If you are contemplating how to best prepare for having kids, imo this essay by Daniel Mackler is a must-read.

I think this is an interesting but vast topic and don’t know where to start in thinking or writing about it. It would be interesting to hear some criticisms of Harris’ position. I’ll let you know if I come across anything.

Your story is a special one. Thank you for sharing it!

Precious, thanks for sharing!

Love you both, Gramma Mary

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMWTs0YT928

At the beginning, I briefly thought, “well. . .if only the smart people stop breeding. . .” Then that question was addressed, though briefly. It is a very important point. We need to stop thinking about children as ours/not ours. The aphorism “it takes a village to raise a child” is true. Children are not our possessions/projections. We live in a society (so called) that still believes that what one does with their children is none of anyone’s damned business unless we overtly abuse them.

I think those are valid criticisms you make. Without thinking about it too hard, I’m likely filtering, or projecting onto, what Daniel is saying some of the psychological stresses I am experiencing within myself at the moment. I don’t have a precise handle on what is going on within me but I’ve been thinking that something of it has to do with a problematic relationship between my superego and the other parts of my psyche. Therefore, I am perhaps overreacting to any sense I get that I am being told what I ought to do by Daniel.

I see what you’re saying, that the urgency of change can be thought of, or just is, the response of understanding the reality of a situation in need of change. Maybe I don’t quite share in this exact understanding at the moment.

I know Alice Miller and a bit of Stef as well. Including Daniel, the three of them all have some powerful ideas and are powerful communicators. But I think it’s possible that while they have all deeply interested me and many others, that their messages are problematic. I think it is healthy to crtically discuss their ideas which, in respect of Daniel, I have tried to start doing in my comments on this site. Daniel is publically putting out quite a forceful message and is making sweeping criticisms of people, especially parents. I think I wanted to suggest that he himself is perhaps not immune from these parent-directed criticisms just because he doesn’t have kids. So, while Daniel advises us not to have kids till we have substantially healed our traumas, I reflect this back to him, suggesting that perhaps we should not take a position of public influence, towards many of whom he will old enough to be their father, until he has done the same. I largely intend this as a rhetorical point for the sake of opening up ways in which Daniel’s meassage can be crticised, rather than a statement of fact, although I did not make that clear in my previous post.

My friendly comments towards Amy were put in quite clumsy terms. Of course, we are all trying to do something or other by presenting ourselves on the internet. I just wished to sketch a quick distinction between what I see many self-help related website authors and forum posters doing to what I see Amy doing. I see Amy’s approach as open-minded and having less of a preconceived agenda than others and I find these qualities pleasing in her role as virtual happiness person. I would like to think that I share some of this approach in my own presentations although I am open to seeing otherwise.

Really nice to engage with you, and I hope therapy related things are going well for you.

It has not been an easy journey. It took me a long time to realize my claims of “caring about the world” did not line up with my actions. On a daily basis now I think to myself – am I making choices that are aligning me with the defense of children, or am I abandoning them to the cumulative abuse of countless generations?

And:
“It seems that a lot of people put themselves out there because they are trying to do something in particular.”
So… when you chose to comment on this podcast, is it you intended to do nothing in particular?

For me, this matter of rushing illuminates what I was trying to say in criticism of Daniel as a father figure.

I picture Daniel as a father who’s rushing his kids to get their shoes on, shouting at them and telling them to do it the way he has told them.

Perhaps Daniel is unconsciously transferring/projecting/acting out (i’m not sure what the correct term is) the treatment he received as a child, not onto his children, but onto his audience, his surrogate children, perhaps.

So, maybe Daniel or his audience arn’t fairing any better from him not having had children, for as long as his traumas remain unresolved, as he would say, he will act them out on others and retraumatize others as he has been traumatized himself.

It’s interesting for me to come to your new discussions with the slightly changed perspective that has come about since listening to you both a month or two ago.

I find myself less enamoured with Daniel’s perspective now than I was then. I would be interested in a rigourous philosophical critique of Daniel’s ideas which seems somewhat lacking in cyberspace at the moment.

I’m interested to know the theoretical underpinnings of Daniel’s ideas, for example, the model of the psyche implied. For example: In what ways is Daniel a Freudian? What does he think of Lacan’s ideas? What is the basis of the idea of the inner child?

I’m finding that Daniel is coming across as something of an authoritarian father figure. Without going into details, I’m getting a general impression of him and his ideas coming across as unquestionable truth. If you put that to him he would probably disagree but then later he would continue on in the same manner.

