Monday, April 23, 2007

Nihilist Commandment 5A: You Shall Honor Your Children by Being One, You Smart Alec

Murder.

I am sure that if nihilistic liberals really comprehended the horror of this term, they wouldn't be nihilistic liberals. To put it another way, the contemporary liberal specifically devalues life and liberty while carrying out a frontal assault on truth, beauty, and any transcendent moral order. And they do these things because their Ten Commandments compel them to do so.

Before getting into more vague and sweeping generalities, let's focus on a particular case, Alec Baldwin, who, unless his recent display of rage toward his daughter was a pure aberration, is an abuser and "rage-aholic." This weekend he released a statement explaining what caused him to threaten, berate, and insult his daughter -- all forms of soul murder. First of all, since he is a liberal, it is not his fault. Rather, he is the victim here, and other victims understand this:

Thank you to everyone who has posted messages of support and understanding.

There are people who support and understand his grotesque behavior? Of course. As we learned the other day at dailykos, there are leftists who support and understand the mass murderer Cho, so supporting Baldwin is nothing.

Naturally, it is not best for a parent to lose their temper with their child.

Interesting way to put it. Bellowing at your child that she is a selfish pig isn't "bad." Rather, it's just "not best." You know, like "murder is not best," or "stealing is not best."

For one thing, losing your temper with your child is neither here nor there. Not only is it inevitable, but children need to know that certain behaviors on their part will elicit anger from others. Anger is a form of valuable feedback.

But there is anger, a passing emotion, and there is rage which is in an entirely different category. It is not just quantitatively different from anger, but it is qualitatively different -- very much like the difference between anxiety and panic. If you've ever been around a rage-prone individual, you know exactly what I mean. They are quite frightening, because they don't have the "thermostat" of a normal person which prevents their anger from exceeding certain boundaries. In other words, there is a sort of "ceiling" which a normal person's anger does not surpass, but for the rage-prone individual, they crash through that ceiling and become a different person. They are not a person who has anger, but rage which possesses a human.

All "borderline" personalities have boundary disturbances that prevent them from regulating their emotions. The boundary disturbance affects their relations with the interpersonal world -- i.e., with people who are meaningful to them -- but more subtly, in their own minds. They have psychic structural deficits that lead to a situation in which their mind parasites become entirely detached from the main personality.

Look at it this way. The most normal person has all kinds of conflicts, but he is generally able to keep them from profoundly affecting him through repression, which you might think of as a sort of horizontal boundary between the conscious and unconscious mind.

But the mind of the borderline individual is subject to vertical splitting. Instead of drawing a horizontal line between your conscious and unconscious mind, with the mind parasites kept "below deck," not too far from Ben's kitchen, imagine a series of vertical lines in the psyche, so that each mind parasite has its own agenda, which is "swtiched on," based upon various signals or patterns coming either from the external world or from the internal world.

In Baldwin's case, he tells us in his diatribe exactly which mind parasite took over: shame -- more specifically dysreglated shame. The narcissistic personality is structured around the inability to tolerate shame, so that if it is provoked, it immediately converts to rage at the object who triggered it. The rage is a measure of the shame, and is equally dysregulated. Thus,

Once again I made an ASS of myself trying to get to a phone! ....I'm leaving this message to tell you you have INSULTED me for the last time! ....You have HUMILIATED me for the last time with this phone! ....You made me feel like SHIT, and you made me feel like a FOOL, over and over and over again!

For the narcissistic, rage-prone individual, once the intolerable shame is provoked, a subpersonality takes over and expresses rage at its maximum intensity. It is no longer the central self speaking, but an omnipotently angry mind parasite. This is to an 11 year-old girl, mind you:

You don't have the BRAINS or the DECENCY as a human being.... I'm going to straighten your ass out! I'm gonna get on a plane to let you know just how I feel about what a ROTTEN PIG you really are! You are a RUDE, thoughtless little PIG, okay?

But liberals always turn perpetrators into victims, the reason being that this is how you overturn the moral order of the cosmos. For once you find a way to see the perpetrator as victim, then anything he does, no matter how heinous, is justified. In other words, the liberal appeals to our innate sense of justice, only in an entirely fraudulent and manipulative way.

That is, being seeped in a Judeo-Christian worldview, we all long for justice. But liberals do not share the Judeo-Christian worldview, to say the least. Rather, they want to eliminate it altogether. Therefore, their strategy involves using it against itself by detaching the moral category of "victim," and using it to appeal to the Christianized conscience.

Please bear in mind that no cultures in the world particularly cared about the plight of victims before the emergence of the Judeo-Christian worldview. This is a critical point, and all Coons are encouraged to read Gil Bailie's wonderful Violence Unveiled for the full explication of the anthropological implications of the Christianized mind.

Remember, on a purely historical and anthropological basis, Christianity is the religion of the ultimate innocent victim, and thanks to its influence, the Western world produced the most humane and decent civilization in human history. But it has now produced a split-off, shadow version of itself, that is, the leftist culture of victimology, which creates victims for the purposes of undermining the Judeo-Christian worldview.

Therefore, being that he is on the far left, it is not surprising that Baldwin immediately depicted himself as the victim. First, he is the victim of his daughter, who has made him feel ashamed, humiliated, and "like shit."

