So I've had a series of dreams on this vacation that have been interesting and I've had to sort of think...
I haven't had to. I've chosen to think a lot about them and dreamed about people that I knew when I was younger and I dreamed of being transformed into a tiger shark.
Very eerie. I put my head into this huge helmet and then it was transformed into a swimming tiger shark.
It was really quite an amazing dream.
And I won't sort of go through all of the details of the dream and the analysis because I'm sure you get enough of that when I chat with other people, but I did want to talk about some of what came out I've been thinking a lot about, as a result of these dreams, believe it or not, this is my vacation.
I've been thinking about restitution.
We've talked about this before. I'd like to go into a little bit more detail here because I think restitution is a very important moral concept.
I've gotten a number of emails from people who listen to the recent podcast on why we're different.
They might say, well, we have a clean conscience.
People say, well, I don't have a clean conscience, so why What about me?
And that's a very, very good question.
And I hope to talk about it more with people this week when I get back, but to share some of my thoughts about restitution.
And we'll start with a sort of more abstract discussion of restitution.
Restitution in a free society, restitution is something that would be handled, I think, by DROs.
And it would be that there would be the basics, right?
So if I break your window, then I obviously at the very least owe you a new window.
I owe you the restoration of your property to its original state.
And I owe you an amount of money above and beyond that, which is to deal with the time it takes and the inconvenience and the lack of a window until it gets fixed.
And I believe the way that I work with the idea of restitution is this.
So let's say I break your window.
It costs $100 to fix your window.
And you have to spend a couple of hours at, say, $50 an hour.
So let's say the whole restitution deal is like $300.
The way that you know the restitution is fair is to imagine if someone were to come up and say, I'm going to pay you $300 to break and fix your window.
And if you said, oh...
Yeah, I will take that.
If you sort of pause and think about it, if somebody said, I'll pay you a million dollars to break and fix your window, you'd be like, hey, look, here's a rock, go to town, right?
That would be too much restitution.
And if somebody said, I'm going to pay you five bucks to break and fix your window, you'd say, no, thanks, five bucks is not worth the inconvenience, even if the window is paid for it to be fixed.
105 bucks. So I think that the best restitution or the most just restitution is where it is not too much that somebody would jump at the chance to have their window broken and fixed.
And the reason you wouldn't want that is that people would then fake breaking their windows in order to collect the restitution.
But it would be, actually not if the person had to pay.
That would be more like insurance fraud.
But it would be something where you sort of weigh it and you say, well, you know, yes, I think I would accept 300 bucks Even if I had to make that deal ahead of time, I would just about accept 300 bucks to have my window broken and fixed.
That, to me, would be good and just restitution.
Not too much, which then is being unjust towards the person who broke your window because they end up, if it's a million dollars, they work for the rest of their lives for one error, that clearly is unjust.
And if it's, you know, $100 to fix the window and five bucks for your couple of hours of time, that's unjust to the person whose window is broken because it's not a fair wage for the amount of time they have to spend working and getting it fixed.
So the kind of restitution that I think is just in a free society and will be implemented is where the person, if offered to have the problem and then the resolution ahead of time, would weigh it and just say yes to the restitution.
I think that would be reasonable.
Now, that comes with a whole host of interesting moral questions, I think, which is think about your life.
Think about the people who've done you wrong in your life.
And we can talk about the other side of the coin perhaps later or perhaps another time.
But it's just easier when you're looking at the people who've done you wrong in your life.
And, I mean, some people who've done me wrong in my life.
I'm trying to think of a sort of a minor example, right?
So when I was younger, I lent a joystick to a guy who broke it.
He returned it and it wasn't working.
And I asked him for 20 bucks.
I don't think he ever gave it to me.
But if I had gotten the 20 bucks to buy a new joystick, I would have said, okay, my time wasn't worth that much.
I was a kid. And so I got the joystick and never got the 20 bucks.
But if I had gotten the 20 bucks, I would have considered that fair restitution.
But I got back a broken joystick that I lent to someone.
And if he paid me the 20 bucks, that would have been an example of a minor inconvenience that would have been fixed.
Another time, a bank lost a deposit that I had made.
This was before ATMs.
I think I deposited $100 from a check into a bank and they lost it.
The money did not show up in my account.
I had to go and find the deposit slip in my carefully organized papers.
I was working in Thunder Bay at the time doing the gold panning.
We were in town to do the actual panning after we collected the samples.
And I had to spend an hour or two going through my papers to find the receipt, and then I took it back into them, and I said, look, I had to spend like two hours, I think it was, looking through my receipts.
