In this call in conversation, philosopher Stefan Molyneux engages in a profound dialogue with a long-time listener who reflects on his tumultuous journey through adolescence and early adulthood. The caller, who began listening to Molyneux at 16, expresses a blend of excitement and anxiety as he seeks guidance on his personal struggles, which have been deeply influenced by a challenging family dynamic and his own substance use.
As their conversation unfolds, the young man unpacks his past experiences, detailing how early life was characterized by a sense of isolation. He describes growing up in an environment where meaningful communication was nonexistent; his father, a successful architect, was often physically present but emotionally absent. The caller recounts how this neglect led him to find solace in video games and unhealthy habits, including a long-term reliance on cannabis. With candid honesty, he admits that these distractions often overshadowed his desire for deeper personal connections and creativity.
Molyneux deftly navigates these sensitive topics, encouraging the caller to explore his relationship with his father and the impact of their lack of communication. The dialogue explores the essence of personal identity and the search for authenticity amid pervasive feelings of inadequacy and neglect. Molyneux helps the caller recognize that his father’s narcissistic tendencies—viewing him as more of a functional variable in his life rather than a relational being—have shaped his self-perception and contributed to his own coping mechanisms.
As the caller reveals his growing interest in entrepreneurship and music, he also confronts the overwhelming feelings of indecisiveness stemming from his multitude of passions. Insightful questions from Molyneux guide the caller toward understanding his avoidance of genuine connections as an impediment to his personal growth. Molyneux helps illuminate the way compounding choices and inherited patterns of behavior have influenced the caller's relationships, both with himself and others.
The discussion transitions into the concept of treating people as non-player characters (NPCs) within one’s personal narrative, which radically reframes the caller's understanding of his father’s behavior and motives. Molyneux artfully likens the interactions to dynamics within video games, emphasizing that when relationships lack mutual recognition and empathy, they devolve into mere utility and transactional exchanges.
Throughout the episode, Molyneux employs vivid metaphors and philosophical reflections that resonate deeply as the caller confronts the implications of having been viewed as an NPC by his own family. The dynamic intertwines realizations about self-worth, emotional authenticity, and the nature of interpersonal connections. Molyneux’s approach empowers the caller to recognize that he is more than the perceived sum of his struggles, and that engaging with the complexities of relationships requires courageous vulnerability rather than avoidance.
As the episode draws to a close, the caller expresses gratitude for the insight gained, feeling emboldened to engage more meaningfully in his life and relationships. Their conversation encapsulates the essence of transformation through dialogue, leaving listeners with thought-provoking reflections on how we connect with one another in the search for purpose and authenticity in a world that often feels disconnected.
0:02 - The Journey Begins
0:28 - The Awakening of Thoughts
4:52 - Embracing Change
6:55 - The Struggle with Identity
15:15 - The Weight of Childhood
24:41 - First Experiences with Love
45:07 - Exploring Substance Use
1:03:48 - Confronting Parental Neglect
1:20:12 - Understanding Narcissism
1:21:48 - The NPC Dilemma
1:30:31 - The Nature of Relationships
1:36:49 - Understanding Narcissism
1:55:03 - Escaping NPC Programming
2:01:50 - The Burden of Empathy
2:17:00 - The Limits of Choices
2:26:34 - Video Games as a Reflection
2:30:01 - Closing Thoughts and Encouragement
[0:00] How long have you been listening?
[0:03] I started listening when I was 16 years old. So it's been quite a while.
[0:07] That's cool. That's cool. That's cool.
[0:10] Yeah.
[0:11] Okay. So it's a public call, of course. So just stay off names and places. And if you want to dive in, I know that you lost a message when you first were sending it to me. But if you want to let me know how I can best help, I'm all ears.
[0:29] Yeah well i'll just start out with saying that my heart is is racing uh like it's, i don't think i've have i've felt like this for for a long time um very shaky um, i feel like i've been looking forward to this since i started listening to you so that's great i'm thrilled.
[0:51] I'm sure we can do some great work and i'm happy to hear what you have to say.
[0:56] Yeah, well, yeah, I guess we could maybe start by talking about why it's been taking so long. I mean, partly like when I was 16, I've always been a thinker. I've just been thinking since as long as I can. My first memories were when I was a baby, basically. I feel like I have quite an exceptional memory. Um, and, but I wasn't talked too much. So I was just thinking all the time. And when I started listening to you, when I found your podcast, it was almost like everything you said was just confirming, um, everything I'd been thinking. It was the first time I realized that in a sense, I wasn't the only one, you know, that was, that was actually thinking because it felt like everybody was just doing whatever and going along without reason, so that journey of thinking started then and since then very quickly afterwards I got into a pretty a very toxic relationship, and I've gotten into some bad habits drug use and.
[2:26] Like when I started listening, I ordered all of your books almost immediately. I read all of them. It all made sense to me. And right afterwards, I got into this relationship and I basically kind of got out of the house, away from the streams. Because all I've been doing was playing video games, watching TV. Um i felt like that was most of my life um other than that it was either my parents or family that sometimes took me out to do something or sports but i was always just looking forward to going back to the screen um so i've i've experienced a lot since then um and philosophy has and your show was kind of like something that was always in the background that I would go back to once in a while. But there also were very long periods where I wasn't busy with philosophy at all.
[3:36] Yeah, I only recently, since that time, since I was about 17, that it started when I was 17, I, I've also, the main, the main drug I've been using is, is cannabis. And I, uh, have been doing that almost ever since. And, um, and basically every day, basically an everyday all day kind of thing. Um, and that wasn't the only thing, but that's been the major thing. And I actually there was actually one half a year where I completely stopped with everything, but I I've gotten back to it but it is about like a month ago that I actually stopped smoking weed again it was partly to do with that this call was coming up and I wanted to make sure that I'm fully here you know and that none of those, I mean I know enough about it to know that, It's probably still in my blood, you know, but I want it to be as sober as can be.
[4:52] And there's just so much going on in my life suddenly i feel like i'm in a huge transition period um where i'm starting to finally become active like i i've always wanted to be an entrepreneur and i finally started making steps with that um i have a deep passion for music um i feel like i'm a very creative person but i've i haven't been able to express it that much because of my history, I think, and the people that have been around. So, yeah, I feel like there's so much that we could talk about. And so I kind of have a hard time to bring up one thing to start with. Of course, I'm happy to get questions from you.
[5:43] Well, no, it's your call. Whatever you want to talk about, I'm keen to accommodate.
[5:49] Alright, well, um...
[5:58] Maybe something to start with is that I do feel like I have so many different interests. And I feel very overwhelmed. Almost like I don't know what to start with. I feel like I'm kind of learning that maybe planning things out and writing things down to a T is not really my style. Things sort of just seem to happen, seem to fall into place when I start doing things. But when it comes, yeah, I don't know. When it comes to, I feel like I've been recently even more active in a business sense. I've been kind of networking. I finally started working, really working since a couple of years, mostly as a freelancer.
[6:55] But I always seem to go back to music and being creative, and I feel like maybe I'm a little bit confused as to which way to go because I would like to be making music all the time but when I do that, well, there's no money coming in And I don't know yet how I'm going to get there.
[7:25] And how do you feel when you're talking to me at the moment?
[7:30] I still feel very nervous.
[7:32] Okay. Yeah, so I get that because you're kind of skimming along the surface of things. And that's totally fine. I understand that. Like, it's a weird thing. I do this all the time and you're doing this once. So I completely understand that. But, you know, take a deep breath. We'll have a good chat. And maybe you could tell me what was happening in your childhood.
[7:50] Yeah. I was ignored for most of my childhood. I feel like all of my childhood. With my father, I cannot remember one conversation we've had. It was always very short interactions, comments. Um he was in the house but he but he wasn't there if that makes sense like a ghost hmm um what.
[8:34] Was he doing.
[8:34] Um he was an architect um not just an architect basically one of the most valuable positions in that field um where yeah.
[8:47] We don't have to get into details but yeah so he was very successfully he was very successful professionally um.
[8:53] Yes but.
[8:55] But he just wasn't there emotionally.
[8:56] No so what would he do at home um most of the time he would turn on music there would be music playing, and that is a good question what would he do at home i feel like most of the time he was away working. Really like a workaholic. If he was home, I would remember him drinking. Friends coming over. Usually to drink, listen to music. Most of the time it was that. So if I think about that time as a baby, as a child, it seems like all the time music was playing Pretty loudly as well.
[9:53] And if not, there were people coming over, lots of talking, but not with me. That's for sure.
[10:06] I think i spent most most of the time with my was my mother if there was any spending of time with with my uh with my parents um but it seems to be the time that i spent with my mom also it that that was then usually going out somewhere going outside bringing me to a sports thing uh bringing me to something to do with friends but nothing that really felt like it like it connected with me uh that that made me really happy um i would say that when i became an adult and i started having a bit more friends talking to people that's only when i realized that basically i've i would say i was depressed as a kid my whole childhood or or at least like it felt very like nothing was happening very boring uh nothing to look forward to and this This is why the only thing I looked forward to was, well, when I was very young, it was watching TV. The first thing I did when I woke up, and my parents let me do this as well, just immediately after I woke up, turned the TV on. And that turned into a lot of playing video games.
[11:24] And did they buy you a console, or how did that work?
[11:29] Yes. I think you could say that I was spoiled in that sense like materially they would basically give me what I wanted but all I really wanted was like consoles or video games well that's all you.
[11:48] Wanted in the absence of parental contacts right?
[11:53] Yes exactly it's like that's the only thing I knew that I had some kind of wish for. That's the only thing where my mind went. I didn't know what I was missing, I think. And on top of that, I had three half-brothers living with me in a pretty small house. And I think those brothers would also kind of feed into this habit of playing video games. Especially two of them themselves were playing video games a lot, like on the computer all the time. Um but not but not not not much of any human contact conversation like i said conversations, yeah i think i really i it was really your your podcast that, made me aware i think of what a real conversation is that's why the call-ins you've had with people were absolutely the most fascinating to me, always.
[13:02] Right, right. Yeah, I mean, the idea that you can actually have real conversations about important things is kind of a shock for a lot of people.
[13:10] Yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah.
[13:13] So, sorry, where did the, you said three half-brothers from your mom's side or where did they come from?
[13:21] One of them from my mom's side, the older two from my dad's side.
[13:27] Right, okay.
[13:29] So they had relationships before that. And from what I learned later on, it was my mom that actually kind of organized it so that we were all living together under one roof. Okay it seemed okay it seemed to be kind of her doing she thought that that was the best for some reason um later on i've been told that i think the focus was a lot on me at the time she wanted to do what was best but i don't i don't really know if that is connected to that but um my brothers were definitely not at least especially the older two from my dad's side there they didn't seem to be happy about this at all. Especially later on, they told me that the oldest brother told me he was very unhappy with this decision.
[14:26] And it was a strange, it was a very strange childhood because because of this, my parents were still even friends with their ex-partners too. So i would see all of these people regularly they would come over but nobody explained to me who was who right so there was this vagueness of like is this is this family are these friends, they treat me like i am family my brothers would call me little brother but it never felt like i was their brother. So, and nobody would explain anything. I just kind of had to go with it.
[15:11] Right.
[15:15] Yeah. So, no real sense of actually having a family, if that makes sense.
[15:25] Yeah, yeah. No, I get it. I get it.
[15:28] Yeah.
[15:28] Okay. Jumbled very jumbled okay.
[15:37] Yeah for sure, all right sorry go ahead yeah i just wanted to mention that i think it's quite important the youngest the youngest brother is 10 years older than me oh wow okay yeah, so that also obviously caused some distance like like they they didn't seem that interested in me at all um the youngest brother the the one that has the same mother has definitely when i was when i was when i was a baby when i was young he did show interest but um.
