This post reminded me of a thing I've been thinking about for a while with no clear conclusion.
I want to clarify first that I don't think this is the meaning of the post, just that it reminded me of this.
For me, it's hard to believe both that causing others suffering is wrong, /and/ that I should not let myself suffer. Some things that cause me suffering can cause others joy. If I were to choose not to do those things, because they cause me suffering, I would be allowing others to suffer. It's hard not to think of this as selfish.
I know why this view came about (excessive parentification during childhood and adolescence) but I don't really know how … I can't figure out a belief that guides when and how I should avoid my own suffering when doing so would cause others suffering. (And I am referring specifically to things that people have expressed they are worse without, not just things that I think I'm obligated to give which have no real impact on someone's life either way.)
I will continue to avoid my own suffering even when it would cause others suffering. This is the choice I made. If I am going to do something wrong I want to know that I'm doing wrong and I can't figure out if (or when) this is wrong. I'm not asking you to decide my beliefs for me I just genuinely can't get a handle on if it makes sense that sometimes my own suffering should be prioritised over others and sometimes the opposite. I don't know where to start.
I'm glad that post inspired you to ask this!
First of all, good on you for clearly having already put in work to better understand your worldview. You are clearly very reflective and open to change and those are key skills to have. I'm gonna start with some practical advice, and then explain my thoughts & give more context for this advice.
When it comes to figuring out when to prioritize one or the other, I would look at these areas (& these are questions to ask about others and yourself in any situation this is relevant in):
How much suffering?
"Suffering" is a very vague term. Someone who stubbed their toe is suffering, and so is someone who has been stabbed. Things can still have an impact on someone's life, a person might be worse without something, but its still a relatively minor loss or impact in the grand scheme of things.
I'm sure this isn't groundbreaking to you. I would ask myself these questions when trying to figure this part out:
What is the short term harm, for you and for others involved? How much suffering would you experience in the moment?
What long term harm for both, for you and for others involved? How much suffering would you experience over time and for how long?
2. What options?
Whether or not to do the thing that could bring joy / cause suffering is not the only action that we can look at here.
What could or would need to be done to heal whatever harm is caused?
Are there ways to do the thing that minimize the short or long term harms than other ways?
What needs are at play for both of you? Are there other ways to meet those needs that are more desirable?
3. What relations?
Perhaps the most important, and really contextualizes the other two areas.
Does the other person feel your suffering is necessary for their joy / to prevent their suffering? (i.e are you sure you aren't going to be sacrificing your own joy for someone who would honestly not mind if you didn't?
^ This is very important because we cannot completely judge harm alone! It is to a large degree subjective. You may think about a consequence of your actions and see it as hurtful to another person and be terrified of doing it, only for that person to see it as an annoyance they could easily deal with. Many people who were parentified overestimate their responsibility for others’ emotions, so you should check in with this when relevant.
What relationships are at play here? What are the expectations? Power dynamics? How free are both of you to choose how you engage with each other? Who is responsible for what here?
You are likely not the only actor at play in most of your decisions. And even if you are, that doesn't mean its right that you are. For example: a child being made to take care of a younger child may be put in a position where the younger child cannot take care of themself, and the older child is the only person who is tasked with that.
This situation sucks ass. Many the older child can't cope with this and runs away and the younger child is neglected. Maybe the older child stays and does their best to care for the child and the older child is neglected. The key thing here is that this situation should not be so black and white. Unless you have been suddenly stranded in the wilderness, an older child should never have to bear the weight of being the sole caretaker for a younger child; there should be someone else, ideally multiple someones else, to help out.
Its not that the older child running away isn't contributing to the younger child's suffering. But to zero in on that choice alone misses how this terrible, unethical situation came about at all and why it is allowed to continue. And the best way to heal this harm would not be to make the older child feel guilty about a very natural reaction to a very terrible situation. It also doesn't mean the younger child would have to pretend they weren't hurt by that reaction. When we look at the situation relationally, we see the failure of relation is the problem and the mending of relation (on an interpersonal and community level) is the solution. Morality is fundamentally the result of us being a species of social animals; it makes sense to take a social perspective on it.
