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July 21, 2011 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
52:57
1959 I cannot admit when I am wrong'! - A Listener Convo

A conversation with a listener who is struggling with always wanting to prove how intelligent he is, and being unable to admit when he is wrong... A listener conversation from Freedomain Radio.

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Hello. Hey, how's it going?
Yeah, very well, thank you. Alright, well, congratulations first and foremost on the job offer.
That's very exciting. Thank you, thank you.
Good, good. So, what can I help you with?
Perhaps, maybe, possibly.
Well, it's a problem that I've had for quite a while and it's something I never really noticed in myself until my wife pointed it out to me.
And it is that I have a really bad trouble with...
I feel like I need to prove how intelligent I am to everybody all the time.
And also... Wait, sorry, you're coming to me with that problem?
Do you think that's wise?
You're coming to me for hairstyle advice.
Anyway, sorry, go ahead. And also...
I have a real problem with being proven wrong.
It makes me feel horrible to be proven wrong, especially in front of someone else.
But also partly just for my own self-confidence type of thing.
So these are the two main halves of the equation.
And it is causing some issues in my life.
And, you know, I'm not sure what to do about it.
So I thought, you know, who better to ask?
Alright. You know my first question, right?
What is my first question?
I don't know. My first question is, how were conflicts resolved when you were a child in your family?
Um... This is the philosophical self-knowledge amateur internet question that is almost always the first and most useful one to ask.
Whether it pans out, we'll find out.
I think it was usually a case of that it was decided by an authority figure.
So can you give me an example?
Let's say me and my brother are fighting over a toy.
Then it would be my mom who would Decide who got to play with it and who didn't.
Usually the person who's doing the snatching is the one who doesn't get to play with it.
Which is always hard to tell, right?
Yes. Because unless mom's got the, you know, video camera on you and can do the slow motion replay, it's tricky to find out.
It is. Now, were there rules about these kinds of conflicts that you followed and you could appeal to?
Was it a bit more chaotic?
How did it work? I can't really think.
I guess one rule was if you snatched it, you didn't get to play with it, right?
Yes. Well, yeah. But obviously that's to a certain extent kind of subjective because it depends on who gets seen to be snatching, who appears to be the snatcher.
Who appears to be this natural?
Right, right. So there's a certain amount of sort of storytelling that can go on in that kind of situation, right?
Yes, yeah. Right, right.
And what determined the value of a human being in your household?
I know this is a really abstract question, but I think it's still really useful to ask, right?
So I'll sort of give you some examples, then you can see if it makes any sense to you.
Sure. So in many households, It is your fidelity to Jesus that is the value of a human being.
In other households, it is your fidelity to the country that is the measure, and I'm not saying the sole measure, but an important measure that we may not agree with as philosophers when we get older.
If you could sort of try and boil it down...
Oh, sorry. And in others, it's your education.
In others, it's your income.
In others, it's your level of professionalism.
In others, it's your level of politeness.
And, you know, in others, to be fair, it is your integrity and your honesty and your courage and your virtue and all those kinds of good things.
But in your household, what was the measure of the value or a primary measure of the value of a human being?
Oof. Hmm.
Hmm.
Well, my family wasn't in any way religious and not in any way really nationalistic.
I guess...
I think probably the closest fit that I can think of is education.
I was always taught that It's better to go into the schools of higher education and that would be the sort of highest honour or whatever.
So you mean sort of like an Ivy League school and a Masters or a PhD and that sort of stuff?
Yeah, I think...
I think a degree was kind of expected.
I think a master's or a PhD would have been one of those nice things, but not really some of the requirements.
Yeah, at least a BA, or at least a BSc or something like that.
Yeah, yeah. Now, was it education...
See, I mean, there's two ways to define education as a value.
I mean, probably more than two, but the two that pop into my mind relevant to this conversation is...
Number one, education is a lifelong desire for learning where you read and you reason and you debate and it doesn't have much to do with formal evaluation or pieces of paper, but it's a lifelong commitment to the expansion of knowledge in whatever feels interests you at the time.
Not with necessarily a clear financial end, although that's not the end of the world, but it's just, you know, stuff that you're passionate about, you study, you talk about, you learn.
That's sort of one aspect of sort of the classical liberal education outside of a college.
And the other, of course, and I'm not saying these two are mutually exclusive, but they tend to be a little bit exclusive.
The other is you have to get...
The piece of paper, and that is how you know whether someone's educated.