[16:26] It's it seemed more like he like he wanted to have a connection with me but it never really, it never really took off so for me yeah it's i can i can definitely say they never even felt like friends to me right it was like it was all like kind of like a play everybody was acting, acting like we are a family especially to the outside but inside of the house there was almost no connection everybody kept to themselves in their own room, I was sharing a room with my youngest brother for some time in the beginning, my oldest brother got I found out later basically kicked out of the house by my mom.
[17:22] Wow.
[17:22] Because she... Yeah. Because she wanted there to be a room so that I could have my own room and my youngest brother could have their own room. My oldest brother... The oldest brother?
[17:37] Yeah.
[17:39] Yeah, I don't... I don't actually... Ages are pretty...
[17:43] Just roughly. Like late teens, early 20s. You said he was kicked out, right?
[17:49] Yes. that would have been early 20s yeah.
[17:53] Okay so it wasn't like some crazy thing like he was 16 or something okay no, sorry go ahead.
[18:10] Yeah well i'm sorry i i i um, i don't i'm not really sure where to go from here i i think well So I can just keep going.
[18:21] So sorry, what happened with your dating life? Sort of, you know, around 14 or so or whatever it is, 13, 15. A lot of times people get interested in girls. And how did that go for you?
[18:38] Um, since I can't remember, I really had, I, I, that interest in girls. Yeah, I, I, I think that did start at around 12, 13, mostly before, before that though, if when I look back, I've already, I, I was already having a lot of attention from girls. I think this has been from yeah this has always been the case but I didn't recognize any of that so it came mostly from the other side like I had girls that all the girls wanted to hang out with me wanted to be friends with me, but it did not make sense to me yet.
[19:30] And it was only when And it was only later in elementary school, along elementary school, there was only one girl that I really felt any kind of attraction towards. And in the last year of elementary school, basically in the holiday between elementary school and high school, is when we suddenly started talking to each other. But this was over the phone, over SMS, over internet chatting. And we were talking and talking about how when high school started because we were going to go to the same high school actually we would actually start like, actually talking with each other and hanging out but this never came to be something in one of our conversations during that holiday, it kind of seems like we were both really scared and afraid and then kind of chickened out right before the year started.
[20:31] Oh, interesting. Okay.
[20:36] And when it comes to other interests, like right after the first year of high school, there was one girl that I was interested in, had like my first kiss, basically.
[20:47] Yeah.
[20:50] At a party where, well, this is important to say too, because I think, yeah, I was 13. It was the first year maybe the end of the first year so 13-14 I actually got really drunk at a party, suddenly I never I don't think I really drank before maybe my parents would give me a sip or something at some point sure, but yeah it was like actually really drunk, and that was when that kiss happened and right after I think even the day after, two days after, this girl wanted to continue a relationship. And I basically just rejected her.
[21:33] Why did you reject her?
[21:38] I think maybe a mix of being afraid, scared, not knowing what it really meant. I'm sorry, how old were you again? This was when I was 13 or 14, around that age.
[22:00] Okay.
[22:03] Um and also somewhere i think also a sense of this is i am not really attracted to her like there was the physical yeah.
[22:14] But you didn't.
[22:15] Like her like her yeah yeah yeah there was really not much of conversation either to go off on you know right, I do remember that she was she was very she was extremely sad about this and shocked even I think because it seemed like she completely, expected it to go somewhere sure sure, and this is something that then happened again I think the next year or two years later in high school kind of a very similar thing where I kind of, even in school got very touchy with a girl, then this ended up in a kiss after which I immediately rejected her and said you know, this is not going to go anywhere it was almost even I even kind of made it I even.
[23:23] I don't think i really wanted to kiss her even it almost felt like she was kind of pushing for that and then at some point i was like all right like i'll do it and i i maybe even said which, i maybe even said like are you happy now huh right as as like it was almost like well will you now get off and get off me like yeah are we are we done um same same response complete shock and surprise like uh how how can you do this uh etc um and i would say maybe maybe that did have to do with that they were quite attractive girls maybe some of the more attractive girls in school, um maybe they expect it they maybe they've never experienced that or i'm not really sure of course but um, i think to me even at that age i was aware like this this is just there's just some physical attraction but other than that i know it's not going to go anywhere right um.
[24:41] So I think those were the first real experiences I've had with girls in that sense, where there was some attraction, but it never went further than physical. And even physically, it was not completely, but yeah, whatever. I mean, I know that if there was any kind of other connection, then it might have worked out.
[25:01] Right right right okay um and did you get any um feedback or or i'm guessing not but obviously i want to be fair from your parents did you get any uh you know here's how to talk to girls you're going to be interested in girls or here's what a relationship is or i guess anything like that.
[25:23] No nothing nothing.
[25:25] So they didn't talk to you about dating or anything like that right.
[25:30] No no i i know nothing.
[25:32] Okay i mean that's appalling right you're not just going to wake up with this magical ability to be able to talk to girls right or know what a relationship is or or how to handle it or do it or anything like that.
[25:48] No, of course not. And I had no clue. It was... I got all of this attention from girls, it seemed like, from all directions, and it made no sense to me. And for the longest time, I didn't recognize it. I remember very well that I remember you saying, maybe to somebody, even with a surprising tone, like, well, don't you know about the signs that women or girls can give you, you know, to show that they're interested.
[26:21] Yeah, yeah.
[26:22] And I remember thinking, like, wait, there's science? And then you just, you named a couple of things. The main thing is, I remember you saying, was the whipping the hair or the rearranging of the hair, right?
[26:36] Sure, sure.
[26:37] And after you said that, like, I realized, like, wait, is that a science? Because almost every single girl I see does this, you know?
[26:47] Right, right. Well, that doesn't mean that they like you.
[26:50] Yeah, yeah, but this was really not something that really popped in my head at all. It was only from that moment I started realizing, and I was kind of shocked. And still, to this day, I'm kind of in disbelief by how much I see this, because it really is just all over the place. It's like everywhere I go, it seems to be that way. And I still feel myself saying, like, no, that's not, no, right? That doesn't mean like is it really the case you know so i was not aware of this for a very long time even though looking back now it's like my when i was very young um what would it be like maybe he's at six or seven years old i remember having birth at birthday parties uh where um, everybody of my class would be invited, but I would actually have two birthday parties, one for the boys and one for the girls, because everybody wanted to be there.
[27:53] Now, did you have a, I'm not saying it's not due to your personal qualities, but I don't imagine that you had huge social skills because of the video gaming and all of that. Was there something about like, well, your place was really nice or something like that, that kids wanted to be there?
[28:08] I think it was the freedoms that I got.
[28:12] Oh, you were the guy with the parents who you could do whatever, right?
[28:17] Yes, exactly. Which would be mostly playing video games, especially later on. Yes. And it's also why some friends stopped coming over because their parents realized that when they came over to me, and it was just all video games right yeah okay.
[28:47] Okay, got it, got it.
[28:49] Yeah.
[28:51] Okay, so what happened in your later teens?
[28:57] Well, I was still playing video games up until mainly, up until I was about, until I was 16.
[29:09] But I got, I did get a bit more social. I was not too much into playing like single player games. All I did was play multiplayer games and I started getting mainly into games where it was kind of a free roaming environment where it was basically like a second life, and I could meet a lot of people and I did start socializing well socializing but it was at least communicating with people online I made some friends there that I was playing games with all the time so that was a bit of a difference.
[29:49] But yeah things really started changing when I discovered your podcast through actually one of my favorite artists that shared a video of you on Facebook, oh very cool yeah I actually recently for the first time after a concert talked to him oh wow very nice, yes yes yeah yeah quite amazing and i do hope that i i'm going to talk to him i i didn't mention that but i still would like to mention this to him at some point that how much that had changed my life um this but this was one of the truth about videos um at the time right right okay yeah.
[30:41] I remember at first being having all these feelings of kind of frustration, annoyance because of your straightforwardness and just, directness just being truthful completely all the time but after I think just watching or I think I went away for it for a couple days then I got back and I was hooked and I ordered all of your books I read everything um, i i really felt like all right i found i finally found my place in this world in some sense right, but i would still i was still playing video games but it was um i was in high school and i think it i think it was my second or third year the year had just started um and there was this kind of introductory class where everybody was, telling everybody a little bit about themselves. And of course, the main thing that I said was, well, I'm into philosophy.
[31:48] Right?
[31:48] And I remembered mainly you using the term objectivist, Ayn Rand, and I said, well, I look at the world in an objective way. I think there is a real objective world out there um and that is kind of and that is kind of my my perspective um it was also kind of the first time i really talked about this which is interesting because i had never been that i was spoken or i do think there were moments in high school before that where i suddenly because it was kind of forced because of the presentation and then i would i would be reminded of like wow i can speak very well i'm a pretty good speaker but there would still be a lot of stress and nerves, But it was actually right after that class, maybe even the walk after that class to another classroom, where this girl actually came up to me and immediately showed interest.
[32:52] Ah, very cool.
[32:54] Yes, and I had never experienced that before, that a girl would actually walk up to me and start talking to me. And I don't remember exactly what that conversation was about, but I think at least it was about reading, about books. Maybe she had mentioned it like, oh, can I share a book with you? Can I give you a book soon that you can read? Because I think it's very interesting. She had caught my eye before, but she felt completely interesting. I did notice her as this kind of special woman in school because she was older than me. She was actually, like at that point, I was still 16 and she was at least 18 or 19. And so she was also one of the oldest people in school, actually. And this is because she had to do, she had done a couple years, maybe one or even two years, was two years behind. And this is why she was still in these classes when she was obviously more of an adult than anybody else.
[34:11] Right, right. And do you know why she had been, I mean, this is a long time ago, I guess, but do you know why she had been left behind?
[34:20] Um that had to do with basically having no focus or attention for studying i think as far as because i i did think that she was very intelligent but later on it became clear to me and she had told me this as well she hadn't she had a horrible situation at home i think that that really made it impossible for her to even focus on anything like that so i could see that she was very skilled that she had skills that she had the intelligence but but she was so distracted by everything around her it seems that she didn't even know about her own intelligence That was not something she was even allowed to explore, it seems like, except with apparently reading books. She did do that, at least. I suppose that's maybe why.
[35:24] I suppose she got a sense that philosophy might be of help to her, which is why she was interested to talk with you.
[35:33] Yes. Yeah, well, that's an interesting point. I don't think that that has been, especially at that point, that didn't come up for me. I can say that pretty quickly it became clear to me that if she was anything, if she could identify with any sort of label or term, it would be a communist. Because of her family's history and culture. That's, I think, where most of her ideas about, well, quote-unquote, philosophy came from.
[36:19] Or thought.
[36:22] And, so knowing that yeah it's hard for me to gauge what really interested like seeing my experience after that it does kind of seem that maybe she, acknowledged that I was smart and that I just started thinking about these things, and that perhaps she could have some kind of influence over me.
[36:55] Hmm, okay.
[37:00] Which I guess would kind of make sense if you come from the communist standpoint, like the control thing, the power thing.
[37:08] Oh, so you think that was something sort of malign? Like, oh, you're a smart guy, we should convert you to the cause of communism.
[37:16] Yes, but at the same time, this is not something she really brought up, you know? This is not, like, she was not trying to convince me of communism.
[37:25] Okay, got it.
[37:25] This is more something that along the way, I gradually realized, wow, this is in the background, and this was maybe a year or two after that maybe I was asking about it.
[37:37] Yeah, yeah.
[37:38] Like, where does this thing come from? And then she would basically, with conviction, say, yeah, communism is the way.
[37:45] Right, right, okay.
[37:46] So this was not talked about but it but it was definitely ingrained so, i i don't know i don't know if it's fair to say that there was this this malice from the beginning where she had a plan well it may i didn't.
