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Feb. 5, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:49:54
2609 The Contagiousness of Crazy - Wednesday Call In Show February 5th, 2014
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Good evening, everybody.
Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio, February the 5th, 2014.
I hope you're doing very well.
My thanks to the World Affairs Conference, who dragged me out of bed with four security guards and an realization at an ungodly hour this Tuesday?
Tuesday morning.
It was actually a real pleasure to be able to speak with these fresh-faced, eager young people whom the world has yet to leave now.
A smoking, sooty footprint on their heart of hopes and ambitions.
So it was a real pleasure to chat with them, and thank you so much for the opportunity, and I hope to go back.
It is Canada's oldest annual student-run current affairs conference, and I got to speak about the drug war, which was, I think, useful.
I hope useful.
And I think it was a pretty good speech.
We'll get that up.
And other than that...
I guess we'll move on to the listeners.
I'm a tad under the weather.
Why?
Because I visited, foolishly visited, the medieval torture pit of biochemical warfare known as a children's play center.
And the last time that...
The last two times I went, I've gotten sick both times.
Not sure why.
But anyway, so I will...
Excuse me.
I may not go the full time because I also am going to do Peter Schiff's show in the morning.
I need to save...
The smoking remnants of my voice.
But let's move on to Kolo number uno.
All right, Nate, you're first.
Go ahead, Nate.
Hello, Steph.
Hi, Nate.
Hello.
Hopefully you get feeling better soon.
Oh, thank you.
I first want to tell you thank you.
No problem.
Thank you.
I received an email recently after I sent a donation that contained the revolution and some of the chapters of your book.
They're parenting books you're reading, so I wanted to thank you, not in person, but over the phone, I guess, for that.
I appreciate it.
Oh, my pleasure.
Thank you so much for your support.
No, that's my pleasure.
And also, I want to share an experience with you I had last summer when I watched your YouTube video that you put out of when you found out of your diagnosis with cancer.
I was sitting in my car, of all places, outside of a Walmart parking lot, And I heard that and I felt really sad and started crying.
And at that point, what was going through my mind was, I mean, of all the people that have something really challenging in their life to happen to, it happened to you, it was quite emotional for me to hear that.
But then your message at the end, you were talking about moving forward?
Oh, no, no.
It was uplifting at the end.
We talked about moving forward and what your plans were and everything.
So I just want to share that.
Yeah, I mean, I was quite lucky in that I genuinely refused to accept that that was going to be my endgame.
And this has nothing to do with belief.
I don't think that belief is foundational to beating an illness like that.
I think it helps.
But I fundamentally, it's like...
Not this way.
This is not how I end this game.
And I fundamentally in no way, shape, or form believed that it was going to be fatal.
And fortunately, it turned out to not be.
And I appreciate your kind words, but I just, you know, not like this.
It doesn't happen like this.
And I think with good medical care and with good healthy habits and all of that, it seems to have It's gone better.
So I appreciate that.
And I was actually quite curious, to be honest.
I was quite curious about chemo and all of that, so it actually worked all right.
So I appreciate your kind words, and I'm sorry that it made you sad, but I certainly appreciate the sentiment behind it.
Oh, no need to apologize.
You didn't make me feel anything.
What I think was just a natural reaction to someone who I've come to know over the years but never actually physically met.
So I just think that's great.
What I did have a question on was family.
And a letter I had received from my mother after going to her and talking to her about, hey, I'm entering therapy.
I got some things in my life that I need to figure out.
I need to understand more about myself.
And this was back in the summer of 2012.
Since then, I've been doing it for a year.
Listening to a lot of philosophy shows, obviously.
Listening to, reading Alice Miller, who I absolutely love.
Her book, Drama Against the Child, I think is probably one of the greatest books I've ever read, ever.
It can be not too redundant.
And she recently sent me an email.
She wanted to come see me, my wife, and my children, and try and fix, I guess in her words, the relationship.
And I said, okay, if you want to come up here, That's fine.
You've got to get a hotel.
That'll give us a great time and opportunity to chat.
The week that it was supposed to happen, though, she canceled and sent me an email, which is quite a long email, basically telling me that there's dark clouds over our family that we need to fix and her reasons of why she was going to come.
So in response to that email, I spent, well, over the course of a week, I wrote a Five and a half page, single space, kind of like a current event timeline would have gone on my life.
I'm sorry to interrupt.
Your mother wrote you that there were dark clouds over the family, but what is that?
I don't know what that means.
What does that mean?
Okay, because when I had gone to tell her that I'm going to go to therapy, that I need to take a break from the family, That I just need not to be contacted because most of the stuff involved my childhood.
The things that I experienced that are not good for me.
And I ask for that time and say, hey, I wish you, you know, please don't contact me or the kids or my wife as I move forward in trying to make sense of my past in order to better help myself out in the future.
And this was after I found listening to you And change my parenting.
Anyway, so moving forward, I sent her a response to that.
And that was two and a half months ago when I sent my email.
I know she got it.
I haven't heard a response since then from her at all.
No text messages, no email message.
And I made it explicitly clear throughout my letter of what was going on for me.
I said I'm willing, I'm more than willing and eager actually to talk about any of these things in my life.
Your thoughts on them and also to any thoughts on my responses to some things the email she had sent.
And it's been two months.
My instincts tell me that I'm not going to get a response.
So it's kind of one of your thoughts about that.
I mean it's certainly a lot to try and figure out because there's a lot of information that we could probably spend half a day talking about, right?
So, is there anything specific that you would find the most helpful to try and discuss?
Do you mean in regards with you and I or with my mother?
With your mother.
That's your major topic at the moment, isn't it?
Yes, yes, definitely.
There's really nothing that is quite honestly of interest to me to share Because of my instincts and what I'm feeling from her, or really not what I'm feeling.
The lack of response really, to me, seems to tell me anything I need to know about our relationship or really not a relationship at all.
Now, were you looking for a response?
I don't...
This was more in prompt, I think, by my wife who was saying, she was telling me, he's like, well, As a mother, I can understand the instinct that she's coming with or why she wants to come see you but you said that you didn't – you needed a break from her.
So she's kind of curious – she gets curious because she asked about it, about what to do moving forward.
But the email, it was really passive-aggressive and whether it was conscious or unconscious, I don't know.
But it was really – it really put me off and I really didn't want to respond at all.
Well, it is a real challenge.
When a relationship has reached the point where one person wants out, the other person is in a real bind.
So if you say, look, I'm taking therapy and I'm pursuing self-knowledge and I don't feel that I want to see you for a while, Then one of two possibilities occurs, right?
Like either your mother knew that there was something wrong with the relationship, but didn't say anything, or she didn't know that there was anything wrong with the relationship, even though you were miserable, right?
Now, if she knew that there was something wrong with the relationship, it's her job to fix it.
Why?
Because she's the mother.
She's the parent.
She defines the relationship.
She defines the relationship.
And it's not like, you know, with a husband and a wife or friends or, you know, whatever, boyfriend and girlfriend.
It's, you know, takes two to tango.
They both need to work on the relationship and so on.
But with parents, it's always the parent's job to fix the relationship.
It's always the parent's job.
I don't care if the parent is 90 and the younger kid is 70.
The parent defined the entire relationship and was like the potter molding the child's brain on their lap for the first 20 to 25 years.
It's always going to be the parent's job to fix the relationship.
If I have a conflict with my daughter, it is my job to fix it.
It is not her job to fix it.
Now this doesn't mean that there's no standards for her in the relationship or anything like that, but it's my job.
So do you think that your parents, sorry, do you think that your mother had any idea Oh, yeah.
I mean, there's really no way.
I don't see how, if she was, if she was, and here's where it makes me think that, where I came to the conclusion, well, based on over the years since I left home, that we really didn't have a relationship, because if she didn't know, that means we were never in touch in the first place.
But if she did know, then that also means that she didn't care enough to let me know or to put me aside or take me aside and say, hey, I've noticed these things have been going on.
You've been talking about how work's been really hard for you.
You've been having problems at home with your kids and your wife.
Do you know what I'm going to talk to?
I never got any of that.
Right.
So if you're unhappy and your mother doesn't do anything about it, Then either she's so clueless that she doesn't even have any idea when her offspring is unhappy or she doesn't care that you're unhappy as long as the relationship serves her needs or she likes that you're unhappy because she's cruel.
Again, I'm not saying which is which.
I'm just saying that there's not a lot of possibilities, but there's no way that a parent who lets a relationship With a child, deteriorate to the point where the adult child is looking to get out.
There's no way that a parent can claim innocence in any of that or blamelessness or anything like that.
They've defined the whole relationship.
Definitely.
Yes.
And that's kind of where I'm coming from and my thoughts and where I'm towards...
This comes towards an end or however it does.
Right?
Because I'm in with you.
When you talk about the experiences you had with your own mother and saying, you know, the thoughts of her now are...
If you happen to see her or if you had to talk to her, it kind of brings butterflies up to you.
Just because of your past, that's always going to affect you.
And it's the same thing with me.
I'm not afraid to talk or communicate about it at all, really.
But it's that old anxiety coming up, like, oh, this is what's happened before.
Because I couldn't really voice my opinion growing up or when I was younger.
Because if I did, they were just quite frankly squashed.
Right.
Right.
Yeah, I mean, I certainly can't speak for you.
I mean, you know, we just met.
But I will tell you my experience of people who are manipulative.
So, when I was not happy with the people in my life, what would happen is In the past, not now, but in the past, I would get these incredibly convoluted and complicated and manipulative messages.
And it was always in a medium where they could get the last word, like a text message or an email or even a letter or something like that.
They'd never drive over and sit me down and say, you know, tell me what the problem is.
I'm here to listen.
It would always be some complicated...
N-dimensional chess maneuvering to put themselves in a better light and to put me in a worse light with the hopes of crushing me down to a size small enough to fit in the little mental box of their skull-like prison again.
That's all it was.
It was all this maneuvering.
Now, I really hate maneuvering in relationships.
I hate maneuvering where people are just trying to somehow convince me that I am in the wrong And they take no responsibility, but nothing is ever clear.
Nothing's direct.
It's all this creation of some sort of impression that's supposed to make you feel bad and sort of get you going back into the box or something like that.
There's never any just sort of clear – and there's certainly no listening.
You know, when I – if somebody has a problem with me and they send me a big text message or some sort of email or whatever, I know for a fact there's just not going to be any listening, right?
Because there's no way for me to respond.
Well, yeah, I mean, there's no way for me to respond.
I'm the one with the problem, and the person with the problem is the one who's supposed to do the talking, right?
You know, you go to a customer complaints hotline, you don't hear about the caller's bunions for half an hour, right?
I mean, they're supposed to shut the hell up and let you talk, right?
So...
The person who complains, the person who has the problem, is the person who should be listened to.
And so when I would say to people, I have a problem, they'd say, well, let me think about it, and then I'd get these long convoluted emails or text messages or letters, and none of it would be any kind of question about me.
They never wanted to hear anything more about what I thought and felt All they were doing was trying to self-justify themselves and maneuver themselves into a position where they were superior and I was in the wrong.
And it was very clear to me.
It's like, well, I don't need to be here for you to do that.
Right?
Yeah.
I mean, if you all want to justify yourselves with no reference to my opinions, you don't need me for that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that's definitely something I kind of realized as...
This transition really actually when I got into therapy in about the middle the middle point of my year in therapy that's been going on that I start to see it's like my bullshit goggles were on totally and I could just see manipulation or you know falseness going on around me all the time and it was kind of shocking at first and then I was able to turn it towards my family well first turn it to myself and see where I had been false And really look at that and look at my ability
to do evil.
And really look that head on.
And that was probably the hardest part of this all.
But then I was able to turn it outward to my family and then my mother.
And then even see the bad things I had done as an older sibling in my family.
There was a podcast I saw, not to change topic real quick, but asking why older siblings transfer Wilder siblings take out or are rude or, you know, what's the word?
Abuse the younger siblings.
And I thought quite a lot about that because I don't know if you've ever got a response from anybody about that.
There's almost...
I felt...
I don't know.
I don't know if there's any interest to you to hear, but...
Go on.
Oh, thanks.
I felt...
Powerless.
And I was able to gain, however really bad it was, able to gain some more power over when I turned it on to my siblings and felt like I had some control, before I had none, of my own life.
Does that make sense?
Does that make any sense to you?
It kind of does, but I've never really understood why there's the need to assert control.
Because it's not control.
Like, I mean, if you want to assert control, you can pick up a tennis racket and become a really good tennis player or pick up keyboards or guitar or whatever and exert control over that.
Why the need to bully or dominate?
Really, when I think about this, I can think of no other reason other than I felt better.
Because someone else was suffering and not just me.
Does that make any sense?
Well, if you feel better, then the other person is suffering and not you, right?
Yes, definitely.
Oh, you're 100% correct, yes.
Right, so was that the only way that you could feel better?
Sorry, could you repeat that one more time?
And so, being...
Harmful towards your younger siblings?
Was it younger siblings or older siblings?
Oh, I was the oldest.
I was first in line, so I had a younger sister and a younger brother.
Okay, so I'm not, you know, trying to be critical here.
I'm genuinely trying to understand it because it's something I don't really have any experience of.
But how would it make you feel better?
And so what did you do to harm them?
Well, maybe dissociate would be a better word to be able to describe it, where I would distance myself from my own feelings, right?
And I don't know, this is what I'm looking back on as I remember.
And so say I would tease my sister.
I would tease my sister incessantly when we were young.