So if you meet someone who's from high school, who only has a high school education, but they have read deeply in a wide variety of topics, then they should be, I think, afforded at least as much respect as somebody who's, you know, gone through the dotted line course of higher education and learned how to please professors who are almost universally incorrect in their reasoning and evidence.
Yeah. So if you'd said to your parents, sorry to break it down.
So if you'd said to your parents, look, I don't want to go to college, but I sure as heck do love to learn.
So I'm going to take the $150,000 or $250,000 in cost of lost income and take zero of those dollars and apply for a free library card.
And I promise I'm going to spend a couple of hours, at least a week, if not more, reading and learning and debating with my friends who have similar interests.
That was kind of difficult to say because my parents are completely diametrically opposite in terms of their perspective.
I'd say my dad was of the opinion that That, by and large, degrees were a waste of time and that you'd be better off going directly and working your way up through some kind of organization or business or some such.
I am a graduate of the School of Life.
Yeah. And my mom was more of a getting the piece of paper.
It's the way into a better paying job and a better quality of life type of thing.
And for myself, in and of myself, I did have a passion for science, which is why I ended up graduating.
So it's something that I already had a passion for, but In terms of parenting, like I said, it was kind of split.
Right, right.
Now, did your parents respect each other's viewpoints?
I don't know, to be honest, because the thing is that they- There's nothing you don't know about your family.
The thing is that my parents kind of divorced when I was seven, and from that point on, they never really interacted much with one another, and they never really spoke too much about one another.
So when I say, did your parents respect each other's viewpoints, and then you say, well, they divorced.
Yeah, that's probably an indication now.
Would you consider divorce to be an indication of a mutual respect for each other's viewpoints?
Probably not, no. Yeah, I would say not, right?
I mean, it's more than probably, right?
Yeah. Do you know what the specific cause of the divorce was?
Or causes, I guess?
I'd say primarily my father's fidelity.
Ah, okay, okay, okay.
Or lack thereof.
Yes, yes. Right, okay.
All right. And did your father admit that his infidelity was problematic and caused the divorce?
Then or later? Yes, he did later.
But not at the time? It's kind of...
It's kind of difficult because...
Yeah, you were seven, right?
So you shouldn't have even been involved in those conversations at the time anyway.
And did your mother express any faults or responsibility or regret for choosing a man who was unfaithful?
For the most part, For the most part, my mum always tried very hard not to say anything negative regarding my dad to me.
There were some occasions where she might get extremely angry about something and she might blurt something out.
Probably maybe two, maybe three times in my entire life where she said something in anger about my dad.
But on the whole, she has always tried to refrain from that kind of verbal attack of him.
And did your mom remarry?
She did not remarry, but she is in a kind of permanent long-term relationship.
Right. And the man is faithful, I'm assuming?
Yes, yes. To your knowledge.
Good. Good. All right.
And did your parents admit fault to you if they had done something incorrect or wrong or against the values that they put forward for you?
Not that I can think, no.
I can't think of any particular examples, but I would imagine that they must have been inconsistent at some point, and so...
I would imagine so.
I think every parent is, every human being is, right?
And so if it was never addressed, then I can only assume that it wasn't brought up.
Well, I can guarantee you that it was brought up by you at some point in your childhood, right?
It has to be. So, I mean, I don't know if you've listened to last Sunday's show, but I was just talking about how I chastised Isabella mildly for not listening to me, and then the other day I was not listening to her, and she chastised me, mocking my entire tone in a completely hilarious way.
She was just, Daddy is not listening!
And this is two and a half, right?
So she's got UPB down.
She knows, and because it wasn't only that she invoked the rule, but she invoked the way that I said it, like the mannerisms that I had in saying it.
So... So I can guarantee you that you brought up inevitable, and I think I'm a pretty consistent parent, but you brought up inevitable inconsistencies in your parents' behavior because I think I'm pretty consistent, but there was a case, and there have been more than one, where I was inconsistent and not living up to the values that I was encouraging her to pursue.
And she also got that it was kind of funny because she was laughing when she did it.
And so I, of course, admitted fault.
And yeah, that was rude. I'm so sorry.
That was inconsistent of me.
I really apologize. I asked you.
I identified the rule. I said, you know, I asked you to listen.
And then I was not listening.
And I apologize. Right.
So that's just an example of, you know, accepting responsibility for an inconsistent fault and apologizing and so on.
Yeah, not to my memory now.
I can't think of any example of that.
Of course, you had, as every human being does, you had criticisms of your parents, you know, whether just or not.
