Chapters
0:00 Family Dynamics
20:19 Recognizing Danger
26:18 Mother's Responsibility
39:26 Legal Battles and Warped Perspectives
40:42 Parenting Challenges and Peer Influences
41:00 Protecting Your Brother
42:20 Stepping Up and Shaking Off Lethargy
43:01 Brother's Decision: Moving Out or Staying
44:57 Facing the Toxic Environment
45:58 Exercise in Empathy: Putting Yourself in Others' Shoes
48:10 Helping Others with Empathy
49:06 Empathy for Future Self
50:04 Separating Siblings: Bad Idea
51:59 Focusing on Empathy for Future Self
1:03:13 Mixed Feelings and Realizations
1:06:18 Understanding Mother's Behavior
1:08:40 Choosing Partners and Maintaining Behavior
1:09:29 Music Journey and Publishing
1:12:25 Reactions to Music Creations
1:13:28 Financial Realities and Future Aspirations
1:17:33 Course Correction
1:22:37 Overcoming Resistance
1:29:52 Moving Beyond Comfort
1:33:00 Facing Maternal Influence
1:35:48 Personal Reflections
1:40:10 Unheard Melodies
1:45:20 Embracing Cosmic Inspiration
1:51:14 Envy and Creativity
Long Summary
The conversation delves into the speaker's deep concerns about their brother's well-being, especially in the shadow of their father's legal troubles and the family's history of trust issues. Despite being a music tutor with a modest income, the speaker feels overwhelmed and lost, unsure of how to support their brother amidst the family turmoil. Seeking guidance on confronting their parents, managing responsibilities, and finding personal happiness, the speaker navigates the complex dynamics of family relationships and the struggle to shield their brother from harm, all while grappling with uncertainty about the future. They emphasize the critical need to prioritize the brother's safety, highlighting the mother's questionable judgment and advocating for empathy to understand the vulnerable position the brother is in. Taking responsibility and making decisions that safeguard the brother's well-being become the focal point, urging the listener to reflect on how they would feel if in the brother's shoes. The speaker underscores the complexities of family dynamics and delves into the psychological underpinnings that shape behavior, encouraging the listener to empathize not only with others but also with their future self to make informed choices that nurture personal growth and foster healthier family relationships. Transitioning to a different aspect, the speaker addresses the listener's struggles in their music career, stressing the significance of marketing, passion, and confidence in achieving success in the industry. Emphasizing the role of risk-taking and deadlines in propelling one's career forward, they highlight stepping out of comfort zones as essential for reaching creative heights. The power of creativity, music, and art in uplifting and inspiring others is underscored, with a call to embrace one's talents without reservation, recognizing the unique contribution each person can make to enrich the world through their creative gifts.
[0:00] I appreciate you're a busy guy. I hope I'm lucky enough to have you read this. I think I'm too dependent on my parents to confront my parents or live by my principles properly. My parents are separated. I live with my mom. I have a younger brother living with my dad, studying to go to university and then to become a doctor. During this time, my dad was arrested and convicted for watching indecent images of children or child pornography. I felt shock, denial, disgust, confusion, despair, and mostly I'm terrified how this could affect my brother. My mom has also expressed concern about him repressing his feelings. My fear is that, you know, if he doesn't process his trauma properly, he could make, or well, I suppose any of us could make terrible choices. Is um and um yeah um my brother's 18th birthday is coming up uh oh sorry it's actually already passed now um one of his presents i got him was real-time relationships the logic of love, i'm not sure what else i should do to help him um i think he has a fairly dismissive view on therapists um because the care worker he had to talk to during our dad's arrest um.
[1:24] Um who was the only who was only really there to um make sure he didn't feel in danger but that's about it um i don't think i can envisage my dad's parents being in my life forever after what's happened i have no idea what to do or what to think i'm very lost and i think i need to process things myself um i'm turning i've turned 24 um i'm a self-employed musician music tutor I don't earn enough to move out I was earning towards um 1,600 to 2,000 pounds um I don't know what that is in Canadian money um you mean per month yeah okay sorry yes yeah yeah.
[2:09] Um um yes um that was last year before well before the COVID stuff happened I now only earn um over half of that um i mean music is my passion it seems to be about the only thing i'm very good at um i hope this is enough information for now i would be eternally grateful for a brutally honest conversation with you and um i could really do with your guidance with what my priorities perhaps should be um perhaps how i can help my brother uh confront my parents how i could lead a virtuous life and be happier yeah that's a that's quite a quite a quite a lot to chew over and i i sympathize massively with what you have to uh process with regards to your father how long ago did this happen this happened um um i would say just before sort of covid hit and um and then the process of him getting arrested and going to court was during um no sorry just before um, covid went sort of crazy around the world if that makes sense right right did he did he get jailed.
[3:24] He um he's on suspended sentence okay um now you mentioned your brother's trauma and it seemed to be somewhat specific or separate from your trauma regarding these horrible events is there something thing in particular that you're concerned about with your brother no um perhaps nothing too different to me although he's had to live with my dad and i've lived with my mom so um he's had to deal with him more um in that aspect um um and i suppose he's the youngest as well so i just uh want to look out for him as well, I mean, I'm sure you're aware that the obvious question is, do you think he was a victim?
[4:16] Do you mean of my dad? Yes. No, I don't think so. I don't think, I don't believe my dad did anything, not to my brother, certainly not to me, in any sort of sexual assault kind of way. As far as I know when I found out about this I was obviously in denial it seemed so out of the blue as well well at least this sort of indecent images watching stuff, okay and how long how old were you or how long ago did your parents separate, um um my dad has sort of always been working away from home um and occasionally visit so, wait you mean even before the divorce so there isn't they've not they're technically not well separation whatever yeah yeah yeah um they they've always he's always been away if that makes sense um and then occasionally visits during the holidays and stuff wait i'm sorry Sorry, I'm trying to understand. So when he was your father and your parents were together, he was away for most of the time?
[5:43] Sorry, just to clarify. Yeah, just to clarify. They're not divorced. No, I understand that. So your parents were together, then they separated, right?
[5:55] Um you know what i don't i thought you said sorry if i got this wrong it could be on me i apologize i thought you said they were not together or they broke up, it's um i don't know if they're a fish um i don't know if if they've i think i think they must have done it on um you know okay you know i'm sorry this is a stupid question when you're you're separated do you have to write it out as if like like a bit like you would with divorce papers, well i know i mean you you i don't know what the laws are where you are i guess i don't care about the legality i care about the physical separation right so your parents were together in the same under the same roof and then at some point they're not under the same roof and i guess i'm just asking when that transition occurred um i would say that that has always happened since i was born.
[6:48] Um because um initially initially because my dad worked away had jobs elsewhere, um and then it became because of other problems with the marriage and stuff so you said that he was was he gone for most of the year i think you said he would come for christmas and other things is that right yes um and summer holidays um and stuff like that right and i assume you know why that probably was right um to well to uh are you asking me why i think that um yeah why was he gone for most of the time i mean you could say that there were economic reasons and so on but there's probably another reason that's more foundational yeah i think well they didn't get on that's for sure nope um that's not it um um oh so we could do stuff behind our back yeah i mean if he's got these perverted sexual impulses then he probably wants to be elsewhere alone yeah well let's hope relatively speaking yes yeah for sure for sure okay all right and.
[8:17] Then they but then they separated at some point relatively recently is that right as far as you can tell i mean not legally i don't care but i mean just in terms of like not living together, Yes, yes, that's right. Okay. And how is your mom doing with all of this stuff? And what are her thoughts and perspectives on what your father has, what's been revealed?
[8:42] She lost trust in him from a thing before. So she already didn't trust him. I can talk to you about that as well. Yeah, let's go chronologically. so if there was a thing before uh probably helpful to hear about so i'm just trying to think, i i think the earliest sort of big thing that made her lose trust in my dad is he started um, secretly sort of going out and seeing someone else um i don't she he you know my dad says he didn't have an affair but he obviously probably had some emotional affair at least, um and so when we found that out then yeah that was definitely a big thing which she realized that you know can't um look at him the same way or can't trust him in the same way, um and how long ago was that that was probably that was that what is before we found out about the um child pornography stuff so probably two years ago now what's the affair two years ago or was it some point previous but it was only found out about two years ago um.
[10:00] Um i think overall probably two to three years ago so maybe it happened three years ago and then found out a year later or something okay um or it's it happened you know it was different um different times right has your mother apologized to you and your brother as yet.
[10:18] No i mean it would seem to me that i don't know i can't imagine it but if i brought some babysitter into my daughter's life who abused her in some manner that would be on me right.
[10:31] Yeah wouldn't be on her i mean it would be on the babysitter but i would be the cause of responsibility for that so is your mom like wow did i ever choose a bad father for you guys and put you in massive risk of this guy who appears to have some perverted sexual impulses towards children um gosh what a mess uh i i brought you guys into i'm so sorry when i um no and when i sort of suggested that she said things along the lines of i couldn't have possibly known.
[11:07] Um and and i said what about the red flags you know there must have been red flags um and she says um i think i don't know she was just quite dismissive um i can't remember of course she was because you're trying to get a woman who's made terrible decisions to take responsibility which is like pushing two opposing magnets together sometimes right so yeah so so that means either your mother is lying that they were red flags but she's not telling you about them because she doesn't want you to to hold her accountable or responsible for anything or she has absolutely nothing to teach you about life and will be of no value to you going forward because she can then be completely bamboozled for decades by a guy who turns out to be this kind of guy in which case she's absolutely no wisdom to give you whatsoever in fact doing the opposite of what your mother does is probably a fine idea.
