META: This response is late because of the following:
1) Yahoo did not place my message (to which Jack's was a reply) in the
same thread that Steve began (and to which my message was a reply).
2) I sent out two replies (one covering similar subject matter on the
same day the Jack's message arrived.
3) It is harder for me to keep track of what needs responses, now that
I am not responding for at least a week.
4) I have been very busy lately with many new projects.

Sorry for the delayed response. /META


On 01/09/2009 12:03 AM, David Thomas Jackemeyer wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> My focus in this response is related to returning value to those who
> invested in our upbringing. For example, our guardians did provide
> shelter, food, some good education, and many other valuable
> conditions that contributed to who we are today. How does one go
> about evaluating what was received and further return value to those
> we no longer value much?
>
> [In the above you are using the collective and ambiguous "we" and "our"
> far too much. I suggest that the following rewrite would be less groupist
> and much clearer:
>
> "My focus in this response is related to a person's returning value
> to those who invested in hir upbringing. For example, one's guardians
> did provide shelter, food, some good education, and many other
> valuable conditions that contributed to who one is today. How does
> one go about evaluating what was received and further return value to
> those one no longer values much?"
>
> --Paul]

These are all excellent questions that require (and deserve) thoughtful
complete answers.
After first making some comments on your statements relative to your
specific situation described below, I will try to lead the reader to a
general approach to such answers.

> More far below:
>
> --- In morelife@yahoogroups.com, Paul Wakfer <paul@...> wrote:
>
>> In morelife@yahoogroups.com, "Steve Floyd Jr" <fallaxus@> wrote:
>>
>>> --- In morelife@yahoogroups.com, Paul Wakfer <paul@> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 11/05/2008 10:29 AM, Steve Floyd Jr wrote:
>
> <large snip here by Paul>
>
>>>>> Since some
>>>>> things my parents did could be hurtful, or (in contrast) caring,
>>>>> or irrational, I began to tune them out and to stop emotionally
>>>>> responding to them.
>>>>>
>>>>> I still do this today. For example, I don't like a number of traits
>>>>> about my mother and I am not very close to her, intellectually or
>>>>> emotionally. However, on the rare occasions I see her or talk to her
>>>>> on the phone, she will try to hug me or tell me she loves me. My
>>>>> first response to these expressions of "love" is to ignore them or
>>>>> tune them out. I don't want to respond to her, probably because my
>>>>> response would be: "no you don't Mom, or you would act differently
>>>>> than you do".
>>>>>
>>>> What this means is that she does not really know what love means.
>>>> She merely thinks of it as a duty that she owes to a son and can be
>>>> accomplished simply buy using the word and taking the standard actions.
>>>> She probably very deeply wants to love you but she does not know what
>>>> love really entails nor how to actually do it.
>>>>
>>> What you describe above seems to accurately describe most people in my
>>> family. I wonder how many other people think the same thing about the
>>> actions of each of their family members.
>>
>> Likely few, I suspect (it sure seems that way from all my experience).
>> Most people merely accept the cultural norm that one has some kind of
>> duty to love or at least continue cordial relations with one's
>> relatives even if deep inside you can't stand them.
>
> My grandmother, mother, father, aunts, uncles, and cousins all
> contributed value to my life in the past,

If you are happy that you were created and are alive and well, then
you most certainly gained value from some of their actions, however
the most critical aspect of those actions is that it (most of it at
least) was not *requested* by you. It was not a mutually agreed exchange
in any manner, and therefore, essentially not voluntary on your part.
Logically this means that you have no *responsibility* to return any
value. [Analysis continued below.]

[The way I view this question is that to the extent that a person
thinks that those aspects about hirself that s/he assesses as valuable
are a result of the direct influence of hir parent(s) then it is
reasonable for hir to return value to hir parents. How much value
(which could include for how long) would relate strongly to how much
value the person continues to derive from hir parents, largely based
on their current practices and ideas.

