How to emerge from 10 years of isolation and cross the desert
Topic Detail: Hi Stefan, I'm a 31 year old man who's recently found the show (in October). Philosophy has taken a fire to my heart. I have been ravenously devouring your books and call-in shows and podcasts in the past months.
I am emerging from a very long period of isolation, and I need help navigating this life transition. I am starting from a point of zero quality relationships, and need to cross the desert!
I've confronted my parents about my childhood. This confrontation not only confirmed their nature as abusers to me, but it engendered a neurological shift in me where I feel more confident, competent, and action-orientated than I've ever felt in my life. I've confronted my parents, moved out of their house, and am taking steps to further my career. Before, I was burning time with hedonism. I had no goal. Subconsciously, I didn't want a marriage like my parents', or for my future children to have my childhood. I avoided dating in my twenties.
When I first moved out in my early twenties, I fell into drug addiction and isolation. I returned to live with my parents in a sort of prodigal son way in my late twenties. I've just moved out again and have told my parents I want I hiatus from our relationship. I don't have another decade to waste. I want love and a family.
In this most critical period of my life, I need guidance! I appreciate your time reading this.
0:05 - A Journey Through Isolation
12:26 - Confronting Childhood Trauma
32:46 - Understanding Parental Influence
37:49 - The Nature of Sadism
42:14 - Inoculating Against Trust
46:31 - Recognizing Patterns of Fear
1:06:53 - The Burden of Parental Denial
1:16:07 - Navigating Relationships and Rejection
1:24:05 - The Irony of Rejection
1:24:24 - Confronting Family Dynamics
1:25:30 - The PhD Journey
1:30:38 - The Psychosis Revelation
1:41:18 - From Atheism to Mysticism
1:45:13 - The Impact of COVID-19
1:45:47 - Navigating Life After Academia
1:51:48 - Aspirations for Family Life
1:58:54 - Financial Planning for the Future
2:09:18 - The Cost of Childhood Trauma
2:20:56 - Embracing Anger for Healing
2:33:58 - Closing Reflections and Gratitude
In this episode, we delve into a heartfelt and candid call from a young man grappling with the aftermath of a challenging upbringing and seeking guidance as he navigates the transition to adulthood. At 31 years old, he recounts his recent journey into philosophy, which ignited a passion for self-discovery and a desire to overcome years of isolation and adversity. Our conversation unpacks the complexities of his childhood, particularly the fraught dynamics with his parents, where he identifies a pattern of abuse and neglect that has profoundly shaped his identity.
As he discusses the impact of confronting his parents about their abusive behavior, he reveals a newfound sense of confidence and determination. However, his reflection also raises concerns about the emotional scars that continue to influence his relationships. This call serves as a poignant exploration of how past traumas can lead to self-sabotaging behaviors, particularly in the realm of romantic relationships, where he yearns for love and family despite feeling inadequate due to a lack of experience.
We explore the caller's perspective on his upbringing, dissecting the patterns of behavior learned in a household rife with dysfunction. He describes the damaging influence of his father's machismo and his mother's coldness, leading him to retreat further into isolation and addiction during his early adult years. This candid admission sets the stage for a deeper discussion about the emotional consequences of childhood abuse and the caller's desire to break the cycle by creating a loving environment for his future children.
As we navigate through his reflections, we touch upon the necessity of personal accountability and the challenges of shedding self-destructive patterns. The dialogue leads to a crucial realization: the importance of recognizing one's worth, embracing vulnerability, and moving towards healthier relationships. We discuss how his journey involves not only healing from past wounds but also learning to develop empathy and love for himself, which is essential before he seeks a partner and builds a family.
The session serves as a crucial learning experience for both the caller and me, highlighting the complexities of emotional growth and recovery. We delve into practical strategies for combating the fears around vulnerability—especially in romantic scenarios—reinforcing the idea that to truly connect with others, he must first reconcile with his past and understand that his childhood does not have to dictate his future.
Through this heartfelt exploration, the caller gains insight into the underlying mechanisms of his fears and insecurities, discovering that confronting these challenges is pivotal for meaningful growth. As our conversation concludes, we emphasize the importance of pursuing a path defined by love, understanding, and a commitment to compassionate parenting—ultimately illuminating the journey from pain to healing.
[0:00] Hi, Stefan. I'm a 31-year-old man who's recently found the show four months ago.
[0:05] Philosophy has taken a fire to my heart. I've been ravenously devouring your books and call-in shows and podcasts in the past months. I'm emerging from a very long period of isolation, and I need help navigating this life transition. I'm starting from a point of zero-quality relationships, and I need to cross the desert. I've confronted my parents about my childhood This confrontation not only confirmed their nature as abusers to me But it engendered a neurological shift in me.
[0:41] Where I feel more confident, competent, and action-oriented than I've ever felt in my life I've confronted my parents, moved out of their house, and I'm taking steps to further my career Before I was burning time with hedonism, I had no goal, Subconsciously, I didn't want a marriage like my parents or for my future children to have my childhood, so I avoided dating entirely in my 20s. When I first moved out in my early 20s, I fell into drug addiction and isolation. I returned to live with my parents in a sort of prodigal son's sort of way in my late 20s. I've just moved out again, and I don't have another decade to waste. I want love and a family. In this most critical period of my life, I need guidance.
[1:33] Right. Well, I'm obviously thrilled and happy to help as far as that goes. So tell me a little bit about your childhood, how that all went there.
[1:43] Yeah, so I thought it would be good to go into a little bit of history of my parents and how they met and then into my childhood. yeah.
[1:55] It's your story whatever you want to tell it's fine with me.
[1:57] Okay so um i'll start with my dad my dad um my dad's father was an alcoholic who basically um my dad's mother and father got divorced probably when he was six or so and his dad basically hardly ever saw him and he was, yeah my dad describes him as just a drunk and my dad's mom she was married like three times throughout my dad's childhood um he was kind of a latchkey kid and he had one full sister and two half sisters, and um from what he kind of describes he was sort of a bit sadistic towards his little sisters like he would create have these like creative ways to um.
[2:58] Uh either humiliate them or straight up injure them like i remember a story of him, he took like this lead i don't know something and hung it from the string, um on a banister and then swung it out and it hit my aunt's in the in the face and this is kind of like a haha funny story that they like to tell um another time i think when he was a teenager he had this really loud car and he would it was kind of a beater and so he would drive up to the high school with her in it and she was very i think popular at the school she was younger than him, and he kind of read the engine and sort of like embarrassed her a lot so anyway so he kind of has this sadistic streak and then in his 20s uh from well sorry sorry to interrupt i'm sorry to interrupt.
[4:03] Your story i just want to make sure i understand what you're saying are you saying that he has this sadistic streak like it's like he has an arm or he indulged his sadistic streak but it could have been different.
[4:13] Oh he indulged it yeah okay.
[4:16] So he didn't have it he indulged it.
[4:18] Yeah you're Right. That's, yeah.
[4:21] And I wasn't sure, and I don't mean to nitpick, I just wasn't sure what your philosophy of moral responsibility was. Like, if you just have sadism, then you're not responsible because, you know, it's just a brain thing. Or if he had a tendency towards sadism that he decided to indulge, obviously that made things worse and so on. Okay, just checking. So, sorry to interrupt. I just, go ahead.
[4:44] No, I definitely agree with the latter, and it's a good catch of my language, I guess. Um, so in his twenties, he kind of describes to me that he, basically played softball and went to bars and kind of lived with roommates and he worked in construction and didn't make much money didn't save much until his early 30s um until he met my mom, um i guess i was gonna go to my mom now do you have any questions or no.
[5:23] Not not in particular I guess, uh, you'll get into what your mom found attractive about him. Cause that's always kind of the, the mystery to me. It's like, okay, so this guy's obviously like a kind of a loser and not a provider and a hedonist or whatever you want to kill. He's got sadistic streaks and, and all of that. So why the hell would your mother marry him? It's always a great mystery to me maybe. And so was he tall and good looking? Was he really charming? What, what was his, what was his plus?
[5:47] Um, his great value that he provides is that he's like, I don't know, I would say like 98th percentile very very handy um he like uh maybe handy is like too like not as grand of a word as it should be it's like uh he can take basically any rundown house he could probably take it and flip it into like by himself like an amazing house within i don't know four to five months Oh.
[6:20] Because he did all the construction stuff, right?
[6:21] Yeah, yeah, exactly.
[6:24] Okay, but that's not enough to marry someone. You hire someone like that. You know, like, I have a good dentist. I pay her to be my dentist. I don't marry her to get free dentistry.
[6:35] Yeah, to be honest, it's kind of a mystery to me.
[6:40] Well, have you seen pictures of your dad when he was younger?
[6:43] Yeah, he's very good looking.
[6:45] Oh, okay, so it's not that much of a mystery, right? He's just really good looking. and he's handy and i assume he's athletic because he did manual labor and played baseball so uh so he's you know he's got some some bods and he's got great looks and uh he's handy so okay so so his i was just gonna say his package though i get that that has two meanings but his uh his deal was that he was uh good looking now what about his language skills his charisma sense of humor or anything like that?
[7:15] He's very funny. He's fairly charismatic. Yeah.
[7:22] Okay. Got it. Got it. Okay. So, uh, do you know what his dating history was like in his twenties? Did he, uh, sleep around? Uh, what, uh, what happened with him?
[7:34] I don't know. He, he never says much about it. He's always very vague.
[7:39] Okay.
[7:40] Yeah. Okay.
[7:41] Just wondering. All right. Okay.
[7:44] But nothing long term, I don't think. yeah.
[7:45] Yeah yeah i mean listen i mean guys who who play baseball was he was he like when he say played baseball was he like sort of semi-pro league or.
[7:54] Pick up baseball.
[7:55] Games or what.
[7:56] He played a lot of softball oh okay so just like softball leagues where you just go out and drink afterwards i assume yeah.
[8:03] Gay baseball got it okay.
[8:05] Yeah um yeah all right so.
[8:07] So he meets your mom in his early 30s and how old was she.
[8:13] She was nine years younger than him uh-huh okay yeah i'm.
[8:18] Guessing he kept his hair.
[8:20] Yes yeah.
[8:22] That gives you access.
[8:23] To immature.
[8:24] Women okay got it.
[8:25] Yeah um so my mom i guess she grew up on a farm and i think from what i gather she had a pretty sheltered kind of life in that it was sheltered from secularism in that her family is a pretty fundamental Christian and, She went to a private Christian school. Her father was a teacher at that school. And I guess one curious thing that was like a descriptor of my mother as a young child, which I don't exactly know what this means, but maybe you can shed some light on it, is that she was described as like always a little adult. So I don't know. It was like she almost never...
[9:21] Such a mature, a mature young lady. Oh, she's just an old soul. No, she's traumatized, and she's not allowed to have a childhood because she's got insane, irresponsible parents around. That would be my assumption.
[9:33] Yeah, yeah, exactly. So her dad, my mother's dad, was beaten pretty severely by his stepdad. And throughout my entire life, he's been extremely depressive. um he's been on every ssri known to man i don't think he's i don't think i don't know for sure but i don't think he's like tried therapy so he like tries all these pharmaceutical and i don't know even that thing where it like shocks your head yeah like therapy yeah yeah yeah uh for to cure his depression so and but he's always kind of been i'm.
[10:15] Sorry who was this again.
[10:16] This is my mom's dad mom's.
[10:19] Dad okay got it.
[10:19] Yeah all right and so he's always been kind of i think he retired from his job as a teacher at the private school pretty early and so for for my life he's kind of just been like struggling with depression as like probably as a result of this unresolved trauma in his childhood no no no okay no no.
[10:42] No not because of that not because of that not because of that so um.
[10:47] Okay.
[10:49] Let's say that he had some physical injury from being hit as a child, right? He had some crooked arm or something like that. And now let's say it could be fixed, but it would be painful to fix, right? They maybe have to re-break it or whatever it is, right? So then he struggles through life. You say, ah, well, you see, he has this crooked arm because he was beaten as a child. nope he has this crooked arm because he fails to fix it as an adult.
[11:23] I i 100 agree with that i don't yeah.
[11:26] And i'm not trying to be again mr nitpicker but i will ferociously fight you know 18 minutes after i'm dead i'll still be struggling in my ghost form to fight against dominoes like this because of past, like no because of past and now i get that with some physical things some guy uh gets his arm bitten off by a shark yeah he's he's got no arm because his arm got bitten off by a shark but we're talking about moral matters here so your um her father was your mother's father was uh you know mistreated as a child and as far as you know he didn't do therapy he just ran to pills and electroshock therapy yeah exactly okay and did it work No.
[12:10] He's totally fried.
[12:12] I'm sorry, say again?
[12:13] He's totally fried. Like, he can hardly function. He's on his way out right now. Yeah.
[12:22] Okay, so yeah, I just want to be clear. It's not because of childhood trauma.
[12:26] It's because of a failure. Now, I'm not saying that, you know, electroshock therapy and these pills things, I mean, I have my skepticisms. I'm not saying he failed there because he did these things I don't know like but what I will say is that if they didn't work he should have tried something else and he didn't right yeah, so to me and and to me I'll just tell you my sort of particular thoughts and and you can see if this is relevant to your situation because I'm sort of really trying to focus on the solitary life, so to me if you have let's say you would say he was depressed or something like that yeah okay so if you're depressed and you decide to have a wife and kids you got to fix your depression and you have to do whatever it takes to fix your depression why because, especially if you have kids you've now created people in your life who your depression affects and they never chose to be there.
