A reverie about what this blog is about and its purpose
I need to publish more, but how?
When it comes to tech, I have it all down. I can type reasonably fast (80wpm?), I know many keyboard shortcuts, my laptop wakes up the moment I open the lid, I often have it on me, and I can type posts reasonably fast on my phone too.
The main problem is I have a ton of hypotheses, but very little interest in researching them all the way. I’m not so much interested in getting to the bottom of every idea, but getting to the bottom of the deeper questions that I have. In the process, I write a lot. If I don’t, I feel like I’m wasting my time. What’s the point of researching if the idea goes to waste?
In any case, what I’m interested in:
How to get along with my ex. We share a child, but it’s difficult to compromise with her. I’m sure most people fall back to social norms to make their decisions. I can’t do that in good conscience. I like to understand why I make my decisions.
I realize many of my problems are philosophical. For example, do the ends justify the means, or do the means justify the ends? This is the question at the root of deontology vs. consequentialism. Some choose virtue ethics, but I’m unconvinced. Even virtue ethics leaves too much wiggle room for interpretation. I can claw my way out of any “virtue” bag you might try to stuff me in 1.
I don’t just care about what’s legal; I care about what’s right, but I’ve also been very wrong many times before. There’s little value in choosing some idea that I’m exploring and then beating myself up for not following it. Am I a coward for not pursuing my “beliefs”, or am I wisely limiting the downside of taking ideas so seriously that I flirt with insanity?
Religion is the best foundation I have found, but religion itself is hard to truly believe and put into practice. I don’t believe in the Christianity of my parents, but then which Christianity is true? I’ve look through different denominations. I used to care more about prophesies, end times, theological trivia, and apologetics. Now I want to know how to live. Many people put an inordinate amount of trust in their preachers, but I often come away unconvinced. I can tell they’re trying to sell to me. Christians aren’t having enough kids, and many are getting divorced. Ideally, my belief system wouldn’t be self-terminating by driving people who think like me extinct. Is modern Christianity is self-terminating 2? Is Christianity failing Christians, or are Christians failing Christianity? From the outside it’s hard to tell.
When I read both Christ’s teachings and St. Augustine’s City of God, I come away thinking that Christians should allow others to defect against them again and again. This is in contrast to the Jewish idea of tit for tat, and in contrast to Dawkins’ modified tit for tat where you randomly cooperate to stop defection loops. Many American Christians have guns in their homes. However, Christianity as understood by St. Augustine, Ghandi, and Martin Luther King is about winning by losing. You not only don’t fight, you help your enemy kill you. If they ask you to polish the gun that they’ll use to kill you, you polish the gun. If you know someone is about to betray you, you ask them to do it quickly, as Christ did with Judas. That’s the true meaning of carrying your cross.
If being Christlike is about letting others defect against you, how do you avoid being a perpetual victim? How do you avoid people taking advantage of you? In fact, I always assumed that people who were taken advantage of need to stand up for themselves. If Christ is right, we have it exactly backwards. Society needs to stand up for the victim, and if we don’t, we’re the bad guy. It’s utterly confusing. So, if I’m going to take Christianity seriously, I need to A) be as good as humanly possible, and B) make sure that if someone defects against me, it’s completely obvious that they’re the bad guy.
If you’re going to let people take advantage of you, you better make sure you don’t hide your “lamp” under the bed (as per Christ’s teachings). No, you want to make sure your victimhood is obvious to others. This doesn’t mean complain. In fact, you should pray for and heap praise your enemies. You want to make it so obvious that you’re being taken advantage of that onlookers begin to persecute your persecuters. Does this describe American society? This is beginning to scare the crap out of me. If others defect against me, chances are they will win by default? This is insanity! Society can’t function like this.
If you’re Christian, and your persecutors are knowingly evil, and they’re hell-bent on ruining you, then they want to limit your chance of posthumous victory. If you’re going to be tortured and killed, they’d prefer that it’s done in private. This has implications for the legal system. Public trials and private punishments start to make less sense 3. Instead, you’d prefer your punishments be public and your trials private. We’ve all made mistakes. And the crazy thing is I’m beginning to suspect punishments would be doled out based on perception and “social justice” rather than evidence. In fact, I’m beginning to worry I’ll be punished more for bad vibes than for any specific crime. I’ve called CPS before and they turned it around on me! So now I’m worried that someone will come after me if I call CPS. To some degree, I recognize that the reason they responded negatively is because I was concerned and scared when I called.
