Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

Feb. 17, 2021 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:19:16

THE TRUTH ABOUT SUICIDE

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Well, good evening, everybody.
	Stefan Molyneux from Freedom, Maine.
	I hope you're doing well. It is the 12th of February, 2021.
	And, oh, man!
	We're going to do a show on Valentine's together.
	Just you and me, some Barry White, some candlelight, a couple of foam pillows.
	And a couple of garden gnomes and some mildly erotic lubricant.
	Look forward to it a couple of days from now.
	Something to shiver your timbers in the meantime.
	We are here tonight with Philip.
	Now, Philip has a lengthy question-comment issue, which is totally fine.
	It's not like I can complain to anybody as I'm cruising in on 5,000 shows for being a bit loquacious.
	Thanks for taking the time tonight, Philip.
	James is going to start reading the letter.
	Philip's going to take it over, and we're going to take it from there.
	All right, so for tonight, our caller writes, Can I live free of anxiety?
	Recently, I feel that I'm regressing mentally, physically, and spiritually, and I'm engaging in destructive behaviors such as consuming too much alcohol, sugar, porn, YouTube, etc.
	I'm constantly ruminating and barely sleeping.
	I feel myself getting fat, stupid, and lazy, and I want to break free of this.
	I fear that I am jeopardizing my health, relationship, and career prospects.
	I don't know where to start.
	But I've written some of my story below.
	So, yeah, I'm worried that my anxiety will kill me.
	I think it killed my father.
	You know, I present relatively as a pretty charming, funny, and energetic guy.
	And so only my close friends know how anxious and depressed I get.
	And, you know, I'm a white guy living here in Japan where I'm teaching English while pursuing a doctorate in education.
	I'm also in a long-distance relationship with my girlfriend who is Chinese and she's studying in Canada to complete her bachelor's degree.
	I'm turning 40 this year and she's 24 years old so there's a 16 year age gap.
	A few years ago I started saving money to pay for my death.
	I wanted to kill myself and I wanted to make sure that I didn't leave anyone out of pocket or in debt I have this weird thing where I don't want to...
	Like when I was 13 years old, I was hit by a car.
	And my first thought was like, oh shit, I broke my windshield.
	How am I going to pay for this?
	And I'm flying through the air while thinking this.
	My second thought is, I'm flying!
	And then my third thought, I'm like, oh, how should I try to land face down on my back or roll like in a movie?
	So... It's kind of how my brain works.
	People sometimes think I'm joking about it, but this is a common thought process for me.
	So one good thing, though, about trying to kill myself responsibly was that I became more responsible, helped me become more conscientious and save money.
	But I was really kind of on the brink of madness at that point in my life.
	And then I got this call from my younger sister, our younger brother, my younger brother, her older brother, He was having hallucinations and delusions and he was drinking obscene amounts of alcohol every day and became a danger to himself and others and got committed to a mental hospital.
	So I flew back to Canada for about two, three weeks, hoping I could somehow help.
	But really, I felt so powerless looking at my brother and just how I could think was like, oh, this could be me.
	You know, I'm only a step away from this, so how can I help him when I can barely help myself?
	And that kind of spurred me to do more and try to improve my situation.
	And during that trip, I also met the woman who is now my girlfriend.
	She was 19 years old at the time.
	And we didn't kiss or anything.
	I was in a relationship at the time in Here in Japan, but I do remember when we first had a chance to speak one-on-one, our wrists touched while we were petting our friend's dog, and it was like electricity.
	And at the time, because I was in a serious relationship in Japan, I was actually wondering whether or not to get married.
	And part of the trip was to try to figure that out.
	So two years passed and I let my relationship drag on but I was still maintaining kind of a message email correspondence with my now girlfriend and then I went to Canada for one month to do some soul searching and my ex-girlfriend at the time she asked me to come back with an answer about marriage so during that trip I found my answer my answer was I didn't want to be with her Also during that trip,
	I got together with my now girlfriend, and things have been much better ever since.
	One year after our first kiss, she came here to Japan.
	We were living together for one year while she was on exchange, and it was great.
	My place is a really tiny, like 115 square feet, and it had never felt as big As when we were both living there together.
	You know, I had started my doctorate at the time, and our original plan was for me to return to Canada after finishing my doctorate.
	And we kind of knew that long distance would be tough, but every four months I get a six or seven week holiday here, which is really nice.
	And I thought, yeah, I can go back to Canada during that time, so it'd be kind of manageable.
	But then the COVID restrictions came in, and we put a stop to travel and to the economy, and we're both really desperate to see each other.
	But if I move back to Canada now, I'd be jobless.
	I'd leave with a half-completed doctorate.
	In order to be together again, she's trying to get into a master's program here in Japan so that she can enter the country on a student visa.
	Because there's no other way to enter the country right now.
	The drama of COVID and the drama of getting back together and all this insecurity over the future has meant that much of my time and my girlfriend's time and energy has been spent on trying to find a way to be back together, but also trying to make sure that we don't screw ourselves over with visas or financial issues.
	Underneath all of this, I'm still scared and neurotic and depressed as I was before.
	But with her in my life, I feel less so.
	And when we get back together, I know I'm still going to have to face my inner demons and my anxiety.
	It's not going to disappear just by her coming here.
	In Canada, I have these wonderful friends and family who I really miss dearly, but the jobs and housing there make it really difficult to live.
	Political correctness, cancel culture, critical race theory, and social justice in Canada really terrifies me much more than finding a job and getting housing.
	I have friends working in education In Canada who are afraid of losing their jobs should they say the wrong thing or even read the wrong writer.
	And what I read about education in Canada as part of my doctorate also terrifies me.
	Here in Japan, I have some decent language skills, make decent money.
	I have the martial arts, which I came here to study.
	I have a pretty comfortable lifestyle.
	And it's much more affordable than living in my hometown in Canada.
	So living here, I save a lot of money.
	I don't have to deal with the same worries of political correctness and so forth.
	However, I don't know if I'd want to raise children here in Japan, especially when they'll be seen as outsiders, even when they get older or even if they stay here their whole lives.
	So it's very difficult.
	It's also very difficult to secure a full-time position here in the universities where I work.
	So the way Canada's treated its own citizens during COVID also gives me a lot of anxiety.
	But the way Japan is treated its long-term taxpaying foreign residents like me also leaves me heartbroken.
	A lot of us were shut out. When COVID hit and even with visas, we weren't allowed back in the country.
	If I was alone, I feel that I could easily kind of throw my life away or I could survive in any place.
	However, loving and being loved by someone else complicates that.
	I want a good life for me and my girlfriend.
	And, you know, I've always been afraid of marriage since as long as I can remember.
	When I was young, I felt really worthless, especially in the eyes of women.
	And I thought no woman would ever want me.
	And this is embarrassing to read.
	This is my letter, but I used to imagine myself with the most repulsive woman I could to try to desensitize myself to what I believed was going to be my fate.
	And it was actually a very liberating moment in my life when I realized, hey, I don't have to marry anyone.
	And with my ex, the one who I was considering marrying, my consideration was really just a very rational one.
	I know she was a good person and she cared about me, but I didn't feel I could be myself with her.
	And the thought of having children with her felt like Death.
	And my friend who once asked me, you know, ah, come on, if you found out she was pregnant, what would be your reaction?
	And I said, like, honestly, if I had a gun, I'd blow my brains out.
	I have my own brains.
	But now, with my current girlfriend, you know, I'm still terrified, but I asked myself that same question.
	What would I do if I found out she was pregnant?
	And I thought, oh, We can manage.
	We can get through this. It's a big change being with her.
	Before, I always thought I wanted to die alone so that no one could see me.
	And now I think if I die, I really wish my girlfriend would be there to hold my hand or just be with me.
	When I think of her, I'm still scared and anxious, but I don't feel that marriage is so scary.
	It seems like Could be convenient for visa purposes if we go back to Canada.
	So that's like one motivation to get married just for that.
	Really, she's the first woman who I ever met who I thought, I am prepared to cut my mother out of my life if she stands in the way of me being with this woman.
	And luckily, my mom loves her.
	Makes things a lot less stressful, but You know, I feel like all my troubles and worries that I present to you here are all interconnected.
	And, you know, there's a lot more I could probably say, and maybe I just keep talking and talking going on forever.
	But I'm worried that my anxiety is going to kill me.
	You know, my father died of cancer, but I really feel like watching him It was the fear and anxiety all the way through his life and even up to his death that really did him in.
	And in order to not become like him, I started doing martial arts and exercise, which is what brought me here to Japan.
	So since coming here, I've done and learned so much, but recently with like COVID and the political situation in Canada and my current situation, I feel like I'm regressing.
	I've gained like about 10 kilos the last four months.
	And as James said, too much porn and sugar and alcohol.
	And when I'm with my girlfriend, my anxiety is much less.
	But I don't want to look to her as a cure.
	You know, it's not fair or practical or healthy to put all that on a person.
	But being with her does make me feel braver and it makes me feel more motivated to live a long, healthy life.
	So I want to break free of my bad cycle.
	And if you can help me explore ways to break free of anxiety or to help me orientate myself so I know what to do, It would really help me.
	I'm in this chicken or egg situation where I don't know if I should deal with my anxiety to make better decisions or make better decisions to deal with my anxiety.
	So, I hope you can help me, Stefan.
	Thank you for listening. You're welcome.
	Thank you for the letter. I don't feel I can help you orient yourself if you're already in Japan and jading a Chinese girl.
	So, boom, there's my politically incorrect joke to start things off.
	I like it. All right.
	So you're 40 and you live in, what was it, 115 square foot room?
	Yeah. Holy shit, dude.
	That's a tiny ass place, man.
	I've lived in some pretty small places, but I mean, this is like one step down from the trunk of a DeLorean.
	Holy crap. All right.
	It's a pretty standard living arrangement for a single person here in Japan.
	Yes, but not a tighty-whitey.
	I think we're talking more about the Japanese, right?
	So you've probably got a wee bit of bulk on them, especially with the extra 10Ks, but all right.
	Okay, so...
	Suicide.
	Why haven't you done it?
	A couple of things.
	A lot of it... I play a game with myself where I'd say, okay, if...
	I completely removed myself from my current situation.
	Do I still want to die?
	And the answer is no.
	But I also don't want to run away from my problems.
	One other thing that kept me going was the memory of good days where I'd wake up and everything just feels fine.
	But it's random, right?
	Yeah, really random. It's unpredictable, right, right.
	Okay. So, how long have you been listening to this general show?
	On and off for about three years.
	And you've listened to the call-ins before, right?
	Yeah. Okay, so you kind of know somewhat what to expect, so I don't need to go slow, right?
	It's okay, yeah, yeah.
	Okay. You don't want to die, somebody wants you dead.
	That's suicide in a nutshell.
	Yeah. You don't want to die, but somebody wants you dead, and that somebody is usually deep in your history, your childhood, perhaps your early childhood.
	That's what suicide is.
	You don't just wake up one morning and say, hey, I think I'm going to take this great treasured gift of existence, the most improbable and glorious thing in the universe,.00 infinity, 1% of matter gets to be manifested in the human brain, I'm going to take this absolutely glorious gift and just throw it in the fucking shredder, right? You don't wake up doing that, right?
	If you win the lottery, you don't sit there and say, I'm just going to take this thing and set fire to the lottery ticket, right?
	Nobody does that, right?
	I mean, maybe they should, given how badly lottery winners turn out, but that's just not what people do, right?
	So it's not that you have this great glorious gift of life and just say, I'm going to let it burn.
	No, no, that's just not how human beings work.
	It's not how animals operate.
	It's not how life operates.
	We didn't get four billion years from single-celled primordial soup organisms to where we are now because of a death impulse.
