Sept. 1, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:02:13
2784 Warning: Disturbing Content - The Antidote to Cruelty - Saturday Call In Show August 30th, 2014
Warning: Disturbing Content. This conversation starts with a simple question about repeatedly breaking commitments and without warning jumps to an incredibly dark exploration of sadism. Listener discretion is advised. Primitive life forms say yes to everything, sophistication is learning how to say no, inflicting pain as power, animal abuse, born into a prison, emotions being used to hurt and connection as the antidote to cruelty.
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Do you want to start off by telling the Izzy story?
I could start off by telling the Izzy story.
I love the Izzy story, so...
Alright, so...
For...
I guess we survived about two years ago, we started teaching my daughter how to read.
Now, of course, her role as a satanic offspring means that mostly it's ancient Aramaic, which she's supposed to be able to recite backwards while spinning her head around, but that's perhaps a topic for another time, but...
So, she was about 18 months or two years when we started doing the ABCs and all of that.
But really, for the last year, we've been reading every day.
And she's not been a huge fan of the reading.
She doesn't mind it too much.
It's not horrible for her.
But she doesn't really love it in the way that she loves some other stuff.
I completely understand that.
You know, we were at a place the other day where there was a piano, and there was this 10-year-old girl playing piano, and the girl said, oh yeah, for the first two years, I hated it, now I love it.
You know, whenever you learn something new, it's annoying.
I mean, just naturally, right?
So I understand that, and so we worked out deals, and she ended up being mostly okay with it.
And I mean, I guess I caught some flack for Making her read.
The language that people use around compulsion is really interesting.
Making her read sounds like locking her in a box without food until she coughs up some dickens or something.
It's negotiation.
It's negotiation.
The degree to which people extrapolate that to Making her do something is kind of crazy.
I make moral arguments like the against me argument, and I'm making people do something.
No, I'm making a moral argument, and people can accept it or reject it.
They can do it or not do it, but I'm making a moral argument.
Anyway, so I guess maybe two weeks ago, she...
Like, just literally, and this is...
I mean, if you're a parent, you'll know what I mean.
Like, you wake up one morning, and suddenly, like, you have...
A new child.
It's a new child.
It's a new day.
And it's like, whoa!
Where the heck did this person come from?
And she looked at me in the morning and she said, Dad, I like reading now.
I said, oh really?
How's that?
And she said, I think I'm getting really good at it and I really like it.
And she said, I want you to leave my favorite book by my bed tonight so that in the morning I can do some reading.
Unprompted, right?
I mean, obviously, after that, I let her out of the windowless van and gave her some food.
But unprompted, she's like, I really like reading now.
And I said, well, you know, it's a long time.
You didn't like it.
And she's like, yeah, I think I was just learning, and it was frustrating.
But I really like reading now.
And she has.
She pretty much dove into it.
And I try not to, you know, just as in parenting as in this show, I try not to lead the witness to Are you happy now that Daddy made you read for a year?
But I just said, yeah.
I remember that girl who was playing piano.
She just didn't really like it for the first two years.
And now she really loves it and she's happy that she kind of kept up with it.
And she said, yeah, I remember you saying that.
I just wanted to say, Dad, you know, thanks a lot for making me read.
I can't remember.
Now I'm like, she can't use that.
But that's what she was thinking.
Thanks so much for...
And I said, but I never made you read, right?
I mean, if you'd have said to me, Dad, no way am I going to read.
There's no way.
Then I'd have said, okay, well, not going to force you.
Never going to force you to do anything.
But you've been negotiated and we found incentivized.
I said, explain the word incentive and so on.
It's not bribery.
It's legal bribery.
Anyway, so anyway, I guess after about a year of, not exactly battles, but a year of incentivizing people, Dear Izzy to read, she now is really enjoying reading.
She suggests, like, instead of me reading her a story for bed, now she, you know, gives me a bottle, tucks me in, reads me a story, and then goes and plays Skyrim.
Oh, such a role reversal.
Anyway, so I just sort of wanted to pass that along, that she is, you know, I always said, like, I try and act as a parent in such a way that...
My daughter will thank me for the choices that I have made when she gets older.
And in this case, it took a year.
She's now very happy that she knows how to read, and she knows she has to keep practicing.
And she's also become a really good dancer, but that's a topic for another time.
Anyway, so just wanted to mention that.
It doesn't...
Doesn't mean, of course, I'm right about everything.
It's just in regards to parenting.
But she is now very happy that she did stick with the reading and it really wasn't a huge amount of storm and stress.
Anyway.
So, alright, that's sort of my intro for what it's worth.
FDRURL.com slash donate to helpy-outy the show.
Alright.
Attila wrote in and said, I'm stuck in a pattern of making commitments and then breaking commitments, and then self-attacking because of it.
This often leaves me with intense feelings of shame, and I'm having a difficult time finding the strength to break this cycle.
Do you have any suggestions?
Right.
Okay, so I'm going to cut right to the chase and assume that you weren't allowed to say no as a child.
Yes.
Yes?
Yes what?
Yes, I was not.
That's rather ambivalent.
You were not allowed to say no.
How did I know that?
I can't think of an answer right away.
I can't think of an answer right away.
I was just basically instructed.
On what to do and like I was raised in such a way that like I was told that like I wouldn't do anything unless I knew what to do and I had to be made sure that I did what I was told and like there was always a supervisor.
Yeah, not allowed to think for yourself, not allowed to negotiate for yourself and not allowed to say no, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, and that is very destructive for children.
Yeah, I mean, you're just training children to be little cogs in a big industrial or military machine in the good old Prussian educational model.
So the general pattern seems to be that when people ask you to do things, you don't feel comfortable saying no, right?
Yeah, so I do them anyway.
Well, no, you don't.
You make the commitment to do it, right?
Right, so you don't do it.
I get this weird sort of schizophrenic disconnect halfway, like, why am I doing this?
Right, yeah.
Okay, so now, rationally you know that, let's say you're coming back midnight on a flight and your friend says, I'll pick you up, right?
You're like, hey, fantastic, right?
So I don't need to call for a cab, I don't need to make alternate arrangements or whatever, right?
Now, if your friend doesn't show up, obviously you're in a worse situation than if you'd said, I'm sorry, I can't pick you up.
I've got to work the next morning or whatever, right?
Yeah.
Right?
So people who make commitments and do not keep their commitments are like they drain the economic and energy lifeblood of the planet because people end up wasting a huge amount of time covering up Or finding alternative arrangements or rushing to do stopgap measures because they have believed someone's commitments, but that person is not following through.
And I just say this because when I was a manager, people would say, oh, I'll have something ready for you by Monday.
And therefore, I wouldn't do it myself or I wouldn't find someone else to do it.
Come Monday, they'd be like, oh, I didn't do it.
And it's like, you know, if you told me this last week...
I could have got it done.
But because I trusted you, it's now not done.
It could have been done.
Now it's not done.
And it is incredibly destructive to other people.
Now, please, I'm going to say Genghis Khan or anything like that.
But what I'm trying to point out is that it's so obviously irrational to make commitments that you won't keep that it can't come from any evaluation of the present.
It must come from habits in the past, right?
So when someone asks you to do something, if you're raised and not allowed to say no, if someone asks you to do something, you can't say no because it brings up a massive amount of anxiety, right?
Yeah.
And so you say yes to appease them in the moment.
But then later, you feel indifferent or resentful because you feel like it was kind of forced out of you, right?
Like you didn't have a say.
You didn't have a choice.
They, quote, kind of made you do it, right?
And then you feel this resentment or this indifference or – and then you end up not doing it, right?
Yeah, and whenever they also ask me, like, why am I not doing this?
Why am I neglecting this?
Why am I, like, putting this off?
I always say, like, okay, I'll do it and then just continue on.
Right.
So it's very passive-aggressive, right?
Yeah.
And at that moment, I actually am convinced that I will do it.
It's just like I just slip out of that into this other kind of mindset where I analyze, like, why did I do this and, like, just make up excuses.
Why did you do that?
Why did you say yes?
Yeah.
Right.
Right.
So, I mean, you're taking out, I would imagine, your anger at your parents on people who are asking you to do things, right?
Yeah.
Because if your parents never let you say no, then they're not letting you exist, right?
Existence is not the great yes.
Existence is the great no.
Identity is the great no.
And that's pretty easy to prove, right?
Have you ever been around like chickens or other kinds of animals?
Or goldfish or whatever?
Of course we all have, right?
At least goldfish.
So you throw food in a goldfish bowl, what does it do?
It just eats it.
Just eats the shit out of that stuff, right?
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, it never says no.
It's never like, well, you know, I'm watching my figure, I can't fit into my tights anymore, and I'm hoping to look good in the next Jacques Cousteau documentary.
Right?
Chickens.
They see a bug, they will go and eat the shit out of that bug.
They never say no, right?
Yeah, they never stop.
Yeah, so the more primitive the life form, the more it just says yes to everything, right?
