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Oct. 11, 2021 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:17:42
BEING GOOD SUUUCKS! Freedomain Call In
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Time Text
Alright, great. Well, nice to meet you.
And it seemed a kind of an urgent situation.
So if you wanted to start off by reading your email, we can take it from there.
Hi, Stefan. This is the most difficult message I've ever had to write.
But after being a listener of yours for four years, now I finally have to accept that there's both continuity and a cause to the endless failures that seem to shape my life thus far.
I have an ACE score of 7, although I do believe that special consideration should be given to the context of the abuse.
In my case, this would surely increase my score.
Violence, incest, abandonment, neglect, torture and betrayal are all major themes in my family history.
Each time I listen to a free domain calling show, A light is shone onto either a suppressed or repressed memory of mine.
And it becomes increasingly clear that I'm actively, perhaps subconsciously, refusing to succeed in life.
Most importantly, I'm beginning to understand why no one has ever intervened to stop my self-destruction.
And even more terrifying is that their existence depends on my destruction.
I am a British-born West African male in my early 30s.
I am tall, handsome, intelligent, charismatic, athletic, and curious.
But despite these gifts, I have nothing of value to show from my time on this earth.
I have bounced around from one addiction to another, from recreational drug use to sugar binges.
I suffer from insomnia, chronic overthinking, and crippling self-doubt.
I've never loved or been loved.
But most disturbing to me is that I have never been loving to myself.
I've dropped out of university twice, college three times, and procrastination has been my only consistent friend.
After many years of inaction, I'm now afraid to dream.
Because each failure I add to my internal resume Gradually erodes my sense of self-worth and efficacy.
As a child, I would curse God for creating me and forcing me into existence.
I thought it was a sick joke that he would make me live a life of suffering.
I often wished I could snap my fingers and end my own life.
I had no real friends.
We were discouraged from socializing outside of the immediate family.
It was school.
My earliest memories were of being beaten by my mother with the heel of her winter boots.
Being abruptly sent to live with an old woman relative in West Africa and not seeing either my mother or father for months after that.
All without any explanation at all.
I have never had an intimate conversation with my mother I have no memory of ever being hugged by her.
I often wonder if she could mention two things that I enjoy doing.
I have a memory of being woken up in the middle of the night by my mother and told to scrub my body in the shower with a soap from West Africa that had been preyed on and that would remove any evil curses.
I could go on and on Stefan.
The true darkness of my family and childhood is buried deep and even to think about it is to risk too much.
The perpetrators and victims have families of their own now and this is why I haven't contacted you before today.
I feel as though I am trapped in a cult of secrecy and shame.
I truly believe that the victims in my family are quietly and politely dying inside as we look at each other for permission to cry out.
But of course, there will never be permission.
I am frozen in time.
Frozen by shame.
Frozen by fear.
Frozen. Help, please, Stefan.
That is quite a tale, my brother, and I'm very sorry.
I'm very sorry that this is the tale that you have to tell, that this is what you experienced.
But I really do appreciate and applaud your courage in coming forward in such a way.
It's a hell of a thing to ask for this kind of help, to ask for this kind of feedback, to open yourself up in this kind of way.
I really admire it and respect your choice.
So I hope then... I'm sure we can do some great stuff in the conversation, but I just wanted to say that up front to express my sorrow for your history and my admiration for this call.
Thank you. Thank you.
What the hell was going on at your house, man?
Oh, my God. ACEF7, you said...
I mean, you mentioned the brutality, the violence, the hitting, the...
Soap from West Africa that cleanses bad spirits?
Like, okay, so what's the incest that was occurring?
So, there's so much, Stefan, seriously.
Okay, I must have been about, I was less than six years old, for sure.
And all I know is before six, I lived with my mother and father and my younger sister.
And something happened, I assume.
And all I know is I'm in West Africa.
Away from my mother and father.
And I'm told this is your grandmother.
And I meet two children, six and seven years older than I am.
So they're probably like 12, I guess.
And 13.
They're siblings.
And I'm told that they're my half-siblings.
So children of my mother.
So I was sexually abused by one of those children.
My older brother.
You mean your half-brother?
Yes. And sexually abused in what way?
My earliest memory I was ill.
I can't remember why or how.
And I was sleeping in the special room.
So in the house there was this Room that was kind of reserved for, I don't know, for the adults.
I don't know, it had a really nice bed.
We were never allowed in there.
Like a guest room kind of thing? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And because I was ill, I got to sleep in the guest room, you know, in the special room with a nice bed.
And I have a memory of my older brother coming into the room And I was laying on my back and he climbed on top of me and he made me perform oral sex on him.
Was there a sense of threat or of violence or like what would have happened do you think if you had not complied?
I have no idea.
And how much older was he than you?
Six to seven years old, older.
And so at this time, when this happened, I was definitely above the age of five or six and definitely younger than nine or ten.
Right, okay. So he was in the sort of early to mid-teens, like post-puberty, right?
Yeah, my first, like, he was ripped to shreds.
That's all I remember about him when I first met him.
That he was just physically strong, ripped.
He's always been ripped to shreds.
And they were strangers to me.
I've never met these kids before.
And I was terrified.
Even before...
I was just in a perpetual state of being terrified because I didn't know why I was there in that country.
I didn't know if I did something wrong, what I did wrong.
I didn't know why I was away from my mother.
I don't know why I'd never saw my dad or spoke to my dad.
It was literally chaos in my mind.
And it's funny. When we're kids, just stuff happens.
And then later on in life, we look back and say, okay, but why?
Why the hell did this stuff happen?
How did this come about? What was the decision making?
Now, do you know anything about...
This was your mother's son by another man, right?
Do you know anything about that other man?
Okay, so this is where it gets even more complicated.
So, my mother has six children.
I am child number four.
I had no knowledge of this until I magically appeared in West Africa.
And the two children I met, six and seven years older than me, were from the same father.
And then there was a firstborn daughter who is from another father.
So there's three fathers, three sets of kids, if you know what I mean.
And the father of the ripped...
Older kid was not your biological father, right?
No. Okay. And do you know anything about him?
I've never met him.
He's deceased now.
What I do know is that the two older siblings that I met, they were moved around as well.
So when my mother had them...
She's separated from them and they stayed with their father in a household with a stepmother.
And from what I know, they were mistreated in that situation.
I don't know anything.
All I know is like little comments and sly references to mistreatment.
And then I think they were kind of rescued by our grandmother.
And so that's the end of the connection between them and their father.
Right. Yeah, I mean, my guess would be that the older boy, the ripped boy, who molested you or forced you to perform oral sex, that he himself had been raped by a male as a child.
And this was the pattern that unfortunately and brutally he enacted on you.
Yeah. Most likely his father.
I mean, I don't know, obviously, for sure.
But that'd be the first place that I would look.
Not that there's any point now, I guess you say he's dead, but...
Okay, so that's who your mom's choosing?
Yeah. That's who your mom's choosing.
Okay, so how long did this sexual abuse from the older boy go on for?
I think...
So before the age of 10...
Sorry, around the age of 10...
We move back to the UK. I move...
Sorry. All the kids, all the children, all six children now, move...
It's quite complicated, but I'm just going to keep it simple.
So we then...
All of us... The family moves to the UK. So for me, it's returning to the UK. But for my older siblings, it's the first time coming to the UK. And...
There was still sexual abuse in the UK. So it went on for a couple of years in West Africa and then continued in the UK, is that right?
Yes. And I think it probably stopped at the age of 12 or 11, that kind of age.
And was it mostly the forced oral sex?
Was there other forms of molestation that occurred?
That's the only memory of oral sex that I have.
And it wasn't a frequent or regular thing.
I think it was more kind of like an opportunistic kind of behavior.
Oh, you mean like if nobody's home and get away with it?
Yeah. And I have a memory of him ejaculating on me.
Um, so we were sleeping in the same bed at night.
And again, we happened to be separate from the rest of the family.
And, um, he just started rubbing himself on me.
And again, I just didn't do anything.
I didn't resist. Um, and then I didn't know what actually happened, but now I know that he ejaculated on me.
I didn't know what it was. I just knew that I was just covered in some stuff.
And, um, And it was nighttime, it was dark.
And then he wiped it off and then that was it.
And then the last memory I have, and this is, I think this is where, this is what really kind of messes with my mind, is that I have this memory of actually seeking that intimacy.
So I have a memory of, we had a bunk bed.
This is in a different house.
We had a bunk bed. And I chose to lay on his bunk, which I never did.
I would never do that.
I never did that before.
And he found me on his bunk.
And how old are you then?
I think I was probably like 11 or 12.
This is my last memory of us ever having any sort of sexual interaction.
Right. So I was probably about 11 or 12.
And then he climbed on top of the bunk and then he tried to kiss me and then I moved.
And then he was stroking me and I felt myself get aroused.
Yeah. But then I stopped and I just kind of left the room.
I don't know why I did that.
I don't know why I stopped it, but I did.
Well, I mean, I can imagine.
Go ahead. Was this your first memory of sexual arousal?
Yes. Right, so you probably didn't want to have the imprinting of incest as your first real memory of sexual arousal or orgasm.
That stuff tends to imprint pretty deep into our mind as the sexual activity we tend to get more used to or maybe even pursue in the future.
So you were probably just trying to ward off that association, if that makes sense.
Yeah, it does, yeah.
Now, in any of this time, my friend, in any of this time, was there any possibility or opportunity to tell anyone to say, look, this creepy stuff is going on, or I don't like this, or anyone to communicate with about this?
I've asked myself that question.
Why never... Oh no, I'm not saying that you should or shouldn't have done.
I don't know, but I'm just curious.
I mean, it must have crossed your mind, but was there anyone that you had any close relationship to that could have helped?
You know, Stefan, I've thought about my childhood a lot since I found your work.
I actually found your work because I researched race and IQ. Yeah.
And then you were the only person speaking frankly about it.
It changed my whole world.
When I think about my childhood, I feel like I was a zombie.
I feel like Like you weren't there, right?
Like you were just eating, you were sleeping, you were dodging, you were maybe a bit of playing, but yeah, there's no person there, right?
I mean, a lot of us who've gone through these kinds of childhoods have that depersonalization, like we're kind of like a robot, and there's no room for us in our own lives.
Yeah, there's no free will.
There was no preferences.
