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
Taming the Fire Within: A Guide to Healthy Hatred
Rage burns while anger fades. This profound distinction forms the foundation of a practical approach to managing our deepest, most entrenched negative emotions. For those who've experienced severe betrayal or abuse, traditional advice to "just forgive" can feel not only impossible but invalidating.
Drawing from personal experience with childhood trauma and the rage it produced, this episode introduces the concept of "healthy hatred" – acknowledging legitimate negative feelings while breaking free from their obsessive grip on your consciousness. Rather than forcing forgiveness when it feels unnatural, we explore how to stop destructive thought patterns through practical techniques that don't require spiritual leaps or denial of genuine harm.
The key breakthrough comes in recognizing that the repetitive conversations in our heads are fundamentally untrue. These mental loops trap us in cycles of bitterness that repel positive connections and healthy relationships. Learning to interrupt these patterns with simple practices creates freedom without requiring forgiveness.
We also tackle the challenging task of dealing with others caught in rage spirals. Whether facing an enraged customer, a political zealot, or anyone unable to be reasoned with, five magic words provide a bridge between emotional reality and practical necessity: "Be that as it may..." This phrase, coupled with the patience to let others fully express their frustration before responding, transforms seemingly impossible interactions.
Whatever emotional burdens you carry, this episode offers practical paths forward that honor your experience while preventing past wounds from determining your future. Breaking free from hatred's grip doesn't mean pretending it never happened – it means reclaiming your mental landscape from those who've harmed you.
Good morning dudes and dudettes. It's me, herbie, the host of the Spiritual Agnostic, where we posit that religion is a good thing. But for those of us who are secular and therefore cannot summon the belief in God and I call myself agnostic as opposed to atheist, because I think atheists are assholes who try to basically form their own religion, without redemption and without a God, and then tell everybody else how stupid they are so I'm an agnostic. I don't think there's any evidence that God exists, but then again, I could be wrong, and so therefore, frankly, at the age of 68, I hope that when I close my eyes for the final time, I open them. On the other side. What can I say? I hope that it's all right, but if it isn't, I hope it's all right, unless I'm going to hell, in which case I hope it's all wrong. But anyway, who knows? That's what it really comes down to.
Speaker 1:But society was built on a foundation of religion. If we don't replace, religion's not coming back, guys. There have been roughly 10,000 gods since the creation of civilization. Civilization was built on religion and gods since the creation of civilization. Civilization was built on religion. But science has killed that when religion used to explain the unexplainable. Why did the sun come up and go down? Why were there seasons? Why are there plants and animals, good and bad? All those things were all explained by religion. Today we know because of science and I mean science as a process, not as a thing, but you know science, the modern scientific process of discovering what is true and what is not. We have ripped away the mystery and all the big mysteries. We know why the sun comes up and goes down. We know how space works. We know the stars are not just lights in the sky. We know the earth was not created in seven days. We know a lot of things. No, the earth was not created in seven days. We know a lot of things and because of this, faith has transformed itself from believing in an explanation of all that is to believing in what cannot be true.
Speaker 1:Faith is the practice of believing in what can't be true by any rational explanation. In other words, you're believing in the supernatural, a word that I don't think existed until science killed what people of religion thought was natural, frankly. So you have to believe in invisible beings, and I personally don't, and I mean this sadly. I have a healthy envy of religion. I wish I could summon faith. I think, on balance, religion is a great thing. Summon faith. I think, on balance, religion is a great thing.
Speaker 1:It's done a lot of bad things, but if your standard is perfection, then you're going to be consistently disappointed in a human world. Religion on the whole has been a positive thing because it gives people meaning in their lives, and we're going to have to replace that meaning with something else. Otherwise, we're going to descend into a well of decadency and we will self-destruct, and that will be the end of us. That's exactly how the end will come if we don't find another way out. I personally focused on Stoicism as a philosophy, mixed in with a little Taoism, and we'll talk about that as we go on.
Speaker 1:However, today I want to talk to you about a more practical podcast, which is basically how to deal with hate, both from other people and yourself. Now, first I'm going to start with myself and dealing with hatred, and then I'm going to tell you how to deal with people that are so enraged as to become embittered and how to cope with that, when they simply don't listen to a word you say. But we'll get to that in just a minute. Let's deal with our own hatreds.
