All Episodes
Previous Next
Jan. 12, 2021 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:24:48
"HELP, I SLEPT WITH 96 WOMEN!" Freedomain Call In
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
good morning everybody hey we've got a binary day and month it is the 10th of january 2021 day four of the giant purge and I do have a very good developing theory about ethics that I can't wait to share with you.
I just can't wait to share with you, but I'm going to wait because I know we've got a bunch of callers this morning.
So let's dive straight in, James.
Thank you so much for getting up at this hour of the AM, and let's dive straight into the listeners.
All right. So the first question we have, it's a bit of a long question, or a long intro, but I think, as he was saying, is relevant.
So here we go. Collar writes, I was born and grew up in Eastern Ontario throughout the 90s and 2000s.
I was very blessed in my early years to be cared for by loving parents and received the opportunities that I did.
Too much of my time as a teenager was spent rebelling, playing in punk rock bands, chasing girls, and or selling various illegal substances.
After working for Federal Bank as a credit account manager for nearly five years following high school, I ventured further into the developing cannabis trade circa 2013.
Initially, I assisted patients with acquiring licenses from various physicians, submitting paperwork to Health Canada, and setting up and providing ongoing assistance with their personal production.
I then moved on to working both licit and illicit cannabis production processing distribution operations.
Just prior to the recreational legalization of cannabis in 2018, I sold everything I owned and ventured across the country, without any particular destination, to find both a new position in the cannabis trade and somewhere to feel genuinely at home.
I decided on Alberta and raised over half a million dollars to fund the successful launch of a retail cannabis brand's flagship store.
Eventually, I found myself shifted out of the operation in bad faith by several former business partners.
Following years of mild success in my trade, I decided to pursue a train conductor position with CN Rail in the summer of 2019.
My final interview was in Edmonton.
I was in the train to Winnipeg for several months, and then be stationed in Jasper.
During my final interview, I met a woman who changed my life.
She was interviewing for the same position, and we eventually come to court throughout our training in Winnipeg.
As opposed to moving on to my terminal, I came back to Edmonton, where I had no car, job, or place to live, with the intention of pursuing my dreams of starting a family with her and making a proper return to the cannabis trade.
Within a week, I found a deal in a used vehicle, rented a new apartment, and found a position helping build a licensed cannabis production processing facility.
In our own words, it's not that something doesn't feel right.
It's that I don't know if I can feel anymore.
We were strained from taking the black pill too soon, having lived a life where your maturity responsibilities are not reflective of your age, being torn between self and communal service in life, misplaced degenerative guilt relative to our struggles with faith, and several further nuanced occurrences regarding our families.
I kept trying to pretend like we could make things work between our hectic schedules and eventually found us separated.
I spiraled drinking again for a while.
I do not remember the majority of March 2020 through May 2020.
And then put myself back together with renewed, progressing goals.
That led to her brief, yet extremely unplanned return.
That has since knocked me off kilter again as we went through this odd, it's still not time for us to be together, and I still don't know who you're supposed to be if this is really real experience before separating again.
I've been very much alone since this past August, and while I am still in pursuit of my goals, life is now a struggle more than ever.
I would appreciate the opportunity to discuss my experiences in an open forum with you so that myself and others might gain perspective as the matters my life touches on.
Well, that's quite a tale.
And thank you so much for sharing it.
Now, is there more that you want to add?
I mean, I don't mind how many details you want to get into is fine with me.
The story sums a lot of it up.
The only add-on I have is I had a car crash in October, sustained a pretty bad concussion, and was found prematurely out of the job that I had.
So, just been at home recovering ever since, finishing up a university course, and just trying to build or plan or wonder, you know, what the hell am I doing?
Right, and help me sort of understand, I didn't, you kind of went over, at least in the letter to me fairly quickly, the stuff that was going on with Your girlfriend, wife, partner, I'm not sure what to refer to as.
What was the arc of the relationship, if you could give me that in a bit more detail?
Well, I met her chasing a job with CN Rail as a train conductor.
And I wouldn't so much say we dated as, you know, I chased her sort of for a year.
It was something. And it feels as though at the end of the year, us not Being together, having any relationship, all the sacrifices I've made to try and pursue it feels quite in vain.
And I see these incel characters taking quite a negative approach as to everything.
And I don't want to take that approach, but I don't I'm quite frustrated, and a lot of the points that they touch on, it's tough because I find that there's not a grain of truth.
There's actually a lot of truth.
And as for my own guilt, I think, well, just not drinking, exercising, going to school, just kind of developing on personal goals is better than the chaos in my 20s that I wish I had practiced a little sooner.
But it doesn't really feel like there's much of a point to what I do.
Nowadays. I don't mean to sound like, oh, the one got away.
But it really does feel like that.
And I just don't...
Is this my fate?
Is this a lot of men's fate that degeneracy just catches up with you?
And this is the best that you can make?
Just working. Well, hang on.
Before we get abstract, and don't get me wrong, I do love myself some abstractions, but before we get abstract, if you could tell me how long you were together for, what caused the breakup, that kind of stuff.
Sure. We were together for about a year in total.
Separated for about six months in between.
I was with several other girls in between the breakup.
She was with one other guy.
We reunited in the summer.
And at the end of two months, we separated yet again.
Her words were, when I'm with you, I feel like I'm slipping away from my goals in life because I get comfortable, because I know you love and you accept me.
And there was a part of me that had never seen somebody so much like myself, so say 90%, and 10% different, that I could love them for, you know, everything.
And so my response was, oh, I understand.
I know what that's like.
If you have to keep working the rails or doing this or that, I accept you.
And then we got in a bit of a heated fight at the end.
Because her response was, well, that's what makes it more difficult.
You just accept this. So I'm like, well, do I stand up and face the recourse of what I faced in my earlier 20s by trying to, you know, be mean, like thinking that's what it means to be a man?
Am I paying the price of being too passive right now?
And either way, I lost her.
Sorry, to what now?
The last one. Uh, being too passive.
Like, I didn't know, did she want me to stand up and put her in her place?
Did she want me to respect her as an equal?
I don't even know anymore.
Well, that's no way to run a relationship, is trying to figure out what the other person wants and provide it to them.
That's fundamentally manipulative, right?
Oh, if she wants me to do this, I'll do this.
Or if she wants me to do the opposite of this, I'll do the opposite of this.
But that's not... Then you're not there in a way.
Your values, your presence, your personhood is not really there, if that makes sense.
You can be yourself and see if people like it, not what do I have to adapt to in order to get someone to stay with me.
Yeah. It feels like a conflict between wanting to be yourself and wanting to be the person that the person you care about cares about.
Right, right. I mean, you know, in general, men trying to out-manipulate women is like me going up against Mike Tyson in his prime.
Ain't gonna play.
It's one thing that a lot of women, not all, but a lot of women have down to a fine art.
And for men to try and step in and beat a woman at that game generally is not...
It's like arm wrestling. Yeah, there's some women who can beat men, but in general, you know how it goes, right?
So let's talk a little bit about your childhood.
Because, you know, you talk about, you used the word degeneracy to refer to your youth.
And let's go back before that, before your teenage years.
What happened in your early life?
Well, what I would want to say is fairly normal.
My mom worked in finance.
My dad worked in finance as well.
It's where they met. Lived a fairly middle-class life.
For whatever reason, I was the uncool kid in school.
I was picked on quite aggressively.
When I was in second grade, it wasn't Cooties, it was like myself.
Yeah, if you could keep names off, I'd appreciate that.
Sorry. And that continued until my teenage years where I started smoking cannabis and I became an access point just because of a bit of an entrepreneurial mind.
So as opposed to being the kid who was bullied, I was the kid who was selling pot.
So you became, I guess, not just popular, but potular, so to speak, right?
Yeah, for lack of a better expression.
I ran away from home at the same time.
Sorry, say again? I ran away from home when I was 14, and I rented a room while working at Domino's Pizza to try to go to as many of my high school classes as possible.
The conflicts that my parents had, it just seemed so silly looking back, but it really did hinge on I want to have a mohawk and stay out late and have a girlfriend.
And just completely ridiculous, like in hindsight.
What's ridiculous? Help me understand what you mean or what you're applying that word to.
It seems ridiculous that I would sacrifice the comforts of a stable life for The nuance of having a mohawk or needing to have a girlfriend.
If I understood when I was a teenager how important stability is so that I could develop.
I like your thoughts or just at least that's where mine are.
Hold up.
I'm trying to bridge this gap here.
Nothing negative on you.
It's my own failure.
Hopefully you can be patient with me as I try and navigate this This tale, right?
Which is, okay, so how do we go from a normal middle-class upbringing to Mohawk, drug dealer, moving out at the age of 14?
Like, there's something there that's a zigzag or a jag in the course of life that I'm not sure I... I mean, I knew a lot of kids...
When I was younger, I knew a lot of kids my age who grew up in pretty stable middle-class homes.
Not one of them became drug dealers.
Not one of them got a mohawk.
Not one of them moved out at the age of 14.
Again, it may be my limited circle.
It could be any number of things, but there's something here where I can't quite get the pattern.
I agree. And a lot of the times people say, like, do you have, is there a trauma?
Is there something particularly, you know, you're not bringing up right away?
And the answer is just no.
Like, I was never molested.
My father was always around and provided.
My mom was there.
Like, I can't particularly recall any instance aside from, and I don't mean to, like, Sounds silly, but just like watching punk rockers and wanting to emulate.
I know, lots of people see punk rockers though, but I think you just told me what the issue is though.
Okay. I think you just told me.
So, when my daughter gets older and somebody says, what was it like when you were growing up?
If my... Daughter ever says something like, well, my father was around.
That's pretty heartbreaking.
Do you know why? No.
And you said this, you said, my father was around and provided and my mother was just around.
That, to me, spells three strangers living in a house with no connection.
No closeness, no intimacy, no unpacking of the heart, no guidance in life, no navigation.
Of the challenges of society.
You fending for yourself.
You being bullied. Parents not swooping in to intervene, to find out, to contact other parents, to move schools, to homeschools, to do whatever it takes to make sure the child is not being bullied.
They're just...
around.
Is it weird that I want to stand up for my parents?
Not at all. And listen, if I'm off the mark, tell me.
Again, I'm trying to navigate here, so if I'm off the mark, tell me.
It's perfectly natural that you would want to defend your parents.
We all do. Not your parents, but our own parents, you know what I mean?
Certainly. I don't think fully.
I just hid a lot of my problems from my parents.
I recall being about, I think I was 10 or 11, and I was going to karate class.
And I was like crying because that day or week was like really tough.
And they were like, what's the matter?
And I recall being like, I'm unpopular.
I'm picked on.
But that was well like years after I had already, you know, I don't agree.
Okay, so what happened? What happened when you told them you finally broke the biggest secret you had of the greatest unhappiness you were experiencing?
And for years, what did they do?
They started to help with interactions like with teachers and parents and principals and engaging in conversations with bullies.
And did they help?
Feels like it helped.
I mean, you can't stop kids from being kids.
You know, nobody could have been there every second of every day.
That's my concern with these pink shirts, because I feel that we're not actually resolving the issue either in the bully who's bullying for a reason or the child who has to take something home regardless.
And so it would be nice to make that child stronger to be prepared for whatever might happen and for the bully...
Well, I don't know, but the pink shirt, it's a bullying thing in school, right?
Pink shirt, solidarity for the victim.
I mean, society is completely screwed up at the moment and is exploiting children.
In ways that Marx could never even have imagined, you know, dropping them into the world a million dollars in debt because of the greed of the boomers.