There was no... Yeah, no preferences you can really act on, right?
And the other thing too, of course, is that when you're treated in this kind of way, I mean, you really are treated as if you're not there.
You're just an object to be used with no preferences or thoughts or feelings whatsoever.
Of your own. And the other thing that happens as well, of course, I don't want to tell you your own experience, but I think this is pretty common.
And of course, tell me if it doesn't apply to you.
But, you know, we're kind of, you know, when something shocking or appalling happens to us, you know, in this case, the molestation, it could be the beatings or whatever.
But when something really appalling happens to us, and it could be at school or anything, right?
We are quite desperate, in a way, to know if anybody notices.
Does anyone notice that we're not as happy?
Does anyone notice that we're moody?
Does anyone notice that we're quiet?
Does anyone notice or care?
Hopefully both, notice and care.
Does anyone notice that we're unhappy?
And that's really the big question.
We tell if...
Someone knows we're unhappy and asks persistently, right?
Because that's the only way we know if they can be trusted, right?
Yeah. Because if we tell and someone is untrustworthy, then they'll accuse us of lying.
They will go to the molester and they will say, can you believe what this boy said about you?
And then you're in shit, right?
Like you're in heavy shit. I mean, you could get beaten or even killed at this point for spreading vicious rumors about a noble boy or whatever.
And so it's really, really dangerous to confess, to tell, to reveal what's happening to you.
And the way that we try and figure it out, Is, well, does anyone even notice that I'm quiet or not?
Does anybody notice that I'm not there?
Does anybody notice that I'm not present in my own life, in other people's lives?
And if they don't notice that, well, we just shut up.
Of course we do, right?
I mean, if you witness a crime from, like, the mafia or whatever, right?
I don't know what the West African equivalent would be, but if you witness a crime from organized criminal crime gang...
If the police is the brother of the criminal, if the policeman is the brother of the criminal, you're not likely to go tell the policeman, right?
Because you're just going to get in more trouble.
The policeman's then going to go to his brother and say, hey, do you know who's ratting on you?
You know, and snitches get stitches and end up in ditches, right?
Yeah. You probably have the radar out, right?
The radar of, okay, is there anyone here I can tell?
And the only person you could possibly tell would be somebody who you were close to who would notice that you were different after the molestation than before.
And since it doesn't sound like anybody even noticed, how on earth could you tell without almost certainly ending up in a much worse situation?
I mean, I know it's hard to imagine worse than this, but there's a lot worse than this, right?
Yeah. Again, sorry, I don't mean to tell you your experience, but if that makes sense.
It does make sense, yeah. Okay, so how was your emotional state, I guess, after you came back to the UK with this predatory ripped molester in the vicinity, in the house, right, in the same house?
how was your mood?
How was your, how were your thoughts in that situation?
It's hard to answer that question, Stefan, because there was so much going on in the household.
There's six kids that were being raised by a single mother at this point.
I still don't know why my father is not in my life.
My last memory of him being in my life is at the age of five.
There's the conflict amongst us siblings because there's the, you know, there's the three groups of kids.
There's the first child, there's the next two children, and then the next three children.
And I'm the fourth child.
So I'm the eldest of the last set of kids.
So there's this conflict of you guys are the British kids, you get treated differently.
There's obviously the conflict between all the kids and our mother because she's not a loving human being.
Then there's the cultural differences between all of us and the new school that we go to and we get bullied and abused in that school.
Who bullies and abuses you?
The kids in the school.
Oh, no, no. I understand that. But I mean, if we're going to sort of bring the ethnicity or the race or anything into it, is it white kids who are bullying you?
Asian kids, black kids?
Yes. So at this point, we are going to a school that is in the suburbs.
So I don't want to be too specific.
In the suburbs. So it's a non-diverse area.
You mean like a majority white area?
Yes. So presumably because my mother wanted us to go to a better school.
So we have to travel about an hour to get to school.
And there are many schools in between where we live and that particular school.
And now I know that our school was a better school than the alternatives.
It was a Church of England school, which faith schools tend to be better in the UK than Well, you'll get a couple of moral values out of it, right?
Yeah, exactly. And so, not only was I a black kid, I was an African black kid with an African accent.
So, let me break it down.
So, there's being black, which is a source of prejudice.
There's being African, which means you're one of the Oxfam kids, right?
Adverts that come on TV with the flies around your face and, you know, you've seen those adverts, right?
Distended bellies and yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly.
And then you have the African accent and you don't have any cultural awareness.
So you don't know the jokes, you don't understand the slang, right?
So the Caribbean kids want to distance themselves from you because they're like, we're not African like them.
You mean the black Caribbean kids, right?
Yes, the black Caribbean kids.
Right. We're black, but we're not West African black.
That's like lowest packing order.
Is that right? Yeah. Yeah, that's right.
That's right. So, yeah, there was no source of, there was no comfort.
There was no community at school.
Yeah. I'm really sorry for all of that stupid tribalism as well.
I mean, my God. You're just trying to survive in a world you didn't choose to be in, in an environment you didn't choose to be in.
When you left West Africa and went back to the UK, how did you feel about that?
Was it like a plus, minus? Did you barely remember it at that point?
Oh, I was ecstatic.
I remember when I found out that we were moving back to the UK. I was like, really?
It was literally like a miracle.
Why is that? Listen, man, don't you understand that England has a bad climate?
I mean, it's much warmer and nicer and sunnier in West Africa.
What are you, crazy? No, seriously, why did you want, I mean, obviously, I mean, violence and molestation and so on, but what was so off-putting about West Africa that you were just kind of desperate to get back to the UK? So, I don't know what it's like now, but back then...
So, I would say we were middle class in Africa, which means that we could afford to go to a private school where you have to pay for your uniform and pay school fees and all that kind of stuff.
Yeah. But even when you're middle class, the infrastructure in that part of Africa or the world is really poor.
So there was constant electrical failures, cockroaches, rats.
Lizards everywhere. Now, the lizards are cool, man.
Listen, the roaches, I mean, you and I could probably shudder together in a black box for a while about roaches, because if you grow up, poor man, roaches, they're the only nukem from orbit species that I can think of on the planet.
I hate those creatures.
I'd literally rather have spiders than roaches.
Roaches are the most vile and disgusting things to have in your life.
I remember in our apartment growing up, there were roaches that would crawl around inside the clocks inside the stove.
Like, you know, you got an oven, right?
And there's little clocks. You see roaches running around in there.
Oh, it was horrible.
Absolutely. I just, oh, I couldn't stand it.
We just regularly get the fumigators coming in and, and, I mean, so, and then the roaches in West Africa could, like, totally beat the shit out of the roaches from my childhood because they're pretty, pretty big, right?
Like surfboards with legs, right?
And, oh, yeah.
And the rats, I've never dealt with.
Mice a little bit here and there, but, yeah, the roaches, oh, man, they are just, they are just stomach-turning.
That's like, Yes, that's like, you know, for anyone who, don't ever torture me, but that's my room 101.
That's like the worst thing in the world.
It's like the bag of roaches over the head.
It's like they're just vile.
I mean, you hear these stories of like women who, I don't know, they fall asleep at some place in New York and they wake up with this incredible noise in their ear because of the roach that's crawled into their ear and it's an antenna that's waving on their ear hairs and something's like, oh my god, just behead me, please, just solve the problem that way.
Yeah. Anyway, I don't remember them so much from the UK, but I certainly remember them in Toronto and Canada.
But anyway, they're sort of neither here nor there.
So I feel you about the roaches, man.
That's rough stuff.
I mean, especially in a warm climate, I mean, you can't really do much about it at all.
Yeah. All right.
Sorry, but I'm supposed to be talking about my trauma here.
Let's get back to your life. No, it's okay.
I really appreciate you, you know, lightening the conversation every now and then.
Oh, yeah. I think it's a good question.
Now when I reflect on it, back then I just thought, oh, I'm going back to the UK. I just felt like it was a miracle.
Now I realize that in contrast to my experience in Nigeria, the UK was a miracle as far as my memories of it.
Because remember, my memories were, oh, my mom and dad are together.
We live in a household together.
I'm safe. Oh, you mean your memories of the UK before you went to North Africa?
Yes. Exactly. So it's like, oh, I'm going back to my memories of the UK. But obviously that wasn't the case because everyone else was coming with me.
Right. And your biological dad was long out of the picture, right?
Yes. What did your mom live on?
I mean, that's a lot of kids, man.
I mean, how did she pay for all this stuff?
In the UK or?
I guess both places, yeah.
So, the exchange rate is quite extreme in West Africa.
I think it was like, my memory is like 200 to 1 kind of thing.
Yeah. So, like I said, even though she was Broke in the UK, she was middle class in Africa.
But did she work?
I mean, no matter how...
Oh yeah, she did, sorry. Don't tell me her actual job, but what area did she work in?
For the government. Yeah, exactly.
I mean, you know, I figure women with voodoo soap for their demon-haunted kids, not necessarily a scientist, if that's the level of superstition that we're dealing with, right?
Yeah. You know, it's so crazy because every time I think about my childhood and I think about how I perceived my mother, she was, like, all-powerful.
And now, when I think about her now, knowing everything I know, I just can't believe that she commanded that level of respect from me.
I just can't believe she was in control of six human beings.
Right. So, help me, I mean, help me understand the difference looking up and looking down.
You know, growing up, like, so...
I just...
All I remember is just...
It's hard for me to give you specifics.
It was more like an atmosphere of chaos.
Now I'm talking about post-Africa, so we're now in the UK, going to secondary school.
There was just this atmosphere of chaos.
You never knew what was going to happen next.
Just explosions of emotion.
Just being confused all the time.
Was your mom like, I don't know, it's an analogy for older people than you, but like a pinball, bing, bing, bing, sort of just bouncing off various situations and circumstances and having these strong emotional reactions depending on the moment?
Yes. Again, again, I didn't...
Well, I say obviously.
Maybe it's not obvious. But I... Okay, I think for me, what's most hurtful is that I was lied to my whole life.
Like, now I know that my mom suffers from extreme anxiety.
Like, crippling anxiety.
But, of course, I wasn't told that when I was a kid.
Well, that's one possibility.
Okay. That's one possibility that she suffers from extreme anxiety.
I would hazard another one.
She's guilty of sin.
Managing her own conscience.
