Love: The Word versus the Deed
Saying the word "success" is far easier than actually achieving success. Mouthing the word "love" is far easier than actually loving someone for the right reasons – and being loved for the right reasons.
If we do not have any standards for being loved, then laziness and indifference will inevitably result. If I have a job where I work from home, and no one ever checks up on me, and I never have to produce anything, and I get paid no matter what, and I cannot get fired, how long will it be before my work ethic decays? Days? Weeks? Certainly not months.
One of the most important questions to ask in any examination of the truth is "compared to what?" For instance, if I say I love you, implicit in that statement is a preference for you over others. In other words, compared to others, I prefer you. We prefer honesty compared to falsehood, satiation to hunger, warmth to cold and so on.
It is not logically valid to equate the word "love" with "family." The word "family" is a mere description of a biological commonality – it makes no more sense to equate "love" with "family" than it does to equate "love" with "mammal." Thus the word "love" must mean a preference compared to – what?
It is impossible to have any standards for love if we do not have any standards for truth. Since being honest is better than lying, and courage is better than cowardice, and truth is better than falsehood, we cannot have honesty and courage unless we are standing for something that is true. Thus when we say that we "love" someone, what we really mean is that his actions are consistent, compared to a rational standard of virtue. In the same way, when I say that somebody is "healthy," what I really mean is that his organs are functioning consistently, relative to a rational standard of well-being.
Thus love is not a subjective preference, or a biological commonality, but our involuntary response to virtuous actions on the part of another.
If we truly understand this definition, then it is easy for us to see that a society that does not know truth cannot ever know love.
If nothing is true, virtue is impossible.
If virtue is impossible, then we are forced to pretend to be virtuous, through patriotism, clan loyalties, cultural pride, superstitious conformities and other such amoral counterfeits.
If virtue is impossible, then love is impossible, because actions cannot be compared to any objective standard of goodness. If love is impossible, we are forced to resort to sentimentality, or the shallow show and outward appearance of love.
Thus it can be seen that any set of principles that interferes with our ability to know and understand the truth hollows us out, undermining and destroying our capacity for love. False principles, illusions, fantasies and mythologies separate us from each other, from virtue, from love, from the true connections that we can achieve only through reality.
In fantasy, there is only isolation and pretence. Mythology is, fundamentally, loneliness and emptiness.
Imagination versus Fantasy
At this point, I think it would be well worth highlighting the differences between imagination and fantasy, because many people, on hearing my criticisms of mythology, think that they are now not supposed to enjoy Star Wars.
Imagination is a creative faculty that is deeply rooted in reality. Fantasy, on the other hand, is a mere species of intangible wish fulfillment. It took Tolkien decades of study and writing to produce "The Lord of the Rings" – and each part of that novel was rationally consistent with the whole. That is an example of imagination. If I laze about daydreaming that one day I will make a fortune by writing a better novel than "The Lord of the Rings" – but never actually set pen to paper – that is an example of fantasy. Imagination produced the theory of relativity, not fantasizing about someday winning a Nobel Prize.
Daydreams that are never converted into action are the ultimate procrastination. Imagining a wonderful future that you never have to act to achieve prevents you from achieving a wonderful future.
In the same way, imagining that you know the truth when you do not prevents you from ever learning the truth. Nothing is more dangerous than the illusion of knowledge. If you are going the wrong way, but do not doubt your direction, you will never turn around.
As Socrates noted more than 2,000 years ago, doubt is the midwife of curiosity, and curiosity breeds wisdom.
Fantasy is the opposite of doubt. Mythology provides instant answers when people do not even know what the questions are. In the Middle Ages, when someone asked "Where did the world come from?" he was told: "God made it." This effectively precluded the necessity of asking the more relevant question: "What is the world?"
Because religious people believed they knew where the world came from, there was little point asking what the world was. Because there was little point asking what the world was, they never learned where the world came from.
Fantasy is a circle of nothingness, forever eating its own tail.
Defining Love
If people fantasize that they know what is true, then they inevitably stop searching for the truth. If I am driving home, I stop driving when I get there. If people fantasize that they know what goodness is, they inevitably stop trying to understand goodness.
And, most importantly, if people fantasize that they already are good, they stop trying to become good. If you want a baby, and you believe that you are pregnant, you stop trying to get pregnant.
The question – which we already know the answer to – thus remains: why do people who claim to love us never tell us what love is?
If I am an accomplished mathematician, and my child comes to me and asks me about the times tables, it would be rude and churlish of me to dismiss his questions. If I go to my mother, who for 30 years has claimed to love me, and ask her what love is, why is it that she refuses to answer my question? Why does my brother roll his eyes and change the subject whenever I ask him what it is that he loves about me? Why does my father claim to love me, while continually rejecting everything that I hold precious?
Why does everyone around me perpetually use words that they refuse to define? Are they full of a knowledge that they cannot express? That is not a good reason for refusing to discuss the topics. A novelist who writes instinctually would not logically be hostile if asked about the source of his inspiration. He may not come up with a perfect answer, but there would be no reason to perpetually avoid the subject.
Unless…
Unless, of course, he is a plagiarist.
What We Know
This is the knowledge that we have, but hate and fear.
We know that the people who claim to love us know precious little about us, and nothing at all about love.
We know that the people who claim to love us make this claim in order to create obligations within us.
We know that the people who claim to love us make this claim in order to control us.
And they know it too.
It is completely obvious that they know this, because they know exactly which topics to avoid. A counterfeiter will not mind if you ask him what the capital of Madagascar is. A counterfeiter will mind, however, if you ask him whether you can check the authenticity of his money. Why is this the one topic that he will try to avoid at all costs?
