Friday Night Live Chat 21 June 2024
In this episode, I discuss the closure of Toronto's Science Center, criticizing government negligence on infrastructure maintenance and urging a focus on upkeep over new construction. Conversations with callers delve into confronting family alcoholism, setting boundaries, and prioritizing self-care. We explore behavioral patterns, emotional honesty, and personal growth, emphasizing the importance of self-awareness in relationships and decision-making.
Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!
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https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/UPB2022
In this episode, I discuss the closure of Toronto's Science Center, criticizing government negligence on infrastructure maintenance and urging a focus on upkeep over new construction. Conversations with callers delve into confronting family alcoholism, setting boundaries, and prioritizing self-care. We explore behavioral patterns, emotional honesty, and personal growth, emphasizing the importance of self-awareness in relationships and decision-making.
Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!
NOW AVAILABLE FOR SUBSCRIBERS: MY NEW BOOK 'PEACEFUL PARENTING' - AND THE INTERACTIVE PEACEFUL PARENTING AI AND AUDIOBOOK!
Also get the Truth About the French Revolution, the interactive multi-lingual philosophy AI trained on thousands of hours of my material, private livestreams, premium call in shows, the 22 Part History of Philosophers series and much more!
See you soon!
https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/UPB2022
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00:00Welcome evening everybody. Welcome to your Friday night live on this delicious and delightful evening of the 21st of June
00:00:072024 and
00:00:10What I did a show just the other night on
00:00:14Bad things in Toronto bad things in Canada now
00:00:20just today let me tell you a little something about a
00:00:24Joy and happiness of my youth the joy and happiness of my youth was a little place
00:00:28just down the road from where I lived and
00:00:30Don Mills and Lawrence
00:00:32With Don Mills and Eglinton and it was in fact the Science Center now I could actually done I think
00:00:39young and sorry
00:00:41Eglinton and
00:00:42Don Mills and Eglinton. It's like one of the busiest intersections in North America and I could actually walk
00:00:48down to the Science Center from
00:00:51my house and it was dirt cheap to get in and
00:00:55And we had school trips there and so on I memorably remember having a school trip there I had no money for lunch
00:01:00So I had to have the very infamous
00:01:03tomato cracker
00:01:06Soup and what that is is you get a bunch because you know, you get the free stuff, right?
00:01:09You get a little free bowl you get some
00:01:14Tomato ketchup in packets, which is free you get some crackers which back then were free and you'd mix
00:01:20The tomato packets of water and you break in the crackers and that would be your
00:01:25Lunchtime nutrition can't imagine why I got a little short of attention span in the afternoon, but that was life as a poor kid
00:01:31And I loved that Science Center man. They had some really cool stuff
00:01:37They had ancient Macintosh computers while they weren't ancient back then but when I took my daughter back decades later
00:01:43They were still using the same ancient Macintosh computers to stuff. There was a lunar lander thing
00:01:47There was a cool thing where you powered a TV by peddling and you realize just how much energy went into electricity
00:01:53They had just really neat stuff. They had the photographic wall with your imprints. They had a
00:02:02Kind of wild dizzying video which zoomed all the way into the nucleus of an atom and then all the way out to the edge
00:02:08of the universe
00:02:09making me feel rather dizzy and giving a strange sense of just how much of the universe can fit inside the human head and
00:02:17When I went back with my daughter, which we went back a couple of times
00:02:20I took her on the tour of my old neighborhood and told her all the stories of my upbringing and
00:02:25Took her the spot where I realized I was gonna marry her mother and it was just a great package of great memories
00:02:33from my childhood anyway, so
00:02:37long story short
00:02:39Here's what I here's what I read
00:02:43The Ontario Science Center
00:02:46At its current East Toronto location will permanently close at the end of the day Friday due to structural concerns with the roof
00:02:581969 the Ontario Science Center opens as the world's first interactive Science Center
00:03:031971 Ontario place opens on Toronto's waterfront 2012
00:03:07Ontario places amusement park closes so the site can be redeveloped
00:03:112016
00:03:13The Liberal government of the day does a business case report on the Science Center
00:03:16Which says that relocating it would save money the Science Center board says a due to deferred maintenance needs the status quo is not sustainable
00:03:21But no action is taken
00:03:262017 new sections of Parkland and trails open at Ontario place 2020
00:03:29The idea of relocating the Science Center is floated again as the tourism and culture ministry
00:03:33Proposes it to government decision-makers as a way to open up housing lands
00:03:37May okay, blah blah blah blah blah boring boring boring, but
00:03:43Here we go
00:03:45Here we go
00:03:49March 2023 a business case commissioned by the government concludes that the cost of restore the current Science Center building and
00:03:55Exhibits would be 1.3 billion dollars over 50 years
00:03:59Well building and operating a new Science Center in a pavilion at Ontario place would cost 1.05 billion over 50 years
00:04:05That's a quarter of a mil cheaper
00:04:08Oh my gosh
00:04:15December 6 2023 Ontario's Auditor General says the business case is missing key information including incremental parking costs and financing
00:04:22Transaction and legal costs for a new Science Center as well as similar costs for the repairs and upgrade of the current facility
00:04:29So
00:04:31Anyway, what has happened is that June 21st?
00:04:352024
00:04:37the Ontario government announces that the Science Center is
00:04:40Abruptly and permanently closing at the end of the day after engineers found structural issues with
00:04:46the roof
00:04:50Quote the Ontario Science Center is shutting down immediately due to the risk that the building's roof could collapse
00:04:56the province announced Friday
00:04:59Isn't that
00:05:02The actions today will protect the health and safety of visitors and staff said infrastructure
00:05:08Minister Kinga Surma in a news release
00:05:12Infrastructure minister isn't that supposed to be infrastructure minister?
00:05:18They're just putting up new stuff
00:05:21You
00:05:24An engineering report this week by Rimkus consulting group showed each of the center's three buildings contained roof panel
00:05:30panels in a distressed high-risk condition
00:05:33the Ministry of Infrastructure
00:05:35Said in a news release
00:05:37So it's the infrastructure minister Kinga Surma, but it's the Ministry of Infrastructure
00:05:43Yes, all of this makes sense
00:05:47Fixing the roof will cost between 22 million and 40 million dollars
00:05:50Requiring the center to be closed for up to two
00:05:53years
00:05:56The government says the center needs four hundred and seventy eight million dollars to tackle its failing infrastructure and sustain programming
00:06:07So
00:06:10What does this mean
00:06:14It's a little tragic of course in many different ways
00:06:17But
00:06:19You do understand the
00:06:24Metaphor that is embedded in
00:06:30Ontario being unable to sustain its science center
00:06:40Because
00:06:41The roof is about to cave in
00:06:48In that wild just think about meditate on that
00:06:55Meditate on that where we are in the West as a culture and as society
00:07:04We are unable
00:07:07to sustain our science center and
00:07:10They have to close it
00:07:13with no warning forever
00:07:16Because the entire thing is about to freak and collapse
00:07:24And it will probably just
00:07:29Never reopen
00:07:32Boy talk about your
00:07:35Atlas shrugged, right?
00:07:37Sorry, oh
00:07:39So sorry for all the taxes we've taken to keep the science center open it turns out our science center
00:07:48Is a total house of cards. We've been unable to maintain the building that houses the education of our children on
00:07:56science
00:07:59So sorry the government
00:08:02Don't here's here's the funny thing man. Listen, just just please understand this basic reality
00:08:09That if you give the government
00:08:12trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars
00:08:16They can change the weather in a hundred years
00:08:20However
00:08:23They can't maintain a fucking building
00:08:29Not only the can they not maintain it but it turns out it's a complete and total shock
00:08:37That it's about to collapse
00:08:40Oh
00:08:41They can change
00:08:43the weather in a hundred years if you sign over your children's kidneys, but
00:08:48Turns out they can't do a business plan that involves costs and benefits. Oh
00:08:53But that weather a hundred years from now man, that's set in stone. They got that covered
00:08:58Isn't it beautiful?
00:09:01Isn't it just
00:09:04beautiful
00:09:05How wonderful how competent how amazing how illustrious and glorious these leaders are
00:09:14That science center is younger than I am
00:09:17But turns out the government can do just about anything man it can manage a pandemic
00:09:24It can save the environment. It can control the weather and the temperature on the entire planet
00:09:29You know what? It can't seem to get round to doing
00:09:33It's
00:09:36Patching up some roofs before the whole building comes down on thousands and thousands of children's heads. Oh
00:09:46This is why I'm out of politics man, it's just so wearying it's so wearying but yeah, there we go infrastructure minister
00:09:55Yeah, sorry emergency closure because it's gonna cave in on the children but yeah, just you know, keep paying that carbon tax man
00:10:03You we can't maintain the roof over your children's heads, but we totally can change the weather in a century. Yeah, absolutely
00:10:10I don't know maybe start with the buildings
00:10:13Just maybe start with not having the buildings collapse
00:10:17Or be threatened with collapse just you know, maybe start with that and then maybe I'll start listen to if you can maintain a building
00:10:25If if you can maintain a building
00:10:28Maybe I can talk to you about some other stuff
00:10:32But if you can't even maintain a building, it's obviously a little bit tough to take anything seriously
00:10:40Infrastructure and I actually worked for a company for a couple of years when I was younger
00:10:44Whose entire job it was to predict infrastructure costs for public and private enterprises and I can tell you I saw the numbers
00:10:51I saw the numbers of
00:10:54Deferred maintenance costs for governments
00:10:58They would gouge your freaking eyeballs out with an awl if you understood just how much infrastructure was decaying
00:11:05Because you know politicians what are they like doing? Hey, I'm opening up a new building. There's a new parkland. There's a new development
00:11:12There's a new block cut the ribbon cut the ribbon
00:11:16But maintaining infrastructure man, that's not sexy preventing problems, that's not sexy
00:11:21I mean who's gonna notice that who's gonna care about that?
