Conversation

Aella
@Aella_Girl
storytime: when I was a child, my dad was extremely cruel in a lot of ways. I remember trying to empathize with him and being terrified because he didn't seem 'aware' of the pain he was doing, even though the signs were there. This was terrifying because -
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
when i imagined being my dad, i realized that it 'felt good', in the sense that there was no sense of being wrong. He felt like a victim, persecuted and hurt by others - and this was *exactly how I felt*. I felt like he was hurting me, and like he shouldn't be. 2/
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
So from an early age I struggled a lot with the paranoia that I was really cruel and hurting a lot of other people, because I saw that cruel people *felt as correct as I did*. A lot of my attention went to trying to figure out how I could tell - from the inside, how do you know 3
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
if you're being cruel to others? And I realized that to be different from my dad, I needed to stop using "you hurt me" as a justification to hurt other people back. That no matter the pain someone caused me, I needed to hold their humanity in mind and care for them. 4/
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
This has deeply informed my entire worldview from a pretty young age, and I think is why I'm so repulsed by a lot of the political discourse happening now. So much of it are righteous justifications of hurting other people due to how they've been hurt. I get the appeal, but 5/
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
these people are utterly failing to empathize with the people who hurt them - and empathizing with people who hurt you is how you learn what it's like to be a cruel person, and thus how to avoid being that yourself. 6/6
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JP
@inflammateomnia
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
I get the approach & agree But, having empathized and understood, there are still bad things in the world that must be fought This is my problem with a lot of morally agnostic, Carse style neutrality - it leaves space for those bad actors to continue harm. How do you resolve?
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JP
@inflammateomnia
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
Wow, neat piece. So having dropped your need for the world to be other than what it is, what is your motivation to effect change on it? "Why not" isn't really an interesting answer, people require a narrative, a vision that compels action.