Family is not a Business Relationship
america my name is amio from pong i come to you live every friday about this time well today thursday i come thursdays now i did the show for a while on fridays thursdays now i come to you live every thursday about this time talk to you about the news of the day and do so in a way that might help you you know not squander your life i don't want you to do that and um that might happen right so what i tell you might not actually predict the future for you um that's not my game other people are trying to do like the science of of how to organize your life and they could predict the future and future collapses and all that stuff i don't do that can't predict the future i can't um uh what i can do is help you kind of understand what should happen and what you should do and how you should think if you want your life to be meaningful i can't make you make the right choice i'm like the doctor who tells you like what to eat so that you might live a little bit longer but like sometimes you want to eat cigarettes and like go on a baking ice cream diet i can't make you uh i can't make you do the right thing i can just kind of suggest what the right thing might do and i can tell you why you shouldn't be surprised why if you don't listen to me things fall apart that's what i got so today we're going to talk about why families not a lot of people say like well you got to look at your mayor's like a business relationship yeah look at your family like a business we're in business together we're partners i need someone who's gonna roll with who's a partner you know business relationships and family relationships are very important in different ways right do not trust anybody who says that you they're in bad marriages and bad families don't trust anybody who says that you need to look at your marriage or family like a business relationship business relationships and family relationships are very different uh because in family relationships you're not immediately other than the other person there's no mediating barrier between you and them one flesh what happens to them happens to you um that's a different kind of relationship than a business relationship where uh what's good for your business partner might not necessarily be good for you sometimes it is sometimes it's not right that's why if any of your bosses or your employers tell you that uh you know here we're like a family um no that you need to go and get a labor lawyer real quickly because your boss is not like your family if your boss is like your family then you should be in your boss's will if you aren't in your will uh and your boss as well then then your boss is not treating you like a family member because their family is in their will so make no mistake you uh are other than your boss and so far those things can go really well for your boss but can't go while going poorly for you and that's completely depending on who you talk to justified but you are not other than your family in which case if things go really badly for your family um that also means they're going badly for you when i explain to students i say like look in a competitive relationship it's possible that the person you're competing against does well and you do poorly yet the relationship be fair at the end of the end of a game one team is going to be like yeah the other team's like boo and um uh that might be fair at the end of an intimate relationship like you know like after you've done having sex if one system is like yeah and the other person's like that means you've done the whole thing wrong because in an intimate relationship in a family relationship you are not other than the other person you're in it together you have the same um shared fate right business relationships you don't have the same shield fate you can but then when it goes south you can quit you can quit at any time family you can't quit you're pretty much foregoing the ability to quit the easy access that's the characteristic feature of a family relationship is that like you've thrown out the exit plan which means that you're going to work it out together which means when you're looking and if you want advice some people want concrete advice looking watching the show if you want concrete advice on what to um look for in an intimate partner look for someone you can creatively solve household problems with including raising kids right because that's what it comes down to and if you're black you need to know richard for para better for us that means stuff because i just heard mark lamont hill had a heart attack [ __ ] them on hill he's about my age he had a heart attack and we don't last that long black man um so uh so look for someone richard for poor better voice you can always if you're black you could always do you you could always lose a job and if you're not willing to lose a job in your black you're just going to be some white man's pawn and if you don't want to be white man man's pawn then i need you to uh you know look for someone who's gonna be okay with you losing a job or who's open with you like figuring it out you figure it out that's what you're committing to do with a family relationship that you're not committing to do with a um a business relationship in a business relationship you can quit you can take your money and run if you take that attitude and family relationships you're just going to degrade what it is the peculiar kind of freedom that comes with family freedom all right so you when you're looking for a partner an intimate partner for the long haul you need to find someone you can creatively solve problems with um and who like is going to be cool with the external stressors um and preferably with a sense of humor and if you don't look at that if you look for someone who's with you because you're stable or look with you because you have money or with you because you have good health or whatever all of that can go and if you do justice work you have to be really uh convinced that all of that could go but what you have is the other person insofar as they're going to be with you like helping you figure it out once you lose your job once you lose your health um the better for worse stuff means something in a family relationship and um if you're with someone who's