00:11:23Hey, man, where are all my taxes going? Because I haven't seen anything new built for a while
00:11:28It's like well, you know, they really are going on maintaining, you know, the electricity grid the sewage infrastructure the buildings
00:11:36that house the educational
00:11:38Requests and preferences of thousands of children a day. Yeah, we just you know, but that's not sexy. It's not sexy to just maintain things
00:11:47Sexy to build new things. So that's what they do
00:11:49They build new things and then they can point and say I I have done all of these these wonderful building things
00:11:55Re-elect me as opposed to well
00:11:58your children will still enjoy the same quality of
00:12:03Clean water that you have. Well, that's not sexy. Can't sell that can't sell that
00:12:08Everybody wants the new stuff
00:12:10Nobody wants to maintain the old stuff until it all breaks and then all the new stuff doesn't work because the infrastructure doesn't work
00:12:20And get ready
00:12:22For it get used to it. It's coming and
00:12:26There is no way around it Calgary
00:12:30Now has emergency water rationing
00:12:33Canada has
00:12:350.5% of
00:12:38the world's population
00:12:41Canada has
00:12:4320% of the world's supply of fresh water and
00:12:48A major city in Canada is out of water
00:12:57Oh my is this what Friedman who said if you put the government in charge of the Sahara Desert in five years
00:13:03They'd be out of sand
00:13:06And all the government estimate to like dr. Evil with this with billions dr
00:13:10Evil with his little finger in the corner of his mouth billions and billions
00:13:13Oh
00:13:17Well, you end up with what you ignore you end up with what you ignore
00:13:25So, yeah, just be aware man be
00:13:28Where what is coming down the pipeline, which is there's nothing coming down the pipeline because the pipelines are crusted and broken
00:13:36You know, I was driving around the other day
00:13:39trying to find something with my daughter and came across a
00:13:43Somebody they replaced a culvert. The government said we've replaced a culvert. It took six months and over a million dollars to replace a culvert
00:13:53Cuz they you know
00:13:55The government they're happy to have the job keep running. I'm sure there's tons of kickbacks and
00:14:01I'm sure that the people aren't in any big rush to finish the contract because they get a steady paycheck
00:14:06Which is kind of hard to get a hold of in the free market the market free. So
00:14:12Yes, just get used to it and
00:14:14Of course, you know with lots and lots of people pouring into the country
00:14:18Then it's going to be a whole lot of infrastructure demands and a whole lot of infrastructure that has not been maintained
00:14:24How the fuck do you end up with a bunch of buildings?
00:14:29That you've been pouring gone godly amounts of money into for decades
00:14:33how do you end up with a bunch of buildings that you have to
00:14:37Pull the emergency fire alarm basically and shut them down because they are in imminent danger of collapsing on the children
00:14:47Well, I guess you don't have much competence and you don't have much of a conscience that's my guess
00:14:53So yeah, man, you gotta be prepared for this stuff
00:14:58It only gets worse and worse and worse from here
00:15:05Prepare yourselves accordingly my book
00:15:09The present goes into this and you should check it out
00:15:12Somebody says New York City Amtrak shut down because power lines were down near trains infrastructure
00:15:18Science the center of our society must be shut down
00:15:23Isn't that wild
00:15:25Another major infrastructure issue is all the water mains around Los Angeles that are well past maintenance and burst pretty regularly here
00:15:32La also has a science center. That sounds very similar to the Toronto one you're describing. It was pretty cool. Yeah
00:15:38See we can't
00:15:41educate children about abstract science
00:15:45Because we lack
00:15:48Basic maintenance and engineering. Ah
00:15:51Be fun to learn about quantum physics kids, but we can't keep the roof up
00:15:58Oh
00:16:01Let's look at what happens when atoms collide
00:16:05Now kids, I'm gonna need you to hold your umbrellas up. So the roof doesn't cave in
00:16:14We live in
00:16:19Infinitely dangerous clown world
00:16:22We live in clown world like Heath Ledger's Joker is a clown
00:16:29You
00:16:31Well kids there's a gauntlet you have to run to learn
00:16:36How to figure out the moon's orbit of the earth
00:16:39You've got a run your way and roll your way through falling cascades of deathly masonry
00:16:48Hey, you know what's cool you can learn about how asteroids killed the dinosaurs with crazy shit falling on your heads
00:16:56Isn't that vivid?
00:17:00I mean this is way better than VR
00:17:06You can learn how craters are formed
00:17:10With giant tons of concrete raining down on your heads making interestingly enough craters
00:17:18Wow now that's what I call an educational experience
00:17:27Hey kids
00:17:31We're gonna teach you about the perils of failing infrastructure by having the building cave in around you
00:17:40You're also gonna learn how important it is to pay your taxes
00:17:49Oh
00:17:50It's also very vivid and it's also very educational see the Science Center is now really teaching us something
00:17:57I thought the Science Center was just gonna teach us about science
00:18:01Now the Science Center is going to teach us about rampant corruption
00:18:04Lack of planning lack of efficiency the difference between a bureaucratic pseudo economy and an actual free market
00:18:14Anyway so we can talk if you like we can talk about
00:18:18What's going on in the world we can talk about what's going in on in your mind and in your heart
00:18:26If you want to unmute this is a chitty-chatty back and forth II so I'm all ears
00:18:31I certainly have topics don't fear don't fret
00:18:35But I'm all ears if you have stuff to talk about go ahead my friend
00:18:39Hey Steph, we had a call in a couple months ago, and I just like to do a follow-up if that's okay, please
00:18:48So this is
00:18:50top of mind right now because I just got a call from my mom and
00:18:55It's um, I don't know if you remember our conversation, but it was about my mom being an alcoholic when I was a child and
00:19:05Dealing with that. I'm sure you get a lot of calls about that. But
00:19:09Anyway, so you told me to basically confront her about it
00:19:14And consider no, no, no
00:19:18Sorry, I might be paraphrasing too much. Do I tell people what to do?
00:19:23You recommend it
00:19:26I talk about costs and benefits. I
00:19:30Said what has been valuable to me
00:19:33But don't and the reason I say this is don't strip yourself ownership of the choice you made
00:19:39Don't be like well Steph told me to do this you made a choice, right?
00:19:43I don't tell people what to do. I
00:19:45Can I can be more clear? I think well, no, it's not made me make the no. No, sorry. It's not more clear
00:19:53It and I'm not trying to be a nag right at the beginning, but it's just it's not more clear
00:19:57It's not like well, that's that's 70% accurate. Let's just make it 75 or 80 percent accurate. That's not accurate
00:20:05Right Steph you told me to confront my mother. No, I didn't guarantee you I didn't but guarantee you we go back on the call
00:20:12That's a basic principle of mine since day one
00:20:17What what led me to that conclusion was our back-and-forth we had where you were
00:20:23It was at a role-play scenario where you were a
00:20:28Future spouse of mine and I was my mother. Mm-hmm
00:20:32And it made me realize all of the crazy that was going on in my life and how someone else might look at it
00:20:40from the outside
00:20:42Okay, so it may have led you to think that it's worth confronting your mother. Go ahead. Did I tell you to confront your mother?
00:20:50No, you did not that was a yeah, you're correct and I understand the point and it's and I'm not I'm not trying to
00:20:56Dog, I'm not trying to dodge accountability here. I just want you to have the self-respect if you made the choice
00:21:02Yes, it took me six months to make the choice since we're since our last Colin
00:21:08Together so it was it was quite a bit of time of meditating on it
00:21:12Relistening to the Colin like do you remember the title? Sorry to interrupt. Do you remember the title of the show?
00:21:21Rough time frame you said six months. Uh, yeah, let me look at Skype and I can tell you right, okay
00:21:26And to see I just I'm sure I want to hear that and then they'll hear giving you
00:21:31Gestapo-style orders on what to do with your life
00:21:35It was December 30th
00:21:38Zipata, it was sorry what December what?
00:21:41Actually, it was January 2nd was when it was recorded. I think it was published the day after okay
00:21:46Got it, January 2nd January 3rd
00:21:48I'm sure James can dig up that title and we'll just put it throw it in here as a reference
00:21:53So it was something about dating grades something about dating crazy women or crazy exes
00:21:59I'm sorry
00:22:00You're gonna have to narrow it down a little bit more than that if we can have that as a category for Colin shows
00:22:05Difficult mother dating crazy difficult mother dating crazy
00:22:10It is that's a show five
00:22:13Three six nine
00:22:15five three six nine addicted to dating
00:22:19Crazy women. Oh, yeah, we have a perhaps that's sorry. I don't know if that's a perhaps
00:22:23That's not it James. Oh, that's not it. I think it was recorded just after that
00:22:29That's actually the show that inspired me to call in. Okay
00:22:33All right. All right. Well, we'll throw it in I'm sure we can dig it up James
00:22:36You can just look for the actual voice and all of that
00:22:40Okay, so what's been happening?
00:22:44So last week I was on the phone with her and
00:22:47She sounded drunk. So I asked her if she's been drinking. She has she's told me previously that she was
00:22:54sober
00:22:55for six months and I
00:22:58I
00:23:00You know when I asked her she said no, I haven't been drinking and then kind of paused for a
00:23:05Few seconds and then she admitted that she had
00:23:08I
00:23:09Asked her how much and she said that it was about a bottle of wine every day for six months
00:23:15So how long had she been claimed to not be drinking for?
00:23:20Us well
00:23:22About six months she claimed to have been sober
00:23:25And then she said Oh a slight revision to not drinking at all. I was drinking a bottle of wine a day
00:23:32Correct. How big is your mom?
