Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux - HOW TO SURVIVE A NARCISSIST! CALL IN SHOW

All Episodes

Previous Next

Oct. 7, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:30:45

HOW TO SURVIVE A NARCISSIST! CALL IN SHOW

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	How long have you been listening?
	I started listening when I was uh 16 years old.
	So it's been quite a while.
	That's cool.
	That's an over a decade.
	Yeah.
	Okay, so uh it's a public call, of course, so just stay off names and places.
	And if you wanna dive in, I'm I know that you lost a message uh when you first uh were sending it to me, but if you want to let me know how I can best help, I'm all ears.
	Yeah, well, I'll just start out with saying that my heart is is racing.
	Uh like it's I don't think I've have I've felt like this for for a long time.
	Um very shaky.
	Um I feel like I've been looking forward to this s since I started listening to you.
	So that's great.
	I'm I'm thrilled.
	I'm sure we can do some great work and I'm happy to hear what you have to say.
	Yeah, well, yeah, I I I guess I guess we could maybe start by talking about why it's been taking so long.
	I mean part of the like when I was 16 um I've I was I've always been a thinker.
	I've I've just been thinking since as long as I can like I had my first memories were when I was a baby, basically.
	I feel like I've I have quite an exceptional exceptional memory.
	Um and but I I wasn't talk too much, so I was just thinking all the time, and when I started listening to you when I found your podcast, it was almost like everything you said was just confirming um everything I'd been thinking.
	It was the first time I I realized that in a sense I wasn't the only one, you know, that was that was actually thinking because it felt like everybody was just doing whatever and going along without reason.
	Um so that that journey of of thinking started then and since then very quickly afterwards I got into a pretty a very toxic relationship.
	Um and I've gotten into some some bad habits, uh drug use.
	And like when I started listening, um I ordered all of your books almost immediately.
	I read I read all of them.
	Um it all made sense to me.
	And right afterwards I got into this relationship and I basically kind of got out of the house, away from the screens because all I've been doing was playing video games, watching TV.
	Um I felt like that was most of my life.
	Um other than that it was either my parents or family that sometimes took me out to do something or sports, but I was always just looking forward to going back to the screen.
	Um so I've I've experienced a lot since then.
	Um and philosophy has and your show was kind of like something that was always in the background that I would go back to once in a while.
	Um, but there are also very long periods where I wasn't busy with philosophy at all.
	Um yeah, I I only recently um since that time since I was about 17, that it started when I was 17.
	I I've also the main the main drug I've been using is is cannabis, and I uh have been doing that almost ever since.
	And um basically every day, basically an everyday, all day kind of thing.
	Um and that wasn't the only thing, but that's been the the major thing.
	And I actually that was that there was actually ha at one half a year where I completely stopped with everything.
	Um but I I've gotten back to it, um, but it is about like a month ago that I actually stopped smoking weed again.
	it was partly to do with that this call was coming up, and I wanted to make sure that I'm fully here, you know, and that none of those I mean I know enough about it to know that it's probably still in my blood, you know, but um I wanted to be as as sober as can be.
	Um and there's just so much going on in my life suddenly.
	I feel like I'm in a huge transition period um where I'm starting to finally become active.
	Like I I I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur, and I finally started making steps with that.
	Um I have a deep passion for music.
	Um I I feel like I'm a very creative person, but I've I haven't been able to express it that much because of my history, I think, and the people I've been around.
	So yeah, that I feel that there's so much that that we could talk about, and um so I kind of have a hard time like to to bring up one thing to start with.
	Um of course I'm like I'm happy to get questions from you.
	Um, whatever you uh, yeah, whatever you want to talk about, I'm I'm keen to accommodate.
	All right.
	Well, um maybe something to start with is that I I do feel like I have so many different interests.
	Um I feel very overwhelmed.
	Um almost like I don't know what to start with.
	I feel like I'm kind of learning that maybe planning things out and writing things down to a T is not really my style.
	Things sort of just seem to happen, seem to fall into place when I start doing things.
	Um but when it comes, yeah, I don't know, when it comes to I feel like I've been recently even more active in a in a business sense.
	I've had I've I've been kind of networking.
	I finally started working, really working since a couple of years, mostly as a freelancer.
	Um but I always seem to go back to to music and being creative.
	Um and I feel like maybe I'm a little bit confused as to which way to go because I I would like to be making music all the time, but when I do that, um well, there's no money coming in, and I I don't know yet how I'm gonna get there.
	And how do you how do you feel when you're talking to me at the moment?
	I s I I still feel very nervous.
	Okay.
	Yeah, so I very nervous because you're kind of skimming along the surface of things and that's totally fine.
	I understand that.
	Like it's it's a weird thing.
	I do this all the time, and you're doing this once.
	So I completely understand that.
	But uh, you know, take a deep breath, we'll we'll have a good chat, and uh maybe you could tell me uh what was happening in your childhood.
	Yeah.
	Um I was um I was ignored for most of my childhood.
	I feel like all of my childhood.
	Um I with my father, I cannot remember one conversation we've had.
	It was always very short interactions, comments.
	Um he was in the house, but he but he wasn't there, if that makes sense, like a ghost.
	Hmm.
	Um what was he doing?
	Um he was an architect.
	Um not just an architect, basically one of the most valuable positions in that field.
	Um where yeah, we don't have to get into details, but yeah, so he was very successfully he was very successful professionally.
	Um but he just wasn't there emotionally.
	No.
	So I would say.
	Um most of the time he would turn on music.
	There would be music playing.
	And that is a good question.
	What would he do at home?
	I feel like most of the time he was he he was away working.
	Really like a workaholic.
	Um if he was home, I would remember him drinking.
	Uh friends coming over.
	Usually to drink, listen to music.
	Most of the time it was that.
	So if I think about that time as a as a baby, as a child, it seems like all the time music was playing pretty loudly as well.
	Um if not there were people coming over, lots of talking.
	Uh but not with me.
	That's for sure.
	I think I spent most of the time with my was my mother, if there was any spending of time with with my uh with my parents.
	Um, but it seems to be the time that I spent with my mom also it that was then usually going out somewhere, going outside, bringing me to a sports thing, uh, bringing me to something to do with friends, but nothing that really felt like it like it connected with me, uh that that made me really happy.
	Um I would say that when I became an adult and I started having a bit more friends talking to people, that's only when I realized that basically I've I would say I was depressed as a kid my whole childhood,
	or or at least like it felt very like nothing was happening, very boring, uh nothing to look forward to, and this is why the only thing I looked forward to was well when I was very young, it was watching TV.
	The first thing I did when I woke up, and my parents let me do this as well.
	Just immediately after I woke up, turned the TV on, and that turned into a lot of playing video games.
	And did they buy you a console or how did that work?
	Yes.
	Uh I think you could you could say that I was spoiled in this in that sense, like materially.
	They would basically give me what I wanted, but all I really wanted was uh uh like consoles or video games.
	Well, that's all you wanted in the absence of parental contacts, right?
	Yes, exactly.
	Yeah.
	That's the it's like it's like that's the only thing I knew that I had uh some kind of wish for.
	Uh that's the only thing where my mind went.
	It's like I didn't know what I was missing, I think.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	I and I uh on top of that, I had three half-brothers living with me in a pretty small house.
	And I think those brothers would also kind of feed into this uh this habit of playing video games.
	Um, especially two of them themselves were playing video games a lot, complete like on the computer all the time.
	Um but not but not much of any human contact, conversation, like I said, conversations.
	Yeah, I think I really it was really your your podcast that uh made me aware, I think, of what a real conversation is.
	That's why the call-ins you've had with people were absolutely the most fascinating to me always.
	Right, right.
	Yeah, I mean the idea that you can actually have real conversations about important things is it's kind of a shock for a lot of people.
	Yeah, for sure.
	Yeah, yeah.
	So sorry, where did the uh you said three half brothers um from your mom's side or or where did they come from?
	One of them from my mom's side, the older two from my dad's side.
	Right, okay.
	Okay.
	So they had relationships before that.
	And from what I learned later on, it was my mom that actually kind of organized it so that we were all living together under one roof.
	Okay.
	It seemed it seemed to be kind of her doing she thought that that was the best for some reason.
	Um later on I've been told that I think the focus was a lot on me at the time.
	She wanted to do what was best, but I don't I don't really know if that is connected to that.
	But um my brothers were definitely not at least uh especially the older two from my dad's side, they're they didn't seem to be happy about this at all, especially later on.
	They told me that the oldest brother told me he was very unhappy with this decision.
	Um it it was a strange, it was a very strange childhood because of this my parents were still even friends with their ex-partners too.
	So I would see all of these people regularly.
	They would come over, but nobody explained to me who was who.
	Right.
	So there was this vagueness of like, is this family or these friends?
	They treat me like I am family.
	My brothers would call me little brother, but it never felt like I was their brother.
	So no and nobody would explain anything.
	I just kind of had to go go with it.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	So no real sense of actually having a family, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, yeah.
	No, I get it.
	I get it.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Jumbled.
	Very jumbled.
	Okay.
	Mm-hmm.
	Yeah, for sure.
	All right.
	Uh sorry, go ahead.
	Yeah, I just wanted to mention that I think it's quite important.
	The youngest, the youngest brother is ten years older than me.
	Oh wow.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	So that also obviously costs some distance.
	Like the like they didn't seem that interested in me at all.
	Um the youngest brother, the the one that has the same mother, is definitely when I was when I was when I was a baby when I was young, he did show interest.
	But um it's it seemed more like he like he wanted to have a connection with me.
	But it never really it never really took off.
	So for me, yeah, it's I can I can definitely say they never even felt like friends to me.
	Right.
	It was like it was all like a kind of like a play.
	Everybody was acting.
	Um it uh acting like we are a family.
	Um especially through the outside.
	But inside of the house there was almost no connection.
	Everybody kept to themselves um in their own room.
	Uh well, I had sh I was sharing a room with my youngest brother for some time in the beginning.
	And uh my brothers would then my oldest brother got I found out later basically kicked out of the house by my mom.
	Wow.
	Because she wanted there to be a room so that I could have my own room and my youngest brother could have their own room.
	Um my oldest brother actually.
	Um the oldest brother?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I don't I don't actually ages are pretty uh just roughly like mid late teens, early twenties.
	He said he was kicked out, right?
	Yes.
	Um that would have been early twenties.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	So it wasn't like some crazy thing like he was 16 or something.
	Okay.
	No.
	Thank you.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Yeah, well, I'm sorry, I I I I um I don't I'm not really sure where to go from here.
	I I think well, I can I can just uh your dating life, sort of, you know, around 14 or so or whatever it is, 13, 15, uh, a lot of times people get interested in girls.
	Uh and how did that go for you?
	Um since I can remember, I really had I I that interest in girls.
	Yeah, I I think that did start at around 12, 13 mostly.
	Before before that though, if when I look back, I've already I I was already having a lot of attention from girls.
	I think this has been from yeah, this has always been the case, but I didn't recognize any of that, so um, it came mostly from the other side.
	Like I had girls that want all the girls wanted to hang out with me, wanted to be friends with me, but it did not make sense to me yet.
	Um it was only when it was only later in elementary school, along elementary school, there was only one girl that I really felt any kind of attraction towards.
	And in the last year of elementary school, basically in the holiday between elementary school and high school, is when we suddenly started talking to each other.
	But this was over the phone over SMS.
	Um internet chatting.
	Um we were talking and talking about how when high school started, because we were gonna go to the same high school, actually, we would actually start like actually talking with each other and hanging out, but this never came to be something in one of our conversations uh during that holiday.
	Um it it kind of seems like we were both really scared and afraid, and then kind of chickened out right before the year started.
	Oh, interesting.
	Okay.
	And when it comes to other intro, like right after the first year of high school, there was one girl that I was interested in, had like my first kiss, basically.
	Yeah.
	Um at a party where well, this is important to say too, because I think yeah, I was 13.
	It was the first year, maybe the end of the first year, so 13, 14.
	Um, I actually got really drunk at a party.
	Suddenly.
	I never I don't think I really drank before.
	Maybe my parents would give me a sip of something at some point.
	Sure.
	Um but uh yeah, it was like and actually really drunk.