[38:03] Say malice it could be enthusiasm for her beliefs but uh.
[38:07] But it's.
[38:07] Interesting so yeah go ahead.
[38:10] Yeah, so I think that's really where the bad influence, like where the bad habits started from that point on. Because up until that point, I was very stern in like, I never want to drink, which is kind of funny, because I think maybe I'd forgotten that I'd already gotten drunk.
[38:36] Well, never want to drink doesn't mean you've never drunk, right?
[38:39] Yeah, yeah, true. So at least I had this kind of, maybe that was something I even said before, that anyway, from a pretty young age, this is something I told people too. Alcohol is bad. Any kind of drugs is bad. I never want to do any of that. My parents were smokers, drinkers. Not that I really learned anything from that, but I do think that I felt like I've heard enough from the science standpoint to know that those things are not a good idea because nobody was really talking to me about it. So, yeah, she showed a lot of interest in me. I had no idea what to do with this. Then at some point, she kind of just flat out said, I like you, with expectation. And there was a silence and I realized, oh, right, I'm supposed to say something now.
[39:47] And sorry, how old were you at this point?
[39:50] This was 16 still.
[39:52] Okay, got it. So, this happened fairly fast, I suppose.
[39:59] Yes. Yeah, this happened, I think, A month, maybe a month or two after she approached me.
[40:08] Okay.
[40:12] And I had said, there was a big silence. Then I had very awkwardly said, I like you too, without conviction, because I was really not sure really what was going on at all. She walked away I felt like I needed to do I was just confused I felt like I needed to hug her or something which I did but from that point on, we just started hanging out more which was also in a pretty, not a normal way because she at that point she was already hiding this whole thing from her family her family was not supposed to know that any of this was going on right.
[41:10] And, um, yeah, she, she was not doing any drugs at that point either, but I'm sure that she had done some of that before. She suddenly showed interest in drinking. I said no. So she was doing it by herself with some very young friends around her that she was hanging out with. but it was clear that she had this kind of group of, I would say, kids around her that followed her. She seemed to have, she seemed to get joy out of being the older person, and kind of telling them what to do or what they should do or what's right and what's not right.
[41:59] But at some point, I think I gazed in, i started doing this at as well uh at some at some moments and it really it really became, bad for me when she because of another girl in school at some point i suddenly saw her smoking a cigarette and i remember that i i really felt like i sank through the ground, because I had no idea what to do at that point because it felt like I was trapped.
[42:40] So smoking a cigarette, is that because it reminded you of your parents?
[42:48] I'm not entirely sure. I think it was mostly just that I had said to myself I was never going to do that. Um, but because I already felt kind of like I was, I don't know what the right word is, but I felt like I was, uh, kind of attached. I was attached to her in a way I'd never felt before. So it felt like I couldn't do anything about, like, I couldn't do anything about this. It felt like impossible to leave her. So now i was stuck in a relationship with a girl that did exactly at least at at least that was something i was certain about like i did not want to do that.
[43:33] So that being because you saw her smoking a cigarette and i get that that's unpleasant or whatever but i'm still trying to sort of sort out for myself what the like it's absolutely unacceptable to date a girl who has smoked a cigarette?
[43:52] Well, I don't think that was even on my mind. Like, it was unacceptable. It was just that I felt very depressed and sad about that. And I think I had even told her about that, but that didn't seem to do anything. It was like, well, I hear that you're feeling sad, but this is helping me. So from the beginning this was her standpoint that she was she started telling me she was in pain all the time and that cigarettes she realized was one thing that briefly, took that pain away okay, and I don't I think not long after after seeing her do this consistently basically getting cigarettes from people all the time. I tried it out with her. Didn't like it at first, but eventually got into the habit as well.
[44:55] Ah, okay.
[44:57] So this was something we started doing together.
[44:59] Let's say you smoking?
[45:07] And yes, yes, I think so. This is not something that I've often thought about, but it would, yeah. Obviously, she was able to buy them at that point. And I think I wasn't yet. But my mom, well, my mom was smoking. And so there were always cigarettes in the house. So from that point on I could always find a cigarette if I wanted to and I'm sure that I don't remember this very clearly but I think I would also start taking cigarettes from her and taking it with me, so yeah, okay got it well I remember now Yeah, she would buy cigarettes, but then she would give them to me to keep them, because nobody was supposed to know that she was doing that.
[46:09] Right, okay. Okay, and what happened then?
[46:24] Um we would we would just we would just be hanging out after school as much as possible but there was always this this danger hanging above our heads because her family was not supposed to know about it um so it wasn't very there was no it didn't feel like we were free to do what we wanted, really. It was always, we were never outside, or if we were, it was just close to the school area. And otherwise, it would be at my house kind of hiding from everybody.
[47:04] That's right, right.
[47:09] Just like we were always in the dark and nobody was supposed to know right, and uh then quite soon after that i got into contact again with a childhood friend that i had been in school and since the first year of school like the very first year of school like elementary school after the kind of kindergarten stage so i'd known him my whole life but we, we didn't have contact since high school started since then he had gotten into some drug habits mainly mainly weed that's someday we met up again and i was smoking cigarettes and i think he had told me about the weed thing i showed interest and i asked him if we want if you wanted to show me that one time and after he did that would that that was kind of like wow this is this is totally different than cigarettes this is this is more my thing right and that's when i started inviting, my girlfriend then to do that with me now that became a habit since then right that was really like the one that stuck right.
[48:36] And what was the because i've never tried weed and what was the major thing that you found positive about it.
[48:43] I remember very well the first time i did it And I was at a friend's place, and I lied down on the couch, and there were these just visions and visuals, ideas, basically. What I remember very clearly that I told everybody, like, wow, I have three creative ideas of video games, things that could be made into the world that everybody would find cool. And I even wrote them down. So it was like almost instantly I got these visions, these creative visions that just came to me. And I don't think I had experienced that clearly before where I could see them. Like I could see them in my head.
[49:36] Right, right. So it was, but do you think that the ideas were there and this was a disinhibitor? Yeah.
[49:45] That that might be the case yes but can you tell me more about.
[49:49] So the disinhibitor is so it's it's people one of the big challenges of creativity is believing in it while you're doing it and not observing yourself and saying oh this is ridiculous like who am i to or this isn't working or like i'm actually believe it or not i'm going through this right now with my uh with my new novel um where I'm like, does this even work? Anyway, so yeah, one of the big challenges is to believe in what it is that you're doing while you're doing it. And that is a big challenge. Because it's very easy to just like abandon it, right? And say, oh, this isn't working or something's wrong with this or who was I to think that I could do this or something like that, right? Especially for me, like i'm always trying new things with every book like i simply i don't know how people like stephen king or dean kuhn so i don't know how they even do it like how do they write the same book over and over again would drive me nuts but uh but anyway they they do and i mean i guess it works for them but uh i'm always trying something new and because i'm always trying something new i don't actually know whether anything's going to work because i don't have a formula if that make sense yeah totally yeah yeah so so the big challenge is is is disinhibiting yourself to the point where you will accept that uh this this can work.
[51:16] Yeah that makes total sense i think before that any ideas that i would have it would be like well this is not real this is in my head so abandon right it's like well i can't see this i can't touch this this is not objective so to say so this is nothing well what am i even supposed to do with this and but if i if i try to remember i don't even know if i can't remember very clearly having any kind of creative idea like that like they like the ones that came when we were there the weed right yes yeah it has never been that clear i think never i i might have like i was constantly observing and thinking all the time and i remember there were moments where especially parents of, parents of my friends so not my own parent i remember one moment i was sitting at a picnic table somewhere in nature and i was just like staring in the distance very deep into thoughts but nobody was talking to me nobody was conversating with me so i didn't even have words i i was just i was just perplexed by the world and i remember this this one parent saying like.
[52:32] What are you doing? It seems like you're very deep in thoughts or something. What's going on with you? And I didn't even know what that meant at that point. I didn't even know how to respond with that. It's just like, well, this is who I am. This is just what I do. I don't know what you would call this.
[52:54] This is all I do, basically. Unless somebody wants something for me. Somebody requests something my parents tell me we need to go there or this okay I'll get out of my world and do whatever you want me to do, But it was kind of just like I was completely in the outside world, looking outside, but not so much inside. I don't know if that makes any sense.
[53:25] Yeah, I got it.
[53:28] So it definitely makes sense when you say this, because it is in the past month or two, and this also has to do with that I really met some incredible people also through the Freedom Main Discord. I made an incredible friend who I've talked a lot with about this kind of stuff. And this is definitely something that started happening recently where I'm exercising this and learning to trust these visions or like, yeah, like you're saying, believe in them. Believing is something I never wanted to do.
[54:07] Well, you just have to stop disbelieving, you know, if that makes sense. It's a tough thing to do.
[54:12] Stop disbelieving. Yes, stop disbelieving.
[54:18] Just say it is possible that this is good. It is possible. And that's tough.
[54:26] It's very tough for me to believe that about something that is not there yet.
[54:30] Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[54:34] But but then when i do trust when i do when there are these rare moments that i do something really beautiful comes out usually sure and people are like in awe are like whoa where did you where did you get like how did you come up with this and and i'd be like i have no ideas right right i don't know i have no clue to the point where i'm in disbelief like i i i can't i can't have come up with this i must have picked this up somewhere you know this can't be can't be me i because i have no idea where it comes from i almost like i didn't know how this process worked so for me it was like if it just comes out of nothing then i can't have created this because I don't know where it comes from. Yeah, this is a very...
[55:34] Well, and it's funny because, of course, your parents are creative people, or at least your dad is, and that he wouldn't talk to you at all about, you know, the challenges and excitements of creativity. I mean, I'm sorry, it's just appalling, this level of neglect that goes on in families. It's just terrible.
[55:51] Yes, yeah, it is appalling. And myself, I've been the past years that I actually did really stop talking to them, which is now about a year, I would say, and my mom a bit longer than my dad, that it becomes even more clear. Like I am appalled by it myself how can you have a child and not talk about any of this how can you, what is more important than that and that immediately reminds me of one of the last conversations I've had with my dad where he suddenly, he was very honest to me and it felt like it really was going somewhere it felt like there was this real time relationship going on for a while, And he suddenly told me that when I was a baby, like an actual baby, they would sometimes leave me alone at home to go drinking in a pub.
[56:56] Sure. Sure.
[57:01] And I was shocked by that. And at the same time, it felt like I almost could remember that when he said that.
[57:09] Hmm.
[57:10] That I remember there were nights where I felt so completely alone. Maybe I was crying or screaming and nothing was happening. Where to the point you just have to give up and accept that there's nothing out there, nothing that cares. And I feel like that, yeah, it makes sense that when I experienced that as a baby, that really sets the tone for the rest of my life, or at least the rest of my childhood.
[57:45] And why do you think your dad said that?
[57:49] Yeah, that's a good question. I definitely came out of a conversation where I made it extra, extra clear more than before that I... I know that they neglected me i know they ignored me and he started being honest about that he started admitting to that he actually said yes like this is true i was completely busy with my own life and he started saying i think i think i've been depressed for as long as i can remember, I guess that's a good moment to say that he himself has never had a dad at all basically because his father died very soon after he was born, so he's been raised by a single mother.
[58:58] Uh no no that's not a single mother i mean unless i misunderstand it.
[59:03] That would.
[59:03] Be a widow.
[59:06] True yes yeah i.
[59:08] Mean it's a very different creature right because one is.
[59:11] Yeah is.
[59:11] As accident the other is is usually choice.
[59:16] Yes agreed yeah i i had some doubt when i said that it's like yeah no it's fine i just.
[59:22] Wanted to point it out okay.
