0:02 - The Call Begins
1:36 - Changing Perspectives on Parenthood
3:14 - Adam's Reluctance
4:39 - The Weight of History
7:00 - Moments of Realization
10:25 - Maternal Influence
15:16 - Family Dynamics Unraveled
22:47 - Understanding Maternal Anger
24:08 - Memories of Childhood Joy
31:14 - The Blame Game
33:41 - Emotional Expression
42:44 - Adam's Struggles with Identity
53:54 - The Path to Self-Discovery
56:20 - The Tyranny of Language
1:04:48 - Embracing Parenthood
1:12:32 - The Roots of Nihilism
1:30:33 - Responsibility and Free Will
1:37:15 - Confronting the Past
1:42:16 - The Complexity of Forgiveness
1:49:35 - Closing Reflections
In this episode of the podcast, Stefan Molyneux engages in an in-depth conversation with two guests, Eve and Adam, who are examining their thoughts about parenthood and the implications of their own childhood experiences on their current relationship and future parenting decisions. The discussion begins with Eve sharing her transformation regarding having children. At 23 years old, she initially thought she did not want kids until a year of listening to Stefan’s show led her to realize that her previous convictions were heavily influenced by her mother. Eve expresses a desire to have children now and shift her priorities accordingly, but this desire has created tension in her five-year relationship with Adam, who was in agreement with her earlier sentiments about not wanting kids.
Adam shares his perspective on the subject, reflecting on his troubled upbringing, which involved witnessing a lot of dysfunction in his own family. He describes how his upbringing made him hesitant about becoming a parent. Both guests reveal that they have grappled with their insecurities and fears instilled by their childhood experiences, particularly concerning their parents’ behaviors. Adam admitted that he was quite certain about not wanting kids, even considering a vasectomy at one point, but has recently started entertaining the possibility due to influences from Stefan's podcast.
Stefan introduces the concept that individuals who come from difficult backgrounds can often become better parents because they have learned from their parents' mistakes. He emphasizes the importance of personal responsibility, noting that coming from a troubled past does not predetermine someone’s future parenting capabilities. He challenges both Eve and Adam to reflect on their childhoods and the narratives they have constructed around them.
Eve delves into her own family dynamics, highlighting her mother’s negativity towards being a parent and how it impacted her own beliefs about motherhood. She shares that her mother often verbalized dissatisfaction with motherhood, which left her feeling unsure about whether she wanted children. Eve identifies her mother’s critical nature as a contributing factor to her previous stance against having kids. Adam recounts similar experiences in which the anxiety and neurosis of his parents created a difficult environment that shaped his outlook on family and relationships.
The conversation then pivots to the themes of guilt and ownership of past trauma. Stefan argues that accepting full moral responsibility for one’s actions and decisions is essential for emotional growth and developing healthy relationships, especially when it comes to parenting. Adam initially struggles with the idea of giving his parents complete agency for the dysfunction he experienced as a child, suggesting that they acted out of ignorance. However, Stefan counters that recognizing and accepting the responsibility of one’s actions is crucial for symmetry in any relationship, including that with one’s parents.
As the discussion proceeds, Adam begins to recognize the complexity of his mother’s behavior while also acknowledging his responsibility for his reactions and nihilistic views. He grapples with the pain of realizing that the absence of functional relationships in his upbringing may have led to his current perceptions of intimacy.
In concluding the conversation, Stefan encourages both guests to imagine a future where they fully trust themselves as parents. He stresses that if they can embrace personal responsibility for their choices and trust in their own abilities to foster healthy relationships, they will not only enhance their chances of being good parents but also strengthen their bond with each other. The episode navigates deep personal revelations, highlighting the challenges and triumphs of moving beyond one’s upbringing and fostering a vision for a more positive future.
[0:00] Hi, everybody. Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain. Hope you're doing well. So I'm here.
[0:03] It's a three-way call, that is. And I'm here with Adam and Eve, believe it or not. And we're going to talk well. I guess, Eve, do you want to start with the topic?
[0:14] Yeah so I can just sum up the email that I sent you so I'm 23 years old and for most of my life I my short life I didn't think that I wanted to have kids and it wasn't until this past year after I was religiously listening to your show I realized that I in fact do want kids and the reasons that I didn't want to have kids weren't real reasons and they were in fact just reasons that my mother kind of pushed on me and that I believed and so I basically totally changed my mind and my goals that I want and decided that I do want to have kids and I want to be a mom and focus on my career later on after the kids are older and so I guess the issue is is that I'm Dating my boyfriend of about five years now, and we both kind of agreed on in the middle of our relationship that we were happy not having kids. And so now that I have totally changed my mind, that's definitely stirred up some issues in our relationship. And if, yeah, so I basically am wanting to convince Adam to basically have kids or not.
[1:36] And yeah and so adam can kind of explain like why he doesn't want or doesn't know if he wants to have kids
[1:43] Well i'm sorry eve just just to gauge the seriousness and immediacy of the conversation you're not secretly pregnant at the moment right no are you sure yes have you been craving unusual foods have you been tearing up at long distance phone call commercials oh that's that's a dated reference all right so to to our knowledge there's no fetus with its fingers crossed deep within your innards saying boy i hope that that she wins this conversation right no okay good good uh so i hopefully that comes as some relief to you adam uh thanks a lot for uh taking the time to take the call today and what are your thoughts on what we're about to talk about um.
[2:25] Well, um, so similarly, I kind of, uh, I came from a, uh, like family that had a lot of problems and whatnot. And, um, and so just a lot of the momentum that has caused me to have the views that I have are just because kind of of the view of like, um, just like I've seen kind of how, how bad it can kind of be. And, and I, I guess I haven't finished processing that it, it's kind of the view of, of it's like, if I tried to be good and my parents still like, weren't happy with me, then that means like, you know, it having a functional family is just so hard, but really the truth is like my, my parents weren't happy with me because of like their own problems a lot. Um, and, and so I guess it's just kind of processing that.
[3:14] And yeah, for most of my life, like I, I absolutely, like I almost, you know, um, got like a vasectomy, like I never actually almost did it, but I was like, almost like considered getting a vasectomy or something. I was just so sure that I didn't want to have kids. And now, yeah, because of your show, we're thinking about it. And yeah, I just have to get my life more together and just be more functional and stuff and just really decide to make this huge decision.
[3:47] And this can also be kind of a lot of me projecting my inner turmoil onto the world. But just, you know, the statistics and Ben Shapiro talks about this a lot about just like, you know, being in the U.S. Today is like basically, you know, the best, you know, because people say, oh, you know, like if you're like poor in the U.S., you know, you need more like help and stuff. But really, like the poor people in the U.S. are like the it's the best poor class in like the history of the world in any country and all this type of stuff.
[4:18] Oh, to be in a country where the poor are the fattest.
[4:23] Yeah, and that's a really interesting thing. But then I listen to a lot of what you talk a lot about, how you think that there's not really a stop to what you consider kind of the big red scare.
[4:40] And it might just be me projecting a lot of my inner stuff onto just, oh my god the world's like a bad place or is is it actually just uh i don't know like just um yeah just dealing with a lot of these types of questions i guess
[4:55] Right right very good very good okay so just before we get started there's just a perspective that i kind of want to put as a sort of backdrop to this which is you know who some of the best drivers are the best drivers are people who've been in accidents.
[5:14] Because they're really careful, right? So coming from a bad history in no way means that you'll be a bad parent. In fact, a lot of times, particularly with self-knowledge, it means you're going to be an excellent parent because you know all of the examples of what not to do, right? It's like that old story about the twins who grow up and one becomes an alcoholic and the other one never touches alcohol and someone asks them why and one of the twins says, well, well, I'm an alcoholic because my father was an alcoholic. I inherited his genes and that's why I'm an alcoholic, right? And the other one says, I never touched alcohol because I saw what it did to my father and I never wanted to end up like that. So you can go both ways when it comes to parenting and history and how it affects you in the future. I mean, I hate to give my mom any credit, but I have always said, I'm gonna tell the truth. I am a great parent in large part because my mom was a terrible parent. I would not be as good a parent as I am if my mom had not been as bad a parent and my dad as bad a parent as they were.
[6:28] So thanks. Do you know what I mean? I want to give in a weird way credit where credit is due. And so that grip of history and this idea that history has got you in its grip and you're just going to end up repeating, all the disasters you were subjected to, is a form of determinism, and a form of Groundhog Day repetition compulsion that if you were prone to, you wouldn't be listening to this show. So I just wanted to sort of mention that at the beginning, get that out of the way so I don't have to keep sort of re-injecting it into there.
[7:01] But Eve, tell me if you can, was there a particular moment when you were listening to this show that you began to feel the old ovaries twitch and say feed me feed me.
[7:10] Yes literally yeah there's this one um call-in show that i specifically remember that it was this woman who actually she got her tubes tied and she called into you basically saying hey ladies out there think about it you know like think before you know you make the mistakes that i've made you know like getting my tubes tied unlike
[7:33] Vasectomy as far as i know that's like a one-way street.
[7:36] Yeah yeah basically right and that i remember listening to her and she is just like sobbing as she's telling you you know how wonderful it is to be a parent and to go through pregnancy and to have her husband take care of their baby and just watching all of that and you know she's just describing all these little things that in such detail just how wonderful it is to be a parent and that was like the final like thing that really pushed me over the edge that like no I really do want to be a mom and I it, I, it was really, and then, but like, I guess before that, it's really like listening to your show and just you talking about how much, um, parenting can affect, um, children and how they grow up. And I was basically taught the opposite that parents really have no, um, control over it. You're kind of, um, you just kind of get a child and hope for the best basically is what I was taught. And so that terrified me. And so listening to your show and getting educated on that really, um, changed my mind. And yeah.
[8:49] Like who, who would say if you're living together with your husband, uh, your wife, who would say, Hey, some random person from the world is going to come and live with you.
[8:58] And you're just going to have to find a way to deal with it. I mean, who, who would say that? Right. I mean, um, and, and so if you think that parenting doesn't have an effect, then you're just rolling the dice and maybe you get a good kid and maybe you don't, but it's kind of alarming, right? Now, to be clear, there are studies that say that parenting doesn't have much effect on some outcomes with regards, certainly educational attainment, IQ, and so on. And I'm there. Like, parenting doesn't affect the height of your kids and your IQ is somewhat fixed. But who cares? I mean, who cares? Just because parenting doesn't affect your kid's eye color doesn't mean that parenting doesn't matter. And the other thing, too, is that parenting is not particularly high quality these days. I mean, parents hit their kids somewhat less, slightly less than they used to, but they spend less time with them and abandon them more to electronics and stuff like that, and peer pressure, peer influences. So we're at a pretty weak state. And the parental transmission of values is almost non-existent. This abandonment of kids to just raise themselves, Lord of the Flies jungle style, has been arguably the greatest disaster to hit our civilization, but it doesn't have to be that way at all. I mean, we really essentially need to transmit values to our children. So it's sort of comparing apples to oranges, comparing good parenting to average parenting these days, but it does have a huge effect for sure, I believe. So, all right. So good for that. Now, Eve, my dear, what...
