Good evening, everybody. Welcome to your Friday night live at the beginning of May, May 2nd, 2025. And how is my post-workout oily face? Leave a like, drop a tip, bring your questions. Sorry, James, I thought that was bring your girlfriend. Bring that too. Bring that too. All right, let's start with the spice. Steph, why do people act as if Shiloh Hendricks murdered someone for saying the N-word? Saying the word is not the same as stabbing someone in the heart.
I don't think there's many people who would make that claim, who would make that claim, asking me to dive into the complexities of often media-provoked US racial politics is for a foreigner asking me to dive in at the deep end and explain to you the constitution of Singapore, having never visited. I mean, really, according to... According to Douglas Murray, if I hadn't been to that playground, what seems to be, and I'm not sure why people are referring...
to the Somalian who took the video as a pedophile. I don't know why they're referring to him as a pedophile. They seem to be referring to him as a pedophile. I don't know if he is or not, but that seems to be quite a common thing. It would seem to me, if he is, don't know if he is, but if he is, it would seem to me that would be... Somewhat important that you've got a guy with bats. in his heart, filming at a playground. Anyway, it's...
Wild stuff. All right. freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show, of course. If you would see your way clear to doing that, I'd appreciate it. I would appreciate it even more. Of course, if you go to fdrurl.com slash locals, sign up for a subscription there. You can try it for a month, see if you like it, cost you nothing if you cancel.
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I was on the phone with tech support today, and the tech support guy was making small talk while he was waiting to do something. And he was like, any big plans for the weekend? It's nice to hear that I... I sound younger than I am, because in your late 50s, you don't usually have big plans for the weekend. I may be getting together with friends on Sunday night for a game night. That's all I can say. That's all I can say. All right. All right. So let's get your questions and comments.
Val asks, how do you define internalized parent? Well, first you get a big cooking pot. So internalized parent, all right. Hit me with a Y if you've ever had to wristle, rassle. with an internalized parent. Hit me with a Y if you've ever had to wrassle or fight back or manage or debate with or deal with an internalized
I mean, we all have internalized parents, but hopefully we have the kind of internalized parents we don't have to wrestle with and who don't sabotage us or anything like that. Hopefully that is... Oh yeah, okay, so it looks like... you'll have this. So, um, second question, want to please you lovely donating audience, please the audience one to 10.
How much detail do you want me to go into? Because it's a big topic. But I've heard tell there are vague rumors out there. I don't believe them myself, but there are vague rumors out there. that I can be concise. I could strive for it, I suppose. For me, it feels like trying to grow younger. But how detailed do you want me to get? Because it's a big old topic, man.
All right, you want the big 10-inch record? All right, we'll do it Aerosmith style. All right, looks like you all want more details, not fewer. freedomain.com slash donate. Just a friendly neighborhood reminder. Okay. Glass is off. It is time to déglace. That smells like middle-aged belly flop sweat. Just be happy it's only audio and visual and not five dimensions of sensory input. All right.
You wouldn't mind. Sorry, I took my glasses off, then someone made a good comment. All right. I wouldn't mind if the majority of the show was on the subject. It's quite timely. Okay. Well, I will start on the subject. which I know quite a bit about. I will start on the subject, and then y'all can tell me. Just hit me with five Zs.
Hit me with five C's in a row if I'm going on too long. Too long. All right. Too long le trek. OK. The internalized parent comes fundamentally from the principle that if a stranger who's three times your size says, either I can hit you or you can hit yourself, what would you choose? Well, you would choose to hit yourself because you're in control of hitting yourself. So if you have a parent who is triggered by a word, right?
flip it a jibbit now that's going to be a little too tough to pronounce over the course of the show um uh let's say that your parent is triggered by the word coin But the thing with the threaded edges. All right. So... If your parent is triggered by the word coin, every time you mention the word coin, your parent gets angry and hits you. Triggered word is moist. Nice. That's good, too. So you have a parent who's triggered by the word coin. So you get this association quite quickly.
And then you internalize the trigger of your parent to the point where you feel great resistance to saying the word coin. Hopefully this isn't anybody's trigger word. You want some big multi-syllable Swedish safe word according to Eurotrip. But... Your parent gets angry and violent and aggressive and abusive when they hear the word coin, so what you do is you then avoid the word coin. In other words, you have internalized your parent's trigger, and you now avoid your parent's trigger.
That's one function of the internalized parents, a very simple representation. Now, of course, if you are a sibling, you have siblings, then you also wish for them, you wish very strongly for them, not... to use the word coin. So you have to also repress in them the use of the word coin. So when I was watching a friend of mine whose parents were in the room play a video game, and he pulled off an amazing move, I... I said the phrase, which was a quote from a Monty Python movie,
called The Life of Brian, you lucky bastard, or you jammy bastard, you jammy bastard, right? It's just, anyway, and my brother kicked me ferociously under the table because I'd used the word bastard with the other guy's friends, parents in the room, my friend's parents in the room. I kind of get where he was coming from. See, even early on, I was pushing the envelope of free speech, so to speak. You internalize this stuff so that you prevent the trigger from reaching your parents.
So when there's behavior that gets you punished, you internalize restraints upon that behavior in the hopes that you don't get punished. In other words, because your parent lacks self-control, you have to inflict self-control. we end up having to control others. In other words, if your parent cannot control his or her response to the word coin, then your parent...
has to have you not say the word coin. So I think that makes sense. And then you have to suppress everyone around it. Now, what this does is it gives you the illusion of control. It gives you the illusion of control in that you say, oh, well, my mother is triggered by the word coin, I just don't say the word coin, and I'm fine. But in general... Could be exceptions. But in general, it doesn't work.
In general, it doesn't work. Now, the question is, because that would be pretty simple. If your parent is triggered by a particular word, like I had neighbors, a French couple, when I lived in England, I had neighbors, a French couple, straight up the stairs. And I remember I had... It's kind of shimmery. I remember... I had mice and hamsters as a kid. We would breed the hamsters and breed the mice.
And I had mice and hamsters as a kid. And I remember, because I was quite friendly with this French couple who were elderly, and I remember coming up with two handfuls of hamsters. Well, a hamster in either hand. to show my lovely pets to the French couple. And I remember that the French woman screamed and slammed the door in my face, which was highly unusual for this quite nice couple. And the only thing, la guerre, right? The only thing I got was it had something to do with the war.
During wartime, rats run wild. I mean, this is talked about in 1984 and so on. The rats, right? The rats run wild in a time of war. So, of course, I imagine that this woman had appalling dangers in the war. from rats. She may have been attacked. Her children may have been attacked. She was quite old, even in the, I guess this would be the mid-70s. So she would have been middle-aged during the war, and I assume she had horrible, appalling battles with rats. Or rodents of some kind. So when I...
proudly held up my rats in this woman's face. She completely freaked out, screamed, slammed the door. Don't blame her. No ill will. Obviously, I was very sorry to have upset her. It was not at all my goal. I was trying to... Spread some happiness and joy, but, right, the shadows of the war. Boy, I remember when my cousins from Germany came to visit when I lived in England as a kid. They were not allowed to even touch.