Managing how badly she treated her children.
Managing how she raised them without a father figure in their life.
Managing how the oldest of the youngest got molested for, what, close to half a decade?
I mean... I've never mistreated my daughter one-tenth of one-tenth of one percent of that.
There's still stuff I feel a little bad about.
And I can't even imagine what that would do to your mom's brain to have her children in these kinds of situations where she's basically delivering them up to molesters and failing to protect them.
I mean, yeah, maybe there's this anxiety, but Anxiety is like this morally neutral thing that she's like a victim.
Oh, I just have a lot of anxiety.
It's like, well, yeah, maybe.
Maybe. Or maybe you were an unbelievably neglectful and abusive mother whose children suffered an adverse childhood experience score of 7+.
And maybe, you know, the Christians are right about the conscience.
Maybe it's anxiety. Maybe it's a really, really, really bad conscience for very good reason.
Maybe that's the price you pay when you fuck up your parenting that badly.
And this wouldn't be something she'd pay when you became an adult.
This would be something she'd pay the whole time through.
Every day, another dollar.
Every day, another dollar.
Yeah.
I mean, my mother.
I mean, again, I'm not trying to confuse this together in one sort of big ebony and ivory frappe here, but, you know, my mother, oh, I have all these medical issues.
I have chronic fatigue syndrome.
I have Epstein-Barr virus.
It's like, yeah, maybe. Maybe you've just got a really bad conscience.
And you don't want to deal with that, so you're pretending it's medical.
Or maybe she's pretending it's anxiety.
I don't know if people who live life well, you know, morally, protect their kids and stay married to the father or mother of their kids.
I don't know that they end up with a huge amount of anxiety.
I mean, that's like life anxiety and world anxiety and what the hell's happening to our civilization anxiety, but I don't know about the parenting anxiety.
I mean, I think if you live a reasonably decent life that way, and, you know, if you have an adverse childhood experience of seven, And the adverse childhood experience score, you know, people can go and look this up, doesn't even count a lot of the stuff that nobody would really consider abuse, but which I would consider destructive to children.
You know, it doesn't really include spanking, it doesn't include timeouts, it doesn't include yelled, raised voices very much, it doesn't, right?
I mean, so, yeah, I mean, you had it really rough, and your mother had one job.
She had one job, which was to keep you safe, right?
That's the job that's necessary for everything else to happen.
If you don't keep your kids safe, I don't care what else you do.
You can't make up for that.
It's like saying, well, yeah, I do smoke, crack, shoot up heroin, but I also do sit-ups.
It's like, no, no, the sit-ups aren't going to undo the smoke and crack and take in heroin.
And it's the same thing.
If you don't even keep your kids safe, if you don't have the kind of relationship where they can come to you and say, you know, something weird happened, like something's not right.
I don't feel good.
I don't like this.
Thank you.
I mean, if you screw up your parenting that badly, and you keep having kids, the suffering that your mother's going through, I mean, because that's, I guess, my question, which I'm slowly circling around here.
The question is, okay, what's your relationship to your mother's anxiety or your mother's suffering?
If your mother suffers, you say you've got anxiety and all that.
What's your relationship to that suffering?
What do you think of it? I don't have any emotional attachment to my mother.
Hey, that's the first thing you've told me.
That really just ain't true, man.
Come on. I haven't seen my mother in a quarter century.
I still have an emotional attachment to her.
The reason why I say that, I'm not saying it's true, because I have an explanation.
The reason why I say that is because I remember in my late teens...
Realizing that I didn't actually care if I saw my mother or not.
It made no difference to my life.
I realized that. I think I was probably about 17.
But that also is not true.
I mean, I think that you may have fled to indifference.
And the reason I want to pause on this thing is that the indifference can be really dangerous.
You know, like the teenage is like, I just don't care!
It's like, well, of course you do, right?
But you're saying you don't because you want to desperately flee from misery to indifference.
In the same way that somebody in pain, they just want a painkiller.
They don't want to hide. They just want the pain to go away.
They want to numb themselves, right?
And I'm just a bit concerned because, you know, you feel that your emotions are not...
Helping you that much in your life, right?
You have trouble with consistency and follow-through and finishing uni or whatever it is, right?
So if you go to the place of indifference, you get a relief from pain in the moment, but it kind of costs you your future, I think, because you lose your feelings, you lose your passions, you lose your commitment, you lose your dedication, you lose your enthusiasm, all that stuff too.
All of the switches in our hearts are like up and down, Yeah, I agree with you.
So what is your relationship?
So tell me, if you say your mother's got anxiety or other things, how's she doing as far as you know at the moment?
She hasn't worked in, I think, like two decades.
Living on? Government support.
Excellent. Excellent.
Excellent. I'm sure there'll be a million British taxpayers sending up a ragged cheer at the moment.
All right. And is it the anxiety that has driven her from the workforce, so to speak?
I think so.
So when I was 15, my mother kicked my three older siblings out of the house.
There was some huge argument, and I don't know over what.
But she literally kicked them out of the house.
They had to go to the government to get emergency shelter.
And so it was just myself and my two younger sisters living with my mother for a short period of time.
And I was taking my GCSEs.
It's basically...
The exams you take at age 16, it's the end of secondary school in the UK. Age 16, you take your GCSEs and then you decide what you want to do for two years before you go to university.
So these are like huge exams, right?
They define the rest of your life in a way.
And I remember her coming up to me and I was sitting in the kitchen and she came up to me and she said, I'm going to be moving back to Nigeria.
And I'm taking your two younger sisters.
Do you want to come with me?
And of course I said no.
Wait, this just came out of nowhere?
Yes. What kind of time frame did you have?
Is there a cab outside to go to the airport?
What kind of time frame did you have to make this kind of decision?
Well, I made the decision instantaneously.
For obvious reasons.
And you were, what, 15?
16, you said, right? Yeah, 15.
15? Yes.
Jeez. So she's just going to leave you in the house at the age of 15?
Because all the siblings are gone, right?
Yeah, they've all moved out together.
Yeah, they were kicked out. They found this, they were given this flat, kind of a part, like a It's called a masonette.
I don't know if you know what that is, but it's like a flat, but it's like a two-story flat.
Okay. It's like a house on top of a house.
Okay, yeah, yeah. So they've been given that property to live in, which was obviously heavily subsidized.
I think they were playing like 10% of the rent or something.
And So the choice was I could either go back to Nigeria with my mother and my two younger sisters or move in with my three older siblings.
One of them was the molester?
Yes. Oh man, I'm so sorry.
That's hideous. And do you know why she suddenly wanted to move or was it even that sudden?
I have no idea, but now I think it's because of a man.
Right. Yeah, single mothers abandoning their kids to go chase men is a story as old as single motherhood, sadly.
Yeah. And so that happened.
They moved away.
By this time, she owned the house we were living in and she was paying a mortgage.
So she had a lump sum of money that she took with her when she sold the property.
I also think that she did some sort of financial scam because one day we came back from school and the house was flooded.
Oh, trying to get some insurance money?
Yeah, I think so. The house was flooded, and we couldn't go back into the house, and we were staying in the hotel, the Marriott Hotel, for like two months.
And again, notice there's no dialogue.
There's no back and forth.
There's no questions. There's no explanations for any of your childhood.
No, no, no.
Yeah, it's like when you've got a...
We're like archaeologists in our own history.
We've got like, well, there's a little scrap of writing over here, and there's a little statue there, and over here it's a little carving.
It's like, how am I supposed to figure out what the hell happened with so few clues?
My childhood, I was just yeeted all over the place.
Nobody ever told me what the hell was going on or why.
I kind of figured or puzzled some of it out.
Sometimes years or decades later, but man, you've got to read some serious tea leaves to try and figure out the story of this kind of chaos, right?
Yeah. So what happened?
Did she go? Yeah, so she went and it's funny that you said, it's funny you talk about the indifference because I remember I was probably about 16 or 17 and Wait, so did you go and live with the older kids?
Yeah, I did. Yes, I did.
But your older half-brother left you alone at this point, right?
Yeah. So by now, he has access to women.
Oh, right. So he's like the emergency prison gay guy, right?
Okay, got it. Yeah. And during that period of time where I'm living in that household with my older siblings, I think it was probably about from the age of 15 to 19, so about 3-4 years, he is now addicted to marijuana.
He's got a bad conscience too, right?
Yeah, I guess so.
You think you get to molest kids and not end up with a bad conscience?
No, I just mean that I think there's probably other reasons.
There are more reasons why he could have been addicted as well.
That's what I'm trying to say. Okay.
Yeah. Yeah.
And sorry, the reason I'm pausing on this stuff when talking about the conscience is that someone has to suffer for your bad childhood.
Now, the more that you accept or realize that other people are suffering for your bad childhood, the less you'll have to suffer yourself.
Someone's got to carry this weight.
Unbelievably shitty and abusive things were done to you.
Are you a religious man?
No. Okay. So you don't even get, you know, God's hammer fist is going to put these people into the lake of everlasting fire.
Which is a way of unburdening yourself from the suffering of your childhood.
And so, for me at least, and we're both people, I think we both basically work the same way, right?
So, for me, as I began to really understand that the people who caused me to suffer are themselves suffering, Because first they look like they're doing well, right? Because they're older than you, they get ahead quicker, they seem to be doing more, they have all of the confidence that comes from not dealing with your childhood, right?
It looks pretty cool when you're young, right?
And then you begin to suspect that they're not as happy as they claim to be, and then you start to get little confirmations of just how miserable their lives are.
Really are. And then as you begin to accumulate, you're understanding more and more of your mother, in this case, your older half-brother and others.
And you begin to realize that hell is not the afterlife.
Hell is the bad conscience in the here and now.
And you also begin to realize over time, it's not an argument, I know, but I'll just tell you my experience.
I began to realize over time that the punishment of That the conscience devises for those who do wrong, particularly those who do wrong to children, that the punishment that the conscience designs for those who harm others is worse even than their victims would want.
Like, you have a lot to re-angry about with regards to your mother, with regards to your absent father, with regards to your creepy as hell molesting older half-brother and so on but I'm telling you man the suffering that they both do experience and will experience over the course of their life it's almost like I don't care how angry you are the suffering that they go through is worse than anything you could even wish to inflict upon them and if you accept that there's a virtue as its own reward Well,
vice is its own punishment.
