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July 14, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
46:24
Notes to a teen - are your friends really your friends?
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Okay, so there's this girl I know, she's 18, and she's in a bad way, but it's like she's almost a natural philosopher.
She's the youngest sibling of a large family, her brother an alcoholic, sister's a mess, and so on.
I haven't talked to her much, if at all, about philosophy, but she seems to almost get it on her own, and it seems like she just needs a little push.
Obviously, her parents are a complete mess.
They argue every day as she is trying to revise, and are just horrific.
As an example, here is an email she sent me, reposted with permission.
Hello, I probably won't send this, but I need to get something off my chest, and typing this will help, I hope.
I just found out that all my closest friends have been bitching about me behind my back for the last many months.
Y, the letter Y, is the only one who actually had the guts to tell me they all think I, quote, change when I'm drunk.
I think they mean that I've gotten angry on several occasions.
Why was telling me things I cannot remember at all?
So there I am, trying to help them out with their problems.
Apparently the thing to do in return is to bitch about me, then encourage me to get drunk at parties, which they do big time.
Oh, this isn't like you, ex.
Finish my drink. No, I'm trying not to drink too much.
Oh, go on, it's fine, is an actual quote from a recent party.
And then complain to each other when I get drunk.
They never actually think, hang on, maybe she's got some bad stuff going on and we should ask her.
Oh no, bitching about me is the way to sort out the problems they have with me.
What I don't understand is why it's taken so long for one of them to step forward and actually talk to me about it.
I've known them for 14 years, but now I've got to go out tonight with a massive grin on my face and act like I don't know that they've been saying really nasty, according to why, who doesn't lie, things about me for the past nine months.
I can understand if they're worried, but I don't think they are.
I think that they're acting as though they are, but if they were truly worried, wouldn't coming to me and asking if I was okay be the thing to do?
Maybe the reason I get angry is because in reality I feel angry pretty much all the time and the alcohol stops the suppression thing I have going on.
I'm not trying to justify my behavior.
Goodness knows I'm fully aware that I'm a horrible person.
But I really think that it could have been handled better than me having to find out after months and then getting very upset and almost breaking down in the middle of a lesson.
I'm so sick of my fucking situation and I wish you were here.
And there's a subsequent MSN chat I'll just touch on briefly.
The boy says, hey.
The girl says, hello. He says, was just about to go to the beach, but I couldn't not respond to your email.
How are you? You go to the beach.
I will do soon.
Would you mind if I posted this exchange on a message board where there are much smarter people than me who are better at this sort of thing?
What's the point? There's no solution.
I get this amazing feeling that you're so close to an incredible breakthrough in your personal and philosophical development that could really help you.
You're like a natural, honestly.
She says, hey? He says, I can't explain too well, but I can try.
You don't need to do anything if you don't want.
If you want. Also, please try not to drink too much for the next few months.
I know we joke about it, but I worry about you.
Do you think after that I'm going to go out and get pissed?
I was absolutely devastated, I can understand.
You'd think the fact that I never used to drink and started about a year ago a lot would show them that something was up.
I just want an escape.
Oh, I know. I know it's dumb to use alcohol, but I can't talk to people much.
I can see that. I hope you feel that you can talk to me some.
Well, I do, but you're kind of far away at the mo.
Yeah. I just feel really sad at the minute, and I hate the fact that I've got to go and act happy.
I, sorry, got kicked off.
It's a horrible position to be in.
No problem. It's all right.
I just keep finding myself in horrible positions.
But it's a hundred percent not your fault.
You have to remember that. Well, it kind of is, isn't it?
I should just not drink so much and control myself.
Honestly, with the situation you're in, restricting things to the occasional time where you drink too much is heroic.
Heroic? Hardly.
And no one else thinks that.
They all think I'm a malicious bitch with no real problems.
Okay, here's a little sentence that you may dismiss, but if you don't, it'll help you, I hope.
Almost everyone else is wrong.
It's about almost everything.
Okay. Feels like I've lost all my friends in one day.
I can't look at them in the same way again.
Yeah, that hurts. But think about it this way, if it helps.
If they are the kind of people who would do something like that, what does being criticized by them mean?
If a bad person tells you you're bad, doesn't that mean you're good?
But they aren't any old friends.
I've known most of them since I was four.
I understand what you're saying, but in the end, they're everything to me.
And just the thought of them saying nasty things about me, especially when I try to help them, I just don't need this right now.
I really like this person.
Anyone have any ideas about what I can do?
Sorry for the length of this. Well, thank you, obviously, to...
To the person who posted, and to the person who, the fine lady who agreed to the posting of the email, and let's have a chat.
