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Dec. 12, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
21:29
1528 The Machine of Evil 2
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Hi everybody, it's Steph. Hope you're doing well.
The Machine of Evil.
That is the title for this particular chattycast, and I hope it will be of some utility for you.
I've had this on my list of podcast topics nigh on a year, and I was hoping to do an animated presentation of it, but I guess I will have to do a vocally animated presentation of it, time pressures being as they are.
So, the question, and I've touched on this in a variety of different podcasts, but of course it's hard to find the needle in the haystack of the podcast history, so I thought it would be useful to go over the principles that I use at least.
I'm not going to say that these are necessarily definitive, but these are the principles that I use, and I think that they are very helpful in delineating responsibility.
So the question that we're going to try and tackle today goes a little something like this.
So my mom was institutionalized and I assume found to have mental problems and she herself undoubtedly had a savagely traumatic childhood.
I have no doubt of that. And worse things happened to her than ever happened to me.
And so is your mother not off the hook?
To some degree, in terms of moral responsibility.
Because she had a bad childhood and therefore she is not responsible for the acting out, or less responsible for the acting out.
When she was an adult.
And that's a perfectly valid and fair and also very interesting question.
So we will attempt to tackle it.
We'll just talk about generic mom.
People need to know more about my mom.
We'll talk about generic mom as a perpetrator of child abuse.
We can, without a doubt, virtually be completely confident Look at that, without a doubt, virtually completely.
We can be as confident as is really possible in the realm of extrapolating into human motivation.
We can be certain that the abusive mom herself received abuse or experienced abuse as a child.
So that's sort of number one.
And the second is that No, let's just stay with this one for the moment.
So, the mom experienced abuse as a child and then axed out that abuse against her children.
Now, first of all, of course, I'm sure you're aware that this is not causal.
It's correlational, but it's not causal.
Insofar as there's not a one-to-one mapping.
Not everyone who was abused as a child becomes an abusive parent.
I, myself, would be an example of that.
I mean, I scored a horrifying 8 out of 10 On the Adverse Childhood Experiences score, and so I should have had a 35% chance of lifetime of attempted suicide.
I should have a much, much higher risk of depression and substance abuse and so on.
But I like to think that the enormous amount of work that I've done on myself with the help of philosophy and the wisdom of psychological theories inherited from the very bright sparks of humanity has done its work, and that I have not this compulsion to repeat.
Earlier abuse, but instead have turned the evil that I experienced into, I hope, a virtue by becoming a better parent through self-knowledge and through the acquisition of the scant and scarce resource of love in the abused child's world and the abused adult's world.
So it's not causal for sure.
So it's not for sure that...
So there's some other factor at work.
And so it can't be that, you know, somebody is pushed off a cliff, they fall involuntarily.
That is a one-to-one, right?
There's nobody who gets pushed off a cliff who flies.
So that's a one-to-one causality.
But it is not the case that those who are abused as children abuse in turn.
And it is easy to ascribe this to the mystery X factor of choice, but there really is no other particular way to explain it that I know of.
And I know that choice is not always...
A particularly compelling explanation because it is an x-factor.
Why is it that somebody makes a choice to deal with abuse and not re-enact it?
And why does somebody take to me the sleazy, easy, cheap and vile route of re-enacting their own abuse on their children in order to avoid the pain of dealing with personal history?
Why does that occur?
Well, I'm going to put it down to the mystery of choice.
Maybe it's causal, maybe it's not.
But, of course, the issue becomes if causality is brought into play.
Here's the challenge. If we say, like somebody who says to me, Steph, you shouldn't judge your mother harshly because she was out of control.
She experienced too much abuse and blah, blah, blah.
Well, the problem then becomes one of turtles all the way down or infinite regression because if my mother is not responsible for her harsh judgment of me as a child...
Because of her history of abuse, then surely I am not responsible for my harsh judgment of my mother as an adult, if you could judge it to be harsh, because of my history of abuse.
