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Nov. 20, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
21:26
1792 Morality is Memory

And abuse destroys memory, so...

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So I was chatting with Christina the other night, and we were talking, as I think parents are wont to do when you have a toddler, we were talking about ways in which she can get injured.
I mean, she's been pretty safe, and she's got great judgment.
There have been a few close calls, I think, where she could have been a little hurt.
I think that's true for all parents.
I hope that's true for all parents, anyway. But we were talking and we were going back to injuries that we'd had as children.
And she was telling me about some injuries she'd had.
And I said, oh yeah, I remember getting my finger caught in a doorframe when some other kid slammed the door.
And I remember losing a toenail shortly after I got my foot caught in an elevator door and stuff like that.
And it was always interesting to hear these kinds of things from the light and love and delight of your life.
But it was also a little hard because...
You're kind of gritting your teeth, right?
Oh, she told me some injury she had.
I can feel it, like in my body, I can feel it, that kind of physical pain.
And she was like, ooh, ah, you know, so basically we're recreating each other's childhood disaster traumas physically for each other.
And I started mulling that over.
I started thinking about that. And it sort of coincided, I think, pretty well with an idea that I've been rolling around in my head for the last couple of weeks.
And I think it's a really good idea.
I can't tell you how pleased and to some degree surprised I am that I can still come up with some good ideas after all these podcasts.
Anyway, enough rambling.
The idea is this. The thesis, be it resolved that, morality is...
Memory. Morality is memory.
So, what I mean by that is morality requires empathy, I think.
I mean, you can understand morality in an abstract sense if you sort of study it, but you don't really get it unless you have Empathy, because then it becomes a conscious thought-out process rather than an unconscious instinctive process.
It's not the reason why UPB is so hard.
It's because our unconscious has been programmed to be exploited by morality, and UPB is the opposite of that.
So we're trying to fight the 9,000-fold processing power of our unconscious with our merely feeble, the laser-like conscious mind, which is...
I'm trying to get UPB. It's like trying to sprint through a forest armed only with a laser pointer in the blackest of midnights with no moon and no stars.
It's a lot of tripping and a lot of falling and things get illuminated in a very strange way only briefly.
So, I mean, it is for me as well because I'm also fighting my unconscious that way as well.
But if you don't have empathy, You can't really be moral.
You can kind of get morality.
I guess in the same way I kind of get medicine from watching Grey's Anatomy, but it's not like I can actually operate.
It's not lupus.
Oh wait, wrong show. Now morality, to me, is empathy.
And empathy, to me, is little more or less.
Then memory. One of the things that has always surprised and astounded other people about me, other than my, as they used to say in Zork, maximum verbosity.
Oh, my God, if you're under 40, you have no idea what that joke means.
It's my memory.
I can remember from before I could walk, which has got to be less than a year.
I was a pretty early walker. I can remember from 10 months old.
I can remember being toilet trained.
I can remember all of these things.
And I just have a memory like I'm watching myself.
I remember the physical feeling, the sensations.
I remember the height. I remember the apartment that I was in just looking like a giant's hallway of chambers going up into infinity.
I remember that all so clearly.
I remember, I mean, I thought, oh, what if one day I want to write an autobiography?
It's like, it would be forever, because I remember everything, everything, everything, everything.
And because I remember everything, I think that has to do with some of the success that I've had in ethical theories, and I think to a large degree in ethical behavior, and with empathy, right?
I mean, If you listen to the listener conversations, I'm pretty good.
I'm pretty good with empathy.
And I think that has to do with memory.
To support this hypothesis, let's dip a little bit into science.
Why not? The scientific literature is very clear that significant early trauma Destroys memory.
Destroys not only the memories that are there, but the capacity to form and retain new memories.
And child abuse leads to, you know, is correlated with, is not causal in a direct sense, but is highly correlated with antisocial, amoral, sociopathic, or psychotic behavior.
And sociopathic behavior is pretty much defined in its essence by a lack of empathy.
Or a sort of manipulative empathy where you just sort of figure out what people want and then use it to hook them.
You know, like a guy who kidnaps your dog knows that you love your dog and blah, blah, blah, right?
And so if child abuse destroys memories and memory is required for empathy and empathy is required for morality, I think we can understand the degree to which Child abuse destroys one's capacity for instinctive or instinctual morality.
I read a story many years ago in a book called Study War No More by Joe Haldeman, who was a science fiction writer.
I think this was in the 70s.
I mean, it was a hell of a long time ago.
It's either the 70s or the early 80s.
And what happened was this bizarre alien with a pyramid head?
I don't know if that was the name. This bizarre alien landed and infected a guy with the involuntary experience of others around him, right?
So he would try and frighten someone and he himself would feel terrified.
He would try and bully someone and he himself would feel resentful and frightened.
And I don't remember much about the story.
Other than to think, what a strange thing it must be to imagine that that's the gift of an alien, when in fact, that is the gift of a friend.
That is the gift of good parenting, to have this kind of empathy.
