Nov. 28, 2018 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:27:40
4255 The Curse of Freedom! Freedomain Call In
Hey Stefan! I wanted to come out of my shell and talk to you about answers I desperately need your help with. In life I'd describe myself as being a very kind-hearted person, but ultimately hollow and very negative. I tend to brood in my own head, creating a world where I inevitably freeze people out of it. I don't want to go outside because of the potential shame, risk and mess of what I bring and who I am. I don't have much discipline and haven't delved within to truly understand and respect myself. Throughout life I always started things but don't properly end it. I haven't really jumped on anything (partially out of my broad range of interests, my ineptitude, and my fear of the unknown), and this has led to me becoming a forgettable person with none of the impact I want to have in the world.Philosophical Question: How can I grow into the ideal state of totality in myself so that I can be the person that my family, my society and I need?▶️ Donate Now: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate▶️ Sign Up For Our Newsletter: http://www.fdrurl.com/newsletterYour 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▶️ 1. Donate: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate▶️ 2. Newsletter Sign-Up: http://www.fdrurl.com/newsletter▶️ 3. On YouTube: Subscribe, Click Notification Bell▶️ 4. Subscribe to the Freedomain Podcast: http://www.fdrpodcasts.com▶️ 5. Follow Freedomain on Alternative Platforms🔴 Bitchute: http://bitchute.com/stefanmolyneux🔴 Minds: http://minds.com/stefanmolyneux🔴 Steemit: http://steemit.com/@stefan.molyneux🔴 Gab: http://gab.ai/stefanmolyneux🔴 Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stefanmolyneux🔴 Facebook: http://facebook.com/stefan.molyneux🔴 Instagram: http://instagram.com/stefanmolyneux
Hope you're doing well. So, got a call from a fellow we're going to call, Ridley.
And he said, I wanted to come out of my shell and talk to you about answers I desperately need your help with.
In life, I describe myself as being a very kind-hearted person, but ultimately hollow and very negative.
I tend to brood in my own head, creating a world where I inevitably freeze people out of it.
I don't want to go outside because of the potential shame, risk, and mess of what I bring and who I am.
I don't have much discipline and haven't delved within to truly understand and respect myself.
Throughout life, I always started things but didn't properly end it.
I haven't really jumped on anything, partially out of my broad range of interests, my ineptitude, and my fear of the unknown.
And this has led me to becoming a forgettable person with none of the impact I want to have in the world.
Philosophical question. How can I grow into the ideal state of totality in myself so that I can be the person that my family, my society, and I need?
That is a great question. That is a great question, man.
That's a great question.
That's a great question.
Now, do you want to start with...
Let's start with the ideal.
So what is it that you would most like to see happen in your life?
What's your platonic perfection of you're on your deathbed a bunch of decades from now, you look back and you say, well, damn, that was worth it.
When I go into this, would it be best if I kept it relegated to myself, or is it something I would like to see happen outside of myself that extends broader into the world?
Let's build your house and then see what kind of neighborhood we can develop.
Alright, let's do that.
I suppose what would characterize a fulfilled life would be that I knew I earned what I accomplished, that I I got as much value out of it as I could and I developed myself into a competent person who is not just empathetic but also intelligent, a role model. I want to be able to master myself so that way I can help out others.
I think that comes from a place of fear mostly.
I'm afraid of the future and how things are going.
And I want to be able to pull as many people out of that as possible.
What part of the future are you nervous about?
I'm afraid of our society, specifically Western civilization and how things are going and how we're on the decline.
And I mean, I understand that it's cyclical.
Of course, things go on the decline.
But the way I've been observing how things have been going just irks me to my core.
It is amazing. It's outrageous how these people are acting.
It's unnecessary.
It causes undue suffering.
It makes me really unstable within myself because I have so many emotions coming out at once.
I want to help. I am upset at the people doing that.
I'm outraged. I'm so many things that it's just hard for me to tame that and to harness my potential.
When you look at yourself, Ridley, and you look at the problems, the mental image that I get, which is just my mental image, may have nothing to do with what you're experiencing, is, you know, shaking your fist at a thunder cloud.
Yeah, I would say that's a pretty good image.
Because, I mean, the problems and the dysfunctions in the world are so huge, it feels like, that our ability to affect them Seems somewhat limited.
And of course, that's the point, right?
Evil has grown to the point where it diminishes.
Good souls, good people, good energy, good motivation, because it's just like, wow, they've really got a lock on things.
You know, the bad people have got like academia and the media and the government in many ways.
And it just feels like, wow, I know things are going badly.
I'm not sure what I can do.
And yet I'm still upset by that, which I feel I can't change, right?
Definitely. And, you know, I'm going to refer to the big five personality traits because that seems to be a good way to, I would say, characterize people's predispositions.
But I am very neurotic, I would say.
I'm really concerned about security and safety, and I want to know that what I'm doing is the right choice.
That's what gave me the momentum to peek out and to, you know, try to I've talked to people that I've gleaned so much off of, and you have been a very impactful person on my life, in my life choices, and I understand.
See, the thing why I can't go to other people, but I feel like I can come to you, is that you understand the context of what's going on and how deep things are.
So the people I talk to in my life, no one truly understands How things have been affecting one another in terms of our whole society, not just our society, but our world.
And I want to be able to make the right choice, to fine-tune where I'm going.
And I don't want to shake my fist at a thundercloud.
How useless is that?
Yeah, no, I mean, the funny thing with me is that I'm going to listen, and I... Don't get upset.
I don't get angry.
I don't get defensive. I'm just like, I'm curious.
I'm curious about people as a whole.
It doesn't mean I never get angry in the world, but in conversations, you can talk to me because I'm going to listen and I'm not a trigger-happy minefield of hyperreaction.
So usually there's room, right?
Because mostly what we do when we talk about difficult things with the people around us is we just wait to hit that stupid minefield, that stupid trigger lock, that stupid...
You know, where it's like, oh, yeah, well, I guess I got 14 seconds of meaning out of the conversation before somebody went apeshit, right?
Yeah. All right, so...
That's my advice.
I'm very emotional and I feel...
Because these things, they really do rock me to my core.
And so it's hard for me to...
Again, to gain control over that.
I don't know if it has to do with my age, my life experience or whatnot, but I do know it's something I need to master.
All right. So I'm now going to describe you, instead of Ridley, Mr.
Generality. Because you have given me a huge helium sandwich worth of generality.
So let's start drilling and get some more details.
You say, in life I describe myself as being a very kind-hearted person.
What does that mean? How would I know if I sort of met you that you're kind-hearted and what does that mean?
True. This is my personal perception of myself.
No, no generalities.
Okay. You are now banned from generalities.
See? I did get triggered.
Anyway, go on. I spend a lot of time trying to appease and make sure that people feel comfortable to flourish within themselves.
And that could extend to people I don't even know.
Like in a movie theater, when one of my friends will be talking, I will do my best to go out of my way to tell them politely to where it doesn't hurt them, but it also is amenable to the people around.
I don't know that. So you have a good sense of social space, and you don't want people to be just discomforted or upset, right?
That tends to sort of get unhealthy at a certain point when it's too much.
And I can sometimes start to put myself down Okay, but what's it driven by?
What's it driven by? So you're really managing your own fear of people's anger.
So kind-hearted person, well that didn't take very long to unpack now, did it?
And this is true for a lot of people who claim to be empathetic or kind-hearted or tender-hearted or sentimental and so on.
A lot of times it's just...
A real fear of people getting mad.
And you don't want to give people any justification for getting mad.
