Why Your Family is Fucked Up

Sometimes a stranger has more compassion than family members. Now that is strange, indeed.

A FACEBOOK FRIEND



Family connections make family think they have the right to control you, ridicule you, and betray you at every turn. This is nothing new since you can see this in antiquity, the plays of Shakespeare, or an old primetime soap opera like Dallas. Family is the first political institution, and families act just like any other political institution.

MY RESPONSE ON FACEBOOK



I spend a lot of time on Facebook reading status updates from many of the people there. Most of my status updates are smart ass remarks concerning politics and current affairs. But for everyone else, they are either mundane observations or heartbreaking grief. I read it all from cheating spouses to overbearing parents to kids getting into trouble. Then, you read something like the quote above comparing strangers to family members. I have read many similar statements such as this. Or as a lady put it to me once, "Family will fuck you before you a stranger will."



Why are our family members so shitty to us? Don't tell me this isn't a problem because it is. I read it everyday on Facebook. I have lived it. Your family will utterly fuck you. They will use you and betray you and treat you like complete shit without an ounce of remorse. Yet, these are the people who claim to love you.



The reason your family is fucked up is simple. They believe they own you. When you are simply a piece of property, you get treated like property. Your family's love for you is no different than their love for a milk cow or a tractor. You are a means to an end. Doubt this? Consider what family says about you or others when they express displeasure. "He is useless." "What good is he?" "What a waste." These are not expressions about people but property.



Families care about you to the extent that they can use you. If this seems sick, it is. This is why strangers are kinder to you than family members. Strangers don't own you. If they spend time with you, it is because they truly like you. If you make a mess of your life, strangers don't really care. They have their own lives, and they will feel sympathy for you. They may even help you out with advice, moving furniture, giving you a place to crash, or even lending you money. But they don't own you, and you don't own them. Because freedom and exchange are the basis of the relationship, they treat you well while expecting little. They relate to you as a person instead of as a piece of property.



Families own you. They made you, so they feel entitled to your labor, your loyalty, and your tolerance for their criticism. If you do not agree with this arrangement, they will hate you, betray you, abandon you, and actively seek to destroy you. It doesn't matter what you do with your life. If you end up as a failure in life, they will bag on you calling you a worthless piece of shit. If you succeed and become rich, they will bag on you and call you a stuck up piece of shit. Remember, your worth to them is wholly dependent on you serving their needs and ends.



The best advice I can give to people is to cut your family out of your life. Turn your back on them and walk away from them. They already think you are a piece of shit, so you won't be losing anything. What you will gain will be much more valuable. You will feel better about yourself as a person. You will become more self-reliant. You will be less afraid of being on your own in the world. And you will realize that though people are not angels, they are not demons either.



I am a lifelong bachelor, so I don't know what to tell people about starting a family. But I can say that this slave/property way of relating is fucked up. Familial love claims to be unconditional, but as I have pointed out, it is the most conditional of all loves. This is why children become estranged from parents. This is why extended family members feud with one another. This is why so much of the cultural depiction of family life is pathological. So, why do families stick together? They stick together because they are all fucked up. Normal people get out of those situations and get the hell on.



Recently, I was asked by a high schooler on Facebook who I correspond with on a regular basis about his own frustrations with his family. I don't know the particulars of his situation, and I don't need to know. He is a teenager realizing the prison he is in. My advice to him was to watch The Shawshank Redemption which is a movie about hope and escape. You want to get out of that jail and go on with your life and not look back. But when you are young, this takes time, patience, and the rest. You just have to do like Andy did in the movie and make the most of it while you are there. But you are always working to get out.



Family members are not inherently fucked up as people. All those strangers who do you kindness are also family members to someone. The guy who helps you start your car in the parking lot at Walmart probably goes home to get drunk and beat the shit out of his wife and kids. He treats you well because he doesn't own you. He treats the family badly because he owns them.



This issue expands to include the government as well. Limited governments respect the rights to life, liberty, and property of their citizens. Tyrannical governments do not respect these rights of their subjects. A citizen is free. A subject is property. When the government treats you like their property, your freedom is gone. You will also note the family thinking behind both left wing and right wing thinking. Government is either your mother or your father. Either way, they are there to tell you what to do because they own your ass. It is my belief that all tyranny begins with the family and those fucked up family ethics.



People claim that libertarian ethics are heartless, cold, and cruel. But this is not the case. Families are the ones who are heartless, cold, and cruel. I bet slaveholders back in the day considered themselves benevolent to their slaves feeding them, housing them, clothing them, and all the rest. The whip was there for their own good. This is how all evils are justified. They are always for your own good, and you need to trust the good intentions of your owners.



If you want to be free, you need to make a clean break with your fucked up family. You need to cut off ties with them and go on. Trust me on this. You will never feel better in your life once you do this. You will wonder why you never did it before then. Teenagers, pursue your independence and leave home as early as possible. Get a job and get the fuck out of there. Decide to never ever go back, and you won't. And you will be insanely happy. Burn that bridge to the last ember.



This is what individualism is about. It is about personal freedom which is the cornerstone of happiness. You need to live for yourself and eliminate anyone from your life who does not respect your rights to life, liberty, and property. If this scares you, it shouldn't. That fear is greater in your mind than it is in reality. Be your own person, live your own way, and live without regret. Your life does not belong to them. It belongs to you.

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