Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

Nov. 5, 2020 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:33:37

STOP BEING A SLAVE! Freedomain Call In

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	And good evening to you, my fine feathered friends.
	Also a fine evening to you if you're not feathered.
	Semi-feathered or feathered curious, I suppose.
	I guess this is the last show?
	No, this is not the last show. It is the last show before Halloween.
	Oh my goodness.
	It has always struck me as kind of odd and interesting that the U.S. election falls so close to Halloween.
	Just when you've recovered from your sugar twitches, you've got to face yourself.
	A potentially new administration.
	Well, either way, you're going to get a new administration on Tuesday because you're either going to get Biden or you're going to get a Trump with nothing to lose.
	That's the basic reality.
	You're going to get Biden or you're going to get a Trump with nothing to lose because he's not got any re-election.
	And we shall see.
	We shall see how it plays out from there.
	I'm still off politics. Don't miss it quite as much as I thought I would.
	But... We'll see what happens coming up.
	So, James...
	I'm sorry, I was going to throw another little intro in there.
	You were probably waiting for that. It's not forthcoming.
	All right. That's totally fine.
	Hello, Stefan and fellow listeners.
	I'm a 22-year-old guy who failed in almost every aspect a human being could.
	Never had any meaningful contact with the opposite sex.
	Never had a real job, and I'm also currently overweight.
	My only good point is that I don't use any sort of drug, not even alcohol.
	I have a very complicated relationship with sacrifice.
	I had a very strict childhood with not many friends allowed at home and not many entertainment sources.
	According to my parents, that was a way to focus on my education.
	For a long time, I was the best student in class, and I had to attend two high schools simultaneously.
	I got into college, and after almost four years of lies and useless classes, I dropped out.
	My parents don't know I quit college.
	I don't want them to know it either.
	Every time they tried to help me, all I got was a clearer vision of hell.
	I'm also what you could call a ghost employee of the local city hall.
	My father got me this position using a friend of his.
	I would receive the pension promise in 40 years, my ticket for the Ponzi scheme, and right now I get the equivalent to $20 every month for keeping my mouth shut.
	Recently, I've managed to accumulate enough savings to live for three months or so without depending on my parents, but I'm afraid.
	I feel like I'm sitting on a box of bombs.
	My parents could find out I dropped out of college.
	They could throw me out of the house, and I could fail to find a way to support myself in those three months.
	Not everything is bad, though.
	I've been out of college for almost a year, and this year I've learned more than my four years of college combined.
	Sometimes I still face failure, the most recent one being rejected for some jobs.
	Those failures, even the small ones, really knock me out.
	I fear I could be wasting my time.
	A certain bald podcaster gave me something to dream about.
	I don't want to feel trapped in time like my time in college ever again.
	My question is, how can I fix my relationship with sacrifice if all the sacrifice I've ever made was for nothing?
	Well, that's quite a story.
	Wow. Wow, wow, wow.
	Is there anything I want to add to it at the moment?
	Well, I would feel more comfortable if you just asked me a question.
	What's the story with the weight gain?
	When did that start? How quickly did it mount?
	Story with what? With your weight gain.
	Weight gain? Weight gain.
	The gaining of your weight. Weight.
	I get it. It started back, you know, when I was young, very young, like three years old, my neighbor had this rabid dog, you know.
	He would bark at me every time I passed through in front of her house.
	Back then, I became afraid of going out, just going out.
	But at that time, I still had some neighbors with a shared backyard.
	I could play with them. But then, my family moved to another house.
	In the new street, there was this big husk, Siberian husk, you know, those big dogs that look like wolves.
	And man, I couldn't get out.
	I was so afraid of that dog.
	I stayed home.
	And I ate. I ate a lot, a lot of junk food.
	Junk food and more junk food.
	Then I started to gain weight and never lost it to this day.
	Well, but how long did it take for you to become seriously overweight?
	From eight years old to 12, approximately.
	And from 16 to 18.
	And did your parents comment about it or talk about it or give you feedback?
	My mom tried. My mom really tried to make me lose weight.
	But this is the part where she tried to help.
	But all I got was a clear vision of health.
	I'm not sure. I mean, you used that phrase in the email.
	Can you tell me what that means to you?
	Yeah, sure, sure. I don't know if you remember, but I didn't have many sources of entertainment.
	Food was just like a refuge for me.
	She tried to change the food in the house, but the food was terrible, Stefan.
	I'm not talking about like, yeah, it's bad, but you can't.
	No, it was really terrible.
	My life became miserable at that time because I had almost no friends.
	I was a kid. I was a strange kid.
	I was a fat kid.
	And the food was bad.
	That's what I see as hell.
	I don't know if you can relate to that.
	So, do you think that you moved more towards the junk food because the food that your mom made was bad?
	No, no. This was after.
	My mom cut my supply of junk food at that time.
	She tried, at least.
	Because I would often ask for money from my father.
	My father would give me money and I would buy junk food.
	I turned to junk food because it's hard to understand.
	I was used to play with my friends in the old house where we had that shared backyard.
	I had two other friends of my age.
	But when I moved, I had none.
	And there was this big husky on the street and I couldn't go out.
	I moved to junk food as a way to entertain myself.
	I don't know if this makes sense.
	I guess somewhat. And did your parents notice that you were isolated, lonely or anything like that?
	If they did...
	They didn't tell anything.
	Till this day, I don't know if they know how different I was.
	Do you have any siblings?
	I do. I have a younger one.
	And how's he or she doing?
	He is much worse than me in this regard, because at least I had some childhood friends, you know, in the old house.
	And after some time in the new house, I got one.
	But it wasn't that good.
	It wasn't a good friendship.
	But my brother had none, Stefano.
	He only had me. Right.
	Is he heavier and even less ambitious?
	No, no. My brother is pretty lean.
	He's not overweight at all.
	He's underweight. And in what way would you say that he's worse?
	Excuse me? Could you say that again?
	You said he's much worse than you, so how is he doing worse?
	Yes, yes. Socializing.
	I once looked at his phone and he has no other numbers besides me, mom and my dad.
	He has no friends. Ah, okay, okay.
	So what is it that you would like to get out of our conversation today?
	I was the best guy in the class when I was a student, but it was all for nothing.
	And today, I still try to put some effort in things, but I'm afraid that I could be going...
	Wait a second.
	Let me think about it.
	I'm afraid my effort is for nothing.
	If I could at least get a direction in some place where I could put effort, And get some results, I would be very grateful.
	That's, I mean, that's not something I can do.
	I mean, I can't tell you what to do with your life, right?
	So you'll have to be a little bit more specific.
	But you can tell me if I'm doing something really, really wrong.
	Well, no, your conscience will tell you that, right?
	I don't know if I trust my conscience anymore.
	My conscience didn't tell me anything for years while I went to college.
	And that was a very bad decision.
	Right. So you're, as you said, a ghost student.
	Your parents think you're still in school, but you're not, right?
	A ghost student and a ghost employee, too.
	But my parents know about the former one.
	Sorry, they do think that you're still in school, right?
	Yes. Right.
	And how long has it been since you've stopped going?
	One year. Mid-2019.
	So what do they think you're doing?
	Oh, that's a question.
	From mid-2019 to late 2019, I actually managed to fool them.
	They thought I was really going to college.
	But then came 2020, and you know, COVID. For COVID, I came back to my parents' house.
	And I have the excuse that the university is closed.
	I don't really need to pretend much while I'm here.
	But when I was still in the other city, the city where the university is, I had to do some pretty crazy things to like.
	Go on. You know, when you're studying, you normally use some more clothes.
	My mom washes my clothes.
	I don't wash clothes at all.
	Back in 2019, I would use clothes without needing them, just so she wouldn't realize I had dropped out of college.
	So, at the end of the week, I would bring back this big bag of dirty clothes for her to wash, just as I did when I was still going to college.
	This is something that waits in my conscience, if it still exists.
	Okay, so what is it you think that I could bring to the table that you don't already know?
	Like, you know you shouldn't be lying to your parents.
	You realize that school was a bad idea.
	I assume you mean that when you say, well, I don't want to sit around for 40 years to get a pension, that working for the government is probably not going to be the most fulfilling thing to do with your life.
	So I'm just trying to figure out...
	Dude, dude, dude, dude, wait, wait, wait.
	Okay, so listen. This is how this conversation has to go, all right?
	This is the third or fourth time that you've interrupted me when I'm just starting to speak, right?
	Okay, so you need to take a deep breath and you need to let me finish my sentences, okay?