[13:27] So you become a father or a mother, you absolutely have to do whatever it takes. And my understanding, again, I'm no therapist, right? But my understanding is like some cognitive behavioral therapy is pretty good. I think philosophy can be pretty good because sometimes depression has a moral basis, I think quite often. But to me, it is self-indulgent to have something like this, not do everything in your power to fix it. If you choose to have a wife and kids, you have to get better. Now, again, maybe there's some people who can't and, you know, whatever. So I'm not saying this is, you know, it's hard to say 100% in these matters, and you never find out for sure, because there's no physical marker that says it's impossible to fix your depression, at least as far as I know. So there's a kind of self-indulgence to this. Now, one of the things that depressed people, it's kind of hard to shake them by his shoulders and tell them to snap the hell out of it and get things fixed. Because depression, you know, there's a fragility and to some degree, a sort of aura of weakness and victimhood about it and so on. But I find that to the degree that it is that, there's manipulation involved.
[14:45] Yeah, that's a really good point. I never thought about it that way. but you are right that like it's really incumbent on you if you have depression and then you have children like you got to fix it.
[14:58] Well and he failed don't have children until you fix the depression yeah and if you look up you know let's let's uh let's do this live baby because i am an edgelord of typing. But if you look up, let's see here, let's see, best cures for depression, right? Best cures for depression.
[15:27] And let's see here, treatment and management. So yeah, it's going to be really, really tough. But my understanding is that CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy, CBT is pretty solid as far. Yeah. So cognitive behavioral therapy is highly effective for treating depression and so on, right? So you would look up, you say, oh, you know, I want to have kids, but man, I'm depressed. So I got to sort this out. And you would do a search, right? And And, you know, whether he was older, of course, I get it. Maybe this is all pre-internet. But, you know, you go to the library and you look up depression and you take responsibility for this stuff. And, look, I have sympathy with people who are depressed. Obviously, it's a difficult state of mind and all of that. But you have to... You have to sort that out before you have kids, because otherwise, you really can't be a very good parent. And this is not just depression, it's anxiety, or whatever it's going on for people, but you need to sort this out before you bring kids into your life, because you have to be.
[16:45] Healthy before, or as healthy as you can be before you have kids. So, I feel a certain amount of irritation at some of the self-indulgence of well it's not working i'll just keep doing the stuff that doesn't work and my kids will just find a way to deal with it it's like well that's not fair anyway so sorry go ahead.
[17:02] Yeah well one thing i just thought of that i wanted to add is that i've definitely felt depressed at points in my life and i felt it was there's an aspect of like self-indulgence where you can kind of wallow in it and sort of uh create a feedback loop of being sad and that kind of thing that kind of indulgence.
[17:23] There is and you know i'm not saying obviously neither of us are saying that everyone who's depressed is self-indulgence but there can be a an addiction to it an identity i am depressed yeah and and then of course what happens is that the longer you're depressed the more you end up with people in your life who are depressed, and and and it becomes a sort of feedback loop uh human condition stuff you know because the enthusiastic positive people will kind of run out of steam with you fairly quickly right.
[17:56] Yeah yeah for sure.
[17:58] I mean if you want to get a bunch of stuff done in your life you just kind of have to press people around you because they'll just siphon off your your energy so well my.
[18:07] Grandpa's definitely yeah he's a total siphon.
[18:12] Okay so uh sorry i know we we spent a lot of time on that but i thought it was, important but okay so um tell me a little bit more about your mother's i think we were just on your mother's upbringing.
[18:23] Yeah yeah so i think it was that thing where she was always quote unquote an adult so there's some like aspect of child abuse there obviously, like and then she was very bossy apparently to her she had two little brothers, um and she was kind of a bookworm um she has this story about being in school and, reading a book in math class and getting in trouble and she's like oh that's like the time i got in trouble was for reading a book um and so so her mother my my grandma was a nurse and so my mom also became a nurse oh.
[19:09] Hey dysfunctionalness i.
[19:11] Yeah i've.
[19:12] Never i've never heard let me just write.
[19:14] Down breaking of.
[19:15] All stereotypes all right.
[19:16] And um so she, moved a couple hours away to a different city uh in her early 20s to to a job, away from where she grew up and she basically met my dad on that job.
[19:37] While she was a nurse?
[19:39] Yes and so, my parents dated for maybe a year and a half and got married and had me maybe a year later and so my upbringing Hmm. um i guess so i have two little sisters so one two years younger than me the other one five years younger than me and what i remember most about my young childhood with my little sister is that we were i remember and i know it's there's no there's never no sorry there's never a reason You're going to have.
[20:31] To get out of whatever strange Mobius loop you're in, get on with the story, because I'm not sure where we are. Okay, you got sisters? What then?
[20:38] Okay, so my little sister, I hated her when we were little kids. And I know that's irrational to hate like a two-year-old. But I hated her. And so the way we were disciplined is we were hit with a wooden spoon.
[20:56] By who?
[20:57] By my mother, by both.
[20:59] Okay, both your parents.
[21:00] Wooden spoon yes and i remember she would my little sister would lie about me and get me in trouble to be hit and i remember that um sorry you're gonna say something no go ahead okay, and so i there's like this dislike and so what i've come to think is that probably it's like my parents playing the kind of a divide and conquer thing and so, sorry there's a bit.
[21:38] Of a squeaking that's coming from your.
[21:40] Side of things it's a bird that's outside my window oh that's fine that's fine.
[21:45] You can't control it I was just I was like is my brain does my brain.
[21:49] Need oiling.
[21:49] I wasn't sure.
[21:50] I can mute while you're talking no.
[21:52] No no honestly don't worry about that that's totally fine I just wanted to know if it's under control okay.
[21:59] Um so so so.
[22:00] You some sort of divide and conquer thing but i'm still not sure why you hated your sister your two-year-old sister.
[22:07] Um i remember i would i would hit her when we were very young and so i was sort of he.
[22:14] Was old how old and you were how old.
[22:15] Uh probably like four and two or five and three six and four these ages.
[22:22] You would hit her, and tell me what would you do?
[22:26] I would, I guess I would bring her, maybe like bring her into physical submission. I don't exactly remember too much, but I remember we would have fights, and then I would No.
[22:41] You wouldn't have fights. She's two. Yeah. Come on, she's two.
[22:48] It could have been slightly older.
[22:51] I'm just going by what you told me, man.
[22:53] Right, right. Well, can I revise that?
[22:55] Okay, so you would attack her because she's two.
[22:59] Yes.
[23:00] Okay, and you would hit her.
[23:02] Yes.
[23:03] Okay. I'm not trying to make you feel bad. I'm just trying to understand the situation here.
[23:09] Yeah, yeah. So I would physically, I guess, restrain her or hit her. And I know I got in trouble.
[23:18] I know it's a long time ago, but on what basis or on what grounds? Like for what purpose or reason?
[23:25] I think to get her to shut up.
[23:29] To get her to shut up. and why was it important that she shut up.
[23:36] Um i guess maybe kind of this tag along kind of thing.
[23:42] Sorry tag along is different from shut up i'm just trying to follow.
[23:48] Uh maybe i felt she was coming too close to me i'm i'm fogging up pretty hard here.
[23:55] I mean well okay when did you stop hitting her.
[23:59] I stopped hitting her probably at the age of five or six.
[24:03] When you were five or six yeah okay got it yeah so that's that's pretty uh pretty hard to remember the causality but you were angry or annoyed with her and you hit her and physically controlled or restrained her is that right correct do you mean like sit on her or hold her down or something like that.
[24:20] Uh what i remember most is like holding her arm back.
[24:25] Holding her like uh.
[24:27] Grabbing her like upper arm.
[24:32] And do you have any more positive or affectionate memories with your sister?
[24:40] Um, throughout my childhood, I always really, really disliked her. Um, more recently as adults, I have some positive things, but, but our relationship's not that not good now.
[24:55] And what, you said you had two siblings, right?
[24:58] Yeah.
[24:59] And so this, your closest sibling is your youngest sister and who else?
[25:04] Uh, another sister, five years younger.
[25:06] Okay. And what was your relationship like with her?
[25:10] Um it was very good actually i always me and her always considered my the middle sister to be like kind of the favorite and so we kind of i guess we kind of bullied her um, yeah we would say actually pretty nasty things we would say she was like adopted because me and my...
[25:35] Holy crap, you'd tell her she was adopted?
[25:36] Yeah.
[25:39] Oh, God. Why am I the only one feeling anything about this? This is appalling.
[25:49] You're right.
[25:51] It's just a little kid. You're supposed to protect your sister.
[25:56] Yeah.
[26:00] Do you feel anything about it?
[26:05] I feel, like a guilt in my stomach right now.
[26:10] Tell me a little bit about that, because I'm not getting that read in terms of you telling the story. I always find it kind of disconcerting when people are like, yeah, I tortured animals, and then I did this. I'm not saying you're being that glib, but it's the disconnect between what you're saying and the emotions, is significant.
[26:30] Right. Let me think for a sec. I guess the way I've processed this is that I was a child. I had limited free will and I blame my parents. The mechanics of it logically to me has to be that they set us against each other when we're really little. And that's kind of what shattered the boss.
[27:08] Okay, so how did they, sorry, if I missed this earlier, how did they set you against each other? I'm not disagreeing with you, I just want to understand the mechanics.
[27:19] I think my mom would show way more affection towards my sister. There was a divide and conquer thing where we would tell on each other and tried to get the other one hit with the spoon.
[27:39] This is all the siblings or just you versus your middle sibling?
[27:44] Mostly me versus my middle sibling.
[27:46] Okay, so if you weren't hitting her or pinning her down yourself, you were trying to get her hit by your mother with an implement or your father?
[27:55] I think it was probably 70% her trying to get me hit and maybe 30 percent the other way around.
[28:03] Right okay well i mean she's got no physical strength relative to you right it's not even close to an equal fight you're a boy and you're two years older right yeah yeah all right so you can you you feel that because your mother showed more affection towards your middle sister that this was the cause of your violence towards your sister.
[28:30] I hypothesize that there's some other dynamic going on there.
[28:38] Sorry, I don't know. I'm just trying to confirm your thesis. I'm not trying to... Is your thesis...
[28:44] Yes.
[28:45] Because I asked the divide and conquer. I said, what were the mechanics? You said, well, my mother showed affection to my sister.
[28:51] Right. Correct. Yes.
[28:53] Okay. Do you think that's causal? I mean, do you think that... I mean, if your mother had something like, well, if, you know, some weird Sophie's Choice thing going on, if your mother said, well, all of the children will be punished for anyone who does anything wrong, and one of the things you can do wrong is be too loud, right? So you're going to get beaten if your sister is too loud, then you might want to use force to control your sister, because you're all going to get beaten if she's too loud. Does that sort of make sense?
[29:29] Sorry can you repeat that.
[29:30] Sure so if your mother says to you kids listen if any one of you does anything wrong you're all going to get beaten and one of the things that you can do wrong is be too loud because you said that your middle sister was too loud at times right yeah so, if your middle sister is too loud you're all going to get beaten so then out of fear of getting beaten you would try and control your sister's noise does that make sense.
[29:55] That makes sense.
[29:57] Okay So that's not what was happening, though. And I could understand that as a causality. And maybe I'm just missing something here, so forgive me if I'm slow to catch on. But I could understand that as a causality or something like that, collective punishment and so on, right? But showing more affection to your sister, I'm not sure how that is directly causal to being violent towards your sister.
[30:27] Yeah it's not.
[30:28] Well it could also be the case because i know the cause and effect when you're very young is tough right so it could also be the case that because she was being so picked on by her siblings that your mother felt that she had to show her extra affection as a result of that to make up for that.
[30:42] No that's certainly plausible, Um, yeah, I mean, I could definitely see that the mechanics of, of it, uh, have never been super clear to me. And I do remember, I was going to say that there was some, there was definitely, even at that very young age, there's definitely an indulgence in the violence for sure.
[31:10] So did you do it when people were over? Did you do it, like, was it out of your control? Did you do it at the mall? Did you do it at school where you could get in trouble? Or was it like sort of secret stuff?
[31:21] No, it was always, I remember it was always when my parents weren't in the room is when it would happen.
[31:27] No, not when it would happen.
[31:29] When I would do that.
[31:30] When you would do it. Okay, so you were perfectly able to control your behavior because you never did it when you could get in trouble.
[31:38] Yes.
[31:38] Okay that's like the you know the pinch someone under the table kind of thing right, okay so the self-indulgence is you want to do it you're capable of not doing it but you let yourself do it and that's that's the big question and look i know you're four or five six years old so i understand that you are not holding you in the adult court of moral law but what do you think was the purpose and i don't have an answer to this right i'm genuinely curious what do you think the purpose was of this aggression or physical or mental torture or both uh sadism well but that's not really that's just giving it a description okay what's the what's the purpose or what were you trying to achieve.
[32:25] So i guess why would i derive pleasure out of.
[32:30] Her did you derive pleasure i mean was that was that the feeling yeah okay so it made you feel good and and help me understand that that approach or that that experience.
[32:47] Um i'm sort of playing it in my head right now.
[32:58] Was it sometimes when she was having fun or in some sort of more positive mood that you would want to attack her in this way? Or was there some trigger that would make this more likely?
[33:13] I don't remember.
