Oct. 15, 2020 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:44:05
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| Good morning, everybody. It's Van Molyneux from Freedom, Maine. | |
| It is, oh, what is that, 23, 22, 24 days until the U.S. election, which will not be decisive, but will in fact trigger a transfer of power crisis, the likes of which the Republic has not seen before. | |
| But I guess everybody get ready. | |
| Everybody get ready. There will not be A graceful transfer of power, I'm fairly sure, based upon just, you know, everything that I'm reading, everything that people are saying. | |
| So you heard it here, probably not first, but hopefully you at least have heard it and we'll get ready for all of that kind of stuff. | |
| And we have, I don't know, a little brief intro. | |
| Okay, let's just do a little brief intro, a little tiny intro here. | |
| So I've been thinking a lot about sort of world issues, world problems that have been going on. | |
| And I think they come down to kind of a fundamental misapprehension of history. | |
| And the fundamental misapprehension of history is everybody looks at the 20th century and says, well, what the hell happened there? | |
| What kind of freaky situation was going on in the 20th century that it was such a disaster, two world wars, a cold war. | |
| I mean, basically just an end-to-end conflict and hellscape of violence and democide and genocide and all that. | |
| And I think people came to the conclusions, or some people came to the conclusion, that the problem, you see, was identity. | |
| The problem was tribalism. | |
| The problem was in-group preference. | |
| And that the best way to solve the problems of the 20th century was to try to erase in-group preference, particularly, of course, among Europeans who were not unjustly viewed as the scientists of World War I, on World War II and so on, and that the conflict in the Cold War was considered to be a white conflict. | |
| I mean, I know Russia is not considered part of Europe, but the Russia-America thing, it was perceived to be a lot of white people sort of fighting. | |
| And so white in-group preference is considered to be one of the triggers for the domino tombstones of the 20th century. | |
| And so if that problem is perceived, then the solution, of course, is to try and oppose in-group preference, particularly among Europeans and so on or European descendants, and And that is a very interesting... | |
| Like, I can certainly see where people are coming from when it comes to that analysis. | |
| I can certainly see where people are coming from. | |
| It has a certain plausibility to it, don't you think? | |
| I mean, just sort of taking all sort of personal issues out of it, you can sort of see, well, you know, in-group preference caused a lot of problems, and so let's not have that And I think that's driving a lot of sort of modern problems or modern... | |
| Well, of course, they're considered to be solutions for problems. | |
| I remember Sam Harris saying that if you have a strong enough central government, then you would no more expect wars between countries than you would expect wars between American states with a strong federal government and so on. | |
| And although the federal government was responsible for the Civil War, but I think that is... | |
| Now, the issue, I think, masks, or the solution to this problem, perceived problem, masks something that I think is much more fundamental, which is the conflict is between collectivism and individualism, between rationality and anti-rationality, between free markets and central planning. | |
| These are the real conflicts, but I think they've kind of been masked into... | |
| An opposition of ethnic identity. | |
| Which is actually, I think, in the long run going to cause or extend more problems than it solves. | |
| So I just sort of wanted to point that out as a way of looking at the current world or the modern world and trying to sort of figure out why do the solutions that are constantly promoted tend to make things worse? | |
| And I think it's because it's a misreading of history. | |
| The other thing, too, I did a lecture yesterday on... | |
| Coronavirus and the politics and all of that to a fine Hungarian, Austrian economist, libertarian, anarcho-capitalist group. | |
| And I did a fair amount of research to prepare for that on the 1918 election. | |
| Flu epidemic. I'll probably end up doing it out as a PowerPoint and stuff like that, but I just wanted to point out that in November of 1917, I guess 112 years before last November, in November of 1917, the Chinese experienced a sudden outbreak of a rather deadly winter flu. | |
| They called it winter flu. But they did not admit this to the world, and they downplayed and minimized the danger of it, and they permitted foreign travel of people infected with this ailment. | |
| So it's a real shame that we can't get real history, because if we actually had real history, if people knew about all of this... | |
| Well... | |
| They might have understood that there might be certain cultural imperatives. | |
| Now, of course, this was pre-communist, before it became a republic, back when it was still an empire or a dynasty. | |
| But if people understood all of this stuff about China and its history with plagues and downplaying and allowing travel outside of the country of people infected, I think they might have looked... | |
| Understanding November of 1917, they might have looked at November of 2019 a little differently, and our current history would probably be quite a lot, or quite a bit different. | |
| But we can't get real history, and so we just end up with the same damn thing over and over again. | |
| History is the same story, just occasionally there are different costumes. | |
| All right. With those, I guess, two spot intros done, let's turn to the fine listenership. | |
| James, who do we have in the queue? | |
| Before we do get going, I do just notice just now you got a little bit of audio thing. | |
| I just want to check if that was you or if anyone else noticed that. | |
| Sound like maybe connection got throttled? | |
| Did it? I mean, I have a local recording, but that doesn't particularly help people who are trying to hear what it is that I have to say live. | |
| So I guess we'll just check with the rest and see. | |
| Is anyone else noticing it or just me? | |
| In the feedback. Someone else did say they noticed it. | |
| Just, you know, maybe do a quick check. | |
| Sorry about the interruption there. | |
| No, no, it's fine. Absolutely, we should do that. | |
| Let's see here. Internet. | |
| Let me just add it to a quick speed check here. | |
| I also noted this. | |
| I can always do a... | |
| I can always switch to another internet. | |
| Or even phone internet if necessary. | |
| So let's see here. What do we have? | |
| It was fine for most of it, and right at the very end. | |
| No, no, it's good. No, listen, the less post-production, the better. | |
| Exactly. And the less repeating of things, the better. | |
| Lord knows there's enough repetition. | |
| No kidding. I guess it's the upload that counts, right? | |
| For this stuff. Yeah, as long as... | |
| If you're not getting dithering, or... | |
| Not dithering, but... The audio artifacts or the pausing for me, then it might be okay. | |
| That's probably the upload, yeah. Yeah, I'm getting 30 to 50 megs down. | |
| Let's see what the up is. 12, 13 up. | |
| I mean, that should certainly be enough for audio. | |
| Okay, let's just... | |
| Yeah, we're just... | |
| And funnily enough, it's running now. | |
| I could hear you fine while I was doing the download test, and you can hear me fine while I'm doing the upload test. | |
| Is that right? Yeah, yeah. | |
| Okay, maybe it was just a blip. | |
| No, no, absolutely worth checking out. | |
| But all right, so let's move on with the callers. | |
| And if it happens again, I will switch, so just let me know. | |
| Yep, and I'll ping you. | |
| Otherwise, if it gets really bad, you know. | |
| All right, I will read off in just a second here. | |
| All right, the caller writes, I am reaching out to you today because I've had an issue that neither myself nor past few experiences with a professional have been able to resolve. | |
| Thank you. | |
| When I was in my last two years, Of high school, I dated a girl for about one and a half years. | |
| She was the first girl I had ever dated. | |
| She had a wonderful family, something I was not so fortunate to come from, and an especially wonderful father whom I respect much in the same way I respect you. | |
| The time came for both of us to go off to college, and towards the end of the month, that same month on the morning of my birthday, towards the end of September, She called me over the phone and stretched out breaking up with me over a 14-hour span. | |
| Yes, 14 full hours. | |
| I later realized this was done to be sadistic, and I had been used as a social trophy throughout the relationship. | |
| I was a young dupe, and I didn't know I should have had the self-respect to hang up the phone in the first 10 minutes, so I sat there and took it. | |
| I learned a few days later I had been cheated on with the new person she was with and was absolutely devastated. | |
| She posted a photo with him on her Instagram list two weeks later and in other profiles of hers I had not unfollowed yet and she bragged about how wonderful college was. | |
| I then realized in the following months I had been in an emotionally abusive relationship and that this person was never the person they had portrayed themselves to be and the red flags of the past started to come out. | |
| I've since moved on, dated other people, continued my education in engineering, and worked to enrich myself with new friends, hobbies, and aspirations which I feel very fulfilled by. | |
| I do not miss this person in the slightest. | |
| However, I worry the experience of that level of betrayal and deception from someone who I was very much so in love with has damaged me on a subconscious level. | |
| To clarify, this incident, which is already fairly trivial in the grand scheme of someone's life, occurred almost two years ago. | |
| I haven't spoken to this person since then, and I never intend to ever again. | |
| However, on at least a daily basis, I have experienced intrusive thoughts regarding being betrayed by this person, abandonment, or a wave of anger against both her and the person she had been cheating on me with. | |
| Also, many other elements which even loosely relate to the incident itself can bring out emotional flashbacks from this incident, or any of the intrusive thoughts or feelings I just mentioned. | |
| They strangely also arise when I'm having difficulty through something, say, a difficult calculus problem with a step I'm stuck on. | |
| I've also noticed I've become emotionally numb to almost everything except the actual thoughts themselves and have been caught off guard with the stoicism I've shown towards people I have dated and even just been friends with since. | |
| There's a disconnect, if that makes any sense. | |
| Back in March, I'd spoken to a psychiatrist to not much avail. | |
| I was told there was nothing he could do to stop the thoughts, and when I told him I was worried there was some sort of emotional trauma from the incident, I was told that I needed to have been in a life-or-death situation to have been traumatized. | |
| I stopped seeing him after three meetings when he finally told me directly there was nothing he could do, and I have been out of any sort of office in the months since. | |
| I'm now completely conscious of the fact these thoughts are causing me significant unnecessary stress and anxiety, as well as acting as a weight, which serves to make certain tasks harder and more draining. | |
| I figured they would eventually go away on their own, but the fact that this has gone on for two full years is not normal, and I need to figure out the source and knock it out at the root. | |
| All right. I appreciate that. | |
| And I mean, I take this stuff very seriously. | |
| I don't think that you need to have been almost mauled or raped by a bear DiCaprio style in order to have a trauma and your sensitivity to this issue is laudable and sensible and I think you're very wise to try and figure out what the actual cause is because our bodies don't usually just wake up and say, hey, I'm just going to lie to this guy. | |
