memeverse

While I'm familiar with this idea of forgiveness for years now (I'm on FDR since 2008, and have even defended it thoroughly and passionately) I have a degree of skepticism towards that idea. Wikipedia, for instance, actually does define it as something that is given regardless of whether there was restitution or not. That may be merely a mainstream definition of it, and you could say it then reflects popular fallacies, but when I ask myself how exactly is it that my mother in this instance could completely provide restitution if we can't actually go back to the past and undo what was done I'm left without a satisfying answer. And if the standard of forgiveness is such that it is next to impossible to forgive then doesn't the concept end up losing all meaning? I do agree that forgiveness shouldn't be given lightly. I can't say I forgive if the evidence of my emotions actually suggests otherwise (like saying I forgive yet feeling positively unforgiving). I also agree that earning does have a degree of relevance to forgiveness, as in, if a person doesn't show any remorse whatsoever and is thus likely to repeat the offenses in some way, then forgiveness becomes irrational. But that is only because the evidence of no remorse makes it difficult to feel the emotion of forgiveness. So the key question is whether I feel forgiveness, upon honest introspection, or not. My mother's remorse and guilt in combination with my drive to be an independent man makes me feel forgiveness. The extremely important thing here, however, is to discern between forgiveness and justification or excuse. Forgiveness in and of itself doesn't in any way imply justification, and that's why forgiving without justifying or even forgetting cannot rationally be construed as empowering the abuser. If my mother today tried to spout excuses about what I know were abuses, I would stop her cold in her tracks, and I emphasized that to her and everyone else I talked to about this already. There is no excuse. There never will be. And thus, there never will be tolerance for similar abuses in the future. It wasn't the article that had an effect on me; rather the deeper discussion below it regarding the nature of consciousness. To be precise, what I felt was simply a desire to understand consciousness fully, in scientific terms, because then I feel like I'd have a greater degree of certainty about how best to be and behave in applying science and philosophy to my life. I've never said I've completely gotten over the desire for certainty, so it's not particularly surprising that I would still occasionally feel hunger for it, even though I do feel very close to being at peace with not knowing what I don't know or can't know, in big part because my "life map" is fundamentally based on methodologies rather than sets of beliefs or facts. Methodologies are programs, not data, and as such rational methodologies can be trusted to take in and process new data as it comes about, even if new data suggests modifications to the program. This provides a good basis for self trust (unlike non-methodological belief systems which can collapse easily if new contradictory facts are encountered, causing anxiety and fear of new input and strong desire for certainty that the current limited belief-set is the 100% correct one; it's inflexible). I did look at the evidence; the evidence of the senses and emotions. Like I said, I communicated with my subconscious as well, learned to identify false self from the true self. And from this evidence I can say that I am free of the mental prison, or at least, the doors are certainly unlocked and opened waiting for me to pass through and out into the open. In other words I've lost the programming that made me susceptible to self-abuse or abuse by others (as a result of past abuses) because I'm aware of the trappings and already considerably learned the skill of avoiding such trappings. I also have an empowering degree of motivation to assert myself; not tolerate any more abuse, and instead demand the basic respect I deserve. I'm already getting said respect from my friends and family. The only reason why I say "at least the doors are unlocked" is because this sort of thing takes some practice. Those new neural pathways, let's call them "freedom neural connections", need to be reinforced until it is second nature. This is why I also said that I feel like I've balanced myself, lost my OCD and social anxiety, but it's sort of on thin ice. There's no other way; only practice can strengthen the new programming until I no longer feel like I'm on thin ice, in risk of occasional regresses, but standing on firm ground. I mean, do you think there's a point at which you just flip a switch and transform over night into a perfectly free individual? I don't think so. And if anyone tells you that he's lying. If it were like that, we wouldn't need this community, or therapy, or years of self-work; we would just take a pill. Yes. And yes I did. Like I probably mentioned, I'm not new to this process. And if I couldn't pick up in years of reading, listening, and trying to apply this material and somehow missed on the "look for evidence" part I'd call myself utterly stupid, deaf, blind, or something. Logic and empiricism, and rational skepticism, has been the very foundation of my thinking for years, and yes, that includes internal evidence (feelings, subconscious thought etc.), and the past. I appreciate your effort here, but that's not at all how I presently feel (and hasn't been for some time). IOW, what you are describing just doesn't resonate with who I am today. If you broke down crying over not paying your debt I would outright think of you as a self-entitled