fitscapades
I went from successful specialist doctor in rural Australia to a homeless addict selling my body for drugs and almost dead to living in full recovery in a three story house 30 meters from the beach with my amazing gorgeous partner, my son, his son, our cat and dog. I am an addict in recovery, my story is quite unique and I didn't live it all only to have it untold as the dusts pass over my grave at the eventual end of my life. I want to give hope to addicts in pain, to their families who worry that true recovery is possible even when you are as bad as I was. I want to try to shift perception in the community that addicts are not a waste of time we are capable of recovery and are not lost causes. I have learned so much and gained so much wisdom walking this pathway to recovery it seems a shame not share this. The lessons I have learned are useful to everyone not just those challenged by addiction.
fitscapades
The Rising Tide of Hate
When hatred becomes normalized in our society, we all lose. From vicious online commentary to political division, from racism to the stigmatization of vulnerable populations, the rising tide of hate threatens to undermine our shared humanity and collective potential.
In this raw, unfiltered conversation, Michelle delves into the psychology behind hatred and why it ultimately destroys the hater more than the hated. She explores how hatred originates within us, revealing our own insecurities and fears rather than any real truth about those we direct it toward. With personal stories from her own experiences with homelessness and addiction, she offers a unique perspective on compassion toward society's most vulnerable.
Michelle doesn't shy away from controversial topics, questioning the motives behind the anti-woke movement and its targeting of transgender individuals. She challenges listeners to examine their information sources and confront the echo chambers that reinforce existing beliefs while blocking out different perspectives. Most powerfully, she makes a case for forgiveness not as weakness but as strength—a way to break destructive cycles and find greater peace within ourselves.
The conversation moves beyond critique to offer practical approaches for navigating a divided world: intellectualizing arguments rather than emotionalizing them, listening to opposing viewpoints with genuine curiosity, and finding common ground even with those who seem most different from us. Michelle suggests that our capacity for empathy and understanding might be humanity's greatest hope in troubled times.
Whether you lean left or right politically, whether you've been the target of hatred or found yourself harboring it, this episode offers a thoughtful exploration of how we might move beyond division toward something better. Listen now to challenge your thinking and perhaps discover a more compassionate path forward.
Welcome back to Fitzcapades. My name's Michelle and I'm a recovery addict, so I'm going to cut to the chase. Today I'm worried for humanity. I see hate on social media. I see people writing awful things on creator walls. I see judgment, blame, lack of accountability, inability in people to identify their own deficiencies and weaknesses. I see racism, homophobia, intolerance of transgender people. I see jealousy, cruelty, lack of empathy and lack of compassion, lack of charity, greed and selfishness. I see blind self-righteousness, arrogance mixed with stupidity. I see stigmatization and bullying. I see wars and arguments over religion when no one really knows what the fuck lies beyond us. I see people who just want to fight, and even on my wall sometimes, when they in principle agree with me on something, they still want to fight. I see division and violence, autocracies out of control they still want to fight.
Speaker 0:I see division and violence, autocracies out of control, power in the wrong places, the sick and the vulnerable and impoverished and elderly being swept aside, division and fighting and war, like we'll end ourselves eventually, when we really are all fundamentally humans. We are all the same at our hearts, we have emotions and feelings, we have families and can't survive on our own. We're all humans and each human life. To me, being purely egalitarian is worth the same. But the world does not see it this way and to me that's just not right. We all have strengths and weaknesses, and if we could accept one another's differences and just all work together, humanity would be capable of so much.
Speaker 0:But hatred without self-reflection is self-perpetuating. It is delicious and irresistible as a pursuit for some. It serves as a selfish purpose to ego. Yet it destroys the individual and seeds dark energy and unhappiness. Hate originates within us. It's everything to do with who we are, much less about what or who we are hating. Hate blinds us from the goodness in other people. It's a much easier thing to do when we see differences in others. It requires little thought and is purely emotional. It is not logical, yet it is the enabler of cruelty to other humans and despicable behaviours. It is ugly and it will destroy the person who hates ultimately, more so than who the object of the hate is.
Speaker 0:Everyday humans commit awful acts against each other and sometimes there seems to be very good reason to hate another individual or group of people, particularly if they've hurt us. But hate is self-consuming and it takes a bigger person to forgive, even if the trespass against you has been really bad. I've watched shows where people have had family members murdered, have been able to come around and forgive the killer and have gone on to live much happier, more productive lives than if they held on to their hate and became consumed and carried all that bitterness around. There seems to be this perception that to forgive is to let go and people can be reluctant to do that because then they feel that the person who committed the crime or bad act against them will never get their due course. But that only perpetuates hate and the desire for retribution. And once retribution is finally achieved, that never, ever puts things right. It just sets in place a cycle of hatred that is ever self-fulfilling.
