I'm sorry you're being treated so rudely, even by Cary. There's no excuse for it.

You are right, that people should treat each other courteously. One of the most damaging expectations one can have, however, is that one be treated in a certain way; that I deserve to be treated like the full human being that I am. I mean, people should definitely be treated that way, but if I expect it of others and get upset when it doesn't happen, and preoccupy myself with not being treated right, it is a very damaging state of affairs; very personally damaging. It is an attitude that, if practiced regularly, can literally ruin one's life.

But you are not nothing. You should not accept degradation. You should not go out of your way to do this dying man, this asshole dying man, any special favors. I would be polite to him, and brief, but not go way out of my way to avoid him. I would never provoke him. I would never spar with him. Just pass on by. I would never lay any of my humanity out for him to step on unless he came across with some humanity, and then I would be measured.

He is making a grave mistake, no pun intended, in not appreciating what life is left in his body and is all around him. But fuck him if he can't take a joke. We're all dying too, and dealing with our own blindness to the life that is in us.

Enjoy. Don't let the bastards grind you down.

Best,

Monty

(More, for free: google "Rabid Fanatic" +"Monty Johnston")

You say, "For some reason I always help him." This is the crux of the matter. Though addiction may or may not be the right word, you will understand me when I say that you are as addicted to helping him as he is to his bad acting and as your parents are to the hooch. That is, while Cary and others repeat the imperitive truth that you stop helping your brother ASAP, you're still ineluctably compelled to keep doing it. This is addictive family dysfunction. Everybody's running around saying, "I can't help it!"

There is a deeper inner self to you that knows the right thing to do, that sees past this addictiveness and has the necessary humane backbone to do what's best, for you; which may happen to help your brother.

This is not, though, about your brother, or your parents, and not even so much about hubby or the kids. It's about you; about you healing yourself. You can do nothing meaningful until you're operating out of a firm real base of operations. Till you're on your pins. People have already mentioned suitable help: Al-Anon, ACOA, CODA (Codependents Anonymous), maybe a shrink.

But a major question is whether you have reached your own bottom. You may not have, though you say you have. Addictions are tenacious. More may have to fall apart.

Your core being has many more choices for who you are than just playing the apparently competent helper. By the way, do you really fully comprehend that doing for somebody what they can and should be doing for themselves causes their abilities to atrophy? This is where so-called helping in fact does damage. The word enabling has been used.

Best to you,

Monty

(More, for free: google "Rabid Fanatic" +"Monty Johnston")

They themselves so flamboyantly illustrate that what they take to be an intelligent designer is, rather, a moronic designer. Why, how,then, do they trump up such crap? This, to me, is the fascinating question. They are other human beings like us, believe it or not, yet they cling to demonstrably unreal beliefs. Why? How?

Finding satisfying explanations for this have deeply interested me for some time.

A passing believer woman in the creation museum gives a good clue: certainty. She goes there seeking certainty; she needs certainty. And, I would add, comfort. She needs the comfort of certainty. Well, shoot, all the rest of us know that that's a wet dream; that life's flux, plain and simple. Who then lives and dies for the comfort of certainty?

Most of these American Christian fundamentalists come from good Scotch-Irish stock. Alcoholics in the wood pile, every family. Where does black and white thinking come from? All-or-nothing? Yeah, right: alcoholism. Add in a little brutality, too, which comes along with the addiction, and you get brains that test out Authoritarian. Check out, please, the clinical testing of , author of "The Authoritarians," which is free to read on the web.

A major wet dream of those from alcoholic families is the comfort of black and white certainty. They will gladly warp all manner of reality in order to ginn up some holographic illusion of certainty. They will win elections to over-turn democracy so they can stuff it down our throats.

And I believe in a higher power; the kind both atheist and religious can ascribe to, accessed through the experience of egolessness. An unnamed agent of creativity, of intuitive design, in love with the action of evolution.

Best,

Monty

(More, for free: google "Rabid Fanatic" +"Monty Johnston")

Thanks.

Not your fault, but the people who were irritated by this irritated me. I had to re-read it to get the taste out of my mouth. Thanks again.

Best,