https://cdn.freedomainradio.com/FDRP/FDR_HOW_TO_MAKE_MONEY_locals_questions.mp3
This episode discusses career paths, game development, dream interpretation, societal issues, empathy, and taking responsibility for one's past.
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Chapters
0:00:00 Exploring Career Paths and Potential Income Sources
0:02:03 Creating Games that Challenge Control and Teach Public Choice Theory
0:04:36 Games that Unmask the Corrupt Realities of the Modern World
0:06:06 AI-Driven Games with Moral Debates and Reasoning Challenges
0:07:49 Games: Aiming at the Lowest Common Denominator
0:09:14 The Power of Games to Challenge Conventional Wisdom
0:15:52 Morality and the Temptation of the Unearned
0:19:25 The Consequences of Chasing the Unearned
0:21:03 Feeling Sympathy for Abusers: A Trap Set by Them
0:27:18 Sympathy for Abusers: a Dangerous Choice
0:29:45 Beyond Restitution: Moving on from Abusive Relationships
Long Summary
In this episode, we cover a wide range of topics including potential career paths, game development, dream interpretation, societal issues, and the importance of empathy.
I begin by discussing my search for new career opportunities and my upcoming career development course. I then turn to Steph for her input on potential career paths, specifically AI and entrepreneurship. She suggests game development, drawing from her own experience as a programmer in the field. Steph highlights the availability of new AI and game development tools and proposes creating games that challenge players to question control and explore unintended consequences and public choice theory. She also suggests games centered around politics and the media, with the goal of shedding light on corruption and encouraging players to think critically. We explore the potential of AI-driven NPCs and dialogue options to create challenges based on moral reasoning.
The conversation takes an interesting turn as I share an idea with Chris about a game set on the Eastern Front, where winning requires relinquishing control and allowing divisions to become more autonomous. I express a belief that games that challenge traditional narratives and encourage reason over violence can have a significant cultural impact.
We then delve into the interpretation of a dream, discussing the symbolism of different elements such as a house representing childhood, boundary violations, hidden aspects of one's identity, and a longing for youth. The dream suggests unresolved issues from childhood and a need to reconcile with suppressed parts of oneself.
The discussion shifts towards societal issues, particularly the functional nature of countries like Japan and China. I mention the low crime rates in Japan due to high IQ and demographic cohesion but raise concerns about their sustainability due to low birth rates. I argue that Japan's seemingly functional society is a result of providing unearned benefits to citizens, leading to corruption and moral degradation. I emphasize the importance of principles over money and caution against taking the unearned.
A listener's question leads us to reflect on empathy for abusers. I express my admiration for my parents' achievements but reject the idea of having empathy for those who caused harm in one's childhood. I criticize sentimentality and self-praise associated with feeling compassion towards abusers and assert that sympathy should be reserved for those who have accepted responsibility and made amends. Unrepentant evildoers will face the consequences of their actions, and I emphasize the importance of focusing one's sympathy on those who genuinely apologize and lift the burden.
Finally, we discuss the significance of taking responsibility for one's past and the irrelevance of restitution once personal struggles have been overcome. I use a lifeguard analogy to explain that once someone has made it to shore, offers of help become meaningless. I caution against sympathizing with those who didn't support us when we needed it and highlight their self-serving motives for helping now. I emphasize the importance of avoiding sentimental decisions based on misjudgment and assert that the lack of past support from abusive parents should render us indifferent to their current actions.
Brief Summary
In this episode, we discuss potential career paths, game development, dream interpretation, societal issues, and the importance of empathy. We explore creating thought-provoking games and delve into the implications of unresolved childhood issues. We also examine the functional nature of countries like Japan and China and the need for empathy towards those who have accepted responsibility for their actions. Lastly, we delve into the significance of taking responsibility for one's past and caution against sentimental decisions based on misjudgment.
Transcript
Exploring Career Paths and Potential Income Sources
[0:00] I'll write more great questions from freedomain.locals.com.
