All Episodes
Previous Next
May 25, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
41:08
770 Abuse and Restitution

A listener's email to an old victim

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Good afternoon everybody hope you're doing well.
It's Steph. It is...
Oh, you know what?
I didn't even get this right when I was working, so what chance do I have now that I'm working from home and on the road?
So thanks for joining in.
Thanks for listening to the conversation.
I humbly submit the most important conversation in the world at the moment, but that could just be me.
So... The gentleman has kindly allowed me...
To podcast on his letter that he has written, his writing to his cousin.
Now this came about because...
Hi.
How does one get out of here?
Oh, where do you want to get to?
Just anywhere out of this little area.
I can't get out of here. Really? How long have you been here?
A couple of days? I keep coming to a dead end.
Go straight to the end. Yeah.
Then take a left and just keep going.
Then take a right where the school is.
Take another left. It'll get you to Mavis.
Okay, great. Okay, good luck.
Thank you very much. Sure. All right.
Mental note. Forget to edit that out.
Anyway, so...
What happened was he said, you know, he's been trying to debate his cousin, who's younger than he is, which we'll figure later.
He's been trying to debate his cousin, and he hasn't been having much luck.
No luck with the cousinly debating.
And so he's been sort of anxious and nervous whenever he's been trying to debate his cousin on libertarian anarcho-capitalist issues and so on.
He did mention at one point that he was physically and verbally abusive towards his cousin when they were younger.
And I naturally and inevitably jumped all over that in a billowy kind of gentle way and said that the reason that you're feeling, in my opinion, the reason that you're feeling nervous and tense and upset and this and that,
when you talk with your cousin, Is that it's sort of weird to say to somebody, I am now anti-violence, because violence is wrong, without acknowledging the fact that you were pro-violence in the past, with regards, and specifically to him, right?
You inflicted violence, both verbal and physical abuse, anyway, on your cousin.
Said result of which, and it's probably not just this, but more than this, that this cousin is now keen on becoming a Marine and, I guess, formalizing and institutionalizing his own desire to reproduce the violence he experienced at the hands of his family on others.
So, I said, you know, you kind of need to live your values, right?
I mean, the virtue, the first virtue is truth, right?
The first virtue is truth, which is honesty about yourself and about others.
And about your history and about what you've done and what you're responsible for and what you're not responsible for.
The first virtue. The virtue that is needed for any other virtue to emerge.
The first virtue is always honesty.
And so... When you have taken a dominant position with somebody in the past, like an abusively dominant position with somebody in the past, oh my friends, it is really really hard to turn that around.
It is really really hard to turn that around and to become an authority without that person reacting to you as if you were continuing the misuse of authority that you had in the past with that person.
Gosh, what a long and bad. Hey, remember when I used to be really good at podcasting?
That was fun. Let me try that again.
Dr. Phil's kid has written a good book.
I have never read it, but I like the idea of it.
And the idea behind the book is sort of like this.
You don't walk into your teenage kid's room and say, Are you doing drugs?
Tell me all about your friends.
Tell me what's going on. You don't start with the big topics in these kinds of situations.
You don't sort of jump in and start talking about all the biggie issues.
The biggie issues naturally arise out of talking about the smaller issues.
You know, what movies do you like?
What did you do this weekend? Blah blah blah.
When you stay in conversation with people in a positive sense about the smaller issues, the bigger issues will just come up of their own accord.
But you can't, I guess, sort of inflict bigger issues on people.
I saw... Shrek 3, which sadly is not very good, but there's two funny bits in it.
One with the frog eating the fly, which you'll know if you see it, and the second is Shrek is trying to talk to a teenage kid.
And he's trying to use sort of hip lingo to communicate with this kid, right?
And fo-shizzy and things like that.
And the kid runs away to somebody saying, help, help!
There's a monster who's trying to relate to me.
Which I think is really, that's pretty funny.
And that is something that is really important when you are talking with people.
You can't start with the big issues, particularly if you've had a difficult past.
And particularly if those big issues directly contradict your prior behavior to them.
And this guy was aware of this when I posted that response.
Not quite as long-winded as this, but hey.
And he said, well, I'm aware of that.
So what I've done is I've sent him or I've got an email sort of all set up.
So I'll read this and then we can talk a little bit about it in my anal and nitpicking kind of approach.
So he says, Dear Cousin, I wanted to revisit some things about the conversation we had last night.
