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Jan. 9, 2021 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:05:05
Surviving a Screaming Dad! Freedomain Call In
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Good morning, everybody.
Stefan Molyneux. Welcome to 2021.
I suppose Happy New Year to you, if I haven't said that to you or told that to you already.
So I hope you're having a great start to the new year.
I hope you, I guess, listened back in the day about the old bitty coins, and I think there's going to be a Quite a lot of upside heading off in that direction.
So that's my particular opinion, of course.
And yeah, check out, I put out later today, George Bruno, a guy I had a couple of chats with in the past when I was at the 21 conventions in Orlando.
He and I had a nice year-in-review chat last night.
Unfortunately, it seems like it's possible that someone had their thumb on the bandwidth thing, because even though I've got crazy good bandwidth, there was a lot of...
Because I'm stuttering. Anyway, I'm hoping to get a source recording.
It should be a little bit better. But I'll put that out today.
It was a really enjoyable chat.
He's a great guy. So, I guess, no further ado time.
Let's get chatting with the listeners.
Alright, so number one at the top of the show today, we have...
My upbringing was rife with verbal manipulation alongside occasional physical violence.
My parents since have divorced and I've had a very easy out for my relationship with my father, although I still live with my mother, yet I have continued to see my father on a semi-regular basis.
Physical violence and threat has entirely stopped as of 15, intimidation whilst yelling, but the verbal manipulation still hasn't.
Conspiracy theory, and you're just young, you know, his focus on experience over principles, etc.
I, as far as I'm aware, have denormalized this behavior, yet I still feel compelled to continue the relationship.
And I believe that he also added another note, which I don't have.
Ah, he says, my father flatly rejects the against me argument.
Well, good morning.
That's a very, very good topic, a very important topic.
I'm glad that you've brought it up.
And the first thing I want to know is, what would you like to add?
The only thing I'd like to add is this is in response to you acknowledging me using some quite ambiguous language during a group chat that we were having over the phone on the day before Christmas Eve, I believe.
Oh, you're the It's Unfortunate guy?
Yes. Yeah, so we were talking about bad behavior online, and you kept saying, and I got slightly more annoyed, hopefully productively, each time you kept saying, yes, that's unfortunate.
It's like, no, no, it's unfortunate if you get hit by lightning out of a clear blue sky.
It's not unfortunate if people decide to do sort of bad things voluntarily.
That's not an unfortunate thing.
That's kind of an insult to the unfortunate who are kind of victims, so...
Yes, I do remember in the call that we had on Christmas that you were referring to sort of bad or malevolent online behavior as unfortunate, and you did that a couple of times, which eventually becomes kind of a red flag for me, or I guess you could say a red flag.
A bull, a red matador's cape in front of a bull, because after a while I was like, I don't really think that that's unfortunate.
Unfortunate is when things happen, you know, kind of accidentally.
You know, you kind of get hit by lightning out of a clear blue sky.
That is unfortunate. But when people are making moral choices to behave badly, it's kind of an insult to unfortunate people to call that voluntary behavior unfortunate.
So I do remember that, and I'm certainly glad that it sparked some productive And I think it's a good example of why it's important to trust your instincts and trust your feelings.
So I did find myself, in the conviviality of the Christmas chat, becoming annoyed at this constant re-characterization of moral choices as unfortunate.
And I hope, or it seems that it's been productive for me to have been annoyed, which, you know, is always a good thing.
Annoyance is usually there to help, not hurt.
So I'm glad that that was helpful.
And tell me, I guess, what it sparked for you going forward, this pushback that we had, or I had, on Christmas.
Yeah, the main thing that it triggered in me was...
It kind of just made me think about how I'm still in a relationship with my father who I've essentially had a really good opportunity to devoo from.
And I've had loads of conversations with him about the way that he brought me up and about how that's not the right way to do it and how it's empirically proven that that's not the right way to do it.
And he's accepted all my arguments.
But the verbal manipulation continues and I continue to persist with the relationship.
And I was wondering if there was something, it seems like in both instances, both with my language and in my relationship with my father, I was almost dissociating a little bit.
Do you mean in the language on the Christmas chat?
Yeah.
Ah, okay, okay.
Well, I think there was...
I don't know really what the technical term for dissociation is, but it's when you're kind of on automatic emotional pilot, usually at the expense of...
Living in the moment and being alive to the moment.
In the conversation, we were talking about trawling online.
And I did find it kind of intrusive to continually insert the word unfortunate for, you know, people's, I mean, to take a silly and extreme example, if some guy's a rapist, we don't say he's made unfortunate choices, you know.
If somebody decided to invest in, say, gold rather than Bitcoin, we could say maybe that was an unfortunate choice, but it's not a moral situation.
And there was a kind of goading and it's almost like there was someone else in the conversation than you.
Somebody who was kind of elbowing his way in and attempting to reframe the discussion about bad moral choices in a way that was really interesting to me.
And I'll sort of tell you very briefly.
I will promise I will keep this brief and then we'll turn it back to you.
So when we're talking about people who are making really horrible moral choices, To verbally abuse online, to be trolls and all of that.
If it's reframed as unfortunate, it is actually an attack upon the people who are complaining about the bad moral choices.
Because when you reframe bad moral choices as simply something that is unfortunate, you are also reframing the people complaining about those bad moral choices as intolerant.
Because who on earth would judge Who on earth would morally judge someone for bad luck?
I wouldn't. Bad luck is bad luck.
You don't morally judge people for being the victims of bad luck.
I mean, if you're obeying the traffic laws and some crazy drunk guy plows into your car, you don't blame the victim of that.
You blame the driver. You don't say, well, that's unfortunate.
It was unfortunate that the drunk driver happened to crash into you.
It's like, no, that's not unfortunate.
That's monstrously immoral.
So it was almost like there were a bunch of us chatting on Christmas and we were talking about bad moral behavior online.
Verbal abuse. And then someone came into the conversation that didn't seem like you, who was wrestling the moral narrative and trying to reframe it to make us the intolerant ones.
Like, why on earth would you get angry or upset or frustrated or negative towards just unfortunate stuff?
It's just bad luck.
It's just bad luck that people happen to type torrents of verbal abuse on.
on, that's just bad luck.
And that reframing of people with a legitimate moral complaint into people who are intolerant and are judging people morally for things that aren't their fault, that are just the result of bad luck, that's what was starting to annoy me.
It was just very insistent.
And it was a very, very much a wrenching of the wheel and an attempt to reframe the conversation to make people with just moral complaints the illegitimate ones and to turn the abusers into victims.
Because if somebody is typing verbal abuse online, then to reframe them as a victim, well, I just kind of got the sense that wasn't really you, if that makes sense.
Yes.
Yeah, and that has two clear-as-day connections to things in my childhood.
The first of which is, that is exactly how my dad frames his parenting style as the unfortunate consequence of, no, sorry, the inevitable consequence of the unfortunate situation or the unfortunate parents he was born into.
Ah, okay. So his parenting style was inevitable dominoes because he just had the bad luck to be born into a bad family.
Is that right? Yeah, precisely.
Now, here's the question.
And this is always the most electric question.
Ooh, it's so good to start a Sunday this way, right?
So this is the really electric question about morals, right?
Which is, your father says, well, hey, I wasn't responsible for how I parented because I just had this environment.
I had these circumstances.
I had no moral free will of my own.
Okay. I don't think that's a particularly noble perspective.
But the question is, is it a universal?
In other words, when you were a child, did you ever get to say, well, Dad, you seem to be upset at me, but it's just unfortunate.
I mean, there was this environment that caused me to make these decisions, so you can't get mad at me.
I mean, in a way, moral or free will nihilism should produce at least non-punishing parenting, right?
Yeah. Because if the parent can say, well, it was just unfortunate that I was born into this family, I'm not responsible for my decisions as an adult, then how on earth could he hold a child responsible, you, for your decisions as a child?
If he's not responsible for his decisions as an adult, because determinism, then how on earth could he punish you for your decisions as a child?
So the question is, did he? - I've heard you made the-- - Sorry, I wasn't sure if we'd cut out there or something.
Yeah, my push to talk seems to be malfunctioning.
I have to keep checking whether my finger's on the button.
I've heard you make this case before, and I agree with it.
And I can't...
I understand why, intellectually, I connect with this argument, and I agree with it, and I apply it to other people, and I would say, you're wanting a moral out, but you're not giving other people that same excuse.
Yet, for some reason, emotionally, I am still sympathizing with this consequence of misfortune argument that my dad makes.
Well, I know you've listened to the show for a while.
Have you heard my response to that?
Now, it may be that you've heard it, but it didn't connect and kind of blew past you.
Your defense has deflected it, so I don't want to repeat an argument you've heard, but do you know why intellectually we understand a moral argument with regards to our parents, but emotionally we can't connect with it?
I think that probably has passed me by.
Okay, no, that's fine.
I just, I don't want to lecture where the lecture is understood.
Again, I vow to keep it brief today, but so you have to please your father in order to survive as a child.
And so while intellectually you say, oh yeah, that's a good argument.
I mean, he says that he's not responsible for his moral decisions as an adult, but somehow I'm responsible for my moral decisions as a child.
But if you were to say that, like if you look at how things are going with your father now that you're an adult, it's very interesting, right?
I mean, I say interesting, that sounds kind of cold and clinical, but from a philosophical standpoint, it's interesting, and interesting is curiosity, and curiosity is growth, which is that as a child, you avoided making your perspective known.
Now, as an adult, with the independence, legal autonomy, separate income, separate living space, you're trying to make your preferences known as an adult, how's that going?
Not too well.
Well, there's your hedging bag, which again.
No, it's going terribly. Yeah, yeah, it's going terribly.
It's going terribly, right? Which is unfortunate.
No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding.
Well, I think the issue is it's not going at all.
I'm not making an attempt.
But you did, right?
You tried the against me argument, you tried bringing up issues that you had with your father in the way that he raised you, right?
So you may not be doing it now, but you certainly did in the past, and it worse than didn't work.
Yeah, I've almost completely, well, not almost, I have completely given up on discussing any such topics with my dad now.