00:23:36She's actually slimmed down a bit but since I've noticed now that she's told me she's been drinking for the last six months
00:23:43I've noticed that in the past year. She's gained some weight for sure
00:23:47All right, why why are you not answering the question how big is your mom did you doll how tall is he
00:23:55Uh-huh. Oh it's all uh, maybe five five seven five seven and like 150 180 pounds
00:24:04Maybe 150. Okay. No, so then the reason I'm saying that is
00:24:09So guys, this is this really important, right? This is really important. You need to do girl math when you're
00:24:17Thinking about women or talking to women you have to do the girl math now the girl math goes something like this
00:24:22So I do this with my wife. My wife is five two and
00:24:28I don't know hundred and twelve pounds or something like that
00:24:32So she gets some pretty comfortable airline seats I
00:24:37Mean
00:24:39The first class for me is like coach for her, right?
00:24:42She gets twice almost twice the living space that I get it's really unfair
00:24:46so you got to do girl math the reason I'm saying that is that you think of a bottle of wine and
00:24:52That's a lot for a man
00:24:54That's a hell of a lot for a woman
00:24:58That's probably more than a bottle and a half or a bottle and three-quarters for a man
00:25:04You
00:25:08So, yeah, I just think that you got to remember so it's a bottle of wine
00:25:12So yeah, so what men do is we tend to say? Oh, well, you know if I drank a bottle of wine boy
00:25:18That would be a lot then it would be
00:25:22Way more than that for sure. It's the same thing with food, right? You have a dessert
00:25:28And a woman has a dessert it's like 40% more dessert for her
00:25:35Right, so if you look at rough calories like 1,500 for women 2,500 for men or whatever depending on how active you are and so
00:25:41on right
00:25:42So it's 30 to 40 percent more
00:25:45for a woman
00:25:47Hey, let's split a dessert. Okay. She's getting 30 to 40 percent more. Hey, let's have a drink. She's getting 30 to 40 percent more
00:25:54So I'm sorry to interrupt your I just it's important to do that math so that you understand what life is like
00:26:01For a woman, okay, so sorry
00:26:02She said she hadn't been drinking and then she confesses to drinking a bottle of wine a day
00:26:09for six months, right
00:26:11Yeah, and then
00:26:16We had a conversation about
00:26:18Different recovery options. I told her that my church
00:26:22I had a recovery program that I
00:26:26Had heard was really good
00:26:29This is this all
00:26:31also an important detail is that
00:26:34this
00:26:36Hypothetical virtuous woman in my life that we were role-playing and our Colin
00:26:42Has seemed to arrive. I've been dating a woman from my church for about
00:26:47Five months now and it's been really great. She's virtuous and maybe that's the conversation for another day. I'd like to discuss but
00:26:58like
00:26:59All of that, but it's been it's been great. It's been a great change of pace for me as far as dating goes, but
00:27:06I told her in that conversation
00:27:10that I told my mom that
00:27:13It you know, she keeps drinking. I'm not gonna allow her around my children or
00:27:19My wife when I get married because I'm planning on getting married sometime next year
00:27:24to the
00:27:28You
00:27:31Sorry, hello, sorry, sorry, sorry, you know, sorry you're planning on get married and getting married to this woman, right?
00:27:39Correct congratulations, I think that's beyond thrilling. Yay release the fireworks and the kraken and
00:27:45Possibly a hound or two with red eyes. All right. No, it's fantastic. Good good here. I really I'm thrilling beyond words
00:27:51so you said
00:27:53You're not coming to the wedding. You're not gonna be around my kids if you keep drinking, is that right?
00:27:58Exactly and thank you for the kind words. Um, yeah, she she did not take that. Well at all. She's been ballistic all week
00:28:08Hates my guts told me to my face
00:28:11How could I do this to her?
00:28:14all that
00:28:16Now I don't know if you want feedback yet or not
00:28:19So I'm happy to keep keep listening, but I have some thoughts but I can certainly hold on to them
00:28:24I
00:28:25Can I can fill in a little bit more of the books here?
00:28:31so she
00:28:32asked me for examples of when her drinking was a problem for our family and
00:28:38She's been drinking since I was a well, she's been drinking since she was 17
00:28:44So there's plenty of stories where she's been yelling at us
00:28:48When we were kids we poured out her beer when she was drinking because we were concerned for her and she would scream at us
00:28:56She ruined a 10th birthday of mine and made all my friends leave when she was drunk and broke some family photos
00:29:03just overall
00:29:05pretty despicable
00:29:08Despicable behavior
00:29:10and then after that conversation
00:29:13She told me that she was raped when she was
00:29:1617 by a
00:29:18black football player and
00:29:21she was drunk at the time and
00:29:25the
00:29:26head coach of the football team at the time
00:29:29Told her not to press charges and coerced her in some way shape or form to not
00:29:36have her press charges and
00:29:40You know learning all of that about my mom and one day was quite a lot
00:29:43So I've been trying to process that sorry, so she was raped by a black football player and it's the coach
00:29:50Who told her not to press charges?
00:29:53He was a valuable prospect I guess and didn't want him to go down. That's the way I understand it
00:30:02And she was drunk
00:30:05Yeah
00:30:08I'm
00:30:10I'm
00:30:13Sorry, I'm not sure exactly why you'd believe this I
00:30:16mean also, I
00:30:19Never said I did. Okay. Okay, sir. I just I just because you
00:30:23My mistake. Okay, go ahead
00:30:25Well, I guess I shouldn't have said learning all this was a shock. I guess hearing all this from my mother was a shock
00:30:34I'm I'm not totally inclined to believe that it was it was raped but
00:30:40I
00:30:42Apologies, I'm a little nervous and I left out one detail. She was um
00:30:46hurt her mother made her get an abortion after
00:30:50the rape because she wasn't sure if it was the football players baby or her boyfriend's baby and
00:30:58So boy, I don't know if it was her boyfriend's baby or the rapists, baby
00:31:03Correct, okay
00:31:05And the boyfriend at the time was extremely upset about this and left her and
00:31:12My mom claims it was all very traumatic
00:31:16Which I'm sure it was. Mm-hmm, but if if she's to be believed about
00:31:21all of it
00:31:23So that's that's all the details that I have right now
00:31:26besides the fact that she called me about an hour ago and so first I've heard from her in a week and
00:31:31she continued to berate me and
00:31:34Call me names. So
00:31:37Okay, sorry, is there more that you wanted to add oh
00:31:40That's all okay. And and do you want feedback? I don't want to assume
00:31:46Yes, please why would you threaten her I
00:31:54I'm curious your thoughts on this because this is what she's been telling me that it was a ultimatum
00:32:00Which it was yeah, she's accurate about that
00:32:02Okay, get help or get help or you can't come to my wedding and you can't see your grandkids, right?
00:32:10Yes, and I'm not listen I'm not I just please understand I'm not criticizing at all
00:32:17Right. I I don't know because I'm not I'm not gonna tell you what the right thing to do is because it's so complex
00:32:22Right, and I don't know this woman and and and so on right so please understand
00:32:27I'm not in any way shape or form criticizing you. I'm just curious about your thinking as to
00:32:34I'm going to give a
00:32:37Very manipulative and
00:32:40Unstable and lying woman an ultimatum, which is to fight in her arena, right?
00:32:48Because now you're like well, I'm gonna do an ultimatum and I'm gonna do a threat and I'm gonna do consequences and
00:32:54You're now moving into her arena, right because so so and again not disagreeing could have been totally the right thing to do
00:33:01What do I know? Right, but I am curious about your thinking. So why did you want to give her an ultimatum?
00:33:10The
00:33:14The way I thought about it going into it was that this wasn't necessarily an ultimatum and I guess this is
00:33:21Where I'd really like your insight and you've you've helped me a lot already, but she I
00:33:30Didn't see it as an ultimatum. I saw it as this is what's gonna happen if you keep drinking
00:33:36Period that it's not really a matter of whether or not if you stop drinking everything's gonna be great
00:33:44there's still gonna be a lot of
00:33:47Reconciling with what has already happened
00:33:49But if you continue to drink there's no way you're gonna
00:33:53See your children. I maybe I was wrong to no. No, no, let's not see
00:33:58I don't I don't want to do any combos about right or wrong. I guess again right or wrong is the end of curiosity and
00:34:05I am hugely curious about your thinking in in this way and and again curious doesn't mean critical at all
00:34:12I'm genuinely like step me through what your reasoning was, right?
00:34:16And and the reason is you didn't get your desired output, right
00:34:21Not at all, okay, so so if you didn't get your desired output, that's interesting, right?
00:34:29Mm-hmm. Now, maybe there's no way to get your desired output
00:34:32like if my desired output was become the prima ballerina of the Bolshoi ballet, there's no amount of
00:34:38Stretching and practicing I could do to get that right
00:34:42so
00:34:43Sometimes we don't get our desired output because it's possible to get what we want
00:34:47But we take you the wrong approach and sometimes we don't get the desired outcome because it's impossible for us to get the desired outcome
00:34:54So what is your desired outcome? What do you want most from your mother?
00:35:02I mean very simply I would like her to be around when I have children so that
00:35:07She can be a mother and a grandmother to me and my children
00:35:13And the desired outcome of that would be
00:35:17Let's go back go back for a sec. So your desired outcome is for your mother to be a good mother and grandmother
00:35:30Okay
00:35:32And
00:35:33Your feeling is that if you threaten her
00:35:37with
00:35:39Cutting her off
00:35:41That this is going to produce
00:35:43empathy and virtue and thoughtfulness and
00:35:48morals in your mother
00:35:50Or is your mother a great woman who just happens to have a
00:35:54Drinking problem and if she can get the drinking problem sorted then she's gonna be a really good person to have in your life. I
00:36:04Think the latter is what I was thinking
00:36:06That was and that's so that's a hype that's a hypothetical right that's your that's your
00:36:12Conjecture so your conjecture is
00:36:16My mother's really great
00:36:18but unfortunately, she has a bad habit called drinking and
00:36:24if she stops using alcohol her natural warmth and empathy and
00:36:30love and virtue will
00:36:34Be liberated if that makes sense
00:36:36Yes, okay. So what's your evidence for that? Right? Because that's a that's a pretty big hypothesis, right?
