Jan. 14, 2018 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
03:59:17
3962 My Daughter Committed Suicide - Call In Show - January 10th, 2018
Question 1: [1:21] – “Is the purpose of a philosopher, ultimately, to cease being a philosopher? Socrates concluded that a necessary condition of the philosopher — as one who ‘loves wisdom’ — is being separated from the wisdom he seeks. He therefore makes a distinction between the philosopher and the sage, the latter being someone who has attained wisdom, having embodied the ideal he/she espouses. Does this suggest that the ideal road of philosophy ends at sagacity? If so, do you consider yourself a philosopher or a sage, and why?”Question 2: [1:03:17] – “I'm 24 years old. When I was 18 years old, I went through a traumatic experience where I watched 5 people die at the scene of a car accident, including 3 close friends. I grew up a lot since then and now work a full-time job where I directly interact with injuries and car accidents. Now, when someone asks what I do for a living or why I picked this career I will tell them honestly about the car accident. This must throw up red flags because anytime I tell someone they either get distant or become less interested romantically. I'm wondering when in a relationship with a high-value partner would be the appropriate time and way to tell this story or if my choosing a career related to this is the problem.? Does a traumatic event make someone a higher liability for a relationship? Is a traumatic event in the past something that should shape someone's future IE career path or life purpose?”Question 3: [2:15:11] – “I am a 50-year old woman in Sweden that has been listening for two years now. I have made most things wrong in my life; I had four children with a man who developed a serious mental disorder that crept upon us, left him, shared custody with my children with him (…) not totally understanding his problems and when my children with him reached adult age, I kind of felt released from being afraid tragedy would strike. I am remarried and have a little boy with a very stable and successful man. Things were looking up, then tragedy struck when my 25-year old daughter committed suicide this August. I heard the call in show with the British girl who was living with her parents and I felt the urge to address the way she shrugged off any thoughts of her family when behaving suicidal. I believe my actions have had a great deal of influence in my daughter’s misery. I did not understand that she was depressed, she lived with her boyfriend and she always acted as if things were great when we talked. I wanted her to come home and the few last times we talked she said ‘Soon, mum. I miss you so.’ I always flattered myself with thinking me and my children had such great contact, they could always talk to me I felt. Now I understand that I got it all wrong. It is painful to realize how my actions in the past echoes in the now and the future. I can`t bring my girl to life again but maybe I can wake some other parent up.”Your support is essential to Freedomain Radio, which is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by making a one time donation or signing up for a monthly recurring donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate
Hope you're doing well. So, we had only three, but three magnificent holy moly of a trinity of a set of callers.
The first was a fellow, he had a bunch of great questions.
We started off with, is the purpose of a philosopher, ultimately, to cease being a philosopher?
And it sounds like a conundrum, but it was a great question.
And then we really ranged far afield.
The second caller.
He was 18 years old, and he went through a terrible experience where he saw five people die at the scene of a car accident, including three of his close friends.
And how this played out in his life is really, really fascinating.
So if you know someone who's been affected by this kind of trauma, or maybe you yourself, very, very interesting story.
And the third caller, it's a woman in Sweden and her daughter recently killed herself.
And the archaeology of the steps that led up to it is a fascinating, deep and powerful human journey.
And I hope that you will join me in sympathizing with her loss and doing what we can to sift through the rubble and find what lessons there were to be learned.
These kinds of conversations, you really can only get here.
Please, please help us out at freedomainradio.com slash donate.
Alright, well first today we have Fareed.
Fareed wrote in and said, Does this suggest that the ideal road of philosophy ends at sagacity?
If so, do you consider yourself a philosopher or a sage, and why?
That's from Fareed. Oh hey, how you doing tonight?
Great, how are you?
I'm well, I'm well, thank you.
Um... So that's an interesting question, of course, which is why you're on the show.
Welcome. And I guess it is whether or not a philosopher is considered a teacher or not.
Now, a teacher is supposed to encourage each individual student to outgrow himself as the teacher.
But since there are always new students, I don't know that the teacher ever seeks to make himself redundant as a whole, if that makes sense.
Uh-huh. So, are you saying that in a sense, the end goal of someone who's partaking in philosophy is to train as many other philosophers as possible and encourage other people to dedicate themselves to truth, reason, consistency, all those virtues?
I can tell you, I mean, the job of the philosopher changes over time.
So, the job of the scientists, say, back 500 years ago, was to convince people, perhaps, that the world was round, that the Sun was the center of the solar system, and so on.
So, that is not really the job of the scientist at the moment.
But I would say this, though.
At the moment, the job of the philosopher, in my humble argument, is this.
We are born, you know, there's an old saying, is it Rousseau?
Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains.
Well, man is born wise, and everywhere his intellect has become cucked and foolish.
Children are born rational, they are born empirical, and they must be beaten, clubbed, whipped, propagandized, chained, and burned by ostracism, attack, misdirection, dependence upon their elders, the natural rationality of the human spirit, of the human mind.
Must be tortured into a post-modernist, hate-filled, easy-to-bend, cloud-head-based mob.
And it is the job of the philosopher to stand as a human shield between the propagandists and the mind, particularly of the young.
It is to run interference.
It is to be a flanking maneuver protector as the mind of the young run through the gauntlet of propaganda to the relative independence of adulthood.
So, to me, is that job eventually going to change?
Well, sure. I mean, if at some point, Lord help us above, if at some point we can end up in a situation where the natural rationality, objectivity, and empiricism of children...
Is allowed to stay the course, is allowed to retain its nature and its practicality, its pragmatism, through to adulthood, then the job of the philosopher will no longer be to protect the mind from the torturing of propagandists and sophists as the child grows.
Right now, the protection of the young, which is primarily the job of the parent, I don't I philosophize towards children, but I philosophize towards parents who themselves must protect the minds of their children.
At some point, we're either going to end up falling into the swamp of propaganda and sophistry and lies and false manipulation and thus war.
War, you know, they say that war is an extension of politics.
It's not really true.
War is an extension of lying.
The lie begets the war.
And I'm not just talking about the direct lie of there are weapons of mass destruction, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, Harold got shot through the eye with an arrow.
Not those lies. The fundamental lies that create irreconcilable realities.
When people are at war, in their mind, that war must either be cooled or it manifests itself in actual war.
So if you are taught to dehumanize a particular group of people at the moment, the most dehumanized and the most viciously aggressed against are white males, which is incredibly dangerous, as we've seen in the past, when particular groups get dehumanized and hated to that degree as the continual...
Faggots in the old sense of wood gets piled on the fire of human hatred.
It manifests itself in extraordinary levels of violence.
As we've seen, when the capitalist class and the kulaks get hated, then they get slaughtered by the thousands, if not the millions.
When the Jews are hated, they get slaughtered by the thousands, if not the millions.
When the Tutsis are dehumanized and called cockroaches, the mounting rage ends up uncorking.
A tsunami of human violence and hatred.
And right now, white males are the target and have been for decades.
And just, I mean, read DeMore's suit against Google to see just how much white privilege there is in that institution.
And so the goal is to stand firm against the lies with the full and certain knowledge that the lies lead to war.
And I'm not talking a culture war.
They lead to boots on the ground, sky shredding, sky cannons of human disassembly kind of war.
And the protection of the young and the pushback against the lies that lead to universal violence is the job of the philosopher.
And right now that job is defensive because philosophers have very much not got the upper hand.
We are attempting to rescue people From this churning, bloody, barrel-filled, raging river of irrationality, but more people are being thrown in than can be dragged out.
You know, every day I reach hundreds of thousands, maybe a million people.
But, but, how many people are going into government schools?
How many people are going into religious institutions where they are indoctrinated Are we saving more?
It is easier to break than it is to make.
You can destroy a building with far less knowledge than it takes to build it.
You can stab a man with far less knowledge than it takes to heal him.
And the destruction of the mind of the young is far easier than the rescuing, the half-broken minds of the adults.
And more craziness is being manufactured than sanity can be restored.
So we're much on the losing end.
The goal, of course, would be to stop being defensive and to stop merely attempting to rescue people from the destruction that society, the state in general, wreaks upon them.
But right now, it is a seemingly losing, possibly hopeless, and significantly defensive battle.
If at some point, you know, this is like the first three years of World War II, if at some point a corner can be turned and a sunrise can be achieved, wherein not merely an attempt to slow the flow, low, but a capacity to push back against this spreading black and bloody ink stain of irrationality,
well, at some point, we either lose or we have to stop being defensive, which is why I focused a lot recently on how to fight back against the enemies of reason and peace.
So I certainly hope that the job of the philosopher over time grows a little bit more proactive, Then reactively attempting to push back against escalating lies and attempting to draw a decreasing number of people from the stormy seas of irrationality compared to those who were tossed in.
So I hope that job ends at some point.
But that means that everyone else, including you, Farid, have to do something about it.
Please don't just rely on me.
I mean, I've been thinking about this.
You know, some of the more controversial topics that I talk about, other people just aren't picking up.
I mean, particularly race and IQ. And I'm wondering if they're not picking it up because I'm talking about, oh, Steph's got it covered.
Well, no, I don't.
If I'm the only one talking about it, or one of the few people talking about it, you are leaving me in an open field.
We're the thousand lasers on my head.
Everybody needs to join in.
Whatever it is that is the most important, that you think is the most important, which in general is the most risky.
Everybody needs to join hands and join together.
I do not like the fact that this very obvious topic, among many, simply is not being discussed by other intellectuals.
I charge you all with cowardice.
I do. This is the most essential topic.
That we have. And leaving me to stand alone is disrespectful to philosophy.
It's disrespectful to the courage of our elders.
And it is cowardice in the face of the enemy.
So those are my particular thoughts.
What do you think? Well, gosh, I don't know where to go.
Well, I guess my first question is just related to your comments just now.
Is there any particular reason why you mentioned the race and IQ question?
Is that something that's really prominent to you right now?
Is there any reason why you would give that as an example of something that we should all try to introduce into the public discourse and not be afraid to bring out?
Of course. Because the...
Hatred of white males is predicated on a lack of understanding of race and IQ. And so when certain minorities do badly in Western society, in the free market, and when women, of course, do less well on average than men, white men in the free market, because everyone believes that everyone is equal, all inequalities of outcome must be the result of injustice.
Of racism. And so the fact that blacks do worse than, say, East Asians, Chinese, Japanese, well, that's laid at the feet of white males in general.
It has to be white males because white females do worse than males in the free market, although they do far better than males in the, say, making new human beings department, which is even more important.
And so because there is this injustice, we see this historically.
When people do not understand the bell curve of intelligence, they ascribe all inequalities of outcome to injustice on the part of the majority, and the majority in Western countries is the white male.
And so, for instance, when Marxists think that everyone is pretty much equal, then the fact that the rich have more money and the bosses have more authority, that is considered to be injustice.
They are considered to be predatory.
They are considered to be discriminatory.
They are considered to be exploitive.
To exploit the workers.
And what this does is it creates this festering, rising, bilge-like tidal wave of rage, which when it breaks through, causes the death of countless people.
Literally countless people. They don't know how many people communism has killed well north of 100 million.
So, when people don't understand the Pareto principle, right, that the square root of workers produces half the value in 10,000, in a company of 10,000 people, 100 people produce half the value, and of course they should get paid more.
Of course they should get paid more because they're producing much more value.
And so, if everyone has this belief that the races are all equal in terms of intelligence, then disparate outcomes are The fact that, let's say, blacks and Hispanics, and I'm sure if there were lots of them over in the West,
Amazonian pygmies and Australian aboriginals, the fact that they do far worse, economically, is always and forever laid at the feet of horrendous, white, vicious racism.
And right now, whites are the new, quote, capitalist class in the Marxist world.
White males are the capitalist class in the Marxist ideology.
And we sure as fuck know what happened to the capitalist class in the Marxist ideology.
They got killed. And I'm not kidding about that.
And so we do need to have an understanding of this topic for immigration policy, for migration policy as a whole, for foreign aid as a whole, for an understanding of why the world is the way that it is.
The world cannot be understood.
Without an understanding of human biodiversity, it cannot be understood.
And all of the disparities end up being laid at the feet of white males, and there is an ever-escalating rage for 60 years, give or take, maybe a little longer.
And so for about a hundred years, the communists have had the goal of suppressing race and IQ differences with the goal of increasing rage against white males.
That's not my, I'm not making that up.
That's all documented.
It's all very clear.
It was at the common term in the 1920s that this program was put in place because they are patient.
And so what's happened is for the last 60 years, The idea that disparities in racial outcomes are always and forever due to the racism of white males, that has been the hypothesis.
And trillions of dollars have been spent, if not downright wasted, in order to attempt to close these gaps.
And in many ways, these gaps are as wide, if not wider, than ever.
Now, in a sane universe, people would look at the hypothesis of endless white male racism and sexism and say, well, we've been working with this hypothesis for 60 years and we haven't solved the problem.
Maybe we should start looking at a different hypothesis.
But people aren't doing that.
It has become a hell-spawn business, so to speak.
It has become highly profitable.
Unfortunately, the demonization of white males has become a cancerous growth industry.
And it is absolutely essential that we talk about this.
It's basic self-defense.
You know, if the capitalist is believed to be exactly the same as the worker, but the capitalist makes ten times as much as the worker, and the workers outnumber the capitalists, right?
And so when the workers can be convinced that the capitalist has stolen from them for generations and is exactly the same as them, but has his boot to the neck of their, right, holding their lives hostage and profiting from them and exploiting them, What happens?
Well, you pour enough of this Iago-style venom into the ears of people, and they go fucking crazy.
And they go mental, and they become absolutely enraged.
And what happens then?
Well, either individually or when they gain control of the political process, which demographically is about 20 years from now, when my daughter is 29 years old, what happens?
Well, we know what happens.
We have seen historically what happens.
There is no doubt about what happens.
It is as clear and as inevitable as the sun rising tomorrow.
So yes, if you care about the future, not just of your society, but of the lives of your children and the lives of yourself, in 20 years I shall be a mere babe of 71.
So people need to start fucking talking about this stuff.
Because I don't know if pushing back against prejudice with facts It's going to solve the problem, but I sure as hell know that refusing to talk about it is going to guarantee the solution, so to speak.
Right. Well, I just think it's very serendipitous that you bring this up, because I'm actually reading a book by Steven Pinker called The Blank Slate right now, and he actually kind of puts this entire idea into a bigger context of even just science and psychology, because he kind of argues that, as you said, even back in the Well, this would be, I guess, 1940, 1950.
There was a push by people who were studying culture and even psychologists to sort of—he calls it the denial of human nature and kind of like the denial of the autonomy of culture from individual minds.
So the sense that we've been trying to move towards saying, okay, everything is socially constructed, right?
As you said, if we see a difference in this kind of distribution, let's say it's at a certain job or something, and they see there isn't as much of a percentage of minorities or a different group, it must be something that is socially constructed.
And they'll go straight to saying, okay, it's racism.
So he puts that in a bigger context and says it's that we're not acknowledging that there are these polymorphisms that exist between populations, right?
And that's a biological fact.
And it seems like we're perfectly accepting to talk about these polymorphisms in science when we talk about, let's say, okay, Asians happen to have a certain gene where they don't sweat as much.
So, you know, one of my best friends is Korean, like I go work out with him, he doesn't smell at all.
I'm Arab. I smell awful after I work out.
That's a polymorphism. He has a higher percentage of having it because he's from a certain population.
I'm from a certain population, and it's a matter of averages, right?
But it exists. It's a biological fact.
Or if you look at the difference between, say, East Asians and Sub-Saharan Africans in terms of fat retention.
You know, East Asians tend to be slender, and it's, you know, I guess they eat fish or whatever, but it also has to do with just the biological capacity to retain fat versus not retaining fat.
We understand all these differences.
We understand differences in penis size.
I mean, to take a silly example, right?
When they ship condoms to Africa, they're different than the size of the condoms they ship to, say, Japan.
Is that true? It is true.
Absolutely. You can look it up.
That's hilarious. There you go.
There you go. I mean, we're not talking Thimble versus Zeppelin, but they're not the same.
That's funny. Yeah, so I definitely agree that.
And I think in the next 50 years, especially as our genetic capabilities increase, we'll be able to really You know, pinpoint what the identities are of even more polymorphisms that exist, right? So I think in terms of the biology, we're only going to get smarter in that regard.
So even from just the scientific perspective, I think we all ought to get more comfortable with that idea.
Well, and let me just sort of add one other thing.
Sorry to interrupt you for it, but let me just sort of add one other thing very briefly.
Yeah. The big problem is that the heads are pretty much the same size.
I mean, there's a small relationship between intelligence and head size, but it's not particularly relevant.
So if you see some guy with, you know, big monster muscles on his arms, and he is arm wrestling with, say, some guy who's got these soy boy noodle arms, and the guy with the big arms and the bulging muscles and the veins...
Looks like a bag of ropes under his forearm, right?
When he beats the other guy, everyone says, well, Jesus, he's got huge muscles.
Of course he won. It's not unjust.
It's not unfair.
But if everyone looks to be the same strength and one guy keeps winning and keeps winning and keeps winning, what do you think?
You think he's cheating. Because people can't see the different size arms.
And when it comes to intelligence, we all have the same sized head.
And so, if everyone had intelligence, like if the head size was relative to intelligence, we'd see, you know, the guy Ma in China, okay, he's got quite the white cliffs of Dover forehead going on, but we'd look at like real geniuses and we'd say, well, their brain is 3,000 times, their head is 3,000 times the size of everyone, so it makes sense, right?
But we don't see it.
We don't see it. So it's hard for people.
You know, the manager in the corner office, he just looks like you.
He looks like a cleaned-up version of the worker.
He's not massively tall.
Now, other things, basketball, we see the height.
Beauty, we see the face.
Singing voice, we hear the beautiful voice.
And we try and reproduce it, and we can't, if we're not that good a singer.
When it comes to running, you know, we see A, he's skinny, and B, he's from Kenya, right?
So whatever it is, like, we see these physical markers of why people are successful or not.
But you look at Jeff Bezos, what did he just pass $100 billion, like the richest man in the history of the known universe?
He just looks like a bald guy with steroids.
You don't look at him and say, my God, you know, you look at Angelina Jolie when she was younger, beautiful woman, nice figure, you know, good actress.
And you say, okay, well, I can understand why she's getting paid a lot more than the potato-faced extra in the back of the crowd, right?
Makes sense. We can see all that.
But when it comes to intelligence, The Dunning-Kruger effect is a big problem, in that dumb people can't comprehend smart people.
