Sept. 12, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
03:42:19
2792 Adversity Breeds Strength - Wednesday Call In Show September 10th, 2014
What do you mean by your recent comment about physicists “sucking money from the government and stealing you daughter’s future,” don’t such people serve an important role within society? Why should I not be a moral relativist? My mother abandoned me and my much younger sister, how do I raise her so that she has the best imaginable future? Why do I self-sabotage? How do I control my anger?Includes: the nonsense of moral relativism, strength as a muscle, Stefan describes the experience of having cancer, reciprocity or bust, no prize for unsaid words, making excuses, cloud cathedrals of language, dating a webcam girl with a history of sexual abuse, anger covers sorrow and defending the meaning of love.
Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
Hope you're doing well.
Yes, my friends, it's time for our Wednesday night Firesides Chat.
Except for no fireside and a little chatting, more yelling.
So I hope you're having a wonderful, wonderful week.
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And with that, let's move on to the darn fine callers.
Who do we have first, Mike?
Alright, up first is going to be David Villafone.
You wrote in and said, You cannot condemn one branch of academia and say that engineers are going to be able to do their job without those other branches.
They are all interdependent.
I must assume that you already know that and wish to know what it is that you are referencing that frustrates you so.
I'm not sure what problem I would have with wasting money.
It doesn't matter what I think because it's their money.
I'm sure that some of the things I spend money on, other people would consider a massive, massive waste of money as well.
Do I need another microphone?
Yes, I do.
So my issue is not with wasting money, and I'm not sure where you would have got that from.
Okay.
Your issue is with?
My issue is with using force to steal the money.
My issue is with using violence to coercively change the ownership of the money or using the monopoly of central banking to print money, which, of course, hits the poor and those on fixed incomes the hardest through inflation.
That is my issue is, you know, I don't really care what the guy who steals my money does with it.
I care that he's stolen it.
Whether he wastes it or spends it wisely or anything like that doesn't really matter.
What happens after the money is stolen is not philosophically relevant or morally relevant, if that makes sense.
Okay.
Well, in the video, you seem to be very frustrated with, I think you said something along the lines of physicists should find a real job and go make a product that people can buy in a free market like engineers.
And I was confused with this because it seems to me, the picture I have in my head is that physicists do a lot of research, crunch a lot of numbers, that helps chemists research and look for new materials to, you know, create out of stuff.
And then the new materials go to the engineers and engineers use it to create new fascinating things that we can all buy.
I don't doubt that there are some times when government-funded physicists come up with stuff that is useful to engineers in the free market.
I mean, I don't think I ever denied that that's not even remotely possible.
But the reality is that they're not driven by the market, right?
The physicists are not driven by the market.
They're not driven by voluntary relationships.
So what do people want?
Well, they want iPads, iPhones, Android.
They want cool stuff that they can use to make their life better.
Do they want a Hadron super collider?
Hell no, they don't!
Which is why the physicists have to lobby the government to extract money from the helpless and largely ignorant population by force in order to have their cool toys to play with.
Now, if people want to smash atoms together and try and figure out the origins of the universe, I think that's cool!
Then they can sell tickets to it, or they can take up donations to it, like I do.
I think philosophy is a little bit more important than physics, but I'm not running to the government with my hat in my hand saying, give me money from people by force.
I am asking people for money so that I can do what I argue is good for the world.
Now, in a free market, of course, you generally have people who invest in companies because the companies can show that there's a market need.
So when I co-founded a company or when I sold the company, when I got involved in more company sales, you had to say, well, here's the market, here's the competition, and here's why you should give me your money because it will end up servicing or serving somebody's needs where they'll exchange money for the goods or services that we are providing.
And I think that is fine and honorable and noble and decent and a good and useful thing to do.
There are other pursuits where I can't, like if I were to start a philosophy show like this, like Free Domain Radio, I wouldn't be able to go to investors and say, ah, you see, there is a huge demand that people have for philosophy and they're going to pay me 50 cents a podcast and here's my competition and here's my market research.
Because this show is the ultimate expression of what in economics is called Say's Law, which is supply creates its own demand.
People didn't know they wanted iPads until there were iPads.
They didn't know they wanted Walkmans until there were Walkmans.
People didn't know how valuable and useful and helpful philosophy could be until this show or shows like it came along.
So, in the pursuit of trying to service the world's need for philosophy, I have to stimulate the world into recognizing how useful and necessary philosophy is because most of the world thinks that philosophy is a useless dead corpse science that only necrophiliacs would bang.
I have to show them that it's relevant and important and useful and essential.
That's my challenge.
Now, if I was off there getting government money to come up with ethical theories and stuff, I wouldn't be facing the marketplace and finding ways to make people interested in what I'm doing.
Now, I survive on donations, which is exactly what physicists should be doing if they say, like, either it's bullshit, in which case, fine.
You know, lots of bullshit gets funded in the world.
I would consider religion to be one of those major bullshit.
Political parties.
Lots of bullshit gets funded in the world.
So if they want to go smash atoms together, fantastic.
It's bullshit in a lot of ways.
In terms of there's no particular customer need for it, no particular customer desire or demand for it, great.
Then go online and say, hey, we want to do some bullshit.
Can you give us some money?
Maybe that's what a lot of people think I'm doing.
Hey, love to do some bullshit.
Can you give me some money for my bullshit?
So if they're just whacking around with atoms and fine, great.
You know, maybe it'd be kind of cool to figure out if they could figure out some cool stuff.
And maybe there'll be some spillover somewhere else that's of value, too.
So either it's bullshit with regards to the market.
And again, I use the word bullshit here not to mean that it's false.
It's just not market driven.
So if it's not market driven, then they should be asking for donations.
Now, if it is market-driven, in other words, if they say, look, we'll be providing this framework for all these engineers to create all this cool stuff, well, fantastic, then they should be the R&D arm of a company, or they should supply, they should have their own company, they should get investors, and they should get money voluntarily.
But they should not be going up and saying, we've got a right to play with atoms at gunpoint!
That's bullshit, and it's horrendous.
And it is the complete opposite of the scientific method.
Does that help at all?
Yes, it does.
You were pointing more specifically to the extortion side, where the money flows rather than the field itself.
It came across through the video, or at least it was my perception that it was the field itself of physics that you found...
Okay.
Yeah, I don't know how to...
I mean, I can only be as clear as I can be and I've consistently praised the scientific method and said that the scientific method is one of mankind's greatest achievements along with the free market and reason and philosophy itself.
So, you know, if people want to sort of say, well, he thinks that science is bad, well, that's just...
I don't know.
I don't know how to make that clear.
It's the coercion.
What I like about engineers is they're building stuff that people want.
This is a basic Misesian or Austrian economics thing.
You cannot figure out the value of something outside of the price mechanism.
You cannot, like they say, oh, the Large Hadron Collider, I don't know, what is it, 10 billion, 20 billion?
Who knows?
I mean, somebody knows.
I don't know how much it costs, right?
But they say, well, that's too much cost.
What's the value of it?
Nobody knows.
Nobody knows.
If you want to know the value of something, put the goddamn thing on eBay.
If I want to know the value of philosophy, I put my shows out there and I ask for money.
And guess what?
I can figure out pretty easily what the value of philosophy is.
But put something on eBay and figure out who's willing to pot hard-earned money for it, and then you'll find out the value of something.
But going to the government means that you have drained value away from other people by taking their money by force or inflating their money supply into vapor.
But you're basically just a bunch of thieves with pocket protectors.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Well, on that point, we would certainly agree.
Excellent.
All right.
Is there anything else you want to mention?
The moral relativism, I suppose, is the only other point, but I've been of the opinion that moral relativism, or I'm a relativist naturally in my natural state, but you mentioned that.
Hang on a sec.
I'm a relativist naturally?
I don't know what that means.
Because you're talking about an intellectual position.
Are you saying that you are genetically predetermined to hold the position of moral relativism?
I don't know.
I got to that point where I would look at people and everybody seemed to have their own beliefs and that was like, alright, well, I had argued with people to a significant extent and after a while I just said, you know what the hell with it?
You have your belief system.
I'll stay with mine.
But you've been arguing for a more absolute sense, and I've only seen one video on that, and I found it actually kind of fascinating.
You argued for the opposite of that.
Forgive me, I'm not being very specific.
No, I get it.
So everybody has a wide variety of belief systems, and I say that most of them are ranked self-serving That is forced down the throats of children, usually at the point of violence or murder threats in the case of religion.
And what happens is without philosophy, everyone gets exhausted and you're either going to go behead people or you're going to throw your hands up in the air.
You're going to say, well, I guess we'll just agree to disagree.
You go into your corner, I'll go into my corner and we'll just do our own thing with the people who believe what we believe and let's balkanize this shit up the wazoo and And we all retreat to our corners and we claim that moral relativism is the way that things work.
So, I mean, look, I mean, if we're going to do the moral relativist thing as a society, fine, fine.
Then what we need to do, of course, is we need to start teaching children moral relativism.
We need to start teaching children That there's no such thing as right and wrong.
That there are no social rules that they have to obey.
That whatever they want to do is perfectly fine and cannot be considered right or wrong or good or bad.
Want to study for that test?
Study for the test.
If you don't want to study the test, we're not going to fail you because that would be a judgment call.
Want to go hit another kid?
Sure, go hit another kid.
That's no problem.
Want to go push another kid into a frozen lake?
Yeah, go push another kid into a frozen lake.
You want to make up your own spelling?
Go for it!
There's no such thing as truth and reality and objectivity.
Do your own math.
Make that shit up.
You know, pretend that a silent Bob is shitting out kanji, you know, a tilt-a-whirl and call it mathematics.
That's fine.
So my question is, how the hell do we have a society where most adults claim moral relativism And most adults hit children for disobedience to values.
You understand those two things are completely contradictory.
If we have moral relativism, let's teach the kids that there's no such thing as good and bad and right and wrong.
And let's never hit them because that would be imposing your values on someone else.
So how the hell do we have a society where adult to adult is nothing but moral relativism, but adult to child is Stalin-esque totalitarian brutality?
And I would argue that those two things are exactly the same.
One is a direct cause of the other.
Why can adults not reason with each other?
Because they were fucking hit as children.
Why can adults not find objective resolution to their disputes?
Because they were bang, bang, bang!
Hit as children.
Asking kids to reason when they become adults is like asking me to be fluent in Mandarin when I've never been exposed to it.
My daughter is fantastic at negotiating, fantastic at reasoning with people, very assertive, very confident because that's the language we speak at home.
So what bothers me I'm not saying in you, right?
But what bothers me as a whole is the unbelievable, n-dimensional, matrix-style hypocrisy of societies around the world.
When they have control over kids, they generally beat and terrify and torment the shit out of them to get them to conform to all the social bullshit masquerading as culture and values in the world.
In other words, when human beings have power...
Then they impose totalitarian will on their children through spanking, through school, through religious indoctrination, through cultural indoctrination, through the death worship of army indoctrination and army worship.
When people have power, they impose totalitarian, dictatorial, brutal, quote, values on their kids.
Ah, but when adults meet other adults who have some sort of independence and some sort of freedom, what happens?
Well, I don't want to impose anything on you, right?
Well, I guess your beliefs are as valid as mine, so let's just agree to disagree.
You go to that corner, I'll go to this corner.
Right?
Well, which is it?
Well, what it is, is bullying and cowardice.
People bully kids when they have power over them, and when they meet other adults, suddenly they're as meek as little lambs.
Well, we'll just agree to disagree, multicultural, blah, blah, blah, right?
Moral relativism.
Well, if moral relativism is true, we are abusing our children by hitting them and commanding them to obey certain ethical standards.
If moral relativism is true, then the entire court system, the entire judiciary and punishment system is evil.
If moral relativism is false, If moral relativism is false, then people who will not impose their values on others, though they are more than willing to beat them into their kids, are a goddamn bunch of cowards.
I'm not putting you in that category.
I'm just telling you the general approach that bothers me.
Okay.
Pretty good.
What's the better way?
The better way?
You mean the better way of instructing children?
That was sort of originally my question.
I kind of realized the mishmashiness of moral relativism, and you were speaking more on virtue and sort of the way, the opposite of that, your particular view, universal...
Universal behavioral behavior?
Well, look, I mean, people can get into the theory, and I applaud people who get into the theory.
It is really important to be skeptical and to examine deeply moral philosophy, because you don't want to be led astray, because morality is the most fundamental engine that runs the social world.
But for people who don't want to get into all of the philosophy, well, you just have to accept that we're not really lying to our children.
I mean, that's all you have to do to be a moral, quote, philosopher in the world.
All you really have to do is say, hey, maybe we're not totally bullshitting our kids.
So when my daughter hits another girl, not that she ever has, but if she did, my daughter hits another girl, hits another boy, I say, whoa.
That is absolutely unacceptable.
We don't hit.
We don't use force to get what I want.
We don't grab.
We don't push.
We don't hit.
Now, parents say this all the time.
Teachers, priests, everyone says this all the time.
And that's all there is to it.
Hey, we don't hit.
And a moral standard that is appropriate for a three-year-old, I think without a huge amount of extrapolation, can be fairly valid for a 30-year-old as well.
Do not initiate the use of force against others.
It's what we tell our children all the time.
It's what's in a couple of at least of the Ten Commandments.
And there's something about if Kim Kardashian lives next to you, something about her burrow or something like that.
But anyway, we're not lying to our children.
So don't use force to get what you want.
That's all that's required to be a moral philosopher.
And we just have to universalize that.
That's all.
I mean, the same thing happened in science, right?
Everybody knows that if you let go of a rock, it falls.
Right.
But then people think, well, it falls to a fixed and unmoved Earth, as the Old Testament says.
It's like, well, no, no.
Right?
It's all universal.
The physics that applies to the rock applies to the Earth.
And, of course, as we all know, The rock falls to the earth and the earth is in a near perpetual fall around the sun as the moon is in a near perpetual fall around the earth, as the sun is in a near perpetual fall around the galaxy and so on.
So all you have to do is take the same principles of the rock and say, hey, they apply everywhere.
Bingo, bango, bongo.
You've got the magic of modern science, which is why we're talking and why we have all of these amazing toys and tools and distractions.
It's the same thing with ethics.
My three-year-old should not hit other children.
Ah, I wonder if we universalize that, what happens?
Well, when you universalize gravity, centrifugal forces, gravity wells, and the endless falling of the stars and planets, it freaks you out.
It freaks you the hell out, because you go, wait a minute, the whole world is falling and turning, and the sun is falling and turning, and the moon is falling and turning, just like this rock falls and turns.
It freaks people out.
The whole worldview tears itself asunder and is remade in the image of truth.
And they don't get to be the sort of fixed special little snow globe of God's experiment in the world.
They don't get to be the center of the universe.
They have to look at the facts.
The rock falls, the earth falls, the moon falls, the sun falls.
And...
When you take the non-aggression principle, which we impose sometimes forcefully on three or four-year-olds or two-year-olds maybe, when you take that and extrapolate it, it is as disorienting to our society as everything falls was to the physical worldview of the medievalists.
I gotcha.
So you simply take the standards which we all accept...
And we universalize them.
And from there, flowers as astonishing a set of human potentiality in the future as the grasping of the scientific method had in the past.
With one caveat, right?
One of the theories as to why the medieval period ended and we got the age of...
We've got the Elizabethan era, and we've got the Renaissance, we've got the Enlightenment, and so on.
And finally, the Industrial Revolution.
One of the theories, which I hope will not have to be repeated, but one of the theories is it was our good old friend, the bubonic plague, the Black Death, that raced, I think, from the East to...
Through Constantinople and into Europe, on the lice and ticks on the backs of the rats on the ships, that the bubonic plague, plagues in general, take out lower IQ populations.
And one of the theories is that the staggering death count of the bubonic plague eradicated low IQ populations, low IQ gene pools, and then you had a higher IQ population Which was able to produce the astounding feats.
Now, I'm hoping like hell that we don't have to have any repeat of anything like that.
I'm hoping that philosophy and reason and evidence can move society to a better place and that we don't have to, in a sense, reverse decapitate the human genome in order to move forward.
But you can't tell the future.
You can only work To change it.
So I hope that makes some sense.
It certainly does.
Before we go, one last question.
What is the limit of the universalness of it?
Because if it works for children...
Are you still there?
Yeah.
If it works for children and we apply it to adults, what's the limit of that?
In my perspective, I'm Referencing, like, dolphins and animals and things who seem to be able to experience the world.
Oh, yeah, no, the limits...
Right, right.
Responsibility for universality rests upon those who can conceive of universality.
Right, so the moment...
I mean, I watched this with my daughter.
So the moment she started using words like everywhere, always, never, right, all abstractions of infinite set, the moment that she started to use abstractions...
Which had universalization.
In other words, for instance, so she learned her high chair was her high chair, right?
And then we go to a restaurant and she sees another baby in a high chair and she says, a high chair, right?
Boom.
She's got universal conceptualization, right?
Now, and she's able to express that, right?
So I say, well, what is a high chair?
And she's able to describe to me what a high chair is and why it's a high chair and not some other kind of chair and so on.
So the moment she's able to grasp and verbalize universalizations, what I guess would be called the platonic forms in the ancient world, concepts unrestrained by individual instances, which happens very early on.
Kids can do statistical reasoning at seven months, moral reasoning at 13 months.
So for me, it was about 18 months.
I gave it a little bit of lag to just be sure that it wasn't a one-off.