I've kind of just reverted back to pretending that I don't feel this way.
Right. And that is what you had.
So, one of the reasons why it's important to speak frankly and honestly with your parents when you're an adult is so that you can see what the hell you were up against when you were a child.
Did you see what I mean? Yeah.
If you can't do it when he has almost no power over you directly, if you can't do it when you can choose not to see him, when you can choose not to interact with him, if you can't make any headway at all in being honest with your father...
When you're an adult, hopefully, I hope, it gives you sympathy for what you faced as a child when you were completely, utterly, totally dependent.
It does. Good.
Okay, so that's why you couldn't do it when you were a child.
And that's why the intellectual argument for the moral hypocrisy of your father, in other words, that he's not responsible, but you as a child are responsible, The reason that it won't emotionally connect with you is because it goes against your survival instinct.
And you know, we're pretty good at ignoring arguments that go against our survival instinct, if that makes sense.
Yeah, completely.
If you had...
See, kids don't probe.
Sort of fundamental fact of childhood.
Kids don't probe. And what I mean by that is, kids don't say, well, I wonder how far I can go in pushing back against the inconsistencies, hypocrisies, and illogical aspects of my parents' natures, of my parents' personalities.
What they do is they put out a couple of feelers and say, ah, okay, well, if I try this, what happens?
Okay, if I try that, what happens?
And usually what happens with dysfunctional families is the parents will simply escalate, right?
Escalate, escalate, escalate.
Now, how many kids sit there and say, well, I think I'm going to push and see how far they're going to escalate.
How did that work out for most kids in human history?
Very badly. Well, yeah, I mean, those kids probably aren't around, right?
And not because they were killed, necessarily, but because their parents might be a little bit inattentive.
They might not care as much.
They might not rush to defend.
They might not give the kids quite as much food.
They may not, you know, necessarily bind the wounds of the kids where the kids get the scratches at a time when a scratch could kill you.
There would just be, you know, 5% less parental attention can be 50% higher mortality rate, right?
And so, yeah, I just wouldn't really...
Or what would happen is those kids would grow up being ignored or rejected by their parents.
They would internalize that, which would cripple their viability in the dating market.
And then they would be too low self-esteem to attract a mate, and those genes would die out even if the parents did take care of them.
Does that make sense? Completely.
This may in fact be playing out in your dating life as well.
We can get to that if that's the case.
Yes. Right.
So, kids, they don't probe, they don't push.
They don't push their parents. They don't push their parents.
Now, you could say, and I always hear the objections in my head because I'm a multiplicity.
I am a phalanx.
So, the pushback is, yeah, well, what about when the kids become teenagers?
When the kids become teenagers, they fight hard against their parents and so on.
It's like, well, yeah.
But, They're young adults, right?
They're not just children anymore.
By the time you're sort of 15 or 14, right, then you're within a stone's throw of getting out.
You need to establish your independence, and so there can be that.
But when you're little, and if you sort of think back in it, if you have the memory for it, and some people don't, but, I mean, I certainly remember pushing back against my mom, her escalating and me saying, well, nope, that's...
That's about as far as I'm going to go because it becomes physically dangerous.
You just get this massive fight-or-flight alert system that goes off in your head where you say, stop, stop, stop, stop.
Stop what you're doing. Don't go any further.
And that's your survival mechanism, right?
Yeah. So, an intellectual argument which goes against your survival mechanism ingrained into children for the past, I don't know, couple of million years from the apes onwards...
The survival mechanism is pretty tough.
It's sort of like going to someone on the welfare state.
They believe, oh, I'm 100% dependent on the welfare state.
If it wasn't for the welfare state, I and my children would starve.
And you say, yes, but you see the morality of the welfare state, violation of property rights, non-aggression principle, blah, blah, blah.
And they may listen to the arguments, they may nod a little bit, but it doesn't move them in any emotional way because they believe that this is a survival mechanism for them.
So... Sorry, because you were about to say something and I kept on going, so go ahead.
No, well, I just remember it was in my teenage years.
I had some really big exams coming up and my desk was full of revision prompted by my dad to revise.
And my dad told me, tidy my desk a couple of nights before the exam because my bedroom was looking untidy because there was revision all over the desk.
That's homework for people who aren't from this particular culture, but go ahead.
Yeah, well, I just said, no, I've got an exam coming up.
I need to get this work done so that I can do well on the exam.
And as a consequence of me working, the desk will be dirty.
And he just said, Screamed and screamed and screamed.
And then eventually I just gave up to cry and tidied my desk because there was simply no reasoning.
So I can definitely relate to that.
I'm so sorry, man, because I don't know if you know what that is, because again, you may be too close.
Do you know what that behavior was motivated by?
I don't. Ah, it's a little word we call sabotage.
Oh. How successful is your father?
Incredibly. Professionally.
Economically. Very.
Very, very successful?
Yeah. Well, not so much.
We don't have to get into details. We don't have to get into details.
I'll say. Okay, so he's made a lot of money.
He's done well in his career, right?
Yeah. Very competitive guy, I would assume, right?
Yes. Right.
Right. You know, one of the great secrets, and it's a pretty dirty secret, but one of the great secrets in life is how many parents are competitive with their own children.
Because your father knows how to succeed.
He knows what you need to do to succeed.
He knows that screaming and traumatizing a child when the child has important exams coming up is destructive to that child's potential, right?
So if he's defined himself as better than, right?
See, there's ways to be competitive that are really healthy, to just strive to be the very best.
So I always try to do the very best shows that I can.
But what I don't do is sit there and say, well, there are a whole bunch of other YouTubers, well, not YouTubers, but podcasters and vloggers.
There are all these people out there.
I have to be better than them.
I don't. I compare myself to the excellence that I believe that I'm capable of and compare myself to an own inner standard.
So I'm very competitive, but it's mostly with ideals and myself.
I'm not, I've got to beat other people.
I've got to be better than other people.
And I think the former is healthy competition.
And the second is Tonya Harding, right?
I think she was reported to have paid someone to take an iron bar to Nancy Kerrigan's legs because she wanted to compete with figure skating or something, right?
So if your father was...
Competing with himself or ideal standards, then you tend to be encouraging to people.
And you know, I've encouraged lots of people.
I've given people lots of opportunities to get their start on my show and all that kind of stuff.
Because I want other people who are really good in this square, in this space.
I would love it if people were neck and neck in me and coming up with moral theories and Writing books on relationships, coming up with better arguments for voluntary society.
I would love it if there were better and more people.
Why? Because you run faster when someone's about to overtake you than if you're way ahead of the pack.
So I know. That's why I've encouraged lots of people to get into philosophy, to vlog, to podcast, and all that.
Because it's going to make me better.
Competition makes me better.
However, if your competition is, I want to be better than, then your goal is not to encourage and to mentor.
Your goal is often to sabotage and undermine, if that makes sense.
It does. So it's not, I want to run as fast as I possibly can, and competition helps me achieve that, so I welcome competition.
It's, I want to run faster than this guy.
So I can either do the hard work of training or I can charley horse him right before the race, like punch him in the thigh or have someone punch him in the thigh.
So I don't even have to run that fast, I'll still win the race, right?
Yeah, I worry that he is also trying to do that with parenting.
My worry, and just as you're saying this, I've noticed patterns of behavior from him where he is also trying to out-compete me in parenting.
Oh, because you yourself are a parent and he wants to be better than you, is that right?
No, well, I'm not a parent yet.
I'm much too young for that.
But I want to be a really good parent when I am.
And I can see that that sparks something in him whenever it's brought up, which says, I've got to have been a better parent than he can be in the future.
Oh, so better, not even...
Equal. But he wants to be a better parent than you.
Yeah, or at least I definitely cannot excel his parenting.
Right, right.
Which would actually make him a bad parent.
I hope that my daughter's a better parent than me.
Wouldn't that be great? I hope she's a better philosopher than me.
Wouldn't that be great? And I'm aware of this now because when my daughter was younger, I was better...
At her, I was better than her at just about everything, right?
Not because I'm better than her, because she was a kid, right?
A little kid. Now, there's things that she's better at than me.
She's better at Among Us.
She's better at Rocket League.
She's better at drawing dragons.
She's better at creating movies, animated movies.
She's better than me.
And in some spheres, there's not even a competition.
It's not like, you know, maybe she's 20% better than me at Rocket League, but...
She's like infinitely better than me at creating animated movies because I can't do it at all.
She is much better at me at using drawing programs.
Apparently there are these things called layers.
I'm still trying to grasp them.
So she's just firing her way through that kind of stuff.
So there's stuff that she's better at than me.
And that's a transition.
Now, I am a competitive person.
I do try and focus on competition with ideal standards and my own past.
Personal best, right? Personal best and ideal standards is the way that I try and focus.
But, you know, I'm still a human being and there is a transition when your kids get better than you.
And parents, you know what I'm talking about, right?
I mean, and non-parents, you know what?
Because there's times where you get better than your parents and things.
You're better than your parents at some things.
It could be online games. It could be writing.
It could be that you've read more books.
It could be any number of things.
But there's things that you're better at Then your parents, and how do they handle it?
How do they handle it?
And some are...
There's always a transition, and like, oh, I kind of liked being, you know, the man-god of your toddler universe.
It was kind of a cool experience, but of course, you kind of just...
I just have to talk to myself, right, obviously, and say, no, that's good.
I want her to... Don't you want her to be better?
But, but I'll tell you this, one of the things that's tough when your kids outstrip you It's a reminder that you're going to fucking die.
Right? It's a reminder.
Like, why is my daughter here?
My daughter's here because one day I won't be.
So when your kids outstrip you, it's like a complete shadow of the scythe man across your doorway.
Oh yes, that's right!
They grow and they get bigger and stronger and better because I'm going to get older and frailer and weaker and then I'm going to fucking die.
So there is a death or mortality panic deep down in your kids outstripping you.
And I don't know what your father's relationship with death is.
I don't know. But people make some really, really bad decisions when they forget that they're going to die.
The reminders of mortality is the reminder for humility.
