Confronting a father…

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14.8M 21:35

Of course… now I’m wondering if I was incurious about my own experience at the time.

The following is a review of Stefan Molyneux’s Universally Preferable Behavior – A Rational Proof of Secular Ethics:

The first time I read this book (UPB), I didn’t really “get” it. I mean, I saw the logic and the proof and thought, “Hey, that’s kind of neat.” I was not able to access the implications that the proof of this theory would have in my life and in the greater world.

I have since re-read UPB. While I still struggle with the full range of the implications for my life, I think I get it (certainly more now than I have before).

The null zone concept is brilliant as well as fascinating! I now have the image in my mind of a “null zone” being forcibly inserted between the “little truths” and the “Great Truths”, which disconnect abstraction from practice in the minds of individuals.

This alone ought to be enough to demonstrate to anybody why this is a multi-generational project. Once you’ve had abstractions forcibly disconnected from practice within your mind, it is a trek through the fires of ten thousand hells to reconnect them.

Also of incredible resonance to me is when Molyneux discusses the emergent properties of morality within society as opposed to the imposition of whim-based morality from a centralized authority. This is the fundamental “reversal” of intuition that either Dawkins or Dennett (I can’t remember quite where I read it) has described when it comes to the science of evolution; that life, the universe, and everything do not proceed from the top-down, but from the bottom-up. Complexity and order are emergent properties of matter over time, hence it makes sense that morality and social order are emergent properties of human society over time.

Eradicating that “null zone” within my own mind and becoming ever more aware of my top-down moral standards is the horrible, horrible consequence of UPB. The upside, however, is that if, one day, I have children… I will not inflict a “null zone” upon them and will equip them to be resistant to it!

I haven’t found any flaws. I think that Stefan Molyneux has done it.

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18.3M 26:42

I’ve found that there are few areas of discussion more controversial than parenting, and that, within that area, there are few topics that generate more heat than spanking children (circumcision is another “topper” on that list).

I sort of went into the lion’s den earlier today on the subject of spanking, so I’m sort of retreating back to my blog to give some air to the subject as well as to expand on my thoughts.

There have been numerous psychologists weighing in on both sides of the “spanking” issue, some saying that it’s essential for discipline, others recoiling at the horror of it. I only know a bit about the psychology, but I know enough to say that the vast majority of people will bend over backwards, sideways, and into pretzel knots in order to justify how their parents treated them.

The question of spanking is pretty simple for me: in its most simple and direct form, it involves the parent hitting the child with the open hand on the buttocks. The key word is “hitting.” No matter what anybody says, you cannot get around the fact that the adult is causing their hand to move towards the child in such a way so as to startle or cause pain.

The fact that spanking necessarily involves hitting is inarguable. Obviously, if we can’t even agree on a simple definition (and it’s amazing how many people try to contort the argument at this stage), then we can’t go any further.

The question for me, then, is: is hitting a child ever appropriate?

My history may or may not be of relevance, but it may be of interest: I was hit as a child, and far more than simple spanking took place. Not only were implements other than the hand used, but I can remember seeing… feeling their rage as they did no less than beat me.

So, you might say that this is a bit of a sore subject for me.

In any case, my personal feelings aside, I have to wonder, what drives an adult to hit a child? Adults will almost always tell a child that has hit another child that hitting is wrong. That same adult, however, may turn around and hit that child for any number of reasons.

Not only is this incredibly hypocritical, but consider what else is going on in this moment: the adult is many times the size and has many times the strength of the child. Children–small ones, especially–are entirely unable to resist and must eventually endure the hitting. If we have been hit as children, we may lose that sense of perspective. It is quite instructive to imagine yourself as you are now, being approached by somebody four or five times your height and having many times more your strength, and that person immobilizing you and hitting you for whatever reason they may have.

