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Jan. 30, 2021 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:24:53
Born in a Junkyard... Freedomain Call In
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Time Text
Good evening, everybody.
I hope you are doing very well.
It is the 29th of January 2021.
Still feels like a science fiction year to me, at least.
And James is in motion.
He is a man in motion. And so I will read the Caller's question will dive straight in.
This may be something which we've all faced at one time or another.
But this caller says, Steph, I feel like I'm drowning.
My internet addiction is robbing me of the air I breathe and I don't know what to do.
My relationships are deteriorating.
I lost my job and I'm aimless.
Now that I have nothing else to do, I am seriously considering either a high-dose psilocybin trip or enlisting in the military.
Cognitive behavioral therapy, self-help books, and lectures by you and other intellectuals have failed to motivate me to break my porn and internet binging habits.
What do you think I should do, and what have you done in the past to get yourself out of a black hole?
Thank you, name of listener.
So, my friend, are you, ironically enough, on the internet to try and deal with this at the moment?
No. I am on the internet still looking for questions to a problem that was caused in the same place.
No, that's right. You always want to go to the drug dealer for the cure because that's the way life works as a whole.
Yeah, hopefully they have a new batch of something cooking in the background.
Yeah, come in the back.
I got something nice for you.
Toilet paper and coke.
All right, so do you want to, I guess, expand to this?
I mean, we all know what an internet addiction is, and we all have our own challenges with the new world of screens eclipsing the old world of things, but do you want to break it down a little more for us, help us understand how it started, where it's at?
Yeah, I can go about and elaborate more.
Whenever I explain it to someone, because there's still a lot of people in my life that don't seem to grasp it as a real addiction or its severity, it all started when I was 13, when I was first given complete, unlimited, unregulated access to the internet through a handheld internet device.
It was an iPod Touch.
Basically a microcomputer where no parental oversight, no...
No ability to stop or regulate time usage or what I was looking at.
And ever since then, about 13 years old, I progressed in the technology and the amount of time that I spent online compoundly.
Like, it just got worse and worse and worse and worse.
And recently, I've done tracking software on both my computer and my smartphone.
When I still had a job, I was working roughly 45-50 hours a week and clocking upwards of 40 to sometimes 60 hours of active online usage per week as well.
Once I usually drop those numbers to people, they start to do the math in their head and they get sort of the severity and the catastrophically large amount of time I spend online.
Right. And of course, I'm assuming that's not all porn consumption.
Otherwise, I'm sure you'd get a slow clap from certain people.
No, no.
So some porn consumption and other stuff.
So how does it kind of break down?
Have you had any luck tracking that kind of stuff?
So yeah, yeah.
The tracker actually breaks down sort of different websites.
It's Almost entirely YouTube videos.
Porn is actually a small proportion, but it's frequent enough, and then just sort of the porn problem in general, the lack of motivation, the dopamine desert that basically kills all my motivation to do anything with porn.
It's important. Most of all the time spent on it is YouTube videos.
So here's the ironic thing, right?
This is the first ironic thing that I'm noticing.
Is that your internet connection is shit.
You're addicted to something and you're garbling on the internet as we speak.
So it's like you should be able to push 50k a second of audio.
So do you have other things going on on your internet at the moment?
No, I don't.
I'm actually on my cell phone's internet.
Let me see if I can...
You might want to Wi-Fi up that mofo because, yeah, it's kind of annoying.
My apologies. Let me see if going outside helps.
Do you not have Wi-Fi where you are?
Is you doing 45 hours on cell phone data?
Yeah, kind of, yeah.
It's satellite internet.
Alright, is this better? Can you hear me?
Let's find out. Yeah, just kind of ironic because, you know, one way to control your addiction is to have a shit internet connection.
I know, right? Yeah, that makes sense.
All right. Okay, so YouTube videos.
Okay, so without wanting to get New York Times specific on what it is that you're watching, what kind of stuff are you consuming on YouTube?
I think it's fairly safe to say you're not consuming my material on YouTube anymore, but what are you watching?
No, it's mostly like comedy shows, podcasts, like just generic stuff.
Garbage, like, internet funny videos, compilations of TikToks and other sort of, like, partial comedy, partial meme-type material.
But it's so excessive and it's so...
You know, one of the things that was a problem is, like, I would argue deleting certain apps and whatnot, and there'd be a very small proportion of, like, oh, I'd actually listen to something important, something that's teaching me something, you know, something informational, so I can't completely delete it.
And then 99% of the time, it's just a bunch of basically comedic, funny YouTube garbage.
Are you a Joe Rogan guy?
Because, man, that stuff can suck up time with giving you virtually nothing in return.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, Joe Rogan and a lot of other, like, arguably entertaining but not very substantial or much substance.
I mean, Joe Rogan has some cool guests on for sure, but, you know, over the years I've talked to a couple of people, oh, I'm totally into Joe Rogan, and just out of curiosity I'd say, okay, you know, what actionable stuff, what practical stuff have you learned?
From Joe Rogan that you use in your life, right?
When people listen to my show, they can get actionable stuff that they can actually use in their life.
It doesn't mean they have to, but they're certainly there if they want it.
And I get all of these emails and messages of like, oh, your show changed my life.
This is great stuff, right? I think Jordan Peterson, other people have that kind of approach where it's like, okay, here's some actionable stuff that you can do in your life.
But the people I know who are total Joe Rogan fans or other people like that, You know, the Ben Shapiro people, even the Tim Pool people and so on.
You can ask them and, you know, don't take my word for it.
Ask them yourself and say, okay, what actionable, valuable things have you gotten from this show that you can do in your life?
And... The answer is a long, glassy-eyed pause.
A thousand-year-old stare of the Eternal Sniper, right?
I felt like I was learning something at the time, but as it turns out, it didn't give me shit I could use.
Yeah, you have to fall back on who's willing to take the action.
You can listen to gold all day and not take advantage of it, not make a step to do anything about it.
But yeah, I... Definitely agree with that.
There's a lot of stuff that I listen to that, you know, you could say that it could be useful, but I'm just not taking advantage or definitely not listening to the right stuff.
Right, okay, okay.
So, you said it started at 13, but I assume it wasn't like, at 13 was like funny videos, that kind of stuff, and it just kind of, and just give me your age range.
I don't need your exact age, of course, but just roughly how old are you now?
Early 20s. Right.
And listen, you don't have to explain the iPod Touch to me.
The iPod Touch was the first, like, handheld digital device that I had outside of, I guess I had an old, oh gosh, a Vision M, but that wasn't even connected to the internet.
You had to upload things over a cable.
That was old, you know, the one, Zen Vision M. I've always liked the Zen players.
But anyway, so...
When my daughter was very young, I didn't want to have to go upstairs every now and then to check my email.
So I just thought, okay, let me get some internet device.
Cell phones were really primitive back then, but I got an iPod Touch like 1.0 before it even had a camera or anything like that.
And yeah, it was a cool little device.
I get to just leave it around and be able to check email without leaving my daughter because she was very young, so I couldn't leave her alone.
And it was actually a handy little device and I could sort of go back My very first audio player was called the Rio 500 with a staggering 64 megs of memory.
That was something else, man.
Such bandwidth. I remember going to the UK to finish a novel.
I was on a plane and I met a literary agent and...
She agreed to read one of my novels.
She read one of my novels. She said, I love it.
I think the ending needs some work.
She gave me some notes and the novel was set in the British countryside.
So I took some time off work.
I went out and rented a cottage in the middle of nowhere.
And there was no internet, nothing like that.
I ended up, for some reason, this is the only time that ever happened in my life.
I ended up only being able to write by hand.
Like, literally, a pencil on paper.
For some reason, it just was not working for me to type, which is kind of the way that I normally write.
And for this one, maybe because it was such a primitive story, like it's not primitive, but it was a story set in the 18th century.
I could only finish it by writing out by hand, and I used to go for these long, long walks, and in my Rio 500, I was listening to audiobooks at 8K, Per second.
So it was like an AM beach radio about the other side of an airplane hangar.
That was the quality.
But that's the only way I could get audiobooks on because otherwise I'd get like an hour of an audiobook and of course I wanted lots of hours for audiobooks.
I listened to Great Expectations by the things in like Just sounds pretty terrible.
So yeah, that was sort of back in the day for me.
So yeah, I know that kind of stuff.
But I was amazingly productive without the internet, of course, which was great.
Sorry, there's a total sidebar.
No, no, it's interesting.
Like handwriting out the finishing of a novel, it's almost like that version of method acting for a writer, you know, just kind of like embracing the full picture of the context of the story you're writing.
This book has some great lines.
It might be the next one I read as an audiobook.
In it, I say, there was a woman, the oldest woman in the village, whose name was Eve.
It was almost inescapable that her husband's name had been Adam.
Good little jokes in there.
But anyway. I like it. So...
Okay, so you kind of plunged in at the age of 13 to this iPod Touch and would you say that it ramped up pretty quickly to dozens of hours a week on the iPod Touch?
Yeah, yeah, I do, because I emphasize the fact of unregulated, because we had computers in our house when I was very young.
My dad was sort of techie in the tech business, and so he had computers set up around the house, but they were all password and time protected, so you couldn't get to certain things, and you could only spend a certain amount of time on them.
And this iPod Touch was the first time where I had No parental oversight, no time limits at all.
And somehow, well, not somehow, I know why, but my parents didn't notice that I was spending so much time on this device.
Okay, so, I mean, that's the key thing, and you're a wise enough listener to this show, or just a wise enough person in general, to know exactly what all this reveals about your family, right?
Yeah, yeah, it's a go-away device, leave me alone.
Well... It's funny, when you first said throwaway device, do you know who I thought you were talking about?
Well, me. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, because listen, I mean, so 13, you're going through puberty, or maybe you've just recently gone through puberty and so on.
And let's just say you're getting tennis elbow.
And a pretty strong left arm or right arm, depending on whether you want to visit a foreign country.
And so now that's exactly the time when your parents need to monitor what the hell you're doing, right?
And that's the time where they just kind of threw you to the digital wolves and your father, of course, had no excuse.
I'm guessing that the website limits obviously weren't at the router level, right?
I mean, they were device specific.
I don't know if you had routers back then that could say no adult content or you can't go to these sites or no searches for these kinds of things.
But I guess your iPod touch was not, as you say, not restricted and it wasn't at the router level.
So you could basically go and do anything you want.
You could go visit the kind of German porn sites that makes cannibals nauseous, right?
Absolutely, yeah. No, it was software-specific, like McAfee-type software protection, so it was device-specific.
So what's going on in your parents' lives?
That they're just like, yeah, it's 13, man, we're totally done.
Wolves will raise him from here.
What was going on in their lives?
Well, I can't know specifically, but I can tell you what I was witnessing.
Uh... I think that's probably the most accurate I can get.
Okay, for the rest of this conversation, let's assume that when I ask you a question, it's based upon your direct perceptions, not the possibility of inhabiting other people's bodies, okay?
I think that's a given that I'm asking you of your perspective, not, well, I did not possess my father in a satanic fashion, so I can, okay, let's just go with that as a given, okay?
Yeah, yeah, I'll tell you what my experience was.
Fighting, incompatibility, lots of fighting.
A huge, huge disconnect between what they both desired out of each other's responsibilities.
My mom would constantly tell my father that he wasn't making enough and to work more and to work harder.
And then when he would commit completely into his career, she would complain about him not being available.
You're emotionally unavailable!
Yeah. Yeah. It's like, but make more money, and then when you work harder and longer to make more money, you're not there for me.
I need more money. You never help around the house.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. Secretly, I think she always wanted me to be completely addicted to something so that I would completely leave her alone.
You know, when I didn't have something, I was quite a pain in the butt as a child among my siblings.
Wait, what do you mean? Why? I needed the most help with schooling and other parental oversight.
I got into a lot of problems.
I was suspended a lot.
I needed a lot of parental oversight, more than my other siblings from my perspective.
And I think there was almost like alleviation.
She seemed relieved that I was finally like completely In some sense, like, out of her hair because of how much time I was spending on this device.
Okay, so let's back up a little bit with regards to siblings.
Who do you have for siblings? I have an older brother and older sister.
Is it significantly older?
Five years with the brother and then two, three years with the sister.
Okay, and what was going on for you at school and when did that start?
Kindergarten, I was aggressive.
I got in a fight with a friend.
Was, I think, suspended then.
And then I got hurt a lot.
I've broken bones.
Got stitches all the time.