| I'm just going to manufacture anxiety and trauma and upset because... | |
| I'm just a sadistic piece of flesh that enjoys torturing the brain stem, right? | |
| I mean, I think that you're... | |
| I'm sorry, Steph, are you speaking? | |
| Because we're not getting any audio from you. | |
| Oh, sorry, I was muted. | |
| So I will take this very seriously, and I think that you're entirely right to have this concern. | |
| I don't think that you need to be... | |
| Attacked or raped by a bear DiCaprio style in order to have Trauma. | |
| I think that it's very sensible. | |
| I don't think your body or my body or anyone's body just wakes up one morning and says, hey, I think I'm just going to pour anxiety and stress and cortisol and worry into somebody's brain because I'm a sadistic bag of meat that just enjoys torturing the higher faculties of man. | |
| So, no, I think that you're wise to be concerned. | |
| I think that there are important things to be learned from this and I also think it's wise, of course, to ask for help in trying to puzzle this out. | |
| And yeah, I mean, I'll take it very seriously indeed. | |
| Thank you, Steph. Now, can you tell me a little bit more about the relationship? | |
| Sorry, go ahead. Sure, you continue. | |
| I didn't really know where to go. | |
| But you said talk about the relationship? | |
| Yeah, yeah. As a whole, when did you, how did you start dating? | |
| How old were you? How long did it last for? | |
| That sort of stuff. I think it was we met junior year of high school. | |
| She was a friend of a friend, and I think it lasted junior year, senior year, and then summer going into college, and then it went about a month into college, and then sort of everything just exploded at the end of September for both of our freshman years. | |
| And this was your first serious relationship, right? | |
| Sorry about that. You said my first girlfriend? | |
| This was your first serious relationship? | |
| Yes, yes it was. Alright. | |
| And how deep or how hard did you fall? | |
| Pretty. Yeah, it was pretty bad. | |
| Maybe like a nine. Because it wasn't just her, it was also her family. | |
| Family was awesome. But so it was definitely, it was sort of a two-package deal. | |
| So it definitely, it made things more difficult towards the end. | |
| Oh, it's almost a two-package deal. | |
| Oh, yeah. For better or for worse. | |
| It's always a two-package deal. | |
| Oh, yeah. Everyone thinks like, like they always portray love like it's just some individual, like some atomized individual. | |
| It's never like, oh, yeah, I have a neurotic aunt and a sick grandmother and, you know, whatever it is, right? | |
| I mean, it's always about going to Aruba and, you know, sex on the beach. | |
| It's never about, oh, my nephew is getting christened, so we're going to have to spend a time with my whatever family. | |
| And it's always presented as this atomized sexual access rather than this soupy gene pool merging that actually occurs. | |
| It's not very realistic. | |
| It's the same thing for women. | |
| Romantic comedy fantasy is always about... | |
| The parents are either quirky and fun or out of the picture completely, but they're never difficult. | |
| Because, of course, you meet a woman and her family has had infinitely more effect on her than you have as her new boyfriend. | |
| That's where you've really got to keep your eyes. | |
| Sorry, was there something else you wanted to add to this? | |
| I mean, that's pretty much the whole idea of it. | |
| I just basically emphasize that since the family was so good, when everything happened so suddenly, it sort of doubled down in terms of the magnitude of how bad actually processing it was. | |
| So I wonder if that's affiliated with it, but that's really that. | |
| No, that's the core of it. The issue is not that you misjudged her. | |
| The issue is that you misjudged her family. | |
| That's the core. That's why it's still troubling to you. | |
| I mean, I can cut straight to the chase here, right? | |
| I don't need to do many breadcrumbs. | |
| Is that right? What do you mean that I misjudged his family with that? | |
| Is it that, like... | |
| Just could you elaborate that on a little bit? | |
| No, that's it. That's it. | |
| That's all you get. That's it. | |
| All right, next caller. No, kidding. No, that's perfectly fair. | |
| Sure. So, from what you have written and what you've said in the convo, you don't like her, but you still like her family. | |
| Pretty much so, yes. Yeah, that's crazy. | |
| That's not correct. That's not accurate. | |
| She's a product of her family. | |
| Yeah. But it... | |
| I get that it's a very strong correlation with usually if you have somebody who comes out as a bad person. | |
| They usually come from a bad home, but she did not come from a bad home in any sense of the word whatsoever. | |
| How do you know? I was in the home all the time. | |
| They were fantastic parents. | |
| They were very, very militant about never hitting the kids. | |
| The father especially, I could tell he always really wanted a son, but he never got one. | |
| And he knew that I didn't really come from such a great background. | |
| And he put in significant effort into relating to me and being my friend and being a father figure. | |
| And they were a very wealthy family, actually. | |
| The dad was a well-established businessman, great guy, libertarian, conservative, He actually, he sort of sent me into the direction of being more libertarian I am now. | |
| And just a very kind guy, even after everything happened when the relationship ended. | |
| He literally, he was the person who told me she cheated on me. | |
| And he offered that he would still be in my life as a father figure if I was okay with it. | |
| But I told him that. You know, because I knew that I wasn't going to go out and say very kind things about his daughter. | |
| So I... I said that I couldn't do it, but he still put the offer on the table. | |
| I reached out to him maybe Six, seven, eight months after the fact, and he messaged me, even though the stuff I was saying, I was talking about how, you know, I thought the daughter was abusive, and I just, you know, I don't want to say anything about anyone's kid, but, you know, I just want to make you aware of it as something to look out for. | |
| And even after saying all of that, he, like, said, you know, I hope you're doing well. | |
| You're a great kid. You're going, like, great places in the world. | |
| Just a very... Immensely kind, man. | |
| Immensely. So I get what you're saying, that from everything you read, it sounds like it's coming from the perspective of they weren't good people, but I can assure you that they were fantastic, amazing people. | |
| For sure. Right. | |
| That's a great case. | |
| That's very, very convincing. | |
| I'm not convinced, but it's very convincing. | |
| Again, you know them, obviously, infinitely better than I do, so take all of this with a grain of salt, as you can imagine, as you know. | |
| Sure. You've not been a dad, right? | |
| I have not been a dad, no. | |
| That you know of? I don't think I should be at 21. | |
| Right, right. Fair enough. I have not, no. | |
| Okay, so here's the thing. | |
| As a dad, this was his daughter's first love too, right? | |
| Yes, yeah. | |
| Right. Now, as a dad, you sit down with your daughter and you go over with her and you do this before, long before your kids start dating. | |
| Long before your kids start dating, you go over the ABCs of relationships. | |
| Right? So, you know, if you've got a daughter, you start to say, you know, some boys will only want you for kissing. | |
| And they just, or they only want you because you're a pretty face or like they're, whatever, right? | |
| And they can be very charming and you have to be careful, right? | |
| And when you are in a relationship, you must be monogamous. | |
| Because otherwise it's a massive betrayal and it's also physically dangerous because you can transfer sexually transmitted diseases from one person to another and it can be disastrous for the other person. | |
| It can be fatal for the other person. | |
| And you start working this stuff in early. | |
| In the same way that you don't just take your kid and say, hey, good luck on the highway with this car. | |
| You start training them early and get them down to stand the rules of the road, like long before they can even get a driver's license. | |
| Explain to them about driving. | |
| Because driving is one of the giant risk factors in the world. | |
| I have a friend who lost his daughter in a terrible car accident. | |
| It was strange. I was having... | |
| A couple over, and they were over an hour late. | |
| And this is a long time ago, before cell phones, and they were not normally late, right? | |
| And they said, oh my gosh, the traffic was unbelievable. | |
| There was some kind of accident, right? | |
| And it turned out that it was another friend whose daughter had died that caused the delay that had my couple friend be late. | |
| It is, you know, it just... | |
| I was in a near-death car accident. | |
| It's just one of these things that you have to just really train your kids on, right? | |
| It's the same thing with relationships, right? | |
| Make sure you match values. | |
| Make sure that you understand the person's history. | |
| Make sure that you're monogamous. | |
| And if you want to break up... | |
| You know, if you start to get feelings like you want to break up, if you start to get attracted towards someone else, then don't just do that alone, right? | |
| Sit down, talk about it with your friends, your family, with the boy, and so on, and just make sure it's not just a passing physical attraction. | |
| That is going to wreck something really good that you've built, right? | |
| So there's all of that, right? | |
| And you sort of prepare your child for dating, for the dating world. | |
| You sort of turn them loose and, you know, good luck! | |
| That's a recipe for disaster in the same way that you don't just wake up at the controls of an airplane and hope to be a good pilot, right? | |
| So... You also, in particular, because she was still, I mean, she's obviously at home, high school and all of that, right? | |
| So she was still under her father's roof over the course of this relationship until college, right? | |
| Yes. Yes. | |
| Right. So you monitor it. | |
| Right? As a father, how's it going? | |
| How's the relationship going? What's the good? | |
| What's the bad? You know, and obviously you don't want any... | |
| I don't know. I don't even know if there was sex, but you don't want any sexual deeds. | |
| But you just want, you know, how's the relationship going as a whole, right? | |
| And if it's like, oh, you know, there's a problem, it's like, well, that's important because this is... | |
| In the same way that you kind of sit in the passenger seat when your kid's driving when they're young, right? | |
| And you give them some guidance and feedback and all that, right? | |
| And so you... Help navigate, help the child navigate some very complicated early relationship stuff. | |
| And if the child has a good relationship, if the young woman has a good relationship with her father, then she will talk about the relationship and this, that, and the other, right? | |
| Now, problems show up before the end, right? | |
| And those problems are either dealt with, in which case the relationship might continue, or they're not dealt with, in which case the relationship will probably end. | |
| And teaching your children to monitor the signs of a relationship beginning to go wrong is very important. | |
| Very important. And I don't know that that was occurring. | |
| I mean, maybe you do, maybe you don't, but... | |
| Now, then, if your daughter decides she wants to break up with her boyfriend, and, again, not if she's gone on three dates and doesn't want... | |
| Like, that's fine. Or if she's gone on a date and doesn't want... | |
| That's fine. You still talk about that stuff, though. | |
| But this is, basically, this was like a start of marriage, right? | |