Speaker 0:And to some degree some hate is understandable, like the hatred between the Jews and the Palestinians runs deep and there's been many atrocities committed on both sides. And that is, I guess, understandable to some extent, although you know the only way to end it, or the best way to end it, would be if one side or if they were to forgive each other. But I realize that that's not a possible thing and that's one of the reasons. The world's at danger now. But there's the other type of hate that we see all around us. That is pointless and senseless, like the racism that's happening in America. And senseless like the racism that's happening in America, like innocent immigrants being labelled as criminals and being sent to concentration camps in El Salvador and having great cruelties committed against them, having their families ripped apart by ICE agents for no reason at all. They don't deserve this. This is all senseless and despicable. And the hatred of racism that is, the origin of which is simply a different coloured skin or people who speak a slightly different accent, with a different language, and that becomes a seed of hatred for racist people. And that is just senseless. And unfortunately, with the wrong people being in power, this perpetuates this issue and enables more people to blindly follow this hatred and support its cause.
Speaker 0:And even worse than that is the hatred that you see on social media. People are writing despicable things on content creators' walls, people they don't even know. They've never met them, they don't know who they are in real life as a person. Yet maybe because they're jealous or have some feeling of self-deficiency about themselves, they have to bolster their fragile egos by sitting anonymously behind a computer keyboard and blasting their hate to try and take that person down a notch so that they can bolster themselves up and feel better for two seconds, and when their target is vulnerable, I don't know if they realise what harm they have the potential to do. There's people who've committed suicide over trolling before.
Speaker 0:You know it's evil and it's just senseless at its very root. You know it's ugly, ugly behaviour and unfortunately there's just no checks and balances against any of this. You know, I mean you've got the leader of the free world who just rants and raves on social media, name calling you know, saying despicable things about people, um, in such an unpresidential way that this behaviour, unfortunately, is becoming normalised and accepted and it's just simply not okay. It's just so like ugly. I can't put it in any other way. It's an ugly, ugly side of humanity and, yeah, I just want to speak out against it because I fear for humanity and I think we're capable of far better than this. You know far, far better.
Speaker 0:If we examine the origins of hatred, which I've kind of already done, there's hate because you've had some bad act or some act of violence committed against you or someone's been murdered or something like that. Someone's hurt you, against you or someone's been murdered or something like that someone's hurt you. And then there's hatred because of perceived threat, and the basis of that is usually because people or the object of the hate have some sort of difference from ourselves, either race or ethnicity or religion. There's hatred because of jealousy too. People feel, you know, have the sort of attitude of why should he or she have all of that? And I don't have anything, you know. And then there's hate because of something within ourselves, some sort of inadequacy or indeficiency, and we see that reflected back to us from the person that we're hating on.
Speaker 0:You know, a step to addressing any of this, of course, is to examine if you feel that sort of feeling of hatred or dislike, to look within yourself and see where that comes from and what the reasons are behind that. And you know, if it's something like jealousy, for example, you know we should be congratulating people who are doing well, not cutting them down. And if we're unhappy in our own lives, fucking do something about it, take action, get a better job, do better. You know it's much more constructive than sitting there and sledging some influencer or something who's actually doing good in life. You know, like the thing is is that we don't know the whole story behind that person. We only see a slither on the screen. There could be hours of hard work and sacrifice behind that person's success. You don't know that. You know we hate people. You know success. You don't know that we hate people.
Speaker 0:We tend to make them very one-dimensional and just can only see the things about them that we hate and assume that that's all there is to them, when there's many facets to every human being. And if we look beyond that and actually keep our minds open, you can discover wonderful things about people that you never knew about before Abilities, talents and strengths, character attributes that are admirable, all these sorts of things. But if you're too busy hating, you miss all of that good stuff. You know. And it's much, much more rewarding to find things that you like about certain people and find, yeah, love in your heart and not hate. Uh, it's a better place to be, you know.
Speaker 0:And on the other side of the coin too, when society sees someone who's doing not so well, like a homeless person or someone who befalls some type of bad, you know, uh, bad fortune or, you know, like drug addicts and that sort of thing, the tendency is to blame them for what's happened to them and use that blame as a reason to not find compassion and to not be empathetic towards them and to not see that they're actually a human being, just like they are, like their own families as well. You know, they put them in their boxes. You know someone who's deserving of it and that's that, and they're, you know, shitty people, and so be it. You know, therefore, they deserve all the cruelty in the world and uh, you know and absolutely no compassion. So, you know, I believe in that human beings need to be accountable, especially for their mistakes and where they could have done better. And ultimately, the only people that can save us is ourselves in a lot of cases. But one's human and we all make mistakes. No one is perfect, and if you're in a position to help and it's not going to harm or hurt you, then these days that's what I try to do.
