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Oct. 4, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:32:29
Most People SUCK! Freedomain Call In
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Time Text
Hey, how are you doing?
I've been better, Stefan.
Well, hopefully, we can hopefully help you out.
With that, do you want to just launch us off by reading your email?
Yeah, I can do that.
It's going to be a little bit hard to do that, but I can do it.
No problem.
I'm all ears and don't be afraid of being passionate about it.
I mean, it's your life, man.
I get it.
Hold on.
Let me get a drink of water.
I'll try to read this.
So, all right, start off.
I'm contacting you because recently I had a friend.
Fuck.
Oh, man.
This is going to be really hard to read.
Okay.
Had a friend visiting from college hang out with me and my brother.
Almost the entire time we were hanging out.
I felt a little emotional.
Good night.
Feigned most of my enthusiasm and wore a mask to try appear as normal as possible.
This is extremely troubling me since I was great friends with such person in high school, and I'm not positive when it started or when I started doing this to people, but I have become increasingly aware of the fact that I feel limited, if any, emotional connection with anyone.
I was shy throughout elementary, middle school, and high school, but never like this.
Deep down, it feels like I don't have any real friends and notice and no one is happy to hear or see me.
With the exception of my parents, I have a very, very hard time expressing emotion and I'm often uncomfortable and anxious around people for this reason.
I feel like I have very low emotional energy and I can no longer make friends, let alone establish any romantic relationships.
And anytime I meet new people, I almost never act authentically.
Wait, you skip a tiny bit there, my friend?
Oh, the in the parentheses.
Yeah.
Did you want to skip that for a reason or keep it?
Oh, no, I just kind of do that with whenever I read parentheses, but I can go back to it.
Yeah, if you could.
I'll start with a whole sentence.
I feel like I have very low emotional energy and can no longer make friends, let alone establish any romantic relationships, which I want badly.
And anytime I meet new people, I almost never act authentically and seem to only feel comfortable distancing new people away from my life with vapid interaction.
Being painfully aware of this now is absolutely devastating to me.
On top of that, I feel like my life is going absolutely nowhere and I'm a loser and I'm probably going to die sad and alone because of my near total emotional detachment from other people.
Please help.
Yeah, well, listen, man, that's that's a courageous email.
And you are, of course, not alone in this.
I want you to be aware of that.
There's an old saying, I think it was about British people, but it's around the world most.
Most people live lives of quiet desperation.
And for you to be aware of this and to connect with it and to ask for help, to write this down, to read it out, is very courageous.
And that's amazing and fantastic.
Now, you said he's a friend visiting from college.
Are you close to college age?
Are you older?
You don't have to give me anything exact, but where are you in the general life arc?
Yeah, I'm about a little over a year older than him.
We actually graduated from the same class in high school.
Right, but are you close to college age or are you older?
Oh, I'm close.
I'm 22.
I'm close to college age.
Okay, right.
So, as far as perhaps having missed the boat in life, you're not there, right?
I mean, you're not calling me like I'm 40 and you know, or 50 and I desperately want a family.
Like you're still young, which I get is not necessarily going to make you feel better immediately.
But just from a guy who's older and as a guy who's talked to people for a long time about all this stuff, it's well within recovery timeframe, if that makes sense.
Okay.
Okay, good, good.
Now, how do you feel when you're talking to me just now?
How do you feel when you're reading it?
How do you feel?
Like, do you feel connected?
Do you feel emotional and sort of solid and present when we're talking?
Yeah, like I wouldn't even, I wouldn't even remotely feel comfortable reading this to like people I work with on a daily basis.
Like not even, not even fucking remotely.
I wouldn't.
Well, good.
Don't.
Don't don't read this to people that you work with on a daily basis.
Please.
Whatever you do, like, because that's work, right?
Yeah.
And work is not the place for existential issues, usually, unless, well, I guess this is my job.
So my work is the place for existential issues, but I assume in general where you work is not the place, right?
I guess I don't work there now, but like I worked there for at my place of work for like a year and seven months.
And it's the type of work where it's pretty mindless.
So it's kind of like you can, you can just do the work and like have a full-fledged conversation with the people around you.
Well, no, but that's not, that's not what they come to work for, right?
Yeah, correct.
And it takes, I think it takes a fair amount of life experience and skill and so on to be able to talk about these kinds of issues.
So just be aware that this is, again, 99 times out of 100, this is not a work conversation, just so you know, like you're not missing the boat as far as work goes.
And because you don't want to talk about this at work, that doesn't mean that you have social problems.
It means you have social smarts, right?
That that's not usually the place to go.
All right.
Just wanted to get that.
Now, you said that you feel this distance from people, right?
Or you feel like you can't be authentically yourself.
And, you know, when you start to feel this kind of desperation, it becomes kind of circular.
In other words, because you feel so strongly that you're not connecting with people, then when you do try and connect with people, because you have so much pent-up emotion, it's kind of like, hey, would you like to sip from this giant fire hose of emotional stuff, right?
So it's hard for a lot of people to accept that or to face that.
Most people are not very good at accepting strong emotions.
It tends to either trigger their own buried emotions or they are not comfortable with their emotions or they've been trained to be against their emotions as most of us have.
And so they feel like some feels-based predator has been let loose in the room and they generally get pretty damn nervous.
That's not the case with us, but just as a whole.
So is this something that goes back your whole life or is this something that is more recent or what?
Well, I feel like it's gotten pretty bad or it is like, I guess I should say, it's become noticeably bad or the point at which it became noticeably bad was probably, what is it, like a year and a half ago.
I feel like I've, I've always, as far as I can remember, or at the very least in like middle school and high school, like I've always have had like some kind of some significant discomfort like expressing my emotions to certain people.
Like it would, like I had, I had friends that I was pretty darn comfortable with like in high school.
And I felt emotionally connected at that time.
But I don't know.
I feel like it's just it's just like I said, it just got like noticeably bad a year and a half ago.
And the more and more I think about it, especially as of late, like in the past three months, it feels like it's just like I'm almost completely emotionally unconnected with the people I previously was.
And that's what's really troubling.
Can you think of anything that happened a year and a half ago or more recently that might have triggered this?
Well, the job that I mentioned before, which I don't work at now, it was, I kind of had to move to it suddenly just because the job before that, I had put in my two weeks, like not out of the blue, obviously, but like in pretty short notice.
And so the job, I guess the job that I just recently left, it was a job that I felt like I was working with a lot of people who are the type of people I wouldn't associate with in high school.
Like it's a it's a factory job.
And I guess that as you could probably imagine, the type of people who work it, who work in there are not like, are not my, not my people.
Like they wouldn't, none of them would be like the type of people I'd hang out with.
And so when I first started working there, I was actually started working there with basically with the mindset that I wasn't going to work there long.
And so I wanted to, or so I didn't really care about like the people I met necessarily.
Like it was a temporary job for me.
And so I think, I think that really made it, made the existing condition a lot worse was being under the mindset like, okay, this job is strictly temporary and like I don't need to make friends here.
And then I ended up working there a lot longer, but I ended up working there a lot longer and the problem became a lot more apparent.
And it especially seemed like I was starting to treat, excuse me, it seemed like I was starting to treat the other people in my life who I didn't normally treat that way.
Like the type of people that I was working with in my factory, just because I felt like those are the people I like, I don't know, wouldn't normally associate with.
Like they're not, I guess, super virtuous people and not the type of people I could have like a deep and meaningful conversation with, which I generally try to surround those type of people with in my life.
Yeah, I hear what you're saying.
And unless I'm missing something, I don't see how being in the company of people in a work environment that you wouldn't normally hang out with would provoke this kind of crisis.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, this may be something I'm missing or it may be some piece of information that I don't have.
But I want to make, just, I'm just being straight up with you.
Like I can't get to where you are.
Yeah.
Because, you know, I've worked in manual labor jobs with people I wouldn't normally hang out with.
And, you know, the days can be a little bit long and all of that.
But I mean, I remember working in the pizza restaurant and there was this Italian guy who was just Mr. Braggadocchio.
Like he was always like, oh, he was always in these big giant, he was a waiter, right?
And he was always doing these big, giant real estate deals and closing all that.
And it's like, but dude, if you're doing all this real estate stuff, why are you working as a waiter at Pizza?
You know, because one of these things just didn't make any sense to me.
Yeah.
And you, but you got to just, you know, you roll your eyes, you bite your tongue a little, and you know, yeah, good for you, that kind of thing, right?
And yeah.
So, so the fact that you would be in the environment that you're in as far as work goes, I'm not there.
And please understand, I'm not saying that you're overreacting.
I don't believe that at all.
I mean, I'm very committed to helping find out what's going on for you, but I just can't quite get there with what you're saying.
And that's, again, please be patient with me if I'm missing something.