As an example, while I did not agree with my parents on basic
philosophy from the time I was 16 (and read Ayn Rand's _Anthem_) I did
consider that much of what I liked about myself was a result of their
parenting. Also they were not antagonistic towards me for my very
different views on some major aspects of life and reality; in fact
they were quite tolerant, though they did early on make attempts to
persuade me that Rand's views were wrong and theirs (based on
Catholicism) were correct - my arguments were limited by my then
incomplete understanding of the actual proper basis for human
interactions, though Rand was a decent start. For these reasons I
continued to have fairly frequent interactions with my parents until
they both died, in writing and on the phone and also at least once a
year in person. (They lived in Florida while I was in AZ from 1975
onward.) In fact my father's death (11 months after my mother's of
breast cancer in 1990) was quite unexpected (massive coronary) and
emotionally very painful for me; he was only a few months into major
lifestyle changes for health improvement and very happily in a new
love relationship with plans to remarry. I had been looking forward to
many years of friendship with a father I highly admired, even if he
was still a Catholic ;>) **Kitty]

> but no longer do and I
> predict will not in the near-future, so I invest little-to-zero
> time/resources with them. But for their past investments in me, I
> think I am indebted, and more-so to my parents, for example; yet I
> also know that my judgment is of value received, a subjective
> perception of the total transaction, whereas each of them has
> received value and may still anticipate returns.

I am not sure that I follow your meaning in the last sentence above. I
will take it that you are saying that you would like to lump all their
value contributions to your creation and raising in one and get it out
of the way, whereas they apparently want you to continue to return value
to them as long as they are alive.
If that is what you mean then the first thing to be stated is that,
given that your lump sum return provides the same increase in their
lifetime happiness as would many smaller returns over the years, there
should be no difference between the two. The only difference arises
because either you may not value overall their input as much as they
think that it is worth OR because there is no kind of return that you
can make as a lump sum that will be equivalent to them to many small
returns of visits, conversation, etc over the rest of their lives. The
former is not your responsibility and is simply their bad judgment in
making essentially a poor investment (taking a chance on transmitting
value without any agreement about the amount to be returned). The latter
is because the type of value that you wish to return, although they may
value it, is not comparable with the type of value that they wish to
receive (eg to them money, say, is not comparable with visits,
conversations, etc.) This latter appears to be true for most people and
to a certain extent is true for me also. In fact, it is a direct
result of the surplus of personal assets, beyond that merely required
for survival, that has occurred only in modern times. This has enabled
most people in the world to have values which they do not relate to
any amount of material goods or services, simply because they already
have an adequate amount of assets to get sufficient goods and services
(any more would be only a small gain in value compared with some
non-material value). As a personal example, the only amount of money
for which I would be willing to do some odious job with no time for my
current projects would be an amount sufficient to enable me to get
achieved all the research that would enable me to live an additional
number of fully functional years, far longer than the time that I
would need to do the odious job. And even then I would have a very
hard time accepting and going through with any such deal.

That having been said if the type of value that they wish to receive
is not something that you can transmit to them, because it is
inconsistent with reality, then you have no responsibility to transmit
it unless you were irrational enough to have contracted to do so.

> But this part is
> confusing to me because I was a child (and therefore, was technically
> owned by them) when they were planning how to invest in me, so it was
> not an adult-adult contract as depicted in the context of the Natural
> Social Contract -- written by Paul.

Yes. It was not a contract at all. You had no say in most of it. Only
to the extent that you did make requests for value from them and
received it, are you "morally" responsible to return it. But even then
you are still not "contractually" responsible (as with the NSC) because
first, there was no contract or even verbal agreement that you would
return value, and second, you were not an independent free member
of society at that time. Because a parent can never be certain that s/he
will ever receive value return *after* a child becomes an adult, it is
important to be sure to gain sufficient return of value from the day
to day interactions with the child, rather to look at most of it as a
negative net contribution to lifetime happiness, which will can only be
made up by continuing value return in the decades ahead (ie. as mostly
an investment).

[This is so very true. A parent cannot be guaranteed that hir child
will be around to be a friend in the future - some terrible misfortune
may occur and the child dies. Or despite the parent's earnest attempts
to raise a well reasoning adult, s/he finds that the child has not
become so. This is the case with my now 35 year old son Andy. Despite
this I have many fond memories of him as a child, teenager and even
into his very early 20s when he first entered the Navy (he had one 4
year hitch). After that point, things went down hill - to the very
bottom.... **Kitty]

> Without them 1) displaying an understanding of value-for-value trade,
> 2) discarding the erroneous proclamations of selfless parenting (and
> therefore valueless, thus anti-human, thus contradictory to reality
> or wrong), I think I'm stuck!

Other than what I have already said above applying to this, see more
analysis below.