[12:03] Mm right? Because, you know, your parents are supposed to give you some wisdom and some value and some, you know, here's how to live, right? Here's how to have a life that's decent, right? I mean, I'm sure your parents raised you to, you know, tell the truth and don't steal, don't hit, some sort of moral instruction. So if your mother says, oh no, there was no way I could tell any of this about your father, then she's saying that evil is completely invisible to her, immorality is completely invisible to her, and she has absolutely nothing to teach you and I can't imagine what the utility of her going forward could possibly be as far as helping you in life. I, I, when she said that sort of thing to me, I thought like, well, I hope she never decides to bloody, uh, find another man. You know what I mean? Um, cause it's, well, if she does, you have no obligation to have anything to do with it. No, she can't tell evil doers. So, and, and evil doers look for people who can't find evil doers. So it'll be like, yeah, good, good luck with all that.
[13:03] Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I mean, for me, in my life, people have to take responsibility for their choices. So I don't have them in my life because it's just too exhausting running around playing pick up and catch up for everybody who gets to make mistakes and never own anything. Just as I, you know, people around me expect me to take ownership for my decisions. I expect people to take ownership for their decisions. I just, I can't deal with toddlers in adult form. I guess I could try to, but what's the point? I mean, they're just going to forever make stupid choices and then blame everyone else around them. And I already have a child who's actually a child that has the excuse of being a child. Yeah, yeah. Maybe the fact I'm not a very independent person is partly...
[13:47] I don't know in her interest um so that it's a a good excuse it's to not have to um, because because if i if i say to her you need to be a responsible person, and then i'm or you um make responsible choices and then i'm there still living at home no no no okay look look we'll get to all of that stuff but please don't try and give me and i you know you'll be appalled when i say it though don't feel bad about yourself please don't try and give me i I like being a musician to I married a guy who's into these kind of sexual images. Right. These are not even in the same moral planet. Do you understand? Like, don't don't. Well, you know, I guess I can't ask her to be responsible if I'm still a musician. It's like being a musician. It's not the same as this. What your mom did.
[14:34] Okay. I understand. I mean, yeah, please. For the love of all that's holy. Let's put these things in massively separate piles. Let's not try and blend them together. Sure. Unless you're a drummer. Everybody knows my hate on pajamas. Everybody knows my hate on pajamas. Anyway, but no, no, let's keep these things completely separate, right? Okay. And she doesn't have to take responsibility at all. I mean, most people don't, right? But the question is, okay, well, what if she doesn't take responsibility? What if she says she's so blind that she married and enabled your father for decades, gave him two children, and now claims to be completely ignorant of any of his characteristics any of them there were absolutely no warning signs she's completely a babe in the woods completely blind it's like okay so all you're going to do is lead me astray in life like having you around is simply going to lend me astray in life and also and also my particular perspective i mean obviously your choice is your choice if you can't tell these kinds of people you're never having a fucking fucking moment with my kids ever. No. No, definitely not.
[15:47] And do you understand that letting her off the hook with regards to responsibility is incredibly cruel to her because it prevents her from having any ownership of her life or any adulthood in her existence? Mm-hmm. um and also i bet when you were a kid right when you were a kid if if if you claimed to not be ignorant of things that were blindingly obvious you were never given that as an excuse when you were five or six or seven or ten years old or anything like that no no i think it's reasonable to hold adults at the same standards that they hold a five-year-old to i think that's reasonable, that sounds fair yeah um okay why are you so focused on your brother just sort of help me out a little here is it like serious older brother protected protection instinct because most of what you talked about with regards to your concerns were not with yourself but with your brother and i'm not saying that's wrong or bad or anything i'm just help me understand yeah, yeah yeah that sort of thing um i i i supposed um at the time like he didn't um he didn't know like you i introduced him to your videos and your book um and i thought he doesn't even have, uh that if you know what i mean um at the time um so it doesn't even have what.
[17:05] Um like but i suppose you like your videos and stuff helped in a in you know it definitely in some ways helped me through that time to process um.
[17:22] You know process things um and the fact that i gave him for example your um real-time relationships i think that helped um and i i just felt like if he didn't have that um you know i just have no idea what would um um what could lead him astray you know do you know what i'm trying to say no i don't understand why you're taking so much focus on your brother again i'm not criticizing or i'm just genuinely curious because it seems like your life is further along and further behind in a way right sure so i'm just trying to understand like you seem to me to have a bullet wound he has a bullet grazing and you're saying no no go help him let's let's focus on him and i'm just trying to figure that out um but he lived with he lives with my dad and so i just still um, yeah um i mean he's gonna move he's gonna go to um what you call it halls of residence to um yeah the university i get it got it yeah um but yeah he still lives um with dad at the moment why does he live with your father i mean i i get that but why wouldn't he be with your mom.
[18:43] Because um partly because of the the school um that he's uh gone to because he went he went to, um or he used to obviously used to sorry say obviously he used to live with me and my mom um and then he moved to a better school um to study and get better grades i'm sorry i'm sorry I'm trying to understand. So he's living with your dad when your dad is going through all this legal stuff, right? Yeah. Why? I mean, you can play school. That doesn't answer anything to me. I mean, if you're concerned about your brother, I don't know why he's still with you. Help me up, Joe. I'm sorry. I'm sure that there's some explanation that I don't understand. But if you're concerned about your brother, he would have been a child when your father was going through all this legal stuff regarding sexually explicit images of children. Am I correct about this? Yes. What the fuck? Why is a child living in the house of a guy going through this stuff?
[19:52] Well i i don't i i don't know i suggest i suggest it that's what i suggested do you want to come back home he didn't want to and i said you know and he and he really didn't want to mess up his grades he said um he was very focused on school and i'm not saying okay let's say that so why Why not then have your father move it? Like, just being under the same roof as a guy going through all of this stuff.
[20:20] Yeah. Right? Yeah, yeah. Being under the same... I mean, you understand that that seems like just about the furthest thing from a wise decision that I can conceive of. And I guess I'm trying to sort of patch together your concern for your brother. I mean, wouldn't this be like a four-alarm-fire family emergency? Whatever we do, we don't leave these two alone.
[20:41] I mean, you say nothing happened? Okay. Okay, but you didn't know that at the time that nothing was going to happen. So wouldn't that be a, I mean, your dad's kind of like a predator, right? And your son would be in the category of his prey, his son, sorry. Am I wrong about this? Correct me where I'm astray. Well, we didn't, um, we, I mean, I, I don't know if this is bad saying this. We didn't believe that, um, dad was going, cause he already moved there at the time before. Um, I don't, I don't know if I've said, um, he was already living there, um, before all this happened with, with living with dad before we found out about all this stuff. Um and then um so then it happened and then i said do you want to come you want to come back home.
[21:40] Um um i don't know um okay but what was your mom doing on all of this she's she's got a son who's now living under the same roof as a guy who ended up being convicted of this stuff right, yeah what was i mean i'm trying not to think of her as useless as tits on a bull but what the hell was she doing she can't claim the excuse that she didn't know at this point, right she can't claim the excuse that she didn't know so what now that she knows she knows he knows that he did um he watched the yeah yeah i get all of that so she knows that there's okay is that a red flag yes of course it is right so she knows that there's a red flag what did she do to protect her youngest son, not enough obviously well no tell him not enough what did she do like not enough is like 99 but that's still 99 so what did she do, um
[22:49] Well, she called him. He came home every now and then to come whenever he wanted to talk to him. You're killing me. I mean, okay, rather than being a neutral reporter on this stuff, ask me what you think of this. What did you feel about this? That your mother, oh, well, I didn't know that your father was a danger. Okay, now you're aware he's a danger. Well, I call him, and occasionally he comes to visit. My son. She doesn't, she doesn't believe and didn't believe that my dad was a danger to him particularly.
[23:30] Well, okay. Let's say that that's entirely true. She has some, okay. First of all, she says, she says she can't possibly detect evil. And then when evil is shown to her, she's like, oh, that's not a danger. So she's already off the equation as far as anything useful to add. Right. Yeah. Here's the other thing too. what if your dad has buddies what if he's got a little clan what if he's got a little tribe of like-minded people what what what if what if there's just general creepy shit going on, right this is what i'm sort of again i'm sort of a bit at a loss here and i'm sorry for jumping in and all of this but i'm just telling you sort of what i think it feel it's like you're concerned about your brother but when he was a child under the roof of a guy who was convicted of this unbelievable stuff this horrifying stuff this perverse stuff involving children he's a child under the same roof as the guy left completely unsupervised right.
[24:33] So yeah i'm just trying to wake your family no i'm just trying to wake you up and because it seems like everybody is just like sleepwalking through this and i don't blame you because you're the kid right you're looking to your mom or you're for leadership i guess in this situation right i I can't believe that Child Protective Services would leave your son with your dad. But I don't know. What do I know, right? But that's what they did. And my mom said, that's one of the things she said, that Child Protection Services deemed it safe, and he's safe in that household. Right. Right. Okay. And look, here's the thing, right? Maybe he was, but he's still living in the environment. Is he going to be able to date? Is he going to be able to bring a girl over to watch a movie?
[25:19] Is he feeling nervous? Is he feeling anxious? Is he... Is he working on computers where something bad could be happening, that he could be implicated? I mean, there's so many red flags here. There's so much. I mean, do you know what I mean? Like, as far as I'm trying to sort of figure out your level of protection towards your brother versus the level of practical protection that he experienced over the last couple of years. Yeah. Well, maybe I didn't do enough. Well, here's the thing. I mean, you're still the son, right? Right. What I want you to see, though, is that I think in, of course, if there was a family that was able to act this decisively with regards to immorality, then it wouldn't have been in that situation to begin with. Right. But the idea that, well, you know, he just he doesn't want to mess with his grades. It's like, um.
[26:09] Yeah, but there is a risk element involved here that's pretty serious, right?
