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Aug. 18, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
33:44
374 Deathbeds
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Hi, this is Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio, which you can find at www.freedomainradio.com.
And we're going to have a short podcast, a semi-emergency podcast, about a very big topic, which we've talked about a few times in the podcast, and I think once on the radio show, and it's been talked about quite a bit on the boards.
But it is around the demise of primary caregivers.
And the death of the family of origin, those who raised you and so on, and what you can do or what is the right thing to do in a situation where you don't have a good relationship with them because they're not good people.
So I'm going to read you a letter.
I'm not going to, of course, mention the person's name.
I'm going to read you a letter and then I'll read you sort of my response.
We'll talk about it for a few minutes and you can begin preparing yourself for one of the toughest challenges of freedom.
Which is the ailing parents.
So this is from a gentleman or lady who says, Among the significant members of my family of origin, I would count my paternal grandparents.
From the time I was 17 until about age 29, I have lived off and on with my grandparents, including the time I was in college.
In my late 20s, I lived in one of their apartments, not in their house.
My grandfather is insane.
He has regular intervals of bizarre, destructive behavior, including but not limited to getting into fights with tenants, destruction, defacing of neighbors' property, screaming and ranting slash verbal abuse for an hour or more without stopping, which may be preceded by getting drunk and which may also end in his being arrested.
After the episode, he acts as though nothing ever happened.
My grandmother is his enabler.
She cleans up his messes, literal and situational.
She also engages in abusive and destructive behavior, but her style is to gossip, use innuendo when speaking to someone of whom she disapproves, and engaging in verbal violence a la the octagon of Suzette Hayden Elgin.
I don't understand the reference. Perhaps you do.
She is, in short, a classic study of an emotional manipulator.
Since the time I last moved out, which was about four years ago, and the move out was an ugly scene, I have rarely spoken to them.
The last time I saw them was in June, when they were at my wedding.
I recently received a call from my grandmother, who left a voice message that my grandfather had a stroke, which has apparently resulted in dizziness and loss of vision.
They want me to come see them.
It was Thursday, I think.
I can't even remember which day.
I have yet to call them back.
The question which is so difficult even for me to formulate is this.
Should I go see them?
Am I right or wrong in not wanting to see them?
What is the morality of the situation here?
Another complicating factor is a maternal aunt who just called today to tell me that I need to go see them.
My aunt used a certain tone of voice which is successful in making me feel a strong sensation of guilt.
Thus making me quite subject to manipulation.
When she called earlier, the first words she said were, You know your grandfather had a stroke?
You need to go see him. He's not doing well.
In that tone of voice, I was foiled from engaging in any sort of rational utterance by her saying this right off the bat, because it seems that if I don't immediately give in to what she wants, it would result in an unpleasant argument, and I am not someone who is normally prepared to have my initial interaction with anyone who calls on the phone via confrontation.
Check. And then there was this tone of voice she used and the hidden insinuation that I had been very bad for not going to see the grandparents.
And I will really be bad if I don't get up there and see them now.
Checkmate. I need some help here because my ability to think rationally about this has been given a punch in the gut by the family of origin.
Thanks everyone. And...
My sort of response to it, which I'll go into in slightly more detail here, is of course, I said, I'm so, so sorry to hear about this situation.
There is no way to have a win in this one in the short run.
There's no way to have a win in any way, shape, or form in the short run in this particular situation.
And because I'm on vacation, I put my advice in.
It might be a little bit too late, but I'll throw it out anywhere because it's not exactly the last time that any of us is going to face this problem.
Christina and I faced this problem late last year with her father.
I said, your grandfather is a horrible evil man.
You owe him nothing, nothing, nothing whatsoever.
We owe justice to those we meet or are inflicted upon us on the road of life.
This man is a real monster.
In my view, it would be wrong to see him.
And the reason for that is your future relationship with your kids, not your past, present or future relationship with your grandfather.
How will you teach your kids to be independent and to think for themselves and live virtuously, live with integrity, not succumb to the general social conformity that is so common in the world these days, if you cave in the face of emotional pressure from bad people?
We must, must, must deal with our families as if they were just anyone.
There is no virtue in genetics.
There is no value in accidental, entwined histories.
We can only love virtue.
You will be ostracized, I wrote to this gentleman.
You will be ostracized by your family for not going to see your grandfather.
This is painful, of course, but it is a big plus, since you can, in one fell swoop, get rid of all the bad people in your life.
And I just thought it was worth chatting about this for a few minutes, because those of us who haven't already faced this, we're going to face this coming up.