They just feel this vague resentment, and that resentment is easy to mine by sophists, to turn the resentment of dumb people against smart people.
Like, let me give you a stupid example.
Like, I was skating today with my daughter, and I can go...
I'm average at so many things, it's ridiculous.
I'm average skier, average skater, average tennis player.
Anyway, but...
I can go pretty fast. And I was thinking, you know, I wonder what it would be like to just race with someone, you know, like those giant butt, half bent over, arm behind their backs, like some pay-per-click butler kind of speed racers, right, on the ice. And I was thinking, oh, bitch, I could go pretty fast.
And then I had to... No, no, they studied, they trained for years.
They train for years.
They would, you can't say, I would eat their desk.
I would eat their ice shavings or something like that, right?
And that would be, we'd measure.
We'd see the muscles. We'd see the speed.
We'd say, oh, that person won. They trained.
They're stronger. They're like Michael Phelps, right?
I mean, the guy just trained, I think, like an extra day a week or something.
So he wins like crazy. And we don't see.
So it's hard.
Dumb people or people of average intelligence, they can't understand what it's like to be inside the brain of a genius.
And so they just, well, look at all these good things.
Look at all of these good things that are accruing to these guys who kind of look like me.
It's not fair. You know, you look at the tall Chad Thundercock alpha guy in the corner of the bar, you know, who's six foot four, beautiful head of hair, you know, he's got a lean physique, chiseled jaw, and the women are flocking to him and you say, okay, I don't like it, but I understand it, right?
But you look at Jeff Bezos and it's like, he looks like somebody who would be fired for being a rather bland looking accountant, right?
You say, why does he have a hundred billion dollars?
Okay, because he's got a contract with the CIA and also because he obviously has a huge amount of business acumen and was in early and has worked, I assume, ferociously And so, with some things, like you listen to Celine Dion, like she just took two days off, I think, because she had a sore throat or whatever.
You listen to Celine Dion, like her music, don't like her music, that is a glorious voice.
I mean, you listen to that high note in All By Myself, any more, gives you goosebumps.
I remember hearing that in the car for the first time, right?
You hear Freddie Mercury's falsetto in the song Cool Cat, I mean, it's like, wow, that is impressive stuff.
So you can get it, right?
And then you try and reproduce it, try and sing that high, or try and sing like that, you can't do it, right?
Even Crazy Babs, like Barbara, the singer, Barbara Streisand, she, at the age of 70, with her, you know, skinny grasshopper legs, she's still got an amazing voice, an amazing voice, even at her age.
And you can hear it, you can try and reproduce it, you can't, you go, okay, well then, you know, I get, I get why they're famous.
I mean, even if you look at the woman from Modern Family, that woman who looks like the playboy cutout, you say, okay, well, you know, she's a pretty funny actress and she's got these curves and all that, so I can understand why, right?
So... But with intelligence, we don't see it.
It's a back office. Guy kind of looks like us, but he's just got all this stuff.
And we can't see why, if we're not smart, if we're not industrious, if we don't understand what's going on.
And they don't have charisma.
Charisma is not unimportant in business.
Look at someone like Steve Jobs.
But charisma for, like, a movie star, you have to have a huge amount of charisma.
You've got to have, like, an 18 charisma.
I use my Dungeons& Dragons numbers.
And so we draw on, like, whoever your favorite movie star is, oh, I had a movie coming out.
Maybe I'll even overlook the Scientology, but you'll respond positively to that person.
Wow, what a lot of charisma. Even someone like Russell Crowe, although he chunked out fairly recently, still got this amazing charisma as an actress.
Okay, well, I get that.
I get that. But intelligence and, you know, the way that the free market rewards intelligence, ambition, creativity, and just plain being right, which is all enhanced by those, is to give you lots of money.
So people say, the rich people are taking all the money, or the rich people have all the money, like they're just greedily taking all the pie, right?
Which is why Trump with his extra ice cream hit a chord that people who don't understand this kind of thinking didn't understand.
Why are they talking about his ice cream? Because he got more!
And there was only a certain amount of ice cream.
Trump got more, which everyone else got less.
But I try to remind people, it's not that the rich in a free market environment, it's not that the rich have money.
It's that they create value.
They create value.
The money is not taken.
It's made. It's created.
People can't see that stuff.
Okay, that's it. Thanks. What's that?
Let's go ahead. Oh, sorry.
Okay, that's true. Although there are processes like rent-seeking where people can just sit on their money for egregious amounts of time.
But you're right. Hang on, hang on.
Wait, wait, wait. Sit on their money?
Go on. Okay.
I just wanted to interject briefly.
No, no. What do you mean by sit on their money?
Okay, so I'm not 100% familiar because I haven't studied economics, but I have read an argument about that that says, okay, while it's true that people like, you know, what's the figure?
Bill Gates has created more millionaires than any other person.
While it's true that there definitely are people like that, that you can also criticize the rich by saying that when they rent-seek, which I think is a term for, you know, when you It's something about using your money and...
Rent-seeking is when you seek a particular advantage that is generally considered unfair.
So rent-seeking, you could say something like, if you have an apartment in New York City and you are really advocating for more and more rent control, like let's say you're renting an apartment, then you're rent-seeking because you're trying to get the government to pass a law that says your rent can't go up.
And so you end up profiting, right?
If you're a businessman and you seek to have a competitor's product excluded from your marketplace, that's rent seeking.
That is it.
If you have a taxi company and then you say, well, everyone else has to have a license, which is really expensive, right?
Then you're attempting to keep out competition.
So in general, I'm not sure of the full technical description, but my understanding is that in general, it means seeking an unfair advantage, usually through political means to make more And the rich certainly do that, to some degree.
And the problem, of course, is the fact that there's no separation of state and economics.
I see. Okay, point taken.
So, back to your point about intelligence, though, I wanted to know if you agree with this question, at least, which is, for all this talk about intelligence, Would you be sympathetic to the idea that in terms of well-being, if you wanted to devise whatever metric you wanted to measure, overall, happiness is kind of a difficult word for it.
I guess more contentment. Overall contentment with life, endowing your life with meaning in a way that causes you to be productive and generally of well-being.
Would you say that...
Would you say that intelligence doesn't really confer an advantage to that, or would you say that there even is an advantage when it comes to being intelligent and achieving that?
Because my intuition is to say that intelligence is more like a tool that you can use in certain contexts, but I certainly know a lot of people who, I guess you could describe them as sabotaging themselves with how smart they are.
You know, there's like an expression, too smart for their own good.
What do you think about that?
What are your thoughts about intelligence and well-being?
Is there a link there, or is it pretty much everyone sort of has the same shot at living a story?
No, there's definitely some relationship.
And God help me when I said that addiction was often inversely correlated to intelligence.
I know a smart guy who's addicted.
But no, I mean, in terms of marital stability, in terms of income, which gives some Liberties in terms of health and longevity.
These are all associated with intelligence.
Now, as far as happiness goes, I don't know.
Maybe there are studies out there.
I have not noticed. But I would assume that if you have a relatively more challenging career, if you have a stable marriage, if you're in decent health, if you have a decent amount of money, and if your marriage is stable and so on, I think you're probably more likely to be happy.
So, that's my guess.
Now, I do think, though, I do think, though, that there is a noblesse oblige, that if you have, I mean, I view myself as having significant intelligence in particular areas, and I did not earn that.
I did not earn that any more than Celine Dion prayed to the gods of singing to get her golden contralto?
Alto? Soprano? I don't know.
Anyway, it's a nice voice.
So, I did not earn my native intelligence, and therefore I am blessed with it.
I am blessed with a reasonably pleasant speaking voice, which puts some people to sleep.
Wake up! It's important.
I am blessed with a fairly decent-sized and shaped head and reasonable jawline, proportionate features, and so on.
It's not like I have massive amounts of cleavage to throw at the webcam, but...
Not bad. Not bad.
Right, that does tend to help.
Yeah, I have a decent sense of humor, you know, like 72% of a comedian kind of thing.
So, you know, a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.
And I have a good deal of emotional courage and intellectual courage.
And because my relationship is with reason rather than with popularity or approval, When people dislike me, I don't take it personally.
I mean, I'm just a guy, right?
I mean, the arguments are disliked.
They would rather dislike me rather than dislike the arguments because if they dislike me, they don't have to do anything.
They can just stew in their hatred. If they dislike the arguments, which is the correct form of the relationship, then they actually have to do something to disprove the arguments, which they don't want to do.
They're going to stew in their hatred. And...
I am fortunate to have the Tour of the Colonies accent that grants the perception of 1.2753 IQ points higher than just about everyone who hears it.
So with all of these, and of course, I've studied a lot of philosophy, a lot of self-knowledge, I've done therapy for years, and I have worked on my language skills since I was six years old.
I'm not kidding, like relentlessly.
Doesn't count. I wish I could do what you do, people say.
And yes, there is some native ability, and that has caused...
Like, the people with good voices take more singing lessons, but it's not like the good voice makes...
It's not like the singing lessons make the good voice.
You take more singing lessons because you have a good voice, but it helps.
And so there is a noblesse of leech, which means that if you're smarter and you can understand these things, then it is incumbent upon you to attempt to reproduce...
What you have understood in terms of wisdom for people who don't have your own abilities.
Of course, right? I mean, it's natural.
You don't have to be the great guitar player to enjoy the guitar solo, but the guitar player has to do something to make it audible to you.
And that's sort of what I'm trying to downshift philosophy to the masses and show them the power and positivity of rational thought.
So, yeah, I think smart people do have a bit of an edge when it comes to happiness, although there are plenty of miserable people.
Smart people as well, because smart people are both a great profit center and a great danger to the powers that be.
They're a great profit center because they generate a lot of revenue for the state, but they're a great danger because their sagacity allows them to penetrate the fogs of sophistry that surround the state and reveal it for the giant punch to the nets that it actually is.
So a lot of smart people can be very corrupted.
And the internet, of course, has allowed us to bypass that.
The internet... It has allowed smart people to bypass the gatekeepers, which means they can't be corrupted.
Can you imagine if I was doing this show on a major Canadian television station, can you imagine how many compromises I would have to make?
I would get out of bed in the morning, brush my teeth, and just see a corrupted, self-loathing golem creature staring back because, I mean, literally 95% of the topics I want to talk about, I would be forbidden from talking about.
And they'd say, well, you can talk about them, but you're going to get fired.
I'd be like, okay, fine, I won't talk about them.
Just touch around at the edges, maybe make a joke once in a while, and so on.
And so because we can now contact the people directly, intelligence has far less need for approval.
There are no gatekeepers, really.
A few gatekeepers. And that's a wonderful thing.
And what that means, of course, is that if you're smart and you're corrupted, you have almost no excuse anymore.
Right. Right.
And I guess you would say that for this era, as you mentioned earlier in the call, that that would involve kind of aversion back to our state of pure rationality, which you believe is, I guess, eliminated by the institutionalized evils that befall us as children, primarily through Yeah, I mean, it's the inverse of the idea of original sin.
So the original sin idea is that we're born evil, but through steadfast cultivation we can become good.
And I believe that we are born good and rational, but through steadfast decultivation we become corrupted.
Right, almost like Rousseau's view of...
Of, you know, humans in society and human in nature.
That's interesting. But Rousseau, to some degree, wanted to boomerang back to the animal.
And we can't go back to the animal.
We're not animals in that sense.
We are animals with a rational consciousness, which means we're unlike any animal out there in the known universe.
So we cannot boomerang back to the animal, you know, go back to the Na'vi in Avatar.
I mean, we simply can't go back.
I don't want to go back.
A fucking ape, because there's a lot of sex and these guys are dangling.
And no, we have to push on to what it is to be human.
And we start that way with that wonderful potential.
And, you know, a cow is born not knowing that it's livestock.
A cow is born not knowing that it's livestock.
Now, of course, it has the genetics of cultivation to be livestock, which is true for human beings as well.
Human beings who weren't easily turned into tax livestock often didn't make it.
So we do have that genetics to work against.
But I do believe, having spent, well, having been a father and so on, there was no particular phase in my daughter's life.
Where she was tempted by irrationality and just plain nuts.
You know, I mean, it wasn't like, oh, she's so sad because she never believed in Santa Claus.
You know, people would say, well, what's Santa bringing you for Christmas?
She's like, I don't believe in Santa Claus.
Oh. You know, she was never sad about it.
You know, as I say, it's a fun story.
It is a fun story. But nobody reads her.
I mean, I didn't read her The Hobbit saying it was a documentary, for God's sakes.
Just a fun story. So, yeah, we can't.
I mean, with the Rousseau thing, there is this yearning to go back to the caves, and there's no rewind button big enough to pull us that far back in time.
Okay, fair enough.
But then, if you're going to say that this idea is kind of, I think you said something like the opposite of original sin, in a way.
If you're going to say that, but then what about the idea that Judeo-Christian values, which are supposedly the foundation of Western society, and Someone like Jordan Peterson would say, okay, the Old Testament and the New Testament are articulations of those values, right? Those values have now been sort of put into the—or articulated through the establishment of a religion, right?
Well, original sin seems like a pretty important and central part of that narrative, which is supposed to underlie the whole Western— So if you're going to say that this idea is sort of opposite to original sin, how do you reconcile that?
Well, I don't reconcile it, Fareed, because the question of original sin is, does it pass philosophical and scientific muster?
And it doesn't. And it doesn't.
And the idea of historical, like, inheriting a historical sin has been a huge castration of the strength of the Western spirit.
A huge castration of the strength of the Western spirit, right?
I'm so sorry to interrupt.
And yet, it's part of the central narrative of Western society.
That seems kind of contradictory to me.
If we're going to start with the idea that Judeo-Christian narratives are the foundation of Western culture, which is, I would say, not a crazy idea, right?
People sort of have that intuition.
Then you're saying that the thing that has been oppressing this group of people, this culture for so long, is something that is part of their central narrative?
That's my question. Why would a culture in its own story produce something that is so antithetical to the way that things are?
Or not only that, but that is so, as you say, as your argument was saying, that has been holding them down for so long.
Well, I'm sure you know some of the paradoxes that every strength is a weakness.
So, Farid, would you say that you're a self-critical person?
Sure. Okay. And that's good, right?
I mean, you don't want to automatically think that everything you do is right.
So to be a self-critical person is helpful.
It means that you have what's called an observing ego, like that third eye.
You look at your own behavior, you evaluate it, and you figure out whether you're doing the right thing or not according to your values, or rational values, I hope.
So self-criticism is good.
Unless you have a verbally abusive person in your life, right?
Right. What happens then?
Well, I guess then you start to internalize what they're saying about you and your self-esteem.
Can I curse? Yeah, well, they view your self-critical nature as the chink in your armor through which they can slip the shiv.
I see. I see.
Right, so if you look at something like Islam, not the most self-critical belief system in the known universe, right?
Yeah, I mean, I'm a Muslim myself, so I could definitely say that.
Not a lot of like, gosh, are we doing the right thing?
Or is this the right thing? Or, you know, like, there is at least among certain aspects of that belief system.
I mean, you can call it a religion, but it's more than that.
It's a whole political system as well.
If you have the collision between a self-critical Western system and a not so much self-critical, say, Muslim system, then the Western system is at a significant disadvantage.
Right? Right.
Now, if you have a group of people who are equally or more or less equally self-critical, then everybody has this mutually assured destruction.
Well, I'm not going to verbally abuse you because I'm self-critical and I have that same chink in my armor, right?
Mm-hmm. And so there's this mutually assured destruction, so to speak.
Everyone's standing neck deep in gasoline.
Nobody wants to light a match, right?
But if you have a culture—and I don't necessarily want to pick on the Muslim culture.
It could be any culture, right? But if you have a culture that comes in that does not have those kinds of self-doubts, that is absolutely certain or does not have those problems, those hiccups, those stumbling blocks— Then they kind of sail in, and they don't have that chink in the armor, but they know that the person with self-doubt has that chink in the armor.
It's sort of like if you're a nice person.
If you're a nice person, a high-pressure salesman can be a big problem.
If you're not a nice person, the high-pressure salesman, well, you just tell them to screw off, right?
If you're a nice person, it's like, well, I don't really want to tell them to screw off, so I guess I better listen the next thing you know.
You know, you're walking out with a timeshare or whatever it is, right?
So it is a challenge.
I also think, of course, that just saying Judeo-Christian gives pretty short shrift to the Greco-Roman, right?
So just saying, well, you know, it's Judeo-Christian and that's it.
I mean, that's a significant portion of the pie, but there's still a couple of slices that belong to Socrates and Aristotle and Cicero and the Roman political system and so on.
And so I think that just looking at the foundation of the West is fundamentally...
Religious, without looking at the foundation of the West, is also religion wrestling with science and rationality, I think does not give enough credit to the philosophers and puts everything in the hands of the theologians, which I don't think is reasonable.
I see. That's interesting.
So then, would you say that there is...
I guess you could call it an archetype, but the collective idea of original sin, would you say that there was some kind of advantage to that?
Because people like Brett Weinstein would argue that A lot of aspects of religion exist because they conferred some kind of advantage to those who prescribed to them, right?
Which is almost going back to Richard Dawkins' idea of the meme as this sort of self-replicating, you know, cultural idea or like a unit of idea or whatever.
No question. Yeah, there's no...
Sorry to interrupt, but there's no...
I just want to, before you be...
I never want to drop that point, which I think is very important for you.
So my thought, let me know what you think, but...
If you want to know what is the most important aspect of Western civilization, look at what the Communists targeted first.
And what did the Communists target first?
Well, I guess there were two aspects to it.
They targeted the family and they targeted the church.
And so if, you know, the keystone to the arch of the West, they didn't say, well, we...
The Communists didn't come along and say, well, we've got to do away with these universities, right?
They didn't say any of that. They didn't say, well, we have to get rid of the government.
They didn't say, no more internet.
They very clearly and specifically worked to destroy the family and to destroy the church.
And the one thing that original sin does is it does give you humility, which, as long as you have borders, is a productive thing.
In other words, being self-critical when...
Jerks can't live in your house is a positive thing.
Being self-critical when jerks are living all over your house is not a positive thing.
And so I would assume that they...
I mean, they co-opted the universities.
So it meant that the universities relative to communism, the universities were not immune to being taken over by communists.
The family...
Is relatively immune to being taken over by communists, although there certainly are some communist families out there, communal families.
But the family is pretty resistant to being taken over by communists, which is why the family had to be destroyed.
Now the church had to be weakened significantly, and now I'm telling you, straight up, man, I mean, tell me what you think, but I think that the left is very much co-opted.
