around like Frankenstein attempting to have them not brain themselves.
And so I think that was the only time.
But even that was more just challenging things with parenting.
It wasn't really, you know, opening up or anything.
Yeah, that makes sense.
That makes sense. And it seems to be pretty much the pattern with the folks that I've been chatting with, too, about this.
A couple of people are already living there that it's pretty much a kind of neighborly relationship type situation.
But that's about it.
Yeah. No, that's...
You know, I'm sorry. I just remembered this two times that I've lived in the same room as someone else.
Gosh, after...
Oh, man. Oh yeah, it was after I left theatre school.
I put on a play that I'd written in downtown Toronto called Seduction, which was, as I mentioned, it's an adaptation of Ivan Torgenev's fathers and sons.
And I lived in a frat house, which was available for the summer, and I lived with a guy, a pretty funny guy actually, who worked for Ontario Hydro and had nothing to do with his days whatsoever.
But I wasn't around too much.
I was working two jobs and I was also directing a play.
And so I didn't see him very much, but that was fine.
You go to bed, you wake up, you keep your bathrobe on, and all that kind of stuff.
That just works out fine.
All right, I'm just going to open it up to see if that's enough.
I just want to make sure that we're dipping into the pool of the people who've joined more recently.
If they have any questions, you can type them into the chat room, or you can, of course, dial in.
Hey, James, we should, if I sort of, I have a phone number on Skype.
If people call that, then that could be, they can be added that way.
We could have like a call-in number.
Is that fair to say? I don't know.
I don't think so.
Oh, I think so. Let's try it.
Let's try it. Well, go ahead.
It's 315-876-9700.
And James, if you see someone, then you think you can just say, add to the conference, and they will then be on the Skype.
It's 315-876-9705.
Yeah, you can add phone numbers, but you can't have them dial you, because that's going to come up as a separate call.
It does, and then it says, and there is an option called add to conference.
If you say answer or add to conference, if you say answer, then it puts the...
It puts the conference on hold.
But I think you can try it. I think you can try it.
Sorry, somebody had a question.
What do I think of repressed memories?
I really don't know.
I really don't know. And I don't know that anyone knows.
Oh yeah, sorry, somebody mentioned, if you have an FDR roommate, I think that would be a really great idea, just for obvious reasons.
But yeah, repressed memories, I don't know.
I don't really get the phenomenon, because I remember everything.
Except where I put my keys this morning.
But around my childhood, I remember...
It sounds weird, but it really is quite true.
I remember almost every day.
I remember my childhood with such vivid detail that it's a bit of a freaking burden at times, I can tell you.
People will say, I don't remember anything before I was 10.
I had memories from before I could walk.
I know I was a pretty physically advanced child like Isabella.
I've got to think that's a year old because I remember sitting and not being able to get up and not being able to walk away from something.
I have memories from very, very early on and they're pretty continuous.
I remember the very first, I mean, I remember having a dream.
I remember a dream that I had when I was, I couldn't have been more than two, about digging in the woods and finding this most amazing gold and being so overjoyed that I had these immense riches.
I just, I remember that.
It's one of my, the very first dream that I remember.
And I was very, very young.
So, oh, it looks like it didn't work.
Yeah, sorry. The phone ended up coming through here.
James, it didn't come through the server there at all, did it?
I think I missed it.
If we could ask that person to try calling again?
Yeah, sorry. If you could call again.
Yeah, because there's no audio thing on the server, right?
Because it doesn't... 315-876-9705.
That would be great. Just call again.
It came in, but then it forwarded itself.
Yeah, yeah. So, now, as far as repressed memories go, again, I have no idea of the psychology or the medical, of course, any of that sort of stuff.
But I do think that there is a fundamental issue around repressed memories.
And the idea is, if I understand this rightly, the idea is that people will say, I was abused.
And then people will say, well, you...
They will remember that they've been abused, right?
So they go to see a therapist or a psychologist or a psychiatrist or something.
They go through therapy or maybe it happens through medication.
I have no idea. And then they get memories coming back of having been abused, you know, sexually.
Usually I think it's sexually or some other way.
And then they say, well, I didn't know and now I've gone through therapy.
I now know and so my memories were repressed as a result of this trauma and The parents who are accused in these situations of certain kinds of abuse, again, usually sexual, have a counter move, and I don't know if it's a move or not, but I'll just characterize it that way.
They have a counter move called the false memory syndrome.
And what they say is that people are very suggestible.
And so the therapist, he implants memories of abuse, he or she implants memories of abuse into the You know, just say a woman, right?
A woman then comes and says to her father, you sexually abused me.
And he says, I didn't.
And how come you never talked about it before?
And she says, well, my memory was repressed.
I went to therapy and now I remember.
And the father says, it is false memory.
It is a memory that has been implanted by the agenda of your therapist or whatever, whatever, right?
That someone has convinced you that you have been abused.
And it didn't really happen, right?
Emotionally, with no, you know, again, it's just amateur opinion.
I mean, I tend to side with the victim.
I side with the victim. I side with the victim.
This doesn't prove anything, but it's just my general leaning.
So, if...
If someone comes forward and says, oh my god, I went to therapy and I've got these memories, came flooding back, this terrible abuse or whatever, I would tend to, I mean, I don't think you could convict anyone in a court of law, but I would tend to say that that is the truth.
Whereas, of course, the people who were accused will say that it was a false memory that was implanted.
Unfortunately, it just doesn't really answer any questions.
I tend to go with the belief that memories can be repressed, it's just my opinion, but Memories can be repressed because they're too traumatic and they show up in various other kinds of dysfunctional behaviors and drug addiction or bulimia or promiscuity or tattoos or lots of tattoos and stuff.
And I think that memories can be recovered.
And I think therapy can do that.
I think it's really difficult.
And again, I don't know anything about the science, but I got to imagine that it's pretty difficult to convince, let's say, a woman that she was sexually abused when she wasn't.
I think that would be a tough thing to do.
I don't know that memories can be implanted in that kind of way.
Because, I mean, at least for me, memories are very vivid and very detailed.
I remember the smells. I remember the angle of the sun in the room.
I remember the quality of the light.
I remember what was on bookshelves.
I remember the time of day.
I remember the season. I mean, I remember a lot of detail.
And I think if such a memory were to arise in you unexpectedly, I don't think that it could be implanted by someone else.
So for instance, I remember things that happened in my room, good and bad things that happened in my room when I was a kid.
And I don't think that somebody else could implant those memories because they wouldn't know what was in my room.