	Um and that was when that kiss happened, and right after, I think even the day after, two days after this girl wanted to continue a relationship, and I basically just rejected her.
	I why did you reject her?
	I think I think mine maybe a mix of um being afraid, scared, not knowing, and not knowing what it really meant.
	No, I'm sorry.
	This was when I was uh thirteen or fourteen, around that age.
	Okay.
	Um I think also a sense of this is I am not really attracted to her.
	Like there was the physical but you didn't like her like her.
	Yeah.
	And there was really not much of conversation either to go off on, you know.
	Right.
	Uh I do remember that she was she was very uh she was Extremely sad about this and shocked, even I think.
	Uh, because it seemed like she completely expected it to get go somewhere.
	Um this is something that then happened again, I think the next year or two years later in high school.
	Kind of a very similar thing, where I kind of even in school, got very touchy with a girl.
	Um then this ended up in a kiss after which I immediately rejected her and said, you know, this is not gonna go anywhere.
	It was almost even I even kind of made it uh I it I I even I don't think I really wanted to kiss her, even it almost felt like she was kind of pushing for that.
	And then at some point I was like, all right, like I'll do it.
	And I I maybe even said which I maybe even said like, are you happy now?
	Huh.
	Right.
	As a as like it was almost like, well, will you now get off, get off me?
	Like, yeah, yeah.
	Are we are we done?
	Um same response, complete shock and surprise, like uh, how how can you do this?
	Uh, etc.
	Um and I would say maybe maybe that did have to do with that they were quite attractive girls, maybe some of the more attractive girls in school.
	Um, maybe they expected they maybe they've never experienced that, or I'm not really sure, of course, but uh I think to me, even at that age, I was aware like this is just there's just some physical attraction, but other than that, I know it's not gonna go anywhere.
	Right.
	Um so I um yeah.
	Those I think those were the first real experiences I've had with girls in that sense, where there was some attraction, but it never went further than physical.
	And even physically, it was not completely, but yeah, whatever.
	I mean, I know that it uh if there was any kind of other connection that it then it might have worked out.
	Right, right, right.
	Okay.
	Um and did you get any um feedback or or I'm guessing not, but obviously I want to be fair from your parents.
	Did you get any uh you know, here's how to talk to girls, you're gonna be interested in girls, or here's what a relationship is, or I guess anything like that.
	No, nothing.
	Nothing at all.
	So they didn't talk to you about dating or anything like that, right?
	No.
	No, I no, nothing.
	Okay.
	I mean, that's appalling, right?
	You you're not just gonna wake up with this magical ability to be able to talk to girls, right?
	Or know what a relationship is or or how to handle it or do it or anything like that.
	No, of course not.
	And I had no clue.
	It was I got all of this attention from girls, it seemed like from all directions.
	Um, and it made no sense to me.
	And and for the longest time I didn't recognize it.
	I remember very well that I would that I remember you saying maybe to somebody kind of even in a s with a surprising tongue, like, well, well, don't you don't you uh don't you know about the signs that women or girls can give you, you know, that to show that they're interested.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And I remember thinking, like, wait, there's signs, and then you just you you named a couple of things.
	The main thing is uh I remember you saying was the um the whipping the hair or the or the the rearranging of the hair, right?
	Sure, sure.
	And after you said that, like I realized, like, wait, is that a sign?
	Because every almost every single girl I see does this, you know.
	Right, right.
	Well, it took you, right?
	Yeah, yeah, but this was really not something that really popped in my head at all.
	It was only from that moment I started realizing, and I was kind of shocked that, and I still to this day I'm kind of in disbelief by how much I see this because it really is all just all over the place.
	It's like everywhere I go, it seems to be that way.
	And I still feel myself saying, like, no, that's not no, right?
	That doesn't mean like, is it really the case, you know?
	So I was not aware of this for a very long time.
	Even though looking back now, it's like my when I was very young, um what would it be like, maybe even six or seven years old.
	I remember having birth at birthday parties uh where um everybody of my class would be invited, but I would actually have two birthday parties, one for the boys and one for the girls.
	Because everybody wanted to be there.
	Huh.
	Now, but did you have a I'm not saying it's not due to your personal qualities, but I don't imagine that you had huge social skills because of the video gaming and all of that.
	Uh was there something about like, well, your place was really nice or or something like that, uh that that kids wanted to be there.
	I think it was the the freedoms that I got that.
	Oh, you were the guy with the the parents who you could do whatever, right?
	Yes, exactly.
	Yeah, okay.
	Which would be mostly playing video games, especially later on.
	Yes.
	And it's also why some uh friends stopped uh coming over because their parents realized that when they came over to me, um it was just all video games.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Okay, got it, got it.
	Yeah.
	Okay, so what happened in your later teens.
	Well, um, I was still playing video games uh up until mainly up until I was about 16.
	Um but I got I did get a bit more social.
	I I uh I I was not too much into playing like single player games.
	Uh all I did was playing game in multiplayer games.
	Um and I started getting mainly into games where I uh it was kind of a free roaming environment where you could where it was basically like a second life, right?
	And you could I could meet a lot of people and I did start socializing while socializing, but it was at least communicating with people online.
	I made some friends there uh that I was playing games with all the time.
	So that was a bit of a difference.
	Um yeah, it things really started changing when I discovered your podcast through actually one of my favorite artists um that that shared that shared a video of you on Facebook that's very cool.
	Yeah, I I actually recently for the first time after a concert uh talked to him.
	Oh wow, that's very nice.
	Yes, yeah.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Quite amazing, and I do hope that uh I I I'm gonna talk to him.
	I I didn't mention that, but I still would like to mention this to him at some point, that how much that had changed my life.
	Um this but this was one of the truth about videos um at the time.
	Right, right.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	Um I remember at first being I having the all these feelings of kind of frustration, annoyance, uh, because of your straightforwardness and just directness, just being truthful completely all the time.
	But after I think just watching, or I think I I it went away for it for a couple days, and then I got back and I was hooked.
	And I ordered all of your books, I read everything.
	Um I really felt like all right, I've I've found I finally found my place in this world in some sense.
	Right, right.
	But I would still I was still playing video games, but it was um it I was in high school, and I think it I think it was my second or third year.
	The year had just started.
	Um, and there was this kind of introductory class where everybody was telling everybody a little bit about themselves.
	And of course, the main thing that I said was, well, I'm into philosophy.
	Right.
	And I I remembered mainly you using the term objectivist, Ayn Rand, and I said, like, well, I look at the world in an objective way.
	Um, I think there is a real objective world out there.
	Um, and that is kind of, and that is kind of my my perspective.
	Um, it was also kind of the first time I really talked about this, which is interesting because I had never been that outspoken, or I do think there were moments in high school before that where I suddenly, because it was kind of forced because of a presentation, and then I would I would be reminded of like, wow, I can speak very well.
	I'm a pretty good speaker, but there would still be a lot of stress and nerves.
	But it was after it was actually right after that class, maybe even the walk after that class to another classroom where this girl actually came up to me and uh immediately showed interest.
	Ah, very cool.
	Yes, I and I had never experienced that before, that that a that a girl would actually walk up to me and start talking to me.
	Right.
	And I don't remember exactly what that conversation was about, but I think at least it was about reading about books.
	Maybe she had mentioned it, like, oh, can I share a book with you?
	Can I give you a book?
	Uh soon that you can read, because I think it's very interesting.
	Um she had caught my eye before, but she felt completely just interesting, like she I did notice her as this kind of special woman in school because she was older than me.
	She was um actually like at that point, I was still 16, and she was at least 18 or 19.
	And so she was also one of the oldest people in school, actually.
	And this is because she had to do she had done a couple years, maybe one or even two years uh was two years behind.
	This is why she was still in these classes when she was obviously more of an adult than anybody else.
	Right, right.
	And do you know why she had been, I mean, this is a long time ago, I guess, but do you know why she had been left behind?
	Um that had to do with basically having no focus or attention for studying, I think.
	As far as I as I I did think that she was very intelligent, but later on it became clear to me, and she had told me this as well.
	She hadn't she had a horrible situation at home.
	I think that that really made it impossible for her to even focus on anything like that.
	So I could see that she was very skilled, that she had skills, that she had the intelligence, but she was so distracted by everything around her, it seems that she didn't even know about her own intelligence.
	That was not something she was even allowed to explore, it seemed, it seems like.
	Except with apparently like reading, reading books, she did do that at least.
	Um I suppose that's maybe I suppose she got a sense that philosophy might be have helped to her, which is why she was interested to talk with you.
	Yes.
	Yeah, well, that's that's an interesting point.
	I don't think that that has been at especially at that point that didn't come up for me.
	Um I can say that pretty quickly it became clear to me that um if she was if if she was anything, um if she could uh identify with with any sort of label or term, it would be a communist.
	Because of her family's history and culture.
	That's, I think, where most of her ideas about, well, quote-unquote, philosophy came from.
	Or thought.
	And so knowing that, yeah, it's hard for me to gauge what really.
	interested like seeing my experience after that it does kind of seem that maybe she she she acknowledged that I was smart and that I just started thinking about these things and that perhaps she could have some kind of influence over me.
	Hmm okay which I guess would kind of make sense if you come from like the communist standpoint like the the the control thing the power thing oh so you think that was something sort of malign like oh you're a smart guy we should convert you to the cause of communism yes but at the same time this is not something she really brought up you know this is not like she was not trying to convince me of communism.
	Okay.
	It was more something that along the way I gradually realized wow this is this is in the background and this was maybe a year or two after that she that I maybe I was asking about it.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Like, where does this thing come from?
	And then she would basically, with conviction, say, yeah, communism is the way.
	Right, right, okay.
	So this was not talked about, but it was definitely ingrained.
	So I don't know if it's fair to say that there was this malice from the beginning where she had a plan.
	Well, I didn't say malice.
	It could be enthusiasm for her beliefs, but...
	uh it's interesting so yeah go ahead yeah so um I think that's really where the bad influence like where the where the bad habits started kind of from that point on because up until that point I was very uh stern in like I never want to I never want to uh drink which is kind of funny because I think maybe I'd forgotten that I'd already gotten drunk.
	Well, never want to drink doesn't mean you've never drunk, right?
	Yeah, yeah, true.
	At least I had this kind of, maybe that was something I even said before, that anyway, from a pretty young age, this is something I told people too, like alcohol is bad, any kind of drugs is bad, I never want to do any of that.
	My parents were smokers, drinkers.
	Thank you.
	um not that I really learned anything from that but I do think that I felt like I've heard enough from the science standpoint to know that those things are not a good idea because nobody was really talking to me about it.
	so yeah she she showed a lot of interest in me I had no idea what to do with this then at some point she kind of just flat out said I like you with expectation and there was a silence and I realized oh right I'm supposed to say something now and sorry how old were you at this point?
	this was 16 still okay got it so this happened fairly fast I suppose yes yeah this happened I think a month maybe a month or two after she approached me
	okay and I had said there was a big silence then I had very awkwardly said I like you too without conviction because I was really not sure really what to do what was what was going on at all um She walked away.
	I felt like I needed to do my yeah, I was just confused.
	I felt like I needed to hug her or something, which I did, but from that point on, um, we just started hanging out more, which was also in a in a pretty like uh not a normal way because she at that point she was already hiding this whole thing from her family.
	Her family was not supposed to know that any of this was going on.
	Right.
	Thank you.
	And um Yeah, she she was not doing any drugs at that point either, but I'm sure that she had done some of that before.
	She suddenly showed interest in drinking.
	I said no.
	So she was doing it by herself with some very young friends around her that she was hanging out with.
	It was clear that she had this kind of group of I would say kids around her that followed her.
	She seemed to have she seemed to get joy out of being the older person, kind of telling them what to do or what they should do or what's right and what's not right.
	But at some point, I think I gazed in.
	I started doing this as well.
	Uh at some at some moments, and it really became bad for me when she because of another girl in school at some point, I suddenly saw her smoking a cigarette.
	And I remember that I I really felt like I sank through the ground.
	Because I had no idea what to do at that point because it felt like I was trapped.
	Uh so sorry, smoking a cigarette, uh, is that because it reminded you of your uh parents?
	Um I'm not entirely sure.
	I think it was mostly just that I had said to myself I was never going to do that.
