All Episodes
Previous Next
June 28, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
43:50
304 Conversational Bombs
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Beware the swear.
Beware the swear. This is going to be a podcast which is going to contain a few good old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon epithets because I just don't know any other good way to describe what it is that I'm going to be talking about.
But I want to start talking about the...
So, if you don't like swearing, don't listen to the podcast.
But I just don't think there's any other way of talking about this kind of stuff because the topic today is the fuck you words.
And there are lots of them, and I'm not going to go through any kind of exhaustive list right now, but I am going to talk about them a little bit, just so that you can help understand ways in which people screw around with debates, right?
So here's one. This is from the board, and no, I'm never going to come up with my own topics again.
You know, that's quite a lot of work, and frankly, I like to parasite off as much of other people's thinking as possible, because...
Well, you know, I'd give you an explanation for even that, but that would be work on my part, so I'll wait for someone to post an explanation on the board, then claim that it's my own.
So, this from the board.
My friend seems to think that it's pretty useless to blame the parents for my current issues that have taken years to undo and work out.
All of these issues were caused by how they went about raising me, the abuse, mental, physical, and verbal.
He seems to think that it is as useless to blame them for these things as it is to blame them for my brown eyes or the shape of my nose.
I can see how he's right in that blaming people really gets you nowhere as far as solving a problem.
Just as much as blaming individuals acting on self-interest solve problems in government when government is the actual problem.
I don't know whether it's important to blame them or not.
However, if I don't blame them, why bother getting them out of my life?
I guess it's not about blame.
Well, blame is one of these fuck you words that I just think it's very important to be aware of.
It is really irritating to me when people come up with this kind of stuff.
And there was a debate on eAssembly, and I couldn't read through the whole thing because life is short.
But somebody posted it on the boards, and in this debate was the phrase, like somebody was saying, well, the non-aggression principle is the valid moral principle, and then somebody said, well...
My moral principle is that it's the greatest good for the greatest number is what society should do.
Why is your moral principle so much more important than my moral principle?
Right? Which is another kind of fuck you phrase.
And this is a very weaselly and cowardly way that people have...
Of skewing the debate.
It's a sophistic trick.
Not sophisticated, but sophistic.
Which means that sophistry is the way Socrates identified many years ago.
Sophistry is the art of making the worse argument appear, the better.
That's sophistry.
And the way that you do that is you use loaded, fuck you words.
Now, one of the greatest ones is blame, and it's only superseded in this moral context by the phrase, the blame game, right?
So whenever something goes wrong at the government, they say, well, we don't want to stop playing the blame game.
Because we've noticed, of course, when the war on drugs goes on, foreign policy goes on, and when 9-11 occurred, people didn't want to play the blame game.
They didn't assign blame to anyone.
They didn't attack anyone.
They don't throw people in jail for anything.
Because the government, you see, is not about playing the blame game.
Now, in this particular context, blame is an important word to understand because it has lots of emotional connotations.
And the primary emotional connotation for blame in most people's minds and hearts is blaming others.
It's a way of sloughing off responsibility to other people for things which are justly your responsibility.
And so this is something when you say, well, I blame my parents.
I blame others for my own shortcomings.
I blame people. I'm a blame-thrower.
Hear me roar.
Well, the way that comes across to people is I take no responsibility for my life.
It's everybody else's fault.
It's never my fault.
Everybody else is responsible for how I've ended up, and I have no responsibility in the matter.
Right? That's what the word blame means.
And so when somebody uses the word blame, well, I don't think it's productive to just blame your parents for everything.
Well, that is a really passive-aggressive fuck you phrase, and I think it's just important to experience it as such.
The aggression that you feel when somebody says something like that to you is entirely valid, and you should respond appropriately.
And by that I don't mean punch them in the nose or anything, because it is, you know, sticks and stones can break your bones, but words, well, they'll really corrupt you.
But anyway, what you can say is say, okay, what is your perception of what my argument is?
Is your perception of my argument about saying that parents...
Because the correct word is responsibility.
The correct word is responsibility.
Are my parents responsible for how they raised me?
Well, if my parents are responsible for how they raised me, then I can blame them for some of the problems that I have in my life.
