I am fully aware that it seems melodramatic and precious to write an introduction that is basically a giant trigger warning – but it needs to be done.
This book is the culmination of forty years work in the fields of philosophy, self-knowledge, parenting and ethics.
Through my show Freedomain, I have had the privilege of having in-depth conversations with thousands of people about their early childhood experiences, and the effects that trauma has had over the course of their adult lives. They contact me in the hope that my training and experience in self-knowledge and moral philosophy will help them untangle the problems in their lives – I hope that I have served them well.[1]
I have interviewed many experts in the fields of parenting, child abuse, family structures, therapy and self-knowledge – these interviews are also available on my website.
I myself experienced significant levels of child abuse. I was raised by a violent and crazy single mother, who ended up being institutionalized when I was in my early teens.
I did talk therapy for three hours a week, for almost 2 years.
At the end of my therapeutic process, and after months of trying to repair my relationship with my family, I decided to separate from them. I have not talked to my mother for twenty-five years. My father left when I was a baby, and I had little contact with him – he died a few years ago.
I have been happily married for over twenty years, and have been a stay-at-home father for the past fifteen years to my wonderful daughter.
My daughter is homeschooled, and we are part of a truly great community of like-minded parents.
My daughter and I do comedy shows together – mostly movie reviews – which are also available on my website.
Now for the trigger warning.
This is a very intense book.
I have tried to write it twice before, but faltered at the depth and enormity of the task.
As a child, I experienced a constant, deep and genuine bewilderment. I was surrounded by people who claimed to be good – and who also claimed to be experts at identifying and punishing immorality. My relatives, my teachers, my parents, my boarding school masters, the priests who instructed me, my neighbours – they all claimed to have the ability to accurately identify immorality and take strong steps to contain and punish it.
I was punished in school – caned in boarding school – and in church, and by parents and relatives – all because they said that I had behaved badly, and deserved to be punished.
But it was most strange…
None of the hundreds of adults who judged and punished me over the course of my young life ever recognized that my mother was an evildoer who violently beat her own children.
They were able to detect subtle signs of rebellion or disobedience in my demeanour, and sharply or aggressively punish me – but they were utterly unable to identify my mother’s obvious mental and moral dysfunctions – or ask me how I was doing, and take any actions to protect me, and oppose the violence I was subjected to.
I have been wrestling with this massive issue for over half a century.
How is it possible that adults can punish children for minor transgressions – I was once caned for climbing over a fence to get a soccer ball – but are utterly blind and helpless in the face of adult abusers of dependent and innocent children?
When I was a child, I watched endless movies and television shows about heroes confronting, combating and overcoming evildoers. The heroes were good, the villains were evil – the fight was clear, the victories tough but certain.
I was taught about religious and historical figures who found and fought evildoers almost to the death – and sometimes beyond it, sacrificing themselves to save the world from immorality…
These were the stories, the histories, the theology – yet no one in my life was able to detect or act against a clear evil in their midst – even in their own family, against their own flesh and blood…
Some expert trackers claim the ability to put their ears to a train track, and hear a locomotive coming from many miles away – if such a man were to claim this ability, and offer to listen to a train track – while failing to notice a giant thundering train bearing down on him, not 20 feet away, wouldn’t that be rather – bizarre?
Wouldn’t that be a sign that he was, in fact, insane?
Imagine hiring a safari guide to lead you deep into the jungle so you could take pictures of an incredibly rare white tiger. Imagine standing in the camp before you left, listening to him tell you all the complicated and mysterious tricks he was going to use to track this white tiger – and then imagine his speech continuing without pause as a white tiger walked up and sat right at his feet!
And your guide saw – nothing!
He just keeps rambling on and on, telling you how brilliant he was at tracking and spotting incredibly rare tigers, without noticing at all the giant animal at his feet!
Again, would he not be a candidate for a mental asylum?
Would you trust this madman to lead you deep into a trackless jungle?
This is the world.
The world of children.
The world of the victims of abuse.