Even pretend weapons, like even the sticks that you make into a little rifle or revolver or whatever handgun, they weren't even allowed to play with imaginary weapons. It was really something. It was really something. So... when you trigger a parent who has a response mechanism that is aggressive with regards to a particular trigger, there's one of two possibilities. Either A, it's just a particular trigger, and like this woman with the rat,
Or it's something else. Now, in general, because it does tend to be kind of a principle, in general, what happens is people... when they have the habit of blaming others for being triggered themselves. blaming others for being triggered themselves, what happens is they don't learn any internal mechanism for dealing with triggers.
Now, when you don't have or develop a mechanism for dealing with internal triggers, you tend to get triggered by more and more. And this is a really dark secret of being triggered. you start to really love. The power that being triggered gives you. Being triggered, the volatility, the outrage, all of this is a pretty deep and heady addiction to power. that people like, especially if you're a parent. You know, kids are so sensitive to the moods of their parents.
is really upsetting for a child. And this is true even with peaceful parenting and so on. So, you know, it's been really eye-opening. My daughter is, you know, fierce and fights for what she believes in, and I really respect and admire that.
about her but of course you know if for whatever reason I'm sat with her she like really listens and and I can tell there's a little bit of nervousness that's just natural to being a kid and it's happened I don't know maybe four times over the course of her childhood and nothing particularly serious, but I'm sort of aware of that power just being a parent.
So people who lack self-control, it's very easy for them to slide into an addiction to controlling others. People who lack self-control find it very heady and powerful. to control others through outrage. Of course, this has a lot to do with the left as a whole. It happens on the right as well, but it happens to the left as a whole.
people love their outrage because it gives them power over others. So the reason why a lot of times this appeasement of parental aggression doesn't work in the long run is because what happens is the parents just flip to something else. Something else triggers them. It's the word coin, and now it's the word moist, right? The word coin and the word moist.
triggers the parents. You say, okay, no coin, no moist. Okay. And then the word, flip it a gibbet, and then the word magnesium, and then the word skybeam, skyscraper, golden gate, whatever. Like my little word association test. So more and more and more triggers.
And as more and more and more stuff triggers, you get more and more and more internalized self-control. To the point of... it can really happen to this level where the amount, and this is really the purpose of a lot of this sort of really heavy woke censorship stuff. The purpose is to pile...
little bits of straw on the camel's back until it snaps. And you're paralyzed. You can't say anything. You can't think anything. You can't express yourself. And that is how... the virus of South Erasure gets inflicted on the next generation. you can't say this you can't say this you can't say this you can't say this you can't say this you can't say this and eventually you can't say anything Because some group, some person, someone is going to be really offended and upset by what you've said.
And then you're paralyzed. You're paralyzed. Or you are limited to the very smallest and most inconsequential of topics to the point where there's no point having a conversation at all because it's just MPC exchange of empty syllables. Now, The most important thing, in my view, my amateur opinion, of course, the most important thing to remember about why we think the way we do is that wrong think was extremely dangerous.
throughout most of human history. I mean, I talked about this in my speech, my speaking tour of Australia and almost New Zealand. which is, you know, the aborigines in Australia had been there for like 40,000 years, and I detailed 40%, if I remember the number rightly, 40% of the children were infanticided. And I talked about it, pour sand into the children's mouths, you know, like, so, so the survivability of children throughout most of human history was.
It was very tight. It was very tight to make it, right? I mean, half of children would die before the age of five, infections or diseases or whatever, right? So you'd have that, and there wasn't much, of course, that people could, I mean, the germ theory wasn't even really thought about until the late 19th century. So... Cue the guy who says there's no such thing as viruses. Go. I dare you.
We hung by a thread, especially, of course, when you had a fair number of children, right, in order to survive. And prior to birth control, you just you had a bunch of children and a bunch of children. So. given that there were five, six, seven, eight children running around. You know, there's all these people who's like, oh, teacher's pet, oh, apple polisher, brown noser, you know. It's like, bro.
A pleasing people in authority was one of the most foundational survival mechanisms throughout almost all of human history. you know, every now and then, right? Every now. And I write about this in my novel. The future, which you should definitely read, right? But so every now and then, you know, you'd be out back at that farm and... There'd be a bunch of kids milling about, doing things, playing, working, whatever.
And a bear or a wolf or a lion or whatever, right, would suddenly burst through the fence or burst from the bushes or the grass and would just... Aim for a kid, right? I'm sure you've seen those videos of the kids leading up against the plexiglass in a zoo, right? All the big cats stalking up to wanting to chew their little heads off. You better be a favorite.
if there's not enough food, which, you know, often there wasn't, right? There's a reason why people in Northwestern Europe would starve themselves over Lent, because it's the end of winter when you've got no food anyway, so you might as well make it into a religious holiday and a purification of the soul ritual. You better be a favorite when predators come, if there's war, if... to be watched over, to be fed, to get the additional parental resources, you better be a favorite.
Now, of course, it's not like, I don't want to state the obvious, it's not like every kid who wasn't a favorite just died, but, you know, it doesn't take more than... you know, 5% increased chance of survival for those behaviors to be reinforced over the course of, you know, 10 generations or so.
You know, there's a, I think it was a Russian researcher who divided foxes into the most aggressive and the least aggressive, kept breeding the most aggressive, kept breeding the least aggressive. Within a couple of generations, he had completely feral foxes and completely domesticated foxes. I mean, that's how we got dogs, right? Not from foxes, things from wolves, but we get the idea.
So you have to please your parents. What that means is if your parents are upset by something, maybe you'll raise a complaint or two, but, but. you'd better not push it. Because if your parents are not invested in your survival to the same degree as some other kid, some other sibling, You do not do well at all. All right, hit me with a Y if this makes sense. I'll put the Y in because it makes sense to me so far, but hit me with a Y if this makes sense to you so far.
Like you were going to die without parental approval, which gives parents overwhelming power. And this is what is foundational to breeding conformity. in society as a whole. And the siblings will internalize the parent and then inject the internalized parent into other siblings for two reasons. One is that they share genetics with their siblings, and secondly, because... If the parent blows up in anger, there could be splash damage on the older sibling.
So two things to remember. The first is, as children, our lives hung by a thread when we were evolving. Does everyone have an internal parent? Yeah, everyone. Everyone. Everyone. Yeah, and it's nothing wrong with internal parents. It's just you, of course, want them to be, you know, relatively sane and healthy and rational, right? So let's get to your questions and I'll leave these behind.
Like, I'm definitely my mother's favorite, but my sister's definitely my father's favorite. They'd never say so, but we can tell. Yeah, that was very unfair in my family. I was my mother's favorite. My brother was not. My brother reminded my mother of her ex-husband. I reminded my mother of her father because I was creative and artsy and wrote a lot.
