AdamC
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Posts posted by AdamC
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Good to find some others familiar Georgism on the board. I got a chance to speak briefly to Stef at Anarchy in NY about it and it was a new concept to him. I really think George provides a morally preferable 3rd way between anarcho-capitalism and anarcho-communism.
Same here. It's heartening to know there are others who make the crucial distinction between land and capital (and thereby avoid the unnecessary polarization of capitalists vs communists).
I'm not in agreement with the Georgist/Geoist moral theory that land value (rent) is owed to all of humanity. I see voluntary (Geoanarchist) rent-sharing as a practical (not moral) solution to settling disputes over who gets to exclude others from supra-marginal land, and to protecting the economic growth and social stability of communities from rent-seeking behaviour.
You might enjoy these articles:
The Geolibertarian Ethics of Land Rent
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While a living person is away from homestead, there are fences and arbitrary markers supposedly binding on people who never agreed to obligate themselves to them.
Ultimately, present and absentee exclusions are only as secure as the reciprocal agreement of community members to respect exclusions (optionally upon condition e.g., Georgist/Geoist rent-sharing), as well as a likely commitment to protect exclusions from roaming outsiders (justified to the outsiders as the protection of body and other property resting there). Claiming an exclusion of spatial land is an "ownership" or a "property right" doesn't create any additional security or binding obligation upon others since neither physical nor spatial land can be owned as property, if property is strictly the result of transformation:
Transformed (e.g., relocated) physical land is called "property". Untransformed physical land is called "land" (not property). Spatial "land" cannot be transformed.
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I agree that you created/grew and own the plants and have a right to harvest the plants. But you didn't create the land. How do you derive ownership of the land? What if someone returns yearly to hunt on a land, do they own it? What do they own? Where they walked? Where the deer fell down? This seems arbitrary.
It is true that land is not the result of human action. And without a consistent principle to appeal to, "land" ownership seems completely arbitrary.
The problem is the definition of "land". There is physical land (rocks, minerals, water, soil, vegetation, animals, etc) and spatial land (geographical "space" or "location").
The "Homesteading Principle" says that the transformation of physical land AND the exclusion of others from spatial land ("embordering") is sufficient to establish property. When Anarcho-Capitalists claim they "own" land, they are not claiming to have transformed spatial land (which is impossible) but are claiming to have made an effort to alert others of their wish to exclude others from a location (by "embordering" that location with a fence) in order to protect the property resting there, property which is the result of their human action (e.g., a planted field, house).
Some (but not all) Geoists (of various political stripes) argue that valid property is only the transformation of physical land, and that exclusion from supra-marginal spatial land should be compensated using a land-value "tax" (statist) or rent-sharing/land dues (voluntaryist). This reciprocal compensation is intended to prevent rent-seeking on rising land values in those locations that have become especially attractive due to the supra-marginal economic and social opportunities available there. Even in a stateless society absent the state's expenditure on public works, some locations will be desired above others and competition for access to those locations will result in higher land-values ("rent"/"geo-rent"/"ground rent").
Because of the "Homesteading Principle" derivation of property and the ability to capitalize land values (rent) into money stuffs, Anarcho-Capitalists don't easily recognize the distinction between land and capital. And because of Robinson Crusoe economics, Anarcho-Capitalists don't easily understand how economic progress leads to poverty in those locations where rent-seeking on rising land values is rife. Fred Foldvary explains how rent-seeking on rising land values initiates the credit (mortgage) expansion phase in each business cycle.
Where Anarcho-Capitalists and Anarchist-Geoists can agree is that IF rent-seeking is a problem in any particular location, people will find voluntary geoist (or other market) solutions to prevent adverse accumulation. But Anarcho-Capitalists and Geoist are certain to disagree if the Capitalist asserts that anything other than transformation/human action results in property, and if the Geoist claims that "land" (in total or portion) is owned collectively by all mankind as a "birth right" absent any human action.
If ownership derives from transformation/human action, then it is property that is owned and not physical "land", physical "land" being that which is left remaining after transformation. If spatial "land" cannot be transformed, then spatial "land" cannot be owned as property, it can only be used exclusively (or collectively). In short, despite verbal claims to the contrary, "land" cannot be owned and should not be heard to be "owned."
I favor the geoist conception of property derived strictly from transformation/human action, and I reject spatial exclusion (as in the "Homesteading Principle") as any basis of property ownership, recognizing "embordering" only as the means by which others are alerted to an intent of exclusive use of a location/space. The concept of property is supposed to prevent disputes. Ultimately, it is the agreement of those local to one's "homestead" that is the reciprocal security of local "homesteads". Agreement requires clear principles that are sensitive to local conditions, particularly market demand for locations since space cannot be produced:
In those locations where competition for exclusion is high, it seems likely voluntary geoist rent-sharing would be the easiest means to secure an exclusion of space for oneself whilst respecting the spatial exclusions of others. Where competition for exclusion is low or none at all, then mere verbal claims of ownership of "land" (physical or spatial) have no consequence for the validity of property since there is no one there to contest such claims.
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I'm trying to understand the concept of privilege. It has the heavy odour of cultural marxism, but I don't doubt that privilege exists. What are we to make of it?
Privilege = "I am a Victim. Therefore you are either a Persecutor or a Rescuer. If you don't rescue me from my victimhood then you must be a Persecutor. Stop persecuting me!"
See: The Victim Drama Triangle / The Three Faces of Victim
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....if public land is sold, where does the money go? Given a minarchy it would seem reasonable to apply the funds to the minimal governmental functions, resulting in less pressure to raise funds through taxation. Not so simple if it comes to anarchy.
So I've debated myself around the circle and back to the starting point: who's money is it?
The money/property paid to exclude others from occupying land (location) within a geographically-defined community can be distributed equally amongst the members of that community.
A member's ongoing payment of "geo-rent" (in proportion to the market value of their exclusion) secures the community's agreement to their exclusion and guarantees a share of the distributed "geo-rent" in compensation for being excluded from other locations.
See Fred Foldvary on Geolibertarianism and Geoanarchism
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Here I made you a nice counter circle to look at whenever you need cheering up:
Thanks for this. Perhaps you can type out the circle if you can't get your image to embed.
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When we protect ourselves ... from a too intensive or too
quick living out or living up, we feel ourselves guilty on account of
the unused life, the unlived life in us. -- Otto Rank, in Irvin D. Yalom, Existential Psychotherapy p.146 -
I came across this recently and thought of this thread. It's fun
[View:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yb0scU4prtQ]
Good message. Respect the "No!" Love the "No!" Only then can be free to hear the "Yes!"
Procrastination is just a form of waiting. And part of this comes from waiting for your parents to love you; waiting for those around you to take an interest in you; waiting for those around you to treat you well; waiting, waiting, waiting. Procrastination can swallow decades of your life. The False-Self wants you to do that which will gain external validation. And the True-Self doesn't. So you end up with ambivalence. Your False-Self wants the effects of having done something rather than the enjoyment of the cause itself. And that causes your True-Self to say, "No, that's just shallow; you just want social approval." When the False-Self no longer believes that it will get praise for doing something then motivation disappears completely. Procrastination is ambivalence about what it is you want to do: You have a good motive for not doing it and a bad motive for doing it – and the good motive won't win and the bad motive won't let go – and so you end up stuck. -- Stefan Molyneux 0747 (Paraphrased)
What is it that you actually do when you don't have to do anything? What are you doing when there is nothing else you'd rather be doing in that moment? Do that. -- Stefan Molyneux 0747 (Paraphrased)
The work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life. -- Jessica Hische
You can only procrastinate in relation to your goals. And there's only choosing and choosing again. Moment by moment choosing, and asking two questions: "Am I having fun right now?" and "Is this what I've set out to do?" -- David D. Nowell
Work like a dog being taken for a walk, instead of an ox being yoked to the plow. -- Paul Graham
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However, I do not see the connection you make between avoidance of relationships and shame. You say failed relationships cause shame (universally?) can you please explain?