	I'm trying not to get annoyed, but it is kind of annoying when I start to ask a question or make a comment.
	I get maybe three or four words into it and you speak right over me.
	Now, if you If you don't want to hear what I have to say, that's fine.
	We can move on to another topic with another caller or I can do a solo show or something like that.
	But if you want to hear what I have to say, you kind of got to not talk over me, okay?
	I don't know, maybe just nerves or something like that, but I'm just kind of giving you that feedback.
	Really nervous. Okay.
	Well, stop, right?
	I mean, I know that's an easy thing to say, but it's not going to work if you talk over me, right?
	Neither is it going to work if you're afraid to talk, right?
	So, you know, we'll just have a conversation, right?
	So just let me get my thoughts out.
	Go ahead. I would just correct you on something.
	I'm not working.
	I'm a ghost employee. I received this money.
	The guy who employed me received my full salary from the government.
	I don't have to work. I just have to say that I work there.
	It's even worse. Wait, I don't understand this deal.
	Can you break it out for me? Yeah, sure, sure.
	Do you know how here politicians have a certain amount of money to employ people to do their things?
	And they receive this money whenever they employ new people.
	But there's a catch. The politicians really like to take this money for themselves.
	So what do they do?
	They say to someone like me, hey, why don't you pretend you're working for me?
	I will receive your salary, but instead of giving it to you, I'll give you half or something like that, and hold the rest.
	But look, you don't have to work at all.
	You receive money, I receive money, you don't have to work.
	Can you understand? I think so.
	I mean, what do you think about that?
	I have a hard time looking into the mirror.
	Well, no, but you're able to do it, right?
	So what's the story you're telling yourself as to why you should get this money?
	Because if I don't, I have to confront my father.
	And what do you mean, how? I'm currently living with my parents.
	I never had any photo of independence until very, very recently.
	I got some money, to be honest, by sheer luck.
	Just enough to live for three months without their help.
	But to live with my father, I have to please him.
	It's very hard to confront him because he's that kind of person that looks calm, looks calm, but if you confront him, he just explodes.
	And I'm really afraid of that.
	I've been thinking about how can I get out of this.
	I don't want to do this shit, man.
	It's wrong. Sorry, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I guess I'm a little confused, right?
	And how old are you? 22.
	You're 22 years old, right?
	Yes. So I'm sure I missed something, and I'm sorry if I have, but why not?
	Is there a reason you can't just go and get a job?
	Yes, yes, yes. That's what I was saying.
	I live in a small town of the poorest area of a third world country.
	And I've been trying.
	I got some job interviews recently, very recently.
	But just recently, I got any sort of skills at all that I could, you know, make money with.
	This was a very recent thing.
	I've been trying to get a job.
	But before I was 18 years old, I actually managed to get a job.
	My dad said, I couldn't.
	I couldn't because you need to focus on your education.
	But after 18 years old, every time I tried to get a job, he would say, no, no, go back to college, go back to college, focus on your college.
	The only kind of job he would allow me to take are government jobs.
	I don't know why. I don't understand, to be honest.
	Because they're safe.
	I don't know, Stefan. Do you have any questions about this?
	I... I'm not sure.
	I mean, I can't change the economics of your country.
	I can't change the job opportunities in your small town.
	The only thing I can do is tell you that you'd better start damn well telling the truth in your life, otherwise you're going to end up pretty unhappy.
	Right? So here's the pattern that I see, rightly or wrongly.
	So the pattern that I see, and this is going to sound harsh, and I don't mean it that way.
	I really do sympathize with where you've come from and where you are.
	It's difficult. Please go ahead. I'm sorry?
	Please go ahead. I was actually going ahead.
	If you could not interrupt me again, I would really appreciate that.
	Thank you. So the question is, do we take the hard road or do we take the easy road in life?
	That's the question. Do we take the hard road or do we take the easy road?
	So you were unhappy as a child.
	Now, I sympathize.
	You have a difficult situation. You have a difficult country to live in, I imagine, and difficult social circumstances.
	So what do you do?
	Well, you eat. And you eat and you eat and you eat.
	And you were scared of the neighbor's dog.
	And instead of saying, okay, well, I'm scared of my neighbor's dog, so I need to go and make friends with someone who lives kind of far away.
	So that I can go play somewhere where the dog's not around.
	Or I got to talk to my parents and say, listen, you got to go talk to the neighbor about the dog.
	It's terrifying. It's barky.
	It's bitey. It's, you know, it's no good, right?
	So you took the path of staying inside and eating.
	And, you know, it takes a while to gain weight.
	You gained weight. You gained weight.
	And the evidence was accumulating that this was not a good solution, right?
	But you persisted in it.
	And as you said, there were two phases from sort of eight onwards and then from 16 to 18 of the weight gain, right?
	So you kind of took the easy path.
	Now, listen, I'm not trying to make you feel bad.
	It's not a big criticism. I'm just sort of pointing out the pattern that I see if you want to break it, right?
	And then the pattern is that you don't want to confront your father.
	And so you go to university and...
	You then stop going to university but pretend that you still are going to university.
	Now, that's taken the easy way out, right?
	Which is you're just lying to get through the moment rather than taking issues head on.
	Now, I don't know much about your history.
	Maybe your father is a very dangerous person.
	Maybe he's violent.
	Maybe you sort of live in fear of injury or murder.
	I don't know what's going on.
	And if that's the case, then you need to be going to talk to a policeman, not to me, right?
	So assuming that's not the case, then there's not much I can tell you to do other than, look, you got dealt a shitty hand.
	You got dealt a bad hand in life.
	And I sympathize with that.
	I mean, I know to some degree what that's like.
	And the question is, okay, well, how are you playing your hand, right?
	Well, what happens right now is you keep folding, right?
	And that's not working out, right?
	You're 22 years old. You should be going out and willfully and manfully carving a place for yourself in this world, right?
	That's what you should be doing at this kind of age.
	But instead, you know, you're overeating.
	You're hiding out. You're taking some secondhand government money.
	You're pretending to go to school.
	You're living a life that is almost completely falsified, right?
	The money you get, you didn't really earn, right?
	Your parents believe you're in school when you're not.
	Like, you're just not living a life that has any real honesty to it.
	And again, assuming that you're not in any kind of immediate physical danger.
	See, it's the big secret in life, you know?
	Like, violence, violence can do stuff, right?
	Violence, what's the Charlie Hebdo, the, oh no, some newspaper, I think it was, In Europe that published some cartoons a while back ago that got the Muslims upset, and they're not doing that anymore.
	And the editor said, well, why?
	Because violence works. And it kind of does, right?
	That's why there's taxation. Violence works.
	So, if we put aside the issue of violence, then you have just one basic decision to make in your life.
	It's one basic decision. It's really the most important decision you're ever going to make.
	Am I here to please people or am I here to be honest?
	There's a fundamental fork in the road in life.
	Am I here to please people or am I here to be honest?
	Now, saying that you want to please people is not universally preferable behavior because it can't be the case that everyone wants to please everyone else because nobody is on the receiving end Of being pleased, right? Because you're trying to please your dad.
	Your dad's trying to please someone else.
	It's just dominoes with no end, right?
	So it can't be a moral situation or an ethical situation to say to yourself, well, I'm here to just not upset people.
	I'm here not to make people angry.
	I'm here not to bother people.
	I'm here not to...
	I mean, you could just ask Jack Dorsey, right?
	CEO of Twitter.
	He, of the Bin Laden beard and the nose ring and the haunted empty eyes.
	He estimated, I think over the last quarter, they'd get 10 million new Twitter users.
	In fact, they got about a million, which net of the people they yeeted off the platform is probably about four.
	So he was off by a factor of 900%, nine times.
	He thought it was going to be 10 million, it was 1 million, and the Twitter price.
	Twitter's share price crashed.
	Because everybody knows it takes a while for the ship to sink.
	Have you ever seen the movie Titanic, right?
	They say there's no way to save the ship.
	It's going to sink in an hour and a half.
	There's no turning back.
	So everybody knows when political correctness has hit a ship below the waterline and it can't be recovered.
	Because, I assume, Jack Dorsey decided that his job It was not, to be honest, his job was to please people or to avoid the displeasure of others.
	And so he's failing, the company is failing, and the stock price got hit 20%, 20% in one day, because everybody gets it, right?
	Especially after the New York Post thing.
	The New York Post thing, I've talked about that before.
	So, I mean, this is sort of a minor example, right?
	Well, it's a big example, but probably minor relative to the issues in your life.
	So, are you here to please people?
	Well, if you're here to please people, that's taking the easy road.
