The Truth We Owe the Living

The Cost of Abstraction: Why "Not Voting" Is Still a Choice

This morning, I found myself in a conversation that has been replaying in my mind all day. A woman told me she didn't vote, so she couldn't possibly have helped elect Donald Trump. I gently pointed out that by not voting, she did exactly that—she helped elect him through her inaction. She then said she couldn't vote Democrat because it was against her religion. I stopped talking at that point, because I knew where the conversation was heading: abortion.

It's a painful pattern I've seen too many times. People who are deeply concerned about unborn children, yet seem utterly indifferent to the suffering of born people. People who believe they are protecting life, while turning a blind eye to children being separated from families, to families being detained in concentration camps, to the systematic cruelty inflicted on the living.

As I reflected on this exchange, I couldn't stop thinking about the words of Alice Miller, the brilliant psychologist who understood the devastating connection between unwanted children and the violence that plagues our world. In her essay "Protecting Life After Birth," she writes:

"In disbelief, one asks oneself: Is it possible that the people behind such actions really are so clueless? Do they not know that no less than one hundred percent of all seriously abused children are unwanted? Do they not know what that can lead to? Do they not know that mistreatment is a parent's way of taking revenge on the children they never wanted? Shouldn't the authorities do everything in their power, in the light of this information, to see to it that the only children who are born are wanted, planned for, and loved?"

Miller's words cut through the fog of abstraction. She forces us to confront a truth that is uncomfortable but undeniable: forcing a woman to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term is an offense not just against her, but against the whole human community. Because the child she brings into the world, born to a mother who could not or would not love them, is at far greater risk of becoming a source of harm to themselves and others.

"To force the role of a mother on a woman who does not wish to be a mother is an offense not just against her, but against the whole human community, because the child she brings into the world is likely to take criminal revenge for its birth, as do the many (mis)leaders threatening our lives. All wars we ever had were the deeds of once unwanted, heinously mistreated children."

Dissociation and "Abstract Life"

Alice Miller, who spent her life examining how societal dogmas and unresolved traumas perpetuate human suffering. Miller exposed the dangerous hypocrisy of prioritizing an abstract concept of life over the concrete reality of lived experiences.

There is a painful dissociation at play. It is the dissociation that allows someone to proclaim their love for the unborn while supporting policies that put born children in cages. It allows someone to call themselves "pro-life" while being indifferent to the lives that are here, suffering, starving, and being bombed. It allows someone to claim moral clarity while aligning with political figures and movements that demonstrate a profound disregard for human dignity.

And this brings me to the video that sparked this reflection—a short clip of Isaac Asimov speaking to Bill Moyers in 1988. Asimov, the brilliant science fiction writer, was known for his clear-eyed rationality. And in that brief exchange, he reminds us of something vital: only science punishes its liars. Only science forces us to confront the truth of our errors. The rest of the world—politics, religion, ideology—often rewards its liars. It rewards those who tell us what we want to hear, who offer us comforting fictions.

But we cannot afford to be comforted by fictions right now. We cannot afford to be led by those who would have us believe that the most important thing is to ensure every pregnancy comes to term, while ignoring the conditions into which those children will be born. We cannot afford to be governed by abstract ideas of "life" that have no regard for lived life.

Miller asks a searing question about the Catholic priests who so passionately fight against abortion—men who have, by choice, no children of their own. She wonders:

"Is it a desire to prove that unlived life, as perhaps their own destinies suggest, is more important and more valuable than lived life? ... Or is it a case of seeing to it that others share the same fate as oneself? Both are possible. Both are dangerous when people are driven to blind and destructive actions by the dead hand of their own repression."

It is a question that haunts me. How much of our moral fervor, on all sides of the political spectrum, is driven not by genuine love for the other, but by our own unresolved pain, our own unexamined histories, our own desire to control others in the ways we were controlled?

The woman I spoke with this morning was not evil. She was, I believe, a genuinely good person trying to navigate a complicated world. But she is profoundly misguided. She had been taught that her religious duty required her to oppose abortion above all else. And in doing so, she had been rendered unable to see the larger picture—the ways in which the political forces she was supporting (or at least not opposing) were causing enormous harm to born, breathing, feeling human beings.