And my grandfather was a writer. And yeah, it's, I mean, there's going to be a little bit of that to some degree, just based upon sort of compatibility, but. secure and safe in the modern world compared to history it becomes a little bit hard to understand how pleasing parents and not annoying parents was so essential to our survival. So number one is children's lives hung by a thread throughout almost all of our evolution.
That's number one Sorry, there's another question here So what happens to orphans or people raised by others? Oh, boy. Well, of course, orphans have to please people as well. And it's your caregivers. It doesn't really matter. And here, like I'm giving you a theory of mind.
and psychological evolution in an amateur fashion. I'm giving you a theory of mind and psychological evolution, and you're like, well, what about orphans? It's like, can we just do the 99% of people first? Can we handle that? Can we just do the 99% of people? Once you understand the 99% of people, we can start to talk about the 1% if that's of general interest. But as a whole, when somebody's working on a 99% theory, what about the 1%? It's like...
What about tall Asians? Yeah. Try your best, just as a whole, right? Just as a whole, right? Try your best when somebody is explicating a complex theory or reasonably complex theory. Try your best to understand it before jumping in with exceptions. Just in general, right? Just in general. It's a good idea to absorb things because it's distracting for everyone else. It's not some big criticism. It's just a...
A little thing, but an important thing. So the first principle is we were always this close to dying throughout evolution, right? So children were like... on the razor's edge, on the cliff edge, on death's door, throughout the course of our evolution, right? That's number one. Number two, number two, is that society didn't change. I'm not talking about another 6,000-year Chinese society, but society in general didn't change.
I sort of made the case that psychology evolved along with social mobility, because psychology is less necessary if you just copy and pasting the generations. You don't really need psychology in that sense, because there's no chance of self-actualization, of honesty, of independent thought, and so on, right? Another thing, you should watch my speeches from Australia. You can just...
Do a search at fdrpodcasts.com and you can just do a search for my Australian speeches. They were very good and very important and tie in a lot to this. See, just things didn't change. Self-knowledge is a negative. What you do is you conform. So the reason, right, let's say you're a little boy, why do you internalize your mother? Because... your wife is going to be like your mother.
Because it's the same religion, it's the same superstition, it's the same environment, it's the same circumstances, it's the same culture. I mean, if you've ever been to really regressive places where... The culture overwhelms any kind of individuality. I'm not going to give specific examples, but I'm sure we can all think of them. If you've ever been to those kinds of places... Well, no, I'll give one. I'll give one that should not be too controversial. So when I was, as you know,
but I haven't mentioned it for at least five to six minutes. After high school, I spent about a year, year and a half gold panning and prospecting, and then I did it for another summer later. And in that... I spend a lot of time in small towns. Now, in small towns, there's a lot of copy-paste, especially the people who Stay in the small towns. It's a lot of copy-paste. Think of sort of it. And so you...
If you've got a mother who's got a particular characteristic and you live in a small town, and you're going to stay in that small town, the odds are that you're going to end up, assuming some sort of monoculture, you're going to end up marrying a woman who's kind of like your mother.
So by internalizing the mother and not bothering the mother and not frustrating or angering the mother, you then have a built-in mechanism by which when you get to your teen years and you start dating, you are also not instigating bothering or annoying. the girls of your own age, because they would have been raised by women similar to your mother. And so it's a shortcut to being attractive to
I mean, your mother and your father, by definition, assuming they're yours, your mother and your father, by definition, are sexually successful, right? Because they gave birth to you, so they're sexually successful. So your genes want to copy whoever is... sexually successful. Whoever has reproduced, your genes are going to glom onto that and reproduce that behavior.
And of course, the closest people to reproduce the behavior of when we're growing up is our parents, who by definition are sexually successful because we exist. We're a literal product of their sexual success. And what do our genes want to do? They want to succeed in reproduction, right? So, a mother is not just the template of Our mother, she is the template for sexually successful females. Now, our father, who chose our mother,
obviously did not anger and annoy and bother and bewitch and bewilder her too much, right? He may have been, you know, a little challenging to get to know, or maybe he made her work a little bit for it, but in general... Our father pleased our mother to the point where... He reproduced, right? He reproduced. And remember, there were times where very few men reproduced relative to women.
So you have to please women, and your mother instructs you what women in the culture like and don't like. So you're hanging by a thread, you've got to please the parent, and if you're a... little girl you model yourself after your mother and and all of that so that because your mother is sexually successful and if you're a little boy you'll model yourself to some degree after your father you'll internalize him but in particular you'll internalize
your mother likes and doesn't like because that's going to be the closest approximation, given the continuity of culture. That's going to be the closest approximation. to what your future girlfriend, fiance, wife, and mother of your children is going to like or not like, right? If your tribe, your culture, believes in Zeus and worships Zeus, Your mother worships Zeus, maybe you don't particularly believe in Zeus, but if you don't worship Zeus, the odds of you getting married go down.
So you're just going to have to internalize your mother's worship of Zeus, your father's worship of Zeus. Maybe you'll fake it or whatever it is, right? Just to be able to reproduce that. All right? Does this make sense so far why we internalize? Hit me with a why. I just want to make sure that we're not doing too much or too little explanation. Because it's not an inner fault. It's not personal to you. It's not personal to me. It is just the way that the world evolved.
We're all making sense so far, right? Yeah, don't take it personally. It's not any fault of yours. It's, you know, oh, gee, you know, I'm just like, I'm triggered just like my mom. It's like, well, yeah, and good, because if your ancestors hadn't done that, you wouldn't. Survive to make it. to be here. All of the, quote, compromises that your ancestors made to get you to where you are is fantastic. Necessary, essential, foundational. Right.
Until, until the modern world, right? Until the modern world. So, there were, of course, people who rejected their inner parent, but they tended not to reproduce. They tended to become monks or nuns. going on strike, right? I mean, I would have rather become a monk. or a priest unallowed to marry in the Catholic tradition, I would much rather have become a monk or a non-marrying priest rather than marry a woman like my mother. Like, no thanks, right? And so you can bail out of it for sure.
But that takes you out of the genetic equation. You end up, especially if you're a priest, you end up as a meme lord, so to speak, like you're spreading ideas and arguments, but you are not spreading your seed, usually in the same way, although of course it did happen with priests and so on, right? Again, if you're finding this helpful, freedomain.com. donate, I would really appreciate it. So when you say, oh, gee, I react in this way, kind of like my mother.
I literally lay in bed an hour this morning thinking about, not this in particular, but my argumentative side, which maybe we can get to later on. Maybe I'll do a solo show on that.
of course you're going to be like your parents. You're going to mimic your parents. You're going to internalize your parents, for sure. And we can see this, of course, in, was it Lizistrata or other stories, and this is even happening in the here and now, which is a woman saying, I will not date or have sex with a Republican.
In fact, there was a show, gosh, what was coupling? Lesbian Spank Inferno. There we go. It's all coming out. It's a very funny show. I didn't particularly care for the American version, but the British version was hilarious. at least the first season or two. And one of the stories, or one of the sort of gags or... Plots in the sitcom was a guy who was right-wing or conservative or Republican, and therefore the women didn't want to sleep with him, but apparently he had a very large penis.