And so the idea that society, which is allowing families to be shattered and children are still allowed to be hit in most countries and uses children as economic leverage to buy votes in the here and now and dumps them in terrible schools with propaganda teachers and indoctrinates them into going into massive debt in order to be indoctrinated into hating their society and all of this crap and teaches them hedonism and the empty life of the pursuit of the dopamine in the here and now rather than the Building of wisdom,
virtue, and family in the long term.
And then with all these screwed up families and single moms and predatory child abuse and massive exploitation and indoctrination, we then go to kids and say, kids, you know, it's your fault that you're being bullied, man.
You've got to be nicer.
It's like, nicer? What are you talking about?
These schools are terrible. What are you talking about?
We know we're in debt.
We know that the government is borrowed in our name and our financial future is completely screwed.
So the idea that society, while pillaging children for the sake of hedonistic democracide, would sit there and nag children about being bullies?
I mean, come on. I mean, that's part of the abuse, is putting the blame on kids.
So how do we recover and not blame?
Well, that I don't know.
At least I don't want to get into it right now because I want to stay focused on you and not go into too many abstractions.
I just wanted to sort of mention this, like, children need to stop bullying.
It's like, how about you stop bullying children, exploiting children.
But anyway, so for years you were being bullied and you didn't tell your parents, right?
Correct. So, fundamental question.
There was a time before you were bullied and then there was a time when you were being bullied, right?
I mean, when you were a baby, your mom stayed home, right?
No, my mom did work.
Oh, sorry. I remember she said she worked in finance.
Did she stay home at all when you were younger?
Very briefly, just when I was born and then kind of back to the workforce.
Do you have any idea? Was it weeks, months?
It would have been about a year after my birth.
Oh, okay. Ed, sorry, who took care of you?
After your mom went back to work?
My father and mother balanced responsibilities with the daycare.
So do you remember anything about the daycare?
Yeah, my first memory is actually the daycare, like just playing on the floor.
Right. Right.
Yeah, I have a memory of being in...
I think it may have been kindergarten or something, and the chaos of my early family life is so mysterious in many ways, because nobody's ever going to tell me the truth about it.
But I was in some school, but it wasn't in my local neighborhood.
It was with my...
My cousin and my, around was sort of where one or more of my, well, the one, one of my aunts who lived in England, it was, I was actually quite far away from home and I don't know where my mother was.
She could have been back in hospital for depression.
I don't know, but yeah, I got those, got those early memories I remember.
Drawing airplanes, you know, the way kids draw airplanes, they draw the fuselage, like you're looking at it from the side, and then they draw the wings going up from the bottom and down from the top, like it's some sort of swordfish.
And I remember looking at that and thinking, oh, that's not right.
That's not right, and working to fix it.
And that's very little, but...
I guess the big question for me is, how old were you when you finally told your parents after karate about being bullied or ostracized?
I believe I would have been somewhere between 10 and 12, say 11.
Okay, so let's say the bullying had gone on since when?
How long it had gone on for, do you think?
It's hard to pinpoint. No, about grade one, I recall a particular school being of issue, and kindergarten, having been in some enrollment before, wasn't much of an issue.
So, four to ten, four to twelve, that kind of thing?
Yeah, years total, yeah.
Okay. So...
I think I can tell you why you didn't tell them.
Now, you put the onus on yourself and you say, well, gosh, if I had told my parents earlier, then things would have been dealt with sooner and things would have been better.
And it's a way of putting the onus on yourself or the blame on yourself and excusing your parents.
But do you know why you didn't tell your parents?
No. No, I am very curious and all ears.
Yeah, no, I can tell you why, in my opinion, you didn't tell your parents.
You didn't tell your parents because it's their job to know, and if they didn't even know you enough to know that your mood had changed, that you weren't as happy, that you weren't as content, that you weren't as full of pep, if they couldn't tell that you were isolated, Or bullied or ostracized or ignored or rejected.
I mean, it's the parents' job to know.
Right? It's the parents' job to know.
It's the parents' job to know.
You don't just abandon your kids to their state-sanctioned relationships and, you know, just assume everything is fine.
I know every one of my daughter's friends.
I know the status of every one of their relationships.
We talk about it. Quite a bit.
It's your job to know as a parent how your kid is doing.
You don't just dump him in a daycare or dump him in a school and just say, well, I'm sure everything's fine.
And if there's a problem, I'm sure that the five-year-old will have the maturity to come and discuss it to me in an open and reasonable fashion.
That's not how parenting works.
That's not how it's even remotely supposed to work.
It's your job as a parent to monitor the quality of your children's relationships to make sure there's no exploitation or bullying.
I mean, that's your job.
So you didn't tell your parents.
And, you know, they could have asked.
Even if they didn't figure it out, which they should, right?
If your parents can't figure you out, I mean, good Lord, right?
I mean, they gave birth to you.
You're half the half genetically.
If your parents can't figure you out or can't even figure out that you're unhappy, what on earth are you supposed to do with it?
I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Steph.
No, but you get it, right?
The absurdity of the situation.
It's not your job to tell your parents how you feel.
Yes. I mean, imagine you are...
You know, we're buddies, and you come to ask me to help you move, and I come to help you move, and I show up, and you're carrying a big, giant, bulky, death-heavy fridge down a flight of stairs.
And I come up the stairs, and I'm like, Hey, man, how's it going?
Doesn't seem very helpful.
Well, I'm ignoring the fact that you're carrying this big giant load.
That's going to be weird to you, right?
Like, first thing I would do, I see you coming down, it's like, dude, let me help.
Oh my God, what are you doing? You should have waited.
Let me help, right? Because I can see you carrying this big giant load.
So the first thing I should do is leap up and help you, not walk up and just say, hey, like you're not even carrying a load, like we're just chilling, right?
Your parents see you're carrying this load.
And they don't notice the load.
They don't rush in to help.
They don't ask you what's going on.
They don't sit there and probe to figure out where the unhappiness is from.
They don't even seem to notice that you're unhappy.
It's their job to know, if that makes sense.
It's their job to know.
This is out there to all the parents.
If you're going to dump your kids into relationships run by other people, i.e.
the state, for God's sakes, follow up, figure it out.
Talk about it. Ask questions.
It's really, really, really important.
And notice if your child's mood changes, for heaven's sakes.
Notice if your child's mood changes.
Notice if your child is unhappy, for God's sakes.
It's their job.
My parents provided well.
I never wanted for food or anything like that.
But at times I would be spoiled with a lot of children of the 90s and 2000s video games.
I'm trying to think.
I think there's something to that in a sense that gave me a physical object.
So my parents were like, oh, something's up.
He doesn't seem that cheery or whatever.
Whoa, he needs the latest video game or whatnot.
And then I'd have this material thing and I'd be like, oh yeah, cool, awesome.
And I would be kind of out of a funk if I was bullied.
But then I would be alone even more so because I'm just playing this game on my own.
And I see it as my parents thinking, oh, well, our job's done.
He's happy. Everything's good here.
And it's kind of like, I don't know if it made the situation better or worse.
Oh, worse. Yeah, no, without a doubt.
I mean, because your parents are basically saying, here's something that you can go away with.
Here's something you could not chat with us with.
Here's something to keep you busy because we don't enjoy your company.
That would be my interpretation. I don't know if it's a fact or not.
And the thing is, too, because you're unhappy because you're in coercive relationships, your parents buy you violent video games, and it's like, hmm, I don't know that that's really the solution to a lack of human connection is going and shooting people on a screen.
I was into racing games, but I hear you, yes.
Well, even that, it's grim competition, win or lose, against either, I guess this would be before all the multiplayer games, but yeah, you're playing against the robot, and it's win or lose, there's no negotiation, there's no intimacy, there's no chat, there's no connection, there's no love.
It's just a grinding mechanical Olympics of dissociation.
And you're searching for the dopamine hit of winning and avoiding the crash of losing, and you're on your own again.
So if your parents sensed that you were unhappy, the first thing to do is not to give you a drug, right?
You understand that the video game is a drug, that your parents, in a sense, were drug dealers, and then you became a drug dealer.
It's not too shocking, right?
Oh, unhappy? Yeah, take this piece of technology and you'll be happy again.
And, oh, you're unhappy?
Oh, here, have some marijuana.
You'll be fine again, right?
But so they knew that you were unhappy.
And rather than trying to figure out why you were unhappy, which was in fact isolation, they gave you an isolating device called a video game console, which made the problem worse.
Oh, isolated?
Let me give you something that's going to have you locked in your room day and night.
That'll solve it. And it's so passive.
It makes you feel as if things are a lot better than they are.
Of course, yeah. Of course.
And what children want is contact.
What children want is for people to be curious about them, to speak their minds, to be understood, to be loved, to be appreciated, And for people's faces to light up when they walk into the room.
I mean, that's what we all want to some degree or another, right?
We want people to light up with joy when we come in the room.
And if you come into the room and your parents' faces light up with joy and they pepper you with questions and ask you how you're doing, Racing against dead pixel robots won't count for much.
won't be that inviting.
You know, my daughter and I will sometimes do a dance when we see each other.
The happy dance. We haven't seen each other for an hour or two.
And why not? Don't you want that?
Don't you want people to take joy in your presence?
Don't you want them to appreciate it?
And love the fact that you're there.
No. But your parents giving you the go away...
It's a go away box, right?
A video game console is a go away box.
It's a rejection box.
Now, I'm not trying to say all parents who buy their kids video games are telling them to go away.
But in this particular case...
They...
In my view...
And I'm not saying consciously, but I think that the effect was they kind of drugged you and said, well, if you're going to be alone, at least you can get a high score.
I wonder if they were trying to buy time to figure things out or if it was the nuance of being a parent.
I don't know. Listen, it's tough.
You know, if your kids are unhappy because of the – it's not just your parents, right?
And they're kind of cogs in a machine just like all of us or most of us are, right?
So it's not just your parents, right?
I mean, the system is very child hostile.
Our current system is very child hostile.
And, you know, we've socialized or made tyrannical our children's existence, which is why tyranny keeps growing, right?
The whisper campaign to get people kicked off social media is no different from the whisper campaign to get kids ostracized in schools.
I mean, if you are a social media giant, you can spend...
I don't know.
A couple of thousand bucks for some bots to start putting horrible things on your competitor sites.
And then you take screenshots of these horrible things.
I don't know if this is what occurs, but it could be.
You take screenshots of these horrible things.
And then you run to your good buddies in the media.
And you say, oh my gosh, can you believe what's being posted on these sites that are directly competitive to me?
And you don't necessarily go as yourself.
You'll have someone go. And then the media will...
Work very hard to get you banned.
And then your competition has dropped out.
And then other people don't want to come into that space to compete with you.
And that's a pretty unholy situation as a whole.
But yeah, this is ostracism.
All of the dysfunctions that we see being played out in society at the moment are...
They have the roots in a system.
And so... With your parents, so you're unhappy.
Now, if they genuinely start to ask and inquire as to why you're unhappy, then they're going to have to question a whole bunch of things which are really challenging to question.
So they're going to have to sit there and say, well, he's not happy in school.
I don't want to blame my child.
Maybe there's something wrong with school.
And then they'll mull it over and they'll say, well, if the government chose my friends randomly, Let's say your family wants to go on vacation.
If there was a government program that said, okay, you go on a vacation for two weeks, we're going to choose 10 random people from the neighborhood to go on vacation with you.
I wouldn't say, well, that's not good.
I don't want to do that.
I mean, maybe we'll get along, but odds are we won't have anything in common or we might have completely opposite values or They may not even speak the same language.
If you had something for adults where the government chose who you hung out with, who you're, quote, companions for or the people in your proximity, if the government assigned your parents to live in a house, a giant house with 30 other people and chose those other people randomly, I mean, what are the odds that anybody would get along in a consistent way?