[33:16] Okay.
[33:20] I guess I can tell you another story from when I was older that's kind of in the same vein. so I have a bunch of younger cousins I'm probably the oldest cousin or close to it and we would play at my grandma's house I was probably what age was I? pretty old like 12 to 14 and what I would do to some of them is there is this little closet space that was also...
[34:00] Sorry, due to some of your cousins?
[34:01] Yes, to my cousins.
[34:02] And they would be younger?
[34:04] They would be younger. They would be from the ages of five to 10.
[34:09] Okay, and you're 13, 14, and so what would you do?
[34:14] And so there's this little... It was kind of like a little play place, but simultaneously a little crawl space under the stairs.
[34:23] Yeah, I know the kind. There was one of my aunt's place too. Okay.
[34:26] Yeah. Yeah. It was pretty cool. But I would lock them in it. And we would kind of play jail, but it was pretty like...
[34:35] They were upset.
[34:37] Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't, you know, innocent play or whatever. Yeah, it was bullying.
[34:44] Bigger and stronger, you can stuff them in and lock them in, right?
[34:47] Yep. Okay. Sit in front of the door. Yeah.
[34:50] And what was the purpose of that? I mean, I assume that gave you some sort of pleasure, right?
[34:55] Yeah, just power, I guess.
[34:58] Well, power doesn't explain much. These are all just like labels.
[35:02] Okay.
[35:03] I mean, because you can have power over yourself and get pleasure out of that, right? Which is, I'm going to resist my sadistic impulses. I have power over myself. So power doesn't explain much, right?
[35:14] Okay.
[35:16] And I'm sorry to be such an egg. Like, I'm just genuinely trying to understand your emotional process and experience of this. What's the plus? What does it get you? And I'm not saying it doesn't, right, get you anything. I'm just trying to follow your, and it's individual. Like, I could some sort of generic cruelty thing, but it's important to figure out your experience of this.
[35:41] Yeah, I mean, it was fun. It was... um uh maybe you can ask another question.
[35:50] Sure so the kids are crying and they're uh maybe, calling out or screaming out to get out right yeah and maybe some of them are having i don't know claustrophobia or some sort of panic attack or something like that and that's a positive experience for you right uh.
[36:10] If it got to that point i would i would let them out.
[36:13] Okay so at some point before that they're distressed and want to get out but they're not screaming and panicking yet right okay so that part then the pre-panic but upset that's a positive experience for you.
[36:27] Um yeah it was.
[36:34] Yeah and again i'm not judging or criticizing i'm genuinely like nothing human is alien to me i'm just trying to figure out the mechanics of it yeah so what What is the feeling there? What is the plus?
[36:58] It's like a... It's like a grim satisfaction or like a dark pleasure. Like, uh... I know it's not...
[37:12] No, I get that. But putting the word dark in front of pleasure doesn't explain it very much.
[37:18] Yeah, yeah.
[37:19] It's X, but dark X. It's like, okay, but yes, but what is the pleasure?
[37:25] I don't know. Can you help me out? I'm totally, I'm totally walled off.
[37:35] Yeah, it's tough to figure out. So when you and your sister would tell your middle sister that she was adopted, she would cry or be upset?
[37:49] She wouldn't believe us. It was always kind of a joke. It was never like we forged fake adoption papers, but it was always kind of a needling, gaslighty kind of thing. I'll mention something else.
[38:06] Sorry, go ahead.
[38:07] I'll mention something else too, is that a lot of the times that I got in trouble, I guess it was for verbal abuse, actually. So I remember a big mantra from my mom is like, don't cut people down. Don't cut down. So I guess, not I guess, but I would sort of cut down or insult my sister. This was around the same age as we were talking about before, very young. So I'm not exactly sure.
[38:36] And what would you say to her?
[38:38] Yeah, I was just going to say, I can't exactly remember. Not exactly, but I can't remember what I would say. It would be insulting. I think I would call her fat. I would call her probably stupid.
[38:52] Okay.
[38:54] Yeah.
[38:56] And what age did you diminish your attacks on your middle sister? When did that sort of die down?
[39:08] The overt attacks, like the hitting and the verbal abuse, probably like five or six.
[39:14] No, I know that, but I remember that. But in terms of like the verbal stuff or the put downs or the.
[39:21] Probably when she got big enough to fight back. Probably when I was... It wasn't as severe as when we were young, but it continued until at least teenage years.
[39:39] Which is a long stretch of years, right? We got six years in there, right? Correct. So when in your teenage years?
[39:48] Um i would say i was 14 she was 12.
[39:52] Right so i'm gonna go out on a limb here could be complete nonsense tell me if it makes anything uh if it makes any sense to you so to me sadism is a kind of benevolence really sadism is a kind of benevolence so for instance if, you lived in africa in in the bush in the in the, in the grasslands or something and and you your your kids were unprotected at night right would it be a kindness to pretend to be a predator growling and creeping up on them.
[40:42] Uh maybe in a sense because it could prepare them for.
[40:46] A situation like life right yeah, so to me it's like being cruel to children or harming children or frightening children if it protects them from a greater disaster, then, you know, children suffer if they want candy and you don't give them candy, but it's for the greater good, right, the longer-term good. Children who are overweight, if they have to eat less, they'll cry and be hungry and be upset, but it's for their own good, right? So suffering for the sake of improvement, is something that is important in life, right?
[41:33] Yeah, I'm crying now.
[41:36] Right. So tell me what I'm saying and how you're feeling.
[41:46] I feel like I was protecting her.
[41:50] Right. And so then the question is, what are the predators you are protecting her from in your mind?
[42:02] It has to be my parents.
[42:04] Yeah. Parents could be, you know, any, any, any cluster of adults, so to speak.
[42:12] Yeah. Yeah.
[42:13] If that makes sense.
[42:15] Yeah.
[42:22] So, tell me if this approach that you're trying to toughen them up and harden them and warn them of predators, then tell me about the mechanics that might be occurring and what might be going on.
[42:39] Sorry, the mechanics in which situation and the situation with… Well.
[42:43] Let's talk about your sister, middle sister, and the kids. under the stairs right okay so you would if we take the approach that you were trying to protect them like an inoculation right like when i was a kid i got an inoculation against smallpox it hurt yeah yeah but you know the argument of course is it hurts a whole lot less than getting smallpox right yeah okay so if you are trying to protect or inoculate, your siblings or let's say the kids under the stairs and your middle middle sister what are you trying to protect or inoculate them from you say well predators and so on but let's let's dig more into it what do you think you were trying to achieve in this, potentially cruel to be kind mechanic.
[43:40] Yeah um, I guess I was trying to toughen them up to being needled at. To being what? Needled at.
[43:58] Needled at, okay.
[43:59] Like verbally. I was trying to toughen them.
[44:04] Well, no, sorry. It can't be that because you're doing it.
[44:08] You're gone.
[44:09] Right, so if you're saying, well, I'm trying to protect you from being needled at or teased, well, you're already doing that. right so that would be like me cutting a kid saying i'm trying to protect you from being cut but you're already cutting them right so it's not that so.
[44:24] It has to be different than the thing i'm doing to them.
[44:26] Yeah it has to be different than the thing you're doing because then that's like injecting me with smallpox saying i'm trying to protect you from smallpox it's like i don't think you did that so.
[44:34] Why would i.
[44:35] Not the why not the why it's what are you what are you trying to protect them from i mean i have a vague thought but you know it's i don't want to interfere with your thought process, though I get, of course, this is a difficult thing to process.
[44:50] To be honest, this is a total wall to me. So if you have a thought, that would be super valuable.
[44:55] Well, I can take a shot, if that makes sense. I can take a shot. So I think you, found the kids who were the most naive and trusting, positive, open-hearted, and good natured. And you said, kids, if you trust anyone, you're fucked. So I'm going to inure you, I'm going to make you immune to this stupid, doe-eyed fucking trust bullshit because you're going to be fucked. Hey, kids, you should go into the closet. I locked you in. Hey, did you learn something about trust? Don't do it. Oh, are you coming to me with affection? I'm going to push you away. I'm going to hold you down. Oh, do you think these are your parents? No, you're just adopted. Ha ha. I think, and I obviously could be wrong, probably am, but I think it's got something to do with kids. If you bond, you're fucked. If you love, if you are open-hearted, if you trust, you're fucked. And I'm going to get you out of that mindset so you're not fucked.
[46:14] That is, that just resonates a thousand percent. And that pattern shows up in my life all the time.
[46:22] Well, I'm concerned that you isolate yourself because you feel like a virus.
[46:32] I don't know. I don't know if that's true. In the past, yeah, for sure. For sure.
[46:39] Okay. So what is it about trust and bond? I'll sort of give you an example that's sort of a cliche in movies. i don't know if you've ever seen any first world war movies uh.
[46:52] Maybe one or two.
[46:53] Yeah or it can be sort of any any movie uh where there's you know significant combat so there's usually two paradigms and this is sort of in platoon and so on but you see this in the first world war movies a lot you know there's a clean-shaven fresh-faced young guy who's just enthusiastic to fight you know and and fight for the fatherland fight for the motherland and he just can't wait and and what what always happens to that fresh-faced apple-cheeked beardless kid when the first combat comes along.
[47:24] He gets blown by a mortar.
[47:26] Oh yeah he gets the shit shot out of him like in slow motion yeah right if you you trust you're fucked, And so, if you have enthusiasm, positivity, and affection, and so on, right?
[47:47] Yeah.
[47:48] Then, I think you probably perceive those kids to be in grave danger. No, that's... You know, it's the old, what do you mean strangers have the best candy? That's not good. and if i have to pretend to kidnap you in a white van so that you don't get kidnapped by a real pedophile i'll do that, yeah if i have to scare the shit out of you to keep you safe i will do that, but whoever gets whoever trusts gets fucked and is in grave danger, Trust is a poison And if I have to slap it out of your hand Ten times a day I will do that, Yep Dang, Hey kids We're gonna play a fun game of under the stairs Haha hide and go seek You're locked Okay how did trust work out for your kids Now you're frightened Okay well before you get completely hysterical I'll let you out But I hope you learned an important lesson. Do you still see where I'm coming from?
[49:10] Yeah, yeah, for sure. I was thinking about this. So this pattern showed up in a relationship that I had when I was around 20.
[49:25] Where basically I didn't really like this girl that much, but she liked me a lot. and i took advantage of that and i had sex with her uh you know sometimes and then so i was going away to college so at the end of the summer we had sex a few times and then the entire semester passes i come back and she contacts me and it's like she waited all these three months just for me and um so so i i had sex with her a few more times and then i was thinking how can this girl, like it's so dangerous for her to give up sex to someone who like i don't even like her like what's gonna happen to her i don't know in the future and i don't want her this is my reasoning at the time but i don't want her to feel bad so what i'll do is i'll completely 100% ghost her i'll block her on everything and i did that and so my theory at the time was she would get mad at me instead of herself and then she would learn to not give away her trust like that again right yeah so.
[50:51] You're giving her an inoculation.
[50:52] Yeah right and it doesn't work Well.
[50:57] I mean, let's not get into whether it works or not, because we're just looking at the mechanics, right? Now, what did you dislike about this young woman?
[51:06] Well, she wasn't pretty enough for me. I was, uh, in my teens and twenties, I wanted to date for vanity.
[51:20] Yes. I wanted to look good. And was she overweight or just was not pretty in the face?
[51:25] She just wasn't, she was like pretty enough. Actually, she was fairly good looking, but just not, I wanted like a 95th percentile, like model girl which is unrealistic for my sort of market value but but um but i wanted that and i like would like hold out hope that i would have that and and so that prevented me from any kind of, like significant bonding or anything like that sorry.
[51:59] That prevented what.
[51:59] That it sort of um eclipsed like that desire for to want a girlfriend that engenders envy in my friends sort of eclipsed any aspiration for a real relationship right.
[52:17] Okay got it got it and how would you uh you said your sexual market value so how would you rank your own looks sort of that one to ten scale.
[52:26] Uh between seven and eight.
[52:31] Okay and are you um uh how old are you.
[52:35] 31 31.
[52:37] And uh what's your just roughly uh income uh a year.
[52:43] Uh nothing okay.
[52:46] Um what was your maximum income when you did work.
[52:49] Uh 30 000 okay.
[52:52] So you can't provide really for a family, right?
[52:55] Correct.
[52:59] And did you ever, did she ever find a way through your block fest?
[53:04] Uh, say that again?
[53:06] Did the woman, the young woman that you blocked, did she ever find a way to contact you?
[53:11] Uh, she, I remember a week after she broke my, uh, wind wiper on my car.
[53:18] Hmm.
[53:19] Um.
[53:21] You saw her do that?
[53:23] I knew it was her. There's another, well, I, I'm pretty sure it was her.
[53:30] And that's that because she had shown these kinds of aggressive tendencies before or.
[53:36] She had a bad friend uh i mean i guess that doesn't give an excuse but.
[53:42] Okay she had a bad friend.
[53:43] Yeah yeah, yeah and so i think the friend is kind of a like a hyper feminist type and i don't know she was bad news i knew i knew the other friend i knew both of them from school, anyway i i think my theory i forget why this is my theory but my theory is that they both drove up and she broke that wind wiper got.
[54:09] It okay so what do you think your lesson was as far as trust goes that trust is death that relying on others trusting others is like death to the point where trust is such a predator that you have to inoculate, children against this predator by continually betraying their trust. What was your experience with trust, do you think, that made it so deadly?