	Right.
	Um, but because I already felt kind of like I was, I don't know what the right word is, but I felt like I was uh kind of attached.
	I was attached to her in a way I'd never felt before.
	So it felt like I couldn't do anything about like I I I couldn't do anything about this.
	It felt like impossible to leave her.
	So now I was stuck in a relationship with a girl that did exactly at least at least that was something I was certain about.
	Like I did not want to do that.
	So that being because you saw her smoking a cigarette, and I get that that's unpleasant or whatever, but I'm still trying to sort of sort out for myself what the like it's absolutely unacceptable to date a girl who who has smoked a cigarette.
	Well, I don't think that was even on my mind, like it was unacceptable.
	It was just that I felt I felt very depressed and sad about that.
	And I think I have I had even told her about that, but that didn't seem to do anything.
	It was like, well, I he I hear that you're feeling sad, but this is helping me.
	So from the beginning, this was her standpoint that she was she started telling me she was in pain all the time, and that cigarettes she realized was one thing that briefly uh took that pain away.
	Okay.
	And uh I don't I think not long after seeing her do this consistently basically getting cigarettes from people all the time.
	Uh I I tried it out with her, didn't like it at first, but eventually got into the habit as well.
	Ah, okay.
	So this was something we started doing together.
	Did GE facilitate you smoking?
	Okay.
	Thank you.
	Um yes.
	Yes, I think so.
	This is not something that I've often thought about.
	But it would, yeah.
	Obviously, she was able to buy them at that point.
	And I think I think I wasn't yet.
	Right.
	But my mom, well, my mom was smoking.
	And so there were always cigarettes in the house.
	So from that point on, I could always find a cigarette if I wanted to.
	And I'm sure that I don't remember this very clearly, but I think I would also start taking cigarettes from her and taking it with me.
	So I remember now that's I think, yeah, she would buy cigarettes, but then she would give them to me to keep them because nobody was supposed to know that she was doing that.
	Right.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	And what happened then?
	Um we would we would just we would just be hanging out after school as much as possible, but there was always this danger hanging above our heads because her family was not supposed to know about it.
	Um so it was a very there was no it didn't feel like we were free to do what we wanted, really.
	It was always we were never outside, or if we were, it was just close to the school area.
	Um and otherwise it would be at my house, kind of hiding from everybody.
	That's right, right.
	Just uh like we were always in the dark.
	Nobody was supposed to know.
	Right.
	And uh then quite soon after that, I got into contact again with a childhood friend that I had been in school in since the first year of school, like the very first year of school, like elementary school, after the kind of uh get kindergarten stage.
	So I'd known him my whole life, but we uh we didn't have contact since high school started.
	Um he had gotten into some drug habits, mainly mainly weed.
	That's someday we met up again, and I was smoking cigarettes, and I think he had told me about the weed thing.
	I showed interest, and I asked him if we want if he wanted to show me that one time.
	And after he did, that would that that was kind of like wow, this is this is totally different than cigarettes.
	This is this is more my thing.
	Right.
	And that's when I started inviting my girlfriend then to do that with me.
	Now that became a habit since then.
	Right.
	And that was really like the one that stuck.
	Right.
	And what was the uh because I've never tried weed, and what was the major thing that you found positive about it?
	I remember very well the first time I did it.
	I I was at I was at a friend's place, and I lied down on the couch, and there were these just visions and visuals, ideas, basically what I remember very clearly that I told everybody like, wow, I have I suddenly have I have three creative ideas of video games, things that could be made into the world that everybody would find cool.
	And I even wrote them down.
	So it was like almost instantly I got these these these visions, these creative visions that just came to me.
	And I don't think I had experienced that that clearly before, where I could see them, like I could see them in my head.
	Right, right.
	So it was but you think that the ideas were there and this was a disinhibitor?
	That that might be the case.
	Yes, but can you tell me more about what's it?
	So the disinhibitor is so it's it's people one of the big challenges of creativity is believing in it while you're doing it.
	And not observing yourself and saying, oh, this is ridiculous.
	Like who am I to, or this isn't working, or like I'm actually believe it or not, I'm going through this right now with my uh with my new novel, um, where I'm like, does this even work?
	Anyway, so um so yeah, one of the big challenges is to uh to believe in what it is that you're doing while you're doing it.
	And uh that that is a big that is a big challenge.
	Because uh it's very easy to just like abandon it, right?
	And say, oh, this isn't working, or something's wrong with this, or who was I to think that I could do this, or something like that, right?
	Especially for me, like I'm always trying new things with every book, like I simply I don't know how people like Stephen King or Dean Kuhn, so I don't know how they even do it.
	Like, how do they write the same book over and over again?
	It would drive me nuts.
	But uh but anyway, they they do, and I mean I guess it works for them, but uh I'm always trying something new, and because I'm always trying something new, I don't actually know whether anything's going to work because I don't have a formula, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, totally.
	Yeah, yeah.
	So the big challenge is is disinhibiting yourself to the point where you will accept that uh this this can work.
	Yeah, that makes total sense.
	I think before that, any ideas that I would have, it would be like, well, this is not real.
	This is in my head.
	So abandon.
	Right.
	It's like, well, I can't see this, I can't touch this.
	This is not objective, so to say.
	So this is nothing.
	Well, what am I even supposed to do with this?
	And I but if I if I try to remember, I don't even know if I can't remember very clearly having any kind of creative idea like that.
	Like they put once in the weed at the weed, right?
	Yes, yeah, this it has never been that clear, I think.
	Never.
	I might have like I was constantly observing and thinking all the time.
	And I remember there were moments where especially parents of of uh parents of my friends, so not my own parent.
	I remember one moment I was sitting at a picnic table somewhere in nature, and I was just like staring in the distance, very deep into thought, but nobody was talking to me, nobody was conversating with me, so I didn't even have words.
	I I I was just I was just perplexed by the world.
	And I remember this this one parent saying, like, we what what what are uh what are you doing?
	It seems like it seems like you're very deep in thought or something.
	Right.
	What's going on with you?
	And I didn't even know what that meant at that point.
	I didn't even know how to respond with that.
	It's just like, well, this is who I am, this is just what I do.
	I don't know what you would call this.
	Um this is all I do, basically.
	Unless somebody wants something from me.
	Somebody requests something, my my parents tell me we need to go there or this, or like okay, I'll get out of my world and do whatever you want me to do.
	But it's kinda it was kind of just like I was completely in the in the outside world, looking outside, but not so much inside.
	I don't I don't yeah, I don't know if that makes any sense.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I got it.
	So it definitely makes sense when you when you say this, because it is in the past month or two, and this is also has to do with that that I really met some incredible people also through uh the free domain discord.
	I made an incredible friend who I've talked a lot with about this kind of stuff.
	Um this is definitely something that started happening recently where I where I'm I'm exercising this and learning to trust these visions Or like yeah, like you're saying believe in them.
	Believing is something I never wanted to do.
	Well, just you just have to stop disbelieving, you know, if that makes sense.
	It's a tough thing to do.
	Stop disbelieving.
	Yes.
	Stop.
	Just saying it's possible that this is good.
	It is possible.
	And that's that's tough.
	It's very tough for me to believe that about something that is not there yet.
	Sure, yeah, yeah.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	But but then when I do trust when I do, when there are these rare moments that I do, something really beautiful comes out, usually.
	Sure.
	And people are like in awe.
	Are like, whoa, where did you where did you get like how did you come up with this?
	And I'd be like, I have no idea.
	Right, right.
	I don't know.
	I have no clue to the point where I'm in disbelief.
	Like I I can't I can't have come up with this.
	I must have picked this up somewhere, you know.
	This it can't be can't be me.
	I because I have no idea where it comes from.
	I almost like I didn't know how this process worked.
	So for me, it was like, if it just comes out of nothing, then I can't have created this because I don't know where it comes from.
	This is like a process, yeah.
	This is a very good thing.
	Well, and it's funny because of course your parents are creative people, or at least at least your dad is, and that he wouldn't talk to you at all about you know the challenges and excitements of creativity.
	I mean, I'm sorry, it's just it's just appalling this level of of neglect that goes on in families, it's just terrible.
	Yes, it yeah, it is appalling, and myself, I've been the past years that I actually actually did really uh stop talking to them, which is now like about a year, I would say, and my mom a bit longer than my dad.
	Um that it becomes even more clear, like I am appalled by it myself.
	How can you have a child and not talk about any of this?
	Right.
	How can you what is more important than than that?
	And that immediately reminds me of one of the last conversations I've had with my dad, where he suddenly he was very honest to me, and it felt like it would really was going somewhere.
	It felt like there was this real-time relationship going on for a while.
	And he suddenly told me that when I was a baby, like an actual baby, they would sometimes leave me alone at home to go drinking in a po.
	Sure.
	Sure.
	I and I was shocked by that.
	Just and at the same time felt like I almost could remember that when he said that.
	That I remember there were nights where I felt so completely alone.
	Maybe I was crying or screaming and nothing was happening.
	Where to the point you just have to give up and accept that there's nothing out there, nothing that cares.
	And I feel like that, yeah, I makes sense that when I experience that as a baby, that that really sets the tone for the rest of my life, or at least the rest of my childhood.
	And why do you think your dad said that?
	Yeah, that's uh good question.
	I definitely came out of a conversation where I was I made it extra extra clear more than before that I know that they neglected me.
	I know that they ignored me, and he started being honest about that.
	He started admitting to that.
	He's he he actually said yes, like this is true.
	I was completely busy with my own life, and he started saying, I think I think I've been depressed for as long as I can remember.
	Um I guess that's a good moment to say that he himself has never had a dad at all, basically, because his father died very soon after he was born.
	So he's been raised by a single mother.
	Uh no.
	No, that's not a single mother.
	I mean, unless I misunderstand it, she that would be a widow.
	True, yes.
	Yeah.
	I mean, it's a very different creature, right?
	Because one is as accident, the other is is usually choice.
	Yes.
	Agreed.
	Yeah.
	I I had some doubt when I said that.
	It's like Yeah, no, it's fine.
	I just wanted to point it out.
	Okay.
	Yeah, so it's it seemed like in that conversation, and maybe some conversations leading up to that, uh I had made it very clear to him, and this of course was very new, like that I sat in front of him face to face, and we actually had a conversation.
	But this was always something that I instigated since I found her podcast, I have been trying with to have conversations like that, and it was only it was those that period where it seemed like it was finally happening that my father was reciprocating this.
	It was still clear that I was the one starting these conversations all the time.
	Yeah, it's and it's funny because uh a lot of times when you have these kinds of breakthroughs, people are like, oh my gosh, we're finally getting someplace real, but it's actually the death knell.
	It's like the end.
	Well, yeah.
	I've certainly had that where I've had issues with people, of course, in in my life, and we finally get through to the core of the issues, and you think, wow, this is gonna be great.
	Like now we can sort these things out, but that's it.
	There's nothing after that.
	Yeah, there's this this feeling of euphoria, right?
	This like what as if you're stepping into heaven and it's like, wow, this it's oh my god, it's it's happening.
	And then that that at some point completely collapsed uh back into what it was, even worse than what it was, or worse, I would say better for me.
	Because it gave me the clear the clarity.
	And finally, okay, this is the last straw and I'll see you next time.
	And that that's when that's when I real uh that was the day when I realized that the next the next day after I was talking to him, he was going to meet up with my mom, and they have been divorced and separated.
	Which happened when I was around 12, 13 years old.
	Yeah.
	They have just like with their past relationships, have been friends ever since, still friends, uh in contact, hanging out, drinking together, I'm sure.
	And she he was going to give her a presence the next day.
	And I I read this in his agenda in his in his because he would he would just leave that open in the living room for anybody to read.
	He had even said at some point that he's fine with that.
	I read this, I felt I felt again this like sinking sensation, like I was sinking through the ground, and I I went to him and I told him this.
	I told him just like like real-time relationships.
	I I told him it's exactly how I felt.
	And it felt like we had a similar conversation before not so long before that, but his immediate reaction was, well, I told you about this.
	This is none of your business.
	You should you don't just don't think about that.
	You know, and he even he even started looking away.
	Uh he and the eye contact.
