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Oct. 27, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:33:14
1493 Entrepreneurship and History (convo)

Overcoming old barriers to career success...

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So, I just wanted to say up front, like, how nervous I've been about this, like, all day, which I think just kind of goes to show you how much I actually need this call.
So, I guess I'll go through a little bit of a history or a backstory first, because I think that's what's going to sort of bring it all together.
My mother had this habit of not talking to me or ceasing to talk to me whenever she found something to be mad at.
And not only would she cease to talk to me often for several days in a row, she would go out of her way to show me that she wasn't talking to me.
For example, like whenever I would walk in the room, she would start talking very loudly to the dog or she would, you know, Blast Oprah.
She would turn, like, the sound on Oprah way up so that even if I talked, she couldn't hear me.
And she would do that, like, to a level which must have been, you know, painful for her ears as well, just in an effort, I think, to show me how much she wasn't talking to me.
And this would usually go on for several days at a time.
And oftentimes, like, I wouldn't even know.
Well, she wouldn't tell me.
She would refuse to tell me.
And I would never know why she stopped.
If she had a reason in her own mind, I never knew it.
So now, and this has been happening off and on, you know, forever, since I was a kid.
But it's been happening Especially lately, as I've been, you know, going back and trying to process some stuff around Mother.
It's been going on to where, you know, I won't talk with, you know, a certain friend for a couple of days and I'll start, you know, imagining these horrible things like, oh my god, they must be mad at me or, you know, everybody thinks that, you know, I've done something horrible and they just won't tell me.
And it's actually... The saddest part is it's even been happening with some of the clients in my business.
For example, I sent one particular client an email two weeks ago, and I know she does not check her email.
Like, she literally doesn't.
She has an assistant to check her email because she just refuses to read email.
So I know that it takes her and her assistant Forever to reply to something.
I know that intellectually.
But in the two weeks since I've seen it, or since I've sent the email, before I got a response, I was imagining all kinds of things like, you know, oh my god, she's totally going to drop us, and then she's going to say really bad things to everybody else, and I must have done something to piss her off.
Right. Yeah, sorry, if you're not talking, Mark, if you could please mute yourself, that would be great.
And so, go ahead.
So, like, I've been imagining all of these things, and what usually happens whenever this happens, I've stopped myself insofar as I'm aware from doing it this time,
but what usually happened in the past is, like, I've just Totally unconsciously acted out, like done something, usually a bad something, to get somebody's attention, like anybody's attention, and to get them to talk to me.
You know, which just makes the situation worse, because then, of course, instead of my just thinking I've done something wrong to anger somebody, I actually do, or I do something suboptimal.
And so that's what I kind of wanted your help with.
It's like, how do I not bring this sort of, like, past freak out about people not talking to the present?
Because I haven't been able to come here on this.
Right, right. Right.
Well, I mean, that's a good question.
And as a standard disclaimer, just because people sometimes jump in and out of the podcast, this is just a bunch of amateur friends talking about life and philosophy, so no professionalism here.
So, to what degree do you think that you've processed your mother's behavior towards you?
I would say of the people whose actions I've had yet to process, she is the biggest thing that's left undone.
So I'd say of the stuff, maybe 25%.
And the only time that these fears come back is when I actually try to sit down and process stuff around her, which is one of the reasons why I've been You know, putting it off and putting it off and putting it off.
Sorry, what was the reason you've been putting it off?
I just missed that. Well, it's because, like, bad stuff comes up.
Like, all of these fears come up.
Normally, I don't feel this way.
Or to a large extent, I don't, you know, get freaked out about people not talking to me.
It's only when I start, you know, thinking about my childhood and trying to, you know, Get down into the process and stuff around, mother, that this stuff comes back up.
Right, right. And my guess is that this is associated with being an entrepreneur, right?
Oh, totally.
I mean, this is, you know, it is bringing up a lot of stuff.
Oh, it does. It does, it does.
And in a way, like, I'm really, really, really grateful for that.
But it's really, really scary.
Yeah. Yeah, no, there's a reason why people who have gone through abusive childhoods, why they tend to not become entrepreneurs.
Because becoming an entrepreneur is vulnerable.
You're dependent upon other people.
You have to negotiate a lot.
It's a challenge to, you know, wherever you have pockets of old pains and aches and twists and ligament tears and Insecurities and so on, the entrepreneurial lifestyle would just sit down there and just start uprooting it all, right? That's why people's tolerance for stress who've gone through abusive childhoods is quite low in this realm.
And it's sad, of course, because it means that we're denied a lot of the pleasures of entrepreneurship.
So it's not, to me, too surprising that...
So, you know, just by the by, whenever I... Whenever people are glib, you know, if they've been, if they've had abusive childhoods and they're glib about that or they glib about other people's, I know that they have not done, you know, one of two things or probably both.
I know that they haven't been an entrepreneur and I also know that they haven't done good therapy.
Because either one of those is going to make you very humble in the face of the issues that you have.
Totally. I mean, it feels like, to use a horrible Star Wars metaphor, like, it feels like Luke Skywalker going into a cave in the second one, and like, oh my god, there's Darth Vader!
Right, right. No, absolutely, and like, everywhere you turn, right?
Yeah. No, that makes sense, right?
I mean, you, vulnerability and dependence, which we're all born with as children, right?
I mean, Isabella can't even get out of her crib on her own, right?
She can't She doesn't know the difference between safe and dangerous food and non-food.
I took her to the sandbox the other day and hovered over her for like 45 minutes.
I stopped to scratch my nose and she jams a fistful of sand into her mouth.
So it's good. She's getting her roughage.
But so there's this complete helplessness and, you know, all too tragically, if that was not met with kindness, care and consideration by our parents on a regular basis, not necessarily perfectly, that's never possible, but Then it's very painful for us to be put back into that position.
And this is why, as I mentioned in the recent podcast on classes, that's why I think classes tend to perpetuate, right?
Because if you can't take risks, you can't get out of the lower or even the middle classes that well, you know, and yet we kind of want to in many ways have that possibility.
So it makes sense to me at least why this stuff would all be coming up to you while you're on this entrepreneurial Venture.
That makes perfect sense.
I know that doesn't solve your problem, of course, but just to put it in perspective, it does make sense.
Sure, it makes sense to me as well.
Right, okay. So your question is how to not have that experience with people?
Well, I mean, it's not like you're going to give me some sort of magic bullet and, like, magically it turns it off, but I was wondering...
If there's something that you would recommend, like, I do when that stuff does come up because it's going to keep coming up to, like, you know, either stop or reduce the freak out and also ensure that, like, I don't turn what I'm perceiving as a bad situation into, like, an actual bad situation.
Well, yeah, I mean, the first thing is to just not...
Just not act when you're in that state.
You just, I mean, you just have to not do it, right?
I mean, it's complicated in theory, but in practice, it's quite simple.
Like, it's like saying to a guy who drinks too much, just don't drink, right?
I mean, that's just, you just have to not, like, if you're feeling that anxiety, you just have to not act, you know?
If you have to strap your hands to the arm of your chair, if you have to have somebody chew through the phone cable, right?
Just don't act.
And deal with the feelings that come up from not acting.
But don't act in order to relieve tension.
Because that always leads to bad things, in my opinion.
So, I mean, that's not going to solve your problem in the long run, but at least it will be, you know, plug the hole in the short run.
You have partners in your business.
Talk to them, right?
They're aware and intelligent people.
So, talk to them and say, I have this very strong urge to do this, which I know is not a good thing to do, and blah, blah, blah, right?
Right. So, talk to them, right?
And just don't act, right?