Things like I called her, I called her flag.
Like I just said, hey flag.
And that really upset her.
And I understand why, and then she would respond in turn like she used to call me toilet teeth.
Okay, but hang on.
Let's just go back.
So you would call her flag.
I don't really quite understand that, but let's say that it was something that bothered her.
Why would that make you feel better?
That part, I don't know.
I thought and thought about that.
No, you don't.
Sorry.
Your therapy, Alice Miller, this show, the I don't know doesn't cut it, right?
No, no.
It was...
Like you said that you examined your capacity to do harm, which I appreciate.
This is a great, great thing to do.
But if you say then, when I ask you why did you do harm or what was your motivation for doing harm and you say I don't know, then you haven't really examined it, right?
Oh no, I felt...
I really did feel like I had some power or sway or was able to minimize my own feelings of...
Anxiety and pain and loneliness.
And take that away from myself.
By putting it on to someone else.
That's horrible as that is.
I mean, that's really my feelings and experience.
That's a very abstract description.
And I appreciate that as sort of an intellectual understanding.
But what was the feeling, right?
So what would drive you to tease your sister?
Right.
In other words, would you go and – Okay, okay.
So you knew that it bothered her.
So that became something that – did you seek it out or was it just when she was in the room or did you go and try and pursue her to tease her?
No.
Okay.
Speaking of this now, do you – whenever – I don't know how to explain this.
Hold on.
Let me pull my thoughts in my head.
I would tease her and then later in the day – Hang on.
This is like the fourth time you're not responding to my question, right?
Because I'm asking you these fairly simple questions and you're going through these big intellectual explanations.
So I asked you, did you seek her out or did it just happen when she came in the room?
Sometimes I sought her out.
Other times it just happened when she was around.
Sometimes I specifically did seek her out, I guess.
So sometimes you did it, you would seek her out?
Yes, definitely.
Okay, and you would seek her out with the intention...
I apologize, I wasn't trying to deflect the question.
Okay, and you would seek her out with the intention of bothering her, of teasing her, of making her unhappy?
Yes, yes.
And why?
What was the feeling before and during and after?
So why...
Would you seek some—because you were all victims, right?
If you had this kind of cold bomb or this unconnected mom, then you could have been partnerist in victimization and you could have given each other comfort, right?
This is part of what I don't understand about sibling teasing and abuse and all that is that why not—I think of, to take a ridiculously extreme example, I think of People in Nazi concentration camps, they could at least band together and give each other some comfort, but that the siblings turn on each other rather than support each other in times of trial.
I'm just trying to figure that out.
And I appreciate your patience with that.
that.
So what's the feeling that drives you in to harm your sister's peace of mind?
I appreciate you going through this, definitely.
Thank you.
I felt anxiety.
So you would feel anxiety, and then you would go and try and find your sister to tease her.
Is that a way of managing the anxiety?
Yeah, I felt like, I don't know another word better than anxiety, but like, or unrest.
And felt like, and this is usually right around before my stepfather got home.
And because I knew he was coming home, so I was really anxious.
And even if my sister was in the room playing, I'd go find her and see what he was doing.
And I'd start to play with her.
And to do something, because I don't know, I was just feeling really anxious, so I just want to relieve that anxiety.
I mean, it's horrible.
It's absolutely horrible that it happened.
So you'd be feeling anxiety because your stepdad would be coming home.
And would you go with the intention of sort of, quote, playing nicely with your sister, and then you would turn meaner?
Yeah, sometimes that's exactly what it would be like.
Or we'd be playing like a board game like Candyland, like back in like the 1990s, early 1990s, right?
We'd be playing Candyland or something and then all of a sudden I would take two or three cards and move that amount of spaces and it would get reaction out of her obviously because of cheating.
Right.
And so what was the goal?
did you experience that as trying to be funny?
Very, very rarely.
Very rarely.
So it was done with the specific purpose of making her upset, right?
Yes, yes, definitely.
And how would that serve you?
I don't know the way to put it other than I felt good.
I don't know if that's...
I felt better.
Like my anxiety, seeing someone else with anxiety, I didn't feel alone.
Does that make sense?
So you would transfer your anxiety to her by cheating or teasing or bothering her, right?
Yes, yes, yes.
And that's horrible.
I mean, looking at it now...
No, no, I mean, I'm not trying to sort of point any sort of significant moral finger wagging at you.
And yeah, of course it's horrible, I understand that, but I still don't really understand it.
I mean, because then your sister, hang on, but your sister then gets your stepdad coming home, which was making her anxious, plus she's got this brother who's making her feel bad too, right?
So she gets a double, right?
Yeah, definitely, yes.
But I wasn't aware of any of this at the time, other than I felt less anxious when this was going on.
That doesn't make it wrong.
Well, hang on, though.
That was my experience.
But you were aware that it made your sister unhappy, right?
Yes, yes, I was.
And you were aware that while you may have felt better, she would feel a lot worse.
Like, did she end up crying sometimes, or how did it end up?
No, she cried regularly.
And was it you who made her cry?
Not every time, no, but I was a catalyst.
Out of all the siblings, yes.
Me, I was on top of both of them when my younger brother got older.
Right, so you were definitely aware that it made her very unhappy, right?
Yes, I was.
And you're still not sure?
I mean, you felt some anxiety and then you felt relief from that anxiety when you made her cry?
Yes.
And did you ever at the time think to yourself that it's something you should stop doing?
Yes, definitely.
I did think that and I would even go to my sister and apologize afterwards or give her like one of my G.I. Joes to play with or say, hey, can I come in here and we can play together?
I mean, this wasn't all the time that I was rude to her.
There was times of kindness, but that doesn't really excuse the times of negativity that I brought or the pain that I brought to her and then to my little brother.
Well, and we don't know for sure whether the kindness that you showed her was a way of keeping her in the orbit of putting her down, right?
There's no way to know.
I have no idea.
It's sort of well known that when a husband beats up his wife, the first thing he does is go out and buy her flowers and gifts and tell her how much he loves her, how sorry he is, he cries, all that kind of stuff, right?
And he does that because he wants to keep her in a place where he can continue to harm her, right?
Because if you were relentlessly cruel and there was never any kindness, then she would just avoid you, right?
It's possible that you were kind to her in order to keep her around to harm her more, if that makes sense.
Yeah, they'll enable, kind of enable my future behavior, is that what you're saying?
Yeah.
Otherwise, she'd come into the room, she'd just leave, right?
She just wouldn't, she'd go to friends' houses, she'd just stay away from you no matter what, right?
Yes, yes, yes, she would.
So maybe I didn't help explain it anymore, what we were talking about earlier.
No, I don't think I have any, but I think it's something to think about.
I mean, I know I've had some theories about it, but I try not to put some theories out when I get a chance to talk to someone directly.
But I don't think that this is particularly well understood for you, but I think it's an important thing to understand, which is what was the motivator for this kind of obviously destructive behavior that was not exactly ennobling or elevating to you, right?
Oh, yes.
Definitely not.
All right.
Is there anything else that you wanted to ask me about?
And I appreciate you talking about that.
I mean, I know it's a hell of a tough subject.
It's not.
I mean, it happened.
And me denying it happened would only hurt me in the long run.
And it's horrible.
You know, I try to talk to my sister and my brother about this very topic and engage them.
I say, look, I was very horrible.
I treated you extremely poorly growing up.
I'm going to therapy now and I'm trying to work on that, but I would maybe see if you want to go into therapy for yourselves, maybe try and at some point maybe down the road we can all kind of talk about our collective experience moving forward.
Because we don't have a close relationship either my mother or my siblings, really at all.
You mean you with your siblings?
Well, no.
Can you repeat that please?
I think I'm a surgeon.
Oh, so you and your siblings don't have a close relationship, right?
No, not really at all.
Well, of course, right?
I mean, that's the price, right?
I mean, why would we?
Yeah.
Right.
Okay.
Go ahead.
Anyway, that's it.
No, I was going to say, I understand the reasoning.
I understand, at least intellectually, the reasoning for that.
Right.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's something worth exploring, but if you don't have any more questions, I think I can move on to the next caller if that's all right with you.
Oh, that's perfectly fine.
Thank you for taking my call.
Thank you so much.
All right, Ava, you're up next.
Go ahead, Ava.
Can you hear me?
Yes.
What's on your mind?
Hi.
Hi.
Is it right if I can read the question that I typed out?
I'm just not that great at verbal speaking verbally.
You bet.
Alright.
So, my first question originally was going to do with something that I felt was pretty short-sighted, so this is going to be a bit more broader.
I have problems with anxiety and procrastination.
While I feel that I'm really great at collecting information and get really hyped on I'm taking my goals into action.
Whenever there's chances where I have the opportunity to achieve my goals, like whether I can enter into competitions or apply for a university or even drawing, that's just actually my passion.
I feel a really great dread and avoidance whenever there is something to do with progress.
I miss a lot of work and the pressure keeps piling up so much so that I feel crippled and I feel like personally sometimes pursuing my dreams is impossible.
And while I know that it is ironic that I should be probably should be maybe take more action instead of prying for more information, I am improving but I still can't I can't still understand why I still have this cycle, even though I'm slowly getting better.
And I was just wondering if you can help me get some insight about it.
And that's it.
Well, sure.
What do you think I'm going to ask first?
My childhood.
I think it actually has a big part of it because I was raised as a bubble-wrapped child and I had a lot.
I was raised as a bubble-wrapped kid.
My father really took care of me for everything.
I barely had to do anything.
When I was a kid or even my teenage years.
So I think that takes a lot, a big part of it.
And also my confidence level.
I feel pretty unconfident and even right now I feel kind of scared of talking.
Yeah.
Right.
And there was a phrase that you used.
It sounded like a bubble rat kid or a bubble rap.
Is it bubble rap kid?
Yeah, that is.
It's about overprotective parents.
That's what it means, in essence.
Oh, okay.
Your name's not Isabella.
You're not my daughter calling from the future, are you?
No.
My father, I know particularly he loves me a lot, even though I don't reciprocate it as well as I could.
But when I was a child and sometimes even as a kid, I mean as a teenager, he does things that a five-year-old should know what to do already or should be taught.
It's because I think personally it's because part of it like my father over protects me or sometimes he does things for me that I should know how to do is because I think that also plays a part with my mother who was never really in part of my life and my father sometimes feels that bad about it and he doesn't know what to do so yeah.
Right, right.
And is it your father, is he managing his own anxiety when he does things for you?
Is that sort of the idea?
Like he feels bad if you can't do something and therefore he tries to do that thing for you?
I feel like he has little faith in me, I guess, just because I barely do anything.
I'll admit it.
I barely do most things he wants me to do because I feel that there's little effort and either way he'll do it eventually.
I think also in part it's my mother and father really have a bad relationship and argue every night but I think part of it is just that he really wants to build a relationship with me and really wants I think partially he really wants to build a good relationship with me and it's just instead of my Instead of building a relationship with my mother,
because it's completely gone right now.
I'm sorry, you said that your mother was gone.
Oh no!
The relationship between my mother and father is completely broken.
They should have been divorced a while ago, but they've been still together and married because of me, I guess.
But they argue every night and I can't go any further than that.
Their relationship is pretty broken down that they don't really even like each other that much, but they love me and my father particularly.
I think this has to do something about it, but my father does a lot of things for me so that he can gain my approval.
It kind of worked before.
How should I say this?
He appeals to what I believe in, I guess, or does things for me so he can just make it easier for me to like him, I guess, if that makes sense.
Right.
And do you have a specific question that I can help you with?
It's just dealing with my anxiety and procrastination.
I feel kind of with my family situation, I really want to take account for my actions and I am starting things on my own and really taking Good interest in things, but I feel like my dreams are really tall.
I feel like pursuing them is impossible.
I procrastinate, etc.
I think I need some guidance or insight just to figure out how to take the first step forward.
Towards what?
Towards achieving my dreams, which I'll be specific.
I really want to be an animator.
I really would love to innovate the animation industry in the Western world.
And I also would love to one day be really self-sufficient.
I'm a bubble wrap kid, as I said, or I really have been overprotected that I barely knew how to do things on my own.
And I really would love to Start things, actually.
Just live on my own and actually have just, yeah.
Okay, so do you want some sort of practical advice on how to stop that kind of stuff?
Yes, that definitely would be helpful.
Okay, okay, good.
Well, I hope that will help.
Well, I don't know a huge amount about the animation industry other than, as far as the documentary goes, animators can be somewhat unreliable.
But there is no substitute for just doing stuff, right?
So if you want to, I guess you have a pretty big goal of revolutionizing the animation industry in the West, then you need to just start animating, right?
So you need to find people who have projects.
So my suggestion would be, You can find a channel on YouTube that, you know, you like their videos, but maybe you think their videos could be enhanced with some animation.
And you say, listen, I will...
Go ahead.
Actually, I've been thinking about...
I'm still in high school, like my last year, and I'm still thinking...
I've been applying to all the top animation schools in North America already.
And also I was thinking soon enough that I'll actually contact animators themselves if they have like Twitter or Facebook just to see on the possibility of my dreams.
If that makes sense.
I'm sorry.
I don't.
I don't.
I mean, hang on a sec.
So you want to go to school, right?
And so I don't know, maybe you need that for animation, I don't know.
But I'm not sure what you mean when you say contact animators on Twitter.
Oh, you know how, like, professionals in the media have Twitters or Facebooks or blog spots where people...
Yeah, I understand that.