Speaker 0:When I was working as an escort, because homelessness was very dear to my heart as a cause, if I made a lot of money over night time, I would go to the town centre. I would find where the homeless people hung out and I would give their money. I would give you know. If I found a homeless dude or the local homeless dude of the town. I'd give them 50 bucks, you know, and at the start I started to take them food, but they found that a bit condescending. But I'd just give them $50 because I was like, you know, you might go and spend this on drugs or cigarettes or booze, but whatever, that's up to you, I'm giving you $50. I respect you as a human being and you do with it as you please, and I'd sit and I'd listen to their story, you know, and I'd find out how they ended up where they were and I treated them like a human being, you know, and it was a very interesting thing to do and very rewarding too, you know, and just the feeling of making someone's day.
Speaker 0:When I was in Orange and I was like homeless, so going from Airbnb to Airbnb, you know, there used to be a homeless girl that would sleep on the streets, she would sleep outside the front of the 7-Eleven and she knew that if I was paying with cash because often I had cash working in a cash industry I would come out with the change and I would always give her the $5 note change that I had, you know, gotten. And she knew that and people were like she's just taking the piss and I'm like, no, she's desperate, you know, and I knew at that point too only too well that I was two steps away from being exactly where she was too. But yeah, and as desperate as I was for cash, it was really important for me to still give her that $5, you know that probably I couldn't even afford, but, yeah, I guess that was an. I felt compassion and empathy towards her, you know, and wanted to know that she was going to be okay.
Speaker 0:Other people walk past homeless people like that and, you know, call them scum, put them down, ignore them. You know, would think, why would I do that? You know they deserve to be where they are and, okay, maybe some of their own mistakes led to them being there. But that blame, it doesn't get us any further ahead in humanity. It's not very enlightened. What humans can't comprehend is that no one is immune to any type of, you know, ill fate. Anyone can find themselves homeless if a few bad things happen to them.
Speaker 0:But there's, yeah, this arrogance that you know I am too good to end up in that person's shoes. You know I'll never end up there and, yeah, never. Say never. Listen, I'm not some bleeding heart that believes that I can save the world and everyone on this planet. That's simply not the case and you can't take away people's bad fortunes from them. I mean, yes, they got there and they're accountable for that and it's not up to me to reverse that. But I guess more what I'm saying is that you don't kick them when they're down.
Speaker 0:You know, and trying to think about what it's like to be in that person's shoes and feel empathy for them is more sort of the stance that I take, you know. I mean, I'm well aware that we have to self-preserve and that if you get too close to some people they will hurt you. You know they'll do crimes against you or they'll steal from you too. So you know you have to be safe. So I'm not completely stupid, but more what I'm saying is, you know, even if from a distance, you know you say, well, look, I feel empathy for that person. They're in that bad position and I wish I could do something. Or, you know, not this hard line, they deserve it.
Speaker 0:So fuck them sort of attitude that I see so often around the place, like, particularly with you know, I get a lot of hate directed at drug addicts, you know, or they're scum, they should be just disposed of and that sort of attitude of just blind cruelty. You know, like I'm not saying that we should be going out and opening our houses to drug addicts Fucking not at all. You know They'll come and rob you and things like that, you know. What I'm saying is we can empathise with their position and say they're humans in suffering. I feel for you. Even just the sentiment of saying I wish there was something I could do for you is much better than saying you're a scumbag and you deserve to die in the gutter. People in that situation when I was in that situation you perish if you sit there and play the victim role. You have to take accountability over your own errors and why you got there. That's very much what I believe. You know that's the key to getting better. But yeah, you don't kick these people when they're down. You just hope that they get the right type of help.
Speaker 0:You know, when we talk about charity and people who are below the poverty line, there's this attitude that you know. Oh, why should they get the doll? You know they get all these handouts. You know they're just bums sitting around doing nothing, and why should they be living this great life. You know. Well, let me tell you, I have been under the poverty line. I have lived under the poverty line, I have lived on the dole, I've been so poor that I couldn't get food. I had to go to the food kitchen to get free food at once or twice.