First of all and most important is why I felt nervous and anxious.
The trouble I have trying to discuss philosophy and the immorality of violence with you comes from the fact that I used violence against you for many years.
I verbally, physically and psychologically violated you and my acts were immoral.
I remember how I would swear and you would ask the perfectly reasonable question, why do you swear so much?
I didn't have a real justification for it.
I would just use bullshit rationalizations and attack you.
I remember how you would sit behind me on the floor in silence, and if you dared do, well, basically anything, I would just scream at you.
And, of course, I remember hitting you.
I was cold.
I was unfeeling.
I was malicious.
I knew that what I was doing was wrong, as evidenced by the fact that I would only do the stuff behind closed doors when the rest of the family wasn't around.
I was merely normalizing the abuses in my own life and projecting my anger, humiliation, rage onto you, In order to normalize being bullied, I became a bully, and not only towards you.
I was young, and I didn't have the appropriate means to discover and acknowledge this, but now I do, and I must.
I feel this subtext of distance and forced relations has existed in our relationship for a while.
Even though I stopped being so hard on you...
There has always been a bit of unease.
Whenever I look at you, whenever I think of you, I think of the horrible things I have done.
I do not think like that anymore, but it will always haunt me that I did things like that.
Being a good person is very important to me and I cannot tackle current issues of violence if I do not confront the past.
Because of the previous nature of our relationship, you have no obligation to see me or talk to me or anything.
It is only because of your good graces that I should be allowed to speak to you.
The thing when discussing philosophy is that Whenever you invoke a moral principle, you must apply it universally, not only to politics or economics, but your personal life as well.
If I say soldiers initiating force against someone is wrong, then I must own up to immoral things I have done in the past.
Cousin, I am sorry.
This all being said, I now have more time to address certain arguments in our conversation.
One of your arguments is that it is immoral to stand by and let other people get killed.
Okay, so then... Okay, but we'll go a little further, and then I'll talk about this.
I would argue that, though this sounds great rhetorically, it has several flaws.
To start, it is a positive moral prescription, and it fails the coma test.
The coma test is, a person in a coma cannot act immorally, for they do not have the capacity to act it in a moral or moral fashion.
If you put a moral proposition forward, and the person in a coma is by principle found immoral, then that proposition is invalid.
Okay? If it is moral to prevent another person from being killed, then it is immoral to not prevent another person from being killed.
This means that whenever I am not actively preventing somebody else from being killed, I am immoral.
A person in a coma is acting immorally because they are not stopping people from getting killed.
To put this to another example, if I say that it is moral to paint walls, then not painting walls is immoral.
And then whenever I am not painting walls, I am being immoral.
This is why you cannot prescribe positive obligations to morality.
To apply the coma principle again.
The principle of stealing is wrong says that taking another person's property without consent is immoral.
A person in a coma is not stealing and passes the test.
So, anyway, I mean, you've heard all those arguments before.
But, and it's a good letter and it's on the boards and it's a continuation of arguments we've had before.
So he said, finally he ends up by saying, I see a lot of 18-year-old me in you.
I remember how I seized with hatred after 9-11 and wanted vengeance.
I remember supporting the war in Afghanistan and in Iraq.
I remember how I considered becoming a Marine.
I remember how I would go to church on the weekends and pray for a better world.
But I've come to see the irrationality of certain positions that I held about everything from war, politics, theology and my personal life.
We are both passionate people, and I think we both want to see a world that is a better place for everybody.
I hope, at the end, we both have a clearer picture of how this can be achieved and what we as individuals can do to bring positive changes about.
I look forward to hearing back from you, and thank you for reading.
So, first, the good.
And there's considerable good, in my opinion, in this letter.
The good is that, you know, there is an acknowledgement of past wrongs, that it was not the fault of the person.
It's not explicit, but implicit that it was not the fault of the cousin who was being abused, and there is a sort of no-holds-barred admission of immorality whatsoever.
So there's good stuff there, right?
I mean, it's upfront, it's blunt, it's open, and so on.
So, you know, kudos from that standpoint.
That's fine, fine stuff.
So that's the good side of things.
Now, apologizing is a real art form.
And for me, it was hard to sort of get the hang of it.
So this is just sort of my opinion.
I mean, if you find that this works beautifully, then so what?
What the hell do I know?
But this is sort of what I have learned about it.