So the moment that you correct anyone, particularly a victim of child abuse, the moment that you correct anyone, you're saying, dude, I know you were abused, but you're being too harsh.
You should do better.
You should have more gentleness. You should have more understanding.
You should have more sympathy for your mother.
So you're basically saying that a history of child abuse is no excuse for a negative moral judgment and that even those who have experienced child abuse should aim for a higher moral standard.
And the interesting thing is that it is the person who is judging the abuser as immoral who is corrected, not the person who actually did the abuse.
That to me is really fascinating.
Because if someone is going to be corrected in the realm of child abuse, surely it should be the abuser, not the victim, right?
To take an egregious example that hopefully will clarify the principle.
If we say to a victim of rape, you should not harshly judge a rapist, then what we're saying is that in the situation of rape, there is a moral problem that needs to be corrected.
But it is not the rape itself, it is the response to the rape, the moral judgment in response to the rape.
That to me is pretty nasty.
That to me is pretty nasty.
It is saying to the person who, in a sense, shoots in self-defense and just scares off, doesn't even hit.
You shouldn't shoot in self-defense.
You should have empathy and sympathy for the person who is attacking you.
Well, I think that's an unjust standard to have.
And I actually think it's kind of an abusive standard to have.
Because if empathy and sympathy is a necessary moral requirement, then surely it should be applied to the victim rather than the perpetrator.
And if for the perpetrator...
There is an excuse based on a history of child abuse, then surely for the victim who is judging the perpetrator as immoral, there is the same standard, and therefore the correction should not occur.
So the moment that you start to say, well, you should have sympathy for the abuser because the abuser was determined by his or her history, then you're saying that victims of child abuse get out of jail free card because they were abused.
But then that should surely occur to the person that you're correcting as well.
So what it means is that those who have worked very hard To create a higher moral standard and a choice are judged much more harshly, in fact infinitely more harshly, than those who did no such work.
And that to me, like, if you do all this work on yourself to create a choice and a different circumstance, then...
What history would, in a sense, dictate, then surely you should be judged more positively than those who did not do the same work, who did not do the work to create choice where the choice did not exist previously.
Sorry, I know this is a bit confusing, and I hope it's not too confusing.
I'm going to sort of run over it again. Hopefully it makes a bit more sense.
If I do all this work, I spend $20,000 and years and years in therapy, and I do all this work to create a different outcome for myself, Then how is it rational or moral that I should be judged more negatively than a person who simply acted out her own abuse against her children, did not do the hard, expensive, and difficult work of self-actualization and a true knowledge and understanding of history in order to create a different outcome?
Why is it that I, who've done an enormous amount of work and spent an enormous amount of money to create a different outcome for myself than the one I inherited, why should I be judged more negatively Why do I lose the get out of jail free card because I've worked very hard to create choice for myself?
In other words, you spend $20,000 and years in therapy in order to create a harsh moral judgment for yourself from others.
That scarcely seems rational or fair.
I mean, it seems to me that the reason that people would give a get out of jail free card to the person who's aggressively acting out And then morally criticize the person who is already self-critical is because it's easier.
Right? I mean, people love to find self-critical people and then apply...
Certain people like to find self-critical people.
And then apply moral judgments to them.
Because the self-critical person, by definition, is going to be self-critical and therefore is not going to act out against the person who is applying the moral judgment.
Whereas the person who is a child abuser, or any other kind of abuser, is going to clearly...
There's the danger of rage, right?
There's the danger of acting out.
There's the danger of creating an enemy.
So they give those people an excuse, or all the excuses in the world, while focusing their moral criticism on the person who has struggled and striven to improve.
Their situation out of a kind of cowardice and out of a kind of collusion in a very abstract way with the abuser to pile on corrections to the person who has expressed the most capacity for self-criticism.
I think it's a kind of cowardly pile-on myself.
And the reason that I say that is that it seems like a kind of trick.