So we've got people who are 16 or so, sorry, 18 or so, and Without a doubt, some significant harm has been inflicted, let's just say, for the most part, upon the woman, right?
She's mentally younger than her physical age, and that's entirely appropriate, given the traumas that she's been through.
There's no other way that it could be.
It's no detriment, but...
Something sort of bad happened around the ages of 12 to 14 that was a form of arrested development.
So she's still embedded pretty much in a corrupt social circle.
She's drinking to excess. And the language that she uses and the attitudes that she has is more appropriate to an earlier form of development, which again, no criticism whatsoever.
This is entirely and totally and perfectly natural.
But what it does do is it gives us a clue as to where to start looking for the source of the most recent and immediate trauma.
When people get stuck at a certain age, that's the age where their development is highly resisted and opposed.
And that's where we can start looking for what happened and when.
So that's sort of very important.
And being a teenager, being a teenager, and I know that there's like superheroic biff square-jaw jocks and so on, and people who look like they're having a great time and so on, but frankly, being a teenager sucks like a big, wet, farty vacuum.
So from that standpoint, I totally remember, totally understand, and anybody who's got any honesty will say the same thing, unless they're just a shallow, outward, sort of brute animal health Kind of person, right?
Who's really embedded in the social norms and has either money or looks or athletic talent or something like that, which is all not anything to do with virtue, but people who are on the down low, on the downside of society, it totally sucks.
It totally sucks. And what this guy's talking to the woman, what this guy's telling you is right, that everyone around you is wrong.
And that's a hard thing for you to hear, right?
That's a hard thing for you to hear.
It's a kind of peculiar assertiveness that is required to figure out who's right and who's wrong these days, let's say.
I mean, you could say maybe throughout history, but who cares about that?
Let's talk about you. It takes a weird kind of confidence.
You know, like if you're the first person to wear...
Like I was the first guy in my school to wear army pants, right?
And it's scarcely that I started to trend.
I certainly don't have that kind of cachet.
But about a year later, it did become a sort of big thing.
It's a peculiar kind of confidence to say, I'm right and the world is wrong.
And of course, a lot of crazy people do that.
So you've got to be careful and you've got to be rigorous in how you look at things.
But it's kind of essential that...
You know, kind of maturing, kind of growing up, kind of becoming an adult is not what people tell you it's about.
Like, for real. It's not what people tell you it's about, right?
So, people say that becoming an adult is like, you know, you've got to start taking responsibility, you've got to be organized, you've got to be disciplined, you've got to do this, you've got to get a job.
All of this stuff is pure and total crap.
It's pure and total crap.
To... Grow up to become an adult from a teenager, it doesn't mean any of those things.
In fact, it's the opposite of what everyone talks about in terms of growing up.
When people say grow up and start to be responsible, what they mean by that is to obey, right?
And basically what they're trying to get you to do is to transfer your allegiance to the irrational bullshit of your parents to the irrational bullshit of an employer or a university professor or college teacher or whatever it is that you're going next.
What they're basically saying is, in the old days, the woman was obedient to her father, and then that allegiance or that obedience was transferred to her husband, and then she was a slave to her husband when he got older, and so on.
Just passing the fuzz.
I don't know if it's legal to podcast in your car, but I'm not going to try and find out.
So... What they mean is that we want you to obey and conform to society as a whole, and that's what people mean by maturing.
What they mean is give up your identity, give up your independence, give up your own thoughts and And look, unfortunately, and we'll get to this in a sec, you're kind of going that way, right?
And so this is a kind of remote digital intervention.
And there's no reason why you wouldn't be going that way, because you sort of live in a society where, as your fine friend said, people are pretty much mostly totally wrong about everything.
I'll tell you what I think growing up really means, becoming an adult really means, and then you can tell me what you think, if you like.
For me, growing up, to sort of make the transition from being a teenager to being an adult, means kind of one thing.
It's a complicated thing, and it's also, when I say the word, you're going to think that it means a whole bunch of things that I don't think it means, but I'll say it up front anyway, and then you can freak out and tell me I'm wrong.
Growing up, becoming an adult, means shifting...
Your allegiance from people to the truth, right?
Shifting your allegiance from people to philosophy.
And again, that's like a weird word.
I know that that doesn't mean much to you, but When you're a kid, as you know, you have to do everything that everyone tells you to.
Now, in a good family, which is still at this point largely theoretical, you wouldn't have that.
You wouldn't be forced to do all of that, right?
I mean, if you have a teacher and they just give you all the answers and tell you what to write, they're not much of a teacher, right?
It's an imitation of learning.