| I mean, you guys were together for years when you were teenagers, right? | |
| So, late teens, mid-late teens. | |
| So, that's like a start of marriage. | |
| That is a huge deal. | |
| And if the relationship is going to end, then you also coach your daughter On how to end the relationship. | |
| And you do that for two reasons. | |
| One is that you want to minimize the hurt to the boyfriend. | |
| And the other is that you want to make sure that your daughter doesn't bring the same problems that cause the end of this relationship into her next relationship because you need to protect her heart. | |
| A woman's heart is very easily scarred and hardens. | |
| You know, when you see these sort of bitter, angry, quasi-feminist, vengeful ex-wives stuff, like Norman Mailer, if I remember rightly, he stabbed his wife. | |
| And he said, well, as long as you're only stabbing, there's still some love left. | |
| In other words, he didn't shoot her. | |
| And I think it was him who said, you never know your ex-wife until you meet her in court. | |
| But when women get this sort of hardened, hostile, aggressive, cold... | |
| I mean, that's scar tissue. | |
| That is, you know, women's hearts are designed to wildly and deeply bond with babies. | |
| And women need a level of trust in this world that you and I can't even comprehend. | |
| Because women get pregnant and they lose their sexual market value when they have children and they really need a man to stick around, even though they've become much less physically attractive over the course of having children. | |
| Women need a level of trust that you and I really, really can't comprehend. | |
| And when that trust is met and nurtured, women become just about the most beautiful things in existence. | |
| And when that trust is violated and destroyed, women become just about the most toxic things that you can imagine. | |
| And a society that doesn't recognize this or imagines that women can be just like men is a society that's pulling the pin on the grenade and rolling it under the house. | |
| That's just boom. It's not going to work. | |
| So you want to make sure that you protect your daughter's heart and you don't want the heart to be broken by staying in a bad relationship, but you equally don't want the heart to be broken by a series of bad relationships. | |
| So as a father with your child's first relationship, first serious relationship, you should be all over it. | |
| And the mother too. I'm just talking as a dad, right? | |
| But that's the deal, right? | |
| That's what you should and really must be doing. | |
| Because expecting a young person, even if you've modeled a great relationship, he says good family and all of that, but nonetheless, you know, values change, things change, you know, the advent of pornography has really changed the relations between the genders, and the welfare state has really changed the relationship between the genders. | |
| So it's a lot of stuff that's gone on that's very different from when I was young, right? | |
| And I get these messages all the time, and I give dating advice. | |
| It's like, dude, you're in your 50s, you don't know what the hell it's like out here. | |
| And it's like, yeah, I know. I probably don't, although I can guess, but I sure as hell am glad I'm not out there, but So, let me ask you this then. | |
| So, for how long were things, if you noticed, not going well in your relationship? | |
| The way the relationship worked, and also to touch upon your earlier point, is that everything you said is completely true. | |
| And that that is, in fact, what good parents should be doing. | |
| I agree 100%. | |
| And this sort of ties into my answer to your question, is that it wasn't like things were visibly bad. | |
| It was sort of... | |
| I was sort of kept around, and then there was always stuff sort of going on behind the scenes. | |
| So, for instance, like... | |
| In the time that we were in high school, before we went off to college, I didn't learn this until later, but she was always talking to other guys. | |
| There was always somebody else. | |
| She was doing a lot of stuff behind my back in terms of going places I wasn't aware of to talk to guys and stuff like that. | |
| I don't know if any of that was ever physical. | |
| Who knows? It doesn't really matter. | |
| Wait, but sorry, how did you find out about this? | |
| It was after the fact, going forwards, that... | |
| There were, let me give you an example of one, is that there were people who went to, because we went to different high schools, there were people who went to high school with her who, there were guys that I was sort of suspicious of, and they confirmed that said other guys had been flirting with her throughout the relationship. | |
| I think it was just a matter of liking the attention, and that's loosely why I was kept around in the first place. | |
| But I agree completely with what you're saying about, you know, a good parent should make sure to, like, tell their kid not only, you know, how to properly spot a good relationship, but also how to, you know, make sure that they protect their needs and they protect themselves in a relationship. | |
| And I think he did that. | |
| I really do. But the thing is, is that she was very secretive in many of the things that she did. | |
| Like, for instance, when... | |
| She basically just dropped the bomb on my birthday. | |
| The parents didn't know. | |
| They literally did not know that anything was going on until all the cards were put on the table then. | |
| The way that they found out was that she did track and field. | |
| So about maybe... | |
| An hour into the phone call, she's like, yeah, I gotta go to track and field practice. | |
| And I was like, you're just gonna do this on my birthday and then you're just gonna disappear to track and field practice? | |
| Like, what? And that's when she called the parents and she told the parents everything. | |
| And that's when they found out. | |
| And the dad confirmed this after the fact that they had absolutely no clue. | |
| They told me that they assumed that it wasn't going to last through college because it was long distance, which is fair. | |
| But they had absolutely no clue that the storm was brewing to speak for just everything to happen on my birthday. | |
| Yeah, but they don't have that as an excuse. | |
| They don't. No, they don't have that as an excuse. | |
| Because it's their job to know. | |
| I get what you're saying, and I agree with you for a lot, but I can't imagine the parents ever saying to the daughter that in any way, shape, or form it was acceptable to not only treat another person like that, but treat someone who you dated like that, who at that point practically was family. | |
| I don't know what they did after the fact. | |
| They never asked. No, no, no. | |
| I'm ready for that. | |
| I'm ready for this stage, right? | |
| Because this is my first round. | |
| This is opening statements, right? | |
| This is opening statements. | |
| So the next round, the next round is... | |
| Sure. The next round goes something like this. | |
| So the next round is... | |
| They had no clue, and somehow it's legitimate that they had no clue. | |
| And... There's a breakup. | |
| And it's a brutal breakup, right? | |
| It comes out of nowhere. | |
| It lasts forever. And then they find out flirting, infidelity, and all of this is involved, right? | |
| So at some point, at some point, they're in possession of the fact. | |
| And of course, I'm assuming everything you say is correct. | |
| I obviously don't have her side. | |
| But they're now, her parents are now in possession of the fact that her daughter willfully and maliciously broke a young man's heart. | |
| Immorally, too, right? Because you had a monogamy, right? | |
| So now they're in possession of this knowledge. | |
| What must they do now? | |
| I mean, I suppose that they would have to notify me, you know, just to, like, be fair. | |
| No, no, no. I mean, yeah, obviously, but... | |
| I mean, sorry, that's not obvious, but... | |
| Yes, they should do that, but what should they do with regard to their daughter? | |
| I don't know, like... | |
| Probably have a conversation with her about how that was a horrible thing to do to somebody, which I don't know whether or not that happened. | |
| I'm assuming it did, but I don't know what was said between the two of them, or the three of them, I should say. | |
| And that's the problem. What they need to do, what they must do, or what they must have done to have moral integrity, is they must talk to their daughter and they must say, you willfully and maliciously and cruelly and brutally broke this young man's heart. | |
| You cheated on him. | |
| You owe him a giant freaking apology. | |
| And you must go and do it right now. | |
| Now that did not happen, right? | |
| No, I never got an apology. | |
| Right. So that means one of two things. | |
| That means either they didn't demand it, or they did demand it, but she didn't respect their wishes. | |
| Because it was, just to clarify on that too, it was after the fact. | |
| She never said it. | |
| She never said on her what was actually happening. | |
| It was just, you know, the... | |
| You know, the stereotypical stuff like, oh, you know, I'm in college. | |
| I, you know, I don't feel like I want a relationship right now. | |
| You know, we can still be friends, all that garbage. | |
| But yeah, you're right. | |
| I never received an apology. | |
| I actually, this is, I probably should have included this in the email. | |
| But what happened after the fact was this person sort of spun the narrative into I was a bad boyfriend. | |
| Let's just pick a name for her. | |
| Let's say... | |
| Rebecca. | |
| There we go. Let's say... | |
| Her name wasn't actually Rebecca, but why not Rebecca? | |
| I'm assuming that when you pick a name, you're not going to actually pick her actual name. | |
| And that's why I can't pick the name, because I've had it once or twice in the show. | |
| Well, let's call her X. And then this is long pause. | |
| It's like... Actually, X is better than Rebecca. | |
| No, let's go with Becky. | |
| Let's just call her Becky. Okay, sure, Becky. | |
| So... What happened was, after the fact, Becky sort of started going around and saying that I was a bad boyfriend. | |
| Yeah, okay. Hang on, hang on. | |
| No, we gotta rewind. | |
| I get that's a lie. Absolutely, stop me when I need you. | |
| Yeah, we gotta rewind. Okay, that's fine. | |
| So... She either was not told to apologize by her parents, or she was told to, she didn't listen to them, and there were no consequences. | |
| And I'll tell you that for myself, there's a lot of theoreticals here, but I will just say this for myself. | |
| If I had a daughter, I can't imagine Izzy doing that, but if I had a daughter who did this, and I said, listen, you broke this guy's heart, you've got to apologize. | |
| I say, oh, he was a bad boyfriend. | |
| It's like, no, no, no. Okay, let's say he was a bad boyfriend. | |
| Then what you do is you honorably decide to end the relationship. | |
| You wait a certain amount of time, and usually it's half the length of the relationship, right? | |
| So you guys went out for how long? About a year and a half. | |
| About a year and a half, right? And so, you know, for nine months, you shouldn't date, right? | |
| So you honorably break up and you don't date for nine months to make sure that you've learned your lessons and you've healed your heart and you're ready to be available for someone new. | |
| But you don't cheat on the guy. | |
| You don't cheat on the guy and then break up with him and don't tell him that you cheated and blame him for being a bad boy. | |
| Like, that's just horrible, horrible, horrible behavior, right? | |
| Yeah. It is. | |
| And I would say, if this was my daughter, I would say to her, you must apologize. | |
| We obviously need some kind of therapy or we need some kind of weekend retreat or we need to figure out exactly how this kind of behavior came about because absolutely, appallingly, terribly bad, nasty behavior. | |
| So, and now the daughter may say, I'm not going to apologize to that guy. | |
| Forget it. No way. | |
| No way am I going to apologize to that guy. | |
| He's a bad boyfriend, right? | |