Now, to explain that advice:
You've already identified the core tension here: you value not causing others suffering, but you also value not allowing yourself to suffer, and the uncertainty around what to do when these conflict causes dissonance.
This is how I look at what you've told me:
In your youth, the credal thread of parentification became a tether for you. It was an important way you made sense of yourself and your relationship with others, and it involved values like "never allow others to suffer" and "putting yourself above others who need you is selfish and bad" amongst other notions
In adulthood, you recognized that these notions were a source of harm. People often do this by learning about trauma-aware credal frames, which often include values like "don't let yourself suffer just to please others" and "put yourself first, especially if you've been told not to," which became new tethers.
However, the value of "don't cause others suffering" exists both in that parentification and the trauma-aware frame, but in different contexts. They share the same "exoterica" (the specific words used to communicate the objective parts of the idea) .But they have different esoterica (the subjective and experiential meaning and how its applied in practice).
Within a household that is parentifying a child, "don't cause others suffering" gets its practical meaning from how it works with many other notions: "noble sacrifice is morally desirable or obligatory," "care work is not optional and doesn't deserve acknowledgement as work," "where you are in a hierarchy dictates your obligations," and "the self is vs. the other; one must sacrifice so the other than gain, and they are in tension."
You can understand how this version of "don't cause others suffering" would cause a lot of dissonance with the value of "don't allow yourself to suffer." Not letting others suffering is inherently about setting aside one's own needs to give to another. The role models we are shown for not causing the suffering of others very frequently emphasize or even explicitly center their good deeds around noble sacrifice.
But a different context for "don't cause others suffering" could involve notions of mutuality, care work as recognized vital work, give-and-take on a circular scale (like a gift economy; there is no tally or tab, we care for each other with the knowledge that care will cycle around to us when we need it), and "the self & the other" where the two are seen as inherently related and require balance. And this esoterica is often much more harmonious with "don't allow yourself to suffer."
Even when we change the explicit, clear parts of our worldview, it often takes longer to build up new subjective, contextual parts. When they aren't matching up well, we struggle to feel secure in our ability to act according to our beliefs. We may be able to name our beliefs systematically, but the real meat of the meaning, the "vibe," the unconscious part of the beliefs, aren't mixing well. So how do we fix that?
I would point to the skill of credal literacy, which you are already practicing! Reflectiveness is one of the elements of this. The ability to reflect on your own beliefs critically but also creatively, and imagine how they might be different, is a very important skill that makes dealing with dissonance much easier.
The other elements of literacy are acceptance of change and tolerance of ambiguity and sensation (fancy name, basically just "how good are you at sitting with complexity and feelings without rationalizing). You already seem open to change!
So I would suggest working on building that skill of tolerating ambiguity. I say that because it seems like a major concern for you is trying to navigate complex, nuanced moral situations and wanting a clear rule to follow so you know how to act in certain situations. This is an entirely normal thing to seek, and in a lot of cases that is possible!
But its important that our worldviews also prepare us for cases where it isn't, and that is where tolerance of ambiguity is really helpful. Figuring out things morally often involves experiencing a lot of complex feelings, desires, fears, etc. Moral issues frequently have a LOT of elements to consider and can get very nuanced. In many cases, there truly is no clear answer. No amount of rigorous, logical pursuit of an objective answer to such a moral problem will ever be truly productive. By working on the skill of sitting with feelings, with complex concepts, allowing yourself to feel the weight and texture of an experience and let it just be an experience before you try to explain it? All of that helps us approach reflection in a much more balanced way. Because we can only reflect on our subjective experiences if we take the time to appreciate them on their own terms. Once you are able to sit with the feeling of "god, this whole situation is so fucked up in so many complex, nuanced ways. That sucks," you can deal with the morality of the situation and what actions are needed without having to fight your own emotions about the topic.