Is anyone actually after me? Probably, not, but I know what it’s like being inside an organization and being “persecuted” for trying to make things better. If you’re truly interested in making valuable changes, you might rub people the wrong way. I have experienced this in many of the companies I’ve worked at and in my personal relationships. The desire to get to the heart of a problem can cause you to make enemies who benefit from the problem remaining.
So, what should I do? I know that if I become a better person, this may actually cause some people to become more angry with me, not less. Maybe I need to make sure I have lots of friends. I also want witnesses to make sure my life has as little privacy as I can muster. If anything happens to me, I don’t want to be alone. I want my goodness to radiate. Many people want to appear good. I’m afraid of appearing good? This is all very weird.
Now back to my situation with my ex and my fear of being unjustly accused. I know my ex has lied in the past. I don’t know how much she’s willing to lie, but I do know just how much society wants to believe women. So, if I’m in this situation, and something like 40% of children are born out of wedlock, I expect my problem to be common. In fact, I seem to be meeting a lot of people who are in similar circumstances. Birds of a feather? And worst of all, I understand just how hard it is for guys to talk about this stuff. In all but a handful of times, the conversation turned sour. I suspect my strong desire to do something about my problem put me at a disadvantage. Maybe it was resentment, but people pretty much shut me off based on vibe alone. It didn’t matter if they were religious or not. The question was always whether I did something wrong at all, and not about the balance of justice. And if I admit to even the smallest fault, I’m told there is something I can do? So ultimately, I learned that even though my bad vibes were a result of my situation and not the cause of it, I was still responsible for having good vibes, and that if I couldn’t manage to become detached about the problem, nobody would even be willing to hear my case. Ironically, for others to care, I had to force myself to nearly accept my problems as a fact of life.
So, when I see a guy with resentment, and he just can’t seem to let things go, I understand now. I see myself in him. But I also know that these same people are at a trust deficit. They don’t know if they can trust me. They don’t know if they can trust anyone. They’re paranoid, resentful, angry, and confused. In fact, seeing that none of the most resentful guys have stayed in touch with me makes me concerned. Why is it so hard to reach them? Are they gripped by a masculine macho spirit that prevents them from opening up? I want to hear them complain. Are they afraid that I’ll turn against them when I learn about even their smaller blunders just as others might have? Do they fear that I will assume the worst?
I always assumed that I shouldn’t speak negatively about my ex. I don’t like to air dirty laundry. I don’t like to say negative things about people. I would rather go direct. I feel bad and ashamed when I do say something negative and I understand that people assume I’ll do the same to them. I also know that when I’m stuck in negative thoughts then these have a way of leaking out. There’s a pastor who goes to my church group and I always feared that he’d kick me out of the group. I assumed he didn’t like me. When he asked me questions, I fumbled, and embarrassed myself. I told him I want to invite a friend but then threw him under the bus by mentioning a problem he was having. I hated that I did this and I was too embarrassed to talk to the pastor again, or to invite my friend. I feared that even the smallest mistake would cause people to reject me.
Maybe the reality was that I was like this myself and I feared that people would treat me the way I treated my ex. I rejected her emotionally. I was critical of her. She didn’t listen to me even when I was completely in the right. Over time, I began to internalize this and my internal conflicts bubbled up when I tried to talk to people. I started to fear that others would be critical of me. And I internalized that others would reject me (as my ex did) despite my being right.
Now that I think about it, it wasn’t my concern or resentment, or anything of that sort that may have caused people to respond negatively. What caused people to not care was precisely my strong desire to get out of my situation. In short, people could see how desperately I wanted an exit, and they determined that it wasn’t worth pursuing a friendship with me in case I bounce. And the reason I wanted an exit was precisely because I wasn’t getting any help and I couldn’t find anyone to side with me despite me being in the right. I felt like I was banished from society, and considering that I’m already a loner, I began to get stir crazy. And if I started to manifest anything like paranoia, it would be the thing that would be picked up on as the thing to treat, and not the root problem behind my paranoia.
I can now sort of understand women who keep finding themselves in toxic relationships. If she puts way too much trust in people and everyone tells her to just stand up for herself, she might be completely incapable of doing this, and get herself into trouble. This would then cause people to see her as a perpetual victim and a naive and problematic person. If she tries to stand up for herself or for some ideas of her own, her trusting nature leads her into crazy ideas because these crazies are the only people who are willing to engage with her. If she tries to stand up for herself, she’s likely to do it either wrong or timidly. She might become angry, resentful, and bitter, but maybe she just started out as being too trusting? As she gets older she might not only have her old problems but a new one: with whom to settle down; she may become desperate. So she’ll have to contend with either being alone, or making some desperate attempt to get into a relationship. She’ll be clingy and this will drive people away. The more she chases, the less she’ll get.