But the moment my daughter was able to speak in universals, Then she was subject to UPB. I mean, in developing circumstances with all the caveats of she's still a toddler and so on.
Sure.
And so if we find that animals can verbalize and discourse on universal abstractions, then they will be subject to universally preferable behavior.
This would be the same for alien races we might find in space and so on.
So...
So does that help?
Very good.
That does.
Very much.
Thank you so much for having me on the show today.
You're very welcome.
All right.
Thank you, David.
Up next is Ramiz.
Ramiz wrote in and said, I am currently raising my four-year-old sister with the help of my other younger sister.
It's getting harder and harder to take care of her time-wise, and I can't pawn her off to her father, as it'll destroy her life.
How do I raise her properly, but also juggle my time commitments?
All right.
Can you just go over that one more time?
I think I understood it, but I just skipped.
There was a lot sort of compressed in there.
So you're raising a four-year-old?
Yeah, yeah.
I just want to say before I start, you know, thank you to you and Mike and everybody else that, you know, calls, does it provide the service.
I'm super grateful for it.
And honestly, it's become like a concrete resource for me to go to.
Oh, I appreciate that.
And we are incredibly grateful.
I just, by the by, you know, people are like, Well, how come you don't talk more abstract philosophy?
Well, first of all, I've done a lot of that.
And secondly, you know, the people who ask that must have never run a business or run anything that's customer-focused.
You know, when people call in, you know, I would say 70% to 80% of the time they have sort of, how can philosophy help me in my personal life?
So, it's just kind of funny for me.
Yeah.
You know, it's like people are saying, give me hot dogs, give me hot dogs, give me hot dogs.
And it's like, Steph, why do you have a hot dog cart?
That doesn't make any sense to me.
It's like, can you not hear the people?
But anyway.
You should serve more McRibs, by God.
Yeah.
Clearly they want salad.
Thank you, Ramiz.
I appreciate that.
But yeah, so give me just a bit more of the background.
Yeah, I don't even know where to start with this.
I guess, okay, I have three sisters and one younger brother.
The younger brother is a stepbrother, and the sister that I'm currently raising is a stepsister.
Not stepsister, half-sister and half-brother, sorry.
And I've got two of the sisters, one 19 and one 15, so...
I live in an apartment with my four-year-old half-sister, my 19-year-old sister, and myself.
Together, we're basically raising her.
Mom has moved abroad to Pakistan.
I think it was...
You mean the four-year-old's mom?
Yeah, the four-year-old's mom, my mom.
She's moved abroad.
Why has she moved to abroad?
Basically, life has become too hard for her in England and she's just sort of skipped home.
That's the most information I can get out of her.
Did she not notice that her tits are longer and her blouse is kind of wet recently from breastfeeding?
I mean, does she not notice the four-year-old?
I don't quite understand.
She notices, but she just doesn't care.
And she came back in May to sort off some finances or something.
And she basically said to me, either you can give her to her stepfather, her father, or you can just give her up to the government or whatever.
It's not my problem anymore.
Yeah, that's it.
I think she's married over there now, and she's doing whatever she's doing.
So the kind of mom whose Mother's Day cards might come with, say, wires and a ticking sound.
All right.
Well, I'm sorry to hear that.
I am, and I'm sorry to hear.
Was this your mom as well?
Yeah, this was my mom.
Wow.
Yeah.
Sounds like quite a charmer.
Yeah.
So she was married to your dad.
What happened to your dad?
Or was she not married?
No, no, she was married to my dad.
You know, they got married back home in Pakistan.
And then they came over here in England, and then I was born.
So together they had three children, me, my sister, and my younger sister.
And then after that, I think I was around the age of 15.
I was 14, 15, and she just got disenchanted with my dad, you know.
They ended up getting basically a divorce.
Wait, wait, wait.
What do you mean basically a divorce?
They got separated.
They had like a Muslim divorce first, then they got a proper divorce through the, I don't know, the UK divorce I guess.
There's like two sort of divorces.
No, I get it.
I get it.
Yeah, so they got the Muslim divorce and then I think a year or a year and a half later they got the government UK divorce and as always there's another man creeping around the corner with her and that's where my half-sister comes into play like when I was 18 or something and it just sort of gets hairier and hairier.
I don't really know how to explain it fluidly.
I mean, do you want something specific?
Well, I mean, how old was the youngest when the mother left?
Well, she didn't actually leave at first.
She's only left this...
Past six months or so, I believe it was January this year she left us to go abroad.
We actually stayed with her and our dad left first.
She kicked him out of the house.
I think that was around the age of 14 or 15.
And some things happened with debts and the bank was trying to take over the house.
So we moved literally a street away from our original house.
And we were staying with her up until, you know, this year in January, like I said, and that's when me and my sister and my little sister moved into our own apartment.
And I should mention as well, my grandma, that's my mother's grandma, mom's mom was living with us the entire time and she's a bit of a fire star too, so yeah.
No doubt it.
Yeah, yeah.
So, hang on, how was your mom with the youngest before she left?
My youngest sister, you mean before my half-sister, four-year-old, yeah?
Yeah.
She was a surprise baby.
And to be honest, she was not so good with her.
I mean, she used to be me regularly, I think, as a kid.
Because she was frustrated.
No.
Sorry?
No.
Did I say something wrong now?
Yeah, what did you say?
I don't know.
Be me regularly?
Because?
I don't know why I put that in there.
You said she beat me regularly because she was frustrated.
Yep.
No.
Tell me, Ramiz, do you ever get frustrated?
Yeah.
Do you go around hitting kids?
No, I do not.
No, you do not.
You do not.
Don't give me this bullshit that women hit children because they're frustrated.
Yeah.
Because I have way too much respect for women.
To say that they're just machines with no capacity for impulse control, no capacity for doing the right thing.
Frustration comes in, child abuse comes out.
They're just these robots.
They have all of the willpower of ice cream attempting to resist sunlight.
They just melt because that's the environment.
Why did your mother hit you?
Your mother hit you because that's what she wanted to do.
Because she chose that as an action.
And this is really important because, by God, you are not alone in this.
I mean, if you ever want to realize just how much contempt people have for women, Just go on to domestic abuse sites, look up these statistics for female violence against children and spouses, and see how repetitive it is.
The 12th gong coming after the 11th gong at midnight.
Women do hit children, but you see they're facing socioeconomic pressures.
They hit them because the man left.
They hit them because they're frustrated.
They hit them because they had postpartum depression.
They hit them because, because, because.
Demonic possession!
Weird marionette strings from Manson's prison cell.
Right?
But, I mean, I've still yet to see a lot of men get excused for hitting women because they're a little stressed.
Right?
Like, so this football player, a couple of months ago, this video of him, his then-fiancé hits him in an elevator and he just freaking clocks her.
And she goes down like a sack of potatoes.
She smashes her face against the metal bar, the handrail on the inside of the elevator.
And she is just...
I thought she was dead.
And basically, he drags her out of the elevator and carries her off.
She's tired.
And...
A month later, they're married.
Right?
And...
This guy, Ray Rice, and the woman now is tweeting, oh no, like, he's my hero, he's my love, don't take away his career, we've suffered enough, blah, blah, blah, right?
And so, immediately, of course, everybody starts rushing to, well, you know, she's an abuse victim, and abuse victims sometimes stay with the men because of socioeconomic reasons, blah, blah, blah, right?
Okay, let's say that that's credible.
How many times have you ever read that men stay with abusive wives because those abusive wives can destroy their lives through the family court system, through alimony and child support?
You leave me, husband of mine, I will take you for everything you've got.
You will never see the children again.
I will claim you abused them.
I will claim you...
How many men have to stay with women because of that?
Have you ever heard that argument?
Yeah.
Yeah, I have.
I've never heard that argument.
Maybe you read different websites than I have.
Maybe, yeah.
But...
No.
I grant women full moral responsibility.
I mean, unless they have...
Some degenerative brain disorder, brain tumor, Alzheimer's, whatever.
Unless they've got something which is physically screwing up their brain.
I'm sorry.
People are saying that people do make those arguments.
Yes, but in the mainstream media.
In the mainstream media, do you see excuses?
Do you see excuses for men who are stressed or upset?
And I will not express any contempt for women by saying they are not morally responsible for their actions.
And you know what's weird?
Is that when I say women are morally responsible for their actions, that I treat them as equal to men, do you know what I get called sometimes?
A woman hater.
Because I give women the respect of moral responsibility.
I don't white knight.
I don't give them separate standards.
I don't treat them as children.
Well, she was stressed, so she had to hit because she's just a stress machine with windmill arms.
I'm actually called a woman hater for accepting that women are responsible moral agents just like men.
Misogynist!
That is so completely insane!
I don't even know what to say about it.
Why do men have affairs?
Because they're bad!
Why do women have affairs?
Because they feel unloved!
Oh my god!
My god!
A A man who drunk drives is fully, in fact, more responsible for the negative results of his drunk driving.
A woman who acquiesces to sex when she's drunk has been raped, according to many statistics and theoreticians.
Sweet mother of God!
How screwed up have we become as a society when refusing to treat women like retarded children Gets you called a misogynist.
The greatest misogynists are those who do not hold women morally responsible, and the greatest racists are those who do not hold various races, various ethnicities, various minorities, morally responsible.
Noted.
Alright, so don't give me this, she hit me because she was stressed.
That's just my bit, right?
I don't doubt she was stressed.
Do you know one of the reasons why she was stressed?
Because she was hitting her children.
Because when you hit children, they don't really want to listen to you.
When you hit children, they become defiant, they become passive-aggressive, they don't respect you, they don't listen to you.
So, saying that you hit children because you're stressed is like saying you drink because your life is a disaster after you've been drinking for 10 years solidly every day.
Ten beers!
It's like, no, no, no.
You don't drink because your life is a mess.
Your life is a mess because you drink.
So, um, I just really wanted to pause and make that point.
I do not want my daughter to grow up in a world where she gets a get-out-of-jail-free card because her hair is a little longer.
Absolutely.
All right, um...
Where were we?
Let's call the youngest Munira.
Munira, okay.
Your youngest sister.
So how is Munira doing at the moment?
She's fine.
She just started school reception last week.
She's fine?
Yeah, she's doing good.
Me and my little sister, we're taking care of her as much as we can.
But it's just one of those things where it's getting a bit where I'm not exactly a parent, so I'm sort of learning most of this as I go along and sort of listening to you talking about how you raise your daughter.
It's pretty much trial and error at this point where I'm just trying to do my best as I possibly can, but it's one of those things where I wasn't really prepared for it.
Of course not.
First of all, Ramiz, I really wanted to express my intense admiration for the work that you're putting into your Your youngest sister.
I mean, she is a damn lucky kid to have you and, I assume, your sisters in her life.
Yeah, well, I couldn't do most of the stuff I can do without my sister.
I would say she does, you know, more than me, probably 70% of the grunt work when it comes to my little sister.
I'm just the administrator, I guess, that keeps everything in check.
But I mean, She's got what?
I mean, assuming to the end of uni, she's got like 18 years to go, your youngest sister, right?
Yeah.
So what's the plan?
I mean, I know it's a ridiculous question to ask because there's no even remotely easy answers, but what is the plan?
Yeah.
You know, it's a tough one.
I mean, I have my dad's brother who tries to sort of question me on these sort of things, and he goes, well, what happens when, you know, my sister that helps me raise her, she's called, and he says, you know, what happens when she gets married?
What happens when you get married and you have a full-time job?
I mean...
I mean, who's going to...
What if you want a date?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Hey, I come with some baggage, right?
And I hate to refer to Venera as baggage, but...
I come with some accessories, I guess, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, by the way, I've got a little baby sister.
She's basically a kid now, so deal with it.
Right, so of course, I mean, women...
And again, this is nothing...
It's just biology, right?
It doesn't mean we can't overcome it, but a lot of women are basically saying, well, I would like some resources to raise my children, right?
And so if you have your mom's daughter...
Then that's a huge amount of resources, time, energy, money that has to go into that.
There's going to be less left over for whoever you're dating or your future kids, right?
Yeah, yeah, of course.
Have you...
Sorry, go ahead.
No, no, please go ahead.
I was just going to run, but yeah.
You're more important.
No, hey, listen, you've got stuff to rant about.
I'm happy to listen.
No, I mean, it's not really a run.
It's just...
Honestly, I don't know what I'm going to do.
It's one of those situations where I'm just...
I just carry on doing what I'm doing.
But I know that's not really the best way to go about things.
So I do sort of need some plan to keep it all in check.
Yeah.
Well, you have a life to have as well, right?
Yeah, I'm only 22, I guess.
Yeah, it's a hell of a thing to dump on you.
And I don't even want to get into what I think of your mom right now because I'm sure we think pretty much the same thing.
Yeah.
What are your thoughts around having her adopted into a stable two-parent household?
I haven't even thought about that.
It's never even...
Okay, well, let's think about that.
Let's think about that right now.
I don't...
Look, please understand, I'm a guy on the internet.
I don't know what you should do, but there are some facts that can help.
The The girl's situation now has a kind of innate instability to it insofar as you all are going to have your lives to some degree, right?
Yeah.
And so there is not as much stability as there would be with sort of a happily married couple who would really want the kid.
Maybe they have fertility issues or maybe they just want another kid.
So if she were to be adopted into that kind of household, there would be a kind of stability there.
Of course.
That would be somewhat difficult, if not impossible, to provide in this constellation of siblings, right?
Yeah.
Now, my understanding, and, you know, obviously you need to do your own research.
It's been years since I've read on this stuff.
My understanding is that children who are adopted do as well as native-born kids, but children who are raised in unstable environments don't do nearly as well, in general, on aggregate.
Obviously, there's tons of individual...
Yeah, I would generally agree with that.
So, in terms of that overused phrase, in the best interests of the child, it may be worth doing the research to figure out what her life will be like if she is adopted into a stable family.
Okay.
Now, whether that adoption comes with visitation or, like, I don't, again, this is All stuff that needs to be worked out.
I just do have to ask where the dad is in all this.
So, I was calling my stepdad, I guess, for easy purposes.
He still lives local, but I don't trust him at all.
He already...
He's kind of a bit of a womanizer.
I don't know if that would be the correct term.
What I feel, he sort of...
I don't know.
It's one of those things where I just don't trust him.
He runs like a clothing shop and whenever I leave her with him, he will just basically dump her in the shop with whoever works there at the time and just go off and do his own thing.
And then he'll come back and pretend he's been looking after her the entire time.
I think he's got too much...
Of his own stuff to do to even give her the time of day, even though it's her kid.
His kid, sorry.
Well, I mean, too much of his own stuff to do.
I mean, maybe that's how British people say he's a selfish prick.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, he's a selfish prick.
But honestly, I think that would be an even more unstable environment.
And unless we call him up, To actually look after her for a while or anything, he just won't bother calling.
Oh, so he has no particular interest in seeing the girl?
No.
He used to call us.
My mum spoke to him about this situation and he said, you know, I take care of it.
But me and my sister were like, look, we know what you're going to be like.
If you want to come and pick her up and see her on the weekend and stuff like that, cool.
If not, no worries.
And he did it for the first few months, like March, April.
And then slowly, slowly, you know, we're up till now when the last time he saw was like three and a half weeks ago, maybe something like that.
And yeah, I mean, that's for a four year old.
That's infinity.
Yeah.
Is there anyone in the extended family?
I mean, I hesitate to ask because these family dysfunctions tend to cluster pretty far and wide in the gene pool.
But is there anyone in the extended family that you think might be able to provide it like married couples without kids who love each other or anything?
It's funny that you just mentioned it.
Now, my mom was talking to one of our family friends, I guess, and they were talking about potential adoption before she went abroad.
And I think me and my sister were just adamant to knock the idea at all in her head.
It just occurred to me now.
I've forgotten about it ages ago.
And they possibly said that they would look after her.
I guess that could be something I could explore again.
But they're not extended family, they're like family friends or such.
But, you know, they're good people as far as I know.
Yeah, I mean, unless you're willing to basically put your life on hold for close to two decades or see what you can figure out to do for, like, get someone involved in your life when you already have a huge and significant responsibility...
Look, if you want to do that, then obviously that's one possibility.
What is the legal status of the child at the moment?
I mean, is she still your mom's kid?
Your mom still has, I guess, legal guardianship or custodianship?
Yeah.
So that would probably need to be transferred, right?
Yeah.
I mean, they tried to do that over to me.
Whatever that means.
But the dad said, no.
He just said, if you're going to do that, you might as well just give it to me.
I'm not going to hand over ownership.
So on top of being a selfish prick, he's being an even more selfish prick.
I think that's because he gets child benefits from her or something every month or week or something.
Yeah, she's a form of welfare crop, right?
Yeah, yeah.
So there's that too.
Yeah.
Yeah, so I mean the choices are pretty stark.
I mean expecting your parents to resurrect some sort of mirror neurons in their brain and come back and take responsibility for the life that they created is not something I would hold my breath for.
Neither would I, yeah.
So I think the choice comes down to are you going to be willing and able to dedicate your life for the next 20 years to this child?
Which obviously doesn't mean being a monk.
It doesn't mean whatever, right?
People are single parents all the time.
But if you're willing to do that, then that's one possibility.
It is going to be about the biggest decision you're going to make.
And I hate to think of a decision landing on your young shoulders.
Yeah.
But if you make that decision, it's going to have a huge impact on your income, on your employability, right?
I mean, young men and young women, but in particular young men, when they get out into the workforce, I mean, the way you establish yourself is you just work like a doc and you can't do that.