Speaker 0:And you're not living a high life when you're living in that situation. You're getting by, you're getting by. Uh, you know it's, um, it's. You're not living like a king or a queen, like we need social security and social responsibility for people who are vulnerable and are not able to make ends meet like we can. You know that's our responsibility as human beings. But you know, we see what's happening in the in States. They're taking tax cuts, they're giving tax cuts to the incredibly rich and impoverishing, taking away support from the needy, and that is just. I can't believe that that sort of thing is actually happening and, again, this is a direction of humanity that is horrendous. You know people go through tough times in life. They lose employment or, you know, get scammed or you know whatever, and and for some time, maybe need that support in order to get up on their feet again. You know, I certainly did. You know I can att to that. There's potential in every human being, particularly if we give them opportunity and don't knock them down. And again, helping one another, helping your fellow humankind, is only going to advance us further.
Speaker 0:The other concerning thing that I've seen emerging is, like, what the fuck is the anti-woke movement? For fuck's sake? I mean, I thought we've come so far with, you know, accepting transgender people. Um, how are transgender people hurting us? Really? Like, how does you know, you know, tom blogs down the road, you know, if he suddenly decides to be, you know, um, a woman, how does that affect my life and how does it hurt me? Like it just simply doesn't. You know, and it's just so perverse. Like, why does everyone have such an issue with trans people? If I can get over it, you know it's not hurting you, they don't hurt people. Um, you know, uh, like, if someone wants to live as the opposite gender, so be it. You know, like, why is that such a big fucking deal? I don't get it, you know.
Speaker 0:But the other thing I don't get too is, like the perverse nature of of you know, like you know, uh, some people go, oh yeah. Like it's a trans, you know, woman, you know, like you know, some people go, oh yeah, like it's a trans, you know woman, has she had the operation? And I'm like, dude, what the fuck Like? Do you meet a cisgender dude as a dude yourself, and go, oh, I wonder what he's packing in his pants? You know how big is he? Sort of thing Probably not. So why is there this perverse fascination with trans people and like what's going on in their pants? It just doesn't make fucking sense to me. This person is coming out to the world as a woman. She's a woman. Why does she have to have a, like a vagina to be a woman to you? You're not going to take her home and fuck her. So like what's it to you? Yes, she's a girl, like, get your mind out of what's going on in the pants situation. You know, I don't know, I don't understand it. You know, I just don't.
Speaker 0:And I'm fucking horrified by this anti-woke movement, people pushing back against transgender when, firstly, the existence of transgender really has little impact on their lives, except for the fact that they might have to see a slightly masculine looking woman or whatever. And if that offends them, then maybe they need to sort of self-reflect on their own comfort with their own gender, and that's probably where that discomfort is coming from, rather than pushing back and saying you know, this is not normal, this is, this is not right. You know, if that adult, that person wants to live as that gender, that's their business, not yours. I mean, that's really very much where I stand on that. You know, and I'm horrified by this anti-woke movement, the cruelty that's being executed against people who have just been told it's okay to come out and be who they truly are. It's just. It's just horrendous, horrendous.
Speaker 0:And with all this violence and hatred and division that's going on out there, the worst thing that could happen is what's happening is our sources of information that we use to form our ideas and arguments and stances on what's right and wrong. You know that's a real issue in today's world. We have people who have the ability or actually, you know, the AI or the algorithms in social media are such that it's very easy to become encapsulated in an echo chamber where we only get exposed to news or information that reinforces already what we believe and we become narrower and narrower in our beliefs and less capable of looking to the other side and seeing what they have to say, and more angry and impassioned about the cause that you believe in and therefore even less capable of listening to the other side and hearing what they have to say. And unfortunately, too, on the right side of things, there's propaganda and misinformation, because there's a dangerous narcissist in control of the United States of America at the moment, and you know that's even worse. Because people get propagandized, it's even more emotive and they become more and more entrenched in these beliefs and the arguments become less factual, you know, less logical, and more emotional and more impassioned, and that's the source of violence and senseless violence.
Speaker 0:When I was younger I was very much I wasn't immune to that. I was surrounding myself in an echo chamber of left-wing stuff propaganda, if you will as well and I became really impassioned about it. And you know, if someone had something to say from the right, it's almost like I couldn't bear to listen to it because I was so emotional about my beliefs that I couldn't bear to be. I was scared to be proven wrong or for there to be a good side point, a good point, you know, coming from the right, which was really really an ignorant way to be, and I think I've since corrected that, like by getting apps like Ground News and things like that.