Why would you talk to...
Why would you want to contact them?
Oh, it's to get an idea about the industry itself and what's the possibility of actually getting my ideas out there and making the films I want or the television shows I want.
Yeah, that won't help.
If that makes sense.
Yeah, I'm sorry, that won't help.
I mean, so it'd be like somebody I don't know twitters me and says, you know, I'd like to have an in-depth conversation about my possibilities for starting a philosophical podcast.
Sorry, I don't have time.
I have my own philosophical podcast to run.
It might happen, but it seems quite unlikely that people will spend the time to do that.
So, if you, you know, my suggestion would be find a YouTube channel that you like where they've got short videos that could benefit from animation and say, look, you know, I would like to animate you an introduction, right?
So, somebody did a nice animation for the introduction to True News and stuff that we still use for our shows here at Free Domain Radio.
And you can say, listen, I just want to put a little website or a little logo or a little Twitter address or something in the bottom corner.
And then if it's somebody who's got some pretty good views, then this is a way that you get free advertising and you get a chance to get your work seen by lots of people.
If you want to be into video game design, then what you do is you mod a bunch of video games and you design levels and then you can get a job.
So usually the more attractive the job, the more work you have to do for free.
Like if you want to be a waiter, nobody says you have to be a waiter for free for a couple of years, but if you want to be an actor, most people will say we'll start doing community theater and stuff like that, right?
Yeah.
And so if you can find people who have channels, offer to give them an intro or an outro or offer to animate something for them.
And then you have a project.
You probably won't get paid, but you'll get views and then people can start to see the work that you do and you will also go through the production process.
And I think that's a good way of figuring out, you know, the important thing to do before you pursue a dream.
It's figure out how much you like it.
Now, fortunately, I've been having philosophical conversations for approximately 3,000 years.
So, for me, I knew that I was going to like doing it.
But you may like the idea of animation.
You might even like certain aspects.
But taking a project from beginning to end with feedback and criticism and complaints and problems and all that is something to really, I think, really experience.
Does that make any sense?
Yeah, it does definitely.
Um is it right if I can talk about the second um how should I say this uh the second um part of I was talking about like the hold on um I was wondering about I still feel I still feel very nervous and not that confident about Even living outside the house or
obtaining, learning how to make my own money, especially during these times where the economy is going to collapse again, right?
And it's just I still feel kind of I don't know how to...
I feel pretty scared, personally, just on how to really start becoming financially sufficient.
I was just wondering, what are the first steps you think, or what are the first ideas that make you feel confident enough to go forth, I guess?
Well, I mean, if you're going to school, like if, let's say, you go to university, you can do a sort of a transition transition.
Interval, right?
So you could go into residence, right?
Where you have a place to sleep and you have some meals, but you're kind of on your own and you budget and so on.
So it's kind of like a halfway house for people who don't have a lot of experience running their own lives.
But I mean, you're still in high school.
If you're going to go to college, that's another couple of years.
So I wouldn't worry too much.
First of all, I mean, I wouldn't worry too much about the economic collapse thing.
I mean, there is going to be a transition for sure, but the best way to deal with that is to try and get as many marketable skills as possible, and you can do that through pursuing animation, right?
Negotiation skills, project completion skills, negotiation skills, all that kind of stuff is going to be valuable.
And there's not really much of a recession for college graduates.
I mean, this is important to understand.
It's the poorer classes, and tragically the minority classes, who are bearing the brunt, the blue-collar classes who are bearing the brunt of the recession.
Unemployment among college grads is like 4 or 5%, which is mostly just people changing jobs and stuff like that.
So, I wouldn't imagine that you have to go from like 0 to 100 in a day, but...
So yeah, it may be useful for you to go to college outside the home if you get a scholarship or if your parents can afford it.
And that way you get used to living a little bit more independently but without having the whole thing on your shoulders right away.
That would be my suggestion.
Yeah.
And I think...
There's one more question that is kind of actually off-topic on this, but I think it's pretty important in my life.
Is it okay to ask it?
Yeah, anything you like.
Just quickly.
Okay.
So...
My friend...
My dear friend, we are complete opposites, I guess.
He's very, very faithful and faith-based and he's very spiritual, while I'm more rational and pragmatic.
And this recently, the death of Paul Walker actually really, really affected him.
And when I was just wondering, well, I can't go much into it because I don't want to make his life public, but I'll say that he had been very, very, very upset more than he should be than a normal person because he never met Paul Walker before in his life.
And I was just wondering, How to talk with someone who experiences that, or how to help them go through it, because it's pretty...
It's kind of insane to even think about and understand sometimes, because it's just...
For me, it's bizarre, because I'm the opposite of him, right, and I don't have as many experiences as he has.
Right.
Why do you think he is so upset about Paul Walker's death?
I think he's missing something in his heart.
I think he really wants to achieve unconditional love from a man, and that is Paul Walker.
Yeah, I don't think he'd get unconditional love from Paul Walker.
He's the wrong gender and several years too old.
But celebrities...
Oh, no, he's gay.
Are not...
Yeah.
Oh, he's gay.
Oh, okay, okay.
All right, so not...
Right orientation, wrong gender.
Although Paul Walker wasn't gay, so...
Now, how is your friend's relationship with his father?
His...
Oh, he doesn't have any biological...
Well, he was...
He has an adopted mother, but his biological parents were actually...
He doesn't know where they are.
They might be dead or so poverty-stricken because he was adopted actually from an orphanage in Cambodia.
Wow.
That's rough.
Yeah, you know, I mean, there's this...
Yeah, he is lucky, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have leftover challenges to deal with.
No, I mean...
He's very fortunate because he's adopted to a very wealthy family, and his mother really does love him, I think, so much so that he's actually pretty spoiled.
I think that also plays a big part in it.
Hey, I thought you said you were complete opposites.
Kind of, almost.
You're both spoiled, right?
Isn't that what you were telling me?
Oh, true, yes.
I think we come from very similar origins and that's why we connect so much greatly because I experience what we experience sometimes and we can talk to honestly instead of talking about trivial stuff.
But externally, like how we, our personalities and even probably Personally-wise, yeah.
We were both very different.
If he was on this show right now, he would probably be a much, much, much better talker than I am right now because I'm so stumbling, but I'm stumbling.
No, listen, first of all, you're doing fantastically.
Don't fall into a stereotype.
You know, this is my advice to young people in general.
Don't fall into a stereotype and be very careful how you describe yourself.
Be very careful how you describe yourself because you say that you are nervous and stumbling and so on, but you're doing fantastically for someone twice your age.
You're in high school.
You are a bubble wrap kid, as you say.
If you hadn't told me that you were nervous and stumbling, I wouldn't even think it.
Does that make sense?
Really?
Yeah, sorry.
Yeah, no, don't apologize.
I'm just pointing out, like, so some families, they get these kind of cliches, you know, he's the forgetful one and she's the clumsy one.
Be very careful with, you're too young to start describing yourself to other people.
You know, you're doing a great job in a conversation.
Like, I think if I was your age, talking to someone like, what, 30 years older than I, In a public forum to be recorded for all time, forever.
I mean, you're doing fantastically.
I mean, I wouldn't have imagined that you were stumbling and whatever it is.
So don't, you know, let people discover you for themselves and what they discover may be quite different from what you think.
So I think you're doing fantastically and, you know, good for you.
But I think you asked a very important question, Eva, which is around celebrities.
So there's this belief that celebrity culture is somehow bad or shallow or wrong or anything like that.
But I don't really believe that to be the case.
I mean, celebrities are not real people to us.
They're just pictures and this and that and the other.
But I think that they're very important to us in terms of signposts or guideposts or areas for self-knowledge, right?
So when I was young, Sting was the guy, right?
He was a singer for the police and he was just, you know, beautiful and great voice, great songwriter, great performer.
He was the guy.
When I was a teenager, I used to imagine like, oh yes, Sting and I would be living in an old Victorian house playing music and talking philosophy together.
And, you know, he was like, I guess, a father figure, which would probably be insulting to him because he's not a whole lot older than me, but you have these kinds of father figures.
For me, Freddie Mercury was one of these, not a father figure per se, but that magnificent grabbing of a microphone and bellowing glorious music to the world at large was something that, deep down, I yearned for.
I wanted.
And, you know, to some degree, I've been able to achieve.
Now, when he first began singing, I guess he was 12 when he formed his first band in a boarding school in Zanzibar.
And I guess he rose to sort of stardom 15 years later.
And even after they started playing gigs, it took them basically about 10 years to get to the top of their game.
They sort of built up a following along the way, and that was sort of my experience as well.
And then they were ripped off by someone.
I mean, even after writing some hit albums, Freddie Mercury was still living in a little apartment with mold on the walls and just a piece of crap.
And I really respected the degree of gusto and passion which he brought to his public persona, to putting on a show.
You know, the music is the music and the show is the show.
And I've always really tried, I mean, sometimes before I'll say, you know, Freddie, help me with this speech.
Help me, give me some spirit.
It's a way of engaging alter egos.
It's a way of tapping into unconscious energy.
So I think that there's nothing wrong with thinking about celebrities and using them as models for particular things that you aspire to.
I think that's fine.
I think that's great.
Now, There's also an aspect of celebrity life which is important for us as well, which is they're very often enormously miserable human beings.
And that is another signpost for us.
I mean, when I was a kid as well, I don't know how, I was a teenager, I think, when Thriller came out, and I didn't know about Michael Jackson's history with the Jackson 5 or anything like that.
And he was the guy.
I never saw him live.
When he first came to Toronto, I actually lined up all night, bought a bunch of tickets and sold them again because I was an entrepreneurial little blondie.
But he was like a living god.
I mean, the glove, anything to do with Michael Jackson was just, people went insane over it.
And, I mean, in his later years, you know, anorexic, his toes and feet were all mashed up from dancing.
He was bulimic.
He required a catheter over his penis to sleep because he couldn't maintain any regularity.
He hadn't slept in a week.
I mean, just a completely miserable, miserable existence that he ended up just wasting away in this god-awful nightmare of a life.
Michael Hutchins, singer from In Excess, ended up...
Well, you're a young mind.
We won't get into the details of how he ended, but pretty miserable on antidepressants.
Heath Ledger, Jim Belushi, of course, Philip Seymour Hoffman, all these nasty, miserable existences in many ways.
And it is that reminder that we always yearn for something outside of ourselves to make us happy.
You know, like if I... If I get enough money, if I'm pretty enough or handsome enough, if I get a six-pack, if I get this role, if I close this deal, if I buy this car, if I date this woman or this man or whatever, if I make this movie or if I change Western animation for the better, then what?
Well, many people have tried that route and it doesn't lead them to much good stuff.
There is no external solution to the problem of insecurity.
And celebrities constantly remind us of that.
You know, if being rich, famous, and beautiful and talented were enough, Marilyn Monroe might even still be alive today, right?
But she OD'd on barbiturates after being passed around from man to man.
And celebrities can be helpful from that standpoint.
So I wouldn't, you know, people are, oh, celebrity culture and so on.
I am interested.
You know, I don't buy the magazines, but if they're around at the airport or whatever, I'll read them.
I'm curious.
These people are signposts or guides either to ourselves, to what we could achieve, or to what we should avoid.
They are morality tales, I guess you could say.
So...
The fact that he's really interested in Paul Walker and is broken up by his death is important.
Sorry, let me just say one last thing and then I'll shut up.
Paul Walker is like a gay man's wet dream, right?
I mean, he's gorgeous.
Talented, rich, and all that.
But it wasn't enough for him.
He still had to do stupid, risky shit.
after being a workaholic and missing out on his daughter's childhood.
Right?
And so...
Well, he tried to be in his daughter's life before he died.
Let me tell you, as a dad, that's not something you really try.
When I was at theater school, some guy was trying to cry.
When you're trying to cry on stage, it looks terrible, right?
And so the acting teacher said, okay, stand up.
He's sitting in a chair.
She said, stand up.
And she said, okay, try to sit in that chair.
And he looked at her and was like, what?
And she said, try to sit in that chair.
And the question doesn't really make any sense, right?
What do you mean, try to sit in the chair?
No, I mean, you just sit in the chair, right?
And he said...
I don't know what I mean by try to sit in the chair.
You either sit in the chair or you don't.
And she said, right.
Don't try to cry.
Either cry or don't.
But be authentic to what you're experiencing in the moment.
You do not need to try to be in your daughter's life.
You either do or you don't.
You are or you aren't in your daughter's life.
But there's not a whole lot of trying about that kind of stuff.
So with...
You're a gay friend.
It could be that Paul Walker had everything that a gay man could dream of.
You know, beauty and fame and money and so on.
There still wasn't enough for him to be happy.
And that might be a good lesson for him.
For my friend, he absolutely loves Paul and after stuff, actually, which is interesting.
Well, he said he, I guess, obsessed about him a bit before, but until he died, he actually became really, really interested in his life, and he actually sees him as his guardian angel, if that makes sense, now that he's there.
But it's...
The one thing about me was, sometimes I get frustrated when talking to him sometimes, just that I don't understand personally how he can be so...
He's 100% obsessed and in love with Paul after his death, and he doesn't see any flaws, or he might, but he doesn't really consider them.
He doesn't see the flaws that he just perhaps mentioned.
He just sees him as a great being and a wonderful person that obviously doesn't deserve to die, obviously, but he gets so wound up in it, so much so that I still don't understand sometimes why...
No, he's begging you.
He's begging...
No, look, Eva, he's begging you to help him out of his mysticism.