	There was this kind of this kind of sort of weird grin going on, the kind of uncomfortable laughing, like, wow, you just you just have to stop thinking about this.
	This is none of your business.
	Why do you bother yourself with this?
	Why do you bother yourself with this?
	And uh it it felt like I was being stabbed in the back.
	Like I I I was appalled.
	I was shocked.
	Um but I said, well, I do think it is, I mean, you are my parents.
	Why I wouldn't, why wouldn't this well I don't know exactly where the words I use, but I it was definitely clear to me.
	Well, I just I just told you what I felt.
	And and since then this has been ringing in my head.
	I tell you what I feel, and your response is that's none of your business.
	Well, hang on.
	So let me make sure I understand that sequence, right?
	So tell me how your feelings, like what what happened in your father's mind that we go from your feelings to it's none of your business.
	Well, I think if you had to guess.
	He referred, I think he was referring to earlier an earlier conversation we've had, where I already I had told him that I've like he had told me that in the past years when we haven't because we haven't had much contact, me and both my parents, that they were still hanging out with each other, and they were still going to family together, like having long car rides and stuff like that.
	And he would, and I would say, like, well, that that seems very strange.
	Well, how it that seems very strange to me.
	How is that for you?
	And he would be saying, like, well, yeah, we don't talk much, but it's like fine.
	It's like okay.
	And I I think I have and I would ask him, Well, do you ever talk about me?
	And he was, and he said, No.
	So they're hanging out all the time, never talking about their son.
	And I felt like this I'd I don't even know how to put it into words really, but I just I just I didn't understand it, but I I just I felt I felt incredibly sad, at least.
	I think I had these questions.
	I told I I asked him these questions, like, why how can you like why are you doing this?
	Or what don't you feel like I think I asked, well, don't you think you should talk about me or or any family for that matter?
	And then his I think then he had given me a similar response that well, well, this is just this is our lives, you know, we can do whatever we want.
	It's none of your business.
	Like, why are you why do you care?
	You shouldn't care, you should care about your own life.
	That's interesting.
	He said you should care about your own life.
	Yeah.
	Interesting.
	Okay.
	I mean, I have some thoughts about that, but I don't want to interrupt if you're in the middle of a a thought.
	No, I no, I think I would like to hear your your thought.
	Okay, so let's let's unpack that because that's really really powerful.
	So you're saying to your father, do you and mom ever talk about me?
	And they say he says, no.
	Why do you say that seems odd or that seems strange, or don't you think you should talk about me, or something like that, right?
	And he says, why do you care?
	You should worry about your own life.
	Okay.
	All right.
	So listen, I I'd like to focus on on your dad, but I want to make sure the call is of best or most value to you.
	So if that works for you, I'm I'm happy to work on that.
	If you wanted to talk about something else, I can do that too.
	No, I think that's uh I think that's a good focus.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	So um your own life.
	Your own life.
	Now uh you're not a father, I assume.
	I assume.
	So one of the things that you wouldn't necessarily get, and it certainly wasn't modeled from your own father, is for your father to say to you, you should worry about your own life means that he has not processed at all what it is to be a father.
	In other words, his own life, his own life does not include being a father.
	His own life does not include you as his son.
	His own life is completely separate from his responsibility as a father.
	His own life doesn't include anyone else.
	Do you see what I mean?
	Yeah, yeah.
	100%.
	That's straight up narcissistic.
	The only thing that matters is my own concerns, my own preferences, my own life, my own wants, my own needs, my own desires, my own thoughts.
	And it does not include anyone else.
	Yes.
	So he's telling you your life concerns should only and forever be about you.
	There are no life concerns or thoughts that involve anyone else at all.
	It's a solipsistic, narcissistic universe of I, me, me, I. You don't exist to me.
	Your concerns are only irritants because they don't coincide with what I want in the moment.
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah, for sure.
	Yeah.
	Now I'm so sorry, go ahead.
	Because that's a that's quite a thing to drop, but uh I wanted to get your thoughts before I continue.
	No, I like if when you were leading up to that already, I felt this sadness coming up.
	And I I I definitely feel the sadness deeply now.
	Um I I have been talking about this with with with friends.
	Uh with my with my uh girlfriend at the moment.
	Um like and and they it has become clear to me too.
	Like I have said this to people and they've said this to me, but they seem completely narcissistic.
	Um the mind of a narcissist, and again, I'm just using this term in an amateur fashion, right?
	I'm not a psychologist.
	But it can be tough to process the mindset of a narcissist, but I can help you do it, because I think it's really important for you to figure out and to not take it personally.
	All right, so wow, that's very possible.
	Yeah, I think you're right.
	Have you ever played Skyrim?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	I mean, whether it's Skyrim or some other game you're more familiar with, a lot of times the especially if it's a single player game, the developers will give you a companion, right?
	Yeah.
	So you can go and do your adventures and there's someone who's along there to help, right?
	Yeah.
	And it's an it's an NPC, right?
	Yes.
	Now Would you ever, if it wasn't part of a quest, what is the presence of that NPC in your mind over the course of your day?
	Do you think, oh, I'm not playing the game.
	I hope the NPC isn't bored.
	Or, oh, I'm hungry.
	I wonder if the NPC needs something to eat.
	Or I wonder if the NPC had a really cool dream last night.
	Or I wonder if the NPC met someone that they might be interested in.
	I'd love to hear how their day went, right?
	Yeah, that would there would be none of that.
	I mean, that would be kind of psychotic, right?
	I mean, that would be not that wouldn't be not healthy at all, right?
	No, that would no, that wouldn't be healthy anymore.
	Right.
	So the NPC is there to help you, and the NPC is not supposed to have any particular needs or preferences of their own, right?
	That's like a shadow cost of your questing, right?
	Yeah, it's like they're they only exist there to aid you, nothing else.
	Yeah, they're only there to aid you, they're only there to serve you.
	And they don't have any existence of your own, right?
	Now, if you're playing the game and you get a call and your favorite band's in town and you got backstage tickets or something like then what you will do is you will uh turn off the game and go out and see the band, right?
	Yeah.
	Now, would it ever cross your mind at all to say, well, I mean, gosh, I'm in the middle of this quest.
	I mean, maybe the I mean the NPC might want to finish it.
	Like, maybe I shouldn't go to the concert because the NPC might that might be inconvenient.
	They might want to finish the quest and they don't particularly I didn't even ask them if they care about this band or anything like that.
	Like you simply would shut down the computer with zero thought, zero thought to the NPC, right?
	Yes, I thought that if I come back, we would just go back where we started.
	Right.
	Right.
	Now, if you can imagine that the NPC reaches out of the game and says, No, you're not going to that concert.
	We're right in the middle of a quest.
	I need like I want to finish this quest.
	Right?
	What would you I mean, imagine such a scenario, right?
	And the NPC was able to reach out of the computer, rip up the tickets.
	Oh, whatever, you know, like just give me give me this crazy scenario, right?
	So if the NPC were to say, no, I don't want you to go, I want to finish this quest.
	I don't want you to go see the band.
	I'm right in the middle, we're right in the middle of doing something here, what would you feel?
	Well, it would creep the hell out of creeping the hell out of it.
	Let's like without the creepy side of it.
	But but how would you feel if the NPC in Skyrim forbade you from going to the concert because the NPC wanted to finish the quest?
	But it has this has nothing to do with you.
	I this is what I want to do.
	And you have to know, but well, how would you feel?
	I mean, outside of the incomprehension, I get all of that.
	But if you just sort of roll with the creative scenario, if the NPC said like the NPC reached out from the computer screen, grabbed your arm and said, You're not going to that concert.
	We're in the middle of quest here.
	Stop like, what are you doing?
	Absolutely.
	I mean, again, outside of the creepy stuff, wouldn't you just feel kind of annoyed?
	Like, I would feel pissed.
	What the hell are you doing?
	Like you're you're a non-player character.
	I want to go to the concert.
	What are you doing?
	Yeah, I'd feel pissed.
	I feel annoyed.
	So that's your dad.
	Right.
	That's your dad.
	You're just an NPC.
	Jim.
	So when your parents they want to go out drinking, right?
	And this is why this is why I specifically use the scenario, right?
	You got a concert and you want to go out, you you you just you just turn off the computer.
	I mean, and you would give zero thought to the NPC.
	You'd be like, well, the NPC is just there to serve me.
	The NPC, I mean, doesn't have any real Needs of its own that are important.
	I mean, they're just programmed or whatever.
	And so I'm your parents go out drinking and leave you home in the same way that you go to the concert.
	And don't think about what the NPC wants or needs.
	Yes, that makes that makes complete sense.
	And realizing that you are an NPC in other people's minds and lives is chilling.
	But holy crap, is it liberating?
	Yeah.
	So when you're when you're a father and mother go out and when you say, well, shouldn't you talk about me?
	That's kind of incomprehensible.
	That's like the NPC saying, well, what do you mean?
	Like, why aren't you thinking about my needs?
	That's like what are you talking about?
	You're an NPC.
	Like I don't know, worry about your own life.
	What are you coming to me for?
	You don't you don't exist for me.
	Yeah, that's a that's a very good way to I that does really help.
	Um putting things in into perspective.
	Well, it's just the start of this liberation.
	So if you are an NPC in your father's quest, so to speak, right?
	If you're just there to serve his needs, and you don't have any needs of your own, and if you assert any needs of your own, it's just kind of a weird bug or a glitch.
	Then what your father is going to do is he's gonna say, Look, if you have problems in your life, the way to solve them is to dehumanize other people.
	If you my big advice to you, son, if you've got problems in your life, you've got a magic wand called narcissism that you can wave to turn everyone else into an NPC, and then you don't have any problems.
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah, yeah, when you say that uh because that it does seem like that's basically what he has been saying in those conversations, I mean.
	Like that's that's what that's what's behind everything.
	Right.
	So he's giving you his life advice.
	Turn everyone into an NPC, and your life is simple.
	In a way.
	How complicated is your relationship with your NPC in Skyrim.
	That's not complicated at all.
	Pretty fucking simple, right?
	Yeah.
	You almost also know exactly what to expect.
	Yeah, I mean, it's not it's the least complicated relationship.
	Hey, we're going to uh this town.
	Okay, I'll go to this town.
	We're gonna go into this dungeon, okay.
	We're gonna go.
	It's totally simple.
	There's no negotiation, there's no self and other, there's no meeting in the middle, there's no clash of egos, there's no overlap of wants.
	It's simple.
	Turn other people into nothing, and your life is simple.
	Because you want to go out, you got a kid at home, just leave the kid at home.
	You want to go to the concert and you're in the middle of a quest with the NPC, just turn off the computer.
	They don't have any needs.
	It's simple.
	It's simple.
	Yeah, that's fair.
	That's that's very easy.
	It's dead simple.
	Oh, I mean, that's why that's why narcissism is tempting for people.
	Because when you dehumanize other people.
	Then you don't have any challenges with negotiations.
	And you don't have to think about much at all because everything just kind of makes sense in that way.
	Just like, well, it's just clear this way.
	I can't Oh, yeah.
	Like just he's saying to you, only think of yourself.
	Don't think about other people's needs.
	don't think about other people's preferences.
	Don't think about what they want.
	Don't give them independent sovereign consciousness.
	Don't negotiate.
	Only think of yourself.
	Yeah, the rest is just a burden, then.
	Yeah, I mean, it's not a fun video game to play if you've got to keep negotiating with the NPC.
	I mean, imagine let's go fight the dragon on the mountain.
	No, I really want to talk about my childhood.
	This game sucks.
	Who made this?
	What kind of neurotic program is sitting there wanting to talk about their childhood when I want to go fight the dragon on the mountain?
	Yeah, I didn't sign up for this.
	I signed up for the for the dragon.
	Yeah, let's go explore the caves.
	Oh, you know, I'm just feeling kind of down today.
	I don't know if I'm up to it.
	What?
	Maybe this maybe this is the next video game to teach narcissists that there are other human beings.
	Have an NPC that has its own thoughts and preferences.
	Some AI thing, right?
	Maybe this would be a training game for uh narcissists or something like that to get them to recognize that it's not all about what they want, need, and prefer, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, you ever you ever go to a town in uh one of these games because you want to buy some armor and the shop is closed because the guy's on vacation.
