Sept. 22, 2018 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:35:50
4201 A Sign From The Universe - Call In Show - September 19th, 2018
This is one of the very rare times that the show contains a single conversation – one of the most memorable and surprising conversations in the history of the show – featuring a Freedomain Radio first. This has never happened during a call in show before – and I doubt it will ever happen again. Question: “What you think about the possibility of the supernatural? If proof of other 'beings' is real, does that open up the possibility of God or Gods? My boyfriend has done a lot of research about aliens and other stuff like that, and has some personal life experience with the supernatural. My boyfriend believes that the Christian God could be real but has a more flexible view than the bible since there are a lot of things it leaves out. His knowledge has given me a different point of view than the Lutheran Church I grew up in and made me question what I know about the world, but still makes me wonder about the existence of higher intelligence.” 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
So I've been doing these call-in shows for like 11 or 12 years, and I will tell you, my friends, out of the thousands and thousands of conversations that I've had with people about philosophy, I have never had a conversation like this.
The event that occurs in the middle, the twist that occurs in the middle, It is absolutely jaw-dropping.
I was gobsmacked.
I'm not often at a loss for words, but I really kind of was here.
But we did manage to finish the conversation.
And I just strongly urge you, strap yourself in.
We start kind of abstract.
We go deep. And then, boom, it happens.
So please be patient.
Listen into this conversation.
Get all the way through to the end.
I promise you, it will be worthwhile.
And just as a little reminder, You know, you can't get conversations like this, you can't get interactions like this anywhere else in the world, online, on television, in the media, in books.
There is nowhere and no place else that does what we do here with philosophy and people.
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Help us continue to expand and grow these kinds of absolutely essential, life-saving conversations at freedomainradio.com slash donate.
What do you think about the possibility of the supernatural?
And if proof of other beings is real, then does that open up the realm of possibility for God or gods?
My boyfriend has done a lot of research about aliens and other stuff like that, and has some personal life experience with the supernatural.
He believes that the Christian God could be real, but has a more flexible view of the Bible since there are a lot of things it leaves out.
His knowledge has given me a different point of view than the Lutheran church I grew up in and made me question what I know about the world, but still makes me wonder about the existence of a higher intelligence.
That's from Elric and Selene.
Hey, how are you guys doing tonight? Good.
We're doing great. So I guess my first question is, personal experience with the supernatural.
Tell me. Yeah, so my mother moved away whenever I was young, 7 or 8 years old.
And I reconnected with her and started visiting her whenever I was 14, 15 maybe.
And then I actually ended up moving in and living with her for a little while whenever I was like 22 or something.
And I always knew that she was into that whole kind of, for lack of a better word, the like...
White magic kind of hippie stuff.
I didn't really think much of it.
Other than just. Whatever.
That's what she's into. And then living with her.
She lived in a haunted house, just to put it completely bluntly.
There was some negative being in that house.
I've seen her TV has turned on when it's not plugged in.
It will turn on various TVs.
Electrical items will turn on and off on their own.
Things have flown off the walls, kind of like poltergeist activity.
Now that could be some kind of magnetic thing.
I'm not sure, but basically that really opened me up to something else is going on.
Not to ramble on, but that's basically where I'm at with that.
Right. And what was your mother's level of dedication to reality or commitment to objectivity or rationality, that kind of stuff?
That's a good question.
I don't know about his mom, per se, but I do know that I consider myself to be a pretty rational person.
I've never seen any supernatural stuff happen.
Wait, wait, wait. What happened to my question?
Yeah, she's a very intelligent woman, and she is, I want to say she's down to earth, but she kind of isn't.
But she, growing up, she's had these experiences, her family's had these experiences, and supposedly it's kind of a bloodline thing.
But, I mean, her approach to everyday situations is a very rational kind of based way.
But at the same time, she definitely has some fantastical views.
Tell me about some of her fantastical views.
Well, she...
Supposedly, I have to take all this, just I have to assume...
Okay, guys, just for the sake of...
Don't give me all the caveats.
Just give me straight up stuff, right?
I mean, millions of people are going to listen to this.
No pressure. But let's just cut out all the caveats and just get straight.
So what was some of her less mainstream views, let's say?
Magic. She...
She can see what's going to happen in the future, things like that.
She also has experiences with entities, kind of like sleep paralysis.
Wait, what does entities mean?
I'm not sure what that means.
Like shadow people, humanoids, bipedal creatures, but with no real facial definition to them, just like a black mass, but a bipedal black mass.
Bipedal, but yeah, okay.
Alright. Bipedal, yes.
So she believes she can see through time.
She believes that there are shadow people.
She believes that her home was haunted.
Correct. She actually got the house for sale a lot cheaper because the people that owned it before her wanted to get out of the house because it was so haunted.
When she got it, the whole family was sleeping in the living room together.
They were afraid to sleep. By themselves.
So there's some backstory with that.
And I find it hard to believe that one family would lie about it and then my mom would pick it up, you know, and run with it.
So I tend to believe that there was something happening at that house.
Well, that's certainly one possibility.
There are other possibilities, which I'm sure are aware of, right?
Uh-huh. So Elric, you had it pretty bad as a child, right?
It could have been worse.
Not really. But it wasn't.
It's hard. So this is your Adverse Childhood Experience score.
Verbal abuse slash threats.
Molestation, sex, rape.
No family love or support.
Neglect. Not enough food.
Dirty clothes. No protection or medical treatment.
Parents divorced. Lived with alcoholic or drug user.
Household member depressed, mentally ill, or suicide attempt.
That is pretty freaking bad.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's all correct.
I know. You said it.
I know. So that's terrible.
So what happened in your childhood?
Well, let's start with the molestation or sex, alright?
Sure. It was a family friend Whenever I was, I believe, seven, I got molested.
I did tell my mother about it.
She believed me. We ended up going to the police.
They didn't believe her at first, and then they looked into the guy's background, and he was actually wanted for some children disappearing that he may have murdered in some other states.
He was actually a really wanted person, and they did arrest him.
But immediately after that, my mom blamed herself, and so she left.
She abandoned me because she thought I would be better off living with my dad, which maybe I was.
Your mom claims she can see into the future and see shadow beings, but she can't see a child molester slash potential rapist who she invites into her house.
I think that her mystical gifts could have been slightly better served if she looked a little closer to home and a little bit less into the future and other dimensions.
I think you're onto something there.
Right. And was this...
Okay, it doesn't really matter what happened to him.
So you were seven.
Your mother abandoned you because she felt guilty for bringing a molester into your life.
Correct. How is that not just making things worse?
Well, I traumatized my child by bringing a molester into his environment.
So now I'm going to traumatize my child by abandoning him.
We've talked about this before.
Yeah, that's exactly what happened.
The abandonment actually affected me worse than the actual molestation, to be completely honest with you.
Yeah, please be completely honest.
So what happened when you went to go live with your dad?
Well, it was a big change.
My father was in my life.
He's a tattoo artist. He still is.
But he was not expecting to take on that burden.
So whenever I moved in with him, we were living in a walk-in closet or living at the tattoo shop.
You were living in a walk-in closet?
Correct. Was sleeping in it.
You know, it's not like we were restricted to the closet.
He was a young man, had gotten out of the military.
He was just kind of wild, you know, at that point.
And wasn't expecting to have to actually have a child that he was taking care of full time.
And so whenever I was kind of dropped off on him, it was a little chaotic at first.
But he did his best.
Well, we don't know about that.
Who was the alcoholic or drug user?
Well, my mom, whenever I was living with her, she was really bad into heroin.
She's clean now. She's like 15 years clean now, so that's good and that's great.
And then my dad also would party off and on.
Sure, cocaine use, I know that happens, you know, tattoo scene.
I grew up around a lot of degeneracy, and I fell into it for a while, but I've really kind of rebelled against it and become really kind of anti-degeneracy and tried to get myself kind of back on what is more like normal Western direction.
Family life, and it's kind of difficult because I wasn't raised in it.
Right. Yeah, it's like trying to learn Klingon or Japanese or something.
It's hard. Right, exactly.
And where did you go, Alrick, in terms of, as you say, degeneracy?
What did you do? Oh, lots of drug usage.
I'm still getting over that.
Alcohol is my last kind of bastion that I still struggle with.
That's more difficult because it's everywhere.
You know, it's right in front of you. There's TV ads, all kinds of stuff.
There's not necessarily commercial ads for, like, ecstasy or cocaine very often.
But yeah, I ended up homeless.
I lost everything. I had a fiancé.
I lost that. I had a career.
I lost that. I became literally homeless, living in cars, the whole nine yards.
Wow. And when did you start to shake that stuff off?
Well, from the time that I wanted to quit, there was a time period of getting over the physical addiction.
To where I could actually kind of start to say no and get off of it.
I would say that I quit using regularly about three years ago, three, four years ago?
Yeah. Yeah, about four years ago.
Actually, whenever I moved in with my mother, I moved away from the state I lived in before and came up and stayed with my mom because I just needed to get away from everything.
Yeah, I would say that whenever you moved is probably the definite change.
Yeah, so like four years ago.
Right. Okay, okay.
And when was the last time that you saw or believed you saw a supernatural phenomenon?
To be completely honest with you, I haven't really seen any...
I did see the things pop off my mom's wall.
So I suppose that was, what was last Christmas?
Or was that two Christmases ago?
Yeah, I think it was two years ago.
We were over there and some stuff happened.
And I've never seen anything supernatural before.
And so I thought it was strange.
There's a possibility that it wasn't supernatural, but it was definitely strange.
It was kind of strange. And it was stuff fell off the wall or flew off the wall?
Like, yes, but they were latched.
It wasn't just it fell off.
It moved horizontally off of the wall, like forcefully kind of tossed off.
And also it was kind of hooked on.
It was, I believe, a picture, but they were hooked on, not just kind of set on.
So it falling off is just kind of unlikely.
It would have had to kind of lift up and over the latch to come off of the mounting, if that makes sense.
So, a picture came off the wall.
I don't mean to diminish it, but we're not exactly talking about close encounters of the third kind here, right?
Correct. All right.
Now, Celine, you got together with Elric when he was a drug user?
He had come out of treatment, and he was currently in the process of becoming sober.
So, We met in the mindset of, yeah, this is not what we want to do anymore.
We both wanted to better ourselves when we met, and we've been doing that and working on it together.
I mean, good for you guys for getting clean, for sure.
I mean, that's congratulations.
And Celine, you also had it pretty hard as a kid, right?
I was never really physically abused, but as...
I've heard on your show before, there are some other types of abuse that can be just as bad.
Not to diminish my problems or anybody else's, but yeah, it could have been a lot better.
Because you also said yes to molestation or sex or rape, right?
Right. And what happened there?
Well, there was...
There was the inappropriate touching from my dad, but he never really did anything beyond that.
And then when I was a little bit older, like just four or five, it must have been, my brother tried to say that, well, Because we were playing house, and he tried to say that if you want to have a baby and we're playing house together, you know how you have to get one.
And so he tried to coerce me into doing something.
I had no idea what he was doing, and that was the only thing that I can remember.
I think I blocked it out for a long time, and then later on I remembered it.
And yeah, that's just the gist of what I can remember.
And how old was he and you at that time?
He was six years older than me, so it was a pretty big difference.
How old were you? I was four or five at the time, so he would have been 10 or 11.
And when you say that your father had inappropriate touching, what do you mean?
Um, like when I would be on the swings, he would do things like pinching my butt.
Um, later on, whenever I was older and I would visit with my dad, um, he would still, you know, like tickle me like underneath of my clothes.
And I told my family that it was made me uncomfortable.
And so I was, I didn't have to see him alone anymore.
Um, But I never wanted to, like, accuse him because I felt like that was wrong.
Like, my family made me feel like I shouldn't do that, sort of.
And you had an alcoholic or drug user in the house too, right?
Yeah. I didn't even find out.
My mom was the alcohol user.
I didn't find out about that stuff until I got older.
My aunts and uncles shielded me from a lot of that stuff.
Obviously, they didn't want me to deal with the complicated idea that my mom was suicidal and depressed and an alcoholic.
