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June 24, 2015 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:38:22
3007 Eternal Human Consciousness? - Call In Show - June 20th, 2015
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Good evening, everybody.
Hope you're doing well.
Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio.
And you might want to check out our video on the truly horrifying incidents of the Charleston church shootings.
It's important stuff to talk about.
We want to do everything we can to try and do our best to make sure stuff like this Never happens again.
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Probably not.
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So let's move on with the show.
Mike, who do we have?
Alright, well, for us today is Colin.
Colin wrote in and said, I would like to know what Stefan thinks, in both a literal and philosophical sense, of the idea that all consciousness is one and the same, and that at the end it is where we return to when we die, and what sends us back to rebirth.
That's from Colin.
Colin, I think you've come to the right place.
Thank you.
And I appreciate the question.
Is there anything you wanted to...
Add to it?
Yeah, just quite quickly, I miswrote something there.
I said that this higher-dimensional source I'm talking of is the source of all energy in the world.
I meant the universe.
I'm sorry, could you just speak up ahead?
Sorry, sorry.
Yeah, what I was saying is I said in the email I wrote to Michael that it's the source of all energy in the world, but I meant to say the universe.
But, yeah.
Oh, yeah, that's...
That's not going to be the primary bone of contention between us, but I appreciate you clarifying that.
But yeah, so is there anything else you wanted to add to your question?
Should we dive in?
Let's just dive in.
I'm happy to answer whatever questions you would have.
When did you first come up with the idea of universal consciousness?
Did it come to you in the form of a voice that's similar to, say, Sir Alec Guinness?
No, I'm just kidding, but sorry.
Go ahead.
Growing up, I'll give you a little bit of my backstory.
For the first, maybe 5 to 13 years old, I attended a Presbyterian church, Protestant, and I never really believed in the whole idea of God.
I just sort of went as something to do on a Wednesday night, you know.
It was this sort of club for, I'd say, about 5 to 18-year-olds, you know, get qualifications and stuff through it.
About 13, I abandoned faith that I never really held, but I always felt that human beings are connected in a way that, you know, animals really aren't.
We have something special about us, and that's just something I believe.
Right.
So, of course, you believe that you're inhabited by a spirit or a soul that is going to survive your physical death, right?
Yes.
That belief, however, sorry, I'll talk about more than that.
That doesn't come from any sort of religious or philosophical idea.
That's the understanding that in the world of physics, energy doesn't die and the consciousness is a form of energy which cannot be destroyed, it cannot be created.
And it makes sense to me that it's all one and the same.
It just exists beyond our physical realm.
Yeah, I mean, and so a star can explode and then the star matter is cast forth into the universe where after untold eons it may drift using gravitational attraction as it sort of conglomerates or aggregates.
It can drift into creating another star, right?
Is that sort of the idea?
Okay.
Like oil, which is squished up old prehistoric tree trunks, right?
The tree trunks once took their energy from the air and then millions of years later they're dug up and burned and then release energy back into the air.
So is it that kind of Big cycle stuff, right?
Rain water, right?
It evaporates on the land, and then it aggregates in clouds, goes out to sea, rains into the sea, or whatever, right?
They get this whole cycle of precipitation, right?
Yeah, exactly.
Well, I mean, it certainly is true that, scientifically true, that the atoms that compose me After I die, we'll return to the earth, and then a tree may grow over my bones, and then somebody may eat a piece of fruit that has grown from the tree that has grown from my bones, and some of my atoms may pass from my bones into the tree, into the fruit, into another person, right?
Yeah, exactly.
Well, no, but that's atoms.
That's not me, right?
That's not me.
In terms of what I'm talking about with the human consciousness, it exists beyond, you know, our physical being.
It doesn't...
I wouldn't say...
I don't know how to describe it, really.
Part of this goes into...
No, you've described it.
I mean, sorry to interrupt, but I mean, you've described it well, which is that you believe in an eternal essence to consciousness that survives death and is part of, like a jigsaw puzzle piece, is part of a larger consciousness or is united...
With all consciousness, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Now, billions of consciousness around the world, are they united insofar as if we're all one six billionth of a puzzle, or is it like all human consciousness and then a deity as well?
Oh no, no such thing as a deity.
I just believe that there is some sort of source of energy.
It's not at all intelligent.
I just believe that, you know, consciousness is part of a bigger thing and something that we probably won't ever understand.
Okay, so I would like, since you believe that this is not a personal belief of yours, like, I like red, right?
Yeah.
This is, for you, a description.
Of something that is empirically and universally true, right?
Yes.
So, make the case.
Okay, well, part of where this belief stems from comes from string theory, actually.
In string theory, the belief is that there are nine dimensions, sorry, the theory is, there's nine dimensions to our universe, as well as a tenth dimension, which is time.
A simple way to say it would be, the further you go through these dimensions, the more realities a person can perceive of.
The way it works is, we are sitting in our dimension, we have our reality.
If you were to go, say, to the fourth dimension, you'd be able to see some of the different paths that your life could take, you could experience them.
All the way through to the ninth dimension, which is where every reality and every universe is possible and has happened.
And it's important to remember that dimensions exist a bit differently from our universe.
Like, there could be many universes in one dimension, and one dimension to permeate through each universe.
Yeah, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I just have to interrupt you because this is just a lot of words to me, right?
So as far as I understand it, and I'm no expert, of course, on this, but I remember reading, I dated a woman, an engineering student at a university, oh gosh, now, more than 30 years ago now.
And, oh, hang on.
No, more than 20 years ago, not quite at all.
And I remember reading about string theory back then, and it all seemed pretty cool and do be enabled.
But as far as I understand it, there's two things that are important about string theory, just as there are about quantum physics.
And particularly true with string theory is that string theory has not been, as far as I understand it, It was not new 20 to 25 years ago, and 20 to 25 years further along, it has still not been proven.
That's number one.
Number two is that, like quantum physics, string theory in no way, shape, or form shows up in the realm of sense data.
So it's a theoretical construct for understanding certain interactions of matter and energy, but it in no way aggregates to To sense data, right?
And what I mean by that is there's freaky stuff that goes on at the atomic level according to quantum physics.
But all of that cancels out long before you get to the level of sense data.
Now, there is a philosophy of science, which, you know, is the scientific method and so on, and is important for establishing standards by which we know the truth about matter and energy and the principles thereof.
But when it comes to When it comes to ethical decisions you're going to make in your life, when it comes to the stimulation of moral courage necessary for the advancement of the species from animal to ubermensch, so to speak, the scientific theories have absolutely no relevance whatsoever.
I understand all that about string theory.
I understand it's not proven.
And it's had time.
I mean, sorry, it's had time.
I mean, within a couple of years of Einstein's theory coming out, it was done and dusted, as they say, in England, right?
I mean, light bent around stars, and the time dilation effect was established, and it's proven.
Now, they've had 30 years and more technology than any other physicist in history could dream of.
They still haven't been able to nail this squid to the wall, right?
Yeah.
So I don't know if you can found a philosophical proposition about reality on a multi-decade, largely incomprehensible, unproven scientific theory.
Well, what I'm talking about doesn't really, I'm trying to think of a word, it's not bound to string theory, that's just, there's parts of string theory that No, no, moving the goalpost.
Moving the goalpost.
Ogre!
Ogre!
We are moving the goalpost, right?
Because I asked you to make the case, and you started talking about string theory, and then I gave you a rebuttal, and then you moved the goalpost, right?
No, I said your rebuttal.
There's a bit more to what I'm talking about than just string theory.
That's just one part of it, and in itself, it's one part.
No, no, no, but you don't get to start off by talking about string theory.
And then when string theory, at least I make a case against string theory, then change to something else, right?
Because if your proposition about universal consciousness relies on string theory, and string theory proves to be relatively invalid in the realm of human action philosophy, then that's important.
Because if you say, well, I don't know, I assume that you start with the majority of what you're Theory is based on, right?
You start with the most important part.
Now, if I try to disprove, let's just say I did disprove it just for the sake of convenience.
I'm not saying I did, but...
So if you say, well, most of it is based on string theory, and then I disprove string theory and its relevance to human action philosophy, and then you say, well, it's not all about, you know, let's move on, let's like...
But no, you can't do that, right?
I mean, that's...
Because if the first part of what you bring up It's disproven, you can't then say, well, it's not that important a part of it, because if it's not that important a part of it, why did you bring it up first?
Well, I didn't claim it's not an important part of it.
I brought up first, I'm sorry, I'm not very well, it's quite late tonight and my head's not all screwed on properly.
It's alright, we'll give it a twist and turn and tug and see if we can get it to the right place.
No, no, I accept what you're saying about string theory and accept that it's not proven and probably won't be proven.