[10:26] Was going on with your mom. Why on earth would a mother of all people try to tell you not to have kids if I understood your reference correctly?
[10:34] Yeah. So she, I guess to make it clear, like she's never like directly said, like never have kids, but she, the messages that she would send me like interpret it, I interpret it, that she didn't want me to have kids. Um, and so part of me thinks that she like regrets having me and
[10:55] What did she send you messages so.
[10:58] She would say well she first would like talk like pretty negative about me and my siblings just like how unenjoyable we were growing up and just we were just not fun to be around and
[11:12] This was your fault i assume somehow yeah was she a stay-at-home mom um.
[11:18] For a period of time and she told me that she just hated it so she she's worked most of my life but there was a period of time where she was a stay-at-home mom probably when i was in elementary school i
[11:30] Would say wait so she went back to work after you were born but there was a time in elementary school where she was home and she hated it well talk about messing the boat by the time your kids are in school, anyway you should really be stay at home before your kids go to school right yeah.
[11:46] No she went back to yeah she went back to work
[11:49] It's like you know when i went to go and see the last 20 20 of that movie i didn't really enjoy it very much it's like yeah i i i can understand that wow yeah and what do you know what she hated about being a stay-at-home mom, other than the fact that the kids were gone most of the day.
[12:07] I mean, I just don't, like, think she enjoyed us. Like, she just says, like, how unenjoyable we were to be around. So I think.
[12:18] But, okay, you've got to give me more than just repeating the same negative statements. Do you have any idea what, like, was it, oh, you kids were bickering all the time. You never got along. You never listened. I mean, what was her, what were her complaints? Do you recall?
[12:30] So she would always complain that we have an attitude. That all of us kids, especially me, had an attitude. But she could never give me a reason. She could never give me an example because I've asked her, what was my attitude like? But she could never explain it. She would just say that I have an attitude.
[12:44] So she would say that- You know, I've never seen a good parent who uses the phrase, lose the attitude. Now, the attitude means you disagree with your parent about something. That's called attitude. Also, sometimes in a slightly more sophisticated form called disrespect. And it's crap. Why should kids respect the opinions or perspectives of their elders? If you're so damn wise, you should be able to explain to kids rather than just rely on authority. You should be able to explain your position to kids, right? I mean, it's not that hard to get kids to understand the dangers of sugar or why you shouldn't yell abuse at people. It's not that complicated because there's very good reasons. And, of course, if you model the better behavior. But this idea of attitude is usually there's some disagreement between the parent and the child. The parent can't or won't explain why the parent's view is better and then just falls back on this grenade called attitude that they roll under the tent of the kid's brain.
[13:45] Yeah, exactly. All right.
[13:48] Now, is your mother... Sorry, I'm trying not to be... Leading questions, right? Okay, what would you say is the level of your mother's contentment as a whole? Is she a happy person? She feel fulfilled? Is she content in her life?
[14:08] Um, I would say no, she's not just because she is very career driven. Like that's what she really pushed on me is to just focus on my career and being just this successful independent woman. And, but she is someone that is constantly switching her career and constantly doing new things, which makes me think that she isn't. Content with her life because she's constantly changing things, if that makes sense.
[14:43] Okay. So why don't, why are you relying on empirical evidence that comes from a resume rather than a knowledge of your mother's actual personality with regards to this? Because that's interesting to me because you're flipping to something that is very abstract and it's like, well, she does. I mean, you grew up with the woman. She was home with you for some portion of your childhood in elementary school. You know her now that you're an adult. Is she a, Is she a happy person?
[15:16] I would say no.
[15:19] And forget the resume, but what indications do you have that she's not happy?
[15:28] I think it's... I just think it's because of just the what she went through with me and my siblings
[15:46] What she went through boy there's an excusing term i'm gonna be a nag just so you know i apologize for that that's fine no listen what she went through i don't know i mean if you're kidnapped out of the blue you go through something if you're the parent you don't go through you're in charge of you manage and you create, I mean, if I paint a picture, I don't sit there and say, wow, that experience of going through painting the picture was really harrowing. It's like, what are you talking about? You made the picture. You can't be passive about something you're in charge of, right?
[16:19] Yeah.
[16:19] Okay. So what, but in the phraseology that we're using, that you were using, what did she go through with regards to her kids? What was the problem? What problems? Other than attitude.
[16:33] Yeah so my older brother was a drug addict for a couple years and so she starting
[16:41] At what what.
[16:43] Uh more than a couple years so i i would say like he started doing drugs like when he was in sixth grade so that puts you around like 11 i guess Oh,
[16:56] Really?
[16:58] Yes.
[16:59] Sixth grade. So what is he, 12?
[17:02] Yeah, around then, yeah.
[17:05] God, what did he start doing when he was in grade six?
[17:08] Uh, weed.
[17:09] Weed? Yeah. Smoking weed?
[17:12] Yeah. And that progressed to some other hardcore stuff and then led to like a full-on addiction where, you know, he was kicked out of the house and all of that and went to rehab multiple times, like in and out, and then finally stuck it through rehab and is now sober.
[17:32] How long did his addiction last? I mean, let's go from 12 till when did he get sober?
[17:37] I would say 20.
[17:39] Oh, my God. All right. So why the hell was your brother doing drugs in grade six? What is going on in the family?
[17:53] Yeah and that's something i've been figuring out because yeah
[18:01] You were there.
[18:02] But i i was there yeah i'm
[18:07] Not saying you'd have all the secrets but you were there.
[18:13] I just don't think like no one felt comfortable in the house it was just yeah i just don't think we felt comfortable especially my older brother and he also just like had a lot of insecurities with himself so that's and he didn't really have another like outlet besides drugs all
[18:33] Right so why didn't people feel comfortable in the house was there yelling was there abuse was there.
[18:38] A lot of yelling yes a lot of yelling okay
[18:40] And yelling like conflict yelling parent to parent parent to child.
[18:47] Um my mom yelling at my dad and us kids and
[18:54] What was she yelling about what was she upset about.
[19:01] Um, just like, she would just yell over like things like the dishes not being done or, um, just like things. Yeah. I just like small things that she would yell at.
[19:23] So she made up standards of housekeeping. Yeah. in order to bully people.
[19:32] Yeah, basically.
[19:34] Because, I mean, there's no way you can care more about beds being made than the happiness of your own children. And there's no way that you can make your children uncomfortable enough about housework, that potentially they could have ended up on drugs because of that, right? That's not... Yeah, if you want a messy home, then yelling at kids about housework to the point where they end up doing drugs is a great way to end up with a messy home, right? Like she did not achieve what she wanted, right?
[20:03] Yeah.
[20:03] Okay. No, and it's, I mean, I've said this before, right? But I dated a girl who was constantly nagging me and others. Oh, you got to tidy up. You got to keep things tidy. You got to tidy. You got to keep things clean. You left this on the counter. It's bad, right? And then I had to visit her like a year or two after we broke up to pick something up. Her place was a complete pigsty. She didn't care about keeping things tidy. She just liked bullying people.
[20:29] Yeah.
[20:32] All right. And what would your mother say? Give me, everyone has this, like, it's like an eight track in your brain. Sorry, it's kind of an old reference. But what would your mother say when she would be upset about that housework?
[20:52] Um she would usually just start yelling about like how lazy us kids were for like not doing the dishes or like putting the dishwasher away or you know not keeping our bathroom clean and just yeah i guess just okay
[21:10] So lazy what else might she say.
[21:12] Ungrateful uh Uh,
[21:15] The ungrateful. Yes. Okay. Go ahead.
[21:19] Yeah. Lazy and ungrateful, I would say, were the main ones.
[21:23] Right. Right. And your father, what would he do when these estrogen-like rampages were charging through the house?
[21:33] Nothing.
[21:35] Just kind of, what, he'd fold himself into a fetal position and hide under the glass table in an ineffective way? Or what do you mean? Nothing.
[21:41] Stay silent. Nothing. like he would just watch
[21:45] Why would why would he why wouldn't he say whoa whoa whoa you know we don't want any of our kids ending up as drug addicts so maybe stop screaming at them all the time and calling them lazy and ungrateful because they're getting older we're getting weaker and there's going to be blowback why wouldn't he assert himself as a co-parent and just say no no no we're going to find some other way to deal with this right i.
[22:09] Think he was just scared of like upsetting her more i mean i really don't know
[22:14] More than drug addiction on the part of one of her children i can understand what he.
[22:19] Just i mean and still to this day he does not say anything he's
[22:24] Still oh he's scared he's just scared of her.
[22:26] Just scared of her
[22:27] Because you know let's be precise right afraid of not upsetting her is one thing afraid of her temper is another thing is she is she a bully i mean is that a fair way to describe her or is it more complex or less complex Um.
[22:48] I don't know if she's like a bully, but she just like yells. Like she just, when she gets mad, she just gets really mad.
[22:56] Oh man. I don't know if she's a bully, says Eve. She just verbally abuses people when she gets angry and terrifies them. I mean, you know, I don't know. Bully could also be called really nice, friendly. I don't know. It's tough to categorize. People who yell at others, particularly children, call them abusive names when they get angry.
[23:19] So, yeah, she's a bully.
[23:21] All right. All right. Now, you have one sibling or two?
[23:31] I have two. Two.
[23:37] And with regards to when your mother was at home, do you have any memory of how long she was home for?
[23:46] I just want to i want to say like two years three years
[23:51] Right not that long let me ask you this can you think of a time with your mother where you had a relaxed enjoyable peaceful time.
[24:09] When i was like when i was a child
[24:10] Yeah no not one no.
[24:15] Nothing i've thought about this and nothing sticks out to me
[24:19] Did she play with the kids.
[24:29] I think sometimes we play board games but
[24:32] And was that not fun or enjoyable.
[24:37] I okay that's enjoyable i do yeah that would be enjoyable
[24:40] And that was you and your mom or your kids and mom i or was the whole family i.
[24:47] Think me and like my maybe a sibling like
[24:52] No but with with your mom did you did she ever play board games with you or join in games with you or play hide and go seek or or i.
