Everything Is F*cked(42)
Adolescents need to be shown that bargaining is a never-ending treadmill, that the only things in life of real value and meaning are achieved without conditions, without transactions. It requires good parents and teachers not to succumb to the adolescent’s bargaining. The best way to do this is by example, of course, by showing unconditionality by being unconditional yourself. The best way to teach an adolescent to trust is to trust him. The best way to teach an adolescent respect is to respect him. The best way to teach someone to love is by loving him. And you don’t force the love or trust or respect on him—after all, that would make those things conditional—you simply give them, understanding that at some point, the adolescent’s bargaining will fail and he’ll understand the value of unconditionality when he’s ready.31
When parents and teachers fail, it’s usually because they themselves are stuck at an adolescent level of values. They, too, see the world in transactional terms. They, too, bargain love for sex, loyalty for affection, respect for obedience. In fact, they likely bargain with their kids for affection, love, or respect. They think this is normal, so the kid grows up thinking it’s normal. And the shitty, shallow, transactional parent/child relationship is then replicated when the kid goes out and forms relationships in the world, because he then becomes a teacher or parent and imparts his adolescent values on children, causing the whole mess to continue for another generation.
Once older, adolescent-minded people will move through the world assuming that all human relationships are a never-ending trade agreement, that intimacy is no more than a feigned sense of knowing the other person for the mutual benefit of each one, that everyone is a means to some selfish end. And instead of recognizing that their problems are rooted in the transactional approach to the world itself, they will assume that the only problem is that it took them so long to do the transactions correctly.
It’s difficult to act unconditionally. You love someone knowing you may not be loved in return, but you do it anyway. You trust someone even though you realize you might get hurt or screwed over. That’s because to act unconditionally requires some degree of faith—faith that it’s the right thing to do even if it results in more pain, even if it doesn’t work out for you or the other person.
Making the leap of faith into a virtuous adulthood requires not just an ability to endure pain, but also the courage to abandon hope, to let go of the desire for things always to be better or more pleasant or a ton of fun. Your Thinking Brain will tell you that this is illogical, that your assumptions must inevitably be wrong in some way. Yet, you do it anyway. Your Feeling Brain will procrastinate and freak out about the pain of brutal honesty, the vulnerability that comes with loving someone, the fear that comes from humility. Yet, you do it anyway.
CHILDHOOD ADOLESCENCE ADULTHOOD
VALUES Pleasure/pain Rules and roles Virtues
SEES RELATIONSHIPS AS . . . Power struggles Performances Vulnerability
SELF-WORTH Narcissistic: wide swings between “I’m the best” and “I’m the worst” Other-dependent: externally validated Independent: largely internally validated
MOTIVATION Self-aggrandizement Self-acceptance Amor fati
POLITICS Extremist/nihilist Pragmatic, ideological Pragmatic, nonideological
IN ORDER TO GROW, HE/SHE NEEDS . . . Trustworthy institutions and dependable people Courage to let go of outcomes and faith in unconditional acts Consistent self-awareness
Adult behaviors are ultimately seen as admirable and noteworthy. It’s the boss who takes the fall for his employees’ mistakes, the mother who gives up her own happiness for her child’s, the friend who tells you what you need to hear even though it upsets you.
It’s these people who hold the world together. Without them, we’d all likely be fucked.
It’s no coincidence, then, that all the world’s great religions push people toward these unconditional values, whether it’s the unconditional forgiveness of Jesus Christ or the Noble Eightfold Path of the Buddha or the perfect justice of Muhammad. In their purest forms, the world’s great religions leverage our human instinct for hope to try to pull people upward toward adult virtues.32
Or, at least, that’s usually the original intention.
Unfortunately, as they grow, religions inevitably get co-opted by transactional adolescents and narcissist children, people who pervert the religious principles for their own personal gain. Every human religion succumbs to this failure of moral frailty at some point. No matter how beautiful and pure its doctrines, it ultimately becomes a human institution, and all human institutions eventually become corrupted.
Enlightenment philosophers, excited by the opportunities afforded the world by growth, decided to remove the spirituality from religion and get the job done with ideological religion. They jettisoned the idea of virtue and instead focused on measurable, concrete goals: creating greater happiness and less suffering; giving people greater personal liberties and freedoms; and promoting compassion, empathy, and equality.
And these ideological religions, like the spiritual religions before them, also caved to the flawed nature of all human institutions. When you attempt to barter for happiness, you destroy happiness. When you try to enforce freedom, you negate freedom. When you try to create equality, you undermine equality.
None of these ideological religions confronted the fundamental issue at hand: conditionality. They either didn’t admit to or didn’t deal with the fact that whatever you make your God Value, you will always be willing, at some point, to bargain away human life in order to get closer to it. Worshipping some supernatural God, some abstract principle, some bottomless desire, when pursued long enough, will always result in giving up your own humanity or the humanity of others in order to achieve the aims of that worship. And what was supposed to save you from suffering then plunges you back into suffering. The cycle of hope-destruction begins anew.