In other words, you're surrounded by these seething, geish-less, irrational anger, and you can't give them an excuse, because then...
Right? Sort of.
I don't want to give them the wrong excuse.
That's not the right way to get angry at me.
I would prefer it if they got angry at me.
Let's say I was talking about hot-button issues.
If they got angry at me for that, Hmm.
But I don't want to wander into territory where people get angry at me when it's unnecessary.
Hmm.
Okay.
That's an interesting dichotomy.
So the stuff that's the least important is the stuff that you're least comfortable with people being upset with you about.
But what... Let's say you are talking about what are called hot-button issues.
Why on earth would someone have the right to get angry at you?
That's giving them kind of a permission to be uncivil, right?
I mean, I hear the most outlandish stuff.
And you do too. Does that give you the right to just get...
You know, directly at people, get angry, call them names or whatever it is that you mean by getting angry.
Why is it okay for them to get angry if these hot button issues are up?
I think because of the full...
Knowing how twisted the facts are on a lot of these things, the public perception, it's understandable for people to have...
To not be oriented properly within themselves and so that they don't fully know how to handle those situations.
So the way I see it is that they're just not fully developed in order to get to that point where they can separate their emotions from talking about the subject.
So why on earth would you talk about hot button issues with people who are so immature that you're giving them excuses to blow up?
I know. It's because the way I see it, there's not a lot of people in my life that...
I don't want to sound arrogant in saying this, but there's not a lot of people in my life who go to the depths that I do, and nobody understands it the way I do.
I don't talk to people like that.
So I'm trying to orient myself in the right way using what I have available.
And that also means the people I have available.
So I'm going to talk to them and see if I can...
The people you have available?
Yeah. Well, I only have a dog crap sandwich, but hey, it's the only food I have available, so I guess I'll eat it.
I mean, why are you satisfying yourself?
Yeah. With the people who are just around.
I assume you mean family of origin, social circle, you know, like kids from school.
If you want a great life, if you want a powerful life, if you want a big, meaningful, impactful life, why would you want to settle for the people who were just kind of accidentally around?
Yeah. You know, it's like you want to make the best band in the world, so you're just going to Take a bunch of childhood friends and try and make a band.
It's like, I don't know if they're any good at music.
Do you have a singer? Wouldn't you want to, in a sense, audition for the best people to be in your band, no matter what?
Oh yeah, totally, totally.
When it comes to just talking about it, I feel like there's, even if it's a kernel of value, I'm wanting deep down to get that.
And I see it from people who...
Maybe they don't understand the full...
Generalities. Generalities.
This is your defense, right?
Your defense is to go wildly abstract, right?
Because my question is, if there are people around you, you can't talk about what's meaningful to you, what's important to you, what moves you, what is deep for you, what is real for you, why are you accepting...
Historical accidents of birth and circumstance as the definition of your social circle.
And listen, I'm not saying ditch everyone.
But what I am saying is recognizing those limitations.
Absolutely. And that's important for me to get inside my noggin of mine.
But I just want to give you a good response, one that I've thought through.
And the way that I see it, it's just...
I think it has something to do with the fact that I've had negative experiences with being social in the past, and so I've become very closed off to a lot of people in a certain way.
I don't bring a lot of people into my inner circle, and I face the consequences of that.
And I don't want to continue that going further, but I also know how Downright terrible people can be, and I have a lot of defenses built up against that.
Okay, again, these are all very nonspecific abstractions, so let's drill down a little bit deeper.
Tell me a little bit about your family history, your childhood.
Sure. Well, my dad was from France, and he came here when he was like mid-20s.
My mom was raised a little bit up north in California.
Yeah. Oh, you're still on?
Hello?
Why are we on hold?
On hold.
Oh, you put me on hold there for a sec.
Oh, did I? I'm sorry.
I guess my cheek did that.
Sorry, I'll go back.
No problem. So your father was from France, and your mother had some involvement with California, and you can just take it from there.
Oh yeah, she was raised in California.
She was raised in Northern California, where it's a little bit more rural, and she was raised on a ranch Where she had to do a lot of arduous hard work and was responsible for a lot of the tasks.
She had to raise up all of her siblings, a total of five.
She got a lot of good traits from that.
When she and my dad met up in the past, I would personally say that they should not have gotten together because it was a very strained and toxic relationship in which they didn't have...
And it took all four of us down with it.
And currently...
Wait, all four? You mean you and your siblings?
Me, my sister, my mom, my dad.
Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay. And what was toxic about it?
What happened? I guess it was a bunch of small things that let up.
It was the...
It was...
Oh, God. It was a ton.
My dad was...
The general principles here, I said, don't be general.
But the general principles rather than the specific conflicts...
All right, for sure. My dad was not taking responsibility for parenthood like he should have, and my mom took on too much responsibility in order to compensate, but did not try to make it more of a teamwork dynamic.
Whatever insecurities and issues that they did not resolve within themselves contributed to the downfall of the relationship, which contributed to everything else that extended outwards from that.
Did they split up? Yes, but not legally.
I believe I was 13, 14.
Wait, you don't remember?
I should probably, yeah, part of what I've done, at least from what I've noticed, is that I've tended to repress or block it out or Or not be too concerned about it.
Okay, and how long was the relationship between your dad and your mom bad before they split up in your early teens?
When I was younger, I didn't get any impression that it was that bad.
I mean, I remember fights, but that's, you know, that's pretty normal.
I would say around my double digits, so 10 onwards.
And was there anything that changed?
Do you think that occurred around that time to make the relationship get worse?
Hmm.
That's a good question.
Goodness, my memory is so fuzzy on that.
I can't even give you an answer.
Do you remember what began to change negatively?
Were there like more fights?
Was there substance abuse?
Was there physical abuse?
Do you know if there were affairs or anything like that?
I believe all of the above, actually.
There was emotional abuse, a lot of manipulation, twisting up facts and trying to guilt people into doing certain things, compulsion.
There was a physical aspect to it in which my mom – it wasn't more than just a disciplinarian spanking here and there.
I got a lot more of that than my sister did when we were younger.
We're getting vague again here.
So there was manipulative abuse.
So what you're saying is kind of thing, right?
You said there was a physical aspect.
Do you mean sort of physical abuse of you from your mom?
No. I wouldn't call spanking abuse.
I would call punching.
Yeah, punching primarily to be abuse.
I rarely ever got punched.
One, I think once.
Yeah, I think it was once.
And what happened at one time?
How old were you? I'd say I was around 13, 14.
Yeah, I was with my dad.
And things sort of devolved, specifically when I was with him.
Things devolved? What do you mean?
What do you mean? It's a very complicated story because there was basically times in my childhood where my mom acted in a certain way where she tried to kill herself, at least how it was perceived.
And she was very toxic.
I believe she was being abusive to my sister specifically.
At least how my sister remembers it, there was physical abuse.
She would get punched and all that.
Did you ever see that?
That's the thing. I never saw that.
No, it's fine. I'm not doubting your word.
I'm just wondering if you had the direct physical impression.
I doubt my word. I doubt my word because I don't know what the truth lies in that.
It's hard for me to take out what is accurate out of that.
Your mom tried to kill herself.
Do you think that if you try to do something that abusive, violent, destructive to your entire family, that hitting your kid is somehow beyond you?
Like to me, people who are willing to either threaten or actually try to kill themselves, there's nothing they won't do for dominance.
There's nothing that they won't do for dominance because suicide is an act of soul murder on those around you.
I agree with that completely.
If you find life unbearable, and I don't know why people or how people end up in this, but let's say there's chronic pain, no future, whatever, right?
