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March 25, 2020 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:14:14
"SAVE ME FROM MY WORST NIGHTMARE!" Freedomain Call In Show Mar 15 2020
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Well, we're back, ladies and gentlemen.
It is the 15th of March 2020, and we are going to take ye olde Call-in show for a spin, using a new format.
I will tell you that right now.
A new format, rather than having Mikey Mike, as he did in the past, grab the mic and read off the questions.
We are, in fact, going to be working with our Discord server, which is going to take a little bit here and there, but I'm sure we'll be able to sort it out.
So I just wanted to thank everyone so much for coming by this morning.
And I guess the first question, Craig, are you around at all today?
Oh, Craig. Calling on Craig.
First caller in the resurrected call.
I'm going to figure out my mic here.
All right. How you doing, Craig? Doing well.
How are you? I'm all right.
All right. So you had a question.
Now, for those of you who don't know, boy, it's been a while since we've done one of these, but I was just thinking about this the other day, how much fun it used to be or how powerful it used to be to do the old dream analysis.
And you have some nightmares that probably bear some examination.
Do you want to read off your email?
Do you want me to do it?
How do you want to take it from here?
Can you hear me?
Forget about this. Okay, you're going to need to work on that mic work there.
Dude, I don't want to have too much post-editing on the first show.
So here's the message.
I had some dreams and nightmares two years ago that have me wondering what happened in my earliest years of life.
Some of them struck a lot of fear to me, and I think it may connect in some way to the fear that I experience in my daily life.
I have some ideas about what they mean and would like your input if you're interested in analyzing them.
One dream I had was as follows.
My adult self was in a dark square room, I think it was in a house, connected by a hallway to another square room with a bare light bulb on that was hanging from the ceiling.
The hallway had a door on one side leading downstairs, I think, to a basement.
Light came into the dark room enough for me to see what I was doing.
I was holding a sort of toilet-shaped bowl and filling it up from a large trough or cauldron full of water.
I was watching myself in the third person with a view of the hallway as I filled the container with water.
The door in the hallway opened as a dark human figure emerged.
The figure planted itself in the hallway with a wide, intimidating stance.
I couldn't make out any details on it other than it seemed to be a man.
Immediately after seeing the figure come up the stairs, I grabbed my water container and aggressively and angrily yelling or howling without words threw the water at him.
My yelling was one long sort of growl.
It started out as a strong, angry adult growl.
A child's growl that was mine became louder as my adult growl.
Oh, just lost your brother.
Can you hear me?
Yeah, I get no...
May I ask a question about the scheduling of today's show?
I'm just in the middle of a call here.
I don't know what happened to Craig. I thought I'd take the opportunity if he's unable to talk.
I'm not wildly impressed with the technology so far, but yeah, go ahead.
Yeah, I can understand. Push the talk is kind of weird.
Not many people use it on Discord.
Anyway, so I just wanted to ask what order have you chosen the questions today?
Just in order of things that struck me.
Do you have a question?
Yeah, so I do have a question.
Well, hang on. I just want to see if Craig's around or if he got dragged into the dreamscape.
Craig, are you there? He's left the voice channel.
Really? So...
Gosh.
Well, let's hope the second caller is a little bit more throughput-y than the first.
All right. And what should I call you, my friend?
Myself? Yeah. Oh, Craig's back.
No, no, I have Craig. Well, I'm not sure that we can do a call if Craig keeps leaving the voice chat.
Craig, are you there? Yeah, just, can you hear me?
Yeah, what happened? I think I just need to find a key that works with this because it totally crashed Discord.
So one second. Why don't you just switch it to voice activation for talking and then you can switch it back to push to talk afterwards.
I'm not pushing to talk. It's just voice activation that's working on mine.
It said push-to-talk on here for some reason.
One second, then. Yeah, that's just a note for those in general.
For sure, it's hard to have a natural conversation when you're doing the push-to-talk stuff, so just have it on voice activation while you're talking with me, and then you can go back to push-to-talk afterwards.
In fact, you should, right? So this server requires push-to-talk, which I think is what Craig was saying.
The whole server?
This voice channel, sorry.
Is that right? Well, then I apologize.
Let me see if I can fix that.
Save changes. I did not know that.
All right. So everyone, let's see here.
Use voice activity.
We can say use voice activity.
All right. I think that...
Is that better?
Yeah, it looks like it's working.
That's better? Yep.
Alright. So, if you can just start from, my yelling was one long sort of growl, I can edit it from there.
Okay. So, my yelling was one long sort of growl.
It started out as a strong, angry, adult growl.
A child's growl that was mine became louder as my dull growl faded.
It sounded as if the child's growl went from anger to disgust to pain as it faded away.
I woke from this dream with chills across my body almost as if I was in shock.
I felt as if someone was outside of my room about to break in through the door or window.
I even thought they might be in the closet.
It took me the better part of the night to relax again.
And for context, I was reading Healing the Shame That Binds You by John Bradshaw at the time and doing deep digging into my past.
The toilet and child seemed to be linked to my wedding abet as a kid, possibly.
Thanks. Right.
Okay. And when you had the dream, when you say your adult self, was that your contemporary adult self, like the age that you had the dream, or was it another age that you were talking about?
Yeah, it was just my age, I think 22 at the time.
Okay, all right. Now, does this layout, the dark square room, the hallway, another square room with a bare light bulb, and the door on one side leading downstairs to a basement, does that accord with anything in the geography of your childhood, like the layout of a house when you were a kid?
You know, I've thought about this, and I just can't think of anything.
And I guess another problem with that is I've moved so much as a kid that it's...
And my memories are not really great about that time.
Or not easy to pull up, I guess I should say.
Right. Okay. Okay.
Did you have a sense of why you were...
Doing what you were doing in the dream in other words was there an urgency or a purpose behind what you were doing?
I Can't say there was no Okay, a bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling.
So I've used that kind of analogy before.
There is this cliché that a place where you would get grabbed and snatched, you know, maybe a rendition treated with turkey or something, that you'd end up in a bare, grimy room, usually made of concrete, with one swinging bulb hanging from the ceiling.
Do you have any associations of that?
Or have you seen, I don't know if it shows up in shows like Homeland or something like that, but a show...
Or an association of an interrogation with that kind of swinging light bulb?
I don't know about an interrogation, but it definitely felt kind of creepy.
Right, okay. So you were holding a sort of toilet-shaped bowl.
Tell me a little bit about the bowl.
How do you know it was toilet-shaped? Just tell me how you understand that.
Is it the whole toilet or just the bowl itself?
It was like, I mean, it had sort of a bowl in the front and then on the back, you know, a piece that kind of extended upward like a toilet.
Like you would fill the bowl apart and I assume the whole toilet shape could be filled with water.
So that's kind of...
It could have been like a child's training toilet, actually.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking, like a potty training, right?
Like there's that little toilet that you kind of sit in, and it just goes straight on the ground, the child sits in it, and there's a little flip lid sometimes too.
This one didn't have a flip lid, is that right?
No, it didn't. Okay, so let's go through here.
So, you're in a dark square room.
Now, is there anything in the room in the dream that you recall?
Not that I recall. Connected by a hallway to another square room with a bare light bulb.
The hallway had a door on one side leading downstairs, I think to a basement.
Light came into the dark room, enough for me to see what I was doing.
So at the beginning, you're just, you're filling it up from a large trough or cauldron full of water.
You're watching yourself in the third person with a view of the hallway.
You fill the container with water.
The door in the hallway opened, and this is the one that leads to the basement, you think, right?
Yep. Okay, the door in the hallway opened as a dark human figure emerged.
The figure planted itself in the hallway with a wide intimidating stance.
Now that's interesting because it's all non-verbal, right?
Exactly. Now what I think of when I think of non-verbal is I think of a child who is pre-language.
In other words, there is something that is occurring that's verbal, but because you're so young, you can't understand the language.
Does that make sense? Yeah, it does.
Okay, so that's very young.
Do you have a sense of how tall you are in the dream?
Oh no, you're an adult self, right?
So it's the same. Yeah, it seemed to be normal.
But when you were looking at the intimidating stance, do you remember if you were looking up at someone or across or down?
In other words, were you short of the same height or taller?
That's a good question.
I might have been slightly down.
Wait, you were looking down or you were down?
I might have been slightly down, but it was still from the perspective of my adult self.
So you mean you were slightly shorter, but you were still obviously taller than a toddler, right?
Who was? Sorry, were you shorter?
You said you were shorter than the adult figure, but not so short that you would be the height of a toddler, right?
Yeah, no, I was definitely not that short, no.
Right, okay. Now, he doesn't say anything, right?
Not a thing? He's just planting himself.
The hallway opens from the basement.
He plants himself in the hallway.
Now, is the hallway something that you wanted to go down or through, or were you just afraid that he was going to come plowing in towards you?
I'm pretty sure I was afraid of being attacked or something.
As soon as the door opened, I was terrified, it seemed.
Okay, so you grab your water container.
Now, you threw the water at him, but not the container, right?
Correct. Now, that's interesting because that's the least violent thing you could possibly do if you're going to attack him, right?
Because water isn't going to hurt him. Right, okay.
So, yeah, it's interesting that you are an adult, but you do something which is not violent towards the man.
In other words, it's almost like there is a child's helplessness in what you're doing because you're not throwing the actual toilet at him.
Do you remember what the toilet-shaped ball was made of?
Was it ceramic? Was it plastic?
Was it something else? No, but I don't think it would have been plastic.
I think it was a sort of solid object.
Okay, all right. So throwing the water at him, like I'm...
So, because you'd have to...
I'm just... I'm sort of trying to think of this when I was reading this.
So you have the water, the bowl, and you kind of...
You would have to throw, in a sense, push the bowl forward and then stop it so that the water would kind of spray out of it.
Is that right? Yeah, basically.
And this is...
Not going to do any harm to the man.
So if you're frightened and angry, you throw the water at him, and then basically there was this long preternatural howl, like Roger Waters style, and then you're just awake from that, right? So you don't know whether you hit the man, you don't know how he responds, if at all, right?
No, I think the focus was on, like, the kind of the, you know, growling and fading out, like, changing to a child's growl or whatever you want to call it, and fading out with, like, pain.
And I forget the emotions.
I'm not reading this, but...
The anger, disgust, and pain of a child, I guess.
Okay, so a wide, intimidating stance.
Is that sort of like, you know, you see football players, they're kind of planting themselves, or is it something like that?
Can you give me a sense of how the physicality was of the figure in the hallway?
They were standing up straight, feet were planted apart, hands were away from the hips a bit.
Sort of like you might see maybe a bodybuilder standing or something.
I don't know, just kind of a wide arms, wide legs kind of thing.
And would you remember if there were fists?
I don't remember.
Right. But that is...
Tell me, of course, your dream, right?
So I'm just trying to sort of get the movements here.
The figure is almost in a defensive position as far as I can see.
In other words, if he's like that, he's almost expecting to be attacked.
I don't think so.
I was kind of seeing it as...
Imagine you're standing up with a wide posture.
You're spreading yourself out.
You're not afraid.
You're not making yourself small.
But that's not, I mean, again, you were in the dream, but that doesn't strike me as an attack situation.
Like, if he charged at you, you know, or he pulled out a gun or something like that, then, and listen, I'm just trying to sort of map it out, because the dream, the reason why the dream is sticking with you is that it's obvious, usually in a reversal kind of way, at least that's sort of my experience.
So maybe this is right, maybe this is wrong.
But my thought is that he's in a defensive position.
Which you consider to be aggressive, but if he's planting himself wide, that's usually to brace for impact, or that's a defensive position.