Evil is its own punishment.
So, that's why I'm sort of probing some of the suffering on the part of your mother and your half-brother and so on.
That's why I'm saying, you're addicted to marijuana?
Yeah, we've got a bad conscience.
Mother's anxious? No, she's got a bad conscience.
But the suffering comes out of the evil that they've done.
And it can't be undone.
Now, it can't be undone.
You know, like if... If my mother soars off her own leg, I can't give her a new one.
I can't have it grow back.
I can't give her mine, right?
It's just missing a leg.
And when people harm children to the extent that these two particular, and your mother and your half-brother, if you harm children to that degree, you can't regrow.
Like, you can't fix it. They're now entombed.
They are in a prison cell of their own misery.
And there is no escape.
There is no escape because there's no redemption.
There is no redemption because it can't be undone.
It can't be undone.
You know, you're over at someone else, you knock over a vase, you break the vase, you can buy them a new vase, right?
It can be repaired, assuming that it's not, I don't know, somebody's cremated remains or so.
It's not an urn. But for the most part, you can make things good, right?
You can make things good. But, I mean, a wrecked childhood cannot be made whole.
It cannot be undone. Because there's nothing that you would accept to make up for that childhood.
Somebody said, hey, I'll give you a million dollars.
It's like, no, I'll take a childhood of, like, not that.
I don't care how much money you've got.
It's not worth it, right? There's enough for sale that way, right?
So... I think if you accept that the punishment of God and the idea of hell, the uneasy conscience, the self-punishment of the immoral,
that that happens regardless of anyone's intention, regardless of anyone's ideas, regardless of anyone's preferences, and even against the wishes of the victims.
My mother is suffering More than I would ever want her to suffer.
I'll say it straight, man, and it's a heartbreak.
My mother is suffering far more than I would ever want her to suffer for justice, as I would conceive of it.
My childhood was 15 years.
You know, since she first had her breakdown in her late 30s, early 40s, It's now 45 years.
Right? So her punishment, her sentence, is a kind of living hell that's gone on three times longer than my entire childhood.
You know, while my mother was a criminal in terms of her physical abuse and violence, and neglect to some degree, a just legal system would not put her in a situation of torture for 45 years.
She would not get a life sentence.
And she shouldn't get a life sentence.
She's not a murderer, right?
Might have come close once or twice, but she's not a murderer.
And she's not a rapist.
Not a molester. And so, like a just legal system, even if it had taken into account all of her crimes, would give her maybe five years in jail?
Maybe. And without torture.
Obviously, without torture.
Okay. And now she's been close to a half century of torture, misery, isolation, solitude, madness, paranoia, sleeping with a giant bread knife under her pillow because she's that scared of the world, right? God knows what they've put her on over the years, right?
So... The suffering of the wrongdoers.
This is one of the reasons we don't do wrong.
We like virtue, but also, I mean, the punishment.
There's no parole.
Maybe the parole could be, oh, I'm so sorry, I've been thinking about it, and I did you wrong, and I shouldn't have acted the way that I did, and I'm so sorry.
What can we do to make it better?
Here's my thoughts. Here's my suggestions.
Here's what I've got going on.
I will relieve you of the need for self-knowledge by telling you everything there is to know about your childhood in as honest and frank and man as possible so that there are no mysteries for you to stumble over in the dark.
But that doesn't come. I assume it hasn't come from your mom.
I assume it won't come from your mom.
My mom certainly didn't come from my mom.
It will not come from my mom in the few years that she may have left.
But the suffering, if you recognize how much those who've harmed you are suffering, it eases your burden, not because it's like, not because it's like, ah, I love the fact that they're suffering.
Don't get me wrong. Occasionally it's okay that they're suffering in my heart and mind, but it's because if they suffer, Then you don't have to blame yourself as much.
If they suffer, you don't have to suffer as much.
If they suffer, you were not in the wrong.
And if you're not in the wrong, that lifts your burden, that alleviates your suffering, if that makes any sense.
Does she suffer?
I mean, you know something about her life since you were 15 years old.
Does she suffer? Yeah, she definitely does.
Yeah, she never found the love she wanted, right?
She never found that safe harbor, that port in the storm, the man to take care of her, right?
She never found that, right?
Yeah. Probably got used up a whole lot along the way, though, by a bunch of really creepy, bad people, right?
Yeah. Yeah. Your elder half-brother, Mr.
Molester, how's his life turned out?
That's an interesting one because on the surface, he seems okay.
So, he overcame his addiction to cannabis.
And from the help of someone from a church that he goes to.
And then he got married.
Appropriate age, like younger than 30.
He has three kids.
And he's still married.
And Career-wise, he's never been kind of educated.
He's not really an intellectual.
Let's put it that way. And so he's working kind of like an average working-class job and he has to work crazy hours in order to pay his mortgage and provide a good standard of living for his family.
So I guess he's suffering in that respect.
I mean, he doesn't enjoy his work.
He doesn't have a particular career.
He's just moved from, oh, this job is paying more money.
No, he's not loved.
Do you know how I know that? How do you know that?
I do want to know how you know that.
I know that beyond the shadow of a doubt.
He is not loved. In fact, he's probably quite despised.
And the reason I say that is that if I... Was working 70 hours a week or whatever, right?
Do you know what my wife would say? You're working too much.
I miss you. Stop working so hard.
I want to spend time with you.
I love you. I want to go out for dinner or stay in for dinner if we can't afford it.
I want to sit on a couch and hold your hand and talk about life.
A jug of wine, a loaf of bread, and you.
That's all I need, right? But his wife, now, if he were to say, well, no, but...
We wouldn't be able to afford whatever, right?
We wouldn't be able to afford this bigger house, right?
Yeah. What would she say if she left him?
I'd rather be with you than have a bigger house and be alone.
Yeah, let's move.
I don't want a big house without you in it.
Yeah. I want a small house with you in it.
Yeah. So she sends him off to work because she doesn't like him.
And he goes to work because he doesn't like his wife and also probably to stay away from his children because of his pedophile tendencies.
Yeah. So that's, I mean, to feel unloved.
And then he's going to start to feel resentful if he doesn't already, right?
He's going to start to feel like, oh my God, all I do is work and I, you know.
I don't get any gratitude. I don't get any affection.
I'm just a workhorse. I'm like a piece of livestock to them.
All of that resentment, right?
And then with that resentment, you know, he has an affair.
His wife has an affair.
They get a divorce.
His life explodes. Goes to family court.
And then he's still working his heart, but he never gets to see anyone.
Stefan? Is it wrong that listening to what you're saying is making me feel better?
Well, no, this is exactly what I was saying, that if you recognize the suffering of other people who've done evil, it takes the burden from you.
Because that's what they did.
Like, this guy got his twisted, perverse, revolting sexual gratification from the oral rape of a little boy, i.e.
you, right? So he made himself feel better by making you feel worse.
You recognize that suffering, it just, yes, it lifts a burden.
Look, you and I are in on the secret.
The big, dark, gruesome secret.
And the big secret is this.
Oh, it's the big secret question, the secret question.
And the big secret question, which we...
Obsess over. And rightly so.
It's an important question. The big secret question is this.
Does being good suck?
Does being virtuous suck?
Or does being good just mean that you're a sucker?
You get taken advantage of.
People walk all over you. They de-platform you.
They insult you. They bully you.
They fire you. They will appease the table-thumping assholes of the world, but the nice, good, sensitive, intelligent people we just get plowed under, like last year's mulch.
Does being good totally suck?
Is it a fool's game?
Is it a way in which the sensitive and the intelligent beat themselves up so that the evil can rule the world unopposed?
Is virtue a soft, syrupy spider trap that we crawl into so that we feel better about ourselves in the moment while letting the world get taken over by the monsters and the predators?
Does being good suck? Is being good cowardly?
Because we see all the bad people in the world going out and taking what they want and getting their satisfaction and Achieving their goals and getting resources and getting the hot girls and getting the big paycheck.
No, I mean, look, it's the question of you get up, you go to work, you work your 40 hours, you make your couple hundred quid, and meanwhile, there are assholes over there in the central banking palace just printing all the money they want on your back, on your productivity, on your dime.
All the guys who get up and go to work and provide for their families are looking at the guys who just go bang everything with a hole that drops a pencil.
Wandering off, having fun, having a blast, living the party lifestyle and we're getting up at 7 in the morning to go to work.
Is being good a fool's game?
Is it like a con?
Hey, man, if I can get you to believe that you should be good, if I can get you to believe that you should be virtuous, say the evildoers, man, you're no threat to me.
You're just going to sit there and bite your fingernails and stare into the mirror and trying to figure out how good you are and if you're good in the right way.
You'll just be self-obsessed with goodness and you'll just drift aside like morning fog under a hot sun and we can then rule the world.
I'm sure that's crossed your mind in one form or another from time to time.
Yes. Of course. Me, I'm going to tell the truth about race and IQ because honesty is a virtue, right?
Right? Of course, right?
And the people who don't talk about these things, the people who don't talk about the information that can help the racists get along better and have more understanding and sympathy with each other, Well, the people who don't talk about that, they still have their shows.
They still have their sponsors.
They still have their income. They still have their views.
So, telling the truth.
What an idiot I was to tell the truth.
Don't we have that feeling from time to time?
Why the hell didn't I just shut up?
It's tempting, isn't it?
No, see, I should have just said, I was talking about race and NyQuil.
Not race and IQ, it was race and NyQuil.
You know that sometimes different races, when they take cold medication, have different response race and NyQuil.
I don't know what you all heard!
I'm not crazy!
Thou shalt not bail false witness, but thou shalt take a fist to the nads every time thou obeys this commandment.
Hmm.
But if you get that they suffer, and they do, And they do.
And they do. It does make you feel better, and it's not sadistic.
It's not like, oh, I take deep existential pleasure in other people's suffering.
No, that's them, right? They took that pleasure, right?
But it's like the moral machinery of the mind is working.
And it means then that your suffering...
It had some value, if you talk about it.
And the value that your suffering can have is that people who've wronged you, when you talk openly about their misery, then they become a warning sign for other people.
The operations of the conscience are beyond the conscious mind.
It can't be changed. It can't be fixed.
I, if I had the key to my mother's prison, if I had that key, somebody handed me this key and said, you can go and let your mom out, I would, with all due respect, hang the hell out of this conversation and go and let her out.