The churches. And they have very much co-op.
If you look at the stuff coming out of the Pope's mouth, I mean, it's fairly indistinguishable from your average social justice warrior.
If you look at how much the churches are being paid, hundreds of millions of dollars by the state, to be part of this third world refugee program and resettlement program.
I think they were weakened significantly, and now they've been overrun.
I don't think that the universities needed to be weakened that much.
And the communists didn't say, let's not have Hollywood, let's not have movies, let's oppose these things.
No, they just co-opted those and used them to broadcast their message.
And they can't take over philosophy.
They can take over philosophy departments, but they can't fundamentally take over philosophy.
And they haven't... They haven't, well, they've used science in terms of sort of spreading this collectivist agenda, but they didn't say, well, we have to get rid of science.
But yeah, as far as the church and the family goes, they were, you know, two sides of that teepee that they just took down.
I see. I see.
Okay, so those are your thoughts on Original Sin.
I guess I kind of want to go back, because we've covered a lot of interesting topics, and I'm really thankful for that.
Thanks for your time. No, thank you.
It was a great question. Yeah, yeah.
Going back to the idea of philosophy as a process, I think you said somewhere it's not a conclusion, it's a process.
If those are the sort of external...
Goals and external ideals that we're striving for.
What can you say about the more internal goals?
Less about the effects that we have to have on society as doers of philosophy and more about the eventual sort of subjective state that we will possess the more that we refine our philosophical inclination, right?
Because you would describe it as a natural inclination towards truth, right?
The sort of state of pure rationality that you talk about.
So I guess my question is, what kind of things The more you commit yourself, because no one's perfect, right?
Everyone acts in ways that you would describe as non-empirical, non-consistently, right?
I mean, I would even say that that's part of the spice of life, right?
So what would you say about that?
Because obviously there are a lot of philosophies that really focus on that.
For example, stoicism, is that how you say it?
Stoicism, yeah, sorry. Stoicism, you know, talked about like this interstate of tranquility that you reach, you know, once you've become sort of a renowned sage or philosopher.
In the Islamic tradition, the Sufis are big on sort of the experiential nature of truth, right?
So that they really, they have this argument that, okay, could you tell someone what it's like to be drunk and have them experience being drunk?
Well, it's like, okay, you could describe, like, okay, you trip over things more often, you find...
More girls, acceptable of your company, right?
And they'll get those things once they get into that state.
Oh yeah, like they can go back and think, damn, yeah, everything you said was true.
But there is something about experiencing it that seems vital to the experience.
So that's sort of what it's like in Sufism.
So what about you?
What are your thoughts on sort of the subjective experience?
And what subjectively is going to be the upper limit of our, you know, Do you mean, sort of, can philosophy offer happiness?
Or contentment or peace of mind?
See, I guess that is part of the question.
The more overarching theme, I guess, would be to say, does the process of philosophy eventually end in a sort of...
Do you have an idea of a gnosis?
I think it's a Christian idea, G-N-O-S-I-S. It's this idea of eventual...
Well, the Stoics would call it this tranquility, this transcendent state of once you've achieved...
Do you believe in something like that, personally?
Do you think there is kind of a...
And just to give more context, like Schopenhauer, he said he was an aesthetic, right?
Like he thought if you stay away from worldly pleasures enough, then that's how you sort of foment this great transcendent state of mind, right?
So it's not a very rare topic in philosophy.
A lot of people have talked about this.
This sort of end state, right?
So if you refine your mind enough, if you refine your philosophy enough, right?
Again, the Sufis would say, if you refine it enough, you will be one with God, right?
And you will basically be this living saint, right?
That's their idea. In the Christian idea, I guess it's the idea of gnosis, right?
Like, dedicating yourself to understanding God so much that you reach this state, right?
So that's more what my question is about.
Obviously, the state itself, the end state, involves a feeling of happiness, involves a feeling of contentment.
I guess it's more transcendent than that.
Do you believe in anything like that?
Someone who, I guess, would be described as practicing perfect philosophy or someone who's really reached the end goal, again, when it comes to the subjective side of things?
No, that's a great question.
That's a great question. And it's bringing six million thoughts.
And I was trying to push them back, Farid, to make sure to concentrate on what you were saying.
And I'll keep this brief.
I'm very good at selling some things, but I cannot hold out to people some sort of foundational nirvana or eternal bliss as the result of the study of the pursuit of knowledge, of philosophy.
The one thing, with the possible exception of Stoicism, the one thing that seems in common with the belief systems that you put forward, Farid, is that there does seem to be the soul, the afterlife, the And God.
Now, if, of course, proximity or closeness to God, and as you know, in certain religious traditions, hell is not a place of fire and brimstone.
It is merely being distant from God and knowing that you're distant from God, and that's sort of the hell that it is.
So if you get close to God, then you experience a state of perpetual bliss.
And that is not just non-biological, it's anti-biological.
Because the way that life works as a biological being, as you probably know, is you get happiness with achievement and you get these endorphins.
And then do you know what your son-of-a-bitch body does, Fareed?
It adjusts!
Right. Oh, look, I won the lottery!
I'm so happy!
And the next day, I'm still me.
Right? And then the problems set in, you know, more money, more problems, right?
So we adjust.
We achieve something.
The thrill of victory lasts about 15 minutes.
And this is how we got out of the caves.
Right? Is that the dopamine puts the prize just out of reach.
And we struggle and we strive to get it, we get it, and then the prize moves again, just out of reach.
This is why we continue to grow as a species and as cultures and civilizations, hopefully.
And so, biologically speaking, when we achieve a particular goal that's in accordance with our values and hopefully in accordance with virtue, we feel good.
We feel great. I mean, you've achieved this yourself, right?
You've achieved great things, and what's it like the next day?
I want more. It's fine.
You know, I'm glad you achieved it, and it's better than not achieving it.
And then you're like, reset.
Damn that reset button.
Right? So there is, of course, this goal, like when you have a great orgasm, which is to say, as a man, when you have an orgasm, I don't know, no bad orgasms.
But anyway, when you have an orgasm, this idea that you could just stay there.
Well, you can't. Right?
You've got to get up and wash and fall asleep.
So you can't stay there.
Like, biologically, we can't stay there.
Now, if you have an otherworldly ideal, well, then you can...
The image that's coming to my mind is it's cold.
You get close to a fire, and you're warm there by the fire.
You stay warm. Now, let's just pretend it's an eternal fire or whatever it is, right?
But the reality is, of course, in our lives, the fire goes out.
So you go to the fire, and if you just stay by the fire, the fire runs out, you get cold again, you freeze to death.
So you have to get up, you go get more wood, bring it to the fire, light it up, right?
You have to adjust the fire and you have to go, right?
You can't just stay by the fire and stay warm because the fire's going to go out.
And that's like endorphins.
You have a goal, a challenging goal, you achieve that goal, you feel great, and then...
You reset. And then you have to go and get better and you have to keep achieving.
So the idea that we can, you know, sit in this hot tub of bliss without striving and achieving is not biological.
It's not how our brains and our nervous system and our dopamine reward system works.
And so if you have an otherworldly ideal, then I guess you can say there's this eternal fire.
You can sit by and be warm forever.
It never goes out.
It never changes. And that's what you can do.
But that's not the way that life is.
And because I'm a materialist and I'm an atheist and I am...
An empiricist, I have to look at how the happiness mechanism works within human biology.
And it's, you know, this old idea of the will of the wisp.
It's this beautiful vision in the woods.
Every time you grab it, it moves deeper into the woods.
You just got to keep going if you want to keep it in sight.
Right. Well, see, while I agree that in terms of biology, the sort of transcendent state that Let's say the Sufis talk about in their tradition does seem to be at odds with, as you say, our innate drive to, you know, once we've achieved something, to go for more.
I would, though, I would bring up the idea that, well, people would say, like Jordan Peterson says, that, you know, there is sort of This comfortable place where you have just the right amount of unfamiliar and familiar environments or stimuli where you're secure with yourself but are adventuring out into the unknown just enough for it to be interesting and not boring,
but it's not too much on you. So it does seem like, yes, if we talk about transcendental states, transcendental states is those, yeah, you reach this, as you say, this fire and you're not doing anything else because you achieved it.
That seems antithetical, but I think there is something to be said about an ideal mode of being, like I said, that involves sort of having just the right amount of, you know, as Peterson would say, like encountering the unknown.
But you need the divine for that, though, right?
Because if you can face the divine, then you can have that kind of peace, serenity, security, perhaps.
But, you know, Fareed, I face people, and I face political system, and I face miseducational systems, and all of the corruption systems that I've talked about at the beginning of our conversation.
So the idea that if you decide to, you know, grease up, skin down, and wrestle with the mad minotaur of human society, the idea that you're going to reach some place of nirvana seems...
It's like, I'm running with the bulls and I'm serene.
It's like, no, pick one.
And so if you're not facing people and if you're not wrestling with the darker side of your nature and their nature and attempting to rouse them, I don't see how it is possible to dive,
as I think philosophers should, into the hurly-burly of human affairs and exhort people to virtue and then say, well, I'm Perfectly at peace and serene.
It doesn't mean there's not great joy.
There's great joy in that, and there's sometimes anxiety, and sometimes there's confusion, and sometimes there's, you know, as knowledge increaseth, so also does sorrow increaseth sometimes as well.
So it is the full canvas and panoply of human emotions to face pain.
The stage of the world rather than the dream of the skies.
But I think if you focus on the affairs of people and you are in their wrestling to elevate the species, I think that looking for the abstract piece of divine contemplation is not where you're going to be.
Right. Point taken.
How often would you say you go face-to-face with Someone who you describe as a leftist, like literally face to face.
Is that something you do often, like walk up to people, let's say, if you see a demonstration or schedule an interview?
Or do you prefer to sort of do it through YouTube and through provoking people, let's say, online and stimulating discussion online in places maybe that it wouldn't have been?
If it comes up in my social circles, I'll certainly take it on.
I don't go to demonstrations and attempt to convert people because I know the mechanics of human belief.
And if I ever want to strengthen the left, then I descend upon them unawares and challenge them with reason and evidence.
I know that that causes people to recoil even deeper into their delusions.
You know, it's sort of like, I want to get this kitten out of a hole in the ground, so I'm going to poke it with a stick.
Well, what does that do? It drives the kitten further into the ground, right?
I mean, you can look at the presentations that I have, The Truth About Reason, I think it's called.
But when people encounter, when they're surprised, and they're not seeking it, but they, at the death of reason, it's called.
Opposite beliefs, they tend to retreat further into their delusions.
And I don't want to scare people deeper into holes, so I tend to usually be a little bit more let's dance rather than jump people.
Right. Right. Well, fair enough.
I appreciate this. I got to move on to the next caller because we have a bit of a lineup tonight, but dude, fantastic questions.
Fantastic questions. And thank you so much for taking all my questions.
I know there was like all over the place, but I have to tell you, like I've, I've definitely, you've given me a lot to think about.
This is very interesting. So thank you for having me on, man.
My pleasure. Thanks for calling in.
Take care. Take care.
Okay, up next we have Tim.
Tim wrote in and said, Now when someone asks what I do for a living or why I picked this career, I will tell them honestly about the car accident.
This must throw up red flags because anytime I tell someone they either get distant or become less interested romantically.
I'm wondering when in a relationship with a high value partner would be appropriate time and way to tell this story or if my choosing a career related to this is the problem.
Does a traumatic event make someone a higher liability for a relationship?
Is a traumatic event in the past something that should shape someone's future, i.e.
career path or life purpose?
That's from Tim. Oh, hey Tim, how you doing tonight?
Hey, not doing too bad.
Thanks for taking my call. It's a very interesting question.
I don't want to make this about me, but I mean, it certainly has...
It has not escaped my attention that after growing up wrestling with a crazy mom...
I now wrestle with the crazy world.
I mean, you know, I have really examined whether this is repetition, compulsion, or what I talk about in the book Real-Time Relationships, the Simon the Boxer stuff.
And I won't go into all of that, but I'm sort of aware of it, and it's something I need to keep an eye on.
Once, and I'm sorry to make you retell this story, you probably told it a thousand times, but what happened when you were 18?
Yeah. Yeah, so this would have been during my freshman year of college.
So I moved out, moved into college, and then this would have been during the second semester.
So nearing the end of, I guess, what would be the first year of university.
This was in the second semester and the friends and I were all driving back to school on the highway and it started to snow.
And we were driving on, I guess the way to get to the college, it's wide open fields.
So it's very flat.
And just to get out there, you just drive on a desolate highway for miles and miles.
So this was in kind of February and the snow started picking up.
And it started kind of blizzarding.
I was driving with a friend, my roommate actually, he was in my passenger seat.
And there was three friends I knew in the car ahead of me.
And they also had one of their friends who I didn't know too well in the car as well.
So it was blizzard, it was daylight, but the snow was, I mean, it was bright white.
The snow really picked up.
We kept driving. And I mean, it became extremely hard to see.
And as I was driving with my friend, my friends ahead of me, Went into oncoming traffic and got absolutely smashed by an oncoming car.
So I pulled over to the side of the road.
So they just, sorry, they just lost the lane?
Correct, yeah. They just slid into oncoming traffic.
And so wait, did they drift over because they couldn't even see the lanes or did they just slide for whatever reason into oncoming traffic?
I guess you don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So it was because there was no traction, right?
The snow, I mean, the snow had, primarily because it's flat area, essentially the wind is really strong.
And the whitest it was was on the pavement.
So it was extremely hard to see the road, right?
So what is black pavement is essentially you can see the white line kind of going down the center a little bit, and it's just snow covering, except for some of the tire track areas where cars had kind of been driving.
Yeah. Did they have winter tires, do you know?
It was an older car. I actually don't know that.
Oh, because I drove a car without winter tires recently, and it's basically like skating.
I mean, it's... Yeah, it was two-wheel drive.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they're going to oncoming traffic.
I mean, it's obviously bad.
I mean, it's two cars going above 70 miles per hour, completely smashing into each other.
Why so fast though, Tim?
Why were they going so fast?
Because we're 18, I guess.
Because, I mean, that's just crazy driving, right?
I mean, I'm like, if it's foggy, I'm like, snails are overtaking me left and right.
You know, I'm very much, I mean, not to the point with it being dangerous, but...
I'm very, I mean, and you now know, obviously, you're this way too.
That's how I am now. Yeah, that's how I am now.
Yeah. That wasn't how I was then.
So it was an accident, but not entirely an accident.
Right, yeah. I mean, there was definitely contributing factors, right?
Right. Right.
So I guess what happens is we get out of our car, I stop my car, and we run to my friends.
And, I mean, there was head trauma.
You know, the way the car hit, essentially, it spun sideways right into the front bumper of a much bigger, like, Tahoe-type vehicle.
And obvious head trauma.
Just in complete panic attack, the driver was smashed.
Both drivers were actually smashed by the frames of their cars.
It's hard for me to talk about. I didn't think it would be kind of hard for me to talk about, but it is.
And then maybe that's probably part of the issue.
Sorry, I'm sorry. I don't mean to dig in, but I just want to know where the emotional content is.
So what do you mean by, well, first of all, what do you mean by Tahoe-style vehicle?
What is that? So, the vehicle that my friends were driving was a much smaller sedan compared to the vehicle that they ended up smashing into right on the right passenger front quarter panel.
Okay, okay. And what do you mean by head trauma?
What did you see? You know, it was...
Anyone on the passenger side of the vehicle had clearly had their head smacked right up against the window, right?
And then on the whiplash, it had happened again as well.
So... Glass was broken.
Glass was causing bleeding.
And then also just some of them, like the two on the passenger side, had just gone out cold.
They had never had any reaction to it, at least from what I saw.
Right. And are we talking like skull caved in?
I mean, invisible brains? Where was the visual for that?
Yeah, I mean, the passenger side had gotten the worst in the car accident.
And yeah, it was some smashed in spaces, pretty much.
Were they dead right away, or did they die over time?
So I'm not going to obviously give any names.
I would never do that. The driver was not having full, I mean, clearly head trauma and bleeding as well, but in full panic attack.
So me and my friend in my car were calling 911, trying to figure out You know, trying to figure out how to manage the situation.
We're out in the middle of nowhere.
It's going to take a long time for anyone to get to us.
And the driver, you know, is in a full panic attack.
And eventually, you know, you just kind of lose it yourself.
You don't really know what to do. And then you realize you just got to, I guess, kind of...
I mean, the way I reacted to it, essentially, I just told them, you know, you're going to be fine.
You know, I mean, the person was freaking out about killing...
And being in this car accident and feeling guilty about the other, and I guess just freaking out about what had happened.
And eventually, you just kind of say, we have the police on the way.
We have the police on the way. We have the police on the way.
We have the ambulance, all of that.
But he's trapped in there, right, with the bodies?
Correct. Yep, there was no way we could open up the car at all.
The glass had broken. The frames was completely smashed in on both vehicles.
So that was the driver's side.
And the other vehicle was bigger, they were mostly okay?
No, the driver did die.
Oh, the driver died on the other side, okay.
Her lung collapsed.
Okay. And so that was slow, sucking for air kind of stuff?
Pretty much, yep. And on the passenger side of the friends that you had, were they dead in the accident or did they die afterwards as well?
Yep, they had obvious head trauma.
They were dead on impact.
Right, okay. Right.
So I guess it's obviously a pretty traumatic experience in my life.
It did happen a while back.
I'm sorry to interrupt, but how long did it take for the paramedics to arrive?
About 15, 20 minutes.
And was the driver still alive at that point?
The driver, no, no one was alive.
So you basically had to sit there and talk to this guy through shattered glass as he died, right?
Right. Was he bleeding out, you know?
Is that what caused the death?
They were all bleeding out.
I mean, they all had glass inside them.
And then the driver, my friend the driver, I mean, His head was also...
I mean, it wasn't great, right?
But as in, like, he had glass inside his head as well.
It wasn't like a smashed in face or anything, but it was pretty obvious he was going to die as well.
I mean, when we were there, there was no way anyone was going to make it out.
And even if the 15 minutes or 10 minutes or whatever it was, if they had gotten there sooner...
By the time they get them out, by the time they pack them in and get them to the hospital, and by the time they're seen by someone, it really wouldn't have mattered if you were closer, right?
Yeah, when we were running towards the car that my friends were in, I mean, the car didn't look like a car anymore.
It was entirely smashed in.
There was no way that there was going to be any recovery.
I mean, I wouldn't say...
I mean, of course, anything is possible.
If there would have been... The jaws of life, you know, what they use to pry open cars that are essentially just cut them open, cut the cars open.