It's not particularly relevant to this part of the conversation, but you had criticisms of your parents growing up.
You would rather them have done some things or done things differently, or you had preferences that were opposed to their preferences in the moment.
Did you have conversations with your parents when you were growing up about the things that you didn't like so much, or had problems with about what they were doing?
No, no. I don't think so, no.
Why not? I mean, do you think that you should be allowed to have those disagreements or criticisms?
Yes, I do. So why didn't you?
What the hell's wrong with you? No, I mean, it's an important question to ask, right?
Because we have these two issues that we started with, right?
Which is finding that you need to show off your intelligence and also feeling that you can't admit fault.
So we're just trying to look for...
Where your inability to admit fault may come from, and the first place we look for is parental influences.
And, you know, if we can't find any, we'll sort of cast it a little wider.
So that's why I'm sort of asking about, could you criticize your parents?
In other words, did they have the capacity to accept criticism?
system and you say no and so the question is why not?
I'm not sure I can't Well, let me ask you this.
Do you have any memories of where you disagreed with something your parents were doing and decided not to bring it up as an issue?
Yeah, pretty much constantly.
I always kind of kept that kind of stuff to myself.
Okay. And the question, of course, is why?
And the answer is in the reaction of your parents, right?
Yeah. I mean, children are naturally self-expressive to an excess occasionally, it would seem.
But children are naturally self-expressive.
And there's a phase that, you know, not to judge all children by my daughter, but I think she's fairly representative.
There's a phase that she's just starting to go through.
She's just over two and a half years old, where if I, like I tell her lots of stories, and sometimes we tell the same story, sometimes I just make them up as we go.
But if I get any kind of detail wrong about the story, I am...
Immediately and assertively corrected.
Because when you're telling the same story for the 20th or 30th time, sometimes your mind wanders a little bit and you put the wrong word in or the wrong color or whatever.
Or you skip a sequence and then there's immediately, no, no, no, no.
It was this, not that.
It was a table, not a couch.
It was yellow, not blue.
And if you forget the name of the character and substitute something, then blah, blah, blah.
So there's a phase of Correcting the parent that is going on at the moment which I think is fantastic and it happens usually at least once a day and if not more and it's you know really important like if I say we you know do you remember when we were playing at the park yesterday and there were four children she'll say no there were three children one came later it's like well I guess you're right that's true right so where she is is correcting and I think that's very healthy and I think that's very positive and I want her to feel that so So I think that's natural for children to want to do,
and if they don't do it, it's because some negative consequence is going to occur.
I think it was just sort of a fear of disapproval, I guess.
My dad was kind of brought up when he was a kid with the philosophy of, you know, kids are seen, not heard.
You know, that kind of old Victorian perspective of children.
Yes, I know that one very well.
I went to boarding school, I know.
That's right. And I think...
Though I never really received any kind of corporal punishment or anything like that, I think there was a very strong kind of disapproval of being rude to adults and that sort of thing.
Well, I would also argue that children don't innately fear disapproval because there are certain things that I disapprove of in my daughter and I express that disapproval and she's like, well, that's interesting.
She doesn't express any fear of it.
So if she's pretending to go to the bathroom so she can have a bite of popsicle, that I consider to be not so great, right?
You know, so she gets a reward for going to the toilet.
And so that's sort of mildly negative.
If she's rude to another child, I will talk to her about that.
And I disapprove of that, though, of course, you know, she's not like morally to blame or anything because she's still finding her way.
Socially. But she doesn't have any fear of that.
And she'll even say, you know, that it seems frustrated.
Right? And we'll talk about it.
But there's no fear. Disapproval is not something that is innately feared by children, I think.
But I think almost every child, if dangled over a great height, would feel fear.
Because all children are afraid of that, innately.
But I don't think disapproval is innately afraid of.
So it must have been something a little stronger than disapproval.
And the question, sorry to interrupt, but the question is around, and just, you know, because you're having a little trouble finding the history, but the question comes up around persistence, but the question comes up around persistence, right?
Children are, and I know this not just from my own daughter, but from years of working with children off and on, children are incredibly persistent, right?
If they want something and they don't get what they want, they're just They do the broken record, right?
They just repeat themselves and repeat themselves until you go insane and give them what they want or you really get them to stop by distracting them or something else, right?
So children are very persistent.
And so if a child doesn't get something that they want, which could be to express a criticism of the parent or whatever, they'll just keep repeating and they may or may not escalate, but they'll certainly keep repeating until they get what they want.