| I mean, okay, okay. You'd have that conversation. | |
| But let's say, you know, this is always the question, right? | |
| What happens if somebody you're giving good advice to doesn't take that good advice, right? | |
| It's an interesting question. And I'll tell you what I would say as a dad. | |
| I would say, okay, if you're not going to apologize, that's certainly your choice. | |
| You're an adult, right? And you want to be independent of your father and your father's advice, that's no problem. | |
| So, given that you are an adult and you want to be independent, I'm going to grant you that independence. | |
| You no longer have to listen to my advice. | |
| You are an independent adult, so pay for your own damn college. | |
| I agree with you completely. | |
| That is an amazing point. | |
| I know obviously neither of us know what was said over that kitchen table after the fact. | |
| No, no. We don't know, but it doesn't matter. | |
| No, sorry. It doesn't matter because you're claiming a veil of ignorance, which we have. | |
| Of course, we don't know what was said, but we do know that the consequence was that she did not apologize to you and there were no negative consequences that we know of, right? | |
| I don't. That's true. | |
| Yeah, that is the veil of ignorance. And the reason I would say to my daughter, I'm not paying for your college, is that I cannot put you, I'm not going to pay for you to be in an environment where you can harm more men. | |
| Because if I'm paying for you to go to college, I'm subsidizing and funding you being in a high dating environment when you have willfully broken the heart of your first boyfriend and learned nothing. | |
| So I am not subsidizing you being in an environment where you can attract and hurt more men. | |
| That's true. That is an amazing point, yeah, that I didn't think of. | |
| Now, let me ask you this. | |
| You know the family, you know the girl, right? | |
| Yes. If the father had said that, would she have apologized? | |
| Well, here's the thing, is that I know the family, but... | |
| I really didn't know the girl. | |
| And I don't want to sound like, you know, cheesy or anything like that, but it was really, you know, after everything happened and you walk away from that and sort of the rose-colored glasses on the memories come off, you realize that all you knew was sort of a front that this person put forwards in terms of their character. | |
| So I... I only knew what this person wanted me to know about them. | |
| I didn't know... | |
| No, no. Listen, I totally get that you want to drag me into an analysis of the daughter. | |
| I really get that. | |
| But she started dating... | |
| Hang on. She started dating you when she was still a child. | |
| Legally, right? So, my concern is not with... | |
| Becky, I get your concern is, and I can completely understand that. | |
| My concern is that you have misjudged. | |
| Look, you haven't misjudged Becky insofar as you get a sense of her deviousness and her manipulation and her hollowness, right? | |
| You get that now. | |
| So if you were in a situation of you've bitterly learned from a very hard experience, then it would begin to recede for you. | |
| But the experience is not receding for you, which means that you're missing something important. | |
| So if you tell me, as you know, oh, you know, Becky did bad things. | |
| Becky turned out to be a bad person or not very nice person or whatever. | |
| I'm like, you know that. | |
| I accept that. And you've known that for a long time, but it hasn't helped you to solve the problem of the experience continuing for you, right? | |
| The trauma, the upset. | |
| So if you're telling me stuff that you already know very well, And you've already known for a long time and hasn't helped you dislodge this experience from upsetting you, then we're not getting anywhere. | |
| This is something you already know. | |
| So it has to be a lesson that you don't know, which is why it's continuing for you. | |
| So that's why, and I'm, you know, I sympathize, I really do. | |
| It's a horrible thing to experience from this woman. | |
| It's a terrible, terrible thing to experience, and I massively sympathize with you. | |
| But I don't want to waste her time together rehashing something you already know, because that's not what the problem is. | |
| The problem is what you don't know. | |
| So, you said that the father, anti-spanking, great. | |
| Libertarian, great. But is he an unparent? | |
| Because, you know, there's peaceful parenting, which is you don't use violence, abuse, aggression, name-calling, humiliation, in order to parent. | |
| Now, that is very different from unparenting, where basically you just let shit happen. | |
| And you might be there as a trusted advisor if the child is in need, but you just let them learn and you're just hands-off, right? | |
| Right. And I am a significant opponent of unparenting. | |
| Because children need guidance, they need consequences, they need feedback, right? | |
| You can't take a child and give that child no negative consequences for the child's entire life and then turn them out into a world that distinctly has negative consequences and think that you've prepared them for anything except failure. | |
| So, you know the family infinitely better than I do. | |
| At what point, over the course of your knowledge of that family, did your girlfriend suffer negative consequences for bad behavior from her family, from her parents? | |
| You know, I really don't think she did. | |
| I think that's a great point that I never really thought of. | |
| Of course she didn't. And she knew... | |
| Now, also, how pretty is she? | |
| She was pretty pretty. She's very pretty, right? | |
| Conservative, whole nine yards. | |
| Yeah, so she's pretty. | |
| You know, she's track and field, so she's got a great figure. | |
| And she's got a high-status family with lots of money and conservative. | |
| So she's a super catch, right? | |
| So I thought... | |
| No, no, but I mean just in terms of appearance and all that, right? | |
| Yeah. She's a super catch, right? Yeah. | |
| All right. So she's a super catch and she has high value and no consequences. | |
| High value, high sexual market value, and I'm sorry to use the term sex because it doesn't just mean having sex, but, you know, high romantic market value, high dating market value, high marriage material value or whatever, right? | |
| And she has the world beating a path to her door, and she has no negative consequences for bad behavior. | |
| And you think it's just her? | |
| When her father has not parented her. | |
| She's grown up like a wild thing. | |
| When in a time of maximum demand for men. | |
| She has no reality, no sense of consequences. | |
| See, the reason that you give children negative consequences is to teach them empathy. | |
| And what is the one... | |
| When somebody behaves, when a child behaves without empathy... | |
| The first thing that I think of is the two extremes. | |
| The extreme of humiliation and punishment and the extreme of no negative consequences. | |
| Brutal parenting or unparenting both meet on the other side. | |
| It's like a river that meets on the other side of the rock with a lack of empathy. | |
| You teach children negative consequences so that they understand that their actions have emotional impacts on others. | |
| I agree with you. That's a great point I didn't even think of. | |
| So, what are the indications in the family of a lack of empathy? | |
| I would say the only person, well, maybe I saw it a little bit from her sister too, not nearly as much as Becky, but... | |
| Oh, from her sister? | |
| From her sister a little bit. | |
| But not nearly as much, I'd say. | |
| But I would argue in terms of empathy from the parents. | |
| I agree with your point completely. | |
| I can't name a time where there are actually consequences for the kids to show empathy. | |
| But the father especially showed immense empathy towards me. | |
| So the father had empathy. | |
| The mom definitely had empathy. | |
| The sister had empathy, too, not as much as the dad, but I think that the dad was a pretty empathetic person. | |
| Well, okay, so hang on. | |
| I appreciate, and I'm sorry to interrupt you, and I appreciate the story that you told me, and I'm taking it very seriously about his mentoring of you and so on, right? | |
| Absolutely. But here's the thing. | |
| If he had empathy for his daughter, he wouldn't withhold negative consequences from her. | |
| Because it's cruel. It's cruel to raise a child without negative consequences. | |
| Because it's not preparing the child for life. | |
| It teaches selfishness, kind of narcissism, and obviously putting your own needs first and to hell with anyone else. | |
| And it teaches people... | |
| See, the opposite of empathy is status. | |
| The opposite of empathy is status. | |
| And that's really, really important to understand. | |
| So when you say it was a high-status family, my first concern is, it doesn't automatically mean, right? | |
| But my first concern when I hear, oh, a high-status family is, oh, are they high-status because they lack empathy? | |
| Because people who focus on status Very often do so because it's the sad second prize when you don't have empathy. | |
| People who look great... | |
| Take a silly example. | |
| Some guy who's really great looking is slowly cruising down the street in a Ferrari or a Lamborghini or some other tiny-dicked, high-status piece of bullshit, right? | |
| Now, how do we know that person lacks empathy? | |
| We know that person lacks empathy because he makes other guys feel bad. | |
| We also know that he lacks empathy for himself because he's attracting women with flashy displays of money and resources, which means that they're going to be drawn to him not for his qualities of character, but for his wallet, right? | |
| His bankroll. So he's not building a stable foundation to be loved. | |
| And he's causing envy and resentment and upset in the men around him. | |
| Now, listen, it's fine to go through life. | |
| You can't go through life saying, well, I'm never going to upset anyone. | |
| That's, I mean, I'd be the last person that anybody would believe if I said that, because I'd upset a lot of people over the course of my life, particularly my philosophical life. | |
| So I'm not saying you can't upset people and so on, right? | |
| But I don't upset people because I'm driving down the street in a Lamborghini or something, right? | |
| I don't upset people because I'm just out there flashing status and all this and that, right? | |
| Like, and I know this, so when I was sort of your age, right, I had friends who were pretty high status. | |
| And wealthy and, you know, beautiful homes and so on. | |
| Like, I remember I wrote a play when I was in high school and we went to rehearse it and we performed it and we went to rehearse it at a guy's house and his father was like truly mind-bendingly wealthy. | |
| This house just went on forever. | |
| There were like two pools, one indoor, one outdoor. | |
| It was nuts, right? Now, A rich kid who's been raised well understands that he's just lucky. | |
| Just lucky. It doesn't, like I was saying to the caller on Friday, it doesn't stick to him. | |
| He doesn't have more value because his parents have money. | |
| He's just lucky. And he should be humble about that good fortune and he should never ever lord it over kids who just happen to be born into poor households. | |
| I mean, if I was that wealthy and I had a son, a daughter in that environment, they would get constant lectures of, yeah, you're just lucky. | |
| I mean, I do say this to my daughter with regards to the fact that she has great parents and, you know, we have a great family life and so on. | |
| And I say, listen, look, I mean, you're lucky. | |
| Like, there's going to be people, you're going to meet people out there in the world, they're broken. | |
| And it's not their fault that they're broken. | |
| It may be their fault that they remain broken as adults, but it wasn't their fault that they were broken as children. | |
| They just happened, you happened to be born into a great family. | |
| And other people happen to be being born, as I was, into a bad family. | |
| And you should never take pride in what you have not earned. | |