	No, every time you go to the town, he's just standing there, right?
	Yeah.
	Um, right?
	Does he ever say, uh, you know, I'm really I'm just depressed today, man.
	I think my wife's gonna leave me.
	Nope.
	He's just like, here's your armor, give me the gold.
	No needs of his own, right?
	Other than you know, obviously the exchange thing or whatever, right?
	But if you want to understand your father, think of the games.
	You are an NPC.
	I actually have a I think it was in I think it was in Morrowind.
	This is just a stupid thing to say, but it sort of I think gives this indication.
	I invest in my NPCs when I'm playing a game, like I care about them.
	And I remember once, I'm sure you've had this in games where the NPC is usually following behind you, but at some point you turn around and they're not there, right?
	Yeah.
	And you're like, oh man.
	Did they get stuck in a canyon?
	Did I close a door on them?
	Like, where are they?
	Right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Figuring out how it happened, and I want to fix it too.
	Like, right.
	So you either have to go back to some prior save where they were still around, or you've got to backtrack and figure out where they are.
	And doesn't it feel kind of good when you release them?
	Hey, there you are.
	You got stuck in a tree, or something like that.
	And I remember in Morrowind, I had a barbarian NPC, and I left a dungeon, went to the town, he wasn't there.
	I actually had to go all the way back.
	I'd closed the door in the dungeon somewhere, and he was stuck there.
	And I felt bad because I'm like, I feel like he's stuck in a dungeon and it's my fault.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, that's a really good example because I've probably I think I've experienced that multiple times, and then also kind of thought like, well, this is kind of weird that I care about this, but I do.
	Well, the game, but the game is better when you care.
	You know, like if you just treat the NPC as you know what the NPC actually is, which is just a bunch of disposable digits with no personality of its own, then it's less interesting.
	You know, if it's sort of the matrix thing, if you if you're fighting the dragon and you just say, well, this is just a bunch of bites.
	This is just a bunch of ones and zeros, and I'm just manipulating pixels or pushing code around, right?
	But you have to think, oh, this is real dragon, I'm really saving the princess, my NPC's fighting by my side.
	Like you have to invest to make the game good.
	You have to invest in the reality of the situation.
	If you dehumanize the NPC too much, then what happens is the game is no fun, right?
	Because it's like this is just a bunch of pixels, it's just a bunch of bytes.
	All I'm doing is pushing data around, which is all you're doing in video games is pushing data around, then you lose the fun of it.
	Sorry, you were gonna say.
	Yeah, no, it just reminds me of like having Watched videos of people play games like that, and then something happens where the NPC, for instance, gets stuck on something, and he's just like jittery like uh uh uh and you can't go further.
	And uh some people they will actually just look at that and laugh at it and find it amusing and be like, oh, this is this is funny.
	Whereas if when I think about that, or when I experienced that, it would be kind of creepy to me, and it would try to figure out like, okay, how can I get you I'm stuck at this because this is clearly very uncomfortable.
	Right.
	Half glitching through a doorway would be pretty painful.
	And I remember one of the I for some bizarre reason, one of the funniest things that my daughter and I ever went through was there's a sort of game that's famously glitchy called Skate 3, I think it's called.
	Oh, that's actually one of my favorite games.
	Like I've played it a lot, yeah.
	I think it was kind of pushed a little a little out ahead of the physics uh integrity, and it's sort of famous for people getting stuck and glitched and flying across the map and and getting you know merged with benches and stuff like that.
	And for some reason my daughter and I came across one of these videos and thought it was just about the funniest thing we'd ever seen.
	We even tried playing the game, but I mean it wasn't as nearly as much fun as the glitches were.
	But uh so anyway, uh so all joking aside, that's your dad.
	So when he says, only worry about yourself, he's saying turn everyone into an NPC that's there to serve your needs.
	And your life is is good.
	It's simple.
	Now, it's simple, I don't think it's good.
	I think it's a terrifyingly crushingly isolated existence.
	Yeah, it it definitely is, and they can and it's clear you can see that.
	And he and he even has some He even has an awareness of that, but he accepts it.
	He I remember him saying one of the those last conversations, I don't think I'm ever going to find a partner again.
	And I, you know, I think I don't I wouldn't even be happy if I have one.
	I think I'm good on my own.
	Right.
	So when he says I'm not going to be able to find a partner, he's saying I can't have a relationship with people who are NPCs.
	Yeah.
	And the way that I live is treating everyone as an NPC.
	Yeah.
	So that's the way to understand the mindset.
	Now, if you were to sit there and if I were to sit there, sorry, if I were to sit there and say, or sit here and say, listen, man, you have to treat NPCs as real people.
	Like real people.
	What what would that mean to you?
	I immediately feel exhaustion.
	I think I've been trying to do that for a very long time.
	No, no, I in a video game.
	Well, like if I said you have to treat the NPCs as real people, you have to try and engage in conversation with them.
	I don't care if it means you've got to hack the game, you've got to explore their needs, their childhoods, you've got to explore their wants and desires and fears and really get to know them as people.
	Like, if I were to say to you, that's what you need to do in Skyrim or Boulder Skate or wherever, what would you say?
	No, I'm I'd be kind of annoyed, and I'd say, well, no, I'm I'm deciding where to go.
	Right.
	I don't want to be bothered by this yeah, the wishes of an NPC or try to figure it out.
	That's not why I'm playing this.
	Right.
	So that's your father's irritation.
	Right.
	Because you're an NPC saying I'm not an NPC.
	And he says, well, you are, and the only thing that I'm gonna tell you to indicate that you're not an NPC is to give you the advice to treat everyone like an NPC.
	That's how you and that you're saying that's the only thing that indicates that I'm not an NPC.
	Right.
	So if your MPC kept bothering you and saying, Well, why aren't you thinking about me?
	And why aren't you talking about me?
	Like imagine if you you locked into or you you you you booted up Skyrim and the NPC said to you, did you talk about me outside of the game yesterday?
	What would you say?
	Um that shouldn't that's not a business.
	That shouldn't that you shouldn't care about that.
	That's not the point of this.
	Right.
	And that's what your father said to you, right?
	Yeah.
	You'd say, what?
	No, you're an NPC.
	Why would I talk about you outside of the game?
	You're here to serve me when I'm going on my quests.
	So what do you mean?
	What why why would I talk about you outside the game?
	Right?
	Which is like you saying to your parents, what did you talk about me?
	No.
	Why would we talk about you?
	Yeah, that would that that explains kind of also the way he expressed it, that he's actually like exactly that that kind of response as well.
	Like, but this is ridiculous.
	Why would you think you're an NPC?
	Why would I talk about you outside the game?
	Yeah, he was laughing about it.
	Yeah.
	There's no side quest called talking about the NPC.
	So that's their perspective.
	Now, of course, you can say to your father, I'm not an NPC, but it doesn't really matter.
	Because in his mind, in the mind of a selfish person, everyone else is an NPC.
	Now, if your NPC proves to be difficult, right?
	Let's say you've got to finish this quest to complete the game or get some big giant upgrade of your sword or something like that.
	And there are five NPCs around.
	And one NPC says, There's no way I'm gonna go do that quest.
	And all the other NPCs are like, yeah, I could do that quest.
	Which one are you gonna choose?
	The one that says yeah.
	Right.
	I can do that.
	Now, even if you've been playing for a hundred hours and the NPC has been sort of floating around and casting spells and fighting or whatever.
	Is it really that wrenching to say, well, in order to finish the game or get this giant upgrade, I need to switch NPCs.
	Would that be a huge wrenching horrible thing?
	No.
	No, you'd be like, I'm just swap out, I just swap out the NPCs because the next part of the quest is something they don't want to do.
	You wouldn't negotiate with them.
	You wouldn't like be wrenching, oh my gosh, you wouldn't be up late.
	You'd be, oh my god, oh, this is so terrible.
	I've been with this person for a hundred hours, and you know, it'd be just like, okay, well, I can't remember.
	There was some game, gosh, what was it?
	Baldur's gate.
	There was some game where you go through a portal and you can just choose all of these different NPCs and you're supposed to swap them in and out.
	I can't remember the game.
	I don't think I played it that much, so it probably wasn't Baldur's Gate, but you you go in and like, oh, here's so-and-so, and here's so and you walk through this ghostly area and you can pick out all these NPCs.
	So I remember, oh boy, this is way back in the day.
	There was a game called Dungeon Master or something like that for the old Atari 520 ST. And you you you start in the game and there's all these portraits, and and you choose your NPCs.
	I think you can swap them out.
	So if you've got a quest and the NPC doesn't want to do it, without regret, you just swap them out, right?
	Yeah.
	Okay, so that's why your parents got divorced.
	Right, it's just like, well, this doesn't get me where I want to go.
	Yeah, like I'm going on this quest.
	If you don't want to go on the quest, I mean that's fine, but you know, we'll part ways.
	Right.
	That's just very simple.
	Because the quest is never a person.
	The quest is never a person, the quest is never virtue.
	The quest is just getting stuff, doing stuff.
	Make a new building, get some more money, uh, you know, uh get an award, buy a new house.
	It's all Just material quests the way they are generally in video games.
	Yeah, you just swap them.
	No problem.
	Yeah, swap them out, man.
	Oh shoot, I need a I need a wizard for the next part of the quest.
	Okay, bye-bye, barbarian.
	Maybe I'll come back later, but I'm going with the wizard because it's just about the quest.
	And you don't sit there and say, oh my gosh, if I dump my barbarian, he's gonna get really depressed.
	He's gonna be really sad.
	No, it's just like, oh, I I need some different pixels for the next part of the quest.
	Right?
	I need different skills and abilities and blah blah blah, right?
	So that's why your parents get divorced, and that's why there isn't any particular animosity.
	Because it's like, oh well, you know, I mean, the I guess this NPC is programmed to not come with me on this quest, so I mean, no hate or anything like that, but I'll I'll just get a different NPC, right?
	And if no NPCs want to go on the quest, or if the NPCs are just difficult.
	I mean, if you if you can imagine a game, you have to complete a central quest, but none of the NPCs want to do it.
	In fact, they'll oppose you doing it, like they'll steal your armor in the middle of the night, or they'll side with the enemy, or they'll take your gold or something like that, right?
	So if you have a quest that you want to complete, but the NPCs are just in the way, they they make it negative.
	Will you pick any NPCs?
	No.
	If I if I can, I would just do it by myself.
	They would kind of just come like the enemy.
	Right.
	And that's not true.
	And that's why your father.
	That's why your father is saying, I don't think I'm gonna get another partner.
	I think I'm gonna just go it alone, because the NPCs keep interfering in my quest.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Just makes it more difficult.
	Oh, yeah, that they're not aiding my quest.
	Because my quest is not connection, my quest is not love, my quest is not merging of self and other, my quest is not virtue or any of that stuff.
	My quest is just getting making, building, earning, climbing, acquiring defeating.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, that it that that also would explain why he does seem to just keep going too.
	It's like, oh no, I'm going to it it's almost as if he is Yeah, no, it's definitely that way.
	Because it's to me it's been appalling.
	It's been appalling, like, well, why are you living then?
	What are you doing this for?
	What's the point?
	Well, but of course, you can say with uh video games, what's the point?
	Right?
	I I think I remember Dr. Phil sort of many years ago, he had a guy on, he's like, Oh, I got this great new sword in EverQuest, and he's like, but do you have anything real?
	They're just pixels.
	And I mean, it's it's a fair question.
	Now, of course, I get all of that.
	I mean, my daughter and I are playing chess, and uh maybe it's just my ancient warrior genes, but I get kind of wound up about chess, man.
	It's like I gotta win.
	Oh my god, I left my flank exposed.
	Oh, I'm gonna lose the war.
	Like my whole warrior instincts get.
	Oh, it's a battle.
	Yeah.
	Oh, it is it is a battle.
	And it is there to train you in war and strategy and all of that.
	So I get, but I I mean, obviously I I have to remind myself it's a game.
	There's no stakes, right?
	Um so with life, yeah.
	I mean, sometimes we'll play these games.
	But of course the big question is if you say to your father, what's the point?
	The the i the other equal question is what's the point of the video games you play.
	Do you still play it all?