Is your belief that my argument is that I have no responsibility in my life because I was raised badly?
And if the person says yes, then you can say, well, tell me how you got that from what I was saying.
Because, I mean, I'm saying this all the time.
In emails and conversations and on the board, I'm always saying, well, tell me how it is that I hate families.
Tell me how it is that I think all parents are stone evil.
Tell me how it is that I think self-defense is not a right.
Tell me how it is that I reject any kind of social organization between human beings.
Tell me where you got this position from something that I said, because if I'm communicating that badly, I kind of need to be aware of it so that I can apologize and communicate much better in the future.
Now, of course, it is sometimes the case that I have said something incorrect, in which case I apologize and put it out publicly, but, of course, when somebody says to me, oh, you're not into the government, you want poor people to starve in the streets, you don't want a military, you want perpetual civil war, it's like, okay, well, what sane human being would want perpetual civil war?
What sane human being would want people to die in the streets?
Now, the really interesting thing about the fuck you phrases is sort of twofold.
And this is sort of why they're annoying.
And let's have a look at just, we'll spend a little bit of time on this blame one.
So that we can have a clearer understanding of what is really going on in this conversation.
So this person says, well, I don't think it's productive to blame your parents for everything.
Well, that's sort of a tautology, right?
But it's also completely illogical.
This is how you know these phrases from just normal phrases around curiosity.
One, they'll make you angry because they're deliberately insulting.
They're completely and deliberately insulting.
I've been working in this field for 20 years, and I have been working in anarchism or in anarchistic thought for a couple of years.
And so when somebody says to me, like they hear I'm an anarchist, and they'll start marching up to me and say, Oh, without a central government...
We'll just have perpetual civil war.
Now, it's a complete insult to somebody to say to them, somebody who's been working in a particular field, to state the obvious as if it's a revelation.
So, if I go up to a doctor, a surgeon of 20 years' experience, and I say to him, well, if you cut that guy's leg off, he won't be able to walk.
I'm sort of assuming that he's been practicing surgery for 20 years, never sort of quite figured out the whole we like two legs to walk on aspect of human physiology.
So that would be a fuck you kind of statement because obviously, obviously he's not going to be able to walk if you cut his leg off.
Doctor, if you cut his head off it might affect his memory capacity.
So that's sort of annoying.
So when you get consultants who come into your business and say, what you do need to do is to sell more product more cheaply at a higher profit.
You'll be like, wow, is that right?
Wow, I never had any idea.
These are all sort of fuck-you statements because they're basically saying you're a complete idiot.
You're a complete frickin' moron.
And that's not something that's ever going to result in a productive debate.
So when somebody says to me, well, DROs would just grow into governments and have nothing but constant civil war, I'd be like, well...
First of all, do you think that I've ever heard that objection before?
Like, do you think that you're the first person to come up to me and that nobody...
Like, I've been working in the freedom movement for 20 years and I've been working with anarchy for a couple of years and I've written tons of articles and done 304 podcasts and, you know, all this kind of stuff.
I've written an entire book on how an anarcho-capitalist society would work.
Do you not think that maybe during the years and years that are now decades that I've been working in this kind of stuff, that that's never come up?
Like, do you think that you're bringing something to the table that has never occurred to anyone before?
I think it would be more intelligent for somebody who's debating with you if there's no government to say, well, the question that pops into my mind, I'm sure you've had this asked you a million times, but the question that pops into my mind is, wouldn't DROs or whatever you put in the place of government just dissolve into endless civil war?
I'm sure there's a good answer.
Because you're not an idiot, right?
So, I'm sure there's a good answer, and I just can't think of it right now, because it's such an obvious question that you would not be an anarchist if you didn't have a good answer for this question.
Or, you'd be a freaking idiot, in which case, why would I even debate with you?
Right, so it's the innate contradiction, right?
In these statements that help you identify them as a fuck you phrase.
So, to take this gentleman's friend who was saying, I don't think it's productive to blame your parents for everything.
They're not responsible for what they say and do, right, is the implication.
Your parents are not responsible for what they say and do any more than they're responsible for the shape of your nose or the color of your eyes.
And so to blame them, it's a deterministic argument, right?