My mother is alive, my father is alive, and my brother, of course, is alive.
And so I haven't had to face the death of somebody who mistreated me when I was a child.
And so I put this out with all sympathy to the people who are going through this.
I put this out for preparation for my own relationship with my own children to come and also to prepare myself for what is to come with my mother.
I'm definitely going to get the call from my brother one day or get the email from my father to say that my mother has had a stroke or is on her deathbed or this, that or the other.
And I've talked about it quite a bit with Christina, what is going to happen in this particular situation.
And of course, we've decided, or I've decided, that I would never go and see my mother.
If my mother is not someone that I want to spend time with on a daily basis, or a weekly basis, or even a monthly basis, or on any basis, Then what would it mean to say, I don't want to see you when you're alive, but I'm going to come and see you when you're dead?
Well, of course, the reason that we want to come and see people, or that other people want us to come and see them when they're dying, is they want to believe that all is forgiven and all is forgotten, and to die in peace.
Well, I've got to tell you, this is my perspective.
I'm not going to say it's syllogistically proven.
This is just my perspective.
It's really not my job to give comfort to people who have abused me.
It's really, really not my job to give aid and comfort to people who have abused me when I was helpless and dependent as a child.
And so what if I took some stuff from them in my 20s?
I lived with my mom for a short period of time before doing my masters.
It was a recession. I couldn't find any place to live.
I couldn't find a job. So what?
So what? She chose to have me.
I didn't choose my parents.
She chose to have children. It's not my job and it's not your job to provide aid, comfort and succor and to make people feel better who have done evil, who have done you evil.
It's hard enough, I mean, if it's even possible to make people feel better who've done evil.
Of course everyone in their deathbed wants to feel that everything is forgiven and everything is forgotten and everything worked out right in the end.
Of course, of course they do.
Don't you see? That's one of the main reasons why evil continues in this world and grows in this world.
Because we do claim to forgive evil people on their deathbeds.
And so other people in the world who are alive, ourselves, our children, our relatives, all see that they can be evil to their own children And still get deathbed reunions and pseudo-apologies and pseudo-forgiveness so that they don't face the end alone.
So, of course, you know, we know in economics whatever you tax diminishes and whatever you subsidize increases.
That's why the economy is going to hell.
We're taxing productivity and subsidizing non-productivity.
Of course we're running out of resources as a culture.
But the same thing is true ethically, of course.
That which we subsidize through our agreement, through our forgiveness, through our complicity, we increase.
That which we condemn, we decrease.
It's natural cause and effect in human behavior.
And so, If we forgive evil people and come to their deathbeds and say that all is forgiven either explicitly or implicitly by our very presence, are we really doing anything material to fight the growth of evil or are we just writing posts on boards and writing articles for websites and listening to podcasts?
Are we actually going to take up a goddamn sword and do a little bit to try and fight the evil of this world or are we simply going to talk about it?
If we're just going to talk about it, Doesn't interest me at all.
That conversation doesn't interest me at all because it's just a bunch of wind in the trees.
It's just nonsense. It's just gas moving across the landscape.
It's not going to shift one single evil person to get them to change their mind.
It's going to have absolutely zero effect.
In fact, it's going to be quite the opposite.
You may claim to be fighting evil, and yet you will end up condoning it through your very presence, through this end of life, well, all is forgiven, you have to go, and how are you going to feel when they die, and this and that and the other.
But if you're really interested in trying to strike a blow for virtue and honesty and truth and integrity and goodness in this world, then you really are going to have to saddle up and ride some of the tougher horses on the lot rather than amble around and feel like a knight.
And this is no negative feedback on the people who have gone through this process prior to sort of this understanding.
And I'm not saying, oh, you people are fake and this and that and the other, right?
But at least you can stop telling people that they should do it, that they should go and see their parents or grandparents or whoever when they're on the deathbed if the parents have been wrong to them and haven't asked for forgiveness.
And look, if you wait until the end of your life to ask for forgiveness from those you've wronged, it's bullshit.
It's complete and utter nonsense.
I mean, it's all well and good.
To say, well, I'm dying now, so I'm sorry.
But of course, if you're capable of apologizing and you wait until your deathbed, it really doesn't add up to more than a fire and a windstorm.
It's nothing. It's complete nonsense.
It's total manipulation.
And so the idea that we owe people something on their deathbed Well, of course we do, but what we owe them is not what they want.
If people have been bad to us, and this is in particular parents, you can't, you know, by the age of five or six years old, parents can't go back and undo the damage they've done.