Yeah, no, I guess I should have really should have prefaced it by saying, like, ever since I, well, should probably, I'm just, I'll just go back to how it probably all started.
Hold on.
So, like I mentioned before, like, pretty much through most of my school age, I've always been pretty selective with the type of people that I hang out with.
And I think a lot of that had to do with, like, I, I, I mean, I had a wide variety of friends and stuff, but it kind of took a lot for me to be able to like emotionally connect with people throughout school.
And I feel like that's may have been like something to do with, uh, I guess basically one of my brothers was just like a total violent asshole to me through most of my life.
And I feel like my parents just handle it very well.
So like recently, I've been thinking about it.
And I think what kind of what caused me to develop some kind of just distrust of people is my parents just perpetually not perpetually not handling the violent asshole brother situation very well.
And what are we talking here?
And listen, you're not alone in this.
There's even by conservative estimates about half of sibling relationships are abusive.
And it sounds like this is really off the charts as far as that goes.
But what would you suffer?
What would be going on?
Oh, it was mainly just most of the time it wouldn't result in physical violence just because generally I could tell where it was going to go.
So it was kind of just like perpetually coercive.
Like pretty much from for, and he was my older brother.
He's probably like two or three years older than me.
Two or three years older than me.
I don't really know.
He's not a big part of my life, but they're not anymore anyways.
It probably started when, gosh, probably started when I was like eight to ten years old.
I can't remember exactly, but pretty much from that point, it got worse until eventually I moved out like from the point at that age, like eight to ten, I like I said, I can't remember exactly.
It just gradually got worse, like the coercion and violence if I didn't avoid it or if I didn't do what was necessary to try to avoid it.
I'm sorry to interrupt because I hate to sort of ask for these sorts of things, but it's very abstract, which you're talking about, which I, again, understand and I find that useful.
But you say it wasn't often physical violence, but it was coercive.
And I'm not sure I understand.
Could you give me, hang on, just give me some concrete examples.
And listen, for those of you who are out there, these concrete examples may not sound all too horrifying.
Maybe they are, but it's the repetition and the proximity.
Like they're in your face, you know, half the day and all the night and all that.
So what is the kind of stuff that he would do that was so difficult?
Oh, I guess something that I can think of is like we had an Xbox.
I guess because I have five siblings and four of them are my brothers, but we had one Xbox, I think, when I was like Xbox 360, I guess, for what it's worth.
Gosh, I want to say for, or when I was in, gosh, I think we got it when I was like 13 or 14 or something.
And something that I can think of immediately, and this was kind of like, I guess this is not going back that far, but like, say, he, if he wanted to play, which I guess I'll bring up something back a little bit further later, but this is similar, this, this sort of situation is pretty similar.
But like, say, if he wanted to play it and, You know, obviously, I didn't want to like relinquish it or anything because it seems like he would like hog a lot of the stuff that we were that we were given.
He would hog it for himself.
And like, if basically, if like we didn't get off or if I, excuse me, if I didn't get off like when he wanted to, he'd basically, you know, obviously he'd call me names and stuff.
And then eventually he'd like start like, you know, he would threaten to hit me or he would hit me or he'd scream at me.
And it'd be stuff like that.
It's basically like if I don't, if I didn't do what he wanted, whether that's like, you know, get off a console or if I didn't like help him with something or anything like that, or if I didn't agree with him, he would always like meet that, meet my opposition with, you know, shouting and like name calling and or, you know, threatening violence, whether that's like, you know, he'd pull back and act like he's going to hit me.
And I mean, sometimes he, sometimes he did do that, but generally I learned pretty quickly that I could tell when he was going to get violent.
And then I would just constantly capitulate to him.
And I think I would.
Well, hang on.
So you say capitulate.
Yeah.
Like I would.
You would conform.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like I would just resistance.
What's that?
Because you're not an idiot.
Yeah.
Look, you can't, at the age of eight to ten, you said, right?
He's like two, three years older than you, right?
Yeah.
So at the age of 10, good luck against a 13-year-old.
At the age of eight, good luck against an 11-year-old, right?
Yeah.
That's right around the puberty gap, right?
So you couldn't win against him, right?
Uh-huh.
And without parental support or sibling support or what have you, you said capitulate, like, what?
Do you have a view of yourself and that capitulation that's negative?
Sort of.
I mean, like, okay, but how?
How?
Under what standard?
Sorry, that sounds more aggressive than I mean it to be under what damn standard.
So, no, but by what objective standard would you view yourself as capitulating or maybe being a coward or backing down or something in that situation?
Or another way of putting it is if you could go back in time and give yourself advice, what would you say to do instead?
You know, I, I mean, I wouldn't really, I wouldn't really know what to do, to be quite honest.
Yeah, I guess I wouldn't, there wouldn't really be much that I could do.
Oh, sure, there is.
No, no, listen, practically, there is, right?
So, what you could do is you could comply in the moment, and then when he was sleeping, you could go up and hit him with a two by four or punch him.
No, there's you could, I'm not saying you should, it would be a bad thing to do, but you could get your own back because at some point, he's got to let his guard down, right?
He's got to sleep sometime, right?
Yeah, and so you could have submitted in the moment and then you know, destroyed something he valued, like his favorite toy.
You could have, you could have said, oh, yeah, no, that's fine.
And then you could have destroyed the Xbox, right?
Or you could have torn up his favorite clothes, or you could have destroyed his hockey cards.
Like, listen, there's six million things that you can do when you're smaller and weaker to retaliate against someone who's a bully.
Yeah.
So, and I'm sure you had thought of, you would have thought of those things.
And why, when I say why didn't you do it, I certainly don't mean to suggest that you should have done it, but given that that's an option, and I'm sure you thought of it at the time, or even if you didn't, looking back, why didn't you retaliate in that kind of way?
Or another way of putting it is, what would have happened if you did?
Oh, if I did, he would definitely fight me at that point.
Okay, and what would that mean?
Oh, like, I mean, he would, you know, like literally would probably literally punch me in the face.
All right.
So then you run away or you find some protection.
And then the next night, you escalate even further, right?
You break his nose in the bed or you set fire to something.
Or like, I'm not, again, please understand, these are just theoreticals and just nobody should ever do this, right?
I get you.
But you could, you could have escalated to the point where what?
So what happens if you escalate with him?
I mean, ultimately, ultimately, my parents would have gotten involved because typically I don't get typically in our household growing up.
Things didn't get that violent.
So they definitely would have intervened at that point, I would hope.
Okay.
What would your brother have done in retaliation if you had, say, broken the Xbox or destroyed a toy of his that he treasured or destroyed one of his pieces of clothing that he liked or something he was collecting or whatever?
Even if you didn't do anything physically violent to him, if you had escalated to the point where, okay, you can punch me and then I'll just wreck something of yours, right?
So what would have happened then?
I don't know.
I feel like he would just pretty much keep going back to violence.
So he would escalate.
Yeah, absolutely.
Okay.
So then you could, right, just continue to escalate with him.
And then is there a point where he would have backed down and said, okay, you know, peace, truce, let's be friends or whatever?
I don't think so.
It doesn't seem, yeah.
No, somebody like that?
Okay.
So somebody like that, I believe the only possibility in your situation is compliance.
I mean, I don't see, and again, please tell me where my imagination is too limited.
Certainly could be the case, but I don't see how you can win against an older psycho who's willing to threaten and use violence for something as stupid as playing a video game.
I mean, how do you win against that?
I mean, you can't, unless you do him such physical damage that you end up being pulled out of school, being sent to a psychiatrist, being charged with a juvenile crime and being put on crazy medications that half-wreck your brain, right?
Yeah.
So that's my question.
If you go back in time to Young Yu, what advice would you give him that would be different than what you slash he did?
Yeah, I don't think I would have.
I'm not sure how much I would have deviated from what I already did.
Oh, no, don't, don't give me your weasel words, brother.
I'm not sure how much I would have deviated.
That's that's not decisive.
Tell me, if you could send a message in a bottle back in time to Young Yu, what would you tell him to do with the violence from the brother?
Would you say, hey, you got to comply?
He's bigger.
He's crazy.
He's violent.
And it's not worth it.
Yeah.
I just have a really hard time.
I mean, no, obviously this bothers me.
No, no.
Listen, I'm not saying it shouldn't bother you.
Please, of course, it should bother you.
It would be inhuman if you didn't.
But what I'm questioning is why you would have a negative judgment of your decisions to submit in the face of overwhelming violence and immorality.
Let's take a stupid example, right?
You and I go and visit the zoo, right?
We're going to visit the zoo.
We're having a lot of fun.
I slip and I fall into the lion cage, right?
The lion is hungry, starts heading towards me, and I climb like a jet-pack-driven monkey out of the lion enclosure, right?
Would you call me a coward?
No.
Man, Steph, what are you doing?
Stay and fight that damn lion.