And so the question becomes, what if you had just kept repeating, right?
if you get some disapproval from your dad when you have a criticism of him and you say, well, that's fine.
I'm just going to keep going until I get an answer of some kind.
What would have happened?
I imagine he would have gotten angry.
Thank you.
And what would have happened then?
If you just keep going, right?
Just, no, I'm just going to keep going until I get what I want.
Even if he's angry, what happens then?
And you can, of course, if you're having trouble, you can just imagine doing this now.
Calling him up and saying, you know, I've got some questions about my childhood and some issues and so on.
And he may try to evade.
He may talk about it, but he may try to evade or fog or whatever or show impatience or whatever.
whatever, but if you just keep going until you get the conversation that you want, what happens?
I'm completely fogging right now.
I have...
That's good. That means we're in new territory.
That's good. That's good.
Well, there must be some kind of threat for a child to not do what is natural to a child.
Children's desires is like a spilt water on a flat surface.
They just spread until they meet some significant resistance and then They'll try and flow around it, and if they meet more, eventually they'll stop, but it's, you know, they are, they spread, so to speak.
And so you must have, you know, it's all my theory, right?
I could be completely wrong, but this is sort of the way I approach it.
Maybe you find some use in it. There must have been some kind of threat that would have caused you to not do what is natural to you and express discontent, unhappiness, or alternate preferences or opposing preferences.
Do you want to try a role play? I'll be you and you be your dad?
Yeah, sure. Give it a go.
Now, do you want to do this in the present or in the past?
I guess the present.
And do you want me to bring up the kind of issues that we're talking about here?
Yeah, let's do that. Yeah, sure.
Okay. Dad, Dad, I'm so glad I got a chance to talk to you.
I really appreciate you taking the time.
I hope you don't mind too much, but I really do have some questions.
Like, I'm going to start this new job, and I find that it's really hard for me to admit that I'm wrong about stuff.
And I'm sort of looking back, and I'm not trying to blame you for everything in my life, but I'm sort of looking back and saying, well, where would I have gotten this idea from?
And, you know, I can't remember a single time in my childhood, Dad, where I... Was able to bring up a criticism or an opposing opinion to yours or to mom's, but we'll just sort of talk about you.
And I was just wondering if you can remember that or what happened with that, because I can't remember it.
I'm trying to remember it. Do you remember me having, like, opposing opinions or criticisms of you that we ever talked about?
Well, nothing that I can remember, no.
I mean, you were...
Always a good kid. You never really talked back.
You never really had any trouble with you.
talked back.
So do you think that for almost two decades as your child, I didn't have any criticisms or opposing preferences to you?
Well, I guess I never really thought about it.
You always just seemed fine.
Well, but I'm just asking, do you think that I did have some differences of opinion with you?
Yeah, I guess.
Why do you think that I was not able to bring those up, or why do you think I never did?
I honestly don't know.
I'm completely fogging right now.
You as dude or you as your dad?
Me as myself trying to imagine my being like that.
Okay, I'll keep asking.
I'll keep asking. Because obviously you had differences of opinion with me, Dad, and you felt...
I'm free to express those.
I remember one of the ones was, children should be seen and not heard.
Obviously you had differences of opinion with mom, or mumsy pie, as they say in England.
But you had differences of opinion with mom, and you had differences of opinion obviously at work, and so you expressed lots of differences of opinion.
I can't figure out why I would never have expressed any differences of opinion with you.
Doesn't that seem odd to you?
Well, let me ask you this if you're stuck.
Did you, dad, have any differences of opinion with your dad when you were growing up?
Well, when I was growing up, kids just weren't allowed to talk back to their parents.
Well, I appreciate that answer, but that's not actually what I asked.
What I asked was, not did you express it, but did you have differences of opinion with your dad?
Sure I did, I just never brought them up to him.
Why not? I'm not saying you were wrong, I'm just genuinely trying.
Maybe there's this pattern in the men, right?
Maybe there's this pattern in the men of this family where you can't voice opposition or criticism or differences of opinion.
Maybe. So why do you think you didn't bring these things up with your dad?
dad what would have happened if you did and I really do appreciate you talking about this stuff coming out of character for me I honestly don't know what the answer to that question would be because I I've never really talked to my dad about about what his life was like growing up I Right. What was your feeling when you were role-playing?
Fear. Right.
Fear of what? My dad's fear of his dad.
Right. And I would imagine, though I certainly don't want to put words in your mouth, fear of where this conversation might lead.