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
So, sophistication as a life form is learning how to say no.
The essence of being a human being is saying no.
And if you're not allowed to say no and you are a human child, then you actually are being denied what it is to be a human being, I would argue.
Yeah, it's basically the thing where, like, their experience and age trumps whatever I say.
Like, even if I, like, later tried to argue with them, they always said, like, oh, but you're still wrong because we're older.
Right, right, right, right.
Right, so then all you do is you buy a piece of electronic equipment and you ask them to explain it to you because they're older, right?
Yes.
And they don't have a clue.
Yeah.
Right?
Can you show me how to connect this tablet to the wireless router?
Because you're older, and you just know stuff, and you're right because you're older.
Right?
So, and pulling the age card is really, really pitiful.
Right?
I mean, there's Godwin's Law, which is whoever compares someone to Hitler automatically loses the argument.
And to me, whoever pulls the age card, I mean, you've just lost the argument.
You've just said, I don't have a good reason, so tree rings.
I have more, you have fewer, young sapling, therefore I'm correct.
So, think of young kids with candy, right?
Do they often say, no, I'm concerned about cavities?
No.
They eat that stuff sometimes until they get sick, right?
And...
You can see this, right?
I mean, as our humanity gets progressively more stripped away through the increasing power of the state, you can see people are losing the ability to say no.
No!
Right?
Which is why people are getting fatter, right?
Less healthy.
They're losing the willpower to say no because our humanity is being taken from us.
And when we lose the ability to say no, we lose our identity.
I believe very, very strongly that particular setup.
So when you're not allowed to say no as a child, your identity drains away from you.
Your personality, your willpower, your higher functioning, I believe, takes significant blows.
And...
I imagine you are probably not too happy with that in your history, not being allowed to say no.
No, I'm not.
Because even right now, even when I was putting the question together, I had tremendous difficulties with expressing what I wanted.
I just have this feeling that I can't express myself the way I want to.
How do you think you're doing in the call?
My heart is to do that.
I'm sorry, your what?
Your heart is to do that?
Oh, your heart is to do that.
Yeah, my best in trying to express myself.
No, how do you think you're doing?
How?
Not good.
Not good?
Why?
Because I feel like I've been taking notes and rehearsing all these lines and just drawing blanks.
Is there anything that you rehearsed that you want to get across?
Yes.
Please, don't let me block that.
I'd hate for you to have your best lines unsaid.
I'm not basically preparing a speech.
One of the bullet points I wanted to go through is that I had a really violent childhood.
Parents divorcing and yelling and hitting and throwing.
Not at me, but more at each other.
This manifested in, like, me and my brother, when we were, like, really small children, like, freaking toddlers, we just saw this, and, like, seeing stuff like that, and the freakiest thing is that I only know this because my mother told me about it, that she would basically get between my father and us and basically catch the stuff that was thrown at us with her own body, and, um...
My brother was basically bawling at the time and I was just going through this internal thing where I wouldn't say anything.
I made no sound, but these streams were rolling down my face.
And I think that was when I started just shutting it out by finding myself to lose something to lose myself in.
At the time it was Legos and then it was TV and then it was computer games.
And then it was like, at one point it was like just being outside, being far away, so I couldn't hear.
Right.
And all of these things, right, all of these activities that you've talked about involve never having to say no.
Do you ever say no to Lego?
No.
Ever say no to TV? No.
I'm not saying, did you ever not watch TV? Yeah, I understand.
It's not a negotiation, right?
It's not a voluntary thing on the part of the other person.
And computer games, I mean, you're on a train track for the most part, right?
Yeah.
I mean, go do this objective.
Okay.
Go do this objective.
Go fetch this thing.
Okay.
Right?
Go kill this guy.
Go climb that mountain.
Cross that stream.
Okay.
Right?
I mean, you very rarely say no in computer games.
I mean, occasionally, right?
In some of the sort of open-ended games, like you can say no to a quest or whatever, right?
But what I'm pointing out is that what you found escape into was situations where either you never said no or saying no didn't have negative repercussions, right?
Yeah, no negative repercussions that actually directly affected me.
And I think another interesting thing was when I was hanging out with other kids.
Like, I had to be like them.
Because if you weren't, then you became the target.
And, like, I remember at one point I was actually, like, just pecked out.
Like, for no good reason.
Just because I was standing in a particular spot.
And they all started throwing rocks at me.
And that's the other thing that like I really am concerned about is like my reaction was initially like stop stop like stop hurting me and then when they didn't and they kept laughing I just went into this like just blackout and it's almost like seeing yourself in third person And I'm just walking up to them and I'm
feeling no pain.
And that's the moment where I felt like if I could get any of them, then I don't know what I would do.
Right.
And do you know why that happened, right?
Or do you?
I don't know.
I just guess I got sick of being powerless.
I can tell you why that happened if you like.
Okay.
Again...
It's technically a guess, but it's not really, right?
Can I tell you why this happened?
Because you said, you're hurting me, right?
And your goal in saying that it was hurting you was for them to stop, right?
Yeah.
And then they continued and laughed.
In other words, they said to you, we know it's hurting you.
That's the point.
We're sadists.
In fact, thank you.
For telling us that it's hurting you.
Because now we know how to hurt you.
And that makes us very happy because we're sadists.
Right?
We want to hurt you.
If the guy's torturing you and you say, oh shit, you know, when you put the needle in there, that hurts me the most.
He's like, well good, that's my job.
Right?
Thank you for telling me.
I never thought of it that way.
I didn't think that children that small would be capable of that.
Maybe that's what they saw at home?
Well, children are not capable of sadism?
One of the primary marks of adult psychopathy or sociopathy is cruelty towards animals, which is finding out what hurts the animals the most and doing that.
That's sadism, isn't it?
And I actually...
I did that too.
I don't really think I did it with that kind of mindset.
This is going to sound really crazy.
And I know it is.
I didn't realize at the time, but I didn't see animals as sentient entities.
I saw them as just moving things.
Yeah, like a robot or something, right?
Yeah, and I wanted to learn about them, and I actually was killing them.
And what kind of animals were you killing?
Chickens, geese, cats, small cats, kittens.
Just anything that was, like, way too small.
And I remember just everything I did, and it's horrible.
And how would you even find the kittens to kill?
I'm not sure I followed that.
There were stray cats, and they would leave their kittens in the sewers, and we would crawl around the sewers looking for them.
And then when you would find a kitten, what would you do?
Well, we would try to pet them, but once they, like, scratched us or something, then we would turn violent.
And what would you do?
I don't remember.
I remember one time...
Yes, you do.
No, come on.
No, you brought this up.
Okay.
What did you do?
Throw them around.
What I did was I threw them around.
I hit them with things.
What things did you hit them with?
Just wooden plank.
Something that didn't involve me reaching my hand out again.
Or I would just claw them back.
So you would hit kittens with wooden planks?
Yeah.
And how do you feel about that when we're talking about it?
I feel bad, even when we're not talking about it.
Anytime I stop to think about it, I feel horrible.
Because now I know that it was a thing that could think that had sentience and it had a life and it felt pain.
They want to live as much as you do, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, and especially with the chickens.
There was this one time when I was even younger, I would put chickens in tar and watch them slowly sink.
Oh, like they would sink like this black hot quicksand kind of thing, right?
Yes.
And they would panic and they would try to find a way out.
But as they struggled, I assume, they would sink further in.
And I'm just...
I don't understand why I was so fascinated about it.
I just feel this, like, complete sense of revulsion now.
And I remember also the moment when this, like, shift happened to me.
Where would you get chickens from?
My grandfather would take me to his country house and we would just move around and some of the neighbors would let us in and play in the backyard.
My brother and I... So, that's where...
Wait, so you would take your neighbor's chickens and put them in these pockets?
Yeah, the way they saw it was basically property damage.
So, they talked to my grandfather about it, who would, of course, reprimand us or even spank us because of that and tell us that it was wrong.
But it didn't really work because we kept doing it for a few more years.
And how many chickens do you think you killed?
I wasn't really counting, but I think it was like six or eight.
And what about kittens?
Two.
And when you say we, you mean your brother and yourself?
Yeah, my brother and myself mostly, and also like...
The other kids we used to hang out with, they did it too.
We were basically self-reinforcing.
Of course, they would do it too because kids with compassion wouldn't be in the gang, right?
Yeah.
Kids would be like you're hitting kittens with wood.
You are sinking chickens who have personalities into...
I have one more story to tell.
The moment when I actually made the realization.
It was another time when I was hanging with them, and by then I was already at the point where I was just too...
I just couldn't do it myself, but I could still watch them do it.
Oh, you couldn't torture and kill the animals in this way?
Yeah.
I was unable to do it, but I could still watch it.
I remember there were these two kittens on a pipe that was above water, and they were throwing rocks at them.
Wait, the kittens were floating in a stream?
No, they were above a pipe.
They were standing on a pipe that was above water, and they were so small they couldn't even see.