First of all, If you abuse someone for many years, an apology is not something that you get out of the way to get on to other things.
And I'm not saying that's your conscious intention, but that's how I read it, trying to put myself in the shoes of somebody who might be on the receiving end of this and just sort of giving you the feedback as I see it.
An apology is not something that you say, okay, well now that's out of the way, let me get on to the main thrust of what it is that I want to say.
That's not really giving much chance for the other person to provide feedback, right?
So, years of abuse is not going to be undone by two paragraphs of...
Saying that you did bad things.
I think that there's a reason that you're putting this in an email, right?
And not doing it face-to-face.
And face-to-face is the best way to apologize, for sure.
Email is, I don't know, email is a really bad, for me, I think, is a really bad medium for any kind of emotionally charged conversations.
You can't read the other person.
You don't know what effect your words are having on the other person, so it's really, really tough to have any kind of deep or emotional conversation via email, particularly those in which the other person's response is paramount, right? It's the most important thing.
The most important thing here, as it is the case with every apology, right?
Is not your apology, but his response, right?
Like, if you're putting a product out to market, the quality of the product is less relevant than the reception of the market, right?
Putting something out there is only judged...
You can only really judge the value of what's put out there by people's response to it.
Now, it's not as simple as that, right?
People prefer... Broken people prefer propaganda to truth, but...
Certainly, if you're trying to apologize to someone, the key thing is not that you apologize.
The key thing is that the other person has a chance or accepts or receives that apology in the spirit in which it is intended.
Sorry, I used to be concise.
I don't know if it's that I'm not in the car, but maybe I never was.
Maybe I'm just noticing it now. The quality of the apology is It's whether the other person really gets the apology, really understands the apology, really feels apologized too, and whether there is emotional release.
And it's funny, I just, I remember, I haven't thought about this in quite some time.
When I was about 21, my father came from Africa for my brother's wedding.
And He then came to stay with me for a couple of days in my apartment in Montreal, where I was attending the National Theatre School.
And we took a bus from Toronto to Montreal.
It was about a six-hour trip.
And I didn't have a car.
I was not destined to have another car for about a decade.
I have a car, ever, for about another decade.
So my father took this time...
To tell me the story of his life, this six-hour trip.
And I was not very far along the road of self-knowledge at this point at all.
And I was really only...
I was a little bit beyond baby steps, but not far beyond.
I'd only been working on it for about...
I guess, Psychology of Self-Esteem, I read when I was about a year.
I was about a year into it, so...
Actually, no, let's just say baby steps.
That's probably quite accurate.
Particularly for me, since I didn't have a clear roadmap.
But... He was talking to me about his life.
And when I was 16, I went to spend, I don't know, four months or so in Africa with him.
And we didn't connect at all, right?
We just couldn't talk at all.
And I felt just kind of weird and lonely the whole time.
Not very consciously, but it was definitely there.
And then when we were on this bus trip from Toronto to Montreal...
He told me that when I was 16, which I guess was about six years previously, five years, four years, no, six years, good lord, what math skills, he was so depressed that he couldn't really connect with me when I was on that trip.
And he didn't apologize, he's nowhere near that advanced, but...
I was very emotional about this, right?
Just recognizing that it wasn't because I wasn't interesting to him as a son, but rather that he was so catastrophically depressed that he had no resources, as he calls it, no resources available to connect with me or to ask me questions or whatever.
And of course, it's kind of hard to ask questions of a son that you left with an abusive mother, right?
Because... The truth ain't gonna feel too good, right?
So, he wasn't trying to apologize, but there was a real connection, and of course, he missed that connection completely, but at least that was a connection for me, which gave me some relief about that aspect of my past.
So... I have the feeling, and no way I can prove this or anything, but I have the feeling that the apology is something that you feel needs to be sort of checked off before you move on to making the argument from morality.
And I don't think that's going to work.
I really don't think that...
I mean, you can send the letter and let me know what you think, but I'm pretty sure that's not going to work.
Because it does have that feeling that...
That it's, okay, well, check that off now.
Let's move on to the important stuff.
Well, and you're not doing it face-to-face, right?
And you're not doing it even over the phone, right?
You're doing it in a venue or in a medium, an email, where your cuz doesn't have a voice.
You don't get to read his response.
You don't get to listen to him, hear about his experiences.
And there's a reason, right, that you would rather do it by email.