But this is what we do with kids, right?
We just say, oh, you've got to go to the school with all these people just from the neighborhood, and good luck.
You don't get to choose your companions.
You don't get to choose your friends, really.
I mean, you can choose your friends in a way, but it's such a messed up environment that when you pair off with people, other people are going to get upset.
So the dysfunctions in society as a whole that we see, To me, a lot of them come out of just the terrible ways in which we treat children.
You say, ah, well, you've got to respect the Constitution.
Respect the Constitution, okay.
What's more important to a child, the Constitution or marriage vows?
I mean, we've said to people, you could just break your marriage vows.
Don't even need a reason. Don't even need a reason.
It's like if you had an electronics store, you could buy a tablet and you could toss it around, you could crack the screen and then two years later you could return it and get paid to return it.
How well would people take care of their tablets?
Well, not very well at all. When you can not just turn in your marriage for a refund but also get paid to do it, particularly if you're a woman, how well are you going to treat the marriage vows?
And so many kids have gone through, I know it's not you, I assume your parents are still together, but so many kids have gone through these breakups in the marriage.
And then they say, well, you know, we've got to respect these laws, we've got to respect these rules, we've got to respect this constitution.
We're a society of laws, not of men.
Okay, well, as a kid, if your parents don't respect their marriage vows, right, your parents make a solemn vow to get together and to stay together and to work it out.
And we see them so often acting like spoiled children without any excuse for being children because they're not.
They just tear up their contracts, destroy the marriage, destroy the family.
And then what they do, of course, is they say to their children, well, you've got to respect.
There's a social contract. You've got to respect the rules, man.
You've got to respect the rules.
And, oh, my son, my daughter, you've got to keep your word.
You've got to keep your promises. You can't promise something and then just break it.
You can't break your word. You can't lie.
You can't just say you're going to do something.
What is it that parents say to teenagers all the time?
They say, don't tell me you're going to do it later because you never do it later.
Don't promise me something just to get me off your back in the moment, which you have no intention of fulfilling in the long run.
To which the teenager can rightly say to his parents if they're divorced, what, you mean like your marriage vows?
You just say something to get what you want in the moment with no intention of following through in the long run?
What's more important, me taking out the garbage or us having a functional, intact family?
But everybody wants this void, this oppositional matrix where there are really solid rules that are imbued with honor and respect and dignity and virtue, which everyone else Has to obey.
Has to respect. Respect these rules.
But then when it comes to their own rules, their own solemn vows to stay together as a family, to love, to honor, to obey, in sickness and in health, in better and in worse.
For better or for worse, in sickness and in health, till death do us part.
It's a pretty solemn vow, man.
That's the foundation of new life.
And then, you know, if it doesn't work out, okay, we're just getting divorced.
Sorry kids, just getting divorced.
We're consciously uncoupling.
We're still good friends, but you know, we just, we want other things.
But if you make a promise to your parents and then you break that promise, you're a bad guy, even though your parents made an infinitely more solemn promise to each other and then broke it.
My mom and dad are still together.
Okay. I think they set a good example.
I wanted to get married.
I got a ring this time around and was trying to meet the dad and do things right.
But that's why I'm kind of like, did degeneracy just catch up with me?
And I was like... Well, no, no.
Sorry for that sidebar there, but we're still trying to sort of examine the roots of this.
So... The punk movement, right?
Yeah. The punk movement arose out of a profound nihilism and hostility to existing society.
The punk movement arose in conjunction with two other big elements or movements within society.
The first was the threat of nuclear war and the second was the threat of environmental destruction.
And Those two threads within society produced a profound nihilism and hostility and hatred of the existing system.
Like, how on earth could adult society be so structured?
And divorce, right?
The punk movement arose in the 70s in particular.
You had divorce, you had nuclear war, imminent, imminent.
There was this bulletin of the atomic scientists, it was a magazine, I think, And it had a, you know, we're two minutes to midnight, midnight being nuclear war.
Like there was this sort of Damocles, this destruction hanging over everyone's head.
And then you had a bunch of movies the day after and threads and so on, many of which were funded by Soviet communists to demoralize the West.
And so there was a sense of no future, and if you thought it wasn't going to be nuclear war, then there was global cooling, global warming, acid rain, ozone layers, you name it, right?
It's just going to be the precursors to the modern climate change stuff.
And so you got massive divorces, people aren't keeping their words, nuclear war, environmental destruction, And this is all put in largely by hard leftists to demoralize people and turn them against their own society.
And the punks were like, yeah, I'll go with that.
The Mohawk was a sign of conformity to leftist propaganda that your society sucks and tear it all down and live for the moment.
And the excessive piercings, the Mohawks, the The whole look was a big advertisement to say, I don't believe in a future.
Right? And you were told that over and over, there's not going to be a future.
Just like kids are being told now, there's not going to be a future.
And that's what makes you go...
I don't know if I'm virtue signaling or anything, and I don't want to get too specific with places, but I grew up near and around a native reserve.
So I was the token white kid.
My friends were just natives.
And growing up around native culture, seeing guys with mohawks, warriors of the community and whatnot, they were just like the older men who kind of said, oh, they're cool with their ATVs and they're nice members.
At least I saw more of them being Nicer help members of the community.
And what it was to symbolize was, oh, hey, I have like that haircut meant, hey, I'm someone in the community, you can ask for help, you can befriend.
So there's a part of me, I think, in some greater good that was like that combined with the punk rock.
Oh, we're like outsiders who help each other or whatnot.
I'm not saying that it's totally valid, but I don't know if I had a mishmash of one culture over the other, or just a bunch of what I was seeing that was promoting a way of life that was like, be you and accept others, just try to be better.
But maybe that's not what it meant.
So you grew up as a minority, right?
Ethnic minority? Yes. Yeah, my family's been in Canada for eight generations, so I'm mixed.
I'm a little bit of everything.
I just don't care for all these things. No, no, but I mean, with regards to your school, right?
Were whites a minority relative to the Aboriginal population?
Um... No, we're probably the majority, but not by much.
Probably about 60-40 in the area that I'm in.
Or wasn't. And what was the perspective of the Aboriginal population on white European culture?
Um... About 60-70% were quote-unquote over it and assimilating while maintaining some sense of their history and cultural identity.
The other 30% were promoting, you know, white guilt and were owed more money and just propelling racial tensions.
Right, right.
And what were the relations, if they could be characterized that way collectively, between the two groups, the whites and the aboriginals?
Well, and what I saw, which was kind of just a music community, not to downplay it, was people didn't care.
People cared about what sort of music do you like?
Do you like hockey or basketball?
You know, we never cared about skin color.
I grew up, I don't know.
I just don't care. I don't understand why the world cares so much.
I care about what's your hockey.
You like hockey? You like basketball?
You like punk rock?
You like metal? Either way, man, I just want to be your friend.
And I don't know. That, I guess, went to the wayside.
Well, let me ask you this.
What was your perspective, or at the time, where a number of the kids who went to your school, you said they lived on reservations, right?
Yeah, well, it was a town of about 40,000, about six schools, and kids all over.
So, like, some of the richer reserve kids go to the richer schools.
Some of the poor reserve kids go to the poor schools.
The poor...
And what was your thoughts about reservation culture or the family structure or lives of the Aborigines?
The Aborigines
Yeah, no, I understand that, but I mean, you would have seen, I mean, I certainly don't have your expertise with regards to I've worked with them and I've certainly visited some reservations and it's fairly hellish,
right? Oh, it's the shack stuff.
It's the substance abuse.
It's the child abandonment.
It's the child abuse. It's the disintegration of any culture or family structure.
I mean, I was working in a town up north.
I would come out of the bar at, you know, 1.30 in the morning.
And there would be kids with no pants running around the street, like from the natives.
Like little kids, like four-year-olds, five-year-olds, six-year-olds just running around the street.
They didn't have any pants on.
And, I mean, I've mentioned this story before that I was driving back from the town, tiny, tiny little town, to our camp, you know, which was off the road a ways.
I was driving back from town at night, not too late, maybe 11 o'clock, and there's this woman staggering along the side of the road.
And I stopped my truck and, of course, asked if she was okay.
This is middle of nowhere, right?
And she was a native woman and it turns out that she'd been in the back of a pickup truck with four native men and they had demanded oral sex from her.
She had refused and they had barely slowed down the truck before throwing her out of the vehicle.
Now, That's not all, obviously, right?
But, you know, this is the stuff that I have seen.
So, of course, I took her to – I drove quite a ways to hospital, and she told me the tales of her life, of her situation.
And, again, anecdote is not data.
But I did see some pretty grim stuff working up in and around these environments.
And then there were also some sort of stalwart, upright people working for honor, hardworking people that I worked with.
But there was a lot of despair, a lot of substance abuse, a lot of child abuse and abandonment and neglect.
And it was kind of rough.
Now, again, this is pretty far off the beaten path, so it may not have been your experience, but that's the stuff that I'd seen.
I guess I was fortunate to be in an area where it was lesser, but I am privy to seeing those things firsthand.
God bless the people in the reserve who are aware of their tribe's problems and trying to fix it.
I think they need help of settlers to call out the bad people in their tribe causing issues, because they're trying.
But there are issues.
Well, I mean, this is where the government controls just about everything, right?
And this is the result.
I mean, if people want to see socialism, just look at the reserves, right?
And that's the result.
That's what people want.
That's what people want. They think it's going to solve the problems in life.
Because, you know, we all want a cessation of struggle, of strife, of conflict.
And if we get that, then we become like astronauts losing bone mass in space because there's no resistance.
We need struggle.
We need strife. We need conflict in a way.
Now, it should be, of course, struggle to improve yourself, struggle to surmount your own former self.
It should be all that kind of stuff. But in a free and peaceful society, we would then be struggling to get to Mars or Jupiter or Invent jetpacks.
You know, that would be our struggle, but right now, it's more conflict-based.
All right. So, when your parents, if they start to ask why you're unhappy and they keep drilling down into why you're unhappy, at some point, they're going to break through the crust of the social earth around them and then they're going to start to see that, well, why are you unhappy?
Well, I'm in a school. Why are you unhappy in a school?
Well, because I'm being bullied or ostracized or made fun of or ignored or whatever.
And they'll work to try and give you some social skills and whatever it is, right?
And they did try to do that, but it didn't work, right?
Because you said you were like 12 when your parents really started to intervene, but then two years later, you'd moved out of your house and you were living on your own, right?
Correct. So it didn't work, right?
So when parents, if you sit there, and this is why society doesn't like to do this at all.
You sit there with your kids, you say, okay, why are you unhappy?
Right. Why are you unhappy?
It's like asking a cow that's in a tiny stall with no sunlight, no grass, no fresh air, no capacity to mate or raise its own offspring.
You're asking that cow, if you could speak cow, I'd say, why are you unhappy?
And the cow's going to say, because I'm in a stall.
Because I'm being fed disgusting stuff.
Because I'm being kept in a constant state of pregnancy so I can produce milk.
Because I have no freedom, no fresh air, no healthy food, no mate, no family.
I'm a meat machine of milk and murder.
What are you going to say? Well, you know, I'm going to give you some tips on how to adjust to this situation.
The cow's going to say...
A, I can't, and B, I don't want to adjust.
I want the situation to change.
So, if there's some animal going crazy in a zoo, I mean, zoos are more humane now, back in the day, right?
Or some bear in some crazy-ass Russian circus that dances and is whipped and starved, right?
When you say to the bear or you say to the animal in the zoo, why are you unhappy?
You say, well, I'm not in my natural element.
I'm controlled. I'm caged.
I'm exploited. I'm kept from all the natural cycles of life that bring me any kind of meaningful happiness.