And of course, it's tough to have that kind of empathy and to be strong where you need to be strong, right?
I mean, because empathy...
I mean, too much empathy means that you're paralyzed in necessary situations, right?
So if you have too much empathy for a guy whose shoulder is popped out, you can't pop the shoulder back in, and he may receive a permanent disability.
Or if you're a surgeon, too much empathy, if you're given their tracheotomy in the restaurant because they're choking, you can't, right?
I mean, so too much empathy can be a definite hamperance.
But... Enough empathy to know, at a very gut level, what is right and what is wrong.
And to empathize without being constrained by sympathy.
Which means you can empathize with somebody who wishes to do you harm.
You empathize with them. You understand where they're coming from.
from, it doesn't mean you sympathize with them and start smacking yourself in the face with a wet fish.
But I think that helps explain why the loss of memory...
Leads to the loss of empathy.
So, if you can't remember what it was like to be hurt as a child, if that memory, if that experience is no longer available to you or has been submerged into your unconscious or physically destroyed through abuse, if you can't anymore remember...
What it was like when you were bullied or if you were bullied or assaulted or whatever as a child, if you can't remember that anymore, then how are you going to stop doing it?
I mean, I so vividly, deeply, and with huge detail remember what it was like to be a child, and that's one of the reasons I can have so much empathy for Isabella, because I remember what it was like to be a child.
All the joys and giddy excitements and newness and fears and anxieties and terrors of all this, that and the other, which I'm not experiencing the terrors, but I certainly do remember all of the other stuff.
The enthusiasms which lead to hurting others, you know, you just sort of throw something because you're excited and it hits someone or whatever, right?
All of that sort of chaotic, your arms feel like tentacles holding bowling balls, you know, because they're just out of your control half the time.
I remember all of that.
And because of that, I think, maybe it's the case.
I can't imagine. Maybe it is.
I can't think that a single bloodline has gone from one such extreme of parenting as my mother's and my father's to Christina and I's parenting.
I can't imagine that a bloodline has seen such a swing from one to the other.
And that, I think, has a lot to do with memory and the empathy that arises from it.
Now, you may, if you agree with this possible analysis, which I think has a lot going for it, though I will not say it is proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, which I think has a lot going for it, though There's a lot going for it. You may be saddened by this, and you may say to yourself, well, jeez, Steph or F.R. Ding-dong, you tell me that memory is required for empathy, empathy is required for morality.
And I cannot remember very much of my childhood at all, you say.
I've heard this, I don't know, dozens of times with listener convos, and people say, well, I can't remember anything before I was 12.
It's all a vague blur.
I don't remember anything. Does this mean that I cannot have morality, that I cannot have empathy?
I do not believe that it does.
It is not loss.
It is not violence that produces long-lasting trauma.
It is not abuse that produces long-lasting trauma.
That is why the abuse is not directly causal.
Experiencing abuse does not mean that you are a bomb in the brain, traumatized for life.
It does not mean that.
I think I can say that I'm proof of that.
It does not mean that. If you lose a thumb, if you lose both your thumbs, In a terrible hero's thumbkin banana blade accident.
If you lose both of your thumbs, it does not mean that you're going to spend the rest of your life dropping things.
If you lose your thumbs, you will only spend the rest of your life dropping things if you deny that you have lost your thumbs.
To stretch the metaphor, if you accept that you've lost your thumbs, you can get toes put on your hands and bolt it into thumbs, and then you can hitchhike at least two feet.
Oh! The humor.
Let's keep this for the podcast, shall we?
It's not the trauma and it's not even the forgetting that produces the horrible effects of abuse.
It is not the trauma.
It is not the forgetting.
It is the forgetting, the forgetting that causes the problem.
So, I mean, seriously.
So, if you lose two thumbs and you pretend to yourself that you haven't lost two thumbs, then you're going to live a life of incredible frustration because you're going to sort of reach to pick up a coffee cup and it's going to fall down.
And you'll be like, what the hell?
I picked it up.
Especially if you have phantom thumbs.
Like, you have phantom limbs, right?
You feel like you still have thumbs.
You go to grab onto something, it's just going to slip through your fingers.
You're going to think all your gloves are defective.
You ain't going to be able to drive with one hand very easily.
So you understand, it's not the loss that causes the problems fundamentally.
It is the ignoring of the loss.
It is the forgetting of the forgetting.
That causes the real problem.
Because, unconsciously, we always know the truth, right?
So, again, just to stretch the metaphor, right?
So, let's say that I've lost both of my thumbs, and I'm around someone who has both of his thumbs.
I think I have both of my thumbs, but deep down I know that I haven't, and I'm going to feel resentful of the guy who has two thumbs.
I'm just going to feel resentful of him.
And I'm going to want to avoid things which expose to me The reality that I have lost my thumbs.
Since I have this bizarre fantasy that I still have my two thumbs, I'm going to need to ignore situations wherein it's going to be revealed to me that I only have one thumb.
