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Yesterday The Guardian memed out a video: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/video/2017/jan/18/the-west-was-built-on-racism-its-time-we-faced-that-video in which a sociology professor asserts that the developments of The West were essentially only realised through the exploitation of non-whites, refutes the scientific classification of races while presumably having no problem with classification of flora an fauna, and suggests that the problems of the global south are the result of the deliberate machinations of The West. The Guardian has been increasingly pushing these types of narratives, including that 'white people are rather awful' and the need for immigration to be used to change the character of the United States. But if you scroll down to the comments and order by recommendations (most up votes), as is usually the case, you will find a slew of comments rejecting these various non-realities. Yet they continue to pump out this unpopular material. Question: Given that these memes are routinely rejected by The Guardians' predominantly leftist audience, do you think their projection actually serves more to discredit them and associated movements and ideologies? From what I have seen these memes are to a great extent confined to professors who are completely removed from market forces (and thus can live in a fantasy) and their hanger-on students. Do you see this anti-reality academic movement posing a real threat to the current level of civilisation? My take is that the dissemination of these fictional guilt-trips is a boon. For many years I was latently of the mind that Europeans were oppressors who were responsible for the current state of the third world. This was not a strongly held conviction, but rather the result of an amalgam of input from film, music, news, cartoons etc., creating the general smorgasbord of uniformed, loosely held opinions that most people never question. It was only in around 2011 when I started to see mentally unstable social justice warriors career around dispensing guilt that I looked into European colonisation and found that the reality was very different from what I had been led to believe.

I hate to be a thorn in the side of this discussion on trolling efficacy, but I really have to disagree here. Firstly, IFS doesn't really work that way. If you haven't accessed your True Self (which usually only happens through therapy or self work,) healed your exiles, and have moved your parts into more productive roles, you are almost always in the grip of a protector (managers/firefighters.) When you humiliate someone, you're right a firefighter will protect them, but later in when the firefighter is not longer active the person isn't in True Self, but in the role of a manager. In this scenario you might have a rationalizer or a prideful part. Unless the person who has humiliated you is someone a part needs you to love or care about (parents) a person will almost never admit that their wrong or question their views and will more likely than not seek to vilify the person by calling them a jerk or a term more apt here, a Troll. The system seeks to maintain itself as for decades it adapted to a situation of immense harm (abusive childhood/adolescence) which it developed that system in in order to survive, to give up it's "opinions" you're trolling is often like putting the person (from the perspective of the parts i.e false self) in mortal danger and in fact the body registers it this way. You are a threat and the system seeks to eliminate you from the environment like a psychological virus, no matter how reasonable your position it. It will in fact seek to reinforce itself. "Learning" and changing ones beliefs can only come in when the system doesn't feel threatened or when the system perceives the information to be vital to it's survival ("learn this or else.") This is why the Stefan/Dale Carnegie methods work well (as the information is presented in a way which isn't threatening or distracts the False Self) as well as when the information is presented in a funny way (a combination of both; the reason you can convince an audience through humiliating another person) and many effective teaching strategies are centered around this. Thats an interesting definition of humiliation and perhaps valid, but holding a person to their own standards, in my experience, doesn't change them either. They just end up qualifying their actions or beliefs. Causing valid internal value-conflict I agree can caused learning if in fact the person can rationality analyze separate values and understands their value heirarchies, but a system lives and dies on maintaining value-conflict. Again, the only "convincing" that I see coming out of trolling is the kind that comes out of convincing your audience that your opponent is an idiot and hoping they adopt your ideas by proxy, which seems to only be more likely if you have a dichotomy type society (conservative vs liberal.) Emperically you can see how trolling had an affect in the United States where this exists predominantly, but not so much in Europe where there is more diversity of view.

