The Pseudo-Morality Of Weaponized Empathy

 I recall an old friend; Todd (who turned out to be an enemy).

He once said "True Christians never doubt that Christianity is true."

⁠
He was, of course, wrong about that.
⁠
Worse yet, without realizing it
(and without giving a damn),
he threw countless Christians (even his own friends) under the bus, by saying that.
⁠
And yet, what he was really telling me is:

 His brain's Operating System didn't include
the Doubts Upgrade;
- the upgrade that makes true rational scrutiny possible.
⁠
He was simply assuming that he shared that in common with all other "True Christians".

So any facts or logic his brain might ever encounter that presents objectively sound reason to re-evaluate some (any) facet
of his worldview, ...
will be summarily dismissed, without evaluation; every time. 
⁠
It's a fire wall.
- A way to make sure that nothing gets through.
⁠
He depends on what he has.
He doesn't want to risk losing it.
⁠
That's how he felt about each of his (few) deeply personal relationships.

His relationships (real and imagined) anchor his identity. 
They don't have to be good, in any objective sense.
They just have to validate him (clarify and edify his sense of identity); no matter the cost.

That value was, to him, a "truth"; and nothing could matter more.
⁠
If (anything) might happen to be objectively factually wrong, or (in any way) unhealthy, ...

He's quite ... determined
not to discover it.
⁠
⁠
---
It wasn't until his grand personal betrayal  
that I realized what he was accidentally telling me about his larger psychology; about his moral ~checks and balances~.
⁠
He was an emotional thinker, operating without personal moral accountability.
⁠
In retrospect, that shouldn't have came as a surprise to me.

Fundamentalist (same as "moderate") Christianity, at its very core, is a gambit to evade personal moral accountability ... by literally scapegoating all failings and transgressions ... onto an innocent martyr. 

It's right there in the brochure (so to speak). 

I just hadn't looked closely enough. 

I wasn't yet really listening ... to what such people were really telling me about themselves. 

As a result, Todd caught me off guard.

When I first foolishly warned my abuser (Mindy) that I planned to ... move out, and re-negotiate the premise of our "relationship" (to stop pretending we are a couple), 
she warned me.


She said "These people are simple. They don't think in complicated ways. They think as a cultural tribe.

That's why I kept my views ABOUT Christianity from the majority (who are Christians).

 It's a religion for children. For child minds. But the great thing about children is ... if you know how to handle them, they will do as they're told. 

I made sure they'd keep thinking of me as part of their cultural tribe. 

You made the mistake of being open about your views. And that just worsened your cultural handicap.

Anything I say about you ... they will believe. And I can get them to go pretty far on my behalf. 

If you leave me, you will be shunned; utterly demonized and ex-communicated, as a dangerous figure.
- Same as someone trying to leave the Amish, or trying to quit being a Jehovah's Witness. 

You can call that "abuse" if you want to. But I call it smart. 

It's why I'll live and die surrounded by friends, and you'll live and die alone and defamed,  ... if you leave me.". 

"Disposable people".
It's the thing I hate most about Abrahamic religions. 

 Worse yet, I had EARNED their trust, and respect, and lasting gratitude for all the good I brought into their lives; especially hers.

I even have a term for it.
- "Social equity".

But I was about to get the opposite. 

She would turn everyone in her world against me, so that she wouldn't have to share anyone with an enemy,
and
to turn a point of shame into a martyr's victory. 

She was very "Jesus" about that.
"If you are not with me, you are against me."

She was even designing a "Hell" specifically for me; a hopefully endless source of torment, to go with my eternal discard. 

 My mind doesn't work that way. But hers does.

I thought she was bluffing.
And I thought she would FAIL, even if she tried.

I was wrong, on both counts. 

She was going to do that, if I left.
And all those good(ish) people ... were going to fully cooperate with it.  
---
At the time, I had this idea in my head.
Once she saw we could get along ~just fine~ as ~just friends~, she'd let go of all that pre-planned vengeance, and just accept the rich rewards of having me in her life ~as a friend~;
without complications of a pseudo-relationship. 