prick who should stop feeling sorry for himself and fix his situation. I would also look at the facts on you to see if what you're saying about your financial situation is actually true (and being "friends" this is hardly difficult). Often in these situations, however, it is pretty obvious when someone is bullshitting me. You would pay your debt or our relationship will be either terminated or severely degraded, but I would still consider you indebted, forever. Just as I might have mentioned I'm allergic to bullying I'm allergic to self-entitled self-pitying abusers like the one you're describing. They don't get much sympathy. Even if your financial situation in this story truly were so bad, in which case I would perhaps forgive the debt if I could afford it (though I may seriously consider simply postponing it), I would still resent the guilt tripping. I don't care how poor you are, but I smell these tactics from a kilometer away, and they're a serious turn off to me. And if that has to do something with my mother, it's precisely what we're talking about all along. I've learned my lesson. Abusers don't get a pass. Like I said. Don't confuse forgiveness with tolerance. Also don't confuse politeness and compassion with excuses. One of the arts of life is the art of making distinctions. Learned that too years ago. I'm not trying to keep them at bay. Again, I really appreciate your effort, but I have to tell you that you've lost me, which is fine. As much as I wrote in this thread you still don't know all that much about me. I'll explain then. Wrt anger and hatred, there was that of course, some time ago, but I've learned to let myself feel them, know their source, figure out what they're trying to tell me, and then deal with the results. Wrt negative emotions in general nowadays, including anxieties, my approach is "let them come and go, don't fight them, learn from them, and then let them go as naturally as they came". This works. Proven. It's a big part of why I am less anxious nowadays. So why am I inspired by eastern philosophy? Well, first of all, I've incorporated zero of eastern religious or spiritual superstructures into my philosophy in their complete form (if such a thing even exists). IOW, I don't call myself a buddhist, nor a New Age supporter, nor a Transcendental Meditation supporter (which is a dangerous cult), let a lone a hinduist or anything of the sort. I am extremely vary of full alignment, or the idea of belonging to a single group and then automatically accepting everything they're about. 99.9% of the time this is pretty stupid and leads to delusion. I'm a strong skeptic. So what I do is I read, listen, watch, let myself feel everything that I'm induced to feel by said material, but then.. when the show's over, I filter. What of the ideas I've just been exposed to actually makes rational sense (wrt logic and empiricism first and foremost, and personal intuition second). Then I incorporate what is consistent rationally, and discard the rest. There's also an in-between the discarded and the incorporated; the stuff I don't take in as truths, but as "interesting ideas", or "interesting metaphors", something that may actually even be of practical use, but I will never claim to be "The Truth" (at least not until evidence and logic fully aligns with it). That's how I interact with eastern philosophy. That's how I interact with all idea structures and their presenters, including FDR. So, what of eastern philosophy did I incorporate? Pretty simple really: at the core of it I saw a strong parallel between their talk of "The Source" or The Core, or just the inner self, and the true self as described by Stef. There appears to be a considerable amount of evidence supporting the fact that such a thing exists; and I'm being almost humorous, because all you need really is the evidence that the subconscious exists to begin with. It's not hard to give the idea of "The Source", by itself, a pass. Then there is the talk of oneness with the universe. This is a no brainer if you are scientifically minded. We are the universe. So where does the self stop and the the rest of the universe begins? Perhaps it's precisely where conscious identity of the self stops and the automatic processes begin. But the line IS somewhere. And the deeper into your subconscious you dig, the deeper you're in fact digging into the fabric of the universe itself because that which you are least consciously in control of is the most controlled by the universe outside of you (and this is nothing particularly esoteric, it's simply the laws of physics, among others, governing your body's local existence in this very moment). Ultimately, what this is for me is simply a neat reminder that by being in this communion with my subconscious, and with it my true self, I'm unavoidably also in deeper communion with the universe, through its laws. Of course I am. Anything that gets you closer to the truth of reality gets you closer to the harmony between your mental map and the universe as a whole. We forget this sort of thing, and it sometimes seems esoteric, but it's simply a way of thinking about what you're thinking about anyway, but one that actually has a chance of providing a greater amount of inspiration, calm, and motivation. It's like a scientist describing how gravity works without ever stopping to remind himself that he's feeling that which he's describing right now, and how awesome that is. Sometimes it's a good idea to jump up and down and tell himself "wow, yes, this is it". It breathes life into our mental maps. That's what I've alluded to when I mentioned "feeling the knowledge" too, not just knowing it like some sort of a robot executing