And I'd say, 45 years, man, that's too long.
I didn't have the key, man. I'd let her out.
I'd let her out. I'd want her to be happy for the last couple of years of her life.
I really would. Genuinely and completely and totally would.
If I had the key, I would let her out.
But here's the thing, man.
I don't have the key. I can't let her out.
I didn't put her in.
And you say, ah, but you could go and forgive her.
But I don't think that lying is a virtue.
And I would forgive her if she asked, if she said, I'm sorry, do you forgive me?
I would say, you know what?
Of course I do. I have a great life.
It's 40 years ago now.
Go out, breathe the fresh air, Here's a trip to the Mediterranean.
Go drink up the sunshine.
Go walk on the water.
I would want to let her out, but I can't.
If she wanted out, she could ask and I would let her out.
That's the only way that I get the key.
The only way I get the key is if she asks.
I could go and pretend that she said something or that she was sorry, right?
But all that would happen...
See, if I went to forgive her...
And I hope I'm not just talking about myself because you have these...
I mean, we all have these questions. We have these kinds of parents, right?
If I were to go and forgive her, do you know what she would say?
Forgive me for what? Forgive me for you not talking to me for 20 years?
Forgive... You forgive me because I was made sick by the doctors and fell apart and you just let me fall?
She would abuse me if I went to forgive her.
And that would make her more unhappy.
Staying away is really the only chance I have to minimize her unhappiness because I don't provoke her into bad actions.
Now, all of this is to say, you know, you said I'm indifferent to my mother.
I don't think you can be, and I don't think you are deep down.
I mean, I'm not saying you're lying to me, right?
I mean, I didn't say you were lying to me.
I just said this is what I don't believe is true.
I don't think it's the truth. We always care about our mothers.
I don't like that my mother suffers this much.
I think that the operations of the conscience...
Is, in a sense, harsher than hell itself.
Because hell is theoretical.
Hell is a possibility.
The suffering my mother has gone through for the last 45 years is very real, it's very vivid.
And it's very powerful.
And it's not later, it's not maybe, it's yeah, absolutely.
It's a fact. So when you say you feel better, how could he be loved when he carries this unbelievably brutal secret that he forced a child into oral rape for half a decade?
You don't have any big dark secrets, do you?
I mean, you're unhappiness for sure, but it's not like, here's the pile of homeless people I've buried in my backyard, right?
No. So you don't know what it's like.
There's only...
I was going to say, maybe it's time for me to mention something that I think I need to say in order to hear what you have to say.
Go for it. So...
It would be bad enough if I was the only one impacted by what we're talking about so far.
So, I think I was about...
What age was I? Maybe around 14, I think.
And... I remember my mum physically attacking my older brother.
You know, like, you know, like you're trying to kill someone kind of thing, you know, like, you know, grabbing anything, trying to smash it on him and all that kind of stuff.
And this is after they'd been kicked out of the house, the household.
Right. And we were in the property that they were living in, in the house, the new house that they were living in.
It's like the top house thing, right? Yeah, yeah.
Masonette, that was the word, right?
Yeah, masonette, yes.
And so I just thought that my mom was violently attacking him and he was crying and apologizing and saying, I'm sorry, mommy, I'm sorry, mommy, I'm sorry.
And.
Again, there's no conversations in my family, no discussions, no explanations, no.
But what I understood... Yeah, there's avoidance and explosions, right?
Yeah, exactly.
Then what I understood is that apparently he had messed around with my younger sister.
Oh, God. But this is me just piecing things together.
There was no verbal affirmation, I mean confirmation.
And do you think your mom found out about this and beat him up, right?
Yeah, I think my mom found out somehow.
And how old was he?
He was an adult at this point, wasn't he?
Yeah, he was 20.
Jesus. So, a confirmed pedophile at this point, right?
Yeah. How old is your sister at this point?
12? 11? I'm 14.
Wait, how old is she now?
Sorry, hold on. 8?
Oh, God. Oh, God.
Flamethrowers. Oh my god.
Oh my god. So when you said he stopped messing with you because he had access to women, it's not really the case, right?
At 20, he had access to women, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
But he then... And this is what you were backing away from when he was touching you when you were 11 and you got aroused and you fled, right?
You were... Feeing this association, which obviously he could not escape or did not escape.
Yeah. Oh, God.
And what's your contact been like with him over the years?
So this is the thing.
This is the thing about my family.
Everyone pretends like that never happened.
What? You don't even know what happened, right?
Because you're only guessing that it was about your young sister.
Yeah. And so you can see how it destroyed the relationship between me and my younger sister.
Because I can't talk about what happened to me.
Right. She can't talk about what happened to her.
No, I mean you can.
What happens if you do? So I'm afraid that she doesn't want to talk about it.
I'm afraid that if I bring it up, then I'm the evil guy that's bringing up things that has been forgotten.
If you know what I mean? Is she not versed in, you know, I mean, one of the big things in the sort of Western or the European tradition is, I don't know what the case is in sort of West Africa, but it's the idea that if there's a crime that the ghost will haunt it until the Crime is discovered and the criminal is identified.
There's a very strong, all the way back, through the Greeks really, of this idea that murder will out, that evil has to be brought out into the light.
The vampires have to come out into the sunlight before they can disintegrate or be disintegrated.
This idea that things can be forgotten, they can't be forgotten.
If you genuinely forgot about something, right?
If you genuinely forgot about, like a while ago, I was trying to figure out why on earth I had bought a gift certificate from a very obscure store, right?
And I was sitting there going, oh my God, why did I ask my wife, why did I spend all this money?
And then I was like, oh, that's right, someone helped me out and this was my thanks.
Oh, right, so then I, you know, because I had forgotten about it and then I remembered about it, I could say, oh, that's, you know, there was no need to keep it a secret because I'd forgotten about it.
But when you claim, oh, it's all forgotten, but you can't talk about it, then it's not forgotten.
I think I'm afraid that if I say it, she'll just be like, what are you talking about?
Yeah.
Okay, so let's say she says that.
What then? Then I'm sick for thinking about it.
And then I would have to tell her what happened to me.
Okay, so let's say you tell her what happened to you.
Then what?
She might not believe me.
Thank you.
Okay, let's say she doesn't believe you.
Then what? Then she has to make her choice.
it's me or him okay so let's say she has to make that choice between good and evil if she chooses evil when the choice is given to her can't have a relationship it.
Thank you.
You can't. You can pretend, you can be in the same room, you can laugh at the same comedy, you can cry at the same sad movie, but you can't have a relationship.
Because you have to hide. You have to hide around her just as you did all throughout your childhood.
You have to hide everything. Hide what's happening to you.
Hide what you think. Hide your questions.
Hide your worries.
Hide your anxieties. Hide your fear.
Hide, hide, hide, hide!
And if you hide...
Every part of you that you hide is like it doesn't exist.
It's like an anti-existence.
It's like a hole rather than a pillar.
It's not just flat, it's an absence.
So let's say that she denies, sides with the abusers, calls you crazy, calls you a liar.
And then does she go to your half-brother and say, do you know what he's saying about you?
you?
And then what does he do?
I have no idea.
Is that an unrealistic possibility?
I don't think it's unrealistic.
Yeah, I mean, if she's an angry person, as she would be having been violated at the age of eight or for God knows how long before that, right?
She's an angry person.
She is. I mean, I'm trying like hell to fight the cliches, man, but you keep serving them up.
Angry, volatile black woman.
Oh, my God. Yeah.
All right. So, if she is...
I mean, since she's angry, she's going to want to do damage.
And if she's not...
Down with the whole self-knowledge thing, then she's going to want to punish you for bringing things up.
Now, she's not going to want to beat you up herself, but she could get your half-brother to do it.
Yeah.
So.
Is your mom still in Africa? - Yeah.
No, she's in the UK now.
Oh, because things didn't work out with the guy, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Back on the taxpayers' time?
It's even worse than that.
She got scammed by him.
Oh, no. So she lost all that money she took over to the UK. That was in Nigeria.
She actually went and got scammed by a Nigerian prince in person?
Yeah, exactly, yeah.
Oh man. Okay.
So she knows how to choose her.
And now she's getting older, right?
She can't get as much male attention and...
Yeah. So now she's relying on her kids to fund her and the government and other people's kids to fund her through the government.
Right. Right. Right.
Do you have any thoughts as to why...
you ended up so different from your family?
Okay, this is partly why I need your help, Stefan, because there's nothing because there's nothing wrong with me.
I realize that there's nothing wrong with me.
me.
And it's taken me too long to realize that, that there's nothing wrong with me.
I'm compassionate I think about other people.
I want to be a positive influence on the lives of people that I meet.
I want to be open and honest.
I care about what is good and what's right and what's evil.
I want to feel love.
I want to love other people.
I've always been like that.
But I've always felt weird.
I've always felt strange.
I've always felt odd around the people I've been around my whole life.
Do you think this is why you were looking up the IQ stuff?
I think... I think the IQ stuff was...
So I think it began with Christianity.
When I realized that it didn't make sense.
And then I realized that I was the only one in my family asking questions about it.
And then I realised that I couldn't ask those questions.
And then I lost my faith, which I probably never had in the first place.
And then I embraced science.
And I was like, okay, let me study physics.
Let me study mathematics. Let me study chemistry.
And I thought I wanted to be a scientist.
And then I wanted to understand psychology and philosophy.
And I just realised I've just...
I think I just wanted to understand me.
I think that's all I really wanted.
I just wanted to understand my place in my world, in my environment.
I don't think it's that I particularly love science or philosophy or psychology or I think I've just always been confused by why my experience in life has been the way it has been.
I mean, you are, right, the super smart guy, right?
And maybe that's just not where your family's at.
It's only recently I've had the balls to even...
Not the balls, the...
I've tried to stop...
Like, people would say, oh, my God, you're so humble.
Yeah. For such a good-looking guy, you're so humble.
Like, why are you so, like, wow, this, like, that's such a great quality.
And now I realize that was an insult my whole life.
Wait, what do you mean? Like, when people say it like that, what they're saying is that your self-esteem doesn't match, it doesn't meet where it should be.
I'm too humble. Yes.
Yeah, okay, okay.
