1412 An Elegy for Michael Jackson... (audio to a video)
Extracting some wisdom from a triumphant and tragic life...
July 13, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
06:56
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| Michael Jackson's life was a triumph in many ways in terms of his performances, his amazing musical and dance abilities, his skills and intensity as a performer and as a vocalist and dancer of course. | |
| But there is A very instructive lesson, I would say, in his death and in his decline, the decline that led to his death. | |
| By all reports, he had a fairly brutalized childhood, his father Biedemann. | |
| His sister has alleged sexual abuse within the family and unbelievable predations upon the children. | |
| And a way of looking at Michael Jackson's life, and I think this is something that can be useful to many people, is to look at it as a desperate desire to become worthwhile by external means. | |
| By being, as he would view it, handsome. | |
| A good mover, the ability to throw some wild shapes. | |
| A great singer, a great songwriter, great drummer. | |
| And this can be seen, though there's no way to know for sure, but it could be seen as a way to attempt to fill a void. | |
| And those people who've gone through abusive childhoods, of which there are just far too many, have this void. | |
| This history of being unloved, of being preyed upon, of being attacked. | |
| And so many people feel that I will be lovable, I will be worthwhile if I'm just a little bit more handsome or more pretty, if I'm a little thinner, if I can sing better, if I can dance better, if I can dress better. | |
| If I have bigger boobs, bigger biceps, flatter stomach, six-pack, if I have more talent, if I have more money, if I have more things, then I will be worthwhile. | |
| I will be attractive to people. | |
| But it's my contention, and it's not just my contention, but I'll certainly put it forward here, it's my contention, that fundamentally there is no external solution to the problem of insecurity, of unworthiness, of a perception or a feeling of unlovability. | |
| There's no amount of talent or ability or charm or sexiness or thinness that you can pile into this hole that will ever fill it up. | |
| The hole just gets bigger the more that you avoid the root cause if you've had a difficult childhood, which is to return to confront the demons, to overcome them, to gain moral clarity, to receive sympathy. | |
| And to move forward with your life with the recognition that if you did not have a happy childhood, you never can have a happy childhood. | |
| You will be who you are as a person without a happy childhood. | |
| That doesn't mean that you're broken. | |
| It doesn't mean that you are doomed. | |
| It just means that you will never be that person. | |
| If you have a heart attack, you can become even healthier than if you'd never had a heart attack. | |
| Because you can really watch your diet and exercise and do all those kinds of good things. | |
| But you can never be the person who didn't have a heart attack, who didn't go through that. | |
| But this belief or this desire or this fantasy really, that if we are charismatic or entertaining or skilled or talented or rich or thin or pretty enough, that people will love us, that people will find us worthwhile, | |
| that the holes of history will be filled in by the glitter of the present, that the holes of history will be filled in by the glitter of the present, is a terrible morality tale that we need for some reason to continue to see played out over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over Because we just won't learn this lesson, that being loved is not being pretty, because we all get old and ugly. | |
| Being loved is not being talented, because we don't live our life on a stage. | |
| Being loved is not being thin, because that is simply skin and flesh and bone. | |
| Being loved is not being rich because that is simply the power to acquire. | |
| Not to be good, not to be noble, not to be virtuous, not to be vulnerable, not to be sensitive. | |
| Not to be compassionate, not to be courageous and strong where it counts. | |
| The fantasy that Michael Jackson seemed to want to play out was if I become skilled and successful and pretty and thin and entertaining enough, that I will be loved. | |
| And his many marriages does not speak well to the validity of this thesis. | |
| But in many ways, the lie of trying to become shimmering and godlike enough to be loved by mere mortals shows up in the name that he gave to his childhood substitute playground, this little carnival that he set up at his ranch where he could ride the rides. | |
| He never got to ride as a kid and play with the animals and the monkeys and the llamas, and he never got to play with as a kid. | |
| The name of it is a clue enough as to its unworkability, which is that it was called Neverland. | |
| That attempting to gain the toys in the present that we were denied in the past does not work because it is an attempt to escape the genuine loss of a broken childhood. | |
| This is why I'm constantly urging people with these sorts of histories not to try to plaster on fake substitutes and ornamentations and skills and abilities and money and prettiness. | |
| On to that which hurts the most, but to get into counseling, to talk to people about it, to get the help that they need, the help that I needed, to become a better and stronger person. | |
| And I hope that when we look at the tragedy of what could be viewed as, and I think with some legitimacy, a life lived in avoidance of childhood pain, the degree to which it simply doesn't work really should be clear to us by now. | |
| And when we look at the endless cavalcades, the portraits of those who tried to substitute talent and beauty and Money for love. |
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