It's like a photocopy of a piece of art, right, hung on a wall.
It just looks like something that's grainy and crappy.
So if you have a teacher who just tells you everything, do this, do that, write this answer, and now turn your paper over or turn it in or whatever, right?
Then you're not learning anything.
All you're learning is how to reproduce what someone's telling you to do.
And that's what families are for the most part.
And in a real teaching or learning environment, you get the chance to say stuff, right?
To argue, to disagree, to question, to criticize.
That's how you sharpen your mental blades, so to speak.
That's how you learn how to think.
And when you learn how to think, then you can really learn how to relate to people in a very intimate kind of way.
Because you're both... Like kind of working on the truth, right?
And working in reality and that's, you know, like if you're running to hug your friend and you miss and you hug thin air instead, it's not much of a satisfying hug, right?
And if you try to approach people and talk to them and neither of you are working with the truth or neither of you are working sort of in reality, Then it's kind of a weird conversation, right?
I mean, you're just sort of talking past each other.
It's like two television sets pointing at each other, pretending they're having a conversation, which is a lot of what people call, you know, like socializing.
And by socializing, I don't just mean with friends at parties.
Like, family dinner tables are the same way, too.
Everyone's just sort of making stuff up, and nobody has any clue what the truth is, or what's real about them, or what's real about reality.
So everybody just kind of, they're just sort of running past each other, hugging thin air, thinking they're having some big You know, Oogie group hug.
And it's just not the case at all.
So when I say that the growing up is sort of about allegiance to the truth, what I mean is that growing up is about becoming a good person.
And becoming a good person doesn't mean believing in God.
It sure as hell doesn't mean believing in government.
And it sure as hell doesn't mean believing that your parents are good people just because they are your parents, to use a...
Oogie metaphor, nobody achieves virtue by having sex 18 years ago.
Becoming a good person is kind of a little trickier than just, you know, banging someone and producing a kid, right?
That doesn't elevate you to the ranks of the virtuous.
It just sort of means that you...
It has all of the... I mean, without wanting to put anybody in this category, it has all of the moral qualities of taking a really good shit.
It doesn't really mean anything morally.
It's just a biological function, having a child.
It doesn't make you a good person, right?
So, obviously, everybody knows that, but nobody likes to talk about it because there are some real consequences to believing in that.
So... So becoming an adult is about becoming a good person and that means thinking through things clearly and not giving people the sort of gold star of being a good person or like having value for things which don't have anything to do with being good or having value.
Like they say, my country right or wrong or be true to your school as the song goes.
Not a song that you would know but look in the oldie archives on Napster or something.
But these things don't have value, right?
The only things that really have value are like truth and virtue.
And virtue doesn't mean like what the Christians mean, and it doesn't mean like what your parents mean.
When they say be good, they mean be obedient to everything that we say, no matter how stupid.
And that's not being good.
That's in fact being bad, right?
That's being really bad.
Just obeying people in authority is not a good thing at all, right?
So being good is about being really tough.
Like think of yourself like you're a...
You're a sheriff in the Wild West or something, and being good is about being really tough, and it's about being critical of what people tell you and questioning.
And if somebody says, I know what is true, I know what is right, I know what is good, and by God, doesn't everyone say that all the time?
Then, you know, you can just pull a modern-day Socrates and say, okay, well, how do you know that?
And give me your reasoning.
And you'll very quickly find, when you do that, that nobody has a little, tiny, freaking atomic clue about what is true and what is virtuous and what is good and what is noble and what is right.
I mean, they're just... Making stuff up and photocopying what other people do and then saying, well, I believe this, right?
And it's not true. It's not true.
Somebody told me this and I'm repeating it.
And claiming to be original or claiming to have thought is, you know, if you're copying from the test from the person next to you, you can't claim to have learned anything.
And if you try and pretend that you have by repeating what the person next to you wrote on their exam, you will very quickly be revealed as somebody who doesn't know anything to somebody who knows something, right?
You're just faking it. And this is more about your friends and your family and not so much about you, which we'll get to in a sec.
So that's sort of the idea.
This is why your friend IM'd you and suggested that you might not mind if you let a philosopher have a look at your situation because it is terrible.
It is terrible, terrible, terrible beyond words that you are in a terrible situation And that terrible situation is generated in the past, maintaining itself in the present, but must not perpetuate itself in the future.
And I'm going to give you some ways in which you can help break the cycle, right?
Your family obviously highly screwed up, to use a technical term.
A high degree of interstellar mess.
You have a brother who is an alcoholic.
Now, there are some, apparently, some genetic components to alcoholism, which means you and the bottle do not make three.
Well, I guess they do make three.