You can't ever be given a happy childhood back if your parents or your siblings or your extended family were bad to you when you were growing up, right?
There's no erasing for that.
You can't undo certain crimes.
You can undo petty theft.
You can return the product, right?
If you embezzle, you can return the money.
If you steal a car, you can return the car.
There are certain crimes like rape and child abuse and so on.
You simply can't restore the person to the previous state.
There's no possibility, right?
Pure transfers of property, capital and so on can be restored with an excess.
But you simply cannot restore people to their original state if you've abused them physically, emotionally, sexually, mentally.
You can't restore somebody to their original state.
Any more than if you are starved of certain kinds of vitamins as a child and you grow up short and frail, you can't be restored to who you would have been if you'd had the nutrition that you needed as a child.
You grow up frail.
Once you get diabetes, you can't be somebody who's never had diabetes.
You can't undo certain things.
And parents can't undo the wrong that they've done to you when you were a child.
Completely and totally and utterly impossible.
You can't go back and have a better childhood than you did.
You can't go back and be loved and be taken care of and be trusted and respected and be curious about and be mentored and be taught correct moral propositions and a true understanding of the world and be allowed to flower and to be virtuous.
You can't go back and get any of those things.
Life is a one way. Stack a domino days towards your death, and so you can't go back.
So the question then, which I touch on in my response then, is what's the big deal, right?
This is always the question. What's the big deal?
Why not just go? It gives him a little bit of comfort.
It's no skin off your nose, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Go for a couple of visits. What does it matter?
Well, of course, that's not how it's going to be presented to you.
How it's going to be presented to you is...
He's sick. You've got to go.
Why haven't you been?
Right? As if it's inconceivable that you wouldn't go.
Well, my friends, it's time to make it conceivable that we don't go to praise the people who abused us.
It's time to make that conceivable.
That's the greatest blow that you can strike against the power of the state and against the power of religion.
is to refuse with moral self-righteousness in the best sense of the word the phrase You can refuse, with your head held high, knowing that you are striking a blow against darkness and for the light of the species,
to say, I'm sorry if it's inconceivable that I'm not going to go, but you could not pay me enough money to go, and sit by the sick man's deathbed, and pretend that everything is all right after he was violent and verbally abusive and physically destructive and evil and drunk and arrested, To me when I was growing up, towards me, around me, in the vicinity of me when I was growing up.
That's not okay. It's not okay.
It's not recoverable. It's not something that can ever be put right.
It's not something I'm ever going to imagine can be put right.
It's not something that's going to consume me for the rest of my life.
But there is no amount of money and no force on this earth that is going to drag me to this man's bedside.
He chose to act the way that he lived.
He chose to do the things he did.
And, of course, if he didn't choose, right, Somebody on the boards responded to this gentleman and said, hey, he did the best that he knew how, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Well, he was just, you know, he just did all that he knew, he just did the best that he could, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Well, fine. Let's say that that's true.
Fantastic. Let's say that this evil, corrupt, nasty, vicious, violent, drunken bastard of a grandfather was just doing the best that he could and he's really not to blame and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Well, fine. Then why not say this, hey, me not going, I'm doing the best that I can.
So why are you trying to argue with me?
If I'm not supposed to have any opinions about this guy being a drunken, violent bastard, if I'm not supposed to have any opinions about this guy and assign any kind of moral responsibility to him, then why the hell are you trying to assign moral responsibility to me?
If he gets off scot-free for being a bad guy, why am I questioned and criticized for being who I am?
Right? If we're just supposed to forgive people because they're just acting the best way that they know how and this is all he knew and blah blah blah.
Hey, this is all I know.
So you start applying the same rules to me and get out of my face with your moral questions because...
It's completely inconsistent to say, this guy should be forgiven because he was just doing the best he can, but you should change your opinion and go and see your grandfather on his deathbed.
Completely contradictory opinions and kind of cheap and bullying, right?
Because if somebody really feels that a person's behavior can be changed by an appeal to morality, what they need to have gone and done is go and talk to the goddamn grandfather for the past 40 years and not stop picking on the grandson who was abused.
These people are all very brave.
When they're standing in front of people who are reasonable, but they're not so brave and not so much about moral responsibility when they're standing in front of people who actually have the power to be vicious verbal or physical abusers.
Then they seem to be all about forgiveness and understanding, but when you say, I'm not going to go to this guy's deathbed, suddenly you don't seem to get quite so much forgiveness and understanding.