	No, it was life, life, life!
	Fighting, striving, fucking.
	That's how we got from there to here.
	And if you have a death wish in you, It didn't come from you.
	It's just not how life works.
	Life does not decide to kill itself.
	Even the lemming thing is a myth.
	So, if that conjecture is true with you, I think it's true in general, may not be true with you, do you remember who gave you such a sense of self-worth that was so low that when you get hit by a car, You're worried about the windshield, not yourself.
	Who thought of you as such a burden, or such a negative, or such a weight to carry?
	Where did that come from?
	You know, I wouldn't think of it as somebody wanting to Somebody wants you dead, man.
	Somebody wants you dead. Now you saying it's you.
	I don't think that's true at all.
	But somebody wants you dead.
	At that time, I wasn't thinking about wanting to die, but...
	I do remember when I got hit.
	No, no, that's not what I said.
	What I said was, who gave you such a low sense of self-worth that when you got hit by a car, you worried more about the windshield than yourself?
	Who did you matter that little to?
	that you ended up mattering that little to yourself where a $300 windshield meant more than your entire existence.
	Are you pausing because you don't know?
	It's an invalid question or you don't want to answer?
	Well, I think I could make a guess if I had to choose.
	No, no, no, no, no, no, that's a way of not being in the conversation and giving yourself plausible deniability.
	If you happen to guess right and I pursue it, you say, well, it was only a guess.
	No, no, no. Look, if it's not valid, if you ended up with a mysteriously absent sense of self and no reason whatsoever, well, first, that would be incomprehensible as to the growth of human psychology, in my opinion.
	But if you ended up with this incredibly low View of yourself for no causal reason, then we're at a bit of a standstill here, right?
	Because then you're saying that life, like we're born with an incredibly strong view of ourselves.
	When you're a baby and you cry, you don't sit there and say, well, it's kind of being inconvenient to my mom.
	You know, she's already been up twice tonight.
	You're like, no, I'm hungry, man.
	Give me some food. You have a narcissistic, and it's kind of an insult to babies to call them narcissistic.
	It's like calling them short. But you focus on your own needs, your own preference, and your life is so valuable that the thought of being inconvenient to others doesn't even cross your mind.
	It shouldn't. If we can imagine a baby that's like, well, you know, Mom's already been up twice tonight.
	I'm hungry. Well, that baby might die before dawn, right?
	So we're born with an incredibly robust sense of our own needs, our own value, our own strength of desire, and how it should be satisfied, how important we are.
	And then you were 13, was it, when you were hit by the car?
	That's right, yeah. Yeah, so what the hell happened?
	My first thought was that they wanted to call the ambulance or the police, and I thought, Or my mother, and I was like, oh, let me call my mother so I don't worry her.
	I didn't want her to...
	So you basically took me to your mother, so do you want to stop beating around the bush, so to speak, and tell me about your relationship with your mother and what she thought of your existence?
	She's always been very affectionate, but also like a...
	What's the word? I sometimes have to walk around on eggshells with her.
	Like, couldn't tell if she was upset or if I was upsetting her or if the problem was me or something else.
	Why would it matter if you were upsetting her?
	Oh, I guess I felt I don't want her not to love me, right?
	Well, why on earth would being upset with someone preclude you from loving them?
	I mean, the two things go hand in hand.
	If you love someone, then you expect the best and want the best.
	And if the best doesn't happen, it's upsetting.
	You know, if I love Bob for his honesty, when Bob is dishonest, which is going to happen, of course, just as I am dishonest from time to time, it's upsetting.
	Now, that doesn't mean that Bob's a bad person or I don't love him.
	It's upsetting precisely because I do love both Bob and the truth and they took a parting of the ways.
	Just as I love myself, and if I'm in a situation where I either choose to or am compelled to be less than perfectly honest, I have to evaluate that relative to my goal of honesty.
	Right? So, to love someone is to be upset with them because we expect the high, we get after the high, and then sometimes they're not quite so high, there's a gap.
	It's not a bad thing, it's how we correct them.
	It's how we move forward.
	It's how we improve.
	So, I'm not quite sure why your mother being upset with you would preclude her from loving you.
	I don't know if it was just me projecting or...
	No, no. You were a child. No, you were a child.
	It's all on her.
	It's all on her, okay?
	So what signals did your mother give you about this level of conditional love, which is to say, not love, in my opinion, right?
	So what signals did she give you that if you displeased her, the bond vanished?
	Well, things like if I did something and said sorry, she would say, oh, no, you're not.
	Wow, that was a different accent for a moment there.
	Yeah, my parents, she's British.
	British? Oh, no, you're not.
	Okay, so you would do something, you would apologize, and then she would say, you're not sorry.
	Yeah. Yeah, she'd say, or I'd say, when she's upset, I'd be like, Mom, I love you.
	Like, no, you don't.
	That sort of thing. No, you don't love your mother.
	She would say that to you? Yeah.
	That's pretty brutal. Yeah.
	So you would love her, or you would say you would love her, to remind her of the bond, to reestablish the bond, and she would say, there's no bond.
	You don't love me. She would tell you what you felt.
	Yeah, that's a very, it's a powerful and terrible thing to say to a child.
	Do you see, I mean, do you see that?
	Yeah.
	Like, okay.
	I wouldn't want to say that to my girlfriend, you know?
	Okay, please don't invite me into comedy land, because this is some serious shit, okay?
	Yeah, I'm serious. Like, I wouldn't...
	No, no, you were starting to chuckle, right?
	It's not chuckle material.
	Oh, no, I was choking.
	Sorry. No, no, and please don't.
	Yeah. Right, please don't.
	I mean, I get it. Like, when we were around uncomfortable territory, we want to invite other people to view it as funny.
	But this is about as funny as a heart attack.
	Or cancer. Right?
	So you would have a problem with your mom.
	You would try to reestablish the bond by saying you left her.
	And she would say, there's no bond, you don't love me.
	Now, what was the kind of conflict that would result in that statement from your mom?
	What would you be apologizing for?
	I don't remember the...
	Most of the conflict, but I do have one strong memory that really stuck with me, and I know she had a difficult time with her own mother, and she'd often say bad things about her.
	Wait, she would say bad things about her own mother?
	Yeah. Like what?
	I don't know things about bad stories, like, oh, my mom, her mother had, you know, many cakes or cookies that she would keep, and she would eat them, but she wouldn't give them to her kids.
	She would stay there for guests, but she would eat them by herself, apparently, and not give them to my mother or her sisters.
	And some of them would go rotten or spoiled before she'd ever give them to others.
	Or she would pay her mother some kind of rent when she was working.
	And her mother would keep it like a ledger.
	And even if she paid, no matter how many times she paid, she would say, oh, it's not written in the ledger.
	And so she'd end up having to pay rent or money several times.
	So she was always in debt to her own mother.
	Well, you're like a reverse magnet with your own mom, right?
	So I'm asking you about your mom and you're talking about her mom, right?
	Because what you want to do...
	This is your mom.
	This is your mom's alter ego intervening in the conversation and saying, have sympathy for me because I had a tough mom.
	Okay, so let's get back to your mom.
	So my mom's mom came to visit and when she left, when she dropped her off at the airport...
	I remember I wanted to go to McDonald's or something on the way back.
	And my mum was really upset and crying.
	And I was like, oh, what's wrong?
	Your mum's gone.
	Aren't you happy? Because I thought she would be happy.
	She always says these bad things about him.
	And then she said to me, oh, you're a selfish little git, aren't you?
	Or something like that.
	And I just remember being so taken back because I'm like, You say all these bad things about her all the time.
	I thought you'd be happy she's gone.
	I thought this is like a good day.
	Let's go celebrate at McDonald's.
	Yeah, yeah, that's exactly how I felt.
	It's like going on a long trip to the airport, go back to McDonald's.
	It feels like happy days for me.
	And I thought she'd be part of that feeling.
	And, you know, in retrospect, I understand feeling is complicated with her own mother.
	Yes, it may be an insensitive thing to say, but I was like five years old.
	But there's a deeper meaning behind what your mom said then.
	It was not about her relationship with her mother, but your relationship with her.
	If you're treated badly by your mother, you should be glad when they're gone.
	It applies more, in her mind, to her relationship with you than her relationship with her mother.
	If you have, as a principle, you should be glad to have destructive people out of your life, or negative people out of your life, or people you don't like out of your life, then she looks down the tunnel of time, 13 years, until you become an adult, and how are you going to treat her, If that's your principle.
	Yeah.
	Everybody universalizes and personalizes.
	It's a very, very important life lesson.
	Everybody universalizes, then personalizes.
	So your mother, when you said, well, you should be glad she's gone, aren't you happy she's gone?
	This negative mother.
	She universalizes that, too.
	Negative mothers should be abandoned, and then she personalizes it to her.
	Do you see what I mean? Oh, so she's...
	She's universalizing...
	She universalizes.
	So you've got a principle which says abandon or reject difficult mothers, right?
	So you say you should be happy your mother is gone because rejecting difficult mothers is a good thing.
	Now she then says, okay, well, if rejecting difficult mothers is a universal principle, I know deep down that I'm a difficult mother, so he's going to reject me, so I must attack him.
	Gotcha. Yeah, yeah.
	So for instance, when you say to somebody who depends on the government, you say, taxation is theft.
	So they universalize that and then they personalize that and they say, I'm in receipt of stolen goods.
	I'm a predatory parasite.
	He's calling me evil.
	I'm going to attack him.
	When I once had a debate with my mother about privatizing socialized medicine, She got completely enraged because in a private healthcare system, the hypochondriac has to get cured,
	right? You know why, right? Because a hypochondriac is somebody who haunts the doctor's office like Hamlet's father and continually demands tests and blood work and medicine and this and that and the other.
	Now, if they have to pay out of their own damn pocket, then they've got to fix themselves or go broke.
	But in socialized healthcare, they never have to confront their demons.
	They can act all that shit out, and they can lean on the taxpayer until the taxpayer expires.
	So when I was talking about private, I thought I was just, let's talk about privatizing healthcare, right?
	And my mom is like...
	Wait, I'd have to confront being a hypochondria in myself?
	I'd have to take responsibility for my own life choices and not blame doctors and not blame others?
	Well, she's going to fight back like hell against that, right?
	Everybody universalizes and then personalizes, right?
	Just personalize. When people say, you say, oh, we don't need a government, and people say, well, then everybody would just...
	I want to go around killing everyone.
	What they're saying is that they have absolutely no sense of self or identity or restraint or morality and they're confessing to being little more than a mammal.
	And they're saying, well, if I didn't have the government telling me what to do, I'd be out there killing people.
	They universalize and then they personalize.
	They say, I'm terrified that the entire world is as formless and amoral as me.
	Hmm. And the government is, in fact, keeping them alive.
	Because if there was no government and they started to become predatory, then they'd get killed by somebody in self-defense, right?
	So anyway, I don't want to get too abstract, but whenever you bring up things like this with people, and look, you're five, right?
	I get all of that. They universalize and they personalize.
	That's the way the human mind works.
	Okay, so if this is the principle, if this is the rule, let's universalize it, and then how would it apply to me?
	So that's your mom.
	Reject difficult mothers.
	Let's make that a universal principle.
	Oh my god, how does that apply to me?
	Do you see what I was saying?
	I think coming to Japan, a lot of the things I felt was trying to escape that home environment.
	And keeping a healthy distance.
	Yeah, that's great, but you're skipping forward about 30 years, okay?
	So let's back up to the beginning here, right?
	Let's do this frame by frame.
	Okay. So at five years old, your mother calls you, what, a selfish little git?
	Yeah. Total verbal abuse.
	Total verbal abuse.