I just think that there's parts of string theory as well as there's parts of other, you know, crazy theories about the creation of the universe that some of these things would hold true, not all of them will.
I believe there's a lot that we're never going to know in our lifetime.
No, no, no, no.
In no way establishes consciousness without matter.
There's no part of string theory, and I don't even know much about string theory, but I can guarantee you this, that there is no part of string theory that detaches consciousness from matter.
Because matter is an effect of consciousness, in that there can be...
I just did a podcast on this a while back.
It hasn't been released yet, but it's going to come out.
So I won't go into all the arguments here, but it would be like saying that string theory creates a square circle, or string theory has the effects of matter without the cause of matter, like it has an effect of gravity without the cause of mass.
And there's no valid part of a scientific theory that can violently contradict all sense data and rationality and empirical experimentation.
And so you can't have an effect without a cause, and you cannot have consciousness without matter.
So, my concern, and I'm not accusing you of this, but just my concern about this mystical scientism that empiricists and rationalists like myself run into a lot, which is I have a thesis that is pretty outlandish.
This is what people like you say.
I have a thesis that is pretty outlandish, and when asked of proof, they go into the most arcane aspects of theoretical physics as if...
That somehow proves the case.
What it's designed to do, like a squid spurting ink in the water, is just confuse people and say, well, I guess I don't really understand string theory, so maybe my consciousness can outlast my body.
But you can't use science to disprove this stuff.
Give me a rational argument, because I guarantee you this as well.
I guarantee you that you did not Not believe in consciousness without matter and then get deeply versed in string theory and a scientist convince you that there was consciousness without matter.
I bet you had this belief emotionally and you're grabbing at scientism to try and find a way not to prove it but to baffle people into thinking that something has been established.
Well, I'm sorry.
Do you mind if I just take like five minutes just to try and explain myself here?
I'm not going to say anything that will confuse people.
It wasn't my intention to confuse people.
I didn't actually mean to start the string theory part.
The reason I mention string theory is...
Nine dimensions is not confusing, really?
Well, yeah, that's confusing, but you know, I didn't get into it.
Like, I don't base what I think of on string theory.
I... I'm trying to think of a way.
It's something that I do believe in, and I can't tell you why I believe in it.
I can't prove it.
Then you can't believe it.
That's the deal.
I mean, if you're calling into a philosophy show, there are rules, right?
I mean, you can't bring a bazooka to a chess tournament.
I mean, you can, but then you're not playing chess anymore.
You're playing something else quite a bit, right?
And so when it comes to your beliefs...
If you say, well, I have this belief, but I can't really prove it, then you don't have the right to have the belief, right?
I mean, because then it's bigotry, it's prejudice.
Like if I say, you know, all Chinese people are thieves, and you say, well, what's the evidence for that?
I say, well, I don't really have any evidence, but I just believe it.
Well, everybody would recognize that that's a form of bigotry, right?
And if you have a very strong and powerful and foundational belief, and what yours is, is metaphysical, like it's right down in the basis of reality, right?
We're not having a disagreement about the ethics of abortion or the death penalty.
This is right down in the root of matter and energy.
And if you have a metaphysical belief and you say, well, I can't really prove it or anything.
Well, then, according to philosophy, you can't have that belief.
I see.
I see.
See, the thing is, I'm trying to think.
It's because the subject I'm dealing with here is what happens to the human body, the brain, the consciousness, etc.
after we die.
And it's the question, is death really the end?
Or are we just, you know, recycled into other humans?
That's kind of what I'm getting at here.
I know I didn't start off too well, but that's, you know, kind of what I'm getting at.
The idea that we don't die and that there's a reason...
No, not that we don't die.
That we are reborn, but there's not any sort of, you know, God presence, power in this.
It's just the recycling of our consciousness.
It's something that I know it can't be proven, and I understand what you're saying.
But I'd like to ask...
Well no, not only can it not be proven, it's easy to disprove.
Really?
Because if we have eternal consciousness, then I should be able to remember existence before I was born.
Well, surely memory is tied to the brain, which is a physical object.
Well, see, but do I have an identity without any memories?
I think that as you sort of see people in the late stages of brain degenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, the question of identity and its relationship to memory is questionable, to say the least, right?
So if you say, well, you know, you are going to be reborn, right?
Well, am I going to be completely erased?
I mean, is it sort of like saying, well, you get Bill Gates' computer, but it's going to be entirely reformatted with like 12th level ninja decryption or whatever it is, right?
I don't know how the heck you erase stuff like that.
And then you say, well, that's not really Bill Gates' computer.
It's just a computer that he happened to touch once, but it's completely reformatted, right?
And so if you're going to say...
That we're going to be reborn, and there's some part of us that survives, but that part of us doesn't include any memories whatsoever, then I'm not really sure what you mean when you say, I could be reborn.
Because if I'm reborn with no memory of having existed in the previous incarnation, and no memory of any time in between, and I'm starting from scratch completely, what on earth would it mean to say that I am reborn?
Reborn.
It's like saying, well, there's a plastic cup, we melted it down, and we turned it into saran wrap, and therefore the plastic cup has been reborn.
It's like, no, it hasn't.
It's now saran wrap, right?
I understand, yeah.
Perhaps a better way to word it would be to say that the consciousness that inhabits my body will one day inhabit another body.
But no memories, right?
You're saying no memories of your existing life, and no memories of any time in between these incarnations, right?
So you'll be completely reformatted and restart.
How on earth is that different from simply dying?
I mean, I'm not sure, actually.
I'm poking at this stuff just because I think that reason and evidence is important for healthy thinking.
So if I was reborn as, I don't know, a leggy South Asian blonde woman, like I get hit by a bus and tomorrow I wake up as a leggy South Asian blonde woman.
And I have no memories of ever having been Stefan Molyneux host of Freedom in Radio.
I have no memories of any time in between.
I have no memories of previous incarnations.
Well, how could you possibly say there's any continuity?
Well, I mean...
I'd say that to be assuming that your consciousness and your memories are tied together.
I wouldn't say that they are.
I'd say that our consciousness exists.
I'm sorry.
I had all this ready to go before the call.
Oh no, I'm giving you really annoying questions.
And frankly, they're unanswerable.
No, I'm glad you're giving me them.
Spot-provoking.
Yeah, they're not answerable.
And I can also tell that this is dislodging nothing.
And what I find fascinating about that is that the beliefs are serving an emotional need within you, which is why you change and don't give up the idea.
And my question, which is to me much more fascinating than, am I going to get born again as a leggy South Asian blonde woman, is...
What do you think these emotional beliefs might be serving for you emotionally?
Another way of asking that is, let's say that you accept what I'm saying and say, well, no, I'm a mortal carbon-based life form and just like when you turn off the radio, the voices don't go anywhere.
When I die, all of the biochemical and electrical energy that sustains my consciousness ceases and the body is there but the consciousness is gone.
And if you were to accept that How would you feel if that were true?
If that were true, I'm not saying it is, but if it were true.
Yeah.
See, I'm not sure how I could accept that.
I'd say maybe this belief stems from...
It's hard because I'm now trying to get deep into my own psyche.
Yeah, I know, I know, I know.
It's okay, because, I mean, you're a deep guy to begin with.
These are deep beliefs, so I'm not asking you to do the impossible.
I guess it's just, you know...
I don't want to think that what makes me me, and I don't believe that my body makes me because my body isn't me.
My brain contains all the information that makes me me.
It just powers this meat suit along the road.
I just don't want to think that death is really the end for anyone at all.
But why don't you want to think that?
I get what I just said, you don't want to think that, but why?
Eh...
It just...
I'd say one of the most simplest reasons is it just doesn't make sense to me.
No, no, no.
It's an emotional thing.
Because your belief makes no sense, which we've just been talking about.
And I don't mean that you don't make any sense.
I mean just this particular belief doesn't make any sense.
The moment you're kicking in ten dimensions, you've got a question, just based on Occam's razor, about whether what you're saying is basically sensible.
Yes, of course.
So, forget that it doesn't make any sense.
There's an emotional reason.
Why?
And please understand, I'm not saying this, emotional reason, in order to disprove your argument or to prove mine.
I'm just genuinely, humanly, deeply curious about the motivation for this.
Oh, don't worry.
I mean, I've been watching your show for a while, so I understand that these are the sort of questions you ask, and they can really get to the bottom of the person, through them.
I'm not too sure what the emotional connection could be.
Many people in my life have passed away.
I just don't want to think that they're really gone.
Did you have closure with these people?
Did you love them?
Did you have a connection with them?
Did you follow them into the sinkhole of death?
Did you hold them as they faded?
Did you have the connection with them as they went?
The two...
Sorry, it's a bit hard to talk about this.
Getting a bit emotional.
No problem with the emotions.
The last two people I lost was my mother when I was 16.