Hey, Steph, over the past month or so, I've been doing a lot of work to gain other sources of income, as well as potentially finding a new career that pays more.
I'm going to be attending a career development course at a local college next week as another way of seeing what's out there and what may be a good fit for me.
I'm curious as to what you think may a good career path. In the past, you've mentioned AI and being an entrepreneur. Or do you still believe those would be good paths? Do you have any others?
Yeah, I mean, it's a funny thing. If I had to start from scratch, and lord knows, maybe that'll happen, but if I had to start from scratch, I would aim directly and squarely at game development.
I actually started off as a programmer in game development, and I programmed a space fighting game, I programmed a missile command using ASCII characters, and I programmed a Zork-like game which was.
[1:04] Again, kind of philosophical, where you type what you wanted to do and have the game would respond.
I created a dungeon exploration game, like I did a lot of game development, and so on.
I never got to machine code or assembler, so I was limited in what I could do in terms of graphics.
And not too, too long ago, I worked on a game with my daughter and some friends, an Among Us style game.
But so if I were starting from scratch again, and given the new AI tools for building and the new game development tools, it's just mind blowing.
And I know games can be ferociously expensive.
[1:46] But I would I would start in game development.
And what I would do, these These are just some ideas I've had over the years, Lord knows if they're any good or not, so to speak.
But what I would do, I would certainly try a genre of gaming, sort of real-time strategy and so on.
Creating Games that Challenge Control and Teach Public Choice Theory
[2:03] There used to be, I'm sure there still are, games like SimCity where you control a city and you build the roads and the hospitals and you try and make the population happy.
That's very much central planning, socialist style stuff.
So I would actually create a game where the only way to win would be to stop controlling things.
Right? Like every time you controlled something, there would be the law of unintended consequences.
It would be a great way to teach people public choice theory.
Every time you tried to win by controlling things, you would have unintended consequences, and you would start off with a lot of control, and then the only way to win would be to relinquish control, and so on. And that, to me, would be a very interesting game.
It would teach people quite a lot about the world.
Now, of course, once The Secret got out, I get all of that, so it'd be more of an indie game, but it would be written about, and it would be so counter-genre, that it would just be really fascinating, like everything you tried to intervene in and control just got worse and worse and worse.
And the only way to win the game would be to relinquish controls and that would be, I think, a really, really fascinating game to play.
[3:10] Now relinquishing controls would also cause problems as well, but in the long run it would be like slowly learning how to relax controls and balance the resulting effects would be, you know, very interesting, right?
Like you privatize the garbage collection in the city and then you get a strike and then the garbage piles up.
So you have challenges with a relinquishing control but it's a navigation from sort of socialism fascism to a free market with all of the attendant problems.
I think that would be fascinating. You could also do a running for office game which taught you a lot about how politics worked that if you didn't say or do the right things the media would toast you and if you didn't say or do the right things with regards to lobbyists, that you would have a problem.
How do you court the general population, which wants things that goes in opposition to the military-industrial lobbyist groups, the media preferences, and all of that.
So I think that would also be a very interesting game. There was a game about running for office that I think ran on an old Atari 800 with 16k of RAM, so I'm sure you could do something like that.
So games like that I think would be kind of interesting. I think it would also be interesting if you started off in a fictional world where you're fighting the usual array of monsters and demons and so on, and maybe it's a first-person, shooter or something like that, but as you go along and as you progress, the masks slowly begin to fall off the monsters.
Games that Unmask the Corrupt Realities of the Modern World
[4:36] And what do you see? Well, you see the corrupts office of the modern world in one form or another, and I think that would be something kind of bone-chilling and and exciting.
[4:45] And you would realize of course that the world of horror that...
Was being portrayed to you like you were maybe you were going through some incredibly overheated hellscape like you know that meme of like is it a doom level or is it lasagna some incredibly overheated hellscape and it turned out that you broke out of that and it turned out to all just be.