[54:38] Well, the first thing that comes to mind, and this doesn't really make chronological sense, but I'll just say it anyway, is in elementary school, I think there's this elementary school kind of thing where you like you have like little i don't know 70 year old six year old crushes, and the kids kind of rate the i guess attractiveness of their other classmates and you have a crush on so and so and so i i divulged to my little sister the two one that's two years younger like uh who i you know who i had crushes on and she went and told the whole my whole class, but but that chronologically doesn't make sense to me because it would have to be before because i was inoculating her against that so it would have to be before like in like in toddlerhood or like infancy where well then that.
[55:32] Could also just be a setup for you to get to punish her.
[55:37] True yeah it's.
[55:38] A big secret don't tell anyone and then she goes and tells people and you get to punish her but okay so uh i know this may of course be pre-verbal it may be pre-memory but with.
[55:47] Regards to.
[55:48] Trust do you ever remember trusting or relying upon your parents yeah.
[55:59] When I did, it went badly. I remember a time...
[56:03] Okay, so give me some early examples of trusting your parents or trying to.
[56:08] I remember a time in seventh grade, I was trying out for the basketball team. And for some reason, I think it was because I didn't have a physical. For the first day, I would have to sit out until I could get a physical. school and I normally don't tell my parents anything about like even at that age about my life what's happening at school so I told my dad and I remember we were out in the parking lot, and I told him and he went into a rage and he went in and I wasn't I didn't witness it but he raged at the coach and i remember being humiliated because there was talk around the school and the community that it's like okay now we have you know your last name rule because your dad yelled at the coach because um his kid didn't get to play the first name rule like this is the This is the Molyneux rule. Like now we have to verify that you have a physical before you try it for the basketball team. Okay.
[57:24] Oh, sorry. That rule was named after your family because of your father?
[57:29] Yes.
[57:30] Okay. Got it. All right. Now, were you disappointed in having to sit out the first one because you didn't have your physical? Did you want your father to fix this in some way? Do you remember that at all?
[57:44] I remember I never wanted to play sports, really.
[57:47] Oh, okay. So you're happy to sit out, right.
[57:49] Yeah. So I didn't really mind. I remember I was really upset I didn't make the team. I'm not athletic. I'm like probably 30th percentile athletic. But my dad was always the coach of my sports teams. and i always played every sports season that there was right.
[58:09] Okay and what about your mother.
[58:15] Uh my mother i think she's very cold i mean it was it was like daily threats of um probably from the age of, um you know toddlerhood to 11 or so where she would daily or 48 hourly threats of uh getting the spoon out and maybe it would happen once a week uh we would get hit.
[58:42] And I assume the spoon on was it on bear skin.
[58:45] It was not okay.
[58:47] So through clothing okay.
[58:48] Yeah mostly.
[58:50] On the butt.
[58:51] Uh exclusively okay.
[58:53] Got it so was it painful or more shocking or scary or what was the experience of being hit with the spoon.
[58:59] It was painful right yeah okay.
[59:04] And do you how did your parents get along.
[59:12] They didn't get along that well when I was under the age of 10. They fought a lot. I remember even at that age, taking my dad's side a lot because my mom would get hysterical. She had a lot of, what she said was she had a lot of homesickness. So they wanted to move. There was all these fights about moving house.
[59:38] And we almost moved one time. they bought a house but then they backed out on moving us into it um there's another time they put us in a i went to public school there's a time they put us in a private school for a month and they backed out of that um but i i remember sitting on the our bedrooms are on the second floor i remember sitting on the stairs when i was seven or eight and just hearing and trying to listen to them fight and and like under understand what the uh what the fights were about, and you know maybe i could do something about it and i always got the sense that my mom was the unreasonable one uh 60 60 to 70 percent of the time but my dad would would rage at her, there's never physical violence, but he would he would go into I guess he'd have a boundary if you want to call it that where it's like if you push this button too much he'll, like kind of yell and rage and then close off.
[1:00:57] And do you remember any close or positive or intimate or pleasant times when you were little?
[1:01:08] Yeah, I remember my dad would he would make up stories like bedtime stories and it would be for 20 minutes to an hour, just making up bedtime stories and we would go oh yeah and this happened and this happened probably under the age of six when this would happen um i i guess this isn't my parents but i was watched by my dad's mom who was crazy but but we had good times like playing like uh we pretend to be animals maybe when i was a toddler and kind of run around on the carpet.
[1:01:59] Okay. And who was the person that you were the most bonded to or close to as a child?
[1:02:10] I don't know. I don't know if there's anyone.
[1:02:13] Well, no, that's why I said not close to the most, but the most. Yeah.
[1:02:17] My dad. Yeah.
[1:02:20] Okay. And how, what is your relationship like with your parents now?
[1:02:26] Um I recently had a big so I lived with him for the past three years and I, you know catalyzed by your show I had a sit down with him and a talk and it lasted like five hours and well the relationship now is I told them that I want to be on a hiatus in our relationships, as kind of honestly as a manipulation i kind of want to just end the relationship and not really speak to them.
[1:02:59] I used sorry but where are you living now.
[1:03:01] Uh i moved out uh like last week.
[1:03:04] Got it okay and and i mean i know it's tough to summarize five hours but what was the general tenor and and result of the conversation.
[1:03:14] Um There's a lot of denial. My mom specifically refused to acknowledge that corporal punishment is abuse.
[1:03:39] Oh, so she accepted that she hit you guys with the spoon, but she did not say that.
[1:03:44] She would not accept that that was abusive.
[1:03:47] It's a good thing. Okay. Do any of your siblings have kids?
[1:03:51] No okay.
[1:03:52] That's not surprising okay.
[1:03:54] Yeah okay.
[1:03:57] So she said it was good parenting to hit you guys as toddlers with spoons right.
[1:04:01] Yes and.
[1:04:04] Did your father agree with that.
[1:04:10] He he kind of uh rubber he kind of goes rubber bones a lot, he he like kind of agreed with me and then like wouldn't agree with my mom my mom is very aggressive actually and overt and just seeing her face in my mind just now she she'd like cock her head and kind of raise her chin and like uh she says i did not abuse you um and my dad is kind of like seemed sorrowful and pitiful but but i had a conversation with him maybe a week or two after and about his childhood and his parents were divorced his his dad was a drunk and i guess he did have kind of a good relationship with his grandmother but um his grandmother was mother to like seven girls that were all total crazy messes and well no hang.
[1:05:15] On hang on.
[1:05:16] Sorry okay kids.
[1:05:18] Don't just become crazy messes out of nowhere, She wasn't just, didn't just land it with three crazy girls.
[1:05:27] Well, it was like seven girls.
[1:05:29] Sorry, seven. She wasn't just landed with seven crazy girls. She must have done something to help make them crazy.
[1:05:36] Yeah, yeah. The dad was a terrible alcoholic that beat them.
[1:05:40] Right. Okay, so she chose to have children with a violent man.
[1:05:45] Yeah, yeah, exactly.
[1:05:47] And then she chose to have seven of them and to keep them in his orbit.
[1:05:51] Yeah. yeah and so so.
[1:05:55] Hang on so your father when you talked to him your father immediately knew that he had had a bad childhood.
[1:06:00] No he doesn't admit it he said I will never admit that I've had a bad childhood oh.
[1:06:06] Sorry so was he bringing up the violence and the drunkenness as a positive thing.
[1:06:10] I was kind of like interviewing him or interrogating him about mechanics of what happened like with his family yeah It was later that he said, I refuse to believe that I had a bad childhood.
[1:06:27] Okay. Now, do you know why your father has to refuse to believe that he had a bad childhood?
[1:06:35] Because if he admitted that he had a bad childhood, he'd have to admit that I did.
[1:06:39] Well, if he admitted that he had a bad childhood, then he would have been responsible for reading a book or two on parenting.
[1:06:48] Yeah.
[1:06:49] Right?
[1:06:54] and so he can't admit that he had a bad childhood because then if he admits he had a bad childhood you'd say okay well if you know that you had a bad childhood, then you would have been responsible for improving it before you became a father.
[1:07:09] Yeah that's true.
[1:07:10] You know like if my mother teaches me to cook and everything she teaches me tastes terrible, and then i want to become a cook then i have to learn better i have to pick up some books on cooking because clearly the stuff my mother taught me is terrible right, yep so yeah the moment you admit that you had a bad childhood is the moment that you are fully responsible for what you inflicted on your children if that makes sense so he's a he's a smart guy yeah.
[1:07:43] I think he would totally i mean he's like in his mid-60s he would totally you know it would take what 15 years to recover from that at least and then the the i don't know i don't know whatever the the guilt of that there's no way he could function i don't think if that came to the surface.
[1:08:03] Yeah maybe maybe maybe he's uh beyond recovery that certainly does you know there's that one cigarette where you smoke that one you get cancer right so uh yeah he could be very well be beyond recovery but it means that he prefers his own psychological self-preservation to the mental health of his children.
[1:08:24] Yeah, it's nasty.
[1:08:26] Well, I mean, it's a continuation of the same pattern from when you were a kid, right?
[1:08:33] Yep.
[1:08:34] Did your parents, so help me understand the sort of the last decade, right? Early 20s to early 30s. So you went to college, is that right?
[1:08:44] Yeah. I went to college on a, on like a full scholarship to a school in a big city, a 10, 12 hour drive away.
[1:08:58] And what did you take?
[1:09:00] I started out with biomedical engineering. And then, then the program dissolved the first year I was there.
[1:09:10] What?
[1:09:10] And I'll.
[1:09:11] Yeah. I'm not disagreeing with you, but what do you mean the program dissolved?
[1:09:14] It was a joint program with another university and I guess the relationship, I don't know, was messed up or they stopped offering. The place that I got the full scholarship to stopped offering biomedical engineering as a degree.
[1:09:35] Okay, but then don't they owe you a refund?
[1:09:40] I mean, I wasn't assertive at all.
[1:09:43] I mean but they should offer that anyway i mean if they and they should actually offer you compensation for the last year right because unless you can transfer it to something else that you like the credits.
[1:09:52] I never thought of that but yeah that's totally true they really screwed me well.
[1:09:58] You and i assume many others right.
[1:10:00] Oh yeah yeah how.
[1:10:02] Big was your first year class.
[1:10:03] Of of college yeah oh this is a fair this is a fairly big school this is a i don't know thousands so.
[1:10:15] They bought thousands of kids then charged them tens of thousands of dollars.
[1:10:19] For the biomedical i don't know because i think i was in general courses so it didn't get to the point where i was going to the other college to take the specialized courses yet This happened maybe after the first year, or at the beginning of the second.
[1:10:37] Okay, so what happened then?
[1:10:40] So I switched the, you know, bad decision. I switched the biology because I just, I got involved in drinking and partying and smoking weed. And so I just wanted to stay there and have my sort of status as, um, you know, Oh, I got this full ride. Like I'm super smart, whatever. and so like i wanted to stay and have the status and also have the drinking and and partying friends and just kind of you know and promiscuity no oh.
[1:11:24] You didn't date.
[1:11:25] No okay.
[1:11:27] And why do you think you didn't date.
[1:11:28] I think it goes back to the vanity thing well also my dating strategy was really terrible my dating strategy for the most part was essentially getting friend zoned um, i would just i would just become friends with girls and develop secret infatuations with them and then you know maybe six months later i would like wait like try to wait out their boyfriends or something and six months later i would say you know blah blah blah like oh i've liked you this the whole time and then it would fade away. So I didn't have the guts to go up and ask a girl out right away or stuff like that.
[1:12:11] But, I mean, this is always the you know, I'm sorry for the impertinent question you don't have to answer anything you don't want to but how did you take care of your sexual needs if you weren't dating or in sexual relationships? Pornography. Ah, okay. So would you say you became addicted to pornography?
[1:12:27] Yes.
[1:12:28] Okay. Got it. okay got it and you know it's easier than i suppose getting into a relationship now did your family or friends ever notice that you weren't dating or ask you about it.
[1:12:41] Um they would sabotage me if i tried to date so i guess an example, um maybe I was like 14 I remember this very vividly and there's this like I don't know video game song I really liked so I would go around kind of singing it, and I come downstairs to dinner singing this song and um, and my mom says she's like why are you singing that video game song no girl's ever going to want to date you singing that song something like that.
[1:13:28] Sorry how was that sabotage.
[1:13:31] Yeah um, I guess it's like sabotaging my, I don't know, my confidence in women.
[1:13:44] Well, was she wrong? I don't know much about youth and dating culture, but just singing video game songs, is that attractive or not attractive to women?
[1:13:54] I would say not attractive.
[1:13:56] Right. So, I mean, it's not how I would phrase it at all. uh-huh but if you were going on a date you know dressed in sweatpants and a muscle tee right and your mom said no girl's gonna want to kiss you dressed like that i mean it might be a bit harsh but it's not entirely wrong.
[1:14:16] Yeah i mean i got no guidance at all on dating i got maybe one book um during puberty, like you know sat down here read this book about puberty no guidance from my dad on dating no guidance from my mom on dating um from my friends.
[1:14:38] Sorry as opposed to what what guidance did you get from your parents on anything other than how to throw a curveball yeah.
[1:14:46] Yeah it's like you know, how to field a ground ball.
[1:14:51] Right. I mean, you sound profoundly unparented.
[1:14:58] Go on. That's interesting to me. Go on.