Is that when you gave up your faith?
No, I gave up my faith at 13.
But I didn't really hold the faith to begin with.
I just went to this church because my mother encouraged me to do it.
So your mother held the faith, and then she died when you were 16?
No, she didn't really hold the faith at all, I think.
She didn't believe in religion.
I think she believed in God.
She wasn't really open about...
Wait, you think?
Hang on, hang on, hang on.
I mean, you knew the woman for 16 years.
Yeah, yeah.
She sent you to church, and you don't know whether she believed in God?
Well, the thing is, she never went to church.
She never, you know, prayed.
She never spoke about God, you know.
But she sent you to church.
I think the only reason she sent me to church is...
It wasn't church.
It's this organization called the Boys Brigades.
It's kind of religious in the fact that, you know, they make you pray and, you know...
Oh, like Boy Scouts.
Like I went to Boy Scouts when I was younger for years.
So it's like Boy Scouts.
It has sort of a...
Well, at least in England, it has this kind of...
You know, God, as so far as God serves the needs of empire, that's a good white explorer in the David Livingston style.
So there was God in it, but it wasn't necessarily religious in any fundamental way.
Okay.
And of course, the next person, the major person.
No, no, hang on.
We never do mom in five minutes.
Never do mom.
This is MILF, Mothers I Love to Philosophize.
It's PH at the end, though, just in case you're going to screw up your internet searches.
So, you didn't know if your mother believed in a deity or not?
No.
And would you say that...
I mean, that seems like a pretty important thing to know about your mom.
Is that indicative of not being close to her?
Or...
No, I was always close to my mum.
You know, the whole idea of religion has never really been a part of my family at all.
Like, you know, we're sort of more down-to-earth people.
You know, it's all about the love between human beings and actually just doing good things for the fact that doing good things are good, rather than doing good things and the worry that you're burning a pit of fire for an alternative.
But no, religion was never part of this household.
Ever.
Alright, so when you lost your faith at 13, if you were close to your mother, I assume you had a lot of conversations with your mother about this?
See, it's hard to actually recollect events in my childhood.
No, no, no, no.
Listen, come on, come on, man.
Unless you've actually had a railway spike through the neofrontal cortex, you would remember a conversation about losing faith with your mother.
This is not something you would forget.
That would be a powerful conversation to have, right?
As I said a couple of times now, I don't think I said it loud enough.
I didn't really have the faith.
I just went because I was encouraged to.
This organisation, Boys Brigade, upon completing the entire course, you get something called your Queen's Award or something like that.
It's just a good thing to have on your CV. But I never really went for the God thing.
I never believed in God.
No, we're back.
You told me that you had some religious beliefs when you were younger, and then you lost your faith when you were about 13, right?
When I say religious beliefs, I believed there was a God.
Look, I get that.
I get that.
I'm not trying to say that you went from altar boy to, like, demon seed worshiper or something like that.
But what I'm saying is that you had some relative shift in your belief systems.
And my question is, if you were close to your mother, wouldn't you have conversations about that?
Now, if you don't recall having conversations about that, I'm not saying it was like some mind-bending huge change in your life, but it's not insignificant, right?
It's not like you switched allegiances from one football team to another.
Actually, that probably would be pretty significant in a lot of the British Isles.
But I'm asking because you say that you're close to your mother, you don't know about her religious beliefs, and you don't seem to have had conversations about any alterations in your See, no, I don't imagine I did have a conversation with her, because it wasn't really a change in my life.
I really just went from believing in a God to then thinking, well, there's probably not a God.
I mean, I wouldn't say I'm completely atheist.
I mean, 99% atheist, 1% agnostic, because As we said earlier, no one knows what happens after you die.
Worked up about something.
You just seem to be basically pissing on that fire.
Because it is not insignificant when you lose a belief in a deity.
That is not an insignificant event.
Because you brought it up originally as a fairly significant event.
And then I say, well, did you talk about it with your mother?
And now suddenly it's become an insignificant event.
Now it's very clear to me that you're changing your story because if it was a significant event and you didn't talk about it with your mother, maybe you weren't as close as you think.
That's all.
Or maybe there's another definition of closeness that I'm not understanding, right?
In which case, explain it to me.
How are you close to your mother when you didn't know if she believed in a deity, and you didn't tell her about your loss of belief in a deity?
And I'm not saying that's the only conversation that would ever make you close, but that's just all we've talked about.
See, it's just I can't actually – honestly, I can't recall having a conversation with her about ways in my faith.
I just – Can you think of other important conversations about milestones in your intellectual or emotional life that you've had with your mother?
Is there anything specific you want to know?
No, just give me the one that you would consider to be the most significant conversation you had with your mother.
Just an outline.
We don't have to get into all the details.
I'm just kind of curious.
Because you define something as close, and I'm not going to disagree with you.
I just want to understand what you mean by close.
Right, and that's a problem.
Mike, are you on the air?
I am.
Okay, Mike.
I don't mean to interrupt this conversation, and we don't have to get into any particular details, but if somebody said to you, Mike, have you ever had conversations with Steph about anything significant or important?
What would you say?
Yes.
And I would have 20 million examples probably off the top of my head without even thinking.
We had one today.
We had one two days ago.
I mean, we talk a lot.
If somebody would say to me, well, have you...
I say, oh, I'm very close to my wife.
And people would say, well, you know, what are important conversations we've had with your wife?
I'm like, well, sit down and let me open volume one of two million, right?
And we've been involved in a significantly deep conversation since the day we met.
That was our first date.
And hopefully that will be our last one, too, at someone's deathbed.
So...
And the reason why this is important, and Mike, can you think of relationships where you have that kind of connection, where this would be a tough question?
Not relationships I have currently, certainly relationships I had in the past.
Well, no, but relationships that you would call close.
Where I couldn't come up with a close, connected conversation?
With examples of any close conversations, yeah.
Nothing that I'd describe as close.
And again, I'm not trying to say you weren't close with your mother.
I'm not trying to say that at all.
But I'm an empiricist, right?
And when people say stuff, I always ask for evidence, right?
Like you said, I believe in this consciousness.
And I said, we'll make the case, right?
And we've been talking about that.
And the reason that I'm not trying to sort of rip apart your heart from your memory of your mother, like pulling apart two sets of Velcro or anything like that.
But I think there could be very important emotional reasons why this belief in eternal recurrence is Might serve you.
Now, I think serve you in the short run, but cost you in the long run.
And that's why we're talking about this.
At least that's why I think it's important to talk about it.
Yeah.
Sorry I wasn't able to answer your question.
No, no, no.
Don't apologize.
We're just talking.
It's an emotional subject.
It is.
And I want to be sensitive to that.
And again, I am sensitive that I'm You know, poking around with a sharp stick in a volcano.
So, Colin, I'm not trying to be disrespectful to you or your relationship with your mom.
I don't think you are, don't worry.
When you asked if she believed in a god, she never actually outright told me she did.
She did believe in heaven.
She did believe in heaven.
But she never went to church, she never prayed, she never acted like a religious person.
She just believed that good people went to heaven and bad people went to hell.
Sorry.
No, no, don't apologize.
But tell me, why do you feel strongly about this?
I'm in no way saying you shouldn't, right?
I want to make sure I understand where you're coming from, what emotion is coming up for you here.
Well, as I said, I don't believe in God or anything like that.
I guess I just don't want to think that she's, you know, completely gone.
Okay, but why?
I'm not saying you should rejoice that she's gone, right?
I'm not saying like do a dance or anything like that.
But my question is why is it so painful for you to think that she's just gone and gone and gone and you shall never meet again?
There's so many reasons.
You only get one mother, I suppose.
She was a really important part of my life growing up.
Letting go is probably the hardest thing I could ever do.
It's been five years now.
It seems to me as if Since, you know, the day that happened, my life's just stood still, and I just don't know how to start again.
I suppose the idea that we never really die just brings some sort of comfort.
Yes, yes, but I think it comes at a cost.
I think it comes at a cost.
You know, there's a statement, which I... I think is a useful starting point for discussion.
I don't know if it's the be-all and end-all.
And it says that all mental dysfunction arises from the avoidance of legitimate suffering.
Yeah, I understand that.
And I wonder if when you are...
And look, I mean, 16, that's a terrible time.
To lose a parent.
I have a friend I grew up with who was 16 when his mother died after a both terribly and mercifully short battle with cancer and it was a brutal experience and he tried to tough it out and defuse it and I don't know that I ever really saw him grieve, and I think it cost him.
I really do.
And I'm not trying to, you know, transpose him onto you, and, you know, I'm really trying to be aware of that, but you said, Colin, that your life is a little stuck since your mother died five years ago.
And I wonder if there is this grieving within you, but you kind of drag it down with this With these theories of eternal recurrence.