And then finally, fifth grade, I ended up teaching a bunch of the local kids how to run a command prompt on their computers so they could get into administrative access and change their grades on the local computers.
And then everyone ganged up and blamed it on me, and then I was suspended just because I didn't do it.
I never changed my grade.
I just showed them how to do it their way.
But apparently, they all lied and blamed it on me, and that was the first time I got suspended was fifth grade.
And then sixth, seventh grade, more suspension, sort of problems with teachers not learning.
Throughout all this, I was barely passing.
Now, let's just rewind a second.
I will bookmark sort of where you are, because you gave me a wee bit of a sob story there.
Well, I simply told the children and showed them in great detail how to change their grades, but I was in no way responsible for them changing their, come on.
I understand. You know, you and I, you know, this is past.
I'm not your principal. I'm not your mom.
But, I mean, I'm sorry, let me laugh.
Like if you heard a kid say that, you know, like somehow they all ended up blaming me for giving them the power to change their grades.
I mean, I get they did it.
That's true. But, you know, you showed them and you're a smart guy.
So you knew that showing kids how to change their grades would probably blow back pretty hard, right?
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's the problem.
There's still a piece of me upset that I got caught for it.
So, frustrating to realize.
Well, but you were going to get caught, right?
Absolutely. So, no, but this is confusing because you say, well, I'm frustrated that I got caught, but it was absolutely guaranteed that you were going to get caught because somebody was going to figure out that the grades were changed, right?
And then they were going to question the kid, and it's not like the kid would say, I'm never giving up my sauce, and be like, hey, it's him, right?
He told me how to do it.
He showed me how to do it, right?
So what you did there was something that was guaranteed to get you in trouble, and that you kind of tried to play a little bit of the victim there with me, right?
I did, yes. Now, as far as the ethics of changing grades and all of that, we'll put that aside, but just taking the normie perspective...
It's, you know, like you've watched these funny videos, right, on the internet and a lot of times it's like, you know, this guy, his firework wasn't working so he looked down the tube and you're like, well, come on, man. Are you going to blame the firework manufacturer for that?
So you taught kids incredibly, I mean, from the position of the teachers, right, incredibly disruptive and destructive stuff.
Causing them to have to change their policies and update their IT software and a lot of hassle, a lot of problems.
And, you know, someone's going to have to take the fall for that, right?
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Tell me about the fights and the injuries a little more, if you could.
The injuries were usually, like, self-inflicted, just me being, like, rambunctious and dumb and, like, falling off stuff and, like, getting hurt.
But the fights were just...
Like, imposing street playground rules of kids who wouldn't know how to play or just kind of dumb kid stuff, I guess.
Wait, I don't understand that. What do you mean?
Imposing playground rules?
What do you mean? You're playing a game, right, and everyone agrees or partially agrees on what a rule is in a playground when you're in kindergarten and someone doesn't play by the rules and so you take it upon yourself, myself, to sort of enforce the rules for kids who weren't playing by the rules.
So you both were a rule enforcer and a massive rule breaker, right?
Because the rules are don't change your scores, don't change your marks in the school computer, right?
So, hey, man, you've got to play by the rules.
Hey, here's how to break the rules completely.
Yeah. I mean, I never change my grades, but it kind of doesn't matter, does it?
No, it really doesn't. Because you were an agent of destruction there, right?
And also an agent of self-destruction because it was pretty guaranteed that you were going to get nabbed for that, right?
Yeah, for sure.
So... In talking about your injuries as you being rambunctious, I'm going to invite you down a couple of layers here because in this conversation, you're a bit of a surface guy.
And of course, if you wanted to call up for a surface conversation, you certainly wouldn't be calling me, right?
I assume you've listened to a bunch of these call-in shows, right?
Yeah. Okay.
If you repetitively get injured, it's because someone wants you hurt.
I would give you that straight up.
People aren't clumsy. People are laboring under a particular kind of hatred.
In other words, I would assume that there was someone in your life who significantly disliked you, and you were acting out that person's dislike by harming yourself to appease them.
You know, interestingly enough, there's a certain memory that pops up.
In close, I hope, relative context to that, I remember around that grade, 6th, 7th grade, I had broken my arm while playing soccer.
And my mother did not notice that it was broken for about two weeks.
And, you know, she always told everyone...
Yeah, she always told everyone I had a really high pain tolerance, quote-unquote pain tolerance.
Uh... And I kept complaining about my arm being, like, hurt.
Like, it definitely hurts.
This hurts a lot. Can we do something about it?
And nothing happened for about two weeks.
And then we went to the hospital, and it was broken.
Like, my wrist was broken. Wait, wait. Hang on.
So you fell on your arm, or you twisted your arm or something.
Yeah. And what did you...
And so you were in significant pain, right?
But, you know, it could be a bit of a sprain.
But even then, even a hairline fracture, you need to go and have it looked at, right?
Right. And so you go home, you say, this hurts, and it continues to hurt, it throbs, it keeps you up at night, and it's not improving in the way that it should if it's just a little sprain or something.
And you say to your mom, this really hurts, and she says, it's fine?
She says something along the lines of, you have a high pain tolerance, like, I don't know.
Hang on a second. No, hang on.
If she says you have a high pain tolerance, then she should take you to the hospital immediately.
Immediately. Right. Because I'm saying something.
Yeah, because you're saying if you have a really high pain tolerance and you're saying to your mom, this really kills, then like saying you have a high pain tolerance is the exact opposite of don't do anything.
Yeah, that's usually her excuse.
It would say like, oh, why did it take so long for you to notice?
It's like, oh, he has a high pain tolerance.
So once he finally said something, I knew it was time to go.
But it was already longer than what I assumed a normal amount of time to figure out you'd broken something.
Okay, so you're not being taught elemental self-care.
And listen, I understand this, and I'm obviously not trying to swap you and me in and out of this story, but when I look back when I was younger, the number of things I just sort of tried to walk off or the number of things, like just basic, not basic self-care stuff that happened, it's pretty appalling.
It's pretty appalling, and you're just not taught that basic self-care that you need, and there's a reason for that, right?
And the reason for that is that somebody dislikes you enough to want you hurt.
And you're just kind of complying with that.
I mean, if you have...
I mean, this is what's so strange, right?
If you have...
I'm putting myself in the shoes of the doctor here, right?
You... The mom comes in with the son and says, you know, he's kind of been complaining...
About his arm for a couple of weeks, but I didn't really do anything about it.
Didn't really care. I was busy.
You know, the younger the restless was on and I didn't really want to get off the couch.
And then the doctor looks at your arm and says, holy shit.
Maybe not holy shit.
Holy crap. This arm has been broken for two weeks.
Do you know what his next call should be?
Child Protective Services?
Yeah, fucking cops, right?
Right? Because this is a mother who has let a son...
I mean, you were, I mean, assuming it didn't give you any lasting deformity, so to speak, but this could have been a very, very serious thing.
Yeah, yeah, luckily I skated out with two, at least not, you know, permanent damage, permanent deformities.
My wrist still works. Right.
And I assume, of course, that...
No such call was made.
The police didn't come by. Nobody evaluated what the hell was going on in your household that your mom and your dad didn't take you to the doctor when you had a broken arm for two weeks.
Yeah. Nothing like that happened.
And what did your dad say about all of this?
I can't remember him saying anything about it.
You know, it was actually only a year after, like, more severely breaking the same arm.
I'd fallen off a slide and actually snapped both of the bones in that left arm, and then this was just a wrist, like a fracture, hairline fracture, so I don't have any specific memories of this.
Wait, sorry, the one you were just talking about where you said you broke your arm, that was a wrist fracture?
That was a wrist fracture, and the other two was two, like, actual snaps that we did go to the hospital immediately for, and I don't remember him saying anything after...
Okay, hang on a sec.
Okay, back the hell up. So, you said that your arm was broken, but now you're saying it was a wrist fracture.
My arm was broken from an injury a year prior, and that broke my arm.
And then this one, I think I was remembering.
No, no, no. Hang on. The two-week thing. Hang on. I'm not mad at you.
I'm just trying to sort of figure things out, right?
So you said that for two weeks you were complaining that your arm hurt and you said your arm was broken.
And then I think you just said it was a wrist fracture.
I believe it was a wrist fracture.
I don't think I remembered the break properly.
I think the injury itself was less severe than what I was remembering.
No, and listen. So what you're trying to do is you're trying to, in a sense, shock me.
Now, a wrist fracture is still pretty serious, right?
And obviously your mom should have had that looked at, but it's not quite the same as a broken arm in terms of parental emergency systems, right?
Yeah, you're right.
Again, I'm not criticizing.
I just sort of want to point out because I think what you're trying to do is I think that people have not given you sympathy for whatever hostility your parents may have had towards you.
And so if you kind of exaggerate a little bit, Their lack of care and concern, you probably get a reaction that is closer in line to your emotional experience, if that makes sense.
Yeah. Yeah.
And this is why I wanted to call in, because you're just so good at cutting through bullshit.
Well, I would say, you know, cry for understanding probably more than bullshit, but okay.
I mean, I'm not going to...
No, well, I don't know.
Yeah. I'm getting what I wanted when I called in, when I was expecting it.
Were there any other examples that sort of pop into your mind about a lack of care from your parents?
One of mine, believe it or not, just to share this sort of, my side was body odor.
When I was, you know, when you're a kid, you never smell, really, right?
I mean, you have to really work hard to smell as a kid.
You know, once you go through puberty and you get your funky male parts and so on, A friend of mine's father actually had to take me aside and say, you know, you're going to kind of need to wear some deodorant.
I hate to tell you, but, you know, he didn't say you're kind of stinking up the place.
He was a bit much more civilized and much more polite about it, but that basically was the place.
And, you know, it wasn't like his eyes were watering or anything like that and plants were dying when I walked past.
But that's kind of the basic lack of self-care that occurs when you're in a chaotic or abusive or dysfunctional household that, you know, people have to say to you, you have to wear some deodorant.
Of course, I couldn't smell myself because you really do smell yourself unless you go straight up in the armpits, but that's sort of an example of just a basic Lack of self-care that my mother didn't say, okay, well now that you're going through puberty, you need to make sure you wear some deodorant, you need to make sure this, that, and the other.
And I mean, she barely kept my clothes clean.
I remember going on a date with a girl that I picked up in a swimming pool and there were holes in my pants and I had to sort of sit on the bus and strategically put my Fingers on my pants.
I just didn't love to cover up the holes because, you know, I had that Beverly Hillbillies vibe going on there, right?
And so just, yeah, just basic lack of care.
And I went through a phase maybe a year or so where I was just itchy all the time.
And then I think somebody said, somebody's mom said, oh, you should, you know, maybe your skin's really dry.
You should use some lotion.
And thankfully that solved the problem.
But, you know, just a basic lack of...
Elementary feedback on what it is to be They have basics of self-care.
And that's something I've had to really work on over the course of my life is to notice and deal with things before they become a problem just because, you know, and again, I'm not trying to confuse our sort of, I'm not going to confuse you with this, but I just want to say like as far as not being taught basic self-care to the point where like if you're continually getting injured, it's really important for your parents to sit down and say, okay, let's step through your judgment process.
Let's figure out what's going on or my wife's mantra, safety first, safety first.
And that wasn't occurring as far as I can tell.
Yeah, you know, I can't specifically remember any conversations where I was like sat down and sort of taught any of those things, sort of deodorant, shaving, like proper hydration even, you know, how to make a meal for yourself when your parents weren't available, your mom wasn't available, anything like that.
So, yeah, I'm sorry about that, man.
Even the shaving thing, right?
Yeah. You had a dad in the house.
I didn't have a dad in the house. I had to learn how to shave.
I found an old magazine in the library, a Life magazine from like the 1960s, which had how to shave.
But you had a dad in the house.
Yeah. What the hell was he doing?
Ironically, he was on the internet all the time.
He was on his computer.
You know, one of the things that might be true for my analysis of my behavior as a kid is I was alone to the point that I would intentionally instigate anger from my father in order to get any attention at all because none was worse than Like, focused, I'm paying attention to you, yet I'm just mad at you.
Right. And we know that negative experiences are better than nothing from self-cutting, right?
Right. People who cut themselves.
And your form of self-cutting may have been, quote, accidental injuries, right?
Because then at least that got you some parental attention, right?
Some, yeah. Or teacher's attention or something, right?
And... So we know that people prefer negative experiences to no experience at all, to numbness, because numbness is death.
