A few days ago Stefan Molyneux did a call-in show entitled "MGTOW
saved my Eggs!" He spends an hour in conversation with a man called Logan ,
from 1 hour 37 minutes, whose wife ran off with a male best friend of his. They
talk for an entire hour and in the last third or so of the discussion Stefan lambastes
his guest for being "too nice" and a "pushover", see: https://soundcloud.com/stefan-molyneux/fdr-3879-mgtow-saved-my-eggs-call-in-show-october-25th-2017.
It makes uncomfortable listening because this is a criticism that has been
levelled at me; although not in recent years I'm glad to say. I'm referring to
a period of my life long gone, primarily my first decade at the hospital, or
maybe slightly longer; there is no definitive beginning or end point for this
slice of time. No particular day that I started nor any particular day I
finished. However, I know that today I am a very different person and that it
has been many years since I stopped being the person I was back then. This
article is addressed to the people who knew me back then and not to most of my current
friends and acquaintances. In fact, unless you knew me before about 2002 this article does not concern you; although feel free to read it still of course. This is why I am posting it on the HPWA blog. I am still
in touch with a few of those people and I'm glad because I owe them an
explanation, and some of them an apology. You see, my personality in those days
was almost entirely an act.
One thing Molyneux believes in very strongly is personal
responsibility and he tries to instil this into Logan
during their call. I understand where he is coming from and he is, as is often
his custom, clearly playing for his audience with sensationalism and hyperbole,
but what he said could be construed as Logan
being held one hundred percent accountable for his awful experience; because
that's what popular wisdom states. In any situation like Logan 's
the call goes out from the multitudes: "You shouldn't let them get away
with treating you like that!" This is far, far more common than:
"They shouldn't be treating you like that!" It can even go to the
extent of: "You deserve it for being such a sucker!" Indeed when
Bernie Madoff, the world's most devastating fraudster, was caught, a commentator
at the time said that Madoff had millions of accomplices, "...the
investors who trusted him!" See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ku4uCB9pE5U.
It took me a long time to understand that my feelings about this matter are why
I did what I did. I really feel like I am moving through life at a ninety
degree angle to the rest of the world and I always have been. I also began my
charade at a time just after I had healed from my disastrous attempt to change
my personality from within, see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/nice-guys-update.html.
The reason is, I have always found the idea of exploiting or abusing another
person because they are vulnerable utterly obscene. If I ever committed such an
offence I would feel mortally ashamed of myself and anybody telling my victim:
"Well, you made it so easy for him! You need to change your ways and stop
being such a mug!" would essentially be exonerating me of any blame for my
brutal actions and shifting it completely onto the poor damaged and destitute individual
I had just defecated on. The implications are that it is A-okay to mistreat
others, so long as they're not capable of resisting. What's the difference
between that and the rapist's excuse: "She was asking for it!"? It is
the veto of the psychopath. However, most people accept this noxious ethical equation;
I know because I put it to the test. I carried out a ten to fifteen-year live
experiment with myself as the guinea pig. During that time I endured fairly universal
contempt and despicable maltreatment at the hands of others. I could give you
numerous examples; people borrowing money and never repaying it, people talking
down to me in front of others in social gatherings for their own
self-aggrandizement or simply for entertainment, money and property being
stolen, nasty jokes being made about me, rumours being spread about me, lies
being told about me, lies being told to
me continuously as a matter of normal interaction, pub drinks being spiked, sabotage
of my work, attempts to ruin my social life. It didn't do my love-life much
good either, to put it mildly. Why did I do it? In truth, at the time I didn't
even know it myself; it was something I decided to do on a completely
subconscious level. It is only actually in the last few years, after a long process
of reflection, that I realize the answer. That understanding has been an
enormous liberation for me. A lot of the bitterness, self-reproach and guilt have
been lifted from my shoulders. I did it because I wanted to know who my real
friends were. Can you honestly call somebody a true friend if you believe that
the only reason they're being virtuous towards you may be because they know you
would not let them get away with anything less? It was a test, pure and simple.
Who would not take advantage of me,
even when they could? I'm sad to say
that only three people ever passed that test; only three of the hundred a hundred
and fifty individuals who came close to me during those years. One of them was
my closest friend at the time, an older man called Barry who had become something
of a surrogate father figure to me at the hospital; we're still in touch and on
good terms although we have slowly drifted apart over the years. And there were
only two others whom I shall not name here; if I meet them I might inform them
of their achievement, if you can call it that.
What does my experiment reveal? That it seems I hold very
unorthodox ethical values. Am I alone? Surely I can't be the only one who doesn't
want to take advantage of other people just because they are easy meat. On the
contrary; whenever I come across somebody and "sense that they're a
pushover" to use Molyneux' words, my first instinct is to protect and
defend them, to keep potential abusers away from them. I have made friends with
these people with that very purpose in mind. I don't know if they appreciate me
for that. Maybe some of them find it patronizing. It doesn't make any
difference to me; I would still do it anyway. It's quite likely I am motivated at a
gut level by my empathic disorder, see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/the-dark-side-of-empath.html
and the background links below. Was this false-persona I lived under for all
that time the right thing to do? To be honest, no. I feel a bit guilty at the
way I misled and deceived some people. I feel almost as if I were a spy in
their midst. I lived a double-life and few people ever saw the real me. I
should not have done it, but because it was never a conscious decision to do it
in the first place, I don't feel as regretful as I would if it had been a
deliberate policy I had wilfully implemented, in which case it would have been
much worse. Therefore I hereby apologize to everybody I lied to, or at least to
Barry and the other two people who passed my test. As for the others?... Well,
I don't have much to do with them these days anyway and I will never let them
back into my life again.
See here fore more
background: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/being-empath.html.
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