They say, well, let me adjust. Let me help you adjust.
I'm going to give you some tips and tricks on how to adjust.
So when parents start to ask, or when society as a whole starts to ask, why are the children unhappy?
If society really starts to listen as to why children are unhappy, well, society's going to have to make some pretty big changes that's going to put it in significant conflict with some pretty powerful forces, like the teachers' union or the state as a whole, the educational system as a whole, or the easy divorce and paid-to-get-divorce system as a whole.
So society doesn't really like, and your parents, this is why I say it's not just your parents, it's a whole machinery here.
The people are like, I don't want to ask, I don't want to know.
Because if we choose a society, like if we genuinely start to ask, why are children unhappy?
We say, well, they're in zoos.
Why do we put animals in zoos?
For profit. So that we can charge people to come and look at the animals in a cage.
Why do we put children in government schools?
For the profit of the teachers and the teachers unions and the leftist politicians that the teachers unions support.
It's a profit.
It's a human zoo.
Why are these children unhappy in a zoo?
Why are animals unhappy in a zoo?
Because they're in a zoo! And telling them to adjust to being in a zoo and it's their fault they're unhappy and all we need is a couple of tweaks.
It comes out of the fact that the system is pretty horrific and nobody knows really how to change it.
And changing it would be brutal.
Even trying to change it would be brutal.
Do you not think there are some opportunities?
Sorry, I just want to say that with some sympathy to your parents, like trying to plumb the depths of why you're unhappy would be pretty blackpilling for them.
Sorry, go ahead. I didn't want to divert away from this, but just like, do you think with Coronavirus and kids staying at home to study that maybe there are some optimistic opportunities with where we're at and where we were and problems and potential solutions?
Well, you know, anything that disrupts an existing system creates a fork in the road, right?
It creates the opportunity for growth, but it also creates the opportunity for backlash.
And the fact that – I mean there's publications even here in Canada that are bemoaning the fact that women seem to be enjoying staying home with their kids.
We can't let that happen.
We've got to propagandize these people out into the workforce again.
Got to tell these women that they can't be dependent financially on a man.
They've got to go out there and be a successful – I mean it's so easy to train people.
It's so ridiculously easy to train people.
All you do is you just run a bunch of articles and ads and so on with some slender, beautiful woman power-walking her way to a meeting.
And women are like, yeah, I'll abandon my kids for that.
My mother did tell me, not in a concession way, but she did say, I wish I had a stayed home and had more kids.
And I wish she would tell that story to younger women as opposed to, I appreciate it.
Yeah, well, if she tries, she's going to get attacked pretty hard, right?
Yeah. I mean, try being a philosopher, reminding women of the basic facts about fertility.
It's one of the things that will get you kicked off social media.
Can't have that. Can't have women being reminded of their fertility window.
That's no good. Can't be doing that.
That might mean that smart people make plans and have more kids.
Ooh, bad, bad, bad, right?
Now, does she know why?
Or did she say why she chose to...
I mean, I hate to put this indelicately, but it's kind of true.
Dump you in daycare so she could go back to work?
No. I don't...
I... I don't know if it was just like...
Finances? Like, I don't really know what our finances ever were.
No, no, no. No, it's not finances.
No. No, no, no, no, no.
No, because when you figure out the cost of daycare and the additional expense of needing a second car, of lunches out, of dry cleaning, of clothing, of like, when you actually do the math, women are working for, at best, a couple bucks an hour.
For the most part, I mean, there could be some You know, neurosurgeon or something like that, right?
But it's not finances.
I mean, especially you live in a small town, you just move to a smaller place.
And is it just you?
Yeah, I'm the only child.
We just moved from like a million-person city to like a 50,000-person city.
Yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay, yeah.
So it's not...
It's almost never money.
And see, here's the thing too.
If the woman makes a fortune, I don't know, $200,000 a year, okay, well then there's an economic case for her working, but then she's almost always married a guy who makes more because of hypergamy, right?
She's not married a guy who's unemployed.
I thought I always hated capitalism in a stupid punk rock misguided sense because it was like That was the system that tricked my parents into like, you need to get the next car.
You need to have a vacation.
You need to do this and that. So my mom's thinking like, oh, got to go to work, got to do this.
Okay, hubby's got to do this.
Okay, we'll put this little one in daycare and we'll keep this up and get a few more dollars for the...
And then in the interim, my happiness is...
And so I don't know if that's like me being like, oh, I got to rebel against the system.
Oh, no, listen, business stole your mom from you.
That's your kid's perspective.
My mom is choosing dollars over me.
And therefore, dollars, trade, the market, that's the scapegoat, right?
Is it? I don't know.
No, it's a scapegoat.
It doesn't mean it's real. But certainly, from a child's perspective, mommy has to go to work.
It means that work is more important.
I think you can say, mommy needs to go to work because otherwise we're going to be living in a box on the street or whatever.
But that's almost never the case.
So if people's lives are that disorganized, they're usually on welfare anyway.
So when mommy says, I'm going to work, Then, yeah, it's dollars, it's materialism, it's corporatism, it's capitalism as it's called.
I've said this before. Why do people hate capitalism so much these days?
Because the market stole mommy.
And it's a way of taking the blame from an individual and putting it on an abstract system which is much more palatable emotionally.
It wasn't mommy's fault.
It was the propaganda. Now, I think you can reasonably hold both the system and the individuals responsible.
You can't just say it's an entire system and the individuals aren't responsible because that's pure determinism and then nobody's responsible because everything is a mechanical robot set of dominoes.
I don't think you can say just individuals are responsible because they do live and try to survive within a system that most of them never chose.
But I think you can reasonably say that there's faults in the system And there's fault in the individuals.
And most people, of course, would rather blame the system than say that mommy chose to make money rather than spend time.
And the reason she's saying now that she regrets it Is because when you get older, the money doesn't matter as much and the relationships mean more.
They matter more. Like all of the dopamine she got from being that, you know, successful businesswoman, blah, blah, blah.
I mean, that's all gone. That's all gone.
And now she's in a situation where, you know, her son is in trouble.
There's no grandkids on the horizon.
She's facing the last 30 years of her life or 40 years of her life or however long she's got without any renewal.
Oh my gosh. She collects these young storybooks that is what she would read to my child.
And... She's just like, I have a good relationship with my mom and dad.
I call them every day.
Oh yeah, I was out and I picked up this little book.
Isn't it nice? And it's like I can see her inside of herself just crying.
Like, where's my grandson?
I just want to read this to him.
But she doesn't do that. She's just smiling.
Oh, it's a nice little book, eh?
The boy, the horse, and the mole are little morals.
And I'm just like... You're such a piece of shit.
You didn't get your stuff together and you didn't, like, give her a grandson and, like, look at this poor lady.
She just... She reads kids' books to herself.
Right. I just ask you again to keep your name off it.
Sorry. Pardon. Sorry.
Yeah, it's tragic.
All the propaganda we follow that conditions us when we're young...
When we get older, all of that propaganda falls away and the truth is revealed.
Looking back, she now would say, I'd much rather spend time with children than go to work, right?
But when she was younger, she chose to go to work rather than spend time with her son.
And trying to warn people of the consequence.
Like, this is why people who were over 50 have to be generally silenced, unless they're total propagandists, right?
They generally have to be silenced.
This is the boomer meme, right?
Shut up, boomer. Because, you know, we do have some hard-won wisdom.
We do have some hard-won wisdom.
And we do want to warn younger people of the mistakes that we've made and try and help people make better decisions.
But that goes against propaganda, right?
Some people learn by reason.
Some people learn by experience.
And the people who've learned by experience can't be allowed to bring the reason back to the younger people because that then goes against the destruction of the culture insisted upon by the powers that be.
So, yeah, I do.
I'm both sorry for your mother, but also, you know, kind of frustrated, right?
I mean, she had a baby in her arms.
She was breastfeeding. Like, why on earth would you...
It's like a man who gets drafted for a war, you know, has to kiss his baby goodbye and go walk away, right?
And if he doesn't go to war, he goes to prison, right?
So either way, he's not going to spend...
And I don't know why it is that women feel that the dollar is a war that they get drafted for.
Like, they just don't have a choice.
Well, I've had my time at home.
Now I've got to go back to work.
It's like, you're not drafted.
What are you talking about? Men drafted.
Yeah, sympathy, man. Rough.
I don't know why women...
I don't know why women view the commandment to work as being drafted.
Sorry, you were saying? Do they want to be part of a team and not understand how, like, having children and...
Living a more female gender role if you paid someone for cooking,
cleaning, Well, it's pretty simple, right? The state has always wanted to get a hold of toddlers.
The government always wants to get whole, like the younger the better, right?
It's like that old Jesuit saying, give me a child until the age of seven, he's mine for life.
So the state always wants to get their hands.
They obviously can't kick down doors and take children away in the style that Plato wanted.
But what they can do is they can just promote women working and then women put their kids in government daycares.
Ah, look, now we have the children.
It's a fairly simple equation.
Thank you.
- Earth window. - And I don't know, just like not hitting that.
It just doesn't feel like I can hit it, and so I don't want to settle.
Sorry if I'm bouncing.
No, no, that's, I mean, I appreciate what you're saying.
I really do. But she, I assume, when she said, well, I'm with you, I lose my ambition, I think what she means is like, I want to go make something of myself.
Now, the equation for women used to be, I want to go make something from myself, as in children, right?
And that your legacy is...
The first adult novel I ever wrote was called Revolutions, and it was about a guy who was a revolutionary in Russia, about a generation before the Russian Revolution.
And he was torn between, do I pursue political revolution to make a better world?
Or do I get married, settle down, and make the world better by a couple of happy, well-adjusted children?
That's the big question.
That's the big question, right?
And... Maybe this young woman that you were interested in, she was like, well, but I've got to go make something of myself, as opposed to I'm going to make something from myself, babies, you know, make something of myself.
I don't have any ambition.
Like, it's viewed, you know, what do they call it?
Marriage turns women into brood mares, you know, like just breeding machines.
And that's, I mean, it's a chilling indictment of their own mothers, right?
That they view mothering or motherhood as, I mean, it's like me describing being a father as being a sperm donor.
That's, oh my God, like that's horrifying.
But it tells you how they were raised, right?
That their mother's Didn't connect with them, didn't transmit values, virtues, culture, humanity to them.
Her mom died when she was 10.
So she went into the occult and a few edgy things.
I found reconnection with my Christian roots in my mid-20s.
And so like a lot of our relationship was based on like Is somebody trying to control me or should I do these things because they're a good formula to a good life?
I don't know.
Right. So moving forward, what's the most essential thing you're looking for me in this conversation, looking for from me?
Well, I feel basically...
I'm resolved now to just be alone.
I feel as though I've missed the boat.
And what's your age range at the moment?
You don't have to give me your exact age, but just roughly?
I'm around 30, then we'll say.
Right, okay. So relative to, like I mentioned, a woman at the age of 22, the birth window and stuff, I don't feel at my age that I'll be able to attract a woman that I could maintain a wholesome relationship with As to some of the greater concerns on an individual level or a societal level to feel like I'm being part of the solution.
So I feel more resolved to just dedicate myself more to my trade in returning to school.
I just finished a university course and intend to keep that up.
Wait, so you're giving up on a family?
Around the age of 30. I just call you 30, right?
So you're giving up ambition for a family because you're 30.
Yes, and I'm curious as to your thoughts.
You're an idiot. You still got time.
You shouldn't be thinking these things. Or it's like, you know what?
Yeah, this is probably the best way to not kid yourself and make use of the time you have left.
And your story is basically a cautionary tale to the younger men of, you guys got to be serious while you can.