If you find life unbearable and there are people in your life who care about you, then you do the humane thing and you damn well make it look like an accident so that nobody has to carry that weight, carry that burden of suicide, you know, Christopher Hitchens style, right?
So once somebody...
Has tried to kill herself, has signaled that or threatened it, then it means to me that there's nothing that that person will not do to establish dominance.
There's no lengths that they will not go to to establish dominance and to bully because that is really the ultimate bullying.
And so if you say, well, my mom tried to kill herself, but she might have hit my sister.
It's like, yeah, I'm with your sister on this one.
I agree. That's why I haven't really questioned too much of it at that point.
It's a bit complicated though because that suicide attempt of hers was perceived by my dad.
I guess she was trying to – apparently she was trying to do it to get attention from him specifically.
But it sort of – it turned into something ugly and then it led to – basically we made a family decision to exile my mom for a couple of years.
And she wasn't allowed back in.
Me and my sister expressed to her the desire for her to leave.
And she abided by that because she wanted us to have what we thought was best.
That time where she left was like the span of two, three years.
And during that time, she would try to reach out.
She would tell us how much she loved us.
She would give us Gifts on Christmas and birthdays.
She would show that she would try to reintegrate back into the family.
And so I always noticed that because then what happened a couple years later is that the same thing happened with my dad where my sister turned 18 and she had a boyfriend and us three living together was very strained.
And then he said he was going to kick her out because she was...
Oh, the three. You and your sister and your dad, right?
Not the boyfriend, too? No, no, no.
Yeah, and...
Living with my dad was tougher because he didn't know how...
Tougher than what? Than my mom.
The way my mom parented was...
She was very conscientious, so she wanted us to have...
activities to fill up our time to develop skills while we're young to socialize to be involved and she would make sure she would make sure that we at least had we chose something my dad was a little bit more lax he took the reins off he allowed us to do what we thought was best for ourselves and he didn't really push or show a lot of concern towards really trying I would say He would tell us to do our homework and not to miss,
but he wouldn't sit down with us and check to make sure.
Does that make sense? It wasn't reinforced by the action.
Cam, I'm just being frank with you here, man.
I'm just trying to square this circle.
Your mom tries to kill herself, but your dad doesn't double-check your homework.
There's got to be something else that's going on with the dad here because those metrics, to me, are way off.
Yeah. I mean, if you would ask someone in general, is it tougher to have a parent not check your homework or tougher to have a parent who tries to kill herself, who you have to kick out of the family, but you say that your dad was harder to be parented by because he's very lax?
Okay, I mean, I get that that's a problem, but I'm still trying to figure out what scale we're working with here.
Right, right.
Okay, so I guess it's not that he was just lax.
He was also very disagreeable and didn't really want to talk to us, really.
It was more like we had to listen.
There was not a lot of questioning or anything like that.
There was no development of the individuality of ourselves.
There was a lot of, do what you're told, and that's that.
Wait, so lax and bossy?
Not in a constructive way that a parent...
At least how I've seen it, that a parent tends to do it.
Sorry, I'm getting a little lost because somebody walked in and I lost track.
Oh, no, no problem. Do you want to take a break?
No, not at all. Honestly, I love talking to you.
You're awesome. Yeah, I'm just trying to get the map of the history here.
Because you had talked about your dad was tougher, your dad was hotter.
Right. And I mean, I get that these are negative things that he's doing, but I don't see how that reaches the, I'm going to kill myself territory.
Right. I think it's because my mom has really, was very remorseful for what she has done and she showed it through her actions.
But whereas my dad feels very justified in how he feels even now, and he's never taken on the responsibility that came with parenthood.
So I'll give you a better metric.
When my mom was kicked out as opposed to my dad being kicked out, I mentioned that my mom would drop in with gifts on Christmas and would try to pay for some of the expenses, the monthly expenses.
So to me, that holds weight.
I have to acknowledge that.
But I also compared that to what my dad did.
He did not do that.
He did not want to pay for our monthly expenses.
He would not give us gifts.
He would not call us. We were just, he was just sort of dead after we kicked him out.
Wait, sorry, after you kicked your dad out?
Yeah. And when did that, when you said, when your sister turned 18, you were saying that she had a boyfriend that was strained, but the three of you living together, is that when it happened with your dad?
Yeah, yeah. And to sort of step me through that, like I understand the crisis with your mom, I'm going to try to kill herself, just get out.
What happened with your dad that precipitated the eject button being hit?
Yeah. The lead up to it came through, I was a teenager around that time, a younger teenager, and my sister was turning 18.
She was getting into a lot of, you know, the social life, the partying, the going out drinking and all that crap.
I don't like it, but that was her decision.
And how long had she been doing that for?
Oh, Lord, she's been doing that for...
I want to say 17, but I would say earlier, like 16, maybe.
Yeah, okay. And, well, the issue was that there would be times in which he would not...
Buy us food or dinner.
It was a sort of punishment.
It got to a point where he would kick me out of the house and lock me out.
To say the least, I didn't appreciate that.
What would cause the locking out?
That's the tough part.
None of us are angels, including myself.
I was angry as a kid.
I was pretty volatile with everything going on.
Me and my dad would argue a lot.
We're both pretty stubborn.
There's a lot of back and forth and not a lot of listening.
Things started to overheat.
I remember one time I had a rug in my hands from outside where you shake it off.
And clean it off.
And we were arguing.
I forgot what the details were, but I had the rug in my hand and I threw it at him.
And that sort of led to me being locked out.
And I mean, I get that.
I should have never crossed that line.
But where did that come from?
Where does it come from that you're in a place, you're trying to have a conversation or an argument?
With your dad. And listen, stubborn, there's nothing wrong with being stubborn.
If you're in the right, being stubborn is it.
Churchill was stubborn. If you're in the right, being stubborn is great.
So it's not a matter of stubbornness.
It's not a matter of not listening.
It's something much deeper, right?
It's something much deeper that has you throw a rug at your dad.
Yeah, true.
And I've never really articulated that depth.
I want to get there.
I believe it had – I think I've always had a level of resentment towards him.
Yeah.
Like, he could have been a better parent, and I blame him for his inaction.
So general! Your feelings don't work on generalities.
They process specifics, and then you come up with generalities, but we've got to get to the specifics.
So what is...
What was the most frustrating...
Give me the top three frustrating things about your dad.
Things that you really, really wish were different.
Oof. I wish he listened a little more.
A little more? Don't back away.
Listen, a little more doesn't have you throwing carpets at someone.
True. Okay, so you've got to not hedge, right?
I mean, you've got to be honest, right?
Sorry. I'd appreciate it.
I get it.
Can you give me an example of where your dad did listen in a way that was satisfying for you?
Okay. A time when he listened to me and I was satisfied is when he respected where we were at with our relationship with our mom.
When we told him we did not want to see her or we did want to see her, he would respect that and he understood that at the end of the day, If we want to build something with our mother, who is he to get in the way with that if it's not leading to something toxic?
Hang on. You're saying that he's lax and indifferent in his parenting, and if you say you want to see your mom, he's like, okay.
If you say you don't want to see your mom, he's like, okay, how is that not part of the laxness?
That is part of the laxness.
Okay, so give me an example of where he listened to something, he listened to you, and it was satisfying in your childhood.
You felt listened to, you felt heard, you felt understood.
It doesn't mean agreed with, right?
But he absorbed what you were saying without distraction, without dissociation, without reaction.
Just listen.
Dude.
Hello?
Oh, you put me on hold again.
Yeah, please try to avoid that.