Sorry, you and the bottle do not make two.
You and alcoholism.
Oh, forget that. I'm thinking of another song, You and Me and the Bottle Makes Three Tonight.
But unfortunately, the metaphor fell apart in my hands, and we shall just have to clap hands and move on.
Don't drink. I mean, don't drink.
There's lots of stuff that I'm going to tell you that is complicated and so on and you don't have to do a damn thing that I say, of course.
What the hell do you care about what I think?
But I'm telling you, don't drink.
Don't drink. This is a very, very bad way to deal with your problems.
And you say this very openly in the email, that you can't talk to people and that you feel highly inhibited, and so you drink.
And when you drink, you become disinhibited, right?
You become less inhibited. And I'm not saying you're doing a girl's gone wild pirouette on the table, but you become less inhibited.
This is called self-medication, right?
You are using alcohol as a medicine to liberate yourself from what I would consider to be pretty important inhibitions.
Like everyone's like, oh, I'm so inhibited and everyone says, oh, don't be so uptight.
You know, uptight is a good thing.
Uptight is a really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really good thing.
And you don't want to sort of just eliminate being uptight, even if we use the word uptight in its sort of negative sense.
You know, oh, she's so square.
She's so uptight.
Uptight is good, right? There's a reason that you don't want to talk to your friends.
But there's a reason that you don't want to talk to your friends.
There's a reason that you need to use alcohol to talk to your friends.
We can't achieve a single shred of happiness in this world by doing what other people tell us to do.
Slaves can't be happy.
All slaves can do is to just relieve the anxiety of disobedience, right?
So your parents told you to do stuff which was stupid and your teachers told you to do stuff and they told you a whole bunch of stuff that was false and what they told you to do was stupid.
And now your friends are doing the same thing, and perhaps your friends have been doing this all along, right?
So you kind of got a choice, and you're at a total fork in the road.
And believe me when I say, though there's no reason why you would, believe me when I say that this fork is going to determine all of your life's future happiness.
And don't feel bad for being at this fork, and for heaven's sake, don't feel bad at the difficulty of the choice.
We just had a call-in show on...
Sunday, where...
Sunday, chatty Sunday.
Ooh, another song from the oldies archives.
Where a guy in his 30s is facing the same thing.
The same thing.
I face the same thing into my 30s.
And since the 30s seem like three geological eras in the future for you, why not do it now and get it over with?
When I said earlier that there's no value and no goodness in people other than value and goodness, I sort of meant it, right?
Like, I really meant it. So, if your parents aren't virtuous people, and I'm guessing pretty solidly that they're not, then you owe nothing, no allegiance, no obedience to your parents.
In fact, obeying your parents would be a bad thing to do, right?
When bad people give you advice or tell you what to do and you do it, their badness is like they're just coughing a cold on you, right?
It's sort of an infection, right?
That's how it transfers. They bully you to do bad things, and then...
You do them, and then you feel worse, and you trust yourself less, and then they tell you to do more bad things, and then you feel worse, and you trust yourself less, so you're more susceptible when other people tell you to do bad things, and so on.
So, you've got to not take your cues from people around you.
You've got to not sort of say, well, what's right and what's wrong?
Well, I'm going to say, what do people approve of or disapprove of?
And then I'll do that, and I'll call it.
Right and wrong.
And that's not true at all.
That's not true at all, right?
To take a silly example, there are lots of people in the Ku Klux Klan who do what those around them approve of and don't do what those around them disapprove of, and that clearly is not a very good thing to do, and I'm not saying that you're anywhere like that, but clearly the principle doesn't work deep down.
Oh, my friends think I should drink, so I'm going to drink.
Oh, my friends want me to put on a smile rather than talk about what's really going on for me, so I'm going to put on a smile and not really talk about what's going on for me.
And you're absolutely right.
You are being put in impossible situations.
I'm not going to sort of blow your mind, but there's something that is called the true self, which is the self that is like honest and forthright and open and clear and so on.
And you've got stuff that's going on in your life that is wretched.
And you've got, naturally, you know this and you want to talk about it.
And why wouldn't you want to talk about it?
But you're stuck around this...
I don't know how to put this nicely.
I really am trying to put it so nicely.
But it's not the easiest thing in the world.
You're with some people who are less than sympathetic to the plight that you're in and who are not reading the signals, as you say, a year ago you began to start drinking, and they're not reading the signals that you're in trouble, that you're not doing well.
And this is entirely inevitable.
You were raised by people who weren't good, and you were taught by people who didn't know things and who taught you the exact opposite of what is good.
It's not like people in school encourage you to think and question.
Not in any fundamental way.