Whereas my memory is of stuff happening in my room, and no therapist would ever know what was in my room, or what time of day it was, or what the typical weather was that time of year, or all that kind of stuff.
What happened before? What happened after?
So I think if the memory is very specific and very detailed relative to things that somebody else couldn't know anything about, that I would tend to go with that as a valid memory.
And I know memory is a tricky thing, and you can misremember it.
Memories sometimes can be more recreation.
But I still think that if you remember the essentials and the particular environment, my particular opinion would be to go with that as a true memory.
But again, it's just my particular opinion.
Yeah, false memory syndrome, I don't think it's ever been, to my knowledge, I don't think that it has ever been proven as an actual syndrome.
So I think that is...
You know, I think that is...
I don't think it's valid.
Again, just my opinion.
But I don't think the false memory syndrome has ever...
I don't think it's ever been scientifically proven that you can genuinely implant traumatic memories into someone else just by talking to them.
Right? Because that's all that goes on in therapy is conversation, right?
And I just don't think that you can convince someone that she was abused when she wasn't abused.
I just, I just, I don't think that you can implant vivid memories of that.
I believe this question, somebody's saying, I believe this question was more along the lines of someone claiming not to remember things that recently happened that were traumatic, mother not remembering abuse.
I'm sorry, was that the mother not remembering being abused when she was a child or an adult, or not remembering criticisms or claims of abuse that she committed against others?
Oh, somebody says, my father abusing both me and her.
And when we're talking recently, how recently are we talking about?
Oh, a few months. So your mother is saying that she can't remember her father abusing you and her a few months ago.
Is that right? Right, right.
Okay. Well, look, this would be my suggestion in this situation.
Obviously, you know, unless your mother has some serious brain disorder...
It seems to me somewhat unbelievable that someone who did not receive a blow to the head, it seems to me unbelievable that somebody would not remember something traumatic that happened a few months ago.
I mean, really, I just...
I find that hard to believe, but, you know, what do I know?
I'm just some guy on the internet, so this would be my suggestion.
If you...
Because, you know, I mean, my mother claimed to remember none of this stuff too, right?
It's just a... And just on the part of my own mother, you know, when I sat down repeatedly to talk about things that happened when I was a kid, you know, she was, I don't remember any of this, but if there's anything that I can do to help you, I'm here for you.
Right? The I don't remember, I mean, if you ever want to see that in action, just watch Alberto Gonzalez being questioned about torture memos or, you know, firing lawyers for not supporting Bush or whatever.
It's very easy to find people who say, I don't remember, because it is such a blanket stop.
To a particular direction of investigation.
But my suggestion would be, you know, if your mother wants to help you with, let's just say you have these memories and you want some help with them, then, and your mother says, I do want to help you with them, my suggestion would be to say, okay, I'm going to, you know, if you don't already, I'm going to open up the Yellow Pages and I'm going to find a competent therapist.
A good therapist, right?
Somebody really accredited and who you feel comfortable with.
And I would go for a couple of sessions myself to sort of test the waters and see how comfortable you were and talk about this thing.
And then I would go to your mother and I would say, it would be very, very helpful if you really want to help me to deal with this stuff, which I appreciate, then let's go to talk to this therapist together.
Let's go and talk to the psychologist together.
And... Have your mother come for a bunch of sessions and have the therapist probe and use that kind of expertise.
To make any kind of even semi-objective decision about this, a second pair of eyes who are really trained, eye contact, body language, tone of voice, all of those details.
A good Cal Lightman, so to speak.
Somebody who can help you with this kind of stuff.
And who is skilled and precise at being able to get past some of the defenses that people have, if they are defenses, around the I don't remember stuff.
So that would be my very strong suggestion.
Always, always, always, you know, when you're dealing with these kinds of family issues, get into a good therapist.
And if you can get family members to come with you to therapy, that is...
Absolutely wonderful. It is going to save you.
I mean, it may sound expensive, but I'm telling you it's going to save you years of stress and anxiety and a feeling of aloneness, right, when it comes to confronting these issues.
Having somebody else in the room who is sympathetic with your desire to get to the truth about family history in the form of a therapist is unbelievably valuable.
It is absolutely essential.
So that would be my suggestion.
Don't get into a he said, she said, so to speak, with your mother, but...
Get into therapy. Get your mother to come for joint sessions.
Tell your therapist ahead of time what it is that you're looking for.
And hopefully the therapist will agree.
I'm sure that would be the case. And just try and get a second pair of eyes to look at the situation.
And somebody...
I mean, the great thing about therapists...
The great thing about therapists...
This is pitch 12 million for going to therapy.
Is that if we have to confront...
Difficult or dangerous people, wherever they are, but let's just say in your family if that's where they are.
If we have to confront difficult or dangerous people, we are terrified to do it.
And we are very susceptible to stopping that process because we're so scared.
But a therapist is not, right?
They have no dog in the fight, so to speak.
And so they can be more objective, more persistent.
They don't suffer from the same history.
Of the activation of the fight or flight mechanism with regards to a difficult or dangerous family member.
And so they can push further in a more relaxed way than we can.
And if your mother refuses to go, well, I think that's telling, right?
Again, I don't know for sure, but, you know, my mother said, anything I can do to help, it's like, let's go to therapy.
I'm not going to therapy. It's like, So I'll do anything to help you, Steph, except spend an hour sitting on a couch talking about things with somebody else in the room, right?
So that was an indication to me of how much she was actually willing to help me, because it's easy to say.
It's tough to actually do.
Oh yeah, somebody mentioned...
And this is another thing too, right?
I mean, this is an excellent point that somebody mentioned on the board.
If your mother says, I don't remember...
Or your parent says, I don't remember, when you bring up things that may be considered critical of them, I think it's important to remember back to your own childhood.
And when you said, I don't remember, was that okay, right?
If it was okay, then clearly there's some UPB compliance there.
And if it wasn't, then that's something to pursue, right?
So the person has written, I'm long distance from my mother now, but I doubt she would even agree to that.
My father would probably not allow that.
Well, it's not for your father to allow or not allow.
Obviously, your mother is a sovereign individual, fundamentally, right?
Certainly legally. But that would be an example of something abusive, right?
Not allowing your wife to speak to a therapist, to me, would be a pretty nefarious and ugly thing to do in a marriage.
So if your mother says, well, I can't remember...
Anything that was negative that came from your father and you say, let's go to therapy and your father forbids it, you'd be like, well, here's one, right?
So again, it's just a way to open up the conversation.
