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For Robin

In the past you have spoken critically / harshly (mostly about me but also about my relations with Carissa; and sundry issues, e.g., faith-as-if-you-know-what-it-is stated heatedly) and I have often kept quiet because (1) I have been astounded with your presumption and judgment from a point of unknowing (‘ignorance’ sounds pejorative), (2) to speak up is or seems like too much denial or admission that I could be affected, (3) you are my younger brother and I feel protective (if I perceived other people speaking to me as you do they would have been dispatched to places away from me long ago), and (4) when I have explained or remonstrated you have mostly ignored what I say or gotten pissed and / or denied any issue (e.g. when you loudly and abruptly said ‘be rational’ in a tone that would have made SCMITRA envious, you got pissed off when I said something, and later forgot / justified your behavior).

I have found your comments mostly off the mark in one way or other (fact, judgment, and what you think I should do); it is unpleasant. ‘Advice is good’ as you say but not when it is a façade for ego (generally, good advice begins and very often ends with listening—I am talking of ‘personal’ rather than ‘objective’ issues; you might have seen the cartoon ‘the person doing most of the talking is the one getting the therapy’; without listening, personal advice tends to condescension and is almost inevitably judgmental—e.g., given the broad difference between persons it tends to diminish the speaker by not opening them up to new ideas and values and the listener by imposition of irrelevance; I suppose that here I am giving you advice / admonition for advice—regarding the former I have listened to you for years and regarding the latter of course ‘admonition’ is not quite the word but it is time that I spoke clearly). Perhaps you think that you are objective and unasked for advice is objectively good; if so we are in disagreement.

I think but am not sure that you set people up against each other; in any case I don’t really care about this with other people but I am not going to let it happen with Carissa.

I can’t and don’t want to try to change you. It is usually ineffective for me to try and change others. But I can change myself.

The first thing I can do is what I have just done—tell you what I think.

The second thing is not tolerate the behavior. If / when you indulge such behavior I will stop the conversation by disengaging (politely).

The third thing, related to the above in the sense of being assertive, is that I want you to know that I want the rest of my life to be an open block of time. Time is becoming more precious; and the first priority of staying at home / writing is over; now the first priority is living out what I have learned about the nature of the world in the years that remain (people are in there as part of the world but I, not others, decide how they fit into my world). Other agendas will have to fit in as they may.