Right? Which is like the short guy who has to make a quarter million dollars more to make out for his lack of height. So... This, of course, is talked about online. Women who's like, first question I ask him is, are you a Republican? Did you vote for Donald Trump? And if you are, I'm not going to date you. And of course, this happens in religious circles as well. If you're not part of a particular religion, then I won't date you, that kind of stuff, right?
So, women saying, I won't date or marry or sleep with or reproduce with people, with men. who don't follow a particular pattern of thought, or not really thought, of propaganda, is a way of shaping the genetics of the mind flowing forward through time. and the men, sort of Howard Rock style, who stand proud and independent of all of this and won't succumb to such estrogen-based V-Cannon bullying sniper fire.
Well, we proudly vanish into the genetic dustbin of history. Proud and gone, right? Proud and gone. Proud and absent. So, yeah, you're going to internalize your parents for reasons, essential reasons of survival, of reproduction, right? of pleasing women and of learning from your mother to... please your future wife, who's going to be very similar to your mother, given the small size of tribes and the conformity of belief systems in particular regions or geographies and so on, right? Alright.
Now, your inner, let's just talk about negative parents, right? Destructive or abusive parents. Obviously not all, but we'll just talk about this particular slice. I internalized my mother's madness so that I could gain some illusion of control over outcomes, right? Because we're all very hungry for control in our environment, right? And of course, this is how totalitarianism works. It doesn't start off with a whole bunch of crazy laws.
It starts off with, well, we just want this little thing. And then once you provide that little thing, okay, we just want this little thing more. Okay, just a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more, and then eventually you can't say anything because everything's been so hyper-controlled. So that's a great comment. I will get to that after this little bit here.
So it's sort of step by step, the laws expand, right? I mean, what is this? Somebody posted on X the other day, I can't wait for World War I to be over so the temporary tax can be rescinded. It's just a temporary tax on the top 2% of earners, right? And then it just grows and flows, right? Because the principle is broken, right? Like once the West as a whole accepted the idea or the argument that we could do good
through evil, that we could help the poor through violating property rights, through forced redistribution of income. Once the West except at the argument that you can do good through evil, the West was done. It takes a while, takes some time, but the West is done at that point. At that point. Very sad. It's just after twitches. After that, if that makes sense. All right. Let me get your questions, comments. That was a really good one. Let me just make sure I get back to it.
Strike a pose, there's nothing to it. A slippery slope, yeah, for sure. So, sorry, so I internalized my mother, and my internal mother would... provoke a negative reaction in me if I was going to do something that would trigger my mother. Now, of course, it's easy to feel like that's bullying yourself, but it's not. So I'll sort of give you an example that I think we're all familiar with. How well do you obey the traffic laws when there's a cop behind you?
You're not running any yellows. You triple check to make sure you can turn right on the red, right? You signal everything. You check your blind spot, right? Maybe you don't change lanes at all, right? So when there's a cop behind you or in the vicinity, right, then what you do is you very carefully make sure that you obey the traffic laws, right? Now, That is your internal cop, right? You've internalized the cop. And your inner cop is there to, quote, protect you from the outer cop, right?
I'm sure you've seen, you know, the videos of the people they steal, that's probably staged, but, you know, you steal, somebody steals someone's pocket, a wallet from a pocket, they see there's a security camera and then they apologize and sort of put it back, right? If you've ever cheated on a test, not I, but if you've ever cheated on a test, when the teacher comes by, you make sure you hide whatever you're cheating on, right? Or with.
So we internalize in order to protect ourselves or our interests, you know, for better or for worse, as a whole, right? We internalize. You haven't really done homework. It's Sunday night, you know that thing. Friday night, woohoo, no more school. No more teacher's dirty looks. And then, what do you do? You kind of edge your way through the weekend and then Sunday night, you're like, ugh.
School, let's do my homework, blah, blah, blah, right? And you do that because you've internalized the negative experiences that the teachers might inflict on you if you show up Monday, you get called up to do whatever, and you haven't done your homework, right? So you've internalized the teacher. Now, let's say you have an abusive mother, and you internalize the abusive mother.
The internal mother, the internalized mother, is there to protect you from your external mother in the same way that the internalized police officer is there to protect you from the external police officer. Now, of course, because the internal mother might yell at you or might make you feel stressed, you feel like it's an attack. But it's not. It's a protection.
Right? I mean, if some guy who's three times your size says, I can punch you, or you can punch yourself, and you punch yourself, it's easy to look at your fist as an enemy. Right? Bam! But it's not. Your fist is your friend because it's way better than somebody three times your size unleashing some barnstormer on your face. Haymaker. I think I meant Haymaker. Barnstorming is plain. Either one works, but I think Haymaker is better, right?
It's easy when you've internalized an abuser, it's easy to see that internalized abuser as your enemy, as it's punishing yourself, you're attacking yourself. Honestly, I'm telling you, brothers and sisters, nothing could be further from the truth. Nothing could be further. That internalized, quote, abuser is there to protect you. Whoops. It's there to protect you from the external abuser.
They are your friend, and they should be thanked for their service. They are your security guard, right? They are your security guard. You know, if you've ever been at a store where they check your bags on the way out to make sure you didn't steal anything, I always thank those people. Hey, man, thank you for keeping the cost low. I appreciate that. I really do. Appreciate it.
So hit me with a why if this makes sense. Because, you know, our internal parental alter ego yells at us or makes us tense or whatever, and we think, oh my God, I'm self-attacking, blah, blah, blah. It's like, nope. Nope, nope, nope. We're just obeying the rules so we don't get arrested, right? Or a ticket or something like that, right? Make sense so far? Okay, good. So let me just get back to your questions and comments. I'm happy to talk about this more. All right.
Somebody says, my therapist and I have spent countless hours working on my inner parents. We've been making good progress, but it's so hard to get them to change and understand my parents aren't part of my life. and they inner parents don't need to use the same tools and tactics that once served me do you have any advice on how to reason with the inner parents that's a great question the next part of what I'm talking about is
Annoying when not needed. Okay, so, Sepanta, just remember, though, For almost all of our evolution, and we have not evolved to deal with the social mobility and class mobility of the modern era, for almost all of our evolution, my friend, There was never a time we didn't need them. Always we needed them, right? Always. Because... Copy-paste went on for generation after generation. Think of the Aztecs.
Think of the Mayans, think of the Aborigines, think of the 18,000-year reign of the indigenous population of North America, which was pretty much the same after 18,000 years as it was at the beginning, and 40,000 years for the Aborigines and so on. So saying, well, it's kind of annoying because we don't need them anymore. But that's not what we evolved for. The reason why it's so difficult to dislodge inner parents is that
Throughout almost all, I mean, effectively, for all of our biological evolution, right, what's happened over the last couple of generations doesn't really count. But for all of our evolution, it was sheer suicide. to eliminate inner parents. then you piss off the elders, you piss off the witch doctors, you piss off the warriors, you piss off the women, you piss off the men, and you don't reproduce.
or you might get in fact killed or ostracized. Remember, remember, most societies throughout most of human history were always looking for someone to sacrifice. And you don't want to be that person. So I understand the frustration of how hard it is to dislodge inner parents. I get that. I sympathize with that. I understand that frustration.
