In this Sunday Morning Live from 2 November 2025, Stefan engages in a raw and insightful discussion with listeners that explores the complexities of family relationships, particularly focusing on the significant impact of childhood experiences. He opens the show with a warm welcome, acknowledging the slightly late start and inviting audience members to ask questions, setting the stage for a deeply personal and philosophical dialogue.
The first caller presents a challenging scenario regarding abusive parents and whether it is advisable to confront them. Stefan empathizes, acknowledging the difficulty in such situations and stresses the importance of testing one’s theories about family dynamics against empirical reality. He underscores that overcoming abusive relationships requires courage and examination, encouraging listeners to confront potentially painful truths. He shares personal anecdotes and philosophical insights on how individuals often avoid reality, echoing the need for genuine communication as a path toward healing.
As the conversation unfolds, another caller shares their experience of a neglectful father and a manipulative mother, raising questions about inherited damage and the struggle to not let bitterness define their future. Stefan challenges the caller to take responsibility for their emotional landscape, emphasizing that the damage one carries may stem more from self-justification rather than sheer childhood experiences. He dives deep into the essence of accountability and self-perception, highlighting that while others may hurt us, it’s our own internal narrative that shapes our understanding and healing process.
The discussion shifts to the caller's relationship with their father—a man they perceive as pleasant yet ineffective and manipulative. Stefan's probing leads to the revelation that the caller's father had a history of poor choices and failed to protect them during their upbringing. With clarity and assertiveness, Stefan insists that the caller must not excuse their father's behavior, which has perpetuated cycles of disappointment and dysfunction. He emphasizes the importance of distinguishing between familial obligation and genuine connection, urging the caller to confront the truth about their father’s shortcomings.
Stefan also speaks directly on the self-imposed burdens that come from unresolved family issues. He encourages the caller to recognize that loyalty does not require accepting wrongdoing and reminds them that seeking one's well-being must take precedence. The candid exchange reveals a rich tapestry of emotional insights, highlighting the natural instinct of children to seek connection while navigating the complex and often unhealthy dynamics of their upbringing.
As the episode progresses, the conversation becomes increasingly dynamic, with the caller wrestling with his upbringing and the effects on adulthood. Stefan notably challenges psychological defenses the caller has built around their father, pushing him to confront the contradictions in their feelings. This ongoing dialogue not only allows the caller to express frustration but also reveals the deeply-rooted fear of letting go of a toxic familial bond. Throughout the session, Stefan's adept questioning and compassionate insight foster a profound exploration of parental responsibility, personal growth, and the importance of establishing boundaries in relationships.
By the end of the episode, listeners are left with actionable insights on how to navigate their own family dynamics, encouraging self-reflection, accountability, and the courage to confront uncomfortable truths. Stefan shares a poignant reminder that while one cannot change their past, they can assert control over their present and future by taking ownership of their decision-making processes and emotional health. This candid conversation echoes the overarching themes of the Freedomain Podcast, aiming to empower listeners through understanding, philosophy, and the pursuit of personal truth.
0:10 - Opening Reflections on Change
8:02 - Confronting Abusive Parents
12:06 - Understanding Parental Responsibility
13:39 - The Roots of Emotional Damage
20:59 - The Impact of Family Dynamics
26:17 - Navigating Personal Relationships
33:28 - The Weight of Past Choices
44:20 - The Challenge of Emotional Healing
51:58 - The Struggle for Independence
1:06:47 - The Complexity of Family Loyalty
1:18:09 - The Burden of Parental Choices
1:22:17 - Seeking Truth and Accountability
1:27:57 - Path to Personal Transformation
[0:00] Good, good morning, everybody. Hope you're doing well. 2nd of November 2025 and a smidge and a half after 11. Sorry for the slightly late start.
[0:11] It's not because the time has changed. It is because the change has timed. That's deep. It's deep, isn't it? That's what we do here. We just aim for a Mariana-style, bonnie blue depth. Now, welcome. This is normally going to be a subscriber show. We're going to make it an open show as a whole because there were some tech issues and I didn't want to have that kind of hiccup. So welcome, welcome, welcome. And I'm happy to take your questions. You can raise your hand to talk. You can type your questions in the text. And let's, without further ado, without further ado, somebody says, what do you think of confronting abusive parents? Or should you even try? Should you even try? Well, I'm sorry that that question is in your life at all. That's tough, and I sympathize.
[1:11] So, I'm sure you are a smart person. We're all smart here. So, I'm not going to say the obvious, you know if it's safe if they're not violent or dangerous or whatever it is trigger happy that way, but i think it's worth talking to people in your life who are abusive if you're close to them right and obviously if you're sort of cheek by jowl or raised twine together like trees in the forest with your parents then i really think it's worth having a chat with them.
[1:44] Because you want to test wherever safe and possible. You want to test your theories against empirical reality. really important. You know, if I think I can sing, I record myself and I listen back. I get other people to listen and say, right? If I think I can have something of value to offer the world in terms of philosophy, I'll put it out there and get people's feedback and see how much good I can do in the world and so on. I think I'm good at something. If I think I know something, you should put it to the test. It's very easy to live in fantasy land. Lord knows, as a creative writer, I do that on a regular basis. It's very easy to live in fantasy land. You don't want to stay there. It's okay to be there for imagination, but you don't want to stay there as a whole. Like if you have a good imagination, don't imagine writing a book. Write a book using your good imagination. So if you have had abusive parents, let's just say they were verbally abusive, right? The best way to find out if someone's a narcissist, in my humble opinion, the best way to find out if somebody is a narcissist is to compare their behavior according to universal or ideal standards and see how they react.
[3:06] Compare someone's behavior to a standard. So if you've got a parent who says, don't lie, and then you catch your parent in a lie, you say to your parent, hey, you lied. And if the parent makes up something, gets aggressive, avoids, dodges, gaslights, and so on, then you're dealing with a very self, I mean, I say narcissist in a sort of colloquial sense, but you're dealing with a very selfish person. I'm reading John Cleese's Autobiography, which came out, gosh, 2016, almost nine years ago. And it is obviously a window into a very distant and much more civilized time where you didn't need quite as many stabby vests to take the public transit. But in it, he talks about being a teacher. So after he finished some education, he was a teacher for two years, and he said the children were.
[3:59] Happy, eager, fine, but you had to be fair, right? So he once wrote the word woolly on the board and misspelled it. W-O-O-L-L-E-Y or something like that, right? And the kid said, hey, every time we misspell a word, we have to write it out repeatedly. Why don't you have to do that? And he's like, you're right. And he wrote out the word woolly a hundred times. And he says, they accepted that honor had been restored, that things were fair, and also they accepted that, well, he accepted, John Cleese accepted that he was never going to misspell that word ever again. So when you are in a relationship with someone, you want to compare their behavior to ideal standards, and we all fall short to some degree or another at times. And if that person says, thank you for the correction. I appreciate that. I mean, assuming they agree with you, then you're dealing with a healthy person you can actually have a relationship with, because we can only meet in reality and reality is objective. And if people reject objective standards, they're rejecting the possibility of any kind of overlap with another consciousness. It's all narcissistic. Like you can't meet people in your nightly dreams and you can't meet people if you avoid reality. And so you compare people's.
[5:21] Actions to ideal standards. Memory is faulty. Memory is not a photocopy. Memory is not a video camera. And of course, now it's different. Of course, you have everything's documented, but sort of the way that we evolved is you don't remember things. You don't remember things. You do remember, I'm not trying to gaslight you, like memory has validity, but memory is not flawless. And so you have a conjecture, you have a hypothesis. And the hypothesis is my parents can't take correction. Your parents can't take correction. Now, that's a theory. Now, you may remember countless instances as a kid, but the problem is when you're a kid, if your parents can't take correction, in other words, if they get angry and they escalate when you correct them, then you will stop trying to correct them. You may, you know, as the teenage hormones hit, you may revisit that theory and you might yell at them, but it's all very fraught and it's all very tense, all very, I wouldn't say hysterical, but very intense. So you have a hypothesis cause my parents can't take correction. You say, well, I didn't try and correct them too much as a child. That's probably because if they can't take correction, it's dangerous to correct them. And as a kid, you won't do that because you won't, as a kid, you don't want to piss off your Thank you.