It really fucks up the conversation.
All right. So, you were talking about how...
I was asking you a time that you can remember your dad listening to you in a satisfying way.
Right. And I was saying that when you asked me that, nothing comes up.
I don't have a good example to give you.
That's good. I don't remember a time...
That's wonderful. I mean, it's not wonderful for your childhood, but it sure as hell is wonderful for your adulthood.
Do you know why? Because if you say, I just wish he'd listened a little bit more, then it's crazy to throw a rug at him, right?
Yeah. But if he didn't listen to you throughout your childhood, then I'm not saying it's excusable, but it sure is understandable why you'd be throwing a rug at him, right?
Yeah. Right.
So that's good. That's good.
Okay, so you'd like him to have listened throughout your childhood, right?
Yeah. All right.
I would have also loved for him to take on responsibility of parenthood and have felt it within himself to try to make us more competent individuals.
For example, he's French, as I said.
He speaks fluent French.
When we were younger, at a time in which it would have been great for us to have picked up the tongue, picked up verbiage and grammatical structure, none of that was given to us.
Me and my sister are at an age now where we have the desire to pick up our native languages, but none of the underlying structure that could have helped the backbone.
Does that make sense? No, totally.
Totally. I mean, you've been robbed of some of your heritage.
Exactly! And I am so upset with that because it was because of what?
Laziness? Ineptitude?
Those are not good excuses to me.
Right. Right.
Is he a handsome man?
At one point, my age sort of took that out.
So yeah, he was a handsome man.
And your mom? She was a handsome woman too.
What were they on the 1 to 10 scale when they were younger?
I know it's kind of a weird thing. I'll think about it clinically.
I would say my dad was...
Okay, he worked out.
So he was about a...
I would rate him a 7 to an 8.
My mom, when she had her good physique, was around an 8 to a 9.
Right. Right.
So he's got foreign exoticness and muscles and she's got curvaceousness and whatever, right?
And work ethic.
Your mom had the work ethic.
Oh yeah. She was a go-getter.
She was like a machination of some sort.
I loved learning from her for that reason.
Okay, so you wanted your dad to listen.
You wanted him to take more responsibility for parenting and to take initiative, like teaching your French when you were younger.
What's number three? Would you like a clue?
Sorry, I'm just really...
Yeah, I would love a clue.
Choose a better mom! Yeah.
Yes, exactly. Choose a mom you don't have to kick out of the family after she threatens to kill herself.
Yeah. You know, I can see where you're coming from with that.
And I agree. There could have been better life choices made.
But we're still trying to...
You just went passive voice. Better life choices made.
Mistakes were made. Errors occurred.
No. Specific people made specific choices.
Yeah. Right? So your dad chose to marry your mom, despite the fact that she was kind of crazy, sounds like.
Your mom chose to marry and, well, to date, get engaged to, marry and have children with your dad, even though he doesn't seem to take square one level of interest in being a dad, right?
Like, it's really cruel to have children and then ignore them.
It's really cruel to have children and then not invest in them because they're kids.
Where else are they going to go?
You know, if I lock a guy in my...
I'm not obligated to feed everyone in the known universe, except everyone apparently coming up from Honduras, but you're not obligated to feed everyone in the known universe.
But if you lock a guy in your basement, you kind of got to feed him because he's got nowhere else to go.
You're the only source of food, right?
Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that.
Did he date again after your mom left?
Did he date again? Yes, he did.
Well, he's French, right? Yes, of course.
Now, what were his girlfriends like?
Did you meet them? Single girlfriend.
I met them.
What was it called? He asked for our permission if he could bring someone new into the fray.
Yeah, I didn't see it as a problem.
When we got to know his girlfriend, she seemed very sweet, very nice, good looking, gave off a lot of good, whatever you call it, good signals.
Good vibes. Good vibes.
As time went on, that truth sort of unraveled itself.
He lived with her after he left, after we told him to leave.
He lived with her and she had kids and her kids were very monstrous because of the lack of parenting there because she, as it turns out, she's not a good parent and it was a feedback loop.
Now he regrets his choice because he understands that some people, based off of their upbringing, can be very unhealthy and sometimes counterproductive for building up a stable life.
And it's like, it's a little too late to learn that at your 40s, dude.
You should have known that before.
What do you know about your grandparents on either side?
Oh yeah, that explains a lot when I go into that.
On my mom's side, it was tough.
I know that there was a lot of, it wasn't, it was a mixture of being old school and also being really just not healthy.
My grandpa was a man respected in his community.
Everybody loved him, had great things to say about him.
He would help out many people.
He left a great – a deep footprint in that area.
But there was a dark side to that where he wasn't – he was very abusive, I believe, to the – To his children.
My mom was the oldest, so she took on the brunt of it in terms of responsibility, and I'm sure also the discipline.
So whatever I've experienced, she's probably experienced 50 times worse than I did.
That explains a lot to me right there.
Ridley. My grandma...
It's the agency that's missing here, right?
You say, my mom had a bad dad, right?
That explains a lot, you say.
No. It explains precisely nothing.
Yeah, I know.
No, do you?
No, because you keep handing out this get-out-of-jail-free card.
And look, your parents have made their major choices in their lives.
They've made their choice about who they're going to marry.
They've made their choice to split up.
They made their choice to have kids.
They made their choices with their parenting.
You and your sister are now grown.
So I'm not particularly concerned about whether you ascribe agency to your parents, you understand, right?
Because they've already made their choices.
You're a younger person. So it doesn't matter to me whether you ascribe agency to your parents.
Qua, your parents doesn't matter to me.
I'm not talking to them.
Why does it matter to me that you ascribe agency to your parents?
It matters to you because you get to peer into how I view the situation.
No! That's very abstract, but no.
No. Why is it important to ascribe agency to your parents?
Because then that gives them the agency to transcend it and to rise above it.
No, it's not about your parents. Oh.
Why is it important for...
I'm sorry, I can't.
No, listen, if you got it, that would be kind of odd.
I'm just being annoyed to ask that question.
I know it's the hardest question to answer.
So the reason, my friend, why you need to give agency to your parents is they're your template for living.
And you don't get to have more agency in your life than you ascribe them and theirs.
Right? What is it that you say?
You say, I tend to brood in my own head.
I freeze people out of my world.
I don't want to go outside.
I don't have much discipline.
That all says...
That you lack agency, you lack control, you lack authority in your life.
Now, if you say about your parents who gave birth to you, who are your godlike templates for what it is to be a human being, if you say, well, they don't have agency, then you don't have agency either.
You cannot have more agency than the least amount of agency you ascribe to those around you.
I'm going to say that again. It's really, really important.
You can't have more agency Then the least amount of agency you ascribe to the people around you.
So let's say if you have 10 people in your life, you ascribe 9 of them, 100% agency, and one of them 10% agency, you only get 10% agency.
Oh, I can see that.
Do you see what I mean? So whenever you say, well, you know, things happened, mistakes were made, and they ended up splitting up, and, you know, my mom had a bad father, and that explains a lot, it's like it explains nothing!
It's like saying, well, this guy's an alcoholic because his father was an alcoholic.
That explains nothing. Because there are tons of people, tons of people, who are the children of alcoholics who say, damn and a half I'm never touching a drink.
I saw what that did.
I got beaten from hell and high water as a child.
Never raised my voice to my child.
Never hit her. Never punished her.
So saying, well, you know, Steph, he had a bad and abusive and violent mother, that explains a lot.
It explains nothing.
We're not dominoes.
Or, if you think we are, you get to be just a domino yourself.