I mean, certainly when people have used that argument against me, And I point these things out to them.
They don't say, gosh, you know, that's kind of right.
That is an odd thing that you should be subject to infinitely more criticism because of your commitment to self-improvement and becoming a better person.
I'm going to criticize you a lot more than the child abuser.
When I've pointed out that contradiction, people have never said, to my memory, have never said, oh, you're right, you know, that is kind of a contradiction.
I wonder why I would take that approach.
But instead, they just change their argument.
So to me, it's just a kind of pile-on.
And I think a particularly shameful one at that.
Now, there are several criteria which I use to determine moral responsibility.
I'm not saying this is the be-all and end-all, but these are the ones that I've used over the years, and I found them to be very effective, useful, and fair, I think.
And they're not particularly dissimilar from common law standards that have arisen in many cultures throughout history and are present in some of the more rational laws that we have even in a state of society today.
And the first, of course, is the capacity for restraint, the capacity for self-restraint.
That's really, really important.
So, clearly, if somebody hauls off and punches his kid right in front of a police officer, then that is somebody who has no capacity to process the consequences, or very little capacity to process the consequences of actions, and no capacity to defer the, quote, gratification of a sadistic desire to injure the helpless.
And therefore, it can be said to be not morally responsible for that particular act, and that may be extrapolated to other actions as well.
But this is why I've asked people in the show who've complained about...
Being on the receiving end of abuse, well, was this ever done in public?
Was it done at a mall?
Was it done in front of a cop?
Was it done in front of a teacher?
Was it done where the negative consequences would very quickly accrue to the parent?
And it's, of course, I've never received an answer that says, no, it was totally done in public and whatever, whatever, right?
It's always done in private.
It's always done away from prying eyes.
And therefore, the...
The abuser, let's say in this case the parent, clearly has the capacity to not abuse because they do not abuse in public.
So they have the capacity to not abuse.
It's not like Tourette's.
A Tourette's sufferer will cuss out the heir no matter what the negative consequences during a speech, during a courtroom appearance.
That's an involuntary, like epilepsy.
But if the behavior can be suppressed, you know, wait until you get home kind of thing, then the behavior is being suppressed while in public.
And therefore, the abuser is capable of restraint, but chooses not to exercise it.
And is also capable of processing negative consequences and saying, I don't want negative consequences to my actions because While, of course, abuse is the infliction of negative consequences to others' actions, so there is a selfishness there, because there is a principle that the abuser is acting on that is not being extrapolated to the child.
But rather, since the parent does not abuse in public, the parent is saying, I don't like negative consequences to my actions, but abuse, of course, is the infliction of negative consequences to the child's actions, and therefore There is a standard.
Negative consequences are bad, and then negative consequences are enjoyable or good when inflicted upon the child.
So that would be another standpoint.
But to me, the most significant and important one isn't to do with this capacity to control behavior and defer gratification.
It is to do with the moral nature.
I mean, to me, the most fundamental aspect of child abuse, or any kind of abuse, but let me just talk about child abuse, the most fundamental aspect of child abuse The infliction of the moral standard.
And that is pretty significant.
That is pretty significant.
The infliction of the moral standard.
You have caused me to hit you because you have been bad.
It's a moral judgment.
It's the moral judgment that lasts.
I mean, if you stub your toe, it's very painful, but the pain, you know, lasts for an hour, a couple hours a day or two at most, and then it fades from memory.
But if you say to yourself, I stub my toe because I'm clumsy and forgetful and careless and stupid and whatever, right?
Well, the pain of the actual physical injury fades relatively quickly, but the judgments can last a lifetime.
And the real abuse lies not In the beating or the attack or whatever, but it is in the moral judgment that attaches to that because the moral judgment provokes self-attack and self-attack can last a lifetime without significant self-intervention or the intervention of professionals.
So, it is the moral standards that, or the moral judgments, or the personality judgments, the critical or negative personality judgments, that are the real abuse.
