June 24, 2024 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:45:58
5545 YOU CAN'T CHANGE ADDICTS!
Friday Night Live Chat 21 June 2024In this episode, I discuss the closure of Toronto's Science Center, criticizing government negligence on infrastructure maintenance and urging a focus on upkeep over new construction. Conversations with callers delve into confronting family alcoholism, setting boundaries, and prioritizing self-care. We explore behavioral patterns, emotional honesty, and personal growth, emphasizing the importance of self-awareness in relationships and decision-making.Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!NOW AVAILABLE FOR SUBSCRIBERS: MY NEW BOOK 'PEACEFUL PARENTING' - AND THE INTERACTIVE PEACEFUL PARENTING AI AND AUDIOBOOK!Also get the Truth About the French Revolution, the interactive multi-lingual philosophy AI trained on thousands of hours of my material, private livestreams, premium call in shows, the 22 Part History of Philosophers series and much more!See you soon!https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/UPB2022
Welcome to your Friday Night Live on this delicious and delightful evening of the 21st of June 2024, and I did a show just the other night on bad things in Toronto, bad things in Canada.
Now, just today, let me tell you a little something about
A joy and happiness of my youth.
The joy and happiness of my youth was a little place just down the road from where I lived at Don Mills and Lawrence.
It was Don Mills and Eglinton, and it was in fact the Science Centre.
Now, I could actually, Don, I think, Young and, sorry, Eglinton and Don Mills and Eglinton, it's like one of the busiest intersections in North America, and I could actually walk down to the Science Centre from my house, and it was dirt cheap to get in.
And we had school trips there and so on.
I memorably remember having a school trip there.
I had no money for lunch, so I had to have the very infamous tomato cracker soup.
And what that is, is you get a bunch, because, you know, you get the free stuff, right?
You get a little free bowl.
You get some tomato ketchup in packets, which is free.
You get some crackers, which back then were free.
And you'd mix the tomato packets with water and you'd break in the crackers and that would be your
Lunchtime nutrition.
Can't imagine why I got a little short of attention span in the afternoon, but that was life as a poor kid.
And I loved that science center, man.
They had some really cool stuff.
They had ancient Macintosh computers.
Well, they weren't ancient back then, but when I took my daughter back decades later, they were still using the same ancient Macintosh computers and stuff.
There was a lunar lander thing.
There was a cool thing where you powered a TV by pedaling and you realized just how much energy went into electricity.
They had just really neat stuff.
They had the photographic wall with your imprints.
They had
A kind of wild, dizzying video which zoomed all the way into the nucleus of an atom and then all the way out to the edge of the universe, making me feel rather dizzy and giving a strange sense of just how much of the universe can fit inside the human head.
And when I went back with my daughter, which we went back a couple of times, I took her on the tour of my old neighborhood, and told her all the stories of my upbringing, and took her to the spot where I realized I was going to marry her mother, and it was just a great package of great memories from my childhood.
Anyway, so, long story short, here's what I read.
The Ontario Science Centre
At its current East Toronto location will permanently close at the end of the day Friday due to structural concerns with the roof.
1969, the Ontario Science Centre opens as the world's first interactive science centre.
1971, Ontario Place opens on Toronto's waterfront.
2012, Ontario Place's amusement park closes so the site can be redeveloped.
2016, the Liberal government of the day does a business case report on the Science Centre, which says that relocating it would save money.
The Science Centre board says that due to deferred maintenance needs, the status quo is not sustainable, but no action is taken!
2017, new sections of Parkland and Trails opened at Ontario Place.
2020, the idea of relocating the Science Centre is floated again, as the Tourism and Culture Ministry proposes it to government decision makers as a way to open up housing lands.
March 2023, a business case commissioned by the government concludes that the cost to restore the current Science Centre building and exhibits would be $1.3 billion over 50 years, while building and operating a new Science Centre in a pavilion at Ontario Place would cost $1.05 billion over 50 years.
That's a quarter of a mil cheaper!
Oh my gosh.
December 6, 2023, Ontario's Auditor General says the business case is missing key information, including incremental parking costs and financing, transaction and legal costs for a new science center, as well as similar costs for the repairs and upgrade of the current facility.
So, anyway, what has happened is that June 21st, 2024, the Ontario government announces that the science center is abruptly and permanently closing at the end of the day after engineers found structural issues with
The roof.
Quote, the Ontario Science Centre is shutting down immediately due to the risk that the building's roof could collapse.
The province announced Friday.
Isn't that... The actions today will protect the health and safety of visitors and staff, said infrastructure minister Kinga Surma in a news release.
Infrastructure minister?
Isn't that supposed to be infrastructure minister?
Are they just putting up new stuff?
An engineering report this week by Rimkus Consulting Group showed each of the center's three buildings contain roof panels in a distressed high-risk condition.
The Ministry of Infrastructure said in a news release.
So it's the infrastructure minister, Kinga Surma, but it's the Ministry of Infrastructure.
Yes, all of this makes sense.
Fixing the roof will cost between $22 million and $40 million, requiring the center to be closed for up to two years.
The government says the center needs $478 million to tackle its failing infrastructure and sustain programming.
So... What does this mean?
It's a little tragic, of course, in many different ways.
But you do understand the metaphor that is embedded in Ontario being unable to sustain its science center.
Because the roof is about to cave in.
Isn't that wild?
Just think about it, meditate on that.
Meditate on that, where we are in the West, as a culture and as a society.
We are unable
to sustain our Science Center and they have to close it with no warning forever because the entire thing is about to freaking collapse and it will probably just never reopen.
Boy, talk about your Atlas Shrugged, right?
Sorry.
Oh, so sorry for all the taxes we've taken to keep the Science Center open.
It turns out our Science Center is a total house of cards.
We've been unable to maintain the building that houses the education of our children on science.
So sorry.
The government... Here's the funny thing, man.
Listen.
Just please understand this basic reality.
That if you give the government trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars, they can change the weather in a hundred years.
However, they can't maintain a fucking building.
Not only can they not maintain it, but it turns out it's a complete and total shock that it's about to collapse.
Oh, they can change the weather in a hundred years if you sign over your children's kidneys, but turns out they can't do a business plan that involves costs and benefits.
Oh, but that weather a hundred years from now!
Man, that's set in stone!
They got that covered!
Isn't it beautiful?
Isn't it just beautiful?
How wonderful, how competent, how amazing, how illustrious and glorious.
These leaders are.
That science center is younger than I am but turns out the government can do just about anything man.
It can manage a pandemic.
It can save the environment.
It can control the weather and the temperature on the entire planet.
You know what it can't seem to get around to doing?
It's a
Patching up some roofs before the whole building comes down on thousands and thousands of children's heads.
Oh, this is why I'm out of politics, man.
It's just so wearying.
It's so wearying.
But yeah, there we go.
Infrastructure Minister.
Yeah, sorry, emergency closure because it's going to cave in on the children.
But yeah, just, you know, keep paying that carbon tax, man.
We can't maintain the roof over your children's heads, but we totally can change the weather in a century.
Yeah, absolutely.
I don't know, maybe start with the buildings?
Just maybe start with not having the buildings collapse?
Or be threatened with collapse?
Just, you know, maybe start with that, and then maybe I'll start listening.
If you can maintain a building?
If you can maintain a building?
Maybe I can talk to you about some other stuff.
But if you can't even maintain a building, it's obviously a little bit tough to take anything seriously.
Infrastructure, and I actually worked for a company for a couple of years when I was younger, whose entire job it was to predict infrastructure costs for public and private enterprises.
And I can tell you, I saw the numbers.
I saw the numbers of deferred maintenance costs for governments.
They would gouge your freaking eyeballs out with an awl if you understood just how much infrastructure was decaying.
Because, you know, politicians, what are they like doing?
Hey!
I'm opening up a new building!
There's a new parkland!
There's a new development!
There's a new... Blah!
Cut the ribbon!
Cut the ribbon!
But maintaining infrastructure?
Man, that's not sexy.
Preventing problems?
That's not sexy.
I mean, who's going to notice that?
Who's going to care about that?
Hey man, where are all my taxes going?
Because I haven't seen anything new built for a while.