[59:23] Yeah. Yeah, so it seemed like in that conversation and maybe some conversations leading up to that, I had made it very clear to him, and this, of course, was very new, like that I sat in front of him face-to-face and we actually had a conversation, that this was always something that I instigated. Since I found your podcast, I have been trying to have conversations like that, and it was only those... That period where it seemed like it was finally happening, that my father was reciprocating this, that looking back now, it was still clear that I was the one starting these conversations all the time.
[1:00:17] Yeah, and it's funny because a lot of times when you have these kinds of breakthroughs, people are like, oh my gosh, we're finally getting someplace real, but it's actually the death knell. It's like the end. Well, I've certainly had that where I've had issues with people, of course, in my life. And we finally get through to the core of the issues and you think, wow, this is going to be great. Like now we can sort these things out, but that's it. There's nothing after that.
[1:00:47] Yeah, there's this feeling of euphoria, right? As if you're stepping into heaven and it's like, wow, oh my God, it's happening. And then that at some point completely collapsed, back into what it was, even worse than what it was, or worse, I would say, better for me. Because it came to clarity and finally like, okay, this is the last straw. And that was the day when I realized that the next day after I was talking to him, he was going to meet up with my mom, and they have been divorced and separated, which happened when I was around 12, 13 years old.
[1:01:47] Yeah.
[1:01:49] They have just like with their past relationships have been friends ever since still friends in contact hanging out drinking together I'm sure, and he was going to give her a presence the next day and I read this in his agenda in his, because he would just leave that open in the living room for anybody to read, he had even said at some point that he's fine with that, I read this I felt again this sinking sensation like I was sinking through the ground and I went to him and I told him this, I told him this like real time relationships, I told him, this is exactly how I felt and.
[1:02:53] It felt like we had a similar conversation before, not so long before that, but his immediate reaction was, well, I told you about this is none of your business, you just don't think about that, you know, and he even started looking away, and just the eye contact there was this kind of this kind of, sort of weird grin going on and kind of uncomfortable laughing, like, wow, you just have to stop thinking about this. This is none of your business. Why do you bother yourself with this? And it felt like I was being stabbed in the back.
[1:03:48] I was appalled I was shocked that, i i said well i do think it is i mean you are my parents why, i wouldn't why wouldn't this well i don't know exactly where the words i use but i it was definitely clear to me well i just i just told you what i felt, and and since then this has been ringing in my head i tell you what i feel and your responses that's none of your business.
[1:04:34] Well, hang on. So let me make sure I understand that sequence, right? So tell me how your feelings, like what happened in your father's mind that we go from your feelings to it's none of your business?
[1:04:46] Well, I mean, if you had to guess. He referred, I think he was referring to earlier, an earlier conversation we've had where I already, i had told him that i like he had told me that in the past years when we haven't because we haven't had much contact me and both my parents that they were still hanging out with each other, and they were still going to family together like having long car rides and stuff like that, and he would and i would say like well that that seems very strange well how it that seems very strange to me how is that for you and he would be saying like well yeah we don't talk much but it's like fine it's like okay and i i think i have and i would ask him well do you ever talk about me and he was and he said no so they're hanging out all the time never talking about their son, and I felt like this I don't even know how to put it into words really but I just I just I didn't understand but or, I just I felt incredibly sad at least.
[1:06:14] I think I had these questions. I asked him these questions like, why are you doing this? Or don't you feel like... I think I asked, well, don't you think you should talk about me or any family for that matter? And then I think then he had given me a similar response. Well, this is our lives. We can do whatever we want. It's none of your business. Why do you care? You shouldn't care. You should care about your own life.
[1:06:50] That's interesting. He said you should care about your own life.
[1:06:54] Yeah.
[1:06:56] Interesting. Okay. I mean, I have some thoughts about that, but I don't want to interrupt if you're in the middle of a thought.
[1:07:04] No, I think I would like to hear your thought.
[1:07:07] Okay. So let's unpack that because that's really, really powerful. So you're saying to your father, do you and mom ever talk about me? And he says, no. No. And you say that seems odd or that seems strange or don't you think you should talk about me or something like that, right? And he says, why do you care? You should worry about your own life. Okay. All right. So listen, I'd like to focus on your dad, but I want to make sure the call is of best or most value to you. So if that works for you, I'm happy to work on that. If you wanted to talk about something else, I can do that too.
[1:07:49] No i think that's uh i think that's a good focus yeah.
[1:07:52] Okay so um your own life your own life now uh you're not a father i assume i assume so one of the things that you wouldn't necessarily get and it certainly wasn't modeled from your own father is for your father to say to you you should worry about your own life means that he has not processed at all what it is to be a father. In other words, his own life, his own life does not include being a father. His own life does not include you as his son. His own life is completely separate from his responsibility as a father, his own life doesn't include anyone else, do you see what i mean yeah yeah 100 that's straight up narcissistic the only thing that matters is my own concerns, my own preferences, my own life, my own wants, my own needs, my own desires, my own thoughts. And it does not include anyone else.
[1:09:20] So he's telling you, your life concerns should only and forever be about you. There are no life concerns or thoughts that involve anyone else at all. It's a solipsistic, narcissistic universe of I, me, me, I. You don't exist to me. Your concerns are only irritants because they don't coincide with what I want in the moment. Does that make sense?
[1:10:07] Yeah, for sure. Yeah.
[1:10:10] Now, I'm sorry, go ahead, because that's quite a thing to drop, but I wanted to get your thoughts before I continue.
[1:10:17] No, when you were leading up to that already, i felt this sadness coming up and i i definitely feel the sadness deeply now um i i i have been talking about this with with with with friends uh with my with my girlfriend at the moment um and, many like and and they it has become clear to me too like i have set this to people and they accept this to me that they seem completely narcissistic um.
[1:10:55] So it can be tough sorry to interrupt it can be tough to figure out the mind of a narcissist and again i'm just using this term in an amateur fashion right i'm not a psychologist but it can be tough to process the mindset of a narcissist but i can help you do it because i think it's really important for you to figure and to not take it personally all right yeah wow that's very powerful yeah i think have you have you ever played skyrim yes okay i mean whether it's skyrim or some other game you're more familiar with a lot of times the especially if it's a single player game, the developers will give you a companion right, yeah so you can go and do your adventures and there's someone who's along there to help right.
[1:11:51] Yeah and it's an it's an npc right yes now, Now, would you ever, if it wasn't part of a quest, what is the presence of that NPC in your mind over the course of your day? Do you think, oh, I'm not playing the game. I hope the NPC isn't bored. Or, oh, I'm hungry. I wonder if the NPC needs something to eat. Or, I wonder if the NPC had a really cool dream last night. Or, I wonder if the NPC met someone that they might be interested in, I'd love to hear how their day went, right?
[1:12:33] Yeah, there would be none of that.
[1:12:35] I mean, that would be kind of psychotic, right? I mean, that would be not healthy at all, right?
[1:12:42] No, that wouldn't be healthy.
[1:12:45] Right, so the NPC is there to help you, and the NPC is not supposed to have any particular needs or preferences of their own, right? It's like a shadow cast of your questing, right?
[1:12:56] Yeah, it's like they only exist there to aid you, nothing else.
[1:13:00] Yeah, they're only there to aid you, they're only there to serve you, and they don't have any existence of your own right now if you're playing the game, and you get a call and your favorite band's in town and you got backstage tickets or something like then then what you will do is you will uh turn off the game and go out and see the band right, yeah now would it ever cross your mind, at all to say well i mean gosh i'm in the middle of this quest i mean maybe the i mean the npc might want to finish it like maybe i shouldn't go to the concert because the npc might that might be inconvenient they might want to finish the quest and they don't particularly i didn't even ask them if they care about this band or anything like that right you simply would shut down the computer with zero thought zero thought to the npc right yes.
[1:14:08] I thought that if i come back we would just go back where we started.
[1:14:10] Right right now if you can imagine that the npc reaches out of the game and says no you're not going to that concert we're right in the middle of a quest i need like i want to finish this quest right what would you i mean imagine such a scenario right, and the npc was able to reach out of the computer rip up the tickets oh whatever you know like just give me give me this crazy scenario right so if the npc were to say no i don't want you to go i want to finish this quest i don't want you to go see the band i'm right in the middle we're right in the middle of doing something here what would you feel well.
[1:14:56] It would creep the hell out.
[1:14:59] Let's like without the creepy side of it but but how would you feel if the npc in skyrim forbade you from going to the concert because the npc wanted to finish the quest.
[1:15:17] This is the it has this has nothing to do with you i this is what i want to do and.
[1:15:24] Yeah no but well how would you feel i mean outside of the incomprehension i get all of that but if you just sort of roll with the creative scenario if the npc said like the npc reached out from the computer screen grabbed your arm and said you're not going to that concert we're in the middle of quest here stop like what are you doing i mean again outside of the creepy stuff wouldn't you just feel kind of annoyed?
[1:15:48] Yeah, I would feel pissed.
[1:15:50] What the hell are you doing? You're a non-player character. I want to go to the concert. What are you doing?
[1:15:55] Yeah, I'd feel pissed. I'd feel annoyed.
[1:15:58] So that's your dad?
[1:16:01] Right.
[1:16:02] That's your dad. You're just an NPC? Jim. So when your parents, they want to go out drinking, right? And this is why I specifically used the scenario, right? You got a concert.
[1:16:16] Yeah.
[1:16:16] And you want to go out, you just turn off the computer. I mean, and you would give zero thought to the NPC. You'd be like, well, the NPC is just there to serve me. The NPC, I mean, doesn't have any real needs of its own that are important. I mean, they're just programmed or whatever. And so your parents go out drinking and leave you home in the same way that you go to the concert and don't think about what the NPC wants or needs.
[1:16:46] Yes, that makes complete sense.
[1:16:50] And realizing that you are an NPC in other people's minds and lives is chilling, but holy crap, is it liberating. Yeah so when you're when you're a father and mother go out and and when you say well shouldn't you talk about me that's kind of incomprehensible that's like the npc saying well what do you mean Like, why aren't you thinking about my needs? That's like, what are you talking about? You're an NPC. Like, I don't know, worry about your own life. What are you coming to me for? You don't exist for me.
[1:17:43] Yeah, that's a very good way to, that does really help putting things into perspective.
[1:17:53] Well, it's just the start of this liberation. So if you are an NPC in your father's quest, so to speak, right? If you're just there to serve his needs and you don't have any needs of your own and if you assert any needs of your own it's just kind of a weird bug or a glitch then what your father is going to do is he's going to say look if you have problems in your life the way to solve them is to dehumanize other people. My big advice to you, son, if you've got problems in your life, you've got a magic wand called narcissism that you can wave to turn everyone else into an NPC, and then you don't have any problems. Does that make sense?
[1:18:55] Yeah, yeah, when you say that, because it does seem like that's basically what he has been saying in those conversations to me. That's what's behind everything.
[1:19:08] Right. So he's giving you his life advice. Turn everyone into an NPC and your life is simple. Right. It is, in a way. How complicated is your relationship, with your npc in skyrim.
[1:19:32] That's not complicated at all.
[1:19:34] Pretty fucking simple right yeah.
[1:19:37] You almost also know exactly what to expect.
[1:19:40] Yeah i mean it's not it's the least complicated relationship hey we're going to uh this town okay i'll go to this town we're gonna go into this dungeon okay we're gonna go it's totally simple. There's no negotiation. There's no self and other. There's no meeting in the middle. There's no clash of egos. There's no overlap of wants. It's simple. Turn other people into nothing and your life is simple. Because you want to go out, you got a kid at home, just leave the kid at home.
[1:20:12] You want to go to the concert and you're in the middle of a quest with the NPC, just turn off the computer. They don't have any needs. It's simple.
[1:20:25] Yeah, that's very easy.
[1:20:29] It's dead simple. I mean, that's why narcissism is tempting for people. Because when you dehumanize other people, then you don't have any challenges with negotiations.