Yeah, I mean, that's one of the major problems that's been happening this entire year for me.
And, I mean, this summer my sister's been able to stay at home and pretty much look after her, but Once she starts uni and once I start getting into the fall of things now, in these next couple of months, I have no idea how we're going to look after her.
It's scaring me just thinking about it.
Right.
No, and you're right to be scared, because are you planning...
Sorry, have you done uni, or are you going...?
I've just graduated in July.
So, I mean, you want to get a job, and of course you can get a job if you have a kid, obviously, right?
I mean, daycares and all that, although I'm not a huge fan of that sort of stuff.
But this is going to be your life for 20 years, and it's going to have a huge impact on your datability.
Yeah.
I mean, there's not a lot of people who, when choosing someone to date, say, hey, someone with a half-sister that they're responsible for but have no legal control over.
That sounds great.
Or as opposed to, you don't have those things.
It's going to have an effect on your sexual market value.
A significant negative effect.
Because it also is a huge tell about how screwed up your family is, right?
Yeah, of course.
I don't know.
I mean...
It's like it's on my conscience if I... I mean, if I give her for adoption, I don't know if that just makes me selfish.
Well, no, no, no.
Listen, if the research is there, that...
Because if you're going to raise her with your sister cycling in and out and with you not having the resources, you know, single parenting is so hard because there's no one to play hot potato with.
Yeah.
Right?
Which is why...
Right, so this happens with my wife and I. I need to go do something, so she'll play with my daughter.
She needs to go to something, I'll play, right?
And it can be as simple as, I've got to make three phone calls, you know, which could take 40 minutes.
Well, you can't leave a three-year-old alone for 40 minutes, right?
Obviously, right?
And so the hot potato stuff that is essential for parenting can't occur really in a single parent household, which is why there's a lot of TV, there's a lot of video games, there's a lot of, you know, drawing on your kneecaps with ballpoint pens and stuff.
Oh yeah, she's addicted to the aircraft.
Yeah, so if you're a single dad, or a single whatever, for want of a better phrase, if you're a single dad...
Yeah.
Then your half-sister is simply not going to get the time with an adult one-on-one that she needs for optimum development.
If she is adopted into a stable, married family, then the odds are she is going to get that time.
Yeah.
It's not selfish if the statistics, the odds, and the research show you that she's going to be better off.
In fact, I would consider it selfish to keep her if the odds show that she's better off.
So before the welfare state, I just wanted to mention this because there's very few people who don't misunderstand me willfully.
Right?
You just let their amygdala fire up their outrage!
Outrage!
At what he said.
And then, you know, they just harden into that scar tissue and then you can't reason with them anyway.
But for those people who do misunderstand me accidentally, in the past, when women got pregnant outside of wedlock, they would give the child up.
They would either have an abortion or they give a child up for adoption.
Now, I'm much more of a fan Of the child living rather than dying.
I think that abortion in the absence of a direct threat to the mother could easily be conceived of as a violation of the non-aggression principle.
It's not my sort of final answer, but where possible, where there's life is better than where there's no life, right?
So what used to the woman used to go away, sometimes with her mother, for a holiday.
She'd be gone for like three months and the baby would be taken from her after birth and would go to an adoptive family.
And the child would do much better in the adoptive family than with the single mom.
And that all changed with the welfare state, right?
So with the welfare state, this weird situation was created, which is sort of what your dad is playing off, where children become a source of revenue rather than a consumption of resources.
Which is completely the ass opposite end of the universe from the economic reality.
And it's only covered through massive taxation and debt.
And so my argument is that women who have children out of wedlock and keep them where it's possible to give them up for adoption to a good home are being selfish.
If the child has the chance to land in a good home, it is selfish to keep that child with you.
Because the child is going to do far better statistically on average in a married two-person household than the child is going to do in a single-parent household.
Men who live with women who have children and they're not the biological father are 40 times, not 40%, 40 times more likely to abuse those children.
Whether we like it or not, we have a genetic preference, which is obviously what's driving you to a large degree, and rightly so.
We have a genetic preference for family, for clan, for tribe.
That has been studied up the wazoo.
And so you have a desire, obviously, to do the best.
You have an attachment you love, you care for, and obviously your biology is mixed up.
I think that is all incredibly wonderful, incredibly commendable.
But focusing on what is best for her means trying to detach the emotionality from it and trying to look at it as dispassionately as possible.
And I don't mean that it's not going to rip your heart out if you end up giving her up for adoption.
But it means looking at what is going to be best for her.
In my opinion, again, obviously this is all crap because I'm just some guy on the internet, but in my opinion, the best situation would be to find somebody in the extended family who would be able to adopt her where you could continue a relationship with her or find people who would be willing to adopt her who would be willing to let you continue to have a relationship with her.
Now the challenge is If the research bears that out and if you accept that that's the right thing to do, which is something you need to work on, the real question is then going to be what to do if your parents...
It doesn't sound like your mom is a big issue since it sounds like you think she might have remarried or whatever, but what happens if your dad doesn't want to give her up?
Well, then you're going to have a battle on your hands, right?
Yeah.
I mean, we've been keeping track of when he's lost paid for and when he's lost I have a feeling we need them.
So I mean, as evidence, if it ever got taken to court or anything like that, I think we'd be able to get it.
But I think if it's one of those things where I just sat down and talked to him, I think you'd understand that it's a big problem for him too.
I mean, you're not just an internet guy.
Your opinion is highly valued to me.
So that's why I'm asking.
Well, I appreciate that, and I'm incredibly sorry that you're in this situation.
I'm sorry that the little girl is in this situation.
I mean, it's a huge mess, and I am incredibly sorry for that.
But boy, has she ever got people on her side, you know, which is more than a lot of people in these situations have.
I mean, God, just massive props and respect and bomb loads of medals to you guys for...
Sticking by her and doing the right thing and focusing so much on what's best for her.
I mean, that's just amazing.
And she is a very lucky girl in a way.
And, you know, so much respect and so much admiration for what you and your sisters are doing.
But in my opinion, really work on trying to figure out what the research is.
Start canvassing ex-family members, extended family members.
And say, look, we have this challenge.
You know, the mom's gone.
The dad is pretty uninvolved.
We got a kid.
I'm a young man.
My sisters are after university.
I might want to start a life.
I don't know that I'm the right person as a single parent to raise this.
I don't have any custody.
So we need to, you know, if there's anyone decent in the family around.
Yeah.
I would really start to focus on trying to find a place for that kid to land where you can maintain a relationship but where she can be with people who can provide her the resources that she needs to grow up as healthy as she can.
Yeah.
Yeah, that sounds about right.
It seems like the best answer that anybody's gave to me.
I guess it's just one of those things where I have to get started then.
Or you could pay for a heart transplant for your mother, where they could just take, I don't care, any heart, could be a pig's heart, could be, I guess not a pig's heart, but could be a cow's heart, and they could open up the vacuum tubing that currently takes the place of your mother's heart and conscience, stuff anything in there.
Could be a heart, I think sawdust would be an improvement, a plasma squeeze, anything, you name it, old cathode ray tubes, anything would be an improvement over what's there, but that I would put as a plan B. Yeah.
I mean, before she left in May, I mean, we had like a huge screaming, shouting match before she left to go back.
She basically said something along the lines of, if you kids weren't so bad, I wouldn't have to leave you in this position.
And it just absolutely boggled my mind as to what's going on in that tiny head of hers.
Oh, God.
Well, the head sounds not too tiny, but the heart...
Yeah, it's full of shit.
How are you feeling about the call just before we wind it up?
How's your heart doing?
I mean, this is a hell of a thing to have in your life.
Yeah, I mean, I'm pretty...
My heart's beating a little bit quick.
I'm starting to cry a little bit for some reason.
Well, there is a reason, obviously.
But it's...
It's just anybody I try to ask about this sort of thing, they have no clue.
And I mean, I knew if anybody had some sort of answer to get me started on the right path, they'd kind of be you.
And it's just one of those things where I'm just over my head and I'm at that situation where two days ago I was just like, what the fuck do I do now?
It's just...
I didn't expect this.
If you even asked me a year ago that I would evolve into this, it just came out of left field for me.
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, it's a brutal thing to have to deal with because your heart gets broken no matter what, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Your heart gets broken no matter what, and that is such an impossible situation to be in.
I mean, my heart's breaking, just think about it, and I'm just like a fly-by voice on the ether, and there's no way forward where you don't get your heart broken one way or another, right?
Yeah, I mean, logically, giving her for adoption would be the best thing, but...
I don't know.
I mean, we've been practically raising her since she was born, so...
Yeah.
Do you have any access to therapy?
Because, look, I mean, there's...
There's your half-sister, and that's sort of the immediate content of this call.
Yeah.
But, I mean, you've had a lot of emotional trauma, I would assume, being raised by people like this, and in particular, you know, how your mom blamed you for her leaving and abandoning her child, blamed you and your sisters.
I mean, that's just so wrong, so immoral, so vicious.
Yeah.
And I can, of course, get a pretty clear picture of how it was for you going back over time.
Yeah.
And I would, if possible, I mean, I think that it would be great if you could get access to some skilled counseling in this area.
People have had some sort of experience with something like this.
I think that would be really helpful because, I mean, you have a lot to process in going through this.
You're going to need a support system for a variety of reasons, even if it doesn't end up being...
A combat with the stepdad over the welfare crop.
It's going to be a hell of a wrenching experience.
And look, I mean, there's studies that show that the people who are the happiest are the people who've gone through some seriously bad shit.
I'm not saying I have any idea why.
There's some theories as to why.
But we look at these gaping chasms of disaster that we have to Swing Johnny Weissmuller style over from time to time as massive and substantial problems, and they are.
But they can be the jet fuel to the stratosphere of happiness.
Having dealt with this, having processed this, having bonded like this experience, I'm sure with the right support system can make you a better, richer, deeper, more emotionally connected person And the great gift that your little stepsister may give you,
I'm sure she will, is through the process of bonding with her, through the process of getting therapy, and through the process of going through these wrenching decisions and confronting your family demons, I think the great gift she will give you is a massive invulnerability shield to people like your mom.
Yeah.
I mean, I just feel old sometimes.
It's like, I feel light years ahead of my friends around me.
And the shit I've been through, I feel so untouchable in sort of small circumstances.
Because I'm just so used to it.
It bounces off of me.
But yeah, I know what you mean.
Therapy isn't something I've thought about.
It is weird.
Look, and I don't want to make this about me, but, you know, I mean, there was some I don't know.
I don't really watch it, but there apparently was some crap rolling about this show and me over the internet because, you know, typists are so courageous.
And I got some messages of support.
And, you know, thanks, James, and thanks to the other people who sent the messages of support.
They're very much appreciated.
Very much appreciated.
But last year, I beat cancer.
You know, internet trolls, seriously, they're about as much trouble to me as a cloudy fucking day.
And that is the kind of strength you get from adversity.
You know, it is true that which doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
And there is strength on the other side of trauma that is unguessed at by people afraid of the trenches.
And that is a gift that you get from adversity.
You know, strength is a muscle.
It hardens with resistance.
Yeah.
It's...
I mean, your mom ran from her difficulties, which means she will never change.
Oh, boy.
I knew that a while ago.
She's always victimized herself.
If it wasn't for...
Not my stepdad, but my actual dad.
He's...
He's not street smart, but man, does he put himself out there.
I mean, he basically helps me pay the rent every month, does everything he can to help me out.
And this is my half-sister that comes over to his house every day to eat his food.
And he says, look, at the end of the day, she's a kid.
It's not I treat it very differently to that.
It's crazy on which the party gives us nonsense.
But it's the complete opposite with my mum, which is just poison.
Adversity also, I tell you, adversity is like carpet bombing false relationships.
When you face significant adversity in your life, whether it's what you're facing or illness or financial ruin or You name it.
What happens is there is a great sunlight that causes indifferent or false friends to scurry into the darkness away from you.
And I'm forever grateful to the degree to which my illness and the chemo and the battle back to health.
I'm forever grateful at the degree to which that helped me figure out who my friends were.
Friends are, you know, when the shit comes down, friends are the people coming in the door, not the ones drifting out.
Yeah, yeah, that's true.
I mean, how are you doing now with your cancer?
Are you completely cured or what was the situation?
Cancer is a tough thing to say.
You're cured because the recurrence is always a possibility.
But I am certainly completely symptom free.
And I go in for my three month checkups and I get felt up in the least romantic way you can imagine.
And everything seems to be fine.
And life is a beautiful and wonderful and magical thing.
And I am almost completely without fear.
So it's almost like the future will benefit from my tumor.
That's awesome.
Yeah, I mean, I feel that there is nothing to hold back on anymore.
You know, like Walter White survived cancer.
You go pretty fucking hardcore.
Yeah, it's funny that you mentioned that.
I mean, I was thinking about my situation and I was watching Breaking Bad the other day and I was just thinking, I mean, at least, you know, I don't have anything wrong with me health-wise.
I can sort of, whatever it is, I can sort of get through it regardless.
That's not an issue.
So, I mean, it's just trying to put things into perspective, I guess.
But...
I guess you've solved enough for me.
Yeah, and so this doesn't always help when you're in the throes of dealing with incredibly challenging stuff as you're dealing with.
But the joy that is on the other side of adversity is like 1% less than the adversity.
Yeah.
I mean, if it was more, we'd go out and seek out adversity.
But it's like 1% less than the adversity is the joy and contentment connection.
There is nothing like deep tragedy to break your habit of wasting time and withholding truth.
And this is going to permanently change how you relate to people.
It's going to permanently change your perception of what it means to be connected to someone.
It's going to permanently change for you what it means to love and to be loved, to support and to be supported.
And your former life will seem a bit distracted and dreamlike, I think.
Because you will Actually have realized that for most of your life you've only been pretending to dance with ghosts.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And the last thing I'll say is it will cure you of any desire to work both sides of a relationship.
In other words, for me...
And I think this is a deep enough experience that it's common, though, of course, I never want to tell other people what they experience.
But for me, I am very patient now when it comes to seeing what people can bring to the table.
I know what I can bring to the table in relationships with friends and others.
I know what I can bring to the table.
And before, because I have so much energy and focus and value for people, I'd be more than willing to give...
To make the relationship 70% or 80% or 90% my effort.
Yeah.
And now, now, not a bit, not a bit.
Now I'm patient enough and relaxed enough in a way to be curious about what people are bringing to me rather than trying to focus on the value I can bring to them.
And that has greatly enhanced my friendships and my marriage, my relationship.
With my daughter.
We were talking about happiness today.
I've been doing some research on happiness.
And I was trying to explain to her about the concept of happiness as a mean, as something in the middle.
The Goldilocks, right?
Not too hot, not too cold.
This one is just right.
You know, one piece of chocolate is nice.
A hundred pieces of chocolate, not nice.
Actually, I have to explain to her why that wouldn't be nice.
But happiness is often in the mean.
And I said, so for instance, I said, so what makes you the happiest?
And she said, waking up to see you and mommy.
And boy, it just melts you.
It just melts you.
It just melts you.
And that is necessary for my relationships now, whereas in my relationships in the past, I was willing to crank uphill on a bicycle built for two while the other person was smoking cigarettes and making phone calls.
And now, you pedal or get off in my relationships.
And I think that that will happen to you.
When you're young, you don't need people very much.
I mean, I've never been sick in my life.
I've never spent a day in a hospital.
I still have my wisdom teeth.
I've never broken a bone.
I've never really needed anyone.
When you get sick and you're a parent, and the illness was not the cancer.
The illness was the chemo, right?
Chemo was brutal.
And you need people.
And when you really, really need people, then you find out who sees you.
You find out who understands your needs.
You find out who's got a bone or two of kindness in their selfish skeleton.
And that has been greatly clarifying for me.
You know, I've had people...
I mean, people contacted me.
This blows my mind.
I've had people contact me.
Like a...
I guess it was about a year ago that I was finishing up the radiation treatment.
And over the last, I don't know, six or seven months, I had people contacted me.
People I used to know.
People had been to my house, part of the show.
People contact me and say, I need you to do something for me.
I need something.
I need a conversation.
I need some money.
I need this.
I need that.
Now in the past, you know, let me help you out.
Now, God Almighty.
Oh, you need something, do you?
You know, I was facing death last year.
Didn't hear from you at all.
Didn't get a phone call, didn't get an email, didn't get a Skype.
People I spent dozens of hours in conversations with and helped.
And it's just immensely clarifying.
Bye.
It's immensely clarifying.
You know, the year that I was facing, dying on my daughter.
Yeah.
Yeah, I could have used more support than I got from the people I mistook for friends.
I could have died on my daughter and my wife.
And so with all that tragedy, with all that anxiety, with all that fear, well, I am not the same as I was.
I am burned free of debris.
I am clean.
I am supersonic.
I am streamlined.
Now, And that is what gets burned away when you walk through that fire.
All the debris, all the takers, all the insubstantial people, all the people whose values are in their words and not their hands.
All the verbalizers, all the sophists, all the takers.
Whatever Who survives the nuclear bomb can be taken down by no one.
And yes, that is a radiation metaphor.
That's keeping track of my metaphors.
But yeah, I mean, it's a Gandalf the White thing, you know?
He falls down with the Balrog and he comes back white, otherworldly, and almost infinitely strong.
Level up.
Yeah, that's right.
Level up.
Level up.
And we don't want disasters, of course.
I mean, we're biological.
We prefer the safety and security.
But with safety and security, with safety and security comes a laziness in the necessary cleansing of your house that is required to If you're doing more than the average.