00:36:45Well
00:36:47When
00:36:49When I know she isn't drunk and it's fairly easy for me to tell
00:36:52She everyone says around me and I also agree that she's a very
00:36:59Pleasant woman to be around
00:37:02Okay, can you tell me what that means or what does that look like
00:37:06She's when she invites people over to her home. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Hang on. Sorry. Sorry
00:37:13No, no, no, not people not people
00:37:16My mother was nice when others came over almost all abusive parents are nice when other people come over
00:37:24Right, so that's like that's like the abused woman saying no, no, no, he never hits me in front of police officers
00:37:34So, let's try that one again just you
00:37:37Okay
00:37:39Well, for example recently
00:37:42during Christmas
00:37:43She she made a really great effort to have me and my brother have a great Christmas and that included
00:37:52Flying my brother out paying for the plane ticket and just being warm and cooking and
00:38:00Welcoming into her home. My parents are divorced. So it's
00:38:05Usually
00:38:08Sorry, there's a sound on my
00:38:11but
00:38:13Yeah, I don't know we just had a drama free pleasant
00:38:16Drama-free pleasant Christmas this year. She got me a nice gift of
00:38:23Relatively high value compared to other gifts and
00:38:30That's my events as of now, okay, so you had you had a good Christmas last Christmas, right?
00:38:35Yeah, okay, and I'm sorry to to be behind on this and maybe you said it and then I'm really sorry if I missed it
00:38:43Wasn't she drinking?
00:38:45Um
00:38:47At that point it was she may have been drinking regularly, but she was not drunk
00:38:52those two days that I had seen her I I
00:38:55Can be pretty sure of that
00:38:57So she might have been drinking but she wasn't no she was drinking probably but she wasn't drunk, right?
00:39:03Yeah, that's probably more accurate, okay, so she cut back on her drinking for two days
00:39:09Yeah, I'm sorry, how many you have how long have you how old are you how long how long have you known her
00:39:14I'm 25. Okay, 25. So you got a quarter-century
00:39:17Did she I'm sorry to to to just to remind me. Did she drink through your childhood?
00:39:22Yes. Okay. So she was an alcoholic and a drunk throughout your childhood
00:39:28She was drinking last Christmas, but she drank less for two days and things were relatively calm
00:39:34Yeah
00:39:36Yeah
00:39:38What do you think about this what I'm saying
00:39:45It's uh
00:39:47There's a lot of onus on me to provide more evidence that she's well
00:39:52That's a good mother when I'm pretty fucking thin gruel you're you're living on there, brother
00:39:56She drank less for two days and was pretty nice
00:40:00Added 25 years
00:40:03You know, that's pretty accurate, right
00:40:12What else is the she's nice deep down if she's just not drinking as much
00:40:28I think this I mean
00:40:32I
00:40:34Guess the more that I think about nice little things that she's done the more that I think about the
00:40:44Very bad things that she's done and it there's like a
00:40:49Imbalance right now and my thinking I can think of like sitting on my desk right now as a card
00:40:57It says it was written by her and it says a lot of really really nice things
00:41:05To my amazing amazing remarkable son is how it opens and
00:41:10I
00:41:11Think I get caught up on things like that because there's this almost illusion that she
00:41:17is in there somewhere and
00:41:21I just want to see it and I don't know if I ever will
00:41:26Sorry, can you tell me a little bit more about what you mean? I'm a little unclear
00:41:31Well, she tells me I mean we when we were
00:41:35When we were talking regularly, she would just constantly tell me how much she loves me and how much she cares about me
00:41:42and she approves of my
00:41:44new girlfriend and we had a good conversation about her and how excited she is that I'm
00:41:51about to propose and
00:41:54She offered to give me jewelry from her
00:42:01Kind of collection in order to build a ring, you know melt down some gold and pick a diamond and
00:42:08Help me plan the wedding and all of that. I thought was very nice
00:42:18Okay
00:42:20So you're saying that the woman who treats you like crap also praises you
00:42:28Yeah
00:42:29Okay
00:42:30So how can we resolve that contradiction? I?
00:42:34Think one of the ways you've resolved it and again, I'm just exploring here
00:42:38I don't have any particular opinion one of the ways that you're trying to resolve this contradiction is saying well the difference is the drinking
00:42:46Yeah, okay
00:42:49She's just a mean drunk but when she doesn't drink she's nice, right I
00:42:55Think that's what I yeah, I would say that's what I think. Okay
00:42:59When
00:43:01Has she last stopped drinking for any period of time? I don't mean cut back like dry
00:43:11When she got breast cancer in
00:43:142015 I believe she stopped for
00:43:19A year, maybe two it's
00:43:23Only she would know exactly how long but that was my
00:43:27understanding
00:43:29All right. And how was she over that time period? I mean, obviously there was the
00:43:33Breast cancer aspect which is super not fun. Of course, right, but but how was she as a whole?
00:43:41Unpleasant mostly because of the divorce that was also happening at the same time
00:43:47She was divorcing my dad and
00:43:50they were separating so she left the house around that time and then got breast breast cancer and so
00:43:56It was it was a hard time for her
00:43:59She was living in an apartment alone
00:44:02and I was still in high school and I didn't have a way to I
00:44:05didn't really know what to do in that situation, but
00:44:09I wouldn't say it was the most positive time. I
00:44:13I think she quit drinking out of necessity for the chemo
00:44:19And just remind me what it was that triggered your parents divorce
00:44:28It's a good question
00:44:29I mean it depends on who you ask and it's hard to know the truth because I was they separated
00:44:34But didn't get legally divorced. They separated when I was around eight years old and they got legally divorced in 2015
00:44:42And my mom says it's because of my dad's ex-wife
00:44:46who was
00:44:47constantly
00:44:48trying to ruin their marriage by
00:44:51calling the house and
00:44:54Threatening them and doing all sorts of crazy things. She was
00:44:59My understanding pretty crazy. She also an alcoholic drug addict
00:45:06And my dad blames the alcoholism for the divorce
00:45:12Your mother's alcoholism
00:45:14Yeah, okay
00:45:17So your mother dated a guy whose ex was an alcoholic and a drug addict
00:45:22The drug addict came after the
00:45:25divorce with the first wife, but
00:45:28Sorry, your dad's first wife. The story is that she became an addict after the divorce, correct?
00:45:34Well a drug addict. Yeah, sorry drug addict. Yes, you're right. Okay
00:45:38All right
00:45:41And
00:45:44So those are the two stories on each side, okay and
00:45:49Is that why they separated when you were eight or in 2015
00:45:54Well in 2015 at that point it was just a matter of getting a paper paper, right? Yeah, okay
00:46:04Sorry, so which is it was it the ex-wife was that more around the when you were eight or was that the final let's separate
00:46:11when in 2015
00:46:17That was in 2008, you know, okay got it. All right
00:46:21Okay, so does your mother has she ever expressed?
00:46:27Any remorse
00:46:29For how she has behaved over the course of her life and not in terms of like a self-pity thing
00:46:35but you know, it's sort of genuine and honest assessment of
00:46:39The mistakes she's made and so on
00:46:41No
00:46:43Okay, so she she only blames your father's ex not anything to do with anything she ever did, right?
00:46:50She also blames my father for not taking her alcoholism seriously and not
00:46:57Helping her through it. Yeah
00:47:00Hmm, okay
00:47:05Okay
00:47:07So it's your father's fault that she kept drinking
00:47:15That that's what she would say
00:47:17yeah, she was stressed from the marriage because he didn't he worked long hours and wasn't home a lot and
00:47:24He valued I can I can also say that he probably valued work over family in those early years
00:47:32Well who wants to be home with a drunk woman? I
00:47:35Mean you didn't right
00:47:37Well, there's one story that can add to that
00:47:39She she told my dad that she was making dinner and he better
00:47:43You know be home by six o'clock and an hour goes by two hours come by three hours and he comes home
00:47:50She throws the dinner plate in his face screams at him and tells him to get out
00:47:55Sure, how old were you then?
00:47:58I mean, I mean I must have been
00:48:01three or four
00:48:03All right, so your mother can quit drinking but only for cancer not for her family
00:48:13Well, then she started again when the cancer was went into remission or whatever they call it these days, right
00:48:21She ended up getting a double mastectomy. But yeah, okay. So when it was removed at the cancerous I
00:48:27Guess the cancer went out with the breasts, right? Okay. Yeah. All right, and then she started drinking again
00:48:33Correct. Okay
00:48:37So
00:48:40Then we have the question of nice behavior
00:48:44Versus not nice behavior now the test of whether somebody is genuinely nice is
00:48:52Whether you can bring up
00:48:56Difficult topics when they're in a good mood
00:49:03Because a lot of times people shut down criticism
00:49:06because they say oh
00:49:09those of us who have
00:49:11Difficult conversation to have with difficult people, you know, if our mother is, you know, if my mother is in a bad mood
00:49:16I'm like, well, I'm not bringing that up now, right and
00:49:19If she's in a good mood, I'm like, well, I don't want to ruin things
00:49:26So either way you can't say anything right
00:49:30Mm-hmm, so
00:49:34Your mother can be nice
00:49:38And
00:49:39You feel that that that is a potential to be unlocked if you just find the right
00:49:45Combination of words you can unlock that niceness and have her be pleasant and positive
00:49:50consistently right not like
00:49:52Eight times out of ten or five times out of ten or nine times out of ten
00:49:56But you know it given that we all can be a little moody at times
00:50:009.8 out of 10, right?
00:50:02mm-hmm and
00:50:05What is the longest time period in the quarter century that you've known her or the 20 years you can remember
00:50:11What is the longest time frame that she has been in a positive and decent mood?
00:50:17You
00:50:27It would be on the order of months if it were anything
00:50:32That's about as vague a response as I could conceive of so can we just take well
00:50:36It would be on the order of if it's anything. I don't know what that means. Has she been sort of positive and pleasant?
00:50:42For months at a time and I'm not disagreeing with you. Of course. It's your memory. It's your life
00:50:47But has she been positive and pleasant for months at a time as over the course of you knowing her?