It's like, well, you know, they really are going on maintaining, you know, the electricity grid, the sewage infrastructure, the buildings that house the educational requests and preferences of thousands of children a day.
Yeah, we just, you know, but that's not sexy.
It's not sexy to just maintain things.
Sexy to build new things.
So that's what they do.
They build new things and then they can point and say, I have done all of these wonderful building things.
Re-elect me!
As opposed to, well, your children will still enjoy the same quality of clean water that you have.
Well, that's not sexy.
Can't sell that.
Can't sell that!
Everybody wants the new stuff.
Nobody wants to maintain the old stuff until it all breaks.
And then all the new stuff doesn't work because the infrastructure doesn't work.
Get ready for it.
Get used to it.
It's coming!
And there is no way around it.
Calgary now has emergency water rationing.
Canada has 0.5%
Of the world's population.
Canada has 20% of the world's supply of fresh water.
And a major city in Canada is out of water.
Is this what Friedman who said if you put the government in charge of the Sahara Desert in five years they'd be out of sand?
And all the government estimates are like Dr. Evil with his... Billions!
Dr. Evil with his little finger in the corner of his mouth.
Billions and billions!
Ah, well.
You end up with what you ignore.
You end up with what you ignore.
So, yeah, just be aware, man.
Be.
A.ware.
What is coming down the pipeline, which is... There's nothing coming down the pipeline, because the pipeline's encrusted and broken.
You know, I was driving around the other day trying to find something with my daughter and came across somebody, they had replaced a culvert.
The government said, we've replaced a culvert.
It took six months and over a million dollars to replace a culvert.
Because, you know, the government, they're happy to have the job keep running.
I'm sure there's tons of kickbacks and
I'm sure that the people aren't in any big rush to finish the contract because they get a steady paycheck, which is kind of hard to get a hold of in Le Free Market!
Le Market Free!
So, yes, just get used to it.
And of course, you know, with lots and lots of people pouring into the country, there's going to be a whole lot of infrastructure demands and a whole lot of infrastructure that has not been maintained.
How the fuck do you end up with a bunch of buildings
That you've been pouring ungodly amounts of money into for decades.
How do you end up with a bunch of buildings that you have to pull the emergency fire alarm, basically, and shut them down because they are in imminent danger of collapsing on the children?
Well, I guess you don't have much competence and you don't have much of a conscience.
That's my guess.
So, yeah, man, you gotta be prepared for this stuff.
It only gets worse and worse and worse from here.
Prepare yourselves accordingly.
My book, The Present, goes into this and you should check it out.
Somebody says New York City Amtrak shut down because power lines were down near trains.
Infrastructure!
Science, the center of our society, must be shut down.
Isn't that wild?
Another major infrastructure issue is all the water mains around Los Angeles that are well past maintenance and burst pretty regularly.
LA also has a science center that sounds very similar to the Toronto one you're describing.
It was pretty cool.
Yeah.
See, we can't educate children about abstract science because we lack basic maintenance and engineering.
Ah, be fun to learn about quantum physics, kids!
But we can't keep the roof up!
Ooh, let's look at what happens when atoms collide.
Now kids, I'm going to need you to hold your umbrellas up so the roof doesn't cave in.
Oh my gosh, we live in an infinitely dangerous clown world.
We live in clown world like Heath Ledger's Joker is a clown.
Well kids, there's a gauntlet you have to run to learn how to figure out the moon's orbit of the Earth.
You've gotta run your way and roll your way through falling cascades of deathly masonry.
Hey, you know what's cool?
You can learn about how asteroids killed the dinosaurs with crazy shit falling on your heads!
Isn't that vivid?
I mean, this is way better than VR!
You can learn how craters are formed with giant tons of concrete raining down on your heads, making, interestingly enough, craters.
Now that's what I call an educational experience.
Hey kids!
We're going to teach you about the perils of failing infrastructure by having the building cave in around you.
You're also going to learn how important it is to pay your taxes.
Oh, it's also very vivid.
And it's also very educational.
See, the Science Center is now really teaching us something.
I thought the Science Center was just going to teach us about science.
Now the Science Center is going to teach us about rampant corruption, lack of planning, lack of efficiency, the difference between a bureaucratic pseudo-economy and an actual free market.
Anyway, so we can talk, if you like, we can talk about
What's going on in the world?
We can talk about what's going on in your mind and in your heart.
If you want to unmute, this is a chitty-chatty back-and-forthy, so I'm all ears.
I certainly have topics.
Don't fear, don't fret.
But I'm all ears if you have stuff to talk about.
Go ahead, my friend.
Hey, Steph.
We had a call in a couple of months ago, and I'd just like to do a follow-up, if that's okay.
So this is top of mind right now because I just got a call from my mom and it's, um, I don't know if you remember our conversation, but it was about my mom being an alcoholic when I was a child and dealing with that.
I'm sure you get a lot of calls about that, but, um, anyway, so you told me to basically confront her about it and consider.
Nope, nope, nope, nope.
Sorry, I might be paraphrasing too much.
Do I tell people what to do?
You recommend it.
I talk about costs and benefits.
I said what has been valuable to me.
And the reason I say this is don't strip yourself ownership of the choice you made.
Don't be like, well Steph told me to do this, you made a choice.
I don't tell people what to do.
I can be more clear.
No, no, it's not more clear.
No, no, sorry.
It's not more clear.
And I'm not trying to be a nag right at the beginning, but it's just, it's not more clear.
It's not like, well, that's 70% accurate, let's just make it 75 or 80% accurate.
That's not accurate.
Right?
Steph, you told me to confront my mother.
No, I didn't.
Guarantee you I didn't.
I guarantee you.
We go back on the call.
That's the basic principle of mine since day one.
Um, what, what led me to that conclusion was our back and forth we had where you were, um, it was like a role play scenario where you were, uh, a future spouse of mine and I was my mother and it made me realize all of the crazy that was going on in my life and how someone else might look at it from the outside.
Okay, so it may have led you to think that it's worth confronting your mother.
Go ahead.
Did I tell you to confront your mother?
No, you did not.
That was a... yeah, you're correct, and I understand the point, and it's not... And I'm not trying to dodge accountability here, I just want you to have the self-respect if you made the choice.
Yes, it took me six months to make the choice since our last call in together, so it was
It was quite a bit of time of meditating on it, re-listening to the call-in, like... Do you remember the title?
Sorry to interrupt, do you remember the title of the show?
Uh... Rough time frame?
You said six months?
Uh... Yeah, let me look at Skype and I can tell you right.
Okay.
In two seconds.
Yeah, I just, I'm sure that people will want to hear that.
And then they'll hear me giving you Gestapo-style orders on what to do with your life.
It was December 30th, but I don't remember it.
Your arse plan, Franz!
Sie Mutter!
Sorry, what?
December what?
Actually, it was January 2nd was when it was recorded.
I think it was published the day after.
Okay, got it.
January 2nd, January 3rd.
I'm sure James can dig up that title and we'll just throw it in here as a reference.
I think it was something about dating crazy women or crazy exes.
I'm sorry, you're gonna have to narrow it down a little bit more than that if we're gonna have that as a category for call-in shows.
Difficult Mother Dating Crazy.
Difficult Mother Dating Crazy.
It is show 5369.
5369.
Addicted to dating crazy women.
Oh, now we have a perhaps.
Sorry, I don't know if that's a perhaps.
That's not it, James.
Oh, that's not it?
I think it was recorded just after that.
That's actually the show that inspired me to call in.
Okay.
All right.
Well, we'll throw it in.
I'm sure we can dig it up, James.
You can just look for the actual voice and all of that.
Okay, so, what's been happening?
So, last week, I was on the phone with her, and she sounded drunk, so I asked her if she's been drinking.
She's told me previously that she was sober for six months, and when I asked her, she said, no, I haven't been drinking, and then kind of paused for a few seconds, and then she admitted that she had.
I asked her how much and she said that it was about a bottle of wine every day for six months.
So how long had she been claimed to not be drinking for?
Well, about six months she claimed to have been sober.
And then she said, oh, a slight revision to not drinking at all.
I was drinking a bottle of wine a day.
Correct.
How big is your mom?
