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Nov. 20, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:32:27
"I was the child of assault..." Freedomain Call In
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All right. Hi, everybody. I'm here with Eric.
And, you know, there are emails that I get that I can put on hold.
There are emails that I get that seem, I mean, so vivid and powerful that I just really feel that time is of the essence.
And I guess yours was one of those emails.
Thanks for taking the time to chat.
Absolutely. So would you like me to read the email off for you?
Yeah, yeah, please. Hello, Stefan.
I may as well be blunt about this with you and tell you that at a very young age, I was informed I was essentially a rape baby.
As I grew older, outside of the physical abuse I grew up with, I frequently dealt with the most scarring thing I could be told, which was that you are acting just like your father or other such comments like that.
It's something that truly plagues me, and the childhood upbringing has definitely affected my personal and romantic life, as I've had one relationship in my life, and she herself was physically abusive.
My main question is, a child is such a situation, how do I find it in myself to tell myself I deserve to have my own family, because the fear of how similar I may be to my father, yet having never met him, does plague me?
Yeah, I mean, that is one hell of a story, and I'm, like, I'm really sorry for what you have to deal with, what you have to face, and for the appalling way in which your family has attempted to rope you into the sins of your father, which is, of course, unfair, unjust.
And I just really wanted to start off by expressing massive, deep sympathy for all of this.
No, I appreciate it.
I appreciate that. Unfortunately, the story does get a little bit worse the more in-depth it gets, but yeah.
Listen, man, take me on a journey.
Tell me what you need to tell me and I'll hear.
Alright, so yeah, it does start with...
I'll just start with the story of the essential, right?
Because I'm sure there's questions around the word essentially, right?
So what happened is I was told that my mother, when my grandparents were moving to a farm, they were living in a city, she didn't want to join them, and so she called child services and made up a story about being abused.
So child services took her, put her in a foster home, and then in the foster home, the foster father is my biological father.
Okay, so let me just make sure I follow that.
So your grandmother was moving to the country, your mother didn't want to go, so she made up a story about being abused and she put herself basically in the hands of a pedophile or a rapist.
How old was she at this time?
She would have been 15 when she called child services.
She would have gotten pregnant with me when she was 16.
Right, so she took her chances with a stranger and Rather than her own mother, right?
Yes. And have you ever talked to the grandmother about this?
Briefly. The only things I ever got told was that my mother was a problem child growing up where she would frequently try and very hardly be with popular crowds and she would try to use her looks to To be popular.
And she didn't want to be removed from that clique in that area.
So that's why she did what she did to try and stay.
I mean, my mother, when I was growing up, did tell me that she was hit and stuff like that.
But when I asked my grandparents about it, they outright denied anything like that and say that it was just stuff she made up to be taken out of the house.
Okay, so your mother is identified as the problem child in that family.
Is that right? Yeah.
I mean, that seems odd to me that the parents would say that the child is the problem.
I mean, the parents... Raise the child, which is not, of course, to say that there are innate aspects to personality and there's IQ, it's largely genetic, but nonetheless, call me crazy, but I like to think that parents have a smidge of an effect on the outcome of their kids, right? So do you know?
To me, parents calling a child a problem child is a problem.
No, I agree. There's a lot of haziness in all the stories I've been told, but there's consistent through lines I can follow to kind of figure out what happened and why I'm around.
But when it comes to accountability of what was done to who, I have legitimately conflicting stories from different parties, from both my grandparents and my mother for that.
Right. Okay, but what you do know, at least what seems to be the case, is that your mother ended up in a foster home wherein she was raped at the age of 15 or 16.
I know you said she had you at 16.
Was she raped when she was 15? Do you know?
My understanding is she was put in a foster home, the guy was married with his own kids, and then he took advantage of her in the basement, and then eventually, somehow, it started off however it did, but then she decided that she wanted to try.
Hang on, hang on, hang on. It started off however it did.
That's kind of the key thing, as far as the relationship, the origins of the relationship.
So what do you mean when you say it started off however it did?
What did it mean? I honestly don't have an in-depth story, but all I have is that she was put in a foster home.
According to my grandparents, she was taken advantage of, and then she afterwards decided that she wanted to try and make something with her foster father because she was pregnant with me and didn't want to give up pregnancy.
Okay, so hang on a sec.
Taken advantage of...
Versus rape? Not the same thing, morally.
It doesn't mean one's right.
I mean, obviously, rape is wrong. It doesn't mean taking advantage of a girl who's 15 or 16 when you're an adult is not wrong, but it's not the same as— It's hard to translate it into your head as statutory rape, though.
Like, the whole, you know, you can't properly consent to something because the person has a massive position of authority over you— That does fall into that category, does it not?
Well, I mean, look, this is a very big moral question, but if your mother, if the story is correct, put herself into the situation voluntarily, was incredibly harsh to your grandmother, because your grandmother could have been arrested, or I don't know if she was, right, for these accusations of abuse to the point where the child gets pulled out of the home, that's pretty harsh, right?
Yeah. All right. There is a difference, morally, between pedophilia and statutory rape.
And again, they're both wrong, don't get me wrong.
But if your mother was in this, I don't know, Billie Eilish might seduce your dad phase, then it's wrong and it's bad, obviously, but it is not quite the same as holding a knife to a woman's throat.
No, I do agree with that.
That's why I do try to say, essentially, there's a statutory part of it, and I don't know how, because I wasn't told how everything initially started when it came to those things.
All I knew is that, according to my grandparents, the wife at the time did not know what he was doing with her in the basement, and then next thing you know, she's pregnant, and he's messing around with her, and that family ends up in turmoil.
Well, and your mother, I guess, wanted to or was interested in having a relationship with this man, right?
I guess. I mean, from my understanding, you didn't stick around very long at all.
No, no, but sorry. Which I guess can't be too surprising.
I want to make sure I get the story straight here.
So, you know, it's your story and please correct me where I go astray.
But your mother wanted to have a relationship with your father, biological father.
It does seem that way, yeah.
I mean, she gave me his last name, so...
Well, no. So, I mean, did she tell you that?
Or did the grandmother? No.
Grandparents. The grandparents did.
Okay. Well, I think that we can probably assume that that's the case.
Or at least I think it's fair to assume that that's the case, right?
Well, yeah. And I have to assume that's the case because they at some point had to meet him in order to correlate that my behavior replicates him or that in some ways I'm similar, right?
Yeah. Well, I wouldn't rely on anyone in this family.
This is going to be one of my central arguments over the course of this conversation, Eric.
Do not rely on anyone in this family to tell you much truth.
At least regarding anything that's harmful to you would be enormously suspect.
So... So, do you think that your mother, or do you have any idea, I guess you know your mother's birthday, you know your birth date, do you have any sense of whether she was 15 or 16 when she was impregnated?
I would say that she was 16.
Okay, okay. Now, there are lots of places in the world where the age of consent is 16 or lower.
Yeah. Again, I'm not going to argue whether that's appropriate or inappropriate and so on.
It's a matter of law. But there are many places in the world where you would be the result of an affair rather than statutory rape.
And again, I know that the age difference can play into it in some areas and so on.
But it's not the same as, again, a woman dragged into an alley and held at knife point.
It's not the same as if she was 5 or 10 or whatever, right?
She certainly would be, I assume, sexually mature.
No, I agree with that. Yeah, so she certainly at this point is sexually mature and...
Where you don't have to tell me where you are, but there certainly are places in the world where you would not be considered, many, many places in the world, and perhaps even the majority of places in the world, you would not be considered a rape baby.
Yeah, my issue is that when it comes down to parental authority in that situation, that's where it really, like, the entire situation I find is disgusting and it's haunted, but it does come down also to the position of authority thing, too, where she's in his care.
And you could be totally abusing that.
Listen, man, it's wrong.
He also can't say he didn't know her age, right?
I mean, anyone you get from Child Protective Services, you shouldn't be...
Anyway, so don't get me wrong.
It's sordid. It's gross.