Yeah, I see what you're saying.
Seriously.
I can't believe I submitted to that lion.
I folded.
No, I survived.
Yeah.
And it's like you could say, hey, man, you could theoretically have beaten that lion in a fight.
And it's like, yeah, there is a slim, extremely slim possibility that I could have beaten the lion in a fight.
You know, you gouge its eyes out.
It's not going to be doing a whole lot of jugular chomping, right?
Yeah.
But it's not very likely.
Right?
It's not very likely.
I mean, Jackie Chan versus a lion would not be very likely.
Me versus a lion is infinitely less likely, or almost, right?
So if I sat there and said, oh man, I can't believe that.
I totally pussied out with that lion, man.
I just, I folded.
I should have fought.
What would you say to me?
I would have told you that you definitely did the smart and rational thing trying to get out of there because obviously you're a human.
You don't have claws and jaws like a lion, but.
Right.
Yeah.
And you would say, what would the fight have gained you?
Yeah.
And what would fighting with your brother have gained you?
Maybe a concussion, maybe some broken teeth?
Right.
I mean, if he's that kind of person who's just willing to escalate violence until they get what they want, those people don't back down.
So I don't see how you did anything other than the smart thing in getting to an adult state without being maimed or having big permanent injuries and scars and God knows what, right?
Because if those, there are people, I mean, my gosh, I've known people like this in the past.
There are people who go into what we colloquially call a blind rage.
When they're in that state of blind rage, there's nothing they won't say and nothing they won't do to get their way.
Other people call it the red mist, like a red mist descends upon your vision and you lose all reason and you basically just become a maddened ape.
No conscience, no sense of restraint.
And I mean, this is how people end up in jail.
You know, like 30 seconds of the red mist and you're standing over a body, right?
Now, I don't know, obviously, but what you've described to me sounds like someone who has some fairly decent chance of going into a blind rage.
Because you, looking as you have the ability to assess the consequences of your actions, you sit there and say, well, I like the Xbox, but I also like being alive.
Your brother doesn't sound like one of these people who really thinks much about consequences.
Impulse-driven, dominance-driven.
He's an ape, so to speak, in terms of the pecking order and the hierarchy, right?
I would agree, yeah.
Okay.
And we know that because what stupid moron sits there and says, well, I really, really would love to fucking alienate my brother for the sake of an Xbox game that I'll forget about tomorrow.
Like, how stupid can you be?
How impulsive can you be?
That you're willing to bully and alienate and traumatize your own flesh and blood for the sake of one stupid fucking video game.
No, that's the type of person that he was.
So he's clearly signaling to you that he has no care of consequences and he will escalate beyond any rationality to get his way.
And you're supposed to fight that?
Yeah.
I mean, can you give some forgiveness back to younger you?
I mean, the people at fault here, it's not you, it's your parents.
Yeah.
But you got to cut yourself some slack, man.
Otherwise, you say your brother's not part of your life.
But holy shit, man, if he's part of your judgment of you when you were younger, he's running the damn show.
He's running you.
He's writing your script.
But don't turn on yourself for doing what you had to do to keep mind, body, and soul together in a multi-year, drawn-out predator-prey relationship.
And here's the other thing, you know, once when you're young and you comply with a bully for a long time, if you get into a fight with a bully, the danger is that you also get the red mist, that you also get into a blind rage because you've been pushed down for so long and you've been repressed and humiliated, so to speak, for so long that you get into that fight.
And it's pretty hard to know when it's going to stop for you, too.
Yeah, I mean, I haven't feel like through most of my life, I've been pretty adverse to violence.
Just, oh, my God.
I don't know.
I feel like the brother that we're talking about here has just been.
So you were talking about it with who?
Oh, no, I was saying the brother that we're referring to here because I have three brothers.
I don't know.
Sometimes I think about it and it's just like the more and more I think about it, it's like him, I guess the impression that he left on me as a kid just really made me like fear violence from other people.
And I don't know.
I think that's just to go back to this whole like emotional detachment thing.
I just, I don't know.
I feel like.
Sorry.
Anyway, I just, yeah, I mean, I'm not, I'm not sure that that would have been me because I feel like I've been just pretty afraid of doing violence myself.
I just, I just wanted to, I just wanted to say that.
I'm, I'm not quite sure I would have ever been in a situation like that where I wasn't able to control it.
I just think I that just really, that part of my childhood just made me really, really, really afraid of any confrontation like that.
No, I get that.
I get that.
But if you did cross over and get into a fight with him, I mean, the beast could come out.
It could, right?
Because of that sort of push down situation.
All right.
Yeah.
So what the hell was going on in your family that you were being bullied under your own roof and your parents did SFA, as they say in the military sometimes?
Like, what the hell was going on with the parenting?
Yeah, I mean, and I've had this.
I've actually, me and my, my other brother, which is my twin brother, and we pretty much went through very similar stuff.
We've talked to our parents about this and pretty much looking back at it now, the way I see it, they just were not very effective in handling the situation.
And it seems like.
Oh, my God.
I'm so sorry.
I asked you a question and I interrupt you.
You have got to stop with the weasel words because this is how you don't connect with people is you give them weasel words.
And I don't mean this as a criticism and I'm not trying to nag you or put you down in any way, shape, or form.
But when you say to me, my parents weren't very effective in handling the situation, that's not the truth, is it?
That's a pretty out-of-focus answer.
Yeah.
Well, no, it doesn't, it doesn't try.
Okay, so it weren't very effective.
I mean, what would very effective be?
I don't even know.
And were they 70%, 80%, 90%, 60%?
It sounds to me like they completely and totally failed.
I could be wrong about that, but they completely and totally failed to protect you for crucial years of your childhood.
But did it go on till you moved out?
Or he moved down?
Yeah, pretty much.
I mean, 10 years?
Eight years?
Yeah, I, yeah, that was probably, it was probably about roughly 10 years, yeah.
Okay, so 10 years, 10 years, one of their children was subjected to outlandish threats of violence and abuse.
Yeah.
And was violently acted against, as you said, sometimes he would hit you.
So tell me what it means to not deal with that too effectively.
What does that mean?
Did they try and cover it up?
Did they try and deal with it?
Did they get to counsel us?
Did they like what happened?
Yeah.
So what I mean by not effectively is it seemed like nearly all the time they would just like diminish diminish blame, like as if as if I or my twin brother, which we were both subject to this, as if like we had some equal part of the blame, as if like it was some like, oh, I'm going to fight you.
And it's like, all right, you better.
But it was, they seemed like they treated it like that a lot of the time.
Wait, I don't know what you mean.
I'm going to fight you while you better.
What does that mean?
Oh, no, I mean like it was like as if it was mutual as if like as if we both wanted to fight each other and not like I clearly wasn't or treating it as though like I wasn't clearly afraid of it and clearly didn't want to fight, but my older brother clearly did.
That's like, that's how I mean.
Like it seemed like.
Okay, so they're the ones who sided to a large degree with your brother and made it mutual, which put the blame on you, which is why you internalize it as blaming yourself when you're younger because your parents blamed you too, right?
Yeah.
Did they not notice a bit of a science differential?
Did they not know the aggressive side of their own flesh and blood?
Their son?
I'm not sure about this.
Help me understand.
Yeah, I don't know.
I feel like they just, they didn't want to, they had a hard time accepting that one of their sons was just like such a problem, like causing just so many problems.
And they still kind of do this now.
It seems like they really give, they really give him the benefit of the doubt.
Well, I mean, they'll, they'll like punish or throughout his childhood, like they'll, they'll punish him for stuff too.
But it was like, it seemed like anytime any one of our siblings got something wrong, they wanted to give us a similar amount of punishment regardless of like what happened.
Or they wanted to correct it pretty similarly, like across the board, regardless of what it was, whether that's like, you know, not doing, not doing chores when we were told to or, you know, driving drunk and hitting a parked car.
Wait, say that last bit again?
I didn't quite follow that.
Sorry.
I said, or driving drunk and then hitting a parked car.
That was this brother who was an asshole to me most of my childhood.
Oh, he drove drunk and hit a parked car?
Yeah, that happened one time.
Jesus.
Well, did he ever get caught?
Yeah, yeah, no, he lost his license for a bit and all that other legal stuff involved.
Wow.
So by refusing to intervene, they put him on a really dark path, right?
I assume his life is not great now.
It's actually, it's actually gotten better.
Oddly enough, he seems like he's been starting to learn some of these lessons, which is really weird because, like I said, he was just like a violent asshole and an idiot most of those, most of the childhood.
And it's, yeah, he's actually gotten a little bit more mature about this.
Wait, so he's apologized to you?
No, he hasn't.
I was all bullshit until that happens, right?
Yeah, pretty much.
He can fake it for a while.
He can, you know, but he's certainly not until he has any empathy for what he put you and your brother, your twin through.