[25:03] Don't remember like i don't remember i would say yeah with board games yeah she would do that with us
[25:10] And you had did you have fun with your mom playing board games.
[25:18] Yeah i i
[25:19] I'm not trying to catch you out i just i'm just trying to map it.
[25:24] Yeah i mean i guess i would say i'd have fun but i guess i've never really felt like a hundred percent comfortable just because i like i've never i her like the anger that in like temper that she would have would just kind of be like random and so i was kind of always on guard if she was just going to like not be like she would get upset or something
[25:48] So she could just get upset and lose her temper and therefore it's very tough to relax around someone like that right yeah yeah yeah no i know i know i know yeah i mean i mean it does you can i mean i remember when i was quite young my mother would and i would sometimes i would read a comic book and she'd read the paper on Sunday mornings. I do remember that being kind of a relaxed and enjoyable time when I was quite young. I guess I was like maybe five or six years old. I have memories of that. So, I mean, it can happen even if people have bad tempers and so on. But as you begin to detect the patterns or the randomness of things, then it becomes harder and harder to relax, right? You never know when the predator is going to come out and when things are going to get spoiled, right?
[26:33] Yeah.
[26:34] And it's even worse when you're supposed to be having a good time. I mean, Some of the most wretched times of my childhood were to around Christmas because you're supposed to be having a great time, right? You're supposed to be enjoying Christmas. There's lovely music, soft lights. You get lights on the Christmas tree. You've got presents. You've got somewhat decent food. And if that goes to hell in a handbasket, that's even worse, right? Because it's like now you can't even enjoy Christmas, right? So the expectation becomes almost like punishment when you expect a decent time and it doesn't pan out. It's like even worse than if you never expected it to begin with.
[27:06] Yeah. Right. Yeah.
[27:08] Right. And your father, did he partake in any of these yelling things, or was he basically absent, or how did that work out?
[27:21] He would just like stay silent. He wouldn't yell or talk or anything like that. He would just kind of let my mom go off on a rant and scream at us. And usually that resulted in me and my siblings like yelling back or staying silent either way. And then one of us would end up leaving. And then that would just kind of be the end of it.
[27:43] Leave the house?
[27:44] Like go to our room. Like go to our room and just.
[27:47] So nothing's resolved in these situations?
[27:50] No.
[27:51] And are there apologies afterwards, or does it just get stuffed down, and then the next grenade gets rolled?
[27:57] It just gets stuffed down, and you just keep going on.
[28:02] Right. Right. Yeah, I'm still sometimes waiting for this supposed emotional intelligence and brilliance of relationship genius of women to manifest sometimes. To be perfectly honest with you, it seems like sometimes it's not how it kind of plays out in the real world. Although your dad wasn't helpful at all as far as i can see kind of enabling it right yeah right and was there um spanking or hitting or anything like that no right, and how often would your mom yell and not just at you but but just in general at your dad or or siblings i.
[28:42] Would probably say two to three times a week
[28:44] Right right so you know i guess what up to a thousand times a year? Yeah. No, sorry. She's thinking two to three times a day. My apologies. 52 weeks, two to three, 104. Okay, got it, got it. All right. And how long would the yelling last? Was it like a flare up and a diminish or was it more chronic or how long would they last?
[29:11] They would last... Probably, like, 30 minutes to an hour.
[29:22] Oh, God.
[29:24] But then, like, once, like, she stops yelling, like, no one goes to her the rest of the night. So it's like she's kind of on, you know, like, on the edge after she, like, calms out.
[29:34] So she kind of stops yelling but doesn't give up the fight.
[29:37] Yeah, like, you couldn't go after and, like, talk to her. It's, like, avoiding, like, everyone just avoids the situation till the next morning.
[29:46] So two to three times a week, like an entire evening would be ruined. Is that right?
[29:51] Yeah.
[29:52] God, I'm so sorry. Oh, Eve, that is just terrible. That's like a war zone emotionally, right?
[29:59] Yeah.
[30:01] Wretched. Have you talked to your siblings much about this?
[30:09] Not really, no.
[30:13] So your brother must have been pretty jittery and nervous. And given that marijuana is like a calming, isn't it? A calming agent. He may have just been self-medicating anxiety that may have just come out of the home.
[30:25] That's what I think. Yeah. And then I think that just led him down to, you know, other things. And that's, you know, he got involved into other stuff.
[30:37] Yeah. So he kind of lost eight years, right?
[30:40] Yeah, definitely.
[30:44] With regards to the addiction, do your parents blame him? Do they blame the school, the peers, the media, themselves? I mean, where is the responsibility for this catastrophe, Leigh?
[31:00] They, I would say, blame him a good amount. I think they take a little bit of blame for it, but not that much. And they would kind of blame him and then the friend group that he was involved in.
[31:14] And what would the self-blame be that they would take or the responsibility they would take for a drug addict at the age of 12 or starting that road?
[31:30] I honestly don't know. So maybe they have not taken blame for it. I actually don't think I've ever heard them say that they take blame for it.
[31:40] Did they ever get involved in family therapy or anything that might have had a professional say, listen, this is what's called the identified patient, which is the person who's acting out the dysfunction in the family, but we have to deal with dysfunction in the family. We can't just say the only problem is the drug user. That's unfair and invalid, particularly because he's so young. So did anything, did they ever do anything like that? Because, you know, if you've got somebody sliding into substance abuse, the first thing you want to do, I think, is go see a professional. Well, you might want to change schools, but go see a professional and figure out what might be happening that would maybe make that path more slippery.
[32:19] Yeah. So we did see a family therapist for a period of time, but not like maybe just a couple sessions. And I don't ever remember getting anything out of it.
[32:30] A couple of sessions.
[32:32] Yeah. We didn't go that long, like that many times.
[32:35] Oh, I know why. I shouldn't laugh because it's not funny, but I know why. My guess, you were there. So obviously your experience trumps my hypothesis. So tell me where I go astray as always. But my guess is that the first couple of sessions are information gathering, and then I believe a competent family therapist would start to focus on anything that the parents might be doing that could be contributing to the problem. And maybe that's when they yanked going back.
[33:11] Yeah, it could have been that. Um, we also, as kids, like didn't want to go to it just because we did not feel comfortable talking even in like a setting like that with a therapist. So I, I especially remember just not feeling comfortable.
[33:26] And so I guess you're afraid of saying something to the therapist that would get you in trouble with your mom, right?
[33:31] Yeah. And I, I didn't, I was like, I guess like definitely embarrassed by the emotions that I've had and like the feelings. Yeah.
[33:41] Um just because i've always been like a really emotional person so i didn't what
[33:46] Do you mean a really emotional person sorry and by the way adam i've not forgotten about you i appreciate this time and we'll we'll get to you so hopefully this is to you um so eve what do you mean you say a really emotional person.
[33:57] All right like i like i cry a lot so like when i would get like just any sort of emotion just you know if i'm upset or mad or whatever like i just end up crying And that was like something my parents don't really understand. And so they would always go like, oh, why are you crying? And I'm just like, I don't know. I just am so upset and I'm crying.
[34:21] And they wouldn't say, why are you crying? Like, well, why are you crying? Like, well, what's happening? And help me understand. But why are you crying?
[34:27] Like, why are you crying? What is wrong with you? Like, why are you crying? And then I would just like stop crying and just.
[34:35] Do they have trouble recognizing authentic human emotion? Do you think?
[34:39] Yeah.
[34:40] Because that's symptomatic of some not very positive personality traits, as far as I understand.
[34:46] Yeah.
[34:48] If the therapist had been criticizing your parents, I bet you you would have been quite interested in the therapy.
[34:54] Yeah. Yeah.
[34:56] So let's say, and listen, I'm not a therapist, but this is just what I've read, right? So my understanding is, especially if the child is very young, then you don't just sit there and say, well, I mean, this is Dr. Phil. You can see this all the time on Dr. Phil, right? He'll say, oh, yeah, yeah, your behavior is outrageous, but let's go talk to your parents, right? Your behavior is counterproductive. This is kids who are like 16 or 17, whatever, but let's go talk to your parents, right? And if the kids are even younger, he sympathizes with the kids and he focuses on the behavior of the parents. And you can see clear as day where the dysfunction from the parents is sliding down, pushing the kid into negative behavior, right? So that's standard as far as I understand it. Maybe there are exceptions, but whatever, right? But of course, if there were exceptions, then your parents would probably have continued going. So here's the thing, right? I know we're reaching back in time with a hypothesis and so on, but I think it could be important. So if your parents, how old were you? Do you remember roughly how old you were when you went? Or sorry, how old your brother was? It's probably easier to.
[35:57] I think my brother was a little bit older. So he would, I think he was probably like in eighth or ninth grade at the time. And so I'm a couple of years younger. Okay.
[36:09] So within two years, say, of him starting, they go. So if the therapist was saying something like this, yes, your son is still 14 years old, so we definitely need to change the behavior, but we need to look at the causality within the family, and that's going to mean that you guys are going to have to look in the mirror and figure out what you may be doing that's contributed to the problem, and therefore you may need to change some behaviors. Or something like that, right? Yeah. Now, if that came to your parents, They're going to the professional who is going to help them with their son's addiction, right? And he's still six years from getting sober, five or six years from getting sober at this point, Eve. So if your parents went to a therapist, went to the therapist, and the therapist said this at some point, which is why they didn't go back, it means that they abandoned what may have been your brother's only chance to not become a drug addict.
[37:13] Yeah i never thought of that
[37:14] And if the therapist wasn't good then they would have dropped that therapist and gone to another therapist right yeah because you do whatever it takes to prevent the situation from escalating i assume he wasn't a full-blown whatever he was using drug addict at this point because he's still only 14 or 15 years old so there was still a chance to stop this before it got way out of control, but they didn't take it, which meant they chose their own emotional defenses or comfort over preventing your brother's further slide into drug addiction, which is horrible if true. And of course, you'll never know if it's true, because it's very unlikely you'd go and sit them down and say, oh yeah, yeah, no, the therapist said that we, we had to change. We didn't want to do that. So we just kind of stopped going to therapy and let your brother slide further into drug addiction. They're not going to say that, right? Um, what do you think about what I'm saying? You say you're such an emotional person. I'm getting a lot of, um.
[38:27] It, it's hard to think that because i definitely could have saved my brother and i's relationship for sure it could have been because me and him were like pretty close and then
[38:42] Well the entire family i assume was half destroyed for half a decade or more from this right yeah and your parents probably i think potentially could have done an enormous amount to prevent or help this by continuing to go to therapy and change their behaviors no emotion yet i.