(Which, by the way, should be understood quite literally; so-called "dirty words" retain their potency because they have deep roots in the unconscious mind. To the extent that these words ever become common linguistic currency, then they lose their connection to deep unconscious springs of meaning which are otherwise beyond the reach of language. In a way, they are "sacred," but in a reverse sense of the term, in that they evoke unconscious power instead of supraconscious power. If used in a mindlessly casual way, these words become "impotent." This is why decent people refrain from using such language in public, because they understand the magic potency of these "four-letter incantations." By no means am I opposed to cursing. However, it should be reserved for various "special occasions," otherwise it no longer performs its function. No one can call someone a bastard like John Cleese. But if the word ever comes into common usage, then we will actually no longer have a word for those bloody bastards. Naturally, liberals are oblivious to this linguistic reality as well, for we have no desire to "repress" language, but to preserve it. Otherwise, we'll have to invent a whole new lexicon to replace our current slate of outstanding dirty words.)

Perhaps I should emphasize that I hardly exclude myself from the "cycle of mind parasites." Parenting is difficult, one reason being that children will inevitably evoke your own mind parasites. However, it is up to you how you react to them.

For example, my son was pretty colicky for several months during his first year, when it was at times difficult to sooth him. There were occasions that a voice popped into my head -- something like, "Damm, will you just suck it up and shut up for five f***ing minutes?" Now needless to say, I did not verbalize this, much less act out on it. I did not call my son a selfish pig, nor did I blame him for making me feel so helpless. Rather, I used it as an occasion for introspection as to the origins of that voice. It would be the height of immaturity to blame the baby -- even though, from the standpoint of the mind parasite, it's all his fault. And if you do act out toward your child, you are just ensuring that they will internalize your own mind parasites.

But for Baldwin, nothing is his fault. Whatever he says or does, someone else made him do it. Here we see another key feature of contemporary liberalism: the attenuation of free will, so that people are just machines who cannot help reacting in this or that way (except for conservatives, who somehow freely choose evil and who are never given a pass). This was one of the most critical contributions to the spike in violent crime that began in the 1960s, for that is precisely when leftists began implementing their new ideas that the perpetrator is the victim, and an era of leniency toward criminals was ushered in. A system of incentives was put in place which actually encouraged criminal activity, and even now, leftists argue for going back to the good old days of rampant crime that ruined so many lives (and a disproportionate number of black lives, I might add -- as if they care about the plight of blacks).

So it's not Baldwin's fault. Rather, Everyone who knows me privately knows that I have endured a great deal over the last several years in my custody litigation.

That could be perfectly true, but why would you take it out on your daughter?

Everyone who knows me privately knows that certain people will go to any lengths to embarass me and to disrupt my relationship with my daughter.

I see. It's all about the humiliation again. But is your own behavior contributing anything to disrupt your relationship with your daughter? How could it not? Who would want to be around such a frightening person unless there is already something wrong with them -- a perverse attraction to the dark side?

Children learn by imitating you. Whatever "lesson" Baldwin thinks he is conveying to his daugter, she will generally learn one of two things: men are out of control beasts whom a woman can easily manipulate or seduce; or they will confuse this kind of parenting with "love," and be attracted to the wrong kind of man: perhaps a man just like Baldwin. I've only seen the dynamic play out hundreds of times. (And by the way, I'm not absolving Kim Basinger, who fell in love with this man. What mind parasite in her made him attractive after she endured the first rage storm?)

Although I have been told by numerous people not to worry too much, as all parents lose their patience with their kids, I am most saddened that this was released to the media because of what it does to a child.

If his friends are telling him not to worry, they are probably not actually friends, for a friend doesn't lie to you. I can't help wondering if Baldwin is the type of person who doesn't want to hear the truth about himself, and would simply "hate the messenger" even more than the Basinger.

I'm sorry, as everyone who knows me is aware, for losing my temper with my child. I have been driven to the edge by parental alienation for many years now.

Okay, you're a victim. You suffer from "parental alienation." But why do you live in New York, 3,000 miles away from her? You're wealthy. You can live wherever you want. Under no circumstances would I ever live 3,000 miles away from my child, for if I did, I would cause a case of "child alienation" in my son. If I had your kind of money, I'd purchase a house in the same neighborhood, and be an active presence in my child's life. This is just "common decency." I'm not congratulating myself, for any normal man would do the same.

Here's what I wouldn't do: move 3,000 miles away in order to get involved in feckless liberal causes as a way to convince myself that I am a good person. According to his website, Baldwin is an "outspoken supporter" of various causes such as:

--the government's support of the arts (i.e., forcing citizens to pay for "art" that Baldwin and other elites approve of)
--campaign finance reform (i.e., limiting political speech that he doesn't like)
--animal rights (i.e, PETA, which is not about "animal rights," but about the deeply immoral conflation of humans and animals; and by the way, would you treat a baby seal the way you treat your daughter? I didn't think so.)
--gun control (i.e., preventing citizens from protecting themselves from crazy, rage-filled perpetrators, such as....)

If I were wasting my time and resources on any of these activities to the exclusion of my primary role as a parent, I would consider myself a failed human being. But the whole point about being a liberal -- the whole attraction, as it were -- is that you needn't give a thought to mastering and transcending yourself, because nothing is your fault. You are never a failure. It's everyone else's fault, and can you make yourself "good" merely by sanctimoniously being on the "correct" side of this or that issue, whether it is affirming Al Gore's junk science or advocating the redefinition of marriage.

But you can only change the world one a-hole at a time, beginning with yourself, followed by your children.