I mean, it's all just surface crap, right?
It's just restraining the beast, right?
Yeah, no, that's why I don't really contact him at all.
I mean, because I've heard some of these call-in shows, and it's like, why the fuck would I go to him for this?
Like, I didn't ask for the abuse, and he, he knows my, he has my phone number if he wants to express any sort of sorrow for it, but that doesn't really happen.
So it's not going to happen, I would imagine.
So who was the primary caregiver for you?
Was your mom stay-at-home or how did that work?
Yeah, or our mom actually, I think pretty much through most of my childhood, she was a stay-at-home mom.
She actually ran a business from home.
Wait, she was a stay-at-home mom or she ran a business.
I mean, well, I mean, she didn't like, I guess I should say, so I'm pretty sure she didn't start her business until she didn't start running her business from home until like I was, I don't know, probably six or seven.
But before that, I'm pretty sure she was raising us most of the time.
Like, I don't think she had a job.
It was just our.
Oh, so she was the primary caregiver for your demon brother.
Yeah.
Okay.
So what happened there?
Do you have any idea?
Was he in organized sports?
Yeah, he was actually.
Hmm.
Do you know why I've asked that?
Why is that?
Well, because it seems like every time you look at the newspaper, there's some other coach who's been accused of abusing the kids.
Yeah, I mean, I haven't heard or got any indication that anything like that happened.
I was actually going to say.
Something must have happened, don't you think?
Yeah, yeah, no, I, because I have no idea.
Like, all my other siblings were, you know, pretty reasonable to me growing up, except for this one.
But something I was going to say is, I, I don't know, I feel like there was some kind of like developmental problem in his brain or something growing up.
Cause, I mean, he's relatively normal now, but like, I know his reading level was pretty low and he didn't do super well academically.
I mean, he wasn't like in like the special ed.
He wasn't right.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, no, wasn't in anything like that, but he was definitely like intellectually was seemed to be at the very least like a grade or two below whatever grade he was in.
Like his yeah, I mean, I hear you, and I'm a no expert at this, but I don't know that he's like Lenny from Ice and Men.
Yeah, no, I don't know that less intelligence necessarily means psycho levels of abuse and violence.
I mean, I don't think that that's that's the way it plays out myself.
I don't think that's the case.
Yeah.
So it can't just be that.
He wasn't adopted, right?
Did your mom having a favorite with a criminal?
I mean, what?
No, no, no.
Yeah, I really don't know.
That's, I mean, as far as like the anything related to like neurological stuff, that's kind of the only thing I can think of is just that he was like dropped on his head or, you know, that was actually, I mean, my sister, my older sister, who's older than this brother, actually, I feel like she's joked about that before.
And I always thought it was, I mean, it sounded like a joke to me, but I mean, I'm not sure how much effect that would have on his development.
Wait, he was dropped on his head?
Possibly.
Like I said, I would always hear my brother or my older sister kind of like joke about it a few times as to why he turned out the way he did.
But I always thought it was a joke.
But I mean, it very well could be true.
Wow.
Okay.
So you're and who was the, was it like a wait till your father gets home kind of thing?
Was he more the disciplinarian or did your mom do it more or how did that work?
You know, it seemed like they like I would say my mom probably did 60% of it and my dad maybe 40 throughout her childhood just because her dad got home from work a little like a little bit later in the evening.
Right.
So we were probably around our mom a bit more.
Okay, so did she ever witness your brother's behavior?
Yeah, but typically the, I guess, the worst behavior would occur when she's not around because, you know, my brother was aware of that.
No, he's not that dumb.
Yeah, no, he is not, he's not much.
He's cunning, right?
Yeah, he's a little clever, but definitely not super smart.
Right, okay.
But she did witness it, and of course, she would witness the effects of it.
Would she, would he behave this way with her in the house just out of earshot?
Or how did that work?
Or are you talking about like when she when she wasn't like directly witnessing it?
Yes.
Okay.
Yeah, he, yeah, he would, I mean, like I said, he, he would definitely tone it down when she was around and typically seemed like the only thing, the only time he would, he would really, you know, like turn off the violence or anything like that or the name calling or the yelling was like when he got really mad when her, when her mom or dad was around, but seemed like a lot of the time it was when she wasn't around when she wasn't witnessing it.
And that would be like that.
And that sort of stuff actually started to happen when our mom got more involved with her business and she wouldn't, she would be at the house less.
Oh, so when she was working at home, she did sometimes leave the house, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Like her, her business stuff would, you know, take her to other places around town.
When you were six or seven.
Actually, it would, so I think she started her business and, you know, it, I mean, she still runs it now.
And it's like kind of as the years go on, because she actually has two physical locations outside the house or outside of the house right now that she manages.
And it seems like from the point where I was six or seven, like her work responsibilities would go up more and more and she would be around, you know, less.
And so I guess you're younger in the birth order, so the elder siblings would be responsible for taking care of you guys?
I mean, she wouldn't, I guess I didn't make this clear, but like from the point where like I was a teenager, that's when there would be like more instances of like where we would be home alone temporarily and stuff.
But my oldest, oldest sibling, she wasn't really in the house.
She was actually in college at that point when I was a teenager when more of the, I guess, being left alone would occur.
Okay.
And my older brother was, yeah, I don't know.
He wasn't in college at that point.
But yeah, he would kind of be doing his own thing at that point.
The second or the second oldest sibling, this asshole brother was a third oldest.
Okay.
Okay.
Was he involved in sports where there was a lot of potential for brain injury?
I don't, not really.
I mean, he did a lot of the sports that I did growing up, like flag football and soccer and basketball.
Okay, yeah.
It's not like straight headpiling football stuff.
Yeah, yeah.
No, I'm not really aware of any situation where like he would have sustained any like significant brain injury.
Okay, so let's let's try and sort of crawl inside the maternal unit processing CPU.
And what is the equation, do you think, that was going on with her since she was sort of primary caregiver, primary disciplinarian?
What's the equation that's going on with her about this abuse from your brother?
This violence from your brother.
Yeah.
Yeah, I don't know.
I, you know, obviously looking back at it now, it's really pretty illogical.
I feel like, and I suspect.
Well, it's logical.
We just don't know what the logic is.
It's not good logic, but there's some logic, right?
Yeah, yeah, I see.
I don't know.
I feel like looking back at it now, she probably thought, I don't know.
I feel like she just to bring up the whole like not disciplining her kids like proportionally to what they did.
I feel like that is a big part of it.
And she had a hard time, especially if, you know, obviously if there's two of her kids are involved and, you know, obviously they're opposing and stuff.
She would have a pretty hard time placing, basically have a very hard time singling them out just on the basis that, I don't know, they were, you were her kids.
And so she didn't want to like, you know, say like, oh, hey, you know, third son, you need to, you know, stop trying to pick fights with your little brother because, you know, obviously that's, that's obviously bad.
But I feel like she really didn't want to do that.
And but why?
Sorry.
Why didn't she want to do that?
I don't, I have no idea.
That's kind of the thing I because she's, she's perpetuating this conflict, right?
So this, this is a note for parents out there and for people, of course, who had parents and went through things similar to you.
So listen, you have to be a near infinite court early on in sibling conflicts, right?
And this, so the general temptation for parents when they come into a room and the kids are fighting is they just want the fighting to stop and they want to go back to what they're doing.
And they just, of course, every kid's going to lie.
Oh, he started it.
No, she started.
So the temptation of the parents is just to say, well, just learn to play nicely together.
Or if you can't play nicely, go play alone.
Or, you know, why don't you turn, watch something on television rather than like, you know, like whatever.
They just want to, they just want to make the conflict stop so they can get back to whatever they're doing, right?
But all they're doing is guaranteeing that for the next, I don't know, 20 years or more, exactly the same shit's going to go down.
If you don't get in there and spend an hour, two hours, three hours, however long it takes to get to the bottom, to get to the facts.
Okay, so, oh, well, that's three hours.
That's two hours.
That's a long time.
It's like, yeah, it is.
But it's a lot less long than having that for half an hour to three hours every day for the next 20 years.
You have to go in and you have to find out what happened.
Now, maybe you can't find out what happened, in which case you eavesdrop.
You pull your Chinese, get your phone to listen in on your whatever happens, right?
You have your kids, you know, let's say the two kids who have the conflict, they're playing in some room.
You stand outside the door and they don't know you're there, right?
And you listen.
You put in a nanny cam.
You know, the camera's in the tent.
You do whatever you need to do.
You can be full-on big brother surveillance state if you have to be, right?
And you find out what the hell is going on.
You find out who's lying.
You find out who's instigating.
You find out who's initiating, who's escalating, and you map that conflict.
And then you go in and you don't tell the kids necessarily that you've recorded or that you've been listening in or that you whatever, right?