It's wrong and so on.
But rape is such a primal and powerful word that I would very much hesitate to...
To found my identity on that word in this situation.
Fair. Like I said, to me, it's still hard to make the difference between the whole statutory side of things because of the position of power and then also having a kid like that, a girl, who's susceptible like that.
Oh, yeah. Again, it's wrong.
I mean, I'm going to really, really be clear about that.
And, you know, in many places in the world, it would be criminal.
But was he charged?
No, from my understanding, he wasn't.
Right. Right.
Is there any guarantee that this is how she got pregnant?
It's the only story I've ever been told about who my father was.
Because, you know, if your mom is unstable enough that she's lying about being abused and all of that in order to get away from moving away, again, lots of things can be suspect in this situation.
But the thing is that they did give you the name, is that right, of your biological father?
Yeah. Only the last name.
I only know his last name. So I assume it's Smith or something that's really, really hard to trace.
Is that right? No, it's Polish.
It's pretty easy to trace, I would think.
Not Polish people in the West.
But okay, so you could get in touch with him.
Is it my understanding that you could get in touch with him if you so desired?
I don't know.
When I was in high school, my half-sister on the father's side tried to contact me.
And at this point, I had been told that whole story.
So I had no interest whatsoever in associating myself with that side of the family.
And when I had told her that I'm like, I think that my father was essentially a rapist and that I think that he was a terrible person.
I have no interest in associating with her.
She didn't push back against that.
She said okay and then left me alone.
And who was that? That was my half-sister on the father's side.
On your biological father's side?
Yeah. But if you know the half-sister, then you would know him, wouldn't you?
Well, I don't know.
She tried to contact me via Facebook, and that's the only thing.
And she messaged me, and I replied, basically telling her to leave me alone with that message.
And then I'd never had communication lines open with them ever since.
Okay, so when you said that you thought you were the product of rape, she didn't disagree, right?
Yeah. Okay, okay.
So, I mean, that's, I guess, evidence for, but without further questioning, it's hard to say, right?
And you've never seen, I assume, a picture or anything like that of him, right?
No. Right, okay.
All I was told is that he was a tall, skinny man, and my mother ended up being quite morbidly obese, so out of my complete revulsion to try and be like either one of them, I ended up as a bodybuilder.
Go figure. Yeah. Oh, is that right?
Wow. Yeah. I just wanted to make sure that I was nothing like him, that people couldn't say I looked like him, that I couldn't have that held against me, and I didn't want to be like my mother, so I went to an extreme of another.
Oh, well, yeah, I know all about that, man.
My mother's kind of crazy and anti-rational and mystical, so I ended up, well, doing what I do, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
And honestly, that's kind of, like, a big reason why I wanted to end up talking, because, like, I hear your story about, and I can draw certain degrees of parallels.
I don't want to say, like, we walk down the same road or anything like that.
I don't want to be unfair to your story, as I don't know all of it, but the snippets that you've It's one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you because I see you tell stories and you have, from what I see, a very happy family.
You have an amazing daughter and it's something that I want to try to emulate, but it's hard for me to rationalize in my head everything that's gone out of childhood, where I came from and how similar I may be to a person who did something so heinous, and then try to justify that, why I should be allowed to have a family.
If personality traits and certain traits can be genetic, then I don't want to, I don't know, like, how do I justify that to myself?
And what personality traits do you think would figure in this that might be genetic?
I honestly don't know.
It's just pure speculation and worry.
Well, okay. So if you worry, the first thing you need to do is get facts, right?
Because you can't ever deal with worry without facts.
Because, you know, worry is just chipping around and roaming around without objective information, right?
Yeah. So, okay.
As far as...
Hang on. So as far as...
Genetically transferred preferences, do you find yourself wanting to cheat on your girlfriend or when you had your girlfriend?
Do you find yourself attracted to young ladies, let's say?
I mean, is there anything that's empirically occurring within your heart and mind that...
Would give you empirical data that you might be having similar tendencies?
No. I mean, I wanted out of my relationship quickly, but I kept getting roped back into it.
But I didn't want to cheat, and I also didn't...
I definitely don't have attractions to younger females.
I like girls my own age, so...
Right. Okay, so what does that tell you?
That maybe I shouldn't be as worried, but it's still something like...
Fairly, maybe I shouldn't be as worried because I'm not showing all these signs of that.
It's in the back of my head constantly because I'm still related to this guy.
Well, but here's the thing, right?
I mean, you were related to him.
And, or you are related to him, and you took the different approach in terms of becoming a bodybuilder, right?
Yeah. So you could say that his body type as reported to you kind of drove you in the opposite direction, right?
On the other direction. Yeah.
So what does that tell you about free will and choice and influence and history?
Well, I obviously have a degree of power over myself.
I'm not going to be susceptible to my past.
It doesn't have to define me.
Well, yeah. And listen, defining yourself by the opposite...
Is, you know, people say, oh, well, if you just do the opposite of what your parents did, then you're still somehow trapped in the cycle of blah, blah, blah, right?
And that's crap, you know?
If you've got a father who's a murderer and you end up not murdering, you're not trapped in the cycle of murder.
You're not murdering, right?
And if your father had this, you know, horrible predilection for girls and you don't, Good.
You know, that's evidence, right?
That's evidence that the genetics didn't transfer, right?
In which case, most likely what happened was your father had some experience when he was a boy that put him in a compromised position vis-a-vis his own sexuality.
In other words, he had something where his sexuality was distorted in some manner, some childhood sexual abuse or inappropriate situation or something like that, if that makes any sense.
Okay, and if something like that were to happen, is that something that's going to be constantly with you, or is there a chance that that just might spring up on you, because I'm not exactly free of that one either myself?
Well, I think you're in your 20s, is that right?
Yeah. Yeah, okay.
So, by the time you're in your 20s, My belief and what I know, and again, I'm just an amateur, so take it all with a grain of salt, but my belief is that, my understanding is that your sexuality is pretty much formed by the time you're in your 20s.
So I don't think it's like, it's sort of like a guy who's 60 doesn't sit there and say, you know what, I'm finally going to surrender to peer pressure and start smoking.
That doesn't really happen, right?
It doesn't really work that way.
If you have a gene for alcoholism, or if you have genetic tendencies towards alcoholism, right?
I mean, it's the Dr.
Phil, Donald Trump thing, right?
But I think they had siblings who died of alcoholism, so they don't touch alcohol, right?
So if you have a gene that makes you more susceptible to alcoholism, you probably know within a couple of weeks of taking your first drink whether you love it or not, right?
But I don't think you'd be, like, let's say you drink, I don't know, a couple of times a month, and you've been doing it since you were 19, and now you're 25, and you're like, well, you know, I can take it or leave it.
I don't really have a strong desire for drink.
If it's not available to me, that's no problem.
Then I don't think it's like, aha, but next year, boy, you're really going to feel like becoming an alcoholic.
Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, that's fair.
And so, with regards to Your father, if the warping of his sexuality was environmental, not genetic, in other words, if something happened to him that caused him to be sexually dysfunctional in this manner,
and the same thing didn't happen to you, or you processed it in a different way, then it would seem to me that You're kind of off the hook as far as that goes.
In other words, I wouldn't put a lot of money on you turning into your dad, if that makes any sense.
No, I get that. I mean, I don't know if it matters in that sense, but I mean, he is older than my grandparents, so he also was doing this stuff when he was older than my grandparents, so there's obviously a lot of massive age thing into that, so it's not like he was young doing it.
Right. And, you know, when I was growing up in England, there were known in the neighborhood, like, the dirty old men.
You know, like the dirty old man who, you know, like, just, it was, you know, you could just tell.
It was like seedy, they were half-shaven, and, you know, only the bravest of children went through their garbage, and, you know, whatever, right?
I mean, it's just, it's seedy and gross.
And I remember thinking about that when I learned about that as a child, and I remember thinking, gosh, man, that would be terrible to be that old and still creepy.