[6:43] Your caregivers, the people who bring you food and shelter, protect you from the elements and predators and so on. You can't piss off your caregivers. Like if you're unjustly imprisoned, you can't piss off the prison guard who brings you your food. You have to, oh, great joke. Oh, yes. Oh, lovely. Right. So you have, as an adult, memories of a child where your parents couldn't take correction. And that's a hypothesis. And you say, well, but they couldn't take correction when I was a teenager either. But, you know, teenage relations are often fraught and, you know, hormones and the emotions are very strong. So it's a little tough to be objective about that. So you want to be just right and fair in your dealings with people. And to a fault, and I think this is sort of a British thing or sort of a European thing, to a fault, I give people chances.
[7:31] There's pluses and minuses to that. I'll give people lots of chances. And that way, if they blow a whole bunch of chances, I don't feel any regret about ending the relationship. So you have a hypothesis which says, my parents are aggressive and my parents can't take correction. So then you think of something that you could correct your parents about. And trust me, everyone has things that they can be corrected about. So you go down and sit down with your parents because now you're doing the philosophical thing. You're doing the epistemological thing. You're doing the scientific thing.
[8:03] You have an experiment. You have a hypothesis or a conjecture, you have a theory, my parents can't take correction without becoming aggressive. And you want to put that theory to the test, again, assuming safety, right? Pull the gun on yourself. So you want to put that to the test, right?
[8:24] So, when I did this with my mother, I had a theory that my mother could not admit fault. So, there were things that I remembered that I had criticisms of, and I sat down with her on three different occasions. Very Christian of me. I sat down with her on three different occasions and attempted to tell her my perspectives and to say that she did something that was wrong. I mean, we don't need to go into the details, but let's just say that the hypothesis was amply confirmed. She could not admit fault. She could not take responsibility. She blamed everything and everyone else and all of that. And I used to be more mad about that. Now I just see that as a really tragically broken person who made choices not to heal. Or, you know, maybe there's so much trauma that you can experience as a child that it becomes functionally impossible for you to heal? I don't know. I mean, I don't know if science has confirmed that, and I'm not sure it would never be ethical to test it, and I don't know if it ever will, but let's just say it's possible.
[9:32] You want to test your theories against the world. So if you sit down with your parents and you say, well, if I have an opinion or a perspective, particularly on moral matters that differs or opposes theirs, differs from or opposes theirs, that they won't accept any correction. They will just escalate, gaslight, avoid, reject, manipulate, and maybe just storm out or whatever it is, right? So you want to test your childhood perceptions of the volatility and self-abdication of your parents in this particular example to find out if you're right, just, and fair. And you maybe want to do it on more than one occasion. Again, I mean, I can't, obviously can't tell anyone what to do other than, you know, be UPB compliant, but I can't tell anyone. So I don't know if you should or shouldn't. For me, three times worse the charm. First time, maybe they're startled. Maybe they had a bad day. Maybe they're a headache. Maybe they didn't sleep well. Maybe they've got a stomachache, or maybe they're fighting a migraine. I don't know, whatever. It could be any number of things as to why they don't respond that well. First time around.
[10:39] Can you try it again? Second time, maybe their defenses have hardened from the first time. Maybe they're suspicious. Maybe whatever, right? Give them another break. Third time, if there's no change. I think mine was over maybe a couple of week period. If the third time there's no change, just like, done. Done, sorted, done and dusted. Because you have.
[11:05] Tested your theory that your parents cannot take correction, that they only get manipulative and aggressive, or, you know, self-pitying, oh, I guess you're just the worst mother, cry, cry, cry. That wasn't what my mother did. She had a very cunning look on her face, like, okay, what can I get away with here? This is a new variable. What can I admit without getting in the fault or in the wrong or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So, yeah, I think you do. You do want to check and see and validate your childhood experiences. If your parents are, like, really nice and friendly, it's a real theory. It doesn't happen, but let's say, then you'd have a reason to question your childhood memories. And if they were really friendly and helpful, tell me more. I want to hear more. Please tell me what your issues are. I'd love to work them out. And this is not what you remember. Then you can ask them, did you do therapy? Or like, how did this change? Or whatever it is, right? But you do need to find out the facts about your childhood. Now, we don't have time machines. But what you can do is you can go back. So you can revisit issues that you had as a child with your parents and find
[12:01] out how it is for you as an adult. I see you, Darth. So let me just answer another question because it's related, and then I'll take your question.
[12:13] Stef, I was raised by an abusive/manipulative mother, and a detached unambitious father, who was also a victim of her abuse. No, he married her. He chose her. Not a victim. How can I identify the damage or habits inherited from them and separate what is within my control, character choices and reason? Finally, how can I live with equanimity, without letting bitterness or resentment shape my future well-being and future relationship health? Well, I'm sorry to hear about that. So...
[12:41] Yeah, your father's not a victim. Your father had legal independence. He was not forced to marry her. He had all the choices in the world. He could have chosen to not date. He could have chosen to date any other women. So he is not a victim. So the first piece of damage that I'm getting, which I say with sympathy, right? The first piece of damage that I'm seeing is that you think that your father is a victim. Nope. Your father had a responsibility to protect you. And if your mother was abusive and manipulative, he had an absolute foundational responsibility to protect you from her.
[13:21] And whatever that took, like whatever that took, that was what he had to do. so damage or habits I inherited from them. So the damage is not in what happens to you. The damage is in what you justify and accept. I want to make this really, really clear.
[13:40] The damage is not what is done to you. The damage is what you justify and accept. So I knew a guy when I was younger who was really into some pretty horrifying music and at one point showed me a thumbtack that he'd pushed through the ball of his thumb, ironically enough, and I thought, That's bad. Obviously, I didn't understand it. I was very young as a cry for help. But let's say that your parents.
[14:18] Poked you with needles when you were wrong or bad, right? When they perceived you as wrong or bad, they poked you with needles. Now, the needle's not going to kill you. It's not really going to leave any particularly lasting damage if it's just a little pinprick. so it's not that you got poked with pins as a kid it's if you keep poking yourself with pins as an adult in other words if you say well whenever i displease others or myself i deserve to get poked with a pin pricked with a pin then it is not the damage as an adult is not the pin pricks when you were a kid the damage as an adult is the pin pricks that you inflict upon yourself, So if you are called stupid by your parents, the damage as an adult is not that they called you stupid as a child. The damage is if you continue to call yourself stupid as an adult, right? So the damage is what you justify and accept, not in what happens to you. And I'm not talking like extreme physical damage, right? I'm just talking sort of psychological or emotional damage.
[15:31] So, what your parents say to you, in particular what they say, what your parents say to you, you internalize to protect yourself, right? So, if your parents, like, let's say you correct your parents, and then they say, oh, you think you're so much better than us, and I get really hostile and angry. Well, you have to stop doing that. You have to stop doing that. You have to stop correcting your parents, because it's very dangerous to piss off your caregivers, at least until you reach sort of teenage independence, like biologically programmed independence opportunities.
[16:04] So, if your parents hammer you every time you correct them, then you will gain fear from correcting people. Obviously, right? So, if you say to yourself, my parents were dangerous, I'm afraid of correcting people like my parents, but there's nothing wrong with correcting people. Like, this is the rational standpoint, right? That's the rational standpoint. I'm going to say it again. Sorry to repeat, but it's really important. If your parents abused you for correcting them and you say to yourself, okay, so they were dangerous. They had power over me. It provoked them when I corrected them. So I didn't correct them. And it's dangerous to try and correct people like them if they have power over you, but there's nothing wrong with correcting people as a whole, right? Kind of essential, right? Well, then, again, I'm not saying that you wake up one morning totally damage-free, but you're no longer justifying it. You're no longer justifying what your parents did to you. You're saying, they're screwed up, they're immature, they're aggressive, they punished me for correcting them or trying to. But there's nothing wrong with correcting people. So they did wrong, they did bad. And then you can begin that process of undoing that kind of damage, right?
[17:27] So, identify the things that your parents said to you that aren't true. Recognize that the anxiety that you have around correcting people is a fear of your parents, but not a fear of the act of correcting people. There's nothing frightening about correcting people. There's only something frightening about correcting narcissistic, vainglorious a-holes who have power over you. So, I think that's the, identify the language that got embedded and judge it morally. All right, let us get to, I'm sorry, we lost the earlier caller. He kind of came and went. Star-cah. Star-cah. If you wanted to unmute, I'd be happy to hear your thoughts.
[18:13] Stefan, can you hear me?
[18:15] Yes, sir.