[1:15:01] Well, I mean, the test you've heard me ask other people is, can you remember a piece of wisdom that your parents gave you as a child or a teenager that you still find a value to this day?
[1:15:16] Yeah, not really. the one thing the one answer i've thought of for that is that um i forget the situation but i think i was in position to maybe like buy like stolen goods at some point like i kind of half knew that they're stolen and my dad says uh basically don't do that like that because that's supporting stealing by proxy that's maybe the um the strongest piece of wisdom you know i've thought about that question for, you know, upwards of hour.
[1:15:47] Well, but it's not something that is particularly practical in your everyday life because it's not like on a daily basis people are coming up to you with an offer of stolen goods. I mean, I assume you're not applying to grants from USAID or anything, so it's not a foundational issue in your life, right?
[1:16:04] Yeah, I had to totally parent myself with the internet pretty much.
[1:16:08] Okay so why do you think you didn't date i mean you said you got into these friend zone situations but why do you think that happened um.
[1:16:31] I think it's like a fear of, like a pathological fear of like rejection. Like if I ask a girl out, then there's going to be this whole cacophony of humiliation that gets laid on me because she'll talk to her friends and be like, hey, get a load of this guy asking me out. And so then I always tried to navigate like without that directness.
[1:17:00] Sorry, I'm trying to piece together your life here, and I'm getting very confused. And, you know, I apologize for this, just sort of help me understand this. So you're saying you have a pathological fear of rejection, right?
[1:17:15] Yeah, at the time. Right.
[1:17:18] And yet you spent your childhood attacking and rejecting other kids, and then you ghosted the girl you slept with. like what am i not getting here what am i not understanding i mean if you have a fear of rejection then you should be not continually harming punishing and rejecting others right, correct i mean are you am i missing some part of the i feel like i'm missing some part of an equation here and i'm sorry for being dinge but it's like the guy who tortures other people physically and then says, oh, you know, I have a pathological fear of physical pain. I mean, most people have a fear of rejection. And you know that because that's partly how you used to how you harmed people, right?
[1:18:14] Yes.
[1:18:17] I mean, your sister had a desire for acceptance and love and, you know, from her older brother and you rejected that, right? And the girl obviously wanted to keep dating you.
[1:18:27] Yeah.
[1:18:27] And you ghosted her. And then you said, well, the problem was her friend. No, the problem was you ghosted her. So I'm trying to put this together, like if you're too afraid of rejection, but that's a mechanic by which you harmed other people. Now, you can say, you know, ironically, you know, ironically, I had this great fear of rejection, which might seem odd because I rejected and ghosted and harmed others through their desire for acceptance. but that what's confusing to me is not that there's an inconsistency or an opposite here but you you talk about about this without it seems to me any sense of the connection between, your harshness and rejection of others and the fact that you're very frightened of being rejected.
[1:19:17] I've never made that connection.
[1:19:19] Like if you're some guy where they used to call this guy chainsaw L who just fired a whole bunch of people in the 80s. So if you're a hiring manager and you fire like a hundred people, and then, you know, the next day you say, I'm terrified of being fired. Right. So, I mean, these two things can coexist, but you should be aware of the thread between them to say, I know I just fired a hundred people, but I'm actually quite frightened of being fired myself. Maybe there's a connection. Do you know what I mean? But you're like, you gave me the first hour of like here's how i rejected and you know even the kids who wanted to get let out from under the stairs you rejected their pleas right you rejected your sister reaching out for you for some kind of comfort and love and protection you you go to the girl and and so on right so and you and your younger sister teamed up to make her uh you know feel fat or or stupid or adopted or something like that right so this does this come as a surprise to you that this fear of rejection is kind of ironic yeah.
[1:20:32] I mean i'll give you a sense of what i'm feeling through this call is that i feel like um i i kind of feel like a monster like, Uh, yeah, I feel like, I feel like I have this, I don't know, all of this rejection that I've heaped on other people. Maybe I had some excuse for it. I mean, I understand, and I'm very remorseful for like, okay, I've been super remorseful about this girl that we're talking about that i ghosted um i i keep having dreams like recurring dreams even now like about her well i'm sorry but.
[1:21:24] Have you haven't contacted her to apologize.
[1:21:27] I did maybe three or four years later and then maybe a couple years after that and she never contacted me and i think she still has me blocked on everything okay um but uh and what about what.
[1:21:44] About your uh your sister.
[1:21:47] My sister I've I had a conversation with her a couple months ago where I laid out like I didn't lay out in full and I didn't appreciate in full how, bad I was to her but I appreciate it at least somewhat I would I said to her that it doesn't make sense that um, like why would I dislike you like and i said maybe logically the reason is that our parents kind of put us against each other, but um i didn't get to the point where i realized that i i was even at that age i was still indulging in uh like being sadistic towards her and you mean sorry as.
[1:22:34] Of a couple of months ago.
[1:22:35] Yeah as of a couple of months and in.
[1:22:37] What ways were you being sadistic towards her as of a couple of months.
[1:22:40] No no i wasn't being sadistic toward her a couple months ago this was the conversation I had with her okay, um where where i kind of laid out like i'm really sorry for like our relationship and i know this is this is a core relationship so i want this to be a good relationship um, and i talked to her about kind of peaceful parenting concepts where it's like you know hang on hang on so i.
[1:23:11] Mean you're doing a lot of talking here but did you ask her about her experience as a child and dig into what it was like for her?
[1:23:20] No, I talked probably 80% of the time.
[1:23:24] But why wouldn't you ask her what her experience was?
[1:23:29] She would just, when I asked her things, she would just give me very short answers.
[1:23:34] Okay, but it's going to take a while, right?
[1:23:38] Right.
[1:23:39] I mean, trust is not an easy thing to recover after almost 30 years.
[1:23:44] Yeah she was uh she's she's like very ambivalent about about the whole thing, um yeah it doesn't seem like she cares or like maybe she she's given up on me that's a possibility for sure i don't know but i don't.
[1:24:05] Know but but if you did her wrong and you do most of the talking and don't ask her about her experience, that still seems like it's all about you, doesn't it?
[1:24:16] Yeah, that's not right.
[1:24:24] Okay, so you had one conversation with her a couple of months ago. You did most of the talking, and you certainly tried to apologize to some degree, and has anything in particular changed since then?
[1:24:39] Um i tried to call her or i did call her a couple times she doesn't i she avoids contacting me because i want to have these well i guess looking at it now maybe it's like me diatribing at her but i want to have these well.
[1:24:58] I mean sorry how did the conversation benefit her.
[1:25:02] I think she got some insight on how we were raised and like why our relationship is so fractured okay.
[1:25:11] But if she got a benefit from the conversation why would she avoid another one.
[1:25:17] Well my well my thinking is that she's beyond redemption like she's behind redemption.
[1:25:30] Sorry what do you mean.
[1:25:30] Yeah yeah so she's this um sort of yelling um third grade or you know elementary school teacher and she is um obese and she has and she smokes weed all the time um oh she's a drug addict teacher Yeah. So I'm not sure how like recoverable that is, you know?
[1:25:59] No boyfriend?
[1:26:00] She does have a boyfriend. Yeah.
[1:26:02] Oh, she does. Okay.
[1:26:03] Yeah.
[1:26:03] And how overweight is she?
[1:26:06] Um, she's probably like five, four, two 50.
[1:26:11] Holy crap.
[1:26:12] Yeah.
[1:26:14] So like double her weight. And how long has she been overweight for?
[1:26:19] Uh, since her early twenties.
[1:26:26] Okay.
[1:26:27] She was a little bit overweight in childhood, and then she lost weight into high school, and then she got pretty big.
[1:26:37] Okay, so let's go back to you were in college, and you did your undergrad, friend-zoned a bunch, you didn't date, and then what happened? This is your early mid-20s, and what happened after college? after.
[1:26:49] College i went to a phd program um at a really really top school uh.
[1:26:58] Doing was it still in biology yeah.
[1:27:01] This was like molecular biology stuff.
[1:27:03] Now in in my experience people who are have a little bit on the cold-hearted side like biology, because it reduces the human body to a kind of machinery and you can't hurt machinery emotionally.
[1:27:23] That makes sense with me. Everyone in biology is pretty cold. Yeah. Yeah.
[1:27:29] They're digging with relief to not find the soul. I mean, how do I empathize with a spleen or a liver, right? Okay, so you went to the PhD program and how did that go?
[1:27:43] Oh it went really badly uh so in college i was the last three years of undergraduate, i was addicted to weed and that stopped for a year once i went to grad school but then it continued well.
[1:27:57] You chose to quit then you chose to start it stopped it continued it's very.
[1:28:01] Much uh that's a good catch good catch anyway go on yeah sure um and so i continued to uh use weed for like, um, four years. So I was there for six years.
[1:28:21] Oh, you're doing the PhD program for six years.
[1:28:24] Yeah. Yeah. And then, uh, I mastered out at the end.
[1:28:28] But a master is a year or two, right?
[1:28:32] Right.
[1:28:33] And why did you not finish? Was it just the drug addiction or?
[1:28:38] Um, no, because I quit the drug addiction in like year four. Um, and what you sort.
[1:28:45] Of on track for your phd in year four what's it is it a six-year phd.
[1:28:49] Yeah it's around five and a half six years it's supposed to be and.
[1:28:52] Were you on track at four.
[1:28:53] No i was probably like a half a year to a year behind i would say okay and then and then even when i quit i would still, i was still like living like i was addicted to weed like i would have i had no energy i would um, i would get this bad anxiety is every time i would go in to do work around two to four hours after, i would get just like so insanely anxious that i would um like quote unquote have to leave, like a panic attack almost yeah yeah and i would be like i gotta get out of here i got But it's nothing logical, nothing like my boss was very super laid back. I didn't really like the environment. I was very gynocentric and a lot of literal communists there. So I had to like...
[1:29:57] A whole podic biologist, yeah.
[1:29:57] Yeah, yeah. And so I guess maybe like the social setting is dangerous, but I never appreciated that until I just said it out loud now.
[1:30:05] But did you did you talk to any counselors or therapists about your anxiety or lack of energy no I mean it's free right in college yeah it is.
[1:30:19] I wanted to do everything myself.
[1:30:25] Well, I guess like the guy who was doing electroshock therapy and your mom's father and tried to do it all in a sense without therapy and it didn't work, right?
[1:30:37] Yeah.
[1:30:38] Okay. All right. So then what happened?
[1:30:47] So i guess so a very significant thing happened um midway through grad school so year three.
[1:30:57] This is while you were still on the weed right.
[1:30:58] Yeah i had a i had a psychosis.
[1:31:03] Oh gosh okay was were you on strong weed or did you think it had some because i know that the weed and the psychosis have some sort of relationship.
[1:31:09] Yeah i think there was there is a connection there for sure um but but it also coincided with so i was 25 at the time so until the age of 25 i was like pretty much a total npc like kind of like a reddit kind of atheist kind of type um like i didn't think super critically about what i've been taught and what i was told and the propaganda that i'd been well i mean how could.
[1:31:40] You i mean you you wouldn't have even been taught philosophy in any practical way or had exposure to, I mean, it's not like the shows like mine are particularly common, right?
[1:31:48] No, they're not. Not at all.
[1:31:50] And sorry, when did you first start listening to me? Oh, you said just a couple of months ago, right?
[1:31:54] Yeah, like a few months ago.
[1:31:55] Okay, got it. How did you come across me, by the way?
[1:31:59] Uh, Franzen.
[1:32:00] Ah, okay, got it. All right. So you, um, you had a psychosis and what was that? What was the story with that?
[1:32:09] Well, so the subjective experience of it was, like, I got really into, like, basically conspiracy theories. And if you consider conspiracy theories under the concept of, what is the concept? A system is what it does.
[1:32:29] Yes. The purpose of a system is what it repeatedly does. Yeah.
[1:32:33] If you consider them under that concept, then what they are maybe is not a force for eliminating corruption. What they are is a force for undermining the moral authority of government. and so i sort of was looking into all these things and sort of the moral authority of government all the propaganda and you know part of it was like the iq stuff you know i was sort of trained to be able to parse that scientific paper my papers myself and like really critically look at it and so sort of my entire worldview was washed out from under me and i was using weed also yeah and so then i i remember very vividly like my worldview was so washed out that for i had to take an hour to litigate whether the earth truly was flat or round and obvious okay it's round but but like you know i'm like a phd student there's this like weird disconnect with me because it's like I'm a PhD student in a very top university and I'm looking at this stuff and.
[1:33:53] And so then uh i get this idea okay i'm gonna show everyone this like i'm gonna i'm gonna walk out, like i'm gonna open everyone's eyes and then as soon as i thought that i get this response and it's it wasn't a voice but it was like this demonic feeling fear thing attacking me that it was like the deepest fear i ever felt in my life that essentially it didn't say no but it said no and i was it said no to.
[1:34:27] What do you think.
[1:34:28] Uh to me sharing like all this information with people right okay and then i go you know what are you like are you a demon or like i asked i'm like having this dialogue in my head and then it gives me another response that's like a feeling response, and i had this kind of quote-unquote dialogue with it maybe this lasted 15 minutes but at the end of it i was convinced that i was going to die that it was going to kill me uh.
[1:35:03] And did you i mean i guess you're an atheist and all right so did you view this as a kind of a demonic presence or entity?
