A Radical Reset
Our Republic has been converted into a democracy which is just another name for mob rule. The mob is getting what it wants, to paraphrase H.L. Mencken, good and hard. One day soon, the entire edifice is going to collapse under its own weight and what takes its place historically will be tyranny. A Radical Reset is the alternative and the system is called Antipolitism. It calls for a new republic based upon merit and not ambition. No parties, no money in politics, no careers in politics, and only serving the public good.
A Radical Reset
The Quiet Mind: Abandoning Victimhood for True Survival
We explore the transformative journey from victimhood to survivorship and why it's impossible to embody both identities simultaneously. Drawing from personal experiences of childhood abuse, prison, and healing, we examine how abandoning victimhood creates freedom and quiets the mind.
• Victimhood keeps us trapped in thought loops that replay trauma and pain
• Survivors acknowledge their experiences without being defined by them
• Victim mentality constantly seeks validation, perpetuating suffering
• Prison exposure to others' traumas creates perspective and transformation
• Stoic principles help separate what we can control from what we cannot
• Collective victimhood has damaging effects on culture and personal growth
• Relationships dramatically improve when we release victim identity
• True freedom comes from acknowledging past abuse without letting it define us
Check out my book "A Radical Reset" available on Amazon in Kindle, paperback and hardcover formats to learn more about anti-politicism as an alternative to our failing systems.
Good morning everybody. It's me, uncle Herbie, your host for the Spiritual Agnostic. Today we're going to take it down from the 20,000-foot level or the 40,000-foot level, depending on how you look at it. I'm speaking from a pilot's point of view of you know how ethics and religion and spirituality and philosophy affect national issues, as I've talked about for the last couple of weeks. We're going to bring it down to the individual's level and we're going to talk about today why it's impossible to be a victim and a survivor at the same time. You can either be a victim or a survivor, but you cannot be a victim who is a survivor. Now I understand that literally, that's true. I mean literally. I am a victim who is a survivor.
Speaker 1:I was raised in and I'm going to use my own experience as let's just say, I don't know just kind of set the table for the discussion. A, because it's not a secret I've never kept this secret, but I also want it and B because I want you to benefit from it. It's kind of like think of today's podcast as kind of like a miniature AA meeting. I've never been to an AA meeting but I've been to a circular. I've been to drug addiction discussions, particularly when I was in prison and you know. The value of them, as far as I can tell, is everybody tells their story and since every story is so horrible, you start to realize that your story isn't so horrible after all and maybe gain some perspective and then be able to battle your own addictions and your own demons. I don't know, I don't. I'm not going to speak to 12 step programs and how those work and what those mean, but I do. I saw value in it. That was the value I saw. I was attending just more out of curiosity than anything else, because I've never had a drug problem or an alcohol problem.
Speaker 1:Just as an aside, I don't drink and I don't drink because I have any kind of objection to it. All of my children drink. I just can't stand the taste of alcohol, so it's just not something that I like and I don't do it. I do use, just for you to know, I use marijuana and I like it and that's that. But that has you know it's not an addiction thing. I went for nearly five years in prison without ever smoking marijuana. I never experienced withdrawal, if you know what I mean. But anyway, I digress so and as I get into this today. I want to make this very, very clear Victimhood is nobody wants to be around a victim, everybody wants to be around a survivor, okay, and you cannot be effective in your life unless you are a survivor. So, and what I mean by that is when you're a victim and I until I went to prison. So, just as a little bit of background, my stepfather and this is for those of you who are not familiar with my story, and that's probably most of the people listening to this we're going to be listening to it much later than when I'm recording it, since my audience audience today is minuscule and I'm hoping to grow it. But anyway, whether I do or I don't, I'll just pretend that I am and I'll share with you that don't know me that I was.
Speaker 1:My mother divorced my natural father when I was two years old. I'm not going to go into the. You know the reasons why and all this other kind of stuff. I'm just going to set the stage for this discussion today because I don't want to have it go on for hours. And after she divorced him, we lived in Miami Beach. I was born in Miami Beach and we lived on Alton Road in a house that my grandfather bought for my mother, who was his youngest child, and we lived there, and when I was five years old, my grandfather arranged a marriage for my mother between her and a man named Samuel K. I still use his last name because my mother had him legally adopt me and since I really never had anything to do with my father as much as I hate my stepfather it's just the name, so I use it.