I've always been a big fan of figuring out whether people are saying things to you because they genuinely want to help you or whether they're just saying things to you to kind of throw you off the scent.
I think that's really important.
Hello. Hi.
Yeah, so I just recently called my mom and I actually said something about all the abuse and she just claimed she didn't remember anything and that just baffled.
That just baffled you?
Is that right? Yeah.
Okay, go on. So I don't really know what to do.
Like I would love it if she would leave him and Like, I just bought a house and I had extra room if she would come and bring my brothers, but she won't even acknowledge that anything ever happened.
I really... I don't know.
I'm so, so sorry.
What is it that you have been talking to her about in terms of issues that you had with your upbringing?
Well, um... I asked her, like, seriously, what did you think about my child?
And she looked like your childhood was fine.
I gave specific examples of times when he had hit her or he was going to hit her and I, like, intervened.
And just a few months ago, the last time I was out there, he threatened to kill her over something really trivial and she just obeyed him and didn't say anything.
And I asked my brother, like, is it always like this, or is it just because I'm here?
Because I'm not biologically his, so my brothers aren't.
I don't know, like, I think that's something to do with it.
But they tattled on me, basically, that I asked them that.
And he was basically bragging that he's punishing my mom because I'm there.
And she's like, I have no idea what you're talking about.
Okay, sorry. I appreciate you bringing this up.
I know this is a difficult topic.
I just want to make sure that I understand.
So you went to go and visit your parents, and your father threatened to kill your mother, to murder her?
Yeah. And again, not that this should ever be said in joke, but could it be considered to be a kind of jest, you know, like, oh, I could just kill that person or whatever, right?
No. He, like, angry through his teeth, like, if you don't do what I'll say, I'll kill you.
Right. Now, I noticed that when you said, you know, he threatened to kill her over something inconsequential.
You get that it doesn't matter that it was inconsequential.
Because that sort of implies that if it was serious, then that would be okay, right?
But it was inconsequential, so it's out of proportion, right?
She would never even say anything to the folks.
Like, she's a little baby here.
Well, sure, sure.
All right. But I know, I understand that it's never acceptable.
Right, right, okay. And then your father said that, if I understand this right, what you're saying is your father said that he was punishing your mother because you were there.
He didn't say so many...
He didn't specifically say, I'm punishing her because you're here, but he's like, yeah, it's because you're here, because you're this and that, and that's why things are like this.
Like, I'm causing him to be pissed off.
So he has no control over his behavior.
You are provoking him to make these death threats against your mother.
Yeah, it's always been like that.
It's always my fault.
He has no control. I'm making him mad.
Now, is it your father's belief, if you had to guess, right?
I know we're just conjecturing, right?
But is it your father's belief that...
Nobody has control over his or her own behavior, they're just provoked by circumstances?
In other words, nobody can be blamed, they just get provoked by circumstances?
I think that only applies to him.
Everyone else has to be controlled, control themselves, obedient, but he's somehow special.
So everybody else is very much responsible for their own behaviors, but he is not.
Yeah. Right.
But that's very interesting.
Does he say that it is a principle that a human being should be responsible?
Like, if you go and say, well, Dad, I'm not responsible for my behaviors, what would he say?
He would say that's absolutely ridiculous.
But all the time, he blames, he says he didn't get good grades in college because nobody told him that he should.
And he said that a lot of times.
So he said that I should get good grades because I'm telling him, because he's telling me to.
Sorry, I just want to go back for a second.
Sorry, I apologize for interrupting.
I just want to go back for a second. So if you were to say, Dad, I'm not responsible for my own actions, He would say, that's ridiculous, you are responsible for your own actions.
And then you were to say, is it true that everyone is responsible for his or her own actions?
What would he say?
I guess he would intellectually agree with that, but he always has excuses why he's not responsible for his own actions.
Right, okay, so then there is no principle called everyone is responsible for his or her own actions because he's not responsible for his actions, right?
So then he can't say that everybody else is responsible because he then gets to not be covered by his universal rule.
I know this is very abstract, but I think it's quite important.
Uh-huh. Yeah. Right?
So everybody's responsible except for me.
Yeah. Right.
But then he can't inflict responsibility on others that he's not willing to take himself, right?
Not justly, anyway, right?
Mm-hmm. Okay.
And your mother has been married to him for how long?
Well, I got married when I was like three, so I'm 24 now, so about 20 years.
And do you view your mother as a victim?
I guess, but like, it's her, she should have known better.
Sorry, because of what? I think that she should have known better and put herself in that situation.
She gave up her power and she made herself a victim.
She could stop it at any time, but she doesn't.
Right, right. I'm just asking questions.
I have no idea what you should do in this situation, right?
I'm just asking questions, right?
Have you thought of calling the authorities?
Well, he's not physically beating.
No, no, no. Death threats, as far as I understand it, are illegal.
Again, I don't know where you're from and don't tell me, right?
But I think throughout most of the world, threatening to kill someone seriously is illegal.
But, like, I have no evidence and it would just...
I feel like it would come out very badly, like it would make things worse.
Look, I mean, again, I'm not telling you what you should do, but if evidence is the problem, you can just get a little digital recorder for 30 bucks, right?
and you can record one of these conversations and then you can play it to the cops and say I think that my mother's life is in danger I don't think that her life is actually in danger but he But there's that threat that if someone steps out of line, he will use physical violence.
Sorry to interrupt. Do you believe that her mental happiness or potential for happiness is in danger, even if he never lays a hand on her, if she lives under the threat of murder?
Yeah. Is that enough to motivate you?
To call the cops?
I don't think so. I want to do something, but I don't know if calling the cops would be appropriate.
Well, what about calling...
You could call...
And again, I have no idea what you should do.
These are just some possibilities, right?
You could call a woman's shelter or a feminist organization or the National Organization for Women...
If somebody could get the website up on the chatroom, I'd really appreciate it.
We can pass that along. You could call them and you could say, this is the situation.
You know, my mother is receiving death threats from my father.
What are my options? And they're not going to, you know, kick in the door and arrest your dad because they're, you know, civilian organizations or whatever, right?
But they could give you some advice on ways in which you can proceed.
It is my opinion, and it is, of course, only my opinion, That you can't solve this problem because you're a child of the marriage.
And I think that this requires experts and I think this requires significant investment of resources to solve this problem.
If your mother has been physically threatened or emotionally threatened for decades, as you say, then she's akin to somebody who's been addicted to heroin for 10 years, right?
No family member can save someone who's been addicted to heroin for 10 years.