Yeah, I think that makes sense.
Yeah, I certainly experienced a...
This is sort of what I... This is just a story of what I experienced as you in the roleplay.
I experienced a great wariness on the part of your dad.
Not quite fear until we got to talking about his dad, but just a wariness like, shit, I better think fast now.
Sort of a calculatedness.
A surprise, obviously, and a discomfort with the topic as a whole.
Like, this is not part of what we're supposed to talk about.
about this is not part of what we do as a family.
A yeah, a sort of an unwillingness without aggression, but with sort of passive aggression, if that makes any sense.
Yeah. You know, like I'm not going to say, I'm not talking about this, click, or whatever, right?
But wanting to bring this conversation into a premature but soft landing rather than jump out of the plane, so to speak.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And a sort of series of blocks of the conversation or more like maneuvers.
And again, I'm not saying it's sort of conscious or unpleasant motivations or anything, but no, you didn't really have any differences of opinion, which is something that's kind of half-praised, but it's really an avoidance of the topic, right?
Yeah, yeah. Right, so...
I certainly would recommend having the conversation with your dad about what his history was like and his dad and all that.
Did you ever know his dad? Yes, yeah.
And what was your impression in terms of differences of opinion?
I don't know.
I never really had those kind of discussions with him.
It was more, you know, go around once every couple of weeks and just, you know, Pop in and see the grandparents type of thing.
But it's not really any kind of deep discussions or things of that nature.
I do remember that he was quite distant.
He wasn't a very emotional man.
He was a very sort of very stiff upper lip type.
Right, right, right.
An old empire statue, right?
Yeah. Well, as far as having difficulty admitting that you're wrong, that to me would seem, I mean, just even from this roleplay, there was certainly no mention on the part of your dad that it even did seem odd that you didn't have any differences of opinions.
And that's the first step into admitting that there was something less than ideal in the parenting, right?
So if your child never expresses a difference of opinion and you just take that for granted, while you yourself as a child had many differences of opinion with your own father but didn't speak them, then there's a sort of fundamental failure to recognize the pattern.
Right? So your dad knew, and again, we're not talking about your dad like a person, just your dad roleplaying, right?
But in the roleplay, your dad knew that he had lots of differences of opinion, but he never expressed them.
And so when you say, well, I never expressed differences of opinion, his first defense, so to speak, was to say, well, you just didn't really seem to have any.
But it's like, but he, as a human being, knew that he had differences of opinion that he didn't express.
So to say that you didn't have any because you didn't express them is...
It's not consistent, right?
I'm not explaining it very well.
Does that make sense? I think I understand.
Let's try it once more, because I just want to make sure that we do or don't, right?
So when he was a kid, he had lots of differences of opinion but didn't express them.
But when you say, I didn't express them, he assumes that that's because they weren't there, which is a mismatch, right?
Yeah. Because they were certainly there for him, he just didn't express them.
Yeah. Does that make sense?
That does make sense, but I would imagine that my dad would probably have, I don't know, repressed his own differences of opinion with his father from...
No, no, because he said that he did have them.
He said that he was aware of having them, but he just didn't express them, right?
So he certainly repressed their expression, but not their experience, right?
Okay, yeah. Yeah.
I think we may have gotten confused again.
No, I think I get you now.
Well, let's try it once more.
You know, I'm sorry to be annoying, but this is one of these things that it's important to get.
And again, this is not a criticism of your dad.
It's just pointing out an inconsistency, right?
Sure. Right, so...
If your dad had differences of opinion with his dad, but didn't express them.
But when you said, Dad, I never expressed my differences of opinion with you, he assumed that that's because they weren't there, which is not consistent with his own experience of what was like for him as a kid.
Yes. Okay.
And that's, again, this is not sort of throw your dad under the bus, so to speak.
This is just to point out a logical inconsistency.
Yes. Because if you'd have said, if in the role play, right, I'd have said as you, hey, Why do you think I never expressed these differences of opinion?
And if he'd have said, well, I assume it's because exactly like me, you were scared to, or you didn't want to, or you were alarmed to, or you felt it would be a big problem, just like I was as a kid, right?
Wait, I think I'm losing you emotionally.
But that would be a different level of empathy, right?
Yeah. So if in the roleplay, again, I'm sorry to keep beating around this, but this is where we kind of need to put the plug together, right?
So if in the roleplay, I, as you, would have said, why do you think I never expressed any differences of opinion with you?
And you, as your dad, would have said, well, it's obvious.