	A break in belonging, a seductively destructive and defining moment in your personality.
	You thought you were being helpful and you were taking your mother at face value, right?
	I don't like my mother. I don't like my mother.
	She's difficult. She's difficult. Oh, you must be glad she's gone then.
	You selfish little git, right?
	No wonder you're terrified of women.
	No wonder you're terrified of marriage.
	Right?
	So you get called a selfish little kid at the age of five while trying to be helpful to your mother, A, and B, get some McDonald's, which is kind of like crack for children, right?
	Right?
	I still remember when they came out with that sundae, and it has that caramel on it.
	It's like the inside of the caramel bar.
	I could literally get my whole head inside that plastic cup and slurp it up, man.
	It was so good. That's good stuff.
	I remember going with a friend of mine to McDonald's with $2 and we feasted like kings.
	Like kings. $1 Big Macs?
	Less? This is back when Big Macs were like 65 cents?
	Oh my goodness. Anyway, yeah, so I mean, just the older people who know what the hell's happened to the money, right?
	So, when you displease your mother, she doesn't sit there and say, well...
	Tell me more about your perspective.
	Oh, I hadn't thought of it that way, or tell me why you think that, or help me understand what's going on, or, you know, that kind of stuff.
	No, she's just, you are a selfish little git, which is the unbelievably destructive thing to say to a child.
	I mean, it's pretty destructive to say to anyone, but to a child?
	That's a defining moment.
	Because in that moment, what were your thoughts?
	It's hard to remember.
	I feel like numb.
	Right. Yeah.
	And do you know why you felt numb at that moment?
	At that moment, I don't believe.
	Because it's hard to know.
	It's impossible to know which is more destructive.
	To believe your mother...
	Or to not believe your mother.
	This is why it's so abusive.
	Because if your mother is right and you are just a selfish little git as a child, when you're genuinely trying to be helpful, then you are just mysteriously birthed as a hateful creature, right?
	And your life is destroyed.
	If she's right. If she's wrong, it's hard to know if that's worse or not.
	It's about the same level of screwed-up-edness.
	Because if she's wrong, and you're not a selfish little git, but she's willing to tell you you are just to score some stupid point, then she is a really, really fucking dangerous person to be around.
	And you've got another 15 years to go, brother.
	You see, there's no winning in that situation.
	The only winning is if this is the only winning that could possibly happen in that situation.
	And again, I know that this didn't happen.
	This is what could have saved that situation.
	Your mother says, well, you're just a selfish little kid.
	Oh, my God. Oh my...
	I'm so sorry.
	I'm so sorry.
	Why would I say that?
	You're not. You're not. I'm upset about my mother.
	It's nothing to do with you.
	You're totally right in what you said.
	I can completely understand where you're coming from.
	Please forget I ever said that.
	That was a terrible thing to say.
	It's not true at all.
	It's not true at all, my son.
	Let's go to McDonald's.
	If you want to talk about it, you're welcome to.
	But please take that right out of your head.
	It has nothing to do with you.
	But she didn't do that, did she?
	She might say, I'm sorry you felt that way.
	Yeah, no, that's...
	I'm sorry you're so immature that you got hurt by something abusive, I said.
	Yeah, no, that's always an insult.
	Yeah. Yeah, I'm sorry you felt that way.
	I'm sorry that was your perception.
	I'm sorry, blah, blah, blah. That's all...
	No ownership, right? No ownership.
	She had 100% ownership in that moment.
	In fact, in your childhood as a whole.
	So, the reason why you went numb...
	It's the same reason that I went numb when I heard my mother scream in the middle of the night, I hate these fucking kids.
	I went numb because either she did, in which case it's pretty terrifying, right?
	Because I was like six years old or five years old.
	Or she doesn't hate these kids.
	I've just got a mother. She doesn't hate the kids.
	She just, I got a mother who screams crazy shit like that in the middle of the night.
	Right? She's either malevolent or she's insane.
	Now, this is different.
	So for you, your mother either genuinely thinks that you're a selfish little git, and of course, that it has nothing to do with her.
	Nothing to do with her. How on earth?
	I mean, if you were, not that you were, but if you were a selfish little git, that would be 100% on your mom.
	You know, like if I paint a portrait and then I scream insults at the portrait for not being accurate, I'm a lunatic, right?
	Yeah. I'm dangerously deranged.
	I just created something and now I'm raging against it like I had nothing to do with it, right?
	You know, it's like that meme, the guy biking down the road.
	He sticks a fork in the front wheel of his bike and then he flips over and makes some comment.
	Yeah, it's great. No, but that's parenting, right?
	If you've turned your child into a selfish person, it's because you're a selfish monster of a parent.
	And the selfishness is on you, not on your child, right?
	It's like teaching your child only swear words and then getting enraged at the child for swearing in front of other people.
	I mean, it's beyond disturbed.
	It's beyond deranged. So what else?
	What were your other conflicts with your mom?
	I'm trying to think. Back then when I was little, I remember more in high school things like If I want to go to my friend's place, I'd be like, oh, can I go to my buddy's place?
	And she would say, oh, don't you think...
	She'd say, why are you going now?
	It's like, oh, I'm just asking, can I go?
	She's like, well, you do what you want then.
	I was like... Well, what I do, I do what I want.
	I was like, I want to go to my friend's house, but I was like, fine, then you do that.
	But obviously she's so upset with me, and I'm like, well, are you upset because you want me to be here?
	I don't know.
	And then I would maybe not go to my friend's house, and then she'd be okay.
	Or I go to my friend's house, and then she gives me the silent treatment when I come back.
	Yeah, she would never say no to anything, but she would make her displeasure felt in her tone of voice.
	Yeah, so it's like a coward and a manipulator, which are two sides of the same coin, right?
	She can't be direct with what she wants.
	She can't say, you know, hey, I know that you want to go and see your friend.
	I get that. But I've missed you.
	We haven't spent much time together.
	Is there a chance we could just, you know, sit and chat for an hour or play a board game or do something fun?
	And then you could go with good graces.
	But I would really like that if we could.
	And I'm sorry to bring it up right before you want to go.
	But, you know, something where she expresses a need or a preference that's just basically honest, right?
	As opposed to this cold-eyed door-slamming shit, right?
	It's an insult to toddlers, but that's how a lot of people behave, right?
	So Yurda, as they said in the old country, how old were you when he died? - Yeah.
	Uh... 24?
	26? 26?
	Somewhere around there.
	And he stayed married to your mom?
	Yeah. Although when we talk about him, I used to have friends who thought they were divorced.
	Because I would say something like, oh yeah, I don't talk to my father much.
	And they're like, oh, when did he leave?
	No, no, his bedroom is next to mine.
	We all live together.
	He just doesn't talk much.
	Was he like a ghost before he became a ghost?
	Is that... Yeah, yeah.
	I always felt I was raised more by not what he says.
	And does directly to me, but by his presence.
	It's like walking around a pillar in a room.
	I have no idea what any of that means.
	This may be something that you've said to yourself so often it makes sense, but it doesn't translate to me anyway.
	Sorry. No, it's fine.
	It's fine. I'm not criticizing.
	I'm just being honest. Like, I don't know what this means.
	He's like a pillar in a room.
	Okay. So my mother is very reactive and very responsive, but my father is always doing his Owned thing.
	And he was working and working like 15 hours a day, six days a week.
	Why? Why is he working that much?
	He was a baker. That doesn't answer anything.
	So up very early in the morning.
	No, no, no, no, no.
	Hang on, hang on. So he was in his 50s when he died?
	Close to 60.
	Close to 60, right? Yeah, yeah.
	Okay, so... Why?
	Oh, okay. Yeah, he didn't like your mom.
	And that crippled his success, right?
	So he's like, well, I got to work 15 hours a day, six days a week, because I don't like being home.
	Because my wife's a coward and a manipulator.
	So I can't be successful.
	I can't hire people.
	Because, you know, that's what you're supposed to do.
	Right? I mean, it's fine.
	I mean, it's not fine, but it's okay to work that hard when you're young.
	Mm-hmm. But you're supposed to work smarter, not harder as you get older.
	You're supposed to hire people.
	You're supposed to have some success.
	But he didn't want to hire anyone and he didn't want to be successful because then he'd have to come home and spend time with your mom.
	I could be wrong, but that's my first thought.
	I think he was very desperate for my mother's love and affection as well.
	Oh, come on.
	Yeah, no. No, come on.
	You don't express your desire for a woman to love you by spending the vast majority of your waking hours away from her.
	But I think it's a chicken or the egg thing because they both blame each other for their...
	What you said about my father, what he should have done.
	My mother has said the same thing in the past as well.
	Like he should have been more successful.
	Yeah, yeah. Or should have just hired someone so that he could spend the last four hours of the day, not close up shop, come home early, spend time with the family.
	Right. But he didn't want to.
	Yeah. And then when it came close to retirement, he got cancer and died.
	hey look there's just another way to not spend time with his wife I remember one time when he comes home and maybe he has bought some flowers or something and then my mum would say something like oh you only bring flowers if you want something Lovely. Or if...
	Just trying to...
	I think I have one picture of them hugging, which I thought was...
	I think he was really desperate for affection.
	Aren't we all? Yeah.
	I mean, isn't that life?
	Of course we're all desperate for affection.
	Of course we are. I mean, we're a pack animal.
	We're a herd animal. We're all desperate for affection.
	I mean, cancel culture wouldn't work if we weren't desperate for affection.
	At least healthy people. Healthy people are desperate for affection.
	People who aren't desperate for affection are sociopaths.
	I think he was really lonely, you know.
	Well, see, now you're giving him the victim mantle, right?
	He chose your mom.
	He chose to stay married.
	He chose not to confront her.
	Yeah. He faded out, right?
	He tried to deal with things by being absent.
	You understand, right? Yes.
	And then you wonder why suicide is a solution to your problems.
	It's exactly the same thing.
	Dealing with things by being absent or avoiding dealing with things by being absent.
	Whether it's workaholism or suicide, it's the same damn principle, right?
	Yeah, yeah. And your mother withheld, right?
	To withhold love, to withhold affection, to punish a man for bringing you flowers, to insult a five-year-old to the very core for making an honest statement.
	Man, that's brutal.
	Man.
	Yeah. Why would your mother not be affectionate to your father?
	What would it cost her?
	Why would that be so difficult or bad for her?
	I wonder if she felt like he was giving up or being weak.
	No.
	It's kind of a stubbornness, I think.
	No, to withhold and to be stubborn is kind of the same thing.
	That's just a synonym contest, right?
	So what's going on?
	What's going on? We need love like we need food, right?
	We need love and affection like we need food, like we need air.
	This is kind of known. Loneliness is worse for people than smoking a pack of cigarettes a day.
	I mean, physically. They're not making that up.
	This is not an analogy.
	Loneliness kills people.
	Isolation, desperation, rejection kills people.
	So when you are in a family situation, you're married, you're a parent, if you withhold affection, I'm telling you straight up, there is a murderousness to that.
	Because you're putting people in a situation of proximate need and denying their needs.
	Like if I lock someone in my basement and I don't feed them, come on, that's murderous, right?
	Yeah. And if you say in your marriage vows, hey man, it's you and me.
	You can't have a fucking affair or I'll take you to the cleaners.
	I'll drag you through the court.
	So hard it'll be like being passed through Genghis Khan's bowels with glass shards all around you, right?
	So if you create a monopoly and you deny, there's murderousness in that.
	In other words, if I lock someone in my basement, they can't get food any other way and I starve them, There's murderousness in that.
	If I say to my wife, you cannot seek affection anywhere else, and I'm not giving it to you either, there's murderousness in that.
	It's the same thing with sexuality.