And then you are the one who attacks, if that makes sense.
Okay. I didn't feel like that, but...
No, no, I understand.
I'm not talking about the feelings. I'm just saying that...
So the way, I sort of imagine being a cop, right, in these kinds of situations.
And I say, okay, so let's say that these two people came to me, and they said, this is what happened, and they both agreed that this is what happened, like you and some guy named Bob, right?
And you say, oh, I was carrying some water, and then Bob opened the door, and then was in the hallway and sort of planted his feet wide and moved his arms out, and then I attacked him.
Well, what would the cop say? Uh, here's the car, I don't know.
No, what would he say to you?
The cop would ask me why I attacked him.
Well, I think so, maybe, but the cop would say that you didn't have the right to attack him.
Because, you know, you can go to a wide, intimidating stance anywhere, and nobody has the right to attack you.
Does that make sense? I'm not saying in the dream, I'm just like in reality, right?
Yep, definitely. Okay, so what's interesting is that you are the initiator here, and yet I think you feel like the victim.
Yeah, that's interesting.
I never thought of that. And that's probably why the dream is sticking with you, right?
Now, the reason why this is hard is that I'm going to guess, just based upon your vocal cadence and the dream itself, that as a child, you were a victim, right?
A victim of abuse in general?
Well, okay, since you think it's a masculine figure in the dream, tell me a little bit about your dad when you were little.
He was a pretty angry man.
Pretty short-tempered.
You know, I got spanked quite a bit.
I was told by some family members that when I was like a toddler, I was at their house and walking on the couch.
And I think he like smacked me with the rolled up newspaper because he didn't like that I was walking on the couch.
Yeah, I mean, it was like his way or the highway, basically, a lot of the times.
If I expressed like a differing opinion or a desire that wasn't aligned with his, I would be, you know, I wasn't in too good of shape.
He would usually get angry, so.
And what would happen with the spanking?
Was it with implements?
Was it bare skin? Was it hands?
Clothing? Yeah, they broke a wooden spoon on me and switched to like a rubber one, which hurt a heck of a lot more.
I am so sorry.
That is incredibly violent.
Incredibly violent. I'm so sorry.
You said you had an association with toilet training?
Yeah, I mean, I had a big issue with wetting the bed as a kid.
It took forever to get out of it, actually.
It was really...
I was like 12 years old when I finally had it mostly under control.
It was actually really tough.
And you know that bedwetting, I think...
I shouldn't say you know. My sort of belief is that bedwetting is associated with anger.
No, I didn't know that.
I believe it is associated with anger.
And it's a way of hitting back against someone who's bullying you and rendering them relatively helpless.
Now, what would happen, of course, with your bedwetting?
What was the response of your parents, of course, in the morning?
Oh, my dad...
I would find it very inconvenient and he'd be upset a lot of the times.
If we're trying to get to school or he's trying to get to work on time, he would get angry and he'd be muttering under his breath.
I don't know. I don't remember exactly what he said, but I felt really like an inconvenience to him when that happened.
Right. But I assume you weren't, or maybe you were, were you spanked or beaten for wetting your bed?
No, I never, I don't think I ever was, no.
Okay. So, how often would you wet your bed?
I know that kind of changed over time, but from young to older, how often would you wet your bed?
It was pretty much every night.
It was basically every night for a long time.
And how often were you beaten?
It's tough to say.
I don't have a ton of memories from this.
I'm going to say at least once a month.
Probably as many as twice a week.
As far as spanking, I guess that is kind of beating if you're using implements.
Yeah, and I don't know where you are, but certainly here in Canada, that's illegal, which makes your father a serial criminal, right?
In Canada, you can hit from 2 to 12, not on the face, not using implements, and not leaving a mark kind of thing.
So, yeah, that would make him kind of a criminal.
So, the association that you feel...
scared and angry and you throw the water at your father well that would accord with the theory that if you're startled if you're angry if you're scared if you're helpless then throwing the water from the toilet bowl is wetting your bed as an act of response to aggression from your father that's good man hey every now
and then i'll rip one off Oh, but we've only started, my friend.
I mean, listen, this is just an interpretation, you know, right?
I don't know if this is true or not, but whether it lands or connects is important.
Does that seem to have some sense of connection for you?
Yeah, I think so.
I mean, that's... Something I never thought of and very, yeah, it's very interesting.
Well, because generally, if we can't talk about our emotions, right, if we can't talk about our emotions, what happens is we recreate our emotions in other people as a form of nonverbal or subconscious communication.
So, like, we all know this sort of passive-aggressive thing, right?
So, if someone is angry, Then what happens is they will, but they can't express it or they get punished for expressing their anger.
Their anger doesn't go away.
What happens is it transfers through passive aggression into the other person.
So if you're frustrated and you're helpless in your relationship with your father and you can't talk about it because he's violent, he'll beat you, then what happens is your frustration and your helplessness doesn't go away, but it recreates itself in your father.
It transmits in a sort of sub-ether, subconscious kind of way to your father.
And so the helplessness and anger and frustration that you felt as a child, your bladder recreated for your father by putting him in a situation where he was frustrated and helpless and angry, right?
Absolutely. Now, what's interesting, well, it's all interesting, of course, right?
But what's really interesting is that you are an adult here.
That is interesting to me.
Now, do you know anything about your father's mother?
Or your father's father?
Uh, yes.
What would you like to know? Tell me a little bit about your father's father.
He was also a very abusive man.
Um... I think he even beat his wife and definitely beat my dad.
I remember being told, like, my dad's sister told me that when she was like six years old, she saw him grab us.
A switch from a tree, which I don't really know what that means.
Is that a branch? Yeah, it's a branch.
It's a branch that's specifically designed to, like, as far as I understand it, it's a branch, it's specifically designed so when you beat the child, or designed, or found, or whatever it is, it's designed so when you beat the child, the end of the branch, which is thinner, whips around and stings even further around the curve of the child's body.
Yeah. Yeah, well, he used that to beat my dad when he was four, I guess.
That's what my aunt said.
And, uh...
Yeah.
Uh... He would, uh, definitely beat my dad quite a bit.
I think my dad told me there was a day he, uh, put, like, a cookie sheet in his pants when he knew his dad was gonna spank him.
And... I shouldn't laugh, but, uh...
He got an even bigger spanking after that.
That one's too obvious, right?
Yeah. Okay, all right.
Okay, are you ready to have your mind blown?
Go for it. All right.
So, you're not a father yourself, right?
Yet. No. Okay.
So, when you have a child, if you have...
Well, I'll just talk about myself here.
So my mother was a relentless screamer.
In other words, she would scream and sometimes be violent, but it was that shrill, screechy, kind of just nails on a blackboard kind of scream.
And the reason I say she was relentless is like if you left the room, she'd just follow you.
And you couldn't go outside because she might actually follow you and scream at you outside, which would be socially humiliating.
So you couldn't escape the screaming.
And so when your mother is out of control and screaming, which I guess in your father's case would be yelling and hitting, then when you grow up with that, you have, as one of your great terrors, to be in a situation where someone is relentlessly screaming.
Like that's a complete nightmare scenario.
And it really feels like you're being attacked, like you're being assaulted, like violence is imminent.
And this is the parent, right?
So what happens is, of course, when you have a baby, the baby, right?
What does the baby do? I'm sorry, I'm a little, a little on focus here.
Just crying here? Well, babies scream.
Right, right. And they scream relentlessly.
And they scream in public and they can be very embarrassing.
So we've all probably seen at one point or another a situation where a parent, the child is having a meltdown or a tantrum or just being quote bad in some manner.
And you can see that the parent is angry at the child for humiliating the parent, right?
Right. So the parent feels the victim.
In that situation. So if you grow up with a screamer, or two screamers in that case, or could be more if there's extended family around, but if you grow up with a screamer as a child, when you have a baby, your screaming parent is now back in the house.
And the screaming is happening again and you feel helpless and you feel hard done by and you feel victimized and you feel aggressive towards the screamer, right?
Now all of the anger that your father had towards his father for yelling or screaming and beating and hitting Well, you have come back.
His own father has come back to life in the form of you.
Because now there's a baby who's screaming at him.
And what can he do?
It completely triggers all of the unprocessed trauma of when he was a child, his father was screaming at him.
Now he's a father and you're screaming at him.
So you...
Strike him as almost an all-powerful adult as a baby or as a toddler when you're yelling.
Because in the dream, your father is trying to defend himself.
If this is your father, and I think it is, because it ties in with the aggression of your father and it ties in with the bedwetting, right?
Now, this is nothing to excuse anything your father did at all, right?
We're just trying to figure out what the causality was or what the dream is trying to tell you and why it stuck with you so long, right?
So, if you as a baby loom very large in your father's mind and completely remind him or trigger him of all the trauma he experienced at the hands of his father, Because he can't control you any more than he can control his own father.
Well, then he has a lot of anger towards his father, obviously, right?
But then when you start screaming, he can take that anger out on you in a way that he could never do so with his own father.
Because now, like when he was a little kid and his father was big, the size differential was that way.
But when He's a father, you're little, and he can beat you, right?
So he's beating his father, basically.
It's not anything to do with you.
I hate to say don't take it personally, but it is kind of a liberating thing when you realize that child abuse is not something you should take personally, because it's not something that was caused by you.
It wasn't something based upon your behavior.
It was like, I don't know, you build a log cabin out there, a little log hut out there in the woods as a kid, and a tree falls on it during an ice storm.
You don't sit there and say, Someone is to blame, right?
I mean, it's really, really important not to take child abuse personally because then it sticks to you, right?
It sticks to you as a judgment.
It sticks to you as an evaluation of yourself.
It sticks to you like it's personal.
It's not personal. You did what all babies and toddlers do, which is you had needs and you screamed and you were awake in the middle of the night and this, that, and the other, right?
And it doesn't matter.
All babies do that. So it doesn't matter if it was you or someone else.
I mean, I remember realizing this with my own mother.
It wasn't personal. She wasn't beating me.
She was just beating the child in the vicinity.
It had nothing to do with me. It could have been any child.
And it would have been any child.
Right? So, for your father, you're showing up.
Subconsciously, as very large, as much larger than you are.
In other words, you're screaming, quote, at him, the same way that his father screamed at him.
so he's just kind of defending himself in a way that he couldn't when he was a child, just as his father, by beating him, was defending himself in the way that he couldn't as a child, and back and back and back until we first dropped from the trees with hair on our eyes.
And so the reason why you're an adult in the dream rather than a child is that that's how you appeared to your father.
As an adult, as his father.
Thank you.
And the reason why your father is not attacking you but first defending himself is that deep down in his lizard brain he believes that he is defending himself Because you're aggressing against him by screaming at him just like his dad did.
And he couldn't defend himself when he was a child, but he sure as hell can defend himself now.
And he's damn well going to.
So if you understand that you showed up as an aggressive father to your own father because you were recreating the screaming that traumatized him and perhaps the sleep deprivation and whatever else was occurring, Then the dream is trying to tell you that I had nothing to do with you.
This abuse.
It would have been anyone. Let's say you go to a farm.
Let's take a silly example. You go to a farm.
Old school. You want some chicken, right?
So you go to the farm and they say, well, you know, we can kill and pluck a chicken for you.
Which one do you want? Well, you just point at a chicken.
I don't know, right? It's not personal.
I really hate that chicken.
I want it to be tortured by being plucked and killed and cooked.
You don't hate the chicken.
You're just satisfying and eat.
You're hungry, right? You want something to eat.
It's not personal. And the chicken, of course, rationally wouldn't take it personally.
It's just, oh, I guess it's my turn to be dinner, right?