Why do you think she was suicidal?
This is something else I found out later on.
Whenever I was older, she kind of let it slip one time.
She was actually raped whenever she tried to join the military.
I guess she and her sister were rejected because of the physical.
And whenever she had gone there for the testing is whenever she was raped and attacked by this person.
So I think that might have something to do with it.
But there's also She told me about this whenever I was still a kid.
She told me that she felt guilty because she was not very nice to her own mother whenever she was a teenager and that was at the same time of whenever her mom had cancer and she died before they could ever, you know, Restore that relationship.
And she told me that I should think about her mistake in relationship to her.
And that was very confusing for me.
Oh, so she used her mother's death and their lack of reconciliation to kind of insist that you be reconciled with her or you view her more positively.
Is that right? Yeah, pretty much.
Well, that's pretty horrible.
It is. And what is the status of your guys' relationship with your parents at the moment?
I don't see my mother.
Like at all. No, I don't.
Because I drew a line at one point.
I was like, well, if you want to see me and have a relationship with me, then you got to be around me sober.
And you can't smoke cigarettes inside so that I'm breathing it in.
And she flipped the handle.
So that's not happening.
So she chose drink and cigarettes over you?
Basically, yeah. I'm so sorry.
That's a terrible choice to make.
And she put you around unsafe situations like her boyfriends and stuff.
Yeah, whenever I was living with her boyfriend Was sexually coming on to me, and I told her about it, and she didn't do anything.
So, that's another reason why I moved out.
Well, that also may have been an implicit deal, right?
Don't leave me alone, and I'll offer up my daughter.
Mm-hmm. Or whatever other resources she has.
Yeah, I agree. But, Elric, you still see your mom and talk to her.
Yeah, I still talk to my mom, but...
My mom likes to meddle and try to help me out, but it actually kind of screwed me over on accident.
So we have kind of limit...
I kind of limit how much I hang out with her.
Even my dad's told me kind of to not really talk to her anymore.
But I can't because, I mean, I do love her and she's terminally ill, actually.
So, I mean, you know, I don't want it to be one of those things where she dies and then I feel bad about it later for being mean to her or something like that.
Because that seems pretty crummy, too.
What do you love about her? She's an engaging conversationalist, and she loves me.
Honestly, I probably don't love her like I should, but I think that's just because she wasn't really there.
When she abandoned me, I think it kind of messed up my, it made me codependent on like relationships and friends, but I actually became kind of the opposite with family.
And my father's like my best friend more so than my dad.
So I think that, yeah, I'm sorry, I'm rambling now.
What do you think, in what way do you think you should love her?
You said you didn't love her like you should.
I don't necessarily feel like that warmth.
I assume other people have kind of like a physical, kind of chemical love reaction when they think or talk or hang out with their parents, and I don't really.
And because she's been terminally ill and we've thought that she was going to die so many times, I think it's kind of flipped the switch.
I don't think I have that connection with her, possibly that I should have.
To be honest with you, I don't know.
I don't know what a normal relationship is.
With your parents is, to be honest with you.
I'm just kind of guessing from what I see with other people.
How do you know she's ill?
She has Hep C and HIV and hyperpulmonary attention disorder and now cancer has come back for the third time.
So, kind of a laundry list of things there.
Wow. And physically, she has changed.
So, I mean, Anybody who was just looking at her and what she used to look like could obviously tell that her body has gone through hell.
Was she promiscuous?
Yeah, she was a professional dominatrix and she ended up actually getting...
Kind of kidnapped by her Mexican Mafia boyfriend and she was held in Mexico for three years.
No, I'm serious. I'm dead serious.
She was a professional dominatrix.
She got kidnapped by her Mexican Mafia boyfriend?
Yeah, they sold heroin together back in San Francisco, back in the 90s or whatever.
And yeah, that's where they met.
And he ended up taking her down to Mexico and taking her papers.
And so she couldn't travel or anything.
No, that's... I'm dead serious.
I know it sounds... Holy Billy Bob Fortin and Goliath, Batman.
Okay. Holy shit.
Yeah. Well, did you know...
Okay. At what age did you find out she was a professional dominatrix?
Because, you know, the amateurs are just crap.
But the professionals, like, what age?
Well, I do know...
I knew that she did, like, stripping...
Whenever I was probably 9 or 10, because I think my dad had made a comment about it.
And then I can remember her telling me whenever I went to visit her.
I suppose whenever I was 13. I think 13 or 14 whenever I came to visit her.
Actually, after she had escaped Mexico with her daughter.
I have a half-sister from it.
So yeah, the first time that I met her after her escapades, if you will.
And how long was she trapped in Mexico?
I think it was like two or three years.
Wow. It was at least two years.
I think it was closer to three though.
It's not very dominatrix-y to get kidnapped, is it?
Aren't you supposed to be the one in charge?
Yeah, you would think.
She always said that this guy was the only guy that she'd ever been scared of, and he was a little short guy.
She did tell me that originally she went with him voluntarily to California to do drugs with him.
Sure, well, you wouldn't want to be going to Idaho.
Right. Exactly. Exactly.
San Francisco would be the place to be for that.
And then he took her to Mexico and got rid of her paper so she couldn't leave?
Correct. Correct.
And she couldn't go to the embassy and say, I've been kidnapped because...
Of the drugs? A warrant?
I mean, why? He was afraid that he would kill her also.
I do know that he tried to escape, or she tried to escape.
In fact, on 9-11, she made it to the border, and the borders were closed, and he caught her and beat the crap out of her, broke some of her teeth out, and damaged her spine, hit her with a chair.
You're like, really bad stuff.
So I think that kind of...
Kind of put a damper on her free will flight.
She became the dominated.
Yeah. And she had to protect her daughter.
She was always afraid that he would kill her daughter.
Because he would say that he would kill her daughter if she escaped.
Or that he would send people to kill me if she ever escaped.
So. So remind me again what kind of love you think you should feel for this woman.
I don't know.
If anything, just kind of a moral thing.
I think you should love her.
Why? I don't know.
I think forgiveness is a good trait that I have and I don't really want to get rid of it.
Hang on, hang on.
Has she earned forgiveness?
Has she taken ownership?
Has she apologized? Did she offer to help you with therapy?
I mean, what has she done to earn forgiveness?
Well, she's gotten totally sober, so that's good.
She highly encourages me to seek therapy.
She's involved with The state, she sits on the city council or something like that.
She's very... And she encourages me to get help and work through that.
And she does apologize. In fact, she apologizes a lot and she thinks that I hate her.
But I just won't admit it.
You won't admit what? That I hate her.
And do you hate her?
I don't hate her.
I'm kind of disappointed in her, but I don't hate her.
Hate... Is too strong of a word for this.
I'm just kind of disappointed.
I mean, just out of curiosity, what actions would someone have to take for you to hate that person?
Threaten me or my people or...
I suppose if they're posing an immediate threat or they're just cruel.
Wait, if they're cruel, you mean if they abandon their child after exposing that child to a potential child murderer and molester?
Yeah. Would that fall into the category of cruel?
I would say it was more of a...
Not cruel, because she didn't do it from a malicious point.
She wasn't intending...
To have those things happen, but her poor choices did allow them to happen.
So I suppose I'm mad at the choices, but I'm not holding, I'm not angry at her, the person.
She chose to be a dominatrix and put herself in the path of a Mexican gangster guy, right?
And then she gave him a child.
Or maybe she was raped.
I don't know. But she did, knowingly and voluntarily while she was a mom, put herself into a situation where she was going to have daily contact with some very dangerous people in society.
Correct. Does she have any responsibility for that?
I suppose, yeah, yeah.
Because it's kind of like, well, my dad shot himself, but, you know, he was just playing Russian roulette.
He didn't really want to kill himself.
It's like, yeah, but if you're playing Russian roulette, odds are something's going to happen sooner or later, right?
Yeah, that's a very good analogy.
So, does she have...
I like...
If she wasn't your mom, right?
If you were hearing this story from someone else, right?
Like my mom introduced me to a child molester and potential child murderer.
My mom abandoned me at the age of seven.
My mom was a dominatrix.
She was a stripper. She was basically a whore.
She got involved with a Mexican mafioso, got dragged off, had a kid with him.
Like, what would you think of someone else's mom if you were hearing this story?
I would probably think that she doesn't make very good life decisions.
I would probably feel bad for that person.
Doesn't make very good life decisions.
Putting it mildly.
She's a mom. Uh-huh.
She's a mom. And this is how she chose to make a living.
She's a mom. She chose to abandon her children.
She's a mom. She chose to do drugs and drink, right?
Uh-huh. That's not an option.
You understand? It's one thing if you're a young single person and you do these terrible things to yourself.
But she was a mother.
Like your window of allowable behavior when you become a parent gets really small.
And it should.
Because it's not just about you anymore.
Right? She was an unbelievably terrible mother.
And you had no choice in the relationship.
You didn't choose.
She chose to become a mom.
You didn't choose to become a son.
Right? Correct.
Because you guys are calling me up.
The reason why I'm asking all of this.
You guys are calling me up. Like, the important question is whether there are ghosts.
Now, the important question is, can you see the demons?
Which are pretty freaking material.
Yep. I think a lot of her behavior and stuff is actually what attracts these negative entities to her, if they are indeed real.
Forget the negative entities in the house.
Forget the negative.
It's not plural, unless you're talking about two boobs.
Your mother is the negative entity in the house.
Yeah, yeah.
It's not haunted by the dead.
It's possessed by the living.
My dad would agree with you.
Now, here's the problem.
Your mother, I bet, has a very wild and ungovernable temper.
Um... Well, I mean, she used to do boxing and wrestling, but she actually is pretty good at keeping her...
I don't know. I would disagree.
Yeah, you think so? Yeah, I'll go with...
Yeah. Yeah, she has a temper.
I'll go with yeah.
Yeah. I mean, she's never struck me or even really yelled at me, but that's mostly because she just admits that she screwed up and she doesn't have a right to do that because she wasn't there when I was younger.
But she can go off.
She can become Mother Bear to other people and kind of go off.
So yeah. Mama Bear?
Holy Christ, man!
I need to take a spanner to your moral compass and just try and get it pointing some sane way again.
I don't think it's a Mama Bear thing at all.
She doesn't want to be aggressive to him because she knows that she made those mistakes, but she's perfectly fine with being aggressive and argumentative with Anybody else.
She's not being argued.
No, she already broke him.
She doesn't need to control him.
She already broke him. She already broke his judgment.
I don't love her like I should.
You shouldn't love her.
Loving her is an insult to Selene, who I assume is not being dragged off to Mexico by a mafioso.
Not if I have anything to say about it, no.
So, she already owns your moral center, and you can't say things like, geez, let me just think about it.
Who benefits from your perspective at the moment, right?
Who benefits from you having this obligation and this morality, Elric?
Who benefits from it?
Your mom! Um...
Your mom. So that my hate doesn't come back on her and she doesn't have to like live with that?
Is that kind of what you're saying? Yeah.
That makes sense. So you're still running around in your mom's brain.
She's calling the shots and you couldn't disagree with her when you were younger, right?
What do you mean I couldn't?
You weren't allowed to disagree with her when you were younger.
You weren't allowed to have an opposing opinion when you were younger, when you were a kid.
To be honest with you, I don't even really remember.
Well, that is honest, and it tells me everything I need to know.
Because children have lots of disagreements with their parents.
Of course, right? Some of it's right, some of it's wrong, but they have lots of disagreement with their parents.
So, if you don't remember having any disagreements with your mom, that tells me all I need to know, right?
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
So, if you're not allowed to disagree with your mom...
Then you can't finally grow up.
Because your mom was wrong about just about everything, right?
Uh-huh. And you need to be allowed to disagree with people around you.
That is essential for you having a soul, an identity, a thought or a mind of your own.
Single moms in particular...
I don't know, the phrase emotional pedophilia is probably a little too strong, but I'm still thinking about it.
But single moms in particular, this can be other moms, and it's not all moms, of course, right?
But single moms in particular, they kind of demand that their children, and in particular their sons, conform to their craziness, right?
Yeah, that's my mom too.
