Mike Fleming

What is your opinion on the way that military people currently conduct themselves in regard to the wars the US is involved with? Do they have a right to be there? Should they be there? Is it OK just to follow orders regardless? You say you don't make the messes but Iraq and Afghanistan look like 2 military created messes to me. I doubt they'd look as bad if you guys hadn't been involved.

Because technological change is exponential. Once you are along the path it's a rapid progression. This has been discussed many times and is the subject of many fears as people look at these exponential curves and extrapolate disaster. What actually happens is that humanity moves to a new paradigm and then rises exponentially up that new paradigm before having to transfer to a new one again or else society would collapse in some kind of disaster. The possibility that any civilization we meet is at the point where it's say had computers for the same amount of time that we have had, maybe 100 years or so depending on what you describe as a computer is virtually impossible statistically. More than likely they have had them thousands or millions of years with all the requisite advances that brings or they haven't developed them at all and are in a much more primitive state, Either way, not much point worrying about them. As for telepathy. I like the X-Men but the idea has zero basis in fact and doesn't make sense physically so I don't even know why you would postulate it as a possible attribute of some possible alien race. It's just a story idea probably based loosely on ancient superstitions. ie God can read your mind. Maybe we should worry about a race of Supermen from the planet Krypton also??

One other thing to mention is that you may have heard stories from parents or grandparents in your society about how nobody locked their doors and no-one was worried about crime decades ago. I think the rise in crime is largely an effect of the rise in government. The question to ask, in a free society with child abuse either wiped out or almost wiped out, is will people even see a need for security? Will there even be a demand for security? If there is, I expect it to be fairly low level but it might be that none is required at all. Hard for me to imagine, but if the theories are right about peaceful parenting then who knows how far it might go. Maybe the disease of crime will be wiped out. Seems a bit hopeful and utopian from my current perspective (and probably everyone else's) but maybe science is telling us, as unlikely as it seems, that it's a real possibility.

How many women out there want to be or wish they were a beautiful princess? How many women fawn when they see a real life princess on TV, like Diana for example, or here in Australia they fawn over that princess in Denmark who came from Tasmania I think. Isn't the whole wedding thing a fantasy where the woman dresses up to be a princess with her handsome prince? They have a big expensive wedding fit for a royal family, and then go off to live happily ever after. And it always works out that way of course... So yeah, I'd stay away from fairly tales in general, except maybe to show why people believe such nonsense in society, and what believing nonsense leads to.

I began thinking this after listening to the podcast today with the guy which went for 2 hours. My own family has resembled a cult to me for many years. My mother behaves as if she is a cult leader. She is infallible, all-important and all other members of the family pale in significance. In fact, she used many of the tactics on me and my brother generally employed by cult leaders, utilising fear, making us feel insecure and worthless, etc. I've never really thought about it beyond my own family though. We tend to only really know about what happens in our own families (there is the whole behind closed doors thing) and my mother certainly misrepresented the dysfunctional nature of our family to the rest of the world. I've never really wanted a family of my own. And the reason I think that may be the case is because I have an automatic revulsion to cults. I don't want to be either a member or leader of a cult. But in today's society that's what the family is, it seems. There are all these myths around family, how you should support family and all you've got is family, etc. And the ultimate cult leader of this unit seems to be mostly the mother these days. There are all these myths in society about mothers being perfect and you should be a good son or daughter. How good kids phone their mother every day and how it seems more emphasis is placed on mother's day than father's day. Is this a fairly recent thing or have families been this way throughout history? It all gives the impression that the adults, and particularly the mothers have something to hide. Which of course, a great many of them do.

One of the first things that I noticed was, why is it a South American country? Is the person afraid that if they posit the story for say the US or Canada it would sound ridiculous? I think in a free society one of the services that people would expect of protection companies is that they feel safe. Part of feeling safe would be not having unsolved murders go essentially unresolved. Especially when you would have investigative journalists look at this situation and ask the question, who benefits from this guy's death? They would then look at the legal situation and find out about the suit and find out what it's for and immediately suspicion would fall on the wealthy guy. At that point he would have to hope he's covered his tracks extremely well or his reputation is destroyed. "Don't do business with this guy because if he decides he doesn't like the terms he'll just have you executed". With all this information out in the open I can't imagine family members not filing suit. What is this guy going to do? He'll be watched like a hawk at this point from people expecting him to do something wrong because they'll get the story for their news show/blog/whatever. Any further bad behaviour is just going to result in the total destruction of this wealthy guy's life and any reasonably sane person at this point would just try to get out of the whole situation with as much reputation and wealth as he could rather than escalating. If he did escalate the situation he would be pretty much an outcast from society. The vast majority of people don't like murderers, especially when it's rich guys that think they can get away with it. Historically people got away with this by manipulating the corrupt law monopoly that exists in countries which is there to benefit those with money and influence.