Shame can be understood as a state following relational failure. By failure, I'm not referring to the final ending of a relationship (though that can add to shame if one is shame-prone); rather I'm referring to the repeated failure of repair within rupture-repair cycles:
"We've looked at our videotapes," Michael Lewis, a professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, says of his studies of shame in childhood. "Mom says, Oh, don't do that, that's awful." She seems to be voicing a negative reaction to the child's behavior and not to the child's whole being. But on closer examination Lewis saw that the mother's face showed elements of disgust, what he called "an incomplete-disgust face." What she was conveying, in effect, was, You disgust me. "We're finding that thirty to forty percent of mothers' prohibitions are accompanied by this incomplete-disgust face. And this is in laboratory situations, where they know they're being videotaped. I would say that the middle class, in moving away from physical punishment, utilizes more withdrawal of love. We think we have moved to a higher plane because we don't punish the kids, when in fact we may be humiliating them instead."
When an infant seeks to engage a parent, when his coos and smiles and efforts to make eye contact fail, he looks down forlornly and experiences what looks very much like shame. The fundamental purpose of all affects, as the affect theorist Silvan Tomkins saw it, is to amplify or call attention to the situation that triggers them. "It's like the relationship between pain and injury," he said. "If we had no pain receptors, we could have injury and do nothing about it." Thus, when the baby turns away in disappointment as his mother fails to respond in the expected way, or, worse, as she reacts with anger or distress because she sees that he has just wet the new comforter, the baby's shame is an adaptive reaction. It keeps him from making a bad situation worse by continuing to seek attunement in the face of a hopeless situation. And because he eventually associates what he has done with the feeling of shame it has evoked, that feeling helps him to learn about acceptable and unacceptable behavior.
Psychologists disagree, of course, on whether to call these early painful feelings shame, since at this stage no self-evaluation is involved. But certainly dealing with shame and its boundaries is soon a constant factor in the socialization of the child, because standards and rules are everywhere, and he has a lot to learn in a very short time. From toilet training to eating behavior to how and with whom to display anger or affection, the boundaries of the acceptable are progressively narrowed. But the child does not necessarily feel personally tarnished by this training: the shame remains situational, not a permanent part of his being. And besides, he is showered with rewards for his efforts to change and for his achievements. He joins the A team, where no one throws food on the floor or makes in his pants. Meanwhile, ideally, his underlying impulses are not entirely suppressed. They are merely directed into acceptable channels.
But, inevitably, certain aspects of the child's emotional makeup cannot find an acceptable channel. What is he to do if belonging to the A team means that he must never express certain feelings? What if his mother turns icy when he gets angry, is unable to respond to his sadness, smirks when he acts disappointed, or lectures him whenever he's fearful or wants to be held? In such cases his very feelings become stigmatized and to a certain extent he is stuck with his shame.
A young woman is having some friends and acquaintances over for a rare brunch. Only six of the ten invited were able to come. The poor showing is a humiliation for the hostess, who is ashamed in front of the remaining guests: she fears they can see how unpopular and disregarded she is. The hostess does not know three of her guests well – they are acquaintances from her department at work – and they do not seem to be mixing much with the others. They are more successful people, "really going somewhere in life," as the hostess sees it, and now she feels a fool for having invited them, having reached out for people who have no interest in her. In fact, she is quite certain that despite their cordiality, they came only to be polite. For a moment the encroaching shame panics her. She finds herself talking excessively. She wants to explain, to be liked despite it all, to make the group coalesce into a successful party. She makes excuses for the food, for her decor – "It's only temporary." She feels bad for having betrayed herself like that, laughs nervously, hears herself laugh, suspects that her merriment sounds forced and unnatural. Her guests seem uncomfortable. She wishes the whole thing would end. Later, when everyone's gone, she's sure they're thinking, "Oh, God, that was really stupid."
This fictional experience typifies the kind of shame that haunts the life of "Polly," a young woman interviewed by the psychologist Susan Miller for her groundbreaking doctoral research on shame, which later became a book, The Shame Experience (1985). Polly is an archetypal shame sufferer. Although she harbors the hope that she will be famous and glamorous one day, she feels like a nobody. She sees herself as the sort of person who cares for people who don't care for her. If she doesn't react the way others do, if she hears a complaint or a harsh tone, she is quick to think, Uh-oh, something is wrong with me, my deformity is showing. Hers is a core sense of shame, a condition that some psychologists now trace back to damaging early experience.
"The child's sense of being someone who counts," Miller says, "comes in large part from the parent's capacity to empathically tune in to that child." Without that consistent reassurance the child begins to doubt the value of her efforts to engage, of the love she is trying to give, of her very being. "Polly seemed to have had the kind of parent who in some basic way never saw the child, or saw a distorted image of the child based on the parent's own needs."
Heinz Kohut had argued that the parent is a kind of mirror for the child, which gives her a sense of herself and her feelings before she has the capacity to achieve this on her own. "If there is no clear reflection," Miller says, "the self has a great deal of difficulty achieving any definition."
Polly's mother never provided this helpful mirroring. She tended to focus on details – the fit of the child's clothes, the smudge on the face, the posture – rather than on Polly herself. When she did attend to Polly, her actions seemed false, as if, in a way Polly could never articulate or even be certain of, her mother was not fully there. Insecure about her ability to draw others' interest to her, Polly developed a tenacious shameful self-concept – that she was inherently uninteresting. Unhappily, in Polly's case the concept contains some truth. Because she had only a tenuous faith in the validity of her feelings, which her parents had so disregarded, "she developed a very conventional, compliant personality, trying so hard to fit in with everyone that she would ultimately be chosen by no one."A relationship is a delicate fabric of non-verbal information flow between two people which regulates each of their attachment systems through their relational right-brains (
). Each time there's a misattunement of this flow (a millisecond of gaze that isn't returned, a subtle twisting of the body in attempt to reach out, a hotflush of discomfort at something said), the fabric is ruptured. Such ruptures are inevitable as we repeatedly come in and out of relationship. The quality of the relationship is dependent upon how quickly ruptures are repaired.Relationships grow stronger through successive repairs. If one has enjoyed a securely-attached
relationship during childhood, then one is far more likely to expect a
rupture to be quickly repaired, and will have no hesitation in reaching
out with, or receiving, attunement. But if one is shame-prone from
having an insecurely-attached childhood, then one naturally hesitates
given that, historically, such ruptures were seldom repaired:Why Love Matters by Sue Gerhardt: How Affection Shapes A Baby's Brain:
In a social context, hopelessness is the result of not being able to put
things right. It is not having negative thoughts about oneself – a
crucial element of depression is that it also involves the feeling that
there is no way of redeeming the self, of recovering others' good
opinion or love. This is the 'disruption and repair' cycle. When stress
and conflict between people occur, as it inevitably will in every
relationship, it is crucial to learn that the positive relationship can
be restored. This is at the heart of the attachment between parent and
child and is the core of emotional security and self-confidence.
High
cortisol children don't expect to be able to deal effectively with
other people's negative feelings. Their teachers rate them as less
socially competent than other children for the very same reason – they
manage negative feelings and difficult situations either by withdrawing
or with aggression. Because they don't expect ruptures to be repaired,
they don't turn to others. Because they have not been taught to focus on
solving problems step by step, they cannot imagine any solution. They
are truly stuck with negative feelings that they don't know how to
disperse, other than by running away.The missing experience of
having feelings recognised and acknowledged by another person,
particularly of having strong feelings tolerated by another person, is
provided by the therapist. Most important of all, when therapist and
client fail to understand each other, or disagree about something
important and there is 'rupture' in the relationship, the therapist
demonstrates that relationships can be 'repaired'. This cycle of rupture
and repair is the key to secure relationships. Knowing that no matter
what breakdowns in communications occur they can be repaired is the
source of confidence in a relationship and the knowledge that regulation
will be restored. Slowly, through these types of experience with a
psychotherapist, a new muscle develops, an ability to be heard and to
listen, to listen and be heard. Emotional states can be shared, both
verbally and non-verbally.Psychobiological
Approach to Couple Therapy: Integrating Attachment and Personality
Theory As Interchangeable Structural Components by Stan Tatkin (.pdf)Interactive regulation involves two or more nervous systems in close physical proximity maintaining or trying to maintain attuned, implicit (nonverbal) communication (Beebe & Lachmann, 1998; Beebe et al., 2003; Schore, 1994, 2002b). At its best, interactive regulation involves a series of non-conscious micro-moments made up of fast-acting somatosensory experiences within and between individuals, resulting in fast-acting adjustments and error corrections. If successful, interactive regulation results in a mutual perception of attunement. If done badly, however, the result is varying degrees of mutual dysregulation, which if unrepaired quickly, will lead to heightening arousal and eventual threat response.