Because that's...
Now, I can tell you what worked for me.
I never know if this is going to work for other people.
I think that it should, which is why I'm telling you, but obviously this is just what worked for me.
And I will talk about my mother, just because I know a lot about your mother, but I don't want to talk about your mother because she's your mother.
Have your own thoughts about that, of course, but I'll tell you what worked for me, and then you can tell me if it makes any sense to you.
What worked for me over the long run was something like this.
So I would feel these feelings, right, around, you know, my mother was, you know, full of rage and manipulation and so on.
And when I would start to feel that way in business, what I would do is I'd sort of, you know, take that deep breath, go for a walk, And sometimes this would be over a day or two.
I'd go to yoga or whatever it was I would do to relax myself, get a massage.
And I would go along the following lines of reasoning.
I think that they'll be of use to you.
You can let me know. Number one.
My mother was evil.
That's sort of where I was going with that.
And that doesn't mean, of course, that everything she did was always and forever.
In terms of, you know, child abuse being a great evil, and she was a perpetual child abuser and adult abuser.
So my mother was evil.
And it is justice, I believe, to ascribe the label evil to people who have perpetually and without apology and continually done evil and destructive things, particularly to children.
In the same way, I would say to myself, it is not just or fair to ascribe the label evil to people who aren't evil, right?
Right. So, I would sort of say, in my approach to this, I would say, well, so someone is reminding me of my mother, which doesn't mean that they are like My mother, of course. It doesn't mean that at all.
It just means that I am reacting.
It doesn't mean they're not like my mother, but it means I'm reacting to something, right?
And so I'd say, okay, well, is the person that I'm reacting to, is this person evil?
And, of course, I would have to say, I doubt it, right?
Because I don't know how they treated their children.
I don't know their personal life.
I just know that we've had some kind of thing that triggered me in the business world, right?
Right. So I can't say, you know, they didn't return my phone call And so they're evil, right?
I mean, that cheapens with a label that I would affix to, you know, child abusers and murderers or whatever, right?
Right. So it's okay, well, I can't call them evil, right?
And so they're not in the same category as my mom, right?
Now, if I think they are in the same category as my mom, then I just won't do business with them, right?
Right. Right, just no matter what it costs, right?
I just won't. I can't profit from evil, right?
Right. So, I would say, well, if this person is not evil, then it is actually unjust of me to call them evil, to react to them as if they're evil.
It's unjust, right? Yes.
And what really got the whammy going for me was I said to myself, my mother reacted to me as if I were evil, right?
The beatings and all that, right?
My mother reacted to me as if I were evil, right?
But I wasn't. And that was the most painful thing.
And so if I'm treating someone else as if they're evil, and they're not, I'm actually acting like my mother.
Right. And that sent such a chilly spinal drip, ice shock down my spine, that it didn't solve my problem, of course, right?
I mean, this is not, you know, one syllogism, ooh, all better, right?
But what it did do is it said, holy crap, I definitely don't want to be acting that way.
And that, you know, really propelled me into working very hard to not be unjust.
In particular, in the ways of injustice that hurt me so much, right?
Right. How does that strike you?
That makes sense.
And I've been doing something along those lines.
I mean, I got up to the part where Like, I'm sure there's a perfectly logical explanation for why somebody isn't emailing me back.
Like, I'm sure there's a perfectly logical thing.
But I didn't get to the part where, you know, if I suffered under, you know, my mother's extreme, you know, injustice and evil in treating me, a child, as though I were evil, then I don't want to do that other.
So that's extremely powerful.
Yeah, and tell me what that means to you.
Well, it just makes me really sad because I remember, you know, during the time spent my mother would be very loudly not talking to me.
I would just like, I would get so frustrated and so upset because it just felt so damn like It felt so unjust and you know the the worst part was not knowing or understanding why she was acting that way.
So if if I put myself into someone else's shoes even though like they're they're not a child and they can stop doing business with me if if they like and if I act this way but even you know that aside I mean just thinking that somebody else might Go through even like a mild form of that at my hands,
that makes me really want to stop and pull back and say, you know, well, wait a minute, let's look at this logically and, you know, and not act.
And when you think back on your mother's treatment of you in this manner, what are your thoughts and I mean, honestly, I can't help myself from feeling hatred.
The first thing I think about is, okay, why did she act this way?
And, you know, part of it is because she didn't process the abuse that she had suffered at the hands of my grandparents.
And so that really It fills me with fear in a way, but it also fills me with this sense of, like, I'm not going to be this way.
Like, I have the chance to totally not be this way.
And I've lost myself a little bit.
But, you know, when I think about my mother's unjust treatment and maintenance, Like, it just makes me want to take her by the shoulders and say, like, you know, why?
Why would you do something like that?
Are you saying that you don't know why she would do something like that?
I mean, I do know.
I do know why she would do something like that, of course.
And so the purpose of, and I don't know what's right or wrong, I'm just asking, so the purpose of grabbing her by the shoulders and trying to get her to sort of explain why she would do it, the purpose of that would be to do what?
If you know why she was doing it, then what would it be for?
It's the same thing we were talking about a while ago on the board.
It's like... She didn't take all of the chances that she had to to process the abuse that she suffered.
Like, she ran and she defood and she went to therapy.
So, why did she turn out evil?
But the corollary to that is, why am I not going to turn out evil?
Like, that's actually what I really want to know.
Go on. Well, because I have...
The exact same chances that she had.
I mean, Red ran earlier than she did.
I mean, I read it at 11.
She found it at 16.
I defood as well, and she did.
She actually, amusingly enough, she ran away to join the circus when she was 21, which was how old I was when I defood.
And I only really...
I only really started thinking about this after an email that my aunt sent to me about six months ago.
You know, in the middle of a bunch of condescending bullshit, she said, oh, your mother ran away for two years as well, and we didn't hear from her either, but, you know, she came crawling back after two years, so we know you will as well.
So, you know, that's what I was thinking about.
It's like... Right now, if you ask me, I would say that there is absolutely nothing on earth that would ever make me go back to my abusers while they remain completely callous to the harm that they inflicted.
But I keep wondering, like, what is it that pulled her back?
Right. And you don't know?
I don't know.
What do you think it was?
Well, a couple of things.
I think that she would have told herself that it was due to financial concerns, but I think that really it was just to...
Painful to do the processing that it would take to keep her away from those people.
Honestly. And you said that she did therapy.
Do you know much about that? She was...
Actually, my grandparents got her hospitalized in an institution as soon as she came back from joining the circus.
Later, I believe sometime before I was born, she was in therapy and on medication for a couple of years.
And then she tells me, though I don't believe it, because I don't remember that she was on antidepressants when I was a child.
But I don't remember that.
So, sorry, go ahead.
Therapy when I was a small child, like six years old.
She sent me to therapy, but she wouldn't go.
She wouldn't even talk to the psychologist.
So you don't have any knowledge or experience of her going to therapy directly?
Right. She was institutionalized, is that right?
Yes. Right, right.
So that's not really therapy?
No. Right?
I mean, my mother was institutionalized too.
Did not make her healthy, right?
That's not the same as somebody saying, I want to go into therapy to help process my past because of X, Y, and Z, right?
Right. So, I think that's an aspect that's important.
It's quite different. Yeah.
So, I mean, because we're looking for differentiators, right?
Right, right. So that makes sense.
All right. So, she didn't go into therapy, and she also put you into therapy without wanting to go herself, right?
Right. In other words, the mother sends the six-year-old into therapy, and yet does not believe for a moment that she, as the mother, might also need to speak to the therapist.