[1:35:12] I viewed it as I guess I don't want to get too into the deals but I was coming across this stuff that made it seem like, telepathy was possible or something. like um so, so i guess i i guess i maybe i'll sort of dishonest my idea was that okay i'll create this telepathy machine that tells people all this information and beams it directly into their heads right and and then i go wow i.
[1:35:52] Gotta tell you that would.
[1:35:53] Be a pretty.
[1:35:54] Impressive phd thesis.
[1:35:55] Like i would i would.
[1:35:57] Be i would be like wow i should smoke weed.
[1:36:02] Yeah, well, that's the kind of ideas it gives you.
[1:36:04] Right, right. And they make sense, right?
[1:36:06] Yeah, and it made perfect sense. And so I was thinking, well, okay, I'll create this telepathy machine, and then I'll tell everyone. And then I go, wait. If this technology has been hidden for so many decades, the government probably has this. and then if the government has this machine then based on my search history they're monitoring, you know me and then I go then as soon as I think that that's when I feel the, feeling and I'm like are you monitoring me and it's like I get a feeling of death, And then I get, and I get convinced that I'm going to die. Right. I'm going, you know.
[1:36:50] The government is going to kill you because of this, um, uh, that they're going to know that, you know, about this telepathy thing. Right.
[1:36:59] Right.
[1:36:59] In fact, they wouldn't even need to monitor you because of telepathy. Anyway.
[1:37:03] Yeah. Yeah. So, so I, this happened maybe in the course of 10, 15 minutes and then I was convinced I was going to die. so I was living like 12 hours away from my parents at the time and so I called them at like midnight and they drove up and got me.
[1:37:24] And did you tell them I'm having an episode or what was their perception of that?
[1:37:32] I said like I think I'm going to die like can you please come here don't Don't turn on the Bluetooth in the car.
[1:37:44] Right.
[1:37:48] Pray for me.
[1:37:49] Ah, they're religious, but you're not, right?
[1:37:52] Yeah, and at that point, I was like, after that fear attack sort of passed, I sort of prayed, and I felt like, then all over my body for the rest of the night, I felt these goosebumps. and my all my hair and my body was standing up on end and i felt like that god had saved me right, um because you know my mom got her parents to pray and all you know sort of a prayer you know i don't know warrior kind of thing, and so so they drove up they took me back i was kind of you know talking to them about like you know hey the government's lying about this and this and this and No one's really listening to me, and they're all very concerned. But after a couple days, I went back.
[1:38:49] Sorry, went back?
[1:38:51] Went back to the city where I was doing grad school in. Yeah. And then I, let's see. I just held my turn and thought. So two weeks later, I was still smoking the weed for like one year after that. Oh, wow.
[1:39:08] But did you make the association of the weed and this episode?
[1:39:16] Yeah. And I cut way back on it, I think.
[1:39:19] Okay, got it.
[1:39:20] Yeah. But I remember two weeks after that, I sort of felt the, I don't know, specter of the demon coming back. And I sort of fought it off. And then that was the last time that I had anything like that. Right. Okay. So, and that was like, you know, I remember the exact date is in March in 2018. And that was like sort of marked, I don't know, a change in my, a total change in my life. And then after that, I felt like I don't really want to do this PhD anymore, but I'm so far into it that like maybe I should finish. But then I was still plagued by, I don't know, just this lethargy. And I quit weed. And I was very mystical. I turned from an atheist to very, very mystical.
[1:40:17] Sorry, mystical or religious?
[1:40:19] Mystical.
[1:40:20] Right. So religion without rules.
[1:40:22] Yeah, exactly.
[1:40:24] Okay, got it.
[1:40:25] Yeah. And so I was like, my goal in life is to, I don't know, awaken my kundalini and uh your what now my my um you know like in hinduism they have that serpent that like travels up your spine and then you reach enlightenment yeah like that okay got it um so i want to awaken the serpent i want to you know do these meditations where i see a certain light and and so it was like i go from this like totally stringent atheist to totally mystical, and uh obviously you had a show of yeah how mysticism is isolation yeah and it's totally true 1000 yeah.
[1:41:19] At least with uh at least with religion you get some companionship right.
[1:41:21] Yeah exactly yeah, Um, and so then it eventually got to a head with the PhD that I was so behind that I just had to get out.
[1:41:34] Well, how much do you think it would have been, uh, like how much more would you have had to do? Do you think?
[1:41:40] Probably two full years of work.
[1:41:42] Okay.
[1:41:43] The problem is also with the PhD, I, the lab had a wheelhouse where it was like these experiments that they've been doing for 15, 20 years. that's sort of a formula to generate publications and i didn't want to work in that wheelhouse i wanted to do different things and i did i learned different technologies but part of the problem also was that my results were um a lot of my results were negative when i ventured into the new technologies but but i wasn't prudent in in the sense that i didn't have like some stable backup project that would just get my thesis over.
[1:42:28] Okay. So you left?
[1:42:30] Yes. This was in 2021. I left.
[1:42:35] How was COVID and all that in this environment?
[1:42:38] Oh, it was awful. It was... I like knew... I could examine the technology of it because of sort of the expertise I had and I knew that, like this vaccine this is not good and then all the people around me are getting these crazy side effects um i think i covered before it even it popped off in like march right i think i had it i think i had it in december before because there was someone from our lab from china and she came back super sick and that was the sickest i was i've been in like five years so anyway so like, um so it was terrible and it was very authoritative and i i eventually did get the i didn't want to get the shot i held out for like a year and this was when i was still thinking i would finish i was like okay i gotta i gotta make the deal i gotta get it and i was and so i got it so the deal.
[1:43:41] What so even though the people in in the biology program would have had some.
[1:43:46] Concerns and.
[1:43:48] There were all these side effects, people were still mandating it?
[1:43:51] You would think so. You would think that people that were most knowledgeable about it would have the most concerns, but they didn't. They were the most militant about it.
[1:44:01] Wow.
[1:44:03] Yeah.
[1:44:03] Academia, I remember when it used to be full of rebels. Actually, no, it probably never was. It's just a fantasy I have from time to time. All right. Okay, so you, and did you have an okay experience with the VAX as a whole?
[1:44:17] Uh, no, like for 48 hours, my heart rate was, I think I had to get two shots. I hate needles anyway, but for 48 hours, my heart rate was like elevated. Um, but other than that, I didn't get, thank God I didn't get any, like, I don't know, injury or permanent injury that I'm aware of.
[1:44:38] Good. Okay. All right. So then how long after you got the vax, did you leave?
[1:44:45] Hmm. Maybe months. uh yeah it was i left in like november of 2021 and i got it in like the spring of that year, oh okay they started rolling it out in the previous summer and it i tried to push it off and off and off to the point i was hoping maybe they would roll back on it but they they made it mandatory right yeah yikes yeah yeah.
[1:45:14] It really shows you that knowledge does not grant you wisdom, right?
[1:45:18] Oh, yeah.
[1:45:19] All the people who should have every reason to accept that there's some potential, I mean, obviously untested, like by definition, right?
[1:45:26] Yeah.
[1:45:26] And yet it doesn't matter, right?
[1:45:29] Yeah. And not to get into too much detail, but like the protein target, even the mRNA that they made could have been targeted to a different protein. Like it makes me think it was deliberately harmful because the mRNA could have been targeted specifically to a different protein.
[1:45:46] Right.
[1:45:46] Yeah. Anyway. no.
[1:45:47] I i get it okay so um so you leave and then what and no dating of course during these times of like um some you know mental health issues stability issues and.
[1:46:00] Yeah and.
[1:46:01] Uh quitting drugs and all that right.
[1:46:03] Yeah none of that um and then i leave and go back to live with my parents, um and basically the last three years i kind of three years plus i kind of just i had this idea and i followed through with like 90 to self-teach myself uh software development oh and i have this really good timing yeah and i have this really good project um that's like sort of a combinational entrepreneurial project while simultaneously being a uh like a portfolio for a job if the entrepreneurial aspect of it doesn't work out yeah and i once i moved home i worked on that very like a lot for five to six months and then i started falling back into this kind of anxiety thing about sorry but so you were.
[1:47:05] Working on a um a software project but you have no particular entrepreneurial experience or anything like that right.
[1:47:14] Yeah i just had an idea how to monetize the project okay.
[1:47:19] Got it and were you ever able to do that.
[1:47:21] It's still unfinished uh okay, yeah so so it's it's like 80% done 90% done it's but it's like uh this thing that was like always in the back of my I don't know head for those three years but I you know did like how I wasted time usually just playing video games and oh so it wasn't.
[1:47:49] Like there was a major focus.
[1:47:51] On the project. No, there was at first. There was at first, and then I got lazy. I got...
[1:47:58] Well, what were you living on?
[1:48:01] I had savings from the PhD as a stipend.
[1:48:06] Oh, and you get to keep that even if you don't finish?
[1:48:09] Correct.
[1:48:10] Oh, okay. Interesting. And what kind of debt did you graduate with, if any?
[1:48:15] Like $5,000, but I paid it right off.
[1:48:17] Oh, good stuff. Okay. Okay. All right. So you didn't finish the software project, so you left the PhD three years ago, right?
[1:48:29] Yeah.
[1:48:30] And other than the software project, have you been up to anything in particular?
[1:48:36] Not really. I helped my dad flip with some construction stuff.
[1:48:42] Right. Okay. And have your parents, what are their thoughts about this? this process or part of your life?
[1:48:56] I think my mom thinks that I'm like my grandpa in that I have a physiological, brain chemical depression imbalance that is, I don't know, hopeless or not curable or something. And that's kind of the, she hasn't outright said that, but that's kind of what she implies. okay so sorry go ahead go ahead oh and they're kind of um when i had this like five-hour confrontation conversation with them one thing they said is they're, they're scared of me they um they their perception is that every time they would maybe try to push me a little then i would and i don't think this is true that i would like, I don't know like I would be like, Chinese handcuffs where it's like you get too close and you get you get snared, with coldness.
[1:50:05] So they view themselves as sort of helpless in the face of your coldness, is that right?
[1:50:10] Yeah.
[1:50:12] But your father feels that hitting children with implements is good parenting, but he doesn't feel that might have anything to do with your coldness.
[1:50:23] I think my dad kind of gets it a little. He was, I don't know, mildly remorseful, if that's even a thing. but uh my mom for sure is is um is is like no way.
[1:50:38] Right kind of been anything to do with it anything like that.
[1:50:42] Yeah yeah okay.
[1:50:43] Got it, all right so um how was it that uh when you contacted me um what was the goal for you.
[1:50:58] Uh the goal for me was to to cry which i've done that but the goal for me was to, i mean i read upb and i come to this conclusion that it's like i haven't been living a life of virtue or um morality my entire life and anytime i've maybe been moral it's been totally accidental, and so, I just want I just need guidance as I feel like I'm starting I have like a year of savings and so I feel like I'm starting from nothing pretty much and, like crossing the desert all this stuff you have a.
[1:51:44] Year of savings that you can live on before you're out of money right.
[1:51:48] Correct and so, just like guidance on how to navigate this and how to live a life of philosophy when I haven't been. And like how to get to a point, where I can have a family.
[1:52:15] So you want to get married and have kids?
[1:52:17] Yeah, I only really, basically since I listened to your show, uh like i realized that i want to get married and have kids okay.
[1:52:25] And why do you and i'm not disagreeing with you but why do you want to get married and have kids.
[1:52:29] I i really i love kids so much i think they're uh i just i just have so much regret and anger for um my lost potential as, like i didn't have any parenting or no one took an interest in me when i was younger and, I just want to give that to kids and I think it's the way to like, inoculate people against this crazy world is peaceful parenting hmm.
[1:53:07] Okay well you're certainly not going to find me arguing with you much about that okay alright and so what is the longest romantic relationship you've ever had.
[1:53:19] Um basically no I don't know three months six months if you count like the couple relationships I had when I was 19 or 20 hmm.
[1:53:30] Okay All right. And when was the last time you had a romantic relationship?
[1:53:38] 19 or 20.
[1:53:39] Okay. So it's been a good old chunk of time.
[1:53:43] Yes. Okay.
[1:53:48] So what do you think a quality woman is looking for when it comes to a husband and a father for her children?
[1:54:02] Uh, she wants to be provided for. She wants someone that has relationship experience, um, and is good at navigating and having a relationship, um.
[1:54:21] Virtue right okay and do do you do you want a woman who wants to stay home with kids.
[1:54:30] Yeah i mean i would potentially maybe be open to staying home with kids but yeah for sure at least for those first years it's very critical for the mother to stay home.
[1:54:39] And um do you want to live in a city or the country.
[1:54:45] Uh the suburbs.
[1:54:47] The suburbs okay and so what kind of let's say how many kids would you ideally like.
[1:54:54] Four to five.
[1:54:55] Okay so um what kind of income would you need as a husband and a father for uh four kids in the suburbs, and a wife who stays home.
[1:55:14] Uh 150 maybe.
[1:55:15] 150 no if you want a house right yeah.
[1:55:20] Is it more or less.
[1:55:22] Oh it's more yeah it's more okay i mean if you want the suburbs right okay.
[1:55:29] Well yeah not necessarily like i don't need a massive house just good enough.
[1:55:36] Um okay well do me a favor uh i don't tell me but uh are you You're at a computer, right?
[1:55:45] Yeah.
[1:55:45] Okay. So do me a favor and tell me, you can look this up.
[1:55:50] Sure.