[5:05] Word propaganda of i don't know climate change hysterics or something like that and you found out that you were only fighting words you were only fighting sophistry not actual people and that But the horror world that you lived in and were trying to survive was actually a language world created by other people.
I think that would be a fascinating and kind of bone-chilling and revelatory kind of...
People are just looking to break out of the Matrix. They're looking to break out of Plato's cave and games would be fantastic at doing that.
And the more VR they got, I guess the more gripping and powerful they would be. So to me, there's a whole game genre about breaking people out of falsehoods.
And if you have dialogue options, maybe there's a way that you have to choose how to reason your way out of sophistry in order to get there.
I mean, to me, it would be fantastic to have challenges or puzzles based on UPB with an AI-driven NPC that you had to debate and to get to the next level or to graduate, you had to debate and figure out the right way to talk about morality, correct moral way to...
AI-Driven Games with Moral Debates and Reasoning Challenges
[6:06] So yeah, there's lots of various options that AI is sort of bringing around in the realm of game creation that's more than just having Mario jump around on levels, or, you know, giving you the godlike feeling that you have to control everything in order for the city or the sort of thing to survive. Like, wouldn't it be interesting to have a game?
I played Eastern Front, 1941 on the old Atari 800, and Smooth Scrolling.
[6:31] Chris, whatever his name was. But it would be very interesting to me if there was sort of an Eastern Front game, but the only way you could win would be to relinquish control over the divisions, right, to let them become sort of more autonomous and so on, and then just provide them resources and so on.
Like everything you did was, and then they would advance further and faster if they were less controlled.
So again, and I know it seems counterintuitive because of course the games are like you getting satisfaction out of controlling things to a positive outcome, but all that does is train people to be fascists, fundamentally.
There's a reason why all of these games came about, and then socialism increased, because it trains you to believe that there's a central planner or war god or city controller who is responsible for the success of everything, and that you have to control things.
And people are like little dots or little ants. I remember playing SimCity many, many years ago, and there were these little dots driving on the roads.
And it sort of reduces people to ants and you as the god controller, it just is programming you for susceptibility to centralized coercion.
So I would go into the game genre and I would explore games that aim to break people out of their habits.
Games: Aiming at the Lowest Common Denominator
[7:49] Games are kind of aiming at the lowest common denominator these days, and games are repetitive.
But there's a lot of very smart people who would be overjoyed at a lack of repetition, and something which was like, it would go against the grain, games that would go against the grain.
I understand they would be frustrating, but it would be incredibly liberating for people to finally figure it out, and it's like, oh, the less control I exercise over time, and I have to manage the change, but the less control I exercise over time, the more successful people becomes.
To make the god player increasingly irrelevant to the success of the game trains people out of fascism and central planning and socialism.
So, and I think people would really flock to that. So anyway, these are just sort of vague ideas I've had over the years, but I think, I think gaming would be the place to go. Gaming has a massive cultural impact, as you know.
People spend a lot more time on games than they do on movies.
And the games, what do they all tell you? If central planning is the answer and violence is the only way forward.
And a game that central planning resulted in increased disasters, you had to learn to relinquish power, that would be really fascinating.
And games that, you know, a lot of people live in a horror scape that's created by language, the environmental catastrophes and all these sorts of disasters that are floating around.
People live in these hellscapes of language and to have them break out of those hellscapes of language and to realize that the demons were actually the sophists, I mean, that would be, wouldn't that be fascinating?
The Power of Games to Challenge Conventional Wisdom
[9:14] Wouldn't that be fascinating? I mean, to find out that the demon was a teacher and the way to win the game is to reject her arguments, not fight the made up monsters.
I mean, I don't know, that would just, to break out of the confines of the game and to go to real world situations where the solution was not violence, but reason.
Ah, that would be, it would blow people's minds. Like it would give people goosebumps from their bone marrow to the tips of their hair. It would just be wild. All right.
How do you interpret the following dream I had? I was at a house that was not my own, but it felt like my own house.
There was a group of people who showed up for a party outside.
Eventually they made their way inside and I had to tell them to leave.
