Justifying God's Ways to Seiko

 

Leibniz

A letter to Seiko, who, at 45, has lived his entire life with anxiety and depression, and who does not believe in God:

You may not be good at evaluating your own parents’ character. There is an English saying, “It’s a wise child who knows his own father.” It is extremely difficult to be objective about your parents. It takes a lot of quiet meditation over your childhood memories, ideally without having to deal with your parents regularly at the same time.

Although I identified my father as profoundly selfish at a fairly early age, I did not realize my mother was as well until after her death. There is usually a dominant and a submissive narcissist. The submissive narcissist is likely to present themselves as a victim.

You ask if I have ever confronted my parents. Never really my mother, since I did not recognize her narcissism until after her death. My father, yes. 

It is usually advised that you do not confront the narcissist. They will not change―all you can do is get away. I do not agree. I have heard, at least, of narcissists reforming once confronted. 

The problem, I think, is that it does not work to confront them with being a narcissist. The psychological approach is designed to allow them to deny responsibility. It is most likely to roll off them like water off a duck’s anterior. They may even happily accept the label. After all, it makes them special, and then if you criticize them for anything, you are being cruel to the disabled. They can play the victim.

I gather you have confronted your parents with something, and they have apologized and even offered compensation. This is surprising. This does not sound like narcissists. Narcissists cannot admit moral fault. But here’s what might be happening. By declaring yourself mentally ill, you usefully discredit your testimony as a witness. I suspect this is why the concept of “mental illness” exists. It allows the victim to relatively freely express himself, and the parents and society to freely ignore them. Yes, they might seem to accept your criticism, but in their own minds they they are just humouring poor crazy Seiko.

It is a survival mechanism. But it traps you.

I believe the trick to genuinely calling out the narcissist is, first, to clearly establish the moral high ground. You must confront your conscience and have no doubts that you are in the right. Then you must call them out in expressly moral terms. Do not talk psychology, but about right and wrong.

What happens then? I have testimony that some narcissists will reform. But more likely, they will die. The problem is that they have made their self the centre of their universe. Admitting their self has been wrong feels like death to them, death of the entire universe.

For both you and the narcissist, this is a matter of life and death. I am not speaking metaphorically.

As for escaping your parents financially, I know very well how hard this is, with them probably in hot pursuit, and all while suffering from extreme depression and anxiety.

In earlier days, it was easier—when monasteries were a live option. Perhaps Buddhist monasteries still are, in Japan, but Christian monasteries now expressly refuse refuge to anyone suffering from mental illness. 

And then they wonder why nobody becomes a monk or nun anymore.

As to the moral universe, you write, “when we observe the world as is, then one must admit that one can't observe justice or fairness or anything that kind of stuff.”

This is not really the issue. Whether the universe, or the people around us, are moral, has no bearing on whether we have a duty to be moral. This is the “is-ought” fallacy.

But I would also argue that the universe as a whole is moral.

Imagine you are God, and you design the universe so that only good and pleasant things ever happen. Nobody is ever tempted to do anything wrong; or those who do wrong are quickly and obviously punished, and those who do right are quickly and obviously rewarded.

This would actually be a world in which no good could exist. 

For anyone doing “right” would simply be acting out of self-interest. No morality is involved.

The world in which good is maximized is one in which good and evil are not obviously rewarded, but eventually are—behind a veil, where we cannot witness it. For example, in an afterlife.

Still, God would probably want to make sure that “the arc of the moral universe is long,” as Martin Luther King put it, “but bends toward justice.” I think this is so, shown both by logic and the evidence of history. For example, lying is effective for evil people only because and so long as enough people tell the truth that we tend to take everyone’s claims at face value. If a majority of people start lying, lying no longer becomes possible or useful. Similarly, if a majority of people start stealing, stealing things is no longer meaningful, since the thief himself would never have secure possession. And so on, for every sin. The universe seems to be structured so that good, in the end, must dominate and must win.

Why couldn’t God have just made us all passive animals, with full bellies and without tough moral choices?

Think about it. Aside from the moral good being of self-evident value, would you really want that life? For a simple comparison, what fun is it to play a game or sport, if it is always predetermined that you win and get a prize. And, if you play a sport, or a game, isn’t the enjoyment in large part because of the effort expended, and the difficulties met and overcome?

The good will win out in the end.