[39:06] Am like tearing up over here
[39:08] Well now this is interesting right yeah what's the tearing up where's that coming from i don't mean to say interesting like you're a specimen so i don't mean to like be cold or anything but it's interesting because what i feel is pretty fucking angry, but you're tearing up.
[39:26] I just feel so sad go on just about yeah like i think i truly believe that my parents had so much control over my brother and all of us but especially my brother and definitely could have helped him earlier on And I will never know. And I also am just so upset because I was left out a lot of this during his drug addiction time. Like we never talked about it. And so as a family, we just repressed it and just didn't talk about the fact that my brother is using drugs.
[40:14] And how would it impact the family, his behavior?
[40:20] The whole family just went more distant just no one talked to each other
[40:28] Now was it did you mean nobody talked to each other like nothing or only inconsequential things.
[40:37] Like nothing like hi how's it not even how's it going just hi
[40:42] So how would you pass how would you pass the time at home in silence in separate rooms or same room or yeah watching the tv or i.
[40:53] Would say in separate rooms we all would just be in separate rooms doing like we stopped eating dinner together like early on like probably when i got into high school
[41:04] Right so.
[41:07] It was just really separate
[41:09] So would food be downstairs like and then everyone would just take their food and go eat in their own rooms um.
[41:17] Yeah part of that yeah or sometimes we would like sit together but no one would talk
[41:26] Like no one would talk like like.
[41:29] No one would talk no
[41:31] I was just saying this is funny i just i just had another call with someone today who had the same story that his childhood was five people in five different rooms with five different televisions and i was just telling him that i was driving back from someplace with my daughter today and we fell silent for about 10 or 15 seconds and you know what she said, well that's unusual Yeah.
[41:59] And that's really special, something that I am sad that we didn't have that in my family.
[42:07] Right. And what's your relationship like with the male?
[42:13] I would say about the same. Like, we don't, I don't really talk to them that much anymore. And when we do talk, we don't really talk about, like, anything meaningful. Like, they never ask me, like, how I'm doing. and stuff like that it's just kind of like really surface level things
[42:37] Right okay now um sorry to startle you here adam but if we can jump to you for a sec yeah your childhood.
[42:44] Um it was really tough for a number of reasons uh most of which i've kind of processed like after just leaving the house um and and i was dead yeah i've definitely been traumatized um in with kind of like a number of symptoms um of that and stuff and have done a lot of therapy and meditation and stuff um it just my parents just had um just this just a lot of like insecurities and a lot of reasons why their two sons needed to really just be these perfect representations of this um upper class like type of ideal that that yeah just had to be like represented and and we that the more negativity we got the more we kind of wanted to like rebel and kind of slide into a more counterculture type of thing um not like doing drugs um a lot of like i mean we just you on a
[43:52] Skateboarder will you.
[43:53] Uh we we're uh rode bmx bikes so yes oh brother and uh yeah and uh and and they um and and and the thing is is is it it was really tough because like like i would my brother and i both just had a lot of energy and and not a lot of time like away from our parents that we had like any freedom to discharge it and so we would like go to the skate park and and this is, I think, typical of a lot of people that are like, you know, very aggressive, like skaters and BMXers and stuff. And so we would do dangerous things. And so my parents are just freaking out, doing everything they can to like, not let us like do that. And then, but then we just have so much stress and negativity from our house that we just, the one time we get to do it, we just, um, are, are just so reckless. And just, I mean, a lot of it was just, I also really didn't, um, although i might have not been able to articulate this at the time i really just did not have like a lot to live for um and and it was it was kind of uh like i was i was definitely doing things that like one small mistake could have potentially cost me my life and i was uh like oh kind of okay with taking that risk yeah
[45:09] It was like when my friends and i used to cross giant train bridges, and you know once or twice trains came along and almost caught us and it was like it's because you're empty and and there's no future that you can see and and stimulation is better than nothing right.
[45:26] Yeah yeah definitely and
[45:29] You want to be good at something and being good at something just takes like philosophy like bmx it takes risk it takes risk.
[45:36] Yeah right
[45:37] Right and within your home did you have any of eve's mom's temper issues floating around or anything like that was there any spanking or.
[45:46] Uh no spanking um but but you know like i i just love like riding bmx bikes and stuff and for like for us like we would just get punished when our parents my parents would just lock our bikes up to this like our bikes just uh we're in the garage like in this bike rack and my parents would just lock our bikes to the bike rack um a lot and and that so that it was it sounds very trivial but it was a very like emotionally charged punishment but yeah no um spanking yes to yelling um and um uh like my dad was kind of more um uh like eve's dad was more kind of like a passive bystander my dad was more kind of uh doing the same thing and and i'd say it's it's very fair to say that they kind of like um didn't really have any like relationship problems because they kind of just triangulated it like like my dad would his number one priority was just how mad he was at us and my mom's was the same so they kind of um yeah it was just uh yeah so that um yeah
[46:58] So I, I generally associate Adam and tell me, you know, this may be completely astray, but I generally associate hypercaution regarding children's safety as more of a feminine thing. But was it your dad was the same way or was he like, well, you, you, you, I don't want your mom to get too scared or too upset or whatever. Right.
[47:20] Uh it was my my dad was not hyper cautious with like the risk and stuff but it was um it was it was my dad deferred my dad did not you know meet my mom my mom at the 50 yard line he let my mom kind of uh had had a majority of the field with regards to like how we were getting raised um but my dad really didn't like bmx and stuff not but not because he was super cautious of the risk although that was also part of it but it just um it he just wanted us to not be that um he didn't want us to be like bmxers and stuff like that did
[48:01] He have because you said earlier upper class thing did he have a class thing about it like that's lower class or.
[48:05] Yeah like a class status type of ego was the main driver, yeah.
[48:12] Got it, okay. So, of course for you, it's like lower class, that's where the vitality is, that's where the energy is, right? I mean, this is like, I don't know, cucumber sandwiches and sliced bread with the crusts off, and so I'm obviously exaggerating a little bit, but you kind of want to go roughhouse a bit, right?
[48:29] Yeah.
[48:31] Now, you said earlier at the beginning of this conversation, Adam, that you had sort of concerns about the Red Scare, the future of the world, and so on. Was there any of that, in your life growing up, environmental scares or war scares, or was there any sense of doom and gloom about the future in an abstract sense in your household?
[48:54] No, no, no. It's all just, yeah, no, it's all, like any kind of real guttural anxiety that I have about that stuff is is all just kind of like a projection um i grew up with like in a very you know safe neighborhood and my parents weren't really super involved with politics and didn't know you know they just um yeah so none of that stuff was present no i get any
[49:24] Enviro scares in school um like global warming is gonna make us all drown or die or anything like.
[49:31] That i'd say with with global warming some um but uh but ironically you know the thing like like right now i'm actually you know of like my number one fear is that you know just kind of what will happen if we kind of uh it's kind of more of the red scare type of thing um and in schools like you know the the number one thing they're afraid of is more of the you know the the the like not you know just the the racism scare with um so i definitely didn't get that from school like like obviously you know obviously my public middle school was not saying that like we're becoming too far left um yeah right
[50:09] Now i can understand that i believe you there i believe you there, now um for you adam let's say that the the you you cross the hurdle and i know you're kind of halfy halfy right but you cross the hurdle with regards to kids is your major concern existential like the future and security? Is it money? Is it whether you'll be a good parent? Is it whether you'll enjoy parenting? And what would you say your top concerns are?
[50:35] Um, I'd say like existential being kind of like out of the household and just, just the fact that like, like I just have so much just, uh, negativity and anxiety and stuff that, that it's just, you know, I'm going to kind of, uh, and that's kind of what, what kind of really drove, um, you know, my mom was just very, you know, my mom was like, would be, you know, pretty much off the charts and like neuroticism and anxiety and stuff like that. And, um, and so it's like, you know, it's kind of just, just that, like kind of repeat the fear of kind of repeating that of just, you know, just, just coming at it with just, uh, yeah. So existential, like, you know, like something bad is going to happen to the kid or something. And, and also the
[51:23] Kid or society, like it's society going to go to hell and, you know, i gotta watch my kids get carted after concentration camps are they gonna watch me or or is it like your kid could get hurt or injured or sick or something like that like one's more existential the other's more just like risk of life of life i'd.
[51:41] Say both of those are big concerns like it's really yeah and um yeah so i'd say both and then on top of that it kind of just like money and stuff and then um Yeah. So just, so all of those things, the truth is, is, is I still have kind of a lot of like just anxiety and, and kind of just mental health that needs to be worked on. Um, like basically at the, like, we wouldn't be having kids like in the next like year. And, and by the time we have kids, um, I kind of, I'm going to be like a different person at that time than I am now. Um, and, and I'm going to be that different person anyway, because I'm just, just progressing myself like in this direction at a very fast rate and stuff.
[52:27] But the way I just think of it, like I'm just, yeah, it's hard for me to kind of picture being just at peace with. And one other thing too is just the fact that like for most of my life and stuff, like I've really not been, like my life has been really difficult. And for most of it, I've pretty much not been happy that I was alive. And that's, that's kind of changed, um, recently. And your show has been the biggest thing that's changed that. Um, so thank you very much for having the show. And I, um, yeah, so, so that's been amazing and everything. And, um, but yeah, like I'm just still not completely functional with just, just my day to day, you know, and, and, uh, uh, and, and still just, you know, have a big, just kind of like, like just a big nihilistic type of like thing that, that I had for most of my life that I'm kind of like healing from is, you know, just everything's just crap. And I just want to kind of work a small job that doesn't mean anything. And then just kind of die and just have for like, fuck my relationship with like the planet earth, you know? And, and I still kind of like seep into that type of thinking. And, and of course, if you are thinking that way, the last thing you want to do is like have a kid.
[53:47] Right. Yeah. So ghosting is kind of tempting for you, right?
[53:51] Yeah.
[53:52] Right. Now. Yeah.
[53:55] I'm sorry to do this to you. I'm going to give you a tiny speech, so feel free to get comfortable, but I think it'll be meaningful and helpful. I was really struck when you said, I'm going to be a different person. Now, I don't think that's true, and I think that that's a way of looking at it that is feeding the nihilism. I've always been kind of fascinated by archaeology where you find a city like you find a city and and and you try to excavate it you try to brush away everything that's not the city so that you can see the city like pompeii you know like all these people who are like buried in ash and they can see them having sex and on the toilet and cooking and dancing and and masturbating and They can recreate the life or moment of a city when it was covered in ash from what Mount Vensuvius, I think, erupted, right? So I love the idea, like, you see a little thing poking out from the earth, usually in Alberta. And it turns out that it's the most incredible dinosaur, but it takes a huge amount of work to excavate it and get the skeleton out and remove everything that's not the dinosaur, right?