50 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your excellent post today describes the Islamists as well as the left. When you pointed out Baldwin's behavior, it is what the culture in the middle east does. And, look at the results of their examples for their children. This is perhaps why pomo liberals love the enemy, they have so much in common.
I call the Democrats the Death and Treason Party. They support abortion, euthenasia, assisted suicide and surrender not to mention their blatant racism. What better way to control the minority population than government funding of abortion clinics. It would make Margaret Sanger proud.
btw-I gave up my life for my daughter. It was the easiest decision I ever made.

Anonymous said...

One can dream that Mr. Baldwin is surfing the net looking for references to himself - wait, that's not the dream part as it's virtually 100% certain - and stumbles across Bob's analysis. Then he actually reads, understands, and resolves to get on a plane and fly off to change his own life. That's the dream part.

Alec, dude, you can change and still be funny on 30 Rock. However, you'd have to do some acting instead of just being yourself.

Anonymous said...

Bob et al
We have a kindred sprit at http://docisinblog.com/

Anonymous said...

Happy Belated B-day to FL! Hope there was cake beyond the dreams of two-year old avarice.

Spent the week-end out of town at my dad's 80th b-day. A bar-b-que dinner for family and friends.

As my mother's sister said, looking around at the kids, grandkids and great-grandkids: "Not bad for an only child".

If our mom could have been there, it would have been perfect. But it was pretty darn good just the same.

Being on-call to help raise my grandkids is one reason why I'm not out having a "life for myself".

Thanks, Bob.

Anonymous said...

Bob,

It's interesting to see that one or two "right wing" talk show hosts, who normally would vehemently disagree with Baldwin, have sided with him on this issue because they too haven't mastered or even seen this aspect of themselves.
The difference being that the leftist wants to manipulate and distort a functioning society to try and feel better and make their world "right". Since the problem is within, there is no end to the twisted possibilities forced on others.

If humanity could figure out that each person, cleaning up his own side of the street, is basically the only way to better the world, we'd be on our way to paradise.

But I guess we shouldn't be too hard on the guy, he's probably still traumatized from the affair Kim Basinger had with that skinny little white bread gang banger wannabe before they were divorced. ;)

Anonymous said...

What you describe from Baldwin is verbal abuse, a common variant or comorbid condition with physical and sexual abuse.

Verbal abuse has been described as a "slap to the heart" that is often more painful than a physical assualt.

Not to excuse Baldwin, but he probably picked up the tendency from his parents. The thing is like an intergenerational virus. It is almost certain that Baldwin's daughter will be a verbally caustic individual to her mate and children, too, unless she gets the kind of control that you describe.

Excellent post. Bravo to you--spot on about everything.

Anonymous said...

Apropos of nothing,
I just caught myself (mysoph) reflexively reading the word destination as deustination. All this wordplay is messing with my basic English language skills (in the best possible way, of course). It's only a matter of time until I start typing these B'ob-isms in e-mails to unsuspecting non-coons, who will, I'm sure, decide (almost did it right there) I'm even more odd than they previously believed.

Thanks, Bob & Coons :D

robinstarfish said...

One for Future Leaders
take a slide of faith
stillness in a fleeting day
catch me if you can

---------------
Happy Birthday!

Anonymous said...

Juliec,

Welcome to the Norm Crosby (Master of the Maloprop) school of electrocution.
Happy Bday to FL.

Anonymous said...

"In other words, the liberal appeals to our innate sense of justice, only in an entirely fraudulent and manipulative way."

One professor I sat under called it "the politics of guilt and pity."

Your conclusion mirrors what my husband said to me last night, as I was discussing some of my forays on the internet and my concern for the future. I've got plenty of God-given tasks set before me right here at home, not the least of which is opening myself more and more to His gentle remedies for my "mind parasites."

Anonymous said...

School of Electrocution?
Zzot! - you've been Bobtized!

wv: zpbznup - exactly!

Joan of Argghh! said...

by the way, would you treat a baby seal the way you treat your daughter? I didn't think so.

Talk about a putting it in a nutshell for the nutcase!

dicentra63 said...

When I heard his rant, the first thing I thought was "Narcissist!" As in the full-blown personality disorder. My father has NPD of the cerebral variety (I suspect Baldwin is a "somatic" narcissist), but the deep underlying rage is the same.

My father was an emotional minefield; you never knew when he would go off. But it always had to do with someone else behaving in a way that disturbed his peace (what? kids disturbing peace?) or that forced him to make an accommodation.

I feel this same kind of rage when I'm off my meds: no one better mess with me, and I'm not going to put up with any crap from anyone. It's my right to demand that people accommodate my tastes, my desires, and my outlook, because my rage clarifies my vision and everyone else is a moral slouch who doesn't look out for the other guy (read: me) enough.

His emphasis on personal humiliation is what gave the game away. Had he said "honey, please keep your appointments. I look forward to talking to you, and it is a stone drag when I can't," even in an angry tone, would have been understandable.

But this was definitely Narcissistic Rage, and it's no wonder there was a divorce. NPDs can't see that they're wrong, and they never apologize unless forced to do so to save face.

Mark my words, he's done this before and he'll do it again. Just not on his ex-wife's answering machine.

wildiris said...

Not only was Alec Baldwin a narrator for the children’s video series, Thomas the Tank Engine, I believe he also starred in the movie version as well. Needless to say, the TTTE videos that where narrated by him have never been shown in this house. To this day, I can't understand how he got chosen to follow in the footsteps of Ringo Starr and George Carlin as a narrator for that children’s program. He has the most un-child-friendly persona of any one I can imagine.

Bob, while I’m on the subject of children’s video series, have you ever looked into the Veggie-Tales videos for Future Leader’s spiritual enrichment?