It's the reminder to not screw up your relationships for the sake of vanity and dominance and one-upmanship and leveling.
It's just a reminder to just, you know, don't be an asshole because you're going to die.
Whereas if people feel like they're just going to live forever, they're going to be strong forever, they're never going to fade, they're never going to fall apart, they're never going to need people, they're going to be middle-aged powerhouses until the end of time, it's like, well, you can...
It's easier to be an asshole if you think you're going to live forever, which is why vampires tend not to be very nice people.
Anyway, sorry, that's a whole lot of cluster bombs there, but I hope that you can pick something out of the wreckage No, definitely.
I mean, I'm just kind of, as you're talking, I'm multitasking in my brain, also trying to work out which other areas it seems that the competitive nature of my father has gotten the best of me and I've internalized his need to be better than me and stifled my own progress in certain areas.
So, yeah, I think the sabotage element is pretty important, and I certainly know without a doubt, and I think it was all unconscious, but the people in my life who encouraged me to pursue self-destructive behaviors, particularly in the dating world, Those people wanted me to fail because they had, like when you have people in your life who've made opposite moral choices, so your father has chosen to blame his past and exonerate himself, right?
So he was a bully, screaming at you, verbally abusing you and so on.
But you see, now that you're older and you're independent and you have adult judgment, suddenly he's done the flip, the flip from bully to victim, right?
They're called cry bullies, right?
From bully to victim, right?
And So, because he's done the flip from bully to victim, he said, I'm going to base myself not on virtue, but on manipulation.
I'm going to defend my past actions of being a bully by striving hard to turn my son into a bully.
In other words, he's blaming me for things that were just unfortunate.
He's morally judging me for having bad parents, which wasn't my fault.
I didn't choose what family I got.
Born into? He's calling evil, or immoral at least, or abusive.
He's calling things abusive that were just unfortunate.
And if he ever gets close to having a moral discussion of these things, I'm going to use that magic word unfortunate to turn him from a victim into a bully.
See, he goes from a bully to a victim, which means that you go from a victim to a bully.
Well, he won't acknowledge the victimization of you as a child, which means that you're a bully in the here and now.
And that's a pretty nimble verbal and moral gymnastics.
And when you have people in your life who are taking opposite moral stances, I tell you, man, whether you like it or not, you are both invested in each other's failure.
You are both invested in each other's failure.
I want everyone to think about this in your life.
Think about this in your life.
Who in your life has taken an opposite moral stance to you?
Now, We believe, with good reason, that our moral decisions, our moral stances are aimed at happiness, are aimed at success, and it doesn't mean necessarily material success, but we're aiming at happiness and success.
And if somebody has taken the opposite moral stance to us, if they're happy and successful, we're wrong.
And we're not just wrong, we're bad.
We could very much be immoral.
We could very much be immoral.
If they are successful and happy, then we're bad.
And if we are successful and happy, then they're bad.
If you take the opposite diet requirements To lose weight from someone and they start losing weight, it's very unlikely that you also will lose weight.
I don't really know what the opposite is.
That's not a very perfect analogy.
But, okay, let's put it this way.
You're in the middle of the woods.
Your friend goes south and you go north and there's only one town in a 50-mile radius.
Now, if he gets to the town, you're screwed.
Because it means you've now gone, plunged deeper into the woods away from the town.
If you get to the town, he's screwed because you've gone in opposite directions and there's only one town.
So you've got to evaluate very carefully and very critically, you've got to evaluate everyone's moral stance in your life.
And if it's oppositional to yours, they will sabotage you.
Now, you may not sabotage them, but you will view any potential success that they're achieving.
You will view any potential success that they're achieving as an existential threat to your own virtue and happiness.
And you're right to do so.
You're right to do so.
And this can happen not just in the realm of morals, but in the realm of, to some degree, life aesthetics.
So you might have someone Who says, making money, traveling the world, sleeping with lots of girls, never settling down.
That is the real path to happiness.
It's bliss. It's so cool.
Look at my Instagram feed.
I'm having so much fun.
And you say, you know, that's kind of shallow.
That's hedonistic. That's vain.
That's basically living the life of a rutting animal.
In cargo shorts.
And so I'm going to find a great woman.
I'm going to settle down. I'm going to have kids.
I'm going to be part of the continuation of culture, civilization, and society.
And you can just be out there dumping your seed on broken women, right?
Now, if he...
Ends up super happy.
The odds of you being super happy are pretty damn low.
In fact, the odds of you being unhappy are pretty damn high because you've made, in many ways, opposite moral choices.
You've chosen a life of commitment, love, devotion, self-sacrifice, and continuity.
He's chosen a life of shallow stimulation, of probably rapidly decreasing endorphin junkiness, right?
And so when you have people in your life who are making opposite aesthetic, moral, happiness, goal, life choices, you each want each other to fail.
In fact, you each need each other to fail. You need each other to fail.
Because if the other person succeeds, you have failed terribly.
And if you succeed, the other person has failed terribly.
Now, some people aren't content to let this experiment called life run its course without a little tipping on the scales.
In the same way that some people aren't willing to have, say, an election without tipping the scales.
So... If you have people in your life and you're starting to do better, and listen, when you make better moral choices than your parents for a long time, you look like you're doing a lot worse, right?
In the same way that if you have a friend and you're both alcoholics and then you quit drinking for quite a while, it looks like you made a terrible decision.
Because for quite a while, you're doing a lot worse than your friend who keeps drinking.
You're going through DTs.
You've got health issues.
You've got shakes.
You've got tremors.
You've got anxiety.
You can't sleep.
You're going through withdrawal.
You're probably going through therapy and dealing with all the pain that drove you to become an alcoholic in the first place.
It looks like you've just made the worst choice in the known universe.
And so people get invested now.
When you hit the bottom and you start to bounce and you start to go up and you start to rise much past the happiness level of your alcoholic friend, he gets really screwed up, man.
He really does get screwed up.
And he's like, oh, come on.
It's a dead cat bounce.
There's no way. There's no way.
It's going to work out for him.
I mean, he just gave up drinking because he became an unbearable square and he became unbearably uptight and boring.
So, it's not going to last for him, man.
It's not going to last. But as you continue to rise in happiness, you've created free will within him in this area because now he has an empirical example that the road to heaven does lead through hell.
The road to heaven always leads through hell, at least until the world becomes a whole lot better than it is.
Currently. So now, he sits there and says, oh man, I thought he was a weak, pathetic human being for giving up drinking and pouring himself into all of this self-knowledge crap.
Now it turns out he gained a superpower called happiness, which is continually becoming less and less for me.
So now he has a choice. He can come to you and say, you know what, you were right to teach me the way, sensei.
How do I get out of the vat of alcohol and into the hot tub of happiness?
Boy, there's a liquid-based analogy in a cup.
Or he can say, oh, you know, I got a friend you should really date.
She's a little bit of a handful, a tiny bit of a hot mess, but she is so much fun.
She has a great sense of humor, and I've heard she's great in bed.
Let me just set you up with her.
Or he could say, yeah, I really think that you should talk more about your political opinions at work.
I think, you know, to have integrity, you really should be honest at work, and you should just be upfront.
And talk to people about what you think and believe.
Or, yeah, you really should go to that protest where the hard left militants are going to be, you know, stand up for yourself, stand up for what you believe in.
I would really admire that. He's going to try and get you to make decisions that are going to screw up your life.
So that he can say to himself, well, that road didn't work out so well, did it?
I guess I'll have another drink.
So that's a very powerful mechanic that goes on in the world.
People don't really like to talk about.
And when I was going to marry the wrong woman, everyone in my life who didn't give me a dick punch and tell me to wake the hell up became massively suspect because they were setting me up for an absolutely terrible failure.
A godforsaken failure.
And then they could say, oh, well, you know, this Mr.
Philosopher, Mr. Reason and Evidence, look what happened to his marriage.
They are invested in your failure, and you are invested in theirs.
That's not healthy. That's not healthy.
At all. So, sorry for the long rant, but the fact that there's this sabotage going on between your father and yourself, And in fact, I would say, in a way, he was trying to sabotage even the Christmas conversation in a little way by coming in and trying to turn us with legitimate moral complaints into, in a sense, intolerant abusers by labeling immoral that which was simply unfortunate.
There's a sabotage element to there as well, which is why I pushed back on it.
But tell me what you think, if this makes any sense to you.
Yeah, it's been...
I mean, you apologise for the speech.
There's no need to.
It was incredibly illuminating.
I found a lot of parallels, especially when it comes to the parenting thing that I was talking about before.
My father, he worked away, so he missed half of my birthdays.
Half of my Christmases, half of my childhood essentially for working away.
And it's always been his stance that I should do that as well, that that's the best thing to do, and that in the event that he had a second go of things, that's what he would do.
And I can definitely see him sowing seeds of doubt about my very humble ambitions regarding the way that I want to set up my life to be a father.
I can definitely see this kind of...
He almost takes joy in the hell that I'm going through on the way to heaven, to continue your analogy.
Right. Right.
And he's right too in his own way, from his own perspective.
Empathy doesn't mean sympathy.
Empathy simply means understanding what other people are experiencing and why.
So if you're making a choice of radical personal responsibility, self-ownership, a commitment to virtue, and a commitment to connection rather than cash, well, if you're right and that leads to happiness, He's screwed.
And here's the thing.
This is why it's so relentlessly difficult between dysfunctional parents and their adult children, is that if you're right, it's too late for him to fix it.
And so it's a million times worse.
If he's right, I mean, I don't think he is, but if he's right and, you know, massive competition, sabotaging your children, yelling at them, working hard, getting lots of money, if that's the path to happiness, so you can try your thing for a couple of years, but you're still in your early to mid-20s, You've got way time to correct your mistakes, right? If he's right and you're wrong, you can experiment with this stuff and maybe it turns out the screaming at your kids and all of that is a great thing to do.
Obviously it isn't, but let's say that in a purely transactional analysis, take the ethics out.
If he's right and you're wrong, you're a million times better off than if you're right and he's wrong because you can course correct.
