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March 19, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
32:59
692 Mommy's Letter
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Time Text
Good evening, everybody. Hope you're doing well, it's Steph.
It is 7 o'clock on the 17th of March.
Is it right? 19th!
Oh, only two days off.
Not too bad. 19th of March, and here is an email that a listener received from his mother.
What do you want me to say or do, Bab?
Just tell me. One of the things you said makes me think I was calling you too often.
I have been under the impression...
You looked forward to my calls, but obviously that changed.
I wanted to tell you I am taking Mom to a doctor's appointment Wednesday for a biopsy of a rather quick-formed mole on her face.
Doctor did tell her it looked suspiciously like skin cancer.
We'll email you what we find out.
Again, I am sorry for making wrong choices in your childhood.
I had always been rather proud of how you boys and I all made the best of our circumstances.
Your dad did too.
Considering what we were dealing with, it is just that it made it pretty rough going.
But we are who we are because of what we have experienced.
I am very proud of your brother and his relationship with the wife with two kids and how well he gets along with the kids.
They thoroughly, quote, enjoy each other.
He and his wife are united in parenting and they do very well with the ex being involved also.
Your brother is a wonderful helpmate to his wife, always doing dishes, cooking, cleaning, washing clothes, and straightening up constantly.
I have been around them enough to see how comfortable they all are with him.
And I know that what he experienced as a child has shown him how he can take the high road and be an exceptional father.
And I know you have decided what kind of a person you are going to be.
All that we experienced brought us to the people we are.
You have always known how proud I am of you from birth forward.
Your perceptions from even before kindergarten age have always amazed me and everyone that has ever known you.
Please let me relay my praises in person or at least on the phone.
All my love, Mom.
Oh my heavens, if only, if only, if only these people could use this exquisite power Wouldn't that be just wonderful if they could use it for good rather than for this kind of destructiveness?
Oh, the horror.
So let's have a little chat about what's going on in this letter.
And I was talking about this morning that...
Families, of course, have this amazing ability to know your weak spots and to know what makes you unhappy and to know what you're vulnerable to and so on.
And as I mentioned, everybody talks in great and happy tones about the wonderful positivity, positronicness of family.
And nobody talks about the risk.
We all know the risk of love or what is called love or attachment or codependence or whatever you want to call it, whatever it is that you are.
We all know the dangers of love, that love can make you happy and love can make you sad.
Love can mend your life, but love can break your heart.
We all know that. But we don't say the same thing about family.
We don't understand the deep ambivalence that family can bring to our lives, the risks and the rewards.
So, I think that this is something that I'd sort of like to highlight.
And most of the stuff that you get from family when you're an adult, right, when you are grown up and when they no longer have power over you, is along these kinds of serpentine, sea anemone, subterranean stinging.
And I think it's well worth having a look at it because there's an enormous amount, enormous amount, That is packed into this letter.
It really is a series of knockout blows that are exquisitely timed and perfectly, perfectly put together.
That's why I say I wish that these people could use this power for good rather than what they use it for.
A brief history, and I'm sure this listener won't mind.
I won't give any identifying characteristics.
36, 24.
He grew up with a father who had had severe abuse himself and suffered, apparently, from chemical imbalances, which caused him to have terrible rages and mood swings, and he was violent and so on.
And the mother did nothing, in effect, did nothing fundamentally to protect her children from this danger.
That's something that I've just never really been able to understand.
But we can talk about that another time.
And he has defood recently because he just did not have any luck talking to his parents, as I would imagine.
It would be almost impossible to have any luck talking to his parents about this kind of stuff, about what happened when he was younger and the fear and the rage and the danger, the physical danger, and how his mother would not only...
Lean upon him emotionally in a horrible way.
And the number of children who are used as sucking chest wound gauze strips and morphine around the world is just too numerous and too horrible to contemplate without becoming thoroughly depressed.
But the number of parents who turn to their children, as we were listening to and the gentleman who talked about his history on last Friday's Ask a Therapist No.
13, The number of parents who lean on their children, particularly moms, though it's sometimes as fathers as well, who suck their children dry emotionally and give them, lean on them and tell them their problems.
And there's that Susan Myers daughter.
They have the same kind of thing in Desperate Housewives to a much smaller degree.
But of course, it's considered to be kind of cute and funny that the daughter is the mom and the mom is the daughter.
And nothing, nothing inappropriate about that, of course.
So, that's sort of a brief history that he was supposed to go in and calm his father down while his mother hid out when he was very, very young.