	If you say to a man or to a woman, you can't have sex with anyone else, and now I'm going to deny you, there's a murderousness in that too.
	There's a monopoly, of course, in parenting, right?
	Right. You couldn't go.
	When you were five, you had to go with your mom everywhere.
	You couldn't be left alone. I mean, you could be left with relatives or friends or whatever from time to time, but for the most part, you're with your mom 100% of the time.
	So, she owes you.
	She owes you, like we owe our children food, like if there was a mother who was starving her children, we would view that as being a moral monster.
	Emotionally starving your children is almost worse.
	Almost worse, and in some ways it is worse.
	Do you know why it's worse?
	At least if you have no food, you can understand the physical presence is not there.
	But when it's right in front of you and it won't...
	It's like...
	What's it take to give a...
	To say, oh, it's alright.
	Come here then. Sorry.
	It doesn't take that much, right?
	Tell me what you're feeling. I just feel like...
	I just thought it could have been so much easier.
	Of course.
	Unless that wasn't her intent.
	I mean, it's easier to feed a man in the basement than to starve him.
	Yeah. Unless you want to kill him.
	The reason why...
	Physical starvation is less cruel than emotional starvation, is the child can get food somewhere else.
	The physical marks on the child, right, the sunken eyes, the hollow cheeks, the ribs sticking through, the lack of energy, the lack of focus, the hair falling out, all of these are massive signs to society that a child has been physically starved to death.
	And the teachers talk about it and the principal talks about it and the social workers come by and the police come by and society is shocked, appalled and horrified that a child is being starved to death physically.
	But emotional starvation?
	You can't get love outside the family when you're a little kid.
	You can't. You're locked in the basement.
	You have no other options. You know, When my mom would leave me home and go off chasing guys all over hell's half acre and she'd leave me with like 20 bucks for two weeks.
	Okay, I'd run out of money.
	I'd run out of food. But at least I could hang around friends' places and hope they'd invite me for dinner.
	Yeah. At least I could find 10 cents and I could go to the mall to the chip shop and they could give me batter leftovers for 10 cents and I could mix them with ketchup.
	I could go, as I did, on a school trip, I would go With no money, no food, to the Science Center, Dall Mills and Eglinton, and I would have the poverty soup, which is crackers and ketchup.
	That's what I'd have to eat. Or I could get a job in a restaurant, and I could eat there.
	thank god for pizza hut and swiss chalet two restaurants i worked at where i finally got enough to eat to be leftover pizzas or you could it's funny i didn't have a union at pizza hut and i got free uniforms and free food i had a union at swiss chalet and i had to pay for my own uniform and pay for my own food oh geez it taught me a lot you know i don't come my opinions don't come out of nowhere you know when it comes to unions and shit like that right
	yeah but emotional starvation is Is an invisible murder.
	Hmm. When your mother turns to you and says to yourself, she'll get...
	She says, if you do something that displeases me, I have zero fucking bond with you, kid.
	I will shred you.
	Oh, yeah. I will shred you, limb from limb.
	And there'll be no warning.
	She did that to my big sister. I'm sorry? She did that to my big sister.
	And what happened? I think I was six years old and seven years old and my...
	My sister got married.
	She was 21 or 22 to her now ex-husband.
	My family was Catholic and my sister and her husband were part of like a new age Christian group and it was It was like,
	any time I'd say something, sorry to give more context, but she would always be fighting with my big sister, and my sister left the house and got married, and it was like, she said to my father, if he went to her wedding, she would divorce him.
	My mom refused to go to my sister's wedding.
	And, um, I remember at the time, um, saying to my big sister, I was like, Oh, like, do you love your, uh, the guy you're marrying?
	Right. And she said, well, sometimes, uh, but he gets me out of the house.
	Well, that's basically, yeah.
	She said, you know, sometimes it's more than, more than love that.
	And, uh, I just remember thinking, oh, that's really weird.
	But my mom would always say, oh, you know, I love you or I love you unconditionally.
	I'm like, well, there's certainly conditions with my big sister.
	Like whenever I was bad or did something wrong or tried to fight back, she'd always be like, you're just like your sister.
	And I was like...
	Whenever you were bad or did something wrong or tried to fight back, you see how your mom's language still defines this shit?
	Yeah. Oh, wow.
	Yeah. Don't say that about yourself, man.
	Don't do that. Don't let her language define you.
	You're not a selfish little kid.
	you're not bad, you didn't do things that are wrong.
	And as for if you go to your daughter's wedding, I'll divorce you.
	I'm sorry, I don't mean to laugh after saying to you this is serious stuff, but it just reminded me.
	I don't do well with ultimatums, or maybe I do really well with ultimatums, but I remember some girl, some woman I was dating when I was quite young, and she did some, obviously not to the same degree because we weren't married or anything like that.
	I'm sorry, but she did this thing It doesn't matter the circumstances, but she said, you know, you do this or we're done.
	And I said, you know, that reminds me of a song.
	Dun, dun, dun, dun.
	Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun.
	And I walked out. Like, don't ever, ever.
	Or we're done.
	That... We're done.
	The moment that somebody says to me, blah, blah, blah, or we're done.
	I had an employee many, many years ago who just came in and demanded a raise and he said, I've got like five business ideas.
	I could go out and start my own business right now.
	So you've got to give me a raise, right?
	And I said, hey man, as a current entrepreneur to a future entrepreneur, good luck.
	And I canned him. Of course, right?
	Of course. No negative, no malice.
	It's like, you know, don't let me hold you back, man.
	Because either he does have great business ideas, in which case he shouldn't be an employee, or he doesn't have great business ideas, in which case he's a liar.
	And a manipulator, and I don't want him to work with me.
	So what the hell was going on with your dad?
	Your mom's just rampaging and bullying and threatening?
	Your dad? I mean, do you understand how...
	I mean, God, it's hard for men to understand just the relationship between women and wedding.
	Women and weddings, women in marriage, women in the wedding day, it's...
	It's a beautiful, glorious insanity, right?
	And that your mother would be rampaging and taking a deep, luxurious, Tyrannosaurus-sized shit all over your sister's wedding day is so unbelievably horrible.
	There's almost no equivalent for men.
	The wedding day is for many women, it's the day of perfection.
	It's the day they've dreamt of.
	It's the day where they're a princess and the queen and the center of existence and they get everything they want.
	That's the day it should be for them.
	Good. I support that.
	I think it's glorious. There's a reason why it's like, I don't know, a $60 trillion a second business in the world, right?
	Fine. Absolutely.
	Absolutely. Absolutely.
	Let's make it wonderful for the woman.
	This should be her day.
	And she should have to worry about nothing.
	And it should be perfect for her.
	And your mom took a deep shit all over that.
	And bullied your dad to not go.
	And your dad, I mean, I don't know what the hell has happened to men.
	Just laugh at someone like that.
	Oh, I can't go to my daughter's wedding or you're going to divorce me.
	You're Catholic. Witch, you can't divorce me, so shut up.
	I'm going. Oh, I'm sorry.
	Are you going to go to hell by divorcing me?
	You made a vow in front of God.
	You can't divorce me. Don't threaten me.
	You'll be ridiculous. Are you going to threaten to turn into a reptile next and hit me with your tail?
	Because that's about as believable.
	Shut up, put on a dress, and let's go celebrate the wedding.
	I don't know. I mean, my therapist recommended a book to me, Man's Fear of Women, and I read it, and I was like, yeah, I kind of get some of it, but I don't get the absolute terror, right?
	Maybe it's family courts.
	I don't know what it is, right? But it's like, what the hell?
	Don't let people bully you, for God's sakes.
	You just don't let it happen.
	Yeah, I always felt my father, I really wished he kind of, you know, tell the person to man up in that situation.
	But so many times, I always wished he would step up, you know.
	God, yeah. I mean, he had all the power.
	And so did she, obviously.
	But he has all the power.
	They're Catholic, right? She can't divorce him.
	So if she says, do this or I'll divorce you, you say, hey, man, thou shalt not bear false witness.
	You can't divorce me. So, stop lying.
	Stop disrespecting our vows in the face of God and heaven and Jesus himself.
	If you're concerned about our daughter drifting away from the religion, maybe you shouldn't be threatening something that's a mortal fucking sin.
	Because if you want our daughter to take religion seriously, maybe you should take your religion seriously.
	I think my dad was the only one who actually stayed going to church.
	He missed church, I think, twice in his life up until he was hospitalized.
	And do you know why that was?
	To avoid my mother.
	Because your mother didn't go!
	Yeah, she went on a Saturday.
	She went on a different day. The bitches in the house, okay, at least I can go hide in a pew somewhere.
	Yeah, I used to go with my mom on Saturdays, and it was just me and her.
	We used to go to an Anglican church, even though we were Catholic.
	And my dad would go Sunday morning to a Catholic church.
	Man, they hated each other, didn't they?
	Well, I realized, though, I was the only one going with my mom.
	And when she said, well, when I turn 13, I can make a choice.
	I don't have to go to church.
	And I made the choices. Yeah, I don't want to go to church.
	And, man, that was like a rough thing.
	I realize now, yeah, I just remembered this.
	I was kind of bullied into getting confirmed.
	Because I remember...
	Before my confirmation as a Catholic, I was, you know, grade seven in elementary school.
	And, you know, they say to you, are you really sure you want to do this?
	Because this is your confirmation.
	You're going to become...
	This is your confirmation you're going to be a Catholic for your life now.
	And if you don't have any doubts, you shouldn't go through the ceremony.
	And so, well, I have a lot of doubts.
	And my mom's like, well, fine.
	I was like, if you're not going to do it.
	And I was like, okay, I guess I'm doing it, right?
	Well, no, no. Okay, so let's play this out, right?
	So let's say that you had said, no, this is a solemn vow before God.
	I need to be certain, and maybe I need to study more, maybe do the Bible more, maybe pray more, go to Sunday school more, but right now I'm not ready.
	But your mom would have felt probably socially embarrassed because of that, right?
	Yeah, right. So she didn't care about your soul.
	She didn't care about getting right with God.
	She didn't care about your faith.
	She didn't care about your virtue.
	She sure as hell didn't care about you getting into heaven.
	she cared about her social status now there's two things you said to me earlier that I need to circle back with you Because now we've talked about your mom.
	Here are the two things you said to me earlier.
	Number one, my great family.
	And number two, My mother really likes my Chinese girlfriend.
	Yeah. Now that we've had a chance to kick around the tires of your mom a little bit, how do you think those two statements land to an outsider?
	Hmm. When I think of my great family, I think of my younger brother and younger sister and my big sister.
	Oh, those are siblings then, right?
	Not family? Yeah, yeah. Oh, okay.
	So... Your mom tried to shoehorn herself into that category, right?
	Using your language.
	She's like photobombing the happy siblings, right?
	And your mom likes your Chinese girlfriend, right?
	She gets a seal of approval.
	Yeah, no kidding, right?
	Yeah. What the hell's up with that?
	Shouldn't that be a giant red flag?
	I was in a relationship with an older woman from Japan when I was like 21.
	And my mom's been so cruel to all of the partners that my siblings have introduced to the family.
	And I remember when I introduced my ex-girlfriend.
	She's 17 years older than me.
	She was a model in Tokyo.
	And it was like...
	Wait, you were how old? She was how old?
	I was 21.
	She was 38. Okay.
	And I introduced her to my mother.
	And I don't know, like...
	It was the only person of all the people we've introduced to my mother over the years where my mother just totally accepted her and was kind to her.
	And the thing is, I think, my theory is that, and this is the same with my current girlfriend too, is they're charming.
	And, you know, a lot of my family members, we bring home someone very stable and, like, not necessarily very flamboyant or...
	Super gorgeous or super handsome.