She's actually slimmed down a bit, but
Since I've noticed, uh, now that she's told me she's been drinking for the last six months, I've noticed that in the past year, she's gained some weight for sure.
All right.
Why, why are you not answering the question?
How big is your mom?
How tall is she?
Oh, tall, uh, maybe five, five, seven.
Five, seven and like 150, 180 pounds.
Maybe 150.
Okay.
No, and the reason I'm saying that is... So, guys, this is really important, right?
This is really important.
You need to do girl math when you're thinking about women or talking to women.
You have to do the girl math.
Now, the girl math goes something like this.
So, I do this with my wife.
My wife is 5'2 and, I don't know, 112 pounds or something like that.
So, she gets some pretty comfortable airline seats.
I mean, first class for me is like coach for her, right?
She gets twice, almost twice the living space that I get.
It's really unfair.
So you gotta do girl math.
The reason I'm saying that is that you think of a bottle of wine, and that's a lot for a man, that's a hell of a lot for a woman.
That's probably more than a bottle and a half or a bottle and three quarters for a man.
So yeah, I just think that you got to remember.
So you said bottle of wine.
So what men do is we tend to say, Oh, well, you know, if I drank a bottle of wine, boy, that would be a lot.
Then it would be way more than that.
It's the same thing with food, right?
You have a dessert and a woman has a dessert.
It's like 40% more dessert for her.
Right, so if you look at rough calories, like 1,500 for women, 2,500 for men, or whatever, depending on how active you are, and so on, right?
So it's 30-40% more for a woman.
Hey, let's split a dessert!
Okay, she's getting 30-40% more.
Hey, let's have a drink!
She's getting 30-40% more.
So, I'm sorry to interrupt your, I just, it's important to do that math, so that you understand what life is like.
For a woman.
Okay, so sorry, she said she hadn't been drinking, and then she confesses to drinking a bottle of wine a day for six months, right?
Yeah.
And then?
We had a conversation about different recovery options.
I told her that my church had a recovery program that I had heard was really good.
This all
Also, an important detail is that this hypothetical virtuous woman in my life that we were role-playing in our call-in has seemed to arrive.
I've been dating a woman from my church for about five months now, and it's been really great.
She's virtuous, and maybe that's a conversation for another day I'd like to discuss, but like,
All of that, but it's been great.
It's been a great change of pace for me as far as dating goes, but I told her in that conversation that I told my mom that if she keeps drinking, I'm not going to allow her around my children or my wife when I get married because I'm planning on getting married sometime next year.
To this woman?
Sorry, you're planning on getting married to this woman, right?
Correct.
Congratulations.
I think that's beyond thrilling.
Yay, release the fireworks and the kraken and possibly a hound or two with red eyes.
All right, that's fantastic.
Good to hear.
I'm thrilled beyond words.
So you said you're not coming to the wedding, you're not going to be around my kids if you keep drinking, is that right?
Exactly.
And thank you for those kind words.
Yeah, she did not take that well at all.
She's been ballistic all week.
Hates my guts.
Told me to my face.
How could I do this to her?
All that.
Now, I don't know if you want feedback yet or not, so I'm happy to keep listening, but I have some thoughts, but I can certainly hold on to them.
I can fill in a little bit more of the books here.
Asked me for examples of when her drinking was a problem for our family.
And she's been drinking since I was a, well, she's been drinking since she was 17.
So there's plenty of stories where she's been yelling at us.
When we were kids, we poured out her beer when she was drinking because we were concerned for her and she would scream at us.
Um, she ruined a 10th birthday of mine and made all my friends leave when she was drunk and broke some family photos.
Just overall, um, pretty despicable, despicable behavior.
Um, and then after that conversation, she told me that she was raped when she was 17 by a, uh, black football player.
And, uh, she was drunk at the time.
And, um,
The head coach of the football team at the time told her not to press charges and coerced her in some way, shape, or form to not have her press charges.
And, you know, learning all of that about my mom in one day was quite a lot, so I've been trying to process that.
Sorry, so she was raped by a black football player and it's the coach who told her not to press charges?
He was a valuable prospect, I guess, and didn't want him to go down.
That's the way I understand it.
And she was drunk.
Yeah.
I'm sorry.
I'm not sure exactly why you'd believe this.
I mean, I never said I did.
Okay.
Okay.
Sorry.
I just, I just, cause you, my mistake.
Okay.
Go ahead.
Well, I guess I shouldn't have said learning all this was a shock.
I guess hearing all this from my mother was a shock.
I'm not totally inclined to believe that it was rape.
Apologies, I'm a little nervous and I left out one detail.
Her mother made her get an abortion after the rape because she wasn't sure if it was
The football player's baby or her boyfriend's baby.
Sorry, she wasn't sure if it was her boyfriend's baby or the rapist's baby.
Correct.
Okay.
And the boyfriend at the time was extremely upset about this and left her, and my mom claims it was all very traumatic, which I'm sure it was.
But if she's to be believed about all of it,
So that's all the details that I have right now, besides the fact that she called me about an hour ago, and it's the first I've heard from her in a week, and she continued to berate me and call me names.
Okay, sorry, is there more that you wanted to add?
That's all.
Okay, and do you want feedback?
I don't want to assume.
Yes, please.
Why would you threaten her?
I'm curious your thoughts on this, because this is what she's been telling me, that it was an ultimatum.
Yeah, she's accurate about that.
Get help, or you can't come to my wedding and you can't see your grandkids, right?
Yes.
And I'm not, listen, I'm not, please understand, I'm not criticizing at all.
I don't know, because I'm not going to tell you what the right thing to do is, because it's so complex, right?
And I don't know this woman, and so on, right?
So, please understand, I'm not in any way, shape, or form criticizing you.
I'm just curious about your thinking as to, I'm going to give a very manipulative and unstable and lying woman an ultimatum, which is to fight in her arena, right?
Because now you're like, well, I'm going to do an ultimatum, and I'm going to do a threat, and I'm going to do consequences, and you're now moving into her arena, right?
And again, not disagreeing.
Could have been totally the right thing to do.
What do I know, right?
But I am curious about your thinking.
So why did you want to give her an ultimatum?
The way I thought about it going into it was that
This wasn't necessarily an ultimatum, and I guess this is where I really like your insight, and you've helped me a lot already.
I didn't see it as an ultimatum.
I saw it as, this is what's going to happen if you keep drinking, period.
It's not really a matter of whether or not if you stop drinking, everything's going to be great.
There's still going to be a lot of
Reconciling with what has already happened, but if you continue to drink, there's no way you're going to see your children.
Maybe I was wrong to assume it wasn't.
No, no, no, let's not.
Honestly, I don't want to do any convos about right or wrong.
Because again, right or wrong is the end of curiosity.
And I am hugely curious about your thinking in this way.
And again, curious doesn't mean critical at all.
I'm genuinely like, step me through what your reasoning was, right?
And the reason is, you didn't get your desired output, right?
Not at all.
Okay, so if you didn't get your desired output, that's interesting, right?
Now, maybe there's no way to get your desired output.
Like, if my desired output was to become the prima ballerina of the Bolshoi Ballet, there's no amount of stretching and practicing I could do to get that, right?
So, sometimes we don't get our desired output because it's possible to get what we want, but we're taking the wrong approach, and sometimes we don't get the desired outcome because it's impossible for us to get the desired outcome.
So, what is your desired outcome?
What do you want most from your mother?
I mean, put very simply, I would like her to be around when I have children so that she can be a mother and a grandmother to me and my children.
And the desired outcome of that would be... Sorry, no, no, hang on, hang on.
Let's go back, let's go back for a sec.
So your desired outcome is for your mother to be a good mother and grandmother.
Okay?
And your feeling is that if you threaten her with cutting her off, that this is going to produce empathy and virtue and thoughtfulness and morals in your mother.
Or is your mother a great woman who just happens to have a drinking problem, and if she can get the drinking problem sorted, then she's going to be a really good person to have in your life.
I think the latter is what I was thinking.
So that's a hypothetical, right?
That's your conjecture.
So your conjecture is, my mother's really great, but unfortunately she has a bad habit called drinking.
And if she stops using alcohol, her natural warmth and empathy and love and virtue will
Be liberated, if that makes sense.