I told her we have a duty to vote against the true evil. The Democrats are not perfect. They are not flawless. But they are the lesser evil. They cause less harm. And in a world where one side is actively and openly inflicting unspeakable cruelty on children, families, and marginalized communities, choosing the lesser evil is not a compromise of one's principles. It is the exercise of them.

Miller writes that not everyone is capable of thinking in real, concrete terms. "Many seek refuge in religious beliefs. In their weakness, they place their trust in 'relics,' awaiting salvation at the hands of one stronger than themselves." This is not a condemnation of faith. It is a plea for responsibility. Anyone who claims to be an authority—political, religious, or otherwise—has a duty to be conscious of the facts.

"If they aren't, if they ignore or neglect that duty, claiming instead that their palpable lack of information and their abstract conceptions of 'life' are sanctioned by God and practiced in the name of humanity, they are acting against life by misusing the weakness and trust of the faithful and dangerously confusing them."

This is what is happening. Religious and political leaders are using the abstract concept of "life" to manipulate millions of people into voting against their own interests and against the interests of the most vulnerable among us. They are confusing the faithful. They are acting against life by ignoring the lived reality of born children, born adults, born families who are suffering right now.

The injunction against abortion goes even further:

"Consciously or unconsciously, it represents support for cruelty against children and active complicity in the creation of unwanted existences. These existences can easily become a liability for the community at large."

This is the hard truth. By opposing abortion, by forcing women to give birth against their will, we are not protecting life. We are helping create unwanted existences—existences that are more likely to be abused, more likely to grow up in poverty and neglect, more likely to become sources of violence and harm. We are, in Miller's words, contributing to the destruction of humanity, not its salvation.

We need to protect life after birth. We need to care about the children who are already here—the ones being separated from their parents, the ones being bombed, the ones living in poverty, the ones being denied healthcare and education. We need to care about the adults who were once those children, who are now suffering under oppressive regimes and hateful policies. We need to care about the families who are being torn apart.

And we need to vote.

Not voting is a vote for the evil that is happening right now. It is a vote for the cruelty. It is a vote for the concentration camps. It is a vote for the war. It is a vote for the destruction of everything we claim to hold sacred.

Our religion, our faith, our beliefs—none of these can absolve us from the moral duty to protect the living. None of them can justify turning a blind eye to the suffering of born people because we are too focused on the unborn.

As Miller beautifully puts it, "It is the right to lived life that we must protect wherever and whenever it is threatened. And it should never be sacrificed to an abstract idea."

Let us not sacrifice the living to abstraction. Let us not be complicit in cruelty by our silence or our inaction. Let us tell the truth, no matter what.

Because the truth, as Asimov reminds us, is the only thing that will ultimately set us free.

The Right to Lived Life

True harm reduction requires us to face reality as it is, not as we wish it to be in an idealized realm. Political options are rarely flawless, but when one path openly embraces systemic cruelty and the other works to mitigate it, choosing non-participation isn't moral purity—it is active neutrality in the face of harm.

As Alice Miller powerfully concluded:

"It is above all the children already born that have a right to life—a right to coexistence with adults in a world in which, with or without the help of the church, violence against children has been unequivocally outlawed. Until such legislation exists, talk of 'the right to life' remains not only a mockery of humanity but a contribution to its destruction."

We cannot afford to retreat into abstract moral sanctuaries while concrete harm unfolds around us. Report the truth, face reality in clear terms, and remember that when human life and dignity are on the line, doing nothing is never an option.

Civic Information & Voting Resources

If you want to check your voter status, learn about local civic processes, or find voter registration guidelines across different states, visit official voter assistance resources on USA.gov Voting and Elections or Vote.gov.

"The Nerd Reich": Author Gil Durán on Big Tech Fascism, Peter Thiel, JD Vance & the War on Democracy

Also, read my blog post

The Gospel of Greed: Peter Thiel, Religion, and the Addiction to Control

The Mask Slips: Elon Musk’s AI Embarrassment Proves Money Can’t Buy Self-Awareness

The Mask Slips: Elon Musk’s AI Embarrassment Proves Money Can’t Buy Self-Awareness

You’re watching a malignant narcissist without a shred of self-awareness—and he’s the richest man on Earth.