And that is something that's hard for people to understand who haven't gone through what you're going through, haven't gone through what I've gone through, but lots of other people have gone through.
But you get stripped of distractions when you are basically toppling over your own fucking grave.
It's you and the coffin.
And the coffin is inhaling.
And you are a feather.
You don't even have a wing.
It's a will that keeps you out of that moor that leads to the center of the earth called only in other people's memories do you continue.
And I was going to be goddamned if I was going to get drawn into that portal during a time Of my greatest loves, my greatest attachments, and my greatest capacity for world-saving fertile thought and communication.
Oh, I was going to be goddamned if I was going to let a bunch of random bastard cells cut me down in my prime.
So what I'm saying is I got a hell of a lot more than a tumor removed.
I can kind of get that out.
My tumor was like those sleeves and those magicians where they keep pulling the kerchiefs out.
My tumor was like the Volkswagen in the circus where the clowns keep coming out.
Pull out the tumor and keep pulling and keep pulling and keep pulling and all this stuff just keeps coming out.
Shitty friends, distractions, fear, anxieties, the desire to withhold like I'm going to keep my cards because there's some prize when you die if you don't give everything you've got.
You got a lot more than you didn't sign up for, aren't they?
Yeah, if you're going on a long hike, you rationed yourself.
But when you're facing that giant fucking shark mouth of a coffin...
And it's getting closer and closer and you cannot get out of the water.
You get that you're gonna die whether you say what's on your mind or you don't.
And there's no prize for the unsaid.
No bonuses for all the words you die with in your head and in your heart.
They're not chips you can then cash in in some afterworld casino.
And that aspect of no prize for the unsaid has been a very driving force for me since last year.
And I've always been focusing on Trying to push the boundaries of human communication and push the boundaries of what it means to speak and to listen and to connect with people.
But since last year, I want to die utterly empty of words.
I want to die like a spendthrift with not even one penny left in the vault.
I want to spend my capacity so gloriously that I want to redefine what it means to have and hear language.
And people who haven't faced those bullets, like that guy in Pulp Fiction, Samuel L. Jackson's character.
Yeah.
The bullets just go all the way around him, right?
And it changes his whole life.
While I stood underneath a crate of knives that fell from the skies and all around me was a shadow of blades that missed.
If you haven't experienced that, and it's annoying to talk about it, but if you haven't experienced that, then it's hard to know what strength you're capable of.
The reason I'm talking about this is because I want other people to get the strength without having to have the cancer.
Right?
To bring back the afterlife.
Right?
I went with my daughter to a water park and it was just an unbelievably sunny day and water parks are a lot of fun.
And the thought hit me very strongly that I absolutely have no guarantees that I didn't die on the operating table.
Last April in America and that everything after this has been the afterlife.
I mean, it's not true, but as an interesting thought experiment.
But if it were true that I died and this is the afterlife, I'm very glad that it's the greatest heaven I could imagine.
My days, since my deliverance, since the shower of blades parted above the air over my head, my days have been paradise.
Glorious.
It doesn't mean I don't stub my toe.
It doesn't mean I don't occasionally get frustrated.
But...
When the sword only takes off the tip of your ear, air is like wine.
All food tastes good.
And all love is beautiful.
All sex is glorious.
All hugs are a connection to this world Of almost infinite beauty.
And so the trials that you're facing will leave you an elementally uncluttered human being.
And that's the only comfort that I can give you for what you're going to be facing, which is going to be rough.
Yeah, well, so I guess worse before I guess bad, basically.
Yeah, yeah, there's a light at the end of the tunnel.
It's not an oncoming train.
That's the best I can offer you, and I hope it helps, and I also hope that you'll keep us posted.
Definitely, will do.
All right, thanks, man, and congratulations again for everything you're doing.
Thanks, Stefan.
Thank you so much for calling in, Ramiz, and thank you, Seth, for that beautiful, beautiful, beautiful words.
Up next is Frank.
Frank wrote in and said, What strategies might you suggest for somebody trying to overcome the pervasive need to self-sabotage, which usually comes near the completion of a project or goal?
Well, stop using the phrase self-sabotage.
Because it's not true.
Did you ever have a sibling?
Do you have a sibling?
Yes, I do.
I have two.
I have two younger brothers.
Right.
So you as the older brother may have used this wee trick once in a while where you grab the younger brother's hand and you make the younger brother's hand Hit the younger brother, right?
Oh, no.
No, okay.
Well, good, good.
I'm glad that you weren't that kind of older brother, because Lord knows there's a few around.
No.
So what you do, older younger, like older brother asshole training is a couple of things, right?
So you go up to your younger brother and you say, yes means no, and no means yes.
Do you want me to hit you?
No.
No, yes, no.
Ah!
Right?
I understand the mentality, but no, not me at all.
Right, okay, good, fantastic.
Okay, so what you do is you take...
The younger kid's hand, right?
And you make the younger kid's hand hit themselves, and then you say, stop hitting yourself, right?
No, I understand where you're getting at.
Just complete opposite from 180 from where I was.
You mean as a brother, an older brother?
No, I've always been very empathetic.
The motor neurons fired at an early age for me.
So the thought of doing anything cruel was just alien.
Did you say motor neurons?
Motor neurons?
Motor.
I'm sorry.
I mumbled.
Okay, so you consider yourself a very empathetic person.
Yes.
With one exception.
Yes, when it comes to myself.
Like the previous caller, I feel like I'm emotionally exhausted, you know, hearing his plight.
It just...
I can't stand that there's evil people like his mother in the world.
It just drives me nuts.
Right.
Well, I mean, he's learning a very powerful lesson about, you know, one of the greatest ways to maintain happiness in life is to surrender yourself to a higher cause.
Oh, absolutely.
It bugs a lot of objectivists and it bugs a lot of people, but it's true.
And it seems to be pretty consistently true.
Um...
Evil people always want you to focus on hedonism.
Your pleasure, your happiness, because fighting evil people is anti-hedonistic.
So they want you to focus on hedonism so that you don't take up arms against them, because that can be unpleasant and difficult.
Anyway, neither here nor there.
So can you give me an example?
Certainly.
I finished a screenplay a year and a half ago, 18 months, whatever, and Finished it.
Had it submitted.
It was going along.
The process was moving along.
Things were moving along.
And right before, there was definitely a sale in progress.
I was like, eh.
And just kind of dropped it and walked away from the whole thing.
No idea why I was doing it at the time.
After the fact, I'm like, what the hell is wrong with you?
Why did you...
Oh my god, are you kidding me?
Aren't there like three people in the known galaxy who sell screenplays?
I mean, everybody writes them, but who the hell actually sells them?
I've sold three.
Wow, good for you.
Thank you.
Nothing became of them.
They were purchased and sit on a shelf indefinitely.
No, no, but still, right?
There's money coming in.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, do you mind if I eliminate a couple of possibilities with no negativity or prejudice towards you?
No, by all means.
Would the screenplay have made the world a better place?
No.
It might have entertained somebody.
So was it like shoot-a-wap car chase stuff?
Yeah, monster movie, B-movie type thing.
You know, fun and fair.
And why are you writing that stuff?
It's an outlet and it makes money.
It's a creative outlet.
Do you think that you could write stuff that would be more meaningful to you?
I've touched on it.
This is part of my problem.
I've got 30 different projects that I'm juggling that I can't seem to focus on any one of them for too long.
There are a few more touchy-feely, goodwill-hunting type of things, but overall, it's kind of the schlock-horror.
Well, not like Sharknado 3 or something.
Oh, God, no.
God, no.
However, one of my scripts did sell to Sci-Fi Channel Universal, you know, Universal NBC and was turned into something horrible.
All right.
So, was it that you did not...
So, what happened emotionally for you when you found yourself disengaging from the pursuit of the sale?
Um, I would just get really depressed.
You know, I've always been prone to, you know, bouts of, you know, severe depression.
I'm usually cognizant.
The good news is, you're the only writer that's ever happened to.
Oh, I know, right?
However, I don't drink.
Normally, it's just all happy smiles for writers.
Yeah, no, no, no.
No, however, I don't drink, so maybe there's my problem.
Right.
But no, that's usually what happens toward the end of the project.
There'll be some form of depression that'll kick in, and it'll just get abandoned and put to the wayside.
All right, so my next question is...
I was trying not to lead people.
I'd really, really try, but...
No, it's okay.
It's okay.
Okay, so we'll just...
Do you want me to just, like, go straight?
Like, do you want me to dance around, or...?
No, no, go straight.
All right.
Balls deep, no lubrication.
Here we go.
Um...
Who in your history is invested in your failure?
What do you mean by that?
I'm sorry.
Who in your history did not believe that you can achieve what you have achieved or could achieve in the future?
That's a tough one.
I would say I've had both positive encouragement and Kind of, you're kind of going too far with this from the family background.
My dad was always very encouraged.
It's your choice.
You know, let's go deep if you want to solve something as deep as depression.
Absolutely, absolutely.
My dad was always very supportive of my ideas, but he would always kind of interject a little bit of reality into any of my grandiose ideas.
Hey, wait, wait.
Already, already, we have a problem of language, right?
Okay.
Okay, so what was grandiose that you needed reality injected into?
An example, when I was 16, I invented a self-sustaining power station based on tidal power.
I know, weird stuff.
Essentially running small generators.
Why is that weird?
Because I don't have an engineering background.
I just can think stuff up that kind of makes sense and works, and I get to a point with the math.
That's not an answer.
Well, I'd really like to solve the problem of relativity, but I'm really just working in a patent office.
When I would get off on these little jags, I would invent something that would make sense to me.
And my dad would come in with, well, if you want to do it, great, but you have to go through the patent office.
You have to do, you know, file X amount of number of papers.
He always offered to help with it, but it just seemed insurmountable just to get through the bureaucracy of it all before I could actually get to a tangible.
Why did you have to do all of that?
Self-protection.
Why?
Anytime you invent anything or try to make anything, you know, from an engineering point of view that's going to go to industry, you have to protect yourself.
Why?
Because as soon as somebody sees what you're working on, once you make a presentation, they can claim it as their own and there's enough patent trolls in the U.S. that any idea you make is snatched up immediately and you lose out.
No, look, I understand all the legalities of it.
I understand that.
No, I understand that.
However, the reality is in the engineering field, especially industrial engineering, you put an idea out there.
It's going to get snatched up pretty quickly if there's any mobility to it.
Okay, so then your idea is out there and you've contributed some great stuff to the world because people now have a tidal energy machine.
And people know that you did it, which means that you'll get great investors for your next gig, right?
In a perfect world, that would be absolutely true.
However, the world we live in, no, it would get snatched up by somebody.
Someone would hide it, bury it, hide it, and we'd still be running on coal for the next 50 years because the financial interest isn't there.
The financial interest isn't there for tidal energy?
No, because tidal energy is relatively cheap once you get past the zinc problem.
It's relatively cheap compared to, you know, coal, nuclear, whatever.
Oh, right.
That's why we don't have email, because email is more efficient than physical mail.
No, but email took a long time.
Wait, wait.
That's why we don't have cell phones, because cell phones are much more convenient and easy to use than rotary dial telephones, which was easier to use than the telegraph.
That's why we don't have cars, because we have horses.
No, there's a definite progression to these things.
Dude, you've already told me everything I need to know.
Okay, let's go.
All right, let's go.
So, I'm going to just, you asked for it straight, okay?
So I'm just like, you're fucking sapping my will to live.
You're just like, yes, but.
Yes, but.
Yes, but.
Well, I've got to do a patent.
It's all this work.
Right?
People will just buy it up and put it on the shelf and it won't get anywhere.
It didn't get anywhere anyway!
Where is this great thing you invented?
It's like you didn't do it at all.
So what you're saying to me is, well, let's say there's a 50% or a 70% chance that this great invention that could have benefited mankind hugely would get snatched up by special interest groups and never get anywhere.
Well, that's 50% more chance than it had by not doing anything, right?
Correct.
And filing a patent, not that complicated, right?
Correct.
I would disagree.
It's very convoluted now.
Just in the past five years, it's become more convoluted.
How old are you?
I'm almost 40.
And when did you invent this machine?
Right around the age of 15, 16.
So a quarter century ago.
Yeah.
So you understand what you just did to me?
Yes.
What did you just do to me?
I completely...
The train just derailed.
Over the last five years, it's become really complicated.
What the fuck does that have to do with 25 years ago?
No, because in that time, I'd gotten other jobs and stuff where it was kind of just put on the back burner.
I'm not sure if you read my previous email.
I got really sick six years ago.
No, no.
And I'm sorry for getting sick six years ago.
We're talking about when you were 16.
I'm saying, after turning 16, I started a computer business.
I went into a whole other line of work and worked 70-80 hours a week.
There wasn't any time for my little flights of fancy inventions anymore.
Okay, so are you interested in solving the problem or do you just want to tell me that I'm wrong every time I say something?
No, no, no.
I'm just explaining to you that, you know, it was put on the back burner.
You asked me what I had done between...
What do you mean it was put on the back burner?
There's no it?
There's no it?
You made a choice?
Yes, I made a choice.
Now, would your father have hired someone to make the patent for you?
If he had the monetary means, absolutely.
Did he have the monetary means?
No, he did not.
He had two heart attacks and everything was lost.
Oh, so he had no money?
No.
Okay.
Did he have any friends or any relatives or anyone in his business or anyone he'd ever known, college roommate or anything, who might have been able to help with this process?
Not really.
My dad was pretty isolated.
And why was your dad pretty isolated?
He was brutally honest with people in the county, which is unadvisable.
Oh, so he was like too good and honest for people and they didn't like him?
Yeah, he would just speak his mind, you know, social norms be damned, and he kind of ostracized himself in that way.
So you're able to invent a tidal energy machine, but not able to file a patent?
I get lost on a lot of the bureaucracy.
My brain just doesn't wrap around it for whatever reason.
Do you do your taxes?
I pay someone to do them.
Did you ever do your taxes?
No, I've always paid someone to do them.
I just dump the receipts and go through it that way.
If you had to do your taxes, do you think you could do your taxes?
Probably.
However, I'd probably get a knock on the door from the IRS six months later.
So you don't do stuff that's difficult and complicated?
Not dealing with bureaucracy.
I have to see a reason for it in order to keep my mind focused.
And if I don't see a reason for it, it goes out the window.
All right.
So, given that almost everything that you want to do in life is going to involve some bureaucracy, then you're just telling me that you don't want to do stuff.
No, it's the level of bureaucracy that I'm able to cope with.
It's a patent, for God's sakes!
Nobody's saying you've got to learn the entire tax code, right?
Yeah.
So what you're saying is that, what, you're too good for patents?
No, no, no.
You just don't like them, so therefore you won't do it?
No, there's a monetary outlay at first, and it's a several-year process.
Several years to get a patent, really?
Oh, absolutely.
25 years ago, it was several years to get a patent?
Yeah, the average has been between two and five years for as long as I can remember.
All right.
Well, if someone in the chat room or if, Mike, you could look that up, I feel some skepticism, but then I'm maybe more learned in the realm of...
No, look at industrial patents and you'll see.
It takes forever.
It's ridiculous.
Well, but this was not an industrial patent.
This was something a 16-year-old made, right?
I mean, I've seen patents that are one page.
I can't imagine they take five years.
No, an industrial patent is a little bit different.
It's got to meet a bunch of different requirements before it even gets approved.
It's a specific thing to this little project.
Now, was your father a success by his own standards?
I would think so.
I mean, he was able to support a family of five.
On a salary in county, which is a little more expensive than other places.
Okay, so your father was satisfied and would count himself as a success?
I would think so.
What do you mean you would think so?
Well, we've talked about it, he and I, and he doesn't have too many regrets or anything like that, so I would consider that a mark of success.
Okay, good.
And would you consider yourself a success in your life?
Yeah, I've done pretty well for myself.
Okay, good.
Now, do you feel that at some point you may end up doing better than your father?
Yes.
And how do you feel about that, and how does he feel about that?
Oh, he's ecstatic about my life.
Since we've had an adult relationship, he's just become my biggest cheerleader.
Right, right.
And do you have other people in your life?
Are you married at the moment?
Yes, I am.
I'm married.
I've been married for four years.
I have a wonderful partner.
She's very supportive of me.
And I her, obviously.
We work well together.
Well, you are presenting me with a mystery, which is fine, obviously.
Obviously.
People are saying here in the search, it says that it can take 24 months to get a patent.
But of course, a patent pending is something we've all seen.
Yes.
But Mike says the entire procedure from application to grant will generally take over 12 months and in some cases over 18 months and sometimes longer.
But of course, you do have patent pending, right?
So if you're first to file, then...
It's still...
Yeah, and again, the problem also, you're borrowing on other people's technologies too, so there's a little more convolution in there too.
It's not a blanket, you know, here's my brand new idea, it doesn't borrow from anything, let's go with it.
It borrows on a lot of different disciplines and other paths.
Of course, please don't explain it to me like I'm three years old.
Of course I understand you didn't invent new fabric and new physics and a new planet and new dimensions and all that, right?
Yes.
I got it.
I got it.
All right.
Now, when you think back on what you did when you were 16, do you think that it was realistic?
At the time, I thought so.
No, that's not what I asked.
I'm sorry.
Repeat.
When you look back on it now, does it seem realistic?
If I had some more financial resources available to me back then, yes.
And have you ever thought of, now obviously you have the money to do it because you pay someone to do your taxes.
Have you thought of paying somebody to apply for the patent for you?