So naturally, you're going through a very, very tough time.
It's going to show up in your relationships.
It's going to show up in your friendships, your love relationships, your friendships.
It's going to show up everywhere. And your life is going to be one mess after another unless you sort of take this different path, which I'm going to sort of suggest in a few minutes.
And thank you so much for listening.
And thank you for your patience. I hope this is even vaguely, vaguely, vaguely helpful.
And you can also appreciate that I'm not trying to use teenage lingo because me and cool explode.
So you took your cues from your parents because you had to, right?
They were the boss. They were the total and total and total and complete boss.
So you had to do what your parents told you to.
No one could ever do any differently in the whole wide world, ever.
And not get, like, totally messed up completely and utterly beyond recovery.
So, you obeyed your parents, though they told you a bunch of stupid stuff.
I would, I did, and my parents told me a bunch of stupid stuff, too.
And I obeyed them as well.
What are you gonna do? They got the, they have the reins, so to speak.
And then you did what your teachers told you to do, and of course I did, and everyone else who's got any common sense does as well, right?
This sort of fantasy rebel thing, Judd Nelson Breakfast Club.
Oh, there's another oldies reference.
I'm so sorry that I don't know any modern music.
Avril Lavigne? Oh dear, I'm trying to use Argo, and it's not working.
So... So now the danger is, right?
So here's the danger. Here's the fork in the road, right?
So you're 18, which means that you're, you know, on the verge of, if not in adulthood.
And now you've got a fork in the road, right?
You've got a fork in the road. And I would totally, totally suggest, and I really, really have seen this and totally believe it to be true.
I would totally suggest that the choice that you make now about this fork in the road is going to completely and totally change your life.
Okay, I should stop using the word totally so much, right?
Maximally, it's really going to change your life.
This is going to be the difference between a happy life and a not happy life.
And like a seriously not happy life.
And the choice is this, right?
So when you were a child, you had to do what people told you to do.
Now that you're an adult...
You don't. You really, truly, completely, maximally and totally don't have to do what people tell you to do.
If you decide that you are going to spend the rest of your life doing what people tell you to do, you will feel like shit.
For the rest of your natural born life.
And that's not really very good.
And that's really not very good.
When we do what other people tell us to do, we feel like we get this relief, like people say, yay, she's drunk, ooh, she's so cool, what a cool drinking chick, right?
And we feel like that's good, we get a little thrill, and we feel like approved of, and it's natural, we're social creatures, we want this, there's nothing wrong with that feeling, you just, you know, there's nothing wrong with being curious about heroin, either just, you know, don't try it so much, right? So we feel accepted, we feel warm, we feel cozy, everyone's approving of us, and if we don't drink when people want us to drink, then they sort of roll their eyes and say, oh, don't be so uptight, don't be such a square, and we feel anxiety, right?
We feel like, oh God, I'm being disapproved of, and my friends don't like me anymore, and I'm going to spend the rest of my life alone and probably end up digging for food and garbage and whatever, right?
I mean, there's all these disasters that we paint for ourselves if we...
Don't do what people want us to do, right?
But I'm telling you, I'm telling you, it is a seriously bad idea.
It is the worst idea in the world to make your decisions on what people think you should do.
Now, I'm not telling you anything that any stupid after-school special hasn't told you already, but I'm trying to sort of take a different approach in saying that there's an option.
There's an option. You don't You don't have to do what people tell you to do.
You don't have to do what I tell you to do.
The option is really to think for yourself.
I'm going to invite you into a conversation that tens of thousands of people are joining in, which is this conversation here, which is about truth and philosophy and integrity and How to make decisions without anybody telling you what to do and know that they're right.
And know that those decisions are right, which is kind of what philosophy is about, right?
How is it you're going to decide what is right and what is wrong?
Well, you can either Take your cues from what people tell you is right and wrong, or good and bad, or cool and not cool, or whatever.
And then you're just kind of like a slave, right?
You're just like, whatever people say, that's what I'm going to do, and that's just going to make you miserable.
Because then it's kind of like you don't exist.
You're like a puppet, and other people are puppets, and nobody's making any decisions.
They're just kind of going with the flow.
It's as silly as, you know, I saw this on a video, so it's cool, and I'm going to...
Like, it's nonsense, right? It's complete nonsense.
And so you kind of don't exist.
If you just do what other people tell you to do, you don't exist.
You're just like an echo.
You yell across a canyon.
The sound comes back. It's not like anyone else is talking to you.
The wall is reflecting back what you say.
Echo, echo, echo.
The second nobody's speaking, it just sounds like they are.