Speaker 1:I thought about changing, just as an aside, when I came out of prison, to use my middle name, ivan, as my last name, put an S on it and call myself Herbie Ivans, and I I almost did it, but it would have confused my children and you know, and in the end and this is, by the way, part of becoming a survivor versus a victim I just, it's just no big deal. I realized that K is the last name of my, of my persecutor and my tormentor and my abuser, but it's just the name, and there are plenty of people named K that have nothing to do with Samuel K, who was the man specifically. I'm not afraid to say his name because he's not going to sue me, because he's going to. You know, the defense of slander is that you're telling the truth and he doesn't. He's an old man now because only the good die young. I'm hoping he dies soon, but that's another story.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I carry a little anger over it, but it's not rage, but we'll get into that in a minute. So, anyway, so he came into my life when I was five and beginning almost immediately, it was a combination of being beaten and there's a big difference between a spanking and a beating and we all know what that is, so I'm not going to go into it. I suddenly was getting beaten, denigrated, because I made him insecure, because I was, I know. By the way, this is a revelation I realize now. At the time I had no idea why he absolutely on one moment would tell me he loved me and the next moment denigrate me down to the size of a peanut. You know that's, that's a wreck. Metaphor was the best, the best I could come up with in the moment. But anyway, um, or it's, it was an analogy, I think it's analogy. Anyway, the uh, he did that all the time.
Speaker 1:But the worst of all was the sexual abuse. He was a homosexual pedophile and he, I mean otherwise. Why would I mean? I realized this was only the 1960s, was 1962. But even then arranged marriages were unheard of. I mean, why would my mother and he agree to bury each other? Having not known each other? They married less than two weeks after the day they said hello. That's a true story. And the answer is both of them had serious, serious sexual issues.
Speaker 1:In my mother's case it was morbid obesity that she fought all of her life and she just basically took the first comer. She met my natural father at a fat farm, no less. I'm happy to say I'm not morbidly obese. I just like to throw that out for the record. That's pure vanity, but I wanted to share that with you. But my sister battles it to this day and it's just something that runs in the family. But anyway, having said that, why else would anyone agree to an arranged marriage?
Speaker 1:And he began the systematic abuse of me in every possible way, and this went on until I was 14 years old. So for the next nine years, until I went to live with my aunt and uncle in Miami Beach when they moved. So, subsequent to getting married to him at five, we moved to Pittsburgh from the age of five to the age of 14. I lived in Pittsburgh, then my nuclear family, including the pedophile, and my half sister, who, who I adore, and my mother, who's now dead, just for the record. Um, they all moved to Arizona for him to take a deal. Now, the real reason they moved to Arizona, I see now, I didn't realize it at the time, as I had wrecked his life in Pittsburgh.
Speaker 1:Um, when I was 11, uh, just turning 12, he had raped me and that was the last straw for me, and I got hold of the family Rolodex, and I called everybody I could think of and I told them in graphic terms what was going on in our house, which was I want you to think about this. This is 1968. No one talked about this in 1968. So my mother basically covered it up, told me that I was creating a scandal for the family, told me that we had to keep a secret, told everybody that I was a liar and that I just didn't like my stepfather, and this is why I made this whole story up. But there was enough people who believed it that I really ruined their life in Pittsburgh. But I don't care, I don't feel any guilt about that.
Speaker 1:And anyway, they took a different deal within his industry in Nogales, arizona, importing produce from Mexico, and at the same time I went to live with my family, with my aunt and uncle, in Florida, which in some ways was the first step in saving my life. The second step was the Navy. When I say saving my life, my aunt and uncle were crazier than shit, but they weren't abusive in any way, shape or form. They were just normal, crazy like most of us are. And, to make a long story short, I got a chance to have a breath of fresh air and live in peace and quiet, and it gave me some perspective. But then they got nervous that I was sharing too much in Florida, so they pulled me back to Arizona where I graduated from Nogales High School when I was 16 years old, because I was so far ahead of the high school. That was really horrible. I'm sure it's good today, but those days it was horrible. It literally took place in a building that was condemned. This is how desperately they tried to get me back into the fold, because they were just paranoid that I was going to say something to somebody which, by the way, they should have been paranoid because I didn't really keep it a secret. And to make a long story short, yada y. And to make a long story short. Yada, yada, yada.