[26:15] Yeah. Yeah. And it seems like everybody just kind of sailed past that. Now let me ask you this if you had sat down with your mom and you just said okay shake it off woman shake it off mom you whatever this fog is that you got going on you need to reverse sneeze and blow it out of your brain right dad has been accused and it seems pretty evident that he did this terrible stuff this is a toxic environment for my brother we have to get him out of that environment now if that means we've all got to borrow money and set him up in a little apartment near a school that he's but he's got to be out from under this cloud and this risk this danger, you say oh well i didn't know before okay now we know now we know yeah okay so what what mountains do we need to move to make this happen what would your mom say she would tell me and i feel awful saying this but she would tell me I like you don't need to you.
[27:26] Because i think we had this conversation before i'm trying to remember what she said when i suggested you don't have to remember it remember it but what would she say if you can sort of just do this quick role play right so you say something like that to your mom Mom, what does she say in return?
[27:46] God, I can't even think. Would she say you're overreacting? The Child Protective Services says it's okay. It'll be fine. No need to worry. It'll work itself out. Is it like this sort of foggy goop like that? Yeah, I think so. Right. In which case I would say, Mom, your one job is to protect your children. You understand that, right? Your one job is to protect your children. Now, you happened to have children in the house with a guy who shot randomly into the house. Bullet holes all over the walls, in the water heaters, in the ceiling. Now, the fact that your children didn't happen to get hit is bloody good luck relative to what good luck should be. But now, you are completely aware of the danger to children that dad represents, and you have a child in the environment. So poo-pooing this it's not so bad it's not a big deal it'll be that's not an option anymore, you need to act to protect your son we need to act to protect our son i'll chip in you'll chip in i don't know maybe dad can chip in but we got to get him out of there now if he wants to stay in the school okay then we get him a little place near the school a room in a house or a bachelor or apartment or something. But we cannot put my brother in harm's way in this way for the sake of what?
[29:13] 800 quid a month? 700 quid a month? Come on. You can't be that cheap with regards to your son's safety. I refuse to accept that even as a remote possibility. Yeah. So what the hell is she up to that this would not be the first thing she would leap to?
[29:39] I don't know. I'm at a loss for words. Well, you do know, though. I mean, nobody, as you know from this show, nobody gets to say, I don't know about people they've known for a quarter century. Convenience over, caring about my brother enough. It's convenient not to do that, and again, the same excuses, it's not so bad, but he'll go to uni soon. He'll be out of there soon um he'll come and visit as much as he as he um as he as he can, um he said his dad is not a real danger to him no but she's already said she doesn't have any clue what real danger is right she's already admitted that she has no she has no signs she doesn't understand risk she doesn't understand danger so she's already established herself as So the idea is I, who had kids with a guy like this and saw no red flags, now completely understand that my youngest son is in no danger to the point where I'm not willing to cough up some quid to keep him safe. So she has no credibility as far as identifying danger, right?
[31:04] And she won't admit she'll she'll say that she was right in um judging him as a good husband and now she's right in judging him afterwards after all of this that so yeah so she's right she she was he was a good person with no red flags and now she totally understands the risk that your son is in even though she had no idea the risk that you guys were in for 20 or 16 years or whatever it was right okay all right so you understand that this is serving you up.
[31:41] This is keeping you in harm's way this is serving you up this is colluding this is co-conspirator however unconscious it may be but if you know your child's in danger serious danger like mind alteringly serious danger of being warped and corrupted in this environment if you you know that and you let it happen, it's because you want it to happen. Not you're okay with it. You want it to happen. And again, I'm not saying that's conscious or anything, but I just view people's decisions empirically. So when somebody who says, I have no capacity to evaluate evil and danger, now says, my youngest son under the roof of a guy like this is totally safe. It's because she wants him there. She needs him there. There's some horrible, sick thing that she gets out of it. And I'm not saying any kind of sadistic thing. I don't know. But there's a secondary gain there that's big enough to put your brother in danger.
[32:37] If she leaves him there, when it's clear what danger he's in, she wants him to be in danger. And I don't know why. Obviously, I have no idea. But empirically, tell me if I'm wrong. I'm happy to be corrected. Oh, my God. Because she didn't pause for a moment and say, holy shit, I'm really bad at evaluating danger. So maybe I better shut the hell up about this and assume there's more danger than I think. Because for 15, 16 years, I thought there was no danger when there was huge danger. So maybe I should step back a little from my own big capacity to evaluate danger and act with the greatest caution possible. That would be the sensible thing to do, right? Yeah. But no.
[33:24] Well. But again, this is your life, your family. I'm telling you what I think is a potential theory. I don't obviously want to dictate anything and I can't prove anything, but that's the pattern that I would see. Yeah. So you think perhaps, like you say, secondary gain, does she benefit from this situation and perhaps doesn't want her brother to be removed from that situation? Situation. Well, without a doubt, she doesn't want your brother removed from that situation because she didn't remove your brother from that situation. I mean, that's just a fact, right? I mean, people can tell you all they want about their thoughts and motivations, but you zoom out and you look at their actions and that's what's going on. Yeah. I mean, if I were to say to you, man, I hate doing philosophy shows. I hate having call-ins. I hate doing this whole thing. The natural question would be, why have you been doing it for 16 years? Right? Yeah. No sense, right so whatever i tell you you just zoom out and look at the behavior that's what being an empiricist is being an empiricist just cuts through people's self-describing bullshit.
[34:34] Right like a woman who says well i don't want to be judged by my appearance but squeezes herself into every tight dress she can come up with and puts on crazy makeup and has her tits like two belugas coming out of an ice flow then okay then you don't clearly you don't want to be judged by your personality or your intellect because you're putting yourself forward in a hypersexualized matter. It's the old thing, I can't hear what you're saying over what you're doing. Your mother left your brother in a ridiculously dangerous and toxic situation.
[35:10] And so, clearly, that's what she wanted. Now, if you said to her, did you want your son to be in that situation? She'd be like, no, I accepted the situation, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like, well, see, when she wanted to separate from your father, what did she do? She separated from your father. She moved out. She did whatever. She put the space between whatever mysterious goop is going on, right? When she, you know, if she wanted to move from one place to another, she moved from one place to another. If she'd wanted to keep your brother safe, she would have moved him out of the environment. She's clearly capable of doing something to achieve what she wants. And clearly, she wanted your brother to remain in this situation because she didn't move heaven and earth to get him out of a clearly toxic and dangerous environment. And even if she had 100% certainty in some psychic manner that your father was not a danger to your brother, you know why she would have moved him out? So that he knew he was being protected. So that he didn't look at his mom and say, well, you left me here? What the fuck? You left me here? You and my brother got out? And you left me in this environment with a guy struggling through these legal battles, these court battles? You left me in the same fucking house as this guy? How do you think that makes your brother feel?
[36:31] Even if you knew he wasn't going to be assaulted or raped in this way or photographed surreptitiously and had pictures shared or whatever the fuck could have happened in these six circles. Even if you knew for 100% that was never going to happen, your brother's feelings of being valued and protected and cared for matter enormously, don't they? Yeah. You left him behind. You guys got out, you left him behind.
[37:07] Music. Marines go back for their dead, right?
[37:12] You ain't Marines.
[37:29] So that's why to me it was important to figure out what was going on with this, massive need for protection of your brother isn't it something along these lines, maybe i feel guilty that i haven't well did the thought cross you that he was in danger did i mean if the thoughts don't cross your mind that's a whole other question but it removes your responsibility in the moment just reduces it for sure but did the thought cross your mind like Like, holy shit, this is what my dad's going through. I don't think my brother should be there. I didn't think that when he said he didn't want to. And when I even encouraged him to come back, he really didn't want to. And then I thought, then I didn't think he's in danger. Do it and obviously i believe my mom about you know i think um services said it's fine so you know don't have to worry about living there um and look i'm not trying to make you feel bad about something because i'm i'm just sort of bungeeing in here with with the stuff from the outside view yeah but it seems to me objectively that it would have been safer for him to be out of the environment.
[38:57] Now you say well my brother at the age of what 16 or whatever didn't want to it's like well, but he's still a child right legally so you know kids want to eat candy doesn't mean you let them eat candy kids want to stay where their friends are doesn't mean it's safe for them because he doesn't really comprehend the dangers in the way that certainly in the way that your mother would be able to see. Yeah.
[39:26] I suppose I suppose, I mean, a guy fighting for his legal life, I don't know, did he, you don't have to tell me because it's too much detail, but, you know, let's say that he denies the charges, he's fighting for his, I mean, that's going to give a very warped perspective to your brother. Yeah. And it's such an unbelievably horrible thing to be going through, and I don't regret it because he sounds like a pretty horrible guy. But to put a child in that environment when somebody is battling for their life legally or whatever it is, right? I mean, that's a very warped environment for a child, especially a child alone with no siblings, right? A child alone at home with that kind of volatility and that kind of intensity. That he, oof, that doesn't seem, I mean, even if your dad was totally innocent, he's still fighting for his life. How many emotional resources and availability is he going to have to parents to be there, to play with, to laugh with, to interact with, to go fishing with? None of that was happening, was it? Not really, no.
[40:42] Definitely not. He couldn't have been parented in any way during this time, that I can imagine. No. No. So that means his peer group is taking over his instruction, right?
[41:01] Yeah so then of course he's going to say well you can't take me away from my peer group because they're my parents right and it's like well i understand that but that's not healthy right you need to be around people who are older than you in order for you to learn uh what the world's all about yeah um i don't i don't know if you want to talk about what should be done now, now um no i i'm not a what should be done guy i'm not you know i'm like let's let's fix the engine but i don't tell you where to go right okay like the mechanic doesn't doesn't plan plan your road trip right sure my question is my question is how did your brother get left in this environment that that's my foundational question and again you know You're still a young man, and of course, but my invitation for you is just what I said earlier. If your mom says, I had no idea this monstrous creep was any kind of danger for year after year after year, I had no idea. Okay, then she's off the equation of what to do because she's completely useless.