And you ask them what's going on.
And then one of the kids, maybe both, but probably one of the kids is going to be lying.
You sit down with your kid and you say, we know, no, no, no, no, this is not going to happen.
You are not going to lie to me.
I was listening and you are straight up lying to my face about what happened.
That makes me more angry than I can probably express to you.
And I cannot have as strong a relationship with someone who lies to me as I can with someone who tells me the truth.
And you have a problem with your temper and you have a problem with lying.
And is that your fault?
You're the kid.
I'm the parent.
It's my responsibility to help you deal with this.
And we will find a way to help you deal with this.
We will find a way for this not to happen.
I don't want you to think you're a bad kid or a wrong kid, but you cannot do this.
You cannot escalate.
You cannot use violence.
You cannot lie.
And we need to sit down and sort this out.
Like, and you just sit down and say, well, what's happening with you when you like, what is it?
You feel like you're never going to get your way if you can't reason?
Are you envious?
Are you angry?
Are you frustrated because you don't have the words to get what you want?
Like, what is going on?
And you can hit the kid.
Sorry, you can meet the kid.
I don't mean to hit the kid.
I would say hit his consciousness.
You can meet the kid at whatever level the kid is operating at.
And you can, and it's going to take a long time.
But the alternative is what?
You're Switzerland to every conceivable conflict.
And that just means that whoever instigates and lies is the one who wins.
And you're teaching the aggressive, you're teaching the aggressive child that lying and escalating works perfectly.
And you're teaching all the other kids or the kid who the violent or aggressive child is bullying that justice will never happen.
Your parents don't really care who's right or who's wrong.
Your parents don't really care about finding out who's at fault and your parents don't care.
They don't care enough.
And listen, I don't mean to sound harsh on your parents.
I'm sure they loved you in many ways, but they did not care enough to find out what the hell was going on and protect you.
And that's kind of their first job.
First job, keep your kids safe from violence.
And you can't keep your kids safe.
You know, yeah, yeah, go learn how to skate, right?
You know, like go rock climbing, whatever, right?
You can't keep your kids perfectly safe, but you can keep them safe from violence, certainly within the home, right?
That's the job.
That's the job.
That's, I mean, if you fail at that job, it almost doesn't matter what you succeed at elsewhere.
Right.
So there's an enormous amount that your parents could have done.
And I'm always a little suspicious when there's significant dysfunctions in the family and the mom goes skating off to run some business elsewhere.
I mean, did you guys really, really need the money?
Or why does she do that?
I mean, I, I, I think we did.
I mean, like my family, like we weren't, we weren't poor, but like there was five of us and our dad would go like from the certain like contracting, like construction contracting type jobs, or he would go from like, you know, certain construction contracting jobs like around the area, or you take different ones and, you know, some of them paid a little bit more than others.
And I think from the time, yeah, I'd say from pretty much most of my childhood since I'm the youngest or most of my early childhood, especially with five of us in the household, like the need, I'm sure when they were raising us or the older ones, the need to get more income was obviously increasing.
So I think that's kind of why she, that's why she came up with the idea of, you know, starting this business, that.
And I guess she made the products that she sold.
And I think that was also kind of a passion of hers.
I think she grew up on a farm.
So I'm not sure if that's where she made, she started off making soaps.
I should say that.
But I think that's kind of, I don't know, must have been somewhat of a passion for her.
And obviously we needed the money with five of us.
Well, did you need the money?
I mean, need, need, or was it nice to have?
Because, you know, I mean, the family, your family life was 10 years of, you know, a fairly, I don't want to overcharacterize it, but I mean, I get the passion you had at the beginning.
Like your home life was like 10 years of fairly continuous nightmare, wasn't it?
Yeah, with one of those things.
Did you need more money or did you need some decent parenting?
Yeah.
She obviously, especially just to go back to what you were saying earlier when you said, like, they just will, when you're talking about parenting and talking about how, like, you know, some parents just want to just stop the fighting, you know, at the expense of, you know, actually logically handling the situation.
That definitely sounds like what my mom, what my mom and dad would do.
Yeah.
But, anyways, uh, I'm sorry, I just lost my train of thought there.
Well, no, I mean, the question around, like, there's an old saying, if you want to be a good parent, spend half as much money in twice as much time.
Yeah.
Right?
Yeah.
Because you didn't, I mean, listen, if you had the choice between some extra coin in the family pocket, which I'm sure benefited you from time to time, if you had the choice between a less, a less or non-nightmarish childhood and the family having more money, you would have chosen.
I mean, there's no amount of money you'd take for 10 years of that hell, right?
Somebody came up and said, I'll give you $100,000 for that.
It's like, no.
I mean, you take it now, so to speak, because it's like not going to undo the past.
Yeah.
Right.
But if somebody said, oh, I'll give you $100,000, kid, but you just got to go through these 10 years of hell, you'd say, no, thanks.
So there's no amount of money that makes that worthwhile, right?
So again, my question is, what the hell was she doing when at least two of her children were being routinely and viciously threatened and abused and hit?
The hell was she doing, sailing off on some business venture?
The hell?
Yeah, that's a very, very good question.
We needed the money.
No, I don't buy it.
No, I think she was dodging the house.
I think she was dodging her responsibilities.
I think she just checked it out.
And she was gravitating towards something she could be good at rather than deal with a problem that was more challenging at your expense, unfortunately, and your brothers.
Yeah, I would agree.
And at the very least, to some degree, with like trying to dodge it.
Because I mean, she as far as 10 years you were in that prison.
Yeah.
And she like her job, she was a stay-at-home.
Her job was to protect you, not make soaps and sell them out of the back of a van or whatever the hell she was doing, right?
Her job was to protect you.
Well, I made some lovely soaps.
It's like, yeah, but that's not the job.
The job is to protect your children from your children in this case, right?
Because this has had a huge effect on you.
10 years, 10 formative years.
What did your siblings do about it?
I mean, you say they joke about it.
Doesn't seem so fucking funny to me, man.
Oh, joke about what?
Your devil brother or whatever.
Oh, yeah.
No, they would.
I mean, like my sister would, she would joke about like just because he's, like I said, he's kind of, he's not very bright.
He's not like, he's not like a full-fledged retard, but he's, like I said, not quite as intelligent as like other people his age.
But yeah, no, they just, that would, they would just kind of joke about like his intellect.
But no, they, I mean, obviously, my other siblings being older than than my asshole brother, they didn't really, they weren't really subject to that.
But I've talked and I've spoken to them.
They knew it was happening, didn't they?
What's that?
They knew what was happening, didn't they?
Not my sister and my second or my oldest brother, he wasn't that aware of it.
What do you mean?
My sister wasn't home when she wasn't.
Oh, say that again.
He wasn't home when it happened, or he didn't know your brother's nature.
Oh, my oldest brother.
Yeah.
I know he knew his nature, but my oldest brother, I mean, he didn't know that coercive, violent asshole part of my brother's nature, mainly because my asshole brother wouldn't really pick fights with him at all.
Oh, come on, come on.
Are you saying that he was in the house where two of his siblings were being pretty viciously abused?
And he had no idea.
Come on.
Yeah.
I mean, he gosh.
I really don't want to sound like I'm justifying this at all.
No, go for it, man.
This is your life.
Don't let any of my opinions get in the way of your actual experience.
I'm just theorizing from a distance here.
So go for it.
You know, push back as hard as you need to.
If I'm incorrect about something, I will absolutely alter.
Yeah.
I mean, he definitely knew about it, especially later in life.
But toward the mainly when basically once I got to being a teenager, which was, like I said, when the violence was kind of increased, or not the violence, but definitely the coerciveness because I was smart enough to avoid the violence.
But that's kind of when it got turned up a bit.
And at that point, I think our older brother, or my oldest brother, wasn't around a heck of a lot.
I think he, and my memory's not super great at this.
Okay, sorry.
No, I get, listen.
I'm sorry to interrupt you.
I really am.
But that's not the point.
Yeah.
The point is, did he not notice from the age of eight onwards the alteration in your personality based upon being the victim of threats, abuse, and violence?
I mean, might not have because I, as you could probably tell, I think I may have even put it in the email.
But like, I've been kind of putting on a wearing a mask is actually the exact words that I use.
Like, I don't know.
Does he notice what really isn't?
Does he not notice the difference that you're putting on a mask?
No, he must not have.
Well, how do you know?
How do you know he didn't know?
Maybe he didn't.
I don't know how that's possible.
I don't know how it's possible to not know there's threats, abuse, and violence going on in the same goddamn house you're living in.
Like, I have no idea how you wouldn't know that unless you desperately didn't want to know that or something like that.
But how do you know he didn't know?
Because he didn't act?
Well, that doesn't mean he didn't know.
Yeah, I that's another very good question.
What about your sister?