Because he knows that his currency is fake.
And he also knows that if you find that out, he can no longer use it to rob you blind.
Obligations
If I own a store, and take counterfeit money from a con man, but do not know that it is counterfeit, then I am obligated to hand over what he has "bought."
In the same way, if I believe that I am loved – even when I am not loved – I am to a degree honour-bound to return that love. If my mother says that she loves me, and she is virtuous, then she must love me because I am virtuous. Since she is herself virtuous, then I "owe" her love as a matter of justice, just as I owe trust to someone who consistently behaves in a trustworthy manner.
Thus when somebody tries to convince you that they love you, they're actually attempting to create an obligation in you. If I try to convince you that I am a trustworthy person, it is because I want all the benefits of being treated as if I were a trustworthy person. If I am in fact a trustworthy person, then I must understand the nature of trust – at least at some level – and thus I must know that it cannot be demanded, but must be earned. Since earning trust is harder than just demanding trust, I must know the real value of trust, otherwise I would not have taken the trouble to earn it through consistent behaviour – I would have just demanded it and skipped all the hard stuff!
If you demand trust, you are demanding the unearned, which indicates that you do not believe you can earn it. Thus anyone who demands trust is automatically untrustworthy.
Why do people demand trust?
To rob others.
If I want to borrow money from you, and I demand that you trust me, it's because I am not trustworthy, and will be unlikely to pay you back.
In other words, I want to steal your money, and put you in my power.
It's the same with love.
Love and Virtue
If I am virtuous, then virtuous people will regard me with at least respect, if not love. Corrupt or evil people may regard me with a certain respect, but they will certainly not love me.
Thus being virtuous and refusing to demand love from anyone is the best way to find other virtuous people. If you are virtuous and undemanding, then other virtuous people will naturally gravitate towards you. Virtue that does not impose itself on others is like a magnet for goodness, and repels corruption.
The practical result of true virtue is fundamental self-protection.
If my stockbroker consistently gets me 30% return on my investments, is there any amount of money that I will not give him, other than what I need to live? Of course not! Because I know I will always get back more than I give.
It's the same with real love.
If I am virtuous, then I will inevitably feel positively inclined towards other virtuous people – and the more virtuous they are, the more I will love them. My energy, time and resources will be at their disposal, because I know that I will not be exploited, and that they will reciprocate my generosity.
If you and I have lent money to each other over the years, and have always paid each other back, then the next time you come to me for a loan, it would be unjust for me to tell you that I will not lend you anything because I do not think you will pay me back. Your continued and perpetual honesty towards me in financial matters has created an obligation in me towards you. This does not mean that I must lend you money whenever you ask for it, but I cannot justly claim as my reason for not lending you money a belief that you will not pay me back.
In the same way, if you have been my wife for 20 years, and I have never been unfaithful, if a woman calls and then hangs up, it would be unjust for you to immediately accuse me of infidelity.
A central tactic for creating artificial and unjust obligations in others is to demand their positive opinion, without being willing to earn it. The most effective way to do this is to offer a positive opinion, which has not been earned – to claim to love others.
If, over the past 20 years, I have rarely paid back any money I have borrowed from you, it is perfectly reasonable to refuse me an additional loan. I may then get angry, and call you unfair, and demand that you treat me as if I were trustworthy, but it would scarcely be virtuous for you to comply with my wishes. Indeed, it would be dishonest and unjust for you to ignore my untrustworthiness, because you would be acting as if there was no difference between someone who pays back loans, and someone who does not.
When we act in a virtuous manner towards others, we are creating a reservoir of goodwill that we can draw upon, just as when we put our savings into a bank. A man can act imperfectly and still be loved, just as a man can eat an occasional candy bar and still be healthy, but there is a general requirement for consistency in any discipline. I could probably hit a home run in a major-league ballpark once every thousand pitches, but that would scarcely make me a professional baseball player!
If I act in a trustworthy manner, I do not have to ask you to trust me – and in fact, I would be very unwise to do so. Either you will trust me voluntarily, which means that you respect honourable and consistent behaviour, and justly respond to those who do good, or you will not trust me voluntarily, which means that you do not respond in a just manner to trustworthy behaviour, and thus cannot be trusted yourself.
If, on the other hand, I come up to you and demand that you trust me, I am engaged in a complex calculation of counterfeiting and plunder.
The first thing I am trying to do is establish whether or not you know anything about trust. The second thing is to figure out your level of confidence and self-esteem. The third thing is figure out if you know anything about integrity.
An attacker will always try to find the weakest chink in your armour. If I demand trust from you, and you agree to provide it – without any prior evidence – then I know that you do not know anything about trust. Similarly, if you do not require that your trust be earned, then I know that you lack confidence and self-esteem. If you are willing to treat me as if I were trustworthy when I am not trustworthy, then it is clear to me you know very little about integrity.
This tells me all I need to know about your history. This tells me that you were never treated with respect as a child, and that you were never taught to judge people according to independent standards, and that every time you tried to stand up for yourself, your family attacked you.
In other words, I will know that you are easy prey.
I cannot create an obligation in you unless you accept that I have treated you justly in the past. As in all things, it is far easier to convince a weak person that you have treated him justly, than it is to actually treat people in a just and consistent manner. If I can convince you that I have treated you justly in the past, then you "owe" me trust and respect in the present.