Because you have a lot of anger...
at the man in the hallway and you are aggressive towards him so he's defending himself in this defensive position and then you are aggressing against him and you're enraged at him And I think that's because you take the abuse that you suffered personally like it was directed at you, like it had something to do with you, like you were the cause of it, something to do with your personalities.
It doesn't...
You're just a receptacle for rage.
I mean, the reason why the body stuff is in there, like the bowels, the bladder and so on, is because, you know, if you pee on a human being, like...
Chelsea Handler style. I mean, she was peed on by someone.
It's this hideous video that's out there.
But if you pee on someone, that's an act of incredible rage and aggression, right?
But if you just pee in a toilet, you don't sit there and say, oh, I hate this toilet.
I'm going to pee in its face, right?
You're just like, oh, I need to pee. Where's the nearest toilet?
And you just pee in that, right? But that's the relationship of abuse of the child.
Like, you're the toilet, and they've got an excess of unpleasant things.
They just dump it on you. They just hit you.
But it's nothing to do with you.
Somebody sent me a link to an interview, I think it was with El Chapo's death squads, you know, like the guys who would be the enforcers for the Mexican drug cartels.
And almost uniformly, what they did was they said, oh yeah, my father was beating me, and every time I tortured and beat people, I was just imagining they were my dad.
And so I think the dream is saying...
But it certainly wasn't you as a child, because in the dream you're an adult.
So your father was not reacting to you as a child.
Your father was reacting to you as if you were an adult.
In other words, he was reacting to you as if you were the figure in the hallway who was about to attack him.
And this ripple goes back through time for dozens or probably hundreds of generations.
Don't take it personally. That's the liberty.
That's the liberation. That's the liberation of it all.
Once you recognize that it's not personal, that the abuse you suffered is not personal, it's really essential to be able to move on from it.
Once you recognize that there's nothing you could have done, you couldn't go back in time and make your father's father a better person.
You couldn't go back in time and make your father process his trauma before he became a father.
Once you realize it had nothing to do with you, not personal.
You know, I talk about this in my various speeches on determinism, and it's also in Essential Philosophy.
You guys know you can get that at essentialphilosophy.com.
That if a rock just bounces down a hill and hits your car, okay, it leaves a ding in your car.
That's frustrating. I get that.
But you kind of move on from it because no one's to blame.
And if you park under an overhanging rock during a storm and then the rock falls and squishes your car, you might say, well, that wasn't the best place to park.
And you kind of, you might blame yourself.
You might sort of be frustrated to yourself and so on.
But again, you kind of get to move on with it because you say, oh, well, what I'll do is not park in that kind of situation anymore.
That's going to be my plan. But if somebody pushes it, if somebody pushes the rock down and it crushes your car, well now it's tough to let go because that's an attack and you've got to call the cops and you've got to get insurance and then it just becomes a whole lot.
You've got an enemy who wants to hurt you and then it's tough to...
With child abuse, I think the really, really important thing is to recognize that it's not personal.
I mean, by the time you're a toddler, you have about as much control over your parents, or a baby.
You have about as much control over your parents as you do as to whether a rock just comes rolling down a hill for no reason and lands on your car.
But no real reason, too.
It was just some weird thing that happened, right?
You have no control, right?
And I think that you say here, it started out as a strong, angry adult growl, A child's growl, me, became louder as my adult growl faded.
It sounded as if the child's growl went from anger to disgust to pain and faded, right?
Now I think that this is the arc of your father's perspective to your perspective.
So you're trying to understand the man in the hallway.
And so, for the man in the hallway, you start out as a strong, angry adult.
In other words, you're screaming at him the way that his father did.
But then, as you grow up, you recognize, of course, that you were a child.
And this is part of the healing the shame that binds you, deep digging into your past.
And so you're getting in touch with your inner child, and your inner child is saying that your father did not react to you as a child.
When you were a child, but rather reacted to you as a strong, angry adult.
And so it's kind of like a Benjamin Button thing, right?
Like as you get older, Your father's perspective and your perspective is that you are.
You were a child, of course, back then.
But people don't beat children.
People beat the adults that the children remind them of.
And you had no control over any of that, of course, right?
So I'm sorry for the long sort of speech, but these were the thoughts that came into my mind regarding this dream.
Tell me what you think, if they sort of make any sense to you.
Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.
I think at the time I was really quite angry at him.
And I've noticed during that time I would take a lot of things personally, just from people in general.
And I think I certainly was taking it personally from him too.
But yeah. I'm not sure that we've really connected yet on this dream.
How do I feel?
I feel on the spot.
That's about all I feel right now.
I don't know. You sound like you carry a burden.
Like you're pushing words up like Sisyphus with his rocks up a hill.
I'm not sure I understand, to be honest.
Well, you don't sound...
And again, look, I know this is kind of a weird situation, right?
I mean, this is... I have experience in this kind of conversation.
It's kind of new for you. But...
And I'll just check in with the chat here because it could just be my perspective, right?
And this is the great thing about having this chat going at the same time.
So if you can just go to the call-in topics, which we'll delete.
Does he sound...
I guess down is like the big technical phrase here.
It just sounds like your voice is kind of slow and labored a little.
Do you know what I mean? He sounds sad, yeah, says someone.
He sounds a little haunted.
This could just be an excuse, but I'm in an apartment and I feel kind of like I don't want to talk too loud, but if that makes sense.
So people are saying it sounds like he's suppressing his emotion, he sounds confused, not connecting maybe, he's not ready to just yet, he sounds disconnected.
And so the reason why I wanted to pause on this connection thing is the sentence you say here, where you say, I was watching myself in the third person with a view of the hallway as I filled the container with water.
That strikes me as what's called hypervigilance.
So you're watching yourself in the third person with a view of the hallway, as you say, as I fill the container with water, right?
Now, in other words, you know something's coming, right?
And that's called hypervigilance.
I mean, I call it, I don't know what the technical term is, but that's called dissociation or hypervigilance, right?
In other words, if you're in a situation as a child, as a toddler, where you can be yelled at, screamed at, beaten, you know, at a moment's notice in a hard-to-predict fashion, then whatever you're doing, you're watching that hallway, right?
You're watching where the dark, scary man comes from.
So, when you are both yourself and guiding yourself, you can't be yourself.
Thank you.
Thank you.
In other words, you can't sort of relax and be yourself if you're constantly scanning for danger, right?
So, if you sort of think about it, I remember walking in the woods many years ago and I heard a big crunch of steps in the dark, right?
It was really, really dark. and I just had like one weak flashlight just walking through the woods and I heard this crunch like somebody was rolling a log or had a tree fell over or something like a really big heavy crunch and of course you immediately think however implausible it might be bear cougars something a pack of hyenas or coyotes I guess it would be here now when you are that Alert.
When you are that alert to danger, you can't just sort of relax and enjoy your own thoughts in a playful manner, if that makes any sense, right?
So the sentence where you say, I was watching myself in the third person with a view of the hallway.
The view of the hallway is important because that's where the dark figure emerges, right?
Yep. And so...
If you are guiding yourself continually, then it's going to be hard to connect with people, right?
And you can connect with your voice without being loud.
You can, right?
But does this hypervigilance, this constant sense of alertness to potential dangers, does that fit in your life at all, or is that something that I've got as a red herring?
Absolutely. Yeah, definitely.
Tell me a bit about that, if you can.
Well, I've noticed... Over the years, a lot of the things I do, I wonder what...
It's hard to...
I mean, I do wonder what people think or what I should be doing.
Yeah, I think it's more like what I should be doing.
You should be doing in order to get what or do what?
I think in other people's eyes.
And I guess to get their approval or something...
Even though I don't typically aim for approval, man, I don't know, it's hard to say.
I definitely feel hyper-vigilant though.
I was talking to some other guys in the chat room here and I was kind of talking about how when I'm driving sometimes, or in the past this was a lot more so, I would, anytime someone would drive up behind me and be like, You know, a distance that I felt was a little close, I would feel like they're really, like, they're upset at me or they want me to move and they're in a rush and I'm like in their way.
Whereas the funny thing is, and sorry, that's interesting you would bring that up, because you're just a car to them.
It's not you, right?
Right. You're just a car.
And listen, a lot of people who tailgate have rage issues.
Because it's such a stupid and dangerous thing to do.
Like we've all had the situation where we're driving and someone passes in a dangerous way.
Like they pass two cars, they pass over a hill, they pass when there's no dotted line but a solid line.
And what they do is they come swerving around, they stamp the gas, and they just burn past you, right?
And you, I mean, it doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out that that's a rage issue, right?
And that's how people get killed.
How do so many people get killed on the road?
It's really not that hard to not get killed on the road.
Just don't be an idiot when you drive.
Don't be a rage-filled doofus when you drive and put other people at risk, right?
But that's a serious.
Now, you can sit there and say, oh, gosh, was I going too slow or blah, blah, blah, right?
It's like you're just a car to them.
It's not a, you know, the car is in the way.
It's not you, so to speak, right?
And it's got nothing to do with you, right?
I mean, people might say, well, I'm in a big hurry.
If you want to get somewhere quickly and you do something where you die, hey, guess what?
You never get there. Or if you do something where there's an accident, hey, guess what?
You're never going to get there for that appointment or whatever it is, right?
So you just go slow and get there and, you know, be a few minutes late if you have to.
But, you know, nothing slows you down more like dying or injury or whatever it is, right?
So, yeah, I can see how that a lot of psychodrama plays out on the roads.
There's a kind of anonymity to driving that sort of mirrors what you get on the internet because, you know, mostly people don't take down the license plate and call the cops, right?
You can be an asshole in a car and, you know, it's like having an anonymous account on social media, right?
Right. Yeah.
So you have to, you know, I think the dream is saying that also, I mean, You can't...
you can't control this.
Right? So hypervigilance comes from the delusion that, and it's a necessary delusion, it's an important delusion, hypervigilance as a child comes from the delusion that there's something that you can do to make it better.
And that's a necessary thing because we all want to think that we have some control over our lives, right?
So hypervigilance comes from the belief that you can do something to make the situation better.
But you can't. Because what happens is, let's say you find some magical key combination to please your father for a couple of days, right?
And everything you do is right. What happens then is that he starts to get progressively more discontented with not venting his frustration and anger, so then he'll just find something.
So there's nothing that you can do to prevent the attacks.
There's nothing that you can do to prevent the attacks.
You say, oh, well, I'll call the cops and I'll get adopted.
It's like, well, better the devil you know than the devil you don't know, right?
So that's really important to understand that we have, as victims of child abuse, we all have this belief that, you know, like these understandably ridiculous sports figures who are like, wow, these are my lucky socks.
You know, I got to keep wearing these socks because every time I wear this sock, I win a game, right?
And if the one time my socks were in the laundry, I lost the game.
Like people come up with these ridiculous patterns, right?
Like, oh, these people were dancing when that terrible storm came, so we better not dance because it angers the storm gods.
Like, people just come up with these associations, particularly, of course, in the absence of philosophy, reason, science, and so on.
They come up with these associations that give them the illusion of control.
Now, it robs you of actual control, but it gives you the illusion of control.
But, unfortunately, the downside of that illusion of control that Means that we have to take it personally.
Because if we say we can stop this, if we say we can do something to stop these attacks, then what we are saying is we're doing something to cause these attacks.
Do you understand? Like the sense of power that is illusory, but necessary because we want to have some sense of advocacy in the situation, some sense of control.
But what it means is that...
We take the blame, too.
Because if you can do things to stop the attack, then you're responsible for the attack starting.
Does that make sense? And I think that's the burden that you're carrying.
That you caused this.
