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Jan. 18, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:34:19
1561 Restitution and the Future - A Listener Conversation - Freedomain Radio

A listener wrestles with the aftermath of FDR1553 - Restitution.

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Okay, so I guess we're ready to roll.
Sure, sure.
So, I guess I had a strong reaction to both podcasts, the Why We Are Different podcast and the Restitution podcast.
For Why We Are Different, I don't know exactly the feeling, but I guess it was a lot of anxiety.
And the thoughts I was having were like, what if I have plateaued, right?
What if I'm one of the people that's just going to end up drifting away, you know?
You mean from FDR or the philosophy as a whole?
I think from FDR in particular, but also because you were talking about philosophy generally, right?
And FDR specifically, if I recall correctly.
Yeah, I mean, my obvious belief is that FDR is the best philosophical resource on the planet.
So I think it's hard to stay with philosophy and not with FDR at some level, which is not to say that it's the only place or the only thing of value that can come out of philosophy.
But, you know, if you're into philosophy, then I think it's tough to make two cases to sort of drifting away.
I think people drift away because they generally want to pull back from philosophy as a whole.
Rather than, particularly applied philosophy, rather than for any other reason.
So I'll sort of put those two hand in hand.
Right, right. And that's, I didn't separate those things in my mind.
I mean, I was thinking about FDR in particular, but it was the general rule of, you know, philosophy.
And it's not FDR that is, you know, it's not FDR's morality, you know, it's the objective.
Right. But I mean, if you're into your reason and evidence and self-knowledge, again, I just, I don't know of a better resource out there.
Otherwise, I'd join that and stop.
I mean, obviously, right, that's my, you know, whoever's designing the car thinks it's the best car.
Otherwise, they design something different, right?
So I think it's the best resource.
But that's, I guess, neither here nor there.
So please continue.
Right. And I didn't...
The timeline or the series of events was that I had that thought, you know?
And I didn't do anything with it, so it just sort of went into the ether.
Which thought? Oh, the thought that...
The question with the implication that I have...
Oh, that you might plateau.
Already plateaued. Oh, that you might already...
That I've plateaued. I might have, or I will, or I already have, and that's pretty much going to be the end of philosophy for me, right?
But I didn't remain curious with that thought, and so when you emailed me about the admin thing, I was all kinds of I'm trying to, I don't want to use a word that's not correct, but it seems to me like a kind of acting out.
And then I realized I was going in circles in my head, and that's a signal to me, at least at the moment, that something's going on.
And that's when I, I think I sent you two more emails, so one slightly less frantic, and then one like, okay, I've had some thoughts about this, and I'd really like to talk about it.
Which I hope was...
I hope landed a little bit better than the other two.
Right, right. And, you know, as far as timing went, you had your vacation.
So, it's not that it's gone away.
It's sort of lessened a bit.
And also, the thought that, you know, the accompanying thought to What If I've Plateaued was the The memory of how I've treated my brother when we were children, especially when we were children.
Because you were talking about not having harmed anybody, and I was like, well, I know I've harmed my brother for sure, because he's complained about it, you know?
Yeah, and in particular it was children, right?
Yeah, right, in particular.
Not having harmed people and not having harmed children, right?
And people are smaller than me.
My brother's been smaller than me my entire life, you know?
Right. You mean he's like human-sized compared to your Gargantua Fest, right?
He's a tall guy. He's a tall guy, ladies and gentlemen.
But anyway, sorry, come on. He's not quite that much shorter than me, but yeah, he's definitely two years younger than me, so that's just sort of how it goes, right?
And for the restitution, and not to skip over anything, I don't think I am, but for the restitution podcast, I felt some relief.
Actually, no, let me back up just a little bit.
I sort of was able to stop the cycle by saying, at least factually, I'll never be the guy that didn't beat up my brother, right?
So that's something I have to live with no matter what, if that makes any sense.
I don't know that...
That doesn't mean anything in particular, but I think it at least is like, well, however far I go...
This is just what's happened in my life.
It's nothing I can do about the past.
And the restitution podcast helped further in that my brother has expressed an anti-desire to pursue any sort of restitution whatsoever.
So in that way, he doesn't want it from me.
And he's also done things, you know, to provoke me into various things, but I wouldn't say it's on this...
I kind of don't know if it's on the same level, but even so, even if his behavior has nothing to do with it, he's not interested in anything I have to offer.
And this is, granted, this is a couple of years ago that we last talked, but I think that's pretty much it as far as What was going on for me on those podcasts.
Right, okay.
I mean, I've had some thoughts, but I'm certainly happy to listen if there's more that you want to talk about.
Not really relating to this.
I mean, I've had a lot of other things sort of Going on, but that's not really...
I don't think it's related to this.
Right. Now, plateauing is perfectly natural in anything that you do.
So it's natural to plateau.
And the reason that we plateau is that the next thing hurts like hell, right?
I mean, if you've ever trained for anything physically, you make particular strides, right?
It's like, yay, you know?
I shave 20% off my time, right?
But then to go to the next 10% is really tough, right?
So with anything, you get a relatively quick burst of improvement.
And then after that, the gains are incremental and painful and difficult, if that makes any sense.
Yeah, that makes sense.
So when you first... Take singing training, you get like an octave or two within a month or so, right?
I mean, once you learn how to breathe and you learn how to sort of do it right.
And then it's not like, hey, a month later I have another two octaves and a month later I have another two, right?
Getting those extra notes is really tough, right?
So if you and I suddenly decided to join the Olympic sprinting team and we started training, right, we would, within a month or two, have significant improvements over our time But of course, at the Olympic level, what is it that Seinfeld says, you know, the times are so close.
It's like, the guy's like, if I'd had a pimple on my nose, I'd have won, right?
So the initial gains are relatively large in a very short period of time relative to other things.
But what happens then is we know that the next stage is going to be painful and difficult to achieve.
And for a lot of people, That is where they plateau.
And I'm not saying whether that's a good or bad thing, but it is a very real thing, that you can get a lot of the gains of philosophy relatively quickly, you know, within sort of 6 to 12 months.
In terms of, you know, like getting abusive people, having the conversations with abusive people trying to work things out, and then if it doesn't work out, having the option to...
To bail, right? You can make those choices, getting out of bad relationships that can't be fixed and so on, and getting out of bad situations at work or whatever, getting rid of destructive friends.
I mean, you can make a lot of those kinds of gains relatively quickly, you know, 6 to 12 months, maybe 18 months.
Yeah, I was around 18 months.
Yeah, like, I mean, if you've got a therapist and you're in the conversation with whoever is of value to you in that process, you can make those gains relatively quickly.
And that's eliminating the negatives.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
I mean, I think that's an essential first step.
But there is a plateau.
And I mean, I've seen it countless times in this community, right?
There's a plateau where people have got the negatives out of their life.
And then they sort of come up to this chasm, right?
You know, like that Nero moment in the first matrix.
You know, can I jump across to the other building, right?
Like I've gotten rid of all the negatives.
I'm feeling a lot better.
And I think it's healthy not to...
You want to rest in that plateau period because you've got to work to get it and then you need to rest because otherwise you're just going to have this constant level of stress in your life as you're constantly going to the next thing and that's too much like a refu for a lot of us, right?
So you have that rest and that pause and that is a plateau and we've seen this a number of times in the community that people...
People get a lot out of FDR and they get to where they, you know, they get a lot further than where they thought they were going to get in terms of happiness and so on.
And they're just like, well, okay, that's good.
I'm good. That's as far as I want to go.
You know, I'm good.
You know, and that is where they leave.
And I think that's perfectly fine.
I mean, not everyone has to go for the Olympic gold, right?
I mean, it's not a boot camp, right?
People can obviously go as they please.