A year? ago I got a knock on my door and a neighbor I’ve never seen told me the guy across the street died last night. I didn’t know the guy. I didn’t know the two women telling me the bad news. Would I be willing to go to war to defend neighbors I’ve never met? Probably not. As far as I can tell, people are willing to go to war for their own political party. In my case, my ex has completely opposite politics of me, and she’s one of the most important people in my life even if we hardly ever talk. I would like to bridge this gap if at all possible.
When I talk to others, including Christians about breaking up with my ex, I don’t get any pushback whatsoever. Such talk is considered completely normal. The only people who push back are my parents, but they also don’t try to understand my reasons. So either people accept me wanting to leave without reasons, or they don’t accept regardless of the reasons. Either way, it’s isolating. The reality is that leaving really isn’t an option if you have a child with someone. And what’s worse is the game theory here sucks. Should I reward her every time she defects? No. But my options to do something are also limited. I can take things away, but we got to the point where we were apart, and I she asked me to stop paying child support, and yet I was still unable to figure out how to resolve the problems we were having. I took her off my Spotify plan.
I wasn’t going to reward her bad behavior, and I didn’t want to go on the offensive, and given everything I read, heard, and experienced, going to court would cost both of us; the incentives would drive an even deeper wedge between me and her, and chances are I’ll be observed through a microscope while her much worse actions would be glossed over, or would even be framed as results of my conduct.
So, if there’s no winning, what am I to do? Am I a coward for not suing her despite me having more money? Am I the bad person for not proposing to her after I got her pregnant? How could I propose to her if she didn’t want to listen to me as is? Or did she not listen because what’s the point if I don’t want to commit anyways? So would tying myself to her further, work? Why would I marry her if she keeps “wanting space” from me? Wouldn’t it be rational for her to accept marriage and then divorce me right away to collect half? Am I still obliged to propose to her even if I know this is very likely?
You could say that I shouldn’t have slept with her, or that I should have used protection, but how can the same society that is telling me to trust and believe women now tell me I shouldn’t have trusted and believed her when she said she was on birth control? She wasn’t a druggie or a liar up until that point. Is there any circumstance or situation where she would be held responsible or liable for her choices? Was I stupid to believe in equality between men and women? Why were there suddenly so many double standards stacked against me? Before, I sensed there were problems with feminism, but I didn’t consider them to be serious. I confused my attraction to women with my respect and trust of them. Now I was paying the price.
So, I was stuck and I didn’t know what to do. I felt helpless. I didn’t want to believe that my ex was a bad person, but I started to. If she’s evil, how can I possibly raise a child with her? I shouldn’t trust a thing she says. At the same time, this wasn’t practical. Some exes stalk, and I didn’t want to do that. But if I did nothing, I also felt guilty. I felt stuck. I could neither reconcile with her nor split up. So, what should I do?
I had some savings and I spend them just thinking about my problems. What should I pursue? If I could buy my way out of this problem, I’d love to. I felt I could hire a nanny that would be a better mom than my ex. However, I also couldn’t have my daughter full time. My ex wanted to have her half the time. So, what should I do? Work felt meaningless, and it was. I wasn’t going to earn my way out of this mess. And even if I could, I didn’t feel good about suing her considering that she likely couldn’t afford a good lawyer. But maybe this is merely me excusing my cowardice. Maybe I should have paid for her lawyer and hoped to win regardless, for my daughter’s sake.
I also knew that if I turned against my ex, that she’d turn my daughter against me. I wouldn’t put it past her to do this, but I also didn’t have strong indications that she did this. I know that women often do this. There’s a certain rationale to it. Regardless, I didn’t want to separate my ex from her child either. It felt wrong.
So I didn’t know what option to pursue, or even how to frame the problem so I could resolve it. Pursuing my ex was not going to work. I suppose I could have completely submitted to her will and hoped that by doing what she wanted I would have some peace. However, after hearing her ideas and what she wanted to do, it was clear to me that this was not going to work. I could pursue what’s best for my daughter, but this is exactly what Eminem did, and it’s difficult to avoid hating your ex in the process. That way leads to conflict. Money wasn’t going to help. Helping the world felt pointless because I would still have to face my relationship problems. Religion seemed to help a little bit, but I came in with a lot of distrust. I came into my relationship not believing in love, believing that you choose your own purpose, and not believing in any religion.