Anonymous said...

"If you've ever been around a rage-prone individual, you know exactly what I mean. They are quite frightening, because they don't have the "thermostat" of a normal person which prevents their anger from exceeding certain boundaries."

This discribes one of my wife's mind parasites perfectly.
One of several reasons i had to seperate myself from her and the kids.

Once i had some time to think and stop reacting to her outbursts i realized that i could not abandon our children to fend for themselves to grow in that kind of atmososhere. Like a vine, it will grow wild and horizintal to the ground without a guide.

Leftists= the new canaanites?

I think Ezra was wrong.
You cannot abba-n-don the next generation to the. that would be nuts.

wv:rpubzrpl= republic, Zur (Rock) people?

Van Harvey said...

"For example, my son was pretty colicky for several months during his first year, when it was at times difficult to sooth him. There were occasions that a voice popped into my head -- something like, "Damm, will you just suck it up and shut up for five f***ing minutes?" "

My oldest was very colicky, there was a period there where I'd be up doing the football carry for 1 to 3 hours (at 1:00 a.m.)around and around and around the couch. If I stopped moving for a moment, "WAAHHH!!!".

An interesting experience in observing the rising urge to spout off, realizing it would be wrong, not to mention pointless... and experiencing a third party sensation of observing myself feeling and thinking and choosing. Ahh, the joys of parenthood.


"To the extent that these words ever become common linguistic currency, then they lose their connection to deep unconscious springs of meaning which are otherwise beyond the reach of language... If used in a mindlessly casual way, these words become "impotent." "

Sort of like familiarity breeds no-content.

Anonymous said...

"But the mind of the borderline individual is subject to vertical splitting. Instead of drawing a horizontal line between your conscious and unconscious mind, with the mind parasites kept "below deck," not too far from Ben's kitchen, imagine a series of vertical lines in the psyche, so that each mind parasite has its own agenda, which is "swtiched on," based upon various signals or patterns coming either from the external world or from the internal world."

We used to call 'em "bilge rats".

Note:
Not to be confused with the friendly inter-departmental-rivalry nickname we had for the Engineers (also known as Snipes).
Nothin' but love for you guys!

Anonymous said...

"But you can only change the world one a-hole at a time, beginning with yourself,..."

So true

"...followed by your children."

Before i can do that, thier Mother needs some serious help and she is just not hearing it from me.She is a contentious woman.

Van Harvey said...

I was with my two boys when Baldwin's rant was played, and we were all gape jawed at it. I asked if, aside from the obvious vile content of it being a parent to an 11 year old, did they noticed something missing from his rant that made it impossible to pretend he was trying invoke some discipline (!) on his child (via voicemail!)?

Yep. No talk about what the problem was(making him feel like shit doesn't count), what was done wrong (not the horizontal instance, but the vertical principle), why it wasn't and would not be acceptable. I was pleased they got it.

His first and foremost concern was with himself and his feelings and how it affected him. Not a bit of concern for her, why the behavior was wrong, harmful to her and others - just him, him, him, himhimhim.

Ward Cleaver I'm not, my kids have heard me upset, sometimes even angry - not in a spitting rage, but clearly, audibly displeased with something they've done. I can get rather loud. My 18yr old got a dose New Years Eve when he was unreachable by phone.

But cursing at them? Insulting them?Pig?!!! OMG, the poor kid (her).

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

"Verbal abuse has been described as a "slap to the heart" that is often more painful than a physical assualt."

This is false; it is based on an unresearched claim by Bruno Bettelheim who stated, more or less, that while in a physical abuse you could 'take it like a man' and 'have some kind of esteem in doing so' verbal abuse does not allow them this, and thus in his mind was 'more painful'. How this is actually so I have no idea. How anyone can compare verbal and physical abuse across the board even with an 'often' makes my mind spin.

The damage done (If any at all) would be different. It all depends on the attitude and mind of the person receiving it.

This idea, in fact - verbal abuse being more 'damaging' - is where the modern idea of shielding people from certain free speech via censorship comes from. And people think this way are offended in various ways when someone delivers a trenchant retort of any kind.

For one verbal abuse can ONLY be 'more damaging than physical abuse' according to Bettelheim's analysis IF physical abuse has been inflicted and the verbal abuse specifically threatens it, or is interpreted to.

Otherwise, a guy can call my mother all kinds of obscene things and yell "eph you" all day and it is nowhere as bad as if he slapped my face once.

I want to make that clear. No slippery slopes, people.

(PS - while I am not an 'expert' on psychology, I think this one stands on its own? What do you say, Bob?)

Anonymous said...

Bob,

For however long it lasts, thanks for providing this forum which facilitates the clarification of thought, helps solidify just/moral postions and strengthens spirits.
Not to mention has me reaching for a dictionary on a regular basis. ;)


P.S. A special thanks for being yourself and not backing down.

Anonymous said...

I've thought a lot about not letting the fools de-coon me because I'd get so freaking angry at the nonsense I'd hear and feel feckless to counter the nonsense as my massive national media corporation is on layaway.

Then I read "Mere Christianity" and that had some helpful insight. It worked a little, but I was still forcing my coon, instead of being naturally up in the tree above the nonsense.

Then I learned of Andrea Dworkin, and had something of a coon-i-lation. She said, "All heterosexual men are rapists." I laughed, but it was only a matter of time before mirth would turn Dr. Coon in Mr. Hyde.

Fortunately, I looked her up and learned that the woman was just plain nuts. And not Chompsky nuts, where they act and speak sane, but you learn, as you take a coon look at their words, that they pay La La Land property tax. Dworkin was fit to be tied.