Yeah, that's Celine's mom for sure, both of us.
Yep. You have to conform to the single mom's craziness.
And if you don't, you're fucked, right?
Yeah. I don't believe that the house is haunted, mom.
I don't believe that you should be doing drugs, mom.
I don't believe you should have a drink, mom.
I don't believe you should date this guy, mom.
I don't believe you chose a good father.
For me, mom, I disagree, right?
But that is not allowed.
Single motherhood is a uno-vagina cult.
Often. Most often.
Single moms You can't disagree with them or they go apeshit.
Yeah. They're needy, dominant, bullying, insecure, voracious, often promiscuous.
They, in general, are a mess.
And they grab at resources, and they grab at penises, and they grab at people, like a drowning man on the last sliver of wood.
And you understand, Elric and Selene, they're still grabbing at you.
What wrong needs to accumulate for consequences to materialize?
You guys don't have any kids, right?
I don't have any kids, no.
I do have a kid.
I am not in her life.
Basically, I wanted her to get clean, and my kid's mom didn't at the time, and that was kind of when I left, trying to get my stuff together myself.
And now that I'm getting better, I would like to get back into her life, but right now she's very wealthy.
Oh, that's why you can't judge your mom.
Because you had a child with a drug addict.
Uh-huh. Yep.
No, I fell for the I can't get pregnant thing.
I totally fell for it and screwed up on that.
And I admit that.
I know that I did not make a lot of good choices whenever I was younger.
I think you made the right decision in this particular case to allow her to be taken care of by somebody who was going to be stable.
Who's taking care of your daughter?
Her grandparents.
You mean the grandparents who raised the drug addict?
Yes, that's true.
The family is...
The families, well, there's some, they got their own problems, some emotional problems.
The dad is kind of a hard ass, but they're financially well off, and the mother, the grandmother really cares about her.
It's just, I don't really have any other options, and I can't do anything if I don't fix myself.
I don't know. It's a difficult topic because I don't really know what to do.
I'm just kind of winging it. I don't really have a lot of...
My dad thinks I should just abandon the kid and not talk to her and I don't want to do that.
But I don't want to be in and out of the child's life either.
So that's why I've come up here and I'm going to therapy and doing a lot of things.
I'm just trying to get myself to where I'm not going to relapse and then be out of her life again.
And I'm all ears for suggestions that you have.
How old is she? Four now.
When did you last see her?
I have never seen her in person.
You've never seen her?
No. What happened when she was born?
When she was born, I was no longer with the mother.
I had gotten back with my fiancé because I was stupid and thought that if I got back with her, then I would just all of a sudden be cured of my addiction problems, which didn't happen.
I completely crashed and burned.
But I believe that Lauren was with an abusive guy at the time, if I remember correctly.
So I was not...
I was at work the night it happened.
That's all I can honestly really remember.
You were at work when your daughter was born?
Correct, yep. And the mother of your daughter was with an abusive man?
Yes, I didn't find this out until later.
I had kind of suspected, but I wasn't really talking to her, to the mother at that point.
Because the girl I got back with my fiancée, her name is Allison, she actually This is terrible, and I hate to say this because it's so shitty of me, but Allison didn't want me to have any contact with the daughter or the mother or nothing, and I went for it because I was that desperate to get back with her.
So that's terrible on my part, but that's what happened.
And then after kind of pulling my head out of my ass and realizing that I can't just ignore this kid and that's not right, I have begun kind of probing back.
My mom is in contact with my daughter and actually has flown down to see her and everything.
And I'm kind of trying to make probing inquiries.
Wait, your mom is in contact with your daughter?
Correct. Yeah, my mom is thrilled, actually.
No, but your ex is fine with your mom, but not you.
We actually, she doesn't hate me as far as I know.
I think you said it was your decision to not be involved.
Correct. So it wasn't like it was imposed on him.
Would the mother let you see the daughter if you asked?
The mother would. It would be the grandparents that would be the problem.
Because they only know me from whenever I was a scumbag, which I was.
And the grandfather hates me, as he should.
Because I was out running around with his daughter doing drugs and God only knows what.
And, you know, he wouldn't be a good father if he didn't hate me.
And I respect that about the man.
So he's allowed to hate you, but you're not allowed to hate your mom.
The fuck? Don't get me wrong, I hate my mom, but I don't have a burning desire to go murder her or anything.
She just kind of pisses me off.
Okay, but you're changing your story now.
Yeah, yeah. So he's allowed to hate you, but you're not allowed to hate your mom.
Because forgiveness is good, but he has no obligation to forgive you.
I don't deserve forgiveness, didn't you know?
Why don't you deserve forgiveness if your mother does?
I do. I just have a problem with self-worth, and that spills over into people-pleasing and stuff like that.
And I'm aware of it, and I'm trying to work on it.
So the thing to do is to stop pleasing people and stop living virtuously, right?
Yes. Because at the moment, you're people-pleasing your mom, right?
Yes. And she is the human being, if I understand this correctly.
She is a human being who has done by far the most harm to you.
Correct. So your lack of self-regard manifests as pretend forgiveness for your mom, based on her needs, not yours.
Could be. Yeah, that would make sense.
That makes sense logically.
The show's a thought.
Selene? Hmm?
What do you love about Elric?
I love the fact that he is brave and courageous, you know, in the face of when he sees something wrong in the world, you know, he knows that it's wrong and he can do something about it.
That was probably the number one thing that I admired about him.
So far, his perseverance and not giving up I'm really proud of him for that and that helps me as well to keep hoping I don't have to revert back to all the bad habits that I did and I can become more virtuous myself.
So when he sees something wrong in the world, he does something about it?
Yeah. Unless it's his mother who abused him or his daughter who he's never seen.
Yes. Could be more applicable to his own personal life.
I could hold myself more accountable for more things, definitely.
Now let me ask you this, guys.
If this courage is there, Why the hell are you writing in about space aliens and ghosts and goblins and shit like that?
If courage and doing the right thing and confronting badness is the key, what is with all this alien ghost crap in your letter?
Because it's not the big issue in your life, is it?
No, it's not.
I personally do struggle with whether or not I believe in the Christian God or if there's some wider explanation that we just don't know yet.
It would be nice to know.
You know, with the Christian God, you get judgment in hell too, right?
Yeah.
I mean, I don't think the Lutherans were way off base with that stuff as far as that being part of the worldview, right?
And I also grew up, some of my family was Catholic, so kind of...
If you die tonight, are you going to heaven or hell?
I would probably go to hell because I'm still unsure.
And haven't fully accepted God, you know.
What about if it had nothing to do with belief in God, but just based upon the personal virtues you'd achieved in your life, the integrity and strength that you had lived, the evil you confronted, the good you had achieved, if it had nothing to do with faith and you died tonight, would you go to heaven or hell?
Um, I don't know.
I guess everybody, I think, thinks that they would go to heaven, but, uh, I think everybody can also be extremely hard on themselves and say that they would go to hell because they don't forgive themselves for their past mistakes.
If forgiveness is out of the question, it's a matter of did you do something to counteract your negative behavior?
In that case, I think that thus far we have been trying to counteract the behavior.
You mean by getting sober?
Yeah, by getting sober and looking into doing more things and being courageous in the world to be that change and not just sit back and watch it happen and think that it's going to happen that way.
Halric, do you send any money to your daughter?
No, I don't.
So, what am I missing here?
In terms of courage and integrity, taking responsibility and so on.
You don't see her. You don't try to see her.
You don't send her money. I have.
I've been working really hard actually trying to get back into work.
When Selena and I had met, I had just become a felon.
And that's new for me.
I lost my career. I actually worked as an armed security guard.
And I obviously can't do that anymore as a felon.
Can't carry a firearm or anything like that.
What happened that gave you a felony?
I stole $75 worth of steaks from Walmart, actually, whenever I was living out of a car.
And when they caught me, I made a verbal threat, told them not to touch me, and left.
And they pulled me over and I got an aggravated robbery for using a verbal threat to escape a theft situation.
I couldn't believe it myself.
You told them not to touch you?
Correct. Yeah, the loss prevention people came out and they were young.
A lot of those crew members are younger.
I've actually, whenever I worked at security, I've worked with them before.
Not these particular individuals, but their organization.
And they're not supposed to physically put their hands on you.
And they wanted to, and I told them not to.
And that threat right there is what escalated it into a felony.
I didn't touch them.
I just walked off.
But you threatened them.
Yeah. I mean, I did do it.
I'm guilty, you know, and I accept responsibility for that.
And what happened? How did that play out from the legal standpoint?
I sat in jail for six months fighting the case.
I couldn't afford an attorney, so I got a paid defender, or I got a public defender, and I ended up pleading out to a lesser charge of simple robbery, 10 years probation, Um, and 16 months of prison time over my head, which I've completed most of.
Wait, 16 months of prison time.
I thought probation meant you didn't do prison time.
No. Well, when you're on probation, anytime you mess up, which in my case just means drinking because I don't really do anything else that's that wild.
Um, if I get caught drinking, I get a violation and I go to jail.
Um, Usually for like a month or two months or three months, but you only do a portion of the time.
It just kind of depends on what they want to do at the time.
So you're not allowed to drink.
Do you get tested when you see a probation officer?
No, usually not actually.
I'm really upfront with them.
They're aware that I smoke weed occasionally and they're kind of okay with that.
And it saves them money not to UA me because those UA tests are actually pretty expensive.
And they're pretty much just as long as I don't get in trouble, but like I got a DUI. I got my first DUI ticket, so they obviously found out that I was drinking.
You got a DUI when you were on probation?
Yeah, this happened just like last month.
I got a DUI, my first DUI. I thought you said you were clean.
I have been clean off of the hard drugs and off of liquor, like I said, but I'm still having a problem.
Getting completely off of alcohol is really difficult for me.
Celine, what are you doing?
Are you kidding me?
What are you doing? If it sounds any better, probably doesn't, but it's been a lot less.
And I have seen his improvement.
If I didn't think that he wasn't trying, obviously...
He just got a DUI! On probation!
He's still doing drugs!
He's still drinking! He abandoned his daughter!
What are you doing?
He's a felon!
From the beginning of the conversation, I obviously have my own problems from my childhood, too.
I get that.
But I don't think this is helping.
Is it? Sometimes it seems like it does help.
I don't know if...
You grew up with an addict.
You're with an addict.
You grew up with dysfunctional parents.
You're with a guy who doesn't see his daughter and forgives his mother.
How is this fixing anything?
Isn't this just repetition?
Correct me if I'm wrong.
It's just kind of how it looks.
I think we both see that, and at the same time, like I said, we are trying to change ourselves.
Obviously, we're not doing a very good job.
I don't know. I think we're making progress.
Elric, do you think it's fair?
Selene is a 24-year-old woman with no children.
I assume she doesn't have any felonies, am I right?
That's correct. Do you think it's fair for you to hold on to her?
Do you think her life is going to be better in the long run?
Being with you or being with somebody who's not a felon, who's not got a kid he doesn't see, who's not still taking drugs and drinking while on probation, who's not regularly getting kicked into jail, who didn't just get a DUI? Do you think maybe you're selfishly holding on to someone because you need someone rather than doing what is actually best for her?
It's really funny that you say that because a lot of the people that I've met in my life seem to all have these problems.
You know, it's not funny at all.
It's not funny at all.
You say, oh, it's really funny that you said...
It's not funny at all, Celine.
It just seems to be like a lot of people...
Have these problems. Or maybe...
No, no. Listen.
Not a lot of people have Elric's problems.
Now, you're in an underworld.
Right? Do you go to hell?
You get that was a trick question, right?
Why was it a trick question?
Because you're already there.
Yeah. Because you're already there.
And you've never left.
And I'm offering you the opportunity to look up, to see the light, to get out.
Are you going to have a child with Elric the felon, the drug addict?
Are you going to get married?
Are you going to have a wonderful life together?
I don't even know if I can have a child.
Come on! Don't sell yourself that short.
And listen, Elric, I'm not trying to throw you under the bus here, but if you're worried about feeling bad at being guilty, if you're holding Selene back, if you're dragging her down, that's going to eat away at your conscience.