	Yeah, I've I think I've taken a long break from it, but now I'm kind of just dabbling back into games I really liked and and actually actually enjoying it, like there's no point to the games, right?
	No.
	Other than you enjoy them and I I I I don't have a negative relationship to video games as a whole.
	I mean, I think you know, obviously they can go too far, you can be addicted and so on, but they're a lot of fun, they're uh easy socializing, uh, and they do teach you thinking, planning, strategy, all that kind of stuff.
	So I I don't have any particular hate on for uh video games, but there's no particular point.
	Video games have value in that it helps you enjoy life, but hopefully it also serves you to develop skills that help you in your life, right?
	Yeah, for sure, yeah.
	Psych Beatsaber would help you with swordplay, I think, or something like that.
	So what I want to sort of get across is that for your father, it's a video game.
	And everyone else is an avatar.
	I assume this is true for your mother as well, because if you get a narcissist together with an empath, they simply don't comprehend each other.
	They can't have a relationship.
	I mean, narcissists can't really have a relationship with anyone, but it's just they don't they don't understand.
	And and narcissism is a way of spreading depression.
	Right, because the narcissist is depressed because they actually have no contact, and they're also living a contradictory lie, which is I have needs and they're really important.
	I'm a human being with needs and my needs are really important.
	Other human beings also have needs, but they're not important.
	Because of course, in a game, everybody knows the NPCs are just programmed.
	Maybe they have AI MPCs coming up at some point, but that's obviously a pretty heavy duty chunk of processing.
	But uh, everyone knows it's dialogue wheels and trees, and like you you can only pick certain responses, it's all just a bunch of programming, right?
	Yeah.
	So we know that they're not real.
	But the narcissist is surrounded by incredibly vivid NPCs, right?
	That he knows deep down in his heart, he knows that other people are just like him, have their own needs and preferences.
	So he has to live a horrible contradiction.
	The horrible contradiction is I'm a human being, I have needs, those needs are very important.
	Other people are human beings, they have needs, their needs are not important.
	They're only irritants.
	My needs are absolutely essential for myself, other people's needs are just an irritant and an annoyance.
	People are both people and NPCs at the same time.
	That's a horrible contradiction.
	And wherever there's a horrible contradiction, there is depression.
	Because you're simply denying the facts and truth of life.
	And if you say everyone else is fundamentally different from me, I have needs, my needs are really important.
	Other people's needs are unimportant, you have just alienated yourself from all of humanity.
	You have become a solibsistic mirror of self-regard, and you have fundamentally distanced yourself from all of humanity because you're saying they are human beings, but they're the opposite of me.
	So imagine if you woke up tomorrow with the certain knowledge, like it wasn't crazy, let's say you had some proof.
	But let's say you woke up tomorrow with the certain knowledge that you were living in a simulation, a matrix, and there was no way out.
	You woke up tomorrow, you could see the matrix, everyone was an NPC.
	It wasn't even like the what that Jim Carrey movie where he's uh in a bunch of commercials, like pretending to be uh a real life.
	But you woke up tomorrow, no one is real.
	You're the only person, everyone else is a simulation.
	Let's say you found out they were robots, or that they were cunning AI hallucinations imprinted on your eyes, or something like that.
	So if you woke up tomorrow knowing that you were the only person and everyone else was a simulation, artificial, a robot, how would you feel?
	Well I would feel I w I would feel depressed.
	Right.
	And that's what I'm pointing at.
	Yeah.
	That's why narcissism is always a cover for depression and then feeds the depression.
	Because you'd wake up and people would be smiling at you, but you'd know it was all fake.
	Yeah.
	People would say, I like you, but it would just be programming.
	You'd just have a bunch of dialogue wheels.
	And what would be the point?
	What would be the point of getting to know anyone?
	What would be the point of imagining or pretending you had any kind of connection with people?
	That would all be a delusion, right?
	Yeah.
	And and and you're saying that that would that that could also make it worse in a sense that if one of them would like just keep trying, like showing this emotion and trying to make that connection.
	Sorry, say that again.
	I wasn't sure I quite caught that.
	Well it it has seemed to me that like because I I feel like I have really tried in different ways.
	Like I'm trying to express my emotion more to him and trying to uh like you're trying to become real.
	Yeah.
	Not real.
	You're trying to become real to him.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	So you're an NPC reaching out of the screen saying, you can't go to the concert because I want to talk about our relationship.
	Right.
	And this would just make them more annoyed.
	Right.
	Like what the hell what?
	Yeah.
	No.
	You're not real.
	That's what you mean is like it feeds into it.
	Like it's it's well, once you treat people as NPCs, okay.
	So the final the final boss of NPC Dim, if you're ready for it.
	Yeah.
	So the reason why people get depressed when they're narcissistic is because the only way to treat others as NPCs is to become an NPC yourself.
	Because then they stop bothering you.
	Well, fundamentally, we're not, you know, your father is not insane, people who are selfish.
	They're not crazy.
	I think that they're not well, but they're not crazy.
	So if you're gonna say human beings are NPCs, then deep down you know that you're a human being.
	And let me ask you this.
	If you've ever spun through, as I sure you have thousands of times, if you've ever spun through the dialogue wheel of NPC conversations, you have also become an NPC.
	Because you're only choosing from the dialogue options presented by NPCs, which means you have no free will in the interaction.
	You can't talk about anything you want.
	You can only talk about the four options on the screen.
	So if you treat people as NPCs, you yourself become an NPC.
	You are an NPC when you're interacting with an NPC.
	Because it's different from a conversation like this.
	You couldn't have a conversation like this with someone in Skyrim, right?
	Right.
	So when you treat people as NPCs, you become an NPC.
	So if you treat people as NPCs, what you do is you say, okay, okay, I want something from this person.
	Uh I w I want something from this person.
	So I have to figure out what makes them tick.
	And then I have to apply positive or negative pressure on them in order to get them to do what I want, right?
	Yeah.
	So all you're doing is trying to pick a lock.
	So by treating people as NPCs, I'm sure that you've had this in video games where you need to get a piece of information from an NPC.
	And maybe you can try bribe.
	Or maybe you can try intimidate.
	Or maybe you can try a charisma role.
	Or maybe you can go through the whole dialogue tree and hunt for that particular piece of information that you need, right?
	You've gone through that process before, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	Yeah.
	So you're just trying to figure out what combination of luck and skill is needed to unlock the information the NPC has.
	And so you have become an NPC by seeking out information from an NPC.
	Because the game is giving you very limited options on what you can do to get that information.
	Does that make sense?
	Yes.
	Yeah, I think so.
	You don't, you don't have you basically you can't be creative in that sense, right?
	Yeah, you can't.
	Or like, well, you have to be in some way you have to be creative with the or well, well, not in a game.
	It's not like you can kind of think of a new way to to get the solution.
	Like you have to use the options given to you.
	Right.
	There's no such thing in Skyrim of saying, I really need this information for personal, psychological, moral, or like you can't engage in a conversation.
	You can't win the person over.
	You can't become real to that NPC.
	You just have to plod through the dialogue wheels until you get what you want.
	So you have you have limited your own free will to picking from a very predefined set of paths.
	You know, like if you if you wake up in a field, you can go anywhere.
	Right?
	You you can walk in any direction.
	But if you wake up in a maze and you're hungry, let's say you've got to get out of the maze, then you can only go where the maze allows you to go, and you go back and forth until you find your way out of the maze, right?
	Yeah.
	So waking up in a field is a conversation with a person, waking up in a maze is very limited.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, that that completely connects with like how I because when I'm growing up, how I felt about conversations as well.
	Like how I felt about going into conversations.
	Right.
	And like sorry, you go ahead.
	I've had a long long old chat, so please go ahead.
	Well, I just want to it just came up for me that like for the longest, yeah.
	Well, because nobody was really talking to me too, but uh whenever I knew a conversation would be coming up, or I knew I had to interact with interact with with somebody, um, it I felt annoyed and I just was constantly beforehand thinking about okay, what can I say?
	And if I say this, what would the other person say?
	And if that person says this, what can I say?
	Um that would just be it wouldn't be real in that ornament feel real in that sense anymore.
	And it would just be like uh basically like a game and figuring out what is the best way to get well for me, usually would be what's the quickest way to get out of this.
	Right.
	Or if you want something, and this is so people rehearse conversations because they know they know that they're dealing with NPCs.
	So you have to figure out the input outputs that you have to pursue, the maze paths that you have to pursue in order to get what you want.
	Yes, yeah.
	Yeah, that's why when you said the maze thing, it's like I immediately thought of that.
	That makes sense why.
	Yeah.
	So if my wife, let's say my wife wants to go to a farmer's market, right?
	Now, I don't particularly love farmers' markets, but I love my wife.
	So she doesn't have to sit there and say, well, okay, how am I going to get my husband to go to a farmer's market?
	Okay, well, I went with him to a renaissance fair, so you know, whatever.
	Like, so I can bring that up, or you know, I can point out that he hasn't been getting much sunshine lately, or I can say that we can pick up some healthy food, or I can say, well, let's stop at an electronic store on the way home and you can browse stuff you're never going to buy.
	Like, she would have to sit there and say, what combination of positive or negative incentives can I arrange in order to get my husband to come with me to the farmer's market.
	But she doesn't have to do any of that.
	She has to say, I'd really like it if we went to the farmer's market today, and assuming I have the time and ability to do it, I'm like, great, let's go.
	Do I love farmers' markets?
	No, but I love time with my wife, and I love her, and I want to make her happy.
	So her happiness is my happiness.
	And I also know, and this is not a bargain, but it's just based upon almost a quarter century of knowing her.
	I also know that if I want her to do something that she's not particularly in love with, she'll do it too.
	So we don't have to rehearse all of these things.
	Because we're not dealing with NPCs.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, that's and yeah, that's just amazing when you see that difference.
	Yeah.
	When you describe that difference, dude, like, and it this is definitely what I've been experienced in in the years, basically more so since I left the house and I started living by myself and actually exploring the world, kind of amazed by this, even that that exists, you know.
	Feel completely and also kind of overwhelmed with that kind of all that all that freedom and feeling like uh yeah, like I don't have to think about those things.
	I don't have to worry about those things.
	So are you ready to take on the drug use?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	So that's why I asked you earlier what your experience of marijuana was, and we did talk about it, and I know I led the conversation, but I think you agreed, and if you don't, obviously let me know.
	But it seemed to me that marijuana had some effect of disinhibiting, which alcohol does for some people as well, to just disinhibit people.
	And you said you got like ideas for like three really great creative video games out of that, right?
	Yeah.
	Right.
	So the purpose of drugs for most people is to de-NPC them.
	Because NPCs is inhibition.
	Well, I can't just state what I think and feel and like and prefer.
	I have to navigate this maze of trying to get what I want by finding the right buttons of rewards and punishments to push in other people.
	So NPC is to be inhibited.
	In the same way, if you're stuck in a maze, you're inhibited in where you can go as to where the maze passages are, right?
	So drugs for most people is an attempt to escape the inhibitions of NPC programming.
	Yeah.
	And as you are generally more authentic and direct with people, the desire for drugs goes down.
	Yes.
	Yeah, certainly.
	So the last thing that I would say, and obviously I'm happy to get your feedback going forward, but the last thing I'll say is this.
	If you suddenly found out that your companion or your NPC in Skyrim was in fact a sovereign consciousness that had gotten trapped in a video game from another dimension, or you know, just make up whatever scenario you want,
	where you suddenly realize that the NPC, and again, this would be a pretty wild story or game or movie or whatever it is, where your NPC is suddenly talking about things outside of the dialogue wheels, having their own thoughts and preferences of their own, their own backstory that wasn't contained in the documentation or anything like that, right?
	That would be a wild experience to wake up to the NPC, right?
	My God, this is actually a consciousness.
	This is like a real thing.
	Yeah.
	Now, if the NPC, you wake up to the NPC, and the NPC were to say, bro, you treated me like shit for like two years.
	You never asked me what I wanted.
	You never took my thoughts and feelings into consideration.
	You just did whatever the hell you wanted, and I was just supposed to drag along like some drunken water skier behind your boat of selfishness.
	Why like you treated me like shit, bro?
	What would you say?
	What would you say?
	What would you say?
	That That doesn't matter.
