Kowalski
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Posts
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Joined
Posts posted by Kowalski
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That's a worthwhile hypothesis. I'd like to see it tested more. But I also think one thing being missed is that there is nothing inherent in being raised in a healthy way that prepares you for resisting exploitive people, per se. Just as being raised without exposure to the flu doesn't inherently give you immunity to it or knowledge on how to avoid it. And being raised in a healthy way doesn't suddenly give you the knowledge of how to avoid being hit by a car.
Well that's not entirely true - people with absent or abusive parents of the opposite gender tend to be far more susceptible to domestic, sexual, physical abuse and such. And people who have their preferences squashed as children are usually more susceptible to bullying/interpersonal manipulation later on in life and are thus more vulerable to conmen/extortionists and generally manipulative or intimidating people.
But I was talking more about on a global scale than an interpersonal one - a society full of untraumatized people is simply more functional and therefore better equipped to deal with any social or global problem whether it be psychopaths, earthquakes or whatever. So a society in which potentially peaceful people are made violent is less effective at dealing with inherently violent people, if such people exist. That means that even if there were no solution to anti-social behavior other than directly genetically-engineering people or implementing voluntary eugenics (I guess you could use involuntary genetics too but I assume we both agree that would be wrong), a society with less traumatized people would simply be better able to do this.
All I can see an argument for is that Stef should be saying "Solving child abuse is the key, direct or indirect, to solving all problems within society" rather than "Child abuse causes most violence in society". And that's in strictly empirical terms - on a gut/common-sense level I think anyone who has a somewhat high degree of self-knowledge and understanding of human nature based on life experiences kind of gets that child abuse is behind most violent/dysfunctional behavior in the world, but yes that's just an unverified personal opinion, and now that I think of it that's probably why Stef said he was agnostic on the issue - to avoid these kind of accusatory arguments. So I'll take back what I said about him being inconsistent. If Stef is self-contradicting by arguing for environmental factors being the main cause of most violence while also claiming agnosticism, then is the author of Evil Genes self-contradicting too? Because I doubt she would make the claim that she has absolute proof an inherent anti-social personality disorder, so in that sense she's agnostic as well.
I think that even as we try to reduce childhood trauma, it's crucial that the scientific study of exploiters, where they come from, how they work, what disorders may be involved, and so on, continue and that the public be widely educated on this topic. There are plenty of threats in the world that require specific education to be protected against them. I think that applies here.
And what type of society is best equipped to do this? One full of traumatized people or one full of well-balanced people?
So this goes along with the point that simply raising children in a healthy way may not be enough to stop exploitive forces from dominating.
You may be interested in the concept of logocracy, which applies here.
Well, who do you think would be better equipped to live in relative harmony with a genetic sociopath - a well balanced nonsociopath or a traumatized, unconscious nonsociopath?
I will agree with you that child abuse should be reduced and that doing so is likely to help to some extent. All I take issue with is the single-mindedness with which that measure is promoted on this board as a sort of cure-all that will inevitably lead to a peaceful world.
Well that's because it basically is a cure-all by definition. Even problems that have nothing to do with child abuse are better dealt with by well-balanced people who have not been abused.
I can't continue stating this enough. My beef is not with the focus on child abuse. It's with the lack of balance in considering other things that may also be involved and other measures that might also be necessary in addition to reducing child abuse in the context of promoting an entire global political philosophy.
I don't think Stef's ever said that child abuse is literally the only thing in the world that needs to be addressed, just that it's the most fundamental thing. Which it is, even if it's granted that there are genetic sociopaths as I explained.
If this site was devoted simply to reducing child abuse and that was its stated focus - just as is the case with a number of such organizations out there - we wouldn't be having this chat. I fully support such work. The only problem that arises for me is when it extends to "And reducing child abuse this way - and without the need to consider other possibly necessary issues - will bring about an overall peaceful world."