[55:12] Now when you see something sticking out of a the badlands in alberta and it turns out to be the most magnificent dinosaur what is the process it doesn't become a different dinosaur.
[55:27] When that old saying michelangelo they would say to michelangelo how do you make such amazing how do you make such a beautiful sculpture of a lion he says well it's easy i just take a big block of marble and i chip away everything that doesn't look like the lion, So the marble is not becoming a different lion. The city is not becoming a different city. The fossil is not becoming a different fossil. You're just taking away everything that's not the thing itself. So if you grew up with a neurotic mother, then you have her voice in your head, and it interferes with your natural expression of who you are. Now, it's become part of who you are, and you can't extract it and become like you never had that mother.
[56:13] But the world seeks to impose itself on us on a regular basis, almost continually, it seems, right?
[56:21] You can't say this. You can't do that. You can't think that. You can't communicate the other. You can't make this speech. You can't show this information. You can't share this graph. You can't, like, control, control, control. It's political correctness. It's a tyranny of language that aims to escalate to a tyranny. Of political power over time, and we get to stop it, right? But they're trying to shape you into something that you're not. They're trying to silence you. They're trying to warp you or discolor you or twist you into something else, and they hope to make it permanent that you'll do it to yourself. So when you say, I'm going to be a different person, I would invite you to think of it in a different way, which I think is a more accurate way, which is i'm going to be more myself in the future not a different person you can't be a different person but you can pull away all the shit that's in the way of you being who you are, naturally spontaneously livingly so to speak you can pull away all the detritus all the junk all the garbage.
[57:28] You know, when some asshole went and spray painted the Mona Lisa some years ago, they didn't say, well, we've got to make a different Mona Lisa. No, they just want to restore it to its original sense. So they very, very delicately had to remove it. It's easy to spray paint, right? Any idiot, a monkey could probably do it, right? Spray paint. But now to return it to its original state, that's hard work, right? It's complicated. It's easy for the ash to fall on the city of Pompeii. It's hard to restore it to where it was. It's easy for the animal to die in an ocean, and 200 million years later, it's hard to pull it out of the badlands of Alberta or Montana or wherever, right?
[58:10] So occluding and corrupting and messing up and cluttering up is easy. Removing all of that so that you can be who you are in a more natural state, right? So your anxiety is not natural. It was imposed. It was inflicted. by being around an anxious person, having to appease an anxious person because anxiety is always associated with anger, right? Because the anxiety is, I feel really bad. I feel really anxious. I can't function if such and such happens or so-and-so says something. So you're like a raw wound. You're at the mercy of mere syllables and ideas and arguments and facts and data and charts and reality out there in the world. And if somebody imposes that reality or you see that reality, then you freak out. So you're this walking wound, this open nerve.
[59:00] At the mercy of other people's behavior that makes you feel terrible, anxious, scared. And so because you're scared of other people, you have to control other people. I don't mean you. I just mean anxious people in general, maybe your mom more, right? So you're scared of random things happening. You've got to control people so that they don't do or say the things that make you feel bad. Now, when you want to control people and you blame them for your feelings, you either control your own feelings or you end up having to control other people. There's nothing in between. So... If you believe that, or if someone believes, that someone else saying or doing something makes them feel terrible, makes them feel anxious, makes them feel upset, makes them feel nervous, makes them can't sleep, like Trump gets elected and people can't sleep, they run to the therapist for fistfuls of whatever, right? Medicine, quote, medicine.
[59:50] So what happens is, if you can't manage your own feelings, you end up having to control other people. And then what happens is if they break free of that control, you unleash anger at them because it's they in your mind who are making you feel bad. And so with your mom or maybe with your dad in service to your mom's anxiety or neurosis, as you called them, you had to severely restrict your behavior, control your behavior, manage what you said and thought. And you couldn't be spontaneous. You couldn't be yourself. You couldn't say what was on your mind. Couldn't be honest couldn't be honest couldn't be authentic couldn't be alive you're constantly self-managing it's not life it's not life at all it's like constantly having to guard a fire that you can't escape or put out you got to just control it all the time it's it's exhausting it's debilitating it's alienating to yourself.
[1:00:50] And so when you're raised by an anxious parent who doesn't take ownership of that anxiety and say, well, I got to deal with this. I got to go to therapy. I got to work on it because it's not your job to manage my anxiety. You're just a kid. You got to be yourself. I can't control you rather than control myself. That's unfair. It's not your fault. I'm anxious. I got to deal with that myself, right? It's like if there's a baby and you have a headache, the baby's cry is going to be hard for your headache. but it's not the baby's job to stop crying. You've got to stretch your neck or take an aspirin or whatever it is, right? That's going to help with your headache. It's not the baby's fault you have a headache, right? It's just a baby. And so when you say, I've got to be a different person, I would say, no, you have to stop being a different person and you have to be who you are authentically. And that means going against the grain of appeasing a probably, in my mind, most likely aggressive neurotic because neuroticism as they're saying an aggression are just two sides of the same coin so you just got to stop appeasing crazy people or neurotic people in your mind and in your environment and that way you can be yourself now once you're yourself I said old line be yourself because everyone else has taken once you're yourself anxiety diminishes enormously.
[1:02:13] Because not being yourself is fundamentally very very humiliating it's very humiliating to not be yourself because it's appeasement it's fear it's one thing when you're a kid because you have to but when you become an adult you don't have to appease anyone anymore, So if you think that you have to be someone different, you're never going to get there. You understand? If you think you're just taking off all the garbage that people put on you to manage their own shit, then you can be yourself. That's achievable. Does that make sense?
[1:02:49] Yeah. And that, yeah, I think, I think you did. Yeah. Just hit on, you hit on something very valuable. Um, but at the same time, yeah, that is like, you know, what I mean is just, just like, I'm just processing more and more and that so much will come off. The marble lion is just so much different than the block. But yeah, you're right. I think viewing it that way, it's putting too much emphasis on the future as opposed to manifesting it now and owning it now.
[1:03:25] I just don't want you to think that yourself now, there's something wrong with it. You need to be someone different. Yeah. Right. Because you're never going to get there. And, you know, I know that for Eve, the question is parenting sooner rather than later. And so if you have a task that you can't achieve, like for me, if I say, well, I'll become a dad when I'm six foot three with a full head of hair. Right. And what am I saying? I'm saying I will never be a dad. Right. it's never going to grow my hair and I'm never going to be six foot three. Right. I'd be out of frame anyway. Just see some, an Adam's apple and man boobs. So I don't want you to think that there's this quest that you have to be a different person because then you're never going to be able to achieve that. And you'll be stuck postponing kids if you end up wanting them. Right.
[1:04:16] Yeah. I just, yeah, I, yeah, definitely. And I just, yeah, I need to just, you know, I'm going to school to be a therapist and I'm going to, you know, just, just go through that. And then you, so it's kind of also just the financial like career, you know, just being like ready career wise and, you know, having that income and.
[1:04:49] You know, there's an old saying that says the prospect of an execution has a wonderful way of clarifying your mind, right, in terms of making a defense. Now, listen, I don't want you obviously to be irresponsible, have like nine kids when you don't have a part to piss in. But the reality is that our ancestors raised multiple children on like one tenth of one percent of what we have today. So there's that, right? The idea that we need a fortune, right? I mean, especially if you don't believe that your kids should go to garbage universities for garbage degrees that have them eternally in debt, that makes things quite a bit cheaper. And so, and especially if you have a stay-at-home wife, like I think, is it fair to say, Eve, that that's what you want to be, is stay home with the kids?
[1:05:35] Yeah, that is what I want to do.
[1:05:37] Yeah, okay. So you've got someone running the household. You can really focus on your career. You can work as hard as you need to with the constraint, of course, of wanting to spend time with your kids and so on. So it's one of these weird things we all think well we need to have a bridge across the canyon before we drive across the canyon and you know yes yes you do right but that's not the way that life works financially the way that life sometimes works financially is you gun it and the bridge appears and what i mean by that is there's two times that a man's income goes up considerably the first is when he gets married and the second is when he has kids it doesn't go up before it goes up afterwards why because he starts taking things really seriously right yeah so you don't know how much money you're capable of making till you become a dad statistically that seems to be the case right so waiting to have all your ducks in a row before you i mean i get it you know it's case selected, it's, you know, cold weather selected, I get all of that. But that's kind of not how things play out in the world as a whole. The way that it plays out in the world as a whole is you gun it and the bridge appears, which is weird. It's, it's a hard thing to believe in, but it is kind of what happens.
[1:06:56] Yeah. It's making me really emotional. Yeah. You saying that, I wouldn't expect that to happen, but yeah, but yeah, just that, uh, cause, cause the thing is, is just like, you know, the, an interesting thing too, is like, you know, I, I, I got straight A's in high school and at a very like elite high school.
[1:07:11] No, no, no, forget your high school. Tell me about your emotions. You said you got emotional.
[1:07:13] What was that? Well, no, no, but, but the reason why, like I'm mentioning this is just because like, I, uh, like I, I, I, like I, I never had real goals. It was, it was kind of just living out my parents' goals. And I tried really hard at that. And, and, and, you know,
[1:07:28] Just, uh, you kind of appeasing an anxious person. No, exactly.
[1:07:32] Yeah. And, and so I just, yeah. So, so I, I do, I'm, I'm working on just kind of developing that. Um, and, and, you know, I think just a lot of my nihilism and stuff is, is a just, you know, it's just because getting you know my engine running in the way that you're just describing of just gun and the bridge will appear just you know if you have a yeah it's gold just uh go for it at like full speed i like that um it's kind of i was doing that my whole life but in a very like corrupted perverted way um so it kind of like ruined it for me and i need to kind of just realign
[1:08:06] Oh yeah yeah yeah you were you were but you were also gunning to just escape right.
[1:08:11] Yeah to just be like i wasn't gunning to my goals i was gunning to be like good enough like yeah right
[1:08:19] Right right well good enough you mean appeasing and getting the approval right.
[1:08:25] Yeah it's good enough in the eyes of my parents yeah
[1:08:30] And did your parents do anything to inquire as to what you wanted out of life?
[1:08:43] No, it's the kind of thing too, that's, that's interesting is, and it's, it's really ridiculous, but it's interesting. It's just like, I, I love just riding BMX bikes and was only allowed to do it a very small amount of time. So pretty much a hundred percent of my, like what I wanted to be doing was just like, I'm just trying to like, it's kind of like my, uh, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, my bottom need of obviously food is the bottom need. The next one up for me is like riding BMX, which I wasn't meeting. So I never really thought about like anything else besides just like biking.