	Because that's the because it what matters is what I want to do in this game.
	Or at least, yeah.
	Like No, no, you're not you're not with me yet.
	Okay.
	So the NPC is saying you better apologize to me, man.
	You treated me like shit for two years.
	You just did whatever the hell you wanted to, and you just never asked me anything.
	You treated me like shit.
	You asshole.
	Or whatever, right?
	What would you say in return?
	How would you defend yourself?
	How would you defend yourself?
	Um I have no I had no choice.
	Like I had to choose between what was given to me.
	No, no, not yet.
	This is this is the barrier.
	This is the final boss for you, right?
	I have trouble see like I have trouble like switching between it being an NPC and it being like a consciousness.
	Like it's like so the consciousness has now has now proven to you that it's a sovereign consciousness, right?
	And says to you, you treated me like you you didn't take any of my you treated me terribly for two years.
	What have you got to say for yourself?
	Well, I think that's where I had the trouble.
	It's like now I I have to see this as uh this is an actual consciousness.
	I I would feel absolutely sorry.
	Like I would start apologizing.
	Or or at least I would be No, I would be wondering.
	No, you wouldn't just start apologizing.
	Because you have a defense.
	What's your defense?
	As to why you didn't take the NPC's thoughts and feelings into consideration while playing the game for two years.
	Because I want to finish the quest.
	Nope.
	Why did you not take the NPC's thoughts, feelings into consideration for two years?
	Is it because you're just a selfish guy who doesn't care about people?
	Why did you not think about what the NPC wanted while playing the game for two years before you realized the NPC was a consciousness?
	Because they'd never show me that they had a consciousness.
	Exactly.
	I had no reason to believe you were real.
	Your defense is you're an NPC.
	You're a piece of code.
	It would actually be crazy to imagine you were real.
	Yeah, yeah, but I think that's what I meant when I said, like, well, this is just what's the point, this just was giving to me.
	I just had to work with what was given to me to finish the quest, like to go where I need to go.
	There was no consideration of there being a consciousness.
	Right.
	It's one thing to order a creepy sex doll.
	It's quite another thing to chat with her, take her out to dinner, ask her how she's doing, right?
	Yeah, this is a sex doll, right?
	Yeah.
	Some sort of laser the real girl kind of thing.
	But so if the NPC says, why did you treat me like crap for two years, you jerk, you would say I had zero reason to believe you were real.
	Yeah.
	It would have been crazy for me to interact with you as a real person when you are in fact an NPC.
	The healthiest thing to do is to use you.
	To imagine that you're real would be a bizarre delusion.
	Oh, right.
	Yeah, that would make me crazy.
	Right.
	That's empathy for your father.
	You're an NPC.
	It would be insane for me to treat you as a real person.
	It's incomprehensible.
	Only crazy people treat NPCs like they're real people.
	Only crazy people treat NPCs like they're real people.
	And that's why he says to you, that's why I really wanted to focus on your dad.
	That's why he said to you, man, just what do you care?
	Worry about yourself.
	Just be an NPC.
	Treat people as NPCs.
	Right.
	I think they have my mom and or my dad had even said something like that.
	Well, you're just making yourself crazy like this.
	You're just going like.
	Yeah, if you you start taking everyone's needs and thoughts and feelings into consideration, you can't play the game.
	Like you're just gonna go nuts.
	Right.
	So pretending that robots are people is crazy.
	Pretending NPCs are people is crazy.
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	All right, are you ready for the final point?
	Yes.
	Yeah.
	All right.
	So the final point is you're taking it personally.
	You think that being treated by an NPC.
	So it's NPD, narcissistic personality disorder.
	NPC will just say it's narcissistic personality condition.
	NPC.
	All right.
	So you think that being treated by an NPC as an NPC means something about you.
	That the your parents have judged you as a child, have found you wanting, he's just not that interesting.
	He just doesn't quite rouse our attention.
	I don't get any particular, he does not spark joy, I do not get any particular pleasure out of interacting with this kid.
	And so you feel that being treated as an NPC by NPCs means something about you.
	Now, if I were talking to a secondary character in Skyrim, and the secondary character was saying, oh, this guy, he doesn't care at all about me.
	He just uses me to fight his battles.
	I'd be like, don't take it personally.
	He doesn't know that you're real.
	He's not judging or evaluating you.
	He doesn't care enough about you because he doesn't think you're real.
	You're just a variable.
	You're just green code in the matrix.
	He doesn't know that you're real.
	He doesn't think that you're real.
	So don't take it personally.
	Oh, but you know, he wants to go fight the dragon on the mountain.
	He never asks me anything.
	He just walks, and I I guess I just feel compelled to follow him along, and I'm I I'm clearly indicating like my head is pointing down, I'm walking a little slowly.
	I'm clearly indicating that I'm sad or depressed, and he's not asking me anything.
	It's like he doesn't think you're real.
	Don't take it personally.
	The deficiency is on his side.
	The deficiency is on his side.
	Right.
	There's these jokes again in Skyrim that every time you want to go somewhere, the NPC is in the way.
	Get out of the way.
	Stop standing in the doorway.
	Let me get behind the shudder and glitch and right.
	I want to go somewhere, get out of the way, right?
	Now you wouldn't, of course, you wouldn't talk to someone like that in real life, but it's just kind of a funny uh joke.
	In Skyrim, because they're not real.
	I mean, how many people have you killed in video games?
	So if you shot zoomed-in sniper style, unreal tournament style, or whatever it is, Halo, how many people have you shot in video games?
	It's not real.
	But you watch Charlie Kirk getting shot, and it's a visceral horror that for me has lasted close to two weeks.
	Oh.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	So that's real.
	That's a real guy getting shot.
	Not some avatar saying, I can't feel my legs.
	So that's real.
	And for narcissists, They're not judging you.
	All they're doing is giving you marks for convenience or inconvenience.
	That's all they're doing.
	And this is why earlier I was talking about look, if you have to swap out NPCs to finish the quest, you'll do that because all you're doing is saying, Is this NPC more or less valuable for what I want to do?
	If I'm already a wizard, I guess I need a fighter.
	If I'm already a fighter, I guess I need a wizard.
	You're just giving the NPCs points for utility or disutility.
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah.
	But you're not judging them.
	You're only judging their utility to you.
	This is why I asked earlier, did you have a PlayStation?
	And you said, yes.
	I think your parents bought you a console, right?
	Yeah.
	Right.
	So why did they buy you a console?
	Because it improved your utility.
	Or it reduced your disutility.
	Yeah.
	Because my guess is, I obviously don't know your father, but my guess is something like this.
	Your father came home.
	If you were sitting around bored, how would he feel?
	Annoyed.
	Right.
	I've just worked all day, I've had a tough day, and now I've got to what?
	Entertain this kid?
	Oh my God.
	Right?
	That's a that's a disutility.
	He didn't sit there and say, man, after a tough day, what could be more fun than having a game of monopoly with my kid?
	Like, isn't that gonna be a blast, right?
	He was like, uh, here's another side quest I don't want to do.
	Right?
	Yep.
	Mm-hmm.
	So that's bad for him.
	That's a negative for him, right?
	Yeah.
	So what does he do?
	How does he remove, reduce or eliminate that side quest?
	He gives me something, so um I won't bother him.
	Right.
	I'm busy with myself.
	He gives you an invisibility spell called a console.
	Yep, it'll be like whatever what do you want?
	Whatever you want.
	There it is.
	Whatever makes you not be a negative to me, I will get.
	I mean, honestly, it's the same thing as you know, the guys who want to go rob a house, they bring uh drugged meat for the dog, right?
	So that the dog doesn't interfere with their business.
	Sorry, you said something you said, oh, and I wanted to know what that was.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I um this comes back to like at some point when I was very young, I actually stopped celebrating my birthday altogether.
	I just removed it from the calendar.
	It's just like, no, we're not doing this anymore.
	Because my whole family started asking me, what do you want?
	What do you want?
	Anything, anything.
	And I've just said I don't know what I want.
	I want nothing.
	I don't want anything.
	And I remember that the response would often be frustration and annoyance.
	Like they would keep pushing and pushing as if like, well, we need to give you something.
	You need to do something or be busy with something.
	And it would be like Yeah, they it it's not like they would have more interest in what I would want, or try to help me out to find out what I would want.
	But it would it seems it seemed to be just irritation.
	Well, and also the fact that they didn't know what you want meant meant that they didn't know you.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, that was clear, yeah.
	So the irritation is, you know, give us a variable that we can satisfy because we have no idea what the variables are.
	Yeah.
	Which means we don't know you.
	Yeah.
	And we don't want to get to know you.
	So just tell us what to get, we'll get it, and we'll deliver it, and we'll call ourselves good parents.
	Yes.
	And I I stopped with that because I realized that if I only said one thing they would immediately get that.
	Right.
	Right.
	Now, I'm gonna guess, I'm gonna guess that that one thing was never something that you all could do together as a family.
	No.
	No, no.
	Like if you just said, hey, you know, Dad, what I really want is for us to go away for a long weekend camping or to a cottage or something like that, right?
	what would he say?
	Thank you.
	Well, that's it's hard for me to imagine.
	Um, but what would he say?
	Uh what I really want for my birthday dad is uh let's let's you and I uh go to um a resort for a long weekend and uh you know spend some great time together.
	Uh well he would be like, well, I'd have to put this aside and I'd have to figure out when we could do that, and it probably won't work out, like I'm busy with work.
	Yeah.
	Uh it's inconvenient, right?
	It has negative utility points for him.
	Yeah, well, the interesting thing is is that at some point there was one specific period where he suddenly arranged like he thought of this idea of like, well, okay, now we're going to just how would you like going to a zoo?
	And like every month we'll go to a new zoo.
	And he just out of nowhere came with that idea, and I and I was like, well, okay, okay, um, I guess we could try.
	And it I remember these trips as to be like very uncomfortable and awkward.
	And after a couple times, I think I would even say, like, well, let's just let's not do this anymore because it's just making me more depressed.
	Yeah, because you're not connecting, right?
	Yeah.
	Right.
	So the journey towards the NPC state of mind.
	We don't really have to get into that.
	I'll maybe do a show on that at some point, but we don't really have to get into it.
	But the point is that your father, did he become an NPC, or let's just say, was he selfish over the did he become selfish over the course of you knowing him, or was he selfish as far back as you can remember?
	Well, he was selfish as far as I can remember.
	As far back as you can see, you didn't make him into an NPC or you didn't make him selfish.
	He was that way when you met him.
	Yeah.
	Now, why?
	So, and and to go back to the scenario where I said, what if you found the NPC in Skyrim was actually a sovereign consciousness whose needs you'd been ignoring for a couple of years and they were outraged, you'd say, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, right?
	So apologizing is what the narcissist is always avoiding.
	And that means that the narcissist cannot process your independent existence because it would mean endless apologizing for having been so selfish.
	And once somebody has I I don't know, maybe it's some brain thing deep down or whatever, but I I think that the way that it goes is we're all tempted by little selfish things, and then we're all tempted by justifying things.
	And I think that narcissism, I don't think it just emerges, like maybe with severe trauma or something like that, but not just the death of a father, because that happens.
	Uh throughout evolution that's happened quite a bit.
	But I think what happens is there's little selfish choices, you do something at the expense of someone else, and then you just justify it.
	Yeah.
	And then because you've justified it, it's easier to do it uh the next time.
	It's like how do people become fat if they're not sort of fat as kids?
	Well, they say, Oh, I deserve a treat.
	I've worked really hard, I deserve a treat.
	And then they go have a treat.
	Right?
	And then they work hard again, and they, oh, well, you know, I guess the reward for me working hard is to have a treat.
	So they have another treat.
	And and so the justifications breed the behavior which breed the requirement for additional justifications.
	Which then causes further So I think it it kind of goes exponentially up from initial choices.
	I should kind of, by the bias what I'm writing my novel about, these little choices at the beginning of things that lead to uh vastly different lives later on.
	So I think that for your father, whatever environmental stimuli and whatever choices he made, there's only a certain number of choices you can make before you can't turn back.
	Yeah.
	So let me ask you this.
	Do you think that it's possible for you to go out into the world and treat people as NPCs?