And, you know, respect yourself and respect women.
You know, you can have kids for another 60 years, right?
Like, I guess I wanted the family, like a monogamous relationship where you're married and it feels like if I can't have that, I guess I'm like, no, is that stupid?
Why can't you have that?
Because I feel too old to develop a real meaningful relationship and find something in a day and age where it's mostly like Tinder and Bumble.
You don't look for it on Tinder and Bumble, but I was older than you when I got married.
Did you meet your wife at a nice interaction, like a grocery store, a library, a friend of a friend sort of thing?
I met my wife.
She was on my volleyball team.
That's a beautiful story.
It feels like that's not something that...
What volleyball team?
Everywhere is locked down. Where do you go to do these things?
The lockdown is brutal.
On dating and relationships.
I mean, it's horrifying.
And I don't know what...
I mean, this ridiculous hysteria.
This ridiculous hysteria is...
I mean, it's like...
There's lots of studies now about how helpful vitamin D is with regards to COVID. So locking down everyone and keeping them indoors all the time is just depriving them of vitamin D. And it's like, oh, come on, right?
It's not right. It's not right.
No, it just seems to get worse.
And in the interim, you know, there's going to be kids this summer.
They get out. This is a time. Okay, great.
But I'm going to be even older.
And my chances of attracting a younger woman who could have, like, you know, kids, no.
It's significantly reduced.
Yeah, but now you can't do it, right?
Now, as far as I understand it, I mean, you're having trouble with...
You're having trouble with stability.
You're having trouble with all of that stuff, right?
And so right now might not be the ideal time to try and attract a woman, right?
Even if there was no lockdown or anything.
I guess the biggest thing was predicated on the real estate market crashing.
I worked my whole 20s, saved some money, lost a lot of it.
Long story, but I still got access to the ability to maybe buy a house, like a down payment.
And so I was like, okay, well, if things crash, like Chicago-style 60% to 80%, maybe there's the opportunity for people my age demographic to buy a house and pick up from the rightful losses of boomers and repatriate to living the old ways of our grandparents and maybe try to get this thing back on track.
But they'll always open up the floodgates of immigration to prop up housing prices.
And I fear you're right.
Sadly, they can't allow...
Real estate values to crash.
I mean, that almost took out the whole terrible system in 07-08, as you know.
Okay, so you've got your health issues, your concussion.
You're working through that. You've got financial issues, career issues, and so on, right?
And, you know, now could be the time to prepare for all of that, to prepare for when some return to normalcy is going to occur.
And it's not going to be like this forever because, I mean, society simply won't survive, right?
And so... I think if I were in your shoes, I would use this time.
So I think there's a couple of things you need to work on.
Again, I can't give you any health advice.
I'm not going to give you any financial advice, but, you know, working on getting a decent income and all of that.
But I am curious what your relationship is to your historical advocacy for marijuana.
Oh, yeah.
Well, I would say that I started irresponsibly using cannabis in my teenage years.
Well, you've been dealing too, right?
Yes, yeah, yeah. So just a bad situation.
Wrong place, wrong time. But certainly take responsibility myself for the poor decision.
I say with youth that cannabis will make you okay with feeling bored.
And it's when you're young that you're bored, you should be using the time to develop a new skill.
So I didn't practice what I preached.
And I think there was a lot of spinning my tires.
When I was 18 I started getting migraine headaches that blinded me and that led to me receiving a quote-unquote valid medical license for cannabis.
I was working for for about five years as a credit account manager and so it was awkward to have somebody in the office who smelt of cannabis and had a legal license and so I found myself out of that position, and I started consulting with commercial operations that were setting up for a for-profit industry.
I did one in Ontario, and then moved out to Alberta, started just working the legal retail stores, built one out here.
No, no, I don't want a resume, man.
Sorry. Sorry. That's really not the point.
The point is not your resume. Do I think cannabis is like a miracle drug or something?
I'm not one of those, if that's...
No, I mean, you've been pushing drugs for good portions of your life, right?
I couldn't deny that, yeah.
And what's your relationship to that?
Oh, like my use?
No, no, no. What's your relationship to the fact that you've been pushing drugs for good portions of your life?
I'm sorry, Steph. Do I feel guilty?
Like, is that it? Well, I mean, I just...
Do you think it was good?
Do you think it was neutral? Do you think it was bad?
I mean, what's your relationship to it?
I think it was bad. I think it was bad.
I think it took more away from myself than added to and the things that I tried to say.
Now, but you're talking about you. What about, like, you facilitate, I mean, I know you were a child, but let's be frank, you facilitated the drug use of other children, right?
Yeah, my chaos negatively impacted others, yeah.
I don't know what that means, but, I mean, to me, it's, you know, you did make the choice.
Yeah. To supply drugs when you were a child to supply drugs to other children.
I think that's simmering deep down in there, and I think this is one of the reasons why it's tough for you to love and be loved.
Now, this doesn't mean that you're doomed forever, but I think it's something that you have to wrestle with.
I think it's something you have to confront.
You know, kids came to you, they were unhappy, and you helped them get drugs.
I'm not trying to make you feel bad, but if the feeling bad is down there, then this is something that's, you know, when someone really starts to love you, if it collides with a negative self-image you have deep down, you won't be able to make the connection.
There's like a physical feeling when you make certain mental connections, and I haven't had this feeling in a very long time.
So I thank you very much for what you're saying.
It's powerful. It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
And you can have sympathy for yourself.
You were part of a system.
You had, I think, relatively uncaring parents.
And so you can have sympathy, but it's something you have to wrestle with, right?
Like men who date women just because the women are physically attractive, use them for sex and then dump them.
That's incredibly harmful to women.
And I know we're given all of this.
You can sleep around and women are just like men and it's fun.
But it's incredibly destructive to your culture, to your society, to a woman's capacity to bond, to your own self-trust.
And the men who've slept around and dated women for looks and then dumped them after having sex...
There's a lot of wreckage, right?
It's all a wreckage in the wake.
And again, I have sympathy, but it's something that you have to wrestle with if this has been your life.
And as a teenage guy who was dealing drugs and in the punk movement and living alone, I'm sure you had a fair amount of pretty trashy sex.
And that leaves some wreckage.
Men can survive that stuff better than women for biological reasons we don't have to go into here.
And again, I'm not trying to make you feel bad.
What I'm trying to say is, okay, something had you come out of your life where you are to when you were dating this 22-year-old woman and saying, well, who do I have to chameleon or morph into so that she'll like me?
And that means that you don't particularly like something about yourself.
Because then it's like, okay, how can I fake her into liking me?
Who do I have to pretend to be so that she'll like me?
And that means that you don't, I think, have a lot of love for yourself in some areas deep down, and this could be the reason why.
Can I ask what your perspective is on a thought of, like, I feel that, like, when she initially fell for me, I was one way.
And then when we were together, it's like, when she fell for me, I was me.
And then when we were together, I was trying to be me, and that caused the issues?
I don't, like...
No, so the reason that we tend to morph or try and morph into someone else is because...
There's not a solid commitment.
So if the person is committed, like the marriage vows or whatever, if the person is committed to us and says, I really like you for who you are, then we don't have to be anyone other than who we are, which I know is a very simplistic equation.
Who we are is constantly changing and all of that.
But the reason why men and women chameleon is because there's not a commitment on the part of the other person.
They're kind of in and not in.
They're there and they're not there.
They're there, but they're keeping their options open.
And then we get kind of desperate and crazy, right?
And okay, I'll try being this person.
I'll try being this person. And maybe that will elicit some kind of commitment out of you or whatever it is, right?
Well, once you have that commitment, you can just be yourself, right?
But in the absence of that commitment, we try to change.
Like, you know, if you got a ring of 50 keys and you're trying to open a lock, if your first key doesn't open the lock, you just keep trying different keys.
and that's us with different personas if we don't get commitment.
We had known each other for three months before we had made love.
And that was odd for myself or like a while.
But I recall like thinking the evening of sort of in the bathroom or whatnot, like, I just want this girl to like me.
And I, I, lately I find myself saying, is this how the women in my young twenties felt?
Like, and I made them feel as like karmic retribution.
Most likely. Hence the cautionary.
I mean, look at Trump, right?
I mean, just take a silly example, right?
Look at Trump. Sure.
So for four or five years, Trump supporters were getting attacked, deplatformed, abused, insulted, ostracized, you name it, right?
And what did he do? Not nothing.
Not really, right?
I don't think he even acknowledged it.
You know, he just raised $250 million to fight this mirage-like election fraud, and is that going to be turned into bail money for the people accused of criminal actions for the Capitol?
No, it doesn't seem to be, right?
So Trump is now experiencing what his supporters experienced for many years.
So, yes, that does, you know, if we confront our own bad behavior in the past, And this does not mean with self-condemnation.
You can do this with great sympathy for yourself.
It's being propagandized.
There's bad actions I did in the past.
I have some sympathy for myself, but I still have to acknowledge that it had a negative impact on me.
And more importantly, it had a negative impact on others.
And being able to come to terms with that and getting some peace with that is really important.
And things like drugs or other addictions or promiscuity, you name it.
I think that a lot of that is just trying to run from an advancing bad conscience.
Pardon? An advancing bad conscience?
Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, listen. It may take us a while.
Like propaganda lures us into doing bad things, gives us a bad relationship with ourselves, so we can't pair bond.
And that's another way that we lose our culture, right?
Lose our civilization. So we've all done things in our youth because we lost God, we lost Christianity, we lost religion, we lost morals, we lost wisdom, we lost philosophy, we lost respect for our elders.
And many of these things is just taken from us.
And so we were tricked, lured, lied into doing some bad things.
You were raised in an unempathetic manner.
You were not empathized with.
In other words, your feelings weren't real enough for other people to take decisive action when you were unhappy, right?
So then, when you were a kid and you were unhappy, your parents gave you stuff that distracted you from that.
It didn't solve the problem.
The problem persists.
And when you were 14, unhappy children came to you and what they really needed was a conversation, right?
What they really needed was curiosity, empathy, all that, right?
But because of how you were raised, and this is where we have sympathy for ourselves, but because of how you were raised, where sadness is dealt with by external means, right?
Unhappiness, go buy something, play a video game, get a new album, get a new haircut, new shoes, new phone.
You are like, okay, well, the way that you deal with unhappiness is some external substance.
And in this case, it happened to be marijuana, right?
More than cannabis.
Right. And it seems likely that some of those children went on to become drug addicts.
I recall one in specific right now.
Some of them may have died.
I'm not saying that's on you 100% or anything like that, obviously, right?
Of course, right? You're a kid.
They're still making their own choices.
And I'm not saying this to make you feel bad.
What I am saying is that if there is something down in there that you need to confront, I mean, I'm a big fan of therapies.
You know, talk therapy is really, really key.
I know that you had a concussion, so if you need money for therapy, let me know.
I'm happy to forward you the money for therapy.
I mean, I think it would be a really, really good thing to do.
And maybe I'm completely off the mark.
But if there's something down in there that you haven't confronted, and the confrontation doesn't mean, oh, I'm a bad guy.
It's a complex situation that you did end up supplying drugs to your peers when you were a child.
I got to think that leaves you with some pretty complex moral questions.
And again, I'm not trying to say, oh, you're a bad guy, blah, blah, blah.
That's not how complexity works.
But when you say, I have a great relationship, With my parents.
When you told me, basically, that your parents raised a drug dealer, I have questions.
I have questions.
questions.
And wasn't it their job to know that you were doing something this kind of destructive?
Yeah.
I don't know what that change is like.
If you see one day your kid's okay and then the next day you think something's off.
That's why I say, oh, it was my parents' first time being a parent as much as it was my first time being a kid.