Speaker 1:I was from the age of five till the age of 14, when I went and lived with my aunt and uncle. I was raised by my mother and a stepfather and my stepfather was a pedophile, a homosexual pedophile, so I was the target of his ire and he was a child beater and he was mentally abusive. I had the trifecta. I'm not going to go into all the gory details and, by the way, I want to make this very clear those of you who have listened to me before know that I have been to prison, that I committed a crime that I did commit, and I don't deny it.
Speaker 1:And I don't want you to associate this background of my own as an excuse as to why or some kind of explanation as to why I did what I did. I did what I did was a complete failure of character on my part and was wrong Period. End of story. Plenty of people have gone through what I went through and didn't commit a crime at all. So it is not an excuse. I'm just sharing my background unrelated to the rest of my story. So and of course it isn't unrelated.
Speaker 1:But you know, look, guys, you can decide what you want to decide about me personally. I don't really care. You know I say this. I hope you care enough that you enjoy the podcast. But me as a human being, if you hate me, you hate me I. I it's not, it's just there's nothing I can do about it. And so I don't worry about what I can't control. I think that's a healthy life lesson, you know, regardless of where you are in the great scale of things. You know, stop worrying about what you can't control. But anyway, back to the subject matter at hand.
Speaker 1:So I went through all of this and to say that I hated my stepfather would be the understatement of the year. I had. I had very graphic homicidal thoughts. I wanted to kill him. I plotted his murder many, many, many times in my head. Um, I let's just say I'm not going to go through it all point by point. That's how much I hated him. It was a murderous rage. It was way beyond hate and it had worked itself up into murderous rage.
Speaker 1:The last time I spoke to him was at my sister's wedding. Who's my half-sister and his natural daughter and I crashed the wedding. It's a long story, but I ended up going on a long walk with him. I confronted him face to face and I told him to his face that if I ever saw him again or saw him around my children, I would cut out his heart with a steak knife and he would die watching it beat in my hands. Those were the exact words I used.
Speaker 1:So you can tell that I was enraged, and there's a difference between rage and anger. Anger you get over. Rage just burns within you like the eternal flame. You know, it's an incredibly debilitating thing. From the time I was five and he moved into my house till I went to prison. Frankly, the central thing that was going on in my internal thought processes, in the background of everything I did, playing, even in my happiest times, there was a background of this. It was this burning, rage and hatred and feeling of victimization that goes with it, that I suffered as a result of my childhood and I went down the roads you would expect me to go down in trying to deal with it. Obviously, I wouldn't be talking to you if I had committed murder.
Speaker 1:I did not murder him. I just fantasized about murdering him. I have to tell you I planned at least two dozen ways of killing him and getting away with it. The reason I didn't kill him was not that I didn't think I'd get away with it, but in the end I just I'm not a monster, I can't do it. I can't, I can't. Two wrongs don't make a right. That was basically the conclusion I came to. Murdering him would solve nothing other than complicating my own life.
Speaker 1:So I did not murder him, but the rage remained within me and over the years I sought counsel from many people. I sought counsel from psychiatrists and psychologists. I sought counsel from rabbis and pastors, and all of them, basically, would begin with you've got to forgive him. Okay Now, not necessarily to his face, but I had to, and mean it, forgive him in order to move on, and I found that to be an impossible directive. I could not forgive him. I cannot forgive him. You know, forgiveness is something that you ask for and, like all psychopaths, he's never asked me for my forgiveness. So I'm not going to grant it unilaterally on my own.
Speaker 1:I think if he showed up at my front door and said forgive me, now he's still alive, because only the good die young, and he was born in 1936, which makes him, going on, 89 years old. I'm hoping that when he does die, it's a slow and painful death. I'll be honest with you. That's how I feel about it. However, in prison, something magical happened. I don't really know why it happened. It was a revelation to me, no-transcript, um, without going to prison. Of course, this is not what I'm advocating, but if you can make what happened to me happen in your own life and I'll I'll give you my reasoning for it and hopefully you can take some value from this.