We victims pass through the world – a world that claims deep expertise in the identification and punishment of evildoers – getting soundly punished for our most minor transgressions – while our abusers are either invisible, praised, or protected and defended.
This is, of course, why the abuse continues to exist.
Moral punishments are only meted out to helpless victims – never powerful aggressors.
If, at a family dinner, an adult victim of child abuse finally reveals the horrors he faced, his family will generally be more upset at the open mouth of the victim, rather than the closed fists of the abuser.
This is just the reality of where and how we live.
Our world is a long way from heaven – it is hell for the victims, a sadistic paradise for the abusers – and a weird kind of purgatory for the enablers of abuse, who wander around in a foggy disconnected avoidance, claiming virtue, but only punishing the victims who speak out.
Many people have been awaiting this book with great anticipation.
I am sure that I will disappoint them.
I’m sorry – I really am, but this book has to be the way it is.
Countless people have begged me for years to write this book – I am sure that I will both shock and disappoint them as well.
I’m sorry for that to.
But I stand by the necessity of what I have done.
People expect a book on peaceful parenting to be – well, peaceful, you know?
It makes sense, I get that…
But bringing about a peaceful world means exposing and opposing evil and violence.
You can bring peace to a town in the wild West, but you have to take down the bad guys first – and that is not very often a pretty process.
This book is not about being nice to children – though do I talk about that.
This book is not about reasoning with children – though I talk about that too.
This book promotes peaceful parenting by removing the obstacles to it.
This is not a pretty process.
I’m not sure how many people will ever listen to me, but I will say it anyway…
If you have hit your children, I beg you to engage with a good therapist before reading this book.
If you have yelled at, neglected or called your children names, same.
If you have significant unprocessed trauma from child abuse, same.
If you don’t have a kind and trusted heart in your corner, this book is likely to be extremely destabilizing.
Philosophers and theologians have written about good and evil for thousands of years – but almost never about the ethics and virtues of children and parents.
Socialists have talked about the evils of power disparities – economic and political – for hundreds of years, but have never taken on the greatest power disparity in the human universe: the difference in power between parents and children.
Feminists have talked about the evils of the patriarchy for decades, claiming that men have economic and political powers far greater than women – but have never talked about the infinitely greater power that mothers have over their children – and how often it is misused and abused.
Communists talk about how the owners of the means of production exploit their workers by paying them less than the value of what they produce – but they never rail against the national debt, which is an exploitation and enslavement of the unborn – surely the greatest predatory theft in the history of mankind!
Everywhere in the world, you see this wild avoidance – people shout their moral condemnations from the rooftops – screaming into the faces of the abstract classes, the political elites, the wealthy and well-connected – but never make their way into the nurseries, into the darkened rooms of hidden and broken children.
You hear endless diatribes against the power of marketing, propaganda, and the evils of manipulative advertising – but how often is the rampant social programming inflicted on helpless and captive children in government schools even acknowledged, let alone condemned?
This book will take on all the hypocrisy, lies and manipulations that enable and cover up the abuse of children in our society – all around us.
In your family.
Because – you know, right?
You know some kid in your environment – that maybe you see every day – who is shy and downcast and avoidant and shaky, as if crushed under the weight of an invisible burden.
As he is, of course.
As she is…
The burden is not primarily the abuse he or she is suffering – but your silence and avoidance.
Of course, society is so configured that it is very hard to know what to do in situations of child abuse. If we try to protect the child, that might further provoke the abuser, who still maintains brutal power over the helpless child.
If we confront the abuser, same.
I used to think that all the adults around me failed to protect me because they were afraid of further provoking my mother – I dreamed that they would wait until I was independent, free of her, before sitting me down and giving me their sympathies, telling me their reasons for failing to help me.
I kicked my mother out when I was fifteen.
I worked three jobs, took in roommates, paid my bills, made my way.
I was free.
And I would sometimes look at the phone – my red dusty rotary-dial phone – waiting for it to ring, for the sympathy and explanations to pour in.
Nothing…
I waited a long, long time for all of this.