> *All* of them (except my grandmother, who, ironically, I happen to
> respect more than the others) have communicated their desire and
> expectation that I continue investing in them.

You need to tell them very frankly that while you are pleased that they
created you and nurtured you to a state where you could be independent,
you respect very little about them as the currently are, and do not wish
to waste your time by dealing with them (ie. you are convinced any
investment of time in them will not optimally increase your lifetime
happiness). Obviously this would be best done to each individually in
writing, prefaced by some note of thanks for their contribution to what
you are and also stating your appreciation for any good qualities that
they do have. You can close with a statement of the few things (if any)
with respect to which contact with each would be welcomed and that
anything else will not be answered.

> Time and again, they
> each explain that they simply want my love, much like the love of
> Steve's mother, which is described above.
>
> Any suggestions for other ways of viewing this?

You can at least describe to each in writing how you view the meaning of
love, and why s/he does not rate as a lovable person in your view, which
means that any attempt to be loving would be a fraud on your part. This
is something that you will not do and furthermore, is such a fraud
really what they want?

>>>>> But, rather than say that (which, in fact, I have on
>>>>> occasion), I mute my emotional response. So one might say that I'm
>>>>> emotionally withdrawn. Rather than express my true emotions and
>>>>> thoughts and create conflict (since she will get angry with me and we
>>>>> will get into an argument – it's happened many times before), I
>>>>> ignore my feelings and even encourage myself to be non-responsive.
>>>>> This "ignoring of feelings just to get through the situation" seems
>>>>> exceedingly prevalent in my life.
>>>> Far better would be to greatly reduce the likelihood of encountering
>>>> such situations and instead seek emotional situations with people who
>>>> understand them and act consistently with that understanding. The fact
>>>> that she (and perhaps other people that are negative to your well-being)
>>>> are biologically related should have no bearing on this decision.
>>> I strongly agree that biological relation has no bearing on my decision
>>> to interact with people, and have begun to apply this perspective in
>>> my life.
>>> Since I understand this philosophy to be highly rational, I find it
>>> surprising
>>> that so few people agree with it. Perhaps this is because so many people
>>> have been indoctrinated by religion or family pride (or something else)
>>> that they experience strong guilt if they refuse to interact with people
>>> biologically related to themselves.
>>>
>
> Echoing what I wrote above: What about returning value for value
> received when we were children? Don't we owe them?

This is initially answered above as: Because there was no agreement by
children concerning the values that they received from their parents,
there can be no Responsibility or indebtedness (in the sense of the
NSC) for any return of such value in any form.
That having been clearly stated, however, I will now consider the
larger question of the effects on the Social Meta-Needs of actions by former
children to those who created and/or nurtured them until they
became independent (self-maintaining). Recall that the Social Meta-Needs are
those social environmental attributes (conditions,
methods, etc relating to the interactions of members of society) which
best enable each member of society to optimally increase hir life time
happiness all at the same time.
I will now present some extremes of action by a former child for each
of which I ask the reader to consider the questions:
a) What is the social effect of such action?
b) how does that effect relate to the Social Meta-Needs? and
c) What does that imply about what a rational action should entail?

Possible actions of former children wrt relatives:
1) Upon declaring independence, the former child leaves home, moves
away, changes hir name and never again has contact with hir parents or
other relatives who contributed to hir life before independence.
2) The former child despises his parents actions and ideas, but
remains as an apparent "loving" friend until their death.
3) Various in between scenarios.

Some points to consider about in between scenarios:
1) Did the relatives willfully make the choices of action and thought
that the former child finds reprehensible, or did they do the best
that they could with the then current knowledge, which "best" only
turned out to be negative in the light of new knowledge?
2) Are the relatives sincerely open to new thinking and trying to
change?
3) Are the relatives totally set and closed minded about anything
the former child has to say - which effectively means that they have
no respect for hir whatever?
4) Is there some mixture of these? Estimate how much and concerning
what things.

Don't think of this in terms of the current society, where such things
just cannot work, but in terms of the a future society, particularly
one where social preferencing is fully implemented, easy to use and
strongly used by everyone. Once you are finished thinking about how
these different actions of former children toward parents/relatives
will operate in that society will be the time to attempt as best you
can to transform the approach that you have decided is right for
yourself into actions within the present society, if possible.

> <another large snip by Paul>

And I have also snipped what was next because it was not on the same
topic as the above and was directed to Steve.

--Paul