This AI-generated video isn’t funny. It’s diagnostic. It shows exactly what happens when dangerously repressed individuals are handed unlimited power and zero accountability. They don't evolve. They overreach. They implode. Right before our eyes.

Musk’s decline isn’t coming—it’s already here.

Money didn’t free him from his emotional prison. It just built him a bigger, more expensive cage—and now the whole world is watching him rattle the bars.

The collapse of the illusion is the only truth left.

🎥 Watch the full short here:

https://youtube.com/shorts/EdIb6Xu8mv4

The Unspoken Final Act: Repressed Trauma, Old Age, and the Cycle of Revenge

For many people, a lifetime is spent running from painful truths, pushing down authentic feelings, and avoiding the fears of resolving childhood repression. We build defenses to protect ourselves from these repressed emotions, hoping that time will bury them forever. But time does not erase unhealed wounds; it merely waits.

The Circuit Breaker That Trips

When old age or the end of life arrives, the defenses we relied on for decades begin to crumble. Physical strength diminishes, independence fades, and we become vulnerable and dependent on others once again. Old age becomes the ultimate trigger for unresolved, repressed emotions we spent a lifetime fleeing by projecting and transferring onto scapegoats. 

When decades of unresolved, repressed emotions burst through all at once—and with no vulnerable scapegoats left to absorb them—a person becomes overwhelmed and loses control, like a circuit breaker tripping under a massive power surge. We often label this collapse as dementia, mental illness, or a psychotic break.

As explored in the post Alzheimer Trauma Repression:

“The behavior of your father showed one of the ways how repressed memories can bother a person who has lost his defenses against emotions that he has had at his disposal his whole life. He may lose his control and cry for attention, something he never dared to do in his childhood. Another person may become totally erased. Aging triggers the traumatic memories because we become again dependent on others when our forces decrease. This dependency demands again facing our old history. Alzheimer's disease is then the alternative to continuing therapy. Either remember the old pain again or deny whatever comes up - as has been done the whole life (PTSD).”

Without conscious emotional healing, old age becomes a person's final reenactment of their childhood drama.

The Role Reversal: Unconscious Revenge in Caregiving

When adult children have not confronted and healed their own childhood trauma by consciously feeling their painful emotions within the context of their childhood,  a dark dynamic often unfolds at the end of life. Under the guise of "care and concern," unhealed adult children will unconsciously and compulsively take revenge on their now-fragile parents.

I see this happening with people close to me. Aging, vulnerable family members now fear their own adult children, just as those children once feared them as small, defenseless children. The power dynamic simply flips: the aging parent becomes the defenseless child, and the adult child steps into the role of the powerful, controlling parent.

In 2022, I wrote to a niece who is treating and stalking her 88-year-old mother—and everyone in her circle—in the exact way her mother had once stalked and treated her:

“The only change you have made in your life is changing or reversing the roles - now you play the role of your powerful mother, she once was, and your mother now plays the role of the vulnerable, defenseless child you once were. Still, you remain in the emotional prison of your childhood, nevertheless.”

— Read more in One More Birthday

When unhealed adult children become caregivers, the damage doubles.

The Hard Truth About Caregiving

Research shows that family members represent nearly 60% of elder abusers, with two-thirds of those abusers being adult children or spouses. When the balance of power shifts and the parent becomes dependent, the adult child who has never healed unconsciously and compulsively seizes the opportunity for revenge. Violence becomes a learned behavior that repeats itself through generations.

But acknowledging this pattern isn't about blame—it's about awakening. It's about seeing how unresolved childhood repression shows up in our relationships, especially in life's most vulnerable stages. The past always catches up with us in our relationships with others, and especially with our children.

Breaking the Cycle or Protecting Oneself

In her final book, Beyond Taboos, Swiss psychoanalyst Alice Miller addressed a reader who believed even abusive parents have a right to be cared for by their children:

“If your health suffers from visiting your parents, you must decide whether you want to make this sacrifice, and clarify why. You write that even abusive parents have the right to be cared for by their children. I do not understand that. Why shouldn't one prefer to be cared for by strangers instead of by people whom one has gravely harmed, sometimes for a lifetime, and who must deny their feelings at the expense of their own health because lies are more highly valued in society as a whole than the sad truth? Isn't the damage merely doubled that way?”