Put into these absolutely impossible, dad-wrangling kinds of sessions that were incredibly destructive and placed an enormous amount of burden upon a child who is...
I mean, children can adapt to anything, but so what?
We can adapt to living in a room that's two by two, but why should we?
We can adapt to living on 1200 calories a day, but why should we?
So let's have a chat about what is going on, in my opinion, what is going on in this letter.
So the first thing that we've got is the standard parental plea, because he has not been returning phone calls or emails.
We have the standard parental plea of, what do you want me to do?
I'm helpless. I'm helpless.
What do you want me to do?
What happened? I don't know what happened.
What did you want me to do? What can I do?
Which is...
It's terrifying for a child, of course, and fundamentally incredibly passive-aggressive.
I mean, it's most enraging, and I don't think I'm projecting, but you can certainly let me know if you think I am.
It's incredibly enraging when somebody has done you great harm in your life, and you have talked to them about it, and they have nodded, and they have understood, and this gentleman has tried to bring this up, has brought it up with his family.
So, when you have been in this situation where you have told somebody, you did X, Y, and Z, which was incredibly destructive for me, and very, very painful, and so on, and so on, and so on.
And the person sort of nods, and then later on, when you have not had any luck trying to talk to them, they then say, but I have no idea what's wrong.
I have no idea what's wrong.
So, imagine if you're some wife and your husband kicks you in the teeth every week for 20 years.
And then you say, I really am not happy with you kicking me in the teeth.
In fact, I've hated it all for these 20 years.
It is an absolutely terrible and wrong thing to do.
I really am disgusted by what you have done, and I don't want to have anything to do with you anymore.
And that's not how the conversation goes, at least not with this gentleman.
You try. You try to have the conversation about virtue and about all these sorts of things and about consistency and integrity and so on.
And you see if there's remorse.
You see if there's understanding. You see if there's any of these good things.
You see if there's receptivity to the basic emotional and moral reality that you lived through as a child.
And the husband, and it's the other wife, you get your teeth kicked every week for 20 years.
And then you say to your husband, the issue that I have is that you kicked me in the teeth for 20 years.
And the husband denies it, and the husband evades it, and the husband says, well, I was just trying to do some cosmetic dentistry, and the husband says, well, I have a twitch in my knee, and you just happened to be kneeling down in front of my foot for 20 years, and just denies, denies, denies.
Or says, well, sure, I did kick you in the teeth for 20 years, but that's made you into the wonderful person that you are.
We'll get to that sickness a little later.
I am that which has not killed you, which has made you stronger, so you should thank me.
I have been the personal trainer of your hardened and calloused soul.
And the husband, you're telling your husband this, and then he doesn't listen, and then you say, well, I'm leaving.
Or you leave or whatever. And you've told the husband that being kicked in the teeth for 20 years was a bad thing for you.
This is horrible and repulsive and disgusting and brutal and all these kinds of things.
Whatever it is. It could be more gentle than that.
that, but basically you have made it very clear what you dislike, what you have a problem with.
And you then don't call.
Maybe it's your ex-husband or whatever.
You don't call your husband for a month.
And then you get an email.
Which says, I don't know why you're not calling me.
I'm not feeling well.
I've got a twinge in my left leg.
And I think I'm going to have to go and see the doctor.
And I want you to come and help me to go to the doctor and to take care of me if I get sick and to do my laundry and my washing up and I want you to come and re-roof my roof and my lawn needs mowing and my garden gnomes need polishing and my hose need refinishing and I need you to come and do all of this.
And I know other ex-wives who've been kicked in the...
Actually, I wouldn't even say that, right?
I know lots of wives and ex-wives who take care of their husbands, and that's a good thing, and they rise above the past, and they're good ex-wives, and they take care of their husbands.
Right. And then at the end of it he says, I don't know what I've done.
I don't know what I've done.
Why you're so upset? Why you're not talking to me?
I don't know what the matter is.
Tell me what to do and I'll do it.
Whatever you need me to do, I will be and do that.
Do you see the real leprous moral sickness that is at the core of this?
And you say to someone, you kicked me in the teeth for 20 years.
You destroyed my childhood.
You terrified me.
You threw me to the wolves. You betrayed me at every turn.
You robbed me of my innocence.
You infected my soul with terror and insecurity and uncertainty and you have made all of my adult relationships horrendously difficult and I've had to pay thousands or tens of thousands of dollars in therapy to attempt to repair some of the damage that you have done when you had custodianship of me.
And you say that and then the next day they call as if nothing happened.
And then when you don't call them back, they get basically upset with you because you're doing a bad, bad thing.