[1:09:17] Well, and the sad thing is, is by not allowing you to do it more, it actually became more dangerous because you had less practice.
[1:09:24] It became more dangerous because i had less practice and and more so it became more dangerous because i had more negative emotions i needed to discharge while doing it and the thing is is it just it um because i i was never actually getting it out of my system so i yeah i never was thinking about anything else it's not like i you know right now i i go bike and then it's just i'm done and i don't bike all day i just okay so let's let's get to the
[1:09:50] Core of this nihilism sorry to interrupt let's get to the core of this nihilism what do you think's fueling that where's that cluster coming from.
[1:09:55] Um yeah well just um especially
[1:10:04] If you want to be a therapist you got to grapple this shit to the ground right.
[1:10:07] Yeah yeah definitely and and a lot of like um well yeah like um i mean i mean the thing is is actually my my kind like i've processed just a ton of trauma and i've talked to a lot of people and helped them a lot and and that is really um you know my relationship with eve and and just like my kind of helping no
[1:10:29] No dude come back come back you're very verbal and you're very um charming but i i am going to respectfully request that you answer the fucking question if you can like let's talk about your nihilism rather than eve and and your friends and all the people you've helped. Let's get to the black heart of what's going on, right?
[1:10:48] Well, I'm just, yeah, I think it's just that my whole childhood and stuff, I just didn't have any good relationships and stuff. But I'm changing that now, and I'm doing a lot of helping myself and other people.
[1:11:01] No, you're off again. Okay. So the fact that you didn't have good relationships as a child does not directly cause denialism. There's an interpretation step along the way. Okay. Right. So, so for instance, you could say, well, the reason that, um, you know, the reason that I don't read books is because there were never any books in my home. Right. Well, so what? There were never any books in my home. So I went to the library. Right. So the fact that you didn't have good relationships, you could have sit there and said, man, these relationships suck. I cannot wait until I can have better relationships. I'm going to work to try and create better relationships, my friends or whatever it is. Right. And that's how it was. So there's something else that happened, an interpretive step. Right. Because if you're going to try and put causality to your environment, to your emotional state, it means that there's no interpretive step, which means there's nothing to change. Can't change anything. If you interpreted your environment to the point where you ended up feeling nihilistic, then you can change your interpretation. If it's just a couple of dominoes and you end up being nihilistic, well, you can't change your past. So you can't challenge the nihilism. If there's no interpretive step, do you see what I mean?
[1:12:08] Yeah. Okay.
[1:12:09] So what was it that you said about humanity and life and family and contacts and friendship and commitment and intimacy? What was it you said to yourself about all of that based upon your environment?
[1:12:32] I think just that I wouldn't have been able to verbalize it at the time, but I think the message was just being close to people is toxic.
[1:12:42] Okay, right, right, right. Okay, okay. So you had to take a family situation. I assume that this is true in your family. You had to take a family situation, and you had to extrapolate it to the world, to humanity, to everyone, right?
[1:12:59] Yeah.
[1:13:00] Why? Now, you know that's false, right? You probably knew as a kid that that was false deep down, but why did you have to do it, or why did you feel you had to do it at the time?
[1:13:13] Well, at the time, I think one of the, yeah. Yeah.
[1:13:22] Let me ask it another way because it's a tough one right did you see any functional relationships when you were a kid any friends family tv anywhere, no come on i call bullshit on that well.
[1:13:40] I didn't have like a lot of good friend relationships and And I wouldn't say I admired any relationships in my family.
[1:13:52] No, I get that. I get that. Did you see anything? Anything, anywhere. A movie, the TV shows that you watched, anything. A video game where there was a happy family, Octodad, I don't know, like whatever, right?
[1:14:08] Um, well, I think, uh, I, I honestly would like, am going to kind of stick with no. And I know I do realize that.
[1:14:14] No, that's fine. Listen, I mean, push back. I mean, it's your life, right? Yeah.
[1:14:17] But, but I think also like you, where you might be kind of seeing my story wrong is I think like a lot of the, the kind of these problems in my family that I'm able to now verbalize, like we're like kind of in the same way that you might've noticed it with Eve, we're kind of just very well suppressed. And when I like kind of, um, before I started having chronic pain and really like dove in, um, to looking at my past and stuff, I didn't realize that my family was even one 100th as like bad and dysfunctional and neurotic as, as I do now.
[1:14:49] What was your chronic pain?
[1:14:51] Uh, it's been headaches. Um, it was like in, uh, yeah, uh, headaches has been the main thing. Um, I've had a lot of tension headaches and, uh.
[1:15:00] It's not all the way to migraine. So it's, it's just bad headaches, which is.
[1:15:04] Uh, I, I think I've also, yeah, I've also had migraines as well, yeah.
[1:15:08] I'm sorry about that. I'm sorry about that. Okay, so you didn't, and listen, I will absolutely withdraw my statement, and I will apologize for calling this bullshit. If this is your experience, obviously that's, I will put my idea aside for the empirical evidence of what you said. So you didn't see any functional relationships when you were growing up?
[1:15:28] Yeah i i would say yeah i i'd say i didn't know anyone well enough to say that's a functional relationship and like i want that or anything like that yeah got it
[1:15:38] No and i again i apologize for characterizing your story this way now um is it and you said that's because you didn't socialize much outside your family is that right.
[1:15:49] Um yeah yeah that yeah that's correct yeah i didn't I wouldn't get to know any like other families well enough to look at their parents and their family and say like, this is a good family that
[1:16:02] I'm just spending time over at other kids' houses though.
[1:16:04] Or, um, I mean, I had a couple friends in like middle school. I went to a public middle school and then a private high school. And I didn't really have, um, I had like kind of one friend for most of high school that I hung out with not too often. And when I was at his house, It was like his house was like a kind of obviously like better than my house, I'd say. But but I don't know if his dad also kind of like left for a period of time and like came back. I think something like that happened. And right. But yeah. So. So, yeah.
[1:16:37] All right. All right. OK. So. Did friends come to your house at all?
[1:16:49] Not very often, no. Like, this one friend would come over to mine. Not, not, no. Not a lot of friends were coming over, no.
[1:16:59] Because, you know, there are happy-ish or happy functional families out there. So my question is, why didn't you see any? Now.
[1:17:09] Well, yeah, no, I think this is what you're about to say. But I think that you can't ignore the degree to which my family had an incentive to not let me.
[1:17:18] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, got it. Yeah, so that's where I was going, right? So you're in a very managed environment where their concern about you making connections with a more functional family is quite intense, right? Their big incentive is to keep you away from functional families so that you don't have a comparison, right?
[1:17:39] Yeah.
[1:17:39] Right. And crazy girlfriends will do this. Like, you know, a guy's dating a crazy girl when he stops seeing his friends. Yeah. Right. Because if the girl is moving to cut off his contact with his friends, it's because she wants to be nasty as hell towards him without his friends saying, oh man, she's crazy. You got to break it up. Right. Yeah. All right. So then it became universalized because you didn't have a counter example. Right. Yeah. Now that meant that your parents, consciously or unconsciously, I think, it meant that they knew that they were dysfunctional.
[1:18:19] Yeah i mean i'm sure it's it's tough i mean yeah they they were especially my mom like my mom is is a very like good person and stuff and she just really um she was just running completely on anxiety and neuroticism and stuff could be the case
[1:18:37] For her being a really good person i'm maybe i'm perfectly open to it but uh yeah i.
[1:18:42] Am i am um and and yeah and and she's she's like yeah she's she is like a really good person and stuff. And I think was just, just very, uh, just cause the thing is about like a family like mine is that, um, the thing is, is like the parents, you know, don't give the kid proper love in the first three years of the kid's life. And then the kid starts to kind of try to rebel and the parent thinks that, but, Oh, my kid is kind of stepping outside of the bounds. It would be a good parent thing for me to do to kind of nudge them back in bounds, And so it creates this kind of cycle that got really out of hand in my family.
[1:19:20] Okay, sorry to interrupt you. Eve, can I just ask you a quick question?
[1:19:23] Yeah.
[1:19:24] Eve, has it ever occurred to you or have you ever had the experience where Adam is not great at answering questions?
[1:19:29] Yes, definitely.
[1:19:31] I think it's sometimes it's called filibustering. So Adam, I'm going to try to reel you back in. What was my question? Do you remember?
[1:19:41] How am I going to defend that my parents were good parents?
[1:19:43] No, I'm not attacking. I'm saying, I'm making the case, like, from what you've told me, kind of dysfunctional. Produces an ironistic kid who, you know, they lock up the bikes and don't let you express yourself and is hyper-controlling and anxious and neurotic. Right. So then you said, like, she's a really good person. And again, I'm happy to hear the case, but I need to get the balance because I don't have that perspective at the moment. So just make the case about the virtues that your mother exhibited that would have you regard her and. Talk about her as a really good person.
[1:20:17] When I was, the first 18 years of my life, when I was, there were no virtues and stuff, but she's a very different person now, I would say. Yeah.
[1:20:29] She exhibited no virtue for the first 18 years of your life, but she's a good person?
[1:20:36] Yeah, I'd say that's correct.
[1:20:38] Do you think that's believable?
[1:20:41] Yeah. Well, she is...
[1:20:49] Imagine you're a therapist.
[1:20:50] Yeah.
[1:20:51] And someone says that to you. My mother exhibited no virtue my entire childhood. She's a really good person. Come on. Come on, man. What would you say?
[1:21:03] Well, the thing is...
[1:21:05] We just found the nihilism, man. We just found the nihilism. It's the absence of values that you need to maintain to maintain this perspective about your mother, how can someone exhibit no virtues as a parent for the entire length, of the childhood of the child which was only a few years ago you're not like middle-aged guy and then suddenly she becomes a good person when he becomes an adult. Come on. I mean, I'm with you. Maybe you didn't see any. I'll accept absolutely that you didn't see a single functional family growing up because that's your subjective experience that I don't have data to. But when you say something self-contradictory, like my mom exhibited no virtue my entire childhood, but she's a good person. Uh-uh, no, no, no, no. That's a self-contradictory statement. I don't need any empirical evidence one way or the other to, to bring myself up short on that. Right.
[1:22:21] Yeah. I mean, the way I would just defend it is just by saying like, she just thought that it was absolute panic crisis mode and was doing whatever she could to kind of keep like her. Yeah. Just, She was just trying to save, you know, like a drowning person in the river. Like that's how much anxiety she had.
