Aug
18
Before I start lemme clearly define what is a voluntary relationship and what is an involuntary relationship.
Voluntary Relationship: A voluntary relationship is defined as a relationship which involves no coercion between the two parties. For example marriage is a classical example of a voluntary relationship. A romantic relationship is also a voluntary relationship. Your relationship with a shopkeeper from whom you just bought something is also mutually voluntary and consensual relationship.
Involuntary Relationship: An involuntary relationship is defined as a relationship which takes place as a matter of compulsion on one or both the parties. For example slave-owner relationship is an involuntary relationship, a bondage labor is an involuntary relationship. Your relationship with a highway robber who just robbed you is also a non-consensual involuntary relationship.
Before you move on, this is not a general blog article talking about the various voluntary and involuntary relationships and describing how good or bad they are. Instead, I am going to change the way you perceived your life and your relationships with other people. First lets cover the standard ground.
Involuntary relationships are immoral and forced upon individuals, any kind of liabilities occurred during an involuntary relationship are void and invalid. For example if a robber robs you on street and then from the money he robbed you, he lends you $50 from it for a week at the interest of 5%, that is no liability at all. Similarly, if a robber on the street cleans up your shoes without your consent and shows you a knife and demands $100 for the shoe shine, you do not have any responsibility to pay to the robber. If a slave owner feeds the slave, he cannot later demand money from the slave for all the days he was fed because the slave master didn’t really take the consent of the slave before employing him in his farm. Now whether the slave owner took the consent of the slave before giving him the food, is irrelevant.
These things might sound obvious, so let me elaborate the slave owner scenario. Lets say you are born to a slave who was owned by Mr X. When you were a kid, your slave father fed you from the money he got from Mr X, he clothed you and educated you by what he got from Mr X. Does that mean that Mr X owns you now, and you are his slave? When you raise objection to Mr X’s action, he says the following “I fed you when you were a kid, I clothed you, it was my money by which you were sent to a school, so logically now I own you, and you must work for me as a slave”. The reason you are not owned by Mr X is because you did not gave a consent for all the favors Mr X gave you. You were a minor who was unable to give any kind of consent of his own. Any attempt by Mr X to hold you liable for the expenses he did on you are invalid.
But what happens to the money which was actually spent on you. Well since there was no consent involved therefore all those gifts are termed as gift in the current definition. If I came to your house, and gave you my car and its keys without ever asking you whether you accept it or not, I cannot later ask you for money for the car. That car became a gift. Similarly all the food, clothing and education are basically a gift to you because you weren’t asked for your consent before those things were given to you.
Your relationship with your parents is an involuntary relationship
If all the things I said till now made sense to you, lemme give you a shocker, just like a slave owner of your father does not owns you, and you do not hold any liability towards your father’s slave owner, you do no hold any liability towards your parents or blood relatives because all the things they did for you were done without your consent, and thereby they all are gifts to you. Your dad might have worked day and night to save money to take care of you or to spend on your education, but to enforce any liability on the kid would be giving moral sanction to slavery. You do not have any liabilities towards your parents.
The relationship of your parents with you is a voluntary relationship
On the other hand, when parents decided to conceive you, they gave a very well informed consent to the various liabilities which occur with a kid. For example, when you bring a puppy to home, you have a responsibility to feed him, similarly when parents conceive a kid, they have a responsibility to take care of the kids. At least the kid is able to give consent regarding his own actions. If they do not take care of the kids, or do not ensure that the kid is well taken care of by offering him to adoption in a good family, then they are failing their liabilities. For example when you take loan from Banks, you have a liability to return that money with the accrued interest some day. But if Bank deposits $10,000 in your bank account without taking your consent about any loan, and demands interest some years later and the money back that is not considered as a liability. Your parents have full liabilities to take care of you till you reach the age of giving consent.
Your relationship with your kids, wives, friends are all voluntary
Whatever relationships you made after reaching adulthood, and with mutual consent of both the parties are voluntary in nature. Of course your relationship with your kids isn’t really voluntary till they reach adulthood, but you can always inform them of their non-liabilities till they turn 18.
If you are a fan of 70’s and 80’s Bollywood movies you must have seen this scene in some movie or the other. I remember it form the movie ‘Avatar’ starring Rajesh Khanna and Shabana Azami, and the follow dialog takes place between him and his son.
- Avataar(Rajesh Khanna): Nalayak, kya tujhe isie din ke liye din raat mehanat kar ke paal pos ke bada kiya tha? (Worthless guy, did I really brought you up by working so hard for this day?)
- Ramesh(Shashi Puri): Paal pos ke bada kiya hai to koi ehsaan nahi kiya hai, wo to aapka farz tha!(Just because you brought me up doesn’t mean you have done a favor to me, whatever you did was your duty)
Rationally speaking Ramesh was right in that scene, although that dialog was the most booed dialog in the movie hall, and the most evil thing his character could have said.for the Indian audience.