Really?
Sorry.
Yes.
Okay.
This is what I would say to a friend of mine who was a mystic and obsessed with Paul Walker.
Or as you said, spiritual, right?
He's faith-based, right?
I actually went to a past life regression therapy session just yesterday and he wanted to find out answers if Paul was in his life before.
He was trying to get answers as to what?
Oh, if Paul was in his life before because he believes that there must be a reason why he loves Paul so much, right?
Because he's obsessed over him so much so that He loves him more than anyone he's met in his real life.
Okay, Eva, I gotta tell you something.
That's what he says.
I gotta tell you something.
This guy is pretty nuts.
Your friend.
Well, yeah, a lot of people say that to me.
People I feel like counselors that I talk to about it, but I still stick up to him because he's my friend, and I really do love him as a friend, and it's just he's...
I can't abandon him because he's going through a lot, and I'm not sure if I'm being manipulated or if he's actually telling the truth of what he believes, but I really have I'm really good.
No, it doesn't matter whether he's telling the truth or not.
Like either he does believe that Paul Walker might have been entwined with him in a past life, which is crazy.
I mean, that's crazy.
I try to reason out with him, but he's very stubborn to not even go to a counselor to talk about it.
No, I got it.
But look, obviously he's not obsessed with Paul Walker because Paul Walker was a great spiritual mentor and a very wise philosopher and a deep, ancient and learned soul who led the world to a better place, right?
There's nothing shallower than spirituality.
There's nothing shallower than mysticism.
It's a great cover-up for the most material nonsense of all time.
You should be able to preach the Word of God without hair gel and a Bentley.
And without a megachurch and a singing choir, I mean, spirituality is the shallowest thing around.
There's nothing deeper than reason and philosophy and nothing shallower than faith and mysticism, superstition, religiosity and spirituality.
Those things are shallow as hell.
He is into Paul Walker because Paul Walker was gorgeous.
And that's it.
There's no fundamental moral qualities.
I mean, maybe he was a nice guy to a lot of people.
He seems to have done some charity work.
Yay, that's great.
But come on, you and I both know, and this guy knows deep down, that it's just because he was really, really purdy, right?
Well, yeah, mostly, I guess so.
Yeah, come on.
Now, that's not spiritual, right?
So you can say, well, what are the spiritual qualities?
Forget, like, let's say that Paul Walker looked like Conrad Black with leprosy, or, I don't know, Who's a really ugly guy?
I don't know.
But let's say Paul Walker looked really gross.
Or let's say he was an 80-year-old Finnish man.
Would he still be obsessed with him?
Of course not.
He was smooth-skinned, tousled-haired, blue-eyed, gorgeous.
I mean, it's the power of looks.
There's nothing spiritual about it.
He is yearning for a fantasy, and he is damaging his brain by indulging in these fantasies.
Let me tell you something.
You know, indulging in this kind of mysticism when you're young, it's like smoking ecstasy.
I don't know, do you smoke ecstasy, Mike?
Not you, but does one smoke ecstasy?
Because some drug guy is going to ask me that or tell me what it is.
You're asking me?
You seem pretty happy.
I think you take a pill?
It's a pill, right?
I believe so, yeah.
Or something on a piece of paper.
Is James in the chat room?
James, do you know?
Ernest Bornein.
Yeah, like he was going to know who Ernest Bornein is.
Thank you.
You don't smoke it.
No, I don't think you take it that way.
Oh, you just put the pill on your tongue.
It's a pill.
Yeah, okay.
So it's like, you know, taking ecstasy.
Yeah, you're up all night, you're thirsty, you're horny, you're dancing, but, you know, you're killing brain cells.
Mysticism when you're young looks like kind of an indulgence, kind of something that's interesting or something like that.
But let me tell you, Eva, you've got to understand this.
This is really harming his brain, and it has the potential to harm your brain as well.
There's nothing more contagious than crazy.
Well, it got me really, really worried every day for the past few weeks, actually.
Yeah, and I've been actually trying to talk to his mother about it, but she said...
But that's the problem.
He does not want to see another viewpoint or go to a council or talk to someone else about it because he believes what he believes and no one can change him, apparently.
When I was younger, I thought that people were who they were and then they had these beliefs.
You know, so I sort of thought it was like there's a house and there's vines or ivy growing on the outside, you know, and there's a couple of leaves and the eaves troughs and some snow on the roof.
So I thought there's this house, that's the person.
And then there's these beliefs that are kind of floating around the person and have some little effect on who they are, but, you know, they're not foundational to who they are.
Oh, I can tell you I was wrong.
I was oh so wrong.
People are their beliefs.
And when you're young, that's not quite as evident as when you get older.
But people who are mystics, it seems like just kind of an affectation or whatever, right?
But when you get older, you realize they're not kidding.
They're not kidding.
They genuinely believe this stuff.
Well, no, they genuinely believe this stuff.
You know, like my mom used to have these conversations with me where she would drone on and on about how she was going to knit psychic helmets to protect people from bad influences around the world that she knew of and so on.
And she watched the OJ trial, jumping up and down, completely convinced and writing letters.
So she planned to write letters to the defense team, completely convinced that she'd solved the case.
And I was like, well, there's my mom and then she has some crazy beliefs.
It's like, no, no.
My mom is crazy beliefs.
There's nothing in there anymore that's not who she is in terms of her beliefs.
The beliefs are the person.
And so if he's got crazy beliefs, he's pretty crazy.
What do you think I should do then when talking to them?
Because I am still his friend and I will be for a while, a long time.
Well, I would tell you that...
No, hang on.
Sorry to interrupt.
But I'd tell you the speech that I would give him.
And then you can say, who the hell am I to listen to some bald old fart?
Right?
But I'll tell you the speech that I would give him.
And hopefully this would be helpful.
I'd say, look, I'm worried about you.
I'm really worried about you.
The Paul Walker thing.
That's been many times.
Yeah, the Paul Walker thing is not healthy.
It's not any deep spiritual qualities that you admire in the guy.
It's because he was pretty and he was powerful and he was rich.
And these are maybe things that you want, but you're going through about it in such a confused manner that this is going to absolutely harm your life.
I mean, how the hell are you going to get a job if you bring up your obsession with Paul Walker and past lives in the job interview?
Or is it just like...
He's very good at hiding his personal feelings, and he's also really good at, he's very professional in making jobs.
Like, he has right now three part-time jobs, and he's in the first year of university, so, yeah, he's pretty busy.
Oh, so is it just you he dumps, hang on, so it's just you he dumps his crazy on, he saves his sane for everyone else?
Mostly, yeah, and his mother.
He has a tattoo about Paul Walker, so it's kind of visibly there.
He's got a tattoo of Paul Walker.
Yes, it was the best option, I think.
Well, I don't know if I really want to go into it in public because he might eventually hear this one day and he might get really, really mad about it.
But at the time, it seemed like the best thing to do because it was a better option for him to be doing something more positive, if that makes sense.
Yeah.
And what do your parents think of your friendship with the fella?
I've told about this before to them and they really wanted me to get out of this friendship and I really disagree with that because even though he might be crazy, he might be nuts, he still has really, really irredeemable qualities and I think...
And what are those qualities?
Okay, so I have barely any friends.
I was never really a social person in my childhood, so he was the first friend in like four years that I really had, and he was the first person to really listen to me, and he was very generous and kind, and it's, yeah, I don't want to get teary-eyed about him, but he really helped me a lot in just getting through, and I do care for him a lot and...
I don't think...
I don't think that he should go if...
Sorry, I guess I'll say it.
He was thinking of committing suicide, and I don't think all these ideas...
I think I shouldn't abandon him or be scared away because I see him as a really great person inside.
Even though he has his flaws, like an imperfect gem, but he still shines in his way.
Now, is that because he believes in an afterlife and he might meet Paul Walker after he dies?
Is that the idea?
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's like he...
It's like...
About Paul, it's like fish not breathing with water, right?
So you can't live without him.
Does his mother know that he has had suicidal thoughts?
Oh, definitely.
He talks about his mother as well, and she supports whatever...
Well, she's definitely against suicide, definitely, and Paula may be taking a bit more...
I'm probably more creeped out about it because I email her kind of a lot and talk to my counselors about it more.
But it's like she isn't willing for her son to go to counseling unless he wants to or gets the help he needs, unless it's like passive aggression therapy which is compatible with his beliefs.
Wow.
Well, this is more than you can handle.
You know that, right?
It's more than I can handle.
This is more than you can help or handle.
You know that, right?
I mean, people who are suicidal and who are yearning to join up in heaven with burnt-up movie stars, this is more than a young lady, a well-intentioned, intelligent, eloquent, committed, passionate, moral young lady such as yourself, This is way beyond, way above your pay grade.
It's way above my pay grade.
Yeah, it's just been on my mind so much that I've been talking to many, many counselors about this and even...
Do you know Erin Pitsy?
Yes.
But I've been talking to...
I even emailed her recently about it a bit, even though she hasn't replied yet a bit.
But it's still...
I don't know what to do.
I've pulled out all the cards that I can pick up on and it still doesn't work.
You can't do anything.
No, no, no.
I'm very serious about this.
Somebody who is suicidal needs significant intervention from professionals who know what they're doing.
That's not you.
That's not me.
That's not his mom.
That's not your mom or your dad or probably anyone that you know.
You can't do anything.
Because, look, if you start owning this, it's going to be paralyzing to you.
And the last thing that you want to do is give suicidal people power over you, right?
I think he sometimes does already.
No, I get it.
I mean, the fact that he's telling you that he's suicidal is an unbelievably destructive burden to place on someone.
It is absolutely unfair To tell a 17-year-old girl that you're suicidal and then not go and get help.
This has got to be hanging over you like horror, right?
Like terror, like every time the phone rings, right?
Yeah.
I'm sorry?
I've tried as much as I can, even going to the counseling services at this university, and it's still nothing.
I've tried as much as I can, like I said.
I have this hard time of saying, is this enough, or I can't give up?
Well, no, but you're seeing a therapist, is that right?
What does a mental health professional tell you to do?
Again, I'm not one of those people, so I don't know what to say.
But, you know, I would assume maybe you could...
I'm sorry, go ahead.
Talking to my high school guidance counselor, that's all I can go to, but she said after trying so much it's now up to him to change if he wants to change and it's right now we just have to let him be who he is and I have a hard time kind of personally I have sometimes a hard time settling on that because it's a life right and it's so important but Well, I don't think you can see it.
Let me just try and give you a way to look at it that may be unclear to you because, you know, you're right up against it, right?
So there's this danger, this fear.
This is very anxiety-provoking, right?
I mean, a friend that you really care about.
How long has he talked about suicidality for?
Since Paul died.
So it's just since December.
Right.
So we have been having weekly conversations with aliens sometimes, yeah.
Now, has he expressed any concern over having told you that he's suicidal?
In other words, has he thought about its effect on you?
Not really, no.
Okay, just stop there for a second, okay?
So he's dropping this megaton bomb into your brain.
I'm suicidal.
And he's not once showed any interest in how that might be affecting you.
Not really.
I've told him about it might impact others, but he doesn't...
No, no.
I'm asking him if he has said that.
He has asked you, not if you've told him.
No.
Right.
Do you get how abysmally selfish that is?
To drop a bomb like that on your friend and then never inquire as to how she's dealing with it.
Yeah, I don't think he really realizes it because sometimes he goes to such low thoughts.
Well, now you're making excuses for him and that's why this stuff is so dangerous is that you don't know whether you should be making excuses for him or not.
I don't know either.
But I do know that it is incredibly distractive To tell a 17-year-old girl that you're suicidal and then not really think about how that might be affecting her.
I mean, this is a huge issue in your life, right?
It's probably like the last thing you think about at night and probably one of the first things you think about in the morning, right?
Yeah, it is.
It's incredibly intrusive, right?
It's like a guy following you around with a gun.
Sorry?
Well, he has no one else to talk to, and it's...
What do you mean he has no one else to talk to?
No, no, no.
What do you mean he's got no one else to talk to?
He's got a mother?
He's got a father?
He's got therapists if they want...
I'm sorry?
He doesn't have a father, but...
But I know his original father in Cambodia was gone.
Wait, what happened to...
Did he get adopted into a single mother household?
Yep.
Oh, okay.
Actually, you know what?
I actually didn't know if single moms could adopt.
I thought they'd follow the stats and try and get two couple households.
But anyway, neither here nor there.
But he's got a mom to talk to.
He's got a guidance counselor to talk to.
His mom, you said, comes from wealth, so I'm sure she'd be more than happy to pay for a therapist.
Right?
But you don't put this stuff on a 17-year-old girl.
You are young.
You are energetic.
You are intelligent.
This should be your time to enjoy your life.
Not worrying about whether your friend is going to commit suicide.
It's incredibly destructive of him to do that.
He's the only one.
He says that he's only comfortable talking to me and his mother and that's it.
So it's Oh, so he does someone else to talk to who is his mother, right?
Now, have you talked to his mother about his suicidality and what are her plans?
I've emailed her a couple of times before he read the emails because he has her account password.
But she said she only take him to counseling if he only wants to see it.
That said now, though, because he wants to pass life-aggression therapy, he feels better, but that's because he believes that Paul is going to be reincarnated.
Like you said, you believe what you want to believe, and I'm not sure if he might go into a low again, or make an excuse for himself to get depressed, and I'm not sure what to do after that.
Right.
Right.