Yes, I have.
It's been a back burner project, but it's definitely been something I've been keeping up with.
I should be able to file sometime in the next six or seven months for something similar to my original idea.
I've got two other patents that I've already secured, so it's not completely foreign to me anymore.
Right.
Right.
So, what about your mother?
Oh, she's a different story.
Not really, because your dad married her.
She can't be that different a story, right?
Well, no, she...
Prior to five or six years ago, mom was great, and then she had a serious health scare and became a crazy Christian.
So my feelings are a little bit mixed now.
What was the health scare?
She almost died.
She had liver failure.
Never a drink or anything like that.
She just had liver failure from chronic health problems.
And she almost died.
I mean, she was like in ICU for six weeks.
And every day we were told, you better come down to the hospital today because she's probably not going to make it through the night.
Right.
And what do you think, so she was fine before, and what do you think changed in her that she became a Christian?
I guess it was her sister and the support structure she had with her sister's church.
And kind of an abandonment of her previous position of empirical evidence and all that other good stuff that I kind of adhere to.
Right, right.
Okay.
And they divorced, right?
Yeah, they did.
Three years ago.
It was kind of weird because there was one of those things where you thought they'd always be together because once you're married past 35 years, it's usually a safe assumption.
And tell me about the kids you don't see.
Yeah, my children.
I was sperm jacked, for lack of a better term.
I was making really good money.
Can you tell me more about that?
Just, I mean, people need to know, men in particular need to know this.
Yeah, no, I was making really good money.
I was billing out at $175 an hour at the time, so fairly well for myself.
Had a girl come into my life that Had some problems and stuff.
I had to play white knight, as I usually did back then.
Thought I would save her.
She told me she couldn't get pregnant, that she was allergic to latex, yada, yada, yada.
She got knocked up.
I knocked her up and didn't realize it was my kid until about three months after the kid was born.
It was a 10-month pregnancy, so the math didn't quite work, and she was sleeping around at the time.
Eventually, when we found out the child was mine, I took her and the child into my home and raised my son for the first two years of his life.
I got a decent job offer up in New York.
I told her we were going to move up to New York if it was cool with her.
She said yes.
I went up ahead of time, got a house, got everything situated, got the new job.
And then she tells me she's knocked up again.
And I said, but you had the IUD thing and you had the birth control stuff.
It's like, well, I stopped taking it, yadda yadda yadda.
I found out later that she had this whole plan just to find somebody with money and get a paycheck for the rest of her life.
Wow.
Yeah.
I can go into more detail, but it's just horrifying.
It is horrifying.
I'm incredibly sorry for that.
It's a horrendous enslavement of men, and I'm incredibly sorry about this.
I'm sure, in hindsight, that you could see some Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely.
I've come so far.
And what were they?
Just for other people, right?
Yeah, yeah.
The way she would always expect me to pay for anything anytime we went anywhere.
There was a lot of very selfish things on her part where she would have an emotional breakdown expecting me to comfort her if I came to her with anything.
It was, well, my problem is this and it's so much worse than yours.
And any of your problems kind of take a backseat to mine, and that was kind of the way our relationship went before the children were born.
And exactly how hot was she?
She was an eight.
Yeah.
And I was young, dumb, full of cum.
Not for long, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Learned my lesson.
I didn't proceed to play Johnny Appleseed after the second kid was born.
Right, right.
And I don't mean to delve into overly painful stuff, but...
No, by all means, Steph, it's fine.
In your ACE score, you had indicated molestation?
Yeah.
I had a...
One of my good friends, his older brother, he was like five or six years older, really fucked around with me and my little brothers.
He would sit on me and make my brothers touch themselves in front of me.
He would threaten me with...
Just all sorts of horrible things.
He threatened to drown my pets if I said anything to anybody.
And we had a dog who had roamed the neighborhood.
Back then, there weren't so many leash laws and stuff like that, so the threat was a real threat to me.
So we kept our mouths shut until one day we finally said something to my parents.
And my older cousin found out about it, and he went to the kid's house and beat the shit out of him and put him in the hospital.
And both families kind of made the arrangement of They wouldn't sue us for my cousin putting the kid in the hospital.
We wouldn't sue him for the child molestation and it was kind of a wash.
Yeah.
And this was, was your friend crazy or just his brother?
In hindsight, I think there were some problems that we probably should have noticed.
I'm pretty sure he was abused by his older brother.
Yeah.
Didn't know it at the time, but in hindsight, looking back on it from an adult perspective, yeah, I'd definitely say that he was being abused as well.
And what were those signs?
When he would use the bathroom at our house, he would kind of pee all over everything.
The kid's brother.
He was always very interested in...
Sorry.
There's your friend and then his brother.
So who would pee all over the bathroom?
The little brother, the younger one, not the molester.
Oh, your friend?
Yes.
And how old was your friend when he was peeing all over the bathroom?
Eleven.
Eleven, wow.
And the older brother was how old?
Sixteen, seventeen.
Wow.
Yeah, he was an asshole.
He's in jail now for, I think, child pornography or something.
Well, the fucking family, Jesus Christ.
Yeah, no.
Fucking family, I mean, God, get the kid to a therapist, get the kid some help, whatever.
But Jesus Christ, don't turn a fucking predator like that loose.
You might as well put a goddamn tiger in the daycare.
Yeah, no, he was arrested at 18 and put in jail, and he's been there ever since, as far as I know.
Good.
And how long did this go on for?
I don't want to say just.
On and off during the summer of 86, 85, 86.
Right.
85, 86.
Two years or either 85 or 86?
Either 85.
I'm not sure which year it was.
It was either 85 or 86.
So just the summer?
Yeah.
A couple of months kind of thing.
Yeah.
And did your parents ever get...
No.
What is a 17-year-old doing playing with 10-year-olds?
Well, we were over at the friend's house playing Nintendo.
Oh, so the Kai never came to your house?
No, no, no.
All the neighborhood kids kind of went from house to house, so it wasn't that unusual, even some of the older kids.
But we would go over their house to play Nintendo, because they were the first ones in the neighborhood to have one.
Oh, yeah.
No, you need to child trap, right?
I'm sure the parents were not exactly blameless.
Yeah.
So did the older boy ever come to your house?
Yeah.
He never did anything at our house as far as any kind of molestation, but we had a pool, so he'd come and use the pool during the summer.
Right.
And your parents, I would assume, of course, never felt that there was anything off about either of these kids?
To be honest, there were so many kids that would come and go.
I don't think they had a really good handle on who was there or who wasn't there what day or who...
When I say a lot of kids, I mean, there were between 30 and 40 kids that would come in and out of our backyard.
Yeah, I don't, you know, I feel that comfortable with that too much.
Because statistically, if you've got 40 kids, one of them is going to be a molester.
At least...
Yeah, knowing that now.
So parents, limit the children around.
You know, when there's a giant crowd, there's going to be at least one psycho in there, statistically.
Absolutely.
But we're going back almost 30 years now, so it's a little bit different time and place.
Not that different.
Oh.
It was also kind of a throwback town, too.
It was very much Mayberry.
I never saw anything like that on Mayberry.
No, I mean, we knew...
An example, we knew everybody in our neighborhood for a 10-block radius around our house.
I would say you didn't know any of them!
That's not...
I mean, was there anything weird about the family?
Yeah, they were a little bit off.
There was definitely some telltale signs there.
But again, this is an adult looking back on a childhood.
And my parents, both mom and dad worked.
And my grandparents were around to keep an eye on us.
And it would just be this mass of kids that would come in and out.
We'd play all sorts of games outside.
We'd play baseball, football, whatever.
Tag, manhunt, all that stuff.
Now you get that all you do is defend this stuff, right?
I see that.
It's not really a defense outside.
I don't think you do.
Okay.
I don't think you do.
Because I don't know if you've listened to this show much at all.
But nobody gets to defend child abuse in this neighborhood.
No, I get that.
Okay.
Not defending the abuse.
I was just trying to explain the situation.
Maybe I did it poorly.
No.
No.
You're defending the abuse.
I'm not saying you're defending the abuser.
Okay.
He got beaten up and blah, blah, blah, right?
Yeah.
But it's your parents' job to keep you safe.
Yes.
Yes.
It's your parents' job to keep you safe, and they failed about as bad as they can fail.
I agree.
Okay, so why are you giving me all of this different time, different values, Mayberry, blah blah blah, kids all over, right?
You just give me a whole smokescreen.
Alright, I don't see it that way, but I'll...
Well, did you express any culpability for your parents?
No, but we didn't really get into that, I didn't think.
I definitely got mad at them about it.
Okay, listen.
If you want to have a conversation with me, you've got to stop bullshitting me, okay?
I just had this whole speech about not having bullshit in my life.
So I've got to try and snap you out of this daze.
Because you're on autopilot right now.
Do you feel that?
Not really.
You don't feel that at all?
You don't feel that you're just making stuff up in the moment to minimize discomfort for you?
No.
Do you understand that you were defending your parents, that you were making excuses for them and not assigning them any culpability at all?
No, but now that you say it, I kind of see where you're coming from, so yes.
Not where I'm coming from.
Not where I'm coming from.
What you were doing.
Right?
Because where I'm coming from is like, well, it's kind of subjective.
I like this piece of art.
Well, I can see how you might like it, though I don't.
This is not a subjective thing.
Right?
Correct.
So.
Hmm.
Everything that you have told me about your past, almost without exception, and I don't mean this with any hostility.
No, I don't...
Almost everything you've told me about your past is with excuses.
Why didn't you do this?
Well, the patent office is complicated.
Could your dad have helped you?
Well, my dad didn't have any money.
Why?
Because he had two heart attacks.
Why did your mom turn crazy?
Well, because she had a near-death experience.
Fuck, I had a near-death experience.
You don't see me kissing Jesus' feet this year.
So did I, Steph.
I'm not kissing Jesus' feet either.
Right, so don't give me this bullshit about it's all causal and nobody's making any choices.
People made choices!
But all you're doing is explaining it like everybody is just robots being programmed by circumstances.
The only person in this entire conversation, which we've touched on probably a dozen people, or actually dozens and dozens of people if you count the whole town, there's only one person you've held morally culpable, and that person was a minor.
Well, that was my experience at the time.
No.
As I've become an adult, I've had conversations with my parents about it.
I've just talked about it in depth with both of them and how upset I was that they didn't have my back when I was a little kid.
We've had those conversations.
So why isn't that part of this conversation?
Well, I hadn't felt that we'd come to that yet.
You hadn't felt we'd come to that yet?
Well, why are you so passive?
Did you not know That you making excuses for your parents' failure to protect you as a child was going to meet with some resistance?
Oh, absolutely.
Okay, so don't tell me we didn't come to it when you're basically raving a big red flag in front of my face.
I'm sorry, it wasn't intended that way.
I apologize.
Okay, so what is it that you would like from me at the moment?
Okay, I just wanted to...
I'm sorry, go ahead.
I'm not able to connect with you because it feels, my experience is that just deflection, deflection, deflection, minimization, minimization, deflection, deflection, deflection.
We can't connect at the moment.
I don't know if you feel connected.
Well, I'm trying to...
I'm just having a really difficult time with this.
I don't know.
I'm very self-aware of everything.
I just...
You're very self-aware.
That's your experience that you're very self-aware of things?
Yeah, I mean, I'm cognizant of what's happened.
I know how I internalize things.
I don't know.
I don't know.
What was it that caused you to tell your parents about the abuse, the sexual abuse?
Just a line was crossed, and at that point, I couldn't stand to see my little brothers being touched that way, and it really bothered me.
So I said, you know, to hell, you know, if he wants to hurt my dog, he's going to hurt my dog, and, you know, consequences would be damned.
I'm just going to go and say something.
And how did your cousin find out about it, who went and assaulted the young man?
He heard my mom and my aunt crying about it.
When I told them, and he was kind of listening in from upstairs.
He wasn't that much older.
He was probably about the same age as the molester.
He was 16 or 17 at the time himself.
And so it was the same night that you told...
Yes.
Yes.
Your parents, they cried about it, or the women cried about it.
The boy heard it.
Yes.
And he went over and attacked the molester?
Yes.
And put him in the hospital, not just...
No.
It was pretty severe.
And I'm going to assume that nobody knew that was occurring.
Thank you.
Thank you.
No.
It was very...
I kept quiet.
The stupid mentality at the time was just...
It was outrageous.
It was, you know, this is dirty laundry not to be aired.
You know, that whole line of bullshit.
I'm sorry, could you just repeat that?
I said it was the whole, you know, no airing of family dirty laundry type thing, so it was that sort of bullshit.
Do you think they would have, if the molester had not been beaten up, do you think your parents would have called the cops?
Yes.
But then they weren't allowed to call the cops because of the assault, or they felt they couldn't?
Well, they had called my Uncle Tim, who was a cop in the area.
And by the time they had called him and he was on his way over to come talk to us, my cousin had already gone over and beat the shit out of the kid.
And I assume that the kid's parents weren't home and the kid was alone?
No, the kid was alone.
And he just knocked on the door and said, hey, it's so-and-so.
The kid opened the door.
I don't think he even knocked on the door.
I think he just went into the house.
He knew the house pretty well.
He'd been over there before himself to play games or whatever.
And just kind of forced his way in and just found the kid and beat the shit out of him.
And do you have any emotional experience of the stuff you're telling me?
Oh, yes.
Right now I'm just, I'm kind of reliving it, so I'm getting a little bit jostled and angry again.
Well, tell me what your emotional experience is of our conversation and of what you're saying.
Well, our conversation, I'm just trying to get, you know, it's sometimes going to be difficult for me to talk to people.
I can come off a little bit assholey.
And reliving some of this stuff is just, it's difficult still.
I've only recently been able to talk about it to other people.
Like in the past, you know, seven, eight years.
So it's still pretty raw.
And how's your sexuality?
Pretty good.
My wife and I are fairly active.
And what does she do?
She's a webcam model.
I know you might poo-poo on that, but that was her thing.
It's what she enjoys doing and she makes decent money at it.
Although I do believe that you can get some webcam models to poo-poo.
Yeah, no, she doesn't go that route.
I'm not sure what you mean when you say I would poo-poo on that.
Well, I heard your conversation previously with another webcam model and it didn't seem too supportive of the idea.
And how did you meet her?
We met at a show.
What is a show?
I'm not sure what the name is.
I'm sorry.
I thought it said my email.
I perform in the show and we met there.
Oh, so you were singing in a show.
Is that right?
I was on stage performing and we met after the show.
Who were you playing?
Brad.
Oh, okay.
So you met after the show.
Yes.
And how long ago was that?
Five years ago.
And was she webcam modeling at the time?
No.
What was she doing at the time?
I had hired her to work at a movie theater.
She had just finished college, and I ran a theater, and I hired her.
So she's quite a bit younger, I assume.
Yeah, 13 years.
Right.
And when did she start doing the webcam modeling?
Two years ago.
And what was it, do you think, that gave her that as a thought for Inca?
She had been friends with a dominatrix, a professional dominatrix, and she was very intrigued.
She's always kind of leaned toward the sex-positive stuff.
We went over to this dominatrix's house one day, and they started chatting about what she does and how she does some webcam modeling, too.
And my wife expressed an interest.
And she kind of got into it.
Wait, hang on.
So she expressed an interest to the dominatrix friend before she talked about it with you?
Well, it was in that conversation.
We were both part of it.
I was part of the conversation as well.
No, I get it.
I get it.
But she didn't sort of say later, well, that would be Something I'd be interested in before she talked about it with the dominatrix.
We had conversations previous to talking with the dominatrix.
She was interested in kind of learning about it and seeing if it was something that she'd be interested in.
So your wife had a conversation with you prior to chatting with the dominatrix about her desire to do webcam porn, right?
Yes, many conversations, not just like one or two.
And what were your thoughts about it?
I've always been, you know, if it's something you want to do and it's not hurting you, it's not hurting me, it doesn't hurt anybody, then yeah, go ahead.
Give it a try if it's something you want to do.
She's pierced and tattooed, so a lot of her job opportunities are going to be in the alternative fields.
How pierced and tattooed is she?
She had the nose ring, the eyebrow ring...
Tattoos at one arm, nothing on her neck or face, but enough to where getting jobs outside of the alternative community would be a little bit difficult.
Are you guys thinking about having children at any point?
No, no, no, no, no children.
I have my two.
That's enough.
And she doesn't want kids, I see.
No, not at all.
And does she work outside of your home?
No, we have our studio set up in one of the rooms.
And she works while you're home?
Yes.
And does she use headphones?
No, she has her studio.
We baffled it pretty well, so the sound doesn't travel.
But you can be working at home.
Oh, yes.
On your writing.
Yes, I have my...
Sorry, if I can just finish my sentence, please.
I'm sorry, go ahead.
So you'd be working at home, and you're...
Your wife is coaxing men to masturbate, to orgasm, like in the next room or two rooms over?
A couple rooms over.
Right.
And it's no issue to you, right?
I assume.
Not at all.
You think it's fine?
Yeah, I support her 100%.
She loves it.
She makes good money at it.
And what do you think the plan is?
I assume that she didn't go to university to study web porn.
No, she did go to college.
She's got a bachelor's.
And what does she have a bachelor's in?
Computer science.
So she wanted to be a programmer?
At one point, yes.
So she wanted to kind of use her brain, not her tits, right?
Yes, and she did for a number of years.
She makes more money doing this.
Yeah, well you can make more money robbing a bank.
That doesn't necessarily mean that's the right thing to do.