"Love" as Predation
Imagine that we are brothers, and one day you awake from a coma to see me sitting by your bed. After some small talk, I tell you that you owe me $1,000, which you borrowed from me the day of your accident. I tell you that because I am a kind brother, and you are in the hospital, you do not have to pay me back the thousand dollars – I would just like you to remember it, so that the next time I need to borrow $1,000, you will lend it to me.
You might look in the pockets of the jeans you wore the day of your accident, and you might look around your apartment to see if there was $1,000 lying around, but there would be no real way to prove that I had not lent you the money. You would either have to call me a liar – an accusation for which you have no certain proof – or you would feel substantially more obligated to lend me money in the future.
If you call me a liar, I will get angry. If you accept the obligation without ever finding the $1,000, you will feel resentful. Either way, our relationship is harmed – and by telling you about the $1,000, I have voluntarily introduced a complication and a suspicion into our relationship, which is scarcely loving, just or benevolent.
This is the kind of brinksmanship and deception that goes on all the time in relationships – particularly in families.
When our parents tell us that they love us, they are in fact demanding that we provide for them. They are basically telling us that they have lent us $1,000 – even if we cannot remember it – and thus we owe them trust in the future, if not $1,000 in the present!
In other words, our parents spend an enormous amount of energy convincing us that they "love" us in order to create artificial obligations within us. In doing so, they take a terrible risk – and force us to make an even more terrible choice.
Brinksmanship
When somebody tells you that they love you, it is either a statement of genuine regard, based on mutual virtue, or it is an exploitive and unjust demand for your money, time, resources, or approval.
There is very little in between.
Either love is real, and a true joy, or love is false, and the most corrupt and cowardly form of theft that can be imagined.
If love is real, then it inflicts no unjust obligations. If love is real, then it is freely given without demands. If a good man gives you his love, and you do not reciprocate it, then he just realizes that he was mistaken, learns a little, and moves on. If a woman tells you that she loves you, and then resents any hesitation or lack of reciprocation you display, then she does not love you, but is using the word "love" as a kind of hook, to entrap you into doing what she wants, to your own detriment.
How can you possibly know whether the love that somebody expresses towards you is genuine or not?
It's very, very simple.
When it is genuine, you feel it.
What happens, though, when a parent demands love from us?
Well, we must either submit to this demand, and pretend to respond in kind, or we must confront her on her manipulation – thus threatening the entire basis of the relationship.
Would someone who truly loves us ever put us in this terrible position?
Society and Religion
The principle of inflicting a good opinion in order to create an unjust obligation occurs at a social level, as well as at a personal level. Soldiers are supposed to have died "protecting us," which creates an obligation for us to support the troops. The mere act of being born in a country creates a lifelong obligation to pay taxes at the point of a gun, in order to receive services that we never directly asked for. John F. Kennedy's famous quote, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but rather what you can do for your country," is another way of saying, "One of us is going to get screwed in this interaction, and it ain't gonna be me!"
The same thing occurs in the realm of religion, of course, as well. Jesus died for your sins, God loves you, you will be punished if you do not obey, Hell is the destination of unbelievers etc. etc. etc.
All of these emotional tricks are designed to create an obligation in you that would not exist in any reasonable universe.
"Sacrifice," in other words, is merely demand in disguise.
Unconscious?
All of these substantial criticisms rest on the premise that people do actually know what love really is, and merely counterfeit it for the sake of personal gain – just as any moral criticism of a counterfeiter rests on the premise that he actually does know what money is, and copies it for the sake of personal gain.
Naturally, it is hard to imagine that those around us are constantly striving to inflict artificial obligations on us through appeal to a fantastical kind of social mythology. When you think of your sweet, white-haired old mother, who sacrificed everything for you, what could it mean to condemn her for failing to be able to perfectly define the nature and properties of love, a question that baffles even great philosophers?
Well of course it would be grossly unfair to ask the average person to accurately define the true nature of love, just as it would be ridiculous – not to mention dangerous – to grab the average man on the street and ask him to perform your appendectomy.
It certainly is unfair to judge people by standards that they can scarcely be aware of. However, it is not at all unfair to judge people according to the standards that they themselves have set. I cannot alone determine at what price you will sell me your car – but if you yourself put the price in the window, it is not unreasonable for me to expect you to honour it.
Thus when people use the word "love," they are "putting the price in the window." Love of course is considered to be a feeling of high regard for someone, and is either based upon the virtues or characteristics of the loved person, or it is not. If love is not based on the characteristics of the loved person, then it must be based on the willpower of the person who loves him or her.
If love is based on the willpower of the person who is "doing the loving," then it must be considered virtuous to love so altruistically. If it is not virtuous to love so altruistically, then there is nothing beneficial or positive in the interaction, since neither the person loving nor the person being loved possesses any positive characteristics. We might as well define obsessive stalking as "love."
If it is "good" for Person A to love Person B despite Person B's lack of lovable qualities, then this "good action" is either a universal principle, or a merely personal preference. If I say that ice cream is "good," I do not mean that ice cream acts with virtue, courage and integrity. If I say that a particular action is "good," then it must be good for more than one person, if it is to rise above merely personal preference. However, if it is "good" to love someone who has no lovable qualities, then an instant paradox is created.
If I have no lovable qualities, then I do not possess "goodness," since goodness is a lovable quality. If it is "good" to love someone despite an absence of lovable qualities, then by definition I am incapable of loving someone, since I lack goodness. In this way, two opposing moral rules are created, which cannot be valid. Person A does "good" by loving Person B, who is incapable of goodness. Person B can then only enable Person A's "goodness" by receiving without giving – thus what is good for Person A is not good for Person B.