Right. I mean, she wanted to diagnose me with a problem so that she wouldn't see that She caused it or whatever, so she wouldn't see that she was actually nuts and not me.
Right, so that's not, again, that's not a good indication of somebody who has any kind of understanding of what it means to take responsibility, right?
Right. For your actions and so on, right?
I mean, if your child is acting out, the first thing you do is to get yourself checked out, not the child's, right?
I mean, other than medically, right?
Right. Do you know if she took any parenting classes?
Oh, I'm sure that she never did.
Right. And you know I'm asking all of these questions and I already know the answer, right?
Sure, of course.
Right. Okay.
I'm just not sure that you know the answers.
Right, and it's...
I mean, the most...
No, and it's perfectly fine to be reminded, right?
It's perfectly fine to be reminded.
I'm just curious where you got these similarities from, because they're not empirical, right?
You understand that. They don't come from, well, here's the evidence.
It comes from a sort of fear, and that fear does not come from anything rational or empirical, because it's only taken a few questions To sort of show just how not rational they are, which means they're coming from somewhere, right? Right.
So where are they coming from? Well, I don't think they're coming from me either.
I mean, an overt source was that, you know, email that my aunt, who almost, or I would think, even more evil than my mother.
But I think it must also come from Just from, like, general fears and neuroses that, you know, are just holdovers from shit they did to me.
Nah, that's too vague.
I mean, it's too vague, right?
I mean, because you could say that about anything, right?
What I'm asking is what specific, what specific things have occurred where you have been equated with your mother, right?
Because this is not something that comes from anything empirical, so it must come From somebody's mythology, right?
From story time about the family, right?
Right. Oh, you're just like your mother.
Oh, you're so much like your mother.
Like, you hear that stuff often enough, and it begins to blur identity, right?
Right. Well, I was always told, you know, because Mother was sort of the black sheep, if you want to call it that, of the family, I was always told because...
You know, I didn't really go in for the family activities and I didn't have the family pride that everybody else had.
You know, I was like my mother.
I was very standoffish and I was very, you know, misanthropic like she was.
And who was telling you this?
Oh, all of my aunts.
All of your aunts. And so they're telling you that you're just like your mother.
Did your mother say that or was that not her opinion?
I guess if she sent you to therapy and she didn't go herself, she may not be heavily invested in the you're just like me mythology, right?
No, mother always said that I was very like my father, whom she utterly hated.
Yeah, no, my mom said the same about my brother.
Okay, so you had all of these aunts.
Now, why do you think that your aunts were so invested in saying that you were just like him?
What was their motive? What was their motive?
Because I kept asking them for help.
So, you know, whenever Mother would yell at me or whatever, like, she wouldn't buy groceries for a month, I would always say, you know, could one of you help me?
Like, y'all have money.
Could you spot me 20 bucks for some food, maybe?
And they never would.
So it was like, I think they wanted to...
To create that distance and give an excuse for themselves for not stepping in to help.
Okay, and you know that just begs the next question, right?
You have to help me.
Why did they not step in to help?
I think because they were just as evil as my mother.
Right, so are you saying that they were participating?
That they were co-abusers, or enablers, I guess?
They were, at the very least, enablers, yeah.
Okay. And so, they would then be in the same category as your mother, morally, right?
Right. Okay.
In fact, it could be said that with fewer provocations, and by that I certainly don't mean, of course, that you were provocative, but with fewer provocations, They would actually have less of an excuse to treat you badly, or to not help you if you were being treated badly, because they weren't directly being, quote, provoked, like in the same way that your mother was, or with the same stresses of raising you, right?
Not that I'm saying you were a stressful kid to raise, but you know what I mean, right?
Right. So then you're going to say that anything that they tell me about, you know, mine, Resemblance or none or anything having to do with myself or my makeup is necessarily a lie.
Well, I would say that it's actually abusive in my way of thinking, right?
Because, well, why?
Well, to compare me, a child, to my evil abuser is, I think, in and of itself evil.
Well, they're not comparing you, right?
They weren't comparing you.
They were equating you.
Right. This is very different, right?
I mean, I could compare you to your mother and say, not the same, right?
Right. But they weren't just comparing you.
They were equating you, right?
Right. So I think that's important, right?
It's always so important.
In my opinion, to consider the source, particularly of stuff that's talked about in the family.
The stuff that's talked about in the family.
What is the source and what is the motivations for people to make these claims or these statements?
Why would they want to make these claims or these statements?
And there's a myth that That floats around, at least I think it's a myth.
I've never seen it proven.
There's a myth that floats around, which goes a little bit something like this.
It says, well, you fight with this person because you're so similar, right?
Right. Have you ever heard that kind of thing?
Oh, yes. They're two pieces apart.
They can't get along because they're just so darn similar, right?
Right. And is that anything that floated around in your family?
Oh, yeah. I was often told that.
It's, you know, you and your mother are two alike, so, you know, no wonder you scream at each other.
It was always, no wonder you scream at each other, and not, no wonder she screams at you.
Right, right. It's the equation of the parent of the child, right?
Like you're just too...
Messed up adults who glommed together and are fighting in some twisted pathological way, which of course has nothing to do whatsoever with the actual parent-child relationship, right?
Which is a relationship even remotely of equals, right?
Right. Right.
And this is a very strong and powerful mythology that is held up, you know, for a wide variety of reasons.
But... I think that's an important thing to focus on, on trying to process, in my opinion.
What are the motives of all of these people?
Because we just kind of accept these things in so many ways.
Because the cost of not accepting them is very high, right?
I mean, if you were to have even these rather, let's say, dangerous allies, if they were to turn against you, I mean, that would be it, right?
Right. And that's all you had to work with, right?
Yeah. And so I do think that it's really, really important to focus on that aspect of things and just to question the sources of the things that we're told about ourselves.
Why would people want to tell me this, right?
And what is the moral nature of the people who are telling me who I am, right?
Right. That's also very important.
Right. I mean, ironically enough, or I guess it's not ironic, it's to be expected, the only time I ever do that is when somebody says something good about me.
Oh, yeah, yeah. Of course.
We only suspect those who say the good things.
We never suspect those who say...
I mean, we rarely suspect those who say the bad things, right?
Right. Right, right.
No, I understand that one for sure.
for sure.
So, in the question of whether you are like your mother, I think that we have enough empirical evidence to say that there will I think that we have enough empirical evidence to say that there will always be some things in which you and your I mean, just genetically, right? I mean, there are some things in which my mother and I are alike.
I mean, good language skills, can have good conversational skills, and so on.
And there are some things. Which, you know, my mother's twisted mysticism could be seen as a way of trying to explore the world and understand the world in a way that I would never follow, but, you know, the impulse mystics tend to be those who want to at least know something about the world, right? Right.
And so, I think that there are some things that you're going to see that are similar between yourself and your mother, and I think that's Reasonable and decent and natural, right?
Nothing, right? Not the moral aspects, right?
But just some attributes that you and your mother may share, right?
I have relatively high cheat bones like my mom.
It's just some things that we sort of share, if that makes any sense.
Yeah. But as far as the moral qualities go, right?
So all of that is the unchosen, right?
That's the stuff that just comes in genetically, right?
But the stuff which is chosen, the stuff which is really our souls and not just The mere material stuff of our bodies, the stuff that is actually chosen.
Well, that stuff we have some real choice and some real control over, right?
And it does not sound particularly like your mother worked to expand her choice or to take responsibility for her actions, right?
Right. Sounds like a fair statement to me, but you can tell me if that seems unjust.
It seems just, but it's only started to, or I should say it's really started to seem just during this call.