Speaker 1:The relationship was poisonous. I haven't spoken to my stepfather in a very long time. I carried around an enormous amount of rage for years and years and years that just suppressed inside me. I felt like a victim of all of this and it absolutely affected my marriages and everything else, because I inherently didn't trust women, because of the betrayal of my mother. I mean and I know I'm shooting through this stuff really, really, really, really fast but these are all the scars that came upon me and all the things that made me feel like a victim, okay, at of of all of this.
Speaker 1:And it was always in my mind. It was always in the back of my mind, it was always present, it would. It took very little to get me to discuss it. It was just a pinprick, is all it would take until, frankly, I went to prison and that's not an excuse for my behavior. Millions of people have gone through what I went through and worse, and did not do the things I did. So I don't want you to hear in any of the things I'm telling you as an excuse for why I became a criminal, in any of the things I'm telling you as an excuse for why I became a criminal. But the truth of the matter was that when I got to prison and before I came to realize that not only am I not alone in being a target of an abusive person or an abusive lifestyle or sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, not only am I not unusual, it's almost common. One of the things you develop when you've been the target of this and you're a survivor of it is you pick up kind of a radar for other survivors. And over the years I've come to realize it's terrifying how many people have experienced a very similar thing behind closed doors and it affects them a lot of different ways. And this is where I come down to. You can either be a victim or a survivor.
Speaker 1:In the topic, the central discussion of today's conversation, when you're a victim, you are always trolling for offense. Okay, in the sense that you're looking for. A victim looks for what am I looking for? Confirmation, and I don't think that's the right word. Validation, that's the right word. A victim is always looking for validation of their victimhood. They're always, you know, when you get into a discussion and someone starts to talk about something that's happened to them which, on a scale of one to 10,. What you experienced was a 10, and what they're talking about is a two and they're making it sound like it's, you know, a national disaster. You know you almost can't wait. You're formulating a way to bring it into the discussion, to bring out your victimhood, if not discussing it in graphic terms, just the entire attitude of a victim you know is one of I don't know. It's a damaging way to operate. You cannot effectively run your life as a victim.
Speaker 1:It is something of a miracle that I put up the facade that I did for as long as I did as a victim, because that was the center of my existence and it took away from everything I did and I didn't even. I never made the distinction between victim and survivor. I thought I was a survivor when I was a victim. All along I was allowing, I was allowing my past experiences to replay in my head over and over again like a thought loop, and in doing so I kept reliving the experience which kept revalidating my victimhood, which kept making me feel like I was different. And the way I think of it is, it made me a very dented can. I couldn't roll smoothly down the road. There were too many dents in the can, where I lost the victimhood and I shared this with you, and I think this relates kind of to the 12-step thing, even though I've never gone through it is I hit my bottom, which for me was prison.
Speaker 1:And in prison I came to realize, through the exposure to people every single day, when I first went to prison, I used to hear people say you know, I grew, you know what they used to ask you ask me, what did you do? What did you do on the streets? What do you do on the streets? Now, I always thought that was a metaphor. I didn't think the straight, the streets were literal, but these people, they meant this literally. These are people who literally live their lives on the street. Oh, they would sleep. I'm not saying they were homeless all the time. A few of them were. We had a few of those guys, but most of them went from, you know, shitty situation to shitty situation to shitty situation, sleeping on couches, really, really rough apartments. You know, rented trailers, things like that.