I mean, it's not good to be creepy at any age, but man, you can make it to 60 or 70 and still be a creepy old son of a bitch, right?
And if that's where your biological father ended up, then that's a shame.
But I don't think that he was fine until he was 50.
That doesn't seem to happen.
I mean, from what I've heard, and I've had emails and so on, and people say, you know, I've been fighting these urges since I can remember.
I've been fighting these urges since I hit puberty.
I've been fighting these urges since blah, blah, blah, right?
I've never had anyone email me and say, you know, everything was fine until I turned 30, you know, and then everything changed, right?
Your personality is... It kind of hardens, especially in your 20s, right?
I mean, most of it is set by the time you're 5, but definitely your brain maturity is sort of mid to late 20s.
Whatever hasn't happened by then, it's not going to happen, you know?
Like, I mean, I don't know how many people developed schizophrenia in their 30s and 40s, but my understanding is it's very few, if any.
Okay, yeah. No, that's understandable.
Yeah, that's fair. Okay, so what happened with the girl?
Um, so I would tell her like, um, basically all the events of my childhood and, um, she, uh, would basically try and convince me that because not only do I look like a freak, but my past is so damaged that nobody is ever going to be able to properly love me.
Wait, wait, you mean you look like a freak? Like, okay, how swole are you?
What are we talking here? I'm 5'9", 260 pounds.
Oh my god, so you're like half wider than you are tall, right?
Yeah, pretty much. All right, all right, okay.
All right, so let's go back a little bit earlier than that and tell me about meeting this girl and all that.
She was a personal trainer at a gym that I went to and it started off relatively okay.
I mean, and I tried to like lay out Because I just figured if I lay out some of my political opinions that may seem controversial and she isn't opposed to it, then we can actually see if we get along.
So I tried with that and she was somewhat okay with it.
So I was like, okay, we can try and explore this.
And then that completely flipped on me.
That was not the case at all.
Was it like a Trump thing or was it something else or what?
She's just gone more and more and more heavily socialist slash communist and I've gone more to the anarcho side of things and heavily capitalist side of things and then it became a massively conflict thing and the first argument we had was about the fundamentals of Islam and when I told her that Islam itself needs submission she got extremely upset with me and said that wasn't true Until I showed it to her,
and she still denied it and said she has a relative who's in the way to become an imam, and everything I'm saying is obviously wrong because they're nice.
Right. Right.
And so you said in your email that she herself had been attacked, right?
Well, yeah, she does have a history of...
Being physically abusive and also being abused herself.
I mean, I didn't know this going into it, and when I was told this about you, I know, but she's had two abortions herself.
And because of that, she's heavily very pro-abortion.
She wants everybody basically to try and have one kind of thing.
Wait, wait. She wants people to have an abortion?
She wants every girl to have the opportunity to do so, and she doesn't want any stigma around it, and she almost is borderline promoting the idea of having one.
Wow. Holy shit, man.
That's fucked up.
Yeah. And then the irony of it that I've never been able to rationalize is that she is also vegan because she hates the idea of herding animals, and it's an irony I've never been able to rationalize to myself.
Well, I mean, sociopathy and sentimentality often go hand in hand, right?
The cruelty to people with great sentimentality towards animals often goes hand in hand.
And it is, you know, Hitler was nice to dogs, you know?
It is tragically...
Co-joined. They're co-joined.
And very sentimental people are incredibly dangerous, in my experience.
And the sentimentality is kind of a camouflage.
In other words, she tells you she's vegan, so she thinks that you're...
So you think she's really nice.
And then... Right?
The truth comes out, right? Yeah.
And how long did you guys go out for?
Close to a year. We'd broken up at least twice.
Yeah, I know, right? When somebody's in your head and telling you that you're basically stuck because you're too damaged and going to be too unattractive-looking, you kind of make dumb decisions.
I'm not trying to make an excuse for being manipulated, but it is what it is at this point.
So she really crushed your self-esteem to the point where you were lucky to have her because you're such damaged goods, right?
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you and I know now, but other people listening to this, man, you gotta run from those people like they're falling boulders at the beginning of an Indiana Jones movie.
You gotta just sprint from those people.
They will take you apart limb by limb.
They can leave you an emotional cripple to the point where you gotta have months or years of emotional rehab just to get the hell out of the wheelchair, right?
Yeah. It was such a remarkably unhealthy situation.
She used to brag to people at the gym that she would hit me, and they would think it was wrong, but she would say, well, he's so big, it's the only way I can communicate to him, so it's okay.
That's a dark gym culture you've got going on there, brother.
Man. Yeah.
Oh, man. And what did...
Most of them thought it was wrong.
Yeah, yeah. And did your friends say anything about this lunatic?
Well, my grandparents urged me to get out of the relationship.
Some of the friends were like, she shouldn't be hitting you.
You know that, obviously. I'm like, yeah, I know.
I know. I don't know what to do.
I'm trying to get her to stop it.
If you disagree with her, it's an automatic meltdown and then becomes quite physical very quickly.
And I didn't want to hit her back or do anything back because if I did, she died pretty much.
There was always justification in my head because I'm so much bigger if I do anything, then I'm screwed.
Yeah, you're doomed. And was she in your age bracket?
A couple years older.
Oh, boy. And I assume that as a personal trainer, she had, you know, yoga butt or bubble butt or like, was there some physical attribute that you found particularly compelling?
Yeah, she was physically attractive.
And I think a lot of it was, like, if I'm damaged, so was she.
So therefore, like, it could, in my head, it was like, we can bond in that, because she had terrible relationships, she'd been divorced, and I had a shit childhood, so if we both were broken and had bad pasts, then maybe it could somehow work, because then I won't have to be harshly judged by anybody else.
Right, just sort of, we're in Mordor together, we'll find a way out, right?
And so you touched on, I think, sexual abuse in the past in your childhood.
But what happened outside of what you've told me about your origin story?
What happened in your childhood that would put you in this woman's category?
So when I was growing up, my mother, she had more boyfriends that I honestly could count.
And she's had multiple kids with multiple men.
And most of those men that were around were very abusive.
And one of them, he would hit me a lot when she wasn't around.
And when I would tell my mom that he was abusing me despite having bruises, she wouldn't believe me because he would deny it.
She was so desperate to have a man stick around.
Sorry, hang on.
Was it for codependence emotionally or was it for money?
Why was she so desperate to have these men around?
It was definitely emotional.
Oh, so she was able to make enough money for her family?
She was working two jobs, had me babysat a lot, and had me taken care of by the boyfriends who didn't really work.
They were just around.
Man, that's rough. Man, that's rough.
The one time he did admit to hitting me was one time when he grabbed me by the throat, picked me up, and slammed me.
I hit the back of my head on, like, there's wood in the cushion of the corner of a couch, and I hit my head on the back of that.
And when I complained to my mom that he'd hit me again, he said, well, I only threw him onto the couch, so it didn't hurt anyways.
And all of this was, like, when I was below the age of nine.
Um, eventually what happened was my mother thought I was insane or something.
They drove me to the hospital where they then strapped me to a bed, um, to prevent me from running or moving or do anything.
And they left me there for overnight before the doctors came back and finally unstrapped me and told me that I was gonna be there for a while.
Um, And I remember at one point, I somehow managed to wiggle myself, so my foot was ripping one of the straps, and the doctor was like, can you not do that?
We need this for later. And I'm like, you're strapping this bed.
Are you still going to try and rationalize with me?
And then I got put in foster homes, where at this point, I mean, I feel...
I don't want to justify it, but it's understandable that I was quite...
A violent kid at this point, but I wasn't violent to other kids.
I would try to fight the teachers or other adults or principals or the foster parents.
I was violent towards them, but not other kids.
Yeah, because you had been aggressed against from adults, right?
Yeah. I got passed around a lot.
I ended up having, apparently, I had my own lawyer at some point.
And then...
I got put around a lot.
I think I was in about four or five different foster homes.
And then when my mother finally got custody of me back, he was still around.
So I got put back in the household with him there.