It's true that reducing child abuse will bring about an overall peaceful world. Whatever issues are caused by something other than child abuse are still best dealt with by people as well-balanced and untraumatized as possible and I don't think Stef's ever argued that no other issues are necessary, in fact I've heard him talk quite a few times about non-child abuse related issues
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Also I forgot my most important point: If some people are hardwired for extreme violence regardless of environmental factors, the best way to bring about a society in which these people can be managed either through offering opportunities that minimize their desire for committing violence and the capacity to cause harm to others (good jobs, boxing matches or such, security systems for homes, cheap, efficient self-defense items etc), or by bringing about an society that allows for the best genetic research is one in which the people who have the inbuilt genetic potential to be non-violent are not corrupted by the trauma of early violent experiences. A nonviolent, free-market based voluntary society would be inherently better at solving problems caused by inherently violent people than the bureaucratic statist ones we live in now.
So even granting that some people are completely, unavoidably predisposed to anti-social behavior, the violence that warps inherently nonviolent children into violent adults only hinders society's ability to find solutions for the behavior of the unavoidably violent. In this case child abuse is still the root cause of most violence in the world, just indirectly in terms of hindering solutions for genetically violent people, rather than directly in terms of all violent people being that way purely because of environmental factors.
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No. I am simply in support of races and distinct cultures to self-determine. I want to trade and live peacefully with everyone, but multiculturalism won't do that.
Are you in support of distinct human beings to self-determine? Most people enjoy the novelty of interacting with people of different backgrounds, and many form intimate relationships and have children with someone of a different race or culture. I'm not sure how you can advocate the prevention of people doing this without advocating violence.
Also I'm not sure how you can define the nonviolent growth of a demographic or the nonviolent shrinking of a demographic as some sort of attack on white people. As if people moving to a different region, and people having kids are violent acts. I don't see how you can advocate keeping the white population high without preventing the movement or reproduction of people of other races (violence).
If people want to establish mixed societies, they should be able to do so. Also, we can prevent people from coming onto our property, no one has a 'right' to immigrate.
Of course - you can prevent any race you want coming onto your property - i.e. whatever land you bought with money from your labor. It's just you can't reasonably or morally claim the entire abstract concept of "Europe" or "America" belongs to an arbitrarty group of people with certain physical traits, and that anyone without those traits who is within that imaginary border is somehow committing an act of aggression, making it OK to use force against them.
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Our personal experiences of violence as children are not relevant. None of us is even saying childhood violence isn't a problem or we shouldn't work to stop it. All we've said is that the science does not show in any conclusive way at this time that nurture is primary and nature secondary in causing the overall problems of violence and aggression on the larger scale as Stefan seems to claim. Trying to focus on our personal experience when we're questioning a simple factual claim by Stefan (and one even he himself contradicts at different times in his own work) is a distraction and almost akin to an ad hominem in question form.
Well, you answered the question about whether you materially support what you believe in/are arguing for, so if such questions are irrelevant why answer one but not the other? That seems kind of evasive - why not just refuse to answer both?
The questions are relevant in that they tell the person asking them whether the person they're debating with has processed any traumatic events they have been through in the past and whether they are clouding their viewpoint/arguments, and the phenomenon of experiences shaping and/or warping opinions is pretty universally accepted in the field of psychology. I never said that if someone suffered abuse as a child that whatever argument they're making is wrong.
This is one of the patterns I've seen many people complain about on these boards over the years. Anyone who questions one of Stefan's view, even simply laying out his argument and asking if this is correct, is peppered with these personal psychological questions that both imply that the questioner can't possibly simply be asking an objective rational question or, at the very least, serve to keep distracting from the question at hand.
The implication that you're not asking an objective rational question can be debunked pretty easily by responding to the questions honestly and without evasion.
You aim a question at Stefan's work and in return you don't get a straight answer, but a bunch of suspicious questions about you and your motives for asking. And ironically, if your original question isn't answered that's considered fine, but if you don't answer the distracting follow-ups this supposedly shows that you are not asking your original question in good faith.
I'm neither defending or attacking Stefan's in and of himself, I'm defending the viewpoint that violent experiences as an infant and child increase a person's chances of developing a violent behavior pattern. This is not at all exclusive to Stef, nor is it an unusual or fringe opinion within the field of mainstream psychology. When you frame it that people are simply blindly following stef you're engaging in the ad-hominem style of argument you're accusing people of using yourself.