And the reason you'd rather do it by email is that empathy for him is going to be very, very painful for you.
Real empathy for him is going to be very, very painful for you.
I only really saw this, and I think I've mentioned this once before, but I've only seen this once with my brother.
So, shortly after I started learning about myself and the value of introspection and so on, I sat down with my brother when I was about 21 to talk about her pasts.
And... He just, I mean, it's the only time I've ever seen this happen with someone.
He absolutely, completely and totally burst into tears, just sobbed and couldn't even breathe about his abuses in the past.
And, you know, I knew that what I was doing was wrong.
I just wasn't able to stop myself, he said, blah, blah, blah.
And it was extraordinarily not satisfying for me, right?
Because I sort of sat down with him and said, you know, if we're going to live together as we were living together at the time, we need to.
Have a talk about this and we need to sort this stuff out, right?
This is not something that we can just brush under the rug anymore.
And what happened was he totally exploded into tears and...
I felt, and so completely overwhelmed, anything that I might have said, because, you know, basically, I mean, I didn't exactly comfort him, but there really wasn't much talking to someone who couldn't even breathe because he was crying so hard.
And it never came up again, right?
I mean, that conversation just kind of tapered off.
He went out, and we never talked about it again, right?
So I guess maybe he had some form of relief or release, but this is, of course, the living hell that's on the inside of every abuser, whether they have...
Like, the moment that they know that it's wrong, but they continue to do it anyway, as you point out.
The two things, I think, that are missing, maybe three, from this, other than the procedural things of, like, do this face-to-face, don't send it in an email, and don't immediately start lecturing.
And don't, you know, later on you call them a kid, well, don't do that, of course, right?
I mean, that's a very positional or authoritarian way to approach someone that you're trying to make an equal, right?
The other thing, too, is that If this person complained about you swearing, your cousin, and you said you just came up with bullshit rationalizations, well...
That's swearing, right? I mean, there's kind of a disconnect there, which is, I think, a little bit...
I totally sympathize and empathize with, but it's kind of running through the letter that you're sending.
So the couple of things I think that are missing, which is the great mystery for me, I've never had an answer to this.
I don't know how many people I've asked over the years who have reported being verbally or physically abusive to younger children, is why?
Why? Why?
Why? This is the great mystery for me, and I can't figure it out.
I know that I write about sadists, and I have a good sort of procedural understanding of sadism, but I still don't even remotely get what the pleasure is.
What the pleasure is.
What is... Like, is it that you stave off a feeling that feels even worse by abusing another kid?
Is it that you feel really good abusing...
Like, what is the emotional motive?
What is the motive?
What is occurring for people in that moment where they decide to abuse someone?
Is it self-hatred? What does that feel like?
Is it...
Like, people, they say stuff and...
You say the same stuff, and I heard the same stuff from the gentleman that I had the conversation with, who had the problems with my sort of turnabout in his threads, Maxim.
He said, and it's what people say, right?
I'm so sorry, let me just find this piece of text here.
You say that, um, I was merely normalizing the abuses in my own life and projecting my anger, humiliation, and rage onto you.
In order to normalize being bullied, I became a bully, blah blah blah.
But, but why?
Why? And of course I'm passionately attached to this because this was a large part of my own suffering as a child, which I've never had an answer to.
Why? Why?
I mean, I also was abused.
And not just by one person, but by many people, right?
Because I was the youngest in the family.
But I didn't turn around and start abusing others.
I've never done it. And I didn't start picking on children in the playground and blah, blah, blah.
I don't know why.
What is the difference? What is the difference?
I mean, maybe I have this fantasy about the protective older brother.
I'm not saying all older brothers are like this, but maybe I have this fantasy of the protector, the older brother who's the protector.
I've had fantasies about my brother and I sort of weeping and understanding and letting go of the past and really recognizing that we were two people in a concentration camp.
It's never going to happen. It's just a fantasy.
But I still don't understand the why.
I don't understand the causality.
Because if the causality for abusing a younger child is abuse, then logically the youngest child should be the biggest abuser of them all.
We all go to school.
We all have younger kids around us that we can attack and undermine and criticize and humiliate.
We all have access to even younger children.
You can go kick a baby if you want.
The causality that is put forward by the abusers is always while I was abused.
But that cannot logically be the causality.
That cannot be the causal factor.