Speaker 1:Um, and I'm not talking manufactured homes, I'm talking trailer, two different, complete, like travel trailer, two different things and it and they live very, very, very tough, much, much tougher than mine and I, my attitude, began to change and I felt, first of all I felt empathy, and then I started to feel understanding, and then I started to realize that what I'd experienced, as horrible as it was, was not the most horrible. And I had a choice to make. And I had a choice to make. I could either convert my victimhood to simply part of what makes me interesting and kind of like a diamond has a lot of facets Instead of making my victimhood a flaw that would make the diamond break apart, I converted it to just another facet, just another way, another part of my personality that, instead of, for example, making me distressed every woman I meet, instead it transformed into I would say, speaking from a stoic point of view a sort of wisdom about my relationship with women. And I'm going to use that as I'm just thinking to myself, as I'm going along here, because obviously I don't speak from a script. That's a good microcosm of where the transformation took place between victimhood and survivorship.
Speaker 1:As a victim, I was constantly looking for, whether consciously or unconsciously, confirmation that women can't be trusted. And then what you do is you set up the betrayal itself. And the way I would set up that betrayal was to be an over-promiser. You know if you promise somebody something and then don't do it, that's going to set up betrayal and if you do it enough times, they're going to betray you. You know my first wife ended up. You know our divorce was over infidelity her infidelity but in fact, if I'm being honest, my behavior drove her to it, but I was so blind to it that I didn't know. I kept that I was setting up betrayal in her mind and making her feel unsafe. And you know she did. I wish she wouldn't have done it, but you know it is.
Speaker 1:It is completely understandable within the context of my own behavior as a victim, although at the time I took it not nearly as magnanimously as I'm taking it now. I was, I was furious, but that is another difference between victimhood and survivorship. As a survivor, I can look and see how my behavior was part of the problem and then come to some reconciliation with it, but as a victim, I can never reconcile with it because it is constantly a loop in my mind. The victimhood plays like a movie that never comes to an end in your head. I know you guys know what I'm talking about. This is why, by the way, regrets are such a stupid thing, because a regret is nothing more than you rethinking something you've done and wishing you hadn't done it, which is another term for what I call a thought loop thinking through something and then coming to the exact same conclusion over and over and the exact same wish over and over to nothing. All it does is waste energy and waste mental energy and waste what could be creativity instead of moving on. A survivor doesn't do that. A survivor.
Speaker 1:The difference is simple. As a survivor, what you say to yourself is that was part of my life experience, it's part of what makes me interesting, but unless you bring it up, it's not something I even think about it. You know, I thought about it obviously in the context of having this discussion with you guys today, but in the broader picture, I can honestly tell you that where before prison, victim Herbie would sometimes I call myself Herbert Herbie, that's why that kind of sounded like I was talking like President Biden but anyway, victim Herbie would have been, would have repeated the same behavior over and over. Survivor Herbie recognizes it's not that I don't have the same feelings sometimes. I just recognize them for what they are and reject them, and on a day-to-day basis. You know Samuel K doesn't enter my mind. You know he just doesn't when he used to enter it.
Speaker 1:I used to run scenarios of how I'd like to murder him, frankly, and all kinds of different things and all kinds of ways that karma would get him and have thoughts of revenge and anger and rage. And you know it's amazing how freeing you know what is rage? But anger turned it on yourself, right, you know it just turns into an acid and and and boils into rage and and rage is, is is an out of control emotion. And so you do things. You know you can be angry but be in complete self-control. I'm not going to lie to you and say I don't get angry today. I do get angry, but in little things. I'm angry for five minutes and then it's like how important is it in the great scheme of things? Which is also why philosophy has become so important to me.
Speaker 1:Let's relate this to Stoicism. First of all, you're going to have to have the courage to admit talking about the first pillar of Stoicism. Courage. You're going to have to have the courage to admit talking about the first pillar of stoicism. Courage, you're going to have the courage to admit that all the things that you if you're feeling like a victim of anything, whether it's racial discrimination or sexual discrimination or family abuse, like I've gone through, whatever it is, whatever it is that's setting you up as a victim in any part of your life. You first have to have the courage to admit is really no big deal, okay, anything short of killing you is really no big deal because no one really cares.