Right, you could use this, but you're not, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Right. Now, but did they ever say that about your intellectual gifts or was it just your pretty boy nature, your physicality?
Yeah. Well, yes, but they wouldn't say your...
They would say stuff like...
How would they phrase it?
Obviously, they wouldn't say it in the same way.
It's mostly women that would say the humble thing about my looks and I could...
Like, why are you such a nice person, basically, when you don't have to be, you know, that kind of thing.
Like, you could be a shit heel because you're good looking, right?
Yeah, yeah, exactly. With my intelligence, I think...
Again, I just think I haven't been around people that would...
I think people have always known that.
I think people have been afraid of my curiosity and the fact that I want to be logical and I want to be correct and I care about evidence and reason.
And so I think they've tried to shame me for it.
Like, it's not that serious or over-complicating things or You think too much.
Right. Everyone's like, oh, you think too much, which they then type on their iPhone designed entirely by people who think too much.
When they get on the car that's kept running by people who think too much, right?
And they turn on the tap and the water comes because of the engineers who think too much.
It's like, oh man, that's rough.
Can I tell you a short story?
Yeah, yeah. So...
My first passion or that I identify as a passion was for basketball.
I really took that seriously and that was my first taste of success in my life.
Oh, so you're good looking and tall.
Yeah, yeah. I'm just kidding.
And I won a scholarship.
Basically, I decided basketball is my way out.
This is how I'm going to escape my environment.
I trained really hard and it was the only excuse I had to leave the house, basically.
I'm going to go to play basketball.
There was no other reason I could give that would make...
I don't know why, but basketball would be my way of escaping the house, escaping the family.
And so there's an opportunity to get a scholarship, but I couldn't pay...
It was like a half scholarship.
I couldn't pay the second half because...
Yeah.
And so I had to do some...
So I remember going to the local council and saying, okay, I want to go to this...
I was 19 and I was like, I want to go on this scholarship, but I know that there's no government program.
That would help me do that because it just doesn't exist.
So how can I do this?
So they said, oh, there's charities.
You can go around to charities.
And you have to remember the kind of person I was at 19.
No confidence, no understanding of the world.
I'm still confused about everything, about life, especially people.
I did not understand people at all.
No social skills, nothing.
But I found the courage to walk up and down my local area, and I found a charity, and there was a meeting, and I had to sit in this room full of these old white people, like 10 of them, around this boardroom table, and I was on my own, and there was no support for my family, and I had to basically put my case forward for what I deserved.
them to fund the second half of the scholarship and they gave me all the money I needed and I think that was my first taste of being able to impact the world Well,
and I mean, it's a wild thing to think that these, you know, as you say, this like, this whole circle of old white people appreciated you more than your entire family had in your entire 19 years.
Yeah. Like, saw a value in you or saw something positive in you, which I think is blindingly obvious, but they were able to look into your heart and into your mind and say, he's a quality guy, which your family hadn't done at all, as far as I can tell.
Yeah. Yeah.
So, this is the part of the story that I wanted to share with you.
So, I go on this scholarship, which means I have to live in a different country.
And, unfortunately, there was the person that was organizing the scholarship halfway through the year.
Apparently, he committed a crime of some kind, some sort of fraud, and he got fired.
And because of that, the scholarship program had to end abruptly.
So now there's a lot of us kids from all over the world stuck in this location.
And they closed the basketball court.
They closed all the facilities.
So now we're there.
And we're only there for education now.
There's no athletic side of things.
So for the first time in my life, I'm away from my family with no distractions.
And I was bored.
I had nothing to do. And I just thought to myself, how about I just read these textbooks?
How about I prepare for these exams that are coming up?
For the first time in my life, I just thought, how about I just prepare for these exams?
I had enough clarity to think, I've got these exams.
How about I actually make an effort?
I don't know why I never did this before.
I don't know why no one ever told me that I could study.
Like, I'd never studied before, ever in my life.
Up until that point. And so I just would spend a few hours a day just reading through these maths textbooks, doing the questions, practicing.
And two months later, I achieved the best grades in mathematics that the school had ever seen.
Great. Right, right.
And I think that is the moment that my whole reality shattered.
And I started to build anew because I realized That there was something about me that my family never told me.
Right. I realized that there was something about me that wasn't corrupted by my family.
Something that was mine.
It's a very high IQ. Sorry, I meant to say a very high NyQuil.
It's a very high NyQuil.
That's what I'm trying to say.
It's a lot of cough medicine.
It's a lot of sleep aid.
No, very high IQ, right?
Like, brilliantly high IQ. I don't take compliments very well.
Everyone tells me that. Well, I mean, it's not a compliment necessarily.
You could use it for evil if you wanted.
It's just like saying, hey, you're really tall.
Is that a compliment? It's just a statement of fact, right?
I mean, as far as I understand it, it's mostly genetic, right?
And so you got a great freaking brain.
Like, yay, good for you, man.
That's great. I mean, again, it's not like a personal compliment, like, look at what you achieved, right?
Virtue would be an achievement.
High IQ is just, you know, mostly something you're born with, I think.
It's like, I don't know, it's like 80% genetic, even in our late teens or whatever, right?
So, high IQ. And it sounds like you grew up with a bunch of dunderheads.
Hey, if it's any consolation, so did I. I mean, in the neighborhood that I grew up in, it was mostly dunderheads and chowderheads.
You know, just people who were volatile and highly emotional and no deferral of gratification and, you know, they got mad, they screamed, they got angry, they threw things, they, you know, they fell in love, they chased people, you know, like it was all just, you know, lowbrow stuff, right?
And I just remember thinking like, well, pretty sure I'm bouncing out of here as soon as I can.
And, you know, it could be.
And now I did in my sort of mid-teens, I found a group of people who were all very smart and a lot of them had gone on to be like professors and intellectuals and writers and all that kind of stuff.
Oh, good stuff. But, yeah, certainly when I was growing up, well, you know what it's like in these trashy council homes and so on, right?
It's mostly just self-destructive people who can barely see beyond their nose, right?
Yeah. And you got a glorious gift, right?
I mean... And it is that very intelligence that has given you the horsepower to not reproduce the wrongs that you were done.
I mean, I'm not saying that there's nothing to do with you, right?
I mean, but it's given you more of a capacity to do that and all praise to you for not doing it nonetheless, right?
But I think it's...
You have to be tall to play basketball, as you know, but you also have to work like hell to be a good basketball player, right?
Like Michael Jordan spends like half his free time practicing shots, or I guess he used to.
I don't know what the hell his game state is anymore.
So the fact that you're tall, the fact that you've got a high IQ has given you the potential, and you've used it, I think, very well, but your life is really frustrating for you, right?
Maybe that's because you're just in the wrong...
Or you're in the wrong circle.
If there's a significant gap in intelligence, it's really hard to communicate.
Like you say, oh, my family doesn't talk about anything.
Maybe they're talking about everything they're really capable of.
If you study all these mathematics and then you go home and you try and talk about all these mathematics, people look at you like you just sprouted a third head or a second head, right?
And you say, well, my family doesn't talk about anything.
It's like, hey, man, they can't talk math.
They don't understand it.
Yeah. And you've got the loyalty and the connection and the history with the people you grew up with, but it doesn't sound to me like that's your future.
I mean, you're in this goodwill hunting kind of scenario, right?
Yeah. You've just got to find the other brainiacs and let rip intellectually, right?
So I know that now.
But I just feel...
Wait, now as in...
Now this convo? Or now as in now?
No, I mean, at this stage of my life is when I'm realizing these things, like the last three, four years of my life.
Right. Before then, it's just so...
Stefan, I feel like I've lived two lives.
There's the life before self-knowledge and the life now.
And I feel like I'm in the adolescence of my second part of my life.
Where I'm separating and trying to individuate.
And what's your age group at the moment?
Early 30s. Early 30s, right, right.
Yeah. I remember I dated a woman in my early 30s and she was much older.
Not much older. She was, I don't know, six or seven years older.
And I knew that she said she wanted to have kids so we'd have to settle down pretty quickly.
And I was just going through a lot of therapy at the time.
I'm like, I'm just stepping into being myself.
I don't know if I can be a dad just yet.
And so we didn't end up continuing because I certainly didn't want to burn up her last gasp of fertility in something that wasn't going to be.
You're coming into your own, like early 30s is a pretty good time for it.
Okay, so what do you want to have achieved by the time you're 35?
What's your tick list? I want to have a stable income.
I want to be the kind of man that can attract the kind of woman that will allow me to be a great father.
Good way to put it.
Yeah. Yeah.
I need to prove that my parents were bad parents.
Proof to who? To myself.
Okay. Alright.
I need to do things better than they did.
I need to love my children.
I want to love my wife.
And protect your kids, right?
The one big thing that was missing for you.
Yeah. I want to give them all the tools necessary to be happy.
Right. And I feel like that will make me happy.
I'm sure you're correct about that.
Right. Okay. All right.
Well, I can tell you how to get there.
I can't tell you exactly where there is, but I can tell you how to get there.
Okay. So let's use a basketball analogy, because, you know, that's up your alley, so to speak, right?
So if you want to become a great basketball player, and yet the people that you play with are kind of fat and short and slow, will you ever be a great basketball player?
No. Well, why not?
They're working hard. Why do you hate the short people, man?
They're trying! Because you need something to aim up towards.
You need to be constantly improving.
You need inspiration.
You need to be challenged in a positive way.
Okay. So, more relevant to your family, you can never be great if you do not accept the limitations of those around you.
You can never be a great basketball player if you do not accept the limitations of the people around you.
If they can't play basketball very well, you have to accept those limitations and move on.
And right now, you're still hemmed and bound in.
You have your glorious potential and you're hemmed and bound in by the utter lack of potential of just about everyone around you.
If you want to be great, you have to know who to say the following words to.
Thank you.
Sorry, you can't come.
I'm going to the NBA! Sorry, short fat guys I play basketball with on Sunday, you can't come.
I'm going to the moon. Sorry, guy who weighs 300 pounds and can't fit into a space suit.
You can't come.
You can't get to the NBA, you can't get to the moon, if you think everyone can come with you.
To accept the limitations of those around you is one of the most necessary parts to greatness that exist.
Think of I don't know.
Who's a famous person you like?
Stefan Molyneux. I appreciate that.
Oh, I don't take compliments either, man.
So there. No, I appreciate that.