	Do you think that it would emotionally, I don't mean intellectually, emotionally, is it possible for you to go out into the world and to treat people as utility objects that only serve your pleasures and preferences.
	No.
	It's not possible.
	It's an involuntary mechanism, right?
	Yeah, I can't do it.
	Yeah.
	You can't do it.
	I I can't sit there and look at my wife and say, well, she's just a utility object for my preference.
	Right?
	I always want to think about what she thinks and feels and so on, right?
	So it is as impossible for your father to empathize with you as it is for you to not empathize with others.
	He can't turn it on any more than you can turn it off.
	You're asking the impossible.
	Just as if you were to say, well, the only way that I can be happy is to stop caring about what anyone else thinks and feels, and to pretend that they're NPCs and not real, you can't do that because it's kind of hardwired and baked into, you know, both maybe some genetics, maybe some uh certainly some environment, but I would say a lot of choices.
	He can't empathize any more than you can de-empathize.
	Yeah, he's he's too far in in he's too far into it.
	Like uh and that's something, yeah.
	That's something I've been thinking about too.
	It's like because at some because people do have they seems like they start, you start with a freedom of choice, but the more choices you make towards that MPC states, and the more justifications you have, the harder it seems to become to to get away from that, right?
	Well, so the analogy that I would use, I think you're right.
	The analogy that I would use is I have chosen not to learn Japanese.
	Now, if I go to Japan, I can't speak Japanese.
	I've I've chosen not to.
	And I could have at any point in my life chosen to start learning Japanese and dedicated myself to learning Japanese and spent 10 years or whatever it is to learn Japanese, but I haven't done that.
	So the result of all of my little choices to not learn Japanese are that I don't speak Japanese.
	And I I I I go to Japan, I can't speak the language.
	So whatever choices your father has made, I'm sure that there were flashes where he's like, ooh, you know, that seemed a bit selfish, or ooh, my kids said maybe I should because I've known people who are really selfish actually quite well.
	And when I've talked to them directly, they've always told me every single one.
	And it's not scientific, but it's also not irrelevant.
	But every single person who's selfish has told me, oh, I did I did look at you know, this person, I thought that they were sad, and I thought maybe I should go and talk to them, but I just thought maybe I'll do it later.
	I don't know, whatever it is, right?
	Or I thought, ah, they've brought it on themselves or whatever it is, right?
	Because what selfish people do is they make everyone around them unhappy, and then they say that the other people are to blame for their own unhappiness.
	This really happens from parents to to children.
	So most selfish, every selfish person I've known, and I've had quite a window over the last 20 years, and I was even having these conversations before I was a public figure.
	I've had insight, deep insight into thousands of people's, you know, psyches.
	And uh every self person, obviously, every selfish person I've talked to both on the show and not on the show, although very few people call in who are selfish, they've always had these forks in the road.
	Right?
	They've always had these forks in the road where they say, Oh, I should be nicer, I should be better.
	Uh I even knew one selfish person who said, like, I woke up every day promising myself I was going to be nicer, and I just never did.
	Wow.
	Wow.
	And after a certain point, there's no turning back.
	And certainly if you've messed up as a Parent by the time your kids become adults, I mean, it's done.
	You can't fix it because they're already adults.
	It's like trying to try and say, Well, I didn't feed you enough kid when you were younger, so you're short.
	So now that you're 25, I'm gonna start feeding you 4,000 calories a day.
	That's not going to fix it, right?
	It's too late.
	And after it becomes too late to fix, there's no path back.
	Because narcissism is saying my pleasure is all that matters.
	And apologizing and realizing you were a bad person is incredibly painful.
	And if you're a hedonist, which is what narcissists are, if you're a hedonist, then you only do what is pleasurable.
	You avoid pain and pursue pleasure.
	And since apologizing and realizing that you've been woefully deficient in a pretty foundational manner is incredibly painful, they don't have any muscles to sustain negative experiences without anger at others.
	Right.
	Yeah, that makes total sense.
	They have not learned to deal with it.
	And plus the longer they don't do that, the more the more painful that becomes, of course.
	Right.
	And the only equation that selfish people have is if you make me feel bad, I will make you feel bad.
	They don't have ooh, you know, you're kind of onto something there, and I really should examine my conscience and and so on, right?
	That's all they have.
	And this was Charlie Kirk, right?
	Charlie Kirk was making leftists feel bad, so leftists made him feel bad and his whole movement.
	And it's right.
	That's all that selfish people have.
	You make me feel bad, I will make you feel worse.
	You put my heart, you put my heart in the hospital, I'll put yours in a morgue.
	That's all they have is escalation and aggression.
	After the manipulation fails and so on, right.
	Yeah, yeah.
	For me, it's always been like, well, why do you why are you doing this?
	This just makes things worse for everybody in the long term.
	But for them, it works.
	But like Well, because you're thinking this makes it worse for everybody, which is like saying, I want to go fight the dragon on the mountain.
	This makes it worse for the NPC.
	Like you don't even think of what the NPC there is no everyone else out there, things could be better or worse for.
	There's only what you want.
	So it's not personal to you.
	You didn't fail.
	You didn't fail to make yourself real to your father.
	He didn't judge you and find you wanting or boring or less interesting than work or anything like that.
	You're an NPC.
	He's an NPC.
	He's a machine programmed to serve his own preferences and needs in the moment.
	It's not personal.
	You know, like m my mother literally screamed that she hated me.
	But it wasn't personal.
	It wasn't like, oh my gosh, I'm such a hateful kid.
	I was actually a pretty nice kid.
	I'm a pretty nice person as a whole, right?
	But I mean, what she was saying was me having a child is interfering with dating.
	I want to get a high quality, wealthy man to commit to me, but he won't commit to me because I'm a single mother.
	And so I hate that you're in the way of me getting what I want.
	It wasn't personal to me.
	It wasn't like if she'd had some other kid, it would have been great.
	I was in the category of child, which put her in the category of single mother, which put her in the category of date but don't marry.
	And she didn't hate me.
	She hated her own choices, she hated her own um anyway.
	I won't don't need to go through the whole list.
	But I mean it had it it didn't have anything to do with me.
	She would have hated any child that she had, because any child interf would have interfered with her ability to land a high value man.
	Wasn't understand it's not personal to me.
	Didn't hate me.
	I mean, she said it, but it it wasn't it wasn't personal to me.
	Yeah, it had nothing to do with your personality.
	Oh, yeah, no, it wasn't a judgment.
	Like if you've ever seen, like there's a couple of ways that you find out people's patients, right?
	One is watch them try to untangle Christmas tree lights, And the other is, you know, you go someplace and your luggage gets lost or something like that, see how they handle it.
	So I mean, I don't know how your father was with frustration, but if your father had issues with frustration, um, you know, they uh these these fucking lamps, you know, these so tangled that right, blah, blah, blah, right?
	Yeah.
	Well, that's I mean, are they really morally judging the Christmas tree lights as being fractious and negative and interfering and blah, blah, blah, blah.
	No, they're not doing any of that.
	They're just annoyed because they're not getting what they want, which is to be able to hang the Christmas tree lights.
	So they're angry.
	They're angry at metal and plastic.
	That's it.
	And that's not a moral judgment.
	And it wasn't like if they had a different set of Christmas tree lights that were tangled, they'd be equally angry.
	Does that make sense?
	Doesn't matter.
	It's not specific to the Christmas tree lights.
	Yeah.
	It's anything that's tangled that they want to straighten that's difficult.
	Yeah.
	And so any kid would have been treated the same as you.
	It's not personal.
	I mean, if you're in a war and you've got to shoot guys, you're not like, oh, I hate that guy.
	It's not personal.
	It's business.
	And to an NPC, nothing is personal.
	It's all business.
	Yeah.
	It just happened to be me, but it could have like it would wouldn't have mattered to them.
	No, you are just you are a variable that sometimes increases their happiness and sometimes decreases their happiness based upon what they like or don't like in the moment.
	You're just a variable.
	And if you're inconvenient, they'll get mad.
	Right?
	Like if if you live in a house and you have a water heater and the water heater fails.
	You're you're upset, right?
	I mean, probably not terribly, right?
	It's just an annoyance and an expense, but not a big a big thing.
	But it wouldn't be like, well, if I had a different water heater that failed, I'd be fine.
	All kids have needs, and the only way that you could survive selfishness was to have no needs.
	And I would also argue that your I would say probably addiction to video games when you were younger was an attempt to understand your parents' minds.
	What is it like when only my needs matter?
	Yeah.
	What is it like if everyone around me is an NPC and only my quest matters?
	And I I judge them based upon their utility in achieving my quest.
	I never think about their needs or their preference.
	I I think, and again, I'm not saying for the multiplayer games because that's a little bit different, but in terms of the solo games, um solo games uh train you on understanding narcissism, and I think it actually trains some people on narcissism because you don't have to negotiate with NPCs.
	They just do what you want, or you dump them.
	And it trains people to not pair bond.
	But anyway, that's a hot topic for another time.
	But I would say that that was probably one of the reasons why you found the game so compelling is A, you had to have some kind of interaction, and B, it was training you on your parents' mindset, I would imagine.
	Yeah, well, I remember well back in the day it was like online games, multiplayer games were not that much of a king yet.
	But and uh that was definitely I was fascinated by that.
	And I was trying, like, because I was really fascinated by the split screen games, like games I could play with somebody else.
	Yeah, yeah.
	So I think I I was really trying as as early as possible, like I kind of started to have this g disgust for single player games.
	And I really at some point I really kind of avoided them because of the.
	So isolating, right?
	It's yeah, really isolating.
	Like, why would I even want to do this by myself?
	Is anybody alive in here?
	No.
	Well, and but even the even the split screen games and so on, you're not really negotiating with other people, usually.
	I mean, if it's like a racing game, you're just competing with other people.
	Even if it's a co-op kind of game, you know, uh like my daughter and I will play Rocket League from time to time.
	Uh, even if it's a you're not really negotiating, you're just oh, I'm over here, oh pass the ball, oh I'm but in front of the goal.
	Like you're just passing back information to help you achieve the quest, but you're not really delving into the other person's thoughts, history needs and again, I'm not saying it's a Terrible thing, but it's not the same as having a relationship.
	No, no, sure.
	It's a slightly more vivid NPC.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	All right.
	Well, listen, we've had a good old jawbone.
	Uh, how's the conversation been for you as a whole?
	Oh, it's been it's been great.
	It's been great.
	I think you really you tackle exactly what has been an issue for me basically my whole life.
	Um and I didn't expect to be talking about that.
	But that is definitely that seems to have been coming back in conversations too.
	And like friends telling me like, hey, like you're taking this.
	I actually had this a couple of days ago.
	Like a good a good friend of mine told me, like, it seems it sounds like you're taking these things very, very personally.
	And he seemed like very kind of uh he was very apathetic.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I've said that you're deficient in any way when I say it's not personal.
	Because you can't just say to people, well, you're taking things way too personally.
	That doesn't really help.
	Yeah.
	And also it's just I'm not saying your friend's dissing you, but it just seems like another kind of dick.
	Like, hey man, just don't take it personally.
	It's like, uh it's not that simple, right?
	Like if somebody's sick, like, hey man, just get better.
	It's like, uh if I knew how to do that, uh anyway.
	Yeah, yeah, exactly.
	No, I did fight back against that and he did understand.
	So I but I that that is that is what I what I experienced too.
	Yeah, me like, well, that's it's not that.
	Um right.
	Well, and also very glad that you're a gamer, because I've wanted to get this NPC thing all across along uh for a long time, but um I I needed a good spark for it.
	All right.
	Listen, um listen, you're welcome to call back anytime.
	I really do appreciate that you've been listening for a long time, and I'm I'm really glad that we had a chance to have this conversation.
	I think it's gonna do the world a whole lot of good.
	And I hope you'll keep me posted about how things are going.
	Thank you.
	I will, and I will definitely call in more often and be more involved.
	I think this for me has been kind of like a spark and just.
	Yeah, people are always like I've been wanting to do this for years.
	Why didn't I do it sooner?
	Yeah.
	All right.
	Well, and if you're listening to this free domain.com slash call, you can uh set up your own call.
	And uh I appreciate your time and I look forward to hearing how things are going.
	Thank you so much.
	Thanks, man.

▲