So to blame them... For their behavior, when they have absolutely no control or responsibility for their behavior, is not productive.
To which, of course, the logical question to ask back is, oh, okay, so my parents had no control over their own behavior, and they just did what they did based on genetics and their environment, and they had no choice in the matter, and you really believe that. Fine.
Okay. So what you're saying is human beings have no capacity to control or change their behavior.
So there's zero responsibility.
Yes. Okay.
So me blaming my parents obviously falls into that category.
If my parents are helpless in terms of what they said and did in their life, then obviously they had no capacity to choose anything different and no responsibility for what they did because it was never a choice.
It was genetic or environmental or whatever, deterministic.
So there was no capacity for them to change what they were doing, and obviously there's no capacity for me to change what I'm doing.
So if they're not to blame for anything they do, why are you blaming me for blaming them?
Or why are you suggesting that I do something different rather than blame them?
It doesn't make any sense.
If they're not free to choose something different, then why the hell would you try and influence me to do something different?
Because you can't have different rules of responsibility for parents and children.
I mean, that would just be sadistic and masochistic as well.
If the parents are not at all morally responsible, then of course blaming them is completely illogical.
Because they could never have altered their behavior.
But then, if I'm blaming my parents, that behavior can't be altered either.
Oh wait! You're telling me that I shouldn't blame my parents, and so I should listen to you and stop blaming my parents because that's not productive.
Therefore, my parents also could have listened to the general social statements out there called don't scream at your children, don't hit your children, don't ignore your children, or whatever.
It's not like nobody's ever heard prior to our generation that you shouldn't beat your kids or scream at them or abuse them mentally or emotionally or physically or sexually or whatever.
And so my parents, if I'm able to take input, process it, and change my behavior to something more productive, then surely my parents are.
The degree to which I should not blame my parents, according to you, is exactly the degree to which I am morally justified in blaming my parents.
And this is what's so frickin' annoying about these fuck-you statements.
They're just so obviously contradictory.
They're so obviously contradictory.
Now, the other thing that's annoying and frustrating about these kinds of statements, and I don't have too many of these directed at me anymore because I don't have these people in my life, but I sure as hell remember what it was like when these people were around me.
Still, as you can tell, it's like swallowing a fish stick sideways sometimes, getting this down your craw.
But the other obvious, obvious contradiction...
Is when somebody says to me, let's just say that this person is saying to me, well, if you blame your parents or blaming your parents for everything is completely unproductive.
But if I was the kind of person who took zero responsibility for my life, if I blamed everyone and took zero responsibility for my life, then telling me to change would do no good at all.
It would be completely, utterly, pointlessly futile.
Trust me, I have a mother who takes zero responsibility for her life and who blames everybody else for what has gone wrong in her life.
Everybody else. And I don't go up to her and I don't go up to her and say, you know, blaming everybody else for your life is not productive.
And why don't I do that?
Because she gets insanely angry.
Because she actually does not take responsibility for her life.
And so telling her that she should will make her enraged.
And so I don't do it.
And nobody does it to my mother.
And why would you? You're not going to change her.
It's just going to be enormously unpleasant.
So these brave warriors of responsibility are putting forward a straw man argument.
You shouldn't blame your parents for everything that's gone wrong in your life.
And of course, if you were somebody who had that completely non-existent sense of personal responsibility...
You would just deflect that statement too.
So there would be no point making it whatsoever.
And if it were true that I was not somebody who took any kind of personal responsibility for my life, I would lash out at anyone who suggested that I do otherwise.
I would lash out in an angry and aggressive manner.
And so people will only say this to me if I do take responsibility for my life and if I am willing to listen to criticism.
This is what's so annoying about this approach.
People are saying to you, or somebody comes up and says to me, oh, you should take a shred of responsibility for your own life.
But they're only going to say that to me if they believe that I do take a shred of responsibility for my own life, because otherwise I'll just punch them.
Or scream at them.
Or completely ignore them.
Or rip into them. And stop pulling them apart.
It's only because of my gentleness and sense of responsibility that anyone has the goddamn courage to come up and say to me, you should take a shred of responsibility for your life.
If I wasn't that person, they never ever would.
