Being an excerpt from my new book that certain readers might want to skip Part Eleven
NOTE: While everyone is, of course, free to read, these particular excerpts are, essentially, footnotes provided for readers of my books and are there to make sense of what they are reading AS THEY READ. So, they may not make as much sense to those who are not reading at the time...
Most people aren’t boy scouts. Or girl scouts. Be fair. They could be preaching from the bible, they could be President of the United States, but if they don’t show compassion to people, to animals, if they don’t respect someone’s property, they’re just thugs. It doesn’t matter if they’re smiling at you, treating you like a friend, they have to show that compassion. It may come as a shock to you, but most people don’t. I used to watch a lot of television and those shows like to push the idea that people are nice. They aren’t.
Most people are selfish and stupid, cannot see two inches in front of their noses or think two steps ahead in time. They may not go out of their way to hurt you, but they won’t go out of their way to help you, either. They think that is someone—or worse, some thing—else’s job.
Those of you who haven’t been watching the news lately may not be aware of the latest manifestation of the absolute scientific proof of these statements. I urge you in that direction.
John Gould liked beating the compassion out of people. This process worked best on his three children. I was fortunate in getting out of that mess faster than the other two. Now, when I say fortunate, my good fortune comes mostly at the expense of a great many other extremely compassionate people, a large number of whom had to fall by the wayside over the years after I remanded myself out of John Gould’s clutches because of my utter lack of empathy even as they showed me the best of human care. Few, countable on rare, random digits, remain. And, in case you haven’t been paying close attention, I am not yet fully capable of the full range of human kindness, what one might expect of a normal person.
Further proof that compassion actually does exist in the world, can be located and inculcated, sown in a person and grown like the best fruit. But, it is difficult.
You develop totally as person, otherwise, without empathy. You are full of desires, needs, drives, abilities. Empathy is what rounds you out as a complete human being, one of the rare qualities, and tells you what to do with that package of, I guess we might as well call them minor qualities, as well as playing its own major role. It gives you purpose. Direction. Poor me. Poor anyone who has to struggle without it or any lack of it. Don’t be so shocked to know that so many people are walking around without some large sum of it in their pockets. Just read the internet. Just understand that there is an internet, a need for an internet, beyond the scientific and technical demands, the social cravings behind it. The gut-driven lack of empathy that pulls it all together in one orgasmic scream of ME.
Oh, sure, many people walk around thinking and saying they are filled to the brim with empathy. There are even a bunch who have the nerve to call themselves “empaths.” Empaths! You know, like on Star Trek. Christ on a cracker, are those people crazy and trying to make a bundle.
I’ve spent more than fifty years, part-time of course, focused on building what my parents should have built for me, or helped me build myself in my first five to seven years of life, some genuine empathy, internalized from youth. Had they done their job properly I would probably have come out whole. As it is, I am still only partially there and will remain so until I am wholly in my grave. Probably. We’ll see. Thanks, Mumsy and Daddikins. Some problems truly are their fault, some can always be laid at their doorstep—don’t listen to those who say otherwise—as much as the color of our eyes and hair. Whether or not we or they can do much about it later. There are movements afoot to tell us we need to suck it up and take responsibility, blah blah blah. Always have been. I think they are always led by bad parents. Usually men.
But, later, we can try, and we can find people to help. And they can help if they want. Or, if you want to allow them in. If they aren’t complete assholes. Like bad therapists who tell you love isn’t real and crap like that. And, of course, no guarantees you won’t find worse assholes to take their place.
You always see these crappy ghetto melodramas—on TV, usually made for TV—where some moron replacement daddy steps in to help a teenage boy and tells him that when the pressure is on, that’s when the magic happens inside you that defines you as a man. No, dumbbell, that’s when you get your act together, learn responsibility and what defines your character as a human being, man or woman, and if you were a decent parent, you’d get that shit straight. But, of course, it’s a ghetto melodrama so it’s just going to keep fucking up the lives of the ghetto kids watching it to keep them down and in prison. Keep that part of them that should be working on the empathy they missed out on from having a decent father absent. So they, and you, can keep beating their mothers...
Now, perhaps Terpil had developed a sort of empathy, or was trying it on for size. How it came to him at such a late date is a question for others to answer. If it came earlier, unnoticed by me, another. Perhaps he had fully developed some brim-full empathy and I was missing it because of some innate prejudice that clouded my opinion of him. Poor Terpil.
Ah, well...
And then there are the very founts of empathy, the therapists, so many of whom are simply scam artists. Or well-intentioned people who simply have no idea what they are really doing and create empathy out of a guidebook.
I’m going to make a statement that sounds absolutely horrible. As if I haven’t already. Not only that, but seemingly disconnected. (And, if you are a psychoanalyst, you might think the disconnect is part of a dissociation, but I beg you not to go there…or go there if you want, whatever...and go some other place, too, for all I care.) First, though, a nice thought. I love the police. Some of my best friends are members of police forces of some kind.