Misattunement (and thus shame) doesn't only run in the direction of neglect. An angry, crying baby will experience as much distress because of her mother's attempt to shift her out of her current state with excessive smiling or even laughter (to which the baby will turn her head away as if to say "That's not it! I'm upset, not happy! That's too much of the wrong kind of stimulation! You're only adding to my pain by not seeing me!") as she would if she were to receive no response at all (
: "There's no reparation and [the baby] is stuck in a really ugly situation"). To avoid causing the baby shame, what is required of the mother is a contingent, empathetic response.Why Love Matters by Sue Gerhardt: How Affection Shapes A Baby's Brain:
The attempt to escape from feelings has its origins in a babyhood in which the baby's feelings have not been identified and responded to in a contingent way. Babies in this situation can't take their own regulation for granted. They are confronted prematurely with their own raw needs, lacking the ability to meet them by themselves. This seems to leave a sort of unfinished business for the baby. As he or she grows up, the adult still longs to be properly taken care of, to be understood without words, to have all wishes fulfilled by magic, and to have needs anticipated without saying anything. Without an actively responsive and sensitive mothering experience, the baby can't identify with the parental attitude and apply it to him or herself. It isn't possible to generate the attitude of self-care and awareness of one's own feelings if someone else hasn't first done it for you. (That is why self-help books are of little use.) You need to have an experience with someone first – then you can reproduce it.
Going back to the baby of the second paragraph of the Shame article ... The failure to be responded to an attuned way during early childhood is the cause of "toxic" or "core" non-verbal relational shame. The earlier these relational failures occur in childhood, the deeper and more toxic the shame. Being unable to regulate himself, the baby had reached out seeking his mother's regulation. Her lack of attunement meant he was left in a dysregulated state. He wasn't met in relationship; his feelings weren't fully felt and empathetically mirrored back to him as being tolerable and therefore acceptable. Because at that young age he is his feelings (he's too young to have thoughts), and his feelings are evidently too much for either he or his mother to bare – he experiences a profound loneliness and unworthiness.
Why Love Matters by Sue Gerhardt: How Affection Shapes A Baby's Brain:
Self-hood is very tied up with the ability to manage emotions in a consistent way that others can recognise and comment on. When others notice that 'you're always so calm/controlling/persistent/quick to act/absent-minded/stoical or practical', they are commenting on your style of emotional management. The sense of self is very dependent on this feedback from others. We need to know how others see us and develop a consistent 'personality' or style of emotional management. But if the parental response is consistently negative or absent, we can feel wiped out, invalidated and basically bad. It becomes much harder to think about feeling without a framework of ongoing support and the sense of self becomes increasingly tenuous.
Given enough of these failures in repair after rupture (the reaching out for regulation), to create some sense of his self, and to defend what little remains of his self-worth, he will develop an adaptive interpersonal coping strategy and script decision with regards to attachment: Moving Towards (Anxious/Angry/Preoccupied/Ambivalent Attachment); Moving Against (
); Moving Away (Avoidant/Dismissing Attachment)Interpersonal Process in Therapy: An Integrative Model by Edward Teyber & Faith McClure
Ultimately, clients' compromise solutions to their core conflicts will not succeed. The client can block the developmental problem (turn against self) and try to rise above the core conflict by moving toward, away, or against. However, these compensatory maneuvers will not resolve the client's problems – no matter how successful the client becomes through these interpersonal coping strategies. As they repeatedly employ these interpersonal styles – even in situations where they are not needed or are not effective – they will engender problems in current relationships, and create personal stress that often contributes to health crises.
Let's examine three reasons why the client's compromise solution will not succeed and then explore what can be done to help the client instead.
First, the "tyranny of the shoulds" places unrelenting demands on the client. These can be heard, for example, when clients enter treatment exclaiming, "I can't do all of this anymore! I can't be a perfect parent, a great spouse, and the most productive person in my office. I can't be everything to everybody anymore!" An individual's quality of life is diminished by these unrealistic expectations. They are depleting and fatiguing, and diminish the potential for personal and professional growth, even if these unrelenting demands they place on themselves (and on others) do not provoke a crisis that brings them to treatment. The struggle that comes from not having had a "secure base" in order to later feel secure in venturing into new relationships with flexibility is palpable in clients severely bound by "shoulds."
Second, clients sense of entitlement and being special will usually fail as well. For example, pleasing clients will not be able to win the love or approval of everyone they need. Expansive clients will not always succeed or be able to make others defer to their demands, and detached clients will encounter criticism from others or situational pressures that force them to compete. Inevitably, clients attempts to become special and rise above their conflict will lead to conflict at work and at home.
Typically, clients enter counseling when situational life stressors, developmental transitions in adulthood, or aging/illness have caused their interpersonal coping strategies to fail. Therapists help clients change when they grasp he pain that clients suffer when their attempts to be special and rise above their conflict fail; Kohut writes eloquently of the narcissistic wound that is so painful to clients' core sense of self. Even though the demands that clients place on themselves and others are unrealistic, it still can be excruciating when their interpersonal coping strategy fails. Tragically, a few individuals will even attempt suicide in response to such a failure, and others will contemplate it. Why are some clients driven to such an extreme response? In a word, shame.
The interpersonal coping style that many clients have adopted is the basis of their identity and their primary source of self-worth, but it is a brittle substitute for the genuine self-esteem they lack. From these clients' point of view, they are their ability to please, to achieve, or to remain superior and aloof. Such clients overreact to seemingly insignificant events (for example, gaining three pounds over the holidays or losing their patience with a trying two-year-old). This overreaction occurs because their entire sense of self is threatened when their interpersonal coping strategy fails and their shame-based sense of self is revealed by their mistakes – which they frame as "failures."
Shame anxiety is likely the underlying cause of various manifestations of the approach-avoidance conflict. The three coping strategies (Moving Towards, Against, Away) are all ways to avoid coming into "true" or "real" relationship for fear of relational shame.
The Moving Away strategy ("introversion") is about staying out of relationship in an attempt to regulate oneself using Autoregulation: "My needs are way too much for even me to tolerate, and so I must deny their existence as best I can." Shame is experienced when startled out of "alone time" and into relationship, revealing relational inadequacy.
The Moving Towards strategy ("extroversion") is about using others (often by caretaking) in an attempt to regulate oneself vicariously using External Regulation: "My needs are too much to be ever satisfied, so the best I can do is to meet other people's needs." There's proximity-seeking in the moving towards style but only a very superficial relationship. Shame is experienced when alone.
The Moving Against strategy is pre-emptively combative so as to make relationship almost impossible: (Julie: "I think the so-called borderline rage isn’t necessarily a defense only against their own core shame, but can also develop as a defense against other people’s projected shame. When you think about the kind of environment a BPD-sufferer survived growing up, it’s kind of a battleground for who can project their shame onto whom first, and sometimes this shame can come in veiled or sugar-coated forms or mixed with elements of truth. In the moment, it can be VERY hard to sort out which parts or communications if any are valid and accurate and which are projections and subtle manipulations. If there’s any doubt about the content, it can actually be better to simply fly into a rage and reject everything wholesale than to risk absorbing whatever part of the message may essentially be poison. Rather than swallow the shame pill you are being offered, you puke it back in the other person’s face. The problem arises when you do this reflexively whenever you get the slightest whiff that someone may be trying to shame you, even when that isn’t actually what’s going on.")INSECURE ATTACHMENT: THE AVOIDANT
Psychobiologically speaking, insecure attachment refers to a compromised safety and security system within a primary attachment dyad. This compromised safety and security system, often attributed to insensitive caregiving, creates an ongoing psychobiological burden, such as interpersonal stress, and involves arousal and neuroendocrine systems that are too often engaged in threat.