Combined with acceptance of change, you also learn to tolerate the inevitability of messing up and doing something wrong, both because you can tolerate the ambiguity of “I want to do good, but sometimes I hurt people” and connect that to “I can always make amends and do better in the future” both of which make us feel much more existentially secure in our ability to behave how we feel we should.
Some advice on building this skill:
Mindfulness practices can be a very good start. Letting yourself be in your body, notice sensations, just let yourself be alive without trying to explain or control your experience. The goal is to appreciate the sensation itself, on its own terms. You can always explain it later, once you've gotten to know it.
Going off that, many people benefit from meditation. If you struggle with "sit down and be at peace" meditation, there are other forms! I don't remember where, but I was really struck by reading about "walking meditation" where you focus on the pace and feeling of your steps, rather than sitting still and focusing on your breathing. Any repetitive action can be used for meditation, so let yourself explore what works for you.
Emotional intelligence/regulation and frustration tolerance also fall under this skill!
More specific advice on building up new esoterica related to suffering:
Read/watch/listen to works on reparative/restorative justice, and writers like bell hooks. These frameworks generally rely on people being able to tolerate ambiguity, and the esoterica of "don't allow others to suffer" is usually far more relational and tolerant of complexity, and also highly values change and reflectiveness.
Similarly, talking to others who have a strong sense of how to navigate these values productively, in a way you admire. Role models are very powerful in building esoterica. This doesn't mean glorifying those people, but engaging with them to understand their perspective.
Set aside time to digest and reflect on all of that. Think about how decisions you've made might have turned out differently, or even just felt differently, if you'd had a different perspective. Try to spot moments in your day-to-day life where these new ideas might be applicable. Even if you aren't using these ideas, imagine what it would be like to use them. What you are doing is practicing activating these notions, teaching your mind "this is when this belief/value is relevant, and this is how I would do it, and this is what it feels like" to build up the foundation of a habit.
I hope at least some of these ideas are helpful to you, anon!
A while ago, you asked what people were hoping to get out of this blog. If you're still accepting answers, I'd love to give mine.
I followed you from your genderkoolaid blog. And I'd always liked 'the answer is philosophy' tag. I guess I'm at a period of time where I'm really taking active steps to try and shape myself or, at least, notice how I've been shaped so far.
I've found a quiet appreciation of my life that I was lacking for a long time. And now that I have it, I'm sort of wondering what to do with it. I think this blog could help me understand what it means to love your life. I think it could guide me into interesting corners of myself. Most importantly, I think it could help me map out what it really means to live in the world —a part of it in me and me in a part of it.
I'll always be accepting answers for that question :)
I LOVE this way of describing worldview work: "map out what it really means to live in the world —a part of it in me and me in a part of it." Really beautifully put & very synjective way of putting it!
I'm really glad you have found that quiet appreciation for your life & I hope this project is able to give you some inspiration on how to love it.
on why i followed: first, i love your work on genderkoolaid! i check that blog to consciously engage with That Discourse, but it’s not something i’m equipped to encounter at random from my dash. your explanation of philosophy to a couple of anons was accessible and well aligned with my own perspective and methods of meaning-making. my partner’s undergrad philosophy thesis challenged hegel’s dialectic of self recognition, ie “what if it’s unnecessary to separate ourselves from the other to achieve self awareness”, and our discussions around that framework have shaped a lot of my worldview. i followed because your posts are a good reminder to keep checking and charting own my map, and partly because i suspect there will be tidbits that i want to discuss in our shared household. i truly believe the path forward, to liberation, requires an understanding of how and why individuals believe what we believe, as both an exercise of empathy for its own sake and as part of a strategy to make effective, compassionate, and sustainable change.
first of all. blushing. i'm so glad my work has had an impact on you like that!
"i truly believe the path forward, to liberation, requires an understanding of how and why individuals believe what we believe, as both an exercise of empathy for its own sake and as part of a strategy to make effective, compassionate, and sustainable change" <- such a good sentence. couldn't agree more tbh! i hope synjectivism is able to give you & your household some good tidbits :]
