RTR and Empiricism
T
he Real-Time Relationship is about empiricism and curiosity – fundamentally, it is the scientific method applied to our relationships.
Diagnosis
If your back hurts, you go to a physiotherapist. The physiotherapist will gently press upon your spine in order to localize and identify the problem. She will ask you, over and over, “Does it hurt here?”
She presses upon nerves to find out if they hurt.
That is how she identifies where the problem exists.
You can of course avoid going to a physiotherapist – or any other health
practitioner – and simply take painkillers to alleviate the symptoms. This is a clear example of preferring immediate avoidance over long-term solutions – scarcely the mark of a mature or responsible person.
In the same way, the reason that you pick up the phone with your mother
and pretend to “enjoy” the conversation is that you prefer the short-term relief of empty compliance over actually pressing a nerve ending to see if it hurts, so that you can identify the source of the problem and work towards a practical and permanent cure.
Our nerve endings signal discomfort – just as your
“sinking sensation” signals discomfort – but by picking up the phone and avoiding the truth, you are simply masking the symptom, rather than dealing with the problem.
Again, this approach is fundamentally
religious
, in that you are making up instant “answers” rather than examining the empirical evidence with curiosity and rationality.
Naturally, if we are not allowed to tell the truth in a relationship
, and we are consistently bullied into pretending to be something other than who we are, we will not enjoy that relationship – because in fact, it is not a relationship at all, but rather a mutual exploitation based on immediate anxiety avoidance.
Thus our sinking sensation
is clearly communicating to us that we do not enjoy this interaction.
We are perfectly aware of why we do not enjoy our relationship
with our mother, which is that we are not allowed to tell her the truth – primarily, we are not allowed to tell her that we do not enjoy our relationship with her.
Thus our emotions
are putting forward a theory – that our mother will attack us if we are honest with her – and if we wish to establish the validity or invalidity of this theory, all we need to do
is be honest with her
.
If we are honest
with our mother – if we say: “I do not want to talk to you, and I do not know exactly why, and I have been feeling this for many years,” and our mother responds with genuine concern and curiosity, then our “sinking sensation” was more paranoia than accuracy.
If, on the other hand, she reacts with irritation
, dismissal, avoidance, redirection, attack, or an over solicitous and cloying “concern for what’s wrong,”
then our emotional thesis is amply confirmed
.
The simple fact of the matter, of course, is that if our mother
did
have a habit of genuinely responding to our distress with curiosity and concern, we would never have any kind of “sinking sensation” when she called.
In the case of long-term relationships
,
the feeling is the proof
.
There is
no possibility whatsoever
that a positive long-term relationship can exist if one or both parties is regularly feeling bad about talking to the other party.
Paranoia?
If your mother says or implies that you are “paranoid” for feeling anything negative about her calls, then not only is she rejecting and attacking your feelings (hence their negativity) but also she is the kind of person who is perfectly happy to continue for years talking to a paranoid person
without once productively addressing that paranoia
.
That is, sadly, in no way the mark of a healthy
person.
Why is it, then, that we avoid putting our emotional theory to the test?
Well, if we avoid putting a theory to the test it is because we know the answer to that test, and we do not like it. This is one reason why religious people always avoid a rational examination of the existence of God, and always fall back on “faith,” which is defined in reality as a willed bigotry in what is known to be false.
If our emotions
tell us that we will be attacked for telling the truth – and we have not been telling the truth – it is because we wish to avoid
confirmation
– i.e.
certainty
.
If we wish to
“avoid” certainty, it is because we are
already certain
.
Thus it is not really
“certainty” that we wish to avoid,
but the results of accepting what we already know to be true
.
The superstitious cultist who goes to church does not avoid rationally examining the question of the existence of God
because he is certain that God exists, but rather because he is certain that God does not exist at all. What he truly wishes to avoid is not the knowledge of God’s nonexistence, but rather the inevitable
results
of that knowledge, which is the end of his association with his cult, and the inevitable attacks that will descend upon him from his fellow cult members. He also fears the contempt and hostility in his children’s eyes that will inevitably result from his recognition of the truth, since he inflicted his superstition upon them with pious self-righteousness when they were young, helpless and utterly dependent. He is also afraid to put his wife’s love to the test, because he knows
exactly
what will happen if he says to her: “Will you love me and the truth, or will you reject me out of fear and enslavement to our fellow cultists, if I reject falsehood?”
He already knows what her answer will be.
He already knows
exactly
where he sits on her hierarchy of “values.”
He already knows that his wife will kick him to the curb the moment he speaks the truth.
Thus it is not the absence of God that he fears and avoids, but the consequences of speaking the truth – and the knowledge that he has wasted his life in a squalid, corrupt cult of liars and bullies – and even worse, that he has sacrificed his children’s intelligence and integrity on the altar of his own cowardice.
Truly, to look into the mirror with such accuracy, and to see what he had truly become, would be more than his soul could possibly bear.
And so he struggles on, avoiding the truth, at war with himself, murdering his honest instincts every single day, proselytizing to helpless children and credulous fools that which he knows to be false, until nature finally takes pity upon him and puts him out of his agony with an empty and prayed-for death.
Of course for the religious, death leads to paradise, because their life is a living hell – compared to which the mere nonexistence that we all know awaits us in the grave seems like a blissful heaven.
Exploring the Facts
The simple fact is that God
does not exist.
The simple fact is that
“the government” is just a bunch of pompous goons with guns ordering you around, filling your children’s heads with lies, and stealing from you.
The simple fact is that you do not want to talk to your mother
on the telephone.
And the simple fact is that we know exactly what will happen when we speak the truth.
We will be attacked by our fellow slaves.
We will not be invited to become a master
.
And thus we shall be alone.
This is the deepest horror of living among the slaves – that the very communal power that could overturn our masters is not turned against our masters, but rather against any slave who dares to say: “We are slaves.”
We
have
a State because we
are
the State.
The shock and loathsomeness of this understanding –
that we have no masters but each other
– is the real horror that we avoid with our blank, smiling conformity.
This is the real reason that we make up
“answers,’ and believe our own lies, crush our natural hunger for truth and freedom, attack anyone who makes us uncomfortable, attack the “enemies” that we are told to hate, and lick the boots of our owners in happy, cringing abandon.
We are not ruled by masters.
We are ruled by each other.
The
“masters” simply pick up the pieces.
These are the simple facts that we know deep down. These are the simple facts that are carved into our very
bones
.
These are the simple facts that we will waste our lives evading if we do not find the courage
to speak the truth.