So she's basically just using her tits and her ass rather than her brain, right?
Yeah, she's going to school for sex therapy stuff now and that's kind of like the end goal for her.
To be a sex therapist?
Correct.
And what does that mean, being a sex therapist?
Talk people through their sexual problems.
Kind of help people out.
She's Very open and very personable.
There's nothing really taboo with her.
No, I get that.
I get that.
And what was her sexual history as a child?
It was pretty horrible.
She was molested by her stepfather.
Of course she was.
Ignored.
Her family is a piece of work.
And do you think that her capacity...
For web pornography, is it all related to her having been raped as a child?
Oh, absolutely.
So basically, she's exploiting her prior trauma, as are you, in terms of the fact that it makes good money.
You're exploiting her prior trauma for money, right?
I don't think of it that way because it's something that she's expressed.
You just told me that it was that.
You just told me that her capacity to do web porn is entirely based upon being raped as a child.
Yes, because she's taken ownership of it, and this is what she wants to do.
What does that mean, she's taken ownership of it?
She's not letting it become...
How do I put this?
I'm...
I'm just trying to find words to properly express this.
It's something I kind of just know when it's hard to...
No, I understand.
Take your time.
It's a tough topic, and I appreciate you talking about it.
I don't mean to sort of have some swinging Victorian Gestapo light bulb over your head, so take your time.
Okay, thank you for that.
No, she's accepted that she can't change her past.
Her abuser died right before she started doing the porn.
That may definitely factor into it.
It's something that still bothers her.
She still has issues with it.
We talk about it.
We have our own quiet time and discuss our personal issues with each other.
She feels that this is a way of, in some ways, getting back at her abuser because she does do the dominatrix stuff, too, online.
And it's kind of a way of her getting back at her stepfather, as fucked up as that may sound.
Does it sound fucked up to you?
I definitely see where she's coming from with it.
So, looking from a societal point of view, yeah, but knowing her, knowing how she, this is her way of coping with it, no.
Wait, wait.
Coping with it, getting back at her rapist does not sound exactly to me like how you described it earlier, which is taking control of it or whatever it was, right?
Well, that's kind of what I mean.
She's taking possession of it, and this is how she chooses to act on it.
Well, no, but that's very value neutral, right?
So if she is exploiting her sexuality because her sexuality was exploited when she was a child, and she's doing this, and this started, how long after her rapist died did this start?
Several months.
Months?
Four or five, yeah.
Do you think that she was in a good state to make a decision like that after her rapist died?
She had been talking about doing it before the rapist died, I think.
No, no.
I understand that.
Do you think that she was in a good and healthy mental state to make a decision about going into web porn when her child rapist had recently died?
In hindsight, probably not.
At the time, I was very sick, so I wasn't putting a whole lot of...
Deeper thought into it.
But this is what's frustrating about chatting with you, is that you say this stuff like it's perfectly normal, and then when I ask you if you think it's normal, you say no, right?
Which means I basically have to try and catch the abnormalities in the conversation and circle you back to them.
No, I get that.
Like I said, I do have difficulty expressing things with people.
I type better than I talk.
Well, that's kind of another excuse, right?
Yeah.
So, I mean, when you said, you know, tatted and pierced and all that, not 100%, but most people, in fact, I would say 100% off the top of my head of women I know who've had significant tattoos were sexually abused as children.
Oh, I definitely agree with that.
And do you think that somebody who was...
I assume that this was not...
I mean, the molestation you experienced was horrendous enough, but was the molestation that your wife experienced on the level of sexual penetration, of full-on rape?
Yeah, it was full-on rape.
And was it like rape plus rape?
Extra horror on the side?
Torture, domination, sadism?
Alright, I can touch on this with you.
If I get too into it, I'm going to start tearing up because it's really horrible and I want to try to maintain some composure.
I don't want you to maintain composure.
You have been too fucking composed in the whole goddamn conversation.
Please try not to maintain composure.
No, it's absolutely horrifying.
You know, he was...
The worst possible person you can imagine.
Completely evil, sadistic.
He was a drug addict.
Her mother wasn't any better.
She was, you know, the worst possible mother.
Her natural father is the worst possible natural father ever.
She had a horrific childhood and it breaks my heart every time we talk about it.
Absolutely, it breaks my heart.
Do you think it's healthy for her to be doing what she's doing with the history she had?
Yes, I do.
As kooky as that may sound, I do.
She's happy.
She's enjoying things.
She's vibrant.
Has she ever done any therapy?
Yeah.
She went to therapy for four years, and they talked about this while she was starting up with the porn stuff, and her therapist said it was a good idea.
Maybe not the greatest therapist in the world, if that's the way you're going to look at it, but she's happy.
She is legitimately happy.
How long ago did her sadistic child rapist die?
Two and a half years ago.
All right.
Well, I'm obviously...
I don't think I'm going to be able to talk you into questioning these particular things or...
I mean, you feel it's important to support her.
You say she's happy that she has no problems.
Her therapist says, great, go into webcam porn two and a half months after the man who tortured and raped you as a child died.
That seems great.
That seems like a wonderfully healthy idea.
Couldn't possibly be anything dysfunctional about that.
So if you are...
Entirely on board with this doesn't sound like it's going to be anything I'm going to be able to help change your mind about but with regards to our first your first question yes if it is true if it is true and I believe that it is true which is nothing I accept that it's just my perspective if it is true that you are And
your wife are profiting off the sexual shell of a human being, tortured and raped as a child, offering herself up for more anonymous sex, virtual sex.
If you're not able to take a stand on that and perhaps get her into a field where things are less hypersexualized, Then the self-sabotage may come from sabotaging your wife.
Sabotaging her chance to really deal with her demons.
Look, the sex positive stuff, sex is great.
Sex is wonderful.
Sex, as I've said before, is the stuff that makes up for taxes.
Right?
So, I don't think I've been prudish in the show.
I think that there are consequences.
I think that there's pluses and minuses to various decisions.
But I don't think that making a decision about public sexuality for money is a wise thing to do within two and a half months of your rapist dying, your torture rapist dying.
Getting into domination and submission role plays with people when you were tortured and raped as a child, I don't think is particularly healthy.
If there's some validity in that perspective, and I've massive, enormous, bottomless sympathy for your wife, right?
I mean, I get...
I mean, obviously, not to as great a degree as you do because you're married to her, but I get what an unbelievably hellacious and horrendous childhood she had.
But I wonder...
Yeah, it is beyond words.
And I wonder the degree to which your self-sabotage is more to do with your choice of women than it is to do with your screenplays.
Because you had one woman who sperm jacked you twice and then dragged your ass backwards through the family court system and took you for, I imagine, a fair chunk of change and sanity.
Yeah.
So one woman rapes you with the legal system.
Another woman is yelling at men to jack off on her virtual boots or whatever the hell goes on in these situations, and who was raped as a child.
Yeah, I think you've got some unprocessed stuff.
I mean, why would you have so much in common with these dysfunctional and disturbed women?
Part of it goes back to my nature of always protecting the little guy or finding the damaged person and trying to help them up.
Yes, but you understand.
You're the damaged person.
I understand that.
I don't know that you do.
There may be some truth to that.
Because if you did, you wouldn't be acting it out with the women.
The White Knights, it's...
Well, first of all, it's generally the moms they're trying to save, but more fundamentally, it's themselves.
They're trying to avoid dealing with the pain of the past by being in perpetual rescue mode to other people.
Oh, I totally get that.
I do.
Okay, good.
Well, then my suggestion would be to try and work on some of that pain of the past and not focus on other people's dysfunction as much.
That would be my sole suggestion as far as the self-sabotage goes.
Any strategies on that?
It's all well and good to say work on it, but How?
I can't go and see a therapist, unfortunately.
I do have a security clearance, and I'm not sure if you're familiar with U.S. security clearance stuff.
You see a therapist and you're out.
Well, I mean, there's stuff that you can do.
As I mentioned before, Nathaniel Brandon has great workbooks.
Other people have great workbooks that you can work on.
But...
I think that you, I mean, you're incredibly intelligent and you're very, very verbally astute, obviously.
Thank you.
And I think, well, it's a compliment, but not a compliment, right?
Yeah, I get that.
I think you kind of need to slow down a little bit.
I think you race ahead of your emotions.
I think you have the capacity to build these cloud cathedrals of language that...
Are very convincing to other people.
And because of your intelligence and verbal skill, you are very convincing to other people.
But...
But...
I think that you have an automatic habit of minimizing emotional connection and content.
Could you explain that a little further?
And you do that by minimizing people's moral responsibility...
And therefore your own.
And as a child, you did not have, I mean, you were a victim.
I completely get all of that.
But your parents weren't.
The other parents, the entire community, what you say, this Mayberry-style town.
Look, there was, I mean, who knows how many kids this son of a bitch had molested before he was 16 or 17.
This guy's moving through the whole fucking town.
It's entirely possible.
I should clarify, when I say Mayberry, I should have said Mayberry on the surface, Derry Maine just beneath.
No, no, I get that.
You don't have to tell me that.
I mean, there was a child predator moving entirely, conveniently, and easily through this whole situation.
Okay, I just wanted to be clear on that.
I didn't want you to think that I thought it was all, you know, Pollyanna.
It was very much, you know, more of a Derry Maine just below the surface than a...
The Mayberry are presented on the service.
You know you're doing that again now, right?
What am I doing again?
I was just trying to...
Well, I'm trying to do some...
I'm trying to sort of slow things down and connect.
And you're jumping off on saying completely obvious things.
Okay.
In a highly rapid and emotionally empty speech.
Like, again, you're sort of...
As I said, you're kind of deflecting and kind of defensive.
I'll slow down.
I'm sorry.
Continue, please.
No, that's okay.
I mean, I don't think that we're going to get much of an emotional connection.
And please understand, this could be entirely my fault.
I'm just sort of pointing out the lack of emotional connection for the people who are listening to this, right, so that they understand that I'm aware that there isn't an emotional connection.
But to me, at least, I think that...
I think you have a lot of anger, in my humble opinion.
You nailed it on the head on that one.
I definitely do.
I think you have a lot of anger.
And I think that you have gone a little bit too far into the live and let live philosophy.
Yeah.
I would not want a lover of mine sexually gratifying other men in the next room.
That's gross.
That's humiliating.
I think it's highly dysfunctional.
And I think one day you're going to wake up and be repulsed by it.
And I don't think it's healthy for her.
My opinion?
I'm not going to say I've got some ironclad proof.
And I think that if you were to connect with that anger, it wouldn't be B-movie scripts.
I think the B-movie scripts come out of The avoidance of that.
I think if you connect with your anger, which means assigning moral responsibility for the people who are supposed to be protecting you, then I think you'll have a greater power and capacity as a writer and a greater power and capacity to connect with other people as a human being.
Again, just my opinion.
There's nothing syllogistical about any of that.
No, I wouldn't have called you if I didn't respect your opinion, Steph.
I really wouldn't.
That's something to think on.
All right.
Well, keep us posted if you can, and I really appreciate you speaking so honestly about what you're experiencing, and I think we can do one more call.
Mike, what do you think?
Yeah, let's go for it.
We got one more person on the line.
Up next is Christina, and she wrote in and asked, are there any methods you would recommend to use in order for anger to not get out of control?
Well, self-knowledge, next!
Can you give me an example where you do get angry?
I get angry when someone insults me and then I try and tell them like not like that or if someone's trying to start an argument with me and I tell them not but I'm not wanting to start an argument I would rather just like talk things out.
And what sort of insults do you receive?
That the friends I have now aren't going to last, that I'm not going to get a job, that I don't take care of my pets, that I'm exactly like my father.
And who says that to you?
It was an ex of mine.
We were friends, but we're not friends anymore, for obvious reasons.
Was he insulting you while you were friends?
Yes.
And we dated...
So what am I going to say about that, Christina?
That he's not a good friend.
I would say that's right except for two words.
One, he's not a friend.
True.
Listen, just before we go on, and I've looked at your ACE score and all that, we can touch on that if you like, but this is really, really important.
Friends don't get to insult you.
Right?
Mike, have you ever insulted me?
No.
Have I ever insulted you?
No.
Never happened.
We ever gang up on Stoyan?
Well, there was at one time, no.
No, no, no.
Well, he paid for it and it was over webcam, so that's different.
But we don't.
Can you imagine me insulting you?
It's so outside my realm of who you are and what our relationship is that if you did it, it would be like, what?
Is this a joke?
I wouldn't even register.
It's weird.
It would be weird, right?
It wouldn't make any sense, right?
Other than my daughter calling me the world's worst dancer in general...
Within our house.
I mean, there's it just doesn't it doesn't happen doesn't mean we don't we disagree and sometimes we can once or twice a year my wife and I will have a disagreement that lasts more than 10 minutes, but The idea in The idea that that this would be an insult household or household where they were insults is like don't accept any insults Like that's why he's not in my life anymore No,
I get that.
But you said he's not a good friend.
Like, he could be an okay friend or an indifferent friend.
Like, I just really want to make that line solid.
And you are right.
And I just try to give people the benefit of the doubt because I'm not perfect either.
And when I lose, like, when I get angry and I lose control, it's not a pleasant sight.
No, I get it.
I get it.
And the reason that I want you to have standards for other people is so that you have standards for yourself.
Yes, that makes sense.
Because so many people, when I say no, no insults, they're like, whoa.
And that's because, like you, they reflect on their own behavior and they say, ooh, right?
Now, does this mean I never insult people?
I do insult people.
But I don't insult people I'm friends with.
I do make fun of and insult people who are doing rambunctiously idiotic stuff.
And people can make fun of me when I'm doing rambunctiously idiotic stuff.
But...
If you have a standard called no insults for your friends, then that's kind of a challenge for you, because then you say, well, I guess I insult, so I guess I'm not perfect, so I can't have that standard for other people, and then the whole thing collapses again, right?
Yes.
But I also realize that when someone insults someone else, it has to kind of do with themselves.
It doesn't really have to do with the person they're insulting.
Well, no, it does in a way.
And I agree with you, because obviously people who insult are unhappy with themselves.
But insulting someone requires...
I mean, this is one of the reasons why insults just completely fail the universality test, right?
Which is, when you insult someone, particularly when you insult them morally...
Like if I said to you, oh, Christina, you just use people, right?
Now, if you were a sociopath, which you're not, obviously, if you were a sociopath, you'd say, yeah?
Like, if someone comes up to me and say, Steph, you just use your tablet, what would I say?
Yes, I do.
I certainly do!
You have completely stated an obvious thing.
I have no problem with it.
I find it rather boring and redundant.
I kind of bought it to use, right?
So if I were to say to you, Christina, you just use people.
Well, if you were a user and a manipulator and you'd say, well, guilty as charged, that's what I do, right?
Exactly.
I mean, you just had that waitress bring you the food you wanted and you didn't care about her at all.
It's like, yeah, that's because I'm a customer.
Well, he's there to serve me, right?
Right, right.
So the insults...
Now, if I knew you really cared about people and didn't want to be a user, then I would insult you by saying, you use people.
Now, I would only insult you if I knew that that would bother you.
Yes.
Yeah.
That's exactly what you said.
It is about, when someone insults you, it is about them, but it's also about you in that they have to know what you value in order to deny those values for you, in order to oppose those values to you, right?
Yes.
But I also wanted to ask, like, what healthy methods would you recommend to release anger?
Well, um...
If you're stuck outside and you're very fair-skinned and you have no sunscreen, what's the best way to not get a sunburn?
Shade.
You get away from the sun and by golly, you're not going to have a sunburn, right?
True.
Right, so the very first thing to do if you have a temper problem is to look around you and say, who provokes me?
So, who provokes you?
You don't have to give me names, but are there people around you who you get angry at?
Yes.
My sister, I guess.
Your sister provokes you?
Okay.
You get angry around your sister?
She has a mental condition that I have never been able to understand or understand.
It's hard to have a relationship with her because everything resolves around her, and it's hard for her to understand where other people are coming from, so I get kind of frustrated with her.
Wait, is she selfish?
Is that what you mean?
No, but yes.
She does care about other people.
They determined her as mentally challenged.
So, she doesn't understand things like you or I would.
Like, when my mom died, she didn't really understand that impact.
Oh, so she, wait, sorry, does she have, like, a low IQ, cognitively deficient, in general?
Yes.
Okay.
Okay.
I'm sorry about that.
That's a very hard situation.
Yeah, it must be for her as well, but...
What else?
Who else?
Certain, like some friends, like one friend, he made me wait for him for two hours and he wondered why I was upset about waiting for so long.
Wait, wait, he wondered why you were upset?
Yes.
Don't get me started on people being late.
I literally rant.
My head will simply spin and rotate and all the words will come out of my spinal cord because lateness just drives me crazy.
And look, I'm unaware of sometimes I'm late.
We get technical problems with the show.
But people who are like an hour or two late...
Yeah, exactly.
Oh my God.
I will give you at least an hour, but two hours is kind of pushing it.
Yeah, no, I remember in the past I've had people who were an hour away...
Who phoned up an hour after they were supposed to be here to say that they were just on their way.
Oh my god.
And it's almost like I don't even know what to say to people like that.
Yeah.
I don't know what to say to people like that.
Because I don't know what it means when people don't understand that being late is incredibly rude.
It is.
Because when you're late, you're saying, well, my time's important, but your time doesn't matter.
It's a...
A form of dominance.
It's a form of pecking order.
It's a form of superiority.
And holy crap, it just drives me nuts.