That person needs significant professional intervention to deal with the problem.
And it's my opinion That you simply cannot solve this problem.
And I think that your mother is telling you that you can't solve it because she's not even willing to admit that these things happened.
Somebody has just put up, thank you James, www.now.org.
That's the National Organization of Women.
Or you could look up a battered women's shelter or you could look up anybody, any expert who deals with aggression against women and you could talk about what is going on in your parents' marriage.
You could also meet with a lawyer who may have expertise in domestic violence cases or domestic threat cases.
You may be able to get this case pro bono.
You also may be able to get even a half an hour of time to get a consult where your options could be laid out.
It is my absolute strong opinion that you cannot step in like some sort of ninja and solve this problem.
This problem far preceded you.
Obviously, your parents knew each other before you were born.
Or at least it would seem to be likely.
So I don't think that you can solve this problem on your own and I think it would not be helpful to try.
There's a National Women's Law Center which you can also access, thanks Richard, from nwlc.org and they will also give you information about what options you have in this situation.
I don't believe that you should try to solve this problem on your own.
I don't think that children can fundamentally solve their parents' problems.
It's just my opinion. I just don't think that they can.
I don't think that if your mother was diabetic, you wouldn't try and administer medication on your own.
You would get her to a doctor, right?
If your mother was a drug addict, you would recognize that hiding her drugs or her money would not solve the problem.
If your mother had some sort of chronic illness, you would get her to a doctor, to a specialist as quickly as possible.
And in a situation of chronic threats of violence and murder that have gone on for years and decades, I don't believe for a second that you can solve this problem.
I think that your mother needs a team of professionals and people who have experience doing this kind of thing and who have experience getting past these kinds of defenses.
I would not take on the salvation of your mother from the relationship she has with her father, I don't believe.
That amateurs can solve these kinds of problems.
And I understand you're not an amateur as far as your family goes, but my strong advice is to reach out and to get the facts and the information and to get the people in who will have the best chance of success.
Because you can try for another couple of years and it won't get better, in my strong opinion.
But if you get people who've got lots of experience going in, they can probably step in the right way to get the right outcome, or at least it will give the best possible chance to have the right outcome.
That would be That would be my very strong opinion.
Yeah. Okay.
And I say this, and I know I'm sort of giving you lots of to-dos or whatever.
This is, again, it's all just my opinion.
But I also just wanted to say that I'm incredibly sorry.
I'm incredibly sorry and incredibly sympathetic that you would even be within 100 miles of this kind of situation, within 100 miles of having to try and make these kinds of awful decisions, to have to try and help someone Who's so broken down that, you know, denial and blankness is the result of somebody, her daughter, trying to genuinely help her out of this difficult and dangerous situation.
If your mother, like if your childhood was ruled over by this, you know, as you say, brutal patriarch, and your mother says you had a good childhood, I don't think she's close enough to reality to even know what the right thing is, what the right thing to do is.
She's in a haze and a daze of blankness in a way.
That would be, again, just...
It's not a diagnosis or anything because I'm not a psychologist, but this would be by, you know, somebody who's just not in reality at all, who says that something is black when it's white, you know, can't be reached by just mere conversation or whatever.
I think that she's going to need...
Significant professional intervention.
She may want that. She may not want that.
She may choose to go that route.
She may not choose to go that route.
But if you really want to help your mother, I think that it's really important to look at her as having a complex, highly sophisticated set of problems, right?
And whether those are medical or mental health or whatever, we don't wade in and try and solve all of those things.
We try to get...
I mean, I think we can... We can give sympathy.
I mean, I hope that you're able to get that I'm giving you some sympathy.
I'm also hoping to give you some moral clarity that it is absolutely unacceptable.
It is absolutely unacceptable for anyone to threaten anybody else with murder.
It is absolutely unacceptable for your father...
To threaten to kill your mother in anger.
It is absolutely and completely and totally immoral to threaten and bully someone's life in that manner.
So I hope you don't have to be an expert to give moral clarity on this and I hope you don't have to be an expert to give incredible sympathy for you to even be in this situation.
But given that that is the situation, given that you do want to help, then I think you need to bring in the professionals.
They are going to have the greatest chance of success and...
And I would say that if you don't want to bring in the professionals, that is most likely because you don't feel that it can work.
But if the professionals can't do it, I don't believe that you can do it at all.
What if they refuse?
Like, should I not speak to them?
Well, that's entirely your choice.
Yeah, that's entirely your choice.
Sorry to interrupt. That's entirely your choice.
You can speak to people in your life.
You cannot speak to people in your life.
It has been my philosophy from the very beginning and it's not just my philosophy.
It is in fact a legal reality and a moral reality.
Adult relationships are voluntary, right?
You don't have to see your parents.
You don't have to not see your parents.
You can choose to have them in your life.
You can choose not to have them in your life.
There are choices and there are consequences.
Like you can choose to Smoke crack if you want and there's going to be consequences to that.
You can choose to take up jogging and there will be consequences to that, right?
Positive consequences we hope.
So I think that I personally would not have a lot of room in my life for people who offer death threats.
I would not have a lot of room in my life for someone like that.
But that's my perspective and my opinion.
But I would certainly say that the first thing that you should do, regardless of what happens with your family, the first thing that you should do Is get into therapy.
Like not tomorrow, not later, but like, you know, stop talking to me, pick up the yellow pages and call a therapist.
And if you have to sell your car, if you have to sell your blood, you know, I'm just kidding, right?
But whatever you can do to get into therapy, right?
I mean, if you borrow money from your family, if you don't have any money, just say, I need to get some help, blah, blah, blah.
But get into therapy.
I think that...
Your desire to help your mother, I completely understand it.
At least I think that I do. And I sympathize and respect your desire to help your mother.
I personally don't think you can do it.
And I think your mother is also telling you with her denials that you can't do it.
But I think the first and foremost is not to make decisions like see them or don't see them, you know, go there or don't go there.
But I think the first thing to do is, you know, given this...
Oh, I'm so, so sorry.
I mean, God... People should not, should not have to live with this kind of stuff when they're growing up.
I just, I can't tell you how much it breaks my heart, especially as a parent myself, to just, to hear the degree of suffering that people experience when they are growing up.
It is, I mean, my heart goes out to you.
I mean, huge cyber hug, you know, for what it's worth.
But I would, you know, if I were in your shoes I would stop trying to help my family.
I mean, if your family has existed for the past couple of decades, they're not going to burst into flames tomorrow.
I would stop trying to change and affect my family.