It's impossible. It's impossible for that to be the causal factor.
If abuse is the catalyst for abusing younger children, Then the youngest children who are abused should themselves be the greatest abusers but it's almost never the case.
You could say maybe it's access and so on but that's not the case.
We all have access to younger kids that we can tease and make cry and we can humiliate and we can browbeat and we can exclude and we all have that.
There's always someone's younger brother that we can or some younger kid on the playground that we can push over when we're behind a tree or something or exclude them from some game and we all have this capacity.
So I know that people who are abusers of younger children, when they themselves were children or teenagers, that they say, well, I just was normalizing the abuse.
And of course, that's not a feeling, right?
That's a rationalization. I'm not saying it's incorrect.
I guess I kind of am.
I mean, but it's not the whole story.
It's a necessary but not sufficient criteria for abusing somebody who's weaker than you are.
I mean, people who aren't abused don't end up abusing other kids.
But people who are abused don't always end up abusing younger kids.
So I don't know the difference.
And I've never had an explanation.
And I have some theories as to why, which we won't get into here.
But if you could, just really dig deep.
And let me know, boy, would it ever help me to understand something important about the world and my own history, of course.
I mean, that is...
I mean, to me, that's one of the great mysteries.
One of the greatest mysteries is why do only some kids turn to abusing other kids when they are themselves abused?
And why do other kids who are abused even more or not do so?
Is it always a younger older sibling thing?
Well, it seems to be in general.
But I don't know.
Maybe there's no consistent person for the younger sibling to project his or her vulnerable side onto.
But I don't know. I mean, there are pets.
Why don't the younger siblings end up abusing the pets?
That seems kind of rare too. Anyway, I don't know.
I don't know what the answer is.
But maybe the people who are out there who I've had these conversations with could really dig deep and, boy, would you ever be doing a great service.
Not just to the people that you have abused in the past, but I would say to yourselves in the future, just if you could.
I just am on my knees, really, honestly, totally begging to find out what this is.
I don't know because I can't reproduce the emotional experience.
I can't imagine myself into that skin.
So, if you could, boy, it would just be wonderful to know what is the motive, what is the cause, what happens, what is the satisfaction, what is the good stuff.
I mean, I was on the balcony with a friend of mine when I was like 12, and I was trying to pull something off my bike, my hand slipped and I elbowed him in the forehead, and he was crying.
Oh my god, I felt like beyond terrible.
Did anything I could do to sort of try and make him feel better.
I just don't understand the difference.
I really genuinely... I'm not trying to sort of self-aggrandize here because it could be totally sibling-related, like birth order-related.
But, boy, I just can't understand the feeling that would drive you towards that.
So, I think that's what you need to get to.
That's where you need to get to.
Because saying... Saying, well, it's just because I was abused, that's why, like, if you say the causal factor was that I was abused, that I was, there's no ownership in that, right?
Which is contradicted by the fact that you openly state, and admirably so, that you did know that it was wrong because you hid it.
So it's not enough of an explanation, I think.
To provide security. Like, if you want a relationship with this person that you have abused, then you need to find some way to make them understand that you are now a secure person to open up to and be vulnerable to.
After years of abuse, I don't even know if that's possible.
I don't know if it's possible, after years of abusing someone in their most vulnerable state, whether, you know, two paragraphs and some self-disclosure is going to turn all that around, and then you become someone...
You're rushing that, right?
You're kind of rushing that, and that's important.
Because what it says to me, or at least sort of what I'm getting from my true self response to it, is that this is not a relationship that is going to turn into something safe and secure if you're rushing past this.
Right? I mean, if you have a capacity for sadism, as you clearly do, then how is it that the other person is going to be safe?
Well, as we've talked about before, you need sort of a 10 to 1.
So if you abuse this kid for 5 years, 10 to 1, good stuff to bad stuff.
So if you abuse this kid for 5 years, then you need to spend 50 years being a great person with no hint of sadism in order for that person to be trustful towards you again.
And maybe it's more than 10 to 1 if their first impressions of you when they're a child are that you're sort of sadistic and so on.
So... Even if we knock that down to only 5 to 1, good to bad, we still have a bit of a problem, right?
In that 25 years of uniformly good behavior on your part would lead this person back to a situation where they could trust you, and that's a whole lot longer than two paragraphs in an email.
So, without a doubt, for me, again, I'm not saying this is true, this is just sort of my response, there's a real cover-up here.