[1:55:51] Tell me what is the average price of a four-bedroom home in the neighborhood that you want to live in?
[1:56:09] 250 to 350.
[1:56:11] Really yeah oh interesting okay i'm i'm a little shocked but obviously that's uh that's good i've never really heard of houses that cheap but i guess it's not in a major metropolis right oh it's not okay got it all right so uh uh and you would need i assume two cars, yeah and health insurance and life insurance and all other kinds of good stuff like that and would you want your kids to be in private school or homeschooled homeschool okay so then you'll need a woman who's got you know a good degree of general knowledge and all that kind of stuff right.
[1:56:51] Yeah okay that's why kind of maybe i wanted to like do some homeschooling if that was even possible because i i would be very good at that.
[1:57:02] Right right no i i think you could obviously uh you've done a lot of learning and i'm sure you could do a lot of teaching too, okay all right so um let's okay let's let's go with right i'm fine with that let's say you can get by with four kids uh and a house and two cars on on 150k a year okay so uh how uh how are you going to get to 150k um.
[1:57:31] I was considering having a job putting money into bitcoin and also having like owning rental properties um.
[1:57:44] It's a bit of a wish list though right so how are you going to get to if you only have a year's income how are you going to get to rental properties, uh through your dad i.
[1:57:57] Think i could get a line of credit for the uh for the properties if i make uh enough money this year or next year the bank could give me a line of credit.
[1:58:09] Okay and then you would invest in getting rental properties and i suppose through your father and through your history with that you have um, You have experience running rental properties, right?
[1:58:22] No.
[1:58:23] Oh, you don't. Okay. Okay. But I mean, you're obviously a smart guy. You could, you could learn that.
[1:58:27] Yeah. I think I could figure it out.
[1:58:28] Right. Okay. All right. And how long do you think it will take for you to get to something like that or in the vicinity or in the direction of?
[1:58:39] On the direction of?
[1:58:40] Yeah.
[1:58:41] I really think I could get in the direction of it this year.
[1:58:45] Well, no, but you need to get your line of credit. I thought you said it would be next year. get your line of credit.
[1:58:50] Yeah i could that's my hope is that i could get the line of credit next year.
[1:58:54] Right so so that would be more than a year because you get to get the line of credit and then you have to uh get the rental properties and start making money from that right yeah yeah okay got it all right so how old do you want your oh sorry what's the what's the sort of gap that you might be comfortable with with regards to your um bride to the mother of your children right because uh you're 31 you start cooking sort of early to mid 30s and uh what's your uh maximum uh time time gap or age gap that you'd be willing to to live with.
[1:59:33] Uh like seven years.
[1:59:39] Okay so let's say you you're really cooking with gas uh 33 34 35 so then you're looking at woman sort of mid to mid to late 20s right yeah yeah okay so by that point you have been 15 years you know 13 to 15 years without a relationship okay sorry i'm i don't don't okay me if i've got something wrong i'm agreeing, So, how are you going to overcome her skepticism that you'll be a good partner with no experience, right? I mean, if you were somebody who was 33 and you were trying to apply for a job and you had no particular work experience, you would understand that your employer might have some concerns, right?
[2:00:26] Yeah.
[2:00:27] Sorry, go ahead.
[2:00:29] I think I would get dating experience all throughout that time. i i plan to get into dating, but i mean that's i guess that's different from a long-term relationship i mean i guess the other thing would be like a degree of self-knowledge that that's kind of the like the stop gap that that's the only thing i can think of that would compensate at least even partially for uh the lack of relationship experience right.
[2:00:59] Right okay i think the biggest obstacle i mean you're obviously a very intelligent guy so you know i love to kiss the ass of the audience but you're a very intelligent guy and so you can i'm sure master just about any intellectual challenge and you certainly have the brain power to run rental properties what do you think is the biggest obstacle to you becoming a husband and father in a sort of productive healthy and loving relationship.
[2:01:24] Um it's like my tendency to like to stagnate um like there's this pattern of almost getting done with the phd there's and then the pattern of almost getting done with this software thing and it's like uh maybe i'll almost get done with dating and then i'll be 40, and so it's like i think it's this pattern i guess that's a bit abstract No.
[2:01:54] I think it's a pattern, but I don't know if you know what underlies it.
[2:01:59] So I've, I've tried to look at what underlies it. And weirdly enough, what came up is, um, that same feeling of, of death that I felt like at the beginning of the psychosis is like, I sort of feel a diminished version of that when I go about trying to, I don't know, like advance my life. Yeah.
[2:02:23] Would you like the answer oh drumroll please i.
[2:02:28] Would love the answer.
[2:02:29] Right now of course i say this with all the confidence of a guy who could be 100 wrong just so you know but i'm confident that doesn't mean i'm right but i have the answer.
[2:02:41] Um i'm all ears.
[2:02:44] All right so you stall out, at a time when people have to start liking you. So, if you look at your PhD, let's say you'd finished your PhD, well, you would have had to get a job in the field, right?
[2:03:05] Yeah.
[2:03:06] To get a job in the field, people have to like you.
[2:03:10] Mm-hmm.
[2:03:11] If you finished your software project, you'd have to take it out into the marketplace, right?
[2:03:16] Yes.
[2:03:16] And people would have to like you even to take a meeting.
[2:03:20] Right.
[2:03:22] With the girl who really liked you You ghosted her Because she was expressing Real affection to you, So you choke things out When you get close to having to be liked, In other words When you can't move forward without being liked You panic out Or you fade out.
[2:03:48] So then I have a, I'll be honest, that didn't super emotionally resonate with me, but it makes total logical sense.
[2:03:58] Well, what did the demon say about you?
[2:04:04] I'm going to kill you.
[2:04:06] You deserve to die.
[2:04:08] Yeah.
[2:04:09] You're going to die, right?
[2:04:10] Yeah.
[2:04:11] Now, dying is a punishment. Being killed is a punishment, right?
[2:04:16] Correct.
[2:04:17] So the punishment for what?
[2:04:23] Are you talking about this specific instance or in general?
[2:04:26] Well, let's talk to the demon. I'll take him very seriously.
[2:04:31] Like a role play?
[2:04:32] Well, I can do it that way too. Let's do it that way. Yeah, let's do it that way.
[2:04:36] Okay.
[2:04:37] All right. Oh, demon. You say that this guy deserves death. Please tell me your case.
[2:04:46] Well, I got to kill him because he's a liability.
[2:04:49] Okay. And why is he a liability?
[2:04:53] Uh because he'll go out into the world and diminish my power kind of expose me okay.
[2:04:59] And how is he going to do that what's your concern about that i'm not disagreeing with you i just want to understand your thinking.
[2:05:06] Yeah he's going to build like an army of connection and and like social i don't know like like social uh nets social warfare and and that undermines me, well.
[2:05:24] I don't believe you. I mean, I've done all of that, and no demon has ever visited me, so that's not it. I mean, I assume as a demon, you're not overly invested in telling the truth, right? That would be kind of weird. I'm a demon, but I'm an angel of honesty, right? So it's not this supposed connection thing because he's not doing any of that. So how about you try again, but don't lie through your forked tongue come on man just tell me the truth what you got against this guy it's not because he's building some giant army of connection the guy barely leaves his room.
[2:06:01] Yeah he's he's just pathetic man.
[2:06:03] Okay so he you understand he can't be both pathetic and a giant anti-demon warrior right right so tell me what you got against the guy i'm not disagreeing with you. Maybe you've got a great case against him, but it ain't this, right? So let's try it again.
[2:06:31] So my case against him.
[2:06:32] Yeah. Why does he deserve death? What's he, what's the, I mean, it's a death penalty, right? It's a death penalty for what crime?
[2:06:45] For being cold and cruel to others Okay.
[2:06:49] Now we're getting somewhere, Okay, so Tell me The case Against him, And I'll listen.
[2:07:03] The case against him.
[2:07:07] Give me the top three things that you think gives him the death penalty.
[2:07:17] I'm fogging up.
[2:07:19] No, you're not. Do you want me to do it?
[2:07:23] Yeah.
[2:07:24] Okay, he was cruel to his sister, right?
[2:07:27] Yes.
[2:07:29] He was cruel to women?
[2:07:32] Yes.
[2:07:33] And he was cruel to himself. He abused himself with alcohol and drugs and wasted his potential.
[2:07:41] Yeah.
[2:07:42] Again, I don't know if those would be, it was something like that, right?
[2:07:44] Yeah, those are, yeah.
[2:07:45] Okay, can you put on the demon head again?
[2:07:48] Sure, sure.
[2:07:48] Okay. So you feel that cruelty to the helpless is deserving of the death penalty, is that right?
[2:07:59] Yeah.
[2:08:00] You, my friendly devil, are so full of shit, your eyes are brown. You're an absolute fucking coward, and I have nothing but contempt for you. Do you know why? Why aren't you talking to his parents? why are you bullying this guy who was himself bullied as a kid and helpless as a child why are you blaming him for what this guy did at four years old and you're not saying shit about the parents, you're not a demon of vengeance you're not a judge jury and executioner you're a coward picking on victims, you're in league with the parents, why aren't you oh well you know he's cruel to the helpless okay were his parents answer me this you were there were his parents nice to him.
[2:08:58] They're nice enough.
[2:09:00] They're nice enough they beat him.
[2:09:04] Yeah but they provided like a lot of material support work.
[2:09:09] And? Are you saying that it's okay to beat children if you buy them a fucking cookie?
[2:09:19] that you can buy your way out of child abuse?
[2:09:28] Child abuse is protection.
[2:09:33] Oh, okay. So child abuse is protection. Okay, so if child abuse is so good, why are you shitting on this guy for being cruel? He was serving virtue then. He was helping. He was providing inoculations. So why would he deserve death if he was doing good work according to you. Because if the parent's cruelty is good, why is my client's cruelty not good?
[2:09:59] He knows better. He has more agency than others.
[2:10:03] Fuck off. What a load of shit. You're saying that my client, had more agency at the age of four than his parents had at the age of 30?
[2:10:19] Yeah, they're stupid.
[2:10:21] You can't. You can't. Come on, man. You got to do a better job than this. You cannot hold and hold up the four-year-old who's the victim of child abuse and say he has infinitely more agency than the parents who are abusing him. Come on, man. Give me a good... I'll listen to a good case. This is insane.
[2:10:43] I mean, this guy hated a two-year-old.
[2:10:46] Right? Right. And his parents also hated him. Where do you think he learned the hatred from?
[2:10:58] Yeah.
[2:10:59] No, listen, you want to be a tough guy. You want to be a tough guy, right? You're a tough demon guy. Oh, big demon. Okay, fine, Beelzebub. Then go talk to the parents. I mean, let me ask you this. Did you say anything to the parents when they were abusing my client?
[2:11:19] No, I like the parents.
[2:11:21] You like the parents? Right. So you're just a manifestation of parental hatred. and the parents who would prefer my client to die rather than reveal their abuses. You're just like someone in the mafia who says, oh, the witness should be rubbed out. Like you're just there to protect evil and keep secrets of abuse. But let's not pretend you're some big tough judging guy. You're just a coward who wants to rub out a witness.
[2:11:58] I will see who wins.
[2:12:02] Ooh, isn't that sinister? Now, listen, by the way, old Bielsi Bob, I'm going to call you Bielsi Bob because I like the name Bob. So Bielsi Bob, listen, I want to be fair. Like, you know, I've, I've cussed you out and, and, and all of that and called you a coward, but that's only in the present context. I get that you were there. You were birthed out of a desire to protect my client. I get that. I understand that. And actually, he's here because of you, right? So you had to kill his empathy and come up with all this tough, leather-winged talk, because if he had kept his empathy as a child, he probably would have been destroyed. I mean, one way or another.
[2:12:48] That's totally true.
[2:12:48] So you're, sorry?
[2:12:50] That's totally true.
[2:12:51] Right. So you're there, listen, man, I get you're there to protect him. I get all of that. And you had the sentence of death upon his empathy so that he could survive the screwed up family. So I get you're a protector. I really do. And I just like, let's not do this mealy mouth bullshit now because we're, you know, bro's in his thirties. He's moved out. He's not dependent on his parents. He's an independent guy, right?
[2:13:17] Well maybe i'm a gargoyle not a demon.
[2:13:19] Maybe yeah maybe and and you know like with all due respect for how you kept him alive and kept him going as as a kid you know obviously at great cost to his empathy and all of that but you know sometimes if the ship is sinking you have to throw your greatest treasures overboard just to live and i get that you did that and i i respect that, but let's just be honest about that and say i had to kill his empathy so that he would survive as a child but i don't need to do that anymore so let's fire that old engine back up because he wants to be like bro like bob bob what the hell was the point of keeping him alive if he can't enjoy his adulthood if he can't fall in love if he can't bond with his wife and kids like you understand that, then you're just propping up a zombie in a sense, right? The whole point of keeping him alive was so that he could live a better life. Can we agree with that?
[2:14:22] Yeah, but then I kind of go away if I'm not in charge or I don't have a significant seat at the table.
[2:14:31] Okay. Okay. And I apologize for my earlier harshness. I just wanted to shock everyone out of the habits. So first of all, you're never going to be away from the table because you are an essential aspect of what kept him alive. And honestly, you know the world a lot better than he and I do, right? Because you see the darkness there that sometimes in order for people to stay sane, we have to pretend isn't there, right? Like you see all the zombies, you see all of the NPCs, you see all the dangerous people who were like, oh, we're taught to hate the unvaccinated, let's get them right like you see that monstrosity of a planet which in order for us to have, happiness and love and any kind of sanity we have to not look at right because it's it's pretty twisting to stare at that and that's what your job is and i massively appreciate that, so i i guarantee you like as my client goes through life, as my client goes through life do we really think his parents are the last assholes we're ever going to meet now?