As I was checking the rooms to make sure everyone had left, I came upon a physical projection of myself in a closet. The projection had blonde hair for some reason.
The projection told me two things. The first is that I cut off circulation to pass my body on purpose, and the other I can't recall.
I felt like there was some self-knowledge or truth that I'm not ready to hear, which is why I can't recall it. What does it mean to see yourself in your dream?
Right. All right. So let's just run through the lexical set.
I mean, this would be better with a call or a chat, but I'll do what I can.
[10:30] So it's your home, but it's not your own home. So if it's your home, but it's not your own home, that's a clear reference to childhood.
Because in childhood you live in a home that's not your own home and it is in fact owned by your parents you live there. It's your home but it's not your home so that's childhood.
A group of people who showed up for a party outside. They made their way inside and I had to tell them to leave.
So that is a lack of boundaries. That is people showing up for a party outside.
I'm not sure if that just means on the property or on the street.
So it's a street party that seeps into your house which means that there's a significant boundary violation in your childhood.
As I was checking the rooms to make sure everyone had left. That's a lack of trust. You tell people to leave but you're not sure they have.
I came across a physical projection of myself in a closet. Now I'm not sure what physical projection of myself in a closet means. I assume you just see yourself but it's not like a hologram.
Had blonde hair. Blonde hair is a symbol of youth. Blonde hair goes grey pretty early and also most people who have blonde hair end up losing their hair.
Damn you Robert Redford.
So I cut off circulation to parts of my body on purpose. I cut off circulation to parts of my body on purpose.
So this would be shutting down aspects of yourself in order for some reason.
The second one of course was important but you can't remember it which probably means it's less important but cutting off circulation parts of your body on purpose.
[11:52] So that means that you are not a full person in terms of your expression.
And I get that, it's not some big criticism, we all have that aspect to some degree.
But you are, there are parts of yourself that are disowned and shut off.
[12:05] Now, when you cut off circulation to parts of your body on purpose, that's a grave danger.
Because of course, if circulation is cut off to parts of your body, they die.
Like if you cut off circulation to your toe, your toe dies and then you start to get what, rotting diseases and so on. the gangrene, it's all pretty awful.
So the lack of blood flow, also that has to do with ... blood flow is very much to do, if you're a male, blood flow is very much to do with sexuality, masculinity and reproduction, because of course the penis gains blood flow, becomes erect and so on.
And so cutting off circulation in parts of your body is probably something to do with a lack of assertiveness with regards to masculinity, a lack of self-expression, which results in necrotic death to parts of your personality.
So, my guess would be that you're self-censoring as a result of boundary violations from childhood.
That would be my guess, right? Don't know. Don't know. All right. What's our time here?
Hey, Steph. Happy Thanksgiving. Thank you, and you too. I was wondering if you could explain why a country such as Japan and also China, though to a slightly lesser extent, is so functional despite having a number of obvious problems.
The Japanese economy has been in quiet depression since the early 90s, and making ends meet there is very hard.
The parenting is often quite abusive, still quite abusive. Children are still hit often, they are shamed and verbally aggressed against.
The family unit is only nominally intact, as many Japanese men take mistresses.
[13:35] Is deemed acceptable by the women since it is only for sexual gratification.
They also seem to have bizarre sexual fetishes which I would presume are tied into sexual abuse of children.
Suffice to say the Japanese society is no meaner perfect. In many ways it is much worse than modern American Western culture, yet Japan has almost no crime at all.
The level of social trust is remarkable and does not appear to have been affected by the great economic decline.
What do you make of this? Well, IQ plus demographic cohesion explains most of the low crime and it's not, it's not neither Japan nor China, and I understand you're not praising China really here as no sane person would, but they're not functional societies because they're not survivable or sustainable societies.
The Japanese birth rate is crushingly low, and I'm going to talk about more of this on my live stream today, and the Chinese birth rate remains crushingly low because of the one-child policy.
It's really hard to reverse that kind of stuff.
So it's not a functional society.