I would get myself into therapy right away and just try and start to work through the pain and the history and the fear of growing up in these kinds of threatening environments.
So that would be my absolutely strong suggestion.
Just once again, my just unbelievably deepest sympathies.
I mean, children... Should be treated as precious gifts from the universe and not in any other way.
And it is sad and tragic that there is an army of the dispossessed and the downtrodden that have come through these kinds of histories.
So I just wanted to extend my absolutely deepest sympathies for you for all of this.
Will you think about therapy?
Uh-huh. And...
And you understand, this is all just my amateur opinion, right?
I mean, I think I know a little bit about ethics.
I myself have gone through years of therapy, and I found it to be absolutely, enormously, fundamentally helpful.
And I think it would be really essential before making any kinds of decisions about anything to do with this stuff.
Yeah. Oh, you're welcome.
I'm so, so sorry.
I'm so sorry. People should not have to be burdened with this kind of stuff at all.
It is so fundamentally tragic.
And the only thing that I can say is that the self-knowledge that you can gain out of really delving into this history with the help of a therapist will give you an enormous capacity for happiness and power later on in your life.
And I'm not saying you don't have it now.
I'm just saying that it will increase.
So there is definitely light at the end of the tunnel, but I think that to try as the child to affect the behavior of your parents is like all with no bottom.
And I think that you need to get yourself straight and get some legal or practical advice from experts before trying to think about how to deal with this situation.
I don't really know what to say.
Don't worry about it. I mean, this is not about you contributing to the show.
I mean, I just wanted to put that out there.
So listen, drop me a line if you can and keep me posted, but stop listening to me ramble on about my nonsense opinions and call a therapist and set up an appointment.
That would be my absolute strong suggestion.
You also may want to check out those websites.
They may have Therapists who have more expertise in these kinds of issues, and that probably would be someone to talk to.
Like, say, you know, this is my family.
Do you have any therapists in the neighborhood that you would recommend who would have experience with this kind of stuff?
Yeah. All right?
Okay, listen. All the therapists, and do give me a shout if you go, and I'd love to know how it went.
Okay. All right. All the best.
Thanks. You're absolutely welcome.
That's, I mean, that's hard stuff.
That is hard stuff.
I mean, it is... I mean, it can be a little shocking to hear these kinds of stories, for sure.
But, you know, this is, I think...
I think this is where philosophy and virtue and truth and courage, you know, find their home, is in these kinds of situations.
So, you know, these conversations happen because of listener support and of this conversation.
So, I hope that...
I hope that you find it worthwhile and valuable.
And if anybody has any suggestions on how I can improve my responses, I'm, of course, as always, more than happy to hear.
All right, I think we have time for another short question.
If anybody has, don't feel shy about following a call like that.
This is a very courageous woman who called in.
And I'm very, very glad that she did.
And I hope that the experts will help her out and...
It is tragic, of course.
I mean, this is something I've mentioned before.
But it's very sad that there's not the moral clarity in society that this would be a conversation that she would have among friends or extended family years ago, right?
But this is something that people don't like to talk about, don't like to get involved in.
And I can understand why sometimes.
But I think it is important, if you know people like this in your life, you know, ask them how they're doing.
Give them some suggestions.
Help them to get into therapy.
Help them to get into A situation where experts can help them, and I think that can do some wonderful stuff in the world.
Hi, Steph. Hello.
Hi. I have a question, but I'm not sure how short it is, so you can just let me know if you think it's too complicated.
Sorry, was that the question? No.
Because it went up at the end. That was my guess, but okay, go on.
I'm just nervous. The, uh, the, I kind of noticed like a pattern in myself and this came up recently where, um, like I'll, I'll start to plan something like, like a get together with friends or like a meetup type of thing.
And then I get like really anxious about it.
And like, I kind of, I noticed that I was like, kind of like taking things personally.
Like if people don't like respond to Oh, you mean like you wanted to run a book club but then nobody read the book or you wanted to do a movie review when nobody had actually seen the film?
Wait, sorry, that's more me.
But sorry, go on. Yeah, something like that.
What came up recently was I was planning a conversation paired with an activity and I was trying to get everybody's schedule And, uh, like people were kind of like taking a little while to respond and I, and I started feeling kind of like, like resentful.
Can you give me a slightly more details if you don't mind?
Um, okay.
Yeah. Uh, and, and I kind of had a chance to talk a little bit about, so it's been a little bit pressed that I'm, uh, yeah.
Okay. Details. Uh, It's okay if you don't.
I just want to make sure that I understand.
If it's not appropriate, that's fine.
But if you can throw a few more scraps my way, that would, I'm sure, be helpful.
Yeah, no, I don't think it's a problem.
I was planning this bake chat where a few people were going to get together on Skype and make this pie together.
Yeah. Yeah, so I asked, you know, people who were interested and I got a couple responses and then I sent out an email.
I'm sorry, just so I'm sorry to interrupt, is this through FDR or something else?
Well, it's FDR people that I'm talking to, but I haven't like posted on FDR. Oh yeah, so it's just people that you know from FDR. Okay, fine.
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
So, yeah, so I sent out an email asking for different people's availability and And, like, I mean, it wasn't even, like, a very long period of time, probably, like, three days.
And I hadn't...
I'd gotten, like, a couple of responses, but not very...
And I also, like, kind of the people that I'm more close to weren't responding.
Like, kind of my closer friends.
And I don't...
I don't know. Like, I just felt kind of...
A little bit hurt by that.
I was taking it kind of personally.
That was saying something about how they felt about me.
Right. Right.
And then I talked to one of the people on Skype I just asked instead of waiting for the email reply.
And he told me that his schedule was all changed around from what he had told me originally.
Which kind of annoyed me even more because...
I had he told me like his idea of what his schedule would be and then I sent out this email you know kind of getting the specific dates and then he knew this schedule is gonna be different but he didn't reply right right right look I mean I I think I understand it and I don't want to interrupt if you have more that you want to add so let me just stop for a sec if you do well just one little thing I had I kind of like talked to him about how that made me feel and And he said that,
like, he knew, like, when his schedule changed, he didn't think about the chat schedule.
Like, it wasn't on the forefront of his mind, so that's why he hadn't responded to me yet.
So I'm kind of thinking, like, it doesn't really have...
I think it's, like, something more to do with me than to do with, like, these people.
Like, a reaction in me.
Right, right. Now, so people did make a commitment to you, and then they failed to follow through, right?
Right. Yeah, well, kind of, because they express interest and then I asked for schedules and then they didn't really follow through.