Negative experience, at least you know you're alive, right?
So what would you do with your dance?
How would you rouse him with that?
Oh, he would just be working on his computer and I would continuously bug him and pester him and mess with him and like throw things at him until he would be so livid he would get up from his desk, from his computer and, I don't know, retaliate or scream or yell or chase me down.
He was about 14, so about a year after.
Now, when you were a little younger than that, was he on the computer a lot or distracted a lot?
Could be TV, could be magazines, books, like just not with you, not paying attention.
Yeah, one of the earliest and largest fights I remember from my parents was my mom threw away some of his magazines that he was going to read at some point.
And so, yeah, he was very much consumed with media.
As well as she was.
He was more of a TV watcher.
He was more of an internet magazine newspaper guy.
Right. It's so sad, man.
It's just so fundamentally sad.
I mean, it's an old anger that I have.
So, again, take that for what it is.
It may not match your experience completely, but...
You know, your dad is like, you know what's really important?
These magazines. How about your kids?
No! These magazines are what's important.
And yet if you were to, you know, let's say he's having a birthday and you would send him a stack of magazines and say, here dad, you can sit these across from the table because they matter to you more than your children, he'd probably be livid, right? Yeah. Yeah.
But that's the fact.
You question their value system.
You're like, what are you valuing?
What is it about these things that you seem to value more than a relationship with your kids or me?
Right. What does this internet provide?
Yeah, my mom is old and lonely, right?
And isolated, and God knows she needs a lot of support, I imagine, at the moment, because she's a hypochondriac in the middle of a pandemic.
Just about the worst thing that could possibly occur, and something from communism might end up inside her body, I believe, not for the first time, because I think she was assaulted by communists as a child.
But here's the thing, right?
So she would regularly...
She'd have these dates. She'd have little ads in newspapers sort of back in the day.
You didn't have internet dating.
You'd put an ad in a newspaper and she'd meet these guys and they'd invite her to go visit.
I remember once she went down.
She went down to Houston for two weeks.
I was 12 and she left me alone.
I was 12 years old.
She left me alone for two weeks and she left me 30 bucks.
Yeah, you'll figure it out.
Yeah, good luck. Yeah, sure.
You got two kidneys, just sell one.
I mean, what's the big deal, right?
And yeah, I mean, I ran out of food after a couple days and I just, I had to hang around my friends' places around dinner time just hoping.
Just hoping they'd say, hey, why don't you stay for dinner, right?
I'd just be hanging around.
Sometimes they did, sometimes they said, you better run on home and it'd be like, okay, I'll go home.
And you'd be hungry.
And then, you know, maybe you fail a test because you're so hungry and then you get consequences, right?
So anyway, I mean, the point of that, you know, semi-tragic story is that these guys who she was constantly trying to attach to, right?
Because she was getting older and she wanted to, Blanche Dubois, she wanted to Lock a man down and have him, you know, either marry her or marry her so she could divorce him and take his money or whatever was going on in that belfry she called her brain.
And she was not paying much attention to me because she was on the prowl, right?
She was on the hunt. I need a man!
You know, that Annie Lennox song was like her thing, right?
And to me... It's like, okay, hey, you know, you want company?
I mean, you've got dozens of boyfriends you can call.
You know, maybe you remember the name of that guy in Houston and you can just give him a shout, right?
Give him a call. I'm sure he'll be happy to drop whatever he's doing and come and take care of you now you're very, very old.
Right. Right?
She's got, you know, the boyfriends, the men, they're always more important.
So, you know, she's a hoarder.
She's kept all the paperwork.
She's got their names.
She probably has their numbers. I'm sure those numbers have changed, but you can find people pretty easily on the internet now.
So she can just, she can call.
You can call the guy in Houston.
And she can say, hey, do you remember me from like maybe 42, 43 years ago?
I came out for two weeks.
In Houston, well, I wonder, you know, if you could just come over and, you know, help take care of me and maybe I could use a little bit of money and I could use some conversation and so on.
And the guy would be like, wait, the what now?
I barely remember you.
Why on earth are you calling me?
Call your kids. Like, oh, uh...
That's not really going to work out, right?
Because, you know, I'm just like, all I do, I respect people's priorities, man.
I respect their priorities.
And I'm talking about you, obviously, in this situation as well, right?
I'm not telling you what to do. I'm just telling you my particular perspective on these things.
I respect my mom's priorities.
I respect my mom's priorities.
So she regularly abandoned me to go chase after men.
So these men were more important than me.
I respect that priority, man.
I don't agree with that. I think it's a bad priority.
I will not interfere with that priority.
So because these men were more important than me, and I know this not just in terms of her going to Houston or Vancouver once or just other places, right?
And I know what these guys were flying her out for, and I know that they had no intention of marrying her.
I get all of that, right? She was just a fling, right?
I mean, I get all of that, right?
But she'd be, like, screaming at me, purple-faced, right?
Top of her lungs, crazy batshit stuff, right?
And then the phone would ring.
You ever see this? I'm sure you saw this with your parents screaming at each other, right?
So my mom would be screaming at me over some bullshit, right?
And then the phone would ring.
And have you ever seen this, like, complete night and day thing that goes on with people?
Absolutely, yeah. She'd be screaming at me.
You'd think she's completely lost her mind.
The phone would ring. Hi!
Hi! It's so good to hear from you.
Oh, it's great to hear from you.
How are you?
You know, like, holy whiplash, man.
That is freaky stuff.
It's like the biggest spit in the face because it shows so...
So, like, concretely how they can behave towards someone.
It's like, you don't have to behave that way towards me when you don't want to.
You're choosing... Yeah, she's not.
She was never out of control. She was never out of control.
Because the moment, the moment someone came along, she'd be all sugar and spice, right?
Yeah, that's like worse than someone who has like...
Like, oh, I have an anger issue, I can't control myself, or whatever.
You're uncontrolled. Versus like, no, I have complete ability to behave the way I'd like to, either butter or not.
Butter or fire. And it's like, I choose to treat you like literal swine.
I mean, I'm so mean to laugh, but I mean, I would have respected her a million times more.
If she's screaming at me, the phone rings, she picks up the phone and says, shut the fuck up, I'm screaming at my kid, rips the phone out of the wall and throws it over the balcony.
I'd be like, okay, you are a pure life form.
You have integrity.
You are not kidding.
You are not fooling. But this complete 180 of like...
Like, that is completely bewildering as a child because you think they're out of control.
And then you see them immediately assume perfect control and be sweet as sugar to someone else.
And it's like, okay, so you treated me like shit, but these guys got your gold.
These guys got your best behavior.
Okay, well then, now you're old and lonely.
Give them a call. I mean, you burnt these bridges, but you were really nice to these men, so good luck getting all the comfort you need in your old age from them, because they mattered to you.
They meant something to you.
You cared about them.
Me? Nah.
You could treat me like crap, but them?
They got your best side, so...
I respect, you know, I've told this story before about how she beat me, felt like half to death at the time because I left a little white ring on a night table or a little dresser or something like that because, you know, I put a cup down.
I was playing with a friend. I put a cup of water down and left that little white ring.
And the white ring faded.
It didn't matter at all, but she just was completely freaked out and beat me half to death, it felt like.
And so the little dresser, that mattered to her.
I was just a punching bag, but that little dresser mattered to her.
And now she still has that little dresser.
It's still by her bed.
And now she can look at that little dresser that can keep her comfort in her old age because that was her priority.
I respect the priorities, man.
I respect the priorities. I love that perspective.
I really do love that perspective where you're almost like stoically indifferent to other people's value systems as like your ability to change them.
You're aware of them. You don't condone them if you don't agree with them.
But you're like, Okay, that's what you think is valuable.
What am I going to do about it?
I don't agree. I don't like it.
I'm an empiricist. I know exactly what my mother and my late father, I know exactly what they chose over me.
So they should have that.
Look, I'm not going to go and take that little dresser away from my mom.
At all. I'm not going to go through her papers and find the names and addresses of these guys from long ago.
That's her value. That's what she wanted.
She chose to indulge her temper.
She would scream at me. She would hit at me.
And she really, really defended the dresser and attacked me.
And she was really nice to these guys and brutal towards me.
So I'm not indifferent to it.
I'm not. I'm not indifferent to it at all.
It's just, you know, you take what you...
This is what the market is, the free market.
You take what you want and you pay for it.
Nothing is free. Nothing is...
I don't subsidize. Right.
I don't subsidize anyone or anything.
In other words, I don't believe in government subsidies.
Right. I don't believe in protectionist tariffs.
I don't believe in exclusionary licenses because I don't subsidize.
And my mother very clearly told me what was important to her.
Strange men and cabinetry.
I know that sounds kind of funny.
I mean, it's so long ago now.
It's not like I'm seething with rage about it.
But what was important to her were distant dicks and cabinetry.
Carpentry... And rhymes with rocks, right?
So that's, you know, I guess, various forms of wood.
Well, this is dark comedy, man, but, you know, it's still kind of funny to me, right?
So various forms of wood, lack it or not, were what my mom prioritized.
She was like a dryad.
Oh, there's an old joke.
So, I'm not going to interfere with that.
I'm not going to pretend those weren't her priorities.
And... I'm not going to interfere with that.
I'm not going to pretend that that wasn't the case.
I'm not going to subsidize it.
I'm not going to take those things away from her because that's what she wanted.
Now, she may look, and the reason we talked about this, of course, talking about this is because of your dad, right?
So your dad was like, I've really got to read this magazine article.
Okay? Yeah. Okay, so that's what he cared about.
Now, I'm not saying be indifferent to it because it's your dad and it's you and it matters, right?
But being an empiricist means you don't put your wish list on top of reality, right?
Being an empiricist is you got a weird lump, get that shit biopsy and find out what the hell it is, right?
You're a young man. You don't know what the hell I'm talking about, right?
But the older guys are like, hey, you got some weird skin lump?
Go get that shit biopsy and find out what the hell it is, right?
Yeah. But you don't just sit there and wish and hope, right?
You're an empiricist. And if it comes back nothing, fantastic.
If it comes back something, you've got to go get it scraped and you've got to get a skin graft maybe or whatever it is, if it's cancer or something.
So you've got to just be an empiricist.
An empiricist is, okay, for 20 years your parents have told you what they value.
And all you have to do is listen to it and accept it.
And it hurts, right?
I'm not saying be like some weird, like not feeling person about it.
It hurts. But it's the truth.
It's the truth. My mom valued strangers above me because she might be snarling and pulling me along, but then the moment if we got to the restaurant and there was a waiter, she'd be super sweet with the waiter.
I remember she was snarling at me about some stupid bullshit, and then we were at this pretty trashy restaurant in the old Don Mills Mall before it was torn down, and she really liked the fish.
She got fish and chips, right? She really liked the fish, and she says, I want to see the chef.
And I remember this darkhead, tall, slightly chubby guy came out like bewildered.
Like he spent three days in chef school or something and he probably just put something out of a freezer and fried it up in some leftover McDonald's oil or something that they found in the parking lot.
And she's like, this fish is wonderful.
I wish to praise you for your culinary skills.
And she was like lighthearted and charming and funny.
And this was like five minutes before.
She'd been yanking me along in the parking lot enraged about some stupid thing that neither of us could probably remember if you paid us a million dollars to try, right?
So some strange chef, she's never going to meet again.
And you understand, you know, right?
It's part of the humiliation.
I can be nice to everyone except you.
That's part of the sadism, right?
It's the worst part.
It is, but in a sense, it's the best part because it's so liberating.
Because it's like, okay, if everyone gets your good behavior except me, that takes me completely off the hook as far as taking care of you in your old age because everyone can take care of you now.
Everyone else. Because you said everyone else matters more to you than me.
So great. The rest of the world...
You know, and I used to get, you know, when we had this old community server, people used to bitch at me from time to time, well, you really should take care of your mother.
She's lonely. I'm like, hey, man, I'll give you her number.
Yeah, go for it. Yeah, like, I trust you.
She'll be nicer to you than she is to me.
Yeah. So there's nothing to stop, like, so my mom is like, everyone else matters more than you.
And it's like, okay, I accept that.
I accept that. I really do.
I accept that. Now, I also accept the basis that it's power, right?
Because I didn't have the power to leave, whereas these other men had power over her because they could reject her.
Right? I don't know what the hell was going on with that cabinetry, the dresser.
I'll never figure it out. It doesn't matter.
And I'll never know because she'll never tell me the truth.