As an adult, we can clearly see that such a person is a horrible monster who is taking gross advantage of their size and power over another human being in order to inflict physical punishment upon them. As adults, we have the ability to reason in this way. However, when a child is thus accosted by his parents, he has the innate ability to reason this out, but the conclusion is too terrifying to behold. His parents? Bad people? Evil people? Horrible people? Monsters? No, that cannot be the case… it must be the child, therefore, that is bad, evil, horrible, and monstrous. Otherwise, why would the child suffer to endure such punishment from his parents, the very people who are supposed to nurture and protect him?

The reasons given for hitting children are manifold; one person even put forward that the intent was to humiliate the child. Humiliation! Parents say that they love their children, and then they turn around and begin hitting the child with the intent to humiliate them? Such people should never have children!

Children come into this world totally defenseless and dependent upon their parents. They do not choose to be born. They do not choose to be kept by their parents. It is the responsibility of the parents to raise the child, to nurture the child, to ensure that the child grow up to be a healthy, functioning adult.

You don’t get healthy, functioning adults when children are humiliated, when children are frightened, when children are hit by their parents.

So why would an adult hit a child? The child has no way of fighting back–he is oftentimes entirely under the adult’s power. There is no greater power disparity than that between adults and children–none. Thus, it is a most egregious abuse of power for an adult to hit a child, for the adult holds all of the power and the child holds none. The adult has the ability to refrain from hitting the child, to seek another avenue for their aggression, but they choose to hit the child.

This is the central problem: the adult who is a parent has said “yes” to having that child born, has said “yes” to taking care of the child, has said “yes” to raising that child to be a healthy adult… and then turns around and uses that power–that responsibility–to inflict lasting psychological trauma onto the child.

If you listen to the justifications put forward by people for the reasons they were hit as children, you’ll get stuff like, “I was spanked, but I deserved it,” “My mother spanked me, but I learned my lesson,” “My parents did more than spanking, but the times they spanked me, it was appropriate.” Those justifications are the justifications of the parents that the children believe for themselves. They believe that they deserved it, they believe they had a lesson to learn (what lesson could that possibly be, incidentally–don’t cross your parents?), they believe that, even though worse physical abuse took place, somehow less severe abuse was appropriate.

All of these beliefs, they do not speak to the child’s experience of being hit. They short-circuit any memories they might have in order to stop the conversation. The fact that people say this while becoming increasingly upset is telling, though it doesn’t prove anything by itself. It does indicate that the conversation is cutting very closely. It is as if they are shouting at a doctor that points out that a limb that they broke long ago did not heal correctly and, thus, their limb is deformed, causing them to contort themselves and possibly causing pain. Not only do they tell the doctor that there is no problem, that their arm is normal, but they may even go so far as to imply that the doctor, with straight and undeformed limbs, is crippled and deformed himself!

Now, I’m no doctor… I’m more like the guy who’s walking along the street, watching all of these people hobble along, and decides to say something.

The reaction isn’t exactly unexpected, of course, though I will admit that the ferocity I faced earlier today did hurt. But they were mere slings; I will continue along unabated. In any case, the way to fix the problem is to break the limb again–to re-experience the pain and fear and anger at their parents for mistreating them so egregiously! I don’t necessarily blame people for not wanting to go through that, but I would only ask that if they do not want to do it for themselves, that they stop telling me that I am crippled and that they do not go forward and cripple their own children.

Not likely, not unless they actually go through the process of uncrippling themselves first.

Finally, I get a lot of people throwing stuff at me like, “Oh, so you want to try to reason with a child?? Good luck!!” I suspect that these people never had an adult try to reason with them when they were kids. I would further suspect that people do not try to reason with them now… there was certainly no reasoning going on in the “discussion” I had earlier today. I mean… nobody even bothered to address the blatant hypocrisy behind: “adults hitting adults is wrong, children hitting children is wrong, but adults hitting children is OK?”

[Edit] – Here are some external references so it doesn’t look like I’m totally talking out of my ass:
www.alice-miller.com
Traumatized Children: How Childhood Trauma Influences Brain Development