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March 21, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
42:30
1309 Vengeance Love and the World - Convo

How to save yourself from hatred.

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Time Text
Hello? Hey, how's it going?
Doing alright? How are you?
I'm just fine, thank you.
Can you hear me alright, by the way?
I'm using a makeshift webcam microphone.
I don't have a microphone at the moment.
That's actually pretty good for a webcam mic.
That's great. Cool.
So, love and hate.
Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
As I said the other day in both my post and in my chat with you, I really don't think I've felt this ambivalence since my defu, and it even feels sharper than with my defu, if that makes sense.
Well, the defu is about the past, whereas this is about the future, so it's going to be more intense, in my opinion.
Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's been jolting me, like, throughout my day.
Right. Now, do you mind, I normally do ask you questions, but I was just wondering if I could give two minutes on Context, and then we could take it from there.
Oh, you're cutting out a little?
Oh, sure. Okay, yeah, that's good.
So, yeah, the context, basically what I described in my post?
No, actually, I was going to do context, and then you could take it from there.
Oh, sure. Sorry, I wasn't clear at all about that.
So the love-hate thing is, I mean, obviously there's no easy answer and you're easily an intelligent enough fellow that if there was anything close to an easy answer, you would have figured it all out by now.
But the challenge is that you can't love virtue without hating vice.
So as our love climbs to the stratosphere, our hatred digs to the bowels of the earth.
That is inevitable.
And The only way that I know to assuage that, and the world is more full of vice than it is of virtue.
And by that I mean people's actions versus people's words.
People's words are very close to what you and I would consider virtuous.
Everybody who we're likely to come in contact with would reject violence as the solution to problems, would call child abuse immoral, And so on.
And so in the words, we live in a world of theoretical virtue and empirical vice, right?
Because then the moment you talk to people about the inevitable results of their proclamations of virtue or ask them to put it consistently into practice, they kind of turn on you, right?
So there's that challenge, right?
To get out of the clouds of words And into the empiricism of actions, of what people actually do.
And that is very tough.
Because that actually tends to increase our...
I'm going to use strong words, maybe, but our fear and disgust at the world.
Because people... You know, the hope is that once people know what is good, they'll do what is good.
But the empirical facts of the matter are quite clear.
That people almost become worse...
When they know what virtue is.
Because they have the problem of hypocrisy along with their tendencies towards dishonesty, corruption, vice, and so on.
So the solution, and this of course was the great shock for me, maybe it is for you as well.
The old idea from Socrates onwards is that people act badly because they lack knowledge.
And once we give them that knowledge of The happiness that comes from virtuous action, not just virtuous words.
In fact, virtuous words tend to lead to great unhappiness if not followed up by action.
But once people understand how happy they could be if they act well, then they will, you know, forego their bad behavior and act better.
But the reality, if we just work empirically, which we always try to do, is that people do have the theoretical knowledge about how to act well.
And that only tends to make them more angry and irritable around questions of virtue.
So that was the great shock for me, that educating people about virtue is not going to make them good.
You know, it is not a lack of knowledge that causes people to act badly, but something else.
And that's where I went into, you know, society, relationships, the family, and so on.
So there's that aspect.
The despair that comes from recognizing that vice does not arise from a lack of knowledge, but in fact gets worse.
The more you educate people about the good in general, the more they tend to Behave worse.
I mean, so there's that real challenge, right?
And that's why we've gone deeper into family history and social history and cultural stuff and so on to try and figure that out.
So that's sort of one aspect. And the other one, which I can talk about much more briefly, is that the only thing that I found that gives me some comfort in this realm is the reality that bad people Suffer for being bad, right? And because of that, there's no need for me to get as angry, if that makes any sense.
Because they're being punished themselves, right?
Right, right, right. Like, if you don't believe...
I mean, if you look at the religious myth of hell, which is very common, right?
The religious myth of hell actually arises out of a despair about virtue, right?
Because religion defines virtue as obedience to priests and to abstractions that don't exist, then they don't believe in the conscience because it's a fundamental error in their conscience.