Anyone who takes a common-sense look at things can see that early childhood violence increases the likelyhood of adult violence. Human children model their behavior on that of their primary caregivers, or highly influential adults within their early lives. This is a proven and commonly accepted fact. If children have violent parents, siblings or family they are by virtue of this fact more likely to be violent themselves. Since the vast majority of people in the world generally do not commit violent crimes like rape and murder, even if some people are literally 100% genetically presisposed to commit acts of extreme violence, they're still a small minority, and reducing child abuse will decrease the violent behavior of people within that group who have the potential not to be violent, thereby further decreasing the size of this already small minority.
If there is a such thing as a person unavoidably prewired for violence then nothing can be done about that until some sort of genetic engineering or voluntary eugenics system is implemented worldwide. So I'm not sure why you have a problem with Stef arguing that people should do something that will have an undeniable and tangible reducive effect on world violence, rather than him arguing for some theoretical engineering of global human genetics that we don't even know for sure is the cause of any violence whatsoever. It's this sort of irrationality that makes people assume that you're arguing from personal issues rather than logic/reason.
No, this thread is about the seemingly contradictory claims Stefan has made about nature vs. nurture in regards to violence and aggression on a global scale. That's it. That's what it's about. Godwin laid out very nicely the various quotes right next to each other and we simply want Stefan to explain if his viewpoint was accurately represented and why there are seemingly contradictory statements. And the fact that that answer is not forthcoming after this long of a thread speaks volumes. In fact, I'm pretty sure the other two people who also had similar questions to me in this thread have given up on ever getting an answer at this point and I'm close to doing so myself.
Are you talking about where Stef claimed he's agonistic on the subject while also claiming that childhood violence is the main cause of most violence? If so, I don't think it's consistent to say both things and don't agree with him doing so, but I'm not arguing for or against Stef, I'm arguing that childhood violence causes adult violence.
As for the second question, I have spent most of the last over 2 years working on writing and promoting the work and ideas I bring up in my initial post on this board. It has been a huge investment of time and effort and even my finally joining this board was part of that effort. So yes I am definitely backing up what I talk about with action (and at some personal cost to me). I claim to be agnostic on the roots of larger scale violence and aggression and I back that up by promoting more research rather than claiming that reducing environmental factors is primary. Stefan, on the other hand, appears to claim to be agnostic but at the same time claim that reducing childhood trauma will bring about a peaceful world on a larger scale.
OK, and do you think what you've done has been more effective in reducing the levels of violence in the world that what Stef has done?
I repeat for the umpteenth time: I completely favor reducing childhood trauma. I simply do not agree that at this time it is responsible to claim that doing so will also bring about some larger scale anarchist peaceful paradise because a world of non-traumatized children will grow into rational adults that agree with FDR's philosophy. I think that is a stretch that cannot be backed up by anything empirical.
I never said you didn't favor reducing childhood trauma. I also don't think anyone here ever said the world would become a paradise - obviously conflict is inherent in human relatonships. All people are saying is that without trauma and abuse, people will be able to deal with those conflicts constructively rather than with multigenerational mass murder. And anarchy isn't "FDR's philosophy", it's just the logically consistent applicaton of standards of behavior to all people. If it's illogical or inconsistent please explain how this is the case rather than just vaguely dismissing it as some sort of bandwagon.
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No. I am simply in support of races and distinct cultures to self-determine. I want to trade and live peacefully with everyone, but multiculturalism won't do that.
Are you in support of distinct human beings to self-determine? Most people enjoy the novelty of interacting with people of different backgrounds, and many form intimate relationships and have children with someone of a different race or culture. I'm not sure how you can advocate the prevention of people doing this without advocating violence..
Also I'm not sure how you can define the nonviolent growth of a demographic or the nonviolent shrinking of a demographic as some sort of attack on white people. As if people moving to a different region, and people having kids are violent acts. I don't see how you can advocate keeping the white population high without preventing the movement or reproduction of people of other races (violence).
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I have two questions for STer and Troncat, (obviously you're not obliged to answer):
1) What were your experiences of violence as children?
2) How much money are you donating to the scientific research of the causes of violence? You say that's a more effective thing to do than promoting nonviolence or being nonviolent oneself. I assume, given the degree of criticism you're leveling at this community's approach to the problem, that you're doing what you think will have an impact, right?