And I didn't hate her. I pitied the poor woman. Either she really was traumatized by a scumbag until her sanity broke, or her sanity broke and the believed a man traumatized her, but it's Morton's Fork because her life must have been a living Hell.

Scared of all men, cognitive dissonance, planet wide evil, and of course, and inability to ever solve one problem because none of her problems existed.

Now, this comment isn't just about me and my progress up this vertical idea of yours. I immediately thought of Dworkin when I heard Baldwin's rage on the radio, and discovered yet another evil cost of postmodern nonsense.

Dworkin needed HELP. Drugs, therapy, SOMETHING. Instead the nutjobs lauded her and enabled her madness to spiral beyond all hope.

If Baldwin doesn't suffer terribly for this inexcusable hate crime, I fear he's going to end up throwing his own feces on the wall and claiming to be Joan of Arc.

WBJ

P.S. Sorry for nabbing your "coon" speak, but it is simply too much fun to pass up.

Van Harvey said...

wbj,

Was that computer generated?

Anonymous said...

Van,

Was what computer generated?

WBJ

P.S. Were there a lot of typos? If so, I'm ashamed. No! I'm a victim!

Anonymous said...

"This idea, in fact - verbal abuse being more 'damaging' - is where the modern idea of shielding people from certain free speech via censorship comes from."

I concur River.
Verbal abuse can't be compared 'across the board' to physical abuse.

But, to a child or mentally unhealthy adult, words can indeed cause damage, although I have much more concern for children than the delusional adults.

Especially when the verbal/mental abuse is coming from the father or mother.
It isn't just the words but how they are said.
Alec Baldwin did get his message across:
"I'm more important than you! You will kneel before me! You will never make me feel like shit and I will make sure of that! You are nothing compared to me! I will show you!"
The next step in Baldwin's progression is physical force to back up the authority of his mind parasites.

But I agree, that physical abuse is worse, plus it's usually accompanied by verbal abuse.

As a child I much preferred verbal abuse over physical abuse, if I had a choice (as if).
But I still despised it.

Oddly enough, the verbal abuse motivated me to become a better person.

Anonymous said...

"Ward Cleaver I'm not, my kids have heard me upset, sometimes even angry - not in a spitting rage, but clearly, audibly displeased with something they've done. I can get rather loud. My 18yr old got a dose New Years Eve when he was unreachable by phone."

Look what happenned to Ward Cleaver's son, the Beav.

You're a better Dad than Ward was, Van. :^)

BTW I've been there. Scary. Especially with daughters. Not knowing where they are or what's happening, your mind races and
you imagine the worst!
That's when I started getting gray hair I think.

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

Yeah. Verbal abuse does hurt (at times a lot.) - but to make that comparison to me seems disingenuous at best. Kind a bit of flickering the dark torch by miswiring the light network. Like all bad connections, you get a spark but eventually you frag all of the circuitry that's connected.

Imagine (if you know electricity) what would happen if you started taking wires and connecting arbitrary points to each other on a circuit?

Disaster.

I think what abuse actually occurred, its context, its results, and so on are more important than any arbitrary grouping like that.

wv: bovikni - Russkie Bliss?

Anonymous said...

Yet again, another variation on the ongoing "ape of God" theme - which is of course, the attempt to overturn the cosmic order, ie., Deicide.

One would think that because there are so many manifestations of the ape/God theme, that leftists have some kind of evil genius working for them, one that calibrates its evil to a mirroring exactitude.

However, I think that it's literally impossible to be, do evil without naturally, instinctively aping the divine order in some way. The shadow symmetry of evil - perversely elegant in its own manner - is proof in itself of the divine order.

Anonymous said...

River, I disagree with you on the verbal abuse issue being less than a real slap. I grew up with verbal abuse from a sociopath and I know from experience that it twists your psyche. I can't even describe to you the mental anguish and the damage it caused in forming personal relationships and even managing to function in society being made to believe that I was less worthy than anyone else, that my soul was rotten and there was something horribly wrong with me. It's taken my whole adult life so far to work through that shit to realize THEY were the ones who had the problem and what they did to a child was criminal. I think verbal and physical violence are equally bad.

I can honestly say that the Judeo-Christian teachings not only saved my soul, but my sanity as well (such as it is :)

Anonymous said...

>>>> . . . their (liberals) strategy involves using it against itself by detaching the moral category of "victim," and using it to appeal to the Christianized conscience<<<<

I was referring to Bob's comment above re: the ape of God.

Anonymous said...

Will - I agree entirely. It's absolutely twighlight zone material.

Mizz E said...

Bob, IIRC you receive James Taranto's "Best of the Web" but just in case you missed looking over today's post, here's a Gagdad-like gem I pulled from the Zero-Tolerance Watch section:

Fub," a commenter on the Volokh Conspiracy, has a perceptive analysis:
What makes these ritual bannings of depictions or imitations of real weapons politically effective (among those for whom they are effective) is a very primitive human thought process: belief in sympathetic magic.
The actual object, the weapon, is imbued with magical power. Its very presence magically causes harm. It causes people to behave in evil ways. The rationale commonly offered is that the mere presence of a weapon makes people more prone to violence.
Sympathetic magic is the belief that what one does with an imitation of the thing with magical power will affect the actual thing. For example, in a magical religious context we see the image of a deity addressed, or given gifts or sacrifices. The magical deity is affected through the treatment of its image, and so performs its magic for the one who gives the image a gift.
In the imitation weapon banning context we have first the belief that the object, the actual weapon, is magic and causes those in its presence to behave in an evil manner. The sympathetic magical belief is that by banning the image or the imitation weapon, the magical power of real weapons to cause people to be violent will be lessened, or the real weapons will stay away from the presence of the faithful.