| You should appreciate it, but you should not take pride in it. | |
| So the people I knew when I was growing up who were wealthy, I can't remember a single one of them who said, I'm sorry that you were unlucky to me. | |
| Because, you know, mom gets institutionalized. | |
| Father is absent. | |
| There's no money. I've got to have three jobs in my mid-teens just to make ends meet. | |
| I've been paying my own bills since I was 15 years old. | |
| I had to go work up north because I had no money and I needed to save up. | |
| And no one, not at the time or ever since that I've known that I grew up with, has ever said, man, you had it rough. | |
| I'm so sorry. I was lucky. | |
| You were unlucky. I'm so sorry. | |
| And it almost never happens. | |
| And this is part of the vanity of people who are born at third base and think they've hit a home run, right? | |
| And so with regards to this family, you said, you know, wealthy, successful, high status, and so on, right? | |
| Now, you can be wealthy, and you can be successful, and you can be, quote, high status. | |
| But if it's kind of obvious, you know, like if you drive the Lamborghini and you, whatever, right? | |
| Then odds are that your vanity is causing you to want to feel better than other people. | |
| And if you want to feel better than other people, it is inevitable that they will end up feeling worse. | |
| And if you, if your success is dependent upon other people feeling worse, you're kind of a jerk. | |
| If you flaunt your wealth, your success, you're kind of a jerk because your value is dependent upon other people envying you, other people feeling worse about themselves. | |
| And that is a great warning sign. | |
| And I'm aware of this. | |
| And I happen to have been born, you know, relatively decent looking. | |
| I have good health for the most part. | |
| I have a good brain. | |
| I'm quite instinctively wise and fairly good at analytical rationality. | |
| And I'm well educated. | |
| I'm well read. And I have a fair amount of wisdom to bring to the world. | |
| And I challenge anyone out there to find a time where I've lorded over my good fortune, so to speak, over someone else. | |
| No. Some things I have earned in myself, but a lot of things are just innate. | |
| I didn't earn that I have blue eyes. | |
| I didn't earn that I'm taller than average. | |
| I didn't earn a pleasant speaking voice. | |
| I didn't earn any of this stuff. | |
| And to some degree, I didn't even earn my interest in philosophy. | |
| I just got fascinated by philosophy the moment I was exposed to it. | |
| So I didn't even really earn that. | |
| And so a lot of stuff that is accidentally positive in my existence I view with great humility and that it has value not because it exists. | |
| My talents have value not because they exist. | |
| They have value insofar as and only insofar as I can use them to make the world a better place. | |
| And so you will never catch me driving down the street in, even if I could afford one, some sort of Lamborghini. | |
| You will never catch me lording my skills and abilities over other people. | |
| You will never catch me using my accidental talents to make other people feel inferior. | |
| In fact, you know, how did we start this conversation? | |
| I lauded you for your courage and your wisdom, and whereas your last, or your therapist was saying, you know, it's not that big a deal, I take, and I said, I'm going to take what you say very seriously, and it is very serious. | |
| You think of the amazing conversation that we're having about this stuff, it's because I'm taking you seriously, and I'm not going to say, oh, poor you, you had a bad breakup as a teenager, welcome to the real world, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right, which would be to humiliate you, Unjustly, unfairly, and then I would feel like a superior person because I just put down a 21-year-old guy, right? So that's, I guess, probably the alarm bells that are ringing deep in your mind, that you got sucked into the vanity of the family. | |
| Now then the question is, wait, let me pause here before I get to the next point and see if any of this lands true for you or makes sense or anything like that. | |
| Sorry, we did have a bit of a disconnect here, but we reconnected right after. | |
| So, regarding... | |
| You guys can hear me now, right? Okay. | |
| So, it's an interesting question. | |
| Do the parents have empathy? | |
| It's an interesting question. | |
| And my guess would be no. | |
| And I'll tell you why. | |
| So, in life, the opposite of empathy is status. | |
| Because empathy is when obviously you care about what other people feel and you at least work reasonably hard to have people be comfortable and happy. | |
| Or even if they're unhappy in the short run, then they're happier in the long run. | |
| So when I sort of remind women of declining fertility, it's not because I want them to be miserable. | |
| It's because I want them to be happier in the long run than if they ignore that and end up childless and alone and unhappy in the future. | |
| Now, status, on the other hand, is quite a different animal, and quite an unpleasant animal in its own way. | |
| Because status, to be high status, automatically means that other people feel lower status. | |
| And so if you're some, you know, great-looking guy and you're driving down the street in a Lamborghini, then that's just making other guys feel bad, right? | |
| And so it's lacking empathy because you're like, I'm superior, I'm better, I'm this, I'm that, right? | |
| I have a Lamborghini, you don't. | |
| I'm good, you're bad, I'm strong, you're weak, I'm, you know, all this kind of stuff, right? | |
| And the same thing can happen with sort of pathological muscle overdevelopment and so on, you know, I'm ripped and you're not and all that kind of stuff, right? | |
| And so if you have, as your value, making yourself feel good at other people's expense, if your status, if your value requires that other people feel kind of a little humiliated or lower status or not good enough or whatever it is, right? Well, you're kind of a jerk. | |
| You're kind of a jerk. Now, the guy driving down the street in a Lamborghini also is lacking empathy for himself because he is attracting a woman based upon his, you know, pretty crass resource display, right? And that's pretty bad too. | |
| And you really don't want to do that to yourself, right? | |
| You don't want to attract a woman just based upon crass resource display That's like a woman just attracting a man based upon a low-cut top, like some sort of cleavage or whatever it is, right? | |
| You're not having empathy for your future self and your future capacity to be loved for who you are, that kind of stuff. | |
| I don't understand, right? So, when it comes to status, if someone is really ostentatious about it, you know, they got the Rolex and they got the super great clothing and they got the A big house that they kind of parade in front of everyone and they got the souped up car or whatever it is. | |
| Well, that is somebody who is gaining value out of making other people feel less. | |
| That's not empathetic. | |
| And so when you talk about this girl's family being sort of high status and so on, look, you can be a success. | |
| That doesn't mean that you are caught up in this anti-empathy status problem, right? | |
| When I was growing up, I knew kids who were from very wealthy families. | |
| I wrote a play in high school, and it was performed in the high school, and we rehearsed over at one guy's house. | |
| And the father, I still remember the name and his actual job, and it was pretty staggering. | |
| I mean, the guy was incredibly wealthy, like unbelievably wealthy. | |
| To the point where they had two pools, like one indoor pool, one outdoor pool. | |
| Their house just went on and on and on. | |
| And it was just crazy, right? | |
| How much money they had, right? | |
| And the wealthy kids that I knew were just lucky. | |
| They didn't choose those families. | |
| They were just lucky. And whether it's luck or unluck, you know, that sort of plays out in the long run, right? | |
| But as far as how things are measured when you're a teenager... | |
| They were just lucky. Now, if I were that wealthy and I had children in that, raising in that environment, I would say to them, listen, it's really, really important that you don't confuse your good luck with having value. | |
| It's the same thing if you have kids who are really physically attractive or super athletic or whatever. | |
| It's like, you know, that's great. | |
| You know, you should enjoy that and that's not a bad thing. | |
| But don't imagine that accidents of birth are Give you actual value. | |
| Like, don't do that. | |
| It's a very, very bad idea. | |
| It's a very bad idea. | |
| And it will make you very unhappy in the long run. | |
| So, and I've had those conversations with my daughter where I say, listen, you happen to have been born into a great family. | |
| You're loved and respected and not aggressed against and not hit and not yelled at and not called names. | |
| And that's, you know, great. | |
| You should enjoy that and appreciate that. | |
| But you're lucky. | |
| And other kids, myself being one of them, just weren't lucky and unlucky. | |
| And you, dear caller, too, one of those kids who said you grew up in a pretty rough environment and you're unlucky. | |
| Now, I don't remember, and I'm sure I would if it had happened, I don't remember one single child, one single young person the entire time that I knew, and just about everybody in my world had it better than me. | |
| Just about everybody. Nobody else's mom ended up institutionalized. | |
| Nobody else had to start paying their own bills, working three jobs when they were 15. | |
| Nobody else had this kind of Dickensian childhood of madness and violence that I had. | |
| Now, I'm sure some kids had it worse. | |
| I mean, sexual abuse and so on. | |
| So there's no doubt of that. | |
| I mean, I have massive sympathy and I could be considered lucky relative to those kids. | |
| But not one person That I knew when I was growing up, either back then or ever since, has ever said to me, man, you were unlucky. | |
| Oh, man, you had a lot to deal with. | |
| You were really, really unlucky. | |
| I'm so sorry. No, that never happens. | |
| So what generally happens is people feel superior To other people, and they base their value on feeling superior to other people, and that is the opposite of empathy. | |
| As I said, the opposite of empathy is status. | |
| Because status requires that your value be vampirically drained from other people through their envy and feeling worse. | |
| And that's really an important thing to understand. | |
| So when you say, A, the family was successful in high status, and B, the children lack empathy, I'm like, well, yeah, of course. | |
| And I say this to my, you know, you can say this if you have money, right? | |
| Say this to your kids. You happen to, you know, you happen to be born into a wealthy family. | |
| Well, that's not bad. | |
| It's not like you should feel guilty or bad about it, but, you know, just kind of lucky. | |
| You know, I say to my daughter, there are going to be broken people you're going to meet in the world. | |
| Now, the fact that they were broken as children was not their fault. | |
| The fact that they remain broken as adults may be their fault. | |
| It depends how badly they were broken. | |
| But don't feel superior to them. | |
| You were lucky. And with regards to my, like, how do we start this call, right? | |
| I'm 54, you're 21, and... | |
| I could have said, as it sounds like the last guy you talked to about this, I could have said, dude, okay, big whoop, right? | |
| You had a bad breakup in your teens. | |
| Welcome to the world, right? Welcome to the real world. | |
| You know, it's kind of pathetic for you to still be mooning about some chick who cheated on you and dumped you in the past and, you know, blah, blah, man up, sack up, whatever stupid shit that could be said, right? | |
| And did I do that? | |
| You did not, no. I did not, right? | |
| What did I say? You were empathetic. | |
| Serious stuff. This is very serious stuff. | |