The avoidants’ reliance on autoregulation provides them with a false sense of autonomy and self-reliance. Their autoregulatory skills may give them the impression they have won their independence; however, their self-reliance is really an adaptation to neglect and therefore cannot be true independence. In actuality their fear and shame around dependency form a “do it yourself” attitude toward everything and everyone. Although appearing to be engaged in interactive regulation, avoidants often autoregulate while interacting with their primary partner much in the same way narcissists can interact while using others as self-objects. The dissociative properties of autoregulation often give the impression of interaction when, in fact, the interacting partner is engaged in self-stimulating and self-soothing.
The avoidant’s tendency toward one-mindedness greatly contributes to repeated, misattuned, unrepaired moments in adult primary attachment relationships. For instance, an avoidant may ignore or fail to detect conflicting social-emotional information, originating both internally and externally, due in part to defenses against negative experience (avoidance of unregulated or dysregulated affects) and due in part to deficits in right brain, frontolimbic social-emotional processing that cannot respond properly or fast enough to detect errors and make rapid adjustments (Schore, 2003a).
Finally, as mentioned at the beginning of this paper, attachment organization and personality structure interact with the peripheral nervous system, neuroendocrine system, and musculoskeletal system in response to interpersonal stress. This manifests in the body, face, and voice as expressive attempts to move toward or away from a primary attachment figure. The avoidant’s reflex is to move back and away, particularly when approached. These movements occur in both separations and reunions, big and small. The recoil reflex is non-conscious and immediate and can be expressed in a variety of ways to avoid, withdraw, comply, ignore, or attack the intruding partner. Approaches by the attachment figure can be visual, vocal, tactile, and even olfactory (Tatkin, 2009a). Due to the avoidant’s default autoregulatory state and difficulty with shifting out of that state, intrusions can be startling and experienced as attacks. In addition, the non-mutual nature of the avoidant’s early attachment experience leads him or her to anticipate approaches as non-reciprocated demands. Similar sensitivities to approach have been noted in both narcissistic and schizoid personality disorders (J. Masterson & Klein, 1995).
INSECURE ATTACHMENT: THE ANGRY/RESISTANTExtreme forms of angry-resistant insecure attachment contain both clinging and distancing defenses, marked by considerable anger, fussiness, ambivalence, and negativism. As with the avoidant, the angry-resistant partner struggles with separations and reunions; however, the experience of distress with both is much more acute. The angry-resistant partner experiences fussiness and ambivalence while in the presence of a partner, anger just prior to and during separation, and anger upon reunion. These individuals often report feeling surprised and baffled by their own angry reactions to separation and reunion (Tatkin & Solomon, in preparation). Their partners often report unavoidable fights started by the angry-resistant in anticipation of being left or of being approached with something positive.
The angry-resistant features of fussiness, anger, negativism, ambivalence, and problems with separations and reunions bear a remarkable resemblance to disorders along the borderline spectrum, especially more an unresolved loss or trauma is involved. The negativistic response to positive approach resembles Fairbairn’s anti-libidinal self in response to the libidinal self (exciting object)—an immediate sabotage to an anticipated positive event in order to defend against disappointment (Fairbairn, 1966; Rinsley & Grotstein, 1994). Indeed, the caregiving style of the angry-resistant child is preoccupied, often irritable, and overwhelmed. Preoccupied caregivers themselves have difficulty with separations and reunions. At times emotionally available and at other times not, the preoccupied caregiver is inconsistent with his or her attention, patience, and self-regulatory functions. Mahler noted that preoccupied mothers during the rapprochement period often elicited clinging behaviors by their toddlers, who could not
emotionally refuel due to the mother’s low libidinal energy or inattentiveness (Mahler, 1974b; Mahler, et al., 1975). Sroufe and others found preoccupied mothers who were unable to physically calm their infant, prematurely put them down or withdrew from them in frustration (Duggal et al., 2001; Slade, 2000; Sroufe, 1985).
Adult angry-resistant partners have a reflex response that moves toward and then abruptly back away from their primary attachment partner. They commonly report feeling like a burden, and like the toddler, anticipate being dropped prematurely by a frustrated other. Their sadness and longing for their partner during separation is replaced by an angry reaction upon reunion. Positive approaches by their partner are both longed for and rejected, in much the same manner as reunions.
The adult angry-resistant partner also tends to be highly verbal and at times tangential, overly expressive and histrionic, can often perseverate on personal injuries, and tends to rely on external regulation. Whereas the avoidant has trouble shifting from autoregulation to interaction, the angry-resistant has trouble shifting from interaction to being alone. Both have trouble tracking and managing implicit, nonverbal right brain activity that arises in the form of body sensations, images, implicit memory, impulses, and the like (Schore, 2003a). The angry-resistant’s strategy for managing implicit somatosensory experience is constant interaction, whereas the avoidant’s strategy is various forms of autoregulation.
DISORGANIZED ATTACHMENTIn contrast with organized insecures who are products of insensitive parenting, type D’s, or disorganized insecures, are products of scary parenting. Their presentation is not unlike that of lower level personality disorders, such as borderline, which have a high prevalence of psychotic and paranoid ideation, post-traumatic startle, and instantaneous re-experiencing of relational trauma. In a relationship, these disorganized/disoriented partners react to almost ubiquitous, ambient threats and rapid misappraisals of meaning and intension. They commonly misread neutral faces as negative and hostile and react instantly and strongly to threatening prosodic cues and threatening movements and postures. Lagging behind these more implicit, nonverbal cues are sensitivities to dangerous words and phrases.
Chronic dysregulation is the intersubjective experience of disorganized couples. Their daily interactions are, to a large extent, managed subcortically (hyperactive amygdala and hypoactive hippocampus), with a highly kindled threat response and a disabled high right hemisphere error-correcting system. Despite the acute and chronic mutual dysregulation, disorganized partners often see in one another their only hope for reparation, safety, and peace, and for that reason often hold together. -
[View:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMj_P_6H69g:560:315]
"Through the very act of asking people, I connected with them. And when you connect with people, they want to help you. "
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AdamC, you make a very interesting and clever analysis (thanks for all the sources too!). However, I do not see the connection you make between avoidance of relationships and shame. You say failed relationships cause shame (universally?) can you please explain?
You are welcome, and certaintly, my statement needs far more explanation. Answering your question presents me with an opportunity to test my understanding of shame. I hope to post a full reply sometime next week.
It was precisely my own process of overcoming shame that revealed I had no good intentions towards my previous partners, but mainly childhood needs - which is perhaps what makes that shame legitimate.
I can say something similar with respect to my attempts to satisfy unmet needs: I was doing the best I could with what little I had. And I'm really glad for it all because it gives me so much raw experience to process. And some of it was very raw.
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This is an interesting point of view that I hadn't really considered before. But ironically kind of find myself in at the moment. Certainly I think men as do women need to make better choices in their partners as a means to improving that quality overall. However, meeting philosophically minded women is pretty rare frankly. But then again this may well be about my choices, so the jury is still out on that one (for me at least). Which is perhaps exactly your point, that in taking time out from relationships we are more able to re-evaluate those choices and desires more rationally.
Thanks Adam, I have really enjoyed your insights and thoughts on this topic and wish you all the best.
And thanks for your replies, xelent.
Your replies have really helped me to appreciate the value of sharing and discussing my research into men's issues. Having "empathy for men" is a very challenging and (evidently) animating idea for me.