And that's what you become when you do what other people tell you to do or you take your cues from what people think is cool or nerdy or geeky or square or whatever.
And if you don't exist, you can't fall in love.
You can't be happy because you're just kind of being a slave to what other people say and want.
And that's just not going to make you happy.
You're not going to be able to respect yourself.
You're not going to be able to respect yourself.
And if you like singing Aretha, this is the way to go.
Oh my god, the oldest references.
I have to update my music taste.
I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.
I'm trying to think of who did a cover of that recently.
Otis Redding? No, that's even older.
So... Your friends, as you call them, and you're putting value, as you say, in your email and in the IM conversation, you're putting value on these people because you've known them for 14 years.
Well, my young friend, let me tell you something.
There is only value in strength, courage, honesty, integrity, In virtue.
In goodness. In, you know, being a tough fighter for what is right and thinking for yourself.
There's only virtue.
There's only value in that.
And I'm not saying that like as I made it up.
This is like something that everybody knows deep down.
But, you know, it's a tough thing to do and nobody wants to talk about it.
And I think it's tougher for women than it is for men.
I think genuinely and totally it's tougher for women than it is for men.
Because men can handle, for a variety of reasons that aren't just psychological, men can handle rejection better than women.
First of all, We get it a lot, so we're sort of more used to it.
But we're not quite as wired in to the social stuff, right?
We can take the disapproval of friends a little bit more easily.
Women find it very tough, and this is not because women are weak.
It's basically because women have kids and they need a social network.
It's part of what nature helps you to survive with, but we kind of don't need it anymore, right?
Like, nature also allows you to have kids at 13.
Doesn't mean you should, right?
So it's not, and nature says eat nothing but chocolate and so on.
Well, actually, that's worth doing.
So you say that your friends have value because you've known them for 14 years.
Well, that's not true.
Like, fundamentally and totally, that's not true.
It's not true that your friends have value for 14 years.
It doesn't matter. If you get thrown in jail and you have a guard who brings you food, And you know that God every day for 14 years.
That doesn't make him a friend.
That doesn't make him a good person.
It's just someone you've known for 14 years.
Doesn't make them good. Doesn't make them valuable.
Doesn't make them virtuous. And it sure as hell doesn't make them somebody who's really interested in you as an individual and being good and kind and warm and strong with you.
So, the thing that you're saying that is the most important Is that you think that your friends have value because you've known them for a long time.
So you notice you don't say, my friends are really good people.
Because if your friends were really good people, they wouldn't encourage you to drink and then come down on you like a ton of bricks for drinking.
They wouldn't say, drink, drink, drink, chug, chug, chug, and then say, you know, she really changes.
She gets really bitchy when she drinks.
That's not the actions of a good person.
A good person doesn't do that.
That's the equivalent of when my older brother would sort of grab my hand and make me punch myself with it and say, stop hitting yourself.
It's not good for you. It's like, well, I'm going to take this now, but when I'm older, and quite a bit older, I'm going to do a podcast.
Because passive aggression is a virtue.
But... You can only judge people by what they do.
You can't judge them as good by the fact that they're your parents or your brother or your cousin or your teacher or your this or your that, right?
None of that means anything. That's just a bunch of nonsense.
The only way that you know if somebody's a good person is what do they do?
Are they doing good things, right?
It doesn't mean saying good things doesn't mean anything.
Anyone can say good things, but do good things, right?
Do good things. Can you do good things?
Can you do... Are people doing good things?
And if they're doing good things consistently, then they're good people and you should wrap your heart around them and lock it up and throw away the key.
But if they're not doing good things, then they're not...
See, I mean, you know this.
If they're not doing good things, then they're not good people, right?
If I say that I'm an athlete, and I'm a great skier, and I never ever have gone skiing, then am I a great skier?
Well, no, of course not, right?
It takes practice. So if people even just say the good things, and they don't do good, well, actually, even worse, like if they don't even say good things, Then they're kind of just like, I don't know, like a chimpanzee that can't play the piano, right? It's not bad.
They don't know, right?
They don't even know what a piano is.
But if they say good things and do bad things, then it's hypocritical, right?
Like if a doctor doesn't know the cure and doesn't give you the cure for whatever makes you sick, then he's not really that bad a doctor.
It's not corrupt totally because he just doesn't know the cure.
Maybe it's new or he's never heard of it.
But if he knows the cure and doesn't give you the cure, then he's really bad, right?
Because then he's like withholding, right?
So if somebody knows what virtue is and doesn't do what is good, then they're really bad, right?
Really bad. Because they're also going to pretend to be virtuous and then be bad, which is really confusing to people.
It makes a lot more people worse than just outright bad people do.