00:50:57Yeah, I mean earlier this year before the drinking started again, we did have periods of
00:51:03Good times and that would have been maybe two or three months. That was
00:51:09Pleasant like oh, okay. So so you had a desire to
00:51:14confront her about her
00:51:16drunkenness and bad behavior in the past
00:51:20So over those two months or three months that she was in a better mood
00:51:24Why wouldn't you bring that up? I'm again. I'm not saying whether you should or shouldn't have I'm genuinely curious
00:51:28Why wouldn't you bring that up?
00:51:34Well that that is around the time actually I did confront her about my childhood
00:51:40it wasn't an emphasis on the drinking per se because I
00:51:44Hadn't
00:51:46Come to the ultimate conclusion. I in my head which seems ridiculous now, but I didn't come to the
00:51:53conclusion that
00:51:55It was solely the drinking. I had also
00:51:59Thought that the divorce and the cancer was a huge part of the reason why we had never really got along
00:52:06But I did confront her
00:52:09about a year ago
00:52:11During that pleasant time when we started talking again
00:52:13I took her out to dinner and told her that I was upset about a lot of the things that happened in my childhood
00:52:20And that conversation went well and
00:52:24She
00:52:29Seemed recept reciprocal to
00:52:32receptive to
00:52:34a lot of the criticisms
00:52:36That I had and we hugged afterwards and then it's just kind of been downhill from there
00:52:45So this is six months before you and I talked last year you correct, I'm correct got it
00:52:52So if she is open to criticisms then why are you giving her ultimatums?
00:52:59You
00:53:03Like you you understand an ultimatum is an ultimate act of desperation
00:53:09Mm-hmm. I can't reason with you. I'm gonna shake
00:53:14My fist in your face until you damn well do what I want
00:53:20It is desperation
00:53:24Did she punish you as a child when you were a child
00:53:28I
00:53:28Just verbally
00:53:30But she applied negative consequences if you didn't do what she wanted, right?
00:53:34Yeah, okay
00:53:36So she can't really object to you applying negative consequences if she's not doing what you want
00:53:41Which she's promised she has been doing which is not drinking, right?
00:53:44Mm-hmm. I mean if you had lied to her
00:53:48Let's say you'd only pretended to go to school and you'd taken money
00:53:52And it turns out you weren't going to school
00:53:54Right, you were just hanging out and whatever right then she'd be really angry if you'd been lying to her
00:54:01for
00:54:02Six months, right? Mm-hmm. So
00:54:09She can't was angry
00:54:10Yeah
00:54:10she can't morally object to negative consequences for bad behavior because she applied those to you when you were a kid and
00:54:17You were just applying those back, right?
00:54:20I suppose yeah
00:54:22If I've got that wrong
00:54:24Well, I can't build the next
00:54:27Story if the first story is a house of cards
00:54:31Do you know what I mean? So I'm trying to build a case here and and if I've got something wrong
00:54:36Absolutely, please. Please. Let me know. I had the last thing I want to be is unjust
00:54:40yeah, I mean you could say that my the words and actions I took last week against my mother were a reflection of
00:54:49Her own actions against me. Well, it's a great that if somebody isn't doing the right thing
00:54:55Then you can apply negative consequences, right?
00:54:59okay, so that's how she raised you and
00:55:02So what's good for the goose is good for the gander and she objectively was doing the wrong thing by lying to you and your brother
00:55:08right
00:55:09So you applying negative consequences because she was doing something really immoral, right?
00:55:16Okay, so she can't object to that on principle, right
00:55:20She can't say well if you love people you should never apply negative consequences
00:55:24If they do something bad or wrong because she raised you that way, right?
00:55:31Now again, I'm not if that's not accurate I would don't want to continue that line of reasoning
00:55:38Yeah, that seems accurate that's not no now we're back to seems
00:55:43It's a lot to think about it. No, it's not it's not a lot to think about did she apply negative consequences to you
00:55:52When you did something quote wrong as a child, did she yell at you? Did she call your names? Did she?
00:55:58Embarrass you did like what did she apply in some sort of negative stimuli to you?
00:56:03When you did something wrong as a child
00:56:06Yes, she yelled broke stuff and
00:56:08Broke stuff and I frightened you and so she applied negative stimuli to you when you did something
00:56:15She disagreed with and and was quote wrong as a child, right?
00:56:20Okay, so when you say if you drink I don't want you around my kids and you can't come to my wedding
00:56:28That is
00:56:29Consequences, you're not directly applying negative stimuli, right?
00:56:32You're not shaking her which thank heavens don't ever touch someone in anger that way and and you're not yelling at her
00:56:39You're not calling her names. You're not calling her out, you know using her name
00:56:43Publicly or whatever it is, right? So you're just saying that they're negative. I don't want you if you're drinking
00:56:48I don't want you at my wedding
00:56:49Which is totally right and totally fair. Nobody wants a drunk mother at a wedding
00:56:55Yes, right
00:56:57So you're applying negative consequences, but without being abusive and your mother was applying negative consequences while being abusive
00:57:03So you're still way better, but the principle is remaining the same that if someone does something that's wrong or bad
00:57:11Negative consequences are perfectly acceptable
00:57:14Okay
00:57:16So I'm with you
00:57:18If she has the capacity to be criticized
00:57:22Why would you and again not a criticism, but why would you not just criticize her?
00:57:27But why why did the where did the ultimatum come from? What was the thinking behind the ultimatum?
00:57:34So as I as I saw it I had three options
00:57:39one was
00:57:40To be with her and help her through recovery and come to her house often and call her often and and be part
00:57:48of the recovery
00:57:50Process with her option B was to cut her out of my life
00:57:54Entirely from that point an option C was to tell her my intentions of doing that while also
00:58:04Giving her options for recovery and setting her up to have those options
00:58:10And you're my room. Sorry. I'm not sure how young your mother had you is she in her 50s
00:58:16She's 50. Yes. Okay. She's in her 50s
00:58:20Now for how long has she been an alcoholic?
00:58:24Since she was 17. Okay, so she's been an alcoholic for decades, right?
00:58:31Yeah
00:58:33Now I need you to understand something here and I'm just going to use a very brief analogy here, right?
00:58:39Have you ever?
00:58:42Studied for a test while bombed out of your gourd
00:58:47Mmm
00:58:49Bombed as in drunk stone, whatever, right? I don't think so. Okay
00:58:56Have you ever tried to learn anything?
00:58:59While drunk like it can you imagine trying to learn chess while drunk like seriously drunk. Mm-hmm
00:59:08I can't imagine. Yes, and you can imagine that would be pretty difficult, right?
00:59:13And you can imagine that would be pretty difficult, right? Yes
00:59:18Now if I said to you I've been studying Japanese
00:59:23For the past six months, but every time I study Japanese and go to Japanese class, I'm drunk
00:59:29Would you think that I had learned much Japanese?
00:59:32No, right
00:59:36So
00:59:38Your mother has been a drunk for 35 years or so give or take I'm sure that's not exactly accurate
00:59:45But it's something like that, right?
00:59:48Okay, so your mother has been a drunk for 35 years
00:59:52What that means is that she has failed to learn an enormous amount
01:00:02She's failed to learn how to negotiate she's failed to learn how to take criticism
01:00:06She's failed to learn how to deal with negative stimuli
01:00:12Because when she experiences negative stimuli she runs for the bottle, right
01:00:21So she has had 35 years of not learning relationship skills
01:00:30Because she's drunk
01:00:33You
01:00:34Sorry stuff you cut out there for a second five seconds. She has spent 35 years
01:00:40Not or failing to learn relationship skills because she's drunk
01:00:47Yeah, right now how long do you think it's going to take let's say she stops drinking tomorrow
01:00:56How long do you think it might take for her to learn
01:01:02Those relationship skills that she has not learned because she spent 35 years
01:01:07drinking minus a year or two
01:01:09When she was having the mastectomy
01:01:16Yeah, it would take a long time I imagine years and you understand it would be enormously painful
01:01:26Yeah, why would it be so painful do you think
01:01:29You
01:01:31Well, it's like being a teenager and being a you know learning all of the consequences of the world and not everything is
01:01:40Pretty you know
01:01:42It's I know I don't know. Sorry. What do you mean? Why would it be so painful for your mother?
01:01:49To learn positive and healthy relationship skills, even if she stopped drinking tomorrow
01:02:00Why would it be so difficult or painful painful, sorry painful
01:02:20I'm thinking in circles because it's it's painful because it's difficult and she wouldn't get along very well in the in the real world
01:02:30You
01:02:44Well
01:02:47She's gonna have to make
01:02:49Well her she's gonna lose a lot of friends who are also alcoholics
01:02:54Right now no that happens even if she quits drinking I'm talking about quits drinking and struggles to learn
01:03:01empathy and compassion and
01:03:04win-win negotiations and and so on
01:03:11I love the fact that you don't know this answer. It speaks very well to your character
01:03:18It's honestly this is a beautiful view I would really be chilled if you knew the answer to this one
01:03:24you
01:03:27No, I would be
01:03:30Let's open it up if anybody wants to type what's the answer why would it be so painful for his mother to learn?
01:03:36healthy and positive
01:03:39Relationship skills
01:03:42After having been a drunk for the best part of 35 years. Why would it be so painful?
01:03:49You
01:03:51Yes simp as often as usual
01:03:54Yeah, because once her empathy starts to kick in she'll have to realize how badly she damaged the people in her life
01:04:00Manuel says because she would realize all the damage she's inflicted over the decades. Her conscience would just eat herself alive says someone
01:04:07Yeah
01:04:10So the reason you don't know why it would be so painful is you have a pretty good conscience, right
01:04:18Yeah
01:04:30She would realize
01:04:32That her entire narrative about her life was a lie
01:04:37That she was a victim that other people were to blame and she would realize how much harm she had done her family
01:04:49And you don't really get that because you have a good conscience
01:04:57And don't forget of course people if you wouldn't mind free to main.com slash donate help out the show free to main.com slash donate
01:05:04I would really appreciate that
01:05:07So that's why it would be so incredibly painful now
01:05:13Because she's been an alcoholic
01:05:15She is bad at handling
01:05:18Emotional pain, right?