And this is why in the dream, you initiate the attack.
Do you understand? Because in your mind, I think, you did things to cause the attacks.
So in the dream, you initiate the attack.
In other words, you do things that cause the attack.
Does that make sense? Yeah.
And what would your life look like if you were not at all in any way, shape, or form to blame?
For what happened to you as a child.
That you were just trying to survive being dropped into a lion cage.
And you did a magnificent job.
And there's nothing that you could have done to stop these attacks.
I think life will look a lot different.
That's for sure. Okay.
What advice would you give yourself as a child that would have been different from what you actually did?
What would you tell yourself if you could send a message back through time?
What would you tell yourself to do differently so that you wouldn't get beaten?
I'm not sure I could.
Right. But that's important, right?
So you, in your mid-twenties, with philosophy, with John Gray, with this show, with Healing the Shame that Binds Us, and all the work that you've done, with all of that close to a quarter century of knowledge, all that perspective, all that wisdom, all that independence, you can't give your child Through time, one shred of advice on how to not get beaten.
Do you know how liberating that is?
If you really accept it?
That you did the best you possibly could and it was all on your dad.
And there's nothing you could have done differently.
That is a huge relief.
Because now you don't own any of it.
And it doesn't stick to you.
It's just something you survived.
And you're free.
Feel more free.
I'd feel a lot more free in my life if I took that seriously.
But that's the truth.
I mean, that is the truth, right?
We're all in pursuit of truth.
I mean, it's funny, you know, because people say this is going to be shocking to people and I'm sure this will be repeated ad nauseam.
I'm going to say it anyway because I want to tell you the truth.
My mom was just some bitch I knew when I was younger.
That's it. It was a dangerous situation.
I survived as best I could.
I couldn't have done anything differently.
I wouldn't have told myself to do anything differently.
It was just a dangerous passage in my life that I did nothing to cause, and that I did everything possible to survive, and I survived.
But why the hell would I want it to stick with me and carry it with me?
You know, like if you're forced to carry a load at gunpoint, when the gun goes away, drop the fucking load, right?
Go live your life and be happy.
I mean, I know that sounds kind of silly and all of that, but it sticks to us because we think there's some kind of relationship, like this howl of anger and pain and frustration that you had at the shadowy figure in the dream.
I get it. I get it.
But that, to a large degree, comes out of taking things personally.
Like if I built that little log cabin in the woods and a tree fell on it, would I go out every day and kick the tree?
You bastard tree.
You smashed my house.
You did this to me.
Do you understand? Yeah, for sure.
What if a tree just fell on you?
I'd have to stop managing.
Go ahead.
Sorry, go ahead.
No, you go ahead.
Sorry.
I'd have to stop managing the outcome of every situation.
I find myself thinking about the outcome before I ever do anything and it just stops me from doing anything like applying for a job I want or something like that.
I'll imagine the people laughing at me or You know, I've managed that by not even trying, and it's kind of annoying.
It's really... It's left me staying in the same spot for a long time, essentially.
Right, and so if you overthink what's going to happen ahead of time, which is, you know, reasonable preparation and all that, you're going to go for a job interview, look up the company, and try to understand its business and all of that, but when you overthink things, Two things happen.
One is that you're not present in the situation because you're over-rehearsed.
And that's one. And the second thing is that it's never the way you imagine.
At least this is the case for me.
Maybe you're better at figuring this stuff out ahead of time.
But that's when I kind of gave up on trying to figure things out, right?
Ahead of time, right? So I've done all these debates.
I'm doing another one on Friday night with Jean-François Garieppe, 8 p.m.
Eastern Standard. I hope you guys will drop by.
I don't know where these debates are going to go sometimes.
So I do a reasonable amount of preparation and all of that, but I don't know how they're going to play out.
Like, I had no idea that the guy from Zero Books was going to start off with a 10-minute lecture on all of the fallacies he was committed to During the course of our debate, I didn't know that the one with Matt McManus was going to go straight to immigration at one point.
I don't know. So if I'd sat there and said, okay, well, if they say this, I'm going to say this.
Then what happens is I'm all tangled up, in a sense.
By the time I get into the debate, I'm tangled up with this preparation of detail.
And therefore, I'm not present because I'm always comparing the current situation to my imagined situation.
And I was always wrong about these things.
All was wrong. It never played out the way that I imagined, so I had to learn to trust myself in the moment to respond in a way that made sense.
And if you can trust yourself to respond in the moment in a way that makes sense, then you don't need to over-prep.
You can be present in the moment, and you're not constantly sitting there going, well, that didn't go at all the way I expected, which is a way of...
It kind of diminishes your own trust in yourself if it happens for you like it happened to me that we get it wrong.
Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.
Yeah. I'm trying to make a connection in my life.
I'm not pulling anything out here though.
Can you think about a time when you predicted a interaction and it went the way that you predicted?
No, I can't.
But that's important, right?
Yep. It means that your predictions...
Are not helpful. Now, I wouldn't want you to be able to predict what happened to you as an adult based upon what happened to you as a child, because what happened to you as a child was that you got beaten and abused, right?
So you don't want to be in those situations, right?
Right. Somebody asks, what if getting it wrong is catastrophic, like life-altering?
This is from Fire Clear.
I just need... I mean, it's a good question.
I just need an example.
So just, yeah, type in your example.
So if getting it wrong is catastrophic, then...
See, there's a difference between predicting how things are going to go in a physical sense versus another person's reaction, right?
So you can control the physical environment infinitely more than you can control somebody else's reaction, right?
So you can control whether you build that house in the woods and you can build it in a relative clearing.
You can't control if someone comes along and just trashes it or sets fire to it or something like that, right?
So getting it wrong should not...
If getting it wrong in a relational sense is catastrophic, then that means you're in the wrong relationships.
In other words, let's say that you forget the anniversary, like your girlfriend's or your wife's anniversary, right?
And let's say then you're like, oh my gosh, if I forget that anniversary, she's going to divorce me.
It's like, that's not a good relationship, right?
Now, you should figure that stuff out nice and early, right?
Or, you know, like for instance, I hear, you know, I was supposed to start at 11, right?
And I was all ready to go.
And then for some reason, I have a hardware recorder that I use.
It just wasn't receiving any information.
I had to switch out computers yesterday for a live stream, and I finally got the exact video and audio quality that I want.
But I didn't use the hardware recorder for that because it's a live stream, so I don't need to.
And I needed to make sure that I could hear your guys' audio going through the hardware recorder properly.
And it just wasn't showing up.
There was just no audio from your side.
And I don't know why.
And it just took a little while.
I didn't even really change anything, but now I have it.
So I was...
Now, if you guys were like, oh man, Steph is like 15 minutes later.
I think it was 11.17 when I started.
And I apologize and so sorry for the delay.
But if I was of the situation where I said, man, you know, everyone's showing up here at 11.
I'm 17 minutes late.
Everyone is going to cancel their subscriptions.
They are going to badmouth me on the internet.
Then I'd be sweating.
Like, oh my gosh, what a terrifying and terrible situation, right?
And... I don't want to be in those relationships.
I want to be in relationships where I can make a mistake, like being 17 minutes late, and I can say I'm sorry, and I'm not going to attack myself.
I'm one guy in a whole studio here.
Just about everyone who runs a show of this size has a whole team, but for a variety of reasons I've chosen to run it solo.
And everybody, to their credit, was very reasonable, and I think we're having a very great conversation.
But if you're in a situation where If you get it wrong with someone, it's completely catastrophic.
Don't be in those situations because you're just controlled and bullied in that situation, right?
Okay, as in making a career choice like college or choosing the wrong spouse?
Um... Yeah, well, choosing the wrong spouse, that is a very big thing, and that's a whole other question.
Just don't be in situations where you're scared.
Don't be in situations with people where you're scared, where they can bully you, where you're frightened of their reaction, and if you get something wrong, they're going to yell at you.
Just don't be in those situations.
I mean, I know it's easier said than done, but all right.
Okay, so does that at least give you something to start working on there with regards to the dream?
Yeah, absolutely. Definitely.
Thanks for your help with this.
Hey, thanks, man. Keep me posted about how it's going, and thanks a lot for bringing this topic up.
All right. So, does anyone have a yearning burning that they want to...
Talk about that maybe time-sensitive.
I'm aware that we spent over an hour with the last caller, and you know, that's just the way it goes, and I have no regrets about any of that, but I do want to make sure that if we get to people who have a yearning-burning that's time-sensitive, that we can get to that.
So, if you do, I guess just unmute and bellow away.
Huh. I'm just curious.
Sorry to interrupt. I'm so sorry.
I just noticed this little thing down here which says, go live.
Does that mean we can live stream this stuff?
Yeah. Yeah, it does.
Interesting. I don't want to right now, but I'm just kind of interesting that we can do that.
All right. So, sorry. Somebody had something that they were bringing up?
Well, I have a question that might not take too long.
It's kind of matter of fact, I suppose.
Oh, I'm sure I'll find a way to stretch it out enormously.
Just kidding. I'm sure you will. I'm sure you will.
All right. So I'm happy to take the floor if no one else.
Well, somebody else, but I don't mind if we go a little long, so go for it.
I'm also quite happy to be very selfish.
I very much look forward to talking to you, Steph.
Thank you. Go ahead. What should I call you?
Finn. Finn is fine.
Finn. Okay. All right. I hate seeing you in the water, but anyway, go on.
So my question, I'll read it out.
I'm going to have to scroll all the way up.
Copy-paste a notepad for this kind of stuff.
It's super helpful. Yeah, sure.
Okay, so I got it here. Should one do what one is best at or what one believes is best for themselves?
And this question is related to myself and my choice in career.
I'm currently a psychology major finishing their third year.
In the UK and I'm kind of daunted with the opportunities at my doorstep.
So I'm getting reasonably good grades to where I could sort of potentially attempt to try to become a clinical psychologist.
Or I could try and go into something much more free market oriented since the NHS is pretty much the only route at which you can do that realistically in this country.
And of course, you probably know exactly why I'm afraid of the NHS for a multiplicity of reasons.
Yeah, of course, if you become a psychologist, as you know, you then put yourself under the tender mercies of a highly politicized governing body, I think, in the UK. Yeah, so I actually have some interesting personal experience with that, having somewhat been a subject of that.
And yeah, some of the mandates that they have towards treating certain cases, I was pretty much told as someone who had sort of disturbing thoughts as related to obsessive-compulsive disorder, I was pretty much told to go and...
Try out being gay for a while.
Forcibly try and make yourself sleep with men by a qualified professional of the NHS. So that's mildly entertaining, if not completely traumatic.
Go be gay? That was the treatment for mild OCD? So, yeah, it was relating to this unending question that I had in my head of what is my sexuality?
Can you truly know? And the answer is empirically, you can't really until you've, as far as this guy's logic was, until you've gone and forcibly put yourself under that stress.
And I knew for myself that I wasn't gay and that this was just a question in my head which had bothered me.
Plus, I had plenty of other OCD symptoms, but that's kind of been resolved.
I say that I've gone through a lot of therapy and self-work, so I kind of have that under control now.
It's no longer really a big problem in my life, and that's fine.
You can't see this, but I'm going to just, on the video, rub my eyebrow the wrong way.
Oh, it's sticking up. Okay. Only one of them is sticking up.
No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding.
All right. So with regards to something more free market oriented, what would you think?
Would it be sort of like life coachy thing, like in the same vein, but without the regulatory overhead?
Well, so my expertise, I would say, and it's kind of par your excellence, to be honest, Steph, is that I've watched your show for eight years now.
I'm 23 years old. And I learned from your show about how to help people solve problems using conversations.