And then, not a week later, he actually was violent towards me in front of her.
He dragged me out to my room.
He punched me, I think, as hard as he could in my leg, because I was basically kind of crawling my way out of my room at that point.
He then took my mother into her room and I basically heard her get sexually assaulted because at least that's what I think it was because by the time I dragged myself to her bedroom door, she was disrobed and lying on the bed crying and he'd taken off.
Wow.
Or maybe your mom was into that stuff.
I She was putting up a lot of a protest.
When he hit me, she was very upset.
And then it was quite violent the way he took her out of the room.
And there was a lot of protest that was going on in the next room.
And then he just left and that was that.
Yeah, no, no, I get it.
I get it. But, you know...
Any man or woman who repeatedly invites a violent person to their house and their bed is getting some, you know, what they call secondary gains, right?
So the secondary gains are things that aren't obvious, but people like, you know, like people, oh, I'm sick.
Well, that's bad. Oh, but I get a lot of attention.
That's a secondary gain. Gain, right?
Like the Munchausen by proxy where the mom pretends or makes the child sick, but she gets a lot of secondary gains, right?
So this is an old point from Camille Paglia that some of these violent relationships, maybe the men are into that, other women are into that.
And that's tragically and sadly and dysfunctionally how they get their rocks off, right?
So again, we're talking about your mom and all that, so I get it.
But... It's okay.
I'm not very sentimental towards her.
But I'm aware that we're sort of treading all over the maternal image and all that.
But maybe a lot of women have rape fantasies, which of course is not the same as being raped.
And I understand what's in your head versus what happens in the world are not at all the same thing.
But this whole, you know, I posted this on Twitter the other day, like my whole life I've been told about, oh, Ayn Rand had these rough sex scenes and it was so degrading to women, it was so horrible to women, it's so disrespectful to women, women hate that stuff.
And then Fifty Shades of Grey comes along and...
You know, you lift the lid, right?
You sort of see where a lot of female sexuality is these days, and it's really shitty.
You know, I got an email just yesterday from a guy who was like, yeah, you know, I don't like dating these girls because they always want this rough stuff in bed and I really don't feel comfortable about it.
It's like... Oh, that's gross.
I'm telling you to sound all kind of prudish and square, but, you know, like, eee.
So, yeah, it's just, you know, there is, you know, there are probably a lot of women and a lot of men who were turned on by violence.
And your mom sounds like she's one of them.
Again, I'm not saying she wasn't assaulted.
I mean, I don't know, but...
If you keep inviting those guys into your bed and their violence, you know, I mean, it's the old argument that if you leave your wallet on a park bench in New York and you come back two days later, it's not going to be there.
Now, whoever stole it was wrong.
Sure. Absolutely. You know, catch him and throw him in jail or whatever.
But it's kind of stupid to do that.
Right. And yeah, if this guy assaulted your mom, yeah, he was wrong.
He should go to jail and all of that.
But if you keep inviting violent guys into your bed, it's Russian roulette, man.
Sooner or later, it's going to happen, almost for certain.
And then my mother ended up fleeing the province to go live in Alberta with me.
And what she would do, and the way she found these men, it was the start of, I think, basically the internet, the whole dating thing at this point, very early stages of it.
And she met a dude online she decided just to go move in with.
And she took me along.
And then a few months later, or not a few months, like a few weeks later, she's telling me that he's breaking into her room.
And basically, I know what she meant now, but beforehand she said, oh, he was doing something, sled.
And now, from the sounds of it, basically she was inferring that he was masturbating, watching her sleep.
And then that's why she moved out.
Well, and how old were you when you heard this lovely story?
I was younger.
I was about nine at that point.
Jesus God. Yeah, I have no idea what the hell goes on in people's minds where they're just like, hey kid, you want to hear a story?
And it's like the craziest shit that you can imagine.
Yeah, I mean, before there was...
The internet, there were these newspaper ads that you could take out, like woman in 40s looking for a guy, blah, blah, blah, right?
And yeah, my mom used to take these ads out or answer these ads.
And I remember she went off to the States for a couple of weeks, leaving me with, I think, 25 bucks.
And, you know, didn't last all that long.
And, you know, I got kind of hungry and just had to hang around friends' places hoping that they'd invite me over for dinner.
And sometimes they did and sometimes they didn't.
And it's...
Yeah, it's bad. And of course, there is this kind of desperation when the women are getting older, right?
In which case, you know, they're starting to get a little dusty, a little creaky, a little cracked, so to speak, on the face and in the mind and heart.
But yeah, it is just weird.
Like, hey, kid, let me tell you what's going on.
It's like, you know that kid part of the conversation would be really nice if you remember that from time to time.
It's crazy. Yeah, it would be great.
It'd be great if at any point through the entirety of my childhood anybody bothered to listen or care or take the obvious warning signs and try and drag me out of the situation that I was in instead of throwing me back constantly.
But where to, right?
That's always the problem. Yeah, well that gets answered later on in the story.
Alright, so keep going. So my mother ended up marrying some native guy.
Who was very, very violent.
I don't understand in his head how he rationalizes this, but he hated white people, but he married a white woman with two white kids.
And then he would tell me that his prime idea of what he wanted to do in life, if he could, would be to go back in time and to be a native warrior and kill white people, despite himself also being half-white.
And he was extraordinarily abusive towards me.
And when he was around, he was very demeaning to basically me and my half-sister at the time, who my mother had with some guy again.
And then eventually, after a while of living with him...
After they get married, my grandparents come out to visit.
My grandmother invites me to come on a vacation with her in Ontario, and then that's it.
I don't go back.
She just keeps me. All right.
If you could cool it with the geographical references, that would be excellent.
Oh, sorry. No, no problem.
So what happened then with the vacation?
So when I went on the vacation, my grandmother just decided to keep me.
I told her what my stepfather was doing and how my mother was permitting it, and she just decided that I was not going back, that there was no way she was going to let me go back to there.
So she told my mom.
My mom threatened to call the police to try and drag me back, and there was a lot of back and forth, but my grandparents just refused to let me go back there.
Right. So you did get an escape route, right?
Yeah, much later in my life.
And then it was my grandparents who ended up telling me the whole story of where I came from.
My mother tried to say that the reason why I was abused or think that I was, because she still doesn't want to believe that the one guy hit me, was that she accidentally dropped me on my head when I was a baby, and I hit my head on a concrete floor, and that I made this stuff up. and I hit my head on a concrete floor, and Yeah, so your mom is a pathological liar.
right? Right.
And how long did you stay? How old were you when you went to your grandparents and how long did you stay?
I was with them.
I moved in with them when I was about 11 or 12.
And then from there, I just stayed with them until I was 17.
And then I joined the military.
And how were things with your grandparents?
Yeah. They were all right.
My grandmother became heavily, heavily, heavily Christian, very fundamentally so, and I was always sent to a Catholic school, and at a certain point, I started having serious doubts in everything I was being told, because there was a whole, if God is so good and if I'm so loved, why don't I ever feel loved in my life?
Why does it feel like nobody's ever loved me properly?
And then also, why did everything happen to me?
Ah, yes, but you see, the answer to that is that God had to break you in order to break the cycle.
Hmm. It'd be nice to not have to go through the cycle in general.
No, I hear you. I'm not saying I'm defending it.
I'm just saying that this is what some people would say.
That, look, you came out of this with an interest in philosophy, with an interest in self-knowledge.
You haven't repeated the mistakes of your mother.
And so God put a strong soul in the works to stop the cycle of abuse.
Hmm. It's not a great argument.
I mean, I understand where the argument is, but I don't really want to...
Well, I mean, of course, it's saying, let's torture children to make the world a better place.
Like, hey, I'm with you, man.
I'm just saying that that's an argument that people would make, right?
Yeah, yeah, because child abuse always turns out it's just great kids.
Yeah, that's right. Maybe he threw your mom into the mix to stop the cycle and it didn't really help because he made her too pretty or something, right?