In their thinking about virtue.
And because there's a fundamental error in their thinking about virtue, they end up having to punish.
And this of course is true of parents and so on.
This is the untruth thesis from the first book.
And because they don't believe that virtue is its own reward, because of course religious virtue tends to be horrendous, You know, to one's personal happiness.
And because they know that in their formulation of virtue, virtue is not its own reward and there are in fact great rewards for vice.
They end up with this hysterical punishment that they have to substitute for what would normally be called an irrational morality, a bad conscience.
And so the idea that I work with is that the conscience is merely UPB, right?
I mean, you can create exceptions For moral rules for yourself if you want, but that does not affect, unless you're completely insane, that does not affect your core processing and understanding of the world, right?
I mean, I can believe that I can fly.
I'm still not going to step off a cliff unless I'm insane, in which case nobody has to worry about me for very long.
And so... The conscience is merely the recognition, the empirical recognition constantly reinforced that we are human, others are human, and we can create exceptions for ourselves if we want to act badly, but they're not valid.
And the invalidity of that accumulates in a sense of anxiety and hypocrisy that is a bad conscience.
And so people do suffer for the bad things that they do, And that helps me recognize that I don't have to be the god of vengeance smiting people in the world because they're smiting themselves already.
That gives me some comfort, but of course...
Sorry, comfort's the wrong word.
It's not like I take pleasure in that, but it gives me some relief from feeling like I need to be the moral agent in the world.
And yet...
It's a secondhand smoke scenario, right?
So people who smoke damage their own lungs, but unfortunately the immorality of the world spills over into the lives of good people, right?
And so it is a secondhand smoke scenario.
Some guy smokes in his own basement, you know, halfway up the street.
I mean, I obviously would prefer that he didn't, but it doesn't affect my health, whereas the immorality of society as a whole, or the hypocrisy or falsehood or whatever, it does spill over and affect.
My life and your life and the lives of other virtuous people.
So the conscience thing only takes me so far because, you know, the world as a whole tends to be hypocritical and destructive towards virtue.
And that, of course, has an effect.
So that's just some of the context thoughts that I had.
And you can tell me if they help or completely extraneous to what you're thinking and feeling.
Well, yeah, I think it's directly relevant.
Especially, you did say that you don't mean to use such harsh words as fear and disgust, but I don't even...
They didn't strike me as all that...
Could you just check your mic?
You're cutting out a little bit. Oh, sorry.
Hello? Yeah, that's great.
They didn't strike you as all that harsh.
And I feel them very strongly, but I don't want to have my emotions necessarily provoke or affect your feelings.
I just wanted to talk.
So I agree with you.
The terms are perhaps not harsh enough, but I wanted to get to your feelings rather than talk about mine.
Oh, sure.
Well, I'm sorry, you're still cutting up.
Perhaps I could call you back by telephone?
Oh, sorry. I think it's just a positioning problem.
Is this better? That's better.
Okay. Yeah, this was happening on a call with Greg the other night.
It's just positioning it right next to my head.
So is this better? Yeah, it seems to be.
Okay. Yeah, so it seems to be just about everything that you were saying just now, especially about the conscious, all that just directly correlates to what's been going on for me.
and I agree with what you were saying well could be the shortest call ever I And the result that I've gotten from all of that is the recognition that the happiness of philosophy needs to be communicated by example, not by theory.
So I have to show people the happiness that results from philosophy.
There's no point just lecturing them about it because it's not a lack of knowledge that tempts people and successfully tempts people with vice.
It's not a lack of knowledge. It is a fear of attack and rejection by those around them, which is something you can't penetrate with reason.
You can only demonstrate how happy virtue makes you.
And then see who's interested.
There's no... You can sort of go and inflict or evoke knowledge in people and have them act better.
It's just... With me, the sharpest point of ambivalence also has a bit to do with...
Like it just feels very counterintuitive.
Wanting to free the world.
Yet it's the same world that...
Very nearly destroyed me, right?
So there is actually, and it's not just passive.
There's a very strong aspect of me that wants the vengeance that you talked about.