Again, though this can be complicated to examine syllogistically, it is an argument that adult children of a co-dependent parent have continuously. If I see my mother perpetually sacrificing everything for my father, I will continually ask her that if sacrificing everything for your spouse is good, then why does my father not sacrifice everything for her? Why is such sacrifice only ever good for her? Why does my father get off scot-free?
It cannot be considered "good" to love someone who lacks lovable qualities. Love, then, is a form of payment for virtue.
I must confess that I understood this at the age of 13, when I was a very shallow young man. In school, word got around that I was going to ask a girl to a dance. My criteria, sadly, was solely based on physical attractiveness. When my classmates cornered me and pestered me to reveal whom I was going to ask out, I finally mentioned the girl's name, and was greeted with rather shocked silence. This girl, while admittedly attractive, was considered rather coarse and unintelligent.
"Why would you ask her?" a friend demanded.
"Uh, because of her… personality," I stammered, convincing no one.
Why was it that, even at such a tender age, I felt the need to invent virtue as the basis for my desire? Would it have been wrong to say, "She's kinda purdy!" and be satisfied with that?
And the looks in the faces of the people around me were very interesting. It was not so much that they knew that I was lying – that much was obvious. It is more that they knew why I was lying – and they actually had some sympathy for that, I think.
They knew that I was lying because it is easier to make up "good" reasons for wanting the wrong thing than to actually want the right thing.
And this lesson we have been well taught by our teachers - but I will get into that later.
When I was about 11, I stole some money from my brother to buy a book. He suspected me of the theft, and spent a good deal of time and energy cross-examining me as to where I'd gotten the money to afford the book. He never could prove that I stole the money, and I stonewalled and evaded with fairly decent ability.
There are three things that I remember very strongly from that long afternoon.
- I was not troubled fundamentally about stealing, but only worried about getting caught.
- If someone had asked me if stealing were wrong, I would have said "yes" – and mean it.
- I was not worried about that blatant contradiction.
In other words, I knew that stealing was wrong, but that knowledge was a mere abstraction, like knowing how many moons Jupiter has, or the name of the drummer for Led Zeppelin. I believed that stealing was wrong – but what that really meant was that I knew that I would get punished if I did not say that stealing was wrong. So I said it aloud, like a magical spell that wards off punishment, like any pagan.
It was similar to how I would chant out my times tables, before I had any real understanding of arithmetic. The sentence was not "Yes, I know that stealing is wrong, but I wanted a book!" It was even less related than that: "Stealing is wrong, and I wanted a book." Just two facts, a principle and a desire, not even orbiting one another…
So did I know that stealing is wrong? Sure, I think I did, but for me, "wrong" just meant, "disapproved of." By this time, I had lived in a number of different countries and classes, and I knew that "wrong" was not objective, because "disapproved of" varied so enormously from place to place. And obviously I myself "approved of" taking the money from my brother, because I did it. So there was my little "approval," and lots of other people's "disapproval," and I thought: well, if other people get to disapprove of things that I prefer, then surely I have the right to approve of things that they do not prefer.
Logical, you may say. Amoral, but logical. And I would have to agree.
But the important issue is that I knew the rules, then I broke the rules by applying them to myself, and so I just made up new rules. This is, I believe, far more common than is generally admitted.
And so we come to the fundamental question: how responsible are we in the face of our own hypocrisies?
The Open Cage…
I'd like you to imagine a man standing in the middle of a large meadow. You spend some time watching this man, and it doesn't take you very long to notice that he paces back and forth in a small square, about 10 feet on either side. That's all. Just 10 feet.
After a few hours of watching him do this, you walk up to him. When you reach forward to shake his hand, however, your fingers are burned by a strong electrical shock from an invisible barrier.
Startled – and hurt – you cry out. The man looks up.
"What's the matter?" he asks.
"I just ran into this invisible wall which gave me a hell of a shock!" you cry.
He frowns. "I didn't see anything."
You blink. "Really? You've never heard or seen or felt this invisible barrier?"
He shakes his head slowly. "What invisible barrier?"
"The one that surrounds you – the one that keeps you penned in this little 10 foot square!"
"What little 10 foot square?" he demands. "There's no little 10 foot square! I can go wherever the hell I want!"
"No you can't!"
"Who the hell are you to tell me where I can and cannot go? I decide that!"
"I'm not telling you where you can and cannot go – I'm just telling you what you are actually doing!"
"What on earth are you talking about?"
"Well, I've been watching you for the past few hours, and you're standing in the middle of this great big meadow, and yet all you do is pace back and forth 10 feet."
"I can go anywhere I damn well please!" the man repeats angrily.
"You say that, but all you do is pace around and around in a little 10 foot square! If you can go anywhere you please, why don't you just try taking one extra step?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about," he growls. "Now get the hell off my damn property!"
"Wait – I can show you!" You reach down and pick up some grass. You throw it towards the man. A few feet away from his face, the blades of grass burst into flame and evaporate. You do this several times, proving definitively that there is in fact an invisible force field that surrounds him, roughly 10 feet by 10 feet.
"Do you see?" you ask eagerly. "Do you see that you are in an invisible cage?"
"Get the hell off my property, you madman!" he cries, shaking with rage.
"But you must know that you are in an invisible cage," you cry out. "You must know that, because you never try to go outside these walls. You must have at one time tried to break free of this cage, and were burned by the electric shock, which is why you never take more than a few steps before turning around! Don't you see?"
He pulls out a gun, screams that he has a principle of shooting trespassers, and, quite sensibly, you run away.