Okay, that's a little complicated.
Forget about that. Let's move on to you.
Let's get back to you. So, let's have a look-see at your friends, right?
So, a year ago, as you say, and I don't know what it is, and you certainly can let me know if you like.
I'll certainly keep it all anonymous.
Babette? Inside joke.
So, about a year ago, something bad happened, and you haven't been able to talk about it with your friends.
So what kind of freaking friends are these people?
What kind of friends are these people?
You can't be honest with them.
You can't tell them what's going on.
You've been spending a year and I know what a year is like with your friends when you're 18 because y'all got nothing but time to hang around and chat, right?
In a way that doesn't really happen so much when you get older.
So y'all got nothing but time and it's not like you're all too busy raising five kids or anything.
You've got time To talk about what's going on for you.
And you've had infinite clouds of hangouts to sit on, and no one's talked about anything.
Well, that's important. It is important that you don't want to talk to your friends, and I would listen to that part of you.
There's a part of you, my sister, that knows that your friends are not your friends.
There's a part of you that knows that your friends are not your friends, because otherwise you We would have talked to them about what's going on for you, which you should do and which friends are very helpful for.
Now, unless it's like a big thing, if it's a big thing, then go talk to a counselor.
Like, I'm serious about that. If it's like, I don't know, you were molested or you got beaten or you were raped or something, go talk to a counselor.
Even crappy stuff with your family, friends can't help you, right?
Like, I can't help you if you've got cancer, right?
You go to a specialist and the same thing is true.
I've done it. It's a very, very important thing to do if you're in this kind of situation, and go talk to a professional.
But your friends don't want to know, right?
So why did you start drinking?
Well, you give us the answer, right?
It's a cry for help, right?
You're drinking so that people will say, how come you started drinking?
And then you can burst into tears and tell them what happened to you.
And that would be a good start.
I mean, that would be right. A friend would say, you know, you started drinking and obviously it's too excess and it's in a self-destructive manner.
And it was a year ago, so why did you do that?
And what you're doing is you're showing distress in the hopes that somebody's going to give a rat's ass and ask you what the hell's going on.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
That's perfectly a decent thing to do, but I'm telling you, no one is coming.
I'm telling you that nobody is going to ask you that question.
Nobody. If they didn't ask you that question the first day that you showed up to work, depressed as hell because of this terrible thing that happened, it's not going to happen on the second day, it ain't going to happen on the third day if it didn't happen on the first day.
There's lots of reasons for that which we don't have to get into right now, but it sure as hell isn't going to happen after a year.
It sure as hell isn't going to happen after a year.
So, the choice that you're going to make is, are you going to think for yourself, or are you going to do what people want you to do?
Are you going to be a slave to the empty-headed idiots in society, or are you going to think for yourself?
And it is that stark and that tough a choice.
It is that solid a choice, my sister.
Are you going to think for yourself?
Now, that doesn't mean much to you right now, right?
When I say, oh, you've got to think for yourself, you're like, yeah, I know, I know, I've got to think for myself, okay.
Sorry, I'm insulting you.
You're probably not a Valley girl. But weirdly, I can do the accent and I'm not even going to try and figure out why.
So, yeah, of course I think for myself.
I'm trying to figure out what I want to do with my future.
I brush my teeth all on my own.
I exercise or whatever it is you do.
So, yeah, I know. But I'm talking about thinking about yourself, like about the important stuff in life, right?
The really important stuff in life, which is like what is true?
What is good? What am I going to do to make the world a better place?
How am I going to become a better person and not be somebody...
Who hangs around a tribe of people who don't really care about me, plasters on a smile and drinks, rather than Be honest.
Because that's what philosophy really comes down to.
Be honest. And it's not really about making stuff up and thinking like, you know, like if you don't know the capital of Mozambique, you just got to look it up.
You can't sort of figure it out. It's not like you...
It doesn't respond to like a logical examination.
But what you know or what is going on for you with your friends, you know everything and totally and completely.
You know everything that there is to know already.
And I'll also tell you this, that you're terrified of your friends.
You are bone-stinking terrified of your friends.
And I totally understand that.
I mean, that's the natural consequence, right?
When I say that a slave can't be happy, it's because slaves live in terror.
Slaves live in terror.
Don't be that person who lives in terror.
The whole world is full of people who are enslaved to everyone else.
You know, there's six billion. The world doesn't need six billion and one, right?
The world is already full to overflowing with people who Just obey everyone and are slaves to every opinion around.
We don't need another. Let's break out just a little bit.
The world can handle a couple of thousand people, a couple of ten thousand people who don't do this.
The planet shall survive.