I don't ever talk to her again. But I just...
I just accept that The people who didn't have to be in my mom's life got the best behavior out of her.
Whereas I, who as a child was trapped there, got treated like shit.
So I totally understand that if I get into my mom's life out of a sense of entrapment and obligation, she will once more treat me like shit.
Like there's no possibility that anything would be different because I had, I don't know, 40 years or 35 years of experience of that, right?
Like if you're there because of obligation, she has power over you and because power corrupts, she'll treat you like shit.
But if you don't have to be in her life, Then she'll treat you pretty well.
And so for me, I'm the drug that makes her act badly.
Or rather, to be more specific, power over me is the drug that makes her act badly.
I'm actually making her a better person by not being in her life in the same way that you don't enable a drunk and go out and pick up his alcohol and give it to him.
That just makes him a worse drunk.
You don't enable that kind of behavior.
It's a kindness to my mother for me not to be in her life because she can't handle the power she has over me as a mother and it turns her into someone she herself hates.
She hates herself when she behaves that way.
She just, in the same way a drug addict hates himself when he behaves, takes the drug or whatever, he hates himself and hates the person who got the drug and hates the person who gave him the drug.
It's the only chance for my mother to have a decent life is to not have me in her life because she can't handle the power of being a parent.
She just makes her into a much worse person and I withhold that drug from her and it really is an act of kindness and I know that sounds kind of… Odd, but it is an actual act of kindness because she would not be able to help herself in terms of how she would deal with me because she's just never learned how to handle power.
I mean, very few of us can, and I can't either, which is why I don't do this.
I'm sorry to talk about myself so much, but the question is sort of addiction and addiction.
With regards to your parents, okay, so you've had some, I think we've had some synchronicity in what we've been talking about, and I'm sorry because I've been talking so much, but tell me some of the things that, empirically speaking, right, not I felt like, but, you know, empirically speaking in terms of things you could judge objectively or anyone looking at the situation would see it.
What are the things that your parents held as a higher value than you?
Hmm. You know, I had an interesting revelation where my mom's cell phone camera broke or something, and I was going through her pictures.
And I like to think that people who are, you know, a little bit older, when they take pictures of something, they really find that thing is valuable.
And while going through the pictures, you know, I had this stark, like, concrete, holy shit, What she's taking picture of is what she actually values, and it was literally like food that she bought, never made, her nails, like really expensive like nail art, fingernail art, getting her hair done, and like all of her friends.
You know, I can't remember going through like years of pictures on an SD drive on her cell phone seeing Any of me, specifically.
I think there was a couple of my sister, but none of me at all.
And it was like, wow.
This is what you value.
You go out of your way to make a memory of it by taking a picture, and I'm not there.
At all. I get some of this stuff, but I don't know.
If as men we can pierce this feminine mystery, whether it's even a good idea to try.
Are you saying she took pictures of food she bought?
Right, like restaurant food.
She never made food.
One thing that me and my brother slowly began to realize is that we were always hungry as kids.
And we would eat like garbage, like frozen meals we thought were the best thing ever because that's what we ate most of the time.
I remember going through the woods when I was locked out, going through the woods thinking, I'm pretty sure I saw a stream here and I'm so thirsty.
Yeah. Yeah, the hungry thing is pretty rough because it also gives you a lifelong relationship to food that's kind of messed up, right?
You always want to overeat because I remember the first time a friend of mine's mother took me to Ponderosa with him.
Ponderosa is like this all-you-could-eat place.
All-you-could-eat, all-you-could-drink.
And I just gorged myself to the point where I felt like a beached whale.
Because, you know, when food is slim, do you ever have this?
Like, you get feast or famine, man.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I remember one night, one morning, me and my brother were spending over at my dad's place.
My dad's remarried with basically the mom I wish I had.
Our stepmom is wonderful.
And when we woke up, she asked, what would you guys like to eat?
And my brother started crying because he had never had someone just openly, lovingly offer him to make food.
Right. Right.
That's amazing.
That's amazing. So it was all frozen food for you guys.
And how old were you when your parents split?
Fifteen. Fourteen, fifteen.
And do you remember, was there a precipitating thing like an affair or did they just wear each other out?
My dad claims that my mom cheated.
She denies it.
I mean, he tells me that she told him, but again, I don't know.
Right. And I assume that they hadn't been getting along for some time?
No, ever since I can remember, they disliked each other.
Disliked? Yeah, like hated.
Like screamed and yelled. How pretty was she?
Not... I mean, well, I don't know.
It's kind of a hard question because it's your mom, but...
I've never seen a really pretty woman with fancy nails, by the way.
Yeah, well, okay, so...
I think she was...
She was not ugly.
But she wasn't super attractive.
Like a six? I'd say a solid six, yeah.
Solid six. How solid?
Can't you fit through a doorway?
No, I'm just kidding. Well, that was weird because she ended up losing a ton of weight.
You know, my dad complained, like, why, you know, I know we're married and we, like, don't have to try anymore, I guess, but, like, can we try to be healthy or something, I think was the argument he had, and then She refused to and gained a lot of weight over a few years, and then within a year and a half, she lost all of the weight.
She got super skinny and then started disappearing and spending long nights and golfing with work friends, and then that's when it all sort of fell apart.
Wait, she lost a lot of weight while she was still married to your dad?
A ton of weight, yeah.
Yeah, that's probably an affair then, right?
Yeah. And I think she was using some attention deficit disorder drugs that I was prescribed to help her lose the weight.
Wait, she was taking your script?
Yeah. Yeah, because with Adderall, with amphetamines, you lose appetite.
I'm trying to find something redeeming about your mom.
I'm working, man. I'm working hard here, but it's like Black Cat in a coal cellar at midnight underground.
I'm not finding much of a gleam here.
An interesting story about the whole...
The time I actually snapped my arm and fell off the bridge, this didn't take two weeks to find out.
The story, every time she told this story to one of her friends, the punchline to the story was...
The sound my bones made when they were being reset and how it made her feel gross.
Like, that was the punchline.
Was not, my child is in screaming agony while they reset his broken bones.
It was, they made a gross, icky squish sound and I almost fainted.
Oh, man. Well, that's about as honest as you need her to be, right?
Unbelievable. How I felt when my son was in agony.
Wow. So I'm guessing not much redeeming stuff going on there.
No, and I'm not blinded by, you know, I'm not fighting to try to build a relationship with her or I'm not really under any spell or, you know, there's almost nothing that she has control of in my life now because I've Oh no, you're under a spell. No, no, no.
Let's not fool ourselves about that.
You are under a spell and it's exactly what you talked about at the beginning, right?
The internet addiction.
That's the spell. Absolutely.
How the hell did your father go from bad wife to good wife?
You said to praise your stepmom.
What happened there? Well, I think he went to hell and back himself.
He... He got extremely depressed.
He was living out of his car while commuting to an extremely high-end IT project management job and just had a really, really rough time for a long time and somehow, I think, built himself back from the brink of destruction, I guess. I don't really know.
Was it a bad divorce?
Yeah, it was horrible.
He was completely isolated from the whole family.
My mom still had a spell over all of us kids, making us think that the entire problem was his fault.
I'm not confused to think that he participated in the problem, but she whipped up a total he is the bad guy No one.
We can't talk to him.
He's evil. And so complete isolation from all of his kids.
Yeah, it's funny.
I don't...
Because I'm not a female, I don't know how it's remotely credible.
There's this woman who...
Kind of obsessively posts on Facebook, always nagging and criticizing and so on.
And she claims that she was instrumental in getting me off YouTube or something like that.
Anyway, so she was complaining about some guy who just seemed to be wonderful and then turned into a real monster.
And I'm like, well, I mean, you chose him.
This idea that women have no capacity to detect quality from malevolence.
But yeah, sure, let's give them the vote.
They have no idea how to figure out who's a good guy and who's a terrible guy.
But yeah, let's give them the vote, right?
Yeah, I definitely believed it at the time.
You know, the big argument was like, Why does he care so much about his stuff?
Our house was pretty full of junk, and very considerably full of junk, and the biggest fights we had as a family were trying to get rid of his junk that he kept on.
And that's part of that value system, which was like, why do you care so much about what we perceive and what seems very objectively a bunch of shit compared to a relationship with your kids?
Or just a comfortable and pleasant environment for them to live in.
Yeah, or even that.
Yeah, exactly. But, yeah, slowly I've been able to sort of break down and try to get rid of a lot of the pre-existing relationship patterns that we had, me and my dad, of how horrible we treated each other and how our value systems were garbage.
I don't know. Sorry, you said how horrible we treated each other and we haven't really talked much about your dad.
What do you mean there? Well, the whole, like, I would go out of my way to piss him off just to get his attention was pretty consistent.
There was very little respect.
There was very little intimate, emotional communication.
We didn't talk about anything meaningful.
I never talked about girls that I was interested in.
Very little or none? None. Okay, that's a very, very big difference.
Yeah. And, sorry, that is a very, very big difference, because it's sort of like the difference between, like, if somebody's pretending to be blind, but every now and then they catch a fly ball, that's a whole lot of difference from they never saw, right?
Somebody... It's a huge difference, right?
And I just wanted to map that.
So, but, sorry, go ahead. Yeah, I don't...
I definitely...
I don't know. We had a lot of time around each other, but I definitely needed more than what he was providing in terms of emotional connection.
Can you think of any guidance that he gave you or any words of advice or wisdom or insight or anything that he gave you even up to the present?
Up to now, yes.
There's been some very, very good emotional connection relationship type that we've been building recently.
I'm sort of talking up to the point of about maybe two years ago where a lot of old baggage shed off and we sort of stopped behaving like we used to and he's been very helpful to assist me in giving me wisdom and talking about relationships and talking about career and shit like that.
But not in cracking this internet thing?
No, no. He...
I haven't figured out a way to figure it out, and he doesn't have any idea either.
Right. I mean, he actually went out of his way to find me my first psychologist, because I was sort of at a loss, and I couldn't bring myself to actually go up and sign up to go get a counselor, and he found one for me.
Right, right.
And what's the status of things with your mom at the moment?
I don't need to talk to her if I don't want to.
There's nothing that she provides that is sort of holding me to forcibly have a relationship with her.
I've come out and told her that I feel like I don't have any real connection with you.
Every conversation we have is empty and emotionless, and I feel like I don't even know who you are.
Yeah, I don't...
I don't know...
If I even should pursue a developing relationship, I sort of come to a conclusion that I remember you saying with your mother where after a certain point in trying, you get sort of content with the fact that you're not going to change them or something along those lines.
Yeah, okay. So do you mind if we just do a quick role play because I'm not getting a strong sense of where your mom is at at the moment?
Yeah. Alright, so let's just pretend...
So, Mom, remember you asked me to have a look at your phone because your camera wasn't working?
Yeah. So, I certainly didn't mean to scour through everything, but I kind of needed to see what was on the phone, and I just kind of noticed in looking at your pictures, there's pictures of food, there's pictures of nails, your nails, there's pictures of your friends.
I don't think I found one picture of me.
Can you help me understand that?
I'm a little bit at a loss.
I'm not saying every picture's got to be of me, but not even in the background.
What's up with that? I'm supposed to tell you what I think she would say to that?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just be her.
You're not around...
I'm not good about taking pictures of things.
Oh, no, no. You haven't come down in a while.
Mom, mom, mom. Okay.
Don't do that. Okay?
Don't give me this crap.
I'm not saying this with hatred, but it's annoying.
Okay? So first of all, you say, I'm not around.
I am around. I'm around enough that you should have a couple of pictures of me.
And second, you say I'm not good at taking pictures of things.
First of all, I'm not a thing.
And secondly, there's tons of pictures of things on your phone.
I just mentioned a whole bunch of them.
So how about we start again that answer and just try and not give me this glib nonsense, okay?
So why do you think that you don't have any pictures of me for years on your phone?
There's no way I could get her to admit...
That she doesn't fucking put time or effort into building or developing a relationship with me.
No, but what would she say if I, as you, would have said that?
Like, just push back on the nonsense she gave.
She would blame it on me.
She would blame it on me.
This has happened before. She would say, well, you don't put in the effort or something.
I remember I confronted her about this, you know, like, Okay, no, no, no.
Let's stay with the roleplay, because I need to sort of get a sense of who she is.
Okay, so she'd say, what would she say if I said, but there aren't, okay, you do take pictures of lots of things, and I'm not a thing, and I am around, so what is the real reason, or what's really going on with these no pictures of me on the phone?