Like you say, oh, I miss her so much.
It was so terrible that she died.
She's my only mother.
And the grief begins to overwhelm you.
And then you kind of beat it back with these ghosts of we'll meet again, right?
I understand, yeah.
I think that's probably a good way to say why this has all happened.
Why?
I think the ways that I do, sorry.
I just don't know what it is.
So then my question is, my question is, What was your modeling in terms of handling grief when you were growing up?
In other words, everybody has grief, everybody has sorrow, everybody has troubles.
I do, you do, everybody does.
And how was sadness or grieving or loss, how was that modeled for you when you were growing up?
Not just in terms of how people dealt with your griefs and loss, but how did you see other people, in particular adults, deal with grief and loss?
I was quite a reclusive child.
I didn't have many friends or go out very often.
The only adult connection I really had was my parents.
And, you know, so death was a bit of a strange thing to experience in that way, because I hadn't really experienced it before.
I'm sorry, you didn't say you didn't have pets or anything like that?
No, I had one pet, but that was a cat I got when I was two and she didn't die until I was twenty.
That was only a couple of years ago.
So no, I didn't really experience heavy loss or grief before this.
The most I did experience was when I was seven years old.
My great grandad passed away.
But I mean, at seven years old, I didn't understand what that meant at the time.
It wasn't actually until ten years, no, seven years later that I think I first cried about that.
Ah, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.
All right, so now we're probably close to the center of things.
So you were seven when your great-grandfather died, and it wasn't until you were 14 that you cried about it?
Yeah, fifteen.
Fifteen, sorry.
It was like seven, eight years.
I can't really remember.
Yeah, it's fine.
So, why did it take you that long to cry about the death of your great-grandfather?
Not that there's anything wrong with you.
I'm not trying to imply that.
Like, you cold-hearted bastard, how long does it take for your heart to thaw when someone you love dies?
Why do you think it took you that long?
When I got told about it, I remember, I actually quite remember perfectly how it happened.
I just woke up one morning and my dad came in to tell me that.
My great-granddad passed away the night, but, you know, at seven years old, what I said was, oh, okay.
And then I went to play my computer games and stuff, you know.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
See, you're putting the onus upon yourself, right?
Yeah, yeah.
But you would take your emotional cues from your father.
Or from your parents, right?
So my question is, how were your parents at this death, with regards to this death?
From my memory, and I could be wrong because it was such, you know, at seven years old, I can't remember them ever really being visibly upset.
If they were upset, they didn't show it in front of me either.
I guarantee you, I can guarantee you, Colin, that they were not upset and never showed it to you.
Because otherwise, you in no way, shape or form We'll have gone back to your computer game.
Right?
And what's interesting is, and I was really, you know, as usual, relentlessly obnoxious, but when I asked if you'd had a conversation with your mom about the change in your religious beliefs, you kind of fogged out.
And I said, well, when things are really important, we really remember them very clearly.
And you remember very clearly, as you said, when you were seven and your father came in and said your great-grandfather is dead.
and you kind of went, okay, and went back to your computer game, that was an important moment, right?
Because that was how your relationship, and it may not have been the first time, but it's certainly the one that's most clear in your mind.
How was your relationship to grief?
Did your father come in and say, you know, we're really sad about it.
This is a big moment.
This is your first exposure to death.
And let's talk about it.
This is important.
I've got a lot to say.
I want to share some of my memories of the man.
I'd like to ask you your memories of the man.
You know, we've got a funeral to go to.
Is there anything you'd like to write?
And he might tear up.
He might cry because he's sad.
And this would be a very important conversation to have with a child about loss.
Yes.
He told me, you know, my dad's told me plenty of things about my great-granddad, you know, the stuff he did.
He was in the war, World War II, you know, a lot of stuff he did, what he did for London, blah blah blah.
But no, he never really had a conversation with me about death, you know, at this point.
I think...
You see, this is the word that you said, like, I never had too many friends, or he never really had a conversation with me about death.
And I never really know.
Okay, can I just be saying?
No, and the reason, because, did he or didn't he?
Because he said, we never really had a conversation.
Okay, because that's the kind of clarity that I need, right?
And when you say you didn't have too many friends, do you mean you didn't have 20 friends, or five friends, or two friends, or any friends?
Because I don't have 20 friends, but I wouldn't say it, right?
I'm sorry.
That's just part of the way I speak.
I know it's very bad.
It's a bad habit to have.
That's how people around me speak.
I'm just trying to get clarity on that because I don't know what too many friends means.
I don't know that you never really had a conversation about death.
I don't know what that means.
It sounds to me like you didn't because that would have been a good time to have a conversation about death, right?
No, I've never had a conversation about death, no.
Right.
Okay, so the first time that you encountered death, it was brushed off.
And you know what's funny?
This word just popped into my head, Colin, and I think it's important.
Do you know what the wonderful thing is about the word immaterial?
No.
It's that it has two meanings.
Maybe it has more than two, but the two that are relevant to this conversation is that immaterial means both non-matter, non-material, and it also means unimportant.
Yeah.
And it's interesting that your ideas about death start from immateriality.
It's immaterial that your grandfather died.
Your great-grandfather died.
Nobody talks about it.
It doesn't really matter.
It's immaterial.
And then you end up with a theory about death that is immaterial.
It's not material.
It's not matter, right?
Yeah.
The soul.
So, you never saw your parents grieve and they never helped you with any grief that you might have.
No.
The first time I've ever seen either of my parents' grief was my dad's after my mum passed away.
Yeah, that's the most grief I've experienced from my parents.
And was your...
I don't want any details, but was your mother's death sudden or slow?
Sudden.
Sudden, okay.
And were there any other deaths or losses...
Or things to grieve over between 7 and 16?
No, not at all.
No troubles in the family?
Nothing to be sad over?
In 8 years?
Yeah.
Seriously?
I want to live in your world.
I was thinking to the 10th dimension.
It sounds lovely.
Sorry, Stefan.
I was thinking more long as death there rather than just general grievances.
I mean...
I was bullied for a long time.
If that could count as a grievance, I suppose it does.
You were bullied?
What do you mean?
What happened?
Well, it started very early.
At age of three, because at the time both my parents were working just to support me.
That's why they both had to work.
So I had to go to this playgroup thing.
Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.
I'm sorry to stop you right at the beginning of your story.
But why did they both have to work to support you?
Well, the economy in Britain wasn't really too good.
My dad's job didn't pay very much and I did my mother's.
And, you know, they still had to get their own house because at the time my dad and mum were still living with her sister because they were still quite young, about 21, 22 when I was born.
No, 23, sorry.
They still live for a sister, so they just needed money to actually get a house that I could grow up in and have a childhood, really.
So, they wanted their own house and therefore they both had to work, right?
Well, my dad was the first person to get a job.
My mother took after me mostly herself until I was about three years old, which is when I was old enough to go to a sort of daycare thing.
Oh, so your mum did stay home for the first couple of years?
Yeah, until I was old enough to go to daycare.
And then she got a job that would take her from the morning to the afternoon so I could spend daycare.
And that's when the bullying started.
The one occasion of it, the most...
What sticks out in my mind was, I remember there was a book corner with lots of pills and stuff.
I was reading the book and three kids came over and was smothered by pills by these groups of kids and passed out and the staff at the daycare ruled it out as they were just playing.
And it's like, you know, I nearly died.
I briefly lost consciousness due to asphyxiation.
And how did they choke you?
Were they kneeling on top of you, hands around the throat?
Two of them held me down and another one put a pillow over my face and then sat on the pillow.
And how old were you?
Three years old.
How old were the boys?
The same age.
Wow!
So you had some It was the same kids that I spent the next school time through with.
In total, to cut down short, the bullying lasted from the age of three till about thirteen.
Wow.
What forms did it take, Colin?
Mostly just physical violence, stealing my things.
I moved school because the bullying got that bad at the point.
In the school, I was in primary three at the time.
I was about eight years old.
And the people that were bullying me were 11 and 12.
I'm an eight-year-old boy with ten 11 and 12-year-olds literally kicking into me on the ground.
And my parents went to the school so many times and they always said, We'll deal with it if it happens again.
And they never deal with it.
No, government schools have no incentive to deal with bullying.
And I know the age disparity is...
11 or 12 years old, I was going through the woods with a friend and 16 and 17-year-old boys sat upon us and sort of trapped us there for a couple of hours, made us build them a fire and threatened us.
And I was so disgusted with them.
And I was unwise, I mean, obviously, but I just couldn't resist and I just said, man, you're like twice their size.
Why don't you guys so brave?
Why don't you pick on someone your own size?
Which got me a very good punch to the stomach, which...
In hindsight, I think was still worth it because I was glad to have got it out.
And yeah, they went to my school.