Because, of course, before I was telling myself what she had told me, which was, oh, yes, I did all this stuff to, you know, to process my whatever, whatever it is.
Yeah, don't tell me about therapy.
I was doing therapy before you were blah blah blah, right?
Right. Right, but of course somebody who is somebody who's actually gone through therapy and who's genuinely recognized the value of it is not going to be offended by somebody saying, you know, therapy might not be a bad idea, right?
Right. I didn't think so, anyway.
I can't imagine that would really be the case.
Right. So, It would seem to me that she made claims that were not valid, like, I went through therapy.
That's not the same as I was institutionalized by my parents, right?
Being institutionalized by your parents is not going through therapy.
It's a good reason why you need therapy, right?
Right. It's not the exercise of choice in the pursuit of mental health, right?
Or anything like that.
So... But it's claiming that you've gone through therapy when you haven't, right?
Yeah, because of course she knew exactly what to claim.
Right, she knew that therapy had value and she kind of used it as a way of winning a fight, gaining credibility, You know, all that kind of nonsense. Yeah, I mean, in the same way that she used any others of my values.
It's like, you know, when I first discovered I ran, I was 11, and she's like, oh, yes, that, you know, I read that when I was your age, etc.
Yeah, yeah, and people sort of get this world-weary thing, oh, it's very interesting, but, you know, you outgrow it, and you realize its limitations, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
Right. And then you ask, well, what are the limitations, and what does it mean to outgrow it, and what did you find that was missing, and where does the logic break down?
And they can never answer that, right?
Oh, of course not.
Right? They just have this haughty superiority, and then when you actually ask them for some facts to back up what they say, well, you don't get them, right?
Yeah. It's tragically inevitable.
And it's, I mean, look, I mean, not to put myself in Rand's category, but I mean, I hear this stuff too.
Oh yes, Molyneux, it's good stuff, but you know, it's limited.
It's like, well, tell me how it's limited.
Well, you know, you just realize that there are certain aspects of life that it doesn't apply to.
Oh, what are those aspects of life and how did you determine that they didn't apply?
You just ask those questions and you realize people are just spouting the most enormous clouds of bullshit that, you know, the planet can hold, right?
Right. Or you get the, you know, well, how could somebody in our day and age, you know, come up with all this stuff?
It's like, well, they probably said the same thing about every philosopher in every age as well.
So, fuck it. Right. And, I mean, that's, you know, that's not an argument, right?
I mean, that's really, right?
He's just not an argument, right?
Ah, he's arrogant. That's still not an argument.
Anyway, so I just sort of wanted to point that out because I think that...
To say you're just like your abuser is really bad.
To not intervene when a child is being starved is bad.
And all of these things are really bad.
And you certainly don't want to...
There's a massive eviction process that goes on during...
The second round of separation from an abusive family, as we've always talked about.
If, with the help of a therapist, you want to take a break, well, that doesn't solve your problems, because there's a family in the world, then there's a family in your head, right?
Right, exactly.
And the second round is to hold these wriggling specimens, for want of a better phrase, up to the light of reason and evidence, and say, well...
Why should I have listened to you at all?
Now, we know why you did listen to them, right?
It's because, right, I mean, they were the only people and if you'd have questioned them or opposed them, they would have attacked you and it would have been too much for you and you're just hanging by a thread.
I mean, look, I completely understand and sympathize and it makes perfect sense to me that you did that and to do anything else would have been suicidal and crazy, right?
So you believed them, you accepted and you absorbed it.
For me, for completely healthy and wonderfully adaptive reasons.
Great. And now, though, you don't need them to survive.
In fact, I would say they're actually impeding your survival.
Because they're causing you to act out in ways that are harmful to what you want, which is this entrepreneurial success.
Yeah, definitely.
So I would say that now it is really counterproductive.
And now you have to hold these people up To the light of reason and the light of evidence and to judge everything that they said, everything that they say according to the moral standards that they clearly displayed in their behavior.
Right. There's this myth.
I don't know if it's a myth.
I call it a myth. There's this myth that You know, even a broken clock is right twice a day in terms of people, right?
That there's good in the worst of us and bad in the best of us.
Well, I certainly do believe that there's bad in the best of us, for sure.
Bad in me, for sure.
So, you know, keep your eye on that dark side, right?
But I don't believe that there's good in bad people.
After a certain amount of time, right?
I don't mean to me. I tell one lie.
Ah, it's it, right? I'm talking about, you know, you smoke one cigarette, you don't keel over from lung cancer.
But, you know, after decades and decades, right, you get sick, right?
And so when people have done bad things repeatedly and maliciously and consciously to children, and when they have hidden the bad things that they've done to children from the world, right?
In other words, they don't do it in public, but they do it in private.
They become bad people.
Bad people. Soul rot.
Soul cancer sets in.
And I've never seen it cured.
But maybe it can be. I just can't imagine.
But, you know, this is just my...
I have to go with my empirical observations and experience and my observations and experience and reasoning is that it can't be cured.
Once you've done things that are bad that you cannot create restitution for, then It's a one-way street.
All you end up doing is continuing to do bad things and continuing to justify and mess up the minds of others.
Once you cross over to that truly darkest of the dark sides, then everything that you say, everything that you say is false and dangerous and destructive.
Everything that you say, everything that you do.
People like this, sorry to interrupt, but people like this We'll put you down in a mall if you don't know them and you ask them for the time.
They'll give you this look like, what are you, some kind of bum who doesn't have a watch?
And they'll say, it's 12 o'clock.
And they'll also say, like, shouldn't you be in school or shouldn't you be in work?
They'll put you down just when you ask them the time.
That's how toxic they become.
And we don't sift there.
I don't. I shouldn't say we.
I don't sit there and say, my mom said a hundred things to me.
I'm going to sift through all of these to find the three or five or ten that are wise and helpful and true.
I just don't.
Because every time I sifted, I found that none of it was wise or helpful or true.
I'll give you a tiny example.
Thank you.
You know, my mother would Tell me what to do, tell me what to wear, and so on, right?
I mean, my whole life, right? Now, at one point, I was going to get married to the wrong woman.
And, of course, in hindsight, it was clear that it was the wrong woman.
And I told my mother about this in my 20s at lunch.
And my mother did not say anything about that.
Right? Didn't say, I don't think it's a good idea.
Didn't say, I don't think it's the right woman.
Didn't say, you know, any of that, right?
So, she tells me what to do.
In my business, she'd come by and tell me, oh, you've got to call this person, you've got to do this, you've got to expand into this field, you've got to do that, you've got to do the old crazy shit that she'd read somewhere, right?
She'd tell me to do all of this stuff, but then when I actually needed her to tell me to do something, i.e.
don't marry this girl, she didn't say a word.
So, she was completely not helpful when she was telling me what to do with unimportant things, relatively.
And then she was completely not helpful when it came to telling me the truth about something that was very important, i.e.
who I'm going to marry, right?
Right. Like, everything is bad.
Everything is bad. I mean, thinking back, I can't think of a single useful thing or helpful thing that my mother ever told me.
And not even compared to all the stuff that she told me that was just bad and wrong and stupid and dangerous and destructive.
But I can't think of anything useful.
Well, none of the stuff that she was telling you was even designed to be useful to you.
No, it was all about her, right?
So, like, when I was 13 or so, I took a grade 13 computer science course, and it was really boring.
It was how to do sequential or random read-writes on floppy disks, you know, and I just wanted to program video games, and so that's what I did in the back of the class, and I never...
I just went to, you know, I went to the classes, used the computer, because I didn't have access to one except through that class...
And I never did any of the work.