Their eyes weren't opened yet.
So we were throwing rocks at them to knock them off into the water.
Oh, so they would drown?
Yeah.
And I remember I threw just one rock, and it hit one kitten, and then it slipped off.
And I saw it drown, and that was my moment.
That was when I had this Hitchcock scene where I was holding my head and like, holy shit, what did I do?
And I just remember...
How old were you at this point?
Somewhere between 9 and 11.
And that was the point where I was just walking off and I just turned back to the group that was going in like, hey, you're missing all the fun.
And I was like, I'm going home.
Fuck you guys.
So they were not troubled.
In fact, they were enjoying the death of the kitten.
Yeah.
And how are you feeling now that you're talking about?
Still terrible.
It doesn't sound terrible to you.
I still remember everything vividly.
And I don't think I ever want to forget because I never want to do it again.
Yeah.
Did your brother continue to do these things?
Maybe.
I don't remember.
I just like completely just went into my own little world after that and just like shut out everyone that had anything to do with any of that.
And what violence did you experience as a child?
Spanking repeatedly with instruments.
Yelled at...
You mean implements?
Like wooden spoons and ladles and...
Yeah, wooden spoons.
So beatings.
Basically, I at one time remember being spanked with a wooden spoon until it broke.
So, to the point of cutting significant bruising?
Yeah.
And how often would that occur?
The most often it was was three times a week.
It varied.
So you would be beaten with implements sometimes up to three times a week?
Yeah.
It depended on what severity my parents decided the crime was.
Well, of course the crime was the assault on you, right?
Yeah.
I mean, children are not born wanting to kill kittens, right?
It's not like you came out of the womb saying, can't wait to get bigger to drown kittens and kill chickens, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Do you remember the first time that you were the cruelest animals in this way?
The very first time.
I don't really remember it like that.
Those are really, really fuzzy.
I remember it must have been geese.
Because I remember that geese would hiss at you when you approached them and they would always move in a pack.
And they were really terrifying because they were almost my size and that's why I was just attacking them or just harassing them.
So, you mean sort of Canada geese?
Sorry, what?
Like Canada geese kind of thing?
No, the reason I'm asking is I'm trying to sort of think of the height, so you'd have been like four maybe, or five?
Yeah, four or five.
Right.
Right.
And did you kill any of the geese?
I remember, like, inadvertently killing one, basically.
We were just, like, carrying one around with us, and it would make this noise, and so we would hold its beak closed.
And we didn't realize that by holding its beak...
Oh, you choked off its nose and its air supply, right?
Yeah.
And so it struggled, and you panicked, and you clamped down, and then it suffocated.
And was that your first experience of death that close?
Yeah.
And how did you feel when the geese died?
I was terrified.
I didn't know what to do.
What were you terrified of?
How am I going to explain this?
The geese was someone's and they're going to be really mad at me.
So it was really fear of consequences, not sorrow for the geese.
I'm not trying to criticize, I'm just trying to understand your mindset.
Yeah, like I'm trying to think with the mind that I had at the time.
Sure.
You were afraid of being beaten?
Yes.
Now, do you know how, do you have any memories prior to being beaten?
In other words, do you know if it happened later, or do you, at least it happened as far back as you can recall?
I don't really remember the first time it happened.
Okay, so it wasn't like there was a period of calm.
So as far as you know, the beatings basically could have started in infancy.
The beatings were like basically an ever-present threat, so it was mainly there to deter us from doing anything that the parents said that was not good.
So anytime we did something and we got caught, we got beaten.
Oh, no, no.
No.
No, no, no.
Come on.
You've got to be wiser than that.
You can't imagine it was punishment for misdeeds.
No, like, that's what they said.
Like, that's how they thought.
Okay, I just want to make sure you're clear on that.
It's not like, oh, well, you know, I did a bad thing, and then I got punished, but the punishment was wrong, but I still did a bad thing, right?
I mean, the rules that are set up for children are usually in my...
to my way of looking at things, and I think there's good evidence for this, but the rules that are set up for children are set up So that children will fail those rules and will be punished.
Yeah, there's no way you can not fail those rules.
Oh, yeah, no, absolutely.
And the rules, you know, they change and someone's in a bad mood and they just wish to...
They wish to discharge violence against children without feeling that they're evil, so they invent rules as an excuse.
It's not that I'm an evil person who enjoys torturing children...
It's that the children failed to obey the rules, and therefore I can uncork my sadism and pretend it's not just evil.
I also remember one of the defense mechanisms I had when I was small was I would just watch TV and just go completely catatonic for most of the day.
So I would literally do nothing that they could use as an excuse.
Sure, sure.
And then they'd say...
You know, you didn't do something or you're being lazy or go outside or to get angry about that.
Yeah, go outside.
Paralysis doesn't work.
Activity doesn't work.
Oh, no question.
I mean, the rules...
I got this at least pretty early that the rules were just there for people in a bad mood to have an excuse for aggression.
Yeah, and both of them were high stress jobs.
I knew that because whenever I tried to reverse the rules, I would just get in more trouble, right?
So if I ever didn't keep my word...
I would get punished.
But if my mother didn't keep my word, then I would get punished.
It's like, okay, so it's got nothing to do with keeping your word, right?
It's not like there's this abstract moral standard that you're bound to as you bind me to it.
It's just made up crap that you use for sadism, right?
Which is basically the reality of statism as well.
At the time, that wasn't even conceivable to us to question anything they did.
Right.
Well, of course, because questioning would lead to more, right?
If people have been doing a lot of immoral and abusive things towards children and using rules as an excuse, then the moment that children start to hold adults accountable to the rules that are used as an excuse for evil, then they're allying themselves with the remnants of a good conscience in the parent's mind which is considered to be the most heinous attack a child can make upon a parent and punished the most
if that makes any sense shall i run through it again because Yes, please.
It's 4.
So, the rules are the excuse that the authorities use to be cruel, right?
So somebody who's a prosecutor in the war on drugs loves the feeling of sadism, of holding somebody's life in their hands and having that person beg for mercy.
That's the feeling that they want.
That's the feeling that they need.
It's not because they don't regretfully do it to enforce the rules.
The rules are there to allow them to do that without feeling evil.
It's law and order, right?
They brought this on themselves.
Well, so the rules are used to enable the sadism, but the moment that the children attempt to place the same rules upon the abusers, the rules are revealed as mere covers for the sadism.
In other words, they can no longer fool themselves that they are You know, regretful enactors of the moral law, right?
The moment the rules are revealed as false, the sadism emerges, right?
Which is why UPB makes some people really angry.
Because the moment you reveal the supposedly universal rules as self-serving camouflage for rank sadism, people start to become in contact with their own corruption and they can't abstract it away by saying that they are mere regretful enactors of the universal laws.
And you see this, right?
So there was this – I can't remember – some senator or congressman who was really gung-ho on maximum sentences for people caught with drugs and so on, right?
Until, of course, his own son is caught with drugs and then he works every conceivable political muscle he can to get the kid into a treatment facility at the taxpayer's expense and to not have him charged and to make sure nothing ends up on his permanent record and all that, right? - Right. his own son is caught with drugs and then he And to not have him charged and to make sure nothing ends up on his permanent record and all that, right?
In other words, the rules have nothing to do with any moral standard, right?
Like, I mean, I have a moral standard called don't lie to people who tell the truth.
In the same way I have the non-initiation of force, I have the non-initiation of lying.
And people lie to me.
Fucking whatever, right?
Game on, right?
I don't give a shit.
But if someone's telling me the truth, I have an honest relationship, then I owe that person the truth, right?
And so if people hold me to the standard of honesty, great.
If I'm in a situation where somebody has told me the truth, then I feel bound to tell the truth.
And so I have, you know...
No problem being held to a standard of honesty.
I have no problem holding my daughter to a standard of honesty, my friends to a standard of honesty.
Right?
Great.
But rules, moral rules, are not invented for universals.
Otherwise, there'd be no such thing as an authority that was exempt from those moral rules.
Because the whole point of authority is to be exempt from the moral rules, is to use them as vents for the sadistic impulse which is tragically common to a lot of people.
And for you, if I may venture forward a theory, for you, to have power is to inflict pain, That was the lesson of your childhood.
If you have power, then you can inflict horrifying pain, right?
On whatever can't fight back.
You understand?
Yeah.
Which is why, when I asked you, you said it was incomprehensible.
That I would turn the tables on the moral rules of my parents, right?
So you understood that it was hypocrisy, that it was a mere...
Unconsciously, you understood it, right?
Subconsciously.
Yeah.
And so your parents have the rule, or they have the standard.
If you have...
To have power is to inflict pain.
Sorry, go ahead.
Another thing that I learned from it is basically you can only have power over something that is smaller than you.
Oh yeah, no, I'm getting to that.
I'm getting to that.
So to have power is to inflict pain.
And sadists are cowards, right?
And people who abuse children are unbelievable cowards, right?