It's because you were afraid that I was going to do some negative consequence.
Just as when I was a kid, I had lots of differences of opinion and never expressed them to my dad.
Yes, but I can see my dad saying that.
Sorry, you can or can't? I can't.
You can't, right. But that's important, right?
I mean, that's important because that means that there's a lack of connection in this instance with his own child, at least there seems to be evidence of that, and a lack of connection with you as a child.
Now, why can't your dad say that?
What are the consequences if he says, well, yeah, I mean, you were scared of me reacting badly just as I was with my own dad.
Thank you.
Why couldn't he state that?
I guess because then he'd have to address his fear of his own dad.
Well, that certainly would be the case.
But I think even more immediately, he basically would be admitting that he was kind of bullying, right, to you as a kid and knew it.
Okay.
Let me give you an...
No, no, he would, right?
Because if he said, well, yeah, I basically scared you into not expressing differences of opinion with me because I don't like it, and he just said that in a blasé way, that would be kind of creepy, right?
Let me ask you another one. So if you were to go to your dad, or right after this call, you phone up your dad and say, Dad, I really feel that you owe me an apology for cheating on mom.
Because the divorce was really, really difficult for me.
And the after effects of the divorce, right?
The lost income, I don't know if you had to move or whatever, right?
But it was really hard.
That breakup of the family, particularly when I was seven, that's a tender age.
The breakup of the family was really hard for me.
And I don't think that you've ever apologized for that.
that and I think I think I'm owed one what would he say well
I actually had a similar conversation with him a little over six months ago where I brought up the divorce and and how it affected me and how I hadn't told and talked to anybody about it and that I've just been keeping how I felt about it to myself since since I was seven
pretty much. And he...
I mean, he was really caught up about it.
He was...
I don't...
I mean, originally he...
He was a little surprised because he said that, kind of, at the time when it had occurred, You seemed fine.
Well, yeah, to a part that he felt like everything had been kind of explained to me and that we'd all had a huge talk about it to kind of Make sure that I understood everything that was happening.
Sorry, did they explain to you that your dad had been unfaithful?
No, it was more that...
Well, sorry, so things weren't explained to you?
No, but that my parents were no longer going to be together, but that they both still loved me, and that my dad was now going to be living with this other woman.
Living with the woman he was having an affair with?
Yes. So you were told at the age of seven that your dad was having an affair?
I don't think it was put quite like that.
In terms of, you know, he cheated on us or anything like that.
It was more that mum and dad don't want Don't want to be with each other anymore.
They don't love each other anymore.
And then, kind of some time later, my dad's new...
what eventually became my step-mom.
She kind of entered the picture and then it was kind of explained to me that my dad now loved this woman and not my mum.
And that was the woman he had the affair with?
Yes.
And did anyone apologize to you for this?
Then or later?
I can't remember being apologized to then at the time.
It was more kind of trying to explain it to me so that I would understand that even though they didn't love each other, that they still both loved me and to make sure that that was okay.
But in terms of being apologised to my dad, when I had the discussion with my dad about six months ago, he did express How sorry he was for how it had hurted me.
And... Sorry, I'm getting a bit...
You know, what's interesting is that you said how it had hurted me, which is what a seven-year-old would say.
I just wanted to sort of point that out, right?
That this is... Because it's how it hurt me would be, right?
But hurted is a younger way of expressing it.
Yeah. And...
And the reason that I'm asking this is just around admitting faults, right?
I mean, as a child, I can't imagine that you wanted your parents to split up.
No. And I can't imagine that you got much of a chance to say, I don't want this to happen.
I want you to work it out.
I want you to stay together. Yeah, that wasn't really an option.
Right. And I don't believe that is natural to children.
If I have to go upstairs to work for a little bit, my daughter is very clear on her preference for me to not do that.
And that's just as minor as I need to go and do something for 20 minutes or whatever, right?
So, to me, I think, you know, there are no answers to this.
It's only questions. It's the only thing about self-knowledge, right?
But the question is, well, why didn't I feel that I could express, like, no, No, I don't accept this.
You all need to sort it out and be mature and find a way for this family to continue.
I don't want this split up to happen.
I don't want you to get divorced.
And there's a reason that you didn't do that, and I think it has to do with why it's hard for you to admit that you've made a mistake, or you're incorrect about something, or you've done wrong, or whatever it is, right?
If you don't have a template for that, then you don't speak the language called responsibility, so to speak, right?