This is the great paradox of attempting to teach people what they already know. Everybody claims complete freedom, but paces back and forth, trapped in a little square. Everyone is surrounded by the invisible cages of culture and mythology, and denies it completely. The evidence of these cages is very clear, because people always turn back just before they hit them. But then they deny that these cages exist.
Everybody acts as if they are perfectly free, and perfectly enslaved at the same time. Nobody admits to being in a prison, but everyone shuffles around in an invisible 10 x 10 cell.
In the same way, everyone tells you that they are free, but in fact everyone is trapped in little tiny cells of allowable conversation. Everybody tells you they love you, but strenuously avoids talking about what love is, or what about you they love.
Everyone tells you to be good, but they have no idea what goodness is – and will savage you for even having the temerity to ask the question.
Everybody talks about the truth, but the real truth is that nobody can talk about the truth – what it is, how it is defined, how it is verified, and its value.
Responsibility
If the man in the meadow were put into his cage when he was a toddler, he would have discovered the limits of his confinement – painfully – when he was very young. It is entirely conceivable that he would end up just avoiding his invisible prison bars, to retain his illusion of freedom, and repress the pain of imprisonment. If you cannot escape your prison, then you might as well imagine that you're free.
The man is not responsible for being put in the cage when he was a toddler, and he is not responsible for his resulting repression, and he is not responsible for not testing the bars of his cage, but instead turning away before he touches them.
There are two things, however, that he is responsible for.
The first thing that he is responsible for denying is clear and tangible evidence that contradicts his belief. There are two primary pieces of evidence: the grass that bursts into flame, and the fact that although he says he is free, he never takes more than a few steps in any direction before turning around.
The second thing that he is responsible for is shutting down the conversation when it makes him uncomfortable.
The essence of wisdom is learning the value of "staying in the conversation," even when it makes you uncomfortable.
Especially when it makes you uncomfortable.
Falsehood and the Conversation
The most important thing in life is not to lie to other people – honesty is the most fundamental virtue. Now, just about every time a philosopher brings up the virtue of honesty, a blizzard of questions blocks his progress – questions designed to find the fuzzy areas at the limits of ethical behaviour, such as "Is it okay to lie if someone holds a gun to your head and demands to know where your wife is so that he can kill her?"
This is all very interesting, but absolutely irrelevant to the world as it is.
In the world as it is, we are so far from being able to tell the truth to each other that focusing on the fuzzy areas of practical honesty is like asking a man who stumbles into an emergency room clutching his own severed arm if he needs a manicure. Or, to take another medical analogy, I view philosophers as essential doctors in the middle of a terrible plague. All around us, people are writhing and dying, and we must work as hard as we can to save as many people as we can – with the full knowledge that very few people will make it. Most modern philosophers, however, are sitting in the midst of all this suffering, and debating what the best course of action should be if a patient presents with a heart attack, diabetes, and a hangnail, and is struck by lightning while being examined.
My response to that is: when we have reached a world that is so healthy that the once-a-century problems are the most important things that we can deal with, we shall scarcely need philosophy at all!
Thus let us roll up our sleeves, and try to deal with the plague that is devouring us now, and leave the improbable problems to a future happier time.
The reason that the man in the invisible cage above is to blame for his actions is that he was lying to you.
When you began to point the truth out to him, he felt uncomfortable. At first, he seemed genuinely baffled – whether that was a ruse or not, we cannot tell. Then, as the evidence began to mount up, both logically and empirically, he began to get hostile.
Was he lying? Of course he was.
He was lying because he did not tell you that he was feeling uncomfortable, but rather began jabbering about trespassing, cursing, and ended up pulling out a gun.
Was this honest? No. Was this man aware that he was feeling increasingly uncomfortable? Of course. Did he honestly express his discomfort? No. He evaded his own discomfort by attacking you.
As an example, when I sat down with my brother, after I had decided to stop seeing my mother, he presented to me the following argument:
"Stef, you should see mother because if you don't see her, then she is exercising control over your choices. If you allow the fact that you dislike her to control your actions, she has won, and you have lost an essential freedom."
"So," I replied, "if I understand you correctly, you are saying that I should see people that I like because I like them, and I should see people that I dislike because otherwise they will have power over me. In other words, there is no one that I should ever refuse to see."
As usual, he rolled his eyes and shrugged.
"But let me tell you what bothers me about this family," I continued. "I strongly feel that I am never allowed to have any real preferences. I mean, I am allowed to have preferences in my own way, but nobody ever respects those preferences and changes their actions. You would prefer that I see mother, and so you are trying to get me to change my actions based on your preferences. However, at the same time, you tell me that my preferences are meaningless, in terms of whom I see. But how can your preferences require a change in my actions, but my preferences should require no changes in my actions?"
Sadly, inevitably, the conversation was over at that point.
It was clear to me even at the time that my brother was intensely uncomfortable with my questions. He telegraphed all the usual signals – pursed lips, eye rolling, tight shrugs and endless frowns. I felt a very strong resistance as I ploughed on, and I asked my brother if he felt uncomfortable. He said that he did not.
This was, of course, the key moment in our interaction. If he had been honest with me, and told me that he felt uncomfortable, we could have talked about his discomfort, and the ways in which that discomfort might have been affecting his position.
By telling me that I was doing something wrong, when what was actually happening was that my choices were causing him discomfort, my brother was lying to me. He was, essentially, trying to manage his own discomfort by inflicting moral commandments upon me. He tried to appeal to my self-interest based on a vague "higher standard," and when that failed, he disapproved of my "resistance." My decision not to see our mother anymore created great anxiety in him, because it opened up the possibility of choice, where before there had only been an absolute.