Ooh, history. Ooh, that's the way it goes.
Well, things happened, right? That's the last thing I want to be.
I have to change the way I do it.
Well, no, but it's the first thing your parents...
Want you to be. Because when you don't ascribe agency to your parents, you suffer.
They win. They get off the hook, right?
Right. Wow.
I don't know how to follow up.
My mother went through the Second World War as a child in Germany.
Her mother was bombed to death in Dresden.
She had a terrible childhood.
Do you know what that explains?
Nothing at all.
Absolutely nothing at all.
I'm not saying childhood doesn't have an influence.
Of course it does. But it doesn't determine what influence it's going to have on you.
You can have a bad childhood and you can say, wow, I really never want to do any of the things that my parents did.
But to do that, to change History, you have to ascribe 100% agency to everyone in your life.
Except maybe crazy people screaming at the sky, waving a tattered Bible in the street corner at 3 o'clock in the morning.
Maybe. Maybe.
But you have to give the great gift and the great horror of absolute free will to everyone in your life in order to receive.
It's one of these presents. You give it, you get it.
You hoard it, you lose it.
If you hoard agency, you don't give it to those around you, you lose it yourself.
If you give the great terrible gift of agency, free will, responsibility to everyone around you, well, they're going to not like you for it for the most part, but you get this great gift of choice, power, consequence yourself.
What is it? Your second big complaint about your dad.
He did not take responsibility.
Sorry, go ahead. You just touched something that I wanted to jump on because you said it.
Right then and there about the dichotomy between being liked and also, well, not being liked when you give the gift of agency to others.
I've wanted to...
This is where I sort of get...
I stop myself.
I want the best of both worlds.
I want to be liked while also giving agency to the people in my life.
Okay, Ridley, I understand that.
But no, you don't want the best of both worlds because you're not crazy.
You have competing...
Well, they're called alters or alter egos.
You have competing characteristics or personalities within your head.
You desperately want agency because you're young and you want to have a big effect and a big impact on the world.
And to do that, you have to be in control.
You have to be responsible.
You have to have full self-ownership.
So you want self-ownership.
Who doesn't want self-ownership?
Who doesn't want agency in your life?
My father and old friends of mine.
And my mom, to some degree.
Yeah, maybe even your sister.
Yeah, maybe.
If you change the pattern of history, my friend, if you change the pattern of history, if you defy the dominoes, a lot of people are going to hate you for it.
I mean, there may be some, oh, good for you kind of thing, but deep down...
You know, that's terrible for them.
Because it means that they could have too.
And they chickened out.
They surrendered. They cucked out.
With regards to the rolling fecal of history.
Sorry to interrupt. No, go ahead.
But I think I got a taste of that a couple days ago, which led me to reaching out to you.
I got a taste of that with my sister.
Yeah, especially with my sister.
At least from what I can tell, my relationship with her matters the most.
And, you know, I've been trying to sort of give her the gift of knowledge that I was given.
And what I mean by that is I want to be able to tell her about what's been going on in the world, in the culture, and what has been going on in law and policy.
And it's like these are very important things in order to orient yourself properly in the world.
And not only does she reject my gift, she doesn't want it.
She chose for herself not to have it.
And she doesn't understand me.
She doesn't care to understand me.
She's more comfortable labeling me as something dastardly than to actually take the time to maybe watch your video one time or to do something, you know, just to extend an olive branch.
There's none of that.
What does she call you?
You said she labeled you.
What does she label you? I don't want to misrepresent.
I want to get exactly what she said right.
She said that the stuff that I watch can be...
I can get really obsessive and it's worrisome in that I'm not going to...
People are going to not want to associate with me and that they're going to...
That I'm going to come across as being obsessed and crazy.
And that it's like...
Not if you look at the evidence.
If you looked at the evidence, then we wouldn't be having this conversation.
I'm really sorry, man.
That's a terrible thing to hear.
It's a terrible thing to hear. It pisses me off.
She could be...
Her and I could be so much more than we are.
She's choosing not to go down that.
Here's your emotion.
Tell me what you're feeling. Yeah, I'm sorry.
No, don't apologize, man.
Tell me what you're feeling. I'm waiting for the breakthrough, the abstractions to the core, right?
So what are you feeling when you start talking about your sister and the closeness that you want?
I feel like... I want to...
It's not just that I want us both to act effectively in the world.
It's also that I want to feel...
Like, I have the security of family, the comfort of her understanding me, and I guess because I view her as a microcosm of mainstream culture.
She, in a lot of ways, represents that to me.
She's always been the popular one, the social one, the trendy one.
You know what I mean? What the kids are doing, basically.
They're going out and raving and partying, and that's what she's doing.
That's where she's at, and I've kind of been the opposite of that.
Yeah, but with less intensity.
She's starting to orient herself also towards her career path, and she's doing well within her law firm that she works at.
And does she... Don't give me any details, but does she still have the same boyfriend as when she was younger?
Is it a new guy or no one?
No one. But that relationship was really bad between her and her boyfriend.
He cheated on her multiple times.
The first time, I guess she gave him a very stern warning.
And then the second and third time, she was like, nope, I'm done.
But there was something emotionally within her that was...
Alluring her to him, and she didn't quite understand it.
That's very general. Okay, so your father had affairs too, right?
Right, and I think my mom did too.
Yeah, okay, so your parents had affairs.
Was the boyfriend that your sister had when she was younger, was he also good-looking like your dad?
I wouldn't say so, but that's subjective.
No, it's not that subjective.
Okay, well, he was about his sixth.
Out of ten. And your sister?
Oh, she's more of an eight.
She would like to think she's nine, but an eight.
A solid eight. Not a scraping up eight.
Not seven and nine-tenths rounded up, right?
Like me with six foot tall. Okay.
Do you know what drew your sister to this man when she was young?
How long did they go out for? A couple years.
Two to three years? So she's at the height of her fertility.
She's at the height of her physical attractiveness.
And she is squandering her youth and her beauty on this philandering man-whore douchebag.
Yeah. And then she realized that and kicked him to the curb.
A little too late for my liking, but whatever.
And since then? Since then, I'm pretty sure she's gallivanting around like most of the...
Yeah, nothing's stable with her romantic life, as far as I know.
She's not associating with quality guys, I would say.
Right. Right.
Because here's the chilling thing, man.
Women are the weather vane of power in society, because women in general score very high on agreeableness, which means agreeableness sounds like you get along with people.
No, agreeableness means that you figure out who has the most power, you conform with them, And you reject or ostracize or attack or dismiss everyone else.
So where women are, who they attack and who they align with is this giant weathervane, like you know the little things on top of the barn, like the weathervane that's usually a chicken or something like that.
It tells you which way the wind is blowing, right?
And if you want to know where power is in society, look at who women are attacking and look at who they're defending, which is why the idea of white privilege is so ridiculous, because women as a whole attack white males in particular, and the idea that there's white privilege, if you ever want to know who you can't criticize, look at who women are defending.
And if you ever want to know who it's perfectly safe to criticize, look at whoever women are attacking.
And your sister is signaling that very...
Very clearly. Strong. And I don't like them.
Sorry, sorry. No, go ahead.
I see that and I thank you for giving me that image because that's going to stick a lot stronger.
But I've had it within me.
It doesn't sit right at all.
It's a perverse biological element that in our time period is just not healthy.
No, it's not. But what...
Tell me the emotions that you had earlier about your sister.
Were you closer in the past?
Did it have... Did you have a fork?
I mean, there's that old saying from Gertrude Stein about her brother, little by little, we never met again.