Van Harvey said...

Question regarding River & Jenny's points -

I've got no sound info to go from here, just speculation, going off of, of all things, old movies. If it seems as if I'm getting too removed from reality with this question, as if taking an obviously serious issue too lightly, I apologize, it's certainly not my intent.

What I'm wondering is, is the abusive impact and psychological scarring, be it received physically or verbally, dependent on the mode of transmission or the active intent of the deliverer?

I'm thinking of the old, old, barely into sound track era movies, where a mischevious Tom Sawyer type kid would stain someones face blue with ink, get caught, and then you'd see the grim and determined ma or pa slap them across the face two or three times, or even the brawling Irish family stereotype, where you'd see the dad roll up his sleeves & clench his fists as he came to deal out the punishment, the kid wincing at what was to come.... and the next scene we find the kid's grown up to be Abe Lincoln or something, proudly and lovingly presenting his parents with their new grandchild....

Then there's the one's where the ma or pa are obviously drunken criminal types and the kid refusing to go into the family business & the 'parent' would scream with a hateful acidic 'You think you're better'n me? You're Dirt! Just like you're ma! Worthless!.... and on and on.

My question is, would the kids who were cooly pummled by their parents solely as a disciplinary actions, and otherwise loved, respected, etc, show as much psychological scaring - if any, as would the child who was verbally shredded, spat on and spat out by their parents, but not physically touched?

Now I take it as a given, if the pummeling parents went at it with an abusive manner, an attitude of malice or glee, not to mention laying in the verbal abuse as well, then that kid is going to show more damage than the one who received the verbal abuse alone.

And obviously this type of an example completely leaves out the rest of the family life, daily attitude, lack of affection, resentful actions, etc.

Just a point I'm wondering about - is it the absuive intent, the parents moral degradation, that is the most psychologicaly damaging, or is it the action alone, no matter the manner and intent?

If I cross the line on this, I apologize.

Anonymous said...

Forgiveness is the ultimate cure for any abuses that we suffer, difficult to do as a helpless child, even more difficult, it would seem, as a not so helpless adult.
I believe that a truly abused child, when reaching adulthood, must pass through the victim phase on the way to forgiveness, just to visit the reality that the injustices truly did happen. Unfortunately many (most?) seem to get stuck at that under-developed victim stage and turn it into a political movement with its perpetual downtrodden and the "champions" (angrier victims) sent to liberate them. That philosophy hasn't worked yet and it never will. It only perpetuates tyranny and continued slavery.
It's up to each one individually to find the way out.
One thing's for sure as far as I'm concerned, ain't no power in bein' a victim, and the choice truly is mine.

Mizz E said...

"I did not get my Spaghetti-Os.  I got spaghetti.  I want the press to know this."

(The last words of Thomas Grasso before he was ritually executed in Oklahoma in 1995.) Grasso had a long criminal record when he robbed and murdered 87-year-old Hilda Johnson in Tulsa on Christmas Eve 1990 by strangling her with the electric cord from her Christmas tree and bashing her head with an iron. Then on July 3, 1991, he killed Leslie Holtz, 81, in the Staten Island boarding house where they both lived.

Why did Grasso have his heart set on SpaghettiOs? When he was eleven, he opened a can and found only eight meatballs, when there should have been twelve. He wrote to complain and Franco-American sent him four free cans. In ordering SpaghettiOs for his last meal, Grasso was hoping to relive one of the few moments of success and happiness in his life.

I don't think most of us can begin to relate to the insane, demonic atmosphere some children have to grow up in.

I've only briefly and lightly brushed against it once.

It was during my first year teaching, which coincided with the first year of integration in Texas, and for which the school board and adminstrators were completely unprepared to deal with. All of the black schools were closed and all of the white schools had to absorb thousands of children for which there was insufficient space and time to even erect temporary classrooms. As a result I had a class of 42 first graders the first semester. After Christmas vacation, construction on a new school was completed and my class was reduced to a teachable size, 30. Then in April, just when the atmosphere was beginning to feel sane, this freshman teacher was presented a new pupil. I don't recall her name, but I vividly recall her behavior, and the look of demonic possession in her 6 year old eyes still stings. She spoke very little and when she did it was a stream of curses. She could not stay in her sit and she literally terrorized her fellow classmates. Stealing things, punching and cursing them was her sole modus operandi.

Needless to say, in the year 1965 social services, special ed and medication were not invented. Finally, the principal got to the point where he didn't want me sending her down to the office anymore, so he advised me to tie her in her chair. Can you imagine? I was in a state of despair. And can you imagine how long that lasted - about a day - for now I had a wild animal with four lances strapped on her rear running around the room. At the end of the day I went to the principal and told him either she goes or I go. I can't say I know what happened to her, but I do know she and her four brothers and Mom and Dad, who had been living in their car on the beach, disappeared from the island, as did I at the end of that semester. I didn't return to the public classroom until 1986, after the Texas Legislature passed a law stating class sizes in the primary grades could not exceed 22. During all of the following 15 years as an art teacher I never saw another child quite like that one, by then classes for the 'emotionally disturbed' had been created.

I wonder if her last name was Grasso. I wonder if she ever escaped the prison she was born into?

Rick said...