Okay, okay. And do you think that, would you characterize it as rude?
And again, I'm not trying to, you know, leading the witness.
I'm just wondering, did you experience it as rude or disrespectful or maybe even insulting for people to say, yes, I'm interested in And then you go to the work of trying to set up schedules and so on and you get no response?
Yeah, kind of rude.
And, like, I kind of felt like...
Sorry, I'm, like, kind of.
Yeah, yeah, I think it's rude.
And the thought that I have about it is, like, I would respond right away.
Sure. Like, I'm kind of holding them up to, like, how I would have handled it.
Right, right. Right.
So you would be responsible as far as getting back to someone?
Because I would imagine that the people who didn't respond have not tried to organize something.
Because when you try to organize something, it's a lot of work, right?
I mean, people, they never want to do anything.
They'll say they do, right?
And they don't really want to do it, right?
Because, you know, I mean, I've tried a bunch of initiatives on FDR, a variety of different things.
We used to do salons.
We've tried book clubs.
We've tried a bunch of other different things.
And people express interest and then one or two people show up out of the dozens of people who will express interest.
And nobody said they're not coming, right?
So you sort of go ahead and then that's it, right?
Yeah. And I'm old school.
I mean, I'm with you. I'm old school that way.
I think that I take those kinds of things quite seriously, right?
I mean, if I make a commitment to someone...
To do something that they're suggesting, then I consider myself sort of bound by that.
Now, it doesn't mean that I'm bound to do it, but it means that I'm bound to either do it or tell them I'm not, right?
Right, exactly. I take it like if you said to me, Steph, I'm going to meet you at a movie theater at 9 o'clock and we're going to watch a movie, right?
Then the way that I see it is I either meet you there at 9 o'clock or I phone to tell you I'm not coming.
Right. I don't just not show up, right?
Yeah, definitely. And I have the thought, too, like, if you're not that into it, like, it's not going to be, like, the end of the world for me.
Like, it can just be, like, a couple of people, you know, on the chat.
Right. I mean, it's your thing.
Like, if I suggest something, you know, that the community might enjoy, and everyone says, eh, forget it, I'm not interested, or nobody responds with any positive interest, Well, that's fine.
I mean, that's okay. Just, you know, put it up the flagpole, so to speak, and see who salutes, right?
So I'm fine if people don't want to do it.
But when people say, oh, that's great.
Oh, I'd love to. Oh, I got five friends.
Will, right? And then, you know, they don't, then you have a list of 20 people who want to do something and you bend while wasting time trying to follow it up, right?
Right. So what turns into something that would be fun for people turns out into something that's annoying and frustrating and like herding cats that are, you know, on acid, right?
Yeah. Right.
So I'm old school with you that way.
I mean, I just...
I don't know why whether, you know...
Because even, I mean, people who I grew up with, it's not just cultural, people who I grew up with don't have the same commitment.
You just do it, you know, do it or tell me you're not going to do it.
That's all I sort of ask from people, right?
But when people express their willingness or desire to participate in something and then don't respond, I mean, I think it's interesting.
I don't think it's personal to you at all.
I don't think it's personal to you.
I do think it's rude. I do.
But I don't think it's personal to you.
I mean, I think I've struggled with this, right?
Trying to get a philosophy conversation going, not to mention asking people for donations from time to time can be a challenge on the ego, right?
It can be a challenge. And the way that I've sort of thought about it is I think to follow through on your commitments It's to have something larger than just the moment, right? So it can be a little difficult if you say, let's do a pie club, and I say, I'm sorry, that's not really my thing.
I don't think I'd be interested, right?
In the moment, that can be, you know, I'm going to hurt her feelings, or she's going to be upset, or I'm going to, whatever, right?
So in the moment, I might say, yeah, that's great, because in the moment, I just want to make me feel good by thinking I'm making you feel good, right?
It's just in the moment. I'm not thinking about the future, right?
I'm just thinking about making the other person happy in the moment with no real thought for the future.
And fundamentally, I'm around making myself feel better in the moment, right?
Right. Now, if I were to remember and say, okay, well, if I say yes to this, Right?
Then I'm going to have to do the next thing, and I'm going to have to do the next thing, and I'm going to have to do the next thing, and then I'm going to have to do the next thing, and this could take up hours or days of my life over the next year, right?
And if I'm clear about that, that that's going to be the result, then I'm going to not just say yes to appease someone in the moment, right?
If I don't want to do it.
If I remember all of that in the future, right?
Right.
Now, I think I think there's something terrifically sad.
About people who've been raised in such a way that they can't, in a sense, really get the emotional realities of a long term commitment, but can only appease the possible upset of others in the moment.
It's a bit of clicking on the line there that's coming from you.
Thank you.
Oh, sorry. No problem. Not sure why.
But just, I mean, again, the way that I stop taking things personally is I think about everyone's history, right?
The 99.99999% of their life that they had before they met me.
That's how I don't take things personally, right?
Right. Right, like a drop of water that falls on my forehead that might be cold and unpleasant...
If you think of it like water molecules from the dawn of time swirling around at the ocean, dried up into the clouds, falling down, like the 99.999 infinity percent of time that those water molecules have been floating around before they hit your forehead, you realize that they didn't just get created and shot at you, right? Right, yeah.
So when I find this kind of thing where I start down a road because people seem to be enthusiastic and there seems to be traction and then everyone just kind of vanishes on me, I think, well, how sad that is.
How sad it is that people don't feel that they can say, I'm sorry, I've changed my mind.
I don't really want to do it.
Right. Like, how would you have been raised that you couldn't say, I thought I was interested in it, but I just, I'm sorry.
Or, you know, I got something to confess.
I'm really sorry because...
I really didn't want to do it at the time.
I just wanted to make you feel better in the moment.
And that was kind of selfish because that was about me and not you.
I'm really sorry. Now, if somebody phoned you and told you that, it's not likely you'd be really mad, right?
Right. No, definitely not.
You'd be like, damn, you know, that's an amazing thing that you just did.
I can't tell you how much that impresses me.
Sorry.
You noticed it.
You thought about it.
You are honest with yourself about it.
You're honest with me about it.
And you have said to me, I'm sorry, I just, I realized I was appeasing you in the moment, which was kind of selfish.
And I had, you know, if I really thought about it, I really didn't have an intention.
and I realized that that was unfair to you, so I'm just, I'm really sorry, I just wanted to set the record straight, because it's, you know, not reasonable, right?