syllogisms. I also sometimes practice simple meditation, and I think few people here doubt its scientific credentials. I also love trance music (esp. psychedelic trance lately), and consider dancing to music to be an active form of meditation, and a really nice symbolic metaphor for this harmony with reality that we strive for. To be truly consistent and happy, that's what we all strive for; to dance to the beat of reality; true reality, not distorted and disconnected belief systems. Dancing to the beat kind of nicely symbolizes and reminds of that, while also being calming, clearing of conscious chatter, physically healthy, and fun activity. Ah I could go on and on.. but the best way to summarize my relationship with ideas from eastern philosophy is that what attracts me is its emphasis on harmony (analogous to philosophers search of harmony with reality), the power of love (analogous to and actually consistent of healthy individual's capacity for compassion, curiosity and generosity), serenity (once old anxieties are unraveled and you free yourself from those mental prisons you can "just be" with a sense of peace in yourself that others can feel as well), and synergy (male vs. female, masculine vs. feminine, positive electrical charge vs. negative, up/down, left/right, light/dark.. synergy seems to be the very essence of the universe, observably, which is why I love the ying-yang symbol; if the universe had a flag or a logo that would be it). That's what attracts me. But what makes me incorporate elements of it into my thinking is the consistence with what I know already, already empirically/logically tested, and also consistent with A LOT of what FDR is about. And some of it I don't incorporate as references to truth, but as helpful metaphors. Nothing wrong with metaphors. You can call the sun a "raging fireball of nuclear fusion", and I can all it, well, "our star". Sometimes the way you describe things changes none of its meaning, yet can affect how you feel about it due to emotional connotations of various words and their individual meanings. I have my boundary enforcers, and I rely on them whenever I need to (they let me know). I've confronted my mom years ago (and described it already). I've also read RTR years ago. Thank you! I wish all the best on your journey as well. Much of my response in this thread, other than the clarifying parts, are also about sharing stuff that I am simply passionate about. Cheers I'm not sure ruling classes are that all powerful, but in any case I don't identify with any of these religions, and if I borrow some ideas from them individually, they are only those which I find rationally consistent, or otherwise metaphorically interesting, entertaining, or helpful (not as truth statements). Lians said "philosophy isn't a buffet". Philosophy as a methodology of thinking isn't. There's the right and the wrong, but the world of ideas is a buffet, and you have no choice but to cherry pick. The key is having your filter set up right.

I've listened to the cautionary tale, and I think I get what you're saying. I think I understand what you mean about what DeFOO-ing actually is; basically becoming completely mentally independent or liberated of the family of origin's abuses and its consequences so that I am no longer susceptible to them from others, like the guy who called in, who apparently still attracted abusive people into his life. So the implication is that I've forgiven my parents too soon, and too easily, and that in saying that they no longer have a hold on me I'm deluding myself because the issues may still be there. I'm honestly not sure if that's actually true, but I'm willing to give the idea the benefit of the doubt. I don't in any way justify what they did, nor did I ever say to them or others that it is in any way excusable. I can point to, like the caller, various causes of why they were the way they were, but for a long time now I haven't been confusing the understanding of why with the justification. If understanding why someone is the way he or she is was enough to justify certain behaviors then everything would be excusable, and that clearly cannot be the case. I still remember a conversation I had with my mother about this stuff, and I remember that I've never justified it, and to this day I don't. She listened attentively, and she was remorseful, and she even went on to tell a story I actually forgot about by then, when she lost control and hit me, and then immediately afterwards felt very guilty because of that (bursting into tears). The fact that she felt guilty then and there, and then so many years later when I confronted her about religious abuses as well, regretted it, is what made me feel like there's hope for her yet, and that I could genuinely forgive. If a person feels genuine remorse, isn't that the natural trigger for forgiveness? My father is a different story, and I probably didn't forgive him, because he hasn't really changed fundamentally. My sister, whom is raising her now 5 year old child according to natural parenting principles she picked up through me as I was exploring this stuff on FDR, has some pretty heavy words of scorn for my father when he seems to sometimes subtly try to sneak in religious sensibilities to my nephew. We're incredibly standoffish when it comes to this stuff, and have next to zero tolerance for his continuing religious spoutings. But this is why, like I said, my relationship with my father is still so distant. To be sure, the abuses suffered by the caller were far more gruesome and sick than anything I've suffered. My parents were light on physical punishment; heavier on touchy feely, but insidiously manipulative religious BS.