I mean, literally, Japan's been around for thousands of years, and if current trends continue and there's no particular reason to believe there's any turnaround, no society in the history of the world has turned around low birthrate.
And Japan's birthrate is sort of so catastrophic that, like, there'll be no Japan functionally in 80 to 100 years.
[14:55] So, what you're saying, if you sort of look at this as a lifespan, Japan's been around for thousands and thousands, probably tens of thousands of years, and we're looking at the last hundred years of Japan, and you're saying, well, why is their society so functional?
[15:07] But this is like somebody, you know, two weeks from death and you're saying, well, how come their health is so good?
And it's like, well, if their health is so good, why are they two weeks from death? Given the longevity of a person and the longevity of the Japanese culture or our civilization, right?
If you take the unearned, you end up with nothing, right?
The devil tempts you with the unearned, you take the unearned and you end up with nothing.
So Japan offered its citizens the unearned, right?
You can get tax redistribution, you can get guaranteed employment, You can get long-term stability in your career and old people can get their pensions and health care.
So it's all unearned. So the Japanese people grabbed at the unearned and then, people don't want to live in that society because it's become almost completely corrupt and evil.
Morality and the Temptation of the Unearned
[15:52] The government offers you things and morality is designed like it doesn't matter if it's the government or not.
People offer you the unearned and it's the purpose of morality to have you shun the unearned, right?
This is the lesson of Jesus in the wilderness when Satan offers him everything in the world, to rule over everything in the world, he says no.
How do you say no to the unearned? Well, morality. Principles.
There was an exchange between Elon Musk and some Sorkin fellow where Sorkin is saying, oh, you know, advertisers feel uncomfortable in your platform and Elon Musk is like, they're going to try and bribe or threaten me with money?
You know, fuck them. Fuck them.
And you can see the Sorkin fellow is just incomprehensible to him, it's like, but that's going to cost you money.
And it's like, but there's principles at stake here. And the idea of principles versus money.
[16:42] So people, and you know, it's most countries, if not all countries in the world right now, people are like, they took free stuff, and deep down in the endless, eternal, deep vein scribe of the unconscious, everything is recorded.
People say, God watches everything, okay, I accept and understand that perspective.
From the secular perspective, the unconscious, the conscience sees and records everything.
So yes, you take the unearned and you become corrupted.
You take the unearned and you become lazy. You take the unearned and you become resentful and you become entitled and you become bitter and you become negative and you become hostile and you become tremulous and you become manipulative because you have to hide from yourself that you're taking the unearned through force, through government force or through other kinds of force.
I mean we all understand that some criminal who steals directly is going to become corrupted through that exercise, but then people who take through the agency of the state, we imagine somehow there's some culture that remains.
[17:37] And so in Japan, in China and other places, the state offers you things for free and you take them.
And I understand it's a huge temptation and you need a huge amount of morality, to say no to things that are offered.
So I understand all of that and I sympathize with that and that's a temptation that seems too great for most people to bear, which is why state societies always end up going the same way.
But I don't know really what you mean when you say it's a functional society.
I mean, honestly, this displays a level of moral and economic ignorance that you really shouldn't be displaying in this level of conversation.
So if you have a neighbor who decides to live off his credit cards and quits his job and you know, sits around playing badminton and sunning himself by the pool all day, would sit there and say, gosh, how come he doesn't have a job but he's functional?
And it's like, well yeah, if you borrow money, you appear to be functional.
Until when? Until you can't borrow any more money or the debt repayments become more than you can borrow to pay or whatever, right?
[18:50] How come my friend has been smoking a pack of cigarettes a day for 20 years and he's not sick yet.
Well, he's on his way. He's on his way, right?
I mean, please, like, you've got to understand, South Korea, China, Japan, catastrophically low birth rates, aging population, massive welfare states, both for the public and the private sector, and for companies and citizens, massive income redistribution, massive debt. It's like, well, it's still a functional society.
