Magic 8 ball says: “You ask too much.”
I wonder a little bit at your choice of the word “faithless.” it seems like back in your marketing/client days people had faith in you by virtue of their willingness to give you lots of money. You’ve had faith in others until you felt betrayed. I know what you mean—equating faith with loyalty, but it would seem as long as one party is believing in the other there’s faith happening.
Before I go further, I will mention that the question demonstrates “all or nothing thinking,” which is generally regarded as a fallacy of depressive thought. ”Everyone hates me,” etc.
I would be more inclined to say that people act ultimately out of self interest and out of whatever they believe is necessary for self preservation. The key in that last statement is “believe.” For example, they might believe they need luxury goods. The point is that those beliefs drive their self-preserving behavior.
Reciprocity has long been a tool for human survival. So we are by seeming necessity required to ask for help to get what we want. We’ve evolved in that to the point that we accept an investment period in a relationship in order to get to a payoff of some kind later. Some or maybe many people game this system. They take advantage of this grace period to suck up as much energy as they can until the other party realizes their faith in reciprocity has been violated. Most of the time, though, people just come to realize that the equation isn’t balancing like they thought it would, or maybe that it can work if they adjust their expectations.
I would argue that your interpretation of your former client’s reactions is a misread. Yes, they were disappointed by your betrayal, but more likely than this being a sign of their “learned helplessness” from repeated exposure to similar abuses, they probably regarded the abuse at your hands as relatively minor and temporary in the grand scheme of their lives and relationships. Contrary to being faithless, they have more than enough faith in their other relationships, religion, community, what have you. They also had faith in the idea of reciprocity, which probably has paid off more than it hasn’t (or at least enough on balance). Surely, you disappointed them or hurt them or whatever, but at the end of the day, they went home to people they trusted, loved, etc. Think about the Grinch and the Whos.
As far as your existential pain goes, existential pain is existential pain no matter how you dress it up. Other people don’t have existential pain perhaps because they haven’t ventured beyond believing that they are a flesh and blood human, that the world is concrete and real and that God is in heaven and the devil is in hell. Existential pain is the realization that life is suffering. It also separates you from fully participating as a human with other humans. It also does a funny thing, which you touch on above. It creates or foments self loathing. I can’t say I fully understand this, but the people like those you betrayed probably don’t experience that self loathing. They’re probably too absorbed in the experience of being human that they experience other emotions that have to do with protecting and asserting their egos. Self loathing like I think you’re describing only comes when one’s faith in (what… being human?) is stripped away and the ego sort of collapses on itself. You probably didn’t feel self loathing when you were out there making money. You may have felt a gnawing or emptiness, but not self loathing. That didn’t come until your faith in making money (or whatever) crashed around you.
I don’t have a cure all for self loathing. I experience a lot of it myself and have through most of my adulthood. Yesterday, I was listening to a journalist who dredges up stories of famines in Africa and the like and he said one of his hopes is that his stories would shake up people (in the U.S. who sit at their desk and read the paper at their leisure) who don’t think about global tragedies all the time. That remark amused me, because I do think about these tragedies all the time, and I espouse the painful belief that these tragedies are man made and in almost all cases engineered with our (western civilization’s) help. I’m plenty aware, and it’s really painful and lives in my own bed of self loathing along with other reasons. It baffles me, that, for example my relative who is a career Marine and practicing Catholic and successful family is seemingly one of the happiest people I know. I would guess that part of this is from the fact that there are very few contradictions in his belief system (such as it is composed in his mind) and that his beliefs probably match and are confirmed by his environment. His loathing is also_Other_ directed, which is another important distinction. Perhaps he hates terrorists or whatever. At any rate, he loves his country, his values, freedom, rock music, beer, friends and family. So as you can see, he helps blow up the stuff he hates “over there” and loves the stuff he protects “right here.” People like you and me perhaps have it the other way around.
There’s a trite book called The Art of Friendship which teaches one interesting lesson—that friendships don’t have to be all encompassing. They can also be situational or limited to a specific focus (like a hobby). You might find it a worthwhile read.
Composing members:
0