Yes.
Okay.
So, what's your evidence for that, right?
Because that's a pretty big hypothesis, right?
Well, when I know she isn't drunk, and it's fairly easy for me to tell, everyone says around me, and I also agree that she's a very pleasant woman to be around.
Okay, can you tell me what that means, or what does that look like?
Uh, she's... when she invites people over to her home, she includes... No, no, no, no, not people.
Oh, sorry.
No, no, hang on, sorry, sorry.
No, no, no.
Not people.
Not people.
My mother was nice when others came over.
Almost all abusive parents are nice when other people come over.
Right, so that's like, that's like the abused woman saying, no, no, no, he never hits me in front of police officers.
So let's try that one again.
Just you.
Okay.
Um, well, for example, recently, um, during Christmas, she, um, she made a really great effort to have me and my brother have a great Christmas and that included, um, flying my brother out, paying for the plane ticket.
Um, and just being warm and cooking and, um, welcoming into her
My parents are divorced, so it's usually... Sorry, there's a sound on my... But yeah, I don't know.
We just had a drama-free, pleasant Christmas this year.
She got me a nice gift of relatively high value compared to other gifts.
That's my evidence, as of now.
Okay, so you had a good Christmas last Christmas, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
And I'm sorry to be behind on this, and maybe you said it, and then I'm really sorry if I missed it.
Wasn't she drinking?
At that point, she may have been drinking regularly, but she was not drunk those two days that I had seen her.
I can be pretty sure of that.
So she might have been drinking, but she wasn't... No, she was drinking, probably, but she wasn't drunk, right?
That's probably more accurate.
Okay.
So she cut back on her drinking for two days.
Yeah.
I'm sorry, how old are you?
How long have you known her?
I'm 25.
Okay, 25.
So you've got a quarter century.
Did she... I'm sorry, just to remind me, did she drink through your childhood?
Yes.
Okay.
So she was an alcoholic and a drunk throughout your childhood.
She was drinking last Christmas, but she drank less for two days, and things were relatively calm.
Yeah.
What do you think about this?
What I'm saying?
It's, uh... There's a lot of...
Onus on me to provide more evidence that she's a good mother.
Well, that's a pretty fucking thin gruel you're living on there, brother.
She drank less for two days and was pretty nice.
At a 25 years.
Yeah, that's pretty accurate.
Right?
What else is the, she's nice deep down.
If she's just not drinking as much.
I think this, I mean, I guess the more that I think about nice little things that she's done, the more that I think about the very bad things that she's done, and there's like an imbalance right now in my thinking.
written by her, and it says a lot of really, really nice things.
To My Amazing Remarkable Son is how it opens, and I think I get caught up on things like that because there's this almost illusion that she is in there somewhere, and I just want to see it, and I don't know if I ever will.
Sorry, can you tell me a little bit more about what you mean?
I'm a little unclear.
Well, she tells me, I mean, when we were when we were talking regularly, she would just constantly tell me how much she loves me and how much she cares about me.
And she approves of my new girlfriend.
And we had a good conversation about her and how excited she is that I'm about to propose.
And she offered to give me
Okay.
So, you're saying that the woman who treats you like crap also praises you.
Yeah.
Okay.
So how can we resolve that contradiction?
I think one of the ways you've resolved it, and again, I'm just exploring here, I don't have any particular opinion.
One of the ways that you're trying to resolve this contradiction is saying, well, the difference is the drinking.
Yeah.
Okay.
She's just a mean drunk, but when she doesn't drink, she's nice, right?
I think that's what I, yeah, I would say that's what I think.
Okay.
When has she last stopped drinking for any period of time?
I don't mean cut back, like dry.
When she got breast cancer in 2015, I believe she stopped for a year, maybe two.
Only she would know exactly how long, but that was my understanding.
All right.
And how was she over that time period?
I mean, obviously there was the, the breast cancer aspect, which is super not fun, of course.
Right.
But, but how was she as a whole?
Um, unpleasant, mostly because of the divorce that was also happening at the same time.
Uh, she was divorcing my dad and they were separating.
So she left the house around that time and then got breast cancer.
And so it was.
It was a hard time for her.
She was living in an apartment alone, and I was still in high school, and I didn't have a way to... I didn't really know what to do in that situation, but I wouldn't say it was the most positive time.
I think she quit drinking out of necessity for the chemo.
And just remind me what it was that triggered your parents' divorce?
It's a good question.
I mean, it depends on who you ask, and it's hard to know the truth because they separated, but didn't get legally divorced.
They separated when I was around eight years old, and they got legally divorced in 2015.
And my mom says it's because of my dad's ex-wife, who was constantly trying to ruin their marriage by calling the house and threatening them and doing all sorts of crazy things.
Uh, my understanding pretty crazy.
She also an alcoholic drug addict.
Um, and my dad blames the alcoholism for the divorce.
Your mother's alcoholism.
Yeah.
Okay.
So your mother dated a guy whose ex was an alcoholic and a drug addict.
The drug addict came after the divorce with the first wife, but
Oh, sorry, your dad's first wife.
The story is that she became an addict after the divorce.
Correct.
Well, a drug addict.
Yeah.
Sorry, drug addict.
Yes, you're right.
Okay.
All right.
And so those are the two stories on each side.
Okay.
And is that why they separated when you were eight or in 2015?
Well, in 2015, at that point, it was just a matter of
Getting the paperwork done.
Sorry, so which is it?
Was it the ex-wife?
Was that more around when you were eight?
Or was that the final, let's separate, when, in 2015?
That was in 2008, yeah.
Okay, got it.
All right.
Okay, so does your mother, has she ever expressed
Um, any remorse for how she has behaved over the course of her life?
And not in terms of like a self-pity thing, but, you know, a sort of genuine and honest assessment of mistakes she's made and so on.
No.
Okay.
So she, she only blames your father's ex, not anything to do with anything she ever did, right?
She also blames my father for not taking her alcoholism seriously and not
Helping her through it.
Yeah.
Hmm.
Okay.
Okay.
So, it's your father's fault that she kept drinking?
That's what she would say, yeah.
She was stressed from the marriage because he worked long hours and wasn't home a lot, and he valued... I can also say that
He probably valued work over family in those early years.
Well, who wants to be home with a drunk woman?
I mean, you didn't, right?
Well, there's one story that can add to that.
Um, she, she told my dad that she was making dinner and he better, you know, be home by six o'clock and an hour goes by, two hours come by three hours and he comes home.
She throws the dinner plate in his face, screams at him and tells him to get out.
Sure.
Uh, how old were you then?
I mean, I must have been three or four.
All right.
So, your mother can quit drinking, but only for cancer, not for her family.
Then she started again when the cancer went into remission, or whatever they call it these days, right?
She ended up getting a double mastectomy, but yeah.
Okay, so when it was removed of the cancerous
I guess the cancer went out with the breast, right?
Okay.
Yeah.
All right.
And then she started drinking again.
Correct.
Okay.
So, then we have the question of nice behavior versus not nice behavior.
Now, the test of whether somebody is genuinely nice is whether you can bring up
Difficult topics when they're in a good mood.
Because a lot of times people shut down criticism because they say, those of us who have difficult conversations to have with difficult people, you know, if my mother is in a bad mood, I'm like, well, I'm not bringing that up now, right?
And if she's in a good mood, I'm like, well, I don't want to ruin things.
So either way, you can't say anything, right?
So, your mother can be nice, and you feel that that is a potential to be unlocked if you just find the right combination of words you can unlock that niceness and have her be pleasant and positive consistently, right?
8 times out of 10, or 5 times out of 10, or 9 times out of 10.
But, you know, given that we all can be a little moody at times, 9.8 out of 10, right?
Mm-hmm.
And what is the longest time period in the quarter century that you've known her, or the 20 years you can remember?
What is the longest time frame that she has been in a positive and decent mood?
It would be on the order of months, if it were anything.
That's about as vague a response as I could conceive of.
So, can we just take another?
It would be on the order of, if it's anything, I don't know what that means.
Has she been sort of positive and pleasant for months at a time?
And I'm not disagreeing with you, of course, it's your memory, it's your life.