But I hope that you will accept that the reason why it's so hard to dislodge them is because those who successfully dislodged inner parents in the past had far lower chances of survival, let alone reproduction. Like it's just bred out of us. It's gone, baby. It's gone. So you're only here because inner parents are hard to dislodge, very hard to dislodge. That's the only reason that you and I and everyone around exists.
So for me, for me, I think it's a good case universally, but for me, it feels kind of churlish and ungrateful to be upset about that, which is fundamentally the main reason I'm here. Oh, it's hard to change a social class. Yes. And for all of our biological evolution, it was functionally impossible.
oh, it's hard to dislodge your inner parents. Well, yeah, because those who had a greater predilection or ability to dislodge your inner parents got ostracized, killed, or at least failed to reproduce. Try not to get too frustrated at that which is a foundational reason as to why you exist at all.
for factors that are the opposite of why you're here is, in a sense, to wish to not be here. There's a kind of thanatos, like a death impulse, a, you know, it's wrong that I'm here. It's bad that I'm here. I shouldn't be here. should be easy to dislodge your inner parents. So then you're just self-attacking, right? And you're self-attacking against the very factors that allowed your ancestors to survive and hand you the trembling, blood-soaked gift of life at all.
So try not to be annoyed by the very factors that have you be alive at all. Because if you got your wish for your bloodline... If people in the past had gotten what you wish for and had found it easy to eliminate parental alter egos, inner parental authority figures or other authority figures from the tribe, they wouldn't have made it. You wouldn't be here. You are here because inner alter egos are very tough to reason with. You know, like lizards.
I'm thinking like the geckos, the green geckos down in Florida, right? So lizards, some lizards, you pull their tail off, like the birds will pull their tail off, and those tails regrow, right? Thank you, Chris. By the way, and thank you, Nicholas. Thank you, James. Thank you, Dorbins. freedomain.com slash jenay to help out the show. Greatly, deeply, and humbly appreciate it. Thank you. I think it's gold, Jerry. It's gold.
So, yeah, inner alter egos are hot. Now, how do you reason with inner alter egos? Well... In my experience, I know that this is scientifically pretty true, right? So we have a second brain in our gut. It actually has a bunch of neurons and it functions as a gut instinct and all of that, right? So we have a second brain in our gut. that is purely empirical. It can't really be reasoned with. It is empirical.
So, you know, if you're walking at night in the woods and you think you hear some beast behind you, you hear some cracking or some movement behind you, right, you get this gut. Fight or flight kicks in, right? And now you can't just continue walking without looking back and saying, oh, it's nothing. Don't worry about it. No big deal. I'm sure it was just the wind and the trees, right? Because you're... Second brain, your gut brain is screaming at you that you might be in danger and you better...
Stop running or go back and check. whether things are safe or not now of course if you've got a flashlight you go back you shine it all around there's nothing i mean it'll calm down to some degree maybe not entirely because it could be a predator that's hiding in order to continue pursuing you right
you have a second gut brain that is purely empirical and really can't be reasoned with. So another example would be you're swimming in some tropical place, and you see a dorsal fin, and you see a dark shadow or a shape in the water. Well, you're kind of nervous. Thank you, Bob. You're kind of nervous, right? Because it could be a shark. It could be a shark. There's that scene in the Jaws movie where Chief Brody shoots at what he thinks is a shark, but it's just a big cloud of fish.
So. If you're in the tropics, in the water, and you see a big shadow, you see a fin, right? Well, you're going to feel anxious. Probably want to get to shore. If it turns out it's a dolphin, then you relax, right? If you've ever had the situation where I'm sure you have, you're asleep at home, let's say you're in a house, and you think you wake up and you think you hear a window breaking or some loud noise that's...
You know, not just your furnace starting up or your air conditioner or something like that. You hear a pshh, right? You hear a break, right? Can you just turn around and get back to sleep? Nope. Can you reason? with your inner gut and say, oh, it's nothing, because your inner gut is like, you don't know that. It's empirical. It needs proof. There can't be reason to it. So what do you have to do? Well, you have to get your ass out of bed.
You have to pick up whatever weapon is legal in your jurisdiction, and you have to go and check the whole house. Check the closets, check the basement. You have to go and check the whole house. Now, once you've thoroughly checked the whole house, there's nobody there.
There's no window breaking. Maybe you just left the TV on. There was the sound of a window breaking coming from the TV show or something like that. So once you have empirically... verified that there's no danger, well then you can go back to sleep. but you have to prove it right our gut that the the intellectual part is great love the intellectual part but there's a second brain which is our gut, and that is empirical. And it has to be empirical, because it's the stuff that survival depends on.
You know, when you're a northern European or you are in the north of Siberia, which is where the sort of East Asians came from, then you have to have enough food for winter, right? You have to have enough food for winter.
And you have to check and double check and triple check. And you have to keep it safe and you have to keep it guarded. The mice can't get in. The mold can't get in, right? You have to have enough food for winter. So you get this sense of unease until you've doubled and triple checked it, right? And you're going to feel this unease all throughout the winter, which is why you're going to go and check and make sure that the cats are taking care of the mice.
And you're going to double and triple check everything to make sure you have enough food for the winter. So, again, hit me with a Y, and this is to do with the parental alter egos, right? So hit me with a Y if this makes sense to you at all. Again, I'm saying it's a perfect explanation, but... It's really important to understand this second brain that is there to alert you to danger and is empirical. So I remember back in the days of my business career, early on,
Could we make payroll? I'd feel like, oh my God, can we make payroll? Wait, there was this additional expense. And then, you know, you've got to go and check the books and you have to find out if you can make payroll. And if you can't make payroll, you've got to go and get your loan from the bank so you can make payroll. Like you understand, right? Oh, you're up to chapter five again in my novel, The Future? Oh, good. Well, tell me what you think. Love to hear. Love to hear. Now.
Your inner parent is in the gut. It is empirical. Somebody says, oh, Sowed, sorry, believe it or not, I learned nothing about the second brain in grad school for counselling. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of therapists like to work with this brain, which can be talked in and out of stuff, but the gut brain is empirical. Is it good for me? Is it bad for me? Am I in danger? Is there something to be uneasy about? so
Remember, your inner parents are not found after you become in your teens, right? In your mid-teens, let's say. Your inner parents are not fundamentally about your parents. Your inner parents are about your social environment as a whole. If something, again, throughout most of the revolution, if something bothered your mother, it was also going to bother the women or the girls you would date and that you would pick as girlfriends, fiancées, wives, mothers of your children.