	Because you can please people by lying to them.
	I knew a guy when I was younger was creepily expert at having people think he really liked them when he just plain didn't.
	I was visiting some people and there was a woman at the dinner party who had put together an animated cartoon series.
	Just a pilot.
	And the guy I knew was so enthusiastic and he knew people.
	He could get it moving. He really got her excited about the possibility.
	And that's really, you know, if you're not going to follow up on that kind of stuff, it's really pretty cruel, right?
	He got this woman really like, oh man, I've been sitting here for two years.
	I can't get anyone interested.
	I mean, if you know people, if you can get me a meeting, anything, right?
	And I could have to say it was actually a pretty good cartoon series.
	So anyway, a couple of weeks later I asked him, so what happened?
	Oh, I haven't gotten around to...
	Blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
	Oh, she sent me a couple of emails, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
	So what happened was he got and he pleased her enormously in the moment.
	He pleased her enormously in the moment.
	And what happened? Well, he broke her heart, I assume, right?
	Because he never did anything with it and her hopes were raised and then dashed.
	And, you know, who knows? Some other offer might have come and she's like, oh, well, I kind of got some guy working on it or whatever, right?
	It's really bad. That same guy, it was not a woman I was dating, but it was a woman I was friends with, and I brought her over to his place for dinner with a couple other people.
	And he was perfectly charming, really liked her.
	Oh, we should do this again.
	Oh, it was a real pleasure, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	She turned and left, and I stayed.
	The guy turned around and said, What are you doing friends with her?
	Like, seriously, two-faced, right?
	It's kind of chilling when you see that mask or that lid being lifted off people.
	It's really scary, right?
	Because he was there to please people.
	And if you live your life trying to please people, you kind of have to surround yourself with idiots.
	You know, I don't mean to insult your parents, but come on.
	I mean, let's get real here.
	The idea... You're going to school and say, oh, my school is closed!
	That's why I'm not going to school, because COVID. I mean, they're paying the bills.
	Do they not get a bill?
	Do they not phone anyone at the school?
	Do they not check out the website?
	Do they not say, oh...
	Say something? Yeah, yeah, go ahead.
	It's a public university.
	They don't pay anything.
	Okay, but should they check when it's going to open again or something?
	Yeah, and the university is actually really closed in real life, you know.
	So you're in a small town, but you're close to a big university?
	No, I'm close to a city with a big university.
	So you're close to a big city?
	Yes. Okay, so the thing that you said to me, That you can't get a job because you live in a small town, but you're really close to a big city.
	Yes, and it was this big city that gave me the opportunities I had in the last month.
	I said I had some other opportunities, but I got rejected.
	Okay, so when I said, why did you get a job, you said I live in a small town, but you're next door to a big city, right?
	Yes. Okay.
	So you're kind of misleading me there, right?
	Was I? Well, yeah, I think so.
	Because if you say, well, the reason I can't...
	I don't know where the hell you live, right?
	So if you say to me, well, Steph, the reason I can't get a job is because I live in a small town, right?
	And then I sort of point to...
	I ask you something else.
	Oh, no, I live right next to a big city.
	So the small town excuse for not getting a job is not a very real excuse, right?
	Yeah. Yeah. I mean, again, I'm not trying to, you know, bag on you or make you feel bad.
	I'm just sort of pointing it out.
	So what happened was you kind of won in the moment, like you came up with an excuse.
	I said, well, why don't you get a job?
	You're 22 years old. You should have had a job for like 10 years by now already.
	I think people should get jobs when they're in their early teens.
	Myself, but should at least have had, you know, five, seven years of a job or whatever, right?
	And you say, well, but I can't get a job because I live in a small town, right?
	And then I said, well, why don't your parents know that you're not going to college, right?
	Oh, well, we're right next to the college, so they wouldn't notice a big difference or whatever, right?
	So you won in the moment.
	Like, you got me to pull back from, why don't you get a job?
	Because I thought you lived in the ass end of nowhere.
	And then it turns out you're right next to a big city.
	And so, look, I'm not shocked, right?
	I mean, you basically wrote in saying, I'm a liar, right?
	And then you kind of misled me a little bit there, right?
	Please, treat me as a liar.
	See, I don't know if you're telling me the truth there or not.
	I don't know if you're telling me the truth there or not.
	But no, I mean, not like you're a liar, like that's the total and sum definition, but that's the major issue that you're calling in about, right?
	Yeah. Right, so liars, of course, what do they do?
	Well, they just win in the moment, just win in the moment, win in the moment.
	You see Joe Biden up there, right?
	You see Joe Biden up there in the debates.
	That's all been debunked.
	That's all been discredited.
	I never did this. I've never said that I was against fracking.
	Show the video! Everybody knows he's lying.
	Everybody with half a brain knows he's lying, right?
	But he just wins in the moment. He's just there to win in the moment.
	And then, of course, you have to ask yourself, okay, what is the price of winning in the moment?
	What is the price of winning in the moment?
	Well, the price of winning in the moment is you win the moment, but you lose the future.
	Because you've got a problem. You don't want to go to school, right?
	No, I don't. And why don't you want to go to school?
	Computer science. And why don't you want to go to school?
	You know, when I got computer science, I wanted to learn to make nice software, very nice software.
	And I went there. I went to learn web development.
	The guys are trying to teach me calculus.
	And then came the really good classes, programming and so on.
	But the really good classes weren't actually that good.
	I could learn much more studying by myself, as I did this last year.
	This is not a lie. I really learned more this last year than in my four years in college.
	No, listen, I'm sorry to interrupt.
	I totally understand that.
	Sorry, I thought you were done. I totally understand that.
	I mean, I took a computer science class in high school, and I mean, it was just terrible.
	It was just terrible.
	And at the same time, I was learning how to program on my own nights and weekends.
	I mean, this was so bad. It was like filling out.
	You would fill out...
	Punch cards to make the computer program do what you wanted it to do.
	That was really bad, at least for the first half.
	So, yeah, I get self-study.
	Self-study is fine with all of that.
	Okay, so you have decided that you don't want to go to university.
	And what happens if you tell your dad, Dad, you know what?
	It's not for me. I love computers.
	I just don't want to learn them in college.
	He says, oh, well, that's terrible. It's like, yeah, well, you know...
	Bill Gates dropped out of college.
	Steve Jobs, I think, dropped out of college.
	Lots of people drop out of college, and they seem to do all right.
	Like, what happens with your dad?
	What's he going to say? He would say, you have to go to college, because only people who go to college are successful here.
	Okay, so let's role play that, right?
	So I'll be you, you'll be your dad.
	So I say, you say only people with college degrees are successful here, right?
	Yes. And I would say, Dad, do you think that you're a successful person?
	Yes. Okay, tell me what it is that you think is successful about you.
	I have my own house.
	I have my own car. I send my kids to a public college, educated my kids well.
	Do you think that your kids are successful?
	I don't know how my father would react to that.
	Ah, you would say, your sister is successful.
	Okay. Do you think that your sons are successful?
	Oh, you guys are too young.
	You will be, if you do what I say.
	No, no, I'm 22 years old, Dad, for God's sakes.
	I mean, don't be ridiculous, right?
	I'm not five years old, right?
	So I tell you this, Dad, I don't feel successful.
	My brother doesn't feel successful.
	And a lot of it has to do with the fact that we're very scared of you.
	He has two reactions to that.
	First one would be to explode at the exact point, and I don't know what happens when he explodes at this point.
	Sure you do. The second...
	Well, you do know what happens, right?
	Ah, yes. He would try to kick me around the house, finish the conversation falsely, Yeah, basically those kind of things.
	But the other answer that I could give is, this is your fault.
	If you're not successful, this is your fault.
	I did everything I could to make you successful.
	Well, I don't know that that's entirely true.
	And I'm not trying to say that you were a terrible father or anything like that.
	But you know that I was lonely.
	I was isolated.
	I ate a lot of bad food, which you and mom bought and left in the house and left all around me.
	Around the age of eight, I started gaining weight.
	Now I'm like twice the weight I should be.
	And that's not successful.
	Like you and mom were in charge of me when I was little, when I was lonely, isolated, and getting ridiculously fat.
	And what did you guys do about it?
	I would say to this, take a look at how your friends fared.
	They got it much worse than you.
	That's not answering the question.
	Yes, he won't answer the question.
	No, Dad, I need you to answer.
	Okay, I guess I didn't really ask an explicit question.
	Did you know how lonely and isolated and scared I was as a child?
	Yeah, I don't know his answer.
	I'm afraid to know. But I think he didn't.