Yeah. Right, okay.
Yeah, and then, yeah, so then my grandparents took me, and they're the ones who told me that, but it was whenever I was acting out, or, you know, misbehaving, or still being, you know, damaged.
Like, I would still say, like, I was still damaged from everything that had gone on, and I was getting taken out of school, but that would be when they were like, you know, you're just acting just like your father.
He was just like this, and I was like, and it would be like, I don't, kind of like the worst thing you could probably tell me if you're also going to tell me, you know, this horse or where I came from, Right.
So it wasn't just your mother who said that, but your grandparents too.
Yeah. Yeah.
I'm sorry, man. That's...
Man, that's a truly shitty way to deal with anyone.
That's a shitty way to deal with a child or with a teenager.
I mean, it's...
I mean, I... It's funny, you know, in the course of this conversation, Eric, it's an odd thing that's occurring.
Which is, because you're not expressing any emotion and your speech is very rapid, I end up feeling everything on your behalf.
So I feel this really deep rage at you being told that you're like your father.
But your story is like, yeah, well, this happened and this happened and this happened and this happened.
It's very fast and it's very unemotional.
Which is tough to be on the receiving end of because the emotions pile up on my side, if that makes sense.
No, I get it. Obviously, I would have theorized that it might be a degree of a defense mechanism as I'm trying to parse everything that's gone on, relay it in...
You know, for once, I actually have somebody who can listen, have a conversation about it, and have it be constructive instead of it being manipulated against me.
Yeah, I know. Or somebody's go, oh, well, that's too bad.
Sadly rare, though, that is.
Right, right. Okay. So, listen, I mean, sorry, is there more that you, we got to the army, is there more that you wanted to tell me?
We've done the relationship with the crazy gym girl, and is there something, is there other stuff that, I mean, I know there's more, obviously, but is there more that you wanted to mention that's, like, high priority?
No, that's good for now.
All right, all right. So, you are in possession of trauma, of history, right?
And when you meet people, you meet basically girlfriends.
It's the one that matters most.
It would happen with male friends. You meet a girl, right?
You're interested in a girl. And she says, so tell me about your life, right?
That's a fucked up situation to be in, right?
Yeah, I mean, hey, you're a family.
You can't meet my mother or father.
You're my grandparents.
It's not exactly easy to explain because of those questions.
Well, no, here's the thing, man.
Here's the thing. It can be actually quite easy to explain.
This is another reason I wanted to take your call as soon as possible because...
It is actually easy to explain on one condition.
Okay. And the one condition under which it is easy to explain your history is that you were a victim, that you survived, and you have not repeated what was done to you.
Right, so let me sort of give you a silly example, right?
So let's say there's a guy and he's playing around in his front yard and a tree falls on him, right?
He's seven or eight years old and the tree falls on him and crushes his legs, right?
anything about it he could just out of nowhere just boom right this tree just fell over it wasn't even leaning just some weird shit happened in underground cave or something like that right erosion right so the tree lands on him and crushes his legs right and it takes him years to recover right well he can tell that story right like oh how was your childhood
It's like, well, you know, it had its ups and downs, but, you know, the biggest thing was that a tree fell on my legs and it took me years to recover and, you know, occasionally it still aches when the rains come or something like that, right?
Because the child would not sit there and say, damn, I caused that, right?
It would be, stuff happened to me that was no fault of my own, and I'm very glad to have dealt with it the way that I've dealt with it.
Now, does that mean you dealt with it perfectly?
Well, that doesn't mean anything, right?
Nobody knows. There's no such thing.
There's no such standard. It's like perfect health, you know?
It's like no such thing, right?
Healthy enough is fine, right?
So here's the thing. This is the great tension of being the victim of child abuse.
It was done to you.
You didn't choose the family.
You were just trying to survive shit, right?
I mean, if you were out there in the Middle East somewhere and some ISIS assholes came along and grabbed you from the field and forced you to carry a gun and forced you to fight, right?
Or they were just going to put a bullet in your head.
Well, you'd tell that story, but you wouldn't say, I joined ISIS, right?
no yeah what would you say that I would be a victim and that I was captured against my world and forces that wouldn't otherwise do right and anybody with an ounce of empathy would have great sympathy for you right Mm-hmm. Okay. So this is what you need to do.
You understand you were de facto kidnapped by a crime gang.
You understand this?
A crime fucking gang.
Yeah. There was sexual assault, there was spousal abuse, or there was boyfriend-girlfriend abuse, there was child abuse, and so on.
This is a criminal gang. You were kidnapped by a criminal gang, so to speak, right?
You didn't choose it?
You had to fight back.
You can't surrender too much, otherwise you don't even get out of bed.
You've got to keep some fight in you, right?
Which is why you were punchy towards adults, right?
Of course, you weren't threatened by children, so you didn't attack children.
And also, you didn't do...
I was listening very carefully when you said that you didn't attack children.
Because what you didn't do, Eric, which is very noble, is you didn't try to level up by pushing down weaker people, right?
Because your family took away your...
Sense of security and strength, right?
And independence and power.
And you didn't attempt to get that back by crushing the spirit of children who were smaller or weaker than you, right?
Good for you, right?
Good for you, like seriously good for you.
And that's one of the reasons why you're savable and are being saved in the process of being saved because you have suffered evil But you haven't done evil against weakers, the weaker opponents.
So here's the thing.
The question comes down to this.
You, empirically, suffered and struggled to survive under situations of severe child abuse.
Mm-hmm. Now...
Your entire family wants you to think that you were responsible.
And if something happened, it was your fault.
And if something happened that they don't like, they'll just say, it never happened, right?
Okay, so this is the tension of being a victim of child abuse.
You were a victim, but your family needs you to be the perpetrator.
Like, here's the classic rape scenario, right?
Which is, you know, the woman's walking home and she's got a short skirt on and her tits are hanging out or whatever, right?
It's two o'clock in the morning, she's half drunk, right?
And some asshole, some criminal comes and rapes her, right?
What does he say? Oh man, she was asking for it.
That's what he says. He raped her, she's the victim, but he wants to make her the perpetrator and him the victim.
That's what evil people do, is they will try to make their victims the victimizers.
And instead of being abusers, they will become victims.
And this happened with your mother, and this also happened with your grandparents to some degree.
When they found you unruly, or disobedient, or too strong-willed for their tastes, they crushed you with the greatest, most horrible insult they could think of, which is you're just like your dad, the rapist, right?
Right. So this is the tension.
Now, I will let you in on the great secret of the modern world.
Are you ready? Take a deep breath.
Oh yeah. Assume the crash position, get the helmet on and everything.
Here is the great secret of the modern world.
Postmodernism, relativism, subjectivism, you name it.
Nobody has a clue what's right or wrong anymore.
Do you know what they look for?
To judge whether you're a good or bad person.
They don't look, most people don't look for any objective moral standard.
What they do is they say, well, if you blame yourself, you must be the bad guy.
That's how they figure out whether you're a good guy or a bad guy.
If you don't blame yourself, you're a good guy.
If you blame yourself, you're a bad guy.
If you have guilt, well, where there's smoke, there's fire, man.
If Eric feels guilty and bad for stuff, he must have done something wrong, right?
Now, it's a fucked up moral universe to be in.
I mean, you understand.
I don't like it. But I don't like that there's a sunburn after eight minutes of me being in the sun.
So I put on sunscreen.
It's just... Accept the facts, right?
Yeah. So you can tell the story of your childhood and have the woman and have most people not...
Think badly of you.
But first of all, you have to not think badly of yourself.
Now, if you can overcome unjust, unwarranted guilt, then it's not actually that hard to tell the story of your childhood.
Yeah, a tree called family fell on me, crushed the shit out of my legs and it took me years to get on my feet again.
I didn't choose it. You don't even have to say these things as long as you know that and you have that attitude, right?
Do you think I did something to provoke my mother?
Do you think I chose my family?
God, no. That's just where the mothership dropped me, so to speak, right?