Now, again, I'm late, obviously, like everyone else.
But I'm like, oh my God, I'm so apologetic.
And if somebody was two hours late and didn't understand why I was bothered, I... I mean, that person's got something seriously wrong with their brain.
Yeah.
We still talk, but it's just through text messaging, because I don't want to go through that again, where it's like, yeah.
I don't want to wait.
Yeah, listen.
I'm sorry, you sound delightfully youthful, but this is something that I wish people had told me earlier, that little things are big things in life.
Little things are big things.
Somebody who's chronically late, it's a big thing.
Now, you may choose to live with it, you may choose, but it's a big thing.
And it indicates significant interpersonal dysfunction.
Well, it does say a lot about them, right?
It says a lot about their character.
Well, it's just their capacity for empathy.
Yes.
Right?
I mean, if you made him wait for two hours, he'd be really upset.
But he doesn't fundamentally get that you have the same emotional apparatus.
He doesn't get that you're the same fucking species.
No, seriously.
Maybe he thinks he's an alien.
Who knows?
No, I mean, if I'm an owl, let's say I have a pet budgie, which I had when I was a teenager.
Laura, how are you?
Right?
But if I have a pet budgie, and I'm home an hour late, I don't think the budgie gives much of a crap, right?
Yeah, exactly.
Because we're different species, right?
Pets don't have a sense of time, so...
Well, I'm sure some do, right?
But not pets.
Sorry, not birds.
Probably not.
I may be like, oh, I'm sorry, but...
Right?
I mean, because they're a different species for me, so...
Right?
I get...
Like, if somebody was supposed to meet me and they were an hour late, I'd be like...
Right?
But if I come home an hour late for my birds, well...
It's a bird, right?
Different species.
But people who, like, little things are big things.
Like, does someone know how to buy you a present that you like?
That's a big thing.
Does someone know how to present themselves in social situations?
That's a big thing.
Does someone's taste in music is a big thing?
Someone's tattoos are a big thing.
Someone's piercings are a big thing.
Someone's wardrobe is a big thing.
Everything is screaming at us all day and all night.
These giant, big things.
And we often will just kind of like, eh, I don't know.
They have quirks, right?
Yeah.
And I kick myself sometimes thinking back in the past about the number of big things I glossed over in people and what a terrible idea that was.
So anyway, just the lateness thing, I mean, why are you even texting with the guy?
Like I said, I try to give people the benefit of the doubt, but...
Okay, but tell me what that means.
That's just a phrase.
I don't know what that means.
Well, because I mess up in friendships and all relationships because of my anger.
No, no.
Hang on.
See, you've already deviated from...
I'm sorry to interrupt you right after I asked you the question, Christina.
What you said to me was he didn't know why you were upset.
Yes.
So already you're in a different category because you say, well, I screw up things, right?
But he doesn't even know he screwed something up, does he?
No.
So that's not the same at all.
So saying, well, I'm going to forgive him because I screw up too, he doesn't even get that he did something wrong or rude or inconsiderate, right?
He's like, well, sometimes people are late.
What's the problem?
I don't understand.
Exactly.
So you are not giving him the benefit of the doubt because you make mistakes, right?
Because he doesn't even admit or is aware that he's made a mistake.
I didn't think of it like that, but you're right.
All right.
Good.
This is not the benefit of the doubt.
This is the subsidization of sociopathy.
But anyway...
Who else bothers you?
My father.
Oh gosh, that's a big one.
He's not in my life and that's his choice.
But everyone has told me that it's his loss but it's mine as well because I desperately crave for him to be in my life.
Though I know he's not a healthy person to be in my life.
He's an alcoholic, a very angry alcoholic at that.
But I thought that he would really wake up and change when he saw what I was doing for my mom.
I put my life on hold for her.
I quit school.
I quit my job to be there for her, and I watched her die.
And I thought that he would grasp that and want to, you know, fulfill that role of being a father, but he didn't.
And I have tried to reach out to him, and he just doesn't reciprocate.
I was trying to test him recently.
His birthday was in June, and Father's Day was in June, and I didn't call him.
And I'm like, okay, maybe he'll call me and yell at me, and at least I'll get some sort of attention.
But I didn't even get that.
And why do you think it's so hard for you to learn that lesson?
Because he's my father.
Because I really don't have...
No.
Sorry to interrupt again, but you're using the word in two different ways, right?
Right.
So father can be obviously sperm donor, right?
Biological father.
Yeah.
But father can also be, in the term that you're using it, you're talking about the act of parenting.
Right?
In other words, fathering, right?
Yes.
Being a father, not just having sperm, right?
Exactly.
Okay, so this is a very important distinction.
Like, if I was born from a test tube, right, and then the guy who was the sperm donor came and said, I need $5,000 from you, what would I say?
No.
And he'd say, but I'm your father!
And then what would I say?
You would probably tell him that he's a sperm donor and not your father.
Right, because he didn't actually do the fathering.
Yeah.
And I know that, I'm aware of that with my own, I guess, sperm donor.
Everybody tells me, you know, I'm sorry to make you take the blame for this, but everybody keeps telling me they know stuff.
And what do I keep saying?
I don't think you do!
I know that intellectually.
I get this.
I understand this.
I know this intellectually.
Oh, I understand that.
No, I get that.
No, I understand that.
But then you wouldn't be doing what you're doing.
It's like people say, by God, I've got to go south, right?
I've got to get south.
South is paradise.
I've got a compass.
And the compass is pointing north, so I'm going to walk that way, right?
And I say...
Actually, south is the opposite way.
I know that.
And they keep walking north.
And it's like, I don't think you do know that, otherwise you turn around!
Yeah.
It's something I have been struggling with.
I'm not going to lie, obviously.
Good!
Let's start doing that.
Look, when I was a kid, I mean, I don't remember my dad being around.
He left when I was, I don't know, six months old or whatever.
I was in boarding school when I was six, and we got a haircut every Saturday, and then we had to write a letter to our parents, right?
So I wrote a letter to my mom, said, dear mom.
I wrote a letter to my dad.
I said, dear, his first name.
Let's just say Bob, right?
Dear Bob.
And people were like, you can't send that.
He's your father, right?
And I didn't understand what they were talking about.
I mean, I wasn't trying to be obtuse.
No.
His name is Bob.
So I would write, Dear Bob, here's what I did in school.
But he's your father.
And I referred to him because he was my mom's ex-husband, so I referred to him as my ex-father.
Because he was not around.
I mean, it's not like I never saw him or anything, but years would go by, right?
And so he had divorced him.
My mother, and he would still occasionally see her, and he had left me, and he would still occasionally see me.
So, he was my mother's ex-husband, and he was my ex-father.
And again, when I would say this to people, they'd be like, I got laughed at, or people would be baffled, right?
Yeah, because it's not the norm, right?
Although it's accurate, right?
Exactly.
Because father is a noun, not a verb.
So when people say, or when you say to me, but he's my father, right?
Are you talking about loving, instructional, wise, consistent, helpful, virtuous, protective, all of that good stuff that goes on for years?
No.
I mean, it's like calling a thief...
An earner.
No, he's just a taker.
So when you put that, but he's my father, I think you really need to be clear on that distinction.
If he acted like a father, then he's a father.
Like father, right?
I mean, technically, my father fathered me, but he didn't parent me.
Yeah.
And you're hoping that if your father changes, the past will hurt less.
He'll grow a conscience so that you don't have to deal with your pain.
And that is an illusion.
Well, he created the pain.
He created the pain.
He's not going to make it go away.
He's most likely only going to make it worse.
Right?
That is very true.
Nothing fosters unhappiness more than the avoidance of legitimate suffering.
There's not just a theory.
There's some pretty significant studies that have found that people tend to be happiest when they accept unpleasant emotions.
Because then you don't end up self-censoring.
You don't end up splitting yourself, dividing yourself, setting yourself at war against yourself.
All My emotions are welcome at the table.
Everybody gets a voice.
Everybody is essential.
I don't have like the legitimate and the black market and the above ground and the underground and the police and the cops and the good and the bad.
Everything within me is essential to my happiness.
My anger, my regrets, my hostility, my frustration, all of the things that are considered negative that we naturally want to avoid.
Are there to help us, right?
You put your hand in a fire, it burns, you don't put your hand in a fire again, right?
If you have a little switch that turns off the burning, you're going to get singed to a crisp, right?
And I have been, like, embracing my emotions more openly, but it's not easy.
But I do feel more at ease when I do let my emotions come to the surface.
I feel less stressed.
I feel more like weight has been lifted off of me.
More of a clear conscience.
It's just like I miss him and I can't help but miss him.
What do you miss?
No, no.
What do you miss?
He has a good sense of humor.
That's really about it.
Yeah, like he was there like in my life when I was a baby and growing up and he was there when I graduated high school and things like that.
Not if he was drinking, he wasn't.
Not really there, right?
Yes.
I mean, doesn't drinking do that?
I mean, just make you emotionally inaccessible and unpredictable?
Yeah, it does.
So, he was there, absolutely.
But was he parenting?
No.
He was not parenting.
And that's painful.
And look, Christina, I mean, agonizing, painful.
The loss is interstellar in scope, right?
Yeah.
Because, like, he also put me into foster care.
Yeah.
Because I was acting out because of his drinking.
Because I wanted his attention and he gave me the wrong kind of attention.
And I kind of still...
Don't listen.
I mean, I don't interrupt you, but let's not laugh about this stuff, right?
I mean, I know that was just a little side laugh.
But your father put you in foster care because you were difficult.
And how old were you?
At this age?
14, turning 15.
And was your mother...
Your mother was still alive, I assume.
Yeah, because you said you dropped out of college.
That's much later, right?
Yeah.
I'm 26.
She passed when I was 23.
And what did your mother have to say about you going into foster care?
She wasn't in my life at the time.
She was very abusive towards my sister and I, and I resented her for it.
For five years, I didn't really have anything to do with her.
So I made contact with her when I came back to Toronto, because I was put into foster care in Keswick, which I didn't even know the place existed.
I felt very abandoned.
I didn't know anybody there.
I felt like I was...
Sorry to interrupt, but how long were you in foster care?
In Keswick it was six months, and then in Toronto it was until 18, and then I moved out at that age.
So you basically didn't have much contact with your father from 14 to 18?
Pretty much, yeah.
We wouldn't have contact and I would see him, but it wasn't really him being a parent.
I'm so incredibly sorry.
What an unbelievable burden to carry that your father basically...
Wanted nothing to do with me, right?
Yeah, wanted virtually nothing to do with you from 14 onwards.
Did he tell the people who he was getting you arranged to foster care, did he tell them that he was a drinker?
I don't think so.
I found out that I was going to care the day of.
That was...
I was very angry with that.
I didn't even know where I was going.
Like, I'd gone to the car and she wouldn't tell me where I was going until we'd gone the highway and then she told me and I'm like, what?
Where?
Who?
Your mother drove you?
No, a social worker, sorry.
Children's Aid.
Oh, man.
So, without warning, you were basically pulled out of your home and dumped in a place where you didn't know anyone.
Yeah, and my sister and I were separated.
God almighty.
So, And was there behavior that your father...
If I was talking to your father, what would he say about your behavior that prompted this?
He would state that I was trying to break him and his partner apart.
Which maybe I was because he sexually assaulted me.
And I didn't want...
I didn't like that because...
Wait, sorry.
We got a few too many penises in the conversation here.
So you mean his gay partner sexually assaulted you?
Yes.
That's so gender, sexual preference bending, I don't even know where to start.
So your father took up with a gay man, invited him into your house, and then the gay man sexually assaulted you thinking you were a man?
I don't know.
Was he bi?
I mean, I'm sorry, because I don't mean to blow past it.
I have no idea.
I have no idea.
I just know he was drunk at the time, but that's no excuse for what he did.
And it was interesting because I told a teacher who was kind of like a second mom to me at the time, as my mom wasn't in my life, and I didn't realize that she would have to tell Children's Aid.
So then Children's Aid came, and my dad pulled me into the kitchen, and he's like, I wish you would have told me, and I wish it would have happened to me instead.
But then once everyone in the neighborhood found out, because we're all kind of a family family, Like neighborhood and he made me write a letter stating that didn't happen in order to have a relationship with him.
Which I totally erased from my mind when I did it because I couldn't believe that he would make me do such a thing in the first place.
So sorry, I just want to make sure I understood that.
So your father made you write a letter to the man who sexually assaulted you?
A letter to him and to his partner.
Stating that it didn't happen so that they could keep on record, I guess.
I don't know the whole reason behind it.
No, the reason was because if they got charged, then they would have some defense, right?
Yes.
And I was only 13 at the time.
And your father decided to stay with the man who sexually assaulted his daughter.
They are still together, yes.
God Almighty.
And he's a diabetic and he's an alcoholic, so I even told him that he's killing himself and he called me a stupid child and that I don't know anything.
Sorry, your father's partner is a diabetic and an alcoholic.
Yeah.
So...
Go diabetes!
Yeah.
So, God Almighty, I mean.
So your father brings in a man who sexually assaults you, makes you write a letter to your rapist or your sexual assaulter saying it didn't happen, stays with the man, dumps you into foster care.
Wow, I didn't look at it like that.
Wow.
I mean, tell me something.
Are you fucking kidding me?
No, unfortunately.
But he's my father, you said, right?
He's got a good sense of humor.
You know, one time Hitler did a little jig when they finished invading Austria.
Okay, dancer.
Guess he's an alright guy.
I mean, are you kidding me?
This fucking monster of a testicle machine?
And you miss him?
I love him too.
No!
No!
No, no, no, no, no.
You do not get to come on this show and use that word, which I speak to my daughter and my wife and my friends.
You do not get to come on this show and use that word for that man.
Don't even think about it.
Don't even think about it.
That word...
It's the exact opposite of what happened to you, Christina.
That is not love.
That deserves no love.
That deserves no loyalty.
And I'm sorry that nobody has seen fit to tell you this before, but you cannot use the word love.
To a man who brings a rapist into your life, forces you to subjugate yourself to that rapist, and then has you dragged off to foster care because you were violated by his partner.
No, no, no, no.
You cannot use that word.
You cannot use that word.
That word becomes like shit in your mouth if you use it with your father.
Because you need to keep that word for someone who acts virtuously.
You need to keep that word safe and clean and pure so that you can speak it to somebody who acts virtuously, who loves you, who protects you, who is curious about you, who empathizes with you.
Not somebody who continues to fuck your rapist.
I'm sorry to be harsh, but that is a very precious word for me.
And you cannot be Stockholmed enough to think that that word applies to this man.
And you're right, and it's painful that you're right.
Keep that word safe.
Keep that word for safe for a man who deserves it.
But don't foul it up with this monstrous visage.
I don't know what to say.
I'm kind of emotional right now.
What are you feeling?
Feeling sad.
I'm feeling sad.
Hurt.
I feel that, yeah, he has no right to have my love at all, and that's unfortunate.
And it's just painful because I have fought so hard to have a family, to not have one.
And I just feel so lonely.
Like, I have pets, but they don't...
They're just pets.
Like, I don't have...
Someone to hold me.
Someone to cover me.
Someone to say that they love me.
I lost that at 23.
And...
Yeah, I have my sister, but...
I just...
I don't have anyone to confide in.
Go on.
That's why I have such an anger inside of me, because I have so much to be angry about. - Well, Yes, you do.
And that has cost me friendships.
And I just want to try and deal with my past and move on and try and find healthy methods to release my anger so that it's not damaging to the people that I care about.
I think you can do that.
And let me tell you this.
I feel intense admiration for your honesty.
And I thank you for yours as well.
No, that is brave.
That is...
Noble.
That is heroic.
Genuinely heroic.
Right?
There should be, like, Marvel superhero comics called Emotional Honesty.
How I would love to be a superhero.
You are, at the moment.
You are a superhero.
Thank you.
Well...
You know you did something highly provocative...
To me, just now.
You don't know that, probably, but you will when I mention it.
Oh, boy.
You were in tears about your loss.
No one to hold you, no one to love you, no one to listen.
You said you lost that when you were 23, right?
Well, I think, like, my mom and I weren't close, either.
And like I said, she abused me when I was growing up, so...
She never hugged me.
She didn't...
Wow.
She didn't want to hug me when I was growing up.
She would push me away.
And she was very abusive verbally as well.
same with my father.
But our relationship did get closer when she was dying.
Go figure.
But it wasn't the closest that I craved for or longed for.
How did you get closer when she was dying?
Well, I was in school at the time.
She sat me down with her counselor who was in her life since I was a baby and she told me that she had cancer and that she had less than a year to live and when she told me this we hugged for the longest time and that's the longest hug I've ever received from her in my life and then I think I was living with her at the time,
and so as I was taking care of her, we got to spend more time together, especially when I quit school and my job, and I was there with her every single day.
But at times, we would argue and fight and yell at each other.
It was a very, very nightmare of a time, to say the least.
Because I would try and inform her about choices of health and different routes to take.
And she was just stuck in her own ways and she wanted to believe the medical doctors and not believe anything else.
And that's what caused her to die.
And she never...
She tried to protect me, I know that, by not telling me everything.
So...
When she had her first surgery I didn't know it was life-threatening until after and to see her afterwards was so surreal and tied up to the bed with tubes everywhere and then I had to she had gangrene so I had to be The person to sign off on her getting her toes removed, which I did not want to be in that position.
But I signed off on it anyways.
She was sedated.
I kept telling them that she needs to be woken up so that she can make this decision.
I was 21 at the time.