The Consequences of Chasing the Unearned
[19:25] And it's like watching someone in the high of cocaine and saying, well, geez, they appear to be really happy. What's the problem?
Well, the problem is the crash, the addiction, the harm to the health, that you're gonna end up with some weird Voldemort nose or something like that after a while.
So yeah, you gotta go deeper than the surface here, right?
And understand that the moral compromises.
And look, it's not that people take the unearned, that's the problem.
I mean, that's not a good part of the problem. There's no good part of the problem. system.
The problem is not that people take the unearned.
The purpose of giving you the unearned or offering you the unearned in the hopes that you'll take it is you end up having to lie to yourself.
And of course you hear this all the time, right? People say, well, I've got to get my pension. I paid into the system.
It's like, no, you gave your money to the government, they blew it on everything else, and there's nothing left other than vampiric IOUs that have to be paid by the blood and future of your children and grandchildren. They have to lie to themselves.
They have to lie to themselves.
[20:24] And once you lie to yourself in order to take the unearned, you break your relationship to reality.
Once you start lying to yourself, you break your relationship to discipline, because discipline is what happens when you stop lying to yourself.
And so once you break people's relationship with reality by having lied to themselves about what they perceive they're entitled to because of the virtues of the system or their taxes or what people voted for or whatever, once they lie to themselves about the morals of what they're doing, they can't be good anymore.
And because they can't be good and they're lying to themselves, all that's left for them is pathetic manipulations.
[20:58] So yeah, it's a shame. All right. Steph, and what have we got here?
Feeling Sympathy for Abusers: A Trap Set by Them
[21:03] After hearing a great show with Izzy, a question popped into my head.
Whenever you have a great time with your daughter, do you ever feel sorry for your parents or for completely missing out on this?
Do you ever stop and wonder, wow, you guys really effed it up and lost one of the greatest relationships you could ever have.
I sometimes have that thought when going through great moments with my sons and feel a little bit sad for the fun that my parents had an amazing kid on their hands and chose to throw it all away on the altar of violence, addiction, and depression.
I'm really, really sorry about about all of that.
I'm really sorry about what you experienced as a child.
Of course, I'm gobsmacked with admiration at what you're able to, what you've been able to achieve and, you know, all praise and heroism to you for that and like massive props and kudos and every metal known to man to weigh you down to the center of the earth.
No, that's no good, I'd be further away from your children, but you know what I mean. Do I think about... I mean, yeah, I was a great, fun, engaging, and enjoyable kid, no question.
I was, you know, very creative and very humorous and not as funny as my brother, though, to give him his props. He's really, really funny.
But as far as what they missed out...
[22:14] I gotta tell you, I think it's false nobility to have empathy for abusers.
I do. I think there's a certain amount of sentimentality about that, and also there's a certain amount, and I hesitate to say this because I don't know if this is the case with you, I'm just talking about with people in general.
There's a certain amount of hyper-sentimental self-praise that I've evolved so much that I can have compassion for the people who beat the hell out of me and terrified me as children.
I have evolved to the point where I feel compassion for those who did the greatest violent harm to me as a child.
[22:48] I don't view that as a positive evolution. I view that as a slide towards treacly sentimentality often provoked by the abusers deep down.
And when they can't have control over you, what do they do? They seek you to have pity over them. If they can't bully you, they seek you to have pity over them.
I mean, if a woman was, you know, raped at knife point, would she ever in her life, would it ever in her life be sane for her to say, I'm not calling you crazy, I'm just saying this is an extreme example, would it ever in her life for the victim of a violent knife at the throat rape, like all rapes are violent, all rapes are violent, I'm just talking about like an extreme knife to the throat rape, would it ever be sane for that woman to say, I feel sad for my rapist because he missed out on a great date.
You know, I'm a great person to date You know, I'm I'm fun.
I'm a good conversationalist. I enjoy the opera I'm great fun to date and I just I feel so sad for my rapist that he missed out on a great date Like if you heard that wouldn't you feel that that was a bit off or a lot off?