	He was never home anyways.
	Okay, so he wasn't home, right?
	So he would say, well, I left that up to your mom, I traveled, I worked, I did this, I did that, right?
	Yes. Okay.
	So, Dad, help me figure this out because I'm a little confused here.
	Number one, you tell me, I did everything I could to make sure you kids were successful, right?
	You just said that like three minutes ago, right?
	And now you say, well, I didn't even know that you were isolated, lonely, and gaining weight because I was never home.
	So if you say you did everything that you could to make us successful, and then also say you barely paid attention to us because you were not around, I don't understand those two.
	They don't fit together.
	In fact, they're kind of opposites, right?
	I can't explain his argument, but I can roleplay in this part.
	Do you mind? Yes, whatever you like.
	Yes, he would say that exactly because he was working so much, he could get us so many resources to get us this beautiful house, and that's why he wasn't around.
	This is his argument. I was working.
	I was getting you a better life.
	Yeah, this is his argument. No, that's a great argument.
	That's a great argument. And I would say, okay, but Dad, quick question.
	Did you ask me whether I wanted more stuff, a bigger house, more toys?
	Or would I rather have some actual time with my father?
	Because if you say it was for me, then surely I should have been consulted.
	Like if I go to my wife on her anniversary and I say, Honey, just for you, I have bought the latest and fastest graphics card to run Doom, which she doesn't play, obviously.
	And I say, No, that's for you.
	I'll put it in my computer.
	I'll be testing it out for the next year or two, but it's for you.
	My wife, what would she say?
	She would say, no, why did you do that?
	Just stay with me.
	Yeah, she'd say, it's not for me.
	You didn't even ask me what I wanted.
	So if any time anyone says, oh, I did it for you, the first thing that you need to ask is Did they ask me what I wanted?
	Because if I say, well, I'm doing something for someone, then surely I should have some idea what they want, right?
	So, no. There's a problem there.
	Yeah, go ahead. Sorry to interrupt you.
	But I do need to correct you before you go into an argument without a reason.
	If my father had asked me back then, you know, before I was seven years old, if I wanted more time with him or more stuff, I would say I wanted more stuff because I was terrified of being around my parents.
	Both of them. No, I'm sorry to correct you about your own father, but that's just not true.
	Because if you'd had the kind of father who would have asked you that question, you would have wanted to spend more time with him.
	Nice. I don't have an answer to that.
	If he had asked you, you would have said, well, yeah, more time with you, right?
	Yeah. So it's not for you.
	Listen, he may be a workaholic.
	He may be somebody who just wants high status.
	He may have not gotten along with your mother.
	He may have been having five affairs.
	He may have had gambling debts.
	I have no idea why he worked so hard.
	None of those. Oh, yeah, whatever, right?
	But there's some reason that he worked so hard, and that reason was not...
	For you. I know the reason.
	Sorry, go ahead. Are you interested?
	Sure. I know the reason.
	My father had a very, very poor childhood.
	He was almost a beggar.
	I'm not kidding. I'm not kidding at all.
	His family had to fear for food.
	My grandmother used to tell me the stories.
	There were days they just didn't have enough to eat, you know?
	That's why he became a workaholic.
	He didn't want that for us.
	So, your father has no free will?
	I don't understand. Like, what do you mean?
	Because he grew up poor... No, he has.
	He's just so deeply afraid of, you know, those things that happened to him, happened to us.
	Wait, so he was so afraid of you guys having a bad childhood that he delivered to you a bad childhood?
	I don't... I'm sorry, I'm trying to...
	I'm still trying to reason this one out, if you could help me.
	Sure. He was afraid that we would starve.
	Almost to death. So he stuffed us with almost as much food as we could eat.
	No, but you see, the fact that these things happened to him as a child do not dictate his response.
	Sorry? The fact that he was very poor and hungry as a child does not dictate His response as an adult.
	Because you said, well, he was a workaholic because he grew up poor.
	And he gave his kid lots of food because he didn't have enough food.
	But there's no causality in any of that.
	You're drawing lines between two things.
	Stefan, you had a bad childhood and you became an awesome parent.
	What's different? I'm sorry, say again?
	You had a bad childhood and you became an awesome parent.
	It's essentially the same logic.
	Wait, are you saying that I became an awesome parent directly because of my bad childhood but no choice, virtue, free will or anything noble that I pursued to get there?
	Yeah, good point.
	See, if you're going to give dominoes to your dad, guess what?
	You get no free will of your own.
	If you excuse your father's behavior By describing it or ascribing it to his history, then you're saying, my father is an unconscious shadow cast by events in the past.
	And then guess what happens?
	You also become an unconscious shadow cast by things in the past.
	If you don't give free will to your dad, you don't get free will for yourself.
	And then you say, well, I feel trapped and I feel helpless.
	Well, sure. Because you're ascribing being trapped and helpless in the face of the past to your father.
	The fact that your father was hungry when he was a child does not explain anything about why you became fat.
	You could say, ah, yes, but, you know, because he was so short of food, he wanted to make sure...
	No, none of that is true.
	None of that is true. He's not a machine.
	He's not a robot. He's not a boulder crashing down a hill.
	You could easily say because my father had such a dysfunctional childhood he worked really hard to deal with things and to make sure he didn't repeat the mistakes.
	Right? That's perfectly causal, right?
	But what happens is you look at your father and the first thing that comes to your mind is how do I make excuses for him?
	And then, inevitably, as an inevitable consequence, you look at yourself, and the first thing that comes to your mind is, how do I make excuses for myself?
	I know this because when I said, why can't you get a job?
	You said, well, I live in a very small town.
	Right? You made an excuse.
	And ascribing things to history is just making excuses.
	It's turning people into machines and stripping yourself of choice.
	Because if your father does what he does because of his past and never had a choice and he's a machine, then so are you.
	Whatever characteristics we ascribe to our parents, we ascribe to ourselves because we are a product of our parents.
	I mean, it's not just that we're all human beings and carpet-based and bipeds and have mostly bald bodies or whatever, right?
	I mean, it's not... It's partly because you're putting your human beings in the category called human being, and you're putting yourself, of course, in the category called human being.
	But it's because you are a product of your father, half his genetics.
	As a man, more than half of his influence, whether he's present or absent, doesn't really matter.
	Look, I'll give you an example because I fight this stuff too, right?
	I'm not saying this is all simple or easy stuff.
	It's a high wire act for sure.
	So my father was gone.
	Gone, baby gone.
	For almost all of my childhood, I went and flew out to visit him when I was six, back when you could do such things, and I went out to visit him when I was 16.
	And I saw him a few times In between.
	And because my father was so absent, I have a tough time not spending time with my daughter.
	So I have the urge, as we all do, to overcompensate.
	So my daughter and I, we really enjoy each other's company.
	And if I have to go off...
	I did do lots of paperwork today and when I did my presentation on what was going on with the DOJ and the antitrust investigation into Google and so on like I took most of the day and you know she's got a great relationship with her mom so but I'm like I feel bad you know because because my dad wasn't there So I've got to be there all the time, right? It's become...
	I mean, it's a little bit of a joke, right?
	And I'm aware of it, though.
	And of course, I do need to give her some space.
	She's got to have, you know, some room to...
	And she's taking that, you know, she's made these movies.
	I mean, my God, they're just...
	They're absolutely amazing to me.
	She's made these movies, my daughter.
	A couple of them now.
	One is a murder mystery... One is about the China virus and one is about children who decide to go on strike to gain more justice and recognition for their humanity.
	And I mean, one of these movies is like an hour 20 minutes long with like 20 characters and plot twists.
	I mean, it's incredible stuff.
	Amazing stuff. And part of that is because I am not down here doing the dad show the whole time and give her some room and space to come up with her own things.
	They blow me away.
	And it's funny, too, because this eruption of creativity also happened when I was 11 and started writing a novel called By the Light of an Alien Son, which was a science fiction book read out by my English teacher in class where everybody readily identified the girl that I was attracted to at that age of 10 or 12 or 11 or 12 or something like that.
	And so I could sit there and say, well, honey, the reason that I spend all this time with you and never give you a moment alone is because my father was never around and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	But that's just an excuse.
	And that's just a justification.
	And what I'm basically saying is I don't want to confront my stuff.
	I don't want to deal with my stuff.
	So I'm just going to manage my own anxiety by spending all this time with you so that I don't feel bad because my dad wasn't around.
	I don't have to deal with that discomfort or that pain or that isolation or that lack of mentoring or whatever it is.
	So I know, I know that I have to avoid the pendulum swing from the totally absent dad to the Dad that gives his daughter claustrophobia because she can never spend a moment alone, right?