I notice I didn't respond to your earlier disclosure. I'm in a similar situation with regard to romantic relationships. I've taken a time-out whilst I work with a therapist to process (very, very gently, and very, very slowly) how shame has shaped all of my relationships (including the therapeutic relationship) – and now also to process the effects of fatherlessness – something that, until very recently, I had previously denied was worthy of any contemplation whatsoever. This denial likely the result of a series of isolating core beliefs: I am unworthy of a father and his contemplation of me; I am unworthy of any man's contemplation of me; I am unworthy of my own contemplation of me; I am unworthy. Shame. I haven't yet fully connected with the sadness of all that, to the loss of potential.AVoiceforMen: Mother of Violence
TyphonBlue: ...there's a distinct correlation between violence and the lack of father involvement in raising children. [When] there's a huge cult of motherhood and the father has almost nothing to do with raising children, [there's more violence in society]. There's an intersection of various factors. [When] women are playing the hypoagent, playing the victim to get what they want out of life – that naturally imprints upon their children – and then you have that combined with boys who are raised without a really strong sense of the masculine, which is what an involved father would give them. So they have a very fragile male identity. And in combination with that, because they don't have an involved father, because they don't have that emotional resonance with the masculine, they feel like they're expendable. On a fundamental level they feel like they're worthless unless they go out and find an identity. You've got all of these boys who have a sense of having no identity, feeling like they're completely expendable in service of an identity – and what do they go do? They go beat the crap out of each other to try to get an identity. Or strap bombs to their chests and blow themselves up to be a martyr.
JohnTheOther: ...they're doing this violence in service to somebody else's needs, particularly a mother figure or a wife figure...
TyphonBlue: The problem with a lot of these [fathers] is they don't have intimate connections with their own fathers. So it's really easy to get in between a man and his relationship to his children because he doesn't really understand it, he thinks it's "woman's work." I really wonder about the whole "wait 'til your father gets home" thing, and how that estranges the father – basically he becomes a tool or an instrument of the mother's wrath so she can maintain the positive relationship and whatever is negative accrues upon him.
TyphonBlue: There's this lack of intimacy between fathers and their children, lack of emotional intimacy, lack of father involvement, and that's what is creating this violence with boys... they don't grow up with the sense that the masculine is valuable, or a sense of a connection with the masculine, and then they are unleashed on the world. They've learned all this victimhood rhetoric from their mothers so they can drop immediately into "I'm a victim, I'm a victim" that justifies all kinds of violence towards other people, and so suddenly you get these war zones... ...you get a lot of enforcers because you get those young men that want to "roll", they want some skulls to bash in to feel like they're men.
TyphonBlue: ...depending on a woman's benefit is where a man is on the scale of good-to-bad. And I think what fathers can do is give children the opportunity to develop their own sense of a moral compass, as opposed to it being defined by outside factors... ...an involved father lays the emotional foundation for being able to define yourself... ...what teaches boys to see themselves as disposable is this lack of intimate connection with their father, this lack of being valued by their father, and taken care of by their father... ...which indicates to his son that he has value and he's getting value from his masculine role-model, which in turn insulates against treating himself as disposable, or allowing other people to treat him as disposable, which in turn insulates him from being proxified.
JohnTheOther: ...to have a rudderless identity where your identity is dependent on fulfilling somebody else's needs at the cost of your own safety or the cost of your own mortality.
TyphonBlue: ...a guy, preferably the father, who shows his son that he is valuable, doesn't necessarily show him how to be a man but that it's valuable to be a man. And then the son can find out what it means to be a man, for him. -
Long post... somewhat repetitive and rantish...
How you handle or rebuff humiliation as a man will be a deciding factor for female appreciation. Since the world has it's fair share of humiliators out there in positions of power. A man that can handle humiliation with grace (for himself), without complaining will be seen as a good catch by some women.
This clearly puts some men in a difficult quandary of course. Learn to handle humiliation and rejection and get women’s appreciation or don’t and isolate yourself from them. Perhaps that thinking is little simplistic, but I think it often fits for men at different points in their lives, depending on their relationship status. It's all part of the risk and reward culture that men are expected to partake in. I think Warren Farrell discusses this at length when he says, "men's weakness is their facade of strength; women's strength is their facade of weakness".
"Women's traditional support systems support women being vulnerable;
men's traditional support systems support men being invulnerable. This
creates a paradox; the support men get to be invulnerable makes them more
vulnerable; the support women get to be vulnerable makes them less
vulnerable. It is just one example of how women's strength is their
facade of weakness and men's weakness is their facade of strength." -- Warren Farrell, Father and Child ReunionThe various branches of the "men's movement" (MRA/MGTOW/PUA) are helping men cope with the challenge of testing and rejection. And learning how to approach women requires high degrees of intrapersonal, interpersonal, and situational empathy. I wonder if much of the popularity of PUA is that it has given men permission to access the touchy-feely psychology stuff without stigma and under cover of being "alpha."
In podcast interviews, Dr. Robert Glover, author of No More Mr Nice Guy, has said girlfriends and wives have called to thank him for curing their partners' of Nice Guy Syndrome i.e., a passive/pleasing, shame-based self. I haven't read the book yet. Here are links to the podcasts: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
I'm still not entirely convinced that 'some' of these cultural expectations are unreasonable. Providing a woman with resources whilst she produces and nurtures our children is a very reasonable trade-off I think.
Totally agree. These basic expectations of both men and women are not in least bit unreasonable.
But these expectations have been caricatured ("hyper-agent"/"alpha"/"patriarch" and "hypo-agent"/"victim"/"feminist"), both sexes have played up to the caricatures for their own "profit" thus attracting more entrants. The states ("Apexual/Male Disposability" pyramids) have, of course, cashed in.
Regarding resource-provision and trade-offs... Perhaps I've caused confusion about what is meant by "Male Disposability."
A man will sacrifice for his biological family. That's not what is meant by "Male Disposability." "Male Disposability" is about the demand that a man sacrifice for other non-biologically-related individuals and families. It's the difference between voluntary charity and state welfare programs.
So a man will naturally sacrifice for his biological family, but he has to be propagandized into sacrificing for other, non-biologically-related individuals and families. And I'm going to suggest that men have never really been directly propagandized to do that, rather women's fears have been manipulated by propaganda such that men couldn't allow themselves to be seen by women as not responding to their fears. "Apexual" statism is the manipulation of the male protector instinct via women, and that's why the Typhon's "Harem Patriarchy" makes so much sense. Women have been corralled by their fear and desire for protection by a few "patriarchs" (not "men" but male-bodied apexuals who have more in common with each other than they have with "men") where men (men who more or less still identify with other men) are disposing of themselves in a crazed competition to get into the harem. This mirrors the church's "where the women go the men will follow" strategy.AVoiceforMen: The Patriarchy at Feminism's Core, Part Deux:
TyphonBlue: “The problem with traditionalism is the Apexual. What I mean
by that is, when these men get to a position of power, they have no
sense of any sort of fraternity with other men. So when these powerful
Apexuals gather – what are they going to do with it? They’re going to
give it to women to create a virtual harem for themselves. The
phenomenon of Apexuality (as I describe it) is based on male
disposability: you have no worth outside of your function in the
hierarchy because you’re disposable otherwise.”TyphonBlue: “It’s
male disposability that creates Harem Patriarchy. As soon as these
Alphas acquire enough power, what do they do with it? They create for
themselves a harem. By ‘empowering’ women with boonies, with cushy jobs
and welfare and healthcare – gender-based healthcare – and all these
other gender-based government services. It’s just a huge harem.”At the level of society, "Male Disposability" isn't talking about the expectations of any one woman or even "women" as a group or class. Rather it's talking about how "Apexual" other-sacrificing elites (and their radical feminist foot soldiers) exploit the legitimate fears that women have of being left without protection – and thereby also exploiting men's fears of failing to be seen as capable of providing that protection. As you suggested earlier in the thread, this fear of failing drives men to seek even more opportunities to signal protection provision. It's that desire to signal protection that leads to the one-upmanship ("white knighting") via the shaming ("Man up!") of MGTOWs or any man that isn't doing his duty to "women" or "society" i.e., to non-biologically-related individuals and families.