I completely agree.
You're not good for her!
I kind of disagree.
Well... There's times when I'm not good for, that's definitely sure.
Oh my god, are you fucking kidding me, man?
Are you kidding me?
You're a felon, you're still half in jail half the time, you won't quit doing drugs, you won't quit drinking, you just had a DUI. Are you kidding me?
Are you saying to Celine, Elric, you can't do better than me?
Oh, I'm sure she could. Okay, so then you're standing between her and something better, which makes both of you go in a worse direction.
If you really care about Celine, wouldn't you want what's best for her?
Is what you have to offer at this point in your life, Elric, is that what is best for her?
Forget about your needs and your codependency and whatever.
What is objectively best for Celine?
Is it you right now at this point in your life?
I don't know. I'm supporting her like going to school and everything like I really I do want her to better herself and she is.
Before I met Elric I wasn't interested in bettering myself.
And so that's why I feel like he has helped me because before in my life, I just didn't care.
So.
So how, how, Elric, how are you making the money to send Celine to school?
Don't bullshit me, man.
I know you're in and out of jail.
How are you making the money to send her to school?
Uh, I'm gonna go with, um, Mercenary for the South African Liberation.
But how are you getting the money right now to send her to school?
I don't. We live in a crappy welfare state, and she, uh, we both, we both qualify for getting grants for going to school, so we're gonna be leeches from the system, and, uh, Do that, I think.
As much as I hate to say it, that's...
What's that?
You're both gonna do it? Learn a trade?
Like you're both gonna suck off the taxpayer tit and get educated, right?
That's... We're going to try.
She'll probably succeed. I probably won't.
I do. I do have a job.
Okay, okay. Hang on, hang on. See, you've got to just listen to people, Selene.
What is Elric telling you?
He's saying that you will succeed and he probably won't.
Now, I don't think he's lying to you, right?
He says you will succeed and he probably won't, right?
Well, of course not, because he's still doing all the things that land him regularly in jail.
He's got 10 years of probation.
How long have you gone, Elric, between going to jail?
What's your biggest stretch of not jail-ness?
I mean, I had never been to jail until I was 20.
No, no, no. Since you were convicted.
Oh, since I was convicted?
A year, maybe?
Roughly a year. So you went a year between going to jail?
Yeah. And were you doing drugs and or alcohol during that year?
yeah so you didn't go to jail because you lied to your probation officer right sorry say that again you didn't go to jail because you lied to your probation officer because i assume he says are you drinking and doing drugs at some point right yeah Correct. Right. So if you had told the truth, you would have gone to jail.
I also assume that lying to your probation officer, also illegal.
Probably. So you haven't gone more than a month without breaking the law.
At any given time, right?
No, that's correct. Right.
I ask you again, Elric, do you think that you are the best person for Celine, her happiness, and her future?
I'm probably not the best person for anyone, but, you know, I'm really giving it a shot.
It may not sound like it, but I am giving it a shot.
I don't care what you say, man.
I'm only looking at the empirical evidence of your behavior, right?
Anyone can say anything, right?
The empirical evidence is you ain't giving it a shot at all because you keep drinking and you keep doing drugs when you're on probation.
You're not giving it a shot at all.
You're self-medicating because you feel bad.
And I'm saying that if you continue to date Celine and maybe drag her down with you, you're both going to end up feeling terrible and you're going to be even worse off than you were before.
I mean, that's not impossible.
What's not impossible?
Your chain of events that you think will happen.
Elric, do you want what's best for Selene, independent of your own needs?
Thank you.
Or are you just using her to sort of stuff up the holes in your own heart?
Do you want what's best for her independent of your needs?
To be honest with you, I can say yes, but that might be kind of a lie because I am super codependent.
Right. No, listen, I appreciate that honesty.
That is most respectable and most...
Ah, look, here's the courage that Selene was talking about, right?
So you are willing or your neediness, Elric, is high enough...
That you would rather sacrifice Selene's happiness and future for the sake of your own codependency.
And listen, that's kind of what codependency is.
It's just another kind of addiction, right?
Right. Well, if you feel good, then I can justify it to myself, right?
I'm sorry, I was talking at the same time.
I just missed what you said when you started.
If you could just repeat it, please. I was just saying, well, as long as I can justify it to myself and I get what I want, it doesn't really matter because What Celine needs, right?
I'm aware that that is a bad thought process.
I'm still working on your good thought process here, Elric, because I gotta tell you, man, you're staring at the brink of jail every month and you're still drinking and driving and doing drugs and it's like, dude, your good thought process remains a rather elusive beast at the moment.
I'm not doing drugs anymore.
I realize alcohol is a drug, but there's a big difference from shooting up hard drugs and drinking a couple beers.
Yeah, shooting hard drugs up doesn't automatically put you in jail, but drinking puts you in jail, doesn't it?
Yeah. Yeah, so it's worse at the moment.
Yeah, that's true.
And you still smoke weed, which is a drug.
Yeah. Yeah.
So, Selene, he's telling you that he would prefer you serve his emotional needs than do what's best for you.
Yeah, and we've talked about this before.
Right. Why can't you do any better?
What is life like for you, Celine, if you meet a functional man who doesn't have these disasters, who doesn't have a felony, who doesn't have a kid he abandoned, who doesn't have jail hanging over him for just about every day he gets up and drinks, who doesn't have a DUI, who has an income, who has a career.
If I've ever met somebody before in my life that I could have gotten closer to, I probably...
Wasn't even aware of that type of relationship and probably pushed them away.
Sure, there are probably lots of good guys in your history that you kicked to the curb or friend-zoned because your juices run with the bad boys, right?
And I also chose pretty poor female friends and peers throughout my young adult life.
Sure. And do you know why you do that?
No, not precisely.
Would you like to know why you do that?
Because I'll tell you.
I will tell you.
So, Celine, the reason that you choose dysfunctional people in the present is to cover up all the dysfunctional people in the past.
The dysfunctional people in your past, your family of origin, are so dysfunctional that they are the ones who don't want you dating a functional man.
Celine, imagine you and I meet, and we, our eyes meet across a crowded room, and we go on a date, we go on another date, and then you take me home, me, like as I am now, you take me home to visit your parents.
What do I say afterwards?
That my mom is a monster and my dad is pretty weird.
Right. So you are protecting your parents by dating people like Elric.
Because Elric doesn't have much of a leg to stand on to criticize other people, right?
See, when you're a good person, when you live with integrity and you're functional and so on, you gain this wonderful ability to criticize other people without being a hypocrite, right?
And so if there are people in your life who can't stand criticism, who couldn't survive criticism, or at least your relationship with them couldn't survive criticism, they never, ever, ever want you to have a functional person around.
Because a functional person will take one look at them and say, Whoa!
Welcome to crazy town.
And then what's going to happen, Celine is that functional person, is going to look at you and say, yeah, Celine, she's pretty cool, smart girl, attractive, funny.
But man, as far as that package deal goes, that's a lot.
That's a big ask. Because I could spend the next 40 years hanging around with creepy and weirdo.
And we're going to have kids, which means, yay, grandparent time with creepy and weirdo.
Like, you understand? Is it applicable if I start the relationship from the beginning and telling them that, no, I don't want to be involved in my parents' life and I don't want them involved in mine?
Is that a choice?
The question is the environment as a whole.
And it's not just your family, although your family is a start.
You said you chose bad female friends too, right?
Sorry, one more time?
You said that you chose bad female friends as well, right?
Yeah. My parents were not really, you know, they didn't instruct me on who I should and shouldn't hang out with, so...
Yeah, but Celine, you're almost a quarter century old now, right?
I mean, you're looking at Elric's resume, you're not like, whoa, jackpot, right?
I mean, at some point, I'm not sure when that age is exactly, but at some point, the rains do pass from your parents to you, right?
Right. And I didn't figure that out until I was probably like 21.
You haven't figured it out now.
Because I talked to you about bad friends that you chose and you immediately blamed your parents.
There you go. I'm sorry for the trauma.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not forgiving your parents for one tiny scrap of anything.
But if they're your go-to big bag of excuses, they're still running your life.
Right? Because you then can hang out with crappy people and say, well, my parents didn't teach me any better.
No, you're right. I think that I chose the peers as people that were going to instruct me.
I thought that they were going to tell me what was right and wrong.
I don't know why I thought that that was a good idea, but I stopped being friends with them whenever I realized.
Come on, man. Everybody tells you what's right or wrong.
Everybody around you all the time tells you what's right and what's wrong.
I mean, if you listen back to this call, Elric's constantly telling me what's right and wrong.
Celine, you're constantly telling me what's right and wrong.
Everybody tells you what's right and wrong.
Doesn't mean everyone's right.
But you know, you hang around with drinkers.
And what do drinkers do? Drinkers say, oh man, people who don't even drink, they're just squares, they're boring, they can't relax, they're too uptight, they don't have any fun, they don't...
Right? It's all the bullshit that comes along with addiction that's really addictive in my...
I mean, there's a physical component.
It's the stories that make everything so addictive.
You know, like someone comes over and you're like, hey man, you want some weed?
And I'm like, no, I don't want any weed.
Then you're like, whoa, Mr.
Uptight, you know, it's 420 plays in Vegas.
Right. It's the bullshit that comes around.
It's the whole lifestyle bullshit that comes around with it.
The people who do drugs, it's like, man, it's a great experience.
Mind-altering, it's mind-expanding.
What was that bit from weed some guy wants to give peyote or mescaline to someone and says, it's like 20 years of therapy in one night.
No, it's not. It's not.
It's bullshit messing up with your perceptions.
That's all it is. Just breaking your brain repeatedly.
It's like taking a hammer to a Ming vase.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
I'm rearranging it.
Nope! I'm expanding its vastness.
Nope! You're just breaking it.
You're just breaking it.
Everybody, all the time, tells you what's good and what's bad, what's right and what's wrong, what's cool and hip versus square and boring and You know, like all those TV shows and movies where the rebellious kids are like, well, I don't want to end up like my parents, man.
2.2 kids on a suburban street with a Volvo, man.
I'm a rebel. You know, like the resistance.
It's like, no, you guys, you're the powers that be.
You own everything. You control everything.
You're not the resistance.
The only thing you're resisting is reality.
So when you say, well, my friends, I thought they would teach me what was good and bad, right?
Everybody does that all the time.
If you listen to people's conversations, so much of it is a wrestling for the moral narrative.
Who's right? Who's better?
Who's cool? Who's hip?
Who's square? So of course your friends tried to teach you, or instruct you, or tell you what was right and what was good.
Everybody does.
It's just some people are right, and some people are very, very wrong.
Right? Mm-hmm.
And whenever I decided that their morals were different from what I thought was right and wrong, I was no longer friends with those people in high school.
Except, I bet you saw it right up front.
I bet you saw it within 5 or 10 minutes of meeting them.
Right? Well, no, actually.
The high school friends, for example, I was friends with this one girl since 7th grade whenever I moved there.
And it wasn't until my sophomore year that they all told me that Well, they didn't even like me.
And I was like, well, if you don't like me and you think that I'm wrong, then I guess we're not really on the same level.
We're not friends. Oh, so this was a childhood friend who turned on you?
Yeah, basically. And what was your childhood friend's family life like?
Oh, just terrible in different ways from mine.
So that's what you need to know.
That's why I say, you know, right up front.
Was she honest about her family life?
Did she know it was bad? Did she know it was dysfunctional?
Did she know that it was immoral?
To be treated like that as a child?
Did she fight for her virtue?
Did she fight for her independence?
Did she fight for her freedom and moral clarity?
No. So she had no bond with her parents, I assume.
And then, guess what, Celine?
She also had no bond with you.
Mm-hmm. So I say, you know up front.
And you knew because you knew about your childhood friend's family, right?
I found out about her family whenever we got a little bit older, yes.
And I think that you're exactly right.
As soon as I was around her family, that's when I realized that, yeah, she...
And this is the instruction that...
I'm sorry to keep interrupting you, but this is the instruction that you need to get.
If you're friends with a girl...
And you don't meet her family for a while?