| It's like, oh, first world problems. | |
| Like, yeah, well, guess what? We're in the first world and we've got problems to deal with. | |
| And it's important. | |
| And because of that, empathy, I think we're having an important conversation about this stuff. | |
| And the last thing I'll say is I was born with a certain number of, you know, fairly extraordinary gifts. | |
| Intellectually I'm pretty good at logical analytics, but I'm also very empathetic. | |
| I have a deep, instinctive wisdom as to the problems of humankind, and I've written novels and plays. | |
| I was a good actor. | |
| I've been a good businessman. | |
| I've been a great writer. I'm a podcaster and philosopher and all of this kind of stuff. | |
| As far as podcasting goes, before this year, really, it's one of the most successful around. | |
| And I happen to be above average in height. | |
| I happen to be pretty good looking. | |
| I happen to be Relatively healthy. | |
| I happen to have a pleasant speaking voice. | |
| I happen to have an interesting accent, which I did not earn. | |
| Like, all of these things have kind of combined. | |
| And some of it is my choice, my willpower, my honor. | |
| And some of it was just bloody accidental. | |
| It was just accidental. | |
| And I can't... | |
| Take pride in the accidental. | |
| I won't. I won't take pride in the accidental. | |
| Some people might say I have white privilege, although it certainly didn't feel that way. | |
| The most popular guy in my high school happened to be a black guy, a really great guy. | |
| But anyway, so I challenge anyone to listen to My massive catalog of shows and find one instance, even one, where I lorded it over someone. | |
| Where I made someone feel bad in order to make myself feel better. | |
| Where I lauded it in terms of status. | |
| I'm always saying, and everybody's heard me say this a million times, I've made mistakes. | |
| I'm right there with you. | |
| I'm not on some ivory tower. | |
| I'm not on some Himalayan peak like a guru looking down at the silly foibles of mankind. | |
| I've been down there in the trenches with everyone, and I still am. | |
| I have never lauded it over people. | |
| I have never taken the accidental and made it into value. | |
| And that's why you're calling, right? | |
| Because you know you're not going to get treated that way, right? | |
| So the big question is then, what was going on? | |
| If this analysis, and let me just sort of pause here. | |
| That's what I did before. Let me just pause here. | |
| Okay, if this analysis has some value, just let me know if you think it might be somewhere in the vicinity. | |
| I don't know if it's exact. Probably isn't, right? | |
| But is it somewhere in the vicinity of something that might be helpful? | |
| So far, yes, it's helpful because it's making me realize that... | |
| Tell me if this isn't accurate, too, but it's almost like that part of the reason that it still bothers me... | |
| It's not because of her. I knew it wasn't because of her, but it's... | |
| It's because of the injustice that was enabled by the parents who I held in such a high regard that maybe this is some form of cognitive dissonance because of what the parents allowed to happen. | |
| Would you say that's accurate of what you're saying? | |
| Okay, so, right. | |
| Now, this comes back. This comes to the dad, right? | |
| This comes to the dad. You got incredibly harmed by this family. | |
| Yes. And the family has not made it right. | |
| Now, I know the dad said, I could still mentor you and blah, blah, blah. | |
| That's not a real offer. How's the dad going to mentor you if the daughter broke your heart and never apologized? | |
| So your collision with this family left you heartbroken and this family has no excuse because they knew that you had a very tough childhood, right? | |
| Right. So, my question is always then, okay, if something really bad happened to you to the point where, sorry, how long has it been since you broke up? | |
| Two years. Two years, right. | |
| So, two years later, it's still troubling you, which is not due to any weakness on your part. | |
| It's not due to any failure to move on. | |
| I don't know, whatever move on really means, right? | |
| Everybody says move on, except for slavery, but anyway. | |
| So you got really wounded by this family. | |
| They have not made it good. | |
| They have not made it right. | |
| Like if the dad had, if his daughter had called you in tears saying, I can't believe it, my dad is going to cut me off college funds if I don't apologize to you, I mean, what would you have thought? | |
| I'd know that he stood up for me. | |
| Bye. | |
| Yeah, and that he cared about you, he cared about his daughter, he cared about his future happiness, his own future happiness, right? | |
| Because what's going to happen if his daughter keeps dating around and sleeping around and cheating on guys is she's going to get her heart broken, it's going to turn into a big giant ball of intransigent scar tissue, and then she's just going to have a miserable life and that's going to be his legacy. | |
| Like it's not a lot of empathy here, right? | |
| I see. So the question is then, so what was the dad doing? | |
| When he was doing all this mentoring of you, right? | |
| Because it ended really badly. | |
| And he didn't take a stand for you. | |
| So what the hell was going on? | |
| He... He was sort of being present in my life in the way a dad would. | |
| Let me allow... I know that's very vague. | |
| No, it's not vague. | |
| I get it. But feel free to go on. | |
| But it was... You know, if there was anything political, because obviously we're on the same page politically, you know, we talk about it. | |
| He knew I had interests, and he'd do everything he could to learn more about those interests, just to, like, relate to me about it. | |
| You know, he put in the effort to do that. | |
| He'd, I'd talk to him and we'd talk about philosophy and he'd literally, he'd, he'd stop in a way that my family never did and he'd sort of say like, you know, I can, oh, well, drop my name if you guys could buff that out. | |
| Sorry about that. But he'd say, you know, my name, um, I can tell you're a really smart kid and that you're, you're wiser than the people your age or I'd, I'd say something and he'd He'd take a moment to think about it for a second. | |
| He'd look at you like he knew that you weren't something that was common. | |
| That you were a catch and that in being a catch he was happy that you were part of said family. | |
| Ah, you added to his status. | |
| What do you mean? You just said you're a catch. | |
| You're unusual, right? You're high value. | |
| He would say, yeah. So you add to his status. | |
| This is the kind of young man my daughter can attract. | |
| This could be a positive addition to the family. | |
| Status, status, right? Could you challenge him? | |
| Could you prove him wrong? | |
| Could you disagree with him publicly? | |
| All the time, yeah. We had different opinions on religion. | |
| And we would talk about it regularly, and he would be open to anything I said, and I would be open to anything he said, and he would be willing to work back and forth. | |
| It wasn't like it was, you know, it's my way or the highway with him, like he'd be willing to discuss ideas. | |
| So it was like, they were genuine discussions and everything. | |
| It wasn't like anyone, you know, this is what I believe, and this is what you're going to believe too, or anything like that. | |
| No, no, he wouldn't. I mean, libertarians generally aren't along those lines for sure. | |
| Right, yeah. And in fact, then, like... | |
| Ah, interesting. | |
| Okay, okay. | |
| No, that's good information. | |
| It's good information. So what was he doing? | |
| Because he sure as hell wasn't protecting you from his daughter, right? | |
| He wasn't. I agree. | |
| That's an amazing point. | |
| And I would argue that the betrayal from the father was worse than the betrayal from the daughter. | |
| Could be, yeah. | |
| And it was a betrayal. | |
| Yeah, it was. | |
| You're right. | |
| Because if the daughter is dangerous and the father is setting you up as a pretend – I don't mean to pretend dad like he's faking it. | |
| Like if he's setting himself up as a father figure but the daughter is dangerous, he's setting you up for a true heartbreak. | |
| Even if indirectly, I get completely what you're saying. | |
| I'm not saying it's conscious, right? | |
| Right. He's providing an environment that's encouraging trust and being comfortable, and then he just enables something like that to happen. | |
| I agree with you completely. | |
| That's something I didn't even... | |
| I guess this is pretty obvious at this point, but I definitely... | |
| No, it's not obvious. No, no, no. | |
| It's not obvious. This is very advanced. | |
| This is like super one-tenth of one-tenth of one percent stuff. | |
| Right. No, this is... | |
| No, please, please, whatever you do, don't feel inadequate to the occasion. | |
| Right? Yeah, I definitely... | |
| I put him on a pedestal and... | |
| No, you didn't just put him on a pedestal. | |
| He really initiated and participated. | |
| In fact, drove that process. He knew that you had a father hunger. | |
| He put himself in there as the father. | |
| Right. The daughter betrayed you, and he flaked. | |
| Because he should have bottled to you what a father does, which is he should have been on top of the relationship. | |
| He should have been tracking how it's going. | |
| He should have instilled better values in his daughter and if she failed those values completely and acted in an immoral and destructive manner there should have been consequences. | |
| What has he taught you about the power of fatherhood? | |
| It doesn't exist. I think he's done harm to your conception of fatherhood because either you have whatever crappy dad you had or this guy who's so ineffective his daughter tots around without consequences breaking hearts. | |
| And he still pays for a college. | |
| It's true. Like, what? | |
| Do you want to be that dad? | |
| Oh, but I'll still mentor you, son! | |
| It's like, please don't! Whatever you do, please don't mentor me! | |
| Because I don't want to end up like you! | |
| Yeah. Do you want to have that kind of daughter when you get older? | |
| Never. God, no, right? | |
| That would be horror beyond words for you in particular, right? | |
| Yeah, especially, yeah. Yeah, so when he's offering to mentor you... | |
| Oh my God. | |
| So when he calls you up, he's like six, seven months after his daughter drives a fucking treadmill over your heart, right? | |
| He calls you up and says, hey man, I'm still available to mentor you so you can be like me. | |
| I want to clarify. | |
| Everything you're saying is I agree with. | |
| I just want to clarify that the... | |
| The offer to still sort of be active in my life. | |
| He didn't directly say mentor, but he said, like, there is a father figure, which I guess it's sort of the same thing, but just to clarify. | |
| No, it's more than a mentor. A father figure is more than a mentor. | |
| That's true. You're right. | |
| I want to clarify that that was right after the breakup happened, and then it was about six months later I told him I was concerned about many of the same problems that you're presenting, even if I wasn't completely aware of all the dimensions of it. | |
| And, um, he responded and he just said, like, he, um, he, we can agree to disagree. | |
| He didn't really want to, um, have an argument about it, but he, um... | |
| Wait, wait, hang on. I don't, I don't know this part and I'm sorry if you mentioned it and it blew past me, but... | |
| Sure, absolutely. So you, you, you confronted him or you contacted him saying that you have, like, particular issues about the family, his daughter, him, like what? | |
| It was, uh, maybe about six months later, um... | |
| I contacted him and I basically voiced some of the same concerns, although I didn't elaborate as much as you are because I wasn't aware of how far it went. | |
| But basically I messaged him and I voiced the concern that if his daughter is doing this, I worry about other people in the future who might end up in a similar situation to me. | |
| And that if... | |