[23:54] I Mean, I understand the temptation But this is again the thirst for the unearned your parents want your sympathy without actually doing that which is necessary to earn it.
You know, if my mother, I don't know, called me weeping at how much she'd missed out on and she'd done therapy and she understood things and she was able to talk about things and actually tell me the truth and take responsibility, then yes, I think that there's some possibility that I could feel some sympathy for her.
But I provide sympathy to those who have accepted responsibility, made apologies, restitution, amends and so on, right? That's who my sympathy is for.
My sympathy is not for people who double down and continue the abuse.
[24:31] You know, if any of my family members had stood up for me when I was attacked in the media, okay, that would have been, you know, some ways toward restitution.
Don't think they have, never really checked, but I'm pretty sure I'd find out about that if they had.
So, or my friends, or anything like that.
So I don't feel that there's sympathy owed to the violent rapist because he missed out on a good date.
[24:56] I think that is a trap that is set up by the abusers so that you can feel sentimental and feel something positive and sweet and sad towards them. No.
No. If they are unrepentant evildoers, and evildoing against children is the worst form of evil, since it's the route through which so much other evil grows, unrepentant evildoers, I am pretty strict and firm with myself about that, and I just have to remind myself of the evil that they did.
So unrepentant evildoers, they get what is inevitable.
I don't know what deserve or it doesn't really matter, right?
Like if somebody smokes and gets cancer, do they get what they deserve?
No, they just get what happens.
So yes, they're miserable and they don't have good relationships and they're volatile and they're self-pitying and they're manipulative and they're, it's, you know, you could say it's kind of tragic except it's not, except it's not.
They put themselves there, they could step out of it anytime they want, they choose to stay there. They choose to stay there.
They choose to stay there. I'm not going to have pity for what people chose to do and continue to choose to do. I respect free will.
Now I can say that's a bad place to be and I'm going to learn otherwise, absolutely.
[26:03] But be really careful about this. I've evolved so much that I just feel sorry for them.
It's like, no, feel sorry for people who've actually worked to make amends, not to people who continue to relentlessly do evil and maintain it.
Like just think how much, if your parents were abusive to you, think how much relief they could give you by accepting that abuse and apologizing and yet they continue to torture you with not taking any responsibility.
So they continue to abuse you. Like every abuser who's not making amends is continuing to abuse.
You follow that right? Every abuser, let me make this very clear, every abuser who's not making amends is continuing to abuse you.
And I don't choose to have sweet sentimentality and oh how sad all the things they missed out when people continue to abuse.
And of course my father went to his grave without really ever taking any responsibility or ownership even though I told him exactly everything that had happened. So, yeah, I mean...
[26:58] I can say I think it's kind of a shame that they continue to do bad things and continue to be negative, to put it mildly, negative presence, have a negative presence or effect on my life.
I think that's a bad decision.
I think it's wrong. I think it's immoral. I think it's destructive.
And those people, they suffer because of it.
Sympathy for Abusers: a Dangerous Choice
[27:18] They suffer because of it. But it's their choice.
And if you focus on their suffering rather than, like, if your abusers are continuing to suffer, it's because they haven't made amends, which means they're continuing to abuse you.
So if you're going to have or try to have some kind of syrupy sympathy for people who are actively and actually continuing to abuse you, I would not recommend that. I would strongly recommend against that.
Trying to feel sympathy for people who are continuing to abuse you by never making amends, which means you have to hold all of the horror of your childhood and deal with it on your own, those people are not, in my view, to be given sympathy.
You reserve your sympathy for those who genuinely apologize, make amends, and lift your burden, right?
If other people strap a giant heavy weight to you while you're trying to struggle up some slippery hill, and then they laugh and point at you while you're doing it, do you feel sorry for them?
I think we should feel angry. It's a hole in the armor of the self-defense of anger to feel sympathy for those who are continuing to harm you, and as I said, all abusers who are not actively making restitution are continuing to harm you.
So I would try, my counsel, I can't obviously tell you what to do, my counsel is, have they lifted the burden from me by admitting fault?