Oh, my, my sister at that point in my life, she was actually like well into college.
So she, she actually wasn't a very big part of my childhood.
So she didn't really know.
She's like 10 years older?
Yeah, she, yeah, just about.
Right.
So she has less knowledge, but she has more responsibility because she's an adult.
And she knew because she was making jokes about your deaf old brother being dropped on his head or whatever, right?
So she knew about his violent nature, right?
Well, I don't think she was joking about his violent nature.
It was mainly just like the fact that we all pretty well thought he was stupid.
That's kind of where that joke came from.
Okay.
Did she ever ask you how you were doing in the family or if there was anything that was bothering you?
Yeah, no, she does now.
No, no, no.
Now you're an adult.
You're free.
Yeah.
When you were a kid.
Did you ever came with you or how?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like when she would come home from college, she would like, you know, ask us like general questions and whatnot.
And I guess I never really guess I never really prioritized telling that to anyone or, you know, not, I didn't prioritize telling that to my sister at that point.
Why not?
You were desperate for help, right?
A little bit.
Listen, I know when my daughter's upset.
I know.
I know instantly.
Now, of course, there'll be times where I'm fine, right?
Nope.
What's going on, right?
Why wouldn't you tell your sister?
And please understand, again, I'm not blaming you.
I'm not blaming your sister.
It's just a statement of curiosity.
Well, I don't know.
I mean, it's a really, I mean, the effects of my childhood are a really big problem now.
And I want to say, probably at the times that she did ask me, or if the conversation ever led to that, I must not have told her either because I don't think anybody would help me because my mom and dad didn't handle it very well.
Or I didn't think it would be that big a deal, especially now.
So you didn't trust her enough to help you?
No.
Did you think that telling people would make it worse?
Not that it would make it worse, but that no one would really do any of that.
And why wouldn't they do anything?
I mean, they might have.
It's just my parents.
Now, why wouldn't anyone do anything to protect you if you told them?
There's only one answer.
What would that be?
They didn't care enough.
That you were invisible to them to some degree, that it was an inconvenience to deal with this.
Let's say your parents are pretty bad at this, which they are.
Well, your brother, your elder brother, your elder sister, could have sat down, the whole family, and said, hey, guys, we got a big problem here.
You, these twins, they're having it really bad.
We got to sort this out.
We got to figure out what's going on.
I don't know what the hell families talk about all the time.
I don't.
Like when stuff like this is going on, in my family, we will sit down on a regular basis.
How's everyone doing?
What could be better?
What could be what's going wrong?
What's going right?
How can we improve things?
And we have a very functional and happy family.
But that's to a large degree why as well, right?
Like, what the hell is your family talking about for 10 years while you and your twin are suffering like hell?
What the hell takes precedence over there?
What else is more important?
Making the soaps?
Talking about the weather, the sports, the TV shows, going to a movie?
None of that.
None of that means fuck all relative to the happiness of your childhood.
You know, it is.
And I still remain continually surprised how little love there is sometimes in families.
And, you know, again, tell me to piss off if I'm totally wrong.
I mean, I'm perfectly happy and willing to accept that.
But you were suffering for 10 years and you were surrounded by people.
Why the hell didn't anyone do anything?
Okay, you can't do anything.
Your sibling, your twin can't do anything.
Your devil brother can't do anything or isn't willing to.
Your parents, you've got four other people in the equation, right?
I've got those numbers right.
Yeah.
You, your twin, devil brother, sister, elder brother, that's five kids, two parents, right?
This doesn't even count extended family.
Aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, second cousins, whatever it is, right?
So you got at least four adults in the family when you and your twin are suffering like hell for 10 years.
I mean, it's no bloody surprise that there's a huge gap between you and people because you have seen a very terrible truth in the world, my friend.
You have seen a very, very terrible truth, which is a very tough thing for a young person or really a person of any age to see, which is how little love there is around.
The fact that you and your twin suffered for 10 years in the midst of a family structure and a society.
Because you had friends, those friends had parents, you had extended family, dozens of adults around throughout your childhood, right?
And you were suffering in obvious silence, right?
And if people bought this mask of yours, it's not because your mask was so good.
Kids' masks are not good.
Takes a while to really get that scar tissue on your face, that elephant man scar tissue of pretend joviality and inconsequentiality.
That takes a long time to develop.
Kids' masks are different and bad.
Nothing personal, they just are.
I mean, I worked in a daycare, I've spent lots of time around kids.
I have a kid.
I mean, the kids' masks are not good.
They're not very sophisticated at covering everything up.
This isn't like the FBI and fizzle warrants or anything, right?
So you learned a terrible truth.
Abusers win, abusers run the show.
And people who claim to be good people don't give enough of a shit to find out what's going on and do something about it.
That's a terrible thing to learn.
And it puts a wall between you and society.
Because it's not really about your devil brother.
Not about him.
He was profiting from nobody else asking the most basic and obvious questions.
Hey, these kids don't appear to be overly happy.
Let's sit down and figure that out.
Ten years, four to twenty adults around.
You suffered.
And no one lifted a finger to find out what was going on and solve the problem.
And this problem was solvable.
Problem it's not solvable now.
Everyone's grown up.
Ten years.
Three thousand six hundred and fifty days, give or take.
That's a long time.
That is a long time.
Tens of thousands of hours.
At any time, during that time, someone could have said, Whoa, everybody, something's not right here.
Let's sit down, break bread together, put our heads together, and figure this out.
Nope.
Dad's got work to do.
Sister's got college.
Mom's got her little business.
So screw you, kid.
Good luck.
Good luck.
Surviving the environment that we created for you.
Hope it comes out fine.
We don't want to deal with it'cause we're only 35 or 40, but you can deal with it'cause you're 10.
I don't want to deal with it'cause I'm away at college and that's fun, you see.
I don't want to deal with it'cause I'm enjoying my business.
I don't want to deal with it because I have work to do, construction jobs to do.
So we can't deal with it because all we are is adults.
But you, as a little kid, yeah, you can totally deal with it.
Well, screw that.
That's terrible.
And if this is your experience of people, and I think it is, you tell me if it's not, deep down.
Do people just say stuff and they pretend to care and they talk about bullshit and trivia and nonsense and nothing, politics and weather and sports and garbage.
And they don't step up to do the one decent thing that they need to do to protect kids being harmed in their midst.
You think that there's a big gap between you and people and somehow this is your fault and your distance and your emotions?
No.
You just, unfortunately, were led into a very brightly lit dungeon wherein, written upon the walls, in the blood of the innocent, so to speak, is a terrifying phrase that goes a little something like this.
Most people suck.
Selfish, indifferent to the suffering of others, only concerned with their own thoughts and feelings and preferences and pleasures, and they're willing to step over bodies in order to get to a latte before it cools on the counter.
And you have seen that, unfortunately, in the world, very graphically, over a 10-year period, maybe more.
You're seeing it even now.
Now that you're an adult, is anyone asking, hey, you seem to be having trouble relating to people, or you seem to be at a kind of distance from people, or you seem to be in a market?
No, nobody's doing that.
You've talked about it with your parents.
Have your parents sat down with a family meeting and said, oh my God, 10 years these children suffered in our midst?
Oh my God.
I can't even get out of bed in the morning.
I feel so horrified about 10 years my children suffered.
Under my care and custody, they suffered and they were threatened and they were hit and they were terrified.
Yeah, that we actually, me and my twin brother have actually brought this up with our parents before.
And not too long ago, we actually had a pretty substantial talk about it.
And what happened?
Well, both of them apologized for.
I'm sorry.
Go on, Ms. Fight.
Don't apologize.
Don't apologize to me, man.
You're the victim here.
They apologize for having us suffer this much because I don't know.
I guess I and you were saying kids don't, their masks aren't that great, but I don't know if I was if it was a mask necessarily or if I diminished it in my own head and coped with it.
No, you, listen, man, you were desperate for help with this situation.
You were desperate for help.
And you accurately assessed that reaching out for help would break you in two.
As long as you didn't reach for help, you could fantasize that it was somehow your fault for having a good mask.
But if you'd have reached out for help and you had not received it, that would have broken you.
You understand?
As a child.
They would have cracked you in two.
Because then, as a child, while still dependent upon your parents, you would have realized the awful truth written on the dungeon of the world that is the world, that people don't care enough to help.
They might listen and they might lecture you a little, well, try to avoid him or try not to provoke him or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
But they won't actually tackle the issue.
They won't actually take a stand for you.
They'll do what most people do, which is they call themselves moral and they simply conform to the most aggressive person around and lecture the innocent and the reasonable and think that they've done wonderful, a wonderful job adding to the goodness of the world.
They appease the brutal, betray the reasonable, and thus feed the machinery that undoes the world.
Are you still there?
I certainly am.
Oh, I'm sorry.
That last word cut out a little bit.