I'm super busy.
You don't put in the effort to be around.
You don't put in the time. So, are you saying that it's my fault that for years you've not taken a single picture of me?
Yeah, that's what she would say.
Okay. Well, help me understand that.
How is it my fault that you don't take any pictures of me, even though I am around?
I've certainly been around many times over the last couple of years or five years or whatever, right?
Why do you think you've never taken a picture of me?
You understand it's a little disturbing to me that you've got lots of pictures of your food and your nails and your friends, but not one single picture of your youngest-born son.
There's a couple of my sister, but...
Not the oldest or the youngest son.
It's a little disturbing to me, and I'm just, you know, maybe there's some reason I can't figure out, but, you know, please don't tell me it's my fault.
That's kind of insulting. It's your phone, and I'm around, and you don't take pictures of me.
I don't know. So what's going on?
I've definitely never laid it out that word before.
But it is disturbing to you, right?
Yeah, it fucking sucks, man.
When I first saw that, it was...
horrible.
Right. And I don't mean to diminish the horribleness of it, but it's seriously fucking liberating.
Yeah. You know, your mom ever calls you up and says, I'm lonely.
You just say, hey, mom, look at your fucking nails.
You'll be fine. Yeah.
You know, just call Uber and get them to deliver what you care about, which is some food.
Yep. You can look at the food and you'll be fine, because that's what you care about.
Your nails, your food. Your hair.
You don't need me. Your new style of hair.
Yeah, you know, just go to the hairdressers, you'll be fine.
And she will be. Yep.
Because all the bad decisions, you know, that people make, all the bad decisions that people make, I don't need sunscreen.
All the bad decisions that people make.
They get older, they kick themselves, and they ask for it, right?
But it's important to honor those decisions.
And not to subsidize.
You made your bed. You made your bed. You lie in it, right?
If you smoke the shit out of your lungs, I'm not donating a lung.
I honor your decision.
You chose to smoke. I honor your decision.
If you chose... To put stupid beauty and vanity and the color of your nails above actually interacting with your children.
Hey man, I honor your decision.
It's not the decision I would make.
It's not the decision I have made.
But I honor your decision.
I respect what you...
I don't respect the content of the choices that you made, but I respect the form of the fact that you made choices.
Yeah. Right? You are free to not use sunscreen, but then later, if you get skin cancer, you know, you take what you want and you pay for it.
You didn't have the hassle or expensive sunscreen.
Right? I mean, look, I think about this from time to time, like the thousands of hours I've spent exercising over the years, right?
And, you know, there are people who were like, oh man, you know, my bones are thin.
Like, yeah, he sat on the couch.
I respect that decision.
I respect, and I know it sounds weird because it sounds like I think it was a good decision.
I don't mean that. It means I respect your decision.
I will not work to interfere with your decision.
I will let you accept the consequences of your decision for good or for bad.
If people say, I spent my money on stupid shit rather than save it, and then, hey, come the pandemic, I'm out of money.
It's like, hey, but you had the stupid shit.
I didn't. I saved.
I'm a saver. I'm not quite a hoarder, but I'm a saver.
Hey, man, I respect your decision.
You had fun, didn't you? You went to Cabo and you picked up weird shoes that you never wear and you got weird, funky, half-tarantula eyelashes that apparently are important in some alternate universe that I don't understand.
Hey, I respect that decision.
Instead of saving for a condo, you bought shoes.
Okay, I respect that decision.
You got a bunch of shoes. But you don't get the fucking condo too, you understand?
Because that's not respecting your decision.
You took photos of your food.
Go ahead. You're giving everyone complete responsibility.
You're in charge of your decisions.
Look, I don't...
I don't have the power...
It sounds so ridiculous, but it's important for you, right?
I don't have the power of time travel.
Right. Right.
If somebody says, oh shit, I got skin cancer, it's like, did you ever use sunscreen?
Oh, no. Okay.
Guess what? I can't go back in time and put sunscreen on you 30 years ago.
Right. I am obese and my bones are brittle.
I might break my shins climbing the stairs.
That sucks. I'm sorry, man.
That's really tough. But...
You made the decision to overeat, and you made the decision to not exercise.
I mean, maybe one times out of ten, I really like to exercise.
Most of the times, it's just a stupid thing that you have to do, right?
And I would love to stuff my face with all the sugary, salty, crappy, fatty crap in the known universe because we're all hardwired for that, but you've got to say no.
Mm-hmm. So people, like, they don't exercise and they overeat like crazy.
I don't have, like, people complain about it.
It's like, I don't, like, why would you, you're complaining about the decisions you made.
I guess I can show some sympathy, but I can't change any.
I can't go back in time and tell you to put down the Cheetos and get off the couch 20 years ago when it might have made more of a difference.
I can't do that. Now, those people, of course, unfortunately, they run to me and they say, well, you've got to pay for my health care or I'm going to have the government throw you in jail, right?
Okay, that's kind of an asshole move, right?
Because they're not respecting my decision to save and exercise and eat well and all of that, right?
They're not respecting those decisions.
They're just violating all of that and saying, I want, I want, I need, I need, which is the same greed for my money that gave them the fat ass in the first place, right?
Mm-hmm. It's the same greed for the greed for calories then transforms into the greed for the unearned, my money, right?
And so, like, with regards to your mom, with regards to my mom, I don't have the power to go back in time and make her a halfway decent mother.
I just, I don't have that. I can't travel through time.
Right. Everything in the past...
It's utterly, completely, and totally unalterable.
Now, I know that's a really boring thing to say, but if we really understand that, if we really get that, it's incredibly liberating.
Yeah, go ahead.
All the potential tentacles of, oh, maybe if this happened, or maybe if this was the way it could have gone, or all this other garbage that you think about of like...
Trying to hypothesize a better past is just cut, like immediately cut the ties because you know that it's not going to change.
It's not going to change and people will always try and rewrite the past.
Always try to rewrite the past.
Yeah. People like bad people will always say, oh, that didn't happen.
You misunderstood it. We did the best with the knowledge we had.
I had it tougher than you.
They always try and rewrite the past.
Always try to rewrite the past.
But let me ask you this. Okay, let me ask you this, right?
So let's say that your mom weighed 300 pounds, right?
And I don't know what it's...
I have no idea what size dress 300 pounds is, right?
But it's not a zero, right?
It's not a zero. Yeah. Okay, so let's say your mom is 300 pounds, right?
And you want to buy her a dress for her birthday, right?
So you go to the store and you say, I want a size zero, right?
And then you get a size zero and your mom unpacks it, holds it up, and maybe she could wear it on one of her arms, right?
But she sure as hell can't wear it on her bloated torso, right?
Right. Now, how would your mother perceive you giving her a size zero dress when she's 300 pounds?
She thinks I want her to be skinnier.
Well, she'd be really angry and offended and upset and what are you trying to tell me and you know how much this hurts me and all this stuff, right?
Right. See, now that's an example of how destructive it is to deny the simple fucking empiricism of history.
Which is that your mom didn't exercise and overate like crazy.
Right. So you showing up with a size zero dress is like you pretending to love someone who hurt you.
You're denying the empiricism of past decisions in the present.
The empiricism of the past decisions to not exercise or to eat too much means she's 300 pounds.
Now, if she had ate well, And exercise, she might be a size zero, right?
Or a size two or whatever, right?
Whatever size, it doesn't really matter, but less than 300 pounds, right?
So if you show up and pretend to like someone who hurt you, that's exactly the same as showing up with a size zero dress for someone who's 300 pounds.
In other words, you're saying, okay, I'm going to pretend in the present that you didn't make all the shitty decisions you made in the past.
So you show up with a size zero and you're saying, I'm going to pretend that you didn't Overeat and under-exercise for 20 years.
I'm going to pretend you made better decisions in the past, even though the empirical evidence in the past and the present is incontrovertible, like you're overweight, right?
You're obese. So showing up with affection to people who've harmed you, exploited you, abused you, ignored you, neglected you, particularly parents, showing up with pretend affection to people who've harmed you, Is this greater denial of the choices of history as showing up with a size zero dress to a woman of 300 pounds?
Yeah, you're just lying.
You're just lying to yourself.
You're just lying to everyone.
It's so real.
It's unreal. It's so bizarre.
It seems common.
I don't want to diminish the fact that I participate, but it seems common.
It's massively common. It's massively common.
This kind of boils down to a piece of why I think I got into the internet addiction in the first place.
I was escaping from the reality.
I was buying a smaller dress for the fat, obese catastrophe that was my neglect and parental relationships.
I was hiding and escaping.
Yeah, I think there's some of that for sure.
And obviously my opinions are not any kind of facts, right?
I'm just telling you my particular thoughts, right?
So, fundamental problem that men have, which is, if you don't want the life your father had, you have a huge job ahead of you.
Now, how old was your father when he divorced your mom?
Uh... 55? Holy shit.
Yeah, something like that. Holy shit.
Not the youngest dad on the planet.
Yeah, he had me when he was 40.
Yeah, yeah. Hey, I sympathize.
I can relate, man.
Okay, so 55 is like almost 35 years from now for you, right?
Yeah. So your dad fucked everything up until he was 55, right?
I guess that's the story, yeah.
No, tell me if I'm wrong.
Tell me if I'm wrong. I don't mean that challenging.
You dare tell me. Honestly, correct me if I'm wrong.
So fucked everything up as having just like picked the wrong partner and not had a functioning relationship with child or partner or his wife.
I don't count making a couple of bucks, or even more than a couple of bucks, as anything to do with success.
Fucking Howard Hughes was one of the richest men on the planet, and he walked around with 14-inch fingernails with his feet in fucking Kleenex boxes, okay, and bottling his own urine.
So being wealthy, I mean, look at Bill Gates, for God's sakes, or look at, what, Steve Jobs, didn't he deny cancer treatments because he thought fruit would cure him?
I mean, the money doesn't mean shit.
Ella Fitzgerald was pretty well off and she still ate so much and didn't exercise they had to cut her legs off.
Jesus. Wealth is far from a marker of sanity or happiness.
Jeff Bezos got divorced.
It's happening all over all the time, right?
Paul McCartney married the one-legged wonder who took him for hundreds of millions of dollars.
Ringo Starr was just about one of the worst husbands in the known universe.
Guy was wealthy, popular, beyond things we could conceive of.
So yeah, if he made some money, okay, so what?
He still ended up living in a car, right?
So he fucked everything up, as far as I can tell, until at least 55.
And then, you know, it took him a couple of years after the divorce.
And so finally, when he's pushing 60, he marries a decent woman, right?
Yep.
Oh, right.
Okay.
Okay.
So, and again, I'm not trying to impose a view upon you.
I'm perfectly happy to be corrected.
But a man who chooses a terrible wife, a terrible mother for his children, who doesn't even notice that his son has a pretty wicked wrist fracture, who doesn't get a wake-up call that your son was walking around with chipped bones for two weeks in the house, A guy who hoards, a guy who has a huge bitter fight because his wife threw out some shitty old magazines he never was going to read anyway, let's be frank.
Most people who hoard never end up using that shit at all.
Yep. And ignored his kids.
I mean, you tell me a great decision that your dad made before he was 55.
I'm happy to hear it. I mean, genuinely, I would really be overjoyed to hear it.
One line he tells me is that he stayed married because he thought that getting divorced earlier would have been worse for us as kids.
He thought about getting divorced earlier when we were younger and he thought that trying to make as much stability as he could manage for as long as he could was arguably better than getting divorced when we were younger.
Total bullshit, man. I'm so sorry.
I really don't want to sound like I've downed your dad.
But total bullshit.
Here's the thing. So if you're going to say, well, I'm going to stay married for the sake of stability, then have a stable fucking marriage.
Right. Don't have some low-rent, trailer-parked, trash-head scream-fest.
Right? If you're going to stay together for the sake of the kids, for stability, then have a stable marriage.
Don't scream at your wife because she threw out some shitty old magazines.
That's not good. That's not creating stability for your children.
And if he's really interested in doing what's good for the children, why the hell did he have his nose deep in computer screens and magazines instead of interacting with his kids?
Well, I did what I did for the sake of the children.
Really? Then why are you screaming at your wife and why are you ignoring your children?
No, no. That's some retroactive excuse bullshit.
Yeah, I didn't really buy it. And it probably has something to do with generating guilt or obligation in you.
Yeah. Could be.
Because if he had succeeded in his goal, he wouldn't afford as much with his wife and he'd have spent more time with his kids.