Because the sadist never says, you know, I really feel powerless.
I feel the need to inflict suffering on someone else to get me the endorphins of cruelty.
So I'm going to go to a biker bar and pick a fight, right?
They don't say that because people in a biker bar can fight the fuck back, right?
Yeah.
Right?
So you...
To have power, which in all...
All beings seek power.
I mean, this is the will to power, right?
I seek power.
You seek power.
It's natural.
Nothing wrong with it.
Perfectly healthy.
Having power over your environment is building a house, right?
Having power over disease is building sewage systems, right?
There's nothing wrong with the urge or the drive or the desire for power.
Obviously, I wish to change people's minds, which means I wish to have power over their thoughts.
Natural.
And the way I do that is to give them a methodology for thinking that leads everyone to reasonable conclusions.
At least that's my goal.
So there's nothing wrong with the quest for power.
It is why we're having this conversation.
It's why we have technology.
It's why we have medicine.
Why we have shelter.
Why we have cars.
So we all have a drive for power.
And...
Our parents and our teachers and our preachers and our governments instruct children on what power is.
And your parents, I'm all too sorry to say, taught you that power is the torture of helpless and dependent animals, right?
That's why I don't want it?
No, this is why you killed kittens and geese.
Oh.
Oh yeah, when I was smaller.
Because you were helpless and whoever you make feel helpless will strive for power.
This is always the blowback of control.
Whoever you make feel helpless will strive for power.
And the way that they will attempt to enact that power, in most cases, is how their parents enacted that power, right?
That's why self-knowledge is important, so you can evaluate your parents and your preachers and your teachers and your governments according to universal moral standards so that you don't end up merely replicating, right?
So whoever you make feel helpless will strive for power using the same methodologies that you use to make them feel helpless.
That's a convoluted way of putting it, but I hope that makes some sense.
Yeah, it makes some sense.
Some sense.
So I would imagine that your cruelty towards animals resulted – and probably there was a direct temporal causation – In other words, your parents had just humiliated and brutalized you or one of the group in your gang and made you feel helpless.
And helplessness is an unbearable feeling for all animals because helplessness is often death.
Right?
It means you give up.
Yeah.
And so all animals that experience helplessness will attempt to assert some measure of power over their environment, and they will do so using the same methodology that made them feel helpless.
Now, in your family, the methodology was you enact sadism against helpless animals.
And so the animals were to you as you were to your parents.
You were attempting to gain power by becoming your parents with regards to these animals and reenacting the same kind of murder that you were experiencing at the brutal beatings of your parents' implements.
This is what power was.
And when you are humiliated and made to feel powerless, which is what happens when you're beaten to perhaps within an inch of your life, then you will go out and attempt to exercise power over the next thing that crosses your path.
Using the methodology that your parents used, which was violence and abuse.
shh shh And this is why I've said, horrifying though your stories are, this is why I have said for many years that we cannot improve the lot of animals without improving the lot of children.
Oh, I agree.
And I am very sorry.
I am incredibly and deeply sorry that your parents brutalized you in this absolutely satanic manner.
It had nothing to do with rules.
It had nothing to do with punishment.
Any more than you were punishing the chickens by putting them in a tar pit.
Any more than you were punishing the kitten by knocking it into the water so that it drowned when it could not even see.
These were not punishments for breaking rules, right?
It wasn't just rules.
It was also disobeying anything they said.
No, I get it.
I know, I get it.
Having an identity, right?
And whenever you create an organism and says, identity is death, When you create a situation for any organism where identity is death, the organism will usually react with explosive rage.
And what I mean by that is, the lion's identity is to eat meat, right?
And if you say to the lion, you can only eat grass, the lion will panic and attack, right?
I mean, if you leave the situation long enough, because it knows that you are denying its identity...
Which is basically a form of murder.
And so it's kill or be killed in that situation, right?
Yeah.
And I did feel this violent rage like only twice.
It was this feeling of I couldn't even breathe because my throat would constrict that much.
Well, no.
That was the least violent rage because you felt it.
The more violent rage was watching the chickens sink into the tar pit and die while stretching its beak out for the last grasp of oxygen when you could have saved it at any time.
You understand?
understand, that was far more rage than when you actually felt it.
To not feel the rage, but to watch the poor animal suffer and die through no fault of its own, because that's how you know how to exercise power, and this is what you do when you feel helpless.
To watch that calmly, to watch that animal die, is far more rage than what you felt at the boys who threw the rocks, right?
Because that rage resulted in the deaths of the animals, whereas the other rage did not result in the death of anyone, right?
Yeah.
That was probably the least angry that you were, if that makes any sense.
Because you knew it.
it wasn't being acted out yeah I see But I just never want to get to that point again.
But you don't have much emotional reaction to these stories.
I'm telling you, it's...
Very hard to hear.
I know.
I also need to be kind of quiet because it's late, but...
I... For some reason...
Well, there probably is a good reason, but not that it comes to mind right now.
I... developed, like, this method of basically shutting everything in.
Like, not showing anything.
Like, even my handwriting is this, like, undecryptable...
Like, typing font.
And, like, I just internalized everything.
I was just drawing things.
Yeah, I don't...
I neither follow nor buy any of that.
I will tell you what I think.
Which doesn't mean I'm right, but I'll tell you what I think.
I think you're spitting me another yarn.
I think what it is, basically, is that if you tell horrifying stories without any emotional connection, it's cruel to the other person.
It is.
Right?
You just throw me...
Into a little tar pit, right?
Because I have to feel everything that you're not feeling, right?
So there's still a little bit of cruelty in this, right?
You're still exercising some sort of power, right?
Now, I'm not helpless in this conversation, unlike the chickens and the ducks and the geese and the I know.
I just want to inform.
I don't want to influence or anything.
I don't understand what you're saying.
I don't want to influence or anything.
I just want to inform.
I'm not sure what you're saying.
I'm not going to alter anything you are trying to put together from this.
I'm just trying to give facts and No, no, don't.
You can, I mean, lie to yourself if you want, but don't lie to me, right?
You're not just trying to give me facts.
You could give me, there are billions of facts in the world you could give me, right?
You're not just trying to give me facts.
Come on.
You can't expect me to believe that.
You can't tell me stories of unbelievable cruelty to animals and then say, well, you know, I'm just trying to give you facts.
No.
No, there's a pattern here, right?
And I don't mean this with hostility and I don't mean this with meanness or anything like that.
I do mean this with care and concern and empathy.
But there is a pattern here.
And the pattern is that for you to feel like what would it cost you to...
I assume you said you feel terrible, right?
And I said, but it doesn't really sound like it, right?
And then you went off on another tangent, which I let go.
It's fine.
I recognize that you weren't ready for it.
But you're ready for it now.
The reason I don't want to show emotion is because I would have to show vulnerability to people.
You would have to own the shit you did.
You would actually have to be responsible for the cruelty you committed as a child.
The emotions are ownership.
It's not just that.
I think I'm going to get cruelty from others if I confess.
Because then I will be under them.
Do you think you will get cruelty from me if you're vulnerable?
No.
So then don't tell me things that aren't true.
We're talking about this conversation right now.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
Right?
What does it cost you in your conversation with me to connect to the cruelty that you exhibited as a child to perhaps dozens of obviously entirely innocent animals?
What does it cost you to connect with that emotionally?
I... I never knew the cost.
But you know it now because there's a reason you're not connecting with it.
Do you know how it comes across to other people when you talk about these issues without any emotional connection?
It comes across as being actively cruel right now.
Yes, I think so.
And again, I'm not saying you're consciously trying to be cruel.
I can understand it rationally, but something's not working right.
No, I don't agree with that.
Because to your credit, my friend, and I'm not saying that ironically like my friend, right?
But to your credit, you ran away, right?
Yeah.
You didn't have to.
Other people didn't, right?
There would have been no consequences, but...
Right.
So you ran away.
You were finally horrified by what you did.
Before, you were like coldly curious, right?
As you watched the animals suffer and die, knowing that they were going to die.
Yeah.
But then...
At that moment, when the blind kitten fell into the water and drowned, you did one thing right and one thing wrong.
What were those things?
Like, I walked away, but...
That's what you did, right?
And I didn't show any emotion.
No.
No.
I didn't ask them to stop?
Nope.
You're thinking about yourself.
Thank you.
Which is the problem.
Oh.
Yeah.
What did you not do?
I didn't try to stop them from harming the other kitten.
Nope.
Can't have done that either.
You couldn't have guaranteed that, right?
Yeah.
What could you have done?
You're still thinking about yourself and your friends. - Yes.
I... I could have told someone, but I... No.
Would have been too late.
What could you have done?
I'm thinking really hard.
I'm not being silent.
No, I know.
I know.
I appreciate that.
I appreciate that.
I appreciate you staying with the conversation.
It's pretty hard fucking work, right?
I'm trying to imagine the situation again.
Right.
Just imagine myself being in it.
And trying to think.
You threw a rock.