It's always kind of really stuck me in terms of sibling relationships.
Little by little, we never met again.
Has that changed from when you were younger?
That... Little by little, we never left.
We never talked again.
That has been my...
My perception of our relationship for a long time.
I felt like when we would get older, I wouldn't associate with her and she wouldn't want to talk to me.
It's unfortunate because I want the best relationship with her possible.
And it feels as if we're being set up against each other.
Right. Well, of course, in the modern world, if you're an attractive young woman, You get so much positive feedback that it's very tough to have a real relationship.
I mean, you go in clubbing.
The guys are all over you. You're on social media.
The guys are all over you.
You're on Tinder. You're on plenty of fish.
You're wherever. Guys are all over you.
I mean, this dopamine drip of male attention, male attention, male attention all the time, everywhere you go.
It's really hard.
To show up to work when you've just won the lottery.
You know what I mean? And it's really hard to have a meaningful relationship when everyone's giving you positive attention because youth eggs vagina, right?
Yeah. You can't compete?
Yeah. I know.
And that kind of fills me with...
It doesn't fill me with anything good.
It just makes me feel like...
If only I could have developed myself more.
If only I could have become...
No, no, no, no!
What did we just talk about?
Agency. Right, right.
Who gets agency? Mom, dad, you, sister, 100% agency.
It's not your fault.
It's not up to you to have developed yourself different, or if I'd only phrased it this way, or maybe I showed her the wrong video, I should have showed her this video from Stanford.
No. She gets 100% agency.
Yeah. If you ask any woman, any woman with an IQ above 80, I assume she's smart like you, but you ask any woman, is it a wonderfully wise and productive thing To squander your youth and beauty on worthless men and just to play men for attention without developing a substantial relationship.
And what will all women say?
They'll say, no, it's not good to use your looks.
It's not good to just gain male attention because you're dangling sexual access or the potential thereof in front of them.
Like if you go to a rich guy and say, is it really great to pay for all of your friends' outings?
And he would say, well, no, because then I don't know if they're here for me or here for the money, right?
Yeah. And so she knows.
She knows this is a terrible way to live.
She knows that it's going to...
It's destroying. It's actively destroying her capacity to pair bond.
And she knows how destructive affairs are because I assume they had something to do with your parents splitting up.
So she knows all these things.
And she has 100% agency.
Because I'll tell you this, man.
If you want people to change around you, you've got to hand them the hot potato of agency.
Oh, thank you. And I bet you she's communicated six million different ways from Sunday,
as your mom, as your dad, as other people in your life probably have.
They've communicated something wherein it's your fault what happened.
Or if it wasn't your fault, it was the grandparents' fault.
Or if it wasn't the grandparents' fault, it was society's fault.
It was the system's fault. It was feminism's fault.
It's like, come on. Give people their agency by taking agency for yourself.
That is the greatest gift.
The greatest gift you can give people is self-ownership and everybody wants to dump all their crap on you or society or the system.
And if you take it, they will never change.
I don't wake up every morning and neither do you saying, man, we got to fix this gravity thing because I'd really like to fly.
Can't change the gravity thing.
And if you don't have, because I don't have any agency over gravity, right?
So I don't try to change it.
So where people don't have agency, there is no change.
Which is why when you assume other people's agency, you cripple them.
You hamstring them.
And that's the last thing I want to do.
I don't ever want to do that to people I care about.
Yeah. Ugh.
My mom had a theory as to why her life had turned out so terribly.
And her theory was that various medical professionals had got her sick for reasons that never made any sense to anyone.
And it was that.
That's why everything went so bad.
Now, that's a zero agency thing, right?
Not responsible, no moral choices, didn't hit her kids, didn't scream at her kids, didn't, right?
Didn't refuse to grow up, didn't choose the wrong man to have kids with.
Ah, nothing. Oh, the doctors, right?
The doctors. Now, trying to hand back agency is really, really important because people who don't have agency...
Who don't have self-ownership, who don't have responsibility, are incredibly dangerous to be around.
And that's why you were crying regarding, or you felt emotional regarding your sister.
There's no safety there. Because they're not responsible.
There's no safety around my mom because nothing she did was her fault, was her responsibility.
Nothing. And I remember, I must have been about, oh, 17?
17? Maybe 17, maybe 18, probably 17.
No, it was before I went away.
So about 17, I was sitting with her in a restaurant.
And I said to her, look, I accept all this stuff about the doctors and all that.
I accept all of that. But here's the thing, you know, the fact that all this happened to you is very stressful, and I'm concerned that you're not managing your stress that well.
And, you know, maybe the library's right across the street.
Maybe we just go and buy a book on stress, how to manage stress, how to deal with stress.
I was accepting everything she said, just saying, you know...
Maybe you could handle all the stress of this terrible stuff that was done to you a little bit better and, you know, I could read it with you.
That's about as mild a course correction as you could conceive of.
And I'm not kidding. Like I said it very delicately, very gently.
And she ended up screaming top of her lungs and she threw a water pitcher at me, full of water.
Because now I was in league with everyone else and all this kind of stuff, right?
So that's when I kind of got it.
I got it. I got it.
I'm never going to have an effect in this relationship.
I'm never going to provide this person even the slightest shred of self-ownership.
They're always going to have excuses, and therefore they can't be trusted.
The only people you can trust are people who own themselves, because they're responsible.
You can't trust a driver who's drunk, and you can't trust a person who has no agency.
And so the really terrible thing I think that your sister has done is there's some history of instability in your family, right?
I mean, if you've got a mom who's talking about killing herself, right?
There's some history of instability in your family, right?
Yeah. So the worst thing you can say to the child of a crazy woman is, you're crazy.
That's the worst thing.
That's what she told me, my mom told me a couple weeks ago.
That you're crazy? Yeah.
Because of how I was acting, I lost, I wasn't keeping good tabs on how I was feeling, and I was trying to push down how I felt, and it sort of erupted, and yeah, it wasn't good.
What happened? It led to...
Mom came home because she's been up north for a while right now to deal with family.
Don't get into any details.
Your mom came home, right? All right.
When my sister and my mom were back, I tried to be docile.
I wanted to make sure things were peaceful, amenable.
I wasn't putting my – I wasn't like, hey, have you been hearing about what's been happening in Sweden?
Have you been hearing about what's been happening?
With the Kavanaugh case, I'm not trying to – Put those sort of stressors on them, but it eats at me.
And I don't, I wasn't acknowledging it.
And I was going out with my friend to go, doesn't matter, but I got locked out.
I knocked on the door for them to, you know, get up to open the door.
You weren't locked out. You just got locked out by accident.
Right, right, right. And my, I think my keys were inside the house, so I couldn't get in if I wanted to.
So they're in the living room and right at the front, I was knocking on the door.
Minute or two, nobody opens it.
And it's like, okay, you're right there.
Open the door. It's not that much.
My mom was like, I can't open it in my back because she fell earlier and her hip was hurting her.
I understood that.
But my sister is able-bodied and able to get up for 10 seconds to open the door.
It took two and a half minutes.
And then when they opened the door, I was livid.
I was like, what the hell?
And then I... I basically yelled at them.
And I said they didn't give a crap.
They don't care about anybody but themselves.
And it showed me that when it...
Because if it were the other way around, I was inside and they were locked out, there would be no tolerance if I took two minutes to open the door for them.
They would have been like, where were you?
You didn't hear me ringing the doorbell?
You didn't hear me? Like, you need to open the door.
Like, there's... That was the incident and it led to a long talk when I came back home and things sort of spiraled and it got to the point where she called me crazy because of how emotional I was getting.