Well, it doesn't sound to me like you're on the verge of taking my advice, but I hope that you will at least think about it.
Yeah, I will.
You don't know what happened to this guy in the womb.
You don't know what happened to this guy in his early childhood.
Do you know how old he was when he was adopted?
A toddler.
Like, he was in Canada already by the age of four, I estimate.
Right.
So, you know what, 70 to 80% of his brain had already been developed by the time, you know, all this was passed.
So, you don't know what happened to him when he was young.
No.
But, so, this is way beyond your capacity to fix.
I'm incredibly sorry that this shadow is even in your life.
Like, this is so wrong on so many levels.
I can't even tell you how outrageous this is.
Like, on his part, or it's just...
On his part.
Overall.
Now, I mean, he's your age, right?
So he's kind of a kid, too.
Yeah.
But if his mom knows that you know about her son's suicidality...
I mean, she should be springing into action to relieve the burden from you.
Well, he'll go if he wants to go.
It's like, you know, she should be sitting down with your parents and saying, I'm so incredibly sorry that my son dumped this unbelievably heavy load on your daughter.
What a terrifying and terrible thing he did to her.
I don't think you can see it because you're close and you care about the guy and so on.
Yeah, and I feel guilty.
Like, if he ever listens to this...
Well, yeah.
And also, if...
I mean, if he kills himself, and you're going to be like, oh, what did I do wrong, right?
Hmm.
Or if I could have done something more, but...
Well, what if I could have done something more?
And when does this end?
When does the statute of limitations for this threat run out?
When can you actually have a friendship with him that's based upon pleasure in his company...
Rather than fear of the consequences, right?
I mean, you were telling me...
I say to my face, but we can't see each other.
You were telling me in my ear all of the wonderful qualities this guy has.
Yeah.
I'm sorry, I must blow a general raspberry in that direction.
People with great qualities don't burden 17-year-old kids with talk of suicide and then not...
Go and get help.
This is not a heroic or positive force in the universe to say the least, right?
I will tell you I hate people who kill themselves or who threaten it.
I hate those people.
I really do.
I said this before and I'll say it again.
Assholes.
All of them.
Look, maybe your life is unbearable.
Maybe you want to die.
I don't know.
I'm not you.
But if people are like that, for God's sake, like in the love of all that's holy, for the love of all that's holy, make it look identical to an accident.
You know, and don't say it and use it to have power over people and control them and manipulate them and so on, right?
I mean, if you're going to kill yourself, I wish nobody would kill themselves.
I think people should go and get help.
I don't know, some terminal illness or godforsaken amounts of pain or whatever, right?
But people who suicide, who leave suicide notes and who blame people or who, you know, it's such an act of ultimate fuck you aggression.
Excuse me.
Frack you aggression.
You know, if you don't, you know, if people don't want to live, then, you know, drive on an icy road and go over a cliff.
Oh, that's too bad.
That's terrible.
At least give people the chance to mourn, to grieve, and all that sort of stuff.
But the people who shoot themselves in front of people or who tell people they're going to kill themselves and so on, I really hate that stuff.
It's like, go and get the help that you need.
And people who particularly weigh that on you, on a young girl, To me, this is unconscionable.
It's incredibly destructive.
Do your parents know that he's threatened suicide?
I've talked to them just once because late at night after I talked to him because I was really scared and I didn't know...
I guess it was natural just to talk to someone.
It was my parents.
They're not the greatest people to talk to when it comes to this, but they know.
And what are their plans?
They say that...
They say never to be in the car alone with him, like if he's driving.
I at least have to make sure that at least his mother's driving when we're going to somewhere like his house or something, or I'm going actually.
But they don't really actually have any contact with him at all because it'd be really, really awkward because my parents aren't the greatest socializers and Yeah.
I'm sorry.
Right.
Well, excuse me.
I hope that, I mean, I obviously can't tell you what to do, but I hope that you will consider this.
I think that you should call a suicide hotline and explain what's happening.
You don't have to give your name.
You don't have to give your friend's name.
It can be as anonymous as this is.
But I hope that you will call a suicide...
Sorry?
He's not considering suicide now because he got the answers he wanted from the past life regression therapy, but do you think I still should call them either way?
Wait, he's not suicidal?
Okay, so he's still very obsessive, yes, but he's not that suicidal as he was just yesterday.
He got the answers he wanted, but I'm still kind of worried about it if his ideas will change.
So yesterday he was suicidal.
But then a past life's therapist told him that Paul Walker was going to be reincarnated, so he wants to stay in the land of the living in case he meets him, right?
In the form of a badger or a melon or a peanut or something.
Okay.
It's fine.
All right.
So I think I would, given that it was just yesterday.
Because I don't know what to tell you.
This is way above my pay grade.
But I think there are experts out there, particularly people who've dealt with this.
So call a suicide hotline and say, my friend has been suicidal.
What do I do?
This is something for experts, but I'm just telling you it's a horrendous burden to lay upon you when you should be getting ready for your life and enjoying the remainder of high school and enjoying your time.
It's an incredibly heavy burden to lay upon you, and it doesn't sound like the adults are doing a whole lot in your life to help out, for which I'm incredibly sorry.
But I would call the hotline, stay anonymous, and just say, this is the situation.
What am I going to do?
And hopefully they can give you some advice that will be helpful because I don't know what necessarily to cancel.
I mean, I'll tell you what I would do.
What I would do is I would begin to extricate myself from the relationship.
And I would do that, you know, in part because he's not showing empathy towards you.
Right?
He's not showing empathy towards you.
Right?
And if your dad, you know, if you were a bubble kid, because of your dad's anxiety, then that was not necessarily empathetic towards you either, right?
So you need people in your life who are going to give you benefits.
Right?
Not give you crazy past life suicidality, Paul Walker idealization madness, right?
Regardless of how it affects you.
So I would, you know, I would up your standards for friends.
You can do better.
I barely have any.
Well, but this is one reason why.
You know, you say this was your first friend from four years ago.
This is probably one of the reasons why you don't have better friends.
Because people come around, you see this guy, and they're like, whoa.
I'm not hanging with those two, right?
Because he's nuts.
Keeping this friend is like repelling other friends, right?
Maybe.
He is really...
Like, personality-wise, externally, he's really the bubbly person and really extroverted and the entertainer of the room.
Yeah, look, crazy people can be great on stage.
Yeah, crazy people can be great on stage.
stage.
So what?
I don't know.
Sorry, I don't know what to say, I mean.
Well, I hope it's just something to think about, and I'm incredibly sorry that this shadow is in your life, and that your friend is acting in this way.
I am incredibly sorry for that.
It is, to me, an unfair burden to place upon anyone, let alone someone as young as yourself.
And I think that if he has passed the danger point of suicidality, and again, somebody you talk to with a hotline or some expert you talk to or your therapist will advise you about this in a way that I can't.
If he's passed the danger point and he's now committed to living, I would begin to extricate myself.
You know, it doesn't have to be sudden.
It doesn't have to be dramatic.
It doesn't have to be horrible.
I'd just be a little less available and I'd just spend a little bit less time and And so on.
And then start looking around for friends who aren't looking to reunite with Krispy Kreme celebrities in the afterlife or reincarnated or whatever.
I mean, I think that's where I would set my standards.
But anyway, I mean, I hope that's been helpful.
Thank you so much for sharing.
I know it's a very, very difficult topic.
But I hope that you will think about it.
Right?
Mm-hmm.
All right.
Well, thank you very much for your call.
And no, don't apologize at all.
And very, very best wishes for this.
And if you get a chance, just drop a line and let us know how you do.
All right.
Thanks.
All right.
Thank you very much.
Next.
All right, Nick.
Go ahead, Nick.
How are you going?
Well, how are you doing?
Yeah, just fine.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Look, first of all, I was retaken by the previous caller and I have worked in Australia as a couple of therapists for an awful long time.
I came across a lot of people who, and certainly over the phone as well, who were definitely suicidal and it's probably the most difficult I'm sure she's still listening.
Given that you actually have some credentials in the field of mental health, is there anything that you would like to say?
Any egregious mistakes that I would have made that you can correct if she's still listening?
Well, I mean, one of the things that I thought about was who's supporting her?
If she's going to maintain contact with this fellow, then who is supporting her in this process?
And if he's not the sort to seek help, and indeed doesn't want to seek help, then I think I remember you suggesting that maybe she should exit the relationship Which is probably actually very, I would have thought would have been a good idea for her own sake.
Because ultimately, we're responsible for our own lives and how we conduct them.
And as much as we can feel for somebody else, it doesn't mean that we need to go down with them.
Yeah, I mean, that's why I was asking about what the adults in her life are doing with the knowledge of the suicidality and her relationship with the man.
I mean, if my daughter is in high school and has a friend who's suicidal, I mean, everything stops until that gets dealt with.
Like, I don't go to work.
I don't do any shows.
You know, we go straight over to that parent's house.
We go straight over to anyone's house who it is, and we work it out, and we get the person to help.
Like, everything would stop until that problem is dealt with.
So, the lack of support, I think, you know, where her dad's saying, well, just don't drive in a car with him, that to me is not as proactive as it perhaps could be.
And I think it is.
It's an incredibly difficult situation for a young girl without adult support to be in.
And, yeah, I appreciate your thoughts.
Is there anything else you wanted to add to that?
No, no.
No, that's fine.
Thank you.
That's fine.
Alright, so what's on your mind?
Well, nothing's really on my mind.
I originally emailed your program because I came across your YouTube videos, which I was really quite taken by.
They fill me in on a lot of bits of social history that I hadn't thought about for quite a long time, like Marxism.
And the most recent one I listened to or watched was your thoughts and your little history of Nelson Mandela, which I wasn't so aware of his early history.
And also, I really came across your talk through listening to Warren Farrell.
I've noticed a number of times you've interviewed Warren Farrell, and so I became interested in actually being interviewed on your program at some stage, and the best I could do was call in, so I thought I'd call in, because I've been very taken by What I would consider to be the great strides that men have made over the last 20, 25 years in Australia.
And I would say a lot of them are doing things very well, a lot of things very, very well, certainly much better than they were before when we had what was locally called the men's movement down here, which I think might have been the same in the United States as well.
I've written a book about this, but I'm curious to know from you, What you would consider that men have been doing well or indeed much better over the last 20 years or so?
That was the question I had for you.
Yeah, I mean, it's a mixed bag, I think, for men over the last little while.
So there have been some relaxation as far as the breadwinner cage goes.
So there is more acceptance and portrayal of men as nurturers, as men as intimate fathers.
We're not sort of the anonymous man in a grey flannel suit going out to rustle up the bacon for the house in the suburbs that we used to be.
So I think that there is...
I mean, I'm a stay-at-home dad and I've not received any particularly negative feedback or, you know, that's your pussy.
So I think there has been some relaxation of...
Man, the money-making macho machine.
I think that has diminished to some degree.
I think that there has been a huge collapse of men's opportunities in two major areas, which is the manufacturing sector in America and in Canada, maybe in Australia too.
And in education, boys in the revolution that came out in the 80s in particular where there was this myth that girls start underachieving and it was all nonsense and the data has been exploded many times by Christina Hoff Summers and other women and men skeptical of feminism.
And so this whole, they reject all of this education to be more, quote, girl-friendly.
And I think it's just lowered educational standards for everyone, but particularly for boys, who like to be active and hands-on and so on and other.
Just, you know, boys are viewed as defective girls and need to be drugged to make them more like girls, which I think is pretty wretched.
So I think there has been some progress, but I think economically, men, you know, the recession is, to a large degree, a male phenomenon, and it's a...
Blue-collar phenomenon.
And I think most fundamentally, though, the degree to which men have been shunted aside as caregivers in the family to the point now where the majority of women under 30 are having children outside of wedlock is truly appalling.
And the effects of that are going to be felt for many, many, many generations to come.
And men are still necessary because men pay the majority of taxes.
So men are still necessary to pay for this single mother culture, but they're no longer involved in terms of intimacy.
I think that's desperately bad for moms.
It's desperately bad for dads.
And, you know, as always, it's worst of all for children.
So I think there's been some mixed bag, but I think that overall it's been quite negative.
I think a lot of the military stereotypes have diminished as well.
You know, the men go fight and war and so on.
So there's been some relaxation of those stereotypes.
And some concepts of male disposability are being talked about and so on.
But I think overall, I think that...
Because the single moms can get money from others for free, particularly from men, they no longer think of men as necessary individuals.
In the same way that if young men could get sex for free, they wouldn't care that much about the women.
And so I think it is pretty bad for men out there.
Unfortunately, it's going to take a brutal crash in the economy for women to remember just how essential men are for the civilization of children and the sustenance of the family.
Because this is all going to come crashing down.
Mathematically, it has to.
So, that's sort of my thoughts.
What do you think?
Well...
I was interested in...
I've actually noticed I've been involved in what we call men's work since all the early 1990s.
And I agree with you that it takes a good recession to bring out basic community values, such as respect and humility and all that sort of good stuff.
And I certainly noticed in the early 90s that a lot of men were joining men's groups.
And I might say varying quality.
But what I've noticed in that time is that men are talking more.
I can remember in a number of trips that I did into really quite remote rural areas, being in Delhi.
I don't know if you've got things called delis over there where you can buy a coffee and a cake and a pastry.
Yeah.
As recently as six months ago, I remember I was sitting there with my wife and there was an elderly gentleman there who had really sort of got the nailed hands that you would expect of somebody who worked on the land.