I'll hazard a guess that Perpetual War (maim don't slaughter) is the most efficient vector of attack in order to set up an "Apexual" "Harem Patriarchy." War takes the men away from the home and leaves women feeling defenseless. After enough wars, women, as a group, were helpless against the poison of radical feminism and the welfare statism that promised to fix their broken men. Radical feminism attacks women with the idea they are only powerless victims, and then misidentifies the villain as "men" as a group (a group that can't even see themselves as a group let alone act as one). But the villain is the "Apexual" sociopathic elite. There is no "patriarchy", there is only the "Male Disposability" state. It's likely men couldn't see this attack on women (or themselves) for what it was because it was made under the colour of reasonable female protection. It has always been so reasonable.But the reasonableness of that protection is now being challenged at every possible level – within the family, within the workplace, within the media, within society, historically, and personally e.g., men asking themselves deep existential questions about what all this female relationship pestilence is for? What a piece of work is a man without a woman? How noble in MGTOW, how infinite in felicity! ...
A man will sacrifice for his biological family. What else but a threat to this family will make a man sacrifice? Men are highly practical. No man is going to go into berserker mode without a credible threat. Therefore, frighten the women (the wife, the girlfriend, the cute girl next door). Then the man has to "Man up!" to protect them no matter what the stated reason – their fear is enough. So absent these reasons and the resulting "Male Disposability" for the protection of other families, there likely could be no state. Thus Apexual sociopaths need to create perpetual wars and propagate self-flagellating "original sin" fantasies in order to make people "other" themselves and thereby make it easier to "other" others.
However, I do think that as people develop
more universal ethics and as child rearing improves that the sort of
things men and women find attractive in each other will change. We kind
of live in a state of nature for now, for which some of those
attractions are frankly reptilian and largely unnecessary in the modern
world.Now that evidence of the effect of fatherlessness is widely distributed, and perhaps even accepted, I think we can agree that parenting can't improve without men having first healed themselves such that they can start new families. How can childhoods ever improve without the involvement of fathers? How can fathers parent effectively if they can't choose high quality women to parent with? How can they choose high quality women if they don't have high standards? How men they have high standards without going "MGTOW" for a while and getting their heads together? How can they take these timeouts if "blue pill" men and radicalized women keep attacking them with self-serving "Man up!" shaming?
MGTOWs (men who, through delayed gratification, are building up their self-worth and setting far higher standards for female selection) are relieving women and society of the yoke of radical feminism. MGTOWs may in fact be the best thing to happen to non-radicalized women.
Rather than crushing the spirits of men under the weight of the "Apexual/Male Disposability" hierarchy, radical feminism has only pushed men right out of it. Ooops!. And now we're seeing the inevitable – but highly disturbing – demonization, shaming, and out-grouping of MGTOWs – both by "blue pill" men and radicalized women. Why? Because women want continued protection and even further provisioning (which still manages to sound reasonable) and "blue pill" men don't want to accept how much they've invested in getting inside the harem (which just sounds weak). -
Perhaps bitch shield is just misslabeled passive aggression.
1. Ambiguity and cryptic speech: *Just get it!..* What's wrong? *Nothing*
I think you're on to something here...
"Shit tests" might be on a spectrum from passive-aggressive to passive-assertive. If the "just get it" theory is correct, then a woman rarely wants to be actively assertive because then she'll be leading and implicitly devaluing the man. This she really does not want to do because she wants to feel protected without prompting for it. But she still has her doubts – will always have doubts – and so she "shit tests" somewhere on the spectrum depending on her current level of crazy.
Regarding the passive-aggressive end of the spectrum...
It's passive-aggression because she's not being upfront and honest about her concern/"shit test." (She'll never admit to her testing; you don't get to prepare for the exam.)
You pass "shit tests" by not caring about them – since there's nothing for you to care about. She's not giving you any honest information to work with, so why would you attempt to work? She's testing for that oh-shit-mother-is-upset response. She wants to know if you're easily unnerved. Go wrestle with an alligator, tussle with a whale, handcuff lightening, throw thunder in jail, murder a rock, injure a stone, hospitalize a brick, act so mean you make medicine sick. Go do anything other than attempt to rescue her from one of her moods.
It's just a mood. It'll pass. You're her Man. She has girlfriends. Calmly hand her her phone. Only care about what is in your control.
If you're so easily unnerved by a passing mood, then how well can you really protect her? = The rationale for her periodic "shit tests" -
In my mind the bitch shield thinking gives me an image of a woman as a helpless victim to her impulses that arise from her brain - unable to control what comes out of her mouth and later on never admitting that she could ever have acted in an inconsistent / abusive / passive aggressive way. Why would anyone want to deal with that crap just get some pussy?
Be grateful for "bitch shields" since, as
, women use them to keep themselves safe.And the issue of "bitch shields" can only come up because you want the woman behind them. Otherwise, what do you care about her "bitch shields"? Why would you deal with that crap?
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You raise a very good point about 'male shaming' Adam. It does appear to be the default position for attacking men by both genders. Female shaming is generally frowned upon and seen as an unreasonable attack on them, which for the most part is probably true. Except when it comes to men, the shame can be piled high without even a whimper from the male victim. This was quite a recent discovery for me and has radically transformed my empathy for other men.
Thanks for your reply, xelent. I felt vulnerable and exposed after expressing my anger about male-on-male shaming, especially that aimed at further
already wounded men.Empathy for men... Warren Farrell's Father Child Reunion really opened my eyes to the issues both sexes (men and women, boys and girls) are facing and how they interrelate. "...men's biggest fear is emotional insecurity; women's is economic insecurity."
Personally I have adopted some of what I consider to be the better
ideas of MGTOW. Making my own way in the world, concentrating on my own
self development and happiness, without necessarily always looking for
the romantic angle. I have and do reject some women in my life because
of their behaviour, attitude and circumstance. Even when sex is an offer
on the table. I still engage with women socially and intellectually and
I certainly consider many of those women as my equal. I have had a few
relationships with women and each time they have been an improvment on
the other, despite their eventual failings. But with all this I am still
open to the idea of meeting my eventual wife someday. I'm just not
going to accept half measure from that lady, anymore than she should
expect of me.That's also how I interpreted the MTGOW/"Zeta Male" perspective: take time out of romantic relationships to reassess your values and standards. Even men within much maligned PUA community recommend doing "inner game" self-knowledge work before playing the field. It's inspiring that you have the humility to learn from relational setbacks and the drive to pursue your goal.
Feminism has already dealt a number of hefty blows to the family unit
thus far. Any idea that this will be resolved by men is somewhat short
sighted. It's like expecting someone walking into battle, already badly
wounded.to weild a sword accurately. It will certainly take both genders
to resolve this together I have no doubt. And a big part of that
resolve will come when both men and women understand that 'male shaming'
is no longer a legitimate way to get men to do things.I agree, all shaming has to stop. The underlying shame that shaming language taps into is just too toxic. (I speak from experience of being both the shamed and the shamer.)
Perhaps women didn't help men before because they've wanted them to "just get it" – to just step confidently around her "
" and "shit tests" (both of these being instinctual, self-protective, male-qualifying mechanisms) without any hesitation or instruction. But it would seem men really haven't been getting it.This could be due to the increasing fatherlessness of boys who have learned to invest their self-esteem in how well they can manage mother's moods via an appeasing and pleasing strategy that they, as adults, take into romantic relationships. But (and this may be putting it crudely) a woman wants a leader/protector more than she wants a follower/nurturer; in actual fact she wants both, but on her terms, except when she doesn't – because a woman doesn't want to openly dictate terms to a man because then she'd be the leader, and that would reveal the man as "useless": ("Women despise a man who needs to be told to be dominant. If masculinity has to be explained to a man, he’s not the man for her.")
So women, still with hard-wired dreams of being swept off their feet by dominant protectors, likely feel frustrated, unprotected, and abandoned by men who are far too preoccupied with pleasing them. Perhaps in exasperation they resort to shaming tactics (*malign* "shit tests") in an attempt to provoke the protective instincts they want extended to them. And then there are those deeply insecure and wounded women (radical feminists) who constantly employ preemptive shaming in attempt to rid themselves of shame.