There is a place for security in a free market society. As long as there is demand for security people will supply it. This will likely not be in the form that the police are currently in, and will certainly be nothing like the army which is incredibly wasteful and inefficient and no-one would pay for because it is just lots of money for crap service.. Maybe someone will brand their security business "Police" and use similar uniforms, although I doubt it because I expect the police to have such a bad name throughout society at that point that no-one will want to associate their business with this historically corrupt and largely inept institution. Like how school will also have a bad name which we can see starting to happen now. But if there is a demand for security there will be people who supply it. But it will be protection of property rights which has little to do with what the police do and nothing to do with what the army does. So it will essentially be nothing like the Police or army of today.

If there are aliens they will either be so far ahead of us that we will be unable to defend ourselves or so far behind us that it is irrelevant. Considering how advanced we have become in the last 200 years, since the industrial revolution, which is but a mere fraction of the 14 billion year life of the universe it is pretty inconceivable that other civilizations, if they exist, will be at or near our technological capability. They will more than likely be either far beyond it or far behind it. In fact you could almost argue that for a civilization to advance to the point where they are colonizing the galaxy they will have probably had to deal with aggression in their own society or end up destroying themselves with advanced technology. This is what gives me hope for mankind. I think that we have to deal with the aggression in society or we will destroy ourselves or end up in a totalitarian 1984 situation. And from what I've seen in my time here at FDR I think we can deal with it.

I always thought that a good idea for highways is the same kind of thing you see at a Grand Prix with advertisements all along the side. Think of all that advertising space!! If you could make a highway that you know a lot of people would use and you could get good throughput on it (ie. little to no traffic jams) so in order to get as many eyes as possible in a given time period I could imagine that being very valuable for advertisers and so would attract a reasonable amount of money. No need for tolls, kickstarters or anything like that.

I don't buy either of those stories. I think the world was looking for any excuse to go to war and that's why it only took a relatively small incident to push the world over the edge. If it hadn't have been the Archduke then it would have been something else. The powderkeg was waiting to be lit. Similar with Adolf Hitler. There was a gap in the market for some nasty guy to come along. If it wasn't Hitler, it would have been someone else. I don't believe there was just one person at the time who was so much more evil and capable than everyone else. The way the Nazi party operated, in the time they were in, would through a process of selection weed out the good people to find the nastiest, most ruthless person that it could. That just happened to be Hitler. The same with Jesus. People were very superstitious and very religious. They were looking for any excuse to anoint the son of God and be rescued from their sins. If Jesus had been strangled at birth some other person would have been anointed as the son of God. And that's assuming there was a Jesus. If the actual person never existed, the story would have been told regardless.

Just another thought I had about this. I'm mentioning this because (I think) I'm seeing parallels with myself. I have been very evasive in the past with people regarding information about myself. So I'll often say a lot without really saying anything at all and it comes off as being evasive and slightly dishonest and quite annoying, though this is never something I myself realised. I just wondered why people didn't react well to me or that I could never really make good friends. The reason behind why I was like this is, again, back to my mother. She would use her intimate knowledge of me to attack me. Not at the time I said things, but it was like she had stored a database of her knowledge of me and would extract some piece of information to attack me whenever she felt like she needed to (which was quite often as her heightened fight/flight mechanism led to almost a permanent state of hysteria). I coped with this by closing up and giving out as little information as possible until it became my default behaviour, my self-defence mechanism, which, as I'm sure you could imagine is not very conducive to open and honest relationships. I'm not saying this is relevant to you, I could be completely off-base, but I'll just put it out there anyway.

Like my mother. Every single one. Which is why I gave up on women for a long time. I realised it must be me and my problems but didn't realise the why behind it until I started to explore self-knowledge and only then could I start to explore having true relationships with women. Fortunately, my father set a strong negative example that I had a strong impulse not to follow, so I'm grateful to him for not falling into the trap of marriage and children when I had serious unresolved issues. He was good for one thing at least.

I think most men have an involuntary "oooff" when they see a guy get hit in the groin. OTOH people seem to think it's funny, but I've never had the urge to laugh when I see it... I just automatically imagine the pain

I always used to do this too, apologize that is. Even now I find it hard not to, it's been trained in to me that what ever little thing happened when I was young, it always had to be my fault (because my mother is perfect and never wrong, the perfect human being basically, lol), so I just did it out of habit as an adult. My father and brother do it too and it's really annoying so I try to consciously intercept the desire to do it so I only apologise when it is warranted and not just for every silly little thing. I think it's an aspect of a heightened fight or flight. Basically, in my case, it is the legacy of being the son of a psychotic narcissist.

Because they would mature into adults. In today's society people are infantilsed by their traumatised parents and one of the symptoms of this is that they will have more in common with 16 year old girls than mature women. Not having traumatised parents short circuits this.