But she thanked me for it because she was able to walk afterwards.
But then that's when they found out that she had cancer and they couldn't do anything but chemotherapy and...
Radiation, which just made her lose weight, and then it made her not walk, and then she started to lose her control of bowel movements and stuff like that, so then she went to a palliative care and died within a week.
But, yeah.
I don't know where I was really going with this, but I've been wanting for someone to be in my life, like a mother figure or a father figure, and I haven't had that from either of my parents.
And it's a painful thing to acknowledge.
Did your mother know that your father's boyfriend sexually assaulted you?
Yes, and she was very upset about it.
When did she find out?
She found out when I started making contact with her.
I think I was, what, 15, 16 at the time.
She never really liked Like, my mom and my dad, oh my gosh, they bashed each other in front of my sister and I. So, like, my mom would bash my dad in front of me and my sister, and then when we saw my dad, he would do the same thing about my mom.
So they never really liked each other, and I was grateful that they got a divorce, because they fought a lot.
But, yeah.
But she didn't really do anything about it, but she never really liked it to begin with.
Right.
Why couldn't you stay with her when you were 14, if your father didn't want you in the house with your rapist?
I wasn't speaking with her at the time.
She would have been informed.
She was your mother, right?
I didn't talk to her.
I had no...
No, but the social workers, I assume, would have had to inform her.
I don't know about that.
I'm not sure, but...
I don't think they can just move a child when there's another parent in the neighborhood to...
I don't know how it worked.
I really...
I don't.
Like I said, I found out that I was going to foster care the day of it occurring.
I don't know how...
But I would assume that you went into foster care because your mother did not take you.
I didn't think of it like that.
I think they have to go to extended family first.
Again, I'm no expert, but...
Either am I. I think that they have to be refused by extended family first before the foster care becomes an option.
It would make sense, yes, but I'm not...
Like, you and I, I don't know.
I'm not certain, but it does make sense, and...
I don't hold any anger or anything towards my mom for saying no, whatever.
I didn't even think of it until you said that.
Wait, you don't hold any anger at your mother for not taking you away from a house with a rapist and away from foster care?
No, because I didn't have any connection with her at the time.
I didn't want to have any connection with her.
Oh, I don't know.
Listen, I mean, if you'd have been told it's your mom or foster care...
Well, I didn't have a choice, but I probably would have...
No, but if you had been told.
I probably would have picked my mom, yes.
Right.
So, I just want to...
Again, I don't know, obviously, the ins and outs, but I would be very surprised if they could just take you off to foster care when you had...
Another custodial parent in town.
That's a fair point, but usually with the foster care system, they don't like to place children in an abusive environment.
And my mom was very abusive until I moved out, until I moved with my dad at the age of 12.
But when you were talking to her while she was dying and when you were taking care of her, did she talk at all about the time that you were in foster care and whether she knew or what she did about it?
She did tell me she knew about it.
She told me that she felt like she wanted to take me, but at the time she couldn't.
Mainly because I wasn't talking with her, and then also she was kind of going through her own, I guess, stuff, like sorting out her own past and stuff from what she told me when I reconnected with her at the age of 18.
Her dad was a cop who raped her, and his cop friends got involved as well.
You mean in the rape of her?
Yes, yes.
She was an only child.
Her mom didn't do anything about it.
Her mom was actually glad that was happening to her daughter instead of her.
She was very abused by both parents and isolated.
She grew up on a farm, so she didn't have anyone to really go to.
No one would probably believe her anyways because her dad's caught.
When she told me this, I understood immediately why she has so much anger.
But I still was angry with her that she took it out on my sister and I for no reason.
It opened my eyes to understand her more and that's something I tried to do with my father.
And he just like completely closed that door.
So at least my mom was willing to open up to that.
I know it's very painful for her to do that.
It is a relief to know the traumas our parents experienced, right?
Yeah, it is.
It explains a lot, I find.
Yeah.
It gives some perspective.
It gives some sense of causality.
Yes.
And that's what I wanted with my dad, because I knew he didn't have a great upbringing as well.
Like, from what he shared, his dad died at the age of 10, and he became the father figure as he was the oldest.
And then he's Italian, and he knew he was gay, Since he was born and growing up in an Italian Christian home, that is not acceptable.
It's a sin, right?
Yes.
And so growing up with that and then being the head of the house, I guess you would say, was not pleasant.
And from what he told me, his mom didn't treat him well.
I don't know in what aspect, but I don't know.
But once I tried to get more personal with him and more like asking questions, he would lash out and yell and insult me and then make me cry and all that stuff.
And I'm like, okay, can't talk about this.
Yeah, and of course, I don't know, you said that you're Well, I mean, whether your mother had lifestyle choices, but for victims of child abuse, cancer rates are significantly higher.
It's just the gift that keeps on giving when you have a terrible childhood.
So it's like probably the cop got her eventually, right?
Yeah, that's what she said.
Like when she found out that she got cancer in her cervix area, she automatically blamed her father.
For that.
And she wasn't, like, she couldn't, like, give birth naturally.
She had to have C-sections because of that.
Oh, because of the damage from the rape as a child?
Yeah.
Yeah, for a lot of people, cancer is the noose, is the final noose of the abusers that gets thrown from the grave, beyond the grave sometimes.
Well, I know you battled with it as well.
Well, so yeah, you've got some reason to be angry.
Huge reason to be angry.
It's always chilling to me the degree to which these patterns repeat, right?
Your mother was assaulted and raped as a child.
You were assaulted as a child.
It is just chilling how there's this dumb goddamn photocopier with nothing but blood for ink that just keeps imprinting like a boot on the face of human potential, generation after generation.
Now, it sounds like you are ready, willing, and able to put a stop to this, right?
Yes.
Because...
I would like to try the non-aggression principle.
It's a struggle.
I'm not going to lie.
Because I have so much anger built up.
And that's why I would like to...
I work out.
I go for walks.
I write.
I draw.
I try and...
No, it won't do it.
It won't do it.
I try and release it.
It will help.
Yeah.
I'm sorry to interrupt.
It will help, but it won't do it.
Do you know what's under the anger?
Oh, pain and hurt.
Sorrow.
Yes.
Anger, like the anger that covers sorrow gives us the illusion of power.
But it's like feeling strong because you can rattle the bars of your cell.
So the anger is...
In this instance, obviously incredibly justified by the suffering that these people put you through.
But underneath, and this doesn't mean like the anger is false and the sorrow is true.
They're both true.
But the anger that acts out is the anger that hasn't found its proper mark.
You know, have you ever done archery, bows, arrows?
I tried, and I flunked miserably.
All right.
But you know, like, if you shoot the arrow, it goes thunk, right, deep into the bullseye.
It doesn't bounce anywhere, right?
Yes, that's true.
Right, but if you're not standing in front of the target, but you're standing, like, mostly to the side, and you shoot the arrow at the target, it's just going to bounce off, right?
Mm-hmm.
It's just going to bounce off and keep flying and hit someone else because you're not pointing at the target and aiming at the bullseye.
It just skims off, ricochets off, bounces somewhere else, right?
You know, like if you take a gun and you shoot, you stand on the side of a boat and you pull the trigger, the bullet goes straight in the water, right?
Mm-hmm.
But if you stand on the shore and you hold your gun pointing out flat at the water, if you shoot, the water can actually cause The surface tension can cause the bullet to bounce up because you're not aiming straight.
Right?
So whatever we don't aim straight at ricochets off and can really harm others.
Now parents don't want us to aim our anger at them and we as children find it impossible to aim our anger at our caregivers.
It's suicidal.
Right?
Yeah, very much so.
So, you experienced and received incredible harm from your caregivers, but you could not aim the arrow of anger at the bullseye as the justified source of your suffering.
I wasn't allowed.
You couldn't.
None of us could.
Yeah.
You can't.
Any kids who did that, well, let's just say those genes didn't last too long, right?
So then we become adults, and if we want to escape the past, to escape being trapped in the past, you can't escape the past, it's your past, but the great challenge is you've got to stand out in front of that bullseye, you've got to draw your arrow, and you've got to sink it deep in the bullseye.
And the angrier the parent The more unacceptable the anger in the child.
Because the parent who's angry knows that the anger of the child is an inevitable and healthy response to their own anger and abuse.
The Nazi god who sees the Jew crying shoots the Jew.
Because the Jew is making the Nazi god feel bad.
Right?
That's, I guess, what I'm struggling with is because I can't direct my anger to the bullseye, as you say.
Well, one of my parents is dead, and then the other one just doesn't want anything to do with me.
No, no, no, no.
I said bullseye.
I deliberately chose something passive, not a dual.
Death is no barrier to legitimate anger.
Because, as you know, deep down in your immensely strong heart, you know, Christina, that you will never, ever, ever get what you needed as a child, right?
It will never happen.
You will never, ever Get the sweet nectar of good parenting as a child because you are an adult.
If you didn't receive enough to eat as a child and you're six inches shorter as an adult because you were malnourished, there is no amount of adult food that would give you those six inches back, right?
Correct.
So, how do I, like, overcome this then?
Like, how do I move past this?
That's my struggle.
No, no, no.
No, you're, as most people do, you are trying to skate into a list and away from an experience, right?
You're trying to say, well, give me a list.
Give me a laundry list.
Give me something to do, right?
Everyone says that.
You hear this in the show all the time, right?
I'm trying to connect with someone about a really important emotional truth and like, yeah, but what do I do about it?
Give me something to do.
Right?
It's human doing, not human being.
Don't give me anything I have to actually sit with and absorb and accept.
Don't give me a lived emotional experience in the moment.
Give me a plan, right?
Because a plan takes you out of yourself and engages the bullshit brain.
The bullshit brain is the distraction brain.
It's a fine brain, don't get me wrong, but when it comes to deep-lived, particularly childhood emotional experiences, it's worse than useless.
It's a massive distraction.
I'm starting to feel upset.
Quick, give me an iPad!
I'm going to go look stuff up about being upset.
It's like you're just doing that to avoid, right?
That's a good point.
So when I tell you, because you'll listen back to this and you'll hear yourself say things that It will be completely shocking to you now.
But you cried because you said there's no one to hold you now, right?
And you said that ended when I was 23.
I don't believe that's the real experience.
No, it's not.
As a child, you desperately hungered and thirsted for that connection, that love, that acceptance, that curiosity.
You know, when you're the victim of child abuse, all you do is focus on everyone else all the time.
That's so true.
All you think about is where the next disaster, the next abuse, the next hit, the next tragedy, the next screaming, the next...
You name it, the next instability is coming from.
And you become nothing but a skin full of eyeballs, constantly looking around, hypervigilant, staring, looking, scanning.
You cannot compose a haiku with a tiger in the house, because you're kind of thinking of the tiger, right?
If you know it's somewhere.
And so you're focused on other people and you're focused on attempting to manage other people and you're focusing on attempting to minimize the damage other people can do you.
Not on what you need, not on what you deserve, not on what your experience is, right?
And for the entirety of the rest of your life, Christina, your childhood will never be any different than it was.
That loss, that tragedy, that which was stolen from you, it will never ever change.
Your childhood is a museum.
The exhibits never change.
The tour never changes.
There's nothing new.
Nothing is taken away.
Sorry, go ahead.
No, and I have acknowledged that, that I can't change my childhood.
I'm trying to change myself now, trying to break habits that are not healthy, like losing control when I'm angry.
When someone insults me, I tend to Play right back into their hands and insult them back.
Which you didn't like your mom taking out her childhood on you, right?
Yes.
I don't like doing that.
I don't like that part of me because it's not the right thing to do and it's not healthy.
I'm trying to acknowledge that and Yeah, but you just give me words like you're reading off the back of a self-help book, right?
I know.
I know it's not going to be healthy.
I know it's not going to make you happy.
I get all of that.
I get all of that.
But what I'm trying to tell you is that if you mourn what you lose, you will lose life.
Your rage.
The rage is a desperate desire for your life to be different.
To not want it.
To not want what you have.
To not want what you have inherited.
To not want the temper.
To not want the discontent.
To not want the retaliatory emotions.
You don't want any of this stuff.
Don't you wish you could just reach in, peel that shit out, And throw it in a sewage grate, right?
That would be the simple way, yes.
That would be the simple way.
Give me some drug, give me some thing, give me some process.
Yeah, shave my head and throw me in a V-mask, right?
And I'm all set, right?
But the reality is that I think that the rage and the discontent comes from a desperate desire to not have to deal with this stuff, to not have to accept it, to not have to accept the sorrow.
And I believe, and it's been my experience, that once you accept that it was an infinite tragedy that can never be changed That's when you can start to leave it behind.
Like, let me give you an analogy.
So there are horror movies where the heroine dies, right?
Right.
Now, if you thought that every time you watched that movie, you could change the ending, you could save her, wouldn't you want to keep watching that movie and keep trying different things?
Yeah.
In other words, you know, when you're a kid, you yell, yell at the movie, look behind you, right?
Yeah.
Thank you.
You go for help, I'll follow the bloody footprints into the cellar.
And once you get that your childhood is a movie that can't be changed, the desire to rewatch it diminishes.
Right?
You want your childhood to change and you want your father to change it for you.
Thank you.
Your mother can't because she's dead, but that's why you have a hunger for your father to be a better person because that way the movie can change.
And that keeps you watching the movie again and again and again.
Trying all these different voodoo spells and dance moves and yells and incantations and candles and rituals.
Trying to get a different ending.
But because your childhood is over, there will never be a different ending.
There could have been a different ending when you were 16 or 14 or 8 or 10.
Maybe 17 and a half, I don't know.
But now you're in your 20s.
The movie will never change.
And no one is coming in to rewrite the ending.
And there will never be any reshooting.
Cameramen have all dispersed.
The actors are all moved on to other projects.
They've all aged.
They can't play those roles anymore.
And the movie will never change.
Because shooting is done.
Everyone's gone.
Now, if you watch that movie knowing that it can never change, you can experience the movie in a very real way.
Because if you think you can change it, then you don't experience it with sorrow, you experience it with anxiety and a desire to affect the outcome, right?
You are so right.
But now you know that it can never change.
If your father gets struck by lightning and grows a conscience the size of Worf's forehead tomorrow, not gonna happen, but if it did, that movie of your childhood would still remain absolutely unaltered.
And if you know you can't change it and no one is coming in to rescue and rewrite the ending or anything like that, then, I think and only then, can you watch the movie As a tragedy, not an illusory opportunity for change.
I didn't think of it like that.
Make it a movie, I can still change.
Make it a movie, Dad, I can still change.
Come back into my life.
Be different.
Rewrite the ending.
I don't want to watch this movie.
Keep staying the same.
I wanted to change.
I needed to change.
And that tension causes a great amount of frustration and anger and rage.
Yeah.
Make it different.
Make it different.
Your fight and flight mechanism is kicking in because you think you can change stuff, but you can't.
Exactly.
You can't.
Because I would try and try and try and try, right?
Over and over to make him happy and prove to him that I'm not this idea that he had of me.
But Right.
And I think it's that kind of stress that can cause cancer.
In my, again, obviously ridiculously amateur opinion, but I think that that constant striving for things to be different than what they are, you know, it takes a mighty heart and a strong mind to accept the world as it is.
Not just our personal world, but the world as a whole as it is.
We constantly look at the real world and we recoil like we're hit with electricity.
And to take a deep breath and to say, this is the world.
This is where people are.
This is what people think or claim to think.
But the world is what it is.
We can do a little bit to affect it.
We can nudge it here and there.
But in order to nudge it, we must first accept it.
We must look at something as being impervious to change to truly understand it.
Before we try to change it.
And that acceptance that your childhood is a movie, not a video game where you can beat the boss, try it again, respawn, try it again, respawn.
No, it is a movie.
It cannot change.
That, I think, is freedom from the stress and tension and rage of desperately trying to change something which you cannot change.
Which is not your life in the future, but you...
We so desperately want the past to be different that we live there.
Trying to will differences to the inevitable.
But at least I have control of the future.
Yes.
Yes.
I know that was all pretty abstract.
And, you know, obviously I strongly recommend, as I usually do in these situations, I think as I always do, you know, Therapist is fantastic.
John Bradshaw's books are very good.
I have been through counseling before from 12 to 21.
I would like to still be in counseling.
It's just because of financial issues.
No, no, I get it.
Yeah, but I mean, there's still stuff you can do.
And, right, I think Alice Miller is very good in these areas, as is Faye Snyder, S-N-Y-D-E-R. But I hope that helps.
I mean, I just hope that when you listen to this again, I mean, I think you've come an amazing distance, really, over an hour or an hour and a bit.
Well, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me.
It really has opened new doors of looking at things and to really, like you said, look at my life as a movie and embrace the emotions that come from it and hopefully be able to move on.
I didn't think of it like that.
Like I said, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me.
It really has impacted me a lot.
It's a weird paradox.
Like, I cannot save the child that I was, but I can use the child that I was to save the adult I can be.
That should be a quote.
Yeah.
Meme that mofo, right?
All right.
Well, listen, will you keep us posted?
Let us know how it's going.
Of course.
And huge, huge, huge props and kudos.
You have a deep and fierce, in a good way, heart.
And I'm overcome with admiration for your honesty and for your willingness to, you know, step into that furnace of openness.
Thank you for allowing me to do that.
All right.
Well, I hope to hear from you again.
Thanks again, everyone, so much.
This is How We Roll.
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But have yourselves a wonderful, wonderful week, everyone.
We will be chatting with you on the night of Saturdayness.