just like well it's just it's a business thing so i just want someone who uh checks all the boxes and like will fulfill my needs what happens when you can't do that anymore or what happens when they can't do that anymore you're going to bounce um so just keep in mind that what you're looking for in a family relationship is someone who is not other than you are they are not strictly other than you are they are someone you can't quit and they can't quit you and it's funny i'm reading a book you know but i think i've given you enough uh let me hit the beat and i'll come back and i'll i'll flesh this out in different ways sound good to me never change for the world or the government if it was the president then i would stay back you leave it up to me i paint the white house leave it up to me i paint the white house all right so what you're looking for in a family relationship is someone that you could work it out with work out whatever external stresses because the other person is ceases to be other than you you don't want someone who's going to look at this as a business relationship because what happens when business goes bad they're going to bounce um so with the assumption that business will never go bad well that's like a high risky proposition and it's going to that's such a high risk proposition that's going to screw up your ability to be black because the only thing the only thing for black people they can do to make sure business doesn't go bad is to suck up to a lot of white people and um that's going to cause problems another way and still that's no guarantee so you're just going to need someone who's going to be cool with you when business goes bad and you can figure it out right you don't need someone who's in business with you because they could quit that business and then say like well i gotta be free i gotta follow my bliss i gotta do what's best for me this is what uh you know a lot of people in the 80s um did more damage to the black black family than than crack uh talking about well you know i gotta follow my bliss i gotta do what makes me happy i just felt in my heart no no none of that like yo when you when you're with someone and a family you are committing to work out with them so only pick people only many people you are going to work things out with because that's the only thing you're committed that's the only thing that's that's promised i'm promising you that whatever happens we're going to work it out not i'm not promising you a stable house i'm not promising you a stable job i'm not promising you a stable blah blah blah blah i'm not promising you to keep you to the standard of living to which you become accustomed i'm not promising you any of that what i am promising you is if anything happens external to us i am going to be down to work it out with you um and so work it out as equals like we're going to figure it out that's the only thing that you can and you only really should be promising to other people um because uh you know yeah if you're promising them to provide for them no you're black man maybe you can provide maybe you can't sometimes it'll go well sometimes it can't but the things you'll do to provide will end up screwing up your relationship with your family because like yeah for a lot of reasons so you don't want anyone like you want to be free in your marriage and that means free to solve problems about the marriage with the other person um and not have it depend on a lot of people lose their job and then lose their wife because they lost their job well that's because your wife was only with you because he had a job and that's the first problem i like people who were with me when i was poor and by the way um uh if you actually support what i'm doing you think what i'm doing is important go ahead and go to www.funkyacademic.com and kick in five fifteen to fifty dollars a month and i would uh you know help me kind of grow the channel and i have bills to pay too and none of this is free and i kind of put a lot of thought in in doing this so if you get at least uh five dollars of wisdom out of what i say and i think you get a little bit more than that go ahead and go to www.funkyacademic.com and kick in a little bit a month because i try to put on a show i'll put i'm going to start doing a little bit more uh than once a week because i'm getting a backlog of ideas so i'll probably put on a tuesday show too but you'll definitely get the thursday show um um uh you know with the quality of wisdom that i think will help you not squander your life and like i don't like i'm looking at the black divorce rate and it's just too high because we're looking for the wrong things and talk about the wrong things in the wrong way and i don't want us to talk about the wrong things in the wrong way i want to talk about the right things in the right way and i want you to talk about like the person you're going to be with for the rest of your life in terms of how they are creative problem solvers for internal problems right how it's not they're not with you because you have a good job or whatever they'll they're with you because they know if you lose that good job it'll be for at least a humorous reason and they're willing to work with you right and the same with you with them right they're not with you because you're in good health they're with you because when you lose your health um you'll take it like you know you'll have a good sense of humor about it and you're willing to figure it out with them right that is what you're pledging to the other person the ability to creatively problem solve and do everything and with and i'm going to do a short video on this probably tomorrow um and it's on all these people who think that like well you know i did what i can for my children and when they get 18 they're on their own that is you're not winning if that's your attitude that is a piss-poor attitude you know that's a wealthy people don't have that attitude wealthy people don't have that ad because they know that whatever happens to their children actually happens to them too so they don't just cut their children off only the stupid ones do the smart ones and a lot of like ones that you don't even know are supporting their kids way up until their 30s and 40s they're buying houses for them they're like i kicked them out and then for all the white people you know who will say that like i kicked out my kid at 18. there's another group a bigger group and a stronger group that'll say well i bought my kid a house so like you can kick them out but then buy them the house that they're kicking them out to right so here's the deal if you're kicking your kid out at 18 because well they should be on their own and they need to learn a lesson it's because you screwed up from seven to 11. you need to own your screw-up or their societal impacts right so um