Van,
Your question reminds me of one of Viktor Frankl’s stories – about something that happened to him in one of the concentration camps. A fellow prisoner fell and he reached to help him back up, I think it was, and one of the guards picked up a stone and threw it at him – striking him hard in the head. The physical pain was great but to him the intense feeling of ‘injustice’ was far worse.

Of course he was an adult and by then probably almost numbed by physical pain.

Anonymous said...

My take on van's scenario is that what differentiates discipline from abuse is primarily consistency.

I'm not advocating hitting a kid (I don't have any and doubt I will when I do), but I think there's a substantial difference between getting the crap beaten out of you because you stole the neighbor's lawn mower and getting the crap beaten out of you because dad's boss was mean to dad that day. Likewise, Alec had every right to criticize his daughter for not honoring her commitments, but he yelled at her for hurting his feelings instead--to him, the only things she did wrong was to slight His Highness.

We have to be harsh to those we love sometimes to reinforce that certain things are wrong, and to do so is an appropriate use of parental power. However, doing the same thing because you feel like it and you can is abuse.

Knowing that dad will get you if you do something bad teaches you right from wrong. Fearing that dad will get you because dad's moods are erratic only trains you to be wary of an individual's termperament and has nothing to do with healthy training.

Anonymous said...

When I was growing up with a divorcee mother and two brothers, our mom often became exasperated and at the end of her rope. She had a tough row to hoe, managing 3 rambucntious boys and eraning the living too. (It was the 1940s.) She said some things, like, "I wish you kids had never been born," or " You'll never be anything but poor white trash." Not very loving, nurturing statements and she probably didn't think they were harmful. They seemed to go straight to my core. Down deep I knew I was worthless. And I spent a good deal of my life trying to prove otherwise.

The interesting thing is that my two brothers, one older and one younger, don't even remember her saying those things. They just washed over them like water off a duck's back. My take from this is that each of us has a different sensitivity to criticism or verbal abuse from parents.

I cringed when I heard the Baldwin tapes and I felt immediate empathy for his daughter. I hope that she is a person with a strong constitution who does not let such tongue lashings make her feel devalued. If he rages a lot she may even be numbed by it and just lets it go by without internalizing it. I would hope so.

Nonetheless, it certainly caused echoes from my childhood to reverberate.

Bob's Blog said...

Bob, Your last sentence is priceless, and I will take it to heart!

Anonymous said...

WILDIRIS: What bugs me is, how the hell did George Carlin get on that show?

Anonymous said...

I grew up in a city with five sisters, three brothers and assorted cats, dogs, birds, fish and rabbits. Our mother would often loss track of our names when she was chastising us, and we would not help her at all. We took some pride when she would use our name last (of up to nine names she had to go through). “I am not nnnn.” “Nope, I am not nnnn.” We would drive her crazy doing this.

Our father had a very short fuse with me, the oldest boy. He did not treat the others as he treated me – when I was about seven or eight I had enough random backhands to the face that I would not sit close to him. Most of my siblings have no recollection of this – they thought I was Father’s favorite, and that I got special treatment – goodies. HAH!

When I turned 16, I had grown to be 6 feet tall; grew about 8 inches between 15 and 16. Father was about 5 feet, 4 inches. He treated me much differently since he had to look up to talk to me (and hit me). It was sad because I think he was afraid of me. I was a big strong kid; but I was a kid, and I would not hit my dad. But it was nice not to see him as a threat.

As someone said above, most kids have very different sensitivities, and recollections of their childhood. I hope Ireland has thick skin. Her “father” is hopeless. I hope she is not attached to him.

NoMo said...

All this discussion of victim-hood strikes very close to home. This once God-hating, raging nihilist had every "justification" to be that way - believe me - but not to stay that way. There aren't many things I would guarantee in this life, but here is one: "And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God..." (Romans 8:28). These few words of Paul give shape to the tapestry - at the same time ever-deepening its mystery.

Van Harvey said...

Regarding my earlier question, my suspicion is that a physical wound in and of itself, is just pain, and if you don't see it as out of the ordinary, it isn't especially marked. But the psychic intent behind such wounds - physical or mental... if received, will poison, to the degree the person involved already extends into your mindbodysoul experience.

For instance, four scenarios:
1. A child falls down a flight of stairs, they are wounded and in pain, but it'll pass. Aside from being cautious at the top of stairs, probably no lasting effects.

2. A child's parent screams "I hate you! You Disgusting filthy Pig! Why were you born?! I wish you were dead!" and pushes them down the stairs, the physical wounds might be the same, but the mental wound and emotional outcome I'd bet would be far different.

3. A child's Parent screams "I hate you! You Disgusting filthy Pig! Why were you born?! I wish you were dead!", but doesn't push them down the stairs, I suspect there will still be a lasting mental and emotional injury, even though there is not bruising.

4. Some passing unknown, unhinged psycho screams at a child "I hate you! Disgusting filthy Pig! Why were you born?! I wish you were dead!", and pushes them down the stairs, I suspect there will still be a lasting physical injury, and there will be an enhanced wariness of strangers, perhaps some lasting fears, but not the soul rending pain felt when the psycho is someone you 'love'.

There are connections and integrations we make within our mindbodysoul, that I suspect branch out and interconnect in potentially limitless ways. I imagine that the depth and sweep of the connections depend on the significance to us of the person or thing involved, and the weight we give to those persons and things involved.