[1:22:43] Okay. So that's all right. I understand that. So then my question is, what objective steps did she take to take responsibility for her anxiety so that she did not egregiously inflict it upon her children?
[1:23:06] Um, like when I was younger, I had a real temper, real temper. And I had to work hard to bring that under control, to focus it on something positive. Cause you know what I know, I mean, when you grow up with a hyper controlling and neurotic mom, you surrender for a certain amount of time and then puberty hits and you can't fucking stand it anymore. So you fight back and you fight back hard and it's a struggle to break free. Like you're, you fell through a hole in the ice. You can't find the hole back and you just got to smash your way through to get to the air and out of the icy dark. So I had to get really punchy.
[1:23:48] Now I could sit there and say, well, you know, but I had this terrible childhood. So of course I've got a bad temper. And it's like, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. That's not how it's going to be with my life, right? I'm going to find this temper into something that serves me and serves the world and gives me courage rather than the capacity to be hurtful, right? Or harmful. So if you're going to say, well, my mother had all this anxiety, okay, fine. I mean, I'm sorry that she had all this anxiety, but she had this anxiety when she was probably a child, a teenager, a young woman, when she started dating your dad, when she got engaged, when she got married, when she decided to have children, when she was pregnant, after she had children when you were toddlers when you were so what did she do, to deal with her anxiety rather than act it out because that's what a good person would do right well.
[1:24:39] She didn't even know that she had an like an anxiety problem um but but i'm
[1:24:45] Also whoa whoa whoa oh my god man what do you mean she didn't know she didn't experience anxiety.
[1:24:54] Well like I was saying she thought she was reacting appropriately to a child drowning in the river rather than having some sort of anxiety problem She didn't know that she had,
[1:25:07] She didn't know that other people, did anyone ever tell her that she, she might have an anxiety problem? Did you as kids tell her? Did you say, mom, you're worrying too much or I think you're overanxious or?
[1:25:17] Yeah, we, we, uh, it wasn't so much focused on like the emotion of anxiety. It was more focused on just the fact that like, we just want to like bike more and stuff like that. But, okay.
[1:25:27] So she got, she got pushed back from her kids that her behavior was not working for them. Right. Yeah. Okay, so she got feedback from her children that her behavior was causing them significant problems or discomfort or frustration or, you know, nihilism is not, you know, you don't want to produce that in your kids as a parent, right? So if you're saying that no one over the course of her entire life ever said that she might have a problem with anxiety, which I don't believe, your father never noticed that she might have a problem with anxiety, never told her anything. No friend, no relative, no coworker, no her doctor never said, are you having any problems with anxiety or blood pressure through the room? No one ever gave her feedback until you and your brother gave her feedback. Okay, so if we accept that, I don't believe that, but if we accept that, I'm not saying you're lying to me. Please understand. I'm just saying what I consider to be a reasonable history. So let's say then that it wasn't until you and your brother told her that her behavior was problematic. So then she had feedback and what did she do with that feedback?
[1:26:40] Um so i'm going to answer that and then also say one thing really fast here before i let you go in so i'm going to say so she got the feedback and she did not do anything but i don't i also want to just clarify i'm not during the first 18 years of her life like i and her we would like both agree that she was basically evil and without virtue for those 18 years but at this point 18
[1:27:01] Years of your life.
[1:27:02] Of my first life like she was basically like evil but but but right now like she basically right now is it has like realized that she was like not a good parent and is basically such a strong advocate for like good like what you call like peaceful parenting and stuff that she's like losing relationships because she's like telling people like where's
[1:27:22] She getting peaceful parenting stuff from.
[1:27:24] Well sure for me um just talking about like like peaceful parenting and and bringing that kind of philosophy into the house and my mom is now Listen,
[1:27:33] Sorry to interrupt. I mean, I'm amazed. I'm thrilled. I think that's fantastic. But if she had turned around, why has it not helped as much with your nihilism?
[1:27:50] Yeah, that's a good. Yeah. So she has turned around and it's been a very good thing to see. Um, but I think just the, the, the nihilism is kind of just a, still just a reaction to the physical trauma that, that doesn't let me, um, kind of just feel like I can achieve things rather than, than an intellectual conceptual, um, philosophy of the world.
[1:28:15] I'm not sure what that means, but I will say that when you introduce your mother as good and then say, but the, for the first 18 years, she was evil. That's a pretty big contradiction man that's a pretty big contradiction, Because it was the first 18 years that she was, as you characterize her, evil. And how do you just then to, she's a good person? Like, how do you... So, it's like, you know, there's this whole thing about bankers, right? That the bankers, like, they'll give you loans when you already have money, but they won't give you a loan when you need it. It's like when you're drowning at sea, nobody gives you a life raft, but by the time you get to shore, everybody drops a life raft on you. Like, what's the point? So, you saying that she became... A better person after she was no longer primarily a parent.
[1:29:08] That's correct, yeah.
[1:29:09] What that means is she had the capacity to improve at any time, right? And she didn't. So now we have to switch to your dad. Why didn't your dad tell her to do whatever it takes to get her anxiety under control and to be a more peaceful parent?
[1:29:31] Um, well, he, I mean, he was, he was, uh, he was more, uh, you know, like in, he was more a part of the problem than he was trying to be part of the solution. Um, he, he was, uh, you know, just not doing the peaceful parenting and the dialogue and stuff.
[1:29:54] So they were a team.
[1:29:56] They were a team. Yeah.
[1:29:57] Right. Okay. Okay. How responsible were your parents for their behaviors? One to like zero to a hundred percent.
[1:30:09] During the fact or like now?
[1:30:12] No, no. When they were parents, like primarily parents, first 18 years of your life.
[1:30:21] I guess like zero, they weren't aware that they had anything that they would need to like apologize for. So that's like zero, I would say.
[1:30:29] Right. Right.
[1:30:34] How responsible are you for your behaviors.
[1:30:46] Um not very
[1:30:48] What percentage is it.
[1:30:50] Well and like i don't i haven't like wronged anyone that i feel like
[1:30:55] I just want a number your parents are zero percent responsible for their parenting, You're younger than your parents were when they were parents, right? Way younger, decades younger, probably, right? Yeah. So if your parents were 0% responsible when they were in their 40s, and you're in your early 20s, what percentage are you responsible for your behavior if your parents, a quarter century on, were 0% responsible?
[1:31:26] Yeah. So, yeah, I'd say, yeah, so I'm significantly more responsible than they are.
[1:31:37] What percentage are you responsible?
[1:31:39] I mean, like for wronging, for like my ability to, my potential for wronging.
[1:31:44] It's exactly the same question as it was for your parents. Just use the same algorithm. They're zero, but it's your number.
[1:31:49] But I don't have children.
[1:31:52] Does that, well, when you suddenly, well, you lose free will when you have children? I don't understand. What does that mean? You have free will, it's a property of humanity. it doesn't matter whether you have children or.
[1:32:00] Not i don't have like responsibilities really um but
[1:32:04] Like you hold the heart of a young lady in your hand what are you talking about right you she you hold the future of your children potentially with her you you hold her trust you hold her connection you hold her happiness in your in right i mean even am i wrong i mean he's got a lot of responsibility with you right yeah.
[1:32:24] Yeah yeah yeah and i um yeah i'm especially like when it comes to the like like me having future kids yeah i'm i'm much more okay i take what percentage are you responsible a hundred 100 okay so
[1:32:38] Your parents are zero in their 40s but you're 100 in your early 20s yeah what's the difference.
[1:32:44] A lot no
[1:32:46] But why why is there a difference.
[1:32:47] Oh um why
[1:32:50] Do they get a get out of jail free card and you get 100 responsibility.
[1:32:54] Uh well i think part of it might just be that like before i started having chronic pain and started just doing the whole introspection thing like i mean i i was basically a walking zombie so i maybe it's that i can kind of relate to just being in that type of state um so so i i can sympathize with people that that are so like traumatized and so clueless that they're basically like don't have free will, perhaps.
[1:33:26] Okay, so if you're traumatized, you don't have free will, as long as you avoid knowledge of your trauma and its cause, right? Because if you know your trauma and its cause, you gain free will. But if you avoid that knowledge, or you act as if that knowledge doesn't exist, you're off the hook. So the best way to avoid being blamed for anything is to stay in a state of primordial ignorance regarding your history and your trauma because you're you're off the hook right.
[1:34:04] Yeah that that is the the conclusion of what i'm saying yeah
[1:34:07] And how does that seem to you as a conclusion um.
[1:34:12] Well it's well i mean if you're if you're avoiding it intentionally obviously then that doesn't put you off the hook but if you're
[1:34:21] The whole you know whether somebody was avoiding something intentionally or not from 18 years ago you'd have to rely upon their reference and statement regarding that which if they were avoiding it intentionally they'd never tell you right you'll never know right unless someone says yes i was avoiding it intentionally in which case they're responsible again. And they're not going to tell you, right? You'll never know. You have to have principles rather than confessions because confessions are so damn rare, right? I mean, the connection between childhood trauma and adult dysfunction has been known for thousands of years.
[1:35:10] Thousands of years. Shakespeare knew about it. Sophocles knew about it. You can see it in the Bible. You can see it in Aristophanes. You can see it in, let me just look at the Oedipus complex or the play Oedipus, right? I mean, you can see the relationship between childhood dysfunction and adult dysfunction or childhood trauma and adult dysfunction has been done. Now, even if we say all of that, oh, well, we don't have to go back to Aristophanes. Okay, fine, fine, fine, fine. Well, Freud talked about it, however badly, what, 1880s and so on. So yeah, 140 years almost. The self-help movement has been around since the 60s in terms of talking about this.
[1:35:57] Popular Ask Abbey columns have been around for decades. Dr. Phil's been on the air for 15 years. You go into any bookstore and there's countless titles of grinning men and women telling you how to empower yourself by overcoming your trauma. Anthony Robbins has been taking his giant tombstone tooth and nipping the top off the champagne cork of people's dysfunction for decades. Come on, are you saying this is not like, do you know ancient Aramaic, right? This is not, do you know Egyptian before the Rosetta Stone? This is common knowledge now and has been for 60 years in popular culture. It's in movies all the time. Did they ever watch The Sixth Sense? Childhood trauma and adult dysfunction, I don't know how anyone can claim. The child is the father of the man. What was that? Wordsworth, Longfellow? Well, anyway, it's known. How can people not know this? Come on. How can they claim to be in a state of nature regarding these things?
[1:37:16] So our big disagreement here is that you're just saying it's impossible that they were not actively and consciously rejecting self-knowledge during the time that they were parenting me.
