That’s a phrase that just popped into my head when I was trying to name my team of explorer/scavengers in a game of Deep Sky Derelicts.
And the phrase had such power in it (to me, anyhow) that I named my team that even though that’s not really a team name in the traditional sense of the word.
My first stab at figuring out what, exactly, I mean by that is that it refers to all the very private pain I have been through in my solitary and lonesome existence.
That covers the “forgotten” part neatly. But trials? Have I been tested? Am I still being tested to this day?
It’s definitely that sense of the word “trial”. The kind where someone or something is being tested for worthiness.
Not the legal sort of trial, although I certainly have been prosecuting the hell out of myself for long enough for it to qualify.
But no, this is the “test of strength” type trial. The sort of thing that the native tribe might put our studly hero through befoe accepting him into their tribe.
Because even in the days of radio, white people were still desperate for the approval of the same people they oppressed. Weird.
And as patient readers know, I have certainly felt forgotten for a long as I can remember. Forgotten and abandoned, like the crumbling ruins of an ancient temple to some god who died with its people.
Ever since that fateful first day of school, when I transitioned from being a kid with a full time babysitter whose whole job was to look after him to a kid who nobody paid much attention to and who was left to fend for himself in a way that had never been asked of him before then.
Hmmm. Some of that is new. Interesting.
Nobody had though, I suppose, to do anything to prepare me for that day. Nobody worried whether I would be lonely, or if I would have seperation anxiety, or if I would in any sense be okay.
Nobody even bothered to walk me there. I faced that first day completely alone.
And that’s just how my childhood worked from then on. I basically faced childhood alone. I lost all sense that anyone, anywhere was looking out for me. I was left to raise myself, more or less.
And there are no words to express how very very wrong that was.
I deserved so much better. I was a sweet,. bright, adorable kid and I deserved all the love and concern and fussing over that the other kids got.
But nobody ever really thought of me as their responsibility. I can see that clearly now. I was not someone anyone looked after.
I wan’t even a resented burden, because someone has to actually “pick you up” in order for you to be a burden on them. I wasn’t even that present in their minds.
The messages was clear : “Be grateful for whatever we remember to give you, and never, ever, ever dare to ask for anything. ”
And I deserved so much better. What happened to me back then was a terrible crime and I have every right to be mad about it and shout my rage to the skies.
Those fucking people. The ones who were supposed to love, cherish, nourish, and protect me but instead they barely tolerated me.
Fuck them all.
More after the break.
The Limits of Responsibility
OK, here we go.
Patient readers know that I have a rather all-encompassing view of responsibility
I think we are responsible for all reasonably foreseeable consequences of our actions.
And that definition has a certain appeal.
For one thing, it is logically complete. It covers all moral situations and all of the usual ways in which we think of personal responsibility. It is simple, fairly easy to understand, and has a pleasingly solid sound and feel to it.
In fact, it seems like the sort of thing that one might make a cornerstone of one’s ethics.
There’s just one problem with it.
It is utterly inhuman.
It does not take human frailty into account. It seems like it does because it has the word “reasonable’ in it, and thus avoids making people responsible for constantly monitoring all possible ramifications of every single action to the point of utter paralysis, and it also avoid making people responsible for consequences nobody could have foreseen.
But it does not fully take into account human limitations because it does not concede that even with those limitations, that definition might still result in far more responsibility than any human being could reasonably be expected to handle.
That’s where I come in. I feel like I have been carrying this inhuman moral burden for a very long time without knowing it, and that, in turn, plays a substantial role in my high background level of fear.
That’s why I think sane and healthy people have some kind of moral horizon that limits the scope of their ethical vision and therefore places a reasonable limit on how much they are taking on.
And I think that limitation comes, in part, from having a healthy childhood that inculcated a sense that the individual did not have to tackle everything alone, that there were people who would help them when needed and that therefore they did not have to worry about every little possible scenario.
The other problem with the above definition of responsibility is that it doesnt take individual intelligence into account either. I am hella smart and can therefore foresee a lot more consequences than the average person.
Does that mean my moral burden is proportionally larger too?
It sure feels that way.
All of that leads me to this : forgiveness. Mercy. I have held myself to inhumanly demanding and impossible to meet standards for far too long, without any room to forgive myself for merely being human.
I might have more going on that most people, but I am still a finite and absurd lump of organic goo trying to make sense of life in a universe too big and complicated for any of us naked beach monkeys to really understand.
The hubris of science and reason can easily convince a guy like me that I can conquer the world and all that is within in with my mighty, mighty mind.
But I can’t.
And it’s high timne I forgave myself for that and let myself just be myself.
Not an angel or a demon or a saviour or a paragon or a god.
Just lil ol me.
And that’s a fine, fine thing to be.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.