What can be said pretty safely is that the average standard of living is rising. Have a look here: Freedom of economy report Countries are ranked by personal and economical freedom, and the correlation can bee seen on the first glance: The less state the the better for everyone, no matter what profession. regards Andi

I visited my parents this weekend (Easter). Having broken the glass of the narcissistic abuse, standing on the other side looking back at the whole thing was interesting, sad and still very frustrating. "We weren't very good parents" actually slipped out of my mothers mouth during dinner. She has bad hearing which is very suitable for her. There is almost no way to speak to her without yelling, which eliminates the possibility of talking about anything personal. Of course she refuses to get a hearing aid. It's also a great way for her to shame me for mumbling or any other derogative statement about the way I speak. It is impossible to be assertive around my mother. The only allowed way of relating to her is to be an inanimate object. Anything beyond an infant is corrected, shamed, ignored and belittled. Anything beyond the infant is a threat to her. There is no understanding of the pain, suffering and the work I have had to go through to be who I am today. On the contrary, she sees it as an offence. Like her way of raising me wasn't good enough. Newsflash: It wasn't. Politics came up. She doesn't understand that she isn't objective in her reasoning. She was constantly defending her view that "there is no way of really knowing anything", which allowes her to have any opinion that suits her. Of course she is completely unaware of this. Anything I would say that challenges her view, she replied with "You're so mean!". So her need to see me as a nothing-knowing, opinion-less, wanting-less infant is paramount. How can you be a son to a mother like that? There is nothing of me that is welcome. At the same time she insists that I visit more often. She even said that I should move there. The gap of understanding between her wants and needs and my wants and needs are undescribable. She needs me to be something that I no longer am. That something lived in my body my whole childhood and many more years. She doesn't see anything but that thing, the deeply codependent infant. She hates and fears anything but that. The panicattacks. When I started my last job 3 years ago, I was starting to have panicattacks. The emerging emotions of being around people that were suppressed until then. A start of the eroding of the codependent false self I have been acting out around other people all those years. Becoming your true self isn't a smooth pretty enlightenment. It's a rough, dysfunctional, broken alternative accident. Maybe it will make you sane, maybe it will kill you. My dad. He was happy to see me. He had a stroke in 2001. He can hardly walk anymore. He is almost in a zombie-state. Can hardly form a sentence. I could tell he became upset with me because I got in to arguments with mom and that I got frustrated with his lack of attempts at actually communicating with me. They both just want everything to be nice and "as it used to be". The fact that I have suffered all those years exactly because of that, they just put out of their minds. We were going through old photos and found a photo of me as a 11 year old. My sister called and I could hear how mom said that I was "happy old me" in that photo. Just smile and get abused! We don't want you to wake up, just smile! Just reflect back that all I do is fine! My childhood was a bodycast of razorblades. Just lie perfectly still and you will be ok.

Some good posts. Now let's cut to it. You don't trust her. Realize it.

Bullshit.

It's easy to say "get over it" or "her past is none of your concern, only her present and her future desires". It's another thing to be psychologically and emotionally mature and/or healed/recovered enough to be there.

There are problems with what you say here apart from what others pointed out. One more FDR listener and one new member to this forum are usually a net gain to FDR. On YouTube, as you probably know, views, likes and shares help videos find their way to the front page or suggestions bar of other people. On forums, seeing an active board encourages people to join it, and the board would be less active if "free-riders" are ostracized. If everyone ostracized those who do not donate, that could just result in many of them simply quitting the forum eventually, instead of instantly donating, what could achieve the opposite of your intentions.

Not everyone on this forum disposes of enough money to donate to the show, I have absolutely zero income at the moment and in fact I never had any income at all. The little personal money that I have will be crucial for me when I leave the town for uni this year, plus good luck explaining to my parents where my money are going, maybe for you that live on your own I assume and have a job these problems seem irrelevant but not everyone on this forum is in the position to risk getting kicked out of the house for "being in a cult". Moreover, Stefan always said that money is not the only way to contribute to the show, sharing,bringing people in, talking about the show, with outsiders are also ways to contribute to the show, he even said that if you need to pursue therapy rather give your money to that, you can donate to the show later.

Consuming resources, receiving value and not reciprocating. Free rider by definition. You could if you donated, but you don't. It just occurred to me but your right, I'm starting now. That is another way of looking at it. In that case my propose is we ostracize those who do not donate after some arbitrary post count number.

Yes, because only humans are made in the image of God. That means we are masters of the noösphere or field of cognitive transformation of the Universe. Animals can be used by us, but they cannot participate cognitively in said sphere by definition. Ergo, human life is worth more than animal. Exceptions can be found, granted, as some humans merit death and some animals' worth outweigh that of those humans, but in general terms humans are worth more than animals. I'm not sure what "more sentient" would mean when applied to machines. Better able to discover universal principles, I guess? Anything that can discover such principles is a person by definition, so at that point we need a word that embraces both biological humans and artificial sentient life, or sapient life, as I've heard it called.