But I think that's important.
And I think those who...
I have no problem with...
I mean, I'm going to say I have no problem like it matters whether I do or I don't.
But I have no problem with people who say, well, I've, you know, I've gotten the gains that I want and I'm done.
I don't want to keep going.
I don't want to... And that's, you know, that's great.
You know, I mean, if you're into losing weight and, you know, you've lost...
You know, you say you need to lose...
100 pounds to get your ideal weight and you've lost 50 pounds and you're like, you know, I'm good for now.
I mean, that's fine. I think as long as people are honest about it and saying there is further that I could go, but I've decided that this is as far as I want to go, you know, now or for the foreseeable future or whatever.
Because it's all about the self-honesty.
And I guess that's my curiosity, which is, and it's a question I think everybody should ask who's into philosophy, you know, how far do you want to take this motherfucker, right?
Right. It's a big question.
How far, how low can you go?
Like how far do you want to go?
And there, you know, we all want to say, I want to go the whole way.
You know, we all want to say that, right, don't we?
I'm in, put me down for, you know, an order of five million philosophy units, right?
We all want to say that because it seems like that's the right thing to say.
Like, I want to go the whole heart.
Yeah. But it's not the right thing to say.
I sort of want to mention that sort of very clearly.
It is not the right thing to say, to say, I want to go all the way.
It's not the wrong thing to say, but, you know, there's no point with the false McKism.
No, no. And that's, I get that.
Go ahead. So, there's definitely a part of me that wants to say, you know, Hit me with everything.
That's right. Strap me in.
I'm going, baby. Yeah.
And then there's a part of me that's when I'd be like, I don't really know.
And there's a part of me that is all kinds of...
Not that we've gone far enough, but not sure how much further.
Right. And I think that's a really, really great...
I think that's a really, really great and honest thing to say to yourself, because it's really important to know.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right.
I mean, nobody has to go, nobody, of course, has to go as far as I've gone, and that's, you know, that's not necessary or required for anyone to be happy, right?
I mean, there are levels of happiness and there's cost and benefits to everything.
I think there are some principles that I think can help make the decision about how far you want to go, which I could sort of talk about for a minute or two if you think they'd be helpful.
I think that would be helpful.
I think...
Yeah, why don't you go ahead, because if I had a thought, it's gone.
Well, the first is if you're young, then I would plan for more rather than less.
Because you've got more time, right?
I mean, how far do you go when you're 85?
Well, not that far because you're sort of limited by time and ailments and so on, right?
So if you're in your 20s, I would say plan for going for more.
If you get...
Like some people...
They climb the mountain like step by step, right?
And other people, what happens is they have these big springy boots, to use a technical term.
These huge Wile E. Coyote Acme delivered spring boots.
And what happens is they take a jump and they go springing halfway up the mountain and then they can't maintain their...
They can't maintain their leverage when they get there and they're skittering back down and then they jump and then they go back down and then they go further up and so on.
So they get a taste of the heights, but they can't sustain it.
And if you're somebody who gets a taste of the heights, but you can't sustain it, you're going to be that much more driven to get back up on those heights, if that makes any sense.
But if you're somebody who just goes up step by step, then you might say like, you know, I'm sure there's a great view from the top, but There's a nice meadow here.
I can build a house. I can settle down.
I'm not one for busting my legs and my lungs getting to the Nietzsche view from the cluster of stars, right?
So if you are somebody who's gone spranging around and you've had those moments where you're just like, oh my God, it's all come together.
If I could just hang on to this.
This would be the best thing ever.
And then, you know, you stub your toe, you get a phone call, you know, it just vanishes, right?
You're like, damn, that vision, that green door, that garden, that was beautiful.
And then you want to get back because you kind of be tortured by its absence if you've been there and then lost it, right?
So, and there's a couple of other principles, but those are sort of the two major ones that I think are really important.
And the reason, the way that you know whether you're the sproingy person is whether you feel a lot of anxiety around stopping.
Right? So, if you're like, I'm okay.
I've had a soft landing. I'm comfortable here.
It's not for me to go for the gold.
And that's totally fine, right?
It's totally fine. I go to the gym, but I'm not trying to get ripped, right?
So, and then some people are and they go the whole hog and they diet and, you know, four hours a day at the gym and so on.
And that's great for them.
It's not for me. Yeah.
But if you are somebody who's kind of, in a sense, tortured by the plateau because you know what's beyond it, then I think it's usually a good idea to plan to go further.
I definitely think I'm much more on the catapult boots side.
Yeah, the sproingy boots, right? Yeah, the sproingy boots.
More so than step by step.
The sproingy boots are a bitch.
They really are. It's like...
You know what you're like?
You're like that dog.
You always see these dogs on these, you know, America's Funniest Videos show.
And it's a dog at the other side of the fence who is somehow magically bouncing up to the point where they can just see over the fence to something that they really want.
And they literally... Or into the kitchen window.
Yeah, or something like the boing, boing, you know, this dog keeps coming up, keep coming up.
And it's like, the dog is like, if only I could stay up here, oh, that would be the best thing ever.
And the dog can literally just die, continuing to jump to see over the fence.
And that's kind of what it's like when you've got the springy boots.
It's what kind of gets you to the next thing, if that makes any sense.
And that's sort of the image that's always occurred for me.
I mean, I have springy boots for sure.
That makes a lot of sense.
I mean, I'm definitely springing at the moment.
You know, like this period of time, I've got something terribly exciting.
And Appropriate words going on.
I'm going to, tomorrow, going to go to an acting school where I'm going to enroll or have an interview for enrollment where I'm going to do the voice acting.
Oh, that's fantastic. That's great.
That's just great. Like I said, it's terribly exciting.
Emphasis on terribly, right?
Terribly, exactly. But at the same time, I know that I can completely...
Take that all the way. Where it's going to go, I really don't know.
That's one of those things.
It's not particularly philosophical, but it's certainly about going after my dreams.
Going after something I've wanted for a long, long time.
And doing it.
And if it works, great.
If it doesn't, then I've done it.
Yeah, of course. Absolutely.
That's a self-expression. Okay.
So... So given that you're kind of on the move around getting things that you really want, the sprongy boots are going to be there.
And so this may be the way that you break through your plateau, right?
No, I think that makes a lot of sense, yeah.
All right. So as far as I'm afraid that I've plateaued, let me tell you this.
If you're afraid that you've plateaued, you're just about to stop plateauing, right?
It means that your sprongy boots are coiling up and it's going to be kapow, right?
Straight, you're going to... You're going to end up hanging with your coattails on that crescent moon that they have on the beginning of the DreamWorks video.
It's like, boing! Oh, shit.
So, yeah, I would say if you're concerned about your plateau, it means that the rockets are rumbling underneath you and you better strap yourself in because you're on your way somewhere, right?
Yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense.
And I'm actually starting to see the steam trails...
You know, billowing away from the tower.
It's all kinds of terrible and exciting.
Yeah. Good, good.
And when we're about to hit the next growth, that's where we really need to go back to basic principles, right?
Because in that new world, we can get lost pretty quickly, right?
Because we're in unfamiliar territory and Either old habits and bad habits are going to reassert themselves or newer habits and good habits are going to reassert themselves.
But it's going to be one of the two. So, you know, as you go forward, if you have success in this, which I hope you do, and you can't fail fundamentally because you're either going to give up the dream or achieve the dream, both of which are a great success, in my opinion.
Right, right. So, yeah, I would just say that, you know, get back to principles and, you know, you've gone, you're doing exploring, you think up the mountain, so the first thing you do is check your map and your compass when you get there and not just start running around looking at stuff, right?
Just, you know, rearrange yourself, check your map, your compass, go back to your basics around self-RTR, honesty, journaling, openness and so on and it'll be great.