Because, of course, your mother and her particular mindset is designed to be replaced by your wife and her particular mindset. And again, most of human personalities, most of human genetics, which is kind of copy-paste, particularly if you have a relatively small gene pool, relatively isolated tribe, and so on, right?
I mean, they've done studies in Yorkshire where people go back, you know, a thousand years, they can find genetics. It's the same kind of trusty barkeep with the doughy face, right? So that which you internalize to protect you against your mother's prejudices, you keep internalized because you don't want to provoke your girlfriend's prejudices so that you can actually reproduce and have kids, right? So empirically, inner parents tend to diminish when there aren't people around like your parents.
Let's sort of take a sort of silly example, but I think it's quite vivid. So if you have, like you're in a criminal gang, you're in a criminal gang, and you decide to leave that criminal gang and join another criminal gang. Well, does that mean that your criminal instincts are no longer needed? Well, of course not. In fact, you're in additional danger because now the old gang might be after you as well, right? If that makes sense.
So if you have people around you that are like your parents, then your gut sense, your inner parents will not relax and undo their... if that makes sense. So, it is hard to undo inner parents, but what is essential to understand is that if You have people around who are like your parents. This could be at work. It could be.
social club, it could be at a religious organization, it could be extended family, it could be your husband's family, your wife's family. If you have people around who are like your parents, let's say you had bad parents and you internalized that. You have to not have people around who are like that in order for the inner parents to empirically say, we're not needed anymore. If that makes sense. Because it's not an act of will. And don't take it personally.
It's not an act of will. It's not an act of choice. It's not a matter of, oh, I get this particular perspective, or I cry a bucket of tears, and suddenly my inner parents are relaxed, if that makes sense. It's actually counter to your survival, to attempt to dump inappearance or oppose inappearance. while still having people like that around. It is like trying to talk yourself out of your house after you hear a glass break in the middle of the night.
It's counter to your survival to say, oh, I'm sure it's fine and just try and go back to sleep. Or to put it another way, the people who heard the equivalent in our evolution, the people who heard... glass break in the middle of the night in their house who didn't go and check their survival. was less, but less of a chance of survival.
The people who did not check whether they had enough food for the winter, but simply manipulated themselves or gaslit themselves into believing that they just had enough food for winter, those people... did not do very well. They tended to die at a higher rate. Because the purpose of life is not peace of mind. The purpose of life is not happiness. Right? The purpose of life...
is survival and reproduction. And that's what all of our mental, you know, we need the abstract brain so that we can be creative and invent things. We need the gut brain so we cannot gaslight ourselves into acting against what we need to do in order to survive. Does that make sense? Don't assume that your inner parents are your enemy or your parents. They're not, right? They are there to protect you from your parents.
If you have a guard, like say you're unjustly imprisoned and you have a guard who's mean and bad, then you're going to have to internalize that guard to try not to provoke him. Because if you provoke him... he's going to withhold food or other sorts of things that would be bad, right? If that makes sense. So, be gentle, be pleasant, be positive, and really thank your inner parents for keeping you safe.
Thank your inner parents for keeping you safe. And listen to them. Because your inner parents will be absolutely fantastic at figuring out who is corrupt in your environment. They know this stuff. And not availing yourself of the wisdom of your inner parents in identifying corruption around you is really flying blind in this world. You need access to your inner parents because they will identify negative or destructive people in your environment very quickly.
very efficiently and they are really working hard to keep you safe. Right? Don't diss them. Don't view them as, oh, these negative, difficult, bad people. It's just like my mother and my mother's in my head. It's like, no, no, no. Your reaction, your protection from your mother is in your head. And you can't just will them away, because it's a gut process of safety and security. And you can't just will them away, in my view. And you don't want to.
That's like willing away alertness or willing away physical pain. Like you don't want to do that because you need access to physical pain. You need access to alertness and you need your inner parents. If you had corrupt parents, your inner parents are fantastic. at figuring out, understanding and unpacking corruption.
And they can see corrupt people a zillion miles away. And they will keep you safe if you let them. But don't just abandon them and reject them as if they're just abusers and bad and blah, blah, blah, right? Damn, you look healthy. Good to see. Thank you. All right. Chris says, if one has people around at work who are like your inner parents, is it then possible to free oneself from their internalization of their inner parents?
You'll have to rephrase that. That got a bit too complex for me. Sorry. Somebody says, I don't need inner voices to tell me I am doomed to fail. Plenty of people on the internet will tell me that with pleasure. That's true, right? Somebody says, I do have a hard time not seeing my inner father as my father.
I've gotten way better at it. But for the longest time, when I'd see my inner father and he'd demand I do something, I'd tell him to go fuck himself. Well, I get that. I get that. But your inner father is there to protect you from your outer father. He is there to help and protect you. You know what? So inner parents are kind of like that.
really tough guy in boot camp who's trying to give you, you know, discipline and focus and make you stronger and make you decisive and so on, right? That sort of full metal jacket guy, right? So... This is sort of the platoon thing, right? Do you want the nice sergeant or do you want the effective sergeant? So the guy who's yelling at you and trying to make you tough and strong and cold and hard and strong and sort of physically quick and aggressive.
Let me see your war face. Meow. Right. And make sure you can react well under stress, etc. And so on. So that guy, is he your enemy? Well, he's yelling at you. But he's trying to protect you from getting shot. Right? The coach who pushes you, is he your enemy? I would argue not really. I mean, he might be abusive. Maybe he is. Maybe.
Somebody had a comment further back that I wanted to make sure I didn't miss. Seems like a lot of women are torn between being controlling that way and wanting men they can't control that way. Yeah, for sure. For sure. Not torn, but, you know. Yes, we did the reasoning within appearance, but there was something else that I wanted to get to. Oh, yes. Zimf says, hey, Steph, I wanted to say thanks again for the talk yesterday. I got my entire apartment cleaned, apart from laundry.
and a bit of organizing. I had the analogy of rooting out an insurgency running through my mind. I would like to continue that mindset. Thank you. I appreciate that. And thank you for the tip. I'm glad it helped. Somebody says, yes, for sure. My inner father telling me to live small, not question people or things, not to grow, etc., is protecting me from my father being violent, for being better than him, or asking the, quote, wrong questions.
And outstripping highly competitive fathers for men in particular can be a very dangerous thing. So it can be at your peril. All right, so what do we do in our 10 on Inner Parents? Hit me with a Y if... That makes sense. That works for you as a whole. That's enough to sort of chew on. But yeah, really make friends with your inner parents. They're there to help you and save you.
instruct you and keep you alert to potential corruption and all of that. And they will lay down their arms when you are surrounded by better people. Yes, okay, good, good. All right, I'm certainly happy to take other questions or issues or challenges or problems. Do give me your problems. And... That may be enough to chew on for today, for now. I'm happy about that.
I could give you a page or two for my new book, which is very interesting to me, but I'm not saying it's necessarily interesting to you. It's pretty raw and obviously unedited, but I'm quite pleased with it. in that way, or in the way that I'm trying to do something really different and new. Keep my juices flowing. Like the river from Babylon as we walked by. All right. Let's see here. What do people want to do? Question. Fiction. Other topics.