If there would have been something like that on the scene, I mean, you never know, but...
Well, but that could have opened up even further bleeding, right?
Right. I mean, sometimes the compression of the surrounding metal actually stems the flow of arterial blood and so on.
Who knows, right? I mean, this will never...
Never be known. So, did they take them to the hospital when they showed up, or did they basically just take them elsewhere?
So, the police actually took me and my friend to the hospital.
I mean, they put us in a cop car and essentially didn't want us to be there.
So, yeah.
Because it's dangerous on the highway, obviously.
I mean, all that.
Well, I mean, your emotions are through the roof, right?
Yeah. Yep. When you were a kid, Tim, sorry to switch gears, you have an ACE or an Adverse Childhood Experience score of two verbal abuse and threats, and the second question you answered to the affirmative is molestation, sex, and rape.
And what was that? I don't...
Did I answer that as an affirmative?
Can you go into detail on what the question was?
I would be honest with it.
I'm not changing it anymore. And that's fine.
If you mistook it, that's fine, too.
And what about verbal abuse and threats?
What was happening there? Yeah, um...
I guess my mom and dad just never had a great relationship.
They stayed together but he cheated on her and they stayed together after that and he was pretty verbal.
He would yell and so would my mom.
I mean it was just verbal abuse.
I mean and just yelling if you did something that they didn't like at all it would just be kind of like small things would turn into a pretty big Vocal abuse, I guess.
It wasn't too much physical, not at all.
The question, and it may have been a mistaken one, but the question three was, did an adult or person at least five years older than you ever touch or fondle you or have you touch their body in a sexual way or attempt to actively have oral, anal, or vaginal intercourse with you?
No. Okay, all right.
So, Tim, what happened...
With you after...
I mean, I assume you didn't sleep that night.
Like, what happened with you socially and with regards to your family when you experienced this, I mean, half-war trauma, right?
Right, yeah. I mean, that's essentially...
So I went with the police officers and then essentially...
I mean, I was still in school.
I was still paying tuition.
I was still... On a goal to get my degree.
So I went back to school.
It's not like I did anything else.
I went back to school. The school had big organized events for all of the students who had died.
And we did all of that.
And then they had therapy for anyone who was impacted by the car accident.
And I did go to three of those sessions just with one therapist and then I mean, the therapist was, um, I guess I'm not gonna go into too much detail with what the therapist, um, how those conversations were all because essentially I was, she had said I had PTSD, you know, um, and to stay involved in school.
If I was, you know, I mean, that's essentially stay involved, keep doing, uh, group clubs continue to go back to her anytime I feel that I need to.
So that was the extent of Assimilating back into just regular life, I guess.
I'm gonna tell you a thought.
Nothing to do with the truth, you understand?
Just the thought. I don't think it's the trauma that does us in at all.
I don't think it's the direct experience of the negative that does us in.
I think if it's possible that you are stuck on this snowy road with your friends dying all around you, it is because there is a feeling or a thought that you have that is considered socially unacceptable, that is unspeakable.
If you have a feeling, a strong feeling about a particular series of events in your life, And that feeling cannot be verbalized without provoking general horror in those around you.
I think that's where we get stuck.
And I speak from experience with myself for stuff I've talked about in this show before.
Yep, I've been a fan of yours.
I've listened to that as well.
Okay, so...
I'll tell you...
My thought about this kind of stuff, and I certainly in no way, shape, or form want to tell you what your thoughts and feelings are, but I want to be honest with you about what my thoughts and feelings are and see if they make any sense.
Yep. People who behave in unbelievably risky manners really piss me off.
Because I said, why...
Was the car driving so fast?
Oh, I was 18! No, lots of 18-year-olds don't drive like that.
Do you know, Tim, of anything in the history of the driver that indicates what's called thanatos, a death wish?
There was nothing, no, nothing like that that I know of, no.
Reckless behavior, yeah.
Alright, so what other reckless behavior had occurred?
Underage drinking, you know, just kind of reckless behavior that I don't want to say is college student, typical college student, but, you know, premarital sex, underage drinking, drunk driving.
Drunk driving? Driving buzz, I guess, you know.
No, no, let's go with what you first said before you caught yourself.
Drunk driving. Yeah, well...
I mean, yeah, it is what it is. Yeah, that's true.
And was he, had he been drinking at all this night?
Not at all. Not that I know of.
Well, what do you mean, not that you know of?
And actually, it's confirmed that it, that it did not the- It did not alcohol, right?
Okay, okay. Right. Now, what was your relationship to this dead young man's reckless behavior?
I was, you know, I was just there.
No, no, like in the past.
Oh. So when you found out he'd been driving drunk, what was your relationship to that?
You know, I wasn't a perfect person either, to be honest.
I gotta admit, I wasn't the perfect...
Right. Was there anything that brought you up short about that, though?
Was there anything that you could have said or, looking back, wish you'd said?
Yeah, of course. I mean, I don't believe that's ultimately what caused the accident, obviously, and we've both known that, but of course, it definitely reckless behavior.
No, what caused the accident was going 70.
Like, sorry, what caused the death was going 70, most likely, right?
If he'd been going 40, they would have lived, right?
Yep. So, driving ridiculously fast.
I was right there, too, you know.
I mean, I was driving right behind them, so I was going the same speed.
Yes, but you had someone ahead of you, which, as you know, makes a huge difference.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, you know what it's like when you're driving through that blowing snow.
Sometimes you're just doggedly following the red lights ahead, right?
Right. They go off a fucking cliff.
You go off a fucking cliff.
Don't drive off a cliff!
Red car ahead, right?
Yeah. Were you scared at that speed in those conditions?
Yeah, I would say I was.
At the same time, I mean, I think anyone's scared when they're driving through something, they can't really see what they're doing.
Well, yes, but you want to be scared to the point where you slow the fuck down, right?
Right. So why did he drive so fast, do you think?
I don't know. I gotta be honest, I don't think it was anything like a death wish at all.
Was he showing off?
Was there somebody in the car that he wanted to impress?
I don't think so.
Were you in a hurry to get somewhere?
Yeah.
No, I had to get back to school.
So why would he be driving so fast?
You have a hypothesis in your head.
I guarantee you, because we all do when it comes to motivations of people.
Why was he driving so fast? - You know, I guess I don't wanna put any Obviously, I can't ask him, you know, so I don't...
No, I said you have a hypothesis.
I said you have a hypothesis, not that you have an answer, right?
Right, right. So what's your hypothesis or one of them?
Maybe just that... I mean, maybe he was trying to show off, or maybe he didn't want the car ride to take as long as you otherwise would have.
Maybe he just wanted to get up there and get all the people out of the side of his car.
Maybe he didn't feel that slowing down for this conditions would have...
Maybe he thought he would have looked like a bitch.
I don't know. I mean, there was his friends in the car.
I couldn't tell you. I really couldn't.
I'm sorry. Because I tell you this, man.
I fucking hate people like this.
He's not my friend, so I can be frank.
I fucking hate people like this.
Yeah, he was driving like an asshole and he got people killed.
Himself too. Yep.
That could have been me in that other lane.
Driving with my family.
My daughter could have been killed by this fucking asshole.
I mean, haven't you seen this?
Like, you know, you're going down the highway and two unbelievable dickwads are racing.
You know that they're racing.
Weaving in and out, right?
Yeah. Oh, you got these motorcyclists riding the stripe?
I really hate people like that.
I gotta be honest with you, I'm all of those things, to be honest.
And I work in the industry, to be honest.
I just am. You drive that way?
I drive a motorcycle and I do lane split.
After the car accident, you're going to hate this, but I'm going to tell you because, I mean, full disclosure on everything, and I don't know if it's any beneficial information.
I'll say that I had led into the conversation with the motivation to kind of speak to something beyond that, to the next questions in it where I think we'll get to.
But while we're talking about just reckless driving, I mean, after this had happened, When I was driving back up to school, you know, throughout the next couple of years, there'd be times the highway is straight as a stick.
You know, it's straight.
And it's dark when it's night, obviously.
There's no lights anywhere. And there'd be times when I would essentially take my headlights, flash them off, and flash them back on while going 70 miles an hour.
And that's suicidal. And that's not okay, right?
That's bad. And I know that.
But even at the time, I just liked the adrenaline of it, to be honest.
So when you say you hate these types of drivers, that's me, man.
Because that could be a deer?
Yeah. I assume not a pedestrian or a bicyclist in those conditions and on that highway, but anything can happen.
I wasn't in a good position after this whole thing happened.
That was right after this whole thing happened and all of that.
No, no. You cannot blame the accident.
Because what you're saying, Tim, is that there's something causal between the accident and you acting in a suicidal manner.
And there's not. The accident could have made you say, well, shit, I'm going to drive as cautiously as humanly possible because I've seen what happens when you don't.
You understand? You had a bony finger beckoning you into a next-door grave, right?
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, that's right. And that's because I believe, though I cannot say for sure, I believe that's because you haven't processed the anger.
And no one tells you to process the anger.
You know, as far as traumatic stress and all of that goes.
I think that war is more bearable if you get angry at the people who so often lied to get you into war.
The one thing that trauma is often not, particularly for men, the one thing that trauma suppresses is anger.
Especially when death is involved.
Don't speak ill of the dead.
Why not? This guy got people killed.
You could have got people killed.
You were him with an extra side slice of good fucking luck, right?
After you saw this, you replicated even riskier behaviors.
This guy wasn't driving with his lights off, right?
Right. So...
Yeah, I guess I can't...
I don't want to do that either because I've listened to the show enough.
I know... If there's something underlying it, then that's what I want to get to, but I don't want to just blame it on the event.
But I can tell you that my outlook on that has since improved.
I feel I never take any type of risky behavior like that.
I know I very much used to be a very risky driver.
No, but you kind of do.
Because your job, you told me earlier, Tim, I'm not trying to catch you or anything, but I just want to make, if I misunderstood something, let me know.
But earlier, Tim, you said to me, it's very risky being on the road where there has been an accident.
Yeah, it is. You say you have a full-time job where you directly interact with injuries and car accidents.
Is that on the road or is that elsewhere?
So I, nope, it's not on the road.
It's not on the road. Okay.
So I directly, here's the, I guess, the next step of that.
So for my full-time professional career, I directly interact with the families of those who had people killed in car accidents or someone individually who's injured from a car accident.
And I work with them, not to get too specifically, but with everything regarding the physical therapy, but not interacting with the physical therapy, the vehicle, Arranging everything as far as the vehicle goes and the vehicles and the tows.
Getting things moved.
A direct contact for them throughout that whole process.
All right. Okay. I appreciate that clarification.
Sorry, go ahead. Yeah.
No, I don't want to interrupt you. Go ahead.
So where is this guy's choice to drive that speed?
You've given me his age.
You've given me the weather conditions.
You've given me whatever, right?
Because I tell you, you know, I mean, I wasn't there, obviously.
Yeah, he definitely had a choice to drive that fast, correct.
He had a choice to drive that fast, and he killed five people.
Right. I mean, this literally, to me, is like going to a mall blindfolded and shooting machine guns around.
I mean, you might not hit people, but you just...
It's just chance if you don't, right?
Right. You drive at that speed under those conditions...
Don't tell me that's not a death wish, man.
Come on. And it's not just a death wish, it's a murder wish.
A death wish is when you do stupid things yourself that might get you killed.
This is like a radius extinction level wish.
Yeah, I hear you.
you.
I hear you.
And when he was dying in front of you with the glass in his body, trapped in the car, knowing that he was in a metal tomb with his knowing that he was in a metal tomb with his friends, his actions had killed.
Of course, he's dying, and you don't want his last moments to be, you stupid asshole, you just killed five people, well, four people in your next, right?
You can't process that in the moment, however factual it might be.
And then, of course, you've got to go and talk to his family.
And then, of course, there's all these hushed tones and everybody refers to it as an accident.
It was a tragedy.
No, it wasn't.
It was a largely preventable incident.
You didn't have to drive.
You could have pulled over.
You could have taken side roads.
You could have gone slowly.
You could have pulled into a restaurant and said, no way, I'm not driving in this.
Right? And you sure as hell didn't have to be going 70, that's miles an hour, right?
Yep. That is insane.
Like, I'm not kidding you, that is insane.
Under most conditions, particularly under those conditions.
I mean, can you stand in front of the guy's parents and say, this unbelievably irresponsible asshole caused the deaths of five people?
Yeah, I didn't say that.
Well, of course, right? Right.
Are you allowed to process or are you encouraged to process the anger?
He traumatized you. And caused the death of five people.
Yep. Because he was being ridiculously irresponsible when he damn well knew better, right?
Right. It was preventable.
Totally preventable. With everything that you said, pulling over, getting to a different road.
Oh yeah, no, of course, right?
Yeah. So he was...
I mean, if he had survived, what do you think he would have been charged with?
Vehicular manslaughter.
Murderer. He would have been charged with murder, right?
There would have been definitely something.
Well, manslaughter isn't a category of murder.
It just means that it was not your direct intention, blah, blah, blah.
Right. So this is a multiple murderer.
A seat-of-the-pants, simultaneous serial killer, right?
It turned out that way, yeah.
Well, no, it didn't turn out that way.
He was taking that direct risk.
This is Russian roulette, right?
Spin the barrel! Pull it to your head!
Pull the trigger! Oh no, he died!
Wow! It was preventable.
It's like, no, he was... So, when I talk about this guy being a killer...
And when you're talking about...
Oh, I'm sorry, not to interrupt. Go ahead.
What do you think? How do you feel?
I was going to say...
You're saying...
No, that's all... There should be anger there.
Well, I can't see how there wouldn't be.
And I was listening very carefully, Tim, as you were describing the accident to find out where causality was placed.
I doubt it was placed on him.
There was no causality placed on him, in particular.
There was causality placed on the weather, on his age.
And now you've taken causality away from him.
Okay.
Yeah, that's probably problematic because I'm probably putting that somewhere else or it's not giving me some type of closure that I need.
Well, do you know where the causality landed?
Because you took it away from him?
on you, Tim, when you were driving like a maniac and turning off your lights.
You were not in control of your life during that period.
You did not have the choice to act responsibly.
Why? Why didn't you have free will?
Why didn't you have the choice to act responsibly?
Because you had stripped your dead friend of his choice, of his responsibility.
Ascribing responsibility to the dead is a very difficult thing.
The dead, women, it's harder to know.
Harder to know sometimes in society.
Ascribing personal responsibility to the dead is a difficult but essential thing, I believe.
Because we must stare at the skull of the truth, no matter how much it glares back, but sometimes even from the afterlife.
If this guy lived, he would have ended up in jail and he would have had the living shit sued out of him.
Thank you.
He was a criminal, a murderer, who acted in a manner reasonably, I believe, reasonably expected to cause injury or death.
And he broke the lane, right?
Right. So he was in the other person's lane.
Right. You said the car slipped.
No, he pushed it with speed.
It was his foot on the accelerator.
So, let's go back to your parents.
It's funny how people say, my parents didn't have a good marriage, or they had a bad marriage, right?
Like, there's this third party called the marriage, which is like a prison cell that they're both trapped in.
Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah.
The causality did not, like, a lack of causality, a lack of responsibility didn't start with your friend.
It started before then, right?
Right. Why did your parents have a bad marriage?
Whose fault was it? Who was to blame?
I would say my dad took action to cheat on my mom, and then my mom chose not to forgive him and move on, or to stay in the relationship and continue to raise kids in that situation.
My parents had as passive.
Then they still do choose to do those same things?
So they are still in the marriage, and is it the case that they're still not getting along?
Oh yeah, yeah. And they chose to inflict that on you and any other children they had, right?
Right. Sorry, go ahead.
Sure. Oh, I was just going to say, you know, at this point, being 24 years old, I'm trying to look back on it and see.
At this point, you know, I'm not...
I don't live with my parents.
I don't do anything like that. I'm completely independent.
It doesn't affect my life as much as I don't think it.
Maybe we're going to talk about it and find something else out.
I would say that my parents still do make poor choices for how they choose to have a family and try to build a family.
Yeah, I would definitely say that.
Poor choices is an amoral phrase.
An affair, for instance, is not a poor choice.
Thank you.
It's a betrayal.
It is a breaking of the vow, and it is threatening, directly threatening the stability of the family unit.
It is an incredibly selfish act and an incredibly destructive act that is entered into and chosen willingly, especially if you have children.
You don't have the right to have an affair if you have kids.
You don't have a right to have an affair if you get married.
It's putting your cock above your kids.
Choosing a man who cheats on you...
Let me ask you this.
Tim, did your mother ever express to you Any knowledge or understanding or indication of the fact that your father either might have been a cheater or anything that she did that may have led up to or helped to provoke his cheating?
Leading up to it, I don't believe so.
I was very young when that happened, so I can't give you all the details on that, but afterwards, after it had happened, There was no hiding anything.
It was essentially...
I mean, not to put words in anyone's mouth, but I hate that man.
And that's...
That's what your mom said?
Essentially, yep. Did your mother gain weight after she got married?
Not too much, no. Did your parents...
I mean, do you know, in hindsight, whether they had a romantic or a sexual life or a physical affection or anything like that?
Because of the fact, and this is wholly true, I guess.
I don't know how else to say it.
Because of the fact that that happened when, maybe, you know, before I was really having conversations with them about much, I don't believe.
I guess I can't really recall much of them.
And how old were you? Sorry, go ahead.
Oh, I was just going to say, I guess, I'm sorry, I spaced on your question.
I'm trying to remember it. How old were you, Tim, when your mom told you that she hated your father?
Probably right after it happened, about 10 years old, you know?
And why would she tell you that?
To shield us from him, essentially.
What? Telling a 10-year-old boy that you hate his father is a shield?
You're right, you're right, you're right.
I'm making excuses for her.
Yeah, I'm making excuses for her.
It's good. We're getting to the core, man.
It's good. Keep being frank.
I'll be honest, I had never thought about that this conversation would go this way or what, but it's good.
Oh, yes. Whoever goes deep in these conversations.
First time for everything. It must have been her way of, she was financially reliant on him, but very angry.
Wait, was she angry before, obviously after, but before as well?
After. No, just after.
And how old was, so your father had the affair when you were 10?
Eight, I believe.
About eight. Around eight.
So two years later, your mother still hates him, right?
Yeah, to this day.
To this day, she still hates him for the affair that happened 16 years ago.
Right. So it's fair to say that you didn't necessarily grow up with seeing a healthy expression of hunger.
No, not at all.
And to this day, I mean, if I would check in while I was in university...