But has she been positive and pleasant for months at a time, over the course of you knowing her?
Yeah, I mean, earlier this year, before the drinking started again, we did have periods of good times, and that would have been maybe two or three months that was pleasant.
Oh, okay, so you had a desire to confront her about her drunkenness and bad behaviour in the past, so over those two months or three months that she was in a better mood,
Why wouldn't you bring that up?
Again, I'm not saying whether you should or shouldn't have, I'm genuinely curious.
Why wouldn't you bring that up?
Well, that is around the time, actually, I did confront her about my childhood.
It wasn't an emphasis on the drinking, per se, because I hadn't come to the ultimate conclusion in my head, which seems ridiculous now, but I hadn't come to the conclusion that
It was solely in the drinking.
I had also thought that the divorce and the cancer was a huge part of the reason why we had never really got along, but I did confront her about a year ago during that pleasant time when we started talking again.
I took her out to dinner and told her that I was upset about a lot of the things that happened in my childhood.
And that conversation went well, and she
It seemed receptive to a lot of the criticisms that I had, and we hugged afterwards, and then it's just kind of been downhill from there.
So, this is six months before you and I talked last year?
Correct.
Okay, got it.
So, if she is open to criticisms,
Then why are you giving her ultimatums?
Like, you understand, an ultimatum is an ultimate act of desperation.
Mhm.
I can't reason with you, I'm gonna shake my fist in your face until you damn well do what I want.
Mhm.
It is desperation.
Did she punish you as a child?
When you were a child?
Just verbally.
But she applied negative consequences if you didn't do what she wanted, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
So she can't really object to you applying negative consequences if she's not doing what you want, which she's promised she has been doing, which is not drinking, right?
Mm-hmm.
I mean, if you had lied to her, let's say you'd only pretended to go to school and you'd taken money,
And it turns out you weren't going to school, right?
You were just hanging out and whatever, right?
Then she'd be really angry if you'd been lying to her for six months, right?
Mm-hmm.
So... She can't... I was angry.
Yeah, she can't morally object to negative consequences for bad behavior, because she applied those to you when you were a kid, and you were just applying those back, right?
I suppose, yeah.
If I've got that wrong, I can't build the next story if the first story is a house of cards, do you know what I mean?
So, I'm trying to build a case here, and if I've got something wrong, absolutely, please, please let me know.
The last thing I want to be is unjust.
Yeah, I mean, you could say that the words and the actions I took last week against my mother were a reflection of
Her own actions against me, which I think is great.
Well, it's a principle that if somebody isn't doing the right thing, then you can apply negative consequences, right?
Mm-hmm.
Okay, so that's how she raised you, and so what's good for the goose is good for the gander, and she objectively was doing the wrong thing by lying to you and your brother, right?
Mm-hmm.
So you were applying negative consequences because she was doing something really immoral, right?
Okay, so she can't object to that on principle, right?
She can't say, well, if you love people, you should never apply negative consequences if they do something bad or wrong, because she raised you that way, right?
Now again, if that's not accurate, I don't want to continue that line of reasoning.
Yeah, that seems accurate.
No, now we're back to seams.
It's a lot to think about.
No, it's not a lot to think about.
Did she apply negative consequences to you when you did something, quote, wrong as a child?
Did she yell at you?
Did she call you names?
Did she embarrass you?
Did she apply some sort of negative stimuli to you when you did something wrong as a child?
Yes, she yelled, broke stuff.
So she applied negative stimuli to you when you did something she disagreed with and was quote wrong as a child, right?
Okay, so when you say, if you drink, I don't want you around my kids and you can't come to my wedding,
That is consequences, you're not directly applying negative stimuli, right?
You're not shaking her, which thank heavens don't ever touch someone in anger that way, and you're not yelling at her, you're not calling her names, you're not calling her out, you know, using her name publicly, or whatever it is, right?
So, you're just saying that they're negative, I don't want you, if you're drinking, I don't want you at my wedding.
Which is totally right, and totally fair.
Nobody wants a drunk mother at a wedding.
Yes.
Right, so you're applying negative consequences, but without being abusive, and your mother was applying negative consequences while being abusive, so you're still way better, but the principle is remaining the same, that if someone does something that's wrong or bad, negative consequences are perfectly acceptable.
Okay.
So... I'm with you.
If she has the capacity to be criticized, why would you, and again, not a criticism, but why would you not just criticize her, but where did the ultimatum come from?
What was the thinking behind the ultimatum?
So, as I saw it, I had three options.
One was to be with her and help her through recovery and come to her house often and call her often.
And be part of the recovery process with her.
Option B was to cut her out of my life entirely from that point.
And option C was to tell her my intentions of doing that while also giving her options for recovery and setting her up to have those options.
And is your, sorry, I'm not sure how young your mother had you.
Is she in her fifties?
She's 50, yes.
Okay, she's in her 50s.
Now, for how long has she been an alcoholic?
Since she was 17.
Okay.
So, she's been an alcoholic for decades, right?
Yeah.
Now, I need you to understand something here, and I'm just going to use a very brief analogy here, right?
Have you ever studied for a test
While bombed out of your gourd?
Bombed as in drunk?
Drunk, stoned, whatever, right?
I don't think so.
Okay.
Have you ever tried to learn anything while drunk?
Like, can you imagine trying to learn chess while drunk?
Like, seriously drunk?
I can imagine, yes.
And you can imagine that would be pretty difficult, right?
Yes.
Now, if I said to you, I've been studying Japanese for the past six months, but every time I study Japanese and go to Japanese class, I'm drunk, would you think that I had learned much Japanese?
No.
Right.
Your mother has been a drunk for 35 years or so.
Give or take.
I'm sure that's not exactly accurate, but it's something like that, right?
Okay, so your mother has been a drunk for 35 years.
What that means is that she has failed to learn an enormous amount.
She's failed to learn how to negotiate.
She's failed to learn how to take criticism.
She's failed to learn how to deal with negative stimuli.
Because when she experiences negative stimuli, she runs for the bottle, right?
So she has had 35 years of not learning relationship skills because she's drunk.
Sorry, Steph, you cut out there for a second.
She has spent 35 years not or failing to learn relationship skills because she's drunk.
Yeah, right.
Now, how long do you think it's going to take, let's say she stops drinking tomorrow, how long do you think it might take for her to learn
Those relationship skills that she has not learned because she spent 35 years drinking, minus a year or two when she was having the mastectomy.
Um, yeah.
It would take a long time, I imagine.
Years.
And you understand it would be enormously painful.
Yeah.
Why would it be so painful, do you think?
Well, it's like being a teenager and being a, you know, learning all of the consequences of the world and not everything is pretty, you know.
I know, I don't know.
Sorry, what do you mean?
Why would it be so painful for your mother to learn positive and healthy relationship skills even if she stopped drinking tomorrow?
Why would it be so difficult or painful?
Painful.
Sorry.
Painful.
I'm thinking in circles because it's painful because it's difficult and she wouldn't get along very well in the real world.
Well, she's going to have to make... well, she's going to lose a lot of friends who are also alcoholics right now.
No, that happens even if she quits drinking.
I'm talking about quits drinking and struggles to learn empathy and compassion and win-win negotiations and so on.
I love the fact that you don't know this answer.
It speaks very well to your character.
Honestly, this is a beautiful... I would really be chilled if you knew the answer to this one.
No, I would be.
Let's open it up if anybody wants to type.
What's the answer?
Why would it be so painful for his mother to learn healthy and positive relationship skills
After having been a drunk for the best part of 35 years.
Why would it be so painful?
Yes, simp as often as usual.
Yeah, because once her empathy starts to kick in, she'll have to realize how badly she damaged the people in her life.
Manuel says because she would realize all the damage she's inflicted over the decades, her conscience would just eat herself alive, says someone.
Yeah.
So the reason you don't know why it would be so painful is you have a pretty good conscience, right?
Yeah.
She would realize that her entire narrative about her life was a lie.
That she was a victim, that other people were to blame, and she would realize how much harm she had done her family.
And you don't really get that because you have a good conscience.
And don't forget, of course, people, if you wouldn't mind, freedomain.com slash donate.
Help out the show, freedomain.com slash donate.