It was my parents' first time being a parent?
I don't know what that means. I mean, I get what you mean in terms of time, but...
Like, it's like I feel angry when...
The concept of, like, getting left in a daycare.
And it's like, so we can talk about a system, but it's kind of like, like, mad at my mom.
Like, there's a lot of emotions.
There's like, I feel like a kid just crying for his mom.
And it's like, oh, so are you just scared and you want your mom?
Yeah. Or are you mad your mom left?
Yeah, that too. And that's where it's like, well, I don't know.
I don't think my mom was like, well, screw you.
I'm out of here. I don't want to be with you.
I just wonder if it's like, oh, I got bills and should I be working or should I be with him?
Oh, I'll just leave him here a little while.
I gotta work, you know? And just kind of getting caught up in the 20th century or whatnot.
But I don't know if I'm making excuses for my mom or my dad.
Well, I don't know either. But that's something that unravels in conversation.
But I'll tell you one thing that does bother me about your mom.
Your mom is putting a lot of emotional pressure on you to have children, but she's not asking you what the problem is.
You know, when she buys these books, these children's books, and tells you how wonderful this is, this is a lot of manipulative emotional pressure, man.
That's brutal. She says she just likes the book or I look into something too much.
Oh, come on. No adult buys children's books without the anticipation of reading them to children, right?
Yeah. So she's putting a lot of pressure on you to have children.
But she's not sitting there saying, okay, was there anything in my parenting that may have given him...
I mean, do they know that you dealt drugs when you were a teenager?
My parents know absolutely everything.
Yep. Right.
Have they criticized themselves at all for producing this kind of dysfunction, or at least having some particularly powerful authority over producing this kind of dysfunction?
Short answer, yes.
What did I do?
Well, no, that's a rhetorical question.
What is their answer? Oh, I guess we've never properly had the conversation.
Just ask the question.
neither of us has had an answer.
Right.
I did try to reach out to counseling and therapy and social services in February of last year when I was left by my ex the first time and And I found it quite difficult just relative to the, you know, do you have coverage and this and that?
No, that's my offer though.
I would strongly suggest you get therapy.
I really strongly suggest.
I'd order you two if I could, but it's a free will thing, right?
But no, just send me a note, right?
Just write to me, send me a note.
We'll sort it out. We'll get your therapist paid, okay?
Okay. My GP has been very decent in the interim.
I go for kind of weekly checkups with him that are extended, but I think...
Proper therapy and counseling is...
Yeah. And thank you.
I'll follow up. Listen, it is not too late.
It is not too late.
You're listening to this show.
You're part of this conversation.
You are a magnificent bastard.
I just want you to get that.
My admiration for you is intense.
Your honesty and forthrightness is beautiful.
It's not too late. I think you've got a couple of old things to wrestle with, which I have and you have and everybody listening to this has.
It's a human experience.
We're raised like animals these days.
And we can't be animals because we're humans, right?
So have sympathy for yourself.
But, you know, understand that decisions I made, decisions you made, decisions we've all made when we were younger caused harm.
And we can have sympathy for ourselves, and we can get mad at ourselves, we can get mad at our society, we can get mad at the lack of training we got, the lack of empathy we got.
You can't raise a child in daycare.
You can't raise a child in daycare.
I worked in daycare for years, I know.
You can keep them out of trouble to some degree.
Well, it's just kind of postponing the trouble, so to speak.
But you can't... You can't raise a child.
You can't morally educate a child in daycare.
I mean, if we had two parents with 30 kids, we wouldn't sit there and say, well, I bet you each one of those kids is getting great moral instruction in one-on-one time with parents, right?
Daycares have 20, 30 sometimes kids in them and in a class, maybe one daycare worker, one worker's aide, which is sort of my job.
Do you know the Nancy Kubler-Ross griefs?
The five stages thing?
But I assume all pop psychology is total bullshit.
I could be wrong, but I assume it's total bullshit.
I assume there's no empirical testing behind it or validity.
I think it's an interesting mental model, but...
I would be careful about those stepping stones because I would just be, you know, like a lot of these personality tests and stuff like that, EMT or whatever it is, right?
I mean, that stuff is largely crap or like, you know, emotional intelligence, largely crap.
Yeah. Okay. I mean, and the reason why is that the actual rigorous methods within psychology, like IQ, are constantly attacked, right?
Whereas the softy, gooey stuff with no empirical evidence is constantly promoted, and it's largely to obscure the hard science of IQ. So, I'm sorry, I don't mean to immediately dismiss your thoughts about it, but I would be certainly pretty careful.
Like, if there's these five stages of grief, I would like to know, okay, what's the empirical evidence?
Is there any scientific backing to it?
Is there, right? Or is it just Yeah, and there's moral grief.
There's grief for things that you've done.
There's regret. There's grief for things that are accidental, like someone you love got hit by a bus.
There's grief for things you have control over.
There's grief for things you don't have any control over, like what Twitter does or what YouTube does.
And so, to me, grief is so complex, mixed with voluntary stuff, mixed with accidental stuff, mixed with guilt, mixed with Anger at...
It's so complex that to me...
Hang on. To me, reducing all of this complexity of grief to five stages, it's like, okay, well, if you're grieving because you did harm to someone, is that the same as grieving because somebody you love accidentally died?
Does it follow the exact same pattern?
Of course it doesn't, right? So just trying to put it all in one category just seems to me a very reductionist.
But sorry, go ahead. That makes sense.
Okay, so like denial, depression, anger, fear, acceptance is something that it was based on.
What about repeating the cycles on purpose on your own because you don't want to accept whatever it is you need to resolve?
So you go back to depression, anger, fear, and then you just keep on going through it because you don't want to accept it because if you accept whatever it is, it's over.
And like, A lot of the times I think, am I not getting better because I want to tell myself, oh, if I do these things, she'll come back.
It'll all be okay. But she won't?
Is that why I don't do these things I think I can do?
or do I need to get that out of my head?
is it's well what do you what did you love about her her.
I loved her optimism.
Okay.
What else?
Things as far as like music.
Movies, pop culture, video games.
We have those same interests.
Oh, you like that too?
Silly things. Oh, you eat peanut butter and bacon sandwiches too?
No way! Little things that might make the nuance of your character and personality.
Her and I seem to just match up.
Nine out of ten things.
And on the one out of ten, if you might think it's odd or whatnot, something you don't like.
Not that you're repulsed, but It's kind of like a little nuance, because if you were so similar, it'd be kind of boring.
So I never met somebody who was so much alike myself, but then also had some uniqueness as well.
But her optimism didn't include you, did it?
No, it didn't. So the one part you really needed her to be optimistic about, she was not at all optimistic about.
In fact, quite the opposite, right?
She only said I love you when we had sex.
We'd have romantic periods, but...
No, no, let's get back.
I mean, you said you, but she was not optimistic about her future with you, right?
It did not, no, no.
Right. And that hurts, man.
That's just, look, being rejected is just painful.
It's just painful. Fundamental question you need to ask yourself.
Everybody needs to ask themselves about rejection.
If I was rejected by a good person, I need to improve morally.
If I was rejected by a bad person, I need to improve in who I choose.
It's the only way it works.
It's just two sides of one coin.
If you were rejected by a good person, it means you need to improve morally, usually your relationship with yourself.
And that's going to hurt. If you were rejected by a bad person, and a bad person doesn't mean that they're evil.
It just means that they didn't have good reasons, like neurotic or insecure, or they don't trust their own happiness.
It could be like a number of fairly aesthetic negatives, but nonetheless, it means that they couldn't commit, right?
So if you're rejected by someone who couldn't commit to you because moral flaws were then you, you need to improve.
And if you were rejected by someone, if you were rejected by someone for good reasons, you need to become a better reason.
If you were rejected by someone for bad reasons, then you need to be better at choosing people.
That's the kind of simplicity and clarity I think that philosophy is so helpful with regards to this stuff.
So did she reject you for reasonable reasons?
Good reasons? Decent reasons?
I don't think so. No, I don't think so.
And why did she reject you then?
Did she reject you for bad reasons?
In other words, for reasons that didn't make sense or weren't valid.
I guess if I had to sum it up, it's like grass is greener on the other side.
Like, was her thing.
So she thought she could do better?
That's what I think, yeah.
It was never fully confirmed, but it's kind of like, okay, well, I'm not good enough to chew.
Could she do better? I don't think so, no.
So sell me on you as a provider.
For the last 12 years of my life, I've always been able to bring in an income and maintain...
Whatever my day-to-day responsibilities are, and I find that were I to pursue the goals of wanting to have a family that my natural abilities of being able to provide would just be heightened.
I come from a family that, not to say we're affluent, but I have the ability to pursue goals as far as getting a property, both combined with how I worked throughout my 20s and built up some funds, and then my family too.
Just pursue those goals alongside.
And what are the odds, do you think, from a female perspective, right?
What are the odds that you would end up parenting a child who would end up as dysfunctional as you were as a teenager?
Very likely. Definitely stacked against myself, yeah.
Right. You understand that's a calculation, right?
Yes. At the end, I was trying to figure out...
Because, like, I see this whole second wave feminism thing as, like, there are women who don't need exceptions in society, don't need handicaps in industries.
They're just capable.
The other side of the coin, okay, that's not okay.
But, like, the ones who want to work and can, yeah, go for it.
Absolutely. Wait, no, no.
I'm sorry, sorry. You're trying to drag me off into something else here.
Okay, let's go back. Let's go back to her decision matrix, okay?
Does she want to raise a child with a man?
The child's going to become a Mohawk, punk-chasing, drug-dealing, moving out at the age of 14.
Well, it's not me anymore.
No, but you said that the odds were fairly high that you would end up raising a child who would do that, if I understood what you said correctly.
Yes, yeah, I just, I thought, like, I'm saying I'd be aware of that.
Okay, is that what she wants? Okay.
Okay. So that's her decision.
Remember, women look down the tunnel of time.
Women look decades into the future.
Men look to this weekend if we're lucky, right?
Women look decades down the road.
Oh, okay.
Well, I was just going to be like, yeah, but I'm aware of that.
So I'll work hard to make sure it's not the problem.
And you're saying she's more like, there's a very high chance that's the problem.
I'm out of here. Well, it's fine, but what's the plan?
How are you going to ensure that doesn't happen?
You're very close and respect and love the parents who raised you, so you're going to take them as a template, which is most likely going to produce you.
Well, I mean, I was encouraging one of us staying at home.
That's not what I'm saying.
That's what I'm saying.
Your girlfriend looked at your relationship with your parents, and you say, I'm close to my parents, I talk to them every day, I love them, and they produced you, right?
Which means you're going to take their parenting as the template and most likely you're going to produce another you.
From her perspective.
Now you can say, well, yes, but I'm going to make sure I don't produce another me.
Okay.
But she's, you know, that's like someone saying, yes, but I've got to make sure I make a lot of money.
Someone's going to say at some point, can I see a practical plan for that?
Or is this just something you're saying?
Can I see this actually in motion?
Well, wouldn't any woman be fair to take that position then?
Yeah. So then...
I'm kind of screwed. I did it to myself, you know, but...
No, you're not screwed at all.
But if you continue to unqualifiedly respect and praise the parents who raised a youthful drug dealer, then women are going to be bloody concerned, and they're right to be.
Now, if you say, yeah, there's some great things my parents did, but man, oh man, You know, I got engaged in criminal activity as a teenager, and I bailed out of the house when I was 14.
And that was messed up.
I got issues with that, and I'm working on them, and here's what I'm doing.
To make sure I never, ever repeat the mistakes that they made that produced that.
That this makes sense.
Praise of the past is a commitment to the future.
Thank you.
