I concluded my recent review of Joker: Folie à Deux with the pathetic (full of emotion…) question, “Why do we hurt each other?” Well, just this second the answer came me.

“We hurt each other because we don’t think we do.”

No, I did not just plop into a very full bathtub like ol’ Archimedes. But I am reading a book on the subject of the universe and one of the thematic points is the whole “mostly empty space” thing I mentioned in discussion of Nolan’s script’s mistaken definition of quantum mechanics.

So, if you need an analogy, use this. We hurt each other because we think of each other as mostly empty space. The truth, however, is we are all full. (Wow. That’s fun. No, not “awful”, but we all are full. We are full.) We are filled space. We are space filled full. (Not empty.)

But that’s just a fun physics analogy that may or may not tickle your fancy. Don’t miss the point!

We possess the power to hurt each other unintentionally.

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PS – For kicks, the actual origin of this Eureka! moment for me is I believe one of my wife’s announced desires is surely destructive to our marriage and family and consequently insist she give it up. Whereas she believes god authored it or approved it or some shit. And as I was reading just now, after I stopped her from randomly starting the dishwasher without my dish in it and saw her eyes say, “Even this action is wrong?”, my mind wandered to the ongoing hellscape of my marriage.

Do you see? Her desire—to her—isn’t harmful to me. And my decree—to me—isn’t harmful to her. But I can assure you, as the nursery rhyme says, “Needles and pins, needles and pins, when a man marries, his trouble begins.”

The best part is Christianity is one of the last forms of order which unequivocally, unconditionally, and without exception places the husband at the very tippy top of the food chain, so much so that even in 21st century conservative, Biblical doctrine, the doctrine is simply avoided. “Why lose even more people by giving unpopular teachings airtime?” seems to be the approved stance.

Incidentally, I even unintentionally started a skirmish in a friend’s marriage (both former international missionaries) by asking them to confirm for me that they were, both 1. Not studying the bible together within their marriage and 2. He is not leading her in any semblance of a formal bible study. I asked them to merely confirm it because a newly converted friend was lamenting to me that his wife (also newly converted) wouldn’t listen to him read scripture to her. And this couple lost their composure in a big way, getting as defensive as I have ever seen—of course the wife being the dominant justifier of the state of things.

I do not know what it is like to be a woman, but I do know what it is like to live under authority. And as it isn’t terrible or tragic or unbearable, I just don’t see the issue.