Oh, sure.
Yeah, no, that makes sense to me for sure.
Oh, you're cutting out again.
Hello? Yeah, sorry, you just cut out there.
Oh. Oh dear, end again.
There, that's better. It's a part of me that I really don't feel comfortable with, but it's...
I feel...
Oh, I'm so sorry.
We're going to have to pick this up another time if you don't have a mic because you keep cutting out.
Oh, alright. Unless I could call your cell or something.
No, I don't have a cell at the moment.
Well, I'll talk for a second or two, because I think I understand what you're talking about, and maybe you can just check your settings.
The microphone on the webcam might have some sort of, like it cuts out when you're not talking kind of thing.
So you might want to turn that off if you have a headset.
But I think it's important to recognize that creating a world of virtue is an act of vengeance against the immoral.
And... I think if we look at, say, the abusive parents who've been, you know, angry and hostile towards me, really, even so than FDR as a whole.
But the abusive parents are very wise in their own way.
Because if The sympathy grows towards abused children and hostility and disgust grow towards abusive parents, then they will live in a world where they will be treated as moral lepers in a way, right? And that is not something that they want.
So in their own way, they're being quite wise to attack someone who is Exposing the immorality of child abuse and sympathizing with the children, because as you and I know, we grew up in a world which did not have sympathy towards abused children, but rather conspired with the parents to cover up the crimes by and large.
If we create or can have some sort of reasonable effect on making the world achieve, let's say, let's be grandiose and say, achieve 5% of the virtues it proclaims in action, then the sympathy towards abused children and the Condemnation of abusive parents.
And condemnation doesn't mean that we see an abusive parent and then we just immediately call that person evil until the end of time, but a condemnation of the evil.
Of child abuse, which may result in people strongly stepping in and saying, look, you have to get anger management, you have to take parenting classes, you need to get...
I mean, it could be a get help scenario, which of course I think would be ideal.
But it would not fester for the many years that for most of us it did, until such point where family relations become, to all intents and purposes, Unrecoverable, which is a real tragedy, right?
I mean, it would be wonderful if people had stepped in who were adults in the situations we found ourselves in, had dealt with things in a proactive and positive manner, and had done, you know, whatever it took to get our parents into some sort of psychological help to the point where they had become better parents and we'd been able to repair and retain our family relations.
That would have been wonderful. And so, in...
In the world that we're trying to create, which is to get people to actually act on the values they proclaim, non-violence and protection of children and so on, the abusive parents are going to face not fearful appeasement and complicity enabling,
which is what they do now, which is much more comfortable for them in a way, in a very significant way, than actually having their crimes revealed, having society take a very strong stand, And being condemned or rejected or reported if they continue to act in these destructive ways.
I mean, if you look at something like racism, which is a collectivized evil that was for many years acceptable, or sexism, and now, you know, the moment anybody says something that could even be considered racist, Walter Block being an example, you know, the baying hounds of political correctness come out.
And that's not to say that they're all wrong.
It's just that there is a kind of knee-jerk reaction to a racist statement, which means that people either have to overcome their prejudices or go underground or be excluded from decent society or whatever, right?
And if we could just get the same level of reactivity or proactivity with child abuse that we do with racism, then the people who abuse children will go through a very uncomfortable phase of having to confront their demons, of being condemned by those around them, of having to get the help, of being threatened perhaps of being condemned by those around them, of having to get the help, of being threatened perhaps even with being reported if they And they don't want to do that, right?
They really don't want to do that because confronting your own corruption is a very difficult and painful process.
And so there is, and it's not the purpose, but it is in effect, there is a kind of vengeance against the immoral that is bound up in the world that we're trying to create, if that makes any sense.
Well, yeah. I mean, I can't thank you enough for that, because that actually really...
It swashes my bit in my ecosystem that wants vengeance for those people.
Yeah, the world we're creating will enact that vengeance of its own kind, if that makes sense.
Right, right. I'll give you one other little example that's a bit tangential, but then I'll, sorry, I'll shut up.