Here's how much I get paid, so I would like an extra 75 bucks or something like that for the time and trouble of also having to come back.
No, it's 100 bucks, because I had to come back and redo all of this.
So it's been a couple of hours that I've had to spend on it.
And I said, you know, the reason being that if I do something that inconveniences the bank, like I kite a check, like I bounce a check, then the bank will charge me extra because the bank is put out and has to spend this time and cover the money and so on.
But I had to spend time and cover the money because of an error that you made.
And given that I have this receipt, for sure I made the deposit, so you lost it.
And so they did end up giving me $100.
And I felt that that was fair restitution for the time that I had spent.
Obviously, I would have liked a little more, but you always want a little more.
And so I thought that was fair restitution for the time that I'd spent and so on.
Another time, you try and get the best restitution you can.
I mean, the guy churned my stock trading account while I was all kinds of busy with my business and I ended up getting some of the money back into It wasn't the best restitution in the world, but it was better than nothing.
And so these are indications or areas in which people have done me wrong, and I have received restitution to varying degrees of satisfaction, and I think that's all reasonable within the bounds.
And another Another sort of issue is, I'm trying to think, oh yeah, so I bought this video control for a free demand radio website, which allows me to play the YouTube videos on the local site, which means that people don't go wandering off to YouTube and forget about FDR. And it stopped working, and I spent an hour or two trying to fix it, and then I spent an hour or so in emails back and forth with the company, and then I said, look, it's not working, so process a refund for me.
So they agreed to process a refund for me, and then a couple of days later, and I hadn't changed a thing on the site, it started to work again.
And, of course, I have no idea why, but the reality is that I did not then say, I don't want that refund because the control is working again, because I'd spent a couple of hours trying to fix it, and I felt that the refund was timed.
And, of course, if they upgrade it, I will buy an upgrade, and I felt that that was a fair response to the time.
It wasn't like it was well paid for that time, but I didn't want to both spend the time trying to debug their software and then not get a refund, even though I'm continuing to use the software.
That's another example where I took restitution, which I felt was fair, and I certainly will upgrade when they come out with a new version.
So that's sort of another example of where restitution can come into play.
Now, I mean, it's well worth thinking about.
It's a really, really good exercise to think about when you think about someone who's done you wrong and then has offered you restitution, which is to say, would I have taken the wrong in order to get the restitution, right?
So if somebody kicks you in the shin and then says, I'm sorry...
Would you take the kick in the shin in order to get the apology?
Well, no, right?
Obviously not. Now, that doesn't mean that somebody who kicks you in the shin has to give you $50 or whatever, right?
But they could offer to do something nice for you or whatever.
If a friend does something that...
Betrays a trust. You tell them something in confidence and they repeat it to somebody else and it sort of gets around.
What is it that you would require from that friend in order to accept the scattering of the rumor or the breaking of the confidence?
Well, it's hard to know, right? Myself, I would accept the breaking of a confidence from a friend if the exploration of the reasons behind the breaking of the confidence deepened and strengthened the friendship.
That, to me, would be a worthwhile investment.
To have somebody, like, say, you're a friend of mine, and I say, X, Y, and Z, please keep this in confidence.
I'm just sharing this with you.
And then you go around and tell other people.
Well, if we sort of sit down and work through it in an RTR kind of way, and we understand, we end up understanding why you did what you did.
Then I would accept that because it would give me a deeper knowledge of you.
You would receive a deeper knowledge of your own behavior.
And we would sort of work through it and end up with a stronger and better relationship.
And I would end up with a greater knowledge of what the relationship was about.
Because if I told you something without realizing, consciously at least, that you could not be trusted, that was not a very good or deep friendship in my opinion.
But if after working through this kind of stuff...
You and I end up being closer and I end up understanding your limitations in terms of trust or understanding the origins in terms of trust or we really understand why the need to break trust occurred for you and why you end up doing that and why I didn't see it ahead of time or we end up with a greater and deeper knowledge.
Then I will accept the breaking of trust in order to get the better relationship.
I mean, there's conflicts that I've had with friends or even with my wife.
Where I've gained such a greater knowledge of that other person and myself and the relationship that looking back, I'm glad we had the problem because of what came out of it.
That to me is fair restitution.
So, when you think of the people who've wronged you, and I, you know, start with the minor stuff.
I would start with the minor stuff. When you think of the people who've wronged you in your life, it's important to ask yourself, what would I accept ahead of time in order to accept that the problem that occurred was beneficial, was worth going through?
And I think that's really, really an important thing to do.
What would I accept ahead of time as recompense, whether it's emotional or monetary or time or whatever, right?
I'm sorry I upset you.