I would really appreciate that.
So that's why it would be so incredibly painful.
Now, because she's been an alcoholic, she is bad at handling emotional pain, right?
And so if she starts to become a better person, it will become entirely clear to her what a terrible person she's been, and she has a lifelong habit of running
to alcohol to numb emotional pain.
So, if she starts to develop empathy, her urge to drink will be a force of nature.
This is why alcoholics and other addicts get trapped.
They manage emotional pain by running to their addiction, which means
They're not drugging themselves, they're not drinking themselves out of existence.
They're drinking their conscience out of existence.
Addicts in general, I mean long-term addicts in particular, are drinking away or drugging their conscience.
Now, if you start to act better, your conscience kicks in.
With exactly how terrible you've been.
But if you have the habit of running to alcohol, when you have a negative emotion and your conscience starts to give you a sense of just how terrible you've been, what's going to happen?
She's going to realize all the damage.
And then what?
She's going to feel so bad, you and I cannot conceive of it.
You and I cannot conceive of what it's like to have been a drunken witch throughout our children's entire childhoods.
To have attacked, to have blamed, to have whined, to have threatened, to have thrown things, to have complained, to have ruined marriages and relationships and childhoods.
To have been a forest fire!
Of destruction!
It's tragic.
No, it's not tragic.
It's not tragic.
It's fair.
When you do great evil to children, you lose your soul.
It's not tragic.
It's fair.
Because through her addiction, through her choices, she tried to take her children's soul.
You survive.
She loses hers.
You know, it's like if there's some torturer with a knife and the knife slips and he cuts his own artery and he bleeds out, do we say, oh, that's tragic?
That's not tragic.
How is that tragic?
Yeah, there's a lie permeated among alcoholics that it's a disease.
Sure.
Yeah, I get it.
I get it.
Yeah.
Her, you know, her parents drank, and their parents drank, and... Mm-hmm.
Yep.
Which should be all the more reasonable.
Yeah, I get it, and it's not.
It's not a disease.
Because you can't just voluntarily choose to quit a disease.
That's a good one.
That's good.
No, it's real.
Yeah.
I mean, I did this show, I don't know, 17 years ago, the billion dollar question.
If somebody offers you a billion dollars to not drink for a day, can you not drink for a day?
Sure!
If you have cancer and somebody offers you a billion dollars to not have cancer, can you do that?
Nope!
I really, really hate the way that addicts grab on to genuinely ill people and pillage sympathy for them.
That's just part of this manipulative bullshit that goes on.
There are genuinely ill people who don't have a choice.
Alcoholics have a choice.
Somebody with multiple sclerosis can't be... can't join MS and on and quit like that.
Nope.
The calling it a disease is just part of the manipulation.
And it's vile.
And inevitable, almost, in a way, right?
I was describing it to my brother, who's been dragged into this.
Dragged?
Don't you give me these no-free-will words, brother!
That's a choice, too.
He got a phone call from my mother about her saying, you know,
She told him that I told her all this stuff and said it was mean things, and I'm, you know, trying to pit me against my own brother.
Sorry, sorry, sorry, I just missed that.
You didn't cut out, I just missed it.
So he said that your mother had said you'd said all these bad things, or sorry, I didn't quite catch that.
So my mom called my brother, and the way that she described our conversation was that I told her all these mean things about how I don't want
her in my life anymore, and how she knows that my brother would never do this to her.
Basically... Yeah, she's worried about you.
She's latching onto your brother, right?
Yeah.
She's concerned that you might not be exploitable, so she's doubly latching onto your brother, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
Right.
Yeah.
And so, him and I have been working through this and trying to kind of work together on processing this
This almost like loss, it seems like, in our life.
But you're not losing your mother.
Sorry, I'm not sure what you mean by loss here.
Well, that's what it seems like to me.
No, that's not, that's not accurate.
Sorry to be annoying.
I really apologize, and I know how sensitive it is.
No, when you're annoying, it's usually very useful.
It's not, it's not accurate.
So, when I was 14 or so, I asked out the prettiest girl in school, and she agreed to go out with me, but there just had to be other people there.
Now, I didn't want other people to be there, so I didn't end up going on a date with her.
So, I said, let's do X, and she said, well, will other people be there, or with who, or whatever, and I said, no, it'll just be you and me, and she's like, you know, I'd, you know, generally prefer, and I understand where she's coming from, it isn't, you know, obviously it's a long time ago now, and I'm happily married, blah, blah, blah, right.
Now, so I asked the girl out, she didn't go out with me.
Did I lose a girlfriend?
No.
Why not?
Because you weren't.
Boyfriend and girlfriend.
Right.
At that point.
You weren't mothered.
You've had to be the caretaker from day one.
Right?
You weren't mothered.
And what you're losing, and I say this with affection and respect, what you're losing is your delusion that you can fix.
A brain with no empathy that's been pickling in poison for 35 fucking years.
That you are losing the delusion that you're Jesus magic hands healing brain fixing guy.
She's poisoned herself and screwed up her relationships her entire life.
But I, as her child, can fix it.
I can talk my uncle who smoked two packs a day for 40 years.
I can talk him out of having damaged lungs.
My words can change neurons and cells and health.
I am a god on earth who can fix people with the soft caress of my silky syllables.
You are afraid of accepting your absolute, complete, and fundamental helplessness.
Which is why you went to ultimatum.
You cannot fix her.
You cannot change the decisions of her entire life.
You cannot unpickle her brain.
You cannot, through your words, go back in time and recreate all the skills she failed to learn because she was drunk decade after decade.
You can't fix your childhood.
You can't fix her as a parent.
You can't make her a good mother.
And you said something which really struck me.
You said, I want her to be a good grandmother to my children and a good mother to me.
Brother, it's way too late.
It's way too late.
Yeah.
Wanting to be mothered when you're about to be married is like having a fetish for breastfeeding when you're in your 30s!
If I can just get a crib big enough and adult diapers big enough, I can go back and have a happy infancy.
Nope.
Nope, nope, nope.
You can't fix her.
You can't change her.
And the first thing she did when you expressed to her how agonized you were with the ultimatum, the first thing she did was lie about you to your brother.
No conscience, straight up manipulation.
No empathy, no curiosity.
She just went ahead.
And lied.
And tried to turn your brother against you.
And tried to align with him.
And moving her little fucking chess pieces around the board.
Of sodden, listless, consciousnessless life.
She escalated with you.
She's now applying massive negative pressure to you, she's threatening you, she's punishing you, she's bad-mouthing you to your brother.
Well, see, my brother has all of the reason to come to this conclusion himself, too.
Last time he was here... No, no, no, no, no.
You're trying to drag me off to your brother.
I'm talking to you.
Okay.
It's about you.
No, it's not about you.
No, I don't need to hear about your brother, because I'm talking about you, and I'm talking to you, not your brother.
Okay.
So you're trying to take the spotlight off on you and saying, oh, look at this shiny object over here, my brother!
It's like, oh, let's talk about your brother!
No!
I'm talking about you.
Let's say you cannot fix her.
Right?
Mhm.
What then?
I plan on keeping that promise.
To not have her what?
To not have her around my children or my wife.
So what does that mean?
When do you have her around then?
When she's...
I'm just assuming that she gets invited to my events.
If you cannot fix her, or, sorry, and you're right, let's say she cannot be fixed, because she shows no evidence of having been fixed.
She faced a double mastectomy and started drinking afterwards, right?
Now, I don't know the degree to which alcoholism and cancer are related, I don't know that they're unrelated, I don't know that they are related, but if they are, then
She basically had lung cancer and started smoking again.
Yeah.
And it seems like they are linked.
I've done some research on that.
Okay.
So, death could not fix her.
Cancer could not fix her.
Her conscience cannot fix her.
You, are you less powerful than her own mortality?
Yup!
Help me understand the benefit here.
How does this help your life, your future, your family, your girlfriend soon-to-be-fiancé, your future children?
There's no way it helps.
Okay.
Does it harm?
Every single way possible.
So?
Have you given it a good, honest, solid try to help and fix?
Yeah.
And for how long, all the way back into your childhood, for how long have you been trying to help your mother?