You hit a blind kitten who fell in the water.
Attila.
What did you not do that you should have done?
There was no way of getting to it.
How was there no way of getting to it?
It was out of arm's reach.
It was in the water.
By the time I would have went down in the basement, it would have drowned anyway.
How do you know?
Why didn't you try?
How do you know?
Because the kitten is you, right?
Because I waited too long.
And that's why I say you did something right and you ran away, but you did something wrong in that the one thing that you could have done was try to save the blind drowning kitten, Attila, right?
Yeah.
Because you, you were the one who put that helpless animal into the water.
Yeah.
Not anyone else.
You were the one who put the animal into the water.
And you owed that animal salvation.
Right?
Yeah.
I remember the noise it made.
What did it sound like?
That noise that kittens make when they're calling for their mother, that high-pitched meow, just gone by gurgle. just gone by gurgle.
But you could have saved it if you had acted quickly enough.
If I... Ran down, down the stairs, the basement.
I don't know if it was locked or not.
I don't, I mean, I'm not gonna pretend to understand the physics of all of this, right?
Yeah, it's...
But you could have tried.
I could have tried, but I didn't.
Instead, I just went home and just shut myself in.
And how many times have you thought of that kitten since?
Not very often, but every once in a while I did.
And after I scheduled this call, I kept thinking more and more about it.
I was actually actively trying to go through everything in order as I was making my notes.
And that's when I started thinking about all this stuff again.
And do you think, because you're still not really connecting with anything emotionally, right?
And do you think you have that capacity somewhere within you?
Did you...
I mean, when you think of the desperate sound that helpless kitten made drowning in the water because of what you did, when you think of the desperate eyes of the chicken sliding into the tar pit, when you think of the convulsions of the goose as you accidentally choked it to death. when you think of the convulsions of the goose as I think whenever I think of that, No, no, no.
Not think.
Not think.
thinking you have no problem with.
Yeah, I think my capacity to connect is I think my capacity to connect is almost entirely gone.
I don't know that that's true.
Like, I did get emotional on songs or sad scenes or just whenever something happened, but I feel like it's going away.
What's going away?
My ability to Express and feel emotions for things like...
Oh, I heard the emotion.
I heard the emotion earlier, and I can tell you this.
Mike, did you get any...
Did you have any anticipation of child torture and death stories from the back and forth you had with Attila?
No, and I checked in earlier today to clarify his question.
Right.
So you avoided...
This stuff, right, Attila?
In getting ready for this conversation, right?
Yeah, I thought it was too long-winded.
Too long-winded?
Yeah.
I'm not sure what that means.
Like, it was just...
I was trying to, like, get something to get the question in with and then, like, use that to open up into this.
No.
No, no.
No, this is...
It's a bait-and-switch, right?
It's an ambush.
It's an ambush of pretty intense cruelty towards animals, which you had not discussed at all with Mike prior to setting up the conversation, right?
Yeah.
So the fact that you avoided it could come from one of two possibilities.
The first possibility is that you were getting off on telling all of these cruel stories, like it gives you a thrill.
It's fun in a weird way.
Well, I guess obviously in a weird way.
So you come on the show because you want to talk about letting people down because you don't follow through on blah, blah, blah.
And then you bring up this intense cruelty and killing of animals, right?
Yeah.
Now, did you not talk about this prior to setting up The call?
Because you're getting off on talking about it?
No.
No, I'm not getting off.
I actually, like, really hate myself because of that.
Hate yourself because of what?
Because of these things, the things that I did.
It's just...
Yeah, but you're just saying it, right?
Maybe I'm not...
These are just words.
I can only do one ambush a week.
Okay.
So...
What do you mean when you say you hate yourself for this?
Because you say it, but again, there's no emotional content behind anything that you're saying.
I don't let myself process it because I don't want to forget.
I don't want to move on.
What do you mean you don't want to forget?
You seem to forget the whole goddamn thing when talking with Mike.
What do you mean you don't want to forget?
What does that mean?
You think that by not feeling it, you're going to somehow retain it?
There's cruelty in what you did on this call.
How is avoiding it helping?
How is not feeling it helping?
It's not.
Somehow imagining that not emotionally processing the cruelty you had, which I sympathize with and I understand.
I hope you don't feel condemned for it.
In this conversation, I hope that I've expressed genuine sympathy, which I feel.
And I'm telling you, Attila, I'm telling you, this is a now or never situation.
You think you're going to have another conversation like this next week with someone?
About these issues?
With someone who's willing to listen and give you sympathy?
Who's not going to freak out?
Who's not going to back away?
Who's not going to Get horrified?
Who's not going to condemn you?
Who's not going to change the subject?
You think these conversations are like a dime a dozen?
That you can waste time on this one?
No.
Is this not a now or never situation?
Are you going to get another one of these conversations coming along anytime soon?
I'm not.
Okay.
So then stop the intellectualizing.
And stop the abstractions.
And open your heart.
Because that's the way to save the kitten.
In the present, right?
You can't go back in time and save that kitten, but you can make that death, the death of that kitten, mean some goddamn thing by opening your heart up in the present.
So don't give me this, I hate myself in the abstract or whatever.
Tell me, what is it like to live in the head of someone who has done these things?
It's like not living at all.
Go on.
Like not wanting to go forward because then I would have to do something, change something.
You're paralyzed, you mean?
Yeah.
Go on.
Paralyzed to save the world from what?
To save others or to save animals or to save those around you from what?
From cruelty.
From your cruelty?
Yeah.
And what cruelty are you capable of that you are paralyzing with this approach of unfeelingness?
Ruining relationships with falsities.
Peace.
Thank you.
False promises.
False emotions.
Manipulations, you mean?
Yeah.
Yeah, there's no false emotions, right?
And so that's what you're trying to do in this conversation, right?
right?
Is you want to give me all this nonsense so that we don't have to have a real connection, right?
I never see it as wanting to do it.
I don't know if I do it consciously.
No, I get it.
I get it.
No, if I thought you were doing it consciously, we wouldn't have made it past the first five minutes.
I accept that it's not conscious.
But you're still responsible for it being subconscious, right?
Yeah.
Okay, so what do you hate about yourself?
My inability to stop.
Don't give me abstractions.
Give me something from the heart.
Give me something that's pulled out from your innards.
Why can't I... Why...
Why is it so hard to get the emotions out?
Like, they just don't come when I want them to.
Well, because you were raised by sadists, right?
And so emotions were used to hurt you, right?
She said about the children.
Yeah.
It hurts when you throw the rocks.
And they're like, that's the point, Attila.
We're supposed to be hurting you.
That's what we want, right?
And I'm afraid to show anything.
Sure.
Because to show vulnerability is to tell the torturers where it hurts.
I mean, who wants to do that?
Or you tell the torturer, it hurts when you tickle me, right?
And...
But you don't have a life where you are a torturer, and you're surrounded by torturers, and that is your entire life, right?
You want to break that orbit.
You want to go to a better place, right?
Which is why we're having this conversation, right?
Yes.
So, your unconscious wants to connect, and your unconscious is ready to connect, but...
Obviously, there's anxiety there and there's fear there and there's, you know, aha, this is going to result in even more cruelty to me and we're doomed and all that, right?
Yeah.
Which is why you didn't give the facts of what you wanted to talk about until we were in the conversation, right?
Right.
Because – Hang on.
Let me just ask you this question.
Don't you hate a planet and a world and a family and a culture and a town and a whole environment that had you throwing rocks at a blind kitten?
Don't you hate everything that led up to that?
That's not where you wanted to be as a child, right?
That's not what you wanted to be doing.
That's not what you came out of the womb anticipating to enjoy.
Yeah.
I don't know if I'm capable of hating it that much to change it.
I just want to make sure that whatever child I have never has to feel this way.
Oh God, man.
No, no, no, no.
You want to have kids, you've got to connect with this stuff first.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right?
Because you know what your kid's going to say?
You, like me, like everyone else on the planet, is an entire Pandora's box of memories, right?
You know what kids do?
They rip that shit open, like there's no locks, and they just start rummaging around inside.
Yeah.
Right?
If I don't process this, then...
Oh, your kids are going to be like, hey, here's a bunny, Daddy.
Why don't you give it a hug?
And you know what you're going to do?
You're going to freak the fuck out.
And all that shit's going to come back to you.
Or they're going to say, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, can we get chickens for the summer?
And what are you going to do?
You're going to freak the fuck out.
Daddy, Daddy, come pet this kitten at the pet store.
It's newly born.
And it's all gonna come back.
And they're gonna sense that in you.
Yeah.
Right?
And you're going to be reading them a bedtime story about the mommy kitten who saved all the kittens from the burning house.
Right?
Right?
Right.
And you are going to be doubled over in pain.
Because, you know, that kitten never died.
Just passed into you, into your mind, into your heart, right?
I mean, you're a haunted man, right?
Yeah.
There are the bodies of animals within you, right?
right?