Most people aren’t boy scouts. Or girl scouts. Be fair. They could be preaching from the bible, they could be President of the United States, but if they don’t show compassion to people, to animals, if they don’t respect someone’s property, they’re just thugs. It doesn’t matter if they’re smiling at you, treating you like a friend, they have to show that compassion. It may come as a shock to you, but most people don’t. I used to watch a lot of television and those shows like to push the idea that people are nice. They aren’t.
Most people are selfish and stupid, cannot see two inches in front of their noses or think two steps ahead in time. They may not go out of their way to hurt you, but they won’t go out of their way to help you, either. They think that is someone—or worse, some thing—else’s job.
Those of you who haven’t been watching the news lately may not be aware of the latest manifestation of the absolute scientific proof of these statements. I urge you in that direction.
John Gould liked beating the compassion out of people. This process worked best on his three children. I was fortunate in getting out of that mess faster than the other two. Now, when I say fortunate, my good fortune comes mostly at the expense of a great many other extremely compassionate people, a large number of whom had to fall by the wayside over the years after I remanded myself out of John Gould’s clutches because of my utter lack of empathy even as they showed me the best of human care. Few, countable on rare, random digits, remain. And, in case you haven’t been paying close attention, I am not yet fully capable of the full range of human kindness, what one might expect of a normal person.
Further proof that compassion actually does exist in the world, can be located and inculcated, sown in a person and grown like the best fruit. But, it is difficult.
You develop totally as person, otherwise, without empathy. You are full of desires, needs, drives, abilities. Empathy is what rounds you out as a complete human being, one of the rare qualities, and tells you what to do with that package of, I guess we might as well call them minor qualities, as well as playing its own major role. It gives you purpose. Direction. Poor me. Poor anyone who has to struggle without it or any lack of it. Don’t be so shocked to know that so many people are walking around without some large sum of it in their pockets. Just read the internet. Just understand that there is an internet, a need for an internet, beyond the scientific and technical demands, the social cravings behind it. The gut-driven lack of empathy that pulls it all together in one orgasmic scream of ME.
Oh, sure, many people walk around thinking and saying they are filled to the brim with empathy. There are even a bunch who have the nerve to call themselves “empaths.” Empaths! You know, like on Star Trek. Christ on a cracker, are those people crazy and trying to make a bundle.
I’ve spent more than fifty years, part-time of course, focused on building what my parents should have built for me, or helped me build myself in my first five to seven years of life, some genuine empathy, internalized from youth. Had they done their job properly I would probably have come out whole. As it is, I am still only partially there and will remain so until I am wholly in my grave. Probably. We’ll see. Thanks, Mumsy and Daddikins. Some problems truly are their fault, some can always be laid at their doorstep—don’t listen to those who say otherwise—as much as the color of our eyes and hair. Whether or not we or they can do much about it later. There are movements afoot to tell us we need to suck it up and take responsibility, blah blah blah. Always have been. I think they are always led by bad parents. Usually men.
But, later, we can try, and we can find people to help. And they can help if they want. Or, if you want to allow them in. If they aren’t complete assholes. Like bad therapists who tell you love isn’t real and crap like that. And, of course, no guarantees you won’t find worse assholes to take their place.
You always see these crappy ghetto melodramas—on TV, usually made for TV—where some moron replacement daddy steps in to help a teenage boy and tells him that when the pressure is on, that’s when the magic happens inside you that defines you as a man. No, dumbbell, that’s when you get your act together, learn responsibility and what defines your character as a human being, man or woman, and if you were a decent parent, you’d get that shit straight. But, of course, it’s a ghetto melodrama so it’s just going to keep fucking up the lives of the ghetto kids watching it to keep them down and in prison. Keep that part of them that should be working on the empathy they missed out on from having a decent father absent. So they, and you, can keep beating their mothers...
Now, perhaps Terpil had developed a sort of empathy, or was trying it on for size. How it came to him at such a late date is a question for others to answer. If it came earlier, unnoticed by me, another. Perhaps he had fully developed some brim-full empathy and I was missing it because of some innate prejudice that clouded my opinion of him. Poor Terpil.
Ah, well...
And then there are the very founts of empathy, the therapists, so many of whom are simply scam artists. Or well-intentioned people who simply have no idea what they are really doing and create empathy out of a guidebook.
I’m going to make a statement that sounds absolutely horrible. As if I haven’t already. Not only that, but seemingly disconnected. (And, if you are a psychoanalyst, you might think the disconnect is part of a dissociation, but I beg you not to go there…or go there if you want, whatever...and go some other place, too, for all I care.) First, though, a nice thought. I love the police. Some of my best friends are members of police forces of some kind.
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