Before I can... Since before I had clear memories, maybe when I was 10, so... So, for 15 years, you've been trying to help your mother, and things are worse now than they ever were, if I understand what you're saying correctly.
Worse for her?
No, no.
No.
You said things are worse between you two,
now than they have been before.
Now, if I've misunderstood that, obviously, please, please set me straight.
But my understanding was, and I'm perfectly happy to be corrected on this, that things are worse now after you provided the ultimatum, that she's really escalated, she's bad-mouthing you to your brother and so on, she's blowing up, she's... right?
So, after 15 years of trying to help someone, your relationship is worse now than it's ever been.
Yeah, that's accurate.
The only hang-up I had was, I'm just thinking about the times when I was a helpless child and she was screaming at me.
I don't know.
I think I would put that above what's happening to me now because I'm more capable of dealing with it.
But between me and her, yeah.
Well, in terms of your relationship, I mean, when you were just an object of abuse, right?
But in terms of
Let's say that you have some control over the situation, right?
Because things can't be good or bad if you have no control.
You just got to grit your teeth and survive, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
So, for 15 years, you've been trying to help and fix your mother.
She's still drinking.
She's still lying.
She's still manipulative.
She's still abusive.
And she's escalating now, and things have never been worse where there is a choice.
So, if you had a friend, and you had spent 15 years trying to get your friend to be nicer, and after 15 years he was even more horrible than he'd been at the beginning, what would you say to yourself?
Or what would you say to someone like that?
Sorry, you cut out a little bit.
I didn't mean to re-hear that.
Somebody said to you, I have a friend, Bob.
I have a friend, Bob.
I've been trying to help him be a nicer person for 15 years, and he's even more of an arsehole now than when I first met him.
What would you say?
Stop helping Bob.
Well, what are you doing?
It's not helping.
Yeah.
Now, if you're only in the relationship to fix someone, it's not a relationship.
Please understand this.
If you're only in a relationship to fix someone, it's not a relationship.
It's a delusion.
Because good people in your life want to fix themselves so that you are happier.
If I have some habit that annoys people in my life and they tell me about it, I will work to fix that habit.
So that they have a better experience.
They don't need to nag me.
They don't need to threaten me.
None of this, right?
Of course not.
Trying to fix people is dead time.
It is empty time, it is gone time, it is times seven deducted from your peace of mind and life as a whole.
If after 25 years you can't look at someone and say, I love you for who you are, don't change a thing.
If after 25 years things are worse and worse and worse.
You understand it is a mad delusion to think that year 26 is going to be a big turnaround.
Right.
She is who she is.
And after the ultimatum, what is there?
What is there?
This is why the ultimatum is called an ultimatum.
It's the ultimate
Or the penultimate.
Like, what do you do afterwards?
After that, after that, after you say, shape up and stop drinking.
I mean, wasn't that your request, like, stop drinking?
Yeah.
Okay, your request wasn't, and go to therapy, and learn how to apologize, and learn some good relationship skills, and so on, right?
It was just, stop drinking.
After 37 years, or 35 years, right?
So, after the ultimatum, then what?
What's left?
I mean, you've got nothing left.
You've got no arrows left in your quiver, do you?
So that's... I mean, if you do an ultimatum, man, that's it.
It either works, or that's it.
Yeah.
And it's tough.
It's tough because it's hard for people who can change their mind to understand the mindset of people who just won't.
You know, I'm trying obviously not to blend our two experiences here, but for me it's like, you know, if I do something wrong, which I do from time to time, I feel bad, I want to make apologies, make restitution, I get, you know, it's unpleasant when I'm going in the wrong, you know, like that uneasy feeling you get if you might be lost in the woods and the sun's going down, it's like, man, better figure this one out, this uneasy feeling.
So I have that guide, that conscience, that oof, you know, oof, right?
I feel bad, right?
And so it's very hard to understand what it's like for people who have the opposite of a conscience.
See, it's kind of funny because people say, and I've used this myself as well, this nomenclature, oh, this person doesn't have a conscience.
That's almost never the case.
What they have is the reverse conscience, which is, I feel really bad if I do something that hurts someone.
But they actually feel good.
Yes!
I've stood up for myself.
I'm not going to get pushed around.
I've shown them what's what.
I've done the right thing.
It's good!
It's not.
There's no such thing as a lack of conscience, really, to anybody who's alive.
You either feel bad when you hurt people, or you feel it's good and right and just.
And maybe even there's sadistic pleasure.
I don't know if that's the case with your mother, but she feels perfectly justified.
It's like the people who can lie.
Like, it's wild.
It's wild to me.
Right?
That, you know, I've obviously talked about some controversial things over the course of this show and I've always been very careful to make sure that I'm accurate and get the right experts on and get the facts and the data.
And then people can just lie.
They have no fucking conscience at all.
They just lie.
So, your mother has just invented a whole nother conversation that you never had and is telling your brother all about it, right?
Maybe she could even pass a lie detector, I don't know, it doesn't really matter.
But just to say whatever shit they want to get through the moment and to come out on top and to look good and all this stuff, right?
It's terrifying.
Yeah, I don't feel particularly good.
When I lie, I feel bad, right?
So I'm like, sorry, I exaggerated this, or I misrepresented that, or whatever.
I don't really like it, of course, right?
So, trying to understand people who just lie, right?
It's like that Salt-N-Eaton thing, right?
They're lying, we know they're lying, they know we know they're lying, etc., etc., yet still they continue to lie.
Just lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie.
They just have no commitment to truth and they don't feel bad for lying.
In fact, they would feel bad for telling the truth.
They enjoy lying.
Like the Bill Clinton, like the gold medal Olympic, one of the gold medal Olympic liars in history.
It's fluid.
It's totally fluid for him.
So it's hard, and this is one of the great weaknesses of people who have a conscience, is it's really fucking hard to figure out what life is like for people without a conscience.
It's like people who have leprosy and they can't feel their fingertips, they can't feel their extremities, they have to do this thing called the VSE, the visual search of extremities, to make sure they haven't cut or burned themselves.
Imagine going through life with no physical pain.
Or, imagine going through life
Where getting a cut felt like an orgasm, and getting burnt felt like a high, and self-protection was pain, like everything was reversed.
It would be really hard to empathize with that, just in the same way it's really hard to empathize with the opposite of empathy.
And so what you're doing is you're projecting yourself into your mother and saying, well man, I have the capacity for change.
I'm sure she has the capacity for change.
We're both humans.
We're both bipeds.
We're both homo sapiens.
I have the capacity to learn and grow.
I have the capacity to improve.
I'm sure my mother does too.
We can't be that different.
There is a better mother locked in there.
She's locked in there.
I picked that lock.
I had to find that good mother.
It's the concept of the soul that there's an indestructible part of someone that you just have to figure out how to liberate it, how to reach past all the defenses and find that good person within.
So she would have to provide extraordinary evidence in order to be reconsidered in a different light.
I'm not sure why you're getting rubber bones and I'm not sure why you're asking me this question.
Well, I guess I'm just asking if... I don't know why I have this tendency to think of the best case scenario
In this situation, but I'd want to prepare for it.
I mean, I can tell you why you have the best-case scenario.
You have a best-case scenario because it serves your mother.
Your mother wants you to have hope so that you'll stick around.
Yeah.
Am I wrong?
No, no, not at all.
Mm-hmm.
Use positive inducements to get their prey.
I mean, think of the Venus flytrap, right?
Coats itself in the syrupy, sweet, sticky stuff, right?
Then closes over its prey.
There are lots of animals that pretend to be wounded and then turn on whatever comes close.
There are lots of animals that have particular ways of luring other creatures in.
And then... Get them!
Right?
Your hope is your vulnerability.
It's how you're controlled, it's how you're exploited.
Your hope is the only pretense of a relationship.
And you understand, it's kind of an insult to your girlfriend-slash-fiancee to go chasing after this pickle-brained, puff-monster of a mother and call the two a relationship.
I definitely see that.
I definitely see that.
If you have hope, hey man, don't take my word for anything.
If you have hope, go talk to her again.
And say, hey, me and her mom, you...
You know, you're lying about what happened with me and you, you're lying to my brother, and you're escalating with me, and it's really unpleasant, and blah blah blah blah blah, then going, right?