So we, you know, let's say that there's some pig ignorant racist who runs a company or whatever.
Then what we want to do is open up the market as much as possible and bring in foreign goods and, you know, no tariffs, no taxes and so on.
Because anyone who's a racist is going to do worse in a free market environment than anyone who's not a racist, right?
Because they're excluding themselves from a large block of talent.
And anybody who does that is automatically going to do worse economically.
So the way that we work against the racist is not by, you know, chanting and waving signs or, I don't know, slashing his tires or, you know, soaping up his windows or whatever.
But we work to create a virtuous, voluntary free market in the economy so that he will suffer for his racism and all racists will then suffer for their racism as a natural result of the application of virtue.
So we want to go for a permanent and effective cure that does not affect or is targeted at any individual in particular but which creates an environment that Right,
right. Yeah, because it's not about the people, like it's not about the individuals.
No, any more than it's about Bernie Madoff or Jim Cramer or even George Bush, right?
But it's about an evil and corrupt system.
And those husbands who, like before divorce was possible, right?
Those, I don't know, largely Catholic husbands who abused their wives...
You know, if you see some guy who beats up his wife, of course, you want to call the cops or whatever.
Maybe they wouldn't do anything back then or you want to do something to make him stop.
But unfortunately, the only thing that you can really do if you want to solve the problem As much as possible, as widely as possible, and as permanently as possible, is to grant wives the right to divorce their husbands and to continue to say that wife beating is immoral and that marital relations are voluntary.
That's the only way to solve the problem at its root, rather than deal with each individual symptom, if that makes sense.
Yeah, that really...
Oh, I can't thank you enough for all that, because that's really given me a lot to work with in a way that really...
Like, I feel I can negotiate with my ecosystem with those bits a lot better than before.
Before it was just, all right, ceasefire, right?
Now, tell me more about what was going on for you with the ecosystem beforehand.
Sure. Well, there's, I mean, I mean, it feels to me, and I think that it's accurate to say without being too hyperbolic, that The world I lived in very nearly destroyed me in several parts of my life.
Yes, either directly or through ignoring or avoiding the problems that were evident, right?
Exactly, exactly.
And so there's a feeling, a strong feeling, and a strong belief that the world Which very nearly destroyed me.
Is the same world I'm trying to save.
And that feels...
Very...
Or at least felt over this past week.
Like I'm...
I guess...
Selflessly... Devoting my life to a better world for my abusers or the people who colluded with my abusers.
Right. The Christian love your enemies thing, which I certainly don't think is virtuous or valuable.
Exactly, and since that was the sharp dichotomy of my thinking in my Mika system over this past week, it's been really hard to come to any more ground because every time I'll make a little more step and stuff, it then it's been really hard to come to any more ground because every time I'll make I'm sorry, you're just cutting out again, if you could repeat that?
Sorry. It just goes right back to that rock in a hard place of, but this is the world that hurt you so much.
Right, right. No, that makes perfect sense to me.
And if we think of medieval aristocrats, and we think of the Industrial Revolution, I know that these are very abstract terms, but I think it can be helpful to approach it from this way.
Taking vengeance against individuals is getting caught up in what I would consider to be the cycle of abuse.
So, for instance, if I had devoted myself to attempting to get my mother thrown in jail for what she did years ago and did not spend time on FDR but instead spent my time doing that, then it's very true. I might take vengeance against an individual And I might succeed in that, although what's much more likely is that everybody else in my family would have attacked me for standing up for that, right?
Or for going after my mother in that kind of way.
And yes, I would have taken vengeance against an individual, and maybe she would have ended up being sanctioned in some way, legally or at least exposed.
And what would that have done?
Would it have made my childhood any better?
Well, of course not. It wouldn't have solved anything to do with what happened, you know, 20, 30, 40 years ago.
But it would have taken away, or possibly eliminated, The work that I've been doing with FDR, which I think is more systemic, right?
Looking at the principles that drive it.
And I wouldn't have helped to promote the values of voluntarism and non-aggression or anti-aggression.