There's also no restitution.
There's also no restitution.
And that's not unimportant.
That's not unimportant.
I kind of vaguely got this even in a dim way.
I was in a long-distance relationship with a girl in my early 20s, and I was unfaithful to her.
And of all the mealy-mouthed excuses in the world, it was long-distance, we hadn't seen each other in forever, but of course I should have broken up with her before going out with the...
The new girl. And I was totally wrong and very harmful to her.
And so she was very angry at me and she demanded that I come up, that I take sort of the 18-hour bus ride to come up and see her where she lived.
And I did.
And the reason that I did that was because I sort of felt that she needed to claw at me to be angry, to be upset, to be hurt, to tell me off, to get mad.
And that was sort of my restitution.
If I had said, I'm sorry for this situation, if I had said, I'm sorry, and then said, but I'm not going to come up and let you yell at me, then that's not really being sorry.
If you say, I'm sorry, I did something to wrong you, and of course I did do something to really wrong this person, and I did.
I went up and she kind of yelled at me for three days straight, and I didn't fight back, and I didn't make excuses.
It's just what you got to do, right?
The other person has the right to get angry.
And you really can't do anything to justify what you've done.
You can't blame the other person.
You can't say, well, you were cold to me, or I thought we were broken up, or it was long distance, or whatever, right?
She was good. So, there's no restitution in this sort of area, right?
Restitution for your cousin might be offering to pay for six months of therapy for him.
Right? This is the kind of stuff that I'm talking about when you have really done something to harm someone.
In other words, if you've been physically and mentally abusive to them for many years in their childhood, that's kind of like a significantly bad thing.
That is really like kind of totally a significantly bad thing.
And I'm not trying to be the heavy, and I'm not trying to come down hard on you.
I'm just sort of pointing out that two paragraphs in a let's move on ain't gonna cover it, my brother.
Not going to cover it.
And you know that. And you know that.
I mean, I'm not telling you anything you don't know, right?
That you kind of want to just move on and get back to being the wiser, knowing guy who lectures.
The cousin. Right?
I agree that there's an urgency in this and that this guy is about to throw his soul away by becoming a Marine.
Right? And I understand that urgency, and I'm not saying that, you know, you're a totally bad guy trying to bypass all this, but restitution is key.
Right? If you really get how much you've harmed this person, then you will pay for six months of therapy for this guy.
And you will say, not only will I pay for six months of therapy, I will give you $10,000 if you don't become a Marine until you've completed therapy.
At least six months or whatever, maybe a year.
See, that's restitution.
That's taking responsibility for your actions.
Because if somebody said to me, and this is an internal calculation that everyone can make for themselves, and you can sort of let me know what you think.
If someone said to me, you can have $20,000, or you can have years of being physically and verbally abused as a child, I'd say, oh God, you know?
Whatever I have to do to not be verbally and physically abused as a child, I will take that, right?
So, I'm not going to take...
If you take $20,000, then you also have to take being physically and verbally abused for years as a child.
Well, I wouldn't take the $20,000 if it meant getting verbally abused.
I wouldn't take the $100,000.
I don't know about the $10 million or a bazillion or whatever.
Who knows? It's not really an issue.
But some significant amount of money...
Would indicate that you kind of got that you really hurt this guy, this kid, and you knew that it was wrong.
So when I talk about restitution, that's sort of what I'm talking about.
That you say, look, I'll pay for your therapy.
I can't just give you the money, because you might use it to get to Iraq quicker, I don't know, right?
You know, I would totally pay for your therapy.
I would give you 20,000 bucks if...
I'll set it up as a gift so you don't even have to pay taxes on it if you don't go and become a soldier and become a paid killer and lose your soul forever.
Now, if you're willing to do that, my God, brother, what a magnificent gesture.
I mean, you'll save your soul in the process, right?
And this will free you up.
To love and be loved in the future, and it's a tiny price to pay.
It's a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny price to pay.
I spent $70,000 of after-tax money funding a film for my girlfriend so that she could direct a film and be a director.
And, I mean, this wasn't restitution in a way, but what this was was freedom.
Right? So... For me, being stingy around people that you are in love with or claim to be in love with or whatever is a really bad idea.
Because with generosity comes freedom.
With generosity comes a natural and inevitable result that you can reasonably and justly expect reciprocity.