I wanted to get married and have kids at one point, but I also knew that the best way to get a girlfriend that I might one day marry is to have other women pursue me as well. So the more women pursued me, the more likely it would be that I could find the one without being needy. I also knew that having women in my life gave me confidence, but that breakups could emotionally floor me for months. I didn’t believe in dating just for marriage. I felt that more information was better than less information. If a girl didn’t want to sleep with me, I would wonder if she really liked me, or if she might just be stringing me along. I didn’t trust my gut because it wasn’t logical. I knew I could be deceived by emotions. I wanted to reason my way through relationships in the same way that I reasoned my way through code. I “knew” this was “impossible”, but I didn’t know any better. I dated by using Tinder and Bumble because where else would I find so many women in one place? My reasoning seemed completely logical. I was pretty sure that if I tried hard enough, I would find my mate. I just needed to find the right words, wear clothing that is trendy, but not too trendy, have a nice job, etc. I wanted to meet the right person to settle down with before I bought a house though. All that came crashing down when I met my ex. I was forced to re-examine my life from its foundation.
The meaning crisis is real for many people. To some extent, the reason we’re so addicted to news is because we want it provide us some meaning, and news sites are competing to give us something worth dying for. The left and the right are trying to get themselves and each other riled up. This is good for their viewership, and if they can turn problems into moral ones, then they can justify extreme action. If the other side is doing something bad, then shouldn’t your side do something about it? If you know what the other side intends to do, isn’t it best to stop them before they actually implement their evil plans, or put them into law, etc?
All of these political situations look exactly like the problems with my ex. You have a counterparty who you don’t get along with. They don’t want to hear from you. Your attempts to reach them go nowhere, and yet you both need to live with each other and make decisions. You are told to look at the bright side but it’s really hard. It’s difficult to find anything positive about the other them, and yet you don’t want to give up. They tell you about the virtues of self-reliance, but this hardly does anything. You spend all your time trying to be right only to lose, not because you’re wrong, but because the other side cares more about power than truth.
NOTE:
After I wrote this post, I felt like I just dropped it off a cliff, but if you want to read more, I talk about political polarization, Game-B, and my romantic life in the next post.
For example, virtue isn’t about extremes but about finding balance. You don’t want to be rash, but you also don’t want to be timid. So virtue is defined as a balancing act. This framing can help in figuring out what to do. For example, if I’m foolhardy in my pursuits, then I can try to be less so in the future. In practice, it’s hard to know the difference between too much and too little. On the outside, it seems crazy that anyone would have trouble distinguishing between the two. However, if you’re trying to move a big abstract object, and you fail, is it because you didn’t push hard enough, or did you push too hard since you nearly injured yourself? These kinds of problems exist everywhere. With physical things, the more you do, the more you get. This is what attracted me to programming. I felt like I had control there. With living things you get a hermetic response. Often, trying harder does the exact opposite of what you want. With people, indirectness often works better. I’m still learning this. The more you resist them, the more they push back. In short, I can be as virtuous as I want to be and still find myself failing for inexplicable reasons.
Christianity being self-terminating sounds awfully inflammatory, and a bit of an exaggeration. Christian Atheists don’t get divorced at a higher rate than Christians. Many Christians are angry and resentful. I grew up fundamentalist. They’re not curious about truth. They assume that everyone who questions is looking for a reason to sin. By lumping all critics together in this way, they end up leading curious soles into Atheism. The answer isn’t to find better proofs, or to be better at gotcha questions. There’s no trick. The best advice I can offer is for Christians to stop treating their religion like it’s a piece of fine china that will shatter the moment you try to analyze it. If it’s that precious, it’s not a rock to stand on. If Christianity is true, it shouldn’t fear questions, and it should’t require sophistry for its defense.
If trials are private, and sentences are public, then a friend or family member who knows me will be able to see how just the legal system is. The people close to me don’t need the courts to tell them what kind of person I am. They want to know what kind of system we have. Private punishments are supposedly more humane, but they do more to hide the injustices of state power than they do to protect the condemned. Conservatives assume that good people don’t or won’t go to jail. I disagree. I believe that christlikeness can lead a person into the same position as Christ himself. The sinner and the saint can both end up either on the cross or in jail.