That's all you need to know.
You understand? I know all my daughter's friends.
All of them. Very well.
Yeah, my aunt at the time, she wouldn't even really let me hang out with her very much until I had done chores and stuff like that.
But I don't ever remember her Saying that, you know, I want to meet this girl and I want to meet her parents.
And so I never thought about those things at first.
Right. So Celine, let me ask you this.
You're 24 years old.
Let's say you stay with Elric.
He's going back to jail sooner or later, right?
He's got 10 years. 10 years probation and he's still breaking the law, right?
Right. He's got a DUI now, too, which is also going to be a huge mess, right?
Especially since it occurred on probation.
So you stay with Selene. Sorry, Selene, you stay with Elric.
You're 24 years old.
Let's fast forward six years.
You're 30. What's your life like?
He's still got four years to go, at least, for his probation.
Unless he serves the jail time.
I'm actually going to just go serve my time.
I've only got four months left, so I'm just going to go do that, actually.
Does that eliminate your probation?
Correct. Really?
Yes. So you had 10 years probation, but you've done enough jail time.
In other words, you keep breaking your probation, so your probation gets eliminated.
Correct. That seems strange to me.
Oh, you didn't return your library book on time.
Oh, just keep it. Alright, so Celine, your goal then is you're just going to wait for four months till he gets out and then just pick up where you left off?
Yeah, he's going to therapy and my next goal is to go to school.
The goal after that is to move out.
Move out of where? My dad's house.
Oh, you guys don't live together?
Yeah, we live at my dad's house.
I thought you had said, Celine, that you didn't have much to do with your parents.
Yeah. You just told me that, I think, about 10 minutes ago.
I should have said my mother.
I don't have anything to do with my mother, excluding her sisters.
Your dad was always gone.
Her dad was always, always gone for work.
But we do live here.
Yeah, we do. So, Celine, your dad was always gone for work, which ties into Elric being gone for prison, right?
Yeah. And that was...
It's just something you're used to. I lived with my dad in high school, and he would work two jobs.
Yes, he was gone quite often.
Right. And Celine, what does your father think of Elric?
His opinion seems to change whenever my opinion changes.
This is the father who was groping you as a child?
Yep. He also has a brain injury from an accident that he had.
I'm not entirely sure about what he was like before the brain injury because I was too young to really remember him and I wasn't around him.
But he's working two jobs. Are you saying that the brain injury allowed him to work two jobs but also made him into a child molester?
No, no, no. What I'm saying is that the brain injury makes it hard for me to communicate to him about these things.
But the man who molested you is putting a roof over your head.
Correct. What do you think of that, Elric?
That you're taking charity from the man who molested your girlfriend when she was a little girl.
Well, neither of us are too happy about it, and that's why we are trying to get our stuff together.
Guys, guys, guys, come on.
Come on. You can't live like this.
No, we can't.
No, but you are. And you want to talk to me about ghosts and aliens.
I guess I would have.
I'm very open to this conversation.
I would have opened with a question about that if I would have known how to phrase the question.
Well, I mean, you knew we would jump past all that crap anyway, right?
Do you get welfare if you're living with your parents?
I didn't know that. Okay, so how that works is I pay him rent and I have paperwork signed by him that says that I pay him rent and then based off of my income and my bills Is how you're able to get food stamps.
But if you pay him rent, and you genuinely pay him rent, then why wouldn't you pay someone rent who, say, didn't molest you as a child?
Because it's cheaper.
I... The financial situation is really difficult.
I had my own apartment and I lost it because I had relapsed and blew all my money in my savings account.
So I lost my apartment and had to move back with one of my parents.
And my mother is much more abusive than my father is.
At least now. Because obviously I'm an adult.
Nobody can molest me without my say-so or it's rape.
But you're saying he doesn't even acknowledge it because of the brain injury, right?
I don't know how to talk to him about it.
So I guess you could say that we're both not acknowledging it.
But he definitely doesn't bring it up, of course.
I don't think any of my family has brought it up to him.
Well, they know.
Your mother knows, is that right? Yeah.
My family also knows that my dad has touched his brother and been inappropriately touching some of my cousins.
Wait. Now?
No, he's not currently doing it now, but this has happened and this is why they don't talk to him anymore and they don't bring my family around for Christmases and stuff like that.
You know, when you say that you admire Elric's strength in confronting wrongdoing and you're both complicit in giving the pedophile money, I'm not sure I see the connection with the moral courage to confront wrongdoing when you seem to be kind of subsidizing it.
This is just too easy for us.
It's just easier for us to do what we're doing now.
How's that easy path worked out for you there over the long run?
It could be better.
The easy path is definitely not.
It's all about that instant gratification.
You guys aren't going to change, right?
I'm getting there. I... I prefer it over being homeless.
Yeah. I guess. Yeah, okay.
So if that's the only option you have is to be with Elric and give money to your molester, if the only other option you have is homelessness, which is not the only other option you have, but if that's your perception, well, to that degree, perception is reality.
So you're going to stay together and you're going to waste your youths and you're going to drag each other down and...
It's going to be a disaster and this one conversation, I think, is just more for other people to see the consequences because it doesn't seem to me that you guys want to change.
I mean, you're not going to have another conversation like this again probably ever in your life, right?
But my understanding is that you're going all rubber bones on me now, right?
So this, you know, my understanding is you don't really want to change and you want to take the easy route and you're going to do that, right?
I want to know What the hard route is and how to get on it.
Because I realize that this easy route is not taking me anywhere.
Yeah, we both realize that.
Oh, it's taking you somewhere.
Don't forget that.
Okay. Taking us farther down.
Yes. Right.
So you want to know what the hard route is?
I do want the struggle.
Yes. Okay. So I'll tell you.
First, you stop using people.
You guys are using each other.
Because you're codependent, because you're needy, because you're lonely, because you're afraid of relapse, because you're clinging together, as people do, who've got histories of addiction.
So you learn to stand on your own two feet.
And you have an income, right, Celine?
I mean, you've got welfare.
You said you had a job, right?
Yes. Right. So you have an income.
So you could definitely afford to move out, right?
Even if it's just like you get a room somewhere, right?
I could afford the rent alone.
See, the hard thing is killer is like the car insurance and how would I get to my job?
Because I don't pay my car insurance bill and I don't pay You know, five hundred dollars in rent.
How do I achieve those things when I'm not yet at that point?
That's kind of why we...
Why do you need a car?
Why do you need a car? If you can move, you just move closer to your job, right?
If there's apartments that I can afford available, sure.
Well, no, I didn't say apartments.
I mean, I was living one room in a house with five other people when I was 27.
So, you could just get a room, right?
You don't have to get a whole apartment, right?
Yeah, I could rent with other people.
Right. Okay, so then you don't need a car.
You can Uber once in a while if you have to, or take a cab, you know, take buses.
I didn't get a car until I was like 33, I think, or 34 years old, maybe 33.
So, you know, I didn't get a car until I was nine years older than you.
You find a way to survive.
I got a question for you. You can get a bike.
It's better for you. What do I do about my pets and my chickens?
Yeah, we've started raising chickens.
If I was going to move out of my dad's house, how do I... You sell the chickens.
I don't know what to tell you. Until you get your life in shape, until you stop being codependent, and still you stop heading to jail, maybe X and A on the chickens.
That's all I'm saying. So, basically what you're saying is I'm going about it in the wrong order.
What, the big barrier between you and fixing your life is chickens?
That's honestly something I've never actually heard before.
No, it's not an obstacle.
What do I do with the chickens?
Just stop.
It's not that they're an obstacle.
It's just one of the things that I have tried to do to better myself.
And like I said, I shouldn't be doing that right now when the core problems are still there.
Kind of like, well, I wouldn't have kids because I still have depression and I don't want to burden them with that.
Why do you think you still have depression, Celine?
And I mean this with love and affection and care and concern.
Why do you think you still have depression?
What is your depression trying to tell you?
That I haven't worked through all of my problems yet.
I don't know what working through your problems means, but...
I haven't. I mean, are you with the right guy for your future, for your happiness, for your stability, for your...
I mean, do you want to have kids in the future?
If I can adopt kids, yes, that would be an option for me.
Why only adopt? I don't...
Are you concerned about damage from drugs?
That, but also just, I don't think I can conceive.
Just my reproductive system was already faulty.
And yeah, drugs and STDs.
I just don't think that there's any chance of it happening.
And I'm not even entirely sure if I should try to, because what if the child...
Had some sort of defect, and that's my fault.
I mean, STDs, did you have STDs that are associated with sterility?
Yeah. Which ones are associated?
I know for guys, you can become sterile if you get mumps or whatever, but what is it for women?
I know for sure chlamydia and gonorrhea are big ones because, yeah, they go in your fallopian tubes, and that is...
One of the problems, if the egg cannot travel to the nest, then it doesn't grow.
And there's scar tissue, right?
Uh-huh. Yeah, okay.
So, but do you want to be a mom at some point, however it's achieved?
Yes. Okay.
And is Elric the best father you can get?
Sorry, one more time? Is Elric the best father you can get for your children?
I've seen him with kids before, but as far as his actions go thus far, I'm not sure.
And do you have any STDs at present?
- No. - And do you have any that may recur in the future? - I don't know about reoccurring ones.
I guess the answer would be no if my doctor didn't tell me about the possibility of reoccurring.
Right. Herpes and stuff, doesn't it come back?
Well, technically speaking, you don't ever really get rid of herpes.
You just have it and you get flare-ups.
Same thing with HPV. You always have it and stress can cause flare-ups.
Right. But you don't have herpes, right?
No. No.
Right. Tell me about the ideal man to partner up with.
Like, if you could just have your complete wish list, Selene, who would it be?
What would he be like? Someone who always strives for what the Absolute truth is and everything.
and somebody who genuinely wants to pass that down onto the next generation and other people around them.
Uh-huh, what else?
Anything more practical? Yeah, I mean, obviously someone who is industrious and, you know, It's obviously a hard worker, has good work ethic and stuff like that.
You don't even have a picture in your mind, do you?
Right. I'm not accusing you.
This is very much like on-the-spot stuff.
Yeah, I would say that probably I never really Wrote it down, and I never had any model person to look at to say that, yes, this is exactly what everybody should be like.
Because nobody's perfect, but I've never...
Oh, come on. No, no, don't give me that.
I've never seen anybody who is close to my definition.
Yeah, don't give me that. No gun is perfect, so it doesn't matter if it goes off in your face and takes your eyeballs off.
All right. Because, you know, like one of the things that I think you want is for someone to be loyal to you, right?
And to care about you.
And I tell you this, if you were my girlfriend and you said, hey, let's move in with my pedophile father, do you know what I'd say?
No. Yeah, you do.
No, I mean, you would say no.
Hell no.
Like, I would rather be homeless than give Uncle Spankyfingers more money.
Hell no.
Because I don't want you to be around a child molester who harmed you because I care about you, Selene.
Thank you.
I don't want you to be triggered.
I don't want you to be depressed.
I don't want you to feel compromised to that degree.
That you have to go and live under the roof of the man who touched you inappropriately as a child and has done it to other children too.
Maybe the statute of limitations is long gone.
Maybe nothing can be done legally, but we don't have to give the son of a bitch money.
And I would say, if I had a bad habit that was interfering with our independence to the point where you do end up having to give money and live under the roof of a man who molested you, that I would say, if I had a bad habit that was interfering with our independence to the point where you do Yeah.
Right, Elric? Elric went to go see who was at the door.
That's fine. He can listen to this later.
Does it count for anything that my father was financially supporting me as a teenager?
Does that count for anything as far as his dad's repertoire?
No, not at all. No.
First of all, your father's supposed to financially support you as a teenager.
That's the job. Yeah.
I mean, this is going back to Elric's dominatrix kidnapped mafioso Mexican mom.
Does it count that the guy who kidnapped me also bought me burgers?
No, it doesn't count.
There's no defense against pedophilia saying, well, I did get her some cornflakes.
There was a whole trail of candy to my windowless fan.
He ate some of the candy! You can't blame me!
It didn't continue whenever I was a teenager, but yes, you're right.