I will apologize and help you move.
Or, you know, something. So there's a recognition that restitution is due.
What would you accept ahead of time?
And I think that's really, really important.
Now, in my life, I divide this into two things.
I say to myself, for the people who've wronged me, it's really bad.
People who betrayed me in business, who said something and then did something else, which caused me a huge amount of grief and ended up causing lots of problems within the company.
Looking back, I say, what would I have accepted ahead of time to end up with these problems in the business?
And it's hard to think of anything.
A million dollars? It's hard to sort of really think of something.
So for some of those things, I would not have accepted anything ahead of time, because I was making good money at the time.
I didn't need more money. So what would I have accepted ahead of time?
I don't think that there's anything I would have accepted ahead of time.
Looking, of course, back at my childhood, at those who had power over me as a child, teachers and priests and family, If someone were to say to me, how much money would you accept to have experienced the childhood that you experienced?
I would say, there is no amount of money that I would accept.
There is no amount of anything that I would accept in order to have had the childhood that I had.
And that to me is a very, very interesting and powerful question, which is to say, where is it in my life that recompense, that restitution has become impossible?
I think it's a really, really, really important question to ask of yourself.
And of those around you. What has occurred in my life?
What wrongs have I experienced or suffered in my life for which recompense is impossible?
Now, I mean, there's a realm of fantasy recompense that I think is interesting, right?
So, if someone were to say to me as an adult, would you have accepted the childhood that you accepted in order to end war in the world, in order to cure cancer in the world, in order to, I don't know, end poverty, in order to end child abuse, would you have accepted this martyrdom of your own childhood in order to end war?
And I would say yes.
I mean, yes. I mean, not to be too altruistic, but I would say yes.
Now, that is the recompense that I'm trying to provide to myself for my own childhood, which is to say, well, I believe that I have the tools and the arguments that in the long run will put an end to war, which is better treatment of children and no state and all that kind of stuff, right?
That's going to end war. So that is the recompense that I'm offering to myself as a child for the childhood that I went through, which is to say that we will work to end war.
We will work to end violence in society.
That is the recompense, the only recompense that I can think of that will make And it's a shame, in a sense, that I have to pay it to myself, so to speak, but there it is.
So that's part of what drives me, or motivates me, is the recompense for my own history.
But where is it in your life where you would not accept any recompense?
Now, there are two kinds of recompense that you won't accept.
The first is where you simply wouldn't accept recompense for anything, right?
You may not have my particular skills, abilities, talent, drive, or whatever, so you may not be able to do what I'm doing, and therefore you may not be able to get any recompense for your childhood, which is a truly tragic thing.
But there's two ways in which you can't get recompense.
The first is that no recompense is possible in any way, shape, or form.
Right? So, I mean, a DRO in the future will have a restitution for rape, obviously.
There will be punishment and there will be restitution.
And the restitution will be, I don't know, a million dollars, a half a million dollars or whatever, right?
But the restitution is a way of paying somebody for an injury, a physical and psychic injury such as rape.
But rape cannot be repaired.
Rape cannot be repaired.
If you drive over my foot and break my toes, then I can go into a cast and with rehab and good luck and all that and good treatment, I can end up as I was before.
I once fell off a bike and I cracked my forearm and I wore a sling and I was very careful and it healed and other than not being able to straighten my left arm quite as much as my right, which is completely immaterial to my life, that is, I'm back to normal. I can be restored and in fact in some ways I'm better off because I was much more careful on my bike.
There's a way in which you can be restored.
Break your window, repair your window, crack your arm, you can get your arm healed, and you're back to where you were.
Inconvenience and payment and so on.
There is recompense that is possible for some injuries.
For psychological injuries, there is no recompense.
A woman who is raped cannot be back to the person she was before she was raped.
I mean, if I crack my arm, I can be back to the person I was before my arm was cracked with some inconvenience and so on, right?
But rape is not that way.
Rape is a permanent alteration of the emotional life and of the mind, I believe, right?
I mean, I don't know for sure, but I imagine that it's the case.
I can't imagine too many women who would, or men for that matter, who would say, I will accept half a million dollars and then get raped, right?
In order, I would be paid half a million dollars to be raped.
And it's complicated because, of course, if you know you're doing it for money, it's not rape, right?
Then it's a kind of forced prostitution, so to speak.
But if you could sort of make the agreement, then wipe your memory off the agreement and get paid afterwards.
Again, it's a little trippy to think about, but it's worth examining.
You know, so what would I accept as payment to be raped?
And then to forget that I was going to get that payment, be raped and get the payment.
I don't think that there's too many people who would accept any amount of money in order to get raped.
