Mike Fleming

That's actually quite funny because the scientific community is mostly in the determinist camp. The religious community is mostly in the free will camp (it's kind of necessary for the whole heaven and hell thing to make any sense) and most normal people don't really think about it much or at all, but if you were to ask them if they think there was free will then they would mostly answer yes. If you replace determinism for atheism and free will for god, this was the exact situation before atheism took off a few years ago. There really is a lot of parallels. You could even say the "free will of the gaps", because most free will people would acknowledge that determinism is true for most of the universe but would hold out that it doesn't apply to humans in the same way most religious acknowledge the truth of science but hold out that there is a place for God.

I wouldn't even bother. If I was going to write a criticism of Zeitgeist, which I am considering, I would just publish it on my own on my own terms with no restrictions. There is plenty of criticism of them floating around now, this is a way of them trying to control it imo. The fact they are doing something like this might be an indication that they have peaked and are in decline and are trying to slow the bleeding.

I have been watching these videos lately where two professional therapists are talking about relationships with crazy, narcissistic people, particularly women. While they are generally talking about men getting involved with insane women I have found it has given me a great deal of insight into my own family situation and made me realise why my mother is a lost cause and why I tried so hard for so long to establish a decent relationship with her and why it was such a colossal failure and waste of time on my part and also my own father's part in enabling it all. Highly recommended. I found them very therapeutic and have listened multiple times. I know that feeling. Just seeing my mother's name pop up in my email account, without even reading the email, used to be enough to make me feel a sense of dread.

When I say every effect has a cause, it does not mean that they're are not interlocking cause and effects. It all depends which layer of abstraction you are working on. If you are working on the most basic level of the universe, whatever it happens to be, then cause and effect will be individual. But any higher level of abstraction and things often don't have individual causes. The point is whether an effect has one cause or many causes, it is still caused. If it wasn't for those previous causes it wouldn't have happened. And the same can be said for each of those previous causes that themselves may have had more than one cause. A set of causes will create a certain effect. That's how you can have the scientific method and repeatable results. And why all the intersecting pieces of your computer provide the same effect time after time. Multiple causes does not lead to a different result. Well then I guess science and the scientific method are wrong. While I'm on this subject does anyone else not find it strange that one of the biggest philosophical questions of all time is not allowed to be discussed on a self-proclaimed philosophy site? It's funny how atheism/religion is resolved, in my mind at least, but it can still be discussed yet free will/determinism is off limits. Even more strange that posts on determinism aren't banned since they are against the forum rules. And Stef said that he banned it because a few people wanted it banned? I guess people don't like controversy. If people don't want to discuss a topic they don't have to. No-one is making people click on anything. But, instead we go the nuclear option. What happened to the idea of exploring controversial topics?

Not sure how whimsical you are being but one states that something is impossible and the other states that two things cannot simultaneously be known, not that they can't both have position and momentum, because they obviously do have both.

What you seem to be talking about is the non-initiation of force or the NAP. Morality? Moral rules? These are just things that groups make up to suit themselves. They are rooted in religion. I don't see any value in trying to re-define it nor any point in doing so because they were only ever arbitrary. That all stems from the NAP. But even in a free society there is no way to get everyone to follow the NAP. The protection agencies will follow that general rule because most people want to be protected from theft, murder, etc and that's what will be most cost-effective. I don't see the point in trying to scientifically prove all this morality stuff. I don't think it can be. Says who? To put this all another way, Stef himself has said that moral rules were created to serve the leaders.

He has a lot of great videos. He has a gift for getting points across in as clear and concise a manner as possible. My all-time favourite video of his is "I'm allowed to rob you"