Yes, I'd like to make friends with my inner parents. It's not easier for the reasons you've said. Yes. So Ed says, hey, Steph, the discussion we had about psychology versus philosophy was great for me, but I can't seem to find the recording of it. I'd love to listen to it again, if possible. Yeah, I think that's going to go out. I think it's out for donors at the moment. Let me just double check that. I think it's out for donors at the moment.
Maybe it's not out yet, but it will be, and it'll go out to the... It will go out to the... No, it's not out yet, but it will come soon. It will come soon. I promise you. All right. My inner father is the voice telling me to stand up for myself. All right. If one has people around at work who have traits similar to their parents, is it a suitable environment to free oneself of their defenses developed in earlier stages of life?
Is it a counterproductive environment in terms of personal growth? Yes. If you're around primitive people, it's very hard to evolve. uh somebody says sorry i didn't give you more detailed feedback about the present yesterday i did feel a little put on the spot but i have been meditating on it as well i think the role play yesterday especially had me thinking my approach to dealing with disagreements in interpersonal situations
I mean, put on the spot? I don't know what you mean. Put on the spot sounds like it did something bad. Just ask you for feedback. You can say I don't have anything particular to say, but I'm enjoying the book. Book preview, please. All right, hit me with a B. It's fine if you don't. Hit me with a B if you'd like a little bit of the new novel.
Just nervous talking to you, yeah. But I mean, I get that, and I appreciate that. I am terrifying, objectively, like a bear. But a book, yeah. All right, okay. Looks like book it is. All right. The book The Present was awesome. Thank you, Joe. I appreciate that. All right. Let me get Le Bookie Book up. Ooh, did I close it on my other computer? Let's find out, shall we? Let's find out. All right. What's a little bit? Let's see a little bit here. Boy, I like the bit about the puzzle.
So this is the protagonist. I'm taking him through 25 years of his life. This is when he's a young man. And let's see here. He meets a woman named Chloe. Yeah, let's do this. Let's do a bit of chapter one. All right. Let me just make sure nobody else has any of the yearning, burning questions that I need to be aware of right now. All right. Chapter one. For much of his life, Robert could only think about curves.
Learning curves, bell curves, the curve of a woman's abdomen between ribs and hip, grading on a curve. And now, driving to Wasaga Beach, the curves of the road, and the slowly declining curves of his attraction to Chloe. clingy these words always merged in his mind she wasn't that way of course she was openly affectionate without guile supportive and warm-hearted and funny and her curves Well, not bad, not at all, but... Well...
There was no way around it in Robert's mind. She had curves, but no curveballs. She had lines, but no spikes. She was predictable, and Robert was young enough to imagine that predictable was the same as boring. And he was a little bit too vainglorious to put predictability in the category of integrity, which, with regards to Chloe, definitely applied. He met Chloe at a frat party. She was standing outside in the dark with toilet paper streamers hanging from the tree branches behind her.
She was trying to listen to a message on her cell phone, her thumb jammed into the opposite ear. And he found that both strange and a little exciting that she would put her thumb in her ear rather than her forefinger. She also muttered to herself, which was confusing to Robert because he couldn't imagine the other person could hear her over the inevitable breathy singer and growling rap song that was shaking the window frames behind her.
Once he realized that she was checking a message, he felt strangely touched in an oddly dusty part of his heart, that she would check in with someone in the middle of a party. He waited until she disconnected, then tried to connect. How can you do that when it's so loud? She smiled at him, obviously eager to please, and he had a sudden flash of Chloe as a chubby tween, staring breathlessly and hopelessly at the jocks as they swung past in their jeans and letter jackets.
She's been ignored, and still believes it was for a good reason, he thought, with a sudden shimmer of sympathy. A friend of mine was interested in a guy and wanted to know if he was here, said Chloe. You're a good friend, then, said Robert. She frowned suddenly. Is there any other kind? And there it was. That little shudder of truth, flashing past like a confused robin, rocketing between two broken windows in a garden shed.
Of course there is no other kind of friend than a good friend, thought Robert. It was so simple and revealed so much about her and about him. Well, is she coming? Robert fully expected her to reply, is who coming? He noticed that most of the young women around him. Well, it wasn't exactly that they played dumb, but they always seemed to be kind of stalling for time or...
putting useless questions in the middle of conversations. It was a hard habit to figure out, but it was everywhere. Instead, Chloe said, no, the guy she's after is not here. Single-minded and vaguely loyal. Those are real pluses. chloe cocked her head and said if we can have a conversation don't i need a name i'm chloe robber
He made no move to shake her hand or touch her in any way. Physical contact had been scrubbed from his generation, as had a floating and chivalry and men asking and paying for dates. It was frozen, frugal, squalid isolation, followed by frantic sex and usually ghosting. Nice to meet you, Robert. Why are you out here? No one smokes anymore, I assume. My ears are ringing. Chloe grimaced. No kidding.
I have no idea why it needs to be so loud. Do people have such terrible thoughts that they need to be continually drowned out? People are courting permanent damage in there. Yeah, I have to watch my hearing. I played trombone in a brass band. She smiled, then frowned. Not sure if he was serious. There was an awkward pause as they both cast about for topics that were not irretrievably hackneyed.
Robert gave up. What are you drinking? Oh, I don't really drink. I hate hangovers. And I never lose my sense of identity or whatever, so I just watch everyone get dumber and dumber for an hour or two, then go home. That must be disappointing. Chloe pursed her lips. I guess so, but I always have hope. For what? Robert was about to say, but stopped, feeling his upper middle class flowering of cringe bursting in his chest.
I don't have hope, I guess, said Robert. But there's buddies here who need a wingman, and I'm frankly very ambitious, so I need to keep my social contacts dubbed up to the max. Chloe laughed. So you get them a girlfriend and they get you a job? Something like that, Robert was about to say, but his heart again seized in his chest at the empty predictability of his words. There was another pause, and Chloe's cell phone rang, and she smiled at him apologetically before taking the call.
Robert stood around for about 90 seconds until it became clear that Chloe was in a conversation. Then he tipped an imaginary hat and headed back into the party. In the trashy music din and endless haze of marijuana smoke, Robert felt as if something was suddenly missing. And he had an odd memory of his mother when he was very little.
She had finished a complicated jigsaw puzzle and framed it to hang on the wall, but just as she held it up, she noticed that a little piece was missing right in the center. It was a stormy scene with a boatman hanging on for dear life, and the puzzle piece that was missing was where his face should be.
His mother was very upset and forced the family to search everywhere, and he could tell, even at his young age, that she was fighting the urge to accuse someone or everyone of sabotaging her two-month project. Shortly before leaving for university, Robert had been looking for an old binder in the basement and came across the ancient jigsaw puzzle, still missing the man's face. and felt a sudden pang at all the last things of the world.