You do not have any liability to pay taxes to the government
Uncovering the actual agenda of this discussion. Your relationship with your govt is clearly an involuntary relationship. The govt just like Mr X, makes your dad work for them, and then use some money from the earnings to feed you, clothe you and educate you. Once you grow up and start earning you are now the slave of Government. You must pay taxes because the government used taxes to have you educated and provide you with food when you couldn’t pay for the food by yourself, or when your dad couldn’t feed you(ignoring the fact that your dad was a slave of the government too, and that you couldn’t have given your consent to the govt).
Just when you thought that you have now reached the age of giving consents, and wanna refuse giving up your hard earned property to the government, the government stops using reason with you and puts on their gun on your head. Now either you must pay taxes or you will be thrown away in a prison for many many years.
Key to happiness is to convert the existing involuntary relationships into voluntary ones
With the exception of your relationships with a highway robbers and the government, you can convert your existing involuntary relationships into voluntary ones. Its really simple to do so. Just go and talk to those people and explain them using reason why your relationships with them are involuntary in nature and that you never got a chance to give a consent to their relationship. Once you have explained that, you must also explain them that you do not hold any liabilities towards them, and if they took care of you when you were a kid, its all considered as a generous gift which you highly appreciate but do not consider yourself liable to return them. If they really like you for who you are, and not just an investment for old age, they will agree to your rationality, and will be willing to make this relationship a voluntary one. If they refuse to do so, its clear that they never really loved you, and you were just suppose to be a pension scheme for them. You do not have to be in touch with them, or consider them a part of your family anymore. You may even choose to accept those liabilities, but then at least do not preach other people that they must do the same. If you wanna marry against the wishes of your family, feel free to do so, you do not hold any liability to your parents. Plus if you married to a girl they told you to marry, you have basically landed yourself into another involuntary relationship.
The great Indian culture propaganda machine always talks about how in west kids don’t respect their parents, and then eventually are never satisfied in their lives. How the people do love marriages and end up getting divorced and remarried many times. The main stress is given on the part that in Indian culture, these things don’t happen. Well in Indian culture, a kid has to take the involuntary nature of his relationship to his parent in a single gulp. There is a little place for resistance with the widespread ostracization by the society. Similarly, if any person is so dumb to just marry the person their parents picked up for him or her, they are dumb enough to never complain about the problems of the marriages. On the other hand when you marry a women as the basis of voluntary relationship, you are free to break it up any time, and move on to a more satisfying voluntary relationship.
Key to happiness is to form more and more voluntary relationships as a replacements of the involuntary ones
You can recreate your own family with purely voluntarily formed relationships. For example, you can snip of the relationship with your physically/emotionally abusive brother/sister, and form much more satisfactory and voluntary relationships with people whom you really feel a brotherly and sisterly emotion. It may sound too unrealistic, but trust me, its worth it based on my own personal experience. I know a girl whom I call as my sister, and I really love her more than my own blood brother or blood-related cousins. When I first left India, I did not feel tear for my parents on Airport, I did not feel a thing for my own brother, but I had tears for her. We might hit rough patches here and there, but nobody has to take any tension from each other. People might say what’s the point of such empty brother-sister relationship where you just break up if things go a bit rough. Well my question to them is, what is the point of a substantial blood brother-sister relationship when you have to take emotional abuse from each other.
You can also end up your relationship with your government. If government robs you of taxes, you try your best to not let them have your rightfully earned property. If government prevents competition in a vital field such as security, offer bribe to their cops to leave you free, or hire your local neighborhood mafia boss for the security of your family. Get your money out to some safe tax haven in Europe. Now opening Swiss bank accounts is a matter of clicks. Find a Hawala dealer and transfer your hard earned savings to some foreign bank account. Nothing can be more Gandhian way of resistance than to steal taxes, offer bribes to govt employees, keep and bear illegal weapons.
DISCLAIMER: The author of this article or the blog owners do not suggest you to do anything illegal. All the ideas suggested in this article are for informational purposes only. The author or the owners of the website cannot be held for any acts committed by its users.
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95 views11 Responses to “Tyranny of Involuntary Relationships”
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Shreya Says:
August 18th, 2008 at 7:45 pmI agree.
Unpretentious Diva Says:
August 19th, 2008 at 12:59 amAn involuntary relationship is defined as a relationship which takes place as a matter of compulsion on one or both the parties. For example slave-owner relationship is an involuntary relationship, a bondage labor is an involuntary relationship. Your relationship with a highway robber who just robbed you is also a non-consensual involuntary relationship.
Partially Correct. Partially Incorrect.