[1:37:31] Well, when you say actively and consciously, I'm not sure what standard you would have for that. But the idea, because, I mean, you called your mother evil, right? And so when you call your mother evil, you're assuming moral responsibility. You didn't call her ignorant, right? If I traveled with my mother to Japan, she doesn't speak Japanese. I wouldn't call her evil. She just doesn't know Japanese, right?
[1:37:56] I'm going to take it back and change it to ignorant then. All right.
[1:38:00] All right. All right. All right.
[1:38:05] Well, I'm not going to stand between you and your moral judgment of your parents, but I'm going to suggest to you that it's complex. And the fact that the story is shifting means that there's unresolved stuff there. And I would also suggest that this is close to where the nihilism sits. And if you can't resolve this, it's going to be very tough to trust yourself as a parent going forward. Because you see, if you're a parent and you get off the hook for not knowing stuff, I mean, I don't think anyone gets off the hook. I don't think anyone gets, I mean, okay, if you've got a brain tumor or brain damage or something like that, okay, fine, you're off the hook, right? But you can't ever end up with more, like, if your parents have no responsibility and you have 100% responsibility, it's like you're a different species. So how the hell are you supposed to be close to them? You can't.
[1:38:54] Because you have this magical thing called free will, which they didn't have. And maybe they're developing it now, but they're no longer primarily parents, like as a verb, not as a noun, right? They're no longer primarily parents now. so what does it matter? Now that you're big enough and you're out of the house and you're independent and you're an adult, suddenly they're into peaceful parenting. It's like, yeah, that's great. Talk about locking the barn door after the horse has left. It's great that you figured out how to be peaceful parents now that I'm an adult, right? That's going to be incredibly frustrating and anchoring, right? Like, why are they listening to you as an adult when they didn't listen to you as a kid? Why are they listening to you as an adult when they didn't listen to popular culture for decades when you were a child, right? So all I'm saying is that.
[1:39:39] You said closeness is toxicity earlier on. That was one of the foundational things, right, that you occur. So now I think you're trying to get close to your parents by forgiving them, stripping them of moral agency, but you can't get close to your parents that way because then you have moral agency and they don't have moral agency or didn't, right? And when they were far older than you, so you're still separate species, so to speak, right? The only way you can get close to people is to give them 100% moral agency as you take 100% moral agency. Now, if your parents really understood the trauma that they had caused, the nihilism that they had caused in you and your brother, or evoked, or encouraged, or whatever, however you want to put it, it's not going to be 100% causality, then your mother would be the first person to say, yes, I was 100% responsible. But the fact that your mother is not saying that and if i think if she had said that that's how you'd be communicating it to me the fact that your mother is still claiming zero percent responsibility means that you're still serving her defenses and closeness is still toxicity because.
[1:40:47] She's not sorry she takes she takes 100 of the blame um but but but she she she would say that like during the time she was just so she just had no like like you know she like you just said all the Tony Robbins and the Dr. Phil, and she was just literally not connected to any of those things and just never actively decided to not pursue self-knowledge. But now she does take 100% of the blame for giving my brother and I a poor childhood.
[1:41:14] Wait, so she takes 100% of the responsibility, but you give her zero. So she's wrong about that in your mind.
[1:41:22] Well it's her parenting is what caused trauma but but she she was not in any sort of like conscious way uh suppressing the knowledge that she should have been
[1:41:34] How do you know right right how do you know if she was evil for 18 years is she suddenly become completely honest and trustworthy no matter what because you've gone from calling her good to calling her evil to saying that she has 0% responsibility and now telling me that she says she has 100% responsibility. This is a confusing fucking mess, man. And that just means you got a lot of complicated stuff going on here that you need to resolve. My suggestion is to resolve it philosophically, not according to your mother's reports or whatever, right? But do you think that she's wrong about taking 100% responsibility?
[1:42:16] Like, uh, do, do I think that she is lying or that she shouldn't be taking,
[1:42:21] You said she has 0% responsibility. She says she has a hundred percent responsibility.
[1:42:26] Well, it's the confusion is in semantics of the definition of the word responsibility. What I'm saying is that she, she, it, yeah, no, it, yeah, no, it is. It is a, like, I understand why. Yeah. So I do need to kind of like dive into this more and stuff, but.
[1:42:44] Okay. It's easy. You don't need to dive much. It's easy. She has 100% responsibility. You have 100% responsibility. That's the only way you're ever going to be close.
[1:42:52] Yeah.
[1:42:53] And also, you want to give your parents 100% responsibility so that you have 100% responsibility. We can never take more free will than we give to our parents. We will never act out more free will than we give to our parents. Every excuse we give to our parents, we take for ourselves. And if you want to know how to become a great parent, it's to give your parents 100% responsibility for what they did. No excuses. No, well, she didn't consciously this, or she never happened to channel flip past Dr. Phil, or she never saw Dr. Phil's face on a fucking National Enquirer magazine on the way out of the supermarket. She had no idea that there was such a thing as psychology. She had no, she never read any books on parenting. She never read any books on how to be a good parent or how to deal with conflicts with your children. She never took anyone's advice. She never went to an expert. She never watched a seminar free available online on how to become a good parent. She never went to the library. Right? Come on. Come on. She was 100% responsible. If you're going to become a parent, like if I, I hear chocolate is really bad for dogs, right? So if I buy a dog and I feed it chocolate and the dog dies, am I responsible? Well, I never knew. It's like you got a dog in the house. You read up on how to take care of the damn dog.
[1:44:09] Right? Like saying I wasn't responsible for feeding my dog chocolate is like saying I wasn't responsible for running into the side of that house in my car because I was drunk. Right?
[1:44:23] It's like, no, you made the choice to drink, then you made the choice to drive.
[1:44:28] You can't have kids and not know how to be a good parent. That's not an option any more than you can have a pet and not know how to take care of that pet. So, well, I never looked it up. It's like, Well, it's your job to look it up because you're bringing a pet into the house and it's your job to look up how to be a good parent, how to be, how to reason with kids, how to, you know, there's parent effectiveness training, there's Dr. Spock, there's Dr. Phil, there's tons of books out there. You go out there for books about parenting, they're just, you can't turn around without tripping over a book about parenting. I read a whole bunch of them before I became a parent because you kind of have to know. I did a lot of self-knowledge. I did a lot of work. I planned out what it is that I want to do. You know why? Because having a children is a giant fucking responsibility. It's the biggest responsibility you're ever going to have. It's more important to keep a kid alive than to keep a pet alive. And it's pretty damn important to keep a pet alive. And no one gets any excuses. You buy the pet, you bring the pet home, you're responsible for keeping that pet alive and healthy, right? Oh, I didn't know that dogs needed water. Come on. I mean, so this idea that your mom has no responsibility, it's a defense. It's still serving her needs and it's her not owning responsibility. Now, of course, when I pointed that out, you're just defending your mom. Like, come on, everyone can hear it. When you listen back to this, you'll hear it too. You're defending your mom. And that's where the nihilism comes from because it's really hard to look at your mom's and your dad's behavior directly and process that they were a hundred percent responsible for what they did to you.
[1:45:56] And that's a painful thing to do. Why would we do something that painful? The reason we would do something that painful and stand in the scalding sandblast at that kind of assignment of free will is because we cannot get the gift of free will unless we give it to those around us. And we want 100% free will. Will we ever achieve 100% free will? I don't know. I don't know. It's like saying, well, will we ever achieve the perfect and ideal weight? I don't know, but it's still different being 150 pounds versus 300 pounds. I don't know what the ideal perfect weight is on 100% perfect health. I don't know. That's still the difference between being able to run a marathon and dying of cancer, right? So that's your challenge.
[1:46:40] You're right. And I didn't, I, you are really, especially just in this last like minute. Yeah. I didn't realize how, how much I needed to kind of think this through and stuff. And so, yeah. So thank you for bringing this more to my attention.
[1:46:52] Now, when you cross that Rubicon of giving free will to your parents, you will be able to trust yourself as a parent. Cause you, when you, when we don't have any excuses, we act with integrity. We know that, right? Because when your parents are out there in the mall, like my mom never hit me when there was a cop around. She never hit me when there was a teacher around. Because she wouldn't be able to get away with it, right? So she behaved really well when she couldn't get away with it. But when you internalize 100% moral responsibility and free will, you can't get away with anything. It's like what God does, right, to people, right? It's like God's always watching. You can't get away with anything, so you behave well. Or badly, if that's what your God wants you to do or whatever, right? But when you get yourself 100% free will, 100% moral responsibility, You won't have any fear About how you're going to behave as a parent I never had one shred of fear About how I was going to behave as a parent And now having done it for 10 years I have no fear about how I'm going to behave as a parent, None, none whatsoever I have no concerns Never did, never did, It doesn't mean I don't improve. It doesn't mean I don't learn it. But I never have any foundational fear, about how I'm going to behave as a parent because I gave my mom and my dad 100% free will and moral responsibility, which meant I took it myself, which meant I couldn't get away with anything, which meant there was always a cop watching me, so I was never going to shoplift. Does that make sense?
[1:48:15] Yeah.
[1:48:15] All right. So that, I think, is the biggest barrier. And it sounds like that's not where Eve is. And that's why we focused a little bit more on that. Eve, how did I do?
[1:48:27] Good.
[1:48:28] Good? Sorry, I'm just used to Adam's polysyllabic responses, so I was waiting for more and maybe even more filibustering. Do you think that I'm, are we circling something useful here with regards to Adam?
[1:48:44] Oh, yeah, definitely. Yeah, I'm very happy because I think that you're able to just give more,
[1:48:50] Yeah.
[1:48:52] Just a better perspective on things for him to really think about that i couldn't have done
[1:48:56] So adam if you could 100 trust that you were going to be a great parent how would that change your desire to have kids or would it.
[1:49:06] Um yeah a large part of it too is just like just a lot of the negativity i received is it like a lot of it has been kind of in the sphere of like career and stuff so i just feel like i'm just bad at like work and not able to like dependably bring home money and stuff and so that that's like a large anxiety. But if I can guarantee that all of that gets covered and just there's no red scare and just all of this, I can definitely see it being a very wonderful, beautiful thing.
[1:49:35] All right. Well, I'm going to stop there and certainly really appreciate you guys' frankness and openness in the conversation. I think it was great and I know it's going to be enormously useful for people. So will you let me know how it goes?
[1:49:48] Yeah, we'll do. Thank you very much.
[1:49:50] Thanks, guys. Really appreciate it. Take care.
[1:49:52] Thank you. Give up the good work.
[1:49:53] Thanks. Bye.
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