Because I tell you, my friends, no one has ever come up to my mother and said, you should take more responsibility for your life because they know they're going to get mauled.
Because she doesn't, in fact, take responsibility for her life.
So, oh, these brave, brave souls who are so interested in inculcating responsibility in other people, never ever take on those who don't actually take responsibility for their own lives and just nag at those who do with false strawman arguments about how they don't.
So it's like saying to a kid, you're evil.
It's like saying to an adult, you're just evil.
If the adult is totally evil, then the adult's not going to care about your opinion.
It's only if the adult cares about being good that being called evil is painful.
And therefore to say to somebody, you're totally evil, it may be a true statement, but nobody's ever going to make that statement.
And of course, if somebody is totally evil, going up and saying to them, you're totally evil, is probably going to result in pretty significant repercussions.
So it's, oh, these brave, brave people who only pick on the morally sensitive, who only bring up moral shortcomings to the morally sensitive.
It just drives me absolutely nuts.
It's so insulting.
Not just to each of us as individuals, those of us who are morally sensitive and interested in improving our own lives, but in general, it's a smack in the face of ethics or morality itself.
So I've got to tell you, I don't have a lot of patience for these kind of fuck you statements.
I got this a little bit earlier in my podcast series as well.
I don't get it so much anymore.
A little bit. But I do get that...
I used to get quite a bit of, Wow, you're really aggressive.
You yell a lot.
You're an angry guy.
You're just an angry guy. You are really aggressive.
You should be more patient. You should be more civilized.
You should be kinder.
You should be more sympathetic.
You should be more understanding.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And everybody knows who's listened to the earlier podcast my response to that.
But suffice to say that you've got one guy who has a gun pointed at his head and who is struggling to get free of ropes that have been placed upon him by another and is twitching violently and you're saying, wow, that guy's really overwrought and is really aggressive.
I mean, that's who you choose to zero in on.
That is a really vicious insult to virtue and to the individual that it's pointed at.
Because, you know, the holy books of the three major religions say that I should be put to death.
Statists say that if I disagree with their opinions about how society should be run, that I should be dragged off to jail, thrown in the rape rooms for the rest of my life, and so on.
And given all of these guns pointed at me, I'm not supposed to be upset.
I'm not supposed to have any self-esteem and any self-respect.
And I'm supposed to say, yeah, well, okay, so they want me dead.
They want to shoot me. But it's okay.
I can understand that. I can be sympathetic with people who want me dead.
I can understand that.
I can be a nice guy. But the fact that somebody who's ethical can actually get angry is something that is shocking to people, right?
Because all we're used to is rage from immature, petty, vicious, stupid people.
To actually be an intelligent and moral man, or at least somebody who aims for morality in a logical way, and to actually get angry.
Oh, people are shocked!
You can't do that!
You can't get angry unless you're crazy!
Only evil and corrupt people get to be angry!
Good people are supposed to suffer in silence and put the goddamn necks on the chopping block for evil people to do whatever the hell they want with, but you can't get angry back.
Oh, you can't get angry.
Oh, heavens, no!
No! No, you have to lie down and be quiet and let the bad people do what they want.
You can't get angry. Oh, how bad can you be?
How aggressive can you be?
Right? So you get the whole debate of the church and the history of the church and you've got all the Muslims and you've got the entire Marine, all of the armed might of the states worldwide.
That is, you know, the state, the governments have killed 270 million people last century and religions who've killed and spiritually crippled hundreds of millions of people throughout the course of human history and caused untold numbers of deaths because of a lack of economic progress due to a hatred of usury and property rights and so on.
And you've got one guy who's a rational philosopher who's getting angry at all of that.
And when you're looking at untold hundreds of millions of people killed and spiritually maimed, and one guy saying, you know, that really is bad.
The person they focus on is...
And of course, if I really was an aggressive person, like if I really was a crazy, aggressive person, people wouldn't tell me that to my face.
They just wouldn't. They just wouldn't tell me that to my face.
It's an important thing to understand.
People only pick on you because they know you're good.
And that's why I say that in order to be virtuous, you've got to have the capacity to get angry.
Because people won't screw around with you so much.