	I mean, that would be right. I understand that.
	I understand that. So I just have to deal with that, and then I will take the time that I need, and yeah, I'll feel a little bad sometimes.
	I'll be like, oh yeah, well, that comes from this, and that doesn't mean I have to act on it and so on, right?
	And that's called having free will.
	That's called having free will.
	Of course your father, growing up poor, growing up hungry, would be completely aware that he would have an urge to overcompensate, right?
	Of course. I mean, if he was a smart man enough or a smart enough man to get out of this kind of poverty and to make a real income and have a professional gig or whatever he does, I assume it's good money, right?
	He works a lot. He's a lawyer.
	Okay, okay. So, fantastic.
	I mean, look at that, right? Look at that willpower.
	Look at that intellect to pull himself basically out of living off the streets Aladdin-style into becoming a lawyer.
	Like, man, good for him. Fantastic.
	Wonderful. So, he was able to break the cycle of history, right?
	But if you then diminish him by saying, well, he had to do this because of his childhood, or he is like this because of his childhood.
	What was it in his childhood that said, you're going to be a lawyer, right?
	Well, nothing. So he was able to surmount that trajectory, right?
	He was able to gain a different life out of that situation, right?
	So don't diminish him.
	Give him free will.
	And if he says to you, well, you know, I had to work all the time, it's like, no, you didn't.
	No, you didn't. There's such a choice, right?
	You have to give him responsibility.
	You have to give him choice.
	Otherwise, You're going to have nothing.
	Because you can't be fundamentally different from your parents.
	Whatever you describe them as, you become.
	Whatever characteristics you grant or deny them, you grant or deny yourself.
	So if you make excuses for your father, you will end up, as you did with me, making excuses for yourself.
	If you give 150% responsibility, To your father, then you get 150% responsibility for yourself.
	And I say 150% knowing it's a mathematical impossibility in a way, but simply because you've got to aim for far more responsibility than you think you could possibly have.
	You know, it's all these people complaining about COVID, complaining about COVID, complaining about COVID. I spent the last 40 years of my life railing against communism, for which I was mocked, attacked, rejected...
	De-platformed way back in the day from theater school, from, had a tough time in grad school and, you know.
	So for me, it's like, well, I spent 40 years telling you that communism was dangerous, that China was dangerous.
	And everybody laughed, attacked, mocked, rolled their eyes.
	I was like a member of the John Birch Society.
	I was a McCarthyist.
	I saw communists coming out of the jam jar, paranoid, right?
	So now, a lot of people are suffering.
	And if I were to have sympathy for them, to a pathological degree, it would be to strip them of their free will.
	And say, look, you were warned.
	Come on. Don't be ridiculous.
	You were warned. You were warned, and you were warned, and you were warned, and you were warned.
	And you chose to listen to the socialists.
	You chose to listen to the collectivists and to the communists.
	The Democrats and the leftists and the liberals who covered up all these crimes and you chose to listen to them.
	And then a communist country facilitated the release of a virus into the world, breaking the most solemn treaties that could be imagined.
	And people are like, oh, this COVID is really tough.
	It's a real drag. Well, you know, there's a price for everything in this life.
	There's a price for everything in this life.
	As an old Greek saying, even the gods cannot break this rule.
	Take what you want and then pay for it.
	And, you know, the boomers and lots of people, of course, laughed at the people who warned them about communism and warned them about China, warned them about the dangers, and laughed and mocked and attacked, and were very hostile.
	Very hostile. Like back in the day, you're a young man, right?
	So back in the day, man, you were anti-communist.
	Man, you got bitch slapped up and down all aisles of the hallway.
	You got marked down on tests.
	You got marked. You got eyes rolled.
	You got people setting up whisper and slander campaigns against you.
	I mean, you just, you took a lot of bullets in the past.
	I mean, still now, of course, right?
	And I'm reminded of this because I'm just reading my Novel, which I wrote in my 30s, early 30s.
	My novel, Almost, which you should really get a copy of it free at the audiobook, fdrurl.com forward slash almost.
	Because in it, I have wonderful, glorious speeches railing against communism.
	Right? This is, you know, over 20 years ago.
	It goes back even further.
	And one day I'll dig up and find something I wrote...
	In my early 20s called the Rationalist Manifesto about how dangerous socialism and communism was, right?
	And so it's like the people in France, right?
	They're having trouble with Islamic attacks now.
	Yeah, well, everyone was aware of Marine Le Pen, as I talked about recently, and Lots of people, myself included, worked hard to wake them up.
	But instead, they just wanted to, you know, they wanted to call the anti-communist paranoid.
	And they wanted to call the pro-Le Pen people in France racist.
	Okay, well, so you won in the moment, right?
	You didn't have to deal with the anxiety.
	You didn't have to deal with the difficulty.
	You didn't have to deal with the problems.
	And you didn't have to side with the truth tellers and the righteous people who were warning you for many decades about what was coming and my record in the public square over the past 15 years has been totally fucking flawless as far as all this shit goes totally fucking flawless talked about the dangers of South Africa yeah it's happening talked about the dangers of communism in China yeah it's happening talked about the dangers of mass immigration yeah it's happening So my conscience is clear.
	And I'll be goddamned if I will have spent and taken all of those bullets warning people about dangers.
	And then when the dangers hit, like, I'm sorry.
	I have some sympathy.
	I really do, particularly for the younger people.
	But no. I'm sorry.
	I'm not even that sorry. I mean, I'm sorry that people didn't listen.
	You know, like if you say to someone...
	You know, you've got to start two packs a day of smoking.
	That's really menthols. I mean, God, you know what they say in the nurse's lounge or they say in the ER, if you smoke, you're likely to end up here.
	If you smoke menthols, you're definitely going to end up here.
	And you say, man, you shouldn't.
	And they laugh and they attack and they mock and they get you fired and they try to destroy your reputation.
	And they listen to the tobacco companies.
	It's wonderful. It's safe.
	It's safe. And then they get cancer.
	They get emphysema. They get COPD or whatever.
	How much sympathy do you have?
	My sympathy is that I'm sorry that you didn't listen.
	And this is so what I'm talking about.
	This is like it's a radical concept.
	I'm still sort of working on the best way to present it.
	But just what does maximum responsibility look like?
	What if people don't have excuses?
	What does maximum...
	Like all the people in America right now Are 150% responsible for not knowing the gruesome facts about the Biden family, right?
	This is not politics, this is the responsibility.
	150% responsible.
	And if they vote him in, unlikely, could happen, if they vote him in, and people come for their Free speech.
	They come for their guns. They come for their liberties and so on.
	It'd be like, well, what sympathy could you have?
	I didn't know. It's like, well, you voted.
	It's your job to know. Sorry.
	It's like me punching a pilot and grabbing the joystick and crashing them.
	I didn't know how to fly a plane.
	It's like, well, you grabbed the joystick.
	You voted. You have to know. You have to know.
	There's no option called not knowing.
	And, oh, but people lied to me.
	It's like, yeah, well, it was the internet.
	There was lots of people who were telling you the truth.
	When I was in university, I fought ferociously and publicly and continuously with the leftists, with the communists, with the socialists.
	I fought with the professors.
	I was on the debating team.
	I fought with everyone publicly, wrote articles, had debates anywhere and everywhere I could.
	And I came in contact with thousands of people Who saw and heard the arguments over the, what was it, almost six years that I was in higher education.
	And those people, of course, they have no excuses anymore because they knew, they heard, they saw.
	And so if they end up getting the virus from the communists, It's not just ignoring.
	It's one thing to ignore people who are telling you something is dangerous.
	It's another thing to mock, deride, attack, and try and destroy them.
	Because you have no excuse, right?
	You heard, you listened, you were there, you knew.
	Those thousands of people that I met over the course of my college and influenced over the course of my college days, I would have big arguments in a lecture hall of 300 people sometimes.
	And I wouldn't back down at all.
	I knew how important it was and I've been very consistent in the public square.
	So if people are suffering now because of the Chinese communist bio-strike, well, you know, keep yourself safe, keep your family safe, keep yourself secure, continue to tell the truth.
	But your father is giving you a whole bunch of excuses.
	And you want to please him.
	Remember we talked about pleasing others versus telling the truth.
	Because you can choose to please people or you can choose to please virtue, but you can't do both.
	And the two are usually opposites, at least when you're young.
	So your father has a problem on his hands.
	And the problem is that his sons are failures.
	And they're not failures because they tried and failed.
	It's worse than that, right?