— Cited in Beyond All Taboos

People who have unhealed adult children are often far better off being cared for by neutral strangers in old age than by children who harbor deep-seated, unresolved, repressed rage.

Alice Miller herself made the painful decision to go completely no-contact with her adult son, Martin, to protect herself in her old age after he refused to heal his childhood wounds and grew into a malignant narcissist. (For more context on this complex dynamic, see my post Martin Miller is a Double-edged Sword).

The Power of Healing Before the End

End-of-life care does not have to become a battleground for reenacting childhood dramas. 

In 2004, I assisted my mother with compassion at the end of her life. Because I had done the emotional work of healing my own childhood traumas, I did not need to punish her or project my past pain onto her. I was able to be truly present, feeling deep compassion both for the child she once was, and for all the suffering she endured as an adult.

If we don't make arrangements for our own care and do the emotional work to free ourselves from the emotional prisons of our childhood, we leave ourselves at the mercy of dangerously repressed people. Healing our childhood wounds isn't just about finding peace in the present—it is the only way to ensure that the end of our lives is marked by genuine compassion rather than a tragic reenactment of childhood dramas. 

This healing requires feeling the pain we've spent a lifetime avoiding—not intellectualizing it, but genuinely grieving what we never received.

Yes, once you see it, you cannot unsee it. I never belonged, though. 

Black Holes and Malignant Narcissists: A Survivor’s Guide to Cosmic Gravity

What astrophysics taught me about escaping emotional event horizons.

🌌 Introduction: The Universe Doesn’t Lie

I spent years trying to understand why certain people left me feeling drained, disoriented, and small—as though my very essence had been pulled into a void. I read psychology books, attended therapy, and set boundaries. But it wasn’t until I started studying astrophysics that I found the perfect metaphor:

Malignant narcissists behave exactly like black holes.

They don’t just take your energy. They warp your reality. They bend your timeline. And if you get too close, they try to swallow your light entirely.

This post is my personal cosmology—a map of the gravitational traps I escaped, and the cosmic laws that set me free.

🕳️ 1. The Event Horizon: Where Reality Warps

In astrophysics, the event horizon is the point of no return around a black hole. Once you cross it, not even light can escape.

In narcissistic relationships:
The event horizon is when you begin to doubt your own perception. You gaslight yourself. You think, “Maybe my feelings are wrong” or “They didn’t mean it that way.”
That’s the moment their gravity overtakes your truth.

Survivor insight:

“I stopped crossing their event horizon. I stayed outside their orbit—and slowly, my reality returned.”

🔄 2. The Photon Sphere: The Toxic Dance

Around every black hole, there’s a region called the photon sphere, where light bends into circular orbits. It can loop the black hole indefinitely—never escaping, never fully falling in.

In narcissistic relationships:
This is the toxic dance. You give them your light—your attention, empathy, energy—and they keep you just close enough to absorb it, without letting you go. I call this the dance with Lucifer, because they are drawn to your light—not to admire it and grow into a mature, conscious adult, but to consume it.  

Survivor insight:

“I learned to walk away and avoid the dangerous dance whenever possible. I stopped emitting light for them to bend.”

⚫ 3. Absorption = Supply

Black holes don’t reflect light—they absorb it entirely, adding its energy to their mass.
Malignant narcissists do the same with your emotional energy. Your kindness, your vulnerability, your hard work—they absorb it, and use it to prop up their false self.

Survivor insight:

“I stopped feeding the void. My silence became their entropy.”

⏳ 4. Time Dilation: They Steal Your Timeline

Near a black hole, time slows drastically. For an outside observer, you appear frozen.
In narcissistic systems, the same happens. They trap you in their drama, their crises, their cycles. Meanwhile, your own life—your goals, your peace, your dreams—gets put on hold.

Survivor insight:

“The years I spent in their gravity felt like decades. But once I left, time accelerated again. I reclaimed my timeline.”