It's one thing to say I don't need a parachute before you leave the plane so someone can give you a parachute.
It's quite another thing to say I don't need a parachute and believe that and have already jumped out of the plane.
Now he, if he's wrong he's got 40, 50 years invested in that being wrong and if he's wrong about parenting you know There's zero rewind buttons in life.
It's really important to understand.
There's zero rewind buttons in life.
You can revisit the past in your mind, but you can't go back and fix it.
The past is an empirical reality to be accepted or rejected, but can't be changed.
You can change your perspective on the past, but you can't change the past.
There's zero rewind.
And so he will never, ever get to be a parent again.
Or I guess he could go and have another family or something like that, but he will never ever get to be a young parent again.
And most likely he'll never get to be a parent again.
So all of his mistakes are unredeemable, unfixable.
Well, maybe they could never be redeemed, but there could be some amelioration if he owned and took responsibility and apologized and, you know, whatever, which he'll probably never ever do.
But So it's really, really important to understand the barriers to change in the people around you.
What is stopping them from changing?
Now when you're young and your life is flexible and you haven't fucked up too badly, you're like, hey, change.
Yeah, that's a good thing.
It's tough, but yeah, let's change.
Let's change. Mix it up.
Let's try some new things.
Why? Because you're not dragging decades of truly shitty decisions behind you that have hurt people.
You don't have that weight.
You haven't had that investment into immorality that bad people have had particularly with their children.
So for you, it's like, yeah, let's just go revisit the past.
It's a benefit for you to revisit the past honestly with your father.
But my God, man, try and picture what it's like for him.
And I don't mean this for sympathy.
I just mean for empathy. Tell me what it's like for your father who can never fix his parenting and never change the terrible things he's done.
What's it like for him when you start poking around that minefield?
It's premature death.
Go on.
Well, for him to know that not only was his parenting bad, but that it was irredeemably so.
And that I know this is like the relationship with his son that he would hope would last for his whole life would end immediately.
Or the illusion of a relationship, at least that he would hope would go on forever, would immediately end.
And that aspect of himself that he believed himself to be pouring into his children would immediately die.
And not only would his relationship with his child die, but also the aspects of himself that he's entrenched in me through his parenting.
I will kill within myself.
Right, right.
I mean, that's powerful stuff.
And that's related to you.
That's really important.
And that's natural for a young man to say.
Playing the annoying multi-decade age card, which is also annoying because it comes with twinges, aches, and pains, but what happens to your father's sense of himself if these moral crimes against his children Not just revealed, but he can't fight them.
They take root in him.
What happens to him getting up in the morning?
What happens to him going to work?
What happens to him trying to boss and dominate other people?
What happens to his vanity?
What happens to his pomposity?
What happens to his sense of dominance that is the foundation of his success?
It becomes without cause.
There's no motivation anymore.
It reverses. So you think it becomes like...
It doesn't go to a neutral. In morality, there's no neutral.
In morality, there's no middle ground.
He thinks he's a really great guy and that you're a fool making mistakes and blaming people for things that aren't their fault and, you know, whatever.
So he thinks he's a really great guy.
He parented well and where he wasn't parented well, he still did better than his parents, which he's not to blame for, his parents, blah, blah, blah.
So he thinks he's a great guy.
What happens to a personality when great guy goes to terrible guy?
What happens Someone's life.
It's not a neutral state.
And I'm perfectly willing to open this up to other people listening.
If you've seen people do this or go through this, and they very rarely do, what happens when someone swings the greatest pendulum arc in the human soul from good guy to bad guy? what happens when someone swings the greatest pendulum arc in
I'm at a loss.
And you know why you're at a loss?
Because I've not made him confront it yet.
No. Because it never happens.
It never happens.
To my knowledge. I'm obviously not omniscient.
It's a silly thing to say. But I've talked to a lot of people.
I've had a lot of examples of moral choices in my life.
My father left me with a violent and abusive woman.
Did not seek to keep me safe.
Did not seek to inquire how I was doing.
And he had ample opportunity I went out there to visit him when I was six.
He visited me continually probably every second year.
In Ireland, I went out again when I was 16.
And we spent months together.
Months! Did he ever once ask me how I was handling a woman that he knew for a fact was violent?
Nope. When I was an adult, I told him about the violence.
And he said, your mother certainly does seem to have some criminal tendencies, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
It's unfortunate. I'm sorry, don't be the laugh, because I always nag at people about this.
But, you know, it was an unfortunate situation.
Not, I made choices.
Now, my father made it through his whole life and died In March of last year, never, ever, ever once, even questioning that he might be a bad guy.
Never questioned it. I read his entire biography, autobiography.
He bragged about the people he knew, the success that he'd had, the places he'd traveled, how wonderful everyone was and how helpful they'd been and all of the great experiences he'd had in his life.
I showed up, I think, in two paragraphs of probably 150 pages.
I read the whole biography.
Not one...
Oh, well, I did...
I had a lot of professional success.
I traveled and had a lot of great people.
I made some money. But, you know, there's this.
Nothing. Completely rewritten.
You understand, if you get people to do bad things, you destroy any capacity for honesty in personal or social histories.
The lie becomes the survival.
Because you had to lie to them as a child, they have to lie to themselves as an adult.
My mother sat down face to face with her on multiple occasions, talked about the violence of my childhood.
She admitted nothing, accepted nothing, opposed the memories of everything, and where it was irrefutable, she said, ah, yes, but you see, the doctors injected me with bad things because reasons, and therefore no free will, no choice, no responsibility, and you should have sympathy.
It's like blaming me for having arthritis.
It was unfortunate. I have known...
A lot of people, a lot of people in my life, I've seen a wide variety of moral choices, and I have never, ever seen a bad person say, I'm a bad person.
Now, you will hear bad people say, oh, I'm such a terrible, despicable person, but that's because they're manipulating you for self-pity.
They don't really believe it.
They're just, this is the buttons you push to get resources.
Now, once you take a deep breath, do it with me, my friends.
Take a deep breath and say with me, bad people will never say they're bad people.
Bad people will never, ever, ever say that they're bad people.
It's just not the way that the human mind works.
Because if there was a cure for bad people, There wouldn't be more bad people.
They wouldn't keep reproducing and creating more bad people as they try.
There's no cure for harm towards children.
There's no self-reflection.
Because if they looked in the mirror and truly accepted that they had hurt, abused, harmed, or corrupted children, their next Step in life would be to go to the top of a tall building and throw themselves off.
That would be most likely, I assume, that their survival instinct, their survival.
So they may hear, you know, earlier saying, oh, you said, I hear the intellectual argument about moral hypocrisy, but it doesn't connect with me emotionally.
They may, and I said, well, it won't connect with you emotionally because of your survival instinct.
So they may Get the intellectual argument, but it won't connect with them emotionally because of their survival instinct.
that no man can look in the mirror, see a devil, and survive the encounter.
No man can look in the mirror, see a devil, and survive the encounter.
It's not curable.
It's not amenable.
It's not negotiable. Start from that standpoint.
And it's a bitter wisdom, but by God, is it liberating.
Because you need something from your father.
You need him to acknowledge the harm he did, the against me argument, the wrongs that he did, the hypocrisies.
But when you're in a position of need with dysfunctional people, They'll never give it to you.
They'll never give it to you.
Because you need them for something.
It's not love. It's not virtue.
It's not...
Because of your deep admiration of their moral courage.
You need them to be honest.
But if they're honest, you'll run screaming.
If they're honest and say, yeah, you know, I kind of got off on yelling at you as a kid because it made me feel powerful.
It added and fueled to my success.
I got to feel superior and dominant.
I love exercising power over the tiny, the weak, and the helpless.
It's a joyous thing for me, they would say.
Oh, I knew at times it was wrong, but oh, it's so tasty.
It's so tasty to do that.
I got to vent all of my frustration about work and everything in my life and your mom.
I got to vent it on you when you were a little helpless kid.
You couldn't go anywhere. You couldn't do anything.
You couldn't fight back. It was great for me.
I loved it. You'd be like, oh my God.
Because no man...
See, I said no man can look in the mirror, see a demon, and survive the encounter.
No man can look at another man, see a demon, and have the relationship survive the encounter.
If they were to say, I will never admit fault because my whole point of my parenting was to have power over you.
And if I admit fault, guess what, Sonny?
That gives you power over me.
That's not how this works.
You don't go to the tax collectors and say, I'm going to tax you.
That's not how this works.
I have power over you.
That's how this relationship works.
Now, you're trying to do this bullshit maneuver where you're trying to make me feel bad or guilty.
That's going to give you power over me.
But if I could handle not having power over you, We wouldn't be having these conversations at all in the first place.
Having power over you is why I get out of bed in the morning.
And guess what, Sonny? I really like to get out of bed in the morning.
So there's no way I'm giving up power over you.
Now I have power over you because you need me to say something.
That gives me power over you.
You think I'm going to say it?
Are you crazy? Have you not noticed the past quarter century?
Come on! You know how this works?
Power over you, that's what I do.
That's how I feel strong, dominating.
A child, it's my thing.
You know how you get a stepladder, you need to reach something on the top shelf that's really important?
Well, the top shelf is my self-esteem, and the stepladder, my stepladder is your neck.
How this works. If you expect it to change.
Well, I'm thrilled that you expected to change.
I might dangle a little bit here and there.
I'm thrilled that you expected to change because that means that I still have something you want and that gives me power over you.
It's great. Keep on keeping on, man.
Keep on doing what you're doing. Works for me.
I guess it works for you.
It doesn't really matter because it works for me.
That's the only equation that I operate in.
But if you're coming around expecting me to give up my power over you by admitting fault, all I can say is God bless your lack of learning curve, son, because it means your childhood will never end.
Now, this may be too strong a statement, statement it may not fit but it's what came barreling through my brain on this now sunday afternoon it does fit in fact uh he doubled down rather than And by that I don't mean he confirmed that he thought that he was in the right all along.
As soon as I confronted him about the childhood violence being wrong, he...
About a week later, we were watching a film.
Me, my dad and my brother were watching a film.
My brother got up.
It was his time to come.