Exactly this. Resonates very well. It's an issue of self-trust, that is, not trusting myself that I can and will be able to navigate life spontaneously as I go even if I don't have a carefully predetermined know-it-all plan of action for every situation. I managed to bring this perfect mental image you refer to, which used to be an unwieldy complex hierarchical checklist of facts and methods, down to a single sentence: "Relax from your center with love and strength." The only way I could do that, though, is by learning to let go of the need to verbalize every single detail of the philosophy that this affirmation refers to and replace those with thought feelings, connotations, and trust. Each of these key words (relax, center, love, strength, and their synonyms) to me carries an entire structure of concepts, already internalized, and already trusted to manifest themselves in practice as needed. This actually works for me. It works better than anything I've ever tried. It's almost like a magic spell that in a simple and effective way reminds me to reconnect with my unconscious, trust my gut, and then from that state of being proceed with living. Well, when saying that the true self has the upper hand I don't mean to say that it necessarily always wins. It simply cannot win if the subconscious isn't even consulted. Without some degree of self-knowledge a person is essentially an automaton. False self keeps being fed, endlessly, because the person hasn't even realized such a thing exists in their unconscious let alone realize that they have the capacity to let it go, and stop giving it energy. But if the connection is made then with it, it seems to me, comes the realization of this positive natural power of the unconscious. Once false self is identified, why do you automatically begin preferring the true self at all if not because your nature as a human being has a tendency towards truth and goodness? This is the "upper hand". It is also consistent with what proponents of natural parenting (including Stefan) say about young children: they all naturally want to be good, and they are also naturally curious and essentially rational. The default appears to be the tendency towards truth and harmony with reality. And again, it makes sense in terms of evolution: why would we evolve with an inherently self-destructive nature, and without a self-repairing mechanism? Yes, our terrible history seems to indicate that we are self-destructive, but that can be easily explained by distortions of our own nature brought about through bad upbringing. Why is bad upbringing so rampant? Well, our big brains are a relatively new evolutionary invention, and it appears we haven't yet quite learned how to use all of that extra power, and in our immature fumbling around we hurt ourselves and the environment.. but eventually, we will have to grow up and learn how to use it. Or we'll go extinct. It's not like objective reality, other than conscious minds, cares what happens. Either big brain was an evolutionary "mistake", or we'll manage to learn how to drive it. I'm not presenting this as a proven fact necessarily, but a theory that seems to explain a lot. To be perfectly honest, when it comes to things like this there are few things I would take as perfect fact. All I have are models that seem to work best until I find a better model. Oops, forgot this: I suppose it wasn't enough back then, probably because she wasn't aware that she was inflicting so much damage. When, few years ago, I started talking to her about my past and how this upbringing affected me she finally became aware, and actually responded with compassion and regret. This is why I avoided the "deFOO-ing" thing. My three sisters have been undergoing their own processes of healing, and they had an influence on her as well. It was difficult for her not to realize the truth in what we presented her with, and so she gradually began shifting. There's another part to that story though: the father. He was raised as a catholic (well, all of them are), but in our culture catholicism is often not practiced as staunchly as protestantism. It's more ritualistic than anything else. This is probably why Alain De Botton, when he recently spoke in Croatia, said that our country was essentially atheistic despite the 90% "catholic" statistic. People say they're catholic, but in practice that means precious little, which dulls the damage of their religiosity somewhat. The problem with my father is that he found a "better" religion than catholicism; Seventh Day Adventism, and this made him into one of the most dangerous things out there: a true believer, passionate and fundamentalist about his faith, and with ambitions towards becoming a preacher and a missionary. He converted my mother, she went along with it, but as it turned out in her 20th year of life (when she got married and gave birth to me) she was too weak, too gullible, and too suspectible to abuse. Most of their marriage he was the, in consistence with religious teachings, "the head of the family", and she kept her frustrations and suffering to herself. Years after the marriage fell apart she keeps regretting her weakness and recognizing the fact that she should have stood up to him and his ideology far sooner. That said, I realize some part of her is just shifting blame to my father, and making herself feel a victim. She did take up the faith, or seemed to anyway, quite seriously. But you know.. this thing's for me already blown out in the open. I've already gone through the process. Already forgave. If I see her as weak, I'm merely sorry for her, and want to let her live in peace. The damage is done; her regrets are there, and my healing is near the end. My father on the other hand; I keep a "diplomatic" albeit emotionally fairly distant relationship with him, difficult at times, but overall not particularly harmful to me. This may sound wrong, but I view him as inferior, as a failure as a father figure. I got next to zero of my manhood from him, and I'm actually trying my best to be the opposite of him. In doing so, I feel like an authority to him rather than vice versa, and I can feel his intellectual shivering. It instills in me either a sense of pity or I just don't care anymore. He's fun to play around with, intellectually, because while I know he'll never budge, I can always bring him to feel so much cognitive dissonance I feel like he's about to explode. Is this sadistic of me? I don't know.. the whole relationship with him just has very little real influence in my life. For better or worse that's how it is. I mostly feel sorry though, because he seems to be wasting his golden years on what should, even to him, be obvious as a failed project. : I know his life could be so much more fulfilling if he joined the rest of us in healing... I can very much sympathize and identify with what you describe! That's precisely it. I'm glad you're growing out of it too. You know.. it seems to become easier after a time. All that's needed is to establish a little bit of evidence that progress is possible and then you can refer to it as undeniable proof that you can get there. This builds momentum.

