No mother and no father

This essay is incomplete and a big portion includes a bullet point list of what the essay should actually include. But it is also already fully whole, and perfect on it’s own terms.

Many years ago I read the Jon Ronson’s The Psychopath Test. It reassured me that insofar as I’m worried about being a psychopath, I’m probably not, as worrying about whether one is a psychopath isn’t the kind of thing that psychopaths do.

I used to worry about being self-absorbed. I also worried that this is exactly the kind of thing that a self-absorbed person would worry about. Not a good time to be an evidential decision theorist. One wonders how many questions online Narcissism Tests really need to include.

___

I more recently read Eliezer’s Unteachable Methods of Sanity.

‘[...] there was a person who thought they were like totally going to develop Artificial General Intelligence. Then they ran into me; and soon after, instead started agonizing about how they had almost destroyed the world. [...] I was rolling my eyes about the part that was a more blatant mistake, completely apart from the epistemic prediction error they probably couldn’t help; the part that would have been a mistake even if they had almost destroyed the world. I was rolling my eyes about how they’d now found a new way of being the story’s subject.’

When I read this I felt a sense of shame, and it seemed this triggered a set of worries about my self-absorption. Shit, am I making the end of the world about me? I don’t know whether the irony here is obvious. I imagine it is, though in the grip of the worry it wasn’t obvious to me.

—

Both many years ago and more recently I read Joe Carlsmith’s On Sincerity. It’s one of my favourite essays and I’ve read it many times. In his section on sincerity’s failure modes:

‘[...] Another, more subtle failure mode is about over-concern with sincerity itself – either in others, or in yourself. [...] Thus, it is easy to treat the question of whether one is sincere as, somehow, the main thing; to agonize endlessly about possible flaws or biases or rationalizations or contradictions in one’s character; to turn most of one’s moral gaze inwards, rather than outwards towards the world’

Shit, am I making sincerity about me, turning my moral gaze inwards rather than outwards?

—

Semi recently I was talking to someone about some friction in our relationship. I don’t have good words for our relationship, to some degree a friend and to some degree a mentor, though neither of those feel quite right.

I was going to attend a workshop, and I found out that broadly speaking she wasn’t too excited about me being there. I felt quite hurt and surprised by this. Anyway, I did go on to attend the workshop, and whilst I was there we sat down to discuss what was going on.

One of the things that she said was that whenever we interacted, I made the interaction all about me, and that I couldn’t see her. I was rather mortified to hear this. I then went on to explain that in the times that we interacted previously I had very low self-esteem. The irony wasn’t obvious to me here either.

—

My sense of what’s going on here at the most basic level:

Experience judgement → Attempt to escape judgement → Experience judgement.

Not all attempts to escape judgement are going to be so neatly self-defeating - often attempts to prevent or escape judgement are successful.

Sometimes I need to fart, but I fear judgement. Typically I will hold in the fart. And this is successful, in that I do not then fart, and I am not judged for farting.

But with the examples above, the attempts to escape judgement and the cause of judgement seem one and the same. In the case of self-absorption:

I read something from someone I respect, or whose judgements are in some way important to me. I interpret them as saying ‘self-absorption is bad’, and see ‘self-absorption’ as about something that I’m doing.

My response to this is to turn inwards and ask ‘Is this something I’m doing wrong? How can I be different?’

Though turning inwards isn’t the only way of attempting to escape judgement.

Very recently I spoke on the phone to my father to ring him for his birthday. I had been putting off ringing him. He said that I don’t ring him often enough.

Here we have a similar pattern, but with avoidance replacing self-absorption.

I experience guilt in relation to my father. I attempt to escape this guilt by not ringing him. At some point this guilt is too strong and so I ring him. I experience him as judging me for not ringing him often enough.

I think there are many ways of dealing with judgement and interpersonal tension more broadly. The strategies I seem most adept in are turning inwards and avoidance.

These are far from the only strategies. Ones where I’m less far on the skill tree: fawning and conflict.

I can imagine people who are more proficient these strategies ending up in a similarly ourobourus structured pickle on receiving judgements of being too clingy or too aggressive. I imagine the default responses upon receiving these judgements being ‘I’m so sorry how can I make that better’ or ‘Fuck you you prick’ respectively.

What’s the solution to this?

Well it seems to me that the basis of this is judgement, whether it’s self-judgement or other-judgement. Judgement is the core sin and you should stop doing it.