They won't use these fuck you statements with you enough if you get angry in return.
And I'm not saying you yell at them.
I'm not saying you scream at them or anything like that.
Because you can start off with curiosity.
When the time gets to be angry, you'll be perfectly aware of it.
Don't worry about that. That will hit you loud and clear.
But you can start off with curiosity to begin with.
And that's a great way of finding out whether somebody has genuinely misunderstood you or if they're just trying to insult you and put you down.
So in the conversation that was outlined in the board posting, I would actually have a good deal of respect for someone, I think.
I mean, I might consider them somewhat foolhardy, but I would have a good deal of respect for someone who, when they found out that I didn't see my mother because my mother was sort of crazy, vicious, and evil, if they didn't come to me and say...
Oh, you know, you should forgive your mother.
You should change your behavior towards your mother, and you should forgive her, and you should be kinder.
And, you know, I still get this stuff from time to time from people I haven't seen in a while, but I would really have respect for somebody if they sort of came up to me and said, well, how's your mother?
And I said, oh, God, I don't see my mother.
She's crazy evil and ugly and unpleasant and virulent and all.
It's just horrible to see her.
I had no pleasure and nothing but pain out of seeing her.
I would be really impressed if somebody said, huh?
And then they said, you know what?
I'll be right back.
And they took a cab or drove or biked or whatever and over to see my mother.
And they went up and sat down with my mother, and they said to my mother, you know, you seem to be doing things which are not pleasant for your son, for your youngest son, Steph.
You seem to be doing things that he really doesn't like, and can I help you change those things?
Can I suggest that you change those things that he's doing?
Because he's perceiving you as sort of evil and corrupt and a hateful kind of person.
And so I want to sit down with you and invest some effort into getting you to change your behavior so that you can be more sort of acceptable to your son and so you guys can have a good relationship.
Now, that would be foolhardy and it would be like watching Little Red Riding Hood go into the lion's den, but I would certainly have some respect for someone like that.
Because they would actually be going to the source of the problem and they would be attempting to change that behavior.
Or if somebody said to me, how's your mom?
And I said, I don't see her because of X, Y, and Z. And they said, oh.
And had no opinions about it whatsoever.
They didn't even say that's a shame. Just, oh.
And I had no idea what they thought about it.
Well, I would at least have some respect for that person too.
Because they would be sitting there saying, well, this is deterministic.
Nobody has any control over their own behavior.
And so there's no point having any opinion about this.
It's like having an opinion about how tall a tree should grow.
Oh, the tree should be shorter or taller.
I'm going to argue with the tree to make it grow or not.
Doesn't... If somebody said that what I want to do this afternoon is to walk over a tree and to talk it into growing taller by 20 feet in a day, you'd say, well, I've got to tell you, I don't think that's a very productive use of your time.
And you're crazy, right?
Because no point that the tree is as tall as it's going to be in a day.
I mean, let's just figure it's an old tree, let's just say, right?
I want to talk this old tree into being twice as tall in a single day.
Well, your words have absolutely no effect on the tree because the tree is what it is.
And your words don't get to affect base physical reality.
Other than a few sound waves, which don't cause a tree to grow.
And so if somebody believes, well, human beings have no control over their behavior and they are what they are and it's deterministic or genetic or whatever this poster came up with to say that they have no responsibility, well, then that's true of everyone.
And so anyone who says anything to try and change another person's behavior is logically exactly the same as somebody going out there and saying to a tree that is mature, you know, you really should grow taller.
I mean, you're attempting to do...
It's magical thinking. It's crazy, right?
It's a complete denial of the whole belief system.
But if somebody does believe that change is possible, then changing my mother's behavior, which has caused me to not want to see her, would be the logical thing to do.
It would be the logical thing to do.
Right? So, if you have a family...
Wherein there are two children, and there is a Rottweiler dog, and the Rottweiler has a bad habit of biting the children, injuring the children, then does it make more sense to A, either get the Rottweilers to stop biting the children, or get rid of the Rottweilers, or do you sit down with the parents and say...
You know, the problem is that you're not forgiving your Rottweilers.
The problem is that you're viewing the Rottweilers biting your children as a bad thing, and it's not.