It's called buying silence!
I mean, Jesus!
Elric goes to jail for $75 worth of steak?
And you're giving money to the child molester?
God almighty!
People sometimes think these conversations are staged.
God, I wish they were!
It's very real for you, right?
So what I have to do then is move out on my own and...
Get my life together. Your boyfriend is fine with you giving money to your child molester because it's easy for him.
Come on, Celine.
Come on. You've got to start valuing yourself more than that.
You're right. And that's definitely something that I am Still working on so hard.
And here's the thing. Here's the thing, Celine.
This is the big secret. You ready for the big secret?
Here's the big secret. Here's the big secret.
First of all, you don't have to do shit.
You don't have to do anything. Life is free.
But here's the thing, Celine.
A lot of times, people wait until they feel right about something before doing it.
Uh-huh. The waiting means that will never come.
So, you may say to yourself, well, I'm just going to keep working on things and I'm going to keep thinking about things and then one day I'm going to wake up and I'm going to feel that I have value and I treasure myself and I respect myself and I care for myself and I love myself.
And then things will be better.
Like I'm just going to keep tinkering and then boom, the car starts and we get a jetpack and we fly.
That's not how it works in life.
Like if I was 300 pounds, Celine, and I said to you, well, I'm reading a couple of diet books.
I'm working through some issues.
I'm working on stuff. But I'm not changing my diet or exercise.
What would you say? I'd say you're a fool.
Well, yeah, maybe a little harsh, but it's not going to work.
Working through things and thinking about things and mulling things over and reading about things, it's like you have to act as if you have value in order for you to feel that you have value.
It's empirical. It's not psychological.
It's empirical. In the same way, That diet is not psychological, it's empirical.
That doesn't mean you don't have issues to work through psychologically when it comes to dieting, whether you've got fat or whatever, but if you want to have self-respect, you act in a manner that has self-respect written all over it, and then you get self-respect.
You don't get self-respect by thinking about it or by mulling it over or by pondering it or by reading about it.
You get self-respect by acting in a manner In accordance with self-respect.
So if you're in there, I don't care what you think about, what you're working on, what you read about, what you journal about, what you dream about, none of that matters while you're under the roof of the guy who molested you giving him money.
Because that is acting in a way that has such lack of self-respect that your heart can't hear what you're thinking over what you're doing.
The heart is empirical. Our emotions are empirical.
If I fall into the lion enclosure in the zoo...
I'm sorry? I don't mean to interrupt you, but I'm going to interrupt you.
Elric actually just got taken to jail.
What? He went to go answer the door and yeah, it was the police.
Well, this isn't live, so what the hell happened?
He missed his court date for the DUI. Oh, that was today?
No, no, no, no.
That was on Monday.
So he just didn't show up for the DUI court date.
Um, he went to his PO the day after and asked him when it was and found out that he had missed it.
Celine, do you know what this is?
Do you know what this is?
It's a sign. No, I know.
It's a sign, Celine.
What is it a sign to do?
It's been coming on for a long time now.
What is it a sign for you to do, my dear?
To change everything that I'm doing.
No, don't give me this abstract stuff.
Give me something physical you can do!
To move out, to be on my own, to be single.
Praise Jesus!
I have believed!
It's a scary thing.
I'm not going to lie at all.
I'm terrified. Of course.
But I know. Of course.
Listen, I completely understand and I completely sympathize and I'm not trying to downplay.
It is. There's a reason you're with this guy who just got dragged off to jail.
There's a reason you're with him and that's because being alone is terrifying.
It's terrifying for both of us.
Yes. Yeah.
I'm going to just get you to focus on yourself a little bit for now.
Yeah, I'm sorry. Elric, I sympathize with his childhood.
I really do. The guy is a loser.
Now, maybe he can turn that around at some point in the future, but he's not turning it around by failing to show up for his DUI court case.
Yeah, he's a...
He's a loser.
Yeah, he's a loser who's been not trying hard enough.
You think? If you can't get through a call about your life without being dragged off to jail, I think a little bit more effort might be required.
Once again, I'm going to take credit for not setting that standard of saying, well, if you're not trying, then I shouldn't be with somebody who's not doing these things.
The moment you have to put those kinds of ultimatums down, though, it's done anyway.
Seriously. Because let's say you said, hey, Elric, I'm going to leave you if you don't shape up.
Okay, maybe he shapes up, but not because he wants to, not because he cares about it, not because he cares about you.
He just doesn't want to be alone.
Or he doesn't want to... I mean, does he contribute money to the household outside of welfare?
He has. He has.
At some point, he'll find a pop bottle or two.
He doesn't get welfare.
But whenever he has worked a job...
And made money. He gives a portion of that to me.
So you're supporting the pedophile and the felon.
I hate drunk drivers.
I've said this before and I'll say it again.
I hate drunk drivers.
Because they do so much damage to people.
They destroy lives.
They destroy property. Hey, you want to go drive yourself into a tree?
That's your business. But they take out other people because of their selfish drinking and driving.
I hate drunk drivers.
So your money goes, well, I guess, no, you work, right?
Yeah, so government money and your money goes to the child molester and the drunken, drug-addicted felon.
Celine? And welfare state.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
I'm pretty sure, pretty sure, that that's not where you want to be in 20 years, right?
Nope. And that's part of the reason why I watch your show.
And I was thrilled for the opportunity to talk to you.
And also, I'm thrilled at the opportunity for what I could be doing differently.
And you knew this is how it was going to go, right?
Deep down? Yeah, I did.
And I think that Elric did too, but he just...
He has a hard time with this because, you know...
No, no. Stop thinking about his feelings, Selene.
No, I know you're a woman.
You've got to stop thinking about his feelings.
He blocks out this stuff.
He's stoned. He drinks.
Well, he's not.
No, he's sober today.
I mean... Okay, he's sober today.
Oh, come on.
This is your big boyfriend, Holmock Card.
Well, he's sober today.
You know, he is sober today, Celine.
That's on the plus column.
Can you think of anything that might be on the minus column today?
Um, I think that he does reject truth.
Wait, no, no? No.
He's sober today. That's on the plus column.
Can you think of anything, maybe tonight, maybe recently, that might be a little bit on the minus column, Celine?
Yeah, I mean, I think rejecting truth is a pretty big minus.
Being dragged off to jail!
He was sober today.
That's good. On the other hand, he did get dragged off to jail.
I got to tell you, I think that the minus is slightly larger than the plus, which isn't even really a plus, just the absence of a minus called being high or.
So this is the guy your father's comfortable you being.
This is the guy your father is comfortable with you being around.
And this is the father, the pedophile, that your boyfriend is comfortable with you being around.
I would say that my dad is comfortable with a lot of things that he shouldn't be.
Agreed. So stop giving him money.
And part of the reason you can't move out is because Elric needs your money, right?
Yeah. I mean, aren't you paying for his weed?
Aren't you paying for his drinks?
Um, sometimes, um...
So you've got an addict on your hands and you're paying for drinks and drugs for him?
Mm-hmm. So you're very much part of the problem.
Yes, and I've also had my problems with not staying sober.
I get that. I get that.
You know what a great way to stay sober is, Celine?
Don't be around giving money to alcoholics and drug addicts who then get into cars and drive drunk.
It's a good way to stay sober.
It's stopping around addicts.
Yep. And that seems to be really difficult for me to do, to find people who are not addicts.
You're going to have to cross the desert.
Because right now, you're in addict land, right?
So everyone around you is dysfunctional.
Everyone around you is an addict.
Everyone around you is screwed up.
And you feel like you're walking through life looking like a flying amber or something that's like one of those ships stuck in a bottle.
Like it's through a glass darkly.
You're looking at everyone else. All over the place, right?
And you can't reach them.
You can't connect with them. You can't get in there, right?
Because you're in attic land.
And to get out of attic land, you're going to have to cross the desert, which means you've got to be alone for a while so that you break your addiction, which is to addicts.
Would you say being alone, then, does that include not making close acquaintances and friends?
I don't know.
I don't know. But I would certainly be very much on my guard against anybody who's got dysfunction.
Like, you've got to go the opposite.
You've got to go the opposite.
So it is better off for me to be isolated.
No, no, no, no. The isolated is just another word, right?
Uh-huh. On my guard.
Have you ever heard that song by Sheryl Crow, All I Wanna Do You Probably Have, right?
No, my mom used to love listening to Sheryl Crow when I was younger.
Yeah. It's an amazing song because it's so depressed.
It really is.
It's like, she's got these songs that have poppy tunes, but are so depressed.
Well, I mean, she dated an ad, right?
I always thought about that when I was a kid, too.
I'm sorry? I always thought that whenever I was a kid, too, I was like, wow, she sounds so happy, but the words are not happy.
Yeah, my friend, the communist.
It's like, what are you singing about communists for?
No, this is, uh, this is, so this is the question of feeling, and she didn't escape it, right?
She didn't escape it. She, um, Eric Clapton, she was with Eric Clapton, who, you know, is a terrible, as far as I understand it, was an alcoholic.
So she says, this is a song, all I want to do is have a little fun before I die, says the man next to me, out of nowhere.
It's apropos of nothing.
He says his name's William, but I'm sure he's Bill or Biddy or Mac.
Bill or Mac or Buddy.
And he's plain ugly to me, and I wonder if he's ever had a day of fun in his whole life.
We are drinking beer at noon on Tuesday in a bar that faces a giant car wash.
The good people of the world are washing their cars on the lunch break, hosing and scrubbing as best they can in skirts and suits.
See? She's just sitting there.
Some guy just starts spilling with her.
No boundaries. A very intimate thing to say.
I want to have just some fun before I die.
Out of nowhere. Apropos of nothing.
And he's ugly.
And they're drinking beer at noon on Tuesday.
In a bar. And there's a car wash.
There are people out there in skirts and suits, right?
They're keeping their cars clean.
They're being responsible.
They have jobs, right?
And they're nothing like Billy and me.
She says, I like a good beer buzz early in the morning, and Billy likes to peel the labels from his bottles of bud.
He shreds them on the bar, then he lights every match in an oversized pack, letting each one burn down to his thick fingers, before blowing and cursing them out.
And he's watching the bottles of bud as they spin on the floor.
And a happy couple enters the bar, dangerously close to one another.
It's a terrifying song.
How isolated they are, how alone they are, how disconnected they are, how addicted they are.
All the good people, all the happy people are a billion miles away even though they're 10 feet from these people.
Terrible. It's a terrifying song.
It feels like my life.
It doesn't have to be that way though.
You don't have to be Sheryl Crow.
Which is a terrifying life.
Which is very pretty. She's a good songwriter and a good singer and all of that and was a backup singer for Michael Jackson.
So probably didn't learn a lot about how to avoid addictions.
But it is a terrifying song.
And like a lot of her songs, it's just really...
Depressing. I used to ride with a vending machine repairman.
I mean, really?
Oh, my friend, the communist, holds meetings in his RV. I can't afford the gas, so I'm stuck here watching TV. It's like, oh, that's really sad.
You know, he's got some friend who's a communist, she can't even afford gas.
It's like, what a horrible life.
Well, no, it's not a matter of solitude.
Because, Celine, you are alone at the moment.
So saying, well, what if it's solitude or loneliness?
It's like, but you are alone.
And you're separate from yourself.
Because you're in an environment where you're handing money to a felon who needs to stay off drugs and you're helping buy him drugs and drink.
And you're handing money to a guy who molested you.
So you're already isolated.
You're already alone. You've got nothing to lose with genuine solitude because at least then you'll have yourself.
I mean, that's something that kind of happened to me, I think, in my early 30s.
In my early 30s, I just got so sick and tired of just being around people but not being myself.
I just got, ah, so tiring.
It's so tiring. And I would run to be alone.
I would run. I went on vacation.
For two weeks. Ah, it was glorious.
Just a beach. It was Aruba.
I went on vacation for two weeks. I remember changing.
And a maid walked in. Hello!
Anyway, but...
For almost two weeks, I had my Nietzsche, I had my Voltaire, I had some...
I have a vague addiction to trashy celebrity magazines.
So, and I was just, ah, it was lovely.