Right? Oh, sorry, that really did get quite loud as far as the wind went, so I just wanted to turn that off for a sec.
And that's sort of what I mean by this reciprocity thing.
Because my guess is that when I say to you, spend 10 grand on his therapy and give him another 10 grand not to go to Iraq, that that's too much for you.
That that's too much, that you sort of get angry even at the suggestion.
Well, in which case, I don't think you're sorry enough.
Like, genuinely, just my opinion, right?
I don't think that you get it. Like, if somebody were to say to you as an adult, I would give you $20,000 if you switch roles with your cousin and you're the one who gets screamed at for moving and gets beaten up physically for years.
Would you do it? I don't think so.
You'd say, no, keep the 20 grand, thanks.
Whatever amount of money that you would then take to reverse positions, you know, is a reasonable thing to pay.
It's a reasonable thing to pay.
And maybe you can sit down with your family and have a flow-through arrangement where your abusive parents pay you some amount of money and then you pay some to your cousin and you sort of apportion it based on who got abused the most and so on.
I mean, this sort of tongue-in-cheek, but sort of real and reasonable as well.
I gave $20,000 to my brother because he sold all his stocks and I hadn't.
Stock was making a fortune.
What did that give me? That gave me freedom.
For $90,000 that I subsidized bad people with, not to mention the amount of money that I gave to my mother on a monthly basis, $120,000, I bought freedom.
I bought freedom. Because when you're very generous to people, you find out whether they're exploiting you or not.
If you hold back and you're not generous with people, you never find that out.
And that's no good. You really need to find that out.
So, with this woman I was going out with, spent 70 grand to make the film, and she worked hard on it, like, to her credit.
So did I. Spent 70 grand to make this film, and then I asked her to review a novel of mine, and she wouldn't do it.
I mean, when you're generous, you are free.
That's why I say the way out of the cage is in the middle.
When I was generous towards my brother, I got to see how he responded to that generosity.
And what he did was I gave him $20,000 in cash by selling stocks and giving him the profits.
And then when his next round of stocks came out of escrow, he gave them back to me.
They were completely worthless.
And he said, well, now we're even.
So I gave him $20,000. He gave me nothing back.
Nothing! So that's all clear, right?
Then you can leave without regret.
So, yeah, spend the money.
I mean, this is a little bit different.
But it's worth it.
If you really want to help this guy, then really help him.
Don't lecture to him about ethics.
Put some skin in the game.
Offer him some cash for therapy.
Offer to pay him to take a year off from becoming a soldier.
And some good money.
That money's not going to make you happy anyway.
You won't end up being happy if you don't make restitution.
And if you don't want to make restitution, then...
Don't get involved in this guy's life.
Right? If 20 grand or whatever is like too much for you, if you feel that that's not...
Oh my God, that's totally unreasonable.
If paying this kid 20 grand for therapy and to not go and be a soldier is not a reasonable thing for you, then let him go.
Right? Because clearly you're not that interested in restitution.
Right? If you won't pay him...
The money to help save his soul that you would never have taken to reverse positions, then clearly, you know, there's no skin in the game for you.
If you say, here's 10 grand for therapy and I'm going to pay you another 10 grand or 20 grand to not go to Iraq for a year, no strings attached, call me when you're done or any time, but this is my gift to you, it's my way of saying sorry, no strings attached, do what you want.
Then, that's kind of like a wowsie.
How much is someone going to listen to you about ethics after that conversation?
Versus, how much is someone going to listen to you about ethics after two paragraphs and a move on?
How much are they going to get in their gut that you understand responsibility and restitution?
Well... They're really going to get it, right?
They're really going to get it.
So, I would say that this is not a letter to send.
I think that you should figure out how much you're going to pay this kid for what you did to him, this young man.
And if you don't want to pay any money to him or 50 bucks and a gift certificate, right?
If you don't want to pay for his therapy, if you don't want to make right as best you can what you've made wrong, then you really shouldn't be in contact with him, I think.
I mean, this is sort of my opinion.
If you get angry about real restitution for wrongs committed, then you should not be in contact with the person.
And then what you should do is you should spend the money that you were going to give to that kid on your own therapy.
So that you can answer, because it's all about me, you can answer my question as to why people do what they do in these sadistic situations.
So, thank you so much for listening.
I hugely appreciate it. I hope that this has been vaguely helpful.
▲
Export Selection