And so if I'd taken vengeance against an individual, I would not have taken a systemic approach to solving the problem, if that makes sense.
So rather than, like I'd be doing chemotherapy on one person rather than working on discovering a cure for cancer.
Right. And my chemotherapy wouldn't have even saved that one person.
My mother's too old to learn anything new.
Sending her to prison wouldn't do anything to make my childhood better or my existing life better.
And, of course, all that would happen is when I told people what I was doing, they would look at me with fear and disgust and loathing, right?
I'm sending my aged mother to prison for stuff that happened 30 years ago, right?
Right, right. That makes a lot of sense.
All it would do is re-traumatize me and it wouldn't do anything to help the world.
And it actually wouldn't do anything particular to help me either.
Right. It would be a reenactment of my history, which is struggling against evil while being betrayed at every turn by those who call themselves virtuous, right?
Right. Oh, right, right.
That makes a lot of sense.
Ah, that was my childhood in a nutshell, right?
And I never wanted that to be my adulthood, right?
Which is why I strike for the root of the problem rather than trimming the branches, so to speak.
Right, right. Yeah, that makes a lot of good sense about all that.
It's just not about the people, the individuals.
Yeah, I mean, they say, and this is not to characterize anyone, but this is just an abstraction.
And these, of course, are all just my thoughts on the matter.
But they say that sociopaths or evil people don't have a conscience.
I don't think that's true at all.
I don't think that's true at all.
Because if evil people didn't have a conscience at all, then their lives would not be terrible.
Like, I mean, I've talked to a lot of people who've had exposure to abusers of one kind or another.
Thank you.
And I've not ever heard, and you've of course listened to a bunch of these converse yourself too, so you know, right?
I've never once heard somebody say, oh yeah, you know, my mom or dad or whatever was a bad or abusive parent.
And the weird thing is, is that they're really happy and fulfilled in their life.
Right. Never happens, right?
Oh, never. I've never heard of that.
They always live these miserable, wretched, self-hating, you know, perilous and tenuous existences where they're constantly lashing out at people and then clinging to them and this life of desperation and self-pity and manipulation.
I mean, it's a miserable existence, right?
Right. And so, at least empirically, because my mother's the same way, my father's the same way, and people that I know who hurt children are living these miserable, shallow, manipulative, vile existences.
And it's not like...
Like the people who spend a lot of time attacking me, it's not like they have these wonderful, fulfilled, happy existences full of love and joy.
I mean, these pitiful, miserable, pathetic existences, right?
Right. So it doesn't seem empirically that you can do wrong and get away with it.
In other words, and be happy.
And the amount of suffering that people have gone through at the hands of abusers, in my opinion, again, this is all just my opinion, but in my opinion, it's nothing compared to the suffering that the abusers go through.
And this is not to generate any kind of pity.
In fact, it gives me a kind of satisfaction.
And that sounds dark, but there it is, right?
It gives me a kind of satisfaction that people who do wrong, especially those who hurt children, End up miserable and live these, you know, hateful, horrible, destructive lives.
They never have a moment's peace.
They speak badly. They're constantly volatile, stressed out, tense, health problems.
I mean, it seems to me kind of fair.
In fact, I would say that the punishments that I've seen inflicted upon those who've hurt children would be worse than anything I would ever come up with were I designing that kind of stuff.
Right, right.
Oh, exactly. Their own hells.
Yeah, I mean, we've never committed crimes for which we dread the exposure, right?
At least I'm assuming you haven't, right?
But I don't sit there saying, wow, you know, I hope nobody finds the body in the backyard and I don't live in fear of that, right?
Of the exposure of my crimes.
And of course, since FDR is about honesty and so on and has the moral standards of voluntarism and anti-violence, There's a place where people can go to reveal the crimes, to show where the bodies are buried, and of course for those who have bodies buried, that's a terrifying and enraging prospect,
right? You know, basically there's a body with a bracelet in the backyard, and we're back there as a policeman with a metal detector, waving it all over, and they're staring from the upstairs window, frantic, right? Right.
That's a miserable existence.