[42:17] Yeah. Right? So then, sadly, you have to step up. Right? If you want to protect your brother, you say, okay, well, I can't listen to anything my mom says.
[42:26] Because all she does is just pathetically justify her own pig ignorance. Either she's lying, in which case she's never going to be valuable, or she's telling the truth and she's completely naive and blind to evil, in which case she can't be of any value. So then you've got to step up and say, okay, I've got to shake off that lethargy. I've got to shake off that dissociation. And I have to focus on what's best for my brother. Now, imagine, imagine this, right? Imagine that you'd woken up one morning and your brother's standing in your room and he says, all right, uh, dad and I talked it over.
[42:59] You're going to move in with dad and I'm going to stay with mom. What's your, what's your first feeling? Um. Like this would have been two years ago.
[43:12] Um i might i don't know um i probably would be okay um, if that if you prefer that um so you wouldn't have and i'm not trying to say you you should but you wouldn't have any negative emotions about going to move in with your father while he's working through these charges from the state, oh right sorry i misunderstood while this is all happening you mean yeah two years ago your brother comes in and says right dad and i have talked he wants you i'm staying here with mom you're going to move back in with dad um i suppose yeah i suppose i'd be like um.
[44:01] Well in a way I'd feel like at least well at least my brother's not dealing with dad no but how would you feel about moving back in with your father two years ago when this stuff was all heating up, well I wouldn't want to that's for sure and what's your emotion um, fear uh horror right um yeah right um.
[44:34] Because i mean with all due respect your earlier question like gosh i'm i just want to help my brother i'm so concerned about my brother i need to be there for my brother right, yeah but the basic exercise of okay what if my brother i switch places how do i feel well i feel like shit i feel like i'm in a horror movie or whatever you would feel right yeah well that's That's how you protect your brother.
[44:57] No one should be with my dad. Well, if you think it would be horrible to go and live with your dad and you're six years older, why are you letting a child live there? How can your brother at 16 handle what you didn't want to at 22? I wouldn't fear him doing any bad things to me. But it would still be a pretty horrible environment, right? It would be a toxic environment. Oh, you've got lawyers, you've got aggression, you've got plea bargains, you've got judges, you've got sentencing. I mean, it's horrible, right? Yeah. Yeah. So that exercise of, if I was in my brother's place, how would I feel, didn't occur, right?
[45:51] And listen, if you don't know that exercise, I'm not blaming you.
[45:56] I don't want you to kick yourself down. I don't want you to beat yourself up. I'm just, if you want the help, right? The help is you got to, that's empathy, right? Empathy is you put yourself in the other person. How would I feel living at my dad's place two years ago? And I would be 22. Now, how would I feel if I was 16 and living at my dad's place two years ago, right? Yeah. Now, you can't help people if you can't do that. You can't help anyone if you can't put yourself in their shoes. Do you see what I mean?
[46:31] So if you don't, yeah, see how it would be like. If you can't put yourself in someone's shoes, right? So let's abstract it from your brother, right? Because your brother's too close, right? So let's say that there's a guy in your neighborhood who is drunk all day, right? He's just some bum, hangs around on the street corners drunk all day, right? And you feel guilty or bad about it, and you say, I'm going to give him 20 quid, right? Now, what you do, of course, is you put yourself in an alcoholic's shoes, right? And you say, okay, it's the middle of the afternoon. Somebody gives me 20 quid. What do I immediately go and do?
[47:09] Um... I'm so sorry my brain just gone could you just say that again oh listen the dissociation when i'm given going through an empathy exercise is perfectly understandable i've got no problem with it at all don't don't worry about it so there's a guy named bob in your neighborhood he's drunk every afternoon right he's probably homeless he's you know or maybe he's on welfare or he's just you know he's he's just drunk right drinking in paper bags and lying around on the street now you you're walking up to bob and he's like oh can you spare some money right and you've You've got a crisp 20 quid in your pocket. You spray it with disinfectant. You hand it over to Bob. Now, you think, oh, I want to help him, right? Now, if you go to Bob, you put yourself in Bob's ratty shoes, right? You put your power from Bob. Okay, he's an alcoholic who could face death. Literally, he could die if he doesn't get his alcohol. He's that dependent because he's destroyed his entire life based on alcohol, right? You're given 20 quid. What's he going to go and do?
[48:10] Get more alcohol. Of course he is. Of course he is. Now, so that's the basic question, right? Oh, I give him 20 quid because I feel sorry for the guy. It's like, no, you're not helping him because you haven't put yourself in his shoes. Now, what does he need? Well, you know, he needs professional help. He needs, you know, some sort of AA. He needs some sort of medically supervised detox. He needs whatever, right? Whatever he needs, right? Yeah.
[48:34] But giving him 20 quid will make things worse. Now, what you could do if you wanted, you could go and buy him a meal and you could bring him a hot meal. Okay, maybe he needs a hot meal. Okay. Okay, so that may help him a little bit, but you got to first put yourself in his shoes. Because if it's about you, oh, I give him 20 quid. I feel like a good person. I feel like I've really helped him. You walk on whistling and he goes and pours more rot gut down his throat, right? Yeah. So to put yourself in other people's shoes is the first step to figuring out what can actually help them. Right.
[49:06] So I'm putting myself in your shoes here. I genuinely believe, my friend, I genuinely and deeply believe you very much want to help your brother. Yeah. And I'm trying to help you to do that by putting myself in your shoes. Okay. I really want to help my brother. Okay. There's a barrier to me helping my brother. I don't know what that is. I assume it's your mom, maybe your dad as well. Right. Because your dad also, see, I think everybody's just serving the immoral in this situation. That's probably it. Right. So did your dad want your brother to move out? No. Of course not. Why not? Um it would um it would highlight the fact that he's trying to get my brother away from an abusive person um.
[50:05] Um and um he'd be on his own whatever um, um yeah he wouldn't have someone to hang out with he wouldn't have someone else in the house or the flat or whatever he wouldn't have someone he could unburden himself to he would be revealed as somebody that a child would be assumed to be not safe around right it would be a very negative experience for your father for your brother to move out right yeah now, are you all used to and and your brother right your brother i'm sure had thoughts of moving out Separating siblings is a very bad idea. Particularly separating siblings around a situation of child endangerment. It's really, really, I'm sorry to be to laugh, but you understand it's absurdly bad. Yeah. You know? Well, here's one house where the child is in danger. Here's one house where the child is safe. I know. Let's split up the brothers and put them in two different houses. Let's put the youngest brother in the most dangerous situation. Yeah.
[51:10] Let's separate him from his support let's separate him from the people who could really help him and put him in a situation of extreme danger, There's no sane plan to the universe that would go that way, right? Mm-hmm. Wait, if you, me, I'm not criticizing it. I'm just saying I'm not sure if that's compliance to my level of emotional energy or whether it's actual agreement. Because anytime you disagree with me, this is your life and your family. So you rule as far as this goes. Yeah, I do agree. I'm just so. You're waking up to this, right? Yeah. Yeah, we're pulling the scales off your eyes, right? And you've been listening for a while, so we can go at a fair clip. I don't need to be overly delicate. And anesthesia can wait. It's time to operate, right? I'm sorry for that, but that's kind of the way it is, right?
[51:56] Yeah. So I want you to help your brother. I was a little baffled earlier on why you were focusing so much on him. But through him, through helping him, right, empathizing with other people is the first step to empathizing with their future self, right? This is just so you get the 101 of the path of this conversation. So if I can get you to empathize with your brother then you can then empathize with your future self so that you can end up in a place in life where you're happy right right, that makes sense and asking you to empathize with your future self which is more abstract than your current brother is a leap too far unless you've completed, the first course so to speak if that makes sense that makes sense yes so.
[52:38] Your mother complies with evildoers.
[52:44] Right. That's her secondary gain, right? She doesn't want to interfere with the desires of evildoers, right? Right. She was raised, I assume, with abusive parents. She was trained to supply the narcissistic needs of evildoers because she would be punished and violated in some horrible way. Maybe not sexual, but some horrible way if she ever stood between the predator and his or her prey. So she is like a blank-faced semi-robot mpc of supply resources to evildoers and never interfere with what they want right right yeah and then she's raised you that way as well so your father, despite the fact is having been completely discredited about as solidly as a father could ever be your father wants your brother to stay there so everyone's like okay we comply with evildoers we serve up the needs the narcissistic predators we we don't interfere between the predator what is it coming up between the beast and its prey that old line from the hobbit or something like that so yeah yeah so you guys like okay whatever the evildoers want we'll find some way to provide it and then we'll just worry a little bit about it on the on the far side but we won't ever actually stand between the predator and the prey.
[54:04] Sorry and you understand we're kind of programmed that way evolutionarily speaking unfortunately right i mean yeah if you've got a bunch of bunny rabbits with babies and the fox comes along to eat the babies what do the parents do, they um, I'm sorry. Just say that one more time. All right. You've got a bunny, a mama bunny. She's got six babies under a bush, right? Yes. They're very little. They can't run. And a fox comes along to eat the babies. What does the mother do? Run away yeah she scatters hey i can have more babies and if i try and fight the fox he'll just kill me too evolutionarily speaking the weaker among us and i'm putting this your mom in this category the weaker among us comply with evil and sacrifice their children always, it's it's an iron rule i don't think i've ever heard or read of a rabbit taken on a fox Even though rabbits do have teeth and, you know, theoretically could hit a jugular or something like that, right? They always gather.