And I'd say that's my main skill set.
So I thought about how I could apply this to my career.
And I thought about consultancy as a potential route.
Basically because I wasn't really aware of many other formats that provided some form of easy route to express that skill.
Do you have the...
I don't know how to put this exactly.
So, going out, boy, you know, you guys know as donors, I mean, you guys know that when I go out and ask for support from the world based upon the value that I'm providing, A lot of people kind of freak out, right?
They get very anxious.
And you can see the anxiety with the hostility and all of that.
Like, oh, you e-beggar and stuff like that.
People get really aggressive when they see someone out there asking for, like me, asking for what I want, asking for the reciprocity that I know that I deserve.
And that's why I really, really appreciate, of course, everyone here for enabling me to be able to do this kind of stuff.
And When you go out and ask for what you want, a lot of people find that very difficult.
Like, you know the old, I don't know if you've ever read or seen Oliver Twist, but there's this famous scene.
I didn't really understand this when I was a kid, right?
But there's this famous scene.
Oliver Twist, of course, is a Victorian orphan.
And he eats this bowl of porridge and he goes up to the guy in charge of the orphanage, right?
And he says, please, sir, can I have some more?
And this is like a very famous moment in literature, and he's polite, and he's just asking for what he wants, right?
And of course, he's wildly punished, and you know, all that kind of stuff.
I remember when I was a kid in boarding school, there was never enough water.
There was a food and water shortage when I was a kid, and there was never enough water for all the kids to get a second cup of water.
We had these little plastic cups, and we were out running around a lot.
I think we were kind of dehydrated, kind of in hindsight, but...
I remember you had the choice.
You could either just gulp your water and then just hope to get a second cup by lining up, or you could sip it slowly, enjoy it for longer, and give up your chance of seconds, right?
Because you couldn't just sit there and say, excuse me, you've had us out running around for three hours.
Could we get one more than one tiny cup?
Tom Hanks, Wilson-style cup of fresh water to rehydrate our little bodies with.
Would that be acceptable in any way, shape, or form?
Please, sir, could I have some more?
Boom, right? So we kind of get punished for saying what we want.
Like, if you find school boring, well, they assume you have ADHD and they'll punish you, right?
Or if you have questions about your sexuality, well, boy, just go force yourself to be gay or something like that.
Like, you can cure OCD with lubes.
But, um... Do you have the capacity, I suppose?
I know you have the capacity.
How tough would it be for you to go out and do that 100 to 1 99 rejections for everyone except, right?
So the vast majority of people who listen to the show, they don't donate, right?
It's just the way that the world works.
There's a small cadre of responsible people who keep this ship afloat.
I'm just one of them, right? You guys are others.
So the vast majority of people, I will ask them to support the show.
I know that they're receiving value because I see these usernames show up and it's like they've been showing up for years.
They watch every video and then they're like, you e-beggar.
And it's just like, okay...
It's like you're watching the show, but not watching the show at the same time.
But what's your relationship to going out and getting the 99 rejections to get the one that keeps you going?
Sorry, we've got some people there in the background.
Yeah, just mute while we're talking, if you could.
Thanks. Sure.
So I personally find that maybe I'm being cynical, but I just assume that given that I'm a 23-year-old, people wouldn't consider me particularly wise.
And, you know, I remember when I first got into your work, Steph.
Sorry about this.
Eternal student? Sorry, man.
I'm going to have to mute you.
Okay, go ahead. Sure.
So... As a 23-year-old, I see myself in a very different position in sort of looking for that kind of thing.
Because, for example, when I got into your work, Steph, I saw you were a lot older and I thought there was a lot that I could learn from you as someone who has clearly thought about things and displayed their ability to be very accessible but logical and reasonable at the same time.
So it showed that you have a lot of empathy For the people that you're talking to.
And I think that that kind of status could only be seen because of the fact that you were perhaps above the age of 40 or something like that when I first saw your videos.
And I think if a lot of people saw this young guy cropping up and saying, hey, look, I can really help you out here.
I can solve these problems.
I think that a lot of people would assume that that's not true and I've even experienced that in my degree where at the beginning of the degree I would apply myself and I would be severely undergraded and now I'm in my third year I'm getting the highest grades in my entire year.
Some of the highest grades on record for modules and such because I'm now applying myself And it's being kind of recognized.
So I think the problem is that I don't think I have access to that based on my perception.
Okay, so hang on.
There's a great, great set of objections.
A couple of things come to mind.
First of all, it only took me so long because I didn't have me.
You know, it's like that old thing, creating the first pill costs you $10 million, right?
Creating the second pill costs you like three cents, right?
So hopefully, you know, part of what I'm doing is taking what took me like, gosh, probably 30 years, like, well, 20 years, 15 to 35 years.
20 years, 25 years.
I'm trying to sort of get that and kind of compress it down.
And so hopefully that hits the gas for people.
You know, it's a lot easier to buy an operating system than write your own, that kind of stuff, right?
So that's one thing.
The second thing is that if you worked...
If I were in your shoes and you wanted to bring, let's say, better business practices, how to resolve conflicts in the workplace, whatever it is that you might want to do.
I'm just sort of spitballing here.
Then I would aim at industries...
Populated by younger people, right?
So in particular tech industries, right?
Or places where there are just younger people, maybe Bitcoin, other cryptos, the startups and all of that.
I would focus my attention on those because a lot of those Are founded on a significant skepticism regarding the efficacy of older people.
You know, like I don't trust anyone over 30 kind of thing.
So I think that there is a market for someone who's young to provide these kinds of solutions.
But you would have to, I think, I would start focusing on the organizations that are themselves young and often have a skepticism of, you know, the salt and pepper guys who come in and say, well, I would just improve that module without any real clue of what they're talking about.
Right. Okay.
Interesting. So, I mean, unfortunately, because of the sort of state regulation that we have in this country, certain occupations are somewhat, like, gatekept by different qualifications.
And my kind of objection would come from the fact that, I mean, it stems from the fact that, like most people today, I suppose, I want to have enough money in spite of the horrendous economic climate we have in order to, you know, homestead and raise kids at home for at least the first five years, like you recommend a lot of the time.
And unfortunately, these qualifications, they sort of lead to roles within companies Uh, which are the only way of accessing that sort of role, uh, at least as far as directly applying psychology.
Um, so for example, if I wanted to become an occupational psychologist, I'd have to do another three years.
No, I'm not talking about any of that stuff.
No, because once you become an occupational psychologist, you're then back under control of the NHS and licensing, and then you're highly restricted in what it is that you can talk about.
You know, when I was younger, I was thinking, oh, maybe I get a PhD, maybe I become a professor and that kind of stuff.
Can you imagine? I mean, look what happened to Jordan Peterson.
Can you imagine trying to be a professor and do what I do?
I mean, that would be claustrophobic.
It would be impossible, right?
I mean... You know, I would, let's do a wee role play here.
Okay, so let's, I'll be you and you be someone who's got problems in their business that needs your expertise to solve, right?
So I'd come up and say, oh, you know, I can really, really help you with these issues.
And what would you say that would be the objection?
So how do you do it? Well, I did study psychology, and then I wanted to actually, rather than just do this endless accreditation process that actually kind of restricts me in what I can say, I just wanted to get out there in the world and apply my problem-solving expertise.
You know, I'll give you two hours totally free, and I guarantee you, you're going to love it.
You're going to find it really, really powerful, and I'm really, really good at helping people find common ground, trying to find that win-win situation so that it's not one person who Achieve what they want at the expense of others, but trying to find creative solutions so that everyone can get what they want.
And the good thing is that the skills are also transferable, so you won't be reliant upon me.
I can actually teach you the skills on how to do this, and it will really, really positively affect your business.
Sure, so I'm going to be devil's advocate in this.
So, that sounds great and all, and I think you probably listened to this guy on YouTube called Stefan Molyneux.
I don't know if you... But anyway, so...
I would love to know if that's true but it seems like going into it you have no experience and I can't see that you've got any experience in these roles and therefore I can't guarantee that the money that I invest in you will actually make me any more money.
And that's a perfectly valid and sensible objection and I can see why you've got the big kahunas chair.
But let me ask you this. So you work in tech.
Do you have formal accreditation and are you regulated by a governing body of programmers?
No, that's an astute observation.
So you only need expertise.
You don't need accreditation.
And also, I'm sure that you experienced the same objections when you went for funding for your business.
You went to investors and they're like, well, what's your experience?
And you're like, man, I'm really, really good at what I do.
Just, you know... Here's some working model.
I've been doing this as a hobby since I was like nine years old.
I know what I'm doing. I'm yearning and burning with passion.
And somehow you convince them to give you a try.
And it's not even despite your lack of accreditation.
It might actually be because of it.
Because you're hungry enough to go out there and do something real rather than just chasing grades and paperwork forever.
Right. So, one thing I have to assure you is that if something unethical happens, like people are made redundant or, you know, people are somehow a lawyer and the lawyers and the law get involved, I have to have I have credited backing for all of my staff based on these regulations by which the law operates and therefore I need people who have these qualifications and unfortunately it doesn't look like you have those qualifications and I am so blessed to be in such a fortunate business to where I didn't need qualifications but because of legal reasons given you're going to be working with human resources fundamentally If anything bad happens,
I need you to have these qualifications.
And maybe I'll give you an internship and pay for your masters to get you a level 2.
But until then, you're going to be barred from getting a higher salary and you're going to just have to go through the long way because life sucks, I guess.
Okay, so that's a lot of what you said there.
And listen, these are all important objections to bring up.
But are you trying to tell me that your business is set up in a way that you can't take any outside advice?
Because lawyers? Like, you can't even sit across the table from someone and have a beer and talk about your business and get some feedback?
Like, you can't do that unless somebody has a stack of degrees behind them because lawyers?
So, I haven't personally got the time to institute these positions and I need someone to do that for me.
And... Sorry, not these positions.
These... These operations that you'd ideally perform to make me make more money.
And so I need someone else to do it for me.
And so essentially, yes, anything that you ask would be done by someone who would have to have a form of accreditation that would cover me in case if I was shafted with a lawsuit.
Well, I'm not sure how getting advice on how to have people get along in your business could result in a lawsuit.
I mean, I'm certainly happy to be schooled and educated in all of that, but people hire consultants all the time.
And the consultants give advice.
There's not binding recommendations.
It would still go through a process within your own internal organization.
But I sort of failed to see.
I mean, there would be no such thing as consultancy if, you know, massive lawsuits.
I mean, that just seems like a kind of giant scare scenario.
And also, when you went to your investors to get money to begin with to start your business, There was no guarantee, of course, that they would get a return on their investment, but they trusted you based upon sort of eyeball contact and confidence and competence and experience, or at least a willingness to put yourself out there.
And of course, you did a lot of work for free, which I'm perfectly willing to do to get my career started.
But certainly, look, if you're the kind of person who's like, okay, well, I can't possibly take any outside advice because I might get...
I don't know.
that I think is actually inhibiting their capacity to do anything.
But if you're the kind of guy who needs to see a piece of paper before deciding if someone has what it takes, even though you don't have that piece of paper to run things, it seems that you're kind of really entrepreneurial when it comes to yourself and your business with regards to yourself.
But then you need all of these assurances that you weren't able to provide to the investors in order to get the entire business started.
Now, I would say you've got to be a good judge of character to be an entrepreneur.
You were able to convince the investors, even though you don't have the accreditation.
I would just suggest, this would be my first piece of advice, and trust me this is not going to get you sued, but the very foundation of your business is passion, intelligence, commitment, and non-formal experience.