I do find pleasure in knowledge, but not uncertainty. I do realize this is probably a symptom of my OCD since at the root of it is the constant compulsion towards perfection or certainty, and if there is no certainty I can't be at peace, can't move on. This is pretty typical for OCD, though I'm lucky I almost never had physical action manifestations of it (like the compulsion to wash my hands thoroughly or check a hundred times if I locked my doors). It was limited inside the mind, and had bearing on my self-image... You asked an interesting (and actually not out of place on this forum) question about my mother, and the answer illustrates pretty clearly why it was a self-image issue. I'm not actually at the beginning of the process of exploration of causes and remedies to these anxieties, but near the end of it. Last couple of months I felt freer from obsessive compulsion than ever before, as well as social anxiety. But the idea of finding happiness in uncertainty actually intrigues me. I wish I could do that! Nothing better than turning something that caused anxiety into something that causes serenity. As for sense of identity stemming from a belief system I don't feel like mine does either so perhaps there's a semantic issue at play. While the context of my original post probably implied any belief system, including superstitious ones, what I base my identity on is the knowledge of what and who I am, the knowledge of what reality around me is, and the knowledge of the methods of how one can interact with the other to most effectively result in a good and happy life. So it's more of a thinking paradigm, than a simple set of beliefs. A difference between methodology and dogma. When I talk about settling I refer to being at peace with the methodology or thinking paradigm I currently have in place, especially if I have evidence that it works, instead of continuing to seek on and on for more and more certainty about it, like the desire to fully understand what consciousness is, something no human being probably understands fully yet. How can I be at peace if I can't accept that I don't or can't know something? I can't. I need to "settle", if you will, at some level, and be practical. Oh yes, I can identify with that. When I feel most at ease is when falling asleep (ok I'm being Mr. Obvious here ). When compulsive thinking was taking a particular hold of me I remember vividly the feeling: "I just want my mind to shut up! This is ridiculous. I'm repeating the same analysis over and over, and it's been hours already. I just want my mind to shut down. I want silence." And sleep provides the silence better than anything. I'm not sure I fully understand the dichotomy you're referring to, but in any case I've come to think that the key is in the balance between directing and letting go. They both have their place, but when one overtakes the other trouble arises. I've been compulsively directing for many years; and letting go so very little, and it was like having a rogue process on a computer that takes up 90% of CPU power slowing the entire system to a standstill. I tried negotiating with my unconscious. My first reaction to that question was "you can't do that, it's unconscious", but then I remember the meditative states and the psychedelic experiences. My theory and experience has been (like many others, it's not a new idea) that when the conscious chatter quiets down parts of the subconscious begin to leap out and you can capture those insights much like a fisherman may capture fish jumping out from beneath the sea. IOW, you listen closely and the subconscious begins to manifest in words, not just as it typically is, as feelings and sensations. I've had many tiresome, but illuminating chats with what seemed to be my subconscious during psychedelic experiences (again, just marijuana, which seems to be sufficient, never tried LSD, and likely wont). But during normal states of mind the only way I see this negotiation being possible is to listen to the manifestations of the subconscious in forms that can be detected consciously; the feelings and those wordless sensations, learning to listen to them more closely without so much analysis, and then based on that figure out where the imbalance lies. I mean.. sometimes there are thoughts or realizations that occur within a nanosecond which in that incredibly small space of time can contain an entire superstructure of concepts that, if put into words, would require a many-page essay of laborious explanations and syllogisms. And that's precisely where my problem always was: I actually went and wrote the damn book of words in my mind before I could accept and acknowledge that thought or realization, and while doing so also tested and analysed and checked every single concept that was a part of it. So it's hours of mental effort simply to acknowledge and check a realization that occured, and was done, within a simple nanosecond. So I concluded: while analysis is certainly useful, my obsessive analysis of compulsive need to verbalize and check, re-check, and re-check again, everything was literally bringing my life to a standstill. I needed to learn to just hear the non-verbal thought-feeling, and then the next one, and the next.. thinking without words, feeling more, letting the subconscious vastness of mental processing power do its thing! And in my experience I learned it's incredibly good at this! After all, subconscious controls most of my body's functioning without me having to think and analyse any of it all the time. And yes I'm fully aware of the mecosystem, or the ecosystem of competing personalities. From my understanding they are grouped into false-self and true-self personalities whereas the true self is what is in congruence with the natural world and my own human male nature as it would develop if it developed from birth onwards naturally and without abuses. False self, on the other hand, are essentially defense mechanisms developed against such abuses, and then left lingering to eat away at myself. They doubt myself, they instill anxieties, and they ultimately want to kill me, and I'm not kidding. They do. This is where suicidal tendencies can develop from (and I've felt them). While they both reside in the subconscious I think the true