In my mid-twenties, when my relatives came into town for a family wedding, I spent days with them, waiting for a word, an acknowledgement – an apology, perhaps.
Again – nothing…
It’s been thirty years since then – they are all dead now.
Pretty sure that old phone is never going to ring.
But they have helped me, in a way – and through their help, I hope to help the world.
The adults around me when I was a child did not lecture and punish me because they had moral understanding, a clear capacity to identify wrongdoing, and a strong will to correct immorality.
No – there was another reason entirely…
I will talk about that later.
You can join me, if you dare.
But it won’t be pretty.
The authority figures of my childhood were not waiting until I was an adult to tell me how badly they felt that I was being abused.
They either didn’t notice, or didn’t care.
That is unacceptable.
Another family used to take me in regularly – half as a refugee from the violence – and met my mother many times.
Again, in my mid-twenties, I met up with this family again, and the mother asked me, with great sympathy and tenderness, “How is your poor mother doing?”
Jaw-dropping, really.
I do remember – even as a child – thinking that, if I ever got to any kind of public prominence, that I would do everything in my power to help the victims of child abuse.
While I have personally confronted aggressive parents in public, the bulk of my work has been online, listening to thousands of adult victims of child abuse, sympathizing with them, and providing moral clarity about their desperate situations.
How many of them ever told me that the adults in their lives tried to help them, when they themselves were children?
I understand that this is a self-selecting group, but the answer has been grindingly consistent.
Zero.
No adult in their life – past or present – has ever shown the slightest shred of awareness, understanding or sympathy for the abuse they suffered as children – even the adults who directly witnessed that abuse.
For 18 years, I have had an open channel to anyone and everyone to talk about whatever philosophical issues are on their minds. I have invited debates on ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, free will – you name it.
Any topic is open and welcomed.
And – what do people want to talk about, when they can talk about anything at all?
Their childhoods, almost every single time.
It sometimes feels like I am the only person in the world who will always listen, always sympathize, and always provide moral clarity to those who have suffered from evildoers.
I never tell anyone what to do, of course – I am a staunch believer in free will, and I would never try to get anyone to substitute my thoughts for their own judgement.
Perhaps I give people a car – but I never tell them where to drive.
Morality without control – morality that informs and liberates, rather than shames and punishes – can be deeply disturbing.
If you don’t understand this yet, you will over the course of reading this book.
I’m telling you this: if you choose to read this book, you will quickly realize why it has never been written before.
The arguments are not complicated – the moral clarity is disarmingly simple.
This is not a book detailing the mathematics of quantum physics, the wild contradictions of superstring theory, or how to navigate hyper-complex tax laws – or how to balance personal interests, social acceptance, and moral integrity.
This is a book that even a child can understand.
This is the book that your inner child has been waiting for.
I have always been impressed by the fact that Socrates never used technical language when discussing philosophy with people – you can’t find a single example of him using the word “epistemology,” for instance.
While I have certainly written more technical works of philosophical examination, I have worked very hard to keep this book as clear and accessible as humanly possible.
There is no point writing a complex moral manual for the improvement of the planet as a whole.
I normally write in fairly lengthy paragraphs – this book is mostly bullet points.
Bullets indeed.
If you were abused as a child – and most children in the world are, that is the way of the world – then you have my deepest and most heartfelt sympathies.
It was wrong, it is unacceptable – and it must change!
No one was there for me, and that is a real shame.
Some people inflict their pain on the world – some people provide what they were denied.
I’m so sorry that you are hurt – it was horribly unjust.
I’m so sorry that – most likely – no one helped, or noticed – either then or now.
I’m so sorry that no one was there for you.
With this book, I can be there for you.
Here for you, now.
It’s time.
Let us begin.
If the world is hell, it is because of childhood.
The unhappiness, misery, pain and violence of the world have all been “explained” according to various theories, all designed to distract us from the central, core and highly personal issue.
Socialists tell us that the world is hell because of economic and environmental exploitation – without ever asking why people end up so coldhearted that they can use and dispose of their fellow human beings via the chilly physics of grim economic utility.