And he started to make an annoying noise.
And I said, will you please stop it?
And my dad screamed, if you do not stop that right now, I will smack you in the face.
And that is the worst violence that had ever been threatened in that house.
How old was your brother at this point?
my brother would have been 14.
Yeah, so remember I was saying that kids won't probe much, So that was probably a bit of a probe from your brother saying, okay, I'm getting bigger.
Is he still going to threaten me with violence?
Because fathers can do it longer than mothers because mothers are smaller and weaker in general, right?
Physically. Yeah.
Yeah, so it's probably a probe, and your father wanted to maintain his dominance physically for another couple of years, so reacted so incredibly brutally to smack down that probe and keep him under heel for at least another year or two.
And then there would have been another probe, and at some point, and this is what you're doing, is you're probing and seeing, okay, well, can I get my needs met?
Can I be honest? Can I have a real relationship?
And... I would imagine that, you know, why would somebody stop making an annoying noise?
Well, because they want to see whether the male lion is still going to maul them or not.
Well, and additionally, it just told me, like, that he thought that everything that I had said over a very emotional hour and a half phone call was complete bollocks.
I mean, he just said, fuck you, no.
Right, right.
And I hope, and so one of the reasons I'm telling you all of this, and for everyone to hear all of this, is, you know, it's that old Robin Williams lines from Good Will Hunting.
It's not your fault. It's not your fault.
You're trying to get your father to admit wrongdoing because you want to save the relationship.
I think that's a wonderful mindset to start with.
But here's the problem, is that you will try all of these different ways to pick a lock.
Oh, if I try this approach, or I try that, or I bring this up, or I try it more nicely, or I get us into therapy, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
But if it's true that bad people would never admit that they're bad people, I just don't want you to feel like you are failing because you're attempting the impossible.
Which is to get a bad guy to admit that he's a bad guy in a situation that can't possibly be recovered.
That he can't possibly fix or ameliorate or solve.
I don't want you to come out of these conversations with your father feeling like, if I had phrased it differently, If I had taken a different approach, if I had been more patient, if I had brought it up in another context, if I had said, like, I don't want you to take ownership for failing the impossible.
I think it's a wonderful thing to attempt the impossible because you don't know that it's impossible when you attempt it, right?
But... I'm telling you, which is not the same as it being true, right?
I'm telling you that in my direct personal experience and in the conversations I've had with thousands of people over 15 years, I have never seen a bad person admit that they're bad people.
Now, I have, you know, had people come in and say, you know, I've had a guy recently, he was feeling aggression towards his son.
He hadn't acted on it.
So he can change.
Bad thoughts are not bad actions.
No thought crime.
And somebody even who has harmed a child out of ignorance, genuine ignorance, and is willing to apologize to the child to make amends, to commit to do better when the child is still quite young, yeah, that can work.
But somebody who's deeply committed to their immorality?
You might as well look at a 70-year-old chain smoker and say, well, with the right coaching, he can win the Boston Marathon.
Nope. And you're not a bad coach if the 70-year-old chain smoker doesn't win the Boston Marathon because you're attempting the impossible.
Do you see what I mean? Yeah, and you saying that has provided me with huge relief because I was...
On New Year's Eve I took a very long walk and thought about what I was going to bring up in this call and the very crux of the issue was the fact that in my personal life I do not feel that philosophy has been successful and I think you've just told me inadvertently why is that I've been trying to use philosophy to That's right.
Yeah. You're doing philosophy exactly right.
Thank you. Because we're empiricists.
Sorry, I don't want to say we.
I'm saying my approach is empiricism, and empiricism is you need evidence.
You know, we've been playing some Among Us games lately, and there's been a lot of, because everyone's getting really good, there's been a lot of jumpy voting off, and I keep saying to people, we actually need evidence.
We can't just, oh, this guy was walking down the hallway, and there was a body somewhere nearby.
Let's vote him off. It's like, we actually need evidence, right?
Because I'm an empiricist, right?
And I'm completely sorry to have brought in a video game analogy to your very intense personal situation, but I just wanted to give a sort of lighter example.
So the evidence, you need to gather evidence.
So you need to have, this is what I say to people, assuming it's safe, have the conversations with the people in your life who you have issues with.
Go have the conversations because that's the gathering of evidence.
Now, you don't convict on hearsay.
You don't convict on loosey-goosey circumstantial.
You don't convict just on memory alone.
If you can, or if the memories aren't too brutal, what you do is you convict on direct eyewitness evidence in the here and now.
And that's why I say go talk to people.
Maybe it'll work out.
Maybe the harm isn't so great.
Maybe they've had a big revelation.
Maybe they took some ayahuasca.
Just kidding. It's a reference to the last show.
But get the evidence.
So you don't convict for a murder based upon sketchy hearsay, loosey-goosey circumstantial.
It's got to be proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
But you do have to have a standard of proof.
And if you come in to a sealed room with one exit and there's a guy standing over another guy, the guy's been shot and there's a smoking gun in the guy's hand and there's a video camera in the corner, what do you say?
You did it. Yeah.
You don't sit there and say, well, I think we need more investigations.
Or, if the guy confesses, then the only question is sentencing.
And your father, as far as I understand it, doesn't deny all of the bad things.
He may deny some of them, but he doesn't deny all the bad things that you experienced.
He just says, hey man, I had the bad family and it wasn't my fault.
So he's saying that he did the crimes, but they weren't really crimes because he's got some determinism defense, but he doesn't have a determinism defense because the crimes were only committed on the basis of your moral autonomy as a child.
So he can say, well, I harmed a child because I had a bad family, but you can't say my desk is messy because I've got exams coming, right?
this insane set of standards right yeah it's completely ridiculous and And I think I'm glad to have realized, or I'm glad that you've told me I've not realized it, I've not stumbled upon this information you told me, that I no longer need to exhaust effort figuring out whether he is a bad person who did wrong.
I would also say that in an odd way, continuing the conversation is somewhat harmful to him.
And I know this is going to sound odd, and I could be wrong.
I'll just tell you the case really briefly, which is he obviously does not do well when he has power over his children, right?
So the more you need something from him, the more you're fueling, in a sense, the worst devils of his nature.
My mother can't behave well around me because she's too guilty.
And she's too defiant in her rejection that she did anything wrong.
And if there was wrong that was done, it was unfortunate because she was a victim of medical malpractice.
So when I'm around my mother, she behaves very badly, very, very badly.
Now, I don't, I didn't stop seeing my mother because, well, I love her so much, I just don't want to be the trigger that has her behave badly.
But I knew that my presence was kind of, it's like showing up to an alcoholic's house with a case of beer.
You're kind of enabling.
And showing up at my mother's house with a case of me was not helping her behave better.
And to withdraw the temptation of self-justification and further abuse and destruction of my history and personality.
To refrain from triggering her into even worse behavior was actually kind of a kindness on my part because I was not going to give her any more reasons to feel guilty and to behave badly.
And she could not control herself in my presence.
The only way that she could behave even remotely well in my presence was either for there to be other people around that she was scared of or for me to completely self-erase.
In which case, I'm giving her ultimate power over my existence.
Because non-existence is just death.
But when you're around people and completely crush who you are, that's anti-existence because you're alive.
But you don't even have the neutrality of death, right?
Because you're alive. So giving her the power to shut me down And have me bite my tongue, not say a word, not be honest, not give her feedback.
She already told me through her entire childhood, my entire childhood, I can't handle power over children.
I can't handle power over you.
It drives me to do terrible things, which I'll never admit.
So if the only way I can be around my mom is to completely self-erase...
I'm handing her exactly the power that for 30 years she told me she can't handle and makes her worse.
Provoking bad behavior in those who've mistreated us is the most self-destructive kind of vengeance that can be conceived of.
Are you helping your father by being around him with naked need that gives him power over you?
But that's his drug.
Power over you could well be his drug.
And you're supplying that drug over and over and over and over again.
It's not making him a better person, is it?
Not at all. It's just giving him more wrongs to defend against.
More wrongdoing to excuse.
Sorry, I asked you a question that completely kind of yelled over your response.
I'm so sorry. I apologize.
Go ahead. Oh, no, no need to apologize.
I did interject in the gap.
I just said not at all. Well, that's a neutral statement.
Are you helping him become a better person?
Not at all. But there's no middle ground, right?
Your presence is giving him more wrongs to justify.
Yeah.
If you stop delivering alcohol to the drunk, it doesn't mean he'll get sober.
However, But the odds of him getting sober while you're still delivering the alcohol is nil, effectively nil.
Because it's working, right?
If you want people to change, you have to at least, and appealing to their conscience doesn't work, appealing to truth, reality, virtue, blah, blah, blah.
If that doesn't work, the only way to get people to change, if they won't respond to reason, is to have things stop working for them.
Right now, he's getting a lot of interaction from his son, right?
To some degree, right? You want to find things out.
You want to have conversations. You want to confront.
So right now, it's working for him.
The only chance I think he has of change is to have what used to work stop working.
what used to happen stop happening yeah I definitely I definitely understand that and I agree there was
He messaged me after New Year's to ask if everything was alright, because he was concerned that I wished him a Happy New Year.
And that, to me, was a real...
It was a real, like, he was just rubbing it in there.
He was rubbing in the control that I am to blame.
He didn't feel the need that he also needed to wish me a Happy New Year.
I didn't wish anyone a Happy New Year, and I explained this to him, and he just wasn't content with it.
And that was a real...
So that is the first thing that comes to mind when you bring up this power dynamic, because I think it was really exemplified there.
Even though it was only three or four text messages long, the exchange, it was just like a naked power grab from him.
Let me just say one thing first before I respond to anything else.
Happy New Year. Thank you.
Happy New Year. Ah, you lied.
You said you hadn't wished Happy New Year to anyone.
I'm just kidding. Sorry, just channeling your dad.
Now, okay, so the question is, and it's a very interesting question, what is the power grab in saying, he said something, I'm sorry, I missed the phrase, like what's the matter or is anything wrong?
He said that he was concerned that I hadn't reached out and the rest of my family had to wish him a Happy New Year.