It's just Rottweilers doing what Rottweilers do.
They have no choice in the matter.
So you just have to let them bite your children and accept it as a fact of reality.
Blaming the Rottweilers for mauling your children is not productive.
Well, can you imagine if somebody's child or children has been attacked by a dog that's in the house that they own, going up to them and saying that you just need to adjust your opinion on your kids being mauled?
Or you being mauled by the Rottweiler and losing a toe or a finger or an eyeball or something?
That you just need to alter your perspective?
No, of course it would be insane to say that.
And if you did say something like that, people would just look at you like you were just the most corrupt thing in the world.
What you would do is you would say, we either train these Rottweilers to not attack the children or we get rid of the Rottweilers.
And in fact, given that even if we train the Rottweilers to not attack the children, you never know when that training might slip.
We're just going to have to get rid of the Rottweilers.
Nothing personal. Doesn't even have to be blamed.
But the cause in the matter of the children getting mauled are the Rottweilers mauling the children.
So that factor needs to be eliminated, for sure.
I mean, they may get sunburns and so on as well, and they might get nibbled by their hamster, but the proximate cause in their injuries, the cause-effect relationship, is the Rottweilers, right?
So you could say, well, we're going to train the Rottweilers not to attack the children, and maybe you'll reduce the number of attacks, or maybe there'll be no attacks for a month or two, but you're still, you know...
You're in a risky situation.
But at least somebody isn't going to say, you need to just change your opinion about the Rottweiler attacks.
And that's the problem, is that you're prejudicially blaming the Rottweilers and they're bad.
And it's like, no, I just don't want my kids to get mauled.
And so with my mom or whoever, my brother, it's like, no, I just don't want to get my emotions mauled.
I don't want to get my self-esteem and my philosophy mauled by these idiots who are out there just being destructive jerks.
But if somebody was very concerned about my relationship with my mother, and they went and said, I'm going to go talk to your mother, and I'm going to get her to change her ways, and that's how I'm going to help your relationship.
Well, I'm not sure that I would change my relationship with my mother based on one or two or three nice phone calls or even six months of good behavior, because just like the Rottweilers, she's had a whole lot of training, practice, and habits in mauling people.
Well, but at least I would respect them as somebody who is going to the first cause of the problem, which is the parents, my mother is in this case, behavior.
But, oh, these brave, brave souls, what they do is they sit down with you, the person who's been wronged, and they say, well, the problem, you see, is that you have a bad perception.
The problem is that you are judging your parents and blaming them and getting angry at them.
And what you need to do is not be angry at them.
And I can understand that, of course.
I don't sit here every day getting angry at my mom.
I don't think about her more than once or twice a week anymore.
But I'm certainly not full of anger about my mom.
I'm not full of anger about my dad or my brother.
I just don't want to have anything to do with them.
I mean, that's the best way to avoid getting angry with people who hurt you is to not see them.
I mean, that's how you manage your anger, right?
You don't sort of keep poking yourself with a sharp stick and saying, well, I've got to manage the pain, right?
You... You stop poking yourself with the stick, and then you don't have to manage the pain because it doesn't hurt, right?
I mean, that's sort of pretty basic, right?
That would seem to me a fairly logical approach to dealing with the problem of emotional pain and abuse and scarring and so on.
And so, of the couple of dozen people in my life who I knew before, during and to some degree after my break with my mother and my break with my brother, not one single person, everybody has lectured me, not one single person has gone to talk to my mother.
Isn't that fascinating?
Isn't it predictable?
Of the people who were even more troubled...
By the fact that I did not see my brother, or broke with my brother, as my brother is not as obviously crazy and evil as my mom, of the two dozen people or so who sat down with me and talked to me about my brother, not one single person went to go and talk to my brother.
And why is that? Because they know the facts.
They know the truth. They know that I'm the more reasonable person, and so I'm not going to attack them.
They know that my brother is exactly who I say he is, and that's why they focus on lecturing me rather than lecturing my brother.
Because my brother is dangerous and I am reasonable.
And they only stopped lecturing me when I started being reasonable about getting angry, about being the one who was supposed to change when I was the wronged party, and people who were so concerned about the state of my brother and I's relationship.