	Because it's not like you said, well, I went out there and I tried to start a tanning business and I worked my ass to the bone and it just failed because it got cloudy too often.
	Whatever, right? Or it got sunny too often.
	So you failed in the worst way so far because you haven't even tried much of anything, right?
	So your father has a problem.
	And I guarantee you, That it's gnawing away at him, right?
	Like a rat on a piece of cheese in the bottom of a ship, right?
	It's just gnawing away at him. And the problem is, my sons are failures.
	Now, I'm not trying to define you as a failure, but so far that's the case, right?
	And it's gnawing at him.
	And he's a lawyer, so he's analytical.
	He knows how to process an argument and all that, right?
	And so what's happening is...
	He...
	It's already manufacturing his excuses, and it probably comes very automatically to him, right?
	Why are my sons failures?
	Ah, because it's them, and I worked hard, and they're just not following my example, and they don't listen, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and they lie, and they're not ambitious.
	Maybe I was too easy on them.
	Maybe they were too comfortable.
	Maybe I didn't have enough expectations, but it's still always going to be blaming you at one way or another, right?
	Now, When I started the role-playing with regards to your dad, what I'm searching for in that instance is, can he accept responsibility for how his children have turned out?
	And the answer to that, of course, is no.
	And so you're very tempted, for reasons I can completely understand to do with not having a bond when you were growing up and being frightened of him, as you say, Because you weren't frightened of the dog, you understand?
	You were frightened of your father who did not protect you from the dog, right?
	It's not the dog's fault, right?
	It's not the husky who's the issue, it's your dad, right?
	Because if there's a dog in the neighborhood terrifying your kid and you're a fucking lawyer, you go out and deal with it, right?
	And people are kind of scared of lawyers, right?
	So you can go deal with it pretty easily.
	Sorry to interrupt you, Stefan, but he wasn't a lawyer at that time.
	He's a lawyer now. No, that's fine.
	There's two other possibilities.
	One, he was in the process of becoming a lawyer or he was thinking of becoming a lawyer or he knew lawyers or anything like that.
	That's one. And the other is he's the kind of person who could rise from abject poverty to become a lawyer.
	Therefore, he's incredibly strong-willed and willing to pursue what's in his best interest.
	It's just that protecting you from the husky was in his best interest for whatever reason.
	We don't know, right? Yes.
	So you want to please your father who wants to make excuses for his own fatherhood.
	Sorry, for his own parenting.
	So your father is faced with a problem.
	My son's a failure.
	And he, first thing he wants to do is blame you and make excuses for himself.
	And you, perfectly understandable, you're a young man, come from this kind of background, you wish to please him.
	And therefore you say, oh yes, no, my father is not responsible because of his childhood, because of his history, because this, that, or the other, right?
	My father is not responsible.
	My father is simply a dumb shadow cast by history.
	It's like if a tree falls on your house and you blame the shadow.
	The shadow did it, right?
	No. The tree did it, right?
	And so you want to please your father, so you want to make excuses for him, but the moment you make excuses for him, all those excuses flow down the tunnel of time and trap you into this barely there life, right?
	And you said, I don't want to confront my father.
	Well, what are you going to confront your father with?
	His responsibility. And you don't.
	I mean, see, here's the beautiful thing.
	You don't have to have him take responsibility in order for you to give him responsibility.
	Responsibility isn't like one of those Elvis songs, you know, like, return to sender, right?
	It's not like you say, oh, Dad, I want to give you responsibility.
	I'm not taking responsibility.
	Oh, no, it's back with me.
	No, that doesn't. My mom's never taken responsibility.
	My father never took responsibility, even when I told him about the direct violent criminal actions of my mother.
	Told him directly. Never took responsibility.
	Never. Never. Doesn't matter.
	Doesn't matter if people take responsibility or not.
	You go to the boomers and you say, you know, this is kind of a bitchy blowback for you guys scorning anybody and everybody who warned you about communism for the past 50 fucking years.
	And the boomers, they're not going to take any responsibility.
	They're not going to sit there and say, oh my God, you guys were totally right.
	You were right all along.
	We're so sorry. Not only that we didn't listen to you, but that we worked very hard to keep you out of any kind of position of influence.
	And we participated with these people in half-wrecking the biohealth of the world.
	But they're not going to take responsibility.
	People won't take responsibility.
	Your dad's probably not going to take responsibility, which is why the roleplay didn't last too long.
	But it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.
	It's like if you say to someone, you're a mammal, and they say, I'm not a mammal!
	What are you talking about?
	I'm an ectoplasmic ghost reptile!
	It doesn't matter. They're still a mammal.
	It doesn't matter whether they accept whether they're a mammal or not.
	And it doesn't matter whether your father accepts responsibility or not.
	It doesn't matter. He has it.
	And it's only by giving him 150% responsibility can you possibly start to take real responsibility for your own life, which is where the only future you can have lives.
	That's it. I'm sorry. I know I said earlier, don't interrupt, but I'm done for the speech.
	Stefan, at the start of the conversation, you asked me, what did you do for me?
	At the time, I said, I want a direction from you.
	But that's not right, man.
	Right now, what I want for you is for you to help me to reveal some of those lies I told myself and excuses that I made for myself.
	Could you do that for me, please?
	I have a situation I never understood quite well.
	No, I don't think so. No, I don't think so.
	And I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why.
	I just told you where the source of your falsehood comes from, and you've completely ignored it.
	No, my fault. I get it.
	Just one more story I would like to tell.
	No, no, no.
	You're ignoring it again.
	See, you're saying to me, Steph, help me with my lies.
	And I said, well, the source of your lies is the excuses and lack of responsibility demanded By your father.
	For him, right? Never for you, but for him, right?
	So I say, listen, if you want to fix your life, you're going to have to assign responsibility to your father.
	And then you completely ignore that and say, Steph, I need to talk about my lies and what's going on with me.
	Now, you can disagree with me, for sure.
	I mean, I could be completely wrong in my evaluation.
	But I won't stand for everything I said just being completely ignored.
	It seems like I have to talk a bit to my father.
	Stefan, after I talk to my father, if, just if, he don't throw me out of the house or any of those things, is it still moral for me Live with his resources while I don't have a real job.
	Or I should just, you know, get out of the house tomorrow.
	I can't do it. I know.
	No excuses here. See, this is the frustrating thing.
	And I knew this was going to be a tough conversation this way, so I came prepared, right?
	But I'll tell you the straight-up frustration thing.
	I'm trying to get you to take complete ownership of your life.
	Right? I'm trying to get you to take 150% responsibility by giving your father 150% responsibility.
	And your mother, of course, too.
	Right? So here I am saying, man, you've got to own yourself.
	You've got to make your own decisions, right?
	And then what's the first thing you ask to me?
	You say to me, Steph, tell me what to do.
	Come on. You understand that you're dirty fighting me, right?
	Because I'm saying...
	Once you get to the root of why your life is not working out, you will gain control over your own life, be able to think for yourself, be able to act for yourself, have 150% responsibility, right?
	And it's to do with your dad.
	And the first two things you say is, A, forget my dad, and B, for God's sake, Steph, tell me what to do.
	How the hell am I supposed to encourage free will in you and then tell you what to do?
	That is to castrate you.
	Right? Because now, instead of your dad telling you what to do, you want to pivot to me telling you what to do.
	Nope. I will never take that ring of power.
	I will never take that ring.
	I mean, it's very optimistic for you to say to me, Steph, what should I do?
	Right? Because you've heard these conversations a million times.
	I never tell people what to do.
	That's entirely disrespectful to them.
	Let's get to responsibility.
	So I'll try to follow along your line of thought.
	Stefan, who's responsible for the fact that I never had any contact with the opposite sex?
	I never understood that because I had opportunities, but I don't know what happened exactly.
	Well, your parents are responsible for that.
	Go on. Because your parents control your social environment.
	Well, they control just about every part of your environment when you're young, but your parents are 150% responsible for that.
	Now, here's the thing, right?
	So if you give your parents 150% responsibility, that doesn't mean that you end up with zero, right?
	Because when you give other people responsibility, it's an amazing process.
	I'll tell you this. It's pretty wild, right?
	It's like you've got this elephant sitting on your chest your whole life, and you don't even know it, right?
	And then what happens is the elephant starts to lift off and you can breathe and you can walk and your shoulders can be squared and you can walk upright and proud because you just didn't know, right?
	So once you start giving 150% responsibility to your parents, choice becomes flooding into your system, but it's choice without self-blame.
	It's choice without self-recrimination.