And I would call. I mean, essentially, it wasn't so much about what was going on in my life at all.
In fact, I hardly talked.
It was hearing about someone bitching about my father, to be honest.
So does your mother take any responsibility for marrying a man who cheated or for behaving in a manner that may have encouraged cheating?
I'm not taking away the responsibility from your father.
He chose to cheat.
But, did she ever say, well, I married a guy who cheated on me, which means I either chose a guy who was a natural cheater, or I acted in such a manner that he was more likely to cheat.
No. Zero responsibility, and then anger.
Which means anger is associated with No responsibility, no ownership, no choice, no free will.
Being a victim, anger is associated with victimhood.
Yeah, that's true.
When was the last time you got angry?
Really angry.
Probably in a car.
And it probably wouldn't have been maybe three years ago at this point, to a point where I physically did anything.
You know, as far as driving recalced area, if you're saying I'm angry to where I go out and I kind of want to physically do something, it would have probably been in the car around three years ago.
And what happened that made you angry?
Oh, I had...
This is...
Yeah, I had... What happened that made me angry?
Oh. I was frustrated.
I had no idea what I was going to do.
I mean, it was coming to an end of my university years.
I had no idea what I was going to do.
School was coming back up again. I didn't want to go back.
I was just upset.
I'm trying to think of what caused me to be that angry.
Probably just coming to the end of the summer, about to head back up to college.
And have you been angry since that didn't involve sort of the physicality of the physical manifestation?
Not really.
I mean, I'm sure I have.
I'm sure I've been...
I couldn't tell you if I've ever been that concentrated on something or someone and been mad.
I don't remember that at all.
Tim, did you ever have the job or did you feel you ever had the job of soothing your mother's upset?
Yeah, absolutely. And what would that look like?
What would happen? I'm just listening to her.
Because... I mean, just any time...
She didn't have anyone else to...
I guess the way I'm thinking about it back on it now, I don't know, but...
She would want to complain or something like that about my father or about something else going on.
She didn't have anyone else...
Finish that thought of, oh, the violin of victimhood is playing loud in Tim's orchestra tonight.
Yeah, yeah. She didn't have anyone else.
Why didn't she have anyone else?
Because she made a poor choice.
Well, because who wants to sit around and watch someone bitch and moan and complain?
Well, the kids have to because you can't get out, right?
Yeah. So she would dump all of her anger and frustration and upset On you, right?
Yep. Is that fair to say?
Yeah, that's fair to say. Definitely an outlet.
So you comforted your mom when she was really upset.
You comforted your dying friend when he was really upset.
And what do you do for a living now?
Comfort people who are very upset.
Right. Now, if you know that, that's fine.
If you don't know that, it's going to be off-putting to people.
I know that I use my skills of listening, of observation, and of a pretty deep knowledge of human nature to try and make the world a better place.
And I know that I learned a lot of those skills dealing with an insane family.
And a pretty crazy school system.
And, and, and. So I know that.
Which means it doesn't have power over me.
As long as you know the causality, you take ownership of where you are.
You can still keep doing everything you're doing.
You just know it, right? If you want to be in the kitchen, you don't know where the hell you are.
You turn the light on and you're in the kitchen.
Okay. At least you know you're in the kitchen.
You don't have to go anywhere. Now...
You grew up with a mother.
Did you ever have the feeling that you wanted to say to your mom, you had something to do with it too?
Yeah. Especially...
Yeah, of course. Or especially at least you have a choice in the way you move on from it.
Why didn't you say that?
Or what happened when you did?
I have said that.
And nothing happens when I do.
It's just not a choice that she's going to make.
What do you mean nothing happens? She just stares at you like you didn't say anything?
What do you mean? I would say, you know, if you hate the guy, then leave him or something.
You know, I mean, I want you to be happy and I want him to be happy.
I mean, that's what I ideally like my parents to be.
If you haven't been happy in a decade, more, you know, a decade and a half.
I mean, if you can do it, I would do what makes you happy.
I mean, I'm not encouraging.
I guess maybe I haven't taken enough steps to say you should...
I don't know the solution to her problem.
You know, I don't. So maybe that's why I haven't been specifically encouraged, then leave the man.
But I've definitely said I want you to be happy, whether that's together or apart.
And it's been a decade and a half and you're not moving on here.
Why do you want her to be happy?
Just because I'm she's family doesn't make me dependent on on her doing that, but I Okay, let me put it to you another way.
Let me put it to you bluntly, Tim.
You don't want her to be happy.
And I'll tell you why you don't want her to be happy, if that sounds like a surprising statement to you.
You don't want her to be happy because there are very specific things that people need to do to be happy.
And the first thing they need to do is to take ownership of what they have done in their life.
Take responsibility. You can't have happiness without responsibility.
You get the short-term relief of bitching and blaming, but you don't get happiness unless you take ownership.
So saying, I want her to be happy without specifically working with her so that she can take some responsibility in her life.
Stop complaining. Stop blaming.
And start apologizing for dumping I hate your dad on the little shoulders of a 10-year-old boy.
That is abominable selfishness.
So, if you want her to be happy, there are specific things.
Like, if somebody wants to win the race, they want to win a running race, but they're a chain smoker, first thing you say is, what?
Stop smoking. Right. But if you say, no, no, no, I'm really encouraging my friend who's a chain smoker to enter into the marathon and I really want him to win, but you never bring up that he should quit smoking, do you really want him to win?
Yeah, no. No.
Right. Your mother will not be happy.
Newsflash, Tim. Your mother will not achieve happiness.
Because without self-ownership, without responsibility, you don't have an identity.
You never achieve anything.
You just blame. And you're like this light, acidic drizzle on the meringue happiness of everyone else around you.
Right? The spine drencher.
The sand castle tsunami chick.
Right?
The minister of doom and gloom from the kingdom of woe is me.
It is such an ugly, nasty, and vicious thing to do to burden a 10-year-old boy with open contempt and hatred of his father.
Bye.
Thank you.
To take ownership of that and to have...
And I'm sure she didn't just start bitching at you when you were 10.
I'm sure it happened earlier.
So let's just say 20-odd years of bitching at a child.
Complaining to a child.
Drenching a child in your negativity and victimhood.
She's got to take ownership of that if she wants to even have a chance of happiness.
She's not going to. She's not going to.
I assume, Tim, tell me if I'm wrong, I assume that she doesn't even know that this is a problem.
No, probably not, no.
Right. Wouldn't it then be my job?
I know you're probably going to say, oh my god, but wouldn't it then be best if she did know it was a problem?
Well, you've told her to take some ownership for her choices, right?
I've told her, yeah, I want her to be happy and get out of the relationship if you don't like them.
But you've told her to take some ownership of her choices, right?
I'm sure I have. And it's done nothing.
Yeah. That's...
I wasn't going to interrupt your thought right there if you had something.
No, go ahead. I was just going to say I had never thought about it and I know I'm not sure if...
I guess let me put it this way.
I don't know if Anything with my mother or my parents impacts my daily life at this point.
Yes, it does. Yeah, it does.
But it is... No, it does.
Go back to that. But it is interesting.
I hadn't thought of my life as an entire place where I was essentially...
Spending my entire time trying to help other...
I mean... No, not helping.
No, not helping.
No, what you're doing is, you know, you're reproducing dishonesty.
You couldn't be honest with your mother.
How did you feel when she said she hates your father?
Hope that it changes.
No, that's not a feeling, man.
How did you feel when your mother said, I hate that man?
Sad.
Anything else?
Maybe anger.
Are you asking or telling me?
I don't know. Anger.
I'm telling you. Right.
Could you express that anger?
Not without retaliation or some type of yelling back.
You couldn't? No.
Right. Could you express your anger that your friend helped kill five people?
No, I couldn't. Not before the smoke call.
I hadn't even... Could you say that afterwards?
Could you say that to his family?
Could you say that to your friends?
Could you say it at the school? No.
Could you even say it to your counselor?
Nope. So, I don't want any details, Tim, but I'm pretty sure that sometimes you're dealing with people in your job who cause their own accidents.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I guarantee you, or at least I'm pretty damn sure you can't say a thing to them either.
I cannot. And they've done the same thing.
And you have done the same thing, but...
No, and they have done the same thing.
The same manslaughter type situations, but they survive.
Right. Right.
So here we have a situation, a repetitive situation, Tim, where you cannot express anger at terrible behavior.
You can't express anger at your mom, you can't express anger at your friend because he's dying, and you can't express anger at your friend afterwards because he's dead.
And everybody would be horrified.
Horrified.
You know, I've publicly stated, you may have heard it once or twice, that I was pretty angry with my mom.
I don't think about her much anymore, but I was pretty angry with her in the past.
But damn good reason.
How did society as a whole react to those statements?
Right? Unspeakable!
Shut up! Bad person!
Terrible son! Right?
Mean to the nice lady who sacrificed so much.
Right? It's unspeakable.
And thus we can't move on as a society.
We can't grow. We can't be stuck.
You can't speak the truth about your anger towards your mom.
You can't speak the truth about your anger towards your friend who took from you not just him and gave you this trauma, took the life of someone else and killed or caused the death of three of your close friends.
You can't express your anger towards some of the people who have been found criminally responsible for causing the death of others now.
You see, it's the same suppression of anger and outrage.
You can't be just.
Yeah, and that's something just before, I guess, the whole call happened.
And I guess the whole reason I had initially sent something in was I was wondering, is my career in some sick way of coping with the situation as opposed to fully recovering and moving on?
And it sounds like more than just the car accident, but of my reoccurring theme here.
Well, you probably are drawn to this show because I trample over these unspeakable things.
Fuck censorship. Fuck people like I can't be angry at people in my life.
Fuck I can't be angry with my mom.
Of course I can be. She did me great harm.
Beat my head against the door.
Did things I've never even talked about.
I mean, of course I can be angry with her.
I mean, if blacks can be angry about slavery 200 years ago, can I not be angry about a woman who half killed me when I was four?
Of course I can be angry.
Now, I'm a white male, therefore I'm not allowed to be angry because that threatens the livestock predation of the whole goddamn predatory system.
But, too bad!
I'm pissed. So, you're probably fascinated by some of the freedom of expression that I have.
Regarding this and also seeing the backlash that I received because I'm angry and pissed off about certain things and I'm damn well going to say it.
There's probably some fascination with you about that.
Yeah, I agree. Like I'm juggling trucks or something.
Wait a minute, we could do that?
That's possible? And maybe you want that freedom.
That honesty.
That bringing every part of yourself to the table.
Because there's this belief, like you see your mom who gets stuck in this petulant childlike rage against your father and you say, well, anger is so self-destructive.
No, blame without responsibility.
When you have responsibility, that is destructive.
And so what happens is, and this is, I think, what people find startling about me, is that, yes, I've experienced significant anger towards people in my life and things that happen in the world.
But I'm also, I'm not stuck in the rage, right?
I mean, I express it when it comes and it passes through me and I move on to doing a cheesy rap rip-off of Eminem's statements about Trump or whatever, right?
And making jokes and...
Being positive and being engaged and talking about my love for my family.
Like, the emotions that others have unjustly or inappropriately or in an immature fashion expressed around us, we look like they're these, hey, want to jump in this pit with no bottom and destroy your life forever?
Have this emotion!
But when people are grounded, and it's not a repetition compulsion, it's not a Simon the Boxer thing, you can have the emotion.
I can be angry. I can be scared.
I can be hostile.
I can be in a debate, right?
Recently. And then I move on and do a different show.
Like, I'm not stuck there.
Does that make sense? Yep.
So if your mom gets angry, like, oh, well, this is what anger does.
Man, that's really toxic.
I better not do that.
And then you can't get angry.
Maybe once every three years.
But if you recognize that healthy anger is a very positive and motivating force in your life, people who endlessly complain, they're petulant, not angry.
Anger is your fight or flight.
Fight or flight.
It makes you do something.
It made me do things, mostly to do with not having people who piss me off in my life on a regular basis.
When anger motivates you to action, it discharges itself and you can move on.
But blame paralyzes.
You know, I used to have this, when I was a little kid, I don't know, maybe six or seven years old, Tim, I used to have this thought, and it was a horrifying thought, that I would...
Lie in a coffin and have concrete poured on my body.
And maybe I'd have my nose and my eyes free.
But concrete would be poured on me and I would be immovable.
I would be trapped.
I would not be able to move.
That to me is mere blame.
There's a helplessness and a petulance and a self-excusing It's all him.
It's all him. It's all him.
Well, who married him? Well, he was different.
Well, who made him?
Or who contributed to him having an affair?
Well, now you're blaming me.
He chose to have the affair.
Yes, but you chose to be with him.
Yes, but I didn't know he was going to have...
Like, you can go round and round, but it's forever, right?
Everybody has an excuse.
It's that old saying, excuses are like assholes.
Everyone's got one. Everyone has an excuse.
And they drain the fuel of their life thereby.
You can blame other people all you want.
You can give yourself the self-pity party.
You can say, it was all done unto you.
And listen, sometimes it was.
You were traumatized as a kid.
You didn't choose it. You didn't choose your parents.
You were genuinely a victim.
And I have absolutely bottomless sympathy for that perspective.
But if you're a grown-ass woman and you marry a guy who cheats on you, you have some causality in the matter.
Now, everybody wants to abstract themselves, to distance themselves from the bad thing that happened and just blame the other person.
I'm an innocent angel and this demon man over there.
But then what happens is you become addicted to blame.
You become addicted to excusing yourself.
You understand your mother cannot leave your father and she will never likely leave your father because she's addicted to blame and to excusing herself.
And when you're addicted to blame, you need someone to blame.
And if you leave the marriage, you have no one to blame.
You now, oh, I'm free of the oppressor!
Jesus, how many people want to be free of their oppressor?
Most people love their oppressor.
I don't know if it's Stockholm Syndrome or just massive self-excusing or whatever.
Most people... Your mom?
I hate that man.
Sure. And most cigarette smokers hate smoking.
And most people who are drug addicts hate the drug.
It doesn't mean they're going to quit.
Because they need it.
And I guess I have some concern.
That your repetition, Tim, is something around silence and a lack of capacity to express the wide range of human emotions that makes meaning out of life.
Yeah, that's something to think about, I guess.
Because that's Because as I had wrote in, I mean, if I'm telling this story, and I don't go in detail on anything, that just wouldn't be right, I don't think.
But I mean, when the conversation comes up, which it ultimately does, which is another reason why I had written in, because I'm working in a field that's directly related or from, I mean, if that wouldn't have happened, I wouldn't be working where I'm working or in the industry at all.
So it makes me wonder, you know, am I I mean, like I said first, you know, I mean, as long as I realize that's what's the cause of that.
Okay, you gotta stop, man. Jesus Christ.
You are so disconnected emotionally, Tim.
What the hell?
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm just talking about your mom, your family, your history, your anger, the meaning of humanity.
And you're like.
What the hell are you trying to do to me, man?
Holy crap.
Hi, mom.
You want to come back or what?
What was that?
You want to come back here and chat with me or what?
Yeah. So all I was saying is you had mentioned at the end there how you're saying that from your perspective, I'm not really doing it.
No, you're not back yet. No, I'm not indulging this.
You are so disconnected emotionally.
Because I'm getting some, I think, getting to some reasonable approximations of truth regarding your family, and you are going way polysyllabic, abstract, and intellectual, right?
Yeah, maybe. Yeah.
I mean, what have I just said over the last 10 minutes?
I don't think your mom can be happy.
I don't think you can make her happy.
She's addicted to blaming your dad, and it was really abusive for her to tell you when you were 10 that she hated your father.
And that I'm not feeling every possible human emotion, or at least...
Right. So, what is your reaction to these bombshells?
My reaction is...
Like, I'm... Sorry to interrupt.
I'm either right, in which case there should be some emotional response, or I'm completely wrong, in which case you can be pissed at me completely fairly, right?
Do you know what I mean? No, you're right.
I would say you're right.
I think you're right.
So I'm talking about how when you're with your mom, you can't have your own emotions.
And when you were with your friend, you couldn't have your emotions or afterwards your Car accident.
And now when you're with the victims or the perpetrators of these car accidents, you can't have your emotions.
And now I'm talking about this, and you know what you don't have?
Your emotions. Yeah, that's tough to hear.
I'm just telling you what I experience.
I can't tell you who you are.
are, I can just tell you what I experience.
Yeah, I don't know.
I wonder why.
Yes, I wonder why. Why you can't have your feelings?
Yeah. You're raged by a raging narcissistic woman who dumped on you emotionally and a father who cheated and your parents who stayed together in this claustrophobic dysfunctional codependent relationship so you can't have any emotions.
Because when you're around two people who are claustrophobically raging at each other, there's no room for your emotions.
They can't process your emotions.
They can't absorb your emotions.
you're like a poison container to be dumped into.
When was the last time, Tim, someone was interested in what you felt and wouldn't accept this intellectualizing?
Amen.
Probably the last romantic relationship.
That would probably be it. Only romantic relationships would Would qualify on that.
Why not friends? Honestly, after this, I haven't really...
I mean, honestly, I don't have too many close friends.
Because you are not emotionally available to yourself, so you can't be emotionally available to other people.
Or emotionally vulnerable to other people.
Well, emotional availability can be you're really angry at someone.
That's being emotionally available, right?
It doesn't mean crying. It doesn't mean being vulnerable.
That's a very feminine way of looking at it, right?
Emotionality means vulnerability.
Emotional expression, being emotionally available to someone might be saying, I'm really angry at you right now.
That's called being emotionally available to someone.
But you move straight to vulnerability, right?
Right. I feel like I'm going to listen back to this call and have a, probably, I don't know, I think I'm going to hear the conversation in an entirely different way.
And the last thing I'll say, and you should, and therapy I would strongly suggest, but the last thing I'll say here, Tim, is that after your childhood, Having a mom who dumped on you, a father that cheated, the codependents, all this stuff, right?
And after not being able to express anger towards your mom or your parents, and then your friend dies, you can't express anger about that, the fact that he destroyed people's lives with his driving and his issues.
And now in a job where your emotions are absent, must be absent in a way from the equation, and in this conversation where your emotions are absent from the equation, you had no idea that your friend may conceivably have had a death or murder impulse or fixation.
And after your friend died, a lack of self-knowledge can sometimes lead to death.
You didn't know in your description of your friend's childhood anything that might cause him to have been self-destructive or destructive towards others.
And your lack of knowledge regarding these particular perspectives I think manifested in you driving down the highway with your lights turned off.
To be angry is to die.
This is a very common phenomenon these days, particularly for white males.