So, okay, I think we've dealt with that and I had some other thoughts on what you said earlier, if that's okay.
Oh, go ahead, please. Alright, so you said a phrase which I found particularly chilling, which is worth, I think, having a look at.
You said, I can't do anything about the past.
Go on. Well, I gotta tell you, to me that seems like a very bad parent thing to say.
Oh, yeah. No, that makes, okay.
Makes a lot of sense, right?
So tell me what was going on there.
Oh, well, it doesn't really square with...
I'm sorry, I'm not really thinking about what I, what was going on there.
No, I think, I think that it was a way for me to stop the merry-go-round, but it wasn't something that was curious but it wasn't something that was curious or.
Like really, really getting at why I felt so much anxiety.
Right, because curiosity is supposed to be the antidote to self-attack, right?
But in this case, curiosity is going to lead to self-attack, right?
I think I get that.
So let me just try to make sure I understood what you just said.
If I'm curious about why I treated my brother the way I did, then that's going to open up to self-attack?
Yes. Normally, when we self-attack, we try to retain this resolute and confident and assertive curiosity about the self-attacky voices or aspects of ourselves.
But in this case, the concern or the fear is that curiosity is going to lead to self-attack, right?
Because if you're sort of curious about your history with your brother and explore it openly, you're afraid that the sort of the bare claws are going to close with jagged and bloody teeth on your legs and all that kind of stuff, right?
Right, and no amount of sprungy boots are going to help.
In fact, I better stop them because it's going to be excruciating.
Right, right, right, right, right.
And that's, to me, why I sort of characterize it as a bad parent thing to say, if that makes any sense.
Because that's what parents experience to a much greater degree.
Like, that's what abusive parents experience to a much greater degree when the child comes with curiosity, right?
Panic, anxiety, you know, self-attack, you know, all the kinds of static which can only be controlled, so to speak, by rejection, by closing the door of conversation, right?
No, yeah, that makes a lot of sense, for sure.
Alright, so let's go hand in hand into what's beyond the door of I can't do anything about the past.
I don't think you were even aware of what a thing that was to say to me, who has spent a huge amount of time focusing on the past and history and we know we are where we came from and the bomb in the brain studies and so on, right? Because the whole premise of self-knowledge is we damn well can do something about the past, right?
Right, right. Which is to discover the truth about it.
Right. So, what's on the other side?
What was coming at you when you slammed the door called, I can't do anything about the past?
What was coming down the hall?
I'm trying to It's almost like I saw my brother, but not as he is now.
And...
I'm just feeling like a Like a sadness and a horror together.
It's kind of a specter.
It's not even real in that way.
It really is sort of a ghost of his childhood, if that makes any sense.
Right.
And when you say that you beat up your brother, what do you mean?
Well, it's hard for me to remember exactly.
But the things that I can't remember is I know that I would punch him in the arm and I would hold him down and torture him.
What do you mean by torture him?
Tickle him or just sit on him and not let him leave.
Right. When he wanted to leave, you know.
There was one time he had this friend over and I sort of...
I sort of...
I got into the house before him and I locked him out and I was holding the window down so he couldn't get in.
We ended up breaking a window.
He ended up breaking a window, is that right?
Yeah, I think he ended up breaking the window.
Trying to get in.
I know that I've done verbal teasing, although I can't remember anything specific.
What do you mean you can't remember anything specific?
I can't believe that. And I'm not saying you're lying to me, of course, right?
But this went on for years, I would assume, right?
This is not isolated behavior, right?
No, it's not isolated.
So when you say you verbally teased him, and I'm just trying to jog your memory again, I'm not saying you're hiding anything, but I mean, would you call him names?
Would you make fun of his appearance?
Would you, you know, mock what he was saying?
Would you, you know, what is it, would you set up in possible situations like, you know, yes means no and no means yes, do you want me to hit you or whatever, right?
How is it that you would tease him?
You know, I'm not sure why I said that now because all I can think about is him teasing me.
Well, if he'd tease you.
Well, if my father was laughing at me, he would join in and sort of add his own two cents.
He would give me weird looks if I'd said something.
like, quote, strange.
I can't really, I can't remember saying things to him so much as responding or, you know, pushing you know, pushing him around physically.
I want to just check whether or not you're hedging your terms, right?
Because you say, I punched him in the arm, I pushed him around a little physically, but earlier you used the phrase, beat him up, which to me seems quite...
I'm just trying to reconcile these two gaps.
Okay. You know, it's quite possible that it's just...
Very extreme language, because I've never, like, maybe I've given him a few bruises, but I've certainly never, like, bloodied him, except for that window incident, but that was the window, you know.
Did you ever punch him in the face?
No. Slap him in the face?
No. Okay. So you'd punch him in the arm, or you'd sort of roughhouse him, like we talked about at the Sunday show, beyond his level of comfort and so on, right?
Yeah. And the verbal teasing that you recall is mostly in response to his actions or your dad's actions, right?
Well, he would be the one teasing me much more so than me teasing him.
And in what way would he tease you?
What was his nomenclature?
What was his nom de guerre?
What did they tease you with?
Well, it was the things I was saying earlier.
The joining in with my father, with the laughing and...
But what would they be laughing at?
I mean, I really feel like we sprunged up to Switzerland here.
Give me some specifics.
What were they laughing at? What was said?
And I'm not trying to have you revisit.
I just, I don't know what the content is of what you're talking about.
It's all adjectives and no, right?
No nouns.
I understand.
It's not so much that it's hard to remember.
It's just having a hard time bringing it up.
What do you mean? You mean it's in your head, but it's hard to speak about?
I can visualize it, but I can't put it into words.
I can put myself in this situation, but I can't come up with any specific details about it.
Well, would they make fun?
Like, again, let's go through the list, right?
Would they call you names? Would they make fun of your body?
Would they make fun of your appearance?
Would they make fun of your habits?
Would they make fun of your personality?
Would they make fun of your friends or your tastes or your hobbies or your preferences?
Like, what is it that was being made fun of, so to speak?
Largely my preferences and the things I said I wanted to do.
And, you know, particular habits or maybe the way I'd say a word.
I mean, some stuff that's so unbelievably petty.
You mean like you'd mispronounce something or whatever?
Not even mispronouncing it, just saying it like the word war.
Apparently, I said it strangely.
The word war? Yeah, war.
Of all the words to pick, eh?
Yeah.
Anyway, go on.
Just the most infinitesimally nitpicky things, like just – No, I take that back because it wasn't nitpicky when it came to things like I wanted to be an actor.
When I said that when I was 10, my brother didn't really join into this to the best of my recollection, but my father just did a complete dream crush on that.
As far as my brother is concerned, whenever it was a question of, am I going to stick up for James, or am I going to side with Dad, he sided with my father.
I can't remember a single time he stuck up for me.
And did you stick up for him?
And I'm not trying to tip for Dad, I'm just trying to understand.
Mm-hmm. I don't believe I ever did.
Yeah, you probably remember, right, if it was...
I probably would remember if I had.
What is the purpose of this nitpicky stuff?
Why was it done?
And I think it's really important to get into the skin of those who did us harm.
I think it's really, really important.
It is how we inoculate ourselves against those types of people in the future.
I think we really have to get into the skin of those who did us harm.
What was the purpose of the nitpicking and the dream crushing?
Because everybody does things for a reason, right?
I have these weird thoughts, I swear to God, like at least five times, no, maybe not five times a day, at least once a day or a couple of times a week, I'll look at something and I'll just think I could become obsessed by that.
Like, for instance, we were on vacation in Mexico for a week and we were driving back to the airport and the bus window was dirty.
And I thought, you know what? I could just make it my mission in life to clean this one window of the bus.