When I've been wronged, that all they're interested in doing is getting me to change my perspective.
And I would say, well, I think this is very interesting.
I'll tell you what. You go talk to my brother or you go talk to my mother and you tell me what you get out of it.
And if you have a very present and productive and useful conversation where they commit to change and they understand and they take responsibility and blah, blah, blah.
I start with my mother. Then you can move on to my brother.
Then I think that would be just peachy.
You can report back to me and we'll talk further.
And not one single person ever took me up on my offer to either talk with my mother or with my brother.
Why? Because they were frightened of these people because they knew in their guts, they knew that I was not going to attack them, but I was going to be reasonable.
And they knew that my mother or my brother was going to attack them and might cause them some real difficulties in their life.
I mean, they're pretty vengeful people, right?
Or at the very least, they're just going to have a very difficult and unpleasant conversation with my mother or my brother.
So in these situations, it's just important to understand where people are coming from.
Where are people coming from?
What level of courage are they actually going to display?
And what level of consistency are they bringing to their opinions about responsibility in human relationships?
Now, the last question, of course, is why?
Why the hell do these people even bother getting involved in other people's family problems?
Well, I'll tell you.
It's not about you at all.
I don't mean to shock you. I don't mean to shock you, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to.
When people sat down with me to talk about my mother or my brother, they could give two flying fucks about me, frankly.
They could give a rolling shit on a donut about my interest whatsoever.
It's got nothing to do with me at all.
All they're doing is playing out their own sad little family histories with me as a useless, blind, mute prop.
They have no interest whatsoever in my relationship with my mother.
And this gentleman who posted on the board his quote friend has no interest whatsoever in his relationship with his parents.
Not even the slightest shred of a tiny bit of an interest.
It's got nothing to do What is going on is the person is managing their true self through a conversation.
They are feeding and justifying their own sickening cowardice So the important thing is to recognize it's got sweet fuck-all to do with you.
It's got squat to do with you.
This other person is just acting out all of this sad and pitiful shit on you because they need to justify their own cowardice vis-a-vis their own parents.
So what happens is...
Their own history with their own parents is that they were the victims, right?
Somebody who was not a victim of his or her parents is certainly aware of victimization because their parents are rational and kind and are certainly going to be curious about somebody else's victimization at the hands of the parents.
And it may come out through that process of being curious that there wasn't as much victimization or there's another way of looking at it or however you want to put it.
But somebody who's raised well by his or her parents, they're not going to be doing these fuck you phrases with you.
Because they've got nothing to manage.
They're free and clear of their own parental issues.
They have relatively no parental issues.
So they're not going to be doing all of this bullshit manipulation with you at all.
But when someone says to you that you need to adjust relative to your parents, what are they saying?
They're saying that the victim must adjust relative to the parents.
That the parents are all-powerful And the only variable in the equation is the compliance of the child.
So this is when people say to me, oh, your mom wasn't that bad, you need to change your opinion of her.
You need to adjust relative to your parents.
Your parents are fixed, firm, absolute, genetic, deterministic gods as fundamental as the base laws of physics.
And you need to be flexible and to change and to compromise.
And you have free will, but your parents don't.
And you have choices and your parents don't.
And the fact that you have choices and have self-reflection and a desire for ethics and to be better and this and that and the other.
Because you have all of these things, you who have greater value should bend to your prejudicial, fixed, firm, blind, determined parents.
So you, who have choice and flexibility, must change everything about yourself to conform with your parents who have no choice and no responsibility and no free will and no virtue.
So virtue, self-reflection, self-knowledge, should bow, conform, scrape before and adapt to blind, prejudicial, primitive, non-introspective, non-knowledgeable personalities.
That's really the argument when it comes right down to it.
The child should adapt, the free-willed and ethical child should adapt and conform and crush their virtue to accommodate the blind prejudices of the omniscient and all-powerful parent.
Actually, all-powerful but absolutely unable to change their behavior.
Now, that's not a very good argument, or it's not a very moral argument to say that The good people should sacrifice their virtue in order to conform to the blind, stupid, evil people. I mean, that's not a very noble argument there.
I wouldn't say that that's going to win any points in the Virtuonomic Olympics.