To be angry is to die.
To be angry at my mother for telling me she hates my father is to be abandoned, is to be rejected by my mother, is to die.
To say to my friends and maybe even my friend's family that I'm really angry at my friend for traumatizing me, for killing people, for resulting in five graves in a split second because he was being stupid and fucking careless and ridiculous and self-destructive.
To have done that may have been to lose your friendships.
It may have been to lose your family.
It may have been to be ostracized at your school.
If you are honest with the clients you have in your business, they may get you fired.
So you've set yourself up repeatedly for authenticity equals disaster.
Honesty, depth.
Wearing your heart on your sleeve, being emotionally available in all the highs and lows and pluses and minuses that that entails to the world and those around you.
All who survive are Spock, it would seem, is the mantra.
and in the past that was true, but I hope in the future it's not.
Yeah, I appreciate you taking my call and everything you said.
Keep us posted, Tim, all right?
All right. Thanks, man. Thank you so much.
Alright, up next we have Sarah.
Sarah wrote in and said, I'm a 50-year-old woman in Sweden who has been listening for two years now.
I've made most things wrong in my life.
I had four children with a man who developed a serious mental disorder that crept upon us, left him, shared custody of my children with him, not totally understanding his problems.
When my children with him reached adult age, I kind of felt released from being afraid tragedy would strike.
I'm remarried and have a little boy with a very stable and successful man.
Things were looking up and then tragedy struck when my 25-year-old daughter committed suicide in August.
I heard the call-in show with the British girl who was living with her parents and I felt the urge to address the way she shrugged up any thoughts of her family when behaving suicidal.
I believe my actions have had a great deal of influence in my daughter's misery.
I did not understand that she was depressed.
She lived in, insert city here, with her boyfriend, and she always acted as if things were great when we talked.
I wanted her to come home, and the last few times we talked, she said, Soon, Mom, I miss you so.
I always flattered myself with thinking me and my children had such great contact.
They could always talk to me, I felt.
Now I understand that I got it all wrong.
It is painful to realize how my actions in the past echo in the now and the future.
I can't bring my girl to life again, but maybe I can wake some other parent up.
That's from Sarah. Hi Sarah, how are you doing?
Oh, not too well when I hear this, as I wrote.
I can imagine, I can really imagine.
Yeah, well, no you can't, and you shouldn't need it, because this is...
Nothing I would want anyone to go through.
What happened with the father?
You said he developed a serious mental disorder.
What happened?
Were there any indications before you got married?
I was quite young when we met.
I was 20 and he was 27.
I really wanted a family because of my situation before.
And so I got pregnant quite quickly and I was childish and stupid and I didn't see the signs and nobody helped me to.
What was your situation before?
Well, my parents divorced when I was eight and my brother died when I was nine.
How did your brother die? In an accident.
He had an aneurysm and he just slid off his motorbike on the highway, dead.
And when he died, my mother stopped living because he was her joy and...
Everything for him. And he was a result of an earlier marriage.
So I believe that she felt that he was a little bit odd man out in our family.
We were three kids.
And so my mother died when I was 15.
And I didn't live with my father, but we had We met all the time and we did things together.
We had projects together, but I didn't live in his house.
I lived with my older sister.
And I think, I believe, that is my pseudo-psychological explanation, that I wanted to go back to having a family.
How old was your brother when he died?
17. 17, okay.
Yeah. And I assume this was like no prior warning, just aneurysm driving and...
Yeah, he just went.
Right. He just went. And so when I started trying to get my own family, I didn't discriminate enough, I think.
I felt...
I didn't see...
The problems that might come.
And maybe nobody could have.
Hang on, but were there any signs at all prior to...
He was lazy and he was a little bit childish and he was spoiled.
But I didn't understand how bad it could be from that.
So he was 27, you said, and lazy hand.
Sloppy, kind of.
He wasn't keen on, you know, keeping things tidy.
And he was quite a mess with money, but that developed in time.
And, well.
Did he have a career, education, job?
No, he had a job.
He was a bus driver.
A bus driver? Yes, and I felt that that was good enough.
And what was it that you were attracted to about him?
That is something I keep coming back to, and I can't put my finger on it.
I think...
I'm not sure.
I'm not sure. I've been thinking about this for 25 years and I'm not sure.
Well, who made the move on who?
How did you meet and how did the relationship start?
Well, we lived in the same area and we saw each other all the time and we were kind of flirting a bit.
And we met out at a pub, a local pub, and just started talking.
And then he kind of latched on to me.
And I let it happen.
I enjoyed it. Latched on to you how?
What do you mean? Well, he didn't...
Well, he was very...
Well, he was always on the phone or, you know, at my place or anything.
As near me as he could.
So, it kind of grew from there.
And it's a funny thing, Sarah, because this is what can be confusing for men to some degree, is that, you know, don't be stalky, you know?
No is no. But it works.
Oh my God, it works. But by God, does it seem to work?
It's like, this is so confusing.
Yeah, but it shouldn't be.
It's just a myth that it doesn't work.
But I mean, it's...
And even, you know, there's this thing that says, well, you know, if it's an attractive guy who's doing it, it's hot and it's cool.
And if it's an unattractive guy who's doing it, it's creepy and stalky and so on.
But it doesn't even seem to be that.
It doesn't even seem to be that because this guy doesn't sound like a major alpha.
No. Not at all.
And it is absolutely possible to wear someone down.
And I think that I wasn't that hard to wear down because I needed something.
I needed a place to be.
I needed circumstances.
I wanted to find a home.
It's funny because in the presence of, I mean, this must have seemed somewhat strong-willed to you, like he really was attracted to you, he wanted to be around you, he'd phone you, he'd be around, he'd be nearby, he'd be in the vicinity.
And it's weird how, for me, it's weird, just based on sort of what women say they want versus what women actually respond to.
It's like in the presence of this strong will, of this thirst, of this desire, it's like women often just kind of go limp.
Okay, fine. Yep, yeah.
Take me. Okay, I'll marry you all.
You know what you want.
I don't really, so okay.
Yep, yep, yep.
Wow. Did you know much about...
Sorry to interrupt. Did you know much about his family?
Well, they were newly separated and they lived in the area.
They were really nice people, as I found them, at least.
But we didn't socialize with them much until the children came.
But there were not...
There was nothing creepy about his family at all.
But they divorced, right?
They divorced, yes.
But, I mean, he was 27 or whatever, right?
Yeah. So he was grown up.
Do you know why they divorced?
Well, now, when I know things, I can understand what his mother talked about in how And things that came up and I think it's in the family because one of his siblings is not well.
He's schizophrenic.
One of his siblings is schizophrenic?
Yes. Older or younger?
Older. So I think that there was quite a strain on the family and I'm not sure that...
I'm not a doctor, I shouldn't say anything.
Well, neither am I, and I know I've done a video a long time ago called There's No Such Thing as Mental Illness.
There does seem to be some bio basis, some biological basis for schizophrenia, so that may be a bit of a...
Do you know, Sarah, did he drink or do drugs at all?
No, he didn't. The occasional beer, but not to have a drink, not at all.
And none of us... And I think schizophrenia generally shows up in the teenage years, if I remember rightly.
It's been a while. But it's not likely, I think, or it's much rarer for it to show up in the late 20s.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I just know that this sibling of his...
Went very ill after 40.
And she wasn't well before that either.
Wait, sorry, the sibling went crazy after the sibling was 40?
Yeah. Then she went really bad.
And she's...
Well, she's not...
She's in...
She's in a home now and she can't fend for herself at all.
And... And I'm sorry to interrupt.
Do you know about the sister?
Did she end up on sort of psych meds before she went nuts?
Yes, yes. Yeah, well, you should read Mad in America.
It's a very good book about some of the effects that these psych meds can have on people.
Yeah, I think that's worsening everything.
They cooked her brain with this stuff, right?
Maybe, maybe. Yeah, yeah.
And was the diagnosis schizophrenia or was it...
Yeah. Yeah, it was, right? Well, I haven't spoken to the doctor myself.
Okay, this is what your husband...
It is what I'm told.
Because she, you know, she sees some texts, you know, with the messages from outer space.
It's kind of that kind of crazy.
And how old was the father of your children when this happened to his sister?
About 40. When she went really, really sick.
But she was about 42, right?
Yeah, quite near an age.
To a similar age or twins?
No, three years apart.
Three years apart, okay. So, at 27, he was low-functioning, I suppose, bus driver, which, nothing wrong with it, but if you're into this show, it seems that there might be a bit of an intelligence gap.
Did he have like a secret or other side, an intellectual side or a reading side?
Well, the thing is that he can be so extremely intelligent at times.
But he's funny and witty and talented to do.
You know, he's very creative.
But he lacks an outlet for it.
So nothing happens.
What do you mean he lacks an outlet?
I don't understand. Everybody lacks an outlet.
Nobody cared about me becoming a podcaster, right?
No, he doesn't do anything with anything.
So he's lazy? Very.
Right. And we moved out into the countryside, because I'm a country girl, and we had this little farm with animals, and it ended up me taking care of all the animals.
Boy, you don't want to be running a farm with a lazy person.
No, but I was...
Young and stupid and I thought everything would be okay because I wanted it to be okay.
You'll change. I know that now.
Now I know this and I know it very well.
And he lost his job because there were layoffs.
Wait, wait. Did he lose his job before you moved to the country?
No, after.
So he was a bus driver in the country?
Yeah. He wasn't the same job.
We didn't move far. But then he lost his job and he didn't want to get another one because he started to be very jealous.
So he wanted to look after me all the time.
He didn't want to leave me in the house because maybe I would do something that he didn't like.
Wait, what do you mean maybe?
Do you mean jealous sexually?
Yeah. So you in the country running a farm, you were going to have an affair?
Yes, rolling around with the haystacks, I suppose.
Right. And by that time, we had three children.
Because I loved the children.
That was just fantastic.
But everything went sour from there.
We ran out of money.
Well, everything just went south, and I realized that I couldn't do this.
I couldn't carry around him and the children as well, so I wanted to divorce, and that took some time, and finally he moved out of our little house, and I kept And try to, you know, make ends meet and pay off all the loans and stuff that really didn't work well.
And then back to me being very sick because I... Well, I got problems with my heart because I was working too hard when I was sick because I didn't have any help.
Sorry, there's a bit of a scraping sound that's going on with your microphone.
Okay, I'm sorry. No problem.
Yeah, that's mine. Okay, better?
Yeah, much better. Okay, and so it ended up with me losing everything and just ending up with an enormous debt.
And I moved into a bigger city and started all over again with my children.
And I was still quite ill for a few years, so me and the father of the children, he needed to help me with them, so they lived both at my place and at his place.
And that's how we kept it going for many years.
And that's not a very good situation.
And how old were you, Sarah, when you got divorced?
28. 28, okay.
Yeah, 28 or 29.
So he was in his mid-30s, right?
Yeah. And by that time, or a few years on, he started to say that he could speak to the dead.
And that he could...
He saw things and...
I felt I needed to distance myself quite a lot from him.
But the children still, they love their dad.
Wait, the dad who could speak to the dead?
Yes. And they...
Yes.
But children love their dad.
That's how it is.
And he was...
Well, children love candy too.
Yeah, I know. Doesn't mean that they get it, right?
Well, but there was not more...
I was... Absolutely alone.
I didn't have anyone to help me except from him.
Wait, wait, wait. What about your family?
Oh, by that time my father was dead as well.
So it was just me.
Okay. So there was really no one to...
Well, I have a sister, but she wasn't very interested in helping me.
and she was missing with her family life.
And well. - And was he at this point, had he been diagnosed at all?
Was he on any kind of psych cancer?
No, no, no. He was just, you know, he was associating with people in the new age branch of life and he was swapping women around He can't be alone for one second.
He always needs to have someone.
I think it started with him meeting someone in one of those Wiccan communities online.
I sympathize with you, Sarah, that mysticism is a terrible poison to the brain.
Yes, it is. Because the thing is that you can explain anything and you don't have to take any responsibility for Life, on the other side, you don't have to care about this one.
Well, and you get to do all this woo-woo unity with the universe stuff, and you don't actually have to work to achieve any knowledge.
You can just make things up and imagine things and feel passionate about fantasy, and it really does, I mean, it undoes people's brains on a regular basis.
But that is what happened, and I think it's very unfortunate.
Maybe he wasn't very stable from the beginning.
Well, it's funny, and I'm sorry, it's funny, tragic, Sarah, but the behavior that you talked about at the beginning, where he was kind of all over you and around you and all of that, well, the fact that that would morph into kind of possessiveness and jealousy is not too shocking, right? No, not at all.
Not at all. And I remember my father told me that He saw that immediately.
He told me immediately when he met this man the first time that I think he should be a bit careful.
But I didn't listen.
So it's funny how you say that children love their fathers.
Yes. But you didn't love your father enough to listen.
No. I realized it way too late.
But... Did you have, just when you were younger, when you met this man before you got married, Sarah, did you have a disaster scenario?
Like, in general, in life, we tend to make bad decisions when we have, like, a disaster scenario.
If it's not this man, I'll be alone forever, or whatever it is, right?
No, no. I think I was more like megalomaniac.
I think that I could do anything.
I'm not sure why I thought that.
I was 20 years old, and I thought I could just make it work.
I can't remember thinking that this is my last shot, because I didn't think so.
I was quite convinced that I could have someone else.
And I'm sorry to ask such a crude question, but when you were 20, where would you rate your physical attractiveness on the old one to ten scale?
8.5. I was quite...
I was good looking.
Very good looking, right? So you may not have had an over an abundance of no in your life.
No. That's fair to say.
Right, right. And this is part of the cruelty of male deferral to female beauty, is that it creates a very unreal world for women, right?
Yes. That's a shame.
Yes, I think so, because I think that I was quite sure that Whatever life would throw at me, I would just take care of it.
And since my childhood was quite, it wasn't brutal, but it was many sad things happening, going on.
And I thought I made it so that I made it well out of there.
So I thought that I was strong and I would know what to do.
So I kind of overrated my What I was able to do.
Right, right.
And I ended up, well, with bankrupt and with children to support and an unstable man to rely on.
Right. How old was your daughter?
When the mysticism began to overtake her father's mind?
Six or seven. And do you know if he, it's kind of hard to avoid, did he pull her into this world of mysticism?
Well, I know that he talked some with the children about it, but they didn't like it.
And I ask him not to because I really, you know, I feel the hair of the back of my neck standing up when I talk about it.
I really dislike the scenario and what happened.
And I can't be sure how much he...
He was talking to them about this.
I can't be sure.
But I know that the older ones told him to stop because they didn't like it.
They thought it was so eerie.
Do you know, just speaking to the dead, did he believe in things like devils or demons or otherworldly spirits as well?
No, I think that he just believes Yeah, I think it's the friendly ghost type of mysticism.
I try not to speak to him because, well, it's really, actually, it started a little bit earlier than I said because he was convinced that I could speak to animals.
That actually could be quite helpful on a farm.
That's quite helpful. And if you pay attention, you can see what's happening with your animals, you know when to check on them.
And he was convinced that they were talking to me.
And I really don't like people talking to me like that, because I don't want anyone to believe that I Believe in those things.
And how old was the daughter who died or who killed herself, how old was she when he first thought about the talking about animal stuff?
Oh, she was in my...
I think she was inside my building at the time.
Oh, wow. Because...
So...
But, you know, that was, you know...
At first I thought it was a little bit, you know, Cesar Millan-ish.
You know... Yeah, sure.
I'm the woman who talks with animals.
Absolutely. I'm Mrs.
Doolittle. But then it escalated from that.
Right. Now, what did he, sorry, when he didn't have a job after he got laid off, what did he, this is always my big sort of question, is like, what did he do with his day?
He was sitting in front of his computer all day and all night.
Like chat rooms and research and reading and video games or what?
Yeah. You know, at that time you needed to have a phone.
Oh, yes. Yeah.
So he was occupying the phone line.
And that could only be abrupt if we didn't pay the phone bill.
So it was always, it was not possible to call my husband.
Because either it was turned off or he was online with his computer.
Do you think that he was having any affairs or emotional affairs online while you were married?
I don't think, I don't know.
I don't think so.
Maybe. Well, no, no particular indication or anything, right?
No, no, no. None offense taken.
I was busy doing everything, so I really didn't care, and I was quite resentful towards this computer.
I wanted to shove it out the window because nothing would be done.
We had a leak in the roof in our bedroom for three years, and it would have been such an easy thing to just fix it, but it didn't.
I felt that if I was pregnant most of the time, I didn't need to go out on the roof as well as doing everything else.
And what do you think was the thinking behind this laziness and selfishness?
I don't think there was any particular thinking.
I just think that it was possible, so therefore he did it.
And the nagging from me and the scarcity of money, it wasn't enough for him to Well, it's a lack of caring for you, right? Absolutely.
Absolutely. So, I mean, from this guy who was kind of stalky to being indifferent to...
Because it's funny, it seems to go from intrusiveness to indifference.
Yes. Both of which are boundary violations or both of which are a lack of empathy situation.
Yep. That's exactly what I've been telling myself many times, that empathy would have been good if it would have been added to the mix.
How was he with the kids?
When he was in a good mood, he was fantastic.
When he wasn't, he didn't care.
He loved to be the fun dad.
And...
Well, he was a bit like with me, but not as indifferent, I would say.
But, well, now I have something to compare with it.
It wasn't good. It wasn't overall good.
What was the trajectory of your daughter?
Well, I know you have more than one kids, but we'll just focus on your daughter, of course.
What was her life trajectory as a whole?
Could you say that, you know, I'm Swedish, and it's in the middle of the night.
Let's walk backwards from 25 to, say, mid-teens.
What was her life like? What was she doing?
She was a very good student, and she was a very good rider, and she had a lot of friends, but she was very picky.
She didn't associate with just anyone, and she was quite popular, and she was very cute, so she had options, and she did a lot of things, and she was sportive, and we used to go swimming and riding, and And she had an appetite for life, as I saw it.
And she wanted to, you know, get a good education and do stuff.
And then she wanted a big family.
And sorry, was there more that you wanted to add?
No, no, not really.
And... What was her relationship like with her father?
She was taking care of him.
I understand this now.
I didn't see it as clearly back then.
But she was, you know, helping out with things and taking care of...
When she was at his place, she would take care of, you know, cleaning and cooking and...
You know, checking out the mail and stuff.
And I think that he loved her for it.
She was very caring.
I feel like we're in the realm of propaganda here.
Really? Yeah, I really do.
Because, yeah. Okay.
She was very caring.