Suddenly you're the one that has to change and you're the one who has to be a better person and you're the one who has to rise above it.
Why? Why?
Either both parties are responsible, the grandfather is responsible for the life he made, and I'm responsible, if I'm his grandson, for the choice to not go and see him on his deathbed, either with both responsible, in which case the person to focus on is the person who's done the most wrong, not me, or neither of us is responsible, in which case stop coming to me and pestering me to go to his bedside.
If he gets off scot-free for living the way he lived because that's all he knew, hey, this is all I know, that I don't go to the deathbed of people who abuse me.
I don't go and give them that kind of comfort.
Because what we do owe people in this life is justice.
What we do owe people in this life is an honest and just and real and moral evaluation of their behavior.
And that is occurring at an unconscious level for us every single moment that we're in the company of someone.
And it's not open to changing because you're going to feel better.
Or somebody tells you to.
So of course people are going to slam down in front of this guy This man or woman, this grandson or granddaughter, and say, you have to go because your grandfather is your grandfather and he's sick and he needs you and he this and he that and the other, and you're going to say, I don't want to go.
Well, you're a bad person for not going.
Oh, okay, well, you give me the definition of a bad person.
Well, a bad person is selfish and doesn't take other people's feelings into account.
Great. My grandfather is a lot more selfish than I am and has not taken a single one of my feelings into account for 30 odd years.
So go talk to him.
Don't come and talk to me if you've got these moral standards.
So as soon as you start to question these people, and this is the approach that I would take, if you wanted to get involved, you could also just not answer the phone and not go to the deathbed and do a little shimmy in your living room when the funeral is announced and not go then either.
If people say, well, you're a bad grandson, you're a bad person for not going, right?
Then you sort of ask them, how am I bad, right?
Oh, you have to respect, you have to do this.
Well, I'm not really sure that I do.
And of course, if respect is very important in a relationship, You tell me how our dear grandfather, who's had a stroke and is not well, you tell me how he respected everyone in his life by beating up on them and defacing their property and being drunken and screaming at them for hours.
You feel that I should respect my grandfather or my mother or my father because respect is a virtue in human life.
Well, did they respect people?
If you feel that it's a universal thing, that people should respect others, how are you going to deal with those who have not spent one shred of their existence respecting other people?
Why are you coming to me if you feel that it's a universal absolute and the most positive moral thing in the universe, that we should respect others?
You should respect your grandfather.
You should respect... What about his respect?
Well, he did the best he could.
That's all he knew. Well, hey, I'm doing the best I can.
This is all I know. I'm not going.
Right? So, you're the one that they start working on because you're the more reasonable one and you're the less abusive one, which means that people all start focusing on you.
Well, I think it's time for the decent people in the world to be a little bit goddamn less conciliatory and appeasing to other people in the world.
I think it's time we became just a little bit more stubborn.
That we became just a little bit less manipulatable.
So that in any conflict between evil bastards with no shred, Of sympathy or respect for others.
That in a balance between these people, the evil bastards, and the good people, the good people aren't always considered to be the pushovers who everybody needs to focus on and bully and manipulate and control.
Why can't we be the people who are a little bit more solid than that?
Why not? Why not?
Now, once you get past that phase with people, you'll get on to the next phase.
And the next phase is where they attempt to appeal to your self-interest.
So once they get that they can't bully you with a false argument for morality, they will then start to work on you from a self-interest standpoint.
And the self-interest is basically, and I mentioned this sort of in the podcast from last night, so I'll just touch on it briefly now, the self-interest that's talked about.
is kind of like one of two phases the first one is you'll feel really bad when he dies and you didn't have this big blah blah blah conciliatory reconciliation kind of forgive all is forgiven meeting with him you'll feel really bad if he dies and that hasn't occurred and you'll feel really bad for the rest of your life and you'll regret it and you'll weep at his gravestone and blah blah blah blah blah and of course the response to that is uh hey that's my issue to worry about that's not your issue to worry about And if it's important for me to forgive him,
then does he have to do anything to achieve that forgiveness?
Like, I forgive people who have recognized that they've done me wrong and then make restitution and apologize and explain their behavior and go to therapy, anger management, blah blah blah, right?
Those people I should forgive.
We can all agree with that, right?
If somebody genuinely Tries to atone, understands that they did something wrong, tries to atone for their behavior, and so on.
We should at least be open to the possibility of forgiving that person.
I think that's possible. But not for major major.
You don't do that for somebody who breaks you, right?
So, I want to forgive these people.