self, like all truth, has just a slight upper hand. It's a self-correcting system that naturally strives for a harmonious balance, for the mere sake of self-preservation (as opposed to self-destruction). This makes perfect evolutionary sense to me. So the key appears to be in simply letting the subconscious superstructure work this out, and when I say "letting", I mean really listening, with honesty and compassion, and then the answers become obvious. The false selves reveal their true nature; their origin in abuse and their goal of self-destruction. Why would I want to listen to them then? And that's where the healing starts. Ok, this was way longer than anticipated, but.. I hope maybe it's somehow interesting to you or others, as a personal experience. Today, it's pretty decent. There's some time now since I begun feeling like I actually have a lot more to show to her (and my father) than she does me, which started when they shown all of their weaknesses during the ugly pre-divorce time. Albeit I was pretty rough and naive at first, having my heads in utopian science fiction and dreams of space exploration which made their quibbles seem so petty and small minded, it was a beginning. Today, I don't feel much of their authority. In fact, with the exception of my father, my mother is borderline atheist now. In the past, since I'm already so long-winded... I'll just summarize: religious parenting along with all the guilt tripping this tends to bring, the pressure to be a model christian (an impossible feat), and the isolation that comes from being in a minority fundamentalist protestant denomination which believes saturday is the sacred day (Seventh Day Adventist) within a catholic dominated country. I know for a while now that the bulk of my OCD and social anxiety originated from these religious abuses. I still remember a nervous breakdown I had when I was about 14 from trying to hard to be a "perfect christian", day in day out. And I can so vividly recognize and remember those urges towards this elusive perfection, because those urges would later manifest as OCD. I became an atheist in 2005, but scars took a whole lot longer to heal to this point, but I think it may be almost over.

Liam, yes it was more of a stream of consciousness than argumentation. I feel like I have an elusive sense of why you felt melancholy and helplessness while reading it. I'm not sure, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but perhaps it is because it may imply that it is best to give up, let go, relax, and basically.. go back to sleep. But that actually wasn't the meaning I intended to convey. In simple terms: there's a difference between finding peace in balance and giving up on the pursuit of truth, liberty, and happiness. My motivation was the desire for feedback, any kind of input, whether it is criticism or confirmation/sympathy or a different perspective or a combination of those. I think I was hoping for a confirmation and a different perspective on it the most, but I'm actually quite interested in demolishing criticisms too. For one thing because I still don't want to live by a fallacy, and secondly because I suspect the ultimate disagreement may be less than it may first appear. I realize that some of what I write sounds kind of spiritualistic and therefore has a scent of pseudoscientific or religious thinking that may be an instant turn off to a lot of people here, because I know such words have been an instant turn off to me not so long ago, but a lot of such words I use in a metaphorical abstract sense because laying these concepts down with mathematical logical precision would take a lot more time and words, and my intent wasn't that, as I mentioned. However, I can lay out my argumentation if wanted. About the "having faith" part, the "you" here wasn't meant in an instructive manner, but more as a generalized expression of what I learned I have to do. Also, I like your honesty. The song's not bad either, but not to my taste or mood at the moment. --- FriandlyHacker, I sympathize with the hacker manifesto, emotionally, but to be honest if hacking here does refer to unauthorized intrusions into somebody else's property, as a libertarian I tend not to approve. I'm aware of the definition of a "hacker", however, that doesn't involve such acts (I'm well familiar with Richard Stallman, Eric Raymond, the Free Software Movement etc.). That said, I wasn't particularly referring to the pain of learning about all of the bad in the world, albeit that can be well within "the curse of knowledge". I've kind of burned through that phase long ago (when I was just unlearning and relearning and felt like everything I believed to be true was false, and everything I thought to be good was bad; the world isn't actually getting freer, and we're living in some sort of a Matrix that I'm now aware off, but almost nobody will understand me if I try to scream about it). I remember that feeling, but the feeling I refer to now is another one: the desire for peace and the ability to just be and do rather than get stuck in constant analysis, seeking, or fighting. More than anything I want to live a full life, not spend it seeking 100% certainty, or trying to make everything perfect before I can actually start living. I want to accept that I don't know, or don't have to know, everything, and that I can be happy even if I'm wrong about something, and also that I can be happy even if the world isn't what I wanted it to be. Brady1981, yes that's another take on it. The more you know, the more powerful you are as well, and the more responsible. I'd say those of us who are truth-seeking oriented encounter more doubts and the pressing need to do the difficult job of constantly re-evaluating and re-configuring our lives to fit the new truths, and then we still have doubts, and the process never ends. There's got to be a balance. But among those who are more power-seeking oriented, I guess doubts are less of an issue, practical application is the focus.. and if something reveals itself as doable, it often seems that just the fact it is possible means it has to be done. Nuke.. that didn't have to be done, but power plays at stake in the violence-governed world brought it into existence, like many other destruction oriented tech.