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[View:http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Vx8RxRn6dWU:400:300]
This video has been posted in almost every thread where this topic arises. Please look at past threads I've posted in where Fallon's work and what it means has been discussed ad nauseum. And let us not get sidetracked by it in this thread.
Here we are wanting to get Stefan's particular view on where exactly and to what extent parenting fits in among the dynamics that lead to aggression and violence.
The only argument I've ever heard made against this video is that it's anecdotal and isn't enough to constitute scientific proof of the nurture argument. Of course, that's true, but I've never seen strong evidence or arguments presented by proponents of nature for their own position, just an indirect undermining of the nurture argument through pointing out "there's not enough evidence to give a definitive cause yet".
OK, there's not enough evidence - then stop asserting that nature is the primary cause of violence. Or provide some equally strong anecdotal evidence like a peacefully parented person with strong friend and family relationships going on a shooting spree despite being given all the factors necessary in life for good mental health.
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My mom is a "schizophrenic" and I can personally verify based on her
behavior that she is in a FAR worse state after years of terrible
medications like Haldol, Zyprexa, Lithium, etc. Wheras before she was a
delusional religious fanatic, now she's more like a robot unable to
feel human emotion - you can hear it in her voice. When my grandmother
originally explained schizophrenia to me several years ago, the whole
idea sounded very strange to me....I'll be showing this video to my grandmother and my guess is that
she's going to get very defensive when these topics are brought up,
because if there is no scientifically verifiable physical manifestation
then it means her parenting is responsible for such a mentally unhealthy
person.Man, so sorry to hear that. On the one hand that you were brought up
by a violent religious fanatic, but also that she's been so sedated by
drugs. Which surely wouldn't help if you ever wanted to talk things over
with her.
Apart from if your mother was correctly labeled
schizophrenic, I want to direct you to my thread discussing physical
properties of mental illness: Biology and mental disorders?
It seems there are behavioral and physical symptoms that co-occur in
schizophrenia and which are not solely the effect of drugs. Even though
drugs are able to dampen delusional thought and hallucinations, they are
not at all a cure. They actually do hasten the decline in brain matter
that was already present. What's far more promising is saving the
schizophrenic's mental functions by targeted mental and social exercise
('use it or lose it'). Talk therapy might be helpful in disentangling
childhood trauma that led to the disorder and managing the psychotic
symptoms.
I highly encourage everyone to actually look up
above sources, look at further evidence of either side and make up your
own mind. Psychiatry does a lot of harm to people, but that doesn't imply that mental disorders and their characteristics aren't real.Sure
there are probably non drug-related physical brain differences between
those with certain mental illnesses and "normal" people, but that's no
different in principle to a bruise, scar, cut etc on a physically abused
person. The approach taken now in psychiatry if applied to the body
would be to label a beaten child with a black eye "black eye syndrome"
based on an innate genetic predisposition to swelling of the eye area
and to indefinitely prescribe anti-inflammatory drugs with horrible and
permanently damaging side-effects.If these so called physical proofs of
mental illness exist, then essentially we have objective physical
evidence in the brains of mentally ill children that they've been been
abused and
traumatized, just the same as if there were bruising or cuts on the body
- but do we send the parents to jail? Nope, just chemically lobotomize
the abuse victims instead.I would make a relatively confident bet (of course I might be
100% wrong) that extreme trauma survivors such as civilians in war,
soldiers, people from gang cultures/neighborhoods have different brains
as well. That's nothing to do with some innate disease though, it's
simply evidence of the brain having been damaged by terrible
experiences, and I think it's the same with extreme mental disorders
like schizophrenia. I really don't see any grey area in which modern
psychiatry is sort of ok sometimes even if mainly bad - except maybe in
the most extreme cases where drugs are absolutely needed to prevent
somebody hurting themselves or others (which is a very small percentage of the millions put on drugs today)
No right to immigrate
in General Messages
Posted
This is exactly what I said - you have the right to disallow anyone you like from coming on your private property. Please point either to where I said you didn't have that right, or to where I said there is a "universal right to immigration" including infringing upon private property??
Also please explain how and why white nationalists currently own all of Europe or America, then you'll have an argument against immigration.