This was an essential aspect of our interaction. I think that I will have had a long life if I live to be a hundred years old. If, however, if turns out that technology can now allow us to live to be 200 years old, a hundred years will no longer seem like such a long life. Where there is no possibility of reaching 200 years of age, we do not feel anxious if we fail to reach it. If there is no possibility of not seeing your own mother, then we feel far less anxious if we continue to see her, even if, deep down, we do not want to.
However, the moment that somebody says: "I am no longer going to see my mother," this creates great anxiety within us, because a possibility now exists that deep down we really want which formerly we thought was impossible.
When I made my decision, my brother had two choices about how to best manage his anxiety. He could examine that anxiety and try to understand its source – or, he could attempt to reduce his anxiety by manipulating me into seeing our mother again.
When choice enters into our lives, where formerly we felt there were only absolutes, we feel anxiety, because deep down we know that that choice always existed, but we have been told that it was wrong to think about that choice. Emotionally, this leads us back to our early traumas, through which "culture" was inflicted upon us – and thus to a deep and bitter criticism of our parents and teachers – bringing us right up against the invisible electric fence of mythological punishment.
We really, really do not ever want to go there.
If somebody breaks out of prison, you can either try to break out of prison yourself, or you can help the guards get him back into prison. The tipping point of the decision is what you decide to do with your own anxiety. If you decide to deal with your anxiety as an internal state, related to your core beliefs, your history, your false allegiances to false virtues, then you will be catapulted through the entire cavalcade of growth that is the inevitable result of deciding to stop using others to manage your emotions.
It is a sad reality that, for most people, their prison doesn't feel like a prison until somebody tries to break out of it. The conclusion they leap to is that the person who has broken out of prison is the one who actually turned it into a prison – by the very act of breaking out of it! It's madness, of course, but all too common.
When I sat down with my mother, about eight years ago, a very similar interaction occurred, just as you would expect. And, just as you would expect, she was much more efficient than my brother, because she taught him.
The fundamental conversation went this way:
I said: "Mom, I feel that you don't listen to me."
My mother replied: "Don't be silly – of course I listen to you!"
Do you really need any help figuring out the blatant contradiction in this interaction?
I doubt it.
Exploitation
If I am sick, and I need you to donate a kidney to me, I have four general choices:
- I can tell you that I would like you to donate a kidney to me, with no expectation that you must do so.
- I can decide not to ask you for a kidney.
- I can tell you that I really need you to donate a kidney, and you should do it because I want you to.
- I can tell you that it is immoral to refuse to donate a kidney to me, and thus you are ethically obligated to give me your kidney, just as you are ethically obligated to pay back a loan.
In the first case, I am simply expressing my true and honest desire for your kidney. I am not manipulating you. I am not bullying you. I am telling you what I want. My request is not a demand – and my request, fundamentally, is not for your kidney, but for you to understand that I would like your kidney.
This is a crucial difference, which is so easily overlooked. Saying, "I would like your kidney," is not saying, "Give me your kidney!" Saying, "I would like to be an astronaut," is not saying, "Make me an astronaut!"
Either I am free to express my thoughts and feelings to you, or I am not. If I am free to do so, then of course I must be free to express what I would prefer you to do, if that is what I think.
If you interpret my preferences as commandments that you must comply with, then you will naturally prefer that I never express a preference. If you hate the taste of ice cream, but every time I said, "I like ice cream," you had to eat a bowl, you would obviously prefer that I not say "I like ice cream" anymore. Because my desires enslave you, you must enslave my desires.
The best and most terrible way to enslave another human being is to interpret his desires as commandments. If, every time I express my preferences, you interpret them as commandments, then you must inevitably be led to controlling, minimizing, ignoring or attacking my preferences.
In other words, if my desires are commandments, then my preferences are attacks upon you.
And the only antidote to this is curiosity.
Curiosity
The opposite of tyranny is curiosity. The opposite of ignorance is curiosity. The opposite of manipulation is curiosity.
The opposite of immaturity is curiosity, because to be curious is to be wise.
What is the most logical and mature response to the statement: "I would like you to give me your kidney."?
Is it:
- "Sure, here you go – I even iced it for you."
- [b l a n k s t a r e]
- "Don't ask me, it makes me uncomfortable."
- "How about those Mets?"
- "I told you not to play rugby, you never listen to me, I can't believe you would have the balls to ask me, how selfish and manipulative can you get?"
- "Tell me more."
If we really understand the nature of the statement, which is "I have a feeling called 'I would prefer for you to give me your kidney'," then together we can examine the nature of that feeling. If I am standing at a bus stop, and a woman next to me says, "Feels like rain," it would be quite logical for me to ask, if I was curious, "What does that feel like?" Arguing about whether rain was imminent or not would be illogical, because the woman did not say, "It's about to rain." What she said was, "Feels like rain," which is quite different. It is a statement of an inner experience, not an outward prediction, command or expectation.
If I say to you, "I dreamt about an elephant last night," could you logically disagree with me? You might not be particularly interested in my dream, but it would make precious little sense to dispute my statement. Either I am telling the truth, or I am not. If I am telling the truth, there is nothing to argue about – if I am not, there's still nothing to argue about, because you will never have one single shred of evidence that I am lying.
Thus when I say to you, "I would like you to give me your kidney," it's the first three words that are important, not the last four. But everyone focuses on the last four, considers them a bullying demand, and thus must spend the rest of their mortal existence managing and controlling the first three.