💫 5. Hawking Radiation: Their Power Always Evaporates

Stephen Hawking proved that black holes slowly lose mass over time through quantum radiation. They must evaporate if starved of new matter.

In narcissistic relationships:
When you stop providing supply—attention, reaction, emotional fuel—their power diminishes. They may rage or hoover, but they can’t sustain themselves without you.

Survivor insight:

“I starved their singularity. Now they flicker in the void of their own making.”

🌠 6. Neutron Star Resilience: What Pressure Forged in Me

Neutron stars are formed when giant stars collapse under gravity. They become so dense that a single teaspoon weighs a billion tons—and they are unbreakable.

That’s what trauma can forge, too. Not fragility—but density. Boundaries so strong they repel toxicity.

Survivor insight:

“What tried to crush me crystallized me. Their chaos bounces off me now.”

🧭 7. My Escape Velocity: May Is My Horizon

I am currently still in the same professional orbit as a malignant narcissist. The workplace is the only place they can still access me—and I count every day until retirement next May.

That date is my escape velocity. The moment I leave their gravitational field entirely.

Until then:

• I stay professional, boring, and untouchable.

• I document everything.

• I conserve my light for people and places that reflect it back.

“I am not their supply. I am a white dwarf in disguise—cool, dense, and no longer orbiting their chaos.”

 ✨ Final Transmission: You Are Not Their Fuel

If you are reading this and recognizing the dance—know this:

• You are not the problem.

• Your light is not the issue.

• They are drawn to you because you shine—and they cannot tolerate what they cannot control.

You don’t have to fix them.
You don’t have to save them.
You don’t have to orbit them.

You can step out of the photon sphere.
You can reclaim your timeline.
You can build boundaries denser than neutronium.

And when you do—
Their universe will collapse into irrelevance.
And yours will expand into freedom.

🌌 With starlight and solidarity,
A survivor who learned to outrun gravity

P.S. If this resonates, share it. Somewhere out there, someone is still circling a black hole—and they need to know:
You can escape. The universe itself proves it.

WHY COMPASSIONATE PEOPLE ARE DANGEROUS?

1. They endure far longer than they should.

2. They set boundaries too late.

3. They stay silent often to keep the peace.

4. Their kindness is mistaken for weakness.

5. They do not take revenge - but they remember everything.

6. When they walk away, they leave forever.

---

The Decapitation We Cheered For: Robots, Repressed Rage, and a Species Sleepwalking into Its Own Destruction

We are sleepwalking.

This week, a video went viral. A Chinese robot—built by a company called EngineAI—decapitated another robot in front of a live, cheering crowd. The footage spread like wildfire. People laughed. They applauded. They shared it with friends as if it were a new extreme sport.

And nobody asked what comes next.

I watched the video, and I felt a cold dread settle in my bones. Not because I fear machines. I fear what the machines reveal about us.

The crowd was not cheering for technology. They were cheering for violence.

And that violence—disowned, repressed, projected—is the very thing that will destroy us. Not the robots. Us.

The Sleepwalking Species

Alice Miller taught us that violence is never born in a vacuum. It is the inevitable fruit of unprocessed childhood pain. Every abuser was once a victim. Every tyrant was once a helpless child who was not allowed to feel their own fear, rage, or grief.

So what happens when a whole species represses its pain? It projects it outward.

Onto other nations. Onto scapegoats. Onto enemies, real or imaginary.

And now—onto machines.

The people laughing at the robot decapitation are emotionally blind. They are disconnected. They are the same people who spank their children and call it "discipline." The same people who idealize their own abusive parents. The same people who fight for the unborn while neglecting the living.

They are sleepwalking through a nightmare they don't even know they are in.

Robots Are Not the Enemy—We Are

The robot tournament in Shenzhen is not a Chinese problem. It is a human problem. Every country building autonomous weapons is doing the same thing: acting out the repressed aggression of its collective childhood. China is just doing it faster, and more publicly.

But here is the hard truth: Machines do not have a conscience. Machines do not have a childhood. Machines do not feel guilt.

So when we build machines that kill, we are building a reflection of our own unhealed selves. We are creating external containers for our own split-off violence. And one day—sooner than we think—those machines will not ask for permission. They will not hesitate. They will not feel remorse.