You know, like I'd ride on the outside of the bus and I would just have my Windex and my paper towels and I would just keep it perfectly clean and that would be my mission for the rest of my life.
You know, I could completely see how people could become insanely attached to those kinds of things.
And I mean, to me, I completely understand it.
And so far, I've been able to fight off that.
But... Because obviously somebody would say, and if I did that, people would say, well, why are you doing this?
Why have you suddenly become obsessed about keeping this one bus in Mexico's window clean?
Obviously it would be, and I'd say, well, how would I explain that?
It would have to be a stand-in for something really important in my life that the window represented that, you know, I was fixating on that to avoid.
Like, it wouldn't just be random.
And I think it's really important to recognize that if people have harmed us, it's not random.
It's not random. There is, you know, maybe not conscious or whatever, but there is a methodology behind the activities.
So with this, with the pettiness and the mocking of maybe you said a word slightly funny or whatever, right?
What is the purpose? Why would someone do that?
I can tell the effect it had, which was to basically put me in a...
Tiny little cage where I couldn't move.
Right, and that's a great, great and wise thing to do, which is to look at the effect and say, well, if somebody does something to hurt me and it has a particular effect and then they keep doing it, they must, at some level at least, want to do it, right?
I mean, that's just a reality.
Like, if I make a meal for Isabella and she doesn't like it, and then I make the meal for her again the next day, The first day is like, well, I just thought she might like, I don't know, spinach and baby fingers, right?
I don't know. I just make a meal for her and she doesn't like it.
I just feed her something and she doesn't like it.
Obviously, the first time I've ever fed her that, that's no problem, right?
I mean, that's just natural. Just learning what she likes and what she doesn't, right?
But if I then feed it to her again, that is a very, very different story, right?
So if somebody is doing something repetitively, yeah, we look at how it makes us feel, and I think it's fair to assume that everybody's a philosopher and everybody's a genius, and therefore they know exactly how it makes us feel.
And therefore, the way that we feel is the purpose of what it is they're doing.
So the purpose was to...
So, yeah, why would your dad want you to feel that small and constrained?
And I think a lot of people have gone through that.
And not just in families, but in totalitarian societies, it's all about that, right?
Right, right. How many novels are there about, you know...
Russian police, KGB. Yeah, you say one thing wrong, right?
And you're off to the gulag, right?
Or that... I mentioned it many...
1984. Yeah, like I mentioned many, many podcasts ago about this thing that Solzhenitsyn reports about how everybody...
Somebody mentioned the name Stalin in a presentation, I think it was, and everybody got up to applaud, right?
And everybody knew that there was secret police in the room.
And nobody wanted to be the first to stop applauding.
So they literally kept applauding for like 20 minutes.
Their hands were red, their backs were aching, the sound was annoying, but nobody wanted to stop.
It just went on and on and on and on because they're terrified of even that tiny gesture resulting in death or imprisonment.
So the effect is the intent.
Yeah, certainly if the effect is repetitively induced, then for sure we do not act randomly as human beings, right?
And whether the intention is conscious or not, it doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter. I mean, I think it's important to note, but it doesn't fundamentally matter.
To me, The difference between conscious and unconscious intent is like the guy who hits me in the car was drunk or sober.
Fundamentally, I don't give a shit.
The fact is he hit me in the car.
You know, if he's drunk or sober, I fundamentally don't care.
I just don't want to get hit by a car, right?
And if you say, well, if he's drunk, he's not responsible.
Well, yeah, he was responsible for getting drunk.
And if somebody says, well, it was unconscious, it's like, well, you're responsible.
Because you have not done the things which would have brought it from the unconscious to the conscious.
You haven't been honest with yourself, you haven't looked at your history, you haven't been honest with your feelings, you've avoided, you've minimized, you've acted out, you've rejected, you've done all of the stupid two-year-olds, and it's an insult to two-year-olds to say, you've done all the stupid and immature things that result in you being abusive towards other people.
You are responsible, in my opinion.
You are responsible. And you can't say, well, I didn't know.
It's like, well, that's like saying I was drunk.
You made the choice to get drunk.
And if you say, well, I didn't know, well, you made the choice not to know.
So yeah, if something is repetitively happening, it's because it is serving an intention.
So what was the intention?
Nope.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Well, the intention was to Put me in this little cage.
Right, and why?
As long as I'm in a cage, it doesn't have to see how small he is.
Right. Right.
Right. I'm talking to this guy that people have recommended to talk to the therapist on YouTube, and he said in one of his videos that people have children in order to act out.
Hmm. Right.
Yeah, I think I saw that, or saw something alluding to that.
Right, in the same way that DeMoss says a lot of people have children as poison containers because they're helpless and dependent poison containers, right?
Oh, man. I was just thinking about the circumstances of My parents' meeting.
That's a very clinical way to put it, I realize.
All the mythology that goes around that is about how they got married.
I did the math when I was a kid and I figured out that I was not full-term if I was conceived in the wedding night.
There's all this subterranean bullshit around it.
That I really picked up on.
But it was a choice.
What was a choice? It's not like it was a secret.
It was a choice to...
Sorry, sorry, sorry.
It was a choice to have sex.
It was a choice to get drunk. It was a choice to...
To not use protection.
It was a choice even to not have an abortion, to get married, to all of these things, right?
All these things were the choices.
I'm glad they didn't make those choices because I think you're a valuable addition to the planet, but all of these things were nonetheless choices.
No, right. And certainly not the kind of thing that you can say you can't use the sacrifice sob stories like I sacrifice so much because even that's a choice, right? Yeah, I mean, this sacrifice thing is complete nonsense.
I mean, the children don't ask to be there, right?
You don't get to buy a dog, lock it in your basement, and then claim that you're sacrificing something by feeding it.
Don't get the fucking dog if you don't want to feed the dog, right?
But that's the deal. The dog can't feed itself if you lock it in the basement.
So it's either going to starve or you're going to feed it.
But then to claim that you're somehow hard done by and sacrificing something because you got the dog and now you're feeding it is ridiculous.
Right. I mean, it is a massive sacrifice having children.
Of course it is. Monstrous.
I mean, my day is snatching time for emails and podcasts in between taking care of my daughter.
But the idea that I'm sacrificing something for her or that she owes me something for what it is that I'm doing as a parent is lunatic.
I mean, I chose to.
I have a kid. I worked at a daycare.
I know what it's all about. I know.
I mean, okay, I'm a little surprised when it's 24-7.
It's more than I thought.
But she's also a very exciting and involving kid.
But the idea that she owes me something because I'm doing things for her is, to me, I can't even express to you what a crazy notion that is.
Right. And for what it's worth, I mean, from the outside, That is just fantastic.
From a complete amateur, someone who's not raising any kids, keep up the good work.
That's just fantastic. She's an incredible pleasure to have in my life.
She's easily the nicest person I know.
So it's a real honor.
But the idea that I'm giving something up in order to spend time with her is You know, if you try as a parent to keep one eye on your former plans and one eye on your kid, it's impossible.
I mean, your eyes are going to rip apart like Roger Rabbit pulled by opposite gravity wells, right?
It just doesn't work.
You focus on your kid and you try and get the rest of your life done as you can.
Particularly at this age, right?
Because she's just non-stop and she can't be left unattended for 30 seconds, right?
So that just is I signed her up for a story time and Christina didn't have any patience.
So we took her to the library where they had story time.
All the other kids, with one exception, which was a young boy who was pretty old, but all the other kids were sitting nicely in their mama's lap while the woman up front did the sing songs and the stories and so on, right? Our daughter almost chewed her way out through my arm to get out and start running around.
She desperately wanted to climb up and sit in the sink and play with the swivel taps.