Oh, it's just... Yeah, it's wretched.
That's hideous. And it's something that's hard for us to come...
I was just saying this to Christina the other day.
I mean, it's... You know, given how wonderful Isabella is, how much fun she is, how happy she is, how affectionate she is, how cuddly she is, and just how full of joy she is, to harm a child is...
Much more unfathomable to me now than it was before I had a baby.
These people are not even a different species.
A different species would be like a tiger, but tigers protect their young.
It's like an anti-species.
Of people, you know, my parents or your parents perhaps or whatever, right?
They're not like a different species.
They're like the opposite. They're like an anti-species from anything that I would really understand.
I just, I can't fathom it in the same way that I can't fathom people who yell at or call their spouse names or whatever.
I can fathom that a little bit more because I never was abusive but I certainly had raised voices in past relationships.
But marriage, the mother of your child and so on, I just can't imagine how people could It's so foreign to me now that it is a life that I can't imagine other than to picture the terror,
anxiety, and self-hatred that would be inevitably embedded permanently in that kind of life.
Right. Well, I mean, even just hearing about Isabella and seeing the pictures of her and all that stuff, I'm feeling more of that that you're talking about, let alone for you guys being her parents, right?
She's so vulnerable and so dependent.
How could I possibly...
I mean, what could she possibly do that would be bad or wrong or that would cause me to yell at her or call her names or, God forbid, hit her or anything?
I mean, it's just... It's so incomprehensible that...
They're not, to me, people in the way that I understand the term.
People who do these sorts of things to their children.
Oh, it's just... I'm feeling that, right?
That's... Oh. Oh, gut-wrenching.
It is, right? And if I had done something like that, or unfortunately, as has happened to you and I, if there had been a perpetuity of stuff like that over years, every...
My entire personality would become set up to oppose...
Any kind of honesty or introspection or psychological understanding on the part of my daughter, my entire existence would be devoted to distracting her, manipulating her, opposing any growth of knowledge or memory within her, right?
Because I would be, my entire being and purpose would be centered around opposing any growing awareness of knowledge about my crimes, right?
Against her. Right.
And I can't, because I'm so devoted to unearthing and pursuing the truth, I can't really comprehend a life that would be entirely focused upon avoiding and repressing the truth out of guilt and self-hatred, shame and terror.
No, it would be awful.
Just awful. And, of course, there's a kind of greed in that too, right?
Because the reason that they don't want the crimes uncovered is for practical reasons, but also because they want to continue to gain the resources of being good parents without actually having gone through the challenges of being good parents, right?
Right, right, exactly.
And so, of course, as I've said before, when we see parents who are actively opposing and propagandizing their children to avoid a growing knowledge of the crimes of the past, I think it's fairly easy to see how the state is so powerful in doing exactly the same thing, right? Getting people too baffled and avoided and pointing the wrong way and attacking the wrong people when it comes to the crimes of the state, which are obvious and clear.
Right, right. Well, if I may break just to say something that I'm feeling right now is...
That I'm really feeling throughout this course, this column, especially towards this last bit, much more of a fire in my belly.
Right. Right.
We make a good world, the evil will suffer without us having to lift a finger.
Sorry, go on. Right, right.
And it's very slight and it's something I want to explore and figure out, but it's much more like the Mika system is starting to align, if that makes sense.
Go on, tell me more. Well, what you're saying is that there's a part of me that wants the revenge.
There's a part of me that wants the future to be a better place.
There's a part of me that wants to sit back and not be involved in that.
Not be involved in that hard, grueling work.
There are all these disparate parts, but they're all starting to sort of see And it's slight, and I don't have a complete, concrete image of what they're seeing yet, and I want to explore this after this call, but they're...
I think I understand. A solution.
You're kind of seeing the world frozen in time and saying, well, the world that is frozen in time, like nobody's moving in time has stopped, is a world full of, you know, nasty or enabling of the nasty people, and why would I want to save them?
But of course, the world is a continual process of renewal and new life, right?
Right, right, exactly.