The ghosts of animals within you.
You have within you the deaths that you made which I sympathize with I really do.
I'm not trying to portray you as a bad guy in this conversation.
But I can guarantee you there is sorrow and anger in you at what you were cornered into by life through no fault of your own and what you did when you were cornered.
I sympathize.
I sympathize with you being cornered enormously.
And I respect and admire you, Attila, for running away.
But it's not done.
You know that, right?
It's not done, Attila.
It's not done.
Show the emotions.
And what about somebody who wants to love you?
Yeah, that's actually why I did this whole thing because I met someone and I think they deserve a sane person.
I know.
I know.
Because what if somebody wants to love you?
And you begin to open your heart and they say, I smell dead things.
I smell drowned things.
I smell tar pits and choked geese.
The bodies and the feathers that roll around your conscience, right?
Yeah.
How will you explain yourself to yourself, let alone to others, without the emotional connection of the rage at having been cornered and the sorrow of what you did when you were cornered?
I feel like that would be just making up excuses, and I don't want to excuse it.
You have excuses.
You have excuses.
You were a child.
You have excuses.
You were beaten.
You were crushed.
You had to Wooden spoons smashed on your tender skin.
You have excuses.
Do not turn these rules into sadism against your younger self, right?
Cut yourself some slack.
You were in a terrorized and sadistic and brutal situation.
People in concentration camps ate cats, ate kittens, but they were in concentration camps, right?
Would you blame them?
No, but...
The Gulag Apikalago opens with Solzhenitsyn telling a story of Soviet Gulag workers so starving That they found some frozen prehistoric fish of almost incalculable value to biology and just ate them.
Because they were so hungry.
You see, if you don't give yourself some excuses, you're giving your parents excuses.
this.
In other words, if you take 100% ownership over your cruelty to animals, you are letting your parents off the hook.
And you were an animal, and their cruelty to you predated your cruelty to anything else.
Do you understand?
So...
It only happened because...
of the things that they did.
Would it have happened?
Would it have happened?
Would it have happened...
If they had been to you as I am to my daughter.
My daughter has never hurt an animal.
My daughter is incredibly tender and gentle with animals.
She is incredibly affectionate towards animals.
And the idea of hurting an animal is absolutely incomprehensible to her.
It's not even conceivable.
It's not.
Once she stepped On a bird's foot in grass and cried.
The bird was fine.
Yeah.
So I guarantee you, my friend, I guarantee you, Attila, without your parents beating you, this would not have happened.
I never saw it that way before.
I always blame myself.
How does seeing it change?
You're still describing like you're a million miles outside of yourself.
I'm shaking right now.
What's happening in your body?
Like it started from my hands and then in my gut and now in my legs.
I just feel something welling up and like My fingers are going numb.
Where is it welling up?
What's welling up?
In your heart?
In your chest?
In your belly?
In your chest, yeah.
Okay, in your chest.
Just try and physically relax.
Just try and physically relax.
Because I'm giving you the get-out-of-jail-free card you always had, right?
I just thought it was...
It's going to sound strange that it feels like cheating to use it.
No, I get it.
I get it.
I get it.
But I guarantee you that if your parents had processed their own cruelty, they sure as shit would not have enacted it on you.
I'm giving you the way to break the cycle, Attila.
Did your parents break it?
No.
Can you break it?
Why, yes.
Yes, you can.
I need to do whatever it takes to.
But that means you take the get out of jail free card.
And you place the responsibility where it in fact is, which is with your parents, who were the adults, and with your grandfather who knew about your cruelty towards animals and did not see fit to get you any help or inquire as to its cause or do a goddamn thing other than pay off the neighbors and somehow imagine in some insane anti-rational Universe,
that you deal with a child's cruelty to chickens by beating the child.
Oh, are you cruel to helpless animals?
I know.
I'll beat you up, little boy.
Because that's really gonna fucking work, isn't it?
You ancient, ancient asshole.
How is that your fault? .
Did you just choose wrong in the lottery of parents?
Did you just say, oh yeah, there's some nice parents out there.
They reason with their kids.
They're gentle and empathetic with their kids.
I know.
I'll take the assholes who are going to break kitchen implements over my ass.
That was not your choice.
Born into a prison is not the same as convicted of a crime.
You understand?
yeah it's at their own doing too Like, I told my mother, like, I should not be existing because you should never have dated and married my father after just one year of dating.
Right.
And gotten pregnant at 22 because you were afraid of being old And then admitting to your parents that your marriage was shitty and then instead just trying to work it out with someone who obviously was abusive and then you just took it out on us?
You mean your mother took it out on you?
Yeah.
My mother, my father, just any kind of excuse.
And then she divorced him and the abuse continued.
If we did something that she thought was wrong.
And then, what was the point in filing for divorce because of the beating when you don't stop the beating to your kids?
Wait, did she file for divorce because your dad was beating you?
Yeah, because she was beating her and us.
How do you know?
Oh, so no, no, no, no, no.
No, Attila, those are two very different things.
Right?
It was mainly because he was beating her.
Two very different things.
Yeah.
Right.
So your mother thought that it was really terrible to be beaten, right?
And so she divorced your dad for beating her, right?
Yeah.
And then what does she do with you?
She beat us.
Right.
And here comes the best part.
She gets together with a guy who's also violent.
Of course he is.
Because this is what happens when you don't emotionally connect with cruelty.
Is you act it out and you act it out.
Whatever we normalize, we reproduce, right?
And this is why I'm working with you to get you...
Look, I can't make you connect with anything, obviously.
This is just words over the ether.
But what I can hopefully do, Attila, is I can help you to understand how essential it is to connect...
With this stuff.
And if you go to therapy and do all of this stuff and connect with it that way, that's fantastic.
But connection is the antidote to cruelty.
But sorry, you were going to say?
I understand there is no real relationship without connection.
And if I don't have the capacity to connect and be available like that, when I scheduled this call, I got a job.
I'm starting September 1st and I plan to go to therapy with that money.
Yeah.
Because I tried to go through all this shit after I dropped out of college and just spent the last two years trying and failing to process it.
Well, and you were trying to push me away as well.
With the stories and no connection.
Because, I mean, you're pretty stuffed full of secrets here, brother, right?
Yeah.
It's this feeling of, like, I don't know if I can trust people with it.
I don't know if I can trust them to be compassionate when I show them.
No.
Fuck.
Fuck, Attila.
Who gives a shit of other people a compassion?
Yeah, I know.
I know.
The only thing that matters is your compassion.
Your compassion.
Your compassion.
And look, I'm trying to teach you Mandarin in an hour, right?
Yeah.
How would you know the language of compassion, the language of curiosity, the language of connection, the language of being gentle with yourself?
And forgiving yourself for what was not your fault.
You wouldn't know that because all you know is recrimination and rage and punishment and sadism and attack and dissociation, all that, right?
Yeah.
That otherworldly magic of malignant cruelty that you experience, not calling you malignantly cruel.
But...
It's not other people's compassion that is essential.
Other people's compassion, such as mine, will not connect with you, Attila, if you do not have compassion with yourself.
It's like I'm trying to try and put a plug in in the dark and it turns out you're like a foot from the electrical socket.
Oh shit, well that's why it's not working because there's no receptacle, right?
Yeah.
And so if you don't have compassion for yourself, there's nothing for other people's compassion to plug into.
I don't know if I can do it on my own.
That's why I need a therapist.
I think that's helpful.
I'm conscious of it, like, just on a rational, like, logical way, because I realize that no matter how hard I try to do it on my own, it's not gonna work.
Yeah, as my therapist Said to me, problems that arise in isolation cannot be solved in isolation.
Yeah.
I'm feeling so bad that I can't connect right now.
What?
Do you mean you're feeling bad?
How?
I feel ashamed that I can't even muster anything right now.
No, you said you feel bad.
That's mustering something, right?
I feel like I have this hyper-developed sense of shame and this low-developed sense of empathy.
But shame, what is the shame based on?
What is the mechanics of the shame?
What is the language that produces the shame?
A lack or an inability to do something.
Like it's something that I have a deficiency in.
Oh, like if you burst into tears or whatever, or a sobbed or something, then that would be good.
But because you can't do that, you're failing?
Yes.
Right.
Right.
And that's why I'm saying I'm not – you don't have to do that.
That's not – right?
You're not a – your emotions aren't a dog that performs on command, right?
Yeah.
Of course not.
I mean I wouldn't – that would be horrible, right?
And I just don't want to waste anyone's time.
Oh, I can tell you one thing you haven't been doing is wasting people's time.
I can guarantee you that.
In fact, you've been scoldingly honest in this call, which I hugely appreciate.
No, you have not been wasting people's time.
I'm pretty, sometimes to a fault, impatient with people wasting time, but I don't feel that in this case at all.
One of the commitments I made was to never bullshit when I go into this call.
Yeah.
Good job.
Good job with the non-bullshit.
No, and you haven't tried to produce emotions on cue or anything like that.