Speaker 1:Okay, you know that's the other part of victimhood. You want everyone to care about it, otherwise you don't feel like you're. You're being validated as a victim where the survivor doesn't give a shit if anyone knows or not, and if it comes up in conversation, you don't deny it, but then again you let the conversation move off of it. It's not the center of your existence. We're in victimhood, oh yeah. Well, you don't know what I've been through, the kind of things that he put me through or she put me through or da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. We've all heard it.
Speaker 1:And and if you're doing that, if you're feeling like everything in your life is somehow related to some wrong done to you, particularly in childhood, let it go, okay. You have to have the courage to admit you're a victim. That's the first step, because unless you acknowledge that you're behaving like a victim. How can you possibly stop behaving like something you don't acknowledge? Okay, stop behaving like something you don't acknowledge, okay. Then you have to understand that there is, you know, when we talk about the second pillar of stoicism, justice. You are not going to receive justice for your victimhood. Just get over it. People have their own problems. You are not going to achieve whether it's you know, something that's on a public level, restitution, or whether it's an apology from your abuser. I mean, I confronted my stepfather straight out at my sister's wedding, looked him right in the eye, had it out with him, did not get an apology, will not get an apology, okay. And the other thing that you have to understand is that you're not going. It's no matter how much.
Speaker 1:I know that you said that people who are victims here's how you know you're a victim. Why doesn't he, why can't they? Why don't they? You start asking that. Why, question, don't they understand? Why doesn't he see? Why doesn't he change? Or she change? You can make it interchangeable. It doesn't matter whatever the case might be, and the answer is they don't give a shit and they're not going to. And all this stuff is just in your head, all this noise that's screaming. Your abuser abused you because they didn't care in the first place. They're not going to care later.
Speaker 1:Whoever victimized you, in whatever way it might be, whether it's physical or sexual or financial or whatever it might be, when they did it they felt justified doing it and to expect that they're going to have changed is to have a very unrealistic expectation. I mean, if one day they show up at your front door and surprise you and just throw themselves at your feet and apologize. But you know, mostly they justify it, that piece of shit that sexually abused me in his weird way of describing it. He viewed it as an act of love and I'm sure he was a victim. But again, I don't feel empathy for him. I don't feel anything for him. That's the key. Goodbye, good luck. It's a closed chapter. What's done is done.
Speaker 1:You have to recognize the kinks in your armor that have been left behind by the victimhood, but you can't have that awareness by the victimhood, but you can't have that awareness. So, like, for example, today, I am single but I occasionally date and one of the great things now is is I can just sit down without expectation when I sit down with a woman and we sit down and discuss and we start talking to see if there's any kind of compatibility and so on and so forth. I can honestly tell you that betrayal is not on my mind. It's much quieter in your head when you're not a victim, when you're not replaying a story in your head. Life is so much quieter.
Speaker 1:And that brings me to wisdom, moderation, which is another pillar of stoicism. It applies in a general you know just, it applies in a general sense in this situation, and that you really need to tamp down your noise. Nobody really wants to hear it. But but as far as wisdom goes, you have to have the wisdom of understanding that your abuser was probably abused themselves, and not to feel empathy for them, but to understand that they couldn't have been anything other than but than what they were, and you were just unlucky and got in their way and were the target. And I know that when I say this, a lot of you are going. You don't understand If the two words together, yes and but, are in your head right now yes, but you don't understand. That's the sign you're off in delusion land. You know there is no, yes, but Okay.
Speaker 1:Your abuser, your persecutor, your enemy, whatever, whoever it is that has caused this feeling of victimhood in you, or whatever it is that has caused this. Maybe it's an institution, maybe you know, whatever it might be doesn't care and they don't care. So your choice is either to give them power over you that they're not even asking for anymore because they've moved on. That's what it is with sociopaths and psychopaths They've moved on to their own thing and live your life and forget about it. Not to forget that it ever happened, okay, but forget about it in the sense of it's a central thing in your life. It's just one more experience that you've had along the way, together with the joyful ones, which, by the way, you'll have a lot more joyful experiences as a survivor.