And then she wanted to put all of the alcohol on her hands to clean them because we do that a lot.
Obviously, she's out a lot.
And then she wanted desperately to get out of the room and go and play on the rocking horse.
And she's fierce, fierce willpower.
It's a beautiful thing. Christine and I were just looking at each other and I was just laughing.
It's like, this is our kid.
She's like footprints on the ceiling 24-7.
And again, all the other kids, you know, and of course, the other parents.
Isabella was, I think, by far the youngest kid in the room.
And, you know, she was pointing at the garbage can and saying, all gone.
And then she pointed At the lights and said, light.
And then when the woman picked up the bear, she said, bear!
You know, and she's like, not even 13 months, right?
So she's got a vocabulary of like 50 or 60 words.
It's crazy just how quickly she's advancing.
And she's running. She's almost running now.
She's trotting. She's not quite able to run.
But she's, you know, only supposed to be starting to walk now.
And so she's like crazy advanced for her age group.
And it's tough because the other parents there...
I have kids. One kid was 15 months old, one kid was 18 months old, and they weren't using words, and one of them wasn't even walking and so on.
So it's tough.
I really do feel sensitive to the other parents, because I know if I was in their position, seeing this crazy advanced kid, it would be really tough.
But yeah, so just the idea that I'm giving something up by spending an hour and a half at the library with her is crazy.
I mean, it's... This is the deal, right?
This is what you get.
This is what you do. Right.
It just sort of coalesced for me that when you were talking about Isabella and just how advanced she is, I mean, I was pretty advanced in a lot of ways when I was a kid, and given how small my father is, I can't imagine it did anything but freak him out, right?
Oh, yeah. Listen, I mean, I think that the...
I don't think... Isabella obviously has some good genes, I think, but I don't think it's anything that most kids couldn't attain and achieve with the right amount of parental investment and resources.
The size of her, the depth of her, she is like interstellar.
It's like standing over...
A big chasm of interstellar space looking down into her.
Because, of course, she's a tiny person.
I think this is helpful and useful.
I don't want to talk about my parenting, but I think this is helpful and useful to understand that the children are immense.
They are immense.
And again, she's not even a toddler.
She's like halfway between baby and toddler.
And she is immense.
She has incredibly strong willpower.
Fierce and positive and beautiful.
And you can negotiate with her even now.
Right? I do have, like I say, wait, wait, wait, when we have to sort of wait.
And she sort of will come and, you know, if she wants something that she can't have, she will let out some protest cries.
But then if I won't give it to her, she settles down because she sort of understands that usually I do and therefore this time if I don't, then I don't for a reason and so on.
She has, you know, amazing preferences about things that she likes.
She's fascinated by birds and airplanes.
I was playing the video Sledgehammer to her and at one point in the very background there's a little airplane.
It flashes, you know, it's a real claymation video.
And she sees it and she's like, airplane!
You know, she's like, bang!
She's constantly listening.
She's incredibly imitative.
Right? So everything that I do, she will try to do, even if I'm not aware that I'm doing it.
So she's And what she is, and I'm talking about you, I think perhaps with your dad, I mean, I would guess, right?
You know, what babies are that is the most incredible and terrifying thing is that they are accurate mirrors of who you are, how you show up in the world.
You know, when we deal with adults, what we're doing with is we're dealing with these funhouse mirrors of herself.
You know, like they're all distorted and wavy and ripply and bulging out in weird places and so on.
Because people don't reflect back to us who we actually are.
Because there's all this bullshit called politeness and appropriateness and this and that and the other.
So all of society is constructed so that nobody looks in the goddamn mirror and sees who they are in the eyes of another person.
That's just fundamental to human interaction that we're all lost in these funhouse mirrors where we're distorted views of ourselves come back to ourselves.
But the incredible thing It's that a baby doesn't do that.
A baby is a flat, straight, clear, clean mirror of who you are.
Because if your baby doesn't like you, they're not able to pretend otherwise.
If you try to do something funny and your baby is frightened, it's not funny.
It's really not funny.
You don't get any polite laughter.
You don't get any distortions.
You get an accurate reflection of who you are.
You know, and I come down in the morning because they're usually up a little bit before me.
You know, Isabella, you know, will start scampering up the stairs to see me because she wants to see me.
I'm, you know, a source of pleasure and happiness and excitement in her life.
And that's great. And I know that that's real because she's not able to fake.
She can't fake that. I can't bully her into doing that.
I can't make her smile, right?
I can't make her like me at this age.
You can make kids fake it later, but not at this age, right?
Certainly not when she was younger.
And if I was not the source of pleasure in her life, if I were a source of stress or anxiety or pain or fear or whatever, if I snapped, if I ignored her, if I made her feel smaller or lesser, then she would avoid me and I could not make her want to like me.
Whereas in society, if somebody doesn't like me, I can just say, well, that's really rude.
And I can try and control them through social pressure, through norms, through appropriateness, through, you know, whatever, right?
You know, like when you're a kid and your grandmother gives you some ugly sweater and your parents say, say you like it.
You know, just when you go in, say that you like it.
Or go kiss her on the cheek, even though she's got stubble and smells like, you know, dentures and whiskey, right?
Right? So... But babies are not like that when they're very young.
They are an accurate, accurate mirror of who you are to them.
And if you're not a nice person, all of society is constructed to hide that simple fact from you.
If you're not a nice person, all of society is designed to hide that simple fact from you.
But it comes through like a fucking searchlight.
From the forehead of a baby.
It illuminates you, whether you like it or not.
And it puts a mirror up in front of you, and you have to look at yourself as you really are, whether you like it or not.
And I think that's why people get so aggressive.
It's why they feel that they need to control.
That's why they feel they need to box in and minimize and crush a lot of times the young.
That's, that makes a tremendous amount of sense.
Thank you.
Because you, just as a person, I don't recall that you ever said that you liked your dad.
No. Just like as a person you'd meet in the park or whatever, right?
Do you...
I've...
If you had kids to babysit, you know, that kind of stuff, right?
Oh, God, no. I would never, I mean, before I became even remotely conscious, you know, there would be the social pressure, but I would definitely be quite reticent even before I flashed onto philosophy, you know?
Right, and I mean, of course, it's my hope that when Isabella gets older and has kids of her own, that she'll really want me to babysit, that she'll find, you know, she'll find it very valuable for me.
To give her my experiences as a parent to her, to be available as a resource, right?
Because I had to invent this wheel all on my own, right?
I've got no in-laws to help us out and so on, right?
And certainly, you know, our parental examples were not things that we want to use.
So I'm hoping that, and I genuinely believe that will be the case, that when she gets older she'll be thrilled and happy to have us available as resources to help her parent.
But if you don't like your dad, there was a long phase in your childhood that you can't remember, because you were too young, when you couldn't fake that you did like him.
And I know you can't remember it, of course, right?
But I think it's really, really important.
To remember that.
Because children are involuntarily honest when they're young.
They're just involuntarily honest.
If I hand Isabella, I think I've only done this once, to somebody.
And Isabella seemed fine with it.
This was, I think, maybe two months ago.
I handed her to a woman in the library who really missed a baby, right?
Her kids were older.
And Isabella seemed to want to go to her.
And... Isabella sat in her arms for about 20 seconds and then began to be not happy.
Her lips began to curl and she began to tear up and she was just not happy being there.
And I could not say, Isabella, don't be silly.
This is a friend. She's nice.
She's a nice person.
Don't be silly. Because she was like 11 or 12 months old.
She's going through separation anxiety.
So that's why all that's occurring.
I could not have talked Isabella into being nice to the girl, to the woman, rather, because that was the age.
Now, if she was older, I could have shamed her, if I were that way inclined, right?