	Okay, dude. She's always been very cruel.
	We're going off in foggy land here, okay?
	Sorry to interrupt you. What does it mean that your mom likes your girlfriend?
	I think my mom just likes charming people.
	Oh, my God. Did we just have this half-hour conversation or not?
	I must be missing something, then.
	Like... Okay.
	Let's say that you bring me over.
	Yeah. And I chat with your mom a little, right?
	And I'm frank and forthright, as I probably would be, right?
	Is your mom going to like me?
	Actually, she might. Yeah.
	But if you...
	Yeah, my mom's so good at...
	No, if I said, hey, your son told me that you called him a selfish little git when he was five...
	What's the matter with you? Did you ever apologize for that?
	That had a huge impact on his life.
	By the way, did you know that your son's been suicidal for parts of his life?
	Do you know that your son as a child had almost no self-worth?
	What the hell did you do to him?
	Is she going to like me? No, she'll probably try to deflect.
	She'd try a lot of things, I bet.
	She'd try a lot of things, right?
	So your mom has managed to make it into her 70s or wherever the hell she is, right?
	Yeah. And nobody's called her on this stuff, right?
	I've done it quite a bit, actually.
	Especially when I go back to Canada, I usually have one item on the list.
	She was really saying a lot of bad stuff to my little sister, and I I sat her down and talked to her about it.
	She would say to my sister things like...
	First of all, she would say to my younger sister all these terrible things about my older sister.
	And then she'd say things like, oh, you know, when time comes, I'm just going to end it.
	I'll take your dad's old cancer pills so I can have a peaceful death or something.
	And I came to her with my mom and I was like...
	Wait, your mom is threatening suicide?
	Yeah, yeah. On what conditions?
	She says, like, when the time comes, what does that mean?
	Well, exactly. There's no one solid condition, right?
	It's, um...
	It just, uh...
	So she just threatened suicide just, like, as a conversational piece, right?
	Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
	And I said, I sat her down and I was like, Mom, this is not okay.
	And she said, Oh, you know, I don't mean anything by it.
	Well, it doesn't matter what you mean by it. I don't mean anything by it!
	Oh my God!
	She said, you know, it's...
	I'm going to overdose on your dad's cancer pills, but I don't mean anything by it.
	Oh, what a coward. What a bully and a coward.
	What a bully and a coward. Okay, does your girlfriend know about this about your mom?
	Yeah, yeah. I gave her the full warning and before I introduced her, I said, look, if anything happens, know that I'm in your corner.
	Okay, hang on, hang on.
	So your girlfriend knows that your mother verbally abused you, emotionally starved you, threatened your father to not attend his daughter's wedding and now threatens to kill herself to get her away.
	Your girlfriend knows all this about your mom.
	I don't know every...
	Does she know half of it?
	Does she know a good portion of it? Yeah, a good portion of it.
	Okay. And she's charming with your mom?
	I think my girlfriend's just charming.
	With your mom? Yeah, yeah.
	The mom who hurt you terribly.
	Who is on your side in your life?
	Who's on your side? Who stands up for you?
	I'll tell you this, man.
	If I was your girlfriend, let's get really freaky here, right?
	I love you so much.
	You're a wonderful guy. How do I feel about people who hurt you terribly?
	How do I feel about those people?
	Let's say somebody punches my daughter.
	God help them, right?
	Let's say somebody punches my daughter.
	Am I going to be charming to that person?
	Do you understand what I'm saying?
	Who's on your side?
	Well, I think I've got maybe three people in my life who I really feel, maybe four now, who are really on my side.
	And I don't include my girlfriend in there.
	I don't. And I don't mean she's a bad person.
	I don't mean she's your girlfriend.
	I don't mean anything like that.
	But to be charming to a woman who abused you is a betrayal of you.
	The reason why your mother likes your girlfriend is your girlfriend poses zero threat to her power.
	Ah, yeah, yeah.
	She's not even a consideration.
	She's not going to be honest with your mother.
	She's not going to defend you, supposedly the love of her life, which tells me everything I need to know about your girlfriend's parents, but that's probably a topic for another time.
	I will not befriend Unapologetic child abusers who've harmed people I love.
	Fuck that.
	And frankly, fuck them.
	I will not do it.
	It will not happen.
	It doesn't mean I sit here seething in hatred.
	I don't. But I tell you this straight up, man.
	If you're someone in my life, and you've been hurt by people, Who've never apologized, never made amends, and continue to hurt you in particular?
	I stand with you against them.
	I will not bow.
	I will not make nice.
	I will not make jokes.
	I will not make pretty.
	I will not overlook.
	I will not ignore. And I will not shut up.
	Hmm. And I don't think you know what it's like to genuinely have someone on your side and say, no, I don't want to break bread with someone who abused you and continues to threaten you.
	I will not sit down and have coffee with somebody who perhaps did the greatest harm to the man I love.
	Are you fucking crazy?
	How could you ask me to?
	If I love you, what is my relationship to people who've hurt you and continue to do so?
	You want me to like your mom?
	When she hurt you so much that you've thought of killing yourself, you want me to like her?
	No.
	It's a sign of how much she hurt you that you would even have that cross your mind.
	Oh, and by the way, lover, she's not coming in with, she's not coming within a light year of our children.
	Hmm. Yeah.
	Yeah. I'm not having cancer pill clutching suicidal verbal abusing grandma tottering around my babies.
	Thank you very much.
	And unless she shapes the hell up, grows the hell up, and apologizes and changes her ways, She ain't coming to our wedding because I'm not celebrating love and treasuring you in the vicinity of an unapologetic abuser.
	I will not do it.
	I do not invite the devil to amass.
	Now this is a reorienting Of your thinking.
	Because I need you to stand up for yourself.
	And I'm sorry that you're the one who has to do it.
	I really am. It shouldn't be you who has to do it.
	But this is the life we live in.
	This is the world we live in. Your mother does what she does because she has no internal conscience that prevents her from doing these things or plagues her if she does these things so that she circles back and apologizes and changes.
	She doesn't have the inner guidance to do it.
	The reason she does it is very simple.
	The reason she does it is very simple.
	She does it because she can.
	She does it because she suffers no negative consequences for doing it.
	She does it because no matter what she does, everybody comes over and maybe they'll nag at her a little bit about it or tell her to do something different, but it doesn't really matter.
	She does it because she can.
	And your girlfriend is part of why she can.
	Because your girlfriend is not standing up for you.
	Now, that doesn't mean yelling at your mom or anything like that.
	It's just like, no, if I love you and someone hurt you, I don't love them.
	I don't like them.
	I tend to hate them for hurting you.
	Hmm.
	And if you have suicidal thoughts, it's because someone wants you dead.
	And that means that in a choice between your happiness, your life, and your mother's immediate preferences, what does she choose?
	What did she choose? My mother?
	Yeah. Sorry, in a choice between...
	In the choice between your life and your happiness versus your mother's immediate preferences, Yeah, she's always got her immediate preferences over...
	Yeah, she sacrifices your life, your happiness, every single time.
	Right? So you will forever be hurt anytime your interests conflict with your mother's selfishness.
	You understand the whole selfishness thing was pure projection, right?
	Anytime your preferences interfere with your mother's bottomless selfishness, she will attempt to destroy you in order to get you to conform.
	In other words, whenever you have a preference in your heart and in your mind, even if your mother is on the other side of the world, the remote control self-destruction button is pushed, and you must destroy yourself in order to appease your mother.
	And I would bet that if you look back at the times when you felt the most self-destructive, I bet you there was elements in your heart and your mind and your love and your desire and your preferences that conflicted with your mother.
	And that you must die so that mommy doesn't get too disturbed.
	Mommy doesn't get too upset.
	Mommy doesn't get too mad.
	Human beings cannot handle power, and mothers have the most power and mothers have the most power of all in the world as it is.
	I think the problem is the left or communism or socialism or fascism.
	It's not that.
	Mothers Have the most power in all the world, all across the world, all throughout time, in the world that is.
	Because mothers can do the most absolutely appalling and destructive things and never pay the bill and never suffer any consequences.
	And that is way too much power.
	Free evil, free immorality, free destruction, free selfishness.
	Everything is subsidized, everything is supported, everything is overlooked, and everything is excused.
	That is more power than you and I can conceive of in a thousand lifetimes.
	The fundamental corruption in this world that drives all the other corruptions we suffer from is not holding mothers to account.
	By that, I also include fathers, but right now we're focusing on your mother and the basic practice that mothers choose.
	Women choose. Women choose the mates.
	Women choose the houses.
	Women choose the households. Women run a lot of things in this life and in this world, and that's fine.
	I've got no problem with that.
	With great power comes great responsibility.
	Nobody holds your mother to account.
	She suffers no consequences for her destructive behavior.
	That is way too much power for any human being.
	And the greatest vengeance you have on your mother is covering everything up.
	Never demanding that she grow up.
	Never demanding that she take responsibility and have accountability.
	It's like that old joke line from As Good As It Gets where the woman says to the writer, how do you write women so well?
	He says, I think of a man.
	And I take away reason and accountability.
	And those two things are the same.
	Until we ask women to grow up.
	And look, there's lots of exceptions to this I'm talking about in general.
	Until we as a society, as a civilization, Say to women, you are responsible for what you did.
	We will forever infantilize them.
	They will never have to grow up and the corruption we suffer under in every sphere will only continue and expand.
	Do you think that the world did any favors to my mother by covering up her crimes?
	By claiming she wasn't responsible?
	That she was a victim?
	But she was a single mother.
	Oh, she was a single mother.
	It was hard for her.
	Yes, she was stressed.
	She was upset. There were money troubles.
	She was abandoned by her husband.
	She was upset.
	She went through menopause.
	It was hard for her.
	You don't know. I mean, not only did it perpetuate the abuse that she committed against me, but it destroyed her as a human being.
	You ever want to create a criminal, you simply excuse bad actions and let nature take its course.
	100%. You are not helping your mother at all.
	You are continuing.
	You're so angry at your mother, you won't hold her to account, you understand?
	Thus trapping her in her destructive behavior.
	But I feel like every time I've gone back to see her...
	Everything has been, you know, I have a certain degree of, like...
	You fight with her?
	No, I don't fight with her anymore.
	No, but you, sorry, I don't mean to say, you disagree with her and you try to make your case, right?
	Yeah, yeah. And then what?
	Well, I think like the last time, for example, you know, I said to these, and the first time she'll say something like...
	Oh, I don't remember this or that.
	And I said, well, it doesn't matter if you don't remember it.
	I remember it. My brother remembers it.
	My sister remembers it. And it's like, she won't admit, even if other people remember it.
	She's like, well, everybody must be misremembering.
	Okay, so you say all of these things, right?
	And then what? Let's say she continues to lie or obfuscate or gaslight, or let's say she threatens to kill herself again.
	what happens?
	What are the consequences of that unbelievably destructive behavior?
	Oh, you really shouldn't strangle puppies, you know.
	No.
	It's really bad to strangle puppies, you know.
	You really shouldn't drown them kittens, you know.
	It's just words.
	Words aren't consequences, you understand?
	Yeah, yeah. So what's the consequence then if nobody wants to see her?
	You know exactly what the consequence is.
	If you lie to me, I'm not going to pretend we have a relationship.
	If you threaten suicide, I'm not going to pretend we have a relationship.
	If you bully people, I'm not going to pretend we have a relationship.
	If you trash talk, my older sister who I love, I'm not going to pretend we have a relationship.
	If you don't grow up, I'm not going to pretend we have a relationship.
	Consequences. I feel like, I guess the big thing is trying to get her to take responsibility or accountability.
	You can't. How on earth can you possibly get her to take responsibility?