[1:20:45] You don't have to think about much at all, because everything just kind of makes sense in that way. Just like, well, it's just clear this way.
[1:20:53] Oh, yeah. like just he's saying to you only think of yourself don't think about other people's needs don't think about other people's preferences don't think about what they want don't give them independent sovereign consciousness don't negotiate only think of yourself.
[1:21:13] And the rest is just a burden and.
[1:21:16] Yeah i mean it's not a fun video game to play if you've got to keep negotiating with the npc i mean imagine let's go fight the dragon on the mountain no i really want to talk about my childhood this game sucks who made this what kind of neurotic programmer is sitting there wanting to talk about their childhood when i want to go fight the dragon on the mountain yeah.
[1:21:46] I didn't sign up for this i signed.
[1:21:48] Up for the for the dragon yeah let's go explore the caves oh you know i'm just feeling kind of down today i don't know if i'm up to it what maybe this maybe this is the next video game to teach narcissists that there are other human beings have an npc that has its own thoughts and preferences like some ai thing right maybe this would be a training game for uh narcissists or something like that to get them to recognize that it's not all about what they want need and prefer right i mean you ever you ever go to a town, in uh one of these games because you want to buy some armor and, the shop is closed because the guy's on vacation.
[1:22:35] No every time you go to the town he's just standing there right yeah dumb right does he ever say oh you know i'm really i'm just depressed today man i think my wife's gonna leave me nope he's just like here's your armor give me the gold there's no needs of his own right other you know obviously the exchange thing or whatever right but if you want to understand your father think of the games you are an npc i actually have a i think it was in i think it was in morrowind this is just a stupid thing to say but it sort of i think gives this indication i invest in my npcs when i'm playing a game like i care about them and i remember once i'm sure you've had this in games where the npc is usually following behind you but at some point you turn around and they're not there right, And you're like, oh, man, did they get stuck in a canyon? Did I close a door on them? Like, where are they? Right?
[1:23:35] Yeah, yeah. I've been figuring out how it happened, and I want to fix it, too.
[1:23:39] Right, right. So you either have to go back to some prior save where they were still around, or you've got to backtrack and figure out where they are. And doesn't it feel kind of good when you release them? Hey, there you are. You got stuck in a tree. or something like that and i remember in morrowind i had a barbarian npc and i left the dungeon went to the town he wasn't there i actually had to go all the way back i closed the door in the dungeon somewhere and he was stuck there and i felt bad because i'm like i feel like he's stuck in a dungeon and it's my fault yeah.
[1:24:19] Yeah that's a really good example because i've probably i think i've experienced that multiple times and then also kind of felt like well this is kind of weird that i care about this but i do.
[1:24:28] Well the game but the game is better when you care you know like if you just treat the npc as you know what the npc actually is which is just a bunch of disposable digits with no personality of its own then it's less interesting you know if it's sort of the matrix thing if you if you're fighting the dragon and you just say well this is just a bunch of bytes this is just a bunch of ones and zeros and i'm just manipulating pixels or pushing, code around right but you have to think oh this is real dragon i'm really saving the princess my npc is fighting by my side like you have to invest to make the game good you have to invest in the reality of the situation if you dehumanize the npc too much, then what happens is the game is no fun, right? Because it's just a bunch of pixels. It's just a bunch of bytes. All I'm doing is pushing data around, which is all you're doing in video games is pushing data around. Then you lose the fun of it. Sorry, you were going to say?
[1:25:27] Yeah, no, it just reminds me of like having watched videos of people play games like that. And then something happens where the NPC, for instance, gets stuck on something and it's just like jittery, like, and it can't go further. And some people, they will actually just look at that and laugh at it and find it amusing and be like oh this is this is funny whereas if when i think about that or when i experienced that it would be kind of creepy to me and it would try to figure out like okay how can i get you i'm stuck at this because this is clearly very uncomfortable right.
[1:26:00] Half glitching through a doorway would be pretty painful and i.
[1:26:04] Remember one of the for.
[1:26:05] Some bizarre reason one of the funniest things that my daughter and I ever went through was there's a sort of game that's famously glitchy called Skate 3, I think it's called.
[1:26:14] Oh, that's actually one of my favorite games. I've played it a lot. Yeah.
[1:26:18] I think it was kind of pushed a little out ahead of the physics integrity. And it's sort of famous for people getting stuck and glitched and flying across the map and getting merged with benches and stuff like that. And for some reason, my daughter and I came across one of these videos and thought it was just about the funniest thing we'd ever seen. We even tried playing the game, but I mean, it wasn't nearly as much fun as the glitches were. So anyway, all joking aside, that's your dad. So when he says, only worry about yourself, he's saying, turn everyone into an NPC that's there to serve your needs. And your life is good. It's simple. Now, it's simple. I don't think it's good. I think it's a terrifyingly crushingly isolated existence.
[1:27:08] Yeah it definitely is and they can and it's clear you can see that and he and he even has some he even has an awareness of that but he accepts it he i remember him saying one of those last conversations i don't think i'm ever going to find a partner again and i you know i think i don't i wouldn't even be happy if i have one I think I'm good on my own.
[1:27:35] Right. So when he says, I'm not going to be able to find a partner, he's saying, I can't have a relationship with people who are NPCs.
[1:27:42] Yeah.
[1:27:43] And the way that I live is treating everyone as an NPC.
[1:27:50] Yeah.
[1:27:54] So that's the way to understand the mindset. Now, if you were to sit there and if I were to sit there, sorry, if I were to sit there and say, I'll sit here and say, listen, man, you have to treat NPCs as real people, like real people. What would that mean to you?
[1:28:22] As i immediately feel exhaustion, because i think i've been trying to do that for a very long time.
[1:28:32] No no i in a video game well like if i said you have to treat the npcs as real people you have to try and engage in conversation with them i don't care if it means you've got to hack the game you've got to explore their needs their childhoods you've got to explore their wants and desires and fears and really get to know them as people like if i were to say to you, that's what you need to do in skyrim or baldest gate or wherever what would you say no.
[1:29:02] I'm i would be kind of annoyed and i'd say well no i'm i'm deciding where to go.
[1:29:08] Right i.
[1:29:09] Don't want to be bothered by this yeah the wishes of an npc or try to figure it out that's not why i'm playing this.
[1:29:16] Right. So that's your father's irritation.
[1:29:21] Right.
[1:29:22] Because you're an NPC saying, I'm not an NPC. And he says, well, you are, and the only thing that I'm going to tell you to indicate that you're not an NPC is to give you the advice to treat everyone like an NPC. That's how you do it.
[1:29:50] And that you're saying that's the only thing that indicates that i'm not an npc.
[1:29:55] Right so if your npc kept bothering you and saying well why aren't you thinking about me and why aren't you talking about me like imagine if you you blocked into you you booted up skyrim, and, And the NPC said to you, did you talk about me outside of the game yesterday? What would you say?
[1:30:31] Um but that that that shouldn't that's not a business that shouldn't that you shouldn't care about that that's not the point of this.
[1:30:38] Right and that's what your father said to you right yeah, you'd say what no you're an mpc why would i talk about you outside of the game, you're here to serve me when i'm going on my quests so what do you mean what why why would i talk about you outside the game right which is like you saying to your parents what did you talk about me no why would he talk about you yeah.
[1:31:09] That explains kind of also the way he expressed it that he's actually like exactly that that kind of response as well like but this is ridiculous why.
[1:31:20] Would you you're an npc why would i talk about you outside the game yeah he was laughing about I was like.
[1:31:27] What?
[1:31:27] Yeah. There's no side quest called talking about the NPC. So that's their perspective. Now, of course, you can say to your father, I'm not an NPC, but it doesn't really matter. Because in his mind, in the mind of a selfish person, everyone else is an NPC. Now if your npc proves to be difficult right let's say you've got to finish this quest to complete the game or get some big giant upgrade of your sword or something like that, and there are five npcs around and one npc says there's no way i'm going to go do that quest and all the other npcs are like yeah i could do that quest which one are you going to choose.
[1:32:25] The one that says yeah.
[1:32:26] Right i.
[1:32:27] Can do that.
[1:32:27] Now even if you've been playing for a hundred hours and the npc has been sort of floating around and casting spells and fighting or whatever, is it really that wrenching to say well in order to finish the game or get this giant upgrade i need to switch npcs, Would that be a huge, wrenching, horrible thing?
[1:32:55] No.
[1:32:56] No, you'd be like, I'd just swap out the NPCs because the next part of the quest is something they don't want to do. You wouldn't negotiate with them. You wouldn't, like, be wrenching. Oh, my gosh, you wouldn't be up late. You'd be like, oh, my God, this is so terrible. I've been with this person for 100 hours. You know, it'd be just like, okay, well, I can't remember. There was some game. Gosh, what was it? There was some game where you go through a portal and you can just choose all of these different NPCs and you're supposed to swap them in and out. I can't remember the game. I don't think I played it that much, so it probably wasn't Baldur's Gate, but you go in and like, oh, here's so-and-so and here's so-and-so. You walk through this ghostly area and you can pick out all these NPCs. So I remember, oh boy, this is way back in the day. There was a game called Dungeon Master or something like that for the old Atari 520ST. And you start in the game and there's all these portraits and you choose your NPCs. I think you can swap them out. So if you've got a quest and the NPC doesn't want to do it without regret, you just swap them out, right?
[1:33:54] Yeah.
[1:33:55] Okay. So that's why your parents got divorced.
[1:34:02] Right. It's just like, well, this doesn't get me where I want to go.
[1:34:04] Yeah. Like I'm going on this quest. If you don't want to go on the quest, I mean, that's fine. But, you know, we'll part ways.
[1:34:12] Right. That's just very simple.
[1:34:14] Because the quest is never a person the quest is never a person the quest is never virtue the quest is just getting stuff doing stuff make a new building get some more money uh you know uh get an award buy a new house it's all just material quests the way they are generally in video games yeah.
[1:34:37] You just swap them no problem.
[1:34:40] Yeah swap them out man oh shoot i need a wizard for the next part of the quest. Okay, bye-bye, Barbarian. Maybe I'll come back later, but I'm going with the wizard because it's just about the quest. And you don't sit there and say, oh my gosh, if I dump my Barbarian, he's going to get really depressed. He's going to be really sad. No, it's just like, oh, I need some different pixels for the next part of the quest. Right? I need different skills and abilities and blah, blah, blah, right?
[1:35:17] So, that's why your parents get divorced, and that's why there isn't any particular animosity. Because it's like, oh, well, you know, I mean, I guess this NPC is programmed to not come with me on this quest. So, I mean, no hate or anything like that, but I'll just get a different NPC, right? And if no NPCs want to go on the quest, or if the NPCs are just difficult. I mean, if you can imagine a game, you have to complete a central quest, but none of the NPCs want to do it. In fact, they'll oppose you doing it, like they'll steal your armor in the middle of the night, or they'll side with the enemy, or they'll take your gold, or something like that, right? So if you have a quest that you want to complete, but the NPCs are just in the way, they make it negative, will you pick any NPCs?
[1:36:17] No if i can i would just do it by myself they would kind of become like the enemy.
[1:36:21] Right and that's why your father that's why your father is saying i don't think i'm gonna get another partner i think i'm gonna just go it alone because the npcs keep interfering in my quest.
[1:36:35] Yeah yeah this makes it more difficult.
[1:36:38] Oh yeah that they're not aiding my quest Because my quest is not connection. My quest is not love. My quest is not merging of self and other. My quest is not virtue or any of that stuff.
[1:36:50] My quest is just getting, making, building, earning, climbing, acquiring, defeating.
[1:37:07] Yeah, that also would explain why he does seem to just keep going, too. It's like, oh, no, I'm going to. It's almost as if he is. Yeah, no, it's definitely that way. Because to me, it's been appalling. It's been appalling, like, well, why are you living then? What are you doing this for? What's the point?