You get dropped in combat, you just try and find a way to survive, right?
I don't have any guilt for it.
I don't have any moral. I didn't do anything wrong.
I do got a question for you then.
Yeah, go ahead. So, yeah, I mean, obviously I want to not have guilt in regards to everything because if I don't have, I shouldn't have guilt towards that kind of stuff.
I shouldn't try and bear any of that responsibility.
Would you say that the path that I took in trying to make sure that I could distance myself from that, even when it comes to physical looks, was that, would you say that was a healthy or an unhealthy decision to make that kind of choice?
Well, it's certainly, I mean, I'm going to go on the assumption that you haven't, like, wrecked your system with dangerous hormones and chemicals and drugs to get too big, right?
So as far as the physical health goes, yeah, listen, I mean, working out and getting bulk and swole and joining the lift buffer and so on, I mean, that's not the end of the world.
Now, the problem is, of course, it's tough to maintain when you become...
And husband and all of that, it's, you know, to be a good father, you can't be spending like three hours a day in the gym, right?
I mean, it's just not fair on your kids.
So there will be a time where you're, you know, you'll stick a pin in Michelin Man, right?
And you'll deflate a little bit.
And then the question will be, how do you handle that?
And, you know, maybe that's going to, you might want to ease down from that before you become a father.
So it doesn't provoke any mirror anxiety when you become a father.
But no, I mean, you're not, you know, you didn't take to a life of crime.
You're not out there beating up hobos.
And, you know, I think it's a fine way to channel your energies.
Okay. Yeah, no, I was wondering if you had any insight.
It might have been like an unhealthy response.
Okay, we're not connecting at all emotionally here, right?
Which is kind of annoying to me. Just telling you that right now.
Because I'm trying to give you these connective speeches and these big insights.
And you're just like, yeah, okay. Right?
I mean, where are you?
Because I can't see you, right? I'm just going to hear you, right?
So I don't know where you are in terms of this conversation if anything I'm saying has any impact or meaning or value or anything like that.
No, honestly, it does, a lot, and I'm sorry that it's coming across to me.
Okay, just slow down a little, that's all. I'm just begging you.
Just slow down a little, and it just feels like getting this rapid-fire, skating-on-the-surface language, which is a shame, because, you know, I assume these conversations don't roll along to people every day, and I'm not sure if you're submerging yourself in the conversation and being well-present, or if it's just kind of Like a, you know, like a skipping stone going all the way across the ocean to another continent of which I know little.
No, no. Without a doubt, the conversation has definitely been quite fruitful so far, and I apologize for the rapid speech.
It's, yeah, no, I... I definitely understand what you mean when it comes to not blaming myself, because that does seem to be a problem that I've been carrying with myself.
It's a huge problem, and it's not just you, man.
I mean, look at white people around the world, right?
Oh, we felt bad for slavery.
So what happens is for the next 150 years, people hammer us for slavery.
Right? Oh, you know, there were some negative aspects to colonialism.
Oh, great. Well, then you only became wealthy, Europe, because you stole from everyone, right?
You know, there's still slavery all over the world, for God's sakes.
I mean, I get these guys on Twitter, these Indian guys on Twitter, like, hammering me about slavery and shit like that.
It's like... You know, India has one of the largest proportions of actual slaves in the world currently.
Oh, whites are racist. Like, India is actually just about the most racist country in the world, according to surveys and reports.
But all people are doing is looking for, if you feel bad about something, that's a giant lever that they can just hammer.
It's like a giant button they can hammer.
You've got to be really careful, really careful.
Who you let see you feeling bad about something.
Because for most people, that's just fucking blood in the water.
That's just blood in the water.
You will just get a feeding frenzy on your balls, man.
It's really harsh, right?
You can't show vulnerability to most people.
I mean, you can't. It's bad for you.
It's bad for them because it arouses their worst and most dominant and bullying instincts, and they just want to ride Genghis Khan all over the Mongolian steps of your heart, right?
And so my question is, fundamentally...
Why tell people?
This is an important question, right?
And certainly, before you know the woman quite well, or have a very good instinct about her trustworthiness, she shouldn't know any of the shit about you.
You are free to keep your secrets.
Until people have earned access to them.
Because there's this weird thing where we feel like we owe the truth.
We just owe honesty to everyone.
Why? How many people deserve the keys to our heart?
How many people deserve or will keep safe that which we are most vulnerable about?
Very few. You know, keep your counsel, man.
A couple of dates, you know, I hate to say feel the woman out.
It sounds erotic or whatever.
You know, feel the woman out.
Ask her questions about her childhood and so on, right?
Yeah. See how, you know, is she sensitive to her own history?
Because it's like you have this bomb that you need to defuse at the beginning of the relationship called your history.
No, you don't. It was done unto you.
and you don't owe anyone the truth about who you are until they've earned it because you are so i just shouldn't go How long ago did you break up with the gym girl?
It would be about a year now as well.
Right. And she hooked into you because you felt bad about your history, right?
Yeah.
Right.
Right.
So I don't really need to feel like I'm broken or that I'm carrying any degree of burden when I try to talk to someone.
It's just, I should look at it as this is what's happened to me and I've overcome it.
But I don't need to feel like it in any way defines me or that it is a bomb or anything I need to diffuse at any point.
It just could be stated as a matter of fact as like this is my story but it doesn't need to be Anything overly important?
Or how should I go about that when I do...
Well, hang on, hang on. So you're kind of...
How should I defuse the bomb, right?
Okay. So a couple of perspectives that are really important here.
So let's say that you got stabbed as a child.
Just some random shit, right? You just got stabbed as a child.
And you still have the scar as an adult, right?
Would you say to yourself, well, I'm just broke.
I'm a broken person. I'm broken.
No. Well, why not?
You have a scar. You had a wound.
Mm-hmm. Well, because you can definitely heal from that kind of stuff.
Well, you may heal.
You may not. You may still have a pull from time to time.
Like, I got surgery on my neck, and every now and then I still get a twinge, and it's been like, I don't know, six or seven years, right?
Mm-hmm. Well, I would say in that situation, it's also because you're not broke.
I mean, your personality and who you are is more than just a simple stab wound that had healed.
Well, but it would be a scary and traumatic thing, and you would be reminded of it every time you showered and washed it and so on, right?
But you wouldn't say, I'm broken.
You'd say, I was stabbed.
Mm-hmm. You're not broken.
People just hurt you.
Here's the difference, man.
You're not broken.
They tried to break you.
Those are two very, very different states of mind.
Do you understand? I'm not broken.
They tried like fuck to break me.
They poured every piece of venom and brutality and violence and neglect and abuse that they could think of.
They tried like hell to break me.
But I'm not broken.
And there's ways to know if you're not broken.
You can talk about it.
It's complex for you as it is for me, right?
You haven't reproduced the abuse on others.
You're willing to accept too much responsibility.
All of these are signs that you're not broken.
Because if you were broken, okay, think about your mom's life in her 20s that you know of, right?
I bet you it was a real shitstorm, right?
Not great. A lot of drugs and alcohol addiction and that kind of stuff.
Well, promiscuity, drugs, alcohol, probably more situations of sexual assault and abuse and you name it, right?
Yeah. So she's already on a crime spree in her 20s, right?
You've been on any crime sprees lately, my friend?
No, no, it doesn't quite.
You knock out many girls and then pressure them into having abortions?
No, no, I think it's fundamentally evil.
Right. You, um, did you sexually assault anyone?
Uh, no. Robiny Banks?
Nope. No kick any hobos?
Nope. Nope.
Did you dine and dash at a restaurant even?
No, actually. All right.
So, you're not broken.
They tried to break you.
They fucking failed.
Now, if you understand, you say you're broken, you've got something shameful to hide.
You say, they tried to break me and they fucking failed.
You've got deep metals on your chest, brother, right?
Yeah. Yeah, they say, you know, people hurt me a lot when I was a child.
I made it. I made it.
I made it out. I'm a good person.