Speaker 1:As a survivor, you can look back with pride at overcoming something that was awful. As a victim, you can take no pride at all in your behavior because you're allowing yourself to be constantly re-victimized by the same situation or person that did it before, and they don't even know they're doing it because you're empowering them through your own victimhood behavior. Do not be a victim, be a survivor and, in a broader sense, as a culture, and I'll just say this in closing this would help us all out, no matter what group we all belong to, let's bring it to group victimhood just to close it out. For those of you who have not experienced personal victimhood and thank God you haven't, by the way good for you, great but if you haven't, then let's look in the broader cultural context of what victimhood is doing to our culture and our country, and that is we have so many groups that are victims. They begin to feel entitled to some sort of recompense or reparation for what's happened and just forget it. You know what you don't, I don't. The world doesn't owe me anything because of what Samuel Cade did to me, and the world doesn't owe you anything because, let's say, let's just talk about the big one in the room. You maybe are a black and feel that you are a victim of the, the legacy of slavery, and blah, blah, blah. You know, nothing could be more ridiculous than to demand reparations and feel like a victim for something that you've never experienced from people who never did it to you. Okay, that's the. That's, that's the pinnacle of absurdity in victimhood versus survivorship. What you should be saying is even if you feel like you've had to overcome things as a black person, great, have pride that you did that as a survivor, not as a victim. Don't ask for any. I don't think Samuel K is.
Speaker 1:I'll give you a good example. When I broke away, I knew I was kissing off an inheritance Not a huge inheritance, but several million dollars that right now in my life would come in pretty handy when the old guy dies and he's 88 years old Now. You know that's the way it goes and I knew it when I did it. But it was to me a small price to pay for my emotional freedom. But I don't ever think to myself there's no, there's on no planet. Until this moment, talking to you about it, I haven't thought about it in years. As a matter of fact, weirdly enough, I don't think about it Not at all when he dies and all the money goes to my sister, who's my half sister, by him, and that's fine. God bless her. Good luck, I don't want it, it's just, I don't care, I've let it go.
Speaker 1:You have to genuinely let it go. To be a survivor is to let go of your victimhood completely and entirely and, instead of wrapping yourself in a demand for recompense or reparation, to instead be proud of what you've accomplished and then make a contribution in a meaningful way to your family, your community and your culture and your relations. One last thing your relationships with everybody you know will get so much better when you shake off victimhood. So much better. Anyway, that's all I've got for you today.
Speaker 1:For those of you who would like to read my book A Radical Reset, which describes anti-politism, which is the solution, let's say magically, hypothetically, that President Trump were successful and he got us out of this horrible mess we're in and we somehow grow our way out of this whole financial thing. Great, great, great, great, great. But how do we guarantee that it never happens again? Anti-politism, let's say it's more likely that he's not going to succeed and we're going to end up in a pile of manure. Well, that's when the really bad people come out.
Speaker 1:And then democracy historically always ends in tyranny and mob rule, because democracy is mob rule. The reason that our founders set up our country as a republic and not a democracy was because they understood that democracy is a horrible form of government. As HL Mencken said and I'm paraphrasing because I'm doing this from memory democracy is when the common man gets what he wants good and hard, you know, and that's what we're getting right now. We're getting what we demanded as a people, good and hard, and we're going to pay a price for it. So what comes next? And how do we prevent it from happening again? And how do we emerge from the ashes without having a dictator or a strong man or a charismatic phony, fraud, self-serving psychopath, which is what always ends up? Historically, this is the end of democracy. This is what happens.
Speaker 1:But if you're looking for a realistic alternative and something to really hang your hat on, that's interesting and, believe me, you'll try to find holes in it. You won't check out anti-politicism. Pick up my book, a radical reset. It's available at Amazon on Kindle, paperback and hardcover. Also, you know, share, like blah, blah, blah. Pass it on. Share, share the podcast. And uh, what else did I want to say? Oh, and if you'd like to help support the podcast, there will be a link to come to my Buzzsprout website, which is where I post these things, because I really don't have any idea how to edit and do anything anyway and I don't really feel the need to learn, since there's automation and AI for this sort of thing. Anyway, that'll link you to my website and on that website, you can support the show financially if you choose to. I love you, whether you do or you don't. That's it. Have a beautiful day Until Friday, the next podcast. Have a great week, peace out.