[2:15:34] No, I gotta be, uh...
[2:15:36] You will always have a role because we don't wake up in heaven. You will always have a role because you're always going to be necessary.
[2:15:47] Well, to make a video game analogy, you got to have a tank to have a good team composition.
[2:15:54] Yeah, exactly right. Exactly right. That's perfect. So I was just annoyed at this falsification, but you as a guardian are absolutely essential because the world is getting destabilized, right? I mean, I'm sure you're following politics and the rooting out of, you know, deep balrog-style corruption in the government and so on, and that may spread. So there's going to be a lot of destabilization. There's going to be a lot of crazy, angry, hysterical people out there in the world for the next couple of decades, at least. So, you know, we absolutely need you at the table. We need you scanning the horizon. We need you guarding. but at the same time we can minimize the power that bad people have in our lives by choosing to have good people in our lives that doesn't mean that you are not essential you are essential because we still have to move through the world and there will still be dangerous people in the world but if you're in charge we don't have a life right it's like if we're in rehab and you're like the rehab doctor the whole point of the rehab doctor is to get you back out into the world if If the rehab doctor says, well, I want to keep you in rehab for the rest of your life, you can only do that by keeping breaking your bones, right?
[2:17:10] Yeah.
[2:17:11] And that's why you keep pushing this panic button. So you keep him broken so that you can stay in charge of the rehab. But the purpose of the rehab is to get him back whole into a world that's different from his childhood, right? I mean, you don't save someone from drowning to bring them back to the bowels of the ship and waterboard them. And it's tough for you to lay down your weapons. And I get that. And I sympathize with that.
[2:17:43] But the whole point of guarding him was to liberate him. If you stay in charge forever, he's never going to outgrow his childhood. Because his parents, it felt like as a kid, right? And it was that way as a kid emotionally that he felt like he was going to be controlled and bullied forever. and so you have an eternity in your nature because it feels like if you go to a a a four-year-old and you say hey kid don't worry in 15 or 16 years you might be free i mean say that to an adult right 15 year prison sentence is an eternity you say that to a four-year-old this is why you have an eternal aspect to your nature because it felt like you were going to have to guide for eternity and for most of human history you would right because the culture wouldn't change you wouldn't be able to get assholes out of your life through most of human history you were trapped with them, but i'm sort of here from the outside to tell you that we live in a kind of different world now where your job can in fact diminish and and you're free thereby i mean i'm sure there's stuff that you want to do other than constantly hammering the panic button and telling him he's going to die that's not a fun job for the rest of your existence right.
[2:18:53] No it's not fun and the eternity you think that really rings home like uh you know feels like an eternal part an eternal aspect.
[2:19:04] Well right and and again for most of our evolution it was this is why the devil is immortal right because uh for most of our existence you couldn't eliminate violent abusive jerks from your life because it was everyone right so so that's the confrontation that i would have and you can like to get him to loosen his grip and tend to stop uh feeling that there's there's imminent predation is is tough it's tough but he he deep down he wants to because it's kind of exhausting, but he doesn't know how or or the best way to do it.
[2:19:40] Yeah in a weird way can i say something uh, like one way that i think sublimates it is is like acknowledging and realizing that I said this before that peaceful parenting is the inoculation like that's actually the healthy form of the guardian maybe I'm wrong but like that's kind of how I've at least moved out a little and like through you listen to your shows I feel like I've had like a mild degree of integration with that part part of me, because of that that insight.
[2:20:16] Well it is but in order to get to peaceful parenting you have to have the capacity to be loved hmm.
[2:20:28] And that's why I wanted to talk to good old Bob, because if you feel that you have done crimes worthy of death, so to speak, how are you going to ask a good, honest, moral woman to love you? Join me, oh virtuous citizen, in my flight from the death penalty.
[2:20:57] and that's the confrontation i think that needs to happen because if you can't, find a way to feeling that you can be loved then all of your romantic aspirations will be based upon a fraud you should like me although i do not like myself uh-huh yeah you should love me, though i believe at some level i deserve the death penalty for what i did when i was four like it's it's you can't get love right i mean it's a cliche right like you can't expect to be loved if you don't have at least some positive affection for yourself, and that means finding a way to forgive what you did.
[2:21:49] Are the mechanics of that, I guess, talk therapy and like internal talk?
[2:21:58] Well, the opposite of self-attack is just anger.
[2:22:05] Really?
[2:22:06] Yeah. See, everybody wants to get sort of self-forgiveness with all this huggy, touchy, feely shit. I don't know. Maybe that works for girls. It doesn't work for guys.
[2:22:15] Yeah, that never resonated with me.
[2:22:17] Yeah, no, it doesn't. It doesn't really work. So, if you robbed a bank, well, sorry, that's not the best example of an immoral thing these days. If you rob a daycare, okay, whatever, right? If you rob a daycare and you, oh, my terrible guy, I robbed a daycare and so on. Okay. But if you realize that there was somebody behind you with a gun at your back, making you rob the daycare, then the moral equation changes, right?
[2:22:47] Right.
[2:22:48] So the question is not, why was I cruel to my middle sister? The question is, what the hell would have happened if I hadn't done that? If you'd have stood up to your parents and said, stop being mean, stop hitting us, or I'm going to call the police because what you're doing is illegal. I don't know if it is or not, but you know, whatever, right? Let's just say we lived in a reasonably just society where it was. Or at the very least, I'm going to tell the priest, I'm going to tell the teacher, that you're beating us and and and you better get your shit together parents and stop being abusive what would have happened death well certainly certainly that's a that's a significant biological risk to that way of thinking right so so this is why when you want to go in a sense public or or talk about what happened, which, you know, you would have to do, I think, if you want to get married and have kids, you've got to be honest about your past. So if you do all of that.
[2:23:55] Then you are breaking ranks and talking about vile, at least to my mind, criminal evils. And if you had threatened to, throughout most of human history, kids were in a very precarious position, evolutionarily speaking, right? And that's what we've all inherited. So kids were in a very precarious position. And what I mean by that is like half the kids died. and so you really had to secure 150 parental investment and positivity in order to survive as a kid i mean when i did my tour of australia i was talking about how like 40 of the kids of the aborigines were murdered they would like lie them back hold them down and pour sand in their mouths so you evolutionarily speaking we cannot displease parents we cannot because all All of the kids who were willing to displease parents did not make it, right?
[2:25:00] Yeah.
[2:25:00] We have to be willing to dis... We cannot... We cannot displease parents. If parents say the price of survival is to... They mean to your sister? What do our genes tell us to do? Come on. Mr. Biologist, what do our genes tell us to do if that's the price of survival?
[2:25:17] You got to keep the genes going. You got to survive.
[2:25:22] Hey, man, if I got to be mean to my sister in order to survive and reproduce, I'll be mean to my sister. Because if, and let's say it's only 5%, you know how evolution works, right? So if it was only 5% of reduction in the capacity to grow up and reproduce for those who defied their parents, it doesn't take more than a couple of generations for that to be gone from the gene pool.
[2:25:47] Yeah yeah it's like that concept where they killed off one percent of uh criminals and.
[2:25:52] Yeah the uk thing over a couple hundred years right yeah it's a ferociously polite society right and apparently they miss miss all of that aggression because they seem to be fixing that pretty quickly so so the forgiveness is fuck them that that was the price of survival yeah, That was the price of survival.
[2:26:22] It was just so contemptible that that was the situation foisted upon me.
[2:26:28] It's monstrous. Now, you, have not done what your parents did. Because you as a kid had no authority and they had all the authority. That's why The devil who attacks only you is in fact protecting your parents or rather protecting you from the wrath of your parents. Even as an adult, with all the independence that you have, when you tried to confront your mother, she still praised her own parenting as good, right?
[2:27:07] Yeah.
[2:27:10] Well, that's a very real fact. Very real fact. So there's no way you could have dislodged the abuse as a child. zero, zero chance. And it would have put you at massive risk. And this is what I meant earlier by inoculation. Sorry, go ahead.
[2:27:32] I was going to say, I will say that when I confronted my mother, I felt like, okay, so there's this insight I made. So there's this attachment theory where it's like the baby needs to attach to the mother in the first in the in infancy uh there needs to be some like sympathetic nervous system mirroring like facial um well.
[2:28:01] If you want empathy but yeah yeah for.
[2:28:03] Sure yeah yeah and so if that attachment is um you know disruptive then one of the ways to you know put a stopgap in that is to have talk therapy as an adult and the good relationship good sympathetic marrying relationship that you have with a therapist is um it like kind of is a surrogate for the stuff you're missing as an infant but but what i found when i confronted my mother is like i kind of got like the same concept of that but like in an opposite form where I was like, when I stood there face to face with her, disagreeing with her about how she's wrong about corporal punishment, like I had never done that before. And I felt after that there's almost like a change or a transformation in even the way I hold my face in public.
[2:29:02] Well, sure. Because if you can't change your mind as an adult, you get that there's no way you could have changed your mind as a kid.
[2:29:10] Yeah.
[2:29:14] It's sort of like in those movies where the bad guy threatens the good guy with the gun, and then the good guy gets the gun, and points it at the bad guy. And if the bad guy still won't give up his beliefs, even when the good guy has the gun, there's no way that the good guy could ever have talked the bad guy out of his beliefs when the bad guy had the gun. So if you confront your parents as an adult with all that independence, and they still won't give up their corrupt ideas, it gives you a true and deep sense of how absolutely helpless you were to change their mind as a child. And all you could do was conform and obey. Whatever the price of survival was, we will pay it.
[2:29:56] Yeah, that's powerful.
[2:30:03] So you don't blame yourself for what your parents made you do. you feel sorrow at having done it but but that's the price of survival, but you don't blame yourself for other people force you to do i mean i'm sure that there's things that the government does that you disagree with are you to blame no they force you to pay, right right i'm not a huge fan of various wars and conflicts around the world but do i as oh some of my money might be going towards that conflict it's like i'm not blaming myself it's not it's not a voluntary choice, i won't take i won't take guilt for what others force me to do the guilt is theirs, I won't have my self-esteem and self-respect at the mercy of corrupt people, particularly when I had no choice.
[2:31:14] Wow. I just thought of, um, I've been having a lot of dreams lately where I'm in the passenger of a car and the guy driving it crashes.
[2:31:24] Mm-hmm.
[2:31:25] So that totally relates.
[2:31:32] Well, what if he was drunk? and you didn't know it what if he was high because the crash can be an accident but what no no it's not an accident oh it wasn't yeah because what happened to you as a child was not an accident sorry go ahead.
[2:31:43] The people that are driving the car in my dreams are being negligent.
[2:31:47] Right like they're right deliberately.
[2:31:49] Running over people's crops and you know deliberately driving on the wrong side of the highway or.
[2:31:56] Yeah stuff like this and you can't get out of the car no you're either strapped in or they got a gun at you or it's just too fast and you'll die if you right so you just you just got to hang on because you are not driving yeah.
[2:32:09] There's not even a thought of jumping out.
[2:32:11] Right so and and you're not even in the passenger seat as a kid you're in the fucking trunk can you imagine yeah like some guy gets gets chloroformed and thrown into the trunk of a car and then some asshole does a hit and run and they charge the guy in the trunk, no that's what the barb was doing you are to blame though you had no control.
[2:32:39] Yeah it's a total corruption.
[2:32:41] Well it's very convenient to abusers the victims blame themselves that way they can continue to enjoy the spectacle of abuse without having to lift a finger.
[2:32:58] Hmm. That makes me very angry. Just so angry.
[2:33:02] Right. And I'm, you know, not trying to make you angry, but those are the moral facts as I see it. Because, you know, the touchy feely stuff, and it's great, honestly, I think it's great that there's all the touchy feely stuff. And I know I'm sort of a slightly contemptuous term, but no, the touchy feely stuff is really important. But for men, the moral anger and, you know, fuck you for what I had to do to survive.
[2:33:27] Wow yeah i was for sure heavy on the touchy feely kind of stuff.
[2:33:31] No it's the kind of centric world we live in where everyone hopes that tears and and hugs will solve everything and they're not bad you know i'm no no no no hostility to tears and hugs sure but in order for a man to feel strong the righteous anger is the testosterone.
[2:33:57] Yeah that's great stuff.
[2:33:58] Is that i know we've talked for a long time is that a good place to i mean i think talk therapy is always a good thing but you know it might want to be with a guy who's got some balls yeah.
[2:34:08] Yeah for sure yeah i mean uh no i don't have anything else to add i think this is great i i mean i have such gratitude for you having me on and talking to me and it's a joy to talk to you.
[2:34:23] Well, I appreciate that. And I certainly wish you the very best. And don't take a sentence that's got someone else's name on it. Man, don't do it. That's just another form of self-flagellation. It only serves the bad guys. All right. Will you keep me posted about how things are going?
[2:34:40] Yeah, of course.
[2:34:41] All right. Big hug, brother. Thanks for a great conversation.
[2:34:43] All right. Thanks, Stef.
[2:34:44] Bye-bye.
Support the show, using a variety of donation methods
Support the show