I could have poo-pooed her, I could, oh, you're overreacting, don't be silly, this is a nice person, you're being ridiculous, you know, just sit there and blah, blah, blah, right?
Or I could have bribed her, you know?
Or I could have threatened her, or, you know, but I could have...
Muscled in to modify her behavior based upon my preferences.
Right, right, right.
There was a story that my mother would tell.
And this sort of came up in therapy.
Like one of the first things that came up in therapy.
And it's a story about how when I was 18 months or so.
My parents were at some sort of resort and they had, I guess, one of my mother's siblings there who was supposed to be watching me, but I managed to get out of the hotel room and I was walking away.
You got out of the hotel room and you were 18 months, right?
It's something in that age.
I don't think my brother was born yet.
Pretty young. I was under two years old, right?
So I got out of the hotel room and the story goes that I was found walking towards the highway.
But the associations I get with that are like this darkness of this hotel room and then this bright green hill of kind of like freedom in a way.
But Then there's no more associations with that.
But what sort of resonates with me about that is that I was already trying to get away from them.
I was already very clear that I didn't like them.
Very much so.
Incredibly so much so that I was willing to...
Well, two years old.
What do I know? I was wanting to get away.
My calculation in my...
Toddler mind was, survival is better without them.
Right, I will take my chances in the fucking woods, right?
Yeah. Right.
And, you know, there's this Calvin and Hobbes thing, right, where it's always portrayed that the kid wants to get away as a protest against sensible rules because the kid is just too immature, right?
Sure, right, right.
I mean, Isabella does not want to.
Go away because it's more fun.
She hates going to bed because it's more fun being up.
Oh, remember that?
With us, right?
She doesn't want to be up watching TV. She wants to be up playing with us, right?
So she's not going to wander off because she wants to spend time with us because we're more fun than whatever, right?
And I mean, that's also what happened to me, right?
So I was like four or maybe five, but I think four, because I remember being pretty low on the ground.
And yeah, when my mother had been just wretched and miserable, that I just, you know, snuck into the kitchen, packed up some cookies, and, you know, went out.
Midnight. It was really, really dark.
And it was a long time after I had gone to bed, so I don't know what time it was.
But yeah, I packed some cookies.
And I was just going to head out into the world in the middle of the night.
I mean, at what extremity do you have to be as a young and tender soul to biologically take that kind of chance?
any random stranger who's going to pick me up who might have some vague interest in taking care of me is better than this place.
Right.
And that was my last act of overt rebellion for many, many years, because that's when my mom, you know, hurt me and just, you know, belted the living crowd.
This is when she sort of hit my head against the door.
And I just really remember very consciously just saying, well, there's no escape.
And I know why she did that in hindsight, right?
Because a child who turns away from you, who attempts to get away from you, who attempts to run away from you, who rejects you, Is holding that mirror up.
And holding that mirror up to somebody who is not a nice person, given that so much in society is constructed to avoid that simple reflection.
Holding that mirror up.
They see who they actually are without socially conformist bullshit.
That feels like such an overwhelming act of aggression against a bad person.
To hold a mirror up to a bad person feels like such an overwhelming act of aggression.
That what my mother did was actually a twisted form of self-defense.
Well, if I know my parents at all, I know that after that episode, there would have been a hell of a lot of yelling.
At you? At me, yelling at me, yelling at my mother's person who was supposed to be watching me but was asleep or whatever.
Maybe even, you know, sort of, maybe not yelling at the person who found me, but certainly like agitation, right?
Just all kinds of hysterics and noise and fury.
Right. And of course, if that, I can't even imagine, right?
But if that ever occurred for myself, like if my daughter, if I left my daughter with someone and then my daughter wandered out at the age of two to some God knows where place, right?
I mean, I would be completely appalled.
I mean, my level of just self-attack would be pretty intense.
And what I would have to do as a responsible human being, and not to say parent, would be I'd have to sit there and say, okay, what just happened where I ended up making a decision that led to this?
Right. How to leave it with somebody that was...
Didn't even have the responsibility to take care of my daughter.
Right! Where is my judgement that I put my daughter in the care of somebody who is not taking care of her and in fact is endangering her?
And that would be a process of self-examination, of self-criticism.
What were the steps that led up to that decision?
What happened this? What happened then?
Why did I make that decision?
And so on. And that would be a big, big series of introspective steps around what decisions did I make that led up to this potential disaster, right?
Right. But that requires a level of responsibility, right?
Where, look, I'm not gonna, I mean, obviously I'll be upset, but acting out in the situation is not going to solve the problem, right?
Yelling at other people when I'm the parent who's responsible for the child, yelling at other people is ridiculous.
Well, of course, of course, I was just sort of It's like I rent a car and I lend it to a guy who's drunk and then yell at him for crashing.
It's like, but you lent it to the drunk guy, right?
Right. So, I don't want to get away from what we're talking about in the moment, but I'm sort of thinking about getting into the skin of these people.
Like, I don't know that I'm quite getting that.
Like, I know what it means, but I don't think I'm quite getting into that skin.
Right. And the reason that you need to get into their skin, we may achieve it or we may not, but the reason you have to get into their skin is they're already in your skin, right?
Getting into the skin of people who've harmed us is an act of self-knowledge because they're already in our heads, right?
Right. Remember that role play I did with the guy from New Zealand, right?
He had his dad down to a tee.
His dad was in his head, right?
And my Mr.
Critic was very much a mirror of my father.
Absolutely. I remember that very, very strongly.
So I think it's important to empathize with those who did us harm because that is an act of self-empathy.
That doesn't mean sympathize with them like what they did was right and blah, blah, blah, but to empathize with their motives so that we learn about those templates within ourselves, right?
Oh, okay. So a big part of that would be the desire or the compulsion even to, I think compulsion is a better word, to keep me small, to keep me boxed in.
Right, because obviously you do that to yourself, right?
No, right, right. And if you're embarking upon a deferred dream, then that's getting out of that box.
So that's going to provoke self-attack in the form of your dad's voice and perhaps other people.
It is important, I think, to realize what they were up to, right?
Right, and I've gotten a lot of this already, but for sure, it's not even so much that I've, quote, gotten it.
I need to also, if I want to succeed, which is whether or not it works out, right, I need to remain conscious, which is what you were saying going back to principles.
Right. Going back to the self-empathy and self-knowledge.
Right. And the psychology of it is very complex, I'm sure, right?
But I think the principles are very simple.
And I'll give you at least my nonsense take on it and see if it makes any sense.
And it's the status principle fundamentally, right?
Like, I think I have useful things to say to people to help them live their lives.
Obviously, I'm not going to pretend I don't because I run this show.
Now, of course, I... I try never to tell people what to do and I certainly say that people don't have to do it because I approve or disapprove.
I always say that my approval or disapproval is meaningless and these are just options and choices and ideas and thoughts, right?
And so I think that I have principles that can help people live their lives but I don't enforce or inflict any of them, right?
I don't run for office and say we need to pass a law that everybody has, you know, the ecosystem conversation once a week or they go to jail.
Whatever, right? You have to journal every day.
Everybody has to be forced to see a therapist, right?
And so I'm sort of an embodiment of that principle of volunteerism.
And of course, on the other hand, there are people like Barack Obama who thinks that he knows how everybody should live their lives.
And he's not creating a podcast where he says, I really think that you should live your life this way.
Instead, he's pulling out the guns, right?
And saying, you better do it this way or you're going to jail, right?
Instead of going and saying, you know, I think it's a really good idea that we bail out these banks, so here's where you send your PayPal money to, and here's where you send your check to if you agree with me.
He's like, no, I'm going to fucking take your money and send it to these banks, and if you don't pay me, you go to jail, right?
Now, we all understand that from the status standpoint, but it's the same principle in families, or any relationship for that matter.