But people, of course, don't want to look at it that way, right?
Because they're frightened of their parents and they're frightened of the lack of approval and respect that they are going to receive if they start to question their parents.
They're frightened of their parents and they're frightened of their peers and they're frightened of their siblings and they're frightened of everyone who they're ever going to meet for the rest of their life who's going to say, hey, how's your mom?
Or how's your dad? And they're frightened of that question.
I understand all of that. God, I haven't wrestled with this for years.
I totally understand all of that.
But be honest. Be honest.
Be honest. Say, you know, I think that you should get back together with your mom and start seeing her again because I don't like the fact that you're not doing it.
It makes me uncomfortable.
They say, oh, it makes you uncomfortable.
That's very interesting. Why don't you tell me more about that?
Maybe we can figure out what's making you uncomfortable.
Well, as it turns out, they don't like their own parents, but they feel that they have to go because they're afraid of breaking social conformity and so on, and that's fine.
So you say, okay, well, so I should see my mom because you're afraid of your siblings.
Well, that's a whole lot less compelling than, you should not be judgmental.
You should forgive your mom because it's virtuous.
As I keep saying, the great danger in human life is false arguments for morality.
These people masquerading self-serving neurotic bullshit as universal ethical values.
So once somebody gets to the point where they say, oh yeah, well you should see your parents because I'm frightened of my siblings.
You should see your parents because I don't want it to be a choice that you can't see your parents because then I'm not just conforming to what is, I'm just conforming to something that's somebody else's opinion.
So it's not a virtue for me anymore.
And I want to believe that I'm virtuous even when I'm cowardly and providing help, comfort, and succor to people who are corrupt.
I don't want to look at myself that way.
I want to look at myself as virtuous.
And so if I'm conforming to evil and corrupt parents, I want to see that as a good thing.
And when you don't see your parents based on ethical reasons, then I need to reframe that as you're petty and bad, because I'm uncomfortable with these choices.
And they're talking to you a little bit, most of all, of course, they're talking to their own inner self, their own true self, their own inner child.
They're saying, you have to keep conforming.
The true self wants to get away from the parents.
The true self wants to flee the parents.
The true self wants to get away from corrupt people.
Not all parents, blah, blah, blah. What they're doing is saying to their own inner child, who desperately wants to get away from these corrupt people and have a new, fresh, better life, they're saying, no, it's evil, it's bad, it's wrong for you to want to get away from these corrupt people.
It's judgmental, it's blaming them, it's intolerant, it's non-forgiving, it's non-loving, they did the best, they were kind, they put a roof over your head, they're always there for you, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And of course the true self is saying, but I don't like them, they hurt me.
They're painful. They're cold.
They're cruel. They're mean. They're manipulative.
They don't listen to me.
They don't care about me. Why am I spending all this time and energy and effort on people who don't care about me?
Fundamentally. And the false self, which is terrified, right?
The false self is a bully, so it's terrified of social conformity, of the requirement.
It's an absolute, like gravity.
You have to conform. Well, they're not doing anything other than managing their own inner self when they're supposedly talking to you about your family.
They're just managing their own true self.
They're managing their own cowardice.
They're managing their own fear.
They're managing their own conformity.
They're managing their own kowtowing to false and ridiculous social standards that only feed the corruption of this world.
Nothing to do with you.
You don't even have to be in the room.
You don't even have to be anywhere.
You don't even have to be on the planet.
It's got nothing to do with you.
99.9 times you're talking to people.
They have no idea what's going on for you.
All they're doing is waiting their turn to talk so that they can deal with their own personal issues by pretending that you've got something to do with them.
So it's just important to understand that and to get angry.
It's okay to get angry.
You don't have to yell at anyone. You don't have to call them names.
It's okay to get angry when people are jerking you around like this, especially when people are using false arguments for morality.
And you just have to remember, any moral judgment that they apply to you, they also have to apply to your parents.
And if they don't, then they're just trying to make you conform to shore up their own cowardice and conformity and aid and comfort to corrupt people and don't do it.
Don't do it. Don't give them that pleasure which they have not earned.
This goes back to justice.
Thank you so much for listening.
▲
Export Selection