Yeah. It's amazing, but people can't feel free to do that, right?
What they do is they just blank out.
They appease you in the moment, And then they get your email and they're like, I'll do it later.
Or they just blank out.
But how sad that they've been trained or raised to be so non-assertive that they have to conform and comply in the moment and can't even assert their preferences or even know their real preferences later on, but all they can do is avoid.
I mean, that's really sad.
It's frustrating, don't get me wrong.
I mean, we don't get all zen and say I float above it with no problems.
But fundamentally...
It's really sad.
Yeah, definitely. And I didn't really think of it, like, from that perspective, but I, yeah, I can definitely see that.
And the other thing, too, I'm so sorry, you go ahead.
Sorry, let me stop. No, I was just going to add that I just think that really helps, like, to keep it, to keep me from, like, taking it personally, because it's definitely not about me, but I think that keeping that perspective would help.
Right. And do you mind if I just mention one other thing that I think will also help?
Yeah, definitely. Please.
A lot of times in life, and this is true when we're growing up, but it also can be true as adults.
A lot of time in life, people will kind of...
I'm not saying you do this, right?
But people will kind of get a commitment out of you by being a little bit pushy.
And then what happens is you kind of appease them because they're pushy or they're aggressive or whatever, right?
You kind of appease them, but then later...
They will pursue you and they, in a sense, have power over you because you made that commitment.
So people sometimes view the giving of a commitment as the surrendering of power to somebody else.
And then they resist that power by avoiding the person who they now believe is going to control them because of their commitment.
Right, it's kind of like the master-slave...
Yeah, the master will impose something.
The slave has no choice but to say no.
Sorry, the slave has no choice but to say yes.
And then the master pretends that that is a voluntary thing, right?
So, I mean, to take a macro example, right?
There's the social contract, right?
I mean, we have no choice but to say yes, right?
Because they have the guns, right?
But then they say, but you made a commitment.
You're still living in this country.
It's a contract. You owe me, right?
Right. Right. And that I think is important.
I mean, this happens in the realm of religion, right?
Parents will say, so you're going to come to church with us on Sunday, right?
And the kids know that they can't say no, right?
Oh, yeah. So then they say, yeah, okay, right?
And then the parent gets them up and says, no, no, no, you made a commitment.
Right, and then they get mad if you like fidget or...
Well, then the children will be slow.
All the passive-aggressive stuff that can happen in these situations.
Because the children don't fundamentally feel that they had a choice, right?
I'm not saying this is true of all kids, right?
All situations. But in these situations, I've certainly seen it.
The kids don't feel that they have a choice.
But a commitment was kind of forced out of them in a way, or bullied out of them in a mild way.
And then because they gave the commitment to comply in the moment...
Then they feel passive-aggressive because other people now have power over them because of this commitment that they didn't really want to make to begin with.
It was a false commitment, right?
Right. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
And so in a way, people are evading you because now you can order them around because they made a commitment.
So they're just resisting power in a way.
And again, that's really sad.
It's got nothing to do with you because, you know, I think that your bullying days ended last week, I think if I remember rightly, late last week.
Yeah. Obviously, right? Oh, yeah.
Stop taking people's pets hostage to get them to do what you want.
So you've mostly put that stuff by the wayside.
But that's not you.
But people will respond to you in that way, right?
But it's got nothing to do with you.
This is the 99.99999% of their lives that shapes their reactions long, long, long, long, long before they met you.
Right. Right. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Now, my suggestion, right, because this has all just been explanatory, right, to whatever degree it is, right?
But I think that your temptation would be to say, I feel hurt and upset, right?
If you were to talk about it with these people, right?
Sure. But I think that that is not empirical.
Because that's saying that you feel hurt and upset because it's to do with you.
Right. But it's not to do with you.
My suggestion would be, I mean, to know what you feel for sure, and to work through the feelings of frustration, right?
Because if you've had a history in your own life of unreliable people, that's going to exacerbate it, right?
Which means it's not about them, but it's about you, right?
So you don't want to cross these wires.
You don't want to layer your past on other people's present, and you don't want them to layer their past on your present, right?
If you've had a history of people making commitments and not following through, and then you get really mad at people who don't do it in the present because of the past, it's also non-empirical and unfair to them, right?
Because you're saying it's about them when it's really about somebody else entirely and your own history.
Right. But I think that the most empirical way to approach this would be to say, well, look, it's not to do with me, and fundamentally it's not even to do with you.
The other person, right? It's to do with something around my history and your history.
So let's do this.
I'll be curious about what led you to this thing, right?
To make this commitment and then sort of not follow through, right?
And not placing a big, heavy moral judgment on that, right?
But just I'm curious. I'm genuinely curious how this came about for you.
And the reason that we want to do that In my opinion, it's because once you find out the incredible number of layers that led someone to act in that manner, you will completely not take it personally and your irritation will be replaced with sympathy.
Sure. Yeah, definitely.
And then you can ask yourself an even more important question, right?
Once you understand the layers, and this can be a lengthy and very beneficial conversation to have with people, But once you have the layers of why somebody did something like that, the most important question to ask, especially if you have a history with people who are unreliable, is what slime-in-the-boxer thing is going on for me?
Why didn't I see that this was going to happen?
Remember, everyone's a genius and everyone's a philosopher.
So why am I surprised?
Because once you get it, you'll see all the patterns that you shouldn't have been surprised that this happened.
Yeah. So, what repetition am I then bringing to the table that I did not see this coming, that I'm genuinely surprised that these people I've known for a long time would do something like this?
Because anyone we've known for a reasonable amount of time, it's really tough to claim to be very surprised about what they're doing, I think.
Yeah. Yeah, and you know what?
The first thing that comes to my mind, like the difference between the people that didn't reply and the people that did reply right away, Is the people that didn't reply, I kind of approached them and asked them if they were interested.
Whereas the people that did reply, I kind of put it out as kind of like a general thing on Twitter or whatever.
And they came to me and said, I'm interested.
And then they responded right away.
Sorry, say that again. I think I've missed it.
Okay. Yeah, like the people that...
Okay, I'm not even sure if this is that important.
But like something that I just thought of as a difference, like maybe an indicator...
Is, uh, the people who I approached, like, personally, like, in, like, a conversation and said, hey, I'm planning this thing, like, do you want, what do you think of it, or, like, do you want to be involved in this?
Like, the people that I approached it in that manner are the people that did not reply.
And then the people that I kind of put it out as more of a general, like, hey, I'm thinking of doing this thing, let me know if you're interested.