	Tell me what levers there exist in the human mind or the human environment that you can pull or push or twist to get someone to take responsibility.
	How is that possible?
	I'm not being sarcastic.
	I mean, genuinely, if there's something I've missed, I'm eager to hear because it would change my life if there was some way to get people to take responsibility.
	Yeah. Because I'm a free will guy.
	I can't get people to do anything.
	Mm-hmm. I can tell you what I need.
	I can tell you what I prefer. I can tell you what I think is right.
	I can tell you what my standards are.
	I can't get people to do anything.
	And I wouldn't want to.
	Because if I got people to do things, then other people could get me to do things.
	I wouldn't have free will. I wouldn't have any pride.
	I wouldn't be worthy of love.
	And I wouldn't be able to love.
	I have to give people their own independent consciousness so I can actually have relationships.
	Rather than shadow manipulations of imaginary power, right?
	Mm-hmm. You don't have the power to get your mom to take responsibility for anything.
	Yeah. You can just take a deep breath and say, don't have that power now.
	Never did. Never had that power.
	I don't have the power to have my mom call me up and apologize to me.
	Mm-hmm. I could tell you I deserve a couple of apologies.
	Yeah, for sure. Right?
	I do. Absolutely.
	Now, I can't make her do it.
	Now, I could threaten her.
	I could say, well, you apologize to me or I'm not going to see you anymore.
	And she'd be like, I am sorry then.
	You know, it's like, well, that was a useless exercise now, wasn't it?
	Empty apology, yeah. And now, now I'm in the wrong.
	Because now, what can she say to me?
	Hey, you asked me for an apology.
	I gave you one, but apparently it's just not enough for you.
	It was just a trick. You're never satisfied.
	Now I'm in the wrong! Dun-da-dun-dun.
	Right? No.
	This is what I need. This is what I want.
	This is what I think is right. You can do it or not.
	But if you don't want to do it, I'm not going to pretend we have a relationship.
	I think my mother expresses willingness and she's had moments when I've had these talks with her where she's willing to and the abstract she can understand but then when we start talking about the things and the emotions come up she gets so emotionally defensive and I don't think she has the tools and my brother's interpretation of it is she ever admits what she's done she'll She'll never be able to forgive herself.
	And she's trying to protect her identity.
	Is your brother a parent? No.
	He's the one who is in the mental hospital.
	He couldn't even bear to see my mother.
	Okay, so here's, look.
	You lack, not empathy as a whole, but you lack empathy with regards to your mother.
	And I know that sounds like an odd thing to say.
	But empathy is understanding somebody's emotional state.
	Sympathy is when you think about that in a positive manner, right?
	But empathy, okay.
	Have you done irredeemable harm to a child?
	I certainly hope not.
	No, you haven't, right? Well, you know, I taught kids and I was so anxious and petrified of hurting them.
	Like, there was some bullying in the class, and I didn't know how to deal with it.
	No, I get that. I quit the job.
	No, but you yourself. So maybe you didn't deal with bullying as effectively as you should.
	Okay, but that's still on the bully, right?
	Yeah. But have you done yourself, of your own actions and choices and will, irredeemable harm to a child?
	No. I have not.
	All right. Then you don't understand what it's like to be your mother yet.
	Mm-hmm. Children are given to us precious and beautiful and pure.
	And we strangle and we stain them.
	We brutalize and break them, for the most part.
	What's on the other side of brutalizing a child?
	Of driving a husband to workaholism and possibly death?
	What's behind verbally abusing a helpless, independent series of children?
	What's behind threatening your husband with divorce if he goes to your daughter's wedding?
	What's on the other side of that?
	Loneliness. Well, there's not a person on the other side of that.
	Yeah. When we break children, the children survive, but we shatter.
	It's a very, very important thing to understand about the world.
	When we break children, the children survive, but we shatter.
	It is far better to suffer wrong than it is to do wrong.
	There are no more innocent parties in this universe than children.
	And there are no more guilty parties than abusive parents.
	And abuse in this case, of course, also includes neglect and rejection of children.
	Cowardly bullying of children.
	You don't know what it's like to be living with the knowledge that you harmed helpless independent children brutally for many years.
	I don't know what it's like to live with that knowledge either, but I can imagine it.
	But I don't think you know even the gap to imagine.
	No. You know, I can think of...
	You know, like I told you, I taught...
	I taught... I taught...
	It's okay. Keep talking. Emotions are fine.
	Absolutely fine. Go ahead.
	I taught kids for one year here and I get so anxious.
	I actually quit the job to take a lower paying job because at least with adults, I feel like if we have a problem between us, I can negotiate.
	If they harm me, I can defend myself.
	If I hurt them, I can apologize and take ownership.
	But kids can see right through you, man.
	I'd say the kids are running around doing stuff and I'd be like, hey, don't do that.
	And they're just like, whatever.
	Because they know I'm not going to harm them and hurt them.
	But also I don't know how to give them structure and whatever.
	One kid was bullying another kid.
	I'd be like, hey, don't do that.
	I have nothing to back myself up, right?
	Well, your father gave you no example of how to stand up to bullies.
	Yeah. How are you supposed to end up with me wandering into your classroom and trying to teach in Japanese?
	How could you know? Yeah.
	how could you know how to deal with police yes I I don't feel so I feel I have tools when it comes to speaking with other adults.
	I don't think I'd let...
	I don't want...
	I'm pretty good after my bad relationship and growing up with my mother to recognize when someone wants to Do we harm and, like, being really careful?
	Okay, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry to interrupt you.
	I know this is an important story for you, but you need to get to your anxiety, right?
	I don't want to, right? These are all distant effects, right?
	Yeah. So, your anxiety, I believe, is based upon the fact that the world can't see predators for shit.
	The world cannot see predators at all.
	And the world, by not seeing the predators, mostly because they may be brutalized by predators or they are predators, the world cannot see predators at all.
	So a state of perpetual anxiety is when the lions are invisible.
	So if there are lions in your vicinity and people see, oh my gosh, there are lions and you can see the lions, well, you build some fences, you build some walls, maybe you sleep in the trees, whatever it is, right?
	But if the lions are invisible, you can never relax, right?
	Yeah, yeah. Because they could be anywhere.
	They could be in a chair you're about to sit in.
	They could be in the washroom. They could be in the toilet.
	They could be in the bathtub. They could be in your car.
	They're invisible. You've got to feel your way everywhere, right?
	So we live in a world where predators are invisible.
	Nobody sees them. And the few people who do see them and speak out like myself get savaged, right?
	Hmm. As a warning, as punishment, as, you know, we'll try and destroy your life, we'll try and destroy your show, we'll try and destroy your marriage, we'll try and destroy your happiness, whatever it is, right?
	The predators are invisible and people like me, we come out and we say, oh, they're actually not that tough to see.
	Here's some powder.
	Here's some sunglasses. Here's whatever, right?
	Or take off these special glasses and now you can see them, right?
	You can see them, you can avoid them, you can warn others.
	Now, do predators who currently run the world, do they want people to be able to see them?
	No. No, they don't.
	They really, really don't.
	So people like me out there in the world saying, oh, yeah, no, that's an example of a predator, right?
	Here's his example. Here's the reasons.
	Here's the philosophy, the morality.
	You name it. This is how you see them.
	The red flags, predators, blah, blah, blah, right?
	And then I say, you know, do you know what the predator hates most?
	The truth is honesty.
	Hmm. And so when I say to people, oh, you've got an abuser in your life, maybe a parent, maybe a sibling, maybe a friend, relative, husband, wife, go talk to them.
	Be honest. The third book I wrote was called Real-Time Relationships, about how to be honest in the moment in your life.
	Because when the predators get exposed to truth, they strike!
	They're like the cobras. Whoosh!
	They strike. You get this clamp on.
	This is the jokes I was making with Joe Rogan eight years ago.
	They do the gator roll, right?
	They clamp and they spin.
	And they would try and fuck you up.
	When honesty comes to them, they know that you're taking off the glasses and you'll be able to see the predators with your own damn eyes.
	And it's a pretty bloody horrible thing.
	It's a pretty bloody horrible thing to take those rose-colored glasses off and seize the world for what it is.
	Which is predator and prey, will to power, blindness, delusion.
	I mean, look at this Lincoln Project, guys, right?
	This Lincoln Project, they brought in, what, $80 million, a bunch of celebrities and endorsements and all of that.
	Then one of the founders was preying on young men, sexing, sending Pretty suggestive text to a 14-year-old.
	There's talk now, unconfirmed because the guy won't come forward, about assault, sexual assault.
	Again, unconfirmed. FBI is looking into it.
	They just printed what looks like the private communications of one of their ex-employees.
	It's a crime, as far as I can tell.
	And one of the founders, I think it was, was it George Conway, went on Anderson Cooper, total softball questions, didn't ask about any of it.
	Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, hell, Woody Allen, according to some reports.
	It's everywhere. Yeah.
	Jim Morrison, singer for The Doors.
	Yeah. Pretty tortured soul, right?
	Mm-hmm. Sexually abused as a child, according to some reports, begged his mother for help.
	She ignored him. Freddie Mercury.
	What happens to a child in a boarding school thousands of miles away from home when he said headmasters would regularly chase him around the table?
	You know what that means.
	Whitney Houston, sexually abused as a little girl.
	Marilyn Monroe, sexually abused as a little girl.
	Matthew McConaughey was recently talking about these kinds of things.
	It's all over, man.
	It's all over the place.
	And if we ever see the number of people There's an old show, gosh, Jennifer Garner and Bradley Cooper and Alias.
	And this young woman thinks she knows some spy network and there's a couple of pieces of paper with arrows and diagrams and so on.
	And then the guy says, oh no, here's the only bit that we've seen so far.
	And he unfolds like two walls worth of bubbles and diagrams.
	And he says, that's the network we're looking at.
	And we, each of us, you know, we're isolated by thinking that the immorality we suffered is somehow singular to us and everyone else got away scot-free.
	And that we were taken down in a time of general peace and positivity.
	No, no, no.
	No. We may have had more extreme cases.
	Yeah. But the more extreme cases only occurred because, because, society Won't see, doesn't see, won't act.
	Your mother did what she did.
	My mother did what she did. Because society colluded with her.
	Right? It's an old Monty Python joke.
	So and so is guilty. Yes, I blame society.
	Yes, we'll be charging them too.
	And I remembered that joke even when a friend of mine introduced me to Monty Python when I was a teenager and I didn't get it that much, right?
	Right? Got me two seconds after.
	No, but you know, I blame society.
	Right, we'll be charging them too.
	Yeah, so listen, my mom did wrong.
	Yes, I blame society. Yes, we'll be charging them too.
	Your mother did what she did because she knew she was going to get away with it.
	Hmm. And everybody still goes over.
	And they may fuss with her.
	They may disagree with her.
	But they still go over.
	There's no standards. There's no consequences.
	And if it wasn't for the internet, there still wouldn't be.
	But I'm the one who was standing up and saying, no, no, no, no.
	We've got to treat people as adults.
	They were adults. They decided to become parents.
	They're responsible. If power disparity means moral standards have to be higher, which is why you can't date your secretary, there's no greater power disparity than that between parent and child, which is why the parent is responsible for the highest moral standards.
	Parents treat their kids abominably.
	Yeah. And get away with it, and get away with it, and get away with it.
	And maybe... You just don't want to live in a world where you can't see the predators, which is one terrifying thing.
	It's one terrifying thing enough that you can't see the predators.
	It's really bloody terrifying when no one can see the predators.
	At least if you can't see them, other people can build the fences and the walls or drive them away and whatever, right?
	But if no one can see the predators, man, that's a pretty stressful situation, right?
	Mm-hmm. I feel like in my daily life, I don't feel like my mother has, how do you say, immediate influence on my day-to-day, right?