[55:30] Yeah. Now, there are some creatures that are, you know, like if you try and attack a baby swan, the parents, the mama swans will attack you even if they're much bigger. But there are a lot of creatures out there in this world that will simply abandon their young when predators come along. If a lion is taking down a baby zebra, what do the adult zebras do? They fuck off. Yeah. Yeah. Because they can't, I mean, theoretically, could they all circle the lion and kick it to death? Yeah, they could try, but there could be more lions out there, and the lion might rip your leg off anyway, right? So they'll run, but if, and it's, you know, it's very sad to see, because we anthropomorphize this stuff. You know, you see those Attenborough documentaries, and the lion takes down the baby gazelle or whatever, and the mother gazelle just stands there watching. And it's heartbreaking, because, you know, it's kind of breaking the mother gazelle's or the mother zebra's heart, but they can't interfere. They don't want to interfere. Yeah, and you understand, evolutionarily speaking, it makes perfect sense. Because the mother can have a dozen babies. And for the mother to die over one baby, well, those genes would have been weeded out pretty quickly, right? Is that to do with the R selection, K selection? I mean, I think so, yeah. Because, I mean, the K selection don't really, they're usually apex predators, so they don't have to worry about that as much. But what they will do, what they will do, if, I don't know, I think when a wolf is getting too old to hunt, don't they just leave it behind?
[56:56] Right. I mean, they, you know, the lion gets too old to hunt, they'll probably bring it a little bit of food. But after a while, it's like, hey, dude, man, you had a good run. Time to go Mufasa and feed the grass, right? Right.
[57:10] So your mother is acting from a very primitive place, right? A premoral mammalian place. I've talked to this recently in my new thing about the mammals and the angels, right? So you're halfway between these two worlds, right? So in my world, we look at the ideal moral circumstances and we try to act in that way, UPB, non-aggression principle and so on, right? But your mom is pure mammal. I don't come between….
[57:38] The predator and its prey. I don't push back against evildoers. And I'll give you a scenario just so you understand. And we can get mad at her from the angel standpoint, but we got to understand the mammal standpoint so we know what's motivating her. And again, I don't know. It's just a theory, right? Yeah. So let's say a woman gets married to a guy who's a pedophile, right? And she has eight kids. Now, he picks on one of those kids to have his evil way with, right? Yeah. Now, if she is so horrified, she hits him with a rock and kills him when she catches him raping a child? Yeah. Okay. She now has eight kids and no provider.
[58:21] Right. What happens? Well, she finds another provider. Not with eight kids, she doesn't. Because no provider who can support eight kids. A provider who can support eight kids is a really good provider. So he's not going to want to put all of his amazing hunting skills and growing skills and resources and money and gold into some other guy's kids, right? No, no. Particularly when there's been a scandal of a murder in the family. Like, no thanks. That's a bit too much drama for a high provider, right? An alpha male. He's going to want to go have some kids, right? Yeah. So she is not going to find a provider. Right. No. So then what happens?
[59:10] Either of all the kids die. The kids die or she has to sell them or they become prostitutes or, I mean, slaves or I don't know what. But it's not good. No. So if she's got eight kids from a horrible amoral biological standpoint. Point okay so you know one of them's getting sexually assaulted that's horrible but it's better than us all starving right so when i say your mother is operating from a very primitive biological state you know the female like the lioness if the if her mate is dies like gets It's kicked in the head by a zebra or something and gets a concussion or cerebral hemorrhage and dies, right? Yeah. And she's got, you know, four baby cubs. The new lion who's attracted to her, you know what he does, right? The male lion.
[1:00:16] He kills the cub and then fucks the lioness. Yeah. Right? So she has to have sex, or she has sex, with a guy who just killed her children. The male lion, right? Right. Now, she can sit there and say, you are not going to kill my children. I'm going to fight to the death to protect my children, right? Right how does that play out for her biologically she dies yeah probably and then her bloodline dies off and the kids will die anyway because they'll get killed anyway yeah so she's like okay, does her heart break i don't know i don't know i don't know what emotional life of lions are but we know empirically that she chooses to have sex with the guy who killed her cubs because that way she gets new cubs plus a protector plus food while she's pregnant and, breastfeeding nipple feeding i think of lions with tits but i'm sure there's a website out there for that dad probably visited it so.
[1:01:20] From your like to understand your mother right yeah to appease evildoers, is a very primitive but reasonably successful reproductive strategy. Right. And you're between these two worlds, as far as I understand it. Right.
[1:01:50] And, And, yeah, yeah. So tell me, I know that you've got a whole lot going on in your brain and your heart. So unpack yourself for me because I can't see you, right? So unpack yourself for me if you can so I can try and figure out what's going on for you because I know it's quite a lot. Yeah, sure. And I apologize for saying yeah all the time. I know I'm doing it. I've mixed feelings. It doesn't matter. Go ahead. Okay. Mixed feelings of obviously shock, realizing all this. I feel guilty. I feel like I, you know, me, my mom and I left my brother in a place where I myself would never have wanted to be in myself. And I definitely don't want to think like a mammal, like my mum kind of is.
[1:03:04] I mean, the impulse is to think, oh, what do I do now? You know, um, I need to get there for sure. Yeah.
[1:03:13] Um, I, um, I'm angry at my dad. Um, I was already angry. Um, but I've, I've suppressed that anger. Go um and um you know if i if i had my i suppose if i had my own place i could um i've got that leverage to sort of you know say i say exactly how it is you know um if i'm because this is a bad situation to be dependent on these my mum and dad and and yeah so my brother I feel like I'm well I'm at least glad he's not going to be living with my dad anymore when he moves to university but um but he'll still be in contact with my mom and dad but but where is he on the mammal angel continuum, when he goes to university that's your big question right yeah.
[1:04:36] I don't know i um, Well, we know this, that how long have you been listening to my show?
[1:04:51] If i say a long time is that worse because it's entirely up to you how frank you want to be but people will guess anyway about five years okay so i mean so that's good right that means we can go pretty fast along these these particular corridors of thought and causality right, okay so the best thing you can do for your brother is to develop your own capacity for empathy if you rush in to try and fix his life you won't be doing any good at all right because what you want to do now that i've sort of opened you up to the potential for empathy with your brother now we will get to this in the next few minutes but get to the empathy for your future self you have to model behavior yeah for your brother and the reason it needs to be factual and empirical is that he's probably heard a whole lot of bullshit in his life right Yeah. So he's probably heard a whole lot of, oh, we're there for you. Oh, we care for you. Oh, you're so important to us. Oh, you know, your mom's like, everything I do is for my kids or whatever she says, right? And it's bullshit, right? And listen, I don't mean to sort of dip into the blowing your mind about your mom. And I'm not saying this means your mom is totally innocent. But you understand, your mom could never, ever, ever, ever, ever possibly have been any other way. There's zero possibility that your mother could have been any other way do you know why.
[1:06:18] Was it to do with how she was raised no I don't believe that because I'm a free will guy good lord if I had fallen if the dominoes had fallen based on the way I was raised I would have been in an asylum by now so no it's not that, um
[1:06:42] Well i was going to say although i don't i'm not sure if it's correct um, it's not in her interest um or her mammal interest well but that's saying that mammal is a um is a foregone conclusion mammal is now the new determinism right or r selected or k selected you can switch you can change right we can evolve even within our own lives otherwise i mean Everything I would be saying wouldn't be of any value. It would just be like, I'm going to talk you into being taller. I mean, it wouldn't make any sense, right? No, I'll tell you why, and you'll get it at the moment, even as I start talking, right? It's just that there's a block there, which is understandable. Your mom would put it there. So the reason why your mom could never have been any different is that if she had been any different, your father would never have chosen her at all.
[1:07:30] Oh. Oh, are you saying it's my, and so my dad chose her because. Because he knew she was this way and she wouldn't change. Yeah. And that's for his benefit. Oh, sure. Yeah. Yeah. Look, if he wants to do this kind of stuff, right. He's not going to choose a woman who stands up to evil doers, right? No, definitely. He's going to choose somebody who's like, does those low brain, lizard brain calculations of genetic utility and, you know, whatever. He's going to choose a blank slate who's simply going to be propelled by history without any intervention for morality, right? Yeah. Like an enabler? Yeah. Or somebody who's going to look the other way. way somebody's going to serve his needs someone who's never going to oppose him or question him or or any of that who's going to claim ignorance and then supply his needs you know oh i didn't know he was a bad guy oh now i know he's a bad guy i'll still supply his needs because some government worker said it was fine right so so your mother.
[1:08:33] Would have been carefully vetted and figured out by your dad to not interfere with his goals and plans.
[1:08:41] And even after his darkest side was revealed, she would still not be interfering with his plans, right? And he would have trained you the same way, right? He found your mother in this state and then worked to maintain it. But he worked, I assume, as did your mother, to create this state in you and your brother, which is why you have seemingly very little willpower in the face of these appalling circumstances. Hmm.
[1:09:07] Yeah, yeah. All right. All right. Now, this doesn't mean, again, forgive. I don't know. That's a whole complex thing. But what I'm saying is that your mother is the way she is because there's no way she could have been different. Otherwise, your dad would have chosen someone else. True. Yeah.
[1:09:30] All right let's talk about you okay, how long have you been playing music, um for about, 11 years are you writing yes and how is the writing going how is the reception of your writing going because you know pandemic or no pandemic you can pull a justin bieber and you You can sing your songs on YouTube, and you can get interest that way, right? Yeah. It's going okay. I mean, I'm not successful, so I don't know. It depends what I mean by okay, I suppose. How long have you been writing?
[1:10:20] Probably about, if I was to guess, six years. And how many songs have you written? Or pieces of music, I'm not sure how you would classify it. Not enough finished ones. How many finished ones in six years?
[1:10:44] Roughly you don't have to give me it down to the fourth decimal place, oh um i'm trying to i'm i say six years um i suppose i've composed i i would actually say i probably composed for six years and then written songs for that when i realized it's probably a good idea to write songs as well um probably four years so in four years, um i don't know if that matters um um if you know what i mean like composing instrumentals versus the song dear god man what are you doing to me how many songs have you finished since you started writing music um not enough um 100 okay 100 songs in four years right yeah Yeah. Can't remember them all, but... That's the song every 12 to 15 days, give or take, right? Yeah. Okay, so... Oh, is that right? No, hang on. Oh, it doesn't matter. Okay, so it's... So, okay, of those 100 songs, how many have... Have you published them anywhere? No.