Right. So I can tell you what happened there if you like.
I think it would be useful, helpful.
I'd love to hear it.
So, you lost agency because they won't accept any.
You were out of control, right?
You said things, you blew up, right?
You said, erupted, right?
That's a phrase that is used by people who are out of control, right?
Yeah. And so, this is the war.
Either you give them agency, or they'll take away yours.
Do you understand? Yeah.
That's the war that goes on.
That's the war that goes on.
And then, yeah, yeah.
I tried to give them the agency in that moment.
I said, I kept pointing out the reasons why they should have gotten up or could have.
And then my sister was like, she was trying to show me that I should not leave the house without my keys.
That's a valid reason.
And she apologized. She was like, you know what?
I should have... Maybe that was the wrong time to show you.
I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that.
Oh, she was not letting you in as a way of teaching you a lesson?
Yeah. About keeping my keys on me.
Is that a continual problem for you or rare?
Being scatterbrained and a little absent-minded, no.
That's something I have a tendency to do.
I do. And I understand that.
I do need to be more disciplined.
However, I can't let myself get to that point and I wish – no.
And they should try to make a more concerted effort to understand where I'm coming from.
And to, yeah.
No, but they won't. No, because they already called you crazy.
So they already have an answer. Where are you coming from?
You're coming from a place of obsession and of craziness and of instability or whatever it is that they've got, right?
They have the answer. Like if you were to walk into the house with them at home and say, guys, let's go home.
They'd say, we are home.
What are you talking about, right? And so if you're saying, well, I want them to change what they're doing.
I want them to try and understand my behavior.
No, they understand.
Your behavior. They have an answer.
In the same way that my mom had an answer as to why she beat her kids.
She was made unwell.
Don't you know, right? So there's no other answer.
It's like me saying to you, we've really got to revisit two and two make four.
You'd be like, I really don't think we do.
I think that's, you know, we pretty much got that down, right?
So they already have the answer.
You know, I think I noticed that by the way they characterize the stuff I wanted to show them.
Like, I wanted to show them videos on Jordan Peterson, on you, on Karen Strawn, on all these great thinkers that I've exposed myself to.
And I've tried to show my mom, and she'll watch occasionally.
She doesn't have the mental capacities to stay on it for too long, but...
Wait, wait, what do you mean? Because she'll start...
She's... In her older age, she started to, I would say, break down.
I mean, not mentally.
I would say physically break down. Wait, what do you mean in her older age?
I mean, you don't have to give me her age, but trust me, she's not in her 80s, right?
I mean, she's not very old.
No, she's not.
But her bad choices have accumulated to the point that now she is feeling it.
She's really feeling it.
All her bad decisions are sort of coming down on her.
And one of the consequences is that she's not as smart as she used to be.
No, no, but she still has full agency.
You can't lose it unless you get a brain injury.
Exactly. If I'm young, I can train to race a marathon, right?
If I smoke a pack a day for 30 years, it's going to be pretty tough, right?
So you say, well, I'm not free.
I have no agency to run a marathon because I've been a pack a day smoker for 30 years, right?
No. You have full agency.
Because it's your pack-a-day habit for 30 years that has resulted in you not being able to run the marathon.
You have full agency in not being able to run a marathon.
Yeah. So don't give your mom this excuse of, wow, she's getting old or bad.
She has full agency.
If she's done things that she regrets and won't admit, she won't go to therapy, she won't deal with it, she won't gain self-knowledge, she is 100% responsible for everything that comes out of that.
Right. I agree.
It's like saying, well, of course we shouldn't charge the guy because he was drunk when he was driving.
It's like, nope. Full 100% agency to be a drunk driver, which is why you face sanctions for it, right?
Because you made the choice to go to a bar, you made a choice to drink, you made a choice to get into a car and drive, you made all of these choices.
Now, you are in a situation where you can't drive well and you have 100% agency for everything.
The only thing that can remove agency...
The only thing that can remove agency is physical incarceration or physical brain deterioration.
Like literally like Alzheimer's, a brain injury, whatever it is, right?
Everyone else, you got to hold on to that hot potato even if you don't like it.
And if you've made terrible choices that reduce your choice in the present, you still have 100% ownership of those choices.
Exactly. And I've been trying to sort of...
Help? Like, okay, no, not help.
That's sort of the modus operandi I've been going off of, and it's the reason why I'm continuing to try to expose them.
It's like you still need to within you, whether you like it or not, where you are at right now, you have to work with it.
So take the steps.
And so I would try to show them.
My mom characterized the videos of Jordan Peterson, of Stefan Molyneux.
She told me it would be good for me to put down the propaganda Well, you know, she's kind of telling you something true there, isn't she?
Just not in the way. Like, the most painful things to hear are the ones that contain an element of truth, right?
So who's giving you propaganda is your parents, right?
She's saying you've got to put down the propaganda.
And it's like, maybe I do, Mom.
Maybe I do. But why are you doing all the work in your family?
You doing all the work is stripping them of agency.
Oh, no. Yeah, we've had that issue in our family.
My mom's been the financial breadwinner, so she's been the one sort of— We've had that issue in our family.
There is a statement of zero agency.
Issue hit family like Meteor.
But that's just how I've seen it.
It's been like that.
I've been trying to pull them out of the— I'm trying to pull them out of the toxic nature of our time.
And my mom is trying to make sure that our financial grounding and our housing and our actual day-to-day expenses are covered.
And my sister is trying to take on that responsibility as well right now.
And the problem is when you do it to the other person's detriment, where they're not able to...
The skills they need to do that for themselves.
No, you mean like if you take care of everyone's needs and they never learn how to cook or clean or do laundry or pay bills or make money or whatever, right?
Chris Dicely, yeah. Right.
And I think that contributes to what I said later in my excerpt to you about never finishing things or following through.
For some reason, there's a correlation there, at least how I see it, but I could be completely wrong.
Okay, so Ridley, what does your life look like if you were to absolutely let go of the desire to change people into who you want them to be?
If I let go of that desire...
Take people as they are, as they clearly communicate themselves to you.
Take them as they are, letting go of the desire to change them into what you want them to be.
Then I would make more decisive decisions with who I associate with and who I put my energy and time towards.
Good. It would be a simplification process.
Are you ready to have your mind blown?
Are you sitting down? Please blow it hard.
Okay. You need a full-on John McCain crash helmet here, man, because this is going to blow your mind.
Are you ready? I'm sitting down.
All right. All right. One of your big complaints is that You are unable to get your family to face the reality of the world that they live in.
Right?
Yes.
You're not facing the reality of your family, the world that you live in.
Wow.
You are doing exactly what you criticize them for doing.
You say, have a look at reality, have a look at the facts, have a look at the data, have a look at the evidence.
And they say, no, I reject it!
I reject the evidence.
I reject the facts. I reject the truth.
And you look at them and you say, well, I'm sure I can change them.
You're doing exactly what they're doing.
You're rejecting the empirical evidence, the data, the facts, the communications, the language that your family uses.
You are rejecting the reality of your family and then you're really upset that they reject social or political reality.
But you're doing the same thing.
They're telling you who they are.
They're telling you what they think.
They're telling you they won't change, but you're like, nope, I'm going back in.
You know, you are rejecting reality while complaining that they won't accept the truth.
What truth are you accepting about your family?
They're very clear, aren't they?
Yeah. Yeah, they are.
Physician, heal thyself, as the phrase goes.
You want them to start accepting reality.
Why don't you lead the way?
They're not going to change. If you give people information that runs counter to their worldview, they double down on their worldview.