If I do something...
If I want my daughter to like me, I face two choices.
Just as the two choices we talked about with podcasting versus running the government.
I face two choices.
I can either act in such a way that she's going to like me, in a real way, and not just in a I bribed you with sugar way, but in a real and genuine way.
I can act in ways that generate respect, or I can get angry when she doesn't give me what I want.
I can get angry because I believe that I am entitled To the effect without the cause, right?
And your dad, it sounds like, when he was faced with that choice of my son at the age of two would rather take his chances out there in the night rather than stay here, right?
That's a pretty powerful piece of information for a parent to get, right?
And, you know, you probably did not run to him when you were a toddler.
You probably got kind of cautious when he was in the room.
Again, this is all speculation, but, I mean, he probably was not an entirely different person when he was younger, right?
No, if anything, he was...
It was worse.
It's most likely. People do mellow a little bit with age, even nasty people or whatever, right?
But you... Yeah, it's not a mellowing to niceness.
It's just a mellowing of, you know, sort of, you lose your flexibility.
Yeah, no, I agree with you. You sort of, well, there's less provoking you, right?
Also when you get older, right?
Career is largely down.
Anyway, kids are grown.
But it's not likely...
And I'm sort of not trying to do any kind of direct comparison, but it's not likely that you would be like jumping up and down, screeching with delight, and trying to run up the stairs even though you couldn't quite make it when you first saw your dad in the morning, right?
No, no, that was quite the opposite.
So if who you genuinely are, if your genuine, spontaneous, honest, deep, rich, and true experience of your father causes your father pain, then your father faces a choice.
The most fundamental choice.
do I change my behavior in order to get what I want from people?
Or do I bully them to give me what I want?
Right, and he very clearly chose a lot.
Right. It's like the same thing we don't like in economics, right?
I can't compete with someone, right?
So let's say some Dude comes up with a podcast that's just so genius that it blows mine right out of the water and everybody goes over there.
I say well shit I either better up my game or find something else to do with my life or I can go to the government and try and get him shut down right right right like if I can't some guy is asking a girl that I want and she seems to be leaning towards him I can either try to become more attractive to her or I can say you know he's got herpes right
Right, right. And so, if who you are is an indictment, so to speak, of your father, then who you are, your natural, honest responses, they have to go.
If your dad takes the dark side, right?
If he takes the dark path.
They have to go.
You can't be who you are because who you are does like your dad.
That's.
I mean, it's all kinds of complicated how it gets set up.
But fundamentally, it's a very simple principle, right?
No, no, right, and that's why, and it just makes sense to me now, why there was no real argument with him by the time I was a teenager.
There simply wasn't, like, why I went to NJIT, why I went into computer science, why I have the job I have now.
It's like, you know, in the movies, there's this exorcism, and they drive the devil out of the person, right?
But to a bad person, the devil is the true self of the child.
It has to be these elaborate rituals and punishments and burning holy water and fire and all that.
I mean, you have to drive the demon of the true self out from the honest face of the child if what's reflected is harmful to your false self.
So you being paralyzed, you being, right?
Well, there's no choice. There's no identity.
Yeah. So, in order to erase somebody's identity, you have to simply put them in a situation where choice is impossible.
And you do that by random punishments, by teasing and mocking, creating a lot of self-attack, by putting them in impossible situations and, you know, continually by driving them to do things that make them feel guilty and infecting their minds with religious gobbledygook about, you know, you can't think about sex or masturbation, whatever it is, right?
All those happen to apply.
The totalitarian impulse is the same in families as it is in the state.
The state comes out of the family, as I've always argued.
You know how we talk about the slave-on-slave violence, right?
The thing that I find surprising to some degree about Your response to the restitution video, and it's not just your response, this has been pretty common, is that people immediately think of who they've wronged and who they might owe restitution to, right?
But that's not UPB compliant.
Right. Although...
Well, no. Why is that not UPB compliant?
It's tricky.
tricky let me see if i can dig it out um i'll give you an example a metaphor because it really is tricky and i you know it's it's uh it's
It'd be hard to see even if you weren't dealing with all this stuff that you're in your history that you're dealing with.
Right, so if I'm standing there and One guy parks illegally and another guy stabs a guy, right?
And I rush over to tell the guy not to park illegally and the other guy dies.
And I say, well, but it's illegal to park illegally, right?
But that's still not UBB compliant because you kind of have to look for the biggest crime, right?
You have to have a sense of proportionality in your responses, right?
Right, so not that, and let me know if this is on the right track, but not that my treatment of my brother was all that great, or even may have been harmful in some cases.
The greater harm was being shoved into the box.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, look at the crimes occurring in the family.
And, you know, once you've worked your way through the major crimes, which come from the parents, you know, once you've worked all that shit out, then you're in a position, right?
And this is also to Greg, right?
You work out the crimes from the major actors.
The only real actors in a family are the parents.
The children are always re-actors.
Parents are actors, children are re-actors.
But you deal with the murder.
You don't deal with the parallel parking, or the illegal parking, right?
And once you've dealt with all that parental stuff, then, then, and only then, can you start to look at your own actions.
Because you can't jump right over the body on the street to deal with the littera, right?
Right. No, that makes...
That makes...
Again, tremendous sense.
And also, I'd just like to point out that that is what I'm exploring in therapy.
Right. Because what you didn't say is you didn't say, I'm so angry because my dad owes me so much restitution and I'm never going to get it.
Right? You and me, this is just self-attack.
Well, but I punched my brother in the arm and then I sat on him and then I tickled him and, right?
Like, okay, I dropped a few pieces of literary...
In the park, and I'm not minimizing, right?
I mean, you understand, but relative to what your parents were up to, it's pretty damn small potatoes, right?
And yet you're missing that, right?
Jumping right over that hole, right?
And just focusing on what you might have done wrong.
But that is an act of self-erasure, in my opinion.
That is a continuance of the little box, right?
And that's why you said round and round and round, right?
To stop the merry-go-round, because that's a little box, right?
Because when we're stuck in a merry-go-round, when we're stuck in those little thoughts, it's because we're missing the big picture, right?
And even if we are doing bad things, genuinely bad things in our life, I don't believe that the solution is ever to Just start self-attacking,
right? I mean, if my parents, even when having done bad things, if they'd sat there and processed the wrongs that were done unto them, they wouldn't have ended up continuing to do those bad things, right?
Right. No, that's right.
And we're never supposed to We're never supposed to judge those in charge, only our fellow slaves and only ourselves, right?
That's why if you and I, you know, steal, I don't know, more than 200 bucks worth of stuff from a stereo store, we go to jail for two years, right?
But the theft of taxation is legal.
If you and I counterfeit, you know, 50 bucks, we go to jail, but you can counterfeit billions of dollars through the government and no jail time, right?
You and I will go to jail.
We plan a murder. Yeah, if we go and murder someone, we go to jail forever, possibly face a death penalty.
But you can go start a war and cause the death of hundreds of thousands of people, and you get a pension and a library named after you, right?
Because we're only ever supposed to focus on the crimes horizontally, never vertically, never vertically.
And that's why it's you and your brother, not your parents and you.
And I'm not saying don't ever look at you and your brother.
By all means, but not first.
But not first, because then what you're doing is you're saying helpless children who are performing minor injuries are the sole moral focus, rather than abusive adults with all the power in the known universe relative to those children who, since they are children, are not morally responsible fundamentally anyway.
Thank you.
It's blame the kids, blame the kids, blame the kids.
Again, right? I don't want to be doing that.
I'm sorry? I'm sorry, I just don't want to be doing that.
Well, you kind of do, but you shouldn't be.
Well, you know, okay.
Empirically, you kind of do, because it's easier, right?
And that's what we're trained to do. We're trained...