01:05:21Mm-hmm. And
01:05:22So if she starts to become a better person, it will become entirely clear to her. What a terrible person she's been and
01:05:31She has a lifelong habit of running
01:05:35to
01:05:36Alcohol to numb emotional pain
01:05:39so if she starts to develop empathy her urge to drink will be a force of nature and
01:05:48You this is why alcoholics and other addicts get trapped
01:05:55They
01:05:58Manage
01:06:00Emotional pain by running to their addiction
01:06:03which means
01:06:04They're not drugging themselves. They're not drinking themselves
01:06:08out of existence
01:06:11They're drinking their conscience
01:06:14out of existence
01:06:17Addicts in general, I mean
01:06:20long-term addicts in particular are
01:06:23drinking away or drugging
01:06:26their conscience
01:06:28Mm-hmm
01:06:29Now if you start to act better
01:06:33Your conscience kicks in with exactly how terrible you've been
01:06:37You
01:06:40But if you have the habit of running to alcohol
01:06:44When you have a negative emotion and your conscience starts to give you a sense of just how terrible you've been
01:06:50What's gonna happen?
01:06:57She's gonna realize all the damage and
01:07:00Then what she's gonna feel
01:07:03So bad you and I cannot conceive of it
01:07:11You and I cannot conceive of what it's like to have been a drunken witch
01:07:17throughout our children's entire
01:07:21childhoods
01:07:23To have attacked to have blamed to have whined to have threatened to have thrown things to have complained to have ruined marriages and
01:07:29relationships and childhoods
01:07:31to have been a forest fire of
01:07:35Destruction
01:07:39It's tragic no, it's not tragic
01:07:44It's not tragic
01:07:47It's fair
01:07:52When you do great evil to children you lose your soul
01:08:01Hmm
01:08:03It's not tragic it's fair
01:08:07because
01:08:08Through her addiction through her choices. She tried to take her children's soul you survive she loses hers
01:08:16You
01:08:25You know, it's like if there's some torturer with a knife and the knife slips and he cuts his own artery and he bleeds
01:08:31Out do we say? Oh, that's tragic
01:08:36That's not tragic how is that tragic
01:08:46You know, there's there's a lie
01:08:49permeated among
01:08:50Alcoholics that it's a disease. Sure. Yeah, I get it. I
01:08:55Get it
01:08:58Yeah
01:09:00Her you know her parents drank and their parents drank and mm-hmm
01:09:06Yep
01:09:07Which yeah, I get it and it's not it's it's not a disease
01:09:11Because you can't just voluntarily choose to quit a disease
01:09:19Good one, that's good. It's real. Yeah, I
01:09:25Mean that did the show I don't know 17 years ago the billion-dollar
01:09:29Question if somebody offers you a billion dollars to not drink for a day. Can you not drink for a day? Sure
01:09:35If you have cancer and somebody offers you a billion dollars to not have cancer. Can you do that? Nope
01:09:41I really really hate the way that addicts
01:09:44Grab on to genuinely ill people and pillage sympathy for them. That's just part of this manipulative bullshit that goes on
01:09:53There are genuinely ill people who don't have a choice alcoholics have a choice
01:10:00Somebody with multiple sclerosis can't be can't join MS and on and quit
01:10:07You
01:10:09Like that
01:10:12Nope
01:10:17The calling it a disease is just part of the manipulation and it's vile and inevitable almost in a way, right I
01:10:27Was describing it to my brother who's been dragged into this
01:10:33Um dragged
01:10:35Well, he don't do you don't you give me these no-free-will words, brother
01:10:41That's choice, too
01:10:44He he got a phone call from my mother about her
01:10:50Saying all the you know, she told him that I told her all this stuff and said it was mean things and I'm
01:10:58You know, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, I just missed that you didn't cut out I just missed it for it
01:11:03So he's he said that your mother had said you'd said all these bad things or sorry. I didn't quite catch that
01:11:09so my mom called my brother and
01:11:12The way that she described our conversation was that I told her
01:11:18All these mean things about how I don't want her in my life anymore and how
01:11:24She knows that my brother would never do this to her
01:11:27Basically, yes worried about you
01:11:30She's latching onto your brother, right? She's yeah, she's concerned that you might not be exploitable. So she's doubly latching onto your brother, right?
01:11:37Yeah, okay
01:11:39right
01:11:41Yeah, and so him and I have been working through this and trying to kind of work together on
01:11:48Processing this this almost like loss it seems like in our life
01:11:54But you're not losing your mother
01:11:58Sorry, I'm not sure what you mean by last year
01:12:05Well
01:12:07That's what it seems like to me
01:12:09No, that's not that's not accurate. Sorry to be annoying. I really apologize and I know how so when you're annoying
01:12:15It's usually very useful. It's not it's not accurate
01:12:19So
01:12:21when I was 14 or so, I asked out the prettiest girl in school and
01:12:26She agreed to go out with me, but there just had to be other people there
01:12:33Now I didn't want other people to be there so I didn't end up going on a date with her
01:12:41So I
01:12:43Said let's do X and she said well will other people be there or with who or whatever and I said no
01:12:48It's just be you and me and she's like, you know
01:12:50I you know generally prefer and I understand I understand what she's coming from it isn't you know
01:12:54Obviously a long time ago now and I'm happily married blah blah blah right now so I asked the girl out
01:12:59She didn't go out with me
01:13:02Did I lose a girlfriend
01:13:05No, why not
01:13:10Because you weren't boyfriend and girlfriend right at that point you weren't mothered
01:13:17Mm-hmm. You've had to be the caretaker from day one
01:13:21You
01:13:23Right you weren't mothered
01:13:26And what you're losing and I say this with
01:13:31Affection and respect what you're losing is your delusion that you can fix
01:13:41A brain, but no empathy that's been pickling in poison for 35 fucking years
01:13:51That you are losing the delusion that you're Jesus magic hands healing brain fixing guy
01:14:00She's poisoned herself and
01:14:03Screwed up her relationships her entire life, but I as her child can fix it
01:14:13I can talk my uncle who smoked two packs a day for 40 years. I can talk him out of
01:14:21Having damaged lungs my words can change
01:14:25Neurons and cells and health I am a god on earth
01:14:31Who can fix people with the soft caress of my silky syllables
01:14:42You are afraid of accepting your absolute complete and fundamental
01:14:48helplessness
01:14:49Which is why you went to ultimatum
01:14:54You cannot fix her
01:14:57You cannot change the decisions of her entire life. You cannot
01:15:02unpickle her brain
01:15:05You cannot through your words
01:15:08Go back in time and recreate all the skills. She failed to learn because she was drunk decade after decade
01:15:15You can't fix your childhood you can't fix her as a parent you can't make her a good mother and
01:15:20You said something which really struck me
01:15:23You said I want her
01:15:26To be a good grandmother to my children and a good mother to me
01:15:31brother
01:15:33It's way too late
01:15:37It's way too late
01:15:40Yeah, wanting to be mothered when you're about to be married it's like having a fetish for breastfeeding when you're in your 30s
01:15:51If I can just get a crib big enough and adult diapers big enough I can go back and have a happy infancy
01:15:59Nope
01:16:02Nope nope nope
01:16:10You
01:16:15You can't fix her you can't change her
01:16:21And the first thing
01:16:24She did
01:16:26When you expressed to her how agonized you were with the ultimatum the first thing she did
01:16:32was lie
01:16:34About you to your brother
01:16:36You
01:16:39No conscience straight-up manipulation
01:16:44No empathy no curiosity she just went ahead and
01:16:48lied and
01:16:50tried to turn your brother against you and tried to align with him and moving her little fucking chess pieces around the board of
01:16:59Sodden listless conscious list life
01:17:07You
01:17:09She escalated with you
01:17:13She's now applying massive negative pressure to you she's threatening you she's punishing you she's bad-mouthing you to your brother
01:17:23Well see my brother has all of the reason to come to this conclusion himself to last
01:17:30Time he was here. No, no, no, so no no no
01:17:36You're trying to drag me off to your brother
01:17:39I'm talking to you
01:17:41Okay, it's about it. There's no it's not about you
01:17:44No, I I don't need to hear about your brother because I'm talking about you and I'm talking to you not your brother
01:17:52So you're trying to take the spotlight off on you and saying oh look at this shiny object over here my brother
01:17:58It's like oh, let's talk about your brother. No
01:18:00And talk about you
01:18:02You
01:18:06Let's say you cannot fix her
01:18:11Right
01:18:14What then
01:18:19I plan on keeping that promise
01:18:24To not have her what
01:18:26To not have her around my children or my wife. So what does that mean?
01:18:31When do you have her around that
01:18:38When she's
01:18:42I'm just assuming that no, no
01:18:47If you cannot fix her or sorry and you're right
01:18:50Let's say she cannot be fixed because she so she shows no evidence of having been fixed
01:18:54She faced a double mistake to be inside of drinking afterwards, right?
01:18:58Now I don't know the degree to which alcoholism and cancer are related I don't know that they're unrelated I don't know that they are related
01:19:06but if they are then
01:19:09She basically had lung cancer and started smoking again
01:19:13Yeah
01:19:15And it seems like they are linked. I've done some research on that. Okay, so
01:19:21Death could not fix her
01:19:24Cancer could not fix her her conscience cannot fix her
01:19:30You are you less powerful than her own mortality? Yep
01:19:39Help me understand the benefit here
01:19:45How does this help your life your future your family your girlfriend soon-to-be girlfriend
01:19:51Your family your girlfriend soon-to-be fiance your future children
01:19:58There's no way it helps okay, does it harm every single way possible so
01:20:10Have you given it a good honest solid try
01:20:18To help and fix
01:20:22You
01:20:24Yeah, and
01:20:25For how long?
