The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - February 08, 2025


Walk Away from Your Addict Child？ Deontological vs. Consequentialist Ethics (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_791)


Episode Stats

Length

4 minutes

Words per Minute

147.29189

Word Count

601

Sentence Count

30


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Should it be a deontological parental position to say no matter what a child does, we will always unconditionally be available to him or her? Or do you apply a consequentialist ethic and say no, there are consequences to be unconditionally available?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.320 Hi everybody, this is God Sad. It's been a while since I last posted a sad truth clip where I just speak directly into the camera.
00:00:10.000 I've been traveling the past two weeks. Two weeks ago I was in Austin doing the Joe Rogan show.
00:00:17.520 I think it was my 11th appearance. It was wonderful. Please check it out if you haven't done so already.
00:00:22.240 And then I visited the University of Austin where I gave a lecture and met all the people. Fantastic university. Had a great time there.
00:00:32.840 And then this past week I was in South Carolina and Florida where I had some various meetings and gave three different talks under my responsibilities
00:00:48.900 as a global ambassador of Northwood University. That was also wonderful.
00:00:54.420 Now I'm back home for a couple of weeks before my next trip.
00:00:58.640 But today what I wanted to talk to you about is this movie that I watched last night titled Beautiful Boy
00:01:07.140 where it's apparently a true story of the devastation that is reaped on a family when you have one of the family members
00:01:17.620 in the throes of drug addiction.
00:01:21.400 And at one point the dad in the movie decides, you know, after trying all that he could to help his son,
00:01:30.360 you can tell that of course he loved his son, you know, immeasurably, but that he had to make the very tough decision of letting go,
00:01:40.260 of no longer, you know, enabling the son because whenever the son needed money or whatever it is that he needed
00:01:49.760 to try to get out of his latest, you know, drug-fueled jam, then of course he could rely on the parent to rescue him.
00:01:58.020 And so that got me thinking about something that I've discussed with you guys on several occasions
00:02:05.160 and of course most notably in The Parasitic Mind where I talk about the tension between deontological
00:02:12.620 and consequentialist ethics. Deontological ethics being, you know, an absolute statement, right?
00:02:20.120 It is never okay to lie would be a deontological statement.
00:02:23.240 It is okay to lie if you wish to spare someone's feelings would be a consequentialist statement.
00:02:31.300 And so in the case of walking away from a child or a family member whom you know that if you keep supporting them,
00:02:40.840 they might bring the entire family down, right?
00:02:43.120 Like this, in this particular case, the addict had two younger siblings at home,
00:02:49.100 so he could certainly harm them. He could, of course, harm the family because he's putting great tension on the family.
00:02:57.300 He's stealing from the family and so on.
00:02:59.900 And so should it be a deontological parental position to say no matter what a child does
00:03:07.340 and what he goes through and what he puts us through, we will always unconditionally be available to him or her?
00:03:15.220 Or do you apply a consequentialist ethic and say no, there are consequences to be unconditionally available
00:03:25.480 and in the service of protecting our family unit, our other children, we have to cut ties with this kid.
00:03:33.740 It's a really tough one because as I was thinking about it myself, you know, I oscillated between it makes perfect sense
00:03:42.140 to reach a point where you need to engage in tough love and you have to walk away
00:03:46.920 because otherwise this person is cancerous to everybody else around him.
00:03:51.120 Or no, no matter what, you've had this child.
00:03:57.000 It is your responsibility to always be there for him.
00:03:59.540 Let me know what you think.
00:04:01.180 I look forward to reading your comments.
00:04:02.880 Have a great weekend.
00:04:04.080 I'll talk to you soon.
00:04:04.660 Cheers.