And Monday, they're like, hey, how was your weekend, Steph?
I mean, that kind of stuff.
And it is...
Yeah, this age disparity, bullying, is so contemptible and so vicious and so pathetic.
The only thing that's satisfying is seeing how these fucking bullies do later on in life.
Oh, you had your afternoon of fun...
How have your 20s been?
One of the bullies in my school is now dead from drug and alcohol abuse.
The arc of the universe is long, but it generally bends towards justice.
But that doesn't help you when you're 8 or 12 or whatever, right?
I'm trying to think about the casino.
No, I mean, the bullying ended at 13, for quite a specific moment I can remember as well.
I was in the playground, this was in, you know, secondary school, academy, whatever you call it in Canada.
And this one boy, who's fairly new to the school, came out with a football shoe, you know, with the studs in the bottom, and smacked me across the face with it, and cut up on my face.
Sorry, what did he catch your face with?
A football shoe.
I don't know what you call it.
Oh, but the cleats, right?
Soccer boot, yeah.
And I just lost it.
And at the time, I was studying, not studying, I was practicing martial arts.
And I just kicked him straight in the face, just, you know, from standing there.
And he went down screaming and crying and I didn't really get any bother after that at all.
But then there was other problems stemming on later on in life in different places.
What are the other problems?
Well, I mean, like, not other problems, similar problems, just in different parts of my life.
Like, school bullying stopped, so in school, you know, I was fine, but I didn't really feel safe in my own town because I'm a guy with long hair who listens to metal and in Scotland there's a lot more people who hate people who listen to metal and have long hair than people who have long hair and listen to metal.
Oh, absolutely.
No, I mean, a culture where skirts are living really has a trouble with long hair.
Absolutely.
I mean, you've got to keep your priorities.
No question.
You've got to be manly.
In skirts, so I get it.
We call them neds over here, non-educated delinquents or chavs, if you've heard that word before.
Just general, idiotic, violent, disruptive people.
Yeah, I think in England at least we call them yobs or we call them bobbah boys or boastful boys after a juvenile delinquency place.
Yeah, no, it's a dangerous tribe.
It's a dangerous tribe, you know?
I was reading the other day about how little effect parenting has on a child's personality.
And everyone's like, well, I guess that means upbringing doesn't matter.
It's like, well, you put kids all in the same public school where everybody's emotional defenses devolve down to the lowest sociopathic common denominator.
Of course, you're going to find that peers have more influence than parents, you know?
It's like putting guys in prison and saying, well, you know, they're Their prison mate, their prison bunkmate has a lot more influence on their behavior than a childhood friend.
I guess childhood friends don't matter.
It's like, well, no, but you put people in prison and you put kids in school prisons and, of course, they're going to have a lot of peer influences because it's a very dangerous and tricky environment where explosions of violence or, as you found out at the age of three, near-death experiences, explosions of violence and near-death experiences can occur out of explosions of violence and near-death experiences can occur out of the blue.
I had a friend of mine who later died in a tragic motorcycle accident, got into, especially like around grade seven.
Where physical divergencies are so huge.
Like some kids have yet to hit puberty.
And like all the Italian guys were like shaving the backs of their hands because they were starting to look like Sasquatches.
And they sometimes could be like a size and a half of one of the smaller kids.
And yeah, one of the biggest kids in school took offense to something that he said.
There was going to be a fight.
Everybody spread the word.
And like there's this literal Roman...
Base, animalistic, chimpanzee, eat-your-liver-out bloodlust that goes running through these schools.
Like, Lord of the Flies is not believable because in Lord of the Flies, the novel by William Golding, it takes weeks or months for them to devolve into a primitive state.
That's ridiculous.
Just rumor of a fight.
And no one's sitting there and saying, fight?
Are you kidding me?
That's ridiculous.
Fight, fight, fight!
And he went out there.
I mean, my God, you can get incredibly badly hurt from these things.
Even if nobody's really intending to.
One finger goes into your eyeball.
One elbow goes into your throat.
You can really, really be hurt.
It can be incredibly destructive.
It's a very, very dangerous environment.
There's no referees.
There's no timeouts.
There are no safe words.
It's just kids wailing on each other with wildly different skill sets and physical sizes.
It's incredibly dangerous and primitive environment and just you know this yourself right?
I mean you're an intelligent sensitive guy with some mildly off the beaten path perspectives and tastes and suddenly it's like you know six million bully lasers are trained on your forehead.
Yeah I mean I think I was always the quiet child in school who actually did his schoolwork and liked to read books, so I was sort of easy pickings in a public school.
Yeah, no, I mean for me it was just work out, get a haircut, get better clothes.
As soon as your sexual market value goes up, the bullying tends to stop, but the sexual market value where it's low is the teenager, I'm not saying at age, right, but sexual market value or hierarchy value.
You know, I started working out.
I started being more public about my sports.
People found out that I went to disco starting when I was sort of 15 and 16, would go dancing and all that.
And so my cool factor went way up, and I was a very attractive young man and athletic and all that.
And so that changed.
I was never hugely bullied, but I definitely was the new kid, and I spent a lot of time in the computer lab, and there were a few incidents of bullying.
But I remember, I've mentioned this story on the show before, I was in a bowling alley playing Defender.
Yeah, yeah, there's a little time bubble.
And I was doing really well, and some other kid wanted to play, and he unplugged the machine.
And I called him a jerk for unplugging the machine.
And anyway, I guess he took great offense at this, and then he told his older brother, who was a known bully, that I'd, you know, pushed him and called him horrible names.
And this guy, you know, you're dead, man.
You know, and I was like, scared.
I mean, this guy was like two heads taller than me.
And you can tell these cold eyes of infinite stillness and infinite volatility.
It's this chilling combination.
No empathy, incredible emotional hyper-reactivity.
And I just avoided the guy.
I mean, I couldn't possibly fight him.
I've never been in a fight in my life.
But I couldn't possibly fight him.
And in Canada, the healthcare is...
Quote, free, which means, like me, you've got to go to another country to get it.
But now with airline overhead.
But the dental work is not free.
And of course, you know, it's a big problem.
And you get a tooth knocked out when you're 15.
I mean, they're your adult teeth.
And, you know, welcome to three grand worth of dentistry.
And problems perhaps for the rest of your life.
Like I remember a photographer got punched out by Marlon Brando.
And the guy had to have like 10 visits to the dentist.
They never got his teeth back in quite right.
He was in constant pain.
And this is the kind of shit that can happen from one stupid incident.
You get pushed down a set of stairs.
Yeah.
And you know, your nose bridge can break and go into your brain.
And like, holy crap.
I mean, you can have some really, really bad stuff.
Like lifelong pain.
I saw Dr.
Phil the other day where a woman was saying that her Her mother was like, oh, I don't know why she doesn't call.
She hasn't called for seven years.
I mean, all I did was hang up on her or she hung up on me.
I don't know what the problem was.
And it turns out that the mother was a drug addict and a serial dater of men, let's say, and incredibly violent.
And it had beaten this girl up so badly that 20 years later, she still had migraines and she had partial loss of hearing in one ear.
She had a bad back from just one beating.
And, you know, the lifelong...
I've been aware of this when I was a kid.
Because I saw when I was a kid, one kid went into the pool wrong, was underwater too long, and had brain damage for the rest of his life.
Like, he was done.
And this kind of stuff where one accident, one incident can just mess you up.
And that's rough stuff.
So you probably had the kind of intelligence and foresight, if you're going to listen to this show, the intelligence and foresight to recognize that it is really dangerous to get involved in physical altercations.
It ain't Fight Club.
You can spend the rest of your life saying, well, that was a really stupid way to pretend I had courage.
I'd say I actually feel quite lucky when you tell me the stories of what's happened to people you know.
When I think about probably the worst pain, or sorry, the worst bow I ever took in a fight, I was 13, yeah, 13, and this is when the bullying was still going on.
One boy tackled me to the ground, and then another kicked me square in the head, in the temple, so hard that My vision turned green.
Everything I looked at had this green flair to it.
A green hue kind of thing?
Or flair?
Yeah, like a green hue.
Everything was just a bit more green and then it just disappeared after about 10 seconds.
Just thinking about that, that could have caused so much more damage than what it probably has, because a kick to the temple was never good for the brain.
Right.
Yeah.
No, I mean, you don't know.
Something like that.
Also, you don't know.
I mean, not that it's going to be the case with you, but, you know, you take a couple of shots at the head and you don't know what's going to happen in your 30s and 40s.
You know, you see what happens with these NFL players and it's like, yee!
No, exactly.
That's some messy stuff, right?
It can be a long way down the road that the chickens come home to roost to a rather empty nest.
Yeah.
That's what I'm thankful.