Ultimatums are a problem because then you can self-criticize and say, well, I did do this ultimatum, and she's gonna react negatively, but if you're just relentlessly honest,
Right, this is the real-time relationships approach.
You're just relentlessly honest.
This hurt me, this upset me.
I'm not saying why, but just see, does she care about your feelings?
That's what RTR is partly about.
It's partly a filter for people who don't care about your feelings.
Or they care about your feelings so they can exploit you.
But I feel like this is just a dead-end street here.
I mean, I can't see you, but you're just... yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'm thinking, yeah.
No, stop thinking!
Thinking?
How's that helping?
How's that... you've done all this thinking!
How's that working out?
So, if... I understand what you're saying about just being relentlessly honest.
Is it...
It's too late for that now, that wouldn't be an approach going forward.
Oh my gosh, you plan, and you consider, and you strategize, and you plan, and you maneuver, and this, and possibly that.
Holy shit, brother, that's exhausting.
Do you want to talk to your mother?
Do you look forward to picking up the phone, right?
When you talk to your girlfriend, you look forward to it.
Hey, you know, great to talk to you.
You know, my wife comes home, I run up and I run to her arms and plant a big one, right?
So I'm running up the stairs to do the show tonight, looking forward to doing philosophy and having great conversations, right?
Yeah.
Do you want to talk to your mother?
I don't.
Okay.
So what's to think about?
Yeah.
You want to talk yourself in and out of stuff.
You want to self-manipulate because you were raised by a manipulator.
You're right, yeah.
What's wrong with the feelings?
Oh, but I got a plan, I gotta strategize, I gotta plot.
No, you don't.
You're 25 years old.
You're not dependent on her anymore.
You don't have to plot a goddamn thing.
You don't have to strategize anything.
You don't have to talk yourself in or out of anything.
Right.
I mean, I have not spent 25 years not talking to my mother, and every day saying, well, today she's gonna call, I bet you the strategy's gonna pay off, it's gonna work, la la la, right?
It'd be exhausting.
Well, I know that she's getting, now this is the exhaustion that's radiating off you, right?
Like some spent vampire victim.
This is exhaustion!
I'm doing all this work, and it's your life!
Why am I the only one who seems to care about your life?
I definitely care.
So what's this... Well, I... I... I know what I have to do now, and... No, no, no.
Now you went from thinking to doing.
What I want you to do is accept what you feel!
Sit with your feelings!
Stop planning!
Stop strategizing!
Stop talking yourself in and out of feelings, thoughts, actions!
I know what I gotta do!
No!
You don't!
Yeah.
I don't want to talk to my mother.
How long is it gonna take for you to accept that?
And stop jumping up to try and fix it or change it or strategize or like... That's gonna take weeks at least.
And don't do a thing.
Don't do a thing.
Sit with your feelings.
Talk about your feelings with your friends.
Talk about, journal about it.
Maybe talk to a therapist.
I'm always a big fan of maybe older therapists these days.
Talk to your girlfriend.
But thinking and doing... She's been very helpful.
I'm sorry?
She's been very helpful.
Okay.
Thinking and doing will not help you.
What you need is feelings.
Feelings are such protectors because feelings cannot be manipulated.
Thoughts?
Oh, they could be manipulated.
Plans?
Absolutely.
Perspectives, preferences, all of that shit can be pushed around like a bunch of pieces on a chess board or a checkerboard.
But feelings?
Mmm.
That's your bedrock, man.
That's your bedrock.
I mean, is there any way for anyone to talk you into wanting to talk to your mother?
Maybe they could guilt you into feeling obligated, they might nag you into making the phone call or whatever it is, but is there anyone who can talk you into genuinely wanting to talk to your mother?
My brother tried and I told him I didn't want to.
And so I would say my family would be the people who would try.
No, no, but is there anyone who can change your essential feeling?
So let's say that you find obese women unattractive, right?
Is there anyone who can talk you into finding obese women the height of sexiness?
No.
Let's say you're not a huge fan of the sexiness of 85-year-old women.
Is there anyone who can talk you into finding 85-year-old women the height of sexiness?
Right.
Now, somebody could pay you to say that.
They might manipulate you into saying that in some form or fashion.
But they can't change what you essentially and elementally feel.
Right?
It's true.
Your feelings are your integrity.
Your feelings are your bedrock.
Your feelings are your certainty.
And when you jump into abstractions and thoughts and plans and this perspective and doing this, that's why when you said, well, I know now what I have to do, I'm like, nope!
Nope, nope, nope!
We act so often in order to avoid our feelings, but the only certainty in our actions can come from accepting our deepest feelings.
Certainty is a feeling.
It is not a thought.
Certainty, integrity, is a feeling.
And if you keep racing around in the attic of your brain, trying to plot and plan and have all these diagrams and maps on the wall, you can't be certain.
And without certainty, you cannot have peace.
And if you interfere with your certainty about your mother, you also interfere with all of your certainty, including your love for your girlfriend.
I am certain I made the right decision in getting out of politics.
I'm certain I made the right decision on waiting on an apology from Twitter.
This is why, I mean I have all the reasons, I've certainly thought through it, I don't, not just, feelings and reason together, right?
Yeah.
And so, and it's funny for people, they think they can just talk me in and out of essential feelings.
Nope.
You can't talk me out of loving my wife, my daughter, my friends.
You can't talk me out of loving philosophy.
Well, and it's why I have such an immense respect for you, is because you trust that.
You trust that feeling.
Right.
Right.
I mean, you wouldn't want to be... What?
You wouldn't want to be an athlete with 20 years of experience and still be uncertain of the rules of the game.
Right.
And you have 25 years experience with your mother.
It's time to relax into certainty, rather than talk yourself into strategies.
Here you are, feel bad.
Okay, do I do I want to call her?
Do I want to get involved again?
Do I want to open up this can of worms again?
Do I want to get
Okay, do you?
Don't you?
If you don't, okay, well, I'll check in later today or tomorrow or whatever, right?
Do I, you know?
I mean, I know my mother's getting older.
I know my mother's, you know, probably halfway to death's door and I'm like, well, do I want any?
Do I want to?
And I'll still check in with myself occasionally.
Sure, of course.
I still don't want to.
In fact, the thought is pretty horrible of being in contact with my mother.
And again, I'm just telling you my experience.
I'm not telling you what yours should be.
But if you genuinely still have deep ambivalence, well, you know, maybe I could, maybe I can fix this, maybe I can do that.
Okay, then, you know, it might be worth having another conversation.
I don't know, right?
Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?
Sure.
Does your mother ever reach out to you?
She has in the past.
I can't remember the last time.
So, it's been a while.
But yeah, she did.
I mean, she reached out, but it was never
It was always just bribery.
It's like, oh, I'm about to win this court case, there's gonna be so much money, and I'd be happy to share it with you.
It's all just, you know, bribery and stuff.
But no, it was never, I've thought about what you said, and, you know, I've reflected on what I did as a mother, and like, it was never anything like that.
That reminds me of the jewelry for the wedding ring that my mother was offering me.
Yeah, yeah, you know, hey, I'll give you stuff, and it's like, yeah, but it's not what I want.
The problem with my childhood wasn't that I was short of fucking jewelry.
Right?
That's right.
My father didn't.
He went to his grave without even telling me that he was ill, or what he was ill with, or... I still don't know.
Which is a bit of a drag, because it's kind of good to know these things genetically, but I guess I'll have to live with that uncertainty.
I'm sorry about that.
But I appreciate that, but it also helps reinforce what a good decision it was to not pursue that imaginary relationship.
Yeah.
That helps me.
Good.
That helps me a lot.
All right.
Is there anything else that you wanted to mention?
I might go and see a late movie with my daughter for a movie review, so I may bail out.
Yeah, well, have a great time with your daughter.
Thank you so much for your help.
You're welcome.
Keep me posted, man, and we will post a link.
I think our show went up on Locals for Donors from last year, so we'll post a link to that.
For donors to consume, and I really do appreciate everyone's time tonight, freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show.
Don't forget you can get your call-in shows, public or private, as you see fit at freedomain.com slash call.