And what we focus on, at least what I focus on, is not...
The crimes of the past, but the virtue of the present.
Now, of course, you can't get to the virtue of the present if there have been crimes in your history.
You can't become a good parent unless you deal with the bad parenting you may have experienced.
So, I mean, frankly, I could give a rat's ass about the parents of listeners because that's all the past.
And that's all done and dead and buried and gone.
It's all frozen in time, can't be undone.
And you can't be reparented at the age of 25 or 30 or maybe even 20, right?
It's all gone.
And the parents have already made their decisions, lived their lives and been parents for decades by the time I have any knowledge of them.
And frankly, I could care less.
What I do care about is the children to come.
Not the parents that were decades ago.
Right? It's like I don't care about fixing World War II. I care about stopping another war.
Right, right. Because you can't change World War II. You can't bring those people back to life, right?
Yeah, exactly.
And so the world that I think of is the world of children I know that if parents were abused and are defending those crimes and exposing grandchildren to abusive grandparents or grandparents who were abusive in the past,
that those children, through absolutely zero fault of their own, are going to be exposed to negativity and potentially significant abuse because of the lack of processing honesty and introspection on the part of their parents.
And I care about those children coming into the world.
You know, I care that your kids aren't going to be around your mom.
Right. I care that you have a very clear line in the sand when it comes to the maltreatment of children, and therefore you won't cross that line.
I mean, if your mom ain't going to cross that line and be in your life, you're not going to cross that line either.
Right. And that your child will love you all the more when she says to you, where's grandma?
You say, well, grandma was X, Y, and Z. I tried to work it out.
I went to therapy.
It was not possible, and therefore I protected you from her.
Right, right. That's the world that I care about, not the existing world of old crimes falling into the void of history.
All of which is unalterable and unrecoverable from.
You and I will never be the people who had good childhoods.
No matter how much work, we will never be those people.
We'll be hopefully different and I think more powerful people, but we'll never be those people.
Those crimes cannot be recovered from.
If they could be recovered from, then there would be restitution and we would...
I mean, if your brother steals 50 bucks from you and then gives you back the 50 bucks and, you know, you talk about it, then there's restitution, right?
But there's no restitution for the biochemical changes and neurological changes that come from a traumatic childhood.
We can't be those people again.
So those crimes which can't be alleviated and can't be undone and for which there is no restitution don't particularly interest me.
But what does interest me is the world that is continually coming into being that can be so much better if that line Around good and bad parenting is clear for people I was I was definitely smiling as you were saying that that I'm feeling a A strong passion about all this.
This is great. Right, and I think differentiating between old crimes and new possibilities is the key.
We can't look at the world as fixed.
We can't look at the world as frozen in time, because then we're just going to be disgusted, right?
Right, right. But we can look at the beauty and possibility of the children who are coming into the world and the joys and nurturing and loving that they need and work in every conceivable way, at least for me, to bring about a better world for them, the world that they deserve. I mean, they didn't choose to be born.
Isabella did not choose to be my daughter, so it's incumbent upon me to bring as much happiness into her life as possible so that she would always choose to be born and always choose to be born as my daughter.
Right.
I mean, I'm feeling a lot of gratitude.
I really can't thank you enough for reaching out to me the other night and for helping me through this.
This has been a really, really difficult thing to open up about and I just can't thank you enough.
Well, is there anything else that you would like to talk about with regards to this or do you have enough to sit with for the moment?
I think I've got enough to kind of sit with Mameka System and journal about it for quite some time.
This is great.
Well, thank you so much.
I mean, I appreciate you opening up about this.
I know it's hard.
I also know that it's something that a lot of people are struggling with, right?
We can't love the world that was, but we can, I think, love the possibility of the world that we can create, and we can only create that world by focusing on principles rather than people.
Right. Right. Exactly.
All right. Well, do let us know how it goes.
And again, thank you so much for taking the time to work through this because, again, I think it's not uncommon what you're dealing with at all.
Great. Well, thank you. You're welcome.
I'll talk to you soon. I'll talk to you soon, Steph.
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