I wouldn't call it an obligation as such, although there was certainly pressure to. There are couples who didn't have kids even in the older age groups. You aren't feeling that, you have been indoctrinated that way. Your feeling is that you don't want to do these things. But your indoctrinated brain and societal peer pressure is making you feel guilty for feeling the way you do. I'm not going to pretend it's easy to get past it. It was a long, hard road for me. The brainwashing goes deep. The question you need to ask yourself is "what can I live with in the long run? Can I face another 10, 20, 30, 40 years of having to deal with all this? What effect will it have on my life?" Personally, I just got to a point in my mid-30's where I couldn't cope any more. I looked back at all the wreckage it had caused in my life and felt incredibly sad that I'd lost all those years through doing what society wanted and being a "good son". The final moment came for me when I tried to imagine, just vividly imagine, that I had received a phone call that my parents had died in a car crash. I really tried to put myself in the moment, like it had really happened and then asked myself honestly how did I feel about it. It was like a huge wave of relief crashed over me. I breathed out "oh, thank god they're gone". And i saw all the potential in life, the freedom to be who I wanted to be and how wonderful life could truly be. It truly felt like I had discovered freedom. Obviously I didn't actually kill them, but they are effectively dead to me now and I feel like I'm truly living life for the first time in my life. If they loved me and cared about me the way they claimed to then there is no reason why I would feel such relief at their "death". Deep down I knew the truth and that they were lying to me and using me, but I denied it for years and years. It was an inconvenient truth considering the society I lived in. You need to get in touch with your true feelings. You need to ask yourself honestly how you feel. People who I care about, I am horrified at even the thought of trying to imagine them dead. Your feelings know the truth. You just need to ask them honestly and go from there. But like I said, getting in touch with the real you that has been suppressed all your life, won't be easy and it's highly unlikely that your current social group/family will be happy about it. Do you think you can live a dishonest life? Because that is what is being demanded of you. If you think you can then by all means try it. Ultimately, many of us have been down this road and there are no easy answers. All we can do is talk about the things we did and hope it provides some help for what is a trying period in anyone's life. Remember, the brain is a physical thing and you can't just change the habits of a lifetime overnight any more than you can easily develop big muscles after a lifetime of sitting on the couch.

Morality is, largely, a meaningless concept to me. I certainly don't think you could make moral rules and enforce them. The only rules that should bind people are those rules that people agree to in order that they don't have to provide all their needs and wants themselves. This will be organised in contracts through a DRO-like system in a free society. If people want to know how to treat others well, treat other people decently, that is great and I am all for it. But it's not enforceable as far as I can see. You can't make people nice by using force. You can however, create nice human beings over time through a system of voluntary interaction. That voluntary interaction would include, first and foremost the family. Children have no obligations whatsoever towards their parents.

I didn't read them. I just know it's going to be full of hypocrisy and I don't expose myself to hypocrites needlessly. What's the point?

I don't think I could bare to read them. The real question would be "What are the bad things that you have done to your 5-year old child that have made them hate you?"

I have to say this is the usual parental bullshit. Why would you sacrifice your life if you didn't have to? Nobody has to have children. The truth is that parents want children for themselves, not for their kids. They want the lifestyle which goes with it. They are told all the time that children will make their lives complete and make them happy. Parents have kids to make themselves happy. How many times have you heard people give unhappy couples the advice that "you should have kids"? Then what almost always happens is that the children do not make them happy. If you are not happy within yourself, someone else cannot make you happy and it is certainly not the child's job to do so. So then what invariably happens is the parents try to drag the children down into their pit of misery. As the saying goes "misery loves company". They know that the children are not going to want to be around them when they are old and miserable so they drum up all these ideas of obligation to try and guilt the kids into continuing to see them as adults. Parental behaviour on the whole (and this is obviously not true of all parents, but generally speaking) in today's society is disgraceful. There's a saying that you can treat your kids as either "people who are little" or as "pets who are human". Most treat their kids as the latter. You are their property. They own you! And they will treat you however they like and you can't do anything about it. Or so they think.

Basically, feminism, assuming it was valid at one point is no longer required. Anyone genuinely interested in equality today would be more interested in ideas of freedom and liberty for all than having one group favoured in a system that allows mass theft and redistribution to occur. Today's feminists receive enormous amounts of money from government grants to keep the narrative going. It's standard operating procedure for government programs. The problems can't go away, even though they pretty much have, because that would mean that they don't need to receive money for it any more. It's the same with global warming. A lot of people stand to lose a lot of money if the problem is perceived as being no longer there. Which is why you get endless propaganda and theories which look bizarre when you actually think about them. It's about money (stolen money to be precise) fundamentally and lots of it.

Welcome. Your English is better than most English people I've met in my life.

Welcome to the world of truth and free-thinking. I did the same thing as you once I got started. Gave up TV, started reading voraciously, listening to podcasts, etc and never stopped.

Sorry to say, but the answer seems obvious then. Not to say that separation is easy, it never is, but you've got to look at the long term and not just what is easiest in the short term. Is there any way you can see a long term future? You've already said you are glad you don't have kids, do you want to have kids at all? Because it sounds like in your current situation, if you do, that you already realise it's not a good idea to have them with this woman. Like I said, my outside view, given the information provided, seems obvious. Chalk it up to a youthful lack of experience. Some short term pain for the both of you may well lead to future happiness for at least one of you.