Did he say, is there anything wrong or something like that?
He said, is there anything wrong, comma, I'm just concerned because you've not reached out.
Is there anything wrong?
Ah, the rubber bones.
I have no idea what the problem is.
Defense. Oh my god, that's ubiquitous.
That's like the 101 go-to for Defendobots.
I don't know what I did.
If I did something that upset you, I'm sorry.
I don't know what the matter is.
Is there anything wrong? Talk to me.
I don't know what the problem is.
Bullshit. He knows exactly what the fucking problem is.
You told him, right?
Yeah. He knows exactly what the problem is.
I think he is very much confronting him with distance now.
I know that sounds oxymoronic, but I am making him face distance from me in response to every time he says something that I take objection to, morally.
And he really doesn't like this.
And he knows that I'm doing it.
And he knows exactly why.
And I'll tell him every single time.
And it's still, what's wrong?
Is there anything wrong?
Right. So what he's doing is he's saying, come back into my life with a big need so that I can reject it again.
Yeah. Because that gives me control.
I don't know what's wrong.
And then our first impulse is to say, oh yeah, but these are the things that are wrong.
Right? Because we think it's an honest statement of ignorance.
But unless your dad has serious brain damage, the conversation that you had with him a week ago, a month ago, whenever the hell it was, he's not forgotten that.
So when he comes with this innocent, wide-eyed Pikachu crap of like, well, I don't know what the issue is.
What could the matter be? I'm concerned.
Are you okay? What's the matter?
He's inviting you back into his life.
Oh, come back to me with a big need.
Oh, because I'm not getting to exercise the power that I want.
So I'm going to really provoke you by pretending that one of the most important conversations you ever had in your life never fucking happened.
You didn't exist in that conversation.
Nothing ever happened. Communism is love.
20th century never happened.
100 million people, right?
So he's inviting you into an unreal universe where your words never happened.
The conversation never happened.
Didn't exist. That is, of course, incredibly provocative.
He's trolling you in a weird kind of way.
And it's really tempting to rush back in and explain once more what the issues are so that he can do what?
Leverage them. Yeah, he can undermine them.
He can ignore you. He can say that you're the bad guy.
He's the victim. Things were unfortunate.
He had it worse than you. He did the best with what he could.
Leave you entirely unsatisfied in that conversation, and then have you go away, not talk to him for a couple of weeks, and then what text is he going to send you?
Yeah, is everything okay?
Yeah, what's the matter?
You're not texting me.
Is everything okay? Is something bothering you?
Right? It's a really weird cycle when you look at it objectively, right?
Yeah. I spotted when I was quite young, probably three years ago, I think I was about 15 or 16, that he doesn't use...
All of the gratification that he gets from his relationship with me is entirely from him gaining bragging rights over my achievements to his friends and my mother's family.
Hmm. Yeah, go on.
Well, he...
I play an instrument.
There's no need to divulge much more detail than that.
But whenever I was practicing to him, he would say, either the song is too easy or I have under-rehearsed.
So either way, it was insufficient and it always would be.
Whereas every time we were at a social gathering, it would be, oh, I'm so proud of...
Oh, he's doing so well on his instruments.
He's doing so well in school.
He's doing so well with music.
And he would never tell me any of this to my face.
And he would say, oh, I'm so proud of him.
He even mentioned you.
He even said, he's listening to philosophy now.
He's really good at philosophy.
He's listening to this.
And it was completely...
He will never mention any of this to me.
He will never say that he thinks I'm intelligent.
He'll never think that I'm utilizing my mental faculties effectively.
It's all just he wants to brag to his flatmate.
Sorry, I just lost you there for a sec.
He wants to brag to my uncle because he's always had some weird standoff with my mom's brother.
He wants to brag to his colleagues.
He wants to brag, blah, blah, blah, all these people.
And it was never, it was always external gratification.
The relationship was never, like, I honestly believe that if we were the only two people in the world, he would not have a relationship with me because there would be no one else to brag about.
No one else to brag about me too.
Right, right.
If you weren't an ego prop, right, what value would you have?
Now, why do you think it would be tough for him to praise you directly to you in the way that he praises to his cronies?
Because he's admitting that he is being unsuccessful in his competitiveness.
Right. I just wanted to rewind for a second because a phrase that you used that had my jaw hit the floor...
I'm sure it's easily explainable, but did I hear you use the word flatmates?
Oh, yes. Well, him and my mother have separated, and he lives in, I'm sure you'll be able to work out which city this is, the big expensive city in England, and subsequently cannot afford a place of his own,
has three early 20s girls as flatmates, In fact, I think it's a mix of girls and homosexuals, early 20s, flatmates, in the big city, and he's loving the cosmopolitan life.
And he loves telling them how great my studies are going.
He just loves it.
Huh. So earlier, talking about the hedonism thing was kind of accurate in a way.
Incredibly. Not any particular plan.
Okay, so... Help me understand this because I may just may have a different metric, right?
I mean, I know some seriously successful people.
I'm not going to say, I'm not going to brag because it's, you know, but I know some seriously successful people.
And seriously successful people don't need flatmates.
Divorce. No, no, no, I get that.
I get that. Seriously successful people don't need flatmates, even with divorce.
Yeah. So we just may have a different metric, and I'm not asking for your father's income or anything like that.
But... Well...
Because you said he was very successful, right?
You just may want to move your needle a little there.
No, well, that's what I will say.
I felt that I was certainly clear in my own head, maybe it didn't come across entirely, was that he was very successful when I was growing up.
His career success, as of such, has dried up probably in the past three or four years.
So why didn't he save his money when he was seriously successful?
Well, I mean, he did and since has been living off it.
He's been living off those savings.
So, you know, I know it's kind of tricky because I don't want a huge number of details, but in broad strokes, what happened to his career?
Can I say the industry that he worked in?
It's a big one. Sure.
Oil. There was the big oil crash.
And he didn't...
I don't think he used his transferable skills to the best of...
I don't think he utilized his transferable skills effectively.
He continued to look for jobs in an industry that was failing as it was failing and lived off savings whilst doing so.
Well, and you said it's been three or four years, right?
Yeah. It might be time to look at a strategy and say there may be a couple of flaws in this approach, right?
Yeah, well, there's been employment since, but it's been, like, subsidiary.
It's not been Sorry, you said there's been subsidiary.
I just lost you for a second.
You said there's been subsidiary employment, but it's not been what?
It's not been sufficient to save.
His last economic boom period would have been three or four years ago.
That was the point up until which I would say he was successful financially.
So he can't even save any money with a couple of flatmates.
Well, living costs are extraordinary in said city.
Said big city, big cosmopolitan, gay city that I hate visiting.
No, no, I've lived in big cities. Hang on.
I've lived in big cities.
I understand. I understand.
But he's certainly making the choice to live in a big city and maybe in a very expensive area.
But, you know, if you're in your 40s or your 50s...
50s.
So if you're in your 50s, And you need roommates?
Oh, man. Oh, that's like being on a bus after you're 30.
Yep. So I just wanted to revisit the whole, my dad's very successful, and I get that it's sort of past tense now, but that's a huge failure.
Yeah, and I'm fully aware of that.
I find it hilarious.
And believe me, I tell him it's completely his choice to live in a big cosmopolitan city and that he could very easily afford a comfortable life in the countryside.
But no, it's the experiences.
It's all the people that you meet.
Tells you all you need to know.
Tells me one thing. He has the great male curse of keeping his hair.
Yes. Right?
Am I right? You are.
Nothing spells man-boy like a man-bun or whatever, right?
And listen, no hate on the hairy guys, so I mean, that's fine.
But there's something absolutely, completely, gloriously maturing about going bald.
Because you can't...
I mean, if your dad was bald, it would be a totally different scene, right?
Yeah. Bald guys grow up pretty quickly.
No, well, I was actually talking to a fellow listener about this.
We had a series of calls earlier in the year talking about various things, and this came up, is that he pursues as his ultimate value...
Being happy in the moment, like a toddler.
Sure, sure. I mean, that's why he screams, because it makes him happy in the moment to scream at someone.
Yeah. Right, right.
So he emotionally has not matured past the age of five, if that.
Sorry, sorry, dude.
That's a wonderful sentiment, but don't you dare insult five-year-olds.
Well, hence the if-that.
Yeah, I mean... A malicious five-year-old.
Okay, so, because people say, and you're not aware of this, and I don't mean to rag on you at all, I just sort of wanted to point this out.
People are constantly insulting children.
Some by saying, oh, he never grew up, or, oh, he's like a toddler, or he's like a baby, or it's like, no, no, no, no.
Don't insult children. Don't insult children by saying that bad people are like children.
Children are great! Yeah, my daughter took food out of her mouth and fed me when she was like six months old.
She understood reciprocity.
She understood that we both had mouths.
She wanted to make sure I got some food as well in whatever disgusting way that occurred, right?
But it's beautiful.
Yeah, I mean, only insofar as the only thing for which he does anything is to be happy.
That's the only extent to which he is like a child.
Uh, okay.
I'm going to have to interfere with that as well.
Because this is you attempting to unite you and your father when you were very young, saying, well, I am like my father, but only when I was very young.
Don't insult your younger self that way either.
Yeah, let me walk that one back.
Well, I was a selfish jerk and verbally abusive, but I had the excuse of being a toddler.
Well, no, you weren't that way when you were a toddler.
You're trying to find something like the two trees that grow apart, but at the bottom they're the same, like this inverted Y or this regular Y, and you're trying to find some way in which you and your father have something in common called toddlerhood.
Nope. Got to block you on that one, man.
I got to, because you know what's going to happen?
The reason I have to block you on that is A, it's unjust and unfair and negative towards children, but B, you become a father, right?
You become a father and you'll be a great dad.
You'll be a great dad.
So you become a father, but here's going to be your biggest challenge.
You're going to see a baby.
Baby's going to be in your house.
Baby's going to scream, right?
What's that going to remind you of?
My dad. Right.
Now, if you think that babies are like your dad or toddlers are like your dad, what's going to happen to your response?