If you don't have any issues with your parents, they're going to completely dominate how you raise your children.
And did you tell your ex that your mom was buying all these children's books?
No, I didn't.
Okay. Should I have?
Well, I'll tell you this.
If she got a sense of that or if she knew...
Then she'd be like, okay, so...
And this ties into the call I had on Friday, right?
She's going to sit there and say, hmm, okay.
So my mother-in-law is going to be all over us when we have kids.
And if my husband thinks his mom is kind of perfect and his mom is over-raising our kids, the odds of producing...
My husband's childhood again and my own childhood pretty bloody high.
That also makes a lot of sense.
Damn it. I've said it a million times, man.
Excuses of promises of repetition.
If you excuse your parents' behavior and listen, you've listened to this show for a while, right?
Yes. How many people have I had on who were teenage drug dealers?
You know what? Call it strange.
I've only probably heard about 20, 30 shows, Steph.
And I can't say...
Well, I can tell you, I can't remember one.
You had it bad, man.
You had it bad.
I remember this one time at a bus stop.
She was 14. And I confirmed it.
And I remember having a feeling in my stomach like...
Yeah, this is past the line, man.
And I didn't do anything.
You didn't sell the drugs?
No, I sold the drugs.
I sold the drugs and I moved on.
I didn't sell to her again.
And I think that was me being like, oh, wow.
But just...
And you were also a bloody lucky man.
I mean, or unlucky.
I don't know whether, but you could easily have been nabbed.
You could have got involved with the wrong criminal elements.
You could have been nabbed by the police.
Your parents could have been dragged into the legal mess.
It could have been really, really bad.
I used to make runs between London, Ontario, Montreal, and on my last run when I turned 18, I said, this is it.
I'm done. And then I straightened up a bit.
Right. So when it was negative consequences for you, you were able to stop, but it was negative consequences to the other kids.
You weren't, right? But that's an empathy problem, right?
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
So you had it bad, man.
You had it really, really bad.
And you can call it degeneracy.
I suppose that gives it a kind of cool air to it.
But it's just trauma.
It's just lack of empathy.
It's a brokenness.
It's a lack of love.
Lack of connection. You know, happy loved children, they're not out.
Selling drugs to kids.
They're not. Bailing at a home when they're 14.
I'm afraid to get better because then like someone comes back and I could lose somebody again.
Right. So I cut off all my friends.
No, of course. You've been rejected. You've been rejected and it hurts.
But what about all the people you rejected?
What about all the women you rejected?
How many women have you slept with?
96. Right.
Now, of those 96 women, how many would have liked to have not had sexuality cheapened by being used but actually have a relationship?
I would think a very high majority, 80%.
Right. So almost 80 women you have used and then rejected, right?
Yeah. And you're crying to me about being rejected?
I mean, you've been brutal on women.
Now, they have agency.
I get all of that.
I used to tell myself...
You understand. It's kind of tough to hear you being upset about being rejected when you've rejected over 80 women.
Sorry, go ahead. No, I see the connection you're making.
It does seem petty.
No, listen. Your rejection is really important.
I'm not trying to say your rejection doesn't matter.
Your rejection, the pain you're going through is really important.
Oh, so it's not suck it up because you did it to someone else?
No! God, no! No!
It's about having empathy for the women you rejected.
They don't even want to talk to me anymore.
No, I know. They went through what you're going through.
You did that to them.
What this woman did to you, you did to them.
What you're going through times 80.
It means have empathy for them.
Because it hurts you and it hurt them.
Now, not all equally.
I'm sure some of them are more fly-by and just wasn't as involved in all of that.
But certainly some, the rejection that you're feeling, you inflicted on others.
Now, that doesn't mean you should have been with them.
It doesn't mean you should have stayed with them.
I'm just talking about a basic.
You did this to others and it sucks.
It sucks. It hurts, right?
It hurts, but I don't think I have a reason to...
Like, I'm not the victim?
I don't know. Like, I did these things.
So what... No, see, you're trying to frame it into perpetrator-victim again.
Okay, yeah.
You now know the pain of rejection at a very deep level, right?
Yes. Which you didn't experience before, I don't think.
Right? You slept with and then kind of dumped 80 women, right?
Yes. And I don't think you processed the feelings they were experiencing in the way that you're experiencing your feelings, right?
Yes. That's important.
You've done some harm.
And listen, we all have. I'm not trying to isolate you or make you feel like a bad guy or anything like that.
You did some harm to others.
they did some harm to you but you suffering is an opportunity for empathy right Thank you.
I feel like I'm rich.
Yeah, the way that we avoid allowing suffering to give us empathy is we talk about victimhood.
Or we blame the other person.
This is a chance for you to connect with women, because what's the future going to be?
The future is going to be that you need to connect to a woman, right?
Now, you can use this experience of being rejected to connect with the women, the 80 women that you yourself rejected, and understand that they felt, to some degree or another, what you're feeling.
And that's empathy, right?
And I don't think you experienced that when you rejected them.
But suffering is...
Like, we either get empathy from our parents, like they empathize with us and they're curious about our feelings and they...
Right? That's one way to get it.
And I think, it seems to me, the only other way to get it is through suffering.
We suffer. We make the connection that others suffer.
And that way we treat other people better.
Right? If you genuinely connect your own suffering to the suffering you inflicted on the 80 women, you won't inflict that suffering again, will you?
I don't believe so.
I bloody well hope not, because that would just be sadism, and I don't think you're a sadist, right?
Why do I feel like I need to wall myself off from everyone?
on because empathy is painful but it's the only way we can love and be loved and It's like saying, why do I want to sit on the couch and eat Cheetos?
Because that's more fun than going to exercise, but it's something we've got to do to stay healthy, right?
And you will see you are already you have been already walled off from people.
I mean, you can't take money and hand over a drug to a 14 year old girl.
If you have empathy for her.
And again, I'm not blaming you, right?
I mean, you were a kid and you were raised in some ways.
I mean, empathy was not developed in the way that it should be or enough or deeply enough, I think, in my opinion, right?
But you have enough empathy for yourself to have a conversation like this, which again, is magnificent.
You should be enormously proud.
It's a massive step forward.
But you have been walled off from people.
Thank you.
I think.
Which is why you've gone through nearly 100 women.
Thank you for connecting these things.
Thanks.
You are welcome, man.
And you've got a big heart in there, man.
man, you've got a big heart, a lot of sensitivity.
And it may, excuse me, it may well be worth having a conversation with your parents about what happened as a kid.
Why did your mom go back to work?
What does she regret now? What does she wish she had done differently?
Why were you in daycare?
Look, if a woman has to work, at least move to where there are grandparents or relatives or someone who can take care of the child who's in the family, right?
We did, but we had dysfunction in our family.
Nothing too extreme, but just kind of like most families have a, oh yeah, this grandpa doesn't, you know, This or that.
My grandfather was abusive physically to my grandmother.
Like a very old 1930s.
She wasn't beat every night.
Was that your mother's father? My mother's mother.
So your mother's father was physically abusive?
Probably to her too, right?
No, actually.
My grandmother took everything.
But she witnessed it.
Yes, yeah.
My grandmother embodied very much, like, stay together for the kids sort of thing.
But your grandmother didn't have the wisdom to choose a nonviolent man.
No, he's...
He's not a good person.
It might be worth having a conversation with your mother about her childhood.
Because it would seem to me that for your mother, the equation is empathy gets the shit beaten out of you.
In other words, your grandmother empathized with the needs of the children for an intact family and that caused her to be a punching bag for her husband.
Empathy could almost get you killed.
Shit. Pardon, pardon.
I'm so sorry, Stephen. No, no, don't worry.
I don't care about the swearing.
I don't care about the swearing. Just don't worry about that.
Just what do you feel there?
I just feel the connection.
I think I'm just starting...
I don't want to say I get it, but I do think I do at a...
I'm going to be thinking about this for another few days.
Yeah. There's a reason I'm so good at the wiring tasks in Among Us.
Sorry, that's a complete geek reference, right?
No, these connections, right?
For your mother growing up, Where the mother took on the obligation to keep the family together at every cost.
Empathizing with the children. Got her beaten up on a regular basis.
What's her relationship to empathy?
It's very dangerous, I would assume.
I don't know where it starts.
So almost by not empathizing with you, in a sense, she was almost keeping a predator away.
Sorry, go ahead. It's like I feel anger or something.
So it's like, oh, you blah, blah, blah to my grandpa.
You do this and that. So you instill these mental issues in my grandma and then my mom, and then it happens to me.
And then I'm thinking, like, my grandpa is a human being, or at least I would hope he's a better man at one time than another.
Almost like, you know, Darth Vader, like, goes to the dark side.
So it's like, what, did you just get hurt by having to work so much to provide?
So you got colder and, like...
I don't know. Okay, so here's the thing.
Listen, listen. You have a habit, which is completely understandable, of empathizing with everyone but yourself.
I need you, I think.
The future needs you.
Your future children need you.
Your future wife needs you.
Forget about what happened to other people when they were children.
You've got to empathize with yourself.
Otherwise, empathizing with others is a distraction from what you need to do.
Just empathize with yourself.
with the suffering you experienced as a child.
Because if you start leaping up the family tree and trying to empathize with everyone else, Hugh gets rejected again.
Oh, it scares me so much to do what you're saying.
I know, I know, I know.
And you want to take me on that ride too.
I'm coming back to you.
You're the person that says, I'm not talking to your grandfather.
I'm not talking to your mother. I'm talking to you.
You're the person I care about.
Okay? You're the person.
You and you alone is my sole focus in this conversation.
Now, other people can be useful, but only so far as they drop breadsticks for you or breadcrumbs for you to find your way back to yourself.
Okay? It's you that matters.
There's got to be something else going on because as I... Yeah, I get it.
No, it scares the shit out of your parents.
You want it. You desperately need it.
You need this empathy with yourself so that you can love, so you can bond, so you can regret, so you can heal, so you can move forward.
But your parents Once you connect this empathy with yourself, you are going to get mad at your parents.
Now, some of that anger will be just and some of it will be a reaction.
It doesn't really matter because you can feel it, right?
But society...
Doesn't want you to empathize with yourself.
Your parents don't want you to empathize with yourself.
Your teachers don't want you to empathize with yourself.
The government doesn't want you to empathize with yourself.
The entire power structure that we live under, both personal, social, legal, political, most of it is founded on a lack of self-empathy, basic empathy.
If we had this basic empathy, understand We wouldn't have the system that we have at all.
We wouldn't have anything close to it.
It's like the only way that slavery could exist was a lack of empathy to the slaves.
Once people started to have empathy for the slaves, the entire system came down and we got something morally infinitely better in its place.
Um... Of course, you have resistance to empathy with yourself.
That's how we're programmed. But you need it.
You want it. Yourself.
For yourself. You don't have a messed up, ambivalent relationship.
Like, I'm personally scared of empathy with myself.
It's like, no, no, no, no. It's like if you beat a dog, every time the dog goes for a drink, the dog can sit there and say, I'm terrified of drinking.
No, you want a drink.
You want to have empathy with yourself.
You've just been punished for it.
But I think the time for punishment has passed.
If you'd had genuine empathy for yourself as a child, you would have raised unholy hell in the daycare until your mother came home.
You would have clung to her, never let her go, never be detached, run back out to the car, cried all day, caused fights, got yourself kicked out.
You understand, if you had had relentless empathy for yourself as a child, you would have been massively inconvenient to your mother until you got what you wanted, which was her, right?
But you would have been punished for that.
Having empathy for yourself would have resulted in punishment.
And then fear of abandonment kicks in and boom, now you're 30, right?
And now, to keep a woman, who do I have to be?