But if the magazines and the hoarding and the fighting were more important than his kids, he can't say, well, you see, I stayed married for the sake of the children because my children's needs were so important to me.
Sorry, go ahead. That's still one of the biggest arguments that we have to this date is like, how did you fuck up so bad picking her?
You know, because like, we have in-depth conversations of all of the horrible things and how poorly she treated him and us, and I'm like, You picked her.
I don't know why I want to feel sympathetic for you.
Let me talk to your dad, if you don't mind, because I need to get a map of this person too, right?
Okay, so if you, if me as you, were to say to your dad, okay, dad, we talked a lot of shit about mom, and I get that, and she did some bad stuff and all of that, but why did you ignore us so much?
Why did you have your nose in computer screens and magazines and all this kind of crap instead of spending time with us as kids?
He would blame her.
He would say, oh, she pushed me so hard to make more money that I had to work all the time.
And then I would say, and just roleplay him, it's a little easier, right?
And then I would say, but Dad, that's not what I said.
So some of the computer stuff you were doing had nothing to do with work.
I know that for a fact. And the fact that you had your nose in magazines and other things meant that you weren't, like, I can't remember much time when you spent playing with me as a kid.
Now, you can't blame mom for all of that.
You had some sovereign decisions in the damn house, right?
I mean, you got to take some ownership for this stuff, right?
I mean, looking back, was it that important to read another webpage or another magazine rather than play with me?
Yeah, you know, I did what I could.
My dad grew up without a dad, and he was really bad at showing me how to behave, and I thought I was doing an okay job.
Wait, hang on. So your dad was not particularly involved with you?
His father...
No, no, just be him.
Just be him. Don't keep jumping in and out of him.
Just be him. Sorry. Yeah, my dad was basically never around at all, and that really didn't give me a good example of how to behave.
So, no, he did, though.
He did give you a great example of how to behave.
Do you know what I mean by that, Dad?
Yeah, do the opposite. Yeah.
Yeah. Be around. Yeah.
So your dad, because it hurt you, right, that it was unpleasant and difficult and he hurt you by not being around, so he told you exactly how to be a good dad, wouldn't you say?
Because, I mean, you've made that connection, right?
I mean, you come up with this connection, not like some big revelation, but something you've known forever, right?
So your dad was not around.
So you knew exactly what to do, so why the hell wouldn't you do it?
Why wouldn't you sit there and say, well, it really hurt me that my dad wasn't around, so I better get my nose out of a magazine and spend time with my kids?
Well, I was around a little bit.
You know, we did a lot of Boy Scout stuff.
I did a lot of that.
I didn't say you weren't around at all, Dad.
So you're not dealing with what I'm talking about.
But you were very distracted as a father.
Thank you.
And you did prioritize a whole bunch of things other than me.
I think that's fair to say, right?
He used to bring his laptop to wrestling meets.
So he'd be like sitting in the stands still on the computer.
And would he say that was work?
Yeah. Still working.
Right. Now, the fact that mom wanted you to make more money, was that my fault?
No. And the fact that you let her push you around that way, was that my fault?
No. Were those good decisions on your part looking back?
Seems clearly not.
Well, what do you mean seems clearly not?
I mean, I'm asking you man to man, right?
No. So why did you make those decisions?
And again, I'm not like, oh, I need you to cry or anything.
I'm just, I'm genuinely, because, you know, your dad's decisions have a big impact on you.
Your decisions have a big impact on me.
So why did you make those decisions?
I need to know that because I'm a lot younger than you were when you made decisions you don't agree with now in the past, right?
They're long behind you, but they're still way ahead of me.
And that's the gift I need from you.
I desperately need this gift, which is, okay, what thinking led you to make those bad decisions so that I don't make those bad decisions?
Because I don't know why you made those decisions, Dad.
I don't know why everything seemed almost always more important than me.
But if I know that, we can break this cycle.
Because right now, I'm not heading in any direction in life where I'm going to get a girlfriend, a fiancé, get married, be a dad.
That's because I desperately, desperately don't want the life that you had, Dad.
It doesn't mean I think you're a bad person.
I'm just like, I mean, you don't want that life, which is why you left mom, right?
You didn't want the life you had.
I don't want the life you had.
What you have now is much better, but I can't wait till I'm 60.
Right. So that's what I need to know is why.
Why did you make those decisions?
And not from a punishment standpoint, but just from a, I need to know.
Because I'm paralyzed in life because I don't want what you had, but I don't know how to not end up that way.
And you can release me from my paralysis by telling me exactly how you ended up that way.
And that way I'll know what to avoid.
You know, if you know where the landmines are, you can dance your way across the field, but if you don't, you don't even want to walk on it at all.
And that's me with adulthood, man.
I don't want to... I'm locked in screens because I don't want to set foot on something that could blow my fucking leg off.
Yeah, it's an escape.
Go ahead. It's almost like the lack of action, you know?
It's stagnation.
You don't change.
No, it's not stagnation. It's paralysis.
So let's go back to your dad.
Dad, why did you make the decisions you made to avoid your kids?
What were you really avoiding?
It wasn't me. What were you avoiding?
She's avoiding mom?
Avoiding her? No, because if you had spent more time with me, that wouldn't have been the end of the world for mom.
she wouldn't have nagged you and belittled you for spending more time with me I don't know why were the magazines more important than me?
You don't know what his answer is?
Okay, but that's the issue, right?
You don't know what his answer is. I'm not saying I know.
I don't know, right? But that's the answer you need.
Yeah, you mapped it out very well.
You're on hold, right?
Because you don't know where the airport is, so you've got no place to land.
But you're running out of fuel, to extend the analogy, right?
Which is why you're calling me, right?
Because you're on hold.
And listen, you are not alone at all in this situation.
That's why I'm spending so much time and energy on this conversation, partly because I care about you as a human being, but partly because this is scarcely a singular phenomenon to you.
This is hundreds of millions of young men across the Western fucking world.
You don't want the life your father's had.
But you don't know how they ended up that way.
You know, every time I sort of pursue him and like bug him, it's like how...
If she was so crazy and so bad, right?
How did you not figure out before you decided to have three kids with her?
And if the answer that you're giving me is, I couldn't, then what the hell am I supposed to do with that?
You just can't figure out that someone's going to ruin your whole life?
You just don't know?
Right. That's exactly why pornography is easier than women, because women apparently are these ticking time bombs that nobody can figure out ahead of time, and they just blow your fucking life up.
So of course it's easier to masturbate than it is to go and pursue and get involved with a woman.
Of course it is. Because nobody's being honest about the red flags.
Nobody's saying to you, okay, look out for this, this, this, and this.
And I merrily jumped into all of those red flags.
I was a complete idiot.
Right, I told them this. I told them this before.
Every time I bring up girls I'm either interested in or talking to or whatever, trying to build a relationship with, it's like...
You know, at the end of the day, I really can't take your advice because of how horribly you did in the past.
You know, I can't get over the fact that you basically caused one of the worst things to happen to me.
Right. Like, am I supposed to be like, oh yeah, no, let me hear what you have to say about this girl that I'm talking to.
And statistically, you're going to have to deal with your mom 10 years after your dad is dead.
So you get, I mean, if you stick with this relationship or whatever the hell you want to call it with your mom...
He can divorce her and he can just get the fuck out through a grave, but you're still dealing with her because she's going to outlive him statistically, right?
Yeah, and he doesn't have to talk to her ever again.
So you're left with his mess.
And you don't know why he chose her.
And because you don't know why he chose her, on the other side of a big open field is called marriage and fatherhood, And you know that there are landmines and your generation and my generation, we saw our fathers get blown the fuck up.
In family courts, in lawsuits, in threats, in bullying, in horrible allegations thrown out by the women.
And I'm sure it's happened the other way too, but I'm just talking about the son's perspective of the father, right?
You seriously don't want that life, right?
Absolutely not.
Right, right, right.
Screens are easier than screams, right?
Yeah, much easier, at least in the short term.
Ask me in 20 years if nothing changes, if I would have preferred this over that.
Who knows? Well, but you're calling in for another option, right?
Another option, which is, okay, you either end up with a horrible scream-fest Hellscape of a marriage with a woman who belittles you and cheats on you and dumps you in a car to get on with your life living under a fucking bridge or it's living in the basement, porn and digital distractions until one morning you just wake up and say, what the fuck am I doing on this planet and why on earth would I bother getting out of bed?
Yeah, and that's sort of my language for the severity of my options.
I laid out two things that it's like, well, now what?
If that's what I'm looking at, if those are the options that currently in my view, it's like, do I have a very high dose psilocybin trip?
There's some evidence to suggest that people have...
You know, positive experiences from doing psychedelics, but...
And or trying to...
No, you're hoping there's this bullshit about this.
20 years of therapy in one night.
No, it's not. Yeah, that's...
No, it's not. No, it's not.
There's no shortcuts. Everybody wants a shortcut.
Right? Your mom wanted a shortcut.
Hey, I need to lose weight. I'll take my son's ADHD meds.
I mean... Yeah.
Right. So...
Your father, I can tell you why he married your mother.
Please. Okay.
Your father married your mother because that's all he thought he was worth.
It's nothing more simple, nothing more complicated than that.
That's all he thought. I remember a guy I know, I met him In my first programming gig, a guy I know, actually he ended up inviting me to the volleyball team that I ended up meeting my wife at, so I'm forever grateful for that.
But he said, yeah, I married the first woman who was willing to have sex with me.
He told you that?
He admitted that? Yeah. Wow.
He was a pretty frank guy.
Pretty honest guy. Yeah, I could tell.
And because, I mean, I can't speak for his state of mind, but that's all he thought he was.
Oh, somebody's going to have sex with me.
Okay, I'll marry her. And why?
Because no one else is going to come along.
Nobody else will choose me. And that's partly because he also told me, like, oh, yeah, I grew up super wealthy.
And, you know, if somebody stole my bike and my bike got dinged, they'd just buy me another bike.
But I was so lonely.
It was ridiculous, right? Yeah.
So your father...
Believed that she was the best he could do.
He couldn't upgrade past her.
That's all he was worth.
Somebody phones you up tomorrow and says, Hey man, I want to give you a job watching YouTube videos for $100,000 a year.
What would you say? $100,000 sounds pretty good, man.
No, you'd sit there and say, you know what, make it $120,000 and maybe we have a deal.
You'd be like, $100,000 a year, we're watching YouTube videos, I'm in, right?
Yeah. Because you wouldn't feel like you could negotiate for anything better, right?
Because that's pretty good, right?
Yeah, that's your perceived value.
Right. So if you don't believe that you can do better, you will accept what you get.
Yeah. Right? And this is why actors have agents, because actors are just happy to do the damn job, but agents will negotiate on their behalf, usually, right?
Right. And so your father married your mother because that's all he thought he was worth.
He couldn't do better.
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
Or a bush in the hand is worth two in the nightclub.
I don't know, right? Right?
And so he married her.
And he had children with her because he thought, well, this is the best I could do.
If I don't get her, I have to go with someone much worse.
Fat or ugly or stupid or mean or whatever, right?
This is the very best that I could do.
If you're freezing to death in some frigid post-Titanic Arctic freezer hell of an ocean and some boat comes along and it's kind of rusty, do you sit there and say, I'm going to wait for a nicer boat?
Like, yeah, those seats aren't padded.
I'll take the next one. Yeah, I'll take the next one.
What, no lattes? Are you kidding me?
I'm going to wait for the latte.
I'm going to wait for the Starbucks boat to come along because I like a nice latte, right?
Yeah, you're telling me you don't have soy milk?
Sorry. Yeah, yeah.
Put me back in the ocean, man.
I'm not going to slum it.
I've got standards, right?
Who do you think? No, seriously.
But that's if you're in a situation of that kind of desperation.
Yep. A guy I was working with up north, he didn't bring his water.
And he drank from some moose tracks.
Like, I don't know. I'm not exactly Jack London out here, but I'm pretty sure that's not a good idea.
And of course, he's not sick as a dog, right?
Right, yeah. I don't need any water for purification tablets.
I think you might.
Okay. Yeah. And I think...
I think that perspective that he had, you know, he couldn't do better because he didn't think he was valuable or not, or that sort of general self-worth.
I've struggled with recently going through No More Mr.
Nice Guy, the book by Glover.
I think his name's like Donald Glover or something.
And that's really made me realize and understand that, like, I think that passed down to me if he had it as well for making the decisions he did with choosing my mom and not someone better because he didn't think so.