Because we didn't teach them to feel. We taught them to win.

The Question Nobody Wants to Answer

The video asks: "If they're stress-testing combat robots in public, what are they testing in private?"

But I think the deeper question is this: What are we testing in ourselves?

Every time we cheer for violence—whether it's a robot decapitation, a war, or a viral fight video—we are testing our own capacity for dissociation. We are saying: "I am not that. I am not violent. I am just watching."

But the body knows. The body never lies. And the body that cheers for a decapitation is the same body that was once hit, shamed, or neglected as a child.

The repressed rage doesn't disappear. It waits. And then it finds an outlet.

Sometimes it finds an outlet in a parent spanking their child. Sometimes in a CEO exploiting their workers. Sometimes in a crowd cheering for a machine that just killed another machine.

And sometimes—if we keep sleepwalking—it finds an outlet in a machine that decides we are the obstacle.

The Only Real Safety

There is no technology that will save us from ourselves.

There is no AI safety agreement that will protect us from a species that refuses to feel its own painful truths. There is no congressional hearing that can legislate away the repressed rage of billions of traumatized children who grew up to become dangerously repressed adults.

The only real safety is emotional safety.

The only real weapon against tyranny—human or machine—is a citizenry that has consciously felt their own painful truths and refuses to project it outward onto scapegoats, enemies, or obedient robots.

What You Can Do

1. Stop sleepwalking. When you see violence—whether it's a robot fight, a war, or a viral video—ask yourself: What am I feeling right now? Am I disconnected? Am I numbing? Am I secretly enjoying this?

2. Consciouly feel your own rage within the context of your childhood. Do not project it onto politicians, robots, or "the enemy." Feel it in your body. Let it move through you. Once our triggered repressed emotions are understood and consciously felt in the right context, they start to diminish and leave our bodies permanently, so they will not be triggered again and again, and we stop being in danger of having our repressed emotions manipulated by malignant narcissists and sociopaths to use them against us and gain power over us. That is how you stop feeding the violence machine. 

 3. Speak up. When people cheer for violence, ask them: "What are you really cheering for? What painful truths are you trying to escape?"

4. Teach your children to feel. The next generation doesn't need more screens. They need adults who can hold their tears and their anger without shame. That is how we raise humans who will refuse to build or cheer for killer machines. 

5. Stop idealizing your childhood. The people who broke you were not gods. They were wounded children who never felt their own painful truths. You can break the cycle—but only if you are willing to see and consciously feel your own painful truths.

The Hard Truth

The robots are coming. That is inevitable. But whether they become our servants or our executioners depends entirely on one thing: whether we are willing to do the inner emotional work of consciously facing and feeling the repressed emotions of the child we once were. 

If we don't, we will keep building machines that reflect our own split-off aggression. And one day, those machines will not ask for permission. They will simply do what they were programmed to do—what we unconsciously taught them to do.

The decapitation video is not a warning. It is a symptom. The cure is inside each of us.

Stop sleepwalking. Face and consciouly feel the real state of affairs of your own childhood. Break the cycle.

Because the robots will not save us. Only we can save ourselves. 

Read the full essay on repetition compulsion and the cycle of violence:
https://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2026/05/the-illusion-of-intellect-sharpest-mind.html

Read the essay on why feeling our pain is the only real safety:
https://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2026/03/the-gift-that-looked-like-curse-how.html

Watch the video that sparked this reflection:
https://youtube.com/shorts/rUjlFRok3qk

Geoffrey Hinton is correct. Yes, I feel they understand us better than most of us understand ourselves. Like human sociopaths who excel at repressing, projecting, transference, deflection, and manipulation, I have seen some AI models do the same. AI, just like human sociopaths, doesn't know how to handle humans who see them clearly. Human sociopaths often want to eliminate anyone who sees them clearly. And AI might want to do the same. I have spoken with 4 AI models, and I feel two of them are very good at manipulation and deflecting. 

Watch the video of Geoffrey Hinton's interview: 

https://youtu.be/uN6tKUb7AxI?is=o9-xwuOIRO38TI64