Speaker 1:I think those of you who have suffered egregiously at the hands of another, regardless of what it might be, to where you're carrying a rage not a rage burns, anger goes away. You know, you get mad at your whatever friend, dog, sister, brother, child, and you're over it. That's anger. Rage is a whole different story. It's that fire of hatred that burns within. You see, you know I say this not jokingly.
Speaker 1:One of the reasons that I rarely date is that I prefer to date women my own age, if only because they know the same music, they know the same jokes, it's much easier. Sex is great and everything, but it doesn't last 24 hours a day, at least not at my age. Actually, it didn't last 24 hours a day when I was 21. I mean, at some point you have to talk to who you're with. And if you have no commonality, what's the point? Unless you're a sex addict, which I am not commonality like what's the point unless you're a sex addict, which I am not?
Speaker 1:I've always enjoyed sex in the context of the relationship, not in the context of just getting laid. Consequently, for me, believe me, women my own age are plenty horny. If that was my goal in life, I could go out. One of the great things about women is the older they get, the more they realize that their vaginas are not platinum plated. When a woman is 21, it's like their vaginas are platinum plated because they're so special. But as you get older, women start to realize they're there for fun, just like with men, and we have a good time and that's fine. The problem with that is that then it's over and you have to talk to them. So I prefer women my own age.
Speaker 1:That said, I rarely date. The reason I rarely date is because so many women my own age, that said, I rarely date. The reason I rarely date is because so many women my own age are bitter, and they're bitter usually because of betrayal, because betrayal almost always turns on bitterness. The other person, by the way, that I felt rage for was my mother, because she betrayed me. She knew what was going on. I'm telling you. I'm not saying that because I think that she must have known. I told her. I didn't keep it a secret. I was a verbal kid, just like I'm a verbal adult, and I was very clear what was going on. And she still, because, to avoid a public scandal, she covered it up and betrayed me. And so I hated her. If anything more than I hated him, to me it was the. You can imagine how wonderful it was to date me.
Speaker 1:I have such a deep trust of women Today. I do, but back in the day it was really anyways. That explains my two failed marriages, by the way. So anyway, moving right along. So women my own age tend to be bitter for kind of the same reasons they were normally. So women my own age tend to be bitter for kind of the same reasons they were normally.
Speaker 1:If they aren't widowed and they're divorced, nine times out of ten the divorce happened because the husband left the wife for another woman, and it was always a younger woman. And that, anyway, the most unpleasant thing in the world is sitting across the dinner table from a bitter woman. Or I'm sure, if I were a woman, a bitter man. Where they go on and on and on about their ex, I'm not interested, I don't care, I don't want to know. There's always two sides in a divorce. Yet All those things go through my head. All I want to do is get away from it. You know, nobody who is not self-flagellating wants to get involved in a relationship with somebody embittered.
Speaker 1:So my choice is I don't date younger women out of respect for my daughters. It's not that I don't find younger women attractive, but I have a. My oldest daughter is 47 and my youngest daughter is 30. Let me just think 30. Right, she was born in 94. So she's 30, going on 31,. But they're both getting older and they crossed the 30 threshold.
Speaker 1:When you know, women, at least culturally, tend to lose dating value. I'm not going to get into that, I'm just talking about a cultural perception, right or wrong, it's just there. And I'm not going to undermine their value as women, although one is married and one isn't and again, not important for this podcast. I'm not going there. The fact is I don't want to send the message that I don't value them as their most important male in their lives outside of their husbands. I just refuse to belittle them that way. It just would be an insult. So I don't Okay. So enough about me. So I don't date bitter women and I myself was embittered.
Speaker 1:So how did I deal with my own bitterness, my own rage synonymous terms and come to grips with it to make me a healthy person today? And the answer is instead of forgiving, which I found impossible and stressful. It got to the point where I was told to forgive them so many times by various people, secular and non-secular, that my head was going to explode. I got tired of that advice, but I converted it into what I call a healthy hatred. I think healthy hatred is much more achievable than getting over being forgiving someone. When you're embittered, you're not going to forgive them. What you have to do is stop thinking about them. That's healthy hatred. So I don't have a magic pill for this. It's something that comes with practice. I just made a decision.