At least I'd be open to forgiving people who have done things against my interests, immoral things against my interests, who then figure it out and talk about it.
So I want to forgive those people.
Now, that's a lot of work, right?
To admit you've done something wrong to someone, to do all of the work, to go to anger management, to figure all this stuff out, to really, I mean, it's a hard thing to apologize to someone and really mean it.
It's a very painful and difficult thing.
It's a lot to do with self-growth.
If you really genuinely understand that you've done something wrong, it's very important to do it, to apologize.
So, somebody can go through that entire process and I should at least be open to the possibility of forgiving them if it hasn't been a major thing like a rape or whatever, right?
People who, you know, destroy the happiness of your childhood.
So, if somebody says to you, you should go and see him and forgive him, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Well, so I should forgive people who genuinely have contrition and who work to regain my trust and blah, blah, blah.
And that's sort of one aspect of people that I should forgive.
But, the other aspect or the other group of people that I should forgive are people who have a stroke.
Do you see that there's just a little bit of a disparity there?
There's just a little bit of a disparity there?
Because having a stroke doesn't change your moral nature.
It doesn't change your moral nature at all.
I guess maybe if it renders you to be comatose, then it changes your moral nature in terms of you can't do good or evil anymore.
But the work to earn the forgiveness and regain the trust of someone through the process we talked about It's sort of one aspect of gaining forgiveness.
Now, another aspect of gaining forgiveness is not having a stroke or a heart attack.
That is not a way to make something up to someone, right?
I mean, you have to have some level of restitution in forgiveness, right?
I mean, if I just say, I'm sorry, like, if I steal a thousand dollars from you and I say, I'm sorry, And then walk away.
Do you really feel? No, of course not.
I need to give you at least two or three thousand dollars back, a thousand bucks plus your time, plus your energy, and I, of course, have to go to counseling and I have to do this, that, or the other, right?
I mean, I have to give you the two or three grand back just so you won't press charges.
But if I want to be your friend again, I've got to do a whole lot more than that so that you'll have any concept of trusting me again.
And that's all a very difficult thing to do.
And is it really equivalent that you have to go through all of that process to regain trust and to have forgiveness bestowed upon you, or you just have to be dying?
It's bullshit. It's total nonsense.
Having a stroke, having a heart attack, becoming weak and debilitated, being on your deathbed does nothing to change your moral nature.
It does nothing to change your relationships with people.
That's all gone. You've got to live with what you've done at that point in your life.
You can't pull out this get-out-of-jail-free card called, I'm sick, you need to forgive me.
And if we grant that forgiveness against all rationality, all ethics, all integrity, all morality, all self-esteem, all history, if we grant that forgiveness, all we're doing is encouraging the spread of evil because everyone around the room says, oh, okay, I can be a total bastard to my kids or my grandkids, and I can still get them back on my deathbed.
Fantastic. That means that my standard can be that much lower for my behavior.
My standards can be that much lower.
Basically, it's so funny. I mean, Libertarians or anarchists or capitalists are very much against state-sponsored unions, they're very much against mercantilism, right?
Because that is the encouragement of corrupt practices through the elimination of consequences, right?
So if you're in a union, it's almost impossible, especially a public union, it's almost impossible to get fired and you get mad at people who work harder than you do and so on and so on, and we think that that's wrong and bad because it encourages corrupt behavior through the negation of consequences And then we hear, oh, my grandfather's on his deathbed.
Gee, I really feel like I should go!
Because I'm all about making sure that people don't act badly by eliminating the consequences of bad behavior.
So people who abuse me, I'm going to go and be friendly with them on their deathbed.
You see the contradiction in that?
Do you see how it's not about unions and it's not about the state, but they just inherit the corruption of the family and use it to control people?
Now, the other thing that they'll say to you, other than you'll feel bad if you don't go, Well, that's your thought, it's not my thought.
Is they'll say, well, you shouldn't give your grandfather so much control over your behavior that you won't go to his deathbed, right?
That's surrendering all the control to him, and now you can't go because he is who he is, and blah, blah, blah.
Well, that to me is just insane, and I mentioned this the other day.
I mean this with all gentleness, right, because I understand this kind of insanity, but it doesn't take but a moment's thought to eliminate it, and here's my moment's thought.
If... We should go and see people that we despise, because otherwise we're surrendering power to them, then basically there's nobody we can't see.
We have to go to everyone's deathbed, right?
We have to go to everyone's deathbed.
Because we'll go to the deathbeds of the people that we love because we love them and they've been good to us.