[18:16] I was the one that asked the question that you were just replying to on Locals. I've been a long-time supporter. Listen, whenever I can, I really appreciate all the clarity you've given my life. As I related earlier in my question, I had a pretty absent father. I don't believe I had one single serious conversation with my father growing up at all. He was very, you know, he went to work. He was a pretty devout Christian person. He had his own struggles. I believe a lot of the distance was because of my very, um, like type a personality very abusive manipulative triangulating mother any any time you went against anything that she wanted um you knew there would be um a serious repercussions you you'd um there'd be um a cost and you wouldn't know when that cost would have been aid you know it could last for a long period of time.
[19:20] Sorry, that cost would have been what?
[19:22] Oh, you never knew when...
[19:25] No, I just didn't hear the word. The cost would have been...
[19:29] You don't know when the debt would have been repaid to her in her mind if you had wronged her.
[19:35] She might store up vengeance.
[19:38] It might be months. It might be a few days. She was also often physically abusive, but more emotionally gaslighting, manipulative, of trying to always create doubt within you. So, like, and I knew from a very early age, maybe pre-teen years, that something was off about her behavior toward me because I was a good kid. I had some really fantastic grandparents. I was a very good student.
[20:08] Sorry, grandparents on which side?
[20:10] My mother's side.
[20:11] Wait, so you're saying that your mother's parents raised her to be this horrible?
[20:16] Yeah, I believe they were so good to me and tried to isolate me because they knew they had created a monster. but.
[20:22] How did how could they be good people and create a monster.
[20:25] Now that's a very good question that's that's a question i've never been able to find any legitimate answers for okay because they were fantastic to me very loving um invested a lot of me everything i have in my life that i treasure is due to their nurturing and their attention and their support did.
[20:49] They Do you know if they, I mean, this is not something you would know as a kid, but do you know if they canceled your father to get you away from your mother?
[20:59] I'm not sure if they did. I'm not sure he would be capable of doing that in the first place. Sorry, what do you mean he wouldn't.
[21:06] Sorry. Was he disabled? Was he a paraplegic? What do you mean?
[21:11] Oh, he's... Even to this day, I often have to give him money, help support him. I have, as an adult, even though I have 11 and a 14-year-old, I've often had to continue to bail him out of situations. My mother divorced him, stole everything from him in the divorce. They had a nice home. At least they had that. And she took everything in the divorce and kind of preyed upon his incompetence.
[21:44] Oh, so is he, I'm sorry to talk about your father this way. Is he just not smart?
[21:52] Um, I would say no. Okay.
[21:54] It happens, right? Yeah.
[21:56] Um, I mean, I'm myself, um, I mean, I'm pretty, I'm like a 30 year, very successful neuroscientist, immunologist. Went to finish first in my class and graduate school, getting my, my doctor had always excelled and everything. I had the highest SAT score in the state of the year I took the test. I have a pretty documented 160-ish IQ. Always been very curious, very open, very interested in how the world works and how the machine of life functions. That's kind of where my main curiosity drives. But early on, I'd say at an age of 13 or 14, I knew something was off with the behavior. What I did didn't match. Her reaction, It was magnified. It was as if you couldn't even probably have a system of behavior where you could not be a victim of the abuse. It didn't really have very much to do with what I had actually done. I was just an outlet.
[23:04] Well, and sorry, this is to Ayn Rand's point, that totalitarianism is not a system of fierce rules. It's a system of no rules. You don't know what you can do.
[23:15] Would stabilize it.
[23:16] Yeah. Well, and that way the random rules means that you can't ever catch the abusive parent on their own behavior.
[23:24] Yeah, they try to provide an infinite number of excuses. I never accepted them. And my happiest day of my life was when I packed my stuff up and left. I mean, I guess secondary to my children to being born, but packing my stuff up and leaving is very close. And I'm very close to my children.
[23:47] I guess in a way he's trying to compensate for what I knew I did not have. and want to provide them opportunities i could see what those that that environment cost me, um i wasn't aware of it till later you know having you you've talked i think recently about this terrific burden of having to figure everything out for yourself and i mean that hit me like a ton of bricks you know that that stung me um because i i was working i think my first job was um, cutting tobacco as a 13 or 14 year old with 30 year old men. I mean, that's not a job for a 13 or 14 year old. It's pretty brutal. You get any of that nicotine juice on you, you immediately vomit. You have to wear gloves up to your elbows and brutal hot sun. And I worked two, three, four jobs. The kids went to spring break during college. I went to work. I did construction. I framed, I did drywall, I painted anything I could do to make money it was really my motivation was to escape them.
[24:58] It drove me so incredibly but it's as if I didn't have a childhood I was never free of worry about subsistence and existence, it was like I was an adult at 14 years old I moved out on my own, my senior year of high school I had my own apartment. I felt as if either I left or I was, I felt as if my survival was at stake.
[25:29] In some way and i know it it's left some it's left some impact on my personality that i've had, a very hard time to shake it's left a harshness within my personality um like i don't i don't want to hear excuses i don't want to i want people around me to be productive and be held accountable, I have a very short maybe tolerance for, not being held accountable for your actions or what you earn in life because I had to work so hard for what I had, and it also at the same time gave me a lot of strength.
[26:17] I'm not very easily taken from my goals, but i'm not so sure that you know some i know that's not perfect that it would have been better to have some kind of happy median i often find myself not not so willing to enjoy the fruits of the labor that i have now i'm 51 years old i have a 200 000 a year job that i've had for 10 years, I've created some sense of stability but my main concerns are still like overwhelmingly the care of my children, I can't really shade I gotta save money for them I gotta have a down payment saved for their homes I have a really hard time maybe focusing on myself being able to enjoy, life Yes.
[27:18] I, I, I'm really, really sorry for all of this. And I agree with you that it was a survival mechanism to get out your senior year of high school. I don't want to interrupt if there's more that you want to say.
[27:29] I garner a lot of insight from the call-in shows I feel that maybe individuals from our generations, there's certainly some like there's certainly some like central themes to what we've experienced, I think maybe centrally a significant neglect.
[28:00] And that having to figure out everything on your own i think about wow my i i never once had a serious conversation with my father about anything to do with like girls or jobs or wisdom or how do you apply for colleges i probably got it gotten into a lot better college than my local state school based on my performance but my life was so utterly chaotic um that i just took the, the opportunity that was simple, and I thought I could execute. And then I got lucky that I met some professors in university who saw some promise in me, and they actually paid for my GRE, my MCAT. They actually gave me money to move to pack up my belongings, a down payment on an apartment.
[28:53] I mean, I'm very, very thankful for all the assistance that I've gotten from others, but that has largely been outside of my family. And my parents are in their middle 70s and of not good health. And I don't talk to my mother. I was divorced about seven years ago. My ex-wife was also just totally indifferent to anything that I needed emotionally. I was just a wallet to her. She told me once that if I married a graduate, I thought they'd made more money.
[29:30] Um, and I was making like $150,000 a year and paid for her to go to nursing school and she had a decent career. So I thought we were doing pretty good and I was doing what I wanted to do with my life. So I didn't really care what she thought of it because it's my life and I have to get up and go to work every day. And I think I had earned it to spend the time of my life, like doing something that I thought would be beneficial to humanity, like figuring out what caused people to be in pain or be sick. I thought I could meld what, you know, my curiosity was, was something where I could benefit others and enlighten others and teach others how the scientific method and how to think critically and how to solve problems. I thought, you know, that's a decently noble, I wasn't completely selfish with my intelligence. I could own several businesses on the side, too, to make money, which I just enjoy. and she lied to the police and told them that I had hit her. The police didn't believe her. It didn't come to anything, but I thought that was like an absolute betrayal. You know, and now she goes and spends a weekend at my mother's house and that, utterly crushes me that sorry.
[30:54] Your ex-wife currently goes to spend weekends at your mother's house.
[30:58] Correct okay and that and.
[31:03] This is the mother of your children right.
[31:04] Yes okay and uh you know that that someone would betray me in that way and trying to get me arrested or in my career you can imagine in academia what a domestic violence charge would do due to your job security and your prospects. And she was just mad I divorced her and it damaged her ego. And so she took that out on me, wasted a lot of the resources for the children in the divorce as well, just by causing us to repeatedly go to court. Every time you go to court costs like $5,000. And of course you can guess who paid the lawyer bills um, myself and, um, so yeah, that, and now that, you know, that she's, uh, spends time with my mother that even further create some like distance for me. That's just something that I just will not tolerate and cannot tolerate. I would damage my self-esteem to tolerate something. I demand loyalty from my blood kin and.
[32:20] Um, I, you know, I just, I don't know if that's something you completely would agree with, but that's like my core feeling about the situation is that's, that's nothing I wouldn't even discuss.