For a relation or a decision or a situtation to be termed as voluntary, there need to be an alternative from which one may opt for the best alternative for his existence and well-being or progress.
Similarly, for a relation or decision or situation to be termed as involuntary, there need to be another alternative which you are forced to NOT to choose or coerced to deny, where you might have opted for the another alternative if you were free.
Your relationship with your parents is an involuntary relationship
False. It can be involuntary, or coerced, or forced in some cases, not in all cases.
Life can be a burden for some in some cases, Life is not a burden though, living is not a forced duty. Similarly, living with parents is not a forced duty, though is the best and most appropriate innate way a sibling starts living. You cannot term it as involuntary relationship, it is open to voluntary decisions, can you provide any viable substitute for a kid of two-months other then living with her living mother/father, if they are alive?
By the way what are your views in general about life? Is it a voluntary choice to keep on existing, or is it a involuntary forced coercion on you? and who the heck forces you to keep living or existing?
Yet, in some cases, parents-children relationship can be involuntary.
Avataar(Rajesh Khanna): Nalayak, kya tujhe isie din ke liye din raat mehanat kar ke paal pos ke bada kiya tha?
Why didn’t you showed the actual scene of that story?
The guy sales out his father’s property without his consent and even without informing him, he pays no respect for his father’s property and individual rights, and that’s why the father calls him (worthless). Anyways, the story goes to well courses again when Rajesh Khanna again makes his own life worthy with his own hardwork and reasonability.
Unpretentious Diva Says:
August 19th, 2008 at 1:19 amYou do not have any liability to pay taxes to the government
I feel its a shameful act to even try to compare Government with family or Parenthood.
\I wonder how the heck you can term or suggest government as important as Parents? Were you on “Involuntary weeds” while writing this ****?/
No, its not a joke, I am serious, try to answer me, what suggests you that government is as important for you as your parent?
Anyways, unknowingly (under the compulsion of Involuntary weeds you consumed last night) you have written something which is worthy, Nobody is liable to pay for their parents because they invested money on their children at their childhood (because that investment was not “CONTRACTUAL”.
Similarly, nobody is liable to pay taxes to government too (because all that which government provides is not “CONTRACTUAL”. it is not chosen.
So what? Everybody is free to decide, to decide whether to respect their parents for their efforts in the upbringing of their new-borne-babies in the best way they could. or not to respect them. Obviously, if the parents shows a reasonable and right attitude, which surely can be strict too, the children will pay respect and tribute too even after being adult, if the parents won’t be reasonable, the children won’t give a heck to them.
I remember one of my friend whose daughter loves her, but hates her father, because he was a criminal, alcoholic, bully and wife-beater, its simple truth, if you owe respect with the reason of being worthy and reasonable, you will get it freely, if you doesn’t worth respect, you won’t get it. Even Indians understands this.
Prahalad opposed his father (the ancient story of Hiranyakahyap).
So what does it shows?: It simply shows that you are not liable to pay respect for your parents, but if parents deserves respect on reasonified manner, then respecting them is right attitude, though it is to be volunatry decision of your own.
Similar way, Taxation cannot be forced or compulsory, and any form of compulsory taxation is crime, wrong and unethical, unreasonable. But Tax can be voluntary, and if a person voluntarily pays taxes, he cannot be said wrong by anymeans by anybody. Just like If Shravan Kumar served his parents, it was his own voluntary decision to do so. If Ram went out of ayodhya for 14 years, it was his own Voluntary decision to do so, infact his own father tried to stop him, but Ram chose his own way “VOLUNTARILY”.
Attila Says:
August 19th, 2008 at 5:15 amBoth renegade_division and unpretentious are wicked people.. doom days for Indian family life lie ahead with worthless progeny like you two… who can dispose off parental responsibility without batting an eyelid..
renegade_division Says:
August 19th, 2008 at 10:23 am@Attila
So the only reason why I should be held responsible to my parents is because of Indian Culture??
Sounds infallible logic to me.
Attila Says:
August 21st, 2008 at 3:43 amYou oh enlightened one, have no responsibility of course, or have only that responsibility that you like, as you so succinctly put, but I was concerned of naive Indian readers following your devious website.. he he.. Chill!
Unpretentious Diva Says:
August 21st, 2008 at 11:55 pm@Attila
I won’t engage in any word abusement spree with you, it reduces the charm.
Yet, I want to clearout some wrong and extremely henious misconceptions which are well set in your (of no or very little use) brain.
1st thing is, not only Indian culture, but every culture whole round the world, respects and acclaims the reasonable right of human to be free of any duty towards anybody just because he is son or daughter of any particular person.
You owe nothing to anybody just because you are son/daughter of a particular person.