It's like a lot of my own behaviors and actions have been sort of putting aside my own self-worth and not genuinely think I'm valuable.
Right. And of course, as a child, you were treated as somebody who had negative value.
As you said, and I heard this from the very beginning, this is why we're here, right?
Because you said, I had to bug the shit out of my father to get any attention and my mother thought I was a pain in the ass, right?
Yeah. So if you have negative value, you have no negotiation.
You have nothing to negotiate with.
Any more than the guy freezing his ass off in the Arctic Ocean three minutes from death has no negotiation when it comes to which boat he picks, right?
Right, yeah. It's a boat, but this boat will ruin your life.
Well, yes, but otherwise, my options are having a life in a bad boat that might ruin my life or dying.
Yeah. Right, so you were treated as somebody with negative value.
As somebody who was an irritant, a pain in the ass, an annoyance, right?
A stumbling block on your parents' ever-skipping joy to happiness, right?
So you were somebody who had negative value, right?
So then anybody who treats you well, well shit, that's the only boat that's going to come along.
Right. Neediness.
Right. So what you do then is you say to the kids in your school, do you know what you say to them?
What? Well, I will give you value by teaching you how to change your grades.
Yeah, that was...
Now I have value to you, right?
Yeah, now I have value to you, right?
And that's why you did that, because you experienced yourself, or did, as a negative, and therefore, in order to even reach equilibrium with someone else, you've got to bring way more to the table.
Like, I don't know if you ever did watch, and you can find it on my various...
Video channels, but the show I did on Robin Williams, the Me Plus, right?
Well, Robin Williams couldn't just be himself.
He had to be himself plus manic jokes to have value, right?
Yeah. And your mom can't just be herself.
She has to be herself plus a new hairdo and funky nails, right?
Mm-hmm. Yeah, and that manifest in high school as well where I was sort of the act, the showman.
I never felt that people were with me.
I was always being loud and obnoxious and sort of, here, poke this kid, he'll do something funny.
Right, right, right.
No, I completely understand it.
I completely understand it.
We've all been there, most of us in this conversation.
Not everyone, of course, but most of us in the world.
Most of us, we've all been there where Why choose me?
It's the fundamental question in life.
Why is someone going to choose me?
Out of all of the people in the world, why is a woman going to choose me?
If my parents didn't, right?
If not, if my parents didn't even think that I was valuable, how the hell am I to find a stranger who is?
Right, right.
If the people who chose to have me and care for me and protect me and feed me and shelter me, if those people Thought I was a hassle and a negative.
How on earth is someone possibly going to find me of great value?
You know, that's actually one of the reasons why my last relationship failed is because I genuinely couldn't believe that she thought I was valuable.
Oh, that's not one of the reasons.
Well, yeah, I know.
That's the reason.
Yeah. Right.
Because if someone genuinely loves you and finds value in you, that means your parents were arseholes.
Yep. I'll tell you a story.
It's a very brief one, but it'll hit you like a hammer.
Are you ready? I think so.
A girl turns 18.
Her father... Shows her a car he's never shown her before.
It's an old car. And he says, go down to the car dealership, used car dealership, and get an appraisal on the car.
She takes the car down to the used car dealership.
She comes back. Father says, what did they say?
She says, I don't know.
They say, like, it's pretty old.
Like, it's a pretty old car.
Like, maybe two grand.
They maybe give us two grand for it or whatever, right?
And he says, okay, okay.
Take it down to the wrecking yard and ask how much they'll give you for this car.
So she takes the car down to the wrecking yard, you know, where they squish the car into boxes, whatever.
She says, oh man, comes back and she says, that is pretty rusty and they give you like, I don't know, 500 bucks for it or whatever, right?
And he says, okay, take this car down to the classic car collector's club And tell me what they say.
So she takes the car down to the classic collector's car club, comes back, and she says, holy shit!
Sorry, Dad, I didn't mean to swear, but they say this thing's worth over $100,000.
Because it's a Spider Alpha Romeo from 1962.
Only 70 of them were made, and it's incredibly rare and really treasured and valued, and it's a collector's item.
And she said, well, why would you have me go through this?
Tell me what the father said.
Valuable to somebody.
You just have to find the right somebody.
Well, they have to know what the hell they're looking at.
Yeah. They have to know what...
You've probably heard these millions of stories, oh, we had a picture hanging in the living room for 20 years until we found out it was a rare Jackson Pollock worth a million dollars, right?
Right. They just didn't know.
We just thought it was a spatter.
We thought some kid did it. Okay, Jackson Pollock was about the disassembly of human perceptions, but that's neither here nor there.
Everybody, you know, it's an antique, right?
Uh-huh.
And your value is not determined by the junkyard.
It's not determined by the used car lot.
It's determined by people who know what the hell they're looking at.
If you know your car is worth $100,000 and someone says, oh, this old piece of junk is only worth $500, what do you think of that person?
Not very highly, especially if you know that it's not worth that much.
No, you know it's worth $100,000.
Yeah. And this guy says, oh, that piece of junk, I gave you 500 bucks for it.
What do you think of that person? Take a hike, man.
I don't need you. Well, you're just stupid, uninformed.
You don't know what you're talking about, right?
Okay, so do you get what this is about, right?
Yeah. Your parents looked at you...
And what did they see? They saw their own emptiness.
They saw their own inadequacy.
They saw their own avoidance.
They saw their own unlivingness.
They saw their own coldness.
And when they looked at you, they saw what they were not capable of doing, which was of connecting to anyone at any time.
And that's why I asked for the role play with your parents.
Can they connect? Can they be honest?
No. If you have a child in the house and you cannot connect with that child, you feel like shit.
And you want to bury yourself in computers and magazines because you are avoiding your own cowardice in the face of connection.
Your child needs you.
Your child is a hostage of nature.
You can't or won't connect with that child.
Well, you always can, right?
But you choose not to connect with that child.
They weren't avoiding you.
They were avoiding their own inadequacies.
You said something like last week where You know the current situation of every one of your daughter's friendships and relationships.
You can tell if she comes home when she's upset.
You can notice when her mood changes.
And just hearing that type of relationship with a child is just so unheard of.
I'm not even reactionary.
I'm like, how's this relationship going?
How's that relationship going?
Did they text you back?
And, you know, how's it going?
And did they keep their last commitment?
Of course. Of course.
I don't want her to invent all this stuff on her own.
That would be horrible. Well, that would be you and I. We don't want that, right?
Right. Just do, like, a cursory comparison between, like, that description of your relationship with your daughter and, like, what I had with my parents.
Just awful to think about.
How far away my relationship was.
Is. And also, you're having a very real conversation with me.
Is this hard work? Yeah.
No, it's not.
Is it hard work for you?
It's emotionally difficult, but hard work, no.
It's challenging. Yeah, it's challenging.
I wouldn't want it to be boring, right?
But it's not like, oh my God, I have no idea what to say next.
Listen, you're doing fantastically.
You're doing fantastically.
And this is an incredible thing, right?
Because, I mean, I'm not too way off from your father's age, right?
And so you are having a deep and meaningful conversation with an older man when you had a father who avoided anything meaningful with you like the plague.
So it's like you grew up in a household that never spoke Japanese and here you are speaking fluent Japanese.
It's incredible. Yeah, they could have done it.
He could have done it.
No! You know how to do it even though it never happened.
Right. It's incredible.
That's your value, man.
Right there. Yeah.
You're able to speak fluent Japanese having heard a couple of podcasts where people speak Japanese.
That's brilliant. That's genius, man.
You understand? Yeah.
I'll tell you a story about my dad.
When I went to go and visit my dad when I was 16, I think, in Africa.
Oh, man, he was just not there emotionally.
He took me on this hike for a couple of days.
And he was like, because he hiked for a living, right?
He was out in the bush all the time as a geologist.
And he would be like way up the mountain.
Because he was kind of impatient.
I wasn't a super fit kid.
I was 15. I think around 16 or 17, I joined the cross-country team and 16, so a swim team.
But I was not super fit back then or even mildly fit.
And so we'd be hiking up this mountain and he'd just be so far ahead.
And I'm sitting there going, what the hell am I doing here?
Why am I here in this mountain in Africa?
With this guy, I don't really know him because my parents divorced before I was six months old.
And where's he going?
And I remember being super thirsty, right?
Because I'm not used to this kind of temperature.
I'm not used to this kind of height, this altitude.
I was really thirsty. And my dad said, oh, just suck on a pebble.
It will produce saliva.
You'll be fine. It's like, you know that's not a net input, right?
Producing saliva and then swallowing my saliva doesn't quench my thirst!
Right. Because there's no new liquid being added to the situation here, right?
And... He, I don't know, we didn't talk about anything.
We couldn't talk about anything.
I remember he was working and I wandered off into the jungle and I made little stones with arrows so I could find my way back.
And he had this 15-year-old kid wandering around a jungle in Africa.
Who knows what the hell could have been out there, right?
He didn't know, didn't care.
Or maybe he cared. I have no way of knowing, right?
He had me go up on top of his roof of his garage and sand it and paint it and all that because he needed that job done, right?
And... And I remember he had to go off to the bush for a couple of days and you know how people ask, you don't really want to come along, do you?
I mean, it's not much for you to do out there.
And I'm like, okay, so he doesn't want me there?
I'm like, no, I've got some letters to write, you know, like whatever it is I could say, like I couldn't do that in a He roamed around this tiny little RV or whatever to do some of his geological work and all that.
And it was a pretty terrible trip.
No conversations, no connections.
He just constantly made up stupid, useless, menial tasks for me to do.
And it was bad.
It was bad. Anyway, many years later, I'm on a bus ride with him from Toronto to Montreal for circumstances that don't really matter right now.
And he tells me this story, and he does tell me that time that you came to visit me in Africa, I was so depressed, I could barely function.
He was. He was, right?
That's what he told me, right?
And yes, he had some significant, like, hospitalized depression issues.
And... That's sort of my big lesson.
The big lesson I got out of that is, so from 15, it was probably close to 7 years until he told me this stuff.
And why didn't he say, listen, I'm having trouble talking to you because I'm really depressed.
It's not your fault. In the bus in my early 20s when he told me this, I started crying.
Because it was a weight off my mind.
I'm grateful to him for having done that.
It was good for him to tell me that.
Because, of course, when you're a kid, you think, well, my father doesn't really pay any attention to me.
He doesn't seem so interested in me.
He's not curious about me.
And I was a pretty interesting kid.
It's not like I suddenly became interesting when I became a public figure.
I mean, I'm interesting throughout my life.
I mean, at that age, I'd already written books.
Half a novel. I'd already written a couple of plays.
I was pretty good at Dungeons& Dragons.
I was starting to get into philosophy pretty heavily.
So I was a very interesting child.
But of course, what do you do?
Do you sit there and say, well, my father is a junkyard dealer looking at a $100,000 car and saying, this thing, you'll have to pay me to take it off your hands.
Because you don't want to think that your father has no fucking clue what quality is.
Because that's terrifying. Right.
But your father rejected you and chose your mom.
What does that tell you?
So it's like you take this $100,000 car to the junk dealership and they say, well, we'll give you $500 for it.
And then somebody comes with a rusty old sieve and they say, oh, I'll give you $5,000 for that.
Like, not only do they not know what quality is, they think that shit is quality.
Yep. So your father rejected you and chose your mom.
Yeah. So that has no reflection on your value.
In fact, that he chose your mom and rejected you means that you are massively valuable because he thought your mom was valuable enough to marry and pay and have three kids with.
Right. If you decided to do that with her based on her behavior, In her personality.
Right. Damn. Right.
So, you understand, he had to stay away from you because you revealed him.
I don't even know what the word is.
I completely went blank here.
Not because I can't think of a word.
I don't even know what the word...
I was going to say a fool, but that's much worse than a fool.
I don't know what the word is.
Hypocrite? I don't know. No, it's not.
Because a hypocrite, it could be a one-time thing.
It may not be that, like a complete reversal of values, where he valued your mom and disavowed you, so to speak, right?
Right. I don't know.
I don't know if you're in the chat, whether anyone could Tell that word I don't have a screen up in front of me because the last thing I wanted to do was to be looking at a screen when talking about your addiction, just so you know.
I'm not looking at a screen here.
I want to make sure we keep the human element here.
I don't know what the word is, but a complete inversal of all values.
The opposite. He's the opposite of good judgment.
It's catastrophic judgment.
So you can't...