This goes back to you at one.
Who do I have to be so that mommy doesn't leave me in a daycare?
And now, who do I have to be so that my girlfriend doesn't leave me?
Oh... Yeah.
Clearly, you being you wasn't enough when you were one.
I'm sad to say it should have been.
It should have been. But being yourself is not enough for a woman, for a mother, for a girlfriend.
Should be. Someone went to rob me two weeks ago.
I was just out getting something on the bus and they ran up to me.
They looked me in the eyes and I don't think I'm a tough guy or anything like that.
But they were about six feet away and I had to look my eyes and then they ran off.
It's not a fun feeling just going through something.
But it's like when you're pushed, you know, it's not fun.
And I miss my ex in a sense that when things were happening in society, it felt like I had a refuge.
Somebody that I could always be myself and calm things down with.
And I haven't had, like maybe it's not even the love thing, but she was like my best friend.
And I just haven't had that to the point that like, I just keep on feeling more tense.
Right. And it is a cliche, and I'm sorry to sound like some ridiculous Hallmark card, but if you enjoy your own company, and if in a sense you are your own best friend, you have good relationships with all the parts of yourself, then you will get and keep a best friend.
But if you self-reject, you will end up being rejected by others.
But it's hard to self-accept when you felt rejected as a toddler.
When mommy dropped you off at the age of a year, when you were probably just learning how to walk.
Thank you.
And unfortunately, you know, a year is when the real moral instruction kicks in.
Because children begin their moral reasoning at about 14 to 16 months.
They develop empathy. So you, unfortunately, were put into daycare At a time when your moral reasoning was most in need of love, care, connection, and contact.
And so the fact that you ended up being put in daycare and ended up as an amoral teenager, well, yeah.
It's like wondering why you didn't speak Japanese when you were never put into any education regarding Japanese.
What about my first memory in the daycare?
I recall crawling around and no one was there.
No other kids, no daycare attendant.
The son's coming in.
But I'm not afraid.
I'm not like, where are people?
Or where's my mom?
I'm just there. Right.
Because you'd given up.
You'd given up expecting.
You had reached the stage of grief they call acceptance.
Which meant a lot of stuff had happened before.
Thank you.
And there is a lot of isolation in daycare, particularly for toddlers.
You've got one daycare worker.
You've got six babies or six toddlers.
They're going to soil themselves once an hour.
Got to spend 10 minutes.
Your whole time is just spent changing diapers.
So there's a lot of solitude for toddlers in daycare.
I really want to ask my mom what the first time I was dropped off at daycare was like.
Like if I was like thrashing around or if I was...
Thrashing around would be a good sign.
Not thrashing around.
I'll just give you a tiny example.
I remember sitting in my apartment, what we called a flat in London.
It had a nice view actually of the city.
I remember sitting the day that...
We moved, or I was moved from England to Canada.
I very clearly remember looking out the window and not caring at all that I was leaving my friends, my school, my neighborhood, basically where I had grown up.
I didn't care.
No grief, no sorrow, no goodbye to friends, no nothing.
Just going to someplace new.
Because I'd given up. No one asked me.
No one consulted. No one cared what my thoughts or opinions were.
We're going to Canada. That's why when people say I'm an immigrant, it's like, you've got to be kidding me.
I like Canada. Don't get me wrong.
I like Canada. But I remember clearly.
Now, not caring.
Not caring. Just get on the plane, come say someplace new.
Now, for you, if you dropped off and you were just fine to go, That's indication that the lack of bonding that made the drop-off at the daycare possible had been occurring for quite some time.
And if your mother, because of her own mother, made the association that empathy with children is very dangerous, then she would have shied away from that connection, probably, perhaps.
And me thinking, it's just like, oh, well, gotta go to work, gotta make some money, and, you know, is...
What, like giving my mom an excuse or something?
So here's the thing. Empathy with the self is time-dependent.
So empathy with the self is important.
So you don't want to go back to when you were one with the judgment of you at 30.
And the, well, there was feminism and there was propaganda and there was this and make money and blah, blah, blah, right?
And there was my mother with her mother and my violent grandfather.
Self-empathy is, I'm one, I'm being dropped off at a daycare.
I don't have any clue what's going on.
What do I feel? Now, if you try and jam all these adult judgments in, you do all of that stuff to avoid the basic empathy with yourself at one being dropped off at a daycare.
You don't know what the hell's going on.
You're just being handed over to strangers in a strange environment and you don't know what the hell is going on.
And frankly, you don't even know if your mom's coming back.
And you're alone, as you remember that memory of being alone.
Actually, I recall getting babysat a lot throughout my age, before I was 13, I guess, and staying on my own.
I never had any issues with my babysitters.
Like, oh, I hated them. Okay, you tell me an example where your parents...
We're like, ah, I really miss spending time together.
Let's go someplace, just us, and reconnect.
Or like, give me an example of where your parents, when you were a kid, expressed genuine desire for your company.
Because what I'm hearing is, well, you were in daycare, and then you had a lot of babysitters, and then you got video games, and it's like, holy shit, can you give me an example of when they really sought out your company?
It feels like it was just around the holidays, kind of.
Like, we'd go for a carriage ride or something, but I can't say that, like, we would do wholesome activities like that every two months or so, or month.
But, you know, the holidays, like, my parents would have a meal, all family members do a little activity, like an Easter egg hunt or some of these traditions that...
Yeah, and that's stuff to do, and there's nothing wrong with that.
But in terms of just your company, eyeball-to-eyeball conversation, your company, not...
haven't used to hunt with the kids i can't say like something like oh my dad and i used to always go hunting together if it like Yeah, no, we didn't have something like that.
So, come on, man.
If your parents don't enjoy your company, what's your expectation of being loved by a stranger?
I'm not fully making this connection.
Is that why I try to reach so many strangers to find love?
Do you have the experience that your parents really enjoy your company?
No. No?
Okay. So if your own parents don't really enjoy your company, how is someone supposed to love you?
I mean, your parents chose to have you.
They chose to become parents.
They didn't really seem to enjoy your company.
How the hell is a stranger supposed to learn to like you if your parents don't even seem to like you very much?
It feels like that's why I got so hung up when I found this girl and it was like, oh, I like you, at least for a period.
Right. Now, listen, you and I have been talking for a while and we'll end up soon.
I really appreciate the length of the conversation, the depth of the conversation.
So here's the thing, man. Do you get the sense that I really care about you with this conversation?
I don't know. Tell me what's missing for you in your mind or in your heart.
I just feel kind of cold, like, that people should just care about themselves because what does it really matter?
All you have is yourself at the end of the day.
So, like, I think you care in the sense that, like, you wish me good and, you know, but...
And I think all the guests on your show are great and whatnot.
I don't think, like, oh, we're just a guest or whatnot, but it's, like, I'm not your friend or anything.
Like, it's...
Is that petty of me?
Is that from... I don't know.
I'm just hurt and I don't want to let people in.
It's not like I think people are shit, but it's just like, well, you got to take care of yourself at the end of the day, don't you?
Are you taking care of yourself, though?
I don't think you are.
No. Because we are not solitary creatures.
We are tribal animals.
We're social animals. We're dogs, not cats, right?
And you say, at the end of the day, you're alone.
That's what you said, right? At the end of the day, it's just you, right?
Yes. Well, that's what they call a self-fulfilling prophecy, right?
Yes. Because that has what's happened, right?
right?
Now you are alone.
Because people can only hammer at the door of your house for so long before they move on, right?
Right.
If nobody's answering. I miss those people.
And they miss you too.
You have a lot to offer.
You have a lot to offer people.
I've tried. And it feels like they're kind of strained from the tension of just somebody calamitous like me.
And I'm just kind of like, yeah, I get it.
It's like I don't want to make new friends because I'm just afraid of doing it again.
So that's why I guess it's...
So you get, you get...
You get. You will get in a moment.
moment you sitting down that you've not left that daycare floor of being alone and being okay with it that's life man that's fate That's humanity. That's it. That's all you get.
Alone and okay with it.
People are danger. People are destabilization.
People will be unhappiness for you.
You can end up alone anyway.
I mean, that is what they call a classic self-fulfilling prophecy, right?
And I'm saying it doesn't have to be that way.
It doesn't have to be that way.
You have a big heart. You have a great mind.
You have great insight. You make great connections.
But I think for you, being with people is kind of like holding your breath underwater.
It's cool. You get to see some cool fish.
You've got to get back to the air of solitude, right?
And as an only child without parents who enjoyed your company, it's hard to figure out the value that you bring to the world, right?
So you try to bring value to the world by bringing drugs, bringing money, being someone else, being someone different.
It's the me too. Who do you have to be in addition, or what do you have to bring in addition to yourself to have value to people?
Well, you should, of course, bring value to your parents just by being yourself, and then you don't need to bring a whole bunch of other stuff.
But if you don't, it's like, okay, that's what you said at the beginning of the conversation.
Me? Just me?
Rejected, ostracized, bullied, teased, mocked.
Me plus drugs.
Ah! Now, people find value in me, right?
Ninety-six women, probably a pretty good-looking guy.
Me plus looks. Me plus a Mohawk.
Me plus independence.
Me plus a house I'm living at the age of 14 with no parents around.
People can have wild parties. Me plus enabling wild parties.
That's how I bring value.
But what if it's with someone else?
It's just you. And if that's not enough, nothing else is ever going to be enough in the long run, if that makes sense.
It does. I don't know if I need to get to work or take a break.
Well, you know, I would suggest conversations with your parents.
Good. Conversations with a therapist.
Good. And empathy with yourself.
Excellent. Thank you, Stefan.
You are welcome, my friend.
Listen, I know it's a tough time for you financially.
Will you promise? Go look for a therapist if you need some money.
If you need to pay a therapist, will you promise to get in touch?
Yes. Yes, I see my doctor on Tuesday.
I'll follow up. Fantastic.
And I really, really appreciate it.
You are a great human being, man.
I don't stay on calls this long with just about everybody, so you've been fantastic.
I am honored.
I am honored by the frankness and openness you've brought to this discussion.
You are a massively valuable human being.
And I hope that you do become a dad, man.
You work through this stuff, you're going to be beyond magnificent.
I hope so.
I know so.
I know so. All right. Will you stay in touch either way?
Yeah. Thank you so much for your commentary.
Wait, wait. How are you feeling? What are you feeling now at the end here?
How are you doing? We got some connection here.
What are you feeling? I just want to be a daddy so bad.
Steph, you don't...
I think you do understand.
I think... Oh, I do. I had the same feeling, man.
It took us forever. It's terrifying.
And it started around 25.
And it's just like... I just had a feeling like...
He or she is coming.
And I gotta get ready.
And it's just gonna be the greatest thing in my life.
And like... I just want to meet him or her so bad and to just hold him.
It's just frustrating.
I thought this was it.
I really thought this was it.
And a part of it, I apologized to her.
is that I'm sorry that I fell in love with the possibility of the idea of our kids before I fell in love with you.
Right.
Listen, it will work out.
It will sort out. And I really, really respect you for this conversation.
It's a beautiful thing you've given to the world as well.
All right. Just thanks for...
I miss you on YouTube. That was my favorite, just seeing you with the blue screen behind and...
I just... I'm still around.
I'm still around. FreeDomain.com forward slash connect.
Tons of places still. Do you do BitChute?
I'm seeing that as more of a...
Okay. BitChute library, Brighteon, Rumble, lots of places.
So yeah, you can stay with me.
All right. Well, thanks, man.
I really, really appreciate your time.
I appreciate everyone's support of this show.
FreeDomain.com forward slash donate to help out and have yourselves a wonderful, wonderful afternoon.
▲
Export Selection