[1:12:00] Well, I've published them in the past and then deleted them because I hated them. Um, okay. So you hate your songs. Well, okay. I can't go round and round with you. If you hate your songs, you hate your songs. That's totally fine. You said you hate them. And I said, you hate them. And then you're like, wait, did I say hate them? It's like, no, I'm not going round and round with you like this. I know that this is uncomfortable stuff when talking about core creativity.
[1:12:25] How many of the hundred songs do you really like? 10. Okay. Have you published any of those? Uh some of them yeah how many.
[1:12:48] Probably about five okay and how have they been doing have you put any work into publicizing them or sharing them or sending them to people or you know trying to gain views or whatever it is? They've had some momentary success, I suppose. So, Radio Play. Oh, they've had Radio Play? Yeah. Okay, good. What else? I'm in a band that has an independent record deal. And we've sold, the band I'm in, sold about a thousand CDs. So...
[1:13:28] Um that's one of the bands and um trying to think what else um and some you know viral bits and bobs here and a little bit viral um like 20 000 views or you know but that's about it, okay so off the five songs that you published out of the hundred that you've written uh how many have more than 20 000 views use oh um most of them don't are you really gonna make me go round and round the mulberry bush like this sorry um let's pretend we're both mortal and we don't have forever for you to beat around the bush these this is not these are not critical questions at all i'm just just genuinely curious, i mean i know the writing world i don't really know the music world, so your question could you just say one more time then please of the songs that you the five songs you like out of the sorry of the 10 songs you like you published five how many of those have let's say more than 10 000 views one okay so in six years you've produced or four to six years you've produced one song with more than 10 000 views now of the cds that you sold of the thousand i know you share that all with the band what was your take-home pay.
[1:14:57] A lot of that went to the expenses um that um so no let's just say practically no money right, sure yeah again not not a not a criticism it's just you know we sort of need to know where we are right so the bulk of your money comes from being a teacher right yes okay and being a teacher i guess you could still do it zoomy zoom or whatever it is that you can do right but it's It's not the same as it used to be, right? Right, right, yeah. So you're not making really a living wage from teaching. I mean, you can kind of get by, but that kind of stuff, right? Yeah. Okay, okay, okay.
[1:15:39] So, what are your odds of changing, right? Obviously, if you put another four to six years in, and it's been like the last four to six years, it's a disaster, right? Yes. I've got no problem with your four to six years. I have no problem with that at all. But if I understand this correctly, and again, it's your life, not mine, but if in four to six years, you have one more song with more than 10,000 views, and you've made another other eight eight quid from a band that would be a disaster right yeah okay okay okay so, empathy for your future self what you want what's your ideal, in five years.
[1:16:29] I wish i had this answer prepared you know the answer you and i both know the answer you want to be a successful musician making his living writing songs maybe touring whatever it is right, yeah am i wrong that's correct i mean there's there's not a you know there's an old joke about that the the waiter in los angeles is like you know oh the guy in los angeles who's like you know, you know i came here to be a waiter but i'm just i have to be a model on the side until i can get achieve my dream right and there's not a single fucking person in music who's like i'm touring ring just so i can save up enough money to be a teacher yeah right everybody wants to be the rock star they want to be the you know the pink singer flying around the stadium i mean that's that's isn't that the deal isn't that the dream yeah of course okay okay fair enough fair enough now good is there a trajectory that you're on that gets you there in five years.
[1:17:34] Uh no okay so so you're not going to achieve what you want if you're not changing your course of action because your course of action will will lead you to more of the same and then you it will then you'll be 30 right and broke and with no skills outside of the skills which keep you broke right yeah no and and listen i've no doubt about your talent as a musician and so on right but music as you know i i don't need you to tell me this the only thing i do know about the music industry is that writers run everything right it's the right that's why i asked you about the writing right it's the writing is the only thing that matters i remember you saying write songs or go home oh yeah in the music business i mean i remember reading this in an early biography of queen right i mean he's like we've got to write our own songs so we're not going anywhere in this business yeah right and and so that's why i asked i asked about the writing now, do you do you know why your your songs are not taking off is it a lack of marketing is there something about them that is not quite catchy enough or do you know it's a gap analysis right it's a gap analysis right which is okay this is where i want to be i'm not there what's, keeping me from getting there what's missing what's not occurring curry i think marketing is one i'm pretty rubbish at marketing um.
[1:19:02] Well what that means is you prefer failure to marketing.
[1:19:08] That's all all marketing because i look all artists are crap at promoting their own work that's why they used to be agents which you don't really need anymore but you got to put this in the correct perspective you prefer failure to marketing.
[1:19:23] I mean, you've heard me say this before, back for the first couple of years of what I did, I spent 80% of my time marketing and 20% of my time doing shows. Right. And that's because I was a director of marketing. There's a reason why marketing exists. There's a reason why half the budget of a movie is marketing. Yeah. Right. So if you don't want to market, you're simply saying, I prefer to fail. That's fair. And nobody likes to market. I mean, I guess some people do, right? I mean, I did it, but it wasn't my own. Actually, no, it was my product sometimes in the business world. But if you don't want to get your stuff out there, if you don't want to, you know, like the old MC Hammer story, this like Hammer Time dancing R&B guy or really a rapper and a disco guy back in the day. You know, he would drive from club to club with LPs in the back of his car and he'd just hustle and you got to play this song and, you know, and it's not the kind of touch it guy. That was some other guy. Oh, Bobby Brown. MC Hammer and you know he made his 10 million dollars and he had an entourage of 150 people and he ended up bankrupt you know it's an unfortunate pattern in the rap industry but.
[1:20:34] Yeah, he's just, it's just hustle, hustle, hustle, right? You got the song, okay, but now you've got to get it into people's ears, right? Otherwise, it doesn't do you much good at all, right? And of course, it used to be that you could just go play tour and people would, you know, listen and they'd get, you know, whatever, right? But if you're not marketing, you're just saying, I'd rather fail. I would rather fail than get behind my music. And that means that you don't care enough about your music.
[1:20:59] Because if you care enough about your music, you'd be like, hey, I don't care. Like with me it's like i cared enough about what i could bring to the world from the state of philosophy that i wasn't going to get a little thing like a lack of marketing stop me yeah if you're like if your songs like bring joy and laughter and happiness and you know to to people i still remember working on a really difficult part of my master's degree i had my headphones on i was just listening to the radio and this old ace of bass song the sign came on and it just lifted my spirits and filled my sails with joy and energy and i was just able to to battle through and and finish this really difficult part of my my thesis and you know music you know it can fill your sails yeah it can it can drive people it can it it cements memories for people like you hear a song and you're like oh i i got my first kiss to that song back at the day some everly brothers thing the guy just died right so if if you if your song brings brings joy or or excitement or or cements memories or or brings life and laughter and and romance to people you know like i mean i'm sure christopher was like lady in red man people are going to bang like a gong to this song right norah jones norah jones it's comfortable sex music for middle-aged people right so so, whatever is going to happen right this thing is like i can wreck a lot of people's voices you try Try and sing along with me because I'm like basically a countertenor.
[1:22:25] But whatever it is that you like, so if you care enough about your music, then you will walk through walls to get it to the world, right?
[1:22:37] Yeah, yeah. Maybe I should take a marketing course or something like that. What might not be the end of the world? But here's the thing. if you don't love your songs if you don't if you're not incredibly passionate about your songs you will not succeed, I was like oh my god can I ever bring fantastic philosophy to the world and here I am you know 40 years after I started 16 years after I got it going, and I was right.
[1:23:12] So when you say, oh, I hate my song, it's like, okay, well, you won't succeed. That's a very good point. Very good point. You have to love them passionately and believe in your heart and soul and spine that it would be a crime to rob the world of your music. And I'm not kidding about that. It would be a cultural crime to rob the world of your music.
[1:23:38] For me it'd be like i might as well set fire to the library of alexandria, if i don't bring my philosophy to the world it would be a crime to deprive the world of these philosophical conversations and you're very confident with the value you provide, sure with and i need to perhaps no no but you've been doing it for years i was confident about the value that i provide why do you think this is the first time i've had conversations like this when i when i first started doing the show no i've been having conversations like this with people, friends acquaintances people at parties people at dinner parties i've always been like curious at delving in and putting patterns i had decades of practice you know it's the 10 year overnight success that guy came out of nowhere no he didn't i've been having these conversations, yeah since i was 15 years old and then at the age of 40 people are like wow he's surprisingly good at this, right? No, it's not surprising. I already knew. Now, you've been doing music for six years, right? Yeah. So, if you don't have the confidence to say, I have something incredible to bring to the world and it would be a crime to hold it back, then I question whether you can do it and whether it's the right thing for you.
[1:25:03] Are you treading water? Is this a way of avoiding life? Is this something which makes you feel like you're achieving something? Is this something that makes you feel like you're busy? Is this something that keeps you under the control, right? You've got to always wonder, if you being a musician keeps you under the control of your parents, is it something they want? Do they encourage you to do it despite the fact that they're not helping you achieve it? Do they encourage you to circle the drain so they can sit in the bathtub with you so to speak I don't know what does your mom think of your music and your musical goals, she's supportive my music runs in my family so the fact that she supports it but you're not succeeding is a very bad sign yes because it means that she wants you to stay living with her yes, well she would say I don't know how to help you but you need to find people that not people but you need to figure out how you can improve and do what you need to do to be successful, well has she had the conversation that I just had with you about your music, Um.