I found the talk of ‘levels’ problematic. For example, Daniel says that his website is written for level 10 in terms of the degree to which one has worked through ones traumas and that this is why someone who has not worked through their traumas will not take to it. I disagree. I can understand and relate to more or less everything Daniel is saying in his articles and I am open to the possiblity he is right and I do agree with a lot of what he says. I don’t run a mile when I read his ‘higher level’ stuff. On the contrary, I am drawn in by the quality of his reasoning and what I see as the truth in his insights. However, I don’t think that I am at a high level in terms of having resolved my traumas. Rather, I just question what he is saying and react according to my current perspective.

For example, at http://www.iraresoul.com/alicemiller.html, Daniel writes: “Take page 252 of For Your Own Good (1980), a book in which she [Alice Miller] offers detailed descriptions of parents who sexually abuse, physically torture, emotionally humiliate, and utterly abandon their children:

‘…because I do not place blame on the parents, I apparently create difficulties for many of my readers. It would be so much simpler to say it is all the child’s fault, or the parents’, or the blame can be divided. This is exactly what I don’t want to do, because as an adult I know it is not a question of blame but of not being able to do any differently.’

Not being able to do any differently: the classic rationalization of the abusive parent!”

It seems to me that Kara and Amy’s view, and perhaps my own at the time of writing, is that it is true that we can’t do differently than we do in the sense that everything we have done up till now cannot be done again differently and when we act in a certain way we do so for reasons that are determining our behaviour at the time. If we could act differently from how we do act in the present moment there would have to be a different set of motivating reasons available to us at that moment. Since each moment has its own set of motivating reasons, whether they be conscious or unconscious, there is no way that we can act differently from how we do act in response to those reasons. To act differently would require a different set of reasons and it is only possible to have different set of reasons in a different moment, not in the same one.

That is not to say that, for example, by reflecting on our behaviour and the reasons behind it, we cannot change over time and act in different ways in the future towards similiar situations than we had done in the past, but insofar that we are able to do this is because of the changes in the motivating reasons that take place as a result of this reflection, and this reflection itself can only come about due to previous changes in motivating reasons over time. In this sense, we are not wholly in control of how we behave in a given moment.

Therefore, I do not see Alice Miller’s remarks regarding not being able to act differently as a defence of certain harmful behaviour, but rather as reflecting her insight into the apparent truth of the utter unavoidability of acting in the way that we act.

To conclude, I think that while Daniel is brilliant in vigourously encouraging us to examine the reasons for our behaviour for the sake of beneficial change over time, he is asking the impossible if he is asking us to act differently than how we are actually acting in the present.

Paul

If Daniel associates unprocessed childhood trauma with the inevitable abuse of your own children, it seems fair to me to use the word “should.” After all, child abuse is objectively wrong.

Then again, is it possible to resolve ALL your trauma? I think it’s unlikely. I think even the best parents probably act out on an extremely unconscious level. If it’s only a small aspect of the parent’s personality and the parent accepts the behaviour and makes a commitment to change, then I think that could be okay.

Like if the parent was really good, the child would feel comfortable expressing pain to the parent.

The paradox here is the idea that if a parent is unconscious to the trauma, they will be unable to empathise with the child. So, it is a tricky one. I’m not sure. I definitely think you need to seriously work on yourself before having kids. The key here is that every time you abuse a child, you create another trauma in yourself that needs to be processed and you make it that much more difficult for yourself to connect with the original pain. At least, that’s what I think.

I also feel moved at the moment to elaborate on my agreement with your point that consciousness IS evolving.

I have detailed, intimate experience–as well as encyclopedic memories–of my mother and her mother, and of my daughter and her daughter, (and also of myself of course). Four of us are still living, and the differences in consciousness over the five generations are phenomenal.

I am the pivot point in the middle, and my intensive long-term journey of healing toward radical self-possession feels like it has THOROUGHLY turned consciousness forever in a new direction, at least for our family.

All four of my grown children would agree that amazing waves have rippled out from the changes that have happened inside of me. It seems clear to me that “important” growth and evolution of the psyche can sometimes take place BECAUSE of having had children, that couldn’t have happened in any other way, and that didn’t unconscionably wreck the kids .

Anyone who knows me knows that my assertions about my family do not come from denial or a sense that I’m a great parent. Rather, I’ve been agonized, humbled, humiliated, grieved and pulled through the wringer by my ongoing processes in relation to all of them.

I think that what I’ve been through and am talking about is outside of Daniel’s experience, and I know some other people who have been on a somewhat parallel path to mine. This isn’t to gainsay his super-cogent points, but just to add something to the picture that I think he has missed.