Statements of preference are just statements of inner experience, and if we care about the person who is expressing them, we will be curious about her inner experience.
Thus, to extrapolate to something slightly more generic than kidneys, if you are doing something that bothers me, I have four general choices:
- I can tell you that I am bothered by what you're doing, with no expectation that you must change your behaviour.
- I can leave the situation.
- I can tell you that what you're doing bothers me, and that you should stop it because it bothers me.
- I can tell you that what you're doing is immoral, and you should stop it because it's wrong.
Of course, if people in general were mature and wise, they would mostly choose what was behind door number one – occasionally, they would leave through door number two for a brief period if they were upset, but they would never open doors three and four.
However, the world is neither wise nor mature, and so children quickly learn that when adults are upset or anxious, it is the children's behaviour that must always change. If my mother is anxious about me dating, the "solution" is for me not to date. If my father will be embarrassed by my absence from church, I must go to church. If my mother will feel embarrassed if I do not kiss my smelly old grandmother, it's pucker time! If my mother will feel mortified if I snatch a toy from another child, the solution is for me to "play nicely." (Of course I really should not snatch toys; the problem is that my mother is not curious why I do so, but merely controls the symptoms, instead of working to understand the cause.)
Attack
When I was 14 or so, I took a summer school course, desperate to get out of the mental gulag of public school as quickly as humanly possible. I had a brittle and belligerent male teacher, who demanded that we show up on the dot at 8:30 am, but then would have us sit and read a textbook for the first 30-40 minutes of the class. He also showed really boring documentaries, spoke in a monotone, and was completely obsessed with JFK assassination conspiracy theories.
Occasionally, I would get very sleepy, and I would put my head down on my desk for a few minutes. I never fell asleep, but it certainly could have looked that way.
After a couple of weeks of classes, I got up to do a presentation on slavery. Just before I began, this teacher held up his hand and ordered everyone to put their heads down on their desk.
All the other children were pretty confused, as you can imagine – as was I. After a few minutes of bullying and ordering, all the children in the room put their heads down on their desks. My face was very pale, and I was alarmed, to say the least.
When everyone's head was down, the teacher turned and literally screamed at me: "Do you see how it feels? Do you see how it feels when you're trying to teach people something, and they put their heads down on their desks? DO YOU SEE HOW IT FEELS? THAT'S RUDE! DON'T DO THAT!" His veins were literally bulging out of his neck.
And then, of course, he demanded that I deliver my presentation.
What was going on here?
The amazing thing about people who abuse children, is that they really have no idea how the children actually see them. I knew that he had all the power, but it really was a very sad spectacle, and I got a very strong impression of a futile, self-loathing and pathetic life. Perhaps they imagine that bullying children makes them look strong, but the degree of contempt that I felt – and feel – towards those who bully the helpless is almost beyond words, and I do not think that I am alone in that. When we think of the radioactive contempt that teenagers often have towards their parents and other authority figures, I think it's fairly easy to see that bullying children does not generate respect – any more than beating your wife generates love.
Let's call this teacher Bob, since I have no idea what his name is, after all these years. Clearly, Bob did not feel like a very good teacher, because a good teacher would regard an exhausted student with curiosity. I could be tired because I cannot sleep, or have problems at home, or have a hormonal imbalance, or some other reason that has precious little to do with his teaching ability – or I could be tired because he is a boring teacher.
If Bob shows no curiosity as to why I am tired, then he will never know why. If I am sick, or stressed (and I was working three jobs at this point in my childhood), he might be able to help me in some way – or at least, he will have established that it is not because he is a boring teacher.
If he finds out that I am tired because he is a boring teacher, then obviously that can be painful, but I have absolutely no doubt that Bob would prefer to be an exciting teacher than a boring one. If he had invested the time to try and figure out – with me – why I was tired, then he might have been able to learn how to become a more exciting teacher, which would have been in line with his own values, and so made him happier.
The truth of the matter, of course, as we have seen above, is that, deep down, Bob was absolutely convinced that he was a terrible teacher. When I put my head down on my desk, it confirmed his worst fears, which he violently rejected.
When we understand the power of mythology, it is clear how little Bob understood about what I was doing, and what I was communicating.
When I put my head down on my desk, I was not saying, "Bob, you are a terrible teacher." I was not saying, "I am putting my head down on my desk to defy your authority." I was not saying, "I am putting my head down on my desk because I am a rude and selfish individual who cares nothing for anyone else's feelings."
When I put my head down on my desk, I was only saying: "I am tired."
Everything else was just mythology – paranoid and vicious fairy tales.
Everything else was Bob's invention, and he invented everything else in order to strenuously avoid being curious.
Why? Why was he so terrified of curiosity?
It's simple.
The reason that we are not curious is that we already know the answers, and we do not like them.
Wisdom and Pain
Pain is our body's way of telling us what we need to deal with, of helping us prioritize our actions relative to health. Our body does not report on organs that are functioning well, but the moment that a tooth gets infected, we know all about it!
In other words, pain tells us what we need to do. If our tooth hurts, we need to go to a dentist. Pain informs us of the problems we need to solve.
If we think of our life before anaesthetics, it's easy to understand that we usually had to accept an increase in pain in order to become healthier. An infected tooth had to be pulled out. Nowadays, we sometimes have to go through the pain of chemotherapy in order to treat cancer.
This is the challenge of pain – we do not like it, but often have to accept a temporary increase of it in order to become healthier.