	So I'm wondering if it's more...
	But she's ingrained these patterns into me, right?
	Well, it's not just her.
	That's just my whole point. Yeah.
	It's not just her.
	You should not have to deal with bullies.
	Do you know why? Because the Japanese society, the Japanese parents, the Japanese community, they should deal with the bullies.
	But it falls to you because they won't see it, or if they do see it, they won't act, right?
	But I have to be able to take care of the bullies myself as well, though, right?
	And... But you can't as long as your mother remains consequence-free.
	You can't deal with any bullies until you deal with those who've done you the most harm.
	Do you see what I mean? Because it would be very hypocritical to say it's really important that I deal with bullies So I'm going to ignore the negative behavior of my mother and focus on these little Japanese kids.
	Yeah. I feel like when I talk to my mother about stuff, for example, when I'd call her up after a long time and she'd start saying something bad about my big sister, and I'd say, look, Mom, whatever happened between you two is between you two.
	But she's my big sister, and I love her, and I don't want to hear you say bad things about her.
	We'd have silence, and she'd be like, oh, sorry.
	And then it would be, she'll, like, avoid that.
	And then she'll come up again, right?
	Okay, I get it. Well, no, usually when I've had these talks with her, they don't come up again.
	And so, like, what I want to say is, like, I think that When I've tried to be firm with her and stood up for myself as an adult, it's had a positive effect on my interactions with her.
	And when I talk to my...
	You know, I know she doesn't...
	I hope not.
	I really hope not. But I know after I had that talk about the way she talked to my younger sister, it made a big improvement.
	Then she no longer puts that on my little sister anymore.
	And so I feel like I have this...
	I don't know how to do it all of a sudden, but every time I go back to Canada or I have these talks with her, I'm sure she would just like me to come over and have dinner or just enjoy.
	I've been pretty firm about making sure we try to deal with an issue each time.
	And you may get her to conform to your preferences, but she's not learned anything in terms of conscience.
	There's no principles involved there, right?
	Yeah. And your girlfriend is still not standing up for you.
	And your siblings are still not standing up for you.
	And you're also not standing up For your sister.
	So what would standing up look like then?
	Would be to, I mean, in the fantasy situation, it would be to get your mother and your sister together and say to your mother, you owe her about 10,000 apologies and we're going to work through this right now.
	And you better not claim you don't remember and you better not gaslight and you better not bullshit.
	Yeah. Yeah. Because you really hurt this sibling that I love.
	And after that, we're going to talk about what you did to Dad.
	And after that, we're going to talk about what you did to me.
	Yeah.
	I think that would be the ideal situation.
	and And I think Me and my brothers and sisters, and this is why I say we have a wonderful family, you know, like, none of us knew what was going on, but when my dad was dying, me and my younger brother and younger sister, we got together and be like, look, shit's going down.
	People are going to be feeling all sorts, but let's make a rule to, like, love each other.
	Okay, and listen, that's great.
	That's great. But you've got a mother.
	One child is suicidal.
	Or has been. One child ended up in an asylum, right?
	Yeah.
	What price does she pay for that?
	She took precious, innocent, pure, beautiful children and kind of smashed them up.
	Now, I guess not just her. Your dad was involved too.
	The schools were involved.
	Disney's involved. Like, all of this shit.
	I get all... It's not just...
	Again, it's a system. It's not in the government and maybe the churches in some way.
	So, I'm not... It's not just, oh, it's all in you.
	But she's the one that your emotional connection is with, right?
	Not the abstract Hollywood studios or whatever, right?
	So, what is the sentence for damaging children almost to the point of death?
	Because I'll tell you this, we're all still complicit. - No.
	Because every time you go and break bread with your mother, You know what you're telling all the other abusers in the vicinity?
	Do what you want, man.
	Do what you want. She's in her 70s.
	The kids are still coming over, man.
	She put one of them in asylum.
	The other one almost killed himself.
	They're still coming over. Do whatever the hell you want.
	No consequences. You're part of the cycle.
	You're part of the broadcast network.
	You see? You're part of the appeasement that gives endless permission slips and get out of jail free cards to everyone else.
	Why do you think people got so mad at me when I said you don't have to see abusive parents?
	Why do you think they got so insane?
	Why do people get so crazed about me?
	It's not me. I'm just some dude, right?
	Just making my case, making my arguments.
	Because people don't want to stop abusing.
	And they don't want to have consequences for bad behavior.
	And what I do, by reminding the world of voluntarism, is I provoke their conscience.
	And the level of rage they display towards me is nothing to do with me.
	I don't take it personally at all.
	Not a tiny bit.
	All they're doing is raging against their own conscience.
	Now, they choose to personify it as me.
	But the people who rage against me, it's got nothing to do with me.
	It's their own memory of bad deeds.
	It's their own conscience. It's what they've done to their kids.
	kids, it's what they've done to others.
	But every time you go over, you're signaling to all the abusers, the whole world over in a way, do whatever the whole world over in a way, do whatever you want.
	Thank you.
	We'll get away with it all.
	Now, when I talk about not seeing my mother, it puts a chill through abusers' hearts, right?
	My mother's not getting away with it, at least with me.
	I don't know about other family members.
	I kind of do, but let's not talk about that.
	It's not their fault I do a podcast, right?
	But... But my mom didn't get away with it.
	What does that say to other abusers?
	Or people who are thinking of it?
	Yeah, they're like, oh shit, I'll go lose my son.
	I might not get away with it.
	Yeah. Shit, there could be a consequence.
	Society won't hurt my victims back to me until the day I die.
	I might suffer negative effects from trying to destroy children for my own selfish mess.
	I don't want that. I mean, you understand they do need that.
	They need me to stand up.
	They need me to stand up.
	They don't want it in the moment any more than, you know, you take away a drink from a drunk.
	He hates you in the moment, but years down the road, he loves you.
	And I, I've got, listen, I mean, one of the, oh, how do you get the strength of so much insults and hysteria and so on?
	Well, because I get the emails of people saying, oh man, I was hurting my kids.
	I didn't even get it. I stopped.
	Yeah, yeah. I get emails from ex-bankers, ex-verbal abusers, ex-physical abusers, not any ex-sexual abusers.
	They're way beyond hope. But, uh, The world needs there to be consequences.
	The Ferguson effect ain't nothing like the hang with abusive parents effect.
	We gotta do what's right for the world, right?
	Not just what appeases our parents.
	Especially if they're not good people in many ways.
	Yeah, I think all of me and my siblings, We've been struggling a lot with trying to show some minimal support for her mother.
	We want it to be better.
	We wanted to talk about this stuff.
	It's a difficult conversation to have.
	That gives her power over you.
	When you need something from someone who has a history of abusing you, it simply gives the power over you like you're five years old again.
	Oh, now I need something from mom.
	I need her to do this.
	You can't be around people who are abusive and show them your soft underbelly and every need you have.
	It's like saying to the torturer, oh, it really hurts when you do that.
	Oh, thank you. I need my mom to talk about this.
	No, it's not true.
	It's not true. It's not true.
	Because you're not crazy.
	And needing something from someone who wants power over you will simply cause them to deny you whatever you need.
	I don't feel I need it.
	But I do think we talk about ideal situations, right?
	Like last time I tried to have this talk with her and she said, you know, oh, if there's something that you want to discuss, we can.
	And I was like, well, you're proving now that by just trying to have some conversation, like you react so strongly and...
	No, so she expresses a willingness to talk about these things so that when it goes wrong, it's your fault.
	I was willing to talk about things, but hey, it went wrong.
	It's got to be you. Yeah, yeah.
	You didn't bring it up the right way.
	You didn't approach it nicely enough.
	You didn't bring things up in an accurate way.
	You can... You can look for the growth of a heart, mind, and conscience in a woman in her 70s, but you never find the gold on the sandy beach, right? Yeah.
	No, you'll never find the oil on the city street.
	You'll never find the gold on the city street.
	You'll never drill for oil on a sandy beach or something like that.
	There ain't no Couterville hiding at the bottom of a crackerjack box, as the old song goes, right?
	Mm-hmm. Because you're 40, man.
	Yeah.
	How long are you going to keep looking for this mirage?
	You're a 40-year-old guy living in a shoebox.
	Mm-hmm. And I don't mean this to make you feel bad.
	I'm just saying that you do not have forever.
	You're a young-looking guy, aren't you?
	Kind of, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you are, right?
	Yeah. Yeah, so whenever a guy says, I'm dating a man, a woman, much my junior, unless you're super rich, which you're not, right?
	Then it's, you're a young looking guy.
	Now, being a young looking guy is a really, really big curse.
	Because you look in the mirror and you don't see that brutal tire track of time across your face, right?
	I got my first big-ass genuine wrinkle recently.
	It's like right above my chin, right?
	Right when my chin goes up, right below my lip, that little half moon under my lip.
	It's brutal. Now, of course, I started going bald in my 20s, so I had that real indicator of time, right?
	Yeah. But you don't have much time.
	This is probably why the anxiety is there.
	The fact that you don't appear to be aging doesn't mean you're not aging.
	Being youthful-looking doesn't give you an extra 20 years of life, man.
	In fact, you know, you keep on with the sugar and the fat at the weight gain.
	Yeah, it'll be dead in a couple of years.
	Well, not that bad, but it's not the right direction, right?
	Yeah. So you look in the mirror and you're like, yeah, it kind of looked the same.
	Yeah, you know, maybe a couple of gray hairs, but, you know, things are okay.
	But they're not. But they're not.
	Because you may have to try and knit a family together with A woman who's, was it 16 years your junior?
	Yeah. So you've got an age gap, you've got biracial issues, you've got like, that's a big thing to put together, right?
	And if you have a destructive mom floating around in your head and in your environment at the same time as you're trying to stitch together an age difference so big it could drive a car legally.
	Bicontinental, biracial, bilinguistic issues.
	Man, that's a lot. That's a lot to try and take on, right?
	Yeah, yeah. You've got to reduce your variables.
	Mm-hmm. You know, when you said you imagined just from my story and her reaction, how would her parents are like, and kind of very similar situation, Well, you've got a bad combo, man, because you've got a dangerous mother with a respect to your elder's girlfriend, right?
	Yeah. I mean, it doesn't take a genius to know that the Chinese culture is a little top-heavy on the respect, right?
	Yeah. As far as the elders go.
	Here in Japan, too.
	Oh, yeah. Japan, for sure.
	Japan, for sure. It's a bit better than China, but, like...
	And she's an only child, right?
	Only child policy. Yeah.
	Yeah. So you're going to have your difficult mom, her difficult parents, cross-continental, cross-language, cross-racial.
	I mean, man, dude, you might want to shave down a few of these variables to give yourself a chance of success.
	You know, it's like, you know, if you travel to another country, right?
	You travel to another country. So in Canada, you know, you know, the price per gallon of gas, right?
	You go to the States and it's like American dollars per gallon.
	I just give up. Like, I'm sorry, I can't.
	I can do American dollars per Canadian liter.
	I can do Canadian per gallon, but U.S. per gallon?
	I don't know. Just fill it up and give me a bill.
	Yeah, too many variables. Too many variables.
	I can't manage it. I can't handle it, man.
	I can't do it. I can't do it.
	I'm sure some people can, but I'm an excellent driver.
	Kmart sucks. I can't figure out how many sticks fall off a...
	Pick up six games, right?
	So just reduce your variables, right?
	Reduce your variables is my strong suggestion.
	Listen, I mean, we've talked about a lot and I don't want to keep plowing on if there's been a lot of value in what we've done, but obviously I'm going to circle back to you Saki-style or whatever the hell you pronounce her name.
	And how's the convo been for you?