I mean, you've been true to your experience of the conversation, which is honorable, I think, and a good thing to do.
Also, I actively rebelled against that person my mother actually married to.
Like, when he was threatening me, With violence, I would always resist.
It's like, I will break before I bend kind of deal.
Because I never want to be violent and I just hate the entire idea of either terrorizing or hurting or just depriving someone of something as a kind of punishment.
Right.
Like in Good Will Hunting.
I don't know if you've ever seen that.
I haven't downloaded it, but I don't know why.
The Victim of Child Abuse, it's a great film.
It's one of the great films, I think, in history, which just makes the Bourne movies even more frustrating.
But anyway, since my father would say, I'm paraphrasing, but he would say, choose the stick or the belt.
And I'd say the belt.
The therapist says, why?
He says, because fuck you, that's why.
Yeah.
It's this act of, like, suicidal defiance.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes, and it involves you in a war with the dead.
Hmm.
Which you can't win.
I can't win because they have a lack of a capacity that I have to lose.
You cannot fist fight a robot because your flesh and they're metal, right?
You have nerve endings and they don't.
And that's why fleeing being a robot as you did in that basement After knocking the blind kitten into the water, fleeing from the lure to be one of the undead.
I mean, that was like two millimeters away from your final vampire bite and you just got the fuck out, right?
Yeah.
You were very close to joining the dead.
And with your intellects and your language skills, possibly becoming a leader of the dead.
And a great power of brutality in the world, right?
Yeah.
I mean, you've got a lot of will.
Sorry, go ahead.
I never really thought of it that way because it sounds kind of vain, but yeah.
Sometimes I have these delusions of having power.
Well, I mean, Elia Raja, right?
Yeah.
His parents don't let him up a tower when he's four, and then he later dreams of ruling the world from a high tower.
No, listen, I mean, I take these moments with extreme seriousness.
You know, I talked earlier about forks in the road.
Forks in the road.
Yeah.
You recoiled from what could have been the last step towards permanent evil.
Which is why I'm saying you saved your soul, you saved your future, and you probably saved...
Parts of the species in that moment.
I mean, you saved not only your future, but the future of others, right?
I never thought of it that way.
No, listen, I mean, you're intelligent, your language skills are great, you obviously have a fierce willpower.
You might have become a politician who'd started a war.
Like, you may have turned not just your history, but a larger history as well in that moment.
This is why I'm saying...
I mean, this shit is very serious and very deep.
It's not just Lord of the Rings shit.
I mean, this is very real stuff.
That is the moment where there's the fork in the road and you recoiled and you ran.
I'm saying remember the kitten because you ran away from evil but you have not crossed over into the light yet, right, Attila?
Yeah.
I mean, you're in the Halflands, you're in the Shadowlands, you're in Limbo, right?
You are not of the dead, but you are not quite yet of the living, right?
Yeah, and that's why I need someone to, like, guide, to know, like, how does it look like?
Because I don't know who to trust and who not to, and that's why I think, like, I can trust someone who actually makes a living this way.
Do you trust me?
Yes.
Okay, so at least you know one person to trust, right?
Yeah, I trust like everyone who I can see like basically they're happy.
Right.
Like they're happy to be who they are and I'm not happy to be who I am.
Yeah, that's because you forgive the wrong people and damn the wrong people.
You damn yourself as we all do when we come from abusive histories.
You damn yourself in order to save your parents and that is the natural occurrence of all bonded children.
And all children are bonded and so often in bondage.
You cannot be gentle with yourself because to be gentle with yourself means to be angry at your parents, which was not survivable when you were growing up.
Neither is it now.
I'm still financially dependent.
Yeah, well, you'd be surprised how quickly that can change when you get the right emotional approach.
Oh, yeah.
I want to move on because it's small and heavy in here.
No, I get it.
I mean, it's the endless rocks of history that pile upon our futures, right?
Obscuring even chinks of sunlight.
And this is why you can't have an emotional connection at the moment because you're in your parents' house, I assume, right?
Yes.
You say, it's late, I don't want anyone to hear.
So you can't have, you know, you can't tap dance in the tomb, right?
You can't have emotional revelations when you're at the scene of the crime, right?
I can't even raise my voice.
No, you can't.
And so, this is why, you know, going to a therapist is important.
You're in a safe spot where you can truly talk and listen, right?
Is there anything else that you wanted to add?
So, the way I get out of a cycle is by first learning to forgive myself and accepting that it's not all on me.
Right.
I still made the choice.
I moved my body and I aimed that rock and I didn't go in after the kitten.
But you ran.
I ran.
And you didn't do it again?
Yeah.
And none of that would have happened if I didn't see that intense cruelty when I was young And not knowing anything about anything and thought that this was how the world worked.
I agree with you, except you used the word see, which is not true.
You didn't see it.
You experienced it.
Oh, I lived it.
It was inflicted upon you.
Yeah.
That was the reality.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I had no choice in rejecting or even fighting it.
Nope.
Couldn't get away.
Never chose to be there, and no one in society stepped in to help, right?
In fact, your society, I would assume, supported and enabled your abusers, right?
Oh yeah, I have one last story to tell.
I'm all ears.
It is.
So, my stepfather became increasingly bold after my mother went abroad to work.
So he would threaten me, threaten deprivation, the food, power access to the computer.
Because at the time, my access to the computer was the only venue I had of actually talking with people who didn't feel oppressive to me.
Those were people I could choose to be with or not to be with.
And that's why I was so threatened.
And he threatened to smash it.
He threatened to hurt me.
And every time that happened, I called my mother, told her about this because I knew that she didn't want violence or yelling in the house.
But it got to the point where she would talk to him and he would just not pick up the phone.
And at one point, he just left the house and left the phone ringing.
So it basically escalated when I was convinced that No matter what I do, what I tell my mother to do, when I ask for her help, it's not going to change.
So at one point, it just got to the point where he tried to grab the phone out of my hand while it was next to my face, and the finger went into my eye and grazed it, like the actual eyeball.
And that was when I just straight went to the hospital.
Got it examined, got a medical paper of it, and took that medical paper to the police station and filed a complaint.
And I had him fined.
And that was when, instead of the reaction of like, like, why did you feel that this was the only way you could fix it?
I got the reaction from my mother of like, but it's a family matter.
Why did you have to make it public?
Yeah.
Like she's ashamed at people knowing about this because I also talked to like the reporters of a local newspaper and it was all over the newspaper.
It was front page and people were stopping me like, hey, you're that guy.
And I was like, yeah, I'm that guy.
I'm that guy who stood up to domestic violence and refused to stay silent.
And the only people that I got any kind of encouragement from Were my former classmates who were the first people to say that it was a brave thing to do.
Before that, everyone was like, you're so stupid.
Why did you do this?
Why did you have to make it hard on everyone in your family?
How hard do you think it was for me to get to this point?
Go on.
How much shit did I have to take to...
actually go to the police station that I also have a fear of because they're also like an authority.
Why was he only fined?
Because he signed an agreement that he wouldn't do it again.
Oh.
Yeah.
Well, that's nice.
And he, by the way, this was after he signed another agreement that he wouldn't do it again.
So this was his second one.
The first one he got off scot-free just by signing a paper.
Now he got to sign a paper and pay some money.
Right.
Well, you're neither a voter nor a taxpayer when you're young, so what the fuck do they care?
Yeah.
I'm sorry, man.
And the police, the way they treat it is just another case so I can add another number to my career and get a fatter paycheck when I retire.
- Right. - Like they just listened to my story.
They just, like, the same thing, now that I think of it.
Like, they didn't connect.
They just went completely empiric, scientific, just cold cut and dry.
And that's what I don't want to be.
No, and male victims, I mean, I knew a guy who never even hit his wife, just punched a wall.
She calls the cop.
He goes straight to jail.
Because, you see, that's a woman.
Why?
Oh, because patriarchy, right?
Whereas you get your eyeball scratched.
I mean, you could have lost an eye.
Yeah.
And this is what happens when you uncork violence in a household or anywhere, for that matter.
People say, well, you know, I was only hit by a belt.
It's like, yeah, but if you twist and you're being hit by a belt or a spoon or something, it can take out an eyeball.
It can puncture an eardrum.
It can break and then splinter into someone's rib.
And I actually had a conversation.
Sorry.
Sorry, when you uncork violence, you don't know where it's going to lead.
How many times, like, a punch can kill someone.
Like, one punch?
Yeah.
Violence is letting loose a real demon in the world.
But, sorry, you were going to say?
Like, I confronted my mother about this afterwards, and I don't know when it was, but eventually she started listening.
Oh, too, your complaints about your stepdad?
No, not just that.
It's just about my thoughts and my feelings and just what I watched, what I'm interested in.
We started having actual conversations where she would talk about her childhood and my childhood and how she was raising me and how she was working with my father.
Anyway, beside the point...
I confronted her about what my stepdad did that I went to the police with.