And when you have those kinds of experiences where you're enjoying your own company, you don't really need anyone else.
You know, like when you're a teenager, I can't go to a movie on my own.
It's like, well, no, you can, and it might be better.
I mean, when I go to see...
Like for the movies that I review for Free Domain Radio, like I go see the movies on my own.
Because... My daughter can't come to the movies that I want to go and review and my wife's, you know, home and all that.
So I go see the movie on my own.
Doesn't bother me at all. Perfectly fine.
Because I get to watch the movie, really absorb it.
I get to think about it on the way home.
Sometimes I'll do the podcast on the way home.
Because right now you're not with anyone.
You're not with people around you.
You're not with yourself. You're in space, right?
So you say, oh, well, there'll be solitude.
Solitude is infinitely better.
Than dissociation.
Than being spaced out. Than not being present.
Not being there. Because right now you're serving other people's needs.
Elric needs money. He needs drugs.
He needs alcohol. Your father needs money.
You're just serving people's needs.
And you're not there.
You're not there. If we could go back to the whole addiction thing for just a second.
Sure. As far as, you know...
If I'm rooming with somebody, if I'm paying rent to somebody else who I think is showing signs of addiction, obviously, you know, I shouldn't live there.
I shouldn't continue to live there, right?
Well, no, you find it out ahead of time.
So, let me ask you this.
What kind of person's house would you want to live in to have the least chance of them doing alcohol or drugs?
Would they be old or young, male to female?
What would it be? Somebody who...
I guess age isn't really...
Because I've known people of all ages to be addicts.
I guess I would judge, like, is their house clean?
I don't know exactly.
Do they have doilies? You know one thing addicts never have is doilies.
I have doilies.
Oh, do you? No, I guess I've proven wrong.
Maybe addicts who are just about to break out of it have doilies.
Right. No, but listen, let's just take a sort of silly example, right?
So there's this woman, she's got a little cottage, she's in her 60s, there's a beautifully tended garden, there's a trellis, everything's nicely mowed and tidied and snipped, and you go inside and there's like lemonade and everything's nice, the carpets are all clean, the walls are clean. This is not probably someone who's about to, you know, snort smack off her hooker's belly, right?
Right. There's a certain peace or a certain sense of sensibility or sensitivity or serenity that you get around people that usually is an indication that they're not huge addicts, right?
And maybe because I, well not maybe, but because I haven't let go completely of my own addictions, that's why I'm not able to seek those people out because I reject that type of person because it doesn't go with What my lifestyle has been like.
Yeah, what's the phrase?
Lifestyle is used by people who often have neither.
Okay, but what do you think of people who don't do alcohol or drugs, who have organized lives, who pay their bills, who tidy their house, who, you know, like, what do you think of people like that?
Because, yeah, I don't really have those people in my life.
And I would assume that's because you have a story about people like that.
You have an image or a cliche about them.
So what do you think about people like that?
Well, most of them, I would assume, had a better childhood than I did.
And if they had a bad childhood, they went through the therapy.
But I guess some people just are smarter, and the ones that make the right decisions are the best.
Smartest of those people.
So I would say that the people who aren't addicts are probably a lot smarter.
All right. So that's the politically correct answer, but I don't think that's the honest answer.
Because if you really admired and aspired to be like people, wouldn't you spend more time around them?
There's got to be something that keeps these people away from you or keeps you away from them.
There's got to be a negative judgment of you to them or what you imagined them to you.
It's got to be something that keeps these...
These magnets, they push away, they don't pull together, right?
Part of the reason why I rejected Christianity was because my aunts and uncles just kind of raised me as like, that's what you're supposed to believe.
And I just didn't.
And I didn't want to go into Christianity believing something that I didn't believe in.
And I think that my family, the good part of my family, they don't...
Question things like that.
And so I view that as like their fault in just accepting lies over the truth.
Hang on a second.
Because I don't think you're there as to why you rejected God.
You rejected God because your father was a pedophile.
And no one did anything about it.
All these supposed Christians, all these supposed worshippers of good, and what Jesus says, whatever you do to the little children, so also do you do unto me.
And Christianity is supposed to be about standing after the evil and protecting the innocent and the vulnerable and the weak among you, which are children, right?
I mean, they protected me after they heard about it, and I was no longer...
With my family. My family took me away from my parents.
They took my brother and I away from our parents.
But your father still got his hand on some cousins, right?
Yeah, and then they did put a stop to it.
But why did they not take him to the police?
I think... Because of whenever he got his injury and he was hospitalized and he was going through the rehabilitation, I don't think anybody felt like that was the right thing to do to somebody who was injured.
But there are other children in the neighborhood.
There are other people who could have access to.
Other children, right?
Right, and I think that they just don't see it that way.
That's not a tough one to see, Celine.
That's not a tough one. Oh, this guy has got kinky, weird sexuality with kids.
Well, there's lots of kids in the world.
I think about that all the time.
Like, what if he had started dating somebody after my mom, and they had kids?
Oh no, listen, Celine, he might have got his hands on other kids.
Because the Christians didn't act to protect those children.
I don't think he's been around any other kids, but you're also right that yes, he could have.
He could have. Because if you want people to believe your ethical system, don't you have to be really ethical?
Yes. And they were not really ethical.
No. They had a pedophile, or I don't know what you'd call it, right?
Child molester on their hands.
And yeah, they got some kids away.
And that was it?
Yeah.
So that has a lot more to do with you and God than abstract arguments.
Yeah.
Yeah. And same thing, whenever I told my mom about what happened with me and my brother, she just immediately was like, well, that's because of your dad and you still live with him.
And it's like, so it's like she's blaming Curtis's faults on my dad too.
Like, I'm either lying or it's just not true.
Right. Right.
So, these Christians probably put a fear of sort of negative feedback or something like that, or family shame, or...
Sorry about that. Who knows what, right?
But they put something above the protection of children, right?
Which is scarcely moral.
Yep, I mean...
They would tell you that they did their best and all those things, but I just don't.
Well, that's further abuse, though.
I don't buy into it.
Because if someone says, well, there was this child molester around, but, you know, we did our best.
It's like, well, no, clearly you didn't, because he was still free and out there in the wild with children around.
So clearly, They didn't do their best.
I mean, by definition, right?
No, I agree.
I agree that they should have done a lot more.
And if your dad got his hands on other kids, then, I mean, to my amateur understanding, that's kind of how pedophilia spreads, is that Adults molest children who then have a higher chance of growing up to molest children who then have a higher chance of growing.
growing this is how the virus spreads isn't it nope um i've suggested to my aunt that if my dad did it to his brother and then to his son
and then to me that there must have been something that happened with his parents that or his growing up that his parents were not aware of and Maybe they were aware of it.
But whenever I bring that argument up, it's, oh, well, no, they did the best they could.
They were being good parents and blah, blah, blah.
I think that maybe they weren't.
Well, because now they're dead that we just don't talk bad about their choices.
Now this, though, Selene, is very interesting because this is probably the fourth or fifth time that you've brought up the argument they did the best they could, and I accept that this is a common argument, but here's the reality.
If the best you could do results in pedophilia, Why would you aim higher?
If that's the best you can do, why would you aim higher?
The whole reason why we criticize people is to raise our own standards.
Criticism of others is not to make ourself feel better or self-righteous or to feel lorded over other people with their judgment.
The reason that I criticize people is to raise the standards for myself.
Because you need to raise the standards for your own behavior and if everyone around you is doing the very best they can but then all these disasters occur why would you try to do better?
It's like if there's some guy in your family who weighs 300 pounds And he diets and exercise perfectly and still gains weight.
What are you going to think about diet and exercise?
You're going to say, well, he did the best he could, but it didn't work.
Didn't do anything. Things got worse.
So then if you get fat, you're never going to diet and exercise because he did the best he could and he still got fat or stayed fat.
It's like, no, he didn't do the best he could.
That's why he got fatter. He did the opposite of the best he could, right?
And that's why we criticize people, is so that we raise our own standards.
Yeah, and that's why I do disagree with my aunt when she says that kind of stuff, because I just don't think that's true.
I don't think that that is the best that humankind can do.
Obviously, mistakes were made because look at what is occurring.
Even if you don't want to look at my grandparents, I mean, just look at my parents.
There was mistakes made with them and you can tell that they made the wrong choices and decisions because look at the kids and look at the outcome.
This is working off.
Mistakes were made.
They made wrong decisions.
They made bad decisions. No.
You're keeping the morality out of it catastrophically.
They abuse children.
That's evil. You know, a mistake is, oh man, I thought we were going to meet at seven.
It's actually six. I'm so sorry.
Like, wow. Sorry about that, right?
There's no immoral intent.
There's no cover-up.
There's no additional harm that accrues to children.
Celine, you were surrounded by child abusers.
Destroyers and attackers on the innocent and the vulnerable.
That's evil! Fuck mistakes.
It's not about mistakes.
Nobody morally condemns a mistake.
Justly anyway, right?
These weren't mistakes.
These were sadistic attacks upon children or cover-ups for sadistic attacks upon children.
I've seen your adverse childhood experience score.
I've seen that of Elric, as we talked about at the beginning.
I just touched on yours.
I saw the rest.
It's child abuse, Celine.
It's not a mistake. It's evil.
And if the best that people can do is evil, How are you supposed to have any higher sights?
The other thing, too, this is how the abuse continues, Celine.
When you go to people and you say, hey, man, I have a problem with what happened in my childhood.
There was this, this, and this.
And they say, oh, well, they were doing the best they can.
You understand that they're abusing you again, right?
They're compounding the crime horribly, destructively, viciously abusing you again.
Because they're saying, well, I guess you lack forgiveness.
I guess you lack an appreciation of all the good they did.
They're screwing you again.
And that's why I told my aunt that I disagree with her when she says stuff like that.
Well, but it's not a disagreement.
The only way out of hell is moral condemnation, Celine.
The only way out of hell is moral condemnation.
I don't know how to tell my elder, the only person who gave me any good things in my life, I don't know how to tell her that despite all these good things, she's still wrong about this.
Well, nobody says you have to tell them anything, as long as you're clear in your own mind.
But the steps out of hell Moral clarity, moral universality, moral condemnation.
And that doesn't mean you just sit there and you can go and have conversations with people and you can probe and figure out where they come from and so on.
But you don't need to stand in front of people and yell at them that they're evil and you just have to have clarity in your own mind.
My mother was an evildoer.
She did evil unto us.
She beat us. She screamed at us.
She threw things at us.
She broke plates. She was dangerous.
You say, well, she was out of control.
No, she wasn't. Because it never happened in public now, did it?
She was fully able to restrain her violent actions in public.
She was not out of control.
She just indulged her desire for evil in private when she couldn't get caught.
She'd never beat us up in front of a policeman or a teacher or a priest or anyone with authority.
Now, of course, she plays the victim and, you know, well, you know, it was a difficult time and I was stressed and I was unwell.
But She never gave me those excuses when I was a kid, so why the hell would I give her those excuses when she's an old woman?
No. Moral condemnation.
Moral condemnation is the only staircase that leads out of hell.
Because when you morally condemn something, when you morally condemn behaviors, You recoil from those behaviors in the future.
Whatever we deem evil, we avoid.
Fundamentally. And you know as well as I do, Celine, why people die of cancer.
People get cancer and most people don't even know it.
They get cancer. And their immune system says, oh, that's bad.
Attacks it and kills it.
Like a cold that you've had before.
People die of cancer, I believe.
Because the body fails to recognize it as dangerous.
And so it multiplies.
And it spreads. And it takes you over.
Forgiveness is exactly what we don't want our immune system to do with cancer.
And cancer tries to mimic as something that's not an enemy.
And evildoers, of course.
When they have power over you, they will screw you up.
When they don't have power over you, they will manipulate you.
They will play the victim. Of course.
Of course. Right?
And so, moral condemnation is the key to protecting yourself From evildoers.
And it is the key to finding virtuous people in your life.
Because if you come trailing into people's lives, Celine, and you have a bunch of evildoers floating around you, good people don't want to have anything to do with you.