[1:37:31] Well but of course you can say with the video games what's the point right i i think i remember dr phil sort of many years ago he had a guy on he's like oh i got this great new sword in ever quest and he's like but do you have anything real they're just pixels and i mean it's it's a fair question now of course i get all of that i mean my daughter and i are playing chess and uh maybe it's just my ancient warrior genes but i get kind of wound up about chess but it's like i gotta win oh my god i let my flank exposed oh i'm gonna lose the war like my whole warrior instincts get oh it's a battle yeah oh it is it is a battle and it is there to train you in war and strategy and all of that so i get but i i mean obviously i i have to remind myself it's a game there's no stakes right, um yeah so with with life yeah i mean sometimes we'll play these games but of course the big question is if you say to your father what's the point the the other equal question is what's the point of the video games you play do you still play at all.
[1:38:38] Yeah i think i've taken a long break from it but now i'm kind of just dabbling back into games i really liked and actually actually enjoying it like.
[1:38:49] To a new level there's no point to the games right no other than you enjoy them and i i i don't have a negative relationship to video games as a whole i mean i think, you know obviously they can go too far you can be addicted and so on but, they're a lot of fun they're uh easy socializing uh and they do teach you thinking planning strategy all that kind of stuff so i i don't have any particular hate on for uh video games but there's no particular point video games have value in that it helps you enjoy life but hopefully it also serves you to develop skills that help you in your life right Yeah.
[1:39:35] For sure, yeah.
[1:39:36] It's like Beat Saber would help you with swordplay, I think, or something like that. So, so... So, what I want to sort of get across is that for your father, it's a video game, and everyone else is an avatar. I assume this is true for your mother as well, because if you get a narcissist together with an empath, they simply don't comprehend each other. They can't have a really narcissists can't really have a relationship with anyone but it's just they don't they don't understand and and narcissism is a way of spreading depression, right because the narcissist is depressed because they actually have no contact and they're also living a contradictory lie which is i have needs and they're really important i'm a human being with needs and my needs are really important. Other human beings also have needs, but they're not important.
[1:40:50] Because, of course, in a game, everybody knows the NPCs are just programmed. Maybe they have AI NPCs coming up at some point, but that's obviously a pretty heavy-duty chunk of processing. But everyone knows it's dialogue wheels and trees, and you can only pick certain responses. It's all just a bunch of programming, right? So we know that they're not real. But the narcissist is surrounded by incredibly vivid NPCs, right? He knows deep down in his heart, he knows that other people are just like him, have their own needs and preferences. So he has to live a horrible contradiction. The horrible contradiction is, I'm a human being. I have needs. Those needs are very important. Other people are human beings. They have needs. Their needs are not important. They're only irritants. My needs are absolutely essential for myself. Other people's needs are just an irritant and an annoyance. People are both people and npcs at the same time that's a horrible contradiction, and wherever there's a horrible contradiction there is depression.
[1:42:00] Because you're simply denying the facts and truth of life and if you say everyone else is fundamentally different from me i have needs my needs are really important other people's needs are unimportant, you have just alienated yourself from all of humanity. You have become a solipsistic mirror of self-regard, and you have fundamentally distanced yourself from all of humanity because you're saying, they are human beings, but they're the opposite of me. So imagine if you woke up tomorrow with a certain knowledge, like it wasn't crazy, let's say you had some proof. But let's say you woke up tomorrow with the certain knowledge that you were living in a simulation, a matrix, and there was no way out.
[1:42:56] You woke up tomorrow, you could see The Matrix, everyone was an NPC. It wasn't even like that Jim Carrey movie where he's in a bunch of commercials pretending to be a real life. But you woke up tomorrow, no one is real. You're the only person, everyone else is a simulation. Let's say you found out they were robots or that they were cunning AI hallucinations imprinted on your eyes or something like that. So if you woke up tomorrow knowing that you were the only person and everyone else was a simulation, artificial, a robot, how would you feel?
[1:43:47] Well i would feel, i would feel depressed.
[1:43:53] Right and that's what i'm pointing at yeah that's why narcissism is always a cover for depression and then feeds the depression, because you'd wake up and people would be smiling at you but you'd know it was all fake, yeah people would say i like you but it would just be programming, you just have a bunch of dialogue wheels and what would be the point what would be the point of getting to know anyone what would be the point of imagining or pretending you had any kind of connection with people that would all be a delusion right.
[1:44:35] Yeah and and and you're saying that that that would that that could also make it worse in a sense that if if one of them would like just keep trying like showing this emotion and trying to make that connection.
[1:44:55] Sorry say that again i wasn't sure i quite caught that.
[1:44:57] Well it has seemed to me that like because i i feel like i have really tried in different ways like i'm trying to express my emotion more to him and trying to uh like.
[1:45:11] You're trying to become real yeah yeah it's not real you're trying to become real to him yeah right so you're an npc reaching out of the screen saying you can't go to the concert because i want to talk about our relationship, right and this.
[1:45:30] Would just make him more annoyed.
[1:45:31] Right like what the hell what yeah no you're not real that's.
[1:45:37] What you mean it's like it feeds into it like it's it's.
[1:45:40] Well once you treat people as NPCs, so the final boss of NPCdom, if you're ready for it?
[1:45:48] Yeah.
[1:45:48] So, the reason why people get depressed when they're narcissistic is because, the only way to treat others as NPCs is to become an NPC yourself.
[1:46:10] Because then they stop bothering you.
[1:46:15] Well, fundamentally, we're not, you know, your father is not insane, people who are selfish, they're not crazy. I think that they're not well, but they're not crazy. So if you're going to say human beings are NPCs, then deep down, you know that you're a human being. And let me ask you this, if you've ever spun through, as I show you have thousands of times, if you've ever spun through the dialogue wheel of NPC conversations, you have also become an NPC. Because you're only choosing from the dialogue options presented by NPCs, which means you have no free will in the interaction. You can't talk about anything you want, you can only talk about the four options on the screen. So if you treat people as NPCs, you yourself become an NPC. You are an NPC when you're interacting with an NPC, because it's different from a conversation like this. You couldn't have a conversation like this with someone in Skyrim, right?
[1:47:27] Right.
[1:47:29] So when you treat people as npcs, you become an npc so if you treat people as npcs what you do is you say okay okay i want something, from this person uh i want something from this person so i have to figure out what makes them tick and then i have to apply positive or negative pressure on them in order to get them to do what i want. So all you're doing is trying to pick a lock. So by treating people as NPCs, I'm sure that you've had this in video games where you need to get a piece of information from an NPC. And maybe you can try bribe, or maybe you can try intimidate, or maybe you can try a charisma role, or maybe you can go through the whole dialogue tree and hunt for that particular piece of information that you need, right? You've gone through that process before, right? Yeah so you're just trying to figure out what combination of luck and skill is needed to unlock the information the npc has and so you have become an npc by seeking out information from an npc because the game is giving you very limited options on what you can do to get that information. Does that make sense?
[1:48:54] Yes. Yeah, I think so. Basically, you can't be creative in that sense, right?
[1:49:01] Yeah, you can't connect.
[1:49:03] In some way, you have to be creative with the... Well, not in a game. It's not like you can think of a new way to get the solutions. You have to use the options given to you.
[1:49:18] Right there's no such thing in skyrim of saying i really need this information, for personal psychological moral or like you can't engage in a conversation you can't win the person over you can't become real to that npc you just have to plod through the dialogue wheels until you get what you want so you have you have limited your own free will to picking from a very predefined set of paths. You know, like if you wake up in a field, you can go anywhere, right? You can walk in any direction. But if you wake up in a maze and you're hungry, let's say you've got to get out of the maze, then you can only go where the maze allows you to go and you go back and forth until you find your way out of the maze, right?
[1:50:05] Yeah.
[1:50:06] So waking up in a field is a conversation with a person. waking up in a maze is.
[1:50:13] Very limited right yeah, yeah yeah that completely connects with like how I when I'm growing up how I felt about conversations as well like how I felt about going into conversations.
[1:50:31] Right. And I'm like, yeah, I'm just sorry, you go ahead. I've had a long, long old chat. So please go ahead.
[1:50:36] Well it just one it just came up for me that like for the longest yeah well because nobody was really talking to me too but whenever i knew a conversation would be coming up or i knew i had to interact with i had to interact with with somebody um it i felt annoyed and i just was constantly beforehand thinking about okay what can i say and if i say this what would the other person say and if that person says this what can i say um and that would just be it wouldn't be real in that it wouldn't feel real in that sense anymore and it would just be like uh basically like a game and figuring out what is the best way to get well for me usually would be what's the quickest way to get out of this right.
[1:51:23] Or if you want something and this is so people rehearse conversations because they know they know that they're dealing with npcs, so you have to figure.
[1:51:34] Out the input.
[1:51:34] Outputs that you have to pursue the maze paths that you have to pursue in order to get what you want.
[1:51:40] Yes yeah yeah that's why when you said the maze thing it's like i immediately thought of that that makes sense why yeah so.
[1:51:51] If my wife let's say my wife wants to go to a farmer's market, right? Now, I don't particularly love farmer's markets, but I love my wife. So she doesn't have to sit there and say, well, okay, how am I going to get my husband to go to a farmer's market? Okay, well, I went with him to a renaissance fair. So, you know, whatever. Like, so I can bring that up or, you know, I can point out that he hasn't been getting much sunshine lately. Or I can say that we can pick up some healthy food. Or I can say, well, let's stop at an electronic store on the way home and you can browse stuff you're never going to buy. She would have to sit there and say, what combination of positive or negative incentives can I arrange in order to get my husband to come with me to the farmer's market? But she doesn't have to do any of that. She has to say, I'd really like it if we went to the farmer's market today. And assuming I have the time and ability to do it, I'm like, great, let's go. Do I love farmer's markets? No, but I love time with my wife and I love her and I want to make her happy. So her happiness is my happiness. And I also know, and this is not a bargain, but it's just based upon almost a quarter century of knowing her. I also know that if I want her to do something that she's not particularly in love with, she'll do it too. So we don't have to rehearse all of these things because we're not dealing with NPCs.
[1:53:08] Yeah, that's just amazing when you see that difference. Yeah, when you describe the difference to it. And this is definitely what I've been experiencing in the years, basically more so since I left the house and I started living by myself and actually exploring the world, kind of amazed by this, even that that exists. You know feel and also kind of overwhelmed with that kind of all that all that freedom and feeling like uh yeah like i don't have to think about those things i don't have to worry about those things.
[1:53:47] So are you ready to take on the drug use yeah okay so that's why i asked you earlier what your experience of marijuana was and we did talk about it and i know i led the conversation but i think you agreed and if you don't obviously let me know but it seemed to me that marijuana had some effect of disinhibiting which alcohol does for some people as well to just disinhibit yeah people and you said you got like ideas for like three really great creative video games out of that right yeah right so the purpose of drugs for most people is to DNPC them. Because NPCs is inhibition. Well, I can't just state what I think and feel and like and prefer. I have to navigate this maze of trying to get what I want by finding the right buttons of rewards and punishments to push in other people.
[1:54:52] So NPC is to be inhibited in the same way if you're stuck in a maze, you're inhibited in where you can go as to where the maze passages are, right?
[1:55:04] So, drugs, for most people, is an attempt to escape the inhibitions of NPC programming.
[1:55:19] And as you are generally more authentic and direct with people, the desire for drugs goes down.
[1:55:28] Yes. Yeah, certainly.
[1:55:35] So the last thing that I would say, and obviously I'm happy to get your feedback going forward, but the last thing I'll say is this.