To focus on our own flaws.
We're trained to focus on the detritus, the little moral scraps of possible negativity in the everyday.
And we're trained, we're trained to completely ignore the massive crimes going on around us from those in power.
And we're just focusing on each other, you know.
That's why I was thinking about bickering couples, you know.
You said this, you didn't do the dishes.
It's like, of all the fucking crimes to focus on in the world is who did the dishes?
Really what you're going to spend your moral energies on.
But that's what we're trained to do.
We're trained to pick at each other, you know, like picking at each other scabs and wounds and focusing on the stupid moral bullshit of the everyday, which is irrelevant relative to the greater moral questions.
But of course, once we start raising the greater moral questions, which in your case is the parents, not siblings, well, things get challenging, right?
Because we have a tough time doing it, and then when we bring it up with anybody else, they try and put us back in the box, because then they feel like they're going to have a tough time doing it.
And they're right! Because once you change that, once you go with UPB, UPB is like the theory of relativity.
The theory of relativity just says if the speed is light is constant, what then?
And it turns out that everything changes.
And if we just say, well, what if the non-aggression principle is constant?
What changes? Everything!
Everything! And it's really wrenching and disorienting.
In the same way, That going from Newtonian physics to Einsteinian physics is wrenching and disorienting.
It just happens to be right Somebody just wrote in the chat room Killer man and you're a murderer Kill many. You're a conqueror.
Kill them all. And you're a god.
Very nice. But yeah, I would focus on the harm that was done to you first and foremost, and for quite some time, and worry about that.
Or not worry, but think about that, meditate upon that.
And then, you know, once you've processed that, because you can't understand what you did to your brother until you've really processed what was done to you, right?
No, I believe that's true as well.
Right, right. Why would I have punched him if I don't understand?
Yeah, you can't understand that without understanding your parents and their choices and their behaviors and why they did what they did.
Your behavior then has no context.
Is it...
Is it...
I kind of...
Sometimes I really get stuck with them as monsters.
Sorry, with them as monsters?
With your parents as monsters? Yeah, that's what they are.
Sorry, you mean you think that they're not, or you think that they are?
No, that I think that they are, and I don't go any further than that, if that makes sense whatsoever.
Yeah, and look, I mean, the challenge of processing parents is that we have the intellectual and moral perspective of adults, but that's not what we had when we were children, right?
That is the real challenge, right?
I mean, if children were philosophers, they wouldn't take it personally, what their parents were doing, right?
Because they would have understanding and family history and psychology and self-knowledge and, right, they wouldn't take it personally, right?
Any more than I take it personally when some crazy guy yells at me on a street corner while waving 12 Bibles around, right?
I don't take it personally, right?
I don't think he actually thinks I'm going to hell because he can see my soul with his, you know, crazy, flecky eyes, right?
So I don't take that personally.
But as children, we take everything personally.
We have to. We have no choice.
That's who we are. That's how we're programmed.
Our brains are smaller. They're a third the size.
They're different. They're immature.
And so that's the challenge.
This is what we bounce back and forth.
We say, well, my parents are monsters.
And then we say, well, but, you know, they had their own histories, they had their childhoods, they were doing the, you know, whatever.
All the excuses come up, right?
But the reality is that we didn't have that information, that perspective, that, quote, maturity, when we were children.
But that's what we have to process.
And so we start falling into the sort of, quote, black and white of viewing our parents' morality or immorality, if, you know, I'm just talking about abusive parents, of course, right?
And we fall into that, and then we yank ourselves back up and we say, well, it's not that simple, right?
But the reality is that when we were children, it actually was that simple.
But we don't want to get into those little britches, right?
We don't want to get into that black and white view because we say, well, that's not sophisticated, that's not mature.
And also, a black and white view was sometimes used, if not often used, to inflict punishments upon us, right?
And that is the challenge, that we kind of have to go back to a comic book simpler time of right and wrong, of pain and pleasure.
And we have to process that.
And I don't think we can process that by lecturing our inner child and say, well, but there was always perspective and they had their histories and their, you know, blah, blah, blah, right?
Because that's not what our inner child experienced.
And it's just another way of not experiencing what happened, right?
You know, to withhold the judgments that came 20 years after the events and let the actual events occur as you experience them.
That is integration, in my opinion.
Hold off these buzzing flies and wasps and bees of later formed abstract judgments about shades of grey and complexity and blah blah blah, the generational chain and the cycle of abuse and unconsciousness.
Because what we actually need to process and integrate were the actual experiences we had as a child.
Frankly, nothing to do with all of that stuff that we get later.
And that stuff is useful, it's just not appropriate to what we experience as children.
And it's just another way of avoiding the experience.
Right, and so the experience of my parents as monsters is the one to explore.
Yeah, that is the one to explore.
And my strong suggestion, you know, this is, you know, defer to your therapist in all cases, right?
But my strong suggestion is you just go into that feeling, that experience, integrate that, deal with that, listen to your inner child with regards to that experience.
And don't lecture your inner child, don't lecture your inner experiences by saying, well, but you don't have the correct perspective.
You don't have a seasoned and mature perspective, because your inner child is going to say, yeah, I'm five, right?
It would be inappropriate to lecture, and in fact, I think destructive, counterproductive to lecture your inner child, so to speak, with the perspective of wise and mature and abstract adulthood, because that's not what was actually experienced.
The inner child needs to be listened to.
It needs to communicate that experience.
So just go with it.
Hey, monstrous, let's go with monstrous.
Let's go full tilt boogie with monstrous until that's all integrated and absorbed and understood.
And afterwards, you won't need to fight for a more seasoned perspective.
It will just be there, but you won't be overleaping that.
Right, right, right.
The last thing I'll say is that you want simple enthusiasm about your voice acting, right?
You don't want seasoned, well, maybe this, maybe that, what if this, what if that, well, you know, it's risky and I've got a sure thing in this cubicle and who knows, right?
Lots of people fail and, you know, I'm too old relative to some of the people who were getting in who've been doing it since they were six.
And, you know, you don't want that.
What you want is the simple, childish, mad enthusiasm to just do it full tilt boogie, right?
You don't want that complexity with some things.
You want it with some things. You really don't want it with other things, right?
Because it clouds and diminishes and befogs the intensity and beauty of the moment, right?
And that is...
That is exactly what I've been experiencing.
Right, so if you want that simple enthusiasm, that comes, you know, from the inner child.
If you want that simple enthusiasm, then you often have to take the simple monsters.
Right, right.
Otherwise, it doesn't make sense why I have 18 months would run away.
Right. I mean, Isabella is incredibly assertive and incredibly gentle.
Right? And you were sitting on people and punching their arm, right?
That's a pressure cooker, right?
That is a lot of tension and a lot of self-control that can only find relief in controlling others, right?
You get this heavy, heavy load of self-control and just like My arms are dying.
they're going to fall off.
I've just got to control someone else to get some relief, however briefly.
No, that's...
That really makes a lot of sense.
Um...
Thanks so much. You're welcome, man.
I appreciate you calling.
I knew it was a challenge.
You don't like to call on the BCF. I knew that it was a challenge and I hope that it's been helpful.
It certainly has.
I've definitely been getting into this with my therapist.
Actually, today I had a double session, which was All kinds of intents, but really, really helpful.
But this perspective is also helping me to see...
Obviously, Will definitely works with my therapist, but also to get...
I guess to...
The things I can continue to work on.
You know, in addition to the things I'm working on in therapy.
Fantastic. Fantastic. All right.
Well, I'll send you a copy of this and you can let me know what you think.
Yep. I think maybe there's a couple of snips, but other than that, I have no problem.
All right. Thanks, man. I'll talk to you soon.
Well done. Thanks. Bye.
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