Speaker 0:So, you know, making sure that I listen to what the other side has to say, I mean, as hard as it is to admit, you know, sometimes Donald Trump does have a good point or two. You know it doesn't mean I've become fully aligned with everything that he's got to say, but at least being capable of being able to concede that and admit that I think is really important. Being capable of being able to concede that and admit that I think is really important, and I guess that's yeah, when the sort of left versus right hatred sort of you know topic, that's what I kind of appreciate about some of the left wing sort of content creators is that, you know, say, like, when Joe Biden was fumbling and not doing so, well, yeah, they were capable of commenting on that and saying, well, look, you know he's not the right man for the job, or he fucked it up or you know, whatever that debate he did was just horrendous. You know, we agree, whereas I think on the right, from the right side of things, you see this cover up and they would never admit that, and that's something that I I, yeah, don't find terribly admirable. I guess the point I'm getting at is that, like, as a left-wing person, I now make myself listen to what the right wing has to say, and if there's a good point then I'll give them that.
Speaker 0:I guess what I'm getting at is it's important as human beings not to be blinded by your cause and to want to only agree with what your side has to say. That's emotional and that's just silly. And again, that just stems from fear of defeat and the other side prevailing. Just because you concede to one point doesn't mean that that will happen. You know credit where credit's due, but as human beings we're grossly incapable of that and we'll fight stupid arguments until the nth. You know being blind to what the other or not listening to what the other side has to say, and that's the flaw that I see a lot out there in the world today, because people are so passionately behind their political beliefs. I guess it's very important to step back from the emotions and try to analyze what's fueling your argument or your belief system. Is it just emotions or is it facts? And if you compare it back to facts, then that's more constructive. Hopefully I'm getting my point across.
Speaker 0:I think I'm waffling a little bit here. I think one person who I really respect, who's really good at doing that is actually Joe Rogan, and even though he's supposedly on the right wing side of things, I actually still really respect him and I think he's very good at fact checking and sticking to the facts rather than emotionally backing his side, and he calls bullshit on both sides. Really well, like, yeah, I really respect him and his approach to things, you know, and I think we can all take a leaf out of that book. You see, instead of being fearful of being proven wrong, we should be curious about what the other side has to say, like, why do they think that way? What drives that opinion, or what's their logic, or who are they as a person? But all too often we enter these sorts of conversations on the defences afraid to be proven wrong. You know, I think that's where all of this comes from.
Speaker 0:I mean, I listened to Joe Rogan interview Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders is fundamentally I like a lot of his ideas, but he was talking about Trump having a go, about him suing the media and actually, when it boiled down to it, he really didn't have, you know, any solid points to argue other than well, you know, he's a bad dude, everyone knows he's corrupt, you know, whatever, I'm right, whereas Joe was right. But you know there was a reason. He sued that particular media corporation and factually, he won that spiral spot, I would have to say. You know, he was dead on right and Bernie Sanders fell flat on his face and, yeah, it was kind of cringeworthy a little bit. I thought to myself well, bernie, you know you should have done better, like, yeah, I was a bit let down by what he had to say.
Speaker 0:Anyway, I didn't want this podcast to become political, so I apologize if it's, because if it's coming across that way, I guess what I'm trying to say is that we should intellectualize our arguments, listen to the other side and leave emotions out of it when at all possible. Um, yeah, that's what I'm saying because, uh, in today's climate, you know, political division, um, and fights like this really drives a lot of hate and and again, it's not constructive. When we start to argue emotionally, we never get to the best solution, or, you know, it's just not productive. So I guess that's pretty much all I have to say at this point in time. I wanted to close by saying that forgiveness is really important and it's a great skill to acquire. To forgive is not to concede. You are the bigger person if you do that and you stop the perpetuation of the cycle of hate, um, and in the end it'll make you a much happier person.
Speaker 0:You know, when I get trolled on the internet, I'm cool with who I am and I know who I am, and most of the criticism is like, you know, like people, not idiots. That's really judgmental people going. You know people are not idiots. That's really judgmental People going. You know, yeah, you still look like a junkie or whatever else, you know, and I know that I'm not that, so it really doesn't hurt me, I'm impervious to that sort of thing. You know, occasionally you reach your limit and you do get beat down a bit and I've, you know, pushed back against these people and then, yeah, regretted it. You know, I'm only human. I'm perpetuated the fight.
Speaker 0:At the end of the day, I forgive those trolls, you know I do. I feel for them. They are unhappy people out there and that's all they have to do is, you know, throw shade on someone like me to try and make themselves feel better for a small moment, and that's really sad. You know, I don't hate them. I, yeah, I do my best to feel empathy for them, um, and I don't let them hurt me either. So, yeah, that that's all I have to say. I hope that was helpful. Um, I hope that brings some light into the world. Until the next time, be kind to one another, don't be assholes and, yeah, love one another.