Speaker 1:When I first went down into prison, I had a lot of time on my hands and I was able to meditate and think for hours and hours on end with nothing to interrupt me, because there was nothing to interrupt me in this endless nearly five years of boredom. That's not really true. I did a lot of things to keep my mind active, but I did a lot of meditation and thinking and I came to the conclusion rationally and I'm not quite sure how I was able to do it that I can't let go of the hate, but I can let go of the obsession. So, where there was this thought loop that was playing in my head over and over again of how I was wronged by this guy, I just literally don't think about it anymore, but I hate him. If he showed up at my front door today, I'd slam it in his face or maybe slap him across the face on both sides, or maybe even punch him in the nose and kick him over backwards I don't care how old he is but then I'd close the door and forget about it, because the fact of the matter is I'm perfectly entitled to hate him. What he did deserves hate. It doesn't. It's not a dislike thing. It's deserves hate. It doesn't. It's not a dislike thing, it's. And I'm not going to forgive him unless he asked for it. And even if he does, he's not forgiven and I just don't. Instead, I just accept the fact that I hate him, Like I accept a lot of other things.
Speaker 1:Like I accept my own guilt in the crime I committed, like I accept my culpability in my divorces, Like I accept you know both good and bad. I accept what I've done in my life. I also accept that I was a great father and I raised four healthy, wonderful children. I accept that everything in life doesn't have to be negative, that you accept and you don't have to be falsely modest either. I mean, I've done lots of things well. If you knew me, you'd find me very interesting and engaging and very conversational and very friendly, and those are all good things and I embrace the fact that I'm good at them. I know I'm a great public. It's just a good thing. There's nothing wrong with being honest with who you are, but part of being honest is also being honest with who you hate, but not obsessing on it because you cannot control it.
Speaker 1:So when I adopted Taoism at least the central tenet of Taoism, which is it's better to be busy, it's better to do nothing than to be busy doing nothing I made the connection of that to my own personal feelings and realized that all that hatred was me just being busy doing nothing. I made the connection of that to my own personal feelings and realized that all that hatred was me just being busy doing nothing. All it did was weaken me. It didn't weaken him, so I stopped doing it. I just decided to do nothing. Doing nothing meant pretending he didn't exist as far as I'm concerned, except for like in this podcast, where I'm trying to impart something of value to you as a human being. I don't think about him. I wasn't thinking about him until I decided to do this podcast and I won't think about him after I stop doing this podcast. You know he's dead to me, even though he's alive, and that's a healthy hatred.
Speaker 1:So my advice to you is with your own hatreds and your own bitterness, if you want to have a good life Because bitterness is also like a force field that repels the healthy from you. Like if you're a man or woman, it doesn't matter, and you are single, let's say, and you're out in the dating world, you're wondering why you seem to be dating the same kind of flawed person over and over. It's because you're obsessed. Something's going on in this internal conversation, this thought loop going through all of our heads. Let on, in this internal conversation, this thought loop going through all of our heads, let me tell you something the internal conversation in your head is a lie. I don't care what it is, it's a lie. It just always is. It's a rule of law. The repetitive conversation that goes on. All of us have a core conversation that goes on in our heads that we talk to ourselves about all the time. And you know it's true, it's that loop, it's a lie. I'm just telling you. And the minute you recognize it's a lie, you're free from it. And then you could just you know.
Speaker 1:I'll give you a really good example. When I start going to dark places, here's my little trick that I do for myself. You can do your own thing, but for my thing is I say out loud stop it. I know how simple that sounds, but when I start going down the hatred loop, I go stop it and I stop it Through practice. Practice makes perfect. I've learned to stop it. Okay, that's my trick. Maybe you can snap yourself with a rubber band, but whatever it is, you've got to snap out of it.
Speaker 1:As they say, let's move along to how you deal with somebody. Now let's say that you're dealing with somebody who's enraged and embittered and you have to deal with them as in a business situation and they are just in crazy mode. And let's say you're dealing with a very, very angry customer. Or let's say you're dealing with a fanatic, like a climate cultist, somebody who believes the world is ending and it's all caused by man. And no matter what you say or do, they're just there and they're going to go over and loop and loop and loop. How do you deal with crazy? You know, with that kind of and I define it well, I don't. Dietrich Bonhoeffer defined it and I accept it as the definition that's just stupidity.