And she said that if I had something serious happen to me, then she would have done this and this and this.
And I was like, but why is it that you only wait for something to happen?
No, what she means is that if something happens that she could not hide from the public, then she would do this and this and this.
Yeah.
In other words, because this was her whole issue, was that you went public.
You actually got police protection from an incredibly dangerous assault.
And so you're blamed.
It's like, why did you report that rape?
Now everyone's upset.
It's like, excuse me, I was fucking raped?
And I think that's when the paradigm shift started happening for her, when she started realizing that, like, all the times I said, like, no, no, this is not right, this is not how it works.
Well, maybe I'm right, and maybe they're wrong.
Like, the moment you start questioning yourself, the moment you're You no longer have this absolute certainty.
Then you start thinking about the things you do and say.
And that's one of the things I've committed myself to is to never be completely sure of anything I do.
Like, always, always examine myself.
No, that is a very good question.
Plan.
You know, I don't know if I had a dollar for every time I've been called arrogant.
You know, I pretty much own the planet.
Oh, she calls me arrogant too.
Yeah, of course.
Of course.
Yeah, because it's not arrogant to beat children.
To be so certain if you're in the right that you're willing to beat defenseless and helpless children.
That's not arrogant.
And yeah, people call me arrogant because it's a lot easier to hurl invective than it is to analyze an argument.
Or then they say, my words have so much power that they can move mountains and my words must be controlled.
It's like, no, my words don't have any more power than anyone else's.
And they just ascribe magical power to my arguments and other people are then helpless.
They must obey what Steph… It's like, no, just making arguments.
No power here.
Boy, if my arguments were that powerful, there'd be no more spanking in the world, right?
So, yeah, I mean, people will do almost anything simply to avoid rationally processing Anything that anyone's saying.
There's massive amounts of literally bonobo ape-style hysteria that occurs.
For most people, the sound of rational thought is like a gunshot in the Amazon.
Everybody just takes to the skies and doesn't come back.
But the few who stay learn how to wield the greatest weapons.
But...
Another thing I'm very proud of to have achieved is like I got into talks with her and I got her to admit that like I just told her about the times like like how I was beaten and she told me that whatever she was doing it she just like flipped the switch off and now that I was telling her about it rationally because she forgot all of this she too saw like how horrifying it was and She told
me that if she had to do it again, she would do everything differently.
And she says she feels bad.
It's just she also says that this was communist Soviet bloc Romania and the only information sources available were like how to feed, bathe and change the diapers on your children.
That's it.
So she got the children's book every mother got and everyone she asked for advice for basically just told her how to keep a baby alive and that's it.
And she basically just improvised the rest based on her childhood experience which was basically the same or even worse.
But I can't get her to, like, accept this completely because accepting it would mean confronting her own father, which right now is a 98-year-old man.
So...
Yeah.
Well, it will be very tempting to focus on your mother.
Oh yeah, I know.
I can't.
You can.
I mean, there's nothing wrong with it.
It's just to be very tempting to focus on her exclusion of yourself, right?
But I think you've done great.
How are you feeling at the moment?
I'm good.
I feel like I've accomplished something.
I feel like I've learned a little bit on what to focus my thinking on and my analysis.
And I know...
I'm positively sure now just how importantly I need therapy because I'm really upset at my inability to feel shit.
Right.
Well, I think you may be surprised when you listen back to this.
You may be surprised at how passionate you got at parts.
I'm getting passionate right now.
What are you feeling right now?
Just...
It's funny because like I'm getting more upset at my inability to get upset about something really horrible than about the thing itself.
That's good.
No, that frustration is really important.
It means you're noticing that you're hungry.
You know what you do when you're hungry?
You go find some fucking food, right?
Yeah.
It's good.
It's good that the frustration adds because it means that you realize you're missing something.
That is essential for happiness.
I mean the capacity to feel is happiness.
Happiness is an emotion, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, and the knowledge that I can still get this makes me feel that I still have a chance.
You do?
Yeah.
You do.
Do you know whatever happened to the people who stayed in that basement?
I have no idea.
I just lost track of them.
I see them once in a while.
But it's just like, hello, hello and goodbye.
Like, nothing.
Well, you might want to poke around a little bit and see what happens to the people who stay in those basements with the kittens.
Yeah.
I... Okay.
Last story, I swear, but this is relating to that, like, the connection and everything.
When I was in kindergarten, there was this one random other boy in the class and we were in the schoolyard and I wasn't thinking.
It was the most natural thing in the world at the time.
I pick up this rock and I drop it on his head.
On whose head?
On the boy's head.
It hit his head.
It was a small rock.
It didn't cause any serious concussion, but he started bleeding and crying, and I was just standing there watching him.
Like, no laughter, no anger, no any emotion, just observing what was the effect.
Sure.
Later on, like years later, I have this field trip where I was like basically learning photography and we went to like just this random fair and in that random fair we see an ice cream stall.
So we go up to the ice cream stall and the guy running the ice cream stall...
Who's that guy?
Yeah.
And he recognizes me.
He remembers me and I don't remember him.
And he tells me, like, you know it's going to be one of those feelings when the way he introduces himself is like, oh, I'm the guy you dropped the rock on.
And he gives me ice cream for free and is all friendly and I'm just like, I'm just so sick I can't even eat that ice cream.
And I just want to just...
Get swallowed by the ground.
But you couldn't say anything, right?
Yeah.
I just couldn't say anything.
I just say hi, and as soon as realization hits me, I just feel this icy chill over me.
You know, this terror that you have is your salvation, right?
Right?
This anxiety, this horror, this fear.
I've thought about this many, many times over the years.
But I was, you know, as I've mentioned before on the show, I was a shoplifter when I was young.
It wasn't always food, though.
Certainly some of it was food.
Some of it was toys.
When I was 12, maybe 12 and a half years.
And it was a couple of months and I stopped.
And I stopped it because I wanted sunglasses and there's no money for sunglasses.
And I was standing...
The store is now defunct.
It was a store called Eaton's.
And I was standing at a sunglass rack and I wanted to steal the sunglasses.
I had no moral issue with stealing the sunglasses at all.
Because society was such a shit heap and had let me languish in violent abuse for, at that point...
More than a decade.
And so the idea that I owed society some moral considerations, I certainly feel that now.
But back in the day, good lord now.
But I was terrified to do it.
I was too scared to do it.
And at the time, I was sort of nonplussed that I was scared to do it.
And it wasn't the money.
I'd stolen more expensive stuff before.
But it was that fork in the road.
Like, you know what?
I'm actually kind of becoming a thief.
And understand, I hadn't stolen a lot, and I hadn't stolen much, and it wasn't like I was running some big operation or something, you know?
But I stole some food, a couple of toys, you know?
But I thought – and it was just fear.
It was just fear.
And at the time, I viewed that fear as sort of an impediment, and I did not steal the sunglasses, and I don't believe I ever stole again.
But that fear was like a bummer at the time.
Like, oh man, here I'm walking out with no sunglasses, right?
It's really bright outside.
And...
My friends were like, hey, did you get the sunglasses?
You know, it was like this, you know, like the cool, the rite of passage, like you with the, right?
Yeah.
With the friends.
Oh, my friends, right?
Yeah.
Those kinds of friends.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so you feel like you failed.
Or I shouldn't say you.
I felt like I had chickened out, right?
Yeah.
But oh, what a great salvation that fear turned out to be.
How inconvenient at the time and how necessary for a moral future, right?
So I get, you know, I mean, with me it was stealing, with you it was animals, but you're sliding down the path to a pretty negative place.
And then something kicks up in your brain and says, stop!
And you recoil.
And you have failed at being bad.
Which means you have the chance to succeed at being good.
In other words, having self-respect, having love, having pride, having a positive effect on the world, and a negative effect on evil.
Ooh!
How delicious!
How delightful!
How lovely!
And it all came out of Fear and failure at being bad.
What an upside down world that is.
Yeah, absolutely.
So strange that you have to fail at being bad even to have a chance at being good.
I feel a rap song coming on.
All right.
Well, listen, it's late and it's been a great call.
Look, I hugely appreciate your openness and your honesty in the conversation.
Yeah, thank you.
I tried to make the most of it.
I think you did.
And was there anything, Mike, that you wanted to add?
No, I think you guys covered the full gamut of it.
Thanks again for calling in, Attila.
Yeah, keep us posted how it goes, man.
And yeah, I mean, if your mom's sorry, and I'm glad that she's admitted fault, you know, maybe she can chip in for some therapy and all that.
But yeah, get in and work hard.
I know you will.
But you can do some fantastic stuff with your life.
You've got a great moral engine in your heart that obviously saved some animals, which is great.
So thanks again for calling in.
Do keep us posted if you can.
And thanks again, everyone, for your time and attention.
So to the callers, we did not get to.
But anytime I can help with these kinds of issues, I certainly do my best to try.
And...
We will talk to you on Wednesday, fdrurl.com slash donate to help out the show.