[32:37] Um, I'd be willing to take my children there, um, for that, for us to spend time together.
[32:44] Oh, you take your children where?
[32:46] Uh, to my mother's for them to visit.
[32:49] What?
[32:51] Yeah I know why, the children, the children like her she's very charming she can be very charming to outsiders.
[33:07] Yeah but you're don't tell me that you're not an outsider.
[33:11] Yeah I know it would yeah I mean maybe she knows that perhaps that's the only way she's going to see the children that's a possibility you know I mean.
[33:23] From what you say she's a pretty destructive and horrible person right?
[33:27] Yeah she's a screamer.
[33:28] So why are your children there?
[33:34] Well they weren't there very often when they were with me so.
[33:40] Sorry I thought you just said that you wanted to or were going to take them to see your mother.
[33:47] Well, I had, Stefan.
[33:49] Oh, but you don't anymore?
[33:51] No, I do not.
[33:52] Okay. All right. And when did they last see your mother?
[33:57] Um, well, a couple weeks ago with the ex-wife.
[34:02] Oh, your ex-wife, yeah, because you don't have any control over what happens when she has them, right?
[34:08] Correct.
[34:08] Yeah, okay. But when was the last time that you took your kids to see your mother?
[34:13] Six years ago.
[34:14] Okay, got it, got it. Okay. Sorry. I thought you were still doing it.
[34:18] I was unclear.
[34:19] Okay. No, that's fine. That's fine. I'm sorry. I have some thoughts, but I'm happy to, I'm happy. I'm willing to hear more.
[34:27] Maybe some questions might help draw some thoughts out from me if you had some thoughts of the experiences.
[34:36] Well, you said, and I agreed with you for what that's worth. You said very emphatically, you can't stand people who don't take responsibility, right?
[34:45] No.
[34:47] And you can't stand people who make excuses.
[34:50] No. I would have ended up in a trailer park or in a ditch if I had done the same for myself.
[34:55] So why do you make nothing but excuses for your father, and why do you accept him taking no responsibility?
[35:03] Because he's nice.
[35:05] No.
[35:07] I know, but...
[35:08] That's not a standard.
[35:10] I'm struggling with this right now.
[35:12] I know you are, and that's why I want to talk about it.
[35:15] I haven't been talking to him. I didn't send him a, for the first time, I did not send him a gift for his birthday. I haven't seen him this year. He lives about an hour or so away. It's always, if we're going to see each other, it's always going to be me going to him, even though I work 60 hours a week.
[35:39] I thought you said, hang on, hang on, hang on. I thought you said he was nice.
[35:44] Well, he's pleasant.
[35:45] No, no.
[35:46] He doesn't scream at me.
[35:47] I thought you said he was nice. There's a nice... Okay, how long ago did you get divorced again?
[35:53] Seven years.
[35:55] And how old were you when your parents got divorced?
[36:00] 21.
[36:01] Okay. So what has your father done to lighten your load and your burden?
[36:07] Nothing. Nothing ever.
[36:09] How the fuck is he nice?
[36:11] Yeah, I know.
[36:13] No, you don't know. You just told me he was nice. Don't, don't, don't gaslight me, bro. Come on. Let's not do that in the conversation. Don't fucking spin me around like that. Okay. I really want to help, but you can't pull that shit.
[36:24] Well, I'm, I'm just telling you what I.
[36:26] No, no. Slow down. Slow down. Slow down. You need to hear my objection, right?
[36:31] Yes, sir.
[36:32] Uh, you said he's nice. He's pleasant, right? And then I said, how is he nice if he doesn't support you when you're in great need post divorce? And you said he doesn't. and I said so that's right and you said and I said that that's not nice right, and then you so and you said yes he's not and so you can't go in the space of you know 10 or 15 seconds from he's nice to he's not nice without even noticing that right oh.
[36:57] I notice it.
[36:57] Okay well then acknowledge it because it's really disorienting for the other person right.
[37:02] Yes I understand it it's just I feel like a bad person for maybe abandoning, him even though he's abandoned me, You know, it's pretty common.
[37:17] Let's go back to the logic here, right? Mr. 160 IQ, which I fully accept.
[37:21] I get it.
[37:22] Maybe more. Could be more. I'll struggle to keep up. So, you know, I said, you said, I can't stand people who make excuses and don't take responsibility. And all you do is make excuses to your father and accept that he's not responsible. And I said, why is that? And you said, because he's nice and pleasant. And then I said, but he's not if he doesn't support you. And you said, no, he's not. Right. So this is all crazy tangled, right?
[37:47] But if he's incapable... Due to, you know, low cognitive function, um, or zone challenges.
[38:02] Okay, so let's, let's talk about his low cognitive function. So what are the indications? Are there any indications that he might not have a very low cognitive function?
[38:15] Yes, he was an air traffic controller in the Air Force during Vietnam.
[38:18] Oh my God, bro. What are you doing to me?
[38:23] He was, um...
[38:25] No, come on, come on, come on.
[38:26] No, I have a caveat here.
[38:28] Okay.
[38:30] Um, he had a severely traumatic experience where he was manipulated by a woman, who married him, but at the same time, she was still married to another man, while he was serving in the Air Force, and he was, He was subjected to electric shock therapy, Ed.
[38:54] Okay, we don't have to get into specifics, if you don't mind. So, okay, so he had electroshock therapy, and is your perception that he thus lost IQ?
[39:09] Yes.
[39:10] All right, let's have a look. Could be, could be, could be. Let's see here. um all right i had a family member who went through that all right um does the uh electroshock therapy, cost iq points now it's not a certain answer on all of that but let's see correct, bum bum bum it's quite so he i guess he was kind of depressed right yes sir okay and you said a woman manipulated him and this and that and the other but he screwed a married woman right.
[39:55] Well he didn't know.
[39:56] How do you know he.
[39:59] Told me he didn't know.
[40:00] How do you know.
[40:02] Because they were married.
[40:03] Who was married my.
[40:06] My father and this woman had gotten married but she was already married to another man. Okay, got it.
[40:15] All right, so let's see here. So, tests like the modified mini-mental state examination show short-term impairments in executive function and processing speed, but these normalize within 14 days, often improving due to reduced depression symptoms. No immediate IQ drop is observed in studies using standardized intelligence tests. In a study of 32, not a big sample size, in a study of 32 older adults with depression, ways are, and NART scores remain stable from baseline through one month post-ECT. Despite improvements in mood intelligence was explicitly described as unaffected by the treatment, a meta-analysis of long-term effects confirmed no deficits in non-memory cognition, attention, executive function beyond 14 days, with some domains like processing speed improving. One recent meta-analysis noted persistent issues in overall cognitive function and learning when used a specific ECT-focused battery, although the executive function improved and IQ wasn't assessed. So it doesn't look like there's much support for IQ drops from ECT.
[41:38] Okay, so he got married to a woman who was already married and hadn't told him. correct and he was intelligent enough to be an air traffic controller right yes sir okay so let's say here what uh is the average iq of air traffic controllers, let us see i assume it's uh i i would assume at least a standard deviation above the average probably more boom let's see.
[42:18] All of his brothers are also highly intelligent people like you and right my grandfather was was also he um um he was a a pretty high up executive at ibm post world war two.
[42:38] Right.
[42:38] Um, he was successful.
[42:42] Uh, mean IQ of 110.5, uh, several hundred us. This is the 1960s, several hundred us air traffic controllers. Uh, you said he was in the army, right?
[42:54] He was in the air force in Vietnam from 70 to 73.
[42:58] Okay. Okay. So, I mean, what Not quite a standard deviation above, but certainly smarter than your average bear. And again, this doesn't mean that this is what's his IQ, but that probably is a kind of minimum.
[43:16] I would say that he has some interest in cosmology, astronomy, scientific subjects. subjects that, and while not classically educated in that, in any of those domains, he still has a decent comprehension of them and can self-educate to some degree. Right.
[43:37] And I assume air traffic controllers, uh, this is an average IQ. I assume that the, uh, spatial reasoning, what about the spatial reasoning would have to be really high for air traffic controllers. I'm just going to see, what they because I assume that's one thing that they would specifically be testing for is your spatial reasoning, very high looks like 6.4 out of 7, which is very high, okay?
[44:20] So you've got to be able to make the correct decision in a short period of time under stress and be confronted with a significant amount of information at once.
[44:32] Yeah, for sure.
[44:33] You can be stupid or incompetent generally.