In fact, I might even be a better person than if nobody had tried to hurt me.
I don't even know. It's complex, right?
I know for sure I would not be as good a father if I hadn't had as bad a set of parents.
No question. There's no question of that.
I wouldn't be as rational a human being as committed to philosophy if I hadn't been raised by a crazy, invasive, intrusive mystic.
It's not like I'm going to thank her for it.
But not only am I not broken, I'm stronger because of it.
That definitely hit me a little bit there.
Okay, tell me, because I still don't know where the hell your heart and mind is, so tell me what hit you there.
The idea that I'm not broken, that they tried to break me, that it's not something I ever really kind of thought about.
It was always that I should think that they succeeded, and that I'm I just got to live with that result and that it has to be who I was type of thing.
In the military, did you ever study how to survive interrogation?
No, that wasn't actually a thing.
All right. Well, let's say that you didn't study how to survive interrogation.
They captured and tortured the shit out of you and you didn't give up any information, right?
What would you say? That they didn't break me and that I didn't confess that I was strong.
Now, what if even further, you gave them information, the people who were torturing you, the enemy army, what if you gave them information that harmed their war effort?
You sent them all scurrying off in the wrong direction or you had them drop their supplies into the ocean or some shit like that, right?
What if not only were you not broken, but you fought even in A situation of torture.
Would you ever say...
No. You say, no.
Listen, man. See, here's the thing about surviving child abuse.
Not only did they not break you, though, they had all the power in the world over you.
Not only did they not break you, Eric, you broke them.
How's your mom doing? Last I heard, she might have been addicted to crystal meth.
Right. So, not only did they not break you, or not only did she not break you, you broke her.
You beat her. Because, you understand, in child abuse, it's you or them.
There is no detente.
There is nothing in the middle. There is no neutral surrender.
There's no armistice.
It's you or them.
You survive and they crumble, or they survive and you crumble.
That's it, man. There's nothing else in the middle.
Because there's this giant list of crimes, this giant massive lava hot rock of crimes, and either you take it, in other words, you were bad or it didn't happen, you're crazy, Or, you survive, it bounces off you and lays waste to their future.
That's why they're so desperate to pin the crimes on you.
Because if you survive, you break them.
Because their identity has been based upon you being dominant and you accepting the guilt of the crimes they committed.
If you survive, they're broken.
To which I say, fuck them.
They shouldn't have committed crimes then.
Shouldn't have harmed children. Too fucking bad.
Think my mom's having a great life?
She's not. She's having a terrible, terrible, terrible old age.
And the only alternative for that was for me to have a terrible, terrible, terrible adulthood.
It's like, nope, I'm the innocent one.
She was the criminal. If she's trapped in a welfare prison of her own making, it's too bad.
Shouldn't have committed the crimes then, shouldn't you?
I've always liked the idea of showing that they didn't break me or that they don't control me by trying to have my own successful family, that I can be the father I never had.
And especially now, since I was a new whole peaceful parenting thing, I hate the idea of any form of child abuse.
It absolutely repulses me.
I've been interested in girls before and I've asked them, like, are you okay with spanking a kid?
And they say yes, I just don't bother any further from that.
Well, you know, if it's a really great woman, it might be worth making the case.
It's, you know, I've learned things from my life that I didn't believe before and vice versa.
So, you know, I'm just saying you don't necessarily want to immediately, but, you know, certainly if you make the case that they're still gung-ho, yeah, get out.
No, yeah, that's fair.
Yeah, it is the old, you know, that which doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
It's a bit of a hackneyed Nietzschean quote and so on, and it doesn't make a lot of sense in the physical way, because, you know, like, I don't know, there's lots of diseases that won't kill you, but sure as hell don't make you stronger, right?
I mean, like, malaria doesn't kill you, but it doesn't make you stronger.
But he's talking, of course, about spiritual or moral or intellectual matters.
Yeah. And your spirit wasn't killed.
You didn't become an abuser.
And you're committed to living an infinitely better life than your parents, right?
Yeah. And your grandparents too.
Yeah. Because the shit they dumped on you, you're just like your dad.
To me, that's a form of attempted soul murder, but that's an unbelievably shitty thing to do, to blame you for something that wasn't your fault at all.
But you can be proud, you understand?
It can be a source of great strength.
You don't have much to fear in the world if you've survived the abuses of your youth.
What are they going to do to you?
Oh, no.
They're going to type about me.
They're going to call me names.
It's not a crazy German woman chasing my eight-year-old ass around the apartment with a fry pan.
I'm all right.
Yeah.
No, I've never thought of it trying to be basically proud of that.
It's never really occurred to me.
It wasn't your fault. You not only survived, you flourished, man.
It's a badge of honor. People should admire you for that shit.
I do. I admire you for what you've achieved as an adult.
I mean, I'm not going to arm wrestle you, but I will admire you.
Thank you.
It honestly means a lot coming from yourself.
Because the way people talk about it, say, I had a bad childhood.
No. You were abused by your caregivers when you were a helpless, independent child.
And society basically let it happen.
And even as an adult, as I said before, society will still try and cover up the crimes of child abusers.
It's a horrible thing that happens.
The reason why people have a tough time sympathizing with victims of child abuse is an indictment on society, because we're all fucking responsible.
We're all complicit in this.
I mean, my conscience is clear.
I've spent years and years and years helping people in this area and being honest about it and taking the bullets about this stuff.
And it's like, yeah, I'm sorry.
For like... 150,000 years, abusers have kind of got away with it.
And then I come along and say, hey, you don't have to spend time with abusers.
And yeah, like, it sucks.
It sucks. It really does.
Like, I have some sympathy.
You know, a con that has gone on for millennia suddenly comes to a crashing end in the age of the internet.
Yeah, like, I'm sorry about that.
No, you definitely get it really hard.
Yeah, like, it's, like, damn.
I mean, when abusers were hurting you or hurting me, I mean, they didn't know that there was going to be this podcasting shit on YouTube, and, like, they didn't know any of that stuff when they were, like, oh, yeah, we'd be getting away with this forever.
Damn, nobody ever gets caught for this shit.
Society will shame our kids until they give us their last kidney on our deathbed.
Oh, this is great. We could just pummel the shit out of these kids and...
We'd get away with it forever.
Why would we think otherwise?
It's been going on for 100,000 years.
And then it's like, oh yeah, sorry, last generation.
Oh man, I'm afraid this thing called the internet is going to come up where child abuse victims can speak to each other and tell the fucking truth and support each other and help each other.
Sorry, man. Bad luck.
And it is. It's bad luck, man.
I mean, it's bad luck.
Y'all thought you were going to get away with it forever.
I understand that.
I mean, it sucks that you can't pay it down anymore.
Like, it sucks that you can't just keep beating up kids forever and have society shame them into giving you resources and bully them into spending time with you.
Like, man, that's harsh, you know?
That's harsh. It's...
Kind of unexpected. You know, in the general turning bloody wheel of history, it's kind of unexpected that after 100,000 years plus, it ends starting 2008.
You know, like that. That sucks.
You know, it really does.
But, well, you know, slavery went on for about the same period of time and then some slave owners lost their slaves.
You know, that kind of sucks too.
Yeah. So, yeah.
Sorry, the only alternative to it's sucking for you is it not progressing for us, and fuck you, I'm not a criminal, so too bad for you.
No, yeah, yeah.
It baffles me when I think back, like, why would Child Protective Services put me back No, no, no, come on.
It does make sense, though.
It does make sense. And you've got to get this, right?
Because this is the only way out of contempt for society as a whole.
So we lost God.
We lost the Ten Commandments.
We lost Jesus. We lost Christianity.
We lost morals, right? So when you lose morals, what do you do?
Will you become an amoral cost-benefit calculation machine, right?
Mm-hmm. Because look, it's the same thing with me.
I mean, I was raised in a variety of different paper-thin walled apartment buildings where people heard me getting assaulted on a regular basis and nobody even made an anonymous call to the cops, right?