Theologians explain that the world is hell because we are born sinful, and have to be beaten and terrorized into even a remote approximation of virtue.
Educators explain that the world is hell because children are willful and disobedient, and have to be threatened and bullied into pursuing knowledge and accepting conformity.
Antiracists explain that the world is hell because people mistrust and hate other ethnicities – without ever asking why people end up xenophobic, hateful and afraid.
Feminists explain that the world is hell because men hate and fear women, and thus lust to bully and control them – without ever explaining why men might hate and fear women – especially when they are raised by women!
Evolutionary biologists explain that the world is hell because mankind is an animal, with an animal’s lusts and passions and thirst for dominance. No one ever explains why science is possible for mankind – but not for any other species – but virtue is not.
Every civil rights movement has striven to bring excluded groups into the moral center of society. Morals – both legal and social – that were set up to exclude various races, sexes and classes, have all been challenged and overthrown. The goal of the inclusion of all excluded groups into the core moral principles of society has been avidly pursued – and often achieved – often to the betterment of all.
Why has there never been a civil rights movement for the most abused, controlled and exploited class in society – the children?
All will be explained.
What else?
Well, skepticism of artificiality has also been a central thrust of modern thought – avoid plastics, chemicals, pesticides and so on. Buy organic, live naturally, embrace the wisdom of your ancestors – countless communities pursue these goals with avid abandon.
We have terms for sexism, racism, homophobia, Islamophobia, xenophobia, fatphobia, classism – the list these days is virtually endless. Fear and hatred of the “other,” it is said, leads to hateful language, violence, terrorism – war, even.
For all our modern moral wisdoms, one word remains conspicuously absent from our endless patrolling of language, exclusion and contempt.
Where is the word “childism”?
Why do we not even have a word for prejudice against children?
“Ah,” you may say, “this is because society treasures its children, devotes endless energies to training and raising its children – therefore it would make no more sense to have a word called ‘childism’ than it would to have a word called ‘loveism.’ We cannot be prejudiced against that which we love!”
Interesting…
But – is it true?
It is certainly true that society claims to worship and love its children, and does devote endless energies into training and raising them.
What do we always hear?
“The children are our future, our heritage, our worlds, the purpose of our life and being, the foundation of our civilization…” – you name it!
The late singer Whitney Houston had a famous song “The Greatest Love of All” which started off thus:
I believe the children are our future
Teach them well and let them lead the way
Show them all the beauty they possess inside
Give them a sense of pride to make it easier
Let the children's laughter remind us how we used to be…
Sadly, Whitney was a victim of childhood sexual abuse who grew up to be a drug addict – enacting all the inevitable abuse and neglect on her own daughter, who, like her mother, also died in a bathtub with a large number of drugs in her system.
Whitney sang about virtue, but lived a deeply broken and destructive life.
But – what is the general theory?
Well – that children are loved by society, and therefore we would never need a word to describe society’s prejudice against its own children!
If you love chocolate, how can you be prejudiced against chocolate?
If you love your wife, by definition you cannot hate and exclude her.
What on earth are you talking about, Stef?
Well, philosophy is all about skepticism – and the longer the claim has been going on – and the more widespread it is – the more philosophers are inclined to question it.
The institution of slavery was universally accepted and practiced through the world, for all of history – until moral philosophers and theologians eventually questioned it.
The modern world is founded on skepticism of traditionally-accepted “wisdom.”
Science, technology, engineering, medicine – these are all founded on skepticism of formerly-accepted “absolute truths.”
The battles against exclusion were all founded on skepticism of the accepted wisdom of excluding other races, sexes, classes and groups.
Reason demands that we judge others – and ourselves – by deeds, not words.
If a man claims to passionately value a woman, then ghosts her after sex, would we accept his protestations of affection?
No – surely we would judge his actions, rather than his words.
Good words often camouflage bad actions.
Con artists charm us before robbing us; seducers woo us before exploiting and abandoning us. Politicians promise us heaven, then deliver hell. People pretend to be injured to bring you close, then rob you blind. Scammers pretend to want to help you, then steal from you.