01:20:27All the way back into your childhood for how long have you been trying to help your mother?
01:20:38Since before I can
01:20:43Since before I had clear memories maybe when I was 10, so
01:20:48So for 15 years, you've been trying to help your mother and
01:20:54Things are worse now
01:20:56Than they ever were if I understand what you're saying correctly
01:21:02The worst for her no, no, no
01:21:06You said things are worse between you two
01:21:10Now than they have been before now if I've misunderstood that obviously, please please set me straight
01:21:15But my understanding was and I'm perfectly happy to be corrected on this
01:21:18That things are worse now after you provided the ultimatum that she's really escalated. She's bad-mouthing you to your brother and so on
01:21:25She's blowing up. She's right. So after 15 years of trying to help someone
01:21:33Your relationship is worse now than it's ever been
01:21:38Yeah, that's that's accurate I the only hang-up I had was I'm just thinking about
01:21:43The times when I was a helpless child and she was screaming at me, I don't I don't know I
01:21:49Think I would put that above
01:21:50What's happening to me now because I'm?
01:21:53More capable of dealing with it, but between me and her. Yeah, I think in terms of your relationship
01:21:59I mean when you were just an object of abuse, right but in terms of
01:22:04Let's say that you have some control over the situation, right?
01:22:07Because things can't be good or bad if you have no control, you just got to grit your teeth and survive, right?
01:22:12Yeah, okay. So for 15 years, you've been trying to help and fix your mother
01:22:20She's still drinking she's still lying she's still manipulative
01:22:25she's still abusive and
01:22:27She's escalating now and things have never been worse where there is a choice
01:22:33You
01:22:39So
01:22:41If you had a friend and
01:22:43You had spent 15 years trying to get your friend to be nicer and after 15 years
01:22:48He was even more horrible than he'd been at the beginning
01:22:52What would you say to yourself or what would you say to someone like that?
01:22:58Sorry you cut out a little bit I didn't overhear that
01:23:01If
01:23:04Somebody said to you I have a friend Bob. I have a friend Bob
01:23:08I've been trying to help him be a nicer person for 15 years and he's even more of an asshole now than when I first
01:23:14Met him. What would you say?
01:23:20Stop helping Bob. Well, what are you doing? It's not helping. Yeah
01:23:25You
01:23:28Now if you're only in the relationship to fix someone it's not a relationship please understand this
01:23:35Mm-hmm. If you're only in a relationship to fix someone it's not a relationship
01:23:41It's a delusion
01:23:45Because good people in your life
01:23:48Want to fix themselves so that you are happier
01:23:55If I have some habit that annoys people in my life and they tell me about it I will work to fix that habit
01:24:02So that they have a better experience. They don't need to nag me. They don't need to threaten me that none of this, right?
01:24:07Of course not
01:24:18Trying to fix people is dead time
01:24:25It is yeah empty time it is gone time it is
01:24:29It is time seven deducted from your peace of mind and life as a whole
01:24:36If after 25 years you can't look at someone and say I love you for who you are don't change a thing
01:24:47If after 25 years things are worse and worse and worse
01:24:53You
01:24:54Understand it is a mad delusion to think that year 26 is going to be a big turnaround
01:25:03Right
01:25:06She is who she is and
01:25:10After the ultimatum what is there?
01:25:14What is there this is why the ultimatum is called an ultimatum
01:25:18It's the ultimate or the penultimate like what do you do afterwards after that after that after you say?
01:25:25shape up and stop drinking I
01:25:27Mean wasn't that your request like stop drinking?
01:25:30Yeah, okay
01:25:31Your request wasn't and go to therapy and learn how to apologize and learn some good relationship skills and and so on right?
01:25:38It was just stop drinking
01:25:40after 37 years
01:25:43So 35 years, right?
01:25:47So after the ultimatum then what
01:25:54What's left, I mean you've got nothing left you've got no arrows left in your quiver do you
01:26:01So that's I mean if you do an ultimatum man, that's it it either works or that's it
01:26:11Yeah
01:26:14And it's tough it's tough because it's hard for people who can change their mind to understand the mindset of people who just won't
01:26:22right
01:26:23You know, I and I'm you know, I'm trying to obviously not to blend our two experiences here
01:26:28But for me, it's like, you know, if I do something wrong, which I do from time to time. I feel bad
01:26:33I want to make apologies make restitution. I get you know, this is unpleasant when I'm going in the wrong
01:26:39You know like that uneasy feeling you get if you might be lost in the woods and the Sun's going down
01:26:44It's like man better figure this one out. It's an easy feeling. So I have that guide that conscience that you know, right?
01:26:53now you're bad, right and
01:26:55So it's very hard to understand
01:26:59What it's like
01:27:01for people who have
01:27:03The opposite of a conscience see it's kind of funny because people say and I've used this myself as well this nomenclature
01:27:08Oh, this person doesn't have a conscience. That's almost never the case. What they have is the reverse conscience
01:27:15Which is I feel really bad if I do something that hurts someone
01:27:18But they actually feel good
01:27:21Yes, I've I've stood up for myself. I'm not gonna get pushed around. I've shown them what to what I I'm done the right thing
01:27:27It's good
01:27:30It's not
01:27:32There's no such thing as a lack of conscience really to anybody who's alive
01:27:36You either feel bad when you hurt people or you feel it's good and right and just and maybe even their sadistic pleasure
01:27:42I don't know that that's the case with your mother, but she feels perfectly justified
01:27:47It's like the people who can lie like it's wild. It's wild to me
01:27:52Right that that's you know
01:27:54I've obviously talked about some controversial things over the course of this show and I've always been very careful to make sure that I'm accurate
01:27:58and get the right experts on and get the facts and the data and
01:28:01Then people can just lie
01:28:04They have no fucking conscience at all they just lie
01:28:08so
01:28:09your mother
01:28:11Has just invented a whole another conversation that you never had and is telling your brother all about it, right?
01:28:17Maybe she could even pass a lie detector. I don't know. It doesn't really matter
01:28:21But just to just say whatever shit they want to get through the moment and to come out on top and to look good
01:28:26And all this stuff, right?
01:28:28So those of us yeah, I don't I don't feel particularly good
01:28:33When I lie, I feel bad, right?
01:28:36Sorry, yeah, you know I did kind of I
01:28:39Exaggerated this or I misrepresented that or whatever. I don't really like it. Of course, right?
01:28:45So trying to understand people who just lie
01:28:51Right, it's like that Solzhenitsyn thing right like they're lying
01:28:57We know they're lying they know we know they're lying etc, etc
01:29:00Yet still they continue to lie just lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie
01:29:05they just have no commitment to truth and
01:29:08They don't feel bad for lying. In fact, they would feel bad for telling the truth. They enjoy lying
01:29:15Like the Bill Clinton like the gold medal Olympic one of the gold medal Olympic liars in history
01:29:21It's fluid it's totally fluid for him
01:29:24You
01:29:26So it's hard and this is one of the great weaknesses of people who have a conscience is it's really fucking hard to figure out
01:29:32What life is like for people without a conscience?
01:29:35it's like
01:29:36People who have leprosy and they can't feel their fingertips. They can't feel their extremities
01:29:40They have to do this thing called the VSC visual search of extremities to make sure they haven't cut or burnt themselves
01:29:45Imagine going through life with no physical pain or
01:29:48Imagine going through life
01:29:51Where
01:29:53getting a cut felt like an orgasm and getting burnt felt like a high and
01:29:59Self-protection was pain like everything was reversed
01:30:03It would be really hard
01:30:05to empathize with that just in the same way, it's really hard to empathize with the opposite of empathy and
01:30:13So what you're doing is you're projecting yourself into your mother and saying well, man, I have the capacity for change
01:30:19I'm sure she has the capacity for change. We're both humans. We're both bipeds. We're both homo sapiens
01:30:27I have the capacity
01:30:30To learn and grow I have the capacity to improve I'm sure
01:30:36My mother does too
01:30:39We can't be that different there is a better mother locked in there
01:30:44It's she's locked in there. I Jack and I picked that lock had to find that good mother
01:30:49it's the concept of the soul that there's an
01:30:55Indestructible part
01:30:57Of someone that you just have to figure out how to liberate it how to how to reach past all the defenses and find that
01:31:04good person within
01:31:07So so she would have to provide
01:31:12Extraordinary evidence in order to be
01:31:17Reconsidered
01:31:19In a different light
01:31:21I'm not sure why you're getting rubber bones, and I'm not sure why you're asking me this question
01:31:26Well, I'm I guess I'm just asking if I
01:31:32Don't know why I have this tendency to think of
01:31:35The best-case scenario in this situation, but I'd want to prepare for it. I
01:31:40Mean I can show you I can tell you why
01:31:43You have the best-case scenario
01:31:45You have a best-case scenario because it serves your mother
01:31:50You your mother wants you to have hope so that you'll stick around
01:31:56Yeah
01:31:58Am I wrong?