[1:55:44] If you suddenly found out that your your companion or your npc in skyrim was in fact a sovereign consciousness that had gotten trapped in a video game from another dimension or you know just make up whatever scenario you want where you suddenly realize that the npc and again this would be a pretty wild story or game or movie or whatever it is where your npc is suddenly talking about things outside of the dialogue wheels having their own thoughts and preferences of their own their own backstory that wasn't contained in the documentation or anything like that right, that would be a wild experience to wake up to the npc right my god this is actually a consciousness this is like a real thing yeah now if the npc you wake up to the npc, and the npc were to say bro you treated me like shit for like two years you never asked me what i wanted you never took my thoughts and feelings into consideration you just did whatever the hell you wanted and i was just supposed to drag along like some drunken water skier behind your boat of selfishness why like you treated me like shit bro what would you say.
[1:57:07] That that doesn't matter because that's the because what matters is what i want to do in this game or at least yeah like.
[1:57:16] No no you're not you're not with me yet okay so the npc is saying you better apologize to me man you treated me like shit for two years you just did whatever the hell you wanted to and you just never asked me anything you treated me like shit you asshole, or whatever right what would you say in return how would you defend yourself.
[1:57:52] I had no choice. I had to choose between what was given to me.
[1:57:58] No, no, not yet. This is the barrier. This is the final boss for you, right?
[1:58:02] I appreciate that. I have trouble switching between it being an NPC and it being a consciousness.
[1:58:09] Okay, so the consciousness has now proven to you that it's a sovereign consciousness, right? And says to you, you treated me like... You didn't take any of my... You treated me terribly for two years. What have you got to say for yourself?
[1:58:26] Well, I think that's where I had the trouble. It's like, now I have to see this as an actual consciousness. I would feel absolutely sorry. Like, I would start apologizing. Or at least...
[1:58:39] Okay. No, you wouldn't.
[1:58:40] I would be... No, I would be wondering...
[1:58:44] No, you wouldn't start apologizing because you have a defense. What's your defense as to why you didn't take the NPC's thoughts and feelings into consideration while playing the game for two years?
[1:59:05] Because I want to finish the quest.
[1:59:12] Why did you not take the NPC's thoughts, feelings into consideration for two years? Is it because you're just a selfish guy who doesn't care about people? Why did you not think about what the NPC wanted while playing the game for two years before you realized the NPC was a consciousness?
[1:59:28] Because they'd never show me that they had a consciousness.
[1:59:32] Exactly. I had no reason to believe you were real. Your defense is you're an NPC, you're a piece of code it would actually be crazy to imagine you were real.
[1:59:49] Yeah yeah I think that's what I meant when I said like well this is just what's the point this just was giving to me I just had to work with what was given to me to finish the quest like to go where I need to go there was no, consideration of there being a consciousness.
[2:00:05] Right. It's one thing to order a creepy sex doll. It's quite another thing to chat with her, take her out to dinner, ask her how she's doing, right?
[2:00:13] Yeah.
[2:00:14] Sex doll, right?
[2:00:15] Yeah.
[2:00:16] Some sort of Liza the Real Girl kind of thing. So if the NPC says, why did you treat me like crap for two years, you jerk, you would say, I had zero reason to believe you were real. It would have been crazy for me to interact with you as a real person when you are in fact an NPC, the healthiest thing to do is to use you to imagine that you're real would be a bizarre delusion oh.
[2:00:53] Right yeah that would make me crazy.
[2:00:55] Right that's empathy for your father, You're an NPC. It would be insane for me to treat you as a real person. It's incomprehensible. Only crazy people treat NPCs like they're real people. And that's why he says to you, that's why I really wanted to focus on your dad. That's why he said to you, man, just, what do you care? Worry about yourself. Just be an npc treat people as npcs right.
[2:01:40] I think that my mom and or my dad had have even said something like that well you're just making yourself crazy like this you're just go like.
[2:01:50] Yeah if you you start taking everyone's needs and thoughts and feelings into consideration you can't play the game like you're just gonna go nuts yeah right so pretending that robots are people, is crazy pretending npcs are people is crazy.
[2:02:17] All right are you ready for the final point yes yeah all right so the final point is, you're taking it personally you think that being treated by an NPC, so it's NPD narcissistic personality disorder NPC we'll just say is narcissistic personality condition NPC alright so you think that being treated by an NPC as an NPC means something about you, that your parents have judged you as a child, have found you wanting. He's just not that interesting. He just doesn't quite rouse our attention. I don't get any particular... He does not spark joy. I do not get any particular pleasure out of interacting with this kid. And so, you feel that being treated as an NPC by NPCs means something about you.
[2:03:29] Now if i were talking to a secondary character in skyrim and the secondary character was saying oh this guy he doesn't care at all about me he just uses me to fight his battles, i'd be like don't take it personally he doesn't know that you're real, he's not judging or evaluating you he doesn't care enough about you because he doesn't think you're real you're just a variable you're just green code in the matrix, he doesn't know that you're real he doesn't think that you're real so don't take it personally, oh but you know he wants to go fight the dragon on the mountain he never asks me anything he just walks and i i guess i just feel compelled to follow him along and i'm i i'm clearly indicating like my head is pointing down, I'm walking a little slowly, I'm clearly indicating, that I'm sad or depressed and he's not asking me anything he's like, he doesn't think you're real, don't take it personally, the deficiency is on his side.
[2:04:42] Right, there's these jokes again in Skyrim that every time you want to go somewhere, the NPC is in the way. Get out of the way. Stop standing in the doorway. Let me get behind. They shudder and glitch. And right. I want to go somewhere. Get out of the way. Right. Now, you wouldn't, of course, you wouldn't talk to someone like that in real life, but it's just kind of a funny joke in Skyrim because they're not real. I mean, how many people have you killed in video games? Have you shot, zoomed in sniper style, Unreal Tournament style, or whatever it is, Halo? How many people have you shot in video games? It's not real. But you watch Charlie Kirk getting shot, and it's a visceral horror that, for me, has lasted close to two weeks.
[2:05:38] Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
[2:05:40] So that's real. That's a real guy getting shot, not some avatar saying, I can't feel my legs. So that's real and, for narcissists they're not judging you, all they're doing is giving you marks for convenience or inconvenience that's all they're doing and this is why earlier i was talking about look if you have to swap out npcs to finish the quest, you'll do that because all you're doing is saying, is this NPC more or less valuable for what I want to do? If I'm already a wizard, I guess I need a fighter. If I'm already a fighter, I guess I need a wizard. You're just giving the NPCs points for utility or disutility. Does that make sense?
[2:06:37] Yeah.
[2:06:37] But you're not judging them. You're only judging their utility to you this is why i asked earlier did you have a playstation and you said yes i think your parents bought you a console right yeah right so why did they buy you a console because it improved your utility or it reduced your disc utility, Because my guess is, I obviously don't know your father, but my guess is something like this. Your father came home, if you were sitting around bored, how would he feel?
[2:07:20] I'm not.
[2:07:21] Right. I've just worked all day. I've had a tough day. And now I've got to what? Entertain this kid? Oh, my God. Right. That's a disutility. He didn't sit there and say, man, after a tough day, what could be more fun than having a game of Monopoly with my kid? Like, isn't that going to be a blast, right? He was like here's another side quest I don't want to do, right? yeah, so that's bad for him that's a negative for him right? Yeah so what does he do how does he remove reduce or eliminate that side quest.
[2:08:21] He gives me something so um i won't bother him i'm busy with myself.
[2:08:28] He gives you an invisibility spell called a console.
[2:08:37] Yep it'll be like what what do you want whatever you want there it is.
[2:08:41] Whatever makes you not be a negative to me i will get, i mean honestly it's the same thing as you know the guys who want to go rob a house they bring uh drugged meat for the dog right, So that the dog doesn't interfere with their business. Sorry, you said something. You said, oh, and I wanted to know what that was.
[2:09:07] Yeah. This comes back to like at some point when I was very young, I actually stopped celebrating my birthday altogether. I just removed it from the calendar. It's just like, no, we're not doing this anymore. Because my whole family started asking me, what do you want? What do you want? Anything, anything. And I would just say, I don't know what I want. I want nothing. I don't want anything. And I remember that the response would often be frustration and annoyance like they would keep pushing and pushing as if like well we need to give you something you need to do something or be busy with something, and it would be like yeah it's not like they would have more interest in what I would want or try to help me out to find out what I would want, but it would it seems to be just irritation.
[2:09:58] Well and also the fact that they didn't know what you want meant that meant that they didn't know you.
[2:10:03] Yeah yeah that was clear yeah so.
[2:10:07] The irritation is you know give us a variable that we can satisfy because we have no idea what the variables are.
[2:10:13] Yeah means.
[2:10:15] We don't know you.
[2:10:18] Yeah and we don't want to get to.
[2:10:20] Know you so just tell us what to get we'll get it and we'll deliver it and we'll call ourselves good parents.
[2:10:27] Yes. And I stopped with that because I realized that if I only said one thing, they would immediately get that.
[2:10:36] Right. Right. Now I'm going to guess, I'm going to guess that that one thing was never something that you all could do together as a family no no like if you said hey you know dad what i really want is for us to go away for a long weekend camping or to a cottage or something like that right what would he say.
[2:11:07] Well, that's, it's hard for me to imagine.
[2:11:11] Well, what would he say? What I really want for my birthday dad is let's, let's you and I go to a resort for a long weekend and, you know, spend some great time together.
[2:11:24] Well, he would be like, well, I'd have to put this aside and I'd have to figure out when we could do that. And it probably won't work out. Like I'm busy with work.
[2:11:34] Yeah. It's inconvenient, right? it has negative utility points for him.
[2:11:39] Yeah, well, the interesting thing is that at some point there was one specific period where he suddenly arranged, like he thought of this idea of like, well, okay, now we're going to just, how would you like going to a zoo? And like every month we'll go to a new zoo.
[2:11:58] Right.
[2:11:59] And he just, out of nowhere, came with that idea, and I was like, well, okay, I guess we could try you could like and it i remember these trips as to be like very uncomfortable and awkward and after a couple times i think i would even say like well let's just let's not do this anymore because it's just making me more depressed.
[2:12:25] Yeah because you're not connecting right yeah right it so the journey towards the npc state of mind we don't really have to get into that i'll maybe do a show on that at some point but we don't really have to get into it but the point is that your father did he become an npc or let's just say was he selfish over the did he become selfish over the course of you knowing him or was he selfish as far back as you can remember.
[2:13:01] Well, he was selfish, as far as I can remember.
[2:13:04] Right. So you didn't make him into an NPC, or you didn't make him selfish. He was that way when you met him.
[2:13:11] Yeah.
[2:13:12] Now, why? So, and to go back to the scenario where I said, what if you found the NPC in Skyrim was actually a sovereign consciousness whose needs you'd been ignoring for a couple of years, and they were outraged, you'd say, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, right? So apologizing is what the narcissist is always avoiding. And that means that the narcissist cannot, process your independent existence because it would mean endless apologizing for having been so selfish and once somebody has i don't know maybe it's some brain thing deep down or whatever but i think that the way that it goes is we're all tempted by little selfish things and then we're all tempted by justifying things. And I think that narcissism, I don't think it just emerges, like maybe with severe trauma or something like that, but not just the death of a father, because that happens throughout evolution. That's happened quite a bit. But I think what happens is there's little selfish choices. You do something at the expense of someone else, and then you just justify it.