So you had a lot of grief and your family had a lot of suffering and troubles because of this bullying, right?
Yeah.
And were you given any emotional skills or how were you helped to handle this?
I was helped handle this.
After the bullying, after I moved school for the first time, I only have moved school twice, my mother put me into mixed martial arts.
I did that until I was about 14, from 8 to 14, and then I discovered a social life, because the martial arts took up my entire weekend, which was the only day I'd have to hang out with the friends I now had.
I said earlier I didn't have any friends, I didn't actually make my first friend until I was 12.
And I didn't actually have a group of friends until I was 15, which is when I started martial arts and started hanging out with people.
Wait, wait, wait.
Are you saying you didn't make any friends through martial arts?
Well, most of the people at martial arts were a lot older than me.
I think the next youngest person after me was five years older than me.
Did martial arts help with the bullying?
It helped me defend myself when I got bullied.
I was always too scared to actually throw a punch back but I was quite capable of blocking punches and dodging punches.
So it helped in that aspect.
Yeah, because you don't know if someone's just going to erupt, right?
I mean, you throw a punch back, you don't know if somebody's just literally, like, it's got some incredibly explosive bomb deep down in their amygdala and fight-or-flight mechanism, and it's just going to blow the shit up and try and kill you, right?
No, exactly, yeah.
Or it's going to climb into your window with a machete.
Like, you just...
Anyway.
Okay, so...
Family had a lot of sadness, a lot of tragedy, and...
Have you had any work or any help with grieving that incredibly lengthy period?
You're talking about 12 years, right?
13 to 15 at least.
Yeah.
The only really help I really saw was counselling through the school.
But that wasn't really fully my choice.
It was suggested to me because I was diagnosed with depression at 15.
And I actually put onto a course of Prozac, which in the UK, I'm not sure works in American Canada, but Prozac is only meant for 18-year-olds and up.
And I was given them at 15 because I was told, you need them.
Yeah, because, I mean, the idea that school could be fixed is incomprehensible.
Yeah, exactly.
Drug the children, right?
I mean, you can't...
You can't fix the school.
You can just drug the children.
And I'm incredibly sorry that that was your experience.
And I'm certainly no fan of that stuff, though my positions on it are all basically amateurish.
All right, so you get a lot of grief.
You get a lot of grief.
And how do you feel your parents handled the bullying as a whole?
See, it's hard to think of how they handled it.
I know it distraught them greatly.
My dad at the time, I didn't really get a chance to see how he felt because he had to work a really, not a bad job, but a long hours job.
He left the house at half five in the morning and wasn't home until ten at night.
You know, working in a nuclear power plant, so I didn't really get to see him for a while.
Wait, hang on a sec, hang on a sec.
Can you work that long?
I thought you had some sort of, like, a nuclear power plant.
I imagine they're quite keen on people who aren't overtired, right?
They actually provide rooms so that people can go for a sleep during work.
So, they do have that option.
So, I mean, but that's a huge amount of overtime, right?
He gets to work at 6, he leaves work at 9 p.m.?
That's 12 hours straight.
See, I'm not sure.
Well, he does have breaks.
I'm not sure exactly the hours he worked because, you know, the power plant's about 20 miles from here.
So part of that time is obviously traveling.
It says about an hour of travel.
Well, yeah, no, I get that.
But I don't quite, I mean, I'm trying to sort of figure this out.
I mean, was he management?
No, he was just a laborer, basically.
So he was unionized?
I think so.
I mean, it is Scotland.
They're no stranger to unions, right?
So he was unionized, and how on earth...
I mean, if you're working 12 hours, five days a week, I mean, that's crazy.
That's like 60 hours a week.
That's...
Massive overtime.
So, I mean, wouldn't that get you more money than you could possibly use?
Well, how it worked with the shifts was he actually worked six days a week, Monday to Saturday.
He got every Sunday off, and he did that for two weeks.
And then you get two weeks off at half pay, and you're back on for two weeks.
It's that sort of rotation.
Oh, so you're misleading me?
Sorry, no, I forgot about that.
I didn't mean to mislead you.
No, no, that's important.
I mean, maybe you were misleading yourself first, but when you give me this excuse like, well, I don't know, my dad was working 60 hours.
Oh, well, except for the two weeks that he had off.
Yeah, sorry, no, I forgot about that.
Well, okay, so you just made up this giant excuse, right?
Like, my poor dad, I never knew, I never had a chance to talk to him about it because he was only at home two weeks out of every four.
So let's not do that, right?
Let's not do this excuse machine, right?
No, I know, I know.
But I just need to be, because it's happened a bunch, right?
I just need to remind you that we don't want to do that, right?
Because that just makes the conversation unnecessarily difficult.
But this is important as to why I think you have the otherworldly beliefs as far as a soul goes.
So you basically didn't have a conversation or know much about how your father dealt with it.
You said that they were upset about it.
But you said you didn't know much about how your father was dealing with it or managing it, right?
Okay, so that would be, I think, again, here we have a pretty important conversation to have about your life.
I mean, you're bullied for 13 years, right?
Yeah.
And you didn't have much of a solid conversation about it with your father, is that right?
Not really, no.
Well, what does not really mean?
Like, sorry, I say that when I'm not too sure about things.
I'm sure I did talk to my parents about bullying, but...
No, you would remember it.
Like, you remembered your dad coming in when you were seven.
The more unusual a conversation is, and the more powerful and unusual it is, the more we remember it.
Sorry, it's just...
I mean, I'll give you a tiny example, right?
So when I was...
I was sent to summer camp for like good chunks of the summer.
It was like one of these heavily subsidized summer camps when I was in my sort of early to mid-teens.
Yay, Camp Bolton!
I actually went back there for a photo shoot because I was so pretty.
And there was a counselor there, not a psychological counselor, but just a camp counselor, right?
And he and I really hit it off.
And he actually was one of the few people I remember as a child who would talk to you like you were a human being, right?
I mean, so many people talk to kids like the kids are just, you know, you've got to put on a show or you've got to entertain them or you've got to be goofy or you're a nonstop joke machine.
But just talking to kids like, hey, how was your day?
Or, you know, talking to them like they're just normal human beings seems to be beyond the… It's like when you see some nervous liberal overly pandering to some black person on a show.
You're so brilliant!
Rachel Maddow does this all the time.
But it's just, you know, just talk to blacks like they're human beings and everything would be fine.
And one night, he and I were sitting.
I couldn't sleep because, you know, I'm a bit of a night owl.
My daughter, the other night, couldn't get to sleep.
She's like, well, Dad...
I'm half you, and your genes seem to keep you up, so I'm sure the same thing's happening with me.
I'm like, ooh, I think I've been educating you too much.
But this guy, I didn't remember his name, but we sat outside the cabin.
It's got to be 10 or 11 o'clock at night.
And we were just chatting and talking about things, the stars, the universe, the God.
I remember he was the one who told me that, oh, you know, everyone thinks that Frankenstein is the monster.
But it's not true.
Frankenstein is actually the doctor who created him.
And I actually ended up reproducing this scene in my novel, The God of Atheists, although it was between two girls having a sleepover.
And so that was unusual insofar as an adult was talking to me like I was a normal human being.
It was so unusual, I remember vast details of the conversation almost four decades later.
And most of the topics that I reproduced in my novel were topics that we talked about that night.
And just a great guy.
If you're ever out there and you ever listen to this, I don't know, four decades on, yeah, I'd be in his 60s.
Thank you.
That was a...
And I also had one teacher who was pretty good when I was in grade 6, Greenland Public School, and he actually talked about things like they made sense.
Like I remember we did, we were talking about the Eloy in H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, and I remember him saying, They get focused on something and then they just see something shiny over there and suddenly they're distracted.
He was trying to help us relate to it because we could all relate to that.
We were like 11 or 12 years old.
11 years old at the time.
And just a guy who...
Vaguely brought things to life and made an attempt to connect with the kids.
And so, I don't want to lecture you about my sort of experience, but this was the central driving issue of your life.
I mean, seriously, Colin, was there ever a time, at least Monday to Friday, when the fact that you were bullied ever left your mind completely?
No, I wouldn't say that, no.
Because it was always an aspect.
No, it was constant.
It was a constant experience.
And constant experiences occur because they never get closure, because they're not talked about, they're not talked out.
On Wednesday, I didn't really talk about my bullying.
I do remember my parents talking to me about the fact that every time they asked me, you know, how did the sale go, I'd only ever tell them it went fine.
They actually had to pressure me to admit that I was being bullied so relentlessly.
Now, why?
Why?
The question is why.
You said you were close to your mother, and you have a constant experience called being bullied, which is like a dimmer switch that doesn't turn off, right?
There's times when it goes down, but it never goes off.