| I don't want this situation basically to happen to anybody else. | |
| I went along the line of the same thing. | |
| So here you have a request for empathy on his part. | |
| Your daughter is dangerous. | |
| She's going to hurt people. She's unfaithful. | |
| She lies. She manipulates. | |
| She brutalizes. So you're saying to him in that moment, your family needs some empathy. | |
| you need some empathy as a dad right and what happened yeah and uh he responded he said that uh he he wished me well he said i was a good kid he said i was he was happy that i was part of the family he was happy i dated his daughter um and he says he thought she was happy uh she dated me too which that's probably bs but sorry he said she thought she was happy and then what He said that he was happy that I was part of the family. | |
| No, I got all that. I just missed it. | |
| I just couldn't hear it. | |
| He said, I'm happy you dated your daughter. | |
| I thought she was happy and then there was something I didn't catch. | |
| He said that the first part and then the second part was that I think my daughter's happy that she dated you too. | |
| But I said that I just personally felt that was BS. But, yeah, it was that. | |
| And then he said that, I get your concerns, but, you know, I don't want to open a discussion into it anymore. | |
| But I hope you've been well. | |
| And, you know, I hope that college has been going well, basically. | |
| So he talked about his feelings. | |
| He talked about his daughter's feelings as he imagined them. | |
| And then when you said, well, I have some feelings, he's like, bye. | |
| To an extent, yeah. Well, no. | |
| Tell me to what extent that didn't happen, because maybe I'm missing something. | |
| You're right. You are right. | |
| It was just, you know, he didn't quite word it as crude, but, you know, that's basically what he did. | |
| Because the intellectual differences and discussions that you had with the man... | |
| That's intellectual jousting and fencing, and I don't mean to say that it's inconsequential. | |
| It's very important, but it's not empathy-based. | |
| Right? That's all head, no heart, right? | |
| Right. But the moment you say, your daughter hurt me, your daughter... | |
| We'll most likely hurt others. | |
| And as her father, you should look into this, like you should try and figure this out, right? | |
| Right. Then he's like, no, no more mentoring, no more family, no more nothing, you're gone. | |
| I do, I'm not defending him, I'm not, but I do want to say that I don't know what would have happened Had I been more vocal about wanting to be still involved in the family. | |
| That's not a defense. It's not. | |
| I just want to clarify that. No, no, but hang on. | |
| Hang on. No, no, but you don't. | |
| I mean, what I got out of that is there's something dangerous about your family. | |
| I really got hurt. True. | |
| And, you know, you should reflect upon this. | |
| And he's like, well, we're just going to have to agree to disagree. | |
| Bye. That's true. | |
| You're right. As opposed to, like, I'm not the father of someone you dated, and I'm sitting here thinking, I'm asking, you know, like telling you what I think and asking you how you feel and trying to give some clarity and all that, right? | |
| Why couldn't he do that? | |
| Didn't want to think about it. | |
| He didn't want to think that his daughter was capable of doing that to somebody. | |
| Well, I'll give you one level deeper, too. | |
| I mean, you're absolutely right, I think. | |
| And I'll give you one level deeper, too. | |
| Is that he was on the verge of his lack of empathy giving him negative consequences. | |
| And he ran just like his daughter did. | |
| Holy shit. Yeah, he did. | |
| You're right. And that's where she got it from. | |
| Dad runs away from demands for empathy. | |
| Dad runs away from negative consequences. | |
| Dad runs back to his high castle of status. | |
| Great point. | |
| He had the ability to step in and do all he could to make it right. | |
| Thank you. | |
| And especially after setting the foundation for a bond like that. | |
| And he had every ability to. | |
| He had every sort of duty to. | |
| And all he really gave me was an offer that I couldn't take. | |
| So the offer was vanity. | |
| The offer was, there's nothing wrong with me. | |
| Everything's fine. I'm still a great guy to mentor others. | |
| And let me offer to mentor the guy whose heart was broken by the daughter I mentored. | |
| That's messed up, man. | |
| It's weird because it's... | |
| Yeah, yeah. You sort of... | |
| You get tunnel vision back to the problem, and then somebody comes in who, you know... | |
| Like, I agree completely with what you're saying, is you voiced this concern, and it's like, oh, it was usually this person. | |
| Oh, no! See, this is the genius of what's going on in your gut. | |
| Your gut is like, we're not safe yet. | |
| We're not safe. We got hurt. | |
| predators are still around. | |
| We haven't figured out the pattern of their attack. | |
| There's a great quote from the Great Gatsby. | |
| There's two great quotes in a pretty horrifying book called The Great Gatsby. | |
| Here's the quote about the wealthy sociopaths. | |
| I'm not calling this guy a sociopath. | |
| I'm just saying this is the wealthy sociopaths, as I would call them in The Great Gatsby. | |
| They were careless people. This is from the book. | |
| They were careless people. They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together and let other people clean up the mess they had made. | |
| They were careless people. | |
| They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together and let other people clean up the mess they had made. | |
| And the idea... | |
| See, a mentor is, you know, you wouldn't mind ending up with something not dissimilar. | |
| Sorry, this sounds like a bunch of weasel words, but it's important not to think of it as a photocopy, right? | |
| So a mentor is, you know, I wouldn't mind ending up with something similar. | |
| Or it would be good to end up, not the same, because a mentor shouldn't want people to photocopy him, right? | |
| But, you know, I mean, I came out of a bad childhood. | |
| I have a great marriage. I have a wonderful relationship with my daughter. | |
| We just did a show with 40 parents, 40 dads, where she was answering questions about... | |
| Parenting and childhood and all of that and I'm very proud of her. | |
| I think she's an absolutely wonderful person. | |
| There's nothing that I would change about her at all. | |
| She's perfect and she's great and every now and then we annoy each other and we talk about it and it's natural, right? | |
| But so, you know, I think people would say, okay, well, I don't want what Steph has because I'm not Steph, but, you know, something similar would not be bad, right? | |
| Something, a good relationship, a great marriage and And all of that, and you know, a decent amount of moral courage in the world and all of that. | |
| You have to kind of want something similar, you know, which is why they don't put the fat guy in the diet book cover, right? | |
| Because, you know, if the guy's slender and he lost weight, it's like, hey, I would like something. | |
| I don't want to be exactly the same guy, obviously, but I would like something similar, right? | |
| You don't want to be Jared from the Subway ads, right? | |
| Pretty badly. So this guy, he's high status, and one of the ways in which he lures people in is he says, do you want to be like me? | |
| Do you want to have what I have? Do you want to be rich and successful? | |
| And I assume with an attractive daughter, he's got an attractive wife. | |
| He's probably an attractive guy himself. | |
| So there's a lot of pluses, right? | |
| Do you want to be, hey, you want to be like me? | |
| You want to be like me? That gives me power over you, right? | |
| If you want to be like me, that gives me power over you. | |
| And the question is, do you want to be like him in the appearance? | |
| No. Well, probably it wouldn't be a bad thing to get some money, to be a business success, to have an attractive family, a nice house, some cars, some money. | |
| Like, all of those things are fine. | |
| I have no issue with them at all. | |
| I think they're fine things to have. | |
| But, but, do you want to end up parenting a daughter who breaks men's hearts? | |
| No. No, you don't want that, right? | |
| And I think, so part of you is like, well, I mean, there were worlds apart from my other family, right? | |
| Worlds apart from my family of origin. | |
| Totally different. More confident, more outgoing, more successful. | |
| You know, the dad's libertarian. | |
| He's conservative. He's an anti-spanker. | |
| All of this stuff is like, that's the bait, right? | |
| Fish don't just bite the hook. | |
| There's got to be a bait, right? And what's the hook? | |
| Well, the hook is to be like me. | |
| You've got to give up your soul, sell yourself out to materialism, strive to be better than, work for status, always be in charge, always be better than, always be the leader, and to hell with empathy. | |
| And that's, well, that's the bargain of the devil, right? | |
| Material success, internal misery. | |
| And the family looks great from the outside, right? | |
| And you were even fooled for 18 months on the inside. | |
| But there's something missing and something pretty important. | |
| And so you run from one extreme in a sense. | |
| I wouldn't say I'm an extreme, right? | |
| But you sort of run from like, I can't figure this out. | |
| I know deep down your brain is like, okay, it's a problem of empathy. | |
| There's only one guy you've got to talk to. | |
| Yeah. I'm sorry, I'm talking a lot, and so I'll shut up now. | |
| I really appreciate it. | |
| You're making great points. | |
| I completely agree with everything you're saying, that there really, there was an empathy, and my gut, the reason it was dwelling on it was because something was still wrong, and I thought it was just because it was sort of so much, | |
| like, stimulation at once that You know, it set me down that road, but it was actually that my gut was telling me that, you know, things weren't as they seem in other ways as well. | |
| And you sort of like pointed that out. | |
| That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I mean, the really important thing as well, I mean, did he sit you down and say, dude, this is not your fault. | |
| This obviously is an issue with my parenting, something I've really missed. | |
| I'm so sorry that you got caught up in this, especially given your own history. | |
| And, you know, here I am. | |
| I'm like, hey, man, I'll be your mentor. | |
| I'll be your new dad. I'll teach you the ways of life. | |
| And then, you know, my daughter just goes and crushes your heart like a bug. | |
| And that's messed up. | |
| And it's been a very humbling experience for me just seeing how my daughter's treating people. | |
| It's been incredibly humbling, really humiliating. | |
| I feel unbelievably bad that somehow my daughter ended up with these values or these lack of values. | |
| This coldness and oh my god, like this has really been an unbelievably huge wake-up call for me and something is really wrong here and I'm so sorry. | |
| I'm so sorry that my daughter did this to you. | |
| I'm so sorry for all of the aspects of parenting that I'm still trying to figure out that caused this or contributed to this and I'm sorry for not monitoring things. | |
| I'm sorry for not Owning any of this. | |
| And my God, the last thing I want you to do is to walk away thinking this is your fault or this is your issue or, you know, this has been a huge wake-up call and humbling experience for me and something is seriously wrong in my household. | |
| I will go and try and work on that, but I humbly ask for your forgiveness for all that I did to contribute to your heart being broken, especially given your history, which we knew all about. | |
| I'm so, so sorry. | |
| I'm really, really, really sorry. | |
| What would it be like to get something like that, right? | |
| Yeah. I honestly probably wouldn't be having the issues I'm calling in about, honestly. | |
| He would have set you free, but he didn't want to set you free. | |