I've been reading this article and the associated discussion bearing on what consciousness actually is, and it almost awoken some old anxieties, not so old even. It often seems like knowledge is a curse, and ignorance can really be bliss. The more you know the more you doubt everything and the more you doubt the more anxious you are. Mind goes into overdrive and practical happy productive life can actually become more difficult. This is probably what is known as analysis paralysis, and it can be particularly tough on a person with a history of thought-oriented OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). So it almost seems that at some point a person has to settle, in a way, for a specific belief system, even while being aware that it might be filled with errors or even fundamentally wrong, simply because such a possibility always exists. The only thing that is absolutely certain is uncertainty. Otherwise we'd be omniscient. In other words, it seems that happiness trumps being right. The reason why the discussion of consciousness brought this up is because I've during this year made tangible demonstrable progress towards living and feeling more, and overthinking less. My OCD is just about gone. My social anxiety is just about cured. I've never had more clarity, confidence, and peace. It just seems a little bit on thin ice at times, because the paradigm that I've built up, that help me get to this point, is still being affirmed. You know.. repetition, affirmation or practice strengthens those new neural connections. The older they get the stronger they are. What helped is a healthy dose of influence from eastern inspired philosophy, albeit distilled and filtered by my own skeptic, materialist, logic and empiricism based perspective. For example, I know meditation helps, the feeling is good, and you can "just be" in the moment, and my psychedelic experiences (just marijuana.. ) seem to strongly suggest that knowledge of The Truth, the real truth, is actually innately built into the subconscious, sort of at the border between the rest of the universe and you, like where the external ends and internal begins. And that falsehoods, irrational thinking and behavior etc. are all just a result of not being sufficiently in touch with the deepest subconscious.. or what some call The Source, which is in fact perfectly analogous with what just about all religions refer to as God; it's just that they project outward and think of God as external. What I'm referring to is also perfectly analogous to what Stef refers to as the "true self". I've on many occasions managed to discern between false self and true self by essentially "consulting", so to speak, that gut feeling, the intuition, with complete and utter honesty with myself. It doesn't seem like the label matters. The Source, The Core, God, True Self, Sexual Essence (in David Deida-speak), are in my mind essentially all the same thing. And this has led me to wonder then...If "brainy" people like scientists, philosophers, intellectuals in general ( could tongue-in-cheek refer to them as "know it alls") are so knowledgeable why aren't they the happiest supermen compared to others? It very often doesn't seem like their happiness and well being levels are so much greater than that of those who are comparatively "dumb", or live unexamined lives on autopilot.. at least those who are lucky enough to have a sufficiently healthy natural personal development even if it didn't involve a particular amount of knowledge seeking or philosophical analysis. Seems there's a huge difference between the map and the territory. All the knowledge in the world is just a map. Applying it is a whole other story, and one actually doesn't seem to depend on the other. A person can apply knowledge without actually knowing it, or rather, a person can apply what knowledge refers to without knowing any of it. This is much like we unconsciously breath, our hearts beat, regrow our cells etc... We don't have to consciously control these processes with intent. It just happens so long as we let it. And I've begun suspecting that the same may hold true for psychological processes and even living in consistence with The Real Truth. It may be innate, subconscious may operate on first principles, logically and empirically, on autopilot. All we need to do is let it do so unhampered. If it contains built in imbalances like various psychological disorders or traumas, it already knows this! It's already trying to re-center, rebalance. We often actually harm the process more than we help it by trying to consciously direct everything. Much like the religious say you just have to have faith in God, I might say you just have to have faith in your subconscious, your innate nature, and let go. (And just to be clear, I am an atheist, and also a voluntaryist). What do you think?