He loved her for it. This is all Hallmark card sentimentality.
But this guy's nuts, right?
Yes. And did he do things for her as well?
Or was he just using her?
Was it just one-sided in terms of generosity and kindness?
I think that is what I'm telling you, isn't it?
No, you're giving me a lot of propaganda.
I don't want to have to sift through the propaganda to get the truth.
Okay, I will be a little more curious.
She was taking care of him and he loved her for that.
No, no, no. You can't love someone just for doing things for you.
Well, okay. I mean, if he thinks he can speak to the dead and he's gone fairly nuts, is he really capable of love?
Is he capable of a mutual relationship?
In his own words.
Okay, in his own words.
Okay, I don't want to have the words of a crazy person in our conversation, please.
Okay, I'm sorry. That's fine, that's fine.
I'm sorry. Because I've been going through all this in my head so many times.
Okay, so what were the bold facts of her relationship with her father, Sarah?
He needed her.
Okay. Because, yeah.
So was he completely non-functional or was he preying on her the way he prayed on you?
Later, yeah.
She was stepping in for me, I think.
And you knew what it was like to serve this man, right?
Yes. And what was your relationship with your daughter now stepping into this role?
Well, I was talking quite a lot about this with her, that she shouldn't be his mother.
That she should step away from it.
And she said, oh, it's fine.
It's fine. I need to do it. You know how dad is.
And then his father died.
And... The children felt sorry for him and...
And...
Well, I kind of think that he used that quite well.
Well, I would be surprised if he only used it, Sarah.
He probably provoked it.
Yes. True.
And then he told me that he was talking to his father from the other side.
He was doing just fine.
Well, by that logic, there's not that much to feel sorry for him for because his father didn't die.
No, exactly. Exactly.
And so the older children moved away a bit from him after that.
And she was the youngest?
Yeah. And...
Well, time went and when she was 18 or 19 she wanted to go to university and I helped her get a flat so she got her own place to live in, as the other kids had.
And she didn't have as much contact with him.
What did she take in university?
She wanted to be a preschool teacher, but first she was studying psychology, but then she decided against staying in school because she wasn't sure that she wanted to spend that much time at university because she didn't like it much.
She started working with different things and she was quite, she was a very good delightful person to work with.
So she had a lot of jobs everywhere and it ended up with her going to North America to work there with her sister.
And what did she do roughly?
Oh, she was constructing things and she was working in bars and she was, you know, Odd worker, I would say.
Was she doing work beneath her potential, like her father?
Yes. Very much so.
So that pattern held true, right?
Yes. And then she met this man at her work.
It was at his place that she died.
And how long has she gone out with this man?
One half year. Just six months, right?
And did she meet him at a bar?
18 months.
Oh, 18 months, okay. And did she meet him in a bar?
Well, he owned the bar.
Oh, okay. And she worked there.
And he was married with a child.
Wait, wait, wait, what, what? Mm-hmm.
Oh, you tried to skate after that one, didn't you?
Wow. Kind of slipped that one past the goalie, didn't you?
No. This is kind of where I feel so extremely guilty.
She was a homewrecker?
Yes. What?
Okay. Yep.
Okay, let's have a look at this.
So she works at a bar, a waitress or something, and the bar owner is married with a baby?
Well, with a child.
Well, preschool age, I think.
And she, do you know how they met or how they ended up as a couple?
No, I can only guess.
She never told you? No, she didn't want to tell me.
She told me about him very late, just a few months before she died.
And she said, I didn't want to tell you because I knew you would have been so upset about it.
But she didn't tell me about the child and that he was married, just that he was older than her.
Do you know how much older? Yeah, I was 40 and she was 25.
She was 25, he was 40.
Yes. Well, she was used to taking care of older men, right?
Yes, yes.
And so I asked her if he was a good person.
And she said, yes, Mother, he's a good person.
So she was lying? Yes.
And when did you ask, was this shortly before she died?
I mean, how long did she go out with him, or how long did she have an affair with him before you found out about him, before she told you?
One year. But I know about him.
But, well, she had told me that she had met someone, but she didn't tell me about the circumstances, his age, and absolutely nothing about being married or being a father.
Um... Why would she not tell you?
I mean, or why wouldn't you find out more?
I mean, I assume you asked, and what did she say?
She had met someone that she really liked, and she wanted me to meet, but not yet.
And I asked, how old is he?
And then she started talking about something else.
So I asked her sister about it, and her sister told me...
Wait, wait, wait. Back up, back up.
Mm-hmm. So...
Your daughter meets someone, gets involved with someone, and doesn't tell you anything about him, and you ask her if she changed the subject, I mean, why don't you just say, no, no, let's change the subject back?
Well, that is one of the questions I ask myself now.
Is it because you didn't want to know, right?
I think it is because I knew, and I... Quite early on, I got to know the truth.
And I'm not sure.
Maybe I had this idea I shouldn't poke in.
I'm not sure. I'm just...
Wait, so you made a bad decision on who you should get involved in when you were young, and you don't pursue your daughter about who she's getting involved in when she's young.
Exactly. Exactly. Right.
So don't poke. Okay, so you didn't want to poke.
You didn't want to what? Be intrusive?
You didn't want to be... What does that mean?
What do you mean? I avoided being a good mother, I suppose.
Well, no, that's kind of a platitude.
But what does it mean when you say you didn't want to be intrusive?
Yeah, but it means something. It means something.
Well... But what did you tell yourself that it was okay to not find out who your daughter was dating?
Because it's a warning sign, you understand?
I mean, you're asking me, right?
It's a warning sign when your daughter won't tell you who she's dating.
That's when you go and find out.
That's when you fly over and find out, you know what I mean?
Yes, yes.
That's when you stalk her if you have to, right?
Yes. And that is exactly what I need, what I should have done.
And what did her sister say?
Oh, she told me that he was...
That he was her boss, that he was a nice person, and she didn't tell me about the wife and the child.
Did she know? Everything was too late, so she lied to me as well.
So she knew that your daughter was dating a married man with a child, but she didn't tell you?
Exactly. But she did tell you that he was 40, right?
Yep. And that's not the worst.
Those things happen. It can be okay.
So I'm not sure why. Well, so that's why they throw me that bone, I suppose.
What do you mean? They told me that and not the other thing.
We can tell her that.
Is there anything else that I need to know before I move on to something else?
You're the expert. I don't know.
Well, I don't know what I don't know.
No, no. But there are so many things.
But this is what is surfacing.
All right.
So, Sarah, where is the golf coming from that your daughters don't want to talk to you about this stuff?
I don't know.
Well, of course you do. - Thank you.
Of course you do. You know that that's not an answer.
I mean, if you don't know, nobody knows, right?
So you have some idea.
You certainly have some conjectures, right?
Well, of course, I've been avoiding to talk about things, too.
Of course.
I haven't told everyone everything and I was...
I haven't been the most honest person in the world myself.
In the what yourself? I haven't been the most honest person myself, of course.
Well, I don't know what that means, the most honest and of course...
No, but I've been hiding things.
Do you mean from your daughters?
Yes, of course. I couldn't tell them everything.
What do you mean? This is very vague.
Yeah, I'm sorry.
It's vague. No one can tell everyone everything, right?
I mean, what do you mean? I just feel that I was not very honest about their father and about me and what happened.
And what did you withhold that you think would have been important to tell?
I think that what I'm saying is that I... I was so angry with him and so tired and so sick.
So I... I didn't want to talk about them at all.
All right. That's not the problem, in my humble opinion.
Okay. Right? When you say I'm an expert, I'm not really, but I'm always curious, right?
Yes, absolutely.
And I want to know everything.
Yeah, the question for me, Sarah, is this.
Why... Did you send your children over to a man who says he can talk to animals, speak to the dead, and is into all this crazy mysticism?
If you were so sick of him and you were so disgusted by him that you couldn't even talk about him, why expose your children?
You couldn't handle him as an adult.
How are children supposed to handle him?
Because I was too sick to take care of my children myself.
I was sick for quite some time, about three or four years.
So I wasn't capable of having them at my house all the time.
And there was no one else?
No. No?
Believe me, I tried. I didn't have any help from authorities or And I'm maybe a bit stubborn, so when things are hard to get, I may say, okay, it's okay, I will make this work.
Could you not get, I mean, this is Sweden, for heaven's sake, it's a socialist paradise, right?
Could you not have had your kids around and had in-home help or nurses or anything like that?
I didn't have any help at all.
No, I didn't ask whether you did.
I asked whether you could have.
Well, I asked for it, but I was turned down.
And I didn't go on welfare.
So, I wasn't in the system.
But hang on. So, your daughter's 25-year life, there's two or three years where you're ill, and she's kind of in the orbit of her crazy dad, right?
Yes. Okay. So, let's assume, and I'm fine with that, right?
Let's assume that that was the only choice.
So she was in a toxic environment because you were not well enough to take care of her.
And I sympathize and I understand.
Let's go with that. So, how did you help her detox from this mysticism?
Well, we were talking about those things.
You said you didn't want to talk about your ex-husband.
We didn't talk about him. We talked about those things.
No, no. What do you mean you didn't talk about him?
He was the source of the toxicity.
Yes, but we were talking about the mysticism and we were talking about Because she asked a lot about it.
And I was trying to tell her about my view of it.
And of course, everything isn't a straight line.
At times, we could talk about their father.
At times, we couldn't. What do you mean we couldn't?
Most of the time I didn't want to.
Okay, so we couldn't is very different from you chose not to.
Yes, yes.
Many times they've chosen not to.
You know, oh God.
And did you ever, at any point, talk to them frankly about your experience of their father?
Yes. So you were able to overcome your resistance to talk about him at times?
A few times in later years, yes.
What was their reaction to that?
We know Mom, but he is like that.
Wait, wait, wait. So you talked about how He kind of betrayed you by not working.
Yes. He spent all his time on the computer rather than parenting, being a co-worker, a husband and a father.
And he worked you to the point where you were sick for two to three years.
Yes. They did not, they just shrugged that off?
Yes. Why do you think they did that?
I mean, why wouldn't they care about your experience?
Because it's hard to see their own dad like that.
It's hard to acknowledge that someone that you're with all the time is like that.
Well, no, they're siding with your father and going over to help him and throwing your experience under the bus, right?
Absolutely. So they bonded with their father, it seems to me, more than they bonded with you.
Yeah, that might be true.
Well, no, just based upon if you say...
Yes, absolutely. If you say, this guy did all this terrible stuff and half-worked me into an early grave to pick up the slack of him being addicted to...
Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.
If a friend of mine said this to me about their spouse, I'd be like...
That's terrible. I had no, like, this is terrible what I'm hearing.
That you were sick for years and couldn't parent us?
Because my father wouldn't get off his ass?
And you were supposed to what?
Fix a leaky roof when you were pregnant?
You did all the work on the farm, you ended up with all the deaths.
While he was off noodling about pretending to talk to chickens and commune with the fucking dead?
Are you kidding me? Like, where's the outrage?
Where's the caring for you?
The thing is, still I come off as the strong one, as the one who, you know, he's a sorry little thing.
With nothing right now.
He doesn't even have a place to live.
He's a sorry little thing?
What are you talking about?
Is this what you think?
Yes, I feel sorry for him.
Jesus, you wonder why your daughter ended up pitying the guy?
Yes.
Do you pity him?
Pity?
What do you mean?
Did he not choose this life?
He did. So why do you pity someone for the consequences of the life that he chose?
He could have any goddamn time got off the computer and helped you in the farm.
Absolutely. So he makes this series of choices.
Why is he to be pitied?
He's not to be pitted. But the thing is that if you put him next to me, then I come off as the strong one, the one that had all the troubles and made it.
No, no, no, no.
You do not come across as the strong one because he got everything he wanted.
He got to stay on the computer.
He got the loyalty of your children.
He got to be a mystic and no one kicked his ass to the curb.
He got your daughter to take care of him.
He got everything he wanted.
And you ended up in hospital.
How does that make you the strong one?
He won! And now you feel pity for him?
Oh man, this guy's good.
This guy is good.
Holy shit. Now you sound like my dad.
And my dad knew things.
Well, of course, the person you wish you'd listened to, right?
Yes. Oh God, I wish I'd listened to him.
But you're absolutely right.
You're absolutely right.
He's a user. Yes.
He exploits and he uses like a fucking cloud of locusts, right?
Yes, absolutely. And I have seen it when he does it to other people, but I haven't seen it as clearly as you pointed out for me.
And he used your daughter.
Yes. And it's your job to stand because you still have family members.
You have three other children, right?
Yes. And they're gonna have children.
This guy's a fucking plague.
You understand? Yes.
And it is your job as the mother to stand between your children and this plague.
Yes. He used you up.
You ended up sick for years.
And you're an adult.
You chose it. They did not choose him as a father.
I know. This guy's like an intestinal parasite without even the honesty to stay in your ass.
Oh God, can I paraphrase that?
Oh my God.
I think. Did your ex-husband notice anything wrong with your daughter?
No. But his needs were being fulfilled.
So, fine, right?
Yes. Yes.
There's another one. This one goes down.
There's another one. Yes.
And it's funny that he couldn't talk to her on a distance when he couldn't talk to animals and dead people.
What do you mean he couldn't talk to her at a distance?
Well, if he could talk to animals or if he could talk to dead people, then he would have sensed that something was wrong with her.
Oh, Sarah, you're not trying to give me logical consistency with a crazy fucker, are you?
Yeah. It was...
An attempt to joke, but I'm really not...
No, it was an attempt to one-up.
Because I don't think you've seen the nature of this man.
The thing is...
Well, I have. Because...
No! Because you just told me three minutes ago that you felt sorry for him!
So don't tell me you've seen his nature!
I'm sorry. The thing is that when we got the call from...
But she was dead. I called him up.
And I told him what had happened.
And he went, oh no, oh no.
And then I just...
And I told him that he actually had committed suicide.
And in what way? And a few days later, he called me about something.
No, I called him because I had had a bill from something way back coming up at this time in my name that he was supposed to pay for like 20 years ago.
And I said, you really have to pay this?
And he said, oh, but I can't, and I can't believe how How you can say this at a time like that?
And then I told him that I wanted a relative of his to not have a lot of new age mumbo-jumbo written under a picture of our daughter.
And I said, oh, why not?
Because I find it very...
I don't think it's suitable.
She killed herself and I don't want...
All this, we have prayed for you, your spirit is safe, or whatever.
And he just went.
She never told me!
She killed Jose. Why?
Why? Why did you tell me this?
You didn't. You didn't tell me.
So then I had to go over it once and again.
That she had committed suicide, because he said that I never troubled him back from the beginning.
And that is also a way of controlling others, because I had something I wanted from him, I think.
Yeah, well, he started this conversation with saying he had been talking to her and she was fine, and she didn't mean it to happen.
And I didn't listen to that.
I didn't want to talk about his fantasies.
How did she do it, Sarah?
What? Do what?
How did she kill herself? She hung herself...
She hung herself in the basement of her house.
Of her own house?
Yes. And do you know if there was any precipitating event?
There was a row. They had been arguing and...
They'd been arguing about...
Well...
Cheating. And there was no note.
What do you mean she and her boyfriend had been arguing about cheating?
About him cheating. That he was cheating on her?
Yes. Well, he's cheating on his wife.
Of course he's cheating on her.
Yes, of course.
I know. I know.
Boy, the guy who's cheating on his wife and little kid with me might be unfaithful.
Yeah.
So she hanged herself.
Yes. And was there any note?
No. And when did you talk to her before, the last time you talked to her before she killed herself?
Two days before. You said the conversation was fine.
Where she was starting to ride horses and she was so happy about that.
I was happy about that because we had been riding horses together forever from when she was a child until she moved away.
And I was happy that we had some common ground, something to talk about all the time and plan.
Something that was ours.
And two days later she was gone.
And do you have any idea why she did it on that day?
I mean, fights happen, conflicts happen.
No. I can't see it.
I don't understand it.
I've been trying to figure this puzzle out, but I can't.
Did you ever meet the boyfriend?
I went over there, but I couldn't stand to see him.
I couldn't do it.
A little tricky for him, right?
I mean, if his mistress kills herself.
Quite tricky. And he wasn't very offensive when I talked to him.
What do you mean he was very offensive?
Well, I asked a lot of questions, and I asked why he left his wife.
Oh, he did leave his wife?
Yeah, they lived together the last month, the last half year.
Wait, wait, sorry. So he left his wife and little child to be with your daughter, and you said a month or six months?
I couldn't figure out which. Six months, I think.
And I asked why he didn't want to be with his son.
And then he told me that I was all...
Well, you know, all those words.
No, no, tell me the words.
Tell me the conversation, as you recall it, please, with the boyfriend.
Because this is very important.
Well, he told me that I... Didn't know anything about why they were together, and that she was...
No one could give him pleasure as she did, and he told me that.
Wait, so, sorry, did he use the phrase, give him pleasure, or make him happy?
No. You heard it right.
Because that seems sexual.
Yes, very. Wait, he's saying to the mother of his suicided girlfriend that she was good in bed?
Yep. Oh my fucking god.
And, um...
Well, he was...
Oh god. What else?
And he told me that he had been saving her from things and...
I'm just looking something up and then she told me that she was behaving crazy that she was here Wait, wait, no, hang on, hang on.
We're skipping all over. Okay.
He has been saving her from things?
Yes. Like what?
Because, yeah, because she was...
Dangerous because she was hearing voices and she was smashing up things and she went angry and, you know, and he had done such a good job saving her and taking care of her.
And then I told him, I'm sorry, but he didn't do a very good job because she's dead now.
And then, well, then he told me that He had made her have an abortion.
Oh God, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.
Okay, just making some notes here.
So made her have an abortion?
Do you know when that happened? No, I didn't.
He didn't tell me that.
Now what does he mean he made her have an abortion?
I don't know. Because I don't think that's legally possible.
No, I'm...
The thing is that he is worse than me in English.
There might be things lost in translation.
Do you know what his background was?
Yes, he's from the southern of Europe.
Spanish, I think.
Yes, Spanish. I assume not overly Catholic.
Not overly, no. So he was a guy who didn't speak English, who ran a bar.
Yeah. And this was the big prize for your daughter.
Yeah. All right.
And what else?
Is there anything more?
What were the words that he said to you?
You said the words, and I don't know what those words are.
Well, he called me a rich bitch that didn't know anything about my daughter, and he wanted to save her from me.
And I should know that she really loved her dad much more than she loved me.
And he has been writing quite a lot of awful things as well, Because I can't understand how this happened, and I ask a lot of questions because I need to know as much as possible, even if it's too late now.