In other words, you worked with computers a long time, you didn't go and get a PhD in computer science, but you worked with computers for a long time before starting this business.
The very foundation of your business is being able to judge expertise without accreditation.
Because accreditation can often mean a lack of expertise, an excess of conformity, an excess of hypercaution because of regulatory bodies and so on.
If the foundation of your business suddenly reverses itself once you get in the seat of power, I think that's not a good decision, right?
Because you're saying, well, this was the way that I got started, this is the way that I'm successful, but everyone else has to follow the opposite rules.
I think that's creating a bit of a culture split.
In fact, it's a huge culture split between you and the rest of the company.
Right. Well, that's because I'm the devil's advocate and I'm totally not reasonable.
No, no, no. If somebody's genuinely not that reasonable, you don't want to work for them.
And if somebody says, well, I can't hire you because lawyers, it's like, okay, well, then that's one of your 99 and you move on to someone else.
I apologize for my poor acting skills.
I was literally trying to break the fourth wall by telling you that I was the devil's advocate.
Yeah, I get that. But that's because I think I came up with a kind of reasonable and gentle way to say, dude, you only have a business because you ditched accreditation and now you're demanding accreditation from everyone?
Oh, come on, right? And I think you've displayed a really interesting point here, which is that, well, when I was somewhat thinking about the kind of roles in which within an institution someone would play, and so I was still in kind of like thinking that you were a, so an occupational psychologist is not actually like someone who helps someone with therapy, it's like, how can I increase work productivity within this institution?
Yeah, yeah. No, I've actually worked in an HR department in my youth.
I know the beast of which you speak.
And I wouldn't necessarily, I wouldn't go to a place that had a big and established HR department.
Fantastic advice, yeah.
Yeah, because you want to go something more small, something more nimble and all that.
So something smaller and more nimble.
Is that at least a reasonable way to start looking at it?
Oh, yeah, I think so.
I think the idea of consultancy is a way more attractive option now because I know that consultants actually don't need any experience or formal training besides, well, I suppose, like insight and experience.
I just contradict myself, but you know what I mean?
Everything I've done entrepreneurial, I've worked for free for a while.
I mean, you have to, right? So when I worked for, oh boy, probably 18 months, fairly full-time with not a single bit of money when I started a software company.
And as you know, I worked for, oh, I don't even remember what it was now, maybe two years, two and a half years on this show without taking any donations.
You've got to know some, I mean, work your contacts, go meet people, become friends with people who are entrepreneurs, and just ask them about their business.
Have a completely informal, unpaid, listen to people, and see if you can help solve any of their problems.
And you'll get a good reputation from that, just as a guy who's, you know, and you'll just start drawing people to you, but you've just got to do stuff for free.
At least that's what I've sort of experienced in my entrepreneurial days, just got to do stuff for free.
And you'll get a reputation that way.
You'll get contacts and it just starts the ball rolling from that way.
Right. And how do you mean do things for free?
Like what kind of platforms are there to help people access that kind of opportunity?
Do you know any entrepreneurs?
I know a few, as someone who's been an active libertarian for a few years now, I've bumped into a few people who do indeed do some things shakers and movers and such, but not very many, to be honest.
Yeah, so, you know, take them out for lunch.
And just say, okay, you know, this is completely off the record.
I'm a vault, totally private.
I guarantee it because, you know, hopefully you have some credibility with them as friends.
And, you know, what's going on in your company?
You know, what's the upside? What's the downside?
I'm looking to provide a service at some point and I know I can do it.
I just need to know. The key in the lock situation, like what's the best way to approach it?
And, you know, I'm sure that if you're friends with them, then they'll tell you and all of that.
And you can find ways to add value and just start it off conversationally and see where your skills could fit.
And then, of course, at some point you may bungee in and say, okay, I'd love to do a two-hour workshop.
And, you know, I'll cater it.
I'll bring free dinner in.
I'll order pizza, you know, just a two-hour workshop, totally free to you.
See if you like it. See if you can provide value.
Just see if you can do all of this kind of stuff.
And, of course, I'm sure you can provide value.
And then, you know, over time, you can just start working towards charging people.
That would be sort of my approach.
Sure. Sorry, I was just sorting out audio issues.
No problem. There is one more dimension by which I would like to sort of say before we finish.
No, I like this entrepreneurial stuff because you kind of lured me in by saying, no, no, no, it's really, really quick.
Just, you know, in and out, man.
In like Flynn. Just kidding. Anyway, go on.
Okay. I personally, I was very interested in your work on self-knowledge at the age of about 15 onwards.
I watched The Way A Man's Heart Is Broken, I think.
When I was 15 and just kept going.
I wouldn't consider myself in that same vein of what that sort of content might inspire in the minds of those who are bigoted about men's trouble with women.
I personally have found myself, how would you say, providing novel material and insight As an undergraduate in psychology and my professors tell me that I'm doing really well and that the doors of academia are right there and you can do really well at this if you chose to do it.
So I have a real knack And I've never done anything in business before, so I'm very much seduced in the same way that you're seduced by the idea of being an academic, or at least you were.
The idea of being an academic anyway, and the fact that you could spend your time studying and creating More theory and ground for theory and testing theory to completely revolutionize a field.
You know, there's a prime position for where I could contribute in meaningful ways that would make my life extremely interesting.
And I'm kind of somewhat seduced in a similar way.
So I was wondering if you had any thoughts on that about, you know, Should you do something because, let's say someone's a fantastic singer, should they become a singer or earn 100k a year?
Well, okay, so that's a big question.
One of the thoughts that popped into my mind is if you wanted to also show your expertise...
Then what you could do is there's endless amounts of business case studies that are out there.
Harvard Business Review has a whole bunch of them, and there's a whole bunch of business case problems out there.
You could actually just start a podcast where you take those articles and you say, here's how I would deal with it.
Here's how I would handle this situation, and just put that out for free.
And then, you know, people can avail themselves of your wisdom.
You can start to build a reputation that way, right?
So that's just one... Possibility.
Now, with regards to if you're a great singer, are you saying that you could earn more money as a singer than something else maybe you enjoy more?
I don't think so, unless if I was just going to start saying, no, I'm not going to do it on live television when people tell me to say a certain thing.
No, I mean, in all seriousness, unless if I become some kind of international freak overnight superstar like Jordan Peterson, there's no way that I, being an academic...
Well, he was not an overnight superstar, right?
I mean, the guy had been working and building his credentials for decades.
Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah.
I've consumed all this material before then on YouTube, so my point was more like...
Sorry, just break it down for me.
Is it like something you're really good at that makes you more money versus something that you like that makes less money?
Is that right? Yeah, in short, yeah.
Okay, so I mean, I do consider that a bit of a false dichotomy because that's saying that you know ahead of time...
Absolutely.
Yeah. Whether what you love to do versus what you think you're good at are even opposite things.
You don't know how much value you're going to be able to provide.
You don't know what time frame that value is going to be there.
So maybe you make less money doing what you love at the beginning, but because you love it, you sustain it, you continue to hone your expertise, and maybe you end up making more money down the road, right?
So I think that you have to I mean, the best union is what you love that is good for the world, right?
So something that you love that is good for the world, that's the sweet spot, man.
That's the best that you can possibly get in life.
To aim higher than that is to have a standard that is like, well, I'm going to die young if I don't live to 300.
Well, you're just going to feel frustrated your whole life that you're right.
So if you can do good in the world at something you love, Sure.
And find a way to make it work financially, which I think you can.
There's a big market for good in the world.
There's a big market for goodness in the world.
And if you love it, then it's gonna be sustainable.
If you love it, you're gonna continue Like, let's say you have some manual dexterity and you've got perfect pitch and you're pretty good at piano, but you don't like playing it and you sure as hell hate practicing, right?
You say, well, you know, I could be a good pianist.
It's like, well, you kind of can't.
Because if you hate practicing, you're just going to delay and avoid and you're just never going to become that good at something that you hate.
But if you love something, I mean, I still read philosophy.
I still read self-knowledge.
I still consume materials.
I still... You know, my OCD, as I've talked about, is the audio-video quality, so I'm always fussing around with that.
Because I think of it like, you know, this is going to be for all time.
Never destroy the master, so to speak, right?
So if you love something, you're going to continually get better at it.
Improve your skills. Improve your knowledge.
I think that's the best way to end up with long-term, decent monetization is something that you love.
Something that you're good at, that you don't love, you just won't practice enough to become truly great at.
Whereas something that maybe doesn't come quite as easily for you, but you love it, you're going to keep polishing it until it really shines.
Cool. So for me, this is going to be an interesting one.
Because for me, the loving part is the...
Academic side, the theoretical side of psychology, where I'm getting my most promising marks and, you know, building my best sort of what I love, really, into something I'm very good at.
And I'm blessed in that that's an opportunity for me, but unfortunately, the only way in which I can make that into, well, the only career path I can see ahead of me, and I know I'm defaulting back to that same uncertainty and all this, the only way that I can see theoretical psychology as a career path is through academia or being a therapist of some kind, and that's being sort of That means you've got to be underneath the state for...
No, no, no. Okay, you're casting it out way too wide.
The only way you can do theoretical psychology is through academia or being a therapist.
Well, being a therapist is not theoretical, right?
It's applied psychology. So I'm not sure how those two end up in the same category.
Sure. So your theoretical psychology is used in a model, and it's basically a working model of how you actually operate.
So therapists in field, they often do extended reading and extended...
No, no, no, I understand that. But if you're just doing pure research...
Because your wife is a therapist, isn't she? Hang on.
But if you're just doing pure research, that's different from being a therapist, right?
The therapist, you're actually applying the theories to hopefully help people's lives, right?
Yeah. Okay, so I can't put those in the same category.
Like, I love theory, therefore I'm going to practically apply theory to people's everyday problems, right?
That's applied.
And of course you need theory to apply it, but that's not the same category as pure research, right?
Yeah, sure. I think what it is for myself that I love about it, I guess to be in more nuance, is that I love theory that can be applied to yourself because that's what I've done in my life and it's been incredibly enjoyable and fruitful.
So how would academia have you apply theories to people's lives?
So if I discovered how certain concepts that only exist currently in philosophy in the Western canon can be understood and made use of in psychology within a research position, I could potentially revolutionize certain aspects and models of therapy for people.
And why would you need to be in academia to do that?
In order to...
Be recognised and not be arrested for the kind of experiments that would be done because they wouldn't be given the ethics boards that you'd have to consult would pretty much threaten you with fine or jail if you ever committed to going through with an experiment without their, how would you say, approval.
Do you think that you would be able to get the approval of a notoriously hyper-conservative ethics board for the kind of stuff that you'd want to do?
I think so. I think so, honestly.
If I was in a research position, yes.
But it's...
Again, they're the same kind of...
They are the devil's advocate when it comes...
They are the people that I was playing earlier.
No, no, I get it. I get it.
Okay, and...
The governing body in the UK regarding this stuff, would they welcome your ideas and a revolution of the field?
Almost certainly not, I don't think, given the fact that I even listen to this show.
You can't even talk about IQ. Yeah, absolutely.
You can't talk about male-female differences.
I mean, you can't talk about Psych 101.
Or anything that's important.
Yeah, or anything that's important. So it seems that there are these two worlds in your mind.
One is where, well, you've got to stay in the academic world in order to revolutionize it.
And the other is, well, they won't even let you talk about stuff that was commonly accepted in psychology 100 years ago.
Yeah, I think I just kind of pushed that under the rug.
Yeah, there is that. Don't believe the website, right?
Like, you go to the CDC's website, okay, there's more about diversity than there is about actually fighting disease.
But, you know, go to the Michelle Malkin article I read out in the live stream last night.