You know that, right? You know that.
I mean, certainly you've listened to this show.
I've talked about it about 12 million times, right?
Yeah. And so you can't change them.
And they're very clear. The data says that.
They say that. Like, once you call someone crazy...
They have no power to change you.
That's why you call someone crazy, or it could be one of the reasons, right?
Like if there's some crazy guy on the street corner, right, screaming and shaking a magazine at the sky and talking about space aliens coming in the morning to deliver him his Cheerios, are you going to join that guy?
No, because he's crazy.
So as soon as somebody calls you crazy, boom, that's done.
Your influence over them is gone.
Because nobody wants to be crazy.
Nobody wants to join the crazy people, right?
Right. They're very clear.
You're crazy. You're obsessed.
This is bad. This is wrong.
So of course then, I mean, very clear, they're not going to change.
And if you want them to change, you've certainly got to stop trying.
Because by discrediting, like they discredit you so they don't have to look at the ideas.
And the more you want to get them to look at the ideas, the more desperate you become to try and drag them to the truth, the more they get to laugh at you for being obsessive.
It's a very clear game, right?
So you, I mean, something may change at some point somehow, but it ain't coming from you, and it sure as heck ain't coming from these videos, right?
So that's clear, and I assume you've been trying for a while, and you've made not only no progress, but negative progress, in that they think that you're crazier now than before you started, right?
Right. So who is rejecting reality the most?
Me. Yeah. I am.
That's right, my friend.
You are rejecting reality the most.
All the while saying, I just, I want my parents and I want my family and I want my friends to face the truth.
Well, you got to lead them, right?
That's the only chance that it could have.
Exactly. I just want to, I want to be able to get to that point.
I have it in me to get to that point.
I need to own up To myself.
And they need to own up to themselves.
I can't be focused on them for my life.
That's terrible. But it's what they want.
You see, this is part of the way that society doesn't change.
Is families in particular trap free thinkers into trying to change the family and they erode your desire to get out of fucking bed in the morning eventually.
Oh yeah. This is what you're facing, right?
Why do I not have enthusiasm?
Why am I Brooding in my own head.
Why? What was it you said here?
Very kind-hearted person, but ultimately hollow and very negative, right?
You understand who's hollowing you out.
It's they're drawing you into this.
You're desperate for them to change.
They refuse to change. And you exhaust yourself doing this.
And you paralyze yourself.
Doing this. And that's part of how the world doesn't change, is it kind of tries to bait you into trying to change what you can't change so you burn out.
You know, that's exactly right.
It is right. But go on, tell me what you're feeling.
I just...
I got to the point when my mom called me crazy and...
There was a point in myself that I felt, even though I have the desire and the knowledge and I have the potential to be that person I see me becoming, all the evidence of what is laying itself out is showing the contrary.
And it was giving me reason to think, darn it, somebody came in.
I'm sorry. I want to talk to you.
That's all right. Take a moment.
That's fine. I can cut this part out.
Sorry, I'm gonna go outside for a moment.
No problem.
Hi.
Sorry, I'm at my friend's house, and they have roommates, so I don't want to cry in front of them like that.
Um, so.
you know.
Thank you.
When my mom told me that, that realization came to me and it made me Not just to press, but it compelled me, and I'm going to be very honest, it compelled me to end it.
It compelled you to what?
what you just cut out for a sec there all right well um we seem to have uh lost him when he went outside so i think that the call is is clear enough and i hope that you find a value in it that i do having these kinds of conversations but it really matters who you surround yourself with it really matters especially if you have big goals and a big life ambition you got to have people around you who believe in you
because if there are people around you who don't believe in you it's going to undermine you it's going to undercut you and you will end up serving a kind of nothingness draining away your energy and your power and your strength into nothingness you want to achieve what you want to achieve and you will have sacrificed a greater good for a lesser good or non-good at all So I'm sorry that the call got a little bit cut off, but I think we had gotten to the major part of the conversation and I wish the very best to you, my friend.
Thank you very much for a call that I hope will shake the rafters of the world and have people wake up to their own potential and how they may be being undermined.
By those around them. So thanks to Ridley.
Thanks to you, the listeners and the callers who make these kinds of conversations possible.
You can of course go to freedomainradio.com slash donate to help out the show.
That's freedomainradio.com slash donate.
And I hope that you will have a great evening.
And please like and subscribe and share.
Oh, hello? No, he's gone.
Hello? Are you back?
Sorry. I'm sorry.
Sorry. My phone's been a mess.
I apologize. I just did the whole outro.
You were gone for a minute.
Tell me what you were feeling when we were talking about letting go of the desire to change people.
Yeah, I've never been able to let go of that.
I've always had that desire in me.
I always felt like we all had the potential that we could take out of ourselves, and I thought that I could help people inch towards that.
But the more I do that, as you said, the more I exhaust myself and really just work against that.
Good intentions really can lead to hell sometimes.
Well, it's not even fundamentally out of care and concern for the members of your family or your friends.
It's what I talked about in my very first book at Freedom and Radio on truth.
The tyranny of illusion is that to get to where you want to be in life, you've got to cross a desert.
You've got to let go of the familiar.
And again, that doesn't mean cutting everyone out of your life, but just giving up a desire to change them, accepting them for who they are, accepting the truth and facts of reality as you want them to do, demonstrating and leading by example.
But you've got to cross the desert, which means you've got to find the people who really support your vision, and it's kind of tough to let go of that desire.
Emotional intertwining that happens with people you grew up with, if they're not there to support your goals and your ideals and that which is best within you, you've got to cross a desert to find people and it's a whole lot easier to think that you can survive where you are than to strike out across the desert and hope you find an oasis.
And that's not an answer that satisfies me, so I do have to cross the desert.
And I think reaching out to you was indicative of that.
In a lot of ways, the friends of mine that have been supportive of my vision have told me to go to the source and to talk to the people who understand what it is I'm getting at.
And so that's why I reached out to you because I am going to the source.
I've listened to you for years now and I've learned a lot about myself and the world from your interactions and I want to keep that going.
I actually want to do that myself.
That actually leads into what I wanted to do as a life, a career path.
I wanted to take my personhood and capitalize on it and be able to also have that align itself to where I help out other people in their lives.
The people who most influence me are people like you.
Jordan Peterson. Well, in particular, yeah, you two.
You're heavy hitters.
If you want to be a doctor, you've got to be around people who are willing to take the medicine.
Otherwise, you're just throwing pills.
Down the toilet. Right. Secondhand, right?
Exactly. And I'm tired of throwing the pills down the toilet.
They're expensive. They are.
They are. And that's going to restore to you...
You know, every time we do something and we fail, we get a little weaker.
There's nothing wrong with that because sometimes we're doing the wrong thing.
We should get weaker and we should...
But every time we try and we fail at something, we get a little weaker.
And every time we try and succeed at something, we get a little stronger.
And... If you're finding yourself weak in your life, if you're finding yourself lost or out of purpose in your life, you have to look at where you're failing.
Because if you figure out where you're failing, you'll figure out the vampire that's truly draining your lifeblood.
And I think here it may be wanting people to be different than who they are and who they're clearly communicating themselves to be.
So I hope that that helps.
All right. Is there anything that you wanted to say as a last word?
I think we got a fairly good distance in our hour and a half, and I really, really appreciate the conversation.
I as well. If anything, I would like to ask if there's a potential chance that we could talk again in the future.
I would love to. Yeah, yeah.
Drop me a line. I'd like to hear how it's going.
And I certainly appreciate the conversation tonight.