[2:14:20] And then, because you've justified it, it's easier to do it the next time. It's like, how do people become fat if they're not sort of fat as kids? Well, they say, oh, I deserve a treat. I've worked really hard. I deserve a treat. And then they go have a treat, right? And then they work hard again, and they, oh, well, you know, I guess the reward for me working hard is to have a treat. So they have another treat. And so the justifications breed the behavior, which breed the requirement for additional justifications which then causes further so i think it kind of goes exponentially up from initial choices i'm kind of by the by it's what i'm writing my novel about these little choices at the beginning of things that lead to vastly different lives later on so i think that for your father whatever environmental stimuli and whatever choices he made there's only a certain number of choices you can make before you can't turn back yeah so let me ask you this do you think that it's possible for you to go out into the world and treat people as npcs do you think that emotionally, I don't mean intellectually, emotionally, is it possible for you to go out into the world and to treat people as utility objects that only serve your pleasures and preferences?
[2:15:47] No.
[2:15:48] It's not possible. It's an involuntary mechanism, right?
[2:15:52] Yeah, I can't do it.
[2:15:53] You can't do it. I can't sit there and look at my wife and say, well, she's just a utility object for my preference right i always want to think about what she thinks and feels and and so on right so so it is as impossible for your father to empathize with you as it is for you to not empathize with others he can't turn it on any more than you can turn it off, You're asking the impossible. Just as if you were to say, well, the only way that I can be happy is to stop caring about what anyone else thinks and feels and to pretend that they're NPCs and not real. You can't do that because it's kind of hardwired and baked into, you know, both maybe some genetics, maybe some, certainly some environment, but I would say a lot of choices. He can't empathize any more than you can de-empathize.
[2:16:56] Yeah, he's too far into it.
[2:17:01] And that's something I've been thinking about too. Because people do have, it seems like you start with the freedom of choice, but the more choices you make towards that, NPC state and the more justifications you have, the harder it seems to become to, to to get away from that right.
[2:17:26] Well so the analogy that i would use i think you're right the analogy that i would use is i have chosen not to learn japanese, Now, if I go to Japan, I can't speak Japanese. I've chosen not to. And I could have at any point in my life chosen to start learning Japanese and dedicated myself to learning Japanese and spent 10 years or whatever it is to learn Japanese, but I haven't done that. So the result of all of my little choices to not learn Japanese are that I don't speak Japanese. And I go to Japan, I can't speak the language. So whatever choices your father has made, I'm sure that there were flashes where he's like, ooh, you know, that seemed a bit selfish or ooh, my kid's sad, maybe I should. Because I've known people who are really selfish actually quite well. And when I've talked to them directly, they've always told me every single one, and it's not scientific, but it's also not irrelevant. But every single person who's selfish has told me, oh, I did look at this person. I thought that they were sad and I thought maybe I should go and talk to them, but I just thought maybe I'll do it later. Whatever it is, right? Or I thought, ah, they've brought it on themselves or whatever it is, right? Because what selfish people do is they make everyone around them unhappy, and then they say that the other people are to blame for their own unhappiness. This really happens from parents to children.
[2:18:43] So every selfish person I've known, and I've had quite a window over the last 20 years, and I was even having these conversations before I was a public figure. I've had insight, deep insight into thousands of people's, you know, psyches. And every selfish person I've talked to both on the show and not on the show, although very few people call in who are selfish, they've always had these forks in the road, right? They've always had these forks in the road where they say, oh, I should be nicer, I should be better. I even knew one selfish person who said, like, I woke up every day promising myself I was going to be nicer, and I just never did.
[2:19:21] Wow. Wow.
[2:19:24] And after a certain point, there's no turning back. And certainly, if you've messed up as a parent by the time your kids become adults, I mean, it's done. You can't fix it because they're already adults. It's like trying to say, well, I didn't feed you enough, kid, when you were younger, so you're short. So now that you're 25, I'm going to start feeding you 4,000 calories a day. That's not going to fix it, right? It's too late. And after it becomes too late to fix, there's no path back. Because narcissism is saying, my pleasure is all that matters. And apologizing and realizing you were a bad person is incredibly painful. And if you're a hedonist which is what narcissists are if you're a hedonist then you only do what is pleasurable you avoid pain and pursue pleasure and since apologizing and realizing that you've been woefully deficient in a pretty foundational manner is incredibly painful they don't have any muscles to sustain negative experiences without anger at others right.
[2:20:32] Yeah that makes total sense.
[2:20:34] They have not learned.
[2:20:36] To deal with it. And plus, the longer they don't do that, the more painful that becomes, of course.
[2:20:43] Right. And the only equation that selfish people have is, if you make me feel bad, I will make you feel bad. They don't have, ooh, you know, you're kind of onto something there and I really should examine my conscience and so on, right? That's all they have. And this was Charlie Kirk, right? Charlie Kirk was making leftists feel bad. So leftists made him feel bad and his whole movement. That's all that selfish people have. You make me feel bad, I will make you feel worse. You put my heart in the hospital, I'll put yours in the morgue. That's all they have is escalation and aggression. After the manipulation fails and so on, right?
[2:21:24] Yeah, yeah. For me, it's always been like, well, why are you doing this? This just makes things worse for everybody in the long term. But for them, it works.
[2:21:33] Well, because you're thinking this makes it worse for everybody, which is like saying, I want to go fight the dragon on the mountain. This makes it worse for the NPC. Like you don't even think of what the NPC, there is no everyone else out there things could be better or worse for. There's only what you want. So it's not personal to you. You didn't fail. You didn't fail to make yourself real to your father. He didn't judge you and find you wanting or boring or less interesting than work or anything like that. You're an NPC. He's an NPC. He's a machine programmed to serve his own preferences and needs in the moment.
[2:22:18] It's not personal. You know, like my mother literally screamed that she hated me, but it wasn't personal. It wasn't like, oh my gosh, I'm such a hateful kid. I was actually a pretty nice kid. I'm a pretty nice person as a whole, right? But I mean, what she was saying was me having a child is interfering with dating. I want to get a high quality, wealthy man to commit to me, but he won't commit to me because I'm a single mother. And so I hate that you're in the way of me getting what I want. It wasn't personal to me. It wasn't like if she'd had some other kid, it would have been great. I was in the category of child, which put her in the category of single mother, which put her in the category of date but don't marry.
[2:23:12] And she didn't hate me. She hated her own choices. she hated her own um anyway i won't don't need to go through the whole list but i mean it had it didn't have anything to do with me she would have hated any child that she had because any child, would have interfered with her ability to land a high value man wasn't understand it's not personal to me didn't hate me i mean she said it but it wasn't it wasn't personal to me.
[2:23:48] Yeah it had nothing to do with your personality.
[2:23:51] Oh yeah no it wasn't just like if you've ever seen like there's a couple of ways that you find out people's patience right one is watch them try to untangle christmas tree lights and the other is you know you go someplace and your luggage gets lost or something like that see how they handle it so i mean i don't know how your father was with frustration, but if your father had issues with frustration, you know, these fucking lamps, you know, this crystal tangled, right, blah, blah, blah, right? Well, that's, I mean, are they really morally judging the Christmas tree lights as being fractious and negative and interfering and blah, blah, blah, blah. No, they're not doing any of that. They're just annoyed because they're not getting what they want, which is to be able to hang the Christmas tree lights. So they're angry. they're angry at metal and plastic that that's it and that's not a moral judgment, and it wasn't like if they had a different set of christmas tree lights that were tangled they'd be equally angry does that make sense doesn't matter it's not specific to the christmas tree lights it's anything that's tangled that they want to straighten that's difficult, yeah and so any kid would have been treated the same as you it's not personal.
[2:25:10] I mean, if you're in a war and you've got to shoot guys, you're not like, oh, I hate that guy. It's not personal. It's business. And to an NPC, nothing is personal. It's all business.
[2:25:24] It just happened to be me, but it wouldn't have mattered to them.
[2:25:29] No, you are a variable that sometimes increases their happiness and sometimes decreases their happiness based upon what they like or don't like in the moment. You're just a variable and if you're inconvenient they'll get mad right like if if you live in a house and you have a water heater and the water heater fails you're you're upset right i mean probably not terribly right it's just an annoyance and expense but not a big a big thing, but it wouldn't be like well if i had a different water heater that that failed i'd be fine, all kids have needs and the only way that you could survive selfishness was to have no needs and i would also argue that your i would say probably addiction to video games when you were younger was an attempt to understand your parents minds, what is it like now when only my needs matter.
[2:26:32] Yeah yeah yeah.
[2:26:34] What is it like if everyone around me is an npc and only my quest matters, and i i judge them based upon their utility in achieving my quest i never think about their needs or their preference i think and again i'm not saying for the multiplayer games because that's a little bit different but in terms of the solo games uh solo games uh train you on, understanding narcissism and i think it actually trains some people on narcissism because you don't have to negotiate with NPCs. They just do what you want or you dump them. And it trains people to not pair bond. But anyway, that's a whole topic for another time. But I would say that that was probably one of the reasons why you found the game so compelling is A, you had to have some kind of interaction and B, it was training you on your parents' mindset, I would imagine.
[2:27:20] Yeah well i remember well back in the day it was like online games multiplayer games were not that much of a thing yet but and that was definitely i was fascinated by that and i was trying like because i was really fascinated by the split screen games like games i could play with somebody else yeah so i think i i was really trying as as early as possible like i kind of started to have this disgust for single player games and i really at some point i really kind of avoided them because so isolating right it's yeah really isolating like why would i even want to do this by myself is anybody alive in here nobody yes.
[2:27:56] Yeah well and but even the even the split screen games and so on you're not really negotiating with other people usually i mean if it's like a.
[2:28:06] Racing game.
[2:28:06] You're just competing with other people even if it's a co-op kind of game you know uh like my daughter and I will play Rocket League from time to time. Even if it's a, you're not really negotiating. You're just, oh, I'm over here. Oh, pass the ball. Oh, I'm in front of the goal. Like you're just passing back information to help you achieve the quest, but you're not really delving into the other person's thoughts history needs. And again, I'm not saying it's a terrible thing, but it's not the same as having a relationship.
[2:28:33] No, no, sure.
[2:28:34] It's a slightly more vivid NPC.
[2:28:37] Yeah, yeah.
[2:28:40] All right, well, listen, we've had a good old jawbone. How's the conversation been for you as a whole?
[2:28:45] Oh, it's been great. It's been great. I think you really, you tackled exactly what has been an issue for me basically my whole life. And I didn't expect to be talking about that. But that is definitely that seems to have been coming back in conversations too. And like friends telling me like, hey, like you're taking this. I actually had this a couple of days ago. like a good a good friend of mine told me like it seems sounds like you're taking these things very very personally and he seemed like very kind of uh he was very.
[2:29:21] Empathetic like that's another insult to you and i hope that you don't think i yeah i've said that you're deficient in any way when i say it's not personal because you can't just say to people well you're taking things way too personally that doesn't really help yeah and also it's just i'm not saying your friend's dissing you but it just seems like another kind of dick like hey man just don't take it personally It's like, uh, it's not that simple, right? Like if somebody's sick, like, Hey man, just get better. It's like, if I knew how to do that anyway.
[2:29:48] Yeah, yeah, exactly. No, I did fight back against that and he did understand. So I, but I, that, that is, that is what I, what I experienced too. Yeah. Me like, well, that's, it's not that.
[2:30:01] All right well and also very glad that you're a gamer because i've wanted to get this npc thing all across along for a long time but um i needed a good spark for it all right listen um listen you're welcome to call back anytime i really do appreciate that you've been listening for a long time and i'm i'm really glad that we had a chance to have this conversation i think it's going to do the world a whole lot of good and i hope you'll keep me posted about how things are going thank.
[2:30:23] You i will and i will definitely call in more often and be more involved i think this for me has been kind of like a spark and just.
[2:30:30] Yeah people are always like i've been wanting to do this for years why didn't i do it sooner yeah yeah okay all right well and if you're listening to this freedomain.com slash call you can set up your own call and uh i appreciate your time and i look forward to hearing how things are going thank.
[2:30:44] You so much.
[2:30:45] Thanks man bye great.
[2:30:46] Day too bye.
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