[1:26:32] I think so, yeah. She says, you've got to give it your all. You've got to. Oh, that's just generic T-shirt stuff. That's like, nobody cares, try harder, right? Give it your all, follow your dreams. That's fortune cookie nonsense, right? What I mean is the practical stuff. Play me your latest song. Here's what I like, here's what I don't like. Put the song out. Now you've got to figure out some way that people are going to listen to it. Look, I don't know anything about marketing music, but i know that you've got to get it in front of people's ears right yeah and if she doesn't know how to do it then she's going to say okay well i've read this or here's what i've heard or i talked to a friend of mine who's in the music business or or here you go do it but you know don't don't write another song until you know how to market the last one right yeah she comes up with suggestions um of what six years right six years man she's not helping.
[1:27:32] And that's a that's now this has nothing to do with whether you can be successful as a musician or not but if your mother is invested in you continuing to live with her then she's going to encourage you to pursue something you won't succeed at you understand again this is just dismantle stuff right yeah and that's my concern right now again maybe you you know i'm perfectly open to the idea that you are a fantastic songwriter and this and that and the other but right now you're dead in the water and your mom's been around for six years yeah and that means again we look empirically right this is where your mom wants you to be right and that means while you're under her roof you cannot succeed there's too much maternal undertow.
[1:28:16] Yeah. I never thought of it that way before.
[1:28:30] Well she serves your father's needs because she's expecting you to serve her needs right their system yeah and your father's not also interfering with your lack of progress because he's helping like this is the deal right she says i'll give you the youngest son and he says okay okay, I'll give you the oldest one. Yeah. So what.
[1:29:17] So now is the time to panic now is the time in sprockets when we dance right you don't know that it's too old too you're too young for that reference now is the time in your career as a musician when you panic. Right? And what that means is stop treading water on a couple of hundred pounds a month living off your mom's money. Yeah. Right? Yeah. You you give yourself a deadline. You say, I have to be self-sufficient within three months.
[1:29:52] In three months I'm moving out come hell or high water. A possibility. I don't know what you should do. It's just a possibility, right? In three months, I'm moving out come hell or high water. You see, creativity, this is an often unrecognized or underappreciated aspect of creativity. Creativity is panic, nine times out of 10.
[1:30:16] I mean we all know the story right we all know the story of uh artists who get comfortable and lazy and produce albums like innuendo by queen or whatever sailing to philadelphia by mark knopfler you name it right yeah i just saw a picture of simon lebon who looks like a beluga that inhaled another beluga but anyway it doesn't really matter so you're not panicking and and And because if you want to engage the deepest aspects of your being to create amazing and beautiful music, you can't be comfortable. I don't know.
[1:30:52] No i can't um because your creativity creativity is is is like a survival panic instinct.
[1:31:07] Like spontaneous as well um well like yeah but so so is a high heart rate when when a bear jumps out of you in the woods right so when i when i when i wrote my best is when i was like so i wrote the god of atheists and i wrote my novel almost yeah after i left my business career when i was just living off savings and it was make or break i had to finish these books they had to be great because this was my shot right i had finally like i had all the clear time i had some savings i could focus my time on writing i could write six seven thousand words a day i could plot things i could I could do all the research. I didn't have any other interference. I didn't have school. I didn't have a career. I didn't have a girlfriend at the time. I could just focus on writing. And it was do or die. It was make or break. And I said to myself, if I can't do it through this, I'm not doing it.
[1:32:06] Because I took over a year, a year and a half almost, to write these two books, right? And I was taking courses at the Humber School for Writers, and I was really getting good feedback on the writing, and I was getting amazing reviews from the people who were reading it and the evaluators for the agent. I had an agent, like the whole thing. And I was like, look, if I can't do it when I pour all my savings and a year and a half and research, and if I can't sell a book from this, then I can't do it. It's not happening. it's not going to happen.
[1:32:39] So I was like for me it was do or die and the do or die created a lot of creativity, like my whole the start of my software career was I was completely out of money totally and completely out of money, and I had borrowed from everyone and I was just like I've got to get a job and I panicked how am I going to pay my rent? What am I going to be out on the street?
[1:33:00] So I panicked when the media attacked hacked me in 2008 i was like oh well they really helped me now because i had to make this thing succeed i had to because there was no way i was ever going to get a job in the business world ever again they they had cut off my escape they did me a great favor in that way they cut off my escape i was 150 in and now if they had been smarter they would have been more like milder and then i would be like ah you know there's a lot of upwind maybe the world's not ready for this i'll just go back to my business career because that was a lot of money but nope they're like whatever you do you ain't coming back here they're like okay given that you can bear almost anyhow i'm so sorry go ahead yeah no pressure well yeah i mean so but they made they made the importance of philosophy very real to me yeah in their own way they were doing their part to heal the world by attacking me and giving me no recourse but going forward they made sure that i wasn't going to punk out. They made sure that I wasn't going to quit.
[1:34:06] They did their part to help philosophy yeah right right and i'm very obviously too comfortable.
[1:34:18] Living you are serving other people's needs, your father is serving your mother's needs by delivering you to keep her company your mother is serving your father's needs by delivering your brother to keep him company, And you're both just bopping along in the current and stream of other people's needs. Look, let me tell you something, man. Oh, you're ready to get your mind blown. Okay, here's something really, really important.
[1:34:49] Children are the ultimate drug. See, a drug, of course, like an illicit drug or a cocaine or whatever it is, it gives you a sense of high. It gives you a sense of achievement. It gives you a sense of worth and value and happiness that you haven't earned, right? Now, children give you companionship you haven't earned. They give you the high of social interaction, which is a drug. It's a literal drug. Social interaction produces contact highs, endorphins. It is a drug. Now, children deliver social interactions that you haven't earned. And so, you understand that your parents, in a sense, are drug dealers and you guys are the pouches of MDMA. Yeah, that makes sense. You are being delivered to provide the social contact high to your parents, which they don't have to earn.
[1:35:40] Because we didn't have a choice, I suppose. We were aware we were born.
[1:35:44] You're born into it. Yeah. I am fully aware, fully aware of this as a father. Father might i mean particularly homeschooled daughter in pandemic right she you know she's stuck and i we talk about this i say look it's it's it's it's a shame you're totally stuck with me now i said there'll be a time when you're not you get older you can move out you can go to timbuktu for all all i i can control i hope that we will want to spend time together i will certainly want to spend time with you but i'm fully aware that i have to treat you like you could leave at any time to make sure i continue to provide value it's the same thing with my wife i always and with these conversations i try not to do the same things over and over like i don't know how people like dr phil do it right it's the same things over and over i try to bring new things in the idea of children as a drug the idea of this you know this mammal and and angel thing the the cross-pollination of the drug addiction and serving so i'm trying to bring new things all because i want to otherwise you could just go listen to some other conversation be like oh i've heard this a million times i even don't want to tell the same stories over and over i've been debating whether i should tell you that i was the younger sibling who was left behind this is why i was so passionate about this earlier i was the younger sibling who was left behind.
[1:36:52] I was left alone with the rest of my family left and left me alone for two years with my mother, from the age of 12 to 14 when she went insane it was just me and just her i was left behind everybody else left and did not even contact me for those two years they just left me behind a stopgap measure.
[1:37:15] Everybody buggered off and left me behind. Just so you know, that's one of the reasons why I was kind of focusing on that, because I kind of know that feeling. I really kind of know that feeling, and it's really complicated. Wow. Yeah. And as far as your artistic ambitions go, yeah. I mean, I tried for many, many years. I wrote plays, poems, novels, you name it, short stories, tried to get published, worked on getting published, and just rejected, rejected, rejected, which is very confusing to me, because I love my work. I love my books. Like I just reread almost for the first time, really read it through in 20 years. It's even better than I remember. And I remembered it being fantastic. Like I love that book. I love the characters. I love the situation. I love the language. I love the plot. I just love that book. Same thing with God. I want to do redo the God of atheists and all that. But you got to love your stuff because if you don't love your stuff, it's not a crime to keep it from the world.
[1:38:05] Yeah. So I'm not, I need to think I'm doing an injustice if I'm not. You're robbing the world. Yeah because if i if i had done what you're doing you wouldn't have this show we wouldn't have this conversation there would be no real-time relationships there wouldn't be 5 000 shows right yeah so you value that i value what i do because that's the only reason you get to hear it, absolutely so you got to have empathy for the this is the big one right that's the final step right Right? Empathy for the world for what it doesn't even know it has yet. Right. What's your favorite song at the moment?
[1:38:52] Um... Answer. Somebody to Love by Queen. That's always the answer, no matter what. That's the only answer. Yeah, yeah. I like Voodoo Child by Jimi Hendrix. I love that song. Great song. Great song. Yeah. You know, there's a whole album, a whole book of misheard song lyrics. You know, excuse me while I kiss this guy. What, this guy? I knew a woman who thought the song was, every time you go away you take a piece of meat with you really it's a unusual love song all right um so um i thought it was uh um oh there's a fields of gold by sting um yeah uh you remember so um i never made promises lightly an arabian summer life's broken i thought it was i never Never made promises lightly. An Arabian summer lies broken. And I thought, Arabian summer lies broken? That's really poetic. And then I read the lighter notes. I'm like, no, no, no, that's not it. It's, I never made promises lightly and there have been some that I've broken. I'm like, the Arabian summer thing was way better. You should hire me. You should totally hire me.
[1:40:10] And here's the thing. Once you get those misheard song lyrics, you can't ever hear the song the same way. You can't unhear it. Yeah, never. Never. Okay, so...
[1:40:21] Love what you're doing to the point where you can't keep it from the world because it would be wrong think of the song voodoo child i'm a along the watchtower guy but voodoo child great song um if jimmy hendrix hadn't loved that song enough to record it it wouldn't have come to you you wouldn't have the pleasure of that he would have withheld that pleasure from you.