	Have we done some useful stuff?
	What's your mindset?
	How's your heart? The idea of completely cutting off my mother feels like kind of a scorched earth policy for me.
	And I wonder, you know, part of me, this feels really...
	When I first came to Japan, people asked me, like, oh, you seem to like...
	Because I seem to fit in really quickly, which is really unusual, right?
	And I'd say, yeah, it feels like being home.
	And they're like, oh, you mean like Canada?
	I'm like, no, no, no, no, no.
	Not like Canada. Like home.
	Like my actual home.
	No one talks directly.
	There's... People are always trying to save face.
	People are very conflict adverse.
	And I felt like I came to Japan just at the point in my life in Canada where I was becoming a more direct communicator.
	Oh, so you refood with Saki.
	Yeah, yeah. Okay. And let me just be really clear.
	Sorry to interrupt. I'm not saying what you should do with your mom.
	I'm not saying what you should do with your money.
	I know.
	I will point out that scorched earth is a desperate policy that actually works.
	Right?
	So when the Russians were retreating from the Germans invading in the early 1940s, yeah, they did scorched earth.
	So for people who don't know, scorched earth refers to the policy, you slaughter the livestock, you poison the wells, you set fire to the grain so that the advancing army has no possibility of eating as they go.
	They got to have this massive supply chain to stay fed and army marches on its stomach and all that, right?
	A scorched earth refers to, like, somehow it's a terrible thing, but if you're facing an overwhelming force and you're in retreat, a scorched earth, it works.
	It actually completely and totally works.
	The Germans never did take Russia, as neither did the French, as neither did, right?
	So, but I'm not, you know, if what you're getting out of this conversation is me saying to you, never see your mom again, that's not what I'm saying.
	No, no. Yeah, just so you know.
	Just so you know. Sorry, go ahead. So I guess one of the tough things, you know, I don't want to be an enabler, right?
	And I, especially when I think of, it was really, when my brother was in the hospital, and my mom wanted to see him, and my brother didn't want to see her, and she's trying to make it all about her, like, oh, he's my baby, and I'm like, well, a lot of, like, what you've done is what bought him here.
	And, of course, like, That's just too much for her to hear as well, but she's willing to go into...
	Wait, it's too much for her to hear, but somehow you could hear that you were a selfish little git when you were five.
	Okay, don't give me these bullshit crocodile tears.
	She can handle it. If you can handle and survive being told you're a selfish little git when you're five, then she can handle some truth about her involvement in your brother's breakdown.
	Yeah, and...
	I don't know. I haven't got a chance to speak with my brother recently, but I heard that he's been talking with her on the phone.
	Haven't had a chance?
	What are you talking about? We text each other.
	What do you mean? Haven't had a chance?
	I'm sorry. Is the internet down?
	Because it feels like that's what we're talking about.
	It's just really difficult.
	The time zone difference.
	You know you can't pull that stuff with me.
	Come on, man. I know that's optimistic.
	If there was an emergency, you'd call your brother no matter what, right?
	Yeah, for sure. For sure. It's not like there's no chance.
	If you organized it, you could make it happen.
	Organizing is not a strong point in my family.
	Okay. Well, then you've chosen not to talk to your brother, right?
	You've got to have this free will stuff, right?
	You've chosen not to talk to your brother.
	I haven't had the chance.
	That's right. Well, we've been in touch, right?
	But I don't know the details of his conversations with my mother.
	That's what I wanted to say. Well, you should.
	And if you claim to love your siblings, then you have to re-evaluate your relationship with the person who's harmed them the most, who's still alive.
	What does it mean to love people?
	It means to not also love those who've harmed them, unless there's apologies and restitution.
	If you have a child and a babysitter beats your child, do you hire her back?
	Hell no. Hell no.
	You understand the principle, right?
	Yeah, yeah. Why is it that your child is worthy of protection but you as a child are not?
	Why are you less important than your child?
	Why would you move instantly to protect your child from a danger, but not yourself?
	Now, you start to understand what it means to love yourself.
	It means to say, whatever I would do for the least among me, so will I also do for myself.
	I would not expose my daughter to my mother, so why would I expose myself to my mother?
	My mother did much more harm to me than my daughter.
	She's never even met my daughter. Why would my daughter be worthy of protection but I'm not?
	How can I protect my daughter if I'm not willing to protect myself?
	Why would I protect a child but not myself?
	Is my daughter more important than me?
	Is she more valuable than me?
	Is she more human than me?
	Of course not. Whatever she's worthy of in terms of protection and security I am a thousandfold more worthy of it with regards to those who've harmed me but not her.
	And if I can't protect myself, they will be able to harm her through me.
	Because they'll mess me up and then I'll mess her up.
	So we protect.
	I protect us both. And when you become a father, as I hope you will, And you look at your child with that love and that fierce desire, the male desire to protect, which has been eviscerated from us through a variety of social mechanisms.
	And you will say, I would do anything to keep this child safe.
	You must also look in the mirror and say to yourself and your former self the same words.
	I will do whatever it takes To keep my child safe and myself safe.
	Because I am as worthy of protection as my child is.
	I am worthy, I am as worthy of safety and security as my child is.
	Because I cannot be a leader to my child if I consider myself inferior to her in that she's worthy of protection, but I'm not.
	And I cannot tell my child to stand up in the world and stand up for what she believes in.
	If I can't stand up to a cranky old witch of a bully.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Thank you.
	You are essential to protect.
	You are essential to keep safe.
	And you are in no way, shape or form commanded to love abusers or pretend to or try to or strive to.
	It can't be done.
	The attempt to worship the unlovable is the essence of slavery as adults.
	You got some thoughts that you want?
	Yeah, I got lots to chew on.
	What are you feeling at the moment?
	You know, I think how do I love myself?
	And, you know, it's easier when I keep that in mind, you know, just to make better choices day to day, right?
	Yeah, just you provide to yourself what's not provided to you, which is protection and security.
	Yeah. No, you should, right?
	You should. You should.
	I was like Usually the worst cycles are when I've done one wrong thing and then I just like, oh fuck it, no.
	Right, right, right, right.
	Because you had a punitive upbringing, so in for a penny, in for a pound is my answer.
	Yeah, yeah. You are worthy of human touch, not pornography.
	You're worthy of healthy food, not junk.
	You're worthy of exercise, not slop.
	You're worthy of protecting your health.
	You're worthy of protecting your mind, your heart, your soul, your capacity for love, your capacity for integrity.
	Yes, sorry. Let me just make a note here.
	We lost a little bit there because I... My power went out on my computer, so sorry about that.
	But yeah, I was really just talking about how if you're not going to provide yourself love and tenderness, who is going to?
	People tend to agree with you whether you like it or not.
	Like if you say, you know, I'm worthy of some attention, I'm worthy of some respect, I'm worthy of some listening to, well, you have to believe it yourself.
	If you don't believe it yourself, then people generally won't pay you much attention or they won't give you much respect because people meet you and they kind of agree with you.
	For better or for worse, you could be some grandiose narcissist or whatever, and maybe people will believe with that assessment or whatever, but people are very good at figuring out what your inner story is, what you genuinely believe about yourself, and they tend to agree with you.
	Because, listen, if I meet you and you're down on yourself, well, you know yourself a lot better than I do, so I'll just, okay, I'll accept your perspective of yourself.
	Because if I came to visit you in Japan and you said, hey man, I'm going to show you around wherever we're going to go, I would say, well, yeah, you know Japan a hell of a lot.
	I've never been before. You know Japan better than me, so I'll assume you're the expert and you know what you're doing.
	It's the same thing with yourself.
	If you have this perspective of yourself, you're not worth that much, you've got to always surrender to people, you've got to appease people and so on.
	I've never visited you before.
	You're the expert on yourself.
	I guess I have to accept the way that you perceive yourself.
	I don't have any other choice.
	Now, in these conversations, it's a little bit different.
	I'm listening to something much more deep than most people are during the course of an interaction or a conversation.
	But you can't change other people's minds if you can't reform your own core story.
	And your own core story is probably something like I'm only worthy of existence if I serve the needs of selfish people.
	I'm only allowed to be alive if I serve the needs of others, which is why when you get hit by a car, you worry about the windshield.
	And when you try to get your own needs served by going to McDonald's, you were viciously attacked verbally as a child.
	It's something like, I have to earn my existence by not existing.
	I'm only allowed to breathe if I don't have any thoughts or opinions that conflict with selfish people.
	There's appeasement and a continual self-erasure just for the sake of getting through to the next breath, which is necessary when you're a child, but it's exhausting when you're an adult and inappropriate to the liberties that you have.
	When you were a kid, you couldn't leave your parents' house.
	Now you're all the way on the other side of the world at God knows what time of day.
	I would say, or what I was just sort of mentioning is that if you say how much you would care for a child that you have, how much you would work to protect the child that you have, you can't accept anything less for yourself.
	It's universal. It's the universal of universally preferable behavior.
	If it is universally preferable behavior to protect a child, Then you should extend that to your younger self.
	You should extend that to yourself at the moment.
	If people who would abuse your child, you would not kiss the ring, kiss the hem with their garment and praise them or appease them or whatever, well, why would you do that to people who harmed you?
	And if you can get that universality, that you can be a leader in your family, you will never end up suffering the fate of your father who appeased himself into the grave, I would argue.
	And you can have a chance for a different kind of life because if we don't want the life our parents had, we get to reinvent ourselves, but it's a hell of a process, if that makes any sense.
	And then I was just at the end asking you sort of how you feel about the convo we've had.
	I think the strong...
	I feel stronger in having a clear target of, you know, just trying to love myself as if, you know, I were responsible for my child, even though I don't have a child.
	And also, you know...
	But you do have a child, because you were a child.
	But anyway, go on. Yeah, yeah.
	And, you know, going back to universal principles, too, you know, if it's good to work hard and protect a child, then...
	Then, of course, then it is good to work hard and protect ourselves because that's what's going to give us the ability to do that, right?
	And if I can, I think if I can always keep something like that as a little mantra for myself when the anxiety hits and my first reaction is either numbness or YouTube or...
	If you had an anxious child, what would you do?
	Well, you'd give comfort and sucker and reason it through and all of that.
	And there's no greater healing thing in the world than to provide what was denied.
	To provide to the world what was denied to you is just about the greatest.
	Because what happens is we focus on what was denied to us.
	We get navel-gazing. We turn inwards.
	But the greatest healing thing that we can do for ourselves and the world is to provide to the world what was denied to us.
	What was denied to me?
	Reason. Free will.
	Independence. Security.
	Honesty. Integrity.
	Virtue. And what was denied to me the most?
	Was visibility of predators.
	So I provide to the world what was denied to me.
	And that way I stop worrying about my own past and my own prior unhappiness and the deficiencies in my upbringing.
	I provide to my daughter what was denied to me.
	I provide to my friends what my friends denied to me.
	I provide to my wife what my father denied to my mother.
	I provide to the world what was denied to me.
	And there's such an elemental power in that, that it makes good people cheer and bad people sneer.
	And that's about as good a set of markers as you could possibly have.
	All right. Keep me posted.
	Will you keep me posted about how things are going?
	Yeah. Should I just send a message through James?
	Yeah, absolutely. Operations at freedomain.com is another way to get a hold of me.
	Thank you, everyone, so much for...
	The deep, deep honor of these kinds of conversations.
	I treasure them more than you can possibly imagine.
	Freedomain.com forward slash donate.
	I also wanted to send a shout out to the people who want to join the next crypto roundtable or the investment roundtable.
	We will get you in and I really, really appreciate everybody's help with that so far.
	Have a wonderful, wonderful evening, everyone.
	Love you guys so much and I will talk to you soon.

▲