In its benign form, male-on-male shaming could be equivalent to "hazing": a "shit test" used to qualify a candidate for group membership. But, again, given the prevalence of fatherless... and then the feminization of workplaces, malespaces, and the general culture... Now a man can't be sure that another can withstand hazing and so he can't trust his resilience in the face of danger. And given that many men really can't handle hazing (I certaintly couldn't) – or rather, just haven't been initiated into manhood by a father who presented them an ongoing series of challenges throughout boyhood into manhood – that can leave a man with a fundamental weakness. And aspiring "alphas" seem to have taken it as great sport to exploit this weakness to get a rise up ("Man up!") on the "Apexual/Male Disposability" ladder. See: [TyponBlue] [GirlWritesWhat
I wonder if so called "extreme MGTOWs" are quarantining themselves due to shame. Failed relationships create shame. Shame creates avoidance. Avoidance causes relationships to fail. It's a downward spiral. And since shame doesn't just come from nowhere (it comes from relational failures in preverbal childhood), the only real solution is a healing relationship with a relationally-oriented psychotherapist. But all previous relationships have failed. The impulse to connect itself becomes the source of pain. So relationship is simultaneously the problem and the solution. And if you've repeatedly experienced failure in relationships – if you've only ever known relational failure – then you really have nowhere to turn, no one to turn to. Having no hope for relationships, having no way to heal, your only strategy is immediate pain management and containment. Quarantine, in other words.
If the "extreme MGTOW" impulse is to avoid all relationships in an attempt to override and disavow one's own psychobiological attachment system due to the pain it causes – then that suggests deep, deep shame.
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Procrastination Is Not Laziness by David Cain:
It turns out procrastination is not typically a function of laziness,
apathy or work ethic as it is often regarded to be. It’s a neurotic
self-defense behavior that develops to protect a person’s sense of
self-worth.You see, procrastinators tend to be people who have, for whatever
reason, developed to perceive an unusually strong association between
their performance and their value as a person. This makes failure or
criticism disproportionately painful, which leads naturally to hesitancy
when it comes to the prospect of doing anything that reflects their
ability – which is pretty much everything.A person who does not have this neurosis might wish they didn’t make a
mistake, whereas the neurotic procrastinator perceives the error as
being a reflection of their character. In other words, most people
suffer mainly the practical consequences of mistakes (such as finishing
with a lower grade, or having to redo something) with only minor
self-esteem implications, while neurotic procrastinators perceive every
mistake they make as being a flaw in them.So what they are motivated to do is to avoid finishing anything,
because to complete and submit work is subject yourself (not just your
work) to scrutiny. To move forward with any task is to subject yourself
to risks that appear to the subconscious to be positively deadly because
part of you is convinced that it is you that is at stake, not just your
time, resources, patience, options or other secondary considerations.
To the fear centre of your brain, by acting without guarantees of
success (and there are none) you really are facing annihilation. -
As mentioned above me, his videos and form of presentation hit me hard too, I always feel this sense of hopelessness and despair as if I am 100% match (also many times he speaks in angles of how to deal with narcissists and this is something I reexperience as a rejection - some sort of advice for people to avoid me or deal with me as some sort of retard - that resonates with me deeply).
Talk of narcissism can feel like further rejection because it taps into shame.
Narcissism is one of many defensive strategies against feeling shame. Narcissism is so often discussed in both overt and covert shaming language because people are unconsciously trying to vomit their own shame into others to relieve themselves and to premptively defend against further shaming. In addition to being injected with another's shame, it can feel hopeless when reading about narcissism (or anything that truly resonates with your particular defensive strategy) because you can feel that your "rising above" defense – a defense that is often the very basis of your identity and productivity – is being stripped away, and ... up rushes the underlying shame.
Interpersonal Process in Psychotherapy:
When developmental problems are pervasive or severe, clients often adopt
one of three interpersonal styles: moving toward, moving against, or
moving away. This inflexible coping style is a habitual way of relating
to others that is also reflected in vocational, marital, and other
defining life choices. There are many exceptions, of course, but
individuals who move toward may find that careers in nursing or
counseling are a good match for their caretaking skills and needs.
Individuals who move against may find that careers in law, medicine, or
money management are congruent with their interpersonal style of taking
charge and needing to be in control. Individuals
who move away may feel comfortable as researchers, artists, technical
experts who work alone, or individuals in a meditative lifestyle.In their self-concept, many clients will privately frame this defensive
coping style as a special attribute or virtue and use it to feel
special and rise above their core conflict. That is, clients
do not experience their interpersonal strategy as a defensive coping
system to avoid anxiety and low self-esteem but as a virtuous way of
relating to others that may make them feel special. However, this
unrealistic sense of being special is compensatory and actually reflects
their low self-esteem or shame-based sense of self.
Their self-worth is brittle and vulnerable – it relies too much on their
ability to rise above their core conflicts by pleasing others, by
achieving and succeeding, or by withdrawing and feeling cynically
superior. In these ways, clients frame their defensive interpersonal
coping style as a superior quality or virtue.More contemporary
therapists write about "narcissistic" element in many types of clients
who are defending against a shame-based self. They describe what clients
do to "restore" their sense of self-worth or power when they (too
readily) feel shamed and overreact to feeling rejected or diminished by
others or that they have failed in some way. -
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I would say that it is an obligation to children (and society at large) in finding the most practical ways of protection, nurture, and development; thus the biological nature of men and women cannot be disregarded, as even you recognize this when you bring up the man's "protector instinct", or likewise the woman's "nurturer instinct".
Men – at least those that are waking up – are tired of having their virtue (in this case their protector instinct) used against them, which is precisely what shaming always attempts to do. Shaming is a vicious, verbal assault aimed to steal away someone's own self-approval and have them jumping through hoops in the hopes of getting it back. (Hint: It's never given back.)
You say men are not honoring their "obligation" as if men have somehow willfully denied their protector (and nurturer) instincts and are walking away from their families just for the hell of it. That's just more shaming on top of the shaming radicalized women used to drive men away from their families – or made them too frightened to start a family in the first place (hence MGTOW).
If a man was heartless enough to maliciously walk away from his children, then you wouldn't appeal to his protector instinct since he obviously doesn't have one. For shaming to work, you first have to assume possession of the very virtue you then deny exists: "You don't have a protector instinct!" "You don't care about the poor!" "You're evil!" Performative contradiction! Go inject your self-attack poison elsewhere.
RockingMrE: Being single is not a choice I'd deny anyone. But if you
get enough people living that way then nothing will progress. You'll
just have a world predominantly made up of hedonistic narcissists.
Keeping the nuclear family alive is essential if human beings are going
to continue to move forward as a species.An appeal to the cult of the family – FAMILIES THAT DON'T YET EXIST! As if anyone within a family benefits from either parent being there just to avoid further shaming. Nothing is more narcissistic than to shame people for the sake of self-serving collectivist concepts like society or "species".
The very idea that men don't want to enjoy being a fully valued and respected member of a nuclear family. If men truly don't want that then why would you attempt to shame them into it?? "Man up!" Cui bono?
"You'll just have a world of... <shaming label>" See, you can have any choice BUT you can't choose not to be shamed because then you'd have the power of your own self-approval!
However, beyond all that, I am just not a fan of the Conflict Theory
that some of these MRM's seem to be going for- I think it will just help
further the decline, either by strength or speed.I'm just not a fan of ABBA; I hadn't thought to tell anyone about it before.
You've already named names so take up their behaviour directly with them, and please stop shaming those men who have decided (for whatever reason) to opt out of relationships with women. Go shame the radicalized mothers holding their children hostage for ransom. Go shame the radical feminists for spewing their hate. Go see if you can manipulate their protector instincts.
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I guess I'm generalizing based on a few loud-mouths in the movement that have made names of themselves on Youtube, such as this Barbarossa character that argued that women should be considered more "disposable" and put in more military positions, and that men should have more state-funding for particular medical problems like testicular cancer. I believe he was also the first to come out with the "Traditionalist Smear" tactics that RockingMrE was talking about.
I don't think these wounded characters have much influence – certainly not enough to overcome the male protector instinct.