Or fallibility, so to speak, which is kind of fundamentally what we're talking about.
No parents, no human being is infallible.
And so if you're in a situation where you can't complain about fallibility, It's because the egos around you are too vain or too fragile or too insecure or too vain, again, to handle error.
Handling error is a fundamental aspect of being an even remotely mature human being, if I can say so strongly.
Because to not be able to handle error is Is to set up an artificial standard that represses and controls other people, particularly children.
Because it means that children can't criticize you because it's black and white thinking.
It's like, I'm right or I'm wrong.
I can't be mostly right with some wrong that I need to make amends for, right?
But it's like, I'm right or I'm wrong.
And I can't ever admit that I'm wrong because then I'm just wrong.
Or it's going to be used against me, or people will no longer respect me, or my children won't look up to me anymore because I'm just plain wrong.
But you and I know, I think you know, right, that I certainly don't get attacked for admitting fault, for saying, oh, you know, that was bad.
I have some bad data here. I made a mistake in this podcast.
Here's an entire podcast where I'm going to read out criticisms that people have of me that I think are valid.
I don't think people have said, oh man, that guy's just a complete idiot.
He doesn't know what he's... I mean, people just say, yeah, okay, I accept that.
He's, you know, he's pretty right, but sometimes he makes mistakes or whatever.
I don't think... I mean, you've probably listened to some of those shows.
What was your experience? I mean, I like them.
I... And I kind of...
I feel respect for...
When I see people do that, I feel like...
That's, you know, that's the way things should be.
But I feel that when it comes to my personal experience, when somebody points out something that's erroneous that I've said, that it just becomes a kind of big ball of humiliation.
Right, and I would suggest that that may not be your Direct experience that may be more how your parents experience error and correction.
That's important to identify.
We all speak the emotional language that we're taught by our parents and we speak it so fluently it doesn't even feel like a language.
It just feels like the world.
It feels like reality. It feels like physics.
This is why it's so important to figure out the emotional language that your parents were speaking or avoiding, which is another way of speaking it.
The words that we avoid We dominate our language as much as the words we use, sometimes more so, because at least we're aware of the words we use.
So I think it's really important to grow as a human being to say, okay, well, what language did my parents speak?
What was their language around value?
I don't think we have time to, but this is a suggested way of approaching the issue of why do you have to be so damn smart?
Well, what happens if you're not that smart?
Because the two are related.
If you have to be that smart, it means that admitting error is to say, well, I'm not that smart.
But if you are confident that you're smart, then the confidence can not only sustain error, but can be reinforced by error.
Because we all know that it is not smart to refuse to admit error.
It is a loss of integrity.
It is a dishonesty.
It is a kind of fraud. I'm not trying to be a finger-wagging Old Testament deity or something, but logically we know that to not admit error when we have accepted error is dishonest.
That's just piling more error on error.
It also gives a lot of power to other people.
The key thing when you are a free thinker or a thinker of any kind is to just not give up power to other people.
So I don't like being wrong, of course, right?
But I'm not going to give up my power of integrity to other people who may criticize me for being wrong, even if I admit that I'm wrong.
Or maybe if I admit that I'm wrong, they'll be even more hostile.
Who knows? I don't know what the hell these people think.
But the reality is that my commitment is to honesty and to integrity, not To other people's reactions to my honesty and integrity.
Because I can control my commitment to honesty and integrity to a large degree.
I cannot control other people's reactions to me.
I can't. And so if you have a dedication to honesty and integrity, then when you're incorrect, even if you think you're incorrect, then you'll say, I think that I'm incorrect.
And if you have intimacy and trust in the relationship, if it's with your girlfriend or whatever, then you say, and this evokes these feelings in me, and I don't know why.
Or if you do know why, or have a theory why, then say why, whatever.
But it's that kind of honesty, that level of honesty, that is so important.
If you weren't taught that, there's no reason that you would speak it, right?
I mean, you don't speak Gaelic, right?
Because you were never taught Gaelic, thank God.
And it's even worse than that, in a sense, because this is not a state of ignorance, like I just wasn't taught this language.
But this may, in fact, be a natural language that you were opposed to.
That you were attacked for speaking the language of opposition and criticism and correction of others, which children have very naturally.
And there's games you play with kids, right?
I was at the park the other day with Izzy and was playing with about five or six other girls and I was playing a game with them called movies where I sort of imitate a quote from a children's film and they identify it.
And if I ever get the quote wrong, Which I sometimes will do.
They'll all say, no, that's not right.