And – believe it or not – criminals generally claim to be innocent, even when guilty.
Imagine a world where mere statements equaled objective truth.
If you fail an exam, but you tell your teacher that you passed it, then she would have to adjust your mark!
If you fail to pay your taxes, but then inform the government that you did in fact pay them, that would have to be accepted.
If you were caught shoplifting, you could tell the store owner that you are not stealing, and he would have to let you go.
You could claim to be a doctor, and no one could disagree with you.
As a toddler, you could be caught with chocolate all over your face, but justifiably deny that you had ever touched any chocolate!
If you were tired of making mortgage payments, you could simply phone the bank and tell them that you in fact owned the house free and clear, and all would be well!
Society would crumble in about forty-eight hours if mere statements were always accepted as truth.
No, we have standards of evidence and empiricism and logical consistency and proof – in order to separate liars exploiting morality from honest people pursuing virtue.
What do we say, if we are rational?
“This is your claim, what is the truth?”
This is the essence not of just philosophy, but society, rationality, functionality – and survival.
Imagine a primitive hunter coming home empty-handed, but claiming to have felled a giant deer. Would anyone eat?
Imagine a man in the jungle being hunted by a tiger – could he save himself by closing his eyes and repeating over and over, “there is no tiger, there is no tiger”?
Of course not – these examples are almost too foolish to mention.
We all understand that we only empower and embolden liars by refusing to look for reason and evidence.
Society claims to love its children – very well, let us look for reason and evidence.[2]
Before we take this journey, though, I need to repeat my warning.
This book will be horrible for you – but the alternative is far worse.
Some medical treatments can be horrible, but they beat dying.
It is horrible to look in the mirror and accept that you are fat, but it beats getting diabetes and heart disease.
It can be horrible to be self-critical, but it beats the corruption and decay of avoiding rational self-correction.
Learning is pain – but the alternative is usually far worse.
This book will be painful for you because it is not about abstract topics, windy philosophical ideals or gentle exhortation to future virtue.
This book is about your pain.
This book is about your life.
This book is about your childhood.
This book is painful – but the alternative is infinitely worse.
If society does in fact love its children, and raises them wisely, virtuously and well, then we are truly doomed – because the current hell is the best we can ever expect.
If you exercise and eat sensibly, but gain weight every week, something is seriously wrong with your body.
If you eat too much and don’t exercise, then you have a solution to your weight gain – eat less, and exercise!
We must truly hope and pray that society does not love and treasure its children – otherwise little can ever be substantially improved!
In other words, if you’re already doing the best you can, you can never improve the outcome.
If society treats its children wonderfully, then there is no path to improvement. The violence, discord, loneliness, lovelessness, exploitation, betrayal – all the evils that fester and grow in the human heart – and our social world – can never be cured.
We have spent the past few hundred years attempting to become more inclusive and create harmony in society, but disharmony is only increasing.
We have spent countless millennia trying to stop war, but war remains.
We have spent an eternity combating immorality, but evil still grows.
Either we are missing something essential, or we are truly doomed.
I choose hope.
However…
Choosing hope means accepting pain.
So be it.
We will ask and answer this question:
Does society truly love its children?
Love and violence are opposites.
A man cannot justly claim to love a woman if he also beats her.
A woman cannot claim to have great affection for her cat if she starves it.
A bully who abuses his victim cannot claim to love that victim as well.
What about love and exploitation?
Can a boyfriend claim to love his girlfriend while surreptitiously running up massive bills on her credit cards?
Enslaving others through debt is the opposite of love.
It is time for a thought experiment.
I want you to imagine a purple-skinned race of people.
Society claims to love and value “the purples” – but what does that mean?
Claims of affection are not proof of love – abusers usually claim to love their victims – stalkers terrify those they claim to treasure, exploitive corporations often refer to employees as being part of a loyal company “family.”
Cults regularly engage in “love bombing” – the practice of showering affection on lonely people in order to stimulate a bond to an exploitive gang.