If their stuff is self-evident to them and ours to us that kinda dilutes the meaning of something being "self-evident". I think if something is self-evident no external evidence or validation is necessary. If any external evidence or information or beliefs are necessary to make something appear evident then it's not "self" evident. I'm feeling so pedantic right now.

I wholeheartedly agree, especially the bold part. I kept waiting for PJ to finish his basic point already, and he does tend to do it through lots of seemingly unnecessary intellectual babble, and technical terms, but ultimately I think his main point was salvaged. And it's a pretty good attack on the free market, good in the sense that it completely agrees with it, but then bypasses that by looking above and beyond that "box" as he calls it. It's good in the sense that it is a great weapon in the hands of believers and seems to have the aura of thinking outside of the box, and with more depth (which in PJs mind seems to be equivalent to "broadness" and big picture thinking, not realizing this actually makes him miss some very important details). While watching occams razor came to my mind; I was wondering if PJ was familiar with the concept (though I'm sure he is). Usually when someone needs so many intellectual hoops to jump through, coming out as what appears as intellectual mumbo jumbo, it's a red flag for me. What I take away from the debate though is recognition of the greater need to address the perception of the free market as strictly all about selfishness (however enlightened it may be), primacy of trading (like PJ said "you have to trade", which is false), and most of all the fear of failure in a market void of safety nets currently established by government. I mean, one way I can understand PJs view that there's inherent tendency in a free market that leads it to creation of governments (making governments essentially an emergent property of free markets) is this fear of falure, and the reaction to failure. Fear of failure makes people incentivized to take any opportunity they get to stay afloat or ahead which in extreme cases may lead them to break the cardinal Non-Aggression Principle. When push comes to shove, you're gonna put your needs above those whom might be violated especially if you are far enough removed from the violated ones to not be able to experience the empathy towards them. Similarly, if you do fail, and there's no safety net of any kind, and you're desperate to survive, it's not surprising that you'll under pressure develop negative traits such as anger and subsequent tendency towards aggression. Left at that, I can perfectly see how a government or any form of institiutionalized coercion, may be the end result. BUT, the simple fact being ignored here is that there's absolutely nothing about the definition of a free market and the NAP that stands in the way of establishing these safety nets and softening the blow of failure. If this service is such a valuable thing then by the operatives of the free market itself it WILL be provided. That's all fine, and easily understood for voluntaryists and ancaps, but I think people like PJ illuminate the need for us to emphasize those kinds of points more loudly. Way WAY too many people view the free market as a kind of archetypical embodiment of primacy of selfishness over concern for others, primacy of trade over other human interactions, primacy of competition over cooperation etc. when this is absolutely false. Instead of talking about a free market as a market of individuals whom only voluntarily trade and compete incentivized by their self interest we should probably talk about a free market of individuals who voluntarily interact with each other in pursuit of their self interest, but as part of that also their ideals and aspirations regarding society in general. I mean, if in this current system there are people concerned about changing the world for the better there certainly would be such people in a free market, and their hands wouldn't be tied to establish organizations (aggregates of interaction not all of which may be trade and not all of which would center on competition) that would solve certain problems that can remain in a free market without breaking the NAP, and in doing so in fact preventing these "structural pressures" from leading anyone to the point of wanting to break the NAP. This would be a way of presenting the free market outside of the confines of the typical perception of it and in a way that addresses a huge swath of issues that people like proponents of the Zeitgeist movement have with it. It would also go to show that the free market doesn't in fact fundamentally operate solely on scarcity (really now... scarcity has been less and less of an issue, but that doesn't automatically make NAP unnecessary or voluntary interaction irrelevant) or operate solely on competition and gaining advantage etc. which are the things they believe make the free market susceptible to emergence of state. They believe so only out of a grave misunderstanding of what a free market is which views it as far more rigid than it really is, seeing obstacles and rules where they don't exist. And WE, the proponents of the free market, keep harping on words like "trade", "self interest" etc. without realizing we are reinforcing those people's established perceptions. Our presentation needs to try harder to get outside of the box that they see us in. We need to make them see that there in fact isn't a box. Nothing about NAP requires there to be a box. There are no other rules or expectations of a free market society whatsoever other than NAP. Even Zeitgeister's Resource Based Economy based cities could be established within a free market society so long as they don't force participants in. Really.. maybe the problem is with the word "market". It has these dirty connotations much like the word "anarchy", for some people anyway. What we're in fact talking about is a free society period. The "market" just happens to be an inevitable and necessary component of it, but it is a less fundamental component than the NAP. All you need is NAP, and NAP creates a free society. Yes.. that also means a market. But so what.