I just programmed a great game and released it on BBSs.
But my mother, of course, was entirely thrilled and would tell everyone, oh, he's 13 or 12 or whatever, and he's taking grade 13 computer science classes and blah, blah, blah, right?
But even that was not useful, of course, right?
Because it had nothing to do with me or what I wanted.
It was just she liked saying it because I guess it makes her look like a smarter, better mother or something like that, right?
Because the thing is that when people have negative credibility with me, then I'm actually more alarmed by the stuff they say that sounds useful.
Right? Because it's like, well, so they gave me all of this...
They have so little negative credibility, and therefore the stuff that they say is really dangerous.
Right? So if you know that somebody always gives you bad directions, when they give you directions that sound plausible, that's when you're at your most risk.
Right? Right, because, you know, you might do it anyhow, because, I mean...
Yeah, it's close enough, I'll figure it out from...
You know, that's when you're most vulnerable, is when you think someone who always gives you bad directions is saying something plausible, right?
But, obviously, don't take my word for it, but what I would suggest, I did this as an exercise, filled an entire notebook, is just sit down and write down everything that you remember your mother telling you.
You know, good, bad, helpful, unhelpful, you know, just write it all down.
And sit there and say, well, what was her motive in telling me this?
Did it have anything to do with my best interest?
What would have happened if I followed her advice?
What happened when I did follow her advice?
blah blah blah blah blah, right?
All of that kind of stuff.
And I think, I mean, you know, it might be different for you, of course, right?
But I think that you'll find that it was all Dangers are destructive or harmful.
Or at the very least, for some motive or prone that was not to help me.
I mean, I can think of...
I can think of one thing that she said that, you know, was incredibly true, but I know why she said it, and it was not meant to help me.
Well, do you want to say what it is, or should we just work on the abstract?
Sure. So the thing that she said was, you know, don't be like me when you're my age.
Which is absolutely true, but what she was doing in the context of the conversation was she was fishing for some sort of compliment.
She was hoping that I would say, you know, what do you mean?
You're not that bad.
I think that you've made some good choices or whatever.
Well... I don't want to put on too dark a set of welding goggles here, but I can certainly see the darkness in that phase.
Go on. Well, I don't want Isabella to be at six years old the way that I was at six years old.
I don't want her to be frightened of her own shadow, unable to sleep, jumpy, nervous.
I don't want her to be any of those things.
Right? So when she's four, I'm not going to tell her I don't want you to be like I was when I was five.
Right? What am I going to do?
You're going to do things to ensure that she's not.
I mean, you're going to give her the love and attention and the whatever else that you didn't have.
Yeah, of course. Yeah, of course.
I mean, of course, right? I'm not going to tell her not to be like me.
Right? I'm just not going to put her in an environment where she ends up like me.
Right. Right?
So if your mother, you know, starved you and hit you and didn't speak to you and, you know, messed up your childhood, and then she says, don't be like me.
Well, since she is like she is because of abuse and then she abused you, her actions are saying be like me, right?
Right. So if her actions are saying, be like me, and her words are saying, don't be like me, it's a trap.
What she's doing is she's hoping, in a sense, this is my guess.
I have no idea, right? But this would be my theory.
This is where I would start, right?
But again, that's not to say anything is true about it.
It's just my theory, but it's a trap.
And what she's doing is putting an exquisite trap down the road so that when you do end up like her, because she inflicted upon you the abuse that In a sense, turned her into the way she was.
I get that she warned me it's my fault.
Yeah, yeah. You feel even worse.
That's beautiful in its simplicity of evil.
Yeah, and I'm not saying that this is consciously plotted out on whiteboards or anything like that.
People just have an instinct for this kind of stuff.
And again, I don't know if that's true or not, but...
That certainly would be my first thought.
And again, I don't know if I'm being overly cynical, you tell me, but it's certainly not, you know, because if she said, I don't want you to be like me, then the next question would be, well, then, you know, we'll go to family therapy, we'll work this out, we'll change things, we'll, you know, treat each other, you'll treat me better, you'll take parenting classes, blah, blah, blah, right?
And of course, what would have happened if you suggested that?
I would have got not talked to for the next three days at best.
Right, at best. That would have been your best, right?
So clearly, she's not actually interested in you not ending up like her because she wouldn't take the practical steps that would help avoid it.
In fact, she took the other nasty steps of hurtful parenting, which would make it much more likely you would end up that way, right?
Right. And so, again, it's a weird thing to process, but there would be no way to trust what she's saying, right?
Right, and that's, I think that phrase was one of those things where, you know, the directions look plausible.
Right, right.
So, but this is, if people say stuff that's plausible, who have been abusive, then...
Those are the ones you have to watch out for the most.
Right. My mother used to say about my brother and myself.
She used to say this quite regularly.
She used to say, he needs you more than you need him.
Which is true in a way.
Well, yeah, it's true.
I guess it's true in a way.
I don't know for sure. In hindsight, not really thought about it.
I think it was true at the time.
But she was...
Because my brother was abusive towards me when I was a kid, right?
So she's saying that she really understands an abuser.
Right. Right?
So how does she really understand an abuser?
Because... She's an abuser.
Right. And so, if you understand this, what she was really trying to tell me was, abusers need victims more than victims need abusers, right?
Right. And, in other words, she was saying, run, run, right?
Get out. Right, exactly.
But she couldn't put it that way, right?
She also couldn't say, I wonder, he needs you more than you need him.
I wonder how I ended up raising someone like that.
What do you think? Right, because then she couldn't face that.
And, you know, you said that it would be suicidal for, you know, someone very young to confront the evil of their abusers.
But I also think that it would be, you know, suicidal, at least mentally, for abusers to contemplate the evil that they've done.
Right, and what she was trying to do, I think, obviously, was trying to align herself with me.
You know, like, hey, I got the goods on...
Your brother and here's the tracks and you know sort of an alignment right as if she had nothing to do with who he was right?
Right. So that's what I mean when I say when it seems true it's actually even more dangerous right?
Right. And again this was my experience of going through it all right?
That I just found that all the stuff that seemed true or even vaguely helpful just turned out to be entirely not helpful.
And it's just a distraction from the real thing, right?
And that's what I mean when I say that when people have turned bad, when they've gone bad, I mean, there's not...
You know, there's not a nugget of gold in that sand beach, right?
Sandy beach. And so I would start from the position, if I were in your...
Buster Browns. I would start from the position that everything that was told to me was false and misleading and corrupt at best.
Yeah. Because I was in an environment where a child was being abused and people were blaming the child or treating the abuser and the victim as if they were equal and who were aligning or identifying the victim with the abuser and saying, oh, you're the same blah, blah, blah.
And, you know, a million other things, which you've not told me, but I'm sure they're right.
With this environment, you don't...
Nothing has credibility.
Nothing has credibility in this environment.
Everything that is said is a lie.
Everything that is said is destructive.
And the opposite of what is true and good and virtuous.
And that's a real liberation.
At least it was for me.
I'm not going to claim this is syllogistically universally proven.
It certainly was my experience, and I think there are damn good arguments as to why.
But you don't think, well, there are 100 guards at this concentration camp, so statistically there must be 20 good guys.
Right. I mean, if they're being concentration camp guards, really, Really?
Any of them are good? Yeah, maybe you say, well, they're conscripted or whatever, right?
But let's say, you know, there's a congregation of 100 hitmen.
So 20 of them must be good men, right?
Or there is a congregation of 100 torturers.
So, you know, five of them must be good, right?
Must be good guys. It's like, no, they're all bad guys because they're torturers, right?