Somewhere in the universe, the atoms of that jigsaw puzzle piece still existed. Probably the piece itself still existed. But it could never be found. It had fallen into a vent or been thrown out by accident. He could not imagine how a piece right at the center of the jigsaw puzzle could have vanished. It was not like an edge piece that could have been brushed off by accident. But that cold day in the basement...
with all the skin dust of endless ping-pong games floating in the late afternoon sunbeams slanting through the high windows. Robert had felt absolutely sure that someone had taken the sailor's fate. It could be his brother. This could have been the start of his brother becoming a corrosive compulsive thief. Or it could even have been his father, who never expressed conflict directly. But someone had been angry at his mother and had stolen the center of her puzzle.
His father would have thrown it out, always overcautious. But his brother would have kept it in a secret place and fingered it from time to time, running his dirty nails along the edge of the stolen fragment of his mother's heart. But then, of course, since he had the mind of an addict long before he became addicted, he would have forgotten it or lost it in one of the...
What was it, three houses they had lived in since the Jigsaw Puzzle House? And now, or at least then, when Robert was looking for his old binder, Robert knew. that the sailor's face, the jigsaw puzzle piece, the heart of his mother's pretend art. that there was no way that it would ever be found or retrieved. His father would never admit taking it, and if his brother had stolen it, well, facts were forever getting lost in the mirrored maze of his endless defences.
If you are around insecure people for long enough, you accumulate their lies like a winter roof accumulates snow. Except without apologies and restitution. Lies just accumulate until the roof collapses, at which point you better be far, far away. If my brother had stolen that puzzle piece, I could offer him ten million dollars to admit it, and he would walk away from that money rather than ever confess. to a moral fault or any tendencies to pettiness.
at the house-party after talking so briefly to chloe as his ears and nose were assaulted by extremities robert felt that a tiny piece of him was now missing he had felt complete rather like finding out that you narrowly missed out on a big inheritance from a distant relative. You did not feel particularly poor. Then you found out a fortune had flashed past without you knowing, and now you felt poor.
Robert was not overburdened with a sense of connection. His family was typical upper-middle class. They bonded over activities and board games and status and health and pricey hobbies and environmentalism. and a hatred of populism and vaguely aristocratic concerns for those less fortunate.
They viewed their own good looks, athleticism, and ease with people as personal virtues, as if they had forged their identities and accents and contacts from exactly the same materials as those available to the twitchy children from Broken Heart. We are all given the same opportunities, the same materials, the same freedoms. Why should we be ashamed of making more of our lives than others choose to? naturally possess the kind of humility that leads to deep connection.
Vanity is the ultimate empty moat that keeps other souls at bay. And so the best they could manage was a sort of proximity of praise. Robert's father was an oddly aggressive accountant well known for his wildly hostile tennis habits and occasional blackout drinking. He had married the pretty girl by relentlessly promoting his own future success, paving the way forward with bricks he promised to turn into gold.
She had surrendered to this, well, outright bribery, Robert sometimes thought, without much complaint or regret. his parents had achieved an almost perfect work-life balance, avoiding the age-old trap of a man who works too hard to provide promised wealth and a woman who resents him for never being home. At least by the time Robert was eight or nine, his father worked less and had outsourced some of his business travel requirements to underlings.
And his mother never seemed to complain about her husband being, in the first deadly word of dissatisfied housewives, unavailable. She had also avoided the upper-middle-class trap of starting a flower arrangement business or catering company or little cupcake shop, a faux independent side hustle that would have eaten his father's time alive, and almost inevitably. lost far more money than it made, thus prompting her cry. The second deadly word of dissatisfied housewives that he was unsupportive.
Robert's mother was apparently well satisfied with the money her husband made, and happy to trade his time away for material possession. She enjoyed decorating and had good taste, but never went crazy with fireplaces and indoor fountains and... She did have a sudden fit of spending and installed a giant stone pizza oven in the backyard, but that was excusable due to its rarity. His parents had seemed well-balanced, making the necessary compromises in order to get along.
particularly in love and lust was unimaginable of course and they trundled along like two people whose paths happened to cross on a long and boring hike and filled the time up with fairly aimless but diverting chatter about the things They saw, hoped to see, and had already seen. They were people who had to fill their time up with something. And that could be anything, except originality. Then two things had occurred in relatively quick succession. Curves, so to speak.
The first was that his brother had become perhaps the laziest addict in human history. Anyway, then we go on to that addiction stuff. So anyway, that's the opening of the book. I like it quite a bit. It's quite different for me. All right. Let's see here. Get your questions and comments. Somebody says, I do have a few things on my mind.
Seven women on your mind? But this is one that's been bothering me for a bit. I say to myself, I want to get married and have kids, which I do. However, there's also a part of me that doesn't want them. And the idea of having and talking to kids would be annoying. This would probably be better as a call-in. Yeah, freedomain.com slash call. This is great. It still feels surreal that we're getting a new novel from you, Steph. Thanks.
How many main characters would you say are part of this book, if you don't mind me asking? I know there will be the two as part of the relationship, Regina and Derek, I think. A strong opener. Bravo. Can't wait for the rest. Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. There are six main characters. Six main characters. And really, this is the first time that I have really taken on addiction.
And it is, for me at least, quite a powerful stuff. All right. Any other last questions, comments, issues, problems? I like the circling back to the curves. Circling curves is clever. Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate that. Wow, thank you. What a read. I appreciate it. I always like the little details in there about life as a whole. I do love the little bit about somebody stealing the jigsaw puzzle piece and who it might be. Hidden conflicts within families.
That's great, Steph. What is the significance of curves? It is an oblique personality. He is not direct. Robert is not a direct person. He's not honest. So the curves are obliqueness, that you don't have a straight line between yourself and other people. which is how his relationship opens and then how it, well, you'll see. You'll see. You shall see.
Yeah, I like the fact that his father woos his mother by talking about all of the money he's going to make. And then Robert immediately talks to Chloe and says, well, I'm frankly very ambitious and I want to make sure my friends get me a good job and blah, blah, blah.
Speaking of addiction, have you looked into the philosophical aspects of AA? I have a much more detailed question on the subject I want to ask you about. I did a show on AA some years ago. It doesn't seem to have very good results as a whole. So I, of course, would be much more interested as a whole in people getting to sort of the early childhood trauma that they're self-medicating for rather than, you know, sort of the 12-step thing and so on. if a data makes sense. Amen.
Yeah. Yes, so I think it will be a good book. Obviously, it's early days, and some of it is background. I'm not sure how much we'll make it into the general novel, although for me, removing text is like removing a finger. with a nail file, but All right, well, I will close off here. I really do appreciate everyone's questions and feedback and comments. I hope that the stuff about inner parents was very helpful to you.
And of course, if you want to, if this provokes call-in requests or requirements for you, free domain.com slash call to set up a call-in show love to chat with you all could be public or private depending on what works best for you and thank you for your compliments about the show really do appreciate it if you're listening later of course pleased to help out the show at freedomain.com slash donate lots of love my friends take care