But he was sitting there and having a coffee with very neatly pressed jeans and being very attentive to his wife.
And that's one thing that struck me.
And the other thing was that there were a couple of other men at another table talking about their prostate.
Now, I can assure you this type of discussion and this sort of attention was not occurring within those sort of spaces as recently as 10 years ago.
And I've certainly noticed with men here That not only are they more inclined to talk, they're more inclined to talk about stuff that really matters to them.
I think the other big change, which I think men are doing very well, is really looking at their health and saying, well, you know, I want to be around.
I want to be around in a healthy manner.
And not only for myself, but also that I can see my grandkids grow up.
I understand that in the United States you have a phenomenon very similar to Australia where you have these whole convoys of bicycle riders streaming up and down the highways and they all look fantastic.
I have deliberately stopped at a few cafes in the country and watched these bike riders turn up in their most, you know, 40 or 50 in this convoy and they look fantastic and It's only when they get off and take off their helmets that you realise that a lot of these men are over 60 and looking very good, thank you very much, and the smile in their eyes is just really quite an amazing thing and a very refreshing thing to see.
So I think longevity is a very major thing for men as well.
I think a lot more men are much more inclined to Be able to say, and I think this is a testimony to not only the good sense and the humility that a lot of men have, to say, well, okay, you earn more, you earn a much better job, you want to work anyway, and often sometimes the woman doesn't, I will stay at home and And take care of the kids.
I mean, this was not a question that arose in the 70s, certainly not in mainstream culture.
I think probably the biggest, and along those lines, I would say that fatherhood, the whole idea around fatherhood and the wanting to be involved with the children would have to be the story of the 20th century so far when it comes to familial relationships, because You know, all you've got to do is go walk down the street and you will see there are a lot of men pushing prams.
Myself, when I go down to the local coffee house here, I mean, I will see fathers.
I remember with one last week, I said, you're taking care of the children.
He said, yeah, of course I am.
He said, you know, my wife earns a lot more.
He said, look, it's a brave new world and I love spending time with my kids.
Having said all that, there are a lot of men who have a sense of ambivalence about it because, you know, we cannot help the way we've been conditioned as males that we would like to be the bridge winner as well.
But there's also a much greater sense of my marriage is about my family now.
It's not just about me the way it used to be.
But I had to adopt this role.
It's not like that anymore.
It's very much a brave new world.
And I would say that a bloke now really can be whatever he wants to be.
Obviously there are cultural limitations, and I was thinking about this this morning, but I think a great thing to think about, and I might even know right about it at some stage, is the whole attitude towards men's clothes.
Because I can't help noticing in the southern Mediterranean that men wear much brighter and lighter colours.
And even wear white suits.
You know, I can tell you, if you wore a white suit in Australia walking down the street, you would certainly be looked at askance.
And I say a lot more men are actually having fun with their children and getting down and getting dirty with them.
I think it's a wonderful thing to see.
So I think a lot of men, I think the world is Liberated.
There's been a much greater liberation.
I think a lot more men are happier for it if they're willing to take that opportunity that's been given to them.
So there you have a very brief, relatively convoluted answer from downtown South Caulfield in Melbourne.
Right.
Well, that's good to know.
That's good to know.
I mean, I've never particularly fallen for a lot of male stereotypes.
You know, it is problematic growing up without a father, but at least you don't have bad imprinting, so to speak.
And so I think that has been beneficial for me in some ways, being able to sort of invent myself without the template of history driving me down a particular kind of train track.
So I think all will be beneficial for As long as men continue to gain awareness.
This consciousness raising that the feminists did in the 50s and 60s was, from Simone de Beauvoir onwards, was fantastic.
And I think we just have to help men to understand the depth and passion that they can bring to the topic of true equality between the genders.
To continue to raise consciousness so that men don't continue to destroy themselves through drink and drugs and workaholism and so on, to keep any kind of non-conformist thoughts at bay.
I think that's been my goal, is to try and remind men that the deep passions in the male heart are an essential engine for the progress of the world.
And yet so often we face this view of men in society that You know, we're just shallow, skirt-chasing, drunken louts, and it's the women who are wise and deep and patient with our foolishness and so on.
You know, that old joke, you know, you see a woman with two kids, and you say, how many kids?
Oh, you see a woman, you say, how many kids do you have?
Well, two, but three if I count my husband.
You know, this is silly and insulting stuff that you hear all the women who get together and crab about.
I think if we could just remind men to go deep and to connect with their deeper selves, I think that will be a huge engine for change.
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, I've been facilitating men's groups for over 20 years now, and I've made a film about it as well.
And it never ceases to amaze me, despite the fact that I've heard it many, many times that within 20 minutes of a man being in a men's group, he will visibly relax because he realises that we're really all in the same boat here.
Because a lot of men, and I heard it again this morning, That lead very isolated lives.
One fellow was saying to me, the only time I can talk, that I have time to talk to my mates because he works 40 to 50 hours a week.
He's got a wife and kids to come home to.
The only real time he can get to talk to his mates is on Saturday morning at six o'clock.
And there are a lot of men like this.
But if they can give themselves the time just for two hours a fortnight, two hours a fortnight, to be in a well-facilitated men's group where they can listen to other men and where they feel they've been listened to time and time again.
I've heard the men say, I've gone home and my wife says I'm going to look quieter.
And I can do what needs to be done in my family.
And the reason why is I ask, well, why do you think that's the case?
And I say, because very rarely, generally, do I feel like I am being listened to.
And obviously this flows on to their wives as well, because often the men don't feel listened to.
And if you speak to the women, they don't feel listened to.
And often, for want of a better word, I've seen them say, I want you to practice listening to your wife and reflecting what she says.
And I would like you to ask the same from her, because if we want equality between the sexes, I would suggest that we actually need to listen to one another and try and begin to understand, even if that's possible, to begin to understand what it's like to walk in their shoes.
Yeah, I mean, I feel some resistance to what you're saying, which doesn't mean anything other than I feel some resistance to what you're saying.
I don't know that men need more listen to women advice.
I frankly think women need more listen to men advice.
Because I think that men have been told forever that women need to be listened to.
I'm sorry, go ahead.
Oh no, I wouldn't for a moment suggest that from what I can see that both genders have a lot of trouble trying to understand where the other is coming from.
Can you hear me?
Yep.
Oh, you can hear me.
I heard a bit and I thought, oh God, I've been disconnected.
No, that was somebody messaging you on Skype.
Oh, okay.
No, I would say that both genders need to really try and understand where one another is coming from.
I've heard many, many women say, look, he never listens to me.
And I can assure you that I've heard just as many men say, well, she doesn't listen to me either.
What I find is the quality of the listening which is important.
And what I often say to the men is that, you know, I don't know that you'll ever understand your wife, but the most I think you can say is you probably understand her better than anybody else.
And to presume that you understand her is to begin to put her in a box and ultimately the road to ruin called boredom.
And I've seen that all too often.
Right, right.
Yeah, I mean, certainly we should model the behavior that we want, but I would certainly like for more people to be saying to women that they need to really listen to and be curious about the emotional lives of their men.
You know, there's an old story, you've probably heard this, you've heard this cliche before about a couple goes to a marriage counselor, they've been married for 30 years, and The wife talks for half an hour, complaining that the husband never says anything, never talks to her, never shares his thoughts and feelings.
And then finally the therapist has to interrupt the woman and turns to the man and says, why is that true?
Why is that the case?
And he said, well, I didn't want to interrupt.
And I think there's some kind of truth in that.
I think that more people would be great if more people were out there saying to women, listen, you have a lot to learn about emotional issues.
About the emotional life for men.
Like, that's something you never hear.
But some of the, you know, many of the greatest and deepest and most powerful emotional works in certainly Western literature, art, and movies are made by men.
I mean, are we really going to try and find more better explication of intergenerational conflict and primal passions than Shakespearean dramas?
I mean, they're astounding.
I think that women could learn a lot about emotional depth from men, Men can learn a lot from women, but all we've been told is how men can learn from women and men should be more like women, but I don't think we hear a lot about how women can learn from men.
And this goes back to the single mom thing, where the idea that a man is as functionally necessary for the mental health of his offspring as his sperm is to their very existence is something that is incomprehensible to most people, even though it's something that is completely obvious.
I think reasserting the value of masculinity is important, but I don't think it's fundamentally going to happen until the financial system of exploitation changes.
Yeah, I couldn't comment on that because I haven't really...
I have read about this before, but I'd like to go back to a point you've made before about how women see men.
Your comments took me back to my film And I remember a number of women saying at the time, which was what, 2005, they said, I didn't know that men felt like this.
And one of the women who had in fact been married for over 25 years, when I gave a couple of talks about my book, Ten stories about what men are doing well.
Three women came up to me at the end of my first talk.
And one of them said, I don't think my husband didn't do anything well.
And the second one said to me, oh, there's only one thing he did well, but you wouldn't tell me what it was.
And the third one said, you're very brave.
Now, I thought I would do an anecdotal study.
And the next day, I was down the street and I met this woman who...
Who I had met on occasions.
I said, look, I've written this book, Chin, stories about what men are doing well.
What do you think men are doing well?
And she said, what are you doing about rape?
And the last example I'll give you is what I've heard from many, many, many is when I say, ask them, what do you think you're doing well?
And a lot of them actually don't know because they haven't really thought about it.
But what they all indicate is where people's mindsets are in relation to the women in relation to the men in their lives.
And the men in relation to themselves, which tells me that there's not a whole lot of self-reflection that occurs.
I can remember one radio journalist When I was talking to him about my book, Ten Stories About What Men Are Doing Well, and he said, I can't think of anything that men do well, and you thought of ten?
Now, if people actually, this sort of sings testimony to the fact that most of us tend to look at the negative in another person and stereotype them accordingly.
Right.
Without appreciating all the good things that they do bring to the relationship and value them as a bit more of a fully human being.
Yeah, I think I would certainly argue that something like civilization is something that men do quite well.
I mean, it wasn't women who built mines and sewage factories.
And, you know, when the power went out here in Ontario, it was not women who were up there clambering and cutting down trees and building the power lines back up and so on.
So, yeah, I think the fact that civilization functions is one thing that men are doing quite well, which, you know, men don't really get thanked for at all.
I mean, as some men say, you know, well, if we're all just rapists and exploiters, let's not get involved with women then and let's let them have this wonderful life by themselves, which they will very quickly find is not that wonderful.
But, yeah, I think civilization as a whole is something that men do quite well, which women benefit quite a bit from.
Yes, yes, I quite agree.
I've heard you talk about this type of thing before, and you speak about it quite well.
But my focus in my book was really on ways of being that I've seen men doing well in, including struggling to understand what's going on.
I mean, you can actually do that very well too.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure I understand that.
Well, you've got a fellow whose marriage is broken up and he cannot fathom why this has occurred.
And it will take him some time to work this out.
I mean, a lot of, well, some men that I've met, they will immediately go to the drink or gamble or find another woman really quick without thinking about and reflecting on what has occurred in his marriage to lead to its demise.
But there are other men who, despite the fact that it's difficult, they will really try to understand what has occurred so they don't repeat the same mistakes again.
And that's what I often think of as really quite a beautiful struggle to occur, even though it's occurring in circumstances that is most people's worst nightmare.
I mean, I don't remember many people who got married so they could get divorced in a hurry.
Most people I've met sort of got married to be married for the rest of their lives and to watch the dream shattered is a terrible experience for them.
Sure.
And I mean, that's inevitable.
I mean, if you can unilaterally end a contract and get paid for doing so, then that's going to stack the economic odds in favor of divorce, which I think is pretty terrible.
I mean, you know, no fault divorce came in.
And the marriage, the divorce rate largely led by unsatisfied women went through the roof.
Because, you know, I mean...
You know, most people in marriage can be tough at times, and you stick it out because, you know, if you have integrity to the vows, you stick it out because of the vows and so on.
And, of course, women, you know, they can break the vows, and men can too, but women can break the vows and generally continue to receive money in a lot of places, and I don't know any other place where that's really a valid option for women.
Any kind of contract.
Anyway, I think that's all stuff that, as you know, I'm an anarchist and so I'm highly critical of state power and that's where state power has really, I think, tipped the balance point so that it's really not towards the favor of men and marriage is highly risky.
A highly risky endeavor for men these days.
Yes.
Yes, I quite agree.
Well, you...
I'm happy to get off now because you've given me some food for thought, Stefan.
And I thank you very much.
You've given me some food for thought.
I was very interested in your answers.
I will do a bit more reading on the economics of the whole situation.
I used to be an economics teacher and an accountant many, many years ago.
But I moved into counselling and I haven't thought so much about the links, those beautiful links that I often hear you make in some of these talks, and you've spurred me on to sort of go back to my economics textbooks.
In fact, I might have to get some new copies because I'm sure I'm at least 25 years out of date.
So I can't thank you enough for your time today.
Oh, thank you very much.
It was a very pleasant chat.
Thank you so much for calling in.
I guess we have time for one more caller before my voice gives out.
So, Mike, who do we have?
All right, Marie.
Go ahead, Marie.
Thank you, Michael.
Hi, Steph.
Hi, Marie.
How are you doing?
Good.
How are you?
Well, thank you.
Good.
First, I wanted to say thank you for everything you do, because recently I got into all of your videos and talks through YouTube.
I am a nanny, so while the child that I nanny for is napping, I spend six hours a day just listening to these things, and I've really opened my mind to a lot of things, and I am really appreciative of it.
Thank you so much.