And so if you're in a situation where children are being abused and people are enabling it and supporting it and directly performing it and not doing anything wrong, To yank a child out of that situation, call the cops, get child protective services, get whatever resources are necessary to protect the child, then you're in a convention of torturers, a convention of sadists. And you say, well, a convention of sadists, there's got to be at least a bunch of good, 5% of them have to be good.
No, no, they're sadists, right? Right.
And so, the more you multiply, it doesn't matter, right?
You get 10,000 sadists, you get a million sadists, there's not going to be a good guy in the middle, right?
And so, if the sadists or the cruel people, the child abusers, say a million things, there's still not going to be one in there that's good.
Right. It's like opposite worlds, right?
And it takes, for me, it took a load off, right?
And I did spend a lot of time, I mean, a ridiculously long journal of therapy, trying to figure out, well, this was said, what was the purpose of that?
And this was said, what was the purpose of that?
And it was just like, ding, ding, evil, evil, corrupt, corrupt, evil, narcissistic, evil, corrupt, nasty, nasty, abusive, nasty, evil.
It's like, okay, I think I get the pattern here, right?
Right. I think that that's definitely something that I'm going to do, because, I mean, I totally believe you, but, you know, knowing it intellectually...
Oh, don't believe me, for heaven's sake.
I mean, it's just what worked for me, and this is my theory.
I think there's good reasons for it, but absolutely, and, you know...
Look at it as positively as possible, but just continue to look at why somebody would be saying that.
And particularly if somebody says, you should do X, but does not pursue that course of action themselves, but instead pursues the opposite course of action, you know, that is a very dangerous thing, right?
Right. It's a smokescreen, right?
Yeah, it is, and I can see a lot of that still.
You know, operating in my life right now, influencing what I do and how I see the world.
Right, right. And I think another question is important.
Sorry, let me stop for a sec before I go on with the next thing.
Is the approach that we're taking here useful or helpful to you?
Is there anything that you'd like to talk about more?
Because I have one other thing to say, but I'm certainly happy if you want to talk more or tell me if this is not particularly helpful.
We can try something else. No, it's all been fantastic so far.
I mean, these are some great things to think about and ways to think about them.
So I'm looking forward to the what else.
All right. So the second thing that I would like to say in this context, and this is something, again, that I worked on for quite some time.
If you're... If you meet some guy who's 60 and he's dying of lung cancer, you just meet him, right?
You feel sad for him dying of lung cancer or he's incurable or whatever, but you don't feel guilty, right?
Right. Whereas if you were his tobacconist and you supplied him for years and you kept encouraging him to smoke and then when he wanted to quit, you'd give him free cigarettes to get him back on and so on.
Then you would feel guilty to some degree.
I mean, obviously he still chose to smoke, but you were there, you know, helping him along in no small degree, right?
Right. So, we'll just use simple terms here, right?
Just for clarity's sake, just use simple terms.
When did your mother become the way she is?
I don't know if...
I don't think that it was...
I don't think there was one point.
I think that by the time I was born, she had gotten to a point where, you know, it was inevitable that she would abuse me.
But I don't know if there's a certain point.
And do you know why I'm asking?
Or do you find the question easy or tough?
I find the question very tough indeed.
I have an idea of why you're asking, and I think that it has to do with the question earlier of, you know, how am I not, you know, It's going to turn out like she did.
But I don't know. You should help.
It's Steph's book of illustrated evil fairy tales.
You know, the parable of the tobogganist, right?
Well, I mean, it's an important...
I think it's an important question, right?
So my mom had me...
Oh, let me do the math here.
My mom had me when she was 29 years old.
She had my brother when she was 26 and a half, I think.
So she was 29 years old and she had I mean the marriage was already collapsing and so on, right?
And so and she and my dad had already done to my brother that which aided and abetted him becoming who he became.
Right. So clearly they did not come into being parents as good people.
Because you don't just suddenly go from good to abusive, right?
Right. So clearly it was there.
It was there beforehand, right?
Yes. Children did not provoke that.
And I can say this empirically and completely truthfully, because my daughter provokes...
Zero darkness in me.
In fact, she is like a disco ball of light glittering in the middle of my heart, right?
So children do not provoke a darkness in people.
That's nonsense. Children are an incredible joy.
Right. Right, so your parents were who they were when you were born, and you did not cause them to become bad.
No question of that. In fact, if they ever had a chance...
To be better people, it was through you, not despite you.
Right. And do you know why I'm asking any of this?
So there's some sort of like half-coalesced thoughts, but I can't really articulate any of it.
Alright, do you want to half-articulate, or should I just keep climbing on?
Keep going for a while.
Bad people will, always and forever, blame other people for their actions, right?
Right.
Yes. That's inevitable.
I mean, to take an extreme example, right?
Hitler blamed... The Jews and the Treaty of Versailles and the fact of being encircled and not having the Danzig Corridor.
That's why he had to start war, right?
Because everybody was about to attack him and all that kind of stuff, right?
Right. And so when we're born into people who are, in hindsight, obviously not able to do right in the situation, There's a lot of work that's put in by those people and by other adults around them to say that it is at best equal and more likely it is our fault that things went awry.
Our fault as children. Like the guy who came to me when I was six or seven or whatever He genuinely thought, I'm sure, that he was caning me because I was bad, right?
Right. Not because he was.
Right. Not because he's like a probably closeted gay sadist, right?
Right. He genuinely would have, you know, anybody that asked him, why did you hit that child?
It's like, because it gives me pleasure.
He would never say the truth, right?
Because it gives me a sense of mastery over my own inner horror to make a child scream and whatever, right?
He would genuinely say, it's because the boy did something wrong, right?
I am the cause of his beating, right?
Not him, right?
And of course, the funny thing about that is that if you ever, as a child, say that somebody else caused you to do something, what do people say?
It's, you know, take responsibility.
Of course, they didn't cause you to do whatever.
Right, right, right.
Right, of course, right? This is the hypocrisy of the culture that we live in, right?
The parents say, it's the children who made me do it.
But when the children say, so-and-so made me do it, they'd say, oh, well, and if so-and-so jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you jump as well?
Right. So, the reason, I mean, the reason why I think that it's helpful Is that it takes the responsibility off, right?
Because a lot of people would say in your family, your aunts or whatever, they said, well, you're two alike and you're just like her.
So they would try to equate the two of you, right?
Right. And she was who she was long before you came along, right?
Yes. And she could have become a better person By having a good child.
I think I've become a better person by being a parent.
I'm learning a huge amount from Isabella.
And why? Because Isabella is who she is and also because she's had a very different childhood than I had.
And so I get to see what it's like to have a happy childhood.
And that is teaching me a lot about a wide, wide variety of things.
And so if our parents failed to take the opportunity to become better people by having children, but as is sadly often the case, became worse people by having children, that is all became worse people by having children, that is all a domino setup that so far precedes us.
Right? That it's like feeling guilty for the instinct the tiger has to eat you.
Right. Right.
But the very opposite is told to us, right?
You know, my parents, not so much, but I've heard this from some people that the parents have this kind of golden age.
Oh, yeah, back before we had kids and blah, blah, blah.
But, you know, when kids came along, things changed and so on, right?
You know, there's this golden age in the past where they were great and then somehow, somewhere, something mysteriously went wrong and they're not sure what and, you know, probably was the kid's fault in some way.
But, you know what I mean? Like, There's this golden age and then the trials of the present are brought about by the children.
Right. That's all nonsense and it's the complete opposite of the truth.
There was no golden age and the trials of the present are not brought about by the children but acted out by the parents.