You've still got some people in the lifeboat of your family, right?
Yes. And I need to make some sense of this.
And what has he been writing?
Well, mostly that I'm a horrible person.
But I'm mean.
Because I wanted her to come home.
So I've been repeatedly asking her to come home and that I will just pay her a ticket and just bring her home so we can be together for some time.
And how do you know he's writing these things?
Well, who else would?
Is he writing them to you?
Yes. He's sending you letters with all the stuff in it.
Yes. So, when I went to see her and collect her, I didn't want to meet him.
So, he got your address.
Oh, is he email? Is he writing these to you in email?
On Facebook.
So, I've got everything.
And the letters. And then I went over to collect her, you know, to identify her and collect her, and I went to her house, and then there was another letter that was very, very sweet waiting for me on their kitchen table.
But... When you say very, very sweet, you're being sarcastic.
No, but it was so sweet because someone else had been writing it for him and it was really sweet.
But of course I'm sarcastic because I know what he was apologizing for being harsh and And if there was anything I needed, I could call him.
But I didn't want to have anything to do with him.
So I went into the flat.
I went down where she did it.
And collected our things.
We went home. We, or who's we?
Well, me and her.
What was left of her?
Oh, the body.
Yes. So you get a sense of the kind of man that she was with?
Yes. More than a sense.
That at a time when you're facing the suicide of your daughter, he's using words like a knife to twist in your heart as much as humanly possible, it would seem to me.
So kind of a sadist, right?
Yes, kind of.
So what the fuck was she doing with some guy like this?
I don't know. And I feel that I'm responsible for that.
I tell you, let me just say a little something here.
This is just my general confusion as a whole.
And it's not just me, but maybe you can help clear up a mystery for me as I'm trying to help clear up a mystery for you.
Yes. Your daughter was, as you say, lots of friends.
She was very picky, cute, athletic, caring, pretty, right?
Yeah. It's weird.
You know, I remember in college...
There was a woman who was very attractive and intelligent and well-read and educated and came from a well-to-do family and so on.
And she was telling me all about the LSD trips that she did and who she hung around with.
I remember talking about her. Yeah. And I just remember thinking, like, you have all this going for you.
What are you doing? You have all of these pluses.
What are you doing? I know.
Can you think of the probably two billion men in the world who would have been willing to date your daughter?
Yeah. And she combs through the muck and comes up with this specimen.
But that was what I taught her.
I teached her, wasn't it?
I taught her that. That was what I did.
Right. Didn't I? Maybe not in the same scale.
Her possibilities were way better than mine.
Well, and... Because she was...
Sorry to interrupt, but...
Yeah, sure. Your ex-husband doesn't sound particularly cruel, just abominably selfish and manipulative.
Yeah. But this guy...
Yeah. Yes, it's magnified.
Thousandfold. Well, he destroyed his whole family for a dead girl.
Yes. That's exactly what I told him.
So... It seems, I don't know if it's a Swedish thing or a European thing, but it was part of the second caller too.
Why is it so hard for anyone to get angry anymore?
And I mean in a healthy way, like, you know, the Aristotelian mean, you don't want to just be raging and you don't just want to be passive, but just to get angry.
She had, and you had, things to be angry about.
Now, she had more reason to be angry than you did because you chose her father.
She didn't, right? But the selfishness, this manipulation, this self-indulgence.
To me, this mysticism is very self-indulgent.
Oh, I'm special because I talk to the dead.
I don't know. How about being fucking special by contributing some good stuff to society?
No, I'm going to talk to animals in my own mind instead.
Hey, feel like contributing something to the world as a whole?
No! I'm in touch with the trees.
What? Like, would you like to give something back to the planet?
Would you like to contribute something of beauty and wonder and truth and excellence to the world as a whole?
No! I'm rapping with the ducks.
Jesus. Oh, God.
This is self-indulgence to mysticism.
Yes. It's just a way of feeling special without having to lift a goddamn finger.
Exactly. I'm at one with things.
Yes, exactly. Feel like being at one with the leaky roof?
No! No.
I am learning the language of the tethy fly.
Yeah. This self-indulgence and this manipulation which is fed by the pity.
It is fed by the pity.
Yes, that's true.
Stop pitying things.
We must constantly view our capacity for pity as a very dangerous enemy.
It is what we must guard against ourselves.
I say this as Europeans as well, but it is what we must guard ourselves against greatly is this self-destruction of pathological pity and altruism.
Yes. To feel good in the moment rather than be good in the long run.
I mean, you enabled, to a large degree, your husband's behavior.
I did. How did he survive after you kicked him out?
Did he just go on welfare? Did he go on disability?
what happened?
Well, he skipped from one job to another.
Wait, so he could work, right?
Yeah, sure. So he wasn't like brain tumor crazy.
No, no, no, no. He wasn't sick.
He was just lazy and crazy.
Well, no, hang on, hang on.
It's crazy if it's random.
If there always seems to be a purpose, if the quote crazy person always ends up getting what they want, they're not crazy.
Or as the saying used to be, I don't know if there's anything in Swedish, crazy like a fox.
Yeah. Yeah. So manipulative.
But no, he has been working on and off for all this time.
And he's been jumping from one woman to another.
Wait, there are women?
This guy's a player?
Yeah. No, come on.
Don't tell me that. I know good men who can't get dates.
Please don't tell me, Sarah, that this ex-husband of yours, they're talking with the dead guy.
This guy's not a player, is he?
But please, there are very many bad women out there as well.
There are so many.
I can't imagine why Sweden's in such trouble these days.
No. No.
It's a mystery. You know, three weeks after...
She died. He told one of my children that he was quite happy because he had met a new woman.
Wait, your ex-husband?
Yes. So he was happy three weeks after his daughter, your daughter, killed herself.
He was happy because he'd met a new woman?
Yes. And you feel sorry for him?
Not anymore. You just told me 10 minutes ago.
Yes, but I didn't mean it in the context of that I feel sorry for him now.
I was in my mind at the time where we were talking about right then.
Then I felt sorry for him, but I can't feel anything for this person now.
I can't talk to him.
I can't do anything. You can't feel anything for him?
What do you mean? You don't hate him?
I'm occupied with grief.
I can't be angry with him.
Why can't you be angry with him?
Sorry, why can't you be angry with him?
Well... Of course I can be angry with him, but I don't want to give him any more time of my...
After this...
I have been handling everything with her death myself.
And my husband, of course, he helps me with everything.
Your current husband, yeah, yeah.
Yes. And...
I can't...
I don't want to have two minutes of my day thinking about that man.
No, but... Because I don't have time.
No, no, no. Sarah, you must.
You have two other children with this man?
Yes. If he has...
I'm not trying to put you all off the hook, like you off the hook, but in just a...
Like, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.
Are your two other children in touch with their biological father still?
Well, I think they were quite put off by that remark that he was happy.
That's not answering the question.
They are not in contact with him.
Have they separated from him like they want to have nothing to do with him because he's happy about his new date three weeks after his daughter commits suicide?
One of them, not the other one.
One of them is from, I think, 10 years back and doesn't want to have anything to do with him.
And the other one still has Some kind of guilt, I think.
So, Sarah, you...
One of the problems...
Hang on, hang on. One of the problems that you talked about earlier was that you did not frankly express your thoughts and feelings about your ex-husband to your children.
And now, do you know what you're doing?
Exactly the same thing.
Exactly the same thing.
You guys have one topic as a family right now.
One topic. What contributed to your daughter's suicide?
Yes. Now the fact that her father doesn't give a shit apparently about it is probably one of those reasons.
The fact that you're not talking about it may be another.
Absolutely. You cannot afford to feed another child to this silence.
To this lack of discussion, to this lack of character delineation.
This lack of honesty about the past and about who's still there from the past and what they're like.
Yeah. Don't give me this, well, I don't want to waste another time, another moment.
No. No, but that's just...
You need to talk about your mistakes and you need to get angry.
Yeah. This guy is indifferent to the death of your child.
I know. Please don't tell me you're indifferent to that.
Or please don't tell me you're above feeling anything about that.
No, of course not.
All right, so let's talk about what you're feeling.
I feel less...
I feel as if I'm absolutely robbed from the possibility to grieve her with someone who knew her from the start.
Sorry, say that again.
I feel as if I'm robbed from the possibility to grieve her with someone who was there from the start of her life and cared for.
I feel as if Her life.
It doesn't matter.
For some people.
And I'm trying to understand.
No, this is all intellectual stuff.
These aren't feelings. These are all thoughts and I'm trying to understand.
What do you feel? There's a hole where my heart should be.
And I'm numb.
And I'm Empty.
And at times I feel as if there's a hellfire inside.
Okay, what's the hellfire? And that is my anger.
Okay, so tell me about your anger.
Well, I would...
I would like to punish someone for something.
I don't know. I'm just so angry and I want to...
I wish I could just remove everything I love from these persons that I'm so angry with.
Who are these persons?
Her boyfriend and my ex-husband.
Who's boyfriend?
Oh, the Spanish guy.
Yes, yes. And I want to punish myself for not being smart enough.
And as I wrote, I believed that I, when they reached Adult age.
And they were functioning okay.
I thought we were out of the woods.
That everything would be fine.
Because it has been quite...
It was hard when they were kids.
Making everything kind of work.
But you stopped parenting.
Right? Yes.
Because your daughter wasn't telling you that she was involved in this relationship with this guy.
And you let it pass, right?
Yes, I did.
And that is a terrible, terrible thing.
And I don't know.
I don't know if this could have been changed.
I don't know, right? But the question is, you did not act solely with the interest of what was best for your child.
Which is, she's not telling you who she's dating, you assume the worst, you fly out, right?
Yeah. So, the question is, moving forward, how do you make...
How do you make it about your children now?
Because you said, well, she doesn't want to talk about it, and you gave yourself this story like, I'm going to respect her wishes, I'm not going to poke, I think you used the word, I'm not going to meddle, and you gave yourself this out.
But if you make it all about your children and what's best for them, clearly in the past you would have said, ooh, that's not good.
That's not good. I made a mistake when I was young.
She's not talking to me.
I know he's way older.
They met at a bar.
A lot of warning signs, right?
Yes. I mean, the sad thing is you had to fly out anyway.
Yes. Right? The flight before, infinitely better than the flight after, right?
Very much so. So...
I will tell you...
The truth about your ex that I think your children need to know.
Okay. He doesn't give a shit about them.
Sure. He doesn't give a shit.
Does not give a shit.
Didn't give a shit about them to get off the computer.
Didn't give a shit about them to work on the farm or to fix the roof.
Or to help you. Didn't give a shit about them.
Did he feel any guilt when you ended up working yourself into illness?
No. No.
Doesn't give a shit about them.
He's like, well, okay, my daughter did kill herself, but I do have a new girlfriend, so I guess that's a win.
Doesn't care. Doesn't care.
Doesn't care. How long have you deep down, Sarah, known this about their father?
Deep down? I think I knew it from the early days.
Right. Of course I understood it when he didn't want to do anything.
Now. And I was telling myself stories, as you say.
To not face that problem.
So he's willing to use them to get what he wants, but he doesn't care about them.
Yeah. You know, I use the toilet to take a pee.
I don't care about the toilet.
So your children, I assume this is not a new thing with him, your children have been raised by a man who doesn't care about Exactly the same type of man.
Yes, exactly. Because you felt guilty and you wish to avoid the topic to avoid your pain and your guilt.
Yes, that is so true.
Of course, I know. I'm a parent, I know.
Right?
Does your ex-husband have a temper when he doesn't get what he wants?
Yes.
Tell me about that.
Bye.
Thank you.
He screams and he might throw things in the ground.
He's not hitting anyone, he's not.
But he's violent and abusive.
He's violent, yes. Right.
So he's vicious and cruel when he doesn't get what he wants.
Yes, absolutely.
Just like...
Your daughter's married boyfriend.
So, a violently destructive, emotionally abusive, highly manipulative, soulless, selfish man was the template for your daughters.
Yes. That is how I see it.
Right. That is what I... Maybe didn't.
I couldn't put it down in so many words, but that is how I feel.
I think those are the empirical facts, aren't they?
Yes, absolutely.
And this is what I taught her to do, and she did.
What did you teach her to do?
Choose the wrong man.
I showed her how to do it.
The problem was not that you chose the wrong man.
We all make mistakes.
Yeah, but I didn't act.
To... To what?
Make it not happen again.
Okay, and what would those actions have been?
Well, in the best of worlds, they wouldn't have lived with him at all.
And I would have been more honest about what happened.
What do you mean, more honest?
I would have told them and showed them Who he was.
How? Yes. All right.
Then the big question, of course, is, and we've touched it a little bit here, but it's important to know, I think, clearly.
The big question is, why not?
Why didn't you clearly explicate and describe and explain his nature, his character, your mistakes, so that they would not repeat them?
I think it might be something that you've been talking about quite a lot on your shows.
That, you know, when single mothers don't address the problem, when we don't take full responsibility for who we have when we don't take full responsibility for who we have children with, and maybe it's...
I don't know. I don't know.
I thought I was going somewhere with that, but I wasn't.
Yeah, you very much go to abstractions.
The reason why we don't say things that are true, the reason we don't say things that are true, Sarah, is because it's very painful for us.
Yes, and it might reflect that on me.
So it might reflect badly on you, right?
Yes. Which is the mirror, to a lesser degree, but it's a mirror of some of that selfishness.
I don't want to feel bad, so I'm going to keep from my children essential information that's going to help prevent them from making the same mistakes.
Yes, and we cross our fingers and hope that this will work.
And it seemed to be working. No, not at all.
No, it seemed to be working.
Yes, it seemed to.
Except that you avoided finding out about her boyfriend.
Yes. So, you had an idea.
I had an idea, of course.
And would it be fair to say that he's worse than you could have imagined?
He's way worse.
Oh my God, he's way worse.
Right. You could not really...
Think of a worse person.
No. No.
And the idea that he had nothing to do with it, in my opinion?
Not true. I think that you might be right on that one.
I'm not sure about anything, but he doesn't strike me as the...
There are things that Or odd.
The man is brutally vicious to you, to a mom whose daughter kills herself.
And can you imagine how he treated her?
Yes. I can.
And how solitary and how alone she ended up feeling.
Yes. And the reason I focused on anger, Sarah, in my, again, obviously amateur opinion, but in my very strong opinion, clear suicide is such an act of rage, such an act of anger, that not being honest about anger in a family is very difficult.
I mean, the cruelty, which I assume she was treated by the boyfriend, the cruelty of killing herself without even leaving a note.
She would have known, of course, how much that would torture you.
She probably had a pretty strong idea deep down how indifferent her father was going to be to this.
But she knew it would hurt you more.
Just as her boyfriend knew it would hurt you enormously to hear that your daughter loved her father more than she loved you or whatever, right?
Yeah. The amount of anger you would have to have to Destroy your boyfriend's life in that way, to destroy your mother's happiness for some time in that way, to not even leave a note, to not explain, to not have a phone call beforehand saying, Mom, I'm feeling so down.
I want to end it all.
You would have done anything for that phone call, right?
Yes. A lot of anger.
A lot of anger. And to let your daughter do endless favors to a man who doesn't give a shit about her.
Not good for her sense of self-worth, right?
No. And now he's going to try and attach himself, because this new relationship isn't going to work out, obviously.
Of course not. And so now he's going to try and attach himself to one of your other children, right?
Yes. He's willing to let one go as long as one stays behind, right?
Yes. So you have one job now, Sarah, and you know what it is, right?
Yes. What is it?
I need to be open and honest with my children about their father and open up their eyes as much as I can.
You need to do whatever it takes.
To keep him awake.
To keep them away from bad people, from selfish people, from people who will use them.
Thank you. And you need to stop crossing your fingers.
Yes. And hoping to get away with things.
And hoping that things are going to work out.
Listen, and I sympathize, Sarah, this is a common problem, a common issue.
We all face it.
I face it. You face it.
Bad things have happened, but I'm pretty sure it's going to work out, so maybe.
Right? I call in to your show because I need to straighten this thing out.
And it's too late.
But still, there are more people in the world and I can't tell myself stories for the rest of my life.
I need to try to do the right thing and try to see things as they are.
And it doesn't help her.
And it may not help me, but it can help someone else.
It will help your children.
Yes. And listen, I... Obviously, don't talk to the dead in any way, shape, or form.
I don't talk to the dead, Sarah, but I do have a pretty good idea what the dead say.
And all the dead say, repeatedly, over and over again, all throughout history, in your life, in my life, in the life of the world, all the dead say is one thing.
Learn from us. Learn from us.
Study why we died.
Learn to avoid what killed us.
Let the flowers that grow on our graves be the seeds of wisdom.
And let it be written on our gravestones.
While we could not instruct the world or be instructed while we lived in the way we wanted, perhaps the world can learn from our death.
That we do not die in vain, but we die In perhaps the most tragic form of education that there is, but it's the best that can be gotten from this endless line of graves going back throughout history.
Of people who, if they could, still talk now, would look back and know exactly why they died, and would call out for us.
In song, in skywriting, in the crab marks on a sandy beach, they would write out, learn from us.
Learn from us. Let our death provide to the world the immortality of wisdom.
And the worms may eat our bones, but let the minds that still live drink deep of the reasons why we died.
That we may live in truth and resolution and closure.
Thank you.
I'm so thankful that you spoke to me.
I hope it was helpful.
It's a very tough thing, and I wish to extend every conceivable fiber of sympathy for yourself, for your family, even for the stony moon heart of your ex-husband.
I grieve, and my heart is broken.
But that's sometimes where the light comes out, right?
Yes. And I just, I don't want any of my conversation to be seen as anything other than a manifestation of that incredible sympathy.
And we all make mistakes.
This punishment is far greater than any mistake.
And I am incredibly sorry.
Sarah, for what you're going through, for what your family's going through.
And my suggestion is merely to make the best of a bad situation.
It does nothing to justify it.
And I just really wanted to extend absolute infinite angel wings of sympathy to what's going on for you.
Thank you. Thank you.
Will you stay in touch and let us know how it goes with your daughters?
I will. All right.
Worth the call? Absolutely.
Good. Well, thank you very much for your honesty and your openness.
I appreciate, of course, everyone's conversation in this most essential topic of humanity and truth and wisdom and understanding.
So I'm not going to close with anything other than be honest with those around you.
Assume that avoidance must be pursued in those you love.
Unpack your heart.
Admit your mistakes. Connect.
Only connect, as the ancient author said, and we shall all get through this together.