Oh, my brothers and my sisters, can you see this?
Can you see this?
can you look at it and not rend your heart with anger and loss?
A man takes a woman on a date...
He gets her drunk and he rapes her savagely.
The next day he calls her and says, Hey, you want to go to the movies again?
And she's sobbing and she's in the hospital.
And then he sends her an email and she doesn't reply to it.
And the next day after that he says, Well, what's going on?
I don't know why you're not returning my phone calls or my emails.
After she said, well, you raped me.
I want to have nothing to do with you.
I don't know what the issue is.
You tell me what I need to do, and I'll do it.
But I got a twinge in my side, and I think I'm going to go and see the doctor.
I need you to come and help me.
I need you to do... Do you see the squelching, savage, moral horror at the core of this interaction?
The chilling, greedy, narcissistic, sociopathic, sadistic, self-involved, entitled, quicksand of moral filth.
You destroyed my childhood.
I told you that you destroyed my childhood.
And then you want me to do things for you and have no idea why I have a problem.
So that's the first aspect of this.
Absolutely fetid, fetid email.
Now, the second part, or the second aspect of it, is just a little bit more complicated, and I hope that I can try and do it some kind of justice, but it's right at the edge of what I'm able to communicate, so I'll do my best.
best.
It would be better with a blackboard and chess pieces, but the driving is already scary enough for some of my listeners, so we shan't take that approach.
Now, what happens with this entirely convoluted kind of communication when When you sort of strip it down to its bare essentials.
There is an incredible maneuvering to get...
This listener, Bab, to get him to feel that he is doing something wrong without identifying any moral standards.
This is a very, very subtle and sophisticated thing.
It really comes out of organized religion or other kinds of religion.
But it's, I think, quite important to understand what's going on here in this subterranean method.
The methodology for invoking guilt in other people is really quite simple, but how it manifests is extraordinarily complicated.
You get them to believe that they're doing something wrong, but you never make a statement of principle.
This is why you're a bad son, you're a bad daughter is so popular, because it's not universal and it's not reciprocal.
But people will always try to tell you that you're doing something that is wrong, but they will never ever state the principle by which they come to that conclusion.
In fact, they will avoid it.
And what they will use is examples of other people, but they still will never distill it to a principle.
So this gentleman's absolutely wretched witch of a sister, who we talked about in Ask a Therapist 13, Who said that people care about each other, that's what they do, and caring is good, and you're bad for not caring.
But the fact that she's not caring, which would be the principle, and the fact that the parents did quite the opposite of caring, but were rather attacked.
She can't say it is good to care for people in an abstract and absolute sense.
Everybody's just absolutist because they're enraged and bullying.
But people will never give you the principles by which they deduce that you are a nasty, evil, mean human being.
So, first and foremost, there is incomprehension.
And some of this incomprehension, I talked about it with this listener last night, is the responsibility of the listener.
So Bob would say, oh, you know, I'm glad you called.
Because he knew that that's what his mom wanted to hear.
And it was just easier to hear.
So she kind of used her historical authority to bully him into saying, I'm so glad you called, and then takes it as a voluntary absolute, and then says, well, I had no idea that you didn't like my phone calls.
How could I know?
So, I mean, that's a little bit more convoluted, but of course it wasn't volunteered.
It was something like, are you happy I called?
Huh? Yeah.
Well, I had no idea you weren't happy I called, and so on.
So, the grandmom is sick, and the threat of cancer is sort of floating out.
And this, of course, is designed to evoke sentimentality, right?
To evoke sentimentality in the part of Bob so that, you know, the crisis, let us unite because there are trials afoot and there are problems and trials afoot.
We must unite as a family.
We must put aside our petty differences and our histories and we must come together to help the person who is in need and who is not well and blah-de-blah-de-blah.
In other words, we have value to you now because we are needy.
We have value to you now because we need something from you.
And if you don't provide it, you're a bad person.
So we need something from you.
If you don't provide it to us, you are a bad person.
And the bad person, remember, is universal.
It's not just, I think you're green, I think you're mean, you are green eggs and ham.
It is a universal absolute.
But you'll notice, of course, that there's no mention of any kind of principle here, nor any invocation of it to the negative, to the detriment of the person who's putting it forward.
So, your grandmom needs something.
Now she has value to you because she needs something, and you should provide that which she needs.
But, of course, if it were a universal principle, then it would be bad to not provide what people need when they're helpless and dependent upon you.
Let's just say that is the rule.
I mean, whatever, I'm not saying it is a rule, but let's just say that is the rule by which inattention to your grandmother's illness might cause you to be condemned.