Yeah, but things are definitely getting better.
That's what I was saying.
Like we've, me and my twin brother had a pretty good talk about or talk with them about what happened and what the long-term effects were, which and they apologized and they didn't say my mom and dad to some degree said they didn't know we were suffering this much and that they didn't want us to suffer this much.
And that do you believe them that they didn't try?
Do you believe them that they didn't know?
Well, I think that, I mean, they definitely had to have known, but I think what the problem was is just my, I don't know, out of some delusion, must have thought that she was handling the situations a lot better than what she actually was, which she wasn't.
But I think it was.
I mean, like, she, she was like clearly very, very sorry for what, like, once we finally brought this to their attention.
And that last, very clearly sorry for letting us suffer.
And I think, sorry.
Well, listen, I don't mean to sound negative or provocative, but do you believe her?
No, I, I, I do.
I, she was, she was devil.
Like, and I'm a fairly good read of uh people.
And what practical steps has she taken to make her apology real?
You know, like, if I steal something from someone and I apologize, I've got to give it back, right?
Yeah.
And that's, this is why I asked earlier if your brother had apologized to you.
Do you know why I asked that?
Because his actions speak louder than words.
No.
Because if your mother was really sorry, she would sit down with your brother and say, you need to apologize to him.
No, and I think that's something that she's going to do.
I was going to say, she.
Well, wait, when did you have the conversation?
What'd you say?
When did you have the conversation with her?
Early, I don't know, early December, like this month.
So almost a month ago.
I was going to say, what'd you say?
Almost a month ago?
Yeah, a little bit.
What the hell she went?
Because your issue was, mom, you did not take my side against my brother and you appeased him, right?
So now the way that she shows that her apology is real rather than just words she says to appease, because your big problem is that she appeases, right?
So she appeased your brother, and now she could just be appeasing you with the apology, right?
So the way you'd know it's real is she'd get back to you and says, I had a long talk with your brother and, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
He told me this.
We understood that.
We all need to sit down.
We need to figure this out.
He needs to apologize to you.
Like, this is my mission now.
It's not just a, you know how you know when apologies are real?
They change something.
They don't just not, it's like a one-time conversation.
Oh, we already talked about this.
I already apologized.
It's like an apology is the beginning of a process that tries to undone some of the damage that was done, right?
But if your mother apologized a month ago and has done nothing since to make the apology real, my concern is there's more words and appeasement.
I could be wrong.
Of course.
Yeah, no, I mean, I wouldn't say she's done nothing.
I was going to say, like, me, me and my twin and my dad and my mom have all had, you know, individual conversations.
So like that whole meeting, that was like all four of us together.
And since then, we've had probably like two or three, you know, three at this point conversations about it.
And my dad has my dad, I know for sure, has talked to my brother at this point, but that was fairly recently.
So I don't know if my mom is.
I actually, I'm going to talk to her tonight about this.
Because anyways, to sort of like get in, get in touch with us more and to see what's going on with us and how we're feeling and whatnot.
Like we've all agreed to be more open about it.
And we were going to have little meetings, little talks with our parents and tell us what's going on in our life and whatnot.
My dad was actually, I just got done talking to him before I came over and was talking to him about stuff related to this not long after I or after we started this call.
So I wouldn't say it's been nothing because it hasn't.
Good.
I certainly retract then, and I absolutely appreciate the correction.
I do think that the most essential thing, though, is to confront your brother, which is your parents' job primarily.
Yeah.
And if they haven't been doing that, even though you brought this up a month ago, that's significant for me.
But as you say, they're on the move.
So I guess just keep an eye and hopefully they'll listen to this.
And it's like, no, you need to do the like whatever you did before that caused the pain.
You got to do the opposite or the apology is meaningless.
You know, if a husband is having a bunch of affairs on his wife and he apologizes, what has he got to do?
Stop having the damn effect.
He's got to do the opposite of what he's apologizing for.
And if appeasing your brother and betraying you to a large degree, and your brother, your twin, if that was the problem that triggered the apology, they've got to do the opposite now, which means to support you and confront the devil brother, right?
Yeah.
And do what they should have done way back at the beginning, which is to now realize who was at fault and get him to apologize, which they should have done 15 years ago, but they didn't, so they need to do it now.
Which it actually would be really great.
Not that I'm sure you're particularly concerned about the future fate of your demon brother's happiness or devil brother's happiness.
I'm sorry to use this phrase, but we're trying to avoid names here, right?
So it will help him.
It will certainly help you to have someone.
You got to break these cycles.
How do you break these cycles?
Well, your apologies are great, but apologies without commitments to action are usually just promises of repetition, right?
And, you know, you've been waiting for 15 years for this.
I'm not really sure why you're having to wait another month after you've brought it up.
Or maybe they don't know how important it is.
Yeah.
So, yeah.
So then the question is: listen, if betrayal has been to some degree the theme of your childhood, then it's not that you have some, I think, it's not that you have some mysterious emotional wall between you and people or you have some mysterious difficulty making friends.
It's like, why would you?
I mean, everybody's got to sit down and stare at that dungeon wall, which says most people suck.
And you got to process that.
I mean, that's a reality.
It's a reality.
And if you don't know that reality consciously, then what happens is you sit there and say, because the important part there is not people and not the word suck.
It's that most people suck, not all.
Now, if you're not aware of that, the most part, then what happens is you say, well, people, then you just have people suck.
You don't have the most, which is the liberating part, because it means, okay, a bunch don't, but, you know, a bunch do.
So most people suck.
If you just have down there in your unconscious, people suck, then why on earth would you want to have friends?
Basically, you're just setting yourself up for disappointment, for betrayal, for tragedy, for more hurt, more pain.
God, who would want that?
You've had enough, right?
But to go from people suck, which I think is where you are at in terms of friendships and socializing, right?
You don't let your guard down.
You don't open up.
You're not vulnerable.
You're not honest.
Why?
Because people suck.
They will protect you.
They won't be loyal to you.
They won't love you in the way that you deserve.
You know, you're stuck in the lion's den, right?
Why would you show your rump, so to speak?
Why would you keep pouring ketchup all over your tender flesh, right?
So to get from people suck to most people suck to getting to the people who genuinely don't suck like a three-step process.
Now, the first process is you've got to recognize that I think, according to your experience, there's been a huge amount, almost uniform, of betrayal.
And it's great that you're talking to your parents and all of that.
That's just the beginning of a step towards changing that.
But you still had to initiate that, right?
After 10 years of pain.
So if you've got to do all the damn work, why on earth would you want a friendship?
If you're the one who's got to figure out and you're the one who's got to sit down with your parents of all people who are supposed to be older and wiser and right, if you've got to do all this damn work, what is the point?
I mean, it'd be like me saying, hey, let's go play tennis.
And then I take the racket.
I say, well, you sit on the side.
I'm just going to run around the tennis court and hit the ball back and forth.
You'd be like, well, if I have to do all the work, why would I bring you, right?
And so, or another way, we're going to go hiking, right?
And I say, yeah, man, I'd love to go hiking, but you've got to carry all the stuff.
You've got to do all the cooking.
You've got to boil all the water.
You've got to pitch the tent.
You've got to do the map reading and all of that.
I'm just, you know, going to be coming along in my track pants and T-shirt, listening to a walkman.
You'd be like, if I got to do all the work, I'm not sure why you'd be there.
It's the same thing in relationships.
Same thing with the romantic relationship, the friendships.
Like, geez, if you have to do all the work, what's the point?
You might as well keep people at a distance.
No, I don't want you to come play tennis if I got to do all the work.
No, I don't want you to come on a hike if I got to carry everything and cook everything.
You're not even going to talk to me.
So, if your experience has been, people are not loyal, people don't love you enough, people don't protect you, they're not honest.
And yes, you can get them to apologize if you do a lot of work and you do, and you initiate everything and so on.
It's like, well, that's just a lot of work.
Relationships aren't really supposed to be that much work.
Relationships are not like a part-time job.
Relationships are supposed to be a vacation, not a job.
So, for you, you say, Well, you don't feel like you have much emotional energy.
Well, of course you don't.
You're carrying everything for everyone.
Of course, you're tired.
But that's not the whole world.
The whole world is not like that.
Most of it is, I believe.
My experience has been, but not all.
There are great people out there who will recharge you, who will energize you, who will be loyal, who will support you, who you can support and it pays off, who will love you and who you can love and it pays off, who you can trust, who are not work, but an oasis, refreshment stand, a recharging station, you name it.
But I think you got to recognize that I don't think you know who to look for or how to look for people who are going to recharge you, who you can be honest with, who will accept and welcome the generosity of your openness, where you don't have to do all the work.
Does that make any sense?
Yeah, yeah, no, that definitely clears things up.
I guess the last confusing aspect of it is that it seems like it's just gotten worse over the years.