The only time the cops showed up at my apartment was when my mom called them on me and then I got a lecture about a generation gap, right?
Yeah. So, no, but look, if you are Christian and you believe when Jesus says, whatever you do to the least among you, so do you also do to me, then you're going to say, well, Jesus commands me to step in and help the children, right? So people will take that because innate ethics plus, you know, cost-benefit analysis of heaven versus hell versus whatever, right?
So people will step in.
Yeah. Now, Without God, without morals, without ethics, it becomes a calculation, right?
So, yeah, teachers knew that, I mean, I came to school in ripped clothes, I was hungry, I was dirty, I was smelly sometimes.
I mean, of course they knew, right? But what's the benefit to them to get involved?
Like, outside of ethics, right?
I mean, what's the benefit?
I mean, my mom is a crazy, vengeful person.
I mean, she could launch complaints against them.
She could make their life a living hell.
She could bury them in paperwork.
She could try to get them fired.
She could stalk them. She could do crazy shit, right?
She's already a crazy child abuser, right?
So who knows what she could do, right?
And look at what happened to me when I stepped in and gave some support to adult victims of child abuse, right?
Oh, I'm a cult leader and I'm destroying families for fun and profit and all this kind of shit, right?
So what, but I have the ethics, right?
I have the morals. I've got UPB, right?
So I've got universally preferable behavior, my book on ethics, so I know what the hell I'm doing.
So I'm willing to take that stuff because I've got course, and there are Christians, I'm sure, who would have been able to and willing to do it as well.
But just so you understand, like, what's the benefit?
Who would want to take on your mom?
Your mom's crazy. You know, like let's say someone comes along and takes on your mom, right?
And then she's got some crazy violent guy living with her.
And then she tells some crazy story to the crazy violent guy living with her about the guy who did something to her, right?
Well, the crazy violent guy is going to come over and try and beat the shit out of that person, right?
You could end up dead with a broken joy in the hospital in a coma.
Who knows, right? You could end up in a wheelchair just because you tried to save some kid, right?
And even if you do somehow manage, well, the government's going to come in and maybe the kids just can end up in the same or worse situation.
Yeah. Like, without foundational morals, which have been stripped away from us by the leftists and socialists, communists and all that kind of shit, without that stuff, why the hell would anyone intervene in a situation of child abuse?
It's dangerous. Parents who abuse children Can really fuck up the lives of other adults, right?
And this is a whole, you know, people think pedophiles run the world.
I don't know, maybe they do. But the much more important thing is that there's this big, giant coalition of child abusers in the world.
It's a big, giant coalition of child abusers in the world, and they all look out for each other, and they all look for any cracks in the armor, and they all look to punish the shit out of anyone who's trying to support...
Particularly adult children, right?
Because, well, first of all, I don't talk to kids, right?
But to support adult children is a different matter because the parents don't have direct control over them anymore, right?
So that's tough.
And there are so many families sitting on these powder kegs of crimes that they don't want to have come out.
They don't want to have them come out.
They want everyone to take these bloody secrets to the grave.
So there is a great tension out there in the world about adult victims of child abuse opening their fucking mouths, listening to each other, supporting each other.
The amount of crimes that will come out are beyond the imagination of God himself.
So, when you say, I don't understand why people didn't do anything or support, it's because they don't have any particular ethics.
They do a cost-benefit calculation, and they say, what if she does to me what she's doing to him?
And it's not worth it.
It's not worth it. And you may have made that calculation at times as well if you see a child being harmed in public, right?
Well, maybe not you because you're huge, but you know what I mean, right?
I still hesitate before going up.
If I see a child being mistreated in public, I still hesitate before going up.
I usually do, but I still hesitate because it's risky, right?
Yeah, I see what you're saying.
So, anyway, that way you can...
It's not like we forgive the world for failing to protect us or...
But understanding is key.
Understanding is key.
It wasn't that everyone hated us, they were all abusers.
It's just... Because of the system that we have, abusers can make your life very difficult.
And... What can you really do to help the kids anyway?
The other thing too, everybody has this calculation like, holy shit.
I saw that parent clip the kid on the head, right?
Backhand the kid on the head.
If I go up and talk to it, I talk to the parent, right?
Maybe the parent's going to take it out on the kid later.
Right? It's a hell of an operation, man.
And we really don't have the tools at the moment.
That's why I talk to adults, right?
Yeah. So yeah, that's the major stuff I wanted to get across.
You know, fuck being broken, man. You're a hero.
What the hell? You didn't break under torture.
You broke them instead.
That's an amazing thing.
It's an amazing thing.
You should be incredibly proud.
This is not a shameful secret that you have.
This is a mark of honor.
This is a mark of valor.
This is a mark of a noble nature.
It's the mark of the most foundational courage there is in the world.
Fuck shame. Embrace the glory of survival and flourishing.
People should be proud to know you.
A woman should be proud to date you because you know how never to make those mistakes again and how to be a great husband and father.
You know, it's funny. I mean, when I was dating in my 20s, teens, 20s, 30s or whatever, early 30s, Sometimes the relationship wouldn't work out.
Sometimes it was me. Sometimes it was the other girl.
But I remember I would ask a girl out.
I don't know, some girl. Every now and then a girl would say no, right?
I was fairly successful. But every now and then a girl would say no or would be humming and hoeing and so on.
And part of me was like, you're kidding, right?
You're kidding me. We're good to go.
I'm faithful. You know, like I'm moral.
I'm like, oh, I'm sorry.
Is there a checkbox?
Oh, well, you don't have a full head of hair.
Okay, well, you go along with the Jennifer Aniston model of needing a guy with good hair and get to Justin Theroux or whatever the hell, whoever the hell she did it, right?
But this is the thing.
This is the kind of confidence that you need to get a great woman is like, You know, there's this line from an old movie set in New York where this guy says, people who don't live in New York, they're kind of kidding, right?
You know, like they're kidding about life.
They can't be serious about not living in New York.
And I thought this very, very clearly.
It's like, what, you won't go on a date with me?
You're kidding, right? You know, and I never pushed it or anything like that.
I was never stalking anyone or anything.
But it's just like... Really?
Who are you waiting for?
Particularly after I'd had some success as a software entrepreneur.
I mean, things were doing all right.
Hey, you know, I've written poems and books and I've run a successful software company that I co-founded and I've traveled the world and I've got a decent amount of coin in the bank and, you know, it's like...
But you want to wait for someone else?
Okay. Yeah. Good luck with all of that.
I'm sure that Einstein pitch will be right along...
Any moment soon.
Einstein married his cousin, so maybe not him.
But anyway, that's just the level of confidence that, I mean, if you've legitimately earned, it sounds like you've become a great guide, not just despite, but in a complex blend of despite and because of your terribly inflicted childhood.
I mean, yeah, you could not date me if you want, but man...
To all the girls out there who did say no, I guess they read my Wikipedia article and think, whoo!
But the facts are, you know, because it's not true, it's just on Wikipedia.
But the facts are that I'm a great dad, I'm a great husband, I'm a good friend, and I'm a good person, and sorry, dad's off the market, so to speak.
And that's, you know, there's nothing wrong with that kind of confidence if you've earned it.
And the idea that you would be ashamed of evil that was done unto you, Don't take that fucking burden, man.
Just push it right back, even if it means other people have to psychologically fall off a cliff.
It's too bad it was their crimes.
Will you dwell on that and listen to this again?
Probably should have been told a long time.
Yeah, no, I was going to say that's definitely advice I should have been given a long time ago, something that I need to actually properly process, think about.
Yeah, I definitely agree when you said that you're a good person.
Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me.
Well, thank you, Eric. Will you let me know how it goes with you?
Absolutely. Thank you, honestly, so much for taking the time and Actually listening to me and showing me a perspective.
I probably should have come to my own, but I didn't.
It's hard, man. But listen, as one ex-soldier to another, so to speak, you won't see the salute except for the video.
But thanks for your time today. I really appreciate you sharing your story.
You take care.
Bye.
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