In fact, I think that the planet might in fact flourish if we stop doing what everyone tells us to do.
But you don't need to add to that number.
And clearly you're an intelligent enough person and you have amazing instincts, very good instincts, which I'm sort of going to point out now just as we finish up this chat.
Thank you again. For your patience in listening to this, and I hope that it's not just a bunch of empty-headed, vaguely British ranting.
So, you're terrified of your friends, and that's not me making stuff up.
I'm just working with the evidence that you've provided, where you say, my friends, like one of my friends has told me that my friends make fun of me when I'm drunk or think that I'm a bitch when I'm drunk or whatever.
And you say, and this person doesn't lie.
Well, that's not true.
I can totally see how you would see that, but it's not true.
I'm just going off the evidence.
So your friend who finally fessed up after a year and said people just mock you when you're drunk or they think that you're weird or bitchy when you're drunk, you say, this person doesn't lie.
Well, kind of, yeah, right?
Kind of they do. Kind of they do.
She does lie because for a year she didn't tell you this.
That's kind of important.
And the question is, why did she tell you now?
And if you can answer that question or dig into that question, you will learn everything you need to know about all of your friends and your family to boot.
But we can talk about that another time.
Just, I would suggest, really sit down and think about, why did she tell you now?
Why did she wait for a year and why did she tell you now?
Knowing how much it was going to hurt.
Knowing how much it was going to hurt.
These little questions lead to amazing new lives.
So you say that you've heard these terrible things that your friends have said about you, and now you've got a plaster on a smile, go out and pretend to be nice, and it's so fake.
Well, it is. Of course it is.
So why are you doing it? Why?
Why? I mean, this is an essential question.
Why are you doing it? If your friends have been bad-mouthing you behind your back for a year, saying that you're horrible when you're drunk, and then encouraging you to drink, please, come on, you don't need a philosopher to tell you what kinds of people these are.
You don't need a dermatologist to tell you when you've got a pimple.
You don't need a philosopher to tell you what kind of people these are.
You really, really don't.
And you're terrified of them.
Thank you.
So why is it that you go out with them, plaster on a smile, and pretend that everything is hunky-dory?
A-okay, right?
Well, because they scare the shit out of you.
You're terrified. And why wouldn't you be?
They're really mean, nasty people.
And I don't care how long you've known them for.
You've known them long enough to know this is true.
That they're not good people.
They're not nice people. These are pretty bad people.
And they will attack you.
And they will badmouth you.
And they will, frankly, fuck you up.
You're 18, so you can hear that word now.
They will frankly fuck you up royally if you cross them, right?
You're kind of in a social mafia.
Kind of, not kind of, right?
I mean, they'll trash you, right?
And social trashing for women is as awful as being beaten up is for men.
So I'm not downgrading how totally horrible this is in every way for you, right?
Facing this possibility of being socially trashed by these people who clearly take no prisoners when it comes to inflicting social norms on people.
It's okay. Car stopped. I don't need my hands on the wheel.
They will royally fuck you up socially.
They will make you a pariah.
They will, like, cast you out.
You will be in the wilderness if you cross them.
And that is just totally horrible.
That is, like, the worst thing ever.
And I totally get that. But you totally got to do it.
Right? Sorry, but, you know...
Chemotherapy sucks too, but you've got to do it.
You've got to do it. You've got to do it.
And the way to do it is not to just sort of freeze them out or whatever.
But with this friend who you think is telling you the truth, you can sit down with her and say, well, this thing happened a year ago and no one's ever asked me what it was and then talk to her about it.
If they are, if you think people are your friends, then treat them like they're your damn friends.
Talk to them about what's going on for you.
Be honest. Be open.
Be true. Be yourself.
Tell them what's going on for you.
If they're your friends, it will work out beautifully.
If they're not your friends, then stop wasting your time with them because it's going to mean that you will never ever have a happy life in the future.
You'll never be able to fall in love.
You'll be a shitty mom to your kids.
You'll never have a satisfying day in your life.
If you end up staying enslaved to these people who are just screwing you up already, right?
You didn't have a choice with your family.
You didn't have a choice with your family.
You got a family that sucked the wet one, and I'm totally sorry about that.
You didn't have a choice. You didn't have a choice.
Now, my sister, you have a choice.
You are not enslaved to your friends in the way that you were enslaved to your family.
Now you have a choice, and you've really got to start exercising it.
So you might want to start listening to some of this...
Free Domain Radio stuff. I wish I could refer you to someone else, but I don't know anyone else who's having these kinds of conversations, so I'm not sure that I can, but this is all stuff you know, and do stay in contact, and do let us know how everything's going.
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