[44:40] Yeah, so it looks like they're in the top 20% of spatial reasoning. And that's very good.
[44:50] Well, what else would you think would be the contributive reasons for his lack of ambition and indifference when getting out of the Air Force? He never pursued a job as an air traffic controller. He drove a truck, like a local delivery truck, not an 18-wheeler or across the road. and he was never really interested in being like motivated to be a provider in any way. I'm sorry, but who provided? More in suffering.
[45:25] Sorry, who provided for your family when you were a kid?
[45:27] My grandfather and my grandmother.
[45:30] Oh.
[45:30] They bought my family home so I could go to a decent school. I even found my Christmas presents hidden in the shower and the receipts on them were taped. The receipts were taped to the presents. They were signed in my grandfather's name. So even the presents that I received on Christmas morning that were supposed to be from Santa Claus were actually purchased by my grandfather.
[46:01] Right, okay. Okay, so was your father good-looking?
[46:07] He was decent-looking, yes.
[46:09] Okay, and what about your mother and the woman he married? Were they above average attractiveness when they were young?
[46:16] My mother was overweight.
[46:21] Oh, when your parents got together?
[46:25] She was attractive, but still overweight, I would say. That's something she's battled with her whole life. I think that's one of the central, like maybe core areas that where insecurity stems from. I mean, she hated my success, Stefan. I mean, she utterly hated it. She would have been so much happier if I was broken and poor, if I was still under her control. I'll tell you one of the central things she ever said to me that was, it didn't shock me. On the day I was hooded at Vanderbilt where you had worked six years, published some really nice manuscripts. I made faculty in like two years from being a postdoc. I was very productive. And the day I got hooded, which is a big ceremony and you could have all the regalia and it's very fancy. she told me don't get too high on yourself you're not a real doctor, you know and she said.
[47:26] Things like you don't need to sell me more on your mom being a bad person so I get that I understand that but you seem to be pretty conscious of that so why was your father so wretched at choosing women why was he just terrible at it.
[47:45] That's a great question I know he's about, 10 years separated from the rest of his brothers. I know he's, he was like very young, in his family, like a late child, and his father passed away when he was younger than the age of one. He had been gassed in World War I and had died from complications due to damage to his lungs. He had died of tuberculosis. And And I know my father told me a few times he had struggled with and wasn't quite alone because his brothers were so much older than he was and his father had passed and it was very stressful for his mother. But I don't know exactly. I mean, again, that's like an excuse.
[48:36] Did he come late to Christianity in his life?
[48:39] Yes.
[48:40] Okay. Okay. So did you ever ask him or did he ever give any indication what he was looking for or how he chose the women in his life?
[48:51] No.
[48:53] Okay. So that's cruel on him, right? It's very, if you make a bad decision, if you make bad decisions as a father, you owe it to your son to do what?
[49:04] Make sure he doesn't replicate it.
[49:05] Right. Say, here's the mistakes I made. Here's the things I look for that weren't there. Here's the things I look for that were there that were bad. So you don't repeat the same mistakes. How the fuck did you end up marrying the mother of your children if your father married your mother. It's his job to make sure you don't do that.
[49:29] He doesn't care. I mean, that's, he's either incapable of caring or he doesn't care.
[49:39] So you know what a circular argument is, right?
[49:42] I know.
[49:42] So if I say, why didn't your father care to prevent you from making his mistakes, and you say he doesn't care, you're not adding anything to the topic, right? And also giving him excuses. Well, his father was gassed in World War I and died, and his brothers were older. That's not causal. Come on, man. And we're free will people here, right? That's not causal.
[50:01] I understand. Maybe I know the answer. I just don't want to accept it.
[50:08] I don't know because I'm just talking to you for the first time. But, you know, with all due respect to, you know, this is a difficult topic. It's mostly bullshit that you're giving me because you say, I can't fucking stand excuses. Here are all my father's excuses.
[50:21] Well, I have people in my life questioning that I'm harsh. I'm too harsh.
[50:26] So?
[50:26] I don't want to talk to my father. I don't want to deal with them. It disappoints me when I think of it. It's destabilizing to what I have going on in my life currently when I think of these things and I feel like maybe you start to have feelings of self-doubt, like you weren't worth their time or you're not good enough or what's wrong with you or what part of this dynamic are you responsible for? and I'm all and it's easier to just admit the fault yourself because at least you can do something about it or at least you question these things and you can act on making improvements or adjustments or being more selective in your personal relationships um than it is to try and convince somebody else they need to change that it's obvious they're never going to, did you still feel this void this loss I don't have a father I don't have this central core figure in my life I've been blessed with others, you know other relationships than these men my age or 10 years younger than me that is sort of in my circle they have these really nice family dynamics that.
[51:49] That I wish I would have had You know Or I feel awful alone sometimes I don't
[51:55] have anyone to turn to Of course you're alone bro Yeah And.
[51:59] I say this with great sympathy But you're not alone Because of your bad childhood And you're not alone Because of your bad parents Okay Why are you alone?
[52:13] Of choice.
[52:14] Well, that's six. Doesn't add anything. Why are you alone?
[52:19] What's the causality? What are your thoughts?
[52:26] I know why you're alone.
[52:28] Well, tell me. I'm not so sure.
[52:30] You're alone because you're stuck between two worlds. The fucked up world and the healthy world.
[52:38] Yeah. Okay.
[52:39] Because you won't let the anchor go. you can't get to the surface you won't come to a conclusion you won't make a decision after half a century plus of knowing this family you won't listen and i say this with, respect right and i say this with with sympathy but i'm going to say it blunt, because good people don't want to be around these sad stories it's depressing, and the only and you have these sad stories but they're still being provoked within you Yeah Right, they're still around you You took your kids to see your mother weeks Oh, sorry, six years ago, right? And I know that you're an ex-wife But your father, you're still making excuses for him.
[53:28] Yeah, well, in my own mind, I really do not, but I have others in my life who...
[53:37] Okay, bro, bro, Jesus. I mean, you tell me how blunt you want me to be. One to ten.
[53:47] A hundred?
[53:48] A hundred, okay. You are so full of contradictions that it's kind of crazy-making to talk to you about this topic, I'm sure when it comes to your work and other things, you're perfectly reasonable and rational. In fact, stupendously so, I'm sure. But it's all so twisted up.
[54:07] Correct.
[54:07] Right? Because you made all of these excuses and now you're saying, well, I don't give him excuses. You say, well, he's not smart. Well, he was an air traffic controller. Well, he had electroconvulsive shock therapy. Well, I've never looked up whether that has an effect on IQ. Right? it's all so convoluted and confusing and so this is the heaviness because i can hear the heaviness in your voice the lack of animation the lack of spontaneity you're you're carrying a burden right, yes sir and it's a burden called and i say this with sympathy i'm not saying that you're consciously trying to lie or anything like that but it is ridiculously convoluted from the outside.
[54:54] It's convoluted on the inside, too.
[54:55] Okay, well, that's what philosophy does, is it straightens things out, right?
[55:00] It's the fear in me of having nothing. My grandparents are gone. If I cut off my mother and father, then I don't have a biological family.
[55:13] What are you talking about? You have children.
[55:17] Correct. i mean my by my origin biological family.
[55:24] That's not your family bro that's your parents family your family is your children your parents family is where you came from because they made all the choices and you didn't make any of the choices i'm not saying they're not a real family i get all of that but it's your parent your parents family is defined by their choices your family is defined by your choices. And they're not the same. One is where you just happen to be born. It's not your family. You just happen to be born there. The family that you have with your kids, that's a choice that you made. You chose to date, get engaged to, get married, have children with their mother. You chose to become a father. So that's all a reflection of your choices.
[56:13] Yes, I agree. I agree with you heartily. And also, another contributing factor that's really kind of stung me is growing up, I was always made the scapegoat for their failures as they didn't accomplish in life what they wanted to because they had to take care of me. And I always thought that was total crap.
[56:35] Sorry, your parents said that?
[56:37] Correct.
[56:38] So your father said that?
[56:39] Mostly my mother.
[56:40] So your father said that?
[56:42] Correct.
[56:43] Come on, bro.
[56:45] I don't know.
[56:47] Come on.
[56:47] You're just probing it something I don't want to accept.
[56:49] Come on.
[56:50] And it's weakness, and maybe that's why it bothers me.
[56:53] No, no, no, that's not weakness.
[56:55] Not wanting, not being willing to accept the reality.