But no, it's like, I don't know, some, I don't know, movie star, sports guy.
Like, who's a famous person you like?
Michael Jordan. Let's just say Michael Jordan.
Michael Jordan. Okay, fantastic.
I just used up my entire basketball analogy.
So please, for God's sake, give me something other than Michael Jordan.
Can you give a brother a Denzel?
Okay, okay. Oh my god.
I'm not really a fan kind of guy like that.
But, okay, let's just say Denzel Washington.
Okay, Denzel Washington. Now, he is a smart and wise guy, in my opinion.
And, like, more charisma than you can fit in an entire village of charismatic people, right?
So, he's the guy, right?
Now, when Denzel Washington decided he wanted to become an actor...
I don't know what the hell he did.
I don't know anything about his life.
I assumed he moved from wherever he was to Hollywood.
He went on auditions.
He did all of this stuff, right?
And he was probably hanging around with a whole bunch of people who either from his hometown weren't going to amount to much or early in the acting days weren't going to amount to much or whatever, right?
Now, he ends up being a top-tier movie star who is truly fantastic at his job.
Now, how many of the people he knew along the way could come with him?
Almost none. Almost none.
George Clooney got 20 of his best friends from his early life together, gave him a million bucks each or something.
They couldn't come. He's worth 500 million dollars or something.
You know, Sting, back when he was Gordon Sumner and...
English teacher at some school, right?
He's like, I'm going to be a famous singer-songwriter and how many of them could come?
Maybe he gave a couple of tickets to his early shows and he's gone, right?
Greatness can only be achieved by accepting the limitations of where you start.
And I say this from personal experience.
I wanted to create this great philosophy show How many people from my prior life could come along?
None. None.
And so you have the choice.
Do you stay in the limitations of where you started?
Or do you just vault the shit out of there?
Um... I realize that you're correct.
I realize that from listening and watching your work, I have come to the place where I know that that is necessary.
It's not even a choice anymore.
It's funny, right?
When you see something clearly, Then choice gets thrown out the window.
You can't even choose anymore.
No, you're right. You're right about that.
No, I mean, you're absolutely right.
Most of free will is just being so clear in everything that the choice is completely obvious.
Yeah, it is.
It is. And just for those of you listening to this 1,000 years from the future, Michael Jordan was a basketball player.
Denzel Washington was a movie star.
You still know me, and you still know my friend here on the call, but these other people have been lost to history.
Like, who knows? A famous actor from 500 years ago.
There's maybe three in the whole world that you'd remember.
But anyway, just for the future, just so we can be vainglorious in the moment.
No, so that's your thing, right?
I mean... And here's...
Like, it's not a choice. It's not...
Like, if I had...
The moment you want something great, everything around you kind of turns to ash.
The reason being, so let's say, oh, I really feel like I can do this incredible philosophy show.
I've been studying philosophy for 25 years.
Man, I am ready to roll.
I am ready to rock and roll, and this is the right thing for me.
It's the right thing for the world, and I can do this, and I'm ready and hot to trot to get it done, right?
Now, let's say I really believe that, and it turns out I was right.
Let's say I really believe that, right? But then I say, oh, but I don't really want to upset my friends and my family by aiming too high, by being too big on myself, by drawing unwanted attention, by whatever it is, right?
So let's say that I say, okay, well, I'm going to strangle that little dream of being a philosopher in the crib, and I'm just going to go back to being a software guy, right?
How happy am I going to be?
Not very. You can't.
Who will I blame? Yourself.
And? And everyone around you.
Everyone around me who wasn't saying, for God's sakes, go!
Have you ever seen Good Will Hunting?
Yes, I have, yeah. Of course you have, right?
You're in it. So Good Will Hunting, what does he say?
He says, man, if you show up to this job site tomorrow, I'm going to kick your ass.
Yeah. You get out of here.
You go. Now, that is unrealistic.
That's the fantasy that's like Lord of the Rings is more realistic than that moment.
None of the people who are stuck in the underworld are ever going to give you a lift up and say, go!
We can't, but you go and you have a great life.
They'll be like, oh, he thinks he's so good for us.
Oh, he's so messed up.
Oh, he's so vain. Oh, he's just so high on himself.
Everybody says that. They're probably saying that about Denzel Washington and his old neighborhood or something.
I don't know, right? I was going to say, that's the kind of propaganda I grew up with, Stefan.
Like, so many things that I know to be true now, I was taught the opposite when I was growing up.
So, what propaganda were you taught?
Like, for example, okay, okay.
So, for example, I remember we would watch, like, there's a soap opera called EastEnders.
Jesus, is that thing still running?
I don't know if it's still running now, but when I was a kid, it was big.
It was huge. Yeah, you're a lot younger than me, man.
And holy crap, this thing's like immortal.
Anyway, go on. And I remember my mom would watch it and she would comment on what she saw on the show.
Kind of like what a good parent would do, right?
You're watching a show of your kids.
You want to kind of instill your morals into your kids.
So you'd comment on certain things that you see and You'd say, isn't that bad?
Isn't that good? You know, that kind of thing, right?
And I remember she would make jokes about the fact that the kids would call their parents by their first name.
Right. Because sometimes the kids would say, like, you know, I don't know, like, Sally, you know, and that would end up referring to their mum, for example.
And in our culture, that's just so taboo.
I mean, you just don't do that.
I've never called my mum by her name.
Even when people ask me, what's your mum's name?
It feels weird me saying her name.
Right, right. Yeah, and Beelzebub doesn't exactly trip off the tongue.
No, I'm just kidding. Sorry, go on. So that's the kind of culture I grew up in.
Anyway, so...
She would make comments like that.
She would say things to kind of degrade the European culture and to elevate what I would call the West African culture.
Sure. Right. Now, I don't want to call it the West African culture because I'll just call it the culture in my family.
Right? Right. Right.
Because obviously...
Well, West Africa keeps changing and growing.
Your family's kind of sliced off this little bit of it from like 30, 40 years ago that doesn't change.
Yeah. So I grew up thinking like, oh wow, these Europeans, they're so immoral.
They don't respect their elders.
They don't look after their grandparents.
They don't You've probably heard stuff like this.
Yeah, yeah, of course, right.
Yeah, you know, we were so bad at respecting our parents that our parents who believed in slavery, we said, nah-ah, we're ending slavery.
First time ever in the history of the world.
Western Europeans are ending slavery and we're going to do it not just at home but around the world.
So, you know, it's kind of a good thing that we didn't listen to our elders because our elders had some really bad ideas.
Exactly. It's called progress, isn't it?
Just not listening to your elders and thinking that they're automatically right.
Exactly. Which is the problem with Africa right now, that the elders are suppressing the talent from the youth.
Right. And it's not a meritocracy.
Europe is more a meritocracy than Africa by far.
Right. And that's one of the biggest problems in Africa.
But again, you would never hear these arguments because those are arguments that require thoughts.
Right. Well, and, you know, this is the other thing too, right?
I mean, it's the thing that drives a lot of people from the UK, and not just whites, but just about everyone.
It's like, okay, so you come here and you're happy to take the taxpayers' money, and then you just sit around and insult the culture.
Yeah. So, and this is why I say, like, I feel like I'm living to, this is, I have the life before self-knowledge and the life now.
Yeah, and there's no life before self-knowledge.
There's no life before self-knowledge.
There's just existence. That's it.
Right. And so now, I mean, you have the choice.
I mean, look, you can't go back.
Right? You can't go back to a lack of self-knowledge.
You can't undo knowledge that you've already achieved.
Maybe Alzheimer's or something.
But no more practical way you can go back.
So like once the idea comes in your head, right?
Like for me, it's like, oh, I want to do a philosophy show.
Damn, I could be great at this.
Oh, I really am good at this.
Man, I'm going to do more of it. Okay, so I can't unring that bell.
I can't put that toothpaste back in the tube.
Like it's go forward or what?
What choice do you have? You can't go back and undo everything.
It's like trying to crawl up into your mother's womb again.
You just split her in two, right? I mean, it doesn't work.
You're bigger than she is now, right?
I mean, it's onward.
Onward or nothing. So, since I've accepted that truth, I've been slowly experimenting with my family.
So, experimenting with the truth.
So, I think this happened about...
The first experiment was about four years ago, where I mentioned to my father that...
Sorry, there was a conversation going on.
My father and my mother were in the same place, which doesn't happen frequently.
I probably see my father...
Twice a year. Maybe because there'll be like a family function and he will show up, a family event and he will show up.
Anyway, so I was in the room, it was myself, one of my older siblings, my older sister, and my mother and my father.
And we were talking about something to do with family and The past or something.
And then I mentioned...
My dad is quite an arrogant man in my opinion.
But I then mentioned that how can you speak like that?
You don't even know what's happened to your children.
That's what I said to him.
And then he goes, what do you mean?
Kind of like in a defiant...
Like an aggressive way.
In an aggressive way.
And I was like, you don't know what's happened to your kids.
You don't even know what's happened to your kids.
And he goes, what's happened to you then?
What's happened to you? Then I said, you don't even know what happened to me in Nigeria.
That's what I said to him.
And then I said, I want to say this accurately.
I then said...
I then said I was abused in Nigeria.
And then he said...
He said, what abuse?
What abuse? Who abused you then?
Who abused you then? And the moment I saw him react that way...
I just recoiled internally...
And I said, I can't believe...
And I said, I can't believe...
I can't believe what I said, but basically, I verbalized something that symbolized this thought, which was, I can't believe this is how you're reacting to me saying that I've been abused.
Now, that happened four years ago.
Now, the summer of this year...
I spoke to my dad about my dissatisfaction with how the family is, our lack of intimacy, because basically over the last three to four years, there's been a series of traumatic events that's happened to members of my family.
And I believe, and I now know that these are the fruits of seeds that were sown in our childhood.
Right? And Again, the only reason I can make these connections is because of your work, Stefan.
So I'm extremely grateful.
Your work has changed my life already.
And so I confronted my dad in a peaceful manner.
It was over the phone.
And I was like, this is what I see.
I think there's dysfunction in our family.
And these are the results of this dysfunction in our family.
Of course, he denied everything.
He said he doesn't see anything of what I see.
And I'm just...
And he...
Basically, just pretending like everything I was saying didn't make sense to him.
And then I said to him that...