So someone's going to say, hey, let's play Thumb Wars.
You'll be like, no, I don't want to.
I don't feel like it. But then I'm going to immediately have to tell myself...
That I'm not refusing thumb wars because I know I lack a thumb, because I'm avoiding the knowledge that I lack a thumb.
And the other person's going to be confused, like, ah, come on, you're going to get angry, you're going to get resentful.
No, I said no! I don't want to do it.
Stop bugging me. See, the complications that arise when we pretend we have not been traumatized.
I mean, you see this all the time on the internet.
The internet is just one bomb-in-the-brain bowling alley of people pretending they haven't been abused and then abusing others in turn.
And this is the underworld that you get trapped into, right?
This is the underworld you get trapped into when you ignore that you have trauma, because you have to pretend that you don't have trauma, but you have to avoid situations where somebody could flourish only if they either have had no trauma or have processed their trauma.
Okay, so let's switch from thumbs to legs.
Again, sorry for the gross metaphors, but...
So you've lost a leg, but you pretend that you have two legs.
You just pretend that you like your cane or whatever, right?
And then somebody says, let's go dancing!
And somebody with two legs can go dancing, more or less.
And you have to say, no, I don't want to go dancing.
I don't feel like it.
Dancing, you have to make up some story, because it's irrational why you don't like dancing.
Why would you not like dancing? Dancing is great.
So you have to then become haughty and dancing is for losers.
You have to come up with some reason as to why you're avoiding the situation that have exposed you to yourself that you have only one leg.
You have to continually avoid, avoid, avoid for no good reason.
Therefore, you have to make up good reasons, which is where you get abuse and attitude and haughtiness and arrogance and scorn and all this kind of stuff.
The entertainment that I talk about in my novel, The God of Atheists.
Free for gold plus donators.
And so you're trapped in this world of avoiding situations that will expose your abuse.
So, I remember...
I guess I was 14 or 15 and my mom was institutionalized.
I went to go visit her and there was this woman there.
I don't remember how the hell. I guess my mom had an appointment or something.
I don't know why. I ended up playing ping pong with this crazy woman.
And this crazy woman played for a minute or two and then put it down and backed away, her face white, her hands shaking, saying, no, no, no, I can't play ping pong.
I get too stressed.
I get too upset.
She got really tense and she ran out of the room.
Okay. Hey, still saying to my mom.
But she had to avoid. But at least she knew.
She had some words for it, right?
So people who are, for instance, you see all of this working-class hero bullshit, you know?
Where, like, the guys on the shop floor are hearty, meaty, sports-loving man-heroes.
Kind of pigs, but, you know, they're there for you if you need it.
They're truck commercials with grimy baseball hats.
And managers are like weaselly, smarmy, know-it-alls who just are power-hungry and wave clipboards and don't know what the hell they're doing.
Don't get too close to that machinery.
It'll chew you up. Right?
They understand that to be a manager takes significantly more emotional skills and emotional intelligence from And verbal skills and interrelated skills.
To be a manager requires much more negotiation and mental health than to be a lever pusher on a line.
And so the people who are brain-dead lever pushers on a line are there because they've been traumatized and abused by culture, by religion, by family, by schools.
They've been brutalized and mentally crippled through propaganda and through all of this.
Now, this, they pretend, is not the case, which is why they all band together in this meaty-hearty caveman Stanley Kowalski, knuckle-dragging, hairy-fingered tribe of idiots.
They all band together, and they all pull each other down.
Because they're so brain-dead traumatized that if they were to try to go for management, that trauma, their levels of anger, of instability, of lack of capacity to negotiate, of lack of capacity for empathy, of lack of capacity for integrity, all of these things would be revealed if they went for management.
If they went for management, their trauma and their deficiencies and their Crippling insecurities which lie underneath this hearty bravado of caveman machismo would be revealed.
So they then have to create this world wherein managers are shit and workers are great.
Because they have to stay in this worker underworld because they can't confront the issues, the culture, the low-rent tribe that hangs on their necks like shackled albatrosses of leaden weight from hell.
They have to create this world where This is good.
So they can't go for management.
But they can't say the real reason they won't go for management.
They can't say that. Because that would be to confront their own abuse and to accept and to actually remember what they have forgotten.
But they can't do that.
So they have to create this world where Horizontal is good.
Vertical sucks.
Only bad people want to become managers.
This is the bullshit that you have to make up to avoid triggering your own deficiencies, your own bomb-in-the-brain traumatized history.
So you sort of see what I'm saying, right?
You get trapped in this underworld.
So you got traumatized, you forget a whole bunch of stuff.
That's, I mean, terrible, and I'm so sorry that that happened to you if it happened to you.
But the reality is that that doesn't keep you down.
That doesn't keep you from becoming a moral and empathetic person.
Because you can remember.
You can work at it.
You can journal. You can self-empathize even with your own lack of history, your own lack of memory, or even your own lack of empathy.
And that begins to rebuild everything.
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