I'm sure you're doing a great job with the children, which I think is the most important philosophical work of our time, or perhaps of any time, so I certainly appreciate that.
I agree.
I agree 100%, and they are really the light of my life, so I'm constantly surprised and amazed by them.
So, anyways, I could talk about that forever.
Sort of what I wanted to touch on today was a problem that I'm kind of Well, I've been dealing with it, you know, my entire life, but mainly it's at the peak right now.
I'm trying to focus on getting my sister out of our parents' abusive household.
I no longer live there anymore, but I don't currently have the means to do so, and I'm trying to figure out how I'd be able to offer her emotional, like, safety until I can get her out of there.
And I don't even know where to start because I've been doing things where I visited my parents' household on the weekends and I spend the weekends there with her.
But because I've had so much hate and resentment towards my mother and father for a lot of things, I turn into this terrible person.
And I end up taking out my aggressions on...
On her sometimes and on them, and I don't think it's helping in the way that I wish it was, and I'm hoping that I can readdress this with some insight, perhaps.
And sorry, can you help me understand where it is that you're acting at?
Where, like how I'm acting out?
Yeah, like I'm under what circumstances with who and so on, yeah.
My sister and I have a terrible relationship with our father.
Not an awful relationship with my mother, but I do definitely have some gripes with things that she's done.
And participated in.
So because of her broken relationship with my dad, she's very snappy and she resents him.
And she spends a lot of time in her room, which I can't blame her for because it's just a toxic environment.
Because she just is constantly managing her thoughts and opinions.
And it's just awful.
So when I go there, I'm put in this position where I'm I've been trying to disconnect from them for so long, but I am back there and I have to constantly manage my thoughts because of the crazy things they say or do.
Because she is hostile about it, I get hostile towards them about it, and then I also get hostile towards her because I just can't handle all of this negative energy around me, and I just get snippy, and I really wish that I wouldn't do that, and I've been trying to control it, but...
Snippy how?
It's hard sometimes.
She'll say something snappy to my dad, and I'd be like, Ellen, do you think it's necessary to speak to him in that tone?
But the thing is, I totally know where she's coming from when she's speaking to him like that because she has a lot of hate and she's with them all the time.
And she doesn't get this away during the week that I do.
So I feel bad.
I feel guilty for leaving her there.
Well, first of all, you're not leaving.
Is she an adult?
Yes, she is.
Wait a minute.
Was she a brain in a tank?
Is she what?
What is that?
No, no, she is.
It's just, you know, she's my little sister, so I care for her a lot, and sometimes I baby her.
You think?
Yeah, she's an adult.
She's an adult.
Okay.
Of course.
So, why?
There's a couple of things.
Let me just talk about a couple of things that I noticed in what you were saying.
And it's a great topic, and I hugely appreciate you bringing it up.
First of all, you said you have a terrible relationship with your father.
Yes.
I would reframe that, in that your father has created a terrible relationship with you.
Okay, yes.
I mean, you know why that's important, right?
Yes, I know why that's important.
Sometimes I forget about the language and how it definitely is really important to look at things like that.
Yeah, you know, I'll tell you a little story which will involve a song that I don't have the voice to sing at the moment, but there's a Phil Collins song.
Just as I thought it was going all right, I found out I'm wrong when I thought I was right.
It's always the same, it's just a shame, that's all.
And this song was stuck in my head, and now I know why.
Because all my relationships were screwed up.
In my 20s.
And that song was stuck in my head over and over and over again.
And now the song, of course, my unconscious was grabbing onto the song to try and tell me something.
But the only way that I could change that and get it out of my head was I had to sing to myself, just when I thought it was going all wrong, I found out I'm right when I thought I was wrong.
It's always the same.
It's not a shame.
That's all.
Like I had to reverse it in my head.
And then it left me alone because my unconscious said, oh, he's not ready to deal with it.
Okay.
And the language of how we describe things is really important.
And you say, well, I have a bad relationship with...
This is your father.
I mean, it's his job to have a good relationship with you.
As I said to the first caller, he defines the relationship and so on, right?
Yes.
So that's an important thing to remember.
And then you talked about having a better relationship.
With your mother.
And your mother is still married to your father?
Yes, they are.
However, I mean, I don't think it really counts for anything.
Because they were matched.
And they never really...
Yeah, they have an arranged marriage.
So they were never really into it.
And they still aren't.
I don't think staying in a marriage necessarily means commitment or anything like that.
It's just comfortable for them.
And safe.
Yeah, how is it comfortable for them if it's not comfortable for you?
It's like taking my daughter to a horror film and saying, well, I like it.
Right, right.
I mean, it's comfortable in the sense that They're really good at denial and they hate change.
So because they can live in the state of denial and silence and they hate change so much, it's easier to just be living in hell than it would be to take the proper steps to be courageous and end things.
Right.
So if you discount the discomfort and destruction towards your children, it's comfortable.
Right.
But they're good at that.
That first part of the sentence is quite significant.
Like, that's literally like my daughter saying, I have to pee, and me saying, well, we're not stopping because I don't have to.
I'm comfortable.
Yeah.
No, I know.
The fact that my daughter is not comfortable is why we stop, right?
Right.
Yes.
And I mean, this is one of the reasons that I really have been building up this, like, continuous, like, resentment towards my mother, even more so for my dad at this point, because he did what he did, and those were terrible, terrible things.
But she enables him.
She makes excuses for him.
She says it's okay.
She sees the truth, and then she denies it all.
What did he do that was telling you?
Okay, well, this is kind of layered.
When I was younger, I was molested by my older sister.
When I was a child, obviously this was kind of hard for me to process.
As I grew older, eventually the abuse stopped, but then it started again in different ways, like how she would manifest her abuse on me.
With the arranged marriage and the molestation, are you from an Indian family?
No.
My parents were actually unificationists.
I don't know if you've ever heard of that branch of religion, but it's like a Korean form of Christianity.
Okay.
Okay.
Yeah.
So, I mean, a lot of the times, because of all the abuse my sister caused me, I hated her.
I was upset at her, for good reason, obviously.
But as I started to grow and get a better idea of why evil things happen...
I could only come to an unconscious conclusion that it was because someone had sexually assaulted her because I don't think a 10-year-old learns this behavior and it just comes out of nowhere.
I don't think that's possible, really, without significant childhood trauma in her life.
And then it was sort of all confirmed for me when My younger sister, the one who's still in my parents' house, she was getting really, really close to my dad, and they seemed to have this really good relationship.
She was really into astronomy for a while, and he really fostered her.
In this summer, with that passion, and this summer...
Not this summer, but the summer that this all happened.
They were saving up money for a telescope together, so they were doing odd jobs around the neighborhood that we had lived in at the time for houses and stuff like that, like watching their house or mowing their lawn, stuff like that.
And it was kind of like a father-daughter team.
They seemed to have something really good going.
And then...
I left because I was doing my life.
I was out of town or something.
And some really weird thing happened.
I had borrowed my mom's cell phone and I got this frantic call from my aunt about things being really terrible or something.
So I called home and no one would tell me anything.
And then later when I got home, people told me that It turns out Child Protective Services came into our family and was wondering if my dad was sexually assaulting my little sister because one of the families they were house-sitting for had found child pornography on their computer,
so naturally they were concerned about What
happened to the investigation?
The investigation was kind of really intense.
It was really intense.
So my mom came to me and she had like this kind of heart to heart and she ended up like blaming me.
She said, I'm pretty sure that you made this accusation because the caller wanted to remain anonymous for a while.
So she didn't know where this accusation was coming from and she was convinced that I somehow fabricated this elaborate lie to ruin our family or something.
I don't know what her logic behind that was.
And after I explained to her...
You're kind of pulling my leg, right?
How so?
I'm sorry.
First of all, I'm incredibly sorry for all of this stuff in your family.
But you said you had a fairly good relationship with your mom?
No, I don't.
You listened to what you said earlier.
You said I have a fairly okay relationship with my mom.
Well, that's the thing.
That's the issue that I have about with the language thing.
Like, I still need to...
I really need to correct myself on stuff like that.
Honestly, like...
Because, I mean, that's insane, right?
I mean, to say that she...
That her only major issue with your father possessing child pornography was that you may have called CPS. That's what she became outraged about.
I mean, that's like, you can't be serious.
To say this without a tone of unbelievable outrage...
It's astonishing.
She had daughters who molested each other.
She had a husband who looked at child pornography and she gets upset with you?
Yeah.
No, I know.
And I didn't speak to her for a long time after that because I had this conversation, you know, when she was accusing me of that, I had this conversation with her saying, these are the reasons how I, I mean, I didn't make the call, but I know this call is factual because of, you know, these factors, these...
This evidence that I had against my father because I had seen it before on his computer.
And after this investigation started, his computer mysteriously vanished and he got a new one.
Like, all this stuff.
And I told her these things.
Wait, sorry.
You had seen child pornography on your father's computer before this incident with the investigation?
Yes, I had.
And how old were you when you saw that?
Oh, I was in high school at the time.
So I don't know, like 16 or something.
So what happened with the investigation?
The investigation was just sort of like inconclusive.
I don't really know what happened to it because they hired a lawyer and they dealt with everything.
And because Ellen had, as far as I know, she hasn't been, and we have a very close relationship...
I'm sorry, who's your sister?
Yes, my younger sister, I'm sorry.
And you have a very close relationship?
Yes, I have a close relationship with her.
So, I mean, as far as I know, he hasn't sexually assaulted her.
So when Child Protective Services spoke to her about it and she said that that had never happened to her, they couldn't really move forward, I guess.
I don't know legal proceedings on that, so...
Yeah, but he still has child pornography.
That's illegal, right?
Yes.
Yes, that's illegal.
But they had no evidence because his computer mysteriously vanished and he bought a new one.
Oh, so he destroyed the evidence.
Yes, he destroyed the evidence.
I told my mom about this.
It's illegal to destroy evidence, so how is he not in jail?
Well, because it was a computer that...
It was kind of off the radar.
It wasn't really his, so they didn't think to look at that.
I don't think either of us knows what you're saying.
Sorry.
You may not know.
Yeah.
No, I do know, but I was failing to explain that properly.
It was a computer through work.
It doesn't usually matter if you're satisfied.
Sorry, if you're satisfied, we don't have to get into the details.
I never quite understand how people get away with stuff, but he obviously did.
He had a good lawyer and obviously managed to get off on some kind of technicality.
And so your mother is still married to him.
Yes.
And despite this accusation...
Your mother still is comfortable with your younger sister living with him.
Yes.
Right.
What do you think of that?
Well, that bothers me.
I hate it.
I really...
I just have no words for how distraught it makes me, and that's why I just want...
Right.
I'm so sorry.
I mean, what an unbelievable burden to be placed on you.
What an incredibly dysfunctional family, to put it as nicely as humanly possible.
What an incredibly creepy father and what an incredibly destructive mother.
Yeah.
I mean, the idea that these predilections, this is a sexual excitement over children, which is something completely incomprehensible to me.
The idea of sexual excitement over children's images.
I mean, there's no such thing as child pornography.
There's only child rape that is photographed or videoed, right?
I mean, children can't conceivably consent.
There's only being turned on by images or videos of child rape.
I agree with that, yes.
That is so satanically creepy and evil that, like, the hairs are standing up on my forearms.
I mean, there isn't an asteroid deep enough in space that I would be happy to ship all those people to.
And I wouldn't have myself trouble too overly much about their access to oxygen.
So I'm incredibly sorry about all of this.
Now, have you ever talked to your older sister about whether she was ever molested?
I... No, because she lives far from me and I have a terrible relationship with her because of what she...
Has done to me that I don't have much sympathy for her.
I mean, it's awful if she also suffered that, but her actions towards me are inexcusable in my opinion, so I can't...
I think I can come to the conclusion for myself that yes, she probably was.
Does she have children?
No.
Oh, good.
Do any of your other siblings have children?
Yeah, I know.
No.
Are they married?
No, but my sister's in a relationship with a man that she'll probably get married to.
Your elder sister?
Yes.
And does he know about her history?
What she did?
No.
I doubt it.
He needs to know.
He needs to know.
Yeah.
He needs to know.
You know, for the sake of kids, right?
For the sake of kids that might come into the relationship.
Yes.
The man needs to know that his wife...
I agree with that.
...was a child for Lester when she was a child.
Yeah, I've been trying to figure out how to address this with him because, I mean, he's also incredibly, like, abusive as a person.
And I just don't know, like, I don't have his email or his phone number or anything like that.
I don't know how I would contact him.
I don't know what to do about it.
Yeah, and of course, I mean, he would be abusive, of course, right?
Yeah, yeah, of course.
So he may not care.
Who knows?
It might be in a grand family tradition to turn on for him, too.
God.
I mean, I think he would care, because he broke up with her, and you know how those things end up.
Like, they break up, they get back together.
I mean, he...
He would care.
He would care.
I just don't know how to get that information to him.
Does anyone else in your family know his name?
Oh, I mean, I know his name, but I mean, I guess I could just Google it.
I don't know.
I don't know how to stock.
If he had a million dollars for you, you'd find him, right?
Yes.
Yeah, this is more than a million dollars.
So yeah, I'll do it.
I mean, if I married a woman, or was even dating a woman, and members of her family knew that she had molested her siblings and nobody told me, I mean, this is a kind of complicity, right?
And you certainly don't owe her a lot of love, right?
Thank you.
No, not at all.
So, did your mother know anything about the molestation?
From my older sister?