Right. And for me, that helped to take some load off my mind.
I mean, everybody says, oh, it wasn't your fault you weren't responsible and so on.
But I think to really dig it, but we're told so often that that's not the case, right?
The teacher is upset at us because we didn't do our homework.
The teacher should be upset that the teacher as an adult and a professional has not motivated us sufficiently to do our homework.
Teacher should be upset at herself, right?
Like when I was an entrepreneur, I didn't get to yell at a customer who didn't buy my product.
Right? Like if I send the customer some literature and then I call them a week later and they say, oh, I haven't read it yet.
I don't get to yell at them.
Right. I mean, you didn't give them an incentive.
Well, even if I did, I still can't yell at them, right?
Because that's crazy, right?
But, you know, if you don't do your homework, you can get...
You know, sent to the principal's office.
I don't get to punish them.
I don't get to say, well, you have to sit in your car for an hour now and think about what you've done.
Or what you haven't done, right?
That would be fucking crazy.
I'd be fired in a, like, I'd hang up the phone and they'd pull the cord out the wall, right?
I think that would be a good Monty Python sketch, though.
But, yeah, it would be absurd because that is exactly what happens in school, right?
Why do people get upset with you?
Because you have caused them to be upset.
You didn't do your homework.
You didn't follow these rules. You didn't wear your dress length long enough.
You wore this t-shirt, not that t-shirt.
It's all the adults are upset because the child did something wrong.
That's crazy! It's the adult's job to model better behavior and encourage and motivate the child to do the right thing.
And if the child does the wrong thing, it's a failure of the adults.
It's not a failure of the child.
That's completely clear to me.
If Isabella ends up hurting herself, it's my fault.
It's not her fault. It's my responsibility to protect her and keep her safe during this time of immensely energetic exploration of the planet.
It is my job to keep her safe during this time.
And if she falls, it's my fault.
If she hurts herself, it's my fault.
It's not her fault. Right.
But we pour the weight of the world onto these kids, right?
You and I and others, right?
It's our fault. Right.
Why did your mother not talk to you?
Because you did something wrong, right?
Wait, that was a very non-committal...
No, I mean, I was thinking about all of the times that that happened.
It's, you know, the...
The implicit or explicit was, you know, it's your fault.
If you were just better, you know, if you were a better daughter, then, you know, we would get along.
I would talk to you. You know, if you did your homework.
I mean, there were years when I just refused to do homework.
And it was, you know, it was like, why should I? Why should I bother?
And so, you know, if I had done X through, you know, Q... She would have talked to me.
We would have gotten along.
But that's not the case, of course.
Yeah, I mean, a big difference between my brother and myself, I'm not talking about him for any particular reason, I just think it sort of fits, is that when I was maybe 12 or 13 and he was 14 or 15 or something like that, his theory was what we need to do is clean up the house.
And if we clean up the house, Mom won't get mad, right?
And I just never wanted to do it.
No, I did it because, you know, bullied me or whatever, right?
But I never wanted to do it because it's like, dude, it's not because the house is not tidy, right?
Right, she'll find something else.
Yeah, it's not because the house is not tidy.
Now, when she's in a bad mood, she will say it's because of the house.
Not the apartment being messy, right?
She will say that, but that's not.
Yeah, it's, you know, something else, right?
In fact, I mean, I certainly was aware that, you know, when she was in a bad mood and just looking to lash out, that she would pace around the house looking for stuff.
Anything. Anything, right?
To vent on. Yeah, or she'd bring up something from the past You know, and it could be long ago, right?
Oh, yeah. There were things that, you know, happened when I was eight that she was still bringing up when I was 17.
Right, right. So it doesn't matter, right?
It doesn't matter whether, you know, the dish rack is empty or full.
That is not, right?
It's not what we're doing or not doing that is causing this.
I was very clear on that even when I was that age.
I'm not saying that it was, you know, all fully formed and conscious, but I was very much like, it doesn't matter.
Let's not pretend that it's because the place is tidy or not.
It's ascribing an immediate and empirical cause and effect that doesn't exist.
Right. I mean, it's like the Christians who blame lesbians in New Orleans for the hurricane.
It's like it's got nothing to do with it.
Yeah, except Hurricane is not a human evil.
But yeah, I know, I agree with you.
It's this ex post facto stuff, right?
It's just crazy.
It's got nothing to do with whether this place is nice or not nice or whatever, right?
It has nothing to do with any of that.
This was all choices made long ago.
Long, long ago. And it has nothing to do with us.
Right. And of course, you know, I know that empirically because whenever I would Ask my mother, you know, what was the reason that she was, you know, not speaking, or what was the reason that, you know, my mountaineering trips were magically cancelled, or that whatever, whatever, you know, she wouldn't answer.
Well, she couldn't answer.
Yeah, she'd have to say the truth, right?
So the reason that I'm mentioning all of this, I know that you know this stuff about your own history, but I don't think you get it about your presence.
Maybe you do, maybe you don't, right?
So this is the last thing I sort of mentioned.
Because in the same way that you were not causing your mother's anxiety or hostility, right?
You were not causing it.
When somebody doesn't return your call, they are not causing your Oh, totally not.
I mean, do you really see that?
Yeah, that's actually one of the things that I've been telling myself.
I've been telling myself, you know, it's not about the client.
It's not about, you know, ex-friend who hasn't called me back.
It's not about, you know, well, I can tell myself that intellectually.
I don't know about... No, but this is what I'm trying to say.
If you feel... At any level, if you feel that you were the cause of your mother's upset, then you will inevitably be led to feeling that other people are the cause of your upset.
You have to challenge your perceptions.
You have to free yourself from being the cause of your mother's moodiness.
Before other people will become free of being the cause of your moodiness.
And understand, I'm not equating your moodiness with your mother's, right?
But I'm just saying it for emphasis.
Right. Right?
You can't let them out of the prison.
You can only let yourself out of the prison.
Then they'll get out. They'll just walk out, right?
Right. But no responsibility for...
Now, you had to have the fantasy of responsibility for your mother's moods when you were a child.
You absolutely had to have that fantasy.
Because otherwise you wouldn't get out of bed, right?
You have to believe that something you can do is going to change your environment, even if it's a complete fantasy, right?
Actually, especially if it's a complete fantasy, you need to believe that, right?
Right. Because otherwise you have no control, no effect, no, I mean, nothing, right?
Right, in which case, you know, that's That's just depression and probably all likelihood of death.
Well, yeah, I mean, I think, I mean, I just, I can't picture that.
I mean, well, it's, you know, why would I, it is, why would I get out of bed in the morning?
Right, right, right.
And so, but we also, right, at the same time that we have to believe we have this magical control over our parents' moods, Right?
If they're abusive. We also have to refrain from asking the outside world for help.
It's a real balancing act.
We have to feel weirdly and irrationally omnipotent when it comes to our own parents and we also have to feel completely helpless and avoidant when it comes to asking the outside world for help.
Yeah, I mean, that makes sense because, you know, if I did ask someone for help and they tried and they couldn't do it, well, there goes both of our efficacy in controlling mother.
Yeah, again, not wanting to be Mr.
Darklight here, but I think it's because we know that people aren't going to intervene.
Sure. I mean, teachers, I mean...
Cops, I mean, they're not going to intervene.
No. You know, the one time when I did ask, I was, you know, dissuaded by one of my aunts and her boyfriend from actually going through with anything.
Right. Yeah, I mean, my mom called the cops when my brother was in England.
He was in England for a couple of years in my early teens.
And she called the cops because I was, you know, we were having a scream fest or something like that.
I can't remember exactly what it was.