[1:40:45] Yeah selfish bastard yeah imagine if that if yeah and if every musician did what you did there'd be no music industry and you'd have nothing to do you're kind of parasiting off other people's enthusiasm yeah you've got to match that enthusiasm otherwise it's you're just taking not giving does that make sense yeah i'm not providing any value yeah well you'll just provide value somewhere else right i i clearly uh wasn't providing much value to to uh or i i know what happened now is that all All my books were anti-collectivist, anti-communist, and the communists were running all of the arts. So, of course, they're going to, you know, because to me, it's like, no, this writing is, this is beautiful writing objective. I can stand outside. This is beautiful writing, great characters, great plot. This is a beautiful book.
[1:41:28] And everyone, like, they loathed it. In the publishing industry, they were like, they literally visceral hatred of this work. And it's like, this was always very confusing to me as well. It's the same thing at theater school. School when i went to theater school i was such a good actor that they said oh you came here for playwriting forget playwriting just be an actor like that's what you should be doing this is like your playwriting is great but the acting you're so you're so good like and then once they found about my political opinions they're like you don't belong here yeah there's nothing for you, and i like a struggle through and i just like yeah you know what i i agree with you it's not a place for me but so i mean i've done the you know tried tried to struggle in through the arts and so on now it's different now you don't have to toe the line because you give a direct medium to the audience it's the same thing with philosophy right yeah for me so that's your empathy yeah so empathy for your brother first up right empathy for yourself in five years second part but the real thing that's going to motivate you is wanting to bring the gifts to the world, not for your own vanity sake not for your own ego sake because then what will happen is once your vanity and ego are satisfied you'll stop.
[1:42:37] And so you say, I cannot keep this. It would be selfish for me to keep the beauty that I can accidentally create. And we all know, right? I mean, we know that creativity is quicksilver. It comes and it goes. Maybe you get 15 years. I'm pushing 16. So I'm still, I'm waiting for that cliff edge, but so far I'm okay. You know that there's inspiration and all artists would say this. All the artists who write, Roger Hodgson, I was listening to him. He's like, I don't feel like I'm writing. I just feel like I'm transcribing. the music is in my head i write it down and all of the artists are like oh yeah i've been playing around with this for a while and you know billy joel was saying about scenes from an italian restaurant it's like oh i just had these scraps of songs or second side of abbey road these scraps of songs sitting around and i'm like i could develop each one of these or i could just put them together into like a a medley or a rhapsody as bohemian rhapsody was right just got these scraps and so there's a kind of inspiration otherwise every song queen wrote would be as as good as Bohemian Rhapsody. They have to deal with and navigate through their own inspiration or lack thereof, right? You're inspired, you write. You're not inspired, you tour, right? That's kind of the way it goes, right? And so the way that the Christians would say it is beautiful. The way the Christians would say it is beautiful. And what they say is, it's a God-given talent.
[1:43:58] God is giving you the music so that you can give it to the world. And if you withhold the music that God is giving you, you are robbing the world, so the way that I look at it is it's a God given ability to have these kinds of conversations it's a God given ability so to speak, I don't earn it and therefore to hoard it.
[1:44:23] Would be really wrong. Now, when you write, if you allow yourself to open up to this cosmic inspiration, I know this sounds kind of mystical, but it's the unconscious, so you might as well say the universe because it's the universe to us. So if you allow yourself to be truly open to the creativity that can erupt from within you and you recognize that you didn't earn that, like Roger Hudson writing the logical song or The Long Way Home or Fool's Overture or whatever, he totally says, I don't know why I could do it then and I can't do it now, Now, you listen to Bob Dylan talking about his early work. He says, I can't do that now. I can do other things. I can't do that. Right. You just get touched by the universal, the collective unconscious, the Godhead, the fountainhead, whatever it is you want to say. You get touched by that, and you are a puppet of beauty that erupts out into the world. You manage it. You don't create it. Yeah. I was genuinely surprised by the twists and turns of my novels.
[1:45:21] At the end of almost when it's revealed what the actual dynamic of the family and therefore the world is it gave me goosebumps i'm like oh my god that is right that is what happened you know and so i can't sit there and say oh i had this all plotted and planned i had ideas of where i wanted to go but you got to do the dance with your creativity if you try to impose too much control over it it just falls away from you right right so so if you if you can say i am a portal through which the universe brings beauty to the world, then not only will you generate more beauty because you're opening yourself up to more creativity, but you market it because people need to hear it. It will make their lives better. It will make them happier. It will...
[1:46:07] And happiness and morality are tied, like, the best art is a moral endeavor as well, because it inspires people to happiness, and happiness gives them the strength to be good. Yeah. So stop playing small, for God's sakes. Stop tinkering. Stop tinkering. Stop hating your songs. Hating your songs is hating yourself. It's a bad idea, yeah. Well, it's, no, hating your songs is what your mom wants you to do, so that you stay close, so you don't succeed. Yeah anybody who's not behind you 150 to be the most glorious person you can possibly be is cutting your prime down to nothing is cutting your potential down to ashes.
[1:46:49] Yeah yeah i believe i believe that the talent in this sense to write these songs to create this work is fundamentally based on willing to be a conduit to beauty in the world and recognizing that that is a powerful and awesome responsibility that generates so much beauty and inspiration in the world that to forego it and play it small is being one of the worst thieves imaginable in the long run.
[1:47:28] Go make us happy go make the world happy or sad go make the world feel go make the world laugh go make the world cry go bring something to people that deepens their perception of themselves that makes them more resistant to evil the deeper we are right your mom i'm sure is a very shallow person talks about shallow things shallow topics shallow subjects never goes deep the deeper we are the more we can resist evil and art excavates us and gives us a depth that roots us in the ground and has us withstand the storms of immorality so go make the world a better place i beg of you i i do appreciate that that um that means a lot um i suppose as well um being too much of a perfectionist can steal the songs away from people because if you're never happy happy with it.
[1:48:21] Then um but you're always finding faults in it and no that's no no that's not no that's not being a perfectionist that's just stealing the perfectionist is getting the music out they're getting the music out there right you're the conduit to what you find beautiful and what you find inspiring and what moves you you can't control how other people are going to react to that, that yeah so being a perfectionist is alienating yourself from your own process and being a horrible skeptical eye-rolling audience member who hates what you do it's just a way of crippling yourself it's like saying well i'm a runner and i'm a perfectionist because i just shot myself in the foot i'm like that's not being a perfectionist that's just destroying your own ability yeah self-centered never put yourself in the audience's spot with a skeptical eye, that's just a way of crippling yourself which again serves your parents needs that you remain crippled and thereby close to them to provide to them the drug of social contact without them having to earn it.
[1:49:21] Don't call it perfectionism because that elevates it to something that's, oh, that's good. Well, we want it to be perfect, don't we? I don't even know what that means. The perfect is getting it out into the world and having the audience respond to it.
[1:49:34] Yeah, that's interesting. I read in your book when people turn vice into virtue, and that's almost like turning, you know, like calling it perfectionism when it's actually not, you know, it's something else. Oh, yeah, it's paralysis. Yeah it's it's um it's it means that there's somebody in your environment who is hostile to what you're doing and you're so let's say that your mom wants you to putter and tinker so that you never get a life going and you're never able to attract a quality enough woman that's going to look at her skeptically right it's also very important like she's training you to be she's training you to serve her needs right for life which means she's got to keep your sexual market value low which means she's happy with you tinkering around and never succeeding because it means you can't get a quality woman quality woman's going to look at her and say uh what now you enabled this guy's dad who did this you left a child with the guy who did this and oh no thanks don't want you around no thanks right so you just she's got to keep you she's got to keep you small and low and and out of sight of the quality women and low sexual market value so this perfectionism is a way of letting the person who wants you to fail into your head to judge your work and saying well i have to please this person who wants me to fail.
[1:50:55] Otherwise it's not good enough but the whole point is that they want you to fail therefore the standards will never be good enough and that's what we call perfectionism, yeah you.
[1:51:14] God and i wanted to make sure we had enough time i've got to stop now but i wanted to make sure we had enough time to get to the creativity side of things because i envy your musical talent i i absolutely massively and totally envy your musical talent i wish i had it i mean the universe of course doesn't wish i had it because i think i'm better doing this than karaoke or whatever not that you do karaoke but but no i envy your musical talent if i had it i'd you know i'd be shirtless us on a rock stage somewhere right but um and so i i really you know given that i envy it i really want you to use it because there are so many people who wish they had it who don't envy your ability to speak um because all i'm saying is great then let's divide let's divide the labor right i'll open for you and you do the concert or you open for me and i'll do the speech whatever right let's divide the labor but you envy that in me and and imagine if i hadn't done this how sad that would be I mean happy for bad people but sad for good people, and so imagine all the things that you consume in the world that people create, And you can add to it and you can enrich the world this way. And you're just like, well, it's not quite good enough yet. I don't like it. And everyone's like, please, God, then give me your talent if you're not going to use it. But you can't. Thank you, Stefan. That was really something.
[1:52:44] Yeah, I've got a lot to think about, you know. um so but that and and it's also you know regarding the music stuff that's super encouraging and and also um it'll make me panic i'm sure and and make sure i flipping do something um and and, make sure i love it and make sure that i give people a reason to love the music it. Yeah, and shield it from the people who don't love it. Right. I wrote a play, and I produced it one summer, the summer after I left theater school when I was still interested in the theater world. I gave it to a beloved family member who had it sit by his bed for about three months and never read it. And I came home once, and he was watching a movie I know he'd watched three times before. But no time to read my play that i was pouring a huge amount of money that i barely had into to to produce myself right just couldn't cry you could watch the movie he'd seen three times before but he couldn't get around to reading the play right and so it's like okay so if i want to achieve great things yeah you won't be there and the question is why where's the love in that all right will you keep me posted about how it's going i will do thank you so much stephan you're very very welcome brother i really appreciate the call great job thank you take care buddy bye.
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