Like that it was easier to make friends in high school than what it is now.
Well, I don't know.
Given that I want a model not doing all the work, how would that be explained by this hypothesis?
Oh, could you repeat that?
Well, you said it was easier to make friends in high school than it is now, five years later or six years later, right?
Yeah.
Well, have you had relationships where you're either not doing all the work or don't trust the people enough to tell the truth about your thoughts and feelings?
Geez, not lately.
I mean, you know, obviously coming out of high school, who your actual friends are that, you know, diminishes and stuff, but not recently.
I haven't really had any relationship with anybody now where.
So you haven't had a relationship since high school where you can be yourself and/or that's not a lot of work.
Yeah.
Okay.
So you have more evidence of people who aren't worthy, aren't worth it, you don't trust and you can't trust.
And listen, you made a big step with your parents, and I'm happy that they listened and I'm happy that they apologized.
And I hope to hell that they understand this is just the beginning of probably a multi-year process of regaining your trust.
I hope they get that.
I hope they get it.
I hope they don't think it's like one apology done and dusted deep in the rear view, right?
Yeah, no, they just a quick interjection there.
They agreed to have these sort of, yes, taking stock of our life here.
They've had it.
They've agreed to have those conversations at least once a month, like actual in-person conversation, not like texting.
No, that's good.
And the conversations are good, but opposite action is what's needed.
But I already made that case.
So that's fine.
So can you picture or imagine a relationship that was nurturing, that was sustaining, that gave you energy rather than took it away?
Have you had a relationship like that in your life?
Yeah, I've had with my twin brother and some people in high school, I've had the sort of relationships where it's like actually stimulating and not like me fending off other people with small talk.
But yeah, I have had those.
And that's kind of what makes the current state so troubling is that I haven't really had anything like that as of late.
It almost strikes me too that you artificially pitch your voice down a little.
I don't.
I just sounds a little bit like you're pitching it down a little bit.
Anyway, just something that crossed across my mind.
It's no bigger.
Yeah.
So yeah, I think that, you know, since advice is usually, or at least feedback is what I think what you're calling me for, I'm incredibly sorry for what you experienced for a decade or more as a child.
That's absolutely terrible.
I mean, I hate to say at least you had a twin, you know, which is more than most people get in that kind of situation.
So you had a sympathetic witness and you have someone you can connect with at this level who was there and I think echoes back what you experienced and validates.
And that's really a gift.
And again, denied to most people in this situation.
So you have that.
Yeah.
And that's really good.
And you're engaging in a conversation with your parents, which I think is good as a first step.
It's great.
But there's a lot of looking back and figuring out who wasn't there for you.
Because, you know, here's the problem.
When you raise your standards in relationships and you say, well, my God, and how on earth does this sort of start that again?
How on earth did this abuse last for 10 years in this social circle, in the school, in the family, extended family, friends, friends, parents, you name it?
How on earth did I pass by being mauled at a bus stop for 10 years and nobody even looked up from their tablets, right?
And that's a huge question.
Because if you don't know the answer to that, it's going to be really tough to trust people.
The answer to that, I think, is just a lack of love.
And it doesn't mean that people didn't love you at all.
And it doesn't mean that they're terrible people or anything like that, but they didn't love you enough to intervene.
They didn't love you enough to pull this crazy predator off you for 10 years, right?
And if you say, well, if that's the best people can do or the best people can be, then you will.
What was your big fear, right?
You will get old and die alone.
Well, you will.
You will.
I mean, I don't mean like some sort of curse or anything.
And the reason you're talking to me, I think, is to avoid that.
But if the very best that people can do is ignore child abuse for 10 years, if there's no upgrade from there, there's no way to, there's nothing to aim at.
Right?
There's nothing better to achieve.
So you have to downgrade people who ignored child abuse for 10 years.
You've got to downgrade them way the hell down so that you can get something better.
Because you won't be motivated to get something better if the best is people who ignore child abuse for 10 years while claiming to love you and being around and having the authority to deal with it and having the capacity to deal with it.
If that's the top, if that's like the summit of human interactions, yeah.
Why would you want that?
Maybe I can become really close friends with someone else who can ignore child abuse for 10 years.
That's no good, right?
You got to raise the bar.
I'm made to laugh.
You got to raise the bar just a little bit from people who step over child abuse victims so they could sell soaps from a van.
People who are just too busy, too consumed with trivia, too darn tired to deal with child abuse.
Come on, that's you, you can't have that as your ceiling.
You can, but then why would you want relationships with people like that?
I mean, I hope at some point, I mean, I hope that at some point, you will at some point come across a child who's being abused and you will do something about it, which means you're already higher than this situation, right?
It was in a parking lot.
I saw a guy standing outside of his car screaming at his kids.
Top of the lung stuff, right?
His kids were like, I don't know, six and eight.
Just walked over.
And I said, no, no, no, no, come on.
You're terrifying these kids.
You're like five times their size.
Don't do it.
Don't do it.
It will bounce back on you so bad when they get older.
This is not who you wanted to be when you wanted to become a father.
You didn't want to be some guy with a purple face screaming in a parking lot.
That's not who you want to be, right?
It's not good.
We talked about it for a couple of minutes.
He was kind of shame-faced and all that, and he felt really bad about it.
And, you know, you've got to be gentle when, you know, obviously you don't want to escalate and you don't want the kids to suffer and you don't want to humiliate the guy.
But you will do something when you see it.
And then you're already miles above where you came from.
And up there is where the people are who you can trust.
Up above the ceiling of people who ignore child abuse for 10 years, there's a whole other world out there of people who have resolution, courage, depth, trustworthiness, love, resolution.
You get to those people and nobody will be able to stop you from having a relationship.
You stay down here.
You'd be like saying to me, hey, remember that time at the zoo when you fell into the lion cage?
Let's go back and let's climb.
Why don't you climb back down into the lion cage?
What would I say?
What are you crazy?
You've got to be nuts.
And if this is your definition of human relationships, of course you won't want anymore.
Because you've seen that dungeon with the wall writing, people suck.
I just want you to put most.
That's a world of difference.
That's a liberation.
That's a raising of the bar.
That's an elevation of standards to the point where you can get great things out of relationships.
That's really what I wanted to get across because I think that's the big fear.
You don't need to have that fear.
I think fundamentally it's the people around you who have that fear because they'd rather keep you with them in this way, down at this level, rather than have you elevate to another level where you get what you want, but then they may not get what they want, which is your continued, I don't say relationship, but you know, support approval and sort of blind adherence and all that.
They may not get that.
So I don't, I think you want to climb.
You want to get to a higher place, but it's tough, you know, for the people around you because there's no one doing 10 years of avoiding dealing with child abuse at your expense.
You cannot do that.
Doesn't mean you can't have relationships with people, but you can't really undo it.
They can do some great stuff to help you with it now.
But the greatest thing is to elevate your standards and aim for, you know, it sounds like a crazy thing.
Like aim to have relationships with people who would never ignore child abuse for 10 years.
It's not the highest.
It's not the highest standard in the world, right?
Absolutely.
And with that differentiation, then you can get where you need to be.
I'm sure of it.
Sure of it.
Normally, you don't have to repeat you're sure of it if you're sure of it, but I really wanted to be emphatic about it.
So what do you think?
Is that a place to start with?
Yeah, I'm going to say hearing it put that way is my mind definitely feels a lot clearer than what it did at the start of this.
It always sounds like it's a slow-motion plane crash, these conversations, but they're always a two-point, there's always a three-point landing at the end.
Yeah.
Yeah, no, this is definitely Something that's going to benefit me or that is, you know, it's already benefited me a lot.
This is, like I said, my mind just feels a lot clearer now.
And I don't really feel the lingering pain that I felt pretty much for the past few days since I wrote you that email.
Right.
Good.
Good.
Well, listen, it's been a long chat, but I really do appreciate your honesty and your openness in this topic.
It really was fantastic.
I hope, I hope, I hope that you will, first of all, again, give my genuine congratulations to your parents for a difficult conversation.
And I also hope that you will drop me a line and let me know how it's going as you go forward in this process.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
Absolutely.
Fantastic.
Hey, your last call of the year, man.
Closing out the whole decade.
Oh.
Closing out.
No pressure, though.
I'm glad it was a good one.
But all right.
Keep me posted.
Have a very, very happy new year.
Do give my best to your family.
And thanks so much for the call today.
Yeah, no, no.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Stefan.
This is what you do for other people in this way is incredibly helpful.
And it's a hell of a lifeline, it feels like sometimes.
Good.
Well, I'm glad.
And I also know what a wild ride it is to be a part of one of these conversations rather than just be listening.
So you did fantastically, and you should be very proud of that.
So thanks, man.
Keep in touch and have yourself a great New Year's Eve.
Yeah, see you too, Stephan.
Bye.
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