Being rejected by your father is a sign of your...
It's a weird thing, right?
Why did my father not tell me he was depressed when I was 15?
Why did he let me carry that burden that I was uninteresting for so long?
Because if my father had had an honest connection with me when I was 15, what would I have told him?
Do you know?
No.
Well, you weren't listening then.
I mean this in a friendly way, right?
Sorry. Because what was my mother doing?
Oh, he would have told them all about the problems you had with your mom.
The problems I have with my mom?
Oh, did your mom ever come in and intercept that language?
A criminally under description.
The problems. Yeah, I have a couple of issues with my mom.
The fact that she's dangerous and violent and throws knives.
And also, at this point in my life, my mother had already been institutionalized.
I apologize for...
No, no, it's fine.
I get it. That's just your mom stepping in.
It's just your mom stepping in and saying, minimize this shit because I don't want to get caught in the splash damage.
Right? Well that's always what's crazy is like whenever I get to a level of intimate communication with someone and I begin to start what feels like the right language in depicting my experiences with my parents and always just You blanked out there, right? I mean, when I was saying, what would I have told my dad?
Because you knew exactly. I mean, it's the moment I mentioned it, right?
You blanked out there. Because that was a long pause.
And then I thought, well, maybe he thinks it's a rhetorical question that I asked you directly.
And then you really blanked out.
And then you minimized, right?
And this is not because of me and my dad.
This is because of you and your dad, right?
So my dad could not have had an honest conversation with me in a million years and never did.
Because he then...
Would have found out, or I would have told him, that my mother was violent, that my mother was losing her mind, that my mother had been institutionalized, and that I was pretty much on the verge here, I think it was very shortly after this trip, that I started paying my own bills.
Because my mom just completely lost it.
We got roommates, and there was a whole thing, right?
I had three jobs. So my father, did he want to know...
That he'd left me with a dangerous and violent woman who had abused me for many years.
Did he want to know that consciously?
No! Oh no!
Absolutely not! Absolutely not!
So, he couldn't be interested in me Right.
Your father wronged you.
Your mother wronged you.
Therefore, they couldn't be curious about them not because you're not interesting, but because they had sinned against you and didn't want their conscience provoked.
Which is why in the role plays, I specifically targeted their capacity for empathy.
These are my feelings. This is my experience.
What happened? I said to your father, this is what I need from you, Dad, to escape the grip of the screens.
Yep. And did he say, I will move heaven and earth to get you that information?
No. No, he just blanked out.
I said to you, Mom, I'm disturbed.
I'm upset by no photos of me on the phone.
I really need an answer.
And then she tried this bullshit of, it's your fault, and I just don't take photos of things, right?
When the old point was that you took photos of lots of...
So when you express a need to both of your parents, a desperate need, Mom, explain to me why I'm not on your phone, and Dad, please help me understand why you made your decisions.
These are the things that I desperately need from you.
They completely blanked out, right?
Yeah. The time I'm demanding them to sort of explain their value structure and why I'm not in it.
No, whatever need you have, it could be anything.
Right, yeah. Whatever need you have, they will not respond to it.
Because if they'd had the capacity to respond to it, you wouldn't have those needs at all.
You understand? It is the very needs that make the response impossible.
Your father should have sat down and explained the living shit out of all of his decisions as soon as he possibly could.
You shouldn't have to beg him in your early 20s to explain his colossal fuck-ups.
He should be volunteering that information out of love, compassion, and empathy for you.
Yeah. The conversation that you pointed out with your dad reminds me of a blueprint that you have in real-time relationships of how to help build those types of relationships.
Tell people your emotions and your feelings as soon as they arise.
Be as open as possible and not in a blaming way.
Don't say, you're the reason why I'm pissed.
It's like, well, I'm feeling this way and let's talk about it.
Let's try to figure out why I'm feeling this way.
Yeah, listen, so I mean, I've had obviously some emotions when I've been talking to you, but I'm very clear that it's not you, right?
Like if I was annoyed or frustrated, I'd say I'm annoyed or frustrated.
I can't believe you didn't tell me the first story, but it was only a fracture that you said it was a liar, it was a break.
I wanted your sympathy, Stefan.
And you get it, right?
And you get it. Now, imagine this.
Sorry, I don't mean to be talking about my dad, because I'm not trying to make this about me.
Because there's got to be a parallel with your dad, I assume, right?
So imagine if my dad had said, I'm depressed, and I had shown compassion and empathy towards him.
Imagine how incredibly difficult for him that would have been.
That the child he abandoned to a violent, a destructive woman showed great tenderness and compassion towards him.
Yeah. Ouchies!
Ouchies! Infinite ouchies, right?
Yeah, and that's what you're saying is he's avoiding.
He's avoiding that pain.
Of realizing that his child could provide the empathy that he wasn't providing.
Yeah, he basically was avoiding two things.
Number one, the pain that he'd inflicted upon me.
And number two, because he would say to himself deep down, well, I inflicted pain because I was hurt, right?
But if I had had compassion to him despite him having hurt me, he would have lost that excuse.
Do you see? Right.
That'd be crazy. That'd be such a crazy thing.
And it'd be so painful.
So painful, and I would have been able to do it at the age of 15, what he couldn't do at the age of 45 or 50, or 55, or whenever the hell that was, right?
Right. So he would have been mastered by a child.
Yeah, and it'd give him even more reason to feel poorly.
It's like, this is the type of child that I abandoned, someone who can provide value like this, someone who can, at 15, be empathetic.
Right. Yeah. So, you have a deep heart and a deep mind, and your parents were not avoiding you because you lacked value.
They were avoiding you because you had value that exposed their lack of value.
In other words, they avoided you like a thief avoids a camera.
Yeah. They avoided you like a counterfeiter avoids a counterfeit detection machine.
They avoided you like a liar avoids the truth.
Ouch.
You were born in a junkyard, and you were a collector's item.
And you've got to get to where people know the value that you have.
But right now, you think that the junkyard is the whole world.
No one's ever going to see your value.
So just fritter and waste the hours, right?
There's nowhere to go.
There's no better place.
There's no place where you're treasured.
There's no place where you'll be understood.
There's no place where you'll be valued.
And you're also...
The minds are in your mind.
Because if you're valued, your parents will lose you.
Because you'll see the difference.
You'll experience the difference.
You'll understand the difference.
So your parents need you to stay in the junkyard.
Because if you're out there and you're valued, you realize that the world is not a junkyard.
Just that shitty corner is.
And you don't have to stay there at all.
And there's a whole beautiful glorious world out here where you can love and be loved, value and be valued.
Be honored and respected for the treasure that you are and what you bring to the world.
But you've got to get out of the junkyard and they don't want you to leave.
Because, you understand, they stayed in the junkyard their whole life because they think the whole world is a junkyard, but it's not.
And if you get out, then what is normal to them becomes shitty.
And they don't want that at all.
They need you to believe the whole world is a junkyard.
So you never escape and get to a better place.
Because then they'll look back and say, oof, we could have done that at his age.
We didn't need the last 40 years.
The whole world isn't a junkyard.
There's beauty and virtue and integrity out there.
We all want to protect our parents.
Thank you.
Thank you.
And living a much better life than your parents is very painful to them.
And very often we will sacrifice ourself on the altar of our parents' bad decisions so they are not hurt by their own corruption.
And I know with my own mother, or I believe with my own mother, and probably with my own father too, that they're torn.
Part of them is incredibly hurt by the wonderful marriage, the great parenting, the great friendships that I have.
And another part of them is like, thank God you got out.
It's too late for us.
We can't make it.
We're stuck. We're chained.
We're blinded. We have become the junkyard.
We can't get out any more than the crushed up car could roll away of its own choice.
We can't get out, but thank fucking God you got out.
Thank God you did escape us.
It hurts us that you're out.
But deep down, we're so glad you didn't get stuck here.
The vampires thus, in a way, half prefer the one who gets away and gets to see the sun again.
And I assume that similar things may be the case with your family.
Yeah.
But it fundamentally doesn't matter what they think.
What matters is what you want out of your life.
Because, look, they've had their life.
They've made their choices. But your choices are still ahead of you.
And you must choose what is best for yourself.
And to hell with the people who made bad choices.
You can't be imprisoned by the mistakes of the past.
Or you'll end up no better off than they are.
and that is scarcely progress that was awesome and you your your loyalty is to your best possible self Your loyalty is to everything in your potentiality.
Everything that you could be.
Everything that you can be.
Everything that you can provide to the world.
You chaining yourself to decaying bodies in a remote junkyard is not helping the fucking planet.
And it sure as hell isn't helping you.
And you weren't responsible for any of that.
You weren't responsible for where you were born.
You weren't responsible and aren't responsible for how people treated you.
What you are responsible for now is breaking out of these dead-eyed screens and going out and living your fucking life.
Making mistakes.
Falling in love. Getting bruised.
Winning. Losing. Living!
Because the screens...
It's a mirror of paralysis.
I don't know how to live, so I'll just distract myself until I'm dead.
Yep. But out beyond the screens is a beautiful world.
Out beyond the screens is a beautiful world.
That needs you.
And you need to be out there showing people what's possible.
Yeah.
And the moment that you accept your own value, the screens lose their allure.
Because when you're simply consuming other people's content, you are erasing yourself from the face of the world.
Memes I found on Reddit is not going to make the world a better place if all you do is watch it.
But to go and create something and produce something, many things, is adding to the value of the world.
But merely consuming, artistically or intellectually, it's like being on welfare.
You're consuming without producing.
And that decays your sense of value.
Because your parents fundamentally want you to end up living to confirm that they were right.
And that's the fundamental battle.
Is my potential correct?
Or were my parents correct?
Do I have massive value?
Or am I an annoyance and an irritant?
Am I a bad-smelling, unshaven, badly dressed with holes in his pants 14-year-old kid?
Or am I an epoch-spanning philosopher with great wisdom to bring to the world?
Is my mother right?
Or my father right?
Or my friends, when I was young, who didn't think me of much consequence?
Are the people who think little of me right?
Or is my potential right?
I chose my potential.
Which is why I regret nothing.
I regret nothing.
I celebrate and champion what I did.
And what I do. Fuck the smallness.
Fuck the pettiness.
The inconsequentiality.
If you hide from history, you just end up being hunted by history.
We've got to go out there and make it.
Oh, they'll come for us, and they won't be kind.
Yeah.
I can't compete, obviously, with your eloquence and ability to put meaningful wisdom out like that.
It's just... I thank you for talking to me and doing what you do.
Please don't stop doing this.
I'm not going to stop.
And I'm sensing the landing gear of the conversation opening up underneath the cabin here, which is totally fine with me.
Is there anything else that you wanted to mention?
Or how was the conversation for you as a whole?
How did it strike you or hit you?
Is there anything else that you wanted to bring up at the moment?
No, it's great.
I mean... Just bringing the reality and the concreteness to pointing out the reasons for why I don't feel valuable or the relationship I have with my parents and what that really meant and sort of knowing and you reminding me that I'm not alone in this battle.
Those were all extremely important points.
Good. Yeah.
You have a huge amount to offer the world, man.
You have a massive amount to offer the world.
And I sure would hate to see it go to waste.
And you will too, obviously, even more than me, much more than me.
But if we judge our thoughts by the incomprehension of dumb people, we'll never feel smart.
And if we judge our paintings by the indifference of the blind, we will never feel like we've created beauty.
If we judge our music by the indifference of the deaf, we will never know the symphonies we've made.
Do not judge yourself by the petty-minded, or you'll end up joining them, and the fire of you will be put out.
Not even by a heavy wind or a storm.
It'll just peter out for a slow lack of oxygen.
Yeah, I can't think of anything else to add.
And will you keep me posted about how it's going?
Oh, unless he's already gone.
Hello? All right.
I'm not sure if he did or not, but it seems like a fairly good place to wind down.
Thank you so much, everyone, for listening to the show, for supporting what it is that I do.
I hugely appreciate it. Freedomain.com forward slash donate.
Love you guys so much, and thank you so much for this caller.
I'm sorry if you didn't catch that last bit, but I will talk to you soon.
Freedomain.com forward slash donate.
Have a great evening. I'll talk to you soon.
Take care. Well, thank you so much for enjoying this latest Free Domain show on philosophy.
And I'm going to be frank and ask you for your help, your support, your encouragement, and your resources.
Please like, subscribe, and share, and all of that good stuff to get philosophy out into the world.
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So thank you so much for your support, my friends.
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