[56:59] That's not weakness. That's sadism. To say to your kid, the reason I'm driving a truck is because your ass came into my life. the reason i never made anything of my myself is because of you kids that's fucking having my.
[57:17] Own children i can't i mean it's even it became more horrific once i had.
[57:21] Okay bro hang on slow slow down is anything that i'm saying having any emotional impact on you at all yes because you just i don't i don't get a sense that anything i'm saying is having any emotional impact now it could be because what i'm saying has no emotional impact and isn't relevant or whatever, but you went from, uh, my dad's a nice, pleasant guy to he blamed me as a little kid for his failures in life.
[57:51] Well, I guess he's, he's nice and pleasant compared to my mother. It was a screamer and a striker and a hitter and a scratcher.
[58:03] And so that's better. Your father was worse, in some ways, because your mother was more obvious.
[58:15] Everything you're telling me is, are thoughts I've had in my mind many times before. I've just been, I've struggled with the acceptance of what that means.
[58:29] What do you mean, what that means?
[58:31] It means I never talked to my father again.
[58:33] You're not talking to him now. You said you've never, you got no advice and you've never had a real conversation with your parents. well i mean i'm sure what you're i mean you it's like some guy with a with a hand puppet saying well i can't put down the hand puppet then i'm all alone yeah.
[58:53] I know it's performative it's not real i i acknowledge that.
[58:57] No but but it's costly it is nothing there fake relationships are costly because they keep the real ones away, hmm let's say okay what's your favorite female name let's do this what's your favorite female name amelia amelia lovely name all right amelia comes along and amelia, is smart wise mature together she's gone to therapy she's ironed all this stuff out right Yes. And Amelia starts chatting with you because you're a hot, lithe neuroscientist dripping in minotaur oil or something like that, right? And she's like, wow, this guy, man, he's smart. He's a good owner. You know, he's a good dad. You know, maybe there's something here that we could explore from a romantic standpoint, right? Now, Amelia starts talking to you and all this stuff starts coming out. What does Amelia think?
[1:00:04] It's dysfunctional.
[1:00:06] Okay.
[1:00:07] Or it's unstable. That I have issues that are unresolved, that would negatively impact our future relationship and progress of building a substantial life moving forward. Unresolved issues that I need to address before I can embrace a healthy relationship in the future.
[1:00:33] Your job is to pursue and capture the truth and reality, right?
[1:00:40] Yes.
[1:00:41] So it's not like you don't know how to do that. If you perform, I don't know what you do, and don't give me any details, but you know, as a scientist, if you perform an experiment, and the results are kind of contradictory, do you just gloss over it and keep going? Or do you have to sit down and resolve those things.
[1:01:00] You repeat it to have clarity.
[1:01:03] Okay, so you still keep getting contradictory results. Do you just say, well, you know, I'll just keep moving on. I'll just keep public. I'll publish. It's fine.
[1:01:09] You adjust your experimental design. Right.
[1:01:12] You have to resolve those contradictions.
[1:01:15] Correct.
[1:01:16] Because you can't publish contradictory results, right? Like if I go to investors and say, the business is going to simultaneously make and lose $5 million next year. What would the investor say?
[1:01:29] No, thank you.
[1:01:31] Yeah. Like if I'm sorry, you're not in reality, right? And if you say my father is a cruel, nice guy who's mentally deficient, but also was an air traffic controller. who i give endless excuses to but i hate excuses, who i don't hold accountable though i hate people who aren't held accountable but i love my father but by every standard i hate my father right you're absolutely correct there's no room in some there's no room for someone else in that level of self-contradiction there's no room for anyone else because you're just fighting with yourself and there's no room for anyone else.
[1:02:18] It's damaging.
[1:02:20] Yeah.
[1:02:21] For sure, it is. I acknowledge that.
[1:02:24] So your parents...
[1:02:25] It has been something I've struggled with.
[1:02:27] Your parents wanted you to fail.
[1:02:29] Absolutely.
[1:02:30] Okay. So.
[1:02:33] They tried to invoke my failures. sometimes they'd promise to help me some in college. And then my mom'd be like, oh, it's okay. I know you're busy with studying. This month, I'll help you pay the rent. And then two days before the rent was due, she would say, no, I'm not going to give you any money.
[1:02:58] Sure. Again, you don't need to sell me on the bad parenting, but that's fine. Okay. So your parents want you to fail. because when you blame your kid for your own failure, you're setting your kid up for failure.
[1:03:14] Correct. Okay.
[1:03:15] So your parents want you to fail. How are your romantic relationships going?
[1:03:22] Pretty well. I mean, my marriage was 10 years. I have two beautiful children out of it, even though.
[1:03:30] Okay. You cannot quote your marriage as a success. I mean, obviously it's great that the kids are here, but if your wife is trying to get your ass arrested, and thrown in jail and bleeds the family finances dry with lawfare, that's not a success, right?
[1:03:45] No.
[1:03:46] Okay, so what's happened since?
[1:03:49] I'm remarried now.
[1:03:51] Okay.
[1:03:53] It's okay. It's not perfect.
[1:03:59] So not perfect is a useless statement, right?
[1:04:03] Yes.
[1:04:04] I mean, I didn't even know what perfect would be. It's like saying, well, you know, my uncle didn't live to 500 years of age. It's like, Okay, why are you saying that? Nobody lives to 500 years of age, right?
[1:04:19] It's good, Stefan.
[1:04:21] Okay, and what does your wife think of your contradictory thoughts about your father?
[1:04:31] She thinks I'm a bad person for abandoning him.
[1:04:36] So she sides with your father and condemns you?
[1:04:41] Correct.
[1:04:41] I thought you said that loyalty was the key thing for you. Did I misunderstand that?
[1:04:50] No.
[1:04:51] Is she being loyal?
[1:04:54] No.
[1:04:55] Are you guys Christians?
[1:04:57] I'm Catholic.
[1:04:59] Okay, so yes. Yes. You're Christianity, the original. Okay. And is your wife religious?
[1:05:07] I've lived a significant part of my life as agnostic, I would say.
[1:05:12] Okay, I get that. Sorry, I mean, I understand that. Is your wife religious?
[1:05:18] No.
[1:05:19] Okay. Did you guys have vows, something to do with, we are one flesh, to have no others before you, and so on, right?
[1:05:29] Yes.
[1:05:29] Okay. By putting your father above you and siding with your father outside the marriage against you, is she fulfilling those vows?
[1:05:39] No.
[1:05:39] Okay. So you just need to remind her. You can nicely and kindly remind her of that and say, the basis of our marriage was that we put each other first. You are siding with my father against me. that is an act of infidelity that is like cheating on me. And you don't have to be mean or harsh, but just, you know, sometimes people just need to be reminded of their promises. You know, like if you lent a hundred bucks to a friend and he forgot about it, he just needs to be reminded. Oh, hey, you remember you said you'd give me that five. Oh, I'm so sorry. Right, right, right. Right. Just, you know, you can be nice about it and just say, you're siding with my father who was not a good father. because he chose my mother. And it would not at all surprise me, though I have no particular proof, of course, it would not at all surprise me if your mother had done things to sabotage your marriage by talking to your ex-wife.
[1:06:31] I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I think some of the maybe reasons why she does that is because her situation with her father, I see, is there's some consistency.
[1:06:47] Okay. For a guy who doesn't like excuses, what happens every time?
[1:06:55] I provide caveats.
[1:06:57] Okay, so you don't want to use the word excuses. Okay, so as long as we use a synonym for the word excuses, it's not an excuse. Perhaps we could just switch to French. Excusez-moi.
[1:07:12] Okay. Oui, oui.
[1:07:13] Right. So, listen, and so we can say there are reasons without providing excuses, right? So I can say, listen, the reason why I'm so focused on self-knowledge and reason, rationality, is because I grew up raised in a culture and with people who opposed rationality and self-knowledge, and it was hell on earth. So that's a reason.
[1:07:36] Right?
[1:07:36] That's a reason why I would be particularly interested in pursuing this, right? It's not an excuse, right?
[1:07:42] Yes.
[1:07:44] So... So if you say, well, my wife's relationship with her father is a challenge. Okay. That's, a challenge. That's something we can all have sympathy for. And of course, for those of you who are younger, because both the caller and I are in our fifties, though he's at the opening end and I'm sort of at the closing end of my fifties, you all don't know what it's like when your parents get old yet. You don't know what it's like, right? So you get childhood back because people are going to say, my God, this guy's in his fifties and blah, blah, blah, but your parents are old, right? And they're going to start to need resources for health reasons and mobility reasons and perhaps even financial reasons if they don't need that already, right?