He then said to me that if anyone's dysfunctional, it's you.
That's what he said to me. Okay, so hang on.
Because I know we've been talking for over two hours here, right?
So I've got to make sure that we get to the meat of the matter.
Why are we talking about your family of origin?
Like four years ago this and then...
Aren't you just yelling at the short guys to jump higher?
So the reason I'm talking about it is because I think I had a series of interactions.
So a lot of the time when...
I guess I had to have it rubbed in my face, basically.
That's the point I'm trying to make.
No, this is a form of self-attack.
You're putting yourself in a situation of rejection over and over again.
Of course you're going to be rejected.
Yes. Your father abandoned his children.
Your father married a woman who then abandoned you at the age of 15 to go chase a guy in Nigeria who has magic voodoo soap to keep demons out of her children.
Right? Yeah.
So, you're asking for what?
Compassion and love and virtue and honesty and self-knowledge from a guy who abandoned his children and has never apologized for it?
Like, what are you doing?
Are you crazy? That's not going to work.
And you know it's not going to work.
You can't make him Into the father you should have had.
There's no amount of self-knowledge that is going to transfer like smoke or COVID in a room to him.
Because you have a clean conscience and he does not.
And you can't transfer your clean conscience to him.
For you, self-knowledge is a great journey because you're smart and deep and wise.
For him, self-knowledge is rooting around in a garbage heap full of rats with rabies.
You know this.
Yeah, I do.
You know that you're putting yourself in a situation, and this is why you're not doing it with your sister, because it's going to get rejected and going to get attacked, put in danger, ostracized.
And if the progress has been before years ago, I said this, and last year I said this, and I'm in my early 30s, you don't have all the time in the world to pursue these half-decade-long projects with your you don't have all the time in the world to pursue these half-decade-long projects with where.
Thank you.
You get a quality woman, smart, wise, deep.
She comes to your family.
What's she going to say? Yeah, I can't even imagine.
Oh, yes, you can!
You know exactly what she's going to say.
Hey, man, you're great.
I can't have these as my in-laws for the next 40 years.
I can't do it. Sorry, man. Like, great, good luck on you, but no, no, can't do it.
No thanks. I'm afraid.
Of... Of not having a family.
Right. Right.
But it's a choice, man.
If you want to have the family that you want to have, if you want to get that, can you have that with your family and a virgin at the same time?
No. And I'm sorry for that.
I really am. I think it's terrible.
But they're the past.
Your family to come is the future.
You might have to let go of one to get the other.
In fact, it seems almost inescapable that that may have to be the case.
I mean, if your dad...
In his, what, 50s or 60s or whatever is like, oh yeah?
Well, if anyone's messed up, it's you, right?
I mean, that's so primitive.
I don't even know what to say.
I just mean mentally, right?
Like it's a very undeveloped state of mind.
It's a very un-self-critical state of mind, right?
Yeah. Be like, you know, if I spent all day on the computer and my daughter was like, Dad, I feel like you're ignoring me.
And I said, Hey, if anyone's ignoring anyone, it's you're ignoring me.
Come on. Can I ask you a question, Stefan?
Of course you just did, but go ahead.
Why would a good woman...
want to be with a man that has no family.
Do you not think that a good woman has had her own struggles with family?
Do you not think that you're going to find a sister-in-arms, so to speak?
She's not going to come from a perfect state and dip down to where you are.
She's going to have had her own struggles with family.
I mean, particularly if you end up, what is it, like 80, close to 90% of black men end up marrying black women, right?
So if you have, let's say, you meet the wonderful black woman of your dreams, right?
And you're like, hey, you know, man, I've had some struggles with a family that's kind of limiting.
What's she going to say? Same!
But if she has worked to free herself, if this has the case, if she has worked to free herself from a dysfunctional family, and that may not mean total separation, it could be in any number of things, but let's say she's worked to create some distance from a dysfunctional family, and that's taken her five years or ten years or whatever, right?
And then she comes to you, And you're still in there?
Oof. She's going to be like, man, I just got out.
I can't go back in.
Yeah. Okay.
And you can say, of course, I mean, you can say, and I think it's a true thing to say, you say, listen, I want...
I was abused as a child.
I want so much better for my kids.
And I can't have the abusers in my kids' life.
I just can't. I won't.
I won't. I'm breaking this...
I'm stopping this cycle. I'm breaking this cycle.
Now, somebody who loves children and wants to do best by them is...
Got to respect that, aren't they?
Yes. I couldn't be the father I am if I had my parents in my life, like, up in my business, so to speak.
What do they say? All up in my grill or whatever it is they say.
I don't know, right? But I couldn't.
Like, I just couldn't do it.
And everything is for the kids, right?
Right. You know, everyone says that, oh, we'd do anything for our kids.
Everything is for the kids. But if you really live like that, it's like, hey, man, if you're good to my daughter, you are welcome in my life.
If you're not good to her.
I don't even mean like if you're mean.
Like, you know, let's say, I don't know, you're big buddies with her and then you just kind of fade away and never say anything.
It's like, well, then you're not really very welcome in my life.
And if you're mean to her...
Oh Don't let the door hit you Where the good Lord split you Everything for the kids right?
Yeah. We gotta...
We gotta stop this stuff.
We gotta stop this whole generational stuff.
Going back in your family for 10,000 years.
Going back in my family for 10,000 years.
Like, somebody's gotta do that fucking Spider-Man with the...
With the subway train, right?
Just stop it. We've just got to stop this stuff.
And I'm sorry for the people who are the generation that it costs, in a sense, the most.
Like, I'm sorry. I really am.
You know, like, before the modern world, before maybe the late 20th century, I would have had to hang out with my mother and my father for the rest of my or their natural days, right?
And that's why everybody treats their children so badly.
Not everyone. That's why a lot of people treat their children so badly.
Because there's no free market in the family.
They're like government workers.
They don't have to provide a good service because they can't be fired.
I'm for the free market and the family.
I'm privatizing the family. I'm for the free market and the family.
If we don't get the free market and the family, we don't get it anywhere else.
And if these people were just...
you're at someone's house and these are the people who sit down for dinner and you're breaking bread with them and you get to evaluate them for a couple of hours over a dinner party are you going to be like hey I'd love to spend more time with you you people are so inspiring and such great conversationalists and so wise you're going to be like You're going to enrich my life.
I can't imagine, based on what I've heard, maybe I'm wrong, but I can't imagine that that would be your first impulse.
You're not wrong. So, future of the past, man.
Future of the past. It's always the choice, right?
Yeah. And what do your kids want you to choose?
Your kids to be? Kids down the road?
Yeah. They want me to choose them and to set a good example and to protect them.
Right. And you have to protect your children from whoever diminishes you as well, as a father, as a mother too, man to man, right?
You've got to be an authority figure.
And you can't be around people who diminish you and put you down and roll their eyes at you and undermine you, right?
Yeah. I mean, it's just a memory that sort of popped into my head.
I think she was from West Africa for sure, but when I worked in the daycare, there was this black woman that I worked with who would constantly put me down in front of the kids that I was supposed to be having an authority figure relationship with, right?
And, you know, I asked her pretty nicely and pretty politely.
I was like, I don't know, 16 or 17, so I wasn't like Mr.
Assertive bulldozer guy, right?
But eventually I just had to really snap at her and say, stop putting me down in front of these kids!
Because she was just chipping away, diminishing, chipping away and loud, right?
The kids at the end of the playground could hear, right?
I just couldn't do it.
I couldn't have it. Because I couldn't do the job.
I already had the challenge of being younger.
And I just, I couldn't.
It was bad for the kids to see a close to adult male being put down in this kind of way.
They needed to see someone stand up, right?
And the black kids who were in my class were just completely jaw-dropped.
I remember them like, what are you doing?
You're a boy! And she's an adult black female from West Africa.
Are you crazy? But to her credit, she backed down.
I just remember that moment.
I don't know. I think it was at least half the kids in the class were black, right?
And mostly great kids, right?
But I just remember them. I remember one of them just hanging off the top of the slide, and he literally was hanging one hand.
He turned his eyes. Well, you know, right?
I don't have to tell you. Like, you see some little white boys going toe-to-toe with the matriarch of West Africa in the playground.
It was quite something.
It was quite something. I was fairly fierce, and after being nice, because I'm nice until I'm not.
It's kind of a white guy thing, right?
And I just remember that.
It just reminded me of that.
I haven't thought of that in, I don't know, forever, but I just remember that moment where I just had to really put my foot down with her.
And just how shocking it was.
Because most of the kids are poor neighborhood, right?
Most of the black kids there and most of the white kids too were without dads.
And so, you know, they were kind of attached to me and I did feel a kind of responsibility to, you know, say that it's okay to stand up.
You know, even if you don't win, it's good to stand up, right?
And yes, I did win that one anyway.
Yeah, so I mean, it's your future kids.
If your father diminishes you and your mother diminishes you and undermines your authority and makes you feel insecure and makes you feel at odds with yourself, you have to protect your kids from other people's effect on you as well, if that makes sense. Yeah, I agree.
So, I mean, that's most of what I wanted to get across and sort of mulling over what you'd What you sent, how's the convo for you?
It's been really, really helpful, especially when you spoke about my older brother and what his experience must be like.
Yeah.
And, you know, like being good, it doesn't matter if you're good or bad as a person.
It doesn't matter if you're a moral man or not.
Oh, the speech about just being good suck?
Yeah, yeah. So you're saying I was helpful about an hour three quarters ago, the rest of it's just been total filler!
No, I'm just kidding, I'm just kidding.
No, I'm saying that's what made the, that was something I'd never even thought about.
I couldn't see that myself.
I wouldn't be able to have seen that myself.
Yeah, I mean, so when we're good, we suffer, but it passes.
When you're bad, you suffer and it just escalates.
So I'm glad that was helpful.
Will you keep me posted about how things are going?
I will. I will.
Will you accept my deep and humble thanks for a great, great conversation?
I really appreciate your openness and honesty in these areas.
It was a great, great chat.
Thank you Stefan for the time and thank you for your work.
I just have to say on behalf of all the other people that won't send an email and won't find the strength to have this kind of conversation with you, you make a difference every single time you do these call-in shows.
I'm just grateful that you have the courage to be the man that you are.
So thank you. I appreciate that.
Thank you so much and have a great night.
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