Hehehe. I think this is close, but also no. One cannot dig oneself out of a hole, and one cannot escape judgement via judgement, and one cannot escape the pain of condemnation via more condemnation. (Or at least I haven’t been able to so far, please dm me if you’ve found a way to do this).

The real answer is opening one’s heart to Jesus. As the big jeezy put it himself:

Let he who is without sin cast the first stone

Also

Judge not, lest ye be judged

One challenge in writing this is not being too judgemental. Like, a lot of the words I’ve used ‘avoidance’, ‘fawning’, ‘self-absorption’, ‘fuck you you prick’, ‘evidential decision theorist’ all seem to contain some implicit condemnation. Even ‘judgement’ is a bit ‘judgy’.

This is obviously very bad, if there’s one sin that’s worse than judgement it’s hypocrisy. Very big pickle. But also, the saving grace is, one can also be not judgemental about that! Mwahahaha!

(To be honest I’m a bit confused by Jeezy, on the one hand he seems very non-judgemental, on the other hand, well:

But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.

I’m not sure what ‘Raca’ means, but I assume it’s beyond the pale.)

—

Hinterestingly in Joe Carlsmith’s On Sincerity he quotes Eliezer - ‘no mother and no father’. The full bit.

No rescuer hath the rescuer.

No Lord hath the champion,

no mother and no father,

only nothingness above.

This is hinteresting because:

• I’ve mentioned my father

• I’ve quoted Joe Carlsmith

• I’ve mentioned Jesus

• I’ve quoted Eliezer Yudkowsky

• Eliezer wrote Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

• I am writing Harri Besceli and the Non Methods of Post Rationality

• I like psychoanalysis

Things this post should do or include but doesn’t because of time, energy and/ or spiritual constraints:

• Talk about how when I imagine Eliezer ‘rolling his eyes’ the thing I imagine is contempt. Contempt for people who are ‘making it all about themselves’.

  • I see directing contempt at someone as a kind of violence, or attack. And given this, I expect the natural response to this to be some kind of self-protective, or self-concerned behaviour.

  • It seems important to talk about this in a way which isn’t eg. saying ‘Eliezer is bad’.

  • It also seems important to talk about or point out. I think that taking on other people’s judgements is a big part of how people depart from the Way.

  • I think that doing this well is in fact about my spiritual abilities at present (I am sorry).

• Overall be more coherent.

• Talk about ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do’, where ‘them’ includes me, Eliezer, and my father.

  • Also talk more about Jesus and persecution.

• Talk about how parents and God are very similar

  • At least from a child’s perspective parents are or are supposed to be benevolent, omnipotent and omniscient. They are also the source of moral truth, judgement, praise and punishment and promises that things will ultimately be ok (if one does what they instruct).

  • Tie this into the ‘no mother and father’ bit.

  • Also, the notion of hell as being separated from God, or unable to receive God’s love.

  • Maybe say something about evolution and attachment theory and about how being without the love of a parent is a big deal developmentally. Plausibly. And also maybe that attaching to judgements, about oneself and others is in some way a survival strategy. Plausibly.

• Talk about how not judging oneself or others for judgement is not the same as permitting oneself to judge.

• Quote the song ‘Upwards over the Mountain’ by Iron and Wine, which I have been listening to on repeat recently. In particular:

  • Mother, I made it up from the bruise of a floor of this prison

  • Mother, I lost it, all of the fear of the Lord I was given

• Talk about how the quaker thing of ‘seeing that of God in everyone’

  • Point out that this isn’t just turning one’s attention to the ‘good bits’ in people, but seeing God in all of a person. At least according to me, I don’t know I’m not really a Quaker nor do I believe in God. Probably.

  • Tone down the God vibes in this section with an amusing anecdote by talking about how I went to Quaker meeting for worship last week and had a cataplectic attack in the middle of the meeting and fell off my chair. This is particularly funny if you know that Quaker meeting for worship involves sitting together in silence for an hour.

• Talk about how I suspect that the answer to all of this is to feel whatever is there to be felt, without attaching to any particular stories.

  • Including feeling how it feels to be on the receiving end of contempt, or judgement, without attaching to any judgements of one’s own.

  • (and plausibly that the function of judgement is to enable oneself to not feel the feelings)

• Also, talk about how I like the nihil supernum quote, but not the ‘rescuer’ part.

  • Talk about saviour complexes, but in a way which isn’t judgey.

• Use AI to generate an ourobourus pickle image