But I think I’ve come to something more essential about what it is I don’t like about Daniel’s stuff, and in a way this dislike is of mine is of the same nature as something of Daniel’s ‘highest principles’ (for want of a less dogmatic term). Basically, the way I see it just now, it is in the nature of the universe and therefore the human spirit to be unlimited and so any version of things that COMES ACROSS (not necessarily inherent in the version), however minutely, as attempting to contain this unlimitedness, is met with a loud F**K YOU! To me it seems that this is the same response that Daniel has to any attempt by his parents or society to try and coerce, change, contain him.

So, perhaps I really like Daniel in as far as his F*CK YOU resonates with my F*CK YOU, and perhaps I say F*CK you to Daniel to the extent that he COMES ACROSS as trying to contain, coerce, change and limit me.

Implicit in some of what Daniel says seems to be a belief in the actual reality of an idea of how the world should be and while this is perhaps compatible with the doom and gloom ‘worldview’ it is perhaps not compatible with the fine as it is worldview.

Above, Kara pleads to the universe for more peace but in a way peace is more painful and boring than conflict. Do I really want peace? In having something to fight for or against there is the possibility of more and more pleasure, joy, understanding even if deeper pain is necessarily part of that. Is to want peace to want an end to that struggle? Is it not in the nature of the universe and everything to be unlimited and therefore to try to limit the depth of joy and sorrow with peace just another campaign against the unbearable truth of the unlimited? Or something.

For example, while it makes sense to me to say that it isn’t appropriate to have kids for x, y and z reasons, people who actually have kids have them for a, b and c reasons. To the people that have [deliberately] had kids there were appropriate reasons which is why they did it.

From imagining a better world where many more people are doing [Daniel-style] healing more quickly, as Daniel does, does not follow that people should start healing Daniel style. People are where they/we are and as we might defend ourselves from being told by others how we should be, then it perhaps follows that we are not helping others by telling them how they should be.

Daniel doesn’t seem to know that enlightenment lies at the end of self-therapy but speculates that it does. However, elsewhere I think he portrays this speculation as knowledge. I find such speculation presented as fact to be objectionable.

Nevertheless, Daniel has some radical and strongly held views and I defend his expression of these in the manner appropriate to him. But that does not mean it will be appropriate to others who are tryng to get over dogmatic and prescriptive approaches to living. But I’m 99.9% really like that he has expressed what he has and the way he has than had ne not expressed at all, so I’m keeping this in that kind of perspective. Thank you Daniel and Amy.

I wanted to post a quibble to one of Daniel`s perspectives on like, which ive notice here and there, and i seem to have found a very good argument against Daniel`s perspective which will also hopefully be of value. im talking about perfectionism. ive seen this theme in some of your conversations, and thought i would add some of the resources that have helped me explore this part of life.

So here they are:

http://media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_1386_perfectionism.mp3
http://media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_939_Perfectionism_And_Bonding_Listener.mp3

They are both from http://www.freedomainradio.com By Stefan Molyneux, whom which i believe you are both familiar with. I hope you guys can find the time to look into them -if you have not seen them yet-, as i, like alof of Stef`s stuff, have found them very useful.

I look forward to more podcasts, and Thank you so much for doing what your are doing guys, this as far as i know is one of the top ways to save the world. : )

It also makes sense knowing how his journal was often his only comfort and path to healing, why he would be such a strong defender of deep Truth. Whereas I am coming from a place where that journal and self-reflection (encouraged by my adult teachers) was my primary tormentor, so it makes sense that I sometimes bristle at such things.

It’s things like this that make me firmly believe there is no “right” or “true” way beyond the self-reflection process to go about healing our traumas, because we’re all coming from different places, with different traumas. Self-reflection is the key. I’m down with that. But, I also think that self-reflection is just that: SELF-reflection. Maybe for you, through self-reflection, you decide to be celibate, while for me, through the same process of self-reflection, I decide to have tons of sex. The outcome of self-reflection is going to be different for everyone. I don’t think that’s just a politically-correct nicety. I think that’s the heart of empathy.

I don’t know. I’d rather have a bunch of happy high people than emotional self-flagellates.

I also think you can make the decision to enter into what Daniel has deemed dishonest happiness conciously and honestly. You have to have a balance, and a love, a softness, an acceptance for yourself – ALL of yourself – before you can deal with all the messy stuff.

I agree with the idea that you can learn about “true” happiness from “fake” happiness. Personally, I like thinking about it as long-term vs. short-term happiness, rather than real or fake. You just do what you gotta do. I don’t think you’re tricking people.

The “more fun” vs. “should do”, and the “uncertain” vs. “certainty”.

I find “fun” and “uncertain” much more appealing, in part because “should do” and “certainty” have been such a large part of dealing with my own childhood trauma. They are what I would call my “primal addictions” – at least the ones that are at the forefront right now.

Just…yes. Exciting. I’ll go listen to the rest now.