01:31:59No, no, okay. So one to the bell. Well if she provides extraordinary evidence, okay
01:32:04Well, I've got to go back
01:32:05I've got to go around and then try and get her to show this evidence and I'm sure it's in there somewhere
01:32:08Huh, right. Okay, you're back in
01:32:14Mm-hmm
01:32:16so the reason why
01:32:18You have hope is that's how you're caught
01:32:25You understand half the predators in the world
01:32:30use positive
01:32:33Inducements to get their prey. I
01:32:35Mean think of the Venus flytrap right coats itself in the syrupy sweet sticky stuff right then closes over the prey
01:32:42There are lots of animals that pretend to be wounded and then turn on whatever comes close there are lots of animals that have
01:32:48particular ways of luring other creatures in
01:32:52And then
01:32:55Get them right
01:33:02Your hope is your vulnerability
01:33:05It's how you're controlled. It's how you're exploited
01:33:07It's how you're controlled it's how you're exploited
01:33:17Your hope is the only pretense of a relationship
01:33:29And you understand it's kind of an insult to your girlfriend slash fiance
01:33:36To go chasing after this
01:33:39Pickled brain half monster of a mother and called it to a relationship
01:33:47I definitely see that. I definitely see that
01:33:59Now if you have hope
01:34:02Hey, man
01:34:03Don't take my word for anything. If you have hope go talk to her again and say hey me and a mom you
01:34:11You know, you're lying about what happened with me and you you're lying to my brother and
01:34:19You're escalating with me and it's really unpleasant and blah blah blah blah blah then going right
01:34:25Ultimatum through a problem because then you can self-criticize and say well I did off I did do this ultimatum and she's gonna react
01:34:32Negatively, but if you just relentlessly honest
01:34:34Right. This is the real-time relationships approach. You just relentlessly honest this hurt me this upset me
01:34:39I'm not saying why but just see can she does she care about your feelings? That's what RTR is partly about
01:34:45It's partly a filter for people who don't care about your feelings or they care about your feelings so they can exploit you
01:35:02You
01:35:03But I feel like this is just a dead-end street here
01:35:08Okay. I mean I can't see you but you just could be a yeah
01:35:12Yeah, I'm thinking. Yeah. No stop thinking
01:35:16Thinking how is that helping? How is that? You've done all this thinking?
01:35:21How's that working out?
01:35:25So if I
01:35:27Understand what you're saying about just being relentlessly
01:35:29Honest, is it it's too late for that now that wouldn't be an approach
01:35:34going forward if oh my god, she called and that you plan and you consider and you strategize that you plan and
01:35:42You maneuver and this and possibly that holy shit brother. That's exhausting
01:35:49Do you want to talk to your mother?
01:35:53Do you look forward to picking up the phone right when you when you talk to your girlfriend you look forward to it
01:35:59Hey, you know great to talk to you. You know, my wife comes home
01:36:01I run up and I run to her arms and right plant a big one. And right so
01:36:07I'm running up the stairs to do the show tonight looking forward to doing philosophy and having great conversations, right?
01:36:14Yeah, do you want to talk to your mother? I?
01:36:16Do you want to talk to your mother I don't okay. So what's the think about? Yeah
01:36:26You want to talk yourself in and out of stuff you want to self-manipulate because you were raised by a manipulator
01:36:39You're right, yeah
01:36:42What's wrong with the feelings oh
01:36:45But I got a plan. I got a strategize. I got a plot. No, you don't you're 25 years old
01:36:49You're not dependent on her anymore. You don't have to plot a goddamn thing. You don't have to strategize anything
01:36:53You don't have to talk yourself in or out of anything
01:36:57Right
01:37:02I mean, I've not spent 25 years not talking to my mother and every day saying well today she's gonna call
01:37:07I bet you the strategy gonna pay off. It's gonna work. Hello, right?
01:37:13It'd be exhausting well, I know that she's get now this is this is the exhaustion that's radiating off you right like some spent
01:37:20vampire victim
01:37:22Exhaustion I'm doing all the work and it's your life
01:37:26Why am I the only one who seems to care about your life? I
01:37:30Definitely care. So what's this?
01:37:37Well, I I
01:37:40I know what I have to do now and there doesn't know now you went from thinking to doing
01:37:51What I want you to do is accept what you feel
01:37:58Sit with your feelings
01:38:00Stop planning stop strategizing. Stop talking yourself in and out of feelings thoughts actions
01:38:07Might know what I got to do. No, you don't
01:38:11Yeah, I don't want to talk to my mother
01:38:17How long is it gonna take for you to accept that and
01:38:21Stop jumping up to try and fix it or change it or strategize or like that's gonna take weeks at least
01:38:28Mm-hmm, and don't do a thing. Don't do a thing sit with your feelings
01:38:33Talk about your feelings with your friends
01:38:35Talk about journal about it. Maybe talk to a therapist. I'm always a big fan of maybe all the therapists these days
01:38:41Talk to your girlfriend
01:38:45But thinking they're doing I'm sorry
01:38:48She's been very helpful. Okay
01:38:50Thinking and doing will not help you what you need is feeling
01:38:55You
01:39:00Feelings are such protectors because feelings cannot be manipulated
01:39:08Thoughts oh, they could be manipulated plans
01:39:11absolutely perspectives
01:39:13Preferences all of that shit can be pushed around like a bunch of pieces are on a chessboard or a checkerboard
01:39:18but feelings
01:39:21Mmm, that's your bedrock man
01:39:24That's your bedrock. I
01:39:27Mean, is there any way for anyone to talk you into wanting?
01:39:32To talk to your mother and I maybe they could guilt you into feeling obligated
01:39:36They might nag you into making the phone call or whatever it is
01:39:38But is there anyone who can talk you into genuinely wanting to talk to your mother?
01:39:46My brother tried and I told him I didn't want to okay
01:39:50And
01:39:52So I would say my my family would be the people who would try no no
01:39:56But is there anyone who can change your essential feeling? So let's say that
01:40:02You find obese women unattractive, right?
01:40:06Is there anyone who can talk you into finding obese women?
01:40:12the height of sexiness
01:40:14No
01:40:16Let's say you're not a huge fan of the sexiness of 85 year old women is
01:40:22There anyone who can talk you into finding 85 year old women the height of sexiness?
01:40:28Right now somebody could pay you to say that they might manipulate you into saying that in some form or fashion
01:40:35But they can't change what you essentially and elementally feel
01:40:39Right
01:40:41It's true. Your feelings are your integrity your feelings are your bedrock your feelings are your certainty
01:40:49And when you jump into abstractions and thoughts and plans and this perspective and doing this
01:40:53That's why when you said well, I know now what I have to do. I'm like, nope. Nope. Nope. Nope
01:41:00We act so often in order to avoid our feelings
01:41:05But the only certainty in our actions
01:41:08Can come from accepting our deepest feelings certainty is a feeling it is not a thought
01:41:19Certainty integrity is a feeling
01:41:25And if you keep reaching it racing around in the attic of your brain trying to plot and plan and
01:41:29Have all these diagrams and maps on the wall. You can't be certain
01:41:34Mm-hmm and without certainty you cannot have peace
01:41:41And if you interfere with your certainty about your mother you also interfere with all of your certainty including your love for your girlfriend
01:41:54I am certain I made the right decision in getting out of politics. I'm certain I made the right decision on
01:41:59Waiting on an apology from Twitter
01:42:02This is why I mean I have all the reasons I've certainly thought through it. I don't not just feelings and reason together, right? Yeah
01:42:11And so and funny for people they think they can just talk me in and out of essential feelings
01:42:19Nope you can't talk me out of loving my wife my daughter my friends. You can't talk me out of loving philosophy
01:42:26You
01:42:28Well, and it's why I have such an immense respect for you is because it you'd you trust that you trust that feeling right
01:42:35right
01:42:38I mean you wouldn't want to be
01:42:41Well, you wouldn't want to be an athlete
01:42:45With 20 years of experience and still be uncertain of the rules of the game
01:42:49Right
01:42:51Right and you have 25 years experience with your mother
01:42:57It's time to relax into certainty rather than talk yourself into strategies
01:43:05Here you are feel bad, huh? Okay. Do I do I want to call her? I
01:43:10Want to get involved again. Do I want to open up this can of worms again? Do I want to get?
01:43:14Okay, do you don't you if you don't okay? Well, I'll check in later today or tomorrow or whatever, right?
01:43:19Do I you know, I mean, I I know my mother's getting older
01:43:22I know my mother's, you know, probably halfway to death's door and I'm like, well, do I want any do I want to sir?
01:43:28And I'll still check in with myself occasionally. Sure, of course
01:43:31And so don't want to in fact, this the thought is pretty horrible of being in contact with my mother
01:43:37And again, there's maybe I'm just telling you my experience. I'm not telling you what yours should be
01:43:41But if you genuinely still have deep ambivalence, well, you know, maybe maybe I could maybe I can fix this maybe I can do that
01:43:48Okay, then, you know, it might be worth having another conversation. I don't know, right?
01:43:54But I'm if I if I ask you a personal question sure does your mother ever reach out to you
01:44:01She has in the past. I can't remember the last time
01:44:06So it's been it's been a while. But yeah, yeah, she did
01:44:09She reached out but it was never
01:44:11Right. It was always just bribery. It's like oh, I'm about to win this court case. There's gonna be so much money
01:44:15Yeah, I'd be happy to share it with you
01:44:16It's all just you know bribery and stuff cuz she but no it was never I've thought about what you said
01:44:21And you know, I've reflected on what I did as a mother and like it was never anything like that. So
01:44:26That reminds me of the jewelry for the wedding ring that my mother was offering me. Yeah. Yeah, you know
01:44:32Hey, I'll give you stuff and it's like yeah, but it's not what I want
01:44:35The problem with my childhood wasn't that I was short of fucking jewelry
01:44:40Right
01:44:42That's right
01:44:47My father didn't he went to his grave
01:44:50Without even telling me that he was ill or what he was ill with or I still don't know
01:44:55Which is a bit of a drag because it's kind of good to know these things genetically
01:44:58But I guess I'll have to live with that uncertainty
01:45:01I'm sorry about that, but I appreciate that but it also helps reinforce. What a good decision it was to not pursue that
01:45:07imaginary relationship
01:45:09Yeah
01:45:11It helps me good helps, you know
01:45:16All right, is there anything else that you wanted to mention I
01:45:22Might go and see a late movie of them. I might go might go see a late movie with my daughter for a movie review
01:45:26So I may I may bail out
01:45:28May I may bail out?
01:45:30Yeah, well, have a have a great time with your daughter. Thank you so much for your help
01:45:34You're welcome. Keep me posted man, and we will post a link
01:45:37I think our show went up on locals for donors from last year. So we'll post a link to that
01:45:42for donors to
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01:45:57Good night