So rape is one of these things where true restitution is impossible because you cannot restore somebody to the psychological state that they were before they were raped.
It's just too much of a violation physically and mentally.
Obviously there's no restitution for murder because you can't bring someone back to life.
There's no restitution really for amputation as you can't regrow the arm.
So there are areas where restitution is impossible no matter what.
Murder. No restitution can't bring back to life.
But on the other hand, there is where restitution is possible but it's not possible because of the attitude of the other person.
So let's say that somebody punches me and I lose a couple of teeth.
Pulls a Marlon Brando on a photographer or Sean Penn.
I lose a couple of teeth. And let's say I would accept half a million dollars, making up some sum, I would accept half a million dollars in order to have those teeth fixed and to go through the pain and discomfort and getting all that done.
But let's say that the person either had no money or was completely unwilling to pay and evaded somehow the system of payment, whether a free society or not.
Well then, see, restitution is possible, but it's sort of theoretically possible, but it's practically impossible because the person is simply never going to pay.
They'd rather go to jail, they'd rather, you know, whatever, right?
Restitution is theoretically possible, right?
Restitution is not even theoretically possible for murder, but restitution is theoretically possible for losing a couple of teeth, but it's practically impossible.
And I think that's an important thing as well.
I think those two distinctions are very important, right?
So, if you have a disagreement with your spouse, Then restitution is certainly possible because you can end up solving that disagreement in a way that makes your marriage stronger and deeper and richer and more loving and brings you greater understanding and sensitivity towards each other and so on.
It's like, okay, well, that was worth having the conflict because we've got a stronger and better marriage.
We love each other more because of it.
So restitution is possible there.
But if your spouse won't admit that there's a problem at all in any way, shape or form, then restitution is theoretically possible but practically impossible.
And I think those two things are important to distinguish because, I mean, fundamentally they're the same, but it's important to distinguish between restitution that is theoretically possible but practically impossible, restitution that is theoretically possible and achievable, and restitution that is not possible and therefore not achievable.
Now, it is my strong contention that where restitution becomes impossible, a relationship cannot exist.
Where wrong has been done and restitution becomes impossible, a relationship cannot exist.
And why? Because there is an avoidance of the fundamental fact of wrongdoing.
Right? So, I don't know.
If my mom were to come to me, it's never going to happen.
But if my mom were to come to me and say, I don't know, I've won the lottery.
You know, here's $10 million for your childhood and the time that you spent and the money that you spent in therapy and all of the thousands and thousands and thousands of hours that you've had to spend sorting out this sort of stuff.
Here's $10 million. Well, I don't think I would take it because, I mean, I don't need 10 million.
What would I do with 10 million dollars, right?
But even if I did take the money, it would not be that I took the money and said, we are now square, right?
I would say, well, I'm glad that you feel bad, in a sense.
I'm glad that you've understood that it was wrong.
I'm glad that you want to make amends.
I will take the money, but this does not mean that I'm okay with the childhood that I had, right?
Because you can't buy back I can't buy back those 15 or 20 years, or 30 years until I broke with the family.
You can't buy this.
I can't be who I was, who I was going to be otherwise.
So, given that that's never going to happen, given that there's not even really an admittance of wrongdoing on the part of my family, restitution is practically impossible, theoretically and practically impossible.
So, where wrong has been done and restitution is impossible, There is such a level of avoidance in the relationship that I would say virtually no intimacy is possible.
In fact, I would say no intimacy is possible because with my family, when I talked about the issues that I had and the problems I had and the negative things that I'd received from the family, there was such a level of avoidance and minimization.
It wasn't bad or suffered or that didn't happen or that ever happened or you brought it on yourself or you whine, you complain, you dwell in the past.
When you bring up a wrong that has been done to you and the other person can't provide restitution or is completely unwilling to provide restitution, then they must minimize, reject, attack, scorn, mock, everything that you are saying.
You can't have a relationship with someone Who's done you such wrong that restitution has become either theoretically or practically impossible?
How are you going to have a relationship with somebody who's wronged you beyond restitution?
I just think it's not even remotely possible.
Especially if it's not, if it's admitted, like I've done you such wrong that I can never make it good, then that to me is a sort of farewell thing, you know?
Like, thank you for the honesty, thank you for the recognition, I appreciate that, that's a small amount of help, but given that no restitution is possible, Then no continued relationship is possible.
Now that of course is very theoretical because it's my belief, and it's not just my belief but my experience both of my own and of those I've known either through FDR or personally, that if somebody cannot give you restitution for the wrong that they've done you, they will never admit to that wrong because that's too much for their own conscience to bear.