Your grandmother needs you, and you're not giving her anything.
You're not treating her with love and respect and affection, and that makes you a bad person.
So, when family members are dependent upon you and you do not treat them well, then you are a bad person, right?
But of course, if that principle is applied universally, who is more at fault?
The mother who abused her child, the father who abuses her child, his child, or...
The grandson who, when staring up the filthy black and bloody moor of his family history, decides that he doesn't want to have anything more to do with this sinew and blood-soaked merry-go-round of eternal history and reoccurrence of brutality.
Who is the one who has violated the moral principle more that those who need things from you should have those things provided by you?
The mother who brutalizes her child, who actively and sadistically brutalizes her child, or the father who does such things, or the mother who exposes the child to extraordinary danger with a raging and fearful man, a terrifying man. Surely, if not providing people what they need is bad, then actively hurting people is worse.
I think we can go that far with some degree of certainty and some degree of safety, I would say.
That would be a reasonable thing, I think, to approach.
But that principle can't be invoked.
The fact that when you were a child and you needed things from your parents, like love and security and integrity and virtue and curiosity and all those kinds of things, the fact that those things weren't provided to you makes your parents a million times worse than you not caring that much about your grandmother's illness, or if you do care, not getting sucked into family stuff in that regard.
And I'm not doing this justice, and I wish that there was a way that I could, but I just want you to kind of understand that whatever is being proposed as a moral rule that is designed to make you feel bad needs to be universalized and reversed.
What is worse, raping a woman, or, if you are the victim of a rape, not going to help your rapist re-shingle his roof?
This is a very important question.
Very, very important question.
Very fundamental to the filthy falsehoods of a lot of families, if not most families.
So you get raped by a woman.
Sorry, you get raped by a man.
That man then calls you up and says, I need help retiling my roof.
And you don't want to do it.
Are you a bad person?
Are you? Of course not.
Of course not. The act of instigation of cruelty, of abuse, of brutality, is the moral evil.
Refusing or refraining from providing relief, assistance, money, time, resources, either financial or emotional, to those who have abused you, is not abuse!
Is not evil!
Not going to re-shingle the roof of your rapist is not the most fundamental moral crime in the universe.
Hurting children is the most fundamental moral crime in the universe because it is the crime from which all other crimes spring.
So when you defoo and your parents, they phone you up and they say, your grandmother is sick, you say, good luck with that.
When your rapist says, my roof is leaking and the wind is howling.
Kids are crying. Guys, the streets are so cold.
Sheets are so cold.
Where the sheets have no name.
You say, what's it got to do with me?
I'm a victim here. I don't praise and pay abusers.
I don't pay them with time.
I don't pay them with resources.
I don't pay them with money.
I don't pay them with energy.
I don't pay them with advice.
You're all goddamn lucky I don't get you thrown in jail.
That's my gift to you, and of course that's my gift to my mother.
not getting her thrown in jail.
That's my gift.
That, and you may want to get your parents thrown in jail, That's a different matter. I'm not saying that's a personal choice.
But my gift is leaving you be.
And that's a hell of a lot to expect from someone.
But I'm not going to come and re-shingle your goddamn roof.
You people that I barely survived.
I am not going to come over and stuff your fucking turkeys and clean up your basement and mow your fucking lawn.
Get lost. Now, there's another aspect to this email that I think is worth just mentioning for a few minutes.
Well, the comparison to the brother and how wonderful the brother is and how the brother has let go of the past and how the brother has risen above the past and is now doing good and moral things as a parent because he has overcome the past.
Now, those who do not overcome the past are bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad to the bone.
But again, here we have a very fascinating moral approach.
A very fascinating moral approach.
And let me tell you a little about it.
I'm sure you've got it, so I'll keep it brief, but a very fascinating moral approach.
So, let's say that, Bob, you are a really bad son who can't get over the past, who can't learn to forgive, and who is taking out You are abusing your parents because you can't get over the past and this results in you abusing people who are helpless and dependent upon you and who need you and this and that and the other.
And that makes you a very bad person.
Makes you a very bad person. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.
Well, you know this, right?
You know this deep down.
This is why it's so enraging because it's so manipulative, so transparently manipulative once you see it.
But it's hard to see it because we're never taught or trained to see it.
But this is the moral.
The moral is that if you do not let go of the past, if you take out the pain of the past on the people who love you in the present, then you are a very bad person.
Then you are a very bad person.
And let's say you are. Let's say you are doing just that.
You're not, but let's say that you are.