[28:37] The people who don't admit fault put extra burdens on you, because once someone admits fault, takes responsibility, and tells you the truth, then the beautiful thing, of course, is that they're taking a load off your mind, because otherwise you have to wrestle with this all on your own.
And of course, by the time you've finished wrestling with it, which I guess I did a little over 25 years ago, I guess I finished therapy and mostly finished wrestling with all the childhood stuff, then any restitution is pointless.
There's an old saying about bankers that they just stare at you while you're floundering in the ocean, but they'll throw life jackets at you after you make it to the shore.
In other words, once you're successful, they'll offer to lend you money when you don't really need it anymore.
And this is why restitution is not a lifelong privilege.
So once I had paid my tens of thousands of dollars and thousands of hours doing therapy, then I had wrestled with and dealt with the demons of the past, which opened my heart up to the great life I have in the present.
Once I had done that, then restitution is past.
Beyond Restitution: Moving on from Abusive Relationships
[29:45] Restitution is past. Right? If the lifeguard just stares at you, or laughs at you, or films you while you're half-drowning in some ghastly squid-laced.
[29:57] Under-toe riptide from hell, and then you finally, like coughing blood and half dead you make it to shore and then you know you go get your checkup and they rehydrate you or whatever they need to do and then a week or two later you're back to normal and you're strolling around the lifeguard comes up and says I'm here to save you, I'm here to help. Be like what the fuck are you doing?
[30:19] What are you insane? I did it already, the time for you to help was like two weeks ago when I was dying in the surf when I washed up on shore barely conscious because you just stared at me the time I was struggling, laughed at me, filmed at me, made some money, uploaded it, got monetized, whatever, right?
Two weeks later they come and, hey man, I'm here to save you! From what?
You're in the rip? No, I'm done with that.
I survived, I flourished, I got to shore, I got new friends, I got a new outfit, I got a new job, I got great people in my life, like you're beyond unnecessary, you're counterproductive at this point, like it would be kind of crazy, right?
So if you've already gotten to the point where you have a great relationship with your children, then restitution is impossible, pointless.
Now restitution would just be annoying because it would be about them, not you.
I feel bad, right? Not you feel bad, right? So if the guy cares about you struggling in the surf, what should he do?
What he should do, of course, is he should say, I'm going to come and save you while you're struggling in the surf.
If he costs you in the restaurant later, that's kind of weird and awkward, and it's about him, not you.
[31:21] So yeah, please try and avoid having this kind of sympathy or whatnot for people who didn't help you when you needed it.
And of course, if they didn't help you, right? The reason why the lifeguard would be coming up to help you, quote, help you, long after you needed help is because he feels bad or he's getting criticized or somebody filmed him not doing anything and he's getting threatened, or he's gonna lose his job or he's afraid you're gonna sue him.
So he's coming up to be nice. It's got nothing to do with you, it's all about him.
So, you know, if abusive parents haven't helped you, when you were struggling and half dying from dealing with moral horror, but then after you've solved it all, they wanna help you, it's like because of them, not you, right, because they didn't care when you were struggling, they only cared that they feel bad, so it's just a continuation of everything else that's been going on.
So, yeah, I hope that helps, and I'm really reluctant to do anything based on sentimentality and misjudgment, And whenever I feel the desire, which we all do, we're kind of programmed this way, usually by bad people.
[32:24] Whenever I feel the deep desire to provide moral consideration to people who remain immoral, I just remind myself of the wrongs they did and how they laughed at me when I was fainting in the surf and still have done nothing, despite the fact that I got to shore 25 years ago nobody's done anything to sort of reach out and in any kind of sympathy or positivity or help or health or anything like that and so there's it's no possibility of it now.
This is why you know it wasn't like some big shock or horror when my father died or you know it's not like every day oh I wonder if my mom called like the time is long past I'm I'm out of this storm I'm out of the, undertow I got to shore I'm far inland so lifeguards get fucked.
All right, thanks everybody. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.