That I have wronged somebody beyond repair, beyond restitution, That is too much for people.
They simply deny that the wrong has occurred.
It's too much. I don't know what would happen to somebody who admitted that they'd wronged somebody beyond repair.
I don't know what they would do, because it's just such a theoretical thing.
I don't really know. I've certainly wronged people in my life, but I've always tried to, even when I was younger, provide restitution.
If I did somebody wrong, I would usually, I can't think of a time when I didn't, I'd suffer through their wrath and just wrath.
And I would try to make amends as much as possible.
And if I couldn't make amends, I would at least recognize or give recognition that the wrong was legitimate, that I had done wrong, and that they had every right to be angry, and I was very sorry for the harm I'd done them.
And then if restitution were impossible, or the other person did not want to continue the relationship because they felt restitution was not possible, I mean, rightly or wrongly, right?
But if they felt restitution, then I would simply apologize and recognize that that was a relationship that I had messed up and wrecked.
And moved on, right?
Set the person free, in a sense, right?
And I'm not hung on to them even though I would feel bad about it.
It's not the responsibility of somebody I've hurt to make me feel better.
It's my responsibility to make them feel better if I can, and if I can't, then I have to leave them alone.
I think that's a sort of basic fairness, because otherwise I'm then using them to make myself feel better, which is another wrong, sort of piling on another wrong, on the wrong that I've already done them.
So, where restitution is not possible, I don't believe that a relationship is possible.
And that's why, to me, it's very, very important to, you know, continually sweep up after yourself.
You know, to continually look behind you and see if you've dropped anything and then go pick it up or sweep up after yourself.
You know, there's this old idea of the untouchables in India that they walk out of a room backwards sweeping up after themselves and nobody even touches the dust that it touches them.
And, of course, I'm not talking about anything that obsessive, but It's so important in your relationships to continually check in and to figure out if things are right or wrong, if they're going well or badly, if you've done anything good or bad or whatever, so that you can continually monitor and make restitution where restitution is required.
And the restitution can be something as simple as, I'm really sorry, you're absolutely right, that was totally wrong of me.
I would be happy to talk about why I did it, not in terms of self-justification, but in terms of shared knowledge and a deepening of our relationship, if it would be of help to but I leave it up to you.
What's your pleasure? What would be the best thing for me to do in this circumstance for you?
Here are the things I could do.
Because if you accumulate even a number of minor, relatively minor things, then you can end up with such a large snowball that it can't be undone.
Let's just say you've been kind of whiny and negative for the first five years of your marriage.
Well, how much would your wife accept ahead of time in terms of money or something in order to pay for those five years of a negative marital experience?
Let's just say you were kind of testy and short-tempered.
Not abusive, but testy and irritable.
Every time you had to do stuff, you were kind of short-tempered, testy and irritable.
So five years into it, right, the question your wife would ask herself, if she's listening to this, is, well, what would I take to have lived with this for five years, not knowing that it was ever going to end?
A million dollars? Five million dollars?
Ten million dollars? What, a beachfront in Malibu?
Beachfront house in Malibu? What would I take?
And if the answer is there's nothing I would take to have lived with this for five years, then you're on really shaky ground, in my opinion, as far as your marriage goes.
You don't let it go for five years, whatever you do, or a year or a day if you can.
Don't let stuff build up because at some point when stuff builds up, even if it's relatively minor, there is a point where restitution becomes impossible and then I believe that your relationship is in dire straits, if not done.
Alright, so don't let that kind of stuff build up.
You know, continually, you know, sweep after yourself.
Look back. See if you've dropped anything valuable.
See if you've trodden on anyone's toes.
Look back and find out what you've done that may have harmed or upset people.
People that you love, people that are close to you, whatever.
I mean, being a good person is always going to harm and upset nasty folk, but, you know, that's the nature of the beast, right?
But... I think that's really, really important.
Do not let your relationships, do not let the wrongs that we all both advertently and inadvertently do in our relationships, don't let those wrongs accumulate to the point where restitution becomes either theoretically or practically impossible and don't deny wrongs that you've done to others and ask them, you know, how can I make it right?
And offer them some options, you know, I could do this, I could do this, I could do this, right?
I go into therapy and I'll get a second job to pay for it, doesn't interfere with the family income or whatever, whatever, right?
But I think this idea of restitution is really important to think about in your relationships because I've never been able to sustain a relationship where restitution has become impossible and I've never heard of it happening because it just becomes denied and problematic.
So I hope this has been helpful and useful.
Please let me know what you think as always and if I've wronged you, let me know and I will do what I can to make a man.