there are a lot of reasons why your 18 year old is like kind of worthless there are societal reasons well that might just be disposable to society for a variety of reasons that you couldn't anticipate but a lot of those reasons are like you're bad parenting you're an adequate parent you didn't raise your kid to be a functional adult so they're confused about the fight and now you want to kick them out because they're confused about the fight and they don't know how to work or blah blah blah blah but like it's because you took your eye off the ball from 7 to 11. like you didn't parent very well from 7 to 11 so now your 18 year old doesn't know like what life's about and that's like you need to own that and not kick them out but like own your screw up and say like all right well i might i might have given you a distorted vision of reality because i wanted you to be happy or whatever or you just for a variety of reasons just like you just didn't feel like being a good parent or you didn't know what that meant um so you you fumbled from seven to 11 and now your 18 year old is a kind of a joke you need to own that rather than just kick them out right and owning that just looks like you know it's responsible right so um like i like the idea like if you're kicking your kid out at 18 you've already lost well you've already lost maybe it's like a hail mary that society will parent them better than you did but mostly you're pretty much you might be telling your daughter to go sell her ass somewhere in order for uh um to get uh housing and you might just tell your son to like do whatever it takes to go to get housing and get over and that might work but it's probably not um and like that's your fault so like instead of instead of kicking them out at 18 you should look back and think oh maybe i might have fumbled i zigged when i should have zagged with respect to uh how i parented them from seven to 11 and i can't blame them for that because i was a primary influence and i just kind of phoned it in at that time and it turns out that maybe phoning it in wasn't the right thing to do um and and i forgive you and you need to forgive yourself and then get on the business of like now parenting your adult children into like a better adulthood because you screwed up when they were small the best thing you should do if you watch this right out now is actually pain with your kids when you're small you know i was talking to a white friend about this and she we came out in different ways because she was under the assumption that schools are going to teach uh her children and that then she would be if something schools didn't teach her children she would be upset at them for not teaching her children and i told her that's like just not how i understand how this works i understand that everything my kids know they're going to learn from everything that matters that my kids know they're going to learn from me one of the reasons i do this is so that if they have any question about what i think about something they can go to a video on youtube and find out what daddy thinks um and i assume that everything my kids learn they'll learn because i tell them i happen to know a lot of things so that helps but i also spend a lot of time like studying the things i know so that i could tell them and parent them right so and then what school is their school is to buy me some time in a relatively safe environment where they don't do too much damage well so that i can learn and work to be the kind of parent they need when they come home right and so that's how i think of of school i don't expect school to teach my kids anything that they need to know that's why yeah i'm like yeah and my kids are going to be better off for that and black people you should just know this your kids are not going to learn what they need to know at school everything that you expect them to know it's going you need it to be because you yourself said the words to them um and and made sure and did it in a way that they understand if you expect the institutions to take care of your child well like these institutions are not for us they're for our enslavement all right so um yeah i i don't know what to tell so everything everything uh everything that my kids learn they're not gonna learn in school they're not gonna learn by me kicking them out they'll be learning in this house and then they'll have to like take that what they've learned in this house and see how it works out with their experiences outside and see if i was right or they were right but they'll learn everything they need to learn here um and that's i think as it i think it's if you're black that's just how you have to approach uh pro approach the education of children in your family relationships right so um yeah and i like you can say well i'll send my kids to like this fancy private school they'll teach you no apprentice fancy private school is gonna be probably all white and like or majority white and i might just confuse them in other ways they might learn math and some white man's history but it'll confuse them in other ways about what it means to be black and then you'll be surprised when you raise like a girl who's confused about what it means to be black and a lot of see a lot of people in los angeles i grew up in los angeles i see a lot of people who assumed that they would live meghan markle's life and it didn't work out for them and because like they were raised a little black girls who thought that there would be little white girls and that's just not going to be that was that's just was not going to ever work out for them because they were confused about what it meant to be black because they uh their parents thought well you know if i