You still don't have an actual obligation to do anything. The fact is, the vast majority of people would help in such a situation. I've seen it over and over again in these types of situations. There is no need to force obligations on to people in this regard. Especially since there is no actual obligation. The person who does nothing will either feel pangs of guilt at some point afterward if they have a conscience, or won't feel anything if they don't have a conscience. As long as you don't cause the harm yourself, you have no obligation to mitigate someone else's pain. That doesn't mean you should do nothing. I don't need to feel obligated to help someone in order to help someone. I do it because it is the decent thing to do and most people in my experience seem to do the same.

As far as I can tell, the only rights that exist are property rights which stem from self-ownership. No other rights exist. I work on the basis of people not having rights. ie. no-one has the right to hurt someone else no-one has the right to kill someone else no-one has the right to steal from someone else no-one has the right to take someone else's gun off of them etc...

Dr Robert Nelson of the University of Maryland argues that environmentalism is a modern form of religion. http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/FreedomainRadioVolume5/~3/nqz8hvrl6TU/FDR_1629_dr_robert_nelson_environmentalism_as_religion.mp3 Incidentally, I was just reading a wiki about the Noah film and looking at the response. (I don't pay much attention to this stuff any more). Should I be surprised and shocked that people aren't talking about the fact that God engaged in genocide? Or that even if you think people decide to die (I know bad assumption to start with but lets go with it for now) that drowning is an incredibly inhumane and horrible way to die. Not to mention the children, the babies... what did they do? I know, I shouldn't be shocked any more but still... People really don't think... I know, I know...

No. There are no unchosen positive obligations. But it's certainly the decent, civilised thing to do.

I had a very similar situation. My brother was 3 years younger and there were quite a few times where I would bully him. Mostly it was just trying to verbally aggravate him enough so that he would throw the first punch, and myself, always being bigger than him could easily overpower him. It was basically a power thing, where I sort of showed that I had power over him. It was because I was so powerless in the face of my parent's bullying fundamentally, more a reaction than anything else. We didn't get on that great in our early 20's, the bad blood was still there, but slowly the relationship started to mend. In the intervening years we have both helped each other out in very significant ways and are good friends now. The subject of our childhood never was brought up until a couple of years ago where I told him that I felt bad about it and I was sorry. He mostly just passed it off saying "geez, Mike we were kids don't worry". Which is partly true, but I felt it needed to be said anyway. What his experience of the conversation was I'm not sure. Whether it meant anything to him or whether it was just "Mike is being a bit silly", I don't know, but we are better friends than we have ever been today. There is no sniping or making fun at the other's expense, which is so common in the rest of the family. So I feel in my situation I have come full circle. I would say that just treat him how you yourself would like to be treated. Apologise if you want to. If he doesn't take it seriously there's really nothing else you can do. Is he someone you would like as a friend? Forget the fact that you share some DNA, is he a person you want to spend time with? If the answer is yes, then do what you can, invite him round, call him to see how he is going, stuff like that. If it doesn't work out, it probably isn't meant to. If he's not all that interested in seeing you or talking to you it may not necessarily be childhood stuff to blame. Many siblings grow apart. I've never really believed in the whole blood brothers thing myself. The thing about myself and my brother is that we share so much in common, including anarchism (he was there years before I was) and so it's easy for us to want to be friends. Also I've just thought, have you talked to him about your mutual experiences with your parents? I mean REALLY talked about them with him. In depth. Parents often try to keep siblings somewhat seperated so they can't validate their feelings and experience. The parents then are able to emotionally isolate their children. Myself and my brother starting to discuss these things brought everything regarding my parents out into the open where before it was suspicions and me wondering if I was the one in the wrong all the time.

Stef did an interview with someone discussing the parallels between global warming and religious ideas in depth. Not sure offhand what the podcast was called or who it was with but I remember it being very interesting and struck a chord with me.

I kind of think of it this way.. Most people in this world are still religious. And that includes statists. We still very much exist in a world of true believers. Many people who don't like the state, but are religious, gravitate towards libertarianism as a way to get their religion back on top. We are still in very early days regarding taking the world away from religious beliefs. You can see this in atheism also, where there are many true believers in the religion of the state. It's one reason why I have gravitated away from both the atheism and libertarian communities. Neither are really as free thinking as they claim to be. They just have different Gods. Stef has mentioned this before that most people are still too damaged. You can take away one God and they will just search for another one. The underlying causes need to be treated and that's going to require many of them dying off I think.