[1:08:29] Correct.
[1:08:30] Right. So parents return to your life in your fifties. They come back in a way that wasn't the case since you were little. Like even as a teenager, like most teenagers, if you have a bad home, or maybe even if you have a good home, you want to spend a lot of time out there with your peers and your friends and doing teen stuff and not being home, right? So your parents come back in your 50s like they weren't around since you were in your single digits. They're just in your mind because the situation has reversed. They are now needy in a way that you were needy when you were a kid. So it's like a mirror image. And again, I don't mean to tell you your life, but I certainly heard a lot of that kind of stuff.
[1:09:09] Absolutely correct. Right.
[1:09:11] So they're back. And I'm sure that your wife's father himself has needs and requirements. And of course, as the woman, she would be more likely to be expected or required to provide all of that.
[1:09:23] He recently passed away. Um, and, uh, I saw a lot of, And indifference from him, he was a yes man. He would just agree with whatever she said and what she thought was best. He didn't have any kind of spine and like say, no, that's a bad idea. You shouldn't do that.
[1:09:52] So he was a manipulator and a liar. Because that's what yes people are. They're manipulating and they're lying. They say they agree with you when they don't. And they do it in order to gain control over you and get your acquiescence.
[1:10:03] Absolutely.
[1:10:04] Okay.
[1:10:04] I despise that because if I ask somebody for advice, I want their honest opinion. And I give my honest opinion. I'm not one to shy away from conflict when it's required. I'm quite a center-right, conservative person, and I've existed within academia for 30 years. And I might add, without any conflict from my peers either, very, very little, they accept me, they respect me, and they know I'm going to stand up for my colleagues if required, no questions asked, and I pursue the truth. And I welcome criticism. I appreciate that.
[1:10:55] And listen, I mean, my admiration for your career and academic skills is without end or limit. I'm very glad that you're not in the arts, but rather in the sciences, because that's the last holdout of Western objective rationalism. But okay. So with regards to your father, he gave you no advice. He married a terrible woman. He's passive. He blamed you for his life's failures, right? Do you know if he's ever done talk therapy? No, but he would have been exposed to some kind of therapy because they don't just, you know, just haul you in and throw a helmet on you and run whatever electricity through your frontal lobes, right? That you have to go through some counseling first.
[1:11:39] That would have been 50 years ago.
[1:11:41] Yeah, but I don't think they don't just, they don't just slap you down. Like there was psychiatry 50 years ago, right? They talked to you.
[1:11:50] I agree, but we've never had any serious discussions concerning those matters. He would always say, well, we'll discuss it when you're older. When I had questions in my teenage years.
[1:12:03] Okay, so I need you to start looking at the language that you're using. We never had is as if you're equals. You are not equal to your father. He runs the relationship. He dominates the relationship. He sets the tone for the relationship. and it's almost impossible to talk to a parent about something that parent does not want to talk about. So he is in charge. I mean, you are a father. How much does the tail wag the dog? How much are your children in charge of your relationship?
[1:12:40] 2%. Yeah.
[1:12:42] I mean, they have influence and you want to listen to that.
[1:12:44] Yeah, for sure. We have conversation.
[1:12:46] It never goes 50-50. Never.
[1:12:48] Never.
[1:12:49] Never. So when you say we've never had, it's like, no, your father has avoided. Your father has refused. Your father has rejected your legitimate needs for guidance, wisdom, and counsel. How old was he when he turned to Christianity?
[1:13:06] 35, 40 years old.
[1:13:09] So that's like 40 years ago, right?
[1:13:13] Correct.
[1:13:13] All right. So for 40 years, he has known that a father must morally and through wisdom instruct his son, right? Spare the rod, the rod being the staff of wisdom, spare the rod, spoil the child. Is it the job of the father to teach his son right from wrong?
[1:13:35] Yes.
[1:13:36] And he's known this.
[1:13:37] He abandoned that.
[1:13:38] He's known this for 40 years.
[1:13:42] And longer, but maybe made more aware by the Christian teachings.
[1:13:46] Sure. I mean, every father, if you ask any father, should you teach your children right from wrong, they will say, well, yeah.
[1:13:52] It's quite instinctual.
[1:13:54] It is. I mean, you don't need to teach a wolf to train its cubs on hunting, right? Absolutely.
[1:14:02] Absolutely.
[1:14:03] So your father not only refused his most foundational obligation as a father. I mean, there's a couple of fundamental obligations as a father, right? One, you kind of both took a bit of a misstep, if not a landmine, which is to choose a good mother for your children. But the reason why you ended up choosing a bad mother for your children, if that's the way to characterize it, is because you were untrained. Now, I guess, of course, and this is back to your grandfather dying of the mustard gas or whatever, that your father was not trained and so on. But if we're going to take responsibility, we just have to take responsibility. I mean, if responsibility is value, we just have to take it.
[1:14:42] So I take the responsibility for my children. Right. So I'm engaging in conversations as these and, and surrounding myself with, with productive, conscientious, disciplined people who, who very much care about me. Some of the best allies I've had in my life have been my colleagues.
[1:15:01] Right. So 40 years ago, you were 11 years of age, and this was 10 years before your parents' divorce. So he had a decade of specific instruction on the fact that he needed to teach you about life. And you said he didn't even talk to you about girls, which would be a big topic in your teenage years. So you must train up your children. Your children will go, where do your children go morally as a Christian? Where do your children go without instruction?
[1:15:28] To the devil.
[1:15:29] Yeah. So your father, knowing that without instruction, you were being handed over to the devil, declined to instruct you. Knowing that that was, and believing and accepting that this was the inevitable consequences that you would go the way of the devil without instruction. He refused to instruct you. And he blamed you for his own life failures. Right?
[1:15:53] Absolutely.
[1:15:54] Okay. Where is, and I'm happy to be instructed in this, where is the ambivalence? Where is it like, you know, 50-50, 51-49, like where is all this ambivalence coming from?
[1:16:10] That's a great question i'm not exactly sure.
[1:16:13] Your father oh.
[1:16:15] Okay there you go.
[1:16:16] Your father is a manipulator he plays the victim he needs he needs he needs you know how dare you you can't abandon me i'm lonely and whatever it is like whatever his life circumstances he's a manipulator so you have your natural instincts right you have i mean you've ulysses right on the um, strapped to the mast of the vessel, right? He wants to survive, but he also wants to dive in and swim to the sirens and die on the rocks. So you have your organic, natural, disgust at your father.
[1:16:53] Absolutely.
[1:16:54] And your father finds that massively inconvenient and fights it tooth and nail, and manipulates you into still providing him resources.
[1:17:06] You know, kind of a woe is me and.
[1:17:09] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[1:17:09] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[1:17:10] So when, when you were talking about like, so I was talking to two people at the beginning of the convo, just so everybody knows how I listen. Right. So I was talking to you and this is, remember I said, it's so tangled and contradictory because you are like, um, two sides of a coin, right? Heads and tails, right? So heads is dad, tails is you, right? No, let's say heads is you because tails is behind you. It's the past. It's your father. right? So heads and tails, right? And so I wasn't sure which side of the coin I was going to get. So at the beginning, I'm talking to a guy who's giving lots of sympathy and excuses to his father while really mad at his mom, right? So who in your life has sympathy for himself, but is mad at your mother?
[1:17:56] Father.
[1:17:56] Your father. So that's just your father. I'm not even talking to you yet. I'm talking to your dad. Yes.
[1:18:03] And I am angry at him for not protecting me. There's no doubt in that.
[1:18:09] Bro, he didn't not protect you. So not protecting you is you're walking down the street and somehow a pack of wolves escaped from the zoo and he runs up a tree. It's not his fault, right? That the wolves are there. He just reacted badly. It's another thing if he drops you in the fucking wolf pen. Your father didn't just fail to protect you. your father married a woman who was violent and emotionally abusive, or at least emotionally abusive from what you've said. Correct me, anything I get wrong. So your father married, dated, got engaged to, married and gave how many children?
[1:18:46] One.
[1:18:47] Okay. It's even more of a challenge, right? So he gave one child to a woman who was far from an ideal mother. And then he kept her there. He kept you in the orbit, right? Right, so he created the situation, gave the woman a child, and kept you there. So that's not just failing to protect you, that is drawing you into and putting you into a situation of danger, and then also failing to protect you. But it's more than just a failure, it is engineered.
[1:19:18] Yes.