| He would rather you carry his burden as a 21-year-old young man. | |
| He would rather you carry his burden than him to self-reflect one fucking percent. | |
| That's an asshole. | |
| I'm sorry. I've got to be frank. | |
| I've got to be frank. He owes you that. | |
| Like what I just said and a whole lot more. | |
| He owes you that. Right? | |
| He brought you into his family. | |
| You date his daughter. | |
| She breaks your heart. | |
| He's got responsibility in the matter. | |
| He owes you that. And that would have liberated you. | |
| But instead, and even when you call him up, which is a very brave thing to do, you call him up and say, I've got some issues, he then has a very clear moment where he can say, okay, I can listen to this kid's issues, I can lighten his burden, and I can accept some responsibility for how my daughter behaves, right? | |
| Because here's the funny thing, right? | |
| He's probably quite proud of his daughter, right? | |
| He probably, oh yeah, she's track and field, she's a straight A student, she's whatever, right? | |
| right? | |
| She's probably taken all kinds of pride in his daughter, right? | |
| Oh, did we drop again? | |
| I can still hear you. | |
| Yeah. No, I mean, was he proud of his daughter? | |
| I would say so. | |
| Both of the daughters were going to the same college that the parents had met at. | |
| So, I mean, that's really sort of where it left off. | |
| I don't know anything since then. | |
| I don't know. No, no, but when you knew him, right? | |
| Was he like, oh, my daughter, she's great. | |
| She's track and field. She's a good student. | |
| So he takes pride in his daughter, right? | |
| Well, okay, so the flip side of pride is shame, right? | |
| So if his daughter is high status and looks great and good marks and is, ah, I take pride, right? | |
| But then when his daughter behaves badly, cheats on her boyfriend, breaks his heart, well, guess what? | |
| That's, you own that too. | |
| Like you can't take pride in your kids without also being ashamed if they act badly. | |
| But he only wants the pride, right? | |
| He only wants the pride. And that's unjust. | |
| That's unfair. It's wrong. | |
| He did it at my expense. | |
| He did it at your expense. | |
| So the real betrayal is not from the door. | |
| That's why earlier, like I was saying, let's stop talking about Becky, right? | |
| It's not about Becky. She's the shadow cast by the dad at this point. | |
| And the mom, too. We didn't really get into her, but I mean, I'm sure that's, you know, they're a team. | |
| They're a system, right? But no, it's not you. | |
| It's not you. It's not you. | |
| And that you would be drawn into this is perfectly understandable. | |
| It's perfectly reasonable. | |
| And it's good. | |
| See, I'm going to... | |
| Last case I'll make here is that this is great. | |
| This is like... You know what this is? | |
| An inoculation. | |
| It really is, yeah. | |
| It really is because the temptation for status... | |
| It's virtually irresistible, unless you have an early experience where you're like, oh yeah, I know where this quicksand leads. | |
| Thanks, but no, right? | |
| You've got an inoculation that, now you understand it, if you pay attention, and I know you will, keep paying attention to it in your life. | |
| It will keep you safe your whole life. | |
| It will guide you. I mean, can you imagine? | |
| Can you imagine if you were a higher status person or whatever? | |
| I'm not saying you're low status in terms of my estimation, the highest status there is, right? | |
| Which hopefully means something, but she obviously, she monkey branched, right? | |
| She hypergamied her way up because there was some college guy who was higher status than you and closer and fed her vanity more and that's who she went for. | |
| Is that fair to say? Hello? | |
| Can you hear me? Yeah. | |
| Yeah, I would say that's fair. | |
| That's very fair. So she ditched you for what she perceived of as some higher-status guy, and then eventually she's going to marry some higher-status guy, and then she's going to divorce him, and she's going to destroy him, and, you know, you don't want to be that guy. | |
| Not at all. I agree completely. | |
| So this is an inoculation, and, like, thank heavens, right? | |
| When I got engaged and then broke off the engagement before the marriage, it was a very painful time. | |
| But I look back and say, thank God that happened. | |
| Well, I mean, thank me, thank friends, thank, you know, well, one friend made one comment, and, you know, it's amazing what you could live on when you've starved your whole life. | |
| But, no, this, look, it's painful, and I'm not trying to turn shit into gold here, but I am telling you that if you've truly, like, the reason why you're still bothered by it is because without identifying The actual issue, you remain susceptible to it. | |
| You know, you wake up, there's a wolf in your room, right? | |
| And then the wolf, the wolf, let's say you live in a house, right? | |
| You wake up, there's a wolf in your room. | |
| You get up and the wolf darts out the door and is somewhere in the house, right? | |
| Well, can you relax? You cannot, no, because there's a wolf in your house. | |
| No, you should relax, man. You can't even see the wolf. | |
| Well, that's the problem, right? | |
| It's more relaxing to see the wolf than to not see the wolf, right? | |
| Mm-hmm. And so you had a predation, I think, in your life, and the predators are out of your life, but the predation remains unconscious, and therefore you have a susceptibility to the next one, right? And I think once you go, okay, that's the issue, that's what's going on. | |
| Then the next time someone comes along, you can start probing for empathy at the beginning, right? | |
| You probe for empathy. It's what you do. | |
| You probe for empathy, probe for empathy, probe for empathy. | |
| See if people have the capacity to understand and appreciate how you feel and what you feel. | |
| And if they don't, doesn't matter how pretty they are, doesn't matter how wealthy they are, doesn't matter how high status they are, you turn and run. | |
| Otherwise, you end up in a situation like this. | |
| Yeah, that's a great point. No, worse. | |
| Worse. Worse. See, you're not stuck anywhere. | |
| You're not stuck with this woman. You're not married. | |
| You don't have kids, right? You got off. | |
| I mean, you had a devil fly by, and you got off with barely a scratch. | |
| And I'm not trying to minimize your pain here, but what I mean is relative to how it could have been. | |
| Right. What if she'd gotten pregnant and then you'd have realized this? | |
| Yeah, that would have been pretty awful. | |
| Well, then it's 20 years of baby jail, right? | |
| Right. And no good marriage and at least tougher to get one and all that. | |
| So, you know, this is a pretty rough, a downright brutal indoctrination, but it's going to serve you beautifully and lead you to a great marriage with a great woman because you've now seen this side of things, right? It can actually be if you ignore red flags and you don't search for the things which are important to search for, like you're talking about, which is all completely true. | |
| Yeah, and listen, there was probably a little bit of vanity in you that was like, oh, you know, this really good-looking girl, this great family, and I'm where I'm supposed to be, right? | |
| So, you know, there was probably a little bit of vanity in you about it all that had you overlook this stuff, right? | |
| Right. | |
| Which, again, perfectly understandable, given where you came from and perfectly comprehensible. | |
| It's a great point. | |
| Those are all things I literally never even thought of throughout the entire process whenever I thought about, you know, why things were still the way they were. - Sure. | |
| Okay, have a little bit more honor for your deeper self, man. | |
| Of course you thought about them. | |
| You just couldn't get them to your conscious mind. | |
| But they were churning away deep in you, right? | |
| Like saying, I never thought of them? | |
| Well, then why the hell were you bothered for two years? | |
| Of course you thought of them, but your thinking is more than just the top of your brain, right? | |
| I mean, your thinking was actually your deep brain thinking or your deep brain perceptions. | |
| questions. | |
| What kind of what drew you to this conversation, right? | |
| Because if you hadn't been bothered by this stuff, you wouldn't have called me and you wouldn't have got the inoculation to take, right? | |
| It would have just been a stupid injection of nothing, right? | |
| So I would have more respect for your thinking if I were you and trust your instincts and say, yeah, there's something there and you should really... | |
| Honor your instincts because I guarantee you they've been pretty frustrated with you. | |
| Two years, man. Come on. | |
| Two years took you to call, right? | |
| Come on. We're going to be dealing with this for a while. | |
| We're going to be dealing with this long ago. | |
| And this is part of the whole ecosystem stuff that I talk about, that if you say, I never thought of this, it's not a true statement because you're deeper than that. | |
| And there was a part of you that was really churning on this and trying to get your attention and saying, we're not safe, we're not safe, we're not safe, right? | |
| I completely agree with you. | |
| And that's the part that's going to keep you safe, right? | |
| Right. Is that I'm aware of this now. | |
| Yeah, so when you get that unease, when you get that unease, you get that unease. | |
| You know, like whoever the jerk was who said, oh, I can't help you. | |
| Move on. It's not war. | |
| It's not trauma. It's like, oh, that's just somebody who doesn't want to, you know, whatever their own issues are, right? | |
| They don't want to deal with that stuff. | |
| But no, I'm comfortable with the deep stuff. | |
| In fact, I relish it. I think it's fantastic. | |
| And by the way, you did fantastically here. | |
| I mean, I know I did a lot of the talking, but it's harder work to listen sometimes than it is to talk. | |
| So, you know, the listening and processing, you've got a first-rate brain for all of this stuff, and you should be very grateful and happy about that. | |
| Thank you, Steph. | |
| That really means a lot coming from you because I seriously look up to you and your perception of the world, so that means a lot. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Well, I appreciate that and recognize that the deepest part of me is mirrored in the deepest part of you, And that's where, you know, all of the zebras run from the lion pretty much the same way. | |
| They're all joined in their caution and their concern and their fight or flight, and all the lions kind of chase the zebras in kind of the same way. | |
| So where you and I are at the deepest, we are at the most connected, which is why when society keeps everyone shallow, it's easy to divide us, right? | |
| But, yeah, so you should, you know, the me that you look up to, which, yeah, I appreciate that and I don't want to ignore that, but the deepest part of me is something that's not even me. | |
| It's something we share. It's you and I. It's the animal instincts. | |
| It's the lizard brain. It's the mammal brain. | |
| It's all the stuff which was... | |
| Vastly around long before our post-Monkey beta expansion pack that's pretty buggy at the moment. | |
| So if you look up to me, I appreciate that, but I would also strongly suggest that the part that you respect most in me is already in you. | |
| And if you listen to that, it's going to be very, very powerful. | |
| Thank you, Steph. All right. | |
| Thanks, everyone, so much for a great call. | |
| Please, my friend, keep me posted. | |
| And I appreciate and thank James for his attention. | |
| We will try and figure out what's going on with the random drops from the only important thing. | |
| You have one job. You have one job, which is to keep people connected. | |
| And we'll figure that out. | |
| But thanks, everyone, so much. | |
| FreeDomain.com forward slash donate. | |
| And have yourselves a wonderful, wonderful weekend. |
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