The more deeply you internalize a person's actions & words as values, the more they can be painful to you as well. For the one brother who doesn't pay much attention to what his Mom says when she's yelling, what she yells is going to cause limited damage. To the one who considers and values what his mom says, yelling or not, then the harsh word is going to reach into many more areas of his soul which his brother never had disturbed. The more psyche exposed, the more at risk to injury or benefit. The more a person gives unevaluated weight to what someone says or does, the more open to deeper wounds they are. The person who listens, evaluates and decides whether or not the speaker - parent or otherwise - is saying something worthy of attention, then the less they are going to be impacted by unsensible words and actions made towards them. Few children are going to have that ability.

The horror of a parent abusing a child, is that by nature of being their parent, they already extend deeply, thoroughly, into their childs psyche, their mindbodysoul. Difficult to comprehend the penetrating pain of the significant value that is a parent, a loved value that touches every corner of their experience, suddenly and inexplicably channelling painful corrosive poison throughout all the interconnected reaches they extend into their childs soul.

I imagine that physical pain would perhaps double or treble the intensity of that poisons reach - the intensity, but perhaps not the reach itself?

The choice of whether to be shot in the gut with a 12 guage or a 16 guage shotgun shell, isn't much of a choice or a consolation.

I've been lucky in life that to me these are thoughts and speculations - not experiences. My heart goes out to those of you who know the cruel reality of what I thinly wonder about. And my admiration to those of you who overcome it. To those who inflict such things upon their children... I sense within what the old sailors scrawled at the edges of the unknown on their maps - 'there be dragons'.

Anonymous said...

Van, I think you just summed it up quite nicely. I was trying to put personal/ secondhand but still close experiences into words earlier to demonstrate your exact points, but my alacrity with words tonight fails me.

River, i must respectfully disagree. I think you underestimate the real and lasting damage that can be done to a child when their parent, or even someone who they view as a parental/ authoritative figure, heaps emotional abuse on them. People who live through that, even if they manage to heal the wounds, bear the scars (deep-seated mind parasites) for life. In very severe cases, there is a very real type of soul murder.

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

julie - I never said it was not bad. I received a different kind of abuse which is bad in and of itself, that is, neglect. My father did not cuss us out or beat us (though he did hit my brother really hard once, and kicked me once.) I had no real connection to my father, no confidence, no guidance, and so forth. In middle school I was at times suicidal. I was a bit violent at times, and I flunked ninth grade.

What I'm trying to say is that you can't just say across the board that verbal abuse is worse. It all depends on the circumstances. My reason for making this point is

1. I experienced differently
2. The idea that verbal abuse is more than often worse is generalized into a rule - which is not always true.

Yes, it can be worse. But what about a parent who doesn't say much at all to you and beats you? What would you say to that? That could be easily more trouble than a bunch of diatribes.

I don't claim any expertise, but I think it is not that simple.

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

I apologize, also, if I crossed any lines with that. It was not meant to insult, but rather a statement of my opinion on the matter.

I also agree, that forgiveness is of paramount importance, even if you cannot forgive the person to their face. (I'd imagine that forgiving Alec to his face would just enable him.)

Van Harvey said...

River,
You beat (tried to think of a different word... too early... coffee not drunk yet) me to it... I didn't think you were saying that verbal abuse wouldn't cause damage, but physical would more. What I'm saying, and again I'm not even not an expert here, it seems to me that the parents whole manner and psychology is the cause of the scarring, the mind parasites spawned from abuse - the method of delivering that abuse, whether it be physical, verbal or neglect would more affect the intensity of the damage, not necessarily the depth and degree of it.

"But what about a parent who doesn't say much at all to you and beats you? What would you say to that? That could be easily more trouble than a bunch of diatribes."

Which is what I mean, the damage done doesn't depend on the delivery system. I could see physical attack creating additional problems in the spiritual eddies of the attacks... but I think I'm getting too far out to be walking without a net, so to speak.

Anonymous said...

What makes the subject so hard to discuss is that it's difficult to say much without saying too much.

Suffice it to say, then, that I am so very happy for Miss Ireland, that she has so many people who can help her understand that the way her father has treated her is not normal, nice, or nurturing. As ugly as it is, at least she will now be exposed to a different sort of air to breathe, she won't have to guess at what is normal, too many people are now available to help her see that.

I'm not saying she's necessarily a terribly helpless victim, but she's at least got some intellectual collateral that isn't available to most kids in abusive homes.

What some wouldn't have given at age 7 for just one person to have known... and believed them.

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

Van: I would agree, then. I think perhaps it is more the spiritual things going on that can make things much worse. We might see more nasty verbal abuse because of what is reported, and probably because of what mind parasites are common in our nation.

Anyhow, off to work...

a.k.a. Blandly Urbane said...

I submitted a Thinking Blogger Award to this site and this post is a prime reason why.

I fed my son at 2am last night and then spent the next hour wide awake thinking about the posts I have read here.

I believe that this should qualify me as a "victim;" at least more so that Alec, no?

Alec Baldwin is a very small man and people reacting with words like, 'well we really don't know the whole story...' is understandable to me to a degree, but ultimately does not change ANYTHING!

His "victimhood" status or your pointing it out really does illustrate the wrongheadedness of his/their lines of thought or philosophy on life.

cosanostradamus said: "Alec, dude, you can change and still be funny on 30 Rock."

Agreed, but I cannot watch him or others anymore. Acting instead of being himself is one reason and two all these actors/actresses/media sponges make themselves the characters they think they are. When I see them now, no matter how good an actor I cannot suspend my disbelief (as I have to do to try and enjoy most movies made these days), because I can't see anything but them anymore.

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