And the cop comes, right?
The place is a complete pigsty.
You know, my mother's completely hysterical.
You know, screaming and just nuts, right?
She could scream like cats would explode, you know?
And the cop's like, well, son, what we have here is a generation gap.
It's a failure of communication because you come from different generations.
You know, or whatever, right?
It's like, do you not see that this caregiver is insane?
I mean, I can see that, right?
Can you not see that I'm, you know, hanging by a thread?
No, of course not. He just came and lectured me, told me to be better to my mother, to listen to what she says, and don't have them come back.
Right, because it was your fault that your mother was a raving lunatic.
Well, you know, he was kind enough to say that it might just be a generation gap, right?
In other words, there's just this mysterious gulf of years between us which makes it hard to communicate, right?
Right. Like the fact that she was screaming and sobbing in the torn 90, nothing to do with anything, right?
It's just, I mean, I laugh now because it's like 30 years later or whatever, right?
But that's how crazy it is, right?
Right. That's how we know that the world will not help us.
Plus, of course, I mean, just to speak about myself, I mean, because I'm not going to pre-guess your experiences, but I've been through half a dozen schools on two continents and, you know, clear signs of abuse, right? Clothes-torn.
Body odor, malnourished at times, bruises, right?
Clear signs, right? Crippling shyness, all that kind of stuff.
And nobody did anything, right?
None of the parents, none of the teachers, none of the policemen, none of the passers-by, nobody in the building who heard it.
Nobody. I mean, it's clear to us that nobody's going to act to help us.
Sure. Yeah, I mean, it was the same with me.
You know, people went out of their way not to ask me if anything was wrong or if they could help.
Sure, sure.
Yeah, I mean, coming between the predator and the prey, right?
People don't want to get involved.
And I'm, you know, to some degree, I'm actually okay with that.
I'm okay with that.
But please don't talk to me about the welfare goddamn state, right?
I mean, come on. Don't tell me about how much you care about the poor as a society.
I mean, that's just ridiculous, right?
That's just insane, right?
So, I mean, I'm okay if people don't want to intervene.
I just want them to be honest about it, right?
If people say, oh yeah, no, if I hear a kid getting abused, I just turn up the TV or I put some headphones on because it bothers me, right?
That's okay, right? Just be honest, right?
But everyone's, oh, the children, and we care, and we want to help the poor, and make sure that they get well-educated, and I'm for the social welfare state, and so on.
It's like, oh, come on.
I mean, nobody even picked up the phone to help us, right?
So... The hypocrisy is the worst.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is what philosophy is exactly designed to detonate, right?
Fuck hypocrisy is the fundamental tenet of philosophy, right?
And so to me, I just...
I'm just, you know, hey, if y'all don't care about kids being treated in this way, it's fine then just to say as a society that that's not a value for us, right?
You know, who wins on American Idol is a value, but this other thing is not.
And that's fine. Let's just be honest.
Look in the mirror and see what's actually there, right?
But people, of course, you know, don't like that so much, right?
Right. And then don't send men with guns to, you know, prop up values that you don't even hold.
Right, right. So the reason that I'm just pointing that out is that we have this weird duality, right?
So we have this belief that we have this amazing power to affect the moods of our parents, which we don't.
But at the same time, we have to kind of separate ourselves from where we're actually told that we can have power.
You know, the kids' helplines or you call children's aid or whatever, right?
And you know, of course, I mean, most times if the kid calls at least, right, it's probably going to end up worse than...
Instead of better, right? Or at least there's that fear.
Because nobody ever talks, I mean, maybe it's different now, but when I was a kid, nobody ever said, you know, if you're being abused, call this number and here's exactly what's going to happen and here's how it's going to benefit you.
Nobody ever said anything like that.
Right. Some big nebulous thing.
It's, you know, we'll get you the help you need.
Well, what does that mean?
Does that mean you're going to take me and put me in a foster home with potentially worse people?
Right, right. That's right.
I mean, this is exactly what you would want to hear as a kid.
It's exactly how things are going to get better and what's going to happen.
But they never tell you that because they don't actually want you to call.
Because that's not how they...
So, and of course, the...
The media is full of stories of, you know, well, we knew about this case of child abuse for years.
The kid ended up getting killed and nobody ever did anything about it.
I mean, I'm not saying it's the case for everything, of course, right?
But it certainly is common enough that, you know, when you hear scare stories of foster parents and so on, right?
So, yeah, I mean, it's not something that, you know, better the devil you know, right, without significant evidence to the contrary.
So, with all of this complexity, right, where we have to believe we have this amazing power over people we actually don't have power over, and we have to then pretend that the world is a good place, but at the same time not ask anyone in the outside world for help, because we know exactly what's going to happen if we do that, it's complex, right? To say the least.
Right, and so because it's complex, it takes, you know, therapy and journaling and all that to unravel.
I think that the fundamental thing is to recognize that you weren't the cause of the general world's indifference.
You weren't the cause of your aunt's enabling.
You weren't the cause of your mother's moods.
All of this predated you probably by decades.
It was all domino effects way back at the beginning of things.
I think people work to save themselves most effectively when they're younger.
I know I did. I started When I was 16 and it's hard even now, right?
But there's no substitute for that.
You have to start early, you have to start early, you have to start early.
It doesn't mean you can't start late.
It's just much better to start early.
It's like retirement saving. You can do it when you're 64 and a half.
You're just going to have 12 bucks in the bank account by the time you retire, right?
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Somebody has just written, it's hard to prove emotional abuse without bruises.
Well, I don't think that's true myself.
And again, I'm no doctor, no psychologist, but it would seem to me that elevated levels of cortisol, elevated stimulus levels of the hypothalamus, the fight-or-flight mechanisms, and so on, Could all prove emotional abuse, right?
High adrenal activity, high adrenaline activity.
If you stimulate a kid who's been emotionally frightened and abused, then their stimulus response is going to be that much higher than...
Right, so in a free society, this stuff would actually be pretty easy to prove.
But, sorry, they were saying, right, it's the state.
The state won't accept those as proofs.
Of course the state won't accept those as proofs because parents vote and children don't.
So, yeah, absolutely, this is...
Why we need a free society and parenting still, I don't think we'll get hugely, hugely better until we get a much more free society, which is sort of the chicken and the egg thing we're working with.
Yeah, actually, Steph, can I make a podcast request?
Sure. Why people do dangerous shit?
Why people do dangerous shit?
You mean like come up with philosophy podcasts?
Like, why would they do that?
Like, do what? Like, I don't know.
Climb mountains or walk across Antarctica on foot or like what happened to people to make them want to do that stuff.
Oh, dissociation and a death wish, right?
Dissociation would mean, again, amateur opinion time, but dissociation would mean that they need excessive stimuli because they're kind of burned out, right?
They dissociated from themselves.
That's what they need to feel, what you and I would feel, you know, walking down a Beautiful avenue of trees or something.
Right. Anyway, listen, long call, and I didn't want to, you know, heat 10 trucks worth of material on you, but is that enough for you to start to work with?
You had nothing to do with their moods, and the people in the present who are not returning your calls, they have nothing to do with your moods.
Yes, the 9.75 trucks that you just hit on me.
Yeah, right. You know, I'll back up now that I still see your foot twitching.
But was it a useful call?
It was extremely useful.
Thank you so much, Steph.
You're absolutely welcome, man. Keep me posted.
And congratulations again on your entrepreneurial stuff.
I just, I hate to say I'm proud because it sounds condescending, but I'm enormously impressed.
I think it's fantastic what you're doing.
Thank you so much.
All right. Take care. You too.
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