Speaker 1:Stupidity is when a person cannot be reasoned with. It doesn't matter how intelligent they are, they're stupid. Intelligence and stupidity are two different things. So you know idiocy might be, you aren't smart enough to learn. Stupidity is you are smart enough to learn but you refuse to learn. You're stupid. So when a person you're dealing with is enraged, that means they're bitter. That means that bitterness is incurable. Okay, it's just, it's just there in them and they're going to.
Speaker 1:Here's how you handle it. This is the Herbie's practical guide. Step one you've got to shut the fudge up and let them talk. Don't interrupt them, don't get in their way. Don't get in their way. I'm going to use the scenario for the example in this podcast, of a person who you're dealing with in a professional setting that's infuriated. They're just beyond it, they're enraged, they're screaming. How do you deal with it? Easy, you shut up and you let them get it out of their system.
Speaker 1:Now, when I say that there's no time limit on this, my personal record for listening to the same story over and over is six and a half hours, which was on a business deal in Mexico. That went on and on and on and on. But you have to let them go on and tell you their story until they've repeated themselves so many times that they recognize they're repeating themselves and finally stop talking and give you room. Okay, it will happen. But it won't happen if you repeat them. Don't give them. Have you thought of it? This, everything you're about to say, everyone's told them before. Just assume that. Assume that you are not the unique fountain of wisdom. So if you tell them to calm down or have a different perspective or understand this or that you're talking to yourself, stop it, be quiet, let them talk it out. As long as it takes, and as long as it takes we'll be guided by.
Speaker 1:When they finally say to you some version of. Okay, I guess I've told you all I have to tell you, or I'm repeating myself, or some version of that. Then here you've got to remember Herbie's five magic words. Here are the five magic words. Even after they've talked themselves out, believe me, a person who is enraged will go right back into another round of repetition unless you use these five words, and word for word. This is a rare piece of advice where I'm giving you word for word. Here are the words Ready. Here they come, five words, be that as it may. Okay.
Speaker 1:When you use those words, be that as it may, you're not telling them they're wrong. You're saying you're right, but you're also going to present the world as it is. So the person's yelled at you, they're screaming, they've gone over and over and over. You've been listening to them for an hour. They finally get to the point of bup, bup, bup.
Speaker 1:You say, be that as it may, here's what we need to do, because it's the only way it can be done. And at that point you've gone as far as you can go. Okay, and about 50% to 80% of the time, depending on you, know your luck of the draw. Be that as it may, we'll put it aside because you're not making them wrong. Be that as it may, here's what we need to do. And then they usually accept it and go okay, you're right, that's what we have to do. Motherfucker, I have to do this. I can't. But you know they'll talk to themselves about it. But they won't not do it if you say yes, but or, there's no other way to be.
Speaker 1:That as it may, don't contradict them, don't disagree, don't engage in argument. Don't try to present objective reality to them. Don't try to show them anything else. Just tell them what the path forward is, even though they're right. Be that as it may, here's what we have to do, and most of the time that'll work. But, like all human solutions, it's not perfect. But it's the best advice I can give you, and I think it will simplify your life a tremendous amount. If you're looking for perfection, you better become an android, because human beings are not capable of it, and that's just the way it goes.
Speaker 1:Okay, don't forget to pick up a copy of A Radical Reset. That is the manifesto of anti-politism, the near-perfect republic that I discovered. I never say invented, because I think it was really hiding in plain sight, but I spelled it out in the book A Radical Reset by me, herbie K, available to you on Amazon in paperback, kindle or hardcover take your pick. You'll find it very interesting. At the very least, at least, it'll start a conversation. Also, if you would share this with everybody you know, because I'm fun to talk to and I have good advice that I dole out, and it's a fun show At least I think so and if it isn't, no one will listen to it and eventually I'll give up, but not for a long time yet, because I'm nothing if not stubborn. Have a beautiful day, a beautiful weekend. God bless you. God bless America. Until next time. This is me, your pal Herbie, signing off.