I believe that was covered a few call-in shows ago.
Clearly not well enough.
Well... Which is probably me.
No, but what's going to happen...
If you're like, oh, toddlers are just like my dad and your toddler is yelling at you.
Yeah, I'm going to transfer the resentment from my father to my son.
Or daughter, whatever.
Now, do you know what your dad saw when you yelled at him when you were a baby or screamed?
What did your dad see? Well, he will have framed it the exact way that we are currently trying to avoid me from framing it.
In his mind and in his heart, it was his parent who was yelling at him, and thus he felt perfectly justified in responding in extraordinarily aggressive ways.
Yeah. Never, never equate abusive adults with babies, toddlers, and children.
Never, ever do that. Because it's not the same animal at all.
Abusive adults have perfect free will, choice, independence, economic, legal, factual autonomy, free will.
Toddlers and babies have none of these things.
Yeah, I suppose a violent chimpanzee would possibly have been a more apt comparison.
Nope! But he does have free will.
I'm not removing that.
Well, you can't compare an abusive parent to a violent, no free will, no human consciousness animal.
You're doing everything.
You see, this is your dad coming in, right?
Doing everything to create an analogy which reduces responsibility from him.
An abusive parent is an abusive parent is an abusive parent, right?
Yeah. I talked about Gertrude Stein, right?
Gertrude Stein was his...
Sorry, go ahead.
He is like an abusive parent.
Yeah. There is no...
There's nothing that you can take that out and put that slot in.
Again, to take a silly example, right?
You say, well, a rapist is just behaving like a toddler.
It's like, uh, what now?
It doesn't make any sense.
Right? A murderer is behaving just like a kid who won't share a candy.
No, no, no. But this prejudice against children, childism, right?
I mean, if you were to say, well, you know, in being this abusive, my father was behaving just like a China man.
I'd be like, uh, dude.
Right? But there's this whole other category of perfectly innocent creatures called children that we have no problem stuffing into the general equation of evil, right?
Yeah, I'm frustrated with myself for saying that.
I fight against that incredibly hard in school whenever teachers use that sort of language.
Don't be frustrated with yourself.
See, now your dad is switching.
Now that your dad is caught, trying to excuse himself, what's your inner dad doing now?
Rubber bone. Maming you.
Your inner dad gave me the I'm like a child analogy.
Then when I pointed it out, your inner dad said, well, hey man, you're to blame.
You came up with this analogy.
Now you've got to be frustrated with yourself.
Be nice to yourself, man.
Be nice to yourself.
You're a young guy. You're struggling out of an incredibly difficult childhood.
You're grabbing with both hands the charging bull of wisdom and philosophy and The idea that you're going to stick these landings in a very challenging conversation at this age, with this amount of tumultuous stuff going on in your life, give yourself some grace, some kindness for a learning curve that is incredibly steep.
Thank you. Be nice to yourself.
It's what a movement teacher told me in theater school.
He told all of us. Two things I remember this guy saying.
One is, play like children play, which is very seriously.
Very, very good phrase. And the other was, be gentle with yourself.
You can never expect people to be nicer to you than you are to yourself.
Doesn't really happen. Because if you're harsh on yourself...
Then verbally aggressive people in particular will come swarming in and try and set you against yourself and exercise power over you because they're helpless in the face of their own immorality, blah, blah, blah, right?
But if you're nice to yourself, then the bad guys don't have any leverage.
They can't get in. Yeah, it's like, and this is a good analogy, I promise, and this is mine, this isn't my dad's.
I am going to liken this to when you say that children who are brought up only to be able to socialise well with good people don't socialise well, cannot socialise and are averse to relating to Bad people and badly adjusted people.
Children who are parented well shouldn't engage with bad people when they're older because it'll be unfamiliar and off-putting.
In the same way as I need to treat myself well in order to not engage in relationships with other people who will not treat me well.
Oh yeah, self-regard is like garlic to vampires.
It's like sunlight to vampires.
Positive self-regard.
Bad people, they don't, they can't get in.
Now, I mean, you still have laws, so I get a culture of bullshit that's around, but in terms of your personal life, like what you actually have some autonomy and control over, you have a positive self-regard.
People are always looking for, if you self-attack, they're like, oh great, this is going to be easy.
If they're bad people, right? Big red flashing buttons, right?
Push this, and I will attack myself.
But the world has not become such a bad place that good people won't win eventually.
My fundamental belief is I'll always win.
It may take a while, and there's certainly some ups and downs in the journey, but I'm always going to win.
And not me personally, but just, you know, philosophy, truth, virtue.
And if you have that kind of positive self-regard, just be patient with yourself.
You were raised in an environment of extreme verbal abuse.
Now verbal abuse is in general worse than physical abuse.
Physical abuse doesn't get into your head in the same way.
As verbal abuse. I was fortunate, extraordinarily fortunate, to have been in a violent household more so than a verbally abusive household, at least from my mother.
Because violence is skin deep, but verbal abuse goes right to the spine sometimes.
And it's a tougher beast to dig out.
So you had it in many ways worse than I did.
That's why I'm saying, please, please, just be gentle with yourself.
It's a lot to carry.
It's a lot to carry and you're carrying it beautifully.
Thank you. You know, there was, on New Year's Eve when I took that walk, I did the first, like, I went through step by step the first, or actually the last instance of, it was a combination of physical intimidation and emotional manipulation from my father.
And I realized that in the same way as the caller a few calls ago was in a essentially put in a kill or be killed situation by his stepmother and you asked if he clicked his fingers and his stepmother had a heart attack,
would he? I realized in that moment when I was in that it wasn't a conflict because I wasn't engaging the We're in anger, but when my father was abusing me in that situation, if I had the option, I would have clicked my fingers.
And he had a heart attack completely.
And he made no physical contact with me at all.
It was screaming.
it was he would scream knocking pictures off the wall hands up in actual surrender screaming I'm sorry And then he would hug me and tell me he loved me.
And then he would start screaming at me again and I'd be back up against the wall.
And then he would hug me again and tell me he loved me and it was alright as long as...
The thing that I supposedly did wrong didn't happen again.
And then he would scream again.
And this cycle happened about three times in ten minutes.
And then I felt so defeated after that had happened.
Even afterwards, I just thought, like, in hindsight, if I had clicked my fingers even half an hour after that had happened to never, ever see him again, I totally would have done that.
Right.
And that finger snap is called adulthood, my friend.
Yeah.
And how often would these verbal tirades, I know that there's a real bell curve for this kind of stuff, but how often would these verbal tirades occur?
Thank you.
When he was home, as in not working away, it would happen to varying degrees twice a week.
But this was the worst example of it, and the most recent.
And that happened when I was about...
15, I think.
So before then, it would have been bi-weekly to weekly to some degree, and then it hasn't happened for three years.
Now the manipulation is much softer.
There is no threat of violence there now, but there very much was.
So this happened hundreds of times over the course of your childhood?
Yeah. My God.
I'm so sorry.
I'm so sorry. My God.
It's just so cowardly to scream at children and bully children.
They're so helpless.
They're so dependent. They need such a light touch.
They want so desperately to look up to and worship their children.
And so many of us At some point in our childhood, look at our parents and say, I'm better than you.
I'm stronger than you.
I'm not as reactive as you.
I have better self-control.
I'm more mature. And you're like a dangerous, immoral, insane person who's in charge of me.
And there's a foundational superiority to the broken robot, dangerous lunatics in charge.
It's a terrible moment.
It's a terrible moment. It's one thing to be better at your...
It's one thing to be better than your parents at a video game.
It's quite another thing to be better at your parents at being a human being.
When you're 12 or 10 or 8?
I remember looking at my mom and saying, you have no self-control.
You have an impulse, you just act it out.
And then you just defend it in a weird, brittle way afterwards.
And then if it's questioned again, you'll just blow up again.
You have no self-control.
I mean, there are puppies with more self-control than many parents.
Just act it out. In the most cowardly, isolated, Hidden in the household kind of way.
People who would never say...
Yeah, they'd never scream at a waiter or a teacher or the person who comes to fix the furnace.
They're perfectly wonderful and civilized with those people.
But the moment they get their helpless little children under their thumb, they just vomit all of their insanity down the throats of their kids.
And then the phone rings, and it's the teacher, and they're all sweetness and light.
And then they hang up, and they're back to the devils.
Sorry, you were going to say? Well, I was going to say, I actually told him this.
And this was before my self-knowledge journey.
It was even before discovering you.
He was shouting at me and my brother very, very violently.
Not physically, but there was...
You could tell that if we had shouted back, he would have gone...
Serious damage would have been done by him to us physically.
And I remember he turned his attention to my brother, so I got a chance and I left the room.
And as I was going up the stairs, the inside of the room was visible from the stairway.
I shouted at him.
I do not want anything to do with a man who treats innocent children like this, and he left the house for the evening.
And I went to bed early that night, and I didn't sleep the whole night because I was terrified that he would come back and scream at me while I was in my bed.
But it was the first time that I'd ever confronted him.
With something like that.
And it had worked.
And it was that moment I could see as he was leaving the house a real hatred for me when I said that.
Well, it's not a hatred for you.
Again, don't take it personally. It's not a hatred for you.
It's just a hatred for the truth.
Yeah. It's not a hatred of you.
My mom never hated me.
My mom never hated me.
I mean, she just hated the truth.
I mean, do you think that the people who oppose, they don't hate me.
I'm just some guy. Just some dude.
I'll never meet. I'm doing my thing.
They don't hate me. It's not personal.
It's just...
They hate the truth.
And they hate the truth because it empowers the people they want to victimize.
Of course, right? I mean...
Nobody likes those who free the slaves.
If you're a slave owner, you hate the people who free the slaves.
It's harming your direct interest.
If you're a criminal, you hate Hercule Poirot or Sherlock Holmes or whoever's really good at figuring out who the criminals are.
If you're a criminal, you're a rapist, you hate the scientists in the lab who's testing your DNA against the semen found on the woman's body or her panties.
I mean... They say, I hate that guy.
You don't hate some scientist working in a lab.
You just hate the truth.