So, for 13 years, you have a constant experience that you're not sharing with your mother, and you don't know if she believes in a deity, and you never talk to her about your own religious change.
Help me understand, Colin, how that can be put under the definition of we were close.
I guess it doesn't.
Why didn't you tell them about it?
I'm not saying you should have or shouldn't have.
Sorry, why the hell didn't you?
I don't mean it like that.
No, I know what you mean.
Yeah, why didn't you tell them?
It's hard to recollect my reasons at the time.
I think I was scared.
Maybe nervous about what would happen if I did tell.
You know, scared that it would get worse if I told people it was happening.
Because that's how it worked in school.
You know, I got bullied and then I'd tell the teachers and then that would just make the building worse.
And that was just, I guess, how I felt would happen if I told people about stuff like that.
Right.
Well, I can...
I'll give you two answers that I think are relevant.
I'm not saying the definitive, but the first answer is it's not your job to tell them.
It's their job to find out.
It's their job to find out.
I mean, I can't even think of it, but if you come home having been almost choked out by some psychotic kids in daycare, toddlers really, I mean, tell me you came home that day the same kid who left.
I don't remember anything else about that day.
That's the only memory I have that entire day.
And that's important.
That's important because when you were a kid, you put out distress signals and you see if they're picked up.
That's how kids work.
Yeah.
You put out distress signals.
I remember doing this as a kid.
I'm sure everyone who's listening to this, you think back to when you were upset as a kid.
You put out distress signals and then you see who picks it up.
And who pursues it to find out what the problem is.
And if no one picks it up, you keep your sorrows to yourself.
Because you're trying to figure out if your emotional existence is a burden to your parents.
Kids never, ever want to be a burden to their parents.
For biological reasons, right?
Kids that were too much of a burden...
Well, those genes didn't tend to last very long in the gene pool during the evolution of a species for the past couple hundred thousand years, right?
And so kids, they say, okay, I'm having a negative experience.
Is this going to be perceived by my parents as a burden or something they desperately want to fix?
Well, the way that I'm going to do it is I'm going to put out that I'm unhappy.
I'm not going to do it necessarily explicitly, but I'm going to do it.
I'm going to come home.
I'm going to be subdued.
I'm going to be quiet.
I know when my daughter's upset, I can see it from across a field.
And I won't stop until I find out what the problem is.
Because I know that that's the case.
Kids don't come up and tell you that they're upset.
Kids will signal distress and see if you...
Are interested enough to pursue and do it.
And then, through that process, kids will then start to open up with you and tell you what the problem is.
But you have to earn that trust by first reading that signals that they're upset and then finding out what the issue is.
And then after you've done that 10 or 20 or 30 times, they will start to open up to you, but they won't before.
And there's very, very clear biological survival reasons as to why that is the case, because they don't want to be a burden.
They don't want to be the one kid out of 12 who's always whining and complaining, because that will not get them the parental attention or maybe even resources to survive that they need for those genes to be passed on.
At the same time, they don't want to keep everything inside, because if they are in an environment where parents actively and proactively try to figure out what's wrong with their kids, they don't want to be short of those resources either, right?
So, you know, we put out the flares and see if any helicopters come to land, so to speak.
We put out the SOS and see if any planes fly overhead.
That's how kids work.
So you put out your distress signals, and you got the pretty clear, though probably unconscious, message that...
If you have troubles, your parents don't want to know.
Because maybe they don't know how to handle it.
Maybe they find it inconvenient.
Maybe it stresses them out too much.
Maybe it brings up childhood pain of theirs that was unresolved.
But whatever the reason, we don't do that.
We can't deal with that.
We won't pursue that.
Yeah.
Does that make any sense?
It makes perfect sense, yeah.
Right.
Right.
I've just always had trouble divulging how I feel to people.
I'm not sure why.
It's something I've always wondered.
But it's a genuine problem I have, even with my own parents.
Even now, I'm a 22-year-old guy and closer to my dad than I ever have been.
We have deep conversations, we talk about a lot of things.
I just can't seem to tell anyone how I feel, really.
Right.
Well, if you have a son in the future, I don't think he will be, but if you have a son who is bullied, would you want to know?
Of course, yeah.
And if he was bullied in the school, and the school didn't do anything about it, what would you do?
Probably take him out of school.
And if he went to another school and was bullied there as well, Well, I mean, I want to homeschool, so...
Right.
Yeah.
So you would do whatever it takes to keep your child in a safe environment?
Yeah.
Right.
Now, your parents weren't that way, I assume?
No, no.
I mean, if you had gone to them and you'd have said, I think I'd rather throw myself in front of a bus than go to school today, and I'm sure it felt that way sometimes.
Yeah.
I think they would have basically said...
What would they have said?
They'd have complete understanding for it.
But I never actually said that.
But why?
Why would you deny yourself that great understanding if it was there?
I can't give you the answer for that, Stefan.
I'm sorry.
It's just...
I don't know.
Right.
Well, I'm not sure that the great understanding would have been there because they already knew you were being bullied, right?
Yeah.
They did move me to a different school.
When the bullying restarted again, right?
Not, like, you know, a fraction of the extent it did at the last school.
Right.
Like, yeah, I mean, there was bullying, but, like, it was, like, petty name-calling.
There wasn't really any violence directed towards me, and I've never really cared about names.
You know, call me what you want.
Right.
So that never really bothered me.
I think that's a British Isles thing that's kind of incomprehensible to others, but anyway.
We call our friends.
And have you talked with your father about any of the bullying stuff in your experiences?
Not recently, no.
When was the last time you did?
Oh god.
Oh, you said not recently, so you've got a time frame in your mind, unless you're fogging me again.
No, I know it's not recently.
I'm just trying to think of when it was.
Probably about ten years ago now, just before I went into academy.
I was just, you know, talking to him about how scared I was about the fact that there's going to be a lot older kids there.
He was quick to reassure me that In Academy, especially because it was a good secondary school I was going to, I was going to find a higher quantity of decent, rational thinking human beings than these degenerates that bored me in my entire life.
It's true.
Wait, wait, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.
Oh my goodness.
Oh my goodness.
Alright.
So...
Your father referred to your previous schoolmates as degenerates?
No, that's me.
No, I said, like, as in the degenerates are the people who are doing the bullying, not any friends, just...
Yeah, he didn't say that.
That's just me putting in descriptive words.
Sorry.
Well, how did he refer to your previous schoolmates?
Because he said your new school, like, the boys in the academy, did he say they're not going to be like the guys in your previous school?
I mean, he referred to billies in general in a negative way, but, you know, anyone would.
He didn't specifically say anything about the people I went to school with, just recognised that there would be more good people at Academy due to the fact that there was going to be more people in general than at a small school like the one I was at.
You know, as I said, the billing wasn't too bad, but I didn't have friends because there was no one who...
Really fitted in with the things I like.
I mean, I'm no mathematician, but if you say, I'm scared to go to the academy, and your father says, don't worry, there'll be better people there, isn't he by implication saying that there were worse people where you came from?
No, I mean, he did say that, well, yeah, there were worse people where I came from.
Right.
And this indicates a knowledge of the suffering that you were experiencing, right?
Because, I mean, if you came and said, listen, I don't want to go to academy, and he said, well, why?
It's going to be exactly the same as where you came from.
Right?
Then he would say, well, I didn't know how bad it was where you came from.
But if you say, I'm scared of going to the academy, and he says, well, no, there's going to be way better people there, then he's indicating that he knows that you're coming from a place where there were way worse people, right?
Yeah.
I mean, like I said, at the school that I was at before moving on to Academy, the bullying wasn't something that bothered me as much because it was just petty name calling.
The major problem I had at that point was the fact that I had no friends, no social life at all.
And that's kind of what I was getting at.
When I'd go to Academy, I would find people...
And did your parents notice?
I mean, obviously, they must have noticed that you didn't have a social life.
And what was their perspective on that?
Did they have social lives?
Did they have social lives?
No.
No, they didn't have social lives either.
No.
I mean, my...
Why do you think that was?
I'm not sure, honestly.
I mean, my dad still doesn't have...
Oh my god, man, oh man, oh man.
You're close to these people, but you don't know why they have no social life.
I'm trying to think, like, it's just...
No, but you shouldn't have to try and think.
It's just, it's a question that...
It shouldn't be a real-time quiz.
It's just a question I don't think has, like, you know, one solid answer.
You can just...
My dad, for example, he was the same as me.
He didn't really fit in with any of the people round about here.
He actually didn't move to this town until he was 16 and was instantly hated by the major groups of people.
So your dad was bullied and ostracised as well?
He wasn't bullied because he's quite a tough guy.
He got into fights and people didn't like him, but he never let anyone walk over him.
But yeah, his entire life here, since he moved here, he's not really had a social life at all.
And your mum, did she have a social life at all?