Don't go to the website and think it's the reality.
So, you know, you go to the UK NHS and, you know, their mission statement is all kinds of Glowing, right?
But, you know, be the empiricist rather than believe the hype, right?
I would imagine that if you have something truly revolutionary to offer, the world of psychology, that the last place you'd want to be is an academic trying to get stuff published through the peer review process, if that makes sense. Yeah, I think it would be a nightmare.
I've already had nightmares with some of the staff in my university.
It's a pretty progressive one.
But yeah, I think so.
Coming back to this, you know, do what you love thing.
So I guess that changes...
Okay, dude. I'm sorry to interrupt you.
Okay, I gotta break you off here.
Because we're trapped in a loop here, right?
Okay, so you just need to tell me, given that you like psychology, you need to tell me how much you were punished for making independent decisions when you were a child.
Making independent decisions?
Yeah. I was never punished, but I was incredibly smothered by my mother.
She would constantly make decisions for me, and I'm already seeing the parallels.
Okay, so you were punished.
Because what happened if you made a decision outside or independent of what your mother wanted?
She wouldn't do it to punish me.
She would do it to try and re-represent what I was trying to say.
She wouldn't... Completely rephrase or try and control my behavior.
I guess she controlled my behavior, if that's a form of punishment.
Okay, and the next question, of course, is how did she control your behavior, Finn?
She would just...
quite...
She would talk over me.
She would... Make sure that she knew exactly what...
She would try and make sure that she thought she knew what I wanted without actually trying to know, without actually wanting to actually know exactly.
Okay, so what happened if you just...
So give me a specific example, if you could, about something that was quite strong in this area where you wanted to do something and your mother wanted you to do something different.
Gosh, so there was a really memorable example where my mother...
I had been in a play fight at school, by which some guy had been taunting me or something like that, and I got hold of him, and I took back whatever it was that they had taken from me, and I... I sort of...
I punched him or something.
I think I elbowed him.
You had a masculine moment, right?
Yeah, I had a masculine moment, definitely.
You weren't just going to sit there and spread lies about his reputation.
You just, you know, you fisticuffed it in a masculine way and dealt with the issue, right?
Sorry to interrupt. Yeah, I even remember knowing at the time I held myself back from being as forceful as I could be.
But this completely traumatized the other guy.
The other boy? The other boy, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Good, and maybe he doesn't do it again.
What's wrong with that? Well, you see, yeah, I guess that's a good question.
But to carry on with the story, my mother was called in, along with his mother, because she seemed so upset by it.
And I remember the playworker, who I'm still good, sort of, I guess, for lack of a better term, friends with, even though she's almost 80 years old now, and And she asked me, my mum was obviously there, she asked me, it was me, her and my mum, she asked me specifically, so why did you do this?
Or what did you do?
And I begun to start talking, and my mum probably heard about maybe half a sentence?
And she butted in and she tried to say something for me for what I meant, even though she had no idea what I was about to say or what I actually meant.
And I remember being so disgruntled with my mother, like, for goodness sake, you know, come on, what's going on here?
And rightfully so, obviously.
Okay, so hang on. So why wouldn't you just say to your mom, hey, don't interrupt me.
You just asked me a question.
Let me answer the damn question.
Right. Great, great Socratic reasoning there.
I think because my mom would escalate.
Okay, so let's do this, right?
So you'd be your mom. So you interrupt me.
I'd say, whoa, mom, you asked me a question.
Let me answer the question.
No, look, look, I'm trying to tell her this.
I'm trying to tell her this.
No, no, you just asked me a question and you interrupted me the moment I tried to answer it.
That's rude. Well, technically it was the other woman who asked the question.
Okay, so the other woman asked me the question and you interrupted my answer.
That's rude. Let me speak my answer.
No, no, I'm just telling her.
I'm just telling her. Don't worry, don't worry.
I'm just telling her. But she didn't ask you, Mom.
Mom. She didn't ask you.
She asked me. You do understand the umbilical cord was cut long ago.
We're two separate individuals.
I'm being asked a question directly.
Let me answer it.
So I'm going to sort of break roleplay here and just say that it would just go in a kind of loop of her just saying the same thing.
Oh, like the kind of loop that I was just complaining about?
With you? Well...
I guess so, but I wouldn't categorize them as the same.
No, I know you wouldn't. I'm not saying that you're your mom, I'm just saying that there was a loop that led us to a loop, right?
Sure. And the way that you break the loop is you say, look, we have some principles here.
And if someone asked you a question, mom, and I interrupted you to provide my answer to your question, you would tell me that was rude and to let you answer the question.
That's a universal principle.
I expect you to live by the values that you impose upon me.
So if I'm asked a question, you back off and you let me answer it.
Now, I guess she'd huff and she'd puff and all that kind of stuff, right?
If you stood your ground, what would happen?
Um, so it's interesting.
I will answer that question straight away.
And... Okay, could you?
I would get stroppy and I'd raise my voice.
And so would she.
Okay, so let's say you just keep going.
What happened? It would just get to a point where it would escalate to a sort of verbally aggressive point where we would just stop the conversation.
Okay, what happens if you don't stop the conversation?
What happens if you just stand your ground until you get what you want?
Which is fair! She gets seriously...
Eventually she would get seriously upset and...
And so? Defensive.
And so? And I've done all this, and that's why I can tell you.
But yeah, I would just keep standing my ground, and eventually she would go away.
She would sort of cry and get really upset and frustrated.
And then eventually she would come back in like maybe...
It used to be a few days, but now it's a couple of hours.
Yeah. Where she would then come back and apologize and say, you know, look, this is something that I did wrong and I apologize that it's...
But does she keep doing it?
I mean, does the apology mean that she doesn't keep doing it?
The blunt answer is...
I mean, progress is incredibly slow, but over a very long time.
So your mother would do what the boy did, which is that she'd be a bully and then she'd cry.
She'd be a bully, and then she'd cry.
Sorry, I'm just processing that.
Because the boy, right? The boy bullied you, and then you took back stuff, and then he went crying to his mom, right?
Yeah, okay. Yeah, I see that.
I see that. Okay, so this is why this was the first thing that popped into your mind, right?
Because this is the same, right?
Right. Okay, okay, okay.
Nice. I like that.
Well, I appreciate the slogan.
Yeah, self-knowledge. Yeah, yeah.
I mean, so... So how was this a punishment?
So I guess the question is, there must have been some implied or implicit threat in your mother for you to back down and get stuck in these loops, right?
In other words, was there a withdrawal like, I'm not going to love you anymore?
Was there a withdrawal like, I'm going to reject you?
Was there a withdrawal like, you're going to pay for it later?
Was she going to escalate in public and humiliate you?
Was there some negative consequence?
To your mother strongly disapproving of what you were doing?
I would say for the next few hours she'd be incredibly emotionally...
Volatile and insensitive, negligent, you know?
No, I don't know. Just ostracizing.
I wasn't there. Okay, okay.
Sure, sure. What does that mean?
I thought you said she'd go away, but what does that mean she'd be volatile?
What would that mean? Like slamming kitchen drawers kind of thing?
Very, very early on.
I would say when I was very young, that did happen.
Yeah. She actually went to anger management and that stopped such extreme behavior.
How old were you when she did that?
Gosh, the first time I kind of remember that sort of stuff happening is around the age of like four?
How old were you when she went to anger management?
Oh, probably about six or seven.
Okay, so for your first six or seven years, your mother had a pretty vicious temper, right?
Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That really resonates. In a way that's really unhealthy, actually.
Like, I see that, and I'm like, yeah, that's now a part of me.
Do you know what I mean? Like, I stare at that on, like...
Wait, it's a part of you, what do you mean?
Like, you weren't even listening to my call with the first caller.
But anyway, go on. Oh, no, I... Well, I believe that I was.
But... I see that in myself.
I could see how definitely...
I'm affected by that.
You know, my mother was like a grizzly bear.
You know, she'd be incredibly affectionate, but then she'd also be extremely volatile and aggressive if you got on the wrong side of her.
How often would her aggression manifest?
Like per week, per month, per day, whatever?
1.5 times per month, I would say.
That's pretty specific. Yeah, yeah.
And the rest of the time, was she relatively even-tempered the rest of the time, or was it like smaller spikes?
I would say she'd get a little bit touchy and unreasonable on maybe like a daily basis with my dad specifically.
And did your dad intervene at all in these maternal eruptions?
Or is he the one who made her go to anger management?
Absolutely not. I mean, yes, in a way, I think that's true.
I'm sure that factored into why she went.
But no, based on what I understand of your experiences and what you relay on your show, I hold my dad accountable for the fact that he never did.
My dad's a whole other story.
As of right now. But anyway, I do hold him accountable for the fact that he never stood up to my mum.
In fact, one of my earliest memories is the fact that there was a moral rule which was being violated.
I violated it and I was told mum violated it.
She got upset.
My dad told me when I went to him and said, look, mum's doing this that's wrong.
He said, oh, well, mum's just upset.
Like, don't upset mum.
And that memory sticks for similar reasons, I assume.
So yeah, that's my experience with my dad.
I'm really sorry about that.
I mean, I'm really sorry about that.
Not having an ally, right, is very tough because it puts the entire weight.
And also, it's teaching you that bullies run the world, right?
That your dad is like, hey, man, we don't want to upset your mom.
Yeah, cry bullies, right?
Yeah, cry bullies.
Unreasonable, aggressive people run the world.
And, you know, them and the elite pedophiles, I guess, these days, right?
The Illuminati. Yeah, yeah.
So... So then how does this, you get stuck in a loop, right?
So it sounds like your mom is stuck in a loop.
It's a less volatile loop than it was in the past, right?
She went to anger management, but she still has these cycles, but they're less extreme and the apologies come sooner, but she's still stuck in a loop, right?
Oh, absolutely. Okay, so why is your mother stuck in a loop?
How is she, what is she missing that she didn't break out of it?
Because you can break out of these loops, right?
So why is your mom not doing it?
Gosh, that's a very...
I've been trying to answer that question for the last, like, 15 years, I would say.
Even before your show.
I think my understanding is that she...
And I'm going to go with the, I guess, least permissible reasons first.
And that's the fact that I think that she has...
She has quite severe learning difficulties.
She has a processing disorder.
We certainly know that.
She has a hard time hearing what people are saying and it takes her a long time to actually listen to the meaning of what people are saying because the audio, almost like the audio, has to be recognized over a much longer period of time.
I've never heard of such a thing.
Yeah, so auditory processing disorder.
And yeah, it's an interesting one.
I've never heard of it. It's saying auditory processing disorder doesn't clear anything up for me.
Yeah, so it's a thing that can sometimes occur where the brain doesn't...
It takes a lot longer for the brain to process audio information.
So to intelligit...
intelligit?
I don't know the specific pronunciation.
To interpret it accurately?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So for example, if you're trying to talk to her with music on, she won't actually hear you at all.
Oh, is it that, I think Jack Posobiec was talking about this the other day, that it's tough to focus on one specific sound when there's a sea of sounds around?
Yeah, although it's slightly different from other disorders that are similar.
So, for example, like autism, you have that same problem present.
But auditory processing is specifically focused on, like, another common example of auditory is that The tonality of people's voice cannot be heard in a lot of cases like my mother's.
So your tone of voice is really hard to be...
like the nuances.
So for example, she's never understood sarcasm in her life until we figured out that she had auditory, which was only a few years ago.
And so that doesn't really answer the question of where the loops came from, but I think that there is some...
You have to give her that in that way.
That she is sort of limited in certain ways and she's not exactly like...
She knows this herself.