I think this has drifted off topic, but I agree with those who say that sexuality is a voluntary thing and age is kind of meaningless in this context as long as it is voluntary. As regards the guy in his 30's dating 16 year-olds I think this has to be taken in the context of the society we are living in. If people are brought up well and allowed to mature into adults then they won't be chasing 16 year old girls. We shouldn't have a law or even some other social thing saying this is unacceptable. In a peaceful society it won't happen. I think this is the case that Stef is making. I think some interpret it as being that he thinks there should be a law or some such, but that's not the way I interpreted it. To me, the idea is creepy, and I don't think I would want to be associated with such a person, but it's voluntary, regardless of how mature the girl is. We should not focus on these individual instances so much but ask the question of why these things are coming about. I think it is clear that it is another symptom of a society which is abusive towards children and we should do as Stef does, in addressing the disease and not focussing on the symptoms.

I moved to the other side of the world to get away from my mother because I was that desperate. The mistake I made was that I didn't break with them emotionally and stayed in contact. In today's world of cheap and fast communication the world is just too small and they can continue the abuse through phone and email (especially if they are as insidious as my mother) if you commit to being a "good son", like society expects. The physical distance was almost irrelevant. It worked much better 30 years ago when my parents moved to the other side of the world to get away from my mother's parents. When there was no internet and letters took a long time, you had to buy them, sit down to write them, walk to post them and they took maybe a week or more to arrive. And when phone calls were quite expensive and reserved for just a couple times a year. Damn the free market, let's get government back in control of communication so it's difficult for our parents to contact us again. So moving is OK, but ultimately, if you want to break from her the physical distance in my experience is irrelevant. You can be abused from a distance if you allow yourself to be. Distancing yourself emotionally (ie. in terms of contact) is more important than doing so physically. EDIT: just thinking, I wonder if the improvement in communication has had anything to do with this drive to face up to our parents now. Now that we essentially have no escape and actually have to admit that we don't want to see or talk to them. Traditionally, people have had the option of running away but still nominally staying in contact, but that option has now been removed with advanced free market communication.

That was a great podcast although what if you were to go to their deathbed and say "Rot in hell, asshole!".? I guess I kind of have this fantasy about going to their funeral and wearing something completely inappropriate, like t-shirt and shorts, and giving a speech on the true nature of the people I knew. And when their friends tell me they are sorry that they are dead, I'll just give a wide smile and say "I'm not. I'm glad they're dead.". Maybe it's just a fantasy though... I probably saw it in a film.

I think it is mostly true. Certainly all the women I met throughout my 20's and early 30's were fundamentally my mother, and thank god I had enough sense not to listen to society in general and chose the single life until if/when I could figure out why this was happening and solve it. Fundamentally, I had to get my abusive mother out of my life before I could start feeling truly comfortable with myself and thereby have a good relationship. It's interesting though because I have a narcissistic, dominating, controlling mother who married a weak, submissive man-child (my father). My mother's father seemed to be very much like my mother more so than my father, so I'm not sure it is true in their case. My mother just seemed to want someone she could dominate. So I think broadly it's true, but not always.

My experience of this though is that they see it as a US thing and not a government thing. Those crazy Americans always wanting to blow things up. Being British , I've heard from lots of people how the British army know what they are doing and don't cause needless destruction and are more professional than the US army. That the Americans always come along and just screw things up. It's all garbage of course, the British are just as bad, on a smaller scale, but that's how most seem to see it. America is not seen as a bastion of hope by most of the world but as a bed of corruption. Being that the idea of liberty is so strong in America, other people then associate liberty ideas with unrestricted corruption and think how much better it is having governments that aren't like that. Government's that look after their citizens. That's been my experience anyway.

Also making evil more affordable unfortunately.

Brilliant analysis. Marx has the classic profile of a narcissist (I have been intimately familiar with narcs). They basically only care about themselves but will tell everyone how much they care about others in order to get things off them. Which seems to me, now that I think about it, to be the basis of the entire Marxist theory. Considering how many narcs there are running around today, I am not surprised it is still popular.

I started to write a few things but then realised I couldn't really say anything that I thought was meaningful. I tried to relate it to myself bullying my brother but found it difficult to articulate so that it meant much in relation to your situation. I just decided to write a post to let you know that at least one person has read what you wrote and was moved by it. I've heard similar situations discussed on Stef's show. Perhaps talking to him might bring you some clarity. I don't believe anyone is beyond redemption or healing but it's certainly much harder for some than others. The fact that you want to heal says volumes. Hopefully some others will be able to provide you with some resources. Good luck.

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I wouldn't say he has been forgiven. People see the value in the work that he does and try to balance that against whatever harm he has done. I would not personally associate with those who participated in the war and don't try and redeem themselves. Those who just go about their lives and consider it OK and that they don't owe any debts for their crimes. Like I said above, the one reality about this that we do know is that they will never be punished. I think Adam is doing enough good things in the world today that it counterbalances whatever wrong he has done in a way that few other veterans can say. I am more for rehabilitation than punishment and I think Adam has come a long way in that respect. He is extremely unlikely to re-offend. He has a debt to pay and I think he is going about it the best way he can.