	So your parents are 150% responsible as to why You didn't have any contact with girls or women, right?
	Because, you know, you're a kid, right?
	So it's like saying, you know, I mean, people say this to me, right?
	Oh, you're not pro-immigration, which is not exactly true, right?
	I mean, I'm fine with anyone moving around.
	I just can't have immigration plus a giant welfare state.
	But I say, well, but you're an immigrant.
	You came to Canada.
	It's like, I came to Canada with about as much fucking free will as my mother's suitcase.
	I mean, I was nine or ten years old.
	The fuck am I choosing countries for?
	I didn't have a choice in the matter.
	I didn't have a choice in the matter.
	So, if you give your parents 150% responsibility, then you can sit there and say, okay, well, they screwed up completely.
	But I also, like, I also, you can say, I also knew that they were screwing up at the time.
	Deep down, deep down, I knew that they weren't Giving me the kind of contact with females that I kind of needed, right?
	I knew that. And what did I do about it?
	Well, I decided to sit home and eat.
	Now, your parents could have fixed that pretty easily, but the 150% responsibility, when you give people responsibility and start taking it for yourself, then you can say, yeah, you know, I kind of weaseled out a little bit.
	I knew that I wasn't getting any contact with girls and I just kind of burrowed into the Cheetos and ate myself silly, right?
	So yeah, my parents were very much responsible for putting me in that situation, but I kind of knew deep down that I was in that situation and I, you know, I kind of chose the easy way out.
	So yeah, 150% responsibility for your parents.
	Maybe 10-15% for you, depending on your age, right?
	Because, I mean, you obviously had a desire, especially when you got puberty and afterwards, you doubtless had a desire to spend time with girls, right?
	Maybe your sister could have helped, maybe she's older, right?
	Is that right? Yes, one of the most sadistic beings I've ever known.
	Wait, what? She's the most sadistic being I've ever known.
	Well, I'm sorry, I was not clear on what I'm saying what about.
	The reason I'm saying what is because through your father you described her as a successful person.
	Yes, in his eyes.
	Ah, okay.
	So he's a failure as a father in just about every conceivable dimension, right?
	I don't know about ever conceivable, but most of them, for sure.
	And your mother? She's much worse.
	My mother...
	Wait, worse than who?
	Your sister, your father, who?
	My father. Them all, them all.
	The thing with my mother is the following.
	I had essentially two mothers.
	One until I was eight years old.
	That was when we moved to a much bigger house.
	And the one before eight years old, when we were already in the big house, you know, my mother, she changed, man.
	She really changed.
	Before, she would beat me up almost every week, Stefan.
	It was terrible. But after I moved to the house, she started to change.
	Today, I got myself thinking, was it my fault she was that aggressive to me?
	I mean, I don't know, because she wasn't that way with my younger brother. - So she, are you, sorry, She wasn't that violent with your younger brother?
	No, but with me and maybe even my sister, less with my sister, more with me.
	You know, I'll tell this story just to represent things.
	Most of the times when she would beat me up, it would be because it's more disagreements.
	Like I was a small child, I didn't want to go to sleep, and she would beat me up for me to go to sleep.
	Stefan, do you know what I did after she beat me up for me to sleep?
	I smiled. I'm not kidding.
	Because if I cried, she would come back and beat me up and say, if you cry, I'll beat you up even more.
	Right. Yeah, that's, I mean, tragically not that uncommon.
	Yeah. But after we moved to the bigger house, she changed.
	My mother in the last, I don't know, four years has been a pretty good mom.
	I don't like to say that because she did me too much terrible things.
	But in the last four years, she was a good mom.
	I kept thinking, was it my fault?
	I don't know. Because in the last four years, a very important thing happened besides college.
	I started listening to you.
	And I fixed my relationship with my brother.
	At least now we have a pretty good relationship.
	I can't help him with his problems, but I don't make it worse.
	Or I think I don't.
	Right. Okay. Well, again, I'm sorry about all of this.
	And in particular, the violence.
	I mean, how would you get beaten up?
	What would happen? Please repeat the question.
	How would your mother hit you?
	What's the open fist, closed fist, hands?
	There is essentially two variations.
	One, she would use the belts.
	This was a very common thing, the belt.
	She would never leave marks.
	She was very careful to not leave marks, at least not visible ones.
	The other one, she would use the sandals, those rubber shoes.
	I don't know if you guys have them in Canada.
	Yeah, like Crocs. They hurt a lot, too.
	Yes, it's very similar, very, very similar to Crocs.
	She'll use those. They also hurt a lot.
	Well, I'm very sorry about that.
	And did she hit your...
	You said she hit your brother less.
	What about your sister? I don't know much about my sister because she's eight years older than me.
	But she'll hit her too before we move to the new house.
	Right, right. Okay.
	Okay, well, I'm sorry about it.
	I mean, I'm really, I'm massive sympathies for all of the stuff that you experienced as a child.
	That is, I mean, it's just horrendous.
	That's why I was so terrified of them.
	Every time I tried to, you know, talk to them.
	Sorry, I'm losing my track.
	Please continue. I don't have to interrupt you.
	No, it's fine. Violence works, right?
	Violence works. I mean, in the short run.
	It doesn't work in the long run, but it certainly works in the short run.
	And I do. I massively sympathize with that.
	And they're 100% responsible for all of that.
	And at what age do you think someone becomes responsible for their own life?
	How old? Fully responsible?
	Yeah. Legal age.
	So, like four years ago for you?
	Yes. Right.
	Right. So certainly your parents were completely responsible for what happened to you as a child, right?
	Because they were certainly much beyond legal age, right?
	For sure. Right.
	Okay, so let's get to your life.
	As far as you say your father throwing you out of the house, what happens there?
	What's the thought? What do you think would play out that way?
	It depends. If I'm in the small town, I would immediately go to my grandmother's house.
	She wouldn't throw me out.
	But there's a problem. If he keeps my laptop, I wouldn't be able to get any more job.
	You know, I'll have to stop studying programming for a while.
	And if I stay in the small town, I won't be able to get a job.
	No, that's an excuse.
	No, but I won't. I won't.
	The town is too small.
	If he throws me out while I'm at the big city, I think I could live by for more or less three months.
	I have some savings. Right.
	And, of course, with regards to your laptop, you could, of course, just work very hard to make sure that you had the laptop with you or had it handy or whatever it is, right?
	If I tell him the truth with a good plan, I do.
	I do have this possibility of having the laptop with me.
	The best possible scenario would be for me telling him the truth when I'm at the big city, especially if I'm not at his apartment.
	You know, my father owns an apartment there.
	I stayed there while I was going to college.
	Now, what if you were to sit down with your dad and say, Dad, I have a tough conversation with you, and before we start, I would like to at least have a guarantee that you're not going to kick me out of the house if you don't like what I have to say for whatever reason.
	I'd like to have a conversation with that threat hanging over my head.
	His words have no value to me.
	Even if he said that he wouldn't turn me out of the house, I wouldn't believe it at all.
	What if your mother was there?
	I guess she wouldn't help at all, right?
	It might even make it worse. Oh, she's much worse.
	You know, the reason why I made excuses for my father is that To this day, you know, you kind of said some nice things to me, but to this day, I saw him as the only reasonable person in the house.
	I don't know if that makes sense.
	Wait, sorry, who's the only reasonable person?
	You know, my father is the last worst person of the house.
	Right, okay. I understand.
	Yeah, I understand. Okay.
	All right. So, do you need to get a job?
	Ah, I do.
	And, like, a job that's not just, like, getting some leftovers from some government money, right?
	Yes. I want the government thing to be over, you know.
	That thing keeps me away because it's a crime.
	And no one likes to commit crimes, at least not me.
	Right, and it's not like you're a politician and can get away with it, so it's kind of risky, right?
	Yeah. Right, okay.
	It's very risky. Okay, so you need to stop taking the money, right?
	Yes. Because that's also kind of like a drug, because it kind of feels like you have something going on when you kind of don't, except for kind of dangerous stuff, like stuff that puts you at risk.
	To be honest, it's humiliating.
	I don't even care about the money.
	I can't live without the $20.
	I have enough money to last for a while.
	I just don't want it to stop.
	No, I understand. Okay, so what about telling your parents about school?
	That's the terrifying part.
	And the worst case scenario there is they start to kick you out of your house?
	Yes, and keep my laptop.
	If they keep my laptop, I'm screwed.
	No, no, but sorry, just to go back, right?
	So if I were in your shoes, this is sort of practical stuff, which hopefully will be helpful, but if I was in your shoes, what I would do is before I had the conversation with my parents about school, I would make sure that I had moved everything I needed to to my grandmother's place.