Whilst I appreciate RME's evolutionary and biological perspectives, I remain senstive to language that shames men into compliance with appeals to what are
referred to as "traditionalist" notions of gender roles where men
self-sacrifice for the sake of the "family" – and where feminists have redefined the "family" as a woman and her children, and "society" as women and their children. If "family" has any virtue it is due to being a voluntary arrangement not an assumed obligation, particularly when men now have so little control over reproduction or any "right" to guarantee paternity of their alleged offspring.However, I remain cautious as to the intentions of this movement, and its ever-growing popularity, that it will just become another ideology for which the Marxists can take advantage of and promote as a narrative to further push the "State is family" garbage. I do not want a world where the relationship between men and women is cold and detached, while the state handles the children. There's already nascent legislation in Canada which will
"protect" parental rights by assigning government committees to
monitor divorce children.Emotions run high when it comes to post-divorce parenting arrangements. Given the urgency of this particular situation, the "rights" part of "Men's Rights" will inevitably tend towards state activism.
Marxists rely on exaggerated claims of victimhood to garner popular support. Excepting male feminists, are the majority of men going to exaggerate their victimhood? I don't think so. Male victims aren't sexually attractive to women, and men don't enjoy sympathy from either sex unless they are members of an "oppressed" "class" that includes women.
There are likely many intentions within the movement but I am yet to encounter any marxist/socialist/communist Mens Rights Activists. Those affiliated with A Voice For Men seem to be on the libertarian spectrum. For example, JohnTheOther has promoted Freedomain Radio for its "first principles" and voluntaryist perspective.
I don't identify as an MRA but I do have empathy for the MGTOW perspective because it is voluntaryism in (re)action. Sadly – but understandably – it is fatalistic. Male FDR participants would be highly unlikely to opt for MGTOW since exposure to the discussions here about male-female relationships foster male self-empowerment and optimism with regards to women.
It's easy to forget how most in the MRM – men and women – have yet to be exposed to the philosophy discussed here.
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I never said all MRM's are like that, but it does seem to be a growing
trend within the movement that recalls of Feminism's development as an
ideology.I don't see any substantive parallels with feminism since MGTOWs/"Zeta Males" are not advocating as a group (men don't easily see themselves as a part of a group) and are not proposing to use state violence to achieve their ends because to do so would be to risk putting women in harm's way.
"Men Going Their Own Way" equates to each individual man going his own way and not to an alleged or feared state-sponsored "gender separatist" movement in the manner of radical feminism. To gain any traction at all, such a male separatist movement would have to first overcome men's biologically hard-wired protector instinct – and that's not going to happen any time soon. Plus most men want secure relationships and happy families.
MGTOW = Can't live with feministic women; can't possibly put any woman in harm's way; the only dignified and honorable option is to go my own way.
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This sounds a lot like someone revolting against nature, desperate to cling to ideology in an attempt to overcome responsibility.
Unfortunately, that sounds like a typical "Man up!" shaming tactic: “Men are shirking their God-given responsibility to marry and bear children.”
Any man possessing the virtue of responsiblity will recognize when his own virtue is being used against him in the service of another's power over him.
MGTOW/Zeta Male seems to be a spectrum of perspectives that range from abstaining from ALL relationships with women (because women are too dangerous/"hypergamous"), to raising the standard of expectations for relationships with women (because women are desirable for relationships and necessary as partners in parenting).
It should go without saying that all adult relationships are improved by the mutual recognition that all adult relationships should be voluntary, and that this recognition is a precondition to a healthy family where children can draw additional strength from the earned security of their parents' relationship.
Thanks for the links to RockingMrE. He does a good job of warning against the sort of polarization that inevitably arises in any sustained discourse.
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Many of the MGTOW's argue for the state (many are Communist/Socialist sympathizers), but just like Feminists, they want the state to fund what they, as men, want and desire, even at the expense of women and children.
On the contrary, it would seem consistent with the MGTOW and "Zeta Masculinty" perspective that they would opt out of toil and sacrifice for the state or any other collective.
AVoiceforMen: Men Going Their Own Way:
JohnTheOther: "The collective/social-approval definition of male
identity is: a man who is of service to, of utility to, or sacrifices on
behalf of the collective, of high-status males, and most commonly, of
women. Male social identity depends on the collective approval of
women. Zeta Masculinity rejects all of that... something we absolutely
need is male self identity apart from the disposable service to other
people."Many (perhaps a majority) in the MRM recognize the state as a tool of male self-sacrifice that primarily serves the exaggerated vulnerabilities of women and the power lust of apexuals:
AVoiceforMen: The Patriarchy at Feminism's Core - Part Deux:
TyphonBlue: “I think that feminism really is better termed 'Harem
Patriarchy'. And what I mean by that is: when alpha males – through the
process of male disposability, the various social powers that enables –
they start to centralize power, they start to look at women and start to
want to gather them up in a quasi harem that’s circling around them.
And in our society, that quasi harem is essentially the woman’s vote.
This is what is happening. Our politicians, our male politicians who
have achieved their power through male disposability, they have come to
the point where they want to have a harem. It’s a psychological harem of
female voter approval, but it’s still a harem. A lot of people say the
huge thing about sex is getting approval. Well, what is voting but
approval?”GirlWritesWhat: “Single women are more likely to vote Democrat, and
married women are more likely to vote Republican. And its because single
women want to protect their entitlements, and married women want to
protect their husband’s ability to provide for them."The Apexual sees all male-bodied-individuals below itself in the
hierarchy as pawns to sacrifice in its attempt to rise within the
hierarchy. While it identifies with the status of the
male-bodied-individuals above it, the male-bodied-individuals inhabiting
those positions of greater status are merely objects to be removed. In
that sense, the Apexual shares no identity with other
male-bodied-individuals, but a desire to see them as tools to its own
advancement in the hierarchy. And those male-bodied-individuals who
either don't have power in the hierarchy or are useless to assist other
male-bodied-individuals within the hierarchy – they are treated as
pariahs, as untouchables, by the Apexuals, by the hierarchy, and often
by male-bodied-individuals in exactly the same position.Also:
GendErratic: MRAs, PUAs, MGTOWs, and How the MRM Is Not a Monolith
"Now they're staying single, working fewer hours, and barely paying any taxes!"
Is homesteading UPB?
in Philosophy
Posted
This is well explained, though I'm not certain what you mean by open borders.
For reference: “the branch of libertarian philosophy which deems the natural rent to equally belong to human beings" (Foldvary also envisages rent-sharing beginning on a local scale.)
This is the moral *should* I have trouble accepting – and perhaps I'm unnecessarily complicating the issue.
I understand that a location becomes even more valuable due to the economic and social activity of the community members working and living nearby, but the idea that they are *owed* that value seems off to me.
We don't own value, we only own things (property) that are valued. Since land value (rent) isn't a thing, the members of the community cannot have been deprived of it and so cannot be *owed* it or claim it *should* be returned.
(The complaint of being owed value also arises from the notion of inflation of the money supply being a "theft" or a "tax". Whilst it is true that inflation causes a reduction in the value or "purchasing power" of the money one holds, it doesn't deprive one of any amount of the money one holds. No-thing has been taken away as it would have been with a theft or a tax.)
The community members cannot create value in the sense that they can demand that potential joiners *should* give any particular market value to their presence and activity. And those existing community members excluded from superior locations cannot demand that the excluders give any particular market value to those exclusions. So the excluded are not *owed*.
Because the notion of being *owed* the value or a "return" of the value seems to falsely imply a deprivation, I can only agree that members of the community can (rather than should) voluntarily agree to share land value to compensate each other for exclusions, and because it is generally true that their activity further increases the market value of locations, it is better that they, rather than a speculative rent-seeker, capture that value and distribute it amongst themselves in proportion to the value of their exclusions.
Again, I could be unnecessarily complicating the issue. My aim is to avoid the advocacy of unreasonable moral shoulds, particularly where those shoulds would adversely impact those not in agreement, e.g., Geoists/Georgists forcibly redistributing land value amongst non-geoists on the basis that they *should*.