[1:19:20] You know, it's one thing if you're the bomb disposal unit and you fail to defuse the bomb, it's another thing if you set it.
[1:19:26] Yeah.
[1:19:29] So you, and again, as a single child.
[1:19:32] Uh, again, and or sabotaging someone trying to defuse it. Right.
[1:19:36] Right. But at least that would be obvious, right? I mean, if you are the real, uh, saboteur, what you'd want to do is pretend to be the bomb disposal guy and then say, oh, well, I couldn't fix it. Right. And that way you keep the real bomb disposal guy away and you make sure the bomb goes off. Right. Anyway. So, so when I'm talking to you, I don't know if I'm talking to you as in the person who was betrayed as a child tragically by the parents, it sounds like. I don't know if I'm talking to you or if I'm talking to your father in you.
[1:20:05] I'm sure you're talking to both.
[1:20:07] Because I have the conflict inside of you. Right.
[1:20:09] I agree.
[1:20:10] And that's why the perspectives flip back and forth without any continuity between them.
[1:20:18] Yeah, it's the fear of seeing myself as a bad person for abandoning my father.
[1:20:25] That's your father's implant.
[1:20:26] That's the core of it.
[1:20:27] Yeah, that is your father's implant to keep you around.
[1:20:30] Mm-hmm.
[1:20:31] Because the only other way, what's the only other way he could keep you around?
[1:20:35] There isn't one. There is, potentially.
[1:20:38] What's the only other way he could keep you around?
[1:20:40] Being a decent father?
[1:20:43] Apologizing and restitution, making amends, validating your experience, going to therapy, apologizing for blaming you for his own failures, apologize for the woman he chose to be the mother, apologize for not being there for you over the last seven years since your divorce, just, you know, a groveling, wretched, supposed to be happening if he's a Christian set of apologies. You know, when you become a Christian, you do a sin inventory, don't you? You say, here's the things, I mean, they do it in AA. I'm sure they do it in Christianity too. Here's the things I've done that are wrong. Here's the amends that I need to make. Here's the sins that I committed. Here's the restitution I need to make. Christianity, you do wrong. Everybody does wrong. And what are you supposed to do with that wrong? You apologize, you seek forgiveness, you make amends, right?
[1:21:28] It's not going to happen.
[1:21:29] No, of course it's not going to happen. What I'm saying is it's not impossible. And the reason, you see, this is the last thing I want to get across to you, bro. You're harming your father by not demanding that he do better by giving him resources without him actually maturing to the point where he takes responsibility and apologizes, makes restitution. That's the healing thing, right? So in a sense, you're kind of the devil with your dad because the devil prevents you from the negative consequences of sin. Why? So you keep sinning. He wants to numb you to the effects of your sin, so you keep sinning. And by enabling your father, by taking his case, by letting your wife talk you into enabling sin, boy, if only that was in the Bible somewhere, that would be a fascinating story.
[1:22:17] Right?
[1:22:18] But you are not helping your father. This is part of your anger at your father, is to take his side and thus prevent him from experiencing the consequences of his sin. This is a very elegant form of F you to the dead. Oh, that's fine. I'll be around. Yeah, no, I'm not going to condemn you. No, I'm going to stick around. I'm going to be like you were a good father. You understand that from a Christian standpoint, you are numbing him so the infection spreads.
[1:22:50] A lot of the anger also comes from pretending that we had a relationship.
[1:22:56] And as a kid, listen, as a kid, you did exactly the right thing. As a kid, you maintained your ability to have human connection by pair bonding with the nicest parent, right? Or the least nasty parent. And so you needed that, especially as a single kid, because you couldn't bond with a sibling, right? And so you had to bond with your father as a kid. Absolutely. Because what else are you going to do? Like have no bonds whatsoever. That's pretty catastrophic for your life as a whole, because we're social animals. We need to have the ability to pair bond in order to raise children. So your instincts are like, okay, well, we've got a really shitty meal and we've got an only somewhat shitty meal. Well, we got to eat. So we'll just eat the somewhat shitty meal because the really shitty meal could be fatal, right? So you bond with your dad and your mind and you make do with scraps and like, you know, with Gollum, you eat the food at the base of the mountain, the uncooked fish and all that sort of stuff, right? So you do all of that. And that makes perfect sense. That's exactly the right thing to do as a kid. Then as an adult, right, You put aside the childish things, as we're all supposed to do, and you judge people according to your independence and according to their objective moral actions. And if you have a father that you wouldn't have as a babysitter, then you have a challenge because it doesn't sound like you'd want either of these people to be babysitting your kids unsupervised.
[1:24:20] No.
[1:24:20] So you have to judge according to adult desserts. And justice is to pay people what they owe. If you owe someone 500 bucks, pay that money. If someone owes you 500 bucks, go collect that money. To pay and collect what you owe is the essence of justice. And if you withhold objective moral judgments from your father, you are harming him. And if you, as a Catholic, believe in the soul, and if you believe in his destination, see, he condemned you to hell in a way, by not giving you instruction as a teenager by not giving him moral instruction and being honest with him what where is his soul's destination if he doesn't change.
[1:25:01] I feel it's futile. Or maybe I'm afraid I'm just going to be even more disappointed by some blunt recognition.
[1:25:09] Okay, I'm so sorry.
[1:25:10] They're just a waste of time.
[1:25:11] Catholic, right?
[1:25:12] Correct.
[1:25:13] Thou shalt not bear—oh, God, I can't remember. How does the rest of that go? Thou shalt not bear false teeth. Thou shalt not bear false teeth. You don't have any false teeth, do you?
[1:25:25] Not yet.
[1:25:25] Okay, good, good. So you're fine. No. Thou shalt not bear what?
[1:25:29] Thou shalt not bear what? false witness.
[1:25:33] Thou shalt not bear false witness. Honor thy mother and thy father. Do we honor people by lying to them?
[1:25:41] Um, no.
[1:25:42] No. If your kids lie to you, do you feel honored by them?
[1:25:48] No, absolutely.
[1:25:49] Right, so tell your father the truth and fulfill at least two commandments.
[1:25:53] Okay, that's...
[1:25:54] And work to save his soul. Can you save his soul? No. But you can at least not participate in its damnation.
[1:26:02] I mean, I can save mine in the process.
[1:26:06] Well, I think it's important that you take some spiritual and moral leadership in your family.
[1:26:12] Yes, sir. Thank you, Stefan.
[1:26:14] You are very welcome, brother. And again, I say this with all respect and with absolute sorrow and a big manly bear hug about your childhood and what you were faced with. For those of you who aren't, again, sorry to just make your case to the world, for those of you who aren't only children, you don't know. now i was not an only child although i did spend some years with my mother alone for a variety of reasons my brother went to boarding school before i did my brother was in england for years so i did spend some years with my mother as an only child it's pretty bad it's pretty bad and it's very easy to fall out of social skills it's very easy to um to be a sort of little lord Fontalroy Slave for your parents' needs and preferences, especially if your parents aren't getting along because then they, I've just got a whole novel about this with a character called Shane, but, So, you know, I would really encourage people to have sympathy when you find out that somebody is from a dysfunctional family and they're an only child. Please, please, please give them some extra care and consideration because it's a burden that if you've not had to carry and I haven't. So I'm not much, not nearly as much as you have. So I just wanted to give you my great sympathy for that as well.
[1:27:32] I would have loved to have had a sibling. I'm sorry? Because my support, I would have loved to have had a brother or sister because I would have, it would have widened my support system.
[1:27:40] Well, it doesn't always do that. That's part of the fantasy about, you know, it doesn't always do that because your siblings can be corrupt as well. But at least it gives you more horizontal connections. So you're not just the shadow cast by your parents alone.
[1:27:57] Thank you, Stefan.
[1:27:58] You are very welcome. What a great chat.
[1:28:01] Guidance you've given me.
[1:28:03] I really appreciate that. And transformative. Yeah, I really appreciate that. And listen, thank you for your honesty and openness in this conversation. You certainly fulfilled the don't bear false witness as far as this goes. And I really do appreciate that. So thank you, everyone. Sorry, again, we started a little bit late. I will try and get a donor show going to Mario. And thank you, freedomain.com/donate to help out the show. If these kinds of conversations are of value to you, and I know that they are, then if you could help out the show again, still trying to recover from more than a half decade of deplatforming. which had a smidge, you really had to squint to see it, had a smidge of an effect on the old income. So freedomain.com/donate. Lots of love, my friends. Have a glorious day. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.
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