Because that's what lasts into adulthood, right?
So, again, to take a silly example, right?
I mean, if you're a kid in a loved family, and you trip and sprain your ankle, that lasts, you know, a week or so, and then you're better.
And it doesn't carry any negative consequences.
But if it's, you know, you're so stupid, you're so clumsy, or if, If you're pushed because the parent is judging you negatively morally and you're bad and you're provoking and you're disrespectful and you're just a bad kid, well, that lasts, right?
The judgments last. The physical pain leaves, vanishes pretty quickly, but the judgment really lasts.
And that is something that I mean, that is the real core of the abuse that lasts, is the moral judgment.
And so my fundamental criterion for judging the moral nature of the abuser is, does the abuser use morality?
Does the abuser use morality?
Because if the abuser just lashes out and hits and then says, oh, you weren't being a bad kid, I had no reason to do that, and then does it, that's sort of inconceivable abuse.
Where there's no justification for it?
Because people who aren't self-actualized lash out and then justify.
They act and then the justification comes at the expense of the victims, always after the fact.
And so the abuser who lashes out and who then creates the justification of, you're bad, I was being a good parent, I'm a good parent, I'm disciplining, I'm correcting, I'm protecting, I'm whatever, right?
Well, that abuser has...
Fundamentally recognize the power and authority and value and virtue of morality and therefore cannot claim to be a non-moral agent because they're fundamentally claiming to be a moral agent.
And so, if the abuser is then confronted with the universalization of the moral principle that they claim are universal, but of course is really only applying to them at the expense of others and isn't even moral thereby, But if the abuser is then confronted with the universalization of the moral principle that is used to excuse or justify the abuse and then completely rejects that,
that to me is the most fundamentally egregious crime against the victim.
Because it recognizes the power of morality, it claims a universality of morality, but then the moment that that universality is actually applied, then the morals shift and change.
And that is somebody who fully knows the power and efficacy of morality and is using it as a form of bullying or abuse.
That to me is the fundamentally egregious nature, the most fundamentally egregious nature of And property of abuse.
So an example is a parent who does not exercise virtue, does not teach a child through example and positive reinforcement, but rather uses strength and size and power to control the behavior of the child and then claims that it's moral and discipline and so on.
So the parent who does that then of course faces the problem that the parent gets weaker over time and the child gets stronger as the child gets older and moves into puberty and so on.
And now the child has the physical size and strength relative to the parent, the teenager.
And what happens? Does the parent then say, well, sure, I mean, physical size and strength is what counts in this family, so now that you have it, feel free to bully me all you want, or feel free to, quote, correct me or change my behavior all I want.
No, the parent will criticize the child for the immoral application of strength and power, physical strength, despite the fact that that really was the basis of the parent's authority in the past.
Strength equals power equals control.
When the child attempts to do it, that is considered to be egregious.
And that is the fundamental reversal that, to me, once you pick up that sort of morality, you can't really complain if it's used against you.
I mean, you will, of course. But it's that brain-twisting, monstrous mess of using ethics.
And, of course, if the parent abuses the child and it's not deferring the gratification of wanting to hurt the child to feel the sense of power and control over negative feelings...
Then, of course, it would be entirely hypocritical but seemingly inevitable for the parent to then say to the child, you should learn how to defer gratification, you should be more mature, you should be more responsible, and this and that, right?
So, the moment the parent uses universal morals, To justify destructive abuse, then the parent is completely responsible.
They have shown the ability to defer gratification.
They've shown the ability to suppress the impulse to act out in an aggressive or abusive manner.
They have used morals to claim the moral high ground, and they have claimed that the morals are universal and not personal, which is why the parent is justified in an abstract sense.
And so they fully understand deferral of gratification, sensitivity to negative consequences, which is the root of deferral of gratification.
And morality. And they just use all of these things in a negative and destructive way against the child.
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