The people that got involved that way, um...
Replied right away. Right, right, right, right.
And I think, I mean, you care more about the people that you approached, right?
Right. So the way that I, this is the way that I see it, right?
The way that I see it is you and I, to take a, right, just to, so I don't have to make someone up, right?
So you and I are walking down, we're walking through the woods, right?
It's a beautiful day, birds are singing, right?
And we're walking through the woods and And then there are these two terrible crashes, and two big frickin' trees land on us, right?
They just fall over, right?
Oops, right? Big trees fall on us, right?
And I say, I can't believe, I'm so mad at you, you pushed this tree over on me.
And you're like, no, you pushed this tree over on me, right?
And we get mad at each other, right?
But of course, the trees just fell on us, and the trees that fell on us are history, right?
Right. And so if we take it personally, then we can't help each other, right?
Because we're mad at each other.
Sure. And we're blaming each other for things that really aren't our faults, right?
To my way of thinking, again, all just nonsense opinion, but to my way of thinking, when somebody is unreliable with me, what they're saying is, help me, a tree fell on me.
Right. Please ask me why I am not free To gain the self-respect of being reliable.
Please help me.
Please ask me about how I came to be this way.
Please don't take it personally.
Pull the tree off me.
Right. Absolutely.
Yeah, it's a great opportunity.
It is, and it may work and it may not, right?
People may just turn into jerks or whatever.
They might, right?
Because they might not be able to, right?
They may then push a tree over on you, right?
Who knows, all right? But I think it's worth, with the people that you feel that you can have that conversation with, you know, I think there are a lot of cries for help in our conversations with people, and some of them are very explicit, and some of them are much more subtle.
I want someone to notice that I'm not reliable.
And I want someone to care enough to ask me why.
Yeah. I mean, there's these massive marionettes of interstellar loneliness that walk around in the world doing things that are frustrating to others because they don't feel that they exist.
Right.
I don't go and hug a mirror because the me that's in the mirror doesn't exist.
I don't reciprocate that way with things that don't exist.
And if people feel that they don't exist.
Then they will treat other people like the other people don't exist.
Right.
Right.
So they if people don't feel that they exist or that they matter, then they'll treat you like you don't exist and you don't matter.
And what they're really asking for is for someone, because they can't do it themselves, For someone to say, wait a minute, I feel like I'm being treated like I don't matter.
Which means you must feel like you don't matter.
And that must be really difficult for you.
Right. That must be horrible.
What led you to the place where you are a ghost among the trees?
The dead trees.
Where nothing that you did mattered.
How sad. Tell me.
Tell me about that, right?
Where do you think it came from?
When was the last time you felt that you mattered?
When was the last time that you felt you had a positive impact?
When was the last time when someone cared that you did something not so nice?
Yeah, that's really helpful.
I think that that's a really great approach.
And I think that works with people who are just kind of, I don't think it works with abusers, right?
I mean, it's a different category, but that's not what you're talking about, right?
Just so people, because I know that people get these contradictory things, they get all messed up, like, well, you're telling, be angry at this person, be sympathetic to this person.
Of course, I'm not saying anyone should be anything.
I'm just, I'm just saying that if you care about these people, right, then see that There's a log on their legs, right?
And help them with it. And you don't have to.
I mean, you don't have to. But don't think that they push a log on to you because they're, you know, bad.
Right.
Definitely.
And because if through that you gain a greater knowledge of them, you can't help but gain a greater knowledge of yourself through this process.
About others is the ultimate tool of self-knowledge, in my opinion.
It's why we can't solve these problems on our own.
It's why we need people to talk to in our life.
It's why we need to be curious and open and honest and empathetic and RTR with ourself and with others in particular.
Right? Self-knowledge is a communal activity.
Right? Because when you learn...
How deep somebody else's indifference to you, so to speak, goes, then you won't take it personally.
You'll be freed from offense.
Taking offense. Taking offense is sort of a cheap avoidance mechanism in most situations, not in all, but in most situations.
But if you're curious and you say, how did our histories mesh in this kind of way where you ended up dissociated and I ended up upset?
If you learn about their dissociation, You will learn about your own upset.
And I don't think there's any other way to do it.
Because we can't ask questions directly of ourself.
We can't. We have to kind of...
We have to learn about ourselves through our interactions with others.
That's been my experience. Because I spent a lot of time trying to learn about myself just by myself.
and I just didn't get that far Isabella is teaching me all this right Because Isabella... She doesn't know who she is, but she knows she has an effect on the world.
She's learning about herself, what she can do and what she can't do by manipulating things in the world.
So she's learning about herself through her interactions with the world.
And certainly my self-knowledge has accelerated greatly Since getting married, since FDR, because of the intensity and quality and depth and honesty of my interactions with other people, I've learned an enormous amount more about myself.
So it's an opportunity. Curiosity about others is knowledge of the self.
It liberates you from reaction alone.
But those are scary questions to ask people, right?
Right. Yeah, definitely, but very important.
Well, I think so. And I know I've talked a lot, right?
So I don't want to have the energy rear off when you're kind of dozing or doing your nails or something, right?
But is there anything that you wanted to add to this?
Because I really wanted to make sure that we actually did sort of talk about stuff that was useful.
Yeah, no, that was very useful, and I really appreciate that.
I think that gave me some tools for the future, for sure.
And I'll definitely... Have a talk with some of these people probably tonight.
I hope so. I hope so. And, you know, if they're amenable and you get a chance, do let us know how it goes.
Yeah, will do. Thank you.
Fantastic. Great, great, great question.
Thanks. Yeah, thanks everybody, of course, so much.
It is always a fascinating thing.
You know, these Sundays, I look forward to them, like as I said, all week, right?
I mean, because you're all so freaking smart and have such great questions and comments.
So, as always, I hugely appreciate the trust, the support, and the openness of people's conversation.
And it is, you know, the great thing about these Sunday shows for me, I never know what the hell people are going to talk about.
Because, you know, we talk about, you know, philosophy, which is the widest of all possible topics.
So, you know, whether we're going from science to economics to metaphysics to relationships to self-knowledge to families to whatever it is, personal stuff, I just think it's a real thrill and a privilege to have these high-accelerated bowling balls shot randomly at me from Cannons hidden in the bushes, randomly. And some in the clouds.
I just wanted to mention, thank you, everybody, for calling in.
And I look forward to chatting with you next week.
And I will put in the request for a time frame for the Entrepreneurs Conference.
And have yourselves an absolutely, stupendously, deliciously fabulous week.
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