Let's accept the premise. Accept the premise.
What have we got to lose? The thing falls apart anyway.
The premise is false. As I said before, you can accept 99 of the 100 syllogisms.
It's still going to fall apart on the 100th one.
It doesn't matter what you accept. Accept any premise you want.
If it's bullshit to begin with, it'll be bullshit at the end.
So you say, yeah, I guess I am abusing my parents.
I'm not returning their phone calls.
I'm not going to go with grandma to the hospital.
And I'm a mean, nasty person.
And I'm not willing to forgive and forget and let go of the past and act well in the present despite abuse in the past.
Me bad. Fine.
Accept it. So what? No problemo.
Because your parents sure as...
I'll try and keep my swearing down.
Your parents, sure as Sherlock, did not overcome their past and refrain from inflicting pain upon those who were helpless and dependent upon them, i.e.
you. Your parents, sure as hell, did not overcome their past and refrain from hurting people in the present.
So by what conceivable standard could your parents say that letting go of the past is a good thing and not attacking people in the present because you were hurt in the past is a good thing when they screwed the hell out of you with your childhood?
Because they never got over their past and inflicted their histories on you in the present.
Do you see the principle that any time you appeal to a principle when you're corrupt it goes off in your hand?
They're going to aim at you and you just stand there.
There's no bullet that's coming out.
out, it just goes off in their head, just blows up in their head.
They say, you must rise above the past and You must rise above the pain of the past.
You must learn to forgive. You must be gentle and you must be gracious to those in the present.
But of course, you're, I do believe, still younger people.
Younger than they were when they began or continued to attack you as a child.
You are still younger than they are.
They say, Bob, you must get over the past.
You must get over the past. You must let go.
You must forgive. You must not inflict any of the past on the present.
Is that what they did at your age and older and older and older and older?
Did they do that? Did they?
I don't think they did. I don't think they quite managed that.
I don't think they quite Manage to pull that one off.
And if it is wrong to inflict pain upon others in the present because of the brutalities of the past, that you will not let go of and forgive and move beyond this and that, then who is worse?
The person who doesn't return his parents' phone calls or the parent who actively tortures and terrifies a child?
Who's worse? By the standard.
By the standard that they are imposing.
Who is worse? Who is worse?
Who is worse? Do you see what it is that I'm talking about?
So let's deal with the last part, and then, by God, I need to go and take a nice, hot, salty shower.
The last part is the statement, we are who we are because of whatever we have gone through.
Or, to be more precise, as the mother puts it, all that we experience brought us to the people we are.
This is the adult equivalent of that really annoying slacker phrase.
It's all good. It's all good.
Yeah. All that we have experienced has brought us to who we are.
There are no bad experiences.
There are no bad experiences.
Good experiences make you happy.
Bad experiences give you wisdom and depth that make you stronger and better.
So, there's really no point being upset about your past, Bob, because the past has made you who you are, and obviously you like yourself.
Obviously you're happy with yourself, and this is the trap, right?
If somebody says, I don't like myself because my experiences have warped and hurt me, then they say, well, it's not good to not like yourself.
You should love yourself, right?
That's the trap. And if you say, I do love myself and I am proud of myself, then they say, well, I can't have done everything wrong then, because obviously the combination of things that you experienced has produced in you a happy adulthood.
I certainly get that. I used to get that, and I still occasionally do.
Well, your mom kind of done everything wrong, because look how you turned out.
Yeah, that's great.
So... This is an absolutely fantastic thing that Yuram is putting in here.
Again, enormously, enormously instructive if you look at it with the right lens.
Or rather, with no lens.
Just look at it straight.
This is the contradiction.
If the principle is that nothing bad can ever happen to you because what happens to you that's, quote, bad enriches and deepens your experience, then by God you are enriching your parents' experience by not calling them back.
Are you not? By God, you are making them better and stronger and wiser people by causing them pain, aren't you?
They should be thanking you for the pain that you are inflicting upon them because, don't you know, pain just makes you a deeper and witcher and riser and better person.
Oh, but it would seem that the pain is only an enriching experience when other people feel it.
Pain, you see, is only good and makes you into a better and wiser and richer and deeper human being when it is inflicted upon you.
When the pain is actually inflicted upon them, it doesn't seem to go over quite as well.
It doesn't seem to feel like enriching.
They're not thanking you, saying, My God, I'm so glad that you're not calling me back.
It is hurting me so much that I can feel myself growing like a geyser.
I don't think that they're saying that.
I think they're blaming you for hurting them.
I think that they're angry at you for hurting them.
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