You fear the truth. Because they say, well, the truth will set you free.
It's bullshit. The truth will set you free of abusers.
But it doesn't set the abusers free.
In fact, it enslaves them because they don't have any place to dump their own immorality.
The end of slavery set the slaves free, but then the slave owners were kind of out of luck, right?
Didn't set them free. Destroyed the value of their investment, and they then had to stop paying wages and learn how to deal with people in a free market, and most of them failed.
It drove them into poverty.
Didn't set them free. The truth will set you free.
What a load of crap. The truth will set good people free, but...
It doesn't set bad people free.
But what I wanted to mention with regards to your father is very interesting.
So when you said what you said, which is an amazing thing to say, when you said what you said, he left the house, right?
Yeah. So he's perfectly fine with ostracism, right?
He's perfectly fine with disconnecting if you're unhappy, right?
Yeah. Isn't that interesting?
I wonder if he would like to universalize that principle.
Yeah, it's a very interesting thing.
That if someone who's abusive doesn't get what he wants, he'll just cease coming.
Conversation with you, or he'll leave the house.
Now, leaving the house, of course, when you're the father, leaving the house with kids is kind of a bit of a threat, right?
Because who knows when you're coming back, if the bills are going to get paid.
There's an uneasiness about that whole thing, right?
And also, when he comes back, what's he going to be like?
But, yeah, that's very interesting.
It's very interesting that your father has, to some degree, embodied the principle that if you don't get what you want, you can just leave.
If you're not happy, you just leave.
Huh. Interesting.
Well, you know, freedom for him is freedom for you too, right?
Sorry, go ahead. He believes in no-fault divorce as well.
It's something that I've said this to my mom.
If she gets to have a no-fault divorce to my father, then so do I. Well, it's...
But there is fault.
Well, A, there's fault, and B, they chose each other.
You didn't choose your father. Well, this is what I've explained to her, and she will not...
She won't even accept the...
She will follow the argument and then reject it at the very last minute, because she was younger when she shows my dad.
Okay. So, I've had...
You've still got a choice. I know.
She was 27 as well.
It's not like she was 15.
Okay. That's young now, right?
Yeah. Yeah. But yes, I completely understand that, and I tell her to no end, this conversation happens once every three months at least, and she will not accept the argument.
Why the hell do you still keep having these conversations?
Well, usually I will have them...
And there'll be like a third person there who I'll be explaining this principle to and my mum will be there and interject, oh, but I was so young.
For example, my nana or maybe a great aunt and they will accept the argument at the end and they will go, oh, fair enough.
Yeah, you're actually right.
I can see that. But my mum will go, oh, no.
In the end of the day, it is your choice, but I was much younger.
It was 20 years ago and all this nonsense.
Right. So she's got the same excuse as your dad, except she was almost 10 years an adult.
Your dad was like, hey, man, I was young.
I got imprinted on this way by my parents, and that's what I did, and it's not my fault.
But your mom is like, yeah, I was a legal adult for almost 10 years.
I'm sure she voted, so she claimed that she had the capacity to choose wisely politicians, but she couldn't choose wisely the father of her children, right?
There's no possibility. But that's great for you, in a way, because it means you can make all the terrible decisions that you want until you're 27, and your mom can't say shit about it, right?
Yeah. And even all the decisions you make, you say, well, hey, mom, if you were so dumb that you couldn't choose a good father for your children at the age of 27, what are you talking to me about my decisions for?
Funnily enough, Steph, she doesn't actually like that when I say it.
Funny, right? It's funny how the excuses only apply to her and not to you, right?
Yeah, I get it. Yeah. Believe me, I do say that.
And she goes, but you've got to learn from the wisdom of my experience, right?
You've got to learn. I'm not 27 anymore.
I say, okay, well, weren't you surrounded by older people when you were 27?
And did you listen to the wisdom of their experience?
No, then I'm going to listen to yours.
In fact, the first time that I brought up that, the first time that I used that argument, I'd heard you use it in a call-in show, and I thought, that is perfect.
I'm going to repeat it verbatim to my mum next time she tries to get off easy.
And she said, well, you trapped my finger in a zip.
No, you trapped my neck in a zip when you were zipping up my coat as a toddler.
When you were three, should I still hold your response?
Should I still be angry at you for that?
That's her argument? That you did something when you were three, like you caught her neck in a zipper?
Yep. Wow.
So that was an accident.
A, that was an accident. B, you didn't know anything about zippers.
C, she was the mother and should have kept herself and yourself safe from that kind of thing.
That's not a moral decision.
You weren't trying to hurt her. That was a decision-based...
That's her fault for putting you in a situation.
It's like saying, hey, I gave you a bunch of matches when you were three years old and then you set fire to the curtains.
Should I be mad at you for that?
It's like, what the hell are you doing giving me matches when I was three years old, you crazy woman?
What the hell are you letting me zip up a zipper which I didn't know how to work when I was three years old?
What the hell? What's a major malfunction of that?
Yeah, and she thinks this is such a great gotcha that it's now her go-to when I say something like that.
That exact situation, which happened one time when I was outside and it was cold so my fingers weren't even working properly.
I was very confident as a toddler.
Yeah. She brings, she's brought this up three times at least.
Oh yeah, no, women have this.
Women will drive you, some women will drive you insane with this stuff.
They get one go-to and they'll just keep repeating it over and over until you want to throw yourself off a cliff.
Because here's the other thing too, I would say, yeah, I would say, so mom, basically your defense for your parenting is that you had all the skills and maturity of a three-year-old.
Like, you're now comparing your parenting as an adult to me when I was three years old.
In other words, that's your big win?
Is that you had about the same skills as an adult parent as a three-year-old has with a fucking zipper?
Yeah. Don't you want to know how many times I have said that to her?
And she'll go, no, it's different.
It's different. You don't understand.
Because reasons and magic and female.
Well, yes.
And she has the wisdom of experience, of course.
She has what? She has the wisdom that comes along with experience, life experience and age.
Oh, and that wisdom gives her the stunning argument that she was as competent as a three-year-old.
Yes, this mystical thing that gives her the ability to bypass principles entirely.
You can't hold me responsible because I was both a mother and a toddler.
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
Yeah, try that with the cops.
Yeah, I did drive really incompetently and badly, but to be fair, did you ever crash your bike when you were a kid, officer?
When you were three years old, did you ever fall off a bike?
Well, of course I did. Well, then you can't be responsible for driving into oncoming traffic, can you?
Because I'm just like a three-year-old.
Yeah, good luck with that lady.
Man alive. I'm sorry we didn't get to spend more time with your mother, but I'm also not sorry we didn't get to spend more time with your mother, if that makes sense.
But it's kind of what you'd expect from someone who stayed married to your dad, right?
Well, and also a lot of the issues that I have residually with my father are...
The exact same with my mother, but magnified.
In my father's instance, they are magnified to what they are with my mother.
And of course, she has the added thing on top of that as having chosen my father to be my father.
And stayed with him, knowing that he was verbally abusing and threatening his children.
But that's something that you've discussed in a lot of Colin Joes and I've discussed with a therapist.
So it's alright that we didn't spend much time on that because I've worked through most of the mother-related things.
It was mostly just the kind of ambiguous language that was coming out of not giving my father ownership, which I've gained a lot of clarity on.
Thank you. Good.
And listen, I really appreciate that you invited your dad to our dinner.
I really do. Like, I appreciate that.
There's such a great conversation out of it.
And I really do. I mean, you are a really, really incredibly impressive young man.
And my God, your future is like so bright.
You're going to need shades, baby.
And I just want to take the moment to just, you know, respect and honor you for where you are in life.
The work that you're doing, it's...
It's incredible stuff.
It's incredible stuff for a young man and you're doing therapy and really pursuing this kind of self-knowledge is incredible.
And I hope that You will give yourself a couple of cramps, giving yourself pats on the back for this kind of stuff, because it is amazing, amazing stuff.
And you definitely are a force to be reckoned with, and it's going to be very exciting to see how this plays out for you, because it's amazing, amazing stuff that you're doing.
And don't take it for granted.
And I know it's tough. I know that, again, the road to heaven goes through hell.
But I hope that from this outside perspective, you can see just...
I was saying this to someone the other day.
Do you feel like a treasure?
I'll do a whole speech on this someday.
Do you feel like a treasure?
So when I was younger, I was always like, yeah, I'd be a great husband.
I'd be a great dad. I'd be a pretty good provider.
I could make things work in life.
And I always felt like a treasure.
Now, okay, there were some women who wouldn't go out with me.
And I'd be like, you're kidding, right?
Yeah. Who are you waiting for?
Who are you waiting for?
Like, I'm funny. I'm intelligent.
I'm a good conversationalist.
I'm insightful. I'm, you know, not bad looking.
You know, I can get a paycheck.
You know, like, who are you holding out for here exactly, right?
And I think it's just kind of important to look upon yourself as a treasure, as gold, as, well, I guess, Bitcoin these days.
But look upon yourself as a treasure.
And it's... You know, your mother didn't feel like a treasure, so she settled for your dad.
Your dad didn't feel like a treasure, so he settled for your mom.
But I think you should feel like a treasure.
Gold. Thank you.
Yeah. It's really, really important, too, because then you won't settle for less.
And once you feel like a treasure, you just...
You're out of the crap. You lift yourself out of the crap.
Out of the garbage people, out of the losers and the abusers and the projectors and the manipulators.
I mean, just, you know, treasures are guided.
Treasures are locked up. Treasures are behind lock and key.
They're not open Like beggars on the street trying to wash a windshield for five bucks.
So yeah, hold yourself out as a treasure and demand just payment for your treasure.
Nobody sells the cullen and diamond for four dollars and a hand job.
So anyway, I really, really appreciate everyone's time today.
Happy, happy new year to you.
Look for the interview I did, the Year in View with Bruno, with George Bruno, and I really appreciate, of course, James and the entire community for keeping these wonderful conversations going.
And I will talk to you on the live stream on Wednesday night, and I will see you online.
Thanks, everyone, so much. Have a great, great afternoon.
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