She says, you know, I'm not the smartest person in the world.
Um... And she never did well at school, and she doesn't consider herself that intelligent.
So, I think I can agree on that, that she's not, you know, the brightest lightbulb.
But that aside, I think that she...
So, hang on. So, she...
This is going to sound critical and negative.
I don't mean it that way.
So, don't have your mom listen to this, because she'll misinterpret it for sure.
But... Okay.
So she has, you have some, and I think legitimate, you have some legitimate sympathy because she is limited in her capacities mentally, right?
And not just in terms of intelligence, but this auditory processing thing, right?
Yeah. Right. So she has some, you have compassion and understanding of her because of her physical limitations, right?
Yeah. In large part, that was a lot of the reasoning as to why I felt like I could start beginning to forgive her for some of this stuff that we talked about earlier.
Well, I'm going to challenge that.
Of course. And I'll tell you why.
Okay. If she deserves sympathy, and I'm sure that she to some degree claims that sympathy, I'm not saying illegitimately, right?
So she claims and says, listen, I have this disability, and so it's tougher for me, and you should have some sympathy for me, right?
And I don't disagree with her on that.
I mean, if this is a legitimate thing, I have no idea.
What do I know? But let's say it's a legitimate thing, then she has the right...
To some more tender treatment, some latitude, some forgiveness, because of her mental limitations, right?
Is that a fair way to put it?
I would say so, yeah.
So what about childhood?
Childhood is a mental limitation.
Should she not also, based upon the standards she claims for herself, have had greater sympathy for you as a child because of your smaller brain size, fewer neurons, immature development?
I mean, isn't being a four-year-old a lot more limiting than what your mother is dealing with?
Absolutely. So, if she claims that you should have sympathy and forgiveness for her because of her limitations, why the hell didn't you get the same when you were a child?
And those limitations were pretty bloody obvious because you were very short, right?
I mean, it wasn't a mystery.
Like, she had to get tested in whatever decade she's in, right?
And it's a very subtle thing.
She doesn't quite get sarcasm.
You know, one of the ways that you know somebody's not very mature is they recently stepped out of their freaking diapers.
Yep. So the more sympathy that you apply towards your mother for her limitations, the less sympathy you can have for her because of how she treated you when you had very obvious limitations called being a child.
Okay. I would definitely have to listen back to that because it's one of those things that if I listened to a few times I would definitely process much better.
Alright, I'll say it even more clearly if you like because I'm always trying to be diplomatic.
I don't know why, but I do try anyway.
The more your mother claims that she should receive sympathy and forgiveness because of her mental limitations, the more she's at fault for not giving you that sympathy When you were mentally limited by being a child.
The more you forgive her for the now, the less you can forgive her for the past.
The more you try and diffuse your anger towards her now, the more you're going to increase your anger towards her in the past.
There is no scenario under which you cannot judge her negatively.
The more she is to be excused for her limitations, the more you should have been excused for your limitations as a child.
Do you see what I mean? You know, if she gets no sympathy whatsoever for her physical and mental limitations, then okay, she was more justified being harsh with you as a child, but she gets no sympathy in the present.
The more sympathy you give to her in the present for her limitations, the more she's to blame for not giving you the exact same sympathy when you were a child.
And you didn't need to be tested to see if you were four.
She actually knew when you came out of her damn body, she knew you were four.
Okay. That's the loop.
Because you're trying to move one of these dials as if it's independent of the other, and that's why you're in a loop, right?
Yeah. You're trying to escape your anger towards your mother by giving her forgiveness in the present, which I understand, but the more you give her forgiveness in the present, the more angry you're going to be unconsciously with her in the past.
You know, oh, well, she doesn't really understand sarcasm, so blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
It's like, okay, but you were four.
Okay. I mean, you didn't understand anything, right?
You were four. Yeah.
Well, she's got this physical limitations, like you have the physical limitation called being four, the mental limitation, right?
So if she's saying, well, I need some forgiveness because of my mental limitations, it's like, but she was really angry at you when you were four.
No, no, no, that doesn't work, right?
Why we get stuck in loops is we try and move these dials independently of each other, but unconsciously they all move up and down the same way.
The more your mom gets forgiveness for her limitations, the worse she behaved when you were four, because you had the physical limitations of being four.
Okay. So what do we do about people who have these problems, I guess?
Hey, I thought you were Mr.
Theory. I don't know.
Now, immediately, you've got a brand new theory you're still trying to process, and you're immediately trying to jump into applying it, right?
Do you know why you're doing that? Because you don't want to feel it, because you don't want to feel the emotions.
This is what people do, right?
And you've heard this in the show a million times, and you probably got annoyed when people did it, and you're like, boy, if I was in that conversation, I'd never do that, right?
I've just given you a blinding insight, and you're like, okay, well, what do I do with it?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's my OCD, too. No, it's...
Well, you can call it whatever you want.
I just think it's emotion avoidance, right?
It's uncomfortable being upset with your mom.
Of course, because she punished you for disagreeing with her when she was younger.
So the mom in your head is setting up this wonderful moral Mobius strip where she gets excused for limitations in her 50s or 40s or whatever, but you don't get excused for any of your limitations when you were four.
Yeah. So I would just say, mull over that and recognize that there is no escape from being angry at being treated unjustly.
And we can construct all these theoretical scenarios where, well, my mom was limited and she had a mom who did this and, you know, the circumstances, the this, the that, the other, it doesn't matter.
Fundamentally, if you were screamed at or yelled at or abused or Or you had a stormy, dangerous mom around.
That was scary. And you have every right to be upset and angry about that.
And constructing all of these theoretical defenses against it is just going to eviscerate you.
It's going to take your balls, right?
It's going to take your...
There's a reason why you had...
Pushed a kid and took your stuff back.
As I said, that's a masculine moment, right?
You had a masculine moment.
And what did you see when you were growing up?
You saw your mom wore the pants.
You saw your dad was emasculated.
Oh, we don't want to upset mom.
What are you kidding me? Don't want to upset mom?
Come on. So emasculation is the key.
And so when I say, listen, you can be angry at your mom for what she did.
I'm inviting you to have a masculine moment, right?
Because that's the one thing that was forbidden when you were a kid and that you saw your father specifically instructed you, a man does not upset a woman.
You've got to be kidding me. You've got to be kidding me.
Of course, men. I mean, otherwise, you never grow up if you can't upset a woman, right?
Because his old mom's going to be mad, right?
You can't ever become an adult.
You can't. Your voice can't drop.
Your balls can't drop. You can't plant your square feet in the world and stand for something.
I'm not saying you. I'm just saying, like, in general, right?
Yeah. And so this is why I think you're overthinking things.
I think this is why you try and figure out every path down.
I think this is why you'd like to stay in theoretical land because you just don't want to reach, To the castanets that God gave you, grip them and say, it's time for Manfin to show up, right?
You can be mad at your mom.
Maybe she was half a child.
Maybe she's a bully. Maybe she's cowardly.
Maybe she's manipulative. And there are wonderful things to her, too, I'm sure.
You're a good guy and a great conversationalist, so she obviously gave you some good stuff with regards to that as well.
But if you have this world where you can't upset women, Then you can't ever be an adult, meat-based male.
Yeah. I mean, in a sense, masculinity is all about upsetting women.
And this idea that women don't like to be upset, come on.
Go read Fifty Shades of Grey and tell me that women don't like to be upset.
Now, all the women who betcha me on Twitter is like, they keep coming back.
They're fascinated by the bad guy.
The Bad Guy song by Billie Eilish, which is hugely popular.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And... I think I'm scared of that.
Of what? Of that sort of caricature of like being a bad guy because I think that my mom even to this day really conditioned me to not be that kind of person.
Right. Like just to elaborate on you saying being that guy.
I was that guy for a very long time in my family.
You mean the bad guy? Yeah, like I took your advice and I was very, not your advice at all, sorry, that's kind of incorrect to phrase it that way.
I interpreted what you've said and I tried to apply it to my own family and I did hold my mum responsible.
And there are definitely massive chunks of that still in our relationship at this moment in time.
And I really did make my mum fully responsible.
And I feel like this auditory processing thing has just come along and given me a mask to wear and pretend like, oh no, my mum could have never done that anyway.
But as you point out, I couldn't have done that anyway when I was four.
So why the hell was she doing it to me?
Why the hell was she acting that way to me?
And I think since then I've been Going back into the shell of, like, being scared of upsetting women.
Yeah, yeah. Listen, that is the great...
You know, I talked about this in my speech in Orlando, and that is the great terror of men that we displease women, right?
We all know that, right?
I mean, that, you know, ladies, don't date this man.
He's a... Right? But until women start criticizing Islam, I'm...
I don't know.
For women to say, oh, this is good or this is bad in masculinity while not criticizing, you know, some pretty patriarchal cultures like Islam and other cultures as well and so on.
It's like, okay, I don't really care what you have to say because you're just trying to pick...
You're trying to pick a weak guy.
And then what happens, of course, is the women pick the weak guy and then they're not satisfied with with that.
Right.
I mean, this is I'm sure the story of your parents relationship that your mother is continually dissatisfied.
My love life, too.
Yeah.
So, yeah.
So, of course, if you have that attitude, then women will pick you and then you'll be sensitive and nice to them.
And then they'll be dissatisfied and you'll be dissatisfied.
And things will just kind of slowly evaporate.
Right.
Yeah. I tried to adapt myself using a lot of this sort of like, I guess, for lack of a better word, like red pill, PUA stuff.
Basically, as soon as I, I guess, stopped judging women that way.
I don't think those two are separate at all because I was trying to appease women through both of them.
Well, but the pickup artistry stuff still hands all over the power to women, because the pickup artistry stuff is being a pussy beggar, right?
It's saying, well, okay, what can I do to manipulate you into having sex with me?
You can be as all kind of manipulative as you want, but it's still up to the woman's decision as to whether you get what you want.
So it's just another form of enslavement to the female.
Hmm. Yeah, exactly.
And also, you tend to have to gravitate towards lower quality women who are susceptible to manipulation.
So, it does not help you get quality women focusing on that kind of stuff.
Covertly accepting, manipulating, like they can conduct manipulation and you just have to pretend like it's okay, subconsciously.
Yeah. So, yeah, I would...
I mean, I think the big challenge is to be as honest as humanly possible with your parents, you know, the frustration that you have with your dad's compliance, your mother's bullying and all of that.
And if she just pulled the, well, I have this condition, it's like, well, I had this condition called being a child that didn't protect me.
why the hell should Joe's protect you?
That would be my thought.
So listen, I'm going to close it down.
I'm sorry. I know it's great to be back at the college.
I really, really love it. Although I do understand, of course, that it's pretty detailed questions to deal with.
But that's what we're here for.
So I'm sorry to all of those we didn't get to.
I will maybe book a little bit more time next time.
But I really do thank everyone.
I'm not going to nag you guys for support if you're listening to this and you're not donating.
I really thank everyone for dropping by today.
And we will aim to do this 11 o'clock Eastern Standard Time every Sunday.
And, you know, maybe we'll throw a second one in if there's a lot of demand for it.
But let me know what you think. If you're enjoying having this back, I certainly like it a lot, and it's great to do some dream stuff, which we haven't done in years.
I was actually thinking about that not too long ago.
So, yeah, it's really, really great.
And, yeah, we will aim to get shorter ones next time, but you kind of have to do it until it's done, you know, like with chicken.
You don't want the salmonella of premature elaboration.
So, all right, thanks everyone so much.
Have yourselves a wonderful, wonderful day.
Day. Really, really appreciate your support.
Love you all to death. And I'll talk to you soon.
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