I said as much.

She just answered with strategic silence; as usual.

I read into that silence, with a fantasy of her being a good person who I expected to act like a good person ... even though she had really never acted like a good person with me.

And, as always, I would eventually come to regret that.
----

It wasn't until a few years later, in the course of much personal research and reflection, ...

I realized the same basic relationship model she tried to have with me, ... was the same "child religion" she mocked Christians for being in.

 She merely stood in place of that "God".
 
This realization is what led to the epiphany I had about how bible-God is specifically modeled on a malignant clinically Narcissistic Personality Disordered mate/owner/shepherd/parent, tries to force upon their supply. 

Although, in retrospect. I should have run for the hills, as soon as she admitted she hates all men ... for what her dad and ex-husband did.
 We're all sort of an amalgamation of the same person.
 
On the surface, I'd been warned about this before;
about "chicks with Daddy issues".

My own father warned me about that, when I was a kid.

I just didn't yet understand what that meant. 

As an adult in my early 40s, I had only a superficial understanding of it.

I thought it was something I could help her "heal" from.
But that was very incorrect and naïve. 
---

After the final parting of ways, ...

I also came to realize and understand
why it's harder for a victim to let go
than it is for the predator. 
And why abusive relationships are actually harder to stop mourning than healthy ones. 
But that's a whole other blog.
----
Back to the stage, where the coming shit-storm was brewing, and all I could do is smile stupidly at the pretty clouds. 
----

Todd was in the habit of letting his cultural tribe do most of this moral thinking for him.
⁠
No matter what crap 
gets written into his narrative (by other people), ...
⁠
he won't question that;
 nor will he doubt the validity of his resulting life-choices.

He will never experience a moment where he doubts the narrative (*of self, and of others) that his tribe writes for him.
⁠
So when my clinically narcissistic soon-to-be-EX (they'd been friends since High School) called upon him as a Flying Monkey, 
he rushed happily into taking sides; while she set out to commit a series of literal crimes against me. 

 I can't prove it was her that did those crimes. I didn't have enough money, at the time, to hire the people needed to get the proof.
But I'll always know it was her.
One of those was confirmed by someone we both knew. They simply weren't willing to testify. 
⁠
How many of those crimes did he know about?
Did he help?
Did he do some of those FOR her?
I can only "reasonably suspect" the answers to those questions.
But his primary personal betrayal is certain. 

In his simplistic thinking, his "Christian heart" was called to action ... by the God-given virtue of (tribal) empathy.

[More correctly, what his brain thinks counts as empathy.
His brain, like hers, can't generate that state. But it can approximate it.] 
 
It was bias. But it was righteous bias.

He didn't bother to ask for my side of it;
nor was he interested in fair, objective neutrality.
⁠
He had postured over me for YEARS as my moral superior, with his "I'll pray for you" rhetoric.

⁠ -Although, I did provoke that defense/offense from him,
by posting critical things about Christianity on my social media page;

- which, in hindsight, I admit, was pretty stupid of me. 

I should have just started a blog under an alias; rather than outing myself as a tribal "other". 

So Todd was already harboring emotional bias. And at least some of that bias was avoidable.  

Technically, it started when he first met me. I saw it in his facial expression. It's relevant. But it's not an essential part of this account.

Todd was right, however, at the time, when he said a lot of the grumbling I did about Christianity and "God" ... was because I was hurting, and because I wasn't really settled or satisfied with my recent loss of faith. 

But that didn't excuse my atheistic musings, in Todd's eyes.
He was taking it personally.

It was just enough reason to keep praying for me, until, ...

As I left Mindy's Protection Racket, 
I lost her "protection" FROM her.

I was at a crossroads, and so was Todd.