It's this, right? And so there's a game you play with kids where you do something incorrectly and then they correct you on it.
And I think it's a very good and healthy game because it teaches them that authorities can be wrong and it teaches them that they should trust their instincts and that correcting others is a very good and helpful thing.
And I say, oh, you're absolutely right.
Thank you. And then I sort of try it again.
And so I think that's a natural language of kids.
And if you're inhibited or you feel anxiety about Admitting that you're wrong or, you know, in the related way, having to be perfect intellectually or so brilliant intellectually that you can't be wrong, then you are acting out of a state of historical anxiety and fear and sacrificing your existing integrity and self-respect for the sake of that.
And again, I'm not sort of trying to criticize you because I really think I do understand and empathize.
I think lots of people have this issue.
I mean, I don't like being wrong, I think, any more than anybody else.
But I think it's really, really important to try and figure out the emotional language that you were taught as a child.
And that's why I always say, well, what are your parents' relationship to being wrong?
What's your parents' relationships to being criticized?
What is your parents' relationships to the value of a human being?
Because all of that is embedded in your mind, right?
Our parents, you know, they sneeze and we get a cold when we're kids.
Whatever they do passes almost unhindered into our own minds and stays there forever until we examine and understand it.
So I would look at that A historical example.
Congratulations on having the conversation with your dad about the divorce.
I think that's great. But I think that it's still not clear to you the degree to which your dad can accept criticism.
Accepting criticism for something that happened a long time ago is great, but it's not, I think, exactly the gold standard test of responsibility.
I think the gold standard test of responsibility is something like, I have a problem with what you're doing now.
And if you bring up something about the past and you get dissatisfying results in the present, then you can say, look, I have a problem with something you're doing right now.
In the moment, can somebody accept responsibility for inconsistent or unpleasant behavior and take ownership of it?
And the reason that we have these conversations is not to make the other person grow or to fix the other person, but simply to get a lay of the land, right?
Our childhoods are shrouded in darkness in that I mean, the most important stuff we can't remember because it was really, really early in our life.
And those habits then obscure the layout of the landscape for us so much later on.
And so the reason we have these conversations is to get a map of our childhoods, to get an emotional map of where the light and dark spots are, where the peaks and valleys are in our emotional inheritance from our childhood.
And so we do this as a, quote, fact-finding mission, not as a change-the-other-person negotiation, but just so, okay, so now I'm feeling this amount of anxiety having this conversation with my dad, and I'm 20-something or 30-something.
When I was 2 and 3 and 4, it must have been even more challenging, and therefore I can understand why I didn't.
And then you just deal with that as an inhibition that came out of your history, and that is something that you need to Work to undo.
Sorry for that long speech, but I hope that makes some kind of sense.
No, that makes sense.
So would you say that practically the best thing that I could do to kind of resolve this issue would be to discuss this with my dad?
Well, that certainly could be part of it.
I mean, I always talk about therapy.
I think that's a useful thing. And I think something like this.
I mean, you're such an intelligent guy that it would be a real shame if you had emotional inhibitions that prevented you from achieving everything that you could in your career.
So, you know, I think that there would be a good investment to talk to a therapist about this stuff.
You know, talk to your girlfriend, write about it.
You can do role plays. You can even just write back and forth in a journal or a journal sounds like someone sounds so gay.
I have my journal with a pink unicorn with rainbows on the front.
But no, you can just write this stuff down.
You can roleplay with your girlfriend.
I mean, you can roleplay with friends and say, you know, or you can ask friends.
Just explore this as a topic.
It may involve talking to your dad.
I mean, I always think that if you're going to have a relationship with people, it's important to have as many open lines of communication as possible.
It could involve that, but there's lots of stuff that you can do in the absence of that that can really help you to understand how this stuff came about within you.
And through that understanding, it will lose its power over you.
That's my experience. I mean, what is unconscious rules us.
And when it becomes conscious, it diminishes in authority and it no longer runs us.
Okay, that makes sense.
All right. Well, listen, has this been helpful?
Yeah, yeah, it's been very helpful.
Good, good. Okay, well, I'll send you a copy and you can let me know if, we didn't have any names or anything, but you can let me know if others can have a listen.
I think it might be a few seconds. I'd just like to say upfront, yeah, it's completely fine.
Beautiful. Oh, thanks, man.
And keep me posted if you can.
And congratulations again on the new job.
I think that's just too fantastic for words.
Thank you very much. All right.
Take care. It's been great talking to you.
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