It is true that society claims to love and treasure “the purples” – but as sensible, rational individuals, we should compare society’s ideals to the actual facts.
How would we judge society’s proclaimed “love” for “the purples” if we found out the following:
There are more examples – countless really – but let us move on.
Surely these basic facts would arise in your mind when everyone in society constantly trumpeted how much they loved, treasured, respected and valued the purples.
If, instead of the purples, these were women, we would be outraged at such blatant, violent and destructive sexism.
If, instead of the purples, these were blacks or Indians or Hispanics – or any other ethnic group – we would be outraged at such blatant, violent and destructive racism.
Racism…
Yet we don’t even have a word for prejudice against children.
That is not an accident.
“Childism” is in part never defined so it can never be discussed.
What is “childism”?
It is the universal, relentless – and often institutional – prejudice against and hostility towards children,
In most countries, parents are allowed to hit their children. The vast majority of parents do hit their children, or deploy other forceful mechanisms to restrain them, such as using their size and strength to force them to stay in a sitting position, or be forcefully confined to a single room.
Parents deny their children necessary food, yell at them, call them names – scream abuse as well – dump them sobbing and crying into daycares – and ignore them at home too, very often.
Children are stuck at home, and cannot leave.
A society that truly loves its children would never ever have a national debt, or unfunded future liabilities such as healthcare and old age pensions, that children will be endlessly forced to pay for.[3]
A society that truly loves its children would never force them into mandated “schools” where the interests and preferences of the children are utterly immaterial – and where they are drugged for failing to pay attention while being relentlessly and pitilessly indoctrinated.
Children are far safer and happier in two-parent households, where the mother stays home to raise the children.
A society devoted to the safety and happiness of its children would do everything in its power to promote the nuclear family – because that is the most reliable way to secure the safety and happiness of children.
Society is the most safe and stable when children have secure bonds and attachments to their mothers. A society that cares about its children would never in a million years promote policies or perspectives that encouraged a mother to separate from her newborn child. Of course, if the mother dumps her baby in daycare in order to go to work, then her employer benefits, and governments benefit from her taxes – and the taxes of the daycare workers – but such a society is inevitably sowing the seeds of future chaos and violence by breaking the mother-child bond.
A society which truly loves and cares for its children would place its children’s needs and happiness at the center of almost every social and legal decision.
Every time any question of importance came up, the central driving factor would be:
Should children be spanked?
The answer is surprisingly simple, as we will talk about later in this book.
Spanking is disastrous for children.[4]
Should we yell at children?
The answer is also surprisingly simple.
Verbal abuse and intimidation is disastrous for children.
Should we put children in government schools?
Again, the answer is surprisingly simple.
Children do very badly in government schools.[5]
Should we fund society’s current greed by enslaving our children to future debt?
To ask this question is to answer it.
To ask yourself whether society truly loves and treasures its children, we must simply ask the following:
If you were to say to the voting public that they will have to forgo some government benefits in order to pay off the national debt – and free the children that everyone endlessly claims to love and treasure – would such a politician ever be elected?
If schools were to radically change their curricula based on what children actually want to study – and what benefited the children the most – would this be acceptable to school unions and authorities?
If people who inflict divorce on their children – enormously traumatizing and harmful – were roundly criticized in society, would this be considered a good thing?
What about women who have children out of wedlock?
What about men who abandon their children?
(Well, we often do attack the men, but it is the women who initiate divorce far more often.)
Those merely accused of verbal bigotry in society are shunned and ostracized. Careers, reputations and incomes are all destroyed.
Yet those who directly harm their own children are very often praised.
People are destroyed over imaginary words, but praised for destructive deeds.
It is absolutely unacceptable to use slurs against other people – but yelling at children, hitting children, confining children and restraining children – and indoctrinating them – are all praised and rewarded.
The world is hell because of childhood.
[1] These conversations are all available on my website https://www.freedomain.com.
[2] Does society love its children?
[3] We will get to all the studies and data that support these arguments shortly.
[4] Is spanking disastrous for children? Pg 302
[5] Government Schools and Child Abuse, Pg 305.
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