The whole time he was "praying for me", it was never (at all) about me.
It was about his ego ... finding redemption; being cleansed of the dirt of my disapproval.

One way that CAN happen ... is if I convert to this belief system.

But there was another way; a way that wouldn't depend on my cooperation at all.

He can be just as validated and cleansed from that feeling ... if I get re-cast as an evil character.
 
In his black-and-white universe, I was already borderline evil, because of my views about his "God" and his religion.

If I become ~resolved~ (in his narrative) as evil,
then that resolves the conflict with his ego.

He would emerge vindicated ... just the same as if I had converted to his religion.

Realizing that, and being always a few steps ahead of me (because I wasn't thinking strategically, and because I didn't yet see this people as enemies, ...

Mindy offered him exactly that.

Finally. RELIEF. 

"God" was just offering that to him .,. through a different form of resolution.

It's the same exact way Bible-god reasons.

All ego-bruisers are enemies.

All enemies are choosing to be worthless;
- as "worth" is always a function of utility. And there's no more important utility than propping up a fragile-yet-righteous ego. 

Eventually, time runs out.
People choosing to be disposable 
must eventually be disposed of.

It's a heavy duty, for the righteous, to lament "look at what you're making me do to you", "by not being more careful with my ego".

Mindy scripted a new chapter.

In this one, I become a "revealed" villain.

All Todd had to do was approve the script;
agreeing to endorse it, entirely on her say-so.

Even though the script wasn't objectively credible, ...
multiple people agreeing that something is true, makes it true; especially when you need it to be. -just ask any Christian. 

His ego was released. 
My views about his religion (which he internalized as views about him) no longer weighed against his ego. 

Me having Mindy for those years ...
also no longer weighed on him; as he quietly regretting not getting the hot girl. And how I didn't even really have to try, when I got her. 

(although, knowing Mindy as I do, I'm sure she offered him some "relief" once she realized she would need to ensure his loyalties).

I was tried and convicted, in absentia. 

He was vindicated 
by the verdict. 

But if he had processed the power of objectivity, and the ethic of personal accountability, he would have realized the reality was quite a bit different than what Mindy scripted for him. 

In truth, ...

The very first time that LIFE called upon Todd to be a "witness" to his moral character ...

(the very opportunity he had been asking "God" to give him; promising God that he would be ready) ...

Without hesitation, 
Todd chose, instead, the course that would "stumble" me into his religion's "Hell", all while still believing that Hell is real "without a doubt".
⁠
It was then
that I started to realize the correlation between clinical psychopathy
and religious fundamentalism.
- And how the real reason he didn't have moral or ideological "doubts" was the same reason psychopaths and narcissist's never have such doubts. That mechanism simply never developed in their brain.
⁠
For him, religion didn't so much 'make it worse', as it just made him comfortable with his own unchangeable nature;
- by normalizing it, and by giving him a substitute, artificial and superficial moral premise to posture from and identify with.
⁠
He was "moral" because a "God" said so;
- via unsubstantiated rumors,
and
with a "feeling in his heart",
and
with an EGO that "can't be wrong";
- in a world full of differently-believing people who are also CERTAIN and yet wrong.
⁠
And that "God" based that assessment on only one thing:

Todd's blind belief
in a strange religious story.
That's all.
⁠
It would be like...

If I were raised to believe 
the King of the Leprechauns would judge me as righteous
if I can believe that at the end of every rainbow is a pot of gold,
and
if I agree that the Lepre-King paid himself with it, so that he can forgive me
for being born unable to reach the ends of rainbows, because they keep moving away from (humans) when we try.
We keep "falling short".
⁠
And then me saying "well, it's a good thing that all actual virtues are like "filthy rags" in the eyes of the Lepre-King.

It's nice to know those are optional, as a way to earn extra "treasures in Heaven"";
- and that any bonus-good would be defined just as ... conveniently".

It would be so good to "know" that the King of the Leprechauns 
agrees with the valuable people  
about
disposable people.