And we'll go to the deathbeds of people we loathe and despise and who abused us because we don't want to give them any kind of false power over us.
But actually compelling a positive action out of someone is not the same as having power over them.
If I say, well I'm not going to go, I'm not going to get off my couch and go to my grandfather's deathbed, I'm actually not changing my behavior.
I'm not going to all these deathbeds otherwise, so why would I change it for one person's behavior, one person's illness, right?
So if I'm sitting on the couch and somebody phones and says, go to your grandfather's deathbed, and I say, I don't want to, I'm not going to, and I'm not even going to debate it.
I can't believe you asked me, jerk.
Then I continue doing whatever it is that I'm doing.
Maybe I write up my journal or watch TV or whatever it is that I'm doing.
Well, I'm continuing on with my life.
This person doesn't have any power over me.
But if I actually am compelled to get up and go to their deathbed and spend hours with them when I hate them, then they absolutely have power over me.
So the idea that not going to somebody's deathbed is giving them power over you is the complete opposite.
Right? I mean, if I, I don't know, like I phone you up and I say, I want you to keep doing whatever it is you're going to do.
I don't have any power over you, right?
But if I phone you up and say, I want you to meet me at this store, and you better do it, or you're a really bad person, and you end up coming to the store, then I have power over you, right?
So it's a complete paradox. It doesn't make any sense.
So we could talk about this for a lot longer, but dinner reservations are getting close, and freedom's all well and good, but we need to feed the belly to be able to continue podcasting.
I just sort of wanted to point this out.
All sympathy and understanding to people who are going to go through this and who are going through this and people who've gone through this and went to see their grandparents.
You can post on the boards and let me know what you think.
But fundamentally, the basic message that we're talking about at freedomradio.com and in other venues, which is just a basic truth.
There's no virtue in your family.
There's no virtue in tribalism.
There's no virtue in genetics.
There's no virtue in blood.
You owe them nothing.
You owe them justice.
Which means if they're bad, you owe them nothing.
And if they're good, I think you owe them friendliness and positive feedback and intimacy.
But you won't have to work to any of those.
It's going to happen naturally because it's what you want.
So we have to get out of the idea that there's virtue in family, that there's virtue in accidental history, that there's virtue in any of this nonsense that's spouted out about how somehow DNA is more important than virtue when it comes to dedication, love, respect, friendliness, forgiveness. But there's nothing more important than virtue.
There is nothing more important than virtue.
And that's not the rule that I'm making up.
Just look into your heart.
The people who are the best to you in your lives are the people you enjoy spending time with.
The people who abused and corrupted you are not people that you want to spend time with.
And yes, you can bully them and this and that and say, well, I'm going because I've got all this self-interest wrapped up and I don't want to feel bad when they die, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
You can make all of that stuff up that you want.
It's not what your hard parts are telling you.
There is no virtue in family.
There is no virtue in history.
There is no virtue in the accidental biological cage, the ABC. There is no virtue in the food, the family of origin.
There is no virtue in DNA. It's racist to say that there is virtue bound up in DNA. And if there isn't, then you treat people, you treat family members as if they were anyone.
Think about your family members the same way you think about them if you just happened to run into them at a dinner party or at some party or on the street.
And of course, if you run into this crazy, drunken, screaming, abusive guy, you want to steer clear of him.
You don't go over and see him every Sunday and say, gee, I'll be at your deathbed, and you wouldn't do any of these sort of things if he wasn't your grandfather.
And so as we become adults, we have to start living within reality, people, not within fantasy.
Not within, particularly not within a fantasy that is spun by evil people who want to be able to do all of the wrong that they can and corrupt all of the children they can get their hands on and then have everybody sit around them while they die and say that all is forgiven.
If we want the world to improve, we've got to start there.
Quit supporting the evil people.
Quit giving your...
Agreement, your forgiveness, your complicity to the evil people.
Just stop doing it.
Or if you do want to keep doing it, stop listening to this.
Because one or the other is going to get you.
And I want to get you over to this side.
And if you continue listening to this and continue to give your support to evil people, you're going to end up a very, very, very unhappy person indeed.
Not because of any voodoo that I have, but just because of the nature of conscience and reality.
So, stop supporting evil people, or stop listening to me.
I hope, I hope that you will choose to stop supporting evil people and join us, I guess, in the quest to make the world a little bit of a better place.
Thank you so much for listening.
I really, really, really appreciate it.
I know that this conversation can be hard sometimes, but it's a very, very important conversation, and I look forward to your feedback, and I hope that this message reaches the intended recipient in time.
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