	My grandmother's place? Yes, I did.
	Do you see what I mean? Yes, I see.
	My grandmother probably wouldn't kick me out or anything like that.
	You know, my mother also worked a lot when I was younger.
	My grandmother basically raised me.
	Well, the time she could because when I got back home, it was hell all over again.
	Right. Okay, so as far as being kicked out and not...
	Having stuff that you need to move ahead with your life, you can deal with that because you can move everything out ahead of time before you have the conversation, leave it with your grandparents, leave it with a friend's place or whatever it is, right?
	Yes. Now, of course, the other thing you...
	Sorry, go ahead. I have a small question about this practical...
	I have a small practical question.
	Would it be wise to move my things over to the big city all at once or move it to my grandmother's place?
	Because if I move the things to my grandmother's place, I may not have a way to get to the big city after, you know, the COVID lockdowns, almost all intercity public transport.
	So I wouldn't have any way to get to the big city.
	Yeah, I mean, that's kind of nitty-gritty.
	You're asking me for a lot of local knowledge I don't have.
	I'll leave that. You're a smart guy.
	Yeah, I'll figure it out.
	Please continue. Yeah, you can figure that one out for sure.
	I mean, I can't tell you the best to take, right?
	I mean, that's not what this show is about.
	The question just resumes too. It's not wrong to build proper conditions, is it?
	I'm sorry, can you say again? Is it wrong to build proper conditions before telling them the truth?
	No, no, gosh, you've got to be careful with this stuff.
	It's also not essential that you tell them the truth face to face.
	In other words, look, at some point, you know, assuming you want to have any kind of relationship with them, at some point, you probably got to tell them the truth, right?
	But it could be the case that you go and find a job and go live with someone else and, you know, I'm moving out or whatever it is and then at some point say, you know, six months or a year.
	It doesn't matter, right? You don't owe them the truth because they were violent and abusive towards you when you were younger, right?
	So you don't have a moral relationship with them in my opinion.
	Because, I mean, it's like if somebody beats you up and then wants something from you or, you know...
	Wants to borrow your car.
	It's like, no, you can't borrow my car.
	You beat me up. I don't have that kind of relationship with you, right?
	If your friend who you love and care about wants to borrow your car, you're probably going to say yes, right?
	But to people who've been violent.
	So I don't think you have a big moral obligation to your parents.
	So I would say, don't be chained to this, well, I've got to tell the truth.
	Because what have they done to earn that kind of integrity from you?
	They've not been honest with you.
	They've not been caring with you.
	They've not been protective of you.
	They've not been encouraging of you.
	You're terrified of them.
	So to me, as far as tell the truth goes, yeah, I mean, I think if you want to have a relationship with them down the road or, you know, continuing on, then at some point it's probably a good thing to tell them the truth.
	But I don't think that you need to tell them the truth if it's going to put you in danger, obviously, if it's going to be harmful to you, I would say.
	Well, gosh no, right? And so, you know, we kind of have this thing with morality.
	Like, morals are just these rules that I have to follow.
	Like a train's got to follow the train tracks.
	I guess it's moral rules. I've got to follow these moral rules.
	And it's like, no, morality is a relationship.
	Morality, like, the highest moral standards is something that you earn.
	It's something that other people earn with you and you earn with other people.
	Right? So...
	People I've known for a long time, like James here, we've known each other for like, I don't know, 12, 13 years, right?
	He's an honorable friend.
	I would do just about anything for him.
	He could ask me for just about any favor and I would work my best to, you know, if he was stuck out in the rain, I'd put him up in the house, like whatever it is, right?
	I've got friends like that in my life.
	I'd do just about anything for my family.
	I'll do a lot for the listenership and so on.
	Because that's an earned relationship.
	But not some stranger, not People who harmed me in the past and all of that.
	So I wouldn't sit there and say, well, to be good, I now have to sit down and pursue the self-destructive act of telling my parents so they can take my laptop and kick me out into the street.
	That's not a good thing to do.
	That's not a healthy thing to do.
	It's not the right thing to do. You want to save your highest moral standards for the people who've earned it.
	just as you would want other people's highest moral standards to be something you could earn.
	Because if we just owe this kind of honesty thing to everyone, regardless of whether they've told the truth to us or lied to us or beat us up or stolen from us or whatever, right?
	Then if we give that kind of moral responsibility or have those very high moral standards with people who've treated us really badly, then what do we give to people who've treated us well?
	It's like that doesn't give us anything.
	We got nothing left. We got nothing left to give, if that makes sense.
	So act in a way that it's going to be safe for you.
	And don't let evil people dictate your obligations, particularly moral ones.
	I have one last question.
	You have a lot, really.
	This thing about, you know, should I... Should I wait before I'm safe before telling the truth was the biggest question I wanted to be answered.
	And you did. Thank you.
	But I have another one. Is there anything I can do to help my brother?
	Absolutely. The best thing you can do for your brother is to be a great example for him.
	I'm no example, man.
	Well, no, right now. But let's say that you find some way to become...
	I'm sure you can, right? When?
	Let's not say if, right?
	So when you find a way to become independent and you have job skills and you have social skills better and you have self-sufficiency skills and maybe you've started to make a bit of a play for the ladies and so on, right?
	Then that's going to be wonderful for your brother to see.
	And then he's going to come to you and...
	Sorry, go ahead. Sorry, just because he's the one person here that interested me.
	It's hard to see, you know, going this way.
	I absolutely understand that.
	I completely look...
	I mean, your sensitivity and your care for your brother is a beautiful thing, and I admire it, and you should really treasure that, and he should treasure that too.
	But you can't help him from where you are right now.
	Like, you know, the old cliché, you're in the airplane...
	If the cabin pressure goes down, make sure you put the mask on yourself before Tony to help other people, right?
	Yeah. You've got to get things sorted out yourself.
	You've got to get your own life sorted out.
	Otherwise, you're not going to be any use to him at all.
	In fact, you're probably going to be worse for him because you'll just end up sending him down the wrong path because you don't know the right path, right?
	If you don't know the way out of the woods, there's no point taking on a leadership position, right?
	Yeah. The only way you can help them is to get some sort of independence yourself, in my opinion.
	Thank you. Thank you.
	Thank you, Stephanie. You are very welcome.
	You are very welcome. Listen, is there anything that I can do to help you in any sort of practical sense?
	I mean, listen... If you're desperate for cash, if you need something to eat, if you need some rent, if you really do end up in a tough situation, will you promise to give me a shout and let me help?
	I will. But right now, I feel like I have to do this on my own, you know?
	Listen, I appreciate that and I'm just saying that if, you know, don't be a stranger if there's something I can do to help.
	I understand. Actually, you helped me last week, you know, The last podcast, you said something about, don't bury your novels in the basement.
	And I started to write one, for sure.
	I started to write my own novel.
	One of the friends at the server is helping.
	And it's been pretty good.
	It gives me a sense of accomplishment.
	I am absolutely thrilled. But now I have to work.
	I'm absolutely thrilled, and I appreciate that.
	Okay, well, listen. First of all, I really, really appreciate the call tonight.
	I... You rolled with the punches very well and you show a lot of intelligence and resiliency and I really want to help you to turn all of that energy and focus and intelligence into the world.
	I have no doubt whatsoever that you could do some great things in this life.
	And if there's anything that I can do to help going forward, please let me know and please accept my deep admiration Thanks.
	Have a good night. Take care, everyone.
	Thank you so much. Greatest listenership in the entire known universe.
	Please, please, please, after, you know, the goal of the deplatforming and blah, blah, blah.
	Lower income, etc., etc.
	If you could please help out, freedomain.com forward slash donate.
	Don't make me beg! Okay, I'll beg eventually, but freedomain.com forward slash donate.
	If you could help out the show, I would really, really appreciate it.
	Thanks to James. Thanks to you guys so much.
	Thanks to all of the people who are giving me such great feedback.
	Have yourself a wonderful day or two.
	We'll see you Sunday morning. And stick around if you want.
	If anybody wants to play some cards, I think that would be fun.
	All right. Bye! Well, thank you so much for enjoying this latest free domain show on philosophy.
	And I'm going to be frank and ask you for your help, your support, your encouragement, and your resources.
	Please like, subscribe, and share, and all of that good stuff to get philosophy out into the world.
	And also, equally importantly, go to freedomain.com forward slash donate.
	To help out the show, to give me the resources that I need to bring more and better philosophy to an increasingly desperate world.
	So thank you so much for your support, my friends.

▲