We Are Cowards Because We Kill Our Children.

[For the uninitiated the situation used for this philosophical muse is that I, my dependent daughter and dependent nephew are being evicted by my sisters from my now deceased parents' house.  We all have health issues and have no resources to move in the immediate future.]

A message I get from all my sisters is this: "We are trying to save you from harm."

That may sound a little odd and it is a gross simplification but essentially the sentimental expressions are always that they are trying to help.  One claims to offer 6 months' rent to help us escape but it is a bad faith offer and she refuses to discuss it.  One offers concern but says "the others don't agree so what can I do?"  One weeps as she suggests an escape route via a dysfunctional welfare system.  One attempts to help and when that fails blames me.  So what is this "threat" this "harm" they are trying to save me from?  It appears to me the only threat of harm is coming from them.

It is fundamentally the convoluted logic of the abuser.

When I look back across our childhood I see the emotional manipulation, the serious physical violence, the rage, the terror, the austere control and it is no mystery to me why they feel the way they do.  They are the unfortunate results of abuse.  They are the broken children; the lost souls.

Even my poor mother cried out "What else can they do?" and my father's tragic last words to me were that he didn't want us thrown out as if it were a fait accompli out of his hands.

It is the guilt of the abuser.  It is the denial of the evil that is in all of us.  Only when we can accept the fundamental evil potential within is there any possibility of a moral good.  With no freewill there is no morality.  Only when we oppose our own evil can we achieve what we perceive as good.  If we are so afeared of being judged evil that we cannot allow ourselves to see our own evil then how can we possibly oppose it?  How can we possibly choose to do good?  If we were simply good people it would be no credit to us to be good because there would be no other possibility.

When my daughter was born and I cut her umbilical cord and saw this tiny miracle of creation with all the potential a human can perceive I was profoundly committed to the role in which I simply found myself - her protector - her father.  I didn't so much decide as became.  Here was a new person.  A new person who will be whoever and whatever she becomes.  It is her life not mine.  It was clear to me I was experiencing something indescribably beautiful whilst setting out on a journey that would likely not be easy.  It has proven far harder than I could have imagined.  But I think and feel a lot, and it is clear to me that if I were starving and the only way to survive was to take her food I would rather die.  The instinct to survive is at the very limit of human endurance.  It is quite conceivable (and the evidence is clear) that at the final moment most of us would kill another human being to survive.  I do not have to attain that greatest of all love that I would rather die than harm anyone, but it is a conscious decision when it comes to my daughter.

I am looking after one of my sisters' sons.  She cast him off (into her parents' house) because she could not accept the sacrifice she might have to make to look after him.  She preferred to ride off into her perceived paradise on her motorbike to live a life of material luxury with her Neanderthal controlling abusive boyfriend on the island of Guernsey.  That might sound like a harsh description but whether I judge her actions to be good or bad is not the final judgement of her - I actually understand her pain and her difficulties.  But when she instigates harm against me, my daughter and her own son in an attempt to bury the evidence of her own guilt in her own mind I will not voluntarily accept to comply.  In other words I will not harm myself, my daughter or her son in some vain attempt to avoid the harm she threatens to perpetrate.  Her problem with her guilt is her problem not mine.  I can't possibly resolve it for her because it is not mine to resolve.

All of them ran away from their parents oppression without ever confronting it.  It would seem that it is set in stone now.  It seems impossible for them to say "no" to the oppressor that lives and breathes inside them.  Why am I so lucky?  Maybe I suffered less at the hands of my parents.  But I came to terms with my fundamental and chronic betrayal of myself some 15 years ago.  Although I have always watched the world with a certain detachment and held on to the me that is within, it is only 15 years since I realised I could say "no" to any demand that I do someone else's bidding under fear of any threat.  Sure, put a gun to my head and tell me to wipe the shit off your shoe and I will do it - but I will never carry out your crime to hide your guilt from yourself.

To my sisters I would say "Grow up and own your own decisions."  If you want to throw me Ele and Mike out onto the street to get your grubby hands on some dosh then own it and do it.  But you will never get my agreement that you are right.  I will never do it for you.  And your claims that you have no other choice, your offsetting the decision by pretending it was Mummy and Daddy that wanted it, or your claims that it is financially legal are all vacuous excuses to blame other people or circumstances for your rather pathetic greed.

The truth is not that you cannot say no to the parents, or no to the money, or no to your sibling, or no to the bank, or no to the law - the truth is you cannot say no to yourself; your own hideous controlling evil self.

Another interesting corollary for this linguistic expression of the dynamics of being conscious is: do you choose to love or are you forced by fear?  Is your God benign or an oppressor?  Are you free to make your own decisions or subjugated by the threats of others as you cling to them in your own minds?

I am still utterly shocked that all this started before the parents were even dead.  The marauders pounced the instant the oppressors became weak.  It still astounds me how rapidly they seized power, as they saw it, and attacked us with such vigour.  Is it possible that their fear is so great that their ravenous desperation to get their hands on the spoils was irresistibly compulsive to the point of being psychotic?  Was it events that controlled them beyond their own ability to resist?  My much pondered conclusion is yes; they are out of control.  I cannot believe that any human could turn on their family and indeed their own child simply for material wealth.  But then I sit up and cast my weary eye across the horizon of human behaviour and history and I sadly conclude that it is all too often the case.  It is literal when I say "We sacrifice real life by complying with social contracts of oppression for our own sense of security."  We really do kill our children because we are cowards - or perhaps more accurately - we are cowards because we kill our children.