She had a social life when she was younger, but when she'd married and settled down, she didn't really see many people.
She also had an underactive thyroid, which caused her to gain a lot of weight and caused a lot of pain on her, and that actually limited the amount of time she could even leave the house.
So she, you know, she just wasn't able to have a social life.
She wasn't really able to do anything.
I thought you said, but didn't they both work?
Yeah, they worked.
My mum at the time, though, she only worked in a shop at the time when she had done underactive thyroid, so, you know, she didn't.
She just sat at a till and, yeah, not really anything physical.
Right, right.
Well, I've got to move on to the next caller, but I'd like to leave you with some thoughts if this helps.
And look, I really appreciate you telling me, I think you're really good at sharing your history.
I mean, I know you say that's tough.
And it's usually tough just because most people aren't that interested or willing to listen, but I'm eternally fascinated by the turning rainbows of diamond-like human souls.
So I really appreciate you sharing this.
And I don't mean to be dismissive, but I'd like to leave you with Some thoughts that I hope will be of some use.
And then you can tell me if they are of use or if not.
because I don't want to just speechify and have not anything land useful.
But I'm trying to organize the best way to put this.
The dream of reunification in the future...
I think is the mirror image of a lack of connection in the past.
The dream of reunification in the future, I think, is the mirror image of a lack of connection in the past.
And I think that if we are really connected with people, Of course we're going to mourn their loss, and of course it's going to be tragic when they die, but at least we have the satisfaction of having had that connection.
There is, I think, within human beings an almost instinctive avoidance mechanism for intimacy, because intimacy leads to loss.
To love is to lose.
There's no way around that equation.
And I think a lot of people don't want to connect with other people for fear of the pain of loss.
I think they shy away from it.
Also, connection requires a willed commitment to honesty, vulnerability, and openness in the moment.
And to say, I must connect now, is to also accept I must do it now because I will die later.
Anything we prioritize that is essential is an admission of mortality.
If I don't connect now, I can do it later.
It's gonna happen later.
Something's gonna happen later.
Something's gonna come about later that's gonna make it better.
There's this deferral and there's this procrastination.
And it comes out of a vague belief that we have forever to turn things around.
We have forever to connect to people.
We have forever to be vulnerable.
We have forever to be honest.
We have forever to genuinely share who we are with those around us.
Because we're never going to die.
Whenever we panic about our lack of connection, it is because we remember we're going to die.
Particularly with our parents.
Well, your father is likely, much more likely to die before you do.
But you're young, and he's probably in his 40s.
I think you said he's very young when he has you.
So, you know, you've got a long time.
And this idea, I don't need to connect now, it'll happen later, or we'll talk about something else, or I'll avoid that I'm actually not that connected with him.
We've got all the time in the world.
All the time in the world.
But of course, the reality, as you know from your mother, is we don't have all the time in the world.
We don't have, we only here because of death.
We are only here because of death.
We're only alive because people die and we need new people, right?
And so I think that part of your emotional drive towards this idea of eternal recurrence and the idea that we are going to meet up later is a way of avoiding the need to connect in the here and now.
Like, okay, so I didn't connect too much with my mom while she was alive, but it's okay because we're going to meet again in the future.
And what that does is it keeps at bay the disconnection panic that could be occurring for you with regards to your father.
Like, I didn't connect with my mom the way that I really wanted to or the way that I really yearned to or the way that would have really made for a rich and deep and connected and powerful relationship.
I didn't do that, but my dad's still here so I can do it with him.
There's no panic about the loss of connection or the lack of connection in the past with your mother.
And the way your belief system keeps that panic at bay.
Because, you know, you're going to meet again.
Right?
That old Vera Lynn song.
We'll meet again.
Don't know where.
Don't know when.
But we'll meet again some sunny day.
I think that's how it goes.
And that's about death.
We'll meet again.
We'll get a do-over.
Mulligan!
Right?
We get a do-over.
We get a do-over and we're going to be together in the afterlife and then we'll be connected.
And I think what it does is it keeps you from doing the work to connect with the people around you because you really have, when you have an eternity, you can't make any mistakes.
All mistakes result from prioritization.
Because if you have an eternity, you have forever to fix things and therefore there's no need to prioritize anything.
And my concern, I said that it comes with a cost, Colin, and my concern is that these beliefs of eternal recurrence and we're all one and we're all going to meet again in the afterlife and Sit in the golden armchairs of eternity and connect like a bunch of mating squids.
My concern is that that is dissolving your prioritization and your willpower and your energy to connect in the here and now because you can always do it later.
And I don't think you can do it later.
I think your mother is dead.
In fact, I know that she's dead.
And you're not going to meet her again.
And there was great loss in her passing.
And the great loss in her passing was not what you said, but what you didn't say.
And most importantly, what she didn't say since she was the parent and she defined the relationship with you.
And there was great loss and mourning that great loss, that lack of connection that I see from my hour and a half of chatting with you.
So, you know, take that with all the grains of salt that you want, Colin.
But what I see is a lack of connection, at least as far as I would define genuine intimacy and connectedness.
And you're keeping that lack of connection grieving at bay, which means that you're keeping current connections at bay.
In order to avoid the necessity and responsibility of connecting with your father and other people in the here and now, you are pretending that you have an eternity in which to connect with people, and you don't.
Your father's going to be dead and in the ground and you will never meet him again.
And you will be dead and in the ground and no one will ever meet you again.
And all of those missed opportunities will never come back to you in any way, shape or form.
And I'm trying to provoke the mortality panic which allows us to prioritize.
Maybe it's because I had my cancer brush, right?
But the mortality panic is really important.
I have Every day, every week, and Mike and Stoyan can tell you how much I bore them with this, I commit to doing better.
I commit to going deeper.
I commit to being more expressed, more connected, speaking more about what I think, with all the caveats, because I don't want anyone to substitute my thinking for themselves.
That's not thinking, right?
And I'm aware that the only way I'm going to live on forever is through my child, And with my wife, through my child, and through my work, through these conversations.
These will be listened for as long as people have ears.
In a moment of mad grandiosity, right?
I mean, I can't remember which one of Shakespeare's contemporaries said, Shakespeare is not for our time, he is for all time.
And there's some of the stuff that I do, which is for our time, right?
The news items and so on.
And that's important, you know, important to get philosophy into the current events against new listeners.
But the conversations like this, I want to be as relevant in a thousand years as they are now.
Because I have mortality panic.
I know that I'm going to be dead.
And so I want to not spend the hour and a half not connecting.
And I think that if you take away this fog of eternal recurrence, you will also face the brick wall face down, mud, bath, six feet under, worms eating out your eyeballs, your thoughts never to return or recur in this plane or any other, no twelfth dimension.
No quantum physics home of future golden couched heaven, heavenly connection.
But it's only in the words that you feel and say and honor and hold and connect with in the here and now.
It is only the language you are willing to speak that defines who you connect with and whether that connection is possible.
It is all up to you to initiate And to hold fast to the principles of honesty and integrity and vulnerability and openness.
And there is no future where this will happen for you.
There is no future where you will blend like two pillars of smoke into one another in the future, in the afterlife or any place like that.
It will never happen.
It is only in the words you choose to speak in the here and now that connection can occur.
It will never be automatic.
It will never be a function of metaphysics.
It will never be a function of where your soul drifts after death.
It will only be the result of what you choose in the here and now.
And I'm saying to you, Colin, that if you abandon the ideals of eternal recurrence and all consciousness is one, you have to do the work to connect.
It's never going to happen for you.
And it should happen now because you're going to die.
Thank you for those words Stefan.
You're very welcome.
I hope that's helpful.
I'm glad I had this conversation with you because it has opened my eyes to things I previously didn't even consider.
Thank you for that.
And as an experiment, you know, you can just humor me.
That's not a great thing for a philosopher to say.
Just humor me.
Pretend I'm right.
But try this.
Try really connecting with your father.
Try really connecting with people around you.
Unpack your heart.
Tell them everything that's on your heart and in your mind and in your history.
Because no priority should be higher than that while we are not currently starving to death.
Try that.
Try really connecting with people.
It certainly is not going to do you any harm.
I think it will do you the world of good.
And see if when you're genuinely connected to people, whether your belief in the afterlife diminishes.
I guarantee you.
At least I'm very sure.
I can't guarantee you.
I'm very sure that it will.
But it's worthwhile as an experiment.
Yeah.
I'll try that.
Yes, of course.
All right.
Will you let us know how it goes?
Yeah, sure.
All right.
Colin's dead.
Incoming!
All right.
Thanks, man.
I appreciate that.
And we'll talk again soon.
Thank you.
Bye.
All right.
Thanks very much.
Appreciate that.
As always, I hope everyone has a wonderful, wonderful week.
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