just teach them to if i just send them around white people and send them to white schools then i won't have to actually parent them no you might have to tell them matt teach them math you might have to teach them english but you're going to have to parent them because they'll end up thinking that they're white and they're being confused in different ways right so so i i i teach my kids everything that they need to know um because i don't consider them other than me in business relationship your business relation your business partner is other than you you might have as a shared interest or whatever but they're fundamentally other than you in a deep way your family's not other than you and also this can be weaponized i'm reading i don't have it here it's the velvet glove by mary jackman and she's like saying you know what it's funny because a lot of conflict a lot of uh conflict is actually held together by um not just the way open conflict a lot of conflict a lot of class the class struggle is not held together by open conflict it's held together by how we are supposedly love and like each other right so if you so the the white teacher who's teaching your kid really loves your kid but they'll love your kid in a way that in like 15 years will end up with your kid being broke and their kids are doing fine right so who controls what counts as the appropriate amount of love is a is kind of a whole thing or like what appropriate love looks like as a pro is a way to like i don't know calcify the class antagonism i might do another a whole nother show on that but you can think about it with respect to non-profit actors and non-profit um uh um providers right they supposedly love you and they they care about their clients or whatever but really their kind of love ends up calcifying they're not trying to distribute democratize power in any meaningful way right so you can actually calcify the class antagonisms by um shaping how people uh like show affection to each other and weaponizing that and you'll know this if you're in intimate relationships and someone says if someone's like trying to hurt you by hurting themselves that's like yeah because they're not other than you and so they know if they hurt themselves they're actually waging a class war against you so open conflict doesn't look like conflict all the time um it's yeah paternalistic and narcissistic love which also just calcifies all sorts of other injustice so class conflict doesn't always look like conflict it looks like controlling how we're allowed to love each other and what counts is that i'll be honest i'm pretty hard with my girls oh my kids my girls are older my four-year-olds um uh i'm less hard on him because he's four but uh you know slightly less i'm hard on my kids and that's because i love them and uh people will tell you that loving people looks like something else so if you can control how someone looks uh what loving someone else looks like you can also control about what fighting that someone else looks like and and and so the class conflict and racial conflict can be waged through like care industries just as effectively as it could be waged through like open conflict and the calcification of power so thank you for your time just to recap uh your family is not a business relationship business relationships are other than our relationships with people that are other than you your family is not necessarily other than you what happens to them happens to you you can say that like well you know um this is why i've said it before and people often blanch when i say it your family member are the people who can poison you without anybody ever ordering an autopsies spouses are poisoning each other all the time nobody knows i know it's true if you watch this show that you know it's true but we don't order autopsies it could just look like natural natural causes someone puts a little bit of cloaks in your coffee nobody we don't know uh there are no autopsies family members poison each other all the time because it's an amazing immediate vulnerability you have to the other person you can say well i'll sleep with a gun under my pillow no you share the same pillow like this is someone you're this person is not other than you so you need to actually be with them and pick someone who's going to love you for better for worse richer for poor and in sickness and health and all that especially if you're black because all that stuff matters because like i said we don't last very long and um is going to be creative and problem solving with you and isn't going to quit you in a business relationship you're going to look for someone who like you know who's going to share some sort of aspects with you but you might want to quit them or they might want to quit you um and like that's going to be allowed in a family relationship no it screws up the whole quality of freedom that comes with family right so you don't want someone who's just looking at you for what you bring to the relationship externally because what you bring to the ex relationship externally depends on other people it depends on you having a good job or good health or good looks or all your hair or whatever you want someone who appreciates what you bring to the relationship internally that's your quality of mind to be able to solve the problem that the relationship kind of foments and if you don't look for that you'll end up marrying the wrong cat and then be surprised that you married the wrong cat because you looked for some external thing like and then that turned out not to be the thing you should have looked for all right uh thank you for your time and i will see you and if you appreciate what i'm doing go ahead and go to www.funkyacademic.com given to me is a lot cheaper than your divorce lawyer and go ahead and sit down with your kids and watch this video with your kids and your spouse because that might actually um uh you know save you like all sorts of marriage because like a lot of divorce lawyers are paid by four by parents so if you watch this and work this out with your kids now in 30 years you're not going to be paying for your kids divorce lawyers divorces are expensive um i will see you next week probably earlier than that but uh definitely next week peace you
2021-10-01 19:40