If I break my leg, it really hurts – that's why I stop moving it. After my leg has healed, to regain full strength and mobility, I have to endure the pain of physiotherapy.
Injuries can also make us stronger. If I survive a heart attack, I may choose to lose weight, eat better, exercise and so on – I may in fact be healthier than if I had never had a heart attack. Similarly, if I break my leg, my leg can end up stronger, as a result of the exercise required to restore strength and mobility. Losing a tooth can generate a desire for better oral hygiene.
There are several key differences between physical pain and psychological pain, however, which you really need to understand if you want to become healthier and happier in the long run.
The first and most important difference is that psychological pain can be transferred from one person to another. If my tooth hurts, I cannot transfer my toothache to you – but quite the opposite is true for psychological pain, at least in the short run.
If I feel anxiety about what you are doing, I can temporarily reduce that anxiety by forcing you to change your behaviour, just as I can temporarily reduce the pain of a toothache by taking painkillers – the difference being that when I take painkillers, you do not feel my toothache.
The transfer of psychological pain almost always occurs in a hierarchical relationship, such as parent-child, boss-employee, a dominant/submissive marriage and so on. Helplessness and dependence – real for children, fantasized for adults – are required to be on the receiving end of this kind of parasitical emotional exploitation.
This is the main reason why hegemonic or hierarchical power relations exist. We do not throw our garbage into a dump because the dump just happens to be there – the dump only exists because we need to throw our garbage somewhere. In the same way, we do not exploit people because they're helpless; we make them helpless in order to exploit them.
Bob did not end up abusing children because he had power as a teacher – he sought power as a teacher in order to abuse children.
Power does not create corruption; the desire to corrupt creates power.
When we are in an agony of psychological distress, it is utterly counterintuitive to want to feel more of that agony – just as it is counterintuitive to want to pull out a tooth that already hurts, or start chemotherapy when you do not feel sick.
Yet that is precisely what is required, if we wish to become healthy.
If I choose not to go to physiotherapy after my broken leg heals, I am the only one who has to live with the resulting weakness and lack of mobility. If I choose to manage my anxiety by attacking the helpless, however, I gain temporary relief from my discomfort only by inflicting my distress on others.
And this is how the entire system reproduces itself.
In essence, by attempting to humiliate me so horrendously, Bob was attempting to infect me with the virus of abuse. Because he was not mature or wise enough to take ownership for his own emotions, he inevitably believed that I was the source of his anxiety. Since I was "inflicting" anxiety upon him, I was acting in a "hostile" manner, just as if I were injecting him with a poison – and thus his attack on me was a twisted form of self-defence.
Furthermore, by inflicting his "humiliation" on me, Bob was demanding that I have empathy for his feelings – but if empathy is a value, why would he not have empathy for my exhaustion?
Without a doubt, Bob had been ignored and repeatedly humiliated as a child, and forced to comply with the irrational whims of those who held power over him. The natural pattern-making habits of his brain thus created a universal commandment: "You must obey those in power!" – or, more accurately: "Disobeying those in power will cause you to be attacked and humiliated."
There are three major components to the psychological agony that results from the establishment of this principle.
The first is the shame and embarrassment that results from being humiliated.
The second is the horror of being trapped in the power of those who act abusively.
The third is the rage that results from being told that such abuse is actually virtuous – "This is for your own good!"
When we are abused as children, we are put into a terrible predicament, because we are utterly dependent on our abusers. A form of the "Stockholm syndrome" sets in, and we force ourselves to "respect" those who abuse us. This is an entirely sensible survival strategy, because the horror of knowing that we will be under the abusive control of our parents for years to come would be too great for us to bear. Also, since we are punished for not showing respect, it is easier just to "respect" them rather than continually have to pretend to – which they will doubtless see through, and punish.
Furthermore, since abuse is always cloaked with self-righteous moral justifications ("It is morally wrong to disobey me!"), we also experience an existential horror, because we know that our parents are using moral terms – and our own desire for goodness – to humiliate, control and bully us. In other words, they use goodness in the service of evil, which is the worst corruption of all.
Thus we are inevitably led to invert rational moral standards – bullying the helpless inevitably becomes virtue.
Absolutes
We can choose not to eat, but we cannot erase our body's need for food. We can choose to jump off a cliff, but we cannot choose to defy gravity.
We can pretend that lies are true, and that vices are virtues, but we cannot turn lies into truth, or vices into virtues.
We cannot erase the truth within ourselves; we can only suppress and distort it.
Fundamentally, philosophy is not invention, but excavation; not exploration, but archaeology.
When we are abused as children, as Bob surely was, we desperately try to numb our pain by imagining that our abusers are virtuous. Deep down, we know the truth though, which is why our distortions cause us such agony in the long run.
We can use other people to "manage" our anxieties as surely as we can use drugs and alcohol to "manage" our anxieties.
The disparity between the mythologies we must invent in order to survive our childhoods and the reality we know to be true is the most fundamental source of our depression and anxiety.
In other words, fantasy is the scar tissue of abuse.
When Bob saw me put my head on my desk, I "created" anxiety in him because I was not acting on a premise that he believed to be a moral absolute: "You must respect and obey those in power!" His hysterical reaction to my innocuous doziness resulted not because he believed that I should obey those in power, but because, deep down, he knew that it was in fact immoral to obey those in power – and because he also knew that if someone in power demands obedience, it is because that person is not moral.
In other words, he avoided the pain of his own abuse by pretending that he was not abused – by pretending that his abusers were moral. He did this by transforming the control that was inflicted on him from a practical principle of obedience to a moral standard of perfection...
