Perhaps the Connection in Journal

was not as straight forward in my earlier post as I would have liked. I do try to simplify and take things step by step. That one was a leap. But, I don’t feel like redoing it.

My mom’s most recent admonition (and plea) to me was M, just change your mind!
Just change my mind.
What does that mean?
And yes, I do think that these commands, demands, this instruction from our parents are deeply meaningful. They communicate what our mothers and fathers- the stuff that we are made of and where we came from- how they operate and how they would have us operate. Are we not each of our mother? And are we not each made in the image of our father?
So… I will never be indifferent to my mother’s opinions. Her opinions, her instruction, her thoughts, her demands. They are all deeply embedded in my soul whether I like it or not.
And… Just change your mind! It strikes me first as an obvious rejection. A rejection of the mind that I am currently presenting her. So, she says, the obvious solution is to change it. Easy peasy.
But, there’s more.
You know how in nature, the predators hunt down the prey. But humans, we’ve made things easier on ourselves by domesticating our prey. That way, our prey doesn’t run away. The easiest way to make sure your prey doesn’t run away is to have them police themselves. Cows, for example, are kept behind sometimes only a single strand of hot wire. Now, the hot wire doesn’t really hurt the cows. It jolts them with a shocking, momentary pain that is startling enough to cause an avoidance reaction. And so after a couple experiences of this, the cows simply do not test the wire again. They will stand behind that wire, forever maybe, as long as things don’t get too uncomfortable there.
Even a straight up dominance relationship must provide some benefit. The predators still need the cows, after all, and there doesn’t seem to be a direct benefit to sadism.
Anyways. You get what I’m saying. The best way to remain dominance over someone is to get them to police themselves. To manipulate themselves. To censor themselves. Ultimately, to Self-erase.
My mom is not a subtle person. She never has been. Perhaps that is why I am so bothered by her hypocrisy. Perhaps that is why everyone around her is such low quality. No one in her life would bother holding her accountable. Uhg. How sad.
Now my mom wants me to change my mind because she is not willing to change hers. She is not willing to entertain or even acknowledge the issues that I’ve brought up. She would rather they just go away. In fact, I think she really does live in a censored thought bubble. She cannot afford to allow any dissenting voices in. She said to me recently, after I asked her about it, how she thought her avoidance and absence was affecting our relationship; “I forgot… I forgot that your truth is different from mine.”

Right.
So, why wouldn’t I change my mind? If I changed my mind from the past, can’t I change it now? And, if changing my mind from it’s past thoughts is causing my mother pain, why wouldn’t I change it back?
All great questions.
Basically, because I refuse to manipulate anymore. It’s because I’ve moved on from the subjective fog of ‘your truth’ vs ‘my truth’- which basically amounts to whoever has the power and dominance in a relationship wins- to The Truth. There is no ‘my truth’. All the subjective b.s. is just manipulative power junkie jargon.
So… not only will I not change my mind, but I cannot change my mind. My mind has changed to a significant degree based on logical premises. Premises like empirical evidence, and reason. In a way, the confrontation with my mom has been an experiment to find out whether what she says is true.
Because, I could continue to live my life and just assume that everything she says is true. But that would leave me with a huge, gaping, unavoidable break in my integrity. It would unravel my soul like a knitted sweater. A little at a time.
If knowledge is required for choice, then I must pursue knowledge. Even the knowledge that hurts me. Even when it hurts my mom. But you know. That is Justice. I don’t owe my mom anything. Nothing at all. She owes me a lot. And even now, refuses to acknowledge that. She still wants me to change. She wants me to admit fault. She wants me to try. She wants me to love her. But, I say, she is the mother. She owes me those things. And her refusal to provide them is a debt. And her angry demands only increase her debt.
All these arguments based in consequentialism. LOL. And consequentialism is not an argument.

So those were not great questions after all.
They were … mediocre questions.
No. So the question is… what would it mean to change my mind?
Yes. THAT is a great question.
lol
I understand the argument for manipulating our internal experiences to align with an outer reality. That is, after all, how frustration instructs our empiricism. But… this is different.
My mom wants me to abandon my empiricism in favor of her mystical explanations of why her version of the world is correct. The only reason that she had me convinced of her explanations in the first place was that I was totally and completely dependent on her for everything. And this is what makes me angry.
It’s the same with all parents- at least all the parents that I know that aren’t Peaceful Parents- that they unilaterally subvert their children’s ability to think and insert their own conclusions. The first sophists are our parents. We believe them because we have no choice. Our parents, instead of protecting us from sophists, exploit us, and then leave us wide open to all sophists.