If someone’s father had kiled some person or had raped some women or children, or anything like that, then that someone cannot be and should not be punished for his parent’s/father’s fault’s and crimes. He owes nothing to anybody just because he is a son of killer, or a rapist, or a son of a simple honest yet ‘black’ person. That is, you or anybody else cannot or shouldnot discriminate anybody just on the basis of his birth in a particular culture, or family, or country or creed, or religion, or parents, the human have got human rights not on the basis of their birth to some particular race or creed or religion or family, no matters you are son of prince charles, or son of George W Bush, or Saddam Hussein, you are not at all “responsible” for your parent’s or creed’s or religion’s or group’s acts. You cannot term a muslim a terrorist just because some terrorists are muslims. A human’s Individual rights are obviously independent of birth to any particular family, creed, race, nation, culture, religion etc. they are equal for all irrespective of their birth. Equal for Father, and son too.
Ofcourse a son have no responsibility if his father is a religious war monger, he can surely deny helping his father in any wrong because that relation is meant to be volunatry, and if it is made compulsory, that since you are son of a particular person hence you hold responsibilities towards him and his acts, than it will be injustice.
You cannot hang a person just because his father was involved in a bomb blast.
Yet, if the son was voluntary involved in that bomb blast than surely he will be punished alongwith his father. But if he wasn’t involved, he won’t be and shouldnot be punished.
If a prostitute has a daughter, than no culture should criticize or debarr or ostracize the daughter, just because the mother of that girl is prostitute.
In India we have a famous Old Saying “janam deke Koi Karam Ka Saathi Nahi Ban Jatta”
Which means that just because someone has given you birth, he won’t be responsible for your wrong or right acts, those acts will be your own responsibility, similarly, neither your parent’s acts will be considered as your responsibility. If your father has taken a loan, you are not entitled to pay back if you yourself havenot taken the responsibility to pay the loan back by your own will voluntarily.
It’s all legal, natural reasonable and accurate, you are uselessly trying to criticise a right and reasonable concept.
If the parents do good and reasonable job as parents, they gains respect and affection by their own on their abilities, but if someone’s father is an alcoholic, rapist, paediophile who have raped his own daughter how can you even think that the daughter will feel any respect towards her father?
Attila Says:
August 22nd, 2008 at 3:33 amWell, oh well, those examples are very valid, but likening blood relations to other common involuntary relationships is what I was concerned about. There should be some leeway in such cases, rather than saying bye-bye at the very first prick of pain. Also, approachability must be allowed, in cases of blood relations. I don’t see that in the post.
And sorry for abusing ur site, on ur site itself, it has some gr8 ideas, and some wrong, particularly this one.
renegade_division Says:
August 22nd, 2008 at 4:20 amWell that’s the subjective approach of an individual case. This article clearly does not concerns that.
There are really only three kinds of relationships in the world. The first kind is the one we all dream of - joyous, mutually beneficial, deep, meaningful, fun, a real pleasure to have and to hold.
This kind of relationship is extraordinarily rare. If this kind of relationship were an animal, it would not even be on the endangered list. It would be by many considered extinct.
The second kind of relationship is mutually beneficial, but not joyous, deep, or meaningful. This is the kind of relationship you have with your grocer, your banker, and perhaps your boss. It is voluntary, defined by an implicit or explicit contract, and can usually be broken or allowed to lapse without guilt, regret or remorse.
This kind of relationship is not uncommon, but also not very important. We do not lose our lives, our happiness or our very souls in the pits of these kinds of relationships. They are, as the saying goes, “dry calculations of mutual utility.” We are not obligated to go to the deathbeds of our bankers; our grocers do not force us to attend church when we do not believe; we rarely get into fights with our bosses about whether or not we should baptize our children.
No, it is the third kind of relationship that we are most concerned with in our lives. It is the third kind of relationship that so often tortures us. It is the third kind of relationship that undermines our joy, integrity and independence…
On Truth: The Tyranny of Illusion
Audiobook, PDF, online or print.
city of night Says:
September 14th, 2008 at 4:06 amVery uplifting.
good to read.
city of night Says:
September 14th, 2008 at 4:30 amre : ud >>
It’s all legal, natural reasonable and accurate, you are uselessly trying to criticise a right and reasonable concept.
If the parents do good and reasonable job as parents, they gains respect and affection by their own on their abilities, but if someone’s father is an alcoholic, rapist, paediophile who have raped his own daughter how can you even think that the daughter will feel any respect towards her father?
>>
If a certain evil minded daughter doesn’t respect her father, that puts him in the bad parenter’s category. This establishes what she has been trying to prove. Nice theory.
>>
My dad works for the army. If i call him a murderer, he won’t agree. When I don’t respect him for my own reasons, that doesn’t make him a bad parent. Respect is not a corollary to good/correct. Goodness is variable, correctness is absolute.