Yeah.
Of course she did, yeah.
I confided in a close friend, and that close friend told...
Her parents and then her parents then told my parents and the only thing that ever happened was my mom went up to my sister asked her did you do this?
My sister said no and that was the end of it.
Obviously like I tried to speak out against that but I mean I'm living in her house.
I'm trying to make it as you know I'm trying to cope and that's not going to help me until I'm not living in her house.
And at the time, my sister still lived in the house, so it's kind of hard to say, yes, she did do this after I've suffered at the hands of her abuse for many, many years.
Right.
And your mother never talked to you about it?
Of course not, no.
Not unless I would bring it up.
Were you present with the conversation between your mother and your sister?
No, it happened behind my back.
How do you know if it happened?
I guess I don't.
I don't have any idea if it happened or not.
Her word doesn't really mean much.
Generally, people who support and enable potential child molesters are fairly comfortable with lying too, right?
Yeah.
So you have no way of knowing if this ever occurred?
No, I have no way of knowing.
that's correct I'm so sorry Gosh.
What a terrible introduction to both male and female role models.
Yeah, it's been pretty awful.
I mean, they are a minority of satanic figures in a world that is not exactly over full with angels, but they are in a special layer of hell.
Thank you.
As far as human beings go.
And I'm so sorry.
What an unbelievably awful introduction to humanity.
It's hard to think of it worse, really.
Yeah.
Now as far as the sibling who gets left behind...
That is tough, and I truly sympathize with your concern for your youngest sibling, your sister.
That is a terrible thing to have as a burden on you, but I understand it's not just that you're concerned she might not get a jump start in life.
You're concerned that she might be in a position of being around a potential child molester, right?
Yes, yes.
Good one.
Tell me what you're feeling.
No, I just said yes.
No, but tell me what you're feeling.
I'm feeling like because my experiences haven't been validated throughout my life, it's hard for me to stand up for her.
And I have to do that.
Like, I can't say that's okay anymore because I'm just being my mom.
Right.
You will never be your mom.
I hope you understand that.
The fact that you're talking about this stuff, the fact that you're on, even within a light year of a conversation like this, you will never be your mom.
I mean, I hope you build that mental fence around your heart.
You will never, ever be your mom.
Come on, you'd spot a creep like this from the dark side of the moon, right?
Yeah.
But you talked about terrible things.
Your emotions really came out strongly when you thought of protecting or the desire to protect your sister, right?
Yes.
Something you said earlier, you said that you get snippy, and I asked you what snippy was, and you said, if your sister is snippy with your dad, you say, is there really any reason to speak to him like that, or there isn't any good reason to speak to him like that, right?
Yes.
Do you understand how different your state of mind is now than when you were saying that?
Yes, and that place is toxic.
It makes me, it enables me to become like my mother and it's scary and I hate it.
Right.
She has every right to be snippy with her dad, right?
Yes, she does, and I'm the same way with him.
It's not like I'm a shining example or anything.
No, no, no.
You misunderstood what I'm saying.
Be more snippy with him.
No, I know.
What I'm saying is I am not at all an example to how to treat my dad right because I am equally a snippy for the same reasons as she is.
No, but how can you be fully who you are in the presence of your dad without launching yourself across the table at him?
You can't, right?
I can't, no.
Right.
So being there is to empty out yourself, right?
To become the opposite of who you are.
Exactly, and it's terrifying.
Yeah.
No, being around crazy or evil people, if you're not engaged in direct combat with them, hollows out the souls of the virtuous, right?
We get turned to ash, there's a little flicker of fire and then they go out too and we're all in the dark, right?
Yes.
What do you think your sister needs to see to be as repulsed by her situation as she should be?
Because the identification of evil and danger is to be like you recoil from it.
It's like touching an electrical plug with a live wire.
You recoil from it.
She's not there yet, right?
So what does she need to see so that her house is like a burning house?
She is.
She's in hell there.
That's why I feel extra guilty.
It's just I can't get her out of there.
I don't have the means to do so, and she doesn't have the means to support herself.
No, but I'm asking you, what are the means?
What are the means to do so?
Oh, she needs to be, like, financially independent, or I need to be able to support her financially, which currently, like, I can't.
We live in a place where just it's impossible.
Like, prices are too high.
Well, why do you need to live in that place?
Well, I'm not going to at...
I'm going to.
At the end of the year, I'm planning to do so.
I'm currently in a contract.
I mean, I guess I could always break that contract.
Listen, try this as a thought exercise.
Try this as a thought exercise.
Think of yourself when you're 90.
Maybe you'll live longer.
Maybe you'll live to be whatever it's going to be.
And you're on your deathbed and you're looking back at the year 2014.
What do you most wish you had done?
Moved.
When?
As soon as possible.
With who?
With my sister.
Right.
Your loyalty, first and foremost, is to yourself.
I understand your guilt.
I really, really understand your guilt.
But it's not yours.
It's your parents.
Right, I understand that, but it's still hard.
I know, we all get that in our heads, but in our heart it's not the same, right?
Now, you know that thing, you fly a plane, right?
They always say the oxygen masks drop down.
What do they always say about those oxygen masks if you're traveling with a child?
Help yourself before you can help others.
Exactly.
Put the oxygen mask on yourself and then take care of those around you, right?
Yes.
And that's why I felt like removing myself from the house was the best way to collect the resources to get her out there sooner.
And I feel it's helping, but it's still hard.
Right.
Do you think she would come if you were in a place of security?
She would, yes.
I wouldn't even have to ask her.
She would be right there.
Yeah, she'd be like, I didn't even see you in the backseat of the car, and there you are, right?
She'd be like a shadow.
Right.
Right.
I would argue that Your loyalty and the greatest good you can do, of course, is to get yourself out of a disgusting, vile, horrendous, immoral, evil cave of ugly prehistory.
And that is your loyalty.
Your loyalty fundamentally is not to your contractor, to your employer, though I certainly respect that as an impulse.
I'm sorry, too, because I love them so much.
So...
You love what?
It's hard to because I love them so much, the people that are the positive people that are in my life right now.
But, I mean, obviously my loyalty is to my sister, so there's just all kinds of emotions.
Well, I don't I agree with you.
I'm not saying because she's my blood, but because obviously I wouldn't stay with my own sister.
Yeah.
Like, I mean, otherwise, of course, you try to be friends with your eldest sister, right?
We share the exact same, yeah, experience.
And, you know, we were each other's support growing up.
That's, like, all we had.
And it doesn't have to be forever.
Like, I mean, if you move someplace that's cheaper, that you can get your sister out, you know, six months you can come back if you can, right?
Yeah.
There's no reason why it has to be forever.
If it's just for a place to get her on her feet or get her out of a situation so she can begin to detox, right?
Yeah.
And the thing, too, is she did have that opportunity for about three weeks with me at one point, and She just changed incredibly and it was amazing to watch her grow that much in like three weeks.
Right.
And then like to send her back there.
Right.
It's really awful.
Right.
Yeah, I mean, I'm old enough to be annoying and luxury that it's your relationships that count.
Fundamental.
You know, your employer, you may like them a lot.
They're not going to be holding your hand when you get old and sick.
You know, that's family.
That's friends.
That's people who are close to you.
It's the relationships that matter.
Everything great in life goes out of great relationships.
I'm sorry?
They are my family and friends.
I mean, they're not just the people that I work for.
But yes, I see what you're saying.
Oh, okay, so it's good.
You have good relationships with the people.
Then won't they totally understand?
Yes.
They would.
Yes, they would.
Yeah, so maybe they can give you a chance to work remotely.
Maybe there's something you can do.
Maybe they can find you some cheap place to live.
If you engage a community in your rescue attempt, right?
It's just hard to...
Yeah, it's just hard sometimes to empower myself to speak to others about this.
Of course, abusers isolate, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, abusers always isolate.
Always, always, always.
And so I would recommend, obviously, if you can talk to a therapist, that'd be fantastic.
But if you have friends that are close that you can confide in, engage your community in helping you in this project.
You would be amazed at how generous people are when you are honest with them.
No, I know.
If you've grown up around selfish people, it's truly amazing how generous people are when you open up to them and ask for their help.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Now, if she's the youngest sibling, she's the youngest kid, right?
So the parents are probably going to not want her to leave, right?
She's the youngest, yes.
Yeah, so the mom's probably not going to want to be spending a whole lot of time alone with each other, particularly your mom, right?
Well, no, but I don't think she would be opposed to my sister leaving.
I mean, my mom doesn't have much of a backbone in her track record, so if Ellen wanted to go, she wouldn't say anything.
Yeah, I wouldn't underestimate the degree of backbone your mom has.
I mean, she survived investigations.
She kept her husband out of jail.
She kept you guys isolated.
She, you know, she may have lied to you about having the conversation with your eldest sister about molestation.
I wouldn't necessarily underestimate the amount of spying your mom has.
Yes, I shouldn't underestimate her.
However...
I know.
Well, no, I don't.
Okay.
Yes.
I shouldn't underestimate her.
Yeah.
I mean, I think the deathbed thing is important.
I think that when you're older, you'll look back and say, so I basically, because you're saying at the end of the year, well, it's February, right?
That's almost a whole year.
That's a whole year of your sister in that household.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, the soonest it could happen would be the summer, but that's even a stretch.
Because I literally wouldn't be able to financially support her until a month or two.
I need a couple of months.
Why?
Does she have a huge cocaine habit or something?
Why is she so expensive?
It's actually...
It's because I made an unwise decision because my parents obviously were pushing me to make this decision and because I depended on them at the time I made this decision and so I went to go live with my older sister My abuser.
And she, I mean, she stole a lot of money from me.
She did terrible things to me.
I lost my job while I lived there, so, like, I don't have that much money anymore.
Oh, I see, I see.
So you're trying to dig out, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Right, okay.
Okay.
If you were to share your goals with your sister, would that help?
We talk about it every time I come over there because we have to have a strategy and hope.
We talk about it all the time.
Right.
Right.
Yeah, if she has something to look forward to, that could really help.
It does help her.
Good.
And, I mean, she'll be able to, you know, get a job or get some income and help out too, right?
Yes, of course.
Right.
Well, I mean, it sounds like you're going to do some great things this year.
I sure hope so, yes.
I'm so sorry that this is even on your radar.
I'm incredibly sorry about what your sister did to you.
You know, there's a line from one of my novels where the guy says about his brother, he says, you know, I heard that phrase my whole life, we're his closest brothers.
And it's true, we were his closest brothers until I remembered all of his early treachery.
And then we weren't.
Or there's a great line...
From an American writer, Gertrude Stein, about her brother, who she had a terrible relationship, a difficult relationship with.
And she said about her brother, she said, little by little, we never met again.
And sibling stuff is difficult.
You know, 50% of sibling relationships are estimated to be abusive.
50% of sibling relationships are estimated to be abusive.
It's really tough.
It's really tough to have sibling stuff.
That is really difficult.
I think that siblings can be absolutely wonderful in life.
But often times it's really not the case.
Yeah, I have the positive coin and the extreme polar opposite of that as well.
So yeah, I see that firsthand.
Is there anything else I can help you with?
Has this been useful?
I'm sorry that it's upsetting, but I assume it was not a truly horrible kind of upsetting.
No, I mean, just the nature of everything that's happened was upsetting.
It's not the conversation.
The conversation's productive, and yes, it was useful.
Is there anything that I could have done differently or better with the conversation?
No, that was effective.
Thank you.
And is there anything that you're going to kick yourself for not having talked about if we stop talking now?
Not that I can think of at the moment.
Well, then I just, what can I say?
But thank you for your vulnerability.
Thank you for your honesty.
You know, we've never met and you calling up and talking about this very, very difficult stuff.
You know, for people who haven't done it, you don't know how hard it is.
And I hugely appreciate your trust.
It's incredibly hard to talk about this stuff and I mean you're anonymous and all that but still I mean this is your life that you're opening up to a conversation like this so I'm incredibly honored that you would call up this conversation and talk to me about this.
I hope I did right by you.
I always try to but I'm incredibly honored and thank you so much for having the trust.
I'm glad the conversation worked out for you but and Congratulations for coming through this childhood you had with such a giant heart and such compassion, concern, and care for others.
I hope you get what a magnificent achievement that is.
You did not have empathy models.
Kindness, empathy, love.
But you've got it in your heart.
Yes, I know.
So, good for you.
Good for you.
If you ever decide to become a mom, I hope that Paul Walker is reincarnated as your child.
If you didn't hear the earlier conversation, that means nothing to you, but...
No, no, I heard it, yeah.
Oh, good, good, good.
No, congratulations, and if you get a chance, of course, there's always a Do drop us a line and let us know.
And if there's anything that I can do or Mike can do or we can do to help you with anything, anything at all, I hope that you will let us know.
Okay, thank you.
All right, thank you so much.
And very best of luck.
Your sister is a very lucky young lady.
All right.
Well, I'm sorry that we didn't get to the last two callers, perhaps on Sunday, but I must rest my voice.
I've got to yell at the planet on the radio in the morning.
So thanks, as always.
FDRURL.com forward slash donate if you would like to help out.
This, as I believe, is the most essential conversation the world needs, and you can certainly help us grow and spread it.
We are just finishing up the studio over the next, what, week or two, Mike?
Yeah, should be.
Should be a week or two.
Fantastic.
And I guess, yeah, I've got some conferences coming up, which you can see at freedomainradio.com.
And have yourselves a wonderful week.
Thank you so much to the callers.
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