Not because they hate you, not because you're a bad person, but it's like, if you come with evildoers, you can't come.
And the only thing that keeps the evildoers away...
Is moral clarity and moral condemnation.
And again, it doesn't have to be verbal.
You don't have to yell at people. You certainly shouldn't abuse them.
But your moral clarity.
It's so powerful.
Keeping evildoers away.
Don't get me wrong. Elric is an evildoer.
I'd say that to his face.
Because he drove drunk.
And he lied to his probation officer and blah, blah, blah, but he drove drunk.
That is an immoral action.
He abandoned his child.
Yeah. And so, do you know how powerful moral condemnation is?
We have this conversation, halfway through it, he gets picked up and goes to jail.
Yeah, and he doesn't want to have this conversation.
As soon as the conversation stopped being about our belief in God and about our problems in our life, he just immediately reverted to, well, you know, I'm doing my best.
But that's not true.
He was admirably honest, though, in that he said he preferred to satisfy his own needs than do what was best for you.
Yeah, and...
That did not make me feel good.
Good. It shouldn't make you feel good.
It should make you recoil. Right.
I think that throughout a relationship I have recoiled a lot and made the mistake of not following through with that.
Right. You have the instinct, which is to run away, right?
To get away. But then what happens is you say, well, he's doing the best he can, and he made a mistake, and you fog up, right?
Correct. So what are you going to do?
Are you going to bail him out, or how does that work?
Or not? Well, I can't bail him out.
He's going to want me to put my...
Put money on his books while he's in there.
Put money on his what?
On his books so that he has money to get things that he needs in jail.
Well, he's gone away for a while, that wasn't he?
I don't know. He may only be in there...
I really don't know.
It depends on whenever they see him at court for the DUI. And they kind of decide that at that point, as far as when that court date is going to be, he will have to tell me or I'll find out some other way.
Does it matter? Really?
I mean, he put himself there, right?
Right, and that's what it comes down to.
That's what it comes down to for me is like, Does it really matter if he's going to get out in two weeks or two months?
Or two years? If he doesn't change the behavior that got him there.
Celine, he's not going to change.
He's not going to change. He's 28 years old.
He did a DUI, didn't even show up for his court date, got dragged off to jail.
Yeah. His brain is done developing.
He's not going to change. He would argue that.
I don't care.
I don't care. Of course he's going to say that.
Because that keeps you around.
Keeps you hoping. No.
But the empirical evidence is that he's not.
I guess at this point it's just been me trying to make him see that, that the evidence is that he's not going to change.
At least, definitely not for me, and he doesn't seem to care about changing for himself.
Well then, what does change matter now?
It's like saying when you're 80, I'm quitting smoking.
You know, like, what does it matter?
What does it matter? Let's say he changes tomorrow.
He's still going to have an ungodly amount of legal risk, legal bills, no resume.
His heart's, you know, if he develops a conscience, what happens with him and his daughter is going to break his heart.
He's still a felon. Like, what does it matter if he changes now?
It's too late. Change is not this lifelong privilege.
I'm 70, but I'm going to be a ballerina.
No, you're not. Maybe when you were seven and even that might have been too late.
Isn't it better for him to change and deal with those things than to never have done that and just continue to be destructive?
I mean, what do you mean by better?
I mean, that's better objectively, which doesn't...
Is it better to lose weight if you're overweight?
Sure. But nobody ever loses weight.
There's like 2% of people who lose weight and keep it off.
So you say, oh, well, it's better for you to lose weight.
No, because cheesecake is pretty tasty, right?
He likes the drugs.
He likes drinking.
And he clearly doesn't mind jail enough to change his behavior.
So maybe he's punishing himself for the wrongs that he did in his life.
Maybe he believes that he belongs in jail because he's exploiting you and Putting you in a situation where you're handing money over to a man, a father who molested you, maybe he deserves jail.
And maybe he's done the actions that make that true.
And maybe he can't undo those actions.
His kid is four, Celine.
His kid is four and has never seen him.
Yeah, she's passed...
She's past that point of...
Oh yeah, there's no bond.
I told him before, he was asking me what I thought about him getting back into her life and being a part of her life.
And I told him, I said, you should leave your ex alone and you should leave your daughter alone because that ship has sailed.
And he told me, well, You would be a bad parent then because you don't know what it's like to have a connection.
Wait. He said you would be a bad parent when he hasn't seen his daughter ever?
Yeah. Oh, fuck him, man.
Oh, my God.
You've got to be. He said you would be a bad parent?
And he had a kid with a drug addict mom while he was a drug addict and never saw her at all, but you'd be a bad parent, Celine.
Oh, my God.
Later on, she followed that up with...
Followed that up with, well, you would be a good mom if you changed.
Oh! If you changed to be a good parent like me!
And you never sent the kid a dime!
Oh my gosh!
Listen, if the cop comes back, can you tip him for me?
I'll pay you back. No, they're not gonna.
That is something else.
Wow. Oh!
I'm actually going to miss him in a kind of way.
I'm sorry. I was really upset about that.
And it's just things like that.
Yeah, things that we've argued about where it's kind of hard for me to just let go of that statement.
See, Salid, here's the thing.
You need to be the kind of good parent who can't go and meet his daughter because he's in jail.
Oh, sorry, honey, I was going to take you this weekend, but daddy's in the big house.
That's the kind of quality parenting you need to get involved in.
God, man, that guy, that takes some cojones and a half.
Holy crap. Yeah, no, his argument is that, well, because she is my daughter, I should still try to be a part of her life.
Yeah, but not really. Yeah.
No, instead I'm just going to smoke drugs, get drunk, and get behind the wheel of a car.
Yeah, I mean, if he really wanted to be a part of his life, he would have done it four years ago.
He would have immediately said, all right, well, I'm not doing drugs anymore.
Yeah, I know. Yeah. Forget his arguments.
Forget his arguments. Forget his arguments.
It's no credibility. No credibility.
The grandparents even said that...
The only reason that they didn't want him to see his daughter is because he was using.
And if that changed, then it would have been possible.
He didn't tell me that.
He said at the time that he chose not to be put on the birth certificate.
Basically, he chose to keep doing drugs.
Instead of saying that, yes, I want to be a part of my child's life.
So he chose drugs over his daughter.
But you're the one who might not be a great parent.
Well. Well, well, well.
To be fair, part of the reason why I never had kids in, you know, accidental is because of the whole thing when I told you.
I probably can't have kids.
So... That was like just a random curse that was also kind of a blessing for my life.
Well, you never know. Like when you get older, I mean, I talked last week with a woman who had her tubes tied and then was able to, through IVF, have kids.
You never know. There's ways to do some pretty remarkable things these days, so it could happen.
You could. Alright.
So, what are you going to do?
I gotta move out.
I gotta go to school. I gotta do this stuff and stay away from these dysfunctional people that unfortunately I seem to be a magnet for.
No, it's a good call.
It's a good call. You've done your time in the dungeons.
It's time to get to the light. And I guess I would just say that I'm really struggling to find that path to the light.
And obviously talking to you has helped and your channel and everything.
So I thank you for that.
You are very welcome. I don't care about Elric, but will you keep me posted about what's going on with you?
Yes, of course I will keep you posted.
I guess I don't know how that works.
You can email the producer.
Just let me know when you're settled.
Let me know how it was and all that.
Don't Get trapped in loneliness.
You're in there, Celine. You're in there and an enjoyment of your own company is in there and you will not be that dependent on people.
You will not need to fix people.
You will not need to have chaotic people around you to give you a sense of imaginary purpose.
You are still in there and you can connect with yourself to the point where when you want to have a relationship, it's not out of need, it's out of Desire, which is a whole different thing.
It's really very much the opposite.
So just trust me, there is a wonderful world beyond that desert that we all have to cross to get from the crap to the great.
And you will make it in a half.
What would you say about the difficulty of enjoying your own company?
If that's what I'm having an issue with as far as my own personal issue.
Well, it's usually self-recrimination, self-attack, and so on.
That's what people are trying to drown out, right?
Moral condemnation puts the blame where the blame is, which is on the people who abused you as a child.
That doesn't mean that you don't have any criticisms of yourself.
I have criticisms of myself and things that I've done morally, particularly in my youth.
But I recognized that I was starting with quite a handicap.
And I can't say I always did the very best that I could, but I was always trying to aim in the right directions.
And I certainly took some detours and did some things that I wouldn't do again at all.
I have continually been working to be a better person.
And so when you start to act in ways that protect yourself and keep dysfunctional, dangerous, predatory criminals away from you, Then you will start to enjoy your own company more.
When you start to self-attack, recognize that you were a victim.
You were a victim, and you continue to be a victim from people who say, oh, well, they did the best they could, and who don't give you all of the moral sympathy that you deserve as a child.
When you accept your victimhood as a child, you gain agency as an adult, for reasons I won't get into here, but, you know, and I hate to say distrust me, you know, it's just the way that it works.
If you accept that as a child you were a victim, then as an adult you have different choices because you're starting with something that is true and it allows you to forgive yourself for bad choices that you made when you were being given bad instructions and it gives you the responsibility to make better choices now Out of a desire for something that's better rather than a condemnation of what came before.
So if you find yourself self-attacking, just remember, you were a victim.
You now have choices and you can break this cycle, Celine, the cycle that has been going on in your family for a thousand years, ten thousand years, a hundred thousand years.
Who knows? Dysfunction and repetition and abuse and dysfunction and repetition.
You can break that chain.
And that is about as noble a thing as any man or woman can do.
Do you think that I should stay in contact with the part of my family that is functional but still did the best they could, so to speak?
Well, do they...
Do they cover up evildoers?
Do they say that you are too harsh in your judgment of evildoers?
Do they stay in contact with evildoers?
She does stay in contact with my mom and she supports my mom's lifestyle of drinking.
Well, that's all I need to know.
Right. And she told me that she thinks it's Her responsibility as the older sister to keep my mom out of homelessness.
Ah, so she enables just as you do.
Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, you can show them something better.
And it doesn't mean you never have a relationship with them.
It just means that you're not going to enable bad behavior.
Just not going to enable bad behavior.
And that's becoming what you said you admired in Elric, which was standing up to immorality.
Yeah. Yeah. So I can talk to them.
I just don't have to agree with it.
Well, what do you mean talk to them?
Well, I get farm eggs from my aunt.
Go buy your eggs. I don't understand.
What do you mean you get farm eggs and that's why you will go and hang out with people?
No, I don't. Who collude with people who abused you as a child?
I don't understand.
No, I don't. How good are these eggs?
No. I don't hang out with them, but obviously there is some communication and continued connection.
It's not worth it to be eggs. When is it with you people and chickens standing between you and freedom and integrity?
It's just healthier.
No, it's not for what?
Not the price you're paying.
The nutrients and the eggs are not worth my morality.
I get it. Yeah, you got it.
And it's not like you can't get eggs anywhere else, right?
And you've got a great place to give your chickens to.
All right. Celine, I have one more call.
I need one more caller tonight.
But I mean, we've been almost, what, three hours on this call.
So I hugely appreciate the call.
And I appreciate the frankness and the bluntness.
I think that there's very useful stuff in here for the world as a whole.
I appreciate... The vulnerability of putting yourself in this situation.
I don't massively dislike the drama of the first on-air arrest.
That's, I believe, new.
I did not like that either.
Well, I get it, but boy, you can't get much clearer than that in life now, can you?
You don't mean to laugh because, you know, I'm sorry.
I mean, I know Elric's history and I sympathize with all of that as well.
I really do. It's not like, oh, he's just a terrible guy with no background and all that.
But you can say that about anyone who mistreats kids or abandons kids.
Well, they had a tough childhood. We have to do better.
Okay. All right.
You made it to the end. Was I right?
Was I right? I was right.
I mean, is your jaw hanging somewhere down?
I'm pretty sure that it has.
It certainly happened to me over the course of the conversation.
And as a minor follow-up, the woman is making the right decision.
And I'm enormously happy and proud of